Parklife

Tuesday, 30/10/2012 – 138 A.D.

"...Nguoi co bon duc: can, kiem, liem, chinh thieu mot duc thi khong thanh nguoi."

- Ho Chi Minh

The alarm went off at 08:30 this morning. Sometimes it goes off at 08:00, occasionally 08:15. Why do we always work in multiples of 15? Sounds like the remnants of a Peter Kay sketch. It was time to leave another hotel, another town, yet again. Tonight we would be catching the notoriously slow train to Hanoi, getting off halfway along at Da Nang. Our locomotive didn’t depart until 19:00, but given that check-out was midday, that gave us only an afternoon to get through while homeless, which wasn’t too bad.

Anyone seen a water puppet show before? No, neither have we. All the time we’ve been here in Saigon we’ve been meaning to get down to this water puppet show (recommended to us by fellow travellers), but we’ve never made it. Either it’s too hot, too late in the day, too much hassle, or we’re too knackered. Today when we rolled up they had just closed for lunch. Maybe we’ll just go and see the show in Hanoi. Instead we went to take a look at the Notre Dame Cathedral, which as you might imagine, stands out somewhat against the surrounding buildings.

I’m not sure why especially today, but I found myself perspiring even more than usual, which is saying something. Possibly it’s because I’m sweating out the recent mild illness, but even if that is the case then I felt a bit more self-conscious than normal, especially as two days earlier we’d been comparing foreigners who had sweat lines in not the most flattering places (it’s somethin` to do, innit?) They don’t do aircon quite as well here as in other south east Asian countries, but at least when we stopped for our main meal of the day they had a fan. Plus I was happily distracted when a bloke came up from the alley and tried to give Tim an impromptu massage against his wishes…

After some Singapore style chow mein, which was tasty but didn’t really plug the gap, we went off in search of supplies for the upcoming journey. I was delighted to find some bacon and egg sandwiches. Normally in these countries they seem to love mixing the sweet in with the savoury in their snack foods. The other day I was distracted by something shiny and bought a packet of crackers that contained chocolate filling! I think they were halal or something and I quickly went off them, though Tim’s a big fan. 

One final thing we wanted to do before leaving Saigon was to have a game of “shuttlecock”. In the nearby park we had seen loads of kids playing with these things, which are essentially elongated, slimmed-down badminton shuttlecocks. Not sure what the rules are, but looks like you have to kick the shuttlecock between two or more of you, a little like the British game of “keepy uppies”. There were plenty of vendors selling these things and we picked one up for a dollar.

Next we had to find a suitably quiet spot in the park where we could have our game without embarrassing ourselves too much. Not easy to find - all of the best spots were taken, so we had to make do at a crossroads along the path. And no sooner had we taken two clumsy kicks than two girls appeared on the path and asked if they could join in with us. We were only too happy to oblige, though we realised we were risking serious loss of macho English keepy-uppy reputation by doing this.

It was a high octane, fast-paced doubles match as me and Phi took on Tim and unknown girl. I think the most keepy-ups we managed in a series was maybe four. More often than not we simply used our hands to swat the cock back at each other. And it felt (to me, at least) like all around the park we had an audience, constantly watching and waiting for me to perform that expert overhead scissor kick. Or to come a cropper and roundhouse kick the nearby stone bench.

After a while we had to sit down, at which point I started talking to Phi, and Tim, on a separate bench, started talking to his new friend, plus a young lad who’d invited himself into the game. Within minutes of us speaking, it was like yesterday all over again. Students surrounded us both in two separate groups and treated us like some kind of positive freakshow in which they could practice their English through listening and speaking. Today I was with them a lot longer, discussing all manner of things, including different dialects between north and south Vietnam, how to say “fortune teller” in Vietnamese, is the water puppet show really any good, why they don’t drink anywhere near as much as British students, all about Britain’s Got Talent, all about Vietnam’s Got Talent, when it’s appropriate to use anti-perspirant body spray, and why I don’t have a wife. It was difficult to know whether to focus my attention on just one of them, or try and talk to them all as a whole – guess there’s some public speaking work to be done there. Sometimes one of them would dominate the conversation from the others, but in contrast there were times when several people would be asking me things at once. At one point I noticed some of my audience leaving to join Tim’s forum and now and then the odd one would desert his and come to hear my words of wisdom. At one point, we were almost in competition!

[Those who came to hear the gospel as preached by James.]

[And those who preferred to devote their time to Timothy’s fables.]

Come 17:30, the light was starting to go, I was getting a little tired from all of the questions, and we had to make our move. Once again it had been an absolute pleasure talking to the students and they in turn called me “very kind” for sitting and talking to them. It was never like that on the steps at Leeds Metropolitan University!

Back at the hotel we picked up our luggage and thought we were playing it safe by calling a cab to the train station. We would have been quicker walking. Rush hour in central Saigon is a spectacle to behold and, even though we had an hour to go, I was starting to wonder if we would ever make it, given how gridlocked the traffic was. But we did make it, and our train was waiting patiently on the platform for us.

It was as we were walking alongside and looking for coach #9 that we saw into the windows of the other sleeper carriages and got a bit of a shock. Looked a bit cramped and uncomfortable. Still, at least we would be in a four person private berth…just hope the other two sharing with us would be okay! Unfortunately the set-up was cramped and uncomfortable. Most obvious of all was the lack of curtain to draw round the bed, effectively giving you zero privacy when you sleep. There’s a good sturdy table between the bed, power points, and plenty of hooks to hang things from, but it’s all a bit grotty and not as good as the trains of Thailand or Malaysia. That said, there was always a chance that we would end up having the four berths to ourselves…

…there was no chance we would get the four berths to ourselves! First to arrive was an old Vietnamese granny who was dropped off by her son in the way my dad used to help my grandma onto the intercity train from Slough to Cardiff. But I could never have imagined my gran sharing a scummy fourth berth sleeper with two young(ish) foreign lads! We politely said hello and she soon realised we spoke no Vietnamese. Then she just sat, and I wondered if she was going to sit for the whole of the journey. And would she be physically capable of making it to the top bunk?

Our berth was complete when a young girl arrived, trying to mask her horror at having to share with us three. At least now granny had someone she could converse with, and young `un gave the impression she didn’t speak much English. And the only provisions she’d brought for the journey was a big bag of unidentifiable green fruits that she plonked down on the table. So, I’m sitting on one side of my bed listening to my iPod, granny is next to me, sitting, Tim is on one side of his bed reading his book, young girl is next to him, sitting.

As the train started to pull away, we felt a bit guilty that granny would have to sleep all the way up in the roof. After debating how we’d play it for a good ten minutes, I communicated to her that I could take the top bunk and she could take mine (even thought I’d paid more for it). She was well-chuffed with this and may have tried to give me an impromptu blessing. So I got her bags down from the top shelf and put my smaller ones up there, keeping the big bag next to Tim’s on the floor. Young `un soon disappeared up to her bunk and promptly went to sleep, as did granny, who also gave us an education in elderly Vietnamese. It was barely 19:30 – were we expected to just go to sleep so early as well? No way, Ho Chi Minh! I’ve already done my good deed for the day!

I’m currently writing the blog as I sit at the end of Tim’s bed, almost ready to climb up and stick Apocalypse Now on the laptop (it would be rude not to watch it while I’m in Vietnam). However, change of plan in that big bag will now be coming up with me. A few moments ago Tim saw a mouse poke its head up from some kind of hole near the end of the table! I think it could have been a rat, but either way we don’t want to leave any bags on the floor where they could be chomped through in the night by a ravenous rodent.

The time is now 20:52. This train arrives at 12:06 tomorrow. I will simply write one more word and one more word only: bugger!