Saigon street scenes

The most famous backpacker ghettos are, well, exactly what you'd expect from the modern connotation of the word "ghetto". Dirty. Sleazy. Etc.

I rather like the Pham Ngu Lao section of Saigon, though. Sure, you have do deal with the occasional ladyboy prostitute riding alongside on you on a motorbike on the sidewalk trying to get you to purchase his/her ... services. (Not only is this is a true story, it's happened many times.) But on the whole it's cleaner and more low-key than, say, Khao San Road in Bangkok or Thamel in Kathmandu.

I've been to Saigon four times and I always stay at the same place. It's on an alley street just off the main intersection. You can see the THANH sign on the right side of the street in the middle of the photo.



Also note how many motorbikes are parked on this little side street. The family that owns the hotel always remembers me, although I wonder if I'm not just getting the fake Southeast Asian smile. Ah, well, the price is right. Although I could do without the stairs.

Virtually every hotel I've seen in Vietnam is what we would consider a rowhome back in Baltimore, a narrow property in a block of identical properties. In the hotel in Saigon where I stay I can touch both walls in the stairwell.

They always put me in the same room. While it's undeniably sweet that they remember the exact room I stayed in, almost three months later, I haven't figured out a way to politely tell them (and allow them to "save face") that I would really rather not be on the top floor.

This is the view looking down the stairwell from my room.


Every time I return it's like doing the Everest Base Camp hike again! The ropes are a pully system they use to raise and lower linen, cleaning supplies, etc.

Just around the corner is an intersection of two major thoroughfares. Note how the traffic is moving in all four directions simultaneously. Also note the the name of the building in the background.


And I was worried about being an American in this part of the world...

One of the hardest things about traveling in this part of the world is dealing with children who are either selling or begging. There are women who walk around with baskets of household items like nail clippers, facial tissues, and so on in one arm, with an infant in the other. It's hard to say no to them.

It's even harder to say no when there is no mother, only a child of five or six with the basket of goods for sale.

Of course the scam here is obvious: No one buys anything. They just give money to the child. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If you don't give the child money she gets in trouble. If you give her money it encourages her parents to continue making her beg.

My admittedly hopeless method to save footing on the slippery moral slope is to give the children money if they will let me take their picture. You have to be one hardhearted bastard to say no to this face.



One of the typically Vietnamese experiences is to sit at one of the impromptu bar/restaurants that pop up on the sidewalks at night. Some offer food but some just offer "fresh beer" or bia hoi, draft beer. It tastes almost as good as dirty dishwater but it's 5,000 dong per glass, which means you can have four beers and get change back for a dollar.

Usually the stools are about eight inches high with a surface area about the size of a paperback book. (I am not exaggerating to make a point!) This particular stall serves a full menu of surprisingly good food and has actual chairs.



Notice that the chairs are actually two chairs tied together. Apparently chairs here aren't built to withstand fat tourist butts. The table here is quite high for a bia hoi stand. The cart to the right has snails and clams for sale in the bowls, and dried squid hanging from the top.

I'm going to Disneyland!

There's a scene in "Apocalypse Now" where the crew gets mail. Lance, the professional surfer, is reading a letter from home:

"I was on a trip to Disneyland. There can never be a place like Disneyland, or could there? Let me know."

Lance says "Disneyland. Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland."

The 'this' Lance refers to is of course the Vietnam War, which in his estimation is better than an amusement park...

That line is echoed in a passage from one of my new favorite novels, "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. After seeing news stories about plagues of locusts, typhoons, cannibals, and so on, Randy says "This whole continent is like fucking Disneyland without the safety precautions. Am I the only person who finds it surreal?"

I dragged these quotes out as a way of illustrating (in extreme fashion) the alienness of this part of the world to western visitors and the power it can hold over the imagination. As Randy muses, "No wonder so many Americans come here on business and never really go home again -- it's like stepping into the pages of Classics Comics."

To borrow another line from "Apocalypse Now":

"Saigon ... Shit. I'm still only in Saigon."

I refrain from using profanity on this blog but I am a film nerd, after all, so it was inevitable I would eventually quote from "Apocalypse Now". I use that last quote ironically, of course, because I'm thrilled to be back in Saigon. I came here to take a class which will certify me to teach English. Then I hope to find a teaching job and live here.

The official name of the place is now Ho Chi Minh City but no one -- not locals, not foreigners -- calls it that. It's Saigon. Or, more correctly, Sài Gòn.

When abbreviated it's usually HCMC, which I find fascinating since that's the English version. The Vietnamese name for the place is Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh, which would be TP HCM. I do see this abbreviation but not often. I suppose this is just another entry in the list of "Things that may interest only me".

I had planned on starting a class here on July 27, but long story short, I'm going to wait until the next course starts on September 7. That will give me some time to do a little sightseeing, visit friends, and properly prepare myself for a four-week course, then living and working in a foreign country for the first time. I've never lived in a foreign country. Florida is the farthest I've ever lived from home.

Excuse me for a moment while I freak out.

Ok, I'm back.

I was able to find a flight online that just had to have been a mistake. I've done three flights between SE Asia and the US, so I had some idea of what the flight would cost. Imagine my shock when I found a flight from JFK to Saigon on Singapore Airlines -- one of the world's best -- for $502!! I had to take a puddle-jumper flight from BWI to JFK but it was worth it.

Singapore Airlines rocks. I couldn't sleep because they kept waking me up to feed me. Seriously, have you ever had an airline give you too much food? The flight attendants all looked Asian fembots, or visitors from a futuristic Utopian society where they grow genetically perfect women in giant pea pods. The airline lost one of my bags, which was bad, but delivered it to my hotel a few hours later, which was good.

By contrast, my American Airlines flight from BWI to JFK was a comic disaster. After paying the exorbitant luggage fees the cost of my 30-minute domestic flight was nearly half the cost of my 25-hour journey half way around the world. When we arrived in New York, two hours late, the pilot overshot the parking space so we had to wait 10 minutes for them to push us into place. It's a sad commentary that if I had started driving north instead of dropping off my rental car I would have arrived in New York ahead of my flight.

I felt bad for a family of six behind me traveling to Kolkata. We started boarding 30 minutes late, sat at the gate for 30 minutes, then drove out onto the tarmac and parked for an hour. It was only there that they were informed there was absolutely no chance they would make their connection to their Air India flight in New York. They would have to pay to stay overnight at their own expense and fly out the next day. Had they known sooner they said they would have simply stayed home -- for free -- and flown out of BWI the following day.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Whoever runs the US airlines really needs to get out and travel a little to see how to properly run an airline. Instead of flying first class on American or United or whatever, they need to fly coach on Thai Air, Iceland Air, virtually any of the foreign non-budget airlines.

Foreign airlines realize that most of us like to take some stuff with us when we travel, and don't charge us for it. My luggage fees for the half-hour flight from BWI to JFK were almost as much as the airfare. There's a reason the US airlines are all in trouble, and it's because, almost without exception, they truly suck.

But I digress....

I was asked if I was going to continue the blog. I don't know how often I'll update it. I have a feeling it will be a series of nearly identical posts.

"The students threw food at me today. I got fleeced at the market. Another mild day, only 147 degrees."

I enjoy writing the blog, though, and I suppose I'll keep writing as long as it makes just one person happy, even if that person is me.