Homage to Marguerite Duras

So.  In 2006 I went to Russia because of the BBC mini-series adaptation of 'Dr. Zhivago'.  In 2009 I went to South America because of Borges' 'Ficciones'.  The Middle East: well, y'know, the Bible and stuff.  Haworth: 'Wuthering Heights'.  Vietnam: Marguerite Duras and the swoonerific French film, 'Indochine'.  When asked at my interview for the Big International School why I wanted to move to South East Asia, and Vietnam specifically, I named this author and this film as my raison principal and happily explained that I live my life in a fictional bubble, which involves me morphing into any one of my favourite literary heroines/heroes as and when the situation demands.  They still hired me, yo, which proves that I'm not as mental as everyone seems to think I am.  At least not on the International Education Scene: everyone's mental here.  I fade comparatively into the background of general unhingedness.

It was with a consuming excitement, then, that I took up the offer of a weekend in the Mekong Delta, birthplace and setting of many of the novels of Marguerite Duras, the woman who had affairs with much older Chinese men at 15, and then drank herself to death aged eighty-something having purged herself through a set of autobiographical novels and had an intellectual affair with a much younger gay man named Yann.  Wow!  She is my actual role model.  To make it even more exciting, I was accompanied by a Frenchie who revealed himself as King of Laid Back and Unassuming Adventures and Google Maps.  This, and his fairly decent Vietnamese language skills, promised a trip of Li Hi proportions.  Three hours on a moped (I absolutely drove for some of the way and did not crash, though I did squeal like a girl on a number of ocassions) without a single Westerner in sight, a broken exhaust pipe, a catastrophic downpour, through which we just had to drive, a couple of hundred rice paddies, fish farms, a lover's house (Marguerite Duras', not mine, alas), a ferry and a Buddhist temple with some naughty statues later, I was not disappointed.

Some more photos:

I really am driving, here.  It's not a clever camera shot. 

Look: it's me!  I bought a Duras book with me to show everyone how serious I was about all of this.



One reason I love Marguerite Duras so, is that she was poor.  Dirt poor.  So poor that pilgrims don't visit her house, they visit her lover's house.  We don't even know where her house was: it was a shack that was pushed down by a slightly stronger than average wind.  She never even set foot into her lover's house: they used to rendez-vous in cheap hotels in Cholon, the China Town of Saigon (I have been here, too, but not to any cheap hotels, obv: I live in a posh apartment).  Despite this, someone else's house has been entirely dedicated to her and she is like, way famous - at least in France, or on French courses at KCL -  and her books have been made into distressing films.  If I was the Chinese Lover's wife, I would be well annoyed that the house of which I was proud for my entire life, was now dedicated to a poor, famous, troubled homewrecker.  Sorry, Mrs. Lover.  Duras is just way more awesome than you.

As if not seeing a white person for the whole day, and freezing our tushies off on an actual local's passenger ferry found down a tiny path, unfit for mopeds, along which we drove our moped, was not enough authentic tourism, more joy came with an evening meal on metal table tops with blue plastic stools and some delicious DIY pork dish that involved picking and choosing from a variety of spring roll/wrap options such as cucumber, banana, rice patted down into little rice squares and lemongrass, and rolling everything up like a cigarette before dipping it into salty brown sauce.  That was a really long sentence, so here's a short one to break it up: Yum!  This was all most reminiscent of what is known in some circles as Nancy and Susan's Big Adventure, where Lizzie and I chanced upon a young man who goes by the name of Mark Dominic Monaco, and ate the best Chinese food we've ever eaten in a white-tiled, brightly-lit eatery by the side of the road on Hainan Island.  Good times.

Some introductory photos for the next stage of the story:

Now I was pretty content with most of this, and had already reverted back to grubby traveler mode, forgetting my new expat lifestyle full of air con and cake Fridays, however!  However!  There was more!  You can't go to the Mekong Delta and not visit the floating market to take photos of old ladies with fruit you will never buy.  That would be a travesty: there would be no point in going.  But of course, Frenchie abhors any form of bus/boat/plane/train that says 'Tourist' on it, literally or figuratively, so we took the mopeds again.  This time, I did full on driving and Frenchie did better navigating than he had done the previous day.  Technically, I had been navigator, but Frenchie hadn't listened to me when I said turn left, so we ended up on the highway for a long time when we should have been zipping through paddy fields.  (Sexism alert!)  Men are really quite stubborn when it comes to directions.

Frenchie's method this time was to ask random Vietnamese people the direction to the floating market until we found a friendly man who took us down some back alleys to his house.

Me (thinking): oh dear, we are going to die.
Frenchie (probably not thinking): this is exactly what I had planned.
Me: what's he saying?
Frenchie: his wife's going to take us on her boat.

WOW.  So we hung out at their house for a bit: everything made out of wood and jutting out into the river.  Chickens inside right next to the stove.  Sleeping arrangements: question mark.  Hygeine?  Let's not think about it.  Lots of fluoride toothpaste absent smiles all round, so philosophical question of the day: what is happiness?  What is poverty?

Then we got on a boat and visited a floating bar to eat mango, a floating petrol station, a floating off license for cigarettes (hubby had to stock up for the journey), a bush with beautiful flowers, in front of which hubby insisted Frenchie and I took 'soon-to-be-engaged' type photo (they like cliche and tack like this in Vietnam), and a family of children who were fascinated by my camera and nearly dropped it.  We then returned to the house to watch one family member squeezing pork liver in a basin.  Wow.

Random: what do you do for a living?
Vietnamese lady: I squeeze livers.

Hmm.  Squeezing livers, hey?  Have a photo:



On the way home, I was pretty convinced that the adventures were all over.  However, I was wrong!  Stopping for petrol, we discovered that the moped would not restart.  Hmph.  We pushed it to a mechanic.  He resolved that yea verily, the moped would not start.  Frenchie did not want to pay 400 dong for a moped that was not his, and so I stood, perplexed, wondering how on earth we would get back to the hotel.  Frenchie, at this point, is still pretty laid back and unassumingly hails another guy on a moped who, he tells me, will get both of us and the moped back to the hotel.  This is how it works:

Step 1: Put experienced driver on broken moped.
Step 2: Place right foot on broken moped and start working moped.



Step 3: Push broken moped along using thigh muscles of steel and blind faith in experienced driver on broken moped.
Step 4: Take photos if riding as a passenger on working moped.
Step 5: At roundabouts or other intersections, push broken moped away and leave experienced driver in the hands of fate, to dodge oncoming traffic.



Step 6: If police come into view, let go of broken moped and allow it to wheel gently to a stop.
Step 7: Get off broken moped and run along with it, sweating, and looking like an idiot.



Step 8: If ascent onto bridge becomes too steep, apologise, and let go of broken moped.  Repeat Step 7, but uphill.
Step 9: Pay Vietnamese guy way more than expected because lady you are trying to impress is in awe of what just happened.  Look generous and capable whilst still retaining laid back, unassuming air.

Pretty impressive trip, right?

Hope the photos made up for how looooooooong this post was.  Some people (literates) love it.  Others complain regularly about the length.  Sorry guys.  Have you ever heard me tell a story verbally?  At least this way, you can go and get a cup of tea and come back to the story without worrying about offending me, or having to do the gesture that Laura, Grace and Bridget have perfected, that involves me pushing along to the actual point of whatever the heck it is I'm trying to say.  Everyone should know to make themselves comfortable when I have a story to tell.  It's just how it is.