&Which is more—we’ve been Hôi An, Mỹ Sơn

If you can keep your head when all about you,

Tour agents, selling trips, sound the same,

To Mỹ Sơn ruins, Champa temples, 4th to 14th century,

And for which you're mispronouncing the name,

If you can bear to hear the way you’ve spoken,

And be told it's 'Mee-Soon', oh, the ridicules,

Then book, with boat back, and trust,

It be not some twisted tourist-trap for fools,

But on coach, prepare, collect from ten or fifteen other hotels, others,

And watch for things not included in quotes,

Like the entrance fee, for example...

And stoop and pay ’em up with worn-out, utterly pointless, 500 Dong notes.

/

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, be smart,

Mark, remember, those standing in frame of your shots,

Are a tour-group, of which you're now part,

If you can trust your tour-guide when all men doubt him,

Because he's wearing a wild purple suit, a weird green helmet and shouting in a crazy screechy twang,

Like if like they cast, as The Joker, Ken Jeong,

That guy in the car boot in The Hangover,

Also Community's Chang.

/

But make allowances for doubting too,

Like whether he was actually a qualified archaeological preservation specialist, as he suggested, 

And if you pretend every omitted fact is a mystery,

It will certainly keep people interested,

If you wish to tour-guide, for anywhere, heed words,

Respond to each question with 'nobody knows'

Saves time on researching, learning, doing any training for your job at all essentially,

But do wear more sensible clothes,

/

If you can make one heap of all your boiled rice and vegetables,

And risk having flavour on one shake of a sauce,

And not lose your appetite, and start eating at the beginning

And never breathe a word about how piss-poor an effort it is for an included lunch course;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to accept food served from a bucket,

To serve you seconds long after firsts are gone,   

And then hold on when you climb on top of the boat,

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Eh, it's not going that fast, fuck it!’

/

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

When the bus pick-up doesn't arrive when they told us.

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Like when you said we'd be picked up at 5pm and had to wait till 5:45,

It was only a few hundred yards to the sleeper bus,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

Except for sleeper buses, which demand and deserve your hate.

They get a low TripAdvisor rating,

/

If you can dream—somehow without actually sleeping—and not make dreams your master;   

If you can think (for instance I think they should re-name them the Lie-Uncomfortably-All-Night bus) and not make thoughts your aim;   

And treat sleep impostors, like the lights and horns and bumps and cramped sleeping bunk...

...the persistent stops for no reason and the crappy films playing in the background and the general bodily noises of strangers around you, just the same;   

If you can fill an unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of actual kip,

You'll have done a darn sight better than I did,

At giving insomnia the slip,

/

And now, to conclude, this passage,

In entirety, it's form, all for a pun,

So, then, ours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

And—which is more—we’ve been Hôi An, Mỹ Sơn!Read more