It was one of those trips where it is important when in a frenetic motor bike infested city to hang onto your shoulder bag when wading through throngs of people. What could go wrong, did go wrong. In hindsight, a comedy of errors, an amusing trip of self-discovery on how to cope under duress in a foreign country where none of the usual certainties of daily life apply, but also a brilliant experience in dogged determination. Some notes and recollections from travel journals. Back in December 2001, in Ho Chi Minh City, only a couple of hours off the plane, while crossing a road after dinner, a motor bike shot past and in a flash my shoulder bag was gone, including passport, cash, some travellers cheques, and airline return ticket (everything paper-based back then). The guidebook had a warning about theft but I let my guard down by carrying a shoulder bag. Fortunately I was staying with a friend. It took days to get everything sorted out, without a passport I couldn’t get travellers cheques changed into local cash. Still don’t know how it worked out, but it did and over the ten day stay I managed to experience another side of Ho Chi Minh City.
Arrived mid-morning dumped gear, but forgot to unpack my shoulder bag, and then took a cyclo tour of the city. After dinner crossing the road I became a drive-by bag snatch victim. Spent several hours with the police to get a report for a travel insurance claim. A policeman even escorted us on his motor bike back to the scene of the crime. By now it was about 2 am and the city full of life, hauling goods of all descriptions in hand carts down to the river. After explaining the incident in detail and what side of the road it occurred, the policeman shook his head, not his jurisdiction, wrong side of the road, sent us to another police station where I had to explain the incident all over again. Finally got my police report by about 4am, a long night, at the least the coffee was good and strong, with French bread and heaps of fruit.
In hindsight I stubbornly tried to problem solve my way out of the situation instead of going straight to the consulate, if there’s help available take it, lesson learnt, mistake not to be repeated, but a good dose of hard reality. Spent at least two days making phone calls accruing a huge phone bill from the hotel trying to contact travellers cheque company (gave me an address for a local bank and told me to have a nice day), Australian bank, travel agent, and airline. Still in shock and getting nowhere set out on foot to find the Australian consulate, bank, airline, and immigration. After giving up trying to negotiate a ride with a mad melee of taxi motorbike riders for hire out front of the hotel, gave up and walked around the corner and found an old man with a cyclo (two wheeled push bike carriage contraption), showed him the map to the post office where I could make cheaper calls. He nodded and threw a heap of cardboard out of the cyclo. I got in he then threw the cardboard back in, and gestured to hold onto it. I was buried with only enough space to see out, at least the cardboard was clean and in pristine condition. We set off, an interesting tour of the city for about forty minutes then he pulled over next to an old wooden shack, got out, went inside for some time. I stayed under the cardboard, he then emerged with another man with a large set of scales. The cardboard was unloaded and carefully weighed, then there was a lot of bargaining argy bargy until a price was settled. He got back on the bike smiling, obviously a good deal was made and we set off for at least another forty minutes, taking in the city sites. I could find no reference points that indicated we were anywhere near the post office. But it was a grand tour then he suddenly pulled over and he pointed to the corner, that’s when I realised we were back at the hotel, we had done a grand cycle tour. I offered him $10 he refused, not the right note. I showed him some of the other notes (a loan from my friend I was staying with), he nodded and took $1, apparently the going rate nothing more nothing less. I then showed the map to a taxi motor bike rider, he nodded and we were at the post office within ten minutes. I then waited an hour in the queue to get a phone booth and booked a call to Sydney, an Australian operator answered and asked for the number, I gave the number, she replied sorry no connection for 1800 numbers and hung up. I gave up and the driver took me to the consulate, where I was greeted by the guy behind the counter with ‘what happened to you’, probably because of the frozen look on my face, no problems at all, the calls were made. To cut a long story short by some miracle my passport was handed in at the hotel, I didn’t have to wait days for a replacement, I was able to cash the travellers cheques, pay the phone bill, and the return airline ticket was reissued. At last I could get on with exploring the city but things didn’t quite go to plan on most days.
The next day Mekong River tour, the delta, canals, farms, a honey farm where the attendant started to explain bee keeping by pulling a slab of bees out of the hive, the bees weren’t happy and swarmed over the tour group, everyone ran in all directions, until the bees made a getaway, sitting at a table sipping tea to calm down suddenly fellow travellers started hitting me around the head with tea towels to remove a large number of bees from my hair. It was another one of those days. At least there were no serious stings. After that onto a Buddhist temple. Shoes had to be removed at the door, unfortunately my new Himalayan walking sandals had stripped a lot of skin off my feet which were now covered in band-aids, worse for wear, the problem was the band-aids started sticking to the lino covered floor, so progress was slow, difficult to limp silently and not draw attention. I stopped to admire an intricately carved table with a huge brass gong on it, unaware of a saffron robed monk behind me, he swung a mallet and hit the gong dead centre, deafened I levitated several feet off the floor, much to his amusement, reached a new level of enlightenment. Drinks all round on the tour stories that night.
Next day local walk taking in the city, still deafened by the traffic noise but getting used to it, but I desperately needed more band-aids. A case where small items previously taken for granted became precious essentials. I found a lady with a small handcart street stall on wheels. I pointed at the only packet of band-aids, she opened the packet and only wanted to sell me one. I insisted on the packet, she refused. I gave her $10, I got the packet, she shut down the cart and went home, probably enough money for a month off. Hired cyclos for trip to Cholon in the afternoon, sheer chaos on the roads, and the market so packed difficult to comprehend the lives of the locals, another reality blast.
Next day tour to Coadai Great Temple, Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi Tunnels, a chilling reminder of what life was like during the war. Little evidence of the war until entering the tunnels ‘at its height the tunnels stretched from Ho Chi Minh City to the Cambodian border’, in the district of Cu Chi there were over 250km of tunnels¹. The tunnels several storeys deep included living areas, storage, weapons factories, command centres, kitchens, and hospitals. The area was carpet bombed although it had been completely covered since with farms and vegetation.
Next day Museum of Fine Arts (Vietnamese art, sculpture, oil paintings, silk painting and lacquer painting, as well as traditional styles including woodcut paintings in the Hàng Trống, Đông Hồ, and Kim Hoàng styles, Vietnamese ceramics and a collection of ancient Buddhist art. Then onto the Tu Do gallery (contemporary art). Left the next day with only $50 in my wallet to get back to Sydney. I made it home but had to break and enter, no house keys, they were somewhere in Vietnam.

Locations
Ho Chi Minh City
Bến Thành Market
Mekong River
Cholon
Coadai Great Temple, Tay Ninh
Cu Chi Tunnels
Museum of Fine Arts

Art References
Some contemporary artists from Vietnam

Other references

¹Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Lonely Planet Guidebook, 2001
‘Once considered the capital of colonial Indochina, the tropical Paris of the Orient to the French who got the boot in 1954, then run by the Americans for 15 years before reunification of north and south Vietnam in 1975.’

APT7 The 7^th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, January 2013

2018 Biennale of Sydney, March-June 2018