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Published: February 27th 2007
Cu Chi Tunnels
This is the photograph from where this blog draws its name. The Viet Cong of Cu Chi lived and fought in a tunnel system that is thought to be over 200km long. So successful was the village that various fighters were given titles by the Viet Cong such as "American Killer Hero" or "Brave Downer of American Planes". They claim that the Cu Chi tunnels were responsible for the destruction of over 5000 American tanks. The tunnels are designed for the Vietnamese fighters and as such were too small for most American soldiers. We saw the small tunnels but only attempted to crawl through the specially enlarged version. Don’t mention the war. That’s the only rule I gave myself for blogs from Vietnam. It’s just too easy a subject. When you say the word “Vietnam” to most people the first thing that pops into their head is the war. But as with all my other blogs I want to take you on a journey of discovery behind the clichés, to tell you about the country of Vietnam - the people, the landscape, the language, the banana pancakes. I managed it in my last blog and I’m determined to make the rule stick in this one. I won’t even mention the war. I won’t even think about the war. As I type all thoughts of Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and M.A.S.H. are being sidelined by my cognitive processes. So, here’s a blog with absolutely no mention of the war…
It was 38 degrees in the centre of Saigon. The stuttering whirr of overworked air-conditioning units filled the air like a squadron of Huey’s. Pasty white western pensioners in pale blue polo shirts tucked into white shorts melted into their plastic seats at the open-air cafes lining the road. Late twenties,
War Remnants Museum
This was a powerful place designed to show the brutality of the Americans. It worked. Graphic details of atrocities and devestation combined with heroically captured American machinery.
What struck me most though was the parallels with the current war in Iraq. I don't want to get all political on you but I can't believe that we learned nothing from Vietnam. It made me angry as I realised that in 40 years time I will be able to type a blog from the War Remnants Museum in Baghdad and I'll probably be saying the same thing.
Clearly this fact is not lost on most visitors; the comments book read like a George Bush hate campaign. early thirties couples with sculpted hair and dressed like walking adverts for Topshop’s summer collection peered at each other through Ray Ban rip-offs. The whole place smelt of melting tar and cheap sandal rubber.
The street was nothing but bottom dollar hotels, dubious clone tour operators offering the same tours at whatever price they could screw the customers for and eager cafes and bars with thirty page menus desperate for a mention in the Lonely Planet. A prime hunting ground for what every Asian knows every westerner wants - beer, drugs, sex and banana pancakes.
Within two minutes of stepping onto the street we’d been offered jugs of beer, several kilo’s of marijuana and a punnet of opium. However, our vice of choice was proving a more difficult quarry. We tried a couple of joints serving French fries and smoothies with no luck. Word on the street was that there was a banana shortage. Desperation set in. I started getting those sweats only a banana pancake addict gets. They put something in them. Makes you want them more than you thought you’d ever want a banana pancake. They say the Yanks sprayed the fields with LSD during the war
Steven in a Trap, Cu Chi Tunnels
This is our guide Steven demonstrating how some of the traps the Viet Cong used worked. Seriously brutal stuff. Lots of spikes designed to "trouble" you as Steven put it.
We got to see a hilarious propaganda video before we saw the tunnel system. Lots of stuff about how the "ruthless" Americans were driven from the Motherland by Vietnamese who "fought with a rifle in one hand and a plough in the other". to make the GI’s fight harder. Something must have seeped into the banana plantations. You have to be in Asia to understand.
It was a long shot but we walked into a gaudy looking yellow place that was only a few tables wide but stretched way back. It was a dubious link, but anywhere that is long and thin and dresses itself in yellow has to serve bananas right? I looked around the clientele. Just a couple of bums with their heads in menus or laptops. A fat fifty-something ex-pat with jaundiced skin, bad taste in shirts and sweat dripping from his nose sat with his porky clammy arm round a petite Vietnamese girl thirty years younger than him. Most ex-pats I’ve seen in Vietnam should have “sex-tourist” stamped in their visa.
A fan blew cool air across my face. I didn’t recognise anyone from my Pancake Support Group so I began to have doubts. Usually I can spot a fellow pancake addict without too much trouble. There’s a look in their eye. Of satisfaction. Of anguish that its over. Of disgust that they can’t fit another one in. The smear of chocolate sauce from the corners of
Crazy House, Dalat
Designed by some woman with an over-active imagination and too much money. their mouth to the top of their cheek is also a give away.
I’d like to say we slipped into the yellow vinyl benches at the table near the fan, but “slipping” was impossible. There’s nothing like the feel of your own sweaty skin against worn vinyl. Like getting in a sauna wearing rubber pants filled with honey is as close as you’ll get (try it - it’s fun at first, but then someone gets over zealous with the honey.). Clammy’s not the word.
As we squirm into our seats menus are dropped like bricks onto the table by a guy who I’m sure I saw in a Village People video. Camp? This guy could mince for Vietnam. His tight black and white top sticks to his wiry frame like its drawn on by someone with a fetish for zebras and sailors. Facially he looks like the love child of Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho and a Shetland Pony. His dark Vietnamese hair has been permed and waves of blonde slashed through it. He stands like he’s about to have a hissy-fit. You can tell this queen has attitude and no messin’, girlfriend.
I know where to look in
"Who could stop this march of three?", Hoi An
(I believe that's a direct quote from an Edwin Morgan poem - impressed?) the menu. Its always the same. Pancakes may be an Asian speciality, but it confuses the hell out of them how to categorise them. Are they dessert or are they breakfast? They usually do the decent thing and just list it twice. Sometimes they disguise it. One place we went to just listed the ingredients. I had to ask the girl for “flour, eggs, butter, banana and chocolate sauce”. Its like flat-pack cooking. Fortunately it came already assembled. I didn’t bother asking about the fruit cake.
So I tell the guy straight up, “Banana pancake please and a banana smoothie too”.
He sighs loudly and scribbles something on the pad that looks heavy in his thin feminine hands. For all I know he’s drawing Santa Claus.
So off he goes with a wiggle of the hips and over reaching, stumbling steps. We hear him giggling and snorting like a Trinity school girl from the back of the restaurant.
I have my back to him but I can tell from the amused look on Viksters face and the slap-slap of sandals on tile that he’s coming back to the table.
“Soooooo sorry. No banana”.
It’s an effing conspiracy! The cold
sweats start. I’m close to tears. I need my LSD coated bananas. Vik can see the danger.
“How about a lemon one with honey?”, she says looking up from the menu. I am a bomb that Vik is used to disarming. Maybe we can salvage something from this terrible banana-less situation.
“OK.”, I say, doing my best to stay calm.
“With or without chocolate sauce?”, asks our totally disinterested waiter. He just wants to get back to the kitchens to play pat-a-cake with the chef.
“With chocolate sauce please”, I say.
Off he goes.
Twenty minutes later he arrives at our table again - this time his limp wrists are trying desperately to support the weight of a plate and a saucer.
He puts them on the table - the effort has worn him out. Four customers: this must be rush hour for him.
“Pancake”, he says sliding a good sized pancake towards me. It looks gold and is speckled with heat spots the way a quality pancake should be. It smells like its fresh from the oil. It’s a smell like no other. I love the smell of pancakes in the morning.
“Lemon”, he says sliding the
saucer towards me with a smile. I stare at it. It isn’t lemon. It’s the end of a lime. A very small piece from the end of a lime. To add insult to injury an ant crawls from beneath it, shakes his head and gives me a look as if to say “what the hell you lookin’ at, ya bum!”. The ant marches off the saucer, stamping his feet in disgust at the pathetic bit of lime. The waiter marches off to the kitchen hoping I won’t notice.
“What the hell is this?”. I say to Vik in ultra quiet tones like I don’t want anyone else to see the shame that is my lime. What can she say?
I sit for a few minutes waiting for the chocolate sauce.
“He’s not coming back”, says Vik, “I think he’s forgotten”.
Eventually he minces past our table on his way to chat with a girl friend who has pulled up on her moped. I catch him on his way back. The buck-tooth smile falls from his face when he realises I’m probably going to ask him to do something.
“Excuse me - I’m waiting for the chocolate sauce”, I say.
Dragon Temple
A personal highglight of our Easy Riders tour around Dalat was this temple. We were both knocked sideways by it. It's stunning. Built only 65 years ago, it is one giant mosaic and consists mainly of Dragons and Buddha's. Recommended for anyone visiting Dalat. He looks at me like I’ve just urinated on his shoe.
“You want chocolate sauce?”, he spits.
“Yes please - I did ask for it”
He tuts and minces/marches off to the kitchen.
Five minutes later he’s back with a little jar of chocolate sauce. He puts it down and gives me a smile like he’s already stuck his finger in the jar.
“Chocolate sauce”, he says. I look from the chocolate sauce to the ant who has decided to sit on the edge of the table, straighten his antenna and watch the scene unfold. He sees my look and shrugs.
So I finish the pancake and it’s decent. Not good, but decent. The chocolate sauce was good, but the whole thing lacked banana. It’s the equivalent of chewing gum to stop the craving for cigarettes. Just not the same thing. His lordship minces past again and I ask for the bill. Strangely enough, this doesn’t seem too much trouble for him and suddenly he’s a buzz of activity.
“Thank you, sir”, he says, placing the bill infront of me like he’s throwing his jacket over a puddle for the Queen.
I look at the figures. For all
the scribbling on the page, this could well be his picture of Santa Claus. The guy writes like the pen was too heavy to lift off the paper at the end of each figure and word. There’s joined up writing and then there’s joined up writing. Judging by the slant of what I assume to be letters he must have been hanging by his feet from the ceiling when he wrote it.
I can’t read much of it, but I know that the important bit - the total - is wrong.
“Excuse me”, I say pointing to the top scrawl on the paper. “What is this?”
“Your banana smoothie”, he says matter of factly.
“I didn’t have a banana smoothie”.
“Yes. A pancake and a banana smoothie”
“No really - I didn’t have a smoothie.”
Now he’s interested. He gives me a look like I’ve just told him perms went out in the eighties. He’s disbelieving. In his curly mind there’s just no way it could happen.
He hesitates. I can see his mind trying to turn back the hands of time to the moment I ordered. But he knows as well as I do that he was too
A quick guide to Open Bus travel...
Two hours late for pick up. Two changes of bus. Two flat tyres. And one crazy driver who may actually never have driven so much as a go-kart in his life before he took the wheel on our journey between Nha Trang and Dalat. busy arsing about to know what I ordered. Hell, he can’t even remember seeing me before this moment.
“You told me there were no banana’s”, I say in a smug patronising manner that makes Vik wince. Inside I’m telling myself not to get violent if it turns out they had bananas the whole time but this punk was too busy acting like a Fame reject to notice.
He spins on his sandaled heels and heads back to the place from whence he came. I give Vik a smile as we listen to the raised voices in the kitchen. She gives me a look that says “leave the poor guy alone”. Clearly she’s underestimated my need for banana in my pancakes. If I ever find myself in a divorce court I can site this failure on her part and be safe in the knowledge that the kids will be staying with me. “Didn’t understand a man’s basic primitive need for banana pancakes?!”, the red faced judge will say. “It’s neglect! It’s a disgrace! - security! Lock her up and throw away the key!”. I’m telling you; it would happen in any court of law.
“I’m soooo sorry”, he crawls
Nha Trang Beach
Nha Trang was not for us. A mess of a town with a pretty beach. We just ain't beachy people. on his return to our table. “We work soooo hard, sometimes we forget”.
I look at him disbelievingly and turn my head slowly so he can follow my gaze around the room.
The two bums still have their heads stuck firmly in their laptops and menu’s. Maybe they have a strange desire to copy-type café menu’s or perhaps they type blogs as dull as mine; either way they haven’t ordered anything since we arrived.
The sex-tourist ex-pat and his “girlfriend” left twenty minutes ago. As we waited for Curly to get the chocolate sauce, I’d watched him grope her tiny bottom with his greasy sausage fingers as they got onto a moped. She looked sad.
No-one has ordered anything since we got here.
I hand over a bundle of Dong and we leave to a cheery “Thank you - come again!” from Curly. He loves that sound. The sound of his own chirpy voice. Sounds like victory.
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Jenn
non-member comment
Another winner
I just updated my blog today but I must say it's yours I look forward to reading. Keep doing your thing kids. I'm missing it but I'm glad I can relive it through you!