Tag: Cambodia

Numbers game

At any time of the day in Saigon, you might be approached by street vendors selling lottery tickets, snacks. Even Buddhist monks hold a donation box but with fixed gaze in Zen steps i.e. barefooted on hot concrete.

Self-punishment. I respect the monks. Their self-control , from strict diet to dress code.

Life evolves around 8-fold path.

Born to suffer. Born this way.

The vendors of Saigon play their numbers game.

Lottery players do so as well.

They gather at close-of-business day for the winning numbers.

Dream on.

The more tickets you buy, the more money you lose.

Meanwhile, folks flock to Cambodia where casinos are legal. Reminds me of S Californians who make similar trips to Sin City (Las Vegas).

Dream on.

Meanwhile, Mirage expands to Macau.

Numbers game again. Improving your odds.

Everyone is on the move. Einstein theory on motion (Earth rotates etc…). Gotta improve the odds. Gotta to change that luck. Gotta play the numbers game, however small the probability. Dream on, move on. Nghin nam sau soi da van can co nhau. Thousand years on, rock and pebbles still need each other. What a song and a line to be played at funerals. Quite fleeting.

Museum of Loss

If you sneaked in the back street of Independence Palace here in Saigon, you would find  Cafe 30-4, named after that fateful day. Most of us have seen that 1975 tank-crashing-gate photo. But from the vantage point of the Cafe where I sat yesterday, I could only see people playing tennis and tourists walking about trying to use up the price of admission.

I felt a lump in my throat and heavy pull at the legs before entering this unholy ground.

The same feeling I had when entering the US consulate a few years back for notary public.

Those spaces represented more than just brick and mortar. They had territorial integrity but lost it.(The French originally built Saigon as Admin Centre for IndoChine).

The spot where the consulate now is, used to be the US Embassy.

And Cafe 30-4 had been just a side entrance for Palace guards.

And so it went with my visit to the Museum of Loss.

Loss of youth,  innocence, and root.

When I got to the US, the first thing I was given was an A number (for Alien).

Later, I “graduated” to a D (for driver). Some day, when cashing out, I get a “S” for Social Security.

Back to our Museum of Loss. In Dalat, at least you would find Bao Dai Palace, still presidential: high on the hill, with some class and signs of  Vietnam transition from Monarchy to Modernity (Western).

IndoChine at the time, shared  inter-regional currency under French colonial.

Those neighboring countries are still connected albeit loosely:

Thailand, still with King. Cambodia and Laos remain underdogs and China is riding to ascendency.

Things were quiet at our Museum of Loss, except for occasional tennis ball contacts. Players are still wearing white, just as the day of Big Minh (who was waiting to hand over the key of the Independence Palace) playing against Westmoreland.

I excused myself after getting up from that chunk of wood (used as stool)..

At least Cafe 30.4 got shades. It also sits in the shadow of Saigon’s former Self. I walked out feeling estranged. In fact, I couldn’t wait to fetch a taxi to the future where I might find hope and promises. It’s the future which decides the winner. Call it “horizontal” marketing, where market dictates the terms and values of everything. To turn a historic landmark on its head, and make a few bucks out of it is what I called entrepreneurial. In loss we find a way out, and in death life.

Death-affirming culture

During lunch time at my first job (Child Welfare Bureau at Indian Town Gap, PA), we threw a football, my first.

That was supposed to be my induction into the Penn State culture the following Fall.

Here in Vietnam, at lunch time, I walk by a casket store. As equally shocking for foreigners as my first introduction to the football back then.

One culture fights every inch toward touchdown (winning is the only thing) while  the other prepared to accept human fate.

In the country side people even pre-purchase caskets to be stored  in the house like furniture, very much like Pre-paid Legal in the US (just in case).

I know this barely scratches the surface of a culture, because cosmetic-surgery is on the rise here (death denying), as modernity starts to eclipse Vietnam’s tradition( age = respect). In addition to this, people also fight for every centimeter in the street and  on the side-walk. There lies the paradox of  resigning to fate and fighting for the future. No offense, but I happened to read an USA Today Blog this morning, describing the author’s arrival to Ho Chi Minh City, and checking in to the Hyatt downtown.  She promised more adventure in Vietnam, but her first installment did not entice me . Too insulated (we checked in, traffic in all directions – has she watched the time-lapse video of traffic here before coming).

I might have noticed the same thing from that vantage point on my first trip (having lunched with a Hyatt’s Boardman out in the terrace), but now that I decide to zoom in, to satisfy my cultural curiosity .

Death is big business here: casket, candle and cremation.

(The other night, I saw a traffic accident  which confirmed this observation besides huge percentage of  male smokers). Most families have ancestor’s photos on the altar (my parents used to have theirs on the altar and now I have my parents’ on mine).

Insurance companies are prospering here. It’s interesting to see the objections people raise when buying life insurance.

Will it cover my casket?

Enough for cremation or a plot of land near the border of Cambodia?

How do my kids prove that I was dead by accident?

At lunch, I also saw a baby napping on a hammock near the casket store.

Life flows continuously here, just like anywhere else.

Except that, at lunch time, I can hardly find anyone to throw a football with. Back then, the sight of co-workers opted for sweats over siesta was a culture shock to me. Just as scooter traffic must be to the USA Today blogger.

Welcome to Vietnam. Cross the street safely. And write something worthy of your stay and your Gold-Card Reward!

Gloria Gaynor survives in Vietnam

When I visited the neighborhood gym, and heard “I will survive” over the speaker, I knew I was back in full swing.

Scooters weaved in and out, backpackers with signature sandals (footwear was an important identifier here) and fake Heineken bootlegged in from our neighbor in the North.

I will survive (recycled cook oil, recycled land mine, and recycled text books).

Over lunch with some classmates whom I hadn’t met in 40 years, I learned that two of them got sent to war in Cambodia.

My recollection and collection of old friends included veterans of two wars, yet “I will survive.”

At the gym, they wanted me to take off my sneakers (I thought they only did that at the temple).

My bare feet will have to survive all the added weights in a crammed but carpeted space. I will survive.

The guy at the barber shop sharpened his blade and I hesitated to let him shave me (an act which I hadn’t braved in years).

I will survive.

Then friends told me about people they knew who couldn’t wait to emigrate to America.

I thought only the nouveau riches in China are doing this.

How can I tell them about Occupy?

About Penn State?

About fiscal cliff?

About entitlement at home (US) and enforcement at the borders?

America, land of the free, but people there have stopped listening to Gloria Gaynor.

Only here that I found Gloria the priestess whose chant was still on everyone’s lips (although not everyone understood what “petrified” meant).

But survival is prerequisite to glory.

Two wars (the American War and Cambodian), just like the US with Iraq and Afghanistan.

But war fatigue in the US is quite different from Vietnam‘s.

In Vietnam, bouncing back from war has been national sport (Chinese and French).

The US will have to dig deep into its memory (WW II) to find ways to reintegrate its veterans.

I am giving it a try as I sit listen how those combat moments had never left my friends.

Understand and to be understood.

That’s how I will survive.