Deerhunter-Gatherer

Vietnam

It is hot, perhaps 90 degrees in the quiet Siem Reap airport, where I am lying on the marble floor, sick as a dog. I make it to the bathroom and vomit until my stomach acid corrodes my wisdom tooth. Though I am wrapped in Austin’s sweatshirt, I remain freezing. No matter: I am on my way back to the ported ship in Ho Chi Minh City.

One minute I am miserable with heatstroke, the next I am sobbing in a Cambodian temple, and then I’m passed out on a Vietnamese airplane. That seems to be the theme. The parasite came and left before I knew my whereabouts. It’s binge traveling, I suppose.

I make it back in one piece and sleep.

I wake up in Vietnam and the collective is on an important mission for shoes. I want to say, "Get a life. We’re in Vietnam!" But that’s the point, we’re in Vietnam: home to some great knock offs—particularly those shoes named after people ( Clarks, Chuck Taylors, Jordans*.)

(*On a side note, Michael Jordan was at the Atlantis gambling when I stayed there in January. Some of my friends were lucky enough to play a hand confirming that yes Michael Jordan The Great has a gambling problem. Jordan shoes are not cheap abroad, contrary to what I initially believed. This was re-confirmed in Hong Kong. I should’ve found Jordan and asked him for a pair when I had the chance. Does he carry them up his sleeve like a magician? I sure bet he does.)

People are searching for bootleg DVDS. They are as brazen as they are commonplace--generally a hybrid of two equally shitty films i.e. “I Am Legend: Blonder than ever.” Vendors sell helmets on the side of the road like those in India retailing coca-cola bottles loaded with gasoline. Or kindergarten Lemonade stands in the United States. Maybe my children will sell gasoline in bottles instead of lemonade. I sure hope not.

Along with the challenge of shopping, crossing the streets of Ho Chi Minh is proving to be one of the greatest dares. We call this ‘Nam-ing': find a local, hold their shirt and shuffle between the bumper of a taxi and the tire of a motorcycle.

After splitting a bottle of Russian champagne in the park across from the Rex Hotel, I am climbing upon the back of a motorcycle. This would be a “never would I ever” without the liquid encouragement. I hold onto the hem instead of the strangers back. I am singing Electric Light Orchestra to myself: “Accroches-toi a ton reve, Accroches-toi a ton reve, Quand tu vois ton bateau partir, Quand tu sents -- ton coeur se briser, Accroches-toi a ton reve.” We are weaving between taxis and flocks of pedestrians. We are flying, motorcycle Zen.

We are now at the grand opening of the Volcano Club. I am walking into a lava lamp of the future-- ironic because lava lamps take me back to '95. There are a series of doors that lead to the dance floor, the nucleus. Drinks are $10 USD. Kendyll and I are grooving with a few black tie businessmen and a women wearing a purple tube top as a dress. The laser light show burns my retinas. Inhaling the dry ice is shoddier than smoking a gun.

I ask a friend what he did that day. “I walked by a sex store and saw the Borat bathing suit in the window but I didn’t go in because the door said ‘if you touch my balls, I cut off hands.”

We are now hunting for food. We find a tiny Japanese restaurant. People quietly sip their miso as we giggle like two buffalos in a china shop.

I am sharing my reoccurring dream with Kendyll. It involves a decrypted Russian warehouse-turned hotel, similar to an old storage building in industrial Portland. The halls are pitch black, and I can only get from room to room via candlelight. The only room I’m looking for is the bar. The dark bottle green walls in the bar turn a tart chemical emerald and the ceiling wax (not sealing wax) melting down the walls is collecting on the mangy Persian carpet. A carousing lamp and a candelabrum light the room. There is a large fireplace and many empty burgundy claw-footed chairs. The bar only serves vodka to my dismay. Kendyll confirms this is true: Russians exclusively drink vodka to her knowledge. She worked at an orphanage in Russia one summer. We decide to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Mongolia one day. I hope this dream is a prophecy. I would really like to go to Russia.


This next day it hot too. Our bus pulls off the side of the highway. We are at the home of photographer Hoang Van Cong. The exterior of house is hidden by jungle fauna and decorated with junk. Like the yard, his appearance is disorderly. He wears a camo jacket and a green cowboy hat adorned by thirty or so buttons. I wonder how long it takes to lace his combat boots. He’s petite, perhaps 5 feet 5. But I like this. It’s like he’s throwing up a big middle finger to methodical militarism.

I have been to many museums and palaces in Asia. Each houses an anthology of gold headdresses, coronation palanquins, bronze snuffboxes, teapots and paranoiac security personnel. But this junkyard pageant is a different can of worms.

He is giving us a tour of his menagerie. I step on a can of soda, while dodging the dishes that litter the ground. A stump acts as a makeshift table. There are chopsticks and rotting Dorian fruit. An American flag sticker decorates the side of his Atlas motorcycle. I thought it was only in America that the backs of our vehicles shit out our patriotism.

There is also a luxurious golf cart and a restored army jeep with wheels equipped for the tangle forest terrain. The jeep has seated the likes of Tim Page and Al Rockoff. Cuong trips over a flower vase and laughs. We are now inside his garage-turned-studio. Not surprising that the garage is also a mess of porcelain pots, books, old newspapers and arbitrary collectable antiques. It is only later that I discover Cuong’s ceramics are family heirlooms, some of the most valuable artifacts in all of Vietnam. But more notably, the walls of the garage are lined with horrifying photographs of the Vietnam War.

"I tell everything through my works. You can see me through my works.”

I open a photo album to a picture of the Clintons embracing Cuong so tightly he almost resembles Chelsea on graduation day. It’s charming. The covers of the photo albums are also charming, albeit creepy: teddy bears, pink unicorns and tabby kittens all hold his life’s collection.

His business card reads, verbatim, ”If you want to review the Vietnam most, please visit museum. Then you will women and children have suffered most, please visit museum. Then you will chance to talk with the ‘living witness’ the museum owner as well. By his whole heart, the owner of this 1st private museum in Vietnam has built a memorial to commemorate about 200 friends and colleagues who lost their lives during their lives during the Indochina War 1945-1975. This is a place to preserve the culture of human beings.”

The questions of war are becoming formulaic. “BECAUSE I AM CRAZY,” is his response to almost everything. I am tempted to ask him about Iraq, and proxy wars, his thoughts on the assignation of Hariri, the Syrian government, a Sunni uprising. “Because I am crazy” couldn’t explain the New World Order. Would he be impressed that Robert McNamara’s colleague and friend is sailing on the ship and sleeping 2 floors above me? And Desmond Tutu’s personal secretary enjoys bowls of oatmeal just as much as I? I’m impressed that he is a friend of Nick Ut, photographer of the Pulitzer-Prize winning shot of the naked Vietnamese girl escaping the napalm strike. Cuong would enjoy the ship. He would have a lot to say but he would circumambulate my questions as most do. We’d probably end up playing volleyball on sunny days. When it rains, we would doodle humpback whales, drink Chai and play Taboo.

I stop fantasizing.

I focus upon the topics at hand. He was 16-years-old when he started taking photos. He tells me he stared with a Nikon F single-lens reflex. He lost it in Laos. The communists thought he was in the CIA. He was thrown in jail when his wife was pregnant. When he got out, he had a seven-year-old son.

I am imagining him rubbing elbows with fellow journalists James Fenton and Hunter S. Thompson during the fall of Saigon. I read Thompson went to seed and bought a gun during his visit.

A soldiers most powerful weapon is not the weapon itself but his construction of the enemy.

Cuong tells us that a bullet hit him between the eyes. Twice. I am staring at his forehead. Where is the scar tissue? I really want to press my palm upon his forehead because I, too, am crazy.


I am wishing I knew more about the war. Part of my knowledge of the war comes from “The Deer Hunter.”

Under my breath, I quote the famous line from the film, "One bullet. The deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people that, they don't listen.”

No one is listening to me either. I’m sitting in the corner playing Russian roulette. I’m so tired. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.