Cops, Collisions and Coldies

One day in Saigon made up for all my puttering lately. You may file this entry under Misadventure - in between Mania and Moronic.

Before Mike Cho left Saigon we met a guy named Vinh who elected himself our cruise director. He basically hung out with us and let us buy him beers while we asked him Saigon questions and ribbed him about his love life. After Mike left, Vinh took me to play pool at Guns n Roses, a late night spot that bribes the local law enforcement in order to stay open past curfew and make prostitution more accessible to the shy backpacking set. Only one day into my return stay in the city, Vinh sees my bike parked outside of an internet cafe and comes in to retrieve me. He got a new job working with his girlfriend at a bar about a kilometer away. I agreed to head off with him and check the place out.

The bar was really more of a cafe. Inside were ten or so folding mini-tables surrounded by plastic, patio furniture chairs. The walls were painted red and decorations were sparse. When Vinh and I arrived, a young girl in come-hither clothing came outside, unfolded a table and dragged some lawn chairs out for us. Vinh ordered two Tigers but we were served two Heinekens because as the girl serving us said, "Heineken OK." My task for the night would be to discover exactly what Vinh's job description described. He said he was there to "watch the girls." I looked inside to see which girls needed watching, having previously only noticed our waitress, and saw six or seven young girls sitting inside with boredom bordering on death faces like UN representatives.

"What do they do?" "They talk to the customers." Sure enough, around seven o'clock, men began to arrive in small groups. Once each group was seated, a girl would bring refreshments, usually tea but sometimes beer, and then join the group, making lighthearted conversation.

Vinh was the self-described manager, but other than managing to increase my tab, his duties escaped me.

After a few beers - each - I decided it was time to switch to tea in order to sober up and drive home. Vinh suggested we roll to Cholon, which is a giant version of San Francisco's Chinatown, to pick up a snack. We snaked through back alleys, darted across tangled intersections, drove through what seemed like back yards, finally arriving at a small storefront far removed from any chance of a casual encounter. Out front sat an old woman who was delighted to see Vinh and slightly confused to see me. Vinh's not too concerned with involving me in his numerous conversations, so interpretation of the woman's finger pointing and scowls and bouts of laughter fell onto my shoulders. In the woman's hand was a wad of cash about four inches thick, on her fingers were ten or so carats of diamonds. She yelled into the store and another younger yell replied. As Vinh and the woman conversed, a stream of people would arrive and shortly thereafter depart with any number of small styrofoam containers. After about ten minutes a woman came out balancing two small plates and two small forks.

This snack was a hardened yellow sweet corn mush topped with a creamy white sugar and coconut sauce. Simple and delicious and very popular apparently.

Vinh's bar closed at 11:30. We waited out front for about an hour, drinking tea and watching the clientele slowly evaporate. For the last half hour it was just Vinh, me, the scooter valet, and the girls. At 11:25 everyone's eyes were quietly fixed on the big hands of their timepieces. At exactly 11:30 the girls jumped up in unison, folded up the tables, stacked the chairs, wiped the floors and by 11:35 had padlocked the door. The plan was to take two girls to get some food, then head to a late-night bar in the backpacker district for beer and billiards. We ordered some Bun Bo Hue at a street vendor and chatted with the owner while the girls ate. Vinh became nervous at the prospect of getting in trouble with his jealousy prone girlfriend so he ferried one of the girls back to the bar to trade. Apparently he got an earful because when he came back to the food stall the plan had changed. Now we were going to pick up a Prestone jug full of beer and return to the bar to satisfy the girls who are not allowed to drink while on duty.

I was surprised to see all the girls still at the bar, but seeing them in their pajamas made me realize that they actually live there in a strange Brady Bunch style arrangement with bunk beds and over-shared bathrooms. The cafe was closed, so we situated ourselves outside on the sidewalk in the cool evening air. Discussion was purely in Vietnamese, which was fine with me because it made for a fun game of one way interpretation. It didn't take long for Vinh, me, the valet, and several girls to polish off the Prestone. The valet, now shirtless, volunteered me to drive him back to the beer source to replenish our supply and also ferret out more peanuts. The taste of the Prestone is very much like water, but some chemical additives impart a slightly Michelob aroma.

The valet, apparently a professional, was very impatient with my drivng style and became violent when I slowed down for red lights. He'd thrust his finger past my ear and shout "di, di, di!" Red lights are only to be taken seriously during the day and even then skepticism runs high. We raced down Tran Hung Dao at 2am, the wide avenue populated sparsely with young couples, desperate snack vendors and sleeping cyclo drivers.

Tapping my face slightly, the valet pointed left just as I approached a large intersection at full speed. I applied brakes and began to lean left, just then catching the first hint of a pair of men atop a honda cub on a collision course. My teeth ground shut and my grip tightened. The Minsk's front brake is extremely ineffective and the back brake tends to lock up easily. So I began to skid as I tried a vector parallel to our interceptors. They did not catch my psychic message however and rather than turn away, they turned into us. I stuck out my leg to buffer the collision, but the moment was over - we collided and fell with a plasticky crunch.

I read that whenever one is involved in a collision in Vietnam, it is best to pretend to be the one most injured. These men were experts. They both stayed prone, arms and legs akimbo like underpaid movie extras. Pretending to be more injured than them would have involved gesturing to an operatic extreme. The valet jumped up and immediately began rubbing his fingers together, signing money, advising me to pay them off. The other driver moaned "one hundred", cradling his arm. I assessed the damage to their bike - a broken turn signal. I looked at them, still laying piteously on the ground with alternating puppy dog eyes and broadway expressions of pain and malice, and offered fifty. Okay. They jumped up, picked up the turn signal, started up the cub and raced off.

Jesus Christo was playing some weird games with me. Earlier in the day I was stopped by the traffic police for driving the wrong way down a one way road. I was definitely in the wrong, but it was an easy mistake to make because I was following a stream of motorbikes doing the same thing. I should have followed them in ignoring the policeman's whistle, but since I was on the way to sell the bike, I didn't want to get into any serious trouble. The police officer issued me a ticket for 150,000 duong. The ticketing process itself involved the cop writing the number 150,000 on the corner of a piece of scrap paper, tearing it rather neatly and then handing it to me. Ten bucks! I nodded no, and said "nam moui" or "fifty" in Vietnamese. I thought maybe they'd think I actually lived here and knew that 150 was way too high. I really had no idea if the price was right or not, but thus far everything else in the country had been negotiable. The cop looked at his partner, they both nodded in agreement and he held out his hand, ready to collect for the state.

Prestone in hand, we returned to the cafe. In our absence Vinh had picked up more peanuts, some Chinese-style noodles, and a bag of steamed clams. We sat down, poured a round of beer and yelled YO, clapping our glasses strongly against each others. A quiet mood descended and suddenly one girl, visibly drunk by this time, began to cry. Another girl joined her. The men seemed oblivious and when I asked what the hell was happening Vinh said that they had both just broken up with their boyfriends. It was kind of cute, but the weirdness overshadowed any simmering sentimentality. The first girl stood up with a jerk, stumbled to the base of a nearby palm tree and started to vomit. Everyone ignored her. I stood up, totally weirded out and went to see if she was okay. This night was disintegrating rapidly. I sort of patted her on the back and hopelessly told her it would be ok in English. She stood up and I began to escort her back into the cafe, assuming prematurely that barf was bedtime's calling card. She brushed me off, returned to her seat, poured a round and indicated that we were to down the whole glass. We did, with respect and approbation, and so did she - a straight up ninety pound bad-ass.