It seems living in a tropical land does more than trigger some long-buried Vietnam memories. I’m now living in the hood of Bocas called Saigon. Did I hear that right? Saigon? Sí. I can’t get a good explanation, but I think the one story that makes the most sense is that it’s a Gringo-ization of the original name that Americans, especially vets, kept mispronouncing as “Saigon.” And, some of the houses are built on stilts over the water, just like in the real Saigon.
Sorry, I refuse to call it Ho Chi Minh City. Some things do matter, despite that Nam mantra, it don’t mean nothing. So after a month of living in the downtown hotel, The Ambassador, I made the move to a one-room cold water flat in Saigon, leaving Panama Annie alone to fulfill her fantasies. The lack of hot water is no biggie for me; I just take a shower in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun is its most intense. My room is about a 15-minute walk to downtown and a 30-minute crawl back. Most of the time my walk to and from the room is interrupted by stopping to watch the neighborhood monkey, named Toto, do his shines. The first time Panama Annie saw the tied up la mona, she squealed like a child and ran to get a hug from the monkey. He repaid her kindness by pooping on her shoulder. I tossed an empty plastic water bottle to Toto once and laughed when he tried to bang it against the tree trunk and it bounced back and smacked him in the face.
My room is one of 10 owned by, get this, karma believers, Elvis and his wife, Aida. It’s call Hospedaje Wini. Aida works in one of the local farmacias, Blanca Rosa, and Elvis oversees the construction of another apartment behind his. Work starts at 7 a.m. (wages are $10 a day), seven days a week and I have to turn the TV volume up really loud to drown out the construction noise, coupled by a pair of screeching parrots and a bleating goat kid. The goat sounds like a child crying out for help and during the night has caused some pretty weird dreams.
Some of the local kids — this is their summer vacation, which ended the first week of March — have a homemade ping pong table set up on the sidewalk and kids stand in line to take on the winner. Losers go to the back of the line. Costa Rica Joe, New Jim, Hardware Rick and Butcher Carl all live there, too. Or did, as New Jim and Hardware Rick have returned to the States, for now. Next to the Wini, in another building owned by the entrepreneur Elvis, is a small tienda, owned and run by the Chinese descendants of those brought to Panama to help build the Canal almost 100 years ago. In fact, in Bocas, all of the grocery stores are owned and run by a Chinese family. It’s the only place that will not cry crocodile tears when you have a C-note to change.
By the way, never, ever travel with traveler’s checks down here. I still have mine because no bank or store will cash them. I don’t know why, but when I visited David, Panama’s second largest city, I went to seven or eight banks, to stand in line only to be told, no way. Did American Express stiff Panama or what, I don’t know. Anyway, Saigon is a neighborhood of mostly poor, honest folks, Indios, mixed races, old hippies with a few turistas and ex-pats living in mostly substandard housing. The hood even has its own drag queen, a young man with pursed lips who wears a training bra under his tight shirt and bats his eyes at all the men when he rides by on his cruiser bike. There are a handful of bars and restaurants for the locals, so I go there to listen and try to learn and yes, drink cheap beer. I like Atlas and Balboa with an occasional Cerveza Panama. But with the high price of oil cascading down to affect everything in the world, the bars have recently raised prices from 60-cents to 65. As always, there seems to be at least one local in each bar who wants to practice his English, but the hidden agenda is “Would you buy me another beer?”
Elvis also owns a bar, Bar Yuly, which has an interesting eye-opener: The video jukebox shows pornos if the song being played doesn’t have an accompanying video. There are also four video slot machines that I watch locals shovel fistfuls of dollars into. One time this young man’s wife threw daggers out of her eyes at her husband who was putting in a few five-dollar bills. He left with his tail between her legs, followed by hoots of derision from the local patrons. Things that make you go, hmmmmm.
There are small shops, a laundry, metal shop, and even a small jail for miscreants, although I have never seen anyone in there, not even Otis, the town drunk. There’s a nearby beach a minute’s walk from my room, but the currents, or lack thereof, mean the beach and water are filled with rotting seaweed, so I usually hop on a bus for an hour’s ride to Playa del Drago. A few minutes of walking brings you to secluded beaches under coconut palms, laden with nuts. Plus the water is clear and chest-deep only a few feet from shore. In Saigon, it seems most houses have a few chickens and the roosters start their crowing around 3:30 a.m. with a repeat performance a couple of hours later. I have even seen a rooster with a small leash on its foot tied to a porch and one man amuses himself by tossing his rooster into the air, spinning it repeatedly. The rooster doesn’t seem to mind. A community horse is staked out on different empty lots to “mow” the grass and fertilize the land. Dogs are not as numerous as in Telluride, and they are mostly placid canines, approaching people submissively, looking for a handout. I’ve never seen one chase a chicken, which puzzles me. Because Panama is the center of the globe, the days and nights do not change much over the seasons. Neither does the temperature, highs in the low to mid-80s and lows in the 70s year-round. There are also no hurricanes here, just a few blowhards in the bars.