August 28, 2008

5 Days, 5 Senses

So apparently I have been too slow with updating my blog. This might have to do with the fact that I have been busily exploring the city in order to have stuff to talk about on the blog. I think it's a fair trade off to have fewer blog posts with more to talk about than blogging about sitting at my computer all day blogging. Cut me some slack here.

Hold on there is a huge cockroach that I need to go kill.

Ok, I'm back. It flew upstairs. Hopefully it wont come back. Also, it's a palmetto, not a cockroach. Looks the same to me, but I will try to be culturally accepting and use the correct term from now on. Wait, now I need to kill some ants that are trying to climb into my bed. Ok.

HELLO WORLD!!! Guess what? I am on a wireless connection right now and just a few years ago this area, An Phu (District 2) used to be a jungle. I was even able to check email on my ipod touch today when I was downtown. I'm pretty impressed. But the power does go out frequently, so again, don't expect blog updates every day. It's better to be pleasantly surprised whenever one pops up.

As I alluded to earlier, Saigon is different in every sense that a sense can be down to my sixth sense that I will get a job sometime in the near future (future being broadly defined). Since it was dark when I landed, the first sense I used was that of smell. Although it took a little while to pinpoint what was wafting every which way, the air has a common scent of a campfire burning incense. People keep fires going on the streets and in their houses for cooking and burning rubbish, and combine ritualistic or just plain just-because-it-smells-good incense. They most certainly are not burning anything for the purpose of heating themselves, since it's so humid you might as well be in the river. While that smell does encompass the whole city (or at least what I have seen so far), there are frequently some particularly gnarly (it's been a while since I used that word, but that's the best way to describe them) scents that completely override the bonfire of the incense. These can particularly be found in the markets, but for the most part there is no place that is immune to pungency. In this heat, with no dip in temperature ever to kill things off, bacteria and fungi and mold and whatever else that smells worse than stretch of Rt. 68 in Durham by Greenbacker Farm, keep growing and growing and stinking and stanking. Winners in this category include the fish section of Benh Thanh market, many other sections of that market with unrecognizable potential food products piled high and wide, and numerous random patches of air in the streets.

When I was finally able to see the city, I immediately noticed two things- motorbikes and construction. Although there are cars, trucks, busses, bicycles, and pedestrians, motorbikes run the show. There are no traffic laws (that are enforced) and the xe om (zay ohm) drivers are in a constant race against time to create the quickest, although not necessarily straightest, route between point A and point B. If traffic is stopped and the sidewalk is clear, then pedestrians watch out. If taking a left means cutting across traffic and they see an opening, then oncoming traffic watch out, and if they do need to cross traffic, brace yourself. I rode on one for the first time today, both in and out of the downtown area (District 1), and there is definitely a sense of fear weaving in and out of bikes and cars and over uneven surfaces and flash flooded streets. I have already seen 3 accidents, but only one third resulted in death, and who knows- that guy could have moved right after I saw him motionless in a gutter. Another was two bikes t-boning each other. Whereas in the States, people would be screaming back and forth while exchanging mandatory insurance information, these people (and one of them was a Westerner) didn't exchange so much as a glance and pretty much bounced off the pavement back onto their respective bikes and off on their merry ways. They didn't even brush themselves off until after they got back on the road. Then again, this also could have been the realization that they were both stopped in the middle of an intersection, and they could go without getting run over. Finally, there was one guy we came across that had just fallen over, and with him went his entire delivery of Coca-Cola bottles. Nobody honked at him; he didn't seem upset; he just meticulously picked up all the bottles, picked up the bike, and moved on. I'll probably buy a Coke tomorrow that will explode in my face. This accident brings me to my favorite picture so far and transitions perfectly to the famous Vietnamese smile.



As I learned from reading Vietnam Today, Vietnam is proof that although popular quote-maker "Unknown" may say otherwise, a smile is not the same in every language. The Vietnamese smile many times does have the same broad-happy-I'm nice-you're nice-even if I don't understand a single word you are saying- connotation, but it can also be used to mask anger or embarrassment or even garbarrassment (the popular new term which is a combination of garbage and embarrassment and is catching on like wildfire from Bangor to Bangalore and Nassau County to Dekalb County). You will frequently see people nearly escaping accidents and smile in lieu of shouting obscene epithetical threats. So, let's analyze this picture. The guy in the foreground is smiling at me because he is happy and wants me to see that he doesn't need an orthodontist to have a high self-esteem. On the other hand, although you can't see his face, the guy who is picking up his bottles and his bike is smiling because he knows that his riding skills are better than that and he is pissed off. On a side note, I didn't even realize that happy smiling man was in the picture until after I looked at it. Then I smiled an American-English smile because I knew that that picture was going to make the blog.

Anyways, I know I promised five senses, but unfortunately it is far later than I have been up yet and I have a full time job of exploring that I need to wake up for tomorrow. I also don't want to overwhelm you, the reader/person who actually cares what I am doing or what I think, or myself, the writer who is extremely A.D.D. and has trouble staying on one topic for too long. Thus I will leave this at to be continued. As a note to myself, I still want to talk about my trip to the Nike Store (not the factory), my living quarters, animals, more about the people, some comparisons to South Africa, and a whole lot more. Stay tuned and GOODNIGHT WORLD!!

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