This past weekend, Vietnam marked a big anniversary: 35 years since showing the world’s greatest military superpower the door and uniting the two halves of the nation under the grand banner of communism. That last bit actually didn’t work out so well for everyone, as you may know, but that hasn’t stopped the government propaganda machine from pumping out platitudes extolling the unspeakable wonderfulness of freedom, independence and money-grubbing happiness under socialism, or the new communism, or whatever they’re calling it these days. All weekend there were the requisite dancing in the street, parades, celebratory speechifying and solemn tributes to Ho Chi Minh, who’s worshipped pretty much as a god around these parts, despite the fact that he bears what may or may not be a coincidentally uncanny resemblance to Colonel Sanders (who, in point of fact, also occupies a pretty high spot on the local totem pole). The celebrations fell back-to-back with Vietnam’s Labor Day holiday this year, so posters like the pair below blanketed all of Saigon for the week preceding, giving the whole city the feel of being trapped in a retrospective of 1920s Soviet Union constructivism.

These posters all sort of neglect to mention that every house, every vehicle, every thimbleful of dirt that had previously been owned by a resident of South Vietnam before 1975 was ‘reallocated’ to someone from North Vietnam immediately following the events of 35 years ago. For them, ‘independence’ tastes a lot  like a shit sandwich. You don’t hear them complaining, though – perhaps because it’s illegal to complain.

Freedom! Independence! Happiness, goddamit!

Very rough translation: "Celebrate 35 years of independence and a united country with a bucket of KFC Original Recipe®"

The disabled have a tough gig here in Vietnam. As if being mutilated in a war defending your country from an overwhelminly superior Western invader weren’t enough (Communist Party censors please take notice — I’m an equal-opportunity maligner of political systems!), there’s the fact that the Vietnamese government see no particular need for providing disabled people — veterans or otherwise — with financial assistance – though apparently they’ve got plenty of walking-around money for things like fighter jets and submarine bases. And those who merely had their legs blown into smithereens by hopped-up, trigger-happy U.S. Marines were the lucky ones; Agent Orange fucks up you and your progeny for four generations. No legs? Tough shit. You’re on your own. You’d better have either 1) a rich uncle or 2) mad begging skillz. (“Oh and by the way, thanks for the Revolution and all that.”) They don’t even have real wheelchairs here. Instead, there’s umpteen squillion Vietnamese people pushing themselves around the country in giant tricycles with pump-action steering wheels, like something out of a Buster Keaton film. So not only are they non-pedestrian, they’ve been turned into rolling punchlines.

One thing about the Vietnamese, though: they’re a resourceful bunch. Take this hombre, for example. Can he work? Not so much. Can he sell lottery tickets? Like nobody’s business. But the crown jewel of his business portfolio, the butter on his bread, the pièce de résistance of his peripatentic office environment? Advertising, thank you very much — on the back of his wheeltricycle. Clearly this is a man of the 21st century. Note also that not only is he advertising for Rainbow Divers, who I’m willing to bet pay a premium for this kind of placement, but he also appears to be licensed. The branding team at Nike should be all over this — forget the irony, this guy’s a rolling poster boy for “Just Do It .” Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Vietnam.

When I first came through Vietnam in June 2008, just after being politely bounced from Japan, I knew I had a friend here, sort of. Two friends, actually – brothers named Steve and Ken Mueller. The Mueller boys had gone to Bishop England High School just a couple of years ahead of me, though I hadn’t really known them then, as it was an unwritten but strictly enforced law at my high school that one could not speak to or acknowledge anyone in any grade below than you, upon pain of the worst kinds of adolescent punishment. (Paradoxically, having a friend in the grades above you was the ultimate coup, made fiendishly difficult by the former rule and often rendered pointless once achieved, due to the fact that your new friend had become, by dint of his willingness to speak to you, a leprous pariah of no use to you or anyone else.)

Steve and Ken had both attended Clemson University slightly ahead of me as well, but I hadn’t really known them there, either, as we’d effectively exchanged one set of rules for another, the new ones being even more rigid and unforgiving – that of the university Greek system. Younger and older were now okay, but fraternizing, as it were, with people not in the frat resulted in a kind of living death – imprisoned in a friendless purgatory, scorned by the ‘brotherhood,’ shunned by the non-Greek population for being in a loathed fraternity.

In any event, I’d managed to keep up with the Muller brothers by proxy in the years after university, and so I knew they’d both left the U.S. shortly after graduating and had been living in Vietnam for some time. It seemed like a good idea to look them up as I was traveling through Vietnam, as I knew nobody else this side of the Korean peninsula, and after attending my friend Andrew’s wedding in Bali two months hence, I would once again be jobless, homeless and without a plan. It felt like a good time to look up dear old friends.

Almost two years later, I’m in business with Steve Mueller. Turns out he’d been living in Ho Chi Minh City for ten years, had a Vietnamese wife and a son, owned several successful businesses including a popular cafe in Pham Ngu Lao ward, and was just about as happy as a pig in shit. One of these businesses, though now winding down, was keeping up with orders for restored vintage Vespa scooters, which he sold and shipped all over the world. (See more on that story here.) The gig was slowing down when I arrived because, in the ten years since he’d begun, other folks had got wind of the international demand for restored vintage Vespas, and restorable bikes had become much harder to find in Vietnam, though labor was still inexpensive.

The result was that when I met up with him on my swing through Saigon in June 2008, Steve was trying to repurpose his Vespa business into a high-end tour company offering guided trips through southern Vietnam’s coastal nether reaches on vintage Vespa scooters. All he needed was a partner to handle sales and marketing. The rest, you can figure out yourself.

Last week, Vietnam Vespa Adventures had our biggest week of business yet – a group of ten young Australians and an American contractor working in Iraq. The tour: three days on the coastal road from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau (via hydrofoil ferry) and then onwards to the the tiny fishing village-slash-local resort town of Mui Ne. Including the Vespa Adventures team we took along (myself, Steve and his wife, Phuong, tour chief Josh Baker and friend Kurt , plus a road crew of three, a driver for the support van, and various other miscellaneous groupies and hangers-on), we had a convoy of nearly 20 people. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the great fortune to ride a classic 1968 Vespa Sport along the Gulf of Thailand, eating authentic local cuisine, staying in three- and four-star resorts, driving through the countryside of a developing nation where life is almost as simple and pure as it was 100 or 1,000 years ago, but I highly recommend it. Fortunately, I now get paid to do so.

Next week, it’s our eight-day tour to Nha Trang. I won’t be able to make the whole thing (classes at RMIT resumed this week), but I’ll hook up with the team in the old French hill town of Dalat on March 6 and join them for the downhill run to the coast. Come to Vietnam some time and join us. I’ll make sure you get a dear-old-friend discount.

The Vespas outside the ferry terminal at Vung Tau, where we orient our guests on how not to die immediately on the roads in Vietnam

The 'adventure' part starts for many with learning to ride the scooters

First stop: Long Hai hills and memorial pagoda, followed by lunch à la campagne

With the Gulf of Thailand mere meters away, it's almost possible to forget about your aching bottom

Not all those we share the road with are lucky enough to be followed by a support van

Nothing amuses the local residents in the countryside more than white people riding 40-year-old motorbikes with expensive new cameras

Workplaces here are still catching up to bleeding-edge technology like the internal combustion engine

Sometimes there ends up being just as much traffic in the country as there is in the city

The fragrance of low tide and dead fish recognizes no national borders

Mom, if you're wondering how I took this photo, you don't want to know

In Italy, all roads lead to Rome. In Vietnam, they generally just peter out and die

Sure, it's hard, grueling, thankless work, but somebody's gotta do it

One of the strangest things about living as near to the equator as I do is that the length of the days never really changes. No matter whether it’s January, August, or December, the sun rises around 5:30am and sets around 6:30pm. Winter solstice, summer solstice, whatever, there’s no difference to speak of. That means that on Fridays, once I’ve finished my last class and have established that the mess on my desk can probably wait until Monday, when I’m finally ready to pack it in for the weekend, this is the scene I’m handed by the universe as I head out the third-floor north exit at RMIT and make for the motorcycle parking lot (which you can see down there, mostly empty at 6:30pm on a Friday). That’s not Saigon per se in the background — not downtown Saigon anyway — but the section of District 7 known as Phu My Hung. Otherwise known as home.

This one’s for the folks back home. The other day, I did a double-take as I was walking down the aisles of a local supermarket. Anyone notice anything familiar about the friendly brand logo on these cans? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Piggly Wiggly has probably not begun producing Vietnamese-style beans ‘n’ franks (suòn hâm dâu) in which the “franks” are gristly chunks of ham and bone. (Of course I tried it.) What we have here is a pirated pig.