ho chi minh city

it's the middle of the afternoon sunday the 21st here at the park hyatt saigon in ho chi minh city.

 

the flight from hong kong to vietnam was easy and uneventful. arrival was easy as well, a cursory look at our passports, then our luggage was among the first to pop out. customs consisted of us handing off our declarations forms and manhandling all our bags on and off one of those big x-ray machines.

 

leaving the airport, we were funneled down a red carpet of sorts, surrounded by a throng of three or four hundred people attentively watching the exit. it was a disconcerting moment, as we were simultaneously hit by the thick, damp hot, and the steady gaze of all those people. for a few hundred people, they were eerily quiet. a young woman had a sign that said "Monica Raymund and guest" (something i think i might see on lists for a long time to come) and i quickly made contact.

 

we waited by the curb and i felt my body instantly kick-start the sweat production. we hopped into a jeep and were whisked away into the thick of the city.

 

we asked the young lady her name and she said something beautiful, but the closest i could repeat it was to clumsily say "Now?" She humbly nodded, and received "Now" as an acceptable mangling of her name.

 

Now told us that 10 million people live in Ho Chi Minh City, and I think we saw most of them on the way to the hotel. One of my imaginary mental images of China is a sea of people on bicycles. I now have a real Vietnam image to accompany it: Motorbikes. Everywhere. They clogged every part of the roads, and most of the sidewalks. Cars were outnumbered twenty to one, and it was the motorbikes that dominated the road- cars had to lurch deferentially around and follow their patterns. People of every shape and size were on these motorbikes, mostly in singles and pairs, but we also saw threes and fours. They weave in and out of each other, amazingly close, often tapping each other with their feet, or rubbing elbows as they pass. Hands braced against our car and people shoved off as if changing direction in a lap pool.

 

Every two hundred yards or so there were motorbike dealers, and long rows of pristine bikes lined the sidewalk- they were hard to differentiate from the regular sidewalk, where hoards of bikes were parked- people sitting on them like lounge chairs, puffing cigarettes, or strapping huge bulbous bags of produce to the back.

 

The dusty streets we drove were clogged with shops, of every shape and size. I noticed, like Egypt, there were lots of makeshift (perhaps impromptu) tea cafe's outside- i saw grown men sitting in brightly-colored little plastic kiddy chairs in alleyways.

 

Many stores were festooned with Christmas displays, including a shop whose title earned a guilty laugh from Monica and I: "SHOP MY DUNG." One sporting wear store had hung a life-sized Santa, sleigh, and reindeer precariously from their awning.

 

I wished I could stop and watch a group of men on the sidewalk in front of a hobby store, as they smoked cigarettes and tinkered with a five-foot long model airplane- i don't know my planes, but it was an early-style of plane, the ones that are shaped like a plus sign, and painted red and white.

 

It was a fun, short introduction to this city and this country. The hotel itself is very nice, and Monica and I have showered and changed and eaten a complimentary lunch at the hotel Sunday buffet, which is inexplicably comprised completely of Italian cuisine.

 

Now it's naptime, and we wait for Monica's folks to come in this evening. Dinner tonight, and tomorrow at 5 AM we head onto a PLANE again, this time to officially start the planned bicycle journey.

 

Thinking about my family in Santa Fe! I hope everyone is having a ball, and Dad's wedding goes off without a hitch. Wait a minute. I hope it goes off with one very successful hitch!