feeling American

Our last day in Kuala Lumpur was pretty relaxed - an excessively long trip to Borders, the first English bookstore we've found in Southeast Asia; a Papa John's pizza, another first for this region of the world; and visits to both Chinatown and Little India.

The Chinatown/Little India trip comprised two noteworthy and altogether different incidents.

1. After walking in circles for over an hour, Andy and I resorted to hopping a cab and instructing the driver to take us to Little India. On the way, we passed a street corner and Andy made a sudden noise of surprise. There, on the corner, was the German woman who climbed Mount Kinabalu with us two weeks ago! The situation was crazy - from the island of Borneo to a street corner in a big city, we had somehow reunited with this woman. Andy rolled down the window and tried to get her attention. I stuck my head out and yelled, "WE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN WITH YOU!" But she must have thought we were simply harrassing her... And in refusing to turn she missed the coincidence of a lifetime.
2. We hadn't walked through Little India for more than five minutes when we passed a TV with a few passerby watching. I didn't even look at it, as I was distracted by the heaps of touristy merchandise, but Andy suddenly told me we had to go. He explained what was showing on the TV: a video of young Arab men with explosives around their waists, blowing up American tanks. Suicide bombers. It was hard for me to fathom that people were simply stopping to watch, and no one was speaking out against it as being strange or inappropriate. It made me feel pretty sick, and I felt perhaps my most American yet as we walked quickly and silently to the metro.

Our trip to Vietnam began with an adventure, as we just barely managed to catch our plane. Checking in, going through customs, and passing security took a lapsed 10 minutes, and yet we were among the last to board the plane. Why? Our taxi driver was absolutely ridiculous. He drove below the speed limit - something I have never seen from taxi drivers in Southeast Asia, or maybe even America - so it took over an hour to reach the airport. Then, after I worriedly asked him "how much longer?" he decided to stop for gas... even though his tank was half full. Andy and I were on the verge of a panic attack, but it all ended well, as I am writing this from Ben Tre, a small city (village?) in the Mekong Delta.

Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as the locals continue to call it, is surprisingly well-kept, with wide shady boulevards and French colonial-style architecture (and baguettes! guess that's the one bonus to having French colonists). The cost of living is again incredibly low - think $15 for a fairly nice hotel, $2 for a restaurant meal, $0.50 for a bottle of beer - and the food is some of the best we've had in Asia. (Andy already gave it the "best food" award but I'm holding out for Cambodia before I decide.)

So what's the big news from Vietnam?

1. Last night we went out to get street food at a cafe near the main square in town. We sat by a Vietnamese and a Burmese (don't know how to turn Myanmar into an adjective?) man, who complimented our choice of food - spring rolls, soup, beef noodles - and asked where we were from. The Vietnamese man was very excited that we were from the States, because he lived in New Jersey from 1972 until recently, teaching at Princeton. Needless to say his English was some of the best we've encountered so far.
2. This story seems too big for the two dimensional space of words in a blog, but I feel like it's essential to share. After a long deliberation, we visited the War Remnants Museum yesterday. As always in war, the winners tell the story; even moreso in a Communist country recounting their own victory. The exhibits included photos of American soldiers shooting civilians and torturing "Vietnamese patriots," the tiger cages that were used to hold the soldiers, and even a display of deformed pickled fetuses that had been twisted by chemical destruction. The captions were equally painful: "Even women and babies are targets of U.S. American Division mopping up operations" and "The father of this little girl is arrested by GIs. She implores them: 'Don't kill my father'. I've always considered war to be brutal and horrifying for both sides, and am equally likely to think of a fatherless Vietnamese as American child when I consider the casualties. Here, I could not stop thinking about the young men I know who went to Iraq to fight - wonderful people, who may not have even understood or supported the war. In the end, I skipped the last room of exhibits because I was crying behind my sunglasses and my throat was burning with vomit. For once I understood why we were the only Americans there.