Status update:

1. Love the support and new followings, guys--thanks!
2. My green guitar broke. The bridge popped off the body right before the lesson. Like, as I walked through the door. Awkward.
3. Despite the technical setback, the guitar lesson went well, I think.
4. The Ho Chi Minh City Museum is worth a visit, at least to witness first hand exactly how little effort the government puts into maintaining it. The relentless deluge of red party propaganda on all the exhibits is just crumbly icing on the dilapidated cake.

Well, I'm happy to say I'm settling down nicely in the Saigon apartment, small and cozy as it is. It's interesting to compare my housing in Asia to where I just was in Arizona. My Hong Kong flat was exactly the same size as the closet in the master bedroom in Sahuarita. And the bedroom itself was no smaller than this whole Saigon apartment. The close quarters demands a fair bit of spatial economy. It kind of feels like we're living on a moderately sized boat, only sans briny air and tossing of waves. Lữ says that living in such a small space is good practice for when we live in New York together. I'm inclined to agree. Although, in New York I think I'll have my own room. For now, I've got a hide-a-bed that I plop down in the living room when it's time for shut-eye. They have their own room--but after they go to bed I have the rest of the apartment to myself, so technically I have the bigger space. Win! Heheh.

To describe the apartment, a picture's worth a thousand words; but let's see how far I get with a few hundred. The apartment is on the first floor, which is really just a case of semantics--the bottom floor is called the ground floor and the next is the mezzanine. You walk up two flights of stairs to get to the first floor, which makes this five story building seven stories in height.

The place is newly renovated, bright, and cheery, with eggshell walls and sandstone-colored tiles. A glass block wall sheds indirect daylight into the living room and onto blonde wooden furniture, which is where we install our butts to veg out in front of the flat screen t.v. that's mounted to the built-in shelving unit. On the other side of the couch is a small dining room and galley kitchen outfitted with the barest of necessities: a micro-fridge, a handful of utensils, pots, and pans, and a pantry stocked with the basics--fragrant Thai rice, finely ground Vietnamese coffee, spices. There's no oven, but there's a gas range, which is nice, although boiling the kettle puts a lot of heat in the room. But since the three of us can go outside to eat a whole meal together for a grand total of $2 dollars, we tend not to overuse the kitchen.

And then there's the bathroom, in which arguably the most important business is conducted. It's set with a pedestal sink, a glass-enclosed shower, and a double-flush toilet (small flush for number 1, and biggie for number 2; I can't for the life of me understand why we don't have those in the western US where water is so scarce). And! Not to forget, there's a certain spray fixture that deserves explanation; however, I'll save the details about that for a future post about water.

The last section of the apartment is Mike and Lữ's room, which has matching solid wood furniture and floor-to-ceiling curtains that drape across a sliding door to a balcony overlooking the courtyard below. On the balcony, our laundry drys on a rack, and a lotus plant with near elephant ear-sized leaves shoots out of a 10-gallon clay pot of water, mud, and duckweed. Lữ gets so excited to see how fast the buds grow--nearly an inch a day, at least.

The early morning view from
our rooftop presents an image
of the spires of the Notre
Dame Cathedral, the city post
office, and fleets of
diving swifts.

And further upstairs, ascending four flights to alight upon the patio. Then to climb the leaning steel ladder to the rooftop! With spectacular city vistas: to the northwest, the movie star's villa next door and the park on the other side, where people play badminton in the hours around dawn, the swifts darting about the spires of the Notre Dame cathedral to the northeast, the city skyline that features Saigon's epic construction: the Bitexco Financial Tower in the distance to the south. Not much room on the rooftop for malarkey--there's a water cistern and a solar water heater that takes up most of the space. But there's a bit of room to sit and take in the views. In the hours before sunrise, this is my favorite place in my new home.

Provender
- breakfast: bánh mì and chè đậu
- lunch: canh chua (leftovers from yesterday)
- supper: gỏi đu đủ khô bò and cháo

Within a mere 24 hours of my arrival in this fair tropical land, it would seem I have acquired for myself some form of profitable enterprise forthwith, and certainly one that would perchance precipitate a sizable return on an investment of just a modicum of time. Lol!

Thanks be to the interwebs and to me bro. I'm officially a teacher now. I got a gig giving guitar lessons starting today, and I'm really excited. In the one day since Mike posted an ad for me on a local forum, almost ten people responded. Most responses have been parents asking about lessons for their kids. Some of the jobs wouldn't begin for about a month. But it's a good wage, and the wage is doubled if I travel to their house.

As tasteless as it is in the states to brag about how much money you make, the game is different here. Folks here don't seem to mind much about discussions of salaries, savings, and expenses. So, here goes. -takes breath- I'm making enough money in one hour to ride a bus fifty times, or buy sixty-six potato cakes from a street vendor, or pick up sixteen tickets to the Saigon Zoo. There I said it, my wages. Well, not exactly. It's still not natural. Check back in a couple weeks, though. By then I might have posted my entire budget for the next six months.

Seriously though, gotta start working on a lesson plan. But first, there's a little cafe around the corner, and I hear they have nice pastries in the morning.

Provender
- breakfast: canh chua
- supper: bún chả

The airport in Ho Chi Minh City (which I will, from now here on after, refer to as Saigon) looks like every other airport I've ever been to. I didn't feel like I was in another country until I stepped outside through the automatic doors to the sweltering balmy air that carried rich wafts of smoky incense. Strange as it may seem for such a smoggy, crowded city that looks about as densely developed as Hong Kong, but Saigon actually smells pretty good.

I had my hands full. Along with my straw hat and green guitar, I had the frame backpack which was all I needed for a month of backpacking in Europe. I also dragged behind me two blue, wheeled suitcases like a pair of mules loaded with gifts and odd-and-ends that are hard to find in Vietnam. Never in my life have I traveled with so many bags.

At least a hundred people crowded outside the terminal waiting for arrivals. My bro and sis-in-law, each carrying a scooter helmet, found me through the crowd and ushered me and my canvas mules toward the rickety bus waiting to take us to my home for the next six months. Mike was wearing the shamrock shirt that goes with the baseball cap I was wearing--both were Christmas gifts from Kevin. T'was heart-warming to see them back together again.

Currency exchangers in the airport usually charge excessive fees, because hey, what choice do you have, so I still didn't have any đồng on me when we got on the bus. Lucky for me, Lữ came along for the ride to help me find my way home. She talked with the bus driver and negotiated the price, which may have been a bit excessive, since he charged full bus fare for each of my bags. Lữ picked up the tab, which was, by local standards, exorbitant. For the two of us and the three bags, the total came out to be 20,000₫, or about a dollar.

The bus sped off among throngs of scooters and taxis. The streets are a raging cacophony of tiny two-cycle engines revving up and ceaseless feeble beeps from scooter horns. Crossing at an intersection takes fortitude, faith, and luck. Lữ says the safest way to cross is at a brisk, consistent pace. Almost all the scooters will steer clear of you that way, and most of the cars. Not the buses though. Mike says the buses will honk a few times before they run you over. To me, it seems like a collision with a bus would be the hard one to walk away from.

Occasionally, you'll see a really fancy car on the streets as well. Later that night, Mike spotted a Bentley, and told me that, on top of its $200,000 price tag, the government in Hanoi slaps on a 100 percent import tax. You might ask, wait a minute, how can someone in a communist country afford that kind of extravagance? Needless to say, there's some disparity among classes in this people's nation. Average wages for folks in Saigon is around $200 a month. That doesn't buy a lot of Bentleys. Communism ain't what it used to be.

Flashes of scenery though the bus windows and, later on, a stroll through the city confirmed my initial impression: Saigon looks a lot like Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and not much different than Singapore. Which makes sense. All three cities are bustling trade centers which were once colonial capitals, with a melange of contemporary, traditional, and Euro-Asian architecture set among rows upon rows of shop-houses. Although here in Saigon, the Indio-British style with neo-classical features like rounded arches is largely absent compared to Malaysia and Singapore; in its place is the sharp, Gothic architecture characteristic of French influence.

The powerlines of Saigon tangle like cobwebs.

A perfect testimony of the stark contrast of new and old, perhaps, is the bundles upon bundles of telephone and electric wires overhead. They look like like rubbery-thick black tendrils of steam-punk vines that darken the sky and choke out all other forms of life. Whereas with most cities, in which the electricity that powers them is routed underground, here the wires are in the same location they were when the city was first electrified. It's as if the first electric wires that were installed so many ago were never replaced; they were just built layer upon layer with every successive generation.

The bus pulled into the stop, and we climbed out with bags in tow. Beyond the bus station was the notable Quách Thị Trang Square, which features a horse and rider statue in homage to a general who led the Vietnamese in their independence from China in the 15th century. Across the square was Bến Thành Market, which contains all manner of tasty foods and souvenirs. From there, it was a short walk in the balmy heat to Mike and Lữ's charming little apartment in a quiet ex-pat community in district 1, where its easy to hear the bells of the Notre Dame cathedral around the corner. With only two hours of sleep since the morning of my 19-hour flight, the rest of the day went by in a blur. But, between narcoleptic-like fits at the restaurant with Mike and Lữ, I remember feeling incredibly happy to be here.

Provender:
Bánh xèo with coconut buds