Day 1
Monday
-Hans.jpg)
Boarding the songtaew to leave school
We left school early in the morning and went to the airport. On the flight to Bangkok, Arlin and I sat beside each other. We were talking about a parody we had written of Kokomo about IGo that we were going to sing for talent night. We decided that instead of singing it live, we should record it and make it into a music video. So I stood there in the aisle and videoed him sitting in the airplane seat lip-syncing some of the lyrics. When we got to Bangkok airport, he videoed me re-eneacting my running through the airport with two backpacks on my back and slipping on the tile floor, because the song mentions that incident in one of the verses. People looked at me a bit funny.
-Emily.jpg)
Eating on our layover in Bangkok
Eventually (after a 5 hour layover) we boarded our flight for Hanoi (Ho Chi Minh City) on Vietnam Airlines. We had been praying for a while that the bread would be safe and continued doing so on the flight. When we landed, we offloaded from the plane onto buses and drove up to the terminal. We then tried to go through immigration, but two things stopped us. Apparently the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok had issued the wrong type of visa to us. The lady immigration officer frowned and insistently told us that in the little English she knew. She said it multiple times spread over 5-10 minutes, each time pointing to the Visa type code (which was C1) on my Vietnamese visa. Then she apparently decided to let me through despite the incorrect visa type. However, I had not filled in my destination in Vietnam address. I had no idea what it was and didn’t really want to let Vietnamese customs know what it was even if I did know. She insisted that I fill it in. I told her that I had no idea. I told her we are staying at a hotel, but that a Vietnamese friend had arranged for it and I didn’t know which one. She told me to call the Vietnamese friend and find out. I told her I had no cell phone and didn’t know his number. She furiously punched around in her computer for a while and finally wrote “Saigon hotel” in the destination address blank. I smiled and thanked her for her time and effort and apologized for the difficulty and I was on through. I next waited for Arlin—we had split up in pairs rather than go entirely solo—and she figured out that he was with me and in the same lodging and visa boat, and so she skipped the grexing (griping) phase and wrote “Saigon hotel” and waved him through.
-Hans.jpg)
Outside the Saigon airport
Our contact, a Vietnamese man, met us outside the terminal and grabbed two taxis which we hopped into. We wended our way through the honking, disorganized traffic to the tourist sector of town where we checked into a small hotel. The traffic reminded me of Dhaka it was so very noisy (our taxi driver sounded his horn every 3-10 seconds) and so disorganized (cars merging everywhere in intersections—intersection trajectories are like a ball of yarn), except it was motorbikes instead of rickshaws.
-Hans.jpg)
A rather orderly example of Vietnamese traffic
-Hans.jpg)
One of the main squares in Saigon with the requisite symbols of Communism
We were on our own for the evening. We walked around town. Flashing neon signs adorned nearly every shop, restaurant, or bar. Since we were in the tourist section, there were lots of Caucasians around. We walked past all sorts of vendors insistently hawking their wares. Every restaurant we walked past had people out trying to get us to come in. We finally went into one and went upstairs. It was beautifully decorated in oriental style. The waitress was beautifully dressed in a traditional royal blue Vietnamese outfit. We had a very good Vietnamese meal for $2 per person and then played pool afterwards.
-Hans.jpg)
Phil playing pool
Leave a Comment