A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
I learned soon after my arrival in Saigon that the Vietnamese are enthusiastic and unabashed imitators of all things popular or name brand. Designer labels are ubiquitous here, and it is not uncommon to see street or market vendors constructing Gucci shoes or sewing on DKNY labels while you watch.

Art is another area ripe for imitation. The tourist areas of Saigon bloom with virtually identical art galleries, all featuring excellent copies of old Masters as well as portraits made from photographs and an enormous volume of tourist-style water colors and pen-and-ink drawings of street scenes, rice paddy workers, and water buffalo. I spent 15 minutes not long ago watching a local artist paint ain impressive version of a Botticelli Madonna and child from a magazine photo.

The concept of copyright is cheerfully ignored as well. On any street corner you can find knock-off versions of Bridget Jones, the latest John Grisham, any book ever written about Vietnam, and all the Asian Lonely Planet guides for just a few dollars apiece. Can't find that DVD of the new Harry Potter on opening day in the USA? Just go to one of the other ten bootleg DVD/CD stores on the same block. Even my school, a quasi-governmental outfit, gleefully violates copyright laws -- all of the texts from which I teach are photocopied and bound right here in Saigon.

And the Vietnamese don't just copy Western art and culture -- their own neighbors get the same treatment. If a duck soup restaurant sees a boom in business, a second will open right next door with virtually the same menu and decor. If the vegetarian Bhodi Tree Restaurant in the backpacker district becomes famous, why not open another right down the block? There are now two restaurants named "The Original Bhodi Tree" within four doors of eachother, serving the same clientele with identical menus. Same goes for any kind of store, really. If your cell phone store or motorbike repair shop or plastic basket outlet starts to take off, you can be assured that within months a raft of cell phone stores, motorbike repair shops or plastic basket outlets will pop up like zits on a teenager.

All this exposition is really just to set the scene for the most amazing example of this copycat phenomenon that I have yet witnessed. Every Monday and Friday I walk home from my kindergarten teaching job. It's an hour walk, and I take a different route each day so as to constantly expand my horizons, or at least to personally view the various weirdnesses of the city.

Yesterday I headed down Nguyen Thong Street, and was quite taken aback by the first shop I came to. Outside, piled in stairstep fashion awning high, were hundreds of cans of baby formula. Apparently they're not completely sold on breastfeeding here in Vietnam. And as I looked just behind the baby formula, I could see why -- the mothers must all be blind drunk. Because this shop sold just two commodities, formula and alcohol. Mostly wine and hard liquor, but I did note some Fosters Lager for those parents who are beer afficionados.

This shop would have been strange enough as a solo effort, but clearly this had proved to be a lucrative prospect to the original progenitor of the Baby Booze scheme, as it had spawned not just one or two copycat stores, but sixteen in a two block stretch. Some, I must concede, did not adhere strictly to the two-commodity business plan, having added a third element to the mix -- Pringles. Hundreds of cans of Pringles and their salty/fatty snack brethren provide a way for tea-totaling moms and dads to accelerate the disintegration of their own health just like their neighbors. The next block down features seven aquarium accessories stores, so I like to imagine these drunk parents at home eating Pringles, feeding the baby, and watching fish.

On a busy corner near my house a family owns an air conditioner repair shop out of which they operate a very popular sidewalk steak and eggs restaurant. I fully expect to see all four corners of that intersection selling greasy semi-cooked fried eggs on sizzling cow-shaped cast-iron plates within the next few months. That will be great, but my life will truly not be complete until I can also purchase some baby formula and a fifth of Johnny Walker Red right next door.

© 2002 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 8:08 PM