On the 3rd Day in Saigon

Jump to Comments

On the morning of the 3rd day, we breakfasted on the frayed ends of a terrible history, comprehensively-documented and poorly-preserved by the Vietnamese government. The War Remnants Museum at District 3 (Metropolitan Ho Chi Minh City is divided into 19 administrative districts, by the way) is an informative and cleverly-run operation that simultaneously fattens the Vietnamese tourism calf while chaining the historical gore of yankee imperialism & the puppet government of South Vietnam to the ballast of memory.

The experience the museum afforded us varied according to our individual tastes and perspectives. Simply put, the War Remnants Museum hits every visitor with a different punch. For Ramli and me, it was the irreversible and sinister crush that we sensed when viewing, for the first time, an inevitable and historical tragedy. A conflict of cultures, a headlock of ideologies, a clash of civilizations. The ruined consequences of the senseless battles of vain and lofty ideas. We felt within our throats a mix of bitter hope and the soft emerging sighs of disgust at the limitless atrocities and horrific capabilities of mankind. For Lin & Geet, it was the fierce sun dashing down so intensively through the hot unclouded sky, and the numerous colours of bottled drinks in the snack-shop fridge that so captivated their interests. ‘Mirinda Orange or Green Tea?’ ‘I don’t know. You?’

I took a great deal of time reading about the dead and missing war correspondents, especially the distinguished jamesdeanian Robert Capa who had among others, covered the Spanish Civil War and The Battle of Normandy. It felt good, seeing his brilliant Indo-China coverage, up close, for the first time.

When we were done studying the whole nauseating american phase of the Vietnam war, we scampered off to Saigon Centre, a cooler hotspot (that doesn’t sound right) for some good shopping and a round of refreshments. I can’t say much about the mall’s offerings and the only thing that makes the sensational cut is that we bought a combined total of about 35 packs of Vietnamese coffee from a convenience mart and 2 over-sized coffee spoons (that if inverted, would also work as a perfect baseball cap for a lemur) from Highlands Café.

As we headed on for lunch, our journey was interrupted by yet another shopping bazaar that seemed to have popped out of nowhere. I’m not exaggerating when I say this. The thing is, roads and streets in Saigon are so exasperatingly full of traffic that you find yourself keeping full eyes on the roads all the time, and hence are unable to pay substantial attention to other things. That’s why things just seem to pop out. And speaking of traffic, it was precisely at this point where Lin became hugely affected by our amateurish pedestrian methods and lashed out a demonstration of the proper, preferred and professional approach of road-crossing. I’ve listed the lessons and steps below, used with permission from the Fadelinah Academy for Higher Pedestrians:

Step 1: Most untrained pedestrians approach a heavy road with extra caution. Foolish, this is. When a road with heavy traffic is sighted, approach it with cool and finesse. Sway and jig a little, if you must.

Step 2: Glance condescendingly at the inferior movement of vehicles. Remember, never allow the raging traffic to sense whatever cautionary impulses and fears you may feel.

Step 3: Look to the left and right. But NOT at the traffic. Instead observe your sides to ensure there are no pesky beginners around and about you. Their close proximity could impede your expert judgment.

Step 4: Breathe

Step 5: If you are with a group of lower individuals at a crossing and they abandon you by dashing across first, ignore their road idiocy. Their inferior actions are a prompt indication of your genius.

Step 6: Become the traffic. Feel. Merge. Desire. Embrace. Scream to the road, “Dances With Traffic. I am Cars In Her Hair. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?”

Step 7: Advance as soon as you hear the traffic call back. Your movement, though swift and nimble, should appear in synchronized slow-mo to surrounding onlookers.

Step 8: Halfway through the cross, take the opportunity to skip and flutter your feet in coordinated abandon. Bear in mind however, that this 3-5 second ‘road dance’ is not to impress, but to express your inner sense of traffic-enlightenment.

Step 9: Proceed to complete the crossing. The system as indicated in Step 7 should again be observed.

Step 10: Inhale and hold your breath as you arrive at your crossed destination. Blink 3 times and slowly exhale. Do not look back. At this point, you may re-join your moronic companions, who by now, should be gawking in wonderment.

So we distracted ourselves for the next hour or so weaving through the bazaar and browsing at merchandise we didn’t really need while our empty bellies whined and whimpered like a Bob Dylan record. ‘We’, by the way, refers to Ramli and myself. The girls, you see, had breached the law of hunger and had parked themselves in a stall that sold, believe it or not, shoes that were custom-made according to the design-colour-height-etc. preferences of the user. I wandered about and very soon found myself bargaining on a price for a large formalin-preserved bat, gloriously spread and neatly pinned in a box-like frame at one of the stalls. The wife came by (she wanted my opinion on a shoe design for my mum) and unfortunately, found the souvenir-mammal extremely hideous and warned me not to even think of adorning our house walls with the hairy crucified beast. Pooh! Will she not understand that I’m not just one man but two? Maybe one day, when Gotham no longer needs me. Anyway, I purchased a set of vermillion-coloured plates for the wife and dragged my way back to the shoe stall area where the girls were perched on little stools and discussed designs and heel-height with the shoesmith who simultaneously knocked pins into semi-constructed footwear. To dilute the boredom, Ramli and I waddled to the stall across that sold hand-made miniature ships and scrutinized an intricate and unsunk Titanic.

When the girls had finally uncovered the secrets to happy feet, we steered for lunch and after a couple of wrong turns, finally arrived at the Quan An Ngon, restaurant, which by Lonely Planet standards is a “highly recommended place to go for an excellent selection of traditional Vietnamese dishes.” Unfortunately for us, we had foolishly forgotten that the Lonely Planet publication was invariably not a food guide. Everything at Quan An Ngon was sadly, a thumb-down. The food was below mediocre (especially the squid, which tasted like spicy solidified shampoo), the dish-portions were very much Vietnamese equivalents of Happy Meals and the service was (let me search for a precise term)…fecal. After an error with one of our orders, I took the liberty to snap at the attending waiter who looked like a hybridized spawn of a pygmy marmoset and a chimpanzee, which turned out to be a big mistake. I say this because on the primate’s next round to our table, he carefully laid down a plate, cleared his throat, puffed his chest and growled out, in his best John Fogerty impersonation, an evil Vietnamese rendition of the old CCR tune:

I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine.
You better stop
The things that youre doin.
I said watch out!
I ain’t lyin’, yeah!
I ain’t gonna take none of your
Foolin around;
I ain’t gonna take none of your
Puttin’ me down;
I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine.

Being our last evening in Saigon, we made another trip to the Ben-Thanh market for a last tad of purchases and then to Phuc Long café for a final and well-deserved caffeine hit. After drinking our fill and overturning the cups, we shuffled through the evening’s overwhelming blast of locals and tourists, somersaulted in a cab and zigzagged through the streets of horns till we reached the hot gates of our quiet hotel. But the wives had plans still, for the last remains of the day. Apparently, Lin & Geet, who had recently visited the salon across our hotel for a hair-washing and massage session so as to acquire some valuable insight for their cultural exploration thesis on ‘Cheap Labour & Exploitation in the Third-World’, had received services so magical, that they felt it necessary for Ramli and I to take a dip in that deep river of piquant pleasure. The salon, you see, is a snazzy little joint across our hotel that offers services ranging from hairdressing to facial treatment, right up to half or full-body massages. And the providers of these feelgood benefits are a concoction of Vietnamese females between the ages of 20-30, with alluring smiles and Gong Li chests and who all wore short-skirted dresses that clung like cellophane wrap around a banana. If I were their career consultant, it would be a tough choice between beauty pageantry and porno (I keed, I keed!). So anyway, this whole idea of visiting the salon was rather unnerving for Ramli and I, who had already planned to spend our evening in quite partnership discussing Jean-Paul Sartre’s, La Transcendance de l’égo. But as usual, the girls had to have their way, again.

We emerged from the salon about 2hrs later like de-feathered chickens – cold and confused. At least that was the feeling I got. The hair-wash was pretty normal and the play-doh shoulder and back-massage was quite like how I imagined it to be. What will make it to the history books however was the facial treatment that lasted about a ½ hour in a darkened room that got me laughing hysterically throughout the music. I say music because, in all my life, I’ve never had someone thump and rattle on my face like as if it was a bongo drum. So because I aspire to keep my entries as close to the actual experience, I’ll overlook embarrassment and hereby admit, I giggled and laughed throughout the entire tickle treatment where that crazy masseuse went all Zakir Hussain on my virgin face. And people pay for this?

We bade Saigon goodnight at about 1.30am after spending about an hour and a half searching frantically for some items that were mysteriously lost. A set of plates, my commie cap and a Vietnamese language book, all blasted strangely into oblivion. And after a spool of mishaps that continued to unreel all the way back to Singapore, we narrowed down the various misfortunes to a curse that originated from Quan An Ngon. The evil primate! It’s a good thing for him that he chose the Vietnamese language book as one of the cursed items for me to lose, for now I will never be able to holler out in Vietnamese my best Gandalf impersonation, “You Shall Not Pass!” when we meet again.

2 Comments

Filed under Gastronomy, Travel