Culture Week

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Culture Week

We are scheduled to leave Yen Bai for a week of cultural experiences, which will include spending two nights in a Buddhist Temple with monks. Concerned that we might actually have to stop drinking during this time, we head out at the weekend to top up. Craig has arranged for the us to meet up with Dung, and two of her friends. The musketeers, along with Trung taking on the role of Dogtanion (yes, I mean Dog) saddle up. During our short time together, we have come to learn that Trung is a insatiable player, a low down, dirty hound dog with loose morals and low standards. He isn't bothered that there is one more guy than there are girls. And he isn't put off by the fact that Craig has already been penciled in as a future husband by Dung. He'll fight tooth and claw for whatever he can get, and is happy to screw us all over along the way.

Tonight, Trung's tactic is to pretend to be Thai. He calls himself Tick, from Thailand (after our third coordinator, Trung's boss). His story is that his grandmother is Vietnamese, meaning he is able to speak and understand a little of the language. The girls seem to buy it, so we have a spy who can listen in on their conversations, and then translate them back to us later. The girls want to go to a karaoke bar, and we end up at the same place as New Year's Eve. We drink beer, and something which carries the name "Champagne", but couldn't be fucking further from Champagne if it tried. It's taste is as difficult to describe as it is to swallow, but I'm a soldier, and push on.

Tonight, as always, I rock. I can't remember what is sung, except "Living on a Prayer". Trung, however, steals the show, in an foolhardy act that finally blows his cover. He chooses to sing the Vietnamese national anthem, eliciting a round of applause, and the securing the popular female vote. I lean over, and suggest he throw in the odd mistake; a little mispronunciation here, a fluffed line there. This fucking guy is way too cocky, though, and he sings it note perfect. The girls are not that stupid, and they reveal him for the filthy liar that he is.

Craig is getting on well with Dung, and feels like being a team player. He tells her I like one of her friends, Ngun, which is a fucking lie, but when I find out I shrug, and try to make the best of it. Ngun seems like a nice girl, and I try not to do or say anything that might offend her. She asks to exchange numbers, but I don't have a phone, so give her Craig's, and tell her I look forward to her call.

We leave the bar, and walk Ngun around the corner to her house. Then, we stop at our regular bar by the lake. A group of young Vietnamese guys are sitting at a table drinking, and call me over. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that the men in Vietnam like me a lot more than the women. I don't know why. The women seem warm to me - I get a fair few "Dep Chai's" (handsome man) as I walk down the street - but the guys go fucking wild. So, I sit, and get fed a constant supply of free beer. The others come over and tell me they will be escorting the two remaining girls home. I look up at them with wide-eyes, and plead for them not to be long. Remember the golden rule - never leave a man behind in 'Nam.

So, alone at last. They seem like a good bunch, but as usual language is our common barrier. I'm told that one is actually an English teacher, though how the fuck he manages to accomplish any success in that particular field is a mystery, as he speaks even less of my language than I do of his. We do establish that several of the group support Liverpool, including the one who sits to the right of me and does most of the talking. "We love Steven Gerrard." Me too, chief. Me too.

I'm checking my watch. The boys have been gone a while. Fuckers. I knew they would do this to me. Their probably fornicating in some grimy boom-boom hotel, leaving me here, alone and oh-so vulnerable, yet again at the mercy of a pack of touchy-feely men. How many bullets can I dodge? How long before I get the train-treatment I clearly richly deserve? Bastards. I'll make sure they hear the full story behind every bruise, that their conscience bleeds for every drop I shed.

Perhaps having thoughts along similar lines, I Love Stevey-G asks where my friends are. I smile, and assure him they will be here soon. He tells me he doesn't think they will be coming back. Oh no, my friend, they will be along directly. He's not so sure. Just trust me - they're just taking their sweet fucking time, but they will be here. They will come back for me. I Love Stevey-G suggests we go back to my hotel to see if they are there. My heart sinks. They will not be there, I Love Stevey-G. They will come back for me here, but they are just dumb, godless son's of bitches, and they enjoy making me sweat.

I Love Stevey-G is a persistent fellow. He feels, for some reason best known to himself, that the right course of action is for him and all his friends to accompany me back to the hotel, and check out my room. I try to convince him that there is really nothing there worth seeing, that I can't offer them drinks or food. It's settled, then. We're going to the hotel. Motherfucker. I get on the back of a bike, and we speed away. As I am now accustomed, I draw puzzled looks from the hotel staff as I enter with six strange locals. We take the lift, and I wearily show them in. They take seats, and have a good look around. I offer them a few sweets that are lying around. They look uncomfortable. They look disappointed. What the fuck did they expect? Then, the door opens, and Gregg's pale face hovers briefly in the frame for a few seconds, before it's gone. Come back, you fucker! I want to chase after him, but I have to play host. After only a few minutes, they all rise, and tell me they will leave now. Excellent, chaps, well thanks for dropping by. Handshakes and hugs, and away.

My mission is now to find the others, and demand an explanation. Gregg is nowhere to be seen, and I start to wonder if his brief appearance was in fact a vision, or a crossing-over from a parallel universe. I go down to the second floor, where we have a base-room for meetings and breakfast. Kat and Marianne are in there. I explain to them how the evening went, and they confirm that they have seen no sign of Craig and Gregg. I'm still very much in the mood for going out, especially after the shit I just had to put up with, so I persuade them to come along. When we get out, everything has pretty much died. We find one place that is still populated, and get one shot of rice wine each.

We walk along the high street for a bit, but there's nothing going on, so decide to drink the bottle of red wine I've been saving since the airport. We're halfway through drinking it when the absent musketeers stumble in. I demand to know where the fuck they've been, and they claim that they walked Dung home, were invited in for a while, then returned to the bar to find me as promised. Gregg offers some explanation for his brief apparition, but I can't be bothered to try to understand. We finish up the wine and smoke a few, and then it's Night John Boy at 2am.

Day one of Culture Week. We arrive at the Truc Lam Tay Thien Zen Buddhist Temple to begin our short life as servants of Buddha. We head up a long flight of stairs, and into the prayer room at the heart of the temple. This is where we will be meditating and practicing yoga. We are introduced to one of the monks, an exceptionally happy fellow with a broad grin and infectious giggle (The Smiling Monk). Either Buddhism really works, or these monks smoke a lot of weed, as they all seem to be just as cheerful, in a simple, child-like way.

I'm sharing a room with Trung, Gregg and Craig. After unpacking our shit, we are led away to choose our monks' robes. The proper monks all wear attractive orange numbers. Novices, or pretenders like ourselves, are forced to suffer pale lilac robes, which seem to symbolise our general non-Buddhist shiteness. You have to work it to get into the orange order. We then get a brief induction into meditation. The key is flexibility, something my body is massively deficient in. In order to meditate successfully, you need to be able to sit comfortably in the lotus position (one leg crossed on top of the other) for long periods of time. I can't even keep my legs crossed at the most basic level for more than a few minutes at a time without inducing crippling pain, and my attempts at the lotus just result in me toppling over like a drunk.

The Smiling Monk smiles. His companion, a former hotel chef who left it all behind to become a monk, pisses himself with laughter. He makes a couple of attempts to force my legs into the correct position, not in the least put off by my screams of pain. After ripping my tendons apart, he gives up and leaves me be. Marianne, it turns out, has the best lotus. Well fuck you, Marianne. We are told to practice, as we will be meditating for an hour in the morning. We have dinner, and join the monks for prayer. We copy our hosts, bowing and kneeling as they do, then leave them to their meditation, and get ready for bed at 10pm.

The bell rings. It's 3am. We start at 3.30. We form a queue in silence, and then slowly file into the main hall. We each have a mat and a cylindrical cushion on which we have to perch while we meditate. It begins. They key to meditation is to empty your mind, and concentrate on breathing. You are supposed to breath in deeply through your nose, and then out through your mouth. If you do this correctly for long enough, you will become free of thought, and will be on the path to enlightenment. It all sounds so very simple in theory. In theory, Marge, Communism works.

What gets in the way is the pain. The pain. I'm determined not to be a bad Buddhist right from the offset, so I try to remain in position for as long as I can. It's just that I'm in so much pain. One of the monks is walking around with a stick, hitting any of the others whose posture is not up to scratch. Luckily, as guests, we are spared the rod, but if I really was a monk, I'd be getting the thrashing of a lifetime. I try to forget myself, to just breath and be at one with the cosmos. I breath in through my nose, and out through my mouth. I link my hands together above my lap. I try to focus. I try not to think about it. About the horrible, horrible pain. About half an hour in, I just about give up. I can't do it. I've not had sufficient training. Although I stay seated until the hour is up, on a few occasions I am forced to move my legs, and stimulate the flow of blood. Breathing and enlightenment go right out the window. This is just about survival.

After meditation, there is breakfast at 6am. We help the chef prepare the food and lay the table. There is a lot of procedure involved in mealtimes. We must all line up, and a bell is rung several times. After ten minutes, Buddha appears to be sated, and we are allowed to sit. I wonder what all the ceremony is about. No one explains it to us, and my theory, almost certainly ill-founded, is that it is something to do with self-control. You sit or stand there, faced with a mountain of food, and yet you must be calm, and wait until the proper time, when the bell rings and you can go ahead and eat.

After breakfast, we spend the day wondering around the temple grounds, red-eyed and dazed. There are many visitors, mostly native Vietnamese, and they seem to find us highly amusing. Hard to blame them. We look like fucking idiots, white people dressed up in dirty robes, stained from our attempts to eat soup and noodles with chopsticks, pretending to be monks. I pay them no attention. I'm thinking about the evening, when we have to meditate again, only this time, for an hour and a half.

In the afternoon, we meet with the Smiling Monk, who tells us a bit about Buddhism, and about how he came to be a monk. He gives us a tour of the grounds, and tells us there is a secret entrance to the temple hidden in the woods. Inside, monks meditate in solitude for months at a time. He tells us he has just got back after being alone in there for six months. No wonder he smiles so much, poor bastard. We then meet the head monk, who answers our questions about his life and religion, and just as frequently answers his mobile phone. He tells us he used to be a teacher, with a family, but went through hard times, and chose a new life. He says his children still sometimes visit him at the temple. I don't know what trouble it was he ran away from, but he seems happy now. He tells us we are only 4% happy, and that a Buddhist way of life will lead to complete contentment.

Meditation, part two. Not everyone makes it to this stage. The ra-ra's have spent all their time since arriving at the temple in their room, and are very, very bad Buddhists. They will most likely be reincarnated as turds, or some kind of re-occurring genital growth. Good luck to them, they deserve it. Gregg, on the other, still had a shot at a low-level life form such as a sponge, fungus or perhaps even a jellyfish. Now, he's gone and blown it, choosing to skip meditation to spend his time with the ra's. The rest of us have better morals, and more ambition.

In the temple, nuns practice meditation on one side, and the monks on the other. I have my back to the girls, which is a good thing. Marianne has been named "No.1", after demonstrating excellent technique in the first round, and I don't want her and the others to see my face, screwed up in pain, or to see the despair in my eyes as I fail to measure up.

Things begin okay. The first half an hour passes with only moderate to severe levels of discomfort. I try to think only about breathing, which is strange, as it's one thing that we normally never think about, and instead take for granted. The problem is, however hard and fast I try to flush my thoughts out, there is always a slow trickle coming back in. One thought always leads to another. I think about breathing, and then I'm thinking about the nature of breathing. I think the nature of breathing, and then I'm thinking about human nature. Before long, my thoughts have wandered this way and that, and I'm onto random brain psychosis, I constant, bubbling stream of consciousness without end. Of course, I can always rely on the pain to focus my thoughts.

Ah yes, the pain. It's spread through my entire leg, but it's at its worst in the ankles. It feels as though somebody has lowered a ton of bricks onto each one, and is jumping up and down on top of them. I look around to see how everyone else is doing. To my relief, I see just as poorly. Tick, Craig and several of the novice monks are all moving, stretching their legs out in front of them, or shifting position. You always felt better about not having done your homework if someone else in the class hadn't as well, and it's like that now. If they can move, so will I.

The next hour is pretty unbearable. I'm changing leg constantly, stretching every ten or fifteen minutes. After the hour mark, Craig picks up his mat and leaves. I think about joining him, but I've come this far, and I really wanna good animal when my time comes. Finally, the bell rings, and we're done. I look to my right at Tick. He tries to get up, but cannot move. After another attempt, he's on his feet. We slowly limp outside, where we're met by The Smiling Monk. He congratulates as for making it. He turns to me, and tells me I'm a "Hero". I'm quite taken aback. I'm a fucking hero. Take that, Marianne, my meditating nemesis. You may be No.1, but I'm a hero. The monk delivers more good news. He tells us that if we really don't want to, we can skip tomorrow's meditation. I tell him optimistically we'll do our best to be there, and say goodnight.

"When worst comes to worst, my people's come first." The words mean that Craig's phone alarm is going off. It means it's 3am again, and meditation time. Nobody moves. The alarm goes to snooze. It goes off once, maybe twice more. No one moves a muscle. 6am. A monk knocks on the door, and tells us it's breakfast time. Trung gets up. Nobody else moves. Around 7am, Trung returns from breakfast, and gets back into bed. Nobody else moves. 10am. We all slowly begin to move. We get up, bump into Tick. He asks if we made it to meditation. We tell him we did not. He lets out a relieved laugh - he did not get up either. Later, we find the girls. They weren't around when The Smiling Monk told us this mornings session was optional. There all did get up. They are exemplary Buddhists. Oh well. Right now, I feel better for having actually got some sleep. Maybe years later, when I'm a sparrow and Marianne the golden eagle is swooping down, talons outstretched, I'll wish I'd tried a little harder to be good. Fuck it, though. Even sparrows get to live a little.

Later, we just wander around again in our robes, messing with the tourists. Down near the temple entrance, Trung is now pretending to be Japanese. One guy appears to call us "arseholes", and we take offense. Trung informs us that he in fact said "Ah sow" (no idea of spelling), which is a slighter milder insult, and means we are badly dressed. Mai Met. This fucking guy. Later still, Trung cements his reputation as a sex pest. He stands above the pathway dressed in his robe and wolf-whistles as passing women, most of whom are accompanied by husbands or boyfriends. Apparently, they don't understand the significance of the whistle. Still, it must be pretty strange and a little disconcerting to round a corner and be confronted by a whistling monk, and his three giggling white companions.

Before we leave, we have our final talk on Buddhism, delivered by another of the senior monks in a chapel above the dining room. The message is again similar. If you want to achieve total happiness, you must devote yourself to meditation and yoga. He tries to impart to us the basic rules of his religion, and the key philosophies and mind sets that you must use alongside the meditation. In order to succeed, these must be chanted, or repeated to oneself as you meditate. Trung struggles to translate the exact meaning of these, since the concepts are clearly complicated. The best he can do with one is: "Quiet.....quiet..........more quiet..... Chew rice."

We say goodbye to the happy monks, and move on. I'd didn't achieve enlightenment. I didn't even achieve sitting still without pain. But the men in orange must be onto something. You take away everything from your life, and leave yourself with one simple goal; happiness. With no distractions, and time and patience on my hands, would it really be possible to become 96% happier than I already am? I'm not close to 100%, but is there really that much more that I could have? For now, I will settle for 4%. I'll keep crossing my legs, and see if the pain reduces. Then, maybe, years from now.....Quiet, quiet....More quiet.............Chew rice.

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