Saturday, June 03, 2006
i'm locked out of my hotel room so i decided to just blog. hehe.
mister saigonthis is taken from the little travel journal i always bring along with me [it took me like 2 hours to write this all]:
there's something about going around a foreign city alone that makes you get in touch with your soul. and i guess, in a way, that's been the point of this trip, this summer. today, i went around Saigon/Ho Chi Minh on my own. my dad went to the gym at our hotel so that gave me around 3 hours of undeniable freedom in saigon. and so, armed with a million dong [i never thought i'd be a millionaire by 18], a camera, and a sense of adventure, i set out and just went where my feet would take me..
i began walking around and found this corner where these street vendors were selling these exotic food items. bearing a strong stomach and an even stronger sense of curiosity, i sampled some of these food items. salty. sweet. sour. poop-inducing. that's all i can remember. haha. i trudged along the main road, hoping not to be run over by one of the three million [yes, literally] scooters running about.
i reached this big main market/tiangge with a lot of novelty items, clothes, jewelry, and food. now, going around this area, i noticed the people more than the goods for sale. the way they talked, related with one another, and generally the way they existed. haha. it's weird cuz the whole tiangge is nothing new to the eyes of a Filipino shopper. everything you see there can be purchased at greenhills, at quiapo, at divisoria, and elsewhere. and yet, i stll felt like i was treading in unchartered territory. i guess it's cuz i'm so used to the thingsd back home that everything loses color and i just see things in black and white. here in saigon, everything is a wonder to me, no matter how stupid and simple it may be. i never bought anything in the market. cuz like i said, i can get everything better and cheaper back home. if i'm buying anything, it has to be original and different.
as i went about my business, i could no longer keep my eyes from the men on every street who keep talking to me, asking me if i wanted to rent their scooters to go around the city. now i have no idea how to ride a scooter, [and i tell you, traffic there is crazy. they have no idea what road courtesy is.] but i thought to myself, what the hell. and so, around a few blocks i went on the scooter. after almost getting into an accident a few times and almost running over a few people, i decided to get off and try to disappear.
i found myself entering this bar called 74-A. it was a quaint little place. dark and rather empty. it had a TV up on the bar so i stuck around and had a beer. i didn't quite make friends with the bartender and it was mainly cuz of the language barrier. or maybe he just didn't like me. whatever it was, i saw from his body language that he didn't really want me to be in his bar so i gulped down my drink and headed out.
now if i only found the red light district, we'd be in business. haha. but unfortunately, i didn't.
so two and a half hours of adventuring later, i decided to head back to the hotel. tired yet fulfilled, here i am, writing all this down for my blog. i'm trying to think of an artsy ending for this journal entry but i can't. so whatever. [insert something emo/artsy here]
**
hahaha. i'll continue this again. i have a great story from here in Cambodia.
the adventure ended at 10:06 PM
