xe om, etc

okay, i've come to terms with never fitting in here. no matter what, even after 4 months in saigon, i will always be seen as a tourist. i could even get alright at the language (unlikely--shit's hard) and amputees and little street kids would still flock to me, arms outstretched. by now i'm used to being stared at, and i know that whether i'm buying a bowl of pho or negotiating a motorbike-taxi ride in broken vietnamese, someone's gonna try to rip me off. i'm getting the hang of it--figuring out how much i should pay for a pineapple or an hour on the internet. but every time i'm trying to get the price down 1,000 dong or whatever, i have--believe it or not--a sort of moral dilemma. now, it always sucks to be taken advantage of, and new york has hardened (jaded?) me to the extent that i have no problem telling someone to fuck off (in vietnamese, even!). but when, for example, the homeless motorbike driver asks for 15,000 dong--less than a dollar--to take me home from school, and i know it shouldn't cost more than 10,000, how hard should i try to push the price down? do i walk to the next street-corner or shell out the extra coin so the guy can buy some lunch? i think i'm being so street-smart and clever, when i'm really just holding out on the equivalent of 5 cents. i don't wanna be a pushover, but sometimes when i take a step back i feel like a dick. as much as i try to fit in here, as much as i want to be treated like i'm vietnamese, i will always be a tall, sweaty, white target. it's frustrating to think that after 4 months in saigon that won't change. but it could be worse. i mean, life in saigon is grand--all sugarcane juice and pop music, cheap cigarettes and karaoke. i really gotta start taking myself less seriously.
okay so moving on...i went to dalat this past weekend with scott..amazing time, romantic getaway. we hung out with "crazy lady", the architect-daughter of the former vietnamese president, and stayed in her hotel, accurately dubbed "the crazy house" (we got the room at the top of the tower.. http://www.reisebilder.ch/vietnam/crazyhouse.htm). she showed us her blueprints and creeped us out. got drunk and ran around it like a haunted house. also played guitar with an old poet man with a foot-long beard, rented motorbikes and went back to the heavy-metal bar. i think we did pretty well for spur-of-the-moment trip. now i think im getting sick..dengue fever, i hear you can shit to death. but for now a sore throat is the least of my worries, since i am currently battling a cockroach infestation and a couple hundred pages of vietnamese economic history. oi..chao cac ban