I Have to Measure My Head
Picture conical hats. Picture orchids and romantic strolls around Ho Guom Lake. See Uncle Ho. Engage the locals in conversation. Speak of industry, hardship and resilience. Haggle. Get ripped off. Take a saunter through the Old Quarter, pay double for a shoeshine and calculate it still only cost 30p. Marvel at it all.
Yet when you get home there is only one guarantee, first you’ll speak of the traffic. It’s all everyone here speaks of. It is our daily bread.
It all comes on vehicles large and small. Juggernaut trucks, speeding taxis, cyclos, soft gliding bicycles and a million or so motorbikes.
I take my life in my own hands twice daily. I can’t find a helmet to fit my head so I drive gingerly, once in the forenoon, and once in early evening. Sometimes I have to pull to the side of the road and take a deep breath. Then I plunge in once more.
As I weave in and out of the mess I see post-accident scenes. Police pulling fights apart. Blood stains and shattered glass. Crowds of onlookers gaping. It always reminds me, I have to measure my head.
The police remind me too, as they measure how many centimetres the bikes are from the sides of the road. Then they chalk around the bikes as if they are corpses in a homicide. People will be fined for moving their bikes before the Police arrive. In one instance I witnessed a man trying to get out from under his bike being pushed back to the ground by the Police who chalked around him while he lay beneath. The man looked more bewildered than a new born baby. I wondered what happens when a truck overturns. Which reminded me I have to measure my head.
Then I met a friend, a photographer, who tells me he spent an evening in casualty at the Viet Duc Hospital. He told me of his horror as hundreds of people were dragged past him. Grazed, bloody, shredded and teary. Some were wheeled past in a coma or perhaps worse.
“Yes…” Explained a doctor, “If the head travels at a certain velocity, and a certain angle, straight at the ground the person will die”
My friend told me all this in Puku café on Hang Trong. He was wearing a helmet and drinking scotch. I explained he was safe. We were on the second floor. He snapped at me like a war veteran. “This thing could save my life”
I looked at my hand. I had to measure my head. It was written there. Underlined twice for emphasis.
People ask me why I don’t have a helmet. I tell them my head is rather large. A family legacy. We are all plagued with healthily sized skulls.
Before I had taken some walks down Helmet St. known to the locals as Pho Hue. I politely asked if I could try on their biggest helmets. I had no luck. A strong mean looking woman emerged rolling up her sleeves. Allow me, she said. With scant regard for my ears or scalp she succeeded in squashing a helmet on my head. I could hardly breathe.
“It fits!” She said smiling hopefully, “Very stylish!” I motioned her to take it off. It took her and her friends 15 minutes to get it off in a scene straight out of the Ladybird classic ‘The Giant turnip.’
That was when I e-mailed my father. How can I get a helmet to fit my head? The reply came swiftly. He’d found a website. Helmets-are-us.com. They make helmets for all shapes and sizes in America, where else. I’ll order one, my father wrote, but you have to…
I had to measure my head. I had no measuring tape. Just a ruler. So I went to a tailor, on Tailor St., Hang Gai to the locals. I looked up measure in the dictionary before I left home.
“You want some trousers?” He smiled at me holding his cashmeres. “No my head, I want to measure my head” A cashmere hat? He looked at me as if I was slightly dumb.
“I’m not stupid, I’m willing to pay you to measure my head, no cashmere”
He shook his head and made a hasty phone call. I over heard him telling some one there was a strange westerner in the shop. Very quickly a woman arrived. It was his English speaking daughter bursting at the seams to show off her exemplary English.
“How can I help you?”
“Yes, I would like you to measure my head”
“Yes, I know,” She replied briskly, “You want to make a hat”
I have learnt sometimes its best not to fight.
So now I know. 65 cms. That is the size of the hat so therefore also the size of my head. The helmet has been ordered. My father assures me it will be here in no time. Now all I have to do is avoid falling towards the ground at a certain rate of velocity at a certain angle, as my new linen hat won’t save me. That’s a guarantee.
Thursday, January 09, 2003
Tây ba lô (My life as a westerner with baggage)
As I saunter or drive through the streets in search of culture, or usually just coffee, sometimes I hear the locals say to each other “Look! A westerner with a bag!” ‘Tây ba lô’ in Vietnamese.
This can be translated as simply ‘Backpacker’. The term is commonly heard since backpackers are still, despite their abundance, found to be a novelty. The general attitude is that all westerners are rich. So why do they dress so shabbily?
Tây ba lô are considered odd as they are clearly cheapskates, eating nothing but spinach and drinking the grittiest beer in town, clinging to their budgets for dear life. Their dress sense, too, is considered to be ridiculous, usually Red Bull shirts and fisherman trousers, all the rage down Ko San road in Bangkok. Thus, to be called a Tây ba lô, especially if you're a local resident, is actually rather derogatory. Every time I hear a local refer to me as a Tây ba lô I wheel on my heel and show that I understand and they will scuttle away giggling: “The westerner with a bag understands Vietnamese!”
As I pulled up to the traffic lights on Dien Bien Phu street, dressed for work, with a tie, my shirt tucked in and polished shoes, I heard a young boy shout “Tây ba lô,!” I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. “Actually, I’m a working man, not a tourist," I said in Vietnamese smugly. "This is a schoolbag” I left him and everyone else in a trail of smoke. One – nil.
The very next day I was walking to the shop and a man, completely by himself, blurted to his chest, “Tây ba lô”. I turned around and said "Hey, if I’m westerner with a bag where’s my bag?" He just shrugged his shoulders and walked away as if the question was both stupid and irrelevant. An important lesson. Being a westerner with a bag is a state of mind.
My house is near Ho Chi Minh's Mauseleum down an alley or two. Further past my house in the heart of Ngoc Ha village lies what's left of the B 52, which crashed here in 1972 and is described as a Historical Vestige. Appropriately enough its like a crust left from a hefty sandwich. I wonder what the locals’ reaction was to any surviving pilots, who landed in the area. “Westerners with helmets and parachutes”?
Everyday one or two crafty tourists manage to find their way past my house in to the labyrinth of lanes and alleys to have a look. Perhaps that’s why my neighbours refer to my place as ‘The house of the westerners with bags’. I often meet the tourists and set them on the right path. Also, plenty of visitors have crashed here on a Southeast Asian tour. So perhaps the locals see the house as a giant manifestation of the bag itself. A kind of mothership where backpacks recharge before further peregrinations. It makes sense, sort of.
The other day I went looking for my own backpack and realised it had disappeared. Or perhaps I left it somewhere on my last laundry run. Paranoid, I pictured a delighted local showing it off to his friends as a trophy. "Behold, the Tây's ba lô!" At first I panicked. Did this mean I had been de-bagged? Had I been rendered impotent? As though someone pinched Shakespeare’s quill, Christy Moore’s guitar or Uncle Ho’s ciggies -- what's a Tây ba lô without a ba lô? Where did that leave me?
Then I realised it was exactly what I wanted. I was no longer officially a Tây ba lô. I felt liberated. I sat on Pho Ly Thai To and joked with the shoeshine boys that I am now a westerner with no bag but two trouser pockets. They seemed to appreciate the humour.
As I sat waiting outside Au Lac Café a group of five star foreigners rolled up to the Metropole Hotel and clambered out.
“Westerners," observed one of the shoe shine boys.
“Westerners with bags” I reminded him of the bags they had.
They collectively scorned me.
“They have suitcases! (Tay nay co va li co ma).”
Another lesson had been learned. You are what you carry. So as I pack my bags for a Christmas return to Dublin I realise am minus a backpack and minus a suitcase. So when I pull up to the red lights on my way to work and I hear the shy boys and giggly girls say “Tây ba lô” I shall raise my finger and correct them thus: “I am a westerner with two schoolbags, a satchel and three plastic bags.” Bit of a mouthful, but fair’s fair.
Henceforth, the world is simpler. There are backpackers, suitcasers and those fumbling in between fighting grimly to be neither of the above. Myself, ‘The westerner with a variety of bags’, included.
Copyright Connla Stokes 2002
As I saunter or drive through the streets in search of culture, or usually just coffee, sometimes I hear the locals say to each other “Look! A westerner with a bag!” ‘Tây ba lô’ in Vietnamese.
This can be translated as simply ‘Backpacker’. The term is commonly heard since backpackers are still, despite their abundance, found to be a novelty. The general attitude is that all westerners are rich. So why do they dress so shabbily?
Tây ba lô are considered odd as they are clearly cheapskates, eating nothing but spinach and drinking the grittiest beer in town, clinging to their budgets for dear life. Their dress sense, too, is considered to be ridiculous, usually Red Bull shirts and fisherman trousers, all the rage down Ko San road in Bangkok. Thus, to be called a Tây ba lô, especially if you're a local resident, is actually rather derogatory. Every time I hear a local refer to me as a Tây ba lô I wheel on my heel and show that I understand and they will scuttle away giggling: “The westerner with a bag understands Vietnamese!”
As I pulled up to the traffic lights on Dien Bien Phu street, dressed for work, with a tie, my shirt tucked in and polished shoes, I heard a young boy shout “Tây ba lô,!” I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. “Actually, I’m a working man, not a tourist," I said in Vietnamese smugly. "This is a schoolbag” I left him and everyone else in a trail of smoke. One – nil.
The very next day I was walking to the shop and a man, completely by himself, blurted to his chest, “Tây ba lô”. I turned around and said "Hey, if I’m westerner with a bag where’s my bag?" He just shrugged his shoulders and walked away as if the question was both stupid and irrelevant. An important lesson. Being a westerner with a bag is a state of mind.
My house is near Ho Chi Minh's Mauseleum down an alley or two. Further past my house in the heart of Ngoc Ha village lies what's left of the B 52, which crashed here in 1972 and is described as a Historical Vestige. Appropriately enough its like a crust left from a hefty sandwich. I wonder what the locals’ reaction was to any surviving pilots, who landed in the area. “Westerners with helmets and parachutes”?
Everyday one or two crafty tourists manage to find their way past my house in to the labyrinth of lanes and alleys to have a look. Perhaps that’s why my neighbours refer to my place as ‘The house of the westerners with bags’. I often meet the tourists and set them on the right path. Also, plenty of visitors have crashed here on a Southeast Asian tour. So perhaps the locals see the house as a giant manifestation of the bag itself. A kind of mothership where backpacks recharge before further peregrinations. It makes sense, sort of.
The other day I went looking for my own backpack and realised it had disappeared. Or perhaps I left it somewhere on my last laundry run. Paranoid, I pictured a delighted local showing it off to his friends as a trophy. "Behold, the Tây's ba lô!" At first I panicked. Did this mean I had been de-bagged? Had I been rendered impotent? As though someone pinched Shakespeare’s quill, Christy Moore’s guitar or Uncle Ho’s ciggies -- what's a Tây ba lô without a ba lô? Where did that leave me?
Then I realised it was exactly what I wanted. I was no longer officially a Tây ba lô. I felt liberated. I sat on Pho Ly Thai To and joked with the shoeshine boys that I am now a westerner with no bag but two trouser pockets. They seemed to appreciate the humour.
As I sat waiting outside Au Lac Café a group of five star foreigners rolled up to the Metropole Hotel and clambered out.
“Westerners," observed one of the shoe shine boys.
“Westerners with bags” I reminded him of the bags they had.
They collectively scorned me.
“They have suitcases! (Tay nay co va li co ma).”
Another lesson had been learned. You are what you carry. So as I pack my bags for a Christmas return to Dublin I realise am minus a backpack and minus a suitcase. So when I pull up to the red lights on my way to work and I hear the shy boys and giggly girls say “Tây ba lô” I shall raise my finger and correct them thus: “I am a westerner with two schoolbags, a satchel and three plastic bags.” Bit of a mouthful, but fair’s fair.
Henceforth, the world is simpler. There are backpackers, suitcasers and those fumbling in between fighting grimly to be neither of the above. Myself, ‘The westerner with a variety of bags’, included.
Copyright Connla Stokes 2002
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