Bound for Vietnam Read online

  My meal caused much merriment among the friendly hostel staff and the resident westerners. I offered my delighted audience a taste, but I had no takers. Afterwards I wondered why I had done it. I had seen it on the menu and thought, why not. I had always found it intriguing that people of some cultures ate snakes and I wanted to see what it was like. I had not, however, much wanted to try a live one.

  Eating snake is a virility trip to some Asians. (No, that was not why I wanted to try it.) Anything that is in any way shaped like a phallus is believed to give great potency. But it is usually only eaten by men. Goodness knows what the locals thought of my doing so. Maybe I gained a lot of face, or more likely they thought I was a most undesirable type of macho female. However, Khai told me I would be very strong tomorrow.

  The hostel had good vibes. My large room had walls so roughly plastered that they appeared to have been done by a blind man in the dark, but it was comfortable. And there was not one single rat in the bed with me at night. What more could a girl ask? There was even hot water. I had my own personal little water heating system, the mysteries of which Khai explained to me. They were quite something. First you turned on a gas cylinder that sat in one corner of the bathroom. The gas connected to a small instant hot water heater that you turned on next. Then, by pulling a lever and banging up and down on a wrench that was attached to a pipe that emerged through a hole in the wall, you hoped to produce hot water. There were no taps. A tin basin was strategically placed underneath the shower to catch the drips. Why just this one drip was considered worthy of such attention was a puzzle. Everything else simply leaked onto the floor regardless.

  The narrow attached bathroom was institution-sized. You entered it by climbing up two steps from the bedroom and immediately encountered a half wall that had been placed there for an obscure reason. At one end of the room was a hand-basin that looked as though it had been installed with a shovel and a loo that coursed water all the time, but still managed to flush. A length of fencing wire attached to screws that had been banged into each end wall dangled the length of the room to serve as a towel rail. A long narrow window ran along the outside wall. It contained one pane of glass, then had a four-inch gap followed by another piece of glass. Obviously there had not been enough glass to fit the lot.

  Opposite the hostel was a park in which a ludicrously tall thin mountain, on whose top a tiny pagoda perched, zoomed straight up out of nowhere. My room was almost on a level with this pagoda and my bathroom window, innocent of curtains, looked straight at it. I swore that if it housed a monk he would be able to see right in. Maybe the hotel staff sent him a flash when a female was in residence.

  Despite the bathing refinements provided, I still had cold showers two mornings running. The first morning I soaped my hair and stepped under the shower before I discovered that the gas bottle was empty. The second morning I found I could not regulate the heat of the water. Finally I got the hang of it, but it was a bit of a worry. When in use the system would give a little pop every now and then. That was the warning that the water was about to run cold for ten seconds. I learned to hop aside on this omen and wait for the water to warm up again.

  A constant hideous noise emitted from the bathroom. It originated in the exhaust fan that Khai had told me I should leave on at all times. When he had been instructing me in the intricacies of the hot water service, I had asked, ‘Isn’t this dangerous. What if the gas bottle leaks?’ He blithely replied, ‘No problem. This is why you have this.’ And he pulled a cord that set the exhaust fan off in an awful row. ‘And you leave this go all the time in case the gas leaks – so, no problem, no problem.’

  The first time I used the hand-basin I felt water splash on my feet and looked down to see that instead of the plumbing pipe trailing off into the great unknown as was usual, it ended a foot from the floor. Water fell from it, then flowed along the sloping incline of the tiles to the end of the room, where it disappeared down a convenient hole in the floor. Very cute, I thought, but where does it go from there – to the bathroom on the floor below?

  I had a large, comfortable bed, a couple of small cupboards and another piece of wire looped across the room to constitute a wardrobe. There were even bed lights, pulled on by tiny chains. An endless supply of hot water for tea, coffee or noodles was readily available. You took your thermos downstairs and swapped it for one of those that were lined up waiting outside the kitchen door.

  My room was on the top (or second) floor. On one side my neighbours were three friendly blond Danish boys and on the other, two very tall Swedish fellows. The door of my room opened onto a long narrow verandah, equipped with cane chairs at the back of the hostel. Here I could sit and contemplate a skinny mountain that rose to a great height directly in front of the verandah, or watch local life below in the courtyard between the hostel and two apartment blocks in which Chinese families lived. These buildings were the usual flat-roofed rectangular boxes but they were cheered up by rows of window planters in which bright red geraniums flowered. The buildings’ roofs had no rails or edges and sometimes I saw the occupants walking around on them which made me, with my fear of heights, feel quite ill.

  I put my undies, face washer and then my feet on the balcony rail; the weak sun was delightfully warm on my bare skin. Under my feet a small boy babbled, children played and grandpa minded the baby while mother worked. Grandma collected citrus peel from the streets and gutters and spread it out on the ground to dry. This was a local cottage industry. I learned that the peel was sold to manufacturers of Chinese medicine.

  Every Saturday night at dusk the air in the street outside the hostel was blasted asunder by a great salvo of firecrackers. I was glad to hear that this was to clear the bad spirits away for the weekend. It was a good idea. But I noticed that it was done conspicuously near the hostel. It was probably thought that the profusion of big noses in there encouraged bad spirits.

  6 Cops and Robbers

  One afternoon a few days later found me lying on my bed with my leg up on a pillow resting my throbbing wounds and recovering from what had been a difficult morning. Apart from minor irritations, I had been robbed, fallen off a bicycle and had several brushes with death.

  That morning I had been indulging in a leisurely outdoor breakfast at the hostel’s café when I decided to hire a bicycle. I hadn’t ridden a bike for years and I was never any good at it, so I am not sure what madness came over me. I will leap confidently onto any four-legged animal, but bicycles and I just don’t get along. I have scars on my knees to prove it. And now I had acquired a couple more to add to my collection. (Although the bigger of the new ones actually overlapped the scar I got two years ago when I fell off the table on which I was dancing at the sailing club after the Darwin Cup – but that is another story.)

  Looking over the line of bicycles at the kerb-side, I chose a machine whose pretty colour matched the purple trim on my hat. The hirer assured me that this was a good bicycle as I paid the eighty cents fee. I told him that I did not know how to ride a bike with gears and he said that it did not matter because the gears were broken anyway. I tied on my hat, had the cracked and broken seat adjusted to my height, shoved my bag in the front basket and wobbled shakily away from the kerb. A woman tout rode close on my rear wheel and tried to induce me to take a boat trip. Shouting desperately, ‘Get out of my way!’ I teetered around the island in the middle of the road. Then I discovered that I did not know which side of the road to take. I chose the wrong one and after reeling up the street against the oncoming traffic, I made a very dangerous turn. Motor-bikes sheared off in all directions, narrowly missing me. Wobbling along in the gutter I decided that my bike was unstable. It wasn’t just a case of a poor workman blaming his tools, as my dad would have said, the machine was terribly shaky and the handle bars seemed to be loose. I weaved up to the shop I wanted to visit and put the brakes on sharply. The front wheel hit the curb with a bang and the bloody bike threw me! Just like a horse, it chucked me up into the air and I came do
wn in a four point landing on the concrete footpath. I got up, dusted myself off and swore furiously at the bike. I had a bleeding knee, my jeans were in tatters and so was my dignity.

  My business with the shop completed, I set off again. The touting woman still pursued me. Now she wanted me to ride out into the country with her. I told her to go away. I was having quite enough trouble with the main street without contemplating the rugged countryside outside Yanshu with its rough dirt tracks and steep hills. Weaving into the tangle of bikes and motor bikes that made up the main stream of traffic, I somehow made it to the other end of the town.

  Arriving at my destination, I fell off. It seemed to be the only way I could get off this rotten invention. At least this time I landed on soft ground, but I went down sideways with the bike on top of me and got very dirty. After an hour of this I came home a grisly sight. Mulga Bill’s bike had nothing on this renegade crate. I had hit a motorbike, a pedi-cab, two pedestrians and another pushbike and only escaped the jaws of death under the wheels of every vehicle I had come near by a hair’s breadth. I was a nervous wreck by the time I finally gave up, dismounted, and walked the rest of the way back to the hostel.

  ‘You can have this bloody bike back,’ I told the bike’s custodian. Laughing uproariously, he handed me my eighty cents. The hostel staff all thought it was a great joke, but I refused to unfluff my feathers and went off in a huff.

  I finished what I had to do on foot, soothing and fortifying myself with a couple of feeds along the way. It was hard not to eat continuously in Yanshu, as everywhere you went there were side-walk cafés offering enticing dainties. Mickey Mao and Minnie Mao ran rival cafés, but both served Big Mao Burgers, whatever they were. I had a Chinese version of a pizza at Minnies. It tasted good but had the consistency of crockery. I was unable to get my knife into it, so I smashed it up and ate it with my fingers.

  At the end of the village the road passes between two peaky mountains that seem to be closely guarding it. Then it crosses over a bridge and goes out to the surrounding villages. Along the edges of the road a street market was in progress. I walked down the long line of sellers who had vegetables, fruit and clothing set out on the ground. One man had three hessian bags containing various grades of tobacco. He did not look like a grower and he certainly wasn’t a rep from Rothmans. I think his tobacco came from butts recycled out of the gutter. On several occasions I had seen a tiny, humped-backed old lady in a big coolie hat and black pyjamas picking up cigarette ends from the gutters with a pair of wooden tongs and dropping them into a wicker basket. Another vendor was sound asleep alongside his bundles of freshly picked herbs, another offered to cure you with the potions he would prescribe on the spot, and an old man told fortunes with his red-figured horoscope chart.

  Investigating behind the main road I discovered minute lanes that led into the original part of the village. Here ancient houses huddled together in clusters and open drains seemed to be the only means of sanitation. I wandered back along the road and turned into a side street that looked like a short cut to the wharf. I had not gone far when I was jostled from behind and felt someone touch the large shopping bag that was slung over my shoulder. A young man sped past me. He had a grey jacket draped over his head, as men sometimes did here to keep the sun off the back of their necks. But in this case it looked suspicious, and I thought I saw him whisk something up under the coat as he went off at a terrific lick. I stopped immediately and looked in my bag. My purse was gone. And so was he, long gone. So it was no use screaming or shouting. I was not unduly upset about my loss – it had only been sixty dollars and my bus ticket to Guangzhou – but I was most annoyed with myself for being so stupid. Even though my purse had been in the bottom of the bag and not on the top, I shouldn’t have carried it in an open receptacle. The thief must have seen me put it there when I had paid for my lunch and he had probably been stalking me ever since. Because there were few people about, I had dropped my guard. At the neighbouring village of Fuli’s market, which attracts huge crowds and is a notorious haunt of pickpockets and thieves, I would have clutched my money closely to me or had it stuffed under my clothes.

  I crept home to my room defeated by this day. There wasn’t much else I could do. I had no money, a sore leg and I was thoroughly cheesed off. On the way back to the hostel I asked the owner of the café the location of the police station. He told me it did not open until three o’clock. Too bad if murder, pillage and rapine were going on down in the town during siesta time.

  Khai was very upset when I told him about the theft and gave me a long lecture about keeping my money around my neck. My American cash dollars and travellers cheques were safely hidden in my room however, so I was able to change some money with him.

  But wait! There’s more! The day was not over yet. After a morning of bike accidents and purse pinching I had the ordeal of the police. I took a motorbike taxi to the police station where I found an office occupied by a nice young man who, with his limited English and a phrase-book, did his best to help me. We got through the preliminaries and past the obstacle of his thinking that I was left destitute after my loss and had no other money. ‘Do you have friends who can help you?’ Finally convincing him that the sixty dollars I had lost was not my life savings and only means of support, we went on to fill out many forms. Then I had to write a report and copy it by hand three times. There was no carbon paper.

  Now the real problem surfaced. It seemed that the stamp and the certificates to prove that I had made the report I needed for an insurance claim were in the cupboard and like everything else in China the cupboard was securely padlocked. And the key to the cupboard was missing. ‘Have you notified the police?’ I quipped. ‘Ho ho. You should fill out a report.’ The policeman laughed, genuinely amused.

  It turned out that the key was with the boss who might or might not return that day. My friend tried to phone this man and then we waited. I knitted and helped the policeman polish his English. Time passed. There were more phone calls. I was asked to come back in a couple of days when the investigations would be over. ‘What investigations?’ I asked. ‘I just want a claim form for the insurance and I am leaving for Guangzhou soon.’

  Another western traveller drifted in. He was also asked to wait. He had been told to return on this day for his visa extension. A skinny Frenchman who was pedalling a bike around the world, he informed me that he had been eight months getting this far across China. I said, ‘How do you manage when you get to whacking big mountains like the ones around the Great Wall?’ He replied, ‘Eet eez just ze same as you ‘ave ze car. You just change ze gears and up ze mountain you go.’ I did not let on that I could not change ze gears. I could not even get around ze first corner without coming ze cropper. He eventually left saying he would get his extension in the next town.

  Then, in a storm of discord, the Holder of the Key arrived. He roared around the room wafting an overpowering trail of booze behind him. His face was very red as he shouted, boy how he shouted, and yelled. He staggered to the table and read, or pretended to read, my report. Then he slurred questions at me, ‘When did you come here? How long have you been here? Where are you going?’ I was getting the third degree and I was the victim! Then things got nasty. I was not registered as an alien in town. He shoved a form that listed the names of the law-abiding foreigners who had done so under my nose and demanded to know why I had failed to let the police know that I was staying at the youth hostel. Unfortunately Khai, the hostel manager, had omitted to pass on this information.

  Eyeing me all the time with deep suspicion, he continued to ask me irrelevant questions. Then came the final crunch that convinced him I was indeed a dangerous type and up to no good in China. ‘Where is your customs form?’ I didn’t have one. As I had arrived in China by ship, it had somehow been overlooked. He said, ‘If you had one you could prove you had this money you say you lost. How do we know you had it at all.’ His puffy face, already suffused with grog and rage, got even redder. His eyes narrowed
to slits as he pushed his face close to mine. It was not a pretty sight. As he tried to speak he slavered, slurring so badly that he was actually chewing his words and spitting them out complete with flecks of saliva, some of which fell on my face.

  I tried to explain the illogic of his question; that the money I lost would not have been the same money that I brought into the country and therefore would not have been identifiable, as I had been exchanging traveller’s cheques all along the way. He seized the phone, dialled the hostel and screamed at Khai, who, thank heavens, must have vouched for me and done his best to convince this drunk tyrant that I was not evil.

  After much more bluster from Nasty Pants, the young man unlocked the cupboard and laboriously filled out the loss form, stamped it with an impressive red seal, made millions of copies by hand and attempted to give one to me. But Nasty Bugger stopped him, demanding ten yuan.

  I said, ‘I have no money. I just had it all stolen!’ Adding under my breath, ‘By another thief.’ I did actually have money. I just wasn’t going to give it to this creep. He refused to let me have the form without paying. I got stubborn and said, ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’ Meanwhile, while Nasty was busy ranting, the nice policeman caught my eye and slowly and unobtrusively slid the form across the desk in my direction. I inched it off the desk behind Nasty’s back and slipped it into my bag. The Nice Person nodded to me to take off. I sidled out and bolted down the road, half expecting to be pursued, apprehended and locked up at any minute. Halfway along the road the Nice Person – I’d heard about the good cop and the bad cop routine, but this was ridiculous – pedalled up on his bike. He dismounted and walking beside me escorted me to the main street, charmingly making tentative apologies for his odious mate.