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Wholl stop the rain

blind guitar

the blind man is led around by his guitar on a leash. his son guides the way.

TRAFFIC

VUNG TAU

this weekend i took a hydrofoil to vung tau. i met a nice australian guy who'd served on the base at vung tau in 1965 and we drank a beer at a beachfront bar when we arrived. i checked into a hotel and was feeling kind of cheap so i didn't rent a motorbike. i went to the beach for a swim but it was too late so i went back to my hotel.


for some reason i checked under my mattress and i found two million dong there in a roll. someone was probably hiding it from a prostitute. that covered all my expenses for the rest of the weekend, so i took myself out for a nice dinner and rented a scooter the next day.


the beaches in vung tau are sandy and covered in seashells. the water is warm. i met a vietnamese family on a secluded beach and played soccer and went swimming with them until nighttime.


i'm back in saigon now. it's nice to have an apartment to come home to. the view from my bedroom is bitchin'. i live on the fifteenth floor of a famous old communist building. it's drab but interesting. my roommate and i are probably the only white guys in the neighborhood. everyone stares at me like i'm an alien. i guess i am an alien.


one last thing before i go: you know those email scams from nigerian kings and benefactors that you get all the time?
i see those dudes every day. there are a ton of sketchy nigerians here who hang out with too-young girls at internet cafes and send out those emails. they all make me think of akon and now i don't think i like akon anymore.

SAIGON II

The train from Hoi An to Saigon took about 20 hours. For four of those hours I was in the rear cabin with the staff drinking cheap Vietnamese whiskey and singing karaoke ("A Whiter Shade of Pale", "As Tears Go By"- we couldn't figure out how to move past the A's). The train itself was an old Soviet behemoth, all boxy metal and wooden benches. I watched the countryside go by, slept quite a bit, smoked cigarettes out the window, read Uncle Ho's biography, and felt pretty weird the whole time.


Saigon has been nice to return to, but it's driving me crazy.


I'm not homesick, but I miss my friends quite a bit.

HOI AN II

The streets by the river are completely flooded and the sky's been gray and wet but I went for a swim today in the South China Sea and it was perfect until the tide went in too far and took away my shoes and glasses but luckily I made it back to the shore in time so then I went and got some noodles and now I'm watching a Queen Latifah movie in my hotel room.