NAM' VI

Have been doing a tad more writting recently, after weeks of writing only the most shockingly poor poetry. (Vietnam is a rather intoxicating place, but I have been a little too stressed to be inspired.) Have started a sequal to Vampre: Hunting The Moon, which shall be called Vampyre: Paris in the Day Light, and a book about Vietnam, called Beautiful Chaos. A sample from the begining of Beautifull Chaos is to be found below.

Beautiful Chaos.

The taxi driver pointed to his head, and my head, and the book that was sticking out of my bag, and said ‘Hanoi’, over and over again.


Eventually I realised that I had to think, because I was going to Hanoi, and some one might steal anything that was easy to steal.


This was one of several ways in which he tried to warn me about the dangers in Hanoi, which was ironic, because that extortionately expensive taxi ride was the only time I was robbed in Vietnam


That taxi ride was not enjoyable. I really needed a smoke, and I had lost my lighter in Malaysia. It took a long time to explain to the driver that I wished to go to the area around a lake, rather than a hotel.


Before the taxi, I had spent two hours in the airport, because I was in the wrong room for collecting my luggage. All of the Russian people in the room should have been a clue, but I had not slept for two days.


My time in Vietnam did not start well. But it got better. Then worse, then better, then worse, then better…

HANOI.

I emerged from the highwayman driven taxi into chaos.


Three days without enough sleep, food or water had not put me into the finest frame of mind.


The first thing that one ought to understand about Hanoi is the traffic. The traffic looks like it wants to kill you, but it is infact trying very hard not to kill you. The traffic in Hanoi (where one can expect to see a hundred motor bikes and a dozen cars on every street) does not stop. Even at the traffic lights. At the traffic light, one side of the road stops, maybe, if they feel like it. Instead, the traffic drives around you. One walks slowly into the traffic (and if there is a road to Hell, it is in Hanoi) and the traffic drives around you.


The streets are busy. The pavements is mostly used for storage space or as an extension of a café or shop, or as motor bike parking, so one walks in the road. With The Traffic.


There are people, of every nation and and every class, everywhere. Many of them are trying to sell you something.


I needed to call the Director of the school in Hai Duong City, but my phone did not work. So I went to an internet café, and things started to get better.


The lovely lady in the café called the Director for me, and the bar man gave me matches so I could smoke. That was the last I saw of Hanoi for quite some time.