I wasn’t at all sure what I’d find in Vietnam when I visited in 1998. The following is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.
Feb. 13, 1998
What can I see perched comfortably six stories above Ho Chi Minh City, more popularly called Saigon?
I can see an abnormally high number of Vietnamese flags — red cloth with one large yellow five-pointed star. I can also see a bright blue sky that belies the pollution of thousands of motorbikes on the streets below. The modern cranes that don’t fly are busy, but the overall impression is of a low city rather than the crowded skyscrapers I have come to expect in Asia. Satellite dishes on the room of the Rex Hotel adjoining the swimming pool insure the most up to date modern technology.
I’m allowed to swim here for a fee even though I’m not staying at this hotel. The swimmers are an odd assortment of foreigners from many countries. But the beauty of Saigon, besides the gingerbread leftovers from the French colonial time which are sometimes freshly painted and sometimes dilapidated and decaying quietly, are the people below who exhibit a fresh and innocent friendliness I didn’t expect given their painful long term and short term history. Yes, there are those who want your money, those who will beg for it, and those who will outright steal it. But, compared to the cautiousness of Chinese and the Korean dislike and/or fear of foreigners, the Vietnamese are warm, sweet, gentle, and helpful.
At least, these have been my early impressions over the last three days. I have been “adopted” by a cyclo driver/guide (the bike is in the back instead of China’s front pedicab). Once he “claimed” me, the other cyclo drivers don’t try for my business. I have even left a message for him with the other drivers, which he received quickly and reliably.
He maneuvers this contraption with great skill through the chaotic masses of bikes, motorbikes, buses, and cars. The bikes and motorbikes convey a bride and groom on their way to a new life, trussed ducks hanging over a passenger seat, a woman passenger holding a live pig, boxes piled up even taller than the driver, and dainty young ladies holding one end of their attractive ao dai dresses with one hand on the handlebar. Equally elegant are the many ladies in shoulder-length silk gloves with frilly handkerchiefs covering their mouths.
The food is wonderful — fresh and fruity and tropical and French and Chinese and Vietnamese — and not too expensive. There are inexpensive hotels and an incredible tourism infrastructure designed for the poorer, independent tourists like me. I haven’t traveled in any third-world countries that make it so easy and reasonably priced.
I finished off my lucky Friday the 13th with a French duck dinner for $4, lovely tropical fruits brought up to my room by the friendly family that runs the small hotel where I’m staying, an International Herald Tribune to scan from front to back, and a good feeling about being here. However, it’s already clear I wouldn’t be able to teach in Saigon because it’s too hot for me here.
