Good Morning, Vietnam - Part I

For the last week I have been in Vietnam with World Series of Poker double-gold bracelet winner, John Phan, as he distributed food and money to people in his home country. It was an amazing experience during which we visited many towns and villages, and helped a large amount of impoverished Vietnamese citizens. A full feature article about John and what he does to help back in his homeland will appear in Card Player Magazine in an upcoming issue. What follows is a recap of the day-to-day activities.



Day one of the trip took me to Ho Chi Minh City (all the locals still call it Saigon) where I met up with John, who flew in a day before me with his girlfriend. The ride from the airport was harrowing as I quickly learned a few things about Vietnam traffic that proved true for the rest of the trip. Driving around in Vietnam is somewhat similar to the U.S., if you were to first replace 60 percent of the vehicles on the road with motorcycles (especially in Saigon), and then turn the road into a no rules free-for-all. Traffic lights, lane lines, speed limits, are all just a mere suggestion to drivers who do what they want, when they want.



Somehow this controlled chaos seemed to work out just fine as we didn't come across one accident the entire week. This probably had to do with the fact that there were so many cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, and bicycles on the road that it was hard to work up enough speed to get into an accident in the first place. We did see a motorcycle police chase speed down the wrong side of the street later in the trip, but even in that case all vehicles involved avoided disaster. With an innumerable mass of humanity on the road at any given second, crossing the street was next to impossible. The leap of faith required to make it from one sidewalk to the next took some getting used to, but once you're in the middle of traffic you feel a little like Moses parting the Red Sea as hundreds of vehicles magically avoid you as long as you walk at a steady pace and don't make eye contact with any of them.



Day one in Saigon consisted of John and his girlfriend showing me a side of Vietnam I would have never explored on my own. We stopped at a temple, then a coffee shop (which was more of a restaurant/bar/nightclub with techno music blasting and to top it off every television in the place had on the classic 80's movie Running Man), and finally a Vietnamese barber shop/massage parlor. John wanted a quick trim for all the photos he was going to take, and he treated me to a shave that was badly needed – old school style, with the barber using a straight razor blade sharpened up on a leather strap. Next up was some more sightseeing for me, while John and his girlfriend headed back to the hotel. We then met back up and capped off the night with a seafood dinner.



We were up early the next morning to catch a 6 a.m. flight to Da Nang (on the central Vietnamese coast), where John grew up, and now owns a home. We conducted an interview on the plane, which really set the tone for the trip, and introduced me to the non-poker side of John (which you can read more about in the upcoming article). His family was waiting for us at the airport to greet us and we went straight to his home to start food donations for the day. It would be tough to put a total number on the size of John's family, he has 19 aunts and uncles who have all had a large number of children, giving John numerous cousins, and they have gone on to have numerous children, giving John an even larger number of nephews and nieces. You would need a volunteer army to conduct the amount of charity distribution that John funds back in Vietnam, and his family happily steps in to provide that help.



One of the first people I met in John's family was his adopted son Minh. Minh was his nephew, but he legally adopted him in Vietnam when his father died. Minh is four-years old, and John will bring him to the United States in three years so that he can receive an American education. He wants Minh to experience as much Vietnamese culture as possible before he brings him to the U.S., so he is going to hold off on his relocation for a couple of years.



John's house in Da Nang was down one of the narrowest streets I had ever seen. Roadside cafes had to be broken down to let the van pass through and motorcycles clung to the wall to give us right-of-way. John has six members of his family living in his home full time, including an aunt, a cousin and step-cousin, and their children – three of his nieces. He completely supports all of them. The living room was filled with 500 cases of Mi Tom Chua Cay noodles and John's nieces and Minh wasted no time making it their personal jungle gym. Each case held 30 packets of noodles (think of your favorite college food staple – top ramen), so John had 15,000 meals to distribute to the poor people that lived in the surrounding area.



We started distributing these boxes of noodles at noon, and with each wave of distribution more and more people came to John's front door. About every hour we would open the front gate and distribute boxes on the patio, while John's cousins and older nephews stacked up motorcycles with boxes of noodles and took them to the elderly or sick people that could not make it over to his house. With each new wave of distribution more people came, and given the fact that John does this about once every two months, word spread quickly amongst the neighborhood and everyone lined up on the street outside his house. The last food hand-out of the day became a little unmanageable, as people became a little pushy to receive their share. It made sense when each box represented a week's worth of food for a family of four, that otherwise might have had to go without for a few days if they didn't receive one. Near the end, we had to close the gate at the front of John's house and hand boxes of food out one at a time to keep order.



The large crowd on the street had attracted the local police. Four of them entered John's house and when they saw an American standing there with a camera in a Communist country, they all began pointing at me and asking questions in raised voices. I stood there for a second baffled as they spoke in Vietnamese, and then went upstairs to retrieve my passport, visa, and look for John so he could interpret the proceedings. We all sat down at the dining room table and one of the cops lit up a cigarette before he began to review our papers while speaking with John and the elder members of his family. I sat in my seat and tried to remain calm, attempting to keep track of the conversation solely through verbal volume and facial expressions. Everything was eventually worked out after about 10 minutes, but it was not one of the most comfortable experiences of my life. I then left on a motorcycle to check into a hotel in Da Nang, while the police promised to help John organize the crowd when he distributes food from his home in the future.

Up Next: Part II from Vietnam, where John and his family head into rural villages to donate more food and money to poor Vietnamese families.