Saints and Sinners Statistics

Monday 11th January 2010, 2am, The Bus - somewhere between Nha Trang and Hoi An.

We went for dinner the other night in Dalat with Hitan and a cute German couple Julia and Chris, and the five of us had a rather strange encounter with an inebriated American man named Mark. Over our dinner of vegetable curry and mashed potato (I'm just so sick of rice, I can't bear to even look at another grain, plus when I order mashed potato it gives me an excuse to do my Bodger and Badger voice - my sister appreciates this reference I think!) he chatted away incessantly about a company he started up whilst he was still at business school in America. This company is called Hufu, and this abbreviation is short for, wait for it... Human Tofu. His business was advertising tofu, shaped, flavoured and textured to resemble human flesh as a healthy alternative food product for cannibal communities. Minute taking and shorthand practice at work were suddenly useful - I unashamedly scribbled in my notebook as he pattered on... "I think that a lot of the pleasure of eating the Hufu product, is imagining you're eating human flesh. For that moment, you can join the fraternity of cannibals. If you really want to come as close as possible to the experience of cannibalism, Hufu is your best option." Uh-huh.

The whole concept and creation of the company was a joke, a marketing scam, an exercise in self-promotion and manipulation of the press to see how much interest and media attention he could amass from claiming to have produced this foodstuff. Mark told us that he received nationwide coverage in the US and even a small article in a London paper; his experiment worked - be crazy and inflammatory enough and people will accordingly sit up, take notice, and ask to interview you on TV. Apparently when he made his televised appearance on The Daily Show the interviewer asked him how he knew that his tofu tasted like human flesh and he told her he'd carried out ''extensive market research". He even went to the trouble of manufacturing Hufu t-shirts, he was modelling one on the evening that we met, and told us that he'd sold 3000 of them. So I guess this proves conclusively that at least 3000 Americans are either gullible or deranged.

On returning to our room after our meal with Monty Python's answer to Hannibal Lecter, Ella and I got to talking about the "characters'' we've met on our travels. As opposed to imagining a fantasy dinner party of famous guests that you would want to spend an evening with, we discussed the slightly more unsavoury or just eccentric oddballs that we've met who we would like to force to have dinner together, in order that they could inflict themselves upon each other, rather than us. Obviously we'd want to be able to watch through mirrored glass, it would be pure car-crash voyeurism. As a side note I thought that they should be served snake wine on this occasion, Ella and I both tried a drop on the Easy Rider bike tour - rice wine stored in a substantial glass jar with the huge, dead coiled bodies of 10 different pickled snakes fermenting in the alcohol. The snakes are meant to offer supernatural health and libido benefits but to be honest I'd rather take a lifetime of illness and celibacy than ever drink that fiery poison again. I think that's what ethanol tastes like, or bleach, reptile flavoured bleach. Am I selling it?!

The reason I mention the encounter with Mr Hufu and our cruel yet entertaining little game, is that on reflection, for every person who might justifiably earn a place at The World's Most Excruciating Dinner Party, we've met another 10 who we'd take to dinner and foot the bill ourselves. Hey, I'd even drink rancid snake wine again if they wanted to, purely for the pleasure of their company. Take the last few days in Nha Trang for example; Mark and Mark from Holland, Olivia and Sophia from Sweden, Joanne from Hong Kong, Phil and Treno from Australia, Dave from Canada - we've been hanging out, having fun and mucking around with some achingly cool, funny, interesting, just purely likeable people. I loved Nha Trang anyway, the bustling little seaside town with a beautiful coastline, hip nightlife, fresh lobster on the beach for a dollar and opportunity for island hopping, but it was the people that made it for me. The reason I was so miffed to be getting on the bus 5 hours ago is that once again, as hit me particularly hard after Koh Phangan and Sihanoukville, I didn't want to say goodbye. I wanted us all to stay there for another week or so, going to dinner together, dancing on boats to live music from Vietnamese "Indie Rock" bands, swimming out at sea whilst drunk on a concoction not dissimilar to cigar scented sherry, requesting Michael Jackson medlies at the local D-I-S-C-O, or just mooching around town and lazing on the sun-loungers slurping banana shakes and winding up the street sellers. I didn't want us to go our separate ways, people I like are just so selfish what with their refusal to cancel their own itineraries and accompany me to places they've already been purely for my happiness and amusement. It is getting rather intolerable that no one I meet is wiling to sacrifice their own plans and follow me to the ends of the earth. Humph. Selfish and intolerable.

Yes, I know, I didn't cancel my plans to follow them either did I. Ella, attempting to boost my spirits on our departure from Nha Trang, suggested that I take solace in the fact that fate had ordained our paths to cross with these people at all, that even for a brief period of time serendipity thankfully placed us all together thereby unexpectedly enriching our lives for a few days. But I didn't want to listen to all this reassurance and rationality, I was busy having a strop. I know she's right though. If we'd not met them I would have loved Nha Trang anyway, had a riotous old time and never known any different. As it was, I was additionally blessed with cracking company. I also know that in terms of travelling companionship and friendships, lightning definitely strikes twice, and more than twice, because it already has for me. Somewhere in the Southern hemisphere as I write this now, there are future friends and companions of mine whom I am yet to meet, what a comforting and utterly lovely prospect. Who knows, if I'm really lucky then maybe my path will cross over again with those of the acquaintances already made in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I do hope so, 'goodbye' can be weathered so much more temperately if I believe that it is really only 'so long for now'.

So, 3000 Americans are gullible or deranged, there's nearly always going to be one person at the table whose drink you'd like to spike with snake wine, and after 6 weeks of travelling you could organise a whole dinner party of people who really deserve each other. But so much more important than this, by the law of averages as we've seen it, there are far more good people in the world than bad. And to my mind, that is a blog worthy statistic if ever there was one.

Favourite Things

Wednesday 6th January 2010, 5.55pm, Phuong Tranh Guest House - Dalat

Oh Dalat, Je t'aime Dalat, tu es magnifique, vous etes belle et si gentille! Qu'est-ce qu'un moment merveilleux, oh Dalat une ville parfait! There aren't enough superlatives in the English language for this stunning highland town and I've exhausted them all anyway raving about other things - hence I'm resorting to some very ropey and limited French, the language of love, and very applicable in this instance given that Dalat is more French than France. Really though, it is beautiful here, don't go on holiday to Italy or the Canary Islands this summer, buy a plane ticket to Vietnam and stay in Dalat - you won't regret it.

A small, provincial looking town set around a lake and bordered on all sides by the Truong Son mountain range, the matchbox slate-roofed houses are painted in pastel shades of mint green, candy pink and sky blue. The countryside is evergreen and lush, the winding streets snake past bakeries and fishmongers, tailor's workshops, chocolate shops and art galleries. The air smells like roses and petrol and coffee, the town centre has been meticulously and laboriously planned and is dotted all over with fountains, statues and flowerbeds, and the climate is warm without being humid or sweat inducing - like England on a sunny Spring day. Apparently Dalat is prime Vietnamese honeymoon territory, and it's not hard to see why.

Being thankfully without grooms in tow, myself and Ella managed to have us our own little romantic afternoon when we arrived here on Monday. Unbeknown to us before scheduling our Vietnam itinerary back in Saigon, we have happened to be in Dalat on the week of the annual Flower Festival. The whole town looks like a Florist's on Valentine's Day; garlands and bouquets and huge floral sculptures are lining every spare piece of pavement, the wind tastes like carnations. We had a picnic on the grass bank at the side of the lake of sweetbread, Dairylea and beer - we had gone shopping in the Patisserie local to our guest house hoping for baguettes, Brie and red wine but then we remembered that we are supposed to be backpacking travellers and must stop being so frivolous and spoilt. We hired a pedalo shaped like a swan (although Ella wanted the Dolphin one because she said it looked like it could go underwater - we had to have a little chat about the difference between pedalos and submarines) and worked off the cheesy bread and Budweiser by peddling around on the lake for an hour taking in the surrounding scenery. This proved harder than expected seeing as it was the first noteworthy exercise either of us had undertaken in a month and was made doubly difficult by the effects of the alcohol and my appalling steering, we were stranded in the centre of the lake laughing away for some time before Ella's nose turned sun-blush pink and we had to find the strength to manouvere ourselves in to some shade. We petted the ponies in the field next to the pedalo shop who are there to pull the innumerable lovestruck couples around town in kitsch wooden carriages, we sat on the kerb and watched a ballet recital performance by a teenage Vietnamese dance troupe, and then spent the rest of the day pottering around town eating strawberries and trying not to buy Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry from the market. That evening we cosied up in woolen socks and hoodies - the temperature here drops rapidly come nightfall, and went for dinner at a restaurant on the lake overlooking a Fireworks display commissioned in honour of the Flower Festival. We may also have had a bottle of Dalat red wine that we had denied ourselves earlier in the day but now thought justifiable considering it's insulating properties on such a chilly evening; you can't argue with science.

Today has been similarly dreamy. The three of us (Hitan from Hainault is back, we obviously did our best to shake him but his face just kept popping up everywhere we went so we've surrendered to the inevitable and adopted him officially) hired Easy Riders - Vietnamese, Harley Davidson driving, perfect English speaking men who take you on a day trip around the mountain range on the back of their motorbikes, stopping off in the local minority villages. We saw the coffee plantations, rice wine producers, strawberry and flower farms, Elephant Waterfalls (so christened because the rock formation at the bottom of the ravine looks like, you guessed it, an elephant), and visited the silk factories where Ella purchased a gorgeous grey silk dressing gown for the pricely sum of $10, oh the lure of the dreaded Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry! We also did some mountain trekking which my legs were less than happy about given that I spent most of yesterday throwing them down cliffs. When we reached the top of the hill climb I spun around with my arms spread and circling me, running over the grassy verge and gleefully belted out 'The hills are alive, with the sound of music!'. No sodding part as an extra for me, this time I was full blown Julie Andrews, and I much prefer Maria Von Trapp to Mary Poppins anyway, in your face Mui Ne.

The most thrilling thing about today was again my unadulterated love of motorbike transportation. It was breathtaking, sitting astride a Harley for a few hours racing through the mountains at breakneck speed along the bends and hilly gradients of the road pass with views for miles of unspoilt countryside coloured in like Autumn but lit with Summer sun. Once more, as I have in numerous moments during the last 6 weeks, I felt vividly alive, as though someone had just painted me in after years of living in black and white. The lightning bolt of 'lucky' struck me again, coursing it's electric shocks along my veins. The whole day has been fascinating and beguiling and a pleasingly authentic cultural encounter with the hill tribe people, but more importantly our drivers - Stefan, Titi and Li - were invaluable sources of information. They told us all they could about the war years, the Napalm bombing, the brutality of the soldiers, the devastation to the land, the horror of re-education camps and the facts of living under the Communist government which still graps and suffocates Vietnam in it's iron fist. But I can't write about this now, I'm still digesting everything I have read and learnt about this country's history and I'm just not ready to put pen to paper about it. Not now, but soon.

Oh Dalat Dalat, merci, merci pour tout mon amie. For strawberries and mountains and waterfalls and abseiling, for sweetbread, for silk, for kind-hearted people with motobikes and stories, for red wine and roses and fireworks and ponies, for these are a few of my favourite things and here it's impossible to feel bad.

Rewriting My P.E. Legacy

Tuesday 5th December 2010, 4.30pm, Peace Cafe - Dalat

I am very proud of myself today, and for good reason. I don't know how many times in my life I have felt genuine pride in something I have done but I think I could count the occasions on one hand - in fact now I deliberate it I'm struggling to remember any! OK, so passing the entrance exams and earning a place at my secondary school, having some work I'd done in my GCSE Drama class photocopied and handed round to other students as an example, getting a 1st on an essay at University that everyone else failed (although this one is questionable, it was the fluke of the century). Those three will do, and all mundanely and sedately academia related, because as a general rule I'm a thinker not a do-er; I can get full marks on a theory test having never read the teaching manual or looked at the practice CD-rom, but I can't actually drive the damn car. Not today though! Today I tried my very best to not think at all, otherwise I may very well have not abseiled down a 25 metre high waterfall, which I DID.

We went Canyoning. When we booked this day trip yesterday I was mercifully ignorant as to the exact nature of this sport, I knew it involved something to do with waterfalls, swimming and perhaps some light trekking, and I figured these activities were all within my coping remit. However, as I discovered from 8am until 3pm today, I was woefully mistaken about Canyoning. It is in fact rock climbing without ropes, clambering down jungle mountain slopes, jumping off 10 metre high ledges into natural pools of freezing water of which you can't see the bottom, sliding head first on your back down steep, rocky, fast flowing streams. It is abseiling over the side of sheer vertical drop cliff faces and gargantuan torrents of waterfalls until your guide instructs you to 'drop the rope!' so that you are plummeted underwater by the full force of the 25 metres of gushing fall above you, before you bob up like a drowned little rat somewhere down stream and are dragged on to the muddy riverbank by your helmet. This is the most accurate way I can describe Canyoning, and I forget to mention that after a day full of these kind of adventures you then have to hike for 30 minutes back up the cliff face in order to reach the highway and your ride home - by which stage you are so physically exhausted and battered from limb to limb that you feel like taking one more step might kill you. I could have kissed that minibus driver when I saw him waiting for us on the road, so relived was I to not have died and my gravestone epitaph having been engraved, 'She always thought but never did, but then she did and now she's dead: some people are not cut out for extreme sports.'

This reminds me of a time at school, when the P.E. staff, attempting some impression of being a real subject in order to justify their classification as "teachers", asked everyone in my year group to write a sporting epitaph for themselves, 'what would it say on your gravestone in regards to your sporting career and accomplishments?' I, being highly derisive and contemptuous towards anything P.E. related, and thinking it hilariously and inappropriately morbid for "teachers" to ask 15 year olds to write their own obituaries, did not take the set exercise too seriously. I handed in a piece of paper that read simply, 'At least this is one place they can't make me run.' It didn't go down too well, but my working relationship with the P.E. staff continued as it had always done - they thought I was a lazy smart-arse, and I thought they were uneducated, barely literate Neanderthal bullies who had only managed to secure employment because they were good at throwing and catching. There was an unspoken mutual understanding.

I am a girl who treated cross-country as an afternoon nature walk, stopping off to stroke and feed the horses in the neighbouring field to the dulcet accompanying tones of an exasperated Mrs Barratt screeching 'Grace! Move!'. I did handstands in the swimming pool when I should have been participating in relay races, I ducked out the way if someone threw a ball at me, whilst in defence at an inter-house hockey match I invented the ingenious game '100 Things To Do With a Hockey Stick Other Than Play Hockey', tennis lessons were spent impersonating Wimbledon stars of the 80's and calling out nonsense scores, 'that's 40 love juice 20 advantage match point to me!', I point blank refused to do anything on Sports Day other than sunbathe and read a book, and with a sly grin and a glint in my eye I would tell Mr Marshall, 'I'm awfully sorry Sir, I won't be able to do the long jump today because I'm on my period.'

So you see, this is why I am proud of myself. I, Grace Gillman, P.E. "teacher" arch nemesis and worst nightmare, spoiler of team games and competitive sport, Professional Lazy Smart-Arse, today amidst the beauty and the ferocity of Dalat's jungle mountain range of waterfalls, accomplished daredevil stunts and feats of physical exertion that I did not know myself capable of (the next time I go to the gym I shall laugh in the face of the cross-trainer). It was bloody hard work and a good 80% of the day I was filled with abject terror, I have a few more cuts and bruises and every one of the four others I went Canyoning with agree that their legs also now feel like lumpy jelly. But it was incredible, a pure adrenalin rush and one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I would do it all again tomorrow... or maybe the day after tomorrow, even the finest sporting superstars need muscle recovery time.

Before I came away one of my friends was telling me about a self-help book she had recently purchased called 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway'. On the sleepless, restless nights of the week before I boarded my flight I repeated this title to myself whilst staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom in the darkness; yes Grace, you're terrified about leaving, but do it anyway. That is what I feel I have achieved today, I was scared, but decided for once in my life to just DO without thinking, and boy was it worth it. I know some of you will be greatly amused by this, but I loved it so much that I am actually considering taking up indoor rock climbing and abseiling as a future sporting activity!

I'd like to think that my former foes, the P.E. staff at Coopers Coborn School, would also be proud of me today. That they would take heart and encouragement in the fact that I didn't turn out so bad, eventually I learnt to embrace physical activity as an enjoyable pastime. Now, as for my sporting epitaph, my gravestone testimony, hmmm....

'Once upon a time there was a day when she did the unthinkable and went Canyoning, and it didn't kill her. Unfortunately a traumatised, revenge-seeking, cricket bat-wielding Mrs Barratt did. But she probably deserved it, the lazy smart-arse.'

A Disappointing Mary Poppins

Monday 4th January 2010, 10.35pm, Phuong Thanh Guest House - Dalat

One thing I have learnt on my travels so far is to remember that someone else's opinion on a place is always just their opinion. Even his Lordship the Lonely Planet is only a collection of opinions by whichever travel writers were sent to be the intrepid explorers of that destination. I'd heard many mixed reviews on Mui Ne before boarding the bus there from Saigon on Saturday morning; from the glowing, 'great beach resort, best kite surfing in Asia - a must', to the damning, 'smells bad, dirty water, nothing to do there - bypass', both of these critiques from friends whose opinions I value. In the spirit of discovery and adventure, and wanting to be able to add my own critique to the pile for future travellers' reference, I took the advice of the former friend and hopped on down to Mui Ne, on Vietnam's South Eastern coast.

I can wholeheartedly agree with him on two things, number one: the sand is 7km long, cotton wool soft under aching, pavement pounding city feet, sunshine yellow and spread wide from the beach bars to the frothy surf - it's a great beach resort. Number two: if you like kite surfing, you will REALLY like Mui Ne. Approaching the beach on the afternoon we arrived I told Ella that I felt like an extra in that scene at the end of Mary Poppins. A somewhat redundant extra however, standing open-mouthed and staring at the daredevils on surfboards being pulled 10 metres above the waves by the roaring wind filling the kites attached to their waists by harnesses. Watching other people kite surf is fun for about an hour (N.B. positive frame of mind and breezy disposition necessary to last whole 60 minutes). It was kind of the Mary Poppins equivalent of being cast as a chimney sweep and being made to stand out the way on the roof while everyone else flies their damn kite...'up to the highest heights!'.

Nevertheless I am neither brave nor patient enough to be dragged through rough seas on the back of a foam plank by a glorified piece of tarpaulin and Mother Nature's wrath. So we gave kite surfing a miss. After spending that evening in bars full of 'kite surf bums' - I'm not being derogatory, this is what they have cheerily termed themselves - I was even more relieved to have not plumped for lessons that afternoon. I don't like to generalise, but I'm human, and we do, so I will... kite surfers are dull, or stoned, or both. They do not understand why anyone would want to live anywhere other than the beach getting tossed around like a ragdoll for 8 hours a day. They dress like a 10 year old Avril Lavigne fan who has spent the entirety of his school summer holidays perfecting skateboard tricks on the kerb outside his house. They also have over inflated confidence in their attractiveness to the opposite sex and react with visible shock and puzzlement if told by two astute, streetwise, city-dwelling girls 'No thanks mate.' Clearly I will not be marrying in to kite surfing stock any time soon. I'd rather eat my own hand.

Anyway, these matters aside, I didn't like Mui Ne. Not because I'm rubbish at water sports, or because the men had ego dysmorphia issues, it just didn't suit me. My attitude and Mui Ne's atmosphere travel on parallel paths in opposite directions - we were just never going to meet in the middle, not even to pass each other by and exchange pleasantries. Incidentally Ella concurs with my dislike of Mui Ne, as my second friend correctly observed, there is nothing to do there. The main problem I would say it has is that it doesn't know what it wants to be or who it wants to cater for, lack of focus has made it directionless so that it floats adrift amongst a sea of other nearby beach resorts who know and play to their market, it has a little bit for everyone but not much of anything for anyone. Hey, that's only my humble opinion though.

On our second evening there the two of us were so disheartened with the place that we avoided going out altogether. Ella was missing a friend from home and had promised this girl to find a lookalike for her on our night out and take a photo. Having failed on her mission the previous evening, I offered to be made up as Ella's friend and have my picture taken. So we spent some time playing fancy dress, we took "comedy" photos of me throwing my hair straighteners in the bin (they are the size of a pencil and unsurprisingly, on trying them out for the first time that evening, we discovered that even at 200°C, they made precisely zero difference to the current state of my untameable locks, they are still in afore-mentioned bin), we fussed about examining our clothes and jewellery, we de-matted Ella's windswept tresses, we danced around to MGMT, we filed our nails, we gossiped about boys (the good, the bad and the ugly) and then to top off our evening of self-made entertainment I went to the mini-mart, bought us Coca Cola and Oreos, and we sat in bed and watched the X Files movie. Slumber Parties R' Us. We both secretly yet thoroughly relished having a little temper tantrum over our disappointment in the place, had a giggle later about the way we had seized the first opportunity in over a month to find a viable excuse for said temper tantrum that wasn't hair related, and we created our own fun. Despite not being Mui Ne aficionados, we definitely managed to enjoy ourselves.

You know what, it's alright that I didn't particularly like it there, there's no rule that says you have to love every place you visit (jeez, I've lived in Essex for 23 years, there's not even a rule that says you have to love where you live) but I think there is a duty that I give everywhere I can a chance. I don't know when I will next be lucky enough, if ever, to find myself in Vietnam again, and what if Mui Ne and it's arrogant young bums had been my Mecca, my home from home, and I'd not bothered to give it the benefit of the doubt? Friends' valued critiques are helpful, but not your own, and if you don't get on the bus with an open mind and eager feet then you will only ever have other people's opinions to talk about, you will only ever speak with someone else's voice. And that would make you even less interesting than a kite surfer*.

*In the spirit of anti-generalisation I would like to offer my sincere apologies to any kite surfing enthusiasts reading this who may be neither dull nor stoned. Congrats, you broke the mould.

Blame It On Zac Efron

Sunday 3rd January 2010, 4pm, Hai Ten Swimming Pool - Mui Ne

I have a confession to make. Actually no, I retract that last statement. We have a confession to make, Ella and I, I will not shoulder the recriminations for this on my own. On the 1st January, our last day in the wonderful Ho Chi Minh City, we spent a large portion of the afternoon and evening (OK, OK, most of the day) watching television in our hotel room. There is a good reason for this, and that reason is Channel 'V'. In some instances a music channel, a chart show, but also a broadcaster of live gigs and a coverer of fashion week catwalks, Channel 'V' is hypnotic television at it's most entrancing. As we have found to our detriment, once you turn it on you are powerless and mesmerised by it's shiny MTV-wannabe gloss. Pretty Asian teenagers with faux Americanised accents enthusiastically announce the next music video in front of pop art print holographic green screens and what can we do but pay attention?! I quite like Shakira, but I'm no mega fan, and yet the other day I watched a whole Shakira concert because Channel 'V' told me to. One night we accidentally on purpose happened to find channel 54, got into bed eyes glued to 'V' TV, and then realised about 30 minutes later that we hadn't uttered a word to each other since we got in; 'V' doesn't want you to talk to your friends, it just wants you to waaaaaaatch......

After spending a hefty majority of the first day of the year paralysed and gaping at the screen we decided that enough was enough. We dragged our hungover, sleepy selves out of bed, away from Channel 'V', and reclaimed our lives by going for dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. Maybe it is worth admitting at this point that the only reason we went for an Italian is because a commercial on 'V' showed someone eating a bowl of spaghetti and instantaneously we both exclaimed 'Ooh, Pasta!'. We are an advertiser's dream. One pizza, one plate of Carbonara and a couple of glasses of red wine later we congratulated ourselves on having made it back on to Saigon's streets one last time before our bus the next morning. Self-redeemed and rather pleased with our progress we strolled through the alleys that form the backstage of Ho Chi Minh's theatrical playground, home to our beds... and our TV.

Where I am glad to report that we did not turn on channel 54, thereby carefully avoiding 'V'; our lover and our nemesis. Travelling has clearly bestowed Ella and I with refined taste in all things televised because instead of Shakira concerts, Asian boy bands and the Spring/Summer 2010 Prada show, we stumbled across the Disney Channel, and in guilty, conspiratorial silence spent an hour or so of our lives watching High School Musical 2. I must try from this point on to no longer watch TV in Asia, my judgement has been seriously clouded by lack of British comedy (oh why don't they have Peep Show out here?!), 'V's' tacky and garish Hello Kitty graphics and saccharine sweet offbeat offerings, and of course, in part, by the loveliness of Zac Efron's face.

The First and Last Days

Friday 1st January 2010, 11.40am, Bobby Brewers Coffee House, De Tham Street - Ho Chi Minh City

On the first day of 2009 I was with a group of 10 or so of my best friends, visiting them in Canterbury. I'd taken a week off work and went for a mini-break to see them in their home town. It was a gloriously lazy and decadent week of pub lunches, river walks, horror movie afternoons, SingStar karaoke, communal cooking efforts, vintage clothes shopping, You Tube surfing, espresso and Marlboro Lights on the cobbles, Moroccan restaurant dining, and of course a New Year's Eve party that culminated in the lot of us sprawled out on the lounge floor at 7 in the morning listening to Sia and Elliot Smith, drunkenly professing undying love and friendship (I.D.S.T.). One of my friend's put some photos from that week up on facebook and entitled the album 'The Reason 2009 Will Be OK'. That stuck with me because I knew how right he was, whatever 2009 threw at us we'd still have each other. This turned out to be more vital to me than I could have realised at the time, 2009 bringing the cancers of betrayal, heartache, stress, depression and illness to parts of my life and to those closest to me. But you know what, 2009 was OK! In fact, without deconstructing the specifics, 2009 held a lot of joy and good fortune for me. Sure there were some pretty awful downs (June in particular can kiss my arse and go to hell) but there were also some fantastic highs because of the people that surrounded me. My friends and family, as Dan correctly predicted, made everything just A-OK.

If somebody had told me on the first day of 2009 as I was cushioned safely in the bosom of love that true friendship provides, that in a year's time I would be sitting in a coffee shop in Vietnam, thousands of miles from all the people that have been integral to my enjoyment, and sometimes survival of life, I would have balked at the idea (and probably thrown up a little bit). Yet here I am.

New Year's Eve in Saigon was what can only be described as SPECTACULAR. Firstly, I have never seen anywhere so decorated. I said to Ella that it was as though someone on the Street Care team at Ho Chi Minh City Council opened a cupboard at work and found 10 billion fairy lights, 5 million multi-coloured balloons, a million Vietnamese flags and thought 'what are we gonna do with this lot?! Oh fuck it, let's put 'em all up.' Traffic came to a standstill, the streets were packed back-to-back with human bodies of numerous nationalities, music from competing bars blared from huge speakers erected on street corners, the confetti and spray foam sellers had the best sales figures of their lives, strobe lights illuminated the sky and at midnight everyone embraced and danced and cheered - it was the photo opportunity of Chinese tourists' dreams.

Ella and I covered ourselves in glitter and went to the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre earlier on in the evening which was hilariously entertaining and simultaneously baffling (are the puppeteers under the water wearing scuba suits and oxygen tanks on their backs we pondered?!) before meeting Hitan, a friend we'd made in Sihanoukville, plus two heart-breakingly gorgeous Swedish girls who we had met the previous day on a tour of the Mekong Delta. The Delta tour consisted of eating coconut candy, rowing through canals in wooden kayaks wearing cone-shaped straw hats, listening to local musicians over honey tea, taking in the scenery from a river barge, and for me only... getting lost on an island jungle walk, jumping out the way of a large black snake, being chased by an angry territorial dog, and then hitching a ride with a Mekong local on her motorbike back to the confines of the tour group! Ella was sensible and had cycled round the island with the rest of the group rather than playing Indiana Jones like yours truly, and while I was having 'real cultural experiences' she had got chatting to the beautiful Kattis and Emelie, thereby recruiting fellow NYE revellers for the next evening.

So that was how I spent my last days of 2009, a year that I am partly relieved to see the back of, but mostly grateful for - it was the year that showed me what I am capable of facing with the unwaveringly loyal aid of those that love me, and safe in the knowledge of their unconditional steadfast support, 2009 gave me the courage to leave them. I'm here having the time of my life, and in spite of distance, they are there for me as I for them - this is the reason 2010 will be OK.

Coming Home To Ho Chi Minh

Wednesday 3oth December 2009, 11pm, Bui Vien Street Bar - Ho Chi Minh City

I'm going to write about something which I guess is quite personal to me, it feels pertinent to talk about it today. I won't censor myself for fear of what others will think of me as this is my blog after all, and if I don't write about it then this entry will only be half the story, and these days I'm looking for completeness.

When I was 16 I spent a portion of my summer holiday living and working in an orphanage in Kenya. The orphanage was on a farm (called 'Graceland' as it happens) in the remote Kenyan countryside on a hilltop overlooking the Rift Valley with views of Mount Kenya. The area was relatively secure but we were told not to walk too far on our own especially at night, tribal gangs being an unlikely but still possible threat to our safety. But I was 16, disobedient, and having the most incredible experience of my life to that date, so one evening at dusk I went a-wandering. I found myself at the far Western corner of the land, looking up at the Water Tower - a wooden platform resembling a raft that was home to a huge water tank, perched precariously on 4 wooden stilts with a shoddily built bamboo ladder of about 100 steps going up to the platform, 30 feet or so in the air; and I climbed it. I don't know what possessed me really, not much thought went in to it at the time other than 'I want to sit up there', it was an utterly spontaneous and probably careless thing to do. One of the more worthwhile stupid decisions of my life though. The sky was blanketed with stars, the far horizon on the plains still aubergine purple from the touch of the sunken sun, the moon was so close you could make out the craters, the smell of smokey African dust was in the air, Elephants were calling to each other in the forest, and the sprawling Kenyan wilderness is still the most beautiful landscape my eyes have had the fortune of looking upon, I was alone in silence with the wonders of the natural world at my feet. It literally took my breath away, I was quite tearful but never more at peace, I felt like I'd been given an intravenous shot of adrenalin or Prozac or Ecstasy or Holy Spirit or whatever you want to call it... liquid happy.

If you have ever felt that you truly belong somewhere, that you've come home to a home you've never known before, that there was a specific place in the world that revealed itself to you and showed you where you should have been all along, 'Surprise! Here I have been waiting for you and at last you've found me!' then you may have some inkling as to how I felt that evening. Frequently miserable, always troubled and far too self-critical and introspective to be healthy, a 16 year old Grace on top of the Water Tower had no memory of previous pain in her heart, worry in her head or weight on her chest. If someone had told me I could have flown off the top of that platform I would have jumped and trusted that wings would sprout from my back. I was up there maybe 20 minutes, maybe an hour, I don't know, but I eventually had to come down after a couple of concerned grown-ups in our party realised I was missing and sent the Kenyan guards armed with bows and arrows to search for me - everyone was cross with me for scaring them and for endangering myself by going up the ladder, but I couldn't find it in me to care too much about that.

So why have I chosen to share this now, having only told a handful of friends about it in the 7 years since it happened? It is because, albeit in a less dramatic way, I feel like that again. I've not had the perspective altering thunderbolt of a moment that I did in Kenya, but definitely a gradual realisation that I've come home - because the concept of 'home' is changing for me. I think I've hit my stride, I've been travelling for over a month now and suddenly feel like I've found my feet. Having been a backpacker virgin and strictly a 2 week summer holiday kind of a girl, my soles are now inexorably glued to my Havaianas, my hair doesn't remember what it felt like to be straight, I have all manner of beads and trinkets and wicker bangles adorning my wrist, and I'm nearly always wearing something cotton and creased. But of course it's much more than the change in my physical appearance, although numerous friends have told me that that they've never seen my face so mellow as in recent photos (my mouth seems to settle into a smile more easily now I think).

I've realised, apart from how much I hate my hair, that I can make anywhere a home, temporary stays in big cities no longer feel like tourist excursions. I live here, I live in Ho Chi Minh City. Since Sunday evening I have been a resident and it feels as natural for me to be here as it would anywhere else in the world, and why shouldn't it? I drink black, muddy ice coffee in the morning at a roadside cafe, I jump on and off motorbike taxis that navigate their way through the mazes of city back alleys, I eat egg noodle soup and pak choi spring rolls and coconut pastries from street vendor carts, I ask for prices in Dong not Dollar, I lie and read in the grassy shade of the palace garden, I sip rice wine and play with street children and gossip with shop girls and read the local paper and only ever say 'thank you' in Vietnamese. Whilst Ella was fast asleep in bed this morning I got up, threw on another crumpled linen trouser and vest combination, scraped my poor old curly mop of hair into a scarf (for one of my friend's at home - it's not a scarf, it's the dreaded 'head snood' we laughed about at dinner!) and went wandering round the town, skipping on and off the broken pavement, dodging the endless stream of 2 wheeled traffic flooding through the Pham Ngu Lao district and tried to assimilate myself into the city, becoming just another stitch sewn into the patchwork of Saigon.

It's like Kenya in that it's home but no home I've ever known before. It's louder, faster, busier, smellier, more buzzing and endlessly 24/7 frenetic than any of the world cities I've ever seen. Ho Chi Minh is a 10 year old boy with attention span problems who's just eaten a packet of Skittles, Ho Chi Minh makes London look like a retired 60 year old with arthritis who spends his days tending the garden, Ho Chi Minh is Bangkok's more boisterous younger brother who stays up after lights out and jumps on his bed. Ella remarked to me that it feels cozy here, despite the pace and noise of the place. I know exactly what she means, almost as though there is a ceiling on the city - everything is so close and contained - the aromas of street cooking and trash cans invade your nostrils, the humidity sticks to your skin, the motorbikes run over your toes, there are always a hundred things to look at directly in front of your eyes, and the locals are tactile and touchable; in a city of 10 million people and 4 million motorbikes they've not had much cause for learning about 'personal space'.

Ho Chi Minh is a personal space though, crammed full to the invisible lid with the sweetness and the stench of human life - a city made of people not of buildings, of community next to commerce. Maybe this is why it feels like a home to me, because one more human being (even one with such outrageously large curly hair as mine) can go relatively unnoticed as she merrily potters about town with an inane grin on her face. The city has carried me with it, woven me into it's kaleidoscopic quilt. Never has it felt so good to be anonymous, it is a privilege to be one faceless thread when the whole tapestry is as rich as this. A couple of weeks ago one of my oldest and dearest friends sent me an e-mail and one sentence read 'I'm really hoping you find your Water Tower moment, some inner peace.' Well my darling, more and more right now, even in what has to be the busiest city on earth, I feel very peaceful indeed. As at home here as if I were back in my beloved Kenya, sat with my wings resting on my back, on a raft 30 feet in the sky.