There Is Another Party Here

Of course this was a full moon party VietNam-style but lets try not to be condescending; no it didn't have the coolness of a Koh Samui sandfloor; of grooving Thai-dyed hedonists, still there, still not. And no, there was no Balaeric pick-up; thongs and songs in a post-Mediterranean setting, a site for disc eyes and incubating doubt. There was none of that. Instead there was guy with a couple of homemade fireballs which he acrobatically wooshed around him. A Danish man helpfully pointed out that the night before ( a pre-full moon party?) one of the fireballs had come off and spattered into the sand close to bare, tanned feet. This was what we were here for; moments on the sand, blissed and melded but always with the chance of being welded to the bean bag we had flopped on to after stiff Long Island Iced Teas. Sure, we could see it was unsafe and we crumpled backwards but we watched the fireball dancers dignify their lack of experience with pure enthusiasm. Thank XX we are not too jaded to see that.

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Music: Calexico/The Clash Guns of Brixton

Night Train to Saigon (Reprise)

music: Elfpower

Came back on the night train to Saigon, five hours from Phan Thiet and the beach. Sluggish and daylight at first as it passed through red sand dunes and into the countryside with its rasta Dragon Fruit trees, a crowd of nodding dreads with pink heads and green gills hanging limply in the air. A strange fruit. Then it sped up as it closed on Bien Hoa as though rushing to dismiss a city which had led a small-scale resistance against the northern communists even after the fall of Saigon. Inside the train, the Vietnamese are beginning to wake up from slumber or recover from being slumped on the floor, crippled with motion-sickness and soon it is our night train cutting through streets where a hand reached out could be touched and where we groan not quite arrived into a station dimly lit and we walk the last three hundred metres down the rusty track.