Oh What a Lovely Country!

Where can I be talking about? Yes, you know that I like China and find it fascinating to live, work and travel in but not all aspects of it are lovely – the pollution, the crowding, the funny language they speak, my beer-gut etc.

Chile? Long time since I was there, but it is a lovely country. Japan? No, too westernised. Thailand? No, not been there except to change planes a few times. Bored with this? So am I. Vietnam.

On the face of it this sounds like an unlikely assertion. 30 years of war with the French and Americans to secure their independence. Antipathy to, and from, China, including a little remembered war in 1979. American refusal to pay the agreed war repatriations after Vietnam invaded Cambodia to get rid of the (Chinese supported) Khymer Rouge – one of the worst governments of the 20th century – for which Vietnam should have got overwhelming international support. For those of you old enough and knowlegable enough, compare it with the (roughly contemporary) Tanzanian invasion of Uganda to get rid of Idi Amin or, more recently, the non-invasion of Rwanda by international forces in 1995. Both of these were nothing like as deadly as the situation in Cambodia where 20% - yes 20% - of the population were killed (not starved – they were executed, usually beaten or hacked to death to save bullets) by their own government. Vietnam stopped the slaughter in Cambodia on its own. (Now, let us consider my new career as an English teacher. The grammar checker preferred “its own”, I originally wrote “their own” – comments please and yes, I know Vietnam is a singular country and the Vietnamese as a people are plural.) The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived Vietnam of their only, rather limited, support after these successful but truly crippling wars.

They were in the shit.

So how can I like it now?

Let us start with an area where I am a known expert – fashion. In my youth I associated the flat-conical hat worn by peasants planting rice with China. That image seems to have transferred to Vietnam mainly thanks to Oliver Stone’s extremely dubiously accurate films. (It is true; they are uncommon in China – at least in comparison with Vietnam.) The hat went with black pyjamas as the universal dress of the Vietnamese in the aforementioned films. I saw no men in conical hats – except one selling them to tourists. I saw no men in pyjamas at all – they all wear pretty conventional shirt and trousers. The women are a different story. The majority of young women and a lot of women of all ages wear “western” style dress too, but many wear the conical hat and pyjamas. I only saw about three sets of black pyjamas - all worn by old women. The rest were colourful and patterned – often floral. Want to get rich with a “new” fashion idea? You could do worse; many of them looked very stylish even when quite old, faded and when worn by obviously poor women. Could be a problem with the shape of western women though!

That brings me on to a new subject – prostitution. I have been reluctant to visit Thailand or The Philippines because I don’t, as an ageing fart travelling on his own, want to be labelled as a sex-tourist as soon as I get off the plane – not to mention making a fool of myself with a ladyboy! However, it has to be said that prostitution is pretty widespread and blatant in East Asia. Many of my male readers will be familiar with something close to the following story but some will not and both of my female readers may be interested in the following tale.

I had been to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon to most of you) once before eighteen months earlier when Bart and I had sat in a bar chatting to the manageress and admiring the view of an evening before we left town 6 or 7 hours after flying in. This time I had arrived off the plane, found somewhere to stay, eaten a pizza and drunk a bottle of wine. (Oops, better explain. I never eat western food in China – it is crap. That is not to say that there are not some things about western food that I still like, despite living in the food capital of the world. So I saw this billboard for a restaurant with an Italian chef cooking pizza so in I went – so much for trying Vietnamese food on my first night in the country.)

Wandering around afterwards I realised that I was in the same area that I had been with Bart last year and decided to revisit the same bar and sit outside as we had done previously. The seating on the pavement area (sorry sidewalk for the yanks) that I wanted to sit and observe the view was full so I went and had a beer or two elsewhere but kept coming back to check after each couple of beers. Eventually my patience ran out and I wandered in. There was no sign of the manageress (who I would have recognised – we took photos) but I got pushed, literally, into a seat by an attractive young lady who brought me my beer and declared her love for me. I disputed this assertion on the basis that she did not know. She persisted in her belief. The conversation continued something like this:
“Take me to Dalat” (Dalat is a tourist town 6 hours from the city)
“I am going to Nui Me”
“Take me to Nui Me”
Slurp.
SMILE (Her not me). She is very pretty. Why not have a week travelling round Vietnam with a lovely young lady who undoubtedly knows her trade? Hesitation.
“No”
“Why not”
“No”
“Let’s go to your hotel”
“No way”
“Let’s go upstairs. You can rent a room for an hour.”
“No”
“Buy me a drink”
“Ok” At least I can do that without any pressure. “Uhm – how much”
“The same as your drink” (It wasn’t, it cost $2 ½ -more than twice as much as mine but the budget can stand it)
“Take me to Nui Me”
Slurp
A foot appears in my groin.
Remember I haven’t been in this bar 5 minutes.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
Slurp
The pressure grows.
“Take me to Nui Me”
Hang on, I am in charge here. It is my money.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
Slurp.
Foot is back.
SMILE “Take me to Nui Me”
Slurp, slurp, slurp. I am over half way through my drink.
OK I may be in charge but can I make a decision.
She is VERY pretty.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
You get the idea. I declined because, obviously, I am morally above this. Either that or her English was too bad to listen to for a week and I was too pissed for the other option.

Don’t worry you can easily avoid this sort of situation. If you want to! Prostitution is not so obvious in other parts of the country although I did get offered women by pimps on a couple of other occasions. I obviously look the part.

This brings me to price. This was, of course, mentioned but I never got into detailed negotiations. The currency of Vietnam is the Dong. This is 15,800 to the $US. Now I checked this out before I left home and sure enough the Romanian Lei is weaker and, of course, one Dong will buy you lots of Turkish Lire but other than that this was no 3 on the world’s lowest value currencies. Like the currency in China it has stayed pretty stable against the dollar whist the dollar has gone down the crapper but you would think that it is time to deal with this issue. The smallest note I saw was 500 and there are almost no coins (minimum 1,000). Reformation of the currency would have a significant cost, at least short term, and some impact on the national ego but wouldn’t that be a good one for the west to pay for? For most things you can use Dollars but you might get your change in Dong. There are ATMs in most, but not all, places so it is good to have a couple of hundred dollars cash with you in various size notes.

Vietnam is cheap. Cambodia is even poorer and cheaper but in Vietnam you can buy most things. This is not to disparage the situation that Cambodia is in but merely to suggest that visiting Vietnam is not a real hardship trip. Like anywhere you can pay $80 or $200 a night for a hotel if you want to. I always had my own room with private bathroom and a fan (air- conditioning is a dubious privilege when you are sleeping – usually add about $5) for $8 or $10 without argument. (That is not to say that I did not splash out for $15 occasionally.) I never had to book or look past one or two places i.e. ten or fifteen minutes. Apparently it can be a bit busier at Tet (Chinese New Year to most or Spring Festival to a few) in late January or early February.

A bowl of noodles costs less than a dollar but, of course, I didn’t do that. Living in Guangzhou, I expect the best food so don’t piss about with any crap. My motto is eat well or don’t bother. I have to say that the food did not make as strong an impression on me as the food further north last year. That is not to say that it is terrible, it is quite good but these days I have very exacting standards about food – I have become a true Guangzhouer. The Vietnamese specialities are peanuts (and peanut sauces) and rice pancakes. You can do lots with these and the associated fish, veg etc to taste and, let me be clear; to most of you who can get past your meat and a couple of veg. it would be fine and rather more; it is just these days I am used to the best as a matter of routine.

If you are a huge carnivore Vietnam may not be the place for you. It is not that there weren’t lots of slabs of meat on the menu; it was just the number of trawlers. They were everywhere so I found it hard to believe that anybody ate much meat. To give you an example I cycled into the local “city” one day from the aforementioned Nui Me. This is a pretty grubby little place and I have, I hope, attached a picture of the fishing fleet. Now, I may be pretty stupid but I was impressed. There were three similar inlets with almost identical images. Every village had lots of boats. Looking out to sea the place was lit up at a range of 5 or 10 kilometres. The first night in Nui Me I assumed that I was on a part of the coast that curved round so that I was looking at a string of towns and villages – not fishing boats.

Speaking of cycling, transport is pretty good. This trip I used buses – previously I had used trains – of which there are plenty going to most places that you would want to go. Most leave fairly early – not my strong suit. One particular incidence of this cost me. The bus was leaving at 7.30, I had got up at 7 and was busy packing when, at about 7.15 I realised that I hadn’t got my wallet in my pocket. I searched everywhere in the room and couldn’t find it. Ho hum, only about $40 in it and a couple of cards so no real problem – I had other cards. Of course, about half an hour out on the bus I realised what had happened. The previous night I was walking back from the bar in my new $4 shorts. Actually they were quite long and my substantial fundament had taken advantage of this fact to split the seam a bit. The sky was fantastic with clouds looking like upturned ice seracs with the moon behind them – well I was on the way from the bar – so I went and lay on the beach for a few minutes whilst the clouds thinned. My wallet had been in my not very deep pocket and I guessed the rest. Actually those shorts were not such a good investment, the next time I wore them and squatted down to take a photograph the fabric ripped so 2 outings and they were in the bin.

Speaking of bars, there are quite a few but this is a quiet country. Outside Ho Chi Minh City and, to a lesser extent, Hanoi restaurants are shut by about ten with the odd bar staying open until 12 or 1 but you have to look for them. Well you don’t really; you just stop a motor-bike taxi and tell him you want a bar. They all speak good English and are happy to take you the requisite 300 metres for the princely sum of 30 cents. Traffic in this country is dominated by very small motor-bikes – 50ccs most of them. That does not stop 3 or 4 people being carried, I did not see 5 on this trip, and is a good indicator of the level of prosperity. Guangzhou, like many cities in China is anti motor-bikes – no knew motor bike licences have been issued in this city since 1998. Motor-bikes were unpopular with the local government for two reasons – drive buy hand bag snatching (true, I have never seen one but many women I know have suffered this) and pollution (complete bollocks – cars, particularly big SUVs with air-conditioning are of, course, vastly more polluting, it is just that the politicians wanted cars). Ironically the pollution argument is beginning to come true as people keep these old, decaying bikes on the road. It is rather ironic, therefore, that the vast numbers of motor-bikes in Vietnam arises because China manufactures cheap bikes. A Honda (of which there are plenty) costs $1,000 but a Chinese bike costs less than $500. You can easily hire a motor-bike for 3 or 4 dollars a day but the traffic in HCMC was enough to put me off and in the country I prefer to walk or get a push-bike.