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There's a big park a few blocks from my house. It's an oasis of greenery and quiet in the middle of downtown Saigon. On any given day it's packed with people walking, playing badminton or taking a leisurely stroll with their kids. It also contains some interesting scultptures. Pictures below, for your viewing pleasure.
I saw this kid selling Coca-Cola to motorists at a stoplight in central Saigon today and had to snap a pic. Embodied in this fresh-faced teenager is all the incredible change that is sweeping across Viet Nam. I was thirsty too, so I bought a bottle.
A capitalist, consumer culture has taken root with a vengeance here. It's almost as if the Vietnamese are in overdrive to make up for 25 years of economic stagnation. Everywhere I see evidence of a burgeoning middle class and the trappings of wealth -- DVD shops (pirated, but obvious evidence of DVD players) , florists, photo studios, refrigerators, LCD HDTVs, glossy fashion magazines, etc.
Yesterday I went to a Walmart-type store crammed with toasters, cookies, cell phones, audio equipment, shampoo, cosmetics, pots and pans, produce, a bakery (the Vietnamese bake excellent bread), clothing, stationery, rice cookers -- you name it, this place had it. Except for the checkout girls wearing ao dais, It felt pretty much like any similar store in Des Moines or Milwaukee. It warmed my heart.
Some find it fashionable to bemoan the spread of wealth and market-based economies across the world. "Everything is being Starbuck-ized!" they complain as they sip their lattes or Pinot Noir. Certainly the free market has its ugly spots. But I challenge any of those people to spend 40 years working from dawn until dusk plowing fields with a water buffalo and living in a dirt-floor house. I'm pretty sure they would politely decline. Instead, they would go to the local Whole Foods and drop a wad on overpriced organic produce and free-range chicken packaged in tidy, sanitized containers. Just like the Vietnamese.
Here's the checkout area of the store I visited yesterday. A security guy scolded me for taking this photo. Maybe he thought I was working for the competition.
Some glossies for sale. I see these stands everywhere.
Frequent sightings of the hammer and sickle offer a sharp reminder of the country's pedigree. But with every passing day it seems more and more an anachronism.
People of Viet Nam, I salute you!
I just read in The New York Times that Mickey Spillane, author of hard boiled detective thrillers, passed away last week at the age of 88. May you rest in peace, ya mensch. I've never read any of Spillane's books, but I've read several by three other titans of the genre, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet and James Cain. One of my favorites is "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" by Cain. Another contemporary author I've read is Michael Connelly. I read his novel "Angel's Flight," based in today's racially charged Los Angeles. It also is excellent.
Their work explores the base, dark sides of human nature -- fear, greed, lust for power, jealousy, violence -- that lurk inside all of us. But they brilliantly contrast the darkness with more noble facets of human nature such as loyalty, courage, love, integrity and perseverance. Reading each book is the emotional equivalent of eating a magnificent 10 course meal. I love it.
Check out some of these fantastic quotes from Spillane:
It was Monday again, a rainy, dreary Monday that was a huge wet muffler draped over the land. I watched it through the window and felt the taste of it in my mouth. “Kiss Me, Deadly,” 1952
His tux was the latest style, but on him it was all eyewash because he was still the dock-type hood and no tailor was ever going to change him. “Survival ... Zero!,” 1970
You would want to kiss the lusciousness of those full lips until the thought occurred that it might be like putting your tongue on a cold sled runner and never being able to get it off. “The Killing Man,” 1989
(By the way, the picture above is the cover art for Spillane's novel "The Long Wait," 1952. I've a hunch that's a femme fatale.)
Tragedy. One word. That is Cambodia.
Over the weekend I visited the infamous "Killing Fields" about 15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh.
The setting was peaceful and anticlimactic
-- a copse of trees, a grassy meadow....and many, many shallow depressions
scattered about where victims were buried under a shallow covering of
soil. This is where tens of thousands of Cambodian men, women and
children, -- “enemies of the people” – were murdered during the Khmer Rouge’s
bloody reign from 1975 to 1979. There is
a monument to the fallen in the middle. It’s filled with skulls. Some
bear visible witness to the violence that ended their lives – puncture and
stabbing wounds are evident on many of the skulls. It’s chilling.
The scale and horror of the cruelty was on the same level as that perpetrated by Hitler’s Nazis. The KR took Mao’s ideas about the Cultural Revolution and brought it to a whole new level. They wanted to create an “agrarian paradise” and completely erase all cultures and ideas that came before them. 1975, the year the KR conquered the country, was reset as “Year Zero.” Nothing that had come before Year Zero existed – the Khmer were going to start a new society. They abolished currency, markets, machinery and independent thought. Anyone with an education or any association with the previous government or foreigners was killed. Nearly two million from a population of about 8 million were killed by the Khmer or died of starvation. It boggles the mind.
Two excellent movies that capture the evil
and madness of the KR regime are “The Killing Fields” and a documentary titled
“S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.” I bought both at the actual killing field. I just finished watching “S21.” It contains footage of former prisoners
confronting their former captors at the infamous “Tuol Sleng” prison (picture of an inmate at right). The guards recount how they helped prisoners
concoct false “confessions,” then tortured and murdered them. They clearly have checked their minds and
hearts at the door and tell their stories in a monotone, matter-of-fact
manner.
When I was in high school in the late 80s there were two Cambodian kids in my class. They were refugees who had been resettled in Vermont. It’s incredible to think about what they must have gone through, and how that contrasted with their cheerfulness. One of the guys used to entertain the rest of us by climbing a rope like a monkey to the top of the gym ceiling and doing one-arm pushups.
It’s clear that Cambodia is still recovering from the KR genocide. That being said, the people were friendly and generous with their smiles. Genocidal maniacs may come and go, but our humanity abides.
I had one delightful experience as I walked through the city on Sunday morning. A rubbish man pulling a cart and a little girl, presumably his daughter, passed me walking the other way. The little girl ran up to me and I braced myself for her pitch. But the pitch never came. In the blink of an eye she darted her small hand out for my empty plastic water bottle and flicked it into the rubbish cart. Then she flashed a warm smile and skipped away happily. "Or-kun!" (Khmer for "thank you") I called after her. Delightful.
Phnom Penh is a disheveled, chaotic city with certain hedonistic element mostly composed of foreign expats. You can check out my photos here. Click on "enter as guest" then click on "slideshow" for the best viewing. Not for the squeamish.
English is everywhere here in Viet Nam. I just noticed the English on this wastebasket in my 1950s-vintage pink bathroom.
I think this is a character from the US comic strip "Pearls Before Swine" (Btam?). Happiness to Everybody, indeed.
I've seen these posters all over town. It looks like a live-action, Vietnamese version of "Snow White." I wonder if they've translated the Seven Dwarves' "Heigh-Ho" into Vietnamese?
Ok, so I got a motorbike. I've been riding for about 10 days now and am starting to understand the unwritten rules of the road here. Official rules like "stop at red lights" are meaningless in Viet Nam. People simply ignore them. Much more important are the unwritten rules that one learns only through experience. One is that in an intersection without a light, the first guy there has the right of way. This rule has a corollary - even if you're the first one there it is sometimes that case that you should yield to the larger vehicle. (Q: Where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep? A: Anywhere he wants.)
Or take red and green lights. People sort of obey them, but their obeisance is forced by drivers going the other direction through the intersection. When a light turns red, the traffic flow that *was* going through the intersection continues to go through it until the people who now have the green light flood into the intersection and choke them off. It's important that the people who now have the green light make a show of strength in numbers. If only a few guys go out they will get clobbered -- gotta go in force. The traffic whose light just turned red will keep going until they're forced to stop.
I've witnessed a similar phenomenon with left turns. In the face of heavy oncoming traffic flow it's virtually impossible to make a left turn on your own (I've seen it done, but mostly by 16 year old boys with a death wish). You generally have to wait for more people to arrive who want to make the same left turn. Then when the left-turners reach critical mass you make a break for it and force oncoming traffic to yield before your combined might. Coalitions between complete strangers are built and dissolved within seconds to achieve a common end. It's fascinating to watch, let alone participate in.
Since I don't have a place to store my bike I need to bring it into the house at night. It's kinda weird, but I've learned that bikes are prized possessions here are subject to rampant theft if left unprotected. I've even seen guys reclined and sleeping on their bikes. Gotta get a pic of that.
Check out this blog for another expat's view on the crazy traffic here.
I moved into my new house last week. It's great. I have plenty of room, a fridge, a washing machine and cable. Did I mention the cable? It's also in a quiet alley off a not quiet at all street. There's an electronics store across the street from the alley entrance that has flashing lights and broadcasts really loud electronics effects sounds, all the time. It's like something out of "Blade Runner" (one of my favorite movies by the way).
I
have a guest bedroom with its very own AC unit for the many, many of you who are planning trips to Viet Nam.
Here are some pics of chez charvey.
Pink - it's the new black.
So I started my own club. It's very exclusive. So exclusive, in fact, there are only three members including myself. Don't even ask me about trying to get in. The hazing and initiation are more than you could bear.
Doan Thuc (left, pronounced like "dwayne top") and Thong (right, pronounced like "tom" said quickly) are my Tieng Viet sparring partners over coffee every Sunday at 10am. Both are 20-something Vietnamese who are eager to practice English. They speak quite well already and certainly have better pronunciation on some words than I do. They're also great teachers who will absolutely *not* let me off the hook until I can pronounce a word. Their favorite torture method is the word for "Wednesday," "Thu tu." I just hate that one. The "th" sound in Vietnamese is tricky. Plus the "u" sound is amazingly tricky, kinda like an "ooof!" pronounced unnaturally deep in your throat (see my Learning Vietnamese post). Combined with having to produce both the "th" and "t" sounds ("t" is pronounced almost like "d" in certain situations) it's deadly. My teacher joked that I should never schedule anything on Wednesday. Haha.
I was walking downtown yesterday when I ran into a gaggle of young American sailors on shore leave. It turns about that there there are two American ships with about 150 sailors paying a courtesy call to Saigon this week. One is the USS Salvor, a ship that specializes in salvage and diving operations. The other is the USS Patriot, a mine countermeasures ship.
I talked to them for a few minutes and gave them directions to an ATM. "Check out your account balance in Vietnamese dong -- you're all millionaires!" (Always a good gag for newcomers.)
I had a few errands to run so I couldn't stay long. But seeing American sailors walking around downtown Saigon was a sight that stirred my patriot heart, especially given that this is July 4 weekend. So I resolved to go out last night, find some sailors, and buy them a drink.
I caught up with Dive Master Mike, Raul, Liaison Bob, Dave from Massachussets and Bosun Mark at Saigon Saigon. They were decked out in dress whites and looking every bit as dapper as Richard Gere in "An Officer and a Gentleman." Pictured at right are Bosun Mark and me in my camo civvies. These are the guys that recently confirmed the final resting place of the USS Largarto, a US submarine that went missing in the closing months of WWII. You can read the story and see the pictures here. There's a picture of Mike Moser, the Dive Master on the USS Salvor who visited the wreck. For a while Dive Master Mike reminded me of someone but I just couldnt put my finger on. Then it occured to me -- Vin Diesel! Raul was making paper roses from napkins and using them to break the ice with cute girls. He taught me too -- it was surprisingly easy, um I mean hard.
Anyway, it was an honor and a lot of fun to buy the men of the USS Salvor a round and hang out with America's finest.
Hey Pardners,
I wanted y'all to know that thar's damn fine genuine Texas BBQ smack in the
middle of Saigon.
A few nights ago I was having a drink with Steve, an American friend here, and mentioned that I had seen this crazy looking Texas BBQ place on the way to he airport. "Oh, I know that place! Let's go there for dinner." Fantastic idea.
Initially I was skeptical. Texas BBQ in Vietnam? The Vietnamese just don't know what to do with big hunks of meat. I'm not sure their stomachs would know what to do with it either. But alas, there it was. We ordered nachos and guac (damn good), wings and, of course, Texas BBQ. It delivered. Steve told me that the owner is a Vietnamese-American guy from Houston. The "chef" (do you call Texas BBQ men chefs?) is a born and bred Texan as well. Good eatin'.
The decor was a little on the cheesy side but not over the top. It looked like I'd imagine a Texas BBQ
theme restaurant to look like, with signs like "Sherriff" and "H&W Bank" on the walls. There was also a neon cowboy with a swinging arm, just like in Vegas. I know that Vegas isn't Texas, but it fit with the general Texan theme nevertheless.
Completing the effect was a geniune Texas two-step class (I have no idea if that's the right name - I think I picked up that term on TV somewhere). It was great. I'm not sure that Texas Two-Step is danced to Eddie Rabbit's "I Love a Rainy Night" though. Any Texans care to comment?
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