Yang
In Ho Chi Minh City (henceforth Saigon or HCMC) everything happens on the sidewalk. Restaurants and cafes are decanted into the sidewalk; shop wares spillover onto it; motorcycles roll on and park; food vendors tend their carts; dogs sleep; barbers barber and touts tout. The only things hard to find are pedestrians since all this activity forces us to walk on the streets.
In Ho Chi Minh City (henceforth Saigon or HCMC) everything happens on the sidewalk. Restaurants and cafes are decanted into the sidewalk; shop wares spillover onto it; motorcycles roll on and park; food vendors tend their carts; dogs sleep; barbers barber and touts tout. The only things hard to find are pedestrians since all this activity forces us to walk on the streets.
I got a haircut on the sidewalk: the barber quoted me $2.00. I know I could have gotten it down to perhaps 50 cents, but since he was going to be having at my head with sharp objects, I wanted him happy, so I accepted, to the general hilarity of his friends hanging out by his chair.
I then proceeded to receive a haircut like no other before. The early part was more or less standard, except that he got the power from his clippers from an extension cord thrown over the side of the construction site fence. After more or less finishing, he produced a razor blade, which he unwrapped and trimmed with scissors so it could fit his razor. I was a little bit alarmed, but I let him lay me down in the chair. He felt my chin and figured out there wasn’t much to shave there, and then proceeded to shave my earlobes and neck, all very good, but then he did my cheekbones, nose and eyelids! I am ashamed to say I have been an ambulatory tonsorial faux pas all these years, brazenly walking around with unshaven eyelids. Egad!
I then proceeded to receive a haircut like no other before. The early part was more or less standard, except that he got the power from his clippers from an extension cord thrown over the side of the construction site fence. After more or less finishing, he produced a razor blade, which he unwrapped and trimmed with scissors so it could fit his razor. I was a little bit alarmed, but I let him lay me down in the chair. He felt my chin and figured out there wasn’t much to shave there, and then proceeded to shave my earlobes and neck, all very good, but then he did my cheekbones, nose and eyelids! I am ashamed to say I have been an ambulatory tonsorial faux pas all these years, brazenly walking around with unshaven eyelids. Egad!
Zeroes, Zeroes Everywhere
Vietnamese currency is difficult to take seriously. First is the name: the dong. Really? Really. The current exchange rate is approximately 20,000 dongs to the dollar. Believe it or not, it makes paying for things really interesting for a while. Let’s say you had an excellent meal, with lots of beer and wine and plenty of food and get the bill: an astonishing 785,000 dongs. Before apoplexy hits, you realize this is less than $40 and breathe a sigh of relief. Then comes the always vexatious question of tipping. China was easy: no tipping. Our Vietnam guidebook says that a 5 to 10% tip for good service is becoming more common in the best establishments, even in the backpacking district. Let's say you are there. Next comes, The Discussion (This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is pure coincidence).
- Your Wife/Girlfiend: “Are you leaving a tip?”
- You: “I wasn’t going to, it’s not expected”
- Your Wife/Girlfriend: “But the service was pretty good”
- You: “They were just doing their job”
- Your Wife/Girlfriend: “You’re so cheap, no wonder I got a square zirconium on my engagement ring; you couldn’t even spring for the cubic one.
All over a $3.00 tip.
But seriously, I don’t usually go on and on about prices. I even managed to blog from Paris for 5 months without mentioning the outrageous local prices more than once ($42 for an ordinary pair of office scissors, for those of you scoring at home). But the prices here are a constant source of wonder. In a way, it reminds me of Zurich, where prices are so ridiculously high that all you can afford when visiting there is to window shop and have a good gasp at what they want for stuff. Here it is the antithesis of Zurich.
A short list of restaurant prices, using random day-to-day items:
- Beer: as little as 50 cents for a 15 oz bottle at happy hour
- Wine: This requires some discussion. Vietnam now produces wine in the Dalat region. You can get a glass for $2.00 and a bottle for as little as $7.00. Some of it is quaffable, some of it very bad. Imported wines are of course more expensive, but it looks as if they have dropped the punitive tariffs they were once levying. An extreme example is an award-winning, pretty good Argentinian wine for $10.00 a bottle. Otherwise, $30 to $40 will buy you a better bottle than it would in a restaurant at home.
- Spirits are expensive by local standards, but still less than at home: a decent Cognac for $8 a snifter, for example (and not a 1oz shot either).
- Restaurant dishes are $2.50 to $5.00 for the most part. Two or three dishes are enough for two (you don’t eat much when it’s 34 degrees).
- A nice, clean hotel room, not too big, withWifi and breakfast in Saigon is $45.00.
- Backpackers can sleep in a dorm for $5.00 a night, or a single room for twice that.
Anyway, you get the picture. One downside, for us, is the near-universal negotiability of prices (except in restaurants, metered cabs and high-end stores). It’s OK for a little while but becomes annoying after a big while. You also have to deal with the curse of the many zeroes, which will make you walk away angrily because the asshole wanted 80,000 ($4.00) for a polo shirt: this whole system just turns you into a cheap bastard.
We had a vivid example of that last night. We went on a street food tour, where we met four other people. Three of them (all girls) were very nice, but the other guy (single, go figure), greeted every announcement from the guide with: "How much?" So that the statement that snake could be had at the next stop elicited, nothing about kind of snake, method of preparation, etc..., but only "How much?". What a Dodo. So if you're reading this, Zach from New Jersey, I lied. It was not nice to meet
Lagniappe
Many thanks to all of you who forwarded the link to Wikipedia’s entry on “sesame”, really, I mean it. I know how to find answers, it just never occurred to me to ask the question. So please desist in future.
Just to test your self-restraint is a question many of you must have wondered about over the years:
What did they call the Vietnam War in Vietnam?
Vietnamese currency is difficult to take seriously. First is the name: the dong. Really? Really. The current exchange rate is approximately 20,000 dongs to the dollar. Believe it or not, it makes paying for things really interesting for a while. Let’s say you had an excellent meal, with lots of beer and wine and plenty of food and get the bill: an astonishing 785,000 dongs. Before apoplexy hits, you realize this is less than $40 and breathe a sigh of relief. Then comes the always vexatious question of tipping. China was easy: no tipping. Our Vietnam guidebook says that a 5 to 10% tip for good service is becoming more common in the best establishments, even in the backpacking district. Let's say you are there. Next comes, The Discussion (This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is pure coincidence).
- Your Wife/Girlfiend: “Are you leaving a tip?”
- You: “I wasn’t going to, it’s not expected”
- Your Wife/Girlfriend: “But the service was pretty good”
- You: “They were just doing their job”
- Your Wife/Girlfriend: “You’re so cheap, no wonder I got a square zirconium on my engagement ring; you couldn’t even spring for the cubic one.
All over a $3.00 tip.
But seriously, I don’t usually go on and on about prices. I even managed to blog from Paris for 5 months without mentioning the outrageous local prices more than once ($42 for an ordinary pair of office scissors, for those of you scoring at home). But the prices here are a constant source of wonder. In a way, it reminds me of Zurich, where prices are so ridiculously high that all you can afford when visiting there is to window shop and have a good gasp at what they want for stuff. Here it is the antithesis of Zurich.
A short list of restaurant prices, using random day-to-day items:
- Beer: as little as 50 cents for a 15 oz bottle at happy hour
- Wine: This requires some discussion. Vietnam now produces wine in the Dalat region. You can get a glass for $2.00 and a bottle for as little as $7.00. Some of it is quaffable, some of it very bad. Imported wines are of course more expensive, but it looks as if they have dropped the punitive tariffs they were once levying. An extreme example is an award-winning, pretty good Argentinian wine for $10.00 a bottle. Otherwise, $30 to $40 will buy you a better bottle than it would in a restaurant at home.
- Spirits are expensive by local standards, but still less than at home: a decent Cognac for $8 a snifter, for example (and not a 1oz shot either).
- Restaurant dishes are $2.50 to $5.00 for the most part. Two or three dishes are enough for two (you don’t eat much when it’s 34 degrees).
- A nice, clean hotel room, not too big, withWifi and breakfast in Saigon is $45.00.
- Backpackers can sleep in a dorm for $5.00 a night, or a single room for twice that.
Anyway, you get the picture. One downside, for us, is the near-universal negotiability of prices (except in restaurants, metered cabs and high-end stores). It’s OK for a little while but becomes annoying after a big while. You also have to deal with the curse of the many zeroes, which will make you walk away angrily because the asshole wanted 80,000 ($4.00) for a polo shirt: this whole system just turns you into a cheap bastard.
We had a vivid example of that last night. We went on a street food tour, where we met four other people. Three of them (all girls) were very nice, but the other guy (single, go figure), greeted every announcement from the guide with: "How much?" So that the statement that snake could be had at the next stop elicited, nothing about kind of snake, method of preparation, etc..., but only "How much?". What a Dodo. So if you're reading this, Zach from New Jersey, I lied. It was not nice to meet
Lagniappe
Many thanks to all of you who forwarded the link to Wikipedia’s entry on “sesame”, really, I mean it. I know how to find answers, it just never occurred to me to ask the question. So please desist in future.
Just to test your self-restraint is a question many of you must have wondered about over the years:
What did they call the Vietnam War in Vietnam?