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Published: February 8th 2007
Pillow Talk with Cooh and the Gang
We hired a tour guide and trekked 15km out of Sapa along the valley, through paddy fields and villages belonging to a minority people called the Black M’Hong. While they may be an ethnic minority in Vietnam as a whole, they actually make up 70%!o(MISSING)f the population of the Sapa region. In the town of Sapa itself you cannot walk five steps without bumping into a crowd of Black M’Hong women.
The French arrived in Sapa in 1903 and since then the tourist industry in the area has become the main source of income for the Black M’Hong people who offer nearly ever house in their villages up for “Homestays” and who specialize in the hard sell of their two major products: hand stitched fabrics and hand grown narcotics.
Act 1 - We were followed on our Trek from Sapa by three young Black M’Hong girls. For the first half of the walk they spent their time making us things out of ferns and reeds, playing games with us and generally being ridiculously cute…
Girl 1
: “For you”
Downtown Sapa
Black M'Hong gather outside the market.Girl 2
: “For you”
Girl 3
: “For you”
Girl 1: “Where you from?”
Bob: “I’m from Scotland”
Girl 1:
“Hmm… Shcootlund.”
Girl 2: “How many bovers and shistus you have?”
Bob: “I have one brother and one sister”.
Girl 2:
“Hmmm.”
Girl 3: “What you’re name?”
Bob: “My name is Robbie. What’s your name?”
Girl 3: “My name Cooh”
Bob: “How old are you Cooh?”
Cooh: “My name Cooh. I ten.”
Girl 1: “Where you from?”
Bob: “I’m from Scotland”
Girl 1:
“Hmm… Shcootlund”
Girl 2: “How many bovers and shistus you have?”
Bob: “I have one brother and one sister”.
Girl 2:
“Hmmm.”
Cooh: “What you’re name?”
Bob: “My name is Robbie.”
Cooh: “My name Cooh”
Bob: “Yes, you said”
Cooh: “My name Cooh. I ten.”
Girl 1: “Where you from?”
Bob: “I’m from Scotland”
This scene repeats for about 7km. Over and over and over again.
Act 2 - The second half of the walk saw a marked change
in their behaviour. Suddenly the ferns, reeds and giggling were gone. The little bags they were carrying were opened, the produce displayed and the selling began. In this, Cooh took the lead. She was relentless and the dialogue she kept up, which was muttered for 7km, was unchanging and at times I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or herself. It was quite amazing to behold. I walked through the mud and rocks in $200 Brasher walking boots; she kept up the pace in $0.25 wellie boots.
Cooh:
“You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
Bob: “I don’t want a pillowcase.”
Cooh:
“No say don’t want pillowcase. You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
Bob: “I really don’t want a pillowcase.”
Cooh:
“No say don’t want pillowcase. You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
Bob: “I don’t need a pillowcase”
Cooh:
“No say don’t want pillowcase. You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
Bob: “No”
Cooh: “Yeeeessss, pillowcase.
No say don’t want pillowcase. You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
Bob: “I don’t want a pillowcase.”
Cooh:
[Mutters something incomprehensible then…] “No say don’t want pillowcase. You buy pillowcase, I go home.”
We didn’t buy a pillowcase. As I type I can hear you all saying “you heartless bastard!” But it’s just a sad fact that in South East Asia if you bought from every cute little girl or boy that tried to sell you something, you’d be flying home penniless with a massively over-laden rucksack before you could say the word “pillowcase”.
Customer Care
We were stood in the reception area of the “Family Guesthouse” in the small but incredibly touristy town of Sapa in Northern Vietnam. It was early morning and despite the town being 1600m above sea level, the heat of the sun had not yet made it over the impressive 3000m+ mountains into the dramatic, terraced valley in which the town nestles.
I was trying to explain to the two young women behind the reception desk that the television in our room wasn’t working. They looked at me with slightly confused and pitiful expressions as I indicated my requirement for a new television by attempting to steal the one they had in the reception area.
As I unplugged and picked up their television,
the better English speaker between them tottered over to join me, waving her hands, shaking her head, saying “No, no, no, no!”.
The second receptionist walked out from behind the desk and joined Vik to watch the exchange between her colleague and me.
Whether it was the cold of the day, the horror at the thought of life without television or just the effect I have on Vietnamese women - I cannot fully be sure; but as she stood, arms folded tight about her, receptionist two gave a little shiver that only Vik saw.
Vik caught her eye and asked in the slow, carefully mouthed, simplified English that everyone in the world, regardless of their linguistic skills understands: “You cold?”. This was accompanied by the sign language motion of wrapping her arms around herself in a copycat, mock shivering motion.
How she interpreted Vik’s communication attempts, we’re still a little unsure, but I turned from my debate with receptionist one just in time to watch as receptionist two, a slight girl in her early twenties wrapped her arms around Vik in a tight hug. Resting her head on Viks chest, she closed her eyes as Vik - a look caught
between surprise and hilarity on her face - reciprocated by putting her arms around the girl and patting her back saying “Uhh… thanks”.
Next time you’re staying in a Holiday Inn, a Sheraton, a Hilton or even the Savoy and you’re feeling a bit cold - or even a little bit down - ask the receptionist for a hug and see what they say. I believe that hugging is an under-rated service that very few western hotels and guesthouses seem to offer.
Epilogue Eventually they swapped our faulty television for the one in reception. Unfortunately the only channels we could get on terrestrial TV were in Vietnamese so they decided we should have the satellite receiver as well! However, despite their best attempts to tune us into satellite TV in our room, it just wasn’t meant to be. So I thanked them for trying so hard and carried the TV and Satellite box down to reception. Unfortunately when we tried to get the system working in reception again, nothing happened.
That night, when we got back from dinner, the staff were all sat on the floor in reception playing cards - a blank, lifeless TV on the wall
Trekking Group going into the Valley
Vikki leads the group. Our guide and two Vietnamese honeymooners follow her. Two Black M'Hong women are coming the opposite way and Cooh and the Gang tag along at the back. above them.
Oops.
"Doctor, This Man has Malaria"
This doesn't really qualify as a Vietnam story as it took place entirely in China, but I found it such a hoot that I thought I'd let you in on the insanity.
At the advice of our rather too casual doctor in the UK, we arrived in South East Asia without Malaria tablets.
"No problem", she said.
"You'll get them so much cheaper in Asia", she said.
"OK", said we.
Well as we progressed through malaria free China toward "malaria zone" Vietnam, we began think that it was time to see what we could find. We'd identified our drug of choice - Doxycyclin - on the basis that it was cheap and didn't offer some of the more bizarre side orders that some of the other pills came with (eg. psychotic episodes (I get enough of them anyway), itchy armpits (I might have made that up) and verbal diahorrea).
We tried some Pharmacy's in Kunming without any luck - either they just shrugged or tried to sell us skin whitening products (all the rage here). Eventually, I decided that more drastic action was required so I looked up the
Terraced hillsides
The terracing is amazing to see. Some of the slopes they have terraced are incredibly steep and the landscape looks like it actually has the contour lines you see on a map. address of the local hospital.
As it turned out, this modern facility was the largest, most impressive Western medicine hospital in the whole of south China. This meant that there was hardly anyone there and the staff sat around twiddling their thumbs, thanking Sweet B'Jesus that they didn't work in the grotty Chinese Medicine hospital down the road which was packed like a tin of sardines with people wanting their eyeballs lanced or their buttocks burned with hot oil.
So I walked into the sparkling atrium and was greeted by a smiling young lady receptionist who said "Hello, how may I help". Brillant thought I, this should be a doddle.
Unfortunately I was soon to discover that that was the extent of her English.
Having called every department in the hospital - she worked her way down a list of extension numbers longer than a Chinese Telephone Directory - she gave up and reached under her desk for her note book which contained some phrases in English.
"How may I help", she asked tentatively in broken English.
By this time I had out my own phrasebook and had flicked to the "Health" section which turned out to be useless unless
Cooh
The girls loved having their photo's taken - but were in absolute stitches when they saw themselves on video. you had diahorrea or a tick. (Phrases like "I can't keep it in" and "I can't get it out" back to back - remarkable). Fortunately for me, in the dictionary section at the back it had the Chinese word and script for "Malaria". Bingo, thought I.
I showed her the book and smiled.
She looked at me with a small frown.
I pointed to the word for "Medicine" which was on the opposite page and drew an imaginary line between it and "Malaria".
"I need medicine for Malaria", I said in that patronising way only a British tourist can.
She looked at me with more than a little concern and pointed to the word "Malaria".
I nodded; pleased with my communication skills.
Swiftly she had a hand on my back and was guiding me round the building in a hurry.
By this point Vik had seen enough and had decided to leave me to my own devices, so off she went and sat in reception to be ogled by bored doctors and surgeons who dream of operating on white people.
Anway, by this stage I was standing at the nurses station in the Emergency ward with a frantic receptionist that
I couldn't calm down. Two doctors with face masks appeared. Suddenly everyone had face masks on and were looking me up and down.
"You ill?" said the receptionist.
"No", said I making a crossed arm "X" gesture which on reflection they may have interpreted as me accepting the inevitability of my death.
She took my phrasebook and a group of masked nurses and doctors gathered like they might start operating on the book at any moment.
In a return gesture I took her little hand written notebook and began flicking through the entries:
"Next time us a condom"
"Are your genitals swollen?"
"Can you count to 5?"
"Are you a chainsmoker?"
Christ, I thought, unless you're a chainsmoking sex maniac, this place is going to be really difficult to use.
"No Emergency", I began to say.
"Just need drugs", I said (note: not a wise phrase to use in South East Asia at any time).
As they buried their collective heads in my phrasebook and laughed at some of the ways tourists hail a taxi, I decided that I should edge my way along the slick corridor floors toward the reception.
But they were hardly likely to let me go
that easily. A self confessed case of Malaria is hardly likely to be allowed onto the streets.
"This way, please", said a doctor coming forth from the throng of activity surrounding my poor phrasebook.
"You speak English?", I asked, hope in my voice.
"OK. Little", said my new favourite man on earth.
But he wasn't in a chatty mood and took my by the elbow in a move I've seen demonstrated in Ju Jitsu, and dragged me along the corridor to a small room.
Inside this room is where I met Chinese Charles Bronson.
He sat with his boots (snake skin - Cuban heels), a cigar held between teeth like it had once been alive before he'd torn its head off and the kind of rough squinting face that Clint Eastwood practised for years infornt of a mirror. The only thing that said doctor was his white coat (over check shirt, jeans and a belt buckle like a Shire horses shoe) and the stethescope worn round his neck like snakes teeth.
"You got malaria?", he grumbled between smoke rings.
"No, I...", I began.
No sooner had I said no than he spat out something in Chinese and I was whisked
from the room.
I don't know who he was. I don't know why he was there. But if I have one piece of advice for sufferers of Malaria it would be: don't own up to it - accept your fate and hope no-one tells Chinese Charles Bronson.
Anyway, by now, by some miracle, they seemed to have the drift.
I was ushered to a pharmacy room and given a medical dictionary that contained the names of every drug a Hollywood celebrity could ever want. I flicked through the pages, three pharmacists, two receptionists, two doctors, a surgeon and some bloke with a bandage round his face supported by his mate, watching on.
"Doxycyclin!" I exclaimed as I found it in the big book.
"Aaaahhhhhhh!", went round the collective sigh.
"Can I have some?", I said to one of the pharmacists, gesturing toward the book.
"I'm so sorry", she said in perfect American English, "we don't actually stock that".
I was caught between - "where the hell were you hiding when I needed you" and "Bugger" but all that came out was that typically British response to anger/confusion... "Oh right".
Epilogue She was nice though - the pharmicist girl. She
wrote down the Chinese name for Doxcyclin as well as other drugs on the Chinese market that I was scared to ask about. So we left the hospital knowing how to ask for something other than toothpaste and soap at the numerous pharmacy's in Kunming, but it was to no avail. No where seemed to stock it and we decided to wait until we got to Hanoi.
In Sapa we were offered everything from Weed to Opium but we still couldn't find Doxycyclin.
Finally, when we reached Hanoi, we found that the pharmacy's were packed with the stuff. Hooray for Hanoi!
THE END.
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Mojo and Po
non-member comment
Love the Film
The last comment went before we were ready - damn these newfangled contraptions! Vietnam looks magic - like the M'Hong Cooh and the Gang with Bob pic. That's posing attitude! Take care guys - keep taking the tablets.