Ho Chi Minh City, Part 2

From our hotel next to Ben Thanh Market, we walked to the more nicer touristy part of HCMC that has well known hotels such as the Rex Hotel, Caravelle Hotel, and Park Hyatt. I was surprised to see a Louis Vuitton, Chloe, and Marc Jacobs store because most of the Vietnamese population would never be able to afford anything in those stores. The disparity between the rich and impoverished is astounding. The 37 year old lady who is following us around works everyday (including weekends) and makes about $120 a month. She hasn't traveled anywhere in the small country of Vietnam despite living here her entire life.

When I walked back from that area, I passed by a spa and decided to get a pedicure because my feet were looking kind of beat from wearing flip flops everyday. (Over here, a pedicure is defined as trimming of the nails.) I laid down on a bed in a dimly lit room with soft music playing in the background. The girl started doing her thing on my foot and then made a comment on my legs about how smooth and nice they were (I was surprised because I haven't shaved in forever). She was looking really closely at it with the spotlight perching above and caressing my leg with her fingers. It was getting a bit awkward...A few minutes later, another girl comes over to work on my other foot (business was slow) and does the same thing to my leg. She touches it and looks really close at it. Then another girl comes over and does the same thing. I began to wonder what kind of legs they have been looking at that make them think that my legs are smooth. I chat with all three of them and one of them asks me to introduce her to my cousin who was sitting downstairs. And when people say "introduce" over here, they really mean "I want to marry him and move to the U.S." They're straightforward about that kind of stuff. Just skip the wooing and go straight to marriage. So I introduce my cousin and he thinks she's cute and gets her number. This time, I'm pretty sure she's not a prostitute.

We had a lot of time to kill in the hotel room since we were done roaming around HCMC. My 72 year old aunt told us stories about our family. Back then my great grandpa owned a lot of rice plantations and employed over a thousand people in the field. He had 20 or so servants (tailor, masseuse, cook, maid, babysitters, gardeners, etc.) to attend to him and his family. He was a compassionate man who gave away free rice to all of his employees' families. His oldest son, my grandpa, inherited all the land and money, allowing my dad and his siblings to live luxuriously. When the war began, all men had to join the army unless they had five or more children. My grandparents had four children and ended up paying someone to adopt their daughter. Eventually they all fled and lost everything. Later I walked out to Saigon River, the area where my grandparents, aunts and uncles fled by boat (my dad was in Switzerland attending college). They left that day not knowing where they were going or if they would even survive. I kept wondering what my life would have been like if they hadn't fled.

Before we went to the airport to go to Hanoi, we ate at Ben Thanh Market. Tons of cockroaches were scurrying around as the vendors were stomping on them. For a split second I lost my appetite but I sucked it up and ate at the food stand anyways. My grandpa always said (in Vietnamese), "Eat dirty, live long." At the rate that I'm going, I'll live til I'm 120.

People here have a relatively low sense of cleanliness and consideration for others. On the plane ride to Hanoi, the man sitting next to me kept picking his nose. A lot of the men here grow out their pinky nail long so they can dig for dinosaurs. After he picked it, he checked out the boogers that were stuck in his nail. Then he blew his nose...into his bare hands. When I was riding in the car from the airport to the city center, the guy sitting in front of me was coughing the whole time without covering his mouth. If I die from TB, it's because of him (my throat hurts right now...I'm getting sick). And the men love to stare. They don't avert their eyes when you catch them looking at you. So I stare back and give them the what-the-hell-are-you-looking-at look.

When we got off the car, three or four motorbike guys swarmed to us like flies on poop (and no, I'm not comparing myself to poop). The northerners are much more aggressive than the southerners and they have thick accents that I can barely understand. We walked around to look for a hotel by Hoam Kiem Lake and quickly found a clean one. There's no night life in Hanoi so I slept early.

Today we're going to explore Hanoi and tomorrow we're going to Halong and then Sapa. Stay tuned...