The point that Jacinda and her Government of Losers appear to be missing is that to raise the cost of fuel is effectively, to raise the cost of everything.

National had it right when they ran with the mantra ‘Improve the economy and the people will benefit’…

The problem with this, and likely the reason Labour couldn’t comprehend it, is because it’s not a ‘quick fix’ like our governing party of losers seem to favour; building a stable economy takes time.

…This principle makes so much sense it ought to be a millionaire; the idea is to boost New Zealand’s economy by, for example, improving the cash-flow of our big exporters so that the money they make can then trickle down through small businesses enabling them to pay their staff better wages meaning they have more money for their families which would put an end to child poverty also probably a lot of the domestic violence we see about at the moment and hey, everybody’s happy – but certainly not the way it’s currently being done where the idiot Government simply demands that employers pay their staff more; what if the businesses can’t afford to pay more, what if they’re struggling themselves? Forcing a small business to pay its staff higher wages can easily be the end of that small business; then what? The alternative, the businesses lay off employees until they can afford to pay their staff more then we’re even worse off than before because while existing employees might now be earning a better wage, taking into account those redundant employees and the failed business owners from before, now unemployment has gone up steeply.

If unemployment goes up we have more people on unemployment benefits, which the Government pays anyway and (although one could argue in that case they’ve shot themselves in the foot) with so many people no longer contributing, the country’s economy will begin to slip; if we’re not careful it will fall right back to where it was before National took charge in 2008 and fixed it – back to the way Aunty Helen left it before she happily handed over the reins of a broken sulky to Uncle John and he had to bring us back on course from, basically, national bankruptcy – then the Global Financial Crisis hit so Uncle John and National had to steer us clear of that calamity as well.

Possibly the worst thing to come from higher fuel prices thus higher commodity prices thus less expendable cash for families thus renewed demand for higher wages thus increased minimum wage thus increase in unemployment thus loss in overall production thus less national income thus falling value of the New Zealand dollar, is increased inflation.

Inflation is a tricky one; it’s always going to increase, the goal is to ensure it increases as little as possible because ultimately, inflation is the value of money.

When a country is doing well, for instance when competent governance ensures a nation’s economy is healthy, inflation remains low; when a country begins to slip, for instance if poor governance means a country is spending more than it can afford (Helen Clark led Labour Government), inflation will rise sharply.

When this happens interest rates tend to rise also; I feel as though New Zealand’s homeowners will be pleased with the way National left New Zealand’s interest rates but, you can be damn sure that with Jacinda’s coalition of losers at the helm and with a Finance Minister who struggles to do basic sums also a Deputy PM who seems hell-bent on all things outrageous, they’ll be back up soon enough.

Roads need to be built and maintained therefore money needs to be spent, yet the Government’s exorbitant tax on fuel, as outlined above (and if I can see it where the hell are they looking?), is not a prudent way to go about sourcing that funding.

Worrying as it sounds, it’s as though New Zealand’s Government doesn’t understand how money works anymore; does our Labour led Government not understand that the economy is a fragile beast?

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Acon Nomie

Photography by Esther Unsar

Across New Zealand the cost of fuel has reached insane new heights, yet fortunately our beloved ‘Jacinda’ is stepping forward to relieve this pressure.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern maintains these rising fuel costs are ‘unfair on hardworking Kiwis’ and is reportedly taking steps to ‘subsidise the cost’ of petrol and diesel.

Make no mistake, in my opinion the Labour Government can go to hell, I’m a cold-blooded right-wing National supporter until the end; you better believe I was outraged by the outcome of this recent election and the way Labour threw together its coalition of losers – they complained about there being ‘no democracy’ in the recent US election but at least in their election the winner was the party which received the most votes…

This time last year the cost of petrol had dropped below $2.00 per litre as the price of crude oil fell back to its lowest point in years; 12 months later that price has peaked at almost $2.50.

…In the lead-up to the last election the Labour party promised voters that it was going to use New Zealand’s ‘massive budget surplus’ (which National’s own Finance Minister assured us was non-existent) to boost funding across a multitude of sectors which many naïve voters thought sounded brilliant and it did, sound brilliant…

12 months on from its record low and the price of a barrel of crude oil has risen – slightly; 12 months on from New Zealand’s notable reduction in the cost of fuel and it too has risen – astronomically.

…Labour planned to use New Zealand’s ‘massive budget surplus’ to improve roads, to boost the health and education sectors; so Jacinda, tell us please, how much ‘boosting’ has Labour actually done? …

Labour promised us, in the lead up to the recent election, (taking into account New Zealand’s ‘massive budget surplus’) there would be ‘no need for any major tax increases in the near future’, making this blowout in fuel prices almost inexplicable.

…In fairness Labour has ‘boosted’ the cost of petrol by more than 50 cents per litre over the last year, so I guess that’s something; what, did they actually think that if they imposed this fuel tax incrementally we wouldn’t notice? Does the Labour Government think that most Kiwis are daft? …

It is a fact that New Zealand (Auckland) roads need maintenance; they always need maintenance and maintenance always means money, but it seems unreasonable that New Zealanders are expected, across one year, to fund a 25 percent increase in the cost of such a vital commodity (and particularly with such a ‘massive budget surplus’ left by National at the lead-up to last election).

…No, clearly Prime Minister Ardern does not think Kiwis are daft as she has now also conceded that ‘fuel prices are too high’, and is reportedly planning to subsidise these costs; in essence then she intends to temporarily reduce taxation imposed on fuel by her Labour Government.

Again Jacinda Ardern comes off looking like the People’s Prime Minister, yet all she has really done is try to screw the ‘People’ then upon hearing them moan, she has agreed to screw them a little less firmly.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by P M Ardern

Photography by Nissa-Wan D Foll

 

 

Across the Western world it was once expected that the man went out to work while the woman stayed home to raise the children and keep house; in Vietnam it is currently expected that women work while men generally go off to cafes, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and chat with their buddies.

For some time I just stood in the middle of the road down the bottom of Bui Vien Walking Street as the frantic horde of revellers bustled around me; taking in the sounds, the sights and perhaps less enchanting, the smells…

Women run Ho Chi Minh City while the men, well the men often take token positions such as ‘gofer’ to their wife’s enterprise – performing the menial tasks or doing the heavier lifting – alternatively they wear a shirt with the word ‘Security’ printed on the back then stand or sit on the footpath (usually drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes) outside a business run by their wives or significant others. (It ought to be noted, younger, single men – men without a woman to keep them – they do generally work also.) Where many Vietnamese businesses/organisations might appear to be run/operated by a man – in that it might be a man who seems to have the power to make things happen – this is typically just a front; behind the masculine façade (probably intended to provide reassurance for chauvinistic Western customers) there will always be a woman in control.

…I had made my decision; I now made my move. No sooner than I had stepped off Bui Vien and onto the footpath I was accosted by several attractive – I assume ‘Crazy’ – girls, where I was handed a drinks menu and shown to a stool…

As with most bars on Bui Vien Street, Crazy Girls has no definitive boundary between the edge of the footpath and the beginning of its premises; the bar entrance itself is a few metres back from the road’s edge in the form of a totally open front gaping out onto the street, and is a 30 centimetre step up from the outdoor area which is often under an awning and splays onto the footpath.

…As my eyes adjusted, although I was seated outside I found I could make out the inside of the bar; to the left was a pool table under constant lighting but to the right of that, in the shadows, beyond an oddly placed pillar, appeared to be the music station – the area from where a ‘DJ’ pulled tracks each night from what would turn out to be the same 18-song playlist (which he just might have dubbed from the bar down the street which had possibly dubbed theirs from the other bar across the street, which had definitely been borrowed from the premises up the road). Further to the right, around a corner where I was noticing many staff – most adorned in their long T-shirts and denim shorts – were disappearing or reappearing, amid even more murky shadows was located a small ‘dance-floor’ yet strangely, I observed, despite the deafening background noise, not a great many customers…

Almost every bar in Vietnam and (as I will learn through reading the book that will ultimately save my soul and which would have saved me a great deal of money too but which, at this stage in my journey, I still have yet to purchase let alone read) Thailand employs women – bargirls – for the specific task of warming up their male clientele and essentially, loosening wallets; of course they dispense drinks and wipe tables as well but primarily, predominantly, these gorgeous ladies are floozies for hire.

…Seemingly the ‘clinking’ I had been hearing was coming from around that corner to the right where, judging by the number of staff who kept disappearing then reappearing holding a drink in each hand, there was obviously some kind of beverage dispensary…

They weren’t dressed as elegantly or seductively as the ladies in red over at Blueskies but the Crazy Girls bargirls sure knew how to make a guy feel important; the girl/s would sit a man down and commence their flirtatious Asian style of ‘fussing’, involving a lot of giggling/eyelid-batting (or if he is standing this becomes butt-patting/nipple-pinching which I initially thought was an odd form of seduction and I was right; as you too will soon discover ‘seduction’ is merely the unwitting by-product of this hands-on show), where the man then buys a drink for himself along with whatever lady decides she also wants one.

…I was at a table surrounded by three beautiful women as well as the one who seemed to have ‘claimed’ me, and with a Johnnie Walker Black on the way; I have a feeling I had agreed to buy each of the ladies a drink too – that’s five in total – and I had given one of them about 600 dong, so I was keen to see if she brought back any change…

It took until about my eighth visit to Crazy Girls for me to understand the insidious complexity of this butt-patting/nipple-pinching display; I was sitting with the future ‘woman of my dreams’ and watching as one of her colleagues exuded her powers of seduction over a decidedly intoxicated male patron. The woman of my dreams – who I had since come to know as ‘Noobie’ – and I were awaiting our next turn in a game of pool against an exceedingly drunk, extremely hard case, Australian husband and wife duo. The time was well past 3 a.m. and Noobie must have noticed my attention turning to the questionable antics of her butt patting, nipple pinching colleague, a few tables over. She tried to distract me, to pull my focus back to the game of pool but no, I was captivated with what I was seeing; the longer I watched the more I was learning.

…Drinks were on the way, even so I glanced again at the drinks menu; by Vietnam standards they were pricey, I could tell that much. Bia (Beer) wasn’t even advertised but I did happen to know that most places around HCMC charge 20 to 30 dong ($1.50 – $2.50) for local (Saigon Bia, 33 Bia) beer or Singapore (Tiger) beer while spirits (only rarely did I see local whisky being sold over the bar) were generally of the imported variety (Johnnie Walker Red/Black also Ballantine’s, Teacher’s, or Chivas Whisky) thus were comparatively expensive – 80 to 100 dong ($7.50 – $8.50) – yet for spirits here (which is oddly all that was advertised on the Crazy Girls drinks menu anyway) the place charged 110 dong (over $9.00)…

What had started with giggling and eyelid-batting had rapidly, perhaps inevitably, escalated into butt-patting and nipple-pinching. Another employee had since joined in the game – perhaps to ensure the drunken manatee didn’t lose his footing and flop onto his blubbery backside before they’d finished plundering him – and now, as I looked on with intrigue, as Noobie tried in vain to turn my attention back to her and our game, with one canoodler at the front pinching nipples and one canoodler at the back patting butt-cheeks I watched as, from practically the middle of the floor, the wallet was gently lifted from the manatee’s trousers and the wad of Viet currency whisked from within. I watched as butt-pincher, the one holding the wallet, glanced sideways at me – a lovely young woman of not more than 19 years named Trang (Chang) – winked and gave me a cheeky smile. I chuckled and shook my head in feigned distaste (because admittedly, I was a little impressed). Her captivatingly dextrous fingers then separated a few 500s before slipping the rest of the notes back into his wallet – ‘Take so little that the rich Westerners don’t even notice it’s gone’ (see last year’s Chronicles) – then with a grin she slid the wallet back inside the manatee’s pocket before giving that giant butt one last gigantic slap (which I actually heard all the way across the floor). Finally, as if thanking him for his contribution, Trang reached around to plant a big sloppy kiss on his big drunken face then returned to giggling and eyelash batting, a cool million dong better off for it.

…110.000VND is the price that a tourist might expect to pay for a good meal, yet in Vietnam, relativity is not a term that people seem to comprehend (think about the New Zealand equivalent, a good meal might cost you 30 or even 40NZD; there is no way you would consider paying even $30 for a single drink).

Vietnamese people do typically have very light fingers and indeed most would make proficient pickpockets, however the art of surreptitiously plundering someone’s personal belongings from their body while walking the street, sometimes right in front of their eyes – although it is a genuine fear of most Western tourists to Vietnam – I have neither experienced nor seen or even heard evidence of this practice; although while chatting with an Australian chap named Steve during my final week I did hear a couple of rollicking stories…

Pick-pocketing may have been an active pastime for Viet youths back in the day but with the rise in Vietnam tourism, governing bodies would be foolish for allowing this trend to continue (indeed, allowing it, because the fact is, if Government wishes to start, finish, prolong, curtail, commence or discontinue something, Government has the money, hence Government has the power thus Government may do whatever the hell they wish, and if you don’t believe that you’re naïve); pick-pocketing is very much an opportunist act perpetuated with little foresight and intended only to benefit one person, for only one time. Where the majority if the world is becoming a ‘cash-free- society, Vietnam is very much a cash-only society – tourists use ATMs to withdraw perhaps 5 million VND at a time, spend that lot then withdraw another 5 mil – take away a tourist’s wallet, you’ve effectively taken his ability to burn through money.

…Vietnamese are all about the tourism cash and it is my belief that they have learned to work as a team in order to acquire the aforementioned currency; while in my final week, staying at the Yen Trang hotel (highly recommended), I found myself in conversation with a very angry, insanely vengeful, but really very nice, Australian man. Aussie Steve was around middle-age and was telling the story of his previous night’s exploits; he had been innocently taking a stroll, somewhere around midnight, and happened to cut through a place known as Tranny Corner – an area one block over from Bui Vien that is considered a red-light district for transvestites – on his innocent way back from somewhere else that was no doubt entirely respectful. As Steve told it, he was approached and propositioned by a three ‘ladies’ – one taking the front with the other two circling around either side, as if admiring – who, as he tells it, he politely declined; it seems the situation became suddenly belligerent and Steve was apparently struck/grabbed in the groin. While doubled over, apparently, the remaining two ‘ladies’, the ones at either side, emptied his pockets, stripping him of his money (which he claims did not bother him greatly), his dignity (regarding the loss of which I did not linger), and his phone (which incensed Steve more than anything as his phone reportedly contained irreplaceable family photography). However, he went on, that isn’t the only time something like this has happened around Tranny Corner…

Any logically thinking Vietnamese citizen is going to try and avoid stripping a ‘rich Westerner’ of their wallet, preferring instead just to swindle and con the money out of them the old fashioned (Southeast Asian) way, then allowing them to go back to the ATM for a top-up, before potentially repeating the act. I spent more money on that first night in Crazy Girls than I care to recall, but justified it with the statement, ‘Oh, everyone has a blowout their first night in Vietnam’ – problem was I ended up spending almost the same amount that next night, too.

…As Aussie Steve told it there was a gentleman, a tourist in or in the vicinity of Ho Chi Minh City District 1’s Tranny Corner, one afternoon having just extracted his allowance from an ATM. Reportedly he was standing on or near the curb as he slotted the wad of notes into his wallet. At that moment a motorbike buzzed by, particularly close to the footpath, with the pillion reaching out and snatching the wallet straight from this tourist’s hands. (As Steve told the story both motorcycle occupants were ladyboys of the night, or in this case day, and apparently, according to Steve, there was a little more to the story that he didn’t know but wasn’t willing to speculate – perhaps regarding ‘a deliberate target’ as a result of ‘improper treatment/payment’ or something to this effect. No I don’t know either, I’m simply surmising based on the facts that I heard and this act sounded premeditated; additionally I am aware how passionately Asian folk feel about retribution – wrong one of these people or their family members on their home soil, cause the loss of face to most any Asian person and, gentle-natured, passive as they may appear, they will even the score, albeit eventually.) Anyway, as the man stood, bemused, unable to comprehend what has just happened to him, the two harlots and their scooter race around the block to a moment later reappear and speed right back past the bewildered gentleman, tossing him his wallet. The man scampers after it, retrieves it and checks inside; of course all of the notes are gone but his bank cards, valuable to no man except him, are of course still in place.

Now I certainly am not going to vouch for Steve’s credibility or indeed, the authenticity of the above yarn, but whatever truth that story may hold it outlines my point perfectly; I believe most Vietnamese have learned/are learning that pilfering a tourist’s wallet is not beneficial in the long-term, and have perhaps become less selfish/short-sighted in their quest for the acquisition of tourist cash. They appear to have learned/are learning that to simply pick the pocket of one man – thereby taking away his ability to procure more cash which would have afforded him the opportunity to become the victim of other Viet scams/cons – is a foolhardy game to play…

You see Vietnamese are not stupid people – they have never been stupid – which is how they have devised much more complex and elaborate means of extracting money from tourists; ideally, where the sucker is not even aware he/she (but usually ‘he’) is being played.

…Mind you, one does not need to be conned in order to burn through money in Vietnam; while I may have spent almost half my month’s budget in that first night at Crazy Girls, I experienced the kind of night that I will never forget, so maybe it was worth it…

The best thing though, the woman of my dreams ended up coming back with me that night.

…So yeah, maybe it was worth it after all.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Willie May-Kit

Photography by Vienna Meeze-Conn

 

 

It was pandemonium. The noise, the lights, the people; this was utter insanity.

I remembered a year ago how Bui Vien had been considered the ‘party street’ of Ho Chi Minh City, but in my opinion it had always been pretty tame; so how could this pleasant little street from last year have since become the hub for all things mayhem – of anarchy? …

Around a year ago, it was a Saturday night; the time was roughly 5 a.m., I was outside the Aston Hotel Saigon with a few of the staff, sitting on kid’s plastic play-chairs and sipping Jimbean (see last year’s Chronicles). The night was winding down with only the occasional motorbike buzzing past, along with the odd drunkard having at some point throughout the evening lost his bearings. The following evening would involve nothing more than a few social drinks and only a small amount of idiocy, which would be largely wrapped up by 2 a.m.

…Bui Vien Street today is unequivocally a 24 hour, seven day a week operation…

This year, from what I perceived, most bars have a two to four hour window, ideally between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., where the venues will shut down, thus briefly allowing ladies equipped with brushes and damp rags to flit through and again make the place presentable; sometimes though, if a group of particularly hardened (usually Aussie or Kiwi but occasionally Brit) drinkers come through and start buying liquor by the bottle rather than the glass (which I later discovered is recommended to noticeably drunken or egotistical patrons – trying to make a show of flexing their drinking muscles – by the establishment’s canoodling bargirls) then the bar manager can scarcely justify closing her premises, can she? (For the record, it is always a ‘she’; Bui Vien Street, indeed the whole of HCMC, is run by women – more on that later.)

…I recall taking a stroll one morning, deliberately early in the hope of catching a different perspective on this number 1 District of depravity and, indeed a different perspective I was shown; shortly before 8 a.m., the sun having been up for some time, down the bottom of Bui Vien, I stumbled upon a couple of bars, still cranking music, still flashing lights around, still going for it like it’s 3 a.m.

I had a chuckle at the few drunken revellers still inside one bar in particular, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the sun was now shining (well, as much as the sun ever shines in HCMC) also that the ambient temperature must have been already pushing 30 degrees, and meandered on across the city. Over an hour later, having crossed several Districts in the meantime, I wandered back to my hotel along that same route, strolling past that same bar; the music had been shut back to a paltry conversation level and the establishment was now – aside from a few ladies dashing about brandishing their brooms and damp rags, also the couple of middle-aged drunkards, the same two drunkards who had apparently been the driving force behind the lengthy evening (the same pair of drunkards who, incidentally, a few nights later I would end up befriending and, along with the woman of my dreams, beating in a game of pool) were now flopped forward on their tables, respective bottles of whiskey or tequila, or whatever the hell it was they were drinking that morning before they passed out, caps removed but bottles still almost full beside them – undergoing it’s hasty makeover before reopening in just a few hours.

This night though, Saturday night, it was still before 12 a.m. as I wrestled my way towards the visibly less-populated end of the street…

Interesting from a walker’s perspective; right up the top of Bui Vien Street, the end on which the Aston is located, things were relatively subdued, then the farther down the street one progresses, indeed the deeper one ventures into the bedlam of deafening audio and deranged revellers, the more one finds oneself struggling for forward momentum – struggling for room to breathe. Keep going, continue pushing through the boozy horde and one will emerge into an area not unlike the other end, again densely populated but again with room to move and breathe freely.

…I made it to the bottom of the street. I was going to keep going, just wanted to keep on walking, so desperately keen I was to explore these Southeast Asian badlands; I so badly wanted to do those things that I knew I shouldn’t do but wanted to do anyway just to see what happened – oh God I wanted to do that – but no. Early days yet, I decided; best to keep a measure on antics in the beginning then see how things panned out before doing anything blindly reckless or irresponsible…

Additionally interesting from a walker’s perspective; if one stands in the middle of the street and casts an eye around, one will notice how, between the hotels, restaurants, cafes, bars and other licensed premises – in fact usually directly above these establishments – are situated residential buildings – Bui Vien Street housing. The majority of these people breathe, work, play, and live practically their entire lives, in or around just this one street.

…I cast my eye around. Where the bars up the other end had looked modern, shiny, inviting hence popular, the bars down this end looked more unloved, derelict and ultimately seedy; this explained the bottlenecked variation that I encountered in reveller density along the street. Even so feeling like I was feeling, exuberant as I was at that very moment, I just didn’t know if heading back up the street for a further ear-bashing at the hands of an over-extended Vietnamese sound system was for me. On the other hand, I thought, perhaps it was – who was I to tell myself what was good for me, anyway? Then again, it was my first night in Vietnam (this year), so maybe I was obligated to let loose..? That was a good point; it was a very good point – how loose need I be letting though? So loose I end up losing all my money then waking up sweating and bloodied in a gutter somewhere..? Not that loose quite yet, no (give it a few more nights though)…

Prior to coming back to Vietnam I had set some rules that I very much expected myself to follow. Firstly, ‘You must not allow yourself to become so intoxicated (one will notice how I am using the term ‘intoxicated’ rather than ‘drunk’, this way the ruling stands for whatever variety of toxin I allow to enter my body) that you lose utter control of your capacities’.

…Last year, in Nha Trang, on my birthday night, hand in hand with my bottle of ‘Genuine Vietnamese Scotch Whisky’ (see last year’s Chronicles), while I seem to have maintained most of my recollection, to this day I have flashbacks of the horrors that I both endured and was forced to endure at some of the places that I entered that night; purely, I believe, (although you might say ‘obviously’) because I allowed myself to become intoxicated to a point where I had no control…

Yeah. That seems to be all the rule-making I did for this recent trip which, having now returned from Southeast Asia with no substantial gains or losses – other than a headful of lurid recollections also a diminished opinion of a Viet woman (or in fact any Viet person’s) ability to speak the truth – seems to have been a fairly liberal way to go.

…To hell with it; I turned to the seedy-looking premises on my left. The décor was almost entirely black which, aside from the intermittent flashing of lights, rendered the place a rather shady, yet oddly entrancing, atmosphere. I suspected this was their intention. I stepped closer and looked for a name but could see none. Sure, there was music, lights, people, clinking glass and the unmistakable audio of general drunkenness – people falsely empowered by alcohol, doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do; empowered furthermore by the sense of being so far from home in this exotic land, taking chances they would not otherwise take – yet this enigmatic establishment seemed to have no indication that it was even trading as a business…

Among the archives now clogging my memory bank, the over four weeks’ worth of optical snapshots from my most recent solo voyage to Vietnam – of which, incidentally, a great many would be captured from among the shadows of this very bar – is one of me standing behind a heavily drunk, very sweaty and hoarse almost to the point of unintelligibility, middle-aged American man who, probably based on my oddly clean-cut and well-dressed appearance, also the way that every employee in the bar appeared to know my name along with my preferred drink and was so friendly towards me (the result of, at that point, seven consecutive nights not leaving the premises until closing time; in most cases 5:30 a.m.), had presumed that, as seems to be the case with many White folk, I was in fact the owner of the aforementioned establishment; given that we had only recently become acquainted I felt it would have been improper of me to correct this gentleman’s assertion. Somehow – might have had something to do with the WWE Smackdown that was usually showing on the bar television – we had started talking about MMA and more pointedly, the UFC; I admitted to not knowing a great deal about the current state of Ultimate Fighting and confessed that I wasn’t really into Mixed Martial Arts either, however, as I casually slipped into the conversation, I was in my fourth year of training in the art of jiu jitsu.

…I looked across the road; four gorgeous women patrolled the sidewalk each adorned in flowing red dresses and six inch stiletto heels, ostensibly soliciting business for a bar called – I thought initially it was ‘Bluesky’s’, based on the letters’ vertical configuration along with visual obstruction on the second and third to last letter, and wondered momentarily about the origins of such a surname, only to later discover it was – Blueskies (turns out not so much the bar owned by old Red Bluesky but the fusion of two inherently single words to fabricate a term which, regarding pronunciation anyway, is decidedly ambiguous), and wondered why I just didn’t go there instead…

This American man (we hadn’t wasted time on formal introductions but let’s just call him ‘Craig’) nodded knowingly and revealed that he also used to compete in MMA asking me, in raspy jest, “So how’s your rear-naked choke?”

I laughed lightly and told Craig, “Honestly bud, it could be better.”

“Go on then,” he wheezed and, still seated on his barstool as I stood beside him, turned his back to me.

“You serious?” I queried with a laugh, “You want me to put a choke on you?”

“Yeah go on,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “show us what you jiu jitsu pansies can do..?”

At that point I knew I ought to have just walked away but of course more compelling was the desire to know what would happen if I didn’t, so I dutifully slid in behind the portly American. “You sure..?” I asked as I slid my left arm around his throat.

“Yeah,” he rasped, his hoarseness amplified by the force of my forearm dragging over his windpipe, “go on, see if you can choke me out.”

I hesitated in setting up the manoeuvre, the grin having suddenly vanished from my face. “Dude, I’m not choking you out,” I said firmly, “because you are going to tap before it gets too much, yeah?”

“Yeah whatever,” he wheezed, “don’t be a pussy – choke me out.”

I tightened the grip of my left forearm around Craig’s neck, bending my knees and pulling my chest in close to his back. I then linked up my left hand with the biceps of my right arm. I positioned my head beside his right ear and reiterated my intentions, “Just make sure you tap out as soon as you feel your head start to swell, alright” – anyone who has experienced a rear-naked knows the feeling – “because shit man, I don’t want to kill ya.”

“Nah, you won’t kill me,” he uttered in a strangled tone, curiously, already sounding halfway to death. “So go on then, ya fuckin’ pussy, show us you what you can do.”

…Saturday night, my first night on Bui Vien of 2018, I looked at the bar-with-no-name and the drunken revellers therein; there was something about its dark, seedy and all-around unappealing quality that I just found so damned inviting. To hell with it; I stepped onto the footpath and, with one last look at the glorious ladies in red over the road at Blueskies, entered the premises of – I glanced up to see a small neon sign obscured by a folded awning – Crazy Girls.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Junkin Yank

Photography by S Connor-Getter/Ria Naked

Following the briefest of platitudes we stepped out into the mayhem of Bui Vien Street on a Saturday night.

Vy was wearing the same kind of outfit that, as I came to recognise, most young Vietnamese women seem to favour – an oversized T-shirt long enough to cover the top portion of the thighs with a pair of tiny shorts concealed beneath the shirt’s lower fringes, perhaps intended to give the impression that she is wearing only the T-shirt…

Do I think this style of dress is a good look for an attractive woman? In a few words: not so much. I realise it’s fashion and indeed, women everywhere now are donning this arguably provocative attire but seriously, for a beautiful woman with a tidy figure..? A baggy T-shirt covering a pair of, usually denim, shorts..? Yes, it’s quick, yes, it’s casual; yes, it’s probably very comfortable too but honestly, for a first meeting, I was a little let down. It wasn’t as if I had sprung this invitation on her either; Vy had been aware at what time I was coming in and I had said that I’d wanted to take her out that night. She was gorgeous but, call me superficial, I found myself a little stuck on her underwhelming choice of dress (and my God there were some utterly spectacular female ensembles to be seen that night on Bui Vien). In fact the first time I had truly taken notice of a woman wearing this kind of potentially risqué, but really not, outfit – Singapore, only a day ago – I had actually been fooled into thinking that perhaps, just maybe this woman was so bold that there was nothing substantial on under the shirt; of course when I later discovered she was wearing a pair of denim shorts I was suitably disenchanted. Denim shorts on women, in my opinion, are awful; they’re heavy, they’re unattractive, they’re not sleek, they’re not streamline, they’re not elegant, they evoke memories of dirty, smelly denim work-jeans which, in fairness is even more unattractive than the shorts themselves and ultimately, again it’s only my opinion, the only thing worse than ratty old denim shorts on an attractive woman, is a ratty old denim skirt.

…Vy and I pushed and shoved our way up Bui Vien; despite the almost shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrian congestion she appeared to know where she was going, while I was just taking in how much the street had transformed from the year prior. Talking was pointless as, while Vy’s English – although she would dispute it – was quite good, the volume of the music inside the bars was overpowering to the extent that, as I would come to understand is a theme in Vietnam, even out on the street with noise coming from both sides I could barely hear the sounds that I made let alone those coming from her.

Eventually she indicated an outdoor seating area where the level of noise was less ridiculous (but only mildly). We sat on barstools either side of a round table. A bargirl came by and, although I couldn’t hear what Vy ordered, I quickly scanned the drinks menu. Seeing no scotch on offer I pointed to the Jack Daniels. “You want with Coke?” The waitress yelled in a high-pitched tone – which I imagine was about the only kind of voice that would penetrate the background discord.

Desperately trying to maintain my sense of calm amid this bedlam, while being quite aware that my own low-treble drone wouldn’t have a hope of piercing the palpable audio (I swear, I could actually see the sound-waves), I simply gave an affirming nod…

Truth was I didn’t care what she brought; I just wanted to get the hell out of that place as soon as possible. This was insane; trying to enjoy a person’s company while being bombarded from all sides by this manmade cacophony..?

…The girl returned with the drinks and said something; I assumed it was along the lines of ‘I’ll start you a tab’…

Aware of the dangers of running tabs in Vietnamese bars – particularly ones where speech hence potential query of a charge is near-impossible, and that’s not even taking into account the language barrier – given the Viet propensity to overcharge when no one’s around to regulate them, I pulled out my wallet. I hadn’t even looked at the price of the drinks but assumed two 100s would cover it (I wondered momentarily if I would require change, or more to the point, if I did if she would return with any change).

…Vy glanced up at me, smiled, blew me a kiss of thanks and sipped her drink. I pulled out the straw I try to always have with me, dropped it in the glass and sipped my Jack Daniels; the sweet woody flavour of American whiskey reminded me why I had become a Scottish whisky drinker. Vy looked at me again and smiled which, given the noise, was all either of us had any hope of doing anyway…

I would later have another attempt along these same lines only this time I would be sure to take charge of location, making a point to steer well clear of Bui Vien but to sadly only encounter a similar, if not worse, regarding manmade volume, situation; I know the Vietnamese like it loud, I guess because if it’s not loud there is so little chance of it being heard over the ambient – traffic along with myriad people trying to make themselves heard above the traffic – noise, yet it is my belief that the main reason Viet folk promote volume the way they do, is in an attempt to befuddle the senses of their, primarily Western, patrons, because it assuredly does do that.

…At one point I did lean in and try to say something to Vy, alas any attempt by me to be sociable was futile. We finished our drinks and I gratefully stood. Vy was demonstrating why Vietnamese are typically not big drinkers; despite her flat-soled shoes (shit even I was wearing 35mm heels) she was looking a touch unsteady on her feet. We nevertheless walked back toward the Aston, into the comparative quiet, where she said simply, “I’m starting get drunk, I should go home now.”

I didn’t know what to say. We’d met, sure, but that was basically all we’d done.

“I busy now,” she went on, “I call you few weeks … K?”

“Sure…” I responded, not really understanding what was happening…

It wouldn’t be until around the three week point before I realised the way a Viet woman’s mind works regarding dating – or whatever the hell you’d call what we’d just done. As I came to understand it, the first ‘date’ is one on one (seemingly with as much noise and outside distraction as possible, perhaps so communication is scarcely an option), the second ‘date’ you meet her friends (I suppose so they can develop an opinion of you as well), the third date (alas I never made it this far as a lack of clear communication, along with Vietnamese women’s inherent unreliability, thwarted me) I think you meet her family and if they like you, and only then, I believe it is unequivocally not until the fourth date, that your relationship may become physical. (I ought to point out, this ‘four date’ philosophy, this applies only to wholesome, usually Buddhist – although as I would come to learn also, it is possible for a woman to maintain a devout Buddhist faith while still being a veritable harlot – women; most of the rest, among Ho Chi Minh City’s female contingent, will do just about anything for a couple of million dong, or sometimes less.) The point though: for a wholesome young Vietnamese woman – think Vy was 26 – making her way in the world of Vietnamese dating, it’s more of a ritual, a process if you like. They have to therefore endure the process in order to reach the conclusion; therefore technically what we did, awful as I felt it to be, did constitute our first date and would have meant, to her at least, that she was one step closer to the culmination, whatever form that was supposed to take.

…I placed my right hand at Vy’s side with the intention of planting a kiss on her cheek, but immediately the hand was brushed away (it was only our first date, after all).

“See ya,” she called cheerfully and disappeared into the swarm of revellers.

“Hen gap lie” (See you again), I murmured with less enthusiasm, turning to climb the steps to the Aston Hotel.

I didn’t imagine I would ever see Vy again.

 

Slowly, yet two at a time, I ascended the staircase to the fourth floor. I buzzed into my room, checked the air conditioning was maintaining a mild 16 degrees and, drenched in perspiration, flopped onto the bed. Lying there on my back, with eyes closed I went over what had just happened; had it been my fault the evening had been a disaster? What could I have done – what should I have done differently? Had it actually been the calamity I thought it was, or was it just me? It certainly hadn’t proceeded as I envisage a first date should but then maybe it had for her..? Yes, maybe it had played out just how Vy had expected..? Atop the bed I rolled onto my side and stared at the warped veneer of the sideboard (the sideboard in my room last year had been like that too, I remembered – I presumed it was something to do with the accumulating moisture content while rooms are unoccupied) – bent timber notwithstanding I realised I didn’t even believe my own logic; there was no way what we’d just done could be considered satisfactory by any lady. Nevertheless I consoled myself with the sentiment that the ‘Vy adventure’ was a lesson learned and that if I ever had the opportunity to do the whole ‘first date in Vietnam’ thing again, I feel as though I should perhaps find somewhere quieter.

Suddenly I had a thought. I opened my eyes and smiled; alright, next plan. I had been in online communication for over twelve months with a lovely Vietnamese woman named Lin; in fact when we had first became acquainted she was known as Ga Ra Lin but, as I have observed, Vietnamese folk seem to very much like changing their names…

In Vietnam it is not unusual for people to share the same, or similar, names; for instance over the weeks that I was there I met three women and one man named Thao (more like Towel), two women named Tao (Tar), two men named Dung (Dum), one named Ding (Dem), and one named Dong (Dohm); four women named Lin – sorry – three named Lin (as it looks) and one named Linh (same as the first), two women named Lan (Lahn) and one named Lanh (Lung), one woman named Min (as it looks), one named Minh (Ming), one man named Anh (Ang) and one woman with the same name, six, seven or perhaps eight women named Ngoc (Nyowp – no, try it again – Nyowp), and three women named Trinh (Chin). (I’m certain I met many more Vietnamese folk with similar names too but that stint of recollection just there, well that just wasted a good half hour of writing time and I was getting off-track anyway, so I probably won’t be doing much more of that in future.) The point is Vietnamese are not so big on names and in fact an eavesdropper will rarely hear a Viet person address another Viet by their name.

…Lin can wait, I thought as a wave of excitement flooded through me; I’m here for a long time and this is my opening night – this is Saturday night on Bui Vien Ho Chi Minh City and shit man, it’s still before midnight and I’m cashed up.

Still adorned in my first-date finery, but having had a quick rinse-off under the shower to disperse the perspiration that my body just would not stop excreting no matter how cool I made my room, I swaggered down the Aston’s front steps and made my way out onto Bui Vien Street.

What I had not considered, as I minced my way through the pulsating mass of revellers, was that this night would be not only responsible for stripping me of millions of dong – although I wouldn’t realise it at first – tonight I would meet the woman of my dreams.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Ruby Love-Money

Photography by Crazy Girls

 

 

 

First task, I needed to contact the woman I had met through VietnamCupid.com; the one who had, apparently, bizarrely – almost inexplicably – not seen my email until exactly twelve months after I had sent it.

I took out my Nokia Basicphone, scrolled down and found Vy’s number; using all of the buttons I then typed a message telling her that I had landed in Ho Chi Minh City and asked if she was keen to meet tonight.

I received a message back immediately: ‘Message From Slingshot Customer Care. Your International Roaming Credit is now below $5. To top up…’

What the hell?! (Fair call, the colourful array of impassioned speech brought about by the aforementioned message was somewhat more forceful than ‘What the hell’; alas I have a varied demographic to consider.)

Before taking to international skies I had purchased a prescribed amount of specific credit which would effectively convert my phone from a ‘monthly’ to ‘prepaid’ plan,  and would allow me to (supposedly) send messages and/or make calls free from exorbitant International Roaming charges…

While still in the air, I believe it was somewhere nearing Singapore’s Changi Airport, I received notification that my special ‘International Roaming Credit’ was now active; I excitedly fired off a few messages at $0.20 (calls were to cost $1.39), then I was in Singapore. I sent no more messages until the next day, where from the lobby of the Boss, I updated family once more of my progress; a total of three messages via International Roaming so far. I then flew to Ho Chi Minh City, my phone having passed through several more time and coverage zones along the way. I landed in HCMC, passed customs, spent two hours in the back of a taxi-van, then before checking in to the Aston I’d attempted to contact Vy. How many is that? Right, it is four, that’s what I thought, four. So 4 by 20 is what? That’s right, it’s 80 – cents.

…Initially unsure of Slingshot’s International Roaming deal I had bought only $15 worth of prepaid credit; I expected that would at least get me started and if I did end up running out (I had budgeted on 75 messages for the month which, given this is almost twice as many as I send at home, I expected should have been ample), I hoped I could gain access to a PC, to access Slingshot’s website, to buy some more. Ultimately I wasn’t perturbed – until now.

I didn’t understand what was happening; had I unknowingly sent off many more messages than I’d thought – or shit – had I pocket-dialled somebody? Or, although they had sent verification that the service was now active, had Slingshot failed to implement my special rates as quickly as they’d sent the message informing me of the rates, leaving me to pay massive International Roaming fees? (Last year, while I was still with Spark, touring the length of Vietnam with my Alcatel Crap-phone, through contacting NZ and the various Vietnamese folk I’d met along the way, at what turned out to be $2 per text and $10 per minute, I managed to accumulate over $350 of these hideous charges – which in this time of free Facebook messaging, where I reckon I am just about the last person in the world to own a Smartphone, how can anyone justify charging $2 for a stinking text message?) Anyway, this seemed the more likely explanation. Problem I was facing now, even if Vy did get back to me, I didn’t know if I had enough credit to reply to her response, even once.

I have learned the ability, at most times, across most situations, to force myself into calmness; alas this variety of ordeal was not among those times or situations. I was furious, I was wound up; I decided I needed to speak to someone, using my tongue.

Dismissing the porter, and conscious of maintaining steady breathing as I walked, suitcase in hand I climbed the steps of the Aston. Behind the desk sat the same woman who had been there last year; I wondered if the rest of the Aston team had remained the same…

I later realised the reason for my lack of immediate recognition of my surroundings upon arrival, given that the Aston Hotel and the street on which it is located was such a memorable part of last year’s antics was that, as well as the street this time being packed with revellers along with more bright lights and distractions in general, the façade of the Aston Hotel (Saigon), one year on, looked downright tawdry and unappealing. Later still I came to another realisation about Vietnam (HCMC, District 1); property owners just don’t seem that fussed about presentation of their property. This might have to do with the fact that many HCMC businesses are owned by Westerners and, given that foreigners cannot actually purchase property in Vietnam these ‘owners’ are merely leaseholders of their premises, thus the desire to maintain to a high standard is maybe less. It might have to do with the inordinately high rainfall this time of year which tends to leave everything bedraggled and shabby; it might have to do with the fact also, that Vietnam (HCMC, District1) is a squalid hellhole and although Vietnamese shop owners do take great pride in their street-fronts – keeping footpaths swept, free of litter and such – the structures’ overall condition, also the airborne stench engulfing everything and everyone willing to inhale the toxic air, particularly when it rains, is not so easily managed therefore is not of great concern.

…Evidently the Aston team had not remained the same as, throughout the check-in process, two new faces approached and attempted to ingratiate themselves to me.

I made myself known to the female receptionist, hoping to refresh her memory on the previous year, and asked if Fine was still about. She didn’t appear to recall any ‘Fine’ and handed me my key-card. With startling efficiency she told me my room was ready and that I should check to see that it fitted with my expectations. I asked if she could offer assistance, briefly explaining my predicament regarding a woman named Vy and the case of the missing mobile credit; showing minimal interest she simply pointed outside, with the words, “Get boys help.”

Leaving my bags in the Aston foyer, I plodded down the steps and assumed a position along the street edge that, as déjà vu struck, I realised was very much reminiscent of last year; a couple of younger guys I remembered for the year prior smiled at me and made quite the fuss about my being there, seemingly remembering me too.

I stepped forward to the, as I recalled, better English-speaking of the two young men, pulling out my phone as I did so and scrolling down to Vy’s number. I quickly explained the situation and, looking on, the man immediately appeared to recognise the Vietnamese name on the screen. He crowded my phone for a moment, seeming to study the (11 digit) number for a second or two, then stepped back and pulled out his own (Smart)phone…

He started scrolling through his device while talking excitedly to his buddies; I couldn’t help noticing how much the word ‘Vee’ was being mentioned. It was then that I realised every time I’d seen her name written I had been mispronouncing it in my head; Vy is ‘Vee’, not ‘Vie’ –  that could have been embarrassing – ‘Vie, Sin chow … Oi zoy oi, Vie, dep qwar … Tahm beit, Vie.’

…I looked up a moment later to see the phone to his ear. His cohort were giggling and chirping excitedly. “Who’s that?” I pointed to the first while asking the other guy I recognised from last year; the one whom, on account of his distant demeanour and poor English skills, I had not given much time.

“It Vee!” He now squealed delightedly.

“What, my Vee?” I pointed to my phone, still with Vy’s contact details on screen.

The young Viet man nodded and giggled. The first man hung up the phone and leaned towards me, “Vee said she be here, one hour.”

“Here..?” I asked, gobsmacked. “You mean the Aston..?”

He nodded coolly and stepped away; I was stunned – then I heard a familiar voice…

I recently disclosed my ‘conspiracy’ theory about Vietnam – or at least greater HCMC – being communicatively intertwined; this recent phenomenon gives yet more strength to my theory. From what I understand, Vy works full time while taking night-classes for some kind of engineering degree; she resides in a city 90km from Ho Chi Minh City, yet this man who has worked at the Aston for at least the past two years, clearly knows her. Admittedly this could have been a freak, some kind of massive coincidence but here are the facts: the Viet dude from the Aston had only to glimpse my phone and – without the aid of a photo – extrapolated from the number alone that the ‘Vy’ he was seeing, was the same ‘Vy’ who he already knew. Wait on though, you might be saying, perhaps he just called the number he saw in your phone and organised the date on your behalf..? I don’t buy it; he may have recognised the number in my phone, sure, but he still went back through his own phone to locate the number. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it wasn’t as if the young Viet even took time to memorise the number he saw on my phone, he merely glanced at my screen and anyway, in the 21^st century, how many younger people have the kind of memory that perceive and recount phone numbers? The title ‘Vy’, in Vietnam, is by no means an uncommon name yet he appeared to know, immediately, the ‘Vy’ I was trying to contact and what’s more, he must already have had her number in his phone.

…I turned but couldn’t see. Then there was laughter; I would never forget the sound of that laughter as long as I lived – “Fine!” I called to the diminutive figure across the table. The Fine I remembered was dressed in a darkly coloured, well fitted shirt and trousers; this Fine was wearing a brightly coloured, bulky woollen jersey and in fairness to my observation ability, he was standing in the shadows.

He stood, smiling at me across the table. “Sin chow!” He yelled with a joyous grin and exaggerated accent.

Call me presumptuous but I felt I knew precisely the moment to which he was referring. “Sin loi!” (Excuse me), I yelled back with my own exaggerated Vietnamese accent…

As I believe I have already documented in last year’s Vietnam Chronicles, on the first night that I met Fine – while still in a conundrum regarding the little Viet’s gender – he showed me around the vicinity, pointing out the good, the bad, what were the best places to eat and, very much in contrast with our tour guide’s (at that time yet to be heard) instructions, from the back of an erratically ridden scooter and devoid of helmets, we motored up and down Bui Vien like a couple of drunken school-kids as I endeavoured to ingratiate myself to the locals with about the only two Vietnamese phrases I knew at the time; ‘Sin chow!’ and ‘Sin loi!’

…He laughed that unforgettable Viet cackle and we shook hands warmly.

“I told you I’d come back,” I said to him quietly.

He just stood there grinning and nodding, making me wonder how much of what I had ever said to him, other than ‘sin loi’ and ‘sin chow’, had actually been understood.

I glanced around and noticed other faces I recognised which, judging by their excited smiles and gesticulation, may have recognised me as well. Shit. I checked my watch; I had just over half an hour until Vy was supposed to be arriving.

From the footpath I bounded up the Aston’s steps two at a time (this would become a habit in Vietnamese hotels as, given Vietnamese are a generally smaller people than most of those in the the Western world, everything is just that little bit – often frustratingly, sometimes dangerously, rarely conveniently – smaller), grabbed my stuff, jumped in the lift, went up a few levels at a painfully slow rate (I remembered at that moment why I had elected last time just to use the stairs), found my room, buzzed in, threw down my gear then, thankful for the familiarity, jumped in the shower. The cold water was blissful; the hot water never came. Some bottled soap went on and even some – for the first time in over fifteen years – shampoo which, although I was just discovering you regular shampooers are probably already well aware, can double as soap when one requires fragrant suds in a hurry yet through rush-induced, also probably sixteen-or-so-hours-in-transit-induced, bodily tremors, one has dropped the small bottle of bath gel and no amount of futile fumbling amid a puddle of smelly water while more smelly water trickles up one’s nose can seem to re-gather it.

Out of the shower not more than three minutes after entering then a quick tooth scrub with a single use toothbrush; dress shirt, dress pants, Vietnam boots (see last year’s Chronicles) matched with best hat and – in the hope of avoiding any more perspiration than is totally necessary – I’m heading back down the lift…

Bugger, forgot deodorant; no matter, a quick waft test down my shirt and, again, I’m thankful for the shampoo.

…I use the time, during the painstakingly slow journey back down the inside of the building, to calm and attempt to compose myself; also to straighten my button line and pull up my fly completely. The lift dings; the doors gradually open. My head is down, my eyes are closed; I am deep in meditation. I raise my head slowly and make to step out of the lift. I swing to the right and stop.

My God, she is even more beautiful than her Facebook shot.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Vienna Maze

Photography by B Yootie

Landing at Tan Son Nhat airport Ho Chi Minh City I was dealing with a fair amount of uncertainty.

I was on time but would my suitcase this time have made the entire voyage with me? Also like so many Westerners before, and likely after me, was I going to be conned into paying ten times the recommended taxi fare, again?

I bowled through the airport ultimately dismissive of anyone not essential to my passage thus, before I had even really allowed myself time to register my surroundings, it was with a terrible sense of foreboding that I emerged at baggage claim.

Shifting my hand luggage from my right to left shoulder, hearing the crunch as the empty water bottle in the side pouch slammed into my torso, extending to full height I stood back and scanned the area. There were around seven conveyors carrying bags in arbitrary circuits with dozens of seemingly deranged travellers hunched around each one scrambling to collect their respective bags then get as far away from that Godforsaken airport as possible.

I saw individuals wheeling up trolleys and loading on bags; I witnessed one furious traveller watching in disbelief from metres back as his suitcase was pulled from the conveyor by another man’s hand, before being snatched back by the traveller who then turned and hurriedly exited this airport of horrors.

I breathed, closed my eyes, flexed my neck, and was forcibly calm. After my first slow pass of all seven baggage conveyors showed up nothing I actually accepted that my antiquated brown Paddington Bear-style suitcase, littered with cracks and plastered with Rock stickers, was not coming back with me today.

I walked back past the conveyors, thinking about the botched system that is the whole ‘baggage claim’ at airports; anybody with a free hand is welcome to simply take from the conveyor whatever item they wish. I saw a few exasperated passengers I recognised from my plane standing at the Number 2 pickup zone; I was going to head over and tell them not to worry, ‘Your luggage will turn up, it just might be a few day’s late and it will have been plundered by Vietnamese Customs, but you will get it back’…

I couldn’t believe it – I believe I uttered a few astonished cuss-words – there, coming gradually down the line, Rock stickers prominent, there was my relic of a suitcase; still in one piece, still looking as dilapidated as ever.

…I peered up at the increasingly exasperated – probably first time to Southeast Asia – travellers, gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile, before grabbing the handle of my own passing suitcase and giving the handle and almighty yank – a strong slow movement ensuring optimum follow-through – I then watched gleefully as my worthless suitcase along with its 20.1 kilograms of largely worthless contents skidded and spun across the polished airport floor.

I was elated; I had made it – my luggage too.

My suitcase wheels having some time ago stopped performing with any amount of efficiency and 20.1kgs being a mite too heavy to easily carry in one hand – that is without the weight constantly thumping into my leg causing me to walk drunken lines and I didn’t fancy anyone in HCMC realising just how much Red Label I had slurped on the plane – I continued kicking, pushing and skidding my suitcase over the floor until reaching the exit threshold.

I envisaged the hordes of drivers out there, ready to swarm upon the next English face they saw; unscrupulous taxi drivers awaiting their next mark.

I turned to my right. There was a taxi kiosk. Well, I thought, this has to be safer than the alternative. I approached the desk. A lady, in wonderful broken English and with an accent that I realised I had sorely missed, asked, “Hello Sir, where you need go?”

“Sin chow,” (Hello) I said employing my best Vietnamese accent, sliding my pack exhaustedly from my shoulder. “Ban ko quear com?” (How are you?)

The lady looked delighted, “Doy quear,” (I’m fine) she responded, nodding enthusiastically.

I pulled from my bag a computer printout I had run off especially for a moment like this…

I remember, last year, the challenge of trying to pronounce company names and/or addresses could be a debacle, therefore in an effort to assuage this awkward confrontation, one pouch of my bag – my filing cabinet as I was referring to it – was packed full of papers, notes, addresses, reminders, and such. (Bearing in mind my old-school propensity, there was no laptop concealed in that bag and certainly, I had no bloody Smartphone in my pocket.)

…”I’m looking to get to the Aston Hotel Saigon,” I articulated as clearly as the current state of my speech centre would allow, and held up the printout for her to see.

The woman didn’t raise her head, instead hollering instructions to an assistant who quickly shuffled across the floor in our direction, to receive a slip of paper with a few handwritten words, along with the spoken words “Eashtin Hoitel Shaigun.” The woman then looked at me, “One hundred and twenty,” she enunciated carefully.

I brought out my wallet and peeled off a 100.000 and two 10.000s, handed them to her, then took a moment to consider the deal that I was brokering…

Last year I had been quoted 70.000 dong for the same trip and, although it had ended up costing me ten times that much, I was aware the going rate from the airport to the Aston had been 70.000 (as I explained last year, such is the nature of their undervalued currency, all prices in Vietnam are stated in thousands – ‘70’ is 70.000, ‘120’ is 120.000, ‘500’ is 500.000, ‘one million’ is 1.000.000, and such like – because given that the smallest Vietnamese denomination is 1000, there is not so much need to add to prices the word ‘thousand’, as it is very much implied); I found it odd to think the price had increased by around half but assumed it had to do with the ‘taxi company’ that I was using rather than aimlessly blundering out the door, walking the gauntlet and entering into the cauldron of scam taxi drivers waiting for the next naïve Westerner who has no idea of the value of his Viet dong in relation to the dirt-cheapness of most Viet services.

…The assistant nodded, smiled, glanced at me, smiled again then took my arm and directed me out the main door.

She waved down a taxi-van. Surprised that she was ordering a van, but assuming this might account for the additional cost, I shook the assistant’s hand and thanked her warmly. The van driver and I then departed…

Flying in to Ho Chi Minh City just after 6:30 p.m., I would have sworn that I could have pointed out Bui Vien – the street on which I intended to be staying – for its brighter lights, its ostensibly higher level of commotion and, as the plane lowered in altitude, for its much higher number of revellers.

…Curiously the van turned and drove in the opposite direction to which I had been expecting. I almost leaned forward and intervened – ‘Ah, Sir, I’m pretty sure Bui Vien’s back there’ – but knowing how important ‘face’ is to Asian folk and how they hate to be told they’re in the wrong in any regard, I sat back and with increasing anxiety but forced calmness, I waited to see what would happen…

That seemed the theme with my recent trip to Vietnam – the regular thought process, my adopted mindset if you like, was one of ‘Yeah I probably shouldn’t do this but I’m going to do it anyway because I want to see what happens’ – because the truth is, nothing exciting ever happens when procedure is being followed; nothing truly remarkable is likely to take place if one always stays within life’s recommended boundaries.

…Around 45 minutes later (it ought to be noted that I am by now beyond exasperated but still very much intent on seeing how this abortion is going to play out) in a journey that should have taken no more than 15, we enter a hotel driveway. From my backseat position I bend my head downwards to peer through the front windscreen; printed in large gold lettering above the entranceway are the words ‘Eastin Grand Hotel Saigon’.

Intense frustration coupled with mild rage erupted. I unzipped my bag, pulled out the computer printout, leaned forward and held it in the driver’s face; “Aston Hotel Saigon, the Aston – just as I said to the woman at the desk … The fuck would you take me to the Eastin?!”

“Aston Hotel Saigon..?” The driver finally betrayed his ability to articulate English…

The entire trip, any time I attempted to say, or to ask the driver anything, his response had always been along the lines of ‘Huh?’, ‘What?’ or the classic, ‘Sorry, no English’.

…“Two million dong,” he now said.

“You fucking what?!” My eruption continued unabated.

“Aston Hotel Saigon, two million dong,” he repeated.

“You can get fucked,” I said calmly, opening my door. “Open the boot, give me my suitcase.” With that, grabbing my bag I bounded out of the van and strode around to the back, waiting for the luggage compartment to open. The boot popped, I lifted the door, grabbed my suitcase and was turning to walk back to the street – I had no idea even in what District I was currently placed – just as the Eastin hotel porter arrived at my side.

“Sir,” he said looking at me curiously, “what’s going on?”

Again I pulled out my, now crumpled into a ball, well-prepared computer printout. The porter appeared to speak English very well therefore – where I might otherwise have curtailed and simplified the explanation for speakers of a Viet tongue until that explanation was so curtailed and so simple it’s practically meaningless thus rendered pointless – I felt able in this case to reveal the full story. “I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City about an hour ago … I went to the airport taxi desk … The lady there was supposed to get me to the Aston Hotel Saigon … This man,” I pointed to the taxi driver, “brought me to the Eastin … Now he’s trying to charge me two million dong to get back to the Aston … He can go fuck himself,” I concluded to the impassive porter before turning back and walking towards the street.

“Sir,” the porter called after me, “Sir, please come back.” I looked around to see the driver and the porter in discussion. “Sir,” said the porter again, “we have the airport taxi desk on the line, would you like to speak to her?”

Honestly, no. I couldn’t see the point. Either through the fault of that woman, or the fault of this man, I was now effectively stranded almost an hour’s drive from where I ought to have been. Nevertheless I took the call. “Sin chow, ban ko quear com?”

“Yesh, helloh,” her voice wasn’t as friendly as I recall, “you tell me go to Eashtin – you tell mee.”

“Ah, no,” I countered, “I showed you a printout of where I wanted to go – the Aston … I think perhaps you failed to look at my paper, which clearly said that I wanted to go to the Aston.”

“No no!” The woman’s chirruping voice seared through my eardrum, “No no, you say Eashtin!”

“Look, it doesn’t matter what I said, I showed you, if you had only looked … Forget it though … As a result I am now a long way from where I should be – from where I have already paid to be…”

“You pay to Eashtin, you pay to Eashtin!”

“Ah fuck it doesn’t matter … I am at the Eastin, I want to be at the Aston, and your man is trying to charge me two million dong to get there.”

“Let me speak,” her tone had calmed somewhat.

“What, to your driver?”

“Yes, let me speak.”

I passed over the phone as both porter and driver now looked at me with horrified expressions; I guess, given the violent tremors and convulsions that tend to rip through my body whenever I assume an awkward posture, such as standing and holding a phone to my ear, particularly while holding a heated discussion, fair to say I may have appeared somewhat freakish/dangerous/murderous.

Some minutes later the driver again handed me the phone. “Yeah,” I offered down the line unenthusiastically.

The woman’s heckles were back up. “You tell me Eashtin!” She was very enthusiastic.

“I showed you, if you had only looked, that I was going to the Aston.”

“You tell me Eashtin!”

“Ah fuck off,” I took the phone from my ear, handed it back to the driver and, following a massive convulsion of my entire body, again lifted my case.

“Sir, Sir,” just moments after I had given up on a successful outcome the porter was calmly addressing me, “Sir, it’s fine Sir, you can go.”

“What? I am going.”

“No, Sir, Sir, you can go with him,” the porter indicated my original driver.

I shook my head definitively, “No way, that fucker wants to charge me two million dong to get somewhere that should have cost me a hundred … I’ll find my own taxi, thank you.”

“No, Sir, Sir, it cost nothing … You go,” he motioned with his hand in a reassuring gesture of passage.

I looked at the driver who had already grumbled his way back to the driver’s seat. “You sure..?” I inquired speculatively, “Are you certain this fuckhead is not going to try and charge me two million?”

“No Sir, yes Sir, all sorted for you Sir.” The porter struggled to heft my suitcase back into the rear of the van then looked at me, “Have a good trip, Sir.”

I clambered back inside the van and – judging by his frequent use of Google Maps – with a driver who had little idea where he was going, made our way to Bui Vien Street.

I had never seen so many of Ho Chi Minh City’s dark and squalid, impractically narrow back streets as I saw that night, sitting in that van behind an increasingly frustrated taxi driver as he drove through the city in circuitous patterns which by my reckoning, ultimately had us no further than a few kilometres from where we’d begun.

Almost an hour after leaving the Eastin – which, incidentally, we’d left around an hour after leaving the airport – the van came to a halt. Road cones blocked the street. I snapped back to focus and gazed out the window. People were everywhere. I peered up. A banner was strung between two buildings, hung high above the road; ‘Bui Vien Walking Street’. The driver turned to me, looked back to the road and pointed, “There,” he said. I stared at the building he was indicating – around 100 metres inside the coned area – blinked, focused then slowly, vision rotated and recognition returned; I realised in those moments I had never actually perceived the Aston Hotel from this point of view – it had always been from down the street looking up.

The building’s lettering which, last year, I recall had shone brightly all night was now just nondescript lettering affixed to the side of a dilapidated building; ‘Aston Hotel’, it read. I was certain it used to have the word ‘Saigon’ at the end but I wasn’t going to argue the point. I knew I was finally where I was supposed to be; a location just fifteen minutes from the airport where I had, over two hours ago, paid to be.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by X S Praytion

Photography by Noah Listen

 

Arriving in Singapore Friday evening, after manically riding the one of the hundred-or-so elevators up and down the inside of the gargantuan Hotel Boss to check out each of the – as it turned out generally identical – floors until being joined by a managerial-looking but not terribly affable Singaporean dude who presumably suspected I was a well-dressed drunkard having wandered in from the street thus demanded to see my key-card, I went in search of what I expected might be my last decent meal in four weeks.

The Singapore Steakhouse appeared to have what I was seeking so after devouring 250 grams of – mutilated by tenderisation yet somehow still chewy – back fillet, I took to the streets.

I had been recommended by the shuttle driver (he’d been tough to hear as he spoke in broken English and over the Vellfire’s vibrating engine mounts as the vehicle lumbered forward at about 12kph in 3^rd gear) to head to ‘Singapore Party Central’, a street called Arab Street.

As I walked I couldn’t help observing the high number of dark – Pakistani, perhaps Indian but certainly not what I imagined were Singaporean – faces glancing up as I strode by; call me bashful but I had reservations about asking one of these characters for directions to a place called ‘Arab Street’. Don’t misunderstand me, I would have had no problem asking one of these dark-skinned passersby, for example, if they knew the way to Sesame Street, but Arab Street, I had this fear that the response might be belligerent, along the lines of ‘What, as if I should know..?’

It was a daft fear and after walking around for almost an hour in what I thought had been the direction of the shuttle driver’s vibrating finger, I did ask pose the question to one of these (smaller) men. “Pardon me Sir, are you able to please point me in the direction of Arab Street?” I watched for his reaction with mild trepidation (shit I wasn’t even in Vietnam yet, it was still far too early to be antagonising locals with unintentional racial slurs or other means of affront – indeed that bloodbath would come later, to be precise on my third night in Ho Chi Minh City). The only reaction I detected however was genuine surprise followed by a compelling desire to be of assistance.

“Ah,” the young man glanced around as if he had no idea of the street’s location but was still desperately keen to help, screwed up his nose and pointed, “yeah, pretty sure it’s just over there a bit.”

“Thank you Sir, you have a good night,” I said, striding in that general direction.

By the time I made it to ‘Singapore’s Party Central’, Arab Street – having enlisted the help of several more dark faces along the way – it was almost 2 a.m. and the street looked to have been dead for about half an hour.

I wondered about getting back to my hotel then, as if gazing skyward for the Bat Signal, I simply looked to the skies; taking up an entire city block of real estate and towering above any of its competitors, with an initially clear line of sight, Hotel Boss can be seen from most anywhere. This was fortunate as I was shocked to see, having found a clearing in the city’s undergrowth giving me a good view of the surrounding skies then searching those skies for a number of increasingly panicked moments, there, away in the distance, far in the distance – so damned far I almost cried – I saw the shiny red outline on black lettering: Hotel Boss.

 

The next morning I was checked out by 11 a.m. and after a bite to eat at the hotel restaurant along with a Singaporean iced coffee (sorry Singapore, it was good but it had nothing on a Vietnamese café sua da) then, hand luggage in hand and wishing I’d had the foresight to pack a change of lighter clothes, I took in the city of Singapore by day.

As with the previous night, despite my initial ‘reluctance’ to ask for directions, I spoke to as many foreign people as I could – be they local, tourist or otherwise – all in the ultimate quest for understanding.

It is truly remarkable how much knowledge can be gleaned from this world, without Internet, without a computer or in fact without any technology at all, if one just looks for it; if one simply asks for it.

I learned, as many of you will probably already know, before they demanded independence, Singapore was a city in Malaysia and was inhabited primarily by Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian immigrants; the majority of so-called indigenous Singaporeans therefore, are in fact Malaysian, Chinese, or Indian, or an insanely attractive mix of all three.

Alas Singapore women reminded me of Kiwi women, and solidified the fact that I simply cannot envisage spending my life with the latter; many Singapore women, from what I experienced, similar to many Kiwi women, from what I have experienced, are a touch full of themselves and tend to operate with an often unjustifiable sense of self importance (it should be noted at this point that almost every Singapore citizen under the age of 50 is fluent in English). Admittedly some Singaporean women were cool, yet many gave me the classic Kiwi ‘Ugh, really – you actually think that you are good enough to speak to me?’ look, while others, well, others just pretended not to hear or simply refused to return my approach.

Every piece of worthwhile information I learned about Singapore came from the ever helpful male contingent; that was, until my last day…

From under the shade of a tree in the Hotel Boss courtyard reading cover to cover the book that resurrected my temporarily shattered life and in fact, had I read it before entering Vietnam, I am certain it could have prevented me from blowing over half my budget in the first week.

…On that first day in Singapore though, feverish, fearless as I was in my pursuit for knowledge, I was sure to be back in the Hotel Boss lobby by 1 p.m., having affixed my orange sticker – given to me along with a brief explanation of its purpose by a highly efficient woman at Changi Airport Travel desk – to guarantee my pickup and transfer back to the aforementioned airport.

It was while seated on one of the Hotel Boss foyer’s many sofas that I became acquainted with one of the most interesting people I have met; she was exquisite, even by Singapore standards, had a typically Asian semblance yet unlike most typical Asians, her skin was a kind of golden brown, or bronze, more indicative of Western sun…

Across Southeast Asia most women subscribe to the principle that ‘White is beautiful, brown is ugly’; across the rest of the modern world most White men would assuredly dispute this mantra (fortunately there are a number of Vietnamese girls simply born with darker skin as a matter of gene selection).

…It is largely the above belief that means many Vietnamese women, through much of the daytime, regardless of an ambient temperature pushing 35 degrees, do their best to cover any bare skin; long-sleeved shirts with collars up keep their torsos white and full-length skirts or trousers keep their legs white, with gloves keeping their hands white and stockings keeping their feet white, all while the Vietnamese sun and its comparatively feeble UV Index does its best to burn through the cloud, the haze, the exhaust pollution and all the other airborne pollutants that help to make Ho Chi Minh City District 1 the cesspit it is…

At this point I need to be clear: the following 25 days, unless otherwise stated, take place solely in District 1 of HCMC. Any future reference I make which implies ‘Vietnam in general’ – given that, due to self-imposed budget constraints suffered during the first week meaning that where I had perhaps intended to see more of Vietnam and maybe even venture into the countryside I ended up experiencing only District 1 of HCMC therefore any negativity directed at the rest of Vietnam is unwarranted and ultimately unfounded – it is relating strictly to District 1, HCMC.

…Seated on a couch in the foyer of Hotel Boss just along from this tanned Asian goddess – she didn’t have the facial distinctions of a Viet nor did she have the face shape of a Thai; she was assuredly not Japanese although I did suspect she was an international traveller thus less likely to be Singaporean and in fact, I speculated, aside from her glorious tan, she actually looked Chinese – she must have sensed my inquisitiveness because turning, glancing at me her expression and briefest moments of eye contact said ‘I know you have something to ask me and while I might appear untouchable, I am actually a very warm soul and I would welcome your inquisition’, or something along those lines.

“I’m sorry, it’s just … Hi,” I eventually decided to begin with the same ingratiation I had been so far using across Southeast Asia, “my name’s Tim, I’m a journalist from New Zealand … I’m on my way to Vietnam but have stopped over for twenty-four hours in Singapore … Anyway, I am compiling information, and plan to write articles on, among other things, ethnic diversities across Southeast Asia, thus while I am here, I am speaking to as many interesting faces as I can…”

“Do you consider me an interesting face then?” She chuckled. I was gobsmacked.

“Ah crap,” I muttered.

The Asian goddess laughed, “Not what you were expecting then..?”

“Not exactly … See, I’m sitting here going through all the Asian ethnicities I know in my head but I just can’t place you, then you speak…”

“I know, dead giveaway, right?” She laughed again.

“So, forgive me, what are you?” I shook my head in perplexity.

Now her laughter really opened up. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she joked, “for not conforming to your standards on how people should look in relation to how they sound – guess.”

“Guess..? Alright … Your features are quintessentially Asian, but your complexion, your skin colour, refutes that … You’re not smoky-brown like a Thai chick, you’re golden-brown like a Western chick…”

“So, what kinda chick am I?”

“So I’m thinking, well after hearing you speak, I mean you’re obviously American but then, you’re obviously Asian – other than the tan I’m thinking Chinese..?”

“Bingo.”

“Chinese-American..?”

“You got it.”

“But how does that work, I mean, your distinguishing features are totally Chinese, yet you have utterly no hint of Asian accent, you speak quintessentially US and let’s be fair, you look – I mean according to your skin-colour – like an American … Which almost implies that, either you’re a Chinese ex-pat who’s been travelling in the North for so long you’ve ditched your Asian accent or, you were born in the US to Chinese parents..?”

“Oh, so close,” she slapped her leg and leaned forward as I would imagine every Yank is taught to do from a young age. “No,” she continued in her broad US tone, “actually I was born in China…”

At this point I had completely forgotten about my orange sticker and the shuttle that was supposedly coming for me at 1:30 p.m. In a moment of panic I tore myself from the most scintillating conversation I’d had in years and (in what must have appeared a rather rude gesture) glanced at my wristwatch. I breathed relief; I still had fifteen minutes of scintillating conversation to go.

“…in the ‘90s and adopted out to American parents.”

At that point I forgot all about the time; I forgot everything other than what I was hearing. “Are you serious?” I was in disbelief. “You were born, in China, in the ‘90s, a baby girl, yet you are sitting right here before me..?”

I was aware that in the’90s China adopted their ‘One Child Policy’ and in many cases, although such practice was never officially recognised, a baby girl was executed in favour of a baby boy; clearly this baby girl though, in favour of execution, had been fortunate enough to have grown up with a loving family in the US.

“I’m Paige,” she extended her bronzed hand.

“Such a Western name, Paige,” I grinned and clasped her hand. “Paige,” glimpsing the time, “my taxi-man will be here soon but, your story is amazing – I want to know more about you.”

“OK, sure,” she smiled, “but I won’t be home for another month…”

“Hah, neither will I.”

“OK, perfect.” With that Paige gave me her email address and we parted ways. “Chat soon,” were her final words.

A minute later a flustered-looking taxi driver popped through Hotel Boss’s glass doors; spying my sticker, in what might have been perceived as an ominous gesture, he simply stood in the entranceway and pointed at me. I stood and obligingly made my way to the door. Half an hour after that I was at Changi airport Singapore, in transit to Tan Son Nhat airport, Ho Chi Minh City…

Interesting thing about HCMC, few locals ever refer to their city as ‘Ho Chi Minh City’, preferring to use the older, and indeed the former Vietnamese capital’s former name, Saigon. (This had often struck me as odd so, what does one do when one has no other means of sourcing information – what have we learned?) Obviously I had to inquire about it. Here is what I found: General Ho Chi Minh, as is widely understood, is a Vietnamese war hero; problem is he fought with the North Vietnamese Army. Curiously Ho Chi Minh City is situated far to the south of Vietnam. Turns out most Southern Vietnamese folk don’t actually think much of dear old Ho Chi Minh, fighting Vietnamese civil wars against them and such; hence, ‘Ho Chi Minh City’..? More of a name for tourists; the locals of South Vietnam are always going to opt for ‘Saigon’.

…Soon I was in the sky, Saturday evening, slurping Johnnie Walker Red through a straw, on my way to HCMC District 1, the unequivocal Party Capital of Vietnam.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Gloria Ash

Photography by Asia E Merrican

 

Having accepted an offer of transportation from my number one plasma-buddy, I was picked up from my driveway on Thursday night then taken to spend the night in Christchurch.

Friday morning, with Kelly preparing to later undergo the needle at NZ Blood Service (as he and I like to do every second Friday), I was dropped off at Christchurch Airport and, after a firm handshake also a fair amount of loitering and general time wasting, embarked upon my second journey to Southeast Asia.

The flight was marvellous; Singapore Airlines – in conjunction with Air New Zealand – are phenomenal. Complimentary snacks are periodically administered, the meals are substantial rather than continental, and even Johnnie Walker Red was even available for those idiot passengers who liked to singe their nasal passages with the vapour of cheap whiskey neat through a straw (I do believe in that capacity I was alone in my idiocy)…

Forgive me, my writing is not what it should be – having only arrived home Monday afternoon then staggering around aimlessly until about 5pm where I gave myself an ice-cold sponge-bath (I seemed to have already forgotten that not all water comes tepid from the cold tap) before collapsing into bed then waking with an anxious flashback every two hours after that, until around 9am – but I expect that, given time to process, to contemplate and indeed, to palate the happenings of the past 30 days, I ought to be back on track for next week’s instalment.

…Almost a day later it was night. I had decided after last time, where I travelled overnight and arrived in the morning, that night-time travelling is among the worst things a long haul traveller can do; yes by travelling overnight, in theory, one can sleep on the plane or other mode of transportation but honestly, can one really? Travelling on the plane overnight I found myself very tired, very uncomfortable and, as generally happens when one cannot sleep at a time when one would very much like to, increasing agitated; I dozed for perhaps ten minutes at a time but that was about it, hence I arrived in the day feeling as though I’d done an all-nighter. Conversely travelling during the day one’s brain is aware that it is not sleep time and therefore probably dozes as much as one would while travelling at night but ultimately arrives at their destination ready for sleep, at night…

As with last year my initial assessment of Vietnam is horrific (now you just wait and see what I have to tell you before you judge, thank you very much) although in fairness I spent my time only in Ho Chi Minh City and perhaps more pointedly, primarily in District 1; I recall starting one of last year’s Vietnam Chronicles with the line ‘…Ho Chi Minh City is the unequivocal arsehole of Vietnam’ which, again, given that I had extensively seen only District 1 of HCMC, this was probably an unfair assessment to make – probably largely accurate but perhaps mildly unfair.

…I arrived in Singapore, circumnavigated baggage claim (having again taken the gamble to allow my suitcase along with all its worthless contents, to make the entire trip to HCMC unassisted) and although I had been told, I was taken aback by the magnitude, also mesmerising beauty of Singapore and its glorious Changi Airport…

District 1, as I pointed out last time, is the most corrupt, the most debauched and decidedly the most depraved section of Ho Chi Minh City; it’s where the majority of HCMC tourists go to have a good time and, while I was there for a number of other reasons as well, the street on which three out of four of my hotels were situated, Bui Vien (Buoy Ven) Street, was tantamount to Kings Cross in Sydney, Khao San in Thailand or even – viewing it from a high vantage point at around 3am – the noise, the lights, it could have almost been Vegas.

…Singapore is very much reminiscent of New Zealand in many senses. The currency is comparable, the expense is comparable, the roadside fauna is comparable, the air quality is comparable, the concentration of Asian population is comparable; the cleanliness is actually of a better standard – at the airport and throughout much of my stay I saw not one cigarette butt littering the street – additionally one feels safe in Singapore and, well, it’s just a pleasant place to be. This is also a highly organised, highly efficient nation (as the value of their currency might indicate); upon disembarking I strolled through the airport, located the correct travel desk, revealed my documents and was presently whisked to my hotel in the most official-looking, glistening, but always in one gear too high – a theme I will later come to realise – black Toyota Vellfire…

Alas as I have explained, currently, my mind is not where it needs to be to in order to properly grasp all that I have experienced, all I have put my body through, all that I have seen; all that I have endured over the course of the past month.

…Hotel Boss, as it is called, is without misnomer; it is bigger than any hotel I’ve seen, with somewhere near 20 storeys including a pool on level 4, a 100 metre square lobby with a restaurant and a 12 metre reception desk at which, at any one time, are stationed no less than six personnel…

Thus as I sit here at my own desk, dredging my fatigued brain for content, for recollection but moreover, for clarity, while poring over the last month’s worth of receipts scattered before me, trying to piece together some sort of chronological or at least, coherent structure to the past month, hoping to see where all the time, hoping to see where the days, the weeks, the years off my life, hoping to see where all the Goddamn money went, I assure myself that this time I will have no sympathy; everything that I experienced, everything that I have endured, everything that I learned about District 1 Ho Chi Minh City – not matter how grim and no matter how unpalatable – I assure myself, that if the reader wishes to learn about those experiences too, next week and for the many weeks to follow, they may do just that.

…Hotel Boss is where my mission begins and indeed, this is where it ends.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Tim Walker

Photography by Tim Walker

 

 

Having called upon the NZ Blood Service to assist with excretion of my 100^th donation, I was now able to shift focus to my other pressing endeavour.

The pressure I had been experiencing over past weeks to perform as required on my big day, on July 13th, on what would become that most blissful of Black Fridays, had been intense – true to form I had almost been expecting that I would find a way to thwart my ambitions or to somehow sabotage myself – but now it was over.

Now it was done, the pressure had been lifted and I could start planning in earnest my return to Southeast Asia.

Incidentally, around 12 months ago when I made my debut appearance unto the landscapes of Vietnam, while bearing in mind the mantra that I hold so true – ‘Good Fortune is what happens when Opportunity meets Preparation’ – several weeks before my departure date I had entered onto a Vietnamese dating site, in the hope of establishing some contacts…

Funny thing about that Cupid.com Vietnam: I paid, I think, 30NZD for one month’s membership then three weeks later closed the account and left for actual Vietnam (along with, of course, a number of supposed contacts from up and down the country which, should I have felt able to break off from my tour group, I was hoping to engage in the coming weeks); then upon my return to New Zealand – in actuality having engaged none of the woman with whom I had been chatting online but instead having met myriad actual Vietnamese women – I turned on my computer to find that, despite my authority to the contrary, Cupid.com had ‘automatically renewed’ my membership meaning that all the time I was in Vietnam my New Zealand Internet connection was maintaining a membership with a Vietnamese dating site which I had zero ability to access given that I was in Vietnam and my PC in New Zealand.

…In fact there had been one Viet woman who I had met online in the build-up to last year’s trip with whom I had become rather close and who I was excited to be meeting, as per our arrangement, in the foyer of my hotel on the afternoon of my arrival but, on account of a six and a half hour plane delay also my own lack of a Smartphone thus no way to make contact with her after the aforementioned airline debacle (then there had been the missing luggage which had stolen from me any last desire I had to meet let alone befriend Vietnamese folk anyway), Good Fortune had apparently not been favouring me on that particular occasion.

Another funny thing about Cupid.com Vietnam, just recently I was contacted via email by a Vietnamese woman who evidently, according to my past email to her, I had contacted almost 12 months ago:

 

‘hi

I dont see you letter, and sorry for late

Hope to see you the nearest day. If you come to Vietnam visit me, very pleased to be acquainted with you. Can you give me your face book?’

 

This Vietnamese woman was claiming to have only found my email almost 12 months after I had sent it (I recall 12 months ago coming up with the brilliant scheme wherein, instead of being charged Cupid.com’s exorbitant messaging service fee, I realised I could make contact with the women on the dating site then, still while using the site’s ‘complimentary first three’ messages, I would offer my Outlook email address or Facebook link) and furthermore, conveniently, she found my 12-month-old message just as I am preparing to return to her country; I suspect these people assume that ‘English’, as they call us, are mostly idiots.

This phenomenon also goes some way to bolstering my theory that much of the Vietnamese population – most of the Ho Chi Min City populous anyway – is communicatively intertwined…

My belief that the majority of Vietnamese folk are in communication with each other regarding the movements, actions, spending habits and preferences of their many English tourists is not something that I have previously documented for fear of being labelled a Conspiracy Theorist, but the more I contemplate the possibility – indeed the more I conspire – the more logical the notion becomes.

…Given they are a country whose only substantial international income is tourism and given also the horrifically undervalued state of the VND – approximately 15,000 times less valuable than the NZD thus a person would require 15,000 Vietnamese dong to buy just one New Zealand dollar which, lest we forget is still only half the value of the US dollar – it makes sense in my head that these people would dedicate their lives to developing the most efficient method of extracting money from these Western tourists.

Last year when my tour group arrived in Nha Trang, having spent the previous few days being plundered and swindled in HCMC where, for the record many Viet folk actually seemed to know about my missing luggage without needing to be told by me at all, although our group was only one of many, I swear the looks I received from other Vietnamese tour guides, from various shopkeepers and other service providers, were often looks of sly recognition; smiling and nodding knowingly as though anticipating or almost expecting of my actions…

A few weeks after HCMC we spent the last day of the tour in Hanoi, and this is where my ‘conspiracy theory’ was given a reality boost; spending the afternoon just wandering around Vietnam’s capital city I ducked away to escape the heat into a (blissfully licensed) café. I approached the counter and ordered a café sua, nuok da (white coffee, iced), then indicated behind the bar at the bottles of liquor, articulating along with two raised fingers, ‘hie’ (two, or in this case, double). The man looked at me, initially perplexed then slowly smiled – that unnerving, knowing grin that says ‘Ah, yes Sir, I know about you’ – then through his stained teeth laboriously articulated the inquiry/statement, “Ooh, you lie da wikky, yea..?”

“Kahm urn,” I said, “Whisky … Scotch.”

It occurred to me later that, given my general indication towards the rows of liquor, there was no way that attendant could have known that I wanted to spike my coffee with whisky rather than, for example, the much more common Baileys or Kahlua, rum, bourbon or in fact any other one of those bottles of booze; any person who had known me over the last few weeks however would have been only too familiar with my penchant for scotch, and in particular, the way I liked to use it to ruin a perfectly palatable Vietnamese iced coffee.

Whatever scheme they’re operating, this Viet woman who contacted me one year belatedly but who just ‘happened’ to catch me a few weeks out from my return to her country, it is clearly one of great functionality.

While I am aware – indeed I have always been aware – of transcendent Asian intellects and otherworldly abilities, I do believe there is even more to this ancient culture of people than their amazing knack of doing sums and extracting cash from tourists.

We’ll see.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Lye Da Wiki

Photography by Swan D’Lah