Ho Chi Minh makes you clever
Dumb Executive Summary
Dumb. Easy to confuse with words. Cannot Brain today. Got the dumb.
Viet speak like I. Lady massa bumbum? Marihuana? Motobike? –No? No understand. Not no. Not know. But nod. Understand is bad for brain. Make brain hum. I speak like Viet. Good for nationunderstandment. Bad for brain. Good.
Always hum and Motorbike. Thousand. Run over you. Almost. Million hum next to Vietnamman drink coffee and tea on street. With table. Chair. Brain hum like hum. Thousand hum.
Always booze. Smoke. Always booze and smoke. Viet booze. Cum sei Cum yaei. Charly say means: You not run you not go away. Farther. Glass empty glass full. Until evening. Expats always booze. Until morning. Brain hum because poisonous poison in trash smoke booze. Mmmh trash.
Oa! Much. Much oa. Always much lookie. Listen. Thousand. Always Oa. House big. Statue uncle Ho. Tree green. Ho good. Good Ho. Oa. Always much Oa. Make Oa in brain. Oa brain!
Sleepy not. Warm. Hot. Death. Night wake for sweat. Booze sometimes. Day wake for Oa. Sweat. Drag. Death. Brain burn better. Wither. Burn. Crackle when burn.
Death brain.
Clever Long Version
I’ve rarely felt as stupid as I do in this city. Stefan would say “City, no?” to this. That’s because your vocabulary shrinks along with your brain. Leading scientists claim that the stupidity rampant in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) can be accounted for by a hole in the cleverness stratosphere of the world. Others believe in an epidemic that might possibly spread to the entire world. Some symptoms are dwindling vocabulary, slowed down reactions, brain pain and general inability to think. Still I can assure you who is now afraid for his own clever brain: Extensive field research has found five simple reasons for HCMC-stupidity that can be rationally understood by clever people.
Scooters are as typical for HCMC as are owl for Athens. The first local we ever spoke to proudly announced that the city had 11 million inhabitants and 6 million motorbikes. Which you can see and hear all the time. The inhabitants of this humongous city rejoice in watching newly arrived folk trying to cross a street. For this is all but impossible following a western mode of thinking. There are hardly any traffic lights, and if you happen to find one for pedestrians, green light does not mean there won’t be hundreds of scooters driving all around you in the next moment. You get used to not affording them more attention than strictly necessery and just float through the running traffic. Experienced Vietnamese often sit comfortably on camping chairs in the middle of a five-lane street with some tea or coffee, enjoying the show. You also get used to the noise. Still it’s slowly but surely gnawing on your nerves and your brain.
The special English spoken here is a classic in many Asian countries. It’s like a proper language. A mixture from Asian languages, English and Toki Pona. In contrast to most places we have been visiting in recent times, the inhabitants of HCMC tend to speak at least this tangle of languages almost fluently. So in order to be understood you have to adapt vocabulary and grammar to baby talk level. In the medium term, this language mutilation does affect the language centre in the brain and thus even your mother tongue. DaDa is next.
At least we could make ourselves understood with the locals from time to time. Who needs elaborate language when you got hands, feet, and beer? Beer – the fast track to understanding among nations. All people love beer. Many people are even friendly, beckon you over, and invite your for one or more bottles. In Vietnam, people are even more than friendly and never let you go again once you agree to a drink. Leaving the round early is not only regarded an insult, it also runs counter to the number one among Vietnamese drinking rules: com sai com yeai (excuse the terrible orthography). The literal translation was given to us in Vietlish as “you not run, you not go away”, but it seems to mean little more than “Don’t go away when you’re drinking”. Add to this delicious Vietnamese cigarettes until smoke comes from your ears.
When you have endured this ritual and everybody is staggering to their scooters, the fun ain’t over for us white people by far. Oh no! Because now the funny expat boozing starts. HCMC is filled with English teachers from western countries – mostly Irish – and bars for this audience. Nights and mörnings we spent in the T&R (don’t ask, we don’t know what it stands for), probably the coolest expat bar in the world. If we have learnt one thing only it must be that the Irish take even worse to trying to leave them alone with their beer, and that they are much more persistent drinkers than the Vietnamese.
Try coming home at 10 a.m. in South Vietnam and attempting to sleep. For the first few hours the buzz helps forgetting about the world around you. Yet at noon at the latest you will be awakened by brooding heat. At 40°C beds become bathtubs and relaxing sleep becomes tormeting wake. So you push out of bed in late afternoon when all the sights are closed already and drag through the suffocating hot wetness waiting outside. Meter by meter you get emaciated in the sun. You can hardly drink enough water to flush out last night’s hangover and now this loathsome sun is coming back to dry out the sponge we call brain until it finally crumbles to dust.
Still every excursion into this suffocating, noisy, and insupportably hot world outside is worth it in the end. Even when you start out at random, again and again you experience something exciting, funny, or shocking. The city is huge and full of little and big things waiting to be explored. Parks, towers, statues, millions of red flags, people, and animals. Just as well that we have learned the best and only true sound for wondering, the “Oa”. Because in this city, many times a day you will be wondering so much it calls for appropriate appreciation. Sensory overload at its best is the thing to get this summer in HCMC. Your dumbed-down, dried-up brain is looking forward already: Finally there are thousands of impressions streaming upon it and finishing it off.
Holiday for the brain. Yes, with a shut down brain life is much better in this city. So you see, the acute stupidity of our recent publications is only due to the dumbing-down spirit of HCMC. I’m so glad we’re just at this moment leaving this wonderful hell-hole and will soon be able to present to you more sophisticated supercleverness pressed in articles like this. To you, too, I can only recommend: Give your smoking skull a break, read something more modest than this grandiloquent sagesex all the time, booze until the morning with cheap liquor and reboot your brain! It will be grateful.
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