Day One: Saigon

ARRIVAL
Our destination looms into sight. From the oval eyelets of the plane, the swollen Saigon river, heavy with her burden of silt, meanders her way in sluggish looping swirls through the sprawling patchwork of green and brown paddy fields.
It is a vivid real life lesson in high school geography; a display of ox bow lakes, branching tributaries, and the fertile gifts of a river at the end of its journey towards the sea. And then the ground lurches ever closer. bumpbumpbump. Welcome to Saigon.

INTRODUCTION
We first smell and hear Saigon even before we see her. Out of the pristine new airport, we are immediately beset by the tang of diesel fumes as our taxi barrels into the thick of the raucous
Around us, a hundred mopeds weave around us like a churning tide, moving as if bidden by a secret song known only to them, intersecting in a complex, chaotic dance.

LESSONS IN CROSSING THE ROAD
We are too early to check in so we have ourselves a nice wander through the hurly burly of the Satruday morning Saigon streets. Once you get the hang of it -- and it took me quite a while before I stopping jumping at every tooting horn (which was every 0.05 seconds as sounding the horn is less of a warning signal and more of a orientation tool designed to tell pedestrians and fellow drivers "Hey I'm here, just riding me bike".) -- crossing the roads here is a liberating and nerve building affair. The key is to just walk at a constant pace so the traffic can judge how to avoid you. Motto of the story: Jaywalking like fuck -- and having an absolute right to do it -- is incredibly empowering.

TOURISTY THINGS

And like the damned tourists we are, we find Pho 2000, "because Bill Clinton ate there". But because we are tourists, we get lost, turned around by the disorientating tangle of unfamiliar (and nameless) streets. To quell my rumbling belly, I get my first hit of Vietnam -- a mystery snack that is a warm flat round of squishy dough bought off a street vendor. It turns to be a grilled tapioca and corn cake, which tasted like the green tapioca cakes found in pasar malams in Singapore. Toasty warm and slightly sweet, the snack was familiar tasting, fragrant and filling.

Then we find Pho 2000, which, like all tourist hot spots is clean, safe and nothing to write home about so i shant. Instead i shall tell of how D got accosted, not by one, but two Vietnamese guys...

Happy glue guy
We walk out of Banh Thanh Market, unimpressed by the shopping on offer and feeling annoyed at the pushy stall=holders. Suddenly, out from this bush, a young man suddenly bursts out and stoops over to attack D's feet with a bottle of glue. He wants to fix D's torn berkies. but D refuses and we quickly walk on. But the guy's insistent and follows us across the road, imploring like his heart would break. We hurriedly enter the would-be haven of the restaurant, expecting him to give up. But the tenacious young man then proceeds to wait outside, positioning himself outside our window, and continues to implore D for about 15 minutes, even as we eat. But before long, put off by our firm but sheepish gestures in the negative, he left, I would assume, heart broken at another torn shoe left unfixed.

The English teacher
We don't need a cyclo, and no we don't need a bike. But we must have looked friendly enough, because he takes us across a busy road intersection. It's enough encouragement for him as he -- in quite good English -- regales D with tales of his life. In typical D fashion, he engages the gentlemen, asking him questions about his language skills and his life. The man continues to share, he studied English in school, becoming a preacher until he fell ill, leading up to his urgent need for some money to go to the pharmacy for medicine for his condition which is, I kid you not, "water shooting out his (ass)" as surmised by descriptive gesticulations. D slowly explains to him that we do not have much money, and they shake hands as we part ways on the street of shoes, where D finally get his berkies fixed up for 10,000 vnd (<1sgd)