Christmas in Ho Chi Minh
Memories of a Saigon Holiday
F is off to Australia for a cousin’s wedding and the New Year, but has decided to stay in Saigon for Christmas day. His excitement is rather endearing. He tells me about his last Christmas alone in Sydney and how miserable he was in his squalid room, dreaming of Asia. He says how grateful he is for his friends in Saigon and wants to stay and celebrate his newfound good fortune in the company of loved ones. He is a gracious man. I picture F alone save a bottle of Jack Daniels, wearing a Santa Claus hat, and watching Bourne Identity seven times in a row.
F says he is looking forward to J’s Christmas Eve party and dinner with N and me on Christmas day. I attend a different Christmas Eve party but get his text the afternoon of Christmas Day: “Coffee by the river than dinner?” Both serious coffee drinkers, it’s our favorite coffee shop in town; we found it independently of one another. About an hour before we are supposed to meet, I make the leisurely 30 minute stroll down packed and polluted Ho Chi Minh streets to the river, taking pictures of a Saigon Christmas along the way: two security guards eating bowls of Bun Bo Hue in front of a Styrofoam snowman; Santa and his reindeer running along a storefront on Hai Ba Trung; Tan Dinh church festooned with lights and decorations; a pharmacy with a lighted wreath perched nearby the watchful eye of the Buddha on his alter.
I arrive early and order a Ca Phe Den Nong (hot black coffee) and a bowl of strawberry ice cream — it’s Christmas, why not — and watch the boats on the river, taking a few shots of a dilapidated junk spinning haplessly in the current. An older German tourist in a pressed black Lamborghini T-shirt sits nearby and is also taking pictures of the boats with his two-thousand-dollar SLR and trying to make conversation with his heavily made-up Vietnamese girlfriend-for-the-week. She’s in her midtwenties and her English is limited to non-existent. “Nice boat,” he says in his heavy accent, receiving a bored stare.
F walks up behind me and claps me on the shoulder. “Hey Buddy,” he says with a smile, “Merry Christmas.” I stand and shake his hand, “Merry Christmas to you.” The waiter is over instantly and places a menu in front of F, which he ignores. “How you doing?” he asks me. “Fine,” I say, gesturing with my chin to the menu. F tells me about his day. “The guy wants you to order,” I interrupt. F is annoyed but orders a Ca Phe Den Nong and a Ca Phe Sua Nong (hot coffee with milk) for his girlfriend N, who is in the bathroom. There’s something about F’s accent or attitude that causes Vietnamese waiters to automatically conclude he wants a Ca Phe Sua Da no matter what he orders. (Vietnamese waiters generally think all foreigners want a Ca Phe Sua Da — an iced coffee with the sweetness and consistency of a chocolate shake — unable to fathom they would appreciate the pungency of a Vietnamese coffee served black. They are equally unprepared when a white person attempts to speak their language, even for a matter as grammar-free and simple as ordering coffee.) This common mistake occurs again, frustrating F immensely. “Fuck,” he mutters.
N glides to the table and straightens out F’s order. I haven’t seen her since the three of us spent a few days at the beach in Nha Trang almost a month before. She greets me and I comment on her scarf. She smiles and tells me F bought it for her in Hoi An (their next stop after leaving Nha Trang — I went to Dalaat instead, heading back towards Saigon). She likes my shirt. F is dressed in his Johnny Cash tropical best: black shirt, black jeans, black flip-flops (or “thongs” as he calls them).
It’s sort of strange that I haven’t seen N in so long as I see F at least a couple of times a week and they spend a lot of time together. I get the impression she doesn’t like to hang out with me, an impression I’ve shared with F who assures me it is not the case. N tells F that when the two of us are together, we just start talking about weird shit at a speed and tone she can’t understand and she finds it quite dull. She also wants F to have some time with his friends. All reasons that make perfect sense to me yet I can’t quite shake the feeling that she doesn’t like my company. Thus even when F starts going off about some random technical detail of his script or the soundtrack to his film-in-progress “Black Neon,” — think Apocalypse Now on a Handi-cam — I try to keep N involved in the conversation, asking her about her work, etc. She’s trying to get out of the bar scene and more directly into tourism, but her English isn’t good enough to pass the national test required of all official tour-guides. I suggest, as F is now a qualified English teacher, that they might consider getting a test prep book and going through it together. F seems shocked by my idea, but agrees it’s a good one.
Eventually we lose track of N’s interest level and she’s staring glumly at the water while I’m talking about my fucked-up virtual (nonexistent) love life — there are two women from home that I correspond with regularly in decidedly “friendly” tones; there is another woman, M, who I was with (mostly) for the two years before I came here, who is a) not speaking to me b) last I heard dying of terminal cancer. In a seemingly endless dance that has been going on for six months I use one to distract from the other two (mostly the two to distract me from the one). I like the two, but they’re both a bit nuts in their own way. (Question: Why would beautiful young women send dirty pics to some washed-up fuck 12,000 miles away? Answer: They both have boyfriends.) I love the other, but it was a relationship that never worked, try as we might. When she got sick I did my best, but after months of pushing and pulling, I metaphorically, and probably literally, threw my hands up, yelled Enough! and split. F is the only person in Vietnam I’ve told that the impetus for moving here was to get the fuck away from her — he’s the only person I’ve explicitly told period. The day we met, when we were randomly seated next to each other at the EFL Certification Course welcome dinner, I assumed maybe he was in the same boat. I imagined a bitter divorce lurking in the not so distant past. That I was totally wrong has had little impact on our camaraderie.
F asks me about M and I imagine my face contorting into a grimace of frustration and self-disgust. The truth is I’ve been thinking of contacting her, to wish her a Merry Christmas at least. We spent last Christmas together, much of that with her drugged out of her skull in a hospital and me sitting on the floor, and eventually a cot when the nurses realized I wasn’t going to leave, beside her. After a couple days I developed a weird facial rash, stress-induced I guess, and tried to get some Benedryl from the nurse but thanks to the archaic ways of the American Health System, needed to be admitted to the hospital to receive any medication — “You can go to the emergency room,” she suggested helpfully. Instead I walked to a nearby gas station. I hadn’t slept more than a few hours the whole time in the hospital and the Benedryl did me in. When M woke in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom and she couldn’t rouse me from my drug-enhanced slumber she started to scream in confusion and terror, sending the night nurse running. I don’t remember any of this, but for some reason I still feel guilty about it.
After coffee by the river, we have a discussion about where to go for our inaugural Saigon Christmas dinner. I wouldn’t mind a one-dollar bowl of Pho, but as we’re close to the Japanese district would take sushi. N seems to like this suggestion and begins pushing the idea to F, who is resistant and aiming for the Pho. There was a problem with his ATM card and F has 400,000 Dong ($20) to get him through the night and to the airport tomorrow. I tell F it’ll be fine and I’ll loan him a million if he needs it and we begin walking to the sushi bar — I have one in mind where I am confident the wait staff will be wearing Santa hats — I am proven correct. We walk down the road by the river then make the precarious street crossing, standing down traffic from N, matching her steps and speed as she confidently picks her way through four lanes of traffic four motorbikes deep, mingled with taxis and the occasional delivery truck. We walk into the Japanese enclave down an alleyway festively lighted for Christmas. N tells F to close his eyes as we pass two brothels catering to rich Japanese businessmen (well out of our price range) with beautiful Vietnamese women in tasteful evening gowns lounging on couches just inside the open doors.
The restaurant is packed and we are surprised not to see any other expats, but I guess sushi is probably not the first option for Christmas dinner, even in Saigon. It takes us a while to get a table, but we eventually do and settle in to pick from the extensive menu. F, along with his money concerns, has issues with sharing food that have come up from time to time in our relationship, as when eating Indian or Japanese or many other cuisines when it’s nice to just get a bunch of shit and share. F, however, is fixated on the inexpensive tempura while N and I are eyeing the sashimi platter for four. In his defense, he has five brothers, but they are all much older than him and I doubt there was much scrapping over food at the table. It comes down to he wants what he wants. His locked jaw and tight eyes show his displeasure, but he eventually acquiesces and we order the sashimi and some appetizers.
When the food arrives, N eats sushi like a Vietnamese person, which makes sense, wrapping the fish in the garnish and eating it like a spring roll, dipping it into a hearty mix of wasabi and soy as if it were Nuoc Mam. F and I both admonish her to be careful but she pays no heed to the white people telling her it will be too spicy and takes a bite. Her eyes widen and her hands rise to her face, miming the passage of the wasabi through her sinuses. “It’s in my nose,” she says. We nod. “Wooo, it’s nice!” she smiles. We nod again. It’s a top notch Christmas dinner and F suggests we make Japanese dinner a tradition. He says he hasn’t really eaten like this in ten years, when he was working running a theater in Japan, which I hadn’t heard about before. He says that’s when he was first bitten by the Asia bug. He says he likes the restaurant and is glad we came. He says it makes him feel like Yakuza.
On Boxing Day, after hours of composition, I send a two-line email to M. Moments later F sends me a text from the airport that sushi’s too expensive when he’s broke and I’m a dick for suggesting it in front of his girlfriend. Thereafter, New Year dawns.
🎄🎅🏯
