Saigon

Saigon is a completely different type of city than Hanoi was. It's the New York City of Vietnam. Around 8-10 million people spread across dozens of different districts. A very evident middle class. A city center that looks more like Las Vegas (those watches at the Rolex dealer are going to cost you U.S. rates) than any place we have seen in Asia to date. And a thriving expat and international school community.

There are essentially two Saigons -- there's the Saigon that looks like Hanoi: numerous peasants turned small business owners trading groceries and goods for fractions of a dollar; and the Saigon that caters to foreigners Vietnam's nascent upper crust, who drive around in Bentleys and Range Rovers and spend thirty-five dollars on a cheeseburger.

Pouyan and I got to experience this expat community on our very first day in Saigon (the official name of the town is "Ho Chi Minh City" but the colloquial and original name is "Saigon"). After shuttling from the airport to our hostel in the Saigon backpacker's district, we settled in and prepared to meet Pouyan's buddy Nate for dinner. Nate went to the same high school as Pouyan and has been living in Vietnam for about six months at this point.

We met Nate and his younger brother Jeremy at a BBQ joint not far from the Saigon River. At my prompting, Nate dove into an explanation of what they were doing so far from Minnesota.

Some of you may be familiar with the book "The Four Hour Workweek", which encourages entrepreneurially-minded people to create location-independent web business that provide income to allow their owners to live and work wherever they please. These businesses can range from "lifestyle businesses" (low hours and low-medium pay) to massive scalable enterprises. But one common feature of most of them is the use of geographic arbitrage -- working for U.S. clients and getting paid in dollars, with the cost of living of a Vietnamese urbanite.

Nate and Jeremy are both part of an online community made up of people running these sorts of businesses, and around fifty of the forum members are currently located in Saigon, making it one of the larger and more attractive bases for this particular group of web entrepreneurs. That night they would be taking us out to a birthday party for one of their members.

We met the rest of the crew at a cocktail lounge called "Beirut". In total there were around 25 or 30 people attending, spread across 3 or 4 circular tables with hookah pipes sitting on each surface. The group was predominantly Americans and Brits with a few other varieties of English-speaking folks sprinkled in. Very few attendees spoke more than a few words of Vietnamese.

The party was opulent compared to our previous examples of southeast Asian nightlife. There was a cake loaded with sparklers for the birthday boy, a trio of alluring belly dancers, and seemingly limitless wine spread across the tables. Drinks off the menu cost between ten and twenty times the backpacker bar rates.

After about 90 minutes the group migrated to an expat bar called "Plan B". This place was an even wilder scene than the last place. At the center dance floor, in front of a grinning DJ, were between 60 and 80 dancing bar inhabitants, mostly white foreign men and beautiful local Asian women. Ringing the dance floor were more Asian women sitting quietly and waiting to be spoken to. Somebody explained to us that the typical custom is for Asian women to never approach foreign men, but to be highly receptive when approached. We saw multiple creepy sixty-something sunburnt white men weaving through the crowd to take advantage of that receptiveness. Seeing this throttled my gag reflex into high gear.
Also, smoking cigarettes indoors was not only permitted here, but seemed to be a requirement.

Pouyan and I tagged along with the group until deciding to call it quits at around 3:30am. We were exhausted but grateful to have seen a brand new side of the Asian lifestyle. 

P.S. Pouyan encouraged me to add this postscript to the story of last week's motorbike accident: It should be pointed out that at the time of impact, the mother did not make any effort whatsoever to control, grasp, or save her baby from hitting the pavement. Rather, she decided that it would be wiser to toss her baby in the air and brace her own fall instead. That is all.