Leaving HCMC/BKK.

Thursday, and in two weeks I will be back in England. I will probably be greeted by rain in Manchester, but in HCMC it is really raining. A great wall of it that shook the Museum of War Remnants, though I was already pretty shaken. A friend of Sophie's had told us to leave this place until our last day, so that we didn't slump too much. It was hard not to. 

The museum was originally given the more entertaining title of 'The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes,' and it tells the story of the American invasion (and to a lesser extent the earlier war with the French) in gruesome detail. There are no effects. No interactivity. No buttons to press, no levers to pull. Just photographs. Some I had seen before: the famous shot of the girl stumbling away from a napalm blast, GI's posing with corpses. But I have never seen the photos of the victims of Agent Orange. So many deformities. Worse was the strange tourist next to me taking a picture of a child born limbless. I called him a twat and he walked off in apparent surrender. Probably French. 

The museum was incredibly interesting but troubling. Also troubling was the kid who tried to steal my phone before I went in, attempting to repair my shoes whilst I was sat down. It's reassuring to meet a few local characters. He said he was hungry, so I offered him my sandwich and  he said no but wanted money. My conscience is clear. 

What was clear was that after a sobering experience such as seeing mutilated bodies and incomprehensible skin conditions, some relaxation and reflection was required. We went on a mini-beer crawl. Sophie is a big fan of Hard Rock Cafe (been there, done that, got a hundred t-shirts), so it was here in HCMC that I lost my Hard Rock virginity. What a truly terrible idea for a place. Then again the staff were lovely and sorted us loud airport taxi so I'm not complaining. Kinda. 

I'm writing this in the air on the way to Bangkok, and we land in a country where a civil uprising is apparently imminent. I wasn't that excited for this part of Thailand. When the best beer in a country is Chang and where the lobster-skinned Englishman roams free, how could I be? But now that there is a little bit of politics in the mix, we've got a good old-fashioned high brow holiday. Hopefully. I'm only in Bangkok for three short nights before a flight to Chiang Mai in the north. And before I know it I'm back in Macau, then Manchester. Talk about quick turnarounds. I'll blog again when I have some Thai stories. Who knows I might end up as the next president?