Ready, set, go

Thanks for checking in! Our flight departs in about 24 hours for our 2010 trip to Vietnam. If you're catching up with us for the first time, here are the basics.

Ilene will be working on two projects in Saigon. First is teaching at the University of Pedagogy in their foreign languages department, a.k.a. the Fulbright project. Second is establishing an exchange program between that university and hers, a.k.a. the State Department grant project. She expects to have several work-related side trips to conferences both within Vietnam and in the region.

I'm working less hard. I'll be starting another novel and working on that, but I won't be passing up any opportunities for adventure that will take my eye off that. I'm also going to be teaching an informal English class at a community center, and I plan to do some extensive solo trekking in other Southeast Asian countries. Roughly, I plan to stay close to Saigon until the end of March, and then embarking on side trips. (Goal: 50k words drafted by then and another 20k drafted before my return.)

We hope just living and working in Saigon will be an adventure, and we hope our friends there will invite us off the beaten path a lot. Expect to see a lot of news here about country homes and family celebrations and, as usual, clothing mishaps. We'll probably have a few words to say about the food and coffee.

We're staying roughly 6 months, give or take, probably longer for Ilene and shorter for me. See you sometime next summer!

-Robert

Friendliness and other last thoughts

We're back home now and missing Saigon a lot.

We're both reluctant to attempt any kind of summary about our trips--to say that "Vietnam is a land of" anything in particular. But it's fair to say that, despite a political and economic environment where people find it difficult to use all of their skills and ambitions, Vietnam has tremendous gifts. Particularly in the familiar and easy way that people get along, whether it's parents and children or strangers in a cafe.

At the speech contest where we were judges, we asked one teenager a follow-up question on her speech about the importance of a strong national identity. She had said when people think of Italy, they think of its fine art and she gave some more examples like that about other countries. We asked her, "What do you hope people in other countries will think of when they think of Vietnam?"

"Friendliness," she said. That idea wasn't in her prepared speech, but it came to her instinctively. And our experience supports her hope. Friendliness is what we think of when we think of Vietnam.

We're also reluctant to attempt a summary, because we expect to have an ongoing relationship with the country and our friends there, with as many more trips as our budgets and schedules will allow. We anticipate returning in September 2009 for a five-month stay. So, there will hopefully be more posts on this travelogue at that time. Please check back to see.

-Robert and Ilene

Last goodbyes and back home

We started back home on Wednesday, Saigon time. It was a late flight, so we spent the day making the rounds to our regular haunts and saying goodbye. Many of our friends met us at the airport to see us off, just like in the days when a plane trip was a big deal.

Except for a small tribute that I had to pay at Vietnamese customs to let some of my souvenirs through, we had an uneventful journey from Saigon to Tokyo to Washington, D.C. to Hartford. We had the same experience as on the way over of excellent, friendly service from the Japanese airline and security personnel and appalling rudeness and cynicism from the U.S. airline and T.S.A. employees.

Despite starting out at bedtime and traveling for 30 hours, I had my usual trouble sleeping on the plane and arrived home a zombie. I made a quick inspection of the house (all OK) and slept for 12 hours straight in a glorious absence of construction and motorbike noise. Now I just have jetlag and culture shock to get over, and if you happen to see me in the next few weeks, I hope you'll forgive me any weird muttering or outbursts.

-Robert

Our favorite restaurant in Saigon, vegetarian, Vietnamese or otherwise

We had lots and lots of delicious food, but one restaurant emerged as our favorite place to go over and over. We loved the variety, the quality, the quiet, the price and the super friendly family that runs it.

It was a favorite based on its own merits, I think, but I may be prejudiced a little by the fact that it was our own discovery, unknown by any guidebook or any friend, and we never saw another tourist within two blocks of the place.

But I don't think success will spoil them so I'm glad to draw attention to it, and I hope you'll consider a trip to Tram Huong at 150/26 Nguyen Trai in District 1. (If you don't know how the addresses work, that means it's at #26 in an alley that starts at #150 off Tram Huong street . The other end of the alley is on Le Lai Street. If you're in the backpacker's ghetto, the easiest thing to do is to walk across September 23rd park to Le Lai. If you're downtown, you'll want a cab.)

It happens to be a vegetarian restaurant, which is what made the sign catch Ilene's eye initially. I assumed that means the family are committed Buddhists, and that probably has something to do with the very peaceful vibe.

We ate there probably three times a week, always ordering enough to take leftovers back to the hotel, and we never did exhaust all the choices on the menu. Some favorites included the different versions of grilled tofu gluten, the five-color stir fry, grilled eggplant, pumpkin soup, fresh springrolls, fried springrolls, banana blossom salad, enoki mushroom soup, simmered jackfruit, lemonade, orange juice and cafe sua da. We usually ordered the small versions of 3 or 4 dishes and spent about $5.

-Robert

Favorite places-Sozo

I don't love Sozo for the cuisine particularly-- though everything I've had there has been tasty--but for the vibe. It's a great relaxing place, with really friendly staff. Plus you feel good spending money there, because it's an enterprise that provides job training and educational opportunities for impoverished families. If you're in the backpacker's ghetto and need a light refreshment, try Sozo instead of Highlands coffee or any place like that.

I particularly like the verandas on the second and third floors with views of the traffic on Bui Vien Street. They have some computers so you can check email and a small library of left behind books.

I know they have a menu of Vietnamese food, but I never looked at it closely because I always went straight to the cakes and brownies and sandwiches, which were the closest approximation to baked goods at home. I also liked getting a package of chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies from the case in front to take away whenever I was passing by.

-Robert

Street children in Saigon

Vietnam has an incredibly young population. The median age is 26 years, compared to 36 in the U.S.

And to western eyes the large number of children here are much more apparent. For one thing, they have a lot more independence--getting themselves to and from school, for example--and with very few playgrounds, gymnasiums or youth programs, the sidewalks are where they spend their free time. Just a few minutes ago on the way home I cracked up watching two kids playing inside the glass booth of a street side ATM machine.

Another reason you notice kids more is that life here isn't separated into nuclear families in individual homes apart from the workplace. Almost any building you see is a combination home and shop or restaurant, and if the children aren't working in the family business, then they are playing in it. The typical shop does double duty as a nursery and the shopkeeper is also a childcare provider. At our favorite restaurant last Sunday afternoon, we waited for our meal while listening to the big sister in a loft above the dining room singing a lullaby to a crying baby while mom was busy in the kitchen. The baby had better luck tuning out the street noise and falling asleep than I do.

The worst part about Vietnam for us is seeing the number of children essentially employed as beggars. It's over 20,000 in Ho Chi Minh City, and at least two families of them work on our street.

One is a pair of sisters, about 12 and 8, who I assume go to school since I only see them at night and on school holidays. They walk a regular circuit between three hotels and one expensive restaurant on the block. They have a slouch-shouldered way of walking from one entrance to the next, never changing the expressions on their faces. The older one leads the younger one, and when someone exits one of these buildings she flips the cotton cap she wears off her head and holds it out. When she gets the shake of the head no she flips the cap back on her head again and moves on. Everyone on the street--the man who manages the taxi cue, the woman who runs the coffee stand, the heavily made up young women, only a few years older, waiting in the doorways of the beauty salons--ignores them, and they ignore everyone right back.

The other group on our street includes a little boy in a vintage wheelchair. His brothers push him up and down the street like demons, bouncing him over the curb and into traffic in a way that terrifies me to watch. When they see a tourist, they race toward him and use the wheelchair to block the path. The other day I came back to the hotel and saw them parked on the sidewalk in front, peering through the glass doors. I braced myself, but they ignored me when I went passed, totally focused on something inside. When I got inside, I realized that they were watching the television mounted on the wall, which was showing American professional wrestling.

Some children assist their parents or other family in begging (or selling gum or lottery tickets.) Babies ride on their mother's hip, holding out their hands like they've been trained, and when they're old enough to walk, the adult spots the mark from a distance and nudges the child to go make the solicitation.

Last week I saw a girl about 9 years old helping a man old enough to be her great-great-grandfather. He was blind and playing the flute as he shuffled down the street. He wore old pajamas, and the top had a large hole near the hem which the girl used as a handle to pull him along, holding out her hat in front of her as they went.

One time I saw a boy about 14 years old taking care of his older brother who appeared to have Downs syndrome. This was at the small playground in the park near us where every night more children then you can imagine pack into it and somehow all get along. The two teenagers sat on the curb nearby watching the crowd carefully, and whenever a child or parent left behind a plastic juice bottle or water bottle, the younger one got up to retrieve it. The older one sat and guarded an old plastic fertilizer bag they used to collect their haul, and when his brother returned with a new bottle, he got up and squashed it underfoot.

Most street children don't go to school at all, and those are the kids we met while tutoring for an organization called Thao Dan. Our group of kids was between 7 and 13 years old and they can't read or write in Vietnamese, but the older ones speak English as well as almost anyone we've met, having picked it up on the street.

When our class at 5:30 in the evening, their day was just starting. Their jobs are to hustle in various ways in the backpackers ghetto from dinner time until the last drunks drag back to their hotels about 3 a.m. Then they travel back out to their homes in remote districts of the city and sleep until the next afternoon. The social worker at Thao Dan tells us that their parents keep them out of school to work like that.

The kids we met this way are amazing. On the one hand they were completely unfamiliar with the habits of taking turns and listening to the teacher and not touching the teacher's stuff. On the other hand, they seemed desperate for whatever it is we were doing with them. When Ilene read a picture book to them last night, I never saw children so entranced. They beg us to come back the next day and they cling to us when we are there, fighting with one another over who will sit next to us. They are full of energy, shouting out answers, proud to show off what they do know, never too shy to guess when they don't know. And they all have a disconcerting confidence for their age, like they are 10 years older.

When we dismiss class, which is held in a borrowed room in the neighborhood People's Committee office, they show off how they know to shake hands and shout "See you later! See you tomorrow! See you next week! See you next year!" They run out the door and by the time we exit, they've already merged into the economy of the street. We see them in front of the bars and cafes along De Tham and Pham Ngu Lau working their hustles.

Last week, we were having dinner nearby and a boy about 11 years old who we know and who is my favorite one in the class came in selling cigars. For the most part, restaurant owners let anyone come in to pester the customers as long as you have something to sell. The typical routine involves going from table to table and holding the merchandise in front of each person's nose until they shake their head no about three times and then moving on. About half way through the dining room our student spotted us and just gave a grin to acknowledge me but didn't come to our table and didn't do any of the friendly showing off he does in class. He ducked out quickly like he was embarrassed for me to see him that way.

Of course, on the street like that each night, they are incredibly vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation. When I pass motorbike drivers who whisper to me "You want very young girl?" I know that before long these kids may be who they are talking about. So when I see the backpackers chatting with the kids like they are mascots or characters in a heartwarming movie about lovable street urchins, it makes me pretty fed up with tourists.

Ilene and I can't help wondering if the more English we teach them the more valuable they become to their families on the street and the less likely they are to go to school. With more time, we would . . . . well, without the language and local knowledge and the contacts, there's not a lot we can do that would be effective. Are we going to persuade their parents to send them to school? After nine weeks, we're still not much more than tourists ourselves, and undoubtedly I got more interesting stories out of our classes than they got education. For now, this is an issue that I know a little bit about but haven't found a real way into. As with everything here, I observe without really understanding what's going on.

But I can say that the people at Thao Dan seemed eager to have the help we could offer, and I assume that means there's some value in it. If you're in Saigon and want to volunteer, I suggest stopping by a bookstore and buying a pile of the simplest math and English books you can find and a box of pencils and stopping by the Thao Dan office. If you're on your way to Vietnam, fill the extra space in your luggage with coloring books. They run a lot of other programs besides these ersatz classes--street outreach, shelters, drop-in centers--and they're always building their supplies for gift baskets they distribute during Tet.

When it comes to charitable donations in Vietnam, it's hard to know what to do to make sure a gift will be used as intended. There is no such thing as a 501c3 here, and there aren't the same systems for financial control and accountability that we are used to at home.

But Thao Dan passes the sniff test for me and Ilene. We generally have the philosophy of "do your givin' where you're livin'," but we are starting to consider Saigon our second home, and we're doing what we can to support Thao Dan. If you're interested in supporting their work from afar, we suggest an electronic money transfer service called Xoom. Or you might consider supporting the work of an organization with a presence in your home country such as (in the case of the U.S.), The East Meets West Foundation or Save the Children. Or if you have experience with any charities here that you recommend, please share it in the comments.

We hope you've enjoyed reading our travelogue. We actually have some more fun posts to catch up on even though our trip is over, so keep checking back.

-Robert

Cooking class

Yesterday we took a cooking class at The Vietnam Cookery Center. It was dorky and expensive but we had fun, even if we didn't necessarily learn a lot. All the prep work is done in advance and a platoon of staff delivers ingredients in front of you in little bowls so all you really do is assemble them. I think with the recipe book they provide I'll be able to make some tasty dishes, though. The best part for me was that we made caramelized fish in a clay pot which became my favorite dish on my first visit.

You can do the class only or the class with a market visit. We were already very familiar with Cho Benh Thanh, so we could have skipped that. Then it's a fairly long ride out to Ben Thanh District to the cookery center. They have prep stations set up for about 20 people with the head chef in front. They walk you through making a salad, a main course and a soup, and then you retire to a big dining table and eat all that for lunch as well as rice and desert which they make for you.

They have a good shtick of making it sound like a tough course, mixing in lots of trivia and having a graduation ceremony at the end where the chef makes a big show of signing the diplomas. All-in-all, it was easily the most professionally run and least disorienting tourist experience we've had here.

-Robert

Going away party

Sunday night we threw a party at a banh xeo restaurant to try and say thank you to some of the people who have been so helpful and kind to us during our visit. We tried to do something special, but of course you can't spend enough money to repay the generosity we've experienced. We were very sad to say goodbye.

-Robert

Favorite places--Pizza

One in a series of posts about our favorite places in Vietnam.

"Favorite" is the wrong category for this discussion. Pizza in Vietnam should be regarded only for its medicinal value in cases of mild homesickness. Bread and cheese are two ingredients too uncommon in the cuisine here to expect them to be done well. And there's so much cheap, terrific, fresh Vietnamese food that for the same money, you could try 3 neighborhood cafes until you found a lunch you liked. So why bother?

Well, because sometimes after a certain number of weeks of unfamiliar experiences--good or bad--on a hot day when the honda om drivers seem particularly relentless, you crave the sensation of something familiar on the tongue. And if you're familiar with the sensation of room service pizza from the Executive Suites off I-80 in Erie, Pennsylvania, you're in luck. You can get that here.

I had days like that a few times (Ilene has more patience) and tried a couple pizza places. By no means did we make a comprehensive tour, and we never did get around to Annie's, which is touted in the guidebooks and online forums as the best in town. We did try a place that we were told was the favorite of Vietnamese kids. In fact it was the only time on the whole trip we ever had to wait for a table. But it was terrible. I can understand why the kids were so eager to squirt ketchup on it.

The place that I tolerated the best is called Cappuccino's, at 86 Bui Vien. Service is super slow (I assume because the toaster oven can only hold one pizza at a time), and the only patrons are tourists, so it's a good a place to practice your English.

Pictured are the Greca and the Tres Colores. They weren't that bad, and after one or the other of them, I could leave with my belly full and ready to take a fresh run at life in Saigon.

-Robert

Wildlife spotting in Cat Tien Park

The wildlife spotting at Cat Tien National Park was less than advertised. The kinds of large mammals--wild water buffalo, large cats, elephants, primates and of course the Javanese Rhino--are just highly unlikely to be something you encounter on the typical guided tour that stays close to the park headquarters. In fact, one guide told me that no one had EVER seen the rhinos in person--that they've only been spotted via camera traps.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and did see a lot of smaller wildlife, including one very close call with a monocled cobra. We also spotted one real-life example of the mascot of this website, the Asian Civet Cat, as well as lots and lots of civet poop.

We used Sinhbalo Adventure Tours and again had a great experience with them. They driver and our guide--Huy--picked us up at our hotel early on Friday and then picked up another traveler--Hermann, a high school P.E. teacher from Austria. We drove about 4 hours to get to the park entrance. First you take a simple ferry boat across the Dong Nai River. We checked into our room, which was about the equivalent of a mountain lodge in a national park in the U.S., except you share it with more lizards. We had a delicious lunch in the canteen and then a siesta. My one complaint is that for all the trouble and expense I would rather have gotten underway on our first hike sooner than 2:30.

Gearing up for the hike includes putting on leech socks and leech repellent. The socks are similar to gaiters, made of cotton and worn inside your shoes and over your pants. Then you smear the repellent like a barrier around your calf. They were absolutely necessary--long pants alone won't cut it. Ilene and I and everyone one else we hiked with found at least half a dozen leeches on their clothing. The leeches I pictured beforehand I guess are aquatic leeches and didn't resemble these at all--at least not before they had a chance to fill with blood. They look like very tiny worms, and they stand upright waving one end in the air and they have an amazing ability to spring from that position. Anticipating them was creepy, but in the end they were harmless.

Huy joined us for the hike but handed us over to a ranger--Trung--who was very knowledgeable and friendly and did a great job of spotting various insects and identifying trees and bird cries and so on for us. I wasn't able to record the names of most of the trees. One large variety is called a Vietnamese Redwood. Much larger than those are a kind of tree where the roots stay near the surface and make spectacular ropey waves. That's the kind the two of us are standing in front of in the picture above. Another neat plant was taro, which are the very large green leaves pictured below. The coolest thing is the strangler vines. They set their roots into the top of a tall tree and then start sending the vines down and taking over. Sometimes you find a kind of woven basket of vines in the shape of the tree that used to be there before it died and decayed.

It was in the middle of the first hike that we encountered the cobra. We were walking in file, with Trung and Ilene ahead. They apparently stepped over it, because I first spotted the movement as I was stepping over it. I got a good look at it behind my heel and then me and Hermann, who was behind me, were both yelling "snake!" It was between black and dark grey and about as thick as the handle of a tennis racket. I got one glimpse of its head and then it was straightened out and moving really fast toward the brush. I kept trying to move my eyes ahead to see its head again but it moved so fast I only kept glimpsing near the tail. I estimated it about 1.5 meters and Hermann says 2 meters. Trung never saw it, but based on our descriptions, he says it was a cobra. When we spotted another much smaller and harmless snake later and hollered, Trung about jumped in a tree.

After dinner, we had the night safari. You pile in the back of a jeep rigged with benches, and a ranger drives quite recklessly down the paved roads while another ranger stands in back and shines a powerful spotlight into the trees and grass. When he sees a light reflecting back out of the eyes of something, he raps the hood of the truck, and the driver screeches to a halt. The animals mostly just watch warily unless we're too close, and then we have to look fast as they scamper. We saw a civet cat this way, one mouse deer, and a couple dozen sambar deer.

The next day we took a jeep to a drop-off point and from there took a 10km hike to the crocodile swamp and back. We spotted a couple interesting birds on the way and also while resting at the ranger station at the swamp. We encountered some macaques, which our guide spotted but we never did. We could only hear their cries and see the tree tops rustling.

We were back at the camp by lunch time, and after that and showering, we ferried back over to meet our driver. We had a good time getting to know our guides along the way. Huy and his wife had twin boys five months ago, and they hope to move to her parents' house in the provinces to open a pharmacy, which is her profession. Trung is a genuine conservationist who has worked 15 years in jobs like this. He is the one person we've met with some ind of academic expertise whose English was good enough that we could learn about it. He hitched a ride back to Saigon with us, because he had an English exam, which he needs to pass to get licensed to be a tour guide, which he would like to expand into. We dropped him off at a crossroads in the suburbs so he could have dinner first with some family and then we plunged into the city traffic for the last push and were home in time for an early dinner.

-Robert

Snakes and leeches!

We're safely back in Saigon from our hike in the forest, without even a mosquito bite, but with a tale to tell about narrowly missing much worse. We'll write after we catch up on sleep. In the meantime, enjoy the photos in the slide show on the right.

How to cross the street in Saigon

I just realized this text and this video together make it appear that it's a video of me crossing the street. Not at all. It's taken as I walk halfway around the inside of the traffic circle at Cho Ben Thanh, from the Sept. 23rd Park side to the start of Le Loi Avenue. A few seconds of it show some people as the cross the street.

1. Stand upstream of a local, and do what they do. (Note this only works on a one-way street. Otherwise, when you get to the opposite half of the street, you're the one who's upstream.)

2. Wait for a large vehicle or a crowd of motorbikes to cross and take advantage of the temporary jam.

3. Look both ways and then look every other possible way--360 on the horizontal and vertical planes. There is no such thing is a lane or a way or even a street, really. Streams of traffic can develop behind you on the sidewalk you're stepping off of.

4. Do keep moving steadily and slowly. Establish a pace and let everyone see it. After that, even if a truck is bearing down on you, ignore you're instincts to dart, stop, or jump back.

5. As you are moving, "take your space" as they say in soccer. Ignore the lifetime of training of waiting until the traffic has passed. Instead, step in front of the traffic wherever there is a space and take it away from the vehicle coming toward you. Crowd that vehicle toward your front forcing it slow down to get around you safely. When the stream eventually gets too choked in front, it will start breaking behind you.

Favorite places-Nhu Lan Bakery

One of several posts to featuring some of our favorite places in Saigon.

Nhu Lan Bakery is more of a favorite of Ilene's than of mine. She and another traveling companion discovered it on an earlier trip and it became a regular place for the two of them, and it's about the first place Ilene wants to check in with on each visit now.

I don't know what this kind of restaurant is called in Vietnamese, which there seems to be at least one of in every neighborhood, but the atmosphere most resembles a New York deli like Katz's, except with table service, as well as take-away. There's always a strong local vibe and the staff have a no-smile, seen-it-all attitude. Cheap, plentiful, fresh food is the main attraction, as well as watching the hustle. Nhu Lan in particular always has a hum of traffic in the evening of people examining the cold cases on the sidewalk to find a dinner to take home or seated on the stools inside gobbling something before a night class.

They have a big variety of a kind of meat pie made with sweet, flaky, pastry-like dough and stuffed with various meat or sweet bean pastes. Also lots of banh mi--sandwiches with shaved meat or poultry. Ilene's favorite dishes--fresher than in most places, in her opinion--are the spring rools and banh cuon, moist rice flour wrappers stuffed with spicy ground pork and dunked in fish sauce. I love the fresh fruit juices and shakes. Most dishes are about $1.25.

On the side is a small grocery of things dried or canned that are good to stock the hotel room with--jars of sour or salted plums, for example, which Ilene is addicted to.

Nhu Lan is at the corner of Ham Nghi and Cong Tru not far from where Nguyen Hue butts into the river. While you're in the neighborhood, head one block west to find the entrance to and stroll through the "old market" that operates on Ton Tham Dat Street.

-Robert

Trekking in Cat Tien National Park

We leave early in the morning for a two-day hike looking for wildlife in Cat Tien National Park. We'll be back late Saturday local time. In the meantime, you can learn about the park here:

http://www.namcattien.org/

Ilene's Vietnamese language exam results

Ilene passed her language exam, of course. That's her tutor, Tuan, getting the news with her. He's translating the fine print on her certificate for me, and like everything else in her scholastic career, it basically says she's the smartest kid in class. (Not that past experience helped her feel any more confident beforehand. When she's in the old folks home she'll probably worry that she's not fully prepared for bingo.)

Kidding aside, this was her main goal of the trip, and she worked super hard on it. The certificate actually says she passed the equivalent of a five-month course of study, even though it was about 1 month with Tuan in January 2008 , 2 months this summer and a lot of homemade self-guided study in the meantime.

-Robert

Chua Giac Lam--Giac Lam Pagoda

Note: For most of the blog entries, there are many more pictures in the albums on the right. (Usually the one titled Vietnam 2008.) In this case, there are several especially nice pix of the trip to this temple.

Today I visited Giac Lam Pagoda, which is in a more remote district than most sites I've been to in HCMC proper. (20 minutes by taxi from District 1.) I saved it for near the end of my trip when I'm getting overly familiar with everything in walking distance of our hotel. It's one of the larger temple complexes I've seen and there was no sign of any other western tourist. It's definitely worth the trip if you have a morning and about $4.50 in cab fare each way to spare.

The guidebook describes it as the oldest temple in the city. I assume it's the institution that is the oldest and not the building itself, which is a modern structure. In fact, they are in the process of constructing a new temple adjacent to the current one. Of course, there's a collection box for that and for ongoing operations and their charitable programs, and I always take along all the small bills I've collected to contribute.

This morning when I visited, there was some kind of ceremony going on involving a nun--an initiation, perhaps. (One of the drawbacks of making my own way on these visits is I don't learn much that isn't plainly visible, so most of the time I'm just guessing at what's going on around me.) It was shortly before lunch time, and a couple of the long tables in the dining hall were set, and a lot of monks were hovering around checking in on the ceremony and waiting for it to conclude.

One thing I got a kick out of was discovering the source of the music that accompanied the chants. It was all coming over a loud sound system. I assumed the melody line, in the five-tone scale recognizable from most traditional music in the east, was coming from some kind of old-time zither or lute. When I came around the corner of the Buddha alter in the main hall, I saw that the sound was coming from an old purple Fender Stratocaster, played by a monk sitting cross legged on the floor. He was shredding the bottom two strings, and the drummer was going at it pretty hard too. Everyone once in awhile the drummer laid down his sticks and picked up a zither, and he had a way of playing a loud wooden knocker with his tapping foot while his hands were busy.

The building behind the main temple is a mausoleum with hundreds of small cubicles for the ashes of the deceased. Two funerals were going on in separate corners when I stepped in, with a few family members gathered around a chanting monk while they loaded up one of the cubicles. Each one typically included an urn with a photo of the deceased and the kit they'll need in the next world--paper money, joss sticks, tea cups. Many of them had personal mementos, too. Near the back of the building, the photos were from decades ago and near the front, they got more and more contemporary. One that caught my eye had a remote control race car with a Power Rangers doll riding in it, and a little plastic replica of a desktop computer--favorite past times I assumed of the little boy whose picture was on the urn.

-Robert

Don't tell our mothers . . . Motorbiking video

Our mothers are going to be appalled, I know, but we ride motorbikes a lot here. It's more or less necessary if you're going to keep company with anyone local. They think we're crazy for spending money on taxis when there's always a motorbike to be squeezed on to the back of. And there's always a fuss with finding us spare helmets, since it's a law now, so if one isn't at hand our hosts sometimes suggest that the police won't stop a foreigner without a helmet, but I insist we find enough.

On this trip, each of us riding behind a friend, we're going out to dinner on a Saturday evening with relatively light traffic. This give a little sense of the lawlessness of the roads. But even that is changing rapidly. You'll see that we're stopped a couple times at traffic lights, and those were nonexistent or totally ignored on our previous trips. But in general, there is no such thing as yielding the right of way, and the most operative law is that might makes right.

-Robert

Rocking Out With the Youth of Saigon-Part II

Turn down the volume on your computer speakers before you play this video, because it rocks hard.

Actually you'll want to turn it down because the audio quality is very poor. The mic on my camera was overwhelmed. But I wanted to show this very enthusiastic crowd enjoying themselves at a nightclub. I take back what I implied in an earlier post about the reserved way kids listen to music. They apparently just hadn't heard their favorite song yet.

This is a cover of Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," and twice now we've seen people go nuts for it. This is in a club called Live Acoustic in District 3. It's a large room set up cocktail lounge style with a fair sized stage and pretty high-end furnishings and decor. Like the other place we went to, there's no cover, but the drinks are about 4 times the usual price. It was super crowded, mostly with people college age.

The band came on about 9 and was still going at 11 when we left with our ears ringing. Their repertoire was the power ballads of Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses, Bryan Adams and some of the lesser metal bands of the 80's. A lot of nostalgic songs about the regrettable transition from carefree adolescence to complicated adult relationships. "The Summer of '69" and that kind of thing. The singer was a dead ringer for Sean Lennon, but did a fair impersonation of Axl Rose.

When the band started, there was an air guitar champion in front already too drunk for his friends to control. He was on his feet and shouting through all the songs. Two private security guards who looked like retired army to me came out to him about four times to warn him. Then they hauled out his less drunk and less obnoxious sidekick, kicking and screaming, as a last warning. Then they finally led him out relatively peacefully. (I put the camera away for that, and you'll notice that there are no police or military in any of my pictures, even though it's not easy to point a camera in Saigon without capturing someone in uniform.)

The heckler had everyone on edge, and when he was finally gone, the crowd really loosened up. This song broke the seal, and after that point the singer stayed away from the mic and let the crowd take lead vocals on the rest of the songs, the lyrics to which they all knew by heart.

-Robert

Censored

I saw a reference to a report by the U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch and went online to find out more. But their website is one that is blocked at the virtual border by the Vietnamese government. I can't read it on this end. If you are some place with more choice in your reading matter, you can see see what Human Rights Watch has to say about Vietnam here: http://www.hrw.org/asia/vietnam.php

The laws of censorship and logic aren't usually fellow travelers, so it shouldn't surprise me that some other sites--presumably equally embarrassing to the Vietnamese government--are accessible on this end:

http://vietnamlist.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietnamhumanrights.net/IndexE.html
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/asia-pacific/viet-nam

-Robert

Update on the mix tape challenge

A couple weeks ago I posted about trying to come up with a single CD of essential American music to share with my friends here. I failed miserably at getting my choices down to just one disc and ended up with a two disc version.

You'll see that, though nothing in my original criteria said it had to be rock music, I completely neglected anything jazz, swing, tin pan alley or what might be called "standards." Consequently, I ended up with a thread that tries to tie together anything that might be characterized with a jump, backbeat or groove--blues, country, r&b and rock. Gospel and more hip hop ought to be in there, but there are some gaps in the library that is on my computer.

Here is what I ended up with. What would you have included, and what would you cut from this list to make room for your choices?

-Robert

Disc 1

Robert Johnson—Ramblin’ On My Mind
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys—So Let’s Rock
Big Mama Thornton—Hound Dog
Elvis Presley—My Baby Left Me
Patsy Cline—Walkin’ After Midnight
Chuck Berry—No Particular Place To Go
Aretha Franklin—Chain of Fools
Otis Redding—These Arms of Mine
Wilson Pickett—634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)
Help Me Rhonda—The Beach Boys
Bob Dylan—Quit Your Lowdown Ways
Simon & Garfunkel—Baby Driver
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas—Heatwave (Love is Like A)
The Velvet Underground—Sweet Jane
Al Green—Tired of Being Alone
The Jackson 5—I Want You Back
Talking Heads—And She Was
Willie Nelson—Georgia On My Mind
Yvonne Elliman—If I Can’t Have You
Joe Jackson—Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts—Bad Reputation
Prince—Kiss
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band—10^th Avenue Freezeout
Violent Femmes—Blister In the Sun
The Cars—Just What I Needed

Disc 2

R.E.M.—The Replacements
The Replacements—Alex Chilton
The Pixies—Here Comes Your Man
The B-52s—Love Shack
Nirvana—Come As You Are
Weezer—Photograph
The Fugees—Killing Me Softly With His Song
The Old 97s—Jagged
Aimee Mann—That’s Just the Way You Are
Lucinda Williams—Drunken Angel
Wilco—Outtasite (Outta Mind)
Liz Phair—Polyester Bride
Fountains of Wayne—Radiation Vibe
Gillian Welch—Pass You By
Ben Kweller—I Don’t Know Why
Rufus Wainwright—Oh What A World
Gwen Stefani—The Sweet Escape
Beyonce—Get Me Bodied
Neko Case—That Teenage Feeling
Kanye West—All Falls Down
Santogold—I’m A Lady