5th January- Nha Trang

I can finally drink coffee, after the tooth withering embargo is over. They serve it black or with condensed milk and it takes me straight back to Jamaica circa ’91. Couldn’t get enough of it. Previously had never thought of using condensed milk and had only had it as a sort of topping on some pudding and by now was too health conscious to ingest that much sugar, but I loved it. That holiday was also the first time I went into a club where the western man were there seeking local women whose job it was to dance and go off with them. I was with my sister and boyfriend D and as we were much younger, we were mildly shocked by the sexual market/sex as a commodity scenario before us. I mean, we went there just to dance.

Here I idly watch the couples strolling by or lying on loungers next to me. The mixed ones (ie. local girl and foreign man) are not exchanging a word. The man usually has a big gut and he reads or sleeps. The woman keeps covered from the sun and is fully dressed in jeans and a t-shirt usually and either looks out to the sea or leafs through a magazine. Local vietnameee girls wear heels while the western travellers are always in flats. That’s what holidays are for right? The only exception is the super glamorous Russians. The older women all have Amy Winehouse beehives. Too funny, the height of fashion. Not. But she’s popular Amy, on café’s and restaurant stereos, I guess no. 1 hits still travel. In 96 it was Ace of Base everywhere…. Umh, the younger Russians are impossibly tall and skinny. They all look like storky Natalia Vodanovna. At least their hard looking men stick by them and don’t consort with the locals. They seem to enjoy banter and games and drinking and more banter.

I have to be careful about what I allow myself to think about the sex trade. After all, a friend of ours goes to Thailand regularly for a dose of intimacy he doesn’t get in London. He has a double PHD and published books to his name, but this is what he does once or twice a year. But what level of communication can be achieved for someone so wordy and sophisticated when he doesn't speak the local language and the locals don't speak but broken English? But it only takes one g/friend to screw you over for your life to take an irreversible dip into deepest waters, you probably tell yourself that no, you won’t be screwed by a woman again, not by surprise any way. Sex is like some king of oxygen, and if you don’t have it in you, you buy bottles like you do when you go for dives.

I have to be careful what I say here as more than one friend is dating a much, much younger oriental girl with whom they can’t speak and of course you only have to read ‘The Quiet American’ to have it explained in a brilliant way. Nobody gets hurt (or do they?) when the transaction is an actual sale. But as Belle says, we’re all whores. And to an oriental our ideas of beauty and handsom-ness are an ungraspable concept. Just me being white is seen as an enviable state, the amount of time I ask what do you consider beautiful? Thin, fat, blond, dark, tall or what and they all just say ‘Your white skin’. It means they can’t actually find N. as ugly as he seems to me and would to most western women. And if he doesn’t care to discuss politics or economics or literature then so be it. It’s almost an accelerated move into old age. Even if you were Einstein married to Simone de Beauvoir you would probably only talk very little in the end and about totally mundane things so like Fowler with Phuong, you only want her body next to yours and that she prepares your opium pipe. In return she wants money to buy scarves and a dream of Europe or some promises. But Europe doesn’t work very well for these women... but what do I know.

As far as I know N. Is too intelligent to think he could have one full time and bring her to London, he just vacations in Thailand like these men do here. Here they’re probably even less world aware than the Thais, though they may have an overall better education (94% literacy I read somewhere). But the deals are so simple. I’d like to know how much men pay for this. Probably the same as some people pay for their servants. There’s enough returning Viets here who now live comfortable lives in the USA or Australia and they’re after maids and housekeepers and cooks and the rest.