Saigon Limbo

[Saigon, 10/8/22]

On 10/7/22, I sat for several hours in a Bà Rịa cafe, waiting for a Cambodia visa that never came. Still convinced it would arrive the next day, I went to immigration to pay my overstay fine. At the gate, the guards wouldn't let me in, however, because I wasn't wearing long pants! Great, I thought, a day wasted.

After flagging down a motorbike taxi to get back home, I grumbled to the driver about my no pants misfortune, so he said he could lend me his. Brilliant!

Assuming we would switch pants, I placed my wallet and cellphone into my bag. Last thing I needed was for those to disappear as the guy drives off.

On a sidewalk, the quick-thinking man took his pants off, and since he had boxer underneath, I could keep my denim shorts on. We went back to immigration.

There, I was told that my overstaying for two or three days was no big deal, so I could pay my fine at the border. Bavet, here I come tomorrow, I thought, or the day after at the latest. When the motorbike driver dropped me off, I tipped him well, so everyone was happy.

Two days later, I’m still in Vietnam. Yesterday, I took an early morning van from Vung Tau to Saigon. Onboard, I got a phone call from a Vung Tau friend. Still feeling good, I joked, “The bombs will drop soon enough, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Let’s see here, there are reports that US troops are already inside Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has just spent $290 million on a radiation sickness drug and Russia’s 604-foot-long “weapon of the apocalypse” Belgorod Submarine is lurking somewhere near an unfriendly country. If one of its six Poseidon torpedoes was launched off Long Island, the entire American east coast would be blasted with a 500-meter-high tsunami, so no more Manhattan and Martha’s Vineyard, at the very least.

Here are more proofs our world has become the sickest joke, with our rulers laughing at us nonstop: Anthony Fauci has just been awarded $1 million from the University of Tel Aviv for “speaking truth to power,” and Volodymyr Zelensky is being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

We had a refreshment break in Long Phước, which sounds like a good omen, but it’s not if you’re fucked up the ass by the bureaucracies of two countries. In Saigon, I walked several blocks to the van services for Cambodia. My visa had to come soon enough, I thought.

For lunch, I treated myself to a $7 plate of pretty good pad Thai at Happy Thai. I had walked by some joint offering burritos, then later, I would discover an Indian restaurant packed with Indians. Halfway through my meal, the waitress came over to say, “If there’s anything amiss, uncle, please let us know.” On the television screen, a young female pianist played nonstop.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that since it was a Saturday, my visa would not come until Monday, at the earliest!

Fine, I’ll take a van to Mộc Bài, right on the border. I’ll check out that scene, instead of lingering in Saigon.

When I told the ticket seller I had overstayed my visa by two days, he said I would need to pay my fine in Saigon, and not at the border, contrary to what I was told in Bà Rịa.

“Immigration opens at 7:30, but go there at 6:30. There’s always a long line.”

“It used to be so easy to get something like this resolved. You just paid somebody. Foreigners bring in money, so why are we chasing them away?! It’s hurting everybody. It’s hurting you!”

“I know,” the man scowled.

[Bùi Viện Street, 8/4/19]

After calling a Saigon friend to pick me up, I went to Bùi Viện for a few beers. Colloquially known as Western Street [Phố Tây], it has western style bars, international food and enough prostitutes. Passing Knock Knock, Hair of the Dog, Miss Saigon and Crazy Girls, etc., I parked my exhausted ass at some nondescript joint and ordered a $1.26 can of Tiger.

Next to me was a 42-year-old bar employee with a leathery face, Tuấn. He’s native to that very neighborhood. Seeing any passing foreigner, Tuấn would shout, “Hey man, come in!”

“Did you take classes to learn English?” I asked.

“No, I just picked it up on the streets.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“It’s just a waiter’s English. I can’t say very much.”

“Still, you’re pretty good. Many people can’t say anything even after years of classes.”

It had just rained hard. Few people were around. Across the street, there were four white guys drinking. Seeing a huge white man walking by, Tuấn said to a bargirl, “Look at that guy!”

“I wonder what nationality he is,” I said. “He doesn’t look American.”

Noticing a chubby black woman, I assumed she was half Vietnamese, but later, Tuấn told me she was an African prostitute.

“Who are her clients? Westerners?”

“No, Vietnamese too.”

“Sampling a new dish.”

“To see what it’s like.”

“How long has she been here?”

“Years.”

“So you see her every day?”

“Yeah.”

Also at the bar was an Englishman. In Vietnam seven years, he missed chips, mushy peas, Sunday roasts and a genuine English pub, but not enough to return for just a visit. A decent English breakfast, he could get right on Bùi Viện. He’s married to a Vietnamese, with whom he had a son. The cute kid, he showed me on his phone.

With a Vietnamese wife, the Englishman can stay here permanently. Many others, though, have refused to leave. It’s hard to walk away from the cheap food, booze, drugs and women. To make money, they sell drugs to other Westerners.

In Vung Tau, I have a friend who can rent me a room irrespective of my legal status, but if I go that route, I can never leave this country or, if caught, I would be deported and never allowed back in.

It is just after 10AM in Saigon. Eager to get this out, I haven’t even had breakfast. On the cafe wall, there’s a print of a terror-stricken Statue of Liberty. With eyes bulging and mouth open wide, she had both hands on her green face. Caption, “NO ‘OFF’ DAYS,” then tiny in the lower right corner, “Get Shit Done.”

Roger, first thing tomorrow morning. Bavet, here I come, still.

One of Kafka’s best stories, “The Next Village,” has just two sentences. Here it is in its entirety, as translated by Willa and Edwin Muir:

My grandfather used to say: ‘Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that – not to mention accidents – even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.’

Never assume anything is within reach. It’s not just a parable, but often true enough in real life. In 1902, a 27-year-old Margarethe von Eckenbrecher arrived off the coast of Namibia after an impossibly long journey from her native Germany. “Under brilliant sunshine, the settlement of Swakopmund appeared friendly, full of promise,” but she still had to disembark, no sure thing:

Our belongings were quickly packed, and we readied ourselves for landing. Dressed in our oldest clothes, as we fully expected to be soaked by the spray of the breakers, we took a cordial leave from the captain and the officers, and waited our turn to be offloaded in the most primitive manner into the landing craft. These boats rocked mightily in the waves below. One after another, we were set in a basket that dangled from a chain as a crane lifted and then lowered us into the boat […] 

[…] The boat that preceded ours nearly capsized when the crew wrongly assessed the situation of the breakers because of the dense fog. Only men who are entirely familiar with the surge can make it through it unharmed. In nearly every landing several boats will capsize; lives are lost, and many pieces of luggage, as well as bales, crates, and railroad ties are immediately buried under the silt. 

It’s quite remarkable to die, isn’t it, with your destination finally in view?

Eckenbrecher made it, and so have the African prostitute and white drug dealers on Bùi Viện. They reached the next village, and so will I, tomorrow.

Now, I go get breakfast in the city I was born in. In one goofy moment of exuberance several years ago, I exclaimed to a friend, “I can recognize every tree on every street here!”

Hopefully, I won’t get a chance to make that literal.

[Saigon, 10/9/22]