Vietnam

If it looks like you could pronounce it but it has dozens of diacritical accents on each and every letter, it’s got to be Vietnamese.

And indeed, the Buddhist pagoda of Vĩnh Tràng in the South Vietnamese city of Mỹ Tho near the Mekong Delta is pretty darn impressive:

There is a wonderful Buddhist template in Vietnam, in the city of My Tho just next to the Mekong Delta, and in the next few blog entries I’ll share some snaps.

But this one caught my attention, just as you walk into the temple you are greeted with this wonderful sign:

Now, not being a Buddhist myself I’m afraid I don’t understand the significance of this. I always thought Buddhists aspired to something more transcendental, rather than just birth-to-grave.

Thanks to modern, ultrabright LED lighting, the nightscapes of mega-cities like Saigon just keep getting better and better, as this snap shows:

Many Asian mega cities have truly amazing night markets, and Saigon is no exception:

Continuing the series, here are more cables in Saigon,

I caught this bus driver taking a mid-day snooze in the luggage compartment of his bus in downtown Saigon:

It’s obviously not the first time he’s done this, as you’ll see his approach to his hammock is well-tested:

Automobiles are few and far between in the capital city of Vietnam, Saigon – the streets are ruled by scooters, known to the locals (despite their manufacturer) as Hondas:

How do you cross a busy street like this? It’s easier than you might think: you just close your eyes and start to walk slowly. The drivers are so careful and aware of what’s in front of them, that they will easily move to avoid you.

The Saigon skyline, along the Saigon River no less, at night:

The development of ultrabright light emitting diodes has transformed how cities look at night.

Continuing the series, when concrete meets roots in Saigon,

OK, it’s not a real Chinese junk – it’s a restaurant boat.

But be that as it may, here’s one view, taken during the day from the 50th story of the Bitexpo Financial Tower in Saigon:

And here’s another view, taken at night from the Saigon River itself:

When I arrive in a new place I’ve never visited, my antenna are stretched out, the gain is tuned to high, and I am looking for that first impression moment where something unique and new strikes my interest.

When arriving in the mega-city of Saigon in the south of Vietnam, that first impression moment unwound slowly but methodically in the first 15 minutes, when my taxi cab got stuck in traffic next to a telephone pole. At first, my eyes caught a jumbled mess of cables:

I’ve seen messy telephone cables all over the world, so to be honest this was nothing remarkable or new for me. But as I sat there patiently in traffic, starting at this pole for many minutes, my eyes scanned the area, took in the Big Picture, and I slowly came to an important realization.

This is what I saw as I expanded my gaze:

What occured to me was how much insight you can get into a culture just by looking at its telephone cables.

In this case in Saigon, the cables are all identical: black, approximately the same gauge, and all of very good quality. A stunning degree of structure, organization, and tidiness in the transmission: The cables coming into the pole are highly organized and carefully wrapped into a tight bundle, and the cables coming out of the pole are highly organized are carefully wrapped into a tight bundle. And a stunning degree of pragmatism, acceptance of non-conformance, and low stress at the interface: the cables fixed to the pole are in no way bent or stressed, and the pole almost seems happy to carry this mass of important lines that meet every which way but somehow go exactly where they need to go.

Continuing the series, a snap, then something AMAZING.

First, the snap:

And now for something amazing. This snap was taken in the city of My Tho, near the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. But that is not what is amazing. What is amazing is that there is nothing native in this snap!  Both Buddhism and pink Bougainvilleas have been imported into Vietnam a long, long time ago: Buddhism, by the migrating hoards of Buddhists; and Bougainvilleas by the French during their colonization of this region of Southeast Asia.

I felt pretty honored and privileged to have been able to have taken this snap:

Here you see the Super Wolf Full Moon shining above the new Ho Chi Minh City skyline on the Saigon River in Vietnam.