Who steals a shoe?

One of the best things about Saigon, especially compared to living in Cape Town, is the ability to walk the street at any time, by yourself, and feel safe.  Whereas in Cape Town, you can't walk to the bars 10 minutes away, here there is almost no violent crime or hold-ups of any kind.  This is largely because owning a gun is illegal here.  In South Africa, on the other hand, I was told by a guy in the elevator after one of my jiu jitsu classes that his gun (which he pulled out of the back of his pants to show me) was the only thing that would protect him.  Ironically I was able to survive 7 months in South Africa without being robbed, but I have now been robbed in my third week in Saigon.  The difference here is Vietnamese thieves are masters of sneakiness rather than brute force.  They specialize in cat burglary as well as bumping your cell phone out of your hand by knocking your elbow as they drive by on a motorbike and then catching it on the way down.

Most Vietnamese townhouses, including Erica and Dave's where I am staying right now, have one entrance gate, and then a little area for shoes and motorbikes before the front door.  We keep the front gate locked even when we are here, but apparently Vietnamese shoe thieves are so sneaky that the little hand hole to get to the lock is all the space they need.  Presumably using the stick that we found lying outside the next morning, our suspect was able to remove every pair of shoes from the area.  He (or she) was nice enough to spare the flip flops.  Surveying the scene, it didn't seem physically possible to remove a shoe through either the bottom of the gate or the keyhole.  We learned to never underestimate the slick and sly shoe thieves of Saigon, and also to leave our shoes inside.  

At the present time we have one suspect.  The other day we stepped outside of the gate only to find a mysterious Vietnamese man sitting on his bike across the alley and staring at us.  He was wearing a traditional pointed rice patty straw hat and holding a bamboo cylindrical object in his hand.  What on earth is this guy doing and what is that mysterious item in his hand?  As these thoughts went through our heads, he put his mouth to the top of the cylinder, and lit a lighter to the bottom.  He took a deep breath, slowly drew his mouth away, and exhaled a serious cirrus cloud worth of smoke.  He then offered me some of this mystery cloud-creating substance.  I thought back to my D.A.R.E. classes and all the anti-drug commercials back in America, and remembered that I would probably either die or end up killing someone else if I did, so I politely declined.  I also had a networking meeting that I was going to, so I didn't think that would help.  When the shoes disappeared, I also thought back to health class and scare tactic commercials and realized that if this man is smoking DRUGS, then he will clearly branch out to commit more crimes.  Thus he MUST be the man who stole the shoes.  We are taught so well in America.

This story really turned on my intrigue of the widely accepted illegal and counterfeit market of Vietnam.  You can get everything cheap here, but it's either going to be stolen or fake.  DVD's are about 75 cents each, and you can even buy them at upstanding supermarkets.  Nobody cares, and since it's so widespread, there is no chance anyone is ever going to sell a legitimate CD or DVD for 20 times the price until there is a crackdown.  But I am not complaining about that.  I was able to buy every episode of both The Wire and South Park for less than 20 dollars total.  Just one season of any TV show is more than that.  

As far as clothing goes, one would think that since so much of everything they own is made in Vietnam, you could get it cheaper here before they ship it out of the country.  However, since most of these companies have explicit export-only agreements, this is not possible.  As I perused the aisles of the Nike Store here (selling real Nike merchandise), everything was made in China, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, or anywhere other than here.  It was also ridiculously expensive.  If you want Vietnam-made you need to go to the sketchier establishments in the markets or to stores on the backstreets.  There is a chance that this stuff is stolen from the factories making legitimate products, but more likely from these mystery factories that only churn out counterfeit goods.  It is my ultimate goal here to find these factories and really learn the ins and outs of the this thriving industry.  I don't care where they make the real North Face bags; I want to see the place where they are ripping them off with much shoddier materials.

It reminds me of the mystery behind the international arts and crafts that dominates tourist markets in all African nations.  Although every vendor claims that he made every wooden giraffe and batik piece on his tables, it is clear that there is some factory somewhere churning out the same crap and sending it to markets far and wide.  Unassuming tourists who can't bargain for their life then buy the crappy elephant thinking they bought it from the art master of Swaziland or wherever they are.  In both situations, although the African art is slightly more legit, these are some of the biggest industries which no one seems to really know the inner workings of.  I can only hope to learn.

Now to the specific stolen shoe industry.  Saigon is like one enormous department store.  The only difference is the aisles are full streets.  There is a separate street or set of streets for every product from power sanders and power drills to giant stuffed animals and, of course, shoes.  Each street will literally have store after store of the same stuff for the same price (which always fluctuates based on how white and vulnerable you look), and this can continue for multiple blocks.  As our good friend Benson deftly noted on Garbarrassing.com, I am as white as they get, and thus they usually start me pretty high.  According to Benson, he is slightly less white than I am, but unfortunately he is going to be given the same ballpark price, and he wont be getting them to take off many dong at all.  The Vietnamese are notorious tough and stubborn bargainers and if you are in a touristy area or are exceptionally white, like Benson or myself, the price is barely moving.  For instance, there is not much hope in Ben Than market in the city center.  If something is 500,000 dong (around 30 dollars) and you undercut it to 200,000, the shopkeeper's next offer, after a huge shocking cry and wince of pain, would probably be a measly 480,000 dong (true story of another very white traveller).  That is savings of a dollar and a quarter.  I guess this is a result of too many tourists coming in matching shirts and stickers and jumping at the first comparatively cheap price.  

My apologies for getting sidelined.  After the infamous shoe incident, we decided to wander down to the stolen/counterfeit shoe street.  While Dave needed to buy new shoes, I went just to find my recently stolen shoes to see if they had made it to a storefront yet.  Every store was full of shoddy looking shoes and dirty used shoes lining the racks.  There were people sitting on the street cleaning off the new arrivals, so this was the opportune time to track down my shoes.  On the other side of the "legitimate" store fronts were people selling their goods on blankets on the sidewalk.  The endless piles and rows of shoes were overwhelming, but I was committed to checking every place for my stolen goods.  However, not long after noticing all these merchants, there was a sudden panic that spread through that side of the street.  With no rain in sight, it was clear that they were alerted to police that were on their way to crack down on this industry.  Nobody was arrested or forced to give up their products, and all it did was increase the possibility that someone was running away with my shoes.  Big B minus to the Ho Chi Minh City police force.  

Now I realize that in the US you can buy illegal and counterfeit goods and you can illegally download whatever files you want.  However, in the US this actually is illegal and is enforced by the law.  Here it is part of daily life.  There is absolutely no understanding or respect of intellectual property, and theoretically, this economy would collapse (even further than it has) if these laws were strictly enforced.  It is such an integral part of the system, people's livelihoods, and people's daily purchases that it is nearly an unstoppable force.  If such laws were enforced, I would just be sold shoes and dvds out of some guys handbag in an alley rather than from a storefront in an alley.  Pornography is illegal, but just the other day I had some guy whistle at me and flash me a dvd of counterfeit porn.  That would be a double-whammy.

Now I need to go to the Pharmacy, which is a wonderland of prescription drugs sold over the counter.  There has been a little gnome living in my stomach for the last few days and he has been trying to gnaw his way out.  Hopefully they have something that will kill him.  And hopefully whatever drug I get isn't produced in the same factory as the DVDs and faux North Face bags.