Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

NOTE: This story, like all my stories on this site, is loosely based on reality. That means it’s not literally true. It’s just a story that I thought would be funny if I told it in this particular way. Don’t take it literally and don’t accuse me of recklessness or breaking the law because you have no idea what parts are true and what are pure fiction.

So I walked down to a greasy, dirty little Thai bus station in Phuket and showed them the receipt I’d gotten from my hotel concierge. Some Asian woman looked at it and then looked up at me and said “Ok. You wait outside”. I asked “Which bus is mine ?” She squinted at me and said “Outside. Bus will come”. Ok, I thought, and went outside and laid all my suitcases against a concrete pole. I sat precariously on a tiny stool, and fearing that my large western body was surely going to smash it into a thousand pieces (I’ve had this happen to me before in the sort of countries where people like to sit on tiny plastic stools) the woman rushed out with a bigger chair and ordered me to “Sit here”. I took the chair and sat down.

I was hungry. I left my less important suitcases and just grabbed my laptop and camera bags and walked to a nearby McDonalds. While I don’t make a habit of eating McD’s when I’m travelling in a foreign country, I was feeling pretty sick with a cold that I’d picked up a few weeks earlier in Penang and recent motorbike riding in the rain had made it worse, and when I’m sick I just don’t feel like shitty Thai food. I never understood why every other country makes Thai food that is so much tastier than what the Thai people make. It’s like they need to import foreign chefs to make their own national dishes or something. The fucking McDonalds was closed. I bought some overpriced snacks at the convenience store and wandered back to the bus stop. Some Indian guy was sitting on my suitcase. I didn’t really give a shit and sat down right beside it just so he became aware that he was sitting on my suitcase. Seems he didn’t give a shit either because he ignored me.

The bus came. It was a little minibus. I hoped that this was just the bus to take us to the bus station where we would board a real bus. It wasn’t. We spent the next 14 or so hours on this overly cramped minibus hugging our bags to our chests in order to give us enough leg room to avoid a serious case of deep vein thrombosis. I ignored everyone and tried to sleep. I was sick as a dog and I coughed and hacked and snorted snot back into my nose the entire way. I hope I made everyone sick. Not because I’m an asshole but at least it’ll be a lesson to them to always ask what sort of bus they’ll be travelling on before booking a ticket.

Some time around 4am we pulled up at a little cafe. The driver yelled loudly to wake everyone up and we all piled out of the bus, rubbing our eyes and wondering what the fuck we were doing. He came around and handed everyone arrival forms for Laos and told us in broken English to fill them out and put them in our passports because we’d be at the border in a couple of hours. I filled mine out without really looking because there was this gorgeous Korean girl sitting at a table of Koreans nearby. I knew they weren’t all on my bus so I wondered where they’d come from. Gathering my courage I walked over and smiled and sat down.

“You are Korean ?” I asked like an ignorant fuckwit. “Do you like So Nyeo Shi Dae ?” The girl gave me a puzzled expression and asked “Girls Generation ?” I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the tattoo I’d gotten in Bangkok of the awesome girl group’s name written in Hangul and surrounded by a love heart. Her eyes went wide and she said “Amazing !” and I grinned. “Normally only Koreans call them by their proper name, but you have it tattooed in Hangul. That’s so cool” she said. I rattled off the names of various other Kpop groups that I had seen in concert and I think I saw one of the Korean guys beside me facepalm. The driver came along and told us it was time to get back on the bus. Only the girl got back on with us. The other guys were travelling separately.

In the morning we arrived in Vientiane. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing there or what I intended to do during my stay. I had told everyone I was going to Cambodia, but for some odd reason at the last minute, I ended up booking a bus to Laos instead. Fucks me why. Fate maybe. We sat there at the bus stop yawning. The girl was there again. I took her photo a couple of times. I don’t remember what I said but I remember that she laughed easily. I was infatuated, though I couldn’t really think of much to talk to her about other than her telling me that she was travelling through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam on her own, which seemed like a rather bold adventure for a single girl who couldn’t be more than about 23 at most.

Some Canadian guys told me they were going to rent motorbikes and ride up to Vang Vieng where they had tubing parties down the river and you could consume lots of magic mushrooms. I wasn’t that phased with the idea of tubing. I’d done that shit before since I grew up on a boat as a child. The magic mushrooms sounded alright, but I was sorta interested in finding out what the Korean girl’s plans were. Apparently my assumption about Vientiane being her destination was incorrect however, because the driver suddenly yelled out “Back on the bus” and she said “Sorry, I have to go” and picked up her bags. I looked at her and my mind reeled. She wasn’t staying in Vientiane with us ?

Fuck. What should I do ? I couldn’t let this beautiful flower escape without at least torturing her to death with my boring stories and anecdotes about my love for Asian pop music. I stood up and looked from the bus, to my 5 bags and back again. Should I just grab my bags and jump on ? While wondering simultaneously if that was too spontaneous a decision even for me, and whether it would be awkward if the bus driver asked what the fuck I was doing back on the bus and where I was going and I had to sheepishly answer “Wherever that Korean girl is going”, the bus closed its door and the driver started the engine, and the Korean girl waved to me from the window. Shit. Too late.

I sat back down with a thud and looked at the suddenly very boring Canucks that I was sitting with. “Oh well” I said with resignation. “Let’s get some bikes and go to Vang Vieng then”. We wandered around looking for bikes that weren’t so shit that they had 60km limits imposed on them. We found a place that rented some brand new Suzuki scooters since we were told that dirt bikes had to be rented at least 3 months in advance. Ignoring for the sake of brevity various stories about me getting totally lost trying to find the hotel that I’d already booked and convincing the owner to let me keep my bags there and not charge me for the night I’d already paid for until I returned at some indefinite point in the future, I joined my new Canadian compatriates and hit the road.

It was pretty late in the day, and the guys were on a tight schedule because they only had three days before their plane back to the land of elk and bison, so we rode at breakneck speed. I had only ridden a motorbike twice before in my whole life, but I was pretty sure that since my parents were bikies and that I’d ridden on the back of my mum’s harley many times on the way to school that surely I must be a natural at it. Besides, I’d survived traffic in Penang AND Phuket. That had to account for something. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that the roads in Laos were utter shit and they just stopped sealing them at random.

So even though I was riding second in line, I was going far too fast when the guy in front held up his hand to warn me of something. I realised what as I saw the bitumen under me disappear and the rocky dirt road underneath started some 6-8 inches lower. Specifically, the way I saw it was as I was flying over the handlebars, only to land unceremoniously, face-first, several meters from my bike. I quickly got up and checked my expensive Nikon that I had around my neck… Apparently not smashed. I said “I’m OK” without even checking and rushed to my bike, noticing blood running down my leg. I just covered my knee with my pants and hoped it wasn’t bad. We hailed down a guy in a truck who couldn’t speak English and after some miming, he got out and hammered my foot peg back into place so that I could change gears again and we all got back onto our bikes and rode off.

Not long after that, when the sun had gone down fully, I repeated the whole exercise a second time, only at a higher speed this time and with more damage to the bike. I landed sort of sideways this time and I heard my bag hit the ground hard and wondered how many of my laptops and tablet computers I had just destroyed. I emptied blood out of my shoe and got back on, but it was fairly evident that I wasn’t going to make it to Vang Vieng at this rate, so we stopped at a small hotel in a nearby town after finding a medical clinic where some Lao doctor patched me back up and wrapped a crude bandage around my leg. We haggled mercilessly with the woman at the hotel over the price, since she wanted to charge us an insane $8 for a room for the three of us. Not that I didn’t have money. But that’s just what you do over there. We got our way in the end and secured the room for about $6.50 a night. We ascended the stairs and I took a shower to wash the blood off me and threw away my tattered pants, which were the only ones I’d brought. One of the Canadians offered me a pair of the ridiculous baggy Turkish pants they had, which they had bought for a friend, and I accepted gratefully. In return I offered them some acid and marijuana that I’d smuggled into the country.

I still remember clearly the way my blood had run cold when the pilot came over the P.A. as we were about to touch down in Kuala Lumpur that drug smuggling carried the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia and I wondered if I was going to die in a foreign country when they discovered the 26 sugar cubes of LSD that I had in my suitcase. Fortunately they don’t check shit and I had walked straight through the “nothing to declare” line and noone was even there to look questioningly at me and wonder why I had purple hair and a bleach blonde beard despite having black eyebrows. So the Canadians dropped two cubes each and I dropped three and we smoked weed on the balcony and pondered the universe until almost dawn before getting back on our bikes and heading off just as the sun was coming up.

Unfortunately, about 30km from our destination, I got a flat tyre and fell behind. They didn’t stop for me as I’d apparently been enough trouble for them at that point and tubing and magic mushrooms were more important than this weirdo Aussie they’d picked up along the way like a leech that had attached itself to their testicles in some icy cold billabong. I limped into a service station and bought a bunch of Che Guevara stickers for my stuff and had a couple of beers while they put a new tyre on my bike. Refreshed, I continued on my way. At some point some young kid pulled up along side me and greeted me and asked where I was going. I prefer to travel alone as this sort of thing happens more often. He said that his aunt ran a hotel in Vang Vieng and suggest I check it out. I followed him there and checked in, and then decided to go into town. I was starting to feel more than a bit fucking sore by this time.

I didn’t see much of Vang Vieng because one of the first things I discovered was this little bar called “Happy Pizza” that was pumping out loud techno music and exclaimed proudly on the sign outside “Weed, Opium, Magic Mushrooms”. Obviously, I went inside. Inside they had a sign spraypainted on the wall graffiti-style that said “Don’t ask us to turn the music down, we like it like this”. Cool. My sort of place. I tried everything on the menu, and everything OFF the menu that I could think of that they might be able to provide me. Not once did they ever say “We can’t get that”. Everything I asked for, was delivered within 20 minutes for a reasonable price and of a high quality. I spent every waking moment in that bar for the next week.

On the second night, I was sitting there using my laptop, puffing away alternatively on joints of weed and opium and washing it down with magic mushroom shakes and then snorting lines of meth off the table, when the DJ leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked back and he was holding the line-in cable from his sound system. He asked “You want be DJ tonight ?” Blinking at him I almost refused, thinking all I really had to offer was a hard drive full of Kpop and I knew they were strictly a hard-house sort of establishment. Then I remembered some Japanese hard trance stuff I had by DJ Shimamura and some other artists. I accepted the cable and plugged in and started pumping it out. Two of the guys got up from their little table behind the counter where they gambled over card games and gave me a big thumbs up. Apparently I had their seal of recommendation, because from that moment on, I was DJ every night after about 8pm.

With the aid of copious amounts of drugs, I was able to mostly ignore the now searing pain in my chest (which I was later told at a Laos hospital was because I had broken two ribs), and it was only when I decided that I really should get moving and try and see some other countries that I realised how much I was going to miss the guys there. Because I spent so much time either DJ’ing or sitting behind the counter snorting lines of speed or smoking bongs (You were only supposed to smoke joints in the visible area of the bar, despite the fact that the bongs were hanging on the walls as decorations), most people who came in automatically assumed that I was the owner. I remember approaching a couple of gorgeous girls from Sydney and telling them I was journalist and asking if I could ask them a few questions and take their photo and they said “Oh, we thought you were the owner”. When I told the staff that it was my last night and I was leaving in the morning, they all came outside and lined up for photos together and with me. It was very special and I almost cried and felt so sad about having to go.

Getting back to Vientiane and not having any drugs harder than a large supply of weed I’d bought before I left, I basically just lay in my hotel room in agony popping codeine and smoking weed and sleeping all day for two weeks solid until I got over the worst of the pain. I fapped a lot and thought about the Korean girl and wondered how my time in Laos would have been different if I’d followed her down the rabbit hole instead of the Canadian guys who had ditched me. Who knows. Next time I’ll follow the girl instead of the curly haired freaks, I’m sure. I might not always remember the girl, but I will always remember that split second of indecision where I was caught between wanting to follow her to the ends of the earth and wondering if that might be too crazy a thing to do. Next time I have that choice, I’m going down the rabbit hole after the girl. You only live once.

But the real moral of the story isn’t about split second choices or how much fun you can have snorting lines of meth off a dirty table at an opium bar in the countryside of a foreign communist country. The important moral of this story is:

“Don’t ride a motorbike in Laos at night”

Here is a picture of the Korean girl to prove to you what a heartbreaking moment it was to see her disappear in that dirty minibus. So at least that part of the story is true.

I enjoyed two bitterly sad true stories today. I love sad stories. They make you FEEL. They might depress you and make you feel like there’s no hope in the world, but they are also cathartic and I believe that they help you deal with sorrow in your own life and also to get un-spent pain and tears out of yourself. Sometimes though, they’re just beautiful stories and that’s it. And who wouldn’t rather appreciate a bitterly sad but beautiful story than some meaningless Hollywood drivel ?

Both stories were about young Japanese girls who die of leukaemia. One was a very old book called “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” which has traditionally been given to primary school children around the world to teach them about the importance of compassion and empathy. I read it when I was very young and it’s always held special meaning to me, because both myself and my grandmother were born on August 6th, the anniversary of what we called “Hiroshima Day”, but what they call in Japan “Peace Day”. It’s only a very short story, because it’s intended for small children, but Sadako’s story is a very moving one.

Sadako’s story is that she was 2 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and she feels no ill effects for 9 years. Sadako is an excellent runner at school and her dream is to represent her school in a relay race, but she begins to suffer dizziness which she hides from everyone around her until one day she collapses at the end of a race and is rushed to hospital, only to be told she has leukaemia. Sadako’s friend reminds her of the legend of the paper crane, which says that if a person who is sick folds a thousand paper cranes, the gods will grant them their wish and make them well again. Sadako’s wish is to get better, so that she can run in her relay race.

Sadly, Sadako gets increasingly sick and she eventually dies in her sleep after having folded only 644 cranes. But her classmates finish the remaining 356 cranes and they are buried with her. In a way, Sadako does get her wish of living forever, because she has become an important symbol of Peace Day in Japan and schoolchildren all over Japan raised funds to build a monument to her, holding her first golden crane that her friend gave to her, which stands to this day in Hiroshima Peace Park, and on August the 6th, people from all over Japan come to lay paper cranes at the foot of her statue out of respect for both Sadako and all others who have died as a result of the two atomic bombs dropped during the war. Sadako, and the paper crane have become a symbol of peace and compassion the world over, and the paper crane is now often referred to as a “peace crane” in her honour. At the bottom of Sadako’s monument is a plaque with the inscription:

“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.”

The other story I enjoyed today was a much more recent one. It’s the 2010 true story about a sickly girl whose family move from Tokyo to Ojiya in Niigata Prefecture in Japan to help her with her asthma and the movie is called “おにいちゃんのハナビ” or “Big Brother’s Fireworks” but the English title is “Fireworks From the Heart”. In the movie, the girl, Hana spends time in hospital being treated for leukaemia, and while she is away, her brother Taro becomes a “hikkikomori”, or social recluse, never leaving his room. When she is released from hospital she literally breaks down his door to try and reach him and later has her friends fake a house fire in order to get him out of his room.

With Hana’s help, Taro eventually does leave his room and get a part time job, and even joins the local fireworks club, since Ojiya is famous for its fireworks event on September the 9th every year, and everyone from the age of 20 through to 60 contributes to sponsor a particular part of the fireworks display. Taro appreciates his sister’s love and compassion for him and does it all for her, but when she later dies (This is not a spoiler, the fact is revealed at the beginning of the movie) he decides to dedicate a special fireworks display for her, his magnum opus.

While Hana is not there to see the fireworks, she manages to be there for him in spirit by having a special message and a special gift arranged for him on his coming of age day and the day of the hanabi festival. Taro dedicates his display to her, but is most surprised when he realises that she has arranged a special display dedicated to him as well, and he is finally accepted openly by the club, his family, and the entire townsfolk. He finally fits in and is appreciated and honoured by the town. Whether all these details are literally true or whether artistic license has been used isn’t really important. The important thing is that Hana’s story is true, and her brother really did dedicate a special fireworks show to his sister to show how much he appreciated her love and support.

Both these stories are at the same time beautiful and bitterly sad, but both also leave your heart warm and give you a great deal of hope and faith in humanity. They may be sad stories that will make you cry, but they don’t just tear your heart out and stomp on it, they lift your heart up and warm it. Anyone can write a sad story about some young girl dying and bring tears to your eyes, but the fact is that both these stories are essentially true.

Whether Sadako really folded 644 cranes, or whether Hana really sent Taro a phone message after her own death doesn’t matter. The details aren’t important. Like my own blogs, they are stories. They may be strongly based on factual events, but a story has room for artistic license and if any has been used in the telling of these stories, we will most certainly forgive the authors because they are touching stories that give you true hope and both of them contain important symbols of hope and inspiration for others. Sadako’s cranes and Taro’s fireworks are both symbols of compassion and understanding that we can all take to heart and learn from.

If you haven’t read the famous book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, I would suggest you consider ordering a copy. It will cost you less than $6 with free postage from The Book Depository in the UK and it is an excellent children’s book and while sad, it doesn’t traumatise children. You can find order it here. Personally it’s always carried special meaning for me due to me being born on Peace Day, so yes the story saddens me, but it also gives me great hope. If you want to learn more about Sadako, you can research her online. A good place to start would be her Wikipedia page here.

The movie Fireworks From the Heart (or “Big Brother’s Fireworks” as the story is more literally called) may be more difficult for you to obtain outside of Asia, but Amazon does carry it and it can be ordered here or you can read the IMDB page for it here.

Life’s been pretty busy since I left Vietnam. I haven’t blogged much at all. Not because nothing interesting has happened, though to be honest, there hasn’t been lots to talk about, but just because I’ve been busy I guess. I’ve had to work and deal with life and stuff. But I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you a little bit more about the time I spent in Singapore and at least put some photos online. I wrote part of this story on my laptop on the flight home, so I’ll tell it how I told it at the time rather than update it from my current perspective.

I’m not a huge fan of Singapore. I feel like it’s a very artificial society. Everything’s been created. It doesn’t really feel like a place that has “history”. It’s just some place for rich people to hang out. You know Singapore has more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world ? They’re quite proud of that fact and they advertise it very prominently on signs around the city.

When I was talking to the Filipino guy who was kind enough to give me some money when I was little down on my luck due to having missed my flight, I commented that I was going to go into the city and try and find somewhere cheap to get some rice or something for dinner. He laughed and said “You haven’t been to Singapore before have you ? Singapore is the most westernised country in Asia. It’s not Vietnam. You’re not going to find roadside cafes with cheap meals of rice. It isn’t that sort of place. Everything here is expensive. You’ll only find classy foreign restaurants”.

I was quite disappointed by this. It sucked, but I resolved that since I was in Singapore for a few days (I deliberately made my ticket change for at least two days away so that I could have a look around) I would have a look. Since I had been told that my luggage had gone on to Australia, I only had the shirt on my back, so I needed some new clothes and I decided to go out looking for some.

I caught the train from Changi Airport to City Hall, thinking that it would no doubt be interesting to photograph. However, finding it turned out to be beyond my abilities, LOL. When you get off the train in the city centre, you’re in this gigantic shopping mall. I mean, it’s farking HUGE. It must have gone on for miles. I kept walking and walking thinking “This mall HAS to end eventually”, but didn’t. It went on for kilometres. I found it impossible to get out and I was getting quite alarmed and wondered how I was going to find my way back again. I found a sushi store that seemed cheap and I stopped in there and ate a couple of really tasty pieces of sushi.

Even after the sushi though, I was still hungry and if there’s one thing I noticed about Singapore, it’s that they have a SHITLOAD of Japanese restaurants. I mean, there was one corner of the mall where there were three Japanese restaurants right beside each other. Maybe it was supposed to be “Japanese corner” or something, I don’t know. I went to MOF first, but their drinks were so expensive, so I went to the all-you-can-eat-and-drink Sukiyaki place nearby instead, where I met Audrey. Oh, and yes, in case you’re wondering, I did email Audrey, and she emailed back. She was very sweet and asked if I was coming back to Singapore again. Jesus, I almost think she really liked me, LOL. I’m sure she was just being nice though, because she can’t have been much more than in her early twenties I don’t think.

Anyway, after lunch, I managed to escape from the gigantic mall. They had a formula one race on there the next day and I looked at the course and wished that I had the time and money to attend it, because that would have been really cool, but it wasn’t practical so I wistfully turned away. I stopped at a bus station to ask a local if they knew where I could buy some cheap clothes. I wish I remembered her name. I feel so embarrassed that I don’t remember because she was such a friendly person. She said “Sure, you should go to Chinatown. Jump on this bus with me and I’ll show you were to get off”. When we got on, she ran into a friend she knew and the two of them chatted to each other and me. They made a cute couple, though they weren’t an item.

They showed me where Chinatown was and I thanked them both and took a photo of them together and got off and wandered around. It was sort of late in the day at that time and most shops were closing up. I wandered around some cheap little malls, but most things were closed already. Outside though there were some shops still open, and I found a couple of places that had nice t-shirts and I bought a few with various emblems of Singapore on them since they weren’t too expensive. I also got a Tiger one, which I’m very proud of, since Tiger of course is my favourite beer in the world as I’m sure I’ve told you many times. I stared wistfully at some beautiful silk kimonos they had there, but I asked how much they were and they were too expensive for my taste, even though they were actually cheaper than the one I bought in Vung Tau.

After picking up my t-shirts I wandered around a bit and took a photo of a lovely couple walking along together, because the girl had a huge love heart on her shirt and they were holding hands. I guess people in Singapore are a bit lovey-dovey as well. Asia seems that way. They like to show off how in love they are. “Couple” clothes are common in many countries, where people get matching clothes or accessories to show that they are together. I wandered past a little restaurant that had very cheap food and I ordered lemon chicken and rice, which was only $3 SGD, and it turned out to be amazingly delicious too, so that was really lucky. I guess they do have cheap food in Chinatown at least.

I wandered into a few convenience stores to buy some snacks and see what they had. One store had what must have been thousands and thousands of blocks of Cadbury chocolate stacked up on the floor. That was sort of impressive. They must sell a lot of it I guess. It’s great seeing Australian products doing so successfully overseas like that. I bought some giant pocky and some other snacks and also wandered around looking at trinkets and stuff. I saw this little plastic thing with some cute cartoon characters on it with love hearts and stuff on it and it was only about $1.50 so I asked the clerk what it was and she said “It’s a fold up mirror” and I went “Oh ok, cool” and I bought it for Suki because it was really sweet and cute.

It was getting late and I figured I’d better head home. “Home” of course being a couch at Changi airport. I went to the train station near Chinatown rather than going back through that nightmarish mall. It was nearly deserted. I was fascinated by this one woman, standing near the train line, holding a laptop open on one hand and working on a spreadsheet with the other. I thought to myself “I guess this is a workaholic sort of nation”. Maybe that’s what you need to do to get by. I mean, I didn’t know her circumstances, but I thought it was sorta sad that she must have been at work all day and couldn’t even relax on her way home. The train arrived, and it must have been peak hour because god was it PACKED. I got on and we were squashed in like sardines, but it was a fascinating experience so I didn’t hate it.

When I got back to Changi airport, I went and relaxed and drank some rice wine and chatted online and processed my photos. I wasn’t real tired, and I sat up pretty much all night long using the internet. I would leave all my stuff at in the internet lounge area and pad over to the information desk in my socks every four hours for a new password. By that time, as soon as they saw me coming, they would start generating a new password for me. They didn’t even bother taking my passport anymore to write down the number. At around 4am a couple of American women and a man turned up to use their laptops. As usual I ended up doing tech support, because one of them couldn’t connect to their VPN. Apparently they all worked for Honeywell in the states. Was sorta weird chatting to them at 4am in the airport lounge, but interesting as well. I love hanging around international airports like that in the middle of the night. It’s just cool to meet strangers from far away and wonder where they’re from and what they do and then find out.

The next morning I wandered around the terminal I was due to leave from watching the time like a hawk. I couldn’t afford to miss my flight a second time ! I was pretty much down to my last few dollars. I went and browsed this little gift shop anyway. They had a few toys in support of Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami. One was a little Hello Kitty plush with “I (heart) Japan” even though Hello Kitty is made by a Hong Kong company. I had to give away all my Hello Kitty plushes that I’d bought for Suki because I didn’t have enough luggage to carry them home and I figured I could always buy more so I gave them to Thao, the girl I really liked in Vietnam. So without any Hello Kitty toys to give Suki I had only one choice. I went without dinner so that I could buy it for her. I can handle hunger and they’ll feed me on the plane later, but this little Hello Kitty plushie with a sentiment supporting Japan was too much to resist so I bought it.

I went through the boarding gates, and for some reason they picked on my cute Angry Birds bag. I had two small bottles of rice wine in the outside pockets and two bigger ones inside with my camera gear. But when they checked my stuff they said I had to throw one of the smaller bottles away. I asked why and the woman said “You can take the 100ml bottle on board, but not the 150ml bottle. It’s too big”. I said “But I have two 750ml bottles inside the bag” and she said “That’s ok. You can carry it on the inside of the zipper but not on the outside. Do you want to drink it now ?”

I stood there looking puzzled wondering why it mattered that some bottles were inside the zipper and some where outside and what difference that made. I assumed she meant that I had to drink it on the spot, and I mean, 40% rice wine is pretty harsh stuff so I shook my head. She turned around and threw the bottle into a large bin. It wasn’t until I walked into the departure area that I realised that I had probably 40 minutes before the plane left and I would have had plenty of time to drink it, but oh well. It was only midday and I’d slept all morning so I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to start drinking, and it’d only cost me a few bucks so who cares I thought.

On the way onto the plane I grabbed a copy of the Straights Times, one of the local Singaporean newspapers and I read a bit of it on the plane since I had an empty seat beside me. And that’s how I found myself on my way back from Asia to that shit-hole of a country we call Australia. It’s ironic that so many Asians think the sun shines out of Australia’s ass and they would literally give their right arm to move there while I personally loathe the thought of returning. But that’s not what the rest of this story is about.

It’s about love. I know you all think I’m weird for marrying Merry the Cambodian girl at such short notice and I haven’t really explained how that turned out as I realise because lots of people have assumed that I was still with her so I’d better explain how that ended. The fact is, since I split with my wife, every single day that goes by feels like a day I am wasting that I could be spending with a new family, with new children of my own. I spent so many years scared shitless of being a father, worried that I wouldn’t be good enough or that I wouldn’t even feel anything for my child.

I was so surprised when she was born that my feelings were quite the opposite. Even not seeing her, Suki is on my mind every single day. The other day I was upset and I went out for coffee with my friend Toan. We talked about lots of things including Josh but also about Suki. I cried so much. In front of everyone. Toan kept saying “It’s ok. It doesn’t matter” but it was still embarrassing. Even just mentioning Suki brings tears to my eyes, so talking about losing her just destroys me.

Even though Jo has said she will never let me see Suki until she is legally old enough to decide for herself I am still buying her gifts all the time in the hope that things will change. And even if they don’t, as friends have told me, it will prove that I’ve really been thinking about her all these years. When I finally see her I am going to have whole packing cartons full of gifts I’ve bought for her. Obviously the clothes will no longer fit her but at least she will get the message – I didn’t abandon her. She was stolen from me against my will and every single day since I have thought about her.

When I was in Vietnam I saw this beautiful Hello Kitty nightie and even though I had little money at the time, I bought it. It’s a large size. I expect she will still be able to wear it when she’s 18 years old as long as she doesn’t become too big a girl. But it was so cute. That’s the thing. I am so desperate to have a family and children to care for and support that when Merry asked me to marry her I accepted even though she really wasn’t my type and I wasn’t that attracted to her. I just thought “Finally. A girl who is willing to marry me and have a family”. It was only when I realised that she had abandoned her own children and was an alcoholic that I told her to get the fuck out of my life. Being so desperate to see my own daughter I couldn’t possibly respect anyone who had the ability to see their own children but were too busy partying it up all the time and not seeing their kids.

It’s not like we didn’t work out. I found I quite liked Merry and we got along well most of the them. She was quite charming. It was only when she got drunk that we would argue lots, and I really didn’t want to go through that again after I’d been through it with Amanda, my girlfriend before Jo, because it had been very stressful and depressing to constantly be fighting and screaming at each other whenever she got drunk. But ultimately, it was Merry’s attitude towards her kids that forced me to end it. That was an absolute deal breaker when she got drunk that night and missed the bus because she was too uninterested in going to see her kids and then didn’t come home with me so that she could go out drinking until morning. But I didn’t let it bother me too much. I just fell straight into love with another girl hahaha.

It was my friend Thao that I drank with most nights. I met her through my friend Toan, and she turned up every night to drink with us even though she lived more than 40 minutes away by motorbike. She was a very immature for a girl of her age. Despite being 26, she still lived at home with her parents and was very sheltered. She worked at her parents’ cafe in the afternoons after studying hotel management at university in the mornings, and she was never allowed to stay away from home overnight anywhere where guys might be present because her parents were crazy overprotective.

When Corey was hanging out with us, it was very obvious that Thao was interested in him and he was flattered and thought she was pretty cool too. They went hiking in the forest on the Independence Day holiday. I would have loved to come along but Merry and I had other plans that day so I couldn’t. I asked him the next day how things were going between them and if he was considering sticking around for her. He seemed surprised and said “She’s not that interested” and I laughed and said “Are you fucking kidding me ? I’ve seen how she looks at you. She’s VERY interested”. He said “Not worth the trouble. Her parents are way too strict. It could never go anywhere. She’s too sheltered. I’m not sticking around here wasting my time for nothing”.

Oh well, I guess Corey wasn’t as into Thao as she was into him. Sure, dating her might have been a challenge and might not have gone anywhere fast, but I know I would have taken things slowly. Maybe Corey wasn’t interesting that sort of long-term, slow-moving relationship, but after Merry and I broke up and Corey left and went back home to the Philippines, my eyes never left Thao. Her cute smile and her laugh captivated me. She was so cute. So shy. She was smart and kind and thoughtful and honest and innocent. She was everything I wanted.

I “confessed” my love to her (as the Japanese say) and asked if I had a chance with her. At first she said “Maybe. You are a nice guy and funny. It’s possible”. But after a week or two I suggested that I would like to meet her parents because I wanted to go travelling with her and I wanted her parents to trust me so they would let her go. She asked why. I said “You know why. You know how I feel about you. Look. If you’re never going to be interested in me, just save me the heartbreak and tell me now. Don’t lead me on. I’m not in a hurry. I will wait as long as you want and get to know you as much as necessary but I need to know if we have a future”.

Sadly she said “No. Just friends. You can find a better girl than me”. I was heartbroken. Even when I was with Merry I looked at her with longing thinking “Why can’t I get a girl like that ? Why do the good girls always turn me down and the only ones who will date me are lying pieces of shit ?” The “You can find a better girl than me” line really pissed me off too. What a cop out. She wanted to soften the blow by pretending she wasn’t good enough for me. Sorry Thao but that’s not your decision to make. I decide who’s good enough for me, not you.

So here I find myself on an Emirates flight back to Brisbane having just watched a beautiful Chinese romance movie called “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”. It’s about a girl who moves to Hong Kong with her boyfriend who then dumps her for another girl. A drunk saves her from being run over and she gives him all her ex-boyfriend’s possessions. He sells them and tells her to use the money to have fun with him. They go out and get her a makeover and have fun together. It turns out that he’s a famous architect but one day he just found he didn’t have it in him anymore and he turned to booze and became an alcoholic.

She told him to stop drinking and with the last $12 they had remaining she bought him some pencils and told him to start sketching a new building and she would meet him next week to see his work. In the meantime she met some sleazy asshole who charmed the hell out of her and even though she knew he was a total cheating sleaze she fell for him completely and forgot to meet the other guy who was honest and kind and not a lying cheater.

Three years pass before they run into each other again and the alcoholic has sobered up and is a successful architect again and has designed and built a huge building in Shenzou based on her silhouette from the night they met. They fall in love but she is still being wooed by the other guy and she is confused and unsure of herself. She knows she wants the good guy but she cannot help her attraction to the asshole guy who is now her boss. In the end they both ask her to marry them in a magnificent finale and well, let’s just say it has a very moving and happy ending.

All I can say is that it’s a shame real life isn’t like that. In real life girls always pick the asshole and the nice guy gets ignored. Even Thao, for all her qualities has the fault of being interested in these total fucking losers with nothing to offer her who aren’t even interested in her enough to stay in the country. I’m not referring to Corey of course, who was a great guy, even though he wasn’t willing to stay in Vietnam for her, but a certain other British loser we hung out with a little bit who Thao seemed charged by, but he wasn’t interested in her at all and he left shortly after I met him. Personally, I would have followed her to the end of the Earth but sadly it doesn’t matter now, because she said she wasn’t interested.

We did talk after I went home though, but we had a bit of a fight over Merry. Thao wouldn’t unfriend Merry on Facebook even though Toan had done so and insisted that Kelly do so as well. Toan had pretty strong morals and when he saw how Merry treated me he just said to Kelly “We don’t want to be friends with someone like that. You have to unfriend Merry”. Thao however wouldn’t do it, and I was reluctant to comment on her Facebook wall because I knew Merry would see it, and I suggested that I wanted her to unfriend Merry, but she got mad at me for telling her what to do and we had a fight and I unfriended her and everyone else I knew on Facebook, coz I just fucking hate the site and all the drama that goes along with it.

We did make up though. A couple of weeks later she messaged me on Skype to chat and said she was sorry that we’d fought about it. Ok so maybe she wasn’t in love with me, but she did appreciate me as a friend which was nice. I again hinted how I felt and said “What would you say if I said I was only coming back to Vietnam to see you ?” She was flattered, and I again asked if she would come travelling with me, because she always talked wistfully about how much she wanted to travel, but she said it just wasn’t possible because there was no way her parents would let her go anywhere with a guy. I let it go and said it was ok. I was just glad we were friends again and that she was being nice. She actually had a very bad motorbike accident just after I left Saigon and was quite badly injured and complained about being in a lot of pain and that she couldn’t ride. She’s better now, but I must say, I did worry about her since I wasn’t there and didn’t know the full extent of her injuries.

I’m not sure when I’m going back to Vietnam. We’ll see what happens. Right now my heart is in Korea and I am desperate to go there. I’m listening to Korean music right now. What’s wrong with me ? Why does my daughter have a Japanese name, I’m drinking Vietnamese rice wine. I listen to Korean music and watch Chinese love stories ? Why wasn’t I born Asian ? How did I end up like this and why ? There was no influence in my life pushing me in this direction. I knew noone else into Asian culture but here I am obsessed with it. Why ? I have no idea. The only reason I don’t think I’m totally crazy is that Josh fell in love with Asian culture in the same way I did thanks to that fateful Monday night back in 1995 when SBS aired Neon Genesis Evangelion on TV after South Park.

That night changed both of our lives forever. Some people get into anime, but that’s all. In fact, more than 95% of my friends who are into anime have absolute no interest whatsoever in Japanese music, or Asian dramas or anything like that. They just like anime and that’s it. But Josh and I weren’t like that. We hadn’t been exposed to it before, until we saw Evangelion and then we just went “Wow. Japan is cool isn’t it ?” and we immediately became obsessed with Asia. I used to laugh when I’d come home from university and Josh would be in his van in the backyard with Jpop blasting out the windows and I’d wonder if he even went to school or if he’d sat at home all day marathoning anime and listening to Jpop.

Ahhh Josh, if only you were still here, you could be by my side as I travel around Asia. I know that when I’ve lost my true love in the past before, I’ve been just as devastated as he was, and I tried to kill myself twice after Jo left me. Thankfully, and I won’t put this down to fate because that’s just bullshit, but due to random chance, I didn’t succeed. Josh wasn’t so lucky though. If only he’d managed to get through that period and given up on that dumb unfaithful bitch who broke his heart, he could be with me today, helping me plan our adventures trekking around Asia. I mean, I do love doing it on my own, but to be able to share all that with Josh when our love of Asian culture had brought us so close together would be so special. At least we could have supported each other when our relationships didn’t work out.

All I know is that my heart is stuck in South East Asia. It’s where I want to live and where I want to die. I want my children to be born and grow up in Asia. Not necessarily Vietnam. Maybe somewhere with more opportunities. Korea or Japan would be awesome but they’re both expensive. Harry the Filipino I met in Singapore tells me there are many opportunities for IT people in the Philippines right now. I don’t want to be another loser teacher with no skills like everyone else.

But on my next trip back, I have even more ambitious plans. Seriously ambitious plans. I don’t want to give too much away because it would take all the fun out of it if I couldn’t just jump on IRC or onto my blog and say “Hahaha, you will NEVER guess where I am right now !” and surprise everyone. But I will tell you the part of my plan which is specifically mapped out.

In January, I am heading to Malaysia. Only staying for a few days unfortunately, because I just picked dates that lined up with underbooked flights, but after that I’m flying to Thailand. After that I will go to Phnom Penh, but while it would cost bugger all, I haven’t booked flights. I’ll probably go via bus or train instead because I just don’t see the fun in flying from destination to destination and not seeing the country pass by underneath me. After that, well, of course I’m headed for Saigon to see Thao and Toan.

Originally I said I was going to take a teaching job temporarily there since Neil had promised to hook me up, but right now I just want to travel. I did have plans to go back to Vietnam and work and settle down, but right now, I have itchy feet and I want to really see Asia. I mean, I like to say that I’m travelling around Asia, but in truth I’ve only really been to Vietnam and Singapore, so I want to see the rest of the region. I can’t tell you my plans for beyond when I get back to Vietnam, because I don’t want to jinx them and I also know from experience that I am quite prone to meeting people and having fun in places and not wanting to leave, so I’d hate to tell you was going to do a bunch of things only to not do them, but I do have ambitious plans.

I’m going to buy a motorbike in Saigon and do some traveling “off the grid”. Since I thought I was going back to Vietnam to live, I did originally want to take a bunch of stuff with my like my guitar, and some computers and such, but now that my plan is just to wander from country to country overland and eventually go on the road on a motorbike, it’s obviously not practical for me to take all that stuff. I think I’ll have to settle for a laptop and tablet, my camera gear, and just enough clothes to get by for a week at a time.

I will give you this hint though… I have a very good friend from Amsterdam who has been studying Japanese and he asked me the other night “Do you want to go to Japan pawz ?”. At first I said “No, not right now. I’m busy in SE Asia. I’m putting that off till later”. But I haven’t seen him in person in well over ten years since he came to Australia to visit me, and when I realised how close to Japan I was planning to end up I said “You know what ? I think I should. It’s not like it has to be my only visit, and I’m already hoping to end up so close anyway… Let’s do it. Why not end my next journey in Japan and catch up with you ? At least I can get a taste for the place and be more prepared for when I’m finally ready to go back and live there properly”.

So… it’s not set in stone, but it’s a possibility. I don’t really want to make fixed plans and have limits on where I have to be and when. That’s why my plane journey ends in Thailand, because after that, I just want to wander as the mood takes me. If I meet some nice people in Cambodia or Saigon or Hanoi and decide to stick around and hang out, I don’t want to have to be constantly checking my calendar. Travelling to a schedule or having plans is not my thing. That’s not how travel works. Man, when I was in Saigon, I used to love being able to just go “You know what ? I don’t wanna go drink at Number Five tonight… I might jump on a hydrofoil to Vung Tau.. like.. right now” and just do something random. Or even go “Hey… Do you wanna go to Hue ? We can leave tonight”

Impulsive travel is the best kind. No plans. No dates. Just “I’d like to end up here at some point in the next few months. Let’s see if I can manage to make that happen”. So I dunno. Maybe some time next year I’ll be writing the words “Hey everyone. I’m sitting in a bar in Tokyo”. Who knows. Or maybe I’ll get to Saigon and Thao will say “You know what ? Fuck my parents, let’s take off to Vientiane for a week”. That’d fuck my plans in a big way, hahahhaha.

We can only hope, can’t we ?

So anyway, I took some photos of Singapore that I never posted, so I guess I should post them now shouldn’t I ? But let’s start with just one photo of Thao and then I’ll post photos from both Changi airport and Singapore City. Enjoy !

You asked for this “Joe”. Don’t blame me !

“Joe” and “Hanh” … well… things progressed from my recent story. We discussed it further and we came to the realisation that “Hanh” wasn’t as horrible as we’d decided in our little bitch session, and that she was actually just insecure and afraid and had reacted poorly. She gave him another go. Things are looking up. She does like him… she didn’t mean to hurt him… and it’s not over after all.

So what does Joe do ? Before he can allow himself the luxury of thinking twice about it, he lets his emotions rule over his rational brain, and he grabs a copy Gimp and Windows Movie Maker, feeds in some photos of the two of them together, adds a pretty Vietnamese love song, and … wait for it…

He proposes to her. By video. Presumably on Youtube.

Yeah. You’re totally facepalming right ? I would have too if not for the fact that this is totally predictable behaviour for Joe, and frankly myself, and I know that I would no doubt do the same thing in his situation. So while I made a token effort to try and say “Is this wise ? Have you thought about this ? This seems a bit of a knee-jerk reaction”…. my heart wasn’t in it, and in the end I had to say “Ok, to be honest, I totally support you and I’m right behind you”.

Only reason I’m MAD… is the bastard won’t let me see the video until she’s seen it.

Jesus Joe. After all the late nights I’ve spent encouraging you, commiserating with you, and sharing our crazy adventures together… I’m a little bit miffed that you decided not to include me in this. And you had the gall to email me and tell me about it and then IM me about it because you were so damn excited, dangle this romantic video in front of me… and then refuse to let me see it.

How could you ? So goddamn mad at you. I don’t care if you want it to be special and just for her… I thought I was part of your crazy adventure. And now you shut me out at the most crucial moment ? You suck. You really really suck. For christ’s sake, she’d better hurry up and see it soon so that you can link me to the damn thing or I’ll be really pissed off. My own life is miserable right now and I’ve finally given up being strong and able to weather all the disappointment in my life and break down and wallow in self-pity, and now you deny me this chance to live vicariously through yours ? Not amused. I don’t care if you want it to be special. Think of ME !!!!!

If you’re going to be a hopeless fucking romantic idiot, the least you could do is include me in your insanity. *sniff*. I’m really hurt. I am. I’m not just joking. I’m disappointed to be left outside in the cold. I thought we were gonna share everything. You didn’t even want my opinion on it.

Ahh fuck it. Best of luck you crazy bastard. I hope you at least get a “maybe” or a “holy shit” or something. Possibly not a “Troi oi” though.

Now show me the fucking video before I kick your arse !

I have to tell you a story.  Not one of my own this time. Someone else’s. I know a lot of people have laughed at me or thought I was crazy and stupid for the things I’ve done in pursuit of love. But apparently I’m not the only one on earth who is completely over-emotional, falls madly in love, and has managed to get completely and utterly duped by a Vietnamese girl.

The sad thing is that I was going to tell this story a couple of days ago and it was actually supposed to be an inspirational and beautiful love story to show you “Look… a foreigner can find love with a Vietnamese girl… they’re not all bad”. But sadly things took a turn for the worse very rapidly and I’m disappointed to say this story doesn’t have a happy ending after all. But it’s still a story worth telling, I think.

I won’t tell you this person’s name because he reads this and he would be embarrassed if I told you who it was and I’m sure he wouldn’t want his friends reading it…. so I’ll call him Joe… and I’ll say he’s from…. mmmm… Sweden. I’ve never met Joe but I have talked to him extensively and we write very, very long emails back and forth talking about our love lives.

Joe’s a programmer. Java I believe from memory (yeah… yuck… Java.. I know). He’s obviously quite good at it and he seems pretty successful. He has enough money to be able to afford to take time off regularly and fly around the world visiting interesting places though I wouldn’t say he’s rich. He’s just a guy who’s smart and skilled and gets paid well for what he does. He’s very much like me except he probably works a lot harder *chuckle* because as we all know, I’m lazy as hell and only work to amuse myself and express myself rather than to earn money beyond what I need to buy the nice toys that I like to own. I don’t know every detail about his story… so if I get something wrong or out of order, hopefully he won’t mind, but it’s not the details that matter in this story.. it’s just the overall theme and outcome.

Joe went to Vietnam about a year ago and while he was there he met a Vietnamese girl called…. mmmm… let’s call her Hanh for irony’s sake since that name means “of good conduct”. So, Joe met Hanh while he was in Vietnam through a Vietnamese friend who lives in his home country. They got along well and he liked her and she seemed to like him. He asked for her number and she gave it to him. Another guy he knew also asked for her number. She didn’t give it to him though because apparently she just wasn’t interested in him because he was a little creepy or something.

Joe went home and then back to Vietnam again, partly for his own reasons, but also to see Hanh. When she suggested he visit Singapore while she was there working, he did. Not once, but twice. The first time was good, but on the second visit something was a bit amiss. She seemed a little distracted and not quite as interested in him. At one point she caught a taxi with him to work. But after she got out, Joe asked the taxi driver what type of establishment it was and was a bit disturbed when the driver said it was a sort of strip club. A place to go to pay to meet girls and possibly take them home, though they weren’t specifically prostitutes, it wasn’t unlikely that they sometimes did this.

Despite being surprised by this, to his credit, Joe was not put off. He was a little miffed, but he didn’t hold it against her. He did however tell her that he knew where she worked and what she did. She sort of freaked out and didn’t speak to him for some time. But he returned home without telling her how he felt about her.

She didn’t contact him for a while and when she did, she expressed her disappointment. She asked why he hadn’t contacted her or shown interest in her. He quickly insisted that he did like her and he didn’t know why he hadn’t been more forthcoming. Unfortunately Hanh said that she had found a boyfriend in Singapore. She said “He was very nice and we talked about happy things and sad things”. Joe didn’t believe her. He was positive that it wasn’t true and that she just said it to make him jealous, which it did, and she clearly saw that. Joe was devastated. He broke down and cried to … well… someone I know, while talking about it. Which is no more emotional than I get mind you, I just don’t cry over things like that. I personally only cry over sad things, not over loss or break-ups. I don’t think I even cried about my divorce. But I can barely mention Suki’s name without crying. But nevermind me, back to the story…

Joe realised that he’d screwed up. He really did like Hanh but he’d stupidly let her slip out of his grasp by not telling her how he felt. Determined that he could win her back, and with no small amount of encouragement from me, he blurted out that he loved her and would do anything for her and he was desperate for another chance. I tried to give him some tips on how I thought he should approach things. Not because I’m successful in relationships, because I’m not, but it seemed that Joe was going about things a bit wrong and sort of being over-emotional and impulsive and saying things he later regretted or felt embarrassed by.

The two of them talked a lot though after that and she wanted him to come visit again. He did. Without hesitation, he jumped on the first plane he could, flying across the world to see her for the fifth time. He was there just to see her and he made that clear. He was very excited that she was interested in him again and he pulled out all the stops this time. Things seemed to be going well. She would come and stay in his hotel, but on a separate bed because well, Vietnamese girls ARE conservative. But they were close and intimate, and eventually they made love for the first time in the year they’d known each other.

But then it all went wrong. She was sitting there on her laptop playing him love songs when someone sent her a link. She listened to the video which was a love song and asked him to explain what the English lyrics meant because she didn’t understand them well. Joe told her that the guy was saying that he would love this girl forever, until the end of time. She got a weird smile on her face that she tried to hide with her hand. Suspecting the worst he asked “Who sent you that ?” and she said “Just a friend”. “Boy or girl ?” he asked. “A boy” he said. Unfortunately he’d seen that smile she tried to hide. He knew it was more than just “any” boy. At some point he happened to see her Facebook open, with a Singaporean guy on screen. That’s when he knew the guy was real and not just invented to make him jealous. Which of course made him REALLY jealous.

He knew what was going on. The Singaporean guy was real and he was wooing her with cheesy love songs… right in front of him while she was supposed to be being impressed by HIM since he was the one who’d flown across the world for her. Joe said he wanted to know how she felt. He wanted some commitment from her. He wanted her to say she loved him. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t give him an answer of any kind on how she felt. She just clammed up and didn’t want to talk. He got mad. He asked her to leave his room. She refused to go so he said “Fine, if you won’t go I will”. “Where are you going ?” she asked. “I don’t know”, said Joe. “I just need to get out of here right now if you won’t answer my question”. They didn’t talk again that night.

We discussed it at great length. He was worried that she liked this Singaporean guy a lot. Somehow he’d touched her heart. Her comment about talking about “sad things” was quite telling. Somehow he’d appealed to her with a sad story of his own and she was moved by it and thought he was “nice” and sensitive, even though she’d met him at a strip club and he hadn’t flown anywhere to see her. Joe was getting worried.

After we discussed it, Joe retired to bed, determined to sort it out in the morning. When she woke up, she didn’t immediately come to see him, and it was a little while before he saw her. He said he wanted to talk to her, but she just laughed it off and said “No” quite rudely. Her friend looked a little concerned but said nothing. Joe was crushed and came back to tell me what happened.

“She’s made up her mind”, he said. “She didn’t pick me”. I tried to insist “Yeah, it does sound like she made up her mind about something, but you don’t know for sure that was her decision. Maybe she just decided to take a step back and re-evaluate things. Maybe she decided it was all getting too serious and she just wanted to relax. Don’t jump to conclusions and potentially screw things up further if there’s a chance it’s not what you think”. Joe listened to my advice, but he was fairly convinced that she had made her choice and it wasn’t him. The way she so coldly laughed at his attempt to talk to her suggested that her and her friend had been talking all night and she’d come to some sort of tough decision that wasn’t going to be in his favour.

They didn’t talk again and later that morning, Hanh and her friend both checked out of their room without any warning or even saying goodbye and left him to pay the bill. Pretty fucking cruel right ? He flies across the world to see her and she just walks out of the hotel without a word and expects him to pay the bill. Not that he wouldn’t have anyway, but you’d think if someone was going to expect you to pay their bill, they’d at least have the decency to say goodbye, but Hanh said nothing. She just left.

Joe was understandably upset. That was a pretty horrible thing for her to do. I was likewise blown away by her callousness but I wasn’t completely convinced it was over and urged him to remain hopeful and that maybe there was some reason for it and that she would sort it out with him later. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Later that day he got this odd text saying that seeing the pouring rain made her think of him. It was bizarre. To be so cold to him and refuse to talk to him, and then check out and disappear without a word, only to turn around and unexpectedly give him this straight-out-of-a-romance-novel bullshit cornball line about the rain making her think of him ?

I had to admit… even I couldn’t deny it this time… she was fucking with him. It was all a big fucking joke to her and she was clearly just messing with his head for her own amusement. This was confirmed later that night when after hearing nothing more from her, Hanh’s friend, who Joe really didn’t know at all rang him and said that they wanted him to come out and drink with them, although he could hear Hanh laughing in the background like she thought it was hilarious. She passed the phone to Hanh who invited him out but then didn’t give him the address.

Joe sat around for half an hour wondering what was going on and then messaged back “So I suppose you gave me the address 30 minutes ago too did you ?” to which she responded “We’re drunk. Take care of yourself”. Joe replied “Fine. I will”.

This was crazy. She had walked out without a word and let him foot her hotel bill, then she’d turned around and feed him some ridiculous lovey-dovey bullshit, then ignored him further, and then invited him out for drinks but deliberately didn’t give him the address and then when he asked, she basically turned around and told him to fuck off.

Well, Joe had had enough. We discussed it and I agreed. Yes, she was deliberately being cruel to him for her own amusement. She had clearly come to the decision that she didn’t want him anymore, but instead of doing the decent thing and telling him, which would have been a bit cruel considering he’d just flown across the world for her, she decided to just fuck with him and piss him off and laugh about it with her friend until he eventually broke down and gave up. I even commented “Yeah after what happened this morning I can see how that would have gone down. They sat around talking about you and she was putting you down and then said that she bet that she could get you interested again with just a few kind words”.

And she was right. But even though Joe gave her another chance (I was insisting pretty vehemently that he not give up because I said he would regret it forever if he didn’t give her every possible chance) her motives were too obvious. She was trying to drive him away, and having a laugh at his expense. Joe got drunk, and realising that it was over, messaged her to tell her that, indicating that it was a shame that she had been just pretending to love her. She didn’t respond. Nor did she the next day. It was clearly over. Anything she said from this point was obviously just her being callous and heartless and trying to alienate him.

We theorised about it at length and came to the conclusion that she didn’t want to feel bad about the break-up so she had steeled her heart and decided to just be a total bitch until he gave up on her. I was convinced that she was going to get bored later and message him again because she obviously loved the attention. In fact, that’s what we concluded the whole thing had been about. Sure, she may have been interested in Joe, but she was obviously fickle and not interested in a serious relationship with him. She just wanted to feel loved and desired. Maybe her unsavoury job left her feeling miserable and unappreciated and her only way to fill that void was to take pleasure in guys adoring her and enjoying her ability to control them. It’s clear she was quite the master of manipulation, as many Vietnamese girls are.

But the way she did it was cruel. To string him along for a year and make him confess his love when she wasn’t willing to confess hers, drag him across the world for the fifth time and then sleep with him only to give him the cold shoulder the next day when another guy tried to charm her.. well that’s one thing. But to then turn around and deliberately treat him like shit, though oddly mixed with the occasional sweet talk just to string him along further for her own amusement ? That’s just unbelievably cruel. We discussed that for a long time and Joe tried his best to rationalise it in some way that made sense to him, but he couldn’t, and I had to say “Unfortunately, sometimes women are just really fucking cruel. I mean, I’m surprised because she seemed like such a nice girl and there were no obvious signs she was like that, but it’s pretty clear now that once she had no need for you anymore, she cared nothing for your feelings and actually took pleasure in your pain”.

In a way, her doing that helped Joe get over her. She destroyed him, but he couldn’t understand why at first. But when he looked at all that she’d done towards the end, and pieced it up with how things had unfolded over time, it all made sense. Sure, she sorta liked him, but she definitely didn’t respect him and she knew she had him wrapped around her little finger, so she just strung him along for the sake of her own ego until she decided she didn’t want him anymore and then rather than own up and break it off properly she chose to just close her heart and treat him like shit until he snapped. Whether it was her intention or not, being a total bitch like that at the end was the only thing that ensured Joe would go back home with no hope left in his heart.

And as mean as it sounds, that’s exactly what he needed. I know what he’s like. He’s as bad as me, if not worse. All she needed to do was drop one kind word after he got home and say she missed him and his mind would be full of doubt again. He might not be willing to put his neck out for her and fly back again, but it would put enough doubt in his mind that he wouldn’t be able to put the relationship behind him and move on. That doubt would have gnawed at him for years and poisoned his relationships in the future.

So in a way, she did him an odd favour by ending it that way. I very much doubt she was doing it out of any sort of kindness though. She just wanted him to go away without her having to tell him to. He’s still there right now, but he’s going home in a few days and he’s determined that he’s not going to talk to her if she contacts him. He plans to send her a simple goodbye message telling her that he’s not upset or heartbroken (he is, but he wants her to think he’s not) and that this is the end and then hopefully he will ignore anything she sends back. I have my doubts about his ability to resist if she contacts him though.

There are many more details to the story that I didn’t go into, especially the many good parts of the relationship which gave Joe hope, but I’ve tried to keep this discussion as brief as possible. But ultimately you have to be amazed at her tenacity and ability to keep the ruse going for so long. Of course we assume it wasn’t always a ruse. At first she liked him. But at some point, maybe around when he had told he he knew what she did for a living, things went downhill. After that, she contacted him, but it seems like it was out of boredom and because she wanted to see where things could go. Or how far she could push him or manipulate him. At that point it became a mind game that went on for a long time.

Whether you admire Joe for his determination and dedication to getting her back and impress her, or whether you think he’s an absolute pathetic idiot is up to you. I know the people that call me a pathetic idiot who tries too hard and is too emotional would say the same threefold about Joe, but others like myself… well, I admire him for not giving up. He could have given up so many times, but he really liked her and didn’t want to just walk away from the relationship without trying to make it work. He spent many, many thousands of dollars on visiting her, not to mention all the time he took off work. He rearranged his whole life to fit around her and would literally go to the ends of the earth for her. After the Singaporean guy had tried to woo her with the cheesy love song, he tried it back, sending her Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do”. He was prepared to play hardball and do anything for her and he wasn’t afraid to make that clear to her.

So why does a girl turn down that sort of dedication ? Surely a guy who is willing to fly across the world five times to two different countries to see you is a keeper, right ? Joe’s an intelligent, sensitive, hardworking, well off, and very devoted guy. He’s obviously not the sort of guy who would cheat on her, nor the sort of guy who would go hang out in strip clubs or titty bars like the one where she met the Singaporean guy. So why did she spurn him ? Is it because she didn’t really want a nice guy in the end ? Many girls do prefer assholes for some reason.

I think the answer is that she’s a bit of a broken person. Not broken in the usual sense that she was damaged, though no doubt her choice of job had a large influence on how she thought about men, and she said more than once that she thought men were “only interested in running around after lots of different girls”, but because she apparently lacked a conscience when it came to her actions towards men. Maybe it was a carefully developed defence mechanism or maybe it was an attack strategy. Maybe it was to make herself feel better, or maybe it was to stop herself feeling worse about herself and what she did for a living.

But my opinion is that if she was doing what she was doing in Singapore, then it wasn’t because she was desperate for money. She was doing it because she found the money easy. She knew she had a talent for manipulating guys and she realised she could use it to her advantage and make a hell of a lot more money in Singapore than she would make back home. Her doing that wasn’t out of desperation, but greed and laziness. She would work six months of the year in Singapore and earn lots of money and then go home to Vietnam and spend it all. She had many flashy things that she’d bought or had possibly had bought for her by guys. She wanted for nothing except attention and she had an easy path cruising through life.

But that isn’t going to last forever. You don’t stay young and beautiful forever, and sooner or later age will catch up with her and she won’t be able to pull off her tricks as easy. She’ll probably find it very hard to give up what she does and get a normal, poorly paid job. Most likely she will find someone rich and ensnare them and hope that she’s setup for life. Hanh is a spider of the most calculating and cold variety because she is able to appear sweet and innocent as a button. Even when Joe’s friends warned him to be careful, and even when he heard all my stories, his response was a naive and innocent “Thank god my Hanh isn’t like those crazy bitches pawz has been dating. Thank god I managed to find a good girl”.

She never wanted money from him, and other than some small items he really spent very little on her, so it’s obvious money was not her motivation, unlike the girls I dated. This girl wanted an ego boost. She wanted to be found beautiful and told she was incredible and to have lots of guys love her and fight over her for her attention. She wanted to feel special, even at the expense of the feelings of a nice guy who really should have been everything she wanted in life.

So it was all the more surprising when she turned out to be calculating and heartless and it appeared that she’d been stringing him along for quite some time for her own amusement. He had known she was baiting him and sucking up to him and fishing for compliments and affection, but he thought it was ok because she liked him. Until he realised that she was so fickle than she would let him fly across the world only to ignore him when some other guy gave her some sweet words.

So what have we learned today ? I think we’ve learned that women are capable of being amazingly calculating and cruel and can hide their ability to do so for years, especially when their partner is blinded by his love for her. Even if there are tiny signs, when a guy, especially one as emotional and prone to falling deeply in love as Joe or myself, sees these signs, they will ignore them. When a girl is that good at playing sweet and innocent, it’s very hard to believe that she could possibly be as incredibly wicked as she turned out to be.

But as I pointed out to Joe, he may be going home with a broken heart and a painful lesson about how truly cold and calculating Vietnamese girls can be, but at least he didn’t lose a lot. He may have lost a lot of dignity and been the brunt of her private jokes, but at least he didn’t marry her. At least she didn’t take away his house. At least she didn’t demand that he spend four hard years having a child with her only to take the child a month after it was born and leave him for another guy like my wife did. When I pointed this out to him I guess he realised that I was right. A broken heart and a hard lesson about love isn’t the worst thing that could have come out of the relationship. He could have ended up far worse off.

But that’s the thing. It’s like Vietnamese girls are amazingly cold and calculating, but at the same time incredibly short sighted and unambitious. They think only about the short term and not about the future. I found that myself. The girls who ripped me off could have gotten a lot more out of me if they’d tried, but they settled for petty amounts of cash instead. It’s like they’re afraid of getting into anything too serious, so they just skim a little bit off each guy. Maybe it’s safer that way. Or maybe it’s easier on their conscience – for the ones that have one that is.

One thing’s for sure though. When we pooled our knowledge, we both learned something about girls, Vietnamese ones in particular from the experiences we both had. We learned not to underestimate them for a start. We learned that they are remarkably skilled at deception and acting sweet and innocent when they are actually far from it. We learned that even in their mid to late 20′s, many Vietnamese girls are not concerned about the future and their only worry in life is having fun and having guys pay attention to them. We also learned that sometimes they completely lack a conscience about what they do.

Are either of us turned off Vietnamese girls forever ? No. Are we not going back to Vietnam ? No, we both have plans to return in the next few months actually. I guess that’s what makes us hopeless romantics, right ? The ability to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous insult to our hearts and still go back for more. That’s what makes you a hopeless romantic. To have your heart broken and have it make you even more determined to keep trying to find love. THAT’S what makes a hopeless romantic. I’d also like to think it’s what makes the most devoted guys. Guys like that don’t cheat on girls. Guys that love the girl until the day they die. Sadly those guys are also easy pickings for girls like Hoa or Hanh.

A girl can tell an honest guy a mile away as if there’s a bright red and white target painted on them. When the guy accepts their advances shyly and doesn’t feel them up and is polite and kind and doesn’t try and get them into bed five minutes after meeting them they know “Ahhh this is one of THOSE guys”. And sadly, they know that these guys fall in love easily and are blinded by it and can be easily taken advantage for whatever it is that they’re seeking, whether it’s money or security or a visa to a first world country or just an ego boost to make them feel great.

Nice guys finish last. And the cold, calculating black widows of this world, well… they normally get exactly what they want. Well, as long as what they want in the long run is some dumb rich guy that they can manipulate and cheat on if they so desire. But hey, I’m sure it’s not fulfilling for them, although it’s possible they have a different way they measure their fulfilment. And as to us guys ? Well, I guess we just keep trying in the hope we finally find that magical, sweet, innocent girl like Sawako from Kimi ni Todoke embodies. The one that seems not to exist outside of anime.

But hope springs eternal from the heart of a hopeless romantic. That’s why we’re so hopeless. We think we’ve learned our lesson after each failure, but we’re always willing to trust again and open up to the next girl. Well. You hope so. Sometimes it doesn’t work like that when our hearts get broken, something dies inside us and we get sad and we think it’s all pointless and we don’t even want to try anymore. But those ones aren’t the completely hopeless romantics. They’re the ones that found a cure. It’s just not the cure the rest of us want.

So if you are a hopeless romantic, and you’ve been reading my tales thinking “Awww this guy is sorta sweet the way he tries so damn hard in spite of repeated failure and ends up more determined to do better each time” rather than the people who just shake their head and think “Jesus you are an idiot dude. You never learn”, then maybe you’ve taken some comfort from these stories. Because hearing that someone else has a story just like yours and has the same weaknesses and idiotic determination and blind ignorance is sometimes just what you need to refresh your hope and think “I’m not so bad. I’m not the only idiotic romantic on the planet who tries too hard and goes to ridiculous lengths. This guy is just as bad”.

If you’re divorced and wonder how you can ever love again, enjoy my stories. If you’re still innocent to the pain that awaits you out there and you’re just determined that you would walk to the ends of the earth to find the love of your life, take heed of stories like Joe’s. Because if you haven’t given your life savings to a girl’s parents that you haven’t even met yet, and you haven’t racked up enough air travel miles to circumnavigate the globe twice for a girl, you just aren’t trying as hard as we are. Hopeless romantics know no limits. Hell, I talked to Thao again yesterday and despite her having told me in the past that it’s hopeless, I’m still dying to see her again and have another shot at it. You’re not a hopeless romantic if you give up on them before they give up on you. We keep trying until we run out of gifts to give and beautiful things to say and until the restraining order lands on our doorstep.

So if you’ve loved and lost, don’t give up. Don’t close your heart. Just try again. And try harder next time. And don’t listen to ANYONE who tells you you’re trying “too hard”. That’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as too hard. Sure you can come on “too strong”, but there’s no such thing as “trying too hard”. If you give flowers to a girl every single day for weeks on end and she finally says “Stop. Please. No more. It’s embarrassing me” then fair enough, take the hint and slow down. But it doesn’t mean you should give up. Sometimes you need to put the ball in their court for a while or give them a break from your intense (and by god can we be intense) affection. Just don’t take your racket and ball and go home until the game’s completely finished.

Joe and I may both have a score of “love” right now if we were playing tennis, but fortunately we’re not playing tennis. We’re playing the game of life, and “love” is the score we want to achieve, and it doesn’t represent “zero” like it does in tennis. The game maybe over. But there are more sets and more matches to come. This is a tournament we’re playing to win.

I mean, we’ve barely been chasing girls for 20 odd years. We can keep this up for plenty more decades. Best of luck Joe. You know who you are. I’ll see you in Saigon next year for a beer and we can talk about our latest hopeless attempts at finding happiness.

Hopeless romantics we are. And proud of it.

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.

Peter and I were hanging out. We had a good night together. We were just laughing at Merry. The police are after her after she skipped out on a taxi bill not to mention numerous hotel bills.

But I don’t want to talk long. Peter and I had finished drinking but he said “There’s two really pretty Japanese girls across the street. You can speak some Japanese right ? Let’s go talk to them. They’re drinking alone”.

At first I was reluctant and then I went “WTF ? I’m single and lonely… fuck being shy… I’m gonna go talk to these girls with Peter”. The ironic thing is they weren’t Japanese, they were Korean… which is mainly dumb because Peter IS Korean !!!! But he’s always lived in America so maybe he’s lost his touch. As soon as we approached them I said to him “Dude.. I don’t think that girl is Japanese”.

But I still went up and said “Kombanwa” and she cracked up laughing and said “We are Korean, not Japanese” and I turned to Peter and said “I fucking told you so idiot. You should recognise people from your own race for fuck’s sake !!!”.

Anyway they were good sports. We sat and talked to them for at least an hour. They were really nice girls. Peter liked the short-haired girl who’s name I forget because it was weird and I liked the long-haired girl called Sun and it seems she had lived in Japan for 3 years. When she asked “Why do you know Japanese ? Have you lived there too ?” I had to say “No. I just love the culture… My daughter has a Japanese name too” and I rolled up my sleeve.

Instantly Sun said “Oh Suki ! That’s such a cute name” and my jaw dropped. I was like “You can READ that !??!!” and she was just like “Well, not everything but I do know that word so yeah, I can read the word ‘Suki’”.

I resisted the urge to say “Marry me right now please ” and we just chatted a bit. They were leaving Saigon in the morning. They were only there overnight. Peter and I were both so sad. We were both into them lots. I mean, Sung wasn’t really my type as such.. but she was still very very pretty and at one point I admitted “I think Korean girls are the most beautiful girls in the whole world” and she took it as a personal compliment and said “Awww thank you so much”.

Anyway, fuck the stories. Here are photos of the two drop-dead gorgeous Korean girls that Peter and I went and chatted up tonight. I’m so glad I had Peter as my wingman because I would NEVER have done that alone but he dragged me along and it was great and we all had fun even though we just chatted and will never meet again.

OH OH OH OH !!!! BUT SUN GAVE ME A KOREAN COIN !!! YES !!! FOR REAL !!! YET ANOTHER FUCKING AWESOME FOREIGN COIN FOR MY COLLECTION !!!! And this one came from a beautiful Korean girl that I met for an hour in Pham Ngu Lao and even though it was just a brief chat, I think I will remember her for a long time. Nice girl. Here’s some photos.

Sorry I’m not IN the photos, but there was noone else around to take them. But take my word for it. I was sitting there right beside Sun the whole time :”)

I want to go out and have fun with Toan and Phuong Thao last night and forget about Merry. They were both busy at work or doing other things when I got into town so I just went to Bia Hoi on my own.

Now I know you may think this is crazy but I guess I believe that sometimes the best way to get over a girl is to find a new girl. And well Phuong Thao is everything I wished that Merry was. She’s cute, shy, polite, kind and she doesn’t get blind drunk and abusive like Merry did. So when I was chatting to her on Skype I came out and admitted the fact that I really liked her and told her all the things I liked about her but said I knew I wasn’t her type. She adored Corey, and Corey liked her. But not enough to stay in Vietnam to be with her. Personally, if a girl like Phuong Thao liked me… I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.

Anyway I asked if there was any chance of her going out with me once we got to know each other more. She said “Yeah it’s possible. You’re kind and funny and I like you”. I was pretty happy about that so I was looking forward to seeing her.

We weren’t supposed to go drinking. We were supposed to do something else. But I took my guitar and when I got to Bia Hoi to wait for Toan and Phuong Tao to finish what they were doing. There was two other guys there who played music too and they borrowed my guitar. Then a woman ran across the street and said to us “Are you guys musicians ? I’ve written this song about Saigon and I really want someone to put some music to it. Would you guys do that ?” And they said “Sure. We have a guitar back at our hotel. We’ll go and get it shortly and we can all jam and sing your song”.

I was so excited at the idea of having a roadside jam session with some singer who had an original song so I told Toan and Phuong Thao to meet us there. When they turned up, Phuong Thao had a cute little balloon hello kitty and well, I had just gotten my stuff back from Merry so I happened to have a new Hello Kitty plushie in my bag. I pulled it out and handed it to her. She was like “For me ? Really ?” and I just smiled shyly and nodded.

Later Nam came past and he had yellow roses tonight. I immediately bought one and gave it to Phuong Thao. I didn’t want to be seen to be coming on too strong, so I tried to excuse it by saying “You know I always buy roses from Nam. So tonight this one is for you”. She blushed and held onto it. But some other guy turned up that I guess they knew. He was British and his name was Oli and Phuong Thao hung on his every word and I immediately despised him. Not just because she seemed to really like him, but because he was just an arrogant, smarmy little cunt who seemed to think he was fucking awesome.

I got him good at one point. He said he’d lived in Saigon for a year and I said “Oh ? What do you do for a living ?” and he goes “Teach English”. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed and said “Oh, so you don’t actually have any real skills ? All you can do is speak English ? Oh well, I guess that’s enough to get by here”. He glared at me and said nothing. I just smirked.

I had decided that I had had enough of Gau. I was sick of his shit. So when I saw him that night and he said “Hello ? You buy from me ?” I said “Sure” and he handed me a 200,000 dong block of weed and I gave him 100,000 and said “That’ll do. We’ll call it even and you don’t have to worry about the other 20,000 you owe me”. He was like “What ? Fuck you ! No. I need the money ! You cannot do this !” I just said “Hey Gau, I’ve been really nice to you. I let you keep the change for weeks and even loaned you money when you said you had none. But I’m not a fucking retard. If you try and fuck me, I’ll fuck you back twice as hard”

He goes “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you” and picks up a plastic chair like he’s going to hit me with it. In one quick motion I pulled my switchblade out of my pocket and flicked it open and said “You sure you want to do that Gau ?” His eyes went wide and he dropped the chair and ran off saying “I’m getting my sister”.

I guess his big sister is the one who got him the job or supplies his drugs. A little while later he comes back with some girl in her 20′s and Gau calls me over. I walk over with a bit of a smirk on my face and his sister says “Gau says you buy from him and not pay. This true ?” and I said “Gau has owed me money for weeks. He never gives me my change back and when he borrowed money off me he never returned it”.

She just swore at Gau and walked off in disgust. I laughed my ass off and Gau started yelling “FUCK YOU ! FUCK YOU ! FUCK YOU !” at the top of his voice and yelling to the Bia Hoi manager in Vietnamese, presumably saying “This guy rip me off. He not pay me”. She just ignored him and shooed him away. He came back many times that night and would walk past and just yell out “FUCK YOU” AND I would yell back “FUCK YOU TOO YOU LITTLE CUNT”. Actually we ran into each other dozens of times over the course of the night and had that same interaction, but he never came to close to me again after having seen that I have a knife in my pocket.

I chatted to Kelly, the Chinese girl who’s birthday at had been the other day. She said “I fucking hate Merry now. She attacked me last night” and I said “What ? You serious ?” She goes “Yeah” and rolled up her sleeve and showed me bruises. She said “Merry did this to me. She was drunk and started arguing with me and then she grabbed me and hit me. If I ever see that bitch again I’ll kill her”. I just said “Wow. That’s fucked up. You know I dunno if I should tell you, but she was only pretending to be your friend anyway. After your birthday party she said she didn’t like you anymore because of something you do. I told her it was none of her business what you do in your free time but she she said she hated you. Then the next day she was being all friendly to you. I hate people who do that. If you don’t like someone then you shouldn’t suck up and pretend to be their friend and then talk about them behind their back. I hate liars like that”. Kelly said “Yeah. She’s a fucking bitch. I fucking hate her so much now” and I just said “I understand”.

Anyway, Oli wanted to go to dinner and he asked Phuong Thao to come too. I wasn’t really hungry but there was no way I was letting him drag her off somewhere by herself so I said I would come too. So the four of us headed off to a little outdoor Vietnamese cafe. I wasn’t really sure what to order and I was thinking about getting some Pho Bo Kho (beef noodle soup) because I’ve become so fond of it that I eat it nearly every day. But Toan said “Man. Have you tried pig brain soup ? It’s really good”. I was like “Really ? You’re not fucking with me ? It’s really good ?” He said “Yeah man it is. It’s very tasty. You want to try it ?” and I said “Yeah. Why not. I’m not a wuss. I’ll try anything”:

Well you know what ? Pig’s brain soup really IS quite delicious ! I’m glad I tried it. I know most people would go “Fuck that. I’m not eating brains” but I tried it and it was good. I asked Oli if he’d tried anything exotic and he said “Not much no. I just eat regular food mostly. I’ve never had brains but I have had some exotic stuff”. I said “My favourite restaurant in District 8 sells bull’s penis. Would you try that ?” and he goes “No fucking way” and even Toan said “Yeah no thanks. I don’t want to put a bull’s dick in my mouth” and I jokingly said “Yeah I bet you’d put a man’s dick in your mouth right” and he laughed and goes “Fuck you David. You can’t even ride a motorbike” and I was like “Ouch. That hurts. At least I can learn. You’ll never try bull’s penis will you ?” and he goes “Nope”.

We went back to Bia Hoi and I tried to pick up my guitar again but there’d been a big police raid in the street earlier that night because apparently the shitty traffic cops were pissed off and they wanted some quick cash so they came screaming into Pham Ngu Lao in a few cars and started writing tickets for everyone sitting in the street. It’s ludicrous that bars can blast out this deafening music literally all night long and the street is full of the noise of motorbikes and car horns, but playing an acoustic guitar on the street is forbidden ? What the fuck ? But I wasn’t playing at the time so I didn’t get in any trouble. I think maybe they don’t like the Bia Hoi place across the road because they only seem to harass them and they never hassle people at our place.

Some people got really mad at the police because none of the tourists know that it’s against the law to drink on the road because everyone does it and the owners of the places all encourage you to do it because the police very rarely ever come into PNL. It was a big scene and everyone was watching in interest to see if anyone was going to get arrested because one western woman was screaming and swearing angrily at the police, and in Australia that would have gotten her into big trouble.

But this isn’t Australia, it’s Vietnam and tonight the police had no desire to arrest anyone. They were just writing tickets so they could get some easy cash. I asked one guy “Do you reckon any of the money from those tickets will go to the government ?” and he laughed and said “Not a single dong. Those tickets will be thrown away. They’re only doing it so that people will bribe them” and I chuckled and said “Yeah I think so too”.

I got lots of photos of it too and they didn’t care. In Australia if you photograph the police doing their job and arresting someone, they have the right to arrest you and confiscate your camera. There’s a law that says that if a police officer feels that by taking a photograph of them performing their duty and you might use it in any way to intimidate or harass them then they have the right to arrest you, charge you, and confiscate your camera. But not in Vietnam thankfully ! So I switched lenses and got lots of photos from afar and right up close. I practically stood right in their face as they were issuing tickets. I had my press card around my neck and I was just dying for one of them to harass me so that I could wave my press card in front of them and say “Really ? You want to arrest a foreign journalist ? Wonder how that’ll look in the news”.

I guess I’m just a bit bitter about everything that’s happened lately and I’m just looking for a fight. I wouldn’t have stabbed Gau of course, but if he’d hit me with that chair, by god I would have beaten his scrawy gay little ass into the pavement. I’m sorta just waiting for someone to really try and fuck with me so that I have an excuse to fuck someone up big time. I’m a nice guy, but I’m not someone you want to cross because I will fuck you up bad and lately with all the bad shit that’s happened to me I’m just dying for someone to give me a reason to seriously fuck them up.

As soon as we sat down of course Oli was right beside Phuong Thao. But I talked to Toan about it and he said “Olly doesn’t really like Phuong Thao as much as she likes him. MAybe he wants to sleep with her but he doesn’t really care about her”.

FUCK !! Why is the world like that and why are girls always like that ? You can be the nicest guy on earth, but the girls will always fall for the asshole who’s going to treat them like shit. I fell in love with Phuong Thao the moment I met her, but I never really had a chance to talk to her at first and then later I was with Merry so I couldn’t get close to her. And now I can see she’s only attracted to these young, skinny twenty-something dickheads who aren’t funny and interesting. I guess she just has poor taste. Oh well.

Anyway I just couldn’t sit there watching it. I was getting so annoyed by the way Phuong Thao was smiling at this smarmy little prick in a way she never smiles at me and I practically wanted to cry. You think I’m nuts right ? I only just broke up with Merry and I’m talking about how in love with Phuong Thao I am. But that’s just how it was. The first time I saw her I thought she was so pretty and sweet and shy and I just wanted to get to know her, not fuck her.

So I said to Toan “I’m going. We’re not allowed to play guitar here anymore and I can’t stand watching Phuong Thao smiling at that dickhead like that” and Toan said “Ok. Take care. I know you’re upset so be careful ok ?” I said “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine”.

I walked past the Rhum House and it was deserted. I know why. They charge two to three times the price for a drink that anyone else does. I can get a Tiger for 11,000 dong elsewhere but they charge 35,000. And on top of that, Cyrille made a big deal of inviting Merry and I there the other night promising us free drinks, but we got no free drinks at all and then the waitress tried to charge us full price instead of happy hour price even though she knew damn well we knew it was happy hour because she came and told us when we arrived. I complained and insisted she fix it and Cyrille said “Oh she’s new here. She doesn’t know” and I said “Bullshit. She came out and TOLD us it was happy hour when we got here”. I insisted she fix it and she changed it to 150,000 dong instead of 210,000 and I paid but then said to Cyrille “Man, she still charged me 150,000. That’s still not right man. We had 7 beers and we got charged for 10″ and he goes “Jin fixed it up already” and I said “No he didn’t. She still overcharged me by 30,000 dong” and he turned to her and angrily said “Fine. Give him his 30,000 and no more”.

Needless to say we won’t be going back there. Fuck man, I was there on their opening night. Over the three days around my birthday I spent millions of dong there, and I even gave him a framed photo of all his staff from his opening night and this is how he treats me ? I know he’s hard up for money but that’s no way to treat a friend and a good customer so I won’t be visiting his place again. I wrote TJ (the other owner) a long email about why he wouldn’t see me there again.

I’ve been considering coming home. Not to see my parents and obviously I can’t see Suki. But one of my clients really wants me to come back. He says he needs me to do stuff and he’d rather talk to me in person. He’s even willing to fly me back. That’s pretty tempting but I don’t want to leave Saigon right now and I’ve just been offered and amazing opportunity.

Because Merry has worked as a tourist information clerk before I went to my favourite travel agent in Do Quang Dao street where I’ve stayed in their hotel before and gotten travel prices from them in the past. I talked to the owner Sang and asked if he had any positions for a girl who spoke many languages and he said “Mate. I know you. You’re a smart guy. You’re not one of these idiot tourists around here. I think i can offer you something much much better”.

I said “Really ? What’s that ?” and he said “I want to open a third office around the corner. Same as this one. Travel agent downstairs and hotel upstairs. But I need a Vietnamese person to be the official owner because foreigners aren’t allowed to own a business or house here and it has to be in a Vietnamese person’s name. I would like your wife to be the signatory on the place, work there managing it and working there and have you as the “Western face” of the business and do all the marketing and promotion and that sort of stuff”.

I was like “Are you serious ? You are offering to let us both manage your travel agency and hotel for you ?” and he said “Yeah mate. I know you. I trust you. You’re not stupid. I know you could handle it, and high season is about to start and man… we make fucking shitloads in high season. That’s why I need a third office. There are hundreds of travel agents in Pham Ngu Lao and the more offices I have the more money I make. I tell you man, you’ll make a killing. You’ll have no worries sending your wife’s kids to school here with a job like that. You know how much it costs to send a kid to school in Saigon right ?” And I said “Yeah, I’ve been told… it’s hundreds of dollars a month per child. I couldn’t believe it could possibly be that expensive” and he said “Yeah in the provinces it’s subsidised by the government, but in Saigon sending kids to school is so bloody expensive mate. This job would be just what you need to support your new wife and kids”.

I was pretty dumbstruck that this guy was just offering me a hotel and travel agent to run. I mean obviously he would really own it and take the lion’s share of the profit, but he assures me that I could make enough money to be pretty comfortable. Sadly Merry didn’t really give a shit. When I took her to meet Sang she was disinterested and not very enthusiastic. When I split with her I was like “Fuck. Now I can’t take that job” and I’ve been thinking of whether there’s anyone else I can trust to run it with me.

I told Sang what happened with Merry and he tried not to laugh and just said “Yeah you get that man. Vietnamese girls, Cambodian girls. They’re fucking trouble mate. They’re so tricky and sneaky and some of them are really terrible people. Lucky you got out when you did I think”. But I said “I know another girl, a friend of mine. She’s honest, smart, trustworthy, not an alcoholic and I think maybe she would be willing to do it” and he said “Sure ok. Well the offer’s still there. You find a reliable girl to do this and the place is yours”.

So I asked Phuong Thao of course. At first she was like “Thanks but I just got a new job. Not really looking for another one. Besides, my English is not very good”. I said “Rubbish, your English is excellent. I’ve never had trouble understanding you. You work in a cafe right ? This is an opportunity to be the manager of a hotel. That’s a good job, right ? Your parents would be pretty happy about that wouldn’t they ?”

At that moment the power went out in her district and we couldn’t Skype anymore but I guess what I said sunk in because she texted me and said “Hey, tomorrow can you tell me more about this job ? I think maybe you’re right and it sounds very good” so i told her I would talk to her about it and take her to meet Sang and see what he thought of her and vice versa.

I mean, I am a tiny bit suspicious about why someone would offer me such a fantastic opportunity. Normally when something sounds too good to be true it’s because it is. But I’m going to look into it further. Sang is a really good guy and we’ve talked a lot. I ran into him on his way home last night on his motorbike and he said “Oh I saw your ex-wife drinking in the bar across the road with some guy earlier” and I said “Yep, sounds pretty likely to me. She’ll talk to anyone if she thinks they’ll buy her booze” and he goes “Sorry man. That sucks. But you know, I could find you a good girl to marry. You tell me what age you’re after and what sort of personality you want and I can find you a good, reliable, honest girl if you want”.

I said “I’m not in too much of a hurry to get married you know ? I really just want to meet a girl, not rush into some marriage that might not work out” and he said “Yeah I understand. Don’t hurry. But don’t let a good opportunity go by either. You’re a smart, handsome guy but maybe a bit too trusting. You need to wise up and stop trusting every girl who tells you she loves you. But marriage isn’t always forever in Vietnam. It’s not like your country. If it doesn’t work out. You just leave. You don’t have to support her or give her all your shit. I mean you know in Vietnam a divorce is done in five minutes. There’s no bullshit waiting period. You just walk in, see a judge and he goes ‘Ok you’re divorced’. It’s not a big deal like in your country”.

Hmmm. That’s sort of interesting to hear that. I heard the same thing from Les. His Vietnamese wife was being a bitch to him and he said he wanted a divorce. They went to court and he said “Irreconcilable differences” and the judge said “Can you work it out ?” And he said “I”ve already moved out” and the judge said “Ok. Done then. You’re divorced”.

I know that sorta sounds a little sad, but when you think about it, isn’t it better than the bullshit you have to go through in Australia ? I mean I’m still not divorced. Jo and I had to separate for a whole year, divide up all our shit. I have to give her half of my entire life’s superannuation funds. And even then, the judge rejected it because he didn’t like the bullshit that Jo wrote on the paperwork. Why make people go through all that shit ? If two people are unhappy and don’t want to be together… just let them go. Why must it be some huge legal drama ?

I tried to break up with Merry on good terms. After she came to my house I talked to her at length about why I couldn’t be with someone who would abandon their their children so they could run off around the world getting shitfaced every night and never see their kids. I told her she needed to grow up and stop wasting her life. I told her that I wanted a stable family and that she obviously didn’t want that. She just wanted to party all night and that’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I think she’s very depressed about how her life turned out and she’s just running from place to place taking advantage of people and drinking herself stupid. It’s horribly self-destructive and I really feel sorry for her and she said “Yes, I’m going to ring my mum and ask her to get me a ticket home to see my family today”.

I said “What are you going to do now ? You don’t even have money to get back to your hotel” and she said “I’ll walk”. I said “Ok, wait. I’ll have a shower. I’ll take you into town”. I took her into the city but we didn’t speak a word and she gave me Suki’s stuff back and I said “Do you want to go get something to eat together ?” and she nodded. I just didn’t want things to end on bad terms. Just because we didn’t work out didn’t mean we had to hate each other. I was hoping we could end it amicably and it wouldn’t end up like Jo and I with her hating me. So we went to lunch and talked a little and afterwards I gave her a long hug and we both had tears in our eyes and I said “I hope I see you again Merry. I want to be friends. I’m sorry it didn’t work out but we just want different things in life”.

Sadly this was bullshit because last night I was out commiserating my own problems and getting drunk and at 4am I saw her on Bui Vien talking to some backpackers, obviously trying to encourage them to take her somewhere to drink more. As I walked past I chuckled and she was obviously drunk and she yelled out “Fuck you” to me. I thought that was pretty rude considering how nice I’d been to her, paying her hotel bills, supporting her, buying gifts for her kids and doing my best to end things amicably.

So I yelled back “Hey. Watch that girl. She has no money and she’s just going to try and scam free drinks out of you”. They said “Yeah and who the fuck are you ?” and I said “Her husband. I was married to her until I realised she was a thieving alcoholic who runs out on paying all her bills. She can’t even pay for the hotel she’s staying at”. Well, that fucking pissed Merry off. She started screaming “FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU” and ran over and punched me in the face, knocking my glasses off my face.

Not having my glasses and being a bit drunk I stumbled around looking for them (still carrying a guitar and a heavy bag) and I fell over twice making a huge mess of my knees which started bleeding. She stood there with these guys laughing her arse off. I eventually found my glasses and put them on but they were totally bent out of shape and the lens was scratched. Awesome. Brand new pair of glasses ruined. Now I need to go buy a new pair, which I can’t do because I spent all my money on Merry and her bullshit trip back to Da Lat that we never even took.

But the night wasn’t all bad. If I can rewind a bit, I’ll tell you some of the good things that happened that night. After I left Bia Hoi I decided to go to the park to play guitar and get drunk. I bought a bottle of Hanoi vodka and headed off down Pham Ngu Lao street but I only got a short way when a Vietnamese guy outside a travel agent said “Hey man. You wanna come play guitar with us ? Have some drinks ?” I wasn’t really sure I wanted any company at that stage but I said “Sure, why not ?”

I went in and it was a bunch of Cambodian guys who’d just arrived and they were all sitting around drinking and eating. Someone thrust a Saigon Red in my face and said “You like this beer ?” and I said “Saigon Do ? Hell yes !” and they all cracked up laughing and repeated “Saigon Doooooooo !” because I guess they didn’t expect me to speak any Vietnamese coz I probably looked like a tourist.

So I sat around and played with them for ages and drank some beer at first and then got stuck into my vodka. They didn’t really want to hear my rock songs. They wanted to hear traditional Cambodian ballads and one tried roughly to play one but he didn’t really know how to play so he just strummed an open chord over and over while singing. They wanted me to try and make up music to go with the melody but I’m not really good at that. Eventually I played “Free as a Bird”, Amber’s song and they thought that was really pretty and I said “Sing something” and they said “We don’t know what” so I said “Just harmonise. You know. Humm” and I gave an example.

They went “Ohhh ok” so I played the song and they just harmonised. It was fucking beautiful. 5 Cambodians, 1 Vietnamese and 1 Australian sitting around playing and harmonising to this beautiful ballad. It was really special. If I’d had someone else there to film it, I would have because it was absolute gold. Eventually it was getting late and I think they had a hotel or something to go to and they started packing up to leave so I got my stuff and bid them all goodbye and headed off.

I went into the park as planned and some people say that the park is very dangerous at night. Apparently a lot of junkies go there to shoot up and stuff but I dunno, I really have no fear these days especially since I started carrying a switchblade so I just wandered into the park looking for somewhere to sit down near the lake and play my guitar and drink vodka.

As soon as I walked in some guy said “Hey man, how’s it going ? You’re out late” and I said “Yeah. Had a bad night. Just wanna get drunk and play guitar”. He said “You wanna talk about it ?” and I said “Sure ok” and we sat down. He offered me a cigarette and I said “Sorry I don’t smoke those. I only smoke marijuana. You mind if I do ?” and he goes “No of course not man. Break it out. Let’s spark up”.

So I handed him my block of weed and some papers and said “You roll. I’ll play” and he started rolling some really nice joints and we must have smoked about four or five over the several hours we sat there talking. I mean, I’d been drinking beer until about 10 at Bia Hoi and then I’d drunk some more beers on the street and then I finished an entire bottle of vodka by myself so frankly I don’t really remember what we talked about. But it was good. I of course opened up and told him about my miserable life recently. I told him about Jo and Suki and I told him about Merry.

He was just like “Fuck man. Women are such cunts. I really understand you man. My wife ran out on me too and I haven’t seen my kid in years either”. Fuck ! Why is this such a common story ? In nearly every country in the world when you split up with a woman the government says “Ok now you’re required to give her half of everything you have to support her and you have to pay money for the child” and in some countries you even have to give the woman part of your income even if you don’t have children. But time and time again I hear people saying “Yeah the bitch ran off with my kids and I haven’t seen them in years. I miss my kids so much but I don’t even know where they are because the fucking cunt won’t tell me”. Cyrille, Toan (this guy), me, and no doubt millions of others have the same sad story.

Someone asked me earlier that night “Why don’t you just go to court. You have rights as a father. Your name is on the birth certificate right ?” and I said “Yeah but it’s not that simple. I saw a lawyer and he said that if I spent 50 grand and went to court that I would win and the judge would grant me access rights but that if Jo wants to be a cunt all she has to do is come up with some reason why I can’t see Suki every time. She just has to say ‘Oh Suki’s sick right now. She can’t go with you’ or ‘Sorry we have something else on’ or ‘No I don’t have transport to drop her off’ and she can keep doing that forever and the courts can’t force her. They can ORDER her. But they can’t FORCE her and this happens time and time again where a court orders a woman to let the man see the child but the woman just avoids it over and over and in practice the man still never gets to see the child”.

I asked the lawyer “So it’s hopeless ?” and he said “It all comes down to her. If she’s going to be a bitch and doesn’t want you to see your daughter, then you will be fighting in court until your daughter is grown up already and you’d better have deep pockets. If you have LOTS of money and you can afford a really good lawyer to represent you and put pressure on the judge then sure… maybe you can get what you want. But I have the feeling you struggled to raise the $440 just to see me for an hour so you aren’t likely to have hundreds of thousands to fight her in court, right ? I’m sorry to say it, but in this situation where the woman is being a bitch, most people just give up because they realise there’s nothing they can do”.

Toan sympathised and I continued drinking and we smoked some more. Another guy was walking through the park and saw us. I’d stopped playing while we talked and he said “Hey man. Sing us a song” and I said “I can’t sing and play at the same time. I’m not coordinated enough sorry” and he said “Awww come on. Give it a go” and I said “Ok fine. I’ll do a simple blues thing” because of course if I play a blues song I can alternate between singing. So that’s what I did. I just made up some crazy lyrics on the spot and after each line I would strum the guitar.

I have no idea what I talked about. Mostly Saigon and Vietnam and booze and girls and stuff I think. All I remember is I had these guys in hysterics for most of it. I must have ripped out some good lyrics because they loved it. But eventually the sun was starting to come up and they all wanted to leave and my vodka was finished so I walked home, which is where I ran into Merry and had that incident.

After that I was so fucking pissed off and depressed I just wanted to get totally fucked up. I found a motorbike guy selling opium and said “Yeah give me some of that. A big bag. 400,000′s worth” and he did. Unfortunately when we took off the other motorbike guy said “You realise he just ripped you off ? That’s not opium. That guy is a scammer. I’m pertty sure he just sold you chewing gum. Check it”. I pulled out the bag and opened it and sniffed it and sure enough… it was fucking chewing gum. I said “Go back. I wanna find that guy. I’ll fucking kill him if he doesn’t give me my money back”. The guy did a really quick U-turn but I was holding so much stuff I couldn’t hold on properly and I slipped off the back. I wasn’t hurt. At least not as badly as I was when Merry hit me and I fell onto the ground twice. But when we went back the guy wasn’t there.

Suddenly I realised something terrible. My laptop wasn’t in my camera bag anymore. It must have fallen out when I fell off the bike. We went back to the area where I’d fallen off and looked but it was gone.

FUCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!

So last night I got punched in the face by ex-wife, had my glasses broken and cracked, got ripped off by some asshole drug dealer, AND lost my fucking laptop.

Great night. Not feeling so happy now I can tell you.

So here’s some photos, starting with a photo of the pig’s brains I ate last night and also a photo of Phuong Thao. I think you can tell why I like her :”)

Merry and I were ready to get on a bus to Da Lat last night. First I took all of Suki’s clothes that I would never be able to give her thanks to Jo being a cunt and my parents always siding with her and not giving me her address and I packed them up for Merry’s daughter Mai instead. So many beautiful dresses. Then we went to the markets to buy gifts for Nimh so that he wouldn’t feel left out and I bought lots of cute clothes for him too.

I was just out of the eye hospital and I’m still blind in one eye but Merry desperately wanted to go to Da Lat to see Nimh who is sick so we booked the 1am sleeper bus and we were in Pham Ngu Lao drinking with friends waiting for the bus.

I was very angry with my parents for constantly lying to me about my daughter and my property and not in a good mood, but I was still nice to Merry. I bought her dozens of roses. First one rose from Nam… then another from Yam… then a whole big bouquet from Linh. Merry was drunk and she got angry at me. “Why you always spend money on roses ?” She demanded. I said “Because I love you and I like buying flowers. Sometimes you make me waste money on things I don’t want. You always make me buy things I don’t need and spend money on expensive taxis when we could just walk. I don’t like wasting money on those things. I am much happier buying flowers for you because they are cheap. You can give this bouquet to your mother when we see her”.

She ignored me to go and talk to her friends. Later near 1am I said “We should go”. She walked off on her own to another bar. I guessed where she had gone and I went to find her. I said “Why are you here ? We should be at the bus station. The bus will come soon”. She stood up and said “Fine” and walked off. I started following her but I ran into someone I knew and I stopped for a second to say Hi and tell them I was leaving. When I turned around Merry was gone.

I ran through the streets looking. I went to where I thought the bus station was but I couldn’t find it. I gave up and went back to the Bia Hoi place wondering what to do. Suddenly she turned up angrily saying “Where is my ticket ? Give it to me” I said “Where were you ? I was looking and looking for you” She just goes “Fuck you. Give me the ticket”. So I gave her both bus tickets and she ran off without me.

The bus company rang me and asked in Vietnamese where she was and why we weren’t on the bus but I didn’t understand them.
A few minutes later Merry came back. I said “What happened ?” and she said “Bus has left already”. I said “I told you ! You weren’t ready ! You were too busy sitting around at another bar !” She ignored me and went and sat drinking with friends and laughing and having a good time. When I tried to look at her, she ignored me. I said “What about all our clothes and the suitcase full of gifts I brought for Mai and Nimh ? She said “I threw them in the street”.

I doubt this is true but I had no idea what to say. Most likely they were put on the bus to Da Lat because Merry did not have them. All I know is she was drunk and so very angry at me when I had done nothing wrong. I asked “What happened to the flowers I bought for your mother ?” she said “I threw them away”. I stayed talking with two nice people I’d just met commiserating what had just happened. They tried to tell me to work it out with her but I just said “I don’t see the point. I loved her. I bought her a wedding ring. I bought expensive ticket to Da Lat for us to see her sick child. I buy so many gifts for her family and for no reason she gets angry and me and runs away. If this is how she is going to act now… I don’t want to know how she will act in 5 years time. We’re finished”.

When the place closed, Merry left with Toan and some friends. Toan said “Come with us”. I just looked at Merry who was staring back and me and said “Sorry. No. I’m going home. I’m tired. We should be on the way to Da Lat now, not getting drunk in Saigon. I give up. I’m going home” and I turned and walked away.

I have no idea where Merry stayed last night or how she paid for her drinks. She made no effort to say sorry to me or ask me to take her home. I cannot even comprehend why she would be so angry at me for no reason after I bought us tickets to Da Lat and gifts for her family but I can only assume she just gets fucking crazy when she’s drunk. Ironically that’s exactly what Loi, a vendor girl said to me. She said “Why you not go home with Merry ?” and I said “We’re finished. She so angry at me now for no reason. I don’t understand”. She said “That girl fucking crazy. She here every night drinking, drinking, drinking. She’s fucking crazy. You don’t want her”. I agree. I want a good, reliable, kind, polite wife who cares for her children. Not an abusive alcoholic. Oh well. Sure, you all think it was stupid to get married to a girl after three days. But sometimes you take a risk and it pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t.

So I walked home in the rain. Alone.

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 !

Well, probably not “the end”, but this probably “the end” for a little bit. My story is done. “Love on the Streets of Saigon” has the happy ending I was hoping it would have, and frankly, sooner than I expected. Not to say I’m going home to Australia, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Things have changed back home and my only purposes for returning have vanished and suddenly there is no reason for me to go back ever. While it would be convenient to sort a few things out, they just aren’t that important and not worth the cost of the plane ticket to get there so I just don’t care about them.

But I also don’t want to share anymore. From now on, everything I talk about would be intimate and personal, and while that’s fine when I’m only talking about myself, it’s not appropriate when you’re talking about the person you’re in love with and with whom you share your most intimate secrets.

There’s a lot more I want to tell you about Merry and her background but I’m just not going to. She doesn’t want everyone to know what she’s been through and what her life is like back home.

Suffice to say we are both suffering the same problems right now. We are both dealing with parents who don’t understand us and think we’re fucking retards who have no idea what we’re doing with our lives and don’t understand why we insist on staying abroad, and we’re both dealing with missing our children, which with regard to Merry is a subject I cannot speak of any further. Though at least I got to speak to her kids on the phone tonight. I wish I could speak to mine, but my asshole, criminal, junkie, insensitive, completely un-christian-like cunt of a wife refuses to even tell me where she’s moving to or give me her address to send Suki gifts, let alone see my daughter, and it’s possible I may never see her again.

As such, tonight Merry and I went up to the roof to drink rice wine and take photos and talk about how angry we were with our ex-partners and why our parents just didn’t have a fucking clue what we were going through.

And that’s it. I’m done for a bit. Blogging about my adventures in Saigon has been fun and I know so many of you have enjoyed it, but while I was always aware of the danger of having a public blog and telling everyone about my daily life, it has finally become a liability and everyone I know manages to use the things I say against me in some way.

I simply cannot express myself here anymore without people twisting my words and trying to make them mean whatever suits what bullshit agenda they have, so it’s best I just stop expressing them. As such, while I may blog about some general interest stories about Vietnam from time to time, I think the personal stories are at an end. It’s been lots of fun pouring my heart out to you and showing you what a lonely desperate soul I’ve been, but I’m over that now. Merry and I have our disagreements but we have more in common in our hearts than we could ever have imagined when we first got together and we are both going through the same emotional stresses and difficulties as each other, but now that I share them with someone else, sorry, but I don’t need to share the with all of you anymore.

It’s been great having you all listen but I think a large amount of the personal insights have come to an end just like the way I no longer buy flowers for random girls from Nam like I used to. That time is at an end for the moment.

I guess I hope you all enjoyed the little while I spent looking inside my soul, but I don’t need to show it to you anymore. Too many people I didn’t want to read my shit were reading it and just using it as ammunition for later. I know that’s what happens when you publish things on the internet and I was fine with that before, but now… I’m done ok ?

I hope I’ll still post from time to time, but it’s likely I’ll be writing a lot more stuff privately from now on, because frankly, I don’t even know 95% of you and of the ones I do know, at least half of them probably hate me and will just use everything I say against me, so fuck you. Go find someone else’s blog to read.

Signing off,

pawz.

Ok, I know a few people read my last post and are probably going “Wait, what ? Didn’t you just meet Merry ? Haven’t you only been together for like…. three days ? And you’re getting married ?”

Ummm. Well if you want to put it like that, I suppose that’s not an entirely inaccurate way to look at it, hehe. But she was desperately worried that if I went back home someone would steal me away from her, and people in her country do that; they meet, and they get married. I probably shouldn’t mention it because I know you’ll be going “wtf” even more, but the reason she’s in Vietnam is that she’s running away from an arranged marriage that she didn’t want to be part of. But it’s not that simple, so don’t take that statement on face value.

It’s also not uncommon in Cambodia for people to be married informally, without the usual ceremony and legal ramifications. So yeah, we’re not “legally” married. But she has a ring, and she refers to me as “my husband” and vice versa and says that we are “married”. So after picking up a pretty white gold ring with a little diamond in it, we headed off to our favourite drinking establishment for some refreshments and to show off to everyone.

Corey and Phuong were both waiting there for us already. Merry didn’t immediately stick her ring in anyone’s face bit I quietly pointed down at her hand and Corey saw it and went “Oh my GOD ! Really ? Is that real ? You’re serious ?! Oh my god that’s amazing ! Congratulations !”. I think he sounded more excited than Merry did, hahaha. Phuong was likewise impressed and very happy for us. But believe me, everyone else around the place pricked up their ears at the conversation and suddenly everyone was leaning over to look

I texted Lil and Viet and Eddie straight away. Viet couldn’t make it because he had to teach a karate class in the morning, and at first Lil said “Nah I can’t go drinking tonight either. Wait, you mean this is your actual engagement party ? Shit. Ok, I’ll be there in 30 minutes”. Eddie said he would be nearby and we’d catch up when he got there.

So we sat around and did the usual stuff. We drank, we talked, we met fascinating people, we ate cheap Vietnamese food at a rice place and a pho place, and then when the Bia Hoi place finally had to shut, we went off to other places. To be honest, we were sorta DRAGGED there. Tuan (the young Vietnamese guy) and Alex, a Singaporean guy we know basically dragged us to this other bar and I think he bought us tequila shots and some other stuff. We’d been drinking 81 cent jugs of Bia Hoi all night so we didn’t really need any more alcohol, but you know… what are you gonna say ? It was a party after all.

The evening was pretty crazy and we had lots of fun of course, and ran into heaps of people we all knew. There was a band playing live music and we played pool and darts. At one point Alex sticks his hand on the dart board with his fingers splayed and says to Tuan “Go on. Go for it” and Tuan goes “Ok” and without pausing, throws a dart at Alex’s hand, and amazingly, doesn’t hit him.

Then Alex is like “Your turn David” and I’m like “Sure ok” and I do it, but then pull my hand away a couple of times as Tuan gets ready to thow. In the end and throws it and yes, he did in fact hit me, hahah. But it didn’t hurt. It didn’t even leave much of a mark. Which explains why I had so much trouble getting them to stick into the board when I was playing darts later; they were blunt as hell.

Now Alex is gay, right. He might be bi as well, but I think it’s pretty fair to just call him gay. At some point early in the night at the Bia Hoi place we pretend to kiss and everyone’s like “Woooh. Again !” and what’s he do ? Yeah, he kisses me full on the mouth… for ages. Everyone’s cheering and I’m just like “I think I’m gonna crawl away and disappear now”. Well that wasn’t the last time two of the males in our group kissed that night. It was the first of many. Troi oi ! If you didn’t know better you’d probably think I’d just married Alex rather than Merry !

I’m out drinking at an engagement party right now.

Whose ?

Oh…. mine.

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I guess my book “Love on the Streets of Saigon” finally has a happy ending.

I haven’t posted much lately, have I ? I bet you’ve been wondering what’s been up. I mean it’s pretty rare for me to go more than a day without posting but I have lately. Why ? Something came up. What ?

A girl of course. A couple of months ago I read on my friend Ryan’s blog the simple post “There’s a rather beautiful girl sleeping on my bed”. I wondered how long it would be until I could make that post. Well, I’m making it now. There is a pretty girl asleep on my bed.

Who is she ? Mmmmm I won’t tell you everything. I am happy to talk about my friends and such online but I don’t think it’d be cool to discuss intimate details about how Merry and I met. No, that’s not her real name but it’s the closest English equivalent.

I’ve known her for about three weeks. She’s a regular at my favourite Bia Hoi place and she often hangs out with various friends of mine. In fact I’ve not only talked about her but I’ve posted photos of her before if you remember me refering to a local Cambodian girl. But other than catching her name and saying “Hi” I had never really talked to her much until the other night when we ended up sitting together and started talking and drinking.

What happened was she asked me to look something up and I pulled out my eeePc and looked up something and was doing some stuff and she wanted to borrow it so I said “Sure” and passed it to her and she grabbed it and started using it, running Linux without so much as once saying “Where’s the Internet ? How do I get to Yahoo ?” or anything which amused me. I pulled out my Macbook Air (yes I really was sitting in a 25 cent a glass beer place with two laptops in my bag) and started using that. For some reason I needed the eeePc back so I offered her the Macbook. After a second I realised I should tell her how to click the trackpad on a mac because most PC users find it very hard as you can’t click just anywhere on the trackpad, you have to click down in the corner and I have had to explain that to people over and over before they finally get it.

I look over and to my surprise she’s happily clicking away on my Apple laptop, using the trackpad without any problems, alt-tabbing between apps, opening new tabs in Safari, sending YouTube fullscreen while I’m stumbling around forgetting where the location of the modifier keys are on each laptop and I’m just staring at her with my mouth open going “How can you do that ? You just moved between a PC running Chrome on Linux to a Mac running Safari on OS X without even thinking twice I know people who have computing degrees and years of experiences in IT who can’t do that and you do it like it’s nothing”. She casually says “Computers are computers. Most of the buttons and methods are the same. If you can use one you can use another. I’ve never used this type of system before but it’s not hard”.

Looking at her take to Linux like it was the most natural thing in the world I think I fell in love with her at that moment. I mean I had been impressed when Jo switched to Debian Linux from Redhat Linux at my suggestion and I was like “Wow a girl who uses linux” but Merry had never even heard of Linux. She just picked it up and went “Oh yeah I can use this” like it was a matter of figuring out how to use a bottle opener. I was just blown away, I tell you. Later she asked if she could use my camera and I said “Sure, you know how to use it ?” and she goes “I think so” and she proceeded to carry it around for the next two days taking more than 1000 photos. Some of them were really good photos too and in the gallery I’ll be posting later you will see many good photos and at least a quarter of the ones in that gallery are taken by Merry and you would never know the difference. Not to say she didn’t take a bunch of out-of-focus pictures of people’s feet as well though but she did take some great ones. Hahaha !

Well, we drank all night with some friends we already knew and others we’d just met and come about 2am when the Bia Hoi place closed we went back to her hotel and sat in the bar downstairs which is 24 hours. We drank there for a couple of hours and we ran into this great American guy named Andy. Funny thing was, Merry just called him “Andy” out of the blue and he goes “How the FUCK did you know my name ?” and she just grins and goes “I just know”. I later asked her and she said “I don’t know to be honest. Just for some reason I just thought he was Andy and I said it. I have no idea how I knew”.

She said at one point that we were drinking there because “Oh this is my hotel” and I sorta ran with it and convinced Andy that she actually owned the hotel. I mean it’s not implausbale. Thy owns Secret Bar and she’s 5 years younger than Merry so there’s no reason Merry couldn’t own the hotel we were at that night in theory. Anyway he bought it and we sorta joked with him all night and told a few fibs that he totally believed. He wasn’t the first person that night who said “Oh, I assumed you two were a couple”, but at that time there was nothing that had happened which suggest that was the case even though we were having a good time together.

Later I was commenting how I may as well stay in Pham Ngu Lao all night since I had a dentist appointing in the morning and she casually said something not even to me about me staying with her like it was matter of fact. I blinked but said nothing, but later as the night wore on and things were getting a bit more friendly I said “Really ? I can stay with you ? Were you serious ?” and she said “Yeah no problem”.

Well, we found out we had some interest in each other I guess ;”) I stayed with her a second night, and since she couldn’t afford to stay in the hotel any longer I told her that if she needed a place to stay she could come and stay with me. Yes well, I’ve said before that I’ve never really dated a girl in my life. Every girl I’ve been with, I’ve lived with her either before, or we got together or immediately after. I’m just interested in that separate living shit. If I like a girl I want her right by my side at all times, and Merry was just like “Sure, I’d love to come live with you”.

So I went from “Single” to “In a serious relationship with a girl I’m living with” in the space of a couple of days. Life’s funny, isn’t it ? Right now I’m not in an immediate hurry to go home. Merry isn’t sure what she wants to do. She can’t stay in Vietnam indefinitely without work. I said I wouldn’t be against the idea of coming to Thailand for a while where she works or even visiting Cambodia, though I doubt there is any work for me there because it’s a fairly poor country and I doubt I could do anything there other than teach English for a miserable wage.

We met up with Joy for a drink so he could talk to me about some stuff and he kept referring to her as “your wife” and me as “your husband” to her. I turned to her after the first time he did it and said “Did you hear that ? Joy just called me your husband” and she just grinned at me and said “Fine with me”. I mean, she really does like me and I think that’s cool and I think she’s really fascinating and I respect her a lot for being so talented at computers, photography and speaking nearly half a dozen languages fluently.

I’ve never been interested in dark skinned girls. I even openly said to a black girl I know online recently “I could never have any interest in a black girl. I’m just not attracted to them”. Now Cambodians aren’t black, but they are very dark brown and pretty much as dark as a lot of Americans that you would refer to as “black” so it really was odd as I lay there that first night staring into her eyes thinking “My god she really is quite beautiful”.

I wasn’t sure until I showed a few friends on IRC her picture and mostly they are people from whom I expected outright ridicule or at least a smartarsed comment or at best a “Meh not really my type” but every single person commented very positively and said they thought she was really beautiful and had an amazing, heart-warming smile and that was people from Australia, USA, Netherlands and UK. I was like “Wow, you really think so ?”

Hmm. Maybe I’m a lucky guy. I just liked her from her personality at first, but later I would look at her face and her pretty smile and white teeth and think “You are a really nice girl. Why the hell do you like me so much again ?” Apparently I’m the nicest, most open minded and polite but funny guy she’s met. Alright. I can live with that.

I must admit though there were a few moments when it’s been weird. When we left Pham Ngu Lao and went back to my place on the third day, we got some looks. At first I wasn’t sure because people look at me all the time in Q.8 but they normally look and say hello. This time they just stared. Merry didn’t notice. But I took her to Cau Xanh for dinner because we were hungry and I wanted to introduce her to the place because I like it so much and because they are so nice to me and I always go there alone so I wanted to prove that I really did have friends and didn’t eat dinner alone every night.

The waitress came up and brought us Saigon beer without even being asked and was about to pour our glasses from two different bottles and Merry stopped her and said (in Vietnamese) “No, only one bottle. We’ll share” and took it out her her hand and poured it. The girl’s face just turned and she had this look of disgust on her face and practically sneered at her.

When the waitress walked off I said “Did you notice that ?” and mentioned what had happened and she just shrugged and said nothing. I said “How do Vietnamese feel about Cambodians” and she said “I don’t really know from much experience because I haven’t been here long and I’ve never been into any regional areas like this but yeah I once talked to a Vietnamese person about it and they said ‘Yeah. I do hate Cambodian people’ so I guess maybe they do”.

Noone came to serve us in a hurry after that. The girl only came back to get another beer and didn’t bother topping up our glasses because obviously Merry was going to do it, and every time she turned up she gave Merry this look of unbridled antipathy. But Merry not only didn’t care, she didn’t even notice. I guess she didn’t even look at her, but even later, walking through the markets hand in hand, she didn’t seem aware of how many people were staring at us even though I was.

People look at me all the time in Q.8 but with a smile or look of amusement on their faces. I mean in Pham Ngu Lao it’s so normal to see a western guy, often decades older walking along with a Vietnamese girl. We saw it so may times over the last two days. One old guy who had to be 70 was walking along arm in arm with a girl in her mid 20′s and we all chuckled. Late on the second night this fat American guy in his 60′s walks down the street with two pretty Vietnamese girls in their early 20′s, one on each arm. Merry grins and says “Look David, that’s you in 25 years” and I just turned and glared at her and said “How could you say that ?” and she laughed and looked embarrassed and said “I’m sorry I was only joking”. Heheh, not to say it’s not possible. Just I’d hope that by that age I was actually settled with a proper girlfriend and not going out with girls in their 20′s !

But none of these people in Q.8 looked amused. To be fair though, they weren’t disgusted like the waitress at Cau Xanh seemed to be, they were interested and they all had their eyes on us until I looked back at them and they would quickly look away without the usual “Helllloooo !”. Children didn’t mind, and they were still calling out hello as usual and we were both greeting them, but no adults went out of their way to say hello.

I dropped into the laundry place to drop off some clothes and also ask the girl if she’d fix my kimono and because Merry wasn’t sure if I could manage that conversation with someone who didn’t speak English, so she tagged alone and came to the door with me. When I asked the girl to fix the hole in my kimono Merry chimed in with something I didn’t understand. The young girl seemed quite happy to see us and was pleasant and smiled so I felt better about that.

Maybe on another day it will be different and I’m sure after they’ve seen us a couple of times it will be fine. They are probably just like “Wow, you’ve been here for a few months and you come home with a Cambodian girl of all people ?” On the other hand there’s another odd side effect. I was specifically told by Cam after I rented my apartment that I could not have a girl live there with me due to some weird sort of security issue or something but when I talked to Cory about it today he said “You know, they may not care if she’s Cambodian. You’re foreign, she’s foreign. Different rules, you know ? They have no idea who she is or how long you’ve known her. They will probably just let it go because she’s not Vietnamese”.

I totally hadn’t thought about it like that. Suddenly a few other things made sense that had happened over the course of the last few days when I thought about that comment he made. We’re both foreigners, but I’m Australian and she’s Cabodian, therefore people have a totally different feeling about us than if we were Australian and British or Australian and Vietnamese. I just don’t think about this stuff. I’m aware of the social significance of dating a girl of a foreign origin but I just don’t think about it. I knew when I got together with Merry that she was different from any girl I’ve dated before but I didn’t meet her and have these thoughts about what our relationship would mean in my mind when she was taking me home or vice versa.

It’s just funny, you know. I hope it’s not a big issue for long. I’m sure people in my neighbourhood will get over it and treat us normally once they are familiar with us, but it’s sort of odd right now. I don’t even think about it. She’s woken up and she’s joking around with me and making fun of me for stuff and I’m teasing her and her nationality is the furthest thing from my mind I assure you.

It’s amusing. We just had our first minor dispute, other than her getting jealous the other night when I kept talking about other girls I’d met here. I was listening to Otsuka Ai on my laptop and she started listening to The Eagles on hers and after a while I said “Merry, I was playing music first. I think it’s a bit rude of you to start playing music on that laptop when I’m already playing music” and she goes “But you’re listening to Japanese music and I like English music” and I said “I let you listen to The Eagles this afternoon. It’s my turn now. I get to listen to Otsuka Ai and you get to like it and later you can listen to what you want, but you can listen to different music from me on another laptop 2 and a half feet away from me, that’s just annoying”.

She accepted what I was saying but it’s amusing to note that she doesn’t like Japanese music at all. If she can’t understand the lyrics, she won’t enjoy it. Fortunately we settled on some Vietnamese music that I’m very fond of (Wanbi Tu Anh of course) and we both enjoyed that because she could undestand the lyrics and I understood the feelings and the video. But we are going to have some issues if she wants to listen to American shit all day and not appreciate any Japanese music. I hate american pop music but I will put up with that if she will give some Japanese and Korean music a go. I think maybe she’s not so bothered by Kpop, but she seems to have little interest in Jpop at all. Is it because Japan isn’t part of South East Asia ? Hahaha, it’s funny to excude another Asian style of music when they’re from so close to you. Anyway, I’ll convert her. Give me some time. She’ll be naming every Morning Musume member by photo or by voice within six months or I’m not a true Asian music fan ! :”)

So what’s Merry look like ? Well, allow me to show you a few photos of her including one of the two of us looking very happy and cute together.

UPDATED: Holy shit this post is long. Over 12,500 words ! It actually took me almost as long to write about this as it did to experience it ! It’s almost 5pm and I’ve been writing this since I woke up !

Yesterday was a hectic day. First I had to get up early to go and see Sinh about his photos. I mean at first I was just really disappointed that he wasn’t happy with the photos and felt embarassed that they weren’t good enough for him. I thought it was dumb the way he wanted the background all blacked out like the Vietnamese guy had done. When I was setting up the photos before he left, I had told him I would photoshop the background to fill the frame.

But apparently he doesn’t like that. Anyway when we were talking at the cafe, I just selected all the background on one and just filled it in a second and he was like “Oh I like that”. I told him I’d email him those ones anyway in case he wanted them and there was one in particular he liked that I think he’s probably going to use instead of the other guy’s one. But ultimately I’m just a tiny bit annoyed that he went and hired a second guy without even talking to me about the photos.

Anyway, after that I had to go meet Joy. I promised him I was going to do his business cards for him today and we were going to have a meeting and talk about his business. Also his SIM was about to expire for some reason and he needed a new phone number so we had to arrange that before I got his cards done. Anyway I’d told him I was going into Pham Ngu Lao and that I’d call him and get him to meet me. But when I got there and messaged him, I got no response. I rang him and his phone just rang out. I emailed him and got nothing.

So I just sat at Tricolore slowly sipping Fosters and nibbling a cheap piece of foccacia and mucking around in Photoshop. First I made him a logo for his delivery business with some clipart of a cheery delivery guy on a motorbike standing out from a big circle with some words wrapped around it that said “Joy’s Special Delivery Service”. Then I put it on a business card design for him and laid it out. Then I got a call from a strange number. It was Joy. He apologised and said he hadn’t got my message and that he was going to walk to Pham Ngu Lao to meet me.

I sat around and waited, listening to Triple J and drinking Fosters and chatting to a friend back in Australia. Joy turned up and we greeted each other and shook hands and he sat down. A waiter came over and asked what he wanted but I knew he didn’t have any money so I said “Joy, you want a drink ? Something to eat ?” and he was like “Oh yeah, thank you. Please, a coke”. He browsed through the menu looking for something cheap because he’s polite and he was careful and didn’t want to take advantage of my offer. I said “They have Vietnamese food at the back of the menu” and he flipped through and looked and said “Oh my god. It’s so expensive”.

Which is amusing because it is there to be honest. Their western food is very cheap, but a bowl of pho is like 4 times the price of anywhere else. I said “You like pizza ? You want to share a pizza ? You eat meat ?” and he’s like “Yeah sure” so I got a large mexican pizza for us to share. He said to me when the waiter left “They are nice here” and I said “Yeah, this is a good place. The old lady who runs the place is very friendly. I love her” and he said “Some places like this, they look down on Vietnamese. The staff don’t smile at you. But here, they are nice and friendly and they smile at me”. I said “Good. I’m glad”.

I showed him the business card I’d designed for him and he just went “Wow. So beautiful”. We talked about lots of things. He had gotten his first job since we’d talked about starting the delivery business. It was a very odd job with a Norwegian guy. It’s sort of an interesting story. The guy was heartbroken because he’d been to Vietnam twice before, and the last time he was here, he had fallen in love with a girl, and then he’d gone home for a year, and when he came back, the girl didn’t want to see him anymore.

He was a mess apparently. Literally bawling in front of Joy saying “Please, you have to see her. You have to take her a gift for me and tell her I’m sorry and that I want to see her again”. He was a bit of a difficult customer though apparently. He got Joy to come and meet him at his hotel to help him learn Vietnamese and he was supposed to be there for two hours, but the guy wasn’t there and he kept him waiting for seven hours and then only wanted to pay him for two hours. Joy suggested they go outside and have a coffee on the street where it was cheap and told the guy he was very thirsty after having waited there all day, hoping the guy would buy him a coffee.

They went out for the coffee, but the guy didn’t even pay for his coffee after making him wait all day for him ! Joy wasn’t pissed off, but he was disappointed and hurt and I totally understand that. Also, the guy kept swearing at him. He was obviously very emotional about his girlfriend, but he kept saying “fuck” in front of Joy even though Joy asked him please not to say that. Joy is a very devout Christian. He wants to become a priest. He does NOT like people saying “fuck” in front of him and he was very, very offended, and this guy even told him to fuck off at one point, and then apologised later.

He asked me “What do I do when I meet a person like this ?” and I said “I think you should only have to ask him once. But you tell him ‘Please respect my culture and my religion and do not talk like that in front of me’ and he should respect that. If not, then he does not respect your culture and religion. But this guy, he was obviously very upset and I think normally, he would not talk like that, so I think you should forgive him”.

The guy also wouldn’t trust Joy. Joy was asking for quite a bit of money for this delivery job to be honest, probably too much in my opinion, but the guy claimed to be rich and said he was coming back to Vietnam to open an internet provider, which made me laugh because there’s lots of those here and I doubt some Norwegian guy who doesn’t speak much Vietnamese could be successful. But the guy wouldn’t trust Joy. He kept saying that Joy would run off with the money and not do the job, despite Joy’s insistence that he was a good Christian and would never do something like that.

I said “Look, I think this guy, he’s not a good customer. He’s rude. He doesn’t trust you. He doesn’t turn up on time. And he won’t even buy you a coffee when you spend all day helping him. Normally, I think, we don’t want this sort of customer, but this guy is our first customer. I think it would be bad luck to turn him away. We don’t have the luxury of being picky. I think we should persevere. He can talk to me and I will assure him that you are genuine and that you will do a good job for him and that he can trust you”.

Apparently the guy has gone back to Norway and wants to send a gift over for Joy to deliver and I said “No. That’s a bad idea. Mail rarely turns up here, and if you use a courier, it will still be stopped by customs and they will demand extra tax. Even if it gets here it will take a long time. He should give you the money and have you buy the gift locally”. Joy asked “How will he pay though ? How can he send money from Norway ? Western Union ? Moneygram ?” and I said “No, these are very bad. They have very high fees. There is an internet company called PayPal. You can use it anywhere in the world and he can send you the money instantly, and then when you get it, you can transfer it back into your Vietnamese bank account” and he said “They have this here ? In Vietnam ?” and I said “Yeah, I’ve checked. PayPal operate in Vietnam. They will accept a Vietnamese bank account. And they have no fees” and he said “Ok good. I knew you would know the best way”.

We talk about people who are rude in business and how it’s not good and I mention briefly what happened between me and Heinz (leaving out the bit about me punching him) and he says “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. Heinz is so angry and rude”. Joy has actually known Heinz for 20 years. When he came in to Number 5 so I could pay him for the rose delivery and Heinz came over and said “You know I know this guy from when I first came to Vietnam 20 years ago ? I haven’t seen him in so many years” and I’m like “Wow. That’s amazing”. It’s sort of cool that I brought them back together like that, but Joy complains that even though I’d arranged it all on the phone, when he went to see Heinz to pick up the cash, Heinz was grumpy and said “Why do I have to pay you ?” and he said “You’re not paying me. You’re paying David. I’m just doing something for David”. He says Heinz was very rude and mean for no reason.

I say “Yeah, he’s like that. Some people aren’t professional when they do business. He didn’t trust me either. I even gave him a contract because he said I was going to rip him off, and in the end he didn’t sign it and then he ended up ripping me off ! And when we had our business meeting to talk about it, he didn’t buy me dinner or even a drink, just like the Norwegian guy wouldn’t buy you coffee. When I have a meeting with someone, I always buy them a drink or dinner.” Joy shakes his head and goes “Yeah, I think he’s just that sort of person. Not good to deal with. I have an idea. When you finish a job for your clients, I think we should take them here” and he pulls out a brochure for a restaurant at a big international hotel.

He points at one bit and says “Here. See, they do a big buffet. Very, very good food, and it’s $80 for 8 people. This is very good ! We could take your clients here after you finish a job and treat them to dinner and then they will be very happy and they will tell all their friends and we will get very good business from them in the future”. I agree. I say “Yeah, I think this is a good idea. It’s only a small cost for me, but it will make the customer remember us and they will have a good experience from hiring us. Yeah. I like this very much. It looks like a very nice restaurant” and he says “It is. I worked at that hotel. Very beautiful western restaurant with a very good buffet”. Good. I like his initiative.

Joy really seems to look up to me. When he asks for my opinion on things he hangs on every word. I’m sure he he has his own opinions on things but he’s very interested to hear what I think. He always refers to me as “my boss David” and himself as “your staff” and he kept telling me that he was assuring this guy over and over “No, you will talk to my boss David. He will explain to you. He will tell you I am honest”. I dunno what I really did to deserve this sort of trust. I think it’s just because I’ve offered to help him with stuff before. When he wanted to apply to this international school in Canada I wrote him a reference on my company letterhead and told them he worked for me. He’s trying to get into this course in Canada. He’s been applying for the last three years, but he can never raise the funds to go because he needs $5,000 for the course.

He’s been doing many things for his church in the hope that they will sponsor him. He says that if he works hard for them and they sponsor him, when he is trained, and he comes back to Vietnam, he wants to be a priest and work at the church for a long time to repay them. Which is nice. I dunno how a little Vietnamese church can afford to give him 5 grand to go and study overseas, but Joy is a very sincere guy and if he says “I will come back and be a minister at your church” then I’m sure they believe him.

We get onto the subject of people who are cheap again, who won’t pay for dinner and who are always complaining about the price. I mention to him that I’ve had a lot of customers who initially say they will hire me but then change their mind because they find someone cheaper. I mention the girl from the theatre group who was willing to pay me $400 for a website but then backed out because she said one of her members would do it for free and I told her “I don’t think you will get a good website then. People who know how to make good websites don’t just do it for free”. Joy nods in agreement and I say “We have a saying. ‘You get what you pay for’” and he says “I have not heard that one. Here we say ‘Cheap price. Cheap product’” and I laugh and say “Exactly. If you pay a cheap price, you don’t get good quality”.

I say to him “I don’t like money. Money is a hassle” and he asks “What do you mean ?” I say “I know people with money and it doesn’t make them happy. Money doesn’t make problems go away, it makes more problems. More difficult problems too. When you have no money, you have simple problems like ‘how can I eat ?’ but when you have money, you have much more complicated problems, like worrying about investing it or worrying about people wanting to take it from you. When you live a simple life you have simple problems. But when you have money, you have much bigger problems to worry about. I only want enough money to live on and buy what I need to help me work. I work to express my creativity, not to get rich. I never want to be rich”.

Joy thinks this an interesting perspective and he just nods and absorbs it. I tell him about the poor family who live near the river near me and how every time I see them they look very happy and he nods again and I think he understands. Concentrating on having a family and a home is what you need in life. When you get money, all you worry about is getting more. You waste your life chasing money instead of spending time with your family.

We talk for a while longer about things and the last piece of pizza is sitting there uneaten because I’ve already had half, and I am a bit hungry but I’m betting Joy is more hungry, because he had to walk here, which means he probably didn’t have any money. I say “Joy, have the last piece of pizza” and he goes “Oh thank you. I am so hungry and this is so good”. I mean, I’m not saying Joy is poverty stricken and lives on the street. He has somewhere to stay, but he lives down to his last dollar all the time and sometimes doesn’t have the money for a bus ticket and he doesn’t have a motorbike, so he often walks places.

But then, so do I. I need to learn the bus system. I know there’s a bus that goes down Pham Hung to Ben Thanh, but I don’t know what number it is or when it comes, and I’m not even sure how to pay for a bus. I guess I just get on and when the ticket guy comes up I say “Ben Thanh” and he tells me how much it is.

Joy is eager to go walking and hand out my business cards to restaurants and bars. He is from District 12, near the airport but he says “I think District 7 would be very good. I think I should go there first and hand out your cards. I think I can find you lots of work there”. He just wants me to give him enough money for a weekly bus ticket and some water. He jokes “I am like a motorbike. I need fuel and water is my fuel. If I walk all the way to District 7, I have no energy to walk around. But if I can catch a bus there and I have water, I can walk all day and promote your business”.

He has a good lead too. He met an Australian guy from Sydney who is about to open an international school and he said to the guy “I think you need a website. My boss David does very good websites. I think you should talk to him and he will help you”. He gave me the guy’s business card and said “So I get a commission, right ?” and I said “Yup, I told you. Any business you bring me, you get 15% for finding it for me. If I charge this guy $1000 for a website, you get $150″ and Joy’s grinning from ear to ear. This is a great deal for both of us. Joy is hardworking and will run all over town meeting people and promoting my business, and he will bring me customers and I’ll give him a cut for finding them.

As he keeps saying, it’s a very good arrangement, because there are many things only he can do because he’s Vietnamese and he knows this city and the culture well, and many things only I can do because I’m a westerner and other westerners will trust me and feel comfortable talkign to me, whereas they won’t trust him. He has to catch the bus home so I say “Let’s go. We’ll go get you a new SIM card before you go home”. He says “Can I pray first ? Do you mind ?” and I say “No, sure”.

He said grace before eating too, and now he wants to pray for our new business. He prays for the Norwegian guy and asks god to forgive him for saying rude things and that he hopes the guy is successful in getting his girlfriend back when Joy delivers his gift to her and asks god to bless our business and find us good customers who will trust us and give us good business so that we can work hard for them. It’s quite a long prayer and it’s nice and I respect that he is so devout. He says “I know god will always help me, but you have to work hard” and I say “God helps those who help themselves” and his eyes go wide and he says “Yes, exactly !”

He says to me “I know you do not believe, but I think maybe you could come to my church one day and meet people there” and I say “That’s fine. I attend church. My wife was catholic and we went to church every week and my daughter is being raised catholic and we had a very beautiful christening ceremony for her. So I go to catholic church sometimes, but I do not take communion anymore”. He says “I had no idea you were married ! You have a daughter too ?” and I said “Really ? I haven’t told you that ? I tell EVERYONE that. I can’t believe I’ve never told you. Hold on, I’ll show you a photo”.

I pull up my favourite photo of Suki on my laptop and he goes “Oh my god. She looks like Marilyn Munroe. She is so beautiful. Pretty smile and beautiful blonde hair” and I just grin happily and say “Thank you. Marilyn Munroe you think ?” and he goes “Yeah. ! Big pink lips and a big smile and blonde hair. Just like Marilyn Munroe”. Hahaha, well noone’s ever said that about Suki before but it’s obviously a very big compliment from him so I’m happy to hear it.

We head off and we’re walking along and he said “What’s her name ?” and I say “It’s ‘Suki’. It’s a Japanese name. It means ‘Love’”. I show him my tattoo of her her name. He says “Wow. Beautiful. You have been to Japan ?” and I say “Not yet, soon maybe. I speak a little Japanese though” and he says “Kombanwa. Genki desu ka ?” and I reply “Hai. Genki desu. Hajimimashite” and he laughs and says “That’s all I know sorry” and I say “Hey, that’s pretty good. You speak so many languages” and he goes “Yeah, well, I was a tour guide for many years so you have to learn how to greet people in their language. I speak fluent French and German and of course Singaporean because I was born there, but other languages I only know a few words”.

I love that he’s a talented guy like that. He’s not just hard-working but he has a bit of life experience too and he’s done a lot of things in his time. He kept saying about the Norwegian guy “I think he’s emotional because he’s so young. Only 31″. So I’m prompted to ask “How old are you Joy ?” and he says “38″ and I’m like “Wow. I didn’t realise. I thought you were much younger. I’m only 33 you know” and he goes “Wow” and he almost said “I thought you were older” but then he catches himself and realises that would be rude so he just says “You look very mature” and I chuckle.

He asks me “How are things with Lam, the girl I gave roses to for you ?” and I say “Ahh, she doesn’t like me. She’s very young. Only 21, and I think maybe she prefers Asian guys”. I explain “I asked her out and she said she just wanted to be friends but I told her I would give her a rose every day until she changed her mind, and that’s what I did, and when I was out of town, I got you to do it for me, but after two weeks she said ‘Please, no more. I am shy and it is embarassing when you deliver flowers to me at work all the time’ so I gave up. I like her, but I was just having fun. I hoped she would like me, but if not, that’s ok. I was just being nice”.

He says “You know, I didn’t want to say anything because it would be rude, but I think she’s the sort of girl who just sits around waiting for some rich guy to come along so he can take care of her. I don’t think she’s a very good girl. Many Vietnamese girls in bars do that” and I say “Oh I know, believe me. I’ve been ripped off by girls before who pretend to like me just to get money from me”. I tell him about Hoa and he’s like “Wow, you gave her so much money and you barely knew her” and I said “Yeah, I thought maybe it was a test to see if I was reliable and would support her, but when she asked the second time, I knew she was just greedy and thought I would give her money. Many Vietnamese girls do this to foreigners”.

Joy says “You know what ? Not just to foreigners. You know how many times this has happened to me ? Many, many times. I have been very unlucky with girls. Once, I liked this girl very much, and she said she needed money. She wanted 10 million dong, which was all the money I had in the world. I had saved for ten years for it. Ten years ! And I gave it to her, and then she left me and I said ‘Give me my money back then’ and she said ‘You know what ? You are stupid to give it to me’”. I say “Aww man, that sucks. I think you’re right. I used to think that girls here would ask you for money to see if you were reliable and would support them, but now I think they do it to see how stupid you are. They are not testing to see if you are reliable. They are testing to see if you are stupid. And if you give them money, then you are stupid”.

Joy says “Yeah. I think so. I was very upset at losing ten years savings to a girl who just insulted me and ran off. Now I do not want to meet a girl for a long time. Maybe twenty years. I want to study and learn to take care of myself before I take care of someone else”. I say “Hey, I don’t think you want to wait that long. Even if you don’t have money, getting married can make you very happy. I think you should tell the girl that you have no money and do not want to make lots of money, and if they still want to be with you, then they are a good girl. But you cannot hold what one person did to you against the next person. You have to treat everyone as an individual and just because you meet one bad person who rips you off, doesn’t mean you should not trust the next person. You have to treat every person on their own”.

He says “I like that you have experience in marriage” and I laugh and say “Not good experience unfortunately, but it’s ok. But I tell you something. Marriage makes you happy, but you are still a selfish person and you love the other person, but you still think about yourself first. But when you have a child. That’s very different. You change. You become a different person and all of a sudden you think differently and act differently because you are always thinking about your child. You stop being such a selfish person because for the first time in your life, there is someone more important than yourself in your life. It is much more powerful than being in love and being married. When you have a child, your whole world changes”. He just nods and listens. He’s such a nice guy I just think it would be a shame if he didn’t get married and have kids because he is such a kind, caring person that I just imagine that he’d make the greatest father.

We’re still walking up through the laptop district because he doesn’t want to get a SIM from the tourist area because he says “I think they rip you off there and charge you more”. I tend to think SIMs are all about the same price, but I don’t mind the walk so I agree to go with him. Turns out he doesn’t know anywhere after all and we wander into a couple of places that say “SIM card” outside, but they don’t actually have any. He says “I think this mall will have one” and he we go into The Plaza and head up the escalators. He asks someone working at a jewelery store if they know a phone store and she says she thinks there’s one upstairs.

We make it up to the fifth floor though and the only thing open is a Japanese restaurant. He laughs and says “Oh well. It was a tour. Did you enjoy your trip ?” and I chuckle. He says “See, maybe I just take you in here because it’s cool in here and it was very hot outside. When you are a tour guide, you anticipate things like this and if you think the guest is hot, you take them somewhere cool to relax before going outside again”. I say “That’s smart. That’s very perceptive”.

I say “Come on, back to Do Quan Dao street. I know somewhere”. I lead him back up Bu Vien and he points to the travel agent who renewed my visa for me, who advertise SIM cards for all three companies and I say “Ok” and we walk in and he asks for Vinaphone who I’ve recommended he get and they try and hand him Mobiphone and I say to the guy “Hey no. No Mobiphone. He wants Vinaphone” and the guy shakes his head so we leave. Joy says “I didn’t like them. That guy wasn’t polite and I think their price is high”. I say “Yeah, Pham Ngu Lao is like that. But price was good actually. Mobiphone is cheaper and comes with more credit, but I don’t think they are a good provider. Come on, I know a woman who sells them around the corner” and we wander off to this little woman who sells SIM cards from a metal stall outside a restaurant in Do Quan Dao.

Joy speaks to her, and she passes him a SIM card but I know that the number he gets is important to him, because Vietnamese care about numerology and normally they always select their phone number carefully and I know that Joy in particular believes that some numbers are lucky and I say “Hey, let him pick the number. Show him all of them” and the woman scowls and passes him a big bunch of SIM cards and he flicks through and finds one with two sevens in it and says “This one. Seven is a very lucky number and this number has two sevens. I think this one”. But then I realise “That’s not Vinaphone. That’s Viettel” and I step in and talk to them in English and say “No, he wants a regular Vinaphone SIM. Not Viettel”.

Joy is unsure about getting a small denomination. He says he’s never recharged a phone before. He only buys the SIMs which last for six months and have lots of credit. I say “No, you should get a cheap one and recharge. As long as you recharge a little bit each month, it will keep lasting forever. It won’t run out”. He takes my advice and accepts a Vinaphone SIM and gets the woman to put it in. I say “Hey, you didn’t check the number ?” and I show him the number on the card and it’s not a favourable one. He’s disappointed and says something to the woman and she shakes his head. He says “She won’t let me change now because she’s already put it in my phone. I forgot that it would be a different number. What is this number ?” I show him and he says “Hmmm, two threes. Not very good. Maybe this number will only bring medium good luck in business” and I say “It’s ok. If you’re smart, you don’t need to rely on luck” and he grins and says “Good advice”.

I walk him to the bus stop and we chat a bit more and I give him 120,000 dong for a weekly bus ticket and tell him to take care and I’ll get the business cards printed this week and talk to him later. It was great talking to him. It’s not that I learned a lot, but somehow, he just helped me understand a few things about Vietnam. He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, but when we spent all evening talking about business and people and girls I realised we had a lot in common in terms of the way we act and the way we treat others.

Joy is incredibly honest, but he’s also sometimes gullible like me. He said to me earlier “You very romantic. I think maybe you must be French because you are so romantic and you give flowers to girls all the time” and I say “Yeah well, I am. After my marriage ended, I didn’t want to be bitter. I wanted to be even more positive than before, and try harder and put more effort in to show a girl how much I like her, but there’s noone I like right now. I’m just doing it to for fun so people think I’m nice and because I enjoy it”. He just nodded and said “I understand”.

When I head off, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m not going to the Rhum House tonight. I wouldn’t mind dropping in to see TJ and Cyril but I can’t afford to drink there tonight because it’s expensive, so I head down to my favourite Bia Hoi place. I’m not feeling the best so I plan to only have a beer or two. I sit down and the girl serves me. There’s a whole bunch of Aussies beside me. I listen to them talking but I don’t say anything for a long time until one of them says something which amuses me and indicates he’s been here a long time and I turn and say “You’re obviously pretty local. How long have you been here ?” and he says “Four years” and I say “What do you do here ?” and he says “Nothing, I’m retired”.

I’m amused by this because this dude would be lucky to be a day over 40, so he’s obviously retired very early. I guess it’s a good idea. In Australia you have to work till you’re 60 before you can afford to retire, but if you retire in Vietnam you can retire much earlier and have a good life. They are an interesting bunch and another one of their Aussie friends comes and joins them. Most of them are older though, around 50, and one looks like he’s about 60 because the old lady who runs the place stands up and he grins at her and talks to her and I think to myself “Awww, they’re cute. The old Aussie guy and the old Vietnamese woman”. I listen to them for a while but I don’t say anything more to them though because I dunno, they all know each other and are locals and I’m just a newbie and I don’t feel like being my typical loud “let me tell you a story” self.

I decide to buy something to smoke. I shouldn’t because I’m short of cash, but I’m just not quite feeling like myself tonight. Talking to Joy was great, but I’m just sort of a bit lonely and maybe a tiny bit depressed. So I message Gau and ask him to drop by. He says “ok 5 minutes” and he turns up and sells me a bag of the cheap Cambodian stuff and I give him 500,000 and he pulls out 100,000 and says “I no have change. I come back later” and I just say “Don’t be long. I’m not staying all night”. He shows me a bag of the nice compressed stuff and I say “No thanks, not tonight”. He turns to the Aussie guy beside me and just shows it to him.

At first I sorta think “Wow, that’s a bit bold, just sticking weed in someone’s face”, but I quickly realise he knows the guy well. The guys “Yeah, 50,000 and change your hair colour back” because Gau has dyed his hair more blonde. Gau laughs and walks off. I chuckle and say “He’s a good kid” and the guy goes “Yeah, but as gay as they come” and I comment “Oh yeah, he’s gonna be a ladyboy one day” and he says “He’s already halfway there. But he sells good weed though”. I say “Yeah, I can get better, but I like him so I buy it off him instead”.

Two young guys pull up and want to sit down and ask if they can sit at my table and I say “Sure, please do”. They’re Korean and they’ve just turned up and they’re only spending a couple of days in Vietnam visiting Saigon and
then Nha Trang and Hanoi. I comment briefly on Nha Trang and wonder why they want to bother going to Hanoi when it’s just like Saigon only dirtier, noisy and everyone tries to rob you and I say “I think you should go to Vung Tau or somewhere. Much nicer” but they already have their plans all laid out so they can’t change.

I’m sitting there smoking a joint and I put it down and am sipping my beer and this book vendor Vietnamese girl in her early 20′s just runs up to me and crouches in front of of me and says “Please. You have to buy my marijuana. Last bag. I have to go home”. I look at her and blink. Why does she think I smoke marijuana ? I didn’t have it in my hand. Maybe she’s seen me talk to Gau, I dunno. But for some reason she runs up to me and wants to sell me weed. I just say “I don’t need. I have. Sorry” and she starts pleading with me. She actually falls to her knees and says “Please, you have to buy my last bag”.

I’m like “Err. I don’t really want it” and she sticks this bag in my face with this frantic look. It’s a big-assed block, about twice the size of what Gau wanted to sell me. I say “How much ?” and she says “500,000″ and I laugh and say “Not a chance. Thanks, don’t need it”. “Please. How much ?” “200,000″ I say. “No, you don’t understand. This is from Thailand. It’s very, very good. Not the shit stuff. It’s worth more” and I just say “I can’t afford anymore tonight. I’m sorry. I can’t pay more than 200,000″. She looks crestfallen and she looks at the ground.

I figure it’s all over and then she just says “Ok. 200,000″ and she presses it into my hand. Wow, that was a deal I tell ya. That had to be close to 7 grams of compressed Thai, which when I smoked it the next morning, was THE best weed I’ve ever smoked. I mean it smelled and tasted like hash. it was phenomonal. And it cost me $9.

I give her the money and she thanks me and rushes off. But then less than an hour later I see her calmly walking down the street selling her books and smiling. I say “Hey, I thought you had to go home” and she say “I did. I had to feed my baby. I’m back working now”. I ponder this. I wonder why she needed the money so urgently. Was it for baby food ? Something else ? Did she owe it to someone or did she need food or baby supplies urgently ? I can only guess. But oh well, at least she got what she needed. And I got a huge block of filthy Thai. :”P

Gau walks past and I call out to him but he doesn’t seem to hear me. I quickly message him “Hey, I was calling out to you” and he texts back “What you want ?” and I say “My change, you dick” and he says “I’m busy selling cigarettes. Later” and I say “No, now. Don’t be a little shit or i’ll kick you in the pussy tomorrow. I have some Korean friends here. Come back and let’s sing Wonder Girls songs”. He replies “Ok ok. Back in 5 minutes”. When he comes back he says “I lost your 500,000. I dropped it, and I have no money to give you. Please, I give it to you tomorrow” and I’m just like “Bullshit. As if you would lose 500,000 dong. You’re not stupid. I need that change man. I need it for xe om. I have no small change. Give me 50,000 now at least” and he goes “Ok, wait here, I go sell cigarettes”.

He goes across the road and sells some cigarettes to someone and comes back waving a 50,000 note and says “Ok, I have it”. I say, “You know, I bought something from Thailand off a book girl just before” and he says “Show me”. I show him and he he glares at me and says “You didn’t buy from me” and I said “Yeah, coz you were being a dick”. I let him go and say “Bring me my change tonight please” and he sorta scowls and wanders off. He walks past later and deliberately doesn’t look in. He probably assumes I didn’t see him, so I message him and I’m feeling like teasing him a bit and I say “Hey Gau, just because you want to be a girl doesn’t mean you have to act like one. Get back here now” and he complains he’s busy selling cigarettes and I say “I saw you walk past. I think I don’t love you anymore :(“.

He messages back “No I can’t. I give you one free tomorrow” and I’m like “I don’t really want more. I want my change. You’ll give it to me tomorrow or we won’t be friends anymore”. He goes “Not my fault I lost your money” and I text back “Gau, I like you. Don’t think I’m stupid please. Give you big hug later :)”. It’s sorta fun flirting with him. I mean obviously, I prefer girls, but that doesn’t mean I can’t flirt with Gau for lulz and it makes the “Hey, give me my money back you little bastard” chatter a little bit more friendly and joking. I don’t want to make a big deal and I’m not going to get angry, I just want to tease him until he gives it back. When he came and saw me briefly to sell someone cigarettes he says to me “You like me ?” and I put my hand on his and say “Oh Gau, I love you. You are my very good friend” and grin slyly at him. He makes this funny face and pokes out his tongue and wanders off.

I don’t really know what the story is, but I can imagine. I can only assume he owed someone money so he thought he could just put me off and hold onto my $10 change for an extra day. I don’t really mind that much because I know I can just see him tomorrow, but I’m pissed off that he did it and that he thinks he can do that to me because I feel like he’s taking advantage of our friendship and I’m sick of being a push-over and I’m a bit insulted and hurt so I’m not going to stand for it.

We exchange a bunch more text messages getting increasingly more joking. He says “I’m busy :(” and I’m like “No hug for you then !” and I don’t see him again for the rest of the night, and some time after midnight I say “Did you go home early or are you just avoiding me” and he goes “Avoiding you of course !” and I message back “you suck so much :P” and he goes “Yeah. I like it”. I say “You’re lucky you’re funny. You’re in so much trouble tomorrow :)”. It just keeps going on and I say “I think you owe me ;)” and he knows what I’m getting at.

I think he accidentally dialed me at one point because he rings me and when I pick up it hangs up. He messages me “What you want ?” and I say “Nothing, you rang me stupid” and he goes “Did I ?” and I say “Yeah, I think maybe you can’t stop thinking about me”. He texts “You crazy. I don’t like you. I think you my friend”. I say “You’re being an idiot. I’m just being nice. You make me angry tonight. Don’t be a dick tomorrow if you want to be friends” and he says “No. I not know you angry. You make me angry” and I’m like “Oh relax Gau, I’m just having fun. See you tomorrow. XxX” and he messages back “Ok. Good night”.

I mean, it was pretty funny. It was testament to how drunk I was because the next day I looked through my message history to remember what we said and I was like “Oh my god, I messaged him THAT many times ? That’s sort of embarassing”. I mean, I was just trying to lighten the mood and get along with him, as well as get my change off him, but flirting with him was really funny. I guess I was just taking the piss out of him, but I mean, he’s a funny dude. No, I’m not going to sleep with him stupid, he’s an 18 year old Vietnamese kid LOL. I’m just having fun. If I was gay and 10 years younger, I’d surely be into him. But I’m 15 years older than him and I’m into Asian girls, not Asian guys ! Though that’s a but unfair, because if he was an 18 year old girl I’d be chasing him, hahahaha.

Anyway, rewinding… Because that funny little interaction went on over the course of about 6 hours, and other things happened in between. The Korean guys I met were really cool. They were 28 and they hadn’t traveled much and when they were just deciding where to go and they just picked Vietnam at random and decided to spend a few days here. It’s like living in Brisbane and going “Hey, let’s go to Noosa for the weekend”, except in their case they were in Seoul and said “Hey, let’s go to Saigon for a couple of days”. Probably cost them a lot less than a trip to Noosa would too !

We talked about Wonder Girls of course, and then I said “But I love SNSD” and they were like “Who ?” and I said “SNSD ?” They looked me blankly and I rolled my eyes and folded my dignity up and put it in my pocket temporarily and sang “Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby. Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby” and Chu (the one who spoke better English) cracks up laughing and through tears of laughter says “Girl’s Generation” and I’m like “Oh. You call them that ? I thought only Americans call them that. Most people I know into Asian music call them SNSD. It’s the an abbreviation from the first letter of each of the words that make up the romanisation of their Korean name. I know, complex. It’s just that all the Asian music people I know call them SNSD, not Girl’s Generation” and he’s like “Wow. I didn’t know that. We call them 소녀시대. Say it slowly, it’s ‘So… Nyuh… Shi… Dae’ or sometimes just ShoShi for short” and I’m like “Oh cool. I can remember that. My favourite Japanese group is Morning Musume but we call them MoMusu for short”.

I mention that I just heard Girl’s Days new song the other day and love it. Chuto says “Haha you really do like Korean girl bands don’t you ?”. LOL, even Korean people think I have weird taste in Korean music. Chu says to me “So. Who do you like more then ? So Nyuh Shi Dae, or Wonder Girls ?” and I said “Oh DEFINITELY SNSD. No question. They are so pretty ! The Wonder Girls are very talented, but the SNSD girls are just so beautiful” and he laughs and says “Yeah, I think so too”. I said “Man, I really want to go to Korea, because the girls are so beautiful. I used to think that Japanese girls were the prettiest in the world, but they’re not. Korean girls are definitely the most beautiful girls in the world”.

He laughed and said “Yeah, but they’re bitches. They care about you for a couple of years and then they get bored and move on. They’re not good girls. I think the Vietnamese girls are very pretty and they are much nicer people and they stay with you”. I add “If you find a good one” and he chuckles. I mention that I’m thinking of going to Japan to teach English and Chu says “You know they need English speakers in Korea too right ? If you can speak good English you can get a job there easy too. Maybe then you could meet some Korean girls” and I laugh and say “Oh, that is so tempting !”

A vendor comes up harassing them while I’m in the toilet and they keep saying “No” to her but she doesn’t leave them alone. I sit back down and say “Chu. I’ll teach you something. I don’t know if this is common elsewhere in Asia, but in Vietnam, you say ‘no’ with your hand. Wave you hand like this to say ‘no’. But if you really want them to just leave you alone, don’t speak to them. Just bring your hand up in your line of vision, you know so it’s like you’re breaking the visual contact with them, and shake your hand. It’s not rude. It just sorta means ‘Don’t waste your time. I’m not interested and I’m not a tourist’. They will think you’ve been here for a long time and they won’t keep hassling you”.

No more than five minutes a vendor comes up selling peanuts and eggs and stuff and he remembers and does it. He just lifts his hand up in front of his face without looking her straight in the eye and gives it a quick little waggle and doesn’t say a word. The woman just nods and keeps walking. He’s like “Holy shit. That worked great. She didn’t keep hassling me. She just gave up and kept walking” and I said “Told you”. I taught them some other useful stuff. Just general things.

I told them the age and sex honorifics but I said “The one you really need to know, is how to get a younger waitress’ attention. You say ‘Em oi’ which is just how you address a younger person, but typically it’s how you get a waitress’ attention” and he Chu is like “Oh thank you. This is very useful”. I love that I can do that. Just a couple of simple things that can help them get by in Vietnam a little better and not look like such a tourist by calling out ‘hey waitress’ or something stupid like that. They really appreciated it.

Anyway, another Korean guy turns up. And I fucking know him. But I can’t remember where from. I just know I’ve met him and it wasn’t from the camping trip so I’m not sure where. But I nod to him and say “Hey” because he sits at the table beside us and he goes “Oh hey David” and I’m thinking “Oh shit, he remembers my name. Now I feel bad” but then I hear someone address him by name and call him Peter and suddenly I remember exactly who he is. He’s the guy who came to the board game meet for the first time a few weeks back when it was raining and he played Settlers of Catan with Ray and Lil and I.

The funny thing is… less than half an hour later, a group of girls turn up, and who’s there ? Bloody Lil ! I’m like “Holy shit. I thought you were in Nha Trang still. Look, Peter is here too ! All three of us live so far apart, and we all still end up at the same little Bia Hoi place even though we’ve never been here together before”. And Peter’s like “Yeah, Saigon is a fucking small place sometimes”. Lil is with MJ and at least one other girl that I met from the camping trip and Lil says “Yeah I just got back yesterday. Sorry I haven’t replied to your email”. Then she adds almost apologetically “Girl’s night out”, looking at the girls she’s with.

Now, I don’t know if MJ noticed me, or if not, whether Lil bothered to point out that I was sitting behind her, but she didn’t acknowledge me. Maybe she’s the one who doesn’t like me, I dunno. She did fucking hate my music and thought I was really weird. I don’t really mind. Between you and me, I thought she was a bit of a tool, and for an English teacher, she had crappy grammar and spelling. Typical American though really, hahaha. Anyway, I was tempted to go over and talk to Lil a bit, but it would have meant standing on the road and breaking up her little “Girl’s night”, and I dunno. After not getting invited to dinner, I’ve gone pretty cold on all those other people. I mean, MJ acted like she wanted to be friends and she got my number. But she’s never messaged me.

Lil’s been busy lately. We still talk, but sometimes it’s mostly just me talking and her apologising via SMS that she’s too busy to respond to my crazy long emails. I hope she’s not reading this because she’s going to hate that I’m talking about her in such intimate detail. I think it’s great that she’s got lots of friends here now that she goes out with, but I admit, I am a little bit hurt, because at first I was her good friend and she kept saying she wanted to do stuff with me, but now she’s got… well… younger friends. I feel so fucking old right now around her after she made that comment about me not being young enough to hang out with them.

I mean, Chu and Chuto (I don’t know if I spelt that right, but that was his name I believe) are only a few years younger than me, but maybe it’s because they LOOK young. Do I look old ? Joy apparently thought so. I think Lil and her friends think so. I think they think I’m not cool too. I listen to weird Asian girl bands that MJ thinks are ridiculous, and Meat Loaf, who is apparently old and uncool according to MJ. But she listens to the fucking Eagles so who’s the old fuddy duddy there ? At least Meat Loaf rocks out. I dunno, I guess I just don’t fit in with them. I don’t fit in with most people fully, because I always have something in common with each of them but then they find out other things about me and are like “Wow, that’s weird that you’re into that”. Sorry, I am weird ! Fuck you, I’ll grab my Hello Kitty pillow and headbang to Meat Loaf now. Is that ok with you ? LOL.

A couple of other amusing things happened though. A guy in a really cool black outfit and a neat hat came along with a massive home-made wooden boombox made out of a car stereo and a bunch of speakers on the back of a pushbike. He pulls up right across from us and turns it on and it’s Michael Jackson. Everyone turns. The whole street stops what theyre doing. We know what’s going on, he’s going to dance in the street. People come out of their houses and I look around and in the alley beside me there’s a big crowd of Vietnamese people watching expectantly. I mean, there must have been well over 100 or 150 people in the space of a bit over a hundred meters of street crowded together waiting for this guy to dance. They just came out of the woodwork all of a sudden when they heard his stereo. He must do this from time to time here.

But before he starts, A woman from the house he’s in front of leans out of the second storey windows and yells at him and waves at him. She doesn’t want him doing it there. He turns off the music and the whole crowd goes “Awwwww” and we boo at the woman who closes her shutters and goes inside. So what’s he do ? He hits the kickstand on his bike, walks three meters ahead to the next house, and kicks it back down again and we all break out in a cheer. He turns the music back on, but then stops it again and we all go “awww” again, but he’s just changing song. He puts on Billy Jean and the crowd goes nuts.

He starts moonwalking down the street. I mean he GOES too. He just moonwalks down the centre of Bu Vien for like 200 meters, way past us all. The traffic is still reasonably heavy too at this time of night and there’s motorbikes whizzing past him, not even slowing down as he moonwalks backwards down Bu Vien street and we’re all applauding and watching him. He comes back and puts a different song on and then dances for a while but sadly he doesn’t do it very long and he’s finished after what seems like only 10 minutes which is really disappointing because not only was he really good, but it was just the best entertainment.

I don’t even like Michael Jackson very much, but when you’re sitting there drinking at a cheap beer joint on the street at midnight and a Vietnamese guy just rocks up and CRANKS Michael Jackson from a home made boom box and dances in the street, it’s pretty fucking good shit. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen lately and I was SO FUCKING MAD that I couldn’t get a photo. I had my camera there but both my batteries were flat I had been too lazy to walk to Pasteur street and pick up my new charger, so I couldn’t use it. Had I been able to, I would have filmed the whole thing and put it up on YouTube as “Great Michael Jackson impersonator in Saigon”.

He came over to us later and was talking to someone and I was walking inside to the toilet and I patted him on the shoulder and smiled at him just to let him know I thought he was cool. Because it was after midnight, we were technically all supposed to be off the street and as much of the footpath as possible but the old lady hadn’t really been pushing us tonight. But across the road, a couple of people had actually spilled out and had their chairs on the road. A police car came down the street flashing its lights and pulled up right beside them, forcing them to jump up so as not to get run over.

We all turned to look. The police jumped out looking pissed off and talked to some of them, looking very angry and threatening. I commented “I have NEVER seen that here before. You never see police in this area”. There was another two Koreans who had joined us and were sitting beside me. Alex, who had been in Vietnam for a while said “I guess they need the money so they thought they’d come down here and harass someone and write some tickets”. One western guy is arguing with the police, and I’m watching closely wondering how this is going to pan out. They gave him a ticket. Not sure if it was for sitting in the street or because he argued with them, but it was obvious, they were just there revenue raising.

One guy who was either Indian or Sri Lankan I’m guessing because he was wearing a turban, took out his phone and took a photo. God I wish I could have done that. After the police left, I walked across the road to the guy and slipped him my email address on a piece of paper and said “Please, will you email that to me ?” He showed it to me and it wasn’t very good, coz he’d taken it from the hip so as not to be obvious, but I said “It’s ok, I want it anyway”. Not sure if he’ll remember tomorrow when he wakes up what the little bit of paper means, but we’ll see.

Something funny happened to Peter though. Well, funny for us, not so funny for him. He was with a Vietnamese girl. Very pretty. A bit too pretty and well dressed to be sitting at a 25 cent beer joint if you know what I mean. We all sorta knew what she did for a living. I don’t think Peter was paying her for that though. I think he’d just met her and invited her to come drinking with him. He was buying her drinks and they went off to have dinner together.

Anyway, when he came back, alone and sat down, someone noticed that the arm-band where he normally carries his iPhone (I think he jogs) was empty and asked him about it. He just grinned wrly and said “She took it. I left her alone with it for a few minutes and when I came back, she was gone and she took my iPhone”. We’re all like “Oh my god ! Really ? She robbed you and took off with your iPhone ?” He’s like “Yeah, I trusted her, I bought her drinks and dinner, and when I was away for a minute she just grabbed my iPhone and ran I guess. Pretty stupid. She could have gotten a lot more out of me than that if she’d tried”.

I cracked up and said “Oh Peter, it’s so funny because I said those EXACT same words when the first girl I met here ripped me off. I said ‘She could have got a lot more out of me if she’d tried’”. I told him the story about how Ta had robbed me of my phone and iPad last weekend and he chuckled and said “Wow, same story huh. You meet a nice girl, know she’s a hooker but don’t care, and you shout her dinner and drinks and then she robs you without a second thought. Sucks hey ?”

Chuto made some comment about trust needing to be earned and I said “Yeah but it’s not always like that. Sometimes you have to make a decision very early on when you meet someone whether you can trust them or not. You might have only known them for an hour, but there sometimes comes a point where you have to make a decision whether to put a small amount of trust in someone and it’s like a fork in the road. You trust them with one thing, and if they are trustworthy you continue trusting them. But if you don’t, then you go down the other path and you probably continue to not trust them. You have to make a decision early on whether you want to trust that person or not. Like before, I went to the toilet and I asked you to watch my camera and laptop for me. I don’t know you. I only met you an hour ago. But I made a decision to trust you because I though you seemed trustworthy. I took the path where I trusted you and when I got back, you were still here and so was my stuff, so now I’ll trust you again” and he just nodded and said “Yeah I know what you’re saying”.

I mean, it sucks that Peter got robbed. Fortunately he doesn’t actually use his iPhone as his primary phone, it’s just for his music. He actually has another cheap Nokia in his pocket that he uses for a phone, so it’s not a huge loss and it was an old iPhone. He certainly didn’t lose as much as me, but I have to admit, it made me feel a lot better to see it happen to somewhere else. Ironically, at the same Bia Hoi place hahaha.

As I said to Peter, and he agreed, you don’t always want to pocket your stuff in front of people just because you don’t trust them not to rob you. Sometimes you meet a girl and you think “Well, I don’t know you, and you don’t have the most reputable job, but I’m not going to insult you by taking all my stuff to the bathroom with me. I’m going to put my trust in you and see if you’re a good person” and sometimes it backfires.

Peter is very philosophical about it. He goes “Yeah, I mean it’s ok. I’m not rich, but I’m not from Vietnam at least. I have a job. It was an old phone and I can replace it. But it obviously meant a lot to her to do that to steal it. I care, but I’m not angry. I understand that her life isn’t so great and she has to do that stuff. I’m disappointed, but I put myself in that situation and put that trust in her, and if her life sucks so much that she had to do that to me to live, then I feel sorry for her, and she can have the phone if she wants. I hope she’s happy”.

Well, that’s as best as I can remember how the conversation went, but that was his message and it was really nice and pretty much the same way I felt about being robbed. I was disappointed that I put my trust in someone and they robbed me, and I probably won’t do that again next time, at least not with something so expensive as my iPad at stake, but I don’t regret that I did it. I just feel sorry for the girl who did it to me, because it musn’t be a nice way to live and when she’s older, I’ll bet she’ll wish she didn’t do that stuff when she was younger. At least, I’d like to hope so.

Peter was putting the moves on this girl that was with Alex so hardcore. It was hilarious. He was right over the other side of the table but he kept leaning across the table to talk to her. She was going back to Korea in two days and he was trying to convince her to stay longer. He was saying “Please, extend your visit just a few more days” and she was laughing and saying “I’ve already extended it once, I can’t do it again”. He got her number though and promised to ring her tomorrow to meet up. She laughed and said “Do you realise how many times that will bounce around satellites between here and Korea ?”.

I didn’t get it at first, until it dawned on me. They both had Korean phone numbers that were roaming in Vietnam. So she was saying that if he called her tomorrow, it would bounce from Vietnam to Korea and then back to Vietnam again. In reality that’s not how roaming works of course, but I got the joke at least and chuckled.

There was another great guy there who was from bloody.. god.. where was he from again ? Oh, Cypress, that’s right ! When I first asked, I was like “Russian, right ?” and he goes “No, but we do business with lots of Russians. I’m from Cypress”. He was a good bloke too but I kept forgetting his name because it was unusual. I had to ask him a second time and said “I’m sorry I keep forgetting your name because it is so unusual to me. I remember Peter and Alex and Mey because they are easy but I forgot yours”.

He told me again (and I forgot by morning !) but Mey says to me “You remembered mine ?” and I said “Yeah, but that’s easy. You have the same name as my daughter’s middle name so I remembered it easy” She asked me how it was spelt and I told her and she said “Oh mine’s spelt Mey rather than Mei, but same thing”.

The rose boy came past. He’d been past earlier and I’d told him “Too early. Come back later and see me”. So he came past and I saw him and I was sorta cheery because I dunno, someone had said something funny and I was laughing and having a good time and he just appeared in front of me and while I really only wanted to buy one, I thought “Stuff it. That’s a gorgeous bouquet he has tonight”.

It was a bit bigger and fancier than the normal ones he had and had about 8 roses in it tonight by the looks and he still only wanted $2.30 for it, so I said “Give me the bouquet. You know what to do ? Any girl at the bar. Up to you” He grinned and nodded and said “The one I like ?” and I’m like “Yeah, whichever girl you like most”. I’m looking forward to dropping into the Rhum House briefly tomorrow and finding out who it is that he likes the most.

Alex and Mey took off home, and Peter and this other girl who came along later and the guy from Cypress all decide to head off to another bar and Peter invites me along and I say “You know what ? I’m actually gonna go home. I’ve had a long day and I drink until 4am far too often. I’m gonna call it a night at 2am tonight. Have fun”.

He said “You want me to get you a motorbike guy ?” and I said “Nah. I don’t like to here. I like to walk a bit further down the road. Maybe I’ll walk all the way home. I like to walk home at night. I do it often”. He said “Ok, see you again soon” and I part ways with them all and head off. As I’m walking down the road, the rose boy appears beside me and I asked him his name, and he tells me it, and I bloody forgot it five minutes later. I wish I didn’t do that with names all the time. But I also asked him “How old are you ?” and he said “Ten”.

I said “How long have you been selling roses in Pham Ngu Lao for ?” and he said “Two years”. “Good on you”, I say, patting him on the head. “See you tomorrow my friend”. I parted ways with him too, because I think he was going to be out later than I was tonight. He’ll probably go home at about 3am because by the time of the night, noone buys roses anymore because they’re too drunk.

It was a good night. I didn’t really want to go drinking, and to be honest, I didn’t drink that much anyway. I only spent 56,000 at the Bia Hoi place, although to be fair, that is 14 pints, plus I had three or four at Tricolore that afternoon. I had a lot of fun and it was good to meet a few new people, and meeting Mey was cool because we had been talking about Korean girls before she arrived and I told her “You are the first Korean girl I’ve ever met, so it was a pleasure to meet you” and she joked “Oh great, I’m the ambassador for Korean girls”.

She seemed like a nice girl though I didn’t talk to her much, but she was pleasant and she smiled when she talked to me. It was hard to tell but I think she was a bit older than everyone else. I think she may have been older than me and she was definitely older than Peter but that sure didn’t stop him. He was right into her which was so cute to see him putting in the yards to chat her up.

I’m really glad I went out last night and saw those people because I was feeling a little bit lonely and down when I first arrived there, and when MJ and the other girls with Lil didn’t even acknowledge me and Lil and I only exchange a couple of words I was a bit hurt. I mean, I know Lil’s been busy, but I didn’t even know she was back from Nha Trang until I see her out drinking with her girlfriends. I’m glad she has friends here, but I just get the feeling we don’t have much in common, and while we’re friends, she’d maybe rather hang out with them because they’re closer to her age or something.

I wish I could stop thinking about that comment that she made, it’s just noone’s ever made me feel old like that before. That’s probably why I went home at 2am. I was like “Nahh you little whippersnappers go off and party until dawn. I’m going home to feed my cat and fall asleep in my rocking chair”. Hahaha. Anyway, I’ll drop her an email to tell her about what happened to Peter and chat.

We had so much fun. I remember listening to this American guy earlier in the night who was there, and he was very drunk and he was just chatting to an Aussie girl he knew and a Vietnamese guy that he’d just met there at the table, and the Vietnamese guy must have been cracking him up and he took photos of them all because he said “I take a photo because this (pointing the table and everyone sitting there) is very good. I want to remember this”. I’m just sitting there chuckling to myself, watching this drunk guy having a great time just meeting strangers from other countries and laughing with them and having the time of his life, and then later in the night, I’m doing the same bloody thing, getting Peter to take photos of me with all my new Korean friends.

So that was yesterday. I had a business meeting with a Japanese guy, then a Singaporean-Vietnamese guy, then I went out drinking and ran into Peter and Lil and met lots of cool Korean people. Oh, and I sent like 20 text messages to Gau, flirting with him and giving him shit, LOL. I swear tomorrow he’s just gonna shake his head at me and go “You’re such an idiot David”. I am. I am. Right ?

Here’s a couple of photos of us all together. We look like we’re having fun, right ?

Oh I shouldn’t make fun of this. I really shouldn’t. I feel bad already for doing this and I haven’t even done it yet.

A Chinese girl named LinJing contacted me from a dating site. She said this:

I come from China, lively and cheerful personality and love to sing, dance, Occasionally at home will do things their own interest, such as burning in accordance with the recipes of dishes, to be a comprehensive, such as fruit tea. Sometimes I would go to parks to take a walk, do some fitness exercise, I like to have the freedom of living space, you want to know me?

Ok, look I know it’s not cool to make fun of people with poor English because I’ve made some stupid mistakes trying to speak Vietnamese and being an almost entirely monosyllabic language I’m sure I’ve mispronounced some things and said some weird things unintentionally.

But come on. Her interests are “burning things in accordance with the recipes of dishes” …. what the hell ?

Does anyone have ANY idea what that means ? What is she trying to say there ? I had to know. That just fascinated me. I struggled with the burning for a while and wondered what recipes meant and why they were related to dishes and then it finally dawned on me. She likes cooking but she hates doing the dishes ! Or maybe she likes doing the dishes ? I dunno.

It’s the only thing that makes sense. As soon as you replace “burning” with “cooking”, the sentence pretty much takes on an acceptable meaning. I sorta want to email her and say “Just so you know, most guys don’t like their food burnt. I think you should say ‘cooking’ rather than ‘burning’”.

But I’m a bit shy. She’s actually a stunningly beautiful 23 year old Chinese girl and way out of my league. I have no idea why she contacted me but I don’t think I could bring myself to meet a girl like her. I would be way too shy. Plus she might use some really funny Engrish and I would crack up laughing and she would slap me.

I can totally see that happening, can’t you ? You wouldn’t believe how long I laughed over that message of hers before I finally worked out what she was trying to say. She would have thrown a drink in my face, slapped me and walked off long before I worked out what she was trying to say if we’d had that conversation in person.

I was feeling jaded this morning. It was mainly due to an email that I got from Ian. He goes to Number 5 a lot and I asked him to please give Cam my number and email because I wanted to stay in contact with her since when there’s a problem with my accommodation my landlady rings her friend and he tells her and then she tells me. Also because she lives nearby and I still wanted to hang out with her.

I hadn’t heard anything for a couple of days and I asked Ian “Did you give her that note ?” I had seen the note he had written with my name, phone number and email address on it. He said “Yep. Delivered it to Cam personally”.

Oh. So she got it and just didn’t bother to message me. Even though I bought her that beautiful Swiss watch which I lied and told you was a knock off but actually wasn’t. I thought we were friends. I thought when she got my email or phone number she would rush to message me and say “Hi David. Sorry you had a fight with Heinz. Hope I can see you some time”.

I guess I was wrong. Ngan and Tra and Nhi and Xiang all have my email as well because I have emailed them things. But I guess noone of them really miss me. They might greet me warmly and rush to talk to me, but apparently when I’m gone, they don’t really mind. There’s always someone else who will come in and sit on my stool and fill the void by making them laugh. I guess I’m replaceable and nothing special after all.

I feel very sad, and I write to my friend Lil about it. Who’s Lil ? Well, I’ve talked about her before under another name, but she’s one of the very few people I’ve met who I have given my blog URL to because I really wanted her to read it. But she felt uncomfortable about me talking about private things she’s told me under her name. So I said I would change her name if she wanted. When this becomes a book it won’t include pictures of people, but while it’s a blog it does. So it’s hard to know where to draw the line.

I’ve just give her a new name for the time being. If you happen to have read my blog previously, and you are familiar with all the lyrics off the Beatles’ White Album, you’ll know who I’m referring to, because there’s a song on there which talks about a girl with three names. Well, that’s Lil. She has one name, calls herself a second, but everyone knows her as the third. Except in this case I’ve switched two of the roles of the names. Oh my god, it’s a fascinating mystery now isn’t it ? Maybe I should run a competition and if you can figure out her real name you win a… um… a beer ?

I’m going to post a picture of her in a minute, so that’s obviously going to identify her. But she said she didn’t want me to not post pictures. So I’m changing her name but still identifying her in the photo. Weird huh ? I dunno. Thing is, I have to tell you personal things about the people I meet because that’s what is so interesting. Life. The individuality of each person you meet and what makes you find them fascinating or makes you chuckle over them.

Later when I’m writing my book I will use more artistic license and the people in the book may not be exactly like you are reading about them now. Or maybe they will. I don’t know yet, but in the meantime, I’m happy to not identify anyone if they wish and I also respect anyone’s right to ask for their photos not to be published. One girl at a bar asked me not to put her photos online because her family didn’t know she worked there and she just didn’t want to be recognised. So you’ve never seen her photos.

Anyway, back on topic, Lil looked at my several page email with horror and texted me to say “OMG, I’ll respond to that later when I have time but for now, here’s some advice”. This is what she said:

“Bars are not the real world but a place where everything is traded, from a bottle of whiskey to a lovely smile”

- “Lil”, 2011.

At first I wondered if it was something she heard in a movie or read in a book, so I google for the keywords in the phrase but I could not find any evidence of anyone having ever said that before. I mean, it sounds like an epic Oscar Wild quote. But it’s not. Lil said it. And it’s a beautiful turn of phrase. Especially, and excuse me if this sounds prejudiced, but for a native Vietnamese person to say in English. I asked her in my email for advice because I said she was a wise girl. She gave me true wisdom worthy of Confucius himself.

Well, you are indeed right, Lil. I had already worked that out a long time ago although Saigon really brought it back home to me, but you put it so succinctly and eloquently that I’m just going to keep that phrase in mind every time a bar girl smiles at me or touches my hand.

I’m going to post a photo of Lil and Ray and Peter and I (both not pictured) playing Settlers of Catan at Geisha Cafe last Thursday. I wanted to tell you this story when it happened but I was tired and I fell asleep and the next day I was busy so it fell through the cracks. Ray is a Filipino but he was born in Australia and lived there all his life until he came to Vietnam a couple of years ago. He swears like a true Aussie too. I am reserved around Vietnamese people and I don’t like to say “fuck” in a Vietnamese person’s company, especially a girl. But Ray dropped it a couple of times. Once he said “Ahh fff- Uh. Damn” and I laughed. Later he just said it anyway.

He introduced us to Settlers of Catan which he described as “Civilisation (the old computer game) on a board with dice”. At first it looked incredibly complicated but he explained it as we went along and by the end we were all doing really well and we got so into it. I was losing earlier only to end up only a couple of points behind Ray who won. Lil got really into the game and would get excited when she got the resource cards she wanted to build something and would cry out in disappointment when she had to turn in half her cards because someone rolled a seven. It was a great night and I’ll be going back next week to play.

I won’t give Ray’s contact details because this blog will be online long after he’s gone and no longer holding the events, but the event is hosted by the “Geisha Coffee and Tea House” and was organised by Ray in conjunction with the owner who is a friend of his. Really it’s more of a restaurant and the food there is absolutely first class. The pork and boiled potatoes is divine and comes with a big dollop of delicious mayonnaise. if you’re there I recommend you try it.

The Geisha Coffee and Tea House is at 85 Pasteur Street, District 1, Saigon (or HCMC if you happen to prefer that name) The board games night may not always be on, but the owner keeps the games on the premises, so as long as you promise not to lose the battleship out of the monopoly set, you can go there and have a good time with your friends playing Monopoly, Scrabble, Pictionary, Settlers of Catan and other games.

Oh, and the title of this article ? It’s not random. You Aussies know what it is, don’t you ? It’s from Cold Chisel’s famous song about Vietnam – “Khe Sanh”.

Here’s Ray and Lil playing Settlers of Catan. I’m in the corner crying because Peter just put the robber piece in the centre of my main circle of settlements and blocked my ability to collect ore and wood !

The little rose bratski had come around earlier last night and I had turned him away because I didn’t have anyone to give a rose to. But he came back again to push his luck a little further. “Come on. You buy rose !” and I would laugh and say “No. I have noone to give it to” and he pointed back in the direction of the bar where I had given one to Lil and one to a waitress and said “Back there”.

Hmmm. Ok. Sure. I do want to buy a rose from the kid. I like it. They’re cheap and it makes him happy and it makes me happy to give them to people. I consider sending one to Cyril just for a laugh. But I’m not sure if he’ll be on the premises at the moment because it’s almost 2am.

The roses only cost 5,000 but the kid sells them for 10,000. But I say to him “I’ll give you 20,000 if you go and deliver one for me”. He says “I need to sell my big bouquet before I go home to sleep. Will you buy it ? You can have it for 30,000″. I look at it. It’s a lovely bouquet of half a dozen young red roses spread out in a fan shape. Sure, I’ll give him $1.20 for that gladly.

So I say “Ok, here’s 30,000 dong. Go back to the Rhum House. The bar you saw me in last night. Give the roses to any waitress there. Doesn’t matter who”.

He doesn’t quite understand and he looks confused. He says “Give to who ?” and I say “Anyone. Doesn’t matter. Just give it to any waitress and say ‘From David’”.

He says “Up to me ?” and I think “Oh yeah, I should have said that”. All Vietnamese understand the phrase ‘up to you’. It’s what they say when they want you to make a decision. So I say “Yes. Give to a waitress. Up to you. Say ‘From David’. Ok ?” and he says “Yes ! OK !” and he runs off down the street.

I go home and don’t think much more of it. The next day I’d actually forgotten all about it even though I was at the Rhum House, when suddenly as I’m coming out of the bathroom I see a sign on the wall that has a picture of a tiny rose in the corner and it jogs my memory. I ask one of the girls “Last night, I sent the little boy back here to give a rose to someone. Did he do it ?” and she says “Yes. He came in and said he’d been told to give any waitress a bouquet of roses from David. He chose Xiang”.

I laugh and say “He wasn’t supposed to tell you that. He was just supposed to say it was from me”. Doesn’t matter, it’s better that way. If some random girl had gotten roses from me she might have thought “Shit, that’s weird. I’ve barely even spoken to David”. But since the kid explained that he was told to give it to anyone, that makes it all a lot less creepy.

She points out Xiang to me and I nod. I don’t speak to her because she’s busy, but I think he picked well because she’s a nice girl. I don’t actually know any of the girls’ names here because I haven’t bothered to learn. It’s not really as full on as Number 5 and the girls don’t all rush to come and sit with you and flirt with you. They mostly just do their job and will chat a little if you want. Also, when I’m there I’m almost always working or chatting to TJ so they don’t have a chance.

Another waitress calls out to me a minute later “Thank you for sending the roses last night David. That was very nice”. Cool. So they understand. I wasn’t trying to woo anyone or anything. I just wanted to buy roses off the little kid and I had to give them to someone, so I sent him to give them to someone at the bar. It was just a gesture. I’ve adopted that bar as my own now (although I actually spend more time drinking at the Bia Hoi place around the corner because it’s far cheaper) so I want to keep up good relations with them.

And I do. Every night I go there, TJ and I have huge long discussions about augmented reality and hackintoshes (he’s trying to hackintosh his home computer at the moment) and stuff. Cyril is always happy to see me and often buys me a drink. Jin is great fun and he’s bringing me Singaporean dollars tomorrow for my collection. Hell, even the massage guy is my friend. I’ve let him give me a $2 massage a few times now and it feels so damn good.

Even when I don’t want one he comes up and smiles and he always hugs me. Last night he came up behind me and wraps his arms around me as I’m drinking at the bar and gives me this big hug and doesn’t let go for ages. It would be a little bit weird if not for the fact that I know it’s all just fun and designed to make me like him so that I will pay him for massages all the time.

It’s sort of his equivalent of what the waitresses do when they say “You’re so handsome” and chat to you. Except that they’re really just doing their job. This guy is sorta sucking up in the hopes that I’ll pay him. The other night I didn’t really want one, or at least want to pay for one so I shook my head but he started anyway and I said “No. Thank you” and he said “It’s ok. Free. No money”. I shrugged and let him massage me. It was so good.

When he did the neck cracking thing I was a little disturbed and he tends to like to do this thing where he sticks his fingers in your neck hard which I don’t really enjoy so I motioned to him to scritch my head and he did it for ages and it was so good. So when he was done I pulled out 50,000 dong anyway and gave it to him and thanked him. So I guess that’s why tonight he came up and gave me this big hug and then stood there with his arm around me for ages just hanging out looking around.

Twe always wants me to buy something too of course. Once you get into a habit of buying something just to keep them happy they will tend to gravitate towards you when they see you and beg you until you buy something. Sure, if you say “no” firmly and emphatically enough, they will get the message and go away, but Twe knows that when I laugh and shake my head and say “Not tonight” that all she has to do is look pleadingly at me and smile and show me a few items and I’ll say “Ok. Ok. I’ll buy something small”.

The other night she comes to me when I’m sitting around the side of the Bia Hoi place without a name (Yes, it’s “The pub with no name”. But most Bia Hoi places are like that) in the alley. She comes up and shows me all her stuff and I laugh and say “I’m sorry Twe. I have everything you sell already. I have tootbrushes and fans and scissors and postcards and nail clippers and all that other stuff and I don’t need a map because I have an iPad”. She looks disappointed and looks through some of her stuff and holds up a shuttlecock with a smile.

Shuttlecock games are popular here and people kick them around in the pack like a hackeysack like in that classic old game California Games if you’re not familiar with hackeysack. But here they use shuttlecocks. I laugh and say “Ok Twe. I’ll have a shuttlecock. How much ?” and she says “30,000″ and I’m like “Nooooooo. That’s expensive. I’m not paying that much for something I don’t even need” and she grins and says “No, ok. For you, only 15,000 because you are a very good friend and you always buy from me”.

So now I have a shuttlecock. Bit of a stupid souvenir, but you know what ? It’s not a souvenir of Saigon. It’s a souvenir of Twe, the nice vendor girl that Colin introduced me to and who brightens up my day for 5 minutes every night and who gives me a smile and a wave every time she passes by. I realise that I don’t even have a photo of her which I feel terrible about. I resolve to do something about that. In fact, I may interview them all.

The Word did a great little series of short interviews with garbage collectors last month, just asking them who they were and how old and how long they’d been doing that job and what the most interesting thing was that had happened to them in their line of work. Well, maybe I’ll do that with the street vendors of Pham Ngu Lao. I want to interview Twe and the cheeky little rose boy and the teenage boy who sells cigars and stuff.

They’re fascinating people and they are the lifeblood of Pham Ngu Lao and thousands of people a day encounter them and never learn their names, so out of respect for these interesting people and also because it captures the essence of Saigon, I’m going to interview some of them. You don’t get vendors like this in the provinces, and even in other tourist locations they sell different things. In Nha Trang they mostly sell sunglasses and hats and phone credit. In Vung Tau they sell t-shirts and kimonos and old coins. But in Saigon they sell cigarettes and roses and little baskets of trinkets. And sometimes knives and guns LOL.

Anyway, meeting interesting people and performing random acts of kindness. That’s what it’s all about. I meet them and they brighten up my day, and then I buy something from them and I brighten up theirs. And maybe a random girl gets a bouquet of roses when she wasn’t expecting one. :”)

Someone said to me “What’s wrong. You’ve gone for like a week without falling in love with a new girl. Have you given up on girls ?”

No. I haven’t. There might be one I have my eye on. I’m just not telling you is all !

So I mean, I thought that maybe Hoa and I still had something. Despite the fact that she tried to hit me up for money again and I made it clear I wasn’t giving her any and I didn’t want to be her boyfriend, just a friend and see how things went from there, we still seemed cool. I didn’t go visit her often, just every now and again to say Hi and sometimes I would message her but I was still getting that “My life is so boring. I never go outside. I have no money” shit. Once or twice would have been ok, but it was so often that it was an obvious ploy.

And when I started ignoring it, she started getting cold and wouldn’t really put much effort into speaking to me. But I wanted to take her somewhere and do something fun. I wanted her to come to Suoi Tien with my friends and I on my birthday. She said “No. Cannot. Must work”. I even said “Forget that. I’ll pay someone else to cover for you that day” but she kept saying no so I gave it a rest and thought I’d bring it up on another day.

Tonight I messaged her a nice message to say goodnight and said I wanted her to come to Suoi Tien with me soon. She responds with:

“Sorry David. I cannot go Suoi Tien with you. I don’t want outside”.

So now she doesn’t want to go anywhere with me ? What happened to “I am so boring, I just want a boyfriend to take me nice places outside” ? So, when I’m giving her cash, she’ll promise to go with me, but then when I arrange things for her day off to actually do it, suddenly she can’t go. Now I’m offering to take her to a theme park with my friends, pay for her to have a sorely needed day off, and nope. She doesn’t want a bar of it.

Obviously she’s moved on. She realises she’s not getting a quick buck out of me and she doesn’t want to do anything with me anymore.

Oh well. I mean I had doubts about the authenticity of her interest in me from the beginning, but now I know at least – it was bullshit. She put on a good act though and we did have some fun together but it was marred by her constant complaints of being sad and broke. She said she just wanted to get to know someone better, but when I try and do precisely that, she doesn’t want to anymore. Guess it’s time for me to move on too.

Feeling a little jaded with girls right now. Is all I’m sayin’.