I keep finding myself in countries that I know next to nothing about. In part this is because of the nature of this project - I'm hopping from country to country, following clues. We don't get the guidebook for the next country until we're en route, and while we're on the plane, Gabriel is usually trying to find a decent hotel for us to stay in. So I show up, knowing (if I'm lucky) how to mispronounce the local equivalent of "thank you".
And so it was with Vietnam. Outside of movies about the Vietnam war (more exactly, the Vietnam-America war) I was pretty much entirely ignorant of the country. My dad was a photographer for the Navy during the war. Apparently he also worked as a life guard at Vung Tao, pulling drunk army out of the ocean. But outside of stories about how he tried to support the anti-war movement by dropping flyers from government aircraft he didn't really talk much about his time in Viet Nam.
I felt genuinely oogy about being a tourist in a country that we had been actively fighting in not too long ago. Gabriel attempted to assuage my fears, saying "Honestly Donovan, they're over it. It's like being a Japanese tourist in America."
Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as you probably know it) is home to some of the nastiest traffic I have ever witness in my life. The Los Angeles 405 is a dream compared to 5pm at any given traffic circle in Saigon. Everybody, everybody is on motorized skooters. Honda is the manufacturer of choice. To cross the street is to put your complete faith in the kindess of human beings; bikes and cars never stop, they just swerve to avoid. Correction: motos will swerve, but a car will end you.
Blergh - I'm having a hell of a time writing this post. Perhaps I'll start with the present and add recollections as they occur.
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