Thailand 101

I still have a monster cold so I'm stuck here at home with nothing better to do than get up to date with the blogging.
(Not quite true since I accidently got hooked on "Dragon Age" while sick, and every fiber in my body is screaming for me to get back to suss out the blood mages, undead and dragons in faraway Ferelden... but I promised Marianne and myself to wrap up this Vietnam thing before becoming and Elven Arcane Warriror again ;)  

 Before I became an axe wielding wizard hellbent on the destruction of all darkspawn we took a three day trip to Vietnam. We both enjoy these small adventures into the countries around Thailand and when AirAsia opened a bunch of new routes from our local airport we jumped at the chance at once.

Vietnam got chosen more or less at random, mostly because it was supposed to be significantly different from the places we have already been to. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Macau and Bangkok are all Westernized to some degree and are all major international hubs. Each have it's own distinct flavour, but you can always find a Burger King if things get a bit to wierd... not so in Ho Chi Minh City. 

Vietnam turned out to be a helluva lot more set in the past than either of us had expected and the lack of any of the usual major US conglomarates in the streets was just the most obvious sign that Vietnam is still doing things the old school communist way and that the famous victory over the US 35 years ago is not at all forgotten... but I'm getting ahead of myself and of course HCMC had a lot more to offer besides no Golden Arches.

We arrived late in the evening and headed through the nice, efficient and very orderly airport with record speed. Outside we ended up in the usual "how to get a cab in a new country without getting ripped off" antics and we went through our first sets of non-functioning ATM machines... all good adventure material when you are used to Kamala where it all just works.

4 seconds flat into the cab ride the driver honked the horn for the first time and we entered TRAFFIC. You have never ever seen traffic until you have been around HCMC, makes Bangkok look like a deserted residential area and in the three days there, the traffic was the constant factor to make us stop and marvel at life and complex chaos theory in motion. It should not be possible but they make it work and we never saw a single serious accident, although I saw more close calls and more hair raising manouvers in those few days than in the rest of my life togetherr.. and I live in bleedin' Thailand, land of the crazy Hail Mary overtaking experiences!

Not quite sure where to begin describing the traffic and without video or pictures it all becomes a bit academic anyway. lets just say traffic was worth the whole trip and I doubt I will ever see anything similar. Heh crossing the road is an act of faith crossed with an adrenaline adventure every time. There are NO gaps in the constant stream of vehicles so you if you want to cross a major road you simply take the first step... and then slowly wade out through the incessantly honking horns allowing traffic to flow inches from you on both sides while you try to remember if you have any life insurance. My old "Frogger" playing days made a big difference here ;) 

Ok, back in the cab.. where we headed down a VERY small back alley and drove the next few miles in semi darkness with a dark river on one side and small dark hovels on the other. In Paris this would have been the fashionable district filled with lights and people strolling by the river, but in HCMC the experience was slightly different and I my mind did touch upon a few of the usual urban myth of cabdrivers taking tourists for their last ride.

The darkness showed to be a constant in the city, not easy to put your finger on but at night the overall impression even in the most busy streets was that of moving through an industrial zone. Not because there was much of big factories etc. but there was not the light, restaurants, shops and glittering advertisement you are used to from a big city. There were street lights and loads and loads and loads of traffic but it still felt strangely dark and deserted when we walked around at night. I never got quite rid of the urge to look over my shoulder and I never felt 100% at ease with the place, again I can't put my finger on where this feeling came from, but I have never felt similarly exposed in any of the other South East Asian places we have visited.

HCMC just didn't "feel" like a warm and welcoming place, I felt like a target more than a guest... even if there was no visible or rational reason for this feeling, not at first at least ;)

Back in the cab and we drew sighs of relief when we left the back alleys and hit a slightly bigger street with lots of neon signs and hotels all over the place. We got ourselves installed, went for a night walk to find an open convenience store (tougher than you would think), cranked up the aircon and found the Premier League match on at midnight... all in all not a bad start.

The next day we were up bright and reasonably early, armed ourselves with a map and headed straight for our first real test... crossing the main traffic artery a few blocks away. We ended up clinging tightly to a million year old stooped over lady who somply shuffled out in the street without even looking up. We both kept in her shadow, assuming that nobody would run over an old lady... and then hep presto we were at the War Memorial Museum.

I doubt you can find anyone in the Western world who have not seen one of the many Hollywood blockbusters about the Vietnam War, but I bet not many of you have seen it from the Viet Cong side before. Just to bring you up to speed, the Viet Cong, VC, Victor Charlie, Ghosts or plain Gooks won the damn thing... and where Hollywood can't reach, history is still written by the winners.

The museum look ever so "slightly" dilapidated from the outside and would not have made it as a regional museum of outdated farming equipment in Denmark, but the history it told was chilling and sobering as hell. No fancy gimmicks, no video showcases or interactive displays. Just text, photos and an assortment of the hardware of death used by both sides in the conflict.

The photos showing Agent Orange victims and napalm survivors won't be forgotten anytime soon, neither will the tiger cages and other assorted torture implementations used by both sides in the POW camps. Scary shit... really really REALLY not nice.
Still since my own personal references were made in Hollywood, I think seeing the real M60 (and later hearing it fire out in the jungle) drove the point home more than anything, you know the big ass gun that some huge muscular black dude is always lugging around in the movies. (Yep that one)

Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket etc might just be fiction, but it's still my only frame of reference. I have never been in a war, have never been tortured, never fled for my life through the snake infested jungle and never heard artillery shells whistling down, so like most others my mental images are colored by movies on the topic. Errh long story short is that the photos of death and destruction as seen from the Vietnamese side is what I will remember, but the recognizable shape of a M16 rifle was what connected fact and fiction in my mental landscape.

Must be a very difficult experience to walk through this museum as an American, usually the US dictate the brand of truth we all believe in, but here was a place where the US got fingered as the bad guys... The really bad bad guys, with full documentation and no way to get around it. Must be quite a thing to take in if you are from Mid america, brought up believing your guys are always wearing the white hats and that it's always the other side that are not following the rules.

Aaaaaaanyways... the museum was ok. But I had bigger fish to fry, I was going to catch Avatar in the full 3d version while in HCMC so after a quick nap we jumped a cab and headed for the one cinema in Vietnam that showed it and from there on things kinda went downhill fast. The movie was sold out weeks ahead and had been from the opening day (even the 07.50 AM showing had been sold out weeks in advance !?!?!)

To calm our (my) utter and bitter disappointment we decided to give the city another chance to sweep us off our feet and we started walking though the night with no specific aim, just taking it all in. I noticed some dude on a scooter who acted a bit weird but thought nothing more off it as a gap in traffic came up.. so we walked on.  A little later we got to the biggest damn roundabout in creation and as we carefully made our way across the tribuary roads I noticed the very same dude sitting on a scooter just to our side. My poor subconscious screamed something at me but I was real busy trying to work out how the hell to get across the epic traffic congestion so I wasn't buying what it was selling.

By the time it had managed to wake me up and I had figured out that 2+2=4 Marianne had already lost her bag with ALL our shit in it. Come on Goofy, how friggin' hard can it be to deduct that a shady dude on a scooter mysteriously appearing in the corner of your eye several times during an evening walk is not crusing by just to work up his courage to bid a warm welcome to the nice tourists. *sigh* Street smarts, yeah I don't got'em !

As we stood on the curbstone gazing into traffic he scooted right past us, narrowly missing Marianne, but most certainly not missing the bag that she kept pretty securely under her arm... and thats the last we saw of our new camera, thus the lack of visual stimulants in this blog ;) Phone, credit cards, money, house keys etc etc etc. also lost.

Only then did we take the time to read up on things and found out that this is an extremely frequently occuring thing in HCMC and that we got off pretty easy. Once they grab hold, they don't let go so if Marianne had had the bag securely around her shoulder she might easily have ended up being dragged through thick traffic until she wiggled out of it. Another famed trick is stealing while the target is trying to slooowly cross a major road, nothing you can do there either.

Still, despite the absolute suckiness of the moment it was not the end of the world, and we quickly decided to just forget about it and enjoy the last 2 days as best we could. (and then took a cab home, no more walking ;))

Join us for more next time... where we visit Viet Cong tunnels, get a dose of propaganda that would make Goebbels jaloux, get a tate of absolute VietHeaven and visit the most run down zoo this side of Bulgaria 1975-77... oh and get through a bit of slapstick with no keys for the house.