I am in the Rex Hotel in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. It is a very fine establishment, slightly reminiscent of the Colonial Era (not that I was there) with more staff than rooms to cater to every whim of the un-assorted patrons. A great hotel with history and a pleasure to stay at!
I was sitting in the lobby cafe after a hard mornings work. I ordered a beer from a very nicely dressed yet extremely thin lady who poured the whole Heineken into my glass is one fell swoop. Luckily she turned away before the beer frothed over onto the table as I was in no mood for profuse apologies from twenty upset waitresses and forty hands mopping me dry.
Anyway, a very pretty lady was serenading the atmosphere with some chirpy piano playing. She played very well indeed but to little applause, apart from some passing tourists who had perhaps had imbibed a few too many drinks or were from America. I was eating a rare Ceaser Salad and an enormous plate of McDonalds look-a-like French Fries - just what the Doctor ordered - and passed the time in companionable (with the piano player) contemplation of life.
It seems that the Rex hotel has recently undergone a series of renovations and the lobby was the last to be finished with only the little things to be pieced together again. The large Santa’s had been moved outward and all that remained was for the fancy dividing bamboo railings to be placed between the lobby and the cafe and for some tables to be straightened out and into some sort of invisible regimental order. The waiter attacked the table first. He creaked and scratched the table in a somewhat embarrassed scraping shuffle about two inches away from the piano. The sound must have grated on the piano player who missed the beat temporarily but she quickly recovered her poise and continued onwards - a superb recovery!
Finally after much nerve-jangling, the table was in a satisfactory position and the waiter air-brushed an invisible speck of dust away before disappearing from sight.
I was debating whether to have some chilli sauce with the chips whilst appreciating the fact that the strong flavour might deteriorate away from the more delicate and subtle flavour of the roma lettuce when a waitress came along and clucked (I'm sure I heard this annoyance over the once again perfect piano music) and proceeded to shuffle the table two inches across the marble floor and back towards the piano. This movement once again created a cacophony of screeching and cat-like wailing that had the piano player playing faster than she had ever played in her life. Her delicate fingers were tripping over themselves in some sort of effort to compete – a live musical production of the Beauty and the Beast!Silence at last returned. I eventually calmed my nerves down enough to be able to muse over the fact that endeavours that are done surreptitiously (in an effort to be unnoticeably quiet) are usually far worse than those done quickly! One quick and rapid table shuffle would probably have gone unnoticed - five minutes of achingly-loud, dry heavy wood scraping against solid and unforgiving marble grated heavily on the nerves. But they thought they were doing a good job, one that nobody was aware of so "let them be".
As I was supping on a second beer with thoughts to retire for an afternoon nap (brought about my previous hard work that morning) a waitress and a waiter (not the same ones) snuck out from behind a pillar and proceeded to completely re-arrange the table by splitting it up into two pieces and turning them to a 45 degree angle to the piano! This time it was worse than a strangled cat. This was an orgy of strangled cats! The poor piano player looked at me (our first and only contact), I shook my head and she stood up and walked away! I clapped silently for her effort.
Anyway, apart from the stretched-out noise opera I had an enjoyable lunch. The lobby was well decorated and certain effort had been placed on Christmas with white Santa’s at every corner and tastefully adorned Christmas trees to give spirit to the occasion. The hotel is a luxury for any tourist and I would gladly stay there again. The noise was simply something that was unusual, the culprits simply doing their job and doing it well and in the process giving me something to write about.
Funny thing though; as I was checking out of the hotel I passed the lobby cafe and happened to notice that the table had been moved again. I did not have a tape measure handy but it looked as if it had been placed back into the original position - just a little too close to the piano I thought.
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