Entry Wounds. Episode 13: “They'd traded in their horses for helicopters, and went tear-assing around 'Nam looking for the shit....”

Let’s get things rolling, because time waits for no man, and change is a foot. If change is a foot, then discipline is a hand, and diplomacy a tongue, and I must impart to you this information before all these limbs and their corresponding abilities degenerate and have me falling to pieces, stumbling around these pages like a drunken leper in an abattoir.

----------------
01/10/2004 5:00pm HCMC “First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women”
----------------

…………Thwack!

There it is, another chunk of time flies by, another mother-load of minutes cashed into father time. Years end is nigh, where work will be slim, so much so that I actually have to start saving now. The plan; December with Lukey, Kalya, Grunta and Moz tripping up Nam, down Laos, and through Thailand, over the span of a few weeks. Then spending late January and February twiddling my thumbs and pinching my Dong while the whole country goes on holiday for a month. I may have to actually work more and spend less, an easy task I’m told, but I aint convinced considering dishing out my Dong has given me my greatest giggles.

Exhibit A: Phu Quoc Island

-------------------
06/08/2004 Phu Quoc Island “Soil’n’Green is People!”
-------------------

It’s the first week of August, and an idea has been hatched by two Dutch girls, a Canadian lassie, and yours truly; a weekend on a tropical island.
Check; Plane Ticket
Passport
Cash
Sunscreen
Towel
Shorts
T-shirt
White wine
Red wine
Tequila
Condoms
Jenga
Pot’n’papers.

To the airport we travel. Domestic terminal “passpor pree” (passport please), bags on the conveyor belt, empty pockets onto a tray, then into the x-ray. My pockets are now empty bar one, which contains half packet of cigarettes, in which a few grams of maryjane are crammed.
Stepping through the detector the alarm wails, but I’m still chilled at this point. The sincere faced guard deftly waves the wand on my front and back, then heads south. It chirps at my belt buckle (expected) then again lower down.
What the?
Then it occurs to me that these shorts have zippers at the bottom to attach extensions. He pats the pockets and throws daggers at my eyes. He registers no apprehension or surprise, this is not because I’ve mastered masking my emotions, but because I’m too hung-over to care.
I take out the pack of cigarettes and open it at an angle that shows a seemingly full pack. He pauses, and then waves me through. Only minutes later does it dawn on me, just how easily things could have gone awry. But at least I can tick another item off my ‘To-do list’. ‘Risking the death penalty to smuggle drugs through an airport….check!’ So after two minutes of imagining a Vietnamese jail and getting the chills, we board a 30 seater plane to an island that used to be a penitentiary.
One hour later we descend through the rain laden clouds and smack the tarmac of a tiny airport. We climb into van-taxi and due to a dud latch one of the Dutch lassies, (Lutzke) has to hold the door closed. The island is lush and largely flat here, but we soon make our way up into the hills. After a twenty minute ascent, the bitumen stops and red rich clay takes its place. The clay is slippery yet simultaneously sticky and the road well worn with tracks full of rainwater. The van’s tires spin away until we veer off the road and direct ourselves into a thicket of trees. This gives way to a narrow mossy path, paved loosely with big slippery rocks. The green path meanders for some twenty metres more, before, we four, are greeted with an eight foot, falling down, mustard yellow wall. This decrepit wall is mould and moss laden, streaked rich-black with grime. Its real age is unknown, maybe only a month, but the monotonous monsoons and steamy tropical heat render it ancient in appearance in no time. Underneath the rain stained muck is the name ‘TROPICANA’.
The Tropicana Hotel; two dozen thatch roofed bungalows with small patios and cane reclining chairs. Each bungalow is isolated via lush vegetation and a single meandering path. Following this path leads you to the restaurant. A quaint, dark teak wood establishment with an open layout, that opens out to over look a secluded beach. Down on the sand the palm trees sway and the sea pounds the shore. On the beach you can be coerced by a group of older ladies to indulge in a legitimate massage. 50,000 Dong (AU$5) for one hour, while lying on a towel listening to the sea; bargain! Unlike the pretty little things in the metropolitan massage parlours, these mature ladies have decades of dexterity and strengthened sinews in their fingers, which results in a massage with mind altering abilities, capable of catalyzing several successive endorphin waves through my central nervous system, as every knot from my little toe to my eyelids, was found and unwound.
My itinerary on day 1 went something like this:
10am – Go for a swim.
10:30am – Breakfast; omelette and fresh coffee.
11am – Recline on a beach chair in the shade, reading a book.
11:30am – Massage
12:30pm – Another short swim. Lunch; lotus flower salad.
1pm – Siesta
2pm – Read book in hammock, smoke a spliff, doze, drink beer, read, stare at the setting sun, watch crabs chase waves back into the sea.
6pm – Dinner; Seafood feast, white wine.
8pm – Spliffs, Tequila, Jenga and drinking games that reveal dirty secrets. (I’m jaw dropping dirty apparently.)
12am – Skinny dipping with three girls in the South China Sea by moonlight.
(My ‘To-do list’ is shortening by the hour!)

-----------------
07/08/2004 Phu Quoc Island - Day 2 “Precipitation, Perspiration, and Perseverance”
-----------------

Hiring two motorbikes we set off while the rain was lightly spitting. By the time we got to the road, a monsoonal torrent had us saturated front and back, and back at the Tropicana. Now soaked to the bone, on our second attempt the desire to disembark was less easily discouraged. So onto the red clay road we rode, following the beach for half an hour or more passing locals taking shelter in their palm frond shacks, staring bemused at the passing foreigners plastered in red-ochre-clay-spray. One of the drivers (yours truly) wore his cap sideways to stop the lashing walls of rain stinging his eyes, and another wore swimming goggles to much greater effect.
So along the coast, and up into rainforests we erratically rode before taking a right at a non-descript point, and worked our way down a well worn track. The ceaseless rain carved the track into a meandering creek. We did our best to maintain control and keep our engines above the waterline, but the track’s quality declined by the metre until finally Natasha and Kim were forced to walk their bikes. Another half hour later and the path which became a track, which became a goat track, which became a creek, petered out and ended at a sublime white sanded beach. A perfect crescent of white, backed by lush green rainforest. A swim in the ocean revealed small spikey things on the seabed that couldn’t be identified, but caused enough discomfort to force us back to the beach. There a small restaurant setup a table on the beach for us, with some hammocks, and there we ate a kilo of fresh giant prawns with salt, pepper and lime, grilled right beside us over coals.
After lunch was digested and a Heineken or two, it was back onto the bikes, where we tackled the ascent up the goat track and back onto the main road. This led us through the middle of the island, passing small stilted huts guarded by muddy, bright-eyed, semi-clad kids who shrieked in excitement at the sight of us.
Back at the Tropicana, showers were required and of course another massage. The rest of the evening needed nothing more than red wine‘n‘weed, resulting in a warm fuzzy feeling and a memory of a similar nature.
Monday morning, we’re up early, to regretfully fly back to the shitty, gritty, city. We land at 10:30am and by 1pm I’m standing in front of twenty-two, six year olds, hung-over playing hangman, pinching myself at the fact that I was on a tropical island at breakfast, and punching myself at the fact that I left.

Phu Quoc, You Rock!


----------------------
20/08/2004 “There’s no place like home, failing that, get a house.”
----------------------
This little monkey has a new residence, but due to the dubious doings in these adventures I can’t spell it out for you. Just ask, and you will receive.

Here’s the floor plan; four storeys of glory.
Ground floor; kitchen and lounge.
Second and third; bedrooms for beds, bodies and bonking.
Fourth floor; room for odds and ends, and a door.
Opening the fourth floor door, delivers you to our rooftop view. A tiled patio, front and back, with ferns for fengshui, hammocks for Heinekens, and deck chairs to doze in. Up here it’s the antithesis of the streets; quiet, spacious, and a pleasant breeze to keep the sweat at bay. This is bliss, and barring the afternoon downpours its suburban Nirvana ‘round the clock. The view is unavoidably Nam; a massive rabbit warren of tall thin houses, turquoise and mustard yellow, crammed together, all washed in grime and stained by rain, with bougainvilleas and orchids cascading from the balconies. A million little alleyways connecting it all, filled with sounds of the poor peddling bicycles and black market goods (or ‘bads’ as the invariably are).
This grand shack is host to several species. The most conspicuous of which are countless cockroaches, one toad, two maids- twice a week, three Canadians, a Yank, and a Vietnamese guy.
The Yank is Tam, a chilled out individual whose maximum weekly work load was 15 hours, until he decided he needed a break, and subsequently hasn’t worked in over a month.
Canadian’s one & two are Greame and Sarah. They met some time last year at a party and one week later they flew to Nam, and have been in a heavily saccharine stage of love ever since, waking up at midday and teaching in the afternoon. They’re all smiles and smoke enough dope to stone a small horse. Needless to say I do my best Shetland Pony impression and accept the challenge every time.
Natasha is Canadian number three. Crystal blue eyes, a razor sharp wit, and a mind that works at a velocity nearing the neurotic. Knowledgeable enough to have the last say everything from ancient history to human anatomy, the extent of her intellect has yet to be found by your truly. This has caused some friction between us, but not the abrasive type, rather the red-hot-under-the-covers type, which solidifies the theory that intelligence is sexy (especially when it’s whispering nasty things in French in your ear).
Now I know what you’re all thinking; “Smuggling ganja through airports, and burying bones in your own backyard! Are you looking for trouble Alamo?” The answer is ‘no’, I’m just going with the flow. But this bout of bliss is brief, as she will return to her chilly mother country, in just over a month to complete her masters in Human Genetics. So until then I’m trying to master unraveling her jeans, and she’s searching for my selective pressure points.
In an environment where all relationships are foreseeably finite, a little denial of the future works wonders and learning to live in the moment means each day matters more than the next. The art of living in the moment, is ironically a lesson I must remember for the future.
Finally there is Khoa. He’s a Vietnamese guy from the Mekong Delta, he doesn’t pay rent or live in room, he just has a makeshift bed in the odds’n’ends area upstairs. He once was a bartender, but now is tour guide, who constantly broadcasts good vibes via an ear to ear smile. Underneath this exterior are stories of suffering and heartbreak, he once spent a week in a coma, and now his baby sister is being claimed by cancer, yet his mood can’t be sunk. He’s an illegal alien, despite being from the south, an example of how the ‘North’ is still punishing the ‘South’ for resisting the hammer and sickle. He gives us an insight into the world of a local, and what’s more we learn all the good naughty words, like ‘loan’, which if said like ‘low an’ is a popular girls name, but if pronounced like bank-‘loan’ means vagina. An explanation for the slack jaws and giggles at roll call.

So all told, this residence rocks, and for me Saigon is now better than ever. That being said, I think I need another holiday.

Exhibit B: Cat Tien National Park
------------------
03/09/2004 Cat Tien National Park “The Search for the Worlds Rarest Aphrodisiac”
------------------

Another weekend away was beckoning, and I finally saw it as an opportunity to see the one place I’d dreamt of visiting before coming to Nam; Cat Tien National Park. The last remaining refuge for the world’s rarest pachyderm, the Indochinese Rhinoceros. The plan was simple, leave on Friday afternoon, navigate our way there and return on Sunday evening. But as with everything in Vietnam, plans never go according to plan because the locals don’t have a plan, and their promises aren’t worth the carbon dioxide generated in uttering them.
We left the house on Friday afternoon as the heavens unloaded, but on this day the rain god’s prostate was playing up. Within 15 minutes the roads were shin deep in a vicious, viscous mixture of rotting rubbish, overflowing sewers and torrential rain. The traffic came to a standstill and we were forced to leave the protection of the taxi and board a motorbike taxi. An 80cc motorbike with a driver, two westerners and luggage, cutting through the flood water, desperately trying to meet our bus prior to its departure. We made it in time, but drenched. The bus driver shakes his head and I console him by taking off my shirt, withdrawing a towel from my bag and drying myself on the bus’ steps. Whether it was my strip tease or my towel efforts that changed his mind, I’ll never know.
It’s dark by the time we leave and the rain eases only slightly, everything I own is wet and the air-conditioning has me shivering. The driver alerts me to the fact that because of rain, we won’t reach our desired stop until 10:30pm, so we agree to stop at the closest big town.
Bao Loc: We are the only two to depart at Bao Loc, and by the looks of the hotel receptionist we were the first white people he’s seen in many months. We take the first room he offers us, and let the silence of the countryside invade out senses. Silence is a foreign concept in HCMC, 9 million people all honking horns, hollering and singing karaoke. The silence here in Bao Loc is truly deafening, my blood pressure drops, my mind untangles and numbed by a beer and a spliff, I slip into the deepest sleep I’ve had since Phu Quoc. Rising bright and early without the aid of an alarm clock, we leave for a nearby attraction. Dambri falls. On two xe om’s we putter through the small township and wind our way through the farmlands. Finally we arrive, and a sense of familiarity stabs me. Have I been here before? Yes, I have! Back in December, this is the waterfall I visited with Thai, on my butt busting 5 day motorbike tour [see: Entry Wounds. Episode 05: Merry 'non-defined religious icon-mas', everybody.]. (And… for those trainspotting these stories, no… a vending machine had not been installed in the cave behind the waterfall as I had feared, it had been closed off entirely). Little had changed, and that is for the best. One noticeable difference was the size and might of the waterfall, now motivated by wet season rains, it roared over the cliff, smashing the rock bed beneath.
An hour later our xe om drivers were yet to be seen, and after one and a half hours they had still failed to materialize. This is a common occurrence in Nam, people agree to help you, or promise to meet you and give you the impression of sincerity, and then more often than not, leave you high and dry. Out of options and time we coerced a thumb-twiddling, hammock-ridden local to drive us back to Bao Loc. Once back at the hotel we settled our bill and waved down a local bus-taxi. This 9 seater Ford Transit had 24 people in it, and the erratic and wirey eyed driver stared at us skeptically, and demanded an extraordinary fee. Using the tried and true formula of staring straight into his eyes and in a no-nonsense tone saying, “Hai muoi ngang!” (20,000 Dong). He looked away displeased, which meant, “ok”. The van hurtled down the winding road, banking heavily in corners, and soon enough the smell of vomit began to thicken the air. 20 minutes later, the bus stops in a run down town, and we are physically ejected from the bus. (I hate long goodbyes anyway.) As the bus screams off down the road, Natasha and I stand on a dusty corner and we watch as the eyes of an entire town focus on us, like seagulls on a hot chip. Men on motorbikes race across the road and aggressively demand the use of their services. Steadfast on the price of 50,000Dong a piece we reluctantly accept and we once again race off into the countryside.
We wind out over the lush green topography of compact farms and then take a left turn up a thin path. This little path leads out into a plantation of maize, and suddenly amongst the maze of corn stalks I get a little suspicious. Are we going to be robbed and left out here?
Not so… instead we emerge from the field to the view of a small river, where a gnarly little old lady stands atop a raft made of 5 oil drums with loose wooden planks on top, lashed together with bamboo. We cautiously board the vessel and she is quick to correct our standing positions. She then grasps a thin rod of bamboo, suspended at head height, and anchored on either side of the river, and hand over hand, slowly this scarecrow of a lady drags us across the river. The men and the motorbikes follow suit, and once on the other side we continue our invasion into the ever thickening vegetation. Finally, after buying park entry passes at a wooden shack, we are dumped at the crossing to a much larger river. Here a young man with a comforting smile urges us to board his boat. Once on the opposite side, we realize that we have actually reached our destination. A cement path dividing modest white buildings in modest states of disrepair, and the atmosphere of a ghost town. The air; still, the grounds; empty, the grass; knee high, and all of it cloaked in absolute silence. The first building we enter is fortunately the reception, so with little fuss and little noise we are led to our room. Small and simple, bamboo bed, white linen and mosquito net. Awash with the sublime concoction of cool shelter and serenity we slide into a well earned siesta.

About two hours later, as the afternoon gave way to evening, we went in search of the only eatery; the canteen. It was closing at 7pm, so we gorged knowing we wouldn’t eat again till the next day. So spring rolls, rice, vegetables, eggs, the works. While we stuffed our heads, I noticed several exited men stuffing ceramic pots with reeds. Upon leaving I gave them an inquiring eye.
Let me digress here for a second and state that in my last life I was a cat, that is common enough knowledge, but now I know how I died. As all cliché cats die; through curiosity.
Let’s continue.
This group of eight boisterous men sat at the only outdoor table. In the centre of this table is a massive tall ceramic pot, and protruding from the top are thin bamboo pipes. We watch as a pint of water is poured into the near full pot, and two men suck vigorously on the bamboo pipes. Their eyes bulge, their throats gulp, and after forty seconds of continuous consumption the water level recedes to reveal a small twig jutting out of the reed bed. Everyone cheers and looks expectantly at Nat and I shouting “You! You! You!”. The water is poured and the pipes are practically shoved in our mouths. We draw heavily. The cloudy concoction is slightly sweet yet simultaneously bland, but the turpentine tang and vapors sicken my stomach immediately. We gulp and gulp, and after a minute there’s still a centimeter of water left. My stomach wants to explode and my head wants to collapse, but somehow we reach the mark. A cheer goes round and I’m told its home made rice wine that’s been brewing for three months. Then each man demands the honour of drinking with us. Natasha bows to their pressure three times before succumbing to nausea and having to leave. I stay with them, and being in reasonable dinking form, and being another 20kg heavier than anybody else at the table, I settle in to test their limits. Everyone challenges me and on my fourth I claim the men to my left and right are loudmouthed lightweights since they’ve only drunk two. They shake their heads and handball responsibility, but by this point having drunk four pints in twenty minutes, I’m not so eager to excuse them. Finally the one to my right accepts, but the one to my left goes back to pointing at me, saying I should have another. Once the other two finish, I grab the pipe and put it in lefty’s mouth, they all cheer. He shakes his head adamantly, and I do a little “I feel like chicken tonight” dance (which really just confused everyone, but still raised a laugh) and looking more pissed off than anything, he drank.
My final tally was eight in the course of an hour, and I felt 8/10 pissed but I could tell the hangover would be chronic. So much for a cleansing weekend.
My eight boisterous drinking buddies ranged from slight spastic to positively paralytic, and their jobs like their intoxication varied but remained in a similar genre. The best drinker turned out to be Chief of Police, and the loudmouth to my left, that I called a coward, revealed himself to be the head of the local Co\/\/unist Party. It scared me that these forty something juveniles held positions of privilege and power, but better to have them as friends than enemies.
After a dizzy nap, we were raised from our slumber by these still spastic social pillars, and helped into the back of a World Wide Fund for Nature ute, panda sticker and all, and taken off into the forest via a flooded muddy track.
“Animaws! Animaws!” the drunken police chief chanted to us. From this I deducted that we were now onboard a spontaneous nightlife tour. With around eight people in the back of the ute, Nat and I were forced to the rear. This position gave us neither view nor anchorage, and every time the ute accelerated or hit a bump, the drunken crowd rocked back, with all its weight on us. The count down to Nat and I falling off the back had begun.
We squatted down and held the side and tail gates. From time to time we saw some vegetation as the spotlight cut a path to the rear of the vehicle. However for the most part we had to be content with staring out the back, watching fireflies illuminate the darkness with bursts of rapid semaphore, while listening to the sounds of drunken yahoos, hollering and screaming into the darkness, driving like it was a rally, and attempting to burn the retinas out of whatever deaf-dumb animals hadn’t run away in time.
It’s the sort of experience you could never pay for, which is about the maximum price you’d pay for it too.
Next morning we rise early around 6:30am and try to join a morning trek with a park ranger. At 7:30am he guides Nat, myself, and a young Dutch couple to a bike rack containing a dozen bikes in varying degrees of disrepair. The first one wouldn’t pedal, the second and third had flat tyres and the fourth’s seat was jammed on a 75 degree angle, and so I settled on the fifth one, the one with no brakes.
We pedaled along a rough clay road and finally saw some real jungle. After thirty minutes we turned down a walking track into the jungle. We left the bikes by a tree and began to walk. The guide who spoke no English, claimed our walk would be three kilometres, but his pace suggested ten. So much for creeping through the dense undergrowth Platoon style, no sir! We were power walking through the forest like fat Toorak mums.
From time to time the guide would hear something, but instead of stopping and waiting to see what would emerge, he bounded into the undergrowth, barreling through ferns, tripping on roots, only so stop ten meters in, look around and shrug his shoulders. The power walk lasted and hour and twenty minutes and finished at ‘Crocodile Lake’. There were no crocodiles to be seen, but the butterflies were amazing and abundant. After a small nap, I used my broken Vietnamese to determine what time we would be returning. The Dutch couple had agreed on being back at the lodges by 2pm so they could meet their bus to Dalat by 4pm. As I suspected these poor tourists had fallen prey to Vietnamese ‘saving face’. That being; whatever they had said, the guide would have said ‘Yes’ to, whether he could follow through on the promise or not, or understand anything they said.
I can imagine the conversation they had.

Dutch Couple: “We need to be back here at two o’clock?
Guide: “Yes”
DC: “Will we be back here at two o’clock?”
G: “Yes”
DC: “We must be back here at two o’clock, its very important.”
G: “Yes”

There mistake was asking Yes/No questions, as it seems almost impossible for a Vietnamese person to say ‘No’. To do so infers that you cannot do something, and thanks to having one of the world’s smallest statures combined with the world’s smallest dicks, there’s a nationwide Napoleonic complex at work. The conversation could have just as easily played out as follows:

Foreigner: “Can you drive me anywhere on your motorbike?”
Vietnamese Driver: “Yes”
F: “Can you drive me to the moon?”
VD: “Yes”
F: “But its impossible unless you have a rocket-ship , do you have a rocket-rocket ship?”
VD: “Yes”

The trick to circumventing this logic is to avoid Yes/No questions and to ask who, what, where, when, how questions.

So after a protracted interrogation. I discovered that the guide wasn’t considering leaving until the afternoon, in fact he never had a watch in the first place! Within thirty minutes we were back on the path, picking off leaches and power walking back to the bikes. I saw glimpses of natural beauty, but was unable to ‘stop and smell the roses’ so to speak.
Once back at the lodges, we showered, ate and rested, then cleared our debts at reception and made our way down to the river to call for the boat. On the other side two keen looking xe’om drivers offered their services, and as the rain came down we cut our path through the streaming water on the road, and the steamy mist in the air, and were finally dumped on the side of the highway. We intercepted our bus, a miracle in itself, and by nights end we were back in the urban jungle of Saigon, only slightly more relaxed and sun burnt.
Cat Tien National Park, like most of Vietnam’s countryside, is a great place to unwind as long as you don’t try to achieve anything. The way I see it; you get what you pay for in life, and in Vietnam things are absurdly cheap, so expect absurdity.


---end of transmission---
Alamo out!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
General Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. -Apocolypse Now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~