Saigon Tom’s intro to Vietnam

From roughly March, 20, 2011

What a jumpstart… what do I talk about first…

My guide to Saigon, the city actually named Ho Chi Minh City but I think that name sucks so I am calling it Saigon, is a local named Tom. Tom speaks English. He is self taught… from watching porn and talking to tourists. You can imagine what sort of vocabulary that produces.

Tom is awesome.

I’ve spent the last few days caroming around the city with Tom and have never ceased to be in unabated awe of the things that come out of his mouth in front of other humans.

We sang karaoke in the kitchen of the Reunification Palace.

 

He took me to the best park to get local coffee and people watch.

Showed me how to navigate the traffic of Saigon and even experience my first traffic accident with me.

We both watched in awe as our taxi driver took off with my phone in his hand. And then Tom loaned me his stuntphone for the week.

True blue cool.

Tom and I went out on the town the night before Michelle was to arrive to see what would happen… and “happen” things did. Tom immediately began chatting up some western girls we met and we all agreed to meet up at a bar later in the night.

The bar seemed cool from the outside, though once we were inside, it was pretty clear that we shouldn’t be there. Old westerd guys were being doted on everywhere by beautiful Asian girls in tiny outfits. Fun, and harmless enough, but not what we were looking for. Later that night while walking back to my hotel, two girls on a scooter pulled up alongside me on the curb. The one driving spoke pretty good english, though it was clear from the blank looks that the pristinely beautiful young girl on the back did not.

Then it got weird. The girl on the front explained to me that this was her sister on the back. The driver explained to me that the sister was 16 years old and that she was very clean and I could have  her for a one hour “boom-boom” for $20.

Yes, she used the words “boo-boom”.

At this point, my travel radar was going into high alert. I knew that I was somewhere I should not be and talking to people that I did not need to be talking to, so I quickly checked all around me told the girls, No, thanks,” and got the heck out of there and back to relative safety with Tom.

It is due in no small part to Tom’s help that I was able to quickly and efficiently locate and procure the big blue atlas (the best book for the job), and the two steel horses that will transport Michelle and I across the length of this country; from Saigon in the south, to Ha Noi in the north.

 

Thanks to Krystle from PR, my bike was named Dodge, which encompasses the most basic driving survival skill for riding a motorbike in Vietnam. Michelle, when she met hers, christened it, Jenky. I still don’t know what that means.

Michelle landed in textbook fashion: late. Though, since she was only about 30 minutes behind, she was still about 90 minutes early. It’s hard to describe how your heart can seriously grow wings and shoot through the ceiling when you see an old friend after such a long time. It was like winning the lottery.

Michelle was also kind enough to bring me things from the USA. Things I hadn’t seen in a while and I was pretty happy to get my hands on; deodorant, a watch, a helmet. Important things. Survival things.

There is a shortage of deodorant in Asia.

The following day, Michelle and I ran off to the Ku Chi tunnels for a day or surrealism, and went to meet up for a last night in Saigon with our man about town: Saigon Tom.

  

Many hours of beer, hammers, and bowling later, Miche and I bid a lengthy adieu to Tom and went to get some sleep before we started out long journey up the length of the country the following morning.

It was an early day getting out of town, and we spent a bit too much time talking to Kevin, the guy we got the bikes from, but soon enough we put the rubber to the road for the first time on our great adventure together. The air was wet and electric and charged everything around us with a sense of excitement and danger. In retrospect, that could have just been the feeling of being on the road with so many Asian drivers.