Gas Powered Perambulations

Please bear with me as I take one of my occasional breathers from the world of modeling and delve back into other subjects almost as far removed from poetry and the symphonic, but still closely entwined with art.

A bit of background to catch up my newer readers: my wife is from Vietnam so I have recently had the pleasure of periodic travel to East Asia. While there I've spent most of my time in  a lovely vibrant town once called Saigon and now officially designated Ho Chi Minh City. I've come to the conclusion that one of the more characteristic things about any given place is the way we get around. Ho Chi Minh is quite unlike most other places I've been. (And I've covered some distance in my short life, touching the soil of forty-seven states, nine countries, and three continents. Typically for at least 24 hours and in many cases quite a bit more than that.)  The US is a car country defined by fancy highways of almost exorbitant length, with a few significant exceptions. (And even the exceptions have their share of pavement.) Europe, with less space for roadways and more people per square klick, is remarkably multi-modal.

Asia, particularly South and East Asia, make Europe seem only slightly more densely populated than the moon. I expect most people have seen pictures of Asian traffic; the solid walls of people on the streets of Mumbai, the miles long parking lots leading into Beijing, the trains breathing pressurized human life in and out of Tokyo. Ho Chi Minh isn't quite like any of these. There are no trains to speak of. There is but one highway (though a second is under construction) and it isn't as yet a parking lot. And no one seems to walk much of anywhere. (I'm a little surprised people walk from their bedroom to their front door, but the houses are small and vertical and motor vehicles don't do stairs well.) So what is Saigon traffic? Motorbikes: mopeds, scooters, crotch-rockets, even the occasional cruiser. It seems as though all the bikes at Sturgis have been hit with a shrink ray and gotten very jiggy populating the streets and lanes of a large, but surprisingly compact Southern Florida style paradise by the millions. It may be the largest collection of two-stroke love on earth. And of course everyone is honking or beeping at all times, traffic laws are fluid, and signals are scarce. In short, it . . . is . . . FUN!

Some minor temporal liberties have been taken, but I hope this gives you a flavor of where I'm going. It's a fun town, Saigon, a great place to relax, eat, visit friends and family. It's a busy, bustling place where a lot of people work and play hard. It makes for a truly memorable power-assisted walk in the park.

The Face of the Earth or Where Have I Been Lately?

First, to discourage the ugly rumors that might pop up when you disappear for six months:

I am not dead. In fact, I am VERY not dead. I'm so not dead I'm getting married. (Death tends to annul marriages in even the most conservative of cultures.) Which also explains why the 2012 installment of the annual fleet review didn't happen in 2012. It's been rescheduled as a coronation review. More on that later. But for now I give you a few photographs from a recent trip to visit my intended Queen:

These things tend to begin when you arrive in distant places. It's been my turn twice now. Next time she can do the arriving.

Once you're done arriving, you might pass an immigration interview.

After which celebration might be called for . . . 

Sometimes young Beans like to shoot zombies with peas . . .  

More elaborate celebrations might call for trips to visit interesting places like museums filled with rusting locomotives. (I do have a somewhat anomalous definition of interesting.)

Thank goodness she loves me. I enjoy my locomotives, but they'd be a lot less interesting without good company.

Buddhist temples are also worth seeing.

If you chance to visit Vietnam, do eat the food. The food is generally incredibly fresh and very very good. And the array of different eats is positively dizzying.

Did I mention temples?

The landscape is also quite lovely.

Since Vietnam is conveniently located between India and China (hence the regional exonym Indochina) Vietnamese religious culture is nearly as rich and ancient as Vietnamese cuisine. Buddhism is much more prevalent than Hinduism, but both can be found. I believe this is an older Khmer icon but I will not attempt to comment on who might be depicted.

Somewhere in the above room I can only surmise there must also have been an icon of Shiva. As it happens, he's not the only creator/destroyer who can dance.

Of course, smiles from loved ones do give us a reason to dance. Cam on em yeu. Gap lai em rat sau.

And finally . . .

The two of us.

For everyone else who has wished us well.

And finally, a little blurry, but well . . .

Thank you all.

Ho Chi Minh City

The city once known as Saigon is a strange and interesting place. Contrary to my first impression there are traffic signals and police officers, but in spite of all that, one's first impression of HCM is probably almost inevitably the traffic. There are something over eight million people here and every single one of them seems to own a motorcycle. Further, there doesn't really seem to be much in the way of segregation by function. Businesses, factories, and homes exist side by side in an uninterrupted cloth.

The block I'm on has perhaps a half dozen restaurants, two mobile phone shops, a couple of pharmacies, a small factory of some kind, and an admixture of other things I can't immediately identify but which clearly look business like. And of course people eat and sleep in virtually every one of these buildings in back rooms and on upper floors. There are surprisingly few "stand alone" houses here, even by European standards. And virtually nothing actually "stands alone." Streets are fronted with continuous walls of buildings to the sidewalk line and beyond on all sides. Alleys are distinct from streets only by breadth and lack of sidewalks. And everything is filled with the noise of people and traffic and the smells of food are everywhere at all times. Makes any city in the west seem downright quiet and sleepy. (Up to and including New York.)

Anyway . . . I can't really convey the whole thing, but here's a little. First, a relatively typical Ho Chi Minh building:

Christmas is apparently celebrated here, and it feels . . . strange. Here's a shop selling little santa suits in all sizes:



A little piece of the local telecom infrastructure:



This is about how a typical street feels:



As you get into the older part of town, district one, there are a number of older and larger buildings and even some colonial remnants that have been converted into museums of one kind or another:



No trip to the east would be complete without a visit to a local temple of some kind. I tossed a few bucks into the collection box in gratitude for letting me take pictures. This one is a fairly typical Buddhist example:





Of course, Saigon was and still is a port city. You can see everything from sampans loaded down with rice on the rivers to cruise ships anchored downtown. The little tour boat went zipping by while we visited one of the museums:



Here's a little glimpse of the skyline, which isn't tall yet, but it's growing:



There's lots more I could show you, of course, and in a week I've only scratched the surface, but I hope this taste meets your approval. I'll close with this shot of a back alley near the main market that's become a motorcycle parking lot:

Well, 'tis my last day in Vietnam. All has gone quite well. I've survived noise and traffic and crazy food, and even East Asian dating rituals, I think. I figured out how to pull pictures on here a few days ago (with the aid of a recently purchased device) but haven't had the time since. Today, being a comparatively quiet day, I have the time.

So here's Mai Hong and I in the hotel room shortly after I got to Ho Chi Minh City:

Her brother in law Hung runs this little cell phone shop:

Her parents live in a smaller city called Cai Lay, and her father raises chickens and ducks:



Her older sister lives in a city famous for its beaches. She brought down some fresh crabs. (You can drag any kind of food, living or dead, more or less anywhere but the western chain coffee joint.) These apparently came down with her on the train and then took the bus with us later before eventually winding up as dessert.



Here we are having dinner. From right to left: the composer, Mai Hong, her younger sister Mai Tham, her mother, and her father:



The next day her sisters fetted me with a birthday party Vietnam style:



The young one is called something along the lines of "bean" and belongs with Mai Hong's older sister.

Will add some pictures about HCM City itself in a second post, but I'll cut the first one here to keep it from getting unwieldy.