Two Random Saigon Scenes

I. Sitting in the street-side Italian restaurant with Thien, we saw the object of so much adoration pass by in the streets. It had a police escort. Thien thought at first that it had something to with football. He was wrong, but it was on its way to adoring fans. T'was a traditional Vietnamese sticky rice cake wrapped in banana leaves on the back of a big truck. Thousands of people were waiting in some public space in the center of the city vying to break the world's biggest rice cake record. It looked like a giant log on its way to a burling contest.

II. Taking photos on the last night of New Years festivities, just as workers were beginning to dismantle the acres and acres of potted flower displays, a woman, festooned in rags with empty juice cans tied about her knees lurched into the public square, made a pronouncement to the fountain, and jabbed the syringe into her right forearm. As I swung around on a three meter radius to get a better view, she removed the injectable and stuck it in her other arm. As I was just about to move again, stunned at what I was seeing, she pulled the needle out and stuck it directly into her neck, right above her clavicle in that little dip where the windpipe recedes into the chest. Letting out a moan, she threw the needle into the potted flowers and staggered off into the shadows grinning into the crowd. That wasn't how William S. Burroughs described it.