What do I know about here, back home, anywhere? Nothing. I'm in a void. I'm ignorant as a grin. I'm butchering time.
It's peaceful, quiet, a fine day, then the air horn goes, shakes me out of sleep. They've all got one, every bus, every bike - I've even seen a water buffalo with one strapped to its horn. Billie's sure that once you got to know a buffalo they'd be nice. They look nice don't they? she says. No, they look like hippos with horns I say. But the beasts can lug.
The bus driver blows his air, waves, shakes his fist to the screen. He'll take anything anytime, gesticulating at drivers, the girls and I follow suit, we're getting flashed and honked, our hands are outside the bus.
We're leaving Saigon where dogs don't dare put out a beggar's paw for fear of being eaten. Air horning it to the sea at Mui Ne.
Steve smelled when we got on, oozing alcohol, drinking beer out of a can, it was 6.30am, sun rising. Deaf in one ear and turning epileptic on the road, he shook. Epilepsy was following us. He talked, my eyelids got lazy. He'd lost his job and was meeting his Aussie friend. We meet Johno later, he told us a story where he snotted a guy and called my girls mate. He staggered over words and drank his stew on a voyage of self-abuse.
Mui Ne has sand dunes and sea rolling into each other. Red sand, white sand, but they don't mix. The grains lay side by side. The girls' Atlantic skin is touched, kneaded by the sun and without so much as a knock, enquiring fingers.
Every morning I say, sorry about the noise.
What noise? Our Swiss owner asks, his bungalows needing attention. Praying again, didn't you hear, I say.
Not a thing, he says.
Went on for hours, wailing pitifully, I say.
He looks at Tracy, shakes his head, goes back to how he sits, cradling his head. I've said the same thing every morning. There's a picture of him on the fridge. Younger, alive when he had skin on his bones and his blood wasn't Tiger beer, his manhood mocking him from the fridge. The photo stares as he throws another can to the bin. All time is beer time, but he won't touch Scotch.
The last thing he said was, are you religious then? No, I said, I don't touch a drop.
Kite surfers practise being dragged, dunked and salted by the sea. I watch, fishermen watch in baskets spinning in high, angry seas.
And away we go leaving the sea, sand, cans, the beer. Up to the central highlands of Dalat, the veggie-growing green centre of Vietnam, the garden. The bus is stuffed, sweaty, taking in dust, climbing bending mountain roads. The girls are up front learning Vietnamese from a passenger who's got a wink. An Israeli woman gets up, spews, hey, when are we going to be put on a bigger bus? She's straining the buttons of her blouse, the heat has put her in a funk. The driver looks at her then back to his honking horn.
Hey, you promised, she squeals. Sounds like a whining chainsaw needing oil. Bigger bus, she shouts, hits the seat in front as if it was a mule, full with badness. She's a lesson for the girls, in keeping mouth shut. Her lover, her servant, her dog, consoles her and I look at the hog. Outside are sun-sprayed green paddy fields, ducks, oxen pulling carts, poles, wires, tapped into taking bringing life. Village after village, people squatting on knees fixing, doing things. I don't do number two on squatted knees, not without holding on. Looking out of a roving window suits the lazy in my soul. We mount the mountain.
We arrive, her hogness Miss Israel gets off with her heavy sweaty supporting bra, her possum wiping down her vileness, sweat and gluttony.
It's cooler in the mountains. The girls look at their sandals, their brown arms. Is it cold daddy? Etta asks. I don't think so, I say, yet the hatted, the scarved, the gloved go by.
We're here to become Easy Riders, ride on a bike, take bends, choke on 50cc fuel. Tour the area, with a Vietnamese man we meet called Yang. He speaks English, reads philosophy from 5am. Talks a good thought. He's full of yin and yangs, atheists, agnostic or nots. Pondering Buddhism, Taoism and Confucionisms, leading me to confusion.
We stare at a dragon pagoda 46m long, wrapping its tail, hissing its fangs waiting as a warning. On to a monk, who will show you his art if you pass the test. We wait, he writes on paper and asks if we understand? Four times he does it, each time the girls shake their heads. But the gates are opened to his nirvana, rooms full of pictures of him. He's famous with an ego he can't shake. His eyes look at us as if cutting rock. He's made music written books, cast cement and painted thousands of pictures of him. He's called Crazy Monk or Luc Thien, call him what you like. He's reputed to be the richest man in Dalat, easy money. He starts to sing the song 'When I was young I listened to the radio', sings its soft and sweet then moves on to 'Yesterday' that Beatles clanger, then goes silent and claps his hands brings them to prayer. He says, I meet a little Buddha today, points to my youngest girl. What's a dad supposed to think of that? Sent a shiver down my spine. Or was it my ego that did that?
Etta's take
A shower of ladies swooped over our faces and said, you very beautiful. Johno was a big banana bottle-drinking boy.
We meet a Swiz man who was as skinny as a stick but he ate rather a lot of bacon. The monk wore a reindeer hat, he was dull in colours but bright in the mind. He loved art and never stopped. I drew a lotus all on my own and rote in his book, you are a very good artist and you will be forever.
We went to crasey places on a crasey motorbike I saw a crasey giraffe.
Billie's take
Walter the Swiss owner, a drinker he just stinks of beer and he's constantly having 'em and he's always puffing away and he's ace at throwing them in a recycling bin. Well I suppose that's all he does all day, sitting in the same spot, drinking them then chucking them.
Today I had a ruck a bad one I don't want to remember it.
We met bazooka Jo on the bus, well it wasn't actually the best person to meet but all she was is boobs and rudeness a complete cow can't put up with the slight bit of uncomfortness. She was on the same bus as all of us and we just had to grin and bear it. She squealed like a seagull, squawk squawk. We stopped to get a drink and she asked the bus driver, is the bigger bus coming now?
Yes I think so, said the bus driver cowering like a dog whose owner slapped it a hell of a lot. Well I'm not surprised, her voice sounded like a slap.
Well it better be. After she said it her hubby touched her precious boobs.
He was a holy monk a Zen monk a wizard as well. We first arrived and he asked Etta and I, do you understand?
Uh uh, we said, shyly shaking our heads.
He had seven dogs maybe one for every day of the week their names are Bamboo, Symphony, Melody, Cuxa, Rocky, Rock and Golden.
Tracy's take
Steve's a man with a past, he has accidents, knee surgery, epilectic seizures, eyebrow splits. He sinks two cans of beer before nine. His breath is sickly sweet; an alcoholic, trembling.
Up early for the bus ride to Dalat, small bus we're squashed in, girls up front with nice couple, enjoying the journey. Miles of sand dunes, men building roads, breaking rocks by hand. A loud voice shrieks rudely at the driver, she's appalling. After her outburst the other passengers chat to change the atmosphere her ignorance creates. Foul-mouth pipes up again, you'd better sort it out. Billie and Etta notice her, it's a good lesson for them in how not to be, it might stick.
We visit the Dragon Pagoda, Linh Phuoc, a mosaic wonder, green and brown glass, broken china, a homage to recycling, it's stunning. There's a statue of the first female Buddha, Billie's impressed, we bow and light incense.
Later we visit Luc Thien, the artist monk, a paradox. His ego is as large as any artist I've met. His work is average at best, yet hundreds of thousands hang in his studio pagoda. Linguist, poet, musician too, no doubt very old, he looks like the grim reaper but Buddhist beauty twinkles in his eye.
