Saigon, Wednesday April 6, 2005
Apr. 7th, 2005 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsandersonYesterday, we rented a car and went to the sea. It took quite a long time to get there. We drove through roads with manicured centers and people working on them. We got stopped and the driver got a ticket (I think) for not signaling a turn.
We stopped at a roadside restaurant shortly before the shore. It was heavily planted with various plants. There were tanks with fish, both glass and concrete. Thong asked them, and I took some shots of the kitchen. While we were there, a guy rode up on a motorbike and delivered ice. We ate rice and fried pork. They also served a large bowl of soup with fish. The soup is one Thong makes with lots of vegetables and okra. I didn’t have any fish. Thien had beer, which seems to be his staple. I stuck with soda water.
When we did. The shore was quiet, but the sea was not. The waves were quite high. We stopped at a resort with a
restaurant and sun shelters. There was a large group in the shelter we used who were having a very good time, drinking, eating, and swimming. I even went into the water. Tin did not, but Thong and his brother, Thien, both did. I put on Thong’s sunscreen thinking it was the one he got for me... an SPF 30. His was an SPF 4… anyway, I’m slightly burned today.
I’m converting the tapes to DVD to leave with Thien. It’s a time consuming process. We fell asleep during the first one I transferred, but it worked.
After swimming and showering, we ate at the resort restaurant. I ordered shrimp in tamarind sauce, Thong ordered rice with fried pork (his staple), and the rest ordered rice with a mixture of seafood – including lots of squiddy cuttlefish tentacles. I liked the shrimp, which were whole and deep fried. The sauce was sweet and sour, with enough pepper for heat and a few cooked onions. Thong ordered another plate of it which we shared.
After the shower, we went to the car to leaving off clothes and the like. Then we went into the restaurant and sat on the balcony. The chairs and table were all damp from spray off the waves.
After eating, we went further down the coast to a mountain with a statue of Jesus on it (across from an island with a different temple). We started up an endless series of stairs flanked by bougainvillea and gardenias just coming into bloom. It was very warm when the wind from the sea got blocked. About midway up, the scent of dry vegetation (not the scent of green papayas) started to get to me along with the sun, and I did not go all of the way up. Thong and I stayed at the bottom of the last flight of stairs and hid in the shade of the gardenias. Thong used up all of the storage on the digital camera there, and I started kicking myself for not transferring it over to the computer and erasing it. I’ve been just moving the pictures over and keeping them on the cards so that I have at least two copies in two different places. Thong keeps warning about dire threats from marauding motorcyclists who swoop in and grab camera bags and passers by with sharp knives who slash bags and harvest the contents. So far, we’ve seen none of that. Anyway, while we were waiting for them to come down from the Jesus statue, a group of two couples came up and asked Thong to take some pictures. He did, but they only had one unexposed picture on their roll.
After Tin came down, we saw a head pop up on the shoulder of the statue. We thought it was Thien, and I focused in with the camcorder for a shot. It got a fairly good view, but a few minutes later, Thien appeared walking down the stairs, so obviously, it was not his head popping up out of the shoulder of Jesus.
The driver came down after Thien. When we were all on the same level, we started down the rest of the stairs. Amazingly enough, there was no miracle, and there was the exact same number of steps going down as coming up. We stopped at the concessions stand about ¾ of the way down, where the girls had been scrubbing bottle caps with toothbrushes when we went up (scary thought about what they did with those bottle caps), and Tin bought some CDs which got played on the way back to the house. While we were at the concession stand, a cute guy with two horses came down the steps. The horses each had two baskets on them. I did not see him coming fast enough to get the camera ready, and only caught them from behind. When we got to the foot of the mountain, he was mixing sand and concrete and putting it into bags. I assume he put it on the horses and went back up the mountain. He had a wide straw hat on with fringes that looked almost Mexican. I think I’ve seen them in the vendor stalls, but I’ve not seen anybody wearing one. The standard Vietnamese peasant had I’ve seen everywhere.
After the mountain, we drove south along the coast to the next town. It was a port of sorts, with lots of small green boats docked. There were some tall buildings, and road construction blocked the route the driver wanted to take. He asked two young boys on a bike how to get around it, and we went right into the neighborhood. He then asked a bunch of men working on a car if the route was right, and with much talking and gesticulating, they all seemed to agree that if we turned and went this way, we’d be back where we wanted.
On the long way back into the city we passed a grove of lacquer trees. At least I think that’s what they were. Thong said they were for making plastic. The grove had no undergrowth and the trees were planted in a grid.
We stopped at a huge market, and walked towards a goal I did not understand. After walking across the back of the large market building and past several market stalls that ran perpendicular to us, we came to the vendor Tin was looking for. Crabs, snails, and shellfish. She picked out a selection of crabs, and they were put in plastic bags, and then we continued into the city. There was a great discussion about price, but the driver pointed out a number of stands selling crabs along the route after we passed the market.
Thong has been handling all of the money, so I’m woefully ignorant of the monetary transactions. I keep thinking the VND (Viet Nam Dong) is 1000 to 1 USD, but I think it’s about 1,600. The currency amounts are staggering, however. Some of the Dong have clear plastic inserts. Thong says they’re copied after some Australian money, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it in a bill. There are a few coins which represent small Dong amounts. They’re not used much, but I’ve collected a small stash for a friend at work who asked for some.
While we were in Hanoi, Thuy called from the states. Tin handed the phone to me, but Thuy wanted to talk to Thong. I handed the phone to Thong, who was in the bathroom. They talked for quite some time. Thuy needed some documents from the church by the farm to prove he was catholic. Rumor has it that he married a Vietnamese girl quite some months ago. I think they’re trying to get remarried in the church, and he needs the papers. When we got back to Saigon, Thong’s father took off for the farm to get them.
When we finally got back to the house last night shortly after the sun set, we retreated to the upstairs bedroom where Thong turned on the air conditioning and ran around the room with the electric tennis racket mosquito whacker. It’s a rechargeable device with a grid for zapping insects. Thong’s parents keep the house open during the day to let the wind keep it bearable. (The day we flew back from a cool and chilly Hanoi, Saigon was 33C or around 100 F.) His parents sleep on the floor of the main floor in the room between the kitchen and the living room under a mosquito net. The rest of us are sleeping on the second floor. Tin, Thien, Thong and I in the room with the air conditioning. Chuan, who is the youngest, sleeps in the other bedroom on this floor, or at least I think he does. He’s always up late and off early.
I harvested the camera storage, burned two CDs and gave them to Thien, and then started burning the first DVD. At one point, the estimated time for the completion was over 17 hours. Fortunately, it did not take that long. At some point, Tin brought up a meal of rice, with a piece of fried pork, and some excellent pork ribs that rivaled the ones we had in Hanoi that everyone liked. After dinner, Tin took Thong off to get a haircut, and Thien and I fell asleep waiting for the DVD to finish burning.
At some point, I awoke to the sound of hammering from downstairs. I checked the DVD status, but it still estimated 9 minutes to go. Thong came up and told us to come down for crab, which we did. They were using spoons to crack the crabs, which had all been boiled. They were excellent. We ate them with a mixture of salt, pepper, lime juice, and sliced shallots. About midway through the crabiganza, Thong’s father arrived in a van with Thong’s eldest sister from the farm. Thong’s father joined us with the crabs and beer, but Thong’s sister was carsick and didn’t.
When we were finished with the crab, I asked Thong to check if the DVD was done. He went up and brought it down. We put it in the American Sony progressive scan DVD player and, after fooling around with the menu, got it to play. I fast forwarded past most of it, but stopped at the point where we bought the crab we were eating and some of the other points. My skills as a camera man are pretty meager, and if I’m going to make it interesting, I’ll have to edit out a whole lot of material. We’ve taken lots of shots out of car windows (or make that through car windows) which really isn’t a good idea. And there are lots of places where we should have stopped that we did not because we were trying to get somewhere and not just trying to get film. I’ve got waay too much shots of roadside scenes.
On the way back, I thought that there are 50 million cafes in Vietnam, and those are just the ones on the road between Saigon and the sea. I know this, because I’ve counted them, and that’s just the ones on this side of the street. And it’s just the ones on the main road. It does not include all of the ones off the main road or on the other side of the street.
I’ve seen computer monitors sticking out of desks in small buildings on the road. Motor cycle repair shops. Metal shops where they make the ornamental screens that are used everywhere, coffin shops, furniture stores, clothing, barbers, and beauty salons everywhere. If they used to call England a nation of shopkeepers, it’s true here. Almost every house has a shop as the ground floor. There are restaurants and cafes everywhere. Food and drink are a constant. You can buy beer from the vendors in the parks or anywhere.
We stopped at a roadside restaurant shortly before the shore. It was heavily planted with various plants. There were tanks with fish, both glass and concrete. Thong asked them, and I took some shots of the kitchen. While we were there, a guy rode up on a motorbike and delivered ice. We ate rice and fried pork. They also served a large bowl of soup with fish. The soup is one Thong makes with lots of vegetables and okra. I didn’t have any fish. Thien had beer, which seems to be his staple. I stuck with soda water.
When we did. The shore was quiet, but the sea was not. The waves were quite high. We stopped at a resort with a
restaurant and sun shelters. There was a large group in the shelter we used who were having a very good time, drinking, eating, and swimming. I even went into the water. Tin did not, but Thong and his brother, Thien, both did. I put on Thong’s sunscreen thinking it was the one he got for me... an SPF 30. His was an SPF 4… anyway, I’m slightly burned today.
I’m converting the tapes to DVD to leave with Thien. It’s a time consuming process. We fell asleep during the first one I transferred, but it worked.
After swimming and showering, we ate at the resort restaurant. I ordered shrimp in tamarind sauce, Thong ordered rice with fried pork (his staple), and the rest ordered rice with a mixture of seafood – including lots of squiddy cuttlefish tentacles. I liked the shrimp, which were whole and deep fried. The sauce was sweet and sour, with enough pepper for heat and a few cooked onions. Thong ordered another plate of it which we shared.
After the shower, we went to the car to leaving off clothes and the like. Then we went into the restaurant and sat on the balcony. The chairs and table were all damp from spray off the waves.
After eating, we went further down the coast to a mountain with a statue of Jesus on it (across from an island with a different temple). We started up an endless series of stairs flanked by bougainvillea and gardenias just coming into bloom. It was very warm when the wind from the sea got blocked. About midway up, the scent of dry vegetation (not the scent of green papayas) started to get to me along with the sun, and I did not go all of the way up. Thong and I stayed at the bottom of the last flight of stairs and hid in the shade of the gardenias. Thong used up all of the storage on the digital camera there, and I started kicking myself for not transferring it over to the computer and erasing it. I’ve been just moving the pictures over and keeping them on the cards so that I have at least two copies in two different places. Thong keeps warning about dire threats from marauding motorcyclists who swoop in and grab camera bags and passers by with sharp knives who slash bags and harvest the contents. So far, we’ve seen none of that. Anyway, while we were waiting for them to come down from the Jesus statue, a group of two couples came up and asked Thong to take some pictures. He did, but they only had one unexposed picture on their roll.
After Tin came down, we saw a head pop up on the shoulder of the statue. We thought it was Thien, and I focused in with the camcorder for a shot. It got a fairly good view, but a few minutes later, Thien appeared walking down the stairs, so obviously, it was not his head popping up out of the shoulder of Jesus.
The driver came down after Thien. When we were all on the same level, we started down the rest of the stairs. Amazingly enough, there was no miracle, and there was the exact same number of steps going down as coming up. We stopped at the concessions stand about ¾ of the way down, where the girls had been scrubbing bottle caps with toothbrushes when we went up (scary thought about what they did with those bottle caps), and Tin bought some CDs which got played on the way back to the house. While we were at the concession stand, a cute guy with two horses came down the steps. The horses each had two baskets on them. I did not see him coming fast enough to get the camera ready, and only caught them from behind. When we got to the foot of the mountain, he was mixing sand and concrete and putting it into bags. I assume he put it on the horses and went back up the mountain. He had a wide straw hat on with fringes that looked almost Mexican. I think I’ve seen them in the vendor stalls, but I’ve not seen anybody wearing one. The standard Vietnamese peasant had I’ve seen everywhere.
After the mountain, we drove south along the coast to the next town. It was a port of sorts, with lots of small green boats docked. There were some tall buildings, and road construction blocked the route the driver wanted to take. He asked two young boys on a bike how to get around it, and we went right into the neighborhood. He then asked a bunch of men working on a car if the route was right, and with much talking and gesticulating, they all seemed to agree that if we turned and went this way, we’d be back where we wanted.
On the long way back into the city we passed a grove of lacquer trees. At least I think that’s what they were. Thong said they were for making plastic. The grove had no undergrowth and the trees were planted in a grid.
We stopped at a huge market, and walked towards a goal I did not understand. After walking across the back of the large market building and past several market stalls that ran perpendicular to us, we came to the vendor Tin was looking for. Crabs, snails, and shellfish. She picked out a selection of crabs, and they were put in plastic bags, and then we continued into the city. There was a great discussion about price, but the driver pointed out a number of stands selling crabs along the route after we passed the market.
Thong has been handling all of the money, so I’m woefully ignorant of the monetary transactions. I keep thinking the VND (Viet Nam Dong) is 1000 to 1 USD, but I think it’s about 1,600. The currency amounts are staggering, however. Some of the Dong have clear plastic inserts. Thong says they’re copied after some Australian money, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it in a bill. There are a few coins which represent small Dong amounts. They’re not used much, but I’ve collected a small stash for a friend at work who asked for some.
While we were in Hanoi, Thuy called from the states. Tin handed the phone to me, but Thuy wanted to talk to Thong. I handed the phone to Thong, who was in the bathroom. They talked for quite some time. Thuy needed some documents from the church by the farm to prove he was catholic. Rumor has it that he married a Vietnamese girl quite some months ago. I think they’re trying to get remarried in the church, and he needs the papers. When we got back to Saigon, Thong’s father took off for the farm to get them.
When we finally got back to the house last night shortly after the sun set, we retreated to the upstairs bedroom where Thong turned on the air conditioning and ran around the room with the electric tennis racket mosquito whacker. It’s a rechargeable device with a grid for zapping insects. Thong’s parents keep the house open during the day to let the wind keep it bearable. (The day we flew back from a cool and chilly Hanoi, Saigon was 33C or around 100 F.) His parents sleep on the floor of the main floor in the room between the kitchen and the living room under a mosquito net. The rest of us are sleeping on the second floor. Tin, Thien, Thong and I in the room with the air conditioning. Chuan, who is the youngest, sleeps in the other bedroom on this floor, or at least I think he does. He’s always up late and off early.
I harvested the camera storage, burned two CDs and gave them to Thien, and then started burning the first DVD. At one point, the estimated time for the completion was over 17 hours. Fortunately, it did not take that long. At some point, Tin brought up a meal of rice, with a piece of fried pork, and some excellent pork ribs that rivaled the ones we had in Hanoi that everyone liked. After dinner, Tin took Thong off to get a haircut, and Thien and I fell asleep waiting for the DVD to finish burning.
At some point, I awoke to the sound of hammering from downstairs. I checked the DVD status, but it still estimated 9 minutes to go. Thong came up and told us to come down for crab, which we did. They were using spoons to crack the crabs, which had all been boiled. They were excellent. We ate them with a mixture of salt, pepper, lime juice, and sliced shallots. About midway through the crabiganza, Thong’s father arrived in a van with Thong’s eldest sister from the farm. Thong’s father joined us with the crabs and beer, but Thong’s sister was carsick and didn’t.
When we were finished with the crab, I asked Thong to check if the DVD was done. He went up and brought it down. We put it in the American Sony progressive scan DVD player and, after fooling around with the menu, got it to play. I fast forwarded past most of it, but stopped at the point where we bought the crab we were eating and some of the other points. My skills as a camera man are pretty meager, and if I’m going to make it interesting, I’ll have to edit out a whole lot of material. We’ve taken lots of shots out of car windows (or make that through car windows) which really isn’t a good idea. And there are lots of places where we should have stopped that we did not because we were trying to get somewhere and not just trying to get film. I’ve got waay too much shots of roadside scenes.
On the way back, I thought that there are 50 million cafes in Vietnam, and those are just the ones on the road between Saigon and the sea. I know this, because I’ve counted them, and that’s just the ones on this side of the street. And it’s just the ones on the main road. It does not include all of the ones off the main road or on the other side of the street.
I’ve seen computer monitors sticking out of desks in small buildings on the road. Motor cycle repair shops. Metal shops where they make the ornamental screens that are used everywhere, coffin shops, furniture stores, clothing, barbers, and beauty salons everywhere. If they used to call England a nation of shopkeepers, it’s true here. Almost every house has a shop as the ground floor. There are restaurants and cafes everywhere. Food and drink are a constant. You can buy beer from the vendors in the parks or anywhere.
