so far from siagon

I had to make a visa run. Well, that was my initial motivation for making the 6-hour trek to Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. I also really wanted that passport stamp!



I made the journey against my better intuition that I was coming down with some kind of illness. In my experience, illness in developing countries, particularly if you're traveling by yourself, is really not to be taken lightly. But I went anyway and when I woke up in the next day in Saigon, instead of heading to the beach as I'd planned - I had to make a hospital run. Because I was by myself, pretty feverish and delirious, I had to enlist the security guard at my hotel to accompany me. And I would have been totally lost without this kind man, because when we arrived at the first hospital tehy wouldn't help me because I was a foreigner. What?? Where's my preferential treatment when I need it, man? ;) Kidding, of course.

So he takes me to an emergency room that is as packed as a bus station. Literally, there were so many people in this tiny room just pushing to get by you, yelling at you for payment, papers, 'this way!". If I hadn't been so woozy, I would have whipped out my camera! The doctors spoke minimal English, as did my security guard so explaining that maybe I had malaria or something terrifying was problematic. And their explanation of what was wrong with me and what medicine they were giving me was also problematic. But I just had to trust that these guys would take care of me, Western standards of medicine aside. The doctor gave me a big hug before I left - so that sure made me feel better.

Once an ugly bout of strep throat subsided, I got to enjoy Saigon.



At first glance, the city is fast and intense. Traffic lanes are not quite comparable to China, but close! I pride myself on being a hardcore jaywalker, but it took me a minute to get used to crossing the street. Because there aren't really pedestrian crosswalks, you have to walk out into traffic very slowly and just let all the cars move around you. Visually, it's as graceful as moving against the current of a school of fish.


You can definitely tell that Vietnam was the darling of the French Indochinese colonies. Picture wide, tree-lined boulevards, corner cafes and lots of cigarette smoking. There is still quite a bit of French colonial architecture still standing, which I really love as decrepit as much of it is.


Culturally speaking, the city couldn't be more different from Phnom Penh. I try to avoid saying that people of a given culture are rude because as an outsider, you don't really know what people are like. But I definitely got the impression that the Vietnamese were not so immediately cordial. Cambodians are very cordial although they are not necessarily smiling and considerate because they are sweethearts. That is just their version of polite. It's like the equivalent of Southern hospitality - pleasant but not necessarily genuine. The Vietnamese on the other hand will not immediately be so nice to you.

One of the most frustrating things that I found was that it is culturally acceptable to charge a foreigner almost double the price than a native. Obviously prices are always higher for foreigners, but you can usually bargain them down. The foreigner inflation in Saigon though, is so ingrained in their dynamic with foreigners that it's really hard to bargain them down.

The most interesting activity in Vietnam was surely my visit to the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the "War Crimes Museum". I was quite naive because the significance of being an American in Vietnam hadn't previously occurred to me at all. But at the museum, I found myself feeling a strange mix of guilt and defensiveness. The guilt of being from a country that participated in such a misguided war is conflicted because I wasn't even alive at the time and I should therefore not feel any personal responsibility. I think that the guilt is the result of feeling that my country has continued to pursue similarly self-righteous war efforts just in other parts of the world.

But I also felt like a defensive American. While immediately factual in it's presentation, this museum was grossly exploitative in it's effort to turn the facts into propaganda for Communist Vietnam's validation. They have an Agent Orange section of the museum that features a tank with dead fetuses that have allegedly died due to the effects of Agent Orange. Alongside the stillborn tank is a gallery of gruesome pictures of Siamese twins and a young man with Down syndrome playing Bach on a crappy keyboard. The young man's tip jar was full.

No one can deny the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam, you see people with deformities and Down syndrome everywhere. But their presentation of American atrocities and their denial of any ommitted by the North Vietnamese whatsoever was just really one-sided. To make it seem like the North Vietnamese did not totally screw their own people post-war - the South Vietnamese anti-war activists, the 're-education camps', the death of hundreds of thousands of boat people - it's pretty much a joke.

Nonetheless, I was really glad I went because it made me realize how the Vietnamese perceive themselves post-war. They perceive themselves to be the victors. Maybe that's why nobody seemed to balk when I told them I was from the U.S. They....won!

Vietnam is a curious spot and I absolutely need to go back. I'll make sure to avoid the hospitals this time.