Day Zero

1. Traditions in Santa Monica

One of the many Italian traditions to which my mom's family adheres is the crab and shellfish dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure exactly from where that tradition comes, but I can say I'm a fan.

Day Zero for this long fortnight in Southeast Asia started early on Christmas Eve, with me driving Corrie to Pasadena for some errands she had to run for work. That's when I took some pictures of the Pasadena City Hall. What grandeur.

Then we found ourselves finishing the last of the household prep items and packing things, finalized the list for our house- and cat-sitter, and left for my Auntie's house in Santa Monica.

In the last half-decade or so a tradition has been cast where my mom's family (me and Dan and Norm) congregate at her sister's house with them and their kids (Mike and Liz, our closest cousins)(when they're around, of course). We have a big crab dinner Christmas Eve, go to the beach the next day and take a dip (weather permitting), and generally do the family thing.

This year with Holly introducing Simon to the world, along with many other factors, we pegged the 24th as our departure day, but late enough to have dinner with the family. Mike was in town in between moving preparations and Liz was still around before her spousal Visa for England was approved, so it was just my siblings who were elsewhere.

I chowed on crab and enormous shrimp until I was full and sleepy. 

Then it was off to soap up my hands and face and eventually head off to LAX.

We boarded the first plane, took stock of our neighborhood in the plane (my seat was 57 J), perused the movies that were to be offered (Chinese Air has little screens for each person and offers free earphones) and settled in. This flight was going to be long.

We took off a little after 11 pm on Tuesday the 24th. I'm not sure how long we were airborne, but we ran from the sun the entire time, maybe thirteen hours, maybe fourteen...I didn't sleep much and Corrie slept even less.

It was just before 5 am when we landed in Taipei, on the island of Taiwan, but it was now Thursday, the 26th.

We'd timewarped over Christmas Day.

2. Day Zero Should Be Over?

To me it was just a long flight through the night, and maybe I should start calling this part of the trip, the "Arrival in the Future" part of the trip Day One, but my rest on that first flight was so minimal that it's just part of this "longest day" deal you get twice on these time-warp trips.

The day started to break while we were getting on the second plane in Taipei, and when we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, the sky was hazy with "winter's" humidity and the clock said just before 10 AM local time. We gained another hour getting to Vietnam.

Even though we were offered food and drinks on each flight at pretty regular intervals, we were pretty hungry as we left the plane and headed towards customs and immigration. 

We were confident that we could get through easy enough, and get out into the city-formerly-known-as-Saigon and find some food by noon. 

Then it would be off to the bus station, because we never do anything easy.

3. Angry Overprivileged Masses

That turned out to be a miscalculation.

Vietnam has every right to do what they want how they want to at immigration. But these guys don't mess around.

If you'd like to visit the nation of Vietnam, you first need to contact their embassy and request a letter of admittance. Your request must expressly state what the reason is for the trip, as well as the exact arrival date and whether you'd like your entrance Visa to be for a single entry/exit or for multiple entries/exits. Easy enough, right? Oh, it goes without saying that this letter request process isn't free.

Once you get the approval letter back from the Vietnamese government, then you're set to finalize your flights. Once you arrive in country, you bring your letter with your passport, two tiny passport photos of yourself (that you'd better have on you before you get there--in fact, bring a dozen, since everywhere you go you'll need another one), an entrance application that they give you, and cash to a window and hand it all over.

The officials look everything over, insert the Visa, collect your money, and you're ready to go.

Of course that process, on Thursday the 26th of December of last year, 2013, took nearly two hours and felt like many, many more. There was no food in the waiting room, there might not even been a bathroom, but I can't remember. What I do remember is the angry mob of white people.

The windows where they collect everything was that thick bullet-proof glass type they have at 'hood banks, and it was constantly mobbed by two hundred of the most privileged folks on Earth. White people from all walks of life and countries, all made to wait and suffer like never before (for them, of course). Swedes and Scots and Dutch and Germans and Ruskies and Aussies and Kiwis and a few Yanks here and there--it was madness I tell you!

Madness but hilarious at the same time. Maybe because I was starting to get a little delirious and punchy I couldn't help but to laugh at the whole spectacle. Look at all this angry privilege, I kept guffawing to Corrie. 

4. Our Passports! Freedom!

While you wait, hungry and tired, part of you feels like this would be an ideal time to make a scene and start yelling at people. This rarely works in airports anywhere anymore, but here you need to remind yourself of an important thing: they have your passport at this very moment. That just means you're pretty much at the mercy of whatever time table they're working from: you're not going anywhere until they say so.

And once you hear your name...JOY! A new day has begun! Grab the bags, let's go!

We easily got through customs and on the way out of the airport, we found a money exchanger that also hired out cabs. What an awesome idea.

I changed over $100, seing as how we needed the cab, a pair of bus tickets, some grub, and we were going to be in Vietnam for a few days at least, so it was reasonable.

They handed me something like 2,138,000 Dong for my five twenties. What?

The rough estimate was D 20,000 per dollar, which is trippy, to say the least.

We made it outside and headed for the column where our cabbie would be waiting. I took a picture of something right outside the airport that my students would recognize:

See that price? "Only 45,000 d".

5. Because we don't do easy...

The main reason for this trip was Angkor Wat. There. Not a secret.

But there were some other cool ancillary things Corrie found out about during her research phase of planning this adventure. One was a very cool floating market in the Mekong Delta region, the biggest in the world in fact, and that was to be the first stop on our trip.

Not Saigon, er, Ho Chi Minh City. We were heading to a hotel we actually had reservations for in a city called Can Tho, only four to six hours away. 

We got the cabbie from a reputable taxicab company because they would write the name down in Vietnamese of where we were trying to get to--the Mekong Delta-region bus station in An Lac--and you've already paid.

Just so we can keep track, Day Zero started in Long Beach, took us to Pasadena, then to Santa Monica, then to Taipei, then to Ho Chi Minh City, and now to someplace called Can Tho.

But of course it couldn't be that easy...

6. The Streets of Saigon

Do you live in a reasonably large enough metropolitan space? Sacramento, Scottsdale, OKC, Denver, Austin, Seattle: you all qualify...Sulphur, maybe not so much...

Imagine driving around your city for thirty five minutes and seeing just three stoplights. Is it impossible for you? It would be for me, until I saw Ho Chi Minh City--huge intersections, no lights! People just slow down, meander through, and head off once they get out the other side.

Also something to take note of: the largest vehicle gets the right away in all situations.

7. Faith in the System

We got to the bus stop, made sure we got the tickets we wanted at the price we wanted (the posted price, thanks), and we were then directed back behind the glassed in counter. This was the general open-air bus depot. Buses were all over the place, and so were people.

An older gentleman took Corrie and me by the shoulder and yelled to some guys. They dropped what they were doing (eating and reading, respectively) and started putting on motor-bike helmets. One directed Corrie to have a seat on the back of a motor-bike. She did, reluctantly.

Then they motioned for me to join her, sitting behind her. "I don't effing think so," I said in English, but with the 'effing' a little more spicy. I knew they couldn't understand me, but my point was that Corrie still wore here backpack, and I had all my gear, and this was a motor-bike, which is a pony compared to an American motorcycle horse.

"I can walk across this parking lot, I added as they pulled me, now in a hurry, the other way to another motor-bike. A helmet was thrust into my lap, "On, on!" they barked pointing to the helmet and then my skull. "I have legs, dude," I was saying as a guy jumped on the bike, fired it up and turned around, starting to drive through the parking lot.

I noticed I could no longer see Corrie and her motor-bike escort. I started to wonder just what in the hell was going on. I knew I could walk across this bust station to get to my bus...what's with the ride?

The situation got murkier once we pulled out on the bus station and out into traffic. I hope Corrie's up there somewhere, I said to myself as my driver sped out through the maze of cars, trucks, tuk-tuks and the billion other motor-bikes.

We went for so long that I got frustrated and yelled in the driver's ear, "Yo, where the heck are we going?" with, if you know me, a spicier version 'heck' being my choice. I knew he didn't understand English, but my tone was universal. He pointed. Up ahead. "Where the hell's my wife? Lady?" He pointed again and again.

In telling the story it becomes obvious that we found each other, and in typing it here, it seems silly that it could be anything other than the truth of what happened: The station sold us tickets for a bus that was leaving right then, and in trying to squeeze extra money out of us, and us haggling back to the stated price, the bus had left without us, and these two nice motor-bike drivers were taking us to catch up to the bus, who, when called by the ticket sellers, eventually puled over and was waiting when we arrived.

But that doesn't remotely capture the terror of what was happening as it happened. We had not set up any protocol for what to do if we were to get separated, and here we were, phones not working, fresh off the plane, receipt in hand for a bus ticket, and totally separated.

Later on while sharing a laugh about the whole thing, we thanked the concept of karma for having positively effected the peoples: they just weren't going to try and screw you over. You bought a ticket, they were going to make sure you made the bus.

But when you're hurtling in and out of dangerous traffic with no view of your loved one and no idea of your destination, you feel your shoulders tense and you fists tighten--you may just have throw-down here in a second...

8. The Bus

Holy cow, what a cool bus! They had us take our shoes off when we got on, they happily stashed our bags underneath the carriage, and one dude on board even spoke passable English. He had lived for a number of years in San Francisco, and he and everybody else--who incidentally were all local folks--were very curious about our adventure. It was about here that I thought it funny that our long day was somehow beginning again right in the middle.

That, and my hands still smelled like crab.

The bus had three columns of reclining type seats you could sleep in if you weren't as huge as me, but the thought was cool. I pulled out my camera and had Corrie try to get a shot of me barely fitting in the seat, one of the first in-earnest pictures from the trip:

9. The Drop-Off

Since we were on a locals bus and not a tourist bus, it didn't stop in the city center of Can Tho, rather, it stopped near a corner populated by local "cabbies", or, "shady bastards". 

Someone got off the bus specifically because he didn't like the idea of us being dropped off right where we were being dropped. I laughed at that idea, frankly. I had already noticed that nobody had guns--not the police, not even the military guys at the airport. Sure, some soldiers might have firearms, but we never saw any of them. If somebody wanted to mess with us out here, FINE. I was ready--that's the 'hood coming out.

We gave a guy the phone number of our hotel, they called, and I'm not really sure what happened. I got into a messed up pick-up truck's front seat, and Corrie got in the back with a handful of other "paying passengers" and we took off towards what glowed as a city center.

From the front seat I eagle-eyed our hotel, "Yo! Right over there! Yo!", my tone not hiding my real intentions ('I may be too tired to speak clearly, but not tired enough to pound you if you don't take us over there right now.') 

It was later that evening over a bowl of noodles from a street vendor that Corrie and I had that talk about karma and the inherent pleasantness of most people in Southeast Asia. We even got a hot shower at our hotel.

We had made it to a resting point, and Day Zero came to an official close. The next day, before dawn, we were heading out to the river to do the floating market and then take a biking trek. It was all starting to come together...

Here's a street view as we ate dinner before turning in for the night:

Blurry, just like our heads at this point...