Escape Escapades

Recently, I had the privilege of being part of Vietnam's music history. Through my house mate Daniel's connections, myself, Alex, Daniel and his girlfriend Suong, managed to obtain tickets to the first ever electronic music festival in Vietnam - "Escape".

It was an interesting evening.  Considering it was the first ever dance festival held in the country, the organisers pulled it off pretty well.  It was held at on Diamond Island at a complex of three luxury apartment towers.  Despite running out of food and alcohol early in the evening, torrential downpours and the police arriving at midnight and shutting everything down, it was quite a fun night.  The best part was the slamming pool party with a DJ booth on the edge, complete with a foam machine.

Above the pool was a large inflatable jellyfish suspended on a cable which was eventually pulled down by the raging pool party participants and subsequently swarmed by everyone... I managed to get underneath it!

The pool party was some of the best fun I have had in a long time; I am super happy I got to partake in it.

In other news, yesterday I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.  I went with Daniel and another guy, Ed.  Ed and I were having the same thing done while Daniel was having his crowns seen to.
Before I left Australia, I tried to get in to see a hygienist and get a cleaning, however every clinic insisted I had to see the dentist before seeing the hygienist (despite me telling them I had seen a dentist only a few days prior)... one of them even said I had to see the dentist first BY LAW......what a joke.

The prices quoted ranged from $250-350 which I scoffed at and politely declined.

Now compare that to Saigon, where I walk into a large, busy, modern dental clinic; write down my name, phone number and birth date, sit down for 5 minutes, get called in for a quick inspection, wait 10 more minutes and get called in for the cleaning.  No appointment.

Oh.... and it cost $25.

The thing about the cost though, is even that price was seemingly "white man prices".  Ed's clean only cost him $17.50 (Ed is an American Vietnamese) and another German guy we met in the waiting room, having the same thing done as well, paid $20.  Even at these prices, we were still probably getting slightly ripped off compared to the normal rates.

I'm not complaining.

Mechanised Mayhem

It all started with the trousers shop.  "Let's go to the trousers shop" he said, "it'll be fun" he said.
En route to said trousers shop, following Alex on my "trusty" scooter steed, I rounded a corner and had to brake suddenly to avoid being impaled by a moto-cart driver transporting long lengths of metallic pipe.  It was at this time that my scooter decided that enough is enough and conked out dead, mid road.
No matter how I tried, the darn thing was dead and just wouldn't start, so I was left with the only option; to push the stupid thing all the way back home.  Luckily it wasn't very far.

I called Chi at the cafe where I rented the scooter from and explained the situation.  She agreed to send someone out to look at it and see what the problem was.
I waited in the doorway for what seemed to be about an hour until the "mechanic" arrived on a large white scooter.  He told me that we were going to swap scooters and he would take mine back to the cafe to look at it properly.  Good luck with that I thought.
He then proceeded to lift the scooter up by the back end and bang it on the ground over and over again quite hard, followed by slapping his hand over the open fuel hatch repeatedly.  He then started the scooter and rode off on it.  I guess that guy knows his scooters.

I eventually get my scooter back and it is in working order, no explanation was given as to what the problem was though.  Now for the epic journey.
Myself, Alex and his Vietnamese friend Nhat had planned to ride the 108kms to the coastal town of Vung Tau, but the recent events surrounding my scooter did not fill me with confidence.

To start the journey off on a wonderful note, I only had one hour sleep before leaving the next morning due to having a coffee too late in the evening, so I was amazingly tired.  Then we had to alter our route because of semi urgent petrol requirements, meaning it would take longer to ride down there, but also meaning that the traffic would be absolutely insane.  I had never seen anything like it.  Sections of jam packed road works, gravel, sand, debris, erratic and seemingly stupid scooter drivers.  Huge trucks and lorries would lumber out from side streets and driveways and simply barge into the stream of traffic without hesitation, blocking the swarming throng of scooters in their tracks.  As soon as the back of the truck had pulled out far enough, the scooter pack adapted like water and started flowing through the gap.  What an experience.

Upon arriving in Vung Tau and entering the lobby of our hotel, the woman who owned the place gasped in shock when she saw how filthy I was.  My face was covered in smears or grey and black soot; my white shorts were grey and my arms and legs were blanketed in grime too.  Hooray for traffic pollution!

After settling in, we went to one of the beaches to check it out.  We searched for a spot to sit among the thousands of other people there and went for the ocean.  Being the only two white people on the beach, we drew the attention of everyone around us.  From the shore, all the way out to chest height, people were staring at us; it was quite an odd sensation.

You can see Jesus on the hill to the left.

After the beach, we rode off to visit the giant statue of Jesus on top of a hill, a la Rio.  We had to climb up a lot of stairs to get to Jesus and they were pretty steep.

When we finally got up there, we climbed inside Jesus from his behind and all the way up onto his arms.  It was a pretty spectacular view and well worth the effort.

Click to enlarge!

On the way back down, it seemed our timing in climbing up was pretty good as the internal stairs were packed full of people waiting and it was a tight squeeze trying to get back down.

Dinner!

The next morning we rode to where we thought a market would be, parked our scooters and walked.  The entire place was empty apart from some half erected amusement rides and a lone shop selling giant carved wooden furniture.

Bring me Ned Stark's head.

On the way back to our scooters, Nhat suddenly mentions, "Oh I know why this place is closed... it is because of H1N1 virus".

Swine flu, wonderful.

Where the market was...

There being not much else to see in Vung Tau, we returned to the hotel to get our belongings ready for the arduous return trip.  This time though, we were taking a different route and using a ferry to cross the river; it was pretty interesting riding with a swarm of scooters on to a ferry.

The rest of the ride home was pretty straight forward.  We stopped at a plantation forest for some rest in hammocks and iced coffee, but the rest is history.

Flaunting Food

Recently I was unfortunate enough to have a pretty stress filled day.

Yuko had asked me to go to Bui Vien with her so she could rent a scooter and if I could ride it home with her on the back.  Two others came with us as they had the same plan.  We got a taxi to our destination and decided on breakfast before anything else as we were pretty famished.
At the scooter rental place, Chi's Cafe, Yuko was rented a semi-manual scooter; it had gears, but no clutch.  I had never ridden such a bike before and now I had to do it for the first time with a passenger and in Saigon traffic.  Not to worry, how hard could it be.
When I first accelerated, the bike lurched forwards suddenly and violently.  My gear changes were clunky and choppy but after a short while I kind of got the hang of it.  We arrived back home without incident and all seemed well with the world until I realised I did not have my keys with me.  We checked the house, I broke into my room, I called the place where we had breakfasted, checked the ground where we caught the taxi; nothing.
The only remaining possibility was that I left my keys in the taxi that took us that morning.  Think about that for a moment; leaving your keys in a taxi, in Saigon.  You would be forgiven for thinking it would be a lost cause and to just forget about getting them back, period.  Not so!
For some reason, I took note of the taxi drivers name card on the way into town that morning.  It was "Dang".  Yuko and I went back to the taxi rank where we caught our cab from and tried asking some of the other drivers about Dang.  One of them seemed to know his name and called over the lady who monitors all the taxi departure times and numbers down in her little book.
She pinpointed the time that we caught our taxi and we then conveyed to her with body language that I left my keys in the taxi.  She seemed to understand and indicated for us to wait there and that the taxi would be back soon.  A wave of relief came over me as I realised that I might get my house keys and scooter key back by some amazing chance.  If we had not caught the taxi from a proper taxi rank, I think all would have been lost.
Yuko went back to check the house again, in case I had missed something when I looked previously; I remained and waited for Mr.Dang to return.  While I was waiting, a group of four police arrived and setup a checkpoint about 20 metres away from me and began stopping people and "fining" them (read: taking bribes) for various road rule infractions.
Out the corner of my eye I noticed that the two other people we went with to hire the scooters were slowly rolling out into the street to start practising on their scooter.  I ran over to them waving my arms to get their attention and warn them that the police were there fining people.

This may have been a bad move.

I returned to my waiting position and stood around.  A short while later I notice one of the police riding slowly towards me on his motorcycle.  He stops directly in front of me, gets off the bike, salutes me and removes his helmet.  For some strange and cringe worthy reason, I thought he was being friendly to a foreigner so I saluted back.
He walks up to me and puts his face right in mine, about 15cm away and starts carrying on in Vietnamese.  I do not understand a thing he is saying but he kept motioning towards his fellow police men and waving his hands in a "no" fashion.  I did not know what to do, he just kept doing the same thing over and over, so I simply said "OK". This seemed to do the trick, as he turned, got on his bike and rode back to the checkpoint.
I am guessing that maybe he saw me warning the other two people about their presence and was not happy about it.  Pretty stressful and slightly intimidating situation really.  The taxi drivers and the taxi monitoring lady were all laughing at me after he left.
So eventually the taxi returned and I got my keys back.  Hurrah! A happy ending to a stressful day.

Since I have no photos of anything I have mentioned so far, here is some of the food I have been enjoying recently.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!