Secure in Saigon

I touched down in Saigon just after 10:00 on Friday night. The airport is a sterile, white, marble-covered cavern. Its cool and bright and every single position is over-staffed to eliminated waits. From my business class seat on the top deck of a 747 to having my bags in hand on the Vietnamese side of customs took perhaps eight or nine minutes. Yet when the glass door slid open to let me out into the night, things radically changed.

Even at this time it feels to be nearly 90 degrees. Its likely cooler but the humidity lays on you like a blanket. Where there were only dozens of quiet, uniformed personel in the airport, outside is a screaming, waving, pulsing throng of locals. And finding my pre-arranged ride is difficult. I’m beating back taxi drivers like hari krishas in that scene of “Airplane!” Five minutes into my search I give up on my ride and enter negotiations with a driver. Luckily my seat-neighbor from the SFO->Hong Kong leg knew Saigon well and told me what I should be paying for fare. I got a good deal.

As soon as I arrived at the hotel I realized why their had been no ride: they had no record of my reservation! Funny, because not only did they send me a confirmation mail but they asked me to reply to the confirmation to re-confirm (which I did.) Not much of a problem, though, they had a room for me.

I cleaned up some and did a quick walk around the block. I stepped into the bar across the street and sat down with a friendly looking solo traveler with a Lonely Planet guide open in front of him. Nine hours and about 24 beers later, the two of us are fast friends. Luke (or maybe Luc?) is a backpacking Hollander with three weeks to see the country. We added another to our group in a friendly Irishman named Brian. And, of course, hookers are constantly present. They attach themselves to men here like ticks to a deer. Despite the presence of laws that were created to close down all bars at midnight we exited the bar to stumble to our hotel well after sunrise.

Luke and I got up at the crack of 3:30 and by the ripe hour of 5:00 set out to explore the city. This place as a vibrance that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Motorbikes swarm intersections by the hundreds. The seedy, backpacking section I landed in is full of hookers seeking johns and dealers unloading literally every drug. But a mile away on our walking tour we found more wholesome activities of children singing the national anthem in front of a statue of Ho Chi Minh, the pious listening to a sermon amplified through the church and out to the street, and street vendors selling mostly the mundane.

Along this walk we stumbled upon the War Remnants Museum. If you’ve ever wanted to see what a white phosphorous bomb does to a soldier or what napalm does to a little girl or a land mine to a farmer collecting fruit in the jungle, this is the museum for you! I have a pretty strong stomach as these things go but the pictures didn’t help my hangover. And, by the way, there was an entire wall dedicated to Bob Kerrey and his despicable acts from the war. Look it up.

I went a little too hard on night one so I’m going to take it easy tonight. I’ve got nearly four weeks here so I don’t want to burn out. I want to spend another few days here in Saigon and check out the tunnels the Vietnamese dug during the war. Then on to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, among other things. I’m starting to feel pretty certain that I’ll skip Thailand this time and take a plane from Pnom Phen to Laos. But that will depend on the things that happen and the people I meet between now and Angkor Wat.