The Maverick Tribe

(Ed. note:  All photographs in this piece are ripped off of the web somewhere.  Apparently our esteemed correspondant was so busy fending off the local gigolos he couldn't take one damn picture of the whole of Saigon. -- MT)

It had been almost 30 days since I entered the Kingdom of Thailand, and we all know what that means: visa renewal time. So, I figured a quick weekender in a neighboring country was in order to get another 30-day stay upon re-entry to the "Kingdom". But which country? Burma is definitely sketchy, considering the border skirmishes and finger-pointing over whose military is the more egregious drug trafficker. Cambodia too is as unstable as any country with no enforceable laws can be. Malaysia was tempting, but when I was in Singapore, I noticed that some of the more fundamentalist Islamic Malaysians tend to glare at me in a way that makes me feel the fires of hell licking at my heels. I certainly wasn't in the mood to pack my bags for a guilt trip.

So, Vietnam it was... that Great Ignobled Mistress of Uncle Sam's. Of course, the Soviets had eventually won her heart in the heyday of my father's generation, back when Marxists got all the chicks. Myself, I was smoldering with excitement; except for an afternoon in Laos, I'd never been to a People's Republic before. This twenty-first century capitalist Yankee would be back to see what's cooking, which is apparently a lot of lemongrass and noodle soup. And of course fish sauce, but that's been a part of my diet since Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth" hit the theatres.

I arrived in Saigon (okay, “Ho Chi Minh City”) at 9:30 in the evening. By 10:30 I was in a public restroom dry-heaving over a toilet. I don't think anyone else in there noticed; they probably just thought I was speaking the language. (Alright Cynthia, calm down, it was just a joke.) Actually, Vietnamese, a language with six separate tones, can sound almost musically demure when spoken by the right person. The flight attendant on Vietnam Airlines sounded so sweet on the intercom that I didn't want her to stop, despite not having a clue what she was saying. I imagine it was something like, "If the cabin experiences a loss of pressure, our pink-o oxygen masks will probably malfunction. In the unlikely event that a water landing becomes necessary, you're on your own. Any Americans on board can be used as floatation devices.…" That kind of thing. Truth be told, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of service on Vietnam Airlines. I confess that I was expecting the airline to be, as we say back home, sooo ghetto.

Incidentally, if you want to fly ghetto, look no further than Biman Bangledesh Airlines. Biman Bangledesh offers the cheapest flights from Singapore to Bangkok (continuing on to Dhaka), and we all know that Jake likes things that are cheap. (Insert sexual punchline here.) When you fly Biman, you must first check in at the front desk as normal, only instead of a queue, you wait amid a whirling funnel of humanity all vying for position toward the front. Instead of suitcases and garment bags, the typical passenger’s check-in materials are actually huge boxes of electronics and textiles, piled high on an airport baggage cart. Before reaching the front counter, the contents of the cart are guaranteed to topple at least twice, one of those times on my foot.

Once checked in, you proceed to the gate, and the gate agent begins the boarding process. First the agent invites all first class passengers and passengers travelling with small children to board the aircraft. What follows are fifteen seconds of eerie silence before the agent essentially says, “okay, now everybody get on”. There is a stampede toward the jetway, then the inevitable line forms trailing out the door of the aircraft. The boarding process on Biman Bangledesh still operates under the assumption that the harder you bear down on the person in front of you, the faster the line will move.

When you finally make it into the aircraft, and pass through the deserted first class cabin and into coach, you are treated to a complex and exotic dance involving carry-on luggage and overhead bin space. The carry-on articles are more boxes of electronics and other oddly-shaped pieces of merchandise, and they are shoved, passed, jostled, nudged, and traded between the overhead bins in a spatial beatdown I couldn’t possibly analyze. The allocation of overhead bin space is arrived at by intense negotiations between passengers, often flaring up into heated arguments. The main job responsibility of the flight attendant is to make futile attempts to arbitrate such disputes, which are eventually resolved by one party’s heftier and meaner brother or cousin. At regular intervals the contents of the overhead bins spill out, usually on my foot.

Where was I? Oh yeah, getting violently ill in the men's room. Not to worry, my malady passed as quickly as it came... must have been some bad fish sauce. (Although, what's "good" fish sauce anyway?) The point is, this little episode set the stage for odd things to keep happening to me in public men's rooms in Saigon. That night, within 30 seconds of walking into a disco, I was approached by a hustler as I was trying to expel all the cafe sua da (ice coffee with milk) I had drunk. Fair enough, at least Vietnam had greeted me with a warm welcome, albeit with ulterior motives. Not so different from Thailand in that respect.

Apart from the touts and hookers, the Vietnamese seem pretty unimpressed about the presence of Westerners. This is understandable, considering their long and painful history with foreign occupation by us Whities (and the Chinese, for that matter). The Thais, who have never had Western influence shoved down their throats and vaginas via colonization, truly treat us like guests in their country. The Vietnamese treat us like guests too, albeit the kind of guest that tends to show up at your house drunk, trash the furniture, and hit on your daughter.

The following night, I found myself in the bathroom of another club talking to an ex-pat brain surgeon from Alaska. There I was at one o’ clock in the morning getting a urinal-side lecture on how Vietnamese and Caucasian brains differ in shape. Suddenly I found myself worrying about how many of those gin and tonics he typically had before going into the operating room.

Okay, so as you've probably realized by now, my stay in Saigon was heavily bent to its nightlife, but can you blame me? One of the more popular nightspots is the impudently-named "Apocalypse Now". You guessed it, they play dance remixes of Buffalo Springfield and Country Joe McDonald. Local boys and gals hang out at these nightspots sipping Budweiser mixed with Sprite. Is nothing sacred?

By day, I found colonial Saigon to be, in comparison to Bangkok, a pleasant and walkable city. Walkable, that is, until you need to cross the street. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to do this without getting killed. The traffic flow here is a continuous stream of motorbikes that don’t stop for anything, which makes crossing a larger boulevard impossible for the faint hearted. I tried everything. I inched across the road, trying to make supplicating, puppy-eye contact with approaching motorbike drivers. I put on an Oscar-worthy performance as an alarmed foreigner rushing to some emergency that needed my attention across the street. I tried calculating a feasible route by summoning up my training in fluid mechanics. Whatever my strategy, the result was the same: standing forlorn and ignored in the same spot as I had begun.

It was apparent that I needed to get around town on the back of a motorbike. This service is readily available for one U.S. dollar or like three trillion Vietnamese dong, which I think are about equivalent. Alas, touring Saigon on a motorbike taxi proved to be just as terrifying as on foot. This is because the driving habits are slightly different from those in Bangkok. Let me explain…

How to drive in Thailand:

1. Drive on the left side of the road.
2. Sit in a traffic jam for fifteen minutes. Once it unsnarls, redline the engine as fast as you can, then come to a screeching halt at the next traffic jam.
3. In any right-of-way disputes, the bigger vehicle wins.
4. Honk to announce your presence to other drivers, to assert your right of way, or to pay your respects to the Lord Buddha when passing a temple.

How to drive in Vietnam:

1. Drive on the right side of the road, unless it's more convenient to drive on the left side, in which case by all means do so.
2. Do not ever stop until you reach your final destination. Do not stop for oncoming traffic, not for red lights, not for gaggles of chickens, not for little old ladies in cone-shaped hats crossing the street. Do NOT stop, although veering and swerving erratically are encouraged (see rule #3 below).
3. In any right-of-way disputes, the bigger vehicle wins.
4. Honk constantly.

As I sat on the back of the raging motorbike, I was too afraid to open my eyes, and too afraid to close my eyes. The other drivers come on from all sides, avoiding you by finger-width margins. I contracted my body close to the vehicle, as I knew one stray appendage could be lopped off in an instant. While we wove through oncoming swarms of other motorbikes, my terror gradually turned to acceptance, and I began to plan out what my life might be like with only one leg. It’s times like these that we all get a bit more religious – even me. “O God, Allah, Buddha,” I prayed, trying to cover all my bases, “if I suffer a massive head injury, please don’t give me the boozey Alaskan brain surgeon….”

By the next day I had met a Vietnamese friend at Apocalypse Now. Lee had his own motorbike, so I no longer needed to negotiate with motorbike taxi drivers and Saigon tourist maps. A word of advice to you travelers out there: wherever you go, try to meet somebody local who’s willing to show you around. Prostitute yourself if you have to, but it just makes touring a foreign land that much more genuine and hassle-free. Before I flew back to Bangkok, Lee took me along on an activity without which no trip to Saigon would be complete. That’s right, kids. It was time for some karaoke.

We got a private room in a junky karaoke shack in the outskirts of town near the airport. First I sat through a couple Vietnamese pop songs; the selection of English music was pretty anachronistic but recognizable. That afternoon we resurrected peacefully-resting 80’s love tunes by Richard Marx and Lionel Richie. Each number was a duet in unison, one voice pitifully off-key, the other without a single correct pronunciation of the letter “r”. As I croaked through “Say you, Say me”, I got an irrational longing for frosted jean jackets and untied Nike high-tops and playing Chicken on the monkey-bars.

When it was time for me to catch my flight, we wistfully left the karaoke house and I bid farewell to Lee. I got on the plane to Bangkok feeling sentimental, which I don’t think is uncommon. I’m guessing most visitors leave Saigon with at least a touch of nostalgia: perhaps Vietnamese ex-patriots for the site of their cultural heritage; the French for the romantic days of Indochine; American baby boomers for their wartime passion; me for Lionel Richie.

Oh yeah, the communist thing. The only remnants of Ho Chi Minh’s egalitarian vision, in the city renamed for him, is a sickle here, a hammer there, an active Mafia, an obsessively controlled press, a corrupt police force, and legendary bureaucracy. Everyone else in this desperately poor country is trying their damnedest to make a little dough. A block of central Saigon is being bulldozed to make way for a shopping center and cineplex. Six-year-old Vietnamese girls in Hello Kitty dresses are hawking tidbits on the sidewalk. There is arguably nothing cuter in the world than a six-year-old Vietnamese girl in a Hello Kitty dress. Watch out, though, she might try to sell you a pack of gum and then grab your wad of dong. (Insert sexual punchline here.)

Speaking of sex, I was landing back in Bangkok. The first thing that struck me (after the signature Bangkok aroma: a not-so-subtle potpourri of barbecued chicken livers, pressed squid, sulfur dioxide, and lead), was how opulent Thailand suddenly seemed. There are gleaming office towers, expressways, ritzy shopping complexes, and many people actually own cars. Of course, with all these things comes horrendous traffic, pollution, and crowds. Is this progress?

At any rate, big city evils haven’t seemed to put a dent in the irrepressibly upbeat nature of the Thais. Upon my return, a group of Thai friends invited me over to their room for dinner. I sat in the apartment listening to them laughing and chattering away in Thai, and we exchanged weekend adventure stories. (As I mentioned before, all of mine involved public restrooms.) The food was so spicy I could feel sweat forming in my ear canals. After dinner, they taught me all sorts of lewd expressions in Thai. Did you know that there are at least four different, non-slang words for “penis”?

Home.

I am Khun Jason of Siam Computer & Language, and I am the instructor for English for Kids, Level Yellow. There are eight students in my class, all between the ages of five and seven. Today we did vowels and how to introduce oneself. Min is shy to the point of verbal paralysis and Kawin suffers from what I can only describe as Attention Deficit Disorder. The other six are inquisitive little tykes.

My classroom is a florescent-lit, window-less room with bleach-white walls. The most interesting and colorful thing in there is the whiteboard marker. As a school, Siam is very disorganized and definitely second-rate, and at 200 baht per hour (not even five bucks), they pay the lowest of any job I was offered. But that's why I chose it, because of its ordinary-ness, and the students are not solely from the upper class who can afford to shell out the dough for the fancier schools.

I don't think I'll need to make a display of my Marine training a la Michelle Pfeiffer in "Dangerous Minds". No one has brought a gun in yet, although Pada has a suspicious look on her face... I think she's plotting something. She's awfully savvy for a six-year-old.

Bangkok is still noisy and hot and smelly. My apartment is lush by Thai standards, complete with Western-style bathroom, hardwood floors, and a racist land lady. And there's a pool. Sometimes I forget myself and think I'm in L.A. In fact, the Thai name for Bangkok is Krung Thep, which means "City of Angels ". The pollution is bad like L.A. , the city layout just as sprawled, the prostitution just as rampant. Want to go for a jog? Get in your car and drive to the gym. Obviously there do exist minor differences. (For example, in Bangkok everyone's sporting their Louis Vuitton and other name brand knock-offs that can be bought on just about any street corner. By contrast in L.A. , the designer gear is generally the real thing; it's the people wearing it that are the phonies.)

But anyway, the point of this email is not to make American social commentaries, I certainly don't have enough time for that.

So to sum up:

I'm still here.

I'm teaching.

I'm still fine.

L.A. sucks.

 

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