« When the bus driver jabbers that he will have to stop at the Police Control, I immediately smell trouble. No stops have been planned and he should know that we have all the necessary authorizations. What’s worse, I don’t remember noticing any kind of control booth on our way to town.

He pulls over in a dark empty street, far away from the Saigon airport and even further still from the harbour, and I no longer have to smell it: trouble is here. The French passengers, still a little shocked by the harassment at Customs, don’t really know any better and are looking around with worried faces, probably wondering if the all-inclusive package to Guadeloupe wouldn’t have been a safer bet.

I put on my most reassuring smile and explain that there must be a misunderstanding which I will sort out at the « Control » with our driver, who has already jumped off the bus and is waving for me to follow him. I fall in with his stride, mentally noting that the houses lining the sinister street do not look at all like official buildings and worriedly looking around for a reassuring sign in the short-lived headlight halo of the rare cars driving by.

The man turns purposefully into an alley, walks across a porch and into a small inner courtyard. Still not a single light in sight. The Vietnamese must keep enforcing a good old curfew to save electricity.

We pass through a metal gate, climb a few steps and just as I am getting ready to turn around and bravely run back to the bus, the driver opens a last door and walks in. Heart beating fast, I follow him. My relief in finding relative lighting inside is soon hampered by the austere look of the room we’re in. Between four walls, a desk, a chair, a lamp. The walls are dirty and naked, the metal desk is barren and the chair occupied by a meager, stern looking woman wearing a military uniform. And as for the lamp, its articulated head is pointed straight at me.

There is no time to lose. I tap into my classical repertoire and manage to label the place under the « Communist interrogation chamber » category with a daring cross-reference to James Bond and Midnight Express.

My driver whispers a few words in Vietnamese to the uniform and then retreats to the back of the room, away from the light and out of view. I’m still unsure whether they are trying to scam me or if this is really a misunderstanding but my blood runs a little colder.

The uniform then addresses me in her language. I don’t catch a single word of her sentence and have to reply with a gesture of ignorance. She repeats her statement, punctuates it with a new comment and shows no sign of speaking anything else than her mystifying dialect. I nervously attempt communication in English, then in French, without any luck.

Tension is building in an almost tangible way.

She obviously wants something and her patience is failing. I ask the driver behind me to explain our situation but his English is so primitive that he doesn’t seem to get it, unless he’s simply refusing to help. I suspect that money would probably solve our issue but I don’t have a single dollar - or franc - on me. My concerned thoughts turn towards the passengers waiting outside in the dark bus.

Suddenly, a door I hadn’t noticed opens on my left. A man in civilian clothes and wearing thin glasses, short and hunched forward, walks in and speaks to the uniform as if continuing a conversation started in my absence. I must be nervous. Crazy options are already going through my head, from a visit to the local jail to the wild escape through the streets of Saigon.

The newcomer, seeming to rank higher on the scene, addresses me first in Vietnamese and next in a hesitant and almost incoherent English. The driver immediately starts answering in Vietnamese, in an affirmative manner that makes me fear he is confirming against my will that we are here for a control; so I interrupt him, hoping for it to be a display of authority but not arrogance.

Using a telegraphic-style English without pronouns or conjugation, I attempt to claim our rights and explain that we have been doing the shuttle between the airport and the harbour with a clearance issued by the proper authorities. I am aware that said authorities must have granted such clearance after the shuttling of some money from a hand to a pocket, but I at least have my official crew landing pass and show it to them. They don’t seem to like that, as if they had just lost an ace in their hand.

I must have been in here for 10 minutes now. The two Party officials are arguing with each other and don’t seem to agree on the procedure to follow. My driver is getting agitated behind me. It suddenly dawns on me that he might well be in on this, hoping for his share of the prize. I know only too well how everything is negotiated under the rising smell of money in the new Vietnam, and I still remember how our landing fees keep rising for no reason from one trip to the next.

On the other hand, there is a possibility that the incredibly sluggish communist bureaucracy alone might be responsible for this mess. There doesn’t seem to be, in their narrow minds and in the related rules, a clause applying to the present situation, and obviously lacking either initiative or freedom or both, they just don’t know what to do.

Then, abruptly, the opposition gives in. The man leaves the room and the woman waves me to the door with a snort and marked disdain.

I lower myself into thanks, open the door, think of slamming it behind me, but decide not to after reconsidering the local jail option.

Outside in the street, the bus is still there, which almost surprises me. My passengers are quiet and tired. I would like to comment on the incident but since that would only stain the image of the perfectly oiled machine that was supposed to welcome them to Asia, I simply announce that everything is finally in order, apologize for the delay, and we get on our way.

The driver hasn’t said a word since we walked out; I don’t break the silence, annoyed at him and rather suspicious. Once we reach the ship, I unload my travelers under the impatient watch of the bridge - it’s late and they were waiting for us to sail. More Party officials are present, gauging the boarding group, probably wondering how high to inflate the landing tax on our next layover.

I definitely don’t like the remains of the communist regime. »

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - 1994

« The ship’s tender drops me off on an lonely pier to which are tied up a few rusty fishing boats, almost all leaning to one side as if to show their long seafaring experience, just as John Wayne wore his hat tilted sideways. But I’m not fooled by the trick and I can feel they are simply tired and worn out, aspiring to never again leave the harbour’s calm waters and this dock they now use as a crutch... »

March 27, 1994 - Lombok, Indonesia.

You had to be there. It was a long time ago. Long before AIM, and Gmail chat, and MSN Messenger, and Skype, and ICQ, and Trillian and the like, the ancestor of online chatting was – and still is – called IRC. It stands for Internet Chat Relay. I spent hours on it, in chat rooms called channels, using the ever-popular mIRC and ViRC programs, writing scripts, customizing my messages, implementing colors, offering roses, seeking privileges, learning the syntax and the codes, wasting precious time, getting addicted. Then I got Jouche addicted too. Mea culpa. And then I bailed.

Nowadays, modern chat clients are so much more powerful and user friendly, but they cater mostly to individual conversations and the idea of public channels never really took off until Facebook appeared.

The difference with IRC is that it was geeky and took quite a while to master. But entire online communities built themselves around those channels. Some of them still exist I’m sure, but I’ve lost touch. I’ve forgotten the language. I’ve moved on. Yet I keep a copy of mIRC on my laptop. One never knows. IRC remains a valuable resource when it comes to finding live, up-to-date info about the weirdest, most remote things, fast.

Here are a few quotes from actual IRC conversations. They were found here. They are much funnier if you’re a geek and if you were there.

(+ware) I rear-ended a car this morning. So there we are alongside the road and
(+ware) slowly the driver gets out of the car . . . and you know how you just get sooo
(+ware) stressed and life seems to get funny?
(+ware) Well, I could NOT believe it . . he was a DWARF! He storms over to my car,
(+ware) looks up at me and says, « I AM NOT HAPPY! »
(+ware) So, I look down at him and say, « Well, which one are you then? »... and
(+ware) THAT’S when the fight started . .

...

<frank> can you help me install GTA3?
<knightmare> first, shut down all programs you aren’t using
* frank has quit IRC. (Quit) **
<knightmare> ...

...

<pronstar``afk> my kazaa preformed an illegal opperation
<cCCPehlet`> isn’t that what kazaa is designed to do?

...

<fabz> I think we need to work on our communication.. one guy is talking crap, one just goes « lol » and the other one doesn’t understand what’s going on
<atsleek> lol
<Nefemus> what?

...

<idsif> you’re smarter than the average american
<ascian> of course. i’m canadian.

...

<Beeth> Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken.
<honx> well, you can stil get one from a strange country : -P

** That’s a system message that appears when a user closes his IRC program. Duh. (Vince)

« … When the bus drops us off at the rendez-vous point, a long hot day is getting old and Club Med 2’s silhouette thrones on a grandiose horizon background of oranges and reds. We are granted a stunning sunset on the South China Sea, a rare occurrence since the Vietnamese coast is generally oriented towards the East. Time slows down to a halt and minutes tick by as a few lonely pirogues glide effortlessly on a glassy ocean. Then the sun sinks below the surface of the world and darkness creeps in. We return to our bright onboard lights leaving behind us the simple poverty and warm smile of these people who seem to no longer even need hope… »

« ... Mother Nature is granting us an exceptional sunset through convoluted clouds in the summer sky. There is a sense of peace lingering in the air tonight that both lifts and sinks my heart. Time is simply gliding over us, flowing without a ripple. Everything is calm and serene, the islands are placidly watching us sail away and a few sampans finally go back to where they came from… »

[Halong Bay, Vietnam - July 1994]

Hmm, what a dark post the previous was. To lighten up the tone, here are a beautiful couple of lines from another author, whom I’m publishing without her permission, which she probabbly wouldn’t have given any way...

 « Years later, I would understand where I was by bending down to see what grew. And always, when I was lost, in one way or another, I would find myself in a garden. »

« ... Tout cela ne vaut pas le poison qui découle
De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts,
Lacs où mon âme tremble et se voit à l’envers...
Mes songes viennent en foule
Pour se désaltérer à ces gouffres amers.

Tout cela ne vaut pas le terrible prodige
De ta salive qui mord,
Qui plonge dans l’oubli mon âme sans remord,
Et, charriant le vertige,
La roule défaillante aux rives de la mort !

... All that doesn’t come close to the poison that oozes
From your eyes, from your green eyes,
Lakes where my trembling soul sees itself upside down...
My dreams gather in a flock
To water themselves at these bitter holes.

And all that it is not worth the prodigy of your saliva.
It bites my soul,
And dizzies it, and swirls it down remorselessly.
Rolling it, fainting, to the underworld. »

Baudelaire - Le poison (Eloquently quoted by Jill and Nikopol in Enki Bilal’s Immortel (Ad Vitam) )

« Honey you are the sea, upon which I float, and I came here to talk, I think you should know

That green eyes, you’re the one that I wanted to find, and anyone who, tried to deny you must be out of their mind

Cause I came here with a load, and it feels so much lighter, since I met you, honey you should know, that I could never go on without you

Green eyes »

 [Coldplay - Green Eyes]

As I promised on Marie’s blog recently, here are the links to the two grouper interviews, originally published on the Paradise Divers web site: one with Ben and one with Jerry. The bottom line, pardon the pun, is simple. Let’s not eat grouper. They are among the top predators on a reef and as such play a key role in the ecosystem. Decimating groupers means impacting the entire reef, not only the specie, and the consequences could be tragic.

... He would probably have written something like this:

« In spring the crabapple exploded into burgundy bloom and the air buzzed with its bees. The dusky sweet smell filled the whole garden. The willow tree turned chartreuse, then yellow with fuzzy lime catkins and even louder bees, until its structure seemed to vibrate. The old, fragile lilac tree at the front door held pale pink, loose, graceful flower clusters, with old-fashioned dark purple violets at its feet. I would crouch with my face near their leaves, picking their long stems one by one to make a posy, oblivious of the romance of it, of the ritual repeated in all countries where violets grow. I loved them - their full fat petals, their fragile white hearts, their scent. That early season was one of fragrance: the cascading bunches of wisteria over the heavy wooden doors in the high white wall; the simple, single white hyacinths growing outside the walls under the ornamental peach trees that lined the street. I wanted to squeeze them to make perfume, and my mother told me that in France there were fields of flowers for just that purpose. When I am big, I will make perfume in France, I said. I could imagine nothing better. »

 [Written some time ago by Marie, who incidentally is now reading Marcel Pagnol.]

« Je venais de surprendre mon père en flagrant délit d’humanité. Je sentis que je l’en aimais davantage. »

Marcel Pagnol - La gloire de mon père