The Complex Plane

Feeling guilty about yesterday's leisurely pace, I spent today throwing myself around the city from first light to the wee hours. I think its an English thing.

First stop was at a push-bike hire shop where I fitted myself out with a standard issue cycle. One of the nice things about communism (putting to one side the secret police, informant systems, gulags etc) is, or was, that nobody has a better or worse bike than anybody else. There's one design and everybody rides it. No heartwrenching decisions about titanium alloy wheels, or Shimano DX or LX gear shifters. No decisions about anything. Who's going to steal your bike when theirs is the same? Equality.

One of the worst things about communism is that nobody has a better or worse bike than anybody else...people are different! I may not be the tallest Westerner, but that bike was still damn uncomfortable!

Luckily, the experience on the roads make you quickly forget about the saddle trying to lodge itself in your stomach. Cycling is a socially bonding activity hear. Bikers move along the streets like shoals of fish, a colorful, dancing carnival of life. Riders slip in and out of the stream, but the shape coheres. For once, cyclists aren't second-class citizens of the road next to drivers. It's a wonderful, liberating feeling. The nearest sensation back home is when cyclists arrange a 'Reclaim the Streets' ride and take over a long stretch of thoroughfares.

Roundabout, Vietnam style
Pumped up, I parked up and headed to the mausoleum (like you do when the adrenaline is flowing, right?). My psyched mood was swiftly brought down to Earth by the stately ambiance of the huge grounds which contained the mausoleum building. Everyone spoke in whispered snatches and moved like geriatrics. I had to hire some trousers, bare knees frowned upon by the guards.

In my too tight regulation issue trousers I joined the line and edged toward the tomb. The building is an ugly slate grey box of sharp angles and rock and totalitarianism. This isn't a time to crack a joke or flick the ear of the man ahead. The guards look mean and ready to pummel anybody who denigrates Ho Chi's resting place in the slightest.

And that included the great man himself.

He actually requested that he be cremated when he die. The living authorities thought better. I guess he didn't get everything right.

We enter the ill-lit building and silence reigns. Please no giggles, I think, endangering myself to the giggle-loop. Uncle Ho looks at peace, but it is still seriously creepy that I'm looking at the real body of the man. How long will it be until he can truly rest in peace and not be subjected to tens of thousands of pairs of eyes every day?

I spent the afternoon doing my gift shopping for the whole trip in one frenzied blitz. The Old Quarter is really something. There are streets dedicated exclusively to one type of good. Chinese decoration street. Or ironmongery street. Or snake wine street. I think it would drive me nuts if I owned a shop and all my competitors were in the same street. Although checking out the competition would be an easy task...

I'm crap at choosing presents for people usually. I endlessly prevaricate, neither having the chutzpah to buy something awful and get it over with, or having the discernment to pick the perfect item. In the end I make an impulse purchase and try to forget about it.

The strategy here was different. Buy a load of stuff and decide who got what later. Statistics would take care of the details. Even if that meant one entirely inappropriate present for one unfortunate individual - the carved wooden turtle compass, sorry, Dad - it was still worth it.

No agonizing shuttling between shops. Just, bang, bang, bang and Bob's your Uncle. I bought silk sleeping bags, an egg-shell painted tray, chopsticks, Vietnam flag T-shirts, a scarf, sequined purses, a vase and much more. All for under twenty quid. Tomorrow I'll go to the post office and get them shipped to the UK and that's that! Might even give it a try with the Xmas presents one year...

Tonight I ditched 'Highway #4' - not the debauched biker bar I expected (cause men in leather turn me on, oh yeah) - and went to the 'New Century Nightclub', named without any sense of irony. It was like being back at the Event in the early nineties. I think 'Late Century Nightclub' would've been more fitting. Glitter balls, wipe-clean surfaces, cheesy rock, soft-light porn decor.

The place was empty. I sat alone on a bar stool overlooking the dancefloor a level down (another throwback to the meat-markets of the eighties) and wondered what time the Vietnamese well-to-do youth started to party, if at all, or if there was such a demographic as the well-to-do Vietnamese youth. A Madame came over and offered me dances by unseen women. Unseen at the time of offering, not unseen when they danced. That would be ridiculous.

I politely declined.

The club was a good example of no matter how hard a society tries to hold back sexual desire, it will always find release somewhere. I never saw any physical chemistry outside on the streets in daylight, but here on the dancefloor couples necked while scantily-clad women strutted above.

I went down and boogied, for once taller than almost everyone else.

Unfortunately, tall, dark and handsome doesn't seem to apply here. At least not the tall bit....