Graffiti

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The first thing I noticed pretty much when I got off the ship was that there was graffiti EVERYWHERE.  I mean, literally on almost every single electrical box, on every pole, on every wall, on every corner, there was graffiti.  I think part of it might be related to the fact that the government even stencils like crazy.  All of their warnings and directions and identification numbers and serial numbers on buildings/objects are stenciled on with spraypaint.

 

Anyway, there was one really big one that just said “SOAR” with white characters and a black outline.  Behind it someone had drawn a Mario face in red spraypaint freehand, but that was gone now.

 

There were two things that I noticed in particular:

 

First, I think one of the more prolific artists in HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) calls himself Dreamer.  There was this one stencil on a building somewhere that was really interesting but is kind of hard to describe.  It was made up of three smaller stencils.  Each stencil had a drawing which was identical at the bottom of it, and text at the top of it.  The colors were red, blue, and yellow, and the text in each one of them read across “SUNDAY FOR DREAMER.”  Or maybe it was TUESDAY.  But you get the point in either case.  I saw another smaller Dreamer piece somewhere else around town.  The last one I saw was coming back from the Saigon/HCMC Airport.  There was this one construction wall or something that wrapped around the curve of a city block, and in huge freehand red letters was “DREAMER” written across it.  It was pretty skilled.  Whoever it is definitely has style.  I would have liked to have met them.  Well anyway.

 

The other thing I noticed was small but awesome.  Walking around one night with Catie, we looked at the wall next to us and noticed some graffiti.  In the middle there was a beautiful, elegant, small stencil of a girl’s face done with blue paint, and split above and below it was written:  “Have you seen me?”  I’d never seen graffiti written with such an explicit social purpose before.  I hope they do find her.  I wondered if it was Dreamer, but the freehand didn’t seem good enough.  I also thought that was an interesting name… and very English…