After switching from four different computers, I found one that lets me bring up my email here in Incheon Airport, near Seoul, South Korea.  I can't read the damn language on the screen and they seem to have locked out the ability to switch it to English.  I am sure there is a simple key to press but I can't figure it out if the help instructions are in Korean.  I am sure there is some help-desk guy out there saying, "well, you just push da-dee-da-dee-da, didn't you push da-dee-dee-da, I never have any problems switching languages."

 

Anyway, I jotted down some last thoughts about Saigon.  The notes I take on Vietnam always seem different to me after I leave the country.  For me, Saigon seems like a city it might take years to understand all its nuances.  Let alone, trying to understand the whole country.  We were laughing about watching all the food being beaten to death before it is served.  After a couple of Vietnamese massages, I also felt beaten to death.  Away from the tourist section of Saigon I sat in an all night soup cafe.  There was a whole street of them.  There, some of the real nuances of Saigon can be noticed.  The kids all stop there after there evening jobs or nights out.  You can drink beer all night and they keep filling your soup bowl with noodles and lettuce. 

 

I got to thinking one thing that makes Saigon what it is at night anyway, is all the hokey neon signs.  There are parts of the city that look like one continuous neon light. 


 - photo by Heide Keith -

I checked the price of a new 120cc Honda scooter and they run from $750 to $1000.  Of course, as a foreigner, I think it is hard to own one legally.  I think you have to have someone else put their name on the title - better hope they are a good friend.  For a short stay it is better to rent one for one to five Dollars a day. 

 

One thing I would like to get my hands on is the device a lot of trucks and taxis use for backing up.  It is a musical warning anytime the vehicle is in reverse.  They like to use a lot of Christmas music.  I would like to put White Christmas on the '92 Metro.  Just finding the street where the auto parts are is an ordeal in Saigon.  You look for the "parts street", not a specific shop.  Last year finding a cheap American jack-knife was as three-day adventure.  Apparently they have no word for jack-knife.

 

Gas prices are about the same as in the U.S.A., but they make about a hundred Dollars a year wages so $3.25 a gallon is a bigger deal there than in America.  Although, I think some of those scooters get one hundred miles per gallon.  I see that the building construction and the street repair takes place at night so they have room to work.  I always try to stay up all night one night I am in Saigon to film the all-night culture.  The markets start to awaken around 3:00 a.m. to set up.  I watched a street soccer game at 1:00 a.m. one night.  Thy game commensed under the one light of a traffic circle down from my hotel.  The cops came and took the ball away as there was still a steady flow of traffic, but as the cops rounded the street corner with the confiscated ball, another ball appeared from the darkness and the game continued. 

 

Saigon's street life expands and contracts depending on the time of day.  In the evening a whole new set of vendors seem to set up for goods people might buy during that time of day.  Later yet another vendor culture emerges and round and round it goes 24 hours a day.

 - Photo by Heide Keith -

The Vietnamese seem not so concerned that the foreigners (Westerners as well as other Asians) are invading their country again, this time as tourists, but they seem to see us as fruit trees that need to have one dollar plucked off from at a time, being careful not to pluck you all at once so as to kill you.  They want you back again for another harvest.