Comrades, I may not have been the only one to notice that the Vietnamese have a certain penchant for that Abba number: “Happy New Year” which by dint of it’s chorus alone (and certainly not the sentiment in the content of the song), has taken the number one slot, not just on New Year’s Eve but over the whole camp festive season. It can be routinely heard as the musac of choice in supermarkets, elevators, hotel lobbies, and on board all Vietnam Airline domestic flights well into Tet. It’s enough to make a dyed in the wool ‘Mama Mia’ fan start to bristle and really hate Abba.
Considering the alternative New Year’s favourite song: ‘Auld Lang Syne’ – it is really no surprise that this 70’s throwback with it’s simple English chorus should dominate people’s celebrations.
I am sitting in Edinburgh Comrades as I write this for ‘The Ministry’, knowing that I will be joining revellers all over the world bidding goodbye to 2009 with a rendition of Auld Lang Syne this Hogmanay. As Jim Gilchrist writes in yesterday’s “Scotsman” newspaper we will all be engaged in “In a very specific kind of mass hysteria, in which groups of alcohol-tranced strangers link hands and jerk rhythmically in a kind of crazed seance while mouthing the words “auld aquaintance. . .- with which however many of the singers seem singularly unacquainted”.
The sentiments of Auld Lang Syne have made it enduring and internationally popular but that won’t stop thousands of people mangling the lyrics and making linguistic mincemeat of it tonight. Many of us know that our Chairman hero of old Robert Burns is attributed to authorship of the song but few Comrades -even in The Socialist Republic of Scotland know all the words- fewer still know what they mean. Fewer Comrades still know the song’s history which goes back in time as far as the 16th Century, long before Chairman Burns made it ready for the people.
There are many records of folk songs bearing similarities to ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and Chairman Robert Burns wasn’t the only Comrade to incorporate them into his own work. Before him there was:
Comrade Robert Ayton in 1711 with this version:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never thought upon,
The flames of love extinguished,
And freely past and gone?
Is thy kind heart now grown so cold?
In that loving breast of thine,
That thou canst never once reflect
On old -long-syne?
This was followed by a rather wet version by Comrade Allan Ramsay in 1720 who undoubtedly would be an Abba fan today:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
Tho they return with scars?
These are the noble hero’s lot,
Obtain’d in glorious wars:
Welcome my Varo, to my breast,
Thy arms about me twine.
And make me once again as blest,
As I was lang syne.
Chairman ‘Rabbie’ Burns sat on the Banks of the Nith and remixed his own version in 1788, fusing Motherland sentiment with as Gilchrist says: “a more robust, convivial and fraternal sensibility”:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
If you are a fellow Comrade from Scotland- be sure to impress upon the bewildered Vietnamese that there really is no real translation from the original Scots for “auld lang syne”, which literally translates into English: “old long since”. Better to let our Vietnamese Comrades be uplifted by Chairman Rabbie’s pithy lyrics and the lilting tune which swells and burgeons with passion, grand-scale emotions and the lovely sentiment which lurks within this sombre song, than to let them be linguistically confused. ‘Auld Lang Syne ‘ is a song which basically says to us all: let’s have a wee drink together and reflect upon our Comradeship for all that matters in life is who you love, how you love and how they love you in return. . .
HAPPY NEW YEAR COMRADES!
WISHING YOU ALL SUCCESS AND JOY IN 2010!
TWELVE MEMORIES
On the first day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
. . .It’s an own-goal nods the referee
On the second day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Two bauxite mines,
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the third day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines,
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the fourth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the fifth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the sixth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
four years of subway works
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines,
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the seventh day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the eighth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Eight banned websites,
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the ninth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Nine franchises starting,
Eight banned websites,
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines,
And an it’s own-goal nods the referee!
On the tenth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Ten cyclos retiring,
Nine franchises starting,
Eight banned websites,
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Eleven new species thriving,
Ten cyclos retiring,
Nine franchises starting,
Eight banned websites,
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my Vietnam memory
Twelve arrested bloggers,
Eleven new species thriving,
Ten cyclos retiring,
Nine franchises starting,
Eight banned websites,
Seven dodgy milk tins,
Six new subs a cruising,
Five swish golf resorts,
Four years of subway works,
Three months of Visa,
Two bauxite mines
And it’s an own-goal nods the referee!
Merry Christmas Comrades !
One of the hardest things that I face living in Vietnam, Comrades is trying to explain that I am a Coeliac and on a Gluten-Free Diet.
A what ? I can already hear you saying. Aside from understanding what it means, even saying the word ‘Coeliac’ ( sealy -ak), is a challenge .
Similarly gluten intolerance is a hell of a difficult thing to explain to a Vietnamese person, let alone a Comrade from Europe. After all, who would have believed that bread, pasta and. . . beer could make a person really ill.
Just to put these communication issues into context; for the last few months I have been carrying around an image of a steaming mug of black coffee in my phone. Why? You may well ask. Well, the staggering truth is this: I have failed miserably to communicate that all I want is an unadulterated mug of hot black coffee to the staff of …..‘Highlands Coffee’ in Vietnam. Incredulous though this may seem, at least two outlets of ‘Highlands Coffee’ in Vietnam (separated by a few hundred miles) have witnessed the face-losing farce of Yours Truly blowing a gasket over the impossibility of ordering a mug of black coffee -in a coffee house.
How was I to know that it was referred to as an “Americano” on the menu? Forgive me for thinking that I might not be the first foreign Comrade to ask for a mug of black coffee! I kid you not Comrades, I have physically led the waiters / waitresses to the stock-piled, ‘Highlands Coffee’ motifed mugs, in Saigon, pointed to the coffee machine in Hue and even drawn pictures on napkins in Da Nang. I finally reached the end of my tether when I did in fact order an “Americano”, only to be presented with a quarter-filled teacup of a crude oil like deposit dripping from one of those mini percolator thingies. Hence the photograph: “give me one of these, please”.
Now, you may well be saying that- isn’t it about time you learned the language, Comrade? And you’d be right; only on most of these occasions . . .I was using the language. A man could get a paranoid persecution complex when faced with such an impasse. Imagine then, if hot black coffee presents one with problems, how much more difficult it is to explain that I want food that is free of certain cereals and their derivatives? This would be a challenge, in just about any food outlet back in the Socialist Republic of Scotland, let alone Vietnam.
Here is a typical scenario. At a restaurant, I would love to have the local beef salad and some rice. I point to it in the menu and stress that I do not want the bread, which normally comes with it and that I would like some rice instead. I feel I am making progress -there are nods of understanding from the waiter. In order to explain that I do not want any sauce or dressing I reach for my carefully laminated card which clearly explains in two paragraphs of Vietnamese the diet and what foods can or cannot be eaten and the consequences of eating them.Feeling supremely confident I order a soup, and the waiter goes off to the kitchen with the card to show it to the chef. He returns nodding. Hooray! It’s all good! . . .Here is what happens: the soup arrives and I spend 10 minutes extracting the bread croutons from it and decide not to risk it. I laugh when the main course arrives, as perched next to the salad is half a French baguette (it is included as part of the price the waiter explains so “why not?”). I examine the salad and after a couple of mouthfuls I realise that it is drenched in what appears to be soy sauce and or dressing but I cannot be sure (“it has already been made earlier” the waiter explains), I push it aside uneaten. When the rice finally arrives – I can at last tuck in, worry free, to a small bowl of plain boiled rice. Bon apetit!
Our Comrades in Vietnam surely do not need another reason to be baffled by their Foreign Comrades quirks and special needs. Aren’t we already high-maintenance enough? As we pass through our lives in Vietnam, protected by our bubble of wealth, healthcare and air-conditioned abundance – all the while bitching and whining about the things which don’t suit us about being here. Our expatriate lifestyles which demand that exclusive Stuff That Saigon Expat People Like. That required variation in quality from everything from cigarettes to bedclothes. That bill for a single meal which for the same money might feed a Mekong Delta family for a week. Now along comes this joker telling us that soy sauce makes him sick and he can’t share a beer with you or eat pizza – yeah right! I suppose you are going to tell me next, that Jesus heard cries of: “Is that bread organic”, “I have a gluten allergy”, “Is that made from buckwheat flour?” , “I’m not eating any of that foreign muck!”, “How old is that fish?” – at the feeding of the Fad Thousand.
To witness the fuss a colleague of mine made at ‘The Ministry’ when sent on an educational trip with the young Party Recruits, when it was discovered that no one had remembered to tell the trip provider that he was a vegetarian. Holy shit! The torrents of abuse and vitriol were amazing. Nothing could have possibly prepared him for the reality that some Vietnamese consider prawns and chicken to be; if not vegetables, akin to vegetables (just as most Ukranian and Russian Comrades sincerely consider beer to be a ’soft’ drink). His imperious indignation did nothing to further his cause on the trip and I am sure that, in the spirit of the wronged waiter spitting in the soup, he was deliberately served the wrong food by our hosts from then on as recompense.
There’s simply no easy way to explain specific dietary needs to a nation apparently unaware of these nutritional minefields. At least if vegetarians accidentally eat meat they are unlikely to become ill as a result. Just as a muslim who inadvertently swallows a prawn which is not actually ‘halal’ will suffer no ill- effects. One must ask oneself what if that increasingly present ‘Certified Halal Product’ labeling appearing on foodstuffs was a complete lie? A placebo? After all, we have seen contaminated milk products and even mineral water being passed off as fit for consumption by the public here in our fair Thanh Pho. Who cares if this weird, needy foreigner gets sick because of a pinch of wheat flour in the sauce? Surely he should be grateful for the food that is served, and he can only really be making a fuss typical of a foreigner? Try telling that to the poor bugger with the nut-allergy who ends up with the face like a pumpkin and a breathing tube down his throat after inadvertently ingesting a trace of peanut.
Eating taboos are among the most potent issues in exacerbating misunderstanding between cultures, it seems. Even within our own familiar native cultures the etiquette surrounding this daily function helps to create further levels of divisive behaviour, disparity and social hierarchies. At the ‘The Ministry’ there has been a series of initiatives by one of the Politburo members to create a certain ‘ethos’, shall we say, among the Party officials. One of these initiatives is to have “Cakes Friday”. An event designed to promote a sense of Unity and Comradeship through shared time eating cakes. With Big Brother watching you it is difficult to pass off your reluctance to partake in this ritual as being due to dietary restrictions and not because you are in fact a dangerous counter-revolutionary who harbours a grudge against the Regime.
Needless to say as a Coeliac, you don’t get invited to dinner much! You may get invited once Comrades, but once your host discovers that you are: 1) a gluten freak, 2) involved in education, then rest assured you will never be invited out again. It sometimes isn’t much fun in the bar either, as you won’t find many people who (assuming that they have not already discovered that you are involved in education) will include you in a round, when they realise that the glass of wine you are drinking costs three times the price of their beer. That is of course that they haven’t already made up their mind that you are simply being an effete wanker for drinking wine in the first instance.
It’s not all “I’m a Coeliac get me out of here!”, Comrades. Having a gluten free diet is quite healthy and very possible to follow in our beloved Vietnam. Most Vietnamese dishes if served without soy sauce are all good! Your nearest source of advice and indeed imported products is the Australian Coeliac Society. Many of the gluten free food products that I have found in outlets like ‘Veggys’ and ‘Annam Gourmet Market’ have come from Australia. UK Coeliacs who know their gliadin from their insulin and are registered with the UK Coeliac Society, get to carry about a wee book (doubtless tucked in beside their emergency gluten free Scooby snack in their bag) which contains a list of all gluten free products available listed by category and then by brand.
So Comrades, if you too are a Gluten Freak in Vietnam you will understand the feeling of triumph when you discover a new item of food that you can eat, that you had perhaps long ago considered being ‘off the menu’. Why not help to compile a similarly useful directory of gluten free products for use here in Vietnam? Among my happy discoveries are: most flavours of ‘New Zealand’ Ice Cream, ‘Fantastic’ Rice crackers, ‘Crown’ peanut butter and ‘Heinz’ beans / ketchup. Contact me at ‘The Ministry of Noodles’ (- the white ones, that is, as they are the noodles made from rice flour! )
May Nutrition Increase!
It seems that all sports are approved of here in modern Vietnam. But some sports are more approved of than others. As I write this, in an Orwellian frame of mind, I can hear the thwack of tennis serves and volleys, punctuated by the occasional “Troi oi!” from the Ton Duc Thang Tennis Club below my window, while recalling a recent conversation on the topic of ‘progress’ through sport.
One afternoon at ‘The Ministry’, a young Vietnamese Recruit told me that her father made her play golf every Sunday. She is a slight girl with a thin frame and a kind of nervous energy and impatience which seems common to teenagers like her. She said that she “hated golf” and “doesn’t really understand why [her] father makes [her] play it”. She went on to explain that her father “felt it was good for [her] to learn this sport”, for two reasons. The first was that golf “was a way of networking and meeting the right kind of people” and the second, was that the alternative of playing tennis would only interfere with her piano-playing prowess as there was surely more of a risk of wrist injury with tennis.
Having grown up close to the Home of Golf, in the Socialist Republic of Scotland, I can only sympathise with this Recruit, Comrades. Much of my childhood was spent traipsing round the courses at North Berwick and Gullane trying, as my father would say, to “knock the skin off” a golf ball, furtively replace divets and hack my way through the coastal rough while others played through. Within one or two short years in this environment of ‘Pringle’-clad enthusiasm and rounds of golf straight after school- only to return home to debriefing and more golf on TV, I began to hate the sport too.
The geography of Scotland at least lends itself to the creation of natural-looking golf courses with minor modification required. Yet, the exclusivity of access to these great land areas, which were usually located right where one would have wanted to be walking and freely enjoying the coast, used to rankle me. This and the obvious snobbery attached to the game, perpetuated by club membership waiting-lists, extortionate green fees, pastel clothing and booklets on ‘etiquette’. There was simply no getting away from golf either, even as a non player. My classmates would relish the arrival of the Opens at Muirfield as they could earn a lucrative income from caddying. They would then be able to trade stories about the eccentricities of ‘their’ professional golfer from abroad and compare the extravagant tips they received. Our parents who may not have been actual ‘ members’ would still aspire to socialise in the various golf club’s bars and restaurants. Adaptation of local firms and businesses who produced everything from turf and fertilisers to tacky golf-club mitts and tartan caps clearly saw them sustain profits in this industry of golf.
During the summer season, sleepy towns along the East Lothian coast experience invasions of coaches carrying pastel-clad ‘golf-tourists’ from abroad. Back in the day they were mainly from America, as the great distance to Scotland, it’s expensive hotels and perceived high cost of living at the time, prevented all but the super-rich visitors from Asian nations.
Now, as then, the Americans still come to Scotland, just as they come to Vietnam today; ready to be nostalgic. Many of them want to find out about their ancestors in the ‘Old Country’ and discover the roots of their family going back as far in time as the Highland Clearances 300 years ago. The medium of golf allows for them to legitimise their visit to Bonnie Scotland and form a kind of ‘basis’ for this nostalgia which I am talking about.
What of Vietnam then? Can this surrogate sport really instill nostalgia in visitors returning to this country? After all, it is only a mere 30- 50 years ago since Vietnamese families were separated and displaced mainly to Australia and America but to other golf-playing countries all over the globe too. Could golf in Vietnam help provide the impetus for returning to ‘The Old Country’ for the Viet Kieu? Would golf enable the returning Australian and American war veterans to further legitimise their return to Vietnam in peacetime? Is a Japanese or Korean investor more likely to clinch that deal if they know they can play golf in modern Vietnam while keeping an eye on their project’s progress? Perhaps to find answers to these questions, we should look back at the origins of golf in Vietnam. This excerpt from “VIETNAM: Golf helps drive economic modernisation” by Amy Kazmin, Financial Times August 1st, 2005 takes us onto the green under par:
‘When Hanoi opened its door to global capitalism in 1988, the Communist party frowned on golf as an irrelevant bourgeois indulgence. Today, the Communist elite has bestowed its full blessing on the game as both symbol, and tool, of Vietnam’s economic modernisation. “Golf is a very effective instrument for bringing people together,” says Pham Sanh Chau, deputy director of the government’s Institute for International Relations and general secretary of the semi-official Hanoi Golf Club, established to boost the game.
Vietnam’s first nine-hole course was built during the French colonial era in the hill station of Dalat to amuse Emperor Bao Dai. That legacy tainted golf in the eyes of Hanoi’s revolutionaries.
After 1975, the Dalat course was abandoned to weeds, used only by young lovers for secret trysts. In the early 1990s, Asian investors were grudgingly permitted to build several new fairways, although golf remained ideologically suspect.
“It was regarded as a luxury game,” says Mr Chau. “People felt very hesitant and guilty if they were caught playing golf like if they were caught playing tennis.” ‘
Comrades, my own family history testifies to this early arrival of golf in Vietnam. We Scots have always made good travelers and ambassadors to the world and it should come as no surprise that the first Saigon Golf Club was established in the early 1930’s by a bunch of guys from Fife during the French Colonial era. My father who, to his credit never forced me to play golf, has provided me with these early archive images of his father in Saigon photographed here with his work and golf colleagues at the first Saigon Golf Club:
These men and women, driven by their own nostalgia for home reconstructed a lifestyle, through activities such as golf in the context of investing in Vietnam just as we can see happening today in the current expatriate communities. Perhaps golf has come full cycle in it’s popularity stakes? Already you cannot avoid the game of tennis in Ho Chi Minh City – a game whose social presence has been amply provided for within the cities labyrinthine nooks and crannies. There are little tennis clubs squeezed alongside busy highways, down cul-de-sacs and between residential blocks.
As Amy Kazmin’s prophetic vision for golf in Vietnam foretold, the tell tale signs in Ho Chi Minh City are already there for us to see. The emerging golf equipment shops and specialist golf clothing shops continue to pop- up all over the city. Although less noticeable to the city dweller but nonetheless significant too are the great numbers of golf tourists from other Asian nations using HCMC as a staging post. Their feet hardly touch the ground as they are sped to destinations in Vung Tau, out at Long Thanh or at the newly recognised city of Phan Thiet. Incognito, they are ushered from air-conditioned hotel lobbies and whisked off with their equipment in minibuses with tinted windows - from one luxury experience to another.
Comrades, you must also be aware that the real ‘teeing off’ of golf in modern Vietnam is taking place before our very eyes in Da Nang , where recently Indochina Land and Vietcombank signed (on 15 September 2009) an agreement for a US$39 million loan to fund development of the Hyatt Regency Da Nang Resort and Spa. With an already existing ‘Montgomerie Links‘ and two further ‘Greg Norman Courses‘, Da Nang is experiencing Dubai -like development. It is being billed as “Da Nang City of Dreams” by some travel websites as the snowball effect for investment in the area gains momentum. Worryingly some of these websites designed to attract the kind of golf tourists we witness here in HCMC to this newly anointed Vietnamese home of golf use photographs, which, by their very inappropriateness of context, cross a boundary between encouraging golf -tourism and sex-tourism. After all, what relevance do photographs of little Thuy in her bikini have to do with the calibre of the resort being advertised or the quality of golf on offer? This is an attitude which is sometimes reflected in the content of Vietnam’s leading golf magazine: ‘Vietnam Golf’ which seems also determined to titillate golf enthusiasts in more ways than expected.
We digress Comrades. What we should be asking ourselves is: “why Da Nang in particular?” What is it apart from that beach which should make this destination so special for this kind of golf mad investment? The Property Report, an online Singapore property magazine, states that it is for these reasons:
Fastest Growing GDP in Vietnam (13.3% in 2007)
Gateway to 1,450 km East-West Economic Corridor
Best Infrastructure –bridges and roads
Strong growth of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese manufacturing companies in the 5 industrial zones.
Proactive investment policies and strategic location
Home of China Beach (1 of the top 6 most luxurious beaches in the world –Forbes Magazine 2005)
And it goes on to explain in the language of Corpspeak:
“Both developers also feel that golf has to be an essential component of their projects and are each developing adjacent courses. ‘History has proven that golf is a mandatory component to the success of a large scale resort destination,’ Piro says. ‘The development of the Montgomerie Links Vietnam golf course is essential to our overall vision and development plan in Danang and we remain very supportive of VinaCapital’s 27-hole Greg Norman designed golf course. The existence of these well branded, internationally designed golf courses gives Da Nang the necessary tourism infrastructure to start to attract a new wave of affluent visitors which will ultimately drive demand for all resort related products in the area.’ “
In a continuing present day family association with Vietnam, (I am the fourth generation of Scots to live and work here), the Missus and I can testify to this developmental period in Da Nang. The Missus and I have begun to furnish the homes of these Da Nang investors as Professional Buyers cum Interior Designers. Our little business, which as yet has no name, has become a word of mouth success, whereby foreign investors are trusting us to spend their money in sourcing contemporary furniture, fittings and decor in HCMC for their newly acquired luxury apartments. All the while our trips back and forth to install these items, enable us to see the cultural and social impact of suddenly imposing this kind top-end luxury, whether it be in the guise of imported leather sofas or golf resorts and casino complexes.
If it is not that difficult to spot the social disparities which golf creates in the Home of Golf itself – the Socialist Republic of Scotland, imagine then what it must feel like from the viewpoint of a coracle- boat fishing community on China Beach in Da Nang, Vietnam.
New employment is visible down the fairway – for it has been so approved. Very soon, in the not too distant future, there will be no more captaining of that coracle boat but instead it will be replaced with the manning of a pristine electric golf cart as it hums between the sprinklers on the greens. . . .But isn’t this just history repeating itself? Or am I being nostalgic?
Anyone for . . .er, Golf? . . . Fore!
After 4 years and 3 months of riding all kinds of motorbikes in Vietnam, in all weathers and under all conditions, I finally got my Vietnamese motorbike driving licence, Comrades. I am just back from the Ho Chi Minh City Ministry of Transport’s Motorbike Test Centre, having completed one of the most bizarre rituals pertaining to driving proficiency on the roads I have yet to encounter. In the Socialist Republic of Scotland I have been used to the sight of posses of ‘Gortex’ or leather-clad bikers, their luminous safety vests glowing in the dreich afternoon, as they wobble amidst the rush hour traffic, nervously following their driving instructor like a flock of ducklings. (There is a ‘Compulsory Basic Training’ Certificate, a Theory test and 2 Module Tests involved in acquiring a full motorbike licence in the UK). This evening-class ritual could go on for several weeks until the dreaded test day itself would come around. Then, our new bikers would be expected to take a journey through the city’s traffic, an examiner following and watching them all the while. Of course, as part of this testing process, there is an element where someone steps out in front of them suddenly, so that the driver can perform an emergency stop correctly. A manoeuvre which fills some test-candidates with dread. If they had but spent even 1 week here in Ho Chi Minh City, then they would have had daily opportunity to practice this very manoeuvre in very real situations. This is something which happens more than once to me every time I commute to ‘The Ministry’, I am thinking. Then there’s the part of the test where the examiner asks you to perform a ‘u’- turn in a confined space, without touching a foot to the ground. Again, seen as a difficult part of the test. Phew! Just take a wee trip around waterlogged District 1 HCMC of an afternoon and such manouvres will become second nature. I’m beginning to think there might just be a gap in the market here for: Motorbike Driving Test Preparation Holidays in Vietnam. A bit like those advertised golf tours, only a lot less glamorous.
So what of the motorbike test here then? What qualifies someone to ride on two wheels here in Vietnam? I don’t know if in your own countries you have ever been stopped or (heaven forbid) arrested by the traffic police before and been suspected of being drunk in charge of a vehicle, Comrades? Doubtless you must be aware of some of the procedures used when police confront a suspect. Arms out to one side, place one fingertip on your nose and walk toe-to-heel in a straight line, without wobbling. Or some such variation which provides the answer to the question: ‘lets see if you can still keep your balance- or not?’ Well, here in Vietnam it does seem that the emphasis for passing the motorbike test is all about balance and control at very slow speeds. It does feel a teeny bit like that suspect drunk-driver test, by it’s nature. To be fair, there are some similarities to the UK’s Module 1 Motorbike test too.
Suffice to say, that if you are going to go through the process of getting an A1 Vietnamese driving licence for a motorbike, Comrades- don’t expect the test process to prepare you for any of the following driving skills:
Overtaking and pulling out: - mirror- signal – lifesaver-look-over-the-shoulder - manouvre. As opposed to check the make-up and adjust the sunglasses and dust mask.
Using the gears: -to slow you down – to accelerate out of trouble. (Yes, there are more than two). As opposed to stamping on the back brake and making the clutch scream.
Correct braking: – that wee handle on the right, first – not that pedal thing at your feet. As opposed to fishtailing it all over the place.
Maybe all of this is covered by the Theory Section of the test, which we foreign Comrades don’t have to complete? It is assumed that since we are already holders of driving licences from our native countries that we will know all of that theory-stuff anyway, right? Besides the three skills mentioned above, what kind of test situation could possibly prepare us for:
Riding axel-deep in murky water
Mounting the pavement during rush hour and doing a slalom between pedestrians, food stalls and parked vehicles.
Having a chat on the mobile while transporting that fridge across town.
‘Off-roading it’ while you are still on what passes as the road, by applying the kind of 4×4 driving principles that people pay good money to learn about by choice in other countries.
Taking more than one passenger across town while trying to share a poncho in a rainstorm.
Making left turns which involve incredibly shallow angles of trajectory, resulting in you driving against oncoming traffic for most of the way. . .or – just plain driving down the street the wrong way.
Using your flapping hands as indicators when it is just too noisy and crowded to be noticed.
Riding through a crowded marketplace on a Saturday morning.
Pushing and heaving your dead weight of a ‘Honda’ out of / in to the cramped regimented lines which the Parking-Nazi has created.
Dealing with the ‘Boys in Beige’. “Why have you stopped me?”, “Because we can”. ” What’s this? a pair of greens – that’ll do nicely Anh!”
Here then, is what you actually have to do when you reach the Lai Xe. I should mention that it is a kind of a test just getting to the test centre in the first place. My test-time said 12.30pm , so I duly arrived 10 minutes beforehand to witness a scene of pandemonium. So many people, so many motorbikes weaving in and out of painted lines and criss crossing a courtyard the size of a couple of tennis courts, no sign of any queue or reception area or any other place to check in. Eventually I am able to find out that everyone is simply ‘practising’ and that when it comes to test-time our names will be called out. Watching ‘the practising’ it reminded me of those very first visits to the Murrayfield Ice Rink as learner- skater. There was no quarter for someone who fumbled and slid onto their bum or skated too slow -you had to be mobile fast. Even though it was considered rude to skate counter clockwise or to deviate from the flow of other skaters, that didn’t seem to bother most learners who doggedly persisted in skating against the flow with their arms flailing or crossing dangerously the paths of more experienced skaters. The participants at this test centre showed a similar disregard for turn -taking and etiquette, as if reluctant to share the facilities with others who were using them. Mass nervousness prevailed.
The very first manoeuvre you must perform for the panel of examiners, who sit court-side for the duration is the ‘Figure-of-Eight’. And it is really recommended that you practise this, as there are tight turns involved and it is surprisingly tricky to stay within the narrow painted track provided. Obviously, one musn’t put a foot down. I think the added pressure to performing this manoeuvre comes from the fact that from a standing start, on an unfamiliar, aged, test-centre motorbike, in front of a throng of onlookers, you are expected to execute this flawless two wheeled-ballet. After that, it’s piss easy. Ride up a straight channel, marked-out by kerbstone walls, weave in and out of some cones, ride over a rumble strip and you’re all done.
An A1 licence qualifies you to ride a motorbike in Vietnam with an engine size up to 150cc. Below is a summary of a very useful and recent ‘The Word, HCMC’ magazine article, by Sarah Johnson which helped me go through the steps to getting my licence:
“In a recent crackdown by traffic police in Vietnam, if you are caught without a licence you run the risk of having your bike comfiscated for up to a month and as the Australian Embassy website points out, penalties for driving unlicensed and casuing an accident whether you are at fault or not can be up to ten years imprisonment and if that accident is fatal, twenty years. Actual penalties are determined by the police and courts. getting a driving licence removes these potential sticky situations.
Pop down to 63, Ly Tu Trong Street in District 1. pick up an application form and fill it out with your personal details. You will be asked to have the form verified by your embassy and you will need to provide photocopies of your visa page and passport photo page as well as six 2cm x3cm passport-style photos. Go along to your consulate and explain that you need proof of your signature for a Vietnamese driver’s licence. At the bottom of the form, you are required to sign. Don’t sign it until you’re in front of the relevant person at the consulate.
When you’ve got all the required bits ‘n’ pieces assembled, go back to 63 Ly Tu Trong Streetand hand them in. They will ask you to go for a health check. You wll also be asked to have an eyesight test. This happens on site. Take the proof of good health back to the counter and you will be given the time and place of your driving test.
If you already possess a driving licence from your home country then things are a lot easier. You will need to get it translated at 47 Le Duan in District 1. Take the original along with two photocopies, go to the appropriate counter and come back three days later to pick up a translated document. If you don’t have a driver’s licence from your home country, things get a whole lot more complicated. you will be required to take a theory test in Vietnamese. The test comprises of 100 questions and there are various tricks to taking it which you can discover when you go for three two-hour study sessions on a Sunday.
On the day of the test remember to bring along your original passport and driver’s licence. Don’t be surprised if you are asked to fill in another form with personal details which is then taken to the examiners, who sit in front of where the people take the test. Your name goes into a pile and you’ll be called when it is your turn.”
Thanks to Sarah Johnson writing for ‘The Word, HCMC’ magazine in their June issue 2009
What does all of this cost?
VND 500,000 at the consulate / embassy for having the form stamped. (Price varies according to country).
VND30,000 for the health check
VND70,000 for the fee for the licence
VND 40,000 to have your home licene translated.
Happy motorbiking, Comrades!
Comrades, my doorstep discovery in the last posting made me reflect upon how we fine citizens of Ho Chi Minh City deliberately use alcohol -the greatest of all the available drugs to modify our behaviour and undergo what can only be described as a transformation process. At ‘The Ministry’, where I am employed – alcohol and its consumption is considered to be the most evil of the social evils and the issue is handled with extreme prejudice. Our pious General Secretary has strictly forbidden it’s presence on Ministry premises and would have us immediately deported should we as much as turn up with a whiff of booze on our breath. “The demon drink” he says, will corrupt the younger party members and lead the fresh-faced recruits astray. You can imagine then the scale of the piss-up which ensues when Ministers, Party officials and members of the Politburo cut loose in Saigon when comes round to Friday night again.
I make no apologies for my background, Comrades. I am your bog-standard Scots male who would rather crawl into a bottle before opening up to you on any kind of emotional level and my favourite novel really is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde”. Yours truly has stood silently drinking through funeral wakes, brought on the David Brent dance routine at weddings, been convinced that I am indeed God’s gift to women, shared my erudite wit and deeply felt philosophies regardless of audience or purpose, verged on death by embarrassment and succeeded in using my drinking implement as a weapon. Just like any other man from Scotland who understands the phrase “a glass of : ‘what the fuck are you looking at?’” I am no stranger to the transformative effects of a bevvy. The art of drinking excessively was respectfully learned in the Middle East during that job that The Party won’t let me talk about. Then I was forced to reassess that dubious claim when working for ‘The Ministry of Borscht’ in Ukraine, where there are really only are two rules: 1) Never go out drinking with Ukranians 2) Read the first rule again. Thus it has continued in a pathetic litany of alcohol abuse on into a life here in Vietnam. However, Comrades, let me tell you, that this is the only place in the world where I may have been actually poisoned by the stuff, and it didn’t involve pickled poisonous creatures either (read the latest article on the specter of fake alcohol in the current issue of ‘The Word’ Magazine HCMC for more on this hazard). It is also the only place in the world where I have experienced men literally drink themselves to death.
Mario Vargas Llosa in his novel “Death in the Andes” describes beautifully the mysterious, inexorable pull towards the teat of that beast which is alcohol, through his evil barman character Dionisio. For those whose bovine compliance to the siren call of the boozer is an automatic one, Llosa has nailed it in one metaphorical image:
‘Animals are happier than you and me, Corporal, sir.” Dionisio laughed and became a bear again. “They live, eat, sleep and fuck. They don’t think, they don’t have worries like us, and that’s our misfortune. He’s paying a visit to his animal now, just see if he isn’t happy.’
Transformation, shamanistic experience and the transcendental effects of being under the influence are all embodied in Llosa’s image of ‘visiting your animal’. I must try this Comrades, “I’m off to visit my animal, my dear – don’t wait up for me!” or “I won’t be into work today, I had a visit from my animal last night”. “Sorry I was visting my animal, I really didn’t mean to do that. . . You like animals, don’t you?”
How then do we find out what our animal is, Comrades? If snake wine restores your mojo and brings out the hidden Hugh Heffner in you, what’s to be said about other types of booze? Could we assign an animal to each of the types of alcohol even if the creature’s presence were not physically within the bottle? If we did, Comrades then the list would probably look like this:
VODKA – The Horse. Contrary to popular iconography, vodka is in a fact a Horse, not a Bear (unless it is VN Vodka, then it is a Macaque Monkey with a fast metabolism and no social skills). You can ride Horse on into the night with abandon -a breeze upon your face and Horse’s fetlocks blowing. All the while Horse’s hooves pound out a rhythm to house music. This arrangement works particularly well when teamed up with a red Bull. Horse will transmit an infectious sociability and directness to you in your evening together. However be aware Horse is notoriously unpredictable and willful. Horse may steer you stubbornly in another direction if not confidently handled. There is also a danger that Horse may also buck and kick-out when alarmed or threatened and may even dismount you, leaving you on the street with no fags and not quite enough Dong for a ‘xe om’ home.
GIN – The Hippopotamus. Hippo appears to be a solid, somewhat dubiously sophisticated option. Hippo has a gentle giant’s strength. You can be in hippo’s company very pleasantly for much of an evening, however there will come a point in that evening where the conversation will become maudlin and hippo will start to drag you down. Before you know it, you too will be wallowing with this massive bore, trapped in a mud hole for two, listening to this fat, negative bastard- pissing, whining and complaining about how bad life is. Before long the whole evening has turned to arse, and you are standing miserably alone on Hai Ba Trung in the rain again. That’s usually when the tears start.
MALT WHISKY – The Stag. Once you join Stag on those rolling, misty, purple-heathered moors, you and Stag will bond like reunited friends. The conversation will come easily and the two of you will pick up exactly where you left off. There are no uneasy silences with Stag and the kind of respect and authority that Stag enjoys when gracefully making a passage through the shafts of sunlight in the forest, can only be described as regal. You and Stag will wade in private trout streams and sit by a fireside together, even though it is actually 30 degrees centigrade outside with high humidity and the Saigon evening traffic is noisy and smelly – you won’t notice a thing when you graze with Stag. One side effect of hanging out with Stag is that you may start getting delusions of grandeur and get a bit ‘up yourself’. You may for example, fantasize about appearing on the pages of “Asia Life” with Stag and yourself looking brooding and cool together in a venue like Cepage or Xu. You may also initiate all that air-kissing bollocks and insist on hugging people when greeting them. But because you want Stag’s company all to yourself, you will not invite them to join you. When it comes to the end of the evening you will see Stag retreat slowly and disappear into the mist like an apparition. You will probably be left with the bill as Stag is tight bastard.
WHISKY – The Sea-lion. With Sea-lion you must expect a degree of formation behaviour during your sessions together. Like a pair of syncronised swimmers your mood will be playful but directed. A great deal of mimicking takes place between you and Sea-lion. You may find yourself later into your evening performing that rather annoying habit of ‘bar-slapping’. A phenomenon usually associated with men of a certain age who hang out in bars such as M52 or Voodoo -where you and Sea-lion can manipulate the playlist so that you can continue slapping the bar to the beat of your favourite Bryan Adams, U2 or Depeche Mode tracks. There’s no getting away with it – being with Sea-lion is immense fun! You may even be tempted to perform a few cheeky tricks ranging from tossing peanuts into your mouth, flipping the bar mats into the air and catching them or perhaps making a half grope- half slap motion for the ass of that bar girl you’ve been eyeing all up night. You and Sea-lion will entertain together and nobody will be more entertained by you than yourselves. On the downside you will be a whole lot more susceptible to the whims of others when with Sea-lion you may find yourself being easily influenced to say. . .try some of that dried squid from the guy with the bike on Bui Vien outside GO2 bar.
TEQUILA- The Chimpanzee. A night on the town with Chimp is a highly unpredictable one. Chimp and you will enjoy using tools for your drinking. Since you both have opposable thumbs this is going to be an important distinction from visiting the other animals. Chimp likes to participate in rituals which involve mutual licking, lime squeezing and hollering before tipping back the shots. You will experience a good deal of loud expulsions of air accompanied by a teeth-baring grimace, and a shaking of the head. You may even find yourself as the evening wears on in the company of Chimp developing a kind of tourrettes syndrome. The moment you find yourself climbing upon bar furniture or raising your arms above your head to dance when there really is no call for it, it’s probably a time to say goodbye to your socially inept companion Chimp. Another warning sign would be when you begin to steal someone’s hat, scarf, glasses etc. and attempt to wear them inappropriately. Chimp needs to learn to be more under control sometimes and often acts like a twat. Incessantly showing any of your body parts below the neck to strangers surely must cross anyone’s line. On the way home it is highly likely you will pucker-up to present a sloppy kiss to some unsuspecting Saigon resident such as the security girl outside La Habana.
RUM -The Parrot. An evening with Parrot will have you bar-hopping all over the toon. You and parrot will hear the news, sports scores and gossip in Phattys bar and then as soon as you get to Sheridan’s find yourselves repeating it verbatim with loud authority and so on throughout the evening. Parrot will have you gliding between the small groups of drinkers and nodding and cocking your head on one side as you listen to what they have to say. As you and Parrot shuffle back and forth along the length of the bar- your colourful display, vibrant personality and loud outbursts will attract female attention. This is where your rudimentary grip on Tieng Viet stands you in good stead as you spend what seems like a long time listening intently and repeating how to say something to the lovely girls as they correct your crap Vietnamese- all the while bobbing your head like you get what’s going on. On a night when the music’s good you and Parrot will sway and rock on your bar stools to the rhythm- breaking out sporadically into impromptu karaoke. This is not always appreciated by other punters and occasionally Parrot’s loudmouth can get on peoples tits, Parrot has a reputation for being a loud bastard and tends to fall prey to drinkers visiting their Hyena or their Bear. As you fly on home to your perch you wish to yourself that someone else would just pull that sheet over your head for a change.
This is by no means an extensive menagerie Comrades, and I hear you saying already “what about the ‘Bear‘ and ‘Hyena’?”. Well, suffice to say- they are the manifestations of joining with Macaque Monkey + Hippo or Macaque Monkey + Sea-lion . . .or any other such variation with the above which are likely to make your quest to the animal realm and the consequences of that mystery journey less than pleasant. My darts team (don’t worry it is in fact a Ministry-approved sport / hobby) ran into one such example just the other week. A hapless Mess of a fellow who had visited more than one animal of an evening. Not only did his naked aggression offend and intimidate- it dragged down the evening for everyone concerned, as a result of his growling and roaring. A scary reminder for those of us who understand the tone of evenings in dodgy housing estate pubs across the length and breadth of the UK. I think a wee visit to the Vet may be in order for this one. . .
Slainte, Comrades!
“siempre encontrara chamba.” (“With people sucking booze the world over, there will always be someone to hustle.”) from “Death in the Andes” by Mario Vargas Llosa
Just before Vietnam’s National Day at the beginning of this month, our neighbour decided to do make some uniquely Vietnamese home brew in the hem lane outside of our house. Our neighbour’s activities have always peeked our curiosity, as most things which take place in front of our house range from the mildly odd to the distinctly surreal. Women urinating, tethered chickens protesting, dogs being barbecued on bricks, small fires being lit for ancestors, nits and white hairs being removed from patient heads, impromptu badminton tournaments, opera singing, children’s bicycle races and pomelo-peel-installation art, to name but a few.
On this occasion they had drafted the help of some local ‘expert’ to perform the task of making a snake wine. This innocuous looking character seemed to have been a purveyor of fine venomous snakes, snake charmer / handler, vivisector, taxidermist and brewer all in one. A young man in his late twenties, one wonders how he came about this knowledge base and these quirky skills in the context of early 21st century urban life. The missus had nearly jumped out of her skin when she first spied the cobra rearing up in the kitchen doorway of their house across the way. We had missed the bit where Snakey Boy had gutted the writhing cobra by slitting its belly vertically and removing its innards only to replace them with a chopstick spine to make it erect and lifelike once again. The same fate had befallen six other members of the snake family who now lay like a pile of discarded colourful belts in a plastic washing up bowl on the ground. Laid at our feet were plastic bags of dried up herbs, what looked like wood chips but may have slices of dried roots, a dead black bird and a leathery, wizened animal’s penis. All of this was spread out in the narrow alley between our houses alongside a plastic jerrycan of clear fluid and a gallon sized glass jar. It was like preparing to watch an episode of “MythBusters”.
Snake wine and its variations comes in two varieties- steeped and mixed. Steeped where large poisonous snakes are placed into a glass jar of rice wine, along with a mixed array of other optional creatures such as scorpions, turtles, birds, spiders even sea horses. The jar, reminiscent of a prop from a “Slip Knot” concert or an item from Marilyn Manson’s dressing table, is then left to steep for anything from 3 months to 500 years. The expectation being that the longer time the ingredients have to ferment together the more the snake’s venom is absorbed by, dissolved and neutralised by the ethanol. The ‘wine’ is then presumably served up only when you are already really really pissed, have no more booze to hand because the shops are closed, need to counteract the effects of narcotics or actually sincerely believe that you will get laid soon after imbibing.
Then there’s Mixed snake wine which provides evidence that the concept for the movie “Jackass” first emerged a long time ago in this South East Asia region and not as one may have been led to believe – in North America. Once you have wrestled with a highly venomous and enraged cobra and succeeded in slitting its body from throat to tail, without ending up laid out on the floor in the death throes of anaphylactic shock, foaming at the mouth. Its simply a matter of dribbling it’s blood (or if you prefer it’s bile) into a wee glass of rice wine or Hanoi vodka before knocking it back immediately to impress your friends. How they will laugh and applaud your daredevil feat! Why not then promptly follow this by swallowing the snakes still-beating heart to really bring out the beast in you?
Omnivorous Vietnamese believe that a little tipple of snake wine will do wonders for your hair loss, farsightedness, lumbago, cramps, fatigue but most of all your libido. In the days before Viagra and research into the causes of infertility and impotence this must have offered some kind of hope. Nowadays these exaggerated claims seem anything but likely. Yet this bizarre beverage can be found on sale just about everywhere here. It’s continuing presence as an item in tourist shops is understandable. We can well imagine, particularly you fellow fans of Australia’s satirical film “The Castle”, how such an item may be prized as a souvenir – “this is going straight to the pool room” . You would be lucky of course if were to it ever reach your pool room without first being confiscated by customs. In many countries it is illegal to import snake wine due it to containing an endangered species which has been killed for it’s production. The food and drink equivalent of the ‘ vampire-fruit’- bat, iridescent butterly or outsized spider souvenir encased in cotton wool and cheaply framed, as a memento of your exotic trip in Asia. To find snake wine being made domestically in a residential area was a kind of surprise to me because as it revealed that this ‘traditional remedy’ endures and continues to be consumed by locals in the arena of everyday life.
The bowl of pho that is the internet, turns up a surprising amount on the subject of snake wine or ’snake whiskey’ as it sometimes described. There are even a mail-order sites for those of us Comrades who are not lucky enough to live in Vietnam or another country which celebrates this peculiar tradition. At “Thailand Unique” you can place an order for your ‘Real Cobra and Scorpion Whisky’ (from Vietnam). “Fun Tim” has presented a staggering archive of images which documents the sheer varieties of these kind of snake wines, collected from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and China. As to where in all of these countries did the concept of snake wine first originate ? I am still no clearer, Comrades. Vietnam is billed as the home of snake wine but other literature on the subject says that perhaps it came out of China from the Cantonese culture.
Does this pickled poisonous creature ‘remedy’ work for both men and women alike? I wonder. Maybe it is an urban myth, like the one which tells us that a wee bit of “Viagra” works as well for women as it does for disfunctional men? Comrades, I would be interested to know how one would broach this with your prospective partner, once that specimen jar of nasties has been unveiled. “Honey, I thought we’d try some of this snake – scorpion- dead bird – seahorse wine tonight. . .” said with a twinkle in the eye.
The season of rain is upon us once more, good citizens of Ho chi Minh City! Once again, I am living daily in that “Travis” song. My commute to the Ministry, Comrades has again reverted to a logistical exercise involving precise timing, deployment of specialist kit and careful navigation. Despite living close to the Vietnamese Naval Barracks, working next door to the Naval Training College and renting my house from an officer in the Navy – you couldn’t really say that I was any sort of sailor. However it has become abundantly clear over the years here that my life as a landlubber isn’t going to get me to work in the pristinely-uniformed state that the Ministry would prefer me in when performing my duties. If you have lived here for any sort of time between the months of August to December, you will understand that to travel through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City is to witness the boundary between road and waterway being blurred. It rains and it rains and then it rains some more, drains overflow, the sewers back up and excess rainwater has nowhere else to go. Then of course there is the weirdness of the tidal water to add to the equation, which monthly rises menacingly from the spongy earth and swirls an unspeakable mix of fluids around the streets and low-lying areas. If you are really unlucky and there is a new or a full moon- you get the dreaded and aptly named ‘King Tide’. A once monthly occurance which renders the streets into canal -ways even without the rainfall. Motorbiking in this is not for the faint -hearted. The slimy waters of Nguyen Huu Canh street have taken many a victim during these post storm episodes. A motorised stew of humanity inches along, sputtering, paddling and cursing whilst cutting a path through a ghastly broth of general runoff, building site waste water and human waste. Ugh! We’ve all been there; playing that game on a wobbling, drunken, moped -up to the axels in kak……You’re not going to put your foot down….you’re not going to put your foot down, you’re not going to…the bike is wobbling as you slow down… what are slowing down for ? Get the f*#k outta the way! Why are we slowing down? ..you’re not going to…There goes the balance! You’re not going… Bugger and shite! Your feet are in it!….. First one, then the other! Socks and trouser legs are like clamy dressings …….nasty. You spend the rest of the day, looking like a right twat, with squidgy shoes, a mouldy niff about you and those damp two-tone trouser legs.
After four years of nearly contracting trenchfoot on such journeys, I have employed a fleet of no less than 3 pairs of shoes as a first measure of defence (one to wear while driving- which gets wet on the way to work, one dry pair which remains in dock at work and one pair (that has dried out from yesterday’s voyage) to go back wearing (not forgetting to give passage home to the morning’s slightly less sodden pair )-which by the morning will be dry enough to start all over again). Meanwhile my desk drawer at work gives harbour to clean dry socks and “Good Morning” towels. I have absolutely no problem with looking like a lost fisherman; wader -like waterproof over- trousers and brightly coloured kagoul done up to the neck, when I bike it to work. Yes, I am that eccentric in 36 c degrees of heat and full sun, gunning it over An Phu bridge in the mornings. You may well point, laugh and comment on how anyone could stand wearing all of that gear in this heat is beyond you , but I can assure you Comrades it is entirely necessary. Because I know, I just know, that sure as submarines are submarines, the final leg of my commute will be turned into some sort of motocross experience. As the tradtional An Phu tidewaters ebb and flow into the narrow streets and provide for me a dramatic water-fording finale not 800metres from my final destination.
The bow wave created from my motorbike is most impressive, it has to be said. And this pleasing by-product of driving in deep water has enabled me to continue to behave badly in that boy racer vein and soak the f*#ckers who give you all that fishtailing-it while over taking you bullshit. Usually, the “might is right” law of HCMC streets/waterways, means that the humble two wheeled vessels are the ones which will be deluged in a wake of greasy water thrown up by larger passing vessels with more wheels. Bastards!
On my route to work
It’s good seamanship that’s called for here Comrades! I’m not talking Russel Crowe in “Master and Commander”, but I am referring to some basic knowledge of what’s happening to the tides and the weather and a good understanding of what the lie of the land/ seabed is, before it is obscured by black waters. Kind of like the opposite to the fear of running aground (you only need to drive into a hidden hole beneath the water once to know what I am talking about). You too may set a course through downtown HCMC without driving into a swampy bottle neck with 1000 other hapless waterlogged motorbikes. This one-man ship of fools then has never been the smartest sailor on the deck, and it is only very recently Comrades, after a conversation with another sailor/biker at my mechanic’s that I realised it may just be possible to make some headway in predicting these tides and flooding episodes.
Tides and tidal forces it seems are entirely governed by the sun and the moon, the moon being the main tide generating body. If the study of this really floats your boat, then the page for Vietnam’s Maritime and Social Network – VinaMaso has a great deal of information on the physics of this and much more on explaining tide levels and tidal currents to the layperson. As far as being able to distinguish whether the moon you are spotting in the sky above the Gotham City-esque ‘Manor’ building is ‘waxing gibbous’ or ‘waning half’, then the not -surprisingly titled My Forecast page is a good place to begin. Here you can find timings for the tides effecting Ho Chi Minh City expressed as tables, along with current condition and special reports and weather forecasts expressed as maps. Then there is the impressive sounding and equally impressive looking page for flood warnings in Vietnam- The National Centre for Hydro- Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF). A web page which blinks and pulses like the dials of a submarine’s dashboard, and comes up with reams of figures and data which in all honesty is quite hard to translate into a simple answer to the question “is it going to flood on my journey to work this week?”.
Flooding and storms when they happen here, can be very alarming for the newcomer to our fair city and in my short inglorious history living here I have pushed barefoot, trousers rolled up, my wretched other mode of transport – the Vespa (now decommissioned) through more floodwater than I would care to remember. Being soaked to the skin and miserable has become an unavoidable certainty it seems. The single most important thing I would recommend you to always to have about your person’s this rainy season Comrades, is the humble ziplock bag. . .
Now you may be a cynical reader who has never visited Vietnam or Ho Chi Minh City, and is asking yourself how bad can this flooding he talks of really be? This video footage shot two years ago during rainy season may give you some idea of the scale of the problems the city is facing.
Phew! Conditions like this continue to be seen and in my opinion, as an HCMC resident, seem to be getting steadily worse. Comrades, if you are a reader of the Ministry endorsed ‘Word HCMC’ magazine you will have perhaps read a recent article on page 10 of August’s issue entitled “Underwater”. As one of the 10 cities worldwide most at risk from climate change, our dear tan pho HCMC has been predicted to be underwater in around an alarming 40 years time. Or so the recent papers on climate change have revealed. Ho Long Phi of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology presented his: “Climate Changes & Urban Flooding in Ho Chi Minh City” at the Third International conference on Climate and Water in Helsinki during September, 2007 and it looks as if his findings were on the right track. Perhaps this is the reason why Vietnam’s Navy is investing in 6 Kilo- Class attack submarines to be purchased second-hand (to the tune 0f $1.8 billion USD) from the Russians? It seems as if the recent Ministry of Noodles posting ‘Visa Geezer’ had correctly taken the Vietnamese -international-relations temperature after all and was correct in the assumptions that all is not hunky-dory with Vietnam’s neighbours -specifically China. Now, whether this purchase of serious naval hardware is because of the doom and gloom scenario of a nation soon to be underwater within my lifetime, or due to a forthcoming scrap over the Spratly and Paracel Islands we shall perhaps never get to really know. Suffice to say we’ll just have to see what the tide brings in.
Back to work again. . . .Enjoy
If you have been following this blog, then you’ll know that I have made some perhaps rather unkind remarks about the nature of lifestyles in the U.K. Reflection on the need for us U.K. citizens to express ourselves (“I just gotta be ME!”) and then in an attempt to do this- ending up being virtually the same as each other, has been discussed. Status anxiety dictates that we cannot stray too far from our positions as temporary residents in the Court of Style. That is of course if we ever gain entry to the Court in the first place! I recall an incident when I was much younger when my parents would still be buying my clothes for me. Rather than experience the shame and humiliation of wearing humble unbranded trainers in the arena of 5- a -side football game with far cooler “Nike” wearing mates, my friend and I put “Tippex” correction fluid to work, in order to paint in that coveted “Swoosh” upon our training shoes. Modification, you see Comrades, is a way of faking status. Let’s be honest, if you have recently had a tattoo done you must have been thinking to yourself, even for a small part of the process: “This is gonna make me look like a real badass“. You. . . and thousands of others who have sought to ’set themselves apart’ in a burgeoning, ‘underclass’ of pierced, tattooed teachers, accountants, estate agents, sales reps, librarians, clerks, bank employees, housewives and so on. I think you are beginning to get my drift (if you’ll excuse the pun), Comrades.
Nowhere does modification better of course than in Asia. My recent trip to the Ministries in Singapore and Malaysia has presented me with a smoergaasbord of automobile modification ( that’s American for doing-up your car) which has given me cause to write once again about the curious habits of Comrades over the water. I have often weighed up this dilemma – you have a perfectly good vehicle, which offers scope for real performance on the road. Yes, it may have just rolled off the production line recently, and yes, it may not be in quite the colour scheme you’d really like, as there wasn’t perhaps enough of a choice. It’s true that there is nothing structurally or mechanically wrong with it and it’s true that, with care and through proper servicing, maintenance and repairs it will perhaps even improve in its performance as well as providing reliability and safety as your motoring…..Why then, would you want it to look like an ocean trench mini-sub and have it propelled by rocket technology? Actually, that does sound rather good doesn’t it? The key here Comrades, in this classically Singaporean flavoured example, is that you begin with a performance car and then you modify it so that it then exceeds itself. My kind of modifications are the ones which enhance brake horsepower, torque and acceleration. A steroid -swallowing, body builder’s approach to car modification, if you wish. These are the kinds of thing you can read about extensively in the pages of Singaporean publication “Hot Stuff” should you be of that species of petrol-head. You mean there’s more than one species of petrol head? I hear you say. Yes my, Comrades there is. In this next species, I recall my vainglorious colleague once more, who purchased the same model of motorbike as me here in Vietnam. Instead of thoroughly checking it out -M.O.T style, he insisted that it had to be delivered to him with cosmetic modifications which would later render him in the role of ‘James Bond Villan’ when he sat in the saddle. It had, in other words, ‘to look the part’ (certain areas re-coloured, stickers removed / added for effect). Clearly it’s performance was (and remains, I am happy to say as he eats my exhaust fumes) -secondary.
Ah vanity! It is precisely this kind of thinking which drives a whole subculture of young men in Singapore and Malaysia to completely festoon their vehicles and apply near ridiculous extremes of modification. A cosmetic styling which derives itself from a variety of sources ranging from the circus sideshow, aeronautics, the tattoo parlor, science fiction, Hong Kong cinema, MTV, Japanese comics and electronic goods stores. For these men, there is no limit, it seems, to how you may cosmetically adapt and modify a vehicle. They are of course the ‘Ah Bengs’. They represent a group of car modifiers who haven’t necessarily begun with a performance car yet have sought to make it exceed itself cosmetically. The kind of guys ‘go-faster-stripes’ were invented for.
It has to be pointed out that is still possible to qualify as an Ah Beng with a performance car modified for excessive performance and cosmetics at the same time. This rarer breed, it is fair to say, would be confined more to Singapore unless spotted at one of Johor Baru’s many exclusive Ah Beng car boutiques where I took these shots of Singaporean rides being polished to within an inch of their lives.
Having first been treated to a ‘Snow Wash’ the vehicles appear to be polished with what looks like my Dad’s old “Black and Decker” drill with a chamois on a disc attached to it. This particular street in JB throbs to sound of unmuffled exhausts and the rhythms of bass from tint-darkened cockpits. It represents the last stopping off point before crossing the causeway back to Singapore after a weekend’s abusing Malaysian traffic laws. Here Ah Beng can refuel cheaply, have some guys swarm his car to make it look super-clean inside and out and buy pirated DVD movies while eating crab and sinking a cold one. Sweet!
Social disparity is a cruel thing, I know, I live in Ho Chi Mean City. So it is no surprise that the Malaysian counterpart Ah Beng’s cosmetically
modify the very essence out of their “Proton”, “Perodua”, or that other manufacturer of unspeakably bad cars which I can’t even be bothered to remember. Malaysia, you see in order to protect it’s car industry has punitively high taxes for importing cars from other countries and as a result the price of second hand cars – particularly the dead sitters for modification (“Honda” ‘Prelude’/'Stream’ , “Mitsubishi” ‘Colt’ /’Lancer’, “Subaru” ‘Impreza’ etc.) remains extremely high. Our poor ‘Ah Beng’ from Malaysia has to find a way to make his “Proton” ‘Satria’ look ‘the shit’ before he can be taken seriously as a boy racer. What to do? It’s a cruel world when you are taking on their Singaporean counterparts as they burn up the highway to Malacca, KL and Penang in their minted Japanese or European rides. If you have ever driven in Malaysia you will understand that an alarming number of hot-headed malaysian males (and a startling number of females) will spend the rest of their lives trying to overtake you again should you so much as push into a traffic queue ahead of them or inadvertently overtake them in the first instance. Heaven forbid you should drive faster than them in their box-shaped “Perodua” ‘Kenari’! I think it was the ‘Kenari’ or was it the equally irritating ‘Kancil’ that was commented on as being the car most likely to be seen reversing down the motorway in Malaysia?
Jeremy Clarkson has done enough damage already in his slagging off the Malaysian car industry, and I don’t need the grief by following in his footsteps and stating the bleeding obvious. Suffice to say that if your only options were a “Proton ‘Saga’” or a “Perodua ‘Kancil’” then you would probably modify them as well, Comrades! The spirit of “Optimus Prime” and the “Autobots” 
would doubtless be with you. I fear that your modifications would be of the cosmetic kind because to implement the other kind- then you might just as well hang the expense and buy a second hand Japanese car to begin with. Then of course if you are keen on blue LED lights, “Pink Panther’s” suctioned onto the windscreen(s) a dash populated by plastic and soft toys, window stickers for every bloody thing, fake alloy covers for your tiny wheels and a spoiler from the ‘Batmobile’, you could really make your ride quintessentially Malaysian.
The nagging thought that I have at the moment is what would it be like if most Vietnamese could afford motorcars? And: how would they embrace the spirit of modification to compensate for the disparities in performance and style when they had them? It is definitely in the post for Vietnam, as only yesterday I spotted what passes as an ‘Ah Beng Car’ parked up in the Rua Xe / Car wash place next to my motorobike mechanics workshop on Nguyen Huu Canh street. This example doesn’t even give away it’s original manufacturer (I think it started out as a “Honda”) it is so heavily modified, yet it embraces that bad boy-racer spirit nicely, I think you’ll agree. Oh yes Ah Beng is coming Comrades, just you wait and see! Just as the era of big engined motorcycles has started here in Saigon- so there is slow drift towards the street cars that we know and love from our passionate petrol-headed Comrades over the water.
