Michael Batson

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Richard was from southeast London, “the good part” he said, though I was unable to decipher which part that was. South was pronounced “sarf” but with two “F’s”. He and his girlfriend traveled light, they one bag each the size of a day pack. After the cruise they would head from Hanoi to Laos via Dien Bien Phu. He had a permanent grin on his face. They had met while working in Bulgaria. Richard had gone there to work in a restaurant but wound up working in a Swedish-owned night club. While in Bulgaria he had distinguished himself twice, once by making the national television news, and the other time by almost starting a war between two opposing mafia families.

Bulgaria is poor by European Union standards and plagued by corruption and organised crime. The local mafia boss, according to Richard, apparently sat about conspicuously in restaurants eating, “just stuffed his face all day – a great fat bastard” seemingly in all kinds of ways.  Richard’s first distinction in Bulgaria was to be filmed dancing drunk in a club. Here, according to Bulgarian television, was the rampant face of drunken tourism, displayed for all to see. The clip was shown on the national news unbeknown to Richard. The next day, hangover and all, he was suddenly a name about town, with people pointing at him in the street and saying “saw you on TV last night.” He said it was all rather bemusing until he saw a repeat showing.

His boss, a Swede, had a penchant for experimental drug taking, “he’d try anything once and wound up in hospital at least once.” One early morning after work, I’m unclear whether this was during his employer’s drug experimentation or not, they had traversed the roof top of their building onto the adjoining site owned by the local mafia boss. Atop this building was a large billboard advertising a hotdog company owned by the said Mafioso. So for a laugh they had unbolted the sign and had it removed much to the chagrin of the owner. This threatened to spill over into some kind of underworld war as the owner perceived this act as a slight against his authority. To make matters worse, Richard and his boss had sent text messages to the Mafioso asking if he wanted sauce with his hot dog!

To settle the dispute, a council of war was held to see if matters could be rectified to the satisfaction of all concerned. The Swede had been visited by the police and ordered to make payments to the aggrieved party. To which the Swede, obviously not in hospital at the time, had told them to piss off.

Richard reported that labour in Bulgaria is dirt cheap. Employers, rather than hire trades people, hire Gypsies en masse, at bargain basement prices to undertake construction. “One day” he said, “hundreds of Gypsies arrived to put up all the street lights in the town. They came in dug all the holes, put up all the poles, connected all the cables, and then pissed off again, all this in a single day. They get paid next to nothing and there are no standards and not a tradesman amongst them, but that’s Bulgaria.”

It’s worrying in a place as wonderful as Ha Long Bay to be confronted with the detritus of human consumption, discarded in such careless form. Polystyrene, plastic bags, plastic bottles and wrappings, tarpaulins, wine bottles and a myriad of rubbish. I had presumed these the castoffs of thousands of tourists, but on reflection I thing that most tourists are careful about the deposing of rubbish. One returning to the boat the first night we passed a small craft with two men gathering via a net on a pole the flotsam. That night a large bonfire was lit on a nearby island as all the plastic went up in flames.

The locals appear to contribute to the rubbish floating in the bay. One woman on a skip going from boat to boat selling snacks and other consumables has no sooner taken the plastic top off a bottle than she threw the item over her shoulder into the water without a thought. Despite rubbish bins on board, one Vietnamese woman got up from her seat in the dining room to walk over to the window and throw a plastic wrapping out of the window. On our feedback forms issued at the end of the cruise we made sure to comment that more needed to be done to educate people about preserving the bay by avoiding litter at the very least.

Cat Ba Island is the second largest island in Vietnam and is surrounded by 1000 smaller islands. After leaving our boat for a day trip we cycled through a gorge on the island and on through rice paddies which stretched across a valley before stopping at a small village. There were no vehicles, only the ubiquitous motorcycles, used for all manner of transport in this part of the world. Again there were no rich people here, just rice farmers eking out a living. Rice is a tyrant. Many hours of backbreaking work goes into getting the finished product on to the table. Seeding, planting and then transplanting. Knee deep in water all day bent over, the paddies full of parasites, bugs, mosquitoes and snakes – and all for very little profit.

There were two doctors in the area, but for those seriously ill, treatment was a three-hour trek across the hills to the main port. The government had paid US$10,000 to supply electricity to every home in the village in order to encourage people to stay. After the 1979 invasion of northern Vietnam by Chinese forces, all the ethnic Chinese in the area were forced to leave.

Over a lunch time drink one of the locals placed a large plastic container, like a giant pickle jar on the table. At the bottom of the jar was a coil of black and white snakes that had long since expired. Into the jar the locals pour the local rice wine and leave it to ferment before drinking. The snakes apparently give the brew some kind of flavour. Unfortunately, Asia abounds with myths regarding the potency of some animal or other, which invariably leads to the demise of the animal for some sad, fanciful belief that people will gain some magical power by consuming parts of the poor creature. All of which does little for either the animals or the people.