My first visitor

While I was traveling around the world several friends from home threatened to join me along the way. No one did, of course. I did have a friend from home contact me out of the clear blue and join me in Thailand, which turned out to be the worst 10-day stretch of the trip.

I had my first visitor from home here in Saigon just before Tet. Kellda wasn't here to visit me. She's Vietnamese and was here to visit family. It was just a happy coincidence that we happened to be in the same city at the same time.

She and her husband Duane joined me for dinner. Duane has visited the country several times with her, so it was fun sharing three very different perceptions of the country.


Kellda and I worked together, so I also got some good gossip from my former workplace. I hopped on a bus to Cambodia the next morning. They headed to the Mekong Delta to visit her family. Now we're all back out our respective workplaces. It was fun while it lasted.

The End of Indolence

I have a job.

Thank you for your condolences.

I signed a 12-month contract to teach English at one of the biggest language schools in Saigon.

http://www.vus-etsc.edu.vn/?page=app_news&lang=en

The pay rate is good. I'll be teaching all my classes at the same building, rather than having to shuttle back and forth across town between different campuses. (In a city with 10 million people, 6 million motorbikes and a medieval public transportation system, this is a big deal. Note to self: Next time work in a city with a subway.)

I'm not thrilled about going back to work but I think this is a good gig. I will be working mostly nights and weekends, by choice as it turns out. This will keep my days free so I can pick up sweet substitute gigs at the international schools, tutor or maybe even do some freelance writing. I've met some people who may be able to help me get my name back in print.

I wasn't sure I was going to continue the blog now that I'm settling down. I am grateful for the emails I've received from folks back home asking me to keep writing. The subject matter will change, of course. I wish I could continue it in the "another day, another country" mode. Now it will be more of a "fish out of water" story as I dive into teaching and the life of an expat.

When I'm traveling I always have my camera with me. I honestly can't remember the last time I used it, though. I'll make a point to carry it to get some shots of Saigon city life. The size, the traffic, the pollution -- it's all a bit overwhelming to a country boy like me. I must admit, I'm not crazy about the place, but it's the right place for me to be for the near future.

I'd like to thank the Academy

Here I am receiving my TEFL certificate from Diem, the primary instructor for the class. On the board is the location of the post-class gathering. They decided to ... play laser tag? Yeah, it was a young bunch.

Here is the whole happy class. These photos came from Steven, the guy in black in the back row holding his certificate above his head. I took my camera with me but left the memory card in my laptop...


Here I am sitting between Nhi (left) and Nghiem (right), the course administrators. There's a bit of forced perspective going on here. I'm scrunched down between them so you can't tell that I weigh significantly more than the two of them combined!


Afterwards we walked around the corner for a big buffet lunch. The place is so big that the boys who replenish the buffet dishes scoot around on roller skates. I felt a little tug on my heartstrings when I saw the name of the place: Dìn Ký. The dog I had when I was a boy was named Dinky.


Here I am trying a local dish for the first time. Mmm ... snails.

Home sweet home

Tomorrow I receive my certification. I am officially qualified to teach English. Now let's see if I can actually teach!

I spent quite a bit of time finding a hotel in which to stay while I was taking the class. When traveling I usually don't care much where I stay. If I'm only staying for a night or two all I want is a bed and a shower.

I needed a place for a month. I also needed a place where I would feel comfortable, someplace I could do homework and get a good night's sleep. I spent quite a bit of time looking at places. I must have looked at 25 hotels. The one I settled on is the first one with a white sign, the one which has what appears to be an unfortunate name for a hotel.


But this is southern Vietnam, where Dung is pronounced 'yoom'. In the north it's pronounced 'zoom'. It's the name of the owner and also the name of one of the girls who works for her. Two other girls work there, Nhi and Thao. They're all very sweet and helpful. I have felt very much at home.

I was surprised at how many people have asked me about my living arrangements. Here are a couple pix of the room.



The room is quite large. Two beds, a wardrobe, a desk, a refigerator, A/C, cable TV and hot water.

Cost: $300. Per month.

Heck, when I find a job I might actually live in the hotel! If I rent an apartment I'll have to furnish it, pay utilities and find someplace to use the internet. Now all that is included in the cost.

My room also has a balcony overlooking the alley.


At the far end is the hotel where I stayed on my previous visits to Vietnam. I was perfectly happy there for a night or two. Little did I know all I had to do was walk down the alley to find a cleaner, bigger and nicer room for the same price!

My hotel is almost on the corner of Pham Ngu Lao Street, which gives the neighborhood gets its name.


Across the street is a big park. It doesn't look like much here but walk a little further to the left and it's quite nice, with walkways winding around gardens and ponds. In the morning it's packed, as are most city parks in Vietnam, with people walking, playing badminton or doing aerobics.

I've been asked a lot what I'll do for food here. There's no need for me to even think about cooking. I love the food here. Even though I'm staying in the tourist district, which is by definition more expensive, I can get a get a bowl of phổ or bún for 25,000, about $1.50. There is nothing I could buy and cook that cheaply. And it's good!

When you get away from tourists and into the neighborhood it's even cheaper. One of my instructors told me in his neighborhood there's a sidewalk restaurant near his house where he can get meat, rice, veg and soup for 6,000 dong. Which means he can eat three meals a day for exactly one dollar.

I've also felt at home in Saigon because I have a few friends here. Several months ago I took a night "sleeper" bus to Nha Trang, the big beach town in Vietnam. Next to me on the bus was a gorgeous local woman. My first attempts at conversation went nowhere but we ended up talking for hours. She got off in Mui Ne, but we kept in touch.


Thanh is on the left. She's a fashion designer and is working on a graduate degree, so I haven't seen much of her since my return because she's so busy. She introduced me to Thu, who I see quite often. She works in a hotel around the corner from mine so she knows where to find everything. She's been a big help and a good friend.

Thu took me to see "The Hangover" here. I had seen it already, but I thought it would be interesting to see which jokes translated and which didn't. And what the heck, she paid! There were parts where the crowd laughed uproariously and other jokes which didn't get a laugh at all.

The proverbial accident waiting to happen

One of the signature sights of Saigon are the crazy nests of electrical wires. Just around the corner from my hotel is a big intersection with a tourist bar on the corner. Here a utility worker flirts with death about a dozen different ways. Note the ladder he climbed. Better yet, look where he's standing!

Stay classy, Saigon

Tomorrow I start my last week of TEFL class. By Friday I will be certified to teach. After months of thinking about it, planning it and doing it, now the fun will really start. I'll start job hunting.

I'm still pondering whether to work in Saigon, or to go someplace less hectic in Vietnam. I'm also still considering Phnom Penh. Much to think about.

Last week one of the girls in my class celebrated her birthday. Hope turned 21. I was certainly happy for her, but I couldn't help but dwell for just a moment on the fact that she's half my age. Sigh... And she's not even the youngest one in the class!



The school was nice enough to buy her a birthday cake. Here she is cutting it as Diem, the primary course instructor, looks on. Diem is wearing the traditional Vietnamese áo dài.

Rosie is the girl taking the photo. Alice is in white behind her. They're both British. They're also the two best teachers in the class. It's a pleasure watching them teach lessons. Sitting next to Rosie is Thu, a Vietnamese woman from Hanoi who already works as a teacher.

One of the odd quirks of teaching abroad is that locals have a harder time landing jobs than foreigners. Schools and students expect a white person to teach English. Thu is going to teach English and then move to Australia to earn a doctorate degree. Smart cookie.

In the corner are Nhi and Nghiem (in black), the two course administrators. Nghiem goes by Nina because her name is so difficult for English speakers to pronounce. She has her own business helping foreigners arrange paperwork like visas, work permits, and the like. She is also working towards a degree in finance at an international school.

She has two jobs where she speaks English and goes to a school where English is the primary language. She said in all seriousness that she speaks English now better than she speaks Vietnamese! A Vietnamese woman living in Vietnam! She also said she dreams in English.

Store-bought birthday cakes in the US taste like styrofoam. This cake was delicious. We demolished it.


(I have no idea of why this photo insists on getting uploaded at a 90 degree angle.)

I usually go to lunch with two guys from class to a food stall in a local market. There we get rice, veg, soup, one meat (fish, pork, chicken, etc.) and iced green tea for 21,000 dong, or about $1.17. I love Vietnam.

A bunch of my classmates have made habit of going to a British-themed restaurant around the corner for lunch. I usually avoid such places, in any country. They're always expensive and the local interpretations of foreign fare can be quite ... creative. I generally eat local food. If I crave Western food I'll get a pizza. I've been able to find edible pizza just about everywhere I've been.

I was pleasantly surprised by this place. It was packed at lunch but, much to my surprise, we were the only foreigners there.



At the suggestion of one of my classmates I took a chance and ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries. It was awesome, the first really good burger I've had outside the US. Not only was it good, it was reasonably priced: 50,000 dong, or about $2.75. We're all drinking the ubiquitous iced green tea, trà đá.

Our classroom is close to the famous Ben Thanh Market. It's a real market for real Vietnamese people, but because of it's proximity to the tourist district you have to walk through a lot of stalls selling, well, crap before you get to the good stuff.

In the shade you can see a xích lô driver sleeping on the job. (It's usually written cyclo in English.)

It's a hell of a way to make a living, riding a clunky old bicycle contraption around in the tropical heat all day. Late at night they'll be lined up along the streets with tarps over them, the drivers asleep inside.

First day of school

Today I taught my first class. Part of the reason I'm taking the TEFL class is that it gives me time in front of students in a more or less controlled environment. For most of my training sessions there will be an instructor in the room with me. For our first teaching practice we worked in pairs.

I was incredibly nervous going in. I didn't know how well I would remember the lesson. I didn't know how smart or well-behaved the students would be. I didn't know if I'd like it. I didn't know if I'd be good at it.

The verdict is in.

It was a blast.

It was so much fun. I felt comfortable and relaxed. We taught a group of 30 generally well-behaved sixth-graders for 90 minutes. Our observer said he struggled with his evaluation because he couldn't think of many areas where there was room for improvement.

I found out that my fellow students thought I already was a teacher, which has to be a good sign. One of them said she thought I seemed "teacher-y", which probably isn't a word, but it's a nice compliment all the same!

Tomorrow I teach a lesson by myself. I'm happy to report that I'm really looking forward to it.

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.

Cu Chi Tunnels

To escape bombardment from French forces, and then US forces during the Vietnam War, Vietnamese communist soldiers built a network of tunnels throughout the country. I visited the Cu Chi Tunnels just outside Saigon. Here a network of 125 miles of tunnels and underground rooms was dug using the most primitive tools.



A wicker basket and a short hoe. That's it. (The hoe is standing upright with the blade on the bottom facing backwards.)

There were meeting rooms, cafeterias and hospitals underground. Vents were dug to allow air in and to let smoke out. Soldiers could spend weeks underground if necessary.

Here is a model showing multiple levels and passageways. In the bottom right corner is an emergency exit into the Saigon River.



Hidden entrances all over the countryside allowed the Communist soldiers to appear seemingly out of nowhere to ambush enemy forces, then disappear just as quickly.

Here I am squeezing into one of the entrances.



Sections of the tunnels are opened for tourists to crawl through. This particular passage was enlarged to accomodate visitors.



The US had superior weaponry -- we always have the best toys -- so the locals had to improvise. There's an exhibit at the tunnels showing the nasty traps they devised using wood and scrap metal. This one uses a common folding chair in a concealed hole.



You fall through the hole into the webbing of the chair. When it slams shut it drives metal spikes into your body. The tour guides seem to enjoy the reactions of tourists when they demonstrate the traps. (They use a stick to trigger them, in case you're wondering.)

It was a long, strange day. There were two busloads of tourists and one "English-speaking" tour guide. He didn't speak the language so much as he had memorized a script. He didn't have much to say so he would repeat himself.

"The tunnels connect to the river. Underground. Underground the tunnels connect to the river. The tunnels underground connect to the river. Connect to the river. The tunnels underground connect to the river."

So it took him four times as long to say ... nothing. If you don't speak English, hey, that's OK, I don't expect that on tour in Vietnam. But don't waste my time!

There was one Vietnamese couple in the group. Now I would certainly not suggest that Vietnamese tourists shouldn't see Vietnamese tourist attractions. But why did they join an English-speaking group? (And why did all of us have to sit on the bus and wait for 20 minutes while they ate their breakfast?)

As an American I certainly wouldn't join a tour group of Vietnamese or Russians or other non-English speaking tourists if I was visiting the White House or Gettysburg or some other American tourist attraction.

So our guide would do his Rain Man bit with us and then talk to the Vietnamese couple for ten minutes. As a result our "half-day" tour got us back to Saigon at 3:30 p.m. Usually tour groups include a buffet lunch or at least stop somewhere where can buy our own. Aside from the ice cream at the tunnels, there was no opportunity at any time during the day for us to buy food.

Ok, I'm being a little harsh. They did feed us.



Mmm ... tapioca root. (With ground peanuts to dip it in!)

Or, as our guide explained: "This is the tapi-you-KAH. The soldiers eat the tapi-you-KAH. The tapi-you-KAH root. The soldiers eat. The soldiers eat the tapi-you-KAH. The tapi-you-KAH."

Saigon, Round Two

I had planned on flying to Buenos Aires the day my friend from the States flew back home, but I decided instead to return to Vietnam. (I had purchased a multi-entry visa with this possibility in mind.)

I only got to see Saigon and Nha Trang on my previous visit here. I want to see more of the country, especially Halong Bay, which is in the north. So I'll take a couple weeks to travel up the coast. From there ... we'll see.

It may be too late to do the two things I most want to do in Argentina: hike in Patagonia and check out the wildlife on Peninsula Valdes. So maybe I'll spend the rest of the trip in Southeast Asia. There's still plenty to see and do here. Plus, it's kinda cool having a tan for the first time in, oh, 15 years!

I had always planned on making Machu Picchu the last major stop on the trip, for sentimental reasons. So I'll probably just do a shortened version of my original planned itinerary for South America. A travel buddy I met in Morocco just moved to Buenos Aires, so it would be foolish to not go.

Ask me tomorrow and I'll have a different plan...

I've decided to set aside tomorrow to get caught up on the blog, email and other computer nerd stuff. I think I have 12 or 15 posts swimming around in my head, so I foresee a long day at the coffee shop...

In the meantime, here's a picture taken from Maya Cove on Koh Phi Phi Leh, the beach used in the crappy movie "The Beach".



The beach itself is maybe 150 meters long. Just to the right of this picture are, oh, about 10,000 tourists. I am exaggerating, but not by much.

War Remnants Museum

"Suppose we lost Indochina. If that happened, tin and tungsten, to which we attach such a high price, would cease coming ... In reality we have chosen the least costly means to prevent one of the most terrible things for the United States for its security."

President Eisenhower, 1953

There it is from the former Commander-in-Chief himself. The Vietnam war was about ... tin and tungsten.

This quote is on a plaque at the War Remnants Museum, a fascinating but gut-wrenching series of exhibits dealing with the American War, as it's called in Vietnam.

(Warning: Some disturbing images follow.)

There's an excellent exhibit on the 134 photographers who were killed during the war. It highlights their astonishing combination of bravery and artistry. Some of their photos deserve to be mentioned with the greatest ever taken. They are dramatic, shocking and often revolting, like this one of an American soldier carrying what's left of a dead soldier.



Here is the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of a naked, young girl fleeing a napalm explosion.



Her name is Phan Thị Kim Phúc. Her story is told in the book "The Girl in the Picture". She was so badly burned that she required 17 surgeries to repair the skin on her back. In the bottom right corner is a small photograph of her holding her own child, with her shoulder bared to show the scars there.

I had seen the photo but I had not seen the film footage. When she stops running she is given water to drink. The skin is literally peeling off her back as she drinks. The look on her face, incredibly, is relief.

I am a quite squeamish, so I couldn't even look at the photos in the exhibits dealing with damage done by defoliants, such as Agent Orange. It literally made me sick seeing photos of children born so deformed that they didn't even look human. Some looked like limbless pillows. Others had spindly limbs as big around as broomsticks, twisted into horrible shapes.

And it's not just people from the war years that were affected. In Laos I saw people maimed by unexploded ordnance. In Cambodia I saw people maimed by landmines. In Vietnam I saw people everywhere with deformed limbs.

I saw one women leave a restaurant in Nha Trang by scooting out on her butt. She can't walk because her knees bend backwards. I visited a factory outside of Saigon where local crafts are made by disabled Vietnamese. Most of the people I saw working there had problems with their limbs.

In another room of the museum was a series of paintings by Vietnamese children that nearly brought me to tears. They were hard to photograph because of the harsh fluorescent lighting. Some were about peace.



Some were about war.



Every one of them broke my heart. The children who painted these are two generations removed from the American War, but are still defined by it.

Another quote from another plaque:

"The situation in Viet Nam poses serious moral problems which are not merely diplomatic or tactical. Our nation is possessed of immense power. To permit its utilization for unreasonable and barbarous purposes endangers the very foundation of American influence."

Excerpt from a declaration signed by one thousand professors and lecturers of American universities and published in The New York Times on May 13, 1965

Thank God we'll never make that mistake again...

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh

I wrote a post about how the name of Bangkok really isn't Bangkok and hasn't been for hundreds of years. Locals call it Krung Thep.

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh (Ho Chi Minh City) is the official name of the big city in southern Vietnam, but no one calls it that. Not tourists, not locals. I shall hereafter refer to it as Saigon, not because I'm taking a stand one way or the other, but mostly because it's easier to type and I'm lazy.

Among the things Saigon is famous for is its traffic. I've read that there are anywhere from three to six million motorbikes in the city. Believe it.

Everywhere in Southeast Asia you can hire a moto taxi, which is a fancy way of saying you pay a guy to drive you around on his motorbike. It's the fastest way to get around the city, and it can be quite ... thrilling.

Here we are on the wrong side of the road.



Here is a pretty typical intersection crossing.



Something I've seen in Saigon that I haven't seen in any other city are the crazy bundles and nests of electrical wires everywhere. This intersection is a block from my guest house.



I stayed in the Pham Ngu Lao section of town. It's my favorite backpacker ghetto so far. It's not as sleazy or crowded as Thamel in Kathmandu or Khao San Road in Bangkok. Oddly, though, most of the bars close at 1 a.m.

One of the main tourist attractions is the Reunification Palace. It was the capital of the south during the American War (as it's called here). It was left as it was when Soviet tanks crashed through the gate in 1975. Now it's used for ceremonial purposes.

In the US we refer to this event as the Fall of Saigon. In Vietnam it's known as the Liberation of Saigon.

I was expecting opulence like I'd seen at the palace in Beijing or even Phnom Penh. What I saw was more like Graceland. It's decorated like a 1970s-era club basement, or a set from The Sopranos.



The exterior of the building was designed to incorporate Chinese characters. Here's the front.



And here are the characters it's supposed to represent.



It was pretty cool, though, wandering through the military rooms in the underground bunkers.



I couldn't help laughing when I thought of the line from President Merkin Muffley in "Dr. Strangelove":

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!

I felt sorry, though, for the poor guy who worked at the one lonely desk in the Crypto Section.



He must have been really good at his job.

Rough Morning Vietnam

I know, I know ... it's a pretty weak title for a blog post. Even worse than The Secret Treehouse, which sounds like a Hardy Boys mystery. Bear with me. I'm feeling a little rough around the edges after a couple nights checking out the nightlife in Saigon.

I generally don't go out drinking when I travel. It's expensive, for starters. From what I've seen bars everywhere look the same for the most part, and drunks all look and sound the same, no matter where they're from or which language they speak.

If I have people to hang out with I'll go out, but I don't like going to bars by myself.

But perhaps the best reason for not going clubbing while traveling is that I end up waking up feeling the way I did today and wasting an entire day. I thought I'd spend the day bringing the blog up to date but the creative juices just aren't flowing. It's hard to write when your muse is nursing a hangover. I've got a lot to write about from Cambodia and Vietnam, but not today.

I've been wrestling with a long post about Phnom Penh, but I'm still trying to get my head around the place. It's fascinating, exhilarating, wild, beautiful, horrifying and sometimes dangerous. I'm intrigued by Cambodia, probably more so than any other country I've visited. Of all the countries I've visited, this is the one I'd like to spend more time in and get to know more intimately.

Tonight I'm heading to Nha Trang, which is supposed to be the best beach and scuba spot in Vietnam. I'm taking a sleeper bus for the first time. It has actual beds, so I might actually get some rest. I'll hang out there for a few days and then fly back to Bangkok. A friend of mine from the US is joining me there and we're going to do some diving. I'm looking forward to having a travel buddy for a while.