A ghost?

I was talking to my friend Jill the other day, she’s lived here as an expat for over a year, so she’s familiar with the challenges of joys of living in HCMC.  She mentioned to me that her family had to take their worm pills as if she were talking about Flinstone’s vitamins.  Of course I had to inquire further into the worm situation; was this something that I needed to know as a resident of HCMC now?  She said that she does it as a precautionary measure since contracting worms is pretty normal in an environment like Vietnam’s; wet, polluted, and far from bacteria free; it’s Southeast Asia after all.  In fact, I can’t even drink the water.  Water is brought in to all houses and apartments.  This means I’m back to brushing my teeth with bottles again; I’m sure it will become second nature eventually.

That is one of the strange things about Vietnam, it seems hard to believe that in a city that does have some infrastructure and development in place that I still can’t drink the water, internet is intermittent,  there are regular power cuts for whole city districts, and apparently I have to take de-worming pills.  That wasn’t in the ESL school brochure! 

I kind of feel like HCMC (and Vietnam) is really on the cusp.  The cusp of making it and turning into a modern, SE Asian city with some structure and stability.  But then I get in a taxi and hit the roads and realize that it’s a far ways from being a boom town.  The traffic is chaotic.  I wish everyone could see it, the insanity of it all.  In NYC you get a fine if you block an intersection – here it is expected.  Here it’s all about numbers and someone being your wing man.  If you have a wingman (another motorbike that will go into the chaos first and cut off cars or pedestrians, then you go with him…he’s your cover.  You use this tactic for crossing the street sometimes too. 

HCMC gridlock

I never experience complete gridlock until I sat in the taxi today watching the biggest clusterfuck of traffic that I’ve ever seen in my life.  Millions of motorbikes tried to squeeze through the vehicle traffic that was at a dead stop as everyone was trying to go their own way (turn left, turn right, go straight) at once.  I don’t know who actually created traffic rules or signals – but I now understand why they did it.  As much as I hate rules, the concept of a traffic light is brilliant.  It creates order.  Vietnam is not about order though. 

As it pours rain outside and the I am serenaded by a host of creepy, crawly sounds I can’t help but wonder what creepy crawly things are in my room…taking that one step further…what creepy crawly thing are in my intestines.  Seems like it’s a good time to start my de-worming process (Jill kindly got some pills for me too); let’s hope that this is simply preventative.  What the hell….it can’t hurt,can it?  Bottoms up…with bottled water of course.