Quark Flavored

As everyone learned in their primary school quantum physics class, there are six flavors of quarks: up, down, left, right, strange and charm. Other than being a quick review of old-school school stuff, why would I be writing about quarks while in Saigon? Well, I’d have to say my day yesterday encompassed all of the flavors. It had its ups and downs, and on the back of a motorbike, I wound my way through the labyrinthine and narrow “streets” of Old Saigon, making innumerable lefts, and rights, and by the end of the night, I’d had some encounters with some strange and charming people. So, yeah, my day was all the flavors of quarkness.

The day started the night before when I decided on a whim to take a ride with a Gojek delivery guy for 150K. I helmeted up and hopped on, and Ut took me around a few of the districts in the cool and dark. We ended up at a café, drinking cacao and beer and tea before he dropped me back at my hotel. I’d agreed to take a city tour with him for three hours the next morning for 500K – about $21. The reason my day started the night before, is that after self-medicating with caffeine from both tea and cacao (had a shot of espresso), I didn’t sleep much. I got up (there’s an Up flavor!) early and decided to try a run. For the first time in a while, I was able to push out a few Ks (only did 4) pain-free. That’s another Big Up flavor.

That’s Ut in the middle

The ride around was also an Up. Except my poor bony ass. No padding there and not much on the seat. My butt bones hurt. So there’s a Down. We had a nice lunch of Bon bo before once again getting dropped off at my hotel. I may contact Ut later for some other sightseeing, but I need to give my ass a break.

​Another day Down was a massage. I know, I know, how can a massage – that only cost $10.50 – be that bad? I’ll just say I got up and left before the time was up. Ugh. I needed a beer now, so I drifted over to the walking street that is basically a strip of neon, flesh, alcohol, various and sundry drugs and food. Me? I was there for the $0.65 large beers. I got there before sundown and before all the usual entertainments kicked off, and decided to beer myself at an off-main restaurant. As I was swilling some lager, I overheard a conversation behind me. Being curious, I tried to suss out what language. It seemed to be Latin-based, but wasn’t English or Italian or French. Portuguese? Hmm. No. Spanish? Maybe, but, I didn’t think mi español was so bad I couldn’t collect a single word. So, I swiveled and asked. Turns out that Marc (classy, European spelling, natch!), and Marta (definitely not a Martha) are from Barcelona, and were speaking Catalan. We talked and ate and drank cervezas for hours. Guess what? They were charming, and I have a contact in Barcelona now for when (not if) I go that way.

While we were people watching and drinking more cheap beer, a man sitting at the table in from of us turned around and slurred some odd questions and gave us quite the monologue of why his life is a disaster. For one thing, what kind of schmuck gets deported from Thailand? He is one of the people in far-flung parts of the world that give the rest of us hopefully decent and conscientious traveling Americans a really bad name. On top of it all, man, that dude was strange.

So, to give the tl;dr:

1. Up: my tour with Ut, a pain-free morning run
2. Down: Bony butt pain, and a legitimately bad, and hopefully forgettable massage
3. Left: So many left turns. So, so many
4. Right: See above
5. Strange: One drunk, or drugged, American
6. Charm: Mark and Marta

There needs to be another flavor of quark though, called Amazing, which would be the flavor for the time Marc, Marta and I had together. Fleeting, yes. Amazing? Definitely and probably all the more because it was so random to meet, connect, share, and separate in only a few short hours.