The Vietnamese are really outgoing and I have found it easy to make local friends. Up until recently, “23/9 park” on Pham Ngu Lao boulevard had been my main channel for making friends.
I met Yen at the aerobics class that takes place in the park everyday at 6.00pm. We connected right away and since then, she has introduced me to many of her friends. I also met Nhan- the one who took me to Ky Quang orphanage- at the park when she and other Vietnamese students asked me to practise English with them. I ended up sitting there for three hours answering their questions about France, the US, Vietnam, politics and cinema. Then Nhan introduced me to her own friends.
I’ve designed my route to school every day so I get to walk through two different parks. With green space at a premium in Saigon, I consider myself pretty lucky. There’s always stuff going on in the parks…lots of “park stuff”, liking walking and reading. Nothing I would consider dangerous, but apparently I’m wrong. While walking through the other day I noticed an usually large number of men in uniform…
The park can be a dangerous place…in the afternoon…
Send an email to Kris, the author of this post, at kris@jetsetzero.tv or read more of their posts here.
There’s always something happening in 23/9 park, which is located a couple blocks away from where we are staying. I’ve already posted video about Hai the Vietnamese busker and our friend Sven the fire-spinner, but on any given night of the week you are guaranteed to see some badminton playing, hacky sackying, or simply people just hanging out in the park. We discovered that in addition to all that, there are free nightly aerobics classes at 6pm. A combination of feeling chubby and the fact that I’m up for just about anything brought me to the park one evening, super excited to see how it would all go down. Laurene and I strapped on our runners and I donned my black Adidas workout clothes that until this point had laid unused in my backpack.
Ever wonder what the American national anthem sounds like when sung by a Vietnamese busker? We got a chance to find out. Also the same busker’s version of the Vietnamese national anthem. This dude (Hai) can sing pretty much any anthem if you ask and plays a mean ukulele. And there’s Sven, our Australian fire spinner friend doing his thing. Until the cops shut him down, which for the record took only 1 minute, 9 seconds. All happening in 23/9 Park, which is fortunately located two blocks from where we live and a great little green place to retreat to.
Send an email to Kris, the author of this post, at kris@jetsetzero.tv or read more of their posts here.
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