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By Root 664 0

was to celebrate the New Year at Apocalypse Now, a promisingly titled expat bar a few blocks from the Continental. What better place to be when the ball dropped, I thought, than some sinister expat bar in Saigon? I expected opium-addicted ex-mercenaries, aggressive whores in silver minis, long-AWOL ‘white VC,’ black market hustlers, Aussie backpackers, shriveled French rubber barons, their faces teeming with corruption and the effects of malaria; I expected international rabble, arms dealers, defectors, and hit men. I’d had such high hopes. But from the moment I step inside, I am instantly disappointed. Apocalypse Now is a fern bar! There’s food! A crowd of well-dressed tourists from America, Canada, and Taiwan sit in a rear dining room among potted palms and Christmas lights, near a buffet of hot entrées, salads, and what looks like Black Forest cake. They sell T-shirts with the movie’s logo. Soccer is shown on an overhead projection screen near a small stage. Sunburned blondes with Midwestern accents and Tammy Faye hairdos drink colorful cocktails at a clean Formica bar.

I hate the place on sight and retreat back into the streets, finding somewhere to stand by a large stage set up behind the Théâtre Municipal. I recognize my moto driver from a few days earlier – from his Yankees cap – and we wave hello to each other. Onstage, a group of children are taking part in some kind of dance and theater presentation: patriotic songs, storytelling. No one in the crowd is watching; everyone has their attention fixed somewhere else. The constant growl of the motos and scooters drowns out nearly everything. Once in a while, loud technomusic plays over loudspeakers as the traditionally garbed performers leave the stage for a break. Everyone seems to be waiting for something, going somewhere, but nothing happens. As the hour approaches, I see a few people check their watches. One minute to midnight, and traffic has not slowed. No ball appears poised to drop. There are no fireworks. Midnight passes – indistinguishable from five minutes before or after. No one cheers. No one kisses. Not a single raised fist, shout of ‘Happy New Year,’ or any acknowledgment that another year has passed in the Western world. It’s true the Vietnamese celebrate the Chinese New Year (Tet), but for weeks there have been signs everywhere reading Happy New Year, and people have been calling it out whenever they spy an American or a Westerner. Everyone seems poised to party, the milling crowds huge, the traffic heavier than ever, but I see not the tiniest indication of any intention to do anything but drive or stand. They’ve all come out for the event, all these kids, as far as the eye can see, and beyond. They cluster around a laser-light display outside a nightclub, as if not knowing what to do next. Dance music blasts from inside, but nobody dances, sways, even taps a foot or drums a finger.

It reminded me of my first high school dance – boys on one side, girls on the other, both sides afraid to move. Or have I misunderstood? Are the hundreds of thousands of kids driving and driving in circles all dressed up with no place to go – as the song says – or are they truly indifferent to the infinite delights of three chords and a beat? Vietnam seems to have shrugged off the worst of our culture with barely a look back. Is ‘living freely’, song tu do, just driving? Or is it waiting? And for what?

It’s tim ran time. This time, I’m going to eat something that will, I am assured, make me very, very strong. The strongest. Huong Rung (Flavors of the Forest) Restaurant is a bright beer-garden-like space, enclosed by trellis, its foyer crowded with fish tanks. I enter, sit down, and order a beer right away, steadying myself for what will probably be the most . . . unusual meal of my life so far.

A grinning waiter approaches, holding a wriggling burlap sack. He opens it, gingerly reaches inside, and extracts a vicious, hissing, furious-looking four-foot-long cobra. As I’ve ordered the specialty of the house, I assume the staff is inured to the sight, but when the cobra,