Saigon; A Moveable Feast

We spent our last day in Bali by hiring a driver and heading to the overlook near the top of the volcanoes. Before us lay a sky blue lake bracketed by two peaks hidden under misty crowns. We had no sooner exited our vehicle with camera in hand than we were assaulted by a flock of vendors selling everything from sarongs to sunglasses. One fellow with a wood carving in hand kept asking, “fisherman, fisherman?” As if he was unsure what it was he was clutching and needed a Westerner’s opinion. After a buffet lunch in a restaurant crowded by a Jakarta tour group we headed down the south slope to Denpensar and the international airport. There, veiled Muslim women gazed at our shorts and giggled amongst themselves.

At the departure area we waited for our flight to Bali. A large group of Balinese twenty-something men in green T-shirts sat in a group on the floor eyeing their surroundings nervously. Probably a work crew on their way to construction jobs in Kuala Lumpur where they might make enough money to send home. The airport filling in as a SE Asian version of our Rio Grande. We took off in the dark and headed North to Malaysia. The work crew stirred uneasily and murmured in Sasak dialect, probably something along the lines of “If Allah wanted us to fly he would have…” After landing at the always-busy LCCT terminal in KL we taxied to the Concorde Inn, a no nonsense business travelers’ place just outside the airport. We didn’t get to bed until 1 AM. It had been a long day and we went to sleep quickly. In the morning we discovered a hotel breakfast buffet that would have put Shoney’s to shame. There was more bread there than we had seen in the previous two months. We ate well and much. Contacting Air Asia we learned that our Bangkok flight had been canceled just as we thought it would. The airline gave us a credit for the cancelled tickets, which we’ll use on another leg.

That afternoon we returned to the LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) terminal and total chaos. The recent tourist escapees from Thailand were in town and trying to find a way home. The terminal has 56 check-in gates and every one of them was backed up to the security X-ray machines. The Air Asia ticket sales counter was buried under a pile of backpackers, crying children and baby boomers frantically trying to buy tickets to any point as long as it was closer to home. Karen talked with a French couple who had managed to fly out of Phuket only to land in China. From there they went to Kuala Lumpur. When we met them they were headed to Hanoi hoping to get back to Paris from there.

At 5:30 PM we boarded a plane to Hochiminh City. This is the only time that you’ll find me using that name. To me it is simply Saigon and I know it by no other name having heard Walter Cronkite use that label thousands of times in my youth when I tuned into CBS News for the day’s body counts. We landed in Saigon at 7:30 PM local time. A beautiful modern airport greeted us. The construction was so new that the caulk in the bathrooms was still soft. It took less than 10 minutes to hand over $50 US and receive our thirty-day Visas from a severe looking fellow sporting yellow stars on his epaulets. A smiling young girl helped us book a taxi and then escorted us outside to our driver and his vehicle.

From the air at night Saigon is a huge sprawling affair. Neon lit boulevards run in perfectly straight lines with perpendicular intersections. On the ground the first thing we noted was the width of the main streets and the hordes of helmeted scooter drivers flying along the same. Our driver wove his way through them using his horn more often than not. The first thing you notice on the roads here is the cacophony of blares, bleeps and honks as people jockey for position making left hand turns from the right lane and vice versa. Along the way we spied many a Christmas tree twinkling in shop windows. We planned to stay in the SW part of the city known for its inexpensive lodgings and matching eateries. We were surprised to find that there were actually tourists here. A lot of tourists here. Our first three hotel choices were booked solid. Luckily we found a family run hotel called NHU LAN at 40/11 Bui Vien St. Dist. 1, HCM City (84-8) 8360566 E-mail: dangnhulan@yahoo.com where we booked an A/C room with fridge, bath and balcony for $16 a night. Below us we saw our Vietnamese neighbors gathered along the lane playing with their children and eating snacks from the food carts that frequent the area.

We headed to an ATM to secure some currency. In Vietnam the ‘Dong’ is the name of the game. I requested 2,000,000 Dong ($120 US) and was taken aback when the machine spit out a meager stack of cash. In Bali you would need a shoebox for that much money. A quick count showed that I now had three 500,000 notes and five 100,000 notes. It was the right amount but after our experience in Indonesia I could see my future clouded by endless waits as storekeepers searched for change every time Karen and I made a minor purchase. Steeling ourselves we headed out to find some food at a restaurant on the neighborhood’s main drag. Taking a table on the sidewalk we gazed in wonder at the activity around us. Conical hatted women sold fruit from baskets suspended from bamboo poles. Men on bicycles trolled the streets waving a bamboo rattle to call attention to themselves and the lottery tickets they sold from black leather briefcases attached to their handlebars. Cigarette sellers offered their wares from huge flat wooden boxes suspended from straps around their necks. A woman with a dolly pushed a tall heavy scale, which flashed red neon numbers and cackled in Vietnamese. Something that looked like a showerhead sprouted from the top. A ‘guess your weight’ business? If so she must have been very good at it as there were no Kewpie Dolls to be won. Young girls with babies tried to garner the sympathy vote by selling gum and small packets of Kleenex while other women peddled counterfeit perfume and wallets, their arms encased in white theater gloves. An elegant touch. Men carried dozens of sunglasses displayed on a sheet of plywood and if you didn’t need the shades they had Zippo lighters engraved with US Army unit insignia. Still running through old inventory? Still other women roamed the restaurants carrying towers of books perched on their hips. Behind us in the restaurant single male Westerners dined with their ‘dates’, slender Vietnamese females in hot pants who shot knowing sidelong glances at their compatriots who were peppered around the room. The only things missing from the scene were olive drab fatigues. It could have been 1968 except for the fact that Uncle Ho’s mug peered out from all of the currency in town.

Our vacation took a wonderful turn for the better when our orders hit the table. We ordered Ba’nh Xeo which is a regional meal. A large thin rice pancake covered in shrimp, fried onions and marinated strips of pork. On the side of the plate lay a leafy pile of fresh mint, basil and lettuce. You add the herbs that you like and fold the pancake over like a taco. Wonderful texture and flavor. Perfume in the mouth. We also ordered fresh spring rolls (Goi Cuon Tom Thit), crepe suzettes and beverages. Total bill came to $7 US. I nervously paid the tab with a 500,000 Dong note. There are no change problems in Vietnam.

The next morning for breakfast we went to Lam’s Coffee Café (their redundancy not mine) and ordered coffee with fresh milk thinking that since this used to be a French colony we would receive the standard café au lait. Wrong. The server brought a glass beer stein and perched upon it was an aluminum canister that emitted a steady drip of dark rich coffee until two inches of liquid covered the bottom of the stein. The server then delivered a small aluminum thermos of hot water and a glass of milk. You dilute the coffee to your satisfaction and then add the milk. An interesting way to prepare coffee that we had never seen before. After it was all said and done you ended up with a pint of good coffee. Add a crusty baguette or a croissant and you’ve got the start to a great day. Across the street we watched an elderly cigarette seller make a rattle out of an empty Marlboro box and a few pebbles which she used to entertain the laughing baby bouncing on her lap. Everywhere we’ve been in Saigon babies are coddled and cooed over. Down the street cone-headed women pushed large carts heaped with oranges and other fruits selling their goods as they went. Karen and I bought some tangerines from a woman who stopped by our table. She carried the fruit in two baskets balanced on a bamboo pole. We asked how much the fruit was for a kilo and she showed us 30 Dong. We showed her 20 and the deal was done. Men on bicycles rode by selling dried cuttlefish, which they grill on small charcoal hibachis. Other women push sandwich carts. 8,000 Dong (48 cents) will secure a split baguette filled with pate’, ham, cucumber, lettuce, mayo, tomato and vinaigrette. Sit in one place long enough and you will have the makings of a four-course meal and all of it will be good. In the evenings sidewalk restaurants that had served noodle soups in the morning turn to seafood in the evening. Huge metal bowls heaped with crab, cockles and snails beckon. Take your pick and the man behind the counter does the cooking. One night Karen and I dined on crab and snails for just over 70,000 Dong ($4.20). They supplied us with safety pins to extricate the snails from their shells. A small boy played with a lipsticked pig balloon next to our tiny table.

After breakfast we walked past a barbershop. A barber inside was killing time between snips with curls. He waved us in and replaced the dumb bell in his hand with a pair of scissors. While he worked on my head the other barbers busied themselves wiping down every inch of counter and tiled wall in the place. Vietnam is the cleanest country we have ever encountered in SE Asia. While using a public restroom in Thailand can sometimes turn into a wet trek in a fetid swamp, while using a public head here is like using your Mom’s powder room complete with the can of air freshener. Hotel rooms and floors are squeaky clean. Streets are scrubbed regularly. A sudden rain will set women to scouring the pavement with long bristled brushes. Orange uniformed street cleaners tend to the gutters every morning.

The souvenir stores sell the standard fare like DVD’s, T-shirts and handicrafts. They also do a brisk business in Viet Cong headgear and something called snake-wine. The wine comes in a clear flask shaped bottle. Floating in the wine is a snake. Smaller bottles hold scorpions. Besides a cobra the larger bottles hold twigs and other plant materials. A pickled terrarium. And as to the quality of the wine? You can be sure that Karen and I will never know.

We went by taxi to Vietcom Bank to exchange some travelers’ checks. Saigon taxis are piloted by uniformed men and are a comfortable and economical way to get around town. We’ve used a cab three times and the highest fare we’ve paid was 20,000 Dong ($1.20). In the bank’s lobby two friendly guards sent us up to the second floor. The well-groomed girl behind the counter asked me to sign the $500 US check. After I had done so she examined my scrawl and declared it not the same as the original. One complaint by me, a dozen re-written signatures and three consultations with management later they relented and gave us our Dong but only after lecturing us on the importance of properly maintaining our signature in Vietnamese financial institutions. We apologized for my sloppy behavior and promised to keep our John Hancocks in tip-top condition. We grabbed the Dong and hit the door looking over our shoulders lest they change their minds. The average annual wage in Vietnam is $550 US. Under those circumstances I understood their concern.

We decided to walk home from the bank but after asking directions twice we were hopelessly lost along a huge roaring boulevard. Walking in Saigon is an exercise in faith. Traffic here does not stop but flows around things. As you step off of the curb you keep your eyes on the opposite side of the street and walk at a steady pace. Forget everything your Mom told you about looking both ways. Never, ever show fear. The drivers here are amazingly adept at avoiding collisions. Never stop halfway across as this throws them for a loop. Standing on the curb we waved down a cab which cut across 4 lanes of traffic to get to us. On the way back to the hotel we spied two men on a scooter. The one on the back seat held a stout bamboo pole the top of which was festooned with dozens of large cartoon character balloons. Daffy Duck and Hello Kitty nodded approvingly as we passed them in the wrong lane.

Back home we stood on our balcony and watch life go by below us. A young mother held her toddler son over a sheet of newspaper lying on the ground. The boy was naked from the waist down. It took us a minute to see what was happening. I could picture the ad in the next day’s Saigon Times.

“Young boy for adoption to good home. Has all shots and is paper trained.”

---

---