Saigon Nights

Allright.. where to begin in the filling you in on the events of the last few days. Yesterday was our last day in our home away from home, Hanoi. We were all very sad to leave our adopted city. We had a great breakfast at a small street food stand with a table and chairs a mere few inches off the ground. While browsing the buffet of foodstuffs, we noticed a bowl of small yellow oval things. Upon further inspection, said bowl was realized to be holding fried maggots. This is when it gets interesting. I dared Sarah to eat one if I did, and Molly stated forcefully that eating bugs was crossing her line of food adventurism. Next thing we know, we are sitting around in our baby furniture with three maggots clenched firmly between our chopsticks. and guess what kids.... THEY WERE GREAT!!! Seriously.. They were not bursting balls of squishy guts. They were slightly nutty perfectly grainy chewy bite-sized bugs of goodness. I really liked it!

Here is the next bit of exciting news. Phuong introduced us to his friend Tuan who is a famous fashion designer in Hanoi. Today, he met with the Vietnamese Idol (The vietnam equilavent of American Idol) to dress the contestants. Tuan is great, really good at karaoke, and asked me to model his clothes for him so he can put the puictures on his website. I had a really embarrassing photoshoot at his store in Hanoi, made bearable by the massive amount of tiger beer i drank, which ended up being a lot of fun. I felt like a mad rockstar sitting on a motorbike on the crowded streets of Hanoi in really cool clothes. I scored two really nice shirts out of the deal and sarah and molly are getting clothes delivered to the states especially made to their measurements. Who would have thought that shit would happen? Crazy!


Anyway, I am composing this scatterbrained post from an internet cafe in Saigon, surrounded by teenage Vietnamese playing online adventure games on computers from the 80's that are swarmed by tiny gnats. Saigon is substantially bigger than Hanoi, and much crazier. Very seedy....

Last night we arrived at 1 am and took a taxi to our hotel (which was so nasty I will spare you the details) and then proceeded to have a beer and a snack before bed at the bar next to the hotel. The place was crawling with prostitutes, underage and ancient alike, and old westerners were taking their favorites home for the night. We sat outside and at least twenty street vendors approached our table selling everything from dried squid to cigarettes. Saigon is in your face at all times and the dark undertones instill the place with a sense of dangerous excitement. We went to the war museum today, which was shocking and draining. The place is centered around a courtyard housing tanks and planes used by the US during the war. It seemed like a place where you negotiate the space with reverence to the dead, but many tourists (western and eastern alike) were smiling for photos everywhere. The exhibits were very well put together: paintings, journalistic photos, and general paraphenalia. The history of the war was explained through the walltexts accompanying the pictures, and was relatively unbiased on which side was to blame. It painted a picture of great tragedy for everyone involved. However, I was disgusted and deeply disturbed by the photos of the Vietnamese agent orange victims. These were/are children of the people who were victims during the war, who are suffering deformation, retardation, and other sicknesses as a result of America's use of biotoxins during the war. It was so awful to think that our society justified the extermination of these people by saying that they were less than human. During this trip, we have been treated like royalty by every Vietnamese person we have met. They are the kindest and most welcoming country I have visited, and they suffer still from America's egotism and idiocy 30 years ago...



Ok, so we will be vising Cu Chi (yes it is pronounced Cootchie, you pervs) tomorrow, which is the network of tunnels used by the vietcong during the war. It should be an amazing experience.

Though I miss Hanoi already, I am excited that we still have 4 other countries to visit in the time we are here. Stay tuned


Love
J

ps. I am on a mission to eat snake while I am here, and possibly the cobra blood shot! good thing is got 11 innoculations! I promise to post some pics soon, but we have been pretty nonstop since getting here and havent had time to upload. My carnage burn is starting to heal, but is still pretty gnarly. What can you do?