Holy crap. Saigon, er, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), is perhaps the wildest city ever. Certainly rivals Bangkok. The most awesomely retarded thing you notice right away are the scooters. They are *everywhere*. At every intersection, they wait by the hundreds, literally, for the light to change. Then like a river they zoom forward in a flood, honking and revving, exhaust fumes everywhere. Most of the time, intersections do not even have traffic lights and somehow oncoming traffic simply blends and swirls and roars and the scooters pass through to the otherside like poltergeists. Crossing the road is an acid trip. Luckily, I spent 5 years in NYC learning how to jay-walk and dodge traffic, so I feel I have the skills to cross the road when necessary. I admit, though, that sometimes I have no idea how to get across and I wait for a group of Vietcong pedestrians to lead the way.

Anyone want a painting? Store after store, famous paintings from world art history are copied in oil on canvas and the quality of many is surprisingly high. I spent much of this evening visiting "gallery" after gallery, flipping through the copies of works by Seurat, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, ... I'm definitely going to buy a few as they are too awesome. They even make them on request, just provide an image. The whole copy/theft/plagarism industry in Asia confuses me. If I could paint that well, why wouldn't I make original works? Just not their culture, I suppose. This is not the land of original thinking.

My hotel is very sweet. Down a little laneway called Minihotel Alley, my room has an armful of charm. Though I don't have a window (and really, who needs a window?) I do have a fake tree growing out of the wall (plagarism again), cable TV, blessed air conditioning, and a very clean bathroom. Oh yeah, and free internet in the restaurant. Oh! The food! Awesome! I had a beef Pho for lunch and it rocked. I even ate the beef tripe and loved it.

Anyway, meeting Dimitri and his wife tomorrow for dinner, hopefully. That'll be goodtimes. Going to continue my wandering during the day with the only specific destination The Museum of American Atrocities, now called the Museum of the American War.

Going to bed...

R*