The Rolling Coconut: NAM! Saigon a.k.a. Hoo Chi Coo Chi City

Vietnam, A strange land of contradictions and juxtapostions

SAIGON:

I arrived in Saigon via a Vietnam Airlines flight from Bangkok without a lot of pre-planning. My first task was to withdraw enough local currency to pay for a cab to a hotel. I was unsure of the exchange rate and recalled I had a back packer advertising zine from Bangkok stashed deep in my bag that contained the US dollar exchange rates for all of the southeast Asian countries. Huhmm... Interesting. Vietnam's local currency is called the "Dong" and secondly you can trade one US dollar for about 17,800 dong. I crossed my fingers and hoped the currency exchange information I gleaned from the zine was correct and furthermore I deeply hoped all of the comas or decimals on the screen were in fact what I was taking them to be, when you're dealing with six zeros you don't want to screw up. I withdrew three million dong. Three MILLION DONG! I just became an instant dong millionaire. I like Vietnam already.

What you've heard about the traffic here is true. The traffic in Saigon is nuts. No offense to Bombay or the Vespa choked streets of Rome but you ain't seen nothing till you've seen the scooter traffic in Saigon. Saigon is an excellent walking city, or at least it has the potential to be if someone could just get the 80 bajillion scooters here under control. The sidewalk is either A.) a completely clogged scooter parking lot through which it is impossible to pass, or B.) a secondary scooter express way which serves to catch the overflow of scooter traffic when the flow of traffic on the streets isn't moving fast enough to suit the tastes of Saigonites. I mean I'm not anti-scooter, but its complete anarchy here. There needs to be safe sanctuary for pedestrians somewhere in a city, but it is not to be found in Saigon. When in Saigon you had better watch your step and steel yourself for the adrenaline pumping adventure that is crossing the street. Its best to wait and follow a local if in doubt, but whatever you do don't hesitate or show fear or the hoards of scooters will rip you apart. Bold is vastly preferable to cautious.

Scooter gear de riguer Saigon. The air is so polluted and dusty its hard to ride without an air filtration system and eye protection. The cops don't give a crap about anything you do on a scooter here, you can drive a scooter 100mph through a pre-school playground, just wear a helmet.

Does this look like a good idea to you.? Me neither. No freaking way would I ever consider driving a scooter here.

Tuckered out Saigon Cowboy.

The food in Saigon is absolutely awesome. No offense to Thailand but I was so happy upon arriving to eat something that wasn't fried rice, barbecue chicken or a coconut based curry. No, Vietnamese is not radically different from Thai, but Vietnamese is a real cuisine. A varied and rigorous cuisine with many influences and different styles unique to each region, south to north. Saigon is Vietnam's most cosmopolitan and sophisticated city and the culinary scene here is no different, Saigon is Vietnam's culinary piece de resistance. The melange of tropical flavors from Kampuchea and the Mekong Delta collide with the colonial French flavors and the more traditional flavors of the Chinese influenced north to create one of the greatest food cities in South East Asia or even the world. From the low end street food to the high end artistry of the gourmet the food in Saigon rocks. Perhaps best of all it is really cheap, even the fancy places are pretty fair. I am going to miss the food in Saigon dearly.

My blog posts have been getting a little long and out of control lately so I'll just try to give everyone a quick rundown from here. Walking, shopping, eating, War Remnants Museum (incredibly disturbing, the worst thing I've seen yet but I promised this is a happy blog from now on!) Reunification palace, tour of Chu Chi tunnels. That was pretty much my time in Saigon, that and getting yelled at everywhere I went. When you're a foreign tourist walking around Saigon all of the Xe Om drivers and street hawkers selling counterfeited guide books and other crap that is much less useful call out "Hey! Hey! Where you go? Moto Cyclo?" Its persistent, its relentless, its pushy and rude. If you speak to me courteously and like a human being I will try to acknowledge you and respond once with a simple "no" or at least a head shake, but the drivers here yell at you constantly "HEY!HEY!HEY! and they even clap their hands at you like you're some kind of a dog that's hard of hearing. That's no way to treat visitors. This scooter driver jackass just kept yelling and yelling at me tonight even though I was obviously doing my best to ignore him while I was attempting to take pictures of this gigantic dying rat on the sidewalk. Finally I had my fill of this behavior and decided to give it right back to this guy. I spun around and jumped right up in his face and started yelling "HEY! HEY! and repeating whatever other gibberish he had been yelling at me while aping the motions of a person trying to get someone's attention. His xe om friends seemed amused and he seemed pretty flabbergasted and confused by the whole thing but I would think the expats that live here must flip out and do the same all the time. It gets terribly old being yelled at constantly no matter where you go. I know there are some pretty big cultural differences between east and west but does anyone like being yelled at constantly? Is that so hard to understand? Jeez.

Tomorrow I leave for Mui Ne. I guess my story above means its time. I do like it in Saigon though, really. Its a great town.

Typical Saigon market place. The greens here are amazing.

Typical madness on the doorstep of my Saigon Hotel 24-7

Oh No! What would Uncle Ho say??? Louis Vuitton? Millions of idealistic communists got their asses shot off on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for this?

Dong Khoi at night. Saigon's answer to Rodeo Drive.

The exquisite Vietnamese treat "Ca Phe Sua De" or Vietnamese sweet ice coffee. The little silver tumbler looking thingy is called a "fin" or at least that is what I was told. The "fin" is just a drip coffee brewing vessle that both brews and filters the coffee. The little white vessel on the table holds the sweetened condensed milk of course, which is added according to individual preference but is optimally added to the hot brewed coffee not the ice so it will warm increasing its viscosity/solubility. Proper Ca Phe Sua De is made with a lovely variety of indigenous Vietnamese coffee, Buon Ma Thuot, which is roasted in butter. The butter roasted beans impart this wonderful beverage with much of its characteristic depth, smoothness and extraordinary richness.

Finished product ready to drink.

Raiden from Mortal Kombat prepares a Durian for my enjoyment. Well, enjoyment if you're the kind of person that derives pleasure from a fruit that has the same consistency and smell as a rotten baby diaper.

Traffic? What traffic? Fire up the barby!!!

One of my appetizers at the Temple Club. Shrimp pate applied and cooked on the stalks of young fresh sugar cane with spicy greens, steamed rice noodle roll-ups, shaved fresh green fruits, house prepared rice paper wraps, and of course a special sauce. They don't mess around when it comes to food in Saigon.

Ngo Viet Thu's most groovey Reunification Palace.

Mother and Son posing in front of the tank that crashed the gate of the old Presidential Palace before it became the "Reunification Palace"

Paging Austin Powers.....

"Gentlemen Please! You can't fight in the War Room!" StrangeLove-esque Telex room in the underground bunker complex underneath Diem's Palace. He was assassinated just before it's completion.