31 January - Where is the Snow?

I'm waiting....

And is this a sign that I'm a silly girl or that I'm just too well organised? Am on the net, customising a Valentine card that can be sent to the BF later on. It includes having to chose some music titles that mean something to him.
Am sure he's not taking this much time in thinking of his one for me. But life is life and girls will be girls.

29 January - Sky Blue

tbc

28 January - Prams & Parks

Am staying at a friend in Queen's Park so naturally I go exploring the neighbourhood on a Sunday morning, close to lunchtime. It starts well enough along Harqvist Rd. There are a few parents and a few prams but nothing much, though we remark that they're already more than the number spottend in a week lower down in Portobello. This includes a famous writer who for sure never looks in the mirror before he steps out. Hideous, though BF says one of his books is not bad.
But when we decide to cross the park is where the full horror strikes you. There's cars parking and leaving and disgorging little families of various colours and backgrounds. But inside the actual park it's a riot of prams and toddlers. The cafe' seems out of bounds. Though later on we spot the 'quiet' garden. It says 'no dogs' but that must mean no chilren too surely? There's a youth in there on his mobile phone but he's talking quietly.

When did this happen? When did all this people move here cause they couldn't afford a garden more centrally and have made all these houses upwards of 3/4 mil? I thought mortgages were high and you couldn't have kids but maybe all these were born before the latest money crunch? Good luck feeding them during the downturn in economy.
We cross at speed and decide to check the Farmer's Marked we've heard of. Not my idea but someone is hungry as someone doesn't really do breakfast before leaving the house. Here the suprise is the prams (still, and the papooses or whatever those little harnesses are called) but also the price of farmers things and... the accents. Last time I looked this area was perilously close to things I never planned to visit, like Willesden. And now all these clubby/posh whites are ... everywhere.

I wonder if being a parent means you have pram envy, you know, you go out and other families seem better kitted out than yours or you wonder if they already have secured a place at such and such a school ... But they all look like they have enough left for a skiing holiday and we know a couple here with one child and one on the way and the 1m house already. To make it worse the pubs around here are child friendly and so you know... you can't really read the paper in peace at the Salusbury can you?

I'm moving into Bloomsbury if at all. I hope that's full of fusty, dusty old people and academics and Ukranian refugees from 50 years ago. I really do.

27 January - Movies & Stalkers

We go see 'No country for Old Men' with a couple of friends. I quickly realise I need translation/subtitles and there are none. I mean, I appreciate the lovely Kelly Macdonald (is she still going out with Dougie from Travis?) doing a fantastic Texan accent but… it’s very hard work, and Toph says he missed some of the Tommy Lee/Sheriff speech at the end. But… that’s what the web is for. I found the script and printed it. Joy. I didn’t like Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ at all but maybe I’ll go back and read his earlier trilogy, given the movie is so satisfying.

Anyway, movie was with the photographer and the onion man.
tbc

26 January - Nail Varnish & Paint dry

A’ propos of something personal, a friend reminds me in an email that people can change, even after 45. I want to believe her but I’m pretty sure I don’t really hold this opinion. I think we stay pretty much how we are, we just develop clever ways to disguise the bad stuff about ourselves or to sell it as not so bad. Or, easier still, we just find new people to sell it to (hence new relationships). Perhaps the only people we can’t fool (nor offload altogether unless we cut all ties) are our closest relatives. They always know who we are and so we hate them for it. But I digress.

However, just to illustrate why I don’t believe anyone changes (and you can give me as many examples as you care to, you know, former cut throat murderer now works with orphans and saves lives etc), I could say that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that it takes nail varnish 2 hours to fully dry. You’d think that by now I’d have internalised that information but no, I still smudge the goddam bastard and it infuriates me slightly less if it’s after a self-administered manicure than if it’s after one I paid top dollar fo at a salon.

The underlining thing this example serves to expose is that I have never learnt to become patient and … just wait for it to dry properly. This gives me the right to believe, as I do, that inherently lazy people, will never become a hive of action. But you don’t know what I’m talking about so ignore me.

25 January - James Mcavoy & May weddings

That was a good evening. A g/friend takes me to see a preview of ‘Juno’ which is hugely enjoyable and well paced and has some great performances, very credible. I was curious as a link to my blog appears on the same page of a distinguished Blogger and she also links to Diablo Cody (scriptwriter of ‘Juno’) and it kind of gives me a nice kick. When you think about it, coming up with an idea like ‘Juno’ is kind of not difficult. It’s not like you have to think out a plot, like ‘No Country for Old Men’ for example, and handle a more complex narrative, plus you can make all the action take place in one location. You only have to fake the weather (there’s a 9 months span to the story).
Anyway, yes, as with many of these things, Miranda July’s one from a couple of years back for example, you sit there thinking ‘I could have done that’. Much as I think about half the stuff I see at the Biennale. But of course that’s not the case. There’s a huge amount of determination and hard work involved and am too busy flitting about to sit down and turn up the required number of pages, plus er.. the business of selling them to someone.

Shortly afterwards I go to a b’day party for a 25 year old. Wish he was my toy-boy but no, he’s the son of a friend. I arrive at the first floor room of the chosen pub only to be told that I’ve just missed James Macavoy and Julian Rhind Tutt by half an hour. No, they’re not friends of the 25 year old but were huddled talking downstairs. Darn. I go to the bar on the ground floor and Mr Macavoy is still there wit friends and then at the bar ordering next to me. He’s unremarkable and not v. tall, not v. anything. In fact he's less noticeable than my friend's kids (the other brother just got a part in the Buddy Holly musical and he's a handsome young man if I may say so and not incur her worries. And yet, James McA is such a good actor. Not majorly good in ‘Atonement’ but good in the other ones. I saw ‘Atonement’ only recently on dvd at home and had totally forgotten the ending of the novel (well they sort of changed the delivery of it by inventing the Vanessa Redgrave interview) and I ended up crying for a good few minutes. So happy I wasn’t at the movies. Toph had the exclusive and rare pleasure of consoling me which was kind of cute. Think he was touched I can have tears jerked so easily. And by Keira who on the whole I can’t stand. Well, I have nothing to say to top actor so I take my wine upstairs, but after i leave D. gives him some of her son’s b’day cake and says he was a bit stunned by her gesture. Bless, it must be hard to have so many strangers invent reasons to come up to you.

I move on to join friends at Century. Haven’t seen them for a while as they moved out of town. It’s near Stansted but it may as well be the moon as my diary is littered with ‘Must go to Essex’ for every Sunday of Nov. Dec. Jan. And soon it will be Feb and that 90 mins journey just doesn’t get made. We’re lazy. The party has been together for a couple of hours at least and they’re on mojitos and champagne. S evolves from paying me some compliments to full on chatting me up. He has half a row of teeth missing, he’s a smoker and I can smell it, and he’s put on 2st. since i last saw him. That’s hardly going to sway me, even if the personality is good. He says ‘I’d like to give you a massage covering you in Mdma’ (wow, sir, that would be an expensive massage). He also adds he has a flat round the corner in Soho. Well now am really tempted. Not. No, I like him a lot, he’s a great guy, top barman and soon to be top majordomo to an 80’s star who is permanently living in Ibiza. Butno. I like teeth and a lean physique and fresh breath. These are some of those non negotiables. For a moment I wonder how I could obtain the mdma and jus go off... But it’s kind of pointless if I’m on it and the BF (who is out watching Mick Jones’ ‘new’ band with guest appearances by 2 Sex Pistols and an audience of 50 somethings) is not...

So, it remains no. Plus am busy discussing the ‘hen’ w/end that my friend L may take us to prior to her nuptials in May. A riad in Marrakesh. Now that’s stylish. And gay M. Is allowed to come and he’s so lovely to be with. L. Wants to wear a Jessica Rabbit style wedding dress. Which is pretty good given her curvy shape and if she loses some serious weight that has crept up in the last year or so. But what shall I wear? Now I have a project. How nice. I make it back by 2am. It was kind of hard to leave the comfortable banquette and return but it could have gone on till the morning and I simply can’t last that long.

24 January - Death & Life

American friend of a friend (similar age to me? Big younger, who knows) at dinner asks me what my blog is about. I tell her it’s about considering how you dislike the ageing process and by writing about it you try and remind yourself that life is good and it will get progressively worse inside your body/bones, but your brain may go the same way so you won’t notice/care or if your brain stays sharp it may alter what it thinks and you may just accept the inevitable etc, etc.
She looks at me wide eyed and says ‘Why do you worry about it so much? What a strange thing to be preoccupied with’.
Well, that may be because I’m European and just stepping out in Rome or Venice you’re confronted with decaying former great cities (they still are great, but you know what I mean, the masonry is propped up) and your thinking is of a more melancholic, romantic, depressed nature when it comes to life… and death. In fact ‘Death in Venice’, c’est moi. And she’s American and probably my considerations are not part of the genetic make up (unless you’re Erica Jong), more like let’s go invade some other country and bring them democracy and Macdonalds. Oh but am digressing and probably doing her a disservice as she’d said she lives here as she fell in love with Paris.

23 January - Real & Fake

I meet a friend who says ‘If I’d known you were going to HK I’d have asked you to bring me back a fake handbag’.
I answer ‘No, I’d have said no can do’. She looks up from her fake little black Prada and gives me the ‘eh? You mad?’ expression so I explain. First of all there are too many shapes and sizes and styles and the whole thing would have taken much texting/calling/double checking and secondly there are good and bad fakes and the good fakes cost around a £100 or so (these are what you find a lot of on Ebay ladies, just in case you thought you were really buying a cast off or because there was an oversupply at Chanel and the factory just had to get rid of them (as if) and so you know, spend the same on a regular handbag. Then there are the bad fakes, mostly for the poor people, you know the Chinese from across the border who come into HK on a shopping trip or for the poor people of Hackney or Willesden or some such, basically the ones that feed the non luxury market.
The good fakes are for the City PA’s and for the people who step off the cruise ships in HK and may pretend when they get home that they got a good bargain in HK or NY or Rome. Or they may be acknowledging it’s a fake, and perhaps even be proud of it, ‘Look what I got’. But why? There are other bags with those shapes and sizes and you don’t need the logo right? Or do you? For the avoidance of all doubt, I read in an interview with the chief exec of Gucci that all their lines are manufactured in Italy and that’s exactly to justify the (perceived) superior quality and therefore the uniqueness and the price. And the didn’t seem to bothered by the fakes. Basically by the time you sold me one bag at £700/1k from one of your own managed shops, then your mark up is so high that you can afford to sell just a few thousands and not hundreds of thousands to make your money. So yes, there have always been ‘seconds’ that escape out of the factory but if I were Mr Gucci I’d have these destroyed so beware of what you buy.

J, the Chinese wife of our Chinese ex banker friend showed me her Gucci at dinner in HK and put me on the spot asking me to identify it. I was pretty worried this would be the start of a bad friendship (we’d just met), but I couldn’t lie. I said ‘My feeling is that this is not a real Gucci’. She said ‘Correct, but tell me why?’ So I told her the stitching on the inside of one handle was not even and it wouldn’t have gone out of the factory that way. Er… plus they don’t do it in that colour.

Trust me, I carried a fake LV (the old classic small hold-all shape) all the way through college. Back then I had to have it as the entire school did (half had LV, half had Gucci- am hazy as to the significance of either in terms of tribes) and it pained me to have it as it was brown and I don’t do brown. But back then it was good quality, there were few around and mine carried heavy loads, dictionaries and stuff for a good 5 years before it started to unravel at the handle and the piping. This probably would have happened to the real one too given the weight. I am not sure that I wasn’t pitied by the girls who did know I couldn’t afford a real one and so mine was an obvious fake though I may have passed it off as a gift from a granny. Who knows, I don’t remember, but I did very little other coveting of brands. Think jeans mattered but in the opposite way ie you wore something nobody had or was unfashionable to differentiate from all the girls who had Levis’.

Anyway, there was so much fakery in HK and the fact that it was not displayed in any iconic way, you know, THE one bag alone in a window with spotlight and plush surroundings that made it the queen of bags to behold, meant it all looked like a jumble. Fake Hermes Kelly? Just a big shopping bag. Fake quilted Prada euwwww that was last year, fake little quilted Chanels with chain handle? Funnily enough these looked pretty normal as they’ve always done but all the other styles were too much. Funny as well how there’s no macqueen, no louella, no paul smith, no stella, no cavalli etc. IT’s still the same YSL, Dior, Chanel, Fendi, some ferragamo, prada, gucci, some armani, oh and those Longchamps the French like.
But I’d have had to spend hours to find one that really had comparable leather to the originals and I’d have been worried I’d overpaid for it etc. It was the same with sunglasses and watches (in this case nobody makes fake Rados, the only ones I’d consider buying – yep… you didn’t know I was a hip hop girl did you?) and I didn’t even trust regular shops, you know regular opticians, to have the real brands, after all what could be better than passing off a cheap fake frame for the real thing, ie. sell it at the top price? After a while even if you were an honest optician you’d be a fool not to make larger profits.

My fake Prada toting friend just says ‘Why do you have to over intellectualise everything, maybe people just like that shape and nobody else is making it’ . True…. She then reaches for a cigarette and tells me all her ‘guys’ (she works in an investment bank) bring her back fags for a few quid as they buy them in the middle east. I’m clearly too worried about fakes because I say ‘How do you know that those are real Marlboros? Why would they be so cheap? Maybe there’s less tobacco in them and more cancer’.
I get another 'pitying you' look. She does them very well S., in her unique Carribbean way.

Ps. Noticed some schoolgirls following morning at bus stop, all around 12/13 with very made up faces, tiny bodies and huge fake handbags… that will be who wants them then, and has probably saved up for the fake. That is history repeating itself then, that’s a version of me with the brown monogrammed LV at college. Am glad it’s taken me this tortuous way to explain fake bags. I guess my thinking now is that if you’re in possession of a job and over 25, you’re a sucker if you buy one, but anyone else is fair game.

22 January - the best intentions...

are ... not followed. Ok. once again I have tons of notes and now I have to retrace my steps and describe what happened. From the safety of my usual computer. Shall try hard. That Sun Times travel prize has to be mine.....
But not today perhaps. Jetlag beckons. Should have gone to the gym to kill it off.

21 January - Stylish wanderings

The trusty slimline trainers I bought in Rio in 2003 have finally fallen apart. They were never meant to last and I’d taken them on at least 2 previous trips thinking of chucking them at the end, but then gave them a reprieve because I was totally attached to them. They walked their infant days in the staggeringly surprising botanical gardens of Rio. Full of orchids in every colour and then there was the forest. And my escort for the day was the young Italian with the velvet eyes and long lashes and the lame ‘r’ that made him so sexy. This time they have tears on the uppers and the soles are coming unglued etc. The reason I’ve kept them this long is also to find their twins. They have no laces so you slip them on easily. They’re white and slightly pointed and v. v. light. But I‘ve looked and looked and they’re a no brand so can’t order them on the net or anything and I have no chance to go to Rio for now. So now they’ve gone. I took them off outside the Hanoi Metropole hotel (a girl can’t go for chocolate fountain afternoons in shoddy shoes) and changed into heels and I put them in a bin from which a hawker quickly retrieved them. Wonder if she’s fix them, add some ribbons, colour them blue and they’ll have a new life.

But I refuse to walk in other trainers so once in HK I buy for £30 a pair of ballerina style Rockports which promise to have the same sole technology as a pair of Nike. Yes, for the first 2 hours they’re ok. No, for a whole day walking they’re not. They’re just not light/bendy enough. So I spend another 30 quid (sales time folks) on another pair of much softer black flat shoes with bendy sole, another American brand, oh how this pains me. But why would you match a black shoe with a brown rubber sole? Why??? Why not make them the same colour, easier on the eye?

They have them in all colours and am tempted by white, red, pistachio green but you know, am not rich yet so I can’t buy the same style in all colours (I once knew a man who did that with his cashmere tops… how I envied him, he ended up giving me a lemon yellow V neck that wasn’t that manly, not even an Italian man would wear it. They wear salmon pink though, it always surprises me. Anyway, these softer shoes are cut in such a way that the edge rubs on my bunions (the only thing I have I common with Posh). Most annoying. This means I still don’t have the perfect pair of walking shoes (yes there are flip flops but only Kate Moss looks good in them and you’re an idiot if you wear them in town.

Having said that, I insist on changing shoes every time there’s a photo opportunity and I carry a spare pair wherever I go on my tourist outing. In fact two this trip as the white corked high heels didn’t go with the blue with orange piping dress for example and so on. Yes folks, this is excessive vanity you may think but… ‘photos are forever’ I keep saying and I will not have a bad holiday snap testament left on computers around the world. It was with some satisfaction that upon seeing all the photos from BF’s previous holidays, that I noticed the ex GF looked pretty ropey in most of hers. ‘She scrubs up’ well he said in her defence when I made a catty comment. And that is true, in a few she’s fine, especially if she’s bothered not to take the same clothes on more than 5 holidays. That seems lazy packing to me. But my motto is not to look good ‘when I scrub up’, but … always… so there. Short heels, nothing too fancy, something that goes with everything, pretty black pointy Kurt Geiger mules and voila’ , instant longer leg and better silhouette. I’m not aiming for fashion shoot, oh, no, though I’ve considered one of those white reflective backdrops, there must be some that can be folded up in my bag. Honestly the amount of good photos ruined by too strong a flash on the face to counteract the fading light or against the sun exposure… A simple screen would fix that, but Toph tells me the GF before the last was obsessive about having her photo taken everywhere and I never ask, he offers, but I don’t want to have him make some unwelcome links between us. Ps. I will also not have a photo taken w/o first applying lipgloss, it’s lovely how it catches the light and illuminates your face in all weather conditions. Oh and a bit of white line inside your lower eye rim. Magic.

19 January - Hong Kong

Don't like it. Probably twice the size of NYC and not half as intersting. Unless you're an architect and you study skyscrapers. Sure, that one over there was used by Lara Croft who lept off it (as if) and it's in the forthcoming Batman (as if anyone would jump 98 floors) and nearby there's an even taller one going up. But me? not my thing and neither are the shops. Divided into incredible malls with all the brands you're used to and the super ones (Gucci, Vuitton, Armani, Dior and .. suprisingly Ferragamo) which are every where .. and a whole bunch of shops that sell fakes and a whole bunch of shops that sell primark style stuff, in Kowloon mainly.

The food is good, but as usual that matters to Toph more than it does to me. The highlight of 3 days here (in overcast weather which usually doesn't help) is my pedicure - very good, smooth tootsies for six quid and a dinner with friends who live here and take us to some old colonial building /club in the premises of the old bank of China and that's superb but it's a sad building as it's low and cute and all around it are these giant skyscrapers full of ... financial workers. No, never here again, next time switch planes in Bangkok.

17 January - Halong Bay & Mr Success

It’s grey and cold weather, on the only day we can go to Halong Bay, same as last time I was here. Back then I dropped the idea of going to Halong Bay as without a hot clear day, the place would feel sad (for your info, it’s what you see in Indochine, the movie. A bay with thousands of uninhabitable ‘islands’ which viewed from above are a sort of seventh wonder of the world, and viewed from a slow moving junk would make you lose any sense of time/space). I don’t know when I’ll be back this way so despite the weather, we set off to experience the bay. This time it’s several hours away so we avoid expensive own car and driver and get on a minibus with ten other people and our guide, who asks us to call him Mr Success as that’s what he’s set himself up to be. He’s young and pleasant enough and tries really hard to get a conversation going but with the assorted Russians, Korean, Japanese, Romanians on board, whose command of English is scant, and if you add his English which is the typical unfinished words, the only thing they find in common is football. Mr Success is so happy that Vietnam have for the very first time defeated the much stronger Japanese national team. He tells us that the Vietnamese players are not full time footballers and all have jobs and never much have a chance to play at international level and therefore improve. I forget now who their coach is, but he’s a westerner.. It’s remarkable how countries only care for their neighbours. The South East Asians care more deeply to defeat the guys next door, much as the Serbians want to defeat the Romanians more than the they’d want to defeat the Brits who are further away and not subject to years of rivalry local rivalry
As everyone on the minibus seem to care for football only slightly the conversation dies pretty soon.

I go back to watching the factories lining the road for miles and miles. They don’t have catchy logos and it’s hard to tell what they all make (clothing and industrial parts it seems, some are electronic industry parts) but given that half the clothes I turned over to see where they’re from are made in Vietnam (and were bought in H&M, Topshop etc) or China, or India, it’s safe to say Mr Primark is inspecting thousands of goods as we speak. Kind of weird that the women on the street don’t seem to be wearing any of our stuff though. What they wear away from traditional costumes is pretty unremarkable. Like what you find in those tourists shops that coaches stop by… bad paintings, bad ceramics, bad wooden objects, polyester clothes. It truly is dire. It’s sort of better to stick to the basics from rural times perhaps but that’s just me, traveller with passport and dosh and not trying to emerge from feudal times in terms of economy. Ignore me. I’d prefer if they still rode bicycles rather than mopeds but sure as hell they’re happy to be motorised. I wonder what time they have to get up to make it 20 miles out of town to go work in a factory. There are hardly any villages on the roads so the factory workers must commute in mainly from Hanoi…

We arrive at the car park of the port from which the brightly coloured dragon boats depart. They're all the same and a sort of cheap carnival parade, can't tell any difference. A case of 'I'll get in on the act if these tourists want to see our rocks in the bay'. By now it’s properly freezing. Most of us and the hordes waiting to board the respective boats, are well clothed but there’s a quite a few backpackers who clearly were not expecting this weather or they just have shorts to wear and I’m rueing not wearing any socks. I could do with buying socks! However the stalls lining up the car park are offering the usual fare of absolutely dire items. Every stall has the same shit and not an enterprising one offering a hot beverage.

It takes an hour for our boat to depart as it’s waiting for other minivans to disgorge other passengers signed up. This is soooo boring. But on a day like this, having rented a more personal type of boat would have been a waste of money. The trip is ok, I can see that in the hottest months this tranquil sea would be a dream, languid wanderings on an old fashioned junk perhaps, without hearing engine noise. But today, we just make the best of it and the cave we visit, inside an unprepossessing ‘island’ is actually one of the best in the world for sure. True 20,000 leagues under the sea type of stuff. The return is cold and windy and on arrival I excitedly explain to Mr Success how he could become richer very fast. I explain he could with a small investment, purchase some light blankets, shawls and socks and hats and on days like these of which there are many, he would do a roaring trade hiring them out to day trippers who would return them (he’d have to find a way to take a deposit or just lose a few items once in a while). He listens but doesn’t seem as excited as I am, though he thanks me. I think he thinks it’s all too advanced a stage of tourism services….Shame. I feel a bit like ‘these people don’t understand!!!’ bloody natives.

The drive back is unremarkable except for Toph spotting road signs featuring Alsatian dogs and upon enquiring, being told by Mr Success that this road is well frequented by lorry drivers who love to eat dog. He says he likes it, but is aware that we go ‘yeewwww’ at the thought. Toph is fascinated. I know he would like to try. I may do to. After all trying rat in Thailand a few years ago was not that revolting. The shape was rat but it was barbecued to .. any meat really. Granted, I only had a small piece and I had seen them at the market. Dog is described as gamey but smelling of dog shit, so perhaps not that appealing. They must have different taste buds to ours. Apparently it’s one of those pseudo Viagra myths and you only eat dog at certain times of the month.. for potency. Not so funnily enough next to the dog diners we see lots of massage parlours. Eat dog, go shag a bitch… sad…

14 January - Hedge funds are following us

tbc

13 January - Hanoi

11 January - Bargains & Growth

tbc

9 January - Hue'

tbc

7 January - Hoi An & Memory tricks

I was in this country a mere 8 years ago. But for example in Saigon, it’s only as I turned into a street and I saw a bar that I remembered yes my hotel then was a few doors down from it. The bar is where all the westerners were and the chewing gum kid vendors had to proffer their stuff from outside the windows as they were not allowed in. But in Nha Trang I’d never be able to find my hotel, it was just … a newish building, the whole town is new but sort of sad. it’s even more apparent now, a cross between Blackpool Torremolinos, minus the bars. There aren’t that many and the only stylish one could be in Madrid or Barcelona for all that it distinguishes itself. No locals there. I also had plenty of dinners with people I befriended briefly and I can’t recall faces or names except for HSM, a New Jersey Jewish man who was busy learning how to write Chinese characters. We met on a coach trip. He was in IT? living in an empty house bar a bed and a TV I think. Why did he have money to travel? An inheritance? A silicon valley style cashing in? He’s still travelling, he’s never gone back. He lives in Taiwan now and acted as a white man extra in local movies. He says his Chinese girlfriend doesn’t speak English. I guess I could ask him to fill in some of the gaps in my memory.

But where did I stay? I went on the spliff-boat trip (the one that attempts to re-create what a fun life demobbed GI’s must have had a few hundred miles down at China beach in Danang) and the Israeli guy played with me in the water when we stopped for lunch, under the watchful and doleful eyes of his girlfriend. She was not up to his standards and she knew it, and I had not much remorse… But he chickened out of coming up to my room later. Where was HSM? We were not a couple but were sharing some rooms. Local people thought we were though and would ask… I’d show them a picture of me and Canadian loverboy and they’d look at HSM and grin happily and point, ‘Yes it’s him!!’ And no he wasn’t. First time I realise that we all look the same to them too.

6th January - Travel bugbears

Travel bugbears: these are my latest two I’ve noticed. One is this inbuilt paranoia about your belongings. I check my bag position hundreds of times. I do it in London too, after all I’ve endured a few snatches in my time, but it’s exhausting this keeping an eye on your stuff, it all seems pretty tranquil around here, but then there are statistics to pay heed to and with (some of) your money gone, you'd be seriously bummed out. I wish I could just walk around with nothing. Maybe that's why people like those all inclusive enclaves that I hate, because there you never have to have money on you or a phone or a camera.

The other one is that we compare everything to something else. I look out at some landscape from the roof of a hotel and say ‘It’s a bit like Sri Lanka don’t you think?’. He looks at some paddy fields and suggests ‘It’s a bit like Kerala’. It’s a bit like Thailand, it's a bit like Bali probably and so on. It's all on similar equatorial distance lines. And clearly it’s not at all like Iceland or Alaska, but you know what I mean. There are no surprises. If we haven't been there, we've seen it on TV. So I get perhaps worringly excited when looking out from the terrace of this hotel, I see how they do cemeteries here. The tombs are circular plots of various sizes, instead of the usual rectgangular shape, and there’s no apparent plan to how they’re set up near each other. Some large, some small. And as there don’t appear to be any vertical stones, or pictures or flowers and clearly no crosses. And some cows are walking around the field/cemetery. From above especially they look like a strange rock garden. That's why I end up with about a dozen photos. The first unique view I catch. Sick really...

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.

4 January - Club Girls at the Noblesse

Toph’s curiosity is always awake, but he pays dearly for it some times. As we enter the ice blue coloured tunnel that leads into the club opposite our hotel, Club X, I hear the thumping fast house disco rhythm which he absolutely hates. Thanks to the teeth whitening I’ve not eaten for a day or so, so I can wear a waist skimming top and I can hold my own flat stomach around the half my age girlies and hostesses in here - they wear pink and apparently are just here to make the place more vibey, call the waiters over, pour drinks and generally increase the club profits. Well, maybe. At least this club is full of trendy locals, if you can be trendy here at all.
Sadly I’ll never be so narrow hipped as the young ones in here, but Toph seems makes nice ownership gestures as he holds me tight next to his hip. Or maybe he’s just scared of being targeted by the hostesses. Or maybe not, actually, give him a short skirt, heels and a smooth tummy and he’s in love. I shake and dance as much as possible whilst standing still and we watch the action. It’s beyond me to enter the foray of the little stage (it all looks like the Hippodrome layout wise – does that still exist?). It’s super brightly lit and there are enough security guards to guarantee not even thinking about misbehaving. There’s a cashless bar which requires you to purchase tickets at a till so there’s no mishandling of money.

The time to drink his beer/my water and off we go back to the hotel as clearly the music is too much for Toph. At our hotel bar/club – it’s called Noblesse - the vibe is totally different. There’s a band band playing first, then there’s a DJ. This is fine and regular, but there are 16 – count them - girlies and only 2 western guys, 2 eastern ones and us and another couple . I mean, maybe there is a night of the week this club is busy and 16 girls are not enough to go round. But it’s not tonight. They alternate to get up and dance and punch the air like they’re really having fun, and then....sit down again. All minus one die hard one who has copper-blond dyed hair and is on the floor throughout. The Eastern guys they’re surrounding could be Korean or Chinese or ... hard to tell. They don’t paw the girls at all, maybe that’s not allowed or at maybe they can’t make their mind up. We just watch. Toph wants to know what’s on in the VIP room and suspects that’s where it gets interesting. Especially when he decides to have a look and gets his entrance barred so he thinks his suspicions are well founded but no, the guard allows him a peek and it’s the family karaoke room! The curse of the East! Thank good it’s in a private room. We get go back to our room. Am happy to sing there.

3rd January - Teeth Whitening & Handjob

Guess who gets which one?

I peroxided my eyebrows before I left (yes have already told you in previous post but it's so bewildering what it does to my face), I wanted them the colour of Sharon Stone’s in all those ads where you’d never know it’s her as the image has been manipulated so much to take 20 years off her. Now I need to buy a brown pencil because, in short, never take a call when you’re doing that and get distracted as your eyebrows end up white and invisible. D. shays her daughter has the opposite problem she’s a dyed black blond girl and when she darkens the eyebrows to match the hair. She looks like Groucho Marx for first week or so. Too funny. I don’t know what I look like but it’s doing strange things to my face definition. But where to find a brown eye pencil in Viet where their eyebrows are dark and there’s no need for brown pencils? Black is available but would be too harsh. I stay as is and Toph says ‘Wait till you’ll see the holiday snapshots’. Yes, well.

The day starts well, exploring Saigon again. It's still 33 degrees, there's the smell of fish sauce as you go past stalls and markets (fish sauce here is the barometer of 'doing well', equivalent to our use of fine wines) and there are still too many bikes and mopeds. My throat is tickling, my eyes get sore and there’s constant high decibel noise from all the horn and bell sounding. I’d have to live with earplugs if I stayed here long term. My headache could be attributed to jetlag but I don’t think so. I go to the clinic where I’ve arranged for teeth whitening, taking advantage of the less than half price local economy. Darn, the dentist says they’re white already and can’t do much for me but how is that possible? Surely they use other peroxide in Hollywood if I go by their teeth, maybe they’re veneers but my teeth are perfectly fine w/o them and I want them Tom Cruise’s white. She says she’ll do her best. Am tempted to say 'double the dose' but having lost eyebrows which re-grow, am less keen to risk losing teeth.
In the end they just appear cleaner but are not dazzling white and now I can’t drink coffee and wine for a week and where am I if not in the land of delicious coffee? Silly me.

Back at hotel we go for a massage to forget about the traffic and the sightseeing. Mine is fine and am leaving the tip when Toph emerges from his and seeing how much I’m leaving (10% of the price) says it’s too little. I start to give him one of the standard speeches ‘Man, treat them as you would in your own country, just because it’s all is cheaper here/they’re poor, doesn’t mean you have to start leaving 50%) but he insist on leaving a huge one for his an says ‘Tell you later’.
Which turns out to be he has had a hand job with his. What????
‘You sanctioned it’ he says giving me a half guilty smile. Eh??? When???? Turns out that my attitude of ‘Let’s try anything once/go for it’ (usually in relation to food /places/parachute jumps etc) has been conveniently interpreted as a permission to go with more outlandish propositions. It seems the French man Toph met in the changing room prior to his massage had explained all. ‘She will ask if you want extras, the only word of English she knows (apparently) and if you do, you take it, you must leave a large tip, these girls don’t make any money working here’.

And so it was that with much furtive looking at the door, (no towel had been hanged on the clear glass partition of Toph’s room but had been put up in mine) Toph’s massage changed course half way through. I ask him for details. He says, first he was showered and washed by ... a bloke which totally threw him (my massage didn’t require ablutions) and that in the waiting room there were many Asian men. Clearly am wrong in thinking it's the nasty westerners who abuse their position in these countries, the locals exploit them quite happily too. Toph says they looked like hotel workers...
He says she was 17 or so and tiny and she looked horrified when he said he was 37 (which means he knocked several years off himself and still she thought he was an old bloke, very funny!).

I ask more questions: how long did it take? how did she deal with the, ahem, outcome: tissue/towel? He looks at me like am crazy but I’m just being scientific about it. For some reason I thought he’d have his eyes closed whilst it took place, but he was looking at her. This troubles me more than what it actually was. I want to know how, sideways? Full on? He says there was not much eye contact from her, though she was on the table whilst, er... administering. They’re truly the size of a ten year old so v. light. He says he was actually enjoying the massage more than ‘that’ and he was sorry the actual massage ended as that was somehow more sensual, though he certainly does not regret the experience. But maybe next time he’ll want more time, a better shielded room etc. He says no. I say I agree as, to be honest, masseuse will never look at you as anything more than a bunch of dollars and want it over and done with as quickly as possible and so it can never compare with what I offer. Plus he couldn't touch her. But hey, I give you a few more years and for sure you’ll repeat it, perhaps you'll choose the more full on option where you can grab her and turn her this way and that. In an ideal world it stays at that first cigarette that nobody liked level and we all said 'Never again will I put this disgusting thing in my mouth', but then we did and we liked it...

‘Will you tell your friends?’ ‘No’. he says emphatically. ‘Well, it’s going in the blog’ I reply. ‘You can’t do that! Some of my friends read it’. ‘Well I don’t care, I write about what affects me.' He looks hurt ‘Well I won’t tell you anything any more then’. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it up if I want to’. I guess pretty well usually in any case.

I take him back to our room and establsh the difference between tipping for it and getting it for free with someone who truly knows you. I guess it's the kissing he'd miss the most. And I'd totally hate to have to do this for a living and for any kind of strangers. Life sucks for poor women the world over.

I wonder though where the massage room is where females could get a bloke to do the same for them. It always seems a one way street this sex business, unless you go the gay parlour route. That must be a whole different scene for that too.

2 January - Saigon

I plan to do this properly this time and not in my usual 'taking pages of notes that then I don't use because why would anybody be interested in my travel observations' mode. But you kind of feel that if anyone wants to read about a destination, they'll read the travel supplements. But hey, this time I may try to fashion this trip into an article for sunday times travel and win their top prize - Toph has been told he has to take the winning snapshots and I won't be in them on account of having decided to a) bleach my eyebrows - which normally look pretty ok on my face/colouring and b) having taken a phone call whilst the bleach was doing its work with the result that now I have invisible ones and yes, a pencil is all I need but they don't sell brown /black eybrow pencils in Vietnam because EVERYONE has dark hair and no need for such a colour. Forgot to buy it at Heatrow of course.

So for now, Saigon is hot, 32 degrees hot and immenseley busy. Where have all these motorbikes come from?? Why do they all hoot/sound horns, beep bells and so on. Nice hotel though, am glad the Caravelle was full as our stay there would have been like any five star in the world, bit bland when you walk through the door, luxury is the same Hilton/Hyatt style everywhere. Our decision to stay in not chain-owned hotels has not gone too well though. We've ended up in a Sofitel as anything local doesn't seem to suit choosy Toph who spends time on websites looking at rooms and swimming pools and so on.

Me, I'm so used to travel on a budget and it suits me just fine. I just need a clean room and a decent bed and what the room generally looks like has not much relevance to me. I mean, do they all think that by laying a strip/runner of contrasting fabric across the foot of the bed it instantly becomes 'boutique' hotel? Are we so stupid as consumers? But he totally wants space and furnishings that suit him. Bizarre! In this area, he's the woman and I'm the bloke. Anyway, the hotel meets with his approval and his first impressions are positive. I remember arriving here 8 years ago and not liking it at all compared to the more peaceful North (had done the journey in revers to now). But as a first landing clash with this culture, he's well upn for it. The traffic is intense but crossing the street is not that difficult if you do it as they do, take it in small stages, lock eyes with riders/drivers and wait for oncoming traffic to dodge you. They do! They generally go very slowly anyway so you would not be killed by a .. moped. Toph has about ten books on Vietnam and the war in his suitcase and am afraid he won't find much that's left of the spirit of the foreign correspondents staying at the Continental or of The Quiet American. I don't dare tell him it's all gone. So long as he digs the food and he does, we're 50% on a winner. And he's already noticed the women are more shapely than the Thais. Same small frames/narrow hips, but they carry regular breasts and have more shapely bums than their neighbours across Cambodia and Laos.

1 January - Ccchanges...

Wonder how it will be. It's not often that I return to the same place in the world as there are currently still dozens of destinations I'd like to get to before I die or before I'm able to walk around unaided (Tibet circuit anyone?). But it's been 8 years almost to the month since I got to Vietnam. This time I'm approaching it from the south up whereas then I landed in Hanoi first and worked my way down to the Delta. I'm telling myself that it will be like going to Rome for the fifteenth time and you can still enjoy seeing St Peter's Square but am not sure. I'll have to be patient for Toph's sake as it will all be new to him and same same but different for me. And I have a little more time and am determined to make it to Halong Bay even if the weather will be against us and it won't be the tranquil pool of blue on which old junks can glide along.... but it will mean not making it to the north, to Sapa and the terraced paddy fields that are so mesmerising you can watch them all day.

What the heck, it's the other side of the world and what better way to detox than being somewhere where a decent wine is far out expensive and the loca hooch too scary to imbibe. Off in a few hours, last little tour of west London and nobody about, all shut, just a few lost frenchies and italian tourists in search of the market and all huddled up in the few cafes which bothered to stay open. Forlorn NY day.... what did we do last night? Stayed in, like 99% of all our friends who are no longer 'young' and all abhor the idea of a club/party. Even watched some Jools Holland on TV. How sad is that? Am sure I spent a good few decades pitying people who see midnight on Tv and now am one. The fact that all my friends are too is no consolation. Still, having a lovely kiss and more on NY's eve with the sweetest man, is joyous enough. And not a new year's resolution in sight. Age means knowing they're all pointless talk.