Fresh Meat in Vietnam

This is my first trip report to Stickman so I’m going to take you back to the first overseas trip I took in 2002. I was 25. I travelled with 2 mates to Vietnam and damn was I green, wet behind the ears, fresh, a complete newbie. Whatever you want
to call it, you name it, and I knew nothing about it.

We planned to travel through Vietnam for a month then I was off to the UK to try to look for work. But you’ll hear nothing about the UK from me because my best adventures have taken place in SE Asia. A place my heart longs for every
day since.

We started our adventures in Hanoi and were to travel by land to Saigon. Hanoi is a truly amazing place and it was a real eye opener for someone who hadn’t been anywhere but Australia before. I arrived earlier in the day and waited
at the airport for my mate’s flight which was due to arrive several hours later. I passed the time reading and doing boring things you do while waiting in an unknown place like a Vietnamese airport. Eventually, my mates place arrived and
after a reasonably short wait while he was processed by customs we arranged a taxi to take us to the heart of the city.

The first thing I noticed were the roads. Ha! The taxi driver seemed like a complete madman at first but then after seeing everyone else driving in the same erratic manner I wrote it off as just normal. He would overtake when there were cars
coming head on. He would almost ram motorbike riders off the road and he drove a clapped out shit box of a car that didn’t make me feel very safe at all. Especially since there were no working seatbelts. Anyway we survived the trip into
Hanoi and started our search for accommodation.

We hadn’t booked accommodation so we had to search around for a room and eventually found a room with 3 single beds. Hah! It’s funny really as I’ve since gone to Thailand a couple of times and wouldn’t dream of
sharing a room with anyone except for the ladies of the night of course. This was just a trip for mates to do some travelling together and explore the world. The first day in Hanoi was fairly uneventful. We found our accommodation (can’t
remember how much we paid but it was cheap) and settled in.

One of my friends knew of an English bloke who was living in Hanoi at the time so the next day we arranged to meet him so he could show us around a bit. Paul was an ok chap. A little too cool for his own good, at least he thought so, but
you get that…. The rented room he was staying in was a complete dive. A run down, damp smelly little room rented from a Vietnamese family. He was paying next to nothing so that’s understandable but I couldn’t believe he actually
stayed there. Even the poor run down places the girls live in at Pattaya are better than his place was.

We walked around Hanoi for the afternoon checking out some local sites, trying the cuisine and having a few beers. After eating some nice food at a restaurant we walked to a little bar where only locals went in which felt like the middle
of nowhere. It was probably only a few blocks away from where we were staying but not having any idea where I was and it being dark and dingy as most of Hanoi seems to be, it felt like no-mans land. This was the kind of bar where you sit at low
tables on little stools and buy cheap grog. I believe it was 10 cents in Aussie dollars for a scooner of beer. It was that price in most places in Hanoi but they were selling illegally and whenever a policeman was in the area they would quickly
collect our beers and stop selling for a little while.

After drinking some beers amongst ourselves, a group of Vietnamese guys invited me to share in some rounds of the rice wine they were drinking. I being the friendly incorrigible guy I am began to down several rounds of what really is the
most awful spirit you can put down your throat. I was getting smashed, and fast! We kept drinking for a couple more hours. The worst moment at that bar was when the guys ordered some of the dried squid you see all over the place in Vietnam. When
I say DRY, I mean extremely dry! It also reeked to high heaven. I was dry reaching trying to get it down but eventually had to secretly spit it out into a tissue whilst trying to be polite and not vomit. I almost hurled several times and will
never eat that again in my life. It definitely is an acquired taste. We stumbled out of the bar into the night.

Paul decided he would take us to a club called Apocalypse now. I’m sure you experienced travellers will know this place as it seemed to be quite popular with the lads. There were plenty of Vietnamese beauties around.

Apocalypse Now is a night club but more like a bar than anything. It was nothing special. This was my first experience seeing how the girls in Vietnam operate. I had met a girl in Australia before I went away so I had no intention of partaking
in P4P while away. Out of the 3 of us travelling, 2 of us were in new relationships and one was single. My single mate ended up getting friendly with one of the girls in the club and as we were leaving, he jumped on the back of her motorbike and
rode off into the night. That was the last we saw of him that night. She was pretty hot too.

So off we went to hit more bars. English Paul, my mate and I. We went to several small bars and continued to drink even though I really didn’t need more alcohol. I wasn’t even a big drinker back then. It wasn’t until
the walk home that things started to get really crazy.

It was about 2 AM in the morning and we decided to leave the little bar we were at. Our hotel was only about 1 km away and we began to stagger home. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I mean literally, two motorbikes drove up behind us with 3 girls
on each bike. They all jumped off and began to fraternise, hugging and touching while we walked along the street. This was completely new to me and being the drunken fool that I was I thought all my Christmases had come at once. I was walking
along with these girls thinking it was my lucky day. They were hugging and touching me all over. By this stage I was getting pretty excited. I really had no idea what was going on. I was ready to party some more and started to want a piece of
these girls.

So there I am walking down the streets of Hanoi with 2 girls under each arm thinking “I AM THE MAN”! I had been separated from my mates who were walking ahead. I vaguely remember Paul looking back and saying “you should
be careful of those girls” but this went completely over my head as I was too pissed to be logical and had no idea what he was talking about. I guess he really didn’t give much of a shit to care enough to pull me away from them.
He had obviously had experiences with them before but they just walked ahead quickly to try and escape.

I continued to walk up the street with these girls and shortly before we came to the main road I had somehow managed to negotiate a BJ from one of the girls. I don’t even remember setting that up.

Next thing I know my back is against a shop wall and a cute girl is on her knees putting a rubber on me. I’m standing in the middle of Hanoi at 2 aM in the morning getting a blow job from this girl while 5 other girls are standing
around me. I had one girl on my left and one girl on my right. There was this older girl (obviously the ring leader) who was barking instructions or probably yelling abuse at me whilst all this was going on.

All this time I was wearing a bum bag which, yeah you guessed it, contained all my important belongings. I had USD$250 cash, USD$500 in American Express travellers cheques and my plane ticket to London. I also had my wallet in my back pocket
with 2 credit cards, up to 50,000 dong and my ID. I know you’re probably thinking “OMG what a dumb arse!” carrying so much cash and valuables around with him and you’d be completely correct in saying so. WHAT A DUMB
ARSE! I can only laugh now as it was so long ago and ended up giving me a whole lot of experience and a good story tell the grand kids or maybe not.

So to continue my story… I stand my back against the wall, my pants around my ankles receiving a not so good blow job in the middle of Hanoi (there was no traffic at this time, Hanoi seems like a ghost town at night with only hustler chicks
like these roaming the streets). The girls are caressing me all over and if it wasn’t for that crazy old bitch yelling random abuse I would probably have stayed there longer. As it happened, I started to feel a bit uneasy and so did my
little friend. I realised that something wasn’t right and zipped up and began to walk off. The girls followed for a little bit but eventually gave up when I caught up to my friends. The whole incident happened in a flash and was probably
only a 5 minute encounter.

As I was walking down the street I suddenly remembered I had my bum bag on and then came the dreaded realisation that everything in my bum bag had been fleeced. I remember walking down the street when the girls drove by on the motorbikes,
the older crazy bitch sitting on the back of one of the bikes waving at me with a nicely rolled up $250.00 wad of US dollars in her hand and taunting me in Vietnamese. I can only guess what she would have been saying. I would have paid her/their
wages for months to come.

When we got back to the hotel, reality set in and I knew I was stuffed. There was nothing I could do about it except learn the lesson and try to be more street smart in the future.

What was extremely lucky is that during the whole incident, I kept my hand firmly over my back pocket as I’m always weary about losing my wallet and it seemed like the obvious thing someone would go for. I remember they tried but I
just held on to it so I managed to keep my credit cards. That gave some relief however little. If only I had remembered I was wearing the bum bag?! I had also left my passport at the reception of the motel we were staying at so luckily still had
that. This all happened on the 2nd night of being in Vietnam and the 2nd night I had ever been overseas. It was a complete nightmare the next day. My hangover was made 10 times worse!

All in all it was a very expensive encounter. I can not praise American Express enough for their customer service as I managed to get a full reimbursement of all my travellers’ cheques when I got to the UK even though I had spent $100.00
already. My plane ticket was a bit of a worry. It took me ages to find a police officer who would sign a statement to say it had been stolen. Eventually it was the work of a nice taxi driver that bought the police officer a packet of cigarettes
to get the deal done and he actually knew the guy at the Thai airways office as well so managed to help me more than I can thank him for.

All in all, I had a great trip regardless of this. I am certainly much the wiser for it.

Would I do it all again… sure!

I’d just leave my bum bag at the hotel next time. 😉