Cripes, it's been a month. A month since I rolled out of the pub and onto a train and out of the country and into this ridiculous sentence. Cripes indeed.
While it's nice not to be in a country that could elect Boris Johnson to high office (you morons) it'd be nice not to live in constant fear of whatever bacteria it is that've given my digestive system a quick once over this week. That, however, has been but a blot on the (no longer literally) sunny skies of life here in 'nam. Did I slip a quick 'no longer literally' in there? Did I do so because it's rainy season? Do I ask too many rehtoric questions? Do my students assume all my questions are rhetorical or are they just slow? Will I ever get to the point?
So my sweet little guesthouse is down a scrappy little alley (home to late night cockfights and a guy chasing off spirits with incessant clacking throughout the night. Being slightly off from the main road means we don't enjoy the privilege of huge open drains. Initially I thought these were disgusting and smelly and while these things remain true, I can in fact see the genius of their design. Much like the slanted curbs on pavements allow bikes to hop on and off the pavement easily (boon or bane? depends on where I'm walking) the huge open drains allow the copious amounts of rainwater to pour off the roads. Without them one finds oneself up to one's ankles in a very dark murky liquid that cotains almost as much rat shit and dirt as it does rainwater. This sludge first sloshed into my life over a couple of days off, so not leaving the hotel was OK. I consumed all my supplies (a few coconut cakes, some smints and six litres of water) and was feeling a lot like Noah (I have two lizards now!) when the rains receded and I could repopulate the Earth with my sons. Oh, the Bible, how may ways can I make you sound weird? So I goes out, I stocks up and I comes back. All is well.
Friday started with a very wet bang when after a shower, a shave, and a third sh sound I had to roll up my stylish trousers, remove my stylish shoes and slosh my way to a motorbike taxi through the potentially toxic breakwaters of the back alley I call home. It was pretty awful, but what you can't see can't hurt you and that water was far too murky for me to see any dirty needles or sea witches. The plumes of filth flying behind the bike, even at low speeds, were reward enough for this ordeal. Oh to have seen the faces we surely soaked as we sped swiftly schoolwards! Oh to gaze on their glares, glances and gawps as we (sort of) gallop away. Oh yeah!
To a western pig devil, the rain is about as predictable as a woman is to a man. To a loyal Vietnamese comrade the rain is as easy to read as a man is to a woman. They get this twinge or something and every bike in the city pulls in to the side of the road to put on a plastic sheet. Every street vendor ducks into a doorway and emerges with their wares magically changed into a variety of anoraks ponchos and umbrellas. Every westerner smiles obliviously, ensconsed in a fortress of blissful ignorance. Then they morph instantly into the drowned rats, scurrying for cover. See how they cower in fear! Bwahahaha!! I'm not excluding myself at all here, I just like to be all omniscient and third persony sometimes.
So that's about it for the rain. It comes twice a day or so and like the scene in Forrest Gump taught us all there is no limit to the number of forms it will take. I've yet to see it hit sideways because any kind of wind is rare here. This is where I'd put a tasteless Burma joke, but I think I know my friends (and Dad) well enough to let them do it themselves. On that ill-advised note...
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