THE SEYMOUR MONKEY CHRONICLES:

Two hours and a couple of Sopranos episodes later and we descended into Saigon through an amazing technicolour Vietnamese sunset. The clouds exploded around us in a palette of reds, pinks and oranges. Intense hues brought to mind the paintings of Edvard Munch who once declared in a reflection about his masterpiece, The Scream, that “I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.” Such colour intensity can only be found in nature in sunset, baboon’s rectums and Therese Rein’s outfits.

Customs passed without incident and we soon found ourselves in front of an ATM withdrawing Vietnamese Dong in quantities seemingly sufficient to fund a moon landing and waving to our waiting ride into town who was holding up a misspelled sign with our names on it amongst the waiting throng of touts. Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City.

OK now the fun started. Driving through Saigon should be a sport in the X Games. Forget Tony Hawke, forget some pony tailed computer geek rocketing off a cliff on a mountain bike, real extreme adventure is negotiating traffic in Ho Chi Minh. The best way to describe it is with reference to iconic moments in movie pop culture mixed with some of the harder levels on a Playstation.  Consider the car chase through Moscow at the end of the Bourne Supremacy, mixed with big doses of the speeder scene on Endor towards the end of Return of the Jedi, with a dose of Kevin Bacon’s game of tractor chicken in Footloose. Cries of “Phong you missed the stop sign” got caught in my throat and I resolved upon my first rule of travel in Vietnam. Never look out the front window of a car or bus.

Looking out the side window you get an appreciation for how Damien Oliver must feel entering the home straight in Flemington. The pack jostling for position - The cute girl on the moped gets boxed in by the cyclo as the family of five, (yes FIVE! – Dad, Mum and the three kids on the one bike), gets the inside running and scoots away into the night.  Our driver is unperturbed and his magic horn, pumped with the intensity of the run button in the 100 metre final in Hyper-Olympics on Nintendo, parts the sea of traffic in a performance not seen since Moses, or at least Byron Pickett’s last game.

The Chancery Hotel emerged out of the chaos and we waved good bye to our friendly drivers who had imparted some words of wisdom and useful phrases upon us to use in dealing with the hordes of Vietnamese wanting to sell us something.  He advised a theatrical rolling of the eyes followed by the phrase “Gwa Mook” (Too expensive) or perhaps a look of horror and the addition of a call for divine help. “My God! Gwa Mook!” With smiles all round we waved them goodbye as they left, no doubt to ice their horn thumbs and prepare for later life Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. 

The foyer of the Chancery Hotel was a sea of pink and white as we made our way past a bride and her entourage up to reception. Apparently the hotel bar and the entire 7th floor was booked out for weddings and the reception was about to kick off in a gala that any Fountain Gate Scott and Charlene would be proud of. Negotiating our way through the big hair and décor straight out of Barbies dream home we hit the elevator up to our room and caught our breath. Faintly through the ceiling above we could hear the strains of George Michael’s Careless Whisper and in unison we decided a quick shower and an exploration of the Saigon Saturday night was the best option.

A lap of the block resulted in an inevitable conclusion. In order to get anywhere remotely interesting we would have to do the unthinkable – cross the road. If anything the traffic seemed to have gotten busier as we approached the curb. We made our way to what appeared to be a zebra crossing marked on the road near a set of traffic lights that like the bananas on a cornflake packet appeared to have been taken by the populace as merely a serving suggestion. I suspected that the marks on the road were merely used to consolidate the pedestrian road kill to areas close to fire hydrants where the blood could be quickly hosed away and the carcass kicked into the storm drains.

The guide book had suggested a crossing technique that appeared to be confirmed by a number of fearless locals who we watched successfully negotiate the endless tides of Vespa and bicycle traffic. The guide suggested that we courageously edge out into the traffic and slowly cross letting the traffic adjust and negotiate their way around us.  Keeping an eye out for the occasional car, bus or truck that seemed to cruise by every now and then looking for another notch on the steering wheel.

Rosie commented on the wisdom of waiting for a local and crossing in unison. Soon an obliging Saigonite arrived on the scene and we stepped out into the void with a similar amount of trepidation and fear as launching oneself from the bungie tower or filling the hole in front of a rampaging Barry Hall. After several sequential crossings, as we worked our way through the HCMC streets, we became quite expert at Saigon Frogger and found ourselves at a second floor bar/restaurant with a great view of the swarm of Vietnamese passing by on the street below. We then settled and acquainted ourselves with the joys of $0.85 Tiger stubbies and noodle stir fry that may or may not have contained the meat of the bovine creature named in the menu.

Morning found us in the backpacker strip tucking into what would become our standard breakfast fare - Pho soup and banana pancakes. Our fearless road crossing was becoming old hat by now and upon walking ten metres from the hotel we were confronted by street venders selling the two items that we had listed as purchase goals for the day. Sunglasses for me and a Vietnamese phrase book for Rosie who had lofty goals of engaging in lengthy dialogue with the locals in the native tongue.

Rosie took my photo next to a bust of Ho Chi Minh who in the great irony of Vietnam is becoming a marketable commodity much in the same way as Che Geuvara before him. His head is on tee shirts, caps and even chess pieces for sale in the markets and from street vendors. Not to mention his body sitting like Phar Lap on display in Hanoi. In fact many of the younger generation seem quite happy to send up “Uncle Ho” whilst the older ones still have memories of the re-education camps and are a bit more cautious. It begs the question - How do you retain authoritarian control when you cannot even control the portrayed image of your iconography? It’s not like they can invoke copyright.
 
So with a nod and a wink the hypocrisy continues.  I ponder the purchase of a Hammer and Sickle flag on a tea towel within metres of a photo on the wall towing the old official party line in its caption…
 
“Cowardly American Invaders cower during the attack by hero Vietnamese liberators.” 
 
I take in the consumer branding that is everywhere in Vietnam (admittedly most of it fake) whilst listening to old audio tapes on the museum loudspeakers talking about the exploits of winners of the Vietnamese Medal For Killing Americans. This week’s revolution proudly brought to you by Nike (or a reasonable facsimile of it). Is fake capitalism any less subversive than real?
 
The American war (as they call it) is constantly in your face in Vietnam. Bombs, land mines and Agent Orange have left their mark and the limbless and disabled abound. Some in jobs others on the streets as beggars, or often a combination of both. Some of these are genuine others are part of a scam culture that lies just below the surface.

Suitably on a reflective downer we headed away from the War museum in search of some lighter exploration metaphorically swatting away cyclo and motor bike taxi riders offering lifts. Through repetition we get our first words of Vietnamese embedded on our brains. “Cam” (pronounced “Com”) repeated with a shake of the head, meaning no.  Rosie tries to soften it a bit with “Cam Sin Loee”  (No Sorry/excuse me) but this just seems to confuse them. She finally settles on “Cam Dum Biet” (No Goodbye) as a good phrase to use. Using Vietnamese phrases seems to work better than using English as it limits the cyclo hordes an opportunity to get you into a conversation from where they will latch onto you and follow you for blocks, point to Australian flag stickers on their cyclo and even trot out hand written testimonials from previously satisfied Australian tourists from which they have no doubt learned the appropriately accented “G’day mate” that they use to punctuate their conversation. I mentally re-order my most annoying salesmen list and move Saigon Cyclo riders into second place above time share telemarketers and below former friends selling Amway.

Taking deep breaths we head off into the Saigon night. The city is home to nine million and sometimes you feel they are all on the roads at the same time. It literally buzzes with life and an innocence that other places like Thailand lost long ago - Less of the glitzy neon and strips of franchise shops and go go bars that have diluted places like Pat Pong and Kho San road into shadows of Western fantasy. The real action is alive outside not upstairs in a noisy club. At the end of the day there is nothing better than sitting in a wicker chair in a roadside café washing down noodle stir fry with a couple of Huda brews and watching the street theatre of Vietnamese life.
 

Part 1 - Saigon
Part 2 Cu Chi
Part 3 - The Reunification Express
Part 4 - Nha Trang
Part 5 - Hoi An
Part 6 - My Son
Part 7 - Hue
Part 8 - The Dee Em Zee
Part 9 - Hanoi
Part 10 - Ha Long Bay