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.

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14/03/04 1pm HCMC
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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.