Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

I don’t have time to talk about this much but today I was in Nha Trang again and I took the opportunity to visit the big Buddhist temple there with the two gigantic statues of Buddha. It was interesting and lots to see but the only down side was the “tour guides” who are supposedly training to be monks will lead you around for up to an hour and then say “We can’t take donations so you have to buy some postcards”. They wanted 400,000 per pack for the postcards and I had two guides… not that I even asked for them. They wanted me to pay $40 USD for two packets of postcards ?!?! WTF ?!?!?!

I felt bad. As you would. I didn’t think I could tell a Buddhist monk.. even a trainee to go fuck himself and that I wasn’t possibly paying 400,000 dong for a small pack of shitty old postcards of lower quality than the photos I took myself but to be honest… I think it’s a scam. I’m not even sure they WERE students. I think it may have been bullshit. Anyway it somewhat ruined an otherwise great experience and I would just make clear at the start if anyone tries to guide you around say “I have no money. I can donate 50,000 and NO MORE. I will NOT buy anything !” because they are clearly setup to guilt you into buying shit at 100 times the normal price. Don’t fall for it. I actually did. I felt awful about telling them I couldn’t pay for their shitty postcards so I spent 300,000 on two packs of postcards… which is at least better than the 800,000 they were asking for !

Anyway it was a great cultural experience and really moving and awe-inspiring. Here’s the photos.

No, not the rapper. The money. I don’t actually have that much though. I have 49.9 cents in cash and negative $4.90 in my bank account. Cool huh ?

I went out for dinner. My “last supper” if you will. I went to the “other” nearby restaurant. The one that does the great Singapore noodles with vegetables. I don’t really like the place that much because they make me feel really uncomfortable sometimes. They recognise me now so I’m not completely bizarre to them, but they are always still amused and they don’t mind showing it.

At some places you can go in and even when the menu is in Vietnamese and you know few foreigners ever go there, they remain completely professional and act like it’s no big deal that you’re there. But at this place they will all look at me and giggle and they will talk about you and smirk and watch you eat and often they will sneak up behind you and look directly over your shoulder at your laptop for ages to see what you’re doing. I mean, I don’t hate it and I’m not offended but it is really unprofessional and sometimes it really annoys me.

Tonight I choose something different. I chose crispy fried noodles and seafood, beef and veges. It sounded delicious. But as soon as they brought it out I thought “Oh this is going to be awkward”. It was a massive plate of these crispy fried noodles and a big hot pot of stewed meat, veges and seafood with a ladle and a spoon. In retrospect I shouldn’t have spent my last few dollars on a meal I wasn’t familiar with because it was possible I might hate it and then I’d have to leave hungry.

It wasn’t that awful, it was just awkward. I have no idea how you’re supposed to eat those noodles ! I basically broke them up by stabbing them with my chopsticks until they were bite-sized pieces and then I would eat them. I tried dropping them into my bowl with a ladle full of the hot pot ingredients but I realised they quickly went soggy so I decided to eat them as they were and just eat the hot pot stuff separately.

The other stuff wasn’t really great. I don’t mind octopus tentacles so much, but steamed cuttlefish is so fucking chewy. I just can’t eat it. I have to basically slice it in half with my incisors and then wash it down with my drink and quickly swallow it whole with a grimace. I didn’t eat any more of that after the first piece. It’s almost as bad as boiled or steamed sea snake which I would probably prefer car tyre over. The bits of beef were likewise chewy and not very nice. Dammit, why did I pick that for my last meal ? Now I’m going to leave hungry.

Not to mention I was obviously eating it wrong and the staff were all staring at me. Goddamnit, leave me alone for fuck’s sake will you ? One of the senior girls, who are normally more mature and polite enough to not laugh at you came over with a grin on her face and I know some of them know at least a couple of words of English and I was waiting for her to say “Um, ur doin’ it wrong” but she just leaned close with this amused grin on her face and I looked at her and lifted my hands a little in exasperation and mouthed “WHAT ?!” silently at her. She obviously thought I wanted to say something so she leaned closer to listen but I just screwed up my face and shook my head and looked away from her and she chuckled and walked off.

Seriously, I like the food there, well, the Singapore noodles at least, but if they’re going to treat me like that all the time I’m not going to go back again. In the end I was so annoyed and embarrassed that I actually faked a phone call so that I could pretend I was urgently needed elsewhere and I asked for my bill, paid, knocked back my beer and walked off in disgust leaving my meal only half finished. Screw you guys, stop making me feel like an idiot. It’s weird enough being there in the first place without you making me feel embarrassed every time I try to eat an unfamiliar meal. I’m trying my best to be brave and try new things and fit in in a heavily Vietnamese area, and you could at least do the decently of not making me feel like shit to the point where I just want to escape in embarrassment.

I’m so disappointed with them. I wish they could have just come and showed me how I was supposed to eat it so that they could leave me alone and stop staring at me and giggling. And now I wasted my last few dollars on a meal that I didn’t enjoy and didn’t finish. Sigh.

On the way home I looked at how much money I had left. I had enough left for either a bowl of pho tomorrow or a small bottle of brandy. I may not get paid tomorrow. Maybe it won’t be until Tuesday. What would I rather be ? Hungry or sober ?

I bought the brandy. Hunger won’t kill me. Sobriety might. I don’t really care that the meal wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I’m just so annoyed at their attitude. I don’t really want to go back there again after that. That’s why foreigners like Ron don’t go out to restaurants like that, because they’re afraid of the staff making them feel ashamed just because they don’t know how to eat the food or order it or whatever customs you’re expected to follow.

Anyway, so I’m back at home with a little bottle of brandy, about 150ml of cheap cola, and two little 12 cent bread rolls with chocolate filling. I figured I would save them until tomorrow when I was hungry. Didn’t happen. I ate them as soon as I got home because I was starving. I still have a few unpleasant chocolate coins and a small packet of sesame snacks and a few coconut candy lollies that I’m not really fond of. Oh, and half a jar of lollipops. I guess I’ll be sucking lollipops all day tomorrow to stave off hunger. I guess I could walk the 15 kilometers into District 1 and back to get a 10,000 dong sandwich with my last remaining money but I seriously doubt the energy gained would outweigh the energy expended getting there. It’s not like a little hunger will kill me. To be honest I think I should experience it. Joy goes hungry all the time. Maybe being hungry would give me a better appreciation for what some other people go through.

My mum tells me the minister at their church is Vietnamese and I idly wonder whether church ministers are allowed to come into the country as “skilled immigrants” to work. I should find out. I’m sure Joy would love to come and preach in Australia. From what my parents tell me, I think his English is probably better than their minister’s because they say they always have problems understand him, but I have no problems understanding Joy because his pronunciation and vocabulary is very good. It sucks that he’s so skilled and yet still struggles to eat.

I’m just going to tell a couple of other random stories that I’ve forgotten to tell. My local xe om guys tend to know me pretty well. Not because I use them but because I don’t use them and they see me walk past at least a few times a day. The guy on the corner when I get to Pham Hung is especially friendly and twice now when I’ve walked past he’s gone “Heeeeyyyy !” and held out his hand for a high five. Well, a medium five, because it’s normally done at waist height, but it’s cool the way he’s basically like “Hey bro, how’s it going ?” and I guess he knows a little English because sometimes he actually says “How are you ?” which is always cool and cheers me up when I’m feeling down.

Further on down the street there’s another guy who I have gotten to take me places from time to time and he knows damn well that when I walk down the road in the late afternoon that I’m only going out for dinner or to the supermarket so he knows I don’t want a motorbike, but he always asks anyway. This evening on my way home, seeing me walk past for the second time he goes “Motorbike ?” and I shake my head and he chuckles probably thinking “Yeah I knew you didn’t want one, I just wanted to say something”.

But yesterday there was something really weird. On my way into the city I was walking along in the light rain and a group of about 5 teenagers walked past going the other way and they all started talking and looking excitedly at me as I approached and one of them goes “Hello !” and he holds out his hand as I pass and I quickly shake it and say “Hi” without really breaking my stride. But as they pass, one of them runs back and just touches me on the arm and laughs and then runs back to join his friends.

What the hell was that all about ? I can only imagine they had some sort of bet going like “First person to touch a foreigner gets bought dinner by everyone else” because it was all like some big joke for them just to touch me. I mean even if that’s what it was, I’m not offended. It was funny and it made me laugh probably as much as it did them. Whatever it was, it seemed harmless and I continued on down the road chuckling to myself thinking “What on Earth was that about ?!”

Sometimes the weirdest things happen to you in Saigon and that’s why I like to hang out in local Vietnamese areas and walk into the city. If I caught a motorbike into the city I never would have found the weird manga cafe, or run into this weird group of teenagers and whatever. Sometimes you just have to do things differently in order to have different experiences.

Sometimes being poor and having to eat at a random little rice cafe late at night like a did a few nights ago is exactly what you need to do to have the sort of unusual experiences that I have here and frankly, I love it. I mean, it’s very embarrassing when I have to admit to my Vietnamese friends that I actually don’t have any money and they look at me and I know they’re thinking “How can you not have any money ? You’re a westerner. Surely you have a wallet full of money don’t you ?”

Joy said to me yesterday, after I had previously told him that in my apartment in Saigon that I don’t have any furniture or anything “I bet you have lots of possessions at home, right ?” and at first I was going to say “No, not really” because I had gotten rid of a lot of stuff when I was looking at traveling around Australia and when I was running out of money in Vietnam, but on second though, I suppose I do. Sure, I sold my big plasma TV (for an absurd price I might add), but I have quite a number of computers, and an awesome stereo and I have boxes full of consoles and games and books and dvd’s and general household shit.

I don’t think Joy has anything in the world other than a couple of pairs of clothes, a mobile phone and a bible. We went to the Rhum House the other day so that I could charge my camera battery and he ran into a woman that he’d taught Vietnamese to a year or so ago and she was there with her husband. He was giving Joy a real hard time because he was wearing a football t-shirt with a date on it and two team names and this guy was going “You can’t wear that ! Those teams weren’t IN that game that year. That’s totally fucking wrong. They didn’t even play each other. That shirt is a fraud ! Take it off !”

The guy was joking.. I think. But Joy was a bit alarmed and he was quite happy to get out of there and he said to me as we left “It’s not my fault. God provided that shirt for me. I have to wear what he provides. I don’t have any choice” and I said “Don’t worry about him. He was just being an idiot. You shouldn’t throw away good clothes just because someone doesn’t like what it says on it. Forget about him”. But I bet Joy is a tiny bit nervous about wearing that shirt now after the way that guy harassed him.

Later that evening we were sitting at the Bia Hoi place on Bui Vien and Kelly bought some cashews and he wanted to offer Joy some, but he had his nose stuck in the bible so he didn’t bother him, but another girl beside him bought some peanuts and offered him a handful and he took them eagerly and said to me “See ? God provides for me”. I sort of mentally facepalmed and thought “Shit, I didn’t realise you were THAT hungry”. He was obviously expecting a comment and I had to be honest.

I said “Maybe when people believe in god they are just nicer people and then they are more willing to be generous” and he basically said “Yeah, same thing” and I figured “Oh well, I guess we sort of agree then”. I personally think people have free will and I don’t like to think that what we do is determined by any god forcing us to do something, but I guess the way he believes it works is complicated. I just prefer to think that there are some nice people in the world and maybe it sometimes has something to do with belief in god. But If god really makes everything happen, doesn’t that mean that we’re not responsible for anything we do ?

When a mother’s son is killed by a drunk driver and she says “Well, god obviously had other plans for him”, doesn’t that absolve the drunk driver from being at fault ? If god made it happen, then surely that means the drunk drive wasn’t at fault, because god made him get drunk and kill someone. It seems like a slippery slope me to start attributing people’s actions to the will of god, but it makes religious people happy when they’re needy and gives them comfort when they’re sad, so I’m certainly not going to take that away from them and say that it’s otherwise.

I can’t rule out the idea of a creationist god. Certainly not one that created this “Adam and Eve” nonsense, but I vaguely think that maybe our universe could have been brought into existence by some greater being. I like to think about Kelly’s theory of the “dimension of size”. Just as we can create a bowl of sea monkeys by putting ingredients into a bowl of water, creating a universe of a much tinier scale than our own, I think perhaps maybe in an environment far larger than our own universe maybe someone could have put the right ingredients together to kickstart our universe.

I don’t hate the idea of a creationist god. I just don’t like the idea of an interventionist one. This is just my personal opinion, but I think life is random. People die all the time and it has nothing to do with some god taking them away for a higher purpose. It just fucking happens and there’s nothing you can do about it. I understand why some people find that so hard to accept and that surely there must be a purpose to our life, but I think the opposite way.

I don’t think we’re given a purpose. I think we have to create our own purpose in life. Life is random and sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen and you just have to make the best of it. Sure, it must be comforting to think that everything happens for a reason even if you can’t understand what it is, but I can’t deal with that possibility. If I tried to imagine that was the case I’d start thinking “Well, why does god hate poor people ? Why do people in Uganda get fucked over so much ? What’s the ‘purpose’ behind that ? Does god hate Cambodians more than Americans ? Surely if this god was so fair and kind and everything had a purpose he wouldn’t make life so miserable for those people. What have they done to deserve that ? Plenty of poor Vietnamese people believe in god and he’s still giving them the short end of the stick while other lazy non-believers in America and Europe prosper”.

I guess I’m not totally atheist, not totally agnostic and not religious either. I really appreciate what religion gives to people and I can see how much they need it. It’s just that I don’t. I can work out good from bad on my own. Nnot that it means I always act flawlessly mind you. Just like any Christian I sometimes do bad things anyway even when I know they are wrong. I’m not perfect. But I can work out the reason you should be kind to others because I know what it feels like to have someone be unkind to you. Not everyone seems to be able to do that though, and I wonder sometimes if a belief in religion actually weakens our ability to work things out on our own, but I still think it’s mostly a good idea.

Sure, horribly atrocities have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion, but you have to admit that for the most part it makes people happy and gives them a reason to live, and that can’t be a bad thing. So I totally respect religion and I have a lot of respect for people who are devoutly religious……… as long as they don’t try and ram it down my throat, because I think that shows a serious lack of respect for others. And then there’s the assholes who get mad at people for having the wrong religion.

I mean, from my point of view, all religions are good and they all have benefits for those people so I think it’s horrible for people to say “No, my religion is right and yours is wrong and you are going to burn in hell“. We had a discussion about it on IRC recently and someone quoted all these bizarre lines from the bible that literally say that it’s ok to kill your neighbour if he believes in a different god.

People put shit on Muslims and say they are violent and will kill in the name of religion but there are numerous situations where the bible says that anyone who doesn’t believe in the same god as you are a lesser person who deserves to be anything from spat on to killed. That’s horrible. Why can’t people just go “Ok, you don’t believe in the same god as me, but at least you believe in a god, so you can’t be such a bad person”.

I mean, if I did believe in a god, I would be one of those people who think it’s the same god and everyone has just gotten fucked up interpretations of it over the years. “Oh, god is male” “No, she’s female” “God says this is what happens when you die” “No, god says this is what happens”. How the fuck can you know ? Because some millenia old book that’s been re-translated and re-edited hundreds of times says so ? Come on. I think if you believe in the bible you should probably accept that it should be taken very loosely and not literally.

You have to accept the fact that over thousands of years and through many re-translations and cultural differences it must have picked up many, many inaccuracies. If you take it literally to the letter and act on it, you’re very likely not doing what your god intended. And of course, the messages were passed down from an invisible, ephemeral being to some imperfect humans who lacked an iPhone to record it on, so who’s to say that when they got home and wrote it down that they didn’t fuck some of it up ? Stop taking it so literally guys !

Why don’t you just chill out and try and get the general feeling of it right and try not to be so literal ? I mean, ultimately, they all say the same thing; “Be nice to each other”, but we get so caught up in these messages that the fallible humans have added in about “Oh, it’s ok to kill your neighbour if he believes in a different god”.

I’m pretty sure if god had given humans a message, it wouldn’t have been that it was ok to kill your neighbour because he believes in a different god than you because I’m pretty fucking sure that contradicts the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” message. Like, would god have said that if he knew it meant “Ok, you can go kill your neighbour and in turn your neighbour is going to kill you”. If he did, he’s not a real cool dude, you know what I’m sayin’ ?

You can’t be so contradictory that you say that it’s so important to treat your fellow man with respect and then turn around and go “Yeah unless he was brought up in the wrong country or community and through no fault of his own was taught the wrong religion as a child and therefore deserves to be killed mercilessly”. I’m pretty sure god wouldn’t say that. That’s not very nice, kind, benevolent or fair.

Religion is very conflicting in Vietnam. It’s mostly a Buddhist society but it also has a massive Christian demographic. On my way home this evening I turned into my street and went “Holy shit, am I in the wrong street ?” My street was just jam packed with parked motorbikes. I realised why. The Catholic church across the road from my apartment was having evening mass and hundreds upon hundreds of Vietnamese people were inside, outside and even across the road from the church reciting prayers.

But just as much, if you live in a family of Buddhists as Joy does and you choose to become Christian, you might very well be ostracised and cast out or treated with scorn and ridicule or even threats of violence. It’s terrible that people who call themselves worshipers of any god would act like that against their own family just due to their choice of religion, but sadly that is what religion has become these days. It’s “Me against you. I’m right and you are wrong“. It truly makes me sad that people who claim to be so righteous because they are religious can be so cruel in the name of the religion they claim to represent.

When I was helping seek sponsors for Joy’s religious education, I asked a friend in Australia if he would help Joy with his tuition in the USA and he said “Why can’t he do it in his own country ?”. I assumed that obviously if that were possible, he would do it, rather than traveling across the world at great expense, but I wanted to know the answer, so I asked Joy yesterday over lunch. He leaned closed and whispered very quietly “Communism. We are not allowed. We may practice Christianity here, but we may not learn it. The government does not allow it”.

Well, fair enough. That’s just how it is. I don’t really criticise foreign governments for acting in a certain way. When people get into power they enact certain rules that may seem unfair and unreasonable to others, but that’s their right. Sure, religious oppression isn’t ideal, and only a few decades ago, all religion was banned completely in Vietnam and priests were all sent off for re-education and public worship was forbidden, but the government policy changed in time and it was opened up again and now they appear to have relative religious freedom.

I mean, even in Australia we are uptight about religion. There are schools, public places and even whole towns that forbid Muslims from wearing the hijāb. I think that’s not very cool and I disagree with that and personally I would protest against that because I think if that’s part of their religious beliefs then we should allow it.

Ok, so maybe Australia doesn’t want to allow it, but if that’s the case they need to at least stop being so fucking hypocritical and admit “Ok, we don’t actually allow freedom of religion here. We are a Christian society and there’s certain religions that we don’t allow you to express publicly in certain ways, and religious dress codes are one of them” because we proclaim to be this free and open society where everyone is equal and have the same rights and the ability to express their religion. And we don’t. You can’t claim that and say “Oh yeah it’s a free country…. oh… unless you want to wear a hijāb, because we just don’t allow that. Fuck you, take that shit off in public or we’ll fine you or throw you in jail if you refuse”.

I bet if I was a teacher in a school in Australia and I had a small Buddhist shrine in the corner people would be up in arms saying “YOU CAN’T DO THAT ! YOU CAN’T RAM BUDDHISM DOWN CHILDREN’S THROATS !!!”, but of course it’s totally normal for even a state school to have a crucifix in every room, isn’t it ? Whether you’re in Australia or in Vietnam, under a democratic or a totalitarian government, it’s always “one rule for us, and one rule for them”.

Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to be a four and a half thousand word rant about religion, it’s just that I’ve been exposed to it a bit lately and it’s been on my mind so it turned out that way. Sorry if you didn’t want to read this. But I have opinions and sometimes I want to express them and this is my damn blog and I’ll say whatever the fuck I want on it. And if the government tries to stop me, I’ll go and host it off-shore on some satellite connection where I’m not bound by any nation’s laws.

Because it’s increasingly looking like that’s what people have to do in order to practice freedom of expression. Maybe seasteading isn’t such a crazy idea after all. I tell you what, I’m not saying if I ran my own autonomous country that I would be fair and open to every idea, but I’d certainly do a few things differently, that’s all I can say. Chibihogoshino would have been right into that shit.

I don’t know what happened to this post. I wrote it. I tagged it. I posted it. Even if I closed my laptop before it saved then it should have been available as a draft as well but it wasn’t. It was gone. So I’ll tell it again.

Joy and I were in Pham Ngu Lao talking. He was telling me about his family, unbidden, just as I had been wondering about last night. He lives with 5 of his brothers. One younger who loves him and is kind to him, and 4 older ones who are horrible and mean to him. He told me that he slept in the park last night because they were being so mean that he didn’t want to go home. He complains that they sometimes take toilet water and pour it over him, and that if tries to eat they will knock his food out of his hands and they will often lock him in the toilet and threaten to kill him if he comes out.

When he first said that they held him down and poured toilet water on him I actually laughed involuntarily, until I realised what I was doing and choked it down and said how terrible that was. Joy said they were Buddhist and they hated that he was Catholic and they were always abusing him about and saying “Is your god going to save you now ?” and horrible things like that. They all had motorbikes and decent jobs whereas Joy had been a missionary in Singapore and he didn’t have a motorbike or a good job and they were always hassling him for money because they said “You can speak English. You should have lots of money. Give us money” but of course Joy doesn’t have any money and he only rarely gets work as a language teacher, so he is very keep to stop living with his brothers.

I asked him about his parents and he said they don’t talk to him anymore. Apparently when people get old in Vietnam, they are supported by their youngest child, but it’s their oldest child who tells them how to live, and Joy’s oldest brother always said bad things about him and had told his parents never to give him so much as a glass of water and as such, they didn’t speak to him anymore and considered him the black sheep of the family because he had converted to Christianity and didn’t have a good job. I felt bad for him and I admired him all the more for his devotion to the church and wanting to be a minister.

Joy was very hurt by the way his brothers treated him but he quoted me something from the bible that explained how he felt about it. I don’t remember the quote and obviously I’m not a fan of people quoting scripture to me, but Joy doesn’t want to convert me. But I must say, if ever I was in doubt about religion and I felt I needed saving spiritually, Joy would be the man to do it. If I needed guidance and I met Joy and he was a minister or a missionary, I know that he would be the sort of person who could talk to me and open my eyes to Christianity and put me on that path.

He has traveled and met people from around the world and he’s been hungry before and lived on the streets and not eaten for “many, many days” he says. He is happy to preach to people, but he’s also happy to respect when they’re not interested and NOT preach to them and that’s what I respect the most about his religious convictions. He feels them strongly and he likes to talk about them, but he will never try and ram them down your throat.

We, or shall I say I, rang his sponsor in Alice Springs on the number I’d found for her. Her son answered and then put her on. She was a very softly-spoken, meek sort of girl and she said that not only had she not forgotten Joy but that she had been readying the funds to help him attend religious school. We talked about Joy’s education and briefly about how he’d suggested I come visit her and she laughed and said “He has no idea how big Australia is or how far it is to Alice Springs”

Anyway she was a lovely woman. Quiet, softly spoken, wanted to help Joy become a minister. Some people make big promises when they are in Vietnam and then they go home and they forget all about them, but this woman seemed quite serious. She was surprised that I had just located her and phoned her out of the blue but she was happy to talk about it and I think she’s going to help Joy achieve his goals.

Afterwards Joy and I sat on the front steps of this little internet phone place watching the rain. I wanted to go get a couple of 15,000 dong hamburgers but Joy said “No, I know a good sandwich place where you can get a sandwich and a pepsi for only 10,000. We should go there” and I said “Ok”. But the rain didn’t let up at all I said “Let’s just make a dash for it”. Joy had a raincoat but I had nothing, but I didn’t mind getting a little bit wet and he had pointed vaguely across the street so I figured it was only a few hundred meters away and we took of running in the middle of a Saigon torrential downpour.

After running for a few hundred meters in the pouring rain to the point where I was just soaking and dripping whenever I ducked under an awning, I asked “Where is it ? I thought it was just nearby ?” Joy said “Behind the bus station” and I said “Ben Thanh bus station ? That’s almost a kilometer away !” and he said “Not quite that far, but yeah”.

We kept running. I took my shoes off because they were so wet and I didn’t want to slip, so was just pissbolting down the street barefoot in the rain with my laptop under my arm, ducking under the few awnings that weren’t full up with motorbikes. Eventually we got to a “My mother’s bread” shop, which are a great little sandwich chain here that sell great cheap salad and meat rolls for 10,000 or a sandwich for 5,000 and I ordered two sandwiches and two pepsis. But there was nowhere to sit and I said “Let’s sit outside”, but two young girls at a table said something to Joy and he said “They say we can sit there with them” so the staff found us two more stools and we sat with these girls and ate.

When I sat down I said “Xin chao” and nothing more because I figured they were just being polite and I just talked to Joy. Joy said grace before we ate as he always does and he told me about this guy from Melbourne he wanted me to eat because he works in an office nearby and Joy has brought him to this place for lunch before. When we finished eating I said “Ok, I have to go for this meeting in Pasteur street now” and Joy said he would walk with me. We got up and I said “Bye bye” to the two girls and they smiled and waved and we walked out.

As we started walking Joy said “Didn’t you like them ? Oh I suppose you only like very pretty girls” and I said “What are you talking about ? Those were pretty girls !” and he said “Why didn’t you talk to them ? They wanted to talk to you” and I said “Really, how do you know ?” and he said “I can tell. When you weren’t looking they kept looking at you and I heard one say that you looked nice to the other girl. I think she really wanted to talk to you because they both liked you” and I was like “Awww are you serious ? We were sitting with two cute Vietnamese girls who were into me and I didn’t even realise ? I feel so stupid ! I wanted to talk to them but I wasn’t sure what to say or even if they spoke English. I really need you to teach me Vietnamese”.

So that was unfortunate. I mean not that it would have necessarily gone anywhere, but they were both cute (not that there’s many Asian girls who I don’t think are cute) and in their mid 20′s and apparently wanted to chat to me, and who knows, maybe I could have gone on a date with one and gone for coffee or something. But as it happened I was oblivious and I was only focusing on talking to Joy so I missed my chance.

Nevermind, there’s plenty more cute young Vietnamese girls in Saigon. Hell, there’s millions. It’s just funny that I was sitting with two girls who Joy assures me were quite interested in me and I didn’t even talk to them. Oh well, live and learn. I guess I should be more perceptive and friendly when two random Asian girls invite me to sit down and eat with them shouldn’t I ? To be honest I’ve just been so busy concentrating on business and how to be successful in Saigon that I’ve spent little time thinking about girls recently and at that time all I was thinking about was Joy’s religious education and my meeting with this Indian investor. Girls just were not on my radar last night. I know. That’s a rare day in history isn’t it ? Hahahah.

When we got to Geisha cafe, he eyed it with mistrust and said “I don’t think this is a good place. It is very expensive” and I said “I’m here for a business meeting with an important person in the financial industry. I can’t meet with him at a pho cafe. It has to be a nice place. I think he will be buying me dinner anyway I hope”. I parted ways with Joy and he said “Do you want to meet up tomorrow and have a cheap rice meal ? I know good places” and I said “Sure, I’d like that”.

I went inside, literally dripping wet and chatted to the owner who’s seen me before. She’s a LOVELY young woman. She reminds me a lot of Thy from Secret Bar. I felt terrible sitting on their nice lounges so wet but I had no choice. I plugged in my laptop and chatted for a few minutes until the guy turned up for my meeting.

I won’t talk specifically about what we discussed because I think he wanted it to remain confidential because it is a very serious micro-finance business model that he’s been working on for years that he will be ready to launch sometime next year. But it is a very big concept aimed at providing a way for lenders to meet borrowers in developing nations and lend them money and get a return on their investment. It’s an emerging business he tells me and I’m familiar with some of the other companies he talks about.

I was curious why he had picked me and why he wanted me to head up his technical team to run what was likely to be a massive online infrastructure for a billion dollar finance business. He said he didn’t want to go to a development company because all they would want to do was give him a website, charge him and piss him off. He said he needed a developer who had experience and understood the internet and could do both the technical aspects of the website and also understand how to make it work best. He wanted someone on board for the long haul who would put their heart into the company and always be there to work on it and make it better.

I was pretty impressed. It was a fantastic business model and he had investors from around the world and payment companies from overseas and agents in Latin America and South Africa ready to bring the borrowers on-board for people to invest in. It was quite exciting and I think I made a good impression on him and he didn’t seem interested in shopping around. He wants to launch a small information-based site first just for his partners and investors and presumably if I was good at that, then I would be heading up a team of my choosing to build the final site.

I don’t want to get my hopes up because it’s impossible to tell whether he really liked me and whether I have it in the bag, but it’s definitely very promising and it has the potential to be a long term contract that would not only bring me a good income but also give me an amazing site to have in my portfolio that would ensure me much success in the future. Fingers crossed on that one anyway.

Afterwards, I trudged back to Pham Ngu Lao to have a few beers after a long day. I went to the Bia Hoi place and found a seat beside the Kiwi guy I’d been talking to earlier. He’d just got here after teaching in Japan for two years and he spoke fluent Japanese and he was showing it off by talking to some Japanese guys nearby. I didn’t get involved because I was talking to some nice British kids who I just met who’d sat next to me, but I did help him find a hookup. He wanted a teaching job and I told him about Neil and the Saigon Workers Resort and he said “That sounds excellent. I don’t want to make a lot of money, I just want accommodation and a good teaching job that’ll pay my way for as long as I want to stay here” and I said “Well, he’s your man. Guaranteed teaching jobs, and you already have your foot in the door because you’re both from New Zealand and he’ll surely like you because of that”.

Turns out he has an interesting background. He has a degree but it’s not in teaching. It’s in Germanic literature of all things. We all laughed when he told us and I jokingly said “Gee that must be a useful skill that people seek out” and he laughed and said “Oh yeah, I use it every day”. But he proved he knew what he was talking about by dragging us all into this discussion about etymology which went on for ages. But it wasn’t as weird as the discussion that followed.

Everyone was pretty pissed already (except me) because they’d been drinking all night, whereas I had just turned up, but this Kiwi (I forget his name) was talking to me and my two new British friends Adam and Tim (who had only just met each other themselves actually) and I ran off to get a hamburger and when I came back they were all having a deep discussion about dimensions. The Kiwi guy was saying “This stuff about us living in a three dimensional universe is bullshit. It’s just one dimension. One dimension is space. One dimension is time. One dimension is the dimension of size” which he went on to explain was the way we perceive things on an infinitesimal or massive scale. He used the example that our universe seems massive, but even a molecule of beer could be a massive universe to something very tiny, just as how our universe could exist as a tiny molecule to some other being living in a much larger universe.

I chimed in by saying “And there could be more. Maybe there’s the universe of consciousness which is the plane that we exist on both before and after death. The dimension of the soul if you will” and he eagerly said “Yes, exactly. I think that could well be a fourth dimension. Dimensions are not just a way of measuring space, they are the perceivable reality around us”. We all paused and absorbed that and thought about it and Tim raises his glass and said “Who would have thought that’d they’d be sitting here on a sidewalk in Saigon drinking cheap beer and discussing Germanic etymology and the many dimensions of the universe ?” I chuckled and said “Surprisingly, this sort of thing happens to me more often than not. All we need now is for something crazy to happen like for the local Michael Jackson impersonator to drop by”.

Since I had the attention of two British guys, one who’d just landed here yesterday I got serious for a moment and said “What’s your take on the London riots ? Who’s doing it ? Is it a particular demographic ? Some people have said it’s all African-Americans doing it. Is that true ?” and he said “No. It’s not. It’s actually the white kids who wish they were African Americans. It’s the kids who’ve lived in central London and then their families have moved out to the suburbs so they join gangs and want to be ‘well hard’ and they go around trying to prove how tough they are by beating people up and rioting and shit. They’re disaffected youth who feel they have no power and they are making being tough gang members into their identity. It’s nothing to do with money or their lack of it. It’s about their culture. When they move into the suburbs they suddenly think they need to become hard to survive and this is how they express that”.

I said “Wow. That’s a perspective noone has shared with me. That’s really interesting. The thing that I don’t understand is why they are smashing up their own neighbourhoods. I mean, I understand rioting and burning cars or whatever in protest. But why are they smashing up family owned florist stores ? There’s nothing to loot in a florist so why are they destroying their own neighbourhood ?” Tim just said “Because they are little cunts who want to act like they’re tough so they can brag to their mates. They’ll get what’s coming to them”.

Changing the subject I idly commented as I watched people at a similar place on the other side of the street “I wonder what life’s like on that side of the street. I only come to this place and all my friends come here, and some people seem to always go over there”. Adam said “Hahah, life’s like that. My local is like that. We have two pubs opposite each other and I’ve never ever been to the other pub even though many of my friends do. We get divided each weekend by people who go to one pub and people who go to the other. At our pub we all say ‘Yeah this pub is cheaper and better. Over there you get STABBED’. And over at that pub they say ‘Our pub is cheaper and better. Over there you get STABBED’”.

I laughed and said “Yeah, we are creatures of habit, aren’t we ?” Nam, my little rose vendor friend walked by a couple of times but he didn’t approach me because he knows I won’t buy a rose early in the night. Later, around 10:30 he came past and smiled at me and I nodded and motioned him to come over. I bought a single rose and said “You know what to do ?” and he nodded and said “No problem”. I’d told the British guys that I do this, but they hadn’t seen the kid until this point and Tim leaned over and explained to this Irish girl what I was doing.

She chuckled and said “Do you think he actually does it or does he just take your money and run off ?” and I said “Oh no. He does it. I go to that bar regularly to check and it’s always full of roses that he’s given. He’s a lucky kid. He’s been doing this here for two years and I’m pretty sure he makes a fortune. I guarantee you that kid is making $50 a week. He’s earning more than his parents or any waitress working in a bar in Saigon. That kid has it made. He speaks nearly perfect English and he has a face that people love and they all buy flowers off him and he makes a fortune. I bet his parents see how much money he comes home with and are so jealous. He’s ten years old and I bet he’s supporting his entire family”.

Adam said “Yeah, he’s lucky already. He’s going to go far in life. When he grows up, he’ll go to university and he’ll use his skills as a salesperson and English speaker to travel or become successful” and I said “Yeah. He’s part of a new generation of Vietnamese. The ones growing up in the new, technological and international Saigon, speaking English and interacting with foreigners. He’s just lucky that he’s cute and he’s been given the chance to learn English at a very young age and he just happens to live in Pham Ngu Lao, so he has it made. He’s not going to grow up selling drugs or begging. He’s going to make something of his life. I’d so love to be around here in ten years time when he’s 20 years old and meet him and see what he’s made of his life and say ‘Do you remember when you were 10 years old and you used to deliver roses to waitresses for me ?’”

Everyone laughs and we’re all happy to see this side of Saigon and imagine this little kid growing up to be a successful person after getting his start in life selling roses on the streets of Pham Ngu Lao. The vendors are really great people and obviously some of them are dodgy and choose to sell drugs, but at least they’re not pickpockets or prostitutes. I’m sure Twe could make ten times as much selling her body as she could selling fans and bracelets, but she’s not interested. She wants to work hard and make an honest living, even if she doesn’t make much money. I saw her this evening too. She came up to me smiling and happy and asked how I was.

I knew I owed her something this time because I hadn’t bought anything yesterday and even though I couldn’t afford it I said “I’m really hot actually. I would love another fan. Can I have one of those wooden ones you have ?” and she said “Yes ! Please. Which one you like ?” and she unfolded a pretty one with little birds painted on it and I said “Yeah. That’ll do fine” and I gave her two dollars for it. That’s probably almost as much as I would spend drinking all night here, but I had to do it. I ate a 50c sandwich and a 65c hamburger and the India businessman bought me dinner at the restaurant so if all I spend today is $5 on drinks and a fan, that’s not too bad.

It may well be the last thing I buy off Twe because I’m hoping to go home next week and I probably can’t afford to come into Pham Ngu Lao again. I think I’ll be spending my last week in Saigon at home working on the computer and drinking cheap scotch from the supermarket. Maybe I’ll have a chance to go walking and take some photos, but that’s about it and it’s sad to realise that my time in Saigon is almost at and end for this year.

Obviously I’l be back next year in January probably, and I’m keeping my apartment and Joy’s going to stay in it while I’m away, but four months in boring small town in Australia is going to feel like an eternity after the amazing lifestyle I’ve led in Saigon, meeting people from all over the world every day. Oh, and Adam gave me 50 pence ! I had brought up the topic of collecting foreign coins and he said “Oh, do you want some pence ?” and I said “Well, I have got 20p already but if you have a different coin, that’d be great” and he gave me 50p.

He said it was his favourite of the silver coins but that his favourite was the one pound coin because it had some Welsh thing around the edge which was a nod to the Welsh part of the UK and that it was nice to see them recognise Wales instead of always referring to his country as an afterthought like “England… and Wales” and I commented that it was probably how people often treated Tasmania that way. I even made a joke later when we were talking about different laws and I said “Yeah well we often have very different laws between our states. We have six states. Well, seven if you include Tasmania but noone ever does” and Tim laughed and said “Awwww, poor Tasmania !” and I said “No, I’m only joking. We just like to make fun of them because they’re not part of the mainland”.

Tim went home later and then so did the Kiwi guy, and he said he was going to call Neil and get a job as a teacher and I said “Well, I hope to see you when I come back next year if you’re still here” and he said “Oh I will be. Two years in Japan was great and now it’s time for a couple of years in Vietnam I think” and I said “Good for you. I’m sure I’ll see you again then. Maybe I’ll call Neil when I get back and look you up at the resort” and he said “Yeah, please do”.

We actually had a couple of disagreements during the night and at one point he got really pissed off with me and wouldn’t talk to me, but we made friends again and when he left he was very enthusiastic about seeing me again and thanked me over and over for referring him to Neil for teaching work. Tim headed off and it was just Adam and I sitting drinking. We told many yarns and of course I talked about all the crazy things I’ve done in Vietnam.

I said “How long are you staying ?” and he said “Well, I have a couple of things to do back home in a few months so I can’t stay indefinitely unfortunately but I think I’ll travel Vietnam a bit, and maybe stop off somewhere else on the way home. Money’s not a problem, I just need to get home to get on with a few things. I envy you just packing up and living here though. I might come back and do it myself at one point. The more and more I see of the world, the more I realise that back home is just utter bullshit. England is a police state. We have no freedom. The government doesn’t listen to us and it’s always raising taxes and making unfair laws, and it doesn’t matter how many times people riot or protest, our voice never gets heard. Our Prime Minister wasn’t even elected and our parliment is so fucked up right now and nothing good is getting done. The standard of living is getting lower and lower and the economy is going into the shitter. I come to a place like this and it’s thriving and they have a good standard of living and they are happy and there are opportunities everywhere. I would much rather live somewhere like this. I’d miss the culture and people of my home country, but I sure wouldn’t miss the country itself and all its problems”.

“Well said”, I responded. “I feel similarly. In Australia we are always told what a lucky country we are and how we have it so good. They keep saying ‘You are so lucky to have access to cheap medicine because it’s subsidised by the government’ but even still, a box of antibiotics will still cost you almost $6 with the subsidy, yet here I can buy the same antibiotics for only $1 ! It’s absurd how expensive life is in Australia. I know Vietnamese people don’t earn much money and the annual income is very low, but when the price of everything is so low as well it all balances out. I mean, ultimately, in Australia you can’t afford to go out and drink beer every night and eat at restaurants. It’s prohibitively expensive. This pint of beer in Australia would cost me $7. Here it costs me a bit over 20 cents”.

Adam said “I know what you mean. This pint would be at least 4 pounds 50 back home. When you go out to the pub in England or Wales you end up only having 4 beers, not because you want to but because you just can’t afford to drink any more than that without spending a week’s wages in a couple of nights” and I said “Yeah. It’s bullshit isn’t it ? Beer is so cheap to make, so why does it have to be so expensive that you can’t afford it ? It’s not in Vietnam. Even the poorest person can afford to go to the pub and have a dozen beers because it’s cheap. The lifestyle is affordable here. Back in Australia, this lifestyle is not affordable. You cannot go out and drink 16 beers like I have tonight without spending hundreds of dollars. You certainly can’t afford to eat at a restaurant every night, but here you can even on a Vietnamese wage. To me that says that life is better in Vietnam. Back home we work our asses off just to get an unaffordable mortgage that we’ll pay off for our entire lives and despite being in a lucky, affluent society, we still can’t afford to eat out and drink at the pub when we want to because it just costs too much”.

“Yeah, fuck the first world” says Adam. “This is a much better place to live. Better techonology. Better internet. Better phone networks. Better lifestyle. If you want to travel in Vietnam, it’s easy. Not like back home”. “I know,” I say, adding “I was looking at a travel agent earlier and I was wondering how much it was to get to Laos or Cambodia in case I needed to leave the country to reset my visa. You know what it costs to go to Phnom Penh on a bus from Saigon ? SIX FUCKING DOLLARS. That’s all. You can’t catch a bus from Brisbane to the Gold Coast for six dollars, but here you can travel to another country for the same price that you’ll buy a plate of spaghetti in a nice restaurant”.

When I come back in January, that is exactly what I’ll be doing. I think first thing I do when I get back is I will take some random journeys. I didn’t make it to Hue this time around but Hue and especially Hoi An are right at the top of my list of places that I have to visit. Also, everyone tells me Cambodia is just wonderful. They say the people are so amazingly friendly. I think I have proof of that because while we were drinking earlier, the Cambodian girl that I met last week turned up and she saw me and said “Hi David ! Nice to see you” and gave me a hug !

She’s just some Cambodian girl that I met while out drinking and I have barely spoke to her. I just seem to end up at her table drinking with friends and she’s there, so she said hello as soon as she saw me and gave me a big smile and a hug. So yeah, I do want to see Vientiane in Laos and Phnom Penh in Cambodia because everyone says that Phnom Penh especially is a great place.

Anyway I must bring this rambling story to a close because I’m hungry and I need to go and eat before I come home and get stuck into my emails and start on Claire’s website for the St Andrews Society this afternoon. I’d love to go into the city and eat with Joy but it’s a long way and I don’t have time. I need to catch up on things at home so sadly I can’t do that today so I’ll send him a text and tell him I’ll see him another day.

Isn’t Vietnamese funny to look at if you’re from a country that doesn’t use diacritics in your alphabet ? It sort of looks like an explosion in a keyboard factory. :”)

The title of this article is “Cat temple” because that’s where I went. I read about this place in The Word. It has a real name which I believe is “Hội quán Quảng Triệu” but what everyone calls it is “The Cat Temple”. The reason is that some years ago one of the caretakers took in a stray cat. And then another. And the next thing they knew there was dozens of cats living in the temple and it became known as the “The Cat Temple”.

I have wanted to visit a temple since before I got to Vietnam but I had been very afraid to do it. While I know that if I made a mistake and walked somewhere I shouldn’t or did the wrong thing that they would forgive me because I’m a foreigner, I just didn’t want to look stupid and embarrass myself. But when I heard about the Cat Temple I had to go. It’s on the road beside the Ben Nghe channel in District 1 so it has a nice location.

It’s just a little city temple nestled in between the surrounding shops and apartments but it is, as expected, very beautiful inside. I have never been inside a Buddhist temple before so this was an experience even though it was only a small temple. There was lots of beautiful architecture and ornate carvings and of course amazing statues and shrines.

I knew that somewhere the would be a donation box because you are of course expected to make a donation if you visit a temple, especially to take photos. But I wasn’t sure where it was. There were various ornate boxes with slots in them but I wasn’t sure what they were for because I thought they may be to put a fortune into or something. While I know a little about Buddhist teachings I do not know about the customs at temples. Fortunately the guy who greets you at the door came up to me and pointed to them and told me that’s where I was supposed to donate and I thanked him and put 50,000 dong into the box.

Sadly there weren’t many cats visible. I could hear more of them upstairs meowing and whining but it didn’t look like that area was open to the public so I just wandered around downstairs. There were two cats in the main temple area and one was eating from a small bowl of some sort of dry food that looked like grain or something.

They sure looked like they owned the place I tell you. They would look at me with this look that said “What ? I live here. What the hell are you doing here ?” Another one leisurely walked over to an ornate temple pole and turned around and pissed on it. I chuckled. He’s not even going to get in trouble for that, the little bugger. Sacred cats.

I wandered around and took some more photos, hoping to see more cats but sadly I didn’t even though I could hear them. It was a very humbling experience to walk around a beautiful Buddhist temple for the first time in my life and seeing it inhabited by stray cats was unique and fascinating.

So now you’ve heard about it and seen the photos. Come and visit the Cat Temple. It’s at 122 Ben Guong Duong. Q.1. Saigon.

Twitter is funny isn’t it ? Not because it’s trying to be. Just because it so often IS. I was on Twitter, posting something (yeah, I know, that’s rare for me) and I thought I’d see what people were saying about Norway, so I searched for #prayfornorway, because you all know how I feel about that stupid #prayfor… hashtag. But I guess it’s become so institutionalised that now it’s the way to bring disaster to people’s attention.

Anyway, many of the tweeters are horrified that #sorryjustin, a series of tweets about Justin Bieber is trending, while news of Norway is not. Twitter is just so fucked up like that. They say they have this super advanced algorithm. Yeah ? You know what we all call it ? The Bieber Algorithm. Because Bieber is the only thing that ever trends. World war three could break out and Bieber would still out-trend it. I suspect Twitter only exists as a marketing machine for Justin Bieber. They admitted once that Bieber tweets account for the resources of three entire racks of servers. Here’s what some people are saying about Bieber today.

But there’s another interesting Twitigeous phenomenon I observed today. (That’s my own word btw. I have copyright on that and Google will back me up on that. I made it up to describe people who are only religious on Twitter) Celebrity prayer. You know how everyone says they are praying for stuff on Twitter ? Well it seems that while a twayer (A Twitter Prayer of course ! I own that one too) can you know, save lives and stuff, apparently a celebrity twayer can move mountains ! What do I mean ? Well, people around the world are begging Justin Bieber to tweet a prayer for Norway.

Yeah. I don’t know what will happen if Bieber prays for Norway. Maybe the dead will rise up from their graves and … no nevermind. Too soon to be making jokes like that. Anyway, this girl said it best:

Well, you’re actually half right there _Ashleeiigh. Technically I think that if you are religious, you should probably be ACTUALLY praying to your god over Norway, but apparently that’s what constitutes a prayer in the 21st century. The internet has reduced our prayers to 140 character messages including the all important #prayfor… hashtag. In today’s busy society we don’t have time to actually PRAY. We just say we pray. We tway (Yes, I obviously own that too, that’s the present tense verb of the noun twayer).

But, I personally (like my good friend Nick Cave, who said it in his great song “Into My Arms”) do not believe in a god that accepts prayers and alters the fabric of causality in the universe based on what people desire and ask him for. I would love that the world worked that way and just praying could make things happen, but in my opinion it doesn’t and If you do believe that, I feel a little sorry for your naivety, no offence. But anyway, what I wanted to say is that twaying (mine also) does have positive benefit. I’m not sure if god has Twitter (Yes, I capitalise Twitter but not god. Does that piss you off ?), but everyone else on the planet does.

And when you tway for Norway (haha, don’t you love accidental alliteration ?) online, people see it. It puts the disaster in people’s minds. It creates awareness. What good does awareness do ? Well. It couldn’t do harm, that’s for sure. It’s difficult to quantify exactly how this awareness is better for us, because I’m not a sociology professor, but in my opinion it causes us to break stride and think for a moment.

Even if that awareness does no good for the people of Norway, it does good for the people who read that twayer. It elevates the consciousness. It puts our shitty lives in perspective and it makes our own problems seem a little less dramatic. I’d even like to think that maybe someone else who is on the verge of snapping and doing something crazy takes a step back and sees the pain this event caused and thinks twice.

So go on, tway. I know I’ve previously been heavily critical of people twaying, (praying on Twitter), but on reflection, I think it’s a good thing. Don’t be under the illusion that you are doing anything religious, that’s for sure. But I think the concept of prayer is evolving in this internet age and is become something else. It doesn’t involve actual prayer to a god. It’s just about sharing with others that you’re thinking about a person or a group of people.

And we all like to know that someone is thinking about us, right ?