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centre’ (HW, 216). The Americans’ bombing of Cambodia would cause the break in the
barrier between the real world and the dream world, and ‘the real war’ (HW, 216), which had
until then been confined to Viet Nam, would invade the ‘land of holiday’, as if Alice’s looking-
glass had been shattered and the ‘Otherworld’ were spilling uncontrollably out.
12.4.3. The Double World
On Saigon’s Tu Do street, the centre of South Vietnam’s bustling capital’s schizophrenic
activity, these scrambled worlds are embodied in diametrically opposed images of the
Vietnamese woman, one highly dignified and the other thoroughly degenerate, who attract the
young men pouring in as the war heats up. The first rides ‘sidesaddle on the backs of motor
scooters as though on magic steeds from Annamese legend, all in their national dress: the
clinging, semitransparent ao dai, with its tunic and matching pantaloons—mauve, green, red,
white’. These are the very image of the alus puppets of the wayang kulit: ‘Straight-backed,
dignified and ethereal, black hair streaming, silk gowns fluttering, they'd passed with eyes
averted, with the modesty of another time, their small, pointed faces delicate and remote.’ The
second, ‘their sisters here in the Happy Bar’, could be kasar puppets in a modern version of the
wayang. They have ‘so much mascara and lipstick that their faces were like those of clowns;
and instead of the ao dai, they wore grotesquely brief miniskirts, low-cut blouses and coloured
camisoles—their small breasts enlarged with padded bras to please the Americans (HW, 103).
One can choose which side of the screen to view reality’s theatre in this wayang-like
construction of the universe, though a Westerner can never be quite sure in which reality he is
treading when he enters Southeast Asia at the end of the last great world age. His first
impression is of the artificiality of his protective cocoon against the threat of an outrageous and
alien world: ‘The hot, elemental excess out there is unreal, watched from this air-conditioned
chamber: an image on a cinema screen’ (HW, 429). One might seem still to be on the side of
the dalang, watching the mechanical works of the shadow theatre, as when Jim Feng notices
how ‘Huge jungle moths circled around the lamp, and their shadows crossed the paper’ (HW,
300); Or one might be seeing through to the other side of the looking-glass, as when Feng,
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