Yakkety Yak

Saturday, October 27

Deciding to NOT go on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels (I was tired, and also not thrilled with going into underground tunnels that are MUCH shorter than I am!), I spent a day just wandering around HCMC and relaxing. I got a haircut (yeah, yeah, my friends all said I'd break down and cut it, and the heat and humidity got to me!) for the equivalent of $3.50 US (including shampoo, blow dry the works), and also a manicure, pedicure, and facial.

Brian Johnson, stop laughing.

I decided to spent some quiet time sitting a park a couple blocks away - there are incredibly beautiful flowers here the likes of which I have never seen, and also tons of bouganvilla, which grows into trees here. But, to my surprise, there was not a lot of quiet time to be had. About 3 minutes after I sat on a bench, two young men approached me very politely and asked if they could talk to me. They are students at the international university here, and wanted to interview me for a school project on tourism. Sure, I said. They talked to me for about 15 minutes (recorded it, so they could go back to parts they may not have completely understood), took my picture, and went on their way. Within another couple minutes, a bunch of kids came up and talked to me for a bit. Nobody was asking for anything; they just thought it interesting to see me in their park, doing nothing. Anyway, to make a long story short, after a number of conversations and an hour of elapsed time, I wandered back to the block near my hotel to do some shopping.

It was good to spend a day doing nothing in particular.

One interesting thing: people here want to know my feelings and thoughts about their country, but ask them and they clam right up. I asked a couple people what their impression was about how easy or difficult it was for a Vietnamese national to get a visa to exit the country, and the response was always the same: "I don't know about that, I have never tried it before. Maybe you could ask a government official." Hmmmm. I have to wonder whether they all were truly ignorant on the subject, or if they just don't talk about leaving at all. On the other hand, people here continue to be better-fed, happier, and much more healthy looking than the people in Cambodia. One more bit of evidence that the country is in better shape: I've seen people here with prosthetic limbs, whereas in Cambodia all of the mine victime I saw simply were missing limbs, even in the largest city.

This country was among the 20 poorest nations in the world about 20 years ago, and still has a way to go, but they are definitely making strides.