Sleep of one, half-dozing of the other.
The human roosters started hammering around 7am, and there was no going back. This is a boom town, and there are hostels and hotels going up all over the place. A lot of construction. It's like Seattle!
I had slept well, however, and I had a good shower and headed down for breakfast. One of the three Austrailian ladies was missing. The other two said, "Shiela's piked it!" If I've heard that expression before, I don't remember it. It really made me laugh, delivered in that cheerful way.
At breakfast, Kim asked me how old I was. I told him 43. He said he was 38 and that since I was older "In my country, you are big and I am small." He implied he had to defer to my requests, carry my bags, etc. Then he said, "But you pay beer."
He asked me what I did for a living. I didn't tell him I'd been laid off and in a sort of severance limbo. Too complicated. I just said I was a writer for Amazon's travel site. He made a confused face and typed on his phone for a few moments. Then he turned the screen to me.
There were a bunch of Korean characters and underneath was the English word: envious.
I was in a good mood and it was enhanced when Nye came in all dolled up in her native garb for the day's trip to her home village.
The Indianans were also spritely, despite a long evening ramble with the natives. I never got the full story there. We triggered their buddies when we walked outside. Hello, buy something? You have wifesister home like purse?
We got safely inside the minivan. As the last person was climbing in, I thought, "They are coming! Get to the chopper!"
Easy little ride to a Hmong village. It was just too too remote, darling.
Great valley view and our cameras went to our faces, and.... disaster. I had left my SD card at the hotel. Camera no work without. I got such a jolt. What a fuckup. I thought about invoking my age privilege and forcing Kim to give me his.
The Indianans totally had three extra, though, so they saved my worthless ass. I will cheer for Purdue the next chance I get.
More ducklings, of course. They knoweth where the minibuth doth stop. They marched with us for hours, priming and prepping us for the Big Sale. The older ones used the Power of Pity, the younger, the Sympathy of Speech. If they hadn't yet had menopause, they were pregnant.
Nye too. I hadn't noticed, but the Aussies did and remarked on it. They have a sense for such things, coming as they do from such a fertile land. Remarkable to watch these ladies with heavy baskets on their backs and babies in their bellies sure-footedly picking their way through these trails and over rocks in sandaled feet .
While we stumbled in our boots and sneakers.
I was at last targeted by May. As we trekked into the hilly forest, she wove grasses with her hands (most of them did) and asked me questions about my life. The answers to which could have no meaning.
The day was clear and bright, and the surroundings were like nothing I've seen. Full and green and jagged and strange. Agricultural mastery of the savage wilderness.
After about thirty minutes of hiking, small talk, and farm animals, we got to another little hilltop where Nye stripped a bunch of sugarcane for us. She asked who wanted to try it. Weirdly, I was the only one who raised his hand.
So I asked how to do it. And she handed me a segment.
You just bite it and suck the juice and spit out the resulting pulp. It was fuuuucking delicious. Cool and refreshing and not-too-sweet. It was also satisfying to make the old ptoo sound as you cleared your mouth for the next bite. I spat cane pulp all over Mt. Cuspidor.
When they saw I hadn't died, the Aussies and others tried some. I was like, "This is the fresh taste the corn industry is trying to keep us from knowing about!" but there was no reaction. They're all deep in the pocket of Big Fructose!
A little boy all done up like a French preppie on a yacht rambled by with a wheelbarrow, and we followed him deeper into the forest.
May told me that if I'd only been here one month ago, I would have seen different colors, since the rice was being harvested then. I told her I was sorry I missed it. Then she handed me a cunning little horse she'd woven out of thick grasses. It was amazing, really.
While I marveled at it, I thought, "I will buy all of your garbage now forever. May, my love, you've won my heart. We shall ride this grass horse together across the rice fields of commerce forever." The use of color! The sweet tail. The tasteful mane!
If it had rained, they would have had to cancel this walk, because we were going through some twisty slides and steeperies. Nye said the ducklings we had seen make this walk every morning in the dark, so they can be at the bus depot when people arrive. God.
You do what you have to to get that buck. I'm sure the idea of sitting at a desk for six - eight hours would make them think I was the crazy one.
They don't get the minibus to cut out the middle portion, so it's like a three-hour pre-rooster walk for the chance to make two or three dollars.
We crossed a bouncy little bridge and were, at last, in the village. Which was a collection of shops and slaughterhouses.
We were now joined by people from many different tribes. Welcome, weary traveler! You have mothersisterwife? You buy something? There was a little place to get water and Fanta, so we stopped. It was like the Mos Eisley spaceport.
May dumped out her basket of nonsense, and I bought a scarf and tote bag to thank her for the horse. This inflamed the desires of everyone else. You buy me too? You help me too! A woman with gold teeth and a tight red headscarf got right in my face.
You buy from Hmong, now buy from Dao. I am Dao people. Buy from Dao people.
I said, ok, and three more popped up. I was surrounded. The Australians were cracking up. The four of them made me pinkie promise to buy from each of them when I was done drinking. What had I done?
While I sipped my water and rested, they were behind me saying, "Do not forget Dao! You buy from Red Dao."
A few more Hmong came up, but I showed them the goods May had sold me. "I have already. See?" This didn't help. "Why you buy her not me? You help her no help me?"
We moved on. Most of us had been soaked for ten - twelve bucks and carried bracelets and change purses and tiny stone carvings. Most of us thought showing that we had something already would make people stop trying to sell us things, but it had the opposite effect. It just let them know we put out.
My Four Red Dao stayed with me, two on each side. I was like Dorothy with her companions strolling through a strange country to a distant palace. I thought they were leading me to their store, and I kept asking, "Is your store close?" and they would nod.
But we kept moving on, and I didn't see any Dao stores. It was all Hmong shops. Nye needed to help the Indianans negotiate for a chess set, so we paused at a little stonemaker's place. My Daos were like, "You buy now?"
Turns out they were their own stores. Everything they had to sell was in their backbaskets the whole time. I don't catch on very quickly.
I was like, "Ok, let's do this," and they all dumped out a pile of crap on the ground and started lifting it to my face. Buy! Buy!
I handed them each 100,000 dong, and I was like, "Ok, you each get a hunnertthousand, so you all have the same, so I'll take one thing from each of you."
100k dong is roughly $5, so I was paying $20. I could have bought a North Face Cloak of Invisibility for that much.
But they were like, "You give us each 200k," and I was like, "No," and they were like, "150 each and 50 for baby."
A baby materialized.
I said 30k for baby but no more. They were like, ok. I picked out a giant fistful of stuff and they pretended to be disappointed, but they were creaming their native underthings in delight. It was a big score for them.
The Dao Industrial Average was soaring! Boom! Finance joke!! Ka-blam!
The Purdue folks had their chess set, and it was time to go.
Nye took us to her mother's house. Tiny little shedshack with a concrete floor. Momma Nye had broken her leg somehow, so she couldn't sell change purses anymore. She waved sadly from her bed. We waved back, Some of us put money on the floor.
Outside, my four Dao were waiting again. I was like, "aww, come on" but they were like, "Gift for you, gift for you!" and they gave me a bunch of free bracelets and one of them put a sort of charm with bells on my camera strap. It was charming.
They must have felt guilty for fleecing me.
A fifth came out of nowhere. "You buy from Dao!"
I was like, "You are late to the party, sister. You missed the pinkie promise parade earlier."
She held a bunch of change purses in my face.
I pulled out the eight or so I had and fanned them like a poker hand. I was like "You buy from me!"
The Australians craaacked up, So did my Four.
Fivey was like, "Ok, ha ha, how much?" I said "Two hundred thousand!" and she said, "Ok, ok, I give you fifty!" and we all had a great laugh, and then it was over.
She wrote her phone number down for me. "For home stay," she said, "For when you visit with you wife and sons."
That's a thing here. You can skip the hotel and sleep in the village. It's supposed to be cool and you get breakfast and a mosquito net.
Then we were gone. We escaped the Selling Fields of Vietnam.
Easy ride back to the hotel to pack up. There was about an hour to buy more North Face clothing should one desire and many did desire. I returned the SD card to its home state. So grateful to those Boilermakers.
Nice little lunch where the Australians were reunited with their companion. One of them told her how "I got some native digits" in the village, and I pulled out the card with Five's number on it, and we all giggled.
Then Tung showed back up to take us to the big bus to take us back to Hanoi.
Friendly farewell to Nye. And Kim. He was there for two more days. He's going to have enough inventory to open a change-purse warehouse back in South Korea.
Sapa was beautiful to see. Raw and interesting. You can see where the older way of life is going to get squeezed out when this place becomes Moab-with-rice fields in five years or so, but it's a really charming mix right now.
Finished the Sinclair Lewis book on the long ride back. He's fantastic. I wrote down some situations and quotes to steal.
We stopped again at the roadside banana leaf hotdog place. I got two dumplings this time instead.
A local boy got on with us and sat next to me. He seemed pretty heartbroken.
Turns out he was a "fixer" for the South American version of The Amazing Race. They shoot their show here all the time, and it's his job to help them navigate local stuff. What a cool job. He showed me videos on his phone of Colombian contestants pillow fighting while balanced on logs. And stuff.
They were apparently South American celebrities.
So, he was like a bunch of people I know in NY, LA, or New Orleans. Useful locals who show up when a production comes to town.
His sorrow came from trouble he was having with a girl in Sapa. They have a long-distance thing going on, and she had posted a picture of herself with a different boy on Facebook. He flipped out, and she blocked him.
He made the six hour bus ride up there to patch things up, but she wouldn't see him. He was riding back in defeat.
I couldn't tell if she was a village girl or a city girl up there making money as a guide or as a hotel counterperson or what, but I was like, "Hey, guy, you're good looking, you have a good job, and it will mean a lot to her that you came up there to fix things. She's thinking about you right now, I'm sure of it. It will work out."
He said that made him feel better. He showed me some pictures of her on his phone. I dug mine out and showed him some pics on mine.
We said goodbye in the road in Hanoi as motorcycles swarmed around us. We're Facebook friends now, so I'll find out if he wins her back.
Tung took everyone back to their hotels in a van one by one. I sat with my bags in my lap until it was my turn.
It was very nice to see the Original Mr. Tung and Mr. Tong again. I told them I had a wonderful time.
In my room, I realized I'd left my phone on one of the buses. Probably when I took it out to swap chickpics with Jacky.
Careless, man. It was late at night, and I was leaving in the morning. Would I ever get it back, or was a Red Dao woman even now using it to order a pizza? I phoned down to Mr. Tong.
Do you suppose, I said? I will see, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment