My flight arrived around 7:30pm local time on Thursday evening. Our flight was the only arriving flight in the entire airport. I've never been able to advance through customs in less than 10 minutes, but, folks, welcome to Saigon. I found an ATM in the airport and took out some cash. I knew that the exchange rate from the dollar to the "dong" (yes, that's currency here -- all you sixth graders will giggle at that reference) was favorable, but this was amazing.
As I left the airport, I plunged into a world where English is not very well known (I can dominate a game of charades right now); traffic snarls everywhere; the pollution is visible; most buildings are relatively short: 4-6 stories; and at least in the areas I saw while going to the hotel, it's fairly obvious that most people are ridiculously poor.
Due to the insane amount of traffic, it took about 45 minutes to travel the 8km to my hotel. In a "classy" twist, a scooter "garage" fronts the hotel. Yes, I had to walk through a "garage" to get to my hotel's front door. Weird.
To say that speaking English here is a struggle is an understatement. I estimated that in Bangkok, I was understood probably about 20-30% of the time. Here, my guess is that it's closer to 10%. That being said, I kinda enjoyed it in the cab rides -- we always rode in silence. In order to get to my destination, I would just bring a map and point to the location.
Curiously, the hotel required that I give them my passport for the duration of my stay. Not really sure what that's all about, but since this place doesn't seem very advanced, I figured, "why the hell not??"
Here's what $25 a night gets you in Saigon:
In another WTF? moment, the bathroom shower door wasn't sealed to the floor, so water would leak out of the shower and run all over the bathroom floor. I put down two towels, but that only did so much -- amazing feat of engineering, I swear...
After relaxing for a few minutes, I decided to head out for some food and some wonderment...
Holy crap! The city bustles with scooters -- they are literally everywhere! The happy scooter "beep-beep" sound is only drowned out by the tame purring of thousands of scooter engines. Also, to my surprise, scooters are apparently all-terrain and SUV vehicles here. I've seen scooters on the sidewalks, through grass, and all over the street.
I've seen a max. of four people on a scooter, but the two coolest things I saw were: a) a guy driving a scooter with presumably his wife riding behind him, feeding her baby with a bottle. The baby was seated between the two adults and b) a young kid, probably around 6 years old, who was riding a scooter and had a mohawk. Awesome!!
Crossing the street is truly a "leap of faith." Basically, I just walked out onto the street and a sea of scooters deftly maneuvered around my body. It's actually a pretty cool feeling as they zoomed past.
While walking around, I instantly noticed that this place feels very "untouched." My gut is that they haven't really figured out the whole "tourist" thing yet. I noticed LOTS of staring (could've been that where I was, I was the only white person, but still).
I walked down an alleyway and was greeted by a open door to a "shop" that looked like a convenience store. I poked my head in and realized I was staring into some guy's living space -- well, the first two feet were the store, but behind it was a bed. He looked at me, and I apologetically looked at him. He instantly grabbed a giant bottle of water and wrote "8.000" on a piece of newspaper that was laying on a table. I paid him the $0.40 (this would've been $3 at least in the States), and took one last look inside the place, which -- scared the crap outta me when I saw two legs hanging off the bed that I hadn't noticed before. Weird. I quickly walked off.
Shortly thereafter, a couple of kids started following me, and I played with them for a few minutes -- basically I kept giving them high-fives as they ran around my legs. Dunno why I'm mentioning it other than it was just a "carefree" traveling moment.
I headed across a fairly large park (which was a source of additional amusement) towards the backpacker district. I did take a few minutes to snap a couple of pictures. Inside the park I saw people playing soccer (without shoes and on concrete of course; how else would you do it??), badminton (without nets, of course); and other random games. There was also a magical amusement park tied to the park...
Beyond the park, I was hunting two things -- food and a travel agency. I knew that I only had a short amount of time in Saigon, so I wanted to do a day trip. Luckily the cards allowed me to knock out both. I stopped into a travel agency and signed up for a day trip down the Mekong River Delta (for a whopping $9) and strode into a restaurant. I gotta say, the food in SE Asia is one of the best things about the area...
Interestingly enough, I didn't see as many counterfeit goods as I saw in Bangkok. There was one weird caveat. I actually kinda respected this counterfeit version, but there were people that would walk around with stacks of smallish books about 35 books high. Counterfeit books?? Really?? I almost bought one just to support the push to get everyone to read ;p, but alas I didn't...
I did do a little shopping on a neighboring street -- I picked up two amazing t-shirts that were a little "overpriced" at $10 apiece, but supposedly a portion of the proceeds goes to helping educate Vietnamese kids. No idea if this is true, but it's a nice thought if it is...
Next up...the best day trip I've done this far. Well, I've only done three now (and that's generously counting the Sydney Harbor Bridge trip), but the Mekong was by far the best. See ya on the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment