WHAT THE PHO?!?!

Scooter Nation!

VietNam Telecom

What has 10,000,000 people, 6,000,000 motorbikes, 1,000,000 cars and a telecom grid designed to frighten the bravest electrical engineers on the planet?

Saigon.

Foolishly, I thought a Carnival in Rio was crazy; or that maddening push through downtown Hong Kong during peak-hour.  But Saigon takes all things to a new and higher level; the bar has just been raised.  It's Hanoi's intensity the size of Bangkok!

With a chaos factor of ten, it makes the New York City rush hour look like the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. It is Ho Chi Minh City and it is alive and well.

It's everything in one.  It's Louie Vitton and Gucci.  It's home to scrummy back-alley food stalls.  It's vibrant colors.  It's loads of small children playing in the streets at midnight. It's vendors selling anything you can imagine and many things you can't.  It's hooting & hollaring, tooting & honking.  It's loud and it's naughty, it's hot & it's sweaty, and sometimes it's rainy. It's hookers and cripples and beggars and businessmen and school kids.  It's smiley faces and it's desperation.  It's university students who want to travel vicariously through us and to try out their English.  It's retail and night markets and cafes and nightclubs.  It's an endless stream of people in every direction taking time to sit, eat, drink and feel merry. It's colonial architecture and French pastries and coffees and breads not alike. It's beautiful noodle dishes and heaps of cheap wares.  It's river boat tours and large parks. It's litter and glitter and ladyboys.  It's "Hello. Where are you going? Motorbike? Massage-ee? Boom-Boom? Marijuana? Cocaine? What are you looking for?"  It's a playground for Australians and Canadians and Europeans and Africans.  It's a city that drinks beer and slurps Pho while sitting on little plastic stools in the street. It's a world-wide destination for people from everywhere; and it's no wonder why.  I submit that Saigon gets my vote, stamp and seal of approval.

How'd the Chicken cross the road to get to the other side?

Nam's the word

Hoi An

I have to say that this trip to VietNam has been quite enjoyable.  I'm not sure if it's the ideal place to live long term but for a vacation, you cannot be disappointed here.  Ten days in the north followed by a month down the coast yielded some fantastic destinations of a most interesting sort.  Hanoi is 1000 years old.  Hue is 1000 years old. Hoi An is 1000 years old.  Excellent beaches and ancient cities, relics and ruins, mixed with wild history and exotic foods, VietNam offers the best value for your dollar as you may find anywhere in the world.

Maybe I just like waking up when I want, eating out breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and paying five dollars a night for a private hotel room. Or maybe it's all the sightseeing, the beach time, the motorbike excursions, the trips through the countryside, or the lakes, mountains and waterfalls that inspire me.  I do know that I very much enjoy the iced coffees, the fresh fruits and all the delicious seafoods; they are well-good. I find the crispy-fried whole fish is always a delightful treat, especially when it's plated in a nice sauce.  Occasionally I find myself taking pleasure in an early evening stroll through the nightmarkets, and I find it pleasant to sample all the local beers while making story time with other travelers and locals alike.  But I have to admit that every now and again, I do require some personal time to read my book or reflect.

Chillin' with the Weasel

For all of you coffee fanatics out there, Vietnam offers a Kopi Luwak they affectionately call "Weasel Coffee." Weasel coffee comes from a bean that has been eaten up and shit out by Vietnamese weasels, at which time the bean is collected by eagle-eye villagers who bring it to market.  Weasel coffee is great for serving at dinner-parties and makes for good conversation at the office water cooler. I tried it and must say, it was stronger, smoother, richer and headier than your average cup from Dunkin' Donuts. (No weasels were harmed in the making of this coffee).

The U.S. opens a 6-pack of "Whoop-Ass!"

The Old NVA VC Boys

Khe Sahn Firebase

They had a body-count in VietNam.  It's true.  They used to keep count of all the dead and wounded because it was the only way to keep score.  Each week, someone over here would tally up the casualties and send that number to some beaurocrat on the other side of the world so they could determine how much closer to victory we were.  Today they count dollars like they used to count bodies.  We should do with the dollars what they did with the bodies;  bury and forget them.

The VietNam War is referred to by the Vietnamese as "The American War."  They do this in an attempt to keep track of all their wars.  Be it the Chinese, the Russians, the Japanese, the French, or the Americans, the Vietnamese have been on the short end of the stick for a long, long time.

Here's a little FUN FACT for all the kids at home: From 1965-1972, the US deployed 29 types of high-explosive bombs, 13 types of fragmentation bombs, and released 5,382,000 tons of ordinance in the South and North of VietNam.  The US spread 76 million litres of Orange Dioxin Defoliation Agent into 607,500 hectares of forest and 89,500 tons of Napalm Incindiary resulting in 2,000,000 casualties dead or disabled, 70,000 orphaned, 200,000 children maimed or deformed, and more than 300,000 missing.  Today there are more than 20 million bomb craters in VietNam, while unexploded cluster bombs and undetonated land mines fill the countryside.  Many parts of Central VietNam are just the way we left it; the vegetation hasn't yet grown back, but at least the earth is still scorched.

Vinh Moc Tunnel System

At 3 million dead Vietnamese to our 60 thousand, we outscored them 50 to 1.  But after meeting with and talking to some North Vietnamese War Veterans, I'm thinking we probably shouldn't have done all that.  But then on the other hand, there is something very luscious about the smell of victory in the morning!

Things that go CRASH in the night!

VietNam has a pretty tricked out, state-of-the-art overnight bus transport system to move the tourists up and down and all around this skinny little country. And as with all the other southeast Asian countries, the drivers here are all totally insane.  They honk, they swerve, they not only use but require all the corners of the road.  And whether they're passing on the wrong side or overtaking others from the shoulder, you can rest assured that this maniacal behavior is standard fare in these parts.

But I had a sneaky suspicion that our little rice paddy daddy of a cheaufer was off his rocker when I had to buckle my seatbelt to avoid being tossed from my sleeper.  It was the sound of the windshield being smashed in, combined with the sudden loss of velocity, that startled even the heaviest of the snoring, slumbering guests.  I answered the cries and whelps of "What the **** was that?!" and "What the hell just happened??"  Our driver has finally managed to crash the bus.  It took him long enough; we'd already been into the journey for six hours.  I felt happier that he'd smashed our sleeper bus into the back of a 5-ton cattle mover as opposed to killing some motorbike drivers.  As he turned the interior lights on, the smartest of us got off the bus and onto the side of the motorway in the unlikely but possible event that the charter should explode from the leaking fluids gushing out the side.  Wise it was because the driver, who pretended to speak zero English, chose to leave our rear taillights off despite the hordes of upcoming traffic.  Are we a sitting duck? I do believe so.  As I've mentioned before, VietNam is crazy. And a rear-end collision of our bus while it sits stagnant in the highway in the middle of the night is probable.  I took a wait-and-see approach.

They don't even charge you extra for this service!

Fortunately, the engine is in the rear, and after it fired up, little daddy decided that we're going for it. We're gonna knock out the last 7 hours of this leg with zero visibility.  But not to fear, because he's not gonna let a little thing like not being able to see thru the glass deter his time schedule.  We've got some ground to make up from that annoying little delay.  As he continued on pelting it down the highway, swerving, honking, speeding and rocking, it dawned on me that we'll be lucky to make it down the coast alive.  Man, what have I gotten myself into over here?

Good Morning VietNam!!

What do you get when you take a full dose of airial bombardment, some artillery and rocket fire, mix it with a bunch of agent orange, a healthy dousing of napalm, throw in some B-52 night raids, a sprinkle of claymore fragmentation and add a whole lot of gun-em down and shoot-em up? You get a nation without many rules.  Is it fair to expect the contrary? I fear not!

Here in Hanoi, there aren't many rules to be followed.  Anything goes.  And as I have come to experience, a country that follows no rule of law can be quite an exciting and exhilerating place to be.  Hanoi pulses.  It thrives.  It is a vibrant, living, breathing, writhing organism unto itself.  The best way to handle this city is to jump in feet first and let the flow take you where it may.  And whether it's the museums or the French coffees, the spicy chicken Pho or the motorbike taxis, the souvenir T-shirts of Uncle Ho, or the twenty-five cent beers, seldom is the time when something will cost you more than 1 USD.  A beautiful thing I do concur.  The city is 1000 years old, it is loud, it is obnoxious, it is sheer insanity, it is chaos at its finest hour.  It is home to beautiful women, French architecture, lakes, parks, and tree-lined boulevards.  For those readers out there who are feeling stale, tired or bored with life, a visit to VietNam should cure your disease.  It is a Good Morning, VietNam!