VN 27: Laundry

A view from a Ho Chi Minh City hotel onto the neighborhood.

A friend once said that she thought washers and dryers would not be good for clothes compared to washing them by hand, and although I see her point, washing machines and dryers are far more common than they used to be. Even so, polyester (sometimes called "Vietnamese silk") is common, and that makes sense since, like tile and plastic, it is easy to wash and it dries comparatively quickly.

Still, how the clothes hung out to dry in the daily soaking humidity ever completely dry I have never understood, but they do appear to. 

Or you can hang them in front of the air conditioner over night.

If you have an air conditioner.

VN 26: Foot and Fish Massage

I once met an American who regularly did business in Vietnam and claimed to get rid of jet lag from his flight from Seattle by having a shower, a massage and a sauna (in some order) as soon as he arrived.

Showers help. But a sauna? Vietnam is a sauna. Why pay for one that is indoors? Walk outdoor and you are in a sauna. 

A massage might help, but usually I save that for right before I leave, after I have been in cars and on motorbikes that may or may not need new shock absorbers. I once went to a place recommended by the hotel I was staying at: the place offering massages  was next to the hotel, upstairs and at the back of a bar. The masseuse walked on my back and I lived to tell about it, but since then I have chosen to go to the spa at the Ho Chi Minh City Sheraton which--no surprise!--has Western city prices and standards of cleanliness. Appropriately, it is on Dong Khoi, basically Ho Chi Minh City's Fifth Avenue, and as far as I can see, the place offers a range of standard good-for-your health massages, not what some apparently do call "happy massage".

But next to my usual hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Lan Lan 2, is  Kelly Hotel, a place that I imagine  is much like Lan Lan 2, give or take, with forty or so dollar rooms, including breakfast. But at the door to Kelly Hotel--in essence, downstairs  from reception  and at street level--used to be a Foot and Fish Massage place. 

Did I go? No. First, even the modest foot massage as part of a basic pedicure makes my feet twitch. Second, although I like the idea of little fish nibbling the callouses and dead skin off my feet--I mean, it does seem environmentally sound--I had to wonder how often the water is changed and what diseases (parasites?) the cute little fishies could transmit as they munch away--and what human-to-human diseases might be lurking in the water as well.

Fish are for eating.

Finally: fish are for eating.

VN 25: From Thatch to Skyscraper

Someone explained to me once that there was a time (and there is no doubt still a place) in Vietnam when material wealth was indicated by the material of your house: the movement was from thatch to galvanized tin to concrete. Trees. Pleasantly seedy (sometimes) and dark and cool (if damp) concrete.

Not so much in the cities any more. Urbanization in the form of glass and concrete has arrived.

In the sweltering and blanching noontime heat, here is a representative street in Ho Chi Minh City, a couple stories, a combination of home and shop, with the newish Bitexco Financial Tower in the background. Sixty-eight storeys, three basements, the fourth tallest building in Vietnam, the tallest (for a while) in Ho Chi Minh City. A multi-use building with office space, food court, restaurants, movie theatres, restaurants, night clubs, and the Saigon Skydeck offering 360 degree view of Ho Chi Minh City for a ten dollar fee.

A heliport.

Rather than echo the local French architecture, the inspiration for the Bitexco Tower's shape was Vietnam's national flower, the lotus, but I have yet to understand that inspiration. What part looks like a lotus?

VN 24: Behind Ben Thanh Market

Moving from the market to the neighborhood: more shops, more traffic, French architecture, and life on the sidewalk. Places where people live.

Everything is for sale, and even though it looks like everything is one big rush, really it isn't.

VN 23: Ben Thanh Market, Part 2

The low building to the right and behind the statue in the middle of the traffic circle is Ben Thanh Market--that is, before the renovations that are going on to remove the traffic circle. The building to the far right in the photo is a hospital which I never saw any use of (fortunately), but for many years, it was not unusual to see men urinating in broad daylight against the outside hospital wall. People just walk on by.

Late one night I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and took a taxi from the airport. By then I knew--pretty much--what the ride to the hotel looked like even in the dark. All was normal, exactly as expected, until the cab driver went around this traffic circle in exactly the wrong direction, and, by that time, I had spent enough time in Vietnam to know that I would get to the hotel safely. (It did help that between midnight and one in the morning there was not much traffic.)

I got there safely.

VN 22: Ben Thanh Market

 

One of the major markets in Ho Chi Minh City is Ben Thanh Market; as the Lonely Planet guidebook once said about it, "If you can't find it there, you don't need it." At one point the French called it Les Halles Centralles, and as of last fall, the statue in front of it had been removed and the road was blocked as part of urban renewal: the new subway is supposed to stop in front of it, and I have also heard the market itself is supposed to be reduced in size but will have a lower, below ground section, not just a street level. At least these days, the place closes around suppertime and a night market opens on the streets on the back and sides.

Over the years prices have gone up. T-shirts (even with bargaining) are no longer a dollar. Counterfeit goods (Rolex watches, Chanel handbags) abound. Raw meat is on what look like lunchroom trays on the ground on the floor if you venture towards the back, and although sometimes hygiene may not always seem to be the top priority, a quick bowl of soup or a Coke or even a bottle of water in one of the inside café stalls is well worth it for the people watching. 

Some vendors are willing to haggle about tourist gifties or chopsticks, soap or flipflops--or even batteries (which did work for a while). And some are not.  I usually try to bargain at least some but finally cave. Why? Because it is freaking hot, and, secondly, the dollar or two we are haggling about very likely means more to the vendor than it does to me.

VN 21: Power LInes

Up until very recently, these were the wires a couple blocks behind Ben Thanh Market and on the way to my usual hotel, Lan Lan 2, in central Ho Chi Minh City. This is a pretty much main and representative intersection.

And then, three years after this photo, the wires were all been moved underground although how the people responsible for doing so figured out what wire was what is beyond me.

As an American friend said, "Sometimes I wonder why the whole place doesn't explode."

VN 20: And Now for a Digression

There are very few almost-solo photos of me in Vietnam. One is of me on the back of a motorbike driven by a Vietnamese friend, and the other is with an American friend who was my upstairs neighbor when I lived at Kien Giang Community College. Both were taken in the Mekong Delta. When I find them, I'll add them and tell their stories.

And then there is this one, which I have only as a computer-printed one, now scanned. This is from 2003: I am wearing my first ao dai,  the Vietnamese national dress, the one my student friend Cindy Xuan took me to buy. She chose the fabric over my protests; I had had in mind something less funky and flashy. Something with far less horizontal movement to it. (But the fabric would have looked good on Cindy Xuan who, she told me when I asked, already had about twenty ao dai.) And then after we bought the fabric in the market, she took me on her motorbike to the tailor so I could be measured. "You must wear big underwear," the tailor told Cindy Xuan to tell me.

I came to think of it as my country-western ao dai. A month or so later, the women in the college bought me fabric for what for what I think of as a much more tasteful gentle peach color ao dai. That is, when I wore than new peach one (no measurements required since they were recorded in a notebook already), I felt a little bit--a little bit--less like a water buffalo compared to the petite and sylphlike Vietnamese women.

My helmet I bought from the local Harley-Davidson dealership before I went to Vietnam,  the dealership as foreign to me in some ways as the tailor in the Mekong Delta. I wore it even though in 2003 there was no law mandating helmets--in fact, only recently had a law passed mandating at least one mirror on the handlebars of motorbikes. These days helmets (and many seem to be more like bike helmets to me) are required by law, but even so, one mother told me that helmets are not good for babies' heads.

My helmet was hot and it made it difficult to hear what the driver was saying. Riding on a motorbike is cool just because and because it generates a breeze--except for around my head inside the helmet.

So in a city of 200,000 in the Mekong Delta, I was the big American regularly enough on the back of a motorbike as I made my way around the city. To the locals, I was told, I looked like I had a rice cooker on my head.

Well, it was hot inside the helmet.

VN 19: Rice Paddies and Power Lines

A little perspective: in 1998, much of Vietnam, aside from the city centers, was this: rice paddies and power lines.

Rural. The boondocks. The back of beyond. "The countryside," as Vietnamese call it.

This photo was taken in 1998 on the road between Hanoi and Halong Bay and nearby Haiphong, a ride which now takes two hours (or less) one way because of improved roads. But in 1998, the ride was closer to four hours one way on bumpy two-lane roads. (Think of mostly-unused country roads in the US.)

At the time, Ford Motor Company had just built a plant on the road to Haiphong, one with metal fence and razor wire around it; these days the fence is hidden in full-grown trees.

These days you can easily travel roundtrip from Hanoi to Halong Bay and Haiphong in a day, and along the way, rice paddies and powerlines--scenes like this one--will be rare. 

Such scenery has been replaced by industrial zones--international manufacturing, many low no-nonsense buildings--that employ many people, no doubt some of whom used to be rice farmers (or who are their children). Industrial zone, industrial zone, industrial zone.

As far as the eye can see. Factories. 

When I asked a Vietnamese friend, he said I was right. Rice paddies had been replaced by industrial zones. No question.  "But I promise you that if you go far enough behind those industrial zones, those factories, eventually you will see what you saw in 1998. Those people are still there. The paddies are still there."

VN 18: Win Hotel: a Room

And here is one of the more expensive and biggest rooms at Win Hotel.

It looked out (well, almost) on the Funky Monkey bar.

Cost? At the most, maybe $40 a night (and likely less) for AC, bathroom with hot water, breakfast, and a balcony over  the street.

VN 17: Win Hotel, Detail

Detail from a place called Win Hotel, Hanoi, now permanently closed, and if Google and TripAdvisor are to be trusted, replaced by Hang Ngoc Dynastie Hotel, another three-star hotel, one now with an elevator, spa area and fitness room. It is now listed as #223 of 619 hotels in Hanoi. Not a bad rating.

Win Hotel was a family-owned mini-hotel with many floors, no elevator, sketchy AC, and a very friendly front desk staff. The windowless and inexpensive rooms were...well, stuffy and damp but clean. Safe as far as I know.

Win Hotel, possibly one of the first generation of privately-owned mini-hotels was recommended by the Lonely Planet guidebook, and it deserved to be.

Maison Centrale, Part 4

And one more bilingual commentary.

VN 15: Maison Centrale, Part 3

Sample bilingual commentary. 

VN 14: Maison Centrale Part 2

For the most part, the contents of Vietnamese museum and historical sights are low-tech, and in Hoa Lo Prison this is particularly effective. There is a large model of the prison at the time when it got the most use, and the French occupation is marked by (among other things) a guillotine.

John McCain's cell--fairly recently repainted, I think--is small and dank and dark, truly a hellish place. Towards the end of the do-it-yourself walk through the prison, a glass case encloses what purports to be the flight suit he was wearing when he was rescued from Truc Bac Lake and imprisoned.