As I got off the plane, I knew instantly that I wasn’t in Melbourne anymore… Or Kansas, my inner voice joked. The air here was oppressive, made itself noticed, couldn’t be ignored. Stepping off the plane to Tasmania or New Zealand had felt just like arriving in Melbourne, but my first steps into Ho Chi Minh City Airport were already unique. The signs everywhere were in Vietnamese of course, so the airport itself felt like a foreigner that wasn’t trying too hard to welcome me. Thankfully some of the announcements were in English – after first playing in Vietnamese and French. The babble of unintelligible voices I heard was ever-present, but it soon faded into the background. I was to discover that Saigon and peace-and-quiet were mutually exclusive.
A pre-arranged (thank God) taxi got me to my also pre-arranged (once again thank God) hotel. My driver steered us through the stream of traffic. The infinite motorbikes and scooters were schools of salmon; slender forms wriggling and dipping in and out of lanes all around me and bleating their cacophonic horns. Looking through the back windscreen of the taxi showed me the wake our little raft of an automobile had left behind us – though it was quickly filled by the rumbling scooters. I was being pushed down the stream. We took a sharp turn – and another. I was thoroughly lost in the riverlike alleys that pervaded the blocks of buildings. Hung low were stray cables of all shapes and sizes, lengths and thicknesses, and states of disrepair. They looped and draped around me, as vines strewn between the great lithic trees that were the buildings. The almost nauseating claustrophobia and disorientation of the sporadic journey this metropolis was taking me on was almost too much; I felt the cobbles beneath our wheels jarring as if they were disturbed pebbles in the likeness of choppy water around me.
None too soon the driver had us arrive at what I initially perceived to be the city centre, where motorbikes were sucked in centrifugal arcs around a great island of manicured garden. After a moment it revealed itself to be no more than a large roundabout. Still, I found myself releasing a breath that I didn’t know I’d been holding. I looked to the driver. What had I expected? Welcome to Saigon? Maybe a cinematic pan into a long-shot? He just stared at me. I felt as if Saigon itself was deciding whether to accept or to purge me, like a foreign cell in a body.
“Thanks.” I promptly got out of the small raft of safety I’d only just become familiar with. I was once again in the tropical urban jungle. A noisy tropical jungle at that. Well, I took comfort, at least I’m at the hotel safe and sound. I turned away from the mesmerising display of vehicles and looked amongst the buildings I was standing in front of for the Ha Hien hotel. I then understood what is meant by the phrase ‘a sinking feeling’, and it was nothing to do with my lunch resurfacing. I was standing before restaurants, not hotels. Indeed, restaurant after restaurant, and stall after stall, as if each street were a parody of its neighbour.
I spun around. A street of shoe shops. No. An expansive food market. Oh goodness. Everywhere, babbling brooks of all manner of merchant, but none of them are my hotel. I started breathing fast. All around me was chaos. It was all Saigon was letting me see. At once every tempting morsel of disrepair thrust itself in my face as I ran (as well as one can run with cumbersome luggage) away from that chaotic corner. I was bounced between wrought iron gates to Buddhist temples, mango flavoured walls of enthusiastically manned stalls, and neon living spaces that housed three or four generations.
Hyperventilating, I slumped down on a small red plastic stool, barely big enough for my seating. After a moment, I realised a man was standing over me, gesturing over his shoulder.
“Man!” The twangy voice seemed to be a command and a request all at once. Sir, get in my carriage and Sir, do you need a lift somewhere? “Man. You first customer.” He drew me over by the elbow to his bicycle-powered carriage – if I may call it that instead. I hadn’t really consented to having my luggage put in the weathered contraption, but his confidence was reassuring.
“Excuse me,” I began, “uh, the Ha Hien hotel?” Amongst the wrinkled and sun-beaten features of his face, his jaded eyes blinked in understanding. Well that’s a relief… I think. As he cycled us around, I willed myself to truly open my eyes again, and take in the surroundings. A damp taste hung in the air of the pollution mixing with the humidity and the smells and tastes of the street food being bought, cooked and bartered every which way I looked. I was beginning to tune out from the literally unceasing blare of horns, which as it seemed to me, directly replaced the function of how I might use an indicator in a car. Circling as vultures over other tourists, I saw carbon copies of the bicycle-man who was currently pedalling away in front of me. Saigon was like a generous banquet, ever ready to serve its customers, dishes balanced precariously everywhere you look, waiters and waitresses eternally vying for your attention, and your Vietnamese Dong.
I saw a lively group of young people drinking a cool beverage together, and what stuck out to me was that they were all in uniform. Emboldened by my regained curiosity, I tapped the unreadable man on the shoulder. “Stop here, thank you.” The man nodded and pulled over.
“Sixty thousand Dong.” he stated, and our staring contest began. I knew the rules to this one.
“Forty thousand.”
“Fifty-five thousand, no lower.” He declared, adding to his little performance with a show of grief.
I smiled and held out a fifty thousand Dong note. “Fifty thousand, deal.” He made begrudging eye contact, but ultimately the little face of Ho Chi Minh that I held before him won him over and he accepted.
I approached the young people. “Excuse me…” At once their faces all lit up, and one girl turned to address me.
“Hello, how are you?” The young lady’s English was very clear, and very clean. I was a little taken aback, and my eyes were drawn to their blue polo t-shirts.
“I’m good thanks. This is my first day in Saigon. What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Welcome!” the young lady chirped. “This is seaweed tea – it’s a specialty in this part of Saigon, but there are – how do you say – it’s not very – there aren’t many shops that sell it. Also, foreigners wouldn’t know where to look because the shops don’t have a sign.” She spoke quickly to an old lady standing by an esky full of the local recipe and handed me the glass that had just been promptly filled. “Here, try it.”
I took a sip. It was wonderful and refreshing, like her. It was pleasant and gentle, like the soft regal teal-green paint daubed on the walls. “Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure. Let me introduce my friends. We are University students, and volunteering for Saigon Walking Tours. We take tourists around to let them see the beauty of the city that we love, and so we get to practise our English too. Where are you headed? We can walk you there before our next tour.”
“Ha Hien hotel.” I had a good feeling about the students. Led forth by my new friends, I was alternately bombarded with questions and trivia, but I was far from overwhelmed. I felt Saigon reaching out to me. Surely enough, we found Ha Hien. I said goodbye to the excitable students at the reception. After dumping my bags in my room, I retired to the rooftop garden. Looking out over the urban sprawl in every direction, I gave a sly nod to Saigon’s raw beauty. She had funnelled me around through the chaotic streams, right into a gaggle of students, and right into her heart.
This is a piece I created for an assignment. Almost all of the events are authentic representations of my experience in Vietnam earlier this year.
Distilled Orthopraxy 