More Postcards from Viet Nam ..part two

“ as the lightning flashed, thunder clapped and the water level rose before my eyes, I found myself knee deep in water spewing up out of the drains:

Last year I could have written a book but second time around I’m a little more jaded about my whole Ho Chi Minh City experience.

A short walk of one block might see me approached/hassled  by a cyclo rider who will say ‘where you go’ or ‘where you from Madame’, then it’s Aussie, Aussie, Aussie , Oi, Oi, Oi,  followed by the inevitable offer of a tour of the city,  a motor bike rider asking to take me somewhere, someone wanting to sell me sunglasses, another wanting to sell me books, a female with sleeping and possibly drugged baby across her shoulder wanting to sell me chewing gum and so it goes on and on and on and on! This is all while I’m trying to dodge all the obstacles on the footpath and having to walk out onto the road amidst the bikes, taxis, cars and food wagons that are weaving in and out around you.

It has been raining on and off pretty much every day since arriving in Saigon, my friend Heather and I had planned on going somewhere, anywhere in fact but alas it is raining all over SE Asia so Thailand is off as is Lao and Cambodia and the central and north of Vietnam. Oh dear, to think I might be stuck here in Saigon for another week and a half is not a very inspiring thought.

Yesterday we went downtown and on cue the rains started, well it rained and it rained and it rained. Lightning flashed, thunder clapped and the water level started to rise and continued to do so until the cars and bikes were driving through water almost up to the top of their mudguards and we were wading through knee deep water that had become a river raging through the streets of Saigon that has inadequate drainage at the best of times.

What to do but high tail it around the corner to the nearest Highlands Café, a western styled chain where you can relax in modern surroundings, buy high priced speciality teas and coffees and fill your face with scrumptious cakes while lounging on comfy settees. You also have free use of any one of dozens of computers set up around the perimeter of the café. And so there we sat for some hours chatting to another western teacher who had been there for hours also waiting for the reluge to ease.

When the rain started we were in a computer shop where Heather was having some gremlins sorted out with her laptop when a great flurry of excitement erupted as it had started raining inside the shop and all the computers and gear were getting wet.

You know back home when a storm comes by we switch off our computers and unplug the power, not so here, everyone just goes along their merry way. Can’t imagine they would have such super duper power surge protectors but, hey, who knows!

And let’s not even mention the hundreds of electric cables strung up and bundled together, weaving like spaghetti throughout the city streets!

The other day I was sitting in a café having tra da (iced Vietnamese tea)   it’s the culture here, it’s what you do….eat, drink and socialise oh and shop, unless you work there’s nothing else to do….anyway a guy rolls along on his motorbike with his box of books on the back which are for sale, he pulls up alongside a young guy and I watch thinking ‘this will be amusing, thinking he would be hassling the foreigner to buy a book……so as the rider gets off he lifts the seat and takes what looks like a cigarette packet out and throws it on top of the books…..mmmmmmmm me thinks this is odd……..and so the young guy ‘pretends’ to be looking at the books, he takes some money out of his wallet and gives it to the motor rider, a particularly friendly hand shake takes place and the guy walks off without a book……surprise, surprise the cigarette pack has mysteriously disappeared.

Reminds me of another café I know where a woman used to pull up alongside the tables out front of the café where I socialised most evenings, she had a small dog chained to her bike which was her diversion………she was the local supplier!

So what else has happened in this seething metropolis…..oh yes I have been befriended by a local woman of my age. She speaks fairly good English and walked with me for a while the other day, we met for a coffee and she shared some of her life with me.

He r mother was Vietnamese and her father was French, he took off and she never knew him. My new friend who calls herself Elizabeth said her grandmother told her mother that she should get rid of her and she was no good, being of mixed blood. But her mother kept her. Elizabeth had a son who was taken into care by her friend’s family in the Mekong, lots of waterways there and the child drowned when he was five years old. It seems Elizabeth may have had this child out of wedlock.

Elizabeth’s mother married another man, a Vietnamese who was taken prisoner in 1975, they had a son who is Elizabeth’s brother. They have little contact and Elizabeth appears to have been living alone all of her life. When Elizabeth’s mother died, the son took over the house and sold it, keeping the money for himself.

Elizabeth’s mother married another foreigner, and her grandmother married a Chinese, oh what a tangled web we weave. Elizabeth has been an outcast all of her life from what I can gather.  

As with all these situations, I ask myself, what is real what is not…it’s always hard to know and harder to know how best to help someone or if you are really helping at all.  For me, it’s a poor life in comparison to my own, I use my intuition as it’s all I have to go by and act accordingly.

Elizabeth has some sort of cataract on one eye, I had a spare pair of glasses which I gave her and yesterday I bought her an English/Vietnamese dictionary. 

You could be handing out money all day every day and never really knowing who is getting that money or if it’s being used wisely or not. Many ppl come here and go to orphanages etc and give money or materials, often these resources never get to the children so it’s a matter of stepping back and thinking about how best you can help for the long term. Donating time to teach English would be a good thing, finding ways to improve hygiene, sanitation etc and asking to see what their policies are (many won’t have any) and how they are distributing money would be another good idea.

Researching organisations that have policies in place for long term sustainability and transparency would also be wise.

But these are things I’ve learned as I have become more familiar with how things work on a day to day basis and as I talk to locals and gain a greater understanding of the culture and mindset of the people.

As a result of my ‘dancing in the rain’ the other day my cold has freshened up again  so I am dosing up on Vit C, and all my other pills and chilling out in my room. My health is definitely not top notch at the moment and being in SE Asia is not the best environment to be in when the immune system is low!!....to be continued……..