No
party can be categorised as such until something gets smashed.
Normally its something of the hosts, but I must be too considerate
for that. Some may disagree and just call me an idiot instead, and
part of the following journal makes it hard to argue against. The
credit card debacle showed that I didn't come here to learn anything
from past experiences, just relive them. There has been plenty of
amazing new experiences so far, but documenting them is going to
prove harder than I thought.
From
a pub four floors up we watched the people celebrate the 1,000 year
birthday like a nest of ants on meth. The time lapse function on my
camera seemed like a great way to capture the life and limb
threatening manoeuvres that were undertaken by all on the road with
utter nonchalance. Little did they realise the greatest threat was to
come from above. Balancing my camera on the hand rail with all the
delicacy of a micro surgeon, I foolishly believed holding my hands
under either side of the rail would ensure no harm could result. Do I
even need to detail how this ended given my last 3 cameras have
suffered similar fates?
What
I didn't count on was the gesticulating punter behind me using the
rail to punctuate a rather important point like a judge with his
gavel. The camera flew off the rail, took a few tumbling bounces
across the landing right before my disbelieving eyes and disappeared
over the edge. Perhaps the good karma from my non-killing ways meant
it wasn't my day to kill a pedestrian with an aerial camera bomb. How
the crowds had parted to avoid a cranial landing spot defies
explanation given the density of life beneath us. Had the camera
landed on an unsuspecting noggin instead, it may have fared better
than it did. Needless to say, camera number 4 in less than 2 years
now lays in pieces and my budget requires another large dint to
ensure the whole holiday isn't left up to my unreliable memory.
Thankfully
travelling in Vietnam is so ridiculously cheap that having to buy a
new camera at Western prices isn't too much of an issue. A recent
raid on an ATM told me that once again I am a millionaire. Most
prices written in dong, the Vietnamese currency, drop the last 3
zero's to save on ink and effort as $1AUS equals about 19,000 dong.
Paying between 25 and 40k for a Vietnamese meal seems like it should
be caviar and golden goose eggs until you do the conversion in your
head. Then you order another 3 dishes just because it still works out
to be cheaper than a bowl of wedges from Matso's.
Unfortunately
Vietnam, like Thailand, has a disturbing proclivity to put cucumber
with every single meal. With my utter hatred of cucumber, it's like
decorating the plate with some steaming fresh dog shit. It's rarely
in the meal itself so perhaps I am seeing this the wrong way round.
Perhaps my disgust is so strong, it is understood even by those who
lack the ESP skills that some wait staff are expected to have. One
veggie burger was served with two layers of cucumber in it proving
that it is always best to eat the local cuisine or be prepared for
individual interpretations to range from spot on to barely
recognisable.
Lindsay
is a great one for hitting the street stalls for the real deal in a
way that my vegetarian palate forbids me from doing with the same
reckless abandon. Although, I could barely keep my laughter to myself
when she tried to order veggie noodle soup off a lady who was midway
through hacking up chicken carcasses. Not understanding a word of
English, the lady kept on showering the area with chunks of flesh as
Lindsay tried explaining her wishes with pointing and ever clearer
articulation; of the wrong language. The joke ended up being on me
when we went to a restaurant for veggie noodle soup and I was the one
who got pieces of chicken in the bottom of my bowl, possibly having
fallen out of my hair.
Other
than terrorising the locals with unusual food requests, our time in
Hanoi was spent in war museums. The first was Hao Lo Prison where
Presidential failure John McCain was held prisoner. It was also used
by the French to detain and torture locals who rightfully opposed
being governed from the other side of the world by a completely
different culture. With a touch of propaganda though, the American
P.O.W.'s were made out to look like they were merely enjoying a
weekend retreat at summer camp.
Like
the Army museum, both places balanced out the one sided view
Westerners have of the Vietnam war. The American war is shown in all
the devastation the self appointed 'World Police' wreaked on a
country's fight for independence then political unity. As informative
as a nutritional panel on a tin of paint, the labelling of all the
displays only demonstrated English translators are in short supply in
Vietnam. Nothing informative was garnered from the displays and we
were still unable to answer an oft discussed question of when the
American war actually ended. The highlight of the day was seeing what
it felt like to sit in the firing seat of a tank big enough to blow a
hole through the moon.
With
Hanoi's temperature showing little variation either side of
uncomfortably hot, we decided to head north to the hill town of Sapa.
The views are meant to be spectacular and Lindsay's camera will have
to start taking duplicates. That is unless my laptop breaks, we miss
the train and I smash her camera just to stay consistent.
