"Good Price For You"/HO CHI MINH CITY

Though my MP3 player now stubbornly refused to turn on after its quick dip in toilet water, and my fancy new shoes were an expensive thing of the past, I was determined to remain upbeat.  During my layover I eat some shark fin dumplings, and their political incorrectness gave me strength.

Although for all my tongue knew, I just paid for some extra-pricey shrimp and unease.

With Australia down, this trip was still only just beginning (fucking hell...).  I was picked up at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City by a representative from the guesthouse my friend Sarah and I would be staying at, and then told my room wouldn't be ready for another 3 hours.  It was 9am now, and Sarah wouldn't arrive until around midnight, so I had maybe a little bit of time to myself.  But what do in Saigon, in Ho Chi Minh City?

Well, first check Wikipedia to make sure they're the same place.  Next, eat some fucking pho.

I had read about a place called Pho 2000, which proudly advertises being "For The President", on account of Bill Clinton eating there once years and years ago.  Instead of going inside, I somehow found myself herded next to a wall outside and sitting in a plastic chair in the street, a wrinkled secondhand menu forced into my hands.  Maybe it wasn't for the president, but the pho I received on the street was just fine nonetheless.  In fact, the noodle soup tasted even better considering the whole meal and a beer cost less than two dollars.  Finally, it was back to third-world prices and much-needed savings on my part.

As most guesthouses here will, my guesthouse had given me a map with all the big tourist sites marked on it.  In one big circuit, I made a run at the People's Committee Hall:

And the City Opera House:

Neither of which I could actually go inside or anything, but I'll be darned if it wasn't some pretty architecture.  I also stopped by the famous Ben Thanh Market to pick up a bag of rice; I had read an article about fixing a wet MP3 player, and apparently leaving it in a bag of rice will suck out the moisture and with any luck restore it to working order.  It turns out, there are quite a few resources online for people who've dropped stuff in toilets.  The real trick turned out to be searching a notoriously huge and crowded market for plain rice, and then explaining to the confused non-English speaking women at the stall that I only wanted just enough to cover an iPod.

There was a weird satisfaction that came from actually going to one of these giant markets with something specific in mind to buy, and then doing so with only minimal fuss.  I was even buying rice, one of the most basic foodstuffs there is!  I was in tune with the culture, in touch with the common man.  I felt almost an honorary Vietnamese person, right up until I put the rice in a ziploc bag with my busted 200 dollar piece of First-World Luxury.

After I'd had my fill of the tourist game, I headed back to my now-ready room and rested up till evening.  Most of the backpacker action is around the street Pham Ngu Lao, and that's exactly where I was headed.  I wandered the surrounding streets for food as night came, when a Frenchman in his late 20s approached me.  I hadn't seen him behind me, but he seemed to be going in my direction.

"Where are you from?" he asked, following backpacker protocol.  "America...Seattle," I replied, and asked where he was from.  France, it turns out.

We converse a little more, about how long I've been in Vietnam (a day), how I'm liking it (not bad), when he asks "Where are you staying?"  Even if I wanted to keep it a secret, I couldn't pronounce the name of our guesthouse, and gestured in the general direction.

"Can we go to your place?"

Dammit.  If he's a backpacker, it was a kind I haven't heard of before.  I start walking a little faster, all of a sudden real intent on finding that place to eat, and away from French gigolos.

"I think you are...very handsome," he says to me, keeping up with my pace and ruining all my childhood memories of Pepé Le Pew.  "Thanks, uh, man," I stammer, eyes wildly searching for some avenue of escape.  I wish I had gone to etiquette school, and learned the polite and elegant way of handling the situation.  As it was, I blurted out "OhIhavetomeetsomeonegottagobye" and ran into the crowds of Pham Ngu Lao, somehow both embarrassed for myself, and for my gay prostitute.

I did not actually have someone to meet.  I lied to a hooker.

Lying low, I settled at a kebab stand in an alleyway and had a doner kebab for a dollar, the same which would have cost me $8.50 just a day ago.  Bright side, and all that.  With still some time before I meet Sarah, I have some passport photos made by a couple of kids, to make up for yet another item I forgot to pack and would soon be needing for all these tourist visas.  Instead of shooting me against a white screen, they photograph me against a wall and then go to all the trouble of cropping the picture and setting it against a digital white background.  Maybe white sheets go for a premium around here.

Midnight hits, so I buy a couple beers for the room and meet Sarah.  She's just flown in from Korea, and in no mood to go out, so we split the beers and call it a night.  The bag holding the beers turns out to be such low quality that it stains the bedsheets pink.  No, not the smoothest first night ever in a new country.

The next day we find out that we can't get another night at the guesthouse, so they move us to a place almost directly across the street, owned by a family member.  In a unique twist, we're both given t-shirts sporting the establishment's name, the Tam Anh Guesthouse.  We are then told that these shirts are not machine washable, and must be washed by hand and then sun-dried.

With unexpected free t-shirt comes great responsibility.

The elderly lady running the place is easily the most maternal woman I have ever met.  She insists upon Sarah and I holding hands in her presence, and sternly lectures us on the importance of keeping our money safe.  We are also made to hand our passports over to her for safekeeping (and even more surprising than me actually doing it was the fact that I actually got the passport back when we later checked out).

Down the street we eat breakfast in a small shop with the same menu you'll find anywhere in Southeast Asia: American Breakfast, British Breakfast, French Breakfast, and then pages upon pages of a la carte items, most of which any one place probably doesn't have the ingredients for.  For some reason the French Breakfast here has hashbrowns while the American does not, which honestly riles my nationalist pride.  After a cup of delicious Vietnamese coffee, we jump straight into the tourist trail, heading first for the Reunification Palace.

And run into a coconut vendor, with the decidedly groundbreaking business strategy of making me hold his baskets.

The Palace is mostly unexciting except for the cramped and slightly creepy basement where military planning was carried out, and next we look around the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica.  If you globetrot for awhile, you'll see plenty of Notre-Dame cathedral around the world.  So, if you never make it to Paris, Vietnam's got you covered.

Outside, the heat is becoming oppressive, and we stop for drinks.  There are vendors all around the cathedral (and indeed, everywhere else) hawking water and overpriced soda cans, and for some reason I keep thinking someone is calling my name.  Sarah goes to buy a water, and then with a surprised look points to a couple sitting on some of the plastic chairs in the middle of the courtyard.

"Jamie!" they yell out, beckoning me over.  I had no clue who they were, but they clearly knew me.  "It's Alex and Sarah!  From CDI training, remember?"

It took me a moment but I did remember, and was even more impressed that they did.  CDI was the teaching academy in Korea I had worked at, where Sarah (whom I was traveling with) also worked.  Before I started, I was sent to Seoul for training with about half a dozen other prospective teachers, including Alex and Sarah in front of me now.  That was almost a year and a half ago, though.  Somehow, I'd made an impression.

So we chatted for awhile, all four of us teachers for the same Korean company, swapping the usual horror stories and regrets.  They had been staying in Saigon for quite some time, and planned to keep traveling throughout the year.  I asked them how they managed to fund that.  "Well, we don't drink anymore."  That would do it, but who would want to?  Maybe that explains their terrifying abilities of recall.

When it gets dark Sarah and I head to the night market, which only served to confirm my belief that Asian night markets are all straight awful if you have nothing in mind to buy.  They're fun and exciting the first couple of times maybe, but certainly not an attraction one needs to see more than that, unless you enjoy the exhaustion of eight hyperactive vendors shouting and grabbing you at every moment.

Or maybe you really need a dozen cheap watches, counterfeit jeans, and a live shark.  I'm not one to judge.

For dinner, we go to a hybrid Italian/Mexican/Cappuccino restaurant that damn sure knew their customer base.  While we eat, a book selling woman walks in.  Every night, there's always a few locals wandering around the backpacker hotspots with giant stacks of books to sell, all bootleg xeroxed copies of Lonely Planet guides and Alex Garland's The Beach.  I make the huge mistake of showing some interest in the woman's copy of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, which leads to 10 minutes of her pleading with me: "Please buy!  I give you good price!  You buy book!  Just one book!  I sell one book, I go home and be with my children!  I want to be with my family!  But I need money!"  My heartless and continued refusal causes her to stand outside the restaurant for the next half hour, glaring at me while we finish our meal.

I could justify myself by saying I didn't have the disposable income to throw at a book I ultimately didn't need to, and indeed went against my personal no-planning approach to travel, but then I went and spent the rest of the night getting furiously drunk with Sarah out on the town.  It seemed that for all Alex and Sarah weren't drinking, we were going to make up for it.  The first stop was perhaps the most famous club in Saigon, Apocalypse Now.  It has a fearsome reputation, and its namesake is indeed preoccupied with themes of darkness and the evil in men's hearts, but I sensed little of that now.  Sure, it was crowded, there was a lot of grinding on dimly-lit dance floors amid scads of policemen and bouncers, and drinks were priced higher than anywhere else, but for the most part it was just a sad hangout for older foreign businessmen and their prostitutes.  Not quite the Vietnamese hive of scum and villainy I was expecting (and hoping for).

Not a single shootout with the police in sight.

We return to our side of town, and bar hop around Pham Ngu Lao.  At a place called Go2Bar I start in on trying the local whiskey, as people with sandwich boards covered in cigarette packs walk by trying to get our attention.  After waving them off, I wonder aloud to Sarah how easy it would be to buy some weed in the city.  Just as I've said that, one old woman comes running back to us, with her cigarette board flapping in front of her.  "Marijuana!  You want marijuana!  Good price for you!"  I decline, but mental fucking note.  Not so easy is ordering a whiskey neat, and after much deliberation between the waiters I am brought the tiniest shot glass I've ever seen, filled with an amount of alcohol I would have to describe as "cute".

You could use this as the thimble in Monopoly.  Also, greatest game of Monopoly ever.

We move on to another joint by the name of Allez Boo, a sister establishment to Go2Bar, and when I order rum I'm given a slightly larger glass, but the same precious amount of booze.  By now it's around 2 am, and the street kids are coming out in droves.  Sarah becomes especially concerned for a little girl who couldn't have been older than seven, and was out on the street selling roses.  By her logic, Sarah figures if she buys the entire lot from the girl, she'll be able to go home and be with her family and study and sleep and whatever it is these children do when they're not being forced to sell flowers to white people.  A sensitive and gracious move on her part, though more than expected by the street kids.  Not 10 minutes later, the same girl is back, with a new batch of flowers.

You'll never see a more ruthless little face.

Meanwhile, I get into a drunken argument with a nine year-old, who then steals Sarah's roses from the table.  Time to move on.

Our last stop of the night is Crazy Buffalo, where we get a hookah and I finally write off Vietnamese whiskey and rum forever.  It's getting to about 3 am and starting to wind down, and the bored workers decide to congregate around Sarah, to her sudden consternation.  While one girl moves behind Sarah and starts braiding her hair, another 3 workers flank her sides and coo over her hair, jewelry, clothes, skin, and yet another guy comes off the street to pressure her into trading necklaces with him.

Pictured: Rape, for the introverted.

My last memory of the night was stumbling into the bathroom, and discovering this:

I was pissing on a television.  Or rather, their urinal was a TV.  Everything was going to be alright.  Me and Vietnam were going to get along just fine.

The Native Life, and Leaving/PERTH

Now that my body was finally back to its original state of unblistered perfection, my time in Oz was coming to an end.  I was to leave the day after next for Vietnam, and honestly I felt relieved.  With great respect to the efforts of Jessie and her friends, it seemed I was not designed to enjoy Australia.  My spirits were being sapped more and more every day by the nonsensical government regulations, crushing exchange rate, and a nightlife filled with such preening over-tanned fight-crazy douchebags as would put even Jersey to shame.  And have I mentioned the prices?

Remember, 4 days a week, for one hour, you can get a drink for $6.  Happy Hour: Australian for "Fuck You"

If that wasn't enough, internet users here still have download quotas.  My personal theory is the Australian government believes the internet may actually run out, and thus conservation is necessary.  And what's the deal with being a country and a continent at the same time?  Does it make you feel like a big man?  Enough already.

Still, with a day and a half left I wasn't quite finished with this sunburnt country.  For one, I had yet to see a kangaroo.  Sure, I'd feasted on their flesh and all, but I wanted to see one up close and hopping.  I could go to a zoo, but then I could go to a zoo anywhere and see one of the be-pouched bastards.  Instead, I was told of Heirrison Island, located in the middle of a bridge over the Swan river, and home to enough kangaroos that they have to fence them in, away from traffic.  Perfect.

Well, I followed the riverfront to the bridge and hiked all over that goddamn island for hours, finding nothing but dust, scrub brush, and a dirty water trough.  The afternoon sun was burning my shoulders where sunscreen had been neglected, and in my desperate thirst I wondered whether the murky water was intended for kangaroos or people, and if I couldn't just chance it this once.  However, reason prevailed.  As much as an Australian longs to fight their fellow man, I knew they hated the 'roos even more.  Surely, the water must be poisoned.

My thirst unsated, I began the long trek back to the city.  While I had been told people don't often spot the kangaroos on the island, I thought the universe would just let me have this one.

Pictured: Not Kangaroos, Probably

Although the powers that be were insistent on throwing up this kangaroo cock-block, I did get a sort of existential consolation prize.  And that would be seeing a Dr. Doom vanity license plate.  That's right, Perth.  I found him.

And he drives a Subaru.

Chuckling at supervillain-owned hatchbacks wasn't the only action on my docket this night either.  Earlier in the week, I had found a flyer for some sort Goth club night in Fremantle.  Ordinarily I'd keep my distance, but my time here had confused my brain into thinking a $10 cover was a bargain, and who out there doesn't want to know what Australian goths are like?  Moreover, there was something special about this event, something that spoke to me.  Maybe it was the badly drawn furry art on the flyer, and promises of "Burlesque Performances".  Maybe it was the fact that one of the bands was called Matty Trash and the Horrorbles.  Come on.  The Horrorbles.  I told Jessie we had to go.

This flyer is a master class in how to get me ironically excited.

"Creature of the Night" turned out to be everything I hoped for, and more.  Girls in corsets hawking awful handmade purses and pillowcases, bands whose music ranged from mediocre to nu-metal, and people playing beer pong with lone glasses of beer and actual ping pong paddles.

I didn't want to say nothin', but...You're doing it wrong.

The burlesque performance was a couple of girls strutting their stockings to Marilyn Manson's version of "Personal Jesus", and it confirmed my belief that girls cannot watch other girls striptease without claiming they could do better.  Sure it may be true, and these ladies were definitely amateurs, but I'm of the opinion that some burlesque is better than no burlesque, and uh, shut up.

But you can form your own opinion:

After I'd had my fill of $6.50 beer and $8 whiskey cokes, we managed to catch the last train back to Perth. Turns out, this was the party train.  After stepping over a pile of puke to board, Jessie and I took some of the few seats not covered in trash, or worse.

Luckily I had the designated Cigarette Butt Seat between me and the vomit.

We started a conversation about the show, the music, the distinct lack of furries despite what the topless tiger-woman promised, when a man lying across three seats in front of us growled, "Shut the fuck up or I will kick your fucking ass."  He then groaned loudly and muttered something about feeling sick, while I began talking even more loudly and distinctly, because Fuck Him.  While I respected his throw-up prowess, if indeed the puddle on the floor did belong to him, I wasn't about to give this fetal-curled bully the satisfaction of backing down, not after I had seen the last third of the film classic Never Back Down.  If there was one thing those 25 minutes had taught me, it was to not Back Down.  Never.  Jessie and I continued to talk, louder and louder, while he groaned and cursed me out more, and eventually flipped over onto his other side.  FIGHT: WON.

With the next day being my last here, I check out of Grand Central and drop my bags off at Dan's.  In the morning I meet Jessie to go see Rango, an animated movie about a confused outsider lizard in an acupulco shirt who finds himself a small desert town filled with people who want to fight him.  More or less.  Something about the film seemed oddly resonant.

Now, I hadn't seen any kangaroos, and it didn't seem likely to happen in the few hours I had before my flight that evening, but I did see something.  As chance would have it, the least likely animal I would expect to see in Australia.  On my last afternoon, I went to...Penguin Island.

Like Skull Island, but not quite.

It took a train and a bus, but I made it to the dock in Rockingham exactly one minute before the last ferry left at 3:00.  I was the only person on the ferry not counting the captain, and I've never been very comfortable as the only person on a boat ever since a particularly stressful experience in Bangkok, and I briefly considered walking to the island (which is actually possible, on top of a 1km sandbar).  However, the ferry ride was more pleasant than terrifying, and I made it to Penguin Island fine and dry.  My expectations were low after Heirrison Island, but finally timing was on my side.  I present to you...the Little Penguin:

Yes, these are the smallest penguins in the world, and yes, they are native to Australia and New Zealand.  Somehow Australia is home to both the deadliest creatures in the world, and the most adorable.  How?  Life Finds A Way, I guess.

Pictured: Life Finding A Way (Not Pictured: Sniper Support)

Once I had my fill of the critters so cute that Australia calls 'em Fairy Penguins, I had about an hour to kill before I needed to get back to the ferry.  And that's how I learned about my new hero: Seaforth McKenzie.

This guy.

Seaforth was a Canadian man possessed of just the right combination of money and crazy that he actually lived in the caves here for years, squatting illegally until the government basically gave up and leased him the land, presumably wary of offending a voluntary cave-dweller with a name like Seaforth.  And before you go thinking he was just another lonely penguin-obsessed hermit like all the others, he actually operated a store out of a cave to serve visitors, and offered lodging.  He also threw the most mind-blowing parties you've ever seen (citation needed).

Party Central

Penguin Island was also home to a massive Pelican mating site, so to protect their eggs and those of the penguins and other birds, you can only walk around on the island on raised wooden walkways.  These walkways are, of course, covered in birdshit.

If, like most of my audience, you're into pelican orgies, have I got a treat for you.

It was on these walkways, surrounded by thousands of surly, screeching birds, that it started to feel like I was in a Hitchcock movie.  They lined the railings, flapped overhead, and covered all the terrain surrounding.

The mood soon changed from feeling like The Birds to actually being in the movie when one gull decided I was being too uppity and started screaming and attacking me, forcing me to flee.  A goddamn bird had made me Back Down.  Shameful.

The bus ride back to the train station was something special, as if on my last day Australia had just decided to open up all her spoils to me.  For one, I spotted an ultra-rare Australian Juggalo on the bus, complete with trashy rat-tail haircut.  He sure was a long way from his natural habitat.  Second, I finally got a picture of a Black Boy plant (kind of):

Flora doesn't get much more blurry or offensive than this.

I meet Dan that evening at a Belgian beer cafe, to spend the last hours before my flight sipping on crispy Stellas.  The way this classy joint operated was they steam-cleaned your glass just before serving the beer, and then cut the head off with an implement called, funny enough, a head cutter.  The whole operation is all sorts of classy, although it's up to you if feeling like you're in a European commercial is worth a 10 dollar Stella Artois.  After guzzling a couple down and a cherry beer called Bellevue, I said my goodbyes to Jessie and caught a cab to the airport.

I left Australia feeling much more positive than I would have expected, and only some of that was the Belgian beer working.  I have a layover in Singapore, and my mood is brought down somewhat by the realities of budget airline travel.

Or "Hell", as Dante famously called it.

After I've picked up my bags and gone through Customs, I notice that my Puma shoes are missing from the side pockets of my backpack where I usually keep them.  I find the Lost and Found, but no one's working.  I wait, and finally an employee comes that I'm able to talk to.  They tell me to talk to a representative from the airline, and I'm pointed to a booth where...no one's working.  Finally someone shows up, and I'm told that after passing through Customs, I can't get my shoes back.  Oh.  Wait, what?  According to this guy, and the shitty email I got later from Tiger Airways, once you pass through immigration you basically give up any right whatsoever to anything you may have lost, and they're not going to even bother and look, because fuck you and your fancy new shoes.

Now down to just my flip flops, things were looking a little dark, and cynicism was beginning to creep through my usually sunny outlook.  Then I dropped my MP3 player in a toilet.  Maybe it wanted off this sinking ship, I don't know.  Now I had Vietnam to look forward to.  At least I had my health.