Cry Me a Perfume River

The weather here in Sài Gòn has gotten very humid and warm and stagnant and made it hard to live without that modern miracle, the air-conditioner, though I imagine the large majority of the city's residents do. A few rain showers have occurred and there will be more of that to come and then the weather usually becomes a bit more pleasant or so I've been told.

I made my second trip to the beautiful city of Huế to visit a friend from my English teaching certification course, Craig, who hails from Australia. Huế is most famous for its historical citadel which was used during Vietnam's last dynasty, the Nguyễn, which ended only in 1945 and also for the excellent cuisine that was required to satisfy the Nguyễns' royal palates . Huế is also known as the site of furious fighting during the Vietnam War as it's not too far from the DMZ. One of life's many ironies is that areas near DMZ's are often witness to intense fighting and in the case of Vietnam, have the most persistent UXO (unexploded ordnance) problems.

I enjoyed my 4 days in Huế as it's a low-key city bisected by the beautiful Perfume River, but I could have done without the daily unannounced power outages that apparently are a part of life there especially this time of year. 2 of the 4 mornings there I awoke in soaked sheets due to the motionless state of the ceiling fan over my bed, a fairly reliable indicator, I grew to discover, that the power is out! Ok, so it's out, when does it come back on? Ah sometime later, I see. Thanks for the helpful information. Yes, it does get annoying. It would usually be out for a period of 'some hours'. On the bright side this helps keep the pace of life in Huế to a manageable slow sprint.

Craig and I made use of the hotel's rental motorbike and toured the most famous of the numerous Nguyễn palaces/tombs in the Huế area, Tự Đức, where one of the Nguyễn royalty of that name whiled away his days back in the 1800's writing poems and frolicking with his wives and concubines who numbered around 150. Maybe he had 150 playmates but he didn't have air conditioning! At the risk of discrediting my virility I think I would opt for the air conditioning. Besides I've found that once you get to over 100 girlfriends it can start to be too much of a distraction and more of a headache than it's worth and I'm sure some of you out there can attest to this. He also had no children, supposedly due to a childhood illness that rendered him sterile. Based on the aforementioned excessive numbers I have this feeling he was unwilling to accept the sterility as being his problem.

We also went out to a local beach area one afternoon and spent a few hours drinking local beer and being harassed by the endless stream of child vendors all selling the same assortment of bagged snacks. I didn't see any other foreigners out there so I'm sure we were regarded as fat cows to be milked with inflated prices for snacks of dubious quality. One of them, a young lad, was especially persistent, but his sales pitch was limited to a tiresome string of 'you, you, you'. That was the only English word he would say. I started responding back with 'em, em, em', the Vietnamese way of addressing him, to the amusement of some of the Vietnamese who were within earshot. I tried to teach him to say 'Would you like to buy some snacks?' to no avail. He couldn't or wouldn't learn even a single new word and I wrote him off since I didn't want any of his wares anyway. If some of the tens of thousands of Vietnamese touts want to set themselves apart all they need do is learn a few more words of English or French or whatever language they're assailing their prospective customers in. If I were walking anywhere in Vietnam and I heard a Vietnamese voice say 'Sir, do you need a motorbike ride?' instead of the ubiquitous 'You motorbike you', I think I would be so pleasantly shocked I would jump on the back and say 'take me anywhere you like and tell me how much later'! I might do that once. Only once.

While at the beach Vietnamese enjoy swimming even if they neglected to bring the proper attire. No, they don't skinny dip, but take the other option of going in fully clothed even if they're wearing denim jeans! I can't imagine any of the boys and girls I saw sitting around in their wet jeans were comfortable, but I saw nothing but smiles and heard nothing but laughter. Someone obviously needed to inform them all how just how miserable they unknowingly were. Many women don't own what we would consider to be proper swimming attire due to both economics and conservative attitudes. It's rare to see a Vietnamese woman in a 2-piece bathing suit, a.k.a. bikini, so rare in fact that I don't recall a single instance of it.

I recently finished an excellent book for an education in understanding Vietnamese society entitled, appropriately enough, Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jameson. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject. It's both insightful and very well written and helps make sense of a lot what you see today in Vietnam.

On the way back from the beach as darkness was falling we discovered that none of the lights on the motorbike worked. Not a big deal in Vietnam as you'll see motorbikes blithely slipping through the darkness completely unilluminated on any night, but I didn't like not having any lights and I shouldn't have been driving at night without my glasses. Craig had no experience motorbiking so it didn't make sense to switch drivers either so we proceeded while I tried to be cautious while also going with the flow of traffic.

As we approached a left turn to take us back into Huế I slowed to wait for an approaching motorbike but I continued to slowly make the turn thinking the approaching driver would veer to his right as we turned. I remember seeing the approaching headlight waver before the loud crack and finding myself lying on the pavement in a state of semi-shock unable to breathe. Craig and I exchanged questions and replies that we were both ok though I couldn't yet move to lift myself up. A Vietnamese bystander came over and offered his hand to help me up but I declined. After maybe 30 seconds of laying on the pavement I was able to take breaths again and I pulled myself up and righted the motorbike. I could see that Craig was standing by the roadside and was OK. I turned back to find out about the other driver but he wasn't there. Apparently he went down also but was able to quickly get back up and took off. By the time I finally pushed the motorbike to the side of the road, the small crowd that had gathered was beginning to disperse, having seen that no one needed any extra attention. I'm not sure how much time had elapsed since the impact. It could have been 2 minutes or 20. In a bit of pain and with my confidence shattered we completed the 10 minute ride back to the hotel. Luckily Craig knew where to go as I was lost and fuzzy and shaky.

It was not a pleasant night for Craig or myself. The motorbike suffered only a minor cracked faring, but I was hurting all over from my head to my knees. Craig suffered some scrapes, the most noticeable being on the knuckles of one of his hands giving him the appearance of having been in a good bar fight. I got about 2 hours of restless sleep that night as I had very few comfortable positions I could try to lay in. The next morning I left for a 13 hour train ride back to Nha Trang.

I assume the accident was at least partly my fault as I'm still not comfortable with the unwritten rules of the road here. I'd had a previous near miss in Nha Trang that was definitely my fault. I should have just stopped and waited for the oncoming motorbike to pass, especially since I didn't have a headlight and he probably had a hard time seeing exactly where I was. Truthfully I was happy to see the other driver had left because that meant he was OK and also I was afraid of being held liable for damages. It would have been smart to check the lights on the bike and/or been more mindful of the time. Of course it would have been helpful if the hotel had informed us the lights didn't work! Then again, they may not even know. I don't know if we even told them

Picture of my respectable bruise is below.

Craig gets momentarily distracted from the day's important business: sipping coffee and reading news on the banks of Huế's Perfume River.



It's not as if the concubines went unnoticed and forgotten!

Remnants of a concubine house.


American bunkers from the Vietnam War perched high up on a bank of the Perfume River outside Huế.

View upriver from the site of the bunkers.

Ouch! But as I've discovered from numerous mountain bike accidents, there's often little correlation between how bad an injury looks and the pain. This one never hurt at all. What was quite painful was the rib that I must have bruised but that had no visible external signs whatsoever.