A vacation from our vacation

Midori and I with our friends Hiromi and Atsushi Ozaki.  Atsushi is managing a plant down there and Hiromi and Midori thought it would be fun to pop down there and see him.  It was!

As noted in the previous post, Midori and I took a side trip to Vietnam in the middle of this year's annual trip to Tokyo.  It almost didn't happen for me due to some diplomatic snafus but we made it for a few days to Ho Chi Minh City (previously known as Saigon, and still very much referred to as Saigon by the locals.) 

In preparing to go I went online to find the official way of getting a visa to enter the country and found the official Vietnamese Embassy's website.  I followed all the instructions and they sent me an email with a confirmation number in very simple text saying that this was the number I would need for the next step.  They didn't tell me what the next step was and I never heard back from them.  They also don't leave any way of getting back in touch with them, so that was that.  I went online again to find out what other people had been doing about this and saw that many of them were saying that you can just get a visa at the airport.  OK.  I decided I would do that.

The problem is, it turns out, the Airlines won't let you on the plane without the visa, so chicken meet egg.  All of the drama was taking place in the Terminal building of Narita International Airport (Tokyo) while Midori and her friend, as Japanese citizens, didn't even need a visa so they were good to go.  I was getting ready to unpack my stuff from our suitcase and head back to my mother in law's place and let Midori and Hiromi just get on the plane and go, but the Vietnamese Airlines guy helping us out had an idea.  He knew of some services who could, for a fee, do the visa processing for me.  No guarantee but they might be able to do it for me within 30 mins.  (About the amount of time it was going to be before the plane took off.)  It cost us another couple of hundred dollars, but they were able to do it pretty quickly and sent me a PDF of the stamped letter I needed.  We squeaked on the plane and were off.  They sent me, via email a bunch of instructions on what to do and WHAT NOT TO DO as soon as I got off the plane which made this whole thing seem a little shady, but in the end it looks like this is a very common way to get into Vietnam for many people.  It has turned into its own little industry. 

Vietnam is a very fast growing economy with wages going up rapidly.  This has caused some inflation so the largest bill of the Vietnamese currency is 500,000 Dong.  This equals about $22 US.  To put it in perspective you can get a BBQ pork bahn mi sandwich (a baguette with meat, cilantro, chilies, and other condiments) for about 19,000 Dong.  (84 cents)  

So the dollar can go quite far in Vietnam if you eat the street food.  Also, everything in all the little markets is negotiable.  For some people this is great, but I am just not a good haggler.  I don't like doing it, and I find it very stressful.  Lucky for me Midori is good at it and seems to enjoy it.  I find the whole thing irritating. 

The contrast between the naked capitalism and the symbols of communism (like the Vietnamese flagged military cap) was a constant source of amusement to me.

That would be one thing, but they also roam the streets trying to sell you stuff as you are just walking around taking in the sights and they gravitate toward me.  It reminded me of when we were in Italy at the leaning tower of Pisa when the street peddlers from all over the globe would be standing there as you got off the tour bus pushing their obviously fake Ray Bans.  In fact, it was exactly like that and even though I had sunglasses on my face these guys were continuously trying to sell me more sunglasses.  It became a joke with us as I grew more and more impatient with these guys to the point where I just looked at them, pointed at my face and said in English, "I already have some on my face," and walked away.

According to our host, this is light traffic

In Saigon the thing that really made an impression was the traffic.  About 60% of the traffic on the streets there is motorbike/scooters.  And the traffic management such as signals and signs seem more like suggestions.  A lot of intersections don't even have that.  And crosswalks?  Sure, there are lots of them.  But don't expect anybody to stop.  To cross the street you have to wait for a relatively light period of traffic and just start walking.  Don't stop, don't run, just pick a casual speed and walk.  The bikes and cars will just avoid hitting you.  They will pass right in front or right behind your path.  The first few times it is scary as Hell.  As you become accustomed to it, it just becomes scary as heck.

This photo was take from the 2nd floor of a Pho noodle shop.  It looks like traffic is moving from all directions as the same time because it is.  If you are wondering why nobody died, me too, and this isn't even an extreme example.

One night our host organized a water puppet show and dinner cruise.  We were told that we would be picked up at our hotel so we should wait in the lobby.  We waited quite a long time and it seemed like nobody was going to show, but then they finally found us and took us to what I thought was going to be a van or taxi cab, but turned out to be pedal driven rickshaws.  Basically an inverted tricycle with a seat on the front giving us an unobstructed view of everything right in front of us.  The first thing they did was pull right out into the middle of the busiest part of the traffic on one of the main roads.  That was insane.  We went through one of those intersections where you wonder why nobody died.  But the lasting impression was the auto fumes.  We sucked in way more than our share of carbon monoxide on that little excursion and I would suggest to anyone who is planning to go to Saigon, take the ride.  But bring a mask to filter out the exhaust fumes.

You can see the guy in the red shirt is pedaling a bike type of contraption with our friend Atsushi sitting the seat just in front.  That is what we were riding on.

Midori and I getting ready to go face first into the Saigon traffic tangle.

One of the things I wanted to do was to go through the Buddhist, Hindu or Taoist temples.  So while we were there we went to one of the oldest Buddhist pagodas in Vietnam, a local Hindu Temple, a Catholic Church and even a Muslim Mosque.  The Buddhist temple was not quite what we are used to from our experiences in Japan.  

It was old, as most of them are, but it looked like it needed to be better maintained.  Also, ironically, the Vietnamese temples had a tendency toward the tacky with neon being used for certain things.  For example, many statues of Buddha or bodhisattva have what look like haloes around their heads representing enlightenment and we see these in Japan as well, but in Vietnam the halo is accentuated with a neon light. 

Back-lit bodhisattva  

    

Another fun thing we did while we were in Saigon was to take a boat tour on the Mekong Delta.  The river itself is pretty filthy with lots of floating debris, but it provides a way of life for a great many Vietnamese.  The first stop on our tour was a market where locals were selling fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and an assortment of other things.  A few of the items were aimed at tourists but mostly it was a market by the locals for the locals.  

A majority of the things for sale we would not have been able to buy or carry with us because they would have required refrigeration or would have needed to be cooked or prepared in some way.  Or it was tourist crap we didn't need.

We also went on smaller boats that looked like dugout canoes.  This was just a quick side trip up one of the mangrove covered tributaries.  

Following that was lunch on some local fruit, fish and relaxing hour laying in a hammock. 

  

If I go back to Saigon, I will spend more time eating the street food.  What I had of it was delicious and cheap.