Sorry for the Group Email

We were in Mui Ne for four days, but there’s not much to tell. Mostly we spent our time raiding the hotel’s book shelves and sunbathing.

We also tried to find somewhere good to eat, which killed almost four days in itself. Mui Ne might be close to an ocean astonishingly abundant in fresh seafood, but only two restaurants of the dozen or so we tried knew how to cook it properly.

We spent 24 merry hours worrying about my debit card, which we inserted into a cash machine and was promptly swallowed. The entire machine rebooted and then sat blinking blindly at us. Incredibly, we asked the nearest hotel to see if they could retrieve it for us, and they arranged for a technician to come out and get it back. They did and, even better, it still worked. What genius thought Windows NT was a sensible choice for ATMs, anyway?

Otherwise we could be found on the beach, which was all-but deserted every day we were there. There were a few holidaying Vietnamese, and a pair of Germans who did their national stereotype no favours by leaving their shirts on the chairs for days on end.

We worked out that we could stay in Mui Ne for nearly four years without running out of money. We also worked out that we’d do nothing but read thrillers (’Salem’s Lot by Steven King is good, by the way), and that we should probably get on.

The bus to Saigon (which seems to enjoy a 50/50 split with its new name, Ho Chi Minh City. I’m sticking with the former because it’s easier to type) only takes four hours; nothing compared to some of the marathons we’ve endured. It was, in many ways, fine. There was plenty of legroom and I wasn’t in bed with any men, snoring or other. The drawback, as it has been on most of the buses we’ve been on in Asia, was the music.

Asian pop music, you see, may be literally the only thing I intensely dislike about the region. To call it sub-eurotrash does eurotrash a terrible disservice. Asian pop music is like European pop music with three times the tempo, twice the volume and half the enthusiasm. It makes Abba sound like Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Queen rolled into one. I drowned it out as best I could with Harry Potter. (Who has opened the Chamber of Secrets? Who?)

We arrived in Saigon and spent a miserable 15 minutes dodging persistent motorcycle touts. Eventually the world presented us with two angels, in the shape of a pair of German backpackers, who suggested, apropos of nothing, that we try a block over.

Hotels, I think, can often be described in a single word. Caravanserei, in Marrakesh, can be described as “opulent”, and the W in San Francisco is “cool” (labouredly so, if you wanted a few more words). The Rex in Nice deserves the word “homely” with all its warm heart. Sometimes the word is negative, such as “cramped”, or “hot”, but our hotel in Saigon deserved its word even more. Its word is “cockroaches”.

As soon as we’d swung the door shut (we didn’t think to look behind it when we were checking the room) we discovered the carcass of one, its legs folded over and pointing at the ceiling.

Shortly after we got back from dinner there was a dreadful scattling noise, and a bug, its brown, thin body an inch long, with two-inch waving antennae, fell onto the floor from the air vent. It sat stunned for a second, then nipped, with astonishing and terrifying speed, to hide malevolently behind the dressing table.

Investigations involving a torch, my hiking boots and a worryingly unsurprised hotel clerk, revealed the cockroach, as well as two more corpses, underneath the dressing table. Holding each one between his forefinger and thumb, the clerk disposed of each of them, but we felt that four cockroaches in a single evening – even if only one of them was alive – was too many. If it hadn’t been 11pm we’d have left then and there. As it was we spent our time looking up a hotel to move to first thing in the morning.

Dave respects all living things. Unless they have more than four times the legs or twice the eyes of a human.