by Sue Perkins
Six months later, as Vicky and I were pissing against a wall in the middle of the Tibetan plateau, she confessed that she and Trung had fallen madly in love with each other. They’d been dating since filming began. They are now married. As am I, according to local custom, to the septuagenarian who used me as an armchair for an hour that night.
The pancakes weren’t about me at all. Or the crew. They were a love letter, wrought in batter, for a woman forced to spend the night with another woman who appeared to have pissed in her bed.
So my pancakes were really love by proxy. But, boy, they tasted sweet.
6. I Don’t Like Mondays
I’m passionate about many things – conservation, homemade scones, the music of Kate Bush – but I’d never given prawns much thought before. The people of rural South East Asia, however, seem to think of nothing else.
For the lucky ones here in Vietnam, prawns have made them and their neighbours relatively rich. Houses have televisions, shiny mopeds sit outside. School enrolment rates have soared. If you’re lucky, there’s gold in them there shells.
That morning, I accompanied Dam, Tuk and Huong’s youngest son, to school. The playground was deserted, thick weeds displacing the paving stones, the odd rusty bike waiting in vain for its next outing. From inside, I could hear singing and the occasional peal of laughter. It was a far cry from my own schooldays: the high note of hormones, girls screaming, the odd casual fist-fight.
The schoolroom itself was essentially one largish room, with old-fashioned desks and chairs stationed in neat rows.
There was a shocked intake of breath as I stepped inside. What? I thought, What’s wrong? Have I forgotten to observe some important custom? Have I made a cultural faux pas? Oh, Christ. Did I forget to put my trousers on again?
The truth is, these children had never seen a Westerner before. They’d never seen this jumble of white flesh, round eyes and strange utterances – let alone the fact I’d walked in with a camera crew in tow. They were cute as buttons, dressed impeccably in their uniforms, with not an untucked shirt in sight.
KIDS: Xin chao!
‘Hello. Welcome. Would you like to take class?’ said the teacher, as I walked in.
What? Oh, God. No. Don’t ask me that. I was a useless teacher in my own country, in my own language. Useless. Here, I’ll be ten thousand kilometres worse than useless.
‘Miss Perkins,’ he said again, interrupting forty-eight years of cumulative self-loathing, ‘I asked you – would you like to take class?’
But I didn’t answer. In my head, I was somewhere else entirely.
It was 1993. I had graduated, and was spending my time ‘being creative’. In this context ‘being creative’ meant sitting around with my mates talking about what I might write one day, if I could be arsed to pick up that biro.
I spent the autumn as part of a sketch troupe (think League of Gentlemen’s Legz Akimbo minus the irony) travelling round schools in a play designed to encourage kids to apply for further education. Among the many roles I brought to life, I was most proud of UCAS. You may not be familiar with UCAS. Sounds like a Marvel superhero, doesn’t he? A strong-jawed, tights-wearing fellow. But, no. UCAS is a far harder character to portray than anything in that canon. UCAS is the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Yes, you heard. Doubt no longer my thespian versatility. The venerable Dame Judi Dench is our greatest luminary of stage and screen but even she cannot claim to have made flesh an organization responsible for undergraduate application procedures.
Note: for those wishing to recreate my character of UCAS, I used a Geordie accent.
Shortly after the tour, my mate Sally asked if I wanted to help teach some drama courses at the local all-girls comprehensive. Sure, I said. Why not?fn1
The class was brimful of tall, sassy teenagers called Kelly, Shane and LaTisha, most of whom wore gold-hooped earrings so large you could have developed a Crufts’ agility course around them. Mere moments into the lesson it became obvious they already had more street-smarts than I ever would.
These kids weren’t interested in anything outside of the nail bar on the Harrow Road. A quick poll during our careers chat revealed a 100 per cent class tendency towards hairdressing. From very early on, it became clear I’d be playing second fiddle to a teaser comb.
Undeterred, Sally and I ploughed ahead with our ambitious project, which was to bring Caryl Churchill’s feminist masterpiece Top Girls to north London. The school didn’t have a theatre space, so we made do with a gym.
At least it meant that giving stage directions was easy:
ME: Shanice! Move there for your monologue. Yes, there, in the penalty box.
SALLY: Jazmine! Can you do your birthing scene by the pommel horse? Great. Thank you.
None of the kids had ever acted before, which was fine since we’d never directed before. What I loved about the students was their refreshing uninterest in playing ball – although, ironically, had they wanted to play ball we would have had the perfect space for them.
ME: Guys, you need to learn your lines.
SHANICE: Why, Miss?
ME: (wisely) Because that is acting. You read the lines, you learn the lines, you say the lines. Acting.
SHANICE: That’s a waste of energy.
ME: How come?
SHANICE: You can just read them from the book. Saves time. Don’t need to learn them.
ME: How many people do you know who go around reading things out loud from a book? We’re trying to be real here.
SHANICE: (pause) Miss, I feel sorry for you. This play is about a dinner party with a Japanese slag and a woman who lives in Hell. That ain’t real. You don’t make sense.
The performance (and, thankfully, there was only one) culminated in me walking backstage (a curtain hung just to the left of the crash mats) to find the kid playing Pope Joan smoking a six-paper spliff. The resinous fug was moving perilously close to the headmistress’s nostrils, but by this point I was beyond caring. Rather than waste breath bollocking her, I simply joined in. It remains, to this day, my only blunt-share with a member of the papacy.
It was with this, rather limited, experience in education that I walked into Dam’s schoolroom in Vietnam, woefully unprepared to teach a class in English.
KIDS: XIN CHAO!
They welcomed me in. The kids here greet elders with their arms crossed, palms resting on the opposite elbow. Think Cossack dancing. It’s their sign of respect, of deference to those with more wrinkles and life experience. It’s bloody wonderful to behold. I used to greet my teachers with a nicotine-stained grin and a middle finger. Different worlds.
‘XIN CHAO!’ I hollered back breezily. I really must learn some more Vietnamese.
Imagine sitting in class, minding your own business, when a jolly, slightly tubby lady comes bowling in. She screams HELLO at you, in an awkward inflection, then spends the next half an hour babbling in a language you’re entirely unfamiliar with.
That, of course, is the key to being a successful foreign-language teacher. Knowing both languages, rather than just the one the kids are struggling to learn.
So there I am, on a raised dais, by a whiteboard, teachers and pupils looking on expectantly, the camera rolling and trained on my sweaty face.
Come on. You need to think of something. Now!
I had to think quickly. Grammar? Didn’t know any. Vocabulary? Limited to swearwords and adjectives about baked goods and dogs.
I know, I thought. A song! Yes! Brilliant! You can’t go wrong with a song. Unless, of course, you’re Honey G – in which case you can’t go right with it.
I’d need something educational, something that would be both fun and instrumental in expanding their Anglo-Saxon lexicon. My mind flashed with possibilities, each of which was discarded in a moment.
‘My Heart Will Go On’. The theme from Titanic as sung by Céline Dion. Mmm. Limited vocabulary, plus it raises unrealistic expectations about immortality. There are no situations in which your heart w
ill go on (see drowning).
‘Kung Fu Fighting’. Possible undercurrents of racism, or at least racial ignorance as kung fu was not developed in Vietnam, but, reportedly, in the semi-mythical Xia Dynasty around 2000 BC.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ Yes, of course they do: they’re an emergent global powerhouse with 10 per cent of their population identifying as Christian. Stop patronizing them.
‘I Kissed A Girl’ – STOP IT, SUE. THEY’RE JUST KIDS.
I decided it would be much safer picking a nursery rhyme.
Out of nowhere, my brain conjured the classic ditty ‘Heads and Shoulders’. Perfect! It’s a cross between a workout and an anatomy lesson. Easy to remember, plus they’ll learn the English for all the body parts they’ll ever want to know and more.
I was ready to face my class.
‘XIN CHAO!’ I bellowed again, aware that the lengthy period of time taken wrestling with my internal monologue might have, indeed, lost the room.
ME: OK, kids, let’s sing a song!
Silence. I carried on, undeterred, pointing to the relevant bits of me while shouting:
ME: Right, here we go! Head!
I gestured frantically towards my bonce. They joined in, pointing along with me.
KIDS: Hezz!
ME: That’s right! Shoulders!
KIDS: Shoo-ders!
ME: Knees!
The kids bent down to touch their kneecaps.
KIDS: Neez!
ME: Toes!
And down they went to touch their toes.
KIDS: Tuzz!
ME: Great!
I went through the entire song, getting more confident and more animated as I went along. This is great, I thought. We’re really connecting. This is a fabulous lesson.
I carried on, through eyes and ears and mouth and nose, before enjoying once more the sight of the kids bending, like obedient hairpins, for the knees and toes section.
I was about to start on ‘feet and tummies, arms and chins’ when I noticed Steve and Vicky in the corner, shaking their heads. If I didn’t know better, I would have suspected they were about to make an intervention. No, I thought. I must be mistaken. They can’t want to stop this because we are all having SO MUCH FUN. I started again.
ME: Heads!
KIDS: HEZZ!
I looked over again. Steve and Vicky were now looking positively concerned. Olly and Matt appeared to be giggling. It was all extremely distracting. How dare you? I thought. How dare you interrupt this incredible moment I am sharing with these children? They are LEARNING here. I am teaching them valuable words – words which they will be able to use to describe their extremities should they be called upon to do so when visiting the UK.
I carried on regardless:
ME: Shoulders!
KIDS: SHOO-DERS!
ME: Knees!
KIDS: NEEZ!
Steve starts motioning towards Matt to move the camera away. What is going on? I refuse to back down.
ME: Toes!
KIDS: TUZZ.
The infants jackknife once more.
And that’s when I notice it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the teacher heading towards a tiny little boy at the back of class. I watch as he sings along: ‘Hezz, shoo-ders, neez and …’
And every time he bends down to touch his toes, he smacks his forehead – BAM – on the lip of the desk. Every single time. But because this is Vietnam, he says nothing. He does nothing. He does not cry out in pain every time his little forehead slams against the hard wood. He endures. This stoic, beautiful kid, who will for ever remember the time the white lady came and gave him a headache. If indeed the concussion will allow him to remember anything at all.
We mourn the loss of respect in our country, we look upon this unquestioning obedience as the model that our children should aspire to. But honestly, kids – take it from me – sometimes you do just know better.
As we drove away, I saw a roadside shack with a makeshift sign proclaiming that ‘4G was coming’. Those kids were on the cusp of change. 4G was indeed coming. Roaming. High-speed internet. Social media, Instagram, SnapChat, and all those shiny lozenge-shaped apps lined up on their phone inviting the scrutiny, the peer pressure, the keeping up with the Nguyens. In a click they would be able to see the panorama of piss-awful humanity, everything, good and bad, all at once. Pandora’s box open for ever. The information formerly wrought through trust and time – where you live, who you live with, your family, where you work, what kind of breakfast you like – now accessible in a click.
And even though one of those kids left the class with the worst headache of their lives, it felt good to do something silly, and simple, before the full horror of the world hit their inboxes.
As I got back on the river, heading towards the Cambodian border, I started to feel ill – truly, madly, deeply ill. My bones ached, and I felt hot and restless. I started to worry that the paraben-free Shamanic Bug Deterrent might have been a waste of six months’ wages. As it turned out, nothing could have saved me from the one thing I hadn’t banked on: aedes aegypti, the daytime-biting mosquito, the Lorraine Kelly of mosquitoes. I don’t know exactly when I got nipped, but it was the start of a rather interesting month-long descent into the realms of the unwell.
The border crossing was on the river, a floating passport control policed by some rather intensely costumed men. The job seemed simple; a check of your papers, a cursory discussion about travel plans and a ‘thank you very much’. Yet they were all dressed like Prince Philip at a ceremonial banquet.
It’s by design, of course.
Bureaucracy is the same the world over. It smells the same, it looks the same, it makes time drag the same. But they don’t want you to think that this is just another humdrum routine affair. They don’t want you to feel safe in the knowledge that this is merely procedural. They want to make their paperwork special, threatening, even, with the addition of medals and epaulettes and shiny boots.
There is a tense moment as a heavily decorated man in an enormous hat looks at my documentation. For a second, I wonder if I’m in trouble. And then, with the flourish of an ink pen, and a lingering stare towards my jugs, I am officially admitted to the Kingdom of Cambodia.
CAMBODIA
* * *
7. Kampong Phluk
As we rowed in, along the mangrove forests on the margins of Tonle Sap, I felt a hundred eyes trained on our crew. Yes, folks, it’s us, another boatload of tourists on a float-by gawp, come to take pictures of subsistence living with our expensive cameras.
We entered a narrow thoroughfare, akin to an underwater high street, with a jumble of houses either side, all on six-metre-high stilts to accommodate the ebb and flow of water. The roofs were frayed and patched with plastic sheeting, the houses themselves Heath Robinson-esqe piles of reclaimed wood. Wonky masts held loops of electrical cable above the water. Just.
The surface of the river was littered with foliage. At first glance it looked like river-weed – but it transpired that the greenery was the tops of trees in this submerged forest.
Cheeky kids with red eyes and swollen bellies bounced on jetties made from chicken wire. In the pens beneath, a bask of young crocodiles thrashed and rolled. They are farmed here for their meat and their skins. The children laughed at us and back-flipped into the water, seemingly unconcerned they were mere centimetres away from the snapping jaws. Teenagers emerged from the houses wearing faded football shirts and dead snakes round their necks, like scarves.
To my right, there was a monastery perched on a tiny island; to the left, my attention was caught by a group of rowdy women bashing tiny fish from their husbands’ nets using what looked like tennis rackets.
We got to the end of the village and the boat butted a house, a bright concrete monstrosity towering above the water. We climbed the stairs and entered what would be our home for the next few days. There were three rooms: the main room, where the boys would sleep, a back room with a toilet plumbed in just for us, an
d a side room, where I got to kip. There were luminous pink mattresses littering the floor. Black mould sat on the wall, like a shadow, and liquorice-loops of electric cabling hung from the ceiling. All day and all night, we were accompanied by the incessant flashing of camera battery packs recharging.
‘What do you want to do?’ said Steve. ‘Where do you fancy going?’
I didn’t hesitate. My curiosity had been piqued. ‘I want to talk to the tennis ladies,’ I said.
Now might be a good time to discuss one of the great perils of filming abroad: the translation. There are two problems that tend to occur.
First, the varying speed of the translation, and what you do while waiting for it.
Second, the quality of the translation itself and the sensitivity of the translator in question.
Waiting for a translation is the curse of the travel documentary. You ask a question, and the interviewee answers it. While they are answering it, you nod – because that is the televisual law. The shots are even referred to in the trade as ‘noddies’. There’s a problem, however. Noddies capture you looking like a toy dog in the back of the car, head moving up and down – which can sometimes feel gloriously out of step with whatever your interviewee is saying. Let me give an example.
ME: What’s it like living here?
The contributor starts talking in an animated, passionate way. I smile, nod – even laugh a little. Then the translation comes back.
TRANSLATOR: She is saying she hates it here. Life is unbearable. This existence is a vale of tears and I cannot wait for it to end.
