Dave Fox's Outbursts!

Everybody Panic! (Again!)

[We interrupt our ongoing bloggage from my recent trip to Vietnam in order to bring you this sneak preview....]

From the producers who brought you 1999 hysteria over world destruction from malfunctioning computer clocks ("Y2K"), and the 2003 panic from a new strain of Avian Flu that would destroy the human race ("Y2Chicken"), comes their greatest thriller yet: "Y2Pig: Swine Flu Unmasked!"

Starring Dr. Sanjay Gupta as the dashing journalist who ventures into the hot zone and risks his life to tell the story, co-starring the entire nation of Mexico as a bunch of dead people, "Y2Pig: Swine Flu Unmasked" will have you on the edge of your hospital bed, believing the hype until the very end!

But wait! There's more! Don't miss the great online extras! Here's what CNN had to say about Swine Flu on Twitter:

"Some observers say Twitter -- a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages -- has become a hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak...."

If you love hype, you won't want to miss "Y2Pig: Swine Flu Unmasked!" -- the movie so terrifying, you'll be too afraid to remove your mask and eat popcorn.

"Y2Pig: Swine Flu Unmasked!" -- coming soon to a television set near you.

(This movie has not yet been rated. If you are traveling with children, please secure your own mask before assisting with theirs.)

[...I'll get back to my Vietnam blogging soon if I live long enough to tell the tales.]

Squid Bike Barbecues

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Looking for a late night snack in Vietnam to go with your beer? Flag down a squid bike.

These bikes are typical Vietnamese ingenuity, and while dried sea creatures aren't my favorite food, I can’t help but love the concept.

Many of the local beer joints don’t sell food, but Vietnamese friends tell me you never go out drinking here without something to snack on. The solution: Here comes the squid!

Special bicycles (and occasionally motorcycles) prowl the streets at night with tall racks of dried, pressed squid. For 20,000 dong (5,000 if you’re shrewd enough to negotiate the local price), the squid biker will run a squid through a hand-cranked press and flatten it out one last time, then warm it on a mini charcoal grill attatched to the side of his bike. The squid is chewy and served with a sweet-and-spicy chile sauce for dipping.

If you go out drinking in Vietnam, you have two types of bar to choose from. Some sell fruity cocktails to backpackers. Others are more authentically Vietnamese –- hole-in-the-wall joints offering pint bottles of Saigon Beer, or jugs of local tap beer for around 10,000 Vietnamese dong per liter. (There are 17,600 dong to the US dollar.) The local watering holes usually have outdoor seating at undersized plastic tables and chairs or stools. The seats are wobbly, and low to the ground, but fun once you get used to them.

The Quyen Thanh Hotel: Pet Geckos and Brilliant Balconies

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

The Quyen Thanh is my favorite budget hotel in Saigon. Seventeen US dollars a night gets you a double room with a bathroom, air conditioning, and pet geckos. A soda from the minibar will set you back 35 cents. A full load of laundry runs about two bucks. Flip flops are recommended in the shower. The green faux-granite bathtubs are grimy, but otherwise, the place is clean.

I’m a night person, which makes staying at the Quyen Thanh awkward. They padlock the front door around 10 p.m. and two receptionists crash on cots in the small lobby. To get in after 10, you ring the doorbell and wait a couple of minutes. Then you ring he doorbell again because the guys in the lobby never wake up on the first ring. After that, you bang on the sliding metal gate that covers the front door. Then a person at the café next door tells you to try ringing the bell again. Eventually, someone wakes up and lets you in. Like I said, this is awkward, especially when you come in well past 10 on a nightly basis, but I’ve offered to move to another hotel so I won’t disturb them. They have graciously assured me they are happy to wake up.

The best thing about the Quyen Thanh is the balconies. The hotel has 14 rooms on four floors, all overlooking my favorite Saigon intersection. Each floor has a single, shared balcony that wraps around the corner for great views of the street below. I’ve sat for hours watching the cyclo riders, food vendors, streetside masseurs, cigarette hawkers, lost backpackers, drunk backpackers, friendly residents, and afternoon downpours. Then, there are the squid bike barbecues. (More on those soon.)

My favorite part of the view from my balcony at the Quyen Thanh is the motorbikes. I’ve already blogged about Saigon’s motorbike culture. What I hadn’t done up to this point was actually participate in it. The swarming traffic was risky enough on foot. Hopping on the back of a motorcycle seemed like a deathwish. But in the morning, my friend Phúc would meet me at my hotel. My belongings reduced to what would fit in a small overnight bag, we would ride 190 kilometers south, weaving through Saigon’s morning rush hour, then buzzing through the Mekong jungles to the city of Can Tho.

I felt nervous about the journey as I crawled into bed. I popped in my earplugs (recommended, as the street noise below lasts all night), crawled under the giant towel that served as my blanket, popped an Ambien to conquer my jet lag, and drifted to sleep.

...To be continued....

Up All Night in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

It's 2 a.m here in Saigon. I'm sitting on my hotel balcony, sipping a final Tiger Beer before I leave for the airport in two hours to fly home to Seattle, and savoring all of my senses.

What I see: A street full of people – tourists drinking at streetside tables, a cyclo driver sleeping on his bike, kids playing a dice game on the sidewalk, specially designed bicycles with built-in mini barbecues... their riders are selling dried squid to late-night revelers. Neon floods my pupils. Muted moonlight is slipping through a crack in the clouds.

What I hear: The honking horns and motorbike motors that never stop here, happy voices in Vietnamese, English, and other languages, the rattles of late-night masseurs who bicycle through the streets advertising their services, a squabble at a bar across the road that has been going on for a good 45 minutes now. Every so often, there is breaking glass, and an angry, apparently drunk woman throws a chair or a small table. But this is not the norm. I feel blissfully peaceful in this frenetic city.

What I smell: Muggy air and my own sweat. The scent of grilled, dried squid does not make it up to my third floor balcony, but I know it's down there. And something sweet – either the hibiscus flower in the pot by my feet, or the sticky, empty can of Xaxi – a Vietnamese soft drink that tastes like licorice-laced root beer.

What I taste: sour remnants of Vietnamese rum, from a drink a couple of hours ago at a bar across the street. The aftertaste is sour, but in the moment it's consumed, it is the most delicious rum I have ever drunk, with strong hints of vanilla. I have two bottles in my backpack, wrapped in dirty laundry, hoping they won't break on the journey home. Cost per bottle: 25,000 Vietnamese dong, or roughly US $1.50

What I feel: Humid air and sticky skin, a pinched nerve in my back from motorbiking through the Mekong Delta last week, a pinched nerve in my foot from too much walking in flip-flops, a strain in my lower back from the 12-inch-tall foot stool on which I'm sitting as I type this, and a reminder from my bladder that it should be emptied soon,

It happened here again, just like last year. I came to Vietnam with limited expectations and a hint of nervousness. I came with a plan, and things did not go as planned. They went better. I'm not exactly sure what it is about this place, but it's magical here.  I don't want to leave. I want to stay. Ho Chi Minh City, still casually referred to as Saigon, feels like home -- in some ways more than home feels like home. After two short trips, I have good friends here.

Ten things I've done these last two weeks:

1. Been massaged by a blind person
2. Spent 15 hours in two days on the back of a motorcycle
3. Watched the sun rise over the South China Sea
4. Eaten chicken penis and coagulated duck blood
5. Watched the streets fill with water during a pounding thunderstorm
6. Lost my day bag and moneybelt
7. Had my foot stung multiple times by pissed-off fire ants
8. Chased after a purse snatcher
9. Left tourist neighborhoods for three-dollar meals of fresh shrimp and beer at roadside, barbecues
10. A few other things we'll get to later.

The clouds have now cleared. The moon is peeking at me over the top of a hotel across the intersection. I have the hiccups. I don't want to leave.

Airplanes mess with our sense of reality. In the next 24 hours or so, I will fly from Saigon to Hong Kong to Vancouver to Seattle. I will arrive home Tuesday night, sleep as much as I can, and teach a free travel journaling class Thursday night. Then I will sleep some more. Then I will blog through the week with elaborations on the above.

Scooting in Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

[Eek! My laptop battery is about to die here... I'm splashing this online without edting, spell-checking, or anything. Photos coming next week.]

Ask anyone who has visited Ho Chi Minh City what sound they remember most, and invariably they'll tell you it's the honking of horns and the constant rumble of motorbikes. In a country where the price of a used car is beyond the reach of most people, in a crowded and sprawling city with roughly eight million residents and limited mass transit, the motorbike is the preferred way to get around.

The sheer number of motorcycles in Ho Chi Minh City, (or Saigon as it's still casually referred to), is mind-blowing. Looking out over a busy intersection from my hotel balcony, so many motorbikes whiz by, counting them all is impossible. There are no traffic lights or stop signs. And people don't stop. They just slow down and swerve around each other.

Their constant honking is functional, not hostile. People navigate by sound as well as sight, paying attention to audible warnings from bikers behind them who want to pass.

What's most amazing to me is the amount of people or stuff they can cram onto a single motorbike. These are generally not big bikes, but my girlfriend, Kattina, says she's seen a family of six on a single bike. I have seen five, and four is routine. Young children sit, helmetless, on top of the gas tank, cradled in a parent's arms. I've seen several kids napping this way. Older kids, age six or older, are often sandwiched between two parents.

The things people carry on their bikes? Huge sacks of rice. Cases of beer. Not single cases. In any given hour, I will see at least a couple of bikes ride past with eight beer cases in two stacks of four, bungee-corded to the seat. Those are the bottles. With cases of cans, I've seen double the amount. But there's more. In any given hour, at any random intersection, you can see motorbikers carrying huge baskets of fruit, furniture, car windshields, even bicycles.

This would all be very illegal in the States. And friends here tell me Vietnam has laws too that are semi-enforced. But it seems safe here. I haven't seen a single accident. I saw one near miss during a pounding downpour.

People drive slowly here, constantly watching out for each other. While motorcycles in the US terrify me, hopping on a motorbike taxi in Saigon and slaloming through the city streets is thrilling – as is sitting on my hotel balcony during rush hour, sipping a beer, and watching the tangle of motorized life below.

“I never get tired of watching this,” Kattina said to me the other night.

I don't either. It's like watching fireworks.