Heading for Vietnam

Heading for Vietnam

Dave Francis

Hello everyone,

Sorry it has been so long, but I have been busy doing nothing. I mean nothing. I have been lying in bed all day, eating too much, and editing the 5000+photos from the trip. (I am up to China now.)

I did go to dacha over the weekend. “Go to dacha.” That is how the Russians say it. Everyone ‘goes to dacha’ on the weekends.

I don’t get it. Russia is the largest country in the world. By a lot. The next two countries combined aren’t as large as Russia. It spans 6 time zones. I know, I have crossed it. It is humongous.

The population of Russia is less than that of the US. About half as many, actually. Even still, with all this space, and this few people, they live on top of one another. Almost nobody here has a house. They all live in apartments. When I was in Moscow, Lena’s cousin, Misha, drove me around and showed me Brezhnev’s apartment, Kruschev’s apartment, Gorbachev’s apartment, etc. These guys lived in apartments. Not great big, beautiful homes, not even modest homes. Apartments. Now, I know that an apartment can be nice, but it is STILL an apartment! You still have neighbors above you, below you, and right next to you.

Why they do this is beyond me. It works well for public transportation, but that is the only really good thing I see about it. For some reason though, the Russian people don’t seem to mind. They are as at home in their tiny little apartments as you and I are in our houses in the US.

Now, when you go to dacha, it is to get out of the city. Away from the crowds. Back to the country life.

I was ready. Upon being informed of our plans, (That is pretty much how it works here. I have learned the phrase, “Kanishna, Lenochka.” Which means, loosely translated, “I will do whatever I am told.”) I started to inject ideas. Open fire, hot dogs, marshmallows, etc.

“No, not a good idea. Too dry and dangerous now.”

OK, I can live with that. It will be nice to get away anyway.

Now, the first thing that makes you suspicious is the transportation to the dacha. It is a train. To a station, then we hitch a lift for a few minutes.

As an American, I am still not used to the idea of riding trains, but I like it. These trains, however, are not the luxury kind. They are called ‘electrichkas,’ and they are not built for comfort. If you are lucky, you get to sit on a wooden bench, pressed together with other happy campers on their way to dacha. If you are unlucky, you get to stand in the aisle, dodging ice cream and ink pen vendors that hawk their wares loudly throughout your trip to sojourn with nature.

After about an hour, we leave the train, and begin to try to hitch a lift.

“Don’t speak, and hide your camera,” I am told.

“Huh?”

“It will cost more if they see the camera, or if they know you are a foreigner. Be quiet,” explained my wife.

I waited around until finally my mother in law arranged a ride for us. We got in the car, and drove for about 15 minutes, down a dirt road, around some turns, until we were there. At dacha.

We got out, and my mother in law paid the driver 70 rubles. (I think I could have gotten us there for 40 at the most…) I see my father in law, painting a very nice looking dacha. It is really nice. Small, but not terribly. It has an enclosed porch that is used for a dining area, a tiny kitchen, (With a wood burning stove. The Russian kind, made with bricks.) and a large room used for sleeping. It also has an upstairs with a large bedroom. The bathroom, I am informed, is outside, across the yard, in a little building with no plumbing running to or from it.

No problem, I have seen, and used, an outhouse before.

Now, I want to make this perfectly clear. This dacha is wonderful. It is lovely, well made, beautiful, quaint, and all sorts of adjectives that Angela wouldn’t understand. I was very impressed by it.

On the flip side, it does have one disadvantage. There are other dachas jammed in almost on top of it. The director at my mother in laws school has a dacha about 30 yards away, there is one next door owned by a professor, there are dachas everywhere. They have taken the unnatural crowded state they live in, and moved it to the woods. Unbelievable.

I can’t complain though. It was a nice time, everyone was very generous to me, and sleeping was great. Great big heavy covers, chill in the air, and a wood-burning stove. What more can you ask for?

Well, so much for my dacha experience, let’s get back to where I left off.

Well, as I remember, I had been telling you guys about Cambodia, and I had just been picked up by my Russian friends after a time of heavy carousing.

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So, the next thing I know, I am on a bus, heading to Vietnam like nothing happened. It was a hell of a thing.

The bus to Vietnam was ok. The road was a lot nicer than the one going from Thailand to Siem Reap, that’s for sure. I would suggest, if you find yourself there, take the road to Vietnam, but fly in and out of Siem Reap.

One part of the trip was very interesting. We got on a ferry in Cambodia. Now, we in the west occasionally hear about several hundred people drowning when a ferry sinks. Now I understand it.

They pack so many people onto a ferry it is unreal. Our bus had people climbing around on top of it to get a ride. Vendors, vehicles, everything you can imagine. We had donkeys, cows, oxen, chickens, all kinds of animals going across. Had it sunk, there would have been a lot of deaths, just from the fact that the people in the center would have drowned before they had a chance to free their arms to swim. Hell, the water level of the river would have flooded the town on the banks, drowning people there. They don’t waste a lot of space on their boats.

I had to be in Vietnam by the 8th at the latest, since my mom was showing up then. I wanted to get there a day or two early, to find a decent place to stay, get adjusted to things, etc. I didn’t really know what to expect from the Vietnamese. I mean, there was a fair chance I may meet with a bit of hostility. I know Americans who are still mad at the Vietnamese, and we did all the fighting on THEIR land, not ours.

Anyway, I was still wearing my cowboy hat, with my USA bandana as a hatband. If I am going to have a problem with an America hater, I would just as soon that he be sure of himself.

I couldn’t have been more wrong in my concerns. Vietnam is nice. Very nice. The further south you go, the nicer it gets.

I have been living in St. Petersburg now for sometime, and I tell people that SPB reminds me of Hemmingway’s description of Paris in the 1920’s. A large, culturally rich city with a bad economy, therefore making it an attractive living spot for people with dollars to spend. St. Petersburg is wonderful on a lot of levels. It has, as Paris did then, the museums, the music, the atmosphere to inspire and help artists produce.

Saigon has the other side of Paris. The freewheeling, easy-living, outdoor café feel that so dominates Paris, but is more or less absent in St. Petersburg. (Hard to enjoy an outdoor café here in –30 degree weather in January.) Saigon has all that. Everywhere you look, there are people laughing, smiling, and enjoying themselves. Outdoor food vendors dot the streets. The corners are frequently occupied by outdoor cafes, their small, round, tables stretching out onto the sidewalks. Pretty girls walk the streets, dressed in long silken dresses, slit all the way up the sides, with silk pants underneath. Many wear silk gloves that go to the biceps of their arms. Little women in straw, wok-shaped hats, smiling demurely as you walk by. On the street where I stayed, there was a group of about 10 boys, ages 8-13 or so, playing marbles in the street in front of a portrait studio. They played with a passion that was infectious.

The sounds of Saigon are the sounds of life. The sounds of commerce. The sounds of a society on the move upward. There are rickshaws, motorcycles, trucks, and cars filling the streets. The motorcycles are winning. They fly around in a seemingly haphazard way, but nobody seems to get killed. It works for them.

The food vendors are on the streets from early morning until late at night. You can buy shish-ka-bob, fried snake, fruit, vegetables, noodles, or any number of unidentifiable things from their lamp-lit wagons on your way home from late night clubbing. The food is cheap, and I have to assume it is clean. I never got sick at all eating anything, and you know me. I ate.

I had a nice room, for about 8 dollars a day, but it was up a couple of flights of stairs. All in all, it was worth it though, so I stayed.

There are Internet cafes everywhere, and they are cheap. Some of them have fast connections, but most are dialups.

It is easy to be a tourist in Saigon also. Things are cheap, (A great Italian or French meal is about 4 dollars, eating Vietnamese is about 1-2 dollars.) They have the best French bread I have ever eaten. Actually, all over SE Asia you can buy great baguettes. (I am convinced that the French were a better colonial power than the British based on this fact alone. The British left the ability to boil meat. The French taught these people to COOK!)

If you are in the USA, or in any other English speaking country. (Sorry Lou, Matt, Carly, America IS an English speaking country…) don’t bother learning another language. (Unless it is Chinese… that may be important.) Drop out of German class. Forget Spanish. French? I don’t think so. Just speak English. It is the only language that is needed now, and it is getting more dominant every day. Everywhere in Saigon, they speak English. They speak it fairly well, and seem reasonably happy to do so.

I had a few days to scope out the town, and there was a museum I wanted, I think, to see. It was called the American War Crimes Museum, but it has changed its name to the War Crimes Museum since normalization of relations with the US.

The museum was interesting. I was a bit intimidated by the idea of going to see it. I didn’t know if I would be welcome there, or if I would be greeted hostilely. No matter, I was going to go and find out, so I did.

I had met a very nice, interesting young lady a day or so before. She is from England, and her name is Dinah. She was traveling all around Asia with her 8-year-old son. (A James Bond fan, by the way.) His name is Harry. They were great. Harry was very cool, and Dinah is tall, blonde, British, and has the nerve to drag her kid all over places most westerners are afraid to go near. ‘Nuff said.

On a side note, what is it about the British that make them travel so much? I cannot figure this out, but out of a tiny, geographically insignificant island had sprung an empire, and to this day, the British seem to travel more than any group I have ever seen. Everywhere you go you meet them. By the dozens. I didn’t meet 20 Americans on my whole trip, but I was over-run by British. I was around so damn many limeys, I am getting a bloody accent! Oh well, back to my tea and crumpets for a minute before I continue writing.

Dinah and Harry cheerfully agreed to go with me to the museum. (Dinah does everything cheerfully. Her face is in a perpetual smile, and she is totally unflappable.)

Once we got there, we sort of wandered off among the exhibits. I was impressed by the place. Really impressed.

I expected it to be propagandized heavily, totally anti-American, and it wasn’t. It was very anti-war, but not really anti-American, French, or South Vietnamese. It had some bad things about us there, but not near as many as I would have imagined. I know if I did a museum in America about the Vietnam War, it wouldn’t have been this balanced. The photos on the walls were mainly from American magazines. Look, Life, Time, etc. There was a display about the journalists who died in the war. There was a walk-through tiger cage exhibit. There were a few US armaments in the yard, a thing about Agent Orange, but most of it was slanted in an anti-war direction without being overly anti-American.

One thing that was cool was the guillotine. They have an actual, used guillotine there.

Cynics may say that this is a demonstration of Vietnams need for US dollars, and that the overt anti-Americanism has been removed. OK, so what? I for one am glad it is gone. It is time to move on with Vietnam.

Actually, when you think about it, it is a damn shame for the Vietnamese they won that war. The country is doing well, more or less, right now. I see a lot of shops, a lot of stores, a whole lot of commerce going on. There is communism, but they keep it damn well hidden. (I couldn’t send a cd home because the censors weren’t at the post office to examine and clear it.) Had they just lost the war though, we would have invested in their economy, like we did with Japan, and with the Vietnamese tradition of hard work and industriousness, they may well have been the economic superpower in Asia today. Oh well, that’s the breaks.

One way or the other, the museum was touching. I was very glad I went.

I had to spend some money in this town. They had tailors, (I had a three piece suit made. Pin stripe, wool, dark blue. 60 bucks.) portrait artists, and shops of all kinds. It is a consumers dream. I had custom-made silk housecoats for people. I was spending money like crazy, and the great thing is, it wasn’t costing me much at all. You get several thousand duong for a dollar.

I met an American ex-serviceman living in Saigon. He was a player. Anything you want, he can get you. You want to know about women? Robert’s the guy. Opium den? Ask Robert. Pearl divers? Robert’s your man.

I met Robert at an outdoor café, off the main touristy area. He was there with a couple of friends, and I joined them. He is crew cut, crag-faced, wears camo pants and a t-shirt, chain-smokes and drinks straight whisky from the time he gets up. He is surrounded by a retinue of street kids and young local toughs. His Vietnamese is flawless, and he is unapologetic about his lust for Vietnam.

“Vietnam is Disneyland for men.” He explained one afternoon. “Anything you want, you can get here. Anything. Vietnamese women know how to treat a man, and the society is hungry for money. For 10 dollars a day, you live like a king here, if you know how.”

Well, I think I am going to go for now. I will pick up the commentary later.

Dave