We’ve seen it. Now its time for you to check it out and let us know what you think.  As always we welcome feedback, comments, suggestions, ideas and money.  brian[at]jetsetzero.tv

7000 miles later the confusing process of unpacking and settling in begins.   “Adventures can be difficult sometimes.”

Our housing search continues.  We have to stay together, so our choices are either a guest house with 5 cheap rooms or a large house.  But, we find ourselves caught between 3 unfortunate realities.  First, it’s almost impossible to find a guesthouse with 5 available rooms.  In fact, we’ve found only 1, and the rooms that were available 3 weeks ago have all been taken.  Second, we haven’t found any houses willing to lease for 3 months (2 months, at this point).  Third, the effort it would take to scour the city in search of other options is simply beyond us.  We’re weary from teaching, exploring Ho Chi Minh City, running Jet Set Zero, filming, etc.

We want to get outside the backpacker district (Pham Nhu Lao), which is overflowing with tourists and backpackers, hawkers and high prices, and – if the night-time street vendors are to be trusted – almost every drug imaginable.  It’s a neighborhood very much oriented toward travelers, and we’ve been told that if we want to immerse ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City, we should move out of the area.  The search has so far remained fruitless.

However, we do enjoy where we’re currently staying – Xuan Spring Hotel.

It’s a cozy comfortable little place nestled in a bustling alleyway.  Sure it has the occasional gecko dashing about, and an air conditioner that sometimes decides it’s time to take a nap, and an 11pm curfew that means we have to wake up the owners to be let in after a late night, and 4 flights of stairs for Brian and me.  Nonetheless, it’s run by the nicest cadre of people we’ve encountered in Vietnam: 1 patient grandmother who always smiles in greeting and chuckles quietly when we try to speak Vietnamese, 1 adult gentlemen who speaks English quite well and never fails to help, and 2 young sisters who always make fun of me when I mispronounce “Cam On” or “thank you” – which, by the way, is almost all the time.

They’ve made this place quite a welcoming place to live in the short term, and I’d definitely recommend the hotel to anyone traveling here.

I think I’ve supplied a good deal of laughs for this family: mispronouncing the most basic word in “tourist Vietnamese,” forgetting my room key downstairs when I trudge up 4 flights of stairs to my locked room, and even locking the key inside the room (only twice in 4 weeks…that’s pretty damned good).

So while we’re scrambling around trying to find something permanent, almost 4 weeks have flown by in the Spring Hotel without any cause for complaint.

- Matt

Since we arrived in Saigon we have been looking to find ourselves a real local hangout.  Some of my best times out in other countries have been when we met enough people to find a great local haunt.  Luckily, I think we have just found one of those places.

Today we set out to find some housing, and after a hilarious but successful attempt (certainly another post) our guide told us in no uncertain terms that it was time for beer.  He hailed a car, gave the driver a set of indecipherable instructions, jumped on his bike and told us to meet him there.  We drove through new areas of town, upscale areas of town, and then to less and less nice areas of town, until dark buildings crowed around the street and we ran out of pavement.  After a jaunt past rubble filled lots, the river and a good stretch of unpaved road we reached a bridge under construction and a narrow alley.  It was here our driver informed us that we would be getting out.

Camera in tow we wandered down the alley and found our guide down at the end in front a truly unique bar/restaurant.  It was three(ish) sprawling open air stories stacked around a plaza and kitchen.  The place was filled with locals, every table, every seat.  We quickly realized that between us and the camera we had become the center of attention, we got smiles and waves from half the tables as we were lead to the second floor.  After that it was one great experience after another, the menu was the first list I’ve ever seen in this country without prices prepared especially for us, amazing shrimp, and a truly fascinated server staff that came from the countryside surrounding Saigon.

We stood out as much as I have anywhere, but every smile of ours was met with a tableful in return and I’ve never been to a place with such a warm and friendly set of people.  We’re counting down the hours until we can return.

Also, I think we’re going to go eat cobras on Saturday.

This post is about a relatively old event, but it’s a story worth recounting.  Some weeks ago, some expats recommended we check out the local English-speaking Club, a Sunday morning gathering sponsored by the Party to give Vietnamese youth an opportunity to practice English together.  They said we’d be super popular, near celebrities, with everyone crowding around the speak with us.  It sounded fun, a little intimidating, but well worth the 7am Sunday wake-up – after all, one main goal was to meet our “global counterparts.”

Well, it turns out that super popular was an understatement.  We all eventually found the area where the English Club congregates, and as we entered, conversation grew quiet and all eyes swiveled toward us.  There was a brief awkward pause until I simply introduced myself to someone, loudly enough to communicate to everyone present that we were here to talk to *them.*  Instantly, students swarmed around us, hedging closer, leaning in to speak and listen, and slowly claiming every square inch of our personal space.  Questions would get asked and then asked again by new people who just joined the group (and there were probably around 20 – 30 students around each of us).  One girl handed me a tissue because I was so obviously sweating in the humid morning surrounded by a wall of bodies.  One guy got me a water, in appreciation for me speaking to everyone.  And finally, after hours of talking, we took a group to get some coffee, where we sat and learned a little more about each other – where we all worked, what we did on Saturday nights, and what our names actually meant, just to name a few.  It was such an invigorating experience, and we walked away with a crop of phone numbers and email addresses.  We’ve since hung out with some of our new friends, but we’ll have to post those adventures separately…

Our current home in Vietnam is in District I, and as massive as it is, even the small area around our hotel is filled with a non-stop slide show of amazing, stunning, and often confusing sites.  I have tried to pull together a few shots to provide a bit more insight into where we live and what daily life is like here.

NIGHT

As many times as we have tried to convey what it is like to cross the street in the city, this picture might do the best job.  The motorbikes never stop, it’s a stream that you wade through.  One slow careful step at a time.

Sunday was the Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, known as “children’s day”. The general idea is that due to long working days this time is set aside to show family affection towards children. Since the poor families work the hardest, people often give lanterns and moon cake to the families unable to afford presents and the city’s orphans. In this picture a couple of charity workers hand out lanterns to children near a busy intersection.

DAY

Walking this street was amazing.  It appears to be a kind of drive through a supermarket.  As you pull up you yell out an order to one of the seemingly identical vendors who line the sidewalk and they run out to your bike and load it up with bags of limes, spring onions, and host of other vegetables and fruits I have never seen before.  There was a similar street that had small food vendors next to it that seemed to run on the same concept.

This is our current restaurant of choice.  There’s a great local crowd.  They have Saigon Green – our favorite local beer – by the bottle for 9,000 Dong ($.54). And a great view of the traffic below.

You can see the whole set of pictures on a map here (you might have to zoom out a few times).  Hopefully this offers at least a glimpse into what our life is like here.

At first, Vietnam was scary. Our initial impressions included thick smog, traffic, and a scooter-by robbery, in which two men on a Vespa zipped past a Mercedes with its window down. As they passed, they pulled a wallet from the passenger’s side and swiftly disappeared into traffic. I could hear the crew pull our cameras closer, and everyone got a little quieter, except for our taxi driver who seemed to think it was pretty funny.

District 1

After arriving and taking in the backpacker district, we saw an array of expected and unexpected sights. Food vendors and small restaraunts sat beside postcard stands, but also next to seemingly empty concrete caverns and the rubble of razed buildings. Vietnamese is a very difficult language, and that made our new home seem impenetrable.

As the week went on, the job hunt continued to be less than fruitful (which is to say, infuriating). Moreover, we noticed that backpackers have created a rather unpleasant atmosphere here in District 1. Every step down the street includes some head-shaking and “khom”s, to inform walking vendors that you do not need sunglasses (as there has not yet been any sun to speak of) nor do you need a wallet (because as soon as you can, you’re turning your money into Spicy Beef Pho). After a summer of bare-bones living, and sacrificing health and happiness, was this what we had worked for?

Of course, the right thing to do in our situation would be to have rested this past week. We should have overcome jet lag, and excursed slowly into the city to build enthusiasm for our new home. We should have slowly ramped up filming, to ensure that we were comfortable with our environment. We probably should not have stumbled into the red light district on our second night here.

Well, we didn’t do any of that. And now, we’re at yet another crossroads.

Pouring Rain in Pham Ngu Lau

Filming here continues to present us with intense challenges. Our conspicuousness (which once, as we sat at an out-of-the-way restaurant, made an elderly woman guffaw in amazement) becomes like a scene out of “Close Encounters…” when the camera turns on. People crowd, and we lose the protection of anonymity. Shipping may be a problem due to customs and we probably won’t be able to publish freely.

Although it may not seem like our biggest challenge, we didn’t allow ourselves time to understand and enjoy this city, and so, the challenges that lie ahead of us here seem nearly insurmountable.

We have a tough decision to make. Do we stay here in Vietnam for three months and brave jobs with minimal hours, difficult and taxing filming, and an infrastructure that will make building out our company even more difficult? Or should we look to our original promised land, Korea, where we could easily secure jobs, housing and transportation, but would have to commit 6 months of our 12-month journey? Do we risk it all—our precious work, safety and happiness— to stick to our convictions, or should we defer to practicality and comfort?

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Well, this weekend we hope to take a break and go to the beach. For $60 a person we have been promised nothing but white sand, sailing, fishing, and maybe a few coconuts with straws poking out of them. We need time to relax and think about our choice.

Bia Hoi is one signature of Vietnam.  It means “fresh beer” – beer brewed locally and delivered each day in huge drums directly to various small restaurants, cafes, and bars.  By 1pm, it’s ready to drink, but we didn’t enjoy it until 2:30pm.  1 liter costs 10,000 Vietnamese dong, approximately $.63…we may have had a couple…or more than a couple.  But hey, this is Vietnam, it’s what the locals drink.

Bia Hoi…(and don’t be fooled be the time stamp, which still on PDT)

We also noticed, at the threshold of our Bia Hoi establishment, a curious ornament, which at first we thought was gnarled rope.

Instead, it was a gnarled dessicated claw.  We’re not entirely sure of its purpose, but decided not to speculate.  But hey, this is Vietnam – its what the Bia Hoi establishment does.

We’d been told that the ice in Ho Chi Minh is safe to drink, because it’s not made at each restaurant from tap water but created in factories and distributed throughout the city.  Today, not only was the Bia Hoi fresh, but the ice was as well.

Many beers in Vietnam are enjoyed over ice.  This may sound blasphemous to some, but a beer with a thick block of ice is definitely preferable to a warm beer with a thick flowering of bubbles.  Hey, this is Vietnam – it’s how to drink beer.

Our first afternoon with Bia Hoi all together was immensely relaxing, as we watched outside the buzz of motorbikes, the slow lumbering of food carts, and the too swift disappearance of our liters of cold carbonated Bia Hoi.

One of the key links in the process that will let us produce regular episodes of our adventures here is shipping footage back to the US from our setup in the field.  However, this is not as simple as it sounds.  Today Rob and I set off with a fairly simple goal – take a stack of full tapes to a DHL shipping center and send them along to Jed for post production work.   We hopped in a cab, showed the driver the address, and sat back to enjoy the ease at which we were completing our task.  The first problem was that the DHL shipping center wasn’t in our district or the next district or on this side of the river, or even near the other side.  It was in fact almost an hour away though the dense and extremely prevalent Ho Chi Minh City traffic.  The laughs continued once we got there as we were told that customs need to watch each and every tape before they could be sent out, and “oh, we don’t have a machine for them. Please bring your machine – tomorrow.”  They would need our camera so that a customs official could watch hours upon hours of tapes.  Heads held low, Rob and I returned to the waiting cab and the realization that we had an hour of driving before reaching our hotel, and much less money than the fare.