How I learnt to "have a good appetite" and love food on planes

Teddy de Burca jnr. has a good appetite, so maybe that’s why he’ll eat anything, even airplane food

As I strolled outside the office, my colleague must have thought I was heading for lunch, even though it was only 10am.
“Have a good appetite,” he said cheerily, walking in the door.

I didn’t bother pointing out in English we don’t say that, we might say, “enjoy your meal” but as we weren’t even in a restaurant, we would be more likely to say, “where are you going for lunch?” As for pre-meal encouragement, face to face with your food, we all have our own way of egging each on. I might say, “dig in”, my mother would say, “There’s plenty more of everything.”

My hairyback cousins from the backwaters of county Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, considering dinnertime to be a form of combat, often used to say “good luck” before demolishing the table and asking for seconds.

Anyway, presuming my colleague might be the victim of Franglaise, translating “bon appetit” into English, I forgot all about it, until an hour later when I did go for lunch and an elderly kind-hearted smart looking man beside me smiled as I picked out my chopsticks. “Have a good appetite,” he said, almost whispering, as though the subtle joys of English were just between the two of us.

But how odd, I thought, the same mistake within an hour. Perhaps, I speculated, it was the Vietnamese being translated into English. But Vietnamese people say “Chuc an ngon”, which is more like, wishing you a delicious meal, or else they would “Moi anh/ chi (invite you)”, on more of a par with the Dutch “alsjeblieft” or French “s’il vous plait”, which is why sometimes Vietnamese, French or Dutch, people might offer you food, or an ashtray, or even money, and say “please”.

Then later that week I happened to be on a domestic flight from Hanoi to Nha Trang and there I discovered what I believe to be the culprit – a small cardboard box containing my inflight meal, a flimsy, tasteless sandwich, with a bit of ham, sticky cheese and a single shred of lettuce and a mouthful of water on the side. Written across the box in large easy-to-read-font is – “Have a good appetite”.

Now, considering there are thousands of foreigners travelling in the country everyday, not to mention teachers, editors and trainers abound, why didn’t the company in charge of printing the boxes ask someone if that was the correct English expression? The boxes will presumably stay for a while, I doubt anyone will crack out the red pen and start crossing all the ‘appetites’ off and replacing it with ‘meal’, but that means non-accomplished English speakers, of which there are many, travelling on the short domestic flights in Vietnam would be potentially picking this incorrect expression up along the way. Not the end of the world I admit, but still, not the greatest advert either.

Trying to forget about it, with a rumble in my stomach, I got on with the basics of life, eating and drinking that is. I opened up the wee box and plucked out the soggy bread and wolfed it down before washing it away with the mouthful of water, and when I closed the box after my “mot-hai-ba” banquet it suddenly hit me: Airplane food, as we all know, isn’t the Mae West, so if you don’t have a good appetite, more than likely, you won’t eat it at all. So perhaps “Have a good appetite” is just another way of saying “Good luck”.

The 36-hour Christmas

Never a believer, but happily a receiver, Teddy de Burca Jnr. feels right at home with the short and sweet Vietnamese Christmas

Even when I was a knee high to a grasshopper I never believed in Santa Claus. My older brother took me aside and broke it too me bluntly, before telling me where the presents were hidden by our charlatan parents.
Somehow, my brother had been a non-believer of universal creed since the day he was born. Famously, he stood up in junior infants, aged 5, and coldly announced to his peers there was no such thing as God, Santa or the Loch Ness Monster before dismissing the class.

A mortified parent phoned my father, later that evening, and told him she didn’t mind so much about the other two but asked could my agnostic brother be told to lay off Santa. Somewhere a mum and dad were obviously left with an inconsolable child robbed of their true religion – the cult of gift giving Santa Claus.

Now that the Loch Ness Monster has been scientifically discredited, Santa it seems is even further ahead in the polls for Christmas popularity. The festival has become more universally celebrated and as a result has strayed far from its original plot line. Less Bethlehem babes in a manger, more wrapped presents under a Christmas tree. In multicultural societies it’s a festival to be celebrated by all religions, these days, even Judaism. And why not? It’s a national holiday with a universally appealing concept – no one has to work, everyone gets a present, eats until they’re stuffed, before watching The Raiders of the Lost Ark, or these days more likely a stack of DVDs, while slumped across the couch.

In America, where admittedly political correctness has always shot for outer space, the holiday is already being repackaged. In Wal-Mart there are no Christmas trees, just holiday trees; there are no Christmas presents, it’s just a holiday shop. The employees are not even allowed to say Merry Christmas lest they offend some sensitive soul of another creed.

Back in sunny Ireland, no matter what you believe, the biggest gripes people have are Christmas starting too early, office parties, the melee in every shop, the twee carols and the never-ending obligation to drink until drunk. Everyone turns into a bit of a scrooge, cursing at the commercialisation and forced tomfoolery. It is much more commonly referred to as silly season. And for good reason.

Which is why I love Christmas in Vietnam – with the exception of missing my family back home, not to mention my mother’s turkey stuffing and Teddy senior cracking out the good stuff. There is no office party, Christmas only lasts half a night and a day, (the Vietnamese only really celebrate Christmas Eve, I suspect looking at it as a sort of New Year’s Eve with less fireworks and more red hats). I can shop in the same chaotic streets I shop in every day. Carols are thankfully confined to very specific designated areas.

For me the “holiday” has been reduced to its core attractions: spending a day relaxing with friends, partners or family, toasting and dining to your heart’s content. Giving presents. Getting presents. Basking in the warm glow of contentment and drunkenness safe in the knowledge that it’s Christmas so you have nowhere to go.

And it doesn’t matter what you eat – in five years of Vietnam I’ve had vegetarian lasagne, bia hoi hot pot, roast duck, a slap up in an Italian restaurant and green curry on a Thai beach for my Christmas dinner.

So chuc mung Giang sinh dear readers: may you celebrate this Christmas in Vietnam with the holy triumvirate of eating, drinking and merry-making, whatever way you want. Just watch out for the traffic on the way home. It’s silly season out there, too, in it’s own spcecial way.

Buy a Connla Stokes short story in a book of other short stories alongside illustrations, and poetry, called Total Cardboard, No.7, at the following addresses: Dublin - Anthology Books, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Red Ink Books, Temple Bar. London - Housman's Books, King's Cross, Broken Arrow Books, Streatham. Melbourne - Greville Street Books, Greville St., Prahran. Readings Carlton, Lygon St., Carlton, Sticky, Flinders Station Arcade, Melbourne, Polyester, Brunswick St., Fitzroy, Cosmos Books and Music, Acland St., St Kilda, Rathdowne Street Books, Rathdown St., Carlton North, Collected Works, Swanston St., Melbourne, Paperback Bookshop, Bourke St., Melbourne, Brunswick Street Books, Brunswick St., Fitzroy, Friends of the Earth, Smith St., Collingwood. Sydney - Pulp Books, 83 King St., Newtown, Berkelouw Books, 19 Oxford St., Paddington, Abbey's Bookshop, 131 York St., Sydney. Or from the World Wide Web at total cardboard. And remember if books like this didn't exist, neither would our stories.

Winter Snaps Back

Shivering in his winter woollies Yorkie Pittstop admits he feels the Hanoi cold, but insists he’s not a big girl, it’s just the humidity that makes him cry

Visiting foreigners walking around often chortle to themselves looking at the locals, including myself, driving around in Hanoi in wintertime dressed like they’re off to climb K2.

Of course technically, last week it was only between 12- 15 degrees, I mean, let’s face it, the North of Siberia it ain’t. It should have been my time to shine, to show my durability, my youthful vigour and non-tropical cold-compatibility. But, alas, no – during summer I melt, and in winter I freeze.

One winter I met a man from Alaska, and as I sat with shivering hands and chattering teeth over a piping hot coffee on Hoan Kiem Lake, he stood boldly on the pavement in a T-shirt and shorts and waxed lyrical, describing it as the “perfect summer’s day”.

So why is it the expat residents – from cold spots like Canada and Northern Europe – lose their winter mojo in Hanoi? The general consensus is the cold gets into your bones. Especially at home, where the high humidity means it sort of rises, like the fingers of an aggrieved zombie, straight through your floor. So in tiled houses you get cold just walking around.

There is also no tradition of fires, and most foreigners refusing to believe how cold it gets, never bother to buy heaters, until it’s too late, hence Hanoi is the only city I’ve lived in where I’ve seen people walk around their house wrapped in blankets with scarves and beanies.

Another problem is most people continue to travel by motorbike, which multiplies the chill factor. The foreign tourists in their shorts are walking around keeping the blood flowing while we’re motionless and exposed.

My friends in Ho Chi Minh City are always slagging off the Hanoi weather and telling me to move. But expat Hanoians would never admit defeat. Sure, down south, the sun shines all year around, but up north there’s the natural cycle of the seasons. We have an autumn and a spring, and although somewhat fleeting, I love them both.

In the event this winter does get too cold, and they say it very well might, there is, of course, always a happy medium. In this case it’s referred to as Hoi An.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind.

Think you can balance a basket of bread on your head for a 100 metre dash?
Fix a puncture in under five minutes?
Pedal a cyclo around Hoan Kiem lake with 200 kilos aboard?
Well then you could be a serious contender at the ...
The Steet Life Olympics

The skill, athleticism and hard work seen daily on the streets of Hanoi should not just be acknowledged, says Yorkie Pittstop, they should be celebrated in a competition

Watching the coverage of 23rd SEA Games in the Philippines is all very entertaining but I can’t help feel that life in Southeast Asia isn’t completely reflected through these sports.

Many of the events – not including the proliferation of martial arts – seem quite incongruously Occidental with a roll call that includes baseball, fencing, golf, snooker, beach volleyball and lawn bowls. There’s even a game of petanque going on somewhere in Manila.

Of course, the SEA Games is a wonderful opportunity to advance each countries sports development programmes to compete on the international stage, and so on so forth, but don’t you think a Southeast Asian Street Life Olympics would be just as much fun?

Perhaps, if one were to be organised in Hanoi it could inspire other places to follow suite. There could be street badminton with OAPs, U-12 football with one of those VND1,000 balls that levitates no matter how hard you kick it, xich lo races around Hoan kiem lake, plastic stool juggling, a 100m dash with banh my baskets balanced on people’s heads, puncture repairing time trials and instead of weightlifting you could have people tugging carts filled with sand or bricks, or women carrying those dual-baskets of bananas.

Many of the above events would be a tremendous way of promoting and rewarding all of those countless workers and low-income jobs that are the unsung heroes of daily life in Hanoi. Others would just be great fun. And anyone could join in any of the events.

Personally I’d be signing up for the bao ve (parking attendants) steeplechase. In this event, you get a ticket and one by one and competitors have to jump over the row of parked motorbikes, find the correct bike, squeeze it out from the tightly parked pack and wheel it back to the owner. Marks would be given for speed and presentation and there would be time deductions for dropping or scratching the bike.

If you think that sounds incredibly boring, or just plain silly, head on down to Dong Xuan market on a Saturday afternoon, pull to the side of the motorbike park and watch the parking attendants do their thing. Their showmanship, grace and effort really have to be seen to be believed. From dawn to dusk, they are hurdling bikes, snatching the handlebars with one hand, twirling the bikes on the kickstand and rolling it to the toes of the customer in the direction they’re about to be travelling.

Of course, it drives the middle-aged women waiting for their Honda Cub bananas, but that’s part of the fun. And perhaps the women wouldn’t be annoyed if they knew that the cheeky boy fetching her bike was no less than a bao ve gold medallist.

Yes, I can see it now, the Street Life Olympics. It’s not as silly as it sounds, you know.

It's a dog eat dog world (so who's guarding the dogs?)

Vietnam probably isn’t the best country for a dog to live in, but any country that ate you wouldn’t be on your shortlist either. So says Teddy de Burca Jnr.

Fido the dog, if he had a brain, and given the choice, probably wouldn’t bee line for Vietnam or Korea, or wherever else roasts, minces and devours our faithful canine friend. But then, I’m not one to go looking for cannibals.

But besides being on the menu, or being the possible victim of dog-napping, it is still far from a dog’s life in Vietnam. You don’t often see dogs bounding around parks, playing fetch, or rolling around with their owners like young brothers wrestling for fun. Or someone scratching the hairy one’s ears, and saying in a Muppet-styled voice, “Oh, you like that, don’t you boy? Yes, I know you do.” There are no kennels. There’s no culture of people cleaning up after them (ah the poop-a-scoop), pampering them, spooning out chunks of oh-so succulent Pedigree Chum. Dogs are usually treated, well, like dogs. What would Barbara Woodhouse think?

In fact, outdoors, away from houses, I only seem to see dogs being dragged mercilessly down the road with a rope for a leash, as the owner hurtles up the dyke road (Tran Nhat Duat) on his moped. Distressingly for the poor dog, doing its best to keep up, the dyke road leads straight to Au Co street, home to innumerable Thit Cho (Dog Meat) restaurants. One man’s kitchen is another animal’s abattoir.

The restaurants are famous for serving up seven dishes, from boiled dog cutlets to fried bowels, or plain old roasted meat. The dishes are to be downed with strong spirits – ruou (rice wine) or vodka. The executive chefs of the dog world can allegedly cook the seven dishes on one stove.

The simple stilt-house style restaurants are usually roaring with customers from halfway through the Lunar month till the end, as during this period eating dog can, so they say, help you “giai den” (erase bad luck). After the 1st, it is therefore bad luck.

You may not be tempted, but the meat won’t bite. It is however, as a protein-filled meat, an overwhelming taste but known for its invigorating qualities.

Perhaps, again only if you were a “thinking” dog, you might try your look in Ha Tay province, where there is one village that is said to worship dogs as a deified animal – could it be the Mecca of the Mutt? Where dogs are glorified, petted and cherished?

Not really, the village is home to plenty of popular dog restaurants as the locals believe eating the godly canines only helps them stay in spiritual tune – the local Holy Communion,
I suppose.

Of course, back in the city, the culture may be changing. More and more families seem to be in the market for a dog, as a pet. Two years ago, on my street, there was one. It was so irritating (it never stopped barking at night) that everyone immediately followed suite.

In the absence of house alarms, I suppose they were bought for security reasons. But now at night the whole neighbourhood lies in bed listening to a cacophony of woofs. You might think some man is scaling your gates or prising open the door with a crow bar, but actually the dogs are barking at, well, pretty much anything – passing bikes, crying babies, slamming doors and, worst of all, themselves.

Once one begins they’re all at it, like a pack of boisterous men at a bar, barking till the cows come home, or perhaps more precisely, dawn approaches, and the engines start up and the horns begin to beep, and after another sleepless night, between the dogs and the motorbikes you wonder which one you will exact your revenge upon.

Of course, you can’t eat a motorbike.


Quotes on man's faithful friend

“I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me
and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs.”
Barbara Woodhouse

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon, hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
Aldous Huxley

“It’s no coincidence that man’s best friend cannot talk.”
Anonymous

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive
evidence you’re great”
Ann Landers

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”
Rita Rudner

“I can train any dog in five minutes. Their owners take much longer.”
Barbara Woodhouse

Don't be a chicken - feel the fear but eat, read and write anyway

Teddy de Burca Jnr. isn’t panicking about the bird flu, he’s too busy planning what to eat, read and write this winter

As the Avian Flu pandemic looms over Asia, fear ye not, and never mind the irony, as the bi-lingual edition of Chicken Soup for the Soul is to be released this month by Tri Viet publishing house. Phew.

And there was me, contemplating taking on Gabriel Marcia Marquez’s One hundred Years of Solitude while I sat in self-imposed quarantine. Now, I can happily loll around the living room reading self-help books and, as is the book’s intention, “make [my] spirits soar and broaden [my] perspective of what it means to be fully human”. (Maybe learn a bit of Vietnamese while I’m at it, which makes me wonder how they translate the title, “Pho ga tot cho suc khoe cac anh chi” per chance?)

But of course, people do need to be reassured. Just look at my friend who bought a giant astronaut suit on eBay, as well as my colleague who’s stockpiled enough Tamiflu for an elephant. In fact, I wonder if I should write to the Chicken Soul publishers and pitch them an idea, Chicken Soup for People Terrified about Avian Flu. (Bit of a mouthful, but then one of the US editions is called Chicken Soup for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing Soul.)

The back of the book blurb could read – “assuage thyself with comforting pop-psychology mumbo-jumbo and quasi spiritual quotes from God knows where, which may or may not give you an “I’m ok, Avian flu’s ok-approach” to the possible/probable pandemic. For those out there who are still eating lots of poultry – hello Hue city! – I could work on drafting up Chicken Soup for People Who Still Eat Chicken.

And in the event of being holed up at home, what would I eat? Strolling around the supermarkets I can’t help but stare at the tins of Campbell’s chicken soup and fantasise a highly marketable scenario the papers back home would surely snap up – “the man who lived through the Avian flu crisis in Vietnam while eating nothing but Chicken soup while reading the bi-lingual version of Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Lest we forget that chicken soup is the all-time best remedy for colds and influenza. The Vietnamese have their very own, called Ga Tan – a medicinal broth with chickpeas, garlic, spinach and herbs and, well, chicken, of course. Perhaps, I could ask for a bucket of a “ga tan khong co thit ga” and stash it in the freezer.

In Korea the secret remedy to fight a cold, and some say also Avian flu, is Kim Chi and in America it’s Sauerkraut. Both are just pickled cabbage, but I suspect that the garlic and spiciness is what makes them so potent against illnesses. An old Chinese proverb says – “eating garlic is better than an army of mothers”.

So with my shopping list complete – I didn’t mention the large quantities of beer, scotch, crisps, cigarettes, beef jerky and instant noodles – my only dilemma is how to stay fit with running up and down the stairs the only solution. But then, putting on a few pounds over winter is normal for a man of my age.

Why deny it? I’ll be flopped across my couch and watching any number of the 172 DVDs in my house or mindlessly surfing the net (thank the lord for ADSL) while spending some quality time with the missus. Why it’ll be just like Tet.

So my advice, feel the fear but eat-drink-man-woman anyway. Let that be your motto this winter and I’ll see you on the other side, along with the joys of Spring.

Drive thru concept arrives in Vietnam
by Teddy de burca

I heard about the capital city’s first ever “drive thru” bun cha restaurant and wondered had fast, convenient, modern dining for drivers finally arrived? But it wasn’t quite what I had imagined. Outside, on the pavement large signs said “no parking” and standing happily directing moving traffic inside stood a bunch of bao ve (motorbike security). And when I say directing inside, I mean, waving everyone in with the engines running. So I followed by swivelling through the door, not much wider than my handlebars. Not sure what to expect inside, I looked to my left, while driving at about 15kmph, and the “big momma” was sitting there frying up the pork, and whacking out plates of noodles. She smiled and waved me on, past the girls preparing the drinks, and all of the diners, all tucking into their tasty lunches, into the back which serves as a makeshift garage. I was then directed to sit back out in the front room, right by the “indoor road” where I ate lunch amidst the sound of traffic and a faint whiff of petrol. And there you have it – Vietnam’s first “drive thru” restaurant where take away is highly reccomended.

The invisible flavour of the east

Is MSG a recipe for disaster or just a harmless flavouring? Yorkie Pittstop steps up to the plate and wonders, would the dish taste just as sweet without

MSG is an acronym that strikes fear into the hearts of a few westerners I know. In fact for a couple of them, khong mi chinh (no MSG in the local lingo) is one of the few phrases they know.

Vietnamese on the other hand seem to pretty much accept it. I’ve even met one Vietnamese national abroad who even travelled with a packet to add to soups, which I admit sounds a bit excessive, I mean I’d never, as much as I love it, travel, with sachets of Dijon mustard in my inside pocket, just in case someone served me a sandwich without.

An English friend just can’t digest MSG, if digest is the right word. Once we went to eat pho (Noodle soup), and as we ordered he leaned over and barked “Pho! Khong mi chinh!” Just to emphasise the importance of this instruction he made several severe slashing motions with his hand, just to enforce the message, “if served MSG this could very well be my last supper.”

But perhaps they thought the dramatic motions meant serve more. Or perhaps they were curious to see what would happen, as halfway through his soup he started to sweat and fidget. He said he felt dizzy, abandoned his soup and staggered next door to a poky little café.

By the time I finished my soup and entered the café he was yawning violently and continuously, though I did arrive in time to catch his epitaph – “bloody MSG”.

Then he nodded off like a bored philistine at an excruciating theatrical performance, slumped against the wall, snoring faintly. He might as well have chucked the coffee over his shoulder.

Plenty of other people have told me of “turns” after a “dose” of MSG. But are they just an unfortunate minority?
You may not be allergic but it may be causing you damage, say the detractors. Some of the anti-MSG propaganda I’ve read goes so far as to claim, basically, it rots your brain, causes asthma, leads to obesity, and perhaps most simply and importantly, is totally unnecessary in food preparation.

MSG has long been the scourge of sensitive consumers as strong doses are used to flavour bland food or make cheap tortilla chips dangerously addictive.

But the Japanese man who discovered this funny little food addictive wasn’t out to destroy your taste buds. He just wanted to see what made food taste so good.

His name was Dr Kikunae Ikeda and in his native Japan a seaweed, called Konbu, was used to enhance the taste of foods.

In the early 1900s, the doctor isolated the taste enhancing property in seaweed – glutamic acid. Dr Ikeda and his colleague Dr Saburosuke Suzuki then founded the company Ajinomoto (Japanese for “Essence of Taste”), which began to manufacture monosodium glutamate (the original MSG).

At the end of WWII, US soldiers sampled rations taken from Japanese POWs and claimed the foreign rations tasted better than their own. This got MSG into the American market as food producers discovered it – and Ajinomoto itself set up a US subsidiary.

But the base substance itself isn’t MSG. Dr Kikunae Ikeda, christened it “umami” which means something pretty close to “yummy” in Japanese. Umami is now described as the Fifth taste – the other four musketeers being sweet, salty, sour and bitter.

Umami can be found naturally in everything from Parmesan cheese and fish sauce to broccoli and tomatoes. What happens, to simplify, is the human tongue tastes the released glutamate in all of these foods – likewise in MSG – and sends messages of joy and happiness to the brain. Hence, a tasty dish.

Of course, too much it seems may very well be a bad thing. Who knows? What has become apparent (I realised as I sat sipping my bitter, sweet coffee, watching my slumbering friend) is the fact there is a reason to carry your own MSG in your inside pocket – to serve yourself.

It’s the only way to know how much you’re getting.

I know queue!

The queue is a fairly unfamiliar and untidy concept in Vietnam but standing at the back Teddy de Burca Jnr. is ready to get stuck in, boots and all

At Hanoi train station I stand three people back from the counter, waiting in turn like everyone else, to be served in due course. But others drift in and merge into the sides of the queue ahead of me – like molecules of mercury rolling onto a greater mass – and suddenly I’m playing back row in a scrum for tickets to Danang.

Now, these sneaky rascals may believe the foreign man is too polite or insignificant to be worth considering but in my younger, more athletic days, I played a bit of rugby and learnt how to ruck and maul with the big boys.

So, I gently lean in on the two tallish Vietnamese boys ahead – let’s just call them my lock forwards – and scythe into the middle of the pack, before rolling off on the inside of the flanker, a slightly plucky but tigerish middle-aged woman.

Her little elbows dig into my stomach, and if either of the two boys are pickpockets I’ll be taken to the cleaners but, at least, now I’m within a stretch of the ticket salesperson – a woman who at first glance appears to have missed the joys of spring since life began on earth.

Now, I must use the power of “Oi” – invented by someone at the back of the queue, I hazard to guess. Perhaps, I even have an advantage speaking the local lingo with my comical lilt.

And sure enough, her little ears prick up at my mangled pronunciation of “Chi oi, toi den day truoc ma!” (I came here first!). For a moment, the pack stops squirming; she looks up at my flushed hopeful head, suddenly grins and announces, with an air of triumph – “Mr Bean.”

Not someone I aspire to emulate, but ne’ertheless, at least, now, I have her attention. “Yes, I’m Mr Bean, and I’d like a ticket to Danang.”

“Mr Bean is going to Danang,” she shouts out to anyone who’ll listen. Then we scoot through a rapid series of questions concerning both my personal life and ticket specifications. Everyone around listens in, as though we were all now having an impromptu press conference.

The conclusion – Mr Bean is not married, he wants a soft sleeper, he has no children, he wants to return in a week, his clothes are quite ugly and he would prefer a lower bunk bed. We would also recommend he select a local wife.

After all that, with my personal life and ticket details made public, the total comes to VND495,000. There is a slight drawing of breath behind my ear as I withdraw my wallet, a shiver of anticipation and more than a smidgen of wonder – just how fat is his wallet going to be?

The answer is not very, I realise, with the panache of Mr Bean himself, I’ve left my cash at home. I blurt this out and swivel, and slip back through the queue-slash-scrum – now well over a dozen people are heaving onto the counter – to avoid being ridiculed. But there’s no escaping that easy.
“Mr Bean forgot his wallet,” roars the ticket woman, much to everyone’s amusement.

I look back over my shoulder. Everyone is laughing and pointing at me (affectionately). I suppose, I can console myself that it could very well be the happiest queue in the country at this very moment in time, who knows, maybe even the world.

I also notice, slipping out the door that the plucky little woman has slipped to the front while no one is concentrating. No doubt about it – with that competitive spirit she’d make a fine wee flanker on the rugby pitch.

A symphony for the devil

Teddy de Burca Jnr. says that the music isn’t in the air, in fact, it’s trapped in a mobile phone

I sit in the café beside a young couple – a lovely, smartly dressed and well educated looking couple. Both smile shyly and look down, averting eye contact. She giggles, he chortles.

You might guess it’s a little bit of harmless flirtation – but neither of them is making a joke, why, they aren’t even talking to each other.

No, as I sip my coffee, the wilful young lovers are doing something far more entertaining than confabulating in seductive tones over the low tables. What would be the fun in that when you can, instead, be trying every single ringtone in your brand new phone?

Of course, when they finish, to try and get back to the one they liked they have to go through the whole lot again. Desperately trying to find that catchy little Beethoven number, perhaps.

In the end the girl settles for the standard Nokia ringtone – apparently now the most frequently heard melody in the world – and the boy chooses, without irony I suspect, one of Britney’s finest, Hit me baby, one more time.

I know I’m not alone when I complain as there is a man in my office who twitches like a shell-shocked war veteran every time a phone rings.

And the rings are never easy to ignore: Jingle Bells throughout the year, the Mission Impossible theme tune, always chosen in every office around the world by the guy with the biggest bunch of keys. (I myself flirted with the idea of downloading the Darth Vadar score for my phone. Just for gentle intimidation.)

But it doesn’t matter what jingle or melody it is. Ringtones are designed to attract your attention, so if it’s not your phone ringing it’s like your little nephew prodding you repeatedly when you’re trying to read a book. Especially when the person ringing never gives up and the person who owns the phone is AWOL. The phone just sits on their neglected desk ringing away. And just as my beleaguered colleague starts frothing at the mouth, the phone stops. Then, after a very brief respite it starts again.

One day he’ll crack, it’s only a matter of time. I picture him as one half of the classic Dilbert cartoon, which had two office colleagues standing by a desk with one saying to the other, “Your cellphone? Was it small, white and... flushable?”

And spare a thought for the musicians belittled by the whole concept. Francisco Tarrega, the 19th-century Spanish musician, known as the father of the modern classical guitar. Tarrega’s life was a miserable one. He suffered from ophthalmia, a horrendous form of conjunctivitis, and was said to have contracted it as a child when he was nearly drowned in a poisoned river by a mentally-disturbed nursemaid.

Now, even in the grave the misery continues for Tarrega as his masterpiece Gran Vals is now the 13-note jingle that is universally known as simply “that really annoying Nokia ringtone”.

Other alarming facts - The bells are ringing out

* Money - One of Hip Hop’s top producers, Scott Storch, who’s written huge singles for the likes of Beyonce, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and many more, now devotes his time to the much more worthwhile (financially speaking) pursuit of composing ringtones and why wouldn’t he, after the people behind The Crazy Frog earned an estimated £14 million from that particular ringtone – the most commercially successful of all time. Ringtones are estimated to be a $9.4-billion-business in the year 2008.

* Faith - Mobile phones and ringtones can be used in a more spiritual manner, or so says Thai monk Phra Phayom Kalayano of the Glass Garden Temple who after hearing sexually explicit sounds coming from teenagers’ phones, decided to develop a set of more wholesome ringtones. These “dharma doctrine” tones, as they are known, consist of several pithy sayings designed to set listeners back on the righteous path. Pick of the litter? “Don’t let mobile phone conversations lead to premature sex and pregnancy.”

Do you remember the first time?

When Yorkie Pittstop first came to Hanoi his hotel experiences were far from first class, but that’s why he’ll always remember them

Jumping on a mini-van bus at Noi Bai airport a smiling man told me my first Vietnamese word, “chao”, which I discovered niftily meant both hello and goodbye. Immediately, my travelling companion and I started speaking like Italians, shouting “ciao bella” out the window at the cute girls, with handkerchiefs for masks, flitting in and out of the traffic.

Then the smiling man – whose grin looked like it would never fade – told us he knew a hotel we might like. He said those magical words “very good, very cheap”. It just so happened that this official Vietnam Airlines mini-van would be stopping outside this very hotel.
“Fantastico!” we told him.

He said something to the driver, who laughed, and the bus turned away into the old quarter and dumped us outside the hotel. There to greet us was another man, who, coincidence of coincidences, was the chap from the bus’ brother.
“Fantastico!” we yelled, before exchanging a “chao” with everyone on the street.

Inside, the two receptionists stepped out of the shadows with a trust-me-as-far-as-you-can-throw-me-glint in their eyes. Under insidious in the dictionary, I speculated, you might find an illustration of these two. The two brothers disappeared and suddenly, my companion and I decided, things were not so fantastico.

Although we were psychologically backtracking, we played along with the “show us the room, how much, sorry, we’re looking for something a little bit more, shall we say, rustic” rigmarole.

The $30 room swiftly became the don’t-tell-the-other-guests-$10 room. In seconds we were back on the street, shouting “ciao”, giggling mischievously. The receptionist, now not grinning, but looking very irritated, was following us down the road and, we suspected, abusing us in the vernacular.

We spotted a xich lo (cyclo) and piled in with both rucksacks. We told him to take us to the Dong Xuan hotel, which we spotted in a guidebook (someone else’s) on the plane. The words “Very cheap, medieval-style surroundings and diminutive staff” had caught our eyes.

The scrawny xich lo driver grunted through the congested old quarter streets, in the heat, argued with women in conical hats that sat hunched over sacks of grain, raw meat and steaming pots, just to get us through. I started to feel guilty but my travelling companion assured me it was all “very fantastico”.

When we arrived at the door and bundled our bags in the door, no one seemed more surprised than the staff. We had interrupted a harmless bit of mid-afternoon karaoke. The three of them were on average about five feet above sea level. They must have been aged between 13 and 15.
“Is there a manager?” I asked.
“Yes, I am the manager,” said the tallest one, a spotty boy with floppy hair, stepping behind the counter.
“Your second cheapest room,” my companion said.
“All rooms eight dollars.”
“Fantastico!”

In the end we stayed for a month as we searched for work in the city. We sat with the boys. Ate a lot bananas and cheese triangles. Drank suspect Chinese beer. Sang karaoke and smoked VND1,000 packs of cigarettes that tasted of burning pork fat.

Years later I returned. The boys were still there, a little taller than five foot above sea level. The eldest had no spots and a girlfriend and played it real cool – just like we taught him. But, all in all, it seemed as if the whole street hadn’t changed – in fact, in about a hundred years I dare say it will be the street that changes the least in all of Hanoi. I hope so – that means I will always be able to travel back in time to 1999, the year I first arrived. And that, my friends, is “very fantastico.”

Beware of the weather

The change of the weather in Vietnam can be downright wicked, says Teddy de Burca Jnr., so keep one eye on those dark and ominous clouds

“Beware of the moon, lads” is a common quoted line from a classic werewolf film, but as the full moon, marking Tet Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Festival), swelled to completion, there was something else in the air. Something far more chilling. Perhaps what Vietnamese fear most, even more than a dinner with no rice: the dreaded change in weather.

It started with a whip of a breeze from the west. Then the air pressure dropped, as if the weather upon the city was breathing in one last wheezy gulp of dirty air, before collapsing flat on its face. We could start to write the following morning’s obituaries – Summer was dead, long live Autumn.

Then the winds started to howl. The rain seemed to be going sideways. All around the city the temperature dropped, fans slowly whirled to a halt while the beer in the fridge seemed a little too cold for the first time in a long time. Someone somewhere sniffed. (No one ever knows who sniffed first.)

And sure enough, the next morning, half of the office comes in, dragging their feet, with a little cough here, and a little sneeze there, in what could be the opening scene from Dawn of the Sniffles: The curse of the common cold.

Vietnamese people will tell you, like they have told me every year I’ve been here, “beware of the change of weather” as if it were some sort of bogeyman preying on the weak.The local expression is “Som nang, chieu mua, giua trua, sam sui” (Sunny mornings, rainy afternoons, mid-noon cloudy and drizzly.) Basically, the weather’s always likely to change, which reminds me of a Scottish joke – “If you don’t like the weather, stick around for a minute, it’s bound to change.”

Often in Hanoi it appears to be raining on one street, while just around the corner it’s dry as a bone. Recently, a colleague told me his team turned up for a football game but the opposition had stayed at home. It was raining in the west, but not in the east, apparently.

The change of weather can be deemed the guilty party, conveniently, for a whole plethora of ailments – common colds, mood swings, toothaches, spots, bad hair dos and a strong desire not to go to work.

You might see people at the office, looking depressed, leaving early. When someone asks why, I guarantee they’ll say, “oh, the change in weather” and everyone will nod understandingly in empathetic silence as if remembering a loved one lost at sea.

So be warned, from here on out, as you leave the house, keep one eye on that weather, oh ye fickle mistress, as it is much like the sea, always to be respected, but ne’er to be trusted, and quite ungovernable.

I eats my spinach!

In his homeland sugar-craving children do battle with parents over the dinner table and real men don’t even eat quiche, but Teddy de Burca Jnr. discovers in Vietnam, digging veggies is nothing to be ashamed of

As a young whippersnapper my mother simply referred to spinach as “delicious”. “Eat your delicious darling,” she’d say, as I stared suspiciously at the soggy, green and oh-so-healthy vegetable in front of me.

When I wouldn’t play ball she’d remind me of the Herculean feats of Popeye, but I figured that to be just one big mothers-in-arms conspiracy to try and get fussy scamps, like myself, to eat it up. She had other lines – “Eat your greens and you’ll have rosy cheeks” or “it’ll put curls in your hair”, but what child would bite that bait?

Only one line would work, the lowest of the low, in my eyes, the thinly veiled blackmailing sucker punch – “If you don’t eat it, there’s no dessert.”

Of course there was a dessert, I could see it, a plump apple crumble by the stove, and I could smell it, a gentle waft of cinnamon and sugary apples hung in the air, the fresh cream, already whipped, sat by its side. But the way she said “there’s no dessert” seemed as if she could make it simply vanish into thin air, with a “now you see it, now you don’t” magician’s flourish. My mother had that sort of power, I had no doubt.

Within seconds my plate was licked clean, although I would try – to lessen the pain – to swallow the lump of remaining vegetable in one, so I could barely breathe let alone chew. Moving the vegetables from one side of my mouth to the other, gulping for air, I would watch my brother holding his nose, mouth agog in the air, dropping Brussel sprouts (his own personal bogey-food) down the hatch, as though trying to dispose of incriminating evidence.

Now, thankfully, my brother and I lived to tell the tale, and grew to be men, with no fear of vegetables, and there is no deep emotional scarring to speak of, though I still have a lingering doubt as to Popeye’s credibility as Brutus’ superior and my brother curiously never opened his mouth while visiting Brussels, years later, during a brief visit to the Belgian capital.

But the question is what do mothers do in Vietnam where – if you are a child you should sit down and take a deep breath – in homes there is often no dessert served, with the exception of fresh fruit. You can twist my arm with puddings and chocolate, sure, but a slice of watermelon or a bunch of grapes? I mean, perhaps, a slice to clean the palate before a triple layered chocolate fudge cake with crème anglaise and sugar on top – but nothing but?

Well, the answer is, they do nothing. The children, believe it or not, in my experience, eat the spinach, along with every other green on the table, even pickled cabbage. Now, try comparing that to my homeland – where meat and spuds are the staple, where continental cuisine is frozen lasagne, a fish supper is fish fingers, vegetables are spurned by children and everything they eat gets washed down with copious amounts of fizzy pop, before jelly and ice cream rears its wobbly head.

Or how about the men – at the bia hoi in Vietnam, if you look, you can find two tough looking locals, complete with tattoos and grimacing faces, sharing a beer, a cigarette and a plate of tofu garnished with freshly plucked sprigs of mint and finely chopped spring onion. Any man seen doing this in a pub back home would be accused of being, how shall we say, a little bit light on the loafers, and there would be tears before bedtime no doubt.

In these parts, while I tuck into breakfast I have seen parents buy children chocolate cake at nine in the morning, but that’s understandable considering that a) they’ve been up since five and b) they eat their greens. Let them have cake, say I.

So if my mother comes back in her next life as a mother, I hope for her sake she is one in Vietnam, a place where delicious is just plain spinach, and the children even cry out for more, and to prepare dessert all she’d have to do would be peel an apple. Then she could put her tired feet up while the children washed the dishes.

Quotes on spinach
“On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full.”
Delia Ephron from How To Eat Like A Child

“One man’s poison ivy is another man’s spinach.”
George Ade, American humorist

“Spinach, for decades, has been the Waterloo of kids all over the world, the one food no mother will take a ‘no’ for.”
Kanika Goswami, journalist

“Never eat spinach just before going on the air.”
Dan Rather, broadcaster

“No matter what my mom does to it, spinach always tastes awful.”
Kelly, an American girl aged 11

“Spinach is susceptible of receiving all imprints: It is the virgin wax of the kitchen.”
Grimod de la Reynie.

“I’m strong to the finish, ‘cos I eats my spinach, I’m Popeye the sailor man.”
Popeye, sailor

Look out - he's right behind you!

A man follows Teddy de Burca Jnr. everywhere and then passes by, but with pantomime flair, he is right behind him again

We all know him, but not by name. He has driven right behind us, so we couldn’t quite lean back and see his face. He has whipped straight past us, but far too quick for us to catch his license plate number. Or, am I the only one getting in his way?

I don’t know what it says on his birth certificate but we shall refer to him henceforth as the man who is in more of a rush than the other three and a half million people in this city. (A bit of a mouthful, I admit.)

He could also be called the man who confuses his motorbike horn for a laser gun or some kind of force field. He zaps all who confront him. Even if you’re at a red light. He flies through crossroads like Evil Knievel himself. Even on empty roads I suspect he beeps

Perhaps, he is thirsty, hungry, hot or tired, or has ants in his pants. Perhaps, he is a fireman, minus a water pump, off to stop a fire or a detective in mufti, chasing a crook. Perhaps, he has just realised he should rush home and tell his wife she is the axis upon which his earth spins and without her, life would have no meaning. Or perhaps, he just needs to go the toilet really, really badly.

The odd thing is, he seems to be following me. Even on my street, I hear him barrelling down the quiet lane, as though it were a grand prix circuit, banging his horn to kingdom come. So, I step into the gate to let him pass, though the only other person on the street, a three-year old spinning devil-may-care on a tricycle, pays him no attention.

Then, as I leave, driving out to the main road, suddenly he is behind me again. I guess he forgot his phone, or left his wallet behind, and had to go back home. I pull to the side and let him pass, for the second time.
But, trundling down the dyke road, he appears, as if by magic behind me again. Did he stop to put air in his tires, or smoke in his lungs? Once again, I let him pass, but how come when I pull up to the red lights he is lurching behind me, beeping at me, revving up his engine as though we were all about to race like bats out of hell to, well, the next set of traffic lights.

Stranger still, quite regularly he is on a motorbike, but he changes model, sometimes it’s a Honda, other times it’s a Yamaha. He also likes to drive a car, and also enjoys a spin in a truck. He is a bus driver, a xe om, a commuter, a young rapscallion, an old doddery retired civil servant, a doctor, a delivery man, and the little boy who lives down the lane. He is all men, and everywhere and no matter how many times he passes, he reappears. Look out – he’s right behind you.

You’ll never eat alone

As a lone diner Teddy de Burca Jnr. is the object of sympathy from waiters who tell him he shouldn’t be doing anything alone, not even writing

You do well to be alone in Vietnam, with a population of some 80 million and such overcrowded cities. But, rather than pine for a little “me” time, most Vietnamese commonly advise that you also shouldn’t even be alone.

So much so, waiters often crowd around me as I sit by myself in a restaurant, donning the lonely cap, to cheer me up.

Of course, generally, I’m quite content sitting there, daydreaming, reading or even penning my thoughts on the mild to extreme romantic longing that weighs upon me. Or so I like to think.

But ne’ertheless, the last time I was out, the waiter stooped over as he served my soup (Irish people love soup you know) and whispered tenderly into my ear – “Eating alone is very bad for you.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” I insist, but he shook his head, as though he knew I would say that, “really. It’s not that bad.”

Believing I was in the depths of depression, the waiter never strayed far. Perhaps he was worried I might have ended it all right there in front of him. A quick hari kari with the chopsticks, perhaps.

So to pass the time – his or mine, I’m not sure – we traded wayward sentences in each other’s language. I learnt there was even a phrase in Vietnamese – an mot minh dau tuc, which means, literally, eating alone hurts. Which I told him was “a bit harsh.”
“Yes,” he replied, clutching his chest, “big heart.”

Slightly paranoid that I was in physical danger, I wondered, could it be true? Was there a chemical process created by solitary eating that is detrimental to my cardiovascular system? If so, what of the opposite, is group gorging (group gorgy anyone?) the way forward?

I decided to tell him, to explain why I was alone and to ease his pain, that I was working. But that didn’t impress him one bit. He taught me another expression – “Lam mot minh cuc than”, which means to work alone will cause you trouble.

Which made me reflect on the words I wrote, as if to work alone is also bad – perhaps you, dear reader, can see a tinge of sadness between these very lines – should I try and find a writing partner?

In the end, desiring to be alone, I decided to tell him I was a poet. That would excuse the solitude, surely. I watched his face, expecting it to brighten like sunshine pouring through the gloom, but no, he shook his head, pulled out a cigarette, offered me one and said, miserably, “Em ngheo nhu thi si.” Which in Vietnamese, means, I’m as poor as a poet.

As he slinked away I felt pretty guilty. It seems, even talking to someone eating alone will cause you pain in Vietnam.

Loose change in tight pockets

Teddy de Burca Jnr. praises the glory of his morning cigarette and a cup of coffee, purchased for a paltry VND6,000 ($0.40), the only problem is he never has the exact change

Every day I stop for a coffee and a single cigarette in the same café. It is a highlight of my day, being an absolute skinflint, but for the cantankerous looking uncle who serves me, it often seems to be the opposite. The problem is, you see, no one has invented a note to the tune of VND6,000.

He is a troubled old soul at the best of times, I suspect. People – known in cafés as customers – are never very warmly received with their orders, requests and complaints.

His gripe with me is I never have tien le (small change). Like yesterday, when I went to pay, first, he stood aside and grumbled to the doorway, as though calculating an equation that would confound professors. Then, when I pulled out a fresh washable pink VND50,000 note, his eyes rolled back into his head. “Who on earth,” I imagined him thinking, “pays for a coffee and a single cigarette with that?”

He stared at the note, as if it were the note’s fault, shook his head, looked at me again with a pained expression, and then begrudgingly rooted around his money-basket for change.

To exact revenge, he plucked out the most God forsaken notes: VND1,000 or VND2,000 ones of the 1984 vintage (frayed at the edges, browned with age, and scented with mildew), a VND5,000 note sellotaped together with a phone number and em yeu anh mai mai (I love you forever) hand written in the corner, and a reassembled VND10,000 with a bit of a VND500 taped conspicuously in the corner.

I spent the rest of the day trying to off-load these notes. Paying bills, debts and tipping delivery boys. Without fail, I rid my pockets of old cantankerous’ notes, which meant this morning I arrived, once again, ordering my usual, only when I stepped up to pay I only had a crisp lime green VND100,000 ($6.6) bill. I might as well have stabbed him in the heart. He stumbled out of the café, put his hands on his hips and gazed at the unmerciful heavens. Then, he walked back in muttering to his chest. He was thinking long and hard. The world turned but we felt nothing, standing man to man, waiting for the other to make the first move. It felt like a Wild West sort of moment. He would tell me to leave town, or cough up the small notes I was hiding in my cowboy boots.
“Okay,” he said, squaring me up, planting the note back in my hand. “You can pay for it tomorrow.”

Of course, my bill would then be VND12,000, and there is no such note, so he’ll have to face my VND100,000 once again. The only other option is I turn up with all the coins left over from a visit to the Hilton Hotel (Why is it the only place that uses them?) – would he be happy with that kind of tien le?

There’s only one way to find out. I’ll be wearing spurs and whistling as I walk into the café tomorrow. It’s a showdown – skinflints at high-noon.

Old hairy arms is here to stay

In Hanoi Teddy de Burca Jnr. can stop the traffic, not with his looks, but merely with his shaggy-haired arms. But will his descendants be able to “hang on” to this eye catching feature?

The first time it happened I was at a red light. The throng of motorbikes sat behind me. My eyes were fixed on the light ahead, and, like everyone else in this city, I was impatiently waiting for it to turn green. That’s when I felt a slight tug.

I could feel a pair of naughty little fingers pulling the hair on my arm. My head rolled around, I like to think, with the air of Schwarzenegger’s terminator, what with the shades, the motorbike, and the bad-to-the-bone attitude.

But no one cowered. No one became embarrassed. A young boy sat on the back of his sister’s bike, and the two of them continuously giggled, as the boy tugged on the mane of hair that covers my left arm, as though it were just too silly to be true.
“Like a monkey,” sniped the boy, as the light went green, and the girl zoomed off, leaving me behind, lost in a din of horns and revving engines.

The very same day, I found myself at a petrol station, and I could see the squat woman, from behind her handkerchief, was grinning madly. As she filled my bike her dainty little hand brushed down my arm.
“Beautiful hair,” I heard her say, and it can’t have been my head hair, as I was wearing a helmet.

Since then, my arms have been admired by men at the bia hoi, I’ve been asked if I wanted them shaved in a hair salon, told the hair was like golden tobacco by a flirty waitress, asked if they keep me warm in winter by a thoughtful mother; shoeshine boys, grown men, girls, mothers, fathers, beggars, doctors, urchins, even the boy marking me in a game of football – all and sundry have had a little inspection.

And as much as my dear partner may pretend to put up with my Celtic body’s peculiarities, she takes glee in the fact that if we had a child, as she’s Asian, all of my reddish hair, hairy arms, freckles, blue eyes and pasty skin wouldn’t stand a chance against her, rather unfairly labelled, dominant genes.

But she’s as wrong as she is right. Any offspring I produced would undoubtedly appear more Asian – black hair, brown eyes, sallow skin – and they would live happily as sleek and aerodynamic drivers, zooming through red lights without any fondling or derision for gross hairiness.

However, thanks to an Augustan monk, Gregor Mendel, we know a thing or two about genetics, as the big-bearded fellow was the man who married smooth peas with wrinkled peas and discovered that the next generation had no wrinkles.

Now, placing my partner and myself in that context, I would be the wrinkled pea, so if we had kids, would that mean the end of the line for me, my hairy arms and sun kissed-pasty looks?

Hardly, as the third generation of peas, grown by brother Gregor, proved that there would be a one in four chance one could return completely wrinkled.

So, I like to picture a scene, years from now, when I’m an old senile nonagenarian, or worse, and the fruit of my loins, a beautiful Asian-looking woman, is starting a family with a carefully selected other, and on a summery day, in a quiet maternity ward, in a bed surrounded by curious heads, a wailing little red-faced-red-headed boy with hairy arms will pop out from the belly of his mother into the hands of the black haired and baffled father, and the nurses will gasp, and the doctor will raise an eyebrow, and the mother will shrug, and that’ll be my way of saying, old hairy arms is here to stay.

I was the Passenger ('Cos breaking up is hard to do)

Teddy de Burca Jnr. can’t help feeling awkward about crossing paths with his old xe om driver, a man now minus a once-steady source of income

I have to change my route to work. I just don’t have the heart anymore. Every morning I drive out to the lane and there he stands, in the shade beneath the kapok trees, his head hanging on his chest, like a wounded soldier in a heart wrenching portrait, entitled – “Man as bucket of misery.”

As I pass by, I try to catch his eyes, just to be cordial. How could I pretend he’s not there, after all we’d been through, all those mornings we rode together, through the dusk, dirt, smoke and the city lights.

And of course, he knows I’m there. He knows I’m passing by, slowing down to say ‘xin chao’. He recognises the sound of the engine, or saw me coming around the corner, but he won’t look at me, lest I see the tears welling up in his eyes.

He, in case you are wondering, is my ex-xe om driver, a man, who due to some broken limbs, I depended on for the last three months. And as a result of the income I generated, he, no doubt, grew to depend on me. Recently, I noticed he had upgraded his brand of cigarettes to a Singaporean variety.

Come rain, come shine, together we drove over the causeway, around by the mausoleum, along the banks of the murky Red River and down the plush boulevards on Tran Phu. He never drove too fast or braked too suddenly. He even slowed down as we passed pretty ladies, so I could wink and say “Howya”. He also learnt some English phrases, my favourite being – “Where to, sir?” He told me that during the next Tet holiday I would be an honoured guest in his house. He thought this summer would last forever. Perhaps, we both did.

But alas, one fateful morning, weighed down by a heavy heart, I wheeled my bike out of the gate, and drew a long breath. I knew it would be awkward. I knew it would hurt.

As I approached, I saw him glance out of the corner of his eyes. He had been laughing with his friends. Looking forward to another day in the saddle, making a few dollars-worth, a decent day’s wages for most. Little did he know when he rose that morning that the gravy train would drive straight past. Should I have given one month’s notice?

And now every morning, as all the other xe om drivers head off with their regular passengers he is left, in the shade under the kapok tree, no money in his pocket and nowhere to go, a future as bleak as it is uncertain.
So that’s why I can’t take it anymore. Tomorrow morning, I will turn left and drive the long way round to work. Just to spare his feelings. So he can begin again.

In future, there will be other foreigners, he will coo them over and they’ll hop on his pillion, and he will smile sweetly, and say – “where to, sir?” And they’ll laugh at that one, especially if it’s a woman, and being new to Hanoi, she’ll pay double what an old skinflint like me ever did. It’ll be the start of a beautiful friendship. Until she plucks up the nerve to buy a motorbike, that is.

An experiment gone wrong

Teddy de Burca Jnr. just wanted to take a taxi from Phan Thiet to Ho Chi Minh City, but found himself in an experiment to try and travel at the speed of light

It wasn’t far out of Phan Thiet when I realised I was with a taxi driver who had set his mind on achieving what you would think was obviously impossible – to travel down highway one at the speed of light.

It would be nice, I suppose, to arrive at your destination as you left. To be there before you knew it. To see the other side of the galaxy or to go boldly where no Vietnamese taxi driver has been before.

But the car was not modified to any Star Trek specifications. In fact, the whole vehicle was juddering as the car tore down the busiest road in the world, weaving in and out of articulated lorries and buses, like there was no tomorrow.

I thought about pointing out to the taxi-driver-cum-scientist that there were two eventualities to this experiment. Either, we would crash, into one of the other thousand automated vehicles around us, and burst into a ball of flames. Or, he would succeed and we would travel at the speed of light but that, according to Einstein, would mean our molecules and atoms would obliterate in a colourful blaze and we would be nothing but cosmic dust sprinkled upon an earthly road.

Either way, we were doomed. I knew that. But he obviously didn’t. So why didn’t I speak? If I had, I hear you say, nothing would have happened. But hindsight, you will agree, is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

So I sat in dumb silence, well, not quite. I could hear the music in my headphones. Isaac Hayes, crooning about a backstabbing love affair, “If loving you is wrong…” We will crash I thought. “I don’t wanna be right,” sang Isaac.

And then, I thought, enough is enough, I will tap him on the shoulder and say, listen buddy, it just isn’t happening, not today, not with me, I would like to live. But the taxi driver had already seemingly given up on life. He had taken his eyes off the road, despite the fact that we were now travelling at a hundred thousand miles per hour, and his eyes were scanning the horizon, across the lush paddies, his thoughts, perhaps, recalling an incomplete romance from his past, and Isaac sang on, “I don’t wanna be right”, and my eyes looked ahead, and I saw the stationary truck we were hurtling towards and I said an unprintable four letter word.

I will not speak of the impact, my gruesome injuries, or the imminent debacle of getting from a country road to a foreign hospital. Nor will I speak of the operation or the rehabilitation. But, I will recommend that when you find yourself in a taxi or on the back of a motorbike, if the driver is trying to travel at the speed of light, be direct, be swift and tap the fellow on the shoulder and say, “No. Not today. Not with me. Just ease off the gas and let’s enjoy the ride. I’m in no hurry. I’ll even give you the gist of Einstein’s theory of relativity along the way.” Or forever hold your silence.

The vigilante’s guilt complex

Teddy de Burca Jnr. encounters a thief and saves the day for a shopkeeper, but ends up wondering why doing a good deed makes him feel so bad

I look into his eyes. He looks into mine. He has just slipped a large colourful volume under his shirt and down into his pants, quite skilfully I might add, and now he is staring at me, like prey before a predator, wondering – “does he see me here, three feet in front of his face, or am I somehow invisible at this moment in space and time?”

And yes, of course I see him, and he realises, and without batting a eyelid, he whips the large colourful volume back out and then holds it up in the air, squinting his eyes, as if measuring it with great academic curiosity, as though he might be thinking, “Yes that proves it – quod erat demonstrandum! One large colourful volume can slip snugly into a pair of pants. And if I wanted I could, y’know, rob it, but of course I wouldn’t do that, because I’m not invisible, which means that foreign guy saw me.”

I call the shop assistant over, thinking craftily, I will scupper this oddball. He won’t have the audacity to steal anything if she stands beside us. She toddles over, smiling beatifically, and repeats everything I say.

“I’m looking for a book.”

“…a book,” she says, turning towards the shelves, as if to say, well, help yourself.

“By James Joyce. He’s an Irish writer.”

“…Icelandic writer?”

“…” I think about trying to sum up the writer in 25 words or less. Irish. Alcoholic. Blind as a bat. Stream of consciousness. Hailed as the greatest by Irish people who have never read any of his books. Dead.

But then I see the would-be-shoplifter drop to his hunkers and then shunt the large, slim colourful volume up his shirt again, before sliding it down into his pants, and then, after wheeling on the heels of his plastic sandals in the doorway, with a flash he is gone.

“That man just stole a book,” I say pointing my finger at an empty space.

“Yes. Stole a book,” she says smiling, oblivious to the theft, searching for a book entitled Stole a book.

“Under his shirt.”

“Under his shirt?” she says, thinking, such names for novels.

I decide to take the matter into my own hands. I walk out and look down the road. Nothing. No one. I jump on my bike and drive around the corner and start to drive in the direction the man vanished into. I imagine a mini-headline – “Foreigner rescues two-dollar book from destitute man, marries shopkeeper’s daughter, declared national hero”.

About a kilometre away – he’s certainly no slouch with a book rammed down his pants – I find him on Pham Chu Trinh street, pacing furiously with the gait of a man, well, with a large colourful volume rammed down his pants.

“You. You have a book.”

“…” He waves me away with his hand.

“I know you have a book down your pants. I saw you.”

Pedestrians start to look as this odd altercation. His thoughts are visibly turning over in his head. He twitches as he turns towards me, walking while whipping the book from out of his pants and under his shirt, and another headline flashes in my head, “Foreign man bludgeoned to death by large colourful volume”, but instead he just hands it to me, quite delicately. Somewhat surprised by the anti-climax I throw it in my basket and drive away not bothering to explain that I am a good-willed vigilante who plans to return the book to its rightful owner. After all, I don’t know the Vietnamese word for vigilante.

He squawks as I drive away, “Schkou, ehuh,” gibberish for “hang on a minute” and starts to run after me, but not for very far. I suspect immediately that, in fact, he thought I might want to buy it off him. Now, he feels he is the one being robbed. Another headline, this time in the Vietnamese dailies, flashes in my head, “Local thief robbed by foreign thief”.

Unperturbed, I u-turn, drive back to the shop, deposit the large colourful volume in the hands of the proprietor.

“Here you are.”

“…here you are,” she says taking the book.

And that’s that, or is it? No marriage proposal. No medal. Not even a pat on the back. And as I drive away a nagging guilt niggles. Scenarios flood my mind. The man had given up too easily. Perhaps, he had paid and just didn’t like plastic bags. Perhaps, he lived in the worst part of town and his pants were the safest place for a large colourful volume. It was, no doubt, his crippled three-year old son’s birthday and I had run away with his gift.

I drive on, trying not to think about it, but his gaunt face returns to haunt me and spite my arrogant vigilance. I picture him sobbing on the roadside. His incomprehensible words – “Schkou, ehuh” – ring in my ears. Being a vigilante is not all it’s cracked up to be, I decide. I’m quite sure, that’s why Batman is such a dark and melancholy chap come cocktail hour on Saturday night.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Teddy de Burca Jnr. ponders a rather challenging work in progress – the street he lives on

Every time I return from a trip abroad, I wonder if the construction work on my street has finished. It doesn’t matter how often I go, or even how long I stay away. It never does. The road is long. So, so long.

Each house on my street has been built around me, one by one, over the course of two years. Each one, in the spirit of neighbourly one-upmanship, a little bit higher than the last.

Though it seems longer, I reckon the projects take on average half a year. Which means, half a year of secretive midnight truck deliveries, spinning cement mixers and the clanking of bricks. Half a year of labourers grinding, sawing, hacking, hammering, drilling, whistling and hollering “ell-looo!” every time they see me. And, worst of all, half a year with no Sunday-sleep in.

What can you do but thank the stars that even the universe is finite. A piece of string, though you don’t know exactly how long, has a length. Everything must end. The only question is when.

For the time being, I must grin and bear it as the latest work-in-progress, directly opposite my abode, continues.

Construction began, or rather continued, after the octogenarian lady who lived there finally succumbed to the lure of the dollar, sold up and, I presume, moved back to her mother’s in the provinces to count the cash.

The building, replacing her so-wee-you-couldn’t-even-see-it-bungalow, is nothing short than a workingman’s idea of a palace. It seems to have stopped at seven, or is it eight, stories, making it the tallest on the street, if not the district.

You could knock down the neighbouring buildings so it stood alone, put clocks on top, and call it the town hall. Or convert the roof into a helicopter-landing pad. Or, at the very least, enjoy abseiling down to pay electricity bills.

The two-dozen young labourers, which initially seemed an excessive number, now have their own room. Lost within the bowels of this architectural monster, they can only be heard, crooning away, tickled pink by the reverb they get on their voices in the bare rooms.

I suspect the father of the family that is destined to live there, asked the architect for a house so large he could hide from his nagging family and live forever in blissful solitude.

Then again, that’s all assuming there is an architect involved. Judging by the style –the mock-pillared balcony (I say mock, as the gaps are filled with cement, so as, I presume, only to hint at pillars, “thus, I give you pillaresque!”), the monastery round tower windows (perfect for archers defending the site from attacking hoards), the car wash size basement for a fleet of SUVs and BMWs and the papaya-peach paint job – you’d say not.

Of course, I know the construction won’t last forever, one day the world will run out of bricks, or just end. But, the really distressing fact is three doors down lies another house where the oldest woman in Vietnam dwells, alone. I’m afraid, like the last of the Mohicans, her days are numbered.

Someday, I will have my much-cherished Sunday morning sleep-in again. The only question is when.

Invasion of the kumquat trees

In the beginning you didn't notice them arriving. Not really. As you rolled through the city streets little flecks of orange here and there may have caught your eye, but amongst the mass of traffic, fumes, beeps and parade of winter fashions, and what with the biting breeze, and the pre-Tet drizzle, you didn't bat an eyelid.

But now, maybe you are on a motorbike – driving to work – or hidden from the rain in the back of a taxi, or cowering behind your xe om driver. But you're in a sleepy-headed daze, so when you stare ahead and see 50 metres down the road a kumquat tree, bobbling in the buffeting breeze, driving a motorbike at full throttle, you'll shake your head, squint your eyes and look again.

Did you just see what you thing you did? Was that a potted plant controlling a two-wheeled motorbike swerving in and out of the traffic with the devilmaycare nonchalance of the headless horseman himself?

"Anh oi," you ask the xe om man, or taxi driver, tapping his shoulder. "Did you see that?" And he will smile leaving you with the impression that a) he didn't understand your Vietnamese b) he didn't understand your English c) he knows something you don't.

As the days dwindle down towards the Lunar New Year, Hanoi city becomes a free for all. The shopping list grows with each year but, to sum up, a shortlist of essentials includes stocking up on crates of beer, bottles of liquor, sacks of rice, fruit, meat and the mildly radioactive looking stomach-sized Banh Chung.

But you've started to notice something else multiplying. This time you're sure. Everywhere bikes are being driven around by kumquat trees. One tree, its little olive-sized fruits shaking as if the tree itself is laughing, is driving a teenage girl and her mother at 40 kilometres per hour down the dyke road, slaloming in and out of trucks, buses and SUVs.

The road by Quan Thanh park - along with many others - has been transformed into polka dot-orange. Young country teenagers coo at passing bikes, beckoning them towards a string of trees for sale. A middle-aged man cruises past eyeing up the trees. Eventually he pauses by a perfectly symmetrical, squat one. He has found his plant, or, you wonder, has the plant found its pod? The young sales boy skilfully ties the plant on to the man's bike. Then the man clambers on the pillion, pats the pot on its rump as if to say - "Off we go!"

You have an appointment, thankfully indoors, and you hurriedly head to the office. I'll be safe here, you think. But the receptionist shunts you into the waiting room where an enormous twelve-footer of a kumquat tree looms over you. The whole room seems to be caught in its shadow. You run out the door shouting that you'll be back after Tet.

Outside you start to panic. The city is now bedlam. You can't travel anywhere without seeing the scores of kumquat trees that have converged on the city like a scene out of the Day of the Triffids. You can't breathe. You decide to u-turn. You have to get out. The suburbs. The hinterland. Anywhere.

But as you snake your way out of the city you glance down into the fields to your right, and there you see a whole host of kumquat trees in their hundreds, stretching into the eerie West Lake mist. Down amongst them locals twirl, dance and skip, like a scene out of the Sound of Music. And the further you drive the more you see, the more you realise there is no point in fighting. The situation is useless.

Eventually you slow down by a field and dismount. You seem powerless, or compelled. You point at a tree. The woman nods. You fork out some crumpled cash from your pockets. Not too much you hope. Then she orders her son to tie the kumquat tree onto your steed. Then afterwards they place you nimbly on the passenger seat and pat the kumquat tree. Then the tree turns the ignition, clicks into gear, accelerates and drives you home.

On the way back the kumquat tree drives with smooth confidence. You are perfectly relaxed. You feel at peace with yourself and fellow man. You realise the stress of the pre-Tet traffic had got you down. Worked up. Frazzled. You smile, put your arms around the tree, and think - "this is going to be the best Tet ever."

As you enter the neighbourhood everyone sees you - the old granny at the tea stall, the neighbourhood policeman, the 'valet' boys at the bia hoi – and they clap their hands with glee.

When you arrive home, after opening your door, your landlord helps you heave the tree inside and place it in a corner where it twinkles in the rays of a setting sunbeam. He admires the tree, and then admires you: "Bay gio," he says with his hand on your shoulder, "thi em la nguoi Vietnam roi."

If you need a translation, it meets quite simply: Now you are one of us.



Things to do with your kumquat tree during Tet:
1. Take off a few kumquats and learn to juggle, which helps reduce stress and lowers the risk of Alzheimer's
2. Take off a half-dozen kumquats, invite a friend over and play "fruit" marbles, which helps reduce tedium and lowers the risk of eye-related injuries
3. Take off all the kumquats, slice them up with limes, while heating a bottle of red wine in a pot, add sugar, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves with the sliced fruit to the wine, heat until just before boiling point. Pour into a glass, drink. Repeat until drunk. And have a merry Lunar New Year.