Miss Saigon

Sorry, I couldn't help it...

I have arrived in Vietnam, and I can’t wait to go exploring. Today was something of a wasted day, because I got about 1 ½ hours of sleep last night, so I found the place, unpacked, and crashed for a few hours. I didn’t actually realize that I’d fallen asleep until I woke up and something totally unfamiliar was playing on TV. I’m staying in an extended stay apartment complex place, which is fine. There’s a mini-mart downstairs that I stumbled to and bought a few things to tide me over.

The flight here was pretty good, I left from Karachi at 11:30 pm, arriving in Bangkok at 6:30 am, including the two-hour time difference. The flight was only five hours, so it went fairly quickly by the time they served dinner (I’m not exactly accustomed to dinner at midnight, but I hadn’t eaten more than a piece of toast since lunch) and I watched a movie. When they served dinner, the flight attendant didn’t see my glass of water and spilled the whole thing all over me. She was so incredibly apologetic, I’m guessing that she’s run into some serious air-rage in her time. I said it was an accident, she didn’t see it, it was only water, etc. Besides, the planes are so incredibly dry that I wasn’t sitting in wet clothes for too long. I woke up in time to see us flying over the countryside around Bangkok, which was really cool. Miles and miles of right angles as we flew over rice fields. But when the plane would bank sharply right or left, the water on the fields would reflect the morning sunlight, to punctuate the fields with these brilliant mirrors. The buildings in the suburbs looked so orderly and symmetrical from the air, in contrast to the organic chaos of Karachi. The airport was fairly unremarkable, but I was incredibly relieved to get on the plane and close my eyes, even for a short while.

We landed in Vietnam, and happily, I was one of the first people off the plane and into the immigration line. However, since I had to get my visa upon arrival, I was in the wrong line. After I went through the procedures to get my visa, it seemed as though ten planes full of people had unloaded in the meantime. I got in the shortest line I could find, and as my hour-long wait ticked by, I began to have new appreciation for what my parents had to do when we were little kids and traveling all over the place. There were so many families with small children, who were acting the way small children act when they’re tired, in an unfamiliar place, and have to stand still in line, or sit quietly in their parents’ arms. Some were running around and playing, some were crying, and some were sitting there, as their parents shifted them from side to side. But sooner or later, they all got sick of being good sports, and I just felt bad for them. There was a couple from Taiwan in front of me, who had the cutest baby girl who was obviously teething, since her gums had that ridge along the top, as was visible when she smiled, and she was drooling like a champ at every available opportunity. My waiting game as I stood in line was to guess where people were from, and see if I could catch a glimpse of their passport covers to see if I was right.

Okay, so it’s not a great game, but my options were limited. It’s not like I was going to bust out Parcheesi in the immigration line.

I had been told that my cab ride should cost $4, which was good to know. I stopped at an ATM to get some Vietnamese Dong (and my wallet now has three different currencies in it), although I had some dollars in case I needed them. As soon as I got out of the airport, I was approached by someone who asked if I needed a cab, and I said yes, so he took my wheelie bag and started to walk. In these situations, whether you want to do business with the guy in question or not, you have to follow, if only to get your bag back. I told him where I was going, at which point he said “why are you staying there? Why aren’t you in the center of the city? It’s very far. Ten dollars.” I looked at him and said “I’m here on business. This is where I’m staying, it’s not that far, and I will pay you four dollars.” He said no, so I grabbed the handle on my suitcase and said that I would then find someone else. All of a sudden four dollars seemed more reasonable. I had already started to walk back to where more cab drivers were waiting, and several of them began to tell me that they knew where I needed to go. One of them decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and started to wheel my bag to where his cab was located, so I followed and folded myself into the backseat, grateful to be that much closer to an actual bed.

In some ways, Ho Chi Minh City reminds me of Taipei, in that the streets are clogged with people on motorcycles and scooters, sometimes entire families on one bike. I also saw women in their conical hats on bicycles, which is a very Asian sight to see, and oddly comforting to me – images from my childhood, I suppose. People weave in and out of traffic, cars, vans, bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters all sharing space. It’s true that the place where we’re staying is outside of the center city, it’s not frequented as much by tourists, but there are a lot of things I like about that. When I walk around (which I’ll do tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep), as much as I am definitely planning to make my way over to the center of the city for the sights and the shopping and the good restaurants and all of that good stuff, I like the fact that my current neighborhood is mostly regular Vietnamese people living their lives. When we get our office set up, the project manager said that he’s going to have it located in the center of the city, so we’ll have access to both areas on a daily basis.

I arrived and checked in, and they gave me my key and their best wishes for a good stay. I hauled my suitcase, which may only be carryon size, but it’s…dense, up four flights of stairs to my apartment. And my key didn’t work. I then hauled everything back down, because the only thing more irritating than having to go back and forth, would be going back and forth, only to find my suitcase missing in the end. It’s much cooler in Ho Chi Minh City than it is in Karachi these days, by at least ten degrees, if not more. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not still very hot and humid. By the time I got back down to the office, I must have started to look the way I felt, because they brought me a nice cold glass of water as I waited for the issue to be sorted out, saying that they thought I looked “tired”. I walked with the engineer back up to the apartment, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I wished fervently that someone would help me with my bag. But no such luck this time. I struggled back up the stairs for the second time, my clothes sticking to me in the heat and humidity, as the engineer calmly trotted up the stairs behind me. Fortunately, the replacement key that I was given worked, and I was able to walk in and crank the air conditioning.

Once I woke up, I wandered down to the mini mart for a few essentials. I could figure out what most things were, but unlike in Pakistan, English isn’t tremendously prevalent. Most people know some English, and there are still a bunch of signs in English, but it is definitely more of a foreign environment in that sense. I’m really happy to be here, though. I definitely stand out, as I do in Pakistan, but people don’t seem to care. Also, since the security situation here is worlds better than in Karachi, there are a lot more foreigners walking around. It was a beautiful and bright day, and as the evening approached, I saw some storm clouds start to roll in across the city. The project manager came by to suggest that we head out for some dinner, and just as I finished changing out of the clothes that I’d both traveled and slept in (ick), the storm hit. It was very, very heavy, with lots of wind, and in a most welcome change from rain in Karachi, it managed to break the heat, and the evening was cool and comfortable after that.

We went out to a restaurant in the city center, which was nice. It appeared to cater to the international crowd, and had London Underground theme. The food was good, but I started to fade quite a lot. The project manager is a very nice, very chatty German guy, who has been doing this kind of work for years. He’s actually lived up in Hanoi for quite some time, so he hasn’t spent much time in Ho Chi Minh City (which plenty of people still call Saigon, actually), but he’s quite familiar with the country and the culture. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon, but I think I’ll be spending the day up to that point at the pool or gym, and checking out my new ‘hood. I did some laundry tonight, and was a little startled to see that the hose from the laundry machine empties out onto the floor of the laundry room, instead of directly into a drain. However, it didn’t result in a flood, and I’ve got some more clean clothes, so that’s good enough for me.

The next couple of weeks are bound to be interesting, and my e-mail connection is only so-so, but this is a good break for me from life in the ‘stan. There are a lot of good things about Pakistan, but I’m glad to have a little more freedom for the time being.