*photos: Max Hauser & Brandon Bjorkman
Sitting in traffic in Saigon, Vietnam truly feels like the end of the world. Thousands of motorbikes clog every breathable gap on the pavement. Buses blast exhaust into my face. There is a man with no legs asking for change on the sidewalk. His face is 11 inches from the exhaust pipes on the street bikes. It is dark. It is smelly. It is sensory overload in the worst way possible. The oxygen is void. This is the apocalypse.
But on the other side of the brutal motorbike traffic expanse, there is a mystical city of infinity. Jagged buildings and misaligned roofs somehow fit together without a blueprint. Electrical wires are duct-taped together by the thousands, wrapping the streets like Goliaths used electrical tape. Neon shop signs light the streets to the point where actual street lights aren’t necessary. There are virtually no rules when it comes to construction, engineering, traffic-flow, or well, pretty much anything. It’s easy to fall in love with the free-for-all.
Local men rip thru thick toxic coffee and cigarettes on the crumbling sidewalks. They sit on tiny fisher-price stools that appear to be built for Keebler elves. The cute old ladies cook hot breakfast soup while assembling bahn mi sandwiches for the crowds. A baby waddles down the street just barely in eyesight of his mother. There is no space leftover. The city moves fast but life moves slow. I am an American weirdo that the locals graciously let exist here. I am merely an oversized fly on the wall.
I lived here seven years ago and everything is just as I left it. Saigon is a time capsule that somehow let me back in for another glimpse. Most places change with the inertia of capitalism, or simply, time. Vietnam maintains its raw authenticity. Even though McDonald’s moved in just last year, you barely notice it amidst the chaos of the far eastern world.
Expats (I.e. foreigners living here) form a love/hate relationship with giant, intimidating, smelly, Asian mega cities. You walk a thin line. On one side of that line is the romanticism and freedom of a mystic lifestyle on mars. On the other side is fading mental health, bone crushing loneliness, and a longing for the comforts of the west. Now I’m on the cozy side of that line.
I am drinking 80 cent coffee on the sidewalk. There are four baby chickens eating crumbs around my feet. Two puppies wrestle under a soup stand. There is an old Vietnamese guy next to me. He has a five inch hair growing out of his mole. It is unlucky to cut the hair off your mole in Vietnam. He offers me a cigarette, so I smoke my 9th career cigarette. Why not? I’m already breathing in motorbike toxicity in every breathe. A whiff of cigarette can be a nice 3-second-break from the routine waves of steaming hot garbage. I think I'll start smoking this trip. 35 cents a pack. Maybe I'll start an import business and sell cigarettes on the merch table next to my records.
The old Vietnamese guy and I don’t have much to talk about. I know ten phrases in Vietnamese. He knows how to say “hello” in English. So the old Vietnamese guy and I surrender to concrete jungle of Saigon. We let it blow by. What else can you do as a tiny insignificant human in a sea of 16 million?
Tonight I will play my first gig in Vietnam in seven years. Almost no one tours here, so it should technically be an interesting thing for people to do. Who knows what'll happen. It could be packed to the gills or there could be 31 people drinking 4% BAC god water in a small concrete room. Either way it’s a win and I’m a happy camper. I walked off a wallowing depression late last night, so technically my emotional cycle should be an upswinging pendulum today. But you know how these human brain waves flow, teetering and unpredictable. It keeps it interesting at least.
Everybody gets down. Only recently have I accepted this as normal. I used to feel guilty when I felt down. My life is good, why am I down?...that type of shit. It's a vicious cycle when we are unnecessarily hard on ourselves. It's time to utilize the catharsis of the down-cycle in our emotions. The down-cycle is medicine. It's hard to acknowledge it when it's happening, but if I can capture that feeling and sit with it, I can use it to eventually feel better. Oh, I'm feeling down. This is normal. This is good. It's glorious on the other side. Plus, if a person never gets down, wouldn’t that make them a sociopath?
I’m trying to ride out the down cycles and remember they are temporary. The old Vietnamese guy smoking cigs with me is doing the same. We all are. The old Vietnamese guy and I continue our coffee and cigarettes at 7am on a Saigon sidewalk. I woke up strange and I'm happy it stayed that way.
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"I will always appreciate bad days like this. Because they grant me a point of reference in regards to my happiness." -Andrew Jackson Jihad
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