Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

THE Philippines welcomed one of the world’s symbolic “seven billionth” babies today, after she arrived to a celebratory cheer at a packed government-run hospital.
Weighing 2.5 kilos (5.5 pounds), Danica May Camacho was delivered just before midnight amid an explosion of media flash bulbs in the delivery room at Manila’s Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital.

“I can’t believe she is the world’s seventh billion” said mother, Camille Dalura.

The child is one of several in countries around the world being declared a symbolic seven billionth human.

Ever since I was young, I always thought “I wonder when we will reach 7 billion people in the world. We’re so close”. Well, now we have, and I think its an amazing milestone in human history. I think it marks a stage of human evolution.

The day we became 7 billion.

I’ve been stranded in Singapore since Thursday. I’ll tell you more about that later but right now I just want to tell you about some of the amazingly nice people I’ve met just wandering around Singapore. Sure, everyone in Vietnam is very friendly… but you know why of course. They either want your money directly or they want to rip you off. There are very few truly genuine Vietnamese people who will treat you with respect. But Singapore is not Vietnam.

Firstly… It cost me a lot of money to change my flight. Pretty much every cent I had left in fact. I had just enough money to arrange another flight home and then I was basically so broke I couldn’t afford to eat. I mean a Double Whopper with Cheese in Changi Airport is about $12.50 … and that’s not a meal… that’s just the burger ! Seriously !

I was sitting at the internet terminals and everyone was having problems because the primary Wifi access point that the information desk was telling everyone to use (You have to show them your passport and they give you a 4 hour password to use the wifi) didn’t work and everyone was confused.

Fortunately I knew that SG and Starhub are the same company and so I was providing tech support for everyone in the airport lounge, advising them how to get online since the information desk were as useless as tits on a bull. A Filipino guy joked “Sounds like you should work here. You obviously know more than they do. Maybe they should be paying you since you’re in here doing IT support for everyone.

He started chatting to me more and asked where I was headed and I told him Brisbane and he said “Wow. Me too ! What suburb ?” and I said “I don’t live there anymore but I used to live in Inala” and he said “That’s amazing. My family live in Archerfield… right beside Inala. That’s where I’m headed now. What a coincidence !”. I reluctantly said to him “Hey I don’t mean to sound like I’m hustling… but I missed my connecting flight and I’m out of money. You don’t want to buy a laptop hard drive do you ?” He asked how much and I said “I’d sell one for $60 ? At least that’d get me out of trouble and let me eat a couple of meals here”.

He said “No thanks I don’t really need one. But look. I’ll do something for you because you’re a fellow Brisbanite. Take this” and he handed me a large wad of Pesos from the Philippines. I said “Oh wow. Thank you so much. How much is that worth if I exchange it ?” and he said “Mmmmm. A bit less than a hundred dollars Singapore. About 80 Aussie dollars”. I said “Oh my god. I can’t possibly accept that ! Not unless you take a hard drive or something”. He said “Don’t worry about it. I’m the CEO for an aircraft engineering company. A hundred dollars is nothing to me. That’ll help you get buy in Singapore because it’s a really expensive place. I recommend you forget about getting accommodation and sleep upstairs in the lounge. Everyone does it. And go to the 7-11 and buy some cups of noodles. They have hot water there and you can make it on the spot and even buy bread and cheap sandwich ham. You don’t have to pay $25 a meal at these bullshit restaurants that way”.

I was just flabbergasted that this guy I’d never met was just being so generous to me. He then asked what I did for a living and I told him I made web pages. He said “Oh. Maybe we can do business then. I will need a web page for my new company in a couple of months. Are you good ?” and I said “Been doing it for 16 years mate” and he said “Wow that is impressive. Here’s my card. Send me an email. When I need it done. You’re my man”.

So not only did this total stranger just GIVE me close to a hundred dollars so that I could afford to eat and get into the city to buy some clean clothes in Chinatown but he even offered me a job.

But he wasn’t the only amazing person I met. When I went into the city on the train I went to a Japanese restaurant because I swear they have MILLIONS of Japanese restaurants here. I think there’s probably more Japanese restaurants than all other countries combined. So at first I went into MOF, the Japanese Sweets store and restaurant that I love so much in Saigon. But when I looked at the price of a beer… it was $11 for a Sapporo. I just couldn’t afford that. So I went to another place nearby. It was an “All you can eat and all you can drink for 80 minutes Sukiyaki and Shabu Shabu” place. The price wasn’t cheap, but I knew that at least I could finally enjoy a few beers without spending every cent I had.

Needless to say I had the waitress who was serving me running back for more beers pretty damn often ! I’ve never a met a Singaporean girl before and to be honest I actually thought she was Japanese. At many of the Japanese places they are trained to speak basic Japanese but this girl was new and knew nothing and when I said a couple of things in Japanese she asked politely what I was saying. I said “Oh I didn’t realise you weren’t Japanese. I’m sorry. You’re Singaporean ?” and she said “Yes. But I’d like to learn some Japanese so I can do my job better. Could you teach me some ?”

I laughed and taught her how to say good morning, afternoon and evening and say thank you and please and excuse me and she dutifully wrote it all down and then made a fairly decent attempt at thanking me in Japanese. I chuckled and asked if I could get a photo of her. She said “Wouldn’t you rather get one with both of us ?” and I said “Sure ok” and she called over another girl to take a photo of us together with our arms around each other’s shoulders doing the victory sign and everything. It was so cool. Her name was Audrey. She even gave me her email address !!!! I doubt I’ll have a chance to see her tomorrow before I go because she’ll be working and I can’t afford to eat there a second time but at least I can chat to her a little later. Not every girl you have to meet has to result in a relationship. Sometimes it’s just nice to meet someone nice… make a connection… take a photo… and then go your separate ways thinking “Wow. That was a really nice person I just met”.

Then I met some real Japanese women. I was at the hotel in the airport because I had bought some cheap (by Singaporean standards) clothes in Chinatown and I was so desperate for a shower I was willing to pay the $8 they were asking for a 10 minute shower. Two middle aged Japanese women came in and I heard one introduce herself as Misaki. When they realised there was a 40 minute wait on the showers they walked out in disgust but as they were leaving I called out “Kombanwa Misaki-san” (Good evening) and she turned and looked at me puzzled, probably wondering how I knew her. I said “Genki desu ka ?” (Are you well ?) and she nodded and said “Hai. Genki desu.” (Yes, I’m well) I said “Watashi wa David. Hajimimashite” (My name is David. Nice to meet you).

Unfortunately that was about the end of my conversational Japanese abilities so I reverted to English and said “Excuse me for asking, but I’m collecting foreign coins from around the world for my daughter and even though she has a Japanese name… Suki actually and no, her mum isn’t Japanese I just like Japanese culture. But I’ve never met anyone who could give me any Japanese Yen. You don’t have any small value Japanese coins on you do you ?”

She said “Wow. That’s so sweet that your daughter has a Japanese name, and such a pretty one too. Yeah I have a few Yen on me. Here’s a few for your collection” and she gave me some Yen and I thanked her profusely in Japanese and she just chuckled and said “No problem. Nice to meet someone so interested in Japanese culture”

I had to go collect my bag of stuff that I’d left at the lock-up room while I went into Singapore City and when I got there the guy was out and had a note saying he’d be back later. On the counter was a small bowl of tips that people had left. Just like 2 and 5 cent value pieces but they came from all sorts of interesting countries including some I had never gotten coins from. I knew there were cameras there so I felt weird about it but I took all the small coins that I was interested in and then I left a 1 US dollar note in the plate and sat and waited for him to return.

When he came back the first thing he noticed was the dollar bill sitting in the bowl and said “Is that from you ?” and I said “Yes. I hope you don’t mind but I collect coins and I took a few of the small coins you had in your tip bowl and I gave you a dollar to replace them”. He said “No that’s more than ok. Those coins weren’t even worth 20 cents. A one dollar tip is much appreciated. You’re very much welcome to them” and then he got me my bags and said “Thanks for being so honest. Most people would have pinched the coins and just left” and I said “I couldn’t do that. They may be small change but stealing tips is a low act. I’m just glad you didn’t mind me replacing them with a dollar note instead” and he said “Of course not. It’s a pleasure. Those coins were useless to me. I can’t even exchange them because the currency places don’t take coins so at least a dollar bill is worth something to me. You’re doing me a favour if anything”. So we both left happy and satisfied that we’d somehow helped the other person out.

Later this evening I was sitting packing my stuff. I had bought a few small souvenirs. I bought some really nice Vietnamese rice wine before I left Saigon and I didn’t have enough space in my two carry on bags to carry them so I had to buy a small bag that I could squeeze my camera and my souvenirs of Singapore into so I’d bought a cute “Angry Birds” kids travel backpack because it was the cheapest bag I could buy in the airport. Many places wanted as much as $800 for a bag but this kids backpack was only about $50 and I needed it so I bought it. Anyway I was packing my stuff into it and I realised I’d bought TWO boxes of the gigantic imitation Pocky they sell here and there was no way I could take them home.

I had been listening to an American woman talking to her daughter in the lounge chairs next to me and her young daughter wanted more snacks but her mum said she couldn’t have any. I said “Hi. I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but I have this gigantic box of snacks that I can’t possibly take back on the plane. If it’s ok with you, your daughter can have them”. She said “Really ? Thank you ! That’s so nice of you. Abigail. Thank the nice man for the treats”. But Abigail, who was probably four or five was far too shy and shook her head and clutched the huge box to her chest. I chatted to her mum a bit and asked where she’d been living and she said “Kuala Lumpar” and I said “Oh. You don’t happen to have any small coins from there do you ? I collect coins for my own daughter” and I showed her the MASSIVE collection I’d just finished sorting and putting into a smaller bag.

She said “Wow.. that’s impressive. Yeah I do actually. Here’s one of each of all the denominations of coins from Malaysia. That’s hardly a fair trade for the huge box of snacks you just gave Abby but I hope it helps your collection” and I said “Yes. That’s wonderful. Thank you SO very much” and she just said “No. It’s my pleasure. What’s your daughter’s name ?” and of course I told her and showed her my tattoo and she thought it was so sweet that I had a tattoo of Suki’s name written in Japanese. She asked if I would mind keeping an eye on their stuff while she took Abby to the bathroom and I did and then they had to leave. By that time Abigail had opened up and when they left she waved at me and said “Bye bye mister. Thank you” and I nearly cried in happiness just from meeting such lovely people.

That’s what travelling is about. It’s not about taking photos of old buildings and buying postcards. It’s about meeting really wonderful people and talking to them and finding what you have in common and then parting ways knowing just a tiny bit more about another human being and feeling a tiny bit happier for the experience. Sure, getting out on the train and seeing a tiny bit of Singapore was amazing and Chinatown was pretty cool (though I’m disappointed I didn’t have time to see Little India which I believe is another cool suburb of Singapore) but even just sitting around at Changi airport I still met the most wonderful people and we shared stories and random people helped me out when I was down on my luck and I got offered some work and I chatted to some lovely Japanese women in their native language and then I gave a little girl and her mother a big box of snacks and everyone was happy.

Don’t travel for the sake of seeing tourist bullshit. Don’t do tours. Don’t go to stupid tourist traps. Get out and meet real people. Whether they’re tourists too or whether they’re locals… just meet people. It’s what travelling is all about.

You know. I’ve said it before. It’s the journey, not the destination.

Oh and I know you want to see what Audrey the cute Singaporean girl who worked at the Japanese restaurant looks like right ? Ok, here’s a photo of us together. She’s not the girl of my dreams, but apparently the girl of my dreams isn’t interested in me and thinks I can do better than her. Which is just code for “I don’t like you but I’m going to say something nice so that you don’t hate me”. Anyway, here’s Audrey.

I’m going blind it seems.

I woke up with a weird eye infection all of a sudden. My eye has been red and so sore I haven’t been able to open it all day. I got several kinds of eye drops and anti-inflammatory medicine and it has at least stopped hurting but I cannot see out of my right eye anymore. It’s just cloudy and white and I can see nothing.

I am desperately afraid I may lose sight in my right eye. I have found an eye hospital in District 1 but they are very busy and do not even answer the phone. I’m just going to turn up and sit there all day tomorrow until they see me.

I don’t want to go blind. I cannot live without my eyes. I am very, very afraid right now. I am sad and lonely and scared. I miss Suki. I miss my cats. I miss Josh. I hate my lying arsehole parents. If I didn’t have Merry with me right now I wouldn’t have anything to live for at all. Tomorrow I’m going to try and see the eye doctor. After that we’re getting on a bus to Da Lat for a while. I don’t know what we’ll do after that.

My life is upside down. My family is lying to me and keeping things from me. My ex-wife has run away to Alice Springs or somewhere else with my daughter and I am never going to see her again.

Right now I’m not sure I have much reason to go on living. Merry is a great help, but right now I feel so lost and hopeless I just want to step in front of traffic and kill myself just like Josh did. Which considering I can’t see out of one eye, is something not too unlikely to happen.

So I told you I’m not doing this daily “everything in the life of pawz” shit right ? Well I’m not. I will still write, but it’s going to be on a new, private site that only a few chosen friends will have access to. Personally this pains because I love my writing being public. I love how people from as many as 100 countries read my writing, but one or two people always manage to fuck it up by using things I say against me by taking them out of context or making ridiculous inferences so fuck you. You don’t get to read it.

But this is still my personal blog and for the few people I care about I will still tell you certain things about what I’m doing so that you know what happens in my life because I know someone of you genuinely care. And there’s some things I need to get out in the open for everyone to see. I know some of you think this should be private but I think making this shit private just brushes it under the rug. I want it to be right out in the open so everyone knows how I feel and what I’m going through.

Yesterday Merry and I sat on the roof taking photos and drinking rice wine and talking about how much we miss our children. She has two, a girl named Mai who’s 10 and a boy named Nimh who’s 6. While Merry’s father lives in Cambodia, her mother and Merry’s children live in Da Lat in Vietnam. She hasn’t seen her children in 4 years due to some complicated circumstances and she’s just as sad about it as I am about not seeing Suki. But she can at least go back and visit even though there is much tension within her family and her visiting causes a lot of fighting.

We’ve talked about bringing Nimh to come and live with us. We cannot bring Mai at the moment because a good school for her in Saigon is incredibly expensive and far beyond our means right now so she will have to stay in Da Lat until I get a better job. But Nimh is sick right now. Merry doesn’t know the details because her mother and her aren’t on very good terms but we talked to her family a bit yesterday and I talked to Mai both yesterday and today. She sounds so adorable and she speaks such clearly enunciated English which surprises Merry because her own mother cannot speak English at all and when I talked to her mum I had to speak to her in Vietnamese which basically meant that all I could say was hello and introduce myself and tell her she had a beautiful daughter. But speaking to Mai was pretty cool.

Merry wants to go see Nimh. We’re not sure why he’s sick but it’s not a just a cold and she hasn’t seen him for years and she wants me to meet her family and I want to meet them too, so by Monday I should have been paid a little money from a client of mine and as soon as I have the money we’re catching a bus up to Da Lat to see her family so that I can meet her mother and Nimh and Mai.

I’m going to take a job teaching. It’s not something I really wanted to do because the pay is low and the hours are shithouse but if I want to support Merry and her kids then that’s just what I have to do. It’s only part time anyway so I can still pursue other jobs. So when my rent is due next week we’re going to give my landlord the required one month’s notice and we’re going to move out. We’re going to rent a small furnished apartment at the resort in District 11 near the airport that Neil runs. Something small, but hopefully with a kitchen and if possible a balcony and an extra bed so that Nimh can come and live with us.

Suki is as good as dead to me now that Jo is running away interstate with her and won’t talk to my family despite everything they’ve done for her and all the money we’ve given her. For the last four months I’ve spent every day thinking about her and buying her clothes and gifts all the time thinking “I’m going to see you soon Suki… soon and these are all going to be for you”. But that’s not going to happen. Joanna made that very clear. In one breath she said “The child support you send me isn’t enough. I want you to send me $1000 now instead of running around spending money in Saigon”.

And in the next breath she said “No. I’m not sending you any photos and you cannot visit or see Suki”. She said she would never let me see Suki until she was legally old enough to make the decision herself and Jo couldn’t stop her. What a lovely person. She insists I send her money but then says I can’t get so much as a fucking photograph of my daughter let alone see her in person. I hope she fucking dies in a horrific road accident.

Well, I look forward to the day when Suki is legally able to decide for herself to see me and I live in anticipation of whenever that finally happens but I think in the meantime, I have to accept that Suki is not and will not be a part of my life as long as Jo is alive and I should just concentrate on the family that I can have. And now I have two kids who I haven’t yet met. Mai and Nimh. And next week I’m going to meet my new mother-in-law and my two new step-children and hopefully Nimh’s sickness is nothing serious and when we get back to Saigon and move house to District 11, he can come and move in with us and I will finally have a family to care for again like I have wanted for so many years.

All I have wanted, ever since Jo and I started trying to have a child back in 2004 was to have a family to love and care for, but unfortunately Jo just used me, led me on, made me support her and give her a child so that she could run off with my child to live with someone else and never even give me a photo of my child let alone see her. I’m not even going to talk about how immoral or illegal that is because everyone knows. Noone I tell it to can even comprehend how someone could do something so disgustingly abhorrent and cruel.

Since Jo won’t even give me her address so that I can send Suki her gifts I guess I just can’t give them to her. As someone suggested to me recently, I will just continue buying her gifts and then one day when she’s 18 years old and comes to see me I can give her 18 years worth of gifts that I’ve bought and say “Here’s everything I bought for you to show you how much I love you but that your mother wouldn’t let me give you”.

But in the meantime, I guess I’m going to be buying cute clothes for Nimh and Mai instead. I can’t wait to meet them. Maybe if you’re lucky, I might even share some photos with you if I’m not sick of all the bullshit and grief that you people reading this shit give me. I finally have some good work coming up worth real money and I’m going to take a part time job teaching as well so that I can support my family so that I don’t have to rely on my own parents who neither understand me nor give a flying fuck about the situation with my daughter and spend all their time kissing my ex-wife’s ass so that they can see my daughter even when I can’t.

So maybe I’ll post a little from time to time, just so you know I’m not dead. But my true thoughts and feelings ? Fuck you, they’re private now. And my stories ? Well, they’re being written somewhere else now. And if you’re invited to read them, then lucky you. And if you’re not, suck shit.

Now, there’s a 3 Litre bottle of $2.30 rice wine sitting here waiting to be poured into my tiny china goblets that we drink it from. It’s miserable and raining today and I can’t afford to go out anywhere because the tiny amount of money I had in the bank just got gobbled up by bank fees and recurring bills so we’re going to be eating packet noodles and drinking cheap wine all weekend until I get paid next or until my parents get off their arse and help me sell the rest of my shit that I have back home instead of pretending to sell it and claiming it all as theirs instead.

Oh and to my mum and dad, if you think you’re doing some sort of weird fucked up favour by not selling my shit and keeping it and then borrowing money on credit to give to me and then bitching about how you owe all this money on your credit card, you’re not. All you’re doing is disrespecting me by condescendingly thinking that I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly know what I’m doing with my life and that I’m going to come running home tomorrow and say “Bawww I want my TV and stereo back”. Well I’m fucking not. In fact, I’m so fucking insulted that you treat me like I’m 13 fucking years old that frankly I don’t want to come back now.

Just do what I fucking asked you to do and stop lying to me. Photograph all my shit so that I can sell it. I gave your phone number to Brad today who wants to come and buy my stereo. He has already messaged you and you haven’t even responded to him. Don’t fuck him around. Just sell it to him and have him put it straight into my Bendigo account OVER THE COUNTER on Friday please and no I won’t be using it to buy your retardedly expensive $750 ticket home. If I wanted to get home I could get there for half that price but you think you’re so fucking smart and I’m so fucking stupid that I couldn’t possibly organise a cheap plane ticket home. Well now I don’t want to after the way you’ve been treating me like a fucking child and lying to me.

You’re not helping me see Suki because you’re too fucking busy kissing Jo’s ass and going off at me for saying bad things about her while she fucking runs around saying “Fuck you. I won’t tell you my address and I won’t send you photos and you’re never going to see Suki” and you don’t give a fuck and don’t do anything about it. You only care about seeing Suki yourself. You’ve seen her time and time again and you don’t even fucking TELL me about it let alone send me photos.

You fucking get what I’m saying ? I don’t want your fucking money I want you to be honest and to fucking help me do simple things like see Suki but you act totally two-faced. You kiss Jo’s ass and then you lie to me and you don’t even tell me when you see my daughter or give me the photos that I’ve asked you to send me. I’ve asked you time and fucking time again to get a CD of all Suki’s photos from Jo and send it to me, or at least send me high-resolution copies of the photos that you’ve taken yourself and you’ve NEVER FUCKING DONE IT. You just fucking ignore me, lie to me, act condescending and insulting and try and tell me what to do. Fuck you. If that’s your idea of “helping” then I don’t want it. Just sell off my fucking shit and I’ll be out of your life and you won’t see me again.

At least I have some people who understand. Cyrille, the owner of the Rhum House just got back from France and he’s very eager to see me. He said “Please, I want to meet your new wife, come see me at the bar tonight. All the drinks are on me. I will pay for everything” and I said “I can’t. I have no money. My clients always pay me so late and I have so little work. I cannot even get there” and he responded “I understand. I spent all my money opening this bar and now I can barely eat. I am lucky to have a wife who supports me and loves me and she works to feed us while my bar is not making much money”.

I said “That is good. I am glad you understand me. But I am so angry right now because my ex-wife is running away, kidnapping my child and taking her somewhere else and will not tell me where she lives or ever let me see her again”. And he said “You know ? I understand that too. I had a wife in Thailand and we broke up and she will not let me see my 6 year old daughter for the last 4 years. She ran away with her and I don’t know where she is or how to contact her. Just like you with your daughter’s tattoo, I carry my daughter’s photo with my everywhere because I am so crazy about her even though I haven’t seen her in 4 years and don’t even know what she looks like now so we are just the same. Tomorrow when you come I will show you her photo and we can talk. I understand so well what you are going through”.

Well, thank fuck someone does. My wife is this heartless cold bitch who won’t even let her daughter see her own father, send him photos or let him send her gifts. My parents are too concerned with seeing their granddaughter themselves to give a fuck whether I get to see her or not. Noone else understands. Cyrille understands because he has had his daughter stolen from him too, and Merry at least understands why I am sad because she hasn’t seen her children either but at least she can visit them if she wants to. Hell, even Lil lives apart from her children but still gets to see them. But Cyrille and I are the only ones in the situation where we loved some woman and gave her everything only for her to turn around and say “Fuck you. I’m going away now and you will never see your child again”.

Unless you’ve had that happen to you, then FUCK YOU and don’t even you TRY and tell me you understand what I’m going through because you fucking don’t and you NEVER FUCKING WILL and I don’t even want to talk to ANY of you about it.

Anyway this 3 litre bottle of rice wine isn’t going to drink itself so it’s time to drink, so … Khang Li. In fact…..

Mot Hai Ba YOOOO !

Brandy’s great isn’t it ?

No I don’t mean the game where you peg tennis balls at young children to make them cry. Though that is sort of fun too, I admit. I mean the drink.

But here’s a pro tip. If you’re going to drink three quarters of a bottle of 39% brandy, it’s probably best to not also knock back half a dozen beers and a bottle of red wine or you may not feel too crash hot in the morning. That’s all I’m sayin’.

And believe me. I speak from experience.

Hell, what category am I going to put this post in ? I can’t decide. Oh well. “Life” will do. It’s lifestyle advice hehe.

Things I hate:

Doing laundry. I hate washing it and hanging it out and getting it back inside again and folding it.

Things I love:

Having someone else do my laundry. I like laundry a lot more when all it involves is walking out my front door, walking 200 meters around the corner, handing a bag of dirty laundry to a young woman, and having her hand me back a big bag of neatly folded laundry and charge me 90cents for doing it.

I really do like that. That’s one less thing that I hate in life that I no longer have to worry about. Now my biggest hassle in life involving laundry is “Yawn, could I be bothered walking around the corner and picking up my laundry today”.

I’m pretty sure they’d come and collect it and drop it off too if I wanted and only charge me an extra 10 cents, but meh. You can only be so lazy, you know ?

I don’t really have the money to be generous right now. I have verrrry little money. But you know, something will come along. It always does. I have a photo shoot tomorrow and a coding job to do. It’ll work out. But you can’t always say the same for the locals’ prospects. Anyway, I’ll get to that.

I went out for dinner. Actually I went out to buy a white sheet for a backdrop for my photo shoot tomorrow, but I couldn’t find one at Titan Mart sadly which means I may have to get up really early and go to Ben Thanh, which sucks coz its’ going to be really expensive there, but I don’t have much choice as I’m on a tight schedule.

After I go to the shop I head across to my favourite karaoke place. I almost went and sat upstairs so that I didn’t get roped into any drinking games with locals but it wasn’t very busy tonight so I snuck in and quietly slipped across to my favourite table against the wall. I love having a “favourite table” at places.

It’s noisy and noone tries to speak to me because I wouldn’t be able to hear (or understand) anyway, but all the waitresses and waiters nod to acknowledge my presence. Without a word being spoken, I feel quite welcome. I order the Ostrich Luc Lac as I love it and it’s awesome here and it’s soooo insanely cheap.

The karaoke is going well and there are some really talented singers tonight. Lots of people have put 10,000 dong notes in the artificial roses on the table and are going up and giving them to the singers. One of the senior waitresses gets up and does a song and gets five roses which is a great effort and she’s a powerful singer. I’d like to do it as well but I don’t have any 10,000 dong notes and I think putting two 5,000′s would look weird and putting a 20,000 would make me look silly so I decide not to.

The old lady who’s the floor manager comes up and presses up to me with a big smile and then sits down opposite to me. I have nothing to say to her other than “hello” though and she just smiles at me for a bit and then stands up and walks away again.

The meal is delicious as usual but I have things to do tonight so I leave it at just one meal of ostrich today (I think maybe I might be losing a little weight since I’m eating such small meals) and three beers and ask for my bill. It’s three bloody dollars. Wait what ? I’ve paid 25,000 dong for a Saigon here before. Tonight I’ve only been charged 8,000 per beer. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re cheaper at the moment due to the day or the time of night, or maybe if they’re just gone “Hey, the Aussie is ok. Charge him the local rate, not the tourist rate”. Wouldn’t surprise me.

One guy earlier had gotten up and given six roses at once to a middle-aged woman. It was obviously his wife and he just wanted to say “I think you are the greatest singer here so I’m giving you half a dozen roses on my own”. Awwwwww.

Anyway, I sat there finishing my beer and realised I’d been given a 10,000 dong note as change. Excellent. I stick it into the bud of a rose and wait for someone I like to start singing. This young guy comes up and does a great song. He’s really bloody good too. He sang earlier and he’s very popular. Several people get up and give him a rose and I decide it’s time for me to step up so I go and give the guy his sixth flower for the one song. Another guy intercepts me on the way up with a big grin and touches my hand.

I go up and hand the flower to the singer and return to my seat. The guy who I met near the stage comes up to say hello. If he actually said anything I couldn’t hear because the place was a bit noisy, so he just smiled and shook my hand and then got his drink and toasted me. I think he was just saying “Good on you man. You really are trying to be a local aren’t you ?”

Well yeah, I am. Not just because I want to fit in but because it’s fun. I enjoy the karaoke. That’s half the reason I go there at night and some of the singers are really great so I wanted to show my appreciation like they were. Admittedly it felt a tiny bit weird and embarrassing and I bet every person at every table chuckled and said to their friends “Look at the foreign guy. He just got up and gave the singer a rose”.

Some places you go, people can make you feel a bit awkward. At Titan Mart they often laugh at me which I find really offensive. I know I’m a novelty, but if you’re going to laugh at the fact that I’m in your store, can you do it so that I can’t hear you ? It makes me less comfortable about going there. But not somewhere like this restaurant. They always make me feel very welcome and comfortable.

When I head off, one of the guys out the front calls to me “Yo” and I turn and he just grins and nods at me. That’s all, he just wanted to say “Hey dude. Good to see you”. How could that not make you happy ? I don’t know if they make jokes about me behind my back or what they think of me, but they seem really nice and friendly and they always acknowledge me politely. One night I’d actually like to bring a whole bunch of my friends to that restaurant to eat the amazing cheap food and listen to the karaoke. I wonder if I could convince Lil to get up on stage and sing karaoke since she’s Vietnamese ?

Anyway I head off back home and I decide to wander through the markets to see if anyone sells sheets. I know a little place that sells pillows and blankets. Maybe they have some. I find the store but they don’t appear to have any and I don’t want to bother them so I head back home. As I’m walking a little 7 year old boy runs up beside me with a bathroom scoop and grins at me and holds it out in front of him.

Not in front of me though and he doesn’t say anything. He just smiles. I don’t like encouraging begging, especially in children and I normally only give money to the disabled and war veterans, but I have a whole bunch of one and two thousand dong notes in my pocket. I pull out a wad of half of them. I’m not sure how much is there and I’m not going to count it but I reckon there’s probably 16-18,000 dong there and I smile and put it in his ladle.

Thing is, I don’t reckon you beg in District 8 unless you need to. There are no tourists. I don’t expect this kid gets given much money so I don’t think he’d do it unless he needed to. I reckon he’s probably lucky to get 5,000 dong from each person so he probably ran straight home and said “Mum mum ! A foreigner gave me 18,000 dong !”. It probably means the difference between plain rice and rice with yummy pork and chicken in it. Maybe he’ll have a better dinner tonight.

And when you think about it, what would I prefer; that the girls grow up to be prostitutes instead of fan and postcard vendors, and that the boys grow up to be pickpockets instead of beggars ? I know that’s an oversimplification and I probably sound a little full of myself and all high and mighty and I really don’t have the slightest clue what life is like for this kid. All I know is that he was there and I he lives about two blocks further up my street and that he’s one of those little kids who brighten up my mornings by calling out “Hello” to me when I wander down the street, and he wasn’t being too in your face or demanding.

He just walked along beside me for a few seconds smiling and holding a plastic ladle, so I shrugged and reached into my pocket and gave him a bunch of small change. Less than a dollar, but I’m sure it made his night that much better and all I was gonna do is buy a beer with it. So instead of me buying a beer, I went home with just a bottle of water and he probably had something yummy for dinner.

I don’t pretend that I had a big impact in his life and I don’t fool myself into thinking that I’m saving anyone from poverty, but it’s not like it kills you to give a kid a dollar when he lives nearby and greets you every day and he smiles at you politely and just indicates that if you happen to have a few cents, he wouldn’t say no.

Money is fucking stupid. I hate it and it hate people’s obsession with it, but it’s true that sometimes it can be a meaningful gift to show your respect to someone. When I gave the karaoke singer 50 cents I was saying “You sing good man. Much respect”. When I gave the little kid 90 cents or so, I’m saying “Hey mate. I know you. You live nearby and you cheer me up some mornings. I like that”. It’s as much symbolic as financial but it shows respect and appreciation.

I love when people buy me drinks. It makes me feel loved. I don’t stop and think “Wait, are they being condescending and buying me free drinks because they think they are more wealthy than me ?” You don’t read that much into it. If someone offers you a free drink, you take it gladly and smile. If someone gives you a tip for your singing or a buck to buy some dinner, you don’t question them, you just take it and are grateful.

Pay it forward, you know ?

John Birmingham is one of my favourite Australian writers. He’s just a Brit who migrated to Australia with his parents and went “God this Australia is a crazy place full of crazy people. I think I should write a book about all the crazy shit that happens here and the nutcases that I meet”. So he did. He wrote the iconic Australian “share house life” book “He Died with a Felafel in his Hand” which was made into a fantastic movie. I remember taking my girlfriend Amanda along to it at a little cult cinema in Leederville in Perth back in 2001 when they were re-running it and she laughed her arse off and said “Wow. That is exactly what Australians are like too isn’t it ?”

Well here’s the sort of story that John Birmingham might write. It’s just fiction keep in mind. it’s loosely based on various observations of life in Saigon but these aren’t real events. They are made up and pieced together from things other people have told me and that I have observed and I have turned them into a first person narrative, but don’t for a moment assume this is really a story about me. I recommend listening to Lou Reed’s “Dirty Boulevard” or “Street Hassle” as background music while you read this. Both work equally well. Queue up both. :”)

I stumbled outside this bar at about 4:30 one morning and looked around for a motorbike guy to take me home. Instantly a toothless old guy calls out to me “Motorbike sir ?” and I nodded and weaved my way over to him but before I could even negotiate where I wanted to go he asked “Marijuana ?” and I laughed. He knew he could make better money selling me weed than taking me across town. Yeah sure I would like some marijuana but I know the stuff they always sell is garbage. It’s cheap but it’s garbage.

“No. Your stuff is always terrible. I want good marijuana” I complain.

“No. Very good. Thailand. I show you” he assures me.

He pulls out a little baggie with a large compressed brick of dark brown stuff that looks very impressive indeed. Wow. The real deal finally ! Real, quality Thai gear ! I say “Yeah not bad. How much ?” and he goes “400,000″ and I laugh and say “No way. Never”.

“How much you pay then ?” he asks.

“200,000 maximum. No more”

“Ok. 200,000″ he says and hands me the bag and I hand him two 100′s. I tell him where I want to go to and he isn’t sure about it so he calls over another, even older, more dodgy and toothless guy and tells him the address. This guy knows it and nods and urges me to get on. I say “Bon Muoi ?” (a bit under $2) and he nods. Good.

We take off and h turns to me and says “Opium ?” and I laugh again.

“No. I don’t really like opium” I say.

“Oh very good. I sell you cheap”.

“How much ?”

“400,000″

“No thanks. Not interested”.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small baggie with some brown tar in it and passes it to me over his shoulder. I look at it and think about it. Opiates in general make me sick but I have had some laced into a joint before and it’s not horrible and I figure it’d be a novelty to buy some opium in Vietnam and I can get the stuff pretty cheaply so I offer him 200,000 but he shakes his head. I go to pass it back to him and he says “You hold it. We talk when we get there” so I shrug and slip it into my pocket.

The first motorbike guy pulls up alongside us and matches our speed and says “Hey ? Ice ?” and I chuckle. I’m sure they could not possibly get good ice here. Most of their drugs seem to be very third-rate stuff from the motorbike guys but his weed was top shelf so I figure I’l look at his stuff.

“Ok show me” I say and he says something to the other guy and we both pull over to the side of the road and he shows me a tiny bag of ice. Oh my god it really is ice too ! It’s chunky and crystalline and even smells really intense. I ask him how much and he says it’s $90 for what looks like about half a gram. Hmmm, even if I bothered to haggle him down I don’t really want it and I don’t really have the money to be able afford it so I smile and say “Not this time. Maybe another time” and he goes “My phone number. I give you. You call me” and I shrug and say “Ok” and put his name and number into my phone. Frankly I don’t really want to go home with three different types of drugs in my pocket anyway even if I did want them. What would the police think if they found them all on me ? I shudder to think.

He turns around and takes off back to the bar and my guy and I continue on to my home. When we get near my street I stop him (I don’t like taking them to my actual street because I don’t like people knowing where I live because these people can be very persistent) and he pulls over. I pull out 200,000 and say “Ok ? 200,000 for opium ?” He gives me this hangdog expression and says “Please. I am very poor. 200,000 is very cheap”.

I pull out an extra 20,000 and he smiles and says “Thank you”. Apparently that extra dollar made all the difference to him because he left happy with precisely $10 AUD in his pocket. I walk to my apartment and get let inside by the guy downstairs and go up to my floor and throw myself on the bed because it’s been a long night.

I pull out my prizes and roll up a big spliff of Thai buds in an oversized rolly paper and pull of some of the sticky, toffee-like opium and put a few tiny lumps inside the joint and spark it up. I recline on my bed looking at the ceiling while listening to Korean pop songs and inhale deeply. I get about halfway through the joint and then put it down in the ashtray and roll over and drift off into a blissful opium-assisted slumber to dream.

The next day I go back out to Pham Ngu Lao to drink but first I ring my friend from last night and say “Hello my friend. Can you get LSD for me ?” and he responds “No problem. I can get anything you want. Cocaine, heroin, opium, marijuana, ice. Anything”. Wow. Motorbike guys in Saigon really are the go-to guys if you want something dodgy. If you want a girl or some drugs or things I can’t even imagine, all you have to do is ask a motorbike guy. They all know each other and if he can’t get what you want, one of his friends can.

I go back to the bar I was at the previous night and wait outside for him for ages and ages and he rings me several times and I’m like “I’m here waiting man. Just bring it here”. He turns up but I don’t recognise him and maybe he doesn’t recognise me. He calls me from across the street and I see him on his phone and I laugh and say “I’m looking at you right now” so I get up and cross the street to him.

He motions for me to jump on his bike and he takes me to the bus station where I took photographs the other day. It’s very seedy and deserted today and I’m feeling pretty nervous about it all and I’m fingering the swiss army knife in my pocket thinking “This could go bad at any time if he has friends here waiting for us”. But we get off and he wants me to give him the money and I laugh. Uhh, no. I don’t give money to random guys I don’t know so they can run off with it and MAYBE bring me back drugs.

I shake my head and say “No. You get LSD. Bring to me. I wait at the bar. He looks confused and says “LSD ?” and I say “LSD. Acid. You know ? Little pieces of paper ? I want two” and I mime swallowing a tab of acid. He nods and says “Ok. You wait. I go find” and he takes me back to the bar and drops me off. He comes back an hour later and leads me across the road to a cafe where some people are sitting and he pulls out two bags of weed. I facepalm and say “No. You don’t understand what I want. Nevermind” and I walk off. I know there’s another guy nearby who says he can get some but he wants a really high price for it. Worse than the Aussie price and I say “No way”.

I give up on the acid since apparently this guy can get everything BUT acid. Or maybe he could if he understood what it was. I consider showing him a picture of a blotter on my iPad but I don’t really want to bring out my iPad in front of this guy coz he’s a bit dodgy and even one of the other motorbike guys warned me about him so I just call it a dead loss and head off. I end up at my favourite little Bia Hoi place with no name sitting in the side alley around the corner since it’s a bit crowded out the front and I hate being crammed in like a sardine. I open up my coin collection folder and rest it up against my pint glass as cover and then proceed to roll up another joint as I did last night.

I sit there smoking it for a while and a teenage kid comes up to me selling cigarettes. He looks at me and straight off the bat says “You want marijuana ?” and I hold up my joint and say “Does it look like I need marijuana ?” and he goes “No. Maybe you need more !” I say “Nah dude, most of the stuff you guys sell is crap” and he goes “No, very good. I show you” and he pulls out a baggie of the same sort of compressed stuff but it’s a little greener rather than brown. I decide to fuck with him and say “Sure, but I can get that for 150,000 so that’s all I’m paying” and he just blinks at me in surprise and walks off in disgust without a word and I absolutely crack up laughing. I’m just sitting there by myself in this alley trying like mad to stop laughing after the face he pulled before he walked off.

Five minutes later though he’s back and he says ” Ok. 200,000″ and I grin and say “Yeah alright” and he subtly slips me a bag and I put it into my pocket without looking at it and hand him the cash. Later I pull it out and look and it’s really tiny ! I’m sure he showed me a bigger one. A few hours later he comes past again and I say “Hey. What you sold me was very small. You showed me a big one and then gave me a small one. What’s up with that ?”

He goes “No. Same Same. I promise” and I just scowl at him and say “That wasn’t a very good one man, I can get better from another guy” and he goes “Ohhh. Ok. You buy tomorrow. I give you a very big one just for you”. “Ok Ok” I say and tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. I sit there quietly in the semi-darkness smoking my joint. I run into a bunch of guys nearby. I don’t recall how. They were just talking about something I was interested in and I threw my two cents into the conversation and next minute we’d all pulled our chairs around together and were talking.

Then I notice what the guy beside me is doing. He’s smoking a bong ! Right there on the footpath in Bui Vien street in the busy tourist district of Pham Ngu Lao ! I laugh. While I know that you can do that at a lot of places and the police are known to turn a blind eye to foreigners smoking weed in public at smaller establishments I’m still surprised to see it and I grin and say “Classy. Smoking a bong on the street in Saigon. I like it”.

He gives me a big smile and passes it to me and says “Enjoy” so I take a big long toke and finish it off and then hand it back to him and he packs it up for someone else. Well, that’s a fun experience. Just the casual, relaxed nature of smoking a bong at a little beer joint in the tourist district of Saigon is sort of special. The 70 year old woman who owns the place is standing not more than four feet away and she sees the whole thing and doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t care. It’s none of her business and even if the cops did come, she’s not going to get in trouble.

I’ve never even seen a cop in Pham Ngu Lao unless they were collecting money. You tend to only see the uniformed “Tourist Security” people who walk along Pham Ngu Lao street making sure everything’s safe and noone’s getting mugged or harassed and I doubt they have the authority to arrest someone for smoking weed on the street. I doubt they have the authority to do anything except observe and call the police if something serious happens.

Not long after, a fight breaks out. Yay. A street fight. Some foreigners have had some big argument with some Vietnamese people and suddenly everyone is yelling and screaming and someone picks up a chair and they start laying into each other. The girls start yelling to the old woman “Call the police !” but noone does because they know it’ll be over in a couple of seconds. Myself and the French guy beside me both half get out of our chair wondering if we should intervene. There’s a bunch of young American girls involved and the Vietnamese can be pretty serious when they get into street fights, although they mostly seem to just hit you with plastic chairs.

But it resolves itself pretty quickly and the foreigners all wander off bitching and grumbling and we all just watch in amusement as the Vietnamese yell and swear at them as they leave. No idea what it was about but it was interesting to watch. Maybe an argument about the price of their drinks. Maybe someone stepped on someone’s toes. Maybe someone was chatting up a Vietnamese girl whose relative or boyfriend was there. Who knows ? But it’s fascinating to watch and just another typical thing you see in Pham Ngu Lao.

The third night, I’m back at the same place and drinking with a couple of Aussies I met, one of whom works for the Federal Police as a “diplomat” which he explains means that he’s riot control and throws tear gas and carries a gun and baton. My friend the cigarette vendor comes up beside me and says “Hello. You want today ? I give you very good. Very big for you” and I put my finger to my lips and point at the guy across from me and whisper “Police. Later” and the kid’s eyes go wide and he nods and quietly slips away again into the night.

I guess I’ll see him again tomorrow.

There’s a great story in this month’s Word with this topic where someone has gone and interviewed all the local garbage colectors who scrounge things to recycle and reuse. Many have been at this job for 25 years or more. There was one story in particular that touched my heart, so here it is.

When I first started this job I still had two chilren at home and it would make me very sad that I couldn’t see them all day and couldn’t afford to buy them nice things. Then one day I found a box with 10 to 15 children’s books that a store had thrown out. I was so happy to be able to give something nice to my children, and come home to see them happy reading the books I found.

- Han. 49. 19 years as a garbage collector.

That’s nice isn’t it ?

I’m told that’s my daughter’s favourite word. “Why ?”. I remember that with my little brother when he was just learning to speak. He would just say “Why ?” over and over and over again.

What do I want to know “why” about ?

Why the fuck do I always meet such shitty women ?

I’m a nice guy. I’ve had my odd problem in the past, but I’ve always been good to my partner. Whether it’s giving them love or attention, or supporting them or driving their useless lazy arse around, or giving them money for their family, I’ve always tried to do the right thing. Sure I’m not perfect. I have my flaws. In the past I’ve had anger problems and some mental health problems and I have at times been difficult to live with. But I don’t take it out on my partner. I still love them and appreciate them.

So why the fuck do they always treat me like this ?

Even when it’s over and years have passed, and I think “Ok, maybe now we can resolve our differences and just talk like two human beings”, it turns out to not be the case. Everyone I know says I’m a nice person. Sometimes I can be annoying or abrasive. Sometimes I can be loud and offensive. Sometimes I do stupid things. But I’m a nice person. I’m not mean. I don’t screw people over or take advantage of them. I live by the same rule every religion preaches.

“Do unto others are you would have them do unto you”
- Christianity

“Hurt not others in ways you find hurtful”
- Buddhism

“What you do not yourself desire, do not put before others”
- Confucianism

“Do not unto others that which would cause pain if done to you”
- Hinduism

“Not one of you is a believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself”
- Islam

“What is hurtful to yourself do not to your fellow man”
- Judaism

“A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated”
- Jainism

“All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One”
- Native American faith

“That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.”
- Zorastrian

I have never even heard of the Zorastrian faith. But they have the same message in their holy book that everyone else has. Here’s what I would write if I was a prophet.

“Don’t be an asshole unless you want other people to be an asshole to you”
- The book of Pawz

I really do try to live by this rule. I put a lot of effort into it. I try to think before I speak. I try to consider other’s feelings. If I know that if I do something, it will hurt someone, I try to find a way to not do it. Sometimes it makes more trouble for me. But at least I feel that I’ve tried to do the right thing. I fucking TRY, ok ? Some people don’t. Some people just think “Fuck them. I only care about me”.

Sadly I don’t think there’s a heaven or a hell and I think you get no reward for being nice other than how it makes you personally feel. I’m happy with who I am. I’m not perfect, but I strive to be as good a person as I can be. I don’t believe in a god, but I do believe in the value of religious teaching. I think we’re born with a conscience, but like all basic instincts, we can ignore them for the sake of our own betterment. Darwinism may provide us with certain things, but Social Darwinism, aka “society” can sometimes take them away.

But c’mon. If you’re a good person, doesn’t it make you feel better ? Even when it fucks you in the ass, you think “Hey, well that sucked, but at least I tried to do the right thing”.

I tried to do the right thing. It fucked me in the ass. *shrug* Still gonna do my best in the future. I’m not Mother Theresa, but I do try. That’s all you can ask of anyone.

Just try, ok ?

So I was out at Number 5. I wasn’t here to drink, honest. I actually had a business meeting organised here. A guy who was the technical manager for a big international moving company wanted to talk to me about updating their website. We spoke about it weeks ago and tonight he wanted to talk in more detail. Their site was generic and template-based and had no real personality. He basically said “I want this site to be more real. Show real Vietnamese movers, not stock photo of Americans. And more professional design”. I said “It looks fairly decent, but there are a lot of details that are wrong”. I went through a whole list of things that were just slightly “off” about the website and he was impressed. He said “Yes. You definitely understand the details. That’s what we need. Someone with attention to detail, not some idiot who spends five minutes knocking a site up out of a template with some stock photos. You can come to our moves, take photos, make it look REAL, and jazz it up with more information and more photos. Make it look professional, not half-arsed”.

Hey, that’s what I love. Someone who doesn’t just want _A_ website. They want a GOOD website. I asked him for a business card and he said “Oh, I hate giving these out. They’re awful”. It was the same deal. It wasn’t a horrible business card. It just wasn’t quite right. There was like 8 lines of info in the corner and I said “That’s wrong. The website URL should be up here beside the logo. The tax number should be on the back. Your email and phone number should be under your name. You don’t need to repeat the company name because it’s already in the logo. Strip all this shit, move that over there and that over there, and that over there, piss off the green background and use white with maybe a simple green stripe, and it’ll look a lot more professional. It’s not bad, it’s just not good. And if someone is comparing you to someone else based on your business card, you might not get the job based on this card”. He said “Exactly. That’s what I said. Can you do print artwork as well ?” I said “Absolutely. I’ve done business cards, labels, stickers, brochures for many businesses. I can do that in a heartbeat and make this look much more neat, easier to read, and more professional”. He said “Excellent. I’m going to talk to the boss tomorrow. Send me a proposal with the costs and I’ll give it to him and I’m sure he will approve. You obviously know your shit and have an eye for good design”.

Excellent. That job is as good as in the bag. I’m going to be doing their website, their business cards, their brochures. The whole kaboodle. I will be their personal graphic designer and web expert. It will no doubt bring repeat business and excellent referrals. My freelance career in Vietnam has already started !

So after we finish talking, I leave him to drink and I wander back to my seat where I’m sitting beside two Aussie guys. I ask,

“Where are you from ?”

“Australia”

“I know that idiot. Where ?”

“Doubt you will know it. A little seaside town called Hervey Bay”.

“Oh bull fucking shit. I grew up in Hervey Bay. That’s where my permanent address is in Australia. My parents live in Urraween”.

Josh goes “Holy Fuck ! Craig lives in Urraween ! I live in Pialba”.

“Farrrrrrking Hell man. We’re a city of like 50,000 people at most, and three of us, one of which who have never met the others turn up in a bar together in Saigon”. Never known these guys from a bar of soap, but Craig lives no more than a few blocks from my house in Hervey Bay. What are the odds of that shit ? Seriously ? What are the fucking odds ? They have to be MILLIONS to one, surely !!!

We talk about Hervey Bay and the various problems; road maintenance, crime, indigenous delinquency. They went to school at Hervey Bay High, whereas I went to school at the Hervey Bay Senior College, but I still attended some classes at Hervey Bay High. They’re about the same age as me. It’s quite likely we were sitting on the oval together at lunch time eating a few metres from each other, and now we end up together drinking in a bar 7,000km away. That’s what a small fucking world it is. I’ve always said “Hervey Bay people go EVERYWHERE”, but this is the ultimate. Sure, Hervey Bay people always migrate to Brisbane and Sydney…. but for these guys to end up in a bar in Saigon right beside me, almost ten thousand kilometres away. That blows my fucking mind. That is so amazing that I just don’t have words to describe it. The other night, I met a guy from Gatton, only about 20km from where I lived. But to meet two people from my home town, one of whom lives a couple of blocks away, on the other side of the world (or at least the opposite hemisphere) is just awesome.

This is what I LOVE most about Saigon. It’s SO international. People who come here are from EVERYWHERE. They’re from Tasmania, and Detroit, and Bristol, and Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur and Seoul and HERVEY FUCKING BAY ! It its by far the most international place I’ve ever been in in the world. I have never met SO many people from SO many places in my life. This is what I’m doing here. I’m meeting people and having life experiences. I tell them my stories, they tell me theirs. We drink, and we’re friends. We trade emails and promise to exchange photos and meet up some time in the future. Either in this country, or another. When you meet someone here, you really do make a friend. They want to stay in touch. They recognise a like-minded individual when they see one and they want to stay in touch and share adventures. Just like how Chris and I are sharing our nightly adventures, so Craig and Josh and I will be emailing each other photos of what we’ve been up to. Hell, when I go home, I can WALK to Craig’s house and say “Hey Craig. Sup man ? Wanna go drink at the Hervey Bay Tavern and look at each others’ photos ?”

It’s just brilliant. Every night I come here, I meet someone awesome and think “God I’m so glad I came tonight, or I would have never met this awesome person and become friends with them”. Even when I come late at night after most people have left, I run into the night owls like Kobayashi and Sako and see Lam dancing to Korean songs. Just now, I walked outside for a breath of fresh air because the smokers nearby are choking me to death and I was going to throw up if I didn’t get some fresh air. Who should walk past but Roger, from the investment seminar. I say “Hey Roger. A good evening to you !” and he smiles and nods and says “Hi Dave. Can’t stop. Going somewhere”. Just the fact that I stood outside for two minutes and saw someone I knew just shows what a great place it is and how many great friends I have. I walk into the street for 2 minutes and I see someone I know. It’s just bloody brilliant.

One thing that sucks about tonight is the waitresses. Most of my friends aren’t here. Lam and Hue are off, Nhi is off, Tra is off. It’s the new girls tonight. Bah. I talked to Cam a bit. I know she wanted a pretty watch, and I need to repay for her helping me out and accidentally screwing her on the apartment commission she was supposed to get. So I wander off to the markets and by her a fake Swiss watch since I got a little money today from working. It’s pretty. It’s fake, but if I didn’t know how much it cost, I would assume it’s real. It looks real. It’s only the price that tells me “This is a FAKE !!!”. I take it back and give it to her. She’s happy. Very happy. All the other waitresses are making jokes and saying “Wooooohh !” but I calm them with a hand and say “Cam is my friend. She helped me, so this is a gift to tell her I appreciate her help”. I mean, it cost nothing, but she doesn’t know that. She can’t tell a fake Citizen from a real one. Nor can I ultimately. Hopefully it’ll keep working at least and not pack up next week !

So I’m supposed to go out to Boomarang to see this woman about her website. But she’s already said she’s going to get it free from one of her theatre group members. I warned her “A free website is NEVER a good website”, but I guess money matters, so she goes with the free website. She promised to buy me drinks, but District 7 is a LONG way away. It’s at least 140-160,000d to get from Pasteur to there and back, so it’s just not worth it for the sake of a couple of drinks. I’d love to go. She invited me to the quiz night. But I’m not riding all the way across Saigon just to have a couple of drinks with some woman who’s not going to hire me, and then pay the same to come home again. Fuck that. I’d rather stay right here. Soon, I wouldn’t mind going to Pha Mu Lao to get something for dinner, but I can’t walk anymore. I’ve been walking EVERYWHERE lately. Probably walked 50km in the last few days. I can’t do it anymore.

My feet are just covered in blisters. It’s so bad I had to take off my shoes in the bar tonight and walk around barefoot. I’m just in agony. My knee hurts, both my feet hurt, my head hurts, my lungs hurt. Living in Saigon is hard on your body. I reckon my life expectancy would drop at least 5 years if I continued living here. Soon I may have to invest in one of those face masks that everyone wears when they are traveling on motorbikes. I’d feel stupid wearing some girly face mask over my mouth, but this is a smoggy city. Even halfway from District 8 to District 1 you can barely see the skyscrapers in Ben Nghe due to the fog. It’s not Shanghai, but it’s definitely getting there. It’s not a great place to live. If you breathe the air, you will get sick. If you drink the water, you will get sick. If you get an open sore, you had better take fucking antibiotics, otherwise you’ll get sick and DIE !

But it’s still a great place and I love it. I know I’m not going to stay here forever, but it seems like a good home base for me. I want to explore Cambodia and Laos and China and Korea and Malaysia. As soon as I have some money saved, I’m going to jump on a plane to South Korea and spend the weekend there in between work. In Australia, I just didn’t have much motivation to work. There seemed no point. What was the end goal ? But here… There are things to do. People to meet. Places to see. It’s different. It’s ALIVE. All of a sudden I have ambition and I want to be successful and open a business and become a rich westerner running a great international business from Saigon. I dunno. Maybe I have a reason to live all of a sudden. That’s maybe being a bit melodramatic, but it feels like it. A couple of months ago, I didn’t care about anything. I was bored and lonely and had no friends and no work and no ambition. Now I have lots of friends and I do exciting things every day and I have work coming at me from all directions and suddenly I care about doing things again.

Also I think to myself “When I see Suki when she’s a bit older, I’m going to tell her amazing stories and show her amazing photos and she’s going to go to school and say ‘My father is a businessman in Asia. He travels all over the world and sees amazing places and does business with people’”. That’s something I could be proud of. I never thought I would really do anything that Suki would be proud of, but I think that living in Asia and traveling and meeting amazing people and doing amazing things will impress her when she’s older. I just want her to go to school and say “What does your dad do ? Oh, he’s a bricklayer in Brisbane ? My dad is a successful businessman in Asia”. That would be epic. Jo would be so pissed off. She’s going to marry a junior police officer who graduated late and is probably going to be a traffic cop. I’m going to be a businessman. The company I’m likely to be working for next week have offices in Singapore and the USA. I could just say “Ok. I want to work in Singapore now. Relocate me”.

An English speaking professional with proven skills can go far in Asia, especially if he bothers to learn the local language. I want to do that. I want to be a crazy, successful businessman here. Traveling from one country to another, solving problems, making lots of money, and then flying home to Saigon and Hervey Bay and wherever else I choose to make my home. Ok, maybe I’ve had a few beers and I’m getting carried away, but it’s not implausible. I have seen that unlike Australia where I’m just one of tens of thousands of applicants, here I am something special. I have a wide range of experience and skills and excellent English, and they seek that out. If I put my mind to it, I could make something of myself here. I can start my own firm. I already have various ideas.

Just watch me. That’s all I’m sayin’.

I only frequent two bars. And in the last two days, the owners of both bars have bought me free drinks. Because I’m just that fucking cool. That’s all I’m sayin’. I’m just fun to have around or something I guess. They know I’m cool and people like me so they want to encourage me to come often and show me how much they enjoy my company.

Not only did Heinz buy me a beer the other night, but tonight at the opening of his new restaurant he said “Come in. Have a glass of wine with me”. I was eager to head off to the other bar, so I reluctantly declined and said I would come tomorrow night and have dinner. The waitresses at his new bar have very cute uniforms though I must say. Because it’s a Swiss restaurant they have stereotypical little red dresses with white frilly bits around the neckline and sleeves. I almost expect them to break out in a clog dance or something. Very cute. If the food’s good there, I reckon I can see myself dropping in a bit. Cafe Mogambo is alright, but I haven’t been there in ages. Not sure why. The food’s good but not overly cheap, and while the atmosphere is sorta ok, when I read about it on Google I was promised the waitresses wore leopard outfits and they don’t. They wear shitty zebra outfits and it’s lame. Heinz puts his waitresses in much cuter clothes.

Though frankly, Thy puts her waitresses in even cuter ones. My favourite is the little white Chinese-style dresses with the round hole just underneath the high neck, though they wear a different uniform each night. They’re gorgeous and the first time I saw them I was like “OMG that is so cute. I must take photos immediately”. Oh and of course, that brings me back to my original point. Thy bought me a drink last night too. I told you that though. It was her birthday and she was just happy I was there even though I’d never actually met her (though she knew who I was) so she wanted to buy me a drink so that I could enjoy her birthday as much as she did.

Tonight when I came in, Hoa was busy, and Thy came up and said “Hi David. How are you tonight ?” and I said “Very good thanks. How was your birthday last night ?” and she said “It was great. Thanks for being here” and I said “Glad I was. Thank you for the drink”. She said “I love your hair. It’s so cool. Can I touch it ?” and I laughed and thought “Goddamn, I would pay you to”, but I just said “Sure, ok”.

She pulled out my pony tail and went “Wow, it’s so soft. You must take very good care of it”. LOL, if only she knew. I have only washed it twice in the last month. She just messed around with it and stroked it and I could have practically purred if it wouldn’t have disturbed her. I hadn’t eaten tonight at Bar Number 5 and while I wanted to go to Lotteria, it was too far away to walk since I had been walking all day and was pretty uncomfortable, and I didn’t realise Secret Bar served food until I saw someone else eating and I asked Hoa if I could have a menu. Their food is actually a bit cheaper here. It’s mostly snacky rather than mealish and there’s a smaller range, but it’s good stuff. I was tempted to get a burger, but I was worried that Hoa was going to sit and watch me eat, which would have been really uncomfortable, so I ordered a club sandwich and chips, since I knew it would come sliced up into small bits with toothpicks in it.

It was really good too. Much better than the shitty club sandwich I had at Bar Number 5 some weeks ago. Thy came over and said to me “How is the food here ? What do you think ? Tell me honestly please” and I said “This is really good. Better than Bar Number 5 and it’s cheaper. I like it” and she said “If there’s anything here you don’t like, please tell me. Drinks, food, anything. I want to know what people think and I know you will tell me honestly”. I admitted “Actually I hate the music. Too much American rap music” and she said “Oh. You know you can request whatever you want ? Just write it down and pass it to the bar staff and we’ll play whatever you want to hear” and I said “Yeah, thanks. I do that sometimes. Tam always plays what I request. But I like weird music and I think other people don’t like it sometimes” and she said “That doesn’t matter. Noone else is asking us what to play. If you tell us what you like. We’ll play it for you” and I said “Thanks Thy. I appreciate that” and she said “No problem”.

Cool. So the owner likes me, loves my hair and likes to play with it, appreciates my opinion, and is willing to do whatever she can to make me happy here. Fucking hell. Why aren’t there bars like this in Australia ? Places you can go where the owner knows your name and buys you drinks and gives you cake on their birthday and lets you pick the music and asks if there’s anything else they can do to please you. Places like that just don’t exist back “home”.

I’m having a beer and Hoa is sitting with me and we’ve just discussed our date on Tuesday. She asked what I wanted to do and I said “I’m not sure yet. I’m still thinking” and she said she liked going to the movies with a guy because it was very romantic. But I had a better idea. I said “How about a boat cruise on the Saigon River and then lunch ?” and she covered her mouth and said “Oh my god. That is so good !” and I’m like yup… sweet. Glad I suggested that. Awesome. I’ve wanted to go on a ferry ride for ages anyway, so if I can take Hoa with me and we can sit on the top deck and just look around at the city, that’ll be brilliant. I asked her “Are you allowed to drink ? Can I buy you one ?” and she said “Yes, I’m allowed”.

I said “Ok, I want to buy you a cider” and she said “Oh my god. You remember my favourite drink !” and I said “Of course I remember. You told me last night you like cider, and I remember that, so now I want to buy you one”. She was very pleased and asked one of the other waitresses to go and get it for her. Interestingly it was peach flavoured rather than apple. I said to her “Is this peach ?” and she said “I don’t know. I didn’t see them pour it” and I said “I think it is peach” and she said “I think you are right”.

She sat with me and toasted me before nearly every sip. I think she was very happy that I’d not only bought her a drink, but bought her the RIGHT drink. It was busy though and after she finished she said “I think I have to go work. Is that ok ? I will talk to you soon” and I said “Sure, no problem”. I went and told Tam to put on Dido’s “Thank You” featuring Eminem. Sadly he put on the regular version. I thought people here would much more appreciate the Eminem version because they play lots of Eminem here. Just now, after sitting by myself for a while I decided to request something else. I requested the “Derezzed Remix” from Tron by Daft Punk. It’s a mad intense pumping techno song. It has no lyrics, but I know it will get the people here jumping. I know what music they like here.

They like stuff with lots of pumping bass and repetitive vocals and mostly rap lyrics, but I don’t like rap lyrics so they’ll have to make do with me fulfilling the other criteria and I think that song will do that. I reckon Tam will approve. I don’t want to pick music that people won’t like or else he will be reluctant to play what I request, even if Thy insists I can pick whatever I want. Seriously, how many bars do you go to where you get to walk up to the bar and say “Play this please” and they do it for you ? I can’t think of any I know. Some may have jukeboxes, but that’s not the same as being able to just walk up to the bar staff and say “Find this shit on YouTube for me and play it please”. This bar just lives on YouTube. You name it, they find it, download it and play it on the stereo and the big plasmas. Fucking awesome.

Tam’s playing my Daft Punk remix now. It rocks. Some dudes on the couch are quietly headbanging to the pumping techno beats. It may not be their typical sort of music, but it’s loud and the bass pumps and people are enjoying it. Fuck yeah. I made a good choice. Not sure Tam likes it though. He’s scrolling through their library looking for the next track to play. Probably someone else requested something though. Awww, it was so short. It’s over already. So disappointed. But it was good anyway.

But you want to know what the big news of the night is ? I got my apartment ! Yes ! I have a fucking house in Vietnam !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It took ages to negotiate. Cam’s friend had to write tonnes of shit. I have no idea what it was. It was far too much for Cam to translate. It was just some sort of contract, but he had to write like a half page essay or something it seemed. He was writing for ages. I got a copy of it, so later when I have time, I guess I’ll translate it and find out what I’ve got myself into. But Cam explained everything that mattered. I pay rent monthly, and I have to give one month’s notice before leaving or putting it on hold (apparently I’m allowed to hold it for a month without paying, not entirely sure). Water and electricity and internet is additional. Water is $3 a month. My unlimited internet connection is… wait for it… $2.50 a month … yes… really.. I get unlimited internet for less than $2.50 per month. Wow. And electricity will be billed to me, but Cam says it’ll probably be about $6-7 a month. She says that prices vary and she once stayed in a place where it was about $4 per kilowatt or something, but that here it’s only about $1, so it’s very reasonably priced. Sounds good. I told her what electricity costs in Australia and she goes “Oh my god !” LOL !

I told Cam I wanted to take some photos of the room while I was here and she said that was fine, so we went upstairs and took photos. The landlord was sorta grinning at me in the photos like she was thinking “Omg, I’m in this guy’s photos. How cool”. Cam assures me she’s a very nice lady and she gives me her mobile and home number. While I have a key to my room, the building has security and you have to get buzzed in late at night. She says that’s ok though and if ever I come home really late, all I need to do is give her a ring and she’ll come down and open the door for me. While we’re upstairs, Cam looks out the window. We’re only on the second storey but it’s nice to look out, though the window doesn’t have any fly screens so I guess I can’t leave the window open or mozzies will come in.

The landlord tells her that I’m welcome to go up onto the roof if I want. She assures us that from the roof, you can see all of Saigon. Fuck yeah. I can’t wait to do that. I am totally going to be doing that so often. When I get home late at night, I’m just going to slip out of my room with my laptop and a couple of drinks and go up to the roof and sit there and look out at the lights of Saigon. Sounds epic. I hope it lives up to what I’ve been promised. Sitting on the roof of my apartment using the $2.50 Wifi and drinking in the dark while looking out of the lights of Saigon ? Could there BE anything more awesome ? I’m so eager to do it. I can’t even afford to move in right now because I have to stay in my hotel until I can pay the bill, but I think tomorrow night, after I finish at the bar, I might go to my apartment and just sit on the roof and look out over the city.

I know it’s tiny, but seriously, what the hell else do I need ? It’s a clean, attractive room with a view, an ensuite, a shower, power, a TV antenna, airconditioning, and ultra-cheap high-speed wireless internet ! I don’t intend to have massive parties. It’s just for me and maybe a special friend to visit. I don’t think I’m even going to bother with a fridge to be honest. Maybe when I come back to Vietnam I will worry about things like a fridge and a stove, but right now, I just want a bed and maybe a TV. Cam tells me that I can get a small TV from between one and three million, but that the best thing to do is to wait for the sales and get one then because it will be really cheap and I’ll get a much better one. I say “Ok, you will help me. When there’s a sale, you will tell me please ?” and she agrees that she will.

I could write more, but I’m keen to post some photos while I’m still on the topic of my apartment, so here they are. Two photos of my room, and the all important key to my life in Vietnam. I’m very pleased right now.

I met a guy at the quiet end of the bar tonight named Steve. He was German. He’d only been here for a few months but he thought he was an expert on Vietnamese girls because he had spent a lot of time in China and said they were the same. Personally I think he was a bit of a know-it-all jealous dickhead, but that’s just my personal opinion.

He pulled me aside and said “I’ve been watching you and listening to you. You’re loud. You don’t know when to shut up. You say too much sometimes about the girls and your emotions. That’s not ok here. You can’t show your emotions. You have to shut the hell up”.

He went on to say that if I had a problem with Nhi, it was between me and her and not to bring it up with anyone else. He said “You know nothing. You are new here. Everyone knows you because you are the new guy. They all think you’re funny, but they don’t trust you. You are just the new guy. Everyone else here has been here for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. You are just some guy who who’s been here for a couple of months and you act like a hero and you speak shit and they all pay attention to you, but you have to realise, they know you are full of shit”.

I said “Mate. I’m not a hero and I’m not full of shit. I am who I am. This isn’t an act. I am just a stupid, crazy, romantic guy and I have a lot of emotions and sometimes I express them”. He grabbed Cam and said “Do Vietnamese people show their emotions ?” and she shook her head. Wow. I guess there’s a small lesson there. We talked a bit about foreigners and how Vietnamese and Japanese and Chinese seemed obsessed with Americans. He grabbed Cam again and (I don’t think he knew her name, the asshole) said “Tell me the truth now. Do you like Americans ?” and she shook her head very soberly. Wow.

That was another serious truth. They all pretend to like Americans. They act like they think that they are coolest people on earth. But Steve says “They are lying. They are using them. They are using Americans, they are using Australians and they are using Europeans. They just want their money and their benefits and they don’t really respect them. It’s all a lie”.

Wow. So that cake is a lie as well ? Didn’t realise. I was always fascinated by that. I could not possibly understand how people who were born before the end of the Vietnam war could possibly respect and adore Americans, but maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s bullshit. Personally I think there’s more to it than what Steve says. I think there’s other factors. I think there’s envy and jealousy and to some extent, respect. I don’t think it’s all about using them. I think they wish they were like them. I mean, the girls here are genuinely attracted to western guys. All the billboards for Calvin Klein here and other fashion products feature western guys. It’s not just about using them, they really do think they’re sorta cool and envy them.

But that doesn’t mean they like them or they trust them. That’s a whole different story and I respect what Steve is saying there. They are using Americans. They come here and spend lots of money and they take advantage of them and earn lots of tips and don’t give a crap about them.

Anyway, Steve said “Vietnam girls. They all know each other. You think they don’t because they haven’t worked here long, but they do. If you give a girl a bad feeling, they will all know. You have to be careful. You make a mistake. Noone will forget. They may forgive, but they will not forget ever. If you make a mistake, they will never get over it. You must be more careful”.

I know he’s talking about Nhi and I get what he’s saying. I’ve been angry at Nhi and everyone knows about it. I’ve created a bit of bad feeling. I just wanted a couple of days distance before resolving it, but right now, he makes me feel bad. A couple of minutes later. Nhi appears beside me and wants to chat, so I talk to her. She asks how I am and I ask why she has her hair tied up tonight. She says it’s hot and she’s working hard. I want to tell her she’s wearing far too much make-up, but I keep my fucking mouth shut as Steve suggested, but I do comment on the hair. She asks “You don’t like it ?” and I admit “No, I like your hair down. You have beautiful hair. You shouldn’t tie it up like that” and she says “Ok, tomorrow I will have it down”. Maybe that’s a promise. We’ll see.

I say “Nhi. I’m sorry I got angry. I shouldn’t have. We will talk again soon, I promise”. She says “Good. I feel sad if you are angry at me. I like you. You can’t be angry at me” and I feel sorta better. A little while later she comes and talks to me briefly again. She’s busy, but she’s clearly trying to make an effort. She doesn’t want me angry at her and she’s trying to smooth things over. Fair enough I’m still really mad at her, but I’m not going to show it. I’m going to be polite and friendly, and we’re going to smile at each other lots, and in a day or two, it’s all going to be okay again. It’ll probably never be quite how it was before, or maybe it will be better. Maybe this will be some sort of proof that we can endure this.

Right now I’m sorta disgusted by her heavy make-up and her hair tied back, but look, that’s a case of convenience and poor self-image. She sneaks up on me and appears beside me and sticks her face in front of me in a funny way just to basically say “Boo. I’m still here”. Then a minute later, she pokes me in the ribs. Ok, I guess we’re back to that. Good to know.

Lam has been cute as a button tonight. Rofl, she snuck up on me right as I was typing that too. Lucky I hid it quickly. She has hung around all night and I’m stoked that we are good friends now. She smiles at me lots. I know she’s not into me, but it’s still cool. She’s not flirting, she’s just saying “Hey David, you’re my friend” and that’s cool and I love it. That’s all I want. Well, she is pretty cute, but that’s all I’m gonna get, so that’ll do.

I talked to Miki about her cold. She’s been very sick for a few days. She’s given her cold to all the other waitresses too. Quite a few are sick. Lam had a bad cough last night, but she appears to be over it now. Maybe she took my advice and drank lots of water and slept lots. Fortunately Miki has the day off tomorrow and I told her “You stay in bed. Drink lots of water. Watch TV and do nothing. By Friday, you will feel much better and you can come back and you will be well again. Maybe everyone else will be sick, but you will be OK” and she said “Yes, maybe”.

I asked Miki about what Steve had said. I said “Miki. Am I too loud ? Steve says I’m new and I’m acting too popular and everyone is talking to me but noone trusts me. Should I shut my mouth and not talk so much ?” and she said “No. People like you. I don’t even know Steve. He is probably just jealous because people know you and they do not know who he is. You should be yourself. If you make a mistake, people will forgive you”.

I said “Steve said people will forgive but never forget” and she said “That’s true, but you are a good person, you will only make little mistakes and people will understand. We all know you are you are, Ok ? Don’t worry. You have lots of friends here and you should be yourself. We like who you are and you are funny and good fun and you don’t need to shut up at all”. I (for the first time) put my hand on her arm and said sincerely, “Thank you Miki. That means a lot to me. That’s what I wanted to hear. You make me very happy. I just want to be myself and have fun and not always worry about what people think all the time” and she said “Yes, you should do that. Be yourself. If people like you, Ok. If they don’t like you, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter”.

That’s the best advice anyone could ever give you. Fuck Steve. He’s just jealous because he’s lived here for six months and none of the waitresses even know who the fuck he is, whereas they all know who I am. I’m not being a hero, I just have a big personality and I’m not going to hide in the corner and repress that just because I’m new. Maybe I’ll be here for a few months. Maybe I’ll be here for 20 years. I’m not going to wait until I’ve been here for a decade before I relax and let my hair down. I want to be who I am right now, and people can take it or leave it. If people like me, awesome. If they don’t, I’ll move onto the next bar or town or city or country and hope that I can do things better next time. But right now, I’m just gonna do what Miki said. I’m gonna be myself and relax and have a good time. If I fuck up, so be it. But I’m a nice guy and I think I’ve proved that many times and I think they respect that.

Miki and I had a discussion about a guy who wanted to buy her a drink earlier. She said “He wanted to buy me a drink, but he talks to every girl. That’s ok, but tonight, he was touching me a lot, and I was sick and I didn’t want to drink with him, so I just said ‘No, I’m busy’” and I said “You have every right. I know it’s your job to talk to everyone and you have to spread yourself around and speak to lots of people, but you don’t have to talk to people you don’t want to. If he’s an asshole and he touches you and you don’t like it, tell him no”.

I continued and with my experience with Nhi firmly in mind, I said “The most important thing is to be honest. Don’t just say you’re busy. Tell him the truth. Some people can tell when you’re lying and you shouldn’t lie and say you’re busy if you just don’t want to speak with someone. You have to be honest and tell them you aren’t comfortable with them, or that you don’t want to talk right now. Don’t lie. If you lie, you will make people very upset. Sometimes you break their heart. Tell them the truth and they will respect you more, even if they are angry right now”

Miki said “Thank you. That is good advice”. Awesome. She gave me great advice and I gave her great advice. I feel good about that. I really appreciated what she said and I hope what I said meant something at least. If it wasn’t necessarily the most appropriate advice for her situation but it was at least something heartfelt that explained how I felt about things and something I thought she might take on board. The girls here aren’t dishonest, they’re just … well… “tactful” and sometimes they will tell someone what they think they want to hear even if it’s not strictly true. They would rather please than be brutally honest.

I think maybe she counterbalanced the grumpy jealous bullshit Steve had said, and I maybe provided a bit of perspective on how to treat people. Though it might not be practical. For a waitress, it’s probably better to blow smoke up someone’s ass and lie if you think it will make them happier and make them buy more drinks. But from my point of view, they’re people, not customers. They have feelings, and if they are being friendly and want to chat to you, it’s probably because they like you, and if you lie to them, you may end up hurting their feelings more in the long run. I hope that’s practical advice. Miki seemed to appreciate it at least.

I didn’t blog at all yesterday so hopefully this post makes up for it at nearly 7,000 words. So either read it or enjoy it or piss the hell off. I was busy and I think it was the first time I’d been at the bar and not been using IRC and blogging. But let me rewind and tell you about how it all happened.

After breakfast where I ran into the American and Japanese guy I was feeling so awful due to the heat, and I stopped in a park and vomited on the grass for a bit, but I was determined to get better before the festival so I lay down in the shade on a bench and tried to will myself back to health. It helped a little and eventually I sat back up again and was thinking of moving on when a Vietnamese guy approached me and said “Excuse me sir. I am learning English. Can I practice by talking with you ?” and I said “Sure ok” and introduced myself. His name was Vhong (although god knows how it was really spelt) and he asked all the usual questions like where I was from and what I did for a living and how long I’d been in Vietnam and what did I like about the place etc. We touched on some interesting topics though. He told me about this place called “Ha Long Bay” up north and said it was very impressive and was one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

I was dubious about that, but I looked it up when I got home and it is indeed listed as a nominee for the seven natural wonders, according it the same status as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, so it must be a pretty cool place and if I get a chance, I’ll check it out. He asked whether I liked Vietnamese food and I said “Not that much. I’ve tried a bit of it, but I don’t like rice noodles very much, although broken rice is good” and he says “Tried dog ?” and I laughed and said “No, I haven’t found it anywhere, but I have been looking. I’d like to try it. I think people who say you shouldn’t eat dog are idiots”. He said “People love animals” and I reply “I love animals too, but I still like to eat them. They taste good” and he laughs this time. He asks “What about rat ?” and I say “No, is that good ?” and he assures me “Yes, rat is very delicious. It is like the most sweetest tender chicken you have ever eaten. I recommend it” and I say “I’d give it a go. Not sure I know the sort of restaurants that are going to serve rat though”.

He said “Yeah, we eat a lot of things you won’t find in most restaurants. Some people eat cats too. And monkey’s brains” and I comment “I have cats as pets, but I would maybe consider trying it, but I draw the line at monkeys. I won’t eat an animal which is intelligent like monkeys or dolphins” and he just goes “Ahh. I understand”. We talk for ages and a young kid of about 11 comes up and wants to shine my shoes. They push this on you a lot, especially in parks and they’re very bloody insistent. I tell him no, but he notices that the sole of my shoes are badly split and before I can complain, he’s taken them off my feet and is glueing them back together. I figure this can’t cost me too much, and I’m busy talking to Vhong, so I just let him do it without asking how much he wants for it.

The other thing I remember we talked about was music. He had asked if I like Kylie Minogue and I said “I don’t think we’ve heard a Kylie song in Australia for decades. She’s not popular there anymore. She lives in London now and they like her over there. They can keep her, we never liked her”, and he’s surprised by this because he assumed she was an institution to us. I commented that I didn’t like American music either and I mostly liked Japanese and Korean music. He said “Do you like SNSD ?” and I laughed my arse off. SNSD is an acronym of the Korean group So Nyuh Shi Dae’s name. What name are they known by in the rest of the world ? “Girl’s Generation” of course, lol. Straight off the bat, he’d asked if I liked Girl’s Generation, and of course my response was “Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby !” and he LOLed and said “Yeah. Exactly”. If you say you like Korean music, the first thing people are going to think of is that song and that group. They’re a phenomenon there and becoming so in other parts of the world. I wish Australians weren’t so against Asian music. I would love to hear Gee get played on Rage or Video Hits. I reckon people would call in in droves saying “What was that incredible song with all the Asian girls in it ? You have to play that again !”. Who would ever choose Jeniffer Lopez over Girl’s Generation ? I know I wouldn’t.

Anyway, Vhong thanks me for talking and leaves after probably 40 minutes of chatting and the kid has finished glueing my shoes back together, glued a new soft lining on the inside, and shined them for me. I ask him how much he wants and he says “500,000 dong” and I laugh and say “Do I look stupid ? No way” and he repeats “Yes. 500,000 !” and I shake my head and say “Not a chance. I’ll give you 100,000. That’s plenty” and he keeps insisting on 500,000 dong and I say “Look, those shoes only cost 200,000. Why would I want to give you 500,000 for glueing them up and shining them ?” and he says “Glue is expensive” and I say “No it’s not. Don’t lie to me”.

I figure it’s my own fault for not negotiating a price, and I pull out a 200,000 dong note and give it to him, but his friend beside him says “No, 400,000 at least” and I say “Not going to happen”, but I pull out another 100,000 and give him that as well and say “There you go. 300,000 dong. Are you happy ?” and he grins at me and I say “It’s your lucky day isn’t it ? I bet you have a party now”. I probably should have just given the kid 100,000 and told him to fuck off, but I was reluctant to underpay someone, even if it was just a young kid. Who knows what his family might do to me. So I’ve given some kid almost $15 to shine and glue up my shoes, which is insane but you live and learn. I’m pretty pissed off about it though because I could have done a lot with that money and I really don’t have very much at the moment.

I decide to go and do something I’ve been thinking about for days but I wasn’t sure I’d go through with it. I go to a tattoo parlour nearby called “Saigon Ink”. There’s a few in this area and I’d researched this particular one online and they have an impressive web page that claims they’ve won awards and done tattoos for lots of famous people so I walk in, but they tell me there’s a problem and they can’t do any tattoos until after 11am today. I show them what I want done anyway, which is Suki’s name, and we negotiate a price. They want 900,000 but I talk them down to 700,000 which I guess is a lot of money to me right now, but realistically it’s only $32 and I think it’ll make me feel better about getting ripped off for the shoe shine. So I wander off for a while and do bugger all and then come back a bit after 11am and there’s a lot of people inside.

I’m asked to email them the picture and take a seat. I’m nervous as hell and I can hear the noise of the incredibly loud tattoo needle coming from the back room. I’m feeling a little better but I’m still very queasy and I have this fear that it’s going to hurt so much that I throw up. Nevertheless, I go out the back when I’m asked and take a seat with the other customers while the female tattooist applies a stencil to my arm. The American guy across from me says “Hey. I know you don’t I ? You’re Dave from Bar Number 5″ and I laugh and say “Fucking hell. I’m in a city of 10 million people and I’ve met two people from the bar who know me in one morning” and he goes “Yeah. But you go there a lot so everyone knows you. I’m Kevin. I’m getting some new art done because today’s my birthday”.

I congratulate him on his birthday and ask what he’s doing tonight and if he’ll be at the bar. He says he’s playing in a volleyball competition tonight and that his friends have asked him out to a different bar but he says if things are boring, he’ll drop in and say “Hi” if I’m there. I explain that I might not be because I’m avoiding Nhi, and he asks “Why ? She’s hot” and I explain that she’s canceled two dates on me and he just goes “Oh well. You win some, you lose some”.

The tattooist asks if I’m ready and she knows it’s my first tattoo and she says “Hope you can handle pain” and I reply “Not in the slightest but I’m committed now”. She starts doing the outline and it is quite painful, but not how I imagined it. I thought it would be a sharp stabbing pain since it’s basically like a sewing machine needle stabbing into you repeatedly but it’s sorta different. I reckon it feels like someone cutting a shape on you with a stanley knife. It’s painful, but it’s bearable and I say “That’s not really that bad” and Kevin says “Yeah, depends where you’re getting it. This one on my chest hurts a lot”.

To be honest, after about 20 minutes you become so used to it that you sorta enjoy it and in a weird way, it’s like having someone play with your hair or something because it’s just about them giving you lots of attention and doing something with your body and I honestly would be happy if it went for a lot longer because I am actually enjoying it. She inks in the middle and I look at it a few times as she works and it looks good. It’s dark and the characters are straight and smooth. When she’s done, she rubs it down with oil and gets me to look in the mirror and tell her what I think. I say “It’s awesome. Thanks” and Kevin says “It’s addictive. Once you get one, you realise how much fun it is and you want more”.

I don’t think I would ever be one of those people who wants lots of visible artwork on their body, but I am very proud to have Suki’s name indelibly written onto my body for the rest of my life and I’m determined that I’m gonna get a tattoo for Josh soon too. Definitely gonna leave it at that and I’m sure as hell not gonna get some girl’s name on my body. I know myself too well to know how that’d turn out. I say goodbye to Kevin and thank the tattooist (who’s name was “Viet”) and they give me some lotion to put on it tomorrow and tell me how to take care of it for the next few days, by not showering, keeping it out of the sun, and not eating any seafood.

I head to Bar Number 5 to see Ngan because I think it’s going to be her last day at the bar. She’s there and I ask her and she says “I think I’m going to stay here actually. It’s better here. The restaurant is busier and you don’t get to sit down or talk to people like here”. I say “I know why you want to stay here” and she asks “Why ?” and I point to my chest and say “Me” and she laughs and I assure her I’m just joking. She works the register late in the evening and the other night she confided to me that some guy ripped her off and took off with a lot of money that was supposed to go into the till. She was deathly afraid that Heinz would see it on the cameras and that she would be fired but she tells me tonight that he doesn’t know and noone else saw, so she’s relieved to still have a job.

Naturally the first thing I want to do is show her my tattoo, and she asks what it means and I tell her it’s my daughter’s name and she says “That’s very cool”. I tell her I’ve got to go now because I’m going to Natsumatsuri, but she has no idea what it is, so I explain and tell her where it is and then I head off.

When I get to the area though, the street is cordoned off by a police barricade and there must be at least two hundred police in this one street alone. I’m not sure what’s going on, but as I approach one of them says something to me and motions for me to leave, so I turn right and decide to walk around to the other side of the block. When I get there, that’s blocked in the same way too. I pull out my iPad to look at a map and figure out what to do next and a young officer comes up and looks over my shoulder, so I translate to him that I’m trying to get to the cultural centre for Natsumatsuri but he has no idea what that is. He goes off to talk to someone and then comes back and shrugs his shoulder, so I keep walking around the block further. In total I reckon about 6 or more blocks are barricaded and there must be well over a thousand police officers present.

I wait in the park and watch for a while, wondering what to do next, when all of a sudden the barricades are moved out of the way and everyone starts just casually walking through as if nothing has happened. I get up and make my way to the cultural centre as many of the police begin to leave but when I get there, the gates are closed and there are a bunch of police outside that too. I wander back and forth for a while wondering what’s going on and whether I should ask someone, but it doesn’t seem that the police in Vietnam are trained to speak English nor are they going to want to type on my iPad so I figure that’s a waste of time. There are a lot of people milling around and pointing to the building and I overhear one person say the word “cancelled” and I sigh and figure that’s that then. I’m still curious to know what’s up though and when a camera crew gets turned away I stop one of the guys and ask “What happened ?” and he just shrugs and says “I don’t know” and walks off.

I’m bitterly disappointed as I’ve told you how much I was looking forward to this event, so I head back to the bar. A couple of waitresses ask why I came back so quickly and I explain that something happened at the venue and it was shut down. Happy hour has begun by this time and a cold Tiger is put in front of me without me even asking which is not something I can refuse, and I drink it and poke at a meal of Roast Pork. Vhun asks me how it is and I say “It’s terrible today” and she sympathises and says “I don’t like the roast. It’s never good”.

I show my tattoo to every waitress who comes up to me and they’re all quite interested in it. Tra must have started early today because she sees it and says “I want a tattoo of a snake on my wrist” and I ask “Why a snake ?” and she says “It is the year I was born in” and I say “Ahh. I’m a horse. What year was the snake ?” and she says “I’m not telling”. I laugh and when she walks off I grab my iPad and quickly Google the year of the snake. Then I sneak up on her and say with a big grin “You were born in 1989 which makes you 23 in Vietnamese years” and she looks sulky. I go and sit back down and she must have asked someone what other year the snake was and she come up and says “No. 1977. I’m 34″ and I laugh my arse off and say “You liar. You are not 34, you’re 23″ and she repeatedly insists that she’s 34.

I ponder for a moment if that’s possible and maybe she looks very young, but no, it’s definitely not possible. There’s no way in hell she’s older than I am. Eventually she relents and says “Ok, you got me. I was born in 1989″ and I say “I knew it. You can’t fool me”. She asks if I want to play pool with her because it’s quiet and noone is playing and I say “Sure, but I’m very bad. All the waitresses beat me” and she assures me it won’t happen by saying “Not me. I only played my first game two days ago. I don’t even understand all the rules yet”.

We play, and I am shocking. When I break, barely a single ball moves and I’m embarrassed as hell because she sinks a couple of balls straight away. But then the tables turn and I pull off a few really good shots that impress her and I’m down to the 8 ball and she still has three balls on the table. It takes me a couple of goes, but I sink it in a really sweet ricochet manoeuvre and she says “Very good. I told you that you would beat me” and comment “You played great for only your second game”.

Nhi arrives and talks to me and says she was worried about me when I didn’t turn up yesterday and I just say “I was very sick so I stayed home”. I tell her I wanted to ring her this morning and ask her to come to Natsumatsuri with me and she says “You should have. I would have come” and I said “I don’t have your number” and she writes it down for me. She says “Can you email me a photo of me ?” and I send it and show her which one I sent. I knew which one she wanted. It was a nice profile shot of her face taken by Tra the other night and it’s a really good photo and she made a big deal about liking it, so I knew which one she’d want. Just for laughs I write in the subject line “A photo of my girlfriend”. I say “Do you have a computer ? Can you check your email ?” and she says “Yeah. I have a computer. I don’t email much though”. I offer her the Yahoo login page so that she can confirm it’s arrived, but it’s not in her inbox, but then I see it in her spam box. She sees the subject line and laughs and swats at me and goes red.

I notice she only has a few emails in her inbox and theyr’e all from one person, named Colin something. I know who that must be and I ask “Colin’s your old boyfriend right ?” and she says “How did you know that ?” and I put at her inbox and say “You have emails from a guy with an English name. It could only be him” and she nods and says “Yeah, I haven’t heard from him since February. I’m still very sad”. She asks me for a photo of myself as well, but I assume she would prefer it on her phone, but I don’t have a SIM card in my phone anymore. I have one in my wallet, but it’s out of credit so I just say “Wait here” and I disappear outside and wander down the street and buy some phone credit and recharge my phone and then stand outside the bar and try and send the photo that I’ve copied onto there via a micro SD card.

It won’t send though, and I go inside and spend about an hour struggling with the internet and MMS settings trying to make it work, keeping my phone under the table so she doesn’t know what I’m doing. Finally I make it work, and I send her a photo of myself with the subject “A photo of your boyfriend”. She walks out of the bathroom, hears her phone and looks at it. She looks across the bar at me with a big grin on her face and comes over and swats me again and says “You’re bad”. I figure we’ve made up by this time, and we talk a little bit briefly, but I keep getting distracted by stuff.

The internet doesn’t work in the bar tonight because Heinz’s modem is broken and he’s bought a new Linksys but he has no idea how to set it up. He says the ISP aren’t open at night and only speak Vietnamese anyway which he doesn’t speak despite him having been here for decades, the lazy prick. I offer to help out and I Google and find that that his ISP are open 24 hours and all you have to do is press 2 when you connect and you’ll get an English speaking operator. I get through a couple of times, but the bar is just insanely noisy and I can only get through on their landline, not my mobile so in the end I have to give up, but he tells me that it’s ok because he knows at guy at the ISP who will come out and set it up for the cost of a couple of coffees. I say “That’s some damn cheap support” and he goes “I know”.

I leave him a bunch of instructions on how to set it up and use a custom DNS server so that Facebook works for all the patrons and he buys me a beer in thanks, but he orders Miki to get me a San Miguel, and I start drinking it and go “What the hell ?” and look at it and grab Miki and say “Have you ever known me to drink San Miguel before ? You know I only drink Tiger” and she says sorry and talks to Heinz about it and he says “I’m so sorry. Miki, get him a Tiger instead” and I thank him. He has a friend called Rob there who I haven’t met before, and he buys a bottle of red wine and insists I drink with them. It’s pretty late at this point and Tra comes and says “David, it’s after midnight. You had better go home or you will be stuck outside all night again” and I say “It’s ok. I want to talk to Nhi” and she says “Ok, but I worry about you” and I say “Don’t. I’ll be fine”.

Nhi was talking to Eric, a French guy for ages and they’re laughing together and looking like they’re having a great time and I want to kill him. They play pool together and she’s having fun and I’m so jealous and all I can think is “Oh, so you’re ‘shy’ are you ? Doesn’t look like it to me”. Then while I’m distracted she goes off and is talking to some fat British asshole on the other side of the bar. I go and chat to this alcoholic guy nearby to Nhi who’s there every single night. He’s a nice guy but he gets even more drunk than me and he’s always slurring his words and looking so plastered. He’s Australian, though I think he wasn’t born there and he lives in Vietnam now anyway. We talk about the music and I say how I want to convince Heinz to add new songs and we discuss for ages what songs would be suitable.

Eventually the British asshole pays up and leaves since it’s almost 12:30. I call Nhi over and say “What would you like to drink ? It’s my turn to talk to you” and she says “I can’t drink anymore. I’ve had three cocktails tonight and it’s almost time to leave and I have to ride home”. I say “No, it doesn’t have to be alcoholic. Grab an orange juice. I just want to talk to you because you’ve been talking to other people all night” and she smiles and says “Ok”. But a few minutes later she’s back on the other side of the bar talking to Eric and I’m just like “What the FUCK ?! She was supposed to be having a drink with me !”. I want to go and punch Eric in the head, but I know it’s not his fault.

So I just wander to where my bags are and am about to leave when I realise I’ve got to pay my bill, so I ask Nhi for it and she says “You’re leaving ? Are you angry at me ?” and I say “Yes. Very. I’m sleeping outside again tonight because I stayed here all night to talk to you and you’ve talked to everyone EXCEPT me, so I’m leaving”. She looks sad and goes away to get the bill. I don’t want to wait to talk to her so I just throw enough money onto the bar to cover my bill and walk out without a word.

I’m so pissed off, and I’m not even drunk because after happy hour finished I started drinking very slowly but suddenly I do want to get very drunk, so I go to Secret Bar around the corner and walk in and throw myself onto the couch and sulk. Tam says “What’s wrong David ?” and say “Girls” and he goes “Ahh. Double Black Russian then I guess ?” and I say “You got it”. I was hoping that Huyeng would be here, because having her hold my arm and put her head on my shoulder would make all my problems disappear right now, but she’s not and another girl called Chieu comes and sits with me.

I don’t know her, but she knows me and says “Everyone here knows you. This is a small bar and we all know the Aussie named David who comes and drinks Kahlua and Vodka. You’re famous here”. I know she’s just bullshitting me and being nice to make me hang out and drink more, but she does at least know who I am and what I drink and where I’m from, so I don’t care if it’s an act.

She doesn’t flirt with me or try and get too close to me though which is a relief. We just talk, and she seems to genuinely want to chat, and to be honest we mostly talk about her rather than me, though of course the first thing I do is show her my new tattoo and she is impressed and asks if it hurt and why I got it and I explain it’s my daughter’s name and she says “Yeah, I know you have children. Someone told me”. I guess when you’re a foreign guy in a very small, quiet bar in Saigon, word spreads like wildfire about who you are.

Turns out she’s met this Aussie guy before from Sydney and she really liked him, but he went home and she’s carried his business card ever since but she can’t work out how to call him internationally because it never connects. I explain that she has to ring 00 for the Vietnamese IDD code and then 61 for the country code, and then drop the first digit of the Australian number and then dial the rest. I say “You should ring him” and she does it on the spot. I point to the local Aussie time on my laptop and say “You do realise it’s 4:30 am in Sydney right ?” and she freaks out and quickly hangs up and I laugh my ass off and say “Ring him tomorrow. He’ll appreciate it. Maybe he’ll be sitting at home feeling lonely with nothing to do and you’ll ring him and remind him of Saigon and he’ll jump on the next plane back here to visit you”.

She says “I hope so. I’d like to see him again”. It really makes me smile because I know that she isn’t trying to use him for attention. She likes him and she misses him and she really wants to see him again. I like to imagine that she’s going to ring him tomorrow and he’s going to be really happy to hear from her and it’s going to make both their days brighter and give them something to be happy about for a long time to come. Not everything has to be some chick using you for attention and flirting and then ignoring you for the next guy, but it makes me sad how the foreigners come here and the girls fall in love with them and then they go home and the girl never hears from him again and forever carries around his photo on her phone or his business card in her wallet.

It’s really unfair the way guys do that, but I guess it can’t be helped. Short of marrying them, there’s little you can do to continue seeing them except keep returning for more holidays or just email or call them all the time. Still, it’s sad, and Americans and Aussies and British guys are leaving a trail of waitresses with broken hearts in their wake.

Secret bar is closing, and Chieu gets up to leave and says goodnight and I wish her luck with her Aussie friend from Sydney and she promises to tell me how it works out. Lam talks to me and gives me Chieu’s name because I didn’t know how to spell it. I also ask the name of the cute shy girl who was embarassed about me taking her picture the first night because I’ve seen her playing pool tonight and he says her name is Hoa and grins at me as if to say “Nice choice”. I pay my exorbitantly high bill for the two drinks I’ve had (though they were double cocktails to be fair) and walk back to my suburb.

I stop at the convenience store and get 8 Smirnoffs and a big bag of pistachios and head off into a nearby alley. This one is really dark and there’s one section where the path is so narrow that I have to walk sideways and I’m amazed that it even leads somewhere because it’s basically a crack in the wall but I just want to hide somewhere quiet and drink. It’s only a couple of hours until my hotel opens so I don’t need to be out too long and I won’t be sleeping. I just need to hide and kill some time.

So I drink Smirnoff and eat pistachios and listen to music videos as per usual. At about 4am I hear someone coming towards me and I quickly turn off the laptop’s screen and sit in the darkness. I can make out some old guy, and he walks straight past me without seeing me. I figure he’ll see me when he opens the door to his house though and I don’t want to startle him, so I quietly clear my throat and say “Xin chao” and undim my screen and he turns and looks at me in surprise, then opens his door and goes inside without a word. I’m feeling pretty uneasy about it though and I decide to get the hell out of there because people are starting to wake up.

I sidle back out of the crack in the wall and go back to my hotel. There’s a bike cabbie there who’s driven me before and he waves and goes and presses the buzzer of my hotel for me, but noone answers, so I sit down on the steps. There’s a hotel a couple of doors down that is open, but I can’t afford to be paying for two hotels, and Hai Minh will be open soon anyway, depending on how soundly the guy inside is sleeping. I watch a whole bunch of huge rats running around across the street and I attach my long lens and photograph a bunch of them. Since the light’s bad I have to do it with manual focus because the camera can’t focus well enough in the dark.

A woman from the alley nearby, who I think is probably the woman who woke me up the first night I slept outside comes out and puts some huge blocks of ice on the street and saws them up into smaller pieces with a weird metal saw and I’m fascinated by it, probably because I’ve finished all 8 Smirnoffs now and I decide to take a photo. I think I should ask, but you can’t get a candid photo if you ask someone, so I just take it anyway. She looks up and smiles but doesn’t say anything. The bike cabbie comes up and says something in her ear and I imagine he’s saying “You should ask that guy for money in return for taking your photo” and to be honest, if she did, I’d gladly give her $2 for the photo because it’s interesting, and seeing an old woman in a “nón lá”, the traditional conical South East Asian hat you see rice paddy workers wearing sawing ice on the street at 4am is a fascinating experience.

But I want to go further. I want to give it a go. She comes back after a delivery and I get up and approach her and she looks a little alarmed and steps back but I point to myself and then the saw and motion sawing a block and she laughs. Unfortunately she’s finished cutting for the night as apparently the remaining blocks are required whole. Instead though, she loads them on the back of her bike and motions for me to get on… the front. She wants me to deliver them for her and presumably she’ll get on the back and guide me. That’d be awesome, but I can’t ride a motorbike and I try and indicate that but she tries to insist. I say “không hiểu motorbike. tôi cắt mai” which means “I don’t understand motorbike. Me cut tomorrow” and she laughs and says “Ok” and takes off on her deliveries.

While she’s gone I ring the buzzer and the shutters are rolled up and I’m let inside. When I get to my room there’s a hilarious sight waiting for me. The cleaners, who are normally so careful to leave everything exactly how they found it have been unable to resist having a little fun with my stuffed animals, and when I walk in, the first thing I see is my tiger in the middle of the bed with his paws wrapped around Pikachu’s head mauling him. I reckon I must have laughed so loudly and for so long that I would have woken up everyone in the neighbouring rooms. It was just so unexpected and it was right there in front of me as I staggered in and I just cracked up on the spot.

I throw myself on the bed and finally, after many days of insomnia, sleep overtakes me and I sleep soundly for many hours. When I wake up, I’m feeling pretty sick from both a hangover and the flu, and despite being hungry, I just roll over and go back to sleep again. Cam texts me and says “Sorry about Nhi” and asks me if I still want the room. Wow, word of our fight sure traveled fast. I respond and say yes I definitely want it but that I’m really tired today and ask her if I can see it tomorrow instead. She says “Ok, I talk to my friend” and then she rings me shortly afterwards and says “No problem. You can come see it with me after I finish work at 8pm tomorrow” and I say “Thanks”. I roll over and doze for a while again.

Then I get another message and assume it’s from Cam again and grab my phone. It’s from Nhi. She says she’s sorry about last night and she doesn’t want me to be sad but she still loves and misses her last boyfriend very much and says she can’t love anyone else because she’s still so sad over him and is always waiting for him to come back or email her even though she hasn’t heard from him in six months. But she says “I feel you very good and I want to be close friends. I hope you will find somebody else who’s better than me. I hope everything good for you David. I am very sad when you are angry at me”.

I tell her I understand and I’m sorry for getting so mad last night, but that I got very jealous of her spending so much time with other people and not me when I was going to have to sleep outside again just so that I could talk to her and she still hadn’t spent time with me despite that. I say that I’m sad that she doesn’t want to be my girlfriend and I tell her I’m not coming tonight, but that I will come again soon and that I won’t be angry forever and I’ll get over it it in time because I like her and still want to see her. I tell her to have fun tonight and say Hi to Tra and Ngan and the others for me.

She thanks me and says she will. I guess I understand now. I think she liked me, but that it was starting to get serious and she didn’t want a repeat of her last relationship where she fell in love and then he took off and she never heard from him again. I’m guessing that’s why she canceled our dates. Ignoring me in the bar tonight though was really too much and I’m still incredibly mad at her for doing that when I was spending the night in an alley just so I could talk to her a bit and she not only didn’t talk to me, she went and talked to others right in front of me. I will go back and see her soon, but I don’t think we’ll talk much anymore. I’ve been hurt now, and whatever her motivations are for wanting to end it, I don’t like the way she did it. She’s not “shy” though. She’s “afraid”. I just wish she’d have said that, but I guess she did in the end.

Today I got ripped off by some kid. The festival I so desperately wanted to go to was cancelled. I had a big fight with the girl I like and stormed out. And I got very drunk and spent way too much money and now I’m almost broke again. But I did get an awesome tattoo that I’m very proud of which is featured below, so please check it out. And tomorrow’s another day, and I’ll meet new people and see old friends and have a good time all over again. So my heart’s been broken yet-a-fucking-gain, but hey, that happens like every second day to me it seems. There’s always going to be another pretty girl to chat to and fall in love with. There’s tens of millions of them here in fact. Will have to go to the bar tomorrow to see Cam, but I won’t be getting drunk, that’s FOR SURE. I’m gonna need my remaining money to pay rent and eat.

But despite having a fight with Nhi and getting my heart broken (again), it was still a good day. I love my Suki tattoo and I’m glad I’m still in Vietnam. Experiences are still experiences, whether they’re good or bad, and they’re worth having. As Tennyson said:

“Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”.

Here’s the photos. Pheer those rats. Sorry about the focus on the stuffed animal photo, I forgot to set my lens back to autofocus. My tattoo rocks, doesn’t it ? :”)

UPDATE: Miki asked me to delete her photos. She said she didn’t her her pictures being on the internet because her family didn’t know she worked here in a bar. She said once, a guy had taken photos of her and put them on YouTube and she was very unhappy with it. I said “Do you want me to delete them ?” She said “Yes, please. You can have them on your computer, but not on the internet please”. I said “Ok. I understand. I am a nice guy. If you don’t want your photos online, I won’t put them online”. It’s a shame because Miki is cute and I would love to show you what she looks like, but like Yuko back at the anime convention, I respect her wishes and if she doesn’t want her photos online, I won’t post them. That’s what being a respectable journalist is all about. If someone says “These photos are private, don’t post them” then I will respect that and I won’t post them. As such, Miki’s photos aren’t included in the gallery below anymore.

I went out drinking.. yes… again. I was at the bar. Nhi wasn’t there tonight. I think I must have misunderstood her when she said she’d see me tomorrow because I guess today was her one day off per week even though I thought it was Saturday she had off, but in retrospect I remember her working Saturdays, so I guess not.

Tra got mad at me for not saying goodbye to her when I left the night before last. I apologised, but I again left without saying goodnight. Oops. She’ll slap me upside the head for that shit I’m sure. Since Nhi wasn’t here, she made sure she got to talk to me tonight. It was funny that a couple of other guys were playing games with the waitresses on their shitty little tiny iPods and to one guy I couldn’t resist and said “You need one of these mate, then they’ll all play with you” and pointed to my iPad.

I didn’t play any games last night though. I chatted for a bit online but I mostly drank and chatted to real people. Ngan didn’t leave my side all night. I’m thankful. At first I was really worried she would be awkward around me for saying I loved her, but she wasn’t. She said next week she finishes working at the bar and is going back to the restaurant where she normally works. It’s only 4 doors down from the bar though, and she gave me the business card and said “Will you come and see me ?” and I said “I like this bar. Don’t want to go to a restaurant” and she looked sad and I said “I’m joking. Of course I will come and see you Ngan”. Maybe they have a bar you can sit at too, I dunno. Probably. I haven’t been there. I’ll find out next week I guess.

I talked to a lot of cool guys. The hacker who I met the other night was there again and we talked for fucking ages about programming. He was jealous about my hacking abilities and I said “No way man, you are the maddest programmer” because he had shown me this awesome “augmented reality” Android app that he’d written that allowed you to photograph a surface like the bar and then see it on your phone and throw 3D objects off it. He assured me that it was just because he’d used an existing game engine and tacked on a bit of augmented reality code onto it and I said “That’s far more than I could do mate, you’re obviously very skilled. You should work for fucking Google”.

I chatted to Alex, an American guy for ages. No fucking idea what about, because I was a little drunk. Ok I was a lot drunk. Not falling down drunk, but pretty wasted. He wanted to get my blog address because he thought it would be cool to read the crazy shit I write about my adventures in Vietnam.

I somehow picked up two jobs last night though I think. I spoke to Han the manager and said “Why don’t you have a web page ?” and he said “We paid someone to do one.. but they haven’t done it. They were useless and kept asking us to tell them we wanted on it” and I said “Ok, I’ll do it for you. You don’t have to pay me much. A bit of cash and some free drinks” and he said “Yeah, ok. That’d be good”.

The other person… well I don’t really remember that. I just know we talked about web pages in the toilet and he wanted my details so I could do one for his new bar that was opening soon and I didn’t have a card on me so I gave him my website address and email. I really should put some business cards back in my wallet because apparently I can get work here. While working in Vietnam will earn you fuck all, money is money, and maybe if I do Han’s website for the bar I will get free drinks forever. I might even put up a simple website today to show him I’m serious and say “I want one meal per night and all my drinks free for as long as I’m Vietnam… deal ?” I reckon he will say yes. :”)

Yan TV is playing “Gee” by Girls Generation. It’s a Korean song and it’s Seriously Fucking Addictive. It’s catchy as hell and has a bunch of cute girls dancing. Thats a big up-vote for me. They have only played it a couple of times on TV since I’ve been here although they play their more recent song “Run Devil Run” a lot, but a few days ago when I was talking about Asian music someone said on IRC “I bet you’re so pathetic that if I said ‘gee gee gee gee’ you would know exactly what I was talking about” and I said “You fucking bet I would. That’s a great song. ‘Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby !’” and he facepalmed and said “I knew it”.

Seriously, I think I have to go to Korea next. The girls there are stunningly beautiful and I think I like their music as much as I love Japanese music… and I mean… I have a hard drive full of Japanese music, but my collection of Korean albums is quickly catching up to it. I have no fucking idea why I’m like this. Why am I into this stuff ? I just have no fucking idea, but I just am. Japanese songs. Korean songs. Even Vietnamese songs now… I FUCKING LOVE THEM. I guess I should start practicing my Korean and head there. The girls there are very pretty, and despite being still considered a third world country, it’s a well developed one and a very beautiful place to visit I am told. Plus they have sakura and I could have hanami there and it would be much cheaper to visit that Japan.

When someone is way too into japanese culture you call them a “weeaboo”. It means they are dickheads who wish they were Japanese but aren’t. But I’m not exclusively a “wapanese” idiot. I love Korea, and Vietnam and Malaysia and China. My child has a Japanese name for christ’s sake. I watch dramas and listen to music from all these countries. I want to meet a Chinese girl so I can tell her that “O Tso Chu Chih Wen” (“It started with a kiss”) is one of my favourite dramas ever. Again, I have no idea why I am like this. I don’t know why I love everything Asian. It just happened. I blame SBS. Josh and I saw Evangelion one night after South Park and that was the beginning of the end for me. Now I’m basically living in Asia, I’m dating Asian girls, and I can speak at least some words in various Asian languages. What happened to me ? My wife always used to joke to me “One day you’re going to leave me for a pretty Asian girl”. Well, she may have left me, but the bit about Asian girls seems to have been right, because that’s my life right now.

My life has changed so much recently. In December last year I was living with two of my best mates, drinking rarely and smoking lots of pot and sitting around doing nothing. Now, I don’t speak to those guys, I’m Asia, I don’t do drugs anymore, I drink heaps and I am dating pretty Asian girls. In six months, my whole life has changed. I said to Ngan at the bar last night “I feel like I have been in Asia forever” and she asked “What do you mean ?” and I said “I was in Nha Trang only 4 weeks ago. It feels like years ago. I don’t even remember what living in Australia is like because I’ve been here so long”. Anyway, enough musings on life. Back to the story at hand.

Alex and his mate said “You have to come with us. We’re going to another bar” and I said “I dunno man, I can’t stay out past midnight or I won’t be able to get into my hotel” and he said “Don’t worry, you can crash at my place if you have to” and I said “Ok, whatever. Let’s go”. We went around the corner to some other bar. It was small but cozy and the waitresses wore the cutest little Chinese dresses. I was very short of cash because I had been drinking double black russians back at Bar Number 5 so I don’t want to buy any drinks, but Alex gets me one black russian and when I’m sitting at the bar, the waitress keeps topping it up with coke. At least that’s what I thought she was doing, until I caught her pouring vodka into it and said “Are you getting me drunk ?” and she said “You are with our friend. I will give you drinks”. Seriously ? I’m hanging out with some dude who’s dating a waitress there so I get free drinks ? Nice.

After an hour or two Alex and his mate say “We need somewhere crazier. I know this great place. You’ll love it, but first we need to get some girls. Let’s go back to Bar Number Five and pick up the waitresses”. So we all piled into a taxi and went back to Bar Number 5 as it was closing at about.. I dunno.. 2 am maybe. Miki and another waitress said they would come out with us, so we all got back into our waiting taxi and headed off to this nightclub. It was mad. It was about 2am or later and this place was absolutely pumping. It had crazy loud techno music and strobe lights and lasers and there was tonnes of people there dancing.

Michael (that’s may be his name, I can’t remember but I’m going to call him that anyway for the sake of convenience) bought a bottle of vodka and Miki was pouring us drinks all night. I took a bunch of photos since Alex asked me to. Back at the previous bar he had told me take some photos and said “I know you’re a journalist, you can do that shit” and I said “How do you know that ?” and he said “Someone told I think. Maybe it was you or maybe it was someone else”. I obliged and took a bunch of photos. Michael was going hard. One minute he was kissing one girl, and a few minutes later her was kissing another girl and then another ! Lucky bastard. I want to kiss a pretty Asian girl, but I haven’t done it yet. God knows what else he did with them later that night. I better limit my comments because I gave Alex the URL to my blog last night and he’s probably reading this shit.

That’s about it. I don’t really remember past that. I remember about half an hour or so at the nightclub and then I don’t remember anything. I just woke up in my hotel early this morning and went “Oh.. apparently I got home again. Lucky for me”. Thing is, when I’m drunk I’m pretty coherent and I manage to take care of myself, but I often don’t remember what happened the next day. It seems I must have got a taxi home, because I have change in my left pocket which normally means I’ve gotten a car taxi home. If I’m on a bike I tend to put my change away, but if I’m in car I just stuff it into my pocket.

God knows what I did last night at the nightclub. If I kissed any Asian girls I’ll be really mad because I don’t remember it. Wouldn’t mind if I kissed Miki though. She’s quite cute. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I think I just drank lots and took some photos and talked shit to people. I may have danced. I vaguely remember the music was really good and we were all grooving and I may have danced. Not sure.

All I know is that I had fun. I went to two bars and a nightclub. I drank lots and didn’t have to pay for it. I talked to lots of cute girls and I made it home (albeit alone) in one piece. Every time I have a good night I think “It can’t get better than this. This was the best night so far”, and then more mad shit happens and I meet more crazy people and we have even more fun. I’m not even hung over today. Dunno how that works. Pretty sure my body must be just used to it. My blood is probably permanently 1% alcohol by now. I’m at home (by which I mean my hotel), blogging.

It’s apparently midday, but I’ve been awake since early this morning having got little sleep as usual. I guess I just don’t need it. Yesterday, after being awake for 56 hours straight, I woke up after only 5 hours sleep. I thought I must have slept all day and that it was 8pm, but I opened the door and looked outside just to check. It was daylight and I thought “Shit.. it’s only 8am ? I didn’t sleep fuck all”. My psychiatrist has warned me that if I don’t get enough sleep my bipolar will be a problem and I will tend to have manic episodes. So that means I’ll go a bit nuts, fall in love with girls at random and do crazy shit like drinking lots and going out to bars and nightclubs all night ? Err… and that’s a problem how exactly ? I’m not sure if me doing that shit is the cause, the symptom or the solution. Whatever it is, I’m having the time of my life and I’m going to keep doing it until my visa runs out, and then I’m going to get another one, and after that runs out I’m going to go home briefly, move all my important shit back to my parent’s place and I’m coming back to Asia. I may not be an Asian, but with a little effort, I can be a citizen at least. Growing up in Australia was fun, but I want to list my place of residence as being somewhere in Asia. It’s great here.

I’m gonna post the video to Gee because I want my friend Peta and whoever else reads this shit to check it out. I know my mate Ryan probably knows it well because he IS Korean. Look at that last scene where they’re all sitting around laughing together and tell me that isn’t the cutest shit you’ve ever seen in your life ? After that, well, I’ll add some photos of stuff. Seriously, I dare you to look at these photos and tell me you are not jealous as hell and that you think I had the best night out ever. Because you can’t. :”)

If you’re reading these stories, I recommend you read the story below first, as they appear on the page in reverse chronological order and it makes more sense if you read the “previous” story first, which is the one below this one. So read that first, then come back and read this one.

For clarity, this story is about Nhi the cafe girl, not Nhi the bar waitress.

When I got home from the bar, I got a text message from Nhi’s brother Zhang. It said “Nhi needs your help. Can you meet her ?”

I hadn’t heard from Nhi in over a week. Last time I saw her she had looked miserable and I was sure she was still telling me lies. She had said we would speak again the next day, but I heard nothing from her for over a week and then suddenly she was having her brother contact me and say she needed “help” ? That was too much.

So I ignored it. He rang. I ignored it. He rang again. I ignored it again. He rang a third time and I picked it up and said “What is it Zhang. What do you want ?”

He said “Nhi wants to see you.” I said “Why. What does she need ?”

He said “She needs money. 200,000 vnd. can you help her ?” and I said “What for ?” and he said “Nhi no tell me” and I said “Then I’m not helping”. I mean, that is only about $9 Australian, so it’s not like I wouldn’t have given it to her if she really needed it, but to just ring me out of the blue and expect money after not having seen her for so long was just a horrible thing to do.

She got on the phone, and it was remarkable how much more English she could speak all of a sudden which made me immediately suspcious. She said “Hi David, this is Nhi. Can I see you please ?”

I said “Why ?” but she didn’t know how to say what she wanted and she spoke in Vietnamese. I said “Put Zhang back on” and she did. There was someone else in the background too. Another girl.

I said “Zhang. If she won’t tell me what she needs it for then i’m not helping” and he replied “Nhi won’t talk to me about it. Will you meet her please ?”

I asked “When ?” and he said “Now”. I said “It’s late. I’m very tired and it’s raining outside. No. She can meet me tomorrow”.

He said “No Nhi must see you now. She go home tomorrow. Must see you now” and I said “Then tell me why” and he said “She won’t tell me. Only you”.

I said “Call me back in ten minutes. I’ll think about it”. He sms’d me an address about 2km from here and said she would be there. Then she rang and said “Hi David. This is Nhi” and I said “I know who it is. What do you want ?” and she again spoke in Vietnamese. I said “Put Zhang on” and she did. There was still some girl in the background talking.

I said to Zhang “Ok. I’ll go see her. I’ll be there in 15 minutes”. I went outside and got a taxi to as close to the address as possible (it was down a one way street). I got to the address and it was a cafe. It was closed and shuttered.

I messaged Zhang and said “I come here. It’s closed”. But he didn’t quite understand and replied “You come and meet Nhi now ?” I replied “Zhang. I’m here. Noone’s here. The cafe is closed”. I didn’t get any response for ages and I wandered around for a while.

There was something funny about it all. She had deliberately picked a cafe near where she thinks I live, which was a long way from where she lives, and she wasn’t actually there yet. She could have asked me to pick somewhere, or she could have picked some place she knew would be open until late like KFC, but she picked a bizarre little tiny icecream and coffee shop that looked to have closed up long ago.

Maybe I was paranoid but there was a girl across the street using her phone at about the same moment that I was getting text messages. Probably just coincidence. It was just strange though and my spidey senses were going nuts telling me there was something fishy about the whole thing.

Zhang responded and said “Nhi is with her friend. I can’t contact her”. I waited another ten minutes but it was obvious she wasn’t here and she apparently wasn’t responding to his calls, and I couldn’t help but think that the girl in the background on the phone earlier had sorta sounded like she was giggling almost. I already don’t trust these two, and this whole situation made me trust them even less.

I had imagined that I was going to come here and demand an explanation from Nhi and have her tell me the truth and if she didn’t, I was going to throw her 200,000 dong at her and say “Here’s your money, don’t ever contact me again”. But this situation I found myself in was even weirder and I was fed up.

I messaged back to Zhang “I’m leaving. Don’t contact me again please”.

He tried to ring me. I cancelled it and messaged him “Nhi broke my heart and I don’t want to see her ever again. Goodbye” and switched off my phone.

I knew that eventually if I turned it back on, I would get text messages from him trying to explain what was going on and I just didn’t want any more doubt and fake hope. So I hardened my heart and I pulled out my sim card and threw it in a puddle and took a photo and walked off.

I knew our relationship was going to end at some point, I just didn’t think it was going to end like that. This photo represents the first time I fell in love with a pretty Asian girl and she broke my heart. But it won’t be the last time I do it.

And that’s how my relationship with Nhi from the cafe ended. I threw my last remaining means of communicating with her in a dirty puddle in a Saigon street and walked away from her forever through the dark rainy streets towards my hotel. Bye Nhi. It was still fun while it lasted and I will always remember you fondly even if it ended sadly.

How do I know this ?

Because I’m sleeping on them. I drank until well after 1am because I wanted to be there when Nhi went home and the bar closed. I knew my hotel closed at 11pm, but I figured they answered the night buzzer all night. They don’t. I got home after 1:30am and rang it for like 20 minutes. Noone answered. So I found a quiet alleyway around the corner and huddled in between two roadside vending carts and pulled the hessian canvas from one over myself. I don’t really intend to sleep per se, I’m more just gonna try my best to stay awake until 6am when I think the hotel will either open or at least start answering their buzzer again.

Homeless on the streets of Saigon ? Well.. that’s part of the adventure, right ? Right ? Shut up. It’s not so bad. There are rats here I can eat. Huge ones. I’ll be fine… right now, 6am is only three hours away. I’m just feeling rather tired is all. Gonna watch Doctor Who. I mean… c’mon… I may be on the streets, but I still have unlimited wifi. It’s not all terrible. :”)

I doze off for a bit and get awoken an hour later by a woman shining her mobile phone light at me. She realises I’m a westerner and says “Hello ?” and I just wave back at her and say “Hello” and pull my makeshift hessian blanket back over me. She wanders off, but she starts unpacking the store. Apparently she opens at 4 in the morning so I figure I’d better get out of here. I grab my stuff and head off to the convenience store because it’s open, relatively safe, and I can buy booze there.

I turn up and the attendant is sitting outside on the steps but he sees me and scurries back inside. They’re out of Smirnoff. Have been for days. Lemon cruisers are almost twice the price and I can’t really afford that so I just buy one cruiser, a can of iced coffee and a packet of chips and I go outside and sit on the steps and open the can of coffee.

I chat on IRC briefly, and an old guy is fascinated by my iPad and just stops and watches over my shoulder for a while. I look at him, but he just gives me a hand-waggle like you would in Australia to say “so so”, but here I know it means either “I don’t understand” or “Don’t mind me” so I ignore him and he wanders off. A woman on a motorbike turns up and asks me if I want a lift somewhere, by which I mean she makes an accelerator motion with her hand and says “motorbike ?”. I say “no” and she gets off and points at my chips. I pass the packet to her and she has some and squats down beside me.

She offers me a massage. I know what massage means, and especially on a street corner at 4:30 in the morning it does NOT mean “massage”. I say “no”, but she assumes I don’t understand and she mimes massaging me. I say “no”. She gets out her phone and writes “10″ and I know what that mens too obviously. She pulls out a 10 USD note and shows it to me and says “massage”. I say “no”. She writes 5 on her phone instead and I still say “no”. She maybe figures she’s not being obvious enough and she mimes the act of oral sex and I laugh and say very firmly “NO”. Apparently she still doesn’t think she’s reaching me and she makes a grab for my crotch and I say “tôi hiểu. NO !” which means “I understand, but NO”. She shrugs and gets back on her bike and leaves.

Thank christ for that. Seriously, I’m tired, dirty, a little bit drunk still, and I’ve been sleeping in an alleyway. Oral sex from a strange Vietnamese woman is definitely not high on my list of priorities right now thank you very much. The sun has just risen and it’s suddenly much brighter and I check the time. It’s just after 5am and I figure there’s a good chance the hotel will answer their buzzer now. There’s two very shifty looking dudes who have been staring at me from the other side of the road and I decide to keep my empty cruiser bottle in my hand just in case they follow me, since there’s a couple of dark blocks between the convenience store and my hotel.

I get back to the hotel and press the buzzer. A few seconds later I hear a noise inside and the shutters come up. Oh there is a god. The guy smiles at me and gets my room key and I have never been happier to trudge up the four flights of stairs to my room and put that room key in the slot and turn on the air conditioning and throw myself onto the bed. I’m home. It’s been a long night. It was a hell of a lot of fun at the bar, despite me staying way too late and getting locked out of my hotel for the night and having to sleep on the street, but yet again, I’m alive and I still have all my stuff with me, so I count it as another successful night in Saigon.

Just a warning to others though. If you decide to stay in a hotel in the suburbs and you know it closes its doors early, don’t rely on them answering the buzzer at 1:30am, because they’re just not going to do it. If you want to risk this shit, you’d better be ready to brave a few hours in an alleyway with the rats and the cockroaches until morning. And the rats are fucking huge, let me assure you. Apparently I am the sort of idiot who is willing to brave that though. I just huddle into a corner, pull something over top of me, and tie all my bags tightly around my neck so that noone can steal them without waking me up… or choking me I guess.

Either way, I’m still home again. I still had fun. And I still survived another crazy night in Saigon. It’s all good. Don’t give me a hard time about being crazy. I probably am. Just shut up and let me do what I do. Every day that I wake up with both kidneys still inside my body gives me renewed confidence that I can handle anything, and I’m pretty sure I can. I can take care of myself.

I had a bad dream last night that Nhi tracked me down at my hotel and came and saw me, but then that she tricked me in the most horrible way. It wasn’t a pleasant dream. I know it was just a dream, but right now, I’m not interested in talking to her.

Isn’t it hilarious that a few days ago I said that the best thing about this relationship was that it was going to be simple and uncomplicated ? LOL. Was I ever an idiot. She’s a girl. There’s no such thing as an uncomplicated relationship with a girl. I mean not that that’s bad. Sometimes complicated things are good. It’s just that this one is very complicated and I don’t know how to deal with it right now, so I’m just not going to.

I’m going to watch a movie instead. It’s called “Koizora: Setsunai Koi Monogatari” or “Sky of Love: A sad love story”. I’ve known about it for a long time but I’ve never gotten around to watching it. It’s said to be one of the most bitterly sad love stories you will ever watch and noone who has ever seen it has failed to cry at the end. It’s believed to be an autobiographical story about Mika, the girl who wrote it since that is also the name of the main character. One of the interesting things about the story and one of the things which are credited as a possible reason for its success is that noone knows who Mika is. She has remained anonymous to this day. The story was originally published as a serialised story available to mobile phone users and over 20 million people subscribed to it. It is described as a cultural phenomenon in Japan and it is unlikely that a single Japanese person does not know the story of Koizora.

The movie starts with Mika on a train, after the end of the story. She is folding a paper crane and conducting an internal monologue. She says this, and you know you’re in for a real heartbreaker.

If I had not met you on that day,
then I would not have experienced that pain and sadness,
and memories filled with tears,
but if I had not met you,
I would also have not experienced that joy, excitement, happiness
and memories filled with tears.

The movie stars Aragaki Yui, a very highly idolised young Japanese actress and singer. They played her song from the movie on Yan TV this morning which is why I decided I was going to watch Koizora today and sit in my hotel room and cry lots. It’s a really beautiful song and it’s easy to see why people idolise Gakky for this. She is a beautiful girl with the prettiest smile and an amazing voice and this song is just… well… just watch it. You’ll see what I mean.

I haven’t finished the movie yet, but I had to show you this screen grab. It’s from an awesome scene where Hiro and Mika cut school together and she’s on the back of his pushbike and she keeps complaining that he’s riding too fast, but you look at the smile on her face, and it’s so sweet. This is what people see in Gakky, her smile. A pretty girl’s smile makes it all worthwhile.

After Hiro finds out he has a terminal illness and breaks up with Mika, she tells him she’s going to his favourite spot and wait for him. He turns up but tells he he’s not going to wipe away her tears anymore and he throws her ring back at her. She goes home and says to herself “If ending a relationship is this pain. I don’t want to fall in love again. Not going to fall in love.. again” and she takes off her ring and puts it away in her drawer. When she returns to the spot where Hiro planted her flowers and where they said the would go back to every Christmas Even on the anniversary of their daughter’s death, she finds a tiny snowman there just like they had left there the previous year and she realises that he’s still been coming back to commemorate her death. She meets another guy named Yu at the spot instead and while he says it must have been fate, she thinks that she thinks the baby arranged for them to meet and was saying “Don’t give up on love. If mummy is sad, I will be sad too”. It’s terribly sad and I wept.

Mika listens to her parents arguing about getting a divorce and says philosophically “Before the dessert was put on a big plate and everybody grabbed one. I don’t know when it became, that everyone had their own small plate”. But her and Yu tape back together all the photos that her mother has torn up, and her parents stay together. The following Christmas, she again returns to the same spot and finds Hiro there building another snowman. They talk, but he still doesn’t reveal that he’s sick, even though he’s lost all his hair and is hiding it under a hat. She asks why he is so indifferent and why he won’t talk to her anymore. He turns and leaves without a word. She runs after him, following his footprints in the snow, but when she reaches a fork in the path, she stops and she remembers him throwing her ring back at her. She takes a deep breath and decides to take the other path. The symbolism is simple yet deep. At school on her graduation ceremony, she writes on the small blackboard in the library “Were you ever happy ?” and at the end of the day she returns and underneath it says “I was once very happy”. She touches the words on the blackboard and says “bye bye” as they start playing Aragaki Yui’s song “Heavenly Days”. I cry again.

She goes back on the third Christmas Eve. Before she gets out of the car Yu surprises her with a pledge ring. She promises they will be together forever. I hate him so much for making her love him and making what’s going to happen so much more complicated. But love is complicated. She sees someone bent over making the snowman but when he turns around, it’s not Hiro, it’s his friend Nozomu. He tells Mika that Hiro has cancer and can’t come to see the baby anymore because he’s dying but that he’s been fighting it alone because he didn’t want Mika to suffer. Yu turns up and finds Mika sitting in the snow shivering. She explains why and says she has to go see him. They fight and he won’t let her go but she pulls away and symbolically, the ring falls off her finger. She stares at it and goes to pick it up but he stops her and says he would be a horrible person if he stopped the girl he loves from finding happiness and he tells her to go see him. Finally Yu does something decent. She thanks him, and crying, she leaves. After he watches her go, he picks up her ring and throws it far away and falls down in the snow sobbing.

She finds Hiro in the hospital and he is mad at her for coming. She sees him still wearing his matching ring and she tells him he’s an idiot and to stop acting tough. He makes her promise to be happy and she says that’s impossible. “I can’t ever be happy without Hiro” she says and adds “zuuto zuuto suki desu” which means “I’ve always, always loved you”. She gets her ring out of her bedside draw and puts it on again and spends every day at Hiro’s side as he gets more and more sick. He gets permission to leave the hospital for a day and they go back to the library at their old school and enjoy the memories. Their words are still on the blackboard and he erases the word “once” and changes the meaning to say “I am really happy”. I cry again.

They go on a picnic at his favourite spot beside the river. She sits in silence for a while before asking if he will marry her to prove his love to her. He nods and says he will. They do it right there. He makes a floral wreath and recites his marriage vows and places it on her head. She says “I do” and he says he wishes their child could be there to celebrate with him and then he turns away sobbing saying that he doesn’t want to die and there’s still so much more he wants to do with her. He grabs her by the shoulders and says “I love you”, but he doesn’t say it like they normally say it. He doesn’t say “Daisuki da yo”, he says “Aishiteru”, the much more powerful phrase that is rarely said to someone. She smiles and looks truly happy.

Back in the hospital, Hiro tells her that when he dies, he wants to become the sky so that he can always be looking down at her. He takes a photo of her and is then told he has to go for his checkup. He hands her the camera and asks her to get them printed. She looks at him and you just know it’s going to be the last words they ever speak in person. While she’s at the photo lab, he collapses and is rushed into the ICU. Mika tries desperately to reach him, but she’s not going to make it in time. She makes a video call to him and his sister holds it up in front of him. Mika tells him to hold on and wait for her. She asks him to open her eyes. He struggles to open them and says two final words to her. He says “Mika…. smile”. And she composes herself and smiles for him, and he closes his eyes again with a smile on his face, and a final tear runs down his face and it’s all over. I am absolutely fucking bawling my eyes out.

Mika doesn’t attend Hiro’s funeral. She just sits staring out the window at the sky and not speaking. Her mother comes in and gives her a book and says that it’s things that Hiro wrote for her before he died. She goes into her sister’s room and asks if she can sleep with her tonight and she nods and they get into bed together. The next day she takes the book and goes back to his favourite place. She says “Hiro, don’t leave me alone” and she climbs up onto the railing of the bridge to jump off. But suddenly two doves fly up from underneath her and she falls backwards onto the bridge and drops the book. It falls open to the last page, which is a small drawing of the two of them holding hands with their daughter. It’s a journal from when he first met her, and every sentence starts with her name. It ends with “Mika, keep smiling”. She looks up at the sky and smiles and says his name.

Back on the train many years later, she has folded a second paper crane. A small one for their daughter and a larger one for Hiro. She is returning home to visit the spot whether they commemorate their child’s passing. She says “The happy times I spent with Hiro haven’t become memories. It is because no matter what, I feel you by my side. Hiro I still love the blue sky. From this day and always, this love will last. Forever”. I wipe the final tears from my eyes as the ending credits play and they show many scenes of the sky. Hiro is the sky, and he will always be looking down on Mika.

That was a beautiful, beautiful story. That has to be the greatest love story of all time. “A Walk to Remember” is an absolute joke compared to Koizora. I’m sorry if I ruined the story for you by telling you so much about it, but I doubt any of you were going to watch it anyway, and even if you did, knowing how it ends doesn’t make it any less special. I read the plot on Wikipedia before I watched it and it took nothing away from how beautiful it was.

Now, where is my Mika ? Who knows. I doubt it’s Nhi. I don’t think I’ll see Nhi again. I didn’t contact her today and she didn’t contact me. It’s probably best that way. It’s five minutes until happy hour at Bar Number 5. I don’t have enough money to do anything except drink during happy hour and eat a cheap meal. No cocktails or tequila shots for me tonight. But at least I can drink beer and see Ngan and Nhi (the waitress not the girl I was dating) and have fun as usual. I want to get a USB stick and give a copy of the movie to Ngan. She’d like it I’m sure.

Turns out Ngan was here at the bar after all even though I didn’t see her. She came and saw me on her way out. I told her what had happened today and she opened her arms and hugged me. I got a hug. A nice one. I feel a little better… a tiny fractional infinitesimal bit better. Life still fucking sucks, but maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe sometimes, there are good moments. Tiny, little, special good moments. You put up with all the crap for those little moments. They may not be happiness. They may not even mean anything. They are just moments. Life sucks but you have to live for the few good seconds among the many years of misery.

Or maybe you don’t. I dunno.

The rain finally eases off a bit after 10:30pm and I’m starving and even though I know the hotel closes its shutters at 11pm I am sure they have a buzzer because I’ve heard people using it after hours. I head out, figuring it’s saturday night.. there must be plenty of stuff open. Turns out I’m wrong and Vietnam isn’t like Australia and things actually close earlier on Saturday night. All my favourite restaurants are closed. I even get turned away from Pizza Hut as they’re about to close too. I look at the roadside noodle vendors but I’m just not up to that tonight. It’s not that the food’s not good, it’s just that their menus give no hint what stuff is. At least in a restaurant even if the menu is in Vietnamese, it at least has headings for each section and you can normally understand those and figure out whether you’re ordering noodles or rice or whatever, but at a roadside place, you just have no idea and I’m not in the mood for standing around translating on my iPad because I’d just look like a bloody idiot.

It’s raining pretty heavily and as I cross the road and get stuck in the middle while cars come down the still-busy road I realise that standing in the pouring rain on a muggy Saturday night dodging cars and trucks just seems totally normal to me now. I like this. This is familiar to me and it occurs to me again that I don’t want to leave here. A lot of things may still be foreign to me, but this city isn’t. I feel like I know Saigon. It’s my friend. We understand each other. I wander back up the road and a woman is frying pork strips and putting them into bread rolls. That I can work out how to order. I point to one and she makes it for me and I pay her and eat it as I wander up the road. I pass a fruit vendor and she has cherries. I’ve had a thing for cherries lately ever since Galaxy served them to me in my cocktails and even though I walk past the vendor, I turn around and come back and point at the cherries. She says something I don’t understand and then pulls out a wad of cash and points at a 500,000 dong note and then at the cherries. She has a grin on her face and I’m not sure if she’s just fucking with me and joking about the price, or if she’s suggesting I buy a metric tonne of them but either way I’m not interested so I give her a puzzled look, shrug my shoulders and keep walking.

As I head towards the convenience store to pick up some bottled water, there are quite a few people sleeping in the streets and I realise that I haven’t observed this before because I haven’t been out this late at night. I’m bothered by it, because it’s a miserable night. Earlier today when I was walking around, an old woman held out her hand to me with a sad look on her face and rubbed her stomach and I felt terrible. I want to help her but I am NOT going to open my wallet in a busy street and hand some stranger money no matter how much they need it. It just wouldn’t feel right. It would make me feel vulnerable, and like I was some sort of rich charity benefactor as well as setting a bad precedent that would make them continue to harass any foreigner they saw thinking they would hand over some cash. If I had some smaller change in my pocket, I would hand it over because she does genuinely look hungry, but I have made a decision that I am not opening my wallet in the street for strangers.

But then as I continue down the street I see this young woman huddled over wet and shivering. I keep walking and don’t make eye contact but she calls out something after me that sounds like “wait” but I don’t think it is. My mind races. Do I do something ? What could I do anyway ? I could give her $10 for a hotel for the night, but what’s that going to solve ? She’s still going to have nowhere to sleep tomorrow either. I feel awful but I know there’s nothing I can really do to change her situation so I just keep my stride and continue walking. I am reminded of a terribly politically incorrect quote by John Howard on Urthboy’s “Distant Sense of Random Menace” album in which he spoke in reference to the boat people which says “I wish this problem were not ours”. I mean, I’d like to think that if I were in this woman’s place, someone would help me find somewhere warm and dry to spend the night, but realistically, I don’t have a lot of money and if I’m not more careful with what I have this week, I could well end up in her place, so I just try not to think about it and I walk into the convenience store.

I don’t buy any alcohol this time, both because it’s late and I would just feel bad spending money on booze after what I’ve just witnessed. I buy some water, some orange juice and a small packet of pistachio nuts. I head back to my hotel and get an uneasy feeling as I see all the shutters drawn down. I think to myself that I really should have asked where the buzzer was before I left, and I look around and can’t find it at first, but eventually I see a small button attached to the side of the building and I press it, and a few seconds later the shutters are drawn up and I am let inside to my relief. Phew, no sleeping on the streets in the rain for me tonight.

It’s hard dealing with situations like this. You want to help people… but what can you do… there’s dozens of people out there sleeping on the streets tonight just on my hotel’s block alone. I can’t help all of them, and frankly I probably can’t even afford to help one of them with a place to stay. I almost feel like I should let one of them sleep on my floor, but that would be insane and I’m sure I’d end up with all my stuff gone in the morning. It’s just hard to deal with. I don’t know why. I see this happen in Brisbane too. It’s not like I’m a stranger to seeing homeless people, but for some reason it feels different here. Maybe because it’s a miserable night outside and the rain is pouring down and while I have returned to my hotel drenched to the core, I know that at least I have a warm bed. Still, I can’t get the sight of that woman, huddled over outside a storefront, without even a poncho out of my mind.

Life is tough, but you can’t change that and I’m not a charity. I’m just a regular Aussie guy wandering around Saigon at night with a tiny amount of money to get by on. I wish I could help people… here… in Brisbane… everywhere, but I just don’t have that power and that saddens me, but I have to get some sleep as I have to be up early. I try and put the huddled woman out of my mind as I climb into my warm bed. Sometimes you’re lucky in life, and sometimes you’re not. Just take it as it comes I guess and don’t take what you have for granted.