Day 4 - Celebrity Guest Blogger Or How I Tried To Sell My Best Freind To Some Vietnamese Train Boys

This incident was so bizarre I still cannot write about it without pissing myself laughing. So here it is in Dawn's words.

Anyway, this morning after the Irish couple had disembarked at their 6am stop, Allison and I were jolted awake by two teenage Vietnamese boys who ripped our door open and sprung into our first class carriage. I would like to point out at this stage that we had repeatedly tried to lock the door to our carriage (and even more so after this incident) but to no avail.

The two teenage boys brandished 5 small green boxes each carefully bound with rubber
bands and waved them around at us. "You buy, you buy?" they said. I have to say I was so stunned by their entrance and was so confused from being awoken so rudely, that I was ready to buy anything to make them go away. So after battling with my wallet to try and hand over the required 10,000 dong to purchase the wretched things (and shouting at Allison not to purchase any more), one of the boys pushed my legs over, sat down on my bed, stared at me and said "You are so beautiful". So to avoid the awkward moment, I resorted to pulling out one of the objects from green boxes to find green slimy mush wrapped up in plastic (which Allison later said she thought looked like urine cakes) and ate some. Mmm slimy and sweet. This caused a lot of giggling from the boys (maybe they were urine cakes?) and finally blowing kisses, they departed.


Allison and I stared at the remaining four boxes of green slime, agreed that we would give them away to small children and then went back to sleep. About 2 hours later, the boys returned. This time, my suitor sat even closer to me, told me I was beautiful (repeatedly) and patted my hair. The other boy acted as our interpretor, writing down questions that my suitor was asking in English.

First we were asked our ages, and then came the important "Have you husband?" question. Allison announced that she did have a husband but that I did not. She then pointed at me and said her best asian-woman-bargaining voice "I sell her to you for 2 MILLION DONG". I would like to point out that as impressive an amount as that sounds, it is actually less than $200 Australian. When my jaw dropped at this proposition, she insisted that 2 million dong was a good amount of money. Luckily, I don't think they caught the offer and the conversation continued.



The second question written by our interpretor was "He ask if you love he?" complete with a "Yes/No" option for me to circle. I said no because I already had a husband(while glaring pointedly at Allison). I explained that my husband was in England(sorry, Nick. I know this is a little premature) and that I was on my way there.

The third question "He ask why do you go with husband". Now Allison and I were a little flummoxed by this question. After trying to explain with "Well he's very tall,
good looking and a wonderful person", we summarised it to "He's a nice man", which they seem to accept quite grudgingly. Finally they seemed to realise that their quest was pointless and departed once again, much to my relief and Allison's mirth.

So if I fail to turn up after our two week trip in Vietnam, I suggest that those of you who care turn your scrutiny onto Allison to find out whether she successfully sold me on our next train trip ;)