so i had to venture out into the world yesterday. needed to buy some brake pads for our bikes, and the one bike shop that id spent 2 hours finding the day before had nothing, despite the fact that they had a pretty nice cannondale with really nice discs. had a moment of irrational thought, and considered buying it, ive always wanted one of them. that passed. i showed the dude my corroded rear disc that id rescued from lissas corrosive self destructive brake pads. he said "shimano. good. no problem" even taking into account the language barrier, it didnt look like he was willing to find a replacement for me. so he tuned up my bike a little (good to get something out of my little adventure) and i paid him 20,000 dong (about $1.30), went home and we had a curry. next stage in the mission. id had a cycle rickshaw driver hassling me for 2 days, finally took him up on his constant offers (for some reason its the rickshaw drivers that are the most persistant). i gave him the packet that my one spare set of brake pads (an old set, a bit worn, not very bright bringing them instead of new ones) had come in, and he said yeah yeah no problem! really enthusiastic. he showed it to a guy on the street who recommended a bike shop to him and off we went. ive been getting more stares than usual from people because ive just cut a new mohawk with my leatherman (it took 2 hours. they are really small scissors). its really funny to look back and catch them gawping at me. despite the fact that some pop musician over here is wearing a tshirt with sid vicious on it in his ultra emo music video. he must have had the "more lock and loll" guy from lost in translation as his bland manager. all the music vids follow the same formula. they seem incapable of originality. young guy with pretty cool hair (nobody here outside of these music videos would ever cut their hair like that) has just been dumped by his girlfriend, he spends at least 10 seconds of the video texting (never calling) her on a new phone that he shouldnt really be able to afford, and moping around looking gloomy. she comes over, and they go for a ride on his moped out to a place with really nice scenery. the scenery is the only thing that ever changes in these videos. sometimes ankor wat (when in cambodia), sometimes a rice paddy or forest.they sit for a while in silence (about 8 to 12 seconds) then she leans on his shoulder and they both smile and are happy again then theres some cheesy romantic shots, interspersed with him singing on stage, looking like a rocker gone karoke. thats about the end of it.
ok, so we cruised around for 20 minutes checkin out the bike shops in the area around district 1 the backpacker area. nothing there, but he seemed to be doing better than i had the day before because people at least understood what he wanted and helped by telling him where another bike shop was that could maybe find what we were looking for. we eventually exausted all the options, and headed off on the long ride through the MANIC traffic towards cholon district, chinatown. we had a cyclo race on the way with 2 hippy girls with dreads who were somehow crammed into another rickshaw (maybe they were anti fossil fuels and too poor to get one each). we also managed to badly cut off a flash as black mercedes at the lights that was being driven by some dick who looked like a banker or cocacola company exec or something. good man my driver. the rickshaw is the king of the road when there is a white guy stuck out the front, noone will fuck with you, so my dude made full advantage of this, cleaving his way through the motorbikes at the intersections. we got to chinatown after some mild hearing loss due to the horns. it was a huge long street, as dirty as chinatown always is with accumulated junk and scum, and was literally dedicated to just bicycle and motorbike parts. i felt like the king riding through town (except that noone was bowing their heads in recognition of my greatness) because all eyes were on me. i have never been stared at in unison by so many people, i kinda felt like i should stand up and make a speach or something. people tapped their unobservent friends on the arm so that they could share the moment and gawp together. the face muscles got tired from making eye contact and smiling to get some reaction beyond the simple stare, so i gave up and just stared back. after a few failed stops, my driver came back and pulled me into a shop that had disc brake sets stashed away at the back. i showed the guy the packet, and said shimano. shimano. he said no, no, tried to sell me some chinese rubbish, whole new caliper mechanisms, entirely different from my own. i decided finally that everything was fucked, and we got the hell out of there. on the long ride home my driver managed to cause a motorcycle crash as he pulled out to pass a bus in parallel with another rickshaw doing the same thing. all the scooters were squeezed into a bottleneck, and the two at the end collided and fell off. kinda like and we all rolled over and one fell out. i think the guy was ok, he landed on the grass median strip thing in the middle of the road. couldnt really tell though cause my driver didnt give a shit and just cruised on. on the way he managed to get through to me (in his really good english with an accent so thick i could barely understand him) that he was a political prisoner because he spoke english when the VC took control of saigon in 1975, and he spent time in a prison where he was beaten with AK47's. he pointed out all the old political prisons along the way, as well as his old highschool and the place where they brew saigon beer (a really understrength brew that makes up for it by having a big bottle for cheap. kinda like the guy in the mercedes i think). we finally got back to backpacker street with not much resolved other than cancelling a whole load of bike shops off my list. i took lissas bike this morning to the first shop that id been to. it was open even though its a sunday, and a different guy was working. i showed him the packet, and he said "i can order, it take 10 days". just like that. fuck. so he is getting me 3 sets of pads and a new disc trom thailand or japan or whereever the hell they come from. i left the bike there to get a tuneup and took a moto home. will ride the mekong delta, and by the time we get back to HCMC they should be almost ready. with any luck. but i reckon ive paid my dues where luck is concerned with the previous days wasted effort. fingers crossed.
an update on what we are actually doing, we went to cu chi tunnels the other day, paid out 70,000 dong each to the army for entry into the complex, and walked through the forest for a while in the pouring monsoonal rain listening to distant AK47 fire from the shooting range. a very authentic naam experience. we checked out a video that was straight communist propaganda. very funny despite its subject. "the cute sweet gentile young girl puts down her books and raises her gun even when she is sick, against the ruthless americans. she is given highest americankiller award for killing one hundred and seventy of americans. even while defending her homeland from the cowardly enemy who rains bombs on her brothers and sisters she still has time to play, and harvest the rice to feed the brave freedom fighting soldiers". no shit. it actually said that kind of rubbish for half an hour. wondering what the shy american girl in our tour thought of it. she prolly wasnt listening. we also went to the chucrh/temple that is the centre of the cao dai religion. these guys worship victor hugo as a saint, and their relioion is a mash of christianity, taoism, buddhism, hinduism, and maybe some muslim stuff i think. its as hypocritical as all the rest though because despite it being illegal or immoral or whatever to kill, they actually had their own army, the cao dai army, who fought against both the north and the south during the war and was even led by their pope. haha. the south crushed them in the end, and the pope fled to cambodia where he died in 1973 i think. they now have no pope, because they think that noone is worthy, and his seat of throne or whatever remains empty. the church was built in the 1930's and some of their symbols are a backwards swastika and an eye surrounded by a triangle. not the third eye though which would be altogether far too spiritual, but either the left or the right because it has an eyebrow. they have all kinds of garish pink and green and blue dragons, and i think they are all on crack.
enough from me. time for a curry. aux.
