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Date: August 17, 2003
The Vietnam summer has melted the gel capsules of my malaria pills into a lump.
All the tape and glue I have used to jerry-rig my bike and supplies has melted.
The bearings in my pedals have burst. Al, the algae in my water bottles, has died.
As for me, I can't walk another step. My temples throb. My skin is flushed. My
thoughts are like butterflies caught in a monsoon. The sun, even through the clouds,
sparks pin pricks of pain. I have heat rash and heat exhaustion.
I should have read my guidebook before deciding to follow a short cut down
the old road: "Highway 6 is a euphemism at this point as atrocious road surfaces,
switchbacks and steep climbs make it an arduous stretch to say the least -- a
four-wheel drive or robust motorbike are the only feasible vehicles. Buses are
only for masochists." The road has given my Buddhist nature many riddles
to contemplate: If I am riding my bicycle through a river is it still a river
or is it a road? A thousand meters below me, I can see the road winding through
a valley of monumental, conical limestone hills.
I try to lay my bicycle down and lose my grip. The handlebars splash down
into a pile of water buffalo dung. I thump down on a road marker shaped like a
tombstone. It radiates heat like an oven and I roll onto the ground and sprawl
in the dirty grass. The ground is too hot. I sit up and fan myself with my floppy
hat but even this is too much effort. Sweat tickles my skin like flies. Without
a puff of wind to cool me, sweat runs useless onto the ground. I feel like the
sun is wringing me dry. For a few horrifying moments, I fear my heart and brain
will explode with heat stroke just like my mom said would happen if wasn't careful.
If Scott passes out does he hear himself hit the ground?
A woman with a baby in a basket strapped to her shoulders and a young boy stop
to gape. The woman has made a fan out of a plastic bottle and piece of bamboo.
Sweat runs down the boy's legs like he urinated in his pants. The baby looks like
a baked potato.
"Nouc, (water)" I repeat over and over, altering the vowel sounds
and stress until final they shake their heads "no". They point up the
hill.
Fifteen minutes later, the locals still gaping, I stand and push my bicycle
up the hill. Walking feels cool with the slight breeze my motion generates but
my feet are blistered and raw from trying to get traction on my bicycle cleats.
I wish I had my hiking shoes. I bought them in Kathmandu especially for the cold
trek to Mt. Everest. They were stylish and had sentimental value but my knees
objected to carrying the extra two kilos up Vietnam's steep and rough roads. A
week ago, I traded them with the woman who owned the guesthouse/restaurant/gift
shop where I was staying. The funny part is that the woman whittled down the bargain
to one dinner and one beer, then she over-charged me for my room, rounded all
the numbers up to the nearest thousandth and then short-changed me. I calculated
that instead of profiting 40,000 dong, I paid her 5000 dong to take the shoes.
The sad part is that I arrived at her guesthouse after a minor crash, bleeding
and desperate, and rather than extend hospitality and compassion, she saw a guy
too dizzy to monitor his pocketbook. After 200 meters of trudging up the mountain
my body is burning. I stop. The villagers stop. Rest. Push 200 meters. Rest. I
repeat again and again with diminishing results. I'm still twenty kilometers from
my destination and I've been averaging, with breaks, less than four kilometers
per hour. I have no water and only one hour of sunlight. No buses, minivans or
jeeps have passed. For a hefty price a man on a Russian Minsk motorcycle leftover
from the war and wearing a pith helmet agrees to toe me to the mountain pass but
the rubber straps won't hold my weight. I consider turning around and coasting
downhill but I can't recall any streams or camping spots, Vietnam is too overpopulated
and deforested. I would have to go all the way to the bottom and buy supplies
and camp in the schoolyard. But this is impossible because the heat of braking
has been causing my rims to expand out of alignment with my brakes and odometer,
and burn through my tires. Besides, the town is full of jokers. A group of adolescent
men saw me coming and went into their yard and dragged a log into the road to
block my path. They surrounded the log with arms crossed and grins on their faces
hoping to rile me. I simply rode in the squishy grass alongside the road. If riding
around the road is easier than riding on the road, is the road still a road?
Three more pushes up the mountain. The villagers lose interest and disappear.
I see a long house on the hill and a group of small children. I climb the hill
to look for water. The children shriek and hide. After much shouting I attract
the attention of an adult. I go through my pantomiming routine asking for permission
to pitch my tent anywhere. He just giggles. I ask for water. He giggles some more.
Everything I do provokes a giggle. I conclude he must be smoking opium, a staple
crop for the mountain villagers. I help myself to the water and wander back to
the main path. Four stocky women dressed in black clothes with colorful embroidered
banding are leading four horses home burdened with fruits and vegetables. I ask
if I can sleep on the ground next to the trail, the only flat spot I have seen.
The leader refuses to look at me and shakes her head "no", her jowls
flap double-time. Four more women and horses approach. The women don't acknowledge
my greetings and two foals flee back down the mountain.
I continue up the mountain. I find a flat spot where a landslide destroyed
the road. The sun has set and I wait for the skies to darken before pitching my
tent in the bushes. A young man finds me and insists that I that I go home with
him. I decline repeatedly until a military jeep drives past. Not long ago, foreigners
were all required to sleep only in special, over-priced, tourist hotels where
the guests were registered with the police. I am certain camping is still forbidden.
Darkness is imminent and I wonder why they don't offer assistance or arrest me
for loitering. I conclude it is best to stay out of sight and that we will both
benefit from the cultural experience. So, my newfound friend and I push my bike
up an even steeper dirt trail 1.5 kilometers into the mountains. It is dark and
I can see nothing but the silvery trail in the moonlight and stumble over rocks
and roots and into a stream. We arrive in his small village of the H'mong tribe.
There are no candles or fires. The geometric planes of the long house jut from
the squiggly, black jungle. We carry my bicycle over the threshold of his house
and lean it against a wall. The embers of a fire illuminate bulky shapes. I grope
towards the fire after the man. He is informing his wife of my arrival. There
are four women and five children who hide behind the pillars and furniture. I'm
offered a small bench suitable for a kindergarten student. My knees crack when
I lower myself and I remain here for two hours mesmerized by exhaustion and the
fire. The women wear fancy embroidered clothes covering T-shirts of companies
from the dotcom crash. The husband wears pants and no shirt and the children wear
shirts and no pants. They are all covered in a coat of indelible grime. Conversation
is sparse and stale. My efforts cease when I ask the man his name and he doesn't
return the courtesy. He is content to smoke his tobacco bong. The wife says only
one word to me which I interpret as "tea" but my drink is more like
bitter water. The wife and her sisters are content to gossip while their hands,
as if of their own mind, languidly perform chores. The children have large emerald
grasshoppers as toys. The desperate grasshoppers cling to anything and
the boys use them as cranes to move matchboxes across the table. There
are no signs of art, literature or music.
I excuse myself to wash and the husband leads me half a kilometer up the hill
to what I assume will be the communal latrine but it is only a hose. The hose
is siphoning water from a small stream and is attached to rickety bamboo piping
on stilts that branch off to water houses further downhill. He disconnects the
hose and I wash in a field of weeds that make my legs itch. When we return to
the house my bladder is bursting. My body is purging itself of lactic acid and
reestablishing a balance of electrolytes and water. I try to communicate that
I have to urinate. I grab my guts and wince.
"I don't understand," he says.
I grab my groin and jump up and down.
"I don't understand," he says.
I use my thumb as a phallic symbol and twist my hips side to side.
"I don't understand," he says.
I put my water bottle between my legs and squeeze out a stream of water and
look relieved. "Ah."
"I don't understand," he says.
"Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Apostles, man." I try to duck into the
woods. He follows me like a dog. "Stay." Three more times I try to
ditch him. Finally, I just turn my back and pee.
He is still laughing at me when we return to the hut and soon all the
women are too. I will have to endure this story three more times until
I leave.
It takes two hours to cook dinner: a pot of sticky rice and a pot of spinach
with salt. By now, the grasshoppers have lost all their legs and have been thrown
into the fire, and I have expended more energy filtering water on the dirt floor,
spilling everything in the darkness and coating myself in a layer of indelible
mud. My host and I dine first followed by the women and children. During the lull
when the kid's mouths are stuffed, I curl up in my designated spot on a wooden
frame built into the house. There is no mattress or pillow just a moldy, dusty
blanket. I pretend to sleep. The others bumble about until eleven o'clock and
then it takes the kids a half-hour to cry themselves to sleep. I awake in the
middle of a rain storm and pee outside between the planks of the wall. My host
never did show me the bathroom.
Everyone awakes at four in the morning and begins their chores: The husband
husks longan fruit, two women mill corn with a machine that looks like a museum
piece from Old World Wisconsin, one woman is boiling corn mush in two big cauldrons
and the last is mincing a huge pile of a green plant onto the dirt floor. I'm
itching to leave but they invited me to breakfast. I content myself to sit on
the stoop and watch the sunrise. When they all grow bored of their chores it takes
another two hours to cook breakfast: a pot of corn meal and a pot of noodles with
salt.
Finally, breakfast ends and I am free to leave. I give the kids some candy
that I really need for the trek up the mountain, take photos, thank each person
with a prayer and a bow and begin to push my bike out the door. I have squirreled
away a small gift for the husband hoping he will buy his kids some pants to cover
their revolting ding-a-lings. But before I can push my bike out the door he stops
me and writes a number on the wall with some charcoal. My bill for room and board
comes to 100,000 dong, a week's wages to the average worker or a night in a nice
hotel with air conditioning, hot water, satellite television, internet and breakfast.
Never has anyone charged me for an invitation, an act of hospitality. I feel demoralized
and robbed of my generosity.
* * *
A note to my critics: I am not being pessimistic; these experiences have been
typical of Vietnam and bear mentioning.
Vietnam is a cruel country. With many men riding war-ear Russian Minsk motorcycles
and wearing cheap, durable army fatigues and pith helmets and challenging anything
that moves, it is easy to form the impression that the Vietnamese are mobilized
to repel another invasion, this time tourism. However, the West is digging
in deep this time, poised to win the day McDonald's sells its first Happy Meal.
It also bears mentioning that many people love Vietnam. (None of them that
I have asked have been to Thailand.) I think the obvious difference is that these
people are not bicyclists. They do not see everyday life. They are not vulnerable.
They take the bus from one tourist trap to the next paying 5-10 times the local
rate. I have seen some of these sights and feel they are about as representative
of Vietnam's people and culture as a zoo full of chimpanzees that paint watercolors
for bananas is representative of the jungle.
I don't regret coming. Vietnam has taught me many valuable lessons that someday
I hope to include in a book.
"Explorer Vietnam." Fiona Dunlop. AA Publishing. 2001
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