I arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Tuesday near 11 am. Except for a slight delay in getting my bag because I'm looking for a black Calvin Klein bag and I now have a black Samsonite bag, things go smoothly. An ATM dispenses 3,000,000 Vietnamese dong to me and I get a taxi for about $8 to the hotel. I get settled in and Person NN_V comes to visit and we go walk down to the Ben Tranh market and wander around. As we're walking I'm saying "I remember this from 9 years ago" - the last time I was in Vietnam. And I keep asking Person NN_V how do I say certain things in Vietnamese, but I keep forgetting a lot of it. Usually I can pick these things up quickly, but not today. Later Person NN_V goes to teach/tutor and I relax a bit and wlak around the neighborhood of the hotel and manage to find a supermarket. I wander around the supermarket gathering supplies and greet people and thank them in Vietnamese and they give me big smiles - they probably don't get many foreigners coming here who know a single word in Vietnamese. But even later Person NN_V comes to visit and he's brought food and smoothies.
I wake up in the middle of the night on Wednesday morning to he hardest rain I've ever heard. Later I realize that the rain noise may have been amplified by a large motorbike park awning, but it sure sounded impressive. I get up and have breakfast and just relax a bit while waiting for Karl to arrive before noon. When he arrives we go walking to areas and grab dinner and go back to the hotel to relax a bit. Later we go to a club that plays pretty decent music but has a lot of money-girls and bad men looking for money-girls. After midnight I catch an Uber home as Karl stays a bit longer. Is there anything weird about getting into a stranger's car who speaks little/no English n a strange country?
On Thursday, Karl, Person NNV, and I set out on a mission to get business for Karl. (His business is building and installing electronic controllers for cement plants.) I've done my homework for Karl and we go to two different cement plant companies. Person NN_V has been nervous about this effort because he believes his English is not up to the task, but I keep pushing him and explaining to him that he only needs to find us an English speaking person that we can talk to and get started. At the first office Person NN_V takes charge and talks with the receptionists and persuades them to find us an English speaking person though we have no appointment. We find a nice man who is technically savvy and understands what Karl's products do. Bingo! We have a discussion with him and exchange business cards and then we go away. Person NN_V expected us to make a sale on the spot (as Karl had brought some demonstration sensors and electronics with him) but I have to expliant to him that you have to cultivate and nurture business relationships. We stop for lunch since there is a large rainstorm. As the rain stops we grab an Uber to a second cement plant that appears to be more govenment run. The reception lady ries to turn us away since we have no appointment but Person NN_V again forces the issue and soon we have a man who speaks English and an older man who does not speak English coming to meet us. The man who speaks English isn't as technically knowledgable as the firs tplant, but he can get us to the right people if we send him an email. So, of course, business cards are exchanged and we will send information.
Later on Thursday, after Person NN_V has returned from his work, we go have dinner and then try a new club. Within a few minutes we realize that this club is way too loud and is trying to impress people with volume rather than quality. So now we head over to last night's club and the music is not as good so Person NN_V and I leave near midnight and let Karl fend for himself.
On Friday the three of us go to the War Remnants museum (which I had been to 9 years ago). Karl has taken a big interest in the Vietnam war since a recent PBS 12 or 15 episode series on the complete history of the Vietnam war that played this past summer. (I watched most of the episodes also to remind myself of background.) Evetually Karl insists that we grab lunch though we are running out of time before our reserved seats on the hydrofoil leaves, so we have pizza. Vietnamese pizza has mayonaise on it - how weird. We get an Uber and there is nasy traffic and we are not going to make our hydrofoil.
But we run to the ticket counter and there is a drunk lady arguing with the ticket agent holding the line up. I don't know how long this has been going on but we were 10 minutes late and the hydrofoil is still at dock. I see the lady with a Tiger beer can arguing and using the online google translator to say "You're trying to make me look stupid and I don't appreciate it". After a few more nasty comments, I say out loud from 5 people back in the line, "Maybe if you didn't drink so much beer you wouldn't look so stupid" The drunk lady, now referred to us as "the Tiger beer boat lady", hears me and turns and thinks that Karl said it. And she says directly to him, "I have to drink this mch to put up with this". Karl is laughing with me since he was the target of the refrain though I started it. And everyone, Vietnamese people included, are laughing at the Tiger beer boat lady. Eventually things get straightened out, the Tiger beer boat lady gets her ticket, and steps aside. The rest of us get our tickets. But now the Tiger beer boat lady is arguing with her taxi driver claiming that she has laready paid him whereas he says she has not. I don't know how the situation resolves itself, but she does get on to the boat. I also notice that during the 80 minte hydrofoil ride from Ho Chi Min city to Vung Tau that she consumes two more Tiger beers.
Vung Tau is a much smaller resort area along the ocean, so there is less traffic and much of the area is more walkable. Person NN_V is from a surrounding village, so after dinner he goes off to meet up with a friend while Karl and I go for a long walk and get lost (as usual). I try to greet as may people as possible with traditional Vietnamese greetings and "How are you" and "What is your name" in Vietnamese. I get big smiles from everyone and they respond enthusiastically. Eventually we find the hotel, but it has been at least a two hour walk.
On Saturday, Person NN_V, Karl, and go for a long walk searching for a bicycle rental place. We don't find one but we get some clues to try again on Sunday. After dinner the three of us go to a club in Vung Tau and the music sounds great but it is again way too loud. So we're there for a few minutes, just long enough to use their WiFi, and find an Uber to go to another club. We go to the Black Pearl and it is a weird mix of people with a live band playing. SO we settle in and listen to some cover songs of rock and roll sung with Vietnamese accents and then a great 30 minute DJ set of dance music. Finally the live band comes back on and plays all sorts of slow depressing songs and you can see many people picking up and leaving. We manage to get through this set before we grab an Uber for the hotel.
On Sunday Person NN_V announces that he will go visit his family and then catch a bus back to Ho Chi Min city. He was a bit ill after the hydrofoil ride though it was not rolly or rough or bumpy. So karl and I start walking and with a few conversations we find a place to rent bicycles to us. They are beat up and the sho powner has to install the brakes, but we wait and away we go. We ride for 90 minutes outside the city and keep talking about how well maintained the roads are even out in the rural areas when compared with Cambodia and Thailand. We finally turn around and head back towards the city. We catch up to a guy on a Trek road bicycle and go past him and continue along and then he re-passes us a while later and tries to get away. So Karl and I, up for some fun on our rickety bicycles, push pretty hard to catch back up to the guy and re-pass him. He's surprised that we caught him and blow past him to not get caught again. We get back to the city and decide to extend the trip a little bit to buy tickets for Monday's hydrofoil ride back to Ho Chi Min city. As we're riding, almost simultaneously, both Karl's left pedal and my left crank fall off. We manage to get the bikes back to the shop but we both realize how lucky we are that these failures did not occur when we were a long way from the city. Later Karl and I have a quiet dinner and call it an early night.
On Monday we have a slow day and catch the hydrofoil back to Ho Chi Min city. There are no drunk Tiger beer boat ladies on today's ride. When we get to HCMC we grab snacks for lunch and relax a bit before heading out to meet up with new friends at a 3D gallery. Except that when we get there they tell us that the gallery is closed (though the website says that they stay open until 8pm). S we go ahead and move over to a restaurant and have dinner and good conversation with two new friends. One of the friends, Yuen, has to go home early so Karl and I check the map and realize that we are only 700 meters from our hotel. But on the way out I get the name of the server (speaking Vietnamese) and tell him my name (speaking Vietnamese) and give him my phone number and email address for future contact. (We had gone all of the way out to District 4 fr the 3d gallery and than back to District 1 for dinner and ended up close to home.) So we just walk on home. Karl is tired from the clubbing and cycling and boat ride and running around so he goes back to his hotel room for sleep before 9 pm. I go to my room and mess around on the Internet before getting down for sleep later.
On Tuesday Karl goes to swim and I go out walking in the morning and then catch a flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In Phnom Penh we grab an Uber to the hotel but the Uber here is just slightly less than a taxi (as opposed to Vietnam where Uber was about a third or half of a taxi). We go walking and grab Tra and he joins us for dinner. I see an interesting Person, Person K_Ca, so I start talking with him. He speaks very good English and I give hime my Line address to chat with. When we leave dinner Person K_Ca is at first going to join us for ice cream but doesn't join us. Then Karl and Tra hit a couple of clubs but they are both dead, so we re-unite and send Tra to his home and we go back to our hotel. Person K_Ca has made a mess of trying to meet us and I'm a bit disappointed.