The Fall of Saigon('s Trees)

Below is a somewhat forced blog that I wrote on a recent trip to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).......

I have been reduced to sitting in the hallway of my Saigon hotel writing a note on my phone.

After a painful waiting experience at airport immigration, I managed to have a hassle free taxi ride to the main part of town last night. I found a very reasonably priced hotel with air con, a fridge, cable and hot water with little effort. A light rain mixed with a bad hangover and the reluctance to wander down dark alleys in a strange town at night managed to keep me in close proximity to my hotel on my first evening in town.

Despite it being Saturday night, these factors made for an early night and an early rise. The next morning, I found a lovely bakery that had amazing croissants and coffee, a rare treat for a seasoned Jakartan. The morning featured the same light rain experienced the night before.

I decided to wait the rain out in my room. After hours of forgettable television, I chose to go explore my surroundings. Leaving the hotel, I was faced with a slightly more intense rain. It was nowhere near the downpours I have experienced in Indonesia but still heavy enough to get wet quickly. I had another coffee at the shop across from my hotel and, once again, waited for the rain to cease. There was to be no such luck.

Dejected, I once again returned to my hotel and watched even more pointless television. Ironically, I was thankful to have cable in my room, a luxury for a cheap room in southeast Asia. After a few hours of sloth, cabin fever began to set in. I decided that it was time to explore.

Outside the hotel, I found the rain to be steadily increasing. The guy at the front desk gave me quite a large umbrella and I figured there was no stopping me. I decided to try to find the backpacker area that is supposedly close to where I am staying.

On my walk, I stumbled upon a road side sandwich stall, it was amazing. I was in a state of bliss with my baguette pork sandwich in one hand and my umbrella in the other. Then, the wind decided to rain on my parade, literally.

Once I hit a large intersection, the wind and the intensity of the rain increased. Since I had already made it this far, I decided to soldier on. During my walk, I was met by countless tourists donning giant rain ponchos and/or umbrellas. After 15 minutes of walking in unrelenting rain, I began to wonder if this was such a good idea.

A right turn on a street intersecting the one I was walking down was met with wind so intense that it blew my umbrella inside out. Getting out of this rain and having a drink suddenly seemed to be a priority. After going a block or 2 and not seeing anything, I spotted a corner cafe with a fridge full of beer. It turned out to be an ice cream shop that happened to sell beer.

The weather didn't really seem to jive with ice cream so I settled on a Tiger beer. Being right on the corner of a major intersection, I sat entertained by the constant blatant disregard for red lights, the right of way and basic common sense. It speaks volumes that these words come from the mouth (thumbs) of one who has spent years driving in Jakarta.

The highlight was a guy on a motorbike who managed to dump 8 or so cans of beer literally in the middle of the intersection. He tried to stop and pick them up but the other hundred or so cans stored in plastic crates between his legs made this impossible. To my astonishment, he soon returned on foot to the middle of the intersection to collect said cans. The fact that no passing vehicles had crushed a single can was even more astonishing. He struggled to pick up all 8 or 9 cans despite my mental encouragement for him to use his poncho as a bib, which would have easily cradled all of them. After managing to only be able to grab six with two hands, a bystander ran into the intersection and helped him pick up the remaining cans. I couldn't help but wondering if the unattended cans were being plundered.

After observing this debacle and downing a couple more tiger beers, I conceded that the rain was not going to stop. Once again, I donned my umbrella and went in search of the elusive backpacker area. After asking a few people on the street for directions to no avail, I decided to make a random left turn and try my luck. Further down the road, I saw signs of what looked like my destination to the right.

Upon turning down this road, I was met with a gust of wind that once again turned my umbrella inside out. Only this time, it nearly knocked me over. I gave up and decided to make my way back to the friendly confines of my hotel. The whole time, the wind was becoming more intense. This equated to sideways rain. After a few more umbrella mishaps, I arrived at my hotel with soaked jeans and a relatively wet fleece jacket.

Feeling that I had no choice but to hibernate, I removed my clothes and decided to have a beer from my fridge and watch even more television. 3 beers and a regrettable screening of "Eat, Pray, Love" later, I once again became stir crazy. A lack of beer in my fridge combined with my hunger made me decide to once again venture outside.

I knew there was a circle K convenience store and a few restaurants only a few doors down so the risk seemed minimal. The scene on the street was eerily quiet yet apocalyptic. I wondered if this eeriness is what it was like after this same city fell almost 40 years ago and ceased to be known as Saigon. The sound of strong wind and debris flying about heard from my room earlier probably added to this feeling.

There was a noticeable lack of traffic and pedestrians. Fallen branches were about, one even spanning an entire road. I managed to find what turned out to be an excellent noodle house only 100 meters away. After a lovely meal, I left and decided to go left down the alley to find a sim card for my phone, having saw a place the night before. I managed to stumble 5 steps to the left before once again being impeded by the wind.

I made my way to the circle K, stocked up on alcohol and decided to call it a night. Upon returning to my hotel, I realized that the power was out. After a brief yet awkward attempt at drinking in the foyer with 3 Vietnamese guys who spoke no English yet kept speaking to me in Vietnamese, the generator kicked in. I climbed the stairs back up to my 3rd floor room only to find that I had limited electricity, meaning that I had lights but no cable or air conditioning.

The heat, lack of television and the desire to smoke cigarettes forced me into the hallway.

That is where I sit at the moment, reduced to typing on my phone and smoking in a stairwell. As I write this, I can hear chainsaws cutting the fallen branches outside. I wonder if this is to be my fate in Vietnam, reduced to getting drunk in stairwells, getting soaked, knocked around and not venturing more than a few blocks from my hotel.

On the bright side, my fridge is still running which means the beer is cold. If the air conditioning does not come back on, I am going to have to drink until I pass out in order to sleep in this 3rd floor heat.

As fate would have it, the electricity came back on as I was typing the previous paragraph. However, I have become accustomed to my inebriated perch and am reluctant to return to my room. Here's to hoping that tomorrow has more to offer than Vietnamese cable and unrelenting weather.

The next day, there were downed trees and people with chainsaws everywhere. The weather for the rest of my holiday was hot and sunny. I found Saigon to be a lovely place that only added to my suspicions that I am living in a city that will one day be uninhabitable. Still, I find myself living in Jakarta and loving it on some sadistic level.

Plane & Simple

For my first blog, I'm going to go against my plan to write about daily life in Jakarta. Instead, this entry is going to be about air travel in Indonesia. The inspiration for this is (you guessed it) that I just returned from holiday in Bali & Lombok. It is a given that the worst part of any trip is the transit itself. Air travel in Indonesia always fascinates me. I often feel like I'm watching an episode of The Simpsons that I've seen so many times that I know the dialogue by heart. I say this because every time I'm in an airport/plane, the same things seem to happen without fail. Here are some examples

1. There is a good chance that I will choose the shorter check in line only to be stuck behind the person who doesn't understand why they are not allowed to check 4 suitcases, 11 twine tied cardboard boxes stuffed with various of oleh-oleh (gifts) and 2 taped up plastic bags full of clothes on a domestic flight. These items will inevitably weigh 40-50 kg and the lone traveller will be shocked when the clerk informs them that they must pay an excess weight fee. Their shock will turn to dismay when they learn that the fee is rp 500 000 (50 bucks) as was the case in the airport yesterday. Said person will then ask if they can leave their parcels at the airport and will be informed this is not allowed. This man or woman will then decide to call a friend or relative to either come give them the money (which they don't have because ironically, they've spent it all on gifts) or to take the excess baggage away. I sometimes manage to swiftly check in while this person is on the phone calling for help.





2. More likely than not, there will be an important looking man (probably wearing a leather jacket) who will try to cut in the check in line until I tell him to get into the back of the line. He will then reach over my shoulder whilst I'm checking in and yell at the clerk to take his ticket. Once that ordeal is finished, the same important man will force his way into the airport tax line and shove his ever so important hand full of cash inside the window and demand that the cashier take his money immediately instead of giving me my change first. This same man (batik shirt optional) will then proceed to shove my travelling companion out of the way in order to get through the security check faster. Once through the metal detector, he will move my bags out of the way so that he can promptly get his bags and enter the terminal. Once in the terminal, he will casually sit and wait one hour or more for his plane to board. I hope I grow up to be important one day. The idea of explaining this pointless rush to the important gentleman crossed my mind but I was afraid that he might have tried to put me put in prison.





3. On the best day ever, the plane will board at the time it is meant to take off. On an average day, the plane will be an hour or 2 late. On a bad day, it will be 3 or more hours late. Yesterday's plane was 2 hours late which meant that all passengers got a complimentary McDonald's hamburger. I wonder if they upgrade to cheeseburgers after a 3 hour wait.





4. When they call boarding for the plane, everybody will run to the gate and try to be the first one to jam their way through the door. I will casually wait until the line slows down but will absolutely definitely without question be pushed and elbowed by the person behind me in a vein attempt to board the plane faster. I'm not sure if people think that the plane is going to leave without them or if they think that they will reach their destination faster by shoving. The worst instance of this was when a man in Medan was using his baby to jab me in the back. His persistence guaranteed that the plane took off 1.5 seconds faster than it would have otherwise. Shamefully, I have given the backwards elbow to a few shovers who wouldn't stop. I managed to resist elbowing the baby in Medan though.





5. There is an 64.6% chance that there will be somebody sitting in my seat. When I politely show them my ticket and explain that they are sitting in my seat, they will sometimes persist that I am wrong. I will then show them my boarding pass and the little sticker with the aisle numbers and letters on top of every row of seats. Then one of 2 things will happen. 1) they will bashfully get up and go to their assigned seat or 2) they will tell me that it is ok lah and that I can sit somewhere else (I'm convinced that these are people who have never been on a plane before) I will insist that I must sit in my seat because I don't feel like being kicked out of another seat when that assigned seat holder appears. They will then begrudgingly move. Yesterday, there was a young girl and a child in our seats. Their father insisted that they were their seats until I respectfully showed him our boarding passes and the sticker with the aisle and seat number above the seats. He then called the flight attendant over and explained to her that he needed 2 more seats since these girls had nowhere to sit. The attendent looked at their boarding passes and informed the kepala keluarga (family boss) that all 7 or 8 people in his family were in the wrong seats and had to move. After some banter, he picked up his half-bottle of vegetable oil (with a plastic bag and elastic under the lid for safe keeping) and directed his family towards their assigned seats.





6. There will occasionally be someone within my vicinity who will pray with a prayer book for the entire flight. There seems to be no religious preference. I am curious to know if they pray on the motorbike ride home since riding on a bike is exponentially more dangerous than flying. Thankfully, their prayers worked and we landed safely.





7. Upon landing, 9 out of 10 people will turn on their cell phones at the first possible opportunity to inofrm somebody that they landed 5 seconds ago and that their plan is to leave the plane, get their luggage and then leave the airport. Around the same time, the praying stops.





8. Not one single person at the luggage claim with the exception of yours truly will seem to be the slightest bit concerned for the safety of the child playing (most likely running) on the conveyor belt.





9. I will intentionally choose a section of the luggage carousel that is not crowded. At this point, there is a 1 in 3 chance that somebody will come and stand directly in front of me and put their luggage cart directly behind me.





10. My taxi ride home will without a doubt be long and traffic filled. I've had rides home that were longer than the flght itself.

I have to look on the bright side. At least I don't have to take my shoes, belt and jacket off. It is not necessary to answer questions about what I plan to do with the 2 lighters in my backpack. There will be no lecture about not being allowed to have more than 150 ml of fluid in my posession. The security check people are not going to yell at me for not knowing airport security check procedures & regulations. It is not necessary to arrive at the airport 2 hours before, 45 minutes will usually do. After some reflection, flying in Indonesia isn't that bad. After all, you almost always get to see volcanoes peeking up through the clouds.