Tag: Ho Chi Minh City

Saigon rocks!

The night before New Year’s Eve (year of the Dragon), Saigonese and expats got a choice to watch the rehearsal at formerly known as Independence Palace, or nurse a beer at Acoustic.

Years ago, this neighborhood was a hang-out place for privileged kids who attended nearby French lycee. Today, at least in this den-like corner, privileged kids shifted their interests to Punk and Hard Rock: we got graced with expat singers’ numbers mixing with local rockers.

At Independence Palace, the rehearsed dance filled the large stage with flags and poles, movement and au parleur, lighting and majestic surrounding.

At Acoustic, it’s the sound, the up-close vibe and all hair.

Collectivity vs Individuality, co-exist and share the same space.

Groupies, bartenders, and some expats who I.D. themselves as being from Portland, OR.

Our mean-looking Black rapper singer turned out to be the mushiest of all with his “Tears in Heaven” number.

Then, of course, “I hate myself for loving you“.

I on the other hand did not hate myself for being there.

I enjoyed it as much as I did years ago, on or off stage.

I am glad the spirit and essence of Rock has found new expressions and entertainers.

Still against the wind, without flag, but gotta to have hair.

I missed my dying friend who belonged to Saigon Rock generation 1.0.

He would agree with me it’s time for a new wave to emerge, even with glowing bass-guitar strings. Those Portlanders kept shouting “One more” because the booze must be accompanied by the band. I bet for a moment however short, they immersed themselves in the company of young and eager music fan, forgetting where one was from, and heck, even where one was going!

Unbundled incense

In his year-end Opinion, David Brooks of the NYTimes recited a story about people in Louisiana who had lighted a candle for neighbor’s graves.

This year-end here in Vietnam, I saw just that and more…incense, flowers and fruit.

People are either already home or on the way. They cook, clean and cater to many needs, among them, lighting neighbor’s graves.

A girl still in helmet, with parked scooter by her side, spent a silent moment praying, Then she would visit nearby lots, perhaps people she used to know from her village church.

In life and in death. You are not forgotten. A form of social immortality.

I read about a sinking commercial cruise, with captain and his crew escaped first to safety.

Would you want to ever step on one of those “luxury” cruises?

Living in style, dying solo.

I tried to nap today when neighbor knocked on my door to see if I were OK

(perhaps he was “xin” – beer + heat exhaustion). Then the Lion dance team went around the entire block reminding us this is their year, the year of the Dragon.

Flower Festival proudly displays mighty Dragon in all shapes and sizes, Vietnam’s version of Rose Parade.

Young girls pose for photo-ops, maybe later seen on Facebook or scrap-book.

The Earth seems to rumble.

People chat up with “natives”, knowing that whoever is left in Saigon, is from there (as opposed to workers, students and relatives who have gone home to their respective villages in the countryside).

City folks or country folks, everyone is gearing up to give and receive.

The gift baskets, the flower bouquets and the sticky “banh chung” (rice cake) have been delivered. Water melon (whose inside is red, signifying good luck), blossomed Hoa Mai and kumquat trees are on firesales.

Vietnamese talk about “khong khi Tet” – the taste, texture and ambience of Tet.

A sense of utter confidence that Heaven and Earth are in alignment and agreement to bless the pure of heart.

I can’t find no further evidence than someone who stood silently at an isolated grave, then lighted up incense for neighbor’s graves. Candles or incense, US or VN, we all long to live the rest of our lives the best way we know how and periodically to celebrate it the best way we can. Here, this way, is  familiar to most, but somehow, vaguely strange to me. I, however, found one constant: ABBA‘s Happy New Year played over and over to welcome the  Year of the Dragon. Tung Cheng! Tung Cheng! Tung Cheng!

Street sweeping in Saigon

I saw a funeral pouring out onto the sidewalk one day, and on the same  block, a wedding the day after.

Meanwhile, the street sweeper just went about his business of sweeping, regardless.

Even if they could use some industrial-grade sweepers, people prefer man to machine. This solves labor problems.

Scavengers make their daily routes by offering to buy anything and everything electronics.

Best Buy could use some help here.

E-waste! What a waste!

As long as one can make a buck, let someone else worry about sustainability.

I love trees but not to the point of being a tree-hugger.

But nothing gives me more pleasure than to see a shaded tree in the middle of a city.

Birds chirping, cyclo drivers napping, and my heart singing.

We got forests and we got trees.

It just that they are “unwelcome” here. Trees take up too much space.

Space for multiple use, such as weddings and funerals, marketing events and Sale Events.

One New Year down, another one (Lunar) to go.

Hoa Mai , kumquat , Lion heads, Earth man, lucky envelopes, confectionary of all kinds.

In the US, they are gearing up for Valentine.

Season changes, but street sweeper goes on sweeping.

Funeral or wedding, summer or fall.

He kept the streets clean, wiping out the past as if nothing had happened.

Bob Dylan’s equivalent , Trinh cong Son, once had a line “the bomb splattered from a distance, and the street sweeper paused to listen”.

If he were to compose a post-war version, it would be “the wedding karaoke party blasted out, and our street sweeper didn’t even stop sweeping”.

Oblivious to noise, dust, and smell, our street sweeper went about his business.

I hope among the stuff that got swept were some dead leaves; it would mean there were still hope of some shades under the scorching sun.

Street sweepers of Saigon keep sweeping and walking man walks on by. That walking man, c’est moi.

Long’s last laugh

My friend had a square jaw. When he laughed, his features became more pronounced. Already taller than most, he carried himself above the fold.

Not all kids in my school went to the Conservatory. You had to have talent. For that brief year in 7th grade, he joined us at music practice. “Can you play bass?” I did not know better, nor did I know what would become of us years later.

Long went on to play keyboard for the Crazy Dogs (w/wig and all). Power Trio.

In Senior High, when we each had gone our separate way, I went to the zoo for our version of Woodstock, not knowing he was up there on stage.

I would have been proud. Then years later, in California, we got to meet again, I found Long’s head all shaved (cancer). He had a career in music teaching and performing, most recently at the Hyatt lobby in Ho Chi Minh City.

Top of the line. Last Christmas for Long, as I woke up this morning thinking.

Requiem for a dying friend. Mozart’s style.

Last month, we had a long talk over the  phone before I boarded the plane for Saigon.

Like the story of the Last Leaf (to cheer up a dying man, the boy climbed up the opposite wall to paint a leaf on the tree to give the illusion that only when that last leaf fell that our infirmed person is allowed to die), I challenged Long to see who was going to die first.

That got him a huge laugh over the phone (I used reverse psychology).

Suicidal, like a song goes.

Vietnam‘s favorite English song, according to a study, is “Yesterday”.

In fact, in English class, we used that to illustrate Simple Past.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

Now, kids are into “I am on the Edge of Glory” Gaga, Gaga, Gaga.

Ah Jude, Ah Jude, Ah Jude.

The anthem of youth has always been some refrains such as “Wild Thing, you make my heart sing”, or “We will rock you”.

Something to unite the crowd or to ignite a revolution.

Long taught me one thing: sit back, relax, and let the energy loop from the problem in your hand to your subconscious, then you may find calm in the storm.

Our Western world in crisis can use this very simple advice.

France is now ranked the most pessimistic country as it comes to economic outlooks.

What happened to the innocence of the 60’s, of “Belle de jours”.

Bonjour Tristesse then.

To think of next Christmas when at the mention of my friend, whoever are left in our group will look back in sorrow and sadness.

But from that last conversation with him, I did not feel that way.

He seemed to take it with an air on the G-string.

He even told me “not to eat all that is placed in front of me” when in Vietnam.

I heeded his advice a couple of times when greasy food suddenly appeared in my bowl, at a wedding reception for instance.

I will probably go to the zoo today. The last time I set foot there, Long was on stage without my knowing it. We were rocking, with various bands competing for the same song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.

I hope somewhere in time, I will hear “Goodbye to you my trusted friend, we ‘ve known each other since we were nine or ten”.

I told Long I would be fearless against the wind, when it comes to conspicuous consumption for instance: spending the money one doesn’t have, to buy things one doesn’t need, to impress people one doesn’t like (Black Fridays? Yew! Walmart guard got trampled over in Long Island, or shoppers got pepper-sprayed?).

Even when Long began his quiet withdrawal to a hospice, I know he would pull up a chair, place his fingers on the key board just as I am now, albeit his covers the 7 notes, and mine the Alphabet, then he would inhale and let go.

The loop from fingers to feelings and back. The circle of life, his and ours.

Long’s last Christmas? Yes. But then next year, perhaps yours or mine.

That square jaw of my bass guitarist (sitting down, short sleeves) though seemed so far away, yet as near as Yesterday. I will never forget Long’s last laugh before my long flight East.

P.S. I am very saddened that Long has passed away and will be cremated in New Jersey (I hope his last Tet gave him ample time for closure). R.I.P. Long.

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!

Slippery Saigon

Someone told me that the rainy season here would end soon.

Yet it is raining still. Outdoor activities like kung-fu class, xe-om, beer stalls all ceased.

I seeked shelters .

The trick to walk safely here is to step firmly with one foot into the sidewalk, not at its edge (which slopes down to facilitate water draining).

Yet the middle of the sidewalk  was often “occupied” by street vendors most evenings.

The last choice is to walk in the street where scooters in all directions fighting for right of way.

Rain or shine, the internet cafe are full: kids playing Chinese chess , soccer and Thumbelina online.

I found a restaurant that caters to Northern taste: boiled pork, shrimp sauce and stuffed tofu.

I miss mom’s cooking.

The owner paced back and forth trying to put his grandson to sleep (on his shoulder).

I remember my old baby sitter, who let me piggyback to and from kindergarten.

I wonder how many favors one accumulated in a lifetime.

And how many favors one gives back ( Karma currency imbalance).

We all need bail-outs at times and we all “occupy” at some point.

Meanwhile, I  read about the Obama’s latest injunction to use foreign aid resources to further human rights’ causes e.g. gay rights around the world.

It’s one thing to finally “don’t ask don’t tell” in the US.

It’s quite another to open US embassies and USAID facilities to be “gay sanctuaries” around the world.

Tall order indeed!

Has anyone briefed him about cross-cultural differences? about Cultural Relativity and Taboos around the world?

People barely got used to using “OK” (condoms) here, much less advancing “don’t ask don’t tell”.

For more than three weeks now, I have been out of one bubble just to enter another.

Here, in Vietnam, people are in constant motion; multi-taskers in the US would feel right at home (people riding scooters in busy traffic with one hand while talking on the phone and smoking).

On my first few trips here, I saw accidents that claimed lives. Lately, it has been less frequent.

Infact, phones are no longer the most sought after, nor are English classes (which are increasingly commoditized ).

Home Karaoke systems perhaps reach saturation point, just like chat room at internet cafes.

Indeed my IT guy and I couldn’t find phone cables (for fax and wireline phones).

Apparently telecom VN has gone completely mobile.

The working class meanwhile are trying to stretch their hard-earned money

(get paid, get a few dresses).

With holidays fast approaching, workers in China and Vietnam are scrambling for the last train home.

Saigon, though still slippery, will then be emptied of migrant workers.

“The Sad Hymn” (Bai Thanh Ca Buon) will be played way past Christmas.

Booze and beer will be consumed till the last drop. Caution: slippery when wet.

Nobody discussed “Occupy” here. We are 100 percenters, sharing the burden and hopefully the beer.

Why not while it lasts! Its famous movie star has just died of a stroke at age 54. His declared wish: someday to return to Vietnam,

and find acting gig among his peers. He has just felt short of that last wish. One of his screen appearances was in “We were soldiers“.

It’s slippery still in Saigon. I will sign off now before treading carefully home, or else, I end up in “We were alive”.

Art expressions in most unlikely places

You would have never thought of running into people ballroom-dancing in the park. But here in GoVap new park, where the young trees are still being nursed, and the lights barely lit up, people came out and did just that. Young and old, male and female, they came out when the heat started to ease. Reminds me of a line in Saturday in the Park, by Chicago (people dancing, people talking, a man selling ice-cream).

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said 42,000 people still died from unexploded land mines (see Huffington Post).

Perhaps the late Princess Diana would have grieved in her grave.

That’s amount to a lot of dancing feet, had they remained above ground.

Someone was practicing the violin tonight . Last night, I heard a flute (which reminded me of my daughter). It’s soon be time for me to pick up the guitar again.

Survival instruments.

When it’s hot, crowded and polluted, you just don’t go out and buy Friedman’s book.  You learn how to cope with realities.

Young students got used to taking the bus. It saves time and money, although in this culture, or even in the US, when you wait for the bus, you are either homeless or down-and-out on your luck.

Public transit somehow was played down by the likes of Ford and GM, when gas was still cheap and the streets spare of traffic.

Those dynamics have now changed, especially here in Asia.

People had resisted the helmet law for a while, until they became convinced by the saved lives. Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here to adopt their Vietnamese child.

They had ridden the streets of Ho Chi Minh City right before the law took effect.

The last of the Mohicans.

f it weren’t for the computers, we would see more youth troubles on the street. As it turns out, they are sitting right next to me, and behind me.

I am staying out of trouble too, even at my age.

Social media, blogging, and gaming.

Some companies (French ones) went ahead and forbade employees from using email. They prefer instant messaging for quick results.

Facebook was prescient on this, when its CEO announced the death of email as we knew it.

Young people communicate instantly without format and formality.

Just a quick question.

Here is a quick answer.

Boom!

Hurry up and get to the park, where people are talking, people are dancing, a man selling ice-cream.

Any day in the park.

A platform, a boombox, a partner and there we go.

One and two, one and two.

Dancing under the stars.

The good Lord rains on the field of both the good and the evil.

He gave each a longing for beauty that transcends place, politics and power of the purse.

Who says poor people are boring? I think the opposite is true.

Crossed markets

Forbes kept praising the success of luxury brands in China while web sites in Vietnam and China mentioned “Pepper Spray on Black Friday”. Chinese-made goods, sold as lost leaders, to the first 100-early-bird shoppers.

Planned scarcity.

Hype-creation.

Sensational, sizzling headline-grabbing video op for YouTube.

We need attention. The media need it even more. (For some counter-intuitive reasons, Warren Buffet just spent a chunk of change buying his hometown newspaper, which was bleeding financially).

Maybe he knew something we didn’t.

Here in Vietnam, I found shopkeepers, “loss prevention” guards, and people at the coffee shops all trying to read something.

Literacy rates are high (low 90’s),  perhaps higher than a lot of their counterparts in Asia.

People in motion here at night market in Hanh Thong Tay (budget shoppers for style).

The demographic (mostly young) definitely is an advantage (they won’t die half way through your projects).

Young people here are very assertive in expressing their ideas and opinions.

If you can ride the scooters to and from work, you can definitely work.

And if you can ride to work, on an empty stomach, you definitely need to work hard.

And if you can ride to work on an empty stomach, while at home, there are more empty stomachs, you have no choice but to work and study hard.

What do young people do with their leisure time? That’s right, computer gaming.

Next thing you know, they upgrade to mobile gaming, the same way they have grown up wanting  to get behind the scooters.

Nation in motion.

Back to China with luxury goods and 200 million people moved out of poverty to the middle class.

In those same thirty years, we saw the decline of the West.

Next thirty years, the rise of the Rest.

Stock up on your pepper spray. Stock up on Christmas decoration.

Stockpiling your weapons of mass consumption.

Shopping has always been a patriotic act in the US.

Shop to save: what a contradiction in terms.

Meanwhile, people in China are putting away money for their “only child’s” wedding.

There will be a lot of empty-nesters in China.

There will then be a lot of old tourists from China.

They got tired of their own Great Wall (of China).

They want to take photo standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, built for the first World’s Fair.

They want to experience Paris of the 50-60’s, where “tous leas garcons et les filles de mon age se promaine, dans la rue…”

Everyone is entitled to their 15-min of fame.

To the childhood’s dream.

Of  strange shores and leaving the familiar behind.

Materialism trumps sentimentalism any day, any time.

That’s how the world is flat: consumers are kings and queens, on Black Friday and any Friday.

Traffic turns attraction

Crunch time in Ho chi Minh City. A nuisance for many yet a photo-op for tourists.

Millions in ponchos, helmets, dust masks, sunglasses fighting for every inch (centimeter here) to get  home in the pouring rain, while tourists leisurely strolled the colonial side walks in shorts, sandals and Sony cameras trying to record their trips. Who is looking at whom?

These skinny people all wrapped up to protect their skin?

Or these fat people are not afraid of getting sun-burn?

Three years ago, I switched role by playing expat in Hanoi, studying among other expats

from US, UK, Canada, Australia and Ireland. I got a glimpse of how the natives were viewed, perceived and more often than not, judged: English school across from a dog-meat stance, ballroom-dancing in the park and to top it all, a 60’s Berkeley-style stripper family on the streets begging for money to cover health care costs (per recent Yahoo news).

One of our lessons for teachers of English as a foreign language that morning happened to be “soliciting money online from friends to cover shopping debt”.

It struck me that the Western girl in the lesson and the lady out there on the street were doing the same, one with wireless, the other voiceless.

Three years have passed since that morning.

A lot of bank bail outs are now behind us.

Bank buildings got renamed, CEO’s booted.

During the upturn,  people drink and smoke their lives away.

During the downturn, people drink and smoke their lives away even faster.

Always a vicious cycle, a race to the bottom. Vietnam spends 38% of its income on food, Mexico 23%, France 13% while the US a mere 7% (subsidized infrastructure).

I found myself in sudden tears at lunch. This was after I had heard that a friend with cancer would have only six months to live.

What would I do in his shoes?

Dzo (down) the Ken (Heineken)? Visit Yellow Stone Park? Eiffel tower?

My grandmother’s grave? (we’ll meet again soon anyway).

What would you do?

Fighting for another inch in traffic?

Every moment is precious especially towards the end .

“There is a pause in between life and death,” said my friend.

I saw it once with the burning monk. The rising flame was both his baptism by fire and his cremation.

To enter that next ring of eternity, he must and did leave all things behind.

To dance to another drummer’s beat.

After two weeks in country, I have learned to cross the streets without the usual reflex which I found counter-productive. And I definitely resist any impulse to take pictures, because someone else’s stress was not going to be my sensation. Not just Vegas, but also Vietnam, where what happened here, stays here. Traffic is to me, a distraction not attraction.

Thu Thiem and Cu Chi

Both have tunnels, but Thu Thiem‘s has just been built and visited mostly by Viet natives.

Cu Chi tunnels however is a backpackers’ must-see.

Going through Thu Thiem Tunnel, you feel like you were in Louisiana or Baltimore.

It unveils the future of  Vietnam, where ferry workers now work as toll booth collectors.

District 2 is the place to watch.

Just as the old Las Vegas strip that gave ways to the Strip, or Sands imploded to hand over to Wynn.

(Maybe surviving “tunnel rats” can find work with companies specializing in collapsing old buildings.)

I am engrossed in “the Devil in the White City“, which recounts the masterminding and building of the Chicago World Fair.

“Landscape does tricks to the mind,” the proposal said (given its time frame of 1890, this was prescient enough).

Competing high rises are being erected along the main highway leading to Ho Chi Minh City.

Meanwhile, inside the alleys, people blast their karaoke systems to “torture” their neighbors.

When I grew up, only the weeks leading to Christmas that loud speakers were in full blast. Now the commoditization of music finds many outlets:  Bose speakers, mobile phones, computers and lap tops

The pull of glitzy city.

You have to have thick skin to survive daily commute and even thicker skin to survive your weeKENd (notice KEN, as in HEINEKEN). Beers are delivered in the back of scooters to the back doors of open-air pubs. Baby stools are placed onto the side walks: voila! open-air party. During the day, it’s the administrative Ho Chi Minh City, but at night, it’s Saigon side-walk.

The museum of wartime remnants now claims several prevalent locations.

The locals want to see new things like Thu Thiem Tunnel and Bana (bananas) Peak near China Beach.

Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here two weeks ago visiting the French equivalent of Alcatraz (Con Dao).

So foreign visitors want to see the esoteric, the locals exotic.

It’s a matter of taste.

Supply and demand.

The economics of travel and leisure.

Still hats off to those who were drafted to die as “tunnel rats”.

To both sides, what a way to die.

Not too long from now, the new Thu Thiem tunnel will be old hat.

By then, their children back from overseas with acquired new taste, will prefer  Cu Chi (the American part of being Vietnamese-American).

Thu Thiem or Cu Chi? It depends on how old and where you are born.