After breakfast with a quick stroll it was down to the Sai Gon river front and the Thu Theim shuttle ferry to what westerners might call slums. For 500 Dong (20 cents) I was on the shuttle ferry but my God, it had hundreds of motor scooters and bikes filling the drive-on deck but no cars. A cavalry charge of blue smoking bikes raced off the ferry as I and a couple of other passengers waited to walk off the ferry. Thu Theim is not a tourist destination. A few hawkers approached me half-expectantly of trade: Well, I was the only westerner in sight. I spent an hour wandering the Thu Theim lanes 'observing' and looking at the local Mayahana Buddhist shrines, Down a narrow path between houses I went to look around when a voice sung out , 'Hello, where are you from'? Uh oh. However it was just a friendly guy, in front of his small lean-to, no sales pitch, so I chatted for a while. He said people choose to live this side of the river because it’s cheap and is a safe community. Compared to the city it was very peaceful. Back to the ferry and while on board a mechanic came over to me and chatted to practice English. Yes, he had fought in the war but that was the past. What a joy just to chat and this only.
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Once my beer had evaporated I walked up the seafront road to the town still deflecting offers for bike taxi hire. I soon passed a typical Viet style 7/11 shop with a few girls outside and where a small boy popped out with handed extended saying, ‘Gimme one dalla’. (Nice try kid, but you need a new routine.) I stopped a few hundred metres further on, sitting on a low wall to consult my tourist map and figure out what I could see in the remaining hour and a bit before the return ferry back to Saigon. Ah, but I was still in sight of the shop. With the sound of ‘putt putt putt’ one of the girls arrived on a scooter alongside me saying ‘Sinjow’ then asking, ‘You want help’?
I declined the offer. She looked thirty but said she was 20 so she was possibly 25 and dressed in the standard all purpose uniform of black polyester slacks and white tee shirt . (I did not see one Viet girl wear less than a tee shirt top and trousers and usually much more, covering up to stay pale and modest being good Buddhists. Her trousers also seemed to be that skin tight, wearing a thong was definably noticeable. She had the figure of a 13 year old western girl but that means nothing as the same physique could toil all day in a rice paddy or tote a rifle during a war.
I could tell she was re-gathering forces for a new slant on her sales attack this time as she put her bike against the wall then asking :
Where you from?
What’s your name?
she placed her hands on top of mine to get that personal contact feel. (Dear oh dear, here we go)
‘You want hotel?’ .’ Khong Cam Irn’, no, sez I.
‘You want massage’ No
‘You want boom boom?’ I waved my upright hand, No No.
‘But I haven't eaten today’.
I looked into her eyes, tilted my head forwarded and stared at her. She grinned.
‘Oh go on’ she pleaded. She pushed her knees against mine and gave little bumps against me. (Was that straight out of some manual to make men weak at the knees?)
‘Where is Li from?’ I asked. Saigon and she was a masseur.
Ah, ‘Poor family to support at home?’. She ignored that pre-emptive question. She finally accepted that ‘no’ was ‘no’ as I started to laugh the harder she tried to sell herself.
In the end I agreed that as she had wasted my time, for $2 US she could take me around the town and back to the ferry on the back of a small bike, ridden by a slip of girl, as I looked over the top of her helmet. If she was a pint sized girl then I was a Gallon size guy. I gave her strict instructions to go slow.
When I got back to the terminal she said
‘You can always catch the next ferry after this one and....?
No!!!
On the ferry ride back to HCMC I sat next to Nigel from Hartlepool, a Tesol teacher working at a Vung Tau high school. He was attached to an absolutely beautiful Viet girl. I referred to her as his personal assistant.
Oh No, she is my girl friend while I'm in Vung Tau.
We slipped into English vernacular chat so she would not understand the conversation especially in his indifferent attitude to her. He said the average local factory wage is around $90 US per month so the girls are practical and seek Westerners who will look after them while in Vietnam.
I’d certainly recommend this day excursion to Vung Tau
Back in Saigon I looked for a real massage shop and hello, two smiling middle-aged women were exiting a tidy massage shop so I ducked in and had one of the most comprehensive massages, complete with hot rocks, to round off my day. My travelling companions said the Mekong delta trip was so so, just like mine?
