"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.