Honkers

Once upon a many years ago, I queued up for four hours at the crack of dawn outside the Chinese embassy in London to obtain visas for a Nancy and Susan's Adventure to China, a trip which included in it's itinerary a jaunt to China's newly re-acquired Hong Kong, which we had heard was full of bright lights and excitement and James Bond and casinos. Of course, this was at least two years in to the Great and Amusing Travel Disasters of Emma and when we got to Shanghai we realised that we had only obtained a single entry visa, and so could simply stand on an island full of orphanages for Chinese girl babies waving forlornly at Hong Kong as all the other girls got taken away by their new American parents. 

That's a story for another time, though, but I feel that slightly ambiguous anecdote that only Lizzie will chuckle at serves to demonstrate the growing closeness of the world and the fact that all the blogs and travel diaries are now beginning to merge together like a giant literary tube map of interconnectedness and shrinking planets and soon we will have all sat next to each other's cousins in business class, or stood behind our colleagues in the immigration queue without even realising it and they will probably all have a caricatured and unflattering pseudonym on 'Vietnam? Yes please!'

Aaaaaanyway.  Since Susan found a new international travel bud in the form of a knot-tying crampon-wielding, map-laminating fiancé, so too did I, and with him, eventually managed to get to Hong Kong, city of skyscrapers, star ferries and leather fairs where Frenchie gets to stand around for five days talking about tanning and quality to all the other people who are interested in such things.

After regaling Frenchie with my story of being upgraded, free of charge, to business for completely unknown and unconscious reasons, we began our whistle stop tour of being sightseers and I think we did fairly well in the 30 or so hours we had available to us, starting on a nineties gangster kung fu set, complete with street food, aesthetically pleasing animal rights abuses, a night time star ferry and a night cap with a view only slightly obscured by a very thick pane of storm glass (photos to follow from Frenchie's camera). 

The next day was filled with skyscrapers and Frenchie feeling nauseous from looking at these really tall buildings whilst I tugged at his arm saying, 'look, look, look at this one!  It's reeeeeeaaaally tall!  Imagine being at the top of that!' which I feel was a loving and empathetic way of helping him to conquer his fears.

Then, we took the funicular (who doesn't love a good funicular?) up to the top of the peak to see a 360 degree, panoramic, raved about, highly anticipated view. I'll tell you what: it didn't disappoint...

Check out that fitty...

No, I don't think 'Frenchie against white backdrop', as minimalist and avant-gardely artistic as it might be, was what everybody had in mind when purchasing their sky deck pass at sea level where there was no mist.  We quite enjoyed it though, coming from Europe where the weather often foils best laid plans and the silver lining has to be found in the grey clouds. Because HK is an ex-British colony, I feel this London attitude has rubbed off on them, because, like Brisbane, there were a number of aspects to the city that felt strangely familiar to me: the rain (note lack of personal umbrella - too long living the high life in the tropics has affected my wet weather practicality)...

...the inappropriate signs in SoHo...

What, please, is a 'La Rage'?  It sounds dangerous. 

...the queues...

The choice of restaurants at the airport...

And of course, the church full of Filipina women...?

Wow!  I have never seen such a packed out church, yet alone a congregation made up almost exclusively of women!  The only reason we came into this church was because we followed what we thought was a public demonstration for Women's Suffrage when we saw the entire pavement inundated with about 300 ladies. When it lead here, our curiosity was amusingly satisfied and I put down my 'Equal Work, Equal Pay' banner that I carry with me everywhere in case such demonstrations unexpectedly occur when I am buying milk, to take a photo of the woman on the right in her awesome jumper.  I'm pretty sure the Queen has something similar in her wardrobe. 

One thing that was decidedly Cantonese was our lunch, for which I put aside my rule of not eating anything you can't see the inside of, in order to appreciate some authentic HK dim sum.

Luckily, I was able to unfurl my banner again after lunch in support of the Taiwanese students protesting in Statute Square. Unlike some of the video footage we saw later on the news from other parts of the world, none of these guys were dragged away aggressively whilst being beaten by policemen, which was good. 

We then spent the evening running through a huge storm to visit a friend who now lives here, at one point having to take our shoes off, roll our trouser legs up and wade across the road in order to avoid ruining our trainers, only to discover that this was 'black' rain and all should have taken cover. What is 'black' rain and why is it so dangerous?

Arrival at airport was decidedly more adult: checked in for the correct flight on time, without having to pay anything extra to be upgraded, have not upset anyone at passport control, and have even had my flights for tomorrow confirmed and a nice egg breakfast. 

Business Class

I have always wanted to travel business class. Just to see what it's like and whether it's worth the extra money. My understanding of business class comes with GOLD lounges and champagne and Internet connections in the sky and flat beds. Ooh. 

Luckily for me, I screwed up the first flight of my holiday and ended up with no choice but to pay for a business class ticket to Hong Kong in order to save face, and my marriage, because I'm not convinced anyone would want to be married to such a bozo who can't even book her flights correctly in order to arrive on time for a mini break. 

Here's how this all happened:

Thursday:

Even amidst the mania of the end of term, I found myself smugly able to print off and highlight my itineraries for the five flights I will be taking this holiday. What a clever little traveller I am, I thought to myself, whilst downloading historical notes for the walking tour I have planned and collating a list of all my hotels, their addresses and contact numbers, and printing my colour coded schedule. Such an experienced adventurer.  I even had a plastic magic wallet to keep all my paper work in and blog addresses for cafes and roof top bars. 

Friday:

I packed. I tidied the house for my guests. I did aaaaall my laundry.  So organised!

Saturday:

Leisurely drive to the airport. Thoughts of coffee and a bit of work in the lounge. I was doing so well that I even got there an hour and a half before my plane was due to take off. Unheard of for me!

Imagine my pit-of-the-stomach acceptance, therefore, when I heard the words, 'Are you sure you're flying with Vietnam Airlines today?'  The personification of my memories of Barcelona, a French gap year, Borneo and the Tiger Airways booking system that glitches when opened in Safari stood a little way off and began to laugh behind their hands and point at me.  I didn't even argue with the check in lady.  With a deep sigh, I checked my colour coded flight confirmation. Of course, it said 'Sunday' where it should have said 'Saturday'. With my nicest smile, I asked the lady if there was any way of getting me on this flight, which was already overbooked, as Hong Kong sidled up to all those other guys and said something about this being so like me. 'True, true,' replied Darwin, knowingly, and introduced himself as 'that dick that hates Emma's passport'. 

Thankfully, two nice ladies at the information and ticketing desk, an explanation about why my debit card has a different name to my passport, and a healthy £200 later, I was able to chirpily inform Frenchie that of course we were meeting as planned, and that guess what?! I'd been upgraded to business!  Now, how long have I been waiting for a stroke of luck like that?

So, considering myself very fortunate to be on a flight, whether in the hold, cockpit, business or economy, or even strapped to one of the wings in a sparkly leotard with feathers in my hair, I settled into a social and resource analysis of business class, and here is what I have discovered:

1. Business class is more about feeling like you are worth more than all the proletariat sitting behind you: you get to the plane on a bus where you can sit down, the workers have to stand; your food is preceded with a menu and accompanied by a garish tablecloth, whereas the first you know of food in economy is when you are unexpectedly asked, 'chicken or fish, madam?' and then you get flustered and say 'fish' when what you really meant was 'chicken, please. I hate fish. Ugh.'  and then you drop sauce on the only pair of trousers (light coloured) that you brought with you on the trip, and they were supposed to be your trousers for looking smart in posh restaurants.  The staff are kinder, and speak in quieter voices in business class, and they don't tell you off when your phone rings during the safety briefing although you have clearly been told three times to turn it off or... I was about to make an inappropriate Malaysia Airlines joke. Too soon, right?

Look!  You even get your own salt and pepper pots!

2. You do get more leg room in business class and four seat settings. I don't know what a lumbar is, and nothing seems to happen when I press this lever, but I still appreciate it being there. The seats are also like those deluxe cinema seats - big enough to fit both you and the small Cambodian child you are smuggling out of the country. This is definitely how Brangelina must have done it. 

Oh, and there's a little place to put all your flight entertainment so that you don't 'do a Borneo' and leave important things like, I don't know, internationally recognised documents confirming your identity and right to travel, in seat pockets.  All those haters, by the way, are still in the airport cafe drinking luke warm coffee. Who's laughing now, hey guys? Emma, and her fluke luck managed to beat you all!

3. I forgot how pretty clouds were. The serenity of business class has enabled me to reconnect with the beauty of simple things. Look how pretty they are:

4. There was no champagne, Internet connection or flat beds.  There was white wine at 11:30am and 5 out of the total 13 guests were women, three of whom were not simply wives of businessmen travelling business class, but human beings in their own right, probably with air miles. This made me feel better about the state of the world.  Have another photo of the sky:

So, here is me in business class, feeling the quiet hysteria of unanticipated poverty and slightly outraged on behalf of the ordinary person.  Those people in the back are probably ten times the person I am, no matter what their flight ticket says!  (What I really mean by this is 'there are ten times as many people in the back - commoners - than there are up here, with the people who have the same ticket as me. Suckers!)

 Haha!  Business class!

When I eventually got to HK, I walked past this sign yelling 'nothing, other than the fact that I'm an idiot!'

And got hauled away by security for taking photos at an airport. I put on the 'smile like you are innocent' face and cooperated really politely and spoke in a quiet voice and they didn't even make me delete the photo. Yessssssssssss!

Cultural Adaptation

So, today I was really struck by the human capacity to adapt to lifestyles and cultures that are very different to those they have been raised in. Judging on my own behaviour (handful of words of Vietnamese, number of Confucius texts read: zero, retaining regular cravings for mashed potatoes and eggs Benedict) adaptation doesn't mean assimilation or even understanding, more a distant observation and figuring out of one's place in the new order of things. I would, however, like to consider myself slightly more globally streetwise than the two elderly American women currently standing behind me in the passport queue, who are regaling each other with stories of how they go on and off the same door on the train in Singapore. Just think of it: the same door. Not the opposite one: the same. Apparently this caused some confusion about who was waiting to get on and off at which point.  Gosh. 

To add to this cultural shocker, here are a few amusing and bizarre and shocking things that I have witnessed recently that have seeped into the mundane, but really, are blog worthy if the blog is made up of vignettes of my life rather than a big, Li Hi event. 

1. The Queue of Monks

For many months, in fact, since I moved to Vietnam, there has been a big temple under construction near our apartment block. Progress has seemed stop-start for the last year or so, and we had all started to presume that it would never be finished. A few nights ago, however, I noticed that there were some Buddhist flags flying in the very spiritual neon green and orange lights that now lit up the central part of this pagoda, thus, I reasoned, it must be open for business.

I didn't realise, however, that this would mean some form of official importing of a very large group of monks and nuns and sundry Buddhist supporters from one place - who knows where - to the new temple next door. Running late for work one morning, I was even further delayed by this trail of people, that had presumably gathered for the inauguration of the temple. The queue, to put it in Anglo-Saxon terms, was at least as long as the queue for ground tickets at Wimbledon, and was being managed by a group of young, Buddhist Y-WAM equivalent youngsters in yellow tshirts. 

That is quite a lot of people for 7:10am!

2. Bikes

Bikes are awesome and liberating and convenient and the mode of transport in Vietnam. I love Roger Red Bike more than any other inanimate object I own because, unlike my MiniPad or bassoon, a motorbike can get you to higher ground when the tsunami is coming. This sounds like a distasteful joke, but it is not: it is a genuine concern in many of the countries I holiday in, and there are signs pointing out the direction to higher ground on most coastlines. 

What's more, you get to experience traffic like this, which makes you feel like your a part of some important historical event and is so cool that you don't even care that it's made you late:

However, bikes are also heinously dangerous and I am shocked that I am no longer shocked by this. For that matter, I am no longer surprised that it took four times and about three years for an official person to give me permission to drive.  Cars are so dangerous, too!  We forget that.  

The immersion into bike-risk is so complete that last weekend, when driving to the airport on a road where there is almost always an accident every time I ride on it, Frenchie warned me not to look at the man lying in the middle of the road with blood leaking from his head, and my first thought was 'I wasn't looking, I was trying to get through the traffic.'  How awful. And most people are the same, including the police who were about twenty metres in front of the accident but hadn't seen/heard/noticed it and so we're doing nothing. 

Kites dropping into the highway cause accidents; dirty and dazed women sitting in the middle of the road cause accidents; dangerous driving causes accidents; men who stink so much of beer that they seem to be soaked in alcohol like a sponge cause accidents but, somehow, dogs that sit in between their owners' knees with their feet up on the dashboard, unsecured, or behind their owners in a relaxed, lying down position, do not cause accidents by leaping jubilantly into the road as I would expect a dog to.  Neither do sleeping children who sit in front of their parents, leaning heavily on one of the arms responsible for steering, their un-helmeted heads lolling like dead people, by falling sideways into the road like I would fear constantly were I that child's parent. 

Because of these multiple, unexpected and creative dangers associate with bikes, I have joined the helmet police. My hatred for non-helmet-wearers equals my father's hatred for mobile-phone-drivers and cyclers-on-the-pavement (I ride my motorbike on the pavement - oops - don't tell him) and yea verily, I will fight this cause with equal vehemence. I have now turned into one of 'those' adults that stops driving when I see any students riding their own bikes without helmets. I have yelled manically across the street, whilst slapping my own helmeted head for effect; I have cruised along slowly with young couples re-enacting that scene from 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', explaining in long and lecturing tones that there is nothing romantic about a crushed skull; I have become that shrill woman that the cool, sporty types hate because I make a habit of pointing out times I have seen them without their helmets on and reminding them that they are role models to impressionable children. 

I'd dislike myself and shun my soapbox if I were not so terrifyingly aware of how dangerous bikes can be. 

Really dangerous, guys. Like.  Really. 

3. The Fire Swamp

From my apartment window, you can see over the undeveloped land that, until recently, has been used  by construction workers to live in. These families build houses out of whatever they can find, often sell meals to the taxi drivers and have a market (though I don't know with what regularity), often have children and a dog. 

About six weeks ago, when I was still intent on running another half marathon, I was trotting home from a run only to discover that this whole area had been set alight and all the grass was on fire. I slowed to a bewildered jog and had the terrifying thought that the children might still be there (the children!), but nobody else was running around waving their arms and screaming, so they probably weren't. In fact, nobody seemed bothered by it at all. I wanted to run around, yelling 'FIRE FIRE FIRE!' at the top of my lungs, or at least call someone and say, 'look: there's a bush fire and nobody cares. Isn't that mental?', but instead, I tripped past, waiting for the world to press the 'play' button on this clearly insane moment and see everyone rushing around collecting their belongings and running for higher ground, but that didn't happen. I didn't even get a photo and the next day at school, nobody even mentioned it, even though someone else must have seen it. It was like it never really happened at all!

Maybe I did just make it up?

4. Aeroplanes

Curious Stranger: so, are you just visiting Singapore for the weekend?

Me: uh... kind of: my husband is based there. 

CS: oh, he lives in Singapore?

Me: no ... he lives on a plane.

CS: I'm sorry?

Me: that's probably where he spends most of his time...

CS: he's a pilot?

Me: no, he makes crocodiles out of bags. 

CS: ...

Me: do you want my seat?  I've seen the sunset from this angle five hundred and seventy six times. Ugh. This is the same Jetstar/Tiger magazine as last week. Boooooooring.  Oh, and look, Huong the stewardess has done her hair differently to normal. I wonder if that's allowed?

Me: and I walk past this architect's version of a human being almost every Friday evening. He gives me nightmares. 

CS: ... !

Clearly, Curious Stranger will learn not to be so nosey and ask strange little Afro-haired girls many questions on her next tourist flight!

The point is, Frenchie and I fly a lot, yo!  Our carbon foot print is so big we're probably solely responsible for the death of an entire blue whale.  Do you think the whale thinks our true love was a worthy thing to be sacrificed for?  And I now consider getting on a plane the same as getting on the tube. I pack in the morning before work and sometimes stay too long marking and think, 'it's fine, they'll wait/there'll be another one'. I remember a time when taking a flight was so exciting that I stayed up the whole night watching 'Requiem for a Dream' rather than risk missing it and read the safety briefing card and identified my nearest exit. 

5. Sunsets

Talking of sunsets, Saigon sunsets do still make me think, 'wow' because they are actually quite sci-fi and scary. I keep putting off taking a picture for you, because every time I leave work early enough to see one of these sunsets, I am riding my bike and hesitate about stopping and then the sun elusively sinks below a building, and I am also probably on my way to a close-shave check-in, and when I did stop to take a photo, I realised that pointing your camera directly at the sun just results in a white blob rather than the blood orange that I can see from where I'm standing. It is so red and so enormous, it's quite scary. I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere. Is it bigger because we're nearer the equator?  Does that make scientific sense?

6. Farm Animals

And obviously, there are these guys who couldn't make life more surreal even if they tried:

Why are there cattle and wild boar grazing and rooting for truffles outside my apartment buildings, an area of land which is basically just a dusty, destitute construction site?  Who do they belong to?  How are they regulated?  How do they know not to wander into the Imperia courtyard and drink from the baby pool or poo on the reception steps?  I don't understand where they have come from!  Is it some form of migration, like wildebeest and what I am seeing is the impact of the rapid industrialisation of man invading and disrupting the natural world?  Was the Imperia site once a mighty river across which these cows leapt in a sort of bovine coming-of-age slow motion nature documentary way on their passage to the paradise fields of the central highlands?  It makes no sense to me. 

So there we go. The mundane of the expat lifestyle.