flash saigon: christmas in hue

by Andrew Bennett

On Christmas Eve in Hue — city of emperors and the hottest of hot zones forty years ago this Tet — the place to be is the Cafe on Thu Wheels. It’s named after Thu, said like the number. She’s the boss and everyone knows it.

We sat down and she sat with us.

“You take my motorbike tour, you see everything,” she said after sliding us our drinks. “Go tomorrow, little money, it’s okay.”

She leaned back against the wall and let her eyes wander. We had not made any sign, but the deal was done from her end. She had reason to feel so sure. Her place is small but the walls are papered in letters of high praise, and streaked with congenial graffiti that doesn’t leave the puns alone: Thu Fast, Thu Furious or It Takes Thu to Tango. It’s easier to count the number of countries and languages that aren’t represented than those that are. It makes for strong advertising, and though we didn’t commit that first night she seemed satisfied. She knew we’d be back.

We switched topics, business aside.

“When wedding bells ring, you two?”

“They did already.”

“Where the baby?”

“No baby.”

“What the matter, broken banana?”

And then the kind of laughter you’d expect to hear in a men’s locker room or from around a poker table. Thu doesn’t smoke cigars, but she could. She’s ninety pounds of knives, an iron butterfly, and she talks loud. It’s easy to imagine her putting a rowdy NCO in his place with some sharp words a few decades back, maybe after he’d gotten careless with one of the girls. There would probably be girls, and Thu would be a fair madam. She’d shame the soldier back to his manners, then set up shots all down the bar.

We came back the next afternoon for our tour of the tombs and temples. Thu wasn’t surprised to see us, but she wasn’t indifferent either. She recognized us at once and pulled out our chairs from the night before. Then she started yelling to someone hidden in back, and left. We relaxed, knowing it was all taken care of.

When the guide appeared, though, we had our doubts. He had come in the previous night and inadvertently closed the place down, not because he was wild so much as not wild enough. He’d stumbled in and found a seat, then started sliding off it while words slowly bubbled out of him. Thu had circled where he’d sat, telling customers to finish up: “One for the road” she said when we ordered. She hadn’t been happy, and the other woman working told us it was time to close since her husband had had too much beer that night. While she was saying this he staggered out and across the alley to a budget hotel with a couch in the lobby. He fell in it like a tree, and we walked home wondering how the two of them would get him home, before agreeing that Vietnamese women number among the earth’s strongest creatures.

He was Thu’s brother Minh, we found our later, and he was apparently ok to go. There wasn’t much talk before we left, no time wasted on introductions then. We made friends later, after blowing across paddies and over bamboo-bridges hardly big enough for a motorcycle to pass. Every place we stopped he knew the angle of choice for photographs, and brought us there in a line, and watched as we took our pictures. At one bend of the Perfume River we followed a path to some concrete bunkers that Minh made a point of saying were French, not American. Then he pointed to a hill a ways upstream from where we stood.

“That Hamburger Hill,” he said, “you know, very famous. Nobody go there now. American army put mines all over, nobody go there. Military base now, Vietnam, but empty anyway.”

After three months in Vietnam, this was the first time I’d heard a Vietnamese person mention the war. The fact that we were paying him to show us points of interest didn’t diminish it. We all leaned in a little closer to hear him.

He went on. “I born in 1976, yeah? In 1972 American Army drop Agent Orange all over here. A lot of women drink the water, have babies with big heads, sick babies, you see them maybe. I lucky, no problem. Same same but different, hah” He laughed, since everybody knows that line. It’s what you’ll hear from anyone selling a fake, and it’s been said enough to warrant its own t-shirt. It’s even got a bar named after it. Minh made his joke, then we headed down to the bikes.

That Christmas Eve we spent back at the bar. Minh brought out his babies for us to admire, and every one of them was dressed like Santa Claus. They swarmed around our knees like kids in any other place, laughing and playing and fighting some, too. Thu posed them in every possible arrangement and made us take pictures of them while they stood there getting tired. She scolded them for fussing, then scolded Minh for turning up the music too loud. He had found some reggae and was dancing through the room, clapping his hands and pounding the backs of whoever refused to stand up and join him.

Thu shuffled the kids off to bed around eleven or so, and said “Merry Christmas, time to go.” Minh followed us out to the street corner when we left. He’d drunk less than the night before, but still wobbled when he stopped to say goodbye.

“Hey my friends, you come Hue again, you see me.” We said we would, and he said ok, then turned and headed home, bubbling Bob Marley as he went.

tagged under:asia, living abroad, travel