Day 6: Saturday 14 Oct 2000
Ho Chi Minh City to Danang

This entry posted on:
17 OCT 2000 at 1000	Vietnam
17 OCT 2000 at 0300	UTC
16 OCT 2000 at 2300	EDT
16 OCT 2000 at 2000	PDT

Day six started as all the others have... no wait, this day was slightly different in that, it began with a blackout. Later the attractive hotel cashier Hien, would tell us that this is an unfortunate byproduct of having a communist government supplying you with your electricity in that they can turn it off whenever they want, for pretty much any reason, and then not bother to tell you when, if ever, it might come back on. We showered in the dark, with only my brand new Maglite to show us the way. But the worst part was that there was no air conditioning either, and it gets real hot, real fast in an un-airconditioned Saigon hotel room. After check-out, we decided to spend the six hours or so before our flight to Da Nang in the Cho Lon district of HCMC. This area was first settled by Chinese immigrants 300 years ago and remains a kind of "Chinatown" to this day. But first we had a couple of cyclo drivers take us to an Army surplus market so that we could pick up some memorabilia. I had my eye on a pair of black VC jammies, but when I asked how much they were, the guy told me 12 bucks. Well, there was no way. I said "no" and he adjusted his price down four times to a final offer of 100,000 VND (US$8). I said no and started to walk away. He chased me out of the store and finally, begrudgingly, went to 80,000. Savoring my victory, I handed over the cash with a smile. But now we had a bigger problem. Our cyclo drivers were waiting for us outside the market. See, what they like to do is quote you a price to one destination, then refuse to accept payment when you arrive, choosing instead to hope that you will want to keep them on the payroll all day. Well, since we had a limited amount of time, we did not want to take a cyclo all the way to Cho Lon (this would have taken about 40 minutes each way). They badgered, they begged, they pleaded, they guilted, but we were steadfast. You would've all been impressed with our ruthless negotiation tactics. We demanded that they take us to the bus station and they finally relented. My guy even apologized to me on the way for his hard sell. Wanting to help him save face I said it was not a problem and that I would gladly have let him peddle our butts across town if we weren't so pressed for time. So we took a city bus to Cho Lon. Very nice bus, air-conditioned, with a TV playing nature programs about carnivorous ferrets at ear-shattering levels. Our destination in Cho Lon was the Binh Tay market. This is basically another market like all the others we've visited on this trip, but with a multi-layered, Chinese theme. It was interesting, though a little less so than the others because their live/dead animal aisle was much more limited. They had a much larger selection of candies, spices, and sundries than the others, but as far as we're concerned, we go to the markets for the food, but we stay for the animals.   So we left the market and strolled up the street headed for the fowl market we'd heard about in our book. Along the way, we developed a growth... or it might have just been a cyclo driver who refused to leave us alone even after we'd said no perhaps a hundred times over the course of an hour. It was infuriating and I was reminded of the comment our Dutch friends from Cu Chi made after telling us they love to visit South East Asia. Said he, "For the first two weeks, I love the people, but after three weeks, I hate them." In moods as foul as the ones we were in this rainy afternoon in Cho Lon, we definitely understood what he was talking about. The fowl market was really cool for a while. I don't know how they manage to keep all those birds lying around so calmly. They submit to being carried around upside down by their feet for hours on end without a single complaint. We were diggin' on the birds until it started to rain again and our feet became encrusted with brown, somehow fowl-related sludge. And now, a quick word on sandals: Neither Mike nor I are, or have ever been of our own accord, sandal guys. But I've had a pair of Tevas for a year or so, and Mike bought a pair for this trip after reading about the nearly unbearable heat and humidity. Smart move. I haven't worn my hiking boots since the flight from LA. We both love our Tevas. Sure it sucks when your feet get splashed with bird shitted-water, but afterwards, you can just stick your feet in the nearest fountain and you're ready to go! Don't travel to Southeast Asia without them, y'hear? After the "fowl market"... which definitely lived up to a certain different spelling of that word, we decided we'd had enough of Cho Lon, and got back on the bus to return to the main part of downtown Saigon. Along the way, a mother got on board with a very cute baby, who then proceeded to piss all over his seat. Mom mopped it up as best she could but there was still a good sized pool left on the seat. The lesson is, if you ride the city bus in Saigon, be careful where you sit. We took the bus back to the main bus stop near the Ben Thanh Market and decided to walk back to Pham Ngu Lau, after taking some good pictures of the city surrounding the large traffic circle with its bronze statute of Tran Nguyen Hai. It was a pretty good walk, but the sun had come out at last and we were happy for the opportunity to practice our "using the force" method of crossing busy streets. Once back on Pham Ngu Lau we walked up the street looking for a new restaurant to try. As we walked by one in particular, I looked in and saw Susan eating by herself, so we went in and joined her for lunch. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, said goodbye to Susan and Phillip, and headed over to Sinh for our car ride to the airport. While waiting for the car, we ran into the cyclo driver who took us around the city on our first full day in HCMC and we were struck by how great these people can be when you are either already their customer, or are not in a position to become one. He seemed genuinely happy to see us, and sad to see us go, so at the last second, I told the driver to wait, jumped out and snapped a picture with him. The airport was another experience. Fortunately, there are only three gates and they all leave from the same basic place. We did have to pay a tax to leave the city, though. While waiting at our gate, a middle-aged couple asked us where we were from. Turns out they are from Orange County, back to visit family in Da Nang. The wife, Su Nguyen, grew up in the "Big D" and escaped with her family one day before the American collapse in 1975. They were very nice and offered to share a cab, and got us a room at their hotel with the local rate, as foreigners are sometimes charged extra. (She would also call us in the morning to wake us up and help arrange for a tourguide to take us to Hoi An, but that's a story for a different day). It was all fairly overwhelming, but it's hard to refuse when someone really wants to take care of you. And in any case, just before they first tapped Mike on the shoulder and said hello back in HCMC, Mike had just pointed out to me that we had no idea what we were going to do when we got to Da Nang, so it all worked out very well. Like I said, you gotta love these people. Finally, we showered up and hit the town, searching for the travel cafe we'd heard about called Christie's. Turns out Christie's has moved and is not the travel hub it once was, so we settled for a walk along the Han River with stops every fifty yards or so to chat with locals curious, mainly about three things: 1) where we were from (USA number one!!!), 2) whether or not we had girlfriends (the answer is always "yes" because the alternative is too difficult to explain), and 3) if we were married (the answer is always "not yet", never "no", because Vietnamese culture does not look fondly on unmarried people over a certain age). After getting tired and hungry, we hired a cyclo driver who'd been hangin' about for a while and he took us to a restaurant we'd heard good things about. Full of more good Vietnamese food, and a large Tiger Beer, we took the cyclo back to the hotel and crashed early again, which is always good because these Vietnamese folk wake up really damn early, and we knew we would be getting a crack-of-dawn call from our new friends in room 102. My sleep--Mike wasn't bothered by them--was disturbed by mosquitoes. Out hotel is less in the vein of The Rex, and a little too much like the Can Tho "D-" hotel for our tastes, and there are many downsides to the 10 dollar per night room rate. Not that there were a lot of the little flying vampires--I was only bitten twice--it's just that malaria is a much more disturbing concept in the middle of the night. But I couldn't figure out my mosquito netting in the dark and just decided, Screw it, I'm just gonna turn up the AC and freeze the little bastards out!!! Worked just fine. Tomorrow, Hoi An, the Marble Mountains, and China Beach.

On to Day Seven...

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