I write this from a communist-run hotel overlooking the bay, in a super comfortable Burmese sarong Brian’s sister nabbed for my Christmas present. We are wondering how much Humberto at Opening Ceremony would sell these sarongs for. Gotta beat him to it. I’ll get them manufactured by single mothers, take a picture of behind the scenes and attach to the tag, bring these babies back and sell at yoga clothing stores in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Make some all black ones for the fellas and sell them at OAKNYC.
But back to my travels. My mom meets us at the Saigon airport. She is wound up and irritable, I can’t figure out why. I chalk it up to having to be with her mom, who is the queen of guilt. My mom escaped in 1975 when Vietnam fell to Communist rule, and comes back sporadically.
We spend a night in the village Ba Ria, which is a great adventure for 24 hours. My mom has been roughing it for 6 days, and we slowly we realize what’s up. My uber westernized mom didn’t want to shower with a hose, cold water in a plastic bucket and a plastic tea cup for pouring on your bits and pits. She refused to drink from the same dirty cups everyone was drinking from. She offers to paint the interior of my uncle’s house.
We bus tables and sweep up at our family’s café and see the look of disgust of her face when we pick up all the toothpicks, napkins and trash people toss on the ground. We visit all my uncles and aunts via moped, and my mom is restless.
She rushes us out to Vung Tau, a more developed beach town 35 kilometers away, and into a government run hotel for high ranking communist officials. This creepy little building has all the charm and design style of an eastern bloc apartment complex, but hot water and AC. My mom’s in heaven.
After dinner she chills out a lot, loosens up. I sit her down and we talk about how much she’s changed. I tell her that we are just passing through, we are he ones who are outsiders here. She seems better. As she leaves to go back to her room, she kicks the toilet and says, “They used the cheapest , ugliest materials! Fiberglass!” And my mom’s back.
I am awakened this morning by fishing boats “putt-putt-putt-“ing out to sea. It’s much better than yesterday, when I awake on a hard wood dining table (typical Vietnam bed) to roosters crowing from underneath the bed. The roosters chill overnight there because they are the family cash cow from cock fighting.
Today the plan is to hit the market because there is guaranteed awesome food nearby. We didn’t wake up with roosters under the bed and that is just fine by me.
