Emails from Vietnam 1 | 2

From: "Angie Eng" <angie_eng@hotmail.com>
To: mailing list
Subject: You're A Loser, Charlie Brown
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:34:38 -0500

YOU'RE A LOSER, CHARLIE BROWN!

Ho Chi Minh City- 12:40pm
I pull up in a moto taxi in front of Independence Palace. Murphie’s Law-I arrive exactly on time for lunch hour and need to kill 20 minutes until reopening. I cautiously make my way across the street through zooming motos weaving in and out of each other to the manicured shrubs and tree lined park. Suspiciously eerie, the park green prompts caution which I regretfully neglect.


Hanoi is the most beautiful city, I think. It looks drab and grey here, but if you look at the lines in this picture, you will never be bored in a place like this.

Cut to the Doublmint gum lady with buck teeth, yellow flip flops and cotton pajamas. I am sitting on a stone bench when gum lady begins her hawking- “3,000, 2000 for you.” “Hom” I say and wave her away. 10 minutes has passed and in slow motion I reach for my bum pack which has now been replaced by air. Double speed, I jump up swing around, frantically look up, down, around. No! Yes. Someone has lifted my new purse with my 6 day old brand new $1732.51 uninsured video camera, 300,000 dong($20), credit cards, ATM card, my mini switch blade Brian gave me on my last trip to Asia, Ho Chi Minh Lonely Planet Pages, my edited stories, my freshly written art proposal and the 10 cent Chinese ear cleaner I bought at breakfast. Good grief!

Hanoi's portable fast food market is everywhere

I walk in small circles scanning the park for any suspicious faces. There are two teenage girls in platform shoes and padded bras laughing at me, the gum lady with her buck teeth squinting into the distance, two old ladies squatting over fruit baskets, three Japanese tourists pretending they don’t see or hear me, and five guys stoically sitting on their motos with deadpan faces. Unbelievable-this must be the sociological effects of them watching too many Air Supply and Amy Grant music videos. Easy listening music as a governmental tactic to pacify the masses. I didn’t know what to do besides curse in the air and question my bad kharma. Hmmm, maybe I should have taken that dip in the Ganges regardless of what the international health standard says about the feces level in the water. A well dressed local on his white moto slowly approaches me and in a low whisper lets me know that he watched(along with 10 others) a guy take my bag and flee in a moto minutes ago.

This was my favorite monument. It wa a giant chicken. The villagers were granted funds to build a monument by the government. Rather than building another Buddha, Ho Chi Mihn, they decided to honor the living thing that was a big part of their livlihood- the chicken!

There wasn’t even an applause when the show ended!?

There I was slumped over a stone bench with the donors name written on the back with black marble inlay, shamelessly sobbing thinking of my list of broken, lost stolen items in the course of the last 3 months of travel.

-$600 video camera ,dropped shampoo inside of it, Jodhpur)
-gold bracelet, lost in the desert of India
-Rajasthani scarf, left in bus
-water bottle bag, left in music store
-2nd water bottle bag-,left in bus
-$1732.51 video camera, pinched (bastards!)
-credit cards, pinched

Good Grief! Unattachment. I was becoming good at this by now. I would have to be The Buddha to not be upset over this one, this time, at this point.

Why didn’t anyone say anything like, ‘Hey’? Well, they did theorize that the North beat the South because the South Vietnamese were ‘lazy’ and ‘chicken’. (Ouch!) Urban story-Katie Genovese: the woman stabbed to death as her neighbors listened to her die without calling for help. People in groups, in danger, absolutely useless. When sick you call out for mom, when in danger call for dad with his 45 and force ‘em to give me back my brand new video camera, AKA my baby.


One needs a trick to bonding. Blue Hmong in North Vietnam

Third world police stations, one might as well be in a men’s senior citizen locker room. I didn’t expect results, but I’ve never been to a third world police station. It’s all part of the adventure. 15 men in army green uniforms slumped over on benches with mobile phones attached to their ears, waiting. Lonely Planet warning box, ‘Saigon police do not wake up to alarms, but only to cash bribes.’ War correspondent, Tim Page got his stolen camera equipment back after 2 days of persistence with Vietnamese police. Ok, that was not in Saigon, and nor was the fall there. Saigon is still falling on one side with prostitution, AIDS, opium addicts, Mafia, petty thieves, political corruption on one hand and the other side is an overcrowded air-conditioned store filled with stylish Vietnamese purchasing new Italian and Chinese motorbikes called ‘Hongda’ and ‘Honest’.

One can not have enough plastic tarp and buckets during the rainy season

It’s hot and humid. I cross the street to negotiate the price of a moto taxi back to the hotel. I scan the area for wood to knock on. I don’t find any around. I whisper to myself so low as not to awaken the bad luck gods, ‘At least I have my health,’ I squeak.

It is a full moon that night and so much for that Hindu lucky white rat I spotted a month before in Bikaner.

Check out her dental work. Blackend teeth and big ear plugs are typical signs of beauty for this hilltribe.

Lucy’s exclamation in a bubble hangs over my head and reads, ‘You’re a loser, Charlie Brown!’ Nonetheless, the next morning I buy my 3rd video camera. This time a ‘cheap’ used one. Chances are, it had been stolen from a Japanese tourist last week. I threw down more cash equivalent to one month’s traveling expenses in Asia.

I pictured my grandmother in her San Francisco flat after the earthquake of ‘89. One week later she was replacing all her shattered antiques with a second set of new antiques right back onto the shelf. We warned her that they would inevitably break in the next quake. In her broken English she replied, ‘What to do? No can see when dead. I can look, enjoy today when live.’