Entry Wounds. Episode 12: “Are you crazy God damnit? Don't you think it’s a little risky for some R&R?”

56 days late. That’s how late this episode is. 56 days late, hmmm, well on the upside I’m not a female teen. At 56 days late, I’ve probably told the drunken one night stand that I’m late and that he should start working a double shift at Red Rooster to pay support. He’s probably told me to terminate. I’ve probably talked to family planning, but not my own family, and now given my economic status I’ve given up on the idea of a lady in a white coat, and am now contemplating the coat-hanger.
          Ahh, the murder of the innocent unborn; a good jar to your morality to kick start proceedings, insurance that anything that follows probably won’t delve so low, and confusing enough to your cognitive functions to make you forget why we’re discussing this at all.

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Times flows relentlessly and moments come and go, however sometimes it grinds and stutters, in fact sometimes it has more in common with passing a gallstone than a babbling brook. This gallstone came in the form of my parent’s six day visit, but that can wait. In advance of this I must slap myself around the head for my clumsy use of words last episode. On re-reading the episode I noticed how much of an absolute snobby-wanker facet of myself was laid to bare when I said I couldn’t get around to writing personal emails. I also discovered that it isn’t that I don’t like writing emails; on the contrary I do. It’s the steaming hot internet café’s and the glacially slow computers and the dirty keyboards with the grime of 100,000 filthy backpacker fingertips, the keys dark brown around the edges, fading to tan in the centre. Ugh!
Fortunately I’m lucky enough to have friends that won’t let me get away with such pathetic excuses, and reassured me that I was a complete twat for trying to weasel my way out of it. So in conclusion: Fuck me! I can go give myself a battle-mace enema!

In celebration of this revelation, I re-entered the communications revolution with the purchase of a new phone. Although the fact that I had to hold my old phone together with my hands to make it work, was also a factor. Another factor was also the fact that the vibrator was broken (and lets face it, life just aint the same with a faulty vibrator), and perhaps it was the mocking laughs of would-be-muggers and the street urchins who scoffed at the size of my ‘barely-mobile’ Nokia 3 something. I made the switch to Sony Ericsson, a T230. The model name was reminiscent of the Terminator movies but in truth there was another more legitimate reason as to why I bought it. It was the sales lady’s English.   
She was a typical Vietnamese sales girl, that is, an ass you could fit in a tea-cup but a crammed toothy grin with all the order and proportion of a Picasso.

**Phonetically approximated transcript**
“Can I helph you sir?”
-          “Yes I want a new phone.”
“What typhe?”
-          “What do you have?”
“We have Nokia, OlwG, Panashonit, Shamsun, and Sunny-Erec-Shon.”
A smirk tugs at my lips.
      -   “Uh-huh and what do you like?”
“I like Nokia and Sunny-Erec-shons, they are good.”
-          “Hmmm, I’m familiar with Nokia, can you show me any Sunny-Erec-shons?”
She looks startled for a split second and I fear she has cottoned on to my mocking, but quickly I recognise that I have overloaded her language recognition circuits with such complex vocabulary. I forge on.
-          “ I want to see the Sunny-Erec-shons.”
“Oh.. look here.”
-          “Are these all the Erecshons you have?”
“Yes, many good Erecshons, very good! Very cheap!”
-          “Really, well which ones are good?”
“All Erecshons are good!”

Really? All? I reminisce for a moment. What about when I was 13 and all those ‘traveling rogers’ that would form on the school bus. They were torture, they needed no motivation, nor gave any warning. Pointless provocations from my hypothalamus. And what about the time I bounded out of bed to answer a knock at the door, only to greet the Census lady with a raging morning-glory protruding from the fly on my boxers? That wasn’t good by any means, Poor old Irene the septuagenarian from Ascot Vale didn’t deserve that. Upon these musings I took the sale-girls advice with a grain of salt.

-          “How much are these Erec-shons?”
“Erechons cheap!”
No shit.
-          “OK, but what price?”
She reels off a list of six figure numbers and I try to do the exchange rate. After what can possibly be recorded in geological timeframes, my feeble mathematics provides a rough estimate of figures, give or take a decimal point. I find the one in my price range, i.e. the cheapest, and point to it.
“You want this Erecshon?”
-          “Yes”
With a sales pitch like that, who could refuse?
“You want me to put it in box?
-          “Ahh.. well I wanted to play with it first.”
“No battery, no go, you have to charge it first”
Charge it first? This is unlike any Erecshon I’ve heard of, aren’t they by definition, charged?
I relent.
- “OK, then in a box please.”
“OK, tankyou, if you have problem, come here” She says pointing to the floor.
-          “OK, well I’ll try to make it in time. Thankyou goodbye.”

I now have the problem that every time I get a phone call I have to hold my Erecshon to my head, my imagination plagues me. Good thing I didn’t get a Siemens.

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31/05/04       2.00pm         HCMC-International Airport             ‘Closing the Gap’
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          I sit at the HCMC Airport; a backpack and a beer in hand, in the domestic departure lounge. My phone chirps to life in my pocket and a mild female voice proceeds to tell me that my plane will not fly for another two hours. Ugh! Not enough time to head back home, too much time to bare pleasurably. All I have at my disposal are Heinekens a bunch of toothpicks and a selection of Vietnamese magazines that I can’t read. So I sit, and the locals stare at me, and I stare back picking my teeth till the toothpicks stain red.
          I count the minutes, but I don’t count the beers, but I’m sober while sitting. Finally my time comes to board and I stand up. The booze floods my limbs and I suddenly realize I’m legless. I float to the boarding gate and then am led out of it and onto the tarmac, where I have to walk to the plane.
In Vietnam people are unaware, or at least unwilling to adhere to the idea of lining up. So when boarding transport, or lining up at a bank or indeed anywhere, foreigners are always left at the back of the pack, abhorring the lack of decorum.
          On board the plane it’s hectic, none of the locals can reach the overhead compartments without standing on seats, in combination with this no-one waits for anyone else and only have concern for their own affairs. The hostesses stand-by and watch the chaos right itself. I’m drunk, belligerent and unsympathetic, so I get along fine, pushing and shoving. The flight is non-descript, and I’m dehydrated. Two hours pass slowly and we land at the capital, Hanoi International Airport. Chaos erupts again as the doors open. I have a bladder holding back a bunch of beer and the subsequent water I drank to combat the dehydration. For a spectator I must have resembled a Sherman tank, head lowered and bulldozing anything in my path, kicking bags and liberal with elbows. As expected none of the locals saw my actions as impolite.

          I find the toilets and upon exiting I realise the airport is near empty. Just a few young guys (I later found out were a pickpocket team) and staff. Wagga Wagga Airport is busier than this! I must wait another two hours at the airport, so I find the only bar and teach the bartender how to make a ‘Scotch on the rocks’ and I remind myself, you gotta love a country where you can buy Johnny Walker Black for $3.50 in an airport lounge. So one turns into four and then I see them. Their body language broadcasts anxiousness, desperately trying to keep one eye on their luggage, one on their pockets and another on what’s going on around them. They’re my parents and they’re in Vietnam after a 3 week stint in Norway with my Dad’s brothers, sisters, Aunties and Uncles.
Mum’s small and frantic as always, but looks more fragile. Her sudden diagnosis and even more sudden recovery from cancer in March had given her skin a slightly more translucent quality, making her seem even more tenacious. Dad looks small, robust and in calm control of the situation as per usual. I’m rolly-polly drunk by now, and too numb to over think the situation. Hug Mum, shake Dad’s hand, nod, and say ‘Welcome’ and hop into the taxi. It’s 45 minutes from the Airport to the city and my Mum talks relentlessly about the Scando relos, and I’m glad the focus is off me, fearing my drunken tongue might reveal too much. I’m out of practice at living dual lives and weaving webs of misinformation. What do they know? What don’t they know? Shit! I should have pre-empted this!
          We arrive at our hotel, and I cringe. Mum and Dad had a family friend in the travel agency cut them a deal. One night in the Hanoi-Hilton Opera. It was imposing and alien to my senses. The foyer was massive, with shimmering marble floors, and three gargantuan marble pillars rising three stories. Giant chandeliers hung from the ceiling and everything was bordered by gold. My jaw dropped in awe and in unison to the sound of a guy playing a grand piano in the foyer lounge. I’ve been living amongst second and third world squalor for six months, so this sudden opulence created an epic contrast. I immediately felt guilt for myself and loathing for the establishment, my father concurred, and we agreed to find more modest accommodation in the morning.
          We go out to dinner and eat Indian of all things. My mother doesn’t like foods with strong flavours, so she begrudgingly eats her fill. I pace my beers so as to avoid criticism but I’m still drinking at a three to one ratio to my parents. Mum and Dad tell stories of my relatives whom I don’t know. Some fascinating, some not. One of my uncles built his own observatory by hand, 300 km south of the Arctic Circle and spends his evenings star gazing. I found it comforting to know that my geeky eccentricities have a genetic basis. Although, a cause for concern was the fact that dyslexia follows the males in the family every few generation. So all my suspicious as to why it takes me months to remember a phone number, or why I get completely confounded by simple mental arithmetic had validity. This redirection of blame to my DNA was soon replaced by a feeling of helplessness, so there was no net gain to my self-esteem.
          The food made us all tired so we made our way back to our room. Mum and Dad were instantly asleep and this was confirmed by Dad’s guttural and phlegmatic snoring and my mothers thirty minutes later. I lay in my bed and wrapped a pillow around my head, but within ten minutes I’d lost circulation to my arms and had to relent. After two hours of this, I was at my wits end. I took tissues wetted them and stuffed them in my ears. They were mildly successful and I nodded off. Three hours later it’s 5am, and the tissues have fallen out, but thankfully there’s no snoring. Instead I’m woken by the sound of rustling plastic. It’s Mum and she’s fossicking around. I ignore it for some ten to fifteen minutes until I snap and grumble into the morning light; “What are you doing?”
-          “I’m just packing some things.”
“Why are you doing it now?”
-          “I’m just organizing things.”
Impatiently I bark “You don’t have to do it now! Stop it!”
-          “Stop complaining, just go to sleep.”
“I’m trying to! Its 5am stop it!”
She then launches into a lecture about how things must be done and how I complain too much. I sit up and survey the room. There on the floor of the room, my mother has emptied all five suitcases onto the floor, and she is refolding and repacking every item and placing it back into its appropriate plastic zip lock bag. Some cases are repacked several times. She has been doing this for ten minutes and continues to do it until 7.30am.
          At this point  I am transported back in time to the age of 16 my pulse races , my blood pressure soars, my chest tightens and I feel that long-forgotten psychotic anger return, and the reasons why I was so eager to leave home become crystal clear.
Let me state for the record:  Having an obsessive-compulsive mother is the definition of torture. Give me the Gin & Tonic wench any day; at least she always has liquor on hand.

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23/06/04                 Death to Canada
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          Ron the Canadian was a neighbour. Ron the Canadian left because he couldn’t stand the bullshit it takes to get laid in this country. Ron went to China. Ron was well-informed and a dynamo on a trivia team, and he hated Americans. Ron gave me book; Harlot’s Ghost, by Norman Mailer. A mock-biography of a CIA agent with fact and fiction melded as one. Consequently its 1300 pages of tiny print. It took me one and a half months of ‘on and off’ reading to get through it. Then, at 3.40am on a Thursday I came to the last page and the bottom line read: “To be continued”
FUCK CANADIANS!
FUCK NORMAN MAILER!

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02/06/04       Hanoi – HaLong Bay            Oriental Orientation
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          After a night in a $30 dollar a night hotel and my prior purchase of sanity saving ear plugs, we boarded a bus to the city of Haiphong (Nam’s third largest city) the gateway to Ha Long Bay.
          Ha Long Bay is a UNSECO World Heritage Site, where giant limestone pillars rise from the sea.  These pillars are bare on their vertical sides, but sport an ‘afro’ of plants on every horizontal surface. It’s like those paintings on the wall divider at your local Chinese restaurant, but 360º and seemingly endless, over 3000 islands only 1100 named.
          We boarded a 12 person rickshaw and slowly made our way into the labyrinth on a two day cruise. The highlight was a perfect sunset over a singular pillar standing out of the water, with a small, open Buddhst pagoda on top. A second highlight was kayaking into a cave of one of these pillars, only to emerge on the inside where it was open to the sky.
          Pictures tell a thousand words, and it would take at least ten pictures to give you an idea of the expanse of beauty this place has, so I’ll spare you the eye-strain and myself the key tapping and just say, Ha Long Bay……Wow!

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03/06/04       Hanoi            A C0mmunst Canberra
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          Back in the capital, we do some exploring by foot. A task that is immeasurably easier in comparison to HCMC because the hot summer air isn’t laden with energy sapping humidity. Hanoi is a quieter and more docile city, and feels more like a large town than a city, having only one or two high-rises visible from the city centre. We find the Temple of Literature, a sprawling ancient construction. It somehow avoided all the bombs in the American-Vietnam war, and the revolt against the French colonialists prior, and the Chinese invasions centuries before that. In fact this C0nfusan centre of learning has stood since 1066, and at its time was a hallmark of human cultural achievement. At the same time whitey was crusading across the middle-east and about to enter the dark ages, here however illuminated spiritual scholars were trying to perfect peace. Interestingly this library does not contain books. Instead it has rows of tombstone like rock pillars. The faces of these structures are finely engraved with text. The brilliant simplicity of this design allowed anyone to make a copy of any text by simply overlaying it with paper and rubbing charcoal over the face, as one man was, while we were there. He was using a text that had been used countless times before, for 938 years. Quite a mental spin out for my temporal perspective, coming from a culture with only 217 years of history. ( I’m aware that Australia has a history of over 60,000 years, but I can’t claim to have cultural links to Aboriginal Australia, I’m just another boat person.)
          Afterwards we trundled down alleyways and along narrow streets. We had a list of things to do but achieved nothing as a consequence of my mother entering every shop with a painting for sale. She bought in total one small cloth painting and a greeting card.
          One last night in Hanoi was uneventful but civil, the next day we made a 40 minute taxi ride to the airport and my mother berated me with a relentless “what are you doing with out life?”, “When are you going to get a real job?” interrogation. Fortunately my plane seat was in a different side of the plane and from my window I saw an amazing sight.  The entire coastline of Vietnam from Hanoi to HCMC from 20,000 feet. The royal blue South China Sea, glistening in the sun. A golden hairline of beach, intermittently broken by townships and behind it, dark green forests, steaming away in the tropical heat generating giant cumulonimbus pillars that towered well above our altitude.
 I again fell in love with Nam and my foul mood dissolved.

          The plane lands and the door opens; Thwack! Saigon air….. it’s thick and chunky, you could carve it. The familiar stream of sweat instantly making its way down my back confirms that I’m back in my town. I dump Mum and Dad in the same hooker hotel I offered Julez, and return to my place. An evening out in the city, and the following day, a taxi to the Cu Chi tunnels.  

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05/06/04       Chu Chi Tunnels        Bombs, Blood, Mud and Murder.
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          At this point we’re going to attempt some willing suspension of disbelief. Take all the most chaotic images of war you have (think Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Band of Brothers, and Forrest Gump) and multiply them by a factor of ten. Now imagine this, you and your platoon of allied forced are battling your way though thick steamy rainforest in Southern Nam. Enemies seemingly materialise then vanish around you, picking off your partners at a rapid pace. You follow some footprints, but they too vanish into the leaf litter. Brushing the leaves aside you find a small hatch, twelve by six inches in diameter. Opening it with trepidation you discover a tunnel. Your platoon inspects the hole, but size prevents anyone from entering it armed. It also happens that you are the smallest, so you strip down to pants and shirt, even your general issue boots must be shed. Entering head first you carry your only viable weapon, a hunting knife, between your teeth. It pitch black dark and the hole is too small to crawl in, instead you must wriggle on your belly in the dark, listening, smelling and feeling your way.
          You have now entered the Cu Chi tunnels, a rabbit warren of over 200 km of interconnected tunnels, filled with Vietnamese soldiers, explosives and booby traps.
In the darkness your ears prick to the muffled noises of talking and activity, but their position isn’t revealed, rather it’s obscured. As you progress you hear the more distinct and closer sounds of movement. Lying dead still this sound closes to within a metre of you. There is no escape from here, and making the first strike could be crucial, so taking your hunting knife in your hand, you make an awkward and swift strike into the darkness. Its strikes nothing, but the source of the other sounds falls silent. Seconds later the air is cut by another invisible knife in retaliation. As you are lying on your stomach, head first, arms out-stretched in front of you, moving backwards is almost impossible. Given your confines, you and your opponent can strike using only the lower arm, and so that is how the fight ensues. In a one foot, by half foot hole, face to face, in the pitch black, a knife fight to the death. After a minute of frantic slashes you strike lucky and take the opportunity to close the kill, but the only body parts on offer are the arms and the face, so doing what you must, you thrust repeatedly forward, stabbing into where you estimate the face to be.
          Finally his arms stop flailing and he is quiet. You attempt to push the body but its mass is limp and lead-like. So retreat you must. Several metres back you feel the entrance to another tunnel and shuffling into position, you enter. Edging your way into this branch of the tunnel you feel wood amongst the dirt. But by then it’s too late and you’ve passed over the half way point. The wooden planks are suspended over a pit, one half supported, one half not, and mounted in the middle on a swivel bar. As the wood plank rapidly descends, you begin to slide, increasing in speed and angle, falling face first into the dark. The bed of bamboo stakes pierce your flesh easily, sliding through your entire torso in some cases. Others have slices and stabbed your face, and for the next few minutes you wait in anxious agony as the blood drains from your body, and the inevitable cold comes.

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06/06/04       12pm  HCMC           Umbilical Cord Jettison
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          My parent’s final day in HCMC is short and rain soaked, so at 11am I stuff them into a taxi and in an afternoon monsoonal downpour, wave them goodbye and developed a unholy hunger for debauchery.
          B is arriving in a couple of weeks, but I can’t wait.

 
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16/06/04                 HCMC Fuck Karaoke!
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For the record, may I state: Fuck Karaoke!

          It’s the fourth time I’ve accepted the invitation despite the last three times I’ve exited the booth, hating life.               I’m trying to be open minded.
Corbet the Irishman and his posse convinced me this time, and despite my protests an hour later I’m in a booth and they’re saying to me “Go on, choose a song.”
          I open the booklet with a sense of anticipation, 30 something pages later and a sense of dread emerges within me.
No! to Richard Marxx
No! to The BeeGees
No! to Micheal Bolton
No! to Lynard Skynard
No No No! The Eagles, Hotel California can go and fornicate itself with a white hot iron poker!
Don’t spit on Sinatra’s grave with your screaming, you banshee! You’ve never been to New York, New York!

“Just let go….. get into it.”
-          “But they’re shit songs, and the electronic keyboard backing robs any half decent song of any of its soul.”
“It doesn’t matter how it sounds.”
-          “It’s music! If how it sounds doesn’t matter, then what the fuck does?
“It’s about letting go.”
-          “Let go! Honey, I’m barely hanging on, letting go isn’t a problem!”
Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t need to release whatever it is that you do, and that if I do, I do it in a form which doesn’t constitute noise pollution.
-          “Understand this…. You can’t sing. You sound shit! That m’dear in combination with cheese-ball love ballads is cancer to my fucking mind!”

I finally settle on Marvin Gaye – ‘Let’s get it on’ and Sly and the Family Stone – ‘It’s a family affair’ to break from the rock ballads (and a version of ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’… what the?), but when it comes on there’s no soothing bass lines, it’s just a plastic sounding synthesizer melody. I now begin to hate life.

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21/06/04                 HCMC I’m in Bat Country.
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          It’s a Monday, and it’s my birthday. I worked from 1.30 till 9.30pm and spent half an hour trying to use a towel to catch a bat doing frantic laps of my room. I repeat the process two hours later.

 
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22/06/04                 HCMC           B-Day is better than B’day.
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Back at HCMC airport, domestic terminal, I purchase 3 Heinekens and wait patiently. I finish the first then eye off the other two. At that point I’m distracted by a smile. It may sound strange, but in Nam smiles on adults are rare (it’s a saving face thing). Anyway this smile is big and bright and familiar. It is of course B, bronzed and brown from a few days at Ha Long Bay. Up until this point B has continually updated me on her progress referring to ‘we’. This I assumed meant she had a traveling partner, but seeing her alone raises my greatest suspicion; she has developed a split personality. So between me and her, it’ll be a full taxi. Suddenly her split personality materializes and is carrying all the luggage. Wow! I wish I could get mine to do that! All I can manage from mine is suburban hedge-burning. It introduces itself as Justine, and predictably we get along fine from that instant onwards. This was also facilitated by Justine’s dislike of beer, thus I inherited her Heineken. The moral: ‘Good things come to those who wait.’

          Eager to offer them the ‘hooker hotel’ they alert me to the fact that this won’t be necessary as they have reservations at The Majestic. Entering the foyer I quickly realise that this is a hooker free venue. Too clean, spacious and well … majestic, for whores. Marble floors, chandeliers, men in suits, concierges with fancy fez inspired hats, and us three in sweat laden clothes, backpacks and beers in hand. Did someone say ‘yobbo’?
          After finding the majestic room, we decide on a dip in the magestic pool. Showing a similar disregard for the majestic nature of the hotel, I strip down to my ‘Winnie the Pooh’ boxer shorts. And I suddenly realize, I’ve had these for far too long, especially considering I don’t know how I acquired them. I hate Winnie the Pooh, that wimp. I’m sure behind the scenes he’s a little S&M submissive doughboy gimp. “Thankyou Piglet, can I have some more.”
“I’ll be your honey pot Tigger.”

After sundown we roam the streets and find the Ben Thanh market and eat our fill of delicious foods.  Nearby in ‘shoe street’ we purchase some local produce; slave labour sneakers (Puma, Adidas, Nike) the same as those in stores across the world, just one tenth the price.

I’m sporadically giggling like a school girl because at last I get to release all the local currency jokes I’ve been holding back since arriving.
B and Justine lead the way;
“Do you take dong?”
“Can I have some dong?”
“Do you want some dong?”
“Nah…. I’ve got plenty of dong?”
“Shit. That’s a lot of dong.”
“Jeeze you just think you can go around flashing ya dong and everyone will do whatever you want, don’t you.”
“Everyone wants dong.”
“Hey, lay some dong on me.”
“You can never have too much dong.”
“You blew all that dong!”
“Yeah, I blew all my dong, I need more dong!”

Next day B and J are on a plane to Nam’s coastal resort Mecca, Nha Trang, and I resume my barely working week.

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25/06/04       HCMC           I-BOX Bar
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          Friday arrives and I’m eager to finally get drunk for a justifiable reason; my birthday. In a funky out of the way bar that doubles as a cluttered, kitsch, designer, furniture, gallery we relax on leopard skin couches and crushed velvet cushions. I order bottles of Australian and Chilean Red with haste and do my best to not screw up the introductions. Within an hour about twenty people have arrived and I’ve eaten half of a devastatingly strong mull cookie that I was advised to eat in quarters. At this point B alerts me to the fact that there are only four guys amongst this group of twenty. Obviously my sub-conscious played a part in deciding who to invite, and a lack of competition was a priority. Its short sightedness was evident in the fact that every girl there was taken. No loss, it now means I can dedicate my time to drinking this delicious red wine, and mustering the strength to navigate this deranged cloak of canniboid confusion.

          It’s 5am, I’m in a bar called ‘Lost in Saigon’ drinking a Vodka-Red Bull, the Red Bull provides me with no energy and the vodka robs me of any remaining motor coordination.  
          Swaying erratically near the dance floor, I fumble around in a time-lapse vision groping into my top pocket. Too pissed for uni-digit dexterity, I retrieve a fistful of joints I’ve somehow appropriated throughout the night, and the second of two mull cookies. I light a j, eat half a cookie, leave my half-empty Vodka-Red bull on a step or something and start drinking from a half-full beer on the table next to me, which may also be one of mine. I turn to the two Danes, and the Australian/New Guinean who made it this far with me, and attempt to raise my glass. It has of course vanished and is now probably sitting on a toilet cistern by now. I grab an icey glass from the nearest table, and garble a cheers and swig….mmm… Gin and Tonic, good choice.
          At that point, I realise I’m over being ‘lost in Saigon’ and would like to find my way home. Evidently I did.

Bouncing back from the evening with remarkable vigor, I join a bunch of Swedes for an afternoon lunch. They’re excited about their Euro-cup soccer game occurring later that evening. They try hard to convince me that my surname ensures I too must invest pride in the Swedish team.
At 5 pm we start drinking schnapps. We eat a lot of cheese. We drink more Vodka, and less schnapps. Several hours later I become aware that for the last half hour the schnapps has been an unhappy housemate for the vodka. I broach the issue of soccer. “When is the game starting?”
          - “1:45am” They reply in unison. I glance at my watch, but the hands seem to be swaying in disagreement on the time.  

The game happened, I was in front of the TV, but I didn’t see any of it. Sweden lost. I don’t care.

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28/06/04                 HCMC          
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B and Justine return from the Mekong, and I finally get my chance to book them into the ‘hooker hotel’. So on a Monday night, our last night together, we sip beers in the most tragic bar available, a.k.a. Guns’n’Roses.  We of course demand Gunners anthems from the DJ and he is wholly despondent to us. Instead he broadcasts an aura of loathing and resentment for that is living and plays R&B instead.
I leave them at midnight and join them again in the morning. They look sharp considering their 4am finish, and yet again B seems another shade browner.
A hug and a kiss, and a wave goodbye and I’m left with that familiar pang of homesickness, and buoyed by mateship.

Later that day I get a phone call from Seanny; “I’m coming over.”

Let the show roll on.

Yours unruly,
MentalOxide

~
Willard: Saigon, shit, I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. Apocalypse Now
~

Entry Wounds. Episode 10: "The horror, the horror"

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07/03/04 HCMC 11am
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Concerned that I might be spending too long on this mortal coil, I’ve taken it upon myself to obtain a motorbike. HCMC and the surrounding areas average fifty fatalities a day. It’s an easily believable figure when you see the complete
lack of caution or concern that is taken on the roads. 3,4,5 people squashed onto a small motorbikes, sometimes whole families weaving and turning amongst a sea of other bikes and on bigger roads, running down the middle of the road, a gauntlet of trucks hurtling in both directions, all showing an almost complete
disregard for laws stating that you should drive on the right side of the road. Compounding this is the fact that all trucks and most bikes are rust buckets. No lights and no brakes and drivers who in an attempt to ‘save face’, turn already challenging driving conditions into a game of chicken. Each determined to not be the one who pulls away. The ‘saving of face’ (a.k.a. not showing any weakness, doubt or inferiority of ones self to others) is not a quality compatible with driving automobiles, as the accident rate attests to.

That being said after a week of driving I feel reasonably comfortable on the roads. It’s still a white knuckled ride everywhere you go but you learn to expect the insanity, and recover from close calls quite quickly, accepting them as a given risk, and knowing there’ll be another two or three that day. However I’ve got a long way to go to catch up with the locals. The 110cc scooter bikes act as both delivery vans and bulk transport. Carrying everything from large, live pigs wrapped in chicken wire like spring rolls, to 300 litre water tanks, TV’s and even upright fridges. Possibly the most concerning cargo is panes of glass, where one man sits behind the driver and between them holds a pane of glass flat to his chest, thus in the event of an accident he would be sliced and diced like a tomato on a Demtel ad. But all this is carried out without the slightest trace of fear or apprehension on their faces, which is both calming and terrifying depending on how you look at it.

-----
14/03/04 1pm HCMC
-----

It’s hot. So goddamn hot! Always, so goddamn hot, and its gonna get hotter still for another month. Everything has a heat haze, the pavement, the buildings, the motorbikes, rippling up through the plumes of automotive fumes. People’s actions are lethargic, but the mind is slowed by the mild and continuous heat stroke so that everything still happens too quickly to register.
It all reminds me of the film Falling Down, where in the midst of an LA summer, Mr. White Collar (Michael Douglas) flips out and turns urban vigilante. I also get Apocolypse Now flashbacks of Kurtz (Marlon Brando), sweaty and deranged watching a slug slide over a razor blade. There are constant reminders of this regions reputation for dismantling rational thinking. Bars with titles like Apocolypse Now, Heart of Darkness, and Lost in Saigon. But these are just clichés to entice backpackers, and I’ve got my head around this city…right?
Wrong.
I awake with a sickening hangover. The dehydration slows my senses, the nausea makes me fragile and the lingering cloud of Thai bud in my head muddies my logic. I walk down the stairs of my place letting gravity do the lion share of the work. I step outside, Wham! The now familiar atmosphere of this city hits me
and I instantly begin to sweat, but today there’s no cloud so the tropical sun is pure and unadulterated burning my eyes. I walk up the alley and turn the corner where I reel my head back in disgust at the pungent smell of fresh urine simmering in the sun. At my feet a puddle slowly creeps away from a well ingrained stain on the wall. It seems public urination isn’t as random as I
initially thought. The same places are reused to the point where the concrete is forever darkened.
I continue forwards and emerge at the street entrance and wave to all the usual street sellers and make my way past the plastic stools and tables. I buy a bottle of water and sit down at a table. All the seats and tables are baby furniture no more than a few feet high. Westerners look comically disproportionate against them. I sip at the water and my tongue and throat sigh
with relief. A man on a bicycle approaches the group of men sitting next to me. They talk briefly and energetically and then the old man retrieves a bag from the box on his bicycle. The bag is moving. He proceeds to withdraw a long slender lime green snake from the bag and unravels it holding it at each end.
The men nod, and place a glass on the table. The man produces a knife and slowly pushes is into the side of the snake. It writhes in pain, coiling upon itself violently. He drags the knife down a further two inches, while holding it over the glass. He stretches it from end to end and then slowly moves his thumb and
forefinger down from the tail to the gasping head of the snake, milking it of all its blood like a tube of toothpaste.
The vivid red glass now sits in the middle of the table, a frothy top and small flakes of flesh and tissue floating to the top. The snake still writhes, but now awkwardly and erratically. Blood is everywhere. On the man’s hands, on the table, on the food and a large fleck on the side of my water bottle. The agony
of the snake and the cruelty dispensed strikes a pang in my heart and head, the wave of emotion and splashings of blood make my stomach churn. Then one man takes the glass and in one prolonged slurp drinks it all. Finally tilting his head back, and tapping the bottom of the glass to free the last of the fat and muscle clinging to the side of the glass.
Intense!
Saliva floods my mouth, I look away and attempt to stand up. Behind me there’s a screech of tyres, I turn and see a p0lice jeep at the at the front of the alley, with 6-8 green uniformed angries jumping out of the back. Commotion and hysteria erupt. The street sellers start pushing their wheeled carts away as quickly as possible, the other family members quickly grasping at the plastic seats and tables despite what is laid out upon them. Glasses and bowls fall to the bitumen their sound adding to the chaos. The p0lice chase them swinging batons, one remains standing by the jeep, AK pointed to the sky. I stand dazed and
immobilized by vomit making its way up my throat. Frantic people swarm by me. An old lady trips on a stool in the confusion, falling against me while I’m doubled over. She falls to the ground, I reach over to help her up. I look to her eyes
to register any pain, but they’re not there. She has no eyes! Just small round cups of skin embedded in her face. But it still feels like she’s looking at me.
INTENSE!!
I almost drop her again in horror. I help her to her feet, and walk her towards where everyone is going. A younger woman spots her on my arm and quickly leads her away. I turn back and walk towards the street and the p0lice. They’ve got hunters eyes, wide and hungry, yet I seem invisible to them. They don’t even
seem to register my presence; they’re after the street sellers. Dizzy with nausea and heatstroke I make my way to the Botanical Gardens for some reprieve, but all I have in my mind is Kurtz’s psychotic voice saying, “the horror, the horror”.

When this city decides to hand out the head fucks, it does so with imagination
and gusto.

Entry Wounds. Episode 11:"Disneyland. Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland"

----------
01/05/04 2pm HCMC 'All Apologies'
----------
Despite rumours to the contrary, I am not dead, nor am I shacked up in some OPM den on a mountain side doing dispicable acts for my next toke, nor have I been recruited by MI6 to infiltrate gubberment installations. In truth, I've just been to busy and boring to write home. I went through a stage of attempting to
reply to all personal emails, but lost the drive, simply due to the fact that since I've been here the longest period of time between receiving an email from someone is three days (for this I'm flattered and grateful). I then attempted to write postcards home, but they are frustratingly small and not suited to my
tendency to dribble shit for extended periods of time. In addition they inevitably became repetitive, and repetition irritates me no end, so here I am back to my original plan; one big b'guckoff shemale. Ahead lies near death experiences, a giant motorised blue dolphin, a giant chicken, and hermaphroditic
love. These are strange bedfellows I agree, but they all have their place so let us take a trip back in time to three weeks ago today.

---------
09/04/04 9pm HCMC 'The Eagle Has Landed'
---------
OK, nigh on four months of teaching can take its toll, what with the relentless late nights drinking, smoking and such, so Julez's decision to spend a few days trippin' round the Vietnam countryside couldn't have come at a better time. Julez arrived at the airport tanned with Thai sun, and I welcomed her with a
rapidly warming Heineken and the news that we were getting drunk at a housewarming party in an hour.
The next morning our trip was organised, that being; bags packed and no idea how to reach our destination other than knowing 'we had to catch a bus'. We waited at the bus station for twenty minutes before being convinced by two cyclo drivers that no buses to Mui Ne or the coast stopped where we were. So for a fee of 10,000 dong each they'd take us to where we needed to go. The cyclo's peddled us for 800 metres to a street corner where another man started barking commands to others. In a flurry of activity we're shoved into a small minibus and relieved of 300,000 dong without time for negotiation, and before I can ask
for change from the cyclo's another 50,000 dong. After some curious navigation skills, and a driving style that included rapid acceleration, heavy braking and the driver getting out of the bus in the middle of the street, we reached the open road and began our extended game of chicken with buses and trucks. The
three hour trip soon became four, then five, until it was dark and Julez and myself were the only passengers left. I was stuck attempting to not only convince the driver that I knew where I was going, and that I had a clue what he was saying, but also to convince Julez and lastly myself that I knew where to go. "See Jules, last time I came here it was light and I'm going by memory
so........ hey there it is..... oh no wait... keep going."
Finally I recognised the thatched roofs of the resort and we unloaded. The fact that thatched roofs are ubiquitous in Vietnam and that it wasn't the resort I thought it was, was inconsequential because it was infact the last hotel on the
beach strip. But this small grey cloud had a big silver lining. It was quiet, clean, opened on to the beach and had palm trees and a good restaurant, and best of all, it was completely empty, save for one or two staff and the owner. Perfect, within an afternoon I'd moved from 9 million people to five humans, a
few beach rats the odd mosquito and the endless lappings of the South China Sea. So with little time wasted I rolled a scoob, ordered some beers and me and Julez then spent the evening swinging in hammocks, spinning shit and weaving thoughts.

We awoke to fishermen casting nets, cows roaming the beach and fruit salad. Over breakfast I organised a motorbike to rent for the day, and we subsequentally spent the rest of the day cruising down winding beach roads, finding outpost hotels of dubious character and hillsides peppered with shacks. The rapidly
fallling fuel guage signalled our return to town, but not before a stop to Mui Ne's biggest attraction; sand dunes. Massive peaks of golden sand, where dusty kids coerce you to sit on sheets of hard plastic and surf down the face. However like everything in Vietnam, it's half arsed and in reality is more of an
anti-climax than anything. After lunch we headed out over the mine infested hills and stumbled upon an oasis of palm trees and rice paddies. All of it so vividly green it hurts your eyes. After hello'ing and swerving around seemingly every school kid the region had to offer we signed ourselves in for some massages. Julez going first and then me an hour later. After my massage I
started talking with the husband of the Vietnamese lady who pummelled us. His name was Up and he was a retired police chief from Amsterdam. He regailed stories of bureaucratic absurdities in Vietnam and the hotspots for mines in the area, he then told me of a conversation he had with a middle aged lady up the
road. A story which struck a nerve in me so raw, that it woud outshine an entire season of Dr.Phil episodes.

It begins; in '66 or '68 or maybe even the 70's the US Army planned an attack on a nearby town of 500 Vietnamese vllagers called My Linh or Ly Minh or something (I'm not a facts and figures guy, it is an infamous attack I'm assured). Anyhow,
suspecting it of being a Viet Cong hotbed the US Army made a decision to investigate. That being; bomb it until it was charcoal, then with an even mix of machine gun fire, mortars, grenades, and flamethrowers, slay all the inhabitants. In just over six hours the township had been annihalated, with the
villagers lying in dusty pools of their neighbours, and family's blood. One seven year old girl however, was not dead. Her arm had been burnt black, back to the bone and part of one of her feet was missing, yet under the cover of smoke and flame she managed to crawl into a pile of dead bodies and hide. She was terrified and immobilise by shock, and so there she stayed all day and night in a blanket of blood and suffocating stench. The following day a US Army Captain returned to search for Viet Cong intelligence. He found none, but he did find the girl. Being a potential source of information she was taken to a hospital,
treated and then interrogated. Many weeks later, broken in mind, body and spirit, she was taken back to the town and abandoned. There she sat amongst the burnt out husks of houses, without friends, without family, alone. She lived off coconuts and things that washed up on the beach for almost a half a year, before being discovered by some Vietnamese soldiers and sent to an
orphanage. Now that young girl, is this middle age woman. Up, distraught at hearing of her horrific life could only think of one thing to say. "You're not angry at Americans or foreigners? Why aren't you angry? How can you not be angry?" Calmly she reponded, "How would that help me get over this any
quicker?"..........
...............
...............
................
.....................................BAM!......
..............
............
..........Profound.
This simple yet powerful concept is something that I've detected since being here, but could never quite put my finger on it. How, a culture that has been punished so extensively and over such a prolonged period of time, seemingly harbour no resentment towards their attackers. From time to time I'll be half way through a conversation with a person younger than my parents and realise;
'they were here then'. They saw that war, they were part of it, and here they are now, going about their day like nothing happened. Mental trauma and a vast variety of psychoses are par for the course amongst allied Vietnam Vets. Yet here the entire population over the age of 40 are war veterans, yet the trauma
just isn't evident to the eye. Remarkable.

After returning to the cabin, I found Julez undergoing a sort of trauma of her own. Impatiently awaiting my return to deter the return of a local boy who in an attempt to communicate with Julez, decided shoving his hand down the front of his pants and groping himself might help to convey more meaning. Disgusted and
freaked, Julez locked herself in the cabin, which the boy responded to by attempting to climb the walls of the cabin, and gain entry. Fortunately he failed and I returned soon after. This is my first and only account of such harrasment that I've heard of in Vietnam, but enough to reassure you that evil still has a home here. On the upside Julez, it's nice you know you're wanted.

--------------
12/04/04 12pm Mui Ne - Dalat 'The Road to Immoral High Ground.'
--------------

The 200km bus ride began at 7am. The distance suggested 3 to 4 hours. I was wrong, six hours later we ascended into the rugged highlands of tea and coffee plantation and after another hour arrived in the rainsoaked mountain city of Dalat. With inclement weather and travel weary bodies we found a nice little mini-hotel and attempted to sleep off our mental and physical atrophy. I was
exhausted but sleep did not come quickly, for one thing played on my mind; our hotel room had three double beds in it. What sort of clientel requires three double beds? Pictures of Vietnamese swingers parties came to mind, which soon progressed to images of hog-ties and sodomy ( I should never have read the Marque de'Sade, I'll never have a pure thought for the rest of my life now). I consoled myself with the notion that there was a lot of love in the room, and in combination with an incredibly comfortable matress, nodded off for an hour. Recharged by our nap we went for a walk, but to rid us of the grogginess of slumber we needed coffee. And.. oh... did we find it. In a little cafe a little lady made us little coffee's. I ordered mine black, no sugar, but it was unlike any coffee I've had. It was strong, rich, syrupy, a little spicey and a little sweet. Not a trace of bitterness. It was without doubt the best coffee I have ever had, Julez concurred. This is how coffee should be, and consequently all others dissapoint. I may yet move to Dalat just for the coffee and dispense with sleeping all together.

So buzzing in unison with the poorly insulated powerlines above is, we paced around in the clean alpine air. As sundown came we found ourselves a restaurant by the lake and drank two bottles of Dalat's most famous commodity; Dalat Red Wine. This bland, textureless, acrid tasting booze is worse than your cheapest
goon bag. It is infact not a wine, but rather a crime upon humanity. That being said, it did get us pissed enough to hire a boat shaped like a big goose and via bike peddles, slowly and noisily whirr our way around the lake. The goose of course was a second choice, the first being a giant, fully enclose, blue,
fibreglass dolphin mounted on a jetski.....but alas, it was broken.

The following morning began just after 8am. We met my old friend Thai the Easyrider who drove me around for five days back in December. He had another riding partner named Ngyuen, and from there we packed as much into our day as we could. Firstly the Crazy House. A ghastly creation spawned by a Vietnamese lady
who studied surrealist painters. The result; a massive house/hotel that is half Dali and half ultra-tacky-failed-theme-park. It was comprehesively gaudy, tasteless, garish and tragic. However beginning the day with such absurdity set me in a good frame of mind. The next step; the Crazy Monk. Down an unsealed
road, an old dark, and damp Buddh|st pagoda was set into a leafy edge of a hill.We were welcomed by a curious little monk, with a curoius little hat. The entire
place had been boarded up, and inside was lit only through cracks in the boards and a few errant candles. Entering the rear courtyard however was very different. Densely packed with pot plants, vines, creepers, ferns and orchids; it was dark and lush. From here we made our way into several wooden sheds, all of them packed with hundreds of thousands of paintings and poems. Most of the paintings were mediocre and all the poems were painful.
i.e. 'The river of ambition flows into the cloud of contentment'.
'The timelessness of contemplation carries the unknown'.
'The road of hope leads to the gate of happiness.'
Blah Blah Blah! This impotent, wishy washy metaphysical masturbation gave me a jaw breaking yawn and while I was intrigued by this man's obsessive passion, when the silence was broken by the sound of Windows booting up on his computer,
with his multimedia CDROM (only 70,000 dong) I knew it was time to leave.

Having our dose of 'crazy' for the day, we spent our last four hours in Dalat touring the agricultural hub. This valley has steep inclines either side with thin steps etched into the face of the mountain. This terrain requires manual labour and thus renders it quiet and peaceful. We then took an equally quiet and
peaceful cable-car ride, which despite any of Julez's reports, did not any way have me terrified to my very core, and white knuckled with every jerk and lurch of the car. From there it was a winding drive down from the mountain, to a waterfall. It was beautiful but not spectacular and when I caught sight of the
Vietnamese man dressed as a cowboy holding his white pony, I got the urge to pelt rocks. But when I saw his cohort, dressed in a black bear suit, the kitch factor went off the scale and I felt driven to push them both into the icy torrent.
My better senses prevailed (or maybe it was just the rain) and we left to visit the minority village of the Mung people. Arriving at the village, two things strike you. The first being the vibrant and beautiful handwoven silks, and the second being a giant 5 metre high cement chicken.The explanaition? The constant expansion of the Vietnamese population into the countryside has placed immense pressure on the natural resources. As a
consequence, the nomadic liestyles of the 54 tribal minority groups in Vietnam are now deemed too destructive, and the gubberment has made efforts to make them settle in one place. These groups sit at the lowest economic echelon and support
from the governement used to come in the form of rice. However for whatever reasons of social erosion, they favoured their rice fermented and alcoholism began to run rife. As a solution the gubberment stopped aid, and instead offered them a symbolic momento to celebrate one of their central myths, a giant, grey,
garish cement chicken.Can't eat it, but on the upside you won't catch the flu from it.

---------
13/05/04 3pm Dalat-HCMC 'The Devil Rides Shotgun'
---------

Our time in Dalat over, we were rushed to our bus and returned to our game of automotive chicken, but this time the odds were cast against us. A thunderstorm brewing above, rain slicking the road, over one hundred blind turns on a mountain that clung to edge of the mountain range, and all of it to take place at sunset...........poor life choices. In my mind all I had was an image of Charles Darwin slapping me round the head screaming "Natural fucking selection Amlom!!!...........have you learn't nothing?". Julez and I steadied our nerves with some confidant swigs of Strawberry wine, and we needed every iota of that 20% concoction. Secondly we needed a distraction from the constant visions of immanent death that unfolded before us every few seconds, thankfully the norse god Thor provided, by putting on the single most impressive lightning storm I've experienced. Every few seconds neon fingers blazed their way across the sky, and it continued for some four hours. However the terror evolved. As we descended into a section where the rain had ceased, the heat of the air and the moisture of the forest combined to produced a thick blanket of fog. Visibility dropped from 30 metres to 20 and then 10, the speedo stayed the same. Unable to see the corners ahead, or the barriers on the other side, our driver forged on, overtaking on blind corners, swerving into suddenly appearing oncoming traffic and swerving away from the odd overturned truck. Our nerves, numbed by liquor and dazed my atmospheric pyrotechnics held out until at 120 kph on a wet
decline, our driver attempted to overtake a bus. Ahead in the fog were a pair of rapidly approaching glowing white spheres. Half way into overtaking the bus, his confidene faltered and he taps the breaks. The spheres are now accompanied by a horn and high beams, but alas, no decelleration. Now left in a deadly limbo of
indecision 'saving face' comes into play..... No brakes, No fear. He plants his foot and everyone takes a deep breath and tenses pre-empting the worst. With inches to spare he wrenches the steering wheel across and we slip through to the right side of the road. The truck flies past our windows, the blast force enough
to push the side mirror back upon the window........ or was contact made?..... i did hear a noise. Best not to mention that to Julez; her nails now deeply embedded in my forearm and the armrest. Wide-eyed and wired the strawberry wine was attacked with fervour, and the entry into HCMC after some five hours of
madness was welcomed. Our challeneges weren't over yet however, the driver whose compassion towards his passengers was minimal at best, was now non-existant, as he ignored my directions to my house and stopped in some backstreet in District 5, Ho Chi Minh's Harlem. Men approached the van and started dragging our bags
out. I snapped at the first guy and we were then left alone. There we stood an hour from midnight on the pavement of a less than wealthy community with backpacks, the international way to say 'mug me!'A passing cab provided salvation but relief only came with the sight of my alley way and hotel and its bar.

Eight hours of sleep later and Julez awakes to her final day in Nam. We have six hours to see the sights of Saigon. We hopsotch around town collecting souveniers and memories until its time to check in at the airport. With a little confusion and a lot of relief we find what we consider to be the cafe; a cement barrier in the parking bay. Despite hating long goodbyes we sit there for over an hour as the circulation to our asses ebbs away, and it's only minutes before she is to leave that we discover an actual resturaunt, with air conditioning to boot. So numb assed and sweaty like lovers at Mardi Gras, we farewell each other and prey
all that H, I stashed in her backpack gets through.

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17/04/04 6pm Vung Tao 'Two X, or Not Two X, That is the Question?'
----------

Not wishing to succumb to the woes of lonliness after Julez's departure, I meet up with friends at an overpriced bar. I drank my remaining cash away on double Johnny Walker Black's till I'm seeing double thus doubling my companions. By midnight I've somehow ditched my friends, and now am dribbling bullshit into the ear of some short skirted Vietnamese/Japanese girl. I don't know what I'm saying but it's effective, because my hands are indecently positioned on her thighs, enough to offend passers by. Offering to take me home, I accept, too pissed for lateral thinking I fail to conceive that she meant her place, so I
direct her to my place, give her a peck on the cheek, fall off the bike, and stumble into my abode. She's left staring blankly from her bike, confused, before turning around and riding home.
The next morning my phone chirps to life with a reminder: ' Go to Vung Tao at 8am'. Information rains down drom the darkness of the night before and I remember agreeing to riding the Hydrofoil to the resort town of Vung Tao with a
Sydney bloke and a kiwi chick. I throw up, wash up, and put the backpack I still haven't unpacked on my back, and head back outside into the hot morning sun. I arrive just in time to meet Nannan and Jess and board the rumbling diesel vessel. Fearing sea-sickness, I'm pleased that the hydrofoil glides seamlessly
across the water and in just over an hour we arrive at Vung Tao.
We are harrased by cyclos, xe oms and taxis from the minute our feet touch the ground, and after an hour of walking and finally succumbing to the cyclos we discover the beach. There, packed with people, umbrellas, deckchairs and litter,
I immediately long for Mui Ne. I go to the toilet to get changed and upon my exit am asked for 1000 dong (10c). We make our way over to the chairs and as soon as our butts touch the furniture we are given a bill for 150,000 dong ($15). Urghh! What are we doing here?
Vung Tao is situated around 110 km from HCMC and as a consequence it is a favourite weekend destination, where Saigonese empty their pockets into shoddy accomodation, shifty brothels, and a number of other less obvious services you'd expect to be free. It lies in the current of HCMC's sewerage and
a near by oil rig. And even if you do have the courage to swim, you must battle the schools of plastic bags and chip packets, and all this at Australian prices. The mood here is also like that of HCMC, hungry and unscrupulous. None of the politeness and kindness of Mui Ne and Dalat. Here the city comes to escape
itself and instead just relocates for the weekend. By 3pm Nannan and Jess had decided to leave. I was less than eager to spend my holiday in the city, and decided to stay. But on my own it seemed disatisfying. Scrolling through my phone for people to call I see an unfamiliar entry, and initially I read it as Hentai, a.k.a. Japanese cartoon p0rnography. Soon after I decipher it as Hanh
Thai, but I was unaware how close to the truth my first assumption would be.
After some calculated guessing I became reasonably confidant that it was 'the girl' from the night before. The passive nature of SMS seemed a suitable form of communication and so I sent out a cheerio. "Hey, I'm in Vung Tao relaxing by the
beach. What are you up to?" Reply message: "I'll be there at 6." Not knowing if it is 'the girl' I also realise I don't remember what she looks like, and so either scenario is a great unknown. At six o'clock I wait at the jetty. She recognises me first, and my calculations were proved correct, it is her, and she is as cute as I hoped, with the standard tiny frame of Vietnamese women, and the complexion that suggests an age anywhere from 15 to 30. However her penguin sandals are a little perplexing.
We return to the hotel I had found, and I sheepishly walk in with her, fully aware of how illegal it is for a foreigner and a Vietnamese girl to share a room. Images of deportation procedures invade my mind. She on the other hand shows no qualms, and is very matter-of-fact about the whole procedure. This
familiarity makes me start to wonder. Yet the room has two beds so it still leaves me guessing as to what to expect from it all.
Down on the beach at sunset, we sit in chairs and make cumbersome small talk. At this point I ask to see her phone, a snazzy piece of hi-technology. Flipping up the screen I'm startled, there as a wallpaper in glorious hi-resolution is a naked blonde woman in a prowling cat posture.... ass raised suggestively. Crivens!!!
She notices my alarm, and says 'I like beautiful women'. And then opens an expansive list of photos on her phone, the likes of which were enough to make a hardened net veteran like myself blush. Cool..... so we finally have something in common, we're both fans of high quality, morally reprehensible pornography.

My mind, undoubtedly moved by these appetizers soon becomes aware of how far a pair of C cup breasts can go on a tiny asian frame.............for those of you still pondering, I'll save you the mental mathematics and tell you; TO THE MOON AND BACK! My appetite for food however quickly came to the forefront and we
left to find a resturaunt. At dinner I ask her what she drinks, and she responds... "Beer is my favourite."
Cool times two.... a second commonality.
After dinner she then says "Can you play pool? I love pool."
Cool times three.
Over a game or three of pool she tells me without a hint of modesty that she really loves sex, although the only word she knows for it is 'fuck' which immediately gives the conversation a pornographic tone. It occurs to me then that I could be trapped in some sixteen year old boy's dreamworld. A beer drinking, pool playing, porn loving, nymphomaniac, with preposterously
proportioned breasts. If Morpheus from the Matrix had arrived at this time with his Red pill/Blue pill skit, I would have laughed in his face......"Morpheus my dear friend, you can take your red pill and shaft it."
My head, swimming in hormones and Heinekens fell silent in speech and I broached the topic of returning to the hotel. Consequently, my drought was broken with a monsoon that would have left Noah in awe, and I felt like I was in a John Holmes film, while she did things that made Jenna Jameson look like a
girl scout. During this time I was also able to appreciate her baffling basastos, both massive, perfectly spherical, and impossibly firm... car tyre firm! And at this point I wonder.... 'could they be?.......they must be?.......they're fake...........maybe?' In combination with this she had a
large tattoo of a naked woman riding a unicorn in the middle of her back. A tattoo! This in Vietnam is taboo beyond measure, essentially reserved for gang members, and the darker elements of society. This only re-affirmed how wild this woman was. These concerns were soon replaced by more serious ones, a rapping at
our door. I opened the door, and their was the hotel owner, barking Vietnamese with urgency. Hanh dresses and rushes out of the room. I'm naked and bamboozled, I peer out the window of the room to see a blinking red glow reflecting off the opposite building.
Police!
Shit! Shit! Shit!
I look around the room...... her backpack near empty and her clothes strewn across the room, my backpack near full, containing a fist size bundle of ganja and an OPM pipe..... that's jail time. Deportation seems suddenly preferable. I pack what I can of her clothes, and hide my gear as best as possible, but simply
turning on a light will undo my efforts. Anxiously I lie in bed, trying to spy through a gap in the curtains, at the same time ready to fall to the bed and feign sleep.

A knock at the door.
I ignore it.
A second knock at the door. It isn't the forceful, demanding knock I'd expect from police, so I open the door. Hanh dives into the room and collapses on the bed. She explains that the police have come and gone. These raids which are almost unheard of, are common now because elections are occuring next week, and so the gubberment is eager to portray itself as a diligent upholder of the law.
With my anxiousness subsiding I sleep heavily.

The next day was spent entirely by the beach. And after my second Saigon beer,out of nowhere Hanh says .........................."I used to be a boy."
"Ha ha ha ha, I used to be a girl." I respond dismissively, and continue reading my book.
"No, look at me.. look into my eyes. I... used..... to..... be..... a.... boy."
Her face speaks volumes of sincerity, and my head begins to swim.
........
.........
........
............
.........
..........
.........What? (blank stare, crumpled eyebrows, hollow
head, twisting stomach).
.............
...........
...........
........."I used to be a boy. Are you disgusted? Do you not like me
anymore?"
...........
...........
...........
...........
..........
..........
.........Blank stare, disbelief, belief, disbelief, not wishing to offend.
............
.............
........." Um..........no..........."
.....
.... "You do, I can tell, you think i'm disgusting" This statement is delivered with a tone of self loathing and I suddenly feel immense sympathy for h...he...him...her?
"No, no, no... it does'nt disgust me, you just surprised me...um....." Still in disbelief I recall all I learnt from the twenty minutes of Law and Order SVU, I saw the week before.
"So, what was your name as a boy?"
Instantly she responds "I had five, Tan, Toan, Hien, Han and Hanh, for when I was at different stages."
"Oh.......ok then.... where did you have the operation?"
"In Bangkok, in a surgery where they only do that surgery... my doctor was the best in Thailand"
Yeah, no shit..............he gave you a clit!
"What about your throat, what about you're Adam's apple?" I reach out and she brushes my hand aside. "No....you'll find something you won't like and you'll go back to Saigon."
"And what about hormone therapy?"
"I have to take pills everyday for the rest of my life to keep me a girl, if you dont believe me I can show you them at the hotel."
"Yes you will.......so... they're implants?"
"Uh-huh."
"So where are the scars?"
She raises her arms and there is a slight, one inch scar in each pit. "Holy shit!" This remark of mine was feulled firstly by the credibilty of her responses and my final acceptance that she really was a he, and secondly, at the fact that they could fit those enormous globes through such a small incision.

I begin to rationalise as curiosity takes over.
"So, when did you feel like you were really a girl?"
"About seven I think."
"So you felt like a girl inside, but a boy on the outside?"
"Yes"
"So you had an operation to make you a girl on the outside?"
"Yes"
"So, now you're all girl.. right?"
"Yes, yes, ... thankyou, that's so nice of you to say. No one understands that. So you still like me even though I'm a ladyboy?"
"Well you're not a ladyboy are you, you're a girl on the outside and on the inside... you're all girl."
"Yes!" She begins to giggle and hugs me. A big deal in public in Vietnam, where holding hands is considered a grotesque display of public affection. I suddenly felt elated. Convinced by my own rationale, and happy that she felt accepted for what seems like the first time in her life. The rest of the afternoon and early into the evening I attempt to explore her history. How her family reacted, how her friends reacted, the transition stage, the effects of hormone therapy. Her past and present emotional state. Each response was a story of emotional torment, and abandonment, it soon became obvious to me that I was the first person she'd met that hadn't spat on her sense of self and considered her a vile freak. So there I lay for the next four hours, in a sense of wonderment of this marvel of modern medicine, and she in
overwhelming gratitude. Then she turns to me and says, "I'm a woman." I congratulate her on her realisation; "Yes, you were a girl in a boys body, but now you are all woman, completely."
"No, ..... I'm a woman, I always have been." And a grin spreads across her face, and she begins to laugh hysterically..... my stomach knots again, and my jaw drops.

THE BITCH! Oh god! THE BITCH!

She laughs continuously for another 20 minutes and in between breaths she says "You actually thought I was a ladyboy..... bwa ha aha ha ha ha! You believed me.... ha ha ha ha ha ha."
My ego fractures and crumbles to the ground. Anger rises... but then I realise my anger is a second win for her. So I tell myself, admit it, you got played good and proper. Accept it. So I take a deep breath, shake my head and laugh, knowing that I'm on an indefinately long list of foreigners who fall prey to the
games of local women.
Vietnamese women :1 Amlom: 0

Yours in hetero-machismo,
Agent XY

Entry Wounds. Episode 09: Another Brick in the Wall

--------
16/02/04 10am Ho Chi Minh City
--------
Pop quiz wise guys: if the chickens have all been slaughtered, then how come I can still buy eggs? Well the answer kills two birds with one stone............The egg comes before the chicken! And I just fitted two bad puns into one sentence, thus doubling my productivity.

There’s been two reasons for the delay in the latest installment. Firstly, I’ve been busy working to patch up some holes in my credit card after almost two months of state enforced unemployment, and secondly I only bother writing, when there is something worth writing about (that’s best for all concerned I think ), and material has been substantially thinner since I haven’t had oodles of time to get up to mischief. Epic apologies for not returning personal e-mails, I am scum.
Anyhow, self deprecation aside here’s my wrap up of the teaching caper, thus far. English is taught mainly as an extra-curricular activity by private institutes for wealthy individuals or their offspring. Alternatively it is taught by some state-run schools within school hours. I work for both types. My day starts at 1.30 in the afternoon at the International Primary School. Four
half-hour classes back to back. I walk in, my Vietnamese Assistant, Mr. Lam shouts orders, and tells me what we’re doing that day. I take a student’s book,and read the speech bubbles in the cartoons. The students repeat after me. We do this a few more times, then I pick out individuals to say the words. I correct
any mispronunciations. Within a half-hour period the class gets through two pages, then we leave, go to the next class and do exactly the same thing. All I do is say approximately 40 words, 40 times in the space of two hours and they pay me $AU20 an hour. It’s criminal. The other classes are with adults in the
evenings, they last two hours and it essentially revolves around me playing a tape and them filling in the answers in their workbooks. This is quite easy as well, and there’s the added bonus of telling adults to shut-up and sit down. In the children’s classes I’m not responsible for discipline or class control, but I have taken the liberty of exercising a pro-active role in this department. Mr. Lam gets to whack a big chunk of wood on the students desks, and the occasional student. From time to time he cracks it, full-force onto a desk making an ear-piercing noise. It creates instant, tense, silence. I call it ‘the
silence of the Lam’, he doesn’t get it. ( I have had one revelation so far, it is that girls are sweet, mature, kind, and polite, and boys are…………..pure driven evil. Henceforth references to discipline only involve males.) The kids aren’t traumatised (from what I can see), they think it’s hysterical to watch another
student getting slapped across the back of the legs, and a minute later the victim is hugging Mr. Lam. This is despite the fact that there’s a poster on the hallway wall denouncing such actions, yet every classroom comes with its own unique whacking stick. My attacks on students are more subversive, a war of
attrition if you will. If a student repeatedly ignores commands, I throw all his belongings off his desk onto the floor, or up-end his bag. While the rest of the class and me laugh at him gathering his belongings.
Pop quiz number 2: A kid’s colouring in the activity sheet, rather than writing in it. What do you do? Answer: Take out all his colour pencils and snap the leads off each of them, then laugh like an evil genius. Mwa ha ha ha haaargh.
The only physical violence I resort to is the always popular ear-flick, and seeing they’re all bare-footed in class, there’s a decent level of toe stamping that goes on. There’s been a few mistakes and close calls however, including the moment when I tried to draw a cross in red pen on a students face, only for him
to turn his head in surprise. The line of red ran in a perfect arc across his cheek bone, and up to his eye, stopping at the base of one of his eyelashes. If he had turned his head anymore I would have harpooned his eyeball, and with the evidence written all over his face, my excuses would have been few. The other
notable casualty thus far has been dear little Van. A tiny little creature, who was either born prematurely or malnourished as an infant. His minute stature makes him especially cute, but beyond this he’s just a little brat. An A-grade smart-arse. In this regard he reminds me of me at school, so I laugh at him first before punishing him. In any case Van as usual was pestering the student in front of him and was unaware that I was standing behind him. So I quickly thrust the assignments in my hand in front of his face to startle him. Instead all I heard was a steadily growing wail from the tiny creature, as he clutched
his ear. Van often ‘cries wolf’ to test teachers so I then whacked his hand away from his ear. It was then that I saw six rapidly forming rivulets of blood forming on the edge of his ear. I was bamboozled at first but it soon dawned on me that Van was sporting six substantial paper-cuts incurred as I dragged the
fistful of paper in front of his face. Ewwwww…. That’s gotta sting! Van has quickly forgiven me, and as I pointed out to him ‘chicks dig scars’ so I’ve actually done him a favour. Although my spin doctoring had little effect considering he’s all of seven years old.

The final in my list of victims you’ll be happy to know is actually a deserving one. A little, rich kid, mumma’s boy at the private institute, who has an extensive history of pushing teachers to the brink. And every time a teacher complains the school pleads with them to tolerate him because his parents pay a
handsome fee for both him and his two younger siblings to attend the school. So far I’ve had surprising success with a rigorous regime of ridicule, death stares, and isolation treatment. By the second class I’d excluded him from all games and had him sitting in the corner of the room like a dunce of yesteryear and mocked him call him a crybaby via mime. By the third class I’d locked him in a cupboard to the class’ ecstatic laughter (assistant included), until he started howling like he was on the set of the Exorcist. How was I to know he was afraid of the dark and claustrophobic? By the fourth class (the most recent) I
attempted to throw him out of the classroom. The tenacious little bastard held the door arches with uncanny strength, and knowing that the only way I could pry him away would be to inflict grievous bodily harm, I relented and told him to go to his seat. He refused and stood facing me in the corner. “Fine then you can
stay there!” I said as I hooked my foot behind his pudgy little ankles and with the help of gravity he came crashing to the ground, forcing his coccyx somewhere up in between his kidneys. The class laughed heartily but I was just beginning. The problem with this little recalcitrant is that he thrives on attention, so
between writhing in pain clenching his butt, he continued to giggle uncontrollably. I decided I wouldn’t stop my tyranny of terror until he stopped giggling. So I grabbed the nearest desk-chair (usual chair with small desk bolted to the side and a steel mesh platform underneath to place bags on.) and placed in over him and sat on it. The bag platform was the perfect height
rendering his entire torso and mid section immobile. He protested between laughing. The other students increased their laughter. I continued the lesson from that position and after a minute or two the students had resumed reading and reciting. The little one under the chair continued to squirm and produce increasingly aggravated grunts.
Me: “So can I pour bread?”
Students: “No, you cannot!”
Me: “Can I pour juice?”
Students: “Ye..no… ahhh”
Me: “Can I pour water?
Students: ye..no..um?
Me: “Yes, I can…look!”

At which point I proceeded to empty the contents of my bottle of water onto the little brats head. His arms wedged firmly between his body and the bag platform, leaving him defenseless. The students and the assistant were in hysterics, the bell rang I stood up felling obliged to take a bow, but decided gloating would
have robbed the situation of it’s spontaneity. He stood up red-faced and angry and probably went home to tell Mummy and Daddy, but I couldn’t give a damn.
There’s hundreds of schools to work for and I figure if his parents are so loaded they can reimburse all the other students parents for wasted learning time. My only concern is finding a way to top last weeks show…. I mean class.

I have however found an antidote to little rich-shits and it comes in the form of the Mai School. A school and shelter for homeless kids. Most of them were abandoned within their first year and miraculously survived long enough to be found and taken to the school. The school trains them with basic education and
skills training, enough to hopefully gain employment. It’s volunteer work, which I figure is the least I can give back to the community considering I get Western wages in a third world country. These kids are shoeless, dirty and live in their only pair of clothes. The younger ones bounce off the walls with bright eyed excitement, and cling to you like you’re Santa at the shopping centre. However the older ones contrast this completely. One girl who’s 12 has been there for five and a half years, and when she was despondent to my introduction and I asked her why she didn’t want to say hello, she stared at the ground and
muttered something in Vietnamese. A Vietnamese teacher nearby translated it for, she had said something like “you’ll just leave like all the others.” Owwwwwww!
There’s a stake of reality to the heart, and she’s right. In a year, chances are, I’ll be on a plane out of here, and then someone else will arrive like they have so many times before, to convince themselves that they earned some Karma brownie points and then leave for greener pastures before the vastness of poverty overwhelms their spirit, and she’ll still be there. So for her there’s also the challenge of emotional survival on top of physical survival. But I still go because despite the bittersweet fact that we’re faux surrogates,without the volunteers they’d all be back on the street, and probably getting
dragged into the sex-slave industry.

---------
18/02/04 9.00pm HCMC
---------

While it may have seemed like I had fallen off the face of the Earth, I can assure I have not, however I have been off my own face for approximately one month. This is the trapping of the teaching game, afternoon starts mean that most nights of the week teachers are getting blotto, and when you’re working for two places at once like I am you are adopted by two drinking groups which both have an uncanny ability to alternate nights throughout the week to get plastered. The teaching fraternity single handedly supports a majority of the bars in this city, and there’s a new one popping up every few weeks. The big temptation of it all is that there is always new surroundings to drink in, and a stead supply of new faces to drink with from all over the world. So now for some baseless generalisations of drinkers worldwide, a.k.a. Alcoholic racism.
Good nationalities to drink with: Belgians, Germans, Spanish, New Zealanders, Brits, and the Irish. Australians only just make it onto this list due to a couple of standout characters, however for the most part it seems we’re exporting ignorant, arrogant, belligerent, beer swilling bitches with about as much grace and charm as a sledgehammer with lipstick. Similarly, Scandinavia,
who have some hilarious characters amongst them, also have a generous proportion of aloof and apathetic IKEA employee’s with whom a conversation is like a lobotomy.
Of those that have had me searching for the ‘eject’ button mid-conversation, the predominant countries where they reside are; Russia, India, and America. But to be fair, I am convinced that just as Australia exports obese, offensive, banshees every country has it’s tragic travellers. In fact I suspect many aren’t
so much explorers, but exiles from their own communities, destined to roam the world looking for people who can put up with them. (don’t bother buying a return-trip ticket buddy).

OK, so by night I speak a simplified and superficial International-English creole, then at work I speak a drastically slow and simplified version of English, and throughout the day a combination of wild hand signals and facial expressions. Like a mime with Tourette’s syndrome. So while my English is eroding, my Vietnamese is coming along at a snails pace. I should be illiterate by years end. I’ve taken it upon myself to learn Vietnamese, but it isn’t easy. Unlike English which is spoken worldwide and in greatly varying dialects, Vietnamese is spoken in Vietnam by Vietnamese people. Thus it is very precise in
its use, and locals are not used to approximating your speech. Where as we can easily understand a Kiwi’s demand for “Fush ‘n’ Chups” in Vietnam a similar variability on the language renders it incomprehensible. In combination with this, it is a tonal language, meaning that a single word can have up to eight
different meanings depending upon the tone of your voice! So my first attempt at saying the word ‘woman’ in a public place was met with stark horror and disgust by those around me, and when I asked for the translation I was refused, but from the looks on their faces I can only assume I said something along the lines of
‘I just made love to a wide selection of barnyard animals, and your mother was one of them!”

Conversely the Vietnamese language is full of absolute gems when spoken in English, let’s see, you can spend a night at the Bong Palace, and there’s the Mai Phuc Hotel, the Yu Phuc Hotel and the Long Phuc Hotel (a late checkout policy I assume). There’s the Phuc Yueen Chinese Restaurant (whatever melts ya
butter baby). There’s countless ‘Hung Long’ and ‘Hung Phat’ businesses which goes against the findings of the Ralph 2003 International Sex Survey for Vietnam. For the ladies there’s ‘Hot Toc’ barbers and ‘Dich Lic’ deli’s (mmmmm…salted meats). Oh and what could be better in the tropical heat than swinging in a hammock with a tub of Vietnam’s premier ice-cream; Fanny Ice-cream. And when you’re finished with your Dich Lic salami and you’ve licked the tub of Fanny’s clean, you can turn and politely thank the store-lady by saying ‘Come on you?’
Puerile humour never had it so easy.

Your’s sleazily,
Unh Hung.

Entry Wounds. Episode 08: Spirit, Opportunity & Giving a F#$K!

---------------
19/01/2003 1pm Ho Chi Minh City
---------------
There's something to be said for the modern daycare system in the developed world; it's pitiful. Leave junior in a Fisher-Price feedlot throughout the day, so that Mr and Mrs double income can return just at the right time to tuck junior into bed. That's bound to nurture a well balanced child.

Vietnam has a lot of children. It's the one thing that has struck me here,.......well that and public urination, bottles of vodka with Cobras in them, and a dried penis from some unknown animal. The Vietnamese's fecundity I think is due to two main reasons;
a) Here, like everwhere else in the world, people love shagging.
b) Parents are happy to let their kids walk around on the street unescorted rather than locking them up in the backyard, giving the impression of many children. Which means that despite the sordid underbelly of Vietnam's cities, kids explore the sidewalks and alleyways like it's their backyard. They're all confident,
free spirits and invariably smiling. And with good reason, they're taken care of with such passion by not only the parents but all the family and neighbours. At no point is a child alone and not the absolute centre of attention by some member of their extended family. My landlady's infant is always being talked to,
tickled and doted on by at least one person at all times. And the little one is always grinning from ear to ear. It's pure hedonism for the kids, they don't even have to sit at a table to eat, they're just followed around by an adult with a spoon and a meal. The life!
So as a consequence I haven't heard one baby crying yet (that wasn't starving)or seen a mother whacking a trantrum chucking toddler.
"Muuuuuuuum, I waaaaana Bertie Beetle!"
"They don't exist here, so SHUTUP or i'll really give you something to cry about."
"Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, I waaaaaaannaaaa Bertie Beeetle!"
"Fine then........ chances are you're going to grow up in abstract poverty and probably end up as slave labour for Western interests."
"Sniff, Sniff..... waaaaaaaaaahhh!"
"There see, I told you I'd give you something to cry about!"

There's an especially insidious form of slavery that is becoming common here;
prostítution. The gubberment takes a pretty strong stance against it. Firstly prostítution is illegal & secondly it is illegal for a Vietnamese woman to enter a hotel room with a foreign man. These are both punishable by deportation for the foreigner, and a hellish 3-8 year jail term for the girl. Personally I think
it would be far more appropriate if the punishments were reversed. She should get the free ticket out of Vietnam, and he should be thrown in the hole! Tell me that doesn't make more sense!
Despite the gubberments strong stance it's pretty evident off the streets and in the bars. The city is awash with young, YOUNG, looking girls being groped and rubbed by leering, dunken fat, old white men, licking their lips and working themselves into a hormanal frenzy. It's these belching, druelling, gyrating
flacid hulks of flesh that are the really ugly side of Ho Chi Minh City.

"But hey, you know.... like.... , the money they get for it buys them food and a home." Bullshit! Spare us the false fuckin sentimentality, if you're that much of a bleeding heart, give'em your fuckin money no strings attatched. The sex slave industry is now the world's largest form of slavery (27 million and
counting) on the scale and size that makes the slave labour economy of the past 400 years look like a lamington drive. Young girls and boys are lured from the country with the prospects of employment, then sold to pimps. Most commonly they are 'broken in' a.k.a. gang raped then drugged. The main purpose of which is
demoralisation. From then on it's equal parts opium addiction and physical violence that keeps them working. Women are forced to work even when pregnant,and once the child is born, it becomes the property of the employer as payment,for the debt incurred by her lack of working while in the final stages of pregnancy. From here the child is either kept or sold to another slave trader.
The child then incurs the debt, and spends the rest of his/her life paying off his/her debt while perpetually being bought and sold. Often these debts are over $3000 US, which means of course he/she will never pay it off.
So knowing this and then seeing these pot-bellied sleezeballs so happy with themselves it can make your blood boil, and if I wasn't so committed to the idea that violence only breeds more violence, I'd ice-pick the spines of every last
one of these muthafuckers! Then deliver these rapists with passports to the slums to meet their revenge. This is why Bali happened, people sick of being fucked. All it needed was spark and religious fundamentalism to fit the bill. Undoubtedly in the eyes of some, Bali was just a slap on the wrist, if they were
playing an eye-for -an-eye we'd all have lost a close friend.

Hmmmmmm.............. seems we've touched a nerve. Time for a hot chocy and some Thorazine injected straight to the temple. Mmmmmmmmmmm Thorazine. Talking about pharmaceuticals, they're pretty lax about self medication here. All for
sale, no prescriptions neccesary; Valium, Barbituates, Benzo diazapene, Dex amphetamine, Pseudoephedrine, beta blockers, and Viagra. Meaning that if one were so inclined you could be; swimming in cotton wool, while feeling detatched from your senses, wired for sound, euphoric, fearless, and hard as a rock for a couple of hours. All of it climaxing in a mixture of massive heart failure, neural meltdown and exploding nether regions. It'd make for one hell of a coroner's report!

----------------
20/01/04 4pm HCMC
----------------
Well I'm not working at the moment thanks to the lunar new year holidays, which means I'm five fifths broke during the entire country's biggest celebration. A week where the whole city goes ape-shit.
The streets are all decorated and the city parks are teeming with people buying softserve icecream and looking at the 100,000's of bonsai's on display. The downside to all this is that when half the people of Ho Chi Minh City's total
population of 8 million hops on thir scooter the pollution gets chronic. Normally when I arrive home at night I can feel the layer of scunge on my skin,a tasty cocktail of sweat and petrochemicals. When riding in traffic you have to wear glasses, without them you soon end up with stinging, bloodshot eyeballs, as
countless little flecks of dust and tyre rubber cling to them. Many motorists wear SARS masks as the air tightens your lungs as well, and as your body does its best to reject these materials it causes you to be coughing up disturbing dark imitation oysters. Fortunately spitting in public is perfectly acceptable.
Every few minutes you hear.. 'Hwaaaaark thoo! As some darling old Nanna launches one onto the footpath , next to the guy taking a leak on the wall. It seems that Vietnam never inherited the hang-ups over bodily processes that we in the West have. One of the first pieces of advice I received when I arrived was to "be
prepared for the fact that you can be half way through talking to someone and they'll just start picking their nose!" Ha! I've spent five years in houses with guys, picking my nose isn't just a habit, it's a sport. The best scene I've seen so far is a beautiful girl in a traditional Ao Dai, a long full length silk
dress, the most elegant garment I've ever seen. She is the picture of elegance and beauty as she rides past on her pushbike. Then she simply tilts her head to the side and lets a massive teardrop shaped lugey dangle from the corner of her mouth, before it breaks away and hits the bitumen beneath her. She dabs the
corner of her mouth with her finger and continues on unphased, without any loss of dignity. Classic.
The consequence of this freedom of body fluids is that in combination with the rubbish, pollution and tropical heat, the city smells a bit like a nightclub toilet. A little bit spicey, a little bit smokey, a little bit sickly sweet. What really concerns me is that I don't notice it anymore. Which possibly means I smell like it too now. . I can't to see what summer does to this stench, 35ºC, 110% humidity, and flooded sewers. Mmmmmmm what a recipe. I'm off to buy a SARS mask.

----------------
22/01/04 11.00am HCMC
----------------
Within four days a temendous mark in human achievement will be reached, a second state-of-the-art robot will land on Mars, and begin to answer the question we've all be asking each other: Are we alone? The news of this has fillled me with hope and pride for humanity, so much so that I decided that on
the cusp of this lunar new year, I would ask some of the people of Ho Chi Minh City if they too shared my excitement.
First contender, the saleswoman in Sapa fine silks store.
Me: "Chuc Mung Nam Moi (Happy new year)"
Saleslady: "Chuc Mung Nam Moi"
M: "It is going to be a good year, yes?"
SL: "Yes, good year, lucky year for Vietnam"
M: "Yes, a lucky year for our whole planet, and another I think"
SL: "???"
M: "Have you heard the news? A Mars rover has successfully landed on the red planet and another will land this Sunday. We humans are striving forward into the Universe and making our claim as a truely accomplished civilisation. Doesn't it make you want to just jump for joy!"
SL: "???...............You buy silk?....... very good, very cheap........you buy?"
M: "Think about it........ we've put a robot on Mars! Have you seen the photo's. All those red rocks as far as the robotic eye can see. How fascinating. And after the second robot lands we will have twice as many pictures of red rocks!"
SL: "No understand? I only have silk. You buy? ......very good, very cheap"

Perhaps she's more of the homely type and extraterrestrial exploration doesn't flick her switch. I know, I'll ask a person who isn't so homely. That homeless beggar looks like the perfect candidate.

"Chuc Mung Nam Moi"
He supports his upper body on the ground using his arms, as his legs are of little use. Paralysed from the waist down they are withered and thin to the bone, covered in ulcers and abrasions. Flies buzz around the cracks between his toes. Both legs are turned outwards and trail behind him as he shuffles
forwards. He looks up and reaches out with one hand and says: "Please".
"Pleased? I sure am, we're going to Mars, are you excited?"
"Please"
"You're pleased? That's great to hear, they called the first Mars lander,
Spirit. Isn't that a super name? How apt. Yes, Spirit has left Earth, and now calls Mars home. It's poetic don't you think?"
"Hungry"
"Hungry, Yeah I bet you are................... HUNGRY FOR MORE INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL! Well your prayers have been answered. The second NASA robot will land this Sunday. Yes 'Opportunity' is on its way to Mars as we speak. Yes we made 'Opportunity' here on Earth, then strapped some rockets to it and sent it hurtling into space, some 3.5 million miles away. I'm so proud of us humans.
Don't you agree? I sure hope it's a success, I'm sure you've been praying for 'opportunity' too."
"Please"
"Pleased... well I think we all are really. And you'll be extra pleased to know how easy it is on our pockets. Only 456 million dollars, why thats almost half of what the last mission to Mars cost. Aren't those NASA boffins resourceful!"
"Hungry"
"You want more?... Well there's plenty more where that came from friend. Our ol' buddy Bush has just announced that by 2020 we'll have a colony on the moon! And by 2040 there'll be a colony on Mars! Is there no end to our genius? Think about it..... if you were a beggar on Mars, your life would be so much easier, since
having only one third the gravity of Earth, those limp little legs of yours wouldn't be nearly as cumbersome, and there's ice at the poles which means you could be drinking pristine martian water. No more dysentery causing gutterwater for you my friend. No sir, you'd be living the good life on Mars, and all for a
bargain price of 130-250 billion dollars."
"Help"
"Sure you can help, but you're already doing more than enough buddy, thanks to the Word Bank and International Monetary Fund loans to Vietnam, the debt your country has inccured along with every other 2nd and 3rd world country, means that until you pay off the debt, global corporations have priority to your
country's resources, which of course is funnelled to the bank coughers of big business and the country's they call home, like America. There all that money works hard on making those country's rich enough to make such dreams as space travel a reality. And it's all taken care of for us by the gubberment, so we're not distracted from all the cool things we can do in our day to day lives, like; making silk, begging, and watching Julio Inglesias specials on MTV, and robots landing on Mars on CNN. How remarkable. Well I must say its been great to meet such an optimistic man such as yourself, especially one who is able to
appreciate the bigger picture. Chuc Mung Nam Moi"

So there you have it guys, Vietnam a land whose people share our planets grand vision; To get the fuck off this rock.

ET phoning home.