Saigon Part One
Friday, May 20
Well, I have been home for a few days now. It feels very bizarre. It has taken me a while to get internet in my room (but not so long to buy a giant ass TV and spent a bunch of money) so this is all really late. I tried really hard to take a lot of notes on my way through SE Asia. Here it is. Part one of "What the Crap Was I Thinking?"
Vietnam was my Vietnam.
Hours earlier I had woken up in familiarity at a little
hotel in Seoul. The sun had risen to
what looked to be a nice day on the peninsula.
Now, my plane is bouncing around a runway at night. Trees that look like palms are silhouetted by
the lights of run down and abandoned buildings with a distinctively French architecture
that dot the area around the airport.
I walk off the plane and am blitzkrieged by the heat and
humidity of Saigon. My skin becomes
moist and my jeans suffocating. As I
stand on the bus that will take us to the arrival terminal of the airport I am
pressed against the window Publish Postby the crowd of people piling in. It isn’t so bad really. There is air-conditioning and it I am in little
danger of falling given that I can’t move.
And the view is good, so my eyes dart around as my cheek squishes
against the window. Behind a green fence
are a couple of old bombers. Their
windows are smashed and the war-green paint is dinged up in a few areas. Their identifying numbers are barely visible,
but they are there. They look like movie
props from every Vietnam flick ever made but they are probably the real
deal.
Welcome to Saigon.
It is a strange transition between Korea and Vietnam. I think it must be a strange transition for
anybody to go from East Asia to Southeast Asia, or the opposite. My first experience in Saigon, now officially
Ho Chi Minh City (but Saigon sounds oh so much cooler), was a pretty good
example.
I had become soft in Korea; too trusting. You could probably leave your wallet in any
bar and stand a pretty good chance of it being returned with nothing
missing. I rarely locked my apartment
door (until my students started to come around towards the end). I never thought twice about getting into a
cab because they are all the same, and they are all cheap.
I hoped that the airport in Saigon would have a kiosk where
you could arrange pick-up to a cheap hotel.
That was my plan after I had my visa processed. Incheon Airport in Korea has said kiosks
every thirty feet. Saigon had zero.
It was late.
Everything was closed and besides there wasn’t much to the airport in
Saigon. Just a long corridor with a few
little rooms, most of which were abandoned.
I changed some of my Korean Won into Vietnamese Dong and walked out
again into the heat.
There was nobody in the airport because everybody was
outside. Hundreds of people were mulling
around waiting for arrivals.
I walked away from the crowd to stand for a moment and
formulate a game plan. This was
something I should have probably done before arriving in Vietnam but I was not
yet worried. I had a 3 week jaunt
through Southeast Asia and not a single plan.
Immediately I was approached by this rotund guy who spoke pretty decent
English.
While Korea made me soft it did not make me stupid. In defense of what happened I have to point
out that I was exhausted. I was pulling
two big pieces of luggage. I was wearing
jeans and sweating profusely and had taken a decent amount of xanax for the
plane ride.
The mind is quick to accept a way out of duress, even if
that way is something you would not have gone for under normal circumstances.
The round man was a taxi driver. He spoke with me for a while and I spoke
back. He seemed to be a genuinely nice
guy; a little pushy but nice. He spoke
of Saigon with a lot of pride. He asked
about the handkerchief I had attached to my camera bag and he seemed interested
when I told him it had come from Seoraksan in Korea. Eventually one of his buddies, a thin and
loud sort of jerk came over and began chatting too.
The thin guy grabbed my arm and started running his fingers
over the tattoo on my arm and asking me questions, particularly if I was
traveling alone and why.
At this point the first guy started to grab my luggage and
walk towards his car. Given that I had
yet to agree to a ride this should have been my key to bail and find an
official taxi company as opposed to a couple of goons in the shadows.
I grabbed my bag and asked him where he was going. He told me he would take me to a cheap hotel
near downtown. I thought on it and
decided, against my gut, that I might as well ride with tubby. I had to get to a hotel and this guy didn’t
seem all bad. Or maybe he did, I didn’t
know. I was exhausted.
I got into his car.
It had no taxi markings on it. It
bothered me a little but not enough to send any sort of alarm.
I closed the door and the thin guy jumped into the passenger
seat up front and said something real quick.
For a moment I thought I was about to get robbed. I became very self-conscious of having an absurd
amount of cash on me.
The thin guy spoke again and then told me I had to pay a fee
to him because he was the boss. I gave
him money and he told me that he would keep my change as a present. He then smiled, jumped out of the car and ran
away.
Shortly after this the cabbie hit me up for the cost of the
exit toll (this is pretty standard). He
then took me to a hotel that cost $80 a night in the middle of a colony of
homeless families. The taxi cost almost
as much as the hotel. I didn’t pick up
on this until I looked up the exchange rate.
The next day, after paying for water I drank from the
mini-bar and becoming extremely depressed over a rocky start to my trip and
losing quite a bit of enthusiasm for the entire thing, I took a reasonably
priced cab back to the airport to try again.
My debit card was sitting somewhere in my old apartment in Cheongju so
my wad of cash was all I had for the duration.
$80 hotels were not in my budget.
The second cab driver looked like a 90 year old mole. He spoke in this high-pitched whine that
reminded me of the old man in the Adam Sandler Chanukah cartoon. He led me to his car (totally thread bare, by
the way), charged me the exit toll, and brought me at last to a cheapish
hotel. He told me he had gotten me a
deal because I had been good to him and that he thought I was nice. I thanked him for finding what looked to be
(and actually was) a safe and legit hotel.
He then made a valid effort to scam me out of a lot of money (and was
successful to a certain extent) before he drove off.
I was then led upstairs to my tiny $20 a night room. I moved my luggage into a corner and relaxed
for the first time since leaving Korea.
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