Snipets of Saigon

Saigon, Vietnam. The heavy and stressful traffic can distract from the sometimes charming streets and buildings (not always though!). If only we could reduce the traffic on the roads, the whole town would take on a different perspective. Trouble is, when your avoiding potholes and monster trucks, it's hard to take in the pastel colours and tree lined avenues.

Here's my old street. For those local in Saigon the house is in the shadow of Pham Viet Chanh apartments, in Binh Thanh district. Most residential areas are behind the shop fronted streets in 'hems', losely translated as 'alley'. The house in the background represents a typical Vietnamese abode....they are narrow and often 4 or more stories high. Most have a roof terrace. There is never a garden. Even the new residential developments of District 7, built completely in open spaces, omit any kind of garden attached to the house.

This is a shot of one of those 'shop fronted' streets. Quite a boring shot actually, but it's still pretty typical of Saigon. Along here you'll find the ususal; internet cafes, lots of eateries including street vendors, small shops, tailors, motorbike repairs and mobile phone shops.

Here is one of my favourite shots of Vietnam. It's taken from my balcony, and it's definitely the best sunset I've ever seen in Ho Chi Minh City. This DOESN'T happen every night....

You can see the sprawl of corrugated iron roofing, and the tall ariels that stretch into the sky desperately fighting for a signal. They are all attached to long pieces of bamboo,the indestructible wood, assured to survive the strongest of thunderstorms during the rainy season.

Getaway

If you think that Vietnam is all about dusty highways and motorbike jammed streets, think again! Phu Quoc is only $60 return flight from HCMC, flying time is less than one hour. The island is developing quickly, but its not surprising when you get views like this.

You can rent a bungalow on the beach from around $30 a night, up to maybe $100 depending on where you stay. You could also travel away from the main beach to find a quiet corner of the island for yourself and for much less. I once stayed somewhere remote which was $18 a night but the generator was off until about 6pm everyday!

Then of course there's Nha Trang. Nha Trang is do-able in a weekend from HCMC. Most city dwellers choose the nearer Mui Ne as a weekend getaway, but how about this - take the overnight train on Friday night to Nha Trang. Journey time is about 9/10 hours depending on which service you take, so leaving around 9 or 10pm will you get you in about 6 or 7am. Get a soft sleeper bed from about $7-$12 depending on top, middle or bottom bunk, the bottom one being the most expensive. Compartments are shared with 6 people. This gives you two very full days to relax, and you return on the overnight train on sunday evening, arriving in time to nip home for a shower and some breakfast. OK, maybe your a little tired on Monday, but it's worth it for two days of this, isn't it?

The Blogosphere

I had no idea. The blogosphere is huge. I was reading this page today and on technorati and according to 'the Pew Internet study about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. According to Technorati data, there are about 75,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 1.2 million posts daily, or about 50,000 blog updates an hour.'

Wow. So how do you find all these blogs? There are so many sites out there that catalog blogs or have blog directories. Some of these are Technorati, Blog Explosion, Blog Catalog and Ex-pat Blog. You can also try the home page of the site I use to power this blog, Blogger. Here you can endlessly scan through the blogs.

Anyway, to cut it short, I have another VN blog to mention, also a food blog but based in Hanoi. It's called Sticky Rice. Excellent stuff! I am working on a list of links to VN blogs, to be put up soon.

C'etait Magnifique!

After our fantastic draws against the HCM People's Committee and then the Saigon Saints, the Raiders are revelling this morning in our victory over Olympique Saigon, yet more evidence that the Raiders have truely turned the courner. As with the Saints, Raiders had not beaten the French expat team for roughly two years. The game ended 4-3, and with only 2 goal scorers. we managed to put together that strong performance and victory even though we have 10 regulars either abroad or injured. Brilliant. I am writing the match report this week and it should be up on the Raiders website sometime today.

Noodlepie

I must say thanks to Noodle Pie. The popular food blog gave me a mention and has directed a lot of people to my site. People are actually visiting my site! So hello, whoever you are, I hope you enjoy reading, and please bear in mind that this is still a work in progress both content and design wise. Keep coming back and you'll see the improvements!
Read on......

Tales of a Tsunami : Part One

(This map is from The World Atlas)

On Boxing Day, 2004, I found myself tied up in the strangest event I think I’ve ever experienced. My family was on a two week package from England which started off in Bangkok and then spent most of the time traveling between the islands and beaches in the south of Thailand. The tour was led by a likeable young Thai girl called ‘Kathy’ for those uninitiated with long Thai names. I managed to tag along with the holiday from the beginning, having greeted Mum, Dad and little sis Sophie off the plane. Kathy became a bit concerned by week one; I was following the company’s itinerary to the tee but for a quarter of the price. No one noticed, or cared. Here we are a few days before Christmas on Koh Hai, near Trang.

That day I had gone for a morning walk along the beach on Koh Lanta, which is in the Andaman Sea off the West Coast of Thailand. After that, I stopped by at the next resort where my family was staying. Remember, this was Boxing Day; a LOT of people were probably still comatose from Christmas celebrations at around 9.45. Koh Lanta is in the vicinity of Koh Phi Phi and Phuket, as the screenshot from Google Earth shows. You can see Lanta at the bottom right, Phi Phi to the West and further afield is Phuket.

It seemed that there was a small commotion developing on the beach. We wondered down to the front, as did all the others, locals and tourists alike. The sea looked unusually violent; it was bubbling and frothing, and undulating erratically. I looked to my right and walked along the front of some beachfront cabins. The stream that previously flowed harmless through the sand and into the sea had turned into something much larger, and I looked on in disbelief as I saw wooden tables and chairs being carried out to sea in its now powerful current. We stood for a few minutes more observing all this, and then I decided to turn back home. As the stream was now too dangerous to cross I had to walk out the back of my parents resort, and back down to the seafront and my bungalow. As I reached the beginning of the path that led back to where I was staying I became aware of people passing me, not slowly either. People were rushing away from the beach. I must have just missed the first wave as I walked around the back of the hotels, because when I got back to the tree lined frontage of the beach the thatched building where I’d eaten my breakfast was collapsed.

I had no conception of what had happened. There was debris and collapsed buildings all around. I walked over to a group of lads I knew from the resort and they told me what happened. As I was talking to a Geordie guy, another commotion rose and you could hear cries along the lines of ‘There’s another one coming’…….meaning another wave. We must have been 25 meters from the shore but you could see it coming. I wasn’t a huge crashing wave that shattered into the beach like the pictures you saw from Phuket, it was more like that wave that comes in too far and you have to pick up your towels and stuff to move back – except this one came in 150-200 meters too far. Considering the level of the sea and the distance and height the water had gained, it was still frighteningly powerful. By the time of this second wave most people had left the beach, but those remaining including myself managed to avoid it by jogging back and keeping an eye on the approaching water; it was never a life threatening situation. About 5 minutes later a third and smaller wave washed ashore.

The immediate reaction was bemusement. There were about 10-15 guys remaining in my area of the beach, not including the local people (although most of those had fled too). We wondered onto the beach and started chatting to 3 English guys who were puffing away on a huge spliff without a care in the world. As we sat there speculating on what had happened a solitary wave with a small crest made its way across the bay. It was singularly the strangest thing I’ve ever seen as it was totally perpendicular to the shore. If you've ever seen a wave going completely sideways like that, please let me know. We tried to find a TV, no luck – all the power was out. I had no idea where everybody had gone, including my family. We strolled along the beach and in amongst the ruins of various bungalows, restaurants and other buildings that were too close to the sea. We ended up crawling under a bamboo roof that had fallen down in order to get to a refridgerator from which we took all the ice cream before it melted, and handed it round.

After maybe an hour, a café up the road began showing BBC World, the international news channel. Everybody was stunned as the news came in. We sat and watched the information scrolling across the screen: Earthquake in Indonesia…….”Earthquake, bloody hell!”……..largest in living memory “Jesus!”………….up to 8.8 on the richter scale……”This is mad!”. Then the news started coming in from the locale…..Dead and missing in Phuket………Koh Phi Phi hit badly………. All that was enough to send shivers down your spine; they were talking about hundreds dead on Koh Phi Phi and we could see the island from where we were sat. We had known people on the morning boat going over there. All the local Thais had friends or relatives working over there. It was a horrible gut feeling, all we could do was sit and watch the Television. I watched for maybe an hour, not able to look away. Time to find the family. I rented a motorbike from the café and started to drive around the island. It was a needle in a haystack search but just as I was about to give up and go back I spotted Kathy on the side of the road. She pointed me in the direction of the group which was up a dirt track camped out with lots of other tourists. I got there and my family was hugely relieved having no idea of what had happened to me.

When the waves had struck the vast majority of people had turned and fled to higher ground. People were unwilling to come back down to sea level. The news was still very sketchy so it was understandable. My family’s group were moved to a place way inland - shared with a load of elephants, as it was the starting point for elephant treks through the jungle. A few members of the group had gotten separated in the panic and were some distance away. It took Kathy and myself an hour or so to find them, going up and down different hillside tracks on our motorbikes. Some of the group were very shaken, others very calm. The rumors that were floating around almost killed me. One women said knowledgably “There’s another coming, about 80m high”…… this was not the best time to laugh in someone’s face, but I exchanged glances with my Dad when she dropped that one. I know we were both imagining an 80 meter wave in our heads. “You’re gonna need to climb a little higher love”. Some refused to leave the elephant house and ended up lying in a rotten field being eaten alive for the night. My crew came back down to the town and slept in a bar with a few others. I was planning on sleeping back in my bungalow by the beach, but when I got down there I realized there was no way I could…it was ghostly awful down at the beach, very chilling.

I only took two pictures all day. I started to shoot down at the beach but then I saw the Thai people rooting through what they had left and I put the camera away. Here is the second and only other picture I took that day.

Coming Soon

Expect to see blogs up soon on:

Teaching English in Saigon

A day in the life of the Saigon Raiders

and

Tales of a Tsunami

Football Crazy! (Not the naff Nokia kind)

The Raiders had a great weekend. We drew 1-1 with the Saints, our rival European based ex-pat team in Saigon. The record was this: we had not beaten or even drawn with Saints for two years. Raiders have had a rocky time of it but fortunes are definitely turning around, as proved by our last two games. The league will start in September with at least 6 foriegn based teams participating.

On other football; the World Cup in HCMC brings with it a few tales. First, the only English commentary avaliable is from Super Sport, an excellent feed from South Africa. However, there is a delay of a few seconds between this channel and HTV, the Vietnamese state owned channel covering the same matches, hence I can hear the ooo's, ahhhh's and downrights waaaa's of any goalmouth action before it happens. This audio warning comes from the congregation of local guys who crowd into the little roadside coffeeshop just 2 minutes from my house. They are certinaly loyal, be it Brazil, England or lowly Angola, they give the same number of decibels to a goal. And yes, they are out there until the last ball is kicked around 3.30am.

The WC has also brought out the patriot in all of us. Here at school, all my Korean students are right behind their team. My German friends have erected two huge flags from the top of their house, and also on their motorbikes. Indeed at the Raiders we have a fair few WC nations represented; Germany, England, Switzerland, Sweden and France (and for the record, non WC nationalities of Singapore, Vietnam, Ireland and Denmark). There are lots of Aussies here at the school as well, although they aren't so happy this morning after their defeat to Brazil. Chi was happy to fly the St George's cross from the back of my bike on the way to the Trinidad game, but the winner so far was Rink, an exteremely tall Dutch guy who looked like he was on his way to the stadium, not Bar Number 5.

Modelling Vespas

Chi, I hope you forgive me, but I am publishing this picture of you on a Vespa.

Vespas are popular here in 'Nam, especially with the foreign contingent. As if we don't stick out enough. Personally I feel they are no better than sardine cans with wheels, and they usually spew out loads of smoke. 'It's the oil burning, that's what it is...' people enthusiastically say. That's great, but I want it to stop, not understand where it comes from. You can buy them here starting from $300.

This isn't Chi's bike by the way.

This has given me an idea for a new blog post subject, so keep your eye out!

The Raiders

Here's a pic of the Saigon Raiders. our opponents here are the Ho Chi Minh City People's Comittee. We played them previously and we got spanked 6-1....they are a very impressive team with a forward who was something like Theo Walcott on steriods. Anyway, in the return away fixture played just two days ago we managed a 2-2 draw. It was a really great game for us and a fantastic result. Well done boys!




Check us out at www.saigonraiders.com

The 419

I recently got '419ed'. The following is from the website 'Nigeria - The 419 coalition website' at http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/.

A Five Billion US$ (as of 1996, much more now) worldwide Scam which has run since the early 1980's under Successive Governments of Nigeria.

Unbelievably.........

The Nigerian Scam is, according to published reports, the Third to Fifth largest industry in Nigeria. It is the 419 Coalition view that, in effect, the elites from which successive Governments of Nigeria have been drawn ARE the Scammers.

How it works

The Scam operates as follows: the target receives an unsolicited fax, email, or letter often concerning Nigeria or another African nation containing either a money laundering or other illegal proposal OR you may receive a Legal and Legitimate business proposal by normal means. Common variations on the Scam include "overinvoiced" or "double invoiced" oil or other supply and service contracts where your Bad Guys want to get the overage out of Nigeria (Classic 419); crude oil and other commodity deals (a form of Goods and Services 419); a "bequest" left you in a will (Will Scam 419); "money cleaning" where your Bad Guy has a lot of currency that needs to be "chemically cleaned" before it can be used and he needs the cost of the chemicals (Black Currency 419) ; "spoof banks" where there is supposedly money in your name already on deposit; "paying" for a purchase with a check larger than the amount required and asking for change to be advanced (cashier's check and money order 419); fake lottery 419; chat room and romance 419 (usually coupled with one of the other forms of 419); employment 419 (including secret shopper 419) ; and ordering items and commodities off "trading" and "auction" sites on the web and then cheating the seller.

The Emails

Here is the first email I received from the scammer in full:

Dear Jon Hoff, I am ........................., a legal practitioner in Malaysia with many years of practice.

I was an attorney to a deceased client of mine who died in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia of a heart related condition in 2001. My reason of sending you this email is to help secure the funds left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this fund valued at $5.7million dollars was deposited.
Since you do have the same surname with my late client, I would want to present you as the legitimate beneficiary with all legal documents required to back the claim up.
The holding bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated, and so far, all my efforts to get hold of someone related to this man has proved abortive.This is my proposal; I am asking for your consent to present you to the bank as the next-of-kin and beneficiary of my late client, since you have the same last name, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you. Then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed-upon percentage. I do have a good standing in Malaysia, it is my assurance that this transaction will be successful and that I will make sure that the transaction is done within the applicable laws to guarantee full legitimacyAll legal documents to back up your claim as my client's next-of-kin will be provided by me. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.This will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. However, if this business proposition offends your moral values, do accept my apology.

Please contact me at once to indicate your interest. Do understand that this transaction do require utmost confidence and you should keep this mail to yourself not withstanding if you are rejecting the transaction or accepting it.
Note that I reserve the right to reject your acceptance of this proposal if I have reasons to believe that you may not be honest or discreet as it concerns this proposal.
Further details will be giving as soon as your interest is indicated.
Yours Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX

I had never even heard of a 419 before this email so I must admit I was intrigued yet exteremely dubious. I replyed, and this is the email that follwed:

In introduction, I am xxxxxxxx, Attorney at Law, member Malaysia law soceity and a licensed practising lawyer of many years standing.

In relation to my proposal mail to you, I had a client who was a mineral resources merchant in Malaysia here, born by two migrant workers in Malaysia which made him a Malaysian permanent resident holder. My client died in 2001 of Pulmonary infection. My late client lost his parents about 10 years ago. He was not married nor did he have kids. As the attorney to my late client I reliable knew that he died intestate because he did not have any Will before his demise.

I was not aware that my client had a deposit of $5.7Million dollars with a bank here in Malaysia till I was contacted by the bank that my late client's fund is about to be declared unservicable due to the reason that they have not been able to trace a next of kin or beneficiary to the deposited fund. This made me do a frantic search to trace a next of kin of my late client which was to no avail. In view of this I decided that instead of allowing the bank to declare the fund unserviceable, it is better that I look for someone to present as the next of kin to the fund and that was my main reason of contacting you.
As I told you in my proposal mail, I chose you because of your last name, which is the same as my late client's name, it is not that you are his relative; I only want to present you based on your last name.
There is no risk to this transaction as we will process all the required documents by law for a beneficiary claim. I have personally studied all applicable laws and found out that this is a transaction that we can do succesfully without it backfiring as far as we go with the plan I have set down and that we kept it secret.
Honesty is another issue that I wish to emphasize on because I do not know you and I do not have any option than to beleive that I am choosing the right person for this transaction, it was not only you that I traced with the same surname but since there is no criteria for choosing any of you, I made a blind choice and here we are.
In this transaction we will go step by step, first with the legal documents to back up the claim and secondly, the monetary documents for the transfer.
I will provide all the necessary legal documents that will back you up as the bona fide beneficiary of my late client, all I need from you is to cooperate with me and be honest in this arrangement and after a succesfull claim has been made, the bank will transfer the total fund into the account provided by you as the beneficiary account after which we will share the total fund as follows; (1) I will take 65% of the total amount. (2) You will take the remaining 35% of the fund. (3) In case there is any tax applicable when the fund is transfered to you, we will settle the tax from the total amount before splitting it according to the above sharing formula.
Do remember that you are not related to my late client, that I am the one that is bringing you into this transaction and the sharing percentage described above is not to be negotiated
If this is okay by you, I will send you a beneficiary affidavit form from the high court, which you will fill and resend to me, for me to swear under oath in high court of Malaysia that you are truly the bona fide beneficiary of my late client and from here we will commence. I will also process all legal documents required to claim the fund. It is my assurance that this transaction will be done within the spheres of acceptable laws and practices to guarantee its legitimacy and success.
Fill free to ask any question you want to ask for better understanding of the transaction.
If I can count on your honesty, cooperation and confidence, reply positively for me to start the paper work.
You do not have to come to Malaysia for the transaction but you may come if you do wish so.
You can always get me on my direct line XXXXXXXX, you can reach me at any time of the day.

Yours sincerely,

Soon after this I googled the terms 'scam + beneficiary', and it didn't take long to find the 419 websites. So, I suppose the message is this - be warned.

Normal? I'm not sure.

What is normal?

Life seems to be normal until I remember what was once normal, then I’m reminded that life hasn’t been normal for while, but then I think yes it has, life is as abnormal or as normal as you make it wherever you are and whatever your doing. The problem is however that the whole motivation of moving to Korea in the first place was a desire to live abnormally, a desire I first discovered when I left England in 2002 with Toby and Dave. After traveling for a year and returning in 2003, I was so gripped by a passion to travel more that I had to do something fast. Teaching English was the obvious facilitator; Korea, the even more obvious facilitating country. It only took about 10 weeks to get the job and get boarded on the plane. I presumed that fellow ‘aliens’ would be ‘travelers’ by nature, this wasn’t the case. Everybody I met in Korea had their own reasons. Some came for the money, some for ‘an experience’, some were enticed out by friends already doing a year’s contract. Most save a good deal in one year, then travel for a few months after and finally head home.

Opportunities taken

My first year in Korea was hard sometimes but however bad things got at work, it didn’t matter because I could stroll down the road after class, look around me, take a deep breath and smile ‘I’m in Asia, in a little country town. In a few months I’ll have enough money to go to x, x and x’. Sound ridiculous? It was all I wanted. During that year I visited Beijing, The Great Wall, Xian and the Terracotta Warrior; I also visited The Philippines. When I left Korea after my contract had ended I visited Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar. Now about 13 months away from home, I had no feelings of wanting to return so I went on to Vietnam in January 2005 and didn’t leave the country again until January this year, 2006. Here I completed a TEFL cert. and started working for local schools, until I got my current job at the Korean School in September 2005. Taking a break this year in January and February enabled me to revisit Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and for the first time get over to Malaysian Borneo and also Bali in Indonesia.

Wearing off.......

Now it’s June, 2006. I’ve been in Vietnam for a year and a half. I’ve met many people and I have a firmly established routine and lifestyle. I play for a local expat soccer team and I go to the yoga club. I will get married here in October to my Vietnamese girlfriend Chi. I live in a house with a Vietnamese family of a mother and two boys, and some other tenants. I have a small room with cable TV and a nice balcony. I have no aircon and a shared bathroom with no hot water. I am really living with and among the locals. I rent a motorcycle to get around, order a lot of takeaways and don’t drink too much, even on weekends. It’s all so, well, normal. That’s what I realized the other day – my main motivation for living abroad has almost gone. I go day by day without that feeling of awe, without even thinking about where I am and that it’s in the slightest bit strange. Some people living abroad strive for that feeling, they want the weirdness to go away, but there’s something a little strange about feeling so normal in Vietnam, which really isn’t normal at all.

Asia fatigue

So I am beginning to yearn for a change once more. Strangely the last thing I expected to happen has happened. What was once normal to me, that is the drizzly windswept damp of my native England, now seems completely abnormal. I want to go home. I want to have to put on 5 layers of clothing just to go out of the door. I want to live somewhere that has orderly roads and where people know the meaning of a queue. I want to meet and talk and get to know some of my fellow countrymen once again. I want to stroll along the windswept cliff tops of Dorset and marvel at the waves crashing against the shore. I want to be able to go into a bookshop full of English language books and browse. I want to have fish and chips for tea. All that stuff just seems so, well, abnormal now. I haven’t lost the travel bug and I never will, but I am feeling Asia fatigued. Now thoughts of my next trip are turning to the great cities of Europe – Vienna and Salzburg, Paris, Amsterdam and Venice. No more does traveling around India interest me for the time being. My next real destinations however are Tokyo and the Seoul – more Asia!

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land." -G. K. Chesterton

Presenting.....

Presenting Peter Crouch.........

150 to 1 for the golden boot? Anyone?