Day 1: Getting the feel

After a few years of random jumping off to strange places, we have learned a few tricks. One of them is how to deal with Day 1.

This is the day to schedule nothing, but to be spent getting your footing. Dealing with culture shock, jet lag, and general apprehension of entering the unknown: there is a lot on your plate without setting expectations or trying to fit schedules.

So today we took a walk-about, found a bank machine to get us some Dong, found some coffee (at what appears to be the Starbucks of Vietnam in its ubiquity), sampled the local food (pho and various mystery dumplings), but mostly just looked around and got acclimated. This is time to create first impressions, however false they may be, as you will have weeks to test them.

Ho Chi Minh City is a bustling, prosperous city. Colonial French buildings, some beautifully maintained, some completely decrepit, are blended with the modern, post-modern and futuristic architecture of Big Commerce. Traffic is chaotic and boisterous, tempered in scale slightly because most of it is all mopeds or motor-scooters, although the flatulent single-cylinder buzz-bombs make up for their small size with abundant noise and exhaust.

Aye Carumba, are these little motorcycles ubiquitous. They fill every space on the roads, and on the sidewalks. Huge space on sidewalks are dominated by their parking needs. You spend you entire day stepping around them, be they parked or moving. Helmets are mandatory in Vietnam (at least for adults, kids on laps or handlebars seem to be exempt), but the dust masks are optional.

You have to wonder about how a society constructs itself such that the most ubiquitous form of transport results in ground level ozone, nitrous oxides, and aromatic hydrocarbon problems, and the response is for huge swaths of the populace to start wearing questionably-effective dust masks. The air quality is horrible, even if the temperature and humidity are comfortable. Fortunately, Ho Chi Minh City has numerous green spaces and tree-lined parks, and it only takes a couple of dozen meters to get away from the bustle of the street and find some tranquility, but for the distant din of horns.

You discover early, Vietnam is one of those countries where horns are used constantly, but not as an expression of anger. They are a friendly notice for those you suspect might not be paying close enough attention to the traffic, and especially those who might not have previously been aware you were going the wrong way up a one-way street (or, for that matter, the sidewalk) on your motorcycle. It's kind of friendly, when you think about it.

At first glance, Vietnam is not a poor country. The trappings of commerce are everywhere, as are high-end consumer goods, at least here in the heart of the commercial centre of the country. There are lots of people in shirt and tie, and lots of groups of young professionals doing lunch with iPhones and Blackberries in hand. The few cars that can find space between the motor scooters are newer Toyotas and Hyundais.

Alas, Ho Chi Minh City was so named after various waves of imperialists were finally driven off in 1975, and the old name "Saigon" fell out of favour with the new boss. So the scars of the French War and the American War are both present in this City.

The War Remnants Museum stands testament to the atrocities of that era. Outdoor areas are littered with discarded supersonic aircraft, horribly beweaponed helicopters, and various pieces of field artillery, all left behind by the Americans as they were leaving in rather a hurry. The interior displays photographs and other documents of the historic atrocities suffered in Vietnam, brutal and unflinching, from dismembered corpses to children deformed by Agent Orange, to smiling pictures of Nixon and Kissinger. Why the hell is Kissinger not in some very dark prison right now?

The museum is only surprising in not telling more about the heroes of the war from the Vietnam side. There is nary a mention of heroic leaders or the actions of Vietnam defenders. This despite a large hall dedicated to the people from various nations that marched to protest the American actions in Southeast Asia, and the heroism of U.S. draft resistors. Perhaps this is a result of the War being, for lack of a better term, a proxy civil war, and heroes of the north might ot be as appreciated down here in the south where they were fighting the "Puppet South Vietnamese Army".

Although, as I started out saying, I'm pretty sure every first impression I developed above is wrong. Especially as I am now sitting in a streetfront pub, 5 feet from a constant flow of motorcycles, listening to 80's pop (currently, and I kid you not, "Footloose") and drinking my nth Bia Saigon Lager (served in a bottle with a neoprene cozy) and avoiding mercantile stares from the very pleasant young ladIes sitting at the next table while waiting for Tig to get back from her massage...

So I may not be of clearest mind, and it is, after all, Day 1.

 

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