I'd escaped from the press of Saigon and my ever present girlfriend, Thi, for a week and indulged in a tranquil idyll, on the resort peninsula of Vung Tau. Vung Tau was where the American puppet government of South Vietnam sent its political prisoners to be incarcerated and tortured. Later, the Americans too would continue this trend, once started by the old French colonialists.

It's quite an odd place, there are stacks of gaudy hotels as well as beautifully drawn structures that loom out over the wide coast road, looking onto the South China sea. Every day the onshore breezes provide a cool breath against the searing, dense heat.

I got into the habit of walking the mile or so from my apartment and then having lunch at Tom's bar, which was actually run by a man named Paul. There I'd eat some fresh crab or lobster, prawns or sea bass and always - for I was on a retreat - washed down with a bottle of Kelly's Promise chardonnay, chilled in a bucket of ice. Okay the wine was dreadful and expensive but it was the best I could find at the price.

The hawkers gathered like flies around the few ex-pats that were gathered there, oil-men mostly and their families, for the entire econonmy of Vung Tau is dependent on oil and gas exploration. There are hoardes of Scots, normally refugees from the Aberdeen oil fields, burly Russians and Americans and Canadians glowering at each other with the barest civility.

I hadn't come to Vung Tau to be sociable, and was instead quite comfortable minding my own business and had no trouble avoiding the hawkers wheedling whines to 'come buy, come buy!' I'd developed a technique that's remarkably effective if somewhat rude. I simply ignore the buggers. The reason it works is that without eye contact they cannot be sure if you've even heard them, you might be deaf or not speak English possibly. They usually give up after a minute and push off. Show the slightest interest or engage for one second in any form of human contact - a smile or a wave of the hand and you can write the next half-hour off.

The astonishing thing is that these hawkers arrive by moto, just one at first, and even though there's only one potential customer, alongside a Welsh man that to all intents and purposes appears to be deaf, when other hawkers spot the lone hawker engaged in dialogue (usually 'you buy, you buy, cheap price cheap price' - 'no, I no want, no I no want, no, I no want (repeat as nauseum) they swoop. The thing is that they're all selling the same dreadful stuff. They wait patiently until the first hawker reluctantly gives up and then press forward, the first hawker hanging back just in case. And the weary dialogue continues, along with the pointless charade until finally the lone customer resorts to the only possible strategy available. He starts to ignore them. After five minutes or so of waving T-shirts and photo-copied books in his face they all give up and go away.

Naturally, I am smug.

Some lose their patience, for the hawkers can be doubly annoying when you're trying to have a conversation while a T-shirt is being jiggled and flapped in front of your face, the hawker seeming to think nothing at all of repeating their litany of 'You buy, you buy, cheap price' while the two sufferers are trying to debate the finer points of the offside law in whatever sport they play in Latvia. One Australian barked, 'Do you understand the word no?', 'Yes.' the hawker replied, 'No', said the Australian with undue optimisim, then a pause, then 'You buy, cheap price'. And so on.

Moto drivers are also painful here. It's bad enough in Saigon where the sour smelling drivers tout for your business every five steps, 'Moto, sir? Sir where you go?' again, ignoring them seems to be bad form, so depending on my mood I play with them a little and say things like 'Fish banana' when they ask me 'where you go?', they get the idea and most of then laugh. This doesn't work in Vung Tau where they follow you for the complete length of your journey with their pestering whines.

One such moto driver followed a fellow Welsh friend of mine, out for a constitutional, for a mile. He stopped to buy some cigarettes from a street vendor, the driver without invitation intervened and started haggling on my friend's behalf with the vendor. Fed up, my friend went into a nearby shop and bought a packet there instead, which was more expensive than that he could buy from the street vendor but worth every penny to avoid the hassle. He had the satisfaction of also losing the moto driver, who was now engaged in a furious shouting match with the street vendor who had, of course, lost a sale.

Sometimes if I'm being playful I'll stop when the moto driver asks me where I want to go and speak Welsh to him. Usually I just say,

'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'

Which is actually the name of a small village in North Wales. After a few seconds of disbelief he repeats, this time with diminished confidence, 'where you go?'. With a manic grin I lean forward intently and after a slower, louder repetition of

'Llanfair-pwll-gwyn-gyll-gogerych-wyrndrobw-llllantysilio-go-go-goch?'

he usually panics and speeds off.

Speaking Welsh at hawkers, when I'm not ignoring them, is also remarkably effective, they soon realise that there's not one inch that they can stick a toe in and give up bemused and befuddled.

Back at Tom's bar, owned by Paul, I've noticed a small fly has sunk to the bottome of my ice bucket. It appears quite, quite dead. I don't know why this attracted my attention, I have no particular affinity for the wretched things. On impulse, I dipped my finger in and brought it onto the table cloth. It was in a classic 'dead fly' pose, on its back and with its tiny legs crossed. I supposed it had drowned, iced water flooding its tracheaee and drowning it. I wondered briefly what a fly felt while drowning, it was one of those mad moments of whimsy where the mind wanders down winding avenues of pointless pondering. I left the wretch there, with the oddest of ideas that perhaps, just perhaps,the sun might dry it out and it may return to whatever life it possessed.

I returned to my book, not a hawker in sight, and cast my eyes across the gentle lappings of the South China sea, in the distance nothing but the silhouettes of giant ships to-ing and fro-ing from somewhere to somwhere else. Whole hours could be lost in this captive theatre, where the lip of sea meeting the vast dome of the sky providing the stage across which boats both big and small would gently and silently drift by.

I remembered my fly, for now I felt an attachment to the thing, a responsibilty. Nothing. As dead as a dead thing could be I suppose. Well, it was a daft whimsy, I shrugged but felt a vague disapointment that I hadn't somehow saved that little life. I returned to my book.

A little later something caught my eye. To my astonishment the little fellow had righted itself and was groggily trying to flap its wings. My heat leapt, how could this be? On this balmy afternoon, I had saved a wretched things life - for some reason I felt proud and faintly ridiculous. Thankfully, nobody was watching my madness, or my silly grin of joy at this unfolding miracle before my gaze. Ships must have come and gone, the sun slipped several degrees down the sky toward dusk, but here, my brave little fly was struggling to live and that was all my considered eye was concerned with.

It gave a pathetic flap of its wings, and jumped about an inch, its wings perhaps were still wet, or perhaps borken or crushed and useless. Was it in pain? Do flies feel pain? I was beginning to fear that I had interfered with nature, and that this damned fly was in agony - should I, that had helped it live, now take away its life? My existential agonies continued unabated as I watched the fly hop once more. Then suddenly - whoosh! It flew, rather than jumped, off the table and onto the floor below. It lived! It could fly! I had saved my little fly, I, I, I! The fly and I stood still, waiting breathless for the next moment of the universe.

A small lizard darted out beneath a bush and with a slick grace swallowed my fly in one snatching gulp.

Sighing, I returned to my book, sometimes life's like that.

yechydda,