We landed in Ho Chi Minh city and were not ready for the chaos we were witnessing. It is hard to describe, and unless you have experienced it you may not get a clear picture. This is a city with 10 million residents and 5 million scooters. The scooters are everywhere, and traffic is constant and nonstop. The scooters weave in and out of traffic like a suspect on Cops. You are watching three near death experiences, every second. The whole “Asians can’t drive” stereotype is officially been dispelled and shattered. Probably, in the US, these are the Asians that couldn’t handle the driving in Asia and got kicked out of the Country for being a liability and for the safety of everyone else. Crossing the street is a near death experience every time. There are no lights, and the rules of the road are; the bigger vehicle gets the right of way, and is not required to stop. The pedestrians on the road are the lowest on the totem pole, and if you are crossing the street you have to close your eyes, pray, and fight your way across. You can’t step back, or slow down or you will get hit. The scooters judge your forward progress position with laser like accuracy and being that there are no lights, the cars and scooters are flying by you in every direction. The cross walks are there simply for design purposes, and cars and scooters blend and criss-cross in every direction. By day two I was able to muster up the courage to cross the street, and was able to sight-see another block.
We had the day for ourselves. Went out that night to a local cover bar, and watched Vietnamese rock stars, rock out to songs by Coldplay, as hard as they rocked out to songs by Brittney Spears.
We met the new people, and it was a bit disappointing. The new people didn’t match up to the ones we lost, I missed Chris, and I needed some new friends.
There were two British guys on the tour that were about my age. Once was a professional, the other was an Iraqi Doctor. I immediately resented the Iraqi since he was really funny, and was trying to be funnier than me. We started becoming good friends, and the teasing started immediately. By day three we had officially run out of ways to say he was a terrorist and me an imperialist asshole, and cheap. He was alternating between American jokes, and Jewish jokes, and luckily he was losing his hair so I we had an equal amount of things to make fun of. We were becoming best friends on this tour, but the term “best friend” is a term he claimed Americans overuse and abuse by calling everyone their “best friend”, so I will call him a chap and bloke I was conversing with on a regular basis, with an exchange of non-stop ribbing, teasing, and banter.
Day Two
We took another cruise down the river, transferred to a Gondola, and planned to spend the night in a local village at a homestead, which is essentially someone’s house in a secluded area in the jungle with nothing to do but to chill out relax, and enjoy the serenity. Our serenity was completely destroyed by a local music performance that consisted of noise they called music, with the leader using some sort of bird chirping device to keep the beat. I tried to respect culture, but this was certainly no Mama Mia. We then all sat down for dinner which was followed by the craziest drinking game I ever played. The rules were; you cannot point, you cannot say the word drink, drunk or drinking, you cannot say anyone’s name, and every time you go to the bathroom you have to roar like a lion. Our tour guide was a Vietnamese gay guy, with a tattoo on his hand that says “its better to give than to receive, but not in the bedroom- signed by Queer as folk”. We were introduced to his alternate twin personality that he named Ken, which one of the blondes on tour took literally and actually thought his twin showed up. I was nicknamed “Americano” and every time a card came up I was ordered to drink, and it was a group effort to get me plastered. The jungle juice was spiked heavily, and I had one of the best nights on tour. We drank, laughed and just got crazy in the hot sticky no man’s land and it was awesome.
Random Note!
While working on the laptop, Ali commandeered the laptop and wrote a paragraph about himself, in is words…..
“ After an amazing two days with the British bred Iraqi doctor who was becoming funnier and funnier with each passing minute and surpassing even my own Jewish humor. He was a humble guy but his friend and eventually most of the girls became obsessed with the size and perfect shape of his member. He would turn red and his handsome face would glow with pride each time it was mentioned, but as with every true gentleman he did not utter or encourage people to mention how well-endowed he was. He was a religious man who gave thanks daily for his well-proportioned assets!!!!!”