Small Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City

It is the night before I am to leave the city, and the sun has just set on a peaceful day. The morning saw me standing near the river practicing yoga and enjoying the quiet, as the celebration of the Tet Holiday is still fresh in peoples' minds and hearts. The roads are still mostly clear, and the air has not yet assumed its unhealthful state.

The river I am at is not the main Saigon River, but a smaller tributary crossed by Cau Calmette, the Calmette Bridge. It is only a few blocks from my hostel, and a few more from Ben Thanh Market. The beds are so hard here, and it is a clear thought that strikes me a few days ago that my yoga practice needs to be reassumed—for the sake of a stiff neck and back. Morning and nights both see me at the river practicing. My first attempt is at night, and though the place is dark and there are graffiti on the bridge in various places, I am moved by a sense of calm and peace. The stairs down have a bathroom smell, but that does not follow me and is far enough from where I practice. A man is passed out nearby... and yet it does not concern me very much. I feel safe in Vietnam, and this place is no exception.

The next morning sees me in the same spot, along with some other morning people exercising. By chance, my chosen spot faces the rising sun, and this brings me joy as the modified pose I am doing, as the main practice to strengthen my neck and back, is a forward fold sequence called a Sun Salutation. I practice steadily, and it brings me joy. A few days later, the thought comes to me that the graffiti on the bridge are almost entirely in English, and thus the people doing this artform are not local.

Back at my hostel, I talk with a man I have bought some tea tree oil for. He is a painter, he says, and he cut his arm at the elbow during a fall. His friend hoists him up to reach a ledge for work. After talking with him for a time, we are friends, and I ask him over the course of several days about his cut and the infection. He is still thinking of going to the hospital for it. Another friend gives him antibiotics and he seems to have turned a corner. He is concerned for his health.

Later, he shows me some of his paint cans and wonders whether he will be stopped bringing paint across the border to Cambodia. They are cans of spray paint. Before he leaves, he gives me a sticker that is of his name, as a tag that he has been leaving in spots in the city. The next time I come to the bridge, I notice some of his stickers, and wonder just what kind of painting this fellow has been up to, and whether his friend who has a business here in Vietnam is simply selling street drugs and doing tagging. That is what this fellow tells me, that he doesn't seem to be doing much of a business other than selling marijuana. I still don't have a clear idea of what kind of painting this fellow does. Staying at one of the cheapest hostels in a city has many benefits, but the people one meets are a mixed bag.

A few days earlier, after the start of Tet, I am walking back for the night. It is late. I wander through the flower gardens and enjoy the scenery. I walk past the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts and reach the far corner. There are two older women crouching, and one has a needle in her arm with the telltale ruby color of blood mixing in the syringe. It surprises me and leaves an impression of misery that is difficult to shake. It is only a few blocks from where I stay, and each day walking past this spot I am reminded of the scene of madness. It is the closest I have been to people who are taking drugs intravenously, and it saddens me.

One evening a few days later, I am walking along the bridge to return home after my yoga practice. The thought comes of a larger story. I am walking in a city that some fifty years ago my father worked very hard to avoid visiting. He is a young medical doctor and has signed up for the army in the USA after his medical training. It is a compromise meant to bypass the draft procedure and in exchange he will practice medicine while in uniform. He has a family with a wife and two small children, and we four are sent to an army base in South Carolina from California. I am young enough that I have no memories from this period of time, but the stories I am told are harrowing. These range from a typical military mishap, wherein someone with the same name has done something and my father gets the blame on his first day reporting for duty; he could hardly be expected to make things right.

During his time practicing on base, there is a more serious issue, where odd medical practice costs several recruits their lives. My father feels a duty to report how procedures need to be changed for the care of the people here. Notwithstanding, the military does not take a liking to my father, both for this and for religious reasons.

A request to leave the base for an extended period to celebrate the Passover holiday is only granted after a congressional inquiry he opens up. The kind of request to leave base for religious practice is typically only a formality. The complexity my father encounters indicates a strong bias against him.

Eventually he is given orders to be stationed in Vietnam. He opens a second congressional inquiry into his case, and ends up instead at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC for medical testing that persists for more than a month. It is a de facto confinement that results finally in an honorable discharge. The results could have been very different. As I walk along the bridge, I wonder at this strange fate, that has allowed him so many decades ago to slip through the machinery that sought to bring him here. And instead has allowed me to come to a country that is so welcoming.

It is a different place now. For the past week I have had a standing date to visit with a friend. We first meet a few months earlier at a museum where she works. She is a writer and we correspond a little online. On my return we head for some of cultural events. Three nights ago we visit a hundred-years-old pagoda just off of what is now called Dien Bien Phu Boulevard. There are red lamps strung over a large courtyard that has a few ponds over which one can stand, before entering the temple structure itself. One has turtles, and the other has very large catfish. There is a statue at the very front as well, and as we start to pay our respects, thoughts of family and of parents come over me strongly. I am surprised, that this religion which values ancestors seems to inspire thoughts of ancestors, but perhaps that is a sign I am practicing appropriately. The experience adds to the presence of the night. The statues and carvings inside are majestic, and we pay for oil that is poured in a ritual to grant us good luck. We leave with a red slip of paper each in a small red folded envelope that has four characters in Chinese offering good luck and happiness for the New Year. Neither my friend nor the hostel owner, whom I later give this token of luck to, can read the Chinese, but all are certain that it refers to happiness and good luck.

Tomorrow I will head to the Mekong Delta region and to a city called Can Tho. There is a top-ranking university there and I will spend a few hours introducing myself to some of the people who work on sustainability there. If all goes well I will have a good experience, and perhaps a job offer. My work permit and visa are still valid, and thus there is less to prevent an interested university from hiring me. My efforts in Indonesia were stalled in this manner, and I am more hopeful in Vietnam.

Correspondence yesterday with a program in Prague has perhaps helped me secure something for the summer, but it will be good news if I can find something for this year or for the coming Fall semester. Tonight I will head again to the bridge to practice yoga, despite the shadows and graffiti. The sliver of moon is growing, and perhaps it will still be in the sky when I arrive. The New Year corresponds with a New Moon as well.