A feeling of detachment is fully embedded in my experience right now.
The sensation of having already left Vietnam, yet being still here, conflicts my present moments.
It’s a mental conflict that can be assuaged by time, and by telling myself to remain present.
The experience of day-to-day life in Ho Chi Minh City is absurd. Last night, friends of mine and I weren’t seated at a restaurant’s outdoor section, just to keep us away from being seen by other possible customers. We even had a woman with us who spoke clean Vietnamese who got all the answers. We simply weren’t allowed on the outside because we were foreigners. They also said it was for our protection from rain… Rain that wasn’t falling… While we sat there, they carried out no fewer than 25 chairs and 6 tables for new customers, and sat no one else inside. One of our party left at the beginning of the meal out of disgust. I stayed with the others because I had been the one to recommend the restaurant. I have been there many times before, but always with my Vietnamese friends having arrived previously, and they would have already gotten a table outside.
Dig, after dinner, one more of the original four left, and two of us were left. We decided to lean on a tree outside just for a few minutes, so we brought our last drink, walked outside, and noticed that there were then three open tables. We decided to sit at one, and I asked for a beverage so that she and I could both have one. We were cleanly told that we couldn’t sit there. 138 Vo Van Tan. I have had great times there. I’ve eaten there a dozen times before. But this time, no Vietnamese friends to get the table before me. Couldn’t sit outside, even after spending 300.000 dong on dinner and asking for another beverage with three extra tables — Screw you 138.
Besides that, I’m not doing so bad. The air quality is still offensive, but the people usually aren’t. I’ve just been offered a swanky job to cover my closure here. So I may come out in quite good form at the end of it all.
I’m looking at a bit of a stressful time-crunch with paperwork that the US government is sleeping on that may derail my hopes for a choice job in Korea soon. That ain’t cool. If I don’t have my paperwork done on time, I might loose out on the job purely due to technical difficulties. That would kinda suck, but I have a sweet backup plan that should cover nicely if it all slips away with the Plan A.
Aside from logistics and frivolous discriminatory restaurants, I’m really having a great time here. For a long time, I had a major stomach infection that turned my experience here into a quite painful deal, but it’s better – and I haven’t been poisoned by food in over a week! So happy. But you know, it’ll be nice when I can be somewhere that that isn’t a concept of regularity. I’m pretty sure that most places that I’m headed and have been will and have been cleaner, but none so vibrant (that’s not really true, it sounds good though.).
How about a picture or two of my recent trip to Con Dao?
