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Because I planned on staying in Vietnam for three months,
if I were to rent a hotel for the duration of my stay, I would
have been broke within a month, so I constantly searched for
housing within local Vietnamese families. My only requirement
was that the house had to have a "normal" toilet
and not one of the famous/infamous "squat" toilets
that dominate Southeast Asia, China, and Japan.
A friend of mine found a house for me in District Binh
Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City. The landlady was nice at first
but once I moved in she started giving me attitude, which,
in some ways, ruined my last month in Vietnam.
One dreary, humid, and tranquil night, at approximately three
in the morning, while I was on the brink of deep sleep, I
dreamt I was briskly skipping through a gentle breeze in a
lush, emerald-green field of scented bliss from painfully
exquisite chrysanthemums. With arms fully stretched and frolicking
gleefully in the sublime, picturesque atmosphere, out of nowhere,
a humongous wasp chases and tackles me down and stings me
on the leg, quickly wakening me from my deep slumber in the
process. Well, ok, perhaps the dream was a bit exaggerated
but it was something of that magnitude.
I groggily opened my eyes and as I started to rub the sleep
from them, I immediately stopped as I sensed something was
terribly amiss - as if the wasp followed me into reality and
was still trying to sting me. It was at that time that I felt
something crawling up my leg. I shot up into the air like
a rocket and started shrieking like a little, pubescent schoolgirl
as I frantically shook my pant leg. To my surprise, out pops
a super-sized cockroach.
Now, Vietnamese roaches are not your average household pests.
They can grow to the size of golf balls (not in roundness,
of course) and they also have the ability of flight. To sum
it up - a frightening and hideous thing.
This particular cockroach had the benefit of a pre-emptive
strike and I was wounded. So I jumped off my bed and ran into
the bathroom to seize the obvious weapon of choice: a handful
of toilet paper. I began to launch my counter-offensive. I
pounced on it, raining down ferocious blows of incessant kicks
and punches, and although I was wounded, the cockroach did
not stand a chance against the righteous fury of dedication,
motivation, and justice.
The short-lived battle had been won as I stood proud and victorious
over the dead carcass, releasing a lofty laugh of self-satisfaction.
Just when I was about to blurt out the first words to Canada's
national anthem, I stopped abruptly and thought to myself,
"Oh God, I hope this thing didn't lay eggs in my leg....
Text © Jimmy Su, 2006
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Travel writers: The roach and I By Jimmy
Su
