mirror and shook his head, but he stopped the car.
I looked over, and the old man was leaning forward and staring at a building. It didn’t look like much to me, just a store that sold vegetables and fruit. The produce was in bins and baskets both inside the store and outside on the sidewalk. Like one of those fruit stands you see in British Columbia. Then there were apartments or maybe offices above that for five floors.
The old man opened the door of the taxi and stepped out. He said, “Wait,” without looking back, so I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the driver. Both of us waited, and both of us watched the old man.
He walked slowly to the building, looking up and down at it as he walked. Taking it all in. It had to have been a place that he knew for some reason when he’d been here before. Was it a grocer’s shop back then? I’d ask him later, but there was no guarantee he’d tell me. It didn’t seem like he was going to be telling me much.
There was a skinny little guy selling the vegetables, but he looked like he was putting stuff away. Closing up. About time, it had to be after midnight. The old man talked to the vegetable guy for a couple of minutes. The guy pointed up the street. The old man looked where he was pointing, then he nodded, and the skinny guy went back to packing up his groceries, covering baskets full of stuff and setting them inside the door of the shop.
The old man looked at the building some more, then reached out and touched the brick wall, left his hand just resting against the wall for a couple of minutes. Then he backed up toward the taxi, but he kept his eyes on the building.
He turned, climbed in the car and said, “Let’s go.” Then turned to look out the window again. He didn’t look at me or say anything to me.
We drove for a while longer. I noticed something else. Another sound. Loudspeakers. Not everywhere and not all the time, but every once in a while you’d hear these loudspeakers. Sometimes it was music; other times it was people talking, in Vietnamese, of course, so I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Mostly it was men talking, but sometimes it was a woman. When it was a woman’s voice, I got the feeling maybe it was like a commercial for something. The men’s voices, I couldn’t tell. It seemed harsher though, like the preachers on those TV shows where they tell you to smarten up your life and send money.
One thing was for sure. Ho Chi Minh City had like a major night life — clubs, lots of them. I could hear some of the music as we went by. Some oriental, some American. Even some oldies rock and roll. As we went past one place I could hear and see the band, all Asian guys pounding out a version of “At the Hop.” My mom loves that oldies stuff, so I know a lot of the songs from hearing them at home. These guys weren’t bad. People were dancing, and they were pretty good too.
Next was a karaoke place. I could see through the windows, some people dancing, some just watching. Two girls trying to sing “Roxanne,” the Police song. They sucked.
We drove a little farther, going pretty slow because of the traffic. That’s when it occurred to me — it was Saturday night here. See, I told you I’d lost a day of my life. I was thinking Friday.
Something else I didn’t expect — that Vietnam would be all about partying on a Saturday night. Then the old man said, “This is good right here.”
I looked around. Terrific. No hotel in sight. So we were going to haul our stuff around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City in the middle of the night for a while. This was getting to be more fun all the time.
The old man paid the driver, and a minute later we were standing in the middle of a brightly lit street. Big-time crowded.
“Now what?” I started to organize my stuff into walking mode. “You forget that we had a hotel, or did you lie to me about that? We just going to wander the streets until morning.”
“The Rex isn’t far from here. We need to eat first.”
“A lot of guys might have dropped their bags off first then walked back to this charming little spot for dinner.” I waved my arm around to indicate the charm.
“Yeah, we could’ve done it that way, but we didn’t, so now we eat, then we’ll head for the Rex. And, by the way, you complain way too much.”
He pointed to what looked like an outdoor lunch counter. People were sitting at seats that faced into the part where the cooks were making stuff. There were some benches a few feet back from where the people were eating. Every time somebody finished eating and stood up to leave, someone from the benches would race in there like this was the most exclusive restaurant in Asia and you were lucky to get in. It looked pretty dumpy to me. Especially compared to a lot of the places I’d seen as we were driving around. No band in this place and no karaoke.
I kept my mouth shut. I’d hate to be labelled a complainer. Especially when we were having all this fun.
We took over one of the benches, got our stuff gathered close around us, and watched the backs of the people who were eating. I tried to get a read on who’d finish next from the way they were sitting and making little eating movements. Couldn’t really tell.
It started to rain. Perfect. Not hard, but even soft rain’s still wet. The people at the counter who were eating were under a sort of canvas canopy. Out of the rain. The people at the benches — as in us — weren’t.
I looked over at the old man. He seemed to be, I guess you’d say, intense. Alive. Interested. Not at all bothered by the rain. He turned to me and said, “It rains a fair bit in Vietnam, so get used to it.” Heading me off before I could complain.
Sure, nothing to it. I’d get used to the rain just like I’d get used to hauling luggage around the streets of the city on foot in the middle of the night and sitting on a bench getting wet and cold waiting for a turn to eat at a place that looked like the ol’ health inspectors just might have missed it. Hell, anybody would get used to that, right?
We sat there for about fifteen minutes. Some people left. Others took their places at the counter. Finally, it looked like it was getting to be our turn. A couple of people finished eating in front of us, and I got ready to make my move. The old man put his hand on my arm. He nodded at a really old lady and a kid maybe my age. They were at the next bench to us, and I was pretty sure they’d got there after us.
They stepped forward and took the two spots at the counter. Didn’t even look at the old man to thank him or anything.
“That was stupid,” I said. “That old lady already has like a million wrinkles. The rain isn’t going to do anything to her.”
The old man smiled. “We’re next.”
Our turn finally came, and we took a couple of seats at the counter. I wasn’t all that comfortable, mostly because I had jammed everything I owned in where my feet were meant to go. I was sure we were surrounded by bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff. We were sitting with our backs to the street, which I didn’t like either because I figured that made things even easier for bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff.
The old man didn’t seem all that worried about it. He was concentrating on ordering. There was no menu, just signs on the wall and hanging from the ceiling above where the cooking was going on. The signs were in Vietnamese, which meant I couldn’t figure out squat that was on them. The Vietnamese alphabet is like ours, as opposed to the symbols that are the Chinese and Japanese alphabets, but that only
