Back in Danang

Memories are short. I'm sitting at the airport where I landed 40 years ago during the Vietnam War. This morning I walked the beautiful promenade reminiscent of Nice that runs along the river. It's wide, flowing, geometrically tiled, and lined with palm trees. It's not Nice; the river is not the blue Mediterranean and the building across the street is not the Hotel Negresco, but it is a beautiful space in country that is in need of them.

I couldn't help but think of the changes. America was at war here. We believed that if Vietnam fell to the communist North that Asia would cave in, China would take over, and the dominos would fall. We were wrong. We were wrong about the Vietnamese and wrong about China. Now both are our friends and trading partners. It was a civil war not a world wide conspiracy to bring down America. Vietnam is thriving now. It's the most energetic place I've ever been. I was in China in April and the energy and activity level here is categorically different. This country is on the move.

A Day of Contrasts

In 1969 as a junior Pan Am co-pilot I ferried US troops in and out of the Marine airbase at Danang. They were on their way to or from R & R (Rest and Recuperation) holidays during the Vietnam War. Today I rode into Danang on Vietnam Airlines and seated next to me was a family of four from Florida on their way to hang out on China Beach for a few days.

I am traveling to attend a staff meeting and talk about our work in Vietnam including some mitigation of the devastation wrought by Agent Orange/dioxin. The Florida family is taking a year off to travel around the world before their kids push back because they are don't want to leave their friends.

After checking into a modern hotel on the street bordering the river I met another East Meets West staffer at a Danang coffee house. The purpose of our meeting was to have him brief me on the work we are doing with disabled people in three provinces including a number of third generation birth defects caused by AO. Where does that end? The work EMW does with the disabled isn’t limited to casualties of AO. The beneficiaries can also be accident victims, hearing and visually impaired, mentally ill or other forms of disability. The young man I met with is a real star, living away from his wife and two kids except on weekends, traveling between programs and provinces, supervising a staff of 10, and delivering services to a population largely hidden in Vietnam.

Following our meeting I walked along the river until I came to a trendy indoor/outdoor restaurant. The bait was a stunning young woman in a short, tight silk dress and 4” stilletos. Her beautiful face could have graced the cover of any of the top fashion magazines. I bit. She seated me on the veranda looking out at the river and her. I ordered a beer and some fried rice and was served by three rather homely but refreshingly innocent young girls who wanted to try their English out on me. They smiled constantly and didn't miss an opportunity to try out their new language skills. Meanwhile, the bait was doing her best to charm a table full of drunks who were ruining everyone's dinner by trying to outshout each other. The real charm this evening was provided by the three homely teenagers whose eager innocence won the day. I finished my beer and walked back to the hotel as it started to rain. It was a day of contrasts.

It's Equinox Time

I'm a great one for fresh starts and new beginnings. The autumnal equinox is today and marks a new beginning. So,it's a great day to signal the transition to our new life in Saigon. We are finally starting to find our feet here in Saigon. We're not locals yet. We're not living "on the economy", but we are getting our sea legs. We moved into our apartment on Friday. On Saturday we filled two shopping carts at the local supermarket where some gnarly dude piled all the booty into some big plastic crates and delivered it all to our door on his motorbike. We went to the ex-pat's favorite gourmet store and bought French ham, olives, cheese, crackers, mayonaisse, and dijon. We found a wine shop in our neighborhood with inexpensive Chilean wine and bought 8 bottles, a corkscrew and 4 wine glasses. Marilynn bought a lifetime supply of cleaning stuff and we hired a very competent and attractive cleaning woman who scrubs our tile floor on her knees, washes and irons our clothes, shops for incidentals and buys flowers for our living room. I think we can get used to it, even if it is completely different from the life we have known until now.

This week we're starting to have a real routine. The alarm goes off at 5:15am and there's a taxi at the door at 5:45 to take us to the fitness center at the Rex Hotel. It's a real extravagance but it feels great. The gym is well equipped. The locker rooms are clean, and the pool is on the rooftop and almost 25 meters long. We work out for an hour, shower, get dressed and cross two wide motorbike choked streets to get to one of two fabulous espresso places - the Paris Deli, which has unbelievably good croissants, or Highlands Coffee, the local Starbucks (owned by a Vietnamese-American from Walnut Creek CA). By 8 I'm in another taxi on my way work and Marilynn's on her way back to the apartment to IM with her assistant who is working on the other side of the world. It's a life that couldn't have been imagined 25 years ago. But, here we are.

Humble Pie

When my son, Brent, was 8 years old we drove our VW bus from Paris to the Costa Brava in Spain. A friend of mine opened a bar on the beach in a sleepy little beach town that was becoming a hot destination for northern European beach rats. I was determined to have Brent embrace the foreign experience so I gave him some money to buy a Coke and told him how to ask for it in Spanish. He just looked at me and said, “What if they talk to me?”

I know just how he felt. It’s now 40 years later and I’m asking that same question – What if they talk to me? Here we are living and working in Saigon, Vietnam and terrified that someone will speak to us and find out just how ignorant we really are.

I love my job; I’m working for an International NGO that is helping Vietnam reclaim its legacy after shaking off 100 years of French colonial rule and the ravages of what the Vietnamese government calls the American War. But, here I am living and working in their country and unable to speak even a word of their language. It’s embarrassing, and I’m determined to make a dent in it soon. In the meantime I am totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.

I travel everywhere by taxi. This place is hot and humid and it rains like it will never end. No one walks. Fortunately there are lots and lots of taxis and they’re cheap. I’ve owned and ridden motor-scooters and motorcycles in the US but no way am I ready to try one here. It is motorbike mania… but I digress. I go by taxi, so every time I get ready to go somewhere I have to write down the address of my destination and hand it to the driver. And, sometimes but only sometimes, the driver will take advantage and take the scenic route that costs half again the normal rate. I’ve been here 3 weeks now and the navigational vertigo I felt at first is gone. I know the names of the major streets and recognize the businesses along the way. But… what if they talk to me?

It is quite humbling to be “of a certain age” and feel the vulnerability that a child feels because of his dependence on others. It’s probably worse, because children are of necessity trusting and dependent. We “masters of the universe” get a real lesson in these situations.

We're Gettin' Down

Last night we had dinner with the East Meets West Foundation's Country Director, her husband, and a friend of hers who manages contributions for a big multinational corporation. The friend is Vietnamese but very Western. She speaks and dresses like a Westerner, and she knows what's trendy in the world. The Director says I should get to know her. She knows everything that's hip in Saigon.

She proved it last night. She picked the place for dinner, and it was a local place whose name roughly translated is "broken pot." That's what they do there; they cook rice in a ceramic pot and when it's ready they crack the pot, throw the shards into a bigger ceramic pot and toss the finished product across the room like a frisbee. The catcher on the other end tosses it in the air before plating it and taking it to the table. The end product is a saucer-like hunk of rice that is dry and crispy with a little browned crust. It's what I call performance food - like throwing fish at Pike's Place Market. It may be touristy, but it's really fun and interesting.

The meal was as good as the performance - stuffed, fried squash blossoms, stir fried chunks of beef with sauteed onion and red pepper, soup, sauteed greens and finished off with mango and banana flambe. Everything was delicious.

After dinner "Rosemary," as she is known to her Western friends, had us all jump in a cab and drive to a small little alley somewhere nearby. It was pouring rain when we got there, and we scampered down this darkish, dead-end alley until we arrived at the entrance to Serenata, a combination coffee house and bar. It was an amazing place. I felt like I was in a time warp - SE Asia in colonial times, Grahame Green's Vietnam, Malraux's beat, definitely some other time and place. It was an indoor/outdoor space- all open to the air - without walls although the central area was covered. In that central area they were playing live music. At first it was a Vietnamese woman singer backed by a trio of violin, piano, and classical guitar. She was followed by a man singing French pop chez Johnny Hallyday, and then the trio took over without the singer and played like the Julliard String Trio. I could have stayed forever. What a great introduction to the offbeat Saigon nightlife.

The Hunt Is Over

Just when you think nothing will happen - something does. We had resigned ourselves to the idea that we wouldn't find an apartment anytime soon and were ready to hunker down in the hotel for a few more weeks. But, when it happens it usually happens fast and this was no exception. You have to be ready to jump on it or you'll lose it.

On Friday we went out to look at four more places. Number 1 was in a small building just outside the downtown area. Up to this point everything we had seen was in a high rise building, so this was definitely different. The entrance was simple, an open ground floor like most Vietnamese houses, but the stairs leading up were polished granite and the elevator was shiny brushed stainless. It was a good start. The broker, a French ex-pat, was showing it to a young French couple at the same time, so we were all moving around in the space checking things out. I couldn't gage their interest, but they were taking pictures and talking quietly as they moved through the place. I liked it immediately, and I hadn't felt that way about any of the 10 we had already looked at. Marilynn, on the other hand, freaked out and stopped looking as soon as she discovered that there was only one window in the whole place. It was an interesting dynamic in the car as we went off to look at the next three apartments.

Number 2 was a real dog - it looked and felt like a high rise cellblock - all concrete (with mold and mildew), no decoration, and locked sliding gates covering the unoccupied unit doors. We didn't even go in to the available apartment. It was too depressing. We stopped at Number 3, didn't even step inside the building, and agreed with the broker to skip Number 4. By the time we got back to the hotel, Marilynn had reconsidered Number 1 and we decided to move on it. I thought the French couple might have tied it up, but they hadn't and we set up an appointment with the landlord on Saturday.

Vietnamese houses, and this is basically a house that has been converted to apartments, are tall and narrow with common walls. There are 5 units in the building, all occupied by ex-pats - 2 French, 1 Dutch, and 1 Mexican. Our unit is on the second floor and has 3 common walls, so the only natural light is in the room fronting the street. It's a bedroom with an en suite bath. The rest of the house is all behind that bedroom. There's a living room/dining room that is open to the kitchen and behind the kitchen is the second bedroom. A second bathroom adjoins the bedroom, and that works well for us since if we have guests the two bedroom/baths are on opposite ends of the house.

It's not perfect, but it meets our non-negotiables - built to Western standards, a reasonable and equal distance from work and the downtown core, basic furniture with built-in wardrobe closets, and 24 hour security. Once she looked at the apartment without the one window block, Marilynn saw that it was going to be fine. I think we can put some lipstick on it and she is already thinking about where to begin.

We signed the lease at 3pm yesterday and were looking out from the colonial-style rooftop bar of the old Caravelle Hotel at 7 celebrating the end of phase one of our life in Saigon.

Apartment Hunting

It's never fun - apartment hunting. But, when you don't know the city, don't know the language, can't walk around because it's either too hot or a torrential rainstorm and where hardly anyone except Gucci takes credit cards you get the picture on the rising stress levels. Add to that the fact that Marilynn has a little case of Uncle Ho's revenge and the picture gets even clearer. That's our situation in Saigon. We have two extraordinary co-workers doing everything they can to help us find something, but it's not easy.

It might be easier with a cushy corporate overseas housing allowance, but we're working for an NGO (non-governmental organization/a non-profit) doing humanitarian aid work and money is tight. We're on a budget, and the Vietnamese landlords know what the market will bear. We'd be concerned if our children had to live in the places we've looked at, and the going rate is still $1000/mo and up. Our needs are clear, a clean, air-conditioned, two bedroom place that has some measure of security. That means a high rise, and they're all pretty much the same. The ones available to ex-pats like us are furnished with tacky, beat up furniture, and smell like a swamp because in this climate if they aren't lived they start to sweat and smell the minute the A/C is turned off.

So far, we've looked at 10 different places. Location has become the mantra. We're never going to find a place we'd really like to live. We know that. But, if we can be within a 10 minute cab ride from the office we can make some concessions. Tomorrow is another day and we have 2 more to look at.

I Don't Know How It Works...But It Does.

Finding your way around Saigon can be a real challenge, but we're actually starting to make some progress. Well... sort of. I'm beginning to recognize some streets and even a few street names, but our world is expanding, like the universe, very slowly. Saigon is not easy to grok. Streets are jammed with motorbikes, and it's hard to pay attention to orienteering and orientation when motorbikes swarm like a school of minnows around your taxi. I imagine that seen from above it would look like a diagram of Bernoulli's Principle. The swarm flows fluidly, like water, finding the path of least resistance. It is absolutely riveting to watch from inside the cocoon of a taxi and try to figure out how it works. Stoplights are only advisory, and cars drive on the left with bikes on the right - except when the car needs to make a right turn and nudges into the swarm to negotiate the maneuver. Even U-turns are handled as if they were a normal. One of the secrets is that nobody is moving very fast. In fact, cars move more slowly than the motorbikes. Add rain and it's a rainbow of plastic ponchos moving in unison. I still haven't figured out how it works... but it does.

Here's What 2,000,000 Will Get You

The numbers are a little unsettling: a latte at The Coffee Bean will set you back 50,000, a three mile taxi ride 65,000, and a romantic dinner for two in a French garden restaurant a whopping 435,000. Those numbers are Vietnamese Dong, the local currency, and they translate this way - $2.75 for the latte (the coffee culture has hit Saigon like a hammer and there isn't a Starbucks in sight), $3.50 to part the sea of motorbikes in an new metered Toyota (bargain if there ever was one), and $35 for two steak and frites dinners followed by a pommes d'terre tart and all washed down with a liter of house red. The zeros will only confuse you, so you drop them and divide by 18 to convert to dollars. Saigon seems like a bargain if you're on a dollar payroll, but it takes awhile to get comfortable with all those zeros.

Now I Remember

Ten hours in the air from Seattle to Tokyo. Only six and half more to Saigon. I have to say, the flight couldn't have gone better; good service at check in, a shiny A330 freshly washed on the outside and clean on the inside, a welcoming cabin crew, decent food, and on time at both ends. I like Northwest Airlines. Too bad they merged with Delta. The evil empire eats them up, but for now they still have some pride.

The good flight and service notwithstanding, now I remember why I hated flying those long overwater flights out of SFO and JFK. As a crew member I was fidgety after 2 or 3 hours and we still had 7 or 8 to go. As soon as I could I transfered to Berlin and I loved it; six take-offs and landings a day and home in your own bed almost every night. I confess that when I thought about an airline job I was seduced by the exotic places and the prestige of Pan Am. I'm not sorry in the least that it was the only airline I applied to, but I had one hour fighter pilot's ass and I had no idea how miserable it would be to sit in the cockpit for 8+ hours.

This entry got interrupted after I tried and failed to get it posted in Tokyo...

The Tokyo layover was almost three hours, and before we left Seattle we bought day passes for the Delta Sky Club lounge. I have to say, I'm glad we did. It was well worth the $50. It's such a different world from the one outside in the boarding area. Chairs are comfortable. There are tables for computers, a selection of small snacks, and whatever you want to drink. I had a couple of pieces of shrimp sushi and a beer and Marilynn had some fruit. It's a real oasis when you feel like Sisyphus pushing the rock around. We actually felt rested when we blasted off for Saigon.

We arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport about midnight on the 2nd, having crossed the International Dateline somewhere along the way. I remember Tan Son Nhat from when I flew in and out with Pan Am during the war. And, when we were here for our bike trip in 2007 it hadn't changed a lot from that time. Now it's bright and full of white marble and high ceilings. It's bustling and modern and reflects the new Vietnam.

Coming out of customs we were met by the amazing young woman, Van Ly, I'm going to be working with at East Meets West. It was so nice to see a welcoming cheerful face at the end of the 24 hour odyssey/ordeal. She whisked us out of the brand new terminal and into a cab heading for the hotel. Ten hours later we were having lunch with Van and Thu Hang the other pillar of the EMW staff here. What a day... and night.

Now it's 5 days later; we hit the ground running and we've been jammin' ever since.