Is it that time already?

My four odd years in Vietnam have certainly left their mark. Indeed I can be found citing the definite pros of having an unlicensed, unregulated taxi fleet in the form of xe oms, available anytime and anywhere someone has a motorbike and a desire to make a quick buck.

With the number of cars on the streets in western cities, it would (on the face of it) seem the perfect solution to outrageously lengthy bus trips or taxi rides that cost the pay from a couple of hours at work.

But you strap on your mp3 player and you get used to it, although nothing has filled the void of the footpath bia hoi or late night pho stall. I’ll be back in Vietnam in a week and a day, so I should be able to tough it through.

Living abroad you see some odd things, not least of all when you return home. It is indeed a two way street. Away, you change. And while you were out, things at home change too. But a wiser man than me once said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Upon my arrival home, it wasn’t long before my mother was on at me about clearing out all my old stuff from the wardrobe in my childhood bedroom.

My brother happened to be back from the UK over Xmas, and as I watched him packing away his extensive collection of old hardcore techno vinyl, I realised this is the equivalent of pulling out the guy rope peg from a tent.

Sure, the new (however temporary) home is over there, but that thin line weighted down under a pile of childhood toys and ill-fitting clothes gives some security, especially if a bad wind should blow your way.

So there I am digging through the sedimentary layers of detritus, uncovering fossilised Masters of the Universe toys and enough plastic Ninja weapons that there may once have been a great battle here (somehow I don’t think the anthropologists will be interested), and I’m thinking about how I will be returning to Vietnam, and subsequently to work, rather soon.

I’ve met a swathe of characters in the last few months, who have either recently returned or are in the midst of planning trips to Vietnam.

It’s a destination that has piqued a large amount of interest in the last few years, and I have had the good fortune to have lived in Hanoi, a place that I have started referring to as home.

So here we have all these geezers looking forward to their holidays, while I’m looking weighing up a return to the reality of palm trees and weekends in Ha Long Bay.

The bay incidentally features in a rather large number of TV and print ads for everything from outdoors adventure (read lifestyle) clothing brands to feminine products. And each time it appears I get a little home sick for those chugging boats, my friends and the daily blessing of living in a place most folks only visit vicariously through friends’ holiday snaps.

In muscle memory of my time away, I keep getting myself into those little dances we all do when walking along and someone walks into our path. That old I’ll go this way, you go that way side skirt that allows both parties to continue along in their mission.

Most of the time, it’s avoided by relying on the road rules we all learn, even as child passengers in mum’s car. After spending several years on Hanoi’s manic, keep right roads, I now tend to get in people’s keep left way.

The point is one of change. What I deem to be ‘home’ has changed and being back “home” has been a pretty odd experience.

When I lived here, nothing ever seemed to change, and having lived in Hanoi, where no two days are the same and high rise buildings seem to spring up over night, I imagined returning home to a safe nest of predictability and a solid memory map of the city, mostly measured in walking distances between good cafes.

My initial forays out taught me two things. First, everything is the same, it’s just moved, and as I can’t remember street names (corner of Manchester and Tran Hung Dao… no, hang on) I can’t find the old haunts. Secondly, when I do find the old haunts, all the old faces are gone.

Indeed, the old characters seem to have been replaced by some insane creature called the Nos Hamster, a little cartoon animal determined to get me to huff on balloons full of nitrous oxide.

As I discovered, doing this sitting at the wheel of a Mini Cooper with three dudes I didn’t know, parked inside a bar that sells nothing but “herbal highs” and nitrous – well, lets say it didn’t put any clarity into the issue of finding my old chums.

Herbal highs, which are not herbal at all but rather made from benzylpiperazine or BZP (a legal substance, although I’m told it can be highly addictive) are the weapon of choice at the moment.

So much so that several stores offer delivery and one enterprising downtown store has a 24 hour window, for those late night needs. I had some called Frenzy, which despite the name didn’t match the onstage antics of Slipknot at the music festival I was attending. They did sit well with Blues Explosion, as I waited for the only other chap I knew in the 38,000 strong crowd to finish interviewing “the guy with the long nose” from Slipknot. Apparently, he was really cool despite always wearing a Pinocchio-esque mask.

I resorted to convincing some pals to return from overseas, including several of whom I knew only from Vietnam. Like veterans, we compared notes on the transition back into the community after being away, describing similar hurdles, such as people just not getting what we had been up to. Or really, people just not being used to what we have become.

So I’m back in the Mini with the chums and the Nos Hamster, an ensuing accidental, go nowhere romance with a friends sister, and golf with said friend and his dad the next day. Aha! This is more like it.

A chilly back yard night staring at the rings of Saturn through a friend’s telescope, getting out on the links for the first time ever (I know, the shame of it) and madly swapping mp3s collected from the hinterlands.

I’m looking at the hordes of wild ducks in the river out back of the University Staff Club at my fathers retirement dinner, thinking how odd that nobody owns or eats them. I’m at the Dux De Lux (a bar in the old Victorian-styled University campus) watching the oxymoron that is the hilariously funny death metal band Human and slurping house beer, a local bia hoi equivalent.

How to take a break from the good life.

 

Now, that’s not to say I didn’t work at all on this extended break. I had to get over myself and my position as a rock and roll reporter, bite the bullet and sign up with a temping agency. My home town is one of no change when it comes to work.

 

The good old protestant work ethic prevails, and people cling doggedly to the jobs they have – especially the better ones – for an average of 15 years.

 

Temping life is then filled with early morning wake up calls; days spent counting t-shirts in the warehouses outdoor adventure (really read lifestyle) clothing stores and the finger splintering drudgery of loading fencing contractor’s trailers in timber yards.

 

The last job I was offered was something to do with packaging and shipping porno mags. Needless to say, I was kind of curious but eventually turned it down in favour of a rainy afternoon in the hills shooting threatening logs and rocks with an AK47. 

 

After unwinding and getting used to the lay of the land again, I realise I’m on holiday in my home country. But the time will come, in a few short days, when I will have to uproot that tent peg buried in the cupboard. I’ll be heading back to Hanoi, back to work and my ‘regular’ life.

 

Back to the reality of palm trees and a country that never rests in its quest for change. Oh yes, definitely back to The Good Life.

 

The Good Life