Introduction to Vietnam

August 21

Whew, Vietnam!  You thrill me!  Everywhere I go I have to maintain my animal alertness, a watchful eye for funny quirks and motorbikes on the sidewalks, dodging the smells that make me sick and the people sitting on those funny baby plastic chairs a few inches off the ground.  Dien Bien Phu sucked (I know it’s harsh, but really, it was bleak when I was there).  I would have been normally happy to find only pho stalls to eat at, but the smell worsened my already plan-changing stomach cramps (thank you, bad chicken in my spicy soup the day before) and I had to bargain down for a bowl of plain, steamed rice.  I don’t know how they eat rice every day, and love it!  I can’t figure out the equivalent that we have, not cereal, not bread, something simpler, like carbohydrates or water.  They love it, they can’t live without it, they ask me twice about it when I refuse to eat it with my curry.  “I’ll eat it like a soup, thank you”.  

Dien Bien Phu…noisy with dogs and car horns that don’t beep but rather undulate in a rhythm that makes me wonder if the car is broken.  In Hanoi, I thought, I will try and eat comfort food to recover.  I should probably go to the hospital, or take my Cipro, because every time I turn, my belly seems to remind me that there is a plant, or a seed, or a tree, or something non-human growing inside of it.  At least that’s what it feels like.

I thought I should suffer through the 12 hour bus ride (during the day so as to be more alert and not waste a sleepless night and risk getting sicker) to Hanoi as soon as possible so I could fully rest there amongst things I thought I would need, like water and breakfast (things that were hard to find in Dien Bien Phu).  Yes, a bus with air conditioning, or at least the vents for it!  I got a window seat; it was the type of bus, like a tourist bus, with two seats on one side and one seat on the other.  I wanted to sleep so I took the one seat to myself.  It didn’t recline.  The gap between the window and seat was too big for me to rest my head there.  It was fine; I can sleep in an upright position.  Before I knew it, luggage was being pushed into the bus to fit into any leftover space that human flesh did not occupy, meaning I had no legroom (I am bigger than the average Vietnamese person so I especially had no leg room).  The aisles had a pull out seat and within the first hour the bus (which also served as a local bus, post office, and party bus) was sitting five or six people across the aisle, with people climbing over other people, bags, and in and out of windows to get on and off.  My stomach was not up for this, but there was no bathroom on this bus and we only stopped three times during this ordeal. 

Ok, I have to admit, it wasn’t that much of an ordeal, minus the constant musical honking (honking because we’re turning, because someone is in front of us, because someone is to the side of us, because there is something on the side of the road, because it’s raining, because we’re braking, because there’s a turn in the road and we need to see if people are coming our way, honking for the sheer delight of it, to say hi to people, to tell them we’re full, to tell them to get on, etc etc) and the blaring Vietnamese music and videos (party bus), the people yelling into their cell phones, and the general discomfort of a bus at almost 200% capacity.  BUT, the scenery was stunning.  Water buffalo walking up the hills, being herded by kids with sticks…water buffalo actually chilling in the water, children and women walking with harvested corn in baskets on their backs and heads, bright green rice paddies, beautiful mountains and hills that we precariously climbed, picking up packages for people to be dropped off hours later at precisely the right pick-up spot (how did the driver know exactly the intersection in the town to go to?), people in traditional clothing, people in modern clothing, unpaved roads and shaky bridges -as long as my Vietnamese bus-riding pros did not make a worried face about the safety of our little town on wheels I knew we were ok.  Cars overturned in ditches…pouring rain that turned into minor flooding…people not wanting to sit next to me and not feeling comfortable enough until I offered them some food and then they fell asleep on me…all  part of this fabulous, sleep-less, rotating, moving sub-communal bus-ride. 

Did I mention the three stops?  Yes, the three stops.  For starters, the men here have a tendency to smoke something out of these huge bongs.  In trying to figure it out, a guy who was on a previous bus with me surmised that it was ground up bamboo, but then on further study I noticed that the bong was made of bamboo and that there could have easily been some miscommunication.  Opium is huge here.  At each stop, the men would sit in a circle, cigarettes in one hand, passing around this huge bong while eating fruit and drinking tea.  The women just ate and drank.  Yes, even the driver partook in this smoking circle.  I was nervous!  But they weren’t.  My local transportation fear-gauge seemed to be managing just fine.  When South East Asians get freaked out in a bus or car or train or elephant, it’s time to get the hell out.  

During lunch, the second stop,  the bus mate/money handler/hustler/driver-in-training tried to get me to eat, but once I motioned that my stomach hurt (absolutely NO English spoken on the bus whatsoever, not even hello or thank you.  People would speak to me in Vietnamese and expect them to speak back to them, making me think that they think its hilariously outrageous when tourists come up to them and speak a string of English words and then expect an answer), he settled on buying me a “Rhino-S” energy drink and offering me a cigarette, clearly the cure-all for immense stomach pain.  I took the drink, declined the cigarette, and only sipped it when he was watching me, not sure when the next bathroom stop was.  It was five hours later. 

Sure enough, bus mate invited me to the Men’s Circle.  The bong circle.  I was terrified.  I didn’t want to smoke, for a lot of reasons.  Plain and simple, I would never, ever do drugs and risk being thrown in jail in a place like Vietnam.   Secondly, I had no idea what was in that massive bong.  Thirdly, being invited to the Men’s Circle was odd.  Fourthly, if it was opium, this bus ride was already hellish enough without any external substances.  If they were smoking herbal sleeping pills or Pepto, that would have been a different story!  But I couldn’t decline at least sitting down in Men’s Circle and “joining the conversation”.  I drank some tea, which automatically made my whole mouth feel like the Mojave Desert, forced down a few more shots of it because all the Men were looking, and ate some strange green apricot fruit.  The bong was safely in the hands of the driver.  Safely?  The mate was engaging all of us in the most serious of serious conversations, eyes bulging, arms flailing about, voice showing even more emotion than the run of the mill Vietnamese, which already sounds really emotional.  He was really pulling me into his heated argument, or story, or philosophical debate, or opium-induced rant.   It went a little like this:

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!”  Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “Yeah, man, that sounds gnarly”.  I make my eyes wide and nod my head.  Men’s Group follows.

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!” Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “I have no idea what you’re saying, but it sounds super serious.  But then again, I don’t speak one word of Vietnamese.”  More eye-bulging and agreement from the Men.

This went on for a few more minutes until he decided he was finished and we all got up and got back inside our packed bus.  My introduction to the mystifyingly beautiful Northern Vietnamese male culture was interesting and a little scary.  I laughed to myself, grateful that through all of this, through hectic bus rides and women sleeping on me, through water-buffalo traffic and small fights breaking out in the bus, I could still maintain a sense of humor.