Misadventures In The Mekong Delta

One night I got a text message when I was sitting in a bar. I thought it was gonna be one of my nightly 'Good night MIKE I hope you have sweet dream' texts that my students take turns to send me. Turns out that 'Student Unknown 9' wanted me to meet her parents. After a heavy weekend in Saigon, the peace and tranquility of the Delta seemed like a great idea.

The next day I was walking towards the university gates where we'd agreed to meet. I suddenly realised that i had no idea who these students were - how old were they? What did they look like? How many of them were there? How good was their English? And I was in immediate danger of walking right past them. Fortunatly they saw me first, whilst i was still pretending to be looking for somone i knew.

"Mie! MIE!!" No 'k'. Bad sign.

After a (by Vietnamese standards) swift and safe bus journey, we arrived at a small area of habitation in the Mekong Delta. Weathered Vietnamese sat in the dust at the side of the cracked tarmac road, drinking iced tea and doing nothing at all. Some people slept, a shoeless schoolgirl walked home. Old women squatted and picked the stems from tiny chili peppers. A couple of cows wandered around, the traffic thundered past and in the sweltering air there was a smell of fermenting coconut. All over the Delta there are huge piles of coconut shells, begun long ago and added to by sucessive generations, so for decades the coconut flesh just rots in the sun.

I have a fundamental problem with spending time with a foreigner because I don't speak any foreign. After half an hour of being silently shown my student's (there were two of them, sisters, 20 years old and bad at English) vast collection of (frankly appalling) Thai and Vietnamese pop videos, they seemed to realise this. So they took me visiting. Visiting is a big thing to more traditional Vietnamese families- to honour a guest the polite Vietnamese takes them to visit every family member around. After four or five periods of sitting awkwardly with birdlike grandmothers ("My grandmother wants to know how old are you" "Nineteen" "Muoi chin" "Ahh! Muoi chin muoi chin!!"), I felt that my 'authentic' experience was complete. I had armfuls of bamboo 'gifts' that cost 5000d each, and wanted to see some neon lights again. Unfortunatly, I'd only been there for 5 hours and was not leaving until the next day.

We went to the park. In the middle of the Mekong Delta, 45 minutes drive from the nearest large highway and in an area where the people still wade through their back gardens and go to bed when it gets dark, the Vietnamese government decided to build a park. But this is no mere taming of jungle! There is a giant pink breezeblock sculpture of a lotus as you enter the park. The lake with fish in is surrounded by a monorail. And in an obscure corner is a cage made of light chain-link wire full of enormous alligators.

"I know! Lizards! Lots and lots of huge, hungry, man-eating lizards! We won't build a clinic or an airstrip, we'll give them some alligators which they'll have to feed! And a pond too. One doesn't see many fish in the Mekong Delta. And then we'll put a monorail around the pond, so people can see the fish and alligators from above!"

I'm paraphrasing, but somone with authority said that.

I wonder who cleans out a 4mX4m cage full of under-fed alligators? I wonder how long it took for the people to get bored of looking at creatures that do nothing but lie in the sun all day? I wonder if, when the mesh of the cage rusts through, anyone will repair it? And how long it will take, once that day comes, for a bored kid to poke too hard with a stick and suddenly find out the hard way that an old tennis court fence is not adequate protection from an enraged 25 stone animal.

That evening we went to a fair. It was a fairly modest do - only 5 stands and a main stage - but was attended by a couple of hundered people. Within 30 seconds all the people there were tailing me around. They weren't self conscious about it or anything, they just came and watched everyrthing I did. My students and I eventually sat down and tried to communicate via paper and pen, and pretended to understand eachother, whilst a hundered Vietnamese penned us in on all sides, leaning so close their ears were touching ours.

Obliged to wait until the highlight (a singer), we scurried off and hid at a nearby cafe, waiting for the main show to start. When it did we went back and were immediatly given seats right in frnt of the stage. A 5 foot 9 Vietnamese 'woman' came out and started to sing in Vietnamese. Then another, then another. What on earth are ladyboys doing in the Delta?! The Vietnamese loved it - for them the performance was half-musical, half freak-show.

Somone thrust a bingo ticket into my hand, one of those spinning spheres full of small bright balls was wheeled onto stage and too late I saw my peril.

"Hello you! Hello Mr Westener! You come help us?" oh god "Hello! You speak English?" smile, shake head, look away. they've lost interest. crisis averted.

The next day, after a shocking night on a bamboo bed, I was allowed to sleep in until exactly dawn. Then we went to the market. Vietnamese markets are the centre of life for immediate communities and the surrounding area. The urban ones have order, internal addresses and maps, but in rural areas they are a hideous mish-mash of low, rusty, sharp corregated iron roofs and drainpipes, underwhich flies buzz, childeren run and the smell of warm meat and blood is everywhere. They sell the most suprising things. Amid the food stalls and clothing stalls are stalls for childerens toys. Action figures and little plastic cars, keyboard guitars that only play one note, and so on.

Then there are music tech stalls. These people love karaoke, and so in their homes they have (in addition to TV and DVD player) a 30-knob levels board and a graphics equaliser. Kit that would do credit to a DJ, just so the family can listen to pop videos. Amid the rotting meat and crap from Taiwan, there are 5-foot speakers and mixing boards! They save up for ages to buy these things. In my students house there wasn't a single mattress and only one table, but they had enough music devices to make Mettalica sound melodious. I guess that kind of explains the alligators and monorail, though.

In the afternoon we went to visit more family in the Delta. It was fantastic, cruising along on a motorbike down dirt roads. On either side tiny rivers, almost hidden behind mangroves, slipped lazily by. Low boats sliding smoothly up and down on the placid brown water. Family tombs deep in the jungle; ornate and pastel-coloured, surrounded by the opressive dark green leaves and thick trunks. Irrigation to keep the groundwater at bay and mark terratory. Amazingly, once or twice we passed an enormous 4-storey house. Ornate, well kept, but clearly not lived in. Then a malorous den of rotting planks and a tarpaulin strung together with rope that served as a home for 10 people.

And, finally, the journey home. I may be generalising, but I don't think bus drivers in England are very nice people. You know when you're still 50 metres from the bus stop, and the bloke behind the wheel just smirks at you as he roars past? We caught the 3pm bus home. At 3.15 we turned around. At 3.30, we're back where we started. At 3.45 we pick up ONE PASSANGER and TURN AROUND AGAIN! She had 15 minutes to wait, and we went back!!! ARRRRGH! We were eventually overtaken by the bus she SHOULD have been on. Bus drivers in England are awesome compared to the guys here.

So that was the end of it. The petrol fumes of Saigon never smelt so sweet; the lights never looked so bright. Although I'd never say I had a good time, it was valuable, authentic, and all the other stuff that's not fun but good for you. I don't mean to suggest the Delta is an awful place, but seriously, it is. If you want to have fun anyway.

Take it easy everyone

Mike

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Published on 6/2/05