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

 
My God, am I a slacker, or what? Sure, I promise "tomorrow", then "Monday", and here it is Wednesday (for you) and I still haven't posted. Well I have to make a confession. While I have indeed been busy (too many classes!) my real problem this week is that I have a new fabulous laptop that I discovered will play DVD's.

To those of you living in a typical American multi-media household you probably can't imagine how overwhelmingly thrilling this was for me. For the six months before I got back to Saigon I only stayed in hotel rooms with TV's a handful of times (I'm thinking you need to budget a bit more for that) and my house here in Saigon doesn't even have a radio, let alone a TV or DVD player. And I am a movie fanatic! Seriously, I even went to see Charlie's Angels and The Incredible Hulk while I was in Bangkok, two superlatively awful movies (and I don't have especially high standards), all because I HAD TO SEE A MOVIE. And this week, all of a sudden, I have access to all those movies that I've wanted to see over the last 14 months.

So forgive me if I went a bit overboard. Some friends loaned me some of their DVD's, and after an absolute orgy of viewing, I then went hunting around town for a good place to buy my own. This is not a difficult task, mind you. As I have reported previously, the Vietnamese have a very, shall we say, flexible attitude toward copyright laws. As you walk down the main tourist boulevard that runs from the big market to the Opera House, hawkers from the stores alongside wave knock-off DVD's and CD's in your face and promise ludicrously low prices.

The problem, of course, is that these are sometimes extremely bad Chinese copies, suitable more for using as a coasters than for entertainment. So I had to go someplace with English-speaking clerks, to whom I could explain the concept of "long term customer" so I wouldn't get palmed off with all the crap they sell to tourists who will never know until they fire up their machine back in Peoria and start to watch a shaky hand-held version of their movie, complete with audience noise and the occasional popcorn-fetcher crossing in front of the screen.

I ended up taking the recommendation of a friend and installed myself on one of the handy stools next to the DVD bins at the brand new SaigonTourist Department Store. In fact I was somewhat surprised to find them there at all. SaigonTourist is the official government travel conglomerate -- they run tours, buses, conferences, etc., and this year they've opened two ritzy (by Vietnamese standards) department stores complete with Western prices. The thing is, in the inaccurately named propoganda tool known as the Vietnam News, every week or two they run a story about how the government is cracking down on businesses who are selling counterfeit or smuggled CD's, cell phones, designer goods, you name it. Yet for a dollar and thirty cents I can buy a DVD of a movie practically before it's even released in the U.S. on the big screen, right in the government's own store. Call me crazy, but this set up sounds just the teensiest bit hypocritical to me.

However, I'm not complaining. I've been able to gorge on movies this week, and for the first time I've successfully convinced a Vietnamese salesclerk that if they are straight with me and actually give me the good stuff I'll come back for more (the Vietnamese pretty much live for the moment -- concepts such as customer service or relationship building are still very foreign to their business strategy). But don't fear -- I will do Part Two tomorrow. Really! I'm not kidding this time!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren



posted by Katy at 5:37 AM