Con Dao, or: Christmas is over when I say it's over

In my living room there is a small artificial Christmas tree, somewhat haphazardly decorated but still festive in its own imperfect way. Though April is almost gone, no effort has been made to pack it up and put it away, wherever it would get put away; it perhaps has been standing in that same place for years on end for all I know. It was there when I moved in, and it will most likely be in that exact spot when I leave.

This is the amount of control I choose to exert over my surroundings. It makes no matter to me that the tree is there—it's an ornamental sort of object, as much an appropriate decoration for the living room as a picture on the wall. It does not offend me that the tree is there well into spring—if it were a menorah or some kind of mutant dreidel, it would still be there without any intervention on my part. In my mind, the tree, however plastic and sad, has a right to exist wherever it will, and at this point the whole place would feel almost empty if it were to suddenly disappear.

Still, it's got me thinking: what am I going to write about? My poor neglected blog, ignored for months because I've somehow developed the idea that I don't have anything to tell anybody. That's just silly and wrong.

So call this a retrospective.

Where were you December 25^th, 2012? I was on a plane for the second time in two days, trying to land on the seemingly-mythical group of islands called Con Dao. Now, I don't mean to seem ungrateful for this, because I appreciate to a great degree that most of you would have given your left kidney to be on a tropical island in December. But this island is situated just so that landing planes on the only available airstrip the tiny place can offer becomes a feat of almost super-human endurance. It tends to put a damper on the whole “relaxing island getaway” idea, but still adds to its mystique. We might as well have been trying to land on the island from LOST.

Christmas Day was take two. The day before, we'd boarded a mid-size plane for a 25 minute flight from the stinky, smoggy chaos of Saigon to the Place Where Christmas Dreams are Born. A three-day getaway to the small island (still technically in the province of Vung Tau--seriously, stupid close to HCMC) seemed like the perfect Christmas trip for a pair of friends and me. After a certain amount of time in a huge city like this, you start planning small escapes here and there, just to remind yourself that the world is not filled with motorbike beeps and a near-constant fear of any and all manners of death and/or dismemberment.

But the universe had other plans. The flight went smoothly enough, everyone on board with extra parcels and some amount of Christmas spirit, that general vibe of being happy to go wherever you're going. When it came time to land, the pilot switched on the seat belt sign, then announced that there was some slight turbulence ahead. Which ended up being the understatement of the year.

Every time the plane got ready to make its approach, it would list to the left and right so violently that the pilot had no choice but to abort the landing and pull up, circle around, and try again. The first time, two alternate thoughts were in my head: 1) I can't believe my pants are dry, and; 2) Trust, trust, trust. Next time will be better.

Next time was not better.

And the third time was the worst.

By this point people were starting to whimper and even scream when the plane attempted its landing. Children were crying, I was inhaling loudly through my teeth and holding my breath, trying to figure out if and who I should be praying to in moments such as these. Or whether I should be praying at all, and just drinking all the whiskey.

After three attempts the pilot, who is a goddamn hero, declared the island's wind conditions unsuitable for landing and turned the whole mess around back to Ho Chi Minh City. So on Christmas Eve I basically took a plane ride to the air above a beautiful tropical island and back.

We collected our things at the airport and went to make alternate arrangements for our trip. The airline put us on the first flight Christmas morning, 6:45 AM. I hoped this meant that we could land in less terrifying conditions and get on with the getaway already.

Enter the universe.

When I woke the next morning, the sun was way too bright and the sounds of children playing and screaming and singing at the school outside my bedroom window immediately signaled to me that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

My phone was dead. Why? We may never know. The battery was fully charged, the alarm set for a reasonable time, it must have just grown sentient for a split second during the night and decided it needed a break (after all, it was Christmas) so why not just shut off for a while?

By the time it powered up, it told me the time was now 7:05.

I wandered around my apartment going, “No! Nooooooooooo! Uggggggghhhhhhhh!” For a few minutes then resolved to check availability for later flights. Damn it, I am going to have my tropical island Christmas getaway, whatever the cost! Fortunately, I got everything ironed out (for a small-ish fee), had a quick Christmas hello-Skype with the fam, and set off to try this whole merry adventure again.

This time, the plane aced its landing, shaky though it was. Many of the people from the previous day were on our flight this time too, and we actually applauded. We were feeling good. Good enough to congratulate ourselves for sitting in one place for a while, hauling our luggage throughout the city, sleeping through flights, sitting in another place for a while, and managing to survive:

The entire story of my Christmas island getaway is practically contained in the journey of getting there. In the days that followed, we celebrated Christmas with copious amounts of spirits, exchanged gifts, and explored this veritable hidden gem of Vietnam, with all its attendant oddities. The day I left we discovered what is quite possibly the dopest beach of all time, well-hidden, full of coffee and beer vendors as ecstatic as any coffee and beer vendor can be to actually have customers, and absolutely, completely, ours:

See all those other tourists crowding around and being loud and generally disgusting? No! You don't! 

Wonderful, right? I had a whole 45 minutes to enjoy this magical discovery before it was time to get back to real life. 

The islands of Con Dao--the largest one called Con Son--are hands-down gorgeous, in many ways the incarnation of that 'tropical island getaway' I harped on about earlier. But they also have a turbulent past, involving several attempted conquests/settlements by several countries, eventually culminating in its use as a penal colony by the French, South Vietnamese, and Americans. There are several markers around the island describing various tragedies and atrocities perpetrated upon the Vietnamese. You can even visit several prison sites, though I opted not to do so because of time and, frankly, the lack of heart needed to process the terrible things that seemed to happen to people wherever Europeans went. I mean:

Click to enlarge!

At present, the island seems to have been purposed as some sort of military base, and boasts a relatively small Vietnamese population due to its geography and preservation status. This makes the local culture vastly interesting. There are elements of the Con Dao islands that remind me of the less savory aspects of living in Vietnam: bored, under-utilized citizenry just kind of sitting around and resenting you for taking time away from their phones, rats, rats, rats!, horribly inflated prices for foreigners, and the general distaste with which many Vietnamese approach their environment, but it also is a special sort of experience you don't get elsewhere in Vietnam: that is, an ecologically responsible one, with very few tourists and very little spastic development. 

This probably has a lot to do with this "preservation" status: The World Wildlife Fund in Vietnam has been working with authorities to preserve not only the islands of Con Dao themselves, but also the marine ecosystems surrounding them. For example, do you know what a dugong is?

Hello!

The rarity of these manatee-ish animals, in addition to throngs of Sea Turtles that use the islands for nesting purposes, have prompted this sort of intervention from the WWF. The conservationists, partnered with a military presence on the island, creates a very different travelling experience in Vietnam. It ensures that the tourist population remains low, and that development is structured and executed within reason. Elsewhere, you might find that people have gone absolutely bonkers trying to capture tourist dollars. In Con Dao, the approach to tourism, while definitely structured, seems so much more relaxed. And by extension, lovely. It will cost more to get you there and back, to eat the food you want to eat and drink what you want to drink, but just remember the pilot who got your ass alive and kicking to the place to begin with. It makes everything all OK.

Nature photos!

Up Next: Epic Tet.