Blog 2

Hello all from sunny Viet-freakin-nam. As they say, 'you don't know man... you weren't there'.

We have eaten pho at street stalls, met Marcel the Vietnamese/French/American, shopped at the insane market, gone drinking with ex-pat lawyers at the grand hyatt, been offered modelling jobs at a Vietnamese night club and are now waiting for a flight to a tropical island.. It's been a big two days.

My attempt to surprise Leo and Emma at the airport with a crazy car was thwarted by over-officious governance on the part of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Some time ago they put a twenty year limit on the age of cars thus eliminating all of the fun cars in one fell swoop. Saigon used to teem with old American cars in the war era then a bevy of Soviet vehicles hit the newly named Ho Chi Minh city when the communists took over. With this piece of historical knowledge in mind I was disappointed to find that I could not hire a crappy old Soviet bomb with which to collect the crew. I took a crazy motorbike instead. The luggage wouldn't fit on the motorbike so we got a taxi back. Very lame.

Marcel was born in Saigon in the late 1940s and survived the war without being forced to declare an allegiance. In the face of communist reform, he decided to leave, joining the French department of cultural development. Seventeen years later he tired of France and relocated again, this time to sunny Florida where he took US citizenship and accepted a job with the government.

I meet him in a tiny local restaurant in Saigon where I have come hoping for a dinner of pho noodle soup. There are many of these makeshift places, with plastic chairs and a cart out the front that serves as kitchen. I believe these are the places that the Australian government suggests we avoid. Bah. I announce that I would like dinner. The locals look at me quizzically as if to say 'is he mad?' Marcel's odd Vietnamese American accent cuts through the misunderstanding... 'They only do morning food here'. Oh, ok. 'But you should come in and sit down anyway.'

I sit with Marcel, a small dark man of 63 who holds his age like a Russian holds drink, he looks no more than 40. It turns out that the family who run this place helped him in his youth and now they are like family. They serve me spectacular drinks and I discuss Vietnamese culture using Marcel as the translator. After an hour of amazing hospitality and a flat refusal to take any money for the drinks they serve, I am escorted to another little place that serves cheap night food. This place is not in the Lonely Planet.