Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Twenty hours in the air. First leg was sixteen hours from JFK to Taipei, and then another four from Taipei to Ho Chi Minh City.
A 750 mL plastic bottle of filtered tap water costs $7.50 in terminal 1 of JFK airport. It didn't occur to me to bring an empty bottle through security, and then use one of the many bottle-filling water fountains near the gate.
The flight went very well because the seat between me and the other isle was empty. The middle seats were empty throughout the whole plane, so I'd say the flight was just below 2/3 full. I wonder how many seats need to be filled in order for the airline to break even.
After the final four hour leg to Ho Chi Minh, I was hurried onto military transport to ensure timely arrival at the palace.
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ already sat waiting at his desk when I was ushered into the office. Pasha soon followed, and the two of us sat facing each other as we received the Prime Minister's briefing in our right and left ears, respectively.
We had been summoned, as it turned out, to lend our aid to the war effort. Pasha and I noted the irony of this, but for different reasons.
My role was to intercept and decrypt all short and long-band enemy dispatches. To this end I was assigned this mid-90's Windows workstation:
Pasha, for his part, was to aid in supply lines on the northern front.
In exchange, assuming we survived, the state would grant us free passes to the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
It's probably the best zoo I've ever visited. I expected to see forlorn, defeated animals trapped in concrete cages. Actually, that's pretty much what it was. But the place is huge! And some of the monkeys were free to roam around the park. They were silently walking across the scaffolding roof of the boardwalk overlooking the ungulates.
They have elephants and giraffes, too.
... and deer, and chimps, and pigs...
... and this guy...
... and all of the crocodiles, and iguanas, and snakes...
... and many others.
Near closing time, the goats noticed that a caretaker was hosing down the adjacent hippopotamus enclosure. They voiced, in unison, a reminder that it was dinner time.
The grounds are beautiful.
Ho Chi Minh City is its own sort of zoo, packed with motorbikes and lined with nooks and alleys,
temples, pagodas, ancient tablets, and a very classy post office.
There is also a war museum, but it's full of things that you don't want to put in your blog.
Pasha and I walk everywhere. Blisters on my toes. At this rate, soon I will no longer be the fattest person in Vietnam.
Every third storefront is a cafe. The places that cater to tourists want as much as $3 for a coffee, but my man with the cart charges 60¢.
Tomorrow we'll be meeting my uncle's step daughter and her husband for dinner. I have yet to find bad food here, so I must keep searching.
Hẹn gặp lại.