Facing Page: Ho Chi Minh 1989
H C M
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From the beginning, I kept the key turned in the lock to keep out the ladies who prowled the corridors looking for customers. Well, them and anyone else that might happen to wander in uninvited.
After midnight on my first night there was a knocking at the door which finally woke me. Someone obviously wanted to get in. I ignored the banging. The banging became louder and more frenzied, reaching a scary crescendo until finally I heard a key in the lock and I jumped out of bed as several police burst into the room.
After midnight on my first night there was a knocking at the door which finally woke me. Someone obviously wanted to get in. I ignored the banging. The banging became louder and more frenzied, reaching a scary crescendo until finally I heard a key in the lock and I jumped out of bed as several police burst into the room.
They entertained and voiced, albeit it in a tongue I didn't understand, the fantasy that I should leave my bed in the early hours and go with them. Something I pointblank refused to do and after a kind of Mexican stand-off, I managed, with much bluster, to shoe them out of the room, a mixture of indignation and disbelief on their faces, no doubt caused by the combination of my display of outrage, my indifference to their power and my confidence in my right to be there. I think they were happy to leave without me.
Several hours later, dawn half-cracked, I was jolted from semi-sleep by the sudden sounds of screeching car tyres and small arms fire. I rolled off the bed and covered the few yards to the window in an instant, peering cautiously over the bottom of the sill. The gunfire continued but the streets were completely empty. It was at this exact moment of bamboozlement that the heavy beat of HOT RS started to reverberate through the building.
On exiting the hotel for a morning prowl I walked straight into the banks of speakers set up beneath my window that belonged to a friendly young man who's business was making bootleg copies of his tape selection for Vietnamese teens.
I ordered his morning intro (yes I was awoken by screeching car tyres and gun shots every morning) to take away with me when I flew home a week or so later. I held onto it for many years before it finally went AWOL.
I'm still taken back to that place whenever I listen to HOT RS. That and anything by Boney M. You couldn't walk between the Rex and Ben Thanh market back then without hearing Boney M, gangs of pickpockets working the streets and vendors hawking sets of polished stainless-steel gynaecological and surgical instruments layed out on squares of fabric on the footpath.
On exiting the hotel for a morning prowl I walked straight into the banks of speakers set up beneath my window that belonged to a friendly young man who's business was making bootleg copies of his tape selection for Vietnamese teens.
I ordered his morning intro (yes I was awoken by screeching car tyres and gun shots every morning) to take away with me when I flew home a week or so later. I held onto it for many years before it finally went AWOL.
I'm still taken back to that place whenever I listen to HOT RS. That and anything by Boney M. You couldn't walk between the Rex and Ben Thanh market back then without hearing Boney M, gangs of pickpockets working the streets and vendors hawking sets of polished stainless-steel gynaecological and surgical instruments layed out on squares of fabric on the footpath.
Hanoi to Bangkok