Obama in Saigon

So, if you've been following the news, you of course know that Obama is in Vietnam right now.

What I didn't know was that he would be on my block this morning.

I was walking home after I finished my morning class (I'm lucky enough that I live close enough to my school that I can walk back and forth from home).  I could see that there was a heavy police presence on the street (as there had been all week) but I assumed that closed roads only applied to motorized traffic.

But, to my surprise, they suddenly started yelling at me, and informed me that I couldn't continue walking down the street.
I've been living here over a year now, and my Vietnamese is still terrible.  But I pulled out my apartment key (which has the street address printed on it), pointed to the street address, pointed to myself, and pointed in the direction of my apartment.  (I was only about a block away from my apartment at this point.)  "Sorry sir," was all the policeman kept repeating.

Fuming at how unfair it was to keep a man blocked out from his own domicile, I tried to go around the long way.  I went over one block, and saw several people waiting behind police barricades for Obama to drive by.

I briefly contemplated what the advantages of seeing Obama's motorcade would be, and ended up deciding that it would bring no measurable material improvement to my life.  And so I opted to just get back to my apartment rather than wait out in the hot sun.

(I did once see George Bush's motorcade drive by once, back in the day, but I can't say it changed my life in any meaningful way.)

And yet...and yet, I still do think it's kind of cool that Obama was speaking one the same block I live on.
And to think, I ate my lunch just half a block away from the President of the United States.  (Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention it, but by going all the way around, I did eventually get into my apartment that afternoon).

Anyway, for anyone who's interested:

This is video of the Presidential motorcade at the Gem Center (which is on my block).



Here is video of people waiting for Obama to drive by: This is just one block away from my apartment.



I didn't attend the actual event, but by all the media accounts, the highlight of this conference was an interaction between Obama and a young Vietnamese rapper.



P.S.--I don't think I blogged about it at the time, but I had some similar experiences in Cambodia--i.e. I once ate my dinner within half a block of where Hillary Clinton spoke, and I was once inconvenienced by the traffic jams when Obama came to Phnom Penh.  So if I ever get hit by a truck or something, someone make sure to mention all this at my funeral--I won't have people saying I never had anything exciting happen to me.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky debate 2016 - The Stony Brook Interviews Part One - Noam Chomsky