Right.

I came back to room feeling absolutely crap, tired, demotivated. I started to feel kind of giddy and figured it was probably low blood pressure from being just about to get my period, but then I remembered the article we read at breakfast, you know the one, the one that said ‘Dengue Haemorrage Fever epidemic hits southern Vietnam’ that said ‘between 1,000 and 1,500 children are presenting with DHF each day to the Ho Chi Minh Hospital’. Gulp. But of course, I tell myself, I am in the North and just being oversensitive. But nonetheless, this all calls for decisive measures. I refuse to have this entire trip feel crap, to just be tied to my room and get back having seen nothing else, and having nothing nice to say about the whole affair. So, in a very small gesture of taking charge, I grabbed my dirty laundry and furiously washed it all in the basin using hotel bubble bath as soap (well… it smells nice and is easier to wash out than the bar of hand soap would be), then rinsed it all, then got red hands squeezing and wringing it all out, then used a combo of coathangers on backs of doors, towels over chairs and the metal rails in the bathroom to arrange for drying (it’s hot, they’ll dry tonight). There is a laundry service, but I feel like I need to do something with my hands, it feels so passive being fed and cleaned up after every single day, it feels nice just to do something*.
Then I went out. I was worried about going because I figured even if I started my work now I wouldn’t get it done before I’d be ready to go to bed, and the other person working on the project arrives tomorrow (9am on a Sunday!!!!) to start working with us, so it is fairly urgent to get it done before then. But then I thought ‘fuck it, it’s Saturday night, and I’ve got to get out’. So I went for a walk in the dust and enjoyed the heat fading and still radiating out from walls and footpath. I admired peeling paint. I saw bananas. I saw people sitting in narrow fashion clothes doorways. I saw the woman with the lit up stand alone cake stand on the street with white and yellow and pink and green decorated cakes with pandas on them. I heard the Saturday throngs of beeping bikes with ones and twos of jean wearing, mask wearing, heel wearing young and not so young people headed out. I ate ice-cream in a dingy foyer and got stared at, rudely I thought, by a western business man with short silver hair. I went supermarket shopping and felt even more giddy in the bright lights and happy house music that I have never heard quite so loud so sober. I saw bright orange shirted supermarket staff resting curved and cat like at the end of the ‘drinking water beer’ isle and refolding towels just to do something. Bought beer as a souvenir for my grandpa and wondered whether it would explode on the plane. Spent far too long in the aisle trying to remember what the rules about cans of beer and aeroplanes are. Bought it anyway. I got laughed at for having brought my own bag and realised that there was absolutely no way I could say ‘oh well, one less bit of plastic to go to landfill’ and have any chance at all of being understood so said nothing and just smiled and shrugged. They used plastic bags anyway and put them in my other bag. Aaah. I walked in my snappy sandals and felt uneven footpath and had people in the gloom ask me about bike rides, and glower at me and smile at me and wince at me and saw the most fleeting shy twitch of a smile that came out before someone checked it. I came back with my bulging bag of lotus tea and water and canned beer and coffee and a present for my housemates and it felt like arriving home. I went up the lift and saw myself mannish and inelegant in my all black utilitarian outfit, peasant in the fields style, and didn’t mind. I opened my room and smelt a rush of soap smell and liked it. Checked the clock. There is still some time. I’ll type now.

* Remind me of this next time I have a basket of washing looming in my bedroom back home.

Post script - how lovely, someone just came and brought me a fruit basket decorated with purple orchid flowers. Imagine bright yelllow nashi, pink and green dragon fruit, red and yellow striped apple, green small peach. An eyeful.