Saigon

I have been sucking at this lately, so my Year of the Rat resolution is as follows: be a better blogger. If it means anything to you, I am constantly chastising myself for not posting more and am often afflicted with a vague sense of dread and self-loathing for shirking my responsibility. It’s like a steady low-grade fever, which I believe is also a symptom of malaria.

Anyway–doings a-transpirin’. I’m using the free wifi in Singapore’s futuristical Changi Airport right now as I wait to catch a flight to Melbourne. I’m going to meet with my editor there before heading to New Zealand to write for this guidebook. I’ll be covering the entire North Island, which includes, among other things: the cities of Auckland and Wellington; geothermal oddities like geysers, exploding mud pools, and volcanic lakes; and an attraction called Sheepworld.

I left Vietnam ten days ago and have been in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and even Indonesia (for a half day) since. It’s been a fantastic, if wallet-destroying, time & I will write about it all in the next post.

Just one other thing to mention for now: it almost passed without my noticing it, but in the midst of all the Tet/Lunar New Year festivities, February 9th marked my own new year–one year since I left New York and started traveling. It’s not even a trip anymore; I don’t know what exactly to call it, but it’s been real interesting.

Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, 2007

I was laid up earlier this week, all coughing and feverish like some 19th century tragic heroine. After months of traveling Southeast Asia almost illness-free, I find Saigon taking its toll on me lately. Vietnamese people tell me it’s probably because of the changing seasons– from hot and rainy to hot and less rainy.

Personally, I’ve identified a few other factors contributing to my recent lack of robustness & sanguinity:

1. The air I breathe. The air quality here absolutely sucks. This is no surprise in a city of more than seven million people, all of whom are on their motorbikes right this second. I go outside with a Cambodian krama scarf wrapped around my face half the time. You think I am exaggerating about the motorbike traffic, but I promise you, it is the first thing you will notice when you come to Ho Chi Minh City.

When are you coming, anyway?


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They’ve started playing Christmas songs here in Vietnam too. Right now, I’m listening to an eerie, theremin-sounding rendition of “Jingle Bells,” but I guess it beats the techno that most Vietnamese cafes start pumping first thing in the morning (usually accompanied by the television also playing at full volume.) Been busy, but things are going fine here. I have lots of photos to upload. Also wanted to mention that I touched the still-beating heart of a crocodile last week.

I had to stop short in heavy traffic yesterday and as I put my foot down to balance myself another bike ran over the heel of my flip-flop and pulled it clean off of my foot without otherwise touching me in any way. I still don’t understand how this was physically possible, but it’s a perfect illustration of what driving in HCMC is like.

I’ve been laid low the past couple of days by a nasty little stomach bug. I assume it was something I ate, but what? It could have been just about anything. The grilled street pork. The ice in my iced coffee. The ice in my beer. Everyone’s a suspect–it’s like Murder on the Orient Express. Still, this is the first of such troubles I’ve had in I don’t how long–certainly since I’ve been in Vietnam, which, as I realized the other day, has been more than four months now. In any case, it’s impossible and kind of pointless to live here and not eat the street food and drink the street cafe sua da, and seriously, most Vietnamese food is incredibly fresh, although just typing the words “eat” and “food” makes me want to go lie back down.

The naked and the nude.

Last night I drove past a man who was walking into heavy traffic wearing nothing but sandals. Even weirder, he had a wad of money stuffed in his mouth, the dong bills spilling out like pink and green tongues. At first I thought, crazy, but as I sped away I began to wonder if there was something else going on. Was this a one-man protest, maybe? (Which, in Vietnam, would be truly crazy.) Or perhaps it was some kind of forced public humiliation, like a punishment for trying to steal money from the mob. I don’t know if organized crime even exists in Vietnam, but the scene looked like it could have come straight out of a Takeshi Kitano film.

This was in fact the second case of public nudity I’ve witnessed here recently. A couple of weekends ago, I saw a Western man–a rather, er, endomorphic Western man–on the sidewalk completely naked, just chatting away on his cell phone. I was across the street with some friends on a crowded bar patio; he was standing in front of a hotel–a nice hotel–absorbed in his conversation, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world to be fat and naked on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. After a few minutes, however, when he finally noticed the crowd of onlookers gawking, he started to ham it up and began performing in ways that I still wish I could un-see. Movie reference point: early John Waters.

Twice might be a coincidence, but three times will constitute an official trend. Mondo Vietnam? Communist Gomorrah? Will keep you posted.

Too much to try and catch up on in one post. It’s been a hectic month for me here in Ho Chi Minh City. Yes: subtly, almost imperceptibly, I’ve stopped saying “Saigon” and have started calling the city by its gray and many-syllabled official name. Ho Chi Minh City. It’s just that I hear most Vietnamese say it that way. I don’t mean humorless party functionaries or war-hardened ideologues (not that I’ve met any), but just people I know, people who are too young to have ever called the city by any other name. Ho Chi Minh City. It sounded so alien and clumsy to me when I was first arrived, but say anything enough times and it starts to feel familiar, to become second nature.

I marvel at human adaptability. What’s in a name? What’s in a place? Time and again while traveling I’ve been struck by how easily one can get used to a new city, or a remote mountain village, or a beach, or an entirely new country, all the time meeting people and leaving people, being alone, being together. On the one hand there is an almost perpetual sense of dislocation, on the other, a remarkable capacity to latch on to things and make them familiar, to make a home of wherever you are. There is something very revealing about the human wiring in all this movement, I think.

And now, from movement to its opposite. Getting settled; working, finding a place to live, opening a bank account, riding a motorbike every day. Oh, how we get used to things. I buy sandwiches and iced coffee and bags of fruit and lotus-seed drinks (delicious!) from street carts without even getting off my motorbike now. I ride in monsoons wearing a blue plastic poncho.

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Lan Anh Restaurant, Ho Chi Minh City.