JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· November 19, 2009

Shock and More Shock

I’m in all kinds of shock since I got back to Seattle a week ago. Weather shock – 50F instead of 90F. Clutter shock – aware of all the stuff that fills our condo as opposed to the spareness of our apartment in Saigon. Food shock – the amount of fat on or in everything and the portion sizes offered. Shopping shock – noticing the number of shiny new shopping bags people are carrying out of downtown stores. If consumer confidence is down in the US I can’t see it. Traffic shock – how aggressive and unforgiving drivers are and how fast they go compared to the slow zen-like movement on the streets of Saigon. And, culture shock – how few people make eye contact or say hello in contrast with the friendliness of the people on the streets of Saigon.

It’s natural to look for differences. We’re moving between a Third World country and the most developed country in the world. But although the contrast is stark it doesn’t always favor the developed state. The day I arrived home is the day the crazy Army psychiatrist killed 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, and yesterday’s headlines in Seattle were about a rich eye surgeon who tried to have his partners murdered because he was unhappy with the million dollar split when they decided to change the business model.

Traffic is a nightmare in Saigon and the sidewalks are broken and filled with parked motorbikes that force you to walk in the street. But, I feel safe any time of day or night on the streets of Saigon. I can’t say the same about Seattle.

Facebook

Google

Twitter

No Comments

Categories : Saigon Diary, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· November 6, 2009

· No Comments

It’s Not Your Mother’s Supermarket

Ben Thanh Market, in the heart of the heart of downtown, is the best known of the public markets in Saigon. It is a must-have-total-immersion experience for everyone from the family shopper to the high end tour group. The market is enclosed in one gigantic structure and covers one square block. I’m not sure what the roof construction is, but the last time Marilynn and I were there it was raining so hard outside that there was a heavy mist inside.

The market catches your eye immediately as you approach. The outer stalls facing the street are the flower sellers – dozens of them. If you enter from the north you are immediately thrown back to the ageless, timeless, markets of the world and an dizzying array of sights, sounds, and smells. The ladies in their conical hats squat beside basins of live eels, octopus, crabs and flopping mackerel. Behind them are the fruit and vegetable vendors with their tables full of carefully arranged produce. Everyone walking through stops to take a picture of the art. The color, the geometry, the orderliness stop the eye and hold it.

The meat, sausage, and poultry are displayed more like they are in a European market – behind glass but in cases open to the air. It’s hard to recognize any of the cuts. They’re different than what we’re used to seeing. When you order chicken in a restaurant it often comes in chunks and looks like the butcher took a bandsaw to the whole bird and cut it into bite sized pieces.

Deeper in the market, food vendors, all with a few seats at narrow counters offer pho, noodles, rice, etc for the breakfast, lunch and dinner crowd. There is plenty to choose from but it isn’t easy to know what they are selling. It’s best to scout out the counters and see what the customers are eating and then point. Is it safe to eat? Probably, if it’s cooked, but the Vietnamese tummy is conditioned and able to cope with whatever travels along with the fruits and vegetables. Ours is not; so the basic rule is don’t eat unpeeled fruit or fresh salads. The exception to the rule is that the better restaurants and those that cater to the expat and tourist trade take extra care and wash their produce with a special product that ensures its safety.

After eating you can shop till you drop, because everything beyond the food vendors is for sale – fabric, watches, clothing, household goods, sweets, art. It’s all there, and, everything that’s for sale has to be bargained for. I’m not very good at it, but my rule of thumb if I want something is to ask the price and then counter-offer with half. If they snap it up I turn away and find another vendor and offer less. There are dozens of vendors with the same products. At least you’ve found a ballpark figure to work with.

Ben Thanh Market has some name brand knockoffs – handbags, watches, clothes, etc, but the better ones are down the street in a newer building called Saigon Square and the same goods that are for sale there are available across the street in a stall for half of that price and with less mystery in the bargaining. We bought Marilynn a “Chanel” leather bag at Ben Thanh for $25 and I bought a “Prada” shoulder bag at a stall for $9. The quality is there if you have time to dig, but it’s harder for the tourist hurrying to catch up with the group or not miss the bus. Your negotiating posture is always better if you have time or don’t really care if you take the particular item home. There’s always next time or another market.

Categories : Saigon Diary, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 31, 2009

· No Comments

An Phu and District 7

In the 1960’s and ‘70s I spent some time in Beirut. It was the financial center of the Middle East. The French were there. The Brits were there. The Americans were there. And the sheiks of the Middle East used it as an escape from the rigid rules of their own kingdoms.

Beirut was mostly about oil. There was none there, but it was where it was traded and where the revenue was exchanged for goods and services. One company dominated the Middle East in those days – Aramco – the Arabian American Oil Company. It operated exclusively in Saudi Arabia, and Aramco compounds, the small cities where the employees lived, were modern, complete, walled, and self sustaining cities within the boundaries of Saudia. Nice houses and apartments, supermarkets, swimming pools, movie theaters, and clubs. You could live in an Aramco compound for years and never see how ordinary Saudi citizens lived.

I was reminded of the Aramco compounds this week. My personal Saigon is the downtown core, Districts 1 and 3, where I work, eat, drink coffee, and workout, but the city is much bigger than these two neighborhoods. Most of my needs are met here, but not all foreigners – expats – feel that way. There are two other districts, 2 and 7, where the majority of the expats have chosen to live. On Friday I went to visit a new acquaintance, a German architect who has been working in Saigon for 10 years. Axel Korn, lives and works in District 7. He lived in District 1 for a couple of years, but moved to 7 because that’s where his office and most of his work is located.

You have to cross the river from downtown to get to District 7 and then drive through an area of rundown tin-roofed structures and plant nurseries. All over Saigon businesses selling the same products group together, but seeing the nurseries could have been a clue about what was to come. Just beyond the nurseries you start to see the high rises of District 7. Drive 5 minutes further and you think you might be in Florida. Palm trees line wide boulevards. A promenade winds along the river. Shopping malls, supermarkets, KFC, they’re all there along with the international schools, there must be 10 of them, where the expats send their kids. If I had school age kids I would probably live in District 7 too, but only for the proximity to the schools. It’s not Saigon. We toured one of Axel’s multi-use building complexes. It’s gorgeous with retail on the first two levels, apartments, gyms, three swimming pools and a rooftop terrace with a garden view of the city. But it’s not Saigon to me.

On Saturday I visited the other expat area, An Phu, in District 2. My destination was a travel writing workshop, and the venue was a riverside café in the BP compound (British Petroleum – there’s the oil connection again). The compound is lovely. It’s walled and gated with tree lined streets and speed bumps. The houses are hidden behind other walls and the gates have signs that say Beware of Dog or No Solicitors. The Boathouse Café is modern, upscale and open to the view and river breezes. There are outside tables under the trees and you can watch the freighter traffic on its way to the Port of Saigon. It’s a great setting. I had a seared tuna salad with arugula and cherry tomatoes that was delicious. An Phu is not a small Florida city like District 7, but neither An Phu nor District 7 is Saigon for me. There are many sides to the city and they all make it what it is. I still choose the smells, sights, and sounds of the downtown core and Cholon in District 5. They are the real Saigon to me. I’m a newcomer though and I might change my mind.

Categories : Saigon Diary, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 29, 2009

· No Comments

The Zen of Traffic

I’ve been here two months now and I’ve just had an epiphany about Saigon traffic. There are three simple rules: Go Slow. Do No Harm. Don’t Hit Anyone.

There are other “guidelines” such as automobiles stay to the left of the flow and everything else, bikes, cyclos, motorbikes and pushcarts keeps to the right. There are also traffic lights, but they are for the most part advisory. These are the two structural guidelines that help ensure that rules #2 and #3 are achieved.

There is one and only one safety device – the horn. Both taxis and motorbikes use them constantly, but they too are advisory – “I’m behind you, please ease over to the side.” And, your area of concern as a driver is always in front of you. Most vehicles have mirrors, but it’s dangerous to look back. Your job is to avoid running into someone ahead of you. If you look in the mirror you will.

In Vietnam motorbikes go anywhere and everywhere that it is possible to squeeze in – between cars, to the left of the cars if there’s a space, on the sidewalk if there’s not and the wrong way on a one-way street if that’s where they need to go. Bicycles roll along in the middle of it all. At first I thought they would stay to the far right, but that was faulty Western thinking. They ride right down the center of the motorbike side. That’s possible because of Rule #1: no one goes fast. Even when the road looks open, which it seldom is, no one dares to go fast. There is always someone entering the road from the sidewalk or an alley or a side street. Almost all motorbike parking is in organized clusters on the sidewalk, and there’s only one way to get into traffic and that’s off the curb.

Cars obey the “go slow” rule diligently. They can do serious harm if anything goes amiss. So they go slow. Most of the cars are taxis and I haven’t been in one yet that had an automatic transmission. I don’t get that at all. In a world where everything operates in slow motion and forward progress is often inches at a time, why don’t the cars have automatic transmissions? I’ve asked the question of lots of people and no one seems to know. The best guess is that cars with manual transmissions are cheaper. I’m not buying it, but it could be true. Cars are very expensive – there’s a serious tax levied on any car that’s sold in Vietnam. Still, taxis rarely get out of first or second gear and often they stall because the driver is in the wrong gear and it lugs down. I can’t believe that an automatic transmission wouldn’t save money in the long run with all the transmission and clutch repair on the manuals.

Anyway, cars go slowly and because they travel on the left when they need to turn right they do a very slow maneuver through the motorbikes and everyone makes room or weaves around as the taxi eases across. Not only do they make this seemingly impossible maneuver in a sea of motorbikes, but they also think nothing of making a U-turn. In the US if someone tried that he would end up in the slammer or the hospital.

But that brings up the most interesting thing about Saigon traffic: road rage is unheard of. I don’t know if it is the Buddhist influence or something more basic in the make up of the people, but millions of people travel the roads every day and I have never seen anyone scowl or shake a fist at anyone else no matter how egregious the offense. It is very Zen-like to be in the flow.

Nothing is perfect; I’ve seen motorbikes down in the street, but to me it’s a miracle that there isn’t a pile up at every corner. Next time I’ll tell you about crossing the street… It’s best characterized as risk management.

Categories : Saigon Diary, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 24, 2009

· No Comments

Flying Solo

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life traveling and more often than not it has been solo. Sometimes that was by choice and sometimes it came with the job. When I was 25 I spent 6 months wandering around Europe with my guitar and for 19 years, as a Pan Am pilot, I was on my own for dinner in strange locations at least half of every month. I learned how to do things on my own early and that probably made it seem normal even if it wasn’t.

Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to deal with so much solo time and how to think about eating out as a solitary traveler in a strange new place. Those questions seem a little odd to me, but that may be because I’ve done a lot of it. I learned to like the quiet time that lets me savor new places, new tastes and people watching without the distraction of other voices and other eyes. I do like traveling with Marilynn because her eyes are seeing foreign places for the first time, and it adds a layer of newness to places I’ve already seen. But I still like going it alone too.

Saigon is a new place for me, and I love the newness. For the first month, while Marilynn was here, we explored it together. She’s gone now, and I’m flying solo again. As an inveterate list maker I’m working on a list of all the new (to me) Saigon restaurants. I started on September 5th, and there are 31 Saigon and 3 Danang restaurants on the list now.

There are times after a long work week when I’d rather veg out on the couch with a beer, a few pieces of cheese, and some olives than haul my ass out to dinner. But today was relaxing and tonight I tried a stylish new place called Sandals that I’ve walked by a dozen times. It’s in the heart of town, just behind the Opera House. If it was on Venice Blvd in Santa Monica the place would have had a line around the block, but I walked right in and got a great table on the 3rd level where the street-side is open to the air and lined with containers planted with bamboo like a tropical screen. The menu is simple, which I like. I picked the 3 course set menu – a delicious tropical fruit and grilled prawn salad, a Greek souvlaki with pita bread, and a dessert of star fruit, melon, kiwi, and coconut ice cream. I had two beers and finished with an espresso and the total bill was $20.

And did I tell you that the service was terrific and included a visit by the owner, Louie, and an absolutely gorgeous Filipino hostess named Lani? Eating alone is not always a hardship – but sometimes it can be a little lonely. Take along a book or a paper and you won’t feel so conspicuous.

Categories : Saigon Diary, Uncategorized