Cambodia And Nha Trang, Changing With The Times

I just returned from about 2 1/2 weeks of traveling outside of Saigon. My plan was to spend all or almost all of the time in Cambodia, a place I visited once before about 2 1/2 years ago. I visited the Temples of Angkor on my first trip so this time I was planning to explore the southern coastal area including the popular beach town of Sihanoukville, named after their former king who recently died.

The bus trip from Saigon to Phnom Penh is really easy, taking only about 6 hours including almost an hour spent at the border. I'm still surprised at how inexpensive bus travel is in and around Vietnam. The trip from Saigon to Phnom Penh set me back a total of $11 US! The return trip beat that at $10. And the buses are comfortable and air conditioned. If you're hard up you can travel like the locals for even less on a crowded bus without air conditioning.

On the way to Phnom Penh I could tell that I wasn't feeling 100%, but was hoping I would return to normal in a day or 2 but unfortunately it went the other way. On my second day in Phnom Penh I went down hard with what I thought was a bad cold. Looking back, it might have even been some strain of flu because it pretty much incapacitated me for 4 days. I spent 2 days just lying in bed not even wanting to read or watch TV.

I did get out and about for a couple of days around Phnom Penh and it's changed a lot since I was there last. Like almost everywhere in southeast Asia it's opening up more and economic changes are happening fast. Even the last holdout, Myanmar, is now beginning to embrace a more modern economy. In Phnom Penh I ran across Spinelli's and Gloria Jean's coffee shops which weren't there 2 1/2 years ago. There are also new malls and restaurants. But the poverty is still there and probably will be for a long time. New buildings and businesses provide a nice veneer but don't do much to change the decades of economic stagnation, loss of skilled people, and lack of education brought about by the years of 'utopia' under the Khmer Rouge.  I think if you ever hear anyone in power utter that word, the best thing you can do for yourself is run like hell.
At the entrances to night clubs there are signs designating prohibited items and one of them is hand guns. There's still a wild element to Cambodia though I've never felt in danger in my 2 trips there.

I stayed along the riverside area which is where many hotels and restaurants and bars are located. The Foreign Correspondent's Club was running a special rate on rooms so I spent 3 days there, those when I was most sick. It was a nice place to lie in bed.

There are many hostess bars along the riverside which are bars with a staff of young women whose job it is to entertain mostly male patrons.  I decided to go into one of them one night just to explore, for purely research purposes of course. It was still early so I was the only customer. What happened is similar to what's happened to me the few times I've ventured into this type of bar around Saigon. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer and was almost immediately surrounded by about 4 members of the staff, but they were the oldest and least attractive ones! At least in my mind that's how it was. I noticed some other younger prettier girls sitting at tables who had no inclination to come over and entertain me.  If someone is interested in these more desirable girls I assume there's some procedure that's followed to engage them, likely involving finding the mamasan (there's always a mamasan, the usually older lady who runs the operations of the place) and placing your request with her. Or perhaps just being more direct and aggressive or younger and better looking or making a display of having money and being ready to spend it does the trick. It's also no secret that entertainment means pretty much anything a customer is willing to pay for. Anyway, I was only there on a research project so I satisfied myself with chatting, playing 4 -square, and getting unwanted neck and shoulder massages from my little group of bottom shelf girls. 4-square is like tic-tac-toe (or noughts and crosses for the Brits) played with a vertical plastic board and colored pieces and it's common in hostess bars in Thailand also. The girls are very good and it's difficult to beat them but I'm sure the fact that they usually drop the first piece gives them a distinct advantage. Back in 2000 on my first trip to Thailand I beat a hostess at 4-square because she got distracted and she was really dismayed as if she had failed at her job! Anyway I finished my beer (75 cents) and left the hostesses to their own devices.

I have the feeling that Cambodia is a great place for the more adventurous traveler who's willing to get a dirt bike and venture out into the countryside. There are many temples to be seen besides the ones at Angkor and a lot of jungle and wilderness, though caution would definitely have to be exercised.

The more I had read about Sihanoukville the less appealing it sounded to me and that along with my illness and the general roughness of Cambodia prompted me to head back to Vietnam after 6 days.

When I needed a ride to the bus station I walked over to one of the many tuk-tuk drivers who patrol the riverside looking for customers and showed him the business card of the bus company I wanted to be taken to. In Cambodia the tuk-tuks are usually a motorbike fitted with a hitch that pulls a covered passenger cart with bench seats that can hold about 4 people. 

The driver looked at the card, which mentioned service to Saigon, and said something about Saigon and I just nodded. He quoted $2 for the fare which I knew was way too low. I should have known what he was up to. He started off in the right direction but then turned into a crowded market area that was not the best route to the bus station and pulled up to a shop and stopped. I looked up and saw that he was trying to dump me off at some random bus company that offered service to Saigon. Well, random to me, but that no doubt pays a commission to tuk-tuk drivers to deliver customers. I already had my ticket for the other company but that didn't matter as I wouldn't have accepted this no matter what. I informed the driver to take me to where I wanted to go and not to stop again and he agreed but said it would cost $1 more. Fair enough, but it was an annoying note to end my trip to Cambodia on.

I got back to Saigon and spent one night there before going to Nha Trang, my favorite place to waste time in Vietnam in.

In the past I had a profile on a Vietnam dating site and had been contacted by a woman who lives in Nha Trang. She had continued to periodically email me so I thought why not meet her while I was there?  Over time she had let me know that she was divorced with 2 children and that she lived with her mother and daughter and her son lived with her ex-husband.  We agreed to meet at the Sailing Club, a popular restaurant/bar on the Nha Trang beach.

As I was waiting there, she texted me that she was bringing her girl. I thought maybe she meant a friend, but no, she meant her daughter.  That was ok with me but I felt a little strange sitting there with this much younger woman and her 2-year old daughter and I knew everyone in the place was looking at us and trying to decide if the kid was mine or not. I say much younger because I found out that she's only 22 years old. An age difference means less in Asia than it does in the west, but when the difference is almost 30 years I feel a little strange about it. In addition she wasn't my type for other reasons so I knew I wouldn't be pursuing this.

After a drink she suggested we go to eat at a Vietnamese place she likes. I had walked to the Sailing Club from my hotel but she and her daughter had come there by motorbike. We decided we would go to my hotel and borrow a helmet (a common hotel service in Vietnam) and I would drive the 3 of us to the restaurant. Now I was really feeling strange driving her motorbike with her riding behind me and her daughter standing on the floorboard in front of me as we cruised along in a non-tourist area of Nha Trang. After eating and enduring many more stares, I was happy to drive back to my hotel and extricate myself from my new family. The girl had thrown a temper tantrum as we were leaving the restaurant which only added to my desire to get back to the serenity of my hotel.

I spent the rest of the week doing my usual activities of sitting by the ocean and bike riding. Nha Trang and Mui Ne have seen a large increase in Russian tourists over the past 2 years and many of the businesses now have signage in Russian.  I have to say that many of the Russians you see in Nha Trang are quite slim and attractive as I imagine they're probably from the more affluent sector of Russian society. I found myself admiring quite a few bikini-clad Russian women walking and lounging on the beach.  I like the fact that they're there as I feel like they buffer me from the Vietnamese looking to engage tourists in commerce. Many of the Russians speak little English so I can also pretend not to speak it and feel better about ignoring hawkers and street merchants.  Not that it ever bothered me all that much.

Nha Trang is developing a lot more and the character of the place has changed since my first trip there 3 years ago. The police have really cracked down on the local vendors who used to ply the beach and parks selling everything from cold drinks to lobster prepared on the spot. In a way I miss the old festive atmosphere and I'm sure the locals who were able to earn a little money by selling miss it a lot more. There's a quiet battle going on over who owns and has access to the beach areas. Or perhaps that battle is already over, having ended as it always does.

Many new high-rises are going up and there's a new mall filled with upscale retail outlets. For now the smaller businesses and mini-hotels seem to be peacefully co-existing with the intrusion of large new businesses, but I fear the day may come when I look for Mr. Hòa who rents good quality mountain bikes for $1.45 / day and find that he's no longer there or the Kim Ngân Hotel where one can rent clean 2-star accommodation for $8 / day has been replaced by a Marriot. Progress, love and hate it.

My room at the Foreign Correspondent's Club.

Looking out from the back of the FCC one sees the colonial past being neglected while the spiritual past is alive and well.

A park in Phnom Penh that suffers the same problem as most of Phnom Penh and that's a lack of trees and shade. The large golden bird I'm not sure about but is part of Cambodian culture or lore as I saw it in many places.

Some businesses in Cambodia want no part of an activity Cambodia is infamous for.

Street Justice and Engagements

Vietnamese society works much differently from those of Europe and North America ("the West") as I don't need to say, but it's sometimes interesting to see specific examples of these differences.  In Vietnam, and Asia in general, there's a much stronger influence of one's image and family at play than in the West and it tends to keep people in line without the direct threat of police or other intervention.

As a matter of fact the police in Vietnam seem to rarely intervene directly in anything as far as I've seen but instead serve as a general threat to certain types of behavior with the matter often settled by direct cash payments.  Initially to a Westerner this may seem outrageous and simply a Mafia-like form of extortion, and in some cases it definitely is, but there's more to it than that. It's accepted that that's just the way it works here. The police don't get paid very much in the form of salary, but instead work on "commission" to put it diplomatically.  Like any commission-based job, some individuals prosper more than others and there are police officers in Vietnam who live in very nice houses and drive very nice cars when off-duty. 

The owners of any business with a street front in Vietnam get regular visits from members of the local police and pay their "taxes" directly to them in cash. It's the way it is here and for better or worse seems to work fairly well, but it would be better to ask a business owner how he feels about it.

Conflict resolution is also handled much differently here than in the West, usually involving only the parties directly affected and usually settled on the spot with a cash payment or a fight or argument that no one else wants anything to do with. In the case of vehicle accidents rarely do the police appear unless there was serious property or bodily damage. But they don't show up in Los Angeles and most other US cities either. There does exist liability insurance in Vietnam and all drivers are legally required to carry it but it seems to be only sporadically enforced. Currently it's very cheap, about $4US/ year, and carries low liability limits on the order of $500. I would be really interested in knowing if anyone has ever successfully filed a claim and collected any money by using it. But again, contrast that with the West where insurance is mandatory and strongly enforced and people, especially attorneys, certainly do collect money from the system but there is still enough left over from premiums paid in to support large highly profitable corporations. The insurance industry transforms the conflict from a street dispute to one involving highly (over?) paid professionals to sort out our problems for us at whatever enforced price they dictate. Which system is better? More efficient? To me the insurance industry is just one example in which the free and open Western system is completely socialist and authoritarian in nature meaning that there is often mandatory participation with legal and cost penalties for those who choose not to participate. Many people don't see it that way because the industry is private and for-profit.

I was relaxing in the park beside the Reunification Palace in Saigon 2 days ago after receiving my 3rd and final hepatitis B vaccination at the Columbia Asia medical office when I witnessed the Vietnamese conflict resoluton system in action.  As an aside, I highly recommend Columbia Asia for Westerners and others in Saigon for medical services as they have a mix of competent foreign and Vietnamese staff in a clean relaxed environment and very reasonable prices. I believe they even operate a hospital in Saigon.  Anyway I heard a man shouting and turned around to see, about 25 meters away, a Vietnamese man picking up his motorbike from in front of a nice new black Audi that had stopped at an intersection. It was apparent the car had hit the bike thereby violating the one cardinal rule of driving in Vietnam and the car driver was therefore completely at fault.

The bike driver was clearly angry as he picked up the items off the street that he had been carrying before being knocked over but there was apparently no serious property or bodily damage to anyone. The car driver, a man most certainly also Vietnamese, just calmly gestured but made no attempt to move or get out of his car. The bike driver was clearly expecting something (money?) from the car driver and finally marched over to the driver's door and simply opened it. The car driver hadn't even locked his doors. He then delivered 2 or 3 punches towards the car driver's head before shutting the door and jumping on his bike and driving angrily away.

The truly incredible aspect of this incident was the car driver's behavior. The punches must have been misaimed or feeble as the driver didn't really react other than to reflexively throw his hands up to shield himself. After the bike left, the car driver calmly turned on his left turn signal and proceeded to finish the turn he had started before stopping again at the right-hand curb about 5 meters away and picking up a female passenger who had been waiting for him outside Columbia Asia and who no doubt witnessed the incident. She got in and he drove away as if nothing at all had transpired!

It seemed that the car driver knew and accepted that the accident was his fault and made the conscious decision to allow himself to be subjected to the punches instead of reaching into his wallet to fork over 1 or 2 hundred thousand Vietnam dong in restitution to the bike driver. The fact that he didn't lock his car doors or make any attempt to leave the scene was remarkable.

On the one hand, Vietnamese rarely apologise for anything, but on the other they do seem willing to accept blame for incidents when they are clearly at fault.

On another topic I attended a Vietnamese engagement party yesterday with 2 friends who knew the families involved. It was a full-on Vietnamese event at a house down a narrow alley somewhere on the edges of district 7 that I would never be able to find again and I was the only foreigner there. There were only 2 or 3 people there whom I could speak any English with.  The party took place from about 11 AM to 2 PM on a Tuesday and most of the attendants had taken the day off and there were about 25-30 people there.

It all started as a civil enough affair with polite talk and tea drinking followed by the serving of a very nicely prepared and tasty lunch of hot pot, boiled chicken, and noodles. But then during the lunch I saw it, the thing I was fearing, the case of Heineken beer being brought out and glasses with ice being placed in front of all the adult male guests.

I've made reference in previous posts about drinking with Vietnamese and how much I dislike it. It's certainly not that I don't like drinking, as anyone who knows me can attest, but I don't like doing it the way the Vietnamese do it at social events and I especially don't like it if I know that I'll become a target because I'm a foreigner in their midst. The events over the next hour or so were tediously predictable.

I participated in all the toasts and glass clinking (một hai ba yo!!) and judiciously took moderate swallows of my beer after each even though there was no shortage of encouragement for me to bottoms up my glass after each. This is the part I dislike, the idea that you're supposed to pound down the beer whether or not that's what you want to do and that fact that you're watched and admonished if you don't. I also usually refrain from drinking while the sun's up as I just don't like it.

At another table next to mine I noticed the volume of chatter had ratcheted up noticeably and then saw they were knocking back not beer but some sort of wine or whiskey from a bottle. It was less than 5 minutes later that I felt the hand on my shoulder and looked up to see a grinning Vietnamese man whom I didn't know and who had said not a word to me prior holding 2 cups in his hand and offering one of them to me while I became the focus of attention.  So I had no choice but to throw down a small cup of this banana-based wine which actually wasn't bad tasting. I had to empty 2 or 3 more with another man before it finally stopped. Turns out it was the 2 fathers of the engaged couple who had wanted to do wine shots with me so I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand I was being treated in a special way but on the other I was just an object to them. A special object, like it or not, take it or leave it.

Later, one of the 2 fathers, clearly inebriated at that point, wanted to know how much money I make in a month and other details of my financial picture. This is also common in Vietnam. I simply declined to answer but have decided the next time it happens to first turn it around and ask how much my questioner makes and see how that goes. If he or she is fine with telling me then maybe I'll also be forthcoming. If not, then I'll respond with some English phrases that I know no one there will understand. BTW everyone all over the world knows Coca Cola, the $100 US bill, and the 'F' word so don't ever use it thinking they won't.

I managed to make it home only slightly buzzed but highly annoyed and vowing not to put myself in that position again. But of course I will because it's just part of life here. Maybe I should stick to only nighttime events and bring my own wine.

The engagement party at the initial pleasant stage of chit chat and tea drinking.

 

Tao Dan (Tao Đàn) Park on the border of districts 1 and 3 is always a pleasant place to escape from the bustle of Saigon. It's over a kilometer from the backpacker area so the usual tourist parasites are not found there.

The Ministry of Electricity

Ironically, over the past couple of months I've had to deal with a little more of the harshness of the Vietnamese system now that I live in a (relatively) expensive apartment. It's because I now pay, in addition to the usual monthly rent, 6 monthly bills that used to be included with renting a furnished room in a serviced building: parking, water, electricity, maid, cable TV, and internet. It makes me sometimes pine for the simplicity of paying one person a fixed amount each month and not not worrying about anything else.

For the most part, paying these other bills has not been an imposition as they are all payable in person in the lobby of the building each month. One has only to keep one's eyes on the notices posted in the elevators about when representatives from the various service providers will be present and to check one's lobby mailbox periodically for the bills.

I'm fairly organised about these things and haven't had any problems paying any of the bills with the notable exception of the electricity bill which the local power company which I will now refer to as  the Ministry of Electricty (MoE) began refusing payment for. That's right, they stopped accepting my payments!

It all began about 3 weeks after I moved in here with a knock on the door by 3 uniformed representatives of the MoE who motioned for me to follow them to the utility room down the hall and to gaze upon the brand new meter they had just installed and its reading of a string of half a dozen zeroes and to sign a form acknowledging my acceptance of its installation. One of the reps informed me that my electricity that month would be free because the previous meter was broken. Somehow I knew that wouldn't be the end of it.

Once you've been in Vietnam for a while you learn that those types of things rarely or never happen here.
Things seemed OK for about 2 months. I would receive the bill from the MoE and pay it in the lobby. I've only been paying about $6-7 US per month for power because of my infrequent use of the air conditioner and the fact that I've adapted to living without hot water and the low cost of power here. 1 kwh runs only 6 cents US at the lowest level and climbs modestly from there.

The living without hot water is a fact of life for many Vietnamese and many residences have only a water heater, often installed retroactively, for the shower and nothing else. This is also still true of many of the hotels in Vietnam.  I started taking cold showers just as a relief from the heat and humidity and while I still occasionally enjoy a hot shower when available, now find a cold shower welcomingly refreshing. Since moving into this apartment over 5 months ago I've never turned on the hot water heater even though it would give me central hot water. I've also found that washing dishes and shaving with hot water, while nice, is completely unnecessary.  The idea of life without hot water is probably a bit terrifying to most Westerners and it would have been to me too, but believe me, you can easily get used to it in Saigon. I never even give it a thought anymore.

Then one day I received a yellow notice from the MoE, all in Vietnamese, regarding a problem with my account and an unpaid balance that amounted to over 6 months of my typical electricity usage.  Well, it's not actually my account, but is in the name of the landlord. That's the way it's done here and I agreed to pay the balances beginning when I moved in.

My discussions with the receptionist regarding the matter got me nowhere except he seemed to indicate that I needn't worry too much about it. Additionally I received my monthly bill from the MoE that looked normal. The next time I attempted to pay the MoE rep in the lobby he gave me the little sideways wave of the hand accompanied by a "không được" ("no can do"). This gesture and the remark are 2 things about Vietnam I will not miss as I've seen and heard them more than enough times for this lifetime.  The receptionist could only tell me there was a problem with the bill and I needed to talk to my landlord about it. Another thing about living in Vietnam : never expect a clear honest explanation of any problem.

I continued to get delinquent account notices along with the threat of cutting off my power. "They wouldn't really do that", I thought to myself. After all, I've been dutifully paying (or at least trying!) all my bills since living here and how ridiculous would it be to cut off the power to a unit in this modern high-rise that bills itself as "Possibly the best address in Vietnam" (PTBAIVN).

Soon I found out why that was qualified with "Possibly". The power often goes off around Saigon and for
some this can mean many hours without power. It's usually an intended outage because the power demands exceed the grid. Ironically (again) at PTBAIVN there's a back-up power system and it's one of the really nice advantages to living here. When the power goes off the back-up system kicks in in less than 1 minute.  Except this time it didn't. I glanced at my door and could see the lights in the hallway were on. But not mine. "No f*&^@$ way" , I thought to myself. I opened my door to find the pink cut-off notice the MoE man had stuck there before proceeding to carry out his responsibility without bothering to even knock on my door first.

I stormed downstairs and the receptionist was able to get my power restored. Again no reasonable explanation was offered as to why the MoE had decided that I owed the large unpaid balance.  I'm just glad I was here when the power was cut for had I been traveling I would have come home to no power and a refrigerator full of rotten dairy products. Lovely.

I had already figured out what was most likely going on. I knew it was related to the MoE's broken meter and that someone there was either misinformed about what had happened or was simply attempting to extort money out of someone because of THEIR broken meter.


The PTBAIVN receptionist did contact my landlord for me and she promised to try to straighten the matter out.

About a week later the landlord called to say she was dropping by. She had in fact visited the MoE and had obtained the power usage records for the previous year for my unit. She showed me the readings from before I moved in and they were 3-4 times what the readings were after I had moved it. Apparently the previous tenant couldn't live without hot water and air conditioning to the degree I could! Between the 2 starkly different sets of numbers were 2 zeroes indicating the 2 months during which the MoE's meter was broken.

The first thing the landlord tried to do was tell me that my power usage was higher than what the meter readings were and that I simply owed more! I wasn't too happy with this explanation for the many obvious reasons and informed her that I would not be paying the MoE any extra than what the meter said I owed. She finally called the MoE and confirmed to me what I had been suspecting : the MoE had decided that it was going to collect for the 2 months during which their meter was broken and they had arrived at the unpaid balance by extrapolating the power usage in the months leading up to the broken meter. They no doubt thought of themselves as exceedingly clever for doing this. The truth is that the MoE really lost almost nothing due to their broken meter because the unit was unoccupied for most of that time but to them it was really simple : someone pays the balance we dreamed up or we cut the power.

In the US and most other first world nations, if a business's meter is broken, tough crap, the business doesn't collect any revenue. And when it comes to services that are essential such as electricity there are procedures and protections in place for the consumer. None of that exists here at least not to my knowledge.

I believe the landlord finally straightened the matter out but it left a really bad taste in my mouth.  No one gave a damn about the fact that I was living here when the MoE cut the power and it was only by pushing back hard that I got the landlord to go to bat for me to get the MoE off my back.

There was later an issue with the payment of the service charge for my apartment and this time it was the staff of PTBAIVN that began sending me notices that they were going to (can you guess it?) cut off all the services to my apartment! This culminated in 2 of them knocking on my door (at least they had the courage and decency to do that) and telling me I needed to contact my landlord to resolve the matter. The landlord had already informed me that she had paid the service charge and being really tired of being the victimised go-between, I told the PTBAIVN lady to wait while I called the landlord on my phone and handed it to her.  After a brief conversation it was apparently resolved.

This month has been peaceful so far but can it last?  Is this really PTBAIVN?

On another note, it's commonly known throughout southeast Asia that many of the local women are interested in foreign men only for the upgrade in lifestyle it might afford them (and their family, and their village....). While this is certainly true there are also many exceptions.  But what I had not heard of was what do foreign women deal with if they become involved with a local man? Of course this a far rarer occurrence than the converse (no, I won't open that can of worms any further), but I recently met a European woman who works here as an airline pilot who has been involved in a tortuous relationship with a Vietnamese man for far longer than she would like to admit. And guess what? He constantly hits her up for money for both himself and his family! And she's been stupid enough to fork it over and not a small amount either. Let's just say that before he hooked up with a foreign woman, there was no property in the Vietnamese man's family, but now they are landed.  The woman is very nice, but honestly she doesn't have the looks that will get her many prospects and by her own admission she's very needy and keeps the relationship going even though she knows it's not healthy for her in the long term.  It sounds depressingly familiar.

One nice effect of the rain is that it clears the air. After a good storm I can see Núi Ba đen (black lady mountain) from my window over 100 km away.

Just a Rub Please

One of the really nice services on offer around Saigon and all over southeast Asia is body massage. There are many establishments in Saigon's Pham Ngu Lao area offering massage, many of them with 'salon' or 'spa' in their names, some of them not. These types of businesses operate under a cloud of suspicion that they are actually something else and that perhaps their names should include words like 'brothel' or 'cathouse'. All I can say is that this suspicion is not without merit. In other countries such as Thailand a massage parlor is often nothing more than a front for a brothel. To be fair I should add that one can find the same thing in the more developed world and the US has no shortage of massage parlors that are understood to offer a wide range of services.

I haven't seen quite the same thing in Vietnam and maybe that's because I simply don't know where to look, but in any case it's a bit more subdued here than in some other countries and the extent of extra services I've heard of here only goes to what's commonly known as the 'happy ending' which involves the masseuse offering to massage her male client in that special place.
There are many massage businesses around Saigon and in the Pham Ngu Lao area that operate on the happy ending business model. If you're a neophyte you may unwittingly find yourself lying on a massage table 20 or 30 minutes into what you thought was going to be a 60 minute massage being pressured by some combination of broken-English euphemisms and unambiguous hand signals to avail yourself of the masseuse's special service. If this is what you came there for, no problem. If it's not, well you probably wasted your money. This is because those businesses that operate under this model depend on willing customers to make it work and expect customers to participate. If the original quoted price for your 1-hour massage seemed too good to be true it's because it was and it was nothing more that a loss leader to get you to the point of lying almost naked on a table in a room with a masseuse pressuring you to give in and let her earn some extra money while helping you to relax. The too-low price is the easiest way to spot an extra services massage parlor. Currently around Pham Ngu Lao, any price under 120,000 vnd for a 1-hour massage is most likely a loss leader designed to extract more money from clients after the massage has started. For me and others I've talked to on the subject the biggest drawback to this type of business is the massage itself. It's lousy and it's lousy simply because that's not the business they're actually in and if you refuse to buy the service they really want to sell you, don't expect either the lackluster massage you've had or the lukewarm attitude you've seen up to that point to improve any.

A friend of a friend back in the Bay Area told me of an amusing experience he had somewhere in southeast Asia when he politely declined the offer of a happy ending mid-way through a massage. The masseuse abruptly announced to him 'massag-ee over!'. Talk about a reality check!

I still vividly remember my first massage in Vietnam. It was on my first trip here in December 2008 and I was traveling up north near Ha Long Bay (Vịnh Hạ Long) with a friend from the States and we had booked a package tour that had us in a 5-star luxurious resort on the last night. The place was plush. Of course there was a spa there offering massage and we decided to try it out. They gave us pyjama-like clothes to wear and we each went off to our separate rooms for the massage. My Vietnamese masseuse came in and I quickly learned she didn't speak a word of English. At that time I could speak (literally) a word or 2 of Vietnamese so not a lot of conversation took place but that didn't matter. She proceeded to give me an incredibly relaxing and skillful massage that went the full advertised 60 minutes. And she was also very cute and friendly so I had absolutely no complaints. The price for this 1-hour stellar massage by a cute skilled masseuse at a 5-star resort? It was $9 US and I tipped her $3 so it set me back $12. The same massage in the US would have run about $70 and would have actually lasted only 45-50 minutes.

So the bottom line is that unless the happy ending is what you want, stay away from massage businesses that operate on the expectation that you do and the best way to know whether that's the business a massage shop is in is by the quoted price for a massage. The general appearance of the staff and the place of business are also good clues and the usual stereotypes apply here. If the staff are well-dressed in actual uniforms as opposed to tank tops and shorts and the business is on a main street and not down an alley and they also offer other beauty and spa services, especially to mixed clientele, it's probably a legitimate massage shop.

Today in the Pham Ngu Lao area a good 1-hour massage can be had for 120,000 vnd or about $5.75 US. At this price it will not be in a private room, but in a large room with around 6 massage tables side by side serving other customers. Initially I didn't like the idea of being in a shared space like this, but I've found that once the massage starts I become pretty much oblivious to what's going on around me. Other than when other customers come and go I don't really feel at all disturbed. If you want more privacy you can always go to the higher priced salons around the high-end hotel area near the Opera House and pay $15-$20 US for 1 hour which is still a really good price. I have been a loyal and almost-weekly customer of 1 particular massage shop in the Pham Ngu Lao area for over a year. The service there is really good and the staff turnover is low. It's on Do Quang Dau (Ðỗ Quang Ðẩu) street that connects Pham Ngu Lao (Phạm Ngũ Lão) and Bui Vien (Bùi Viện) streets and I believe the name is the Hoang Thi Spa. The staff all wear maroon colored dress uniforms and sometimes they can be seen out walking the area handing out spa flyers. The price for a 1-hour Vietnamese body massage is 120,000 vnd and a tip should always be given as the staff aren't paid much. I will usually tip 100,000 vnd as I've become sort of a regular and am always treated well and many of the staff know me and are friendly to me. Even including my high tip the 1-hour massage only costs about $11 US.

A couple of times when I tried other massage shops the masseuse pulled out a sheet of paper when it was time to tip her that had names and comments from alleged former customers along with very high tip amounts on the order of 100,000 vnd and higher. I was then asked to write my name and comments and of course my tip amount below the others. This was just a tactic to pressure me into giving a high tip while documenting it to be used for added pressure on the next customer. I just politely declined to write anything on the paper and then tipped what I felt like, more like 50,000 vnd. The fact that the comment sheet was used to pressure me put me in a negative disposition. There is no such practice at the Relax Spa.

On one of my many trips to Nha Trang, I decided to try a massage at a new high-end spa that targeted the Russian tourist market that has become more prevalent in Nha Trang and Mui Ne. Both of these beach resort towns have becone very popular with Russians in the last few years to the extent that many businesses now have signs in Russian only. The last time I was in Nha Trang a woman started asking me a question in Russian until I smiled and shook my head. She then just stopped and made no attempt to speak English. I don't remember the name of the spa, but it's on one of the main streets 2 blocks off and parallel to the beach, Nguyễn Thiên Thuật I believe. It looks very nice on the outside and the price for a 1-hour massage was around 450,000 vnd at that time. They gave me the massage pyjamas and a locker and a cup of tea and I sat in the nicely appointed lounge amid the sounds of soothing music and trickling water before being taken upstairs to a nice new large private massage room. The massage itself was just ok and they employed the tactic commonly used in the US of giving a massage of about 50 minutes and calling it an hour. They had a policy of no tipping so at least I didn't have to worry about that, but I wasn't satisfied with the experience at all. When it comes to massage I've come to prefer substance over style.

Who left the roof open?! One of the buildings just below my window was undergoing some renovation and they had installed a roof that didn't have what it takes to withstand the high swirling winds that are so common in the rainy season. The problem was quickly fixed and all seems ok now.


Another rainy Saigon night. This was taken at the corner of Pasteur and Lê Lợi streets across from the Saigon Centre shopping center.

Club a Dub Dubbin'

I was in Nha Trang about 1 1/2 years ago at an open-air cafe enjoying a coffee and looked over to my left at a table about 20 feet away where 3 Vietnamese women were seated. Of the 2 who were facing in my direction, one was of the wannabe starlet siren type, early 20's, cute, wearing designer, or more likely cheap imitation designer sunglasses and a sundress and the other was older, probably early or mid-30's and okay looking. I detected a motion from their direction and glanced again at The Siren and it seemed she was smiling at me and giving me a small wave of her hand. My male by-pass circuitry immediately kicked in and I became instantly interested. You know the male by-pass circuitry, the pathways in the male brain that route impulses safely away from the accumulated knowledge and experiences of life and the basic logic that might call into question the idea that cute women 25+ years your junior are attracted to you simply because of who you are. Yeah, that circuitry, that sometimes pulls us out of the slow numbing drumbeat of our day-to-day existence and serves as the springboard for a few memories and stories possibly worth retelling. Anyway, it had kicked in and I'm sure I smiled back like an idiot and after The Siren then motioned for me to join them at their table I was on my way over.

I found out that both The Siren and the older woman worked at a bar around the corner from where we were sitting and I was invited to drop by that evening to say hello. The Siren was 20 years old. I exchanged telephone numbers with both of them.

In Vietnam people are freer with handing out their phone numbers than in the USA. I'm not sure why this is, but there seems to be less of a problem here with harassment and stalking type behaviors than in the US. I believe this gets all the way back to how important it is for Vietnamese, and Southeast Asians in general, to keep 'face' or what Westerners would think of as reputation. But it differs from the Western idea of reputation in that it's stricter and narrower and seems to be complied with by about 100% of the population. The obsession with face keeps people pretty much in line as far as doing anything, especially in a social sense, that other people might view unfavorably.

Another phenomenon that I believe is due to the same strict social protocols observed here is that when a sidewalk has been repaired and there's fresh cement exposed to any and all passers-by, no one etches their initials or anything else into it. In the USA, guards have to be posted until the cement sufficiently dries to prevent it from becoming covered in tags and other random graffiti.

There are 2 occasions I've regretted giving out my phone number in Vietnam because I was harassed. One of them was a young man who got the idea that I was working as a lecturer at one of the better universities in Saigon and thought I could somehow help him get admitted there. Even if both of those had been true, the fact that he harassed me about it would have precluded me from ever helping him in any way. He eventually got a clue and stopped. The other was a bizarre woman who was desperate for a friend, boyfriend, husband, or maybe anyone who would pay any attention to her at all. Unfortunately there was really nothing attractive about her and I don't what I was (or wasn't) thinking when I gave her my number. When I realised she was not going to stop SMS'ing me, I succumbed to my dark side and started playing along with her just for fun. I was later able to convince her that I had changed my number and that she should IM me at a special Yahoo account I set up for her. It worked. The poor woman was so dense she never even bothered to check that my number was still working!

Back to Nha Trang. Later that afternoon I was relaxing in my hotel room and got a message from the older woman. She wanted to know if she could come to my hotel and 'visit' me! I let her know in no uncertain terms that I wasn't interested in that. Had the message been from The Siren, hmm I don't know, but it wasn't from The Siren so it doesn't matter.

I did drop by their bar that night. The older woman saw me and kept her distance, possibly a little embarrassed by what had happened. That was fine with me. Both she and The Siren were members of the staff, mostly serving food and drinks to the half dozen or so patrons. The Siren smiled and said hello but otherwise seemed a bit aloof. Another server sat down at my table and I asked about The Siren. 'Oh, Thanh, she's the owner's girlfriend', I was informed. The owner was an older (ok, maybe about my age) fellow American.

After about 10 minutes, The Siren stopped by my table and asked me to step outside. This was so that the owner wouldn't see her chatting with someone else of course. She informed me that she was getting off early and that I should meet her at another bar by the beach in 30 minutes. I agreed. I was just looking for something to do that night.

She was there as promised and informed me we were going somewhere else and needed to get a taxi. The tone was now set. She would tell me what we were doing. I didn't mind since I was up for something different from the tourist area near the beach at Nha Trang and anything was fine with me.

After catching a taxi she talked briefly in Vietnamese with the driver and after driving a short distance we stopped to pick up another Vietnamese girl accompanied by a tall white foreigner. She was The Siren's friend and he, a Brit, was her friend. After about 10 minutes we arrived at a well-lit nightclub away from the beach, a place I had not been to. Everyone quickly piled out of the taxi leaving me to pay the fare with no assistance. No big deal as it wasn't expensive and I was enjoying myself so I thought nothing of it. Someone else will get the next fare I thought to myself.

As we entered the club I was assaulted by the pounding music being blared from the man-size speakers positioned all around the place. It was so loud that I could feel the sound in my torso and I believe it was actually interfering with my heartbeat rhythm.

This was my first time in a Vietnamese nightclub. We were shown to a table and immediately surrounded by at least 4 staff whose job it was to cater to anything we needed. In addition to bringing food and drinks, they would light cigarettes, empty ashtrays that had even a trace of ash in them, refill any glass that you had so much as taken a small sip from, constantly replace the ice in your beer glass, and wipe off even a mere drop of spilled drink or condensation from your tabletop.

My companions ordered a food plate and we all ordered beer. The Siren and I danced for a while while the other 2 stayed at the table eating and drinking. I didn't talk to them at all other than the initial 'Hi, nice to meet you' and it was too loud in the place to do much more than scream at someone right beside you and hope you were heard.

After an hour or so The Siren told me that they were all ready to leave and wanted to go to another club. When the bill was brought to the table, the other 2 simply got up and left. I'm not kidding, they stuck me with the bill and offered to contribute not 1 Vietnamese dong! It wasn't too outrageous, around $20-$25 USD, but the attentive and solicitous staff all loitered around the table waiting for their tips and I was the only one handing out any money. So now another tone had been set, one that I wasn't so agreeable about.

I've mentioned it before, but it deserves another. In Southeast Asia, it's not just the locals who'll cheat you it's also the foreigners. You really have to watch it. A lot of foreigners who choose to spend time here are not from the cream of whatever society they came from and one shouldn't make the mistake of thinking another English-speaking foreigner that you don't know well is going to treat you with any sort of fairness.

The other 2 jumped into their own taxi outside the club (hmmm, I wonder why?) and The Siren and I got into our own. I told her I wanted to go back to the beach area and didn't want to go to another club. My desire to explore new parts of Nha Trang had been severely tempered by the company I was keeping.

I got out at the beach, after paying the full fare again of course, and said goodbye to The Siren who was on her way to meet some other friends at another bar or club. I comforted myself with the thought that at least I wasn't stupid/desperate enough to have her as my girlfriend and that I had had a fairly interesting night.

I heard from The Siren again the next day, but didn't reply. Been there done that.

Interestingly I ran into the Brit 2 nights later sitting at a sidewalk table by himself having a beer. I walked up and greeted him and he was noticeably uncomfortable. Nevertheless he invited me to sit down and then mumbled some insincere apology about being a bit short on funds the other night. It turned out he was living in Nha Trang working at a dive shop. I figured he might at least offer to buy me a beer. Dream on. He had probably gone native after living there for a while and considered tourists fair game for fleecing.

I didn't venture inside another nightclub until last week. Not far from where I live in Saigon there's a club that I often drive by when returning home at night and it often looks rather lively. Its name is Lush and I had heard and read about it before. I hadn't had any real desire to go there as it's obviously tailored to the young hip crowd and it oozes attitude with the phalanx of doormen and the rope guarding the entrance.

A friend had told me that she's been there a few times and as I was chatting with her asked her kiddingly if she's been to Lush recently. 'Wanna go there tonight?', was her reply. 'Tuesday is ladies' night', she added. 'What the hell?' I thought. At least I could say I had been and experienced it and I had plenty of time on my hands.

After arriving by cab and entering Lush I found out that ladies' night is really good for 2 reasons. First, women get in free and get free drinks which meant, in stark contrast to my first experience in a Vietnamese nightclub, I only had to pay for myself, and secondly, the place is crawling with young, attractive, well-dressed members of the fairer sex. I wasn't looking to meet any other women since I considered my companion sort of as my date even though we've always just been friends and maybe I liked not being under that sort of pressure.

I first had a passion fruit mojito that I have to say was done quite well. The mojito is a popular drink in Saigon these days and there's plenty of fresh mint available here to do it right. The music was very good and the 2 DJ's made sure there was never even a hint of a pause in the beat the entire time we were there. We danced for a good long time. There's not much of a dance floor at Lush except for a very small space in front of the DJ's about 5 feet wide so most people just find a place around one of the bars or the upstairs railing to move around in.

Lush is a good scene with a mix of foreigners (about 30-40%) and well-heeled Vietnamese. I was feeling a bit self-conscious pulling out my 'dumb' phone to check the time in the midst of all the iPhones and other smart phones being openly brandished around me. I guess I'll have to give in and get myself one. At some point between 1 and 2 AM I looked down from the upstairs section on the bar below and saw that one of the plaid skirt clad Vietnamese bar girls was being held down by some of her co-workers while her mouth was held open and an undetermined spirit from one of the bar bottles was being liberally poured in. Not too long after this, at the same downstairs bar, some of the other bar girls began jumping up on the bar and dancing in a very non-traditional way. Well, it was traditional but only in a way that goes back to the beginnings of the propagation of our species if you get my drift. The blouses had begun creeping up off the plaid skirts to expose their smooth lithe swaying bellies and bar bottles were being tipped skyward to allow the free flow of various bar libations through their expectant parted lips. Not that I found any of this interesting in the least.

I made it home a little before 3 AM. There was a time in my life about 2 decades ago when that wasn't such an unusual hour for me to come creeping back home, but since then it's been a rather rare occurrence and I don't plan on changing that at this point. I had a good time and am glad I went to Lush and I recommend it, expecially on Tuesday Ladies' Nights, for those who want a good dance club experience in Saigon. My cover charge was 100,000 vnd (about $4.90 US) and drinks were a little less than that so it wasn't ridiculously expensive and there aren't many places like Lush in Vietnam.

Gardens near the Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh. I realise I need to get out with my camera and start getting some new photos. I've gotten out of the habit of being a camera-toting tourist.

Money Matters and Motherly Maids

I've posted before on these 2 topics, but now have fresh experiences on both.

First, this thing about the money. As I wrote previously, in Vietnam the physical condition of cash is important as heavily worn, torn, or chipped cash is not (knowingly) accepted by anyone. I could understand this when it came to foreign currency since damaged currency must be returned to its country of origin to be exchanged and that can be problematic when that's thousands of miles away. But what has always annoyed me is that in Vietnam, even the local Vietnam dong (vnd) currency is not accepted when damaged. In the US and most other countries that I know of, banks will freely accept and exchange damaged currency, so I was really taken aback when confronted with this issue in Vietnam and I chalked it up to a silly collective attitude among the Vietnamese. Along with motorbikes using the sidewalks as an extra traffic lane, this is one of my 2 big pet peeves about Vietnam.

Well, I have to rescind that thought because it's not the fault of the Vietnamese, but their banks, and probably some government policy that directs the banks. It turns out that banks will not freely accept and exchange damaged currency in Vietnam but instead charge about a 4% fee and ask the bearer of the damaged currency to fill out a form in order to try to determine how it got damaged, so it's no wonder merchants and others don't want to accept currency that carries an inherent penalty on its face value. I can think of all sorts of pejoratives to ascribe to such a policy, but I'll just say it seems a bit looney to me.

A result of this bank policy is the Vietnamese playing a perpetual game of hot potato with damaged currency by trying to sneakily pass it on to someone else. I'm certain that foreigners are a common target for damaged currency since those fresh off the plane have no idea about it. I've mentioned that even the official foreign exchange counters will hand out damaged currency as it's happened to me at least 3 times. Now I not only count the vnd currency I've just received but also inspect it all for damage. The counters are good about exchanging any currency you don't want, but you have to spot it yourself. So far I've only caught one damaged note at an exchange counter, but I received 2 or 3 before I started checking it.

On one occasion I received a chipped 500,000 vnd ($24 US) note and didn't notice until I had left the counter. I decided I would eat at a restaurant and then act as if I didn't have any other currency and could only pay with that and nothing else to see how far they would push it. The answer: really far. They took the note that was inside a closed booklet, but it was only a few seconds before they brought it back pointing to the chip on the top and shaking their heads. I said it was the only currency I had and they said sorry, we can't take it. They actually were fine with me leaving the restaurant to get undamaged currency and returning to pay later! I was amazed. I was about 1 km from the currency exchange counter where I had received the note earlier and decided to walk back there and try to exchange it. The counter took it back and exchanged it no questions asked. So I imagine anyone could take any damaged currency to an exchange counter and possibly get it exchanged. So about 25 minutes later I returned to the restaurant and paid up.

On another occasion I came into possession of a 100,000 vnd ($4.85 US) note that was worn on one side down to the bare plastic. The usual green coloring and portrait of Uncle Ho were worn off and clear plastic was exposed. I actually wasn't sure if this note would be considered damaged or not as there were no chips or tears. The house I was living in at the time shared drinking water and we ordered when there were no full bottles left in the lobby. Myself and another housemate took turns ordering and it was my turn. As an aside, the ordering had to be done over the telephone in Vietnamese and I felt such elation when I had mastered the simple sentences well enough to pull it off! That day I ordered 3 bottles for a total of 90,000 vnd. I thought, hey, I'll give the guy this damaged 100,000 vnd note and let him keep the 10,000 vnd as a tip and maybe he'll be ok with that. I handed the note to him with the worn side down so he didn't notice and he thanked me and took off on his motorbike. Well, that wasn't so bad I thought to myself.

About 2 hours later it was so bad! I heard a Vietnamese man yelling and banging on the front door to the house and looked out over my balcony to see the water delivery man from earlier banging on the door and trying to peer in through the grating. I knew immediately what it was about and was truly aghast. He had made a round trip to the warehouse and back, a distance of over 10 km, and was now back making a scene in the alleyway. I went down and could see the 100,000 vnd note in his hand and tried to calm him and tell him I would replace it for him. He spoke not a work of English and my Vietnamese wasn't getting through and it got a bit testy when I tried to tell him I needed to shut the front door to go get the replacement. Finally a student came over and translated for him and he backed off so I could shut the door. Feeling annoyed at the circumstances, I only gave him the 90,000 vnd originally owed for the 3 bottles of drinking water. He gave me a look and left. I imagine it was his boss who sent him back to return the damaged note, so I shouldn't have taken back his tip, but I was really annoyed.

I was later able to pass the damaged note at a gasoline station and this is a good way in general to do it. The gasoline stations in Vietnam are all serviced and you hand the attendant the money to pay for your gasoline. The attendants are usually quite busy and have a huge handful of cash and don't usually take the time to inspect what you hand them. It's even a little easier after dark.

I think if the banks would do away with the fee and form for damaged currency, the GDP of Vietnam would immediately bump up a fraction.

Before I wrote about one of the hotel maids who arranged fruit in my refrigerator and even peeled, cut, and handed it to me to eat.

Now I live in an unserviced apartment, meaning I have to take care of everything myself. This is ok as I like my independence, but I have to admit I miss having the maid service included in the rent. At my previous residence she even changed the sheets. Now I use the same maid from my previous residence. I hired her because I thought she did a good job. She does do a good job, but she is starting to become a bit motherly. A Vietnamese friend explained that this is common here as a maid will start to think of a client as part of her extended family. This maid started by buying me a book on Vietnamese grammar so that I could form better sentences when talking with her. First, I really don't want to talk to her beyond confirming whether she'll be showing up or not, and second, it would actually help her a lot if she tried to learn some English, something she seems not at all interested in doing. She sends me long SMS messages, all in Vietnamese, and begins blabbing at me as soon as I open the door to let her in to clean. I usually can understand the gist of the SMS messages, but don't usually respond as to not encourage any more. After letting her in I'll nod and smile and say a few words and hustle out the door as quickly as possible. This week she sent me another SMS which I could understand very well. It said 'You shouldn't drink so much soda because it's not good for your health. Where I live there are many people who drink too much soda who are in the hospital.' First, I drink Orangina which isn't really soda so much as sparkling orange juice. She has noticed the ample supply of it in my refrigerator. And second, I only want her as a maid, not a mother! Well, sometimes the extended family just pulls you in. I guess I shouldn't complain.

The all-seeing eye inside the Cao Dai (cao đài) temple in Tay Ninh (Tây Ninh). Photographs are only allowed during the Tet (Tết) new year and I was lucky enough to be there then.

Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain

When I first left for Vietnam I didn't know quite what to expect as far as the rainy season was concerned. Not knowing any better I went to REI and spent a significant amount of money on a pair of rain pants, imagining myself slogging through sheets of falling rain and swirling run-off up to my knees.

What I didn't think about was how the 90 million or so Vietnamese deal with the rainy season and the fact that there might be an easier way than suiting up for battle with the weather. I guess one could say my preparation was typically American or Western, that of facing off with Mother Nature by garnering all the available resources and digging in my heels for a victory or at least a contentious stand-off.

There are no REI's in Vietnam yet and even if there were very few Vietnamese could or would shop there. However, in the still somewhat new Crescent Mall in District 7, there is a Coleman store selling the usual array of outdoor and camping gear. I've never camped in Vietnam and I'm not sure where the Vietnamese would do so, but there are a few national parks scattered around mostly in the central regions, but I've read that overnight camping of the backpacking variety isn't allowed in them. The wide open spaces and unspoiled natural beauty of the American west is something that just doesn't exist here and it's something that I truly miss. I always knew that it was a special gift to spend time in such a place and coming here only reinforces the point. The idea of putting on a backpack and hiking out into the woods to sleep in a tent doesn't evoke the same romantic notions of freedom here as it does elsewhere and that's for a number of reasons. First, most people here dream of living in a nicer and bigger house than they currently have so sleeping in a tent is the antithesis of that. Then there's the social stigma that would go along with that. Conformity and fitting in with the rest of society carry a higher priority here than in the west so it's more difficult to strike out on one's own even if one wants to because there's a social price to be paid for daring to do that. Finally, there's the less friendly conditions for camping with the tropical flora, fauna, and weather. I do see tents in use in Vietnam, but it's always in a crowded public park or at a beach and just for sun protection or for the kids to play in.

I should pop into the Coleman store one day and enquire about the nature of their sales.

After arriving here I soon discovered the way 95+% of Vietnamese deal with rain is to throw on a plastic rain poncho. These ponchos, or raincoats if you like, come in various levels of quality from the cheap flimsy type that are often treated as disposable to heavier longer-lasting types. At the first sign of rain, which during the rainy season from April to September is at least once daily, roadside vendors break out their raincoats for sale and often do a brisk business as so many motorbike riders invariably get caught out when the weather turns as quickly as it so often does here.

In addition to the use of the plastic raincoats most Vietnamese, especially if they're motorbike riders, dress appropriately for rainy weather so that it really doesn't matter too much if they get soaked. The most important aspect of this attire is the shoes. The standard type of footwear in Vietnam among the motorbike class is the cheap plastic sandal which can be freely submerged in water without affecting the wearer's temperament in the slightest other than perhaps being thought of as a free foot bath.

The rainy weather isn't too much of a problem as long as one isn't forced to ride a motorbike while wearing nicer attire, especially nice shoes. If this isn't the case however the rain suddenly becomes problematic. I discovered this recently when I was out on my motorbike wearing a pair of nice leather shoes with a backpack full of groceries I had just purchased and was caught in a torrential downpour.

For those living in Vietnam who are not members of the motorbike class, the rain doesn't matter so much other than possibly being a slight inconvenience or annoyance. The non-member motorbike class members I'm referring to are those above the class, but it may apply somewhat to those below. I'd say the motorbike class includes about 95% of the population. Those below the motorbike class are mostly students who will soon become members of the class and there are a few so poor they can't afford to ride a motorbike, but these are very few in number. But these people wither walk or travel by bicycle both modes being better during rainstorms in my opinion. Those above the motorbike class are wealthy enough to own a private car or hire one or use taxis.

There are also foreigners living and working in Vietnam who have transportation provided by their companies usually in the form of a van for commuting to work. I've met some Koreans who are here working for Korean or Japanese companies and one who works for a Japanese company told me he's forbidden by company policy to drive a motorbike while he's in their employ here. I'm sure this comes down to some sort of insurance issue.

So when I got caught in the deluge I quickly became aware of a number of unsavory aspects to riding a motorbike in the rain. The first bit of information that becomes glaringly soakingly obvious is that the rain ponchos do only a fair job of keeping one dry. First, they only cover from the head down to around the ankles, leaving the feet and shoes completely exposed. Secondly, if the rain is heavy enough or you've been in it long enough, it starts to leak down into the poncho from the neck area unless you've figured out a way to seal the neckline off.

The third problem is the worst one. It's really not so bad getting rained on as it can be refreshing and cleansing for the motorbike if not also for the rider. But the main problem isn't the falling rain, it's the fallen rain.

Good drainage systems are one of those things that you'll likely never even think about until you see the distasteful effects of poor ones. Vietnam is a country that suffers from generally poor infrastructure, even though there have been monumental improvements in the last few decades, and is a country that really needs good drainage systems for its roads but unfortunately doesn't have them yet except in a few newly developed areas. To my very unpleasant surprise I've discovered since moving into the fairly new high-rise bulding I now live in that the streets in front of and approaching the building transform into deep foul-looking ponds and sluggish streams under a heavy downpour. If you're riding a motorbike on these streets, just forget having feet and shoes that are not completely water-logged due to the splashing up of this standing run-off. Even if you're so careful as to not splash it up on yourself, any number of fellow motorbike and vehicle drivers will take care of that for you as they roar by between sheets of flying run-off out that come cascading down on all in their wake. You will not be spared.

In addition to getting soaked there is also a sanitation aspect to the air borne run-off. The collected run-off in the streets here is, in a word, nasty, as of course it would be anywhere. I prefer not to dwell on what could be discovered by a too-close scrutiny of it, but when arriving home after a motorbike ride in the rain in Saigon, the first order of business is to strip down and go straight for the shower.

A teacher friend told me the only way he can commute by motorbike to work here during the rainy season is by wearing a full rain suit along with a pair of plastic sandals while keeping his work shoes in his backpack. So maybe my original purchase of the quality rain pants wasn't such a foolish one after all.

My own leather shoes are now sitting by the window at the start of what will probably be a 3-day drying out period during which I am avoiding touching them.

From an aesthetic point of view there are, however, at least two inspiring phenomena during the rainy season and they're both to be found in the sky, specifically the clouds and lightning one sees before and during the storms. The cloud formations here, even when the weather is nice, are truly amazing. High, billowing, majestic, white formations towering up into the bright blue air that remind one that there is still natural beauty here in this sprawling urban landscape. The lightning flashes are like none I've ever seen and can only be described as spectacular as they crackle and flash across the darkened sky from horizon to horizon like glowing yellow spider webs.

Ah, the romance of the rain!

I noticed my neighbor below regularly takes afternoon runs on his cramped terrace. I zoomed in on him for this shot. While showing us all what a little adaptability can accomplish, I did a rough calculation and figured a mile would be north of 200 laps!

There's Wine in Them Thar Stores!

It's probably not news to many that there are monumental changes taking place in Vietnam and Southeast Asia these days. In the 3 1/2 years that have elapsed since I first set foot in Vietnam, just the changes I've seen are breathtaking, but only when put into that perspective from 3 1/2 years ago. Like the proverbial frog in heating water, when you're here in the middle of it, you can easily forget the scale of it all.

Many infrastructure changes are taking place in Saigon other than the proliferation of high-rise buidlings. One is the recent opening of the Thu Thiem (Thủ Thiêm) tunnel that routes traffic underneath the Saigon River and connects districts 1 and 2, a journey that previously could only be made by ferry. Unlike some other similar bridge and tunnel projects, this tunnel was sorely needed and has been heavily used since opening day. Like many road infrastructure projects in Vietnam, cars, buses, trucks, etc. must pay a toll but 2-wheeled vehicles do not. A small gesture towards addressing the problem of growing inequality here.

While there are obvious changes taking place in the skylines and on the roads of cities like Saigon the equivalents are taking place in homes and businesses that are not as obvious to a casual observer.

Any time there is economic growth, the rewards are not evenly distributed and here the problem seems especially acute. I believe the growing inequality is magnified as a result of the rapidity of the huge disparity that is being closed between Vietnam and the more developed world and the fact that so few Vietnamese were in a position to individually prosper from it while at the same time the government was not in a position to effectively moderate the effects of it. There's probably some economic equation somewhere (like in a basic economics book?!) that correlates economic and inequality growth rates as the two seem to always go together and there doesn't seem to be any way to prevent that. There's an irony in that the system in place in Vietnam before it began opening its economy helped create the situation in which only a very few Vietnamese would be properly positioned to prosper from the change. In other words the previous sytem that championed social equality has resulted in facilitating just the opposite.
My anecdotal evidence, however, tells me that the Vietnamese middle class is growing, and quickly. One change I've noticed is the make-up of the clientele of the nice coffee shops around Saigon that I used to feel were more like private foreigners' clubs. Often when I walk into a Highlands Coffee nowadays, there are no seats open and the customers are almost all Vietanamese and they all appear have their laptops or smartphones out. Hell, I don't even have a smartphone!

Other more official data point to the burgeoning wealth of Vietnamese citizens such as the increasing number of private vehicles regardless of the exhorbitant cost due to the high import tariffs imposed on such goods. While I've never investigated the prices of cars here, I've been told by enough credible people that the price of a vehicle in Vietnam will run 2-3 times that in the USA. I once asked someone about the Bentleys and Rolls Royces that there seem to be a significant number of around Saigon and was told it would cost in the neighborhood of $500,000 US to purchase one here. Some segment of the extremely wealthy Vietnamese population seems to have a disturbing fondness for these vehicles. It seems wrong that anyone would drive a car so expensive in a country where the average annual income is somewhere in the low single digit thousands of USD, but I know that's a matter of opinion. It also says something about myself that I can feel that way about one person's lifestyle while not questioning my own. But there is more to it which is that society has a collective tolerance for inequality, both in its magnitude and the perceived causes behind it. When this tolerance is breached, big problems can result for the status quo so it's not something to be trivialized or dismissed.

Anyway, there are many nice aspects to the improving economic situation here for those with a little money to take advantage of them. One of them is the wider availability of quality products at reasonable prices and one of those that I'm especially fond of is good wine. One can now walk into any supermarket, and there are more and more of those, and find a fairly good selection of imported wines for sale. Sorry to say, but here in Vietnam good wine is only the imported stuff. There is a wine region in Da Lat (đà Lạt) and while it' s inexpensive I'm not of the mind that it's even a good value. That's my opinion but I've met others who disagree.

But the good news is that I can now find decent wines from regions like Bordeaux for around $10 US per bottle. Life just got immensely better!

I also moved into a new apartment this week. My life has sort of been on hold since I arrived here in December 2010. I've mentioned that the reason I came back here then was because of a Vietnamese woman that I met and I've also mentioned that it's been long over. At some point I'll do a blog post about that whole experience when I'm at a point where I can be reasonable and somewhat objective about it. Soon, very soon.

I've lived in 2 different places since coming back here, both just rented rooms and while they were both OK, I was doing it with the thought that I might need to find a house to rent at some point and that living in a rented room was only temporary. Yes, that's what I was thinking, renting a house big enough for, you know, a few people. Well, I'm over all that now and decided to try living in one of the new high-rises that have sprouted up in the last few years. I'm now on the 16th floor of one and have a nice view of downtown Saigon and the Saigon River. The first 1 or 2 days I felt completely isolated and lost, but now I'm starting to really like it. A really nice feature is that it's quiet, something hard to find in this city. I'll log a few extra km on my motorbike getting around, but that's ok. I doubt I'll be able to go back to living 'down there' again.

This field was cleared near the District 2 entrance of the Thu Thiem tunnel, but the temple that was there was left untouched. Or maybe only its sign. Hopefully it can be incorporated into whatever will rise up from the newly vacant plot.

The view from my apartment window of the Saigon River and downtown Saigon. Note the neighborhood of more traditional houses directly below.

And if I turn the other way, a vestigial slum clings to the edges of a pond. I can't imagine that either will be there for long. I've seen other slum areas in cities like Nha Trang scraped away to make way for progress. I have no idea what happens to the people who live in such areas.

Hey, Don't Pop My Bubble!

One of the problems of being a long-term expat in southeast Asia is developing a positive and sustainable social circle. I agree with what I've read on other blogs about finding Western friends here which is that it's not hard to meet people, it's the quality of those people that's the problem. Additionally, in Vietnam, there's also the issue of the ever-looming departure date and the short-time or vacation mentality that accompanies it that you'll find with almost all foreigners you meet in the tourist areas.

At this point, I've developed a small social circle of English-speaking foreigners that I've met through teaching and teacher training and just hanging out in a few bars. As unhealthy as bars can be, they also serve a useful purpose, which is providing a venue for people from disparate walks of life to sit down together and get to know each other, people who would never meet any other way. If you're patient and selective you can find good friends from bars.

As your stay here lengthens you'll begin to slowly find out about aspects of life for foreigners other than what's found around the tourist areas and you learn about options to branch away from that, but it's not particularly easy and certainly not automatic.

During my time of living within a short walking distance of the Pham Ngu Lao backpacker area, I met a total of 1 foreigner with whom I felt a good connection based on shared views of life and Vietnam. He happened to be from Sacramento, California and maybe the fact that he was a fellow American had a lot to do with our friendship since we didn't need to work our way through the nationalistic antagonism I sometimes find with foreigners here.

On that subject I can say I've never run into any real anti-Americanism here amongst the Vietnamese. I'm sure the sentiment is harbored amongst some of the old guard Hanoi Boys, but I don't ever come in contact with them. But interestingly enough, the only person I've encountered here who does display open antipathy towards the USA is, believe it or not, Canadian!

Here in Vietnam there are numerous websites for and about expats living here. They provide lots of useful information about the important everyday and other aspects of life here. One of the more popular websites has a forum for Saigon where anyone can post questions or comments and respond to others'. The forum is moderated by a Canadian Vietnam resident who in addition to using his position as forum 'moderator' to openly rail against some American companies and the government's policies has other agendas directed towards foreigners in Vietnam and he promotes and defends those by actually censoring or deleting posts that he feels contradict them. This is one foreigner who has truly gone native.

Another foreigner complained to me about the declining value of the US dollar last year when it suffered an exchange rate decline. I guess he somehow thought I owed him something! While he could have made a good point regarding the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency, he was just whining because he felt he'd lost some money and wanted to blame someone. Since he obviously wasn't equipped to engage in a real conversation about money and its value, I just told him he had never really had as much money as he thought he had and shouldn't complain. He hasn't spoken to me since.

These days we often hear about a global wealthy elite who live in a celestial world not defined by national borders. Well, there's also a global community on the other end of the social spectrum who are unwittingly united in their identical displays of banal nationalism. Minus the jet-set standard of living of course. It's ironic that the only difference between most foreigners who rant anti-Americanism or anti-anywhere else and the average American redneck is what national borders they happened to have been born within. On the other hand I appreciate the many foreigners I meet here who rise above all that and those are the people I want to spend time with.

Since being here, I've learned to accept the fact that America is viewed as a brand and an image as well as a nationality. There's nothing I can or even would do to hide the fact that I'm American so I've learned to use it to my benefit whenever I can and lay low about it otherwise. So underneath it all, we're all the same.

Since the foreigners you meet in the tourist areas are just that, they spend their time here in a tourist or vacation bubble. That's what tourists everywhere do and are supposed to do, but sometimes I'll meet a long-term tourist (meaning over 6 months here) who still tries hard to maintain his vacation bubble as if it can be a permanent way of life. It can only become a permanent way of life if it's somehow artificially sustained because life here is not a permanent vacation and in fact is still quite harsh for most Vietnamese and can't sustain a foreigner's vacation bubble for long. If someone has enough money and restricts their haunts to the nicer developed urban and tourist areas, it is possible to live a permanent vacation here, but it's fragile and artificial and eventually starts taking a psychological toll.

There's a fellow American here now who just returned after being here last year before going back to the states for 6 months. He was here for 6 months last year, so he qualifies as a long-term tourist. He's a nice guy whom I enjoy eating and drinking and talking with, but we have a problem in that he's still in a vacation bubble. It's interesting because at the same time I feel he's not being realistic about Vietnam, he feels I've become too cynical and jaded and maybe I need to leave. This starkly differentiates our agendas for being here.

Soon after he arrived here last month, we got together and while walking around, he became hungry and wanted to eat at one of the many street side cafes where the patrons sit outside in plastic chairs at plastic tables and enjoy food served on plastic dishes. So while he wanted to experience some of the real Vietnam, it was our differing opinions about it that was significant. I declined to eat anything as I wasn't hungry, but I also prefer to eat at real restaurants now. I've already experienced the street food in Vietnam and while it's ok and very cheap, I can do without it. There's nothing novel or interesting about it for me anymore and I'm also concerned, maybe unjustifiably so, about hygiene. He, on the other hand ,was immersed in the idea that it was so cool to be eating street food in Saigon. I can guarantee you the Vietnamese workers and students we were surrounded by found nothing cool about eating there. It was all part of his tourist fantasy about Vietnam.

While I know that I'm more realistic about Vietnam, he wants to continue enjoying his vacation bubble and we've both become wary of each other. He, because he knows that if he lets my realism rub against his vacation bubble too much it will pop, and I because I believe he's the type who will experience something negative one day and the next he'll be on an airplane out of here never to return.

While I now regard Vietnam in many of the same ways I regard life in the US, he feels that it's 'just better here'. I don't disagree that it can better here, but the reasons someone feels that way have to be real and explainable. I can state exactly why I'm here. He can't or won't. I think he has a day of reckoning coming.

So while he wants to protect his bubble, I don't want to invest too much emotionally in someone whom I don't believe has a healthy sustainable mindset and who therefore literally poses a flight risk. Hopefully we can continue to enjoy food and drink together. At real restaurants.

From last October, the Nha Trang surf colored brown as a result of recent rainstorms.

A restaurant in Tay Ninh (Tây Ninh). Thịt = meat for eating. Chó = dog. Served with a local alcoholic brew and with a 'special aroma and flavor'. Sorry, I can't give you a review!