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Published: January 11th 2009
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xmas eve
Outside Ben Than Market, xmas eve Happy 2009 everyone. Hope everyone is well and not freezing their arses off too much. The new year has been pretty good so far here in sunny Saigon. Without wanting to depress any of you back home who may be sick of the cold, the weather here has been lovely. Its warm as opposed to the usual hot and there has is little rain so it is truly pleasant weather here, which I’m enjoying as by the time March comes around it will be stiflingly hot, apparently.
I saw the new year in in suitable fashion, just going for drinks uptown, nothing too mental. The next day I went to a theme park on the other side of the city (it never fails to amaze me how frickin big Saigon is). I can’t remember its name (in fact I think that’s because the literal Vietnamese translation is ‘theme park’) but It was ace. They have these kind of cycle powered air born pedalos that you can trundle round part of the park on…they are like 20 ft off the ground and follow a little rail but it’s a nice way of seeing Vietnamese families enjoy the start of 2009 (I
would say ‘the new year ‘ but they are all waiting for Tet round here, the new year has yet to start in this part of Asia). The park is filled with all these, often ridiculous, statues that, whilst seemingly of cultural value, are I suspect are akin to the crap they have in theme parks back home. It was all massive fibreglass elephants, some pretty creepy Santa Clauses, and odd things dotted about the place. I loved it. I went in to someplace called the House of the Unicorn, which had nary a unicorn in sight and instead housed some rather vivid displays of what Thu calls ‘the 18 floors of hell’. Its all set up like some kind of dungeon inside and you go from one extremely graphic scene of torture and mutilation to another. Electric models sawed each other in half, heads are split open and I’m pretty sure one of the dummies was being anally raped by an inanimate with an axe but I may be wrong. Still it was the best ‘ghost train without the train’ I’ve ever been in and gave me an insight into how it must feel to be in a Gwar
video.
There were plenty of other things to do there too. There is a massive water park surrounded by plastic mountains (Dave, next time you come to Saigon, we’ll go…it’s like swimming in a lake below M.A.C. mountain, I’m sure there must be a helicopter landing pad tucked away in there somewhere). There is also a pretty freaky haunted house, some good roller coasters and a an all round good vibe going on. Best of all thought was the crocodile farm. At the back of the park is a lake that you walk across on these big wooden walkways. The lake is teeming with crocodiles, which having only really seen them lifeless and asleep behind reptile house windows in the UK zoos, I was amazed. They were everywhere, from little nippers to the kind that eat boats. For 2000 dong you can fish for them with little pieces of meat which is great because you really get a sense of how fucking fast they can move.
The following day I went to the golf range with Jon and Tabby. Whilst on the back of Tabby’s bike some guys crashed into us but it was a staged crash so
croc farm 2
" it was roundabout now that Micheal J Dundee shat his sen" they could nick Tabby’s bag. Before I knewit , Tabby, Jon’s usually mild mannered girlfriend, turned into a female Streethawk, racing though the busy Saigon traffic in search of the two ‘perps’. I hold myself responsible, she would have perhaps caught them (or crashed into a bus) if it hadn’t been for my fat ass on the back lending extra weight. According to the locals this kind of thing happens more on the build up to Tet as even criminals have to find the cash for family celebrations and such like...
A few days ago I went to a Vietnamese wedding, which was a pretty good laugh. It’s not really that dissimilar to back home except there’s no real disco style knees up at the end, which was a shame because I had a tie all ready to wrap round my head and shout from under. Still, the food was great and the beer flowed freely.
Other than that, just getting on with things here. I’ve started playing golf again, though not better golf, and am planning to go to Cambodia for a week at the end of January with Nick, Amir and Caitlin (two New Yorkers), so
thank god this offer is not available in Shelthorpe
This made me laugh, especially as Saigon sewer can barely cope with toilet paper so im sure any unwanted crocodiles would be lucky to make it round the u-bend I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve also been listening to a hell of a lot of Kraftwerk…Moviewise, I watched the new 'Day the Earth stood still' which I thought was ok, a new war film with Daniel Craig called 'Defiance,' which I like a lot, and Thu dragged me to the utter bag of excrement that was 'Twilight'.
Any road, take care folks
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