Long Day?

So many ways I could start this tonight haha. I had a loooooooooong day. I think maybe one of my longest since I passed out the night I landed here, two fans on high trying to cool me down after 28 hours of flying and 14 hours of waiting.

WARNING: Long. Grab a drink, go to the washroom or just pace yourself haha. If it's better for you, on my walk home I talk about most of this on video, in order to stay sane. Might be a bit easier for you. Thanks :)

I'll start off with jot notes...

-some girl told me she loves me
-kid on the back of a moto gave me a drive by punching
-walked non-stop for 8 hours, Downtown to Tan Son Nhut AF and back
-Vietnam People's Air Force Museum
-pull the muscle out in my knee
-got screamed at by random guy
-hit 2 markets, no military stuff
-walking 2 hours in rush hour and gridlock

Alright, overall I've had a good day, bad shit did happen though haha. Today the weather was suppose to have no rain so I went on a trek, turned out to be 8 hours haha. Had my fruit salad, didn't forget my bag this morning under the table, set off on my trek. Wait, I was trekking to two co-ords. There was a market I was told to check out as it might have military stuff. About an hour away from there was the Vietnam People's Air Force Museum which focused on the American war and the Cambodian war.

I trekked it, and trekked it good. I only have been that route once and it was a 15min drive from the airport at 10pm, so seeing it in the daylight was good. On my way to location #1, the market I stopped in a hobby shop with some kick ass models done up, like Huey's, an M42 Duster which was a 40mm Anti-aircraft gun but worked well against people, an Ontos which was a USMC small tracked vehicle with six 106mm recoilless rifles mounted on the outside and a crew of three. Good idea against bunkers and the streets of Hue, but some poor bastard has to go out and manually load all six rifles and the thing (Ontos is actually greek for "thing") is a bullet magnet. One funny thing I did see was a 173rd Airborne Brigade set of recon soldiers. I would have bought it but I suck at painting and they were 1:35 scale which is awkward as I only collect 1:72 and 1:18 scale stuff. I saw a few 60's era buildings and found another market on the way.

This market, Cho Hoa Hung was two level, the bottom being mostly food as most markets are, and the top being clothes. Alright, first weird encounter. I'm walking through the food section, and a man said "Hey". I kept walking as that's what my anti-vendor and anti-moto training has me do. "Hey!" kept walking "HEY!" kept walking... HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First off, who the fuck are you?! 2) If you're gunna fucking scream at me, do you think I'll stop and have a pleasant chat with you?! 3) I'm under stating the yell. He did it top of his lungs, 120% volume and the whole market stopped and looked at him like "What the fuck?" but I kept walking haha. Searched the place and nothing, but I did see a big rat. I don't think mice exist here, or if they do, they are eaten by the rats. Troops weren't kidding that they are the size of cats.

I humped it out and found a BP gas station. Guess they didn't go bankrupt haha. Also I walked past a shop and I saw the vendor had a "CANADA" shirt. I stopped and told him I liked his shirt, and then the language barrier dropped. He had a book shop and asked if I buy book. I tried to tell him I liked his Canada shirt and I'm from Canada. Then my usual tactic if they don't get that is "It's Okay. See you" haha. Getting to the main market I was headed to took me down back ally ways and everyone had a linen shop. Now I'll let you know, I scanned every shop looking for anything like Tiger Stripes, ERDL camo, Duck Hunter or Olive Green material. Found some rip offs (big surprise) but nothing close to authentic.

I made it to the market, Cho Tan Binh which was actually three stories tall. The main building looked like an old department store as it had broken down escalators. I guess they broke when democracy did. Kinda reminded me of that mall Owen Wilson is in, when he was in Behind Enemy Lines except this time a T-72 tank didn't roll though the wall and share some 125mm cannon action. It had some different shops, but this place is just clothes. I thought Ben Thanh Market was, but this has to be the biggest market in Saigon or at least that I've seen. Behind it is rows and rows of booths which is almost triple the size of the main building. It could honestly and easily have 500 vendors or more. It was to the point where I could only skim the rest of the place or I'd be there all damn day, and I had to hit the museum as it closes at 4pm. During all this searching I found the washroom. This washroom reminded me that I'm in a 2nd class country. It had running water which was good, but stank, and I'm not talking like a porta-potty, I'm talking... fuck, I don't know if I can describe it. I'll give it a try...

Take a small tiled room. Bring in an elephant and trade its water tub with a clear, liquid laxative. Leave it for 24 hours and not clean up. Then start a fire around this small tiled room, cranking the temperature as high as possible, but not enough to get rid of the smell in exchange for smoke. More or less bake the room and the bacteria that has made a kingdom in anything that isn't tile, as tile can be wiped. If you touched anything, your fucked. Guess why? The "sink" is a rain water collection bucket, the big blue kind you have catch the water from your roof. I had hand sanitizer. The icing on the cake is I walked out and got yelled at. I turned and looked and some girl said "cash" I blew it off but swiftly left. I found another washroom AND YOU HAVE TO PAY TO USE IT! The beautiful thing is, guess how much... TWO AMERICAN DOLLARS! $2USD! HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! For that much I could have pissed on the sidewalk, which I caught someone later on doing today but not only that, I could have gotten 3 ice cream cones at the convenience store for $2. I couldn't believe it! Fuck, listen bitch, you gotta pay me $2US to share my clear bill of health in your god forsaken urine soaked bacteria fucking hell hole! I could have said gold, but remember kids, stay hydrated! Doc's orders! Fuck it's more funny now that I think about it haha. That was just the guy's room too! The girls washroom would have been four times as worse!!! Fuck I love being creative :)

Alright, found nothing other than rip off copy shit. Oh, by now I pulled the muscle in my leg again. It was a great airsoft game at the start of Oct I think, but it's not fucking funny anymore. Heal damn you!!! It was stairs, the quick bending in and out, over and over, plus a long trek on top of that which think I was in my 3rd hour of quick walking, not diddy bopping down the block on the way to Masonville. I got maybe a half hour of walking, which is now 45 minutes with limping. Doesn't hurt if I keep it straight so I'm walking like Terry Fox (yea I know I'm going to hell) except I don't have a police cruiser clearing my path and keeping me safe. I'd fucking need it later haha. I'd normally say I humped it out, but now I'm dragging it out. I was going down the sidewalk and some guy was looking at the wall of a building. Then I heard his stream splashing and luckily I was out of range. I saw a toy store and quickly checked it out. Turns out kids here play with knock off transformers and power rangers. Girls play with dolls which I think is unfair. Discoloured Transformers and Power Rangers made in a Laotian workshop are good enough for girls to play with as well. Don't forget there's an Asian Female power ranger and the first generation of Transformers had girlfriends back on Cybertron! I'm pretty much at the museum, which is by Tan Son Nhut Airport, at one point the busiest airport in the world. You can see the architecture shift kinda, looks older and has that 60's vibe which we all love, admit it. At the street corner a moto driver yelled at me, as usual. I use street corners (that sounds bad, let me explain) to find out where the fuck I am and check my map haha. I shoot an azimuth with my compass and make sure I'm going the right way. The driver and I think an air force security guard come over and I tell them the Vietnamese People's AF Museum, and the guard points to a Vietnamese sign. Sixty metres away. The moto driver wanted to take me. I'm limping but I'm not dead or retarded. I can drag for 60m haha.

I get there and it was pretty good. Not a soul there which is a shame. I creep into the building as it looks like it's closed. Three girls hanging out and a guy reading a newspaper are the staff and the one girl turned on the lights for me. Now that's museum service ;) haha. Everything is in Vietnamese haha, but I checked out the pictures and got the just of it. They had models of certain aerial events that reflect favouring on the North, not mentioning Operation Rolling Thunder, Operation Bolo, Rolling Thunder II, The Christmas Bombings and countless other operations where the North had to beg Russia for more aircraft :) They did have some cool stuff there. I got pictures with a GAU-2 7.62mm Gatling Gun (I might have said GAU-8 in my video, which was a gun with an aircraft built around it and bigger than a VW Beetle haha). They also had an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. The AIM-9 was a 1st generation 190lbs heat seeking Air to Air Missile (AAM, SAM - surface to air missile) that would obviously seek heat, like the massive jet engine of an aircraft and is still used today by Canada, the US and a few NATO friends. They also had a K-13 (NATO calls it the AA-2 Atoll) missile which is Russian and reverse engineered from the AIM-9, a K-5 (AA-1 Alkali) missile which rode a beam from the aircraft to its target, instead of individually seeking the enemy aircraft and unguided rockets on display. They had info and pictures of the Cambodia vs. Vietnam conflict and I found it sad and hilarious that Communist Vietnam used US aircraft and weapons to fight Cambodia! They trained pilots to fly Huey helicopters, F-5 Tigers, A-37 Dragonflies and O-1 Bird Dog spotter aircraft. If the US donated it to South Vietnam, it was later used by Red Vietnam attacking Cambodia. Continuing the irony donated aircraft were originally American, given to the Republic of Vietnam's Air Force (RVAF) so it could have been possible that the US used those aircraft in Cambodia, given them to South Vietnam (SVN), the South taken over by the North and used again on Cambodia!!! They also had Mi-24 Hind Gunships and I took a picture

Alright, outside they had a UH-1D or H model Huey, an O-1 Bird Dog spotter, A-37 Dragonfly, F-5 Tiger, MIG-21, Mi-24 Hind and Mi-8 Hip out front. I should warn you I fell in love with US Aviation before I focused on Vietnam, so I know my shit equally well and go into full detail. I have a long video explaining all of these aircraft here... and RED DAWN is the damn movie I can't remember in the video hahaha. Well it's a long video (44 minutes, get comfy!) and a long upload. If I remember I'll post it here.

I left around 4:30pm and had to retrace my way home. I did find a mall and checked it out, found a MAXIMART which isn't a Mart, but a big grocery/department store and it was two levels. All the normal stuff you'd find in a grocery store but I was shocked to find North American chocolate bars for 24,000VND or $1.25CDN! I came to Vietnam for cheap shit god dammit! That's more than chocolate bars at home! Frack! There was a Lottera, KFC and Pizza Hut and could have stopped for dinner but I was determined to get home. It was getting late and rush hour-ish and after walking all day, getting tired, hurt, dirty and sweaty, I was getting crabby and I recorded some of this. What really pissed me off is when the streets are so crowded that the motos start driving on the sidewalk which is for me! Us! Pedestrians! I'm surprised I spelled that right! Traffic was so bad that motos were all over the road, all over the side walk and you had to crawl and weave all around these fuckers taking up space and not doing anything. I was so frustrated and with motos trying to run me over for over an hour on the sidewalk I was ready to kick anything in my way. In my video I mention that two things boost moral when I've been like this before either singing out loud makes me laugh, ice cream shuts me up and happy haha. I did both and made it back to home.

I honestly didn't feel like eating, I turned on the fans and the A/C and flaked out on my bed for 15 minutes, rested my leg and went to hit a Texas Bar and Grill down the street. I had the American pancakes there a few days before and though they could make a good burger. What's critical to know if you don't it already. If you wanna go to a restaurant, and when you get there and nobody is eating there, no locals, no tourists. Don't go. You might have a good time still, but other people may know more than you on this place. It's it's 6pm and all the other places have tons of people and the place you want to check out is dead, there might be a reason why! So I back tracked and found a place I haven't been to, an Italian place with air conditioning. Only two things on the menu interested me, Hamburger and Ravioli so I got the ravioli. It came really fast, fast enough to think it was pre cooked and under a heat lamp haha. For 100,000VND I got 5 and they weren't great. 50% of it was "tail", the non-stuffed parts haha. Little rubbery but for $5USD I'd get the same quality at home, but for 100,000VND I could have got a lot more. I ate it and paid and limped to the ice cream place, Swansons I found the other night. I emailed them and their actually based in Canada, Markham Ontario! And they have no Canadian locations. A Canadian company just bought the chain, which has over 300 locations in the US and World wide. It wasn't as great but I got the strawberry sundae thing and had like jam syrup in it which was too much. Let the ice cream do the talking and the sauces on backup. I came back, traded in my $200US emergency money and got $4 million Dong which will last me for now and after that it's all debt! So now you know why I can't just take off somewhere, I gotta ration it until I leave Dec 15th.

One thing that I regret is that with my ignore tactic with vendors and moto drivers, not this guy, but I think someone legitimately wanted to talk to me, maybe practice English or just see what's up, and sadly I clued in after I blew them off. Baz Lurman in his Sunscreen song suggests living in New York, but leave before it makes you hard. Being use to downtown London for years has already made me hard (not in that way...) and I think being here for almost a month has made me cold as ice (good song) to anyone who wants my attention and waiting to react. A moto driver grabbed my arm and I told him to "get your fucking hand off me!" I took some pictures and put my camera away, right hip, 2nd pocket, zipper shut, wrist band secured and the rubber around my camera gives me a hard time taking it out haha. I caught someone tailing me and I was ready. It might be dumb, I admit it, but if I'm robbed, I'm going down swinging even though I was taught to give them whatever, you can get more money and can't get a new "Me". Even if I get shanked in the gut and my shit stolen, I rather land a few hits and bleed out on the sidewalk than be victimized, comply and hand over my dignitary to some fuck that probably didn't pose a threat.

I'm here now and I used my two trademarked moves which I'll let you copy. If you think you're being tailed, look out to the track, lock your eyes on a car and follow it, as if you think it was your aunt that just drove by. Break contact after making sure you're not being tailed. If you are being tailed and wanna shake them off your six(ass) take a step to the side away from them. Stop. Check your pockets like you lost something. 99% of the time they keep walking on. I want to make this straight though. I'm not crazy and think people are chasing me hahahaha. I have no reason to be chased. I just live by the US Marine motto "Be nice to everyone you meet, but have a plan to kill them." I know it's odd, but so am I haha and I've done this since I was little (I'm talking like seven haha), thinking "If we were attacked, what would I use around me..?" The only thing is that with such a large volume of people, you can't lock on and pick a different attack for everyone. I was walking down an alley and thinking "Okay, this guy I'd swing my water bottle 'round the world' style and break his nose" and then another person walked by "alright same with him, and that guy, okay and that guy, and that one..." haha

I guess it's learned behaviour. I was that way at recess, always ready to get jumped and what my next move would be after, then what? Okay if I do this what will happen? What if I do that. It gets to the point where I'm calculating things that won't happen, or slim chance they will happen. That's probably where I picked it up. I had to in order to survive school, now I'm on the streets in public and I'm ready to get jumped again. Kinda cool that I'm learning stuff about myself being 14,000km away from everything I've ever known.

Baz Lurman suggests living in California once, but before it makes you soft. I think the closest thing here is Nha Trang and sadly I can't do it and survive to Dec 15th. I'm stuck in a hard city and getting harder by the day. My face is scarred with years of being hard and now it's my relaxed look and people ask if I'm alright. I could be doing good but I got the hard look going, and yet when I'm walking alone at 4:30am at home I put on my ultimate hard look, the "I'm going to fuck you up" look. I'm working on it though. Smiling at people is less scary, for when I want to be less scary. Like when the sun is out, at 2pm and all secure, no morons, junkies, drunk people or people waiting for my money. There's classes to prepare you for threats. Are there classes on how to disarm your security system? haha. I know I have to lighten up and that's a good step. I keep it real with some and I'm not like this, also doesn't help that I'm quiet, everyone thinking "what's on his mind?" On my own my guard is up, ready and waiting for threats and I think that transfers over to other aspects in life and I can't lower my guard in certain places, with certain people, etc. Just unsure how to unlearn. Hm...