Here's the Missing Post from Saturday

(I found this in another private blog a friend and I maintain; it got posted to the wrong blog!)

September is supposed to be the second rainiest month of the year in Vietnam. I've been very lucky that I have had such good weather while here. This week, however, the rains have started to arrive. They still aren't interrupting my plans much. If it rains during a given day, it usually is for a while in the afternoon or it starts in the early evening and continues past bedtime. I've only been caught out once so far. That was two days ago. I walked back to my hotel using my umbrella; that was the first time I have had to use it on the trip. Last night, it started raining around 7 p.m., so I got a little wet going out for dinner, but I didn't use the embrella; there are just so many nearby places to eat that it wasn't necessary.I have developed a rather slow-paced schedule to follow these remaining days in Vietnam. Each morning I go out to a museum or other place I want to visit. I try to find a restaurant in that area of town for eating. Then I return to my hotel. During the afternoon, I nap and/or read and/or watch a movie on TV. Then I go out to have dinner in my neighborhood in the evening. Every other day, I have been going to the sauna from about 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. It's also in my neighborhood.

Thursday, Sept. 21, HCMC (Saigon)

Spent the morning at the War Remembrance Museum. It was set up to display equipment, photos, and other exhibits of the war with America and is probably the most popular museum here in Saigon. It was interesting seeing all of the photos--both photos that had been taken locally and the professional ones that had been taken by photographers covering the war. Probably the best exhibit at the museum is a reconstruction of the cells that were used to house prisoners showing how small and hot they would have been, especially considering how many people were sometimes placed in one cell. I wasn't too interested in all of the equipment; military equipment such as airplanes, bombs, tanks, etc., don't age well anyway. A couple of observations: 1) I didn't see a photo of Jane Fonda in the part of the museum about the resistance movement within the U.S. I wonder if she has specifically requested that the government not include her in this section? 2) I couldn't help but relate the impossibility of trying to fight an enemy that really wasn't identifiable (Which Vietnamese were for and against the U.S. side and how would one pick them out from among the crowd during daily life?) here and the similar situations in Iraq and Afghanistan today. It seems that only good intelligence can really deal with such a situation and that trying to deal with it by fighting a war will only lead to problems due to killing innocents as "collateral damage."

I had a large, crispy pancake filled with shrimp, pork, and beansprouts for lunch. It was much like dosa in India--big enough to extend over the edges of the plate. It was very tasty.While I was out, I decided to go to two temples in the area near the restaurant. It was just after going to each of them that the heavy rains began. I was probably a 20-minute walk from my hotel, so I just opened the umbrella and headed that way.

I finished reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. It is a fictional story contemplating what could have happened if the Republicans had nominated Charles Lindberg for President in 1940 and he had won. Because of his Nazi sympathies, the story follows the citizens living in a Jewish neighborhood in Newark. It tells of their fears, the plans the government implements to dilute their culture, etc. It seems obvious that Roth also wants the reader to associate some of what is happening in the book to the present Bush presidency. I gave the book 3 stars out of 4.

Well, I had eaten nothing but Vietnamese food for 25 days, so I went out for pizza in the evening. It wasn't great pizza. And it was smaller than I expected, but I enjoyed it as a change in diet. There was a group of expatriots dining together at a table near me at the restaurant. I enjoyed listening to their conversations. It was obvious that they all are working here. My guess is that they have a regular date to meet for dinner on Thursdays of each week. It was also obvious that they are here in hopes of having an advantage that will make them wealthy. They talked with scorn about environmentalists. Of course, the label I applied to them was "opportunists."

Speaking of diet, I seldom have problems with my stomach when traveling. If I do, my problem is the opposite of most travels. This week, I suffered from constipation for about 4 days. I was ready to go to the drug store for a laxative when everything started moving again. It's strange that I have THAT problem when I am having drinks with the local ice, eating all those leaves and salads they serve here which the guidebooks say to avoid, etc.!

Friday, Sept. 22, 2006--HCMC (Saigon)

I chose the local history museum for my morning outing today. I arrived at a time when they were having the opening of a new exhibit on ceramics. There was a huge crowd there for the opening and a luncheon that went with it. But I was able to go through the normal exhibits without a problem. I always like seeing local museums, especially for the photos that show how the city has changed over the years. It's fun to see a photo of an intersection I know that shows what it was like in 1920 or some other time in the past. It wasn't a great museum, but it was better than most museums in Asia are.

I found a wonderful local place for lunch. They serve set lunches. You walk up to their counter where all the cooked food is in big trays and choose a main course. Then they bring a plate with it and side dishes. They were just finishing preparing everything and putting it out when I arrived. Choices included squid, fish, pork, etc. I chose the pork. Along with it, I got a helping of mixed greans, rice, a bowl of broth with squash, a banana, and a glass of iced green tea. I might go back there again!I think I am having allergic reactions again. My throat was a little sore from drainage today. (And it is still the same on Saturday morning except on the other side.) It hasn't developed into a cold, so I guess something in the air is causing it. It has made me feel a little sluggish, however. I spent all afternoon inside the room.

At 4:00, however, I went to the sauna. I met a very nice young Vietnamese man there who speaks English better than anyone else I have met here. We went back and forth between the sauna and the cool-down room talking all the time. He (Ban) is 32 years old and is an electrical engineer. He is from Hoi An where I visited a few weeks ago, but the work is here in Saigon. He shares a home here with 3 relatives and takes vacation twice a year to go back and visit his family. He would also like to teach English lessons privately, so I encouraged him to put an ad in a paper and see if he could just start by finding a couple of students he could teach on Saturday mornings, since he has a M-F job. I was enjoying his company so much that I invited him to dinner. He was hesitant thinking that we should do it American-style (sharing the costs). But I insisted that I wanted to pay. We stopped at a local place with pho (Vietnamese soup) and had the beef soup with noodles, bean sprouts, peppers, pepper sauce, and lots of leaves. He had a motorcycle, so he drove us in the rain to the restaurant and then dropped me off at my hotel. He said he was busy this morning, but he may come to my hotel and take me out for coffee this afternoon at some point.

One of the topics that Ban and I discussed was my interest in volunteer work. He suggested that I come back to Vietnam as a volunteer. He said that the government will give extended visas for something like that. Then he asked why I didn't just try to come back and work for pay. I told him I didn't want to work for pay. It took a long time to convince him that it was better for me to work for free so that I could have a say in the number of hours I worked and the type of work I did. Anyway, he said he would e-mail me the addressed of a couple of government agencies I could contact to try to make connections for maybe returning here as a volunteer at some point in the future.