31/10/06

DOWN

A lover in Hanoi

A lover in Hanoi would be transitory. You would leave the naked bed to fuck on the balcony from which you wave to your green tea neighbours in the morning. In the streets you wouldn’t touch but would rub up against each other in cyclos. You would see yourself with your tongue wrapped around them when buying silk. You would be tourists and so find yourselves wearing matching t-shirts. And when you left in the night, Hanoi would be noisier.


A western toilet is designed for the hairless vagina

A western toilet is designed for the hairless vagina: a big bowl where one can feel free to full-stream, swirl, spirt, spray or pee with a Brazillian for which all the former methods apply at once. However your average field or squat toilet doesn’t keep in mind that pubic fashions change. The hair, it seems, is there for a reason. ‘The hair is there for a reason.’ nods a Brazillianed friend with piss splattered thongs. The hair was there for a reason.


When looking through photos you discover an erection

When looking through photos you discover an erection – a faceless man before a green rice field in one of your t-shirts with his dick in his hand. Who is the man? If he did this to your camera, what did he do to your t-shirt? Who took the shot? How did the autofocus know to hone in on his crotch? And then, finally, what a pretty penis.


You take time in the morning to dress appropriately

You take time in the morning to dress appropriately. You have three tshirts that make you look like a school boy with man boobs. You wear pants that you hate and skirts of a weird length. If you wear a singlet you cover it with something that resembles the people of your race: long, white and shapeless. Your hair is demure. You wash your flip flops so that they are red again. Then, upon leaving the bathroom, you find an aging Vietnamese man on the balcony level with yours sweeping away the morning’s dust and dirt clad in nothing but a pair of bikini-style jockettes.


Imagine drinking this much beer at home!

Imagine drinking this much beer at home! You would have problems. Your friends would be concerned. But they keep putting it in the fridge. And every now and then the fridge has a conniption and doesn’t work anymore. You lie in the bed imagining the beer melting, the aluminum dripping down through the shelves. Even though it costs more than the beer at home, even though it is eleven am and they just kicked you out of breakfast, even though there is a city brimming with guide-book delights just metres from your door, you must sit in your hotel room and you must drink it. You must. The bill doesn’t come until the end.


1/11/06

ETIQUETTE

How can one feel comfortable in a cyclo?

How can one feel comfortable in a cyclo when those that take them are huge, spread eagaled and almost certainly german. You can feel the parts of you that are german expanding to fill the red vinyl. You blush as you move past the beer shop where people recently disbanded from cyclos gaze at you with fat-legged distain. A grimace as you reach the slight climb in the road and your cyclist struggles under your weight. A moment of shame when you realize that the collection of damp notes you just handed him generously add up to about 90 cents. No more.

A woman selling bread who blushes

A woman selling bread who blushes as you pass is not necessarily in love with you. She likes the man you were there with at four thirty in the morning, eating toast and runny cheese and listening to him flirt in Vietnamese. He can only flirt in Vietnamese. In Australian he is dryer than bread. You feel somehow exempt being a woman and un-Vietnamese in his presence.

The people at the balcony table holding hands

The people at the balcony table holding hands speak carefully. Both are new to the others’ language and age. She can read the menu on the left side, he can read it on the right. Lonely planet said that this place was ‘an ideal bolthole away from the bustle’. It is untrue. As she laughs and clutches his arm the traffic is as present as in the street. But he speaks quietly and she leans into the other.

Realising that you’ve ordered the fiery pot of embers set on a wooden platform.

Realising that you’ve ordered the fiery pot of embers set on a wooden platform with fish floating on a pool of broth at the top, described on the menu simply as ‘ an Hanoi fish specialty’. You would like the people of the restaurant to stand cheering at your choice. It waitress, it is obvious, would like to offer her congratulations. But it is probably not the done thing so she shows you how to eat it instead.

Later, remembering

Later, remembering like an oven left on or a bill yet to be paid, the words list on the street before you. You would have said things. Wonderful things. And you wouldn’t have left so particularly quietly, or at all, but stayed on to sleep in that wonder.

After sex

After sex you order fried banana in chocolate sauce. It is the only thing.

4/11/06

TOURISM

Do not look anyone that is not Vietnamese in the eye.

Do not look anyone that is not Vietnamese in the eye. They might want to talk to you and then you might find out that you’ve been to exactly the same places. Often, when avoiding their eye you might catch their t-shirt and realise that you have its cousin in your bag. You might be going on the same tour tomorrow which means that you’ll probably become friends. You might fall in love with them and then your cultural experience will be ruined seeing, instead of Vietnam on a shoe-string, the inside of an English back packers mouth.

A hot pink, ankle length rara skirt on the bus to Halong Bay.

A hot pink, ankle length rara skirt on the bus to Halong Bay is not a choice many women would make. You hope that this woman is on the boat with you as you would like to see her bikini.


5/11/06

SAME SAME BUT...

Surrounded by caste mountains bulging from the sea you are cold

Surrounded by caste mountains bulging from the sea you are cold. French is spoken. The false note of a digital camera shuts and opens. A crow plucks some already dead thing from the water. And a girl row, row, rows her boat. Truly gently out to the sea. It is 6.30 in the morning. It is nice to be alone.

A tourist in Vietnam, you find yourself contemplating Australia.

A tourist in Vietnam, you find yourself contemplating Australia.

6/11/06

APATHY

After the boat

After the boat. After the boat you will be on land. Your legs will sway like spiders. The tour will be over. After a while you will be hungry again. You will eat and someone at the next table will say something about the price of things.

Imagine looking at a note pad or reading a book before such beauty.

Imagine looking at a note pad or reading a book before such beauty. Hours of travel and one starts to look down, not up, it seems.

Perhaps we do share a universal consciousness

Perhaps we do share a universal consciousness and it is this that makes every tourist in every country talk about the same things.

As the hair grows slowly

As the hair grows slowly under your arms, in your legs, over your cunt, Vietnam moves slowly through Monday. There is fishing to be done. And fruit to sell and gather.


8/11/06

REPETITION

To the people that have thought and written this before

To the people that have thought and written this before: isn’t it is gut wrenching? As beautiful and as mind blowing as Vietnam is, as a tourist you seem incapable of having a single original thought.

To be morning in Sapa

To be morning in Sapa is to be mist covered. It is to be mouths washed out and spat onto the streets. It is to be rotten toothed and opium induced. It is to be sold something. It is to feel the dense wash of the mountains, the shadowed rocks. It is to be, finally, away and at home.

Today you are all doing what you need to

Today you are all doing what you need to. She is working at yoga on the floor of the room. He is taking photos with the camera in the street. You are writing stories on the balcony while the selling girls scuff around below and the mountains layer themselves in something different again. The motorbikes buzz.

Afraid to pee

Afraid to pee because each time there is more. Diarrhea. Nausea. A stabling pain in your gut. But it is this that has made you stop and remember. On holiday, dear, you are supposed to be seated.

On the boat

On the boat his body exploded from both ends and as the cabin filled with the smell of shit and vomit you watched his beautiful size begin to waste away. The only thing you could do for him was to give him water. This was done and he was ill again.

Your body is the best and the worst it has ever been.

Your body is the best and the worst it has ever been. On the inside, a scratched raw nerve. An aching. A limping in your foot. A white coated tongue and a pain that won’t leave you. On the outside, toned. Your bum perched at the end of your back like some school boys. Your breasts bigger, pointing upward. Exercise, it seems, is illusive. (So that’s what all those people have done!) The Oscars make sense, finally.

Aching.

Aching. Time to go to bed. Again. In the middle of the day. Buying sneakers will have to wait for later.