Welcome to Vietnam

Cinda and I spent a seemingly endless Saturday afternoon chasing the setting sun toward Tokyo, watching movie after movie and chatting in the galley over cups of box wine with the flight attendants about how to deal with the stresses of unpleasant passengers (1. anti-depressants; 2. buddhism). After a quick stroll through the Tokyo airport (cubist lounges, spas, fried shrimp ebi burgers at McDonald's), we were back in the air and bound for Saigon, known (only) officially as Ho Chi Minh City, after their mustachioed and goateed smiling former president.

We had been advised and warned about the hectic pace of Saigon's streets, but we arrived near midnight on a Sunday night, a time which acts as a beekeeper's smoke in calming the hive. Instead we rolled slowly through half-dark and nearly empty streets, the frequent portraits of Ho Chi Minh curiously mirrored by one of advertising's biggest dumb-luck successes in all history - Colonel Sanders and his mustache, goatee, and warm smile (the Colonel plays well in China, too, where he looks to me like Confucius' little brother).

It was after midnight in Saigon but 8 AM back home, so we were wide awake and ready to stroll. The warm night was enveloping ("like a blanket" said Cinda) as we walked through festive boulevards still vibrant with fresh flowers and paper lanterns from the Lunar New Year celebration last weekend. But restaurants were hard to come by, so we settled on Chinese food at a brightly lit aquarium with tables (Tiger333 beer, fried rice and dumplings). Finally we forced ourselves to sleep.

Monday morning was quiet and comfortable, but as the light gathered, so did the hum of the hive, embodied by the put-put-putter of hundreds of low horsepower scooters. The scooter-to-car ratio lies somewhere around 30 to 1, with all manner of business conducted from the saddle (DHL, carpool, feather duster sales, block ice delivery, business suits headed to the office, sleeping, eating, frolicking). We used our short morning before our flight to visit the War Remnant Museum, which houses an array of U.S. hardware in a dusty courtyard, from jets to artillery pieces to a tracked flame thrower. Inside the open air building were a host of displays about the war itself and the surrounding political situation, both in Vietnam and around the world (all from a not-quite-familiar perspective). There were notably several American men in their 60s there who would have been in their 20s during the war and were likely making a difficult journey back to a place they had been a lifetime ago.

After a short flight to the central coast town of Da Nang, we were shuttled out to the small riverside town of Hoi An, passing along the way the 30 km stretch of coast known collectively as China Beach - a favorite R&R for American troops during the war. However, we never actually saw the beach, because of the non-stop progression of huge, exclusive resorts that are emerging from the sand, in various states of completion and preventing access to all but the cucumber eye mask crowd.

Hoi An's streets are often narrow and winding, littered with flowering trees and lit with overhead lanterns. Known for good food, the town is famous for fine clothes, and within hours I found myself being measured for a tailored suit in the loft of a 19th century warehouse-like building, while Cinda flipped through magazine and catalog cutouts she had brought along and discussed how to bring them to life with another tailor. With the jetlag finally catching up with us, we spiraled our way back through alleyways and over covered bridges until we were back at the hotel and among the friendly staff ("You don't have to take your shoes off at the door - you're number one!"

-Nate