June 30th, 2001 and yet another strange and exotic
location: The Woodlands, Texas

"Vietnam and back" is the unofficial original title of this whole saga, though I use it here in a slightly different context: "Back" meaning a location rather than a direction of travel - I'm finally home! Or at least in a place I used to call home while attending high school and college, and a place that is still a helluva lot closer to home for me than Vietnam is.

Back in Asia nearly 3 weeks ago, doing the land crossing from Cambodia into Vietnam was a lot easier than I'd expected, on both sides. While Cambodia isn't really known for having obstructive and blatantly corrupt officials like Vietnam, the fact that the Cambodian visa in my passport (the same visa that needed to be checked and stamped so I could exit) now looked like a bad watercolor that had been dipped in the bath twice, didn't bode well. (It rains here. A lot.) I was fully expecting the border guard to grimace in disgust (which he did) and then demand that I either pay some 'damage penalty' for allowing it to be soiled or get a completely new visa. What the hell was he expecting, when I was coming from a country where it's a) the rainy season, b) 'rainy season' means completely drenched within 3 minutes on a daily basis, and c) they can't afford permanent ink for their stamps? But, no, after the initial grimace (and a anxious few minutes when he put my passport aside to concentrate on other folks' for a few minutes before returning to me), he stamped it, handed it back, and I trooped across the 30 yard no-man's-land to face the Vietnam process.

The other side was a whole different animal, as I knew it would be based on the comments I'd heard from fellow travelers. Tales of full body searches, endless questions, arbitrary 'fines' asessed for nonsense reasons - all the things that you don't see at the major airports, where the majority of tourists (and the majority of objections) would come through. While in Cambodia I'd picked up a bunch of music cd's, and I reported these along with my bike and cameras on the Vietnamese customs declaration form - anything I figured had a chance of proving a customs hassle at some point. (I didn't want some exit official later on trying to tax me on them as though I'd purchased them in Vietnam, though that would be an unusual scenario. Usually they hit you for things you bring in and then don't take out with you, thinking you'd brought them in to sell them. Why they would think this, when just about anything you can bring in is available for less in Vietnam, I don't know.)

Rich, my English-teaching bud in Saigon, encountered this when he departed Vietnam for a visit back to the US and left his video-camera behind in his Vietnam house (as he later said, what was he gonna do - videotape his hometown?). The customs guy looked at his form which showed the camera he'd properly declared when he originally entered the country, and demanded a 'tax' of $30 for not having it with him now. Never mind the fact that Rich had a round-trip ticket on him, demonstrating his intention to return to Vietnam, and was adamant that he still owned the camera. But this guy was obstinate (imagine that!) and had time on his side, and his flight departure rapidly approached while they argued endlessly. Finally giving in to the inevitable, Rich slapped 3 tenners on the counter for the 'tax'. At which point the official wrote down the serial numbers of the bills on Rich's form, and then had the balls to tell him that when he came back through with the camera, he would get those specific bills back! Riiight! Like this guy wasn't gonna be getting drunk on Johnny Walker Red that night, courtesy of Rich's $30. Thankfully this kind of thing is something we can escape eventually by returning home. Though it has been pointed out to me, during arguments on the subject (and I have to agree), that ALL governments operate with some degree of corruption. Here in the west, it just happens to be more subtle and operates at a much higher level than we commoners typically encounter (read: big-money corporate lobbyists and Congress, for example).

But I ran the gauntlet ok and emerged unscathed, apart from a defaced customs declaration form where the officer had scratched out my line listing the cd's. Setting me up for problems later on down the line? I dunno - I handed the guy back my form and asked in travel-English (see below for an explanation) why he'd done it. He stamped it again for my trouble (whatever that meant), plus threw me a look that told me to quit asking questions. Advice taken.

On the way out of the customs office I met 4 Brits each pushing a moped/dirt-bike-type-thing towards me, looking to cross into Cambodia. We all stopped and chatted, and they asked whether or not I'd had a problem crossing over with my bicycle. Turns out they were concerned about getting their mopeds, purchased in Vietnam, across the border in order to continue their tour, as foreign ownership of vehicles in Vietnam is a no-no. Did I think they'd make it through? My response was "well, anything is possible - it just depends on how much you're willing to pay", which I still believe is the case. I didn't stick around to find out if they made it through or not. I figure they'd have had to ante up $50 each to grease the wheels, but it could easily have been much more. I figured the best thing that could happen to them would be if their bikes were confiscated. That way they'd finish the trip with their butts still intact - I couldn't imagine doing the hell-roads of Cambodia and Laos on those things. At least on a bicycle, you hit the bumps slower (and therefore more softly).

Travel-english, as mentioned above, is a hybrid of grade-school English and really bad grammar, combined with vigorous body language, that enables one to communicate effectively (relatively) with the rest of the world. Using it slowly, loudly, and with wild gestures is best (sort of like shouting at a blind person...). For example, instead of saying "Would it be possible to buy a bus ticket to Istanbul here?", you'd holler "Ticket to Istanbul, ok?". Or "Did you travel from Bangkok yesterday?" would translate as "Yesterday Bangkok (motioning behind you), today Saigon (pointing down), yes?" Basically the fewer
words (with the least syllables) gets you the most understanding, I've found. It's something you adopt after a while in response to all the blank looks you get while using proper English. In fact it can be quite entertaining to listen to new foreigners who use long involved sentences and then wonder why they don't get anywhere.

However, this technique tends to break down a bit in South-east Asian countries as their languages can be very tonal, so the same word said 3 different ways can mean three different things. This affects us because the tones we use without even consciously realizing it, such as a rising inflection to indicate a question, render us incomprehensible over there, as they change the meaning completely to their ears. (And just forget about actually trying to learn to SPEAK the language.) This is also complicated by the fact that loud voices and violent gestures are not appreciated by most Asians. It's sort of the Asian equivalent of someone coming up to you in the US and saying loudly "Hey, you! Yeah, I'm talking to you, dummy! Where's the airport?" The best joke I've heard that illustrates just how wide the communication gap can be was about a guy in Bangkok trying to find directions to Kaosan road (a very famous backpacker area, well-known even to most Bangkok Thais). He stopped numerous people on the roadside and asked them in travel-english "KAOsan road?, KAOsan road?" while using the appropriate 'where' gesture (hands at shoulder height - palms up - clueless look on face). They were all completely stumped even after multiple repetitions, and the guy figured it must be miles away, as Bangkok is HUGE. Then, finally, understanding dawned on one lady's face and she said "Oh, you mean KaoSAN road!!! It's there!", and pointed to a street one block away.

I got to Saigon from the border pretty quickly (man, this non-biking is a nice and quick way to travel!), though I paid the taxi driver through the nose for it, starting way too high in the bargaining. Those cabbies were tough nuts to crack. None of 'em wanted to get off their butts long enough to drive me the 60 km, though it would easily have meant at least a couple of day's wages to any of them. During the bargaining session, I took the fact that I had a group of 10 of them crowded around me as a sign that they each wanted the money badly, but judging by my failure to bring them down much I think that I was more entertainment than payday for them. They couldn't wait to get back to their card game once one of them and I had settled on a price.

Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it's now officially called, was quite an interesting place, to say the least. I found myself quite drawn to it though how much of that was simply me not wanting to end this odyssey, I'm not sure. Rich helped me find a wonderful little guesthouse - for $5 a night I got a huge spotless room, private bath, fridge, and an extremely friendly housekeeper who somehow managed to STAY friendly the entire time, despite the fact that for 5 nights in a row I woke her up at 2am (or worse) to let me in for the night. Of course these late nights obviously meant that Rich and I were having a grand old time. I think we were each other's worst enemy, as one of us was always in the mood to party and the other was usually never able to resist. Rich was the one who had to get up early and work the next day - I had it easy, regularly sleeping late enough to miss out on the morning house-cleaning.

One night he introduced me to Club 56, a dark little bar in a trendy tourist area with nothing on the outside distinguishing it from the 700 other bars in town. But inside it prominently featured 5 of the most beautiful Vietnamese bartenders that ever poured a drink, whose sole duty was to keep both the beer and the flirtations flowing for the customers (mostly expats). Despite the flirtations, the unspoken yet well-established rule was that they weren't allowed to date anyone on the other side of the bar (can I have a job there, then, please?), but funnily enough this only made the whole experience that much more pleasurable. Without the worry that you'd blow your chances for a date by showing her how much of a dork you really were, you could relax and just roll with it. You knew that when you patted her hand and told her that you could die happy in your glass of beer as long as you were able to do it while seeing her face, it was all just fun and would never get awkward or complicated. And then she would giggle shyly before pushing another $2 beer or $3 cocktail on you, in a country where the bia-hoi's (Vietnamese beer gardens, I guess, though there's nothing garden-ish about them) sell keg beer for about 30 cents a liter. Aah, the intellectual pursuits... And if flirting didn't happen to be your interest that night, they would unobtrusively perform their normal bartending duties in the background. Man, were they slick! And they did it all for the grand total of about $33 a month in wages, with little or no tips.

Bargaining, like in most of Asia, is a way of life here, except the Vietnamese have embraced it with all the zeal of an 80's businessman sucking up a line of coke. It really is an addiction for them, but seems more cutthroat and confrontational than enjoyable. First of all, there are two price structures here: local and foreign. If a local goes to the market to buy food, it costs a certain amount. If a foreigner goes for the same things, it costs 10 times as much. And the foreigner will NEVER be able to bargain the prices down to local levels. This is because all foreigners are viewed as rich, regardless of actual circumstances, dress, character, etc. I can go out in cutoff jeans, ragged t-shirt, not having bathed in a week, and I'll still pay rich foreigner prices just because I'm non-Vietnamese. This assumption also extends to anyone who is merely WITH a foreigner, even if they're local. If I were to go to the market with a Vietnamese girl who does all the buying, she would be interpreted as my girlfriend and therefore rich by association. Needless to say, no local wants you with them when they're shopping (a cool thing if they happen to be shopping for you).

Second, these guys can be greedy enough about it that they'll screw themselves in the process. If they look at you and decide 'rich' at the onset of a bargaining session, they won't change that assumption even after they realize you're more savvy than a newbie tourist. For example, I wanted to buy some old cardboard boxes to use as padding when shipping my bike. I found a shopkeeper who'd bundled up a bunch to sell to the scrap dealer and asked 'how much' (in travel-english, which can be done without a single word: just point at the item and rub your thumb and fingers together). She replied $5. Hah! We both had a good laugh at this, at which point she should have realized that I wasn't completely stupid and come down a LOT in her price. But I could NOT get her below $1.50, even though we both knew that the max she was gonna get from the scrap dealer for the whole pile was about a quarter. At the most! In her eyes it had changed from (or never even reached) being about making more money than she would have from the dealer, to about making me paying as much as I could afford, regardless of the value of the goods. So she lost the sale.

Third, and funniest, is how quickly they'll jump on a perceived opportunity, even going as far as to try and raise the price in the middle of a bargaining session if they think it might work. A good way to illustrate this is to imagine walking up to the counter of a 7-11 with 2 Snickers bars in your hand. You put them on the counter and the clerk says "$5.50, please". You're so stunned that you hesitate long enough for the clerk to think that maybe you're ok with that price, so he figures he can improve his take even more and says "yep, that's $5.50 apiece, so $11 total"!!!

Traffic: I could write a book on the subject. Leno, Letterman, and O'Brien could spend a week each doing their monologues on nothing but. I've never ridden in such uncontrolled mayhem in my life and probably never will. The usual traffic in the city consists of no trucks (they aren't allowed within the city limits until evening), 50,000 or so cars (mostly cabs) and approximately 80 million scooters, 3 for every man, woman, child, dog, and rat in the city. Well, maybe not the rats - they outnumber the people and probably have their own separate rat mass-transit system. (I'm picturing this little rat subway, with a tiny rat loudspeaker announcing "Next stop, Mrs Tran's noodle stall!".) They could train the military really well for urban warfare here: give all the soldiers bb guns and send 'em out into the streets of Saigon.

Anyway. Basically, there aren't really any hard and fast rules here - many laws are (mostly) followed, but all are seriously open to interpretation. Bicycles are rule-less - you can do what you want on a bike here, from running red lights to going against traffic while waving hello to the cops, and you'll find everyone else pretty much yielding to you. I say 'pretty much'. You still run a good risk of getting plowed by a stubborn moped, but most people will stop for you if you jump out in front of them. Mopeds go everywhere, are used for everything, and account for 98% of all occurrences of gross stupidity in the country. If someone's doing something dumb in Vietnam, you can bet your ass it's being done on a moped. I've never seen more people who, having practically grown up on the things, still can't use with enough skill to save their life (and their lives ARE on the line here), let alone navigate efficiently. Entire families hanging on to the least little support or tiniest corner of the rack or seat. Guys carting so many piles of boxes and so much luggage that they barely have room to sit down or reach the controls with both hands. Accidents involving these particular guys (and I've seen a couple) scatter so much wreckage everywhere it takes 30 minutes to clean it all up, even when no-one's injured.

And, man, how accidents are resolved here! First, the cops aren't called - if you involve a cop in settling a road dispute, it's a sure sign you're an ignorant foreigner. What happens is a crowd gathers around (quickly!) and the question of who was at fault is debated endlessly until a majority opinion is reached. This means that the eventual verdict is usually decided by folks who didn't even see the accident, but who are the most vocal. With this form of mob rule being used, if you're involved in the accident, playing up to the crowd is essential in order to reach a fair decision (one that vindicates you). Once fault is established, restitution for damage and injury is then settled on the spot (another source of endless debate by the crowd). This is all part of the Vietnamese system of government that combines the Judicial and Entertainment branches. If you've gotta do something work-related, at least try to make it fun! Even if it's Keystone Kops type of fun.

Saigon does have traffic cops. Their duty is to hit the streets whenever their wallet starts getting thin, in order to re-stuff them with bribes, 50,000 dong (yes, dong) at a shot (about $3.20). Whenever you get pulled over for a traffic offense, you have a choice of either paying this bribe or going down to the station and paying 5 times as much for the legit ticket. This choice isn't exactly a brain-stumper, especially when you're a foreigner ex-pat and not legally allowed to own the scooter you're probably driving. Going down to the station under THOSE circumstances involves risking having your ride impounded for days/weeks while you negotiate the formidable Vietnamese bureaucracy and their collective outstretched palm, a much more expensive and time-consuming process. So you pay up and walk away, either laughing it off as the way it is, or gritting your teeth and stewing in your own juices until you eventually go off the deep end.

Rich joked with his Vietnamese class about the situation one time. Stood in front of his students and asked if they knew what a Vietnamese driver's license looked like. Puzzled looks all 'round. Then he holds up a 50,000 dong note, to their (eventual) laughs. According to Rich, the Saigon traffic police were on foot until relatively recently. Someone finally figured out that they weren't able to do much enforcing while standing on the curb yelling at folks to stop, and they got mopeds and motorcycles. So nowadays you can't rely on getting away from them, though you can always pretend you don't hear their whistles and hope to get lost in the crush before they catch up to you.

I will admit, however, that in many ways riding a bike in these places can be safer than doing it at home. In the US the prevailing attitude seems to be that bikes shouldn't be on the road, so no-one expects you to be there and drives very aggressively when you are. Almost as though they're trying to explain to you why you belong on the sidewalk by giving you a first-hand demonstration of the danger you're in. ("See! That's why you should be off the road. 'Cause of people like me!", as they drive off, leaving you spewing venom from the bottom of a ditch.) But in Asia, much of the country rides bikes out of necessity (no $$$). So while the mopeds and cars still drive pretty aggressively, they do EXPECT you to be there and are watching out for you. Especially as they know that most of the bike riders they see are clueless and demand the right of way. I actually felt safer riding in Bangkok at night than I have done in Texas during the day. Quite nice, really, once you get used to the density and start to notice the traffic patterns (stupid patterns, admittedly, but patterns nonetheless).

So now I'm back in the USA (woo-hoo!). The next report will be the last (cheers all 'round), where I'll detail the fun of being back in a place where the airports seem to contain more concrete and land than some entire SE Asian countries.

Mark-out

A cycle (bike taxi) with a less-objectionable customer. The driver is reaching back for the only brake on the vehicle, a lever connected to a hub drum brake.	Cyclo driver with a normal load - they can tote unbelievable amounts of weight with these things. Many have their saddles set so they can't touch the pedals at the bottom of the stroke. Looks funny as hell to see them ride with their feet coming off every revolution.
Vietnamese women consider tans to be ugly, so they cover themselves up to protect their skin from the sun.	Typical carnage after a dual-moped accident
Driving off as though nothing had happened (and bound for another wreck 500 yds down the road)	Vietnamese patriotism. You forget this is a communist country until you see sights like this. As Rich pointed out, they feature typically Caucasian faces (ala Soviet Union) but with oriental eyes.
Me and some friends in Vietnam. The girl in red spent about 15 minutes trying to get through my thick head that I shouldn't trust the guy in grey - he's a thief! She used pictures and my own phrasebook to do it!