Arriving in Vietnam + Top 10 Impressions of Tokyo Narita Airport

28JUL07 - We arrived last night at 11:30PM in a "minor monsoon" - about 3 inches of rain fell in 3 hours. Philip and Xuan (pronounced "soon"), our hosts, met us at the airport and took us by cab to their house, which is a 3-story 6,000 sq ft "mansion" with 5 B&B guest rooms, we have AC and private baths (yeah!) and a 50 ft outdoor swimming pool in the downstairs. All of the house is open and cooled by fans except for the bedrooms - we eat family style with them in a covered area overlooking the pool - great authentic Vietnamese foods, breakfast was a choice of American granola and wheat toast (Aly's choice), European cold cuts and cheese (Philip's choice) or Vietnamese vermicelli rice noodles with bean sprouts and chopped peanuts (Xuan and Rand's choice). We are the only guests right now but a couple from Montreal arrives on Monday.

After breakfast, Aly and I went for a "walk/run" through a little mud street of hovel houses and indigenous "shops/cafes," which after 300 yds emptied onto a wide, beautiful "boulevard" with colored individually handlaid "mosiac" sidewalks that had trees planted in 3x3 cut out squares every 20 yds or so. The boulevard runs next to the Saigon River and has a string of gorgeous Spanish stucco/red tile roof 5,000+ sq ft. houses, many of which are in gated communities. [Not too hot - maybe 78 degrees but 90% humidity - with a breeze off the river.] Philip (who is a Swiss Canadian who married Xuan when they both lived in Montreal, they just moved to Ho Chi Minh City 18 months ago) says this area was all rice paddies 10 years ago but now is the wealthy area where a lot of foreigners and returning Vietnamese expatriates live. This afternoon we go to meet Ven. ("Venerable") Thich ("teacher") Thien Chieu, the "head monk." Xuan will translate and be our guide with Mr. Chieu. Should be quite an experience!


27JULY07 - What impressions come to mind in the International Terminal of Tokyo Narita Airport on a Friday summer afternoon at 4PM? My top 10 list:

10. First a spookily quiet, clean, functional and almost empty terminal compared to US airports (and ones I remember in other big cities – London, Paris, Johannesburg, Durban) – where are the crowds, still crammed on the commuter trains?

9. Many Japanese girls and young women traveling together, very few boys and young men.

8. The young women have diverse stylish dress, from miniskirts and 4 inch heels to satin red “traditional” dresses – who knows what tradition, the teen boys look like slobs, what else is new?

7. No Starbucks, not even any coffee, but Kirin on draft and many weird bottled teas.

6. Great magazines – but they are stapled “backwards,” reminding me that Japanese is read from right to left so of course the magazines are bound on the right instead of the left and apparently read from “back” to “front”

5. Comic books are the thing – inch-thick comic books make up half the rack, and virtually every type of magazine from cars to sports (excluding teen fashion) has pages of cartoons – usually set off in newsprint paper from the other glossy pages.

4. Despite being 1,000 miles plus east of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Tokyo is 2 hours ahead – perhaps it signifies that Vietnam is still quite a ways behind economically or maybe being 4,000 miles north encourages the Japanese to turn their clocks ahead 2 or 3 hours in the summer. In any event, it’s a bit discouraging to realize it’s a 6 hour flight from Tokyo to HCMC, with Tokyo being 14 hours ahead so 4PM here is 2AM last night on our Nashville body clocks.

3. Favorite local ice cream is Haagen Daz Green Tea – sold out in the vending machines.

2. Slow seller: the Slimy Dough Roll isn’t moving too fast – what do you do with a 5 pound cylindrical hunk of yellow starch (2 feet long, shaped like about 6 “slice and bake” cookie packages end-to-end, but in clear plastic) floating in some juicy white slime, have a party?

1. My favorite – spotless men’s room at every gate, with motion activated “air towels” installed in the counters next to the sinks, best of all, the first toilet stall is labeled “traditional Japanese toilet” – a ceramic ground level hole that you can squat over! Decisions, decisions!