6 AM
March 20, 2001
Ho Chi Minh Cith
Greetings from Viet Nam! A little less than 24 hours ago, 9 weary travelers stepped off Vietnam Airlines flight #742 onto the tarmac, most of us being a little shell-shocked at finding ourselves in a completely different world. We were greeted by stone-faced customs officials, reminding us that we were now in a country run by a communist government. I'll let fact that we were checked in on IBM PCs running Windows slide by without any additional comment. . .
The first thing that grabbed our attention was the traffic on the way to the hotel. We found ourselves in a sea of motor scooters mixed in with a few bicycles and even fewer cars. The protocol seems to be to rip through traffic as fast as you can go and honk your horn when someone is in your way. I A number of the students said it reminded them of Frogger--personally, I think that analogy is a little tame (incidentally, no one wears helmets). Nevertheless, with thousands of scooters racing around, we saw only two very minor accidents of the knee-scraping variety. It seems to be a bizarre mix of some exquisite ballet (with rules that have eluded me so far) and chaos theory in the flesh.
I spent most of the day with an eerie sense of deja vu, having grown up in the generation that saw scenes of this city and this country almost nightly on the national news. More thoughts about that later.
We visited Vinh Dang's college, the house where he was raised, his neighborhood, and ate dinner in a jazz club later in the evening where a pretty good and versatile group of musicians played some Vietnamese music mixed in with a lot of American pop, show music, jazz, and even a very beautiful violin and piano rendition of the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria.
At several places where we stopped, people seemed fascinated by us. A little girl sneaked up to me, playfully touched me on the arm, and jumped away as if she was trying to decide if we were real. I smiled and said "Chau" (hello), using up one-fourth of my Vietnamese vocabulary. She smiled and bashfully returned the greeting.
Vinh explained that while there are occasional European visitors, American visitors are still very rare here (I guess it was really that obvious!?).
Great food, wonderful sights, fascinating sounds.
We're having fun, but we miss you. More later to those holding down the fort back home.
Gary Daum
Today's photos include our ANA "Pokemon" flight from Tokyo to Singapore; Breakfast in Singapore; landing in Viet Nam; the group in Saigon; downtown Saigon
