Vietnam. Pay up, M'n F'er.

Dear Reader,

It always takes longer to get there then it does to come back. Probably because on the way back you know how long it takes and what you'll see. Just came back from a lovely evening at Le Banyon, a French/Vietnamese restaurant on the An Bang beach, 2.5km from Hoi An. Julian and Gaiel (sp?) the proprietors are two rad French dudes and we spoke at length on all things French, American and Vietnamese. I sit nohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifw sipping my "333" Vietnam beer (best bang for the buck) with two Italians next to my typing as furiously as I am.

To relate the late several frantic days (and more to come), you should probably see/listen to these two songs first. To me, they embody what it's been like as a solo traveler, to experience Vietnam coming from Cambodia. Remember; COMING FROM CAMBODIA. Those are the key words.



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The moment I got off the bus in Ho Chi Mihn City, bleary from sleeping pills due to the 12 hour journey I just completed, I was grabbed by an "Agro" (new German word) taxi driver who proceeded to take me around, run up the meter and not give me change for the 500,000 Dong note that I gave him, and me, thinking he was being friendly and about to give me change, pushed me out with my bag onto a random street. The random street (actually it was an alley way) turned out to be the actual place where I was staying. Thus, began the quest of all Vietnamese people (that I encountered), to lie, cheat, persuade and generally try and rip me off. This trend has not stopped and has turned me into a something of a hermit and general misanthrope, even toward my fellow traveler. I blame it on my genetics, really, my lack of faith in humanity during these late days; these genetic traits helped my ancestors survive, and thus I am endowed with the behaviors of successful choices that propagated their genes into the future.

To be fair, Saigon was better then I expected. The reports from fellow travelers coming out of Vietnam were basically all neutral or negative. Those reports are not mere bias or isolated events; this really is a challenging and aggressive country. Okay, okay, there are those who are going to say "Eric, Vietnam had a huge war, survived decades of occupation from Western powers, Americans dumped tons of toxic chemicals on the country, they're poor and have it hard!" To that I call bullshit. EVERYONE IS POOR AND HAS IT HARD. Laos had more ordinance dumped on them then anyone else. Cambodia had tons of American bombs dumped on them AND their own people slaughtered more then 1/3rd of their own population. Their OWN people, not an invading force. Thailand didn't have it great but I can't recall what terrible event(s) struck them down. Point is, Laos people, Cambodian people, had really shitty histories and are REALLY NICE today. Vietnam... what gives? Not every Vietnamese person is out to screw you out of your money just because of your ethic profile, this is true. If you know some people like this, please introduce me because it would be a welcome change.

Actually, I did meet some really nice people today, but mainly they were nice because I irresponsibly dumped several hundred dollars into getting James Bond-esque suits made. That may be a fair chunk of change, but for two suits, three shirts, two ties, one vest, custom leather jacket and two pairs of custom leather shoes, I call into question who is getting more boned... I'm going to look even more like a masterpiece when I get back home.

But I digress. Saigon. It's not like it used to be. Vietnam's elder generations fervently defend the territory they so fervently fought for, yet it seems, the younger generations have one thing on their mind; Business and progress. Two things, then. After a day of wandering around the most amazingly crazy, busy, moto-congested city I've ever seen (Bangkok pales in comparison), I needed to sit down and was pleaded by two friendly looking older guys sitting at a childs sized table, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. One spoke good English, Mr. Hamong, and he proceeded to tell me about the city and buy me drinks. We agreed to meet at my hotel in the morning and he would show me all the sites for about two hours. He drove me back to my hotel and I can't remember what happened then. I guess I went to sleep (must have, right?).

The next morning, after some confusion and some calls, Mr. Hamong appeared and we proceeded to conquer the sites of the city, ranging from the Vietnam War Museum, 7 story Chinese pagoda, Buddhist/Taoist/Animst/Christian shrine (what do they worship here?), and some other things that were just too amazing to remember. The war museum is worth talking about... if you read my other posts about S-21 and the Killing Fields, one thing I harped on was how tasteful everything was that the Cambodian people did to preserve the terrible history; nothing was insinuated, nothing was altered, nothing was overblown or exaggerated. And in the "War Remembrance Museum", EVERYTHING was tactless, pointed, spun, overblown and wholly infused with one single point, a point by which came only from North Vietnam; Anti-American and anti-puppet government/people (aka South Vietnam). It fed the lizard part of the brain one big fat T-bone steak; grotesque photos of blood and gore, disfigured people from agent orange and other dioxin substances (okay, yes, that was fucked up, well done McNemara) and pictures of anti-American sentiment from all over the world. Only a tiny portion of the exhibits featured antiwar demonstrations from the American side, or the terribly sad stories of what unwilling American soldiers went through. Maybe growing up in households that inherently hated the Vietnam war and having parents that lived through that time and having an uncle who was IN that war and saw terrible things in Vietnam has created the view that I have today, but none of this aggressive, overt "poor us", one-sided propaganda made me have any sympathy for whoever put that museum together; on the outside they show pristine aircraft, tanks, artillery, and other heavy weapons used by the Americans (and clearly captured from the Americans). There are nice little placards explaining what this weapon does, how it's used, and basically how awesome it is. And then on the inside of the museum, there's all these pictures and munitions and examples of what it would be like for an American soldier to point a gun at you. Excuse me, but war is hell, for everyone involved but the people who aren't actually in it, I know this even having had the privilege of not serving in one. If there is a big disparity and disorganization in my writing about this place, it's probably because there is a big disparity and disorganization going on in that museum. I was not impressed at the one sidedness of it. I worship Vishnu, what can I say. But I do like a bit of Shiva now and again... That being said, it was interesting to see such fervent hatred against the country from which I'm from.

Other things he showed me but I didn't remember them in my mind, but rather on an SD card in my camera. One thing that I did remember is being screwed over though, for a little over two hours he demanded that he should be paid $30, to which I said "Bulllllshittttt." not literally but in my mind, and to which he said "Noooo I buy you drink, I take you so many place, such a long timeee..." etc. Be it known, I ALWAYS wanted to pay for everything, but he insisted (like a "good host") that it was on him, even though I never saw him give any money to anyone whom drinks were bought from. Surely he had some kind of deal worked out with whomever he interacted with on my behalf.

And this is how they GET you, simple human game playing and manipulation, the old bait and switch; "Don't worrrrryy about the price, we talk about that after," is a good one. And then, they flip it and use that against you saying "but I did all this random shit for you, you OWE me, muvva trukka!". This also happened at the Killing Fields in Cambodia; there was a stretch of the self guided tour that had a fence enclosing it in, and there were several beggar children singing these weird begging songs "pleeaaaase can i have some monneeyyyy so i can go schooolll and blah blah blaahhhh" but then when that didn't work, and they saw I had my camera out, they said "OHHHH picture! Make picture of us! Yes yes pleassse!" and so I took a picture of them. To which they said, "Me see, me see!" I showed them. They were amazed. Then they said "okay now you give me moneyyy so i can go to schooolll and blah blah blah". Luckily there was a fence between me and them so I could distance myself from this nonsense. Seriously, if they weren't making such a good living begging at the Killing Fields, they'd be looking to actually go to school. Unfortunately for me and Mr. Haumong or whatever his name was, god love him, there was no fence. And in the end, I gave him $25, him all glowering and sad and angry he didn't get $5 more. Greedy bastards, eh? Not unlike most greedy human bastards. And this (me being human after all), put a bad taste in my mouth. A dystopic, skeptical, hyper-alert taste in my mouth. This was to be how I would interact with most people in Vietnam (to this point), always having to keep in the back of my mind that I am being screwed over, that there is an agenda, that beneath the kindness or smile, there is an ulterior motive; your CASH. Even now, as I am arranging a guide in the hill town of Sapa (NW Vietnam) I get this very quote from my guide after asking him what his price per day is, "... I pick you up from the train station, the trip cost we will talk when you come, no wory,". Again, this is how they get you. But now I know better... No where else does this popular Southeast Asian phrase fit better then in Vietnam "No money, no honey". This was not true in Thailand or Cambodia or even Laos, where the people are probably the most poor in all of Southeast Asia. I would make a comment about good ol' China having some kind of influence on Vietnamese culture and people but that would just be ignorant and untrue. In anticipation of thoughts like "They have no choice, they need to work in sweatshops and factories!", Again, please, I call bullshit. We're all human beings, we're all one, we're all equal and the same, right? We all have a choice. Human beings ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE. I don't care what the choice is, we all choose, everyday what we do and who we become or we choose how poor or rich we will be. Call it black and white, but if we filter this through the lens of Occam's Razor, all things being equal the simplest answer is usually the correct answer, and the answer becomes, we all have a choice. This whole poorer then thou thing is getting on my nerves, but I digress.

So, after the taxi and Mr. Manipulative-Moto-Guy, I decided to play hardball. No more Mr. Pushover Tourist. The next day was to Vung Tau, an R&R point for American troops during the Vietnam War, and one that an uncle of mine frequented when the army wasn't fucking him. It used to be a small seaside beach resort town, but when I crested the hill that overlooks the place, it was a sprawling metropolis! I climbed down the hill (which, btw, has a Jesus that is almost as large as the one in Rio D.) and requested my moto driver to take me to the tourist beach. After all, I had one reason to be there and it wouldn't take long to document the place and report back to my uncle what I'd seen. Again, I made the mistake of not agreeing on a price with Mr. Moto guy beforehand, which I'll come back to later. On the beach of Vung Tau I found trash, murky water, and oddly enough an abundance of mystical shaped sea shells, the kinds you'd see in children's story books. I was literally the only non-Vietnamese person there, and got all sorts of strange looks shot in my direction. Again, more fuel to the fire of the unwelcome feeling I was constantly getting from Vietnam. Tired and having seen enough, I bought a small bottle of water. "Three thousand" The seller lady motioned with her fingers. I gave her three, 1,000 Dong notes. She proceeded to shout at me in a callused, caustic tone that gave away her smokers/hard life. Motioning "10!10!". I looked over at some laughing family and they said in English, "Ten thousand!". Dismayed at this, I handed her a 10,000 note. Lied to, cheated, fucked again. Fuck you, dishonest, manipulative beach seller lady; I could have saved $.34 if it weren't for your rouse! And by the way, don't start with the "They're poor, they have it hard, blah blah" crap, I already covered that in the first part of this post.

I'd seen enough, had enough, taken my pictures, it was time to get back to Ho Chi Mihn City and get on with my flight to Danang. Turns out, at this point in the trip, paying a bit more and getting to a destination 1,000,000 X faster pays of way more then taking a bus. As we pull back to the boat dock, Mr. Moto (surprise, surprise) attempts to screw me over asking for $15 for less then 2 hours of "work". My payment of $8 is all the "Fuck you, asshole," that needed be uttered. Wordless, bitter boat ride back to Ho Chi Mihn. The 1.5 hour trip was plagued with dreams of home and mixed memories of the past, helped along the way with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp music.

The scene at the boat arrival was one of comedic proportions. It was time to test this theory of Vietnamese economics I had in my mind. I put in my pocket a 10,000 Dong note ($.48). The throbbing mob at the gangway was of moto-drivers and taxis, all shouting and yelling, demanding that X person get-the-fuck-in-the-car/moto. I walked straight into the throbbing mob and held up my note, along with a business card of a map of my hotel. The hotel, btw, is about .4 kilometers from the boat launch and I could have easily walked there... or, at least attempted to brave the confused and chaotic streets of Ho Chi Mihn, which by the way, did not match at all with the little pocket map I was given at the hotel. Upon seeing the map and the note, I was literally laughed at by the moto grivers. "30,000 minimum!" they all shouted! "This is my last dong, my ONLY dong," I pleaded (all of us knowing full well that I was full of shit). I went from moto, to moto, showing the map and the dong, each one saying "Haha Go away, you walking!" and then laughing in my face. There was one moto driver that I noticed however who struck me as different; he was old. Old and quiet. He didn't yell above the others or make and violent hand gestures, but rather was quite demure, as if he knew something the others didn't. Once I was confident I would walk back to the hotel (oh no! walking, how terrible!) I started off and pushed my way through the throbbing mob. A hand grabbed me. It was the quiet old moto man, who calmly looked at the small map and looked at the 10,000 note. He said "Okay, okay, come." I must have looked like the most smug shithead in a 10 block radius; 90% of the aggressive moto-drivers still standing there, all potential customers vanished, and me and old-man-moto, speeding off into the distance. Upon arrival, I gave him 30,000. That man should write a book.

The flight to Danang was nothing to speak of. A taxi, paid in advance through the hotel (good thinking, Eric!) took me on an uneventful ride to an uneventful airport which delivered me (uneventfully) to Danang, Vietnams 3rd largest city. Seeing that there were no more buses to Hoi An (and unwilling to shell out X dollars for a taxi) I opted for a cheap-ass hotel for the night, which was provided to me by two nice ladies at the airport exit. Remember, they were nice because I had money to give them :) Humans really are simple creatures. [See what an asshole I'm becoming? Seriously, I wasn't like this before Vietnam! It's changed me, like so many other young American men, generations before me!] I walked out of the airport and was bombarded with "TAXI! TAXI OVER HERE!!!!! TAXI!!!!!!!!" etc etc. I pointed at a white car and was ushered in immediately, away from more throbbing mob action. "taxi, taxi..." I muttered... the whole greedy, aggressive situation becoming more and more comical as my upset feelings about the whole thing started to fade. I laughed for the first time in Vietnam, and the taxi driver, not speaking any English, must have thought I was drunk or crazy.

Hoi An, it turns out, has echos of Luang Prabang; Crumbling French-colonial town, UNESCO world heritage site, it is a charming town full of tailors and restaurants... GOOD food, I might add. Small streets, minimal traffic make this place an immediate tourist destination, and one that I'm sad I'm not spending more time in. Scratch that I'll spend more time here later, next trip to SEA. The streets are filled with vendors and sellers of all sorts of random things, I fondly look back on seeing a deprecated old lady on the riverside, one foot up on the bulkhead/street, eating a bowl of rice and occasionally blowing into a ceramic whistle in the shape of an animal. The cartel that must employ her has a great idea; get a super old lady to sell cheap ceramic crap to unwitting tourists and take 99% of what she brings in! Brilliant! Such a great business model that I was suckered into buying some of her wears, but not on first seeing her; the NEXT day I bought souvenirs from her. The other souvenirs came at a more costly price but much more valuable... more on that later.

That night, I planned to go out or do something of that nature, but was feeling so isolated and lonely, all I wanted to do was escape; escape the barrage of lies, escape the people trying to cheat me, escape this country where so much death occurred at the hands of my country, escape it all and just be back home where I belong. Seems stupid, to waste valuable time going to bed so early (er... 6pm, to be exact)... but I will not apologize for it. I needed to rest and recharge my mental defenses for the next onslaught of Vietnam; after all, I could not lapse again into the false "Just World" mentality, a belief system in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.

Recharged and rejuvenated (having the Discovery Channel in my room helped a bit with that), I set out to enjoy some of Hoi An's good old fashioned retail therapy. To this point in my journey I had been keeping tight track of my finances and buying little to no souvenirs anywhere I'd been, apart from a few trinkets in Phenom Pehn. Today, however, was different. Hoi An has over 200 custom tailor operations going on in town, and I decided to get myself fitted for a suit. Not one, to be precise, but two. Anyone who knows me knows I'm abysmal at fashion. I shouldn't be though; a well rounded man should know what he looks good in, but lacking a friend or female companion to bounce ideas off of, I went with pictures of James Bond, and showed the tailor ladies the suits Sean Connery and Daniel Craig wore for their roles as my main man, JB. Overall, getting clothing made in Southeast Asia is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy X1000 cheaper then doing anything in Europe or America. Good quality as well, I guess. We'll find out tomorrow when I try on whatever they concoct for me (uh oh, I sense I'm about to get screwed over again...) We'll see. They kept asking me "What color you want?" ... I have no fucking idea what color I want, do I look like someone who knows what they want? Clearly not because I must have "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead or something, I'm from the Pacific Northwest, we don't care what we look like, we care about REI, and Gortex and Polartec and Northface... It's too cold and rainy to care. And those tailor ladies were no help, whenever I ask, "Is this color or THIS color better?" they simply said "yes yes, okay okay,". It was a desperate moment, a moment in which I needed to CHOOSE for myself, what I would wear, what would present my best self to the world when I dawned these rags. No outside opinion. No outside help. I almost left and gave up and called some of my closest female friends, but then realized it would be 2AM and that A.) they most likely wouldn't answer a random skype call at that time of night, and B.) It's rude to wake people up like that. So, I made my choices, took that advice of the friendly ladies (remember, friendly because why...? You guessed it: No money no honey! Greenbacks are truly the greatest aphrodisiac) while simultaneously deflecting comments about marrying their daughters. In the end, good old retail therapy paid off and I'll have a badass custom leather jacket to show for it. Or I'll have a completely miscalculated piece of dead cow sewn together that doesn't fit my personality at all, we'll see, and in that case, there's always craigslist/ebay!

I sipped a mango daiquiri while watching that decreped old lady blow her ceramic animal whistles on the river front this evening, she was so cute and quiet except for that whistle that caught every tourists eye. I bought 5 animal whistles from her for 10,000d a piece. She had a light in her eye and teeth rotting out of her head, it was all too charming with the sun setting and casting it's reddish, hazy glow upon the river. Upon giving her a 100,000d note, she waved me away and said "Thank you!" Again, REALLY? "You hag, you cheating bitch, give me my fucking change like a normal fucking human being, what the fuck is wrong with you people, DO BUSINESS PROPERLY!!!!" Is what echoed and bounced around my mind. If she refused I was about to toss all her ceramic crap into the river as revenge for all the wrong injustice brought upon me. I try and do things right in these countries; I don't litter EVER, I turn off lights when I leave rooms, I close doors behind me, I open doors, all for this? Fuck me, why bother if this is what karma is. She finally rescinded her sinful position and gave me my rightful change back. For fucks sake, when even an old woman tries to screw you over, and not in the good way, what does one do? Not interact with the local culture? Not go outside? I tried that and it was right depressing. Not even in American does that kind of business take place (Nay, an even more sinister, paper/lawyer driven business takes place but I take no part in that nor have any comment on it). I suppose I have a lot to learn about how to interact with Vietnamese people. Maybe just act like them, after all, when in Rome...

Next stop; Hue. Right on the old DMZ of North and South Vietnam. Tell me, why is it that in almost every country, there is such a strange divide (almost always!) from North and South?

Love and kisses to all (be a decent human being, btw),

-Eric

PS Just be a decent human being. Be. Decent. It's more effort to NOT be decent then it is to be decent, so it just makes logical and evolutionary sense to be... DECENT.