To Have and Have Not

There are triple the number of cars compared to when we first arrived, clogging up the potholed arteries that form most of the city streets. It does seem strange to notice such a thing, as though the roar of the South East Asian tiger, the growl of industrial change can be measured continuously by the eye. It can here. Buildings growing like rapeseed; ugly, progressive, striking and yet the ultimate status symbolised here is not some ridiculous car, a hearse for the avarice of humanity or even the gleaming,fully facilitated killing field condos that are squeezing the poor into smaller and more disease-ridden areas. It is the mobile phone. A slick motor can drive by and no one looks, but pull out an iPhone and there is a pile up of stares and yes a collusion of desire. There is no criticism of that. Consumerism here is label-based; a yes logo couture culture where only the tourists believe the copied bags, clothes and watches have any value. Imagine a time when the cut of clothes could be cutting edge. When Next was new.

The ascendance to comfort is complete. For some.

But such comfort, my comfort with air-con at the flick of a switch and an evacuation bag by the door seems shallow. And although there is security at the gate, there is nothing secure about any of this. We are all undermined.If you look sideways away from a new four lane highway you see what is still there. A mother was holding her baby at the glassless window of their home - a corrugated shack beside a sewered canal with blue tarpaulin for a roof- which has suddenly got a tarmac'd view. One moment the child is taking it all in, hazel eyes wide open and the next he or she is coughing like a 40dayer; the hot, filthy air rushing into their roadside home is now 3 times more toxic and the hacking cough is enough to make the child's body shudder. The new cars purr by.

And time is spent looking out of our back window. There is some James Stewart in this; my rear window takes in more than just a static snapshot of shack life but provides an ever-changing montage of scenes of a surviving strata of Vietnamese life. These are the Cyclo drivers, the Xe Om drivers, the food stall cooks who prepare their Pho and noodles before wheeling out their trolleys on to the bustling road nearby to wait on customers who perch on little red stools. No one here earns anything approaching what could be called a salary in the West or even a minimal wage but there is enough for the children to (mostly) go to school, for everyone to be wearing clean clothes, for food to be available every evening for smoking men and playful children. This is no slum but people survive by making the most of what they have.

I know, back in the cold and here in the heat is the same: the tropics make none of this exotic, there is sweat rather than ice on faces exposed with little shelter to the elements. This is not just about location it's not even about cohesive argument rather it is the pitter patter of observation, the slow impotent melancholy of glimpsing another life.

The mother holding the coughing baby at the window comforts him by whispering into his ear and raises his own hand to cover his nose. Training for the future.

Original Photo courtesy of Charmaine.