Vietnam Day 61 (8/8/09)

I’m so happy to be leaving this hotel. I’ve had some wonderful times in Ben Tre but very few took place in the hotel. I’m ready to make this place a memory rather than part of my every day life. My room gave me a lovely parting gift this morning as my final battle with the broken bathroom door left me with a scrape on my hand. The sendoff I did appreciate came from the group of older students who came to say goodbye. We waved to them as the bus pulled away. Leaving Ben Tre is bittersweet because it’s sad to say goodbye to all these new friends, but I am looking forward to the freedom and diversion of the city.

We’re just entering Saigon and I’m getting really excited. Outside my window are apartment buildings so high I have to crane my neck to see the clotheslines stretched across the top balcony. The familiar sound of excessive numbers of motorbike horns turn my attention back to the ground as we turn around a traffic circle alongside a motorbike carrying an entire fridge. We pass through Chinatown and then onto more familiar streets like Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, home of our beloved Citimart. Funky billboards depicting pho and models with cheesy grins are partially obstructed from view by tangled webs of power lines, which still make me fear a blowout at any moment. Back at the old guesthouse, I find that Van Anh and I are the only ones who will have had the same room the whole time. My wonderful roommate isn’t here yet because she’s still visiting relatives, but once she gets back everything will be perfect.

As soon as we got settled into our rooms a bunch of us made a laundry run down 18 Alley, followed by a trip to Citimart to find all the comforts of home (home in Saigon, that is), and then to the DVD store. This was my first time at the DVD store, but I didn’t come away with anything because it was too disorganized for me to sort through. When you walk in, a clerk sits you down on a little stool around a coffee table with stacks upon stacks of movies. Unhappy women in satin uniforms thrust a random bunch of discs into your hands and you flip through until you find one you like enough to take over to the TVs to check for quality (since all of these movies are pirated). It’s really just too much trouble for something customs could give me a hard time about and won’t even work in most DVD players in the U.S. We walked back to the guesthouse down familiar streets and it was like we’d never left. I know we just spent four weeks in Ben Tre, but I slipped back into Saigon life naturally. It’s crazy to think we’ve been in Vietnam for nine weeks. I’ve gotten so used to being here that I sometimes forget where I am in the world. When I first got here, the crazy motorbike traffic on the road next to me would have freaked me out, but now I hardly give it a cursory glance. I’m trying to make sure I don’t take anything for granted, but at the same time it’s nice to know that I can find a sense of normality in a foreign country.

For dinner we went to our usual banh mi lady who greeted us with a warm familiar smile. Sadly the cooktop she uses to make the egg was on the fritz. She spent several frustrated minutes trying to get one of the paint can-sized propane cans to lock into place, nearly singing herself during the flame-outs (there was one particular burst of fire so huge I thought it must have gotten her hand). As a result we had our sandwiches with just meat and the fixings (which was fine by me), but since Alex and Molly get theirs with egg and no meat they had to go down the street to another stand. Molly pointed out that the contrast made her realize that our banh mi lady makes the sandwiches with love – you really can taste the difference between hers and another stand that uses the same ingredients. We ate at the cafe next to the guesthouse, where we had our first cafe sua das in the city. I was shocked when I realized each coffee cost 10,000 dong, versus the 4000 we paid in Ben Tre. The caffeine buzz was certainly worth it, but this new standard of living is going to take some getting used to – I shudder to think what it’ll be like when we go back to America.