The Jaded Empress Chronicles

B eing back in Ho Chi Minh City (AKA Saigon), may not be quite the right place for a post-menopausal Empress. Are those hot flushes (read: Chernobyl-like, nuclear thermal melt downs) and night sweats am enduring, or simply Southeast Asian dengue fever? Not sure which is worse. Menopausal women are similar to global warming – we are experiencing rising temperatures. Thankfully, here in the tropics, we don’t have to contend with northern hemisphere-induced duvets or central heating. But in Ho Chi Minh City, we do have to contend with year-round temperatures hotter than a Korean barbecue. Although up north in Hanoi, it's seasonal weather, with temperatures decidely chilly in the winter months, but counter-acting with off-the-charts humidity in the summer months. How those colonial-era ladies managed, I cannot imagine. Short of strapping an air-conditioning unit to your person, or opening the ‘fridge door for a rush of icy air, how does one cope? Never mind all the Gucci ...

  Actually, there isn’t one…... literally.... I come from a land far, far away, where, when you enter your home (or palace), you insert one key in a Yale lock, open the front door, et voila! simple - you’re in. During the times I’ve resided in Vietnam, maybe it’s the houses I pick, but the relatively simple procedure of getting into, or for that matter, getting out of my own home, has amounted to a ridiculously complicated affair – almost Mission Impossible status. Sometimes even my hotel. When I first arrived to live in Hanoi (early noughties), I temporarily stayed in a small tourist hotel. I was, however, public enemy #1 for the young reception-cum security guard, whose overnight shift involved sleeping on a camp bed in the drafty lobby. Most nights, he had to drag himself out of a deep slumber to open the hotel doors to let me in from a night of revelry, usually at some godforsaken hour. After which (much to the relief of the security guard) I move...