Hieronymus Bosch and Happy Birthday

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Have you ever seen the depictions of hell by Hieronymus Bosch? Go on - google them now and then come back to this...

If you recall, today's plan was to catch the train to Hue. The Reunification Express (love those Communists!), the fastest and most modern of Vietnam's train services (I'd hate to go on one of the old ones), that snakes its way up the country's east coast.

I arrrived at Da Nang station about 50 minutes early for the train. You weren't allowed on the platform, we were all held in a medium sized, non air-conditioned waiting room with a large television that played the same 3 kung fu sequences in a loop. A curiously violent choice for a group of people you want to keep calm and quiet in a hot confined space. The handheld ladies fan touts were doing a roaring trade. Have I mentioned the constant noise of Vietnam yet? It is a never-ending din. From the predictable cacophony of the roads at any time you will hear hooters, bikes, dogs, babies crying, upraised voices in animated conversation, music, whistles, gongs - and in this waiting room, a small child playing a game that piped 'Happy Birthday' electronically over and over and over again. The Vietnamese are just noisy. An English waiting room would have been like a comtemplative nun's closed convent in comparison. The train got later, the temperature rose, if there's a repeat of the train poo incident, I thought, we're done for.

I did have one very satisfying encounter though with an elderly Vietnamese man. (Everyone was being friendly and kind to me. I think they'd all been pre-warned). He asked if I spoke French as he had no English. 'Un peu', I replied. Do you know, it was the best and most useful and informative French conversation I've ever had? (ahem). It was all the subjectsjects you do at school - 'Where are you from? How long on holiday? When will the train arrive', but the joy was that he spoke it as slowly as I did so I could understand exactly what he was saying back to me. Not like this wretched native French speakers gabbling away at 19 to the dozen. It was precisely as my schoolgirl textbook conversations with Monsieur et Madame Merteuil had led me to believe.

The train arrive with a greatness to its lateness. We all bundles for it. This is what you do here. You bundle for everything or do a great big 'pile on'. Never give way - that's for suckers and the moment you do you'll get stampeded by 27 tiny Viets all pushing past. And you must barge and invade personal space - because they will you, so we all joyfully steamed onto the train, I was especially pleased to see that out of 15 or so carriages I was lucky enough to be in the same carriage as the 'Happy Birthday' kid. Excellent.

Arrived in Hue. pretty much incident free. Great to see the countryside - could almost see the GIs creeping through the dense undergrowth. All very Apocalypse Now. Quite an interesting moment as well when I was in the squalourous toilet and we went through a tunnel. I was stuck in inky blackness with my knickers round my knees for about 5 minutes.

(to be continued - internet connection keeps crashing)

Great hotel - more like a family home. Whe I arrived they gave me hot milk and soybeans (surprisngly nice) a huge bowl of noodles (oh dear) and a tower of toast and marmalade (which I couldn't eat). Got to my roon where they put the World Service on and I saw the breaking news Osama Bin Laden killed.

Now I haven't seen the news since - so this could all be academic, but I have some misgivings about this. Really? Can we have some proof please? After all, if there's a man eating shark in the water that's killed lots of your townspeople - when you find it - surely you take it back to prove it's dead. I assume there are photos or DNA evidence. IF NOT - he's either not dead - OR the soldiers did awful things to his body. And I apologise to my American readers here, but I found the jubilation outside the White House a bit disturbing. I know a great injury was done to your people, but this jubilating can only incense Al Quaeda further. I think things are going to be quite dodgy for a while. I think they could even get worse for a bit. I thnk we should stop and quietly think of those who were killed and are mourning lost ones - and watch our backs.

Anyway back to Hue - really friendly place. Lots of nice chats with people. A fab French goats cheese salad, a terrible foot massage and now to bed and lots of water.

By the way - Hieronymus Bosch was way off. He hadn't included the Happy Birthday music.

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