Patrick Sullivan shared an Instagram photo with you

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"Best cafe downtown Saigon"
(taken at Cafeteria de L'usine)

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The Instagram Team

Patrick Sullivan shared an Instagram photo with you

Hi there,

Patrick Sullivan just shared an Instagram photo with you:

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"Pirate Tourism"
(taken at Pham ngu lao street)

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

MC

Good for glacoma

Mũi Hồ Tràm

In And Around

Saigon #1 from Patrick Sullivan on Vimeo.

A different dimension to the Fourth

As I'm sure you can imagine, it's slightly awkward to be an American in Vietnam on the fourth of July. It seems inappropriate to celebrate our independence when we tried to take theirs. Luckily reality exists quite divorced of my conscience or ego, however you choose to see it. Nevertheless I live in my head, and, on this momentous day for my nation, I stumbled upon an intensely somber experience.
The day started tame. I had an always frightfully inappropriate and exhilarating conversation with a good friend of mine as he flew over our great nation from the western to the eastern coast followed by some delicious phở and black coffee for breakfast. I played around on the interwebs making amazing discoveries as usual. Then tired by my electronic spelunking I decided to go shopping. 

We headed over to district one, the impatiently throbbing heart of Saigon. We leisurely strolled around, bobbed and weaved between motorbikes and street vendors, and dipped in and out of both ritzy and modest stores alike. The day was generally mundane until we strolled down a shaded street trellised with long vines hanging from crumbling French colonial balconies. The street was unassuming from afar, but the crepuscular covering was but a rouse for the most colorful imagery I've seen thus far while settling into our new life. We had found (sorry for the cliche) a sparkling gem, a diamond in the rough, among the ramshackle roughage of Nam's largest city, the antique district of HCMC. 

This is where everything amazing from at least the last dozen decades went to die. But purgatory sits sweeter than a nuns...well anyway it was jaw dropping. Everything I've ever wanted in my home was there from east to west, ancient to industrial. I would have gawked for as many ages as there were surrounding me but my lovely lady friend had an appointment with a cheeky little hipster and forced me to stop bargaining the prices of ship wheels and Buddha heads. Don't fret, I will be back. And I will be coming home with stuff you all thought previously unattainable for fractions of their worth. No, I'm not plundering. Actually the truth is that my bargaining skills don't exist, and the only thing I bought I received in return three times as much change as I expected to.

So we set out to Ashley's coiffure. As fun as it would have been to sit for hours and watch her get snipped and dyed, I went for a walk down the street to see what I could discover. And on this momentous day I awkwardly came across the War Remnants Museum. A display "to systematically study, collect, preserve and display exhibits on war crimes and the aftermath foreign aggressive forces caused for Vietnamese people." Clearly this wasn't a celebration of America's best and brightest achievements as the fourth of July is meant to bolster. Instead I viewed from the disturbing to the downright grotesque. Some I found unfair, some ironic, and some shameful. But regardless of how provocative it all was, it was more so intriguing. The richness and breadth of the Vietnamese culture leaves me with the hope that our nation can some day mitigate both its faults and fortitude in as graceful a way as the Vietnamese have.