The stabber of Vinh
We arrived in Vinh; mother, her friend, her children and I. Something was immediately suspicious. Vinh is a shitty city in the middle of Vietnam, it’s small dusty and close to the border with Cambodia. Everyone is poor. We pull up to a large house. A mansion.
At the front of the house was a large bar and restaurant decked out with expensive furniture. The same was true for the hotel next door. A mid sized hotel which was nicely furnished. The problem with it all was, it was deserted. The bar and restaurant was closed, the hotel was closed. It was as if someone with more money than sense thought it would be a good idea one summer to open up a bar and a hotel, only to get bored by the whole thing.
When we got into the house proper, everything was ornate. There were two of those china vases that were 2m high adorning the entrance and lots of shiny swords adorning the walls. I flicked on the 52 inch TV and watched BBC World rather nervously in the living room.
I quizzed my mother as to why we were there. She said it was because her friend had to visit someone. That night I overheard a few people speaking. My mother’s friend couldn’t visit. There were problems with the paper work. The prison wouldn’t allow it at such short notice.
The prison. I confronted mother and she came out with it. Her friend was to meet the stabber of Vinh; The stabber of Vinh?
The story goes like this:
The stabber of Vinh was part of a triad, based in Vinh. In Vietnamese we don’t use the word triad, it translates closer to the “black society”. Anyway, the black society traffics Heroin from Cambodia into Vietnam. With Vinh being situated in the centre of Vietnam, and its transport links to Hanoi and Saigon, it made perfect sense for the trade. So this gentleman imported Heroin. One day, he got into an argument with his “brother,” and stabbed him, hence, the name “The stabber of Vinh”. Fearing prosecution he fled to England.
Once he got to England, under a fake name, he set to work doing what all Vietnamese people without legal status do. He started growing weed. Weed houses.
The authorities have been pretty good at closing down weed houses. They use infrared cameras attached to helicopters and track houses with a lil too much infrared leaking out of them. This was how he was caught. Once in prison, the stabber of Vinh came up with a master plan. Seek asylum. The fool tried to convince the British authorities that he was in fact the stabber of Vinh. He couldn’t be sent back to Vietnam or else he’d be executed.
The British authorities at first didn’t believe him. Why on earth would you admit to being a murderer. The stabber of Vinh was rather persuasive though, proudly producing newspaper clippings of him and the event. He was promptly sent back to Vietnam. The extradition was a big thing. The story goes that 9 police cars flanked the car he was in, fearing the black society would attack. My mother knew him, because she was hired to act as a translator for the extradition.
That’s the aside. So here I was, sitting in the house of the head of the black society. She was a Cambodian woman who spoke perfect Vietnamese. She drove a brand new BMW as her pride and joy, a lovely Lexus was getting some work done. As she drove us around she would stop at green lights and go at red lights. Seriously. She was high on Ice. Ice being the aka of crystal meth in Asia.
The next day I was sitting in the house. Within the next hour I saw about 15 people enter the house. They all entered rooms and vanished from sight. 2 hours later everyone emerged. They all looked a lil spaced out.
We ate grilled Goat’s breast and drank Goat’s breast vodka. That isn’t just a funky name. The lurid drink is white in colour and does indeed contain Goat’s breast.
As we were leaving, the woman gave my mother a black block. She said it was a chinese medicine made out of tigers in Cambodia. Really expensive and very much against the WWF. I was so happy to get back to Saigon.
In Saigon, my mother’s friend introduced me to a pretty girl. She was the daughter of one of those unsavory men we met in Vinh. She had studied the hotel industry in Geneva while her father sold vast sums of heroin. The vacant hotel next door may have been hers. She tipified the sweet girl next door and was pretty. She only wore dresses. I caught her stealing a few glances at me.