Textick

Wednesday, 7th December, Perfume Grass Inn, Nha Trang, 2:45pm

I’m starting to feel increasingly restless in Nha Trang, but I’m still enjoying it. I’m just currently prone to random hypo-attacks, where I run around the room making animal noises, or start flicking James on the thigh, or make him play lame word games with me. It’s raining here. It’s raining a lot. In fact, it’s torrential, and makes leaving the hotel quite an adventure. But with that in mind, it’s nice to have an excuse not to have to leave the room , and we (apparently) saving money. But then we had a major bender on our first night here, so any money we might have saved is now just going back into covering that big night. We’re still living on $50AUD a day, though, including accommodation.
But let me start at the beginning, since I was too hungover to write yesterday, so I must go back as far as Monday night, after my last entry, when we went for dinner at the restaurant in our hotel, and then went for a “few quiet drinks” at a bar down the road…
The bar we chose to frequent is called “Crazy Kim’s,” and it donates a lot of time and money (particularly money from the bar and restaurant) to helping raise awareness against paedophilia in Vietnam. We decided it was a good cause, and if we were going to spend money at least we’d be spending it somewhere where a bit of the money goes back into the community. The bar was really empty (the whole of Nha Trang is really empty right now, which makes it super relaxing, and the vendor’s aren’t too pushy because it’s not on-season), and the happy hour deal is two-for-one, so for every one cocktail I bought, I was getting two. Yay! So I had a couple (read many) of cocktails, and we started a game of pool (and everyone knows how gifted at pool James and I are!). It took us over an hour to get down to two balls and the 8. Anyway, we saw a guy come in and he started up a game by himself, so I asked him if he wanted us to play against him (assuring him we were awful). I told him that if he plays us, at least he knows who won! His name was Jamie, and he was a British lawyer living in Melbourne with his Canadian wife, and he’d come on a vacation by himself (his wife unable to get time away from work).
So Jamie, James and I started drinking in rounds, and we were chatting for a couple of hours. Then suddenly we became aware of the room around us. We were in a hooker bar. The prostitutes were 2:1, and the men were dodgy, dodgy, dodgy. We were drunk, and we were oblivious until that point. Plus it was so suss that a bar supposedly out to stop child prostitution would be so full of hookers. You’d think that this bar of all bars would be very selective over their clientele. But here they were, about a dozen hard-faced working girls, looking through me and casting cold, distanced stares at all the men. So we started to play a little game called “Guess The Nationality.” We started picking out men, and trying to guess where they were from. Then I would go up to the bar to get us another round, and strike up a conversation with whoever was the subject of our scrutiny, and glean as much information as possible. Man, am I good at doing that!! It was so much fun. It started off with this girl who looked South American, and she was dressed like a major, skanky, hussy-ho. She looked about 15, and her shirt was tied to reveal her low-riding jeans (which prompted questions about the presence of any genitalia) and her tanned, toned stomach. She was my first subject. I walked over to the bar, and began chatting by pointing at her companions shirt and saying,
“That’s cool! What does it mean?”
It was a picture of a chicken. He stood and turned around, and on the back it said “do the funky chicken.” So I did, and the girl we thought was South American (who will from now be called Shakira) did the funky chicken with me. I was in! So I said,
“Where are you guys from? South America?”
“Man, that’s the second time we’ve had that tonight!” Shakira said in a bastardised English accent. It turned out she was French, and up close she looked a lot older than initially thought. I stood chatting to them for about five minutes, then I scurried back to our table to relay my discoveries. Then they started asking about an older man, in his forties, in a safari suit, with a bald head and an awkward chin.
“Time for another round?”
This time, I gave a giggle at the bar and said,
“I have noooo idea what I’ve just ordered” (which was a lie). Unable to resist my wily drunken charm, the safari suit turned and said,
“Doesn’t matter, does it?”
I’m in again!
“Oh, you’re from South Africa?”
“No, Adelaide!” he said, looking a bit shocked that I hadn’t picked his accent. So we chatted for awhile, he was a lecturer (which is disturbing) and he was very keen on a prostitute wearing a tiny frilly skirt and high platform shoes. So I let them get back to business. I had the information I needed.
Suddenly it was almost midnight, and Shakira had mentioned some sailing club where everybody went to after Crazy Kim’s. But first we got chatting with a German guy who was travelling around the country with a Vietnamese guide who had become his friend. Then we moved on. Or should I say “swam on”?
The rain was…unbelievable. It was so heavy and so constant that we were drenched within seconds. The streets were completely flooded, and James and I kept losing our thongs in knee-deep puddles. We took them off, abandoning the attempt to keep dry under the umbrella, and the three of us just ran for it (Jamie was still with us, obviously, but he ran ahead). It was completely surreal. I have never experienced rain like that, and I have never waded so deep through water. At one stage, I slipped and fell, backpack and all, into a really deep puddle. The next day, I had a bruise the size of my fist on my thigh (it’s super impressive, even now!), and all our books were soaked through. Now they’re warped, but still readable, so it’s okay. The bizarre thing was that the water was really warm and pleasant to run through. We weren’t even shivering!
As we ran down a street we passed three Germans sheltering in a shopfront, and a frog. The frog conversation went:
“Is that a frog?”
“No, it’s a rock.”
“No it’s not, it’s a frog!”
“Is it alive?”
“Touch it and find out.”
(James nudges the frog with his shoe, it jumps forward).
“Yep! It’s alive!”
The sailing club was quite snooty, and the drinks were triple the price of everywhere else in Nha Trang, but there were barely any hookers and a lot of dancing. I went to the bathroom, chatted briefly to a girl from Melbourne, then came back to the boys. They spotted Shakira, and asked me to go find out her age. When I got to her and said hello, the girl from the bathroom was there, too, so I ended up dancing for ages. It turned out Shakira was 23, and the Melbourne girl was named Ally. Eventually I extricated myself from my bad dancing, and staggered back to the boys.
Then the sailing club closed up, and we started chatting to a group of about five Irish boys. We went with them to another bar called the “Why Not Bar,” but we didn’t last long. I was getting so drunk that the room was beginning to spin a little, so we figured it was time to leave. Plus the “Why Not” bar was filled to the brim with hookers.
When we got back to our hotel (gone 3am), everything was closed and locked. We were told there was a 24-hour reception, but the gates were locked and bolted. But I was drunk, and I could see our key sitting on a table just on the other side of the gate. So off came the thongs and up and over the gate I went! It was easy, there were clear foot-holds, and there was no other choice. When I reached the other side, I grabbed our key, and then scaled the gate again to get the backpack from James so he could climb over.
Then suddenly we heard a grunted murming, and James said,
“Angela!”
He pointed to a corner, where a sleepy Vietnamese man was stirring. He was the nightwatchman, and he had a bed set up in the courtyard. He staggered awake and I jumped down, blushing and apologising profusely. He unlocked the gate, he was sooooo groggy, and let James in. He felt like kids being greeted by our stern fathers, and were so embarrassed that we were coming home late. Jamie told us today (we’ve caught up with him again since the drunken debauched night) that his guard had asked him where he’d been. Our guard was very good-humoured about it all. So we giggled our way up into our room and then drunkenly collapsed in bed.
The next morning we were both quite a little bit hung-over. We ate breakfast, chatted to and English couple named Amy and Luke, and then went and bought books to while away the afternoon. Which we did. We didn’t do anything of note all day, except read, sleep, and watch TV. The joy of hangovers and bad weather!
In the evening we went and ate at a fresh seafood restaurant, and it was okay but not brilliant, and then we went and had coffee, and then we just came back to the hotel room and watched TV while I nursed another bout of ‘Nam belly. It’s nothing too serious yet.
This morning we woke early because we’d volunteered to help at a local free school. The classes go for two hours, and it’s the only schooling the kids get. They work out of books, and you’re just expected to read through and help them with their grammar. Except that when we left, it was raining so badly that we had to turn around and go home. We were soaked, and we decided to retire to our room until it eased a bit, then go to the school (the nightwatchman was in the foyer, and he laughed and laughed with his friend when he saw how wet we’d got. We laughed as well). At about 10 it had cleared up, so we got to the school a ½ hour late.
The kids were wonderful. They ranged in age from 10-20, and had very good written English skills, but needed a lot of help with pronunciations. James was very hesitant to help at first because he mumbles so badly and thought he’d be a terrible teacher, but I talked him into it and I think he found it extremely rewarding. This is also where we caught up with Jamie again; he walked in not long after us, and we hung out afterwards for a drink. We also might be catching up for dinner tonight, but there’s been no real plans made (and either way we’ll see him again tomorrow morning, as he’s helping with the kids again as well). Anyway. The kids. It was just a wonderful, unique experience, and they were all very excited and friendly to meet us. They’re quite touchy-feely people, actually, and the girls quickly gave me hugs and acted excited to see us all.
It was exhausting work, as well. You have to explain everything you say, and it’s tiring to consciously over-pronounce everything, and to give your strongest attention to whoever you’re helping. The most common mistakes was dropping the final letters of words, and everyone struggled with the “dr” sound (as in “dressed”). One of the activities required them to distinguish between the words “awake, wake up, get up, go to bed, sleep, asleep” etc, and it was actually quite hard to try and explain to them what the difference between all the words are. I also had the joy of trying to define the words “else” and “psychologist,” which was challenging! After the lesson, the girls got out booklets with song lyrics in them, and asked me to sing them. I was like, “uh…are you serious?”. It turns out that they had the lyrics, but no music, and had never heard the songs in their life. I was happy to oblige, but I had to flick till I found a song I knew. So I sang three songs for them. I sang (and this would make Angela Booth so happy!) “Oh! Carol” first, then “Love Me Tender,” then “Jingle Bell Rock,” which they all joined in with because they’re learning it for a performance. They told us the performance was on today, at 12, and since class finished at 11:30 Jamie, James and I decided to go get a drink and then go back and watch. It turned out to be a rehearsal, though, so we sat and watched for about ten minutes, then left.
And that brings us up to speed! We’re helping with the English lessons again tomorrow morning, and then we’re going to leave Nha Trang on Friday. We’ll still be a day ahead of ourselves as a result, but this cloudiness is never going to lift, and by Friday we’ll have had enough relaxing, I think!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 1:59 am and is filed under Travel, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.