Despite trying not to think about the “Tam Coc” incident, I sometimes still do. I guess this is because everything else went so smoothly in Vietnam that this event still troubles my mind.
Another reason is, this all happened in the most glorious of landscapes one can imagine. Where Catherine Deneuve “languished in exotic isolation”!I feel anger that two senile women managed to spoil a moment that could have been a thousand times better...
It all started in the best of moods. In an iron sampan, with two ladies rowing behind me. Actually, I never quite understood why so many women row their sampans in Vietnam. Rowing is a hard thing for a woman to do all day! I mean, come on, why are all Gondolieri in Venice men? Is there not a reason behind it. Well, not in Vietnam...
Anyhow. The scenery was absolutely marvelous, I was shooting at my usual 30 pics a minute, until at one moment I realized, the lady rowers behind me had not stopped speaking for a while now, and I wondered if something was wrong. Were they having a fight? I kept waiting to shoot some short film in silence, but their talk seemed to have no end.
By the way, I purposefully added a FILM where you can hear their voices. And when you do, bear in mind that this was more or less the only pause they took, sort of anyhow, and that the film lasts just a few seconds, while they went on for one and a half hour talking in this niang-niang tone, without comas, exclamations or stops. Just niang-niang, instead of the sound of a boat sliding in water, wind through bamboos, ducks crowing, birds singing...
After half an hour more or less, when I started not being ale to stand their voices scratching my ears, I turned and looked at them again, rather severely. I thought they would understand that something was wrong, that my stopping to take pictures to look at them behind me with meaning had a reason. But my reaction was obviously very European, transparent for them to ask themselves.
They kept rowing until we arrived to the most scenic part of this canal, I guess one could call it, and their was a grotto coming. Then they very seriously lit up a light, and I said, at least here, in this silence, in these magnificent waters, they are going to respect the quietness and shut up. But insteead, niang-niang they miawled on undisturbed.
I turned again and said, “Pouvez vous arrêter de parler s'il vous plaît?”
Non, elles ne pouvaient pas...
I thought that if they understood through my remark that they would get less tip or no tip at all they would stop talking, but nothing happened either. The old lady rowing went niang-niang, while the other filled in the voids. I knew then that this was it, they were never going to stop, this was how it was going to be until the bitter end...
And yet, I was wrong again.
As soon as we got out of the grotto, again under a burning sun and with my pulse at around 120, the younger one brought a very dirty plastic bag that was hidden under her seat and came and sat by my side.
Don't you want to buy some linen? She said. I looked at her, and I felt so, just soooo silly, that I could not speak. Moreover, when she came so near to me I felt like a giant, a well fed monster, and she like a dwarf. No, I said, linen is not my thing. Thanks but no.
How about some table sets then? She said. Look how nice they are! How much work there is in them! It's ME who did them, she kept on repeating, while I thought, how stupid can I look, can she not see that I know she bought them for a penny in the local market?
Try selling this to a woman, I said to her. I am not a woman, I make pictures, I said, and pointed to my camera.
And of course when somebody says to you, I make pictures, leave me alone, what do you do? What did she do?
She grasped seriously her dirty plastic bag, took out baby linen and started selling it to me! Buy it, for your children, she insisted. It's ME that made them!
My children bigger than you, I said. I, or rather ME not want buy!
Ha!, she looked at me despise-fully and for a while, as if she meant, “I know how you are, all you middle aged perverts, what you come here for”. Sometimes one can read a mind so clearly....
And then she asked:
How come you so big camera, and no woman?
Well, that is the one million dollar question, I'd liked to have said. And I must say, this was not the first time I was asked the same rather indiscreet (for a Westerner) question in Vietnam: You so rich, where woman? And I confess, I always lied: No woman, I said with my saddest look, Woman left, or Woman divorce, which I explained with a splitting gesture with my hands (that seemed strangely to appease them). Children big, I said with another gesture raising my hand above my head, and they smiled. Vietnamese people marry very young and have children before 20. Their main struggle is to survive, eat, and they therefore do really not understand why you travel alone, if you have money, which you obviously do, since you are there and have a big camera. Having a woman is something that comes naturally with money, a job: what the hell happened to you?
They never seem to stop to such simple facts such as we do, as: I was unlucky, I'm ugly and nobody likes me, or I snort, I have dandruff. No. Big camera=Woman, that's the way it goes in Vietnam.
Traveling alone is usually the paradoxal choice one makes when one has no choice. But traveling alone, as everything else in life, comes with handicaps, as well as advantages: you can't share, but you're free, is the simplest way I could put it. There is a lot of unjustified fear and hesitation before a far-away travel alone. Yet the only reality is, when you get “there”, nothing seems to matter anymore apart the fact that you're there. I never had time to languish on memories, “better” times. Time is precious, time is now, and I never feel this so stark as on a trip. I do feel sad when I see people traveling alone in a restaurant with a sad look, but mainly because I would not like to appear like them...Because when you travel in company you can afford all moods possible, noone cares, but when you're alone, you concentrate upon you like a magnet all looks, in the best case discreetly. But the worst of all is being alone and appear happy, content: That can only be because, when, you are an old pervert!
And I know you probably understand what I mean, because you can read and understand my words. But try explaining this to a lady rower that likes to repeat niang niang for a long time. You'd feel as angry as I did to be confronted malgré moi to such a silly, surreal situation.
And on she went, with baby linen. All sorts of yellowish -by the sun- and rather dirty baby clothes.
I have to use the big weapon now, I thought, although the trip was already nearing the end and was definitely fucked up:
Listen, I said, if you don't leave me alone, you are not going to have a tip in the end.
Ha! she looked at me, even more scornfully than half an hour before. Not only are you a nasty old pervert, you are a STINGY nasty old pervert as well, was written in her humid eyes...
And how much you give me? She said, trying to appear indifferent.
20,000 dong, I said. Each one.
Pah! She exclaimed. Little money. 30,000 dong.
Ok, I said. A very fair deal, something like 5 euros for her to shut up. I could happily give 50, actually, but thank God it was not written on my front!
NOW! She commanded. We were approaching the embarkation, and she obviously did not want other rowers of the association to see the money and have to share it with them.
I gave her the money. She looked at it as if it was dirty: one bill was slightly torn.
This no good money, she said. Give me other!, and she showed me another bill in my wallet, actually sticking her finger in it.
I seriously thought of pushing her in the water, let her drown slowly in the mud, I had read somewhere most Vietnamese can't swim...(the old lady behind had somehow stopped niang-nianging, she must have felt how tense I was).
Instead I gave her the good, untorn money, and got out.
You no good man!, she waved me good bye.
Kim and my bike were waiting, and I felt a breeze...
Catherine Deneuve must have had it better, I thought, some things only fame can buy...