Thursday 14th March

Thursday 14^th March

At dinner on Sunday we all tried to remember our first jobs. 

Margie had started at the tender age of 10, selling newspapers and chocolates from a big satchel, all around the (then) mean streets of Lutana.  Her route involved going up and down the stairs of the (now) notorious Stainforth Court, a set of forbidding-looking apartments, recently condemned and about to be demolished and re-built to get rid of the rats, the urine smells, the social dysfunction…

My first job was babysitting, then waitressing – I enjoyed both of these very much, but my most treasured moments were being a library monitor (volunteer) – oh the bliss, surrounded by books, and index cards!

Pete always worked on the family farm, although he did have a brief time pouring beers at the Marquis of Hastings.  I don’t think he loved this; he has always thrived on being self-employed.

Ann-Marie also did babysitting, for a very refined Spanish family.  They would leave a delicate supper for her delectation, and she never saw a peep of the sleeping children, so this was a very nice job.  She also, at 15 or so, found a job at the local supermarket, where she had the best time imaginable, giggling and getting up to mischief with a wickedly funny friend.  In fact she loved it so much that her mother was able to punish her for some misdemeanour by ringing the supermarket and saying, “My daughter is unable to work any more, thank you very much!”  Ann-Marie was devastated… Eventually, many months later, she was permitted to return to work, chastened and subdued…

Margaret from NZ – Vietnam 2008

It was still quite early when Pete and I got back to Binh Bao, so we decided to go down to one of the rickety little cafes for a nightcap beer.  There was a big rowdy table of people in their twenties; amongst them was a woman in her fifties, who looked at us longingly and said, “Would you like to join us?  We are about to play some drinking games.”  Well…we know how to have fun with the best of them but…no thanks.  But we did invite her to come and sit with us, which she was very happy to do.  She was on a four week holiday in Vietnam with her two daughters, and one boyfriend.  Her husband, she said, didn’t like this sort of travel; had been to Thailand the year before and had found it all too difficult.  And after this particular holiday I think Margaret also will be eschewing this part of the world…

She and Amanda, one of her daughters, had arrived in Ho Chi Minh City a bit nervously on a plane from Auckland, expecting to be met by Michelle and her boyfriend.  They didn’t make it through customs… Apparently Margaret had a bit of a temperature - “I am at the age where I DO get a bit of a temperature,” she said, plaintively - and Amanda was coughing… Oh no… They were separated from the rest of the passengers and within minutes were banged up in quarantine.  For seven days… This was a totally ghastly experience.  For the first few days there was no shower, no toilet paper, no soap for handwashing even, and they weren’t given their luggage so they had no clean clothes or books to read.  Michelle and her boyfriend had no idea at first where Margaret and Amanda had gone.  They went to the New Zealand Consulate and the people there were very helpful but couldn’t find out any information either.  Margaret said it was just like being in prison.  Eventually they were allowed out to resume their holiday, but I don’t think things had gone all that swimmingly for Margaret.  She was the only person over thirty in the group, and everywhere they went she could see people looking at her as if to say, “Why have they taken their mother along?  And why would their mother WANT to tag along?”  When we met them, they had just come back from a two-day cruise on Halong Bay, which had been reasonably pleasant, I think.  But one of the “experiences” was a visit to a national park, to see the beautiful endangered monkeys.  Poor Margaret found that the walk involved a very steep climb up a muddy mountain track to see one bedraggled sad endangered monkey in a cage….We saw her again the next day, about to get on a bus to take the party back to Hanoi.  She seemed very glad to be coming to the end of her holiday, and said, sadly, “I really wanted to go to Fiji…”