This blog tales kite surfing, drug deals, and a reflection of the trip.
The last evening I spent in Mue Ni, Sean had already left to Siagon. I was staying one more day to do another lesson of kite sufing.
So I end up staying at some hostel — it was about $5 a night for a room with 6 people in it. This hostel was nice — a bar, a pool, breakfast/dinner, the works. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.
Everyone at the hostel is like ridiciulously hot. All these young Europeans, with their perfectly tan bodies and perfect abs, and same for the girls. I’m just thinking. how do you look *THAT* good and drink that much? How great it was to be young.
Me being an old geezer decided just to go to my room and go to bed. At 10 pm. Luckily I just turned on some music and was able to drown out their partying.
The next day, wake up, eat breakfast, buy some sunscreen that says “very water resistant”, and then kill a few hours before my kite surfing lesson.
It ended up being a great lesson. I learned how to try and stand up on the board. And I did it successfully 2 times!, going about 30 meters on the water each time. It was soooo much fun. But it was also really hard. A couple of times I gave the kite too much power and ended up slamming face first into the water(really painful…). Near the end of the lesson, I had a problem getting the kite back out of the water; it ended up getting tangled in a bunch of fishing lines, and I had to eject from the kite and swim back to shore(FYI, this kite surfing area is FILLED with fishing lines attached to water bottles that float the surface. Pretty freaking annoying, as you constantly get caught in them).
After the lesson, I took the sleeping bus back to Saigon. I told Sean I’d split the hotel both nights(the hotel was $100/night which is OUTRAGEOUS for Vietnam prices). The main reason we got the hotel was because of the “infinity pool” on the top. Unfortunately because I was getting there after 10 pm, the pool would be closed. So the only time I’d be able to enjoy it was the next morning.
So anyways I get there around 10 pm that night. Then we go on the search for food. I get some boba(YAY BOBA), and Sean ends up asking some friend he knows about a good place to eat(since everything seemed to be closed). She suggested this “backpacker ally”. And boy was it a good suggestion.
Here’s a video of the area, and Sean dancing:
I eat some street food which is obviously delicious. Then we begin the drinking!
Now at around this time I had decided I wanted to get a gift for my friend Molly — there was this really cool tobacco in the north we smoked called “thuoc loa”, which basically means loa tobacco. It’s actually just tabacco that is 8 times stronger than regular tobacco. When you smoke it, you get a sort of weed high for about a minute, then it goes away.
You can read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_rustica
Being tobacco, I assume it is legal to bring back to the US. But never having bought “drugs” before, I wasn’t quite sure how to find it. It’s primary smoked in the north(like all in the streets of Hanoi and whatnot), but not so much in Siagon, which is where we were.
So I try to smooze up a guy. I find one of the bartenders at the bar we were at, buy him a shot, and then ask about 10 minutes later if he knew where I could buy some. He asks a guy, who in turn asks a guy, who disappears. And I never hear from them again. Well damn, that failed 🙁 But hey, at least he enjoyed his shot!
And then we bought another guy a drink, because why not. Here’s said guy:
Next, we go big. Last year in Thailand we bought a “tower” of beer:
This year, we did the same:
Some things don’t change ahaha.
After that, the night gets a lot more-drunk. We go play pool at some point. At this time I’m pretty sure I’m plastered judging by the deteriorating state of my selfies:
We go to the top of a club and go dancing. I remember dancing all about, keep bumping into tables and stuff. In hindsight I realize I was probably drunk of my ass, but at the time I just figured it was a small dance floor(which it was!). Finally at like, I think 4 am or some shit, we go back to our hotel. At some point before getting back to the hotel, I call Molly. She had the kid she was babysitting in the back of the car, and I apparently was like, “make him say shit! Make him say motherfucker! Fuck fuck fuck!”. Sean said something like “this is what I’ve been putting up with for 3 weeks” in the background. Of course she promptly hung up on me. Super inappropriate. Guess I’m not a very funny drunk 🙁
I thought I had set an alarm for 6:30 so I could go up the infinity pool the next morning and see the sun rise. But I missed the alarm somehow. That’s okay though, I still got to go up and enjoy the pool. Ladies:
and I had some delicious pad thai:
After that, Sean left. Goodbye Sean! Thanks for putting up with me!
Dissapointed in my failure the previous night to find the Thuoc Lao, I set out today to find some. I was going to do a food tour that morning, but this was much more important. I was on a MISSION!
I first ask the bar tender if he knew a place that might sell it. He referred me to a hookah-like louge, saying they might sell it or they might know. Seems reasonable. I uber over there, and the place is closed(of course, it’s the middle of the day). There are some guys doing construction inside, I ask them about the tobacco, and they just point me to the convenience store across the street. Nope, that’s not exactly what I want…
So next I head to a boba place to think it over. I had read online(on reddit, of all places) that people were able to buy at local markets. So I find the closet street market, and head over there. The market ends up being pretty weak, with not much stuff being sold. No bongs/thouc lao to be found. Damn.
So next, I head to an indoor clothing shop called “Siagon Square”. I don’t think they’d sell it here, but it was a 4 minute walk, so why not. Anyways, no such luck there either.
A quick note about the shopping in Vietnam: people say its AMAZING and the stores are CRAZY, but it’s seriously nothing compared to Bangkok. Hell, the shops in Vietnam seem smaller than some American street markets!
Anyways, I next head to the holy grail of street markets, ben thanh market: the biggest street market in Vietnam. I was hesistant to shop here because I figured they’d rip me off, but I had no choice.
I get there, look around, and no thouc lao! Wtf! Internet you lied, there’s no tobacco here. I walk to some shop that was selling cigarettes, and I ask them. The woman laughs at me, and points me to a hotel down the street. Hmm, strange a hotel would sell it, but whatever. I go to the hotel, which is very fancy looking, ask about it, and no such luck! Damn. Wtf lady, what are you on about?
This was turning into quite the adventure.
I then find a cigar shop on google maps. Maybe they’d know! I walk to the shop(sweating my balls off in the process, why is it so hot in Vietnam!?!?), only to find out that the shop is CLOSED. Also it looked to high-class to be selling this kind of tobacco.
At this point I was pretty dishearted. I had spent about 4 hours searching for this holy-grail-tabacco, with nothing to show for it.
I was just about to give up and get some food, when I decided I’d go back to the backpacking area we were in last night and try there.
So I uber over, and ask the first sketchy-looking guy I see, “thouc lao”? He just points me down an ally way. I’m like, uh…okay. So I go down the ally, and it’s actually not that sketch. It’s got hotels and shit, and white people walking all around. I ask a few more people in the ally, “thouc lao”? And they just keep pointing me deeper and deeper down the ally. Uh oh D:
Finally, I come out the other side of the ally, and onto the street. Damn, I must have missed it. I ask a guy near a cigarettes stand, in desperation, “thouc lao”? He says, hold on a minute, I think I got you. He talks to a few other people, and then this guy comes up to me, and says he has some. But we’d have to take a ride to where it is.
Oh-kay? I guess. I ask him how far and he says “15 minutes”. So we hop in his VAN.
Didn’t my Momma tell me not to do this? Anyways, being slightly scared I was gonna die, I start live sending Molly my location:
Indeed, what the hell am I doing.
The guy was a taxi driver, so he turns on the meter. Already I’m getting fucked, because he’s charging me like 5,10,15$ for this cab ride.
He starts making chit chat like a normal person, talking about how he loves americans, but northern vietnamese don’t(Vietnam war and all that). The he tells me his grandfather fought in the war. Oh god, is he gonna murder me because I’m American?
Then he asks me how much I’m going to buy. “10 kilos”? “You sell back in America, yes?” Oh jesus, now he thinks I’m a drug dealer! I can’t carry 10 kilos of this shit, jesus christ. “No no, 100 grams”. He doesn’t seem to understand. At this point I don’t want to upset him, since he’s going out of his way to drive me here, and if he thought I was going to buy massive amounts of tobacco and I don’t, will he murder me? Oh Jesus ._.
He’s confused by the 100 grams, so I say “0.1 kilo”. “Oh, 1 kilo?” No motherfucker, that could smoke out all of the bay area for a year. “No, 0.1 kilos. 100 grams”. Finally he realizes, “oh :(” with a sad face. But he keeps driving and doesn’t murder me. Yusss.
He then starts making obcense jokes, “oh, Americans very big like THIS(gestures with a wide circle)”, but vietnamese girls very small, very tight(gestures with a small hole). Oh Jesus dude, like I just met you, I don’t wanna talk about this. “I have a girlfriend” I say.
This whole time he’s driving, but not to anywhere sketchy. Eventually he gets off the freeway, and to this brightly lit street where they’re selling a bunch of Chinese new years stuff. He stops in front of a cart that looks like it’s selling bongs(bingo), and tobacco! Maybe I’m not going to get murdered after all? We hop out, and I can see more clearly they have these HUGEEEE bags of tobacco. They’re like long thin bags, about as half as tall as me. He tells me they’re about 800 grams each. And he wanted me to buy like 6 of those? No way that’s allowed through TSA lol.
Eventually he shows me the bags of “Thouc lao”, and they’re pretty small. Maybe a bit bigger than a brick. I’m like oh, that’s not too bad. So I ask how much for a bag — only 100,000 dong!!! (That’s like $5). Like fuck yeah, give me 2 of those! Each bag has roughly 100 grams; so this ends up being the equivalent of about 200 cigarettes worth of tobacco. Which actually isn’t that crazy of an amount if you think about it. But remember this is about 8-9 times stronger than normal tobacco, so it’s really like 1,8000 cigarettes. Lol.
So anyways, I tell him 2 bags, and a bong(100k dong, or about $5), and then I’m like okay, I’m done. Lets go. He offers to drive me back to my hotel — I feel bad if I say no, and I don’t want to upset this guy. He says yes, and doesn’t turn on the meter. Sweet!
We get back to the hotel in a mostly uneventful ride. At the end, he’s like, “oh I drive you there and back, so just double your one way fare”. I originally thought he was just going to drive me back for free, but that’s foolish thoughts lol. It ends up costing me 460k(about $20), which is the most expensive ride I’ve taken in all of ‘Nam. I give him a 500k, expecting him to give me change. Nope, he just takes my money. That’s okay, I just want OUT of this car lol. I’m feeling all sketched out.
For some reason, since this is basically the last Vietnamese person I’ll probably interact with, I offer him a USD $1 — just as a keepsake. He takes it, thanks me, and hands me back a “fake” $100 bill he was carrying around. Haha.
I hop out of his car, and END that terrifying, but kinda fun experience. Yay, I didn’t get murdered!
Now how to get this through TSA…
Now technically, the stuff is tabacco. You can read the wikipedia article I linked higher up. So there’s nothing illegal about bringing it through TSA. The problem is, it looks sketch, and it doesn’t really have proper labeling(just a white placard that says “thouc lao” and a picture of a guy smoking). Also I didn’t get a reciept, so if customs needs that, I’m SOL.
I figure I’d keep it on my carry on so if it DOES get confiscated, I’d be there to see it. I don’t want them shifting through my checked in luggage without me knowing.
If you look on the website, you are allowed to bring x number of cartons of ciggerates through. You are also allowed to bring “rolling tabacco”(which is what this technically is”), but they don’t say how much. I guess each “port” or city of entry has different requirements of how much you can bring through. San Francisco didn’t really say how “much” you could bring in, but it did have a PDF from 2006 saying all rolling tobacco was taxed at 50% the price you bought it at, and I’d have to fill out a form. So I’m like okay, that’s what I’ll probably have to do.
So I get to the airport, and get through Vietnamese security no problem. The guys actually didn’t even look at the screen when my bag went through.
The same thing at the Taiwan transfer security checkpoint — don’t even bother looking at the bag.
When I get to the US security checkpoint, I’m sweating bullets. I’m not really worried I’ll get arrested or anything — again, to the best of my knowledge, this stuff is legal — but I *am* worried that my shit will get tossed for not having proper labeling. I look at the customs form, and it doesn’t have anything for tobacco — which is weird since tobacco is a pretty common thing to bring through customs. They do have a section for “plants”, which I guess tobacco technically is. I decide to say I have “nothing to declare”, since technically tobacco wasn’t on there. But when I got to the passport checkpoint area, and the guy asked if I had anything to declare, I just said “tobacco”. “How many cartons?” “Oh not cartons, just rolling tobacco”. He just looks at me a second, writes something on the back of my customs form, and lets me through. Okay.
Then I got to the customs guy that scans your shit. He was sending most people to the left(people who didn’t need shit scanned I assume), and some people to the right for extra screening. Oh god, here comes the anal probing. He takes one look at my customs document, AND SENDS ME TO THE LEFT. No extra screening. Didn’t care to see my tobacco. Woohooo! Home free. I walk as quickly as I can out of the customs area and into the arrivals area and into the cool, San Francisco night.
Now I never *lied* at any point during this process, and I technically didn’t bring anything illegal into the country. But I definetly skirted a few gray lines. For one, on my customs document I probably should have said I had something to declare; but I told the guy verbally, so no harm there. Second, the guy that checked my passport probably should have said I had something to declare, but I guess he thought checking the rolling tobacco wasn’t worth it, so signed my documents saying I had nothing of interest.
So I got lucky I get.
And that’s how I “smuggled” a bunch of tobacco into the USA. CBP, if you’re reading this, IV’E GOT NOTHING TO HIDE.
hahaha…