Thanks to those friendly sky guys who play Gershwin all of the time, we got to "out enjoy" our stay in the lounge at Hong Kong airport last night and to arrive here in Vietnam at a cool 4am. Nine hours waiting for a plane is never fun ! United are a pretty dump airline yet we will have to partake of their services more than any other airline during our trip because of our itinerary.
The one benefit about arriving in a new place at such a time is that the taxi trip in from the airport is almost always quick. Plus you get tantalising glimpses in the dark of a city about to wake up. And so it proved last night as we sped between the limited number of scooters out and about....a man performing tai chi, a group of three women seemingly power walking, the first breakfast stalls being set up. While we drove through the relatively deserted streets this AM, our musical accompaniment from the taxi's radio was that old Vietnamese spiritual Auld Lang Syne, followed by George Michael in Wham days' Last Christmas.
Going to bed after 5am is never fun, nor is then getting up at 8am but that is what we did this last day of 2013. It was worth it though. HCM is what Bangkok was 20 years' ago and Singapore 40 years' ago. It has not westernized enough yet to have lost its real charm.
Scooters are everywhere. They are driven on the road the right way, and the wrong way; some stop at lights and a lot don't; and when the jam is too much, they just come up on to the footpath and play chicken with the pedestrians. There are no rules for crossing the road. I have adopted that Canute approach, my hand held out like a traffic cop, demanding the tide of bikes stops to allow me to cross. It has worked so far.
Central HCM is French colonial at its finest. I love the buildings. Interspersed are modern skyscrapers and also some tatty tenements.
What makes it so enjoyable is your average Saigoner; out there getting on with daily life. The people we have met so far have been delightful. It is has been the first day of 18 we will spend here in Vietnam and the omens so far are very good indeed.
Finally, I must mention briefly our NYE experience tonight. It was very Bangkok-esque in that we were sat outside up high (albeit only 10 storeys here rather than 60) at a new bar/restaurant on a warm and pleasant evening. We ate crocodile sashimi with a wasabi and basil cream as well as oysters and other yummy things. To accompany us was an "opera" singer, banging out Classics greatest hits including The Blue Danube. I never realised that Strauss had stolen it from an old Khmer folk song!
In the audience for dinner apart from ourselves were slicked up Russians, Americans who did not pause for breath for an entire 3 hours and some local ladies who Tess reliable reported to me (as I was facing the wrong way), appeared to have forgotten to wear pants! Those attracted to this city now are as exotic as they were 60 + years ago when Graham Greene was writing.
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