It can still be a blog if you take over a month off from writing it, right? Cool. I've been adventuring around Southeast Asia since the end of May (accompanied at times by one of a few blokes from Tonbridge, Misters Nick Carter and Jay Malihoudis, and a few other friends), taking full advantage of exchange rates that always come out in my favor and eating more rice than the previous 35 years combined. After a week in Cambodia and nearly four in Thailand, I've been in Vietnam since the end of June. It looks like a comma with a coastline, and it feels a bit like the Europeans tried to turn it into their summer beach house.
Because, well, they did.
And that's how Vietnam became what it is: an eastern country with a few recessive western traits - pockets of western-looking architecture; cities with wide, tree-lined boulevards; crusty bread and fruity pastries. In fact, Central Saigon feels a bit like somebody tried to copy Paris from memory but forgot to add in all the rude. Throw in harrowing experiences like "walking across the street" and "ordering something called chien on the menu,*" and you've got a mashup of East and West that demands you're always on your toes. And since western tourists only began converging on the country two decades ago, its tourist industry is still growing up, resulting in the most endearingly awkward place I've ever visited.
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| Saigon |
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| Hanoi |
*There are scooters and motorcycles EVERYWHERE here, and they don't believe in inconveniences like stopping - even for red lights - so crossing the street is always a game of Frogger. Chien, "dog" in French, means "fried" in Vietnam, essentially harmless but way too close for comfort, especially before you learn what it means in Vietnamese.
And it's a place that will always stick with me. Whether it was kids who giggled while saying the only English word they know, "hello," the bolder ones who asked to take a picture with me, or the constant glares in my direction while confused people tried to figure out how a human head could be so enormous, Vietnam is a friendly, gorgeous, quirky place. One that, sitting here in Singapore, I already miss.
Here are just a few of the many reasons why.
I Won't Tell No One Your Name
The first thing I noticed in Vietnam - in contrast to Thailand - was how genuinely friendly the locals were. Wait, that was the second thing. The first thing? Their names are ridiculous. Not the real names, mind you, but the names they've chosen because westerners can't pronounce the things g's and h's do to other letters. Instead of watching us butcher Nguyen, Gook, Anh, Luong, Ngoc, et al, many people there adopt Western-sounding names to make it easier on tourists, Jon Stewart style. (Gook's name, for example, has three syllables; he eventually told me to call him Henry.) At a hotel in Hue, I was greeted warmly by Amy, Anna, Mary, and Emma, whose names were definitely not Amy, Anna, Mary, or Emma. In Hanoi, a few of the guys took creative license with their names; Dragon and Happy were two of the best guys I met in the whole country.
And their commitment to service can be so personal that it borders on creepy. Everytime I walked into that hotel in Hue, Amy, Anna, Mary, Emma, and two bellhops I never met gave me the Norm Peterson treatment, standing up and saying "Hi Mr. Kevin" in unison. One day, I walked to the city's famous Citadel in the boiling heat, and Anna was there to greet me afterward. Which led to this:
"Hi Mr. Kevin, what did you did today?"
"I walked over to the Citadel. It's gorgeous. Can't believe so much of it was destroyed in the war."
"You walked there? It's too hot. You must be tired."
"Nah, it was okay. There's lots of shade and it's pretty close. I enjoyed the exercise."
"You sleep good tonight. And have many good dream. Tomorrow, I ask you about them and you tell me everything. All of your dream."
"Um, well, yeah. Okay, goodnight."
"I won't be here in the morning, but I will talk to you in the afternoon and hear all about your dream."
No, Anna. No you won't. Thanks though.
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| The Citadel, Hue |
Everywhere I went - particularly if I was alone - locals took the chance to sit next to me and practice their English. One girl in Hoi An complained about her job and told me she was going to quit and go to a more popular bar/restaurant down the street.
With her boss standing five feet away.
My caddy at Danang Golf Course, a spunky 23-year-old named Hong (no Western name because Hong is easy to say), taught me a few new phrases in the language, including "hai wa" (good shot, which we didn't need to say very much), "come un" ("thank you"), and "mmm" (the slangy way to say yes). Unlike my friends the Ridgeways, who needed a machete to play golf along the Amazon, my foreign golf experience was, well, luxurious.
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| Danang Golf Club |
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| Camera shy caddies |
The best moment may have been delivered by Luong (David), my guide around Hue, who rattled off facts at historic sites like a sixth grader reciting the Gettysburg Address. No eye contact; can't be distracted and forget the next line. He took me to the elaborate tomb of an emperor from the early 1900s not well liked in Vietnam. He was a puppet for the French imperialists, he was consumed with vanity, he had no children. But the main reason he was despised?
"People think he was a homosexual."
I understood what he said, but he felt the need to enlighten me.
"It means he liked making love to the man and not the woman."
I see.
Name That Tune
There are few truly transcendent experiences in life. And rarely in my daily life do I come across things I must experience first-hand to fully appreciate, things where I can't take another person's word for it, visceral experiences that words are powerless to convey. You know, things like eating uni to realize how disgusting it is, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on foot, and seeing an Asian man dressed like Kenny Rogers play "Fly Me to the Moon" on pipe organ.
Yep, I went to a live Muzak performance in Saigon.
Live.
Muzak.
It wasn't even all that shocking to see live Muzak in Vietnam, because from what I could tell, the entire country owns one of only three music collections: modern Muzak hits, loungey covers of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Rod Stewart, or Delilah's Favorite Hits. To say that Muzak and soft rock thrive there would be to understate their grip. They. Are. Everywhere. One delightful day in Hoi An, the most charming town in Southeast Asia, I sat in a restaurant eating cau lau and chocolate mousse and heard the following setlist, entirely in Muzak: "P.I.M.P" by Fitty Cent, the Theme Song from Rocky, and "Dancing Queen". Another night, I was walking down the main riverside promenade in Danang - Vietnam's third largest city and biggest magnet for Japanese money building high-end resort hotels - to see a very familiar sight in Vietnam: large groups of locals sitting on tiny plastic chairs on the sidewalk, drinking fresh beer out of ice-filled glasses. And I heard a very familiar tune on the cafe radio; familiar, at least, to my inner love-sick sixth grader: "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You," by Milli Vanilli.
It's a tragedy for me to see the dream is over, and I never will forget the day we met...girl I'm gonna miss you
(You're welcome)
The Great Outdoors
The biggest thrills in Vietnam don't happen in cities, though. I spent a lot of time riding my very own motorbike, despite Vietnam being the most dangerous place to drive in the world, and hopped of the beaten path for several hikes, bike rides, kayak trips, and more. Here are just a few pictures from the tours I took in the great outdoors, including one of the most remarkable experiences of my life hiking/swimming/climbing through the Phong-Nha cave system just north of the DMZ.
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| Hiking through the jungle |
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| The mouth of the cave |
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| Phong-Nha |
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| With Mr Malihoudis |
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| Everything Zen |
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| Mr Carter and his kayak |
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| Round peg, square hole |
Until next time...
