Landing in the airport of a foreign country for the first time is always a moment of disorientation. I'd been through Bali, Singapore, Thailand, but it seemed like Vietnam was something completely apart - a new kind of foreign-ness. Coming in to Ho Chi Minh City we passed lazily over the Mekong, drifting into a sleepy little airport, and then it was through the somewhat repulsing force of Vietnam's immigration service. Immigration officers with guns spaced out at the end of a long open hall, seeming to say "come here if you want, but we're not too happy about it." But maybe that was just me.
$65 poorer and a really nice visa sticker later, I stood in front of an ATM and tried to reason out the value of dong. Most ATMs have suggested amounts, which is a good way to gauge the value of the local currency - like an American ATM would show you predetermined amounts of $20, $50, $100, etc. All of Vietnam's banks (and all the banks in Vietnam are Vietnamese) don't do this - they just give you a big blank to fill out: you tell us how much dong you need. So I took a stab at it: 2000 dong, that sounds like rather a lot - surely with that I can at least get into the city and get some food... After seeing some of the taxi/hotel hawker prices I went back for another 200,000.
I'd been warned about the taxis so I battened down the hatches and surged through the ranks - a shake of the head here, an emphatic no there, twisting around a driver trying to block my path then an intricate dance of the hands as I kept the paper with the address out of the snatching grasp of another tout. They became more desperate as I made my way down, but I finally grabbed one of the safe ones. Cruising in to Ho Chi Minh is a trip (ba-dum ch, tip your waiters!) - the cars press together down streets with no apparent traffic laws but it's the motorbikes that press the insanity of the road down on you. Later a tour guide would tell me that there were 3 motorbikes to every 4 citizens of Vietnam. That almost seemed like a low estimate. During rush hour you can stand on a street corner and watch an endless parade of motorcycles blow past you. They fill up both sides of the street, most of the intersection and even come up on to the sidewalk much more than they should.
The taxi dropped me off outside of a bunch of travel agencies and it almost felt like a setup - I'd get out, lost, and they'd try to sell me a room in a hotel somewhere else entirely. "It's right there," he said exasperatedly, pointing. It really wasn't - no sign, no hostel, nothing remotely resembling Saigon Youth Hostel. "Right there," with a stab of the finger. "What, that alleyway?" I said with a tilt of the head. He grunted, setting my bag on the ground. "Yes." And then he was off into the night.
So I wandered down into the narrow alleyway, past men on motorbikes, whole familes eating on the pavement, nail salons trying to press flyers into my hands and half a dozen other hostels. One man resting on a motorbike took pity on me, "Where are you trying to go?" I showed him the address and he smiled, rocked a baby gently and said in flawless English, "No worries bro, you're almost there."
Behind him on the wall there was some simple stenciled graffiti:
