Tigerland

Vietnamese coffee could be used as rocket fuel.

As I write this I can barely keep my caffeine addled fingers steady enough to type and yet they’re so good I’ll probably order another one.  A carryover from the French occupation (1859-1954) it is as firmly ingrained into the culture at this point as the baguette and patè (if only they had taken on the whole ‘surrender at the drop of a hat’ thing).

For every bar or ‘bia-hoi’ there are three cafes.  Old men with the patience of saints can sip a thimble of the viscous stuff for the better part of the day.  A patience I endeavor to, but have yet to attain.

As decried as the French are here, hated even more than Americans I was happy to note, they have left a lasting imprint on this country that remains even fifty years after their ass whupping at Dien Bien Phu.

As I write this from a street side cafe in the mountain town of Da Lat the influence is apparent.  Wide avenues, grand roundabouts, lakeside promenades, and even a replica Eiffel tower make this the Paris of the East to many and I can see why.  The mountain air is cool year round, a point the French, sweating their cheese-eating asses off in Saigon, were quick to notice. The affluent frogs quickly set up their vacation homes in the hills around Dalat, and then retired, presumably to watch Jerry Lewis in comfort.  These spectacular mansions are now decrepit abandoned wrecks dotting the countryside.

Even having been booted so maliciously a half century ago, pockets like Dalat still cling to their imperial past. The bakeries, done up in francophone style, have since taken on a distinctly Viet twist with green-rice pastries and black bean croissants.  By comparison the American influence is barely perceptible outside of the southern capitol of Saigon (renamed HoChiMinh City as a little fuck-you to the defeated south).

A member of the CIA helps evacuees up a ladder onto an Air America helicopter on the roof of 22 Gia Long Street April 29, 1975, shortly before Saigon fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops.

The fairly recent history of our exploits here weighed heavily on my mind when I first began planning for this trip.  Most Americans would have a hard time pointing to Vietnam on a map, but would know we fought, and we lost (Vets would say we didn’t lose, we left).  The most politically divisive war fought to that point would cost over 58,000 American lives with scores more returning home wounded both physically and mentally.

I knew the history from the American side. The Gulf of Tonkin incident. A fabricated attack used by Johnson to launch a massive bombing campaign and bring the US from a advising position to an active combat role.  The Tet Offensive in 1968. The first time the Vietcong emerged from the jungle to fight in the open.  All leading to the fall of Saigon on April 30th 1975,10 years to the day before I was born).

The image of the last helicopters airlifting panicked Americans and South Vietnamese collaborators from the rooftop of the embassy while North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the front gate is one of the most powerful pictures I’ve ever seen.  Not for the image itself, but for the context.  It was a still shot of the United States losing a war.  If the Visigoths had a snapshot of the sacking of Rome it would be comparable.

Our laser guided bombs and satellite reconnaissance had been ineffective.  We had been done in by a man in a hole with a hammer, waiting patiently to smash the firing pin on a recovered bomb when he hears a tank overhead.

‘The man in the black pajamas, a worthy fucking adversary.’
– Walter Sobchak

What would the reception be to two Americans, albeit one Asian-American, riding roughshod through the battle-scarred back country of Vietnam?  I didn’t know, but I was willing to risk some mean-mugging in order to find out.

Evan Miyamoto, after seeing the Top Gear Vietnam Special, seemed as enamored of the idea as I was.  There were still so many possible hangups that the idea seemed foolish, but with a soft yes from him the preparations could begin in earnest.

1.  Quit the job.  An easy enough act, but not wanting to watch the work I had created from my own blood, sweat, and tears (yes, at times there were all three) fall to pieces, arrangements had to be made.  Most people would say they would relish this part. Walk out the front door middle fingers blazing. But I liked my job, and more importantly the people I worked with.

2.  Sell everything.  Funding a long term jaunt would require every penny I had and then some.  I would watch misty eyed as every possession I had went out the door to a succession of weirder and weirder Craigslisters.  One guy went on an absolute shopping spree and just wandered my home putting things in a box.  A lifesaver since I was just going to throw all those spatulas away.

The only thing that bothered me was my guitar, the rest was just stuff.  The majority of my belongings had already been absconded with via two previous break-ins.  The first was a costly lesson, the second a financial windfall when insurance paid out (thanks crackheads!), contributing a nice kick start to the Asian-Adventure fund.

3.  Passports, plane tickets, visas, language prep.  Standard groundwork was begun via late night Tallahassee-Tampa Skype sessions.  We may as well have been planning a re-invasion of the peninsula such was the military order of our preparations.

4. Physical Training. A near decade of gluttony and sloth had made me wholly unprepared for a country where 10 miles is considered ‘walking distance’.  Mission San Luis park became my ‘Tigerland’.  A sweaty, mosquito infested jungle replica of the terrain and climate I was about to hit.  The daily pack runs (40lbs of water bottles) up and down hills and through the bush would prove invaluable and a damn close approximation of the real thing.

For all the methodical planning and preparation that was taking place, the one aspect I had not accounted for was the emotional toll. The relationships, both friendly and romantic, I had built over 9 years were difficult to sever.  I had made some of the best friends a guy could hope for. This was never more apparent than during the the elaborate exit festivities that melted my icy Grinch-like heart and made me forever appreciative of the people I had come to know and love.

Nevertheless it was time.  Tallahassee was always about the people in it, but even they knew I was growing restless in a half-horse town devoted to a sport I cared little for.  I could see going back to raise a family, or pursue another degree, but for a twenty-something with a wanderlust it just wasn’t enough anymore.  No, it had to be 180° from the norm. No Western Europe or it’s ilk (Oh, the McDonalds here has gravy for the fries, how exotic), it had to be weird…and cheap.

In terms of travel costs Southeast Asia ranks as one of the cheapest in the world. Portions of South America and perhaps India may trump it, but getting by on $15 a day is doable although not stylish.  My calculations on cost projected that I could stay in the region for a year or more without income.  Two years if I ‘went to the mattresses’ and shunned all Western luxuries.

Obviously the first month of biking and near constant travel would be the most costly, but then adopting a more leisurely pace would allow for a substantial stretching of the budget.  That said, $1100 plane tickets (one way to Hanoi), visas, passport renewal, and travel insurance add up quickly.

My gear, about which I am a bit of a meticulous nut, was pieced together cheaply over six months of eBay auctions and piles upon piles of amazon boxes.  In thinking back on it, not a single purchase was made in a brick-and-mortar store. The few attempts I made at outlet malls and REI-type shops were unmitigated overpriced failures. A testament to the new world of e-commerce I suppose.

To this point I feel that my planning in this regard has saved me numerous times.  Most situations that have arisen have been quickly handled by having the right tool for the job, be it my swiss army knife to do a teardown of my fuel filter on the side of a Saigon highway, or simply duct tape and zip ties to handle the everyday snafus (a man with enough carabiniers, zip-ties, and duct tape could rule the world!).

I could do twenty pages on gear, and will in a separate post for those interested, but suffice it to say I was well prepared.

All that was left as they say, was the doing.  I subleased my apartment, packed my scant remaining items into a two door coupe (the same size car I had arrived in as a freshman nine years prior) and set off.

OK, so maybe not ‘off’.  I had a soft landing at a friend’s house who had been kind enough to let me use his Lakeland home as a staging area before my final flight out.

These ten days turned out to be incredibly important.  I was out of Tallahassee, and that fact alone was given enough time to sink in, yet I wasn’t at my parents house in Tampa where the incessant questions and mothering would only serve to heighten my anxiety.  It was an important middle ground where I was able to collect my thoughts and mentally and physically prepare myself for the coming months.

Ten days of study, healthy eating, and workouts were capped by a self proclaimed ‘Day of Oppulence’.  We ate and drank copiously of the quintissential American junk delights I would soon be without (try finding a Jalapeno Popper here, I fucking dare you)  I can’t imagine a better end note transition from the bounty of American life to the stark minimalism of rural Vietnam.  It was an orgy of sloth and gluttony and I naturally loved every minute. Oppulence!!!

My flight out was scheduled for February 13th.  A date picked quite tactfully to land me after the Vietnamese Tet holiday (massive new year celebrations), but before Valentines day (sorry ladies), and leaving enough room to travel for a month before the start of the Summer rainy season.

Perhaps it’s my nature, but I couldn’t help but wait for some calamity to befall us.Things were going too well. Too many things had to come together for this to come off.  Avoiding last minute injuries, sicknesses, work related rescheduling, final bills and whatnot seemed too much.

Yet, as if overseen by some invisible force, the day arrived without a hitch. Twenty seven hours later we would do what the U.S. Army had not been able to in nineteen years of fighting, put Americans in the heart of the Communist stronghold of North Vietnam, Hanoi.