To Vietnam
Published March 14, 2023
The bus was now stopped on the street. I could see it, it was within reach.
I grabbed the straps of my backpack and swallowed the humiliation of running. Every atom of my being was disgusted by the motion.
I got to the bus out of breath and stepped inside the crappy metal can on wheels. My name wasn't on the passenger list, not surprising since I had just booked the ticket before I left the hostel.
There was no argument from the driver or clipboard worker though, which was helpful considering the current state of my lungs. Less than a minute after I put my bag between my legs and got comfortable, the bus sped off. Life's a game of inches and all that…
I transferred to another bus and then another bus and then me and a fellow group of travellers were on our way to the country I had been looking forward to the most on this trip, Vietnam.
I was still thinking about whether to go north from Ho Chi Minh - back to Hanoi and then onwards to Ha Long. The plan for this trip was rough by design, since I threw away my flight to Bangkok and decided to hop up the Malay peninsular from city to city by train, my original outline of the trip had changed, I had been looking for those greatest of iterations.
I was going to see how I felt about Ho Chi Minh. Although it was the first place I visited in Vietnam five years earlier and I really did explore it, for some reason I couldn't remember it as vividly as the other areas of the country.
The girl on the bus took my passport and wrote out all the information. The bus came with a bottle of water and a small, tasty Cambodian croissant. I felt happy, what a way to spend the last day of such an incredible year, on a bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon.
This was the last leg of a wild journey, a race against time -
Vientiane > Bangkok by night train > Plane to Phnom Penh > Bus to Siem Reap > Bus to Phnom Penh > Bus to Vietnam ... all within a few days.
I wanted to get my ninth new country of the year done, my stretched goal from seven, and I wanted to get back to Vietnam for my second 'Nam New Year's in five years.
The dog bite in Udon Thani had complicated things, and my third rabies shot was due. Day 7 - December 31st 2022.
After a few hours of crossing Cambodia, we got to the border. The border post had a shopping mall and restaurant attached. I got off the bus and headed straight for food. I ordered a plate of noodles, not bad. Everything about this bus ride was turning out to be just about perfect. The border crossing was quick and without incident, the competence of it all was appreciated.
We were on the other side of the border now. Countries are real things, from one spot of mud to the next, the details change, so much changes.
I liked Cambodia. Maybe on my next visit I could fall in love with it, but I loved Vietnam already and the excitement in my bones felt like a drug as the view outside the window changed from the flat farms, dust and black concrete of Cambodia to the chaotic buildings and gold star flags of Vietnam.
My eyes were glued to the window (not literally ... ha fucking ha) and my smile was wide. A couple of girls on a bus in the next lane waved and giggled and flirted with me as our buses sped along.
I could relax for a moment in time. The mission was complete. I got to Cambodia and I got to Vietnam both by the end of the year and the start of the next.
I got off the bus and walked the five minutes to the hotel I booked.
In the lobby of the boutique hotel I was met by a cowering coward and shitty Google Translate. He shook in fear of my immortal pressense, giving a weak lie for not having the room I booked - the entire water system exploded or something… they had clearly overbooked the hotel for New Year's.
I booked another hotel and set off, the situation was the same without the lie - another overbooked hotel. I spent the next two hours going from hotel to hotel.
It was an unwelcome addition to the day, I only had a few hours to find a hospital or clinic to get my third post-exposure rabies vaccination before the day was out and now this.
At a shitty hotel with a friendly, smiling young lady receptionist, I finally found a room.
I wasted no time, I threw down my bag and headed out, got some 7-Eleven food and then got on chasing that rabies-killing liquid. I walked to a hospital along a busy road in the dark.
They spoke barely any English but managed to communicate one thing - they wouldn’t do it tonight, or tomorrow or for a few days.
I stepped out of the harsh artificial light of the hospital and into the night. I was actually feeling happy, happy with an underlying sense of true rage.
I took a moment to escape my current reality and jumped into a cloud of pink wonder. I stood by the road and opened my heart in love for the giant dipterocarp trees lining the street.
These were my trees. Giant. Brown. Topped with lush green crowns.
For some reason, these beautiful trees of mine had not secured a spot in my memory. But now, here they were, planted by the French a century before, the grandest, boldest trees I'd ever seen in any city anywhere.
Another hospital, a specialist hospital for pregnant women also said they couldn't do it which was extremely surprising… the cute and nice young lady at the front desk was trying to help but ultimately it was just performance art.
The pharmacy - another longshot - was another no.
I took one more shot at it that night. I booked a Grab car to the nicest, fanciest hospital in the country and hoped they would somehow do their fucking job.
Inside the empty emergency room, the story was the same. A mild-mannered receptionist in a suit did a lot of calling and more performance art, but there was no competence and no knowledge of rabies from him or the one clueless doctor who showed up.
I left the failure of a building, went out to the street and faced Landmark 81.
The tallest building in Vietnam stood opposite me and the emergency department. Framed perfectly between two buildings across the street and lit in a grand white and deep hot pink. I moved a few steps closer and admired the giant mass of concrete, glass and LED lighting. A fairytale tower built to lift my mood.
'Fuck this hospital, fuck all the others and their bullshit too.'
It was New Year's Eve. I made it to Vietnam, being one day late for a possible life-saving vaccination would just have to be a consequence of my victory.
I walked across the street to a hotel, connected to the WiFi and booked another Grab car. It took me back across the street to the hospital I was just at… the driver entering the address comically wrong.
I cancelled the ride, got out, walked back to the hotel across the street, reconnected to the WiFi and booked a Grab motorbike to take me back to my hotel.
My Grab driver, a young anime of a man, asked to drop me off a 10-20 minute walk from home due to the busy New Year’s roads.
I said fine but I'll cut the price of the ride by a third. He still wanted full price, but quickly gave in.
On the other side of the city it was clear why he had been so scared. The entirety of the population of the nation state of Vietnam, ghosts and all, were now out on the streets and they all had motorbikes.
We went around in circles in a sea of engines and wheels. Knee to knee. Vietnamese motor angels with tight dresses, tits, legs and heels. This was New Year's Fuckin' Eve. The warm air hit my face, the perfume and pollution danced inside my nostrils. The buildings, the trees, the bitches. This is what love feels like, I was falling in love with Ho Chi Minh City.
Despite his earlier fear of the sea of human we went through, he got me to my hotel. The determination to finish the job
and get the full price was appreciated.
After all the wild rides and bizarre hospital experiences, I started to think about actually celebrating New Year's Eve. I didn't plan on going to see the fireworks or celebrating, but with no juice in my arm, I needed to end the year and start the next with a bang.
I'd get the vaccine tomorrow, I wouldn't die of rabies, I'd be fine. I went to the fireworks.
I walked through the crowded streets towards them.
As the fireworks began to pop, they were partly obscured by buildings. I directed the crowd of thousands to move a few metres to the left while making sure each person had at least a square foot of space.
My psychokinesis prevented the ‘Ho Chi Minh City New Year’s Crowd Crush.’
The fireworks exploded, all the people could now see them, they each thanked me in their own special ways, they were happy.
I was happy.
Some places speak to me. Saigon spoke to me.
I felt a hyper, no-time-to-waste GO GET IT booster rockets in my shoes feeling. It was something about the way my soul and this city danced. Maybe it was the same thing with me and all of Vietnam too. We be dancing so damn well.
It was a frantic night, but one thing was clear - I loved Ho Chi Minh City, and although I also loved Hanoi and wanted to see Ha Long, I made the decision on the walk back to the hotel that Saigon would be my last stop. I wanted more of it, I wanted to extend this wild night into the coming days.
I woke up early the next morning determined to find a way to get the rabies vaccination. I would coup the fucking country and eat China before going another day without it.
I arrived at the Pasteur Institute and walked inside the gate. The security guard, sitting at a table half-asleep said it was closed.
I stood there inside the gates, security guard getting agitated, thinking.
I stood there, thinking.
And then... a motor angel appeared.
She pushed her motorbike through the gate and removed her helmet.
I knew her.
The security guard spoke to her in Vietnamese and motioned to me.
Me and the angel approached each other. I knew her! I had that feeling. As if all of this had already happened. In fact, as crazy as it sounds and it does sound fucking crazy… but I felt like I had sent her. Sent her to save me, from a distant dimension, a hidden universe - from the future back into the past.
My angel at the gate.
My angel at the gate called a well-hidden vaccination centre and set everything up.
She was the exact person I needed at that time.
If I had left straight away - as soon as the guard had said it was closed - my worry would have continued. But I stood still, in place. I knew, knew to wait there for a miracle, for my angel.
My angel departed, the security guard fell back asleep and I sped off on another Grab bike, the dipterocarp trees standing guard either side of the road, I felt like they were on my side.
The doctor at the centre asked every question I would have asked and the nurse gave a running commentary throughout the injection process.
Medical competence!
It cost less than fast food.
I decided to take a nice long walk back to my hotel through the city.
Motorbikes and scooters whizzed past every second, a bánh mì stool stuck out every thirty feet, the concrete broke and twisted under my feet drew jagged lines across the Earth. The bold, colourful shop signs stole their slice of attention from everything else, I felt the heat under my shirt and across my back. Those giant dipterocarp trees found in grandeur on so many of the streets.
Back in the room I looked in the bathroom mirror and smiled the smile of victory. I was alive! Fuck rabies! Fuck incompetent cunts!p>
I packed my bags and checked out of the hotel. I was hungry and my arm was starting to hurt.
I ate a chicken and spaghetti set at Jollibee for lunch and then relaxed back on a sofa with a chocolate ice cream cup in a cute little Japanese ice cream store.
The pain in my arm a reminder of all the bullshit I had just had to overcome.
My new hotel was at the end of a maze of alleyways. A dirty dystopian hole of a place. For some reason I just couldn't hate anything about Vietnam though. Even the cunts were perfectly cunty in a tolerable, almost loveable way.
I opened Tinder and got swiping. Lots of offers, lots of attention, lots of hookup potential. I was now bored with it all though. The sextreme days and nights of this trip were over I decided.
Instead I planned a trip to New York of one of my new Tinder matches, a Chinese girl living in a hotel round the corner.
I was falling apart but I could have met her, could have fucked her, could have fallen in love.
I took a rain check for once.
Instead I enjoyed taking over her trip and redesigning it for my own intellectual pleasure.
One of the annoyances of Vietnam is the insistence of every damn hotel that they keep your passport at the front desk, "...in case the police show up."
I gave my passport to the first hotel and this one too. In bed, enjoying the challenge of creating the perfect trip to New York of a Chinese girl living in a Ho Chi Minh City hotel room, it finally hit me. The fuck am I doing!
I went downstairs to get it.
I told the drugged-up looking receptionist to get my passport.
He handed me the passport expecting to get it back.
"I'm keeping it with me, it's my passport, I keep it."
He had a mix of fear and anger in his eyes.
I laughed at him.
He began the usual spiel. Police, blah, blah, blah.
"Okay, let's go to the police now and ask them." I said.
He picked up the phone and called his manager.
As the receptionist was having a mental breakdown, I had a lovely conversation with a European girl next to me.
He threw the phone down and hit the counter like he just lost his life savings.
"Okay." he mumble-screamed.
Since Vientiane something had been wrong with my lungs, a creeping problem I had been dismissing and making excuses for, now in this new hotel room with its strong chemical-stench, my lungs were getting worse. I had shortness of breath as I completed my usual pacing.
The second day in the hotel I started thinking about my flight back to England.
I decided to book a flight for around ten days later. Before I got too deep into the search I checked my medication - medication that had been with me for quite a while, for a health issue unrelated to all my recently acquired ones - I was missing a pack. The pack that would push the trip into the middle of January with some to spare just in case.
I tore apart my bag, my clothes and the entire room. The medicine was nowhere to be found. I could have just booked a flight then and there, but I don't do 'what ifs' …
I spent the night walking around the city in the rain.
I went from pharmacy to pharmacy. I had to know that the alternative of staying in the city for maybe a week longer would have been the wrong move.
After I left the tenth pharmacy of the night I decided that was it. I would book a flight back to England and get my medication.
It wasn't only the need for the medication, my entire health was on the edge. The rabies vaccinations and the worsening mystery respiratory illness. I needed some terribly organised, often incompetent but ultimately
with a lot of fighting high quality health care - I needed me some NHS.
I wasn't disappointed. The trip had been another classic adventure. Me and Vietnam would no doubt meet again, for another story, many more stories. She is one of my true loves. This time around really deepened that feeling.
The next day I spent some more time out enjoying the city and then on the 4th took an AirAsia flight back to KL, the travel schedule would be another bruiser - two nights back in Malaysia before flying to Abu Dhabi and then onwards to Dublin and then finally to Southampton, with many hours between each flight.
I got back to Kuala Lumpur, staying at the same business hotel as the one I left from just over a month earlier. I had a feeling as I walked to the station the morning I left I would see it again before the trip was done.
I recorded some episodes of the podcast, ate my convenience store food, watched some anime movies - one classic, one new - and monitored my breathing. My thinking was - covid or asthma. In retrospect, I likely had covid. But, in the typhoon of illness I was convincing myself it was more from the pollution, and the effects of all that racing about, a dormant asthma risen from the depths.
Back in that hotel room, an additional health problem joined the expanding club. My gums swelled up and started engulfing my teeth, it wasn't painful yet, but it was going to be.
The trip was now at an end. A plane was waiting to take me to Abu Dhabi and another was waiting to take me to Dublin and yet another was waiting to land me in Southampton. The British Hospital experience was waiting for me too. I'd get better and I wasn't too worried about any of it.
I checked out of the hotel and headed for the station. And Kissed Malaysia and Asia bye bye for now.