Miss Saigon

Nobody calls it Ho Chi Minh City. The new name has stuck about as well as New Coke or Clear Pepsi - everyone still calls it Saigon. It is my favorite place on the trip so far. Reckless, insane and alive. Even the people who live here can't believe that they live here. There are seven million bodies and five million motorbikes. Every crosswalk is a new way to die - fender in the face, kickstand in the liver, tire in the anus. You can't even hear yourself think during rush hour. With so many people in your business, I would have to imagine five pm as the ideal hour to get a rimjob. Nobody would hear you moaning as thousands of horns blared outside of the window.

I saw the sights in Saigon. The War Remembrance Museum was as brutal and sobering as I expected. I am glad that I was still playing with Weebles in the early seventies and did not understand how miserable the "conflict" with Vietnam was. The History Museum reminded me that these people were just not to be fucked with. Each room was a different century of failed invasion, from the French to the Chinese to You-Know-Who.

I pulled the ripcord on Saigon early so that I could take a three day Sinh Cafe tour of the Mekong Delta. Day one was a motherfuckload of bus travel, spruced up with cultural stops that did little to provide culture. Watch people make candy, opportunity to buy candy. Watch people make rice wine, opportunity to buy rice wine. Watch people puff riced...yeah. Clearly someone in this country had visited Disneyworld and learned that the ride's exit should be constructed directly through a shop. I believe that the world's capitalism was created in Tomorrowland, just outside of Space Mountain.

The bus contained French people who had not discovered deodorant, fat English girls who talked too loud and four Dutch guys who, combined, might be taller than The Empire State Building. I sat next to Phillip, an acceptable German man. Neither one of us was in love with the match but given the friendship options, both of us knew that we could spend a few days together. It turned out that we both like super hot men, which means that neither of us is attracted to the other. At least we had common ground and I was reminded that he Cosmos sure does have a way of pairing The Gays.

There was also a deuce of Lesbians on the trip, who naturally kept to themselves. There is simply no mistaking dykes. They wore smart, sensible Northface daypacks and halter tops. They ate nutritious pineapple snacks. They had tight frosted hair, cross-training sneakers and shorts that will never be in fashion, anywhere. Mom + Pop sporting goods shops should never fear financial difficulty, so long as their town has a baker's dozen of rug munchers.

Chau Doc is near the Cambodian border. Our hotel was on the river. Herpes ridden whorehouses are a notch classier than river hotels in border towns. Dozens of people asked me if I wanted a massage but every time I explained that I am just not that kind of lady. The truth is, I am just not that kind of lady for asian people.

We spent two days touring floating markets and non-floating markets. You can get a good sense of the big differences between life here and in the north by taking one of these tours. You can also come to loathe markets, which never seem to have a salad bar like Whole Foods, never mind a buffet like Souplantation. Aisles are filled with stinking fish, buckets of dried fruit and restaurants that could collapse in a Two earthquake. I had only paid 50 bucks for the whole trip and couldn't really complain, even if the windowless one star hotels were located above Peavey amps blaring Toni Braxton.

Our guide spoke a smattering of english and was always keen to point out that we could make a pretty picture at each location. This could be a rice field full of graves, or a town that had been flooded with bodies in 2005.

Tourist village kids were sent out by their parents for our money. I learned how to furrow my brow just like them and mimic words back like "PLeeeeeeez" and "KoKonut", which pissed them off to high heaven. After about the thirtieth child attack I began pretending that they were all ShortRound from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which gave them a Speilberg quality and made them much more palatable.

Phillip and I did our best to be Foodies, eating at neighborhood haunts. All of the guide books say to go where the locals are eating but I think they have missed an important point - just because locals are eating chicken feet does not mean that it is good. We began ordering at least two unrecognizable items per meal, unsure if they were Ox balls or Venison Vagina. They often looked like things that could have been either, so we tended to sweep them under our piles of rice and cut our losses. This was impossible to do when they brought out an foot long catfish, which turned out to be quite delectable. Neither of us tried the whiskers.

The days took on a Super Mario quality. No obstacle was too difficult to overcome, but each was rather tedious and something that we must do to advance. Bus. Market. Bus. Bad lunch. Bus. Bowser.

We had to take a few ferries because the bridges had once collapsed and killed hundreds of people (engineering goes out the window in monsoon season, when everything sinks further into mud than anticipated). The chaos of hundreds of people embarking and disembarking resembled the Superdome circa 2005. Couples argued over which blue bus was theirs, amputees on boards grabbed at the knees and old ladies laughed like witches amidst the chaos. There were also the requisite old men selling Rayban sunglasses, all with logos that could be scratched off with a fingernail.

One thing has always kept me from crisis mode in Vietam - the promise of strong, sweet coffee. No matter where you are here, even if you are a field of treefrogs, you can get the most delicious coffee. It is unlike any other. Imagine the last concentrated drips from a filter tasting like pure sugar cane and you will come close to it fathoming the deliciousness. Poured over ice, it is orgasmic. Handed to me in trying circumstances, it is a nipple to my mouth and instantly quels my whimpering.
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I just became distracted because a man with a bicycle full of dried quid and fake lonely planets tried to sell me both and I purchased neither.

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I am writing this from Saigon, where I am spending my last days in Vietnam. My flight leaves tomorrow for Siem Reap and I am very excited to arrive in a new country. Especially since I have picked a posh hotel to crash at for the next few days.