Han and Vern's jaunt round the globe together! - Aug 14, 2007

Being in Cambodia is a bit of a relief really. Not that Vietnam wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable but it’s nice not to have to deal with the six faced nature of it’s people. To some extent I should have been expecting this, it’s not like every place we’ve been hasn’t been building up to it but the Vietnamese take it to unprecedented levels. It’s the one aspect of SE Asian culture which consistently gets under my skin and Khmer people are the only ones on this little peninsular that seem to be totally free of it. Vietnam is The Nation of Lies; Country of Falsehoods and State of Misinformation. You can’t believe a single word most Vietnamese people say until it has been proven true before your very eyes, even then all before your spectacles should be treated with speculation.

The irritation is probably party my own fault. It’s just that I don’t understand how to interpret what many Vietnamese people say. To me a question such as “When will my washing be ready?” that is answered with “Two o’clock, sir,” has only one outcome and that is me picking up my fresh pressed smalls at two o’clock. To believe that this is the case however would be the misplaced faith of a fool. To do such a thing would reveal a keen lack of observation on my part of several key factors. Firstly you need to bear in mind the amount of time it took that person to give you an answer. If it was instantaneous you can be 100% sure that it was a lie, a number picked from the ether as meaningless as the answer to ‘How long is an egg noodle?’ Secondly you need to be wary of a searching look into your eyes which is trying to ascertain when you want the washing by and then give you this answer, also meaningless. Lastly and perhaps most importantly you need to read the subtext. This is what I have failed to do most. The subtext to virtually any answer to a direct question that you are given is a coded message which I believe may take years to perfect your reading of however I may have cracked it. Ninety per-cent of the time the subtext is this:

“The answer I am giving you now bears no resemblance to reality. I am merely giving you a finite figure/statement/direction to make sure that I no longer have to deal with you on this encounter and can continue watching what other people are up to which is always infinitely more interesting than the task at hand. There fore I shall tell you either what you want to hear, or what I believe you want to hear. I repeat, you cannot rely on this information. In short what I want you to know is that I do not know the answer to your question/query/problem. Unfortunately I am not permitted by social constraints to admit this extremely minor failing on my part so I have given you an answer. Thank You.”

To be fair this is a minor gripe when we’re talking about clean pants but every transaction of information at some point seems to fall into this hole, it’s both infuriating and baffling.

I’d like to say that the Vietnamese have perfected the art of lying, but they’re really bad at it. I guess when you spin webs of deceit with such regularity it’s only natural that some of them get found out. The above conversation resulted in the washing being delivered to our room a mere 2 minutes later at about midday, so the reason for the lie was merely to avoid admitting that he had to check with whoever was doing the washing, which is perfectly reasonable in my eyes. Even if telling me five o’clock was a face saving measure to spare the unbearable embarrassment at not having such trivial information at his fingertips, then why ask the maid and have it delivered to the room right after I’d left. Surely it must now be obvious to him that I now know that he was lying and didn’t have the answer at our original conversation so I should accordingly think just as little of him as if he’d said “I’m not sure, I’ll just find out.” If you’re trying to look like you know everything then at least back it up by asking the maid to bring the washing around five-ish. It’s just not very smart or I’m thinking about it too much.

On the occasions when you catch them out in this game of cat and mouse they’re often mortally horrified. Perhaps it is bad sportsmanship on my part to expose the lack of skill in this area, Maybe that also is to be left unsaid. In Saigon one lunch time we booked our bus tickets to Cambodia and then went to the Café next door for a sandwich. After leafing through the menu for a moment, Han saw that you could get 20% off if you had booked a tour at the agents next door, which we had. A bonus considering that we were going to eat there anyway. When we asked the waitress however we were told that this was not possible. Under questioning the reason for this changed wildly and drastically. At first it was only with trips to Cambodia, exactly what we’d booked. Then it was an expired offer, no date had been filled in despite the space for one. Then it was only on the day of the trip. When I spelled out these options she settled on the fact that it was expired. We’d hoped they might knock off a dolla in spite of this as it was clearly their mistake that it had been left in there but they didn’t (the Vietnamese had already proven themselves to be rather thrifty). We didn’t really care about saving a dolla but the lying annoyed us enough to leave.

So it is with great enthusiasm that we’ve discovered in Cambodia that most people are thoroughly trustworthy and comparatively straight talking. I even gave a moto driver $10 which he then went and changed just so I could pay him $2 for the ride. He came back with the whole $10 in Reil and waited for me to pay him. Nowhere else we’ve been have you been able to do that.