Chasing the Dragon

Religion...it gets everywhere
Tet celebrations were winding-down and the city was beginning to return to normalcy. This meant all the traffic which had been out of town was now coming back in -- minus all the vehicles that had been written off over the period (281 road deaths and counting). Fortunately by now I'd mastered the zen-like approach to crossing the street.

After throwing myself into the culinary fare of SE Asia without reservation for the first three weeks, I now had my first hankering for good old English grub. The kind of English grub which comes from anywhere else in the world but England that is. Burgers, pizzas, steaks, Mexican, Indian, Spanish. I didn't mind. I found a faux-European style cafe and ate a couple of slices of dry limp pizza. Perfect. It was a taste of home -- just like waking up bleary eyed and peeling out the last slice of pizza left out overnight on the kitchen table. Everything was familiar until the arrival of one very unusual customer.

A seven-man Chinese dragon.

Accompanied by a cacophony of clashing cymbals and tambourines it snaked around the Euclidean geometry of the cafe, a vibrant blood-red celebration of rebirth. It's head was huge, bigger than a 20" TV, with a great whisker lined maw of a mouth and large piercing eyes. Primary yellows and blues and greens offset the red, a real explosion of colour against the cafe's muted decor.

I followed it outside and watched it perform for a large crowd, twisting and weaving in a well choreographed routine. Excellent.

Pictures don't always do it justice...
One disappointment with the travelling has been the inability to talk with any Vietnamese people except a few of the younger generation who speak a limited broken English. A girl who works at Miss Loi's, Oanh, has been one of the few people I've been able to talk to, but because of the watchful eye of Miss Loi I've been unable to hold any decent conversations with her. I still uncovered her great sense of humour, though. A quote from an email I received from her a few days after I left HCMC:

I hope I can meet you soon, I can not go to Eng now, because I must work and still studing, but I hope one day you will take me to England with you in the future.hihi

I'm just jorking, Thanks alot for staying with us. Every body in MissLoi guesthouse always fine and love you so much.

Until a universal translator like Douglas Adam's Babelfish comes along, communicating with people who don't share a common tongue is always going to mean the awareness of their culture is limited to excerpts from books and your own observations. Understanding your own culture is difficult enough. Understanding the culture of a foreign land is probably impossible (whatever that means). That's not to say staying at home and reading traveller's reports, historical accounts, translated newspapers etc will give you a better picture. There are some things you need to see or hear or feel that can't be properly understood second-hand.

Like the streets I walked down tonight.

Rather than heading towards the centre, I thought I'd head in the opposite direction and get a taste of the 'real' city. I wandered through several alleyways and eventually came out on a road a couple of blocks away from the guest-house.

The change in the cityscape couldn't have been greater. I think the shock must've overridden my personal safety circuits because I stumbled down the pitch black road not thinking I was probably a prime candidate for being robbed or worse.

The road surface itself was so pocked and broken I doubt any traffic ever came this way. The north side was one long wall and on the southern side of the road there were great gaps between the buildings which on closer inspection revealed piles of masonary or half-standing houses. There was no electricity, but I did see candles burning through a couple of shattered windows down the street so I guess this was home for some.

The destruction can only have resulted from the bombing of Saigon during the Vietnam War.

I suddenly realized where I was walking and headed back the way I came.

Oanh, Miss Loi's