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Published: September 26th 2008
After an exhausting 32 hours awake, through London and Singapore, on arriving to Tan Son Nhat airport in HCMC I couldn’t get fast enough to Van Trung Hotel in the Pham Ngo Lao area ILA (my employer) has arranged for me. At Heathrow my lack of a visa (and one way flight) into Vietnam had raised a few eyebrows but due to the large and important queue at first class, they left me board. I decided to push communist immigration laws to the back of my mind, instead focusing all my anxiety on the plane’s (A380 -the biggest commercial plane in the world) engines, wheels, pilots and all the thousand’s of things that can go wrong with them. As the flight progressed, my nerves were lessened somewhat by the addition of individual t.v. /computers!If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would have learnt more Vietnamese using the computer!! All the airline attendants were in traditional Singapore clothing and there were paintings in the cabin so I almost forgot I was on a plane. Almost.
It was an amazing feeling to actually see Asia from the air. Most people spend their lives looking at the continent on a map so actually
seeing it was akin to discovering that the earth is really round - not just believing it is true because someone told you. After the turbulent landing at HCMC, my first priority was to get my visa. Unlike in Cork airport, where you only have to be white and ‘look’ Irish (wear green alternatively) to get through, Vietnamese guards treat you as a criminal first, determined to make you give them a few dollars before allowing you entry. After complying with all their ridiculous and bureaucratic form-filling that justifies their fee, I waited at the wrong luggage belt for ten whole minutes before seeing other people from my flight walk by with all their baggage in tow. Thinking all my baggage was now in outer Mongolia I started to panic before a Vietnamese woman started shouting gibberish at me…and pointing at the right belt across the hall. Fearing she was alerting the guards to my dodgy visa status I ran across, grabbed by luggage and hightailed it out of there!
I was fortunately met by Luke from the company so it was all easy peasy from there. Of course I didn’t listen to a word he told me about
the teaching job I have but to be honest there is far too much to watch on the street. It’s impossible to describe this place properly…the photos will help give a certain impression but it’s the density - of people, shops and motorcycles in combination with the humidity, traffic pollution and street kitchen smells that overwhelms the novice here. I find myself staring (and being stared back-after 5mins it does get weird) at mundane tasks of the Vietnamese that back home I wouldn't ordinarily find fascinating.daily tasks assume a new dimension here; I watch street sellers, xeom riders, shopkeeps and fruit-sellers arrange thier goods and services meticulously, as if the slightest disruption of its location would spell disaster. (Oddly enough, the Viets find the number 4 a badluck numer so no hotels or lifts have a 4th floor). Traffic and the chaos that passes for driving is the initial overpowering feature. The main form of transport is the motorbike and scooter - to get anywhere I have to first look for a xeom taxi (‘zeeom’). Motorbikes are used for everything and count for all here. People not only ride them but eat on them, sleep on them, gamble (play cards)
on them and god only knows what else. Xeoms are everywhere. In fact, I (‘nice Irish white girl…so prettie’) can’t walk two metres without somebody asking ‘Where you go now?’ Nobody can believe it when I shrug and say ‘I’m exploring’ so I just point at my feet and say ‘They very good feet…’ Yet still the xeom riders persist. ‘I bring you on tour - one hour all of HCMC…I so good my bike so good we be friends…You Irish? You beat England you like us…’ My favourite activity is to sit in a streetside bar (found Le Pub bar - its nice! they take the piss so its like watching the gaelic staff from the right side of the bar!:-) and watch the crazy traffic. So far I have seen scooters somehow carrying:
One rider and a new fridge freezer (approx. 5 metres tall x 3 metres wide)
One child driving whilst selling lighters with father and sister on back
One driver plus 6 large sacks of melting ice for a bar/café somewhere
One family with 5 members
Two riders plus one new tv set
Two riders with the back passanger holding 100 ballons (see picture)
One
rider driving bike whilst holding 5 metre high photocopied lonely planet guides (there are no copyright laws here) and selling them to tourists at restaurants.
I thought I would have to be inebriated on vodka and opium before I ever took my first xeom ride but actually all I needed was to get lost. Which I did on my first day (Wednesday) trying to find a popular tourist area Dong Khoi. There are as far as I can make out at this early stage, a few general rules to driving.
Density rules the road. The more bikes that decide to go a certain direction the more right of way they have.
This means that if you can persuade many people to ‘heave’ to the other side of a crossroads/juction then you are the winner. You do this by using the single most important possession you have, the Horn. The Horn signifies when a heave might begin, when to break lights, an invitation to the hundreds of other bikes to join the people’s struggle to cross the road. Horns are tooted to indicate you have no wing mirrors, to suggest you may turn left or right, to imply you might
perform a U turn or change lanes. The Horn says hello, goodbye, get out of the way, well done for carrying that heavy load, don’t even think about cutting across me, look how much I am going to get outta this pretty white lady!! The most fun you can have on a bike is to get out your camera and film what happens when you encounter lights. Some places (very few) have a little timer to tell the impatient riders how long they have to wait before the lights will go green (a bit like pedestrian timers informing them when to walk - but for drivers!) These timers actually function as racing game. If you don’t cross before the timer reaches zero (and the lights go green) you not only are the loser, you also get stuck in the cross traffic and then you hear the Horn very clearly!! I’ve come to the conclusion that I am safer on the xeoms (as they are king and master of HCMC) than walking - crossing road is another fine art that I am still perfecting by singing loudly the Fields of Athenry at 100 motors as they zoom and toot towards me.
Made it to Dong Khoi alive; half way through my trip I think I proposed to my driver (see pictures) out of terror. This area contains a lot of French colonial architecture (Girval reataurant, Notre Dame Church, City Hall, Municipal Theatre) and the famous hotels - the Rex, Caravelle and Continental. The former two were very famous gonzo journalist joints - The Rex was a US military press centre that ‘updated’ on the war (five o clock follies) and the Caravelle - another popular expat bar in the 60’s and 70’s. Many journalists covered the Vietnam war from their bar seat without ever leaving hotel. Since then though most have been renovated in high style. Still, there’s no better place than to have an overpriced 333 beer (Vietnamese beer - and ‘overpriced’ at a whole $3 a can!!) (see pictures). Diamond Plaza (huge shopping mall)then beckoned me due to sudden downpour - (really hot rain! Like Miami) I caught my second xeom and made friends with driver who laughed at my silly fears…now he is my regular driver (Ut) who collects me from wherever whenever for about 70cent! It is actually impossible to spend money here - 1,000,000 dong
= about 40 euro and that could keep me going for about 4/5 days if needs be. Ut has little English, seriously needs glasses and which he never has with him but sometimes has wing mirrors so that swung the deal for me. Additionally, unlike most Viets, he has realised the Horn is just the horn and achieves very little.
Today (Thursday) Ut (he has a much harder to pronounce real name) collected me and brought me to Cholon or Chinatown (where my school is). Found ILA after a lot of walking - this area is much poorer and has much more street begging. I could have been the only tourist type in Cholon - I only saw one more ‘Western’ person at ILA. Its strange when you no longer look the same as everyone else; countless kids and teenagers just go silent when I walk by. Kids are the braver in trying out their English on me. After visiting a few pagoda - buddist/hindu temple buildings (see pics). they are really cool - very tranquill in a city that is so noisy! Went to Bin Tinh market - I liked it better than Ben Thanh market - less
busy. Sort of. Anyway, that’s all for now - as i post this I am sitting in an internet gaming cafe surrounded by 20 teenage boys playing some killing game against each other and generally are screaming the place down. when I walked in - white western woman the place suddenly wnet silent and every time someone screams for 'killing them' and I laugh in sheer terror at their fanaticism they stare and say funy words!! in the future i promise i'll be more selective with the photos and the length of these blogs i promise!!just I'm not sure how long it will be until I get knocked down by a zeeeom...
p.s. somebody better leave me a message after writing all this!
xoxkate
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Dylan
non-member comment
It's all just a dream....
Hey Kate--sounds like you have settled back into your true roots very quickly..i'm glad mum didn't have to break the news of your adoption since you've discovered where you really came from......adios Chi Roche-min-cho-talk to you soon!!. PS: Remember--over there YOU are the tourist!!!!