MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Or rather, me sharing a couple more photos and blathering on a bit.

As usual, I spent most of the time working (but with a sexy bathtub at my disposal), but it was interesting in a number of ways, many of them deriving from the fact that Vietnam is one of those countries that most Americans my age think of as The Country That Broke America’s Wartime Winning Streak (as well as The War That Has Defined The American Political Divide Since The 60s).

Which means that if you went there for the first time anytime after (say) the Reagan administration, odds are yr pre-conceptions of the country had been shaped and influenced by Walter Cronkite, John Wayne, Chuck Norris and Oliver Stone.

My first trip was to Hanoi in 1997, and it was also my third trip to a Communist country (the first two being East Germany and China). As I remember, Hanoi was hot, dusty, and looked very run-down. I exchanged a small amount of US currency and was handed over a million dong in a big fat wad of bills that no one really wanted to accept as payment because the US dollar was far more popular. An imported box of Orion Chocopies cost five figures. A shoeshine boy cursed me when I refused his services (hey, they were suede shoes*), and I got food poisoning from an undercooked burger.

Good times.

Fourteen years later, I was back in the country, but in a different city, so it’s hard to make comparisons. Obviously things have changed overall. For one thing, everyone has a mobile phone now. (In the airport in Ho Chi Minh City, I sat in the gate waiting area next to an ancient Vietnamese woman listening to music on an iPhone.) And it’s one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Anyway, Nha Trang has a similar look and feel to it that I’ve seen in mainland China: a peculiar mix of old and new buildings, local flavor and Western influence (discos, for example), propaganda billboards, and a feeling of being unfinished, perpetually under renovation, the streets full of mopeds and sidewalks littered with piles of dirt, sand and gravel, waiting for someone to make a decision.

Oh, and people still prefer that tourists pay in US dollars when possible.

Here’s another random fact:

The airports in HCM City and Cam Ranh have lots of Samsung flat-screen TVs playing one of three things: Jackie Chan films, Tom & Jerry cartoons and Britney Spears videos.

If that’s not progress, what is?

And here’s a last look at the beach outside my hotel at sunrise. With bonus calisthenics! 



Pearl of the orient,

This is dF

We are in Nha Trang. Here’s the view from my bathtub.



Which is fabulous, until you notice the Crowne Plaza construction site on the right.



And then it’s still fabulous.

Pity I’m stuck in a ballroom schmoozing and watching PowerPoint presentations.

Well, not just that. More later.

Sequestered,

This is dF