Vertigo

'Lazy River', Saigon Water Park
Sufficiently recovered from the Ho Chi Guts to risk Saigon Water Park today.

Francis and I bused out to the complex early, arriving shortly after 10am when the park opened. It was deserted. I guess a daytrip to an attraction like this is too expensive for the average Vietnamese family. It did get busier as the sun got higher in the sky, but never became as crowded as an equivalent place back in the UK on a bank holiday. Good for us, bad for people who couldn't afford it.

We wandered round the park and didn't have to queue for a single ride. Water rapids, flumes, wave pools, undulating water-slides all freely available. We were like kids doing Supermarket Sweep in a confectionary store -- or at least I was. I don't know about Francis.

I remember one time we climbed up the four flights to the water-slide platform and I bounded ahead, grabbed a mat, and then launched myself down the slide at a run. After I plunged into the end pool at the bottom I got out wiping the water from my eyes and looked back up for Francis. I couldn't see him.

All I could see was a mat, bereft of any rider, creeping its way down the outside track in sad spurts. I looked further up to the platform, but Francis was nowhere to be seen.

Had he fallen off the platform? My stomach lurched at the thought. The mat limply arrived in the end pool, bobbing on the frothy water like a deserted raft, and I waded over to retrieve it. I clenched the spongy material in my hand; the last thing Francis had touched. I squeezed out some water from the mat as if it were shedding tears. Why, Francis, why? You had so much to give.

I sat at the side of the pool and stared into the swirling, foamy water, patterns coming and going in the blink of an eye.

A shadow loomed over me.

I looked up, squinting from the rays of sun that surrounded the head of the figure like a halo.

It was Francis. Was he an angel already? God works fast these days, I thought.

Angel-Francis shuffled from toe to toe. A cloud blocked the sun. Angel-Francis had a bashful look on his face. Angel-Francis was actually mortal-Francis.

I smiled. "What happened?"

"I lost my mat. And then I lost my bottle. I had to come down."

I broke his gaze, trying to hide my smirk as I pictured this pale gentle giant coming down the stairs clamped to the handrail with playful kids swarming past as he went.

"Fear of heights," I said. "That's not nice."

Later, after Francis had left, I was charging my way round 'Lazy River' when I bumped into a Vietnamese girl named Phuong. I grabbed an inflatable ring and drifted along beside her, letting the current carry me along. We got talking -- no sophisticated and witty opening line, merely an apology for crashing into her -- and I found that she spoke enough English to hold a decent conversation with me. She was a student at a university in the city. We flirted around, went on some other rides, and generally had a laugh.

What wasn't so fun were the looks that I was picking-up from quite a few others. I have no idea what the Vietnamese think about Westerners, or the British in particular, but there was an air of disapproval in their looks. I've heard a high proportion of visitors are sex tourists so maybe when a Western man is with a local woman that is an immediate suspicion, or perhaps any kind of relationship between a foreigner and Vietnamese is viewed as a betrayal by many. I don't know. All I know is that I try to approach every person I meet in the same way.

Perhaps there is some truth that some Asian women get together with Western men for the material rewards that they can offer. In my eyes I don't see this any different from any of the other reasons people get together -- shared values, physical attractiveness, sense of humour etc. We all take the things we want. Sometimes its more outward thing like physical beauty, sometimes its more inner things like being understood. Sometimes, if you've grown up in poverty and rich Westerners are waving their cash in front of your nose, you want to live in a different world. It's all based on taking. The thing is, for one person to take, another has to give. I try to remind myself of that when I feel I've been taking too much.

We exchanged email addresses, and I headed back to Miss Loi's.

At Ben Thanh Market where the bus terminated, I stopped-off to pick up some food. However, in the fresh produce area, a mangy rat keeled over and convulsing through its death throes put me off that idea.

I went out for dinner with Francis at a Cao Dai place instead.

And found a live caterpillar in the eggplant fritter salad. It put my thoroughly Westernised stomach off its dinner.

Ben Thanh Market....don't look down!