Saturday, March 03, 2007
Halfway House
Today marks the halfway point of our trip, one we can look upon favorable. Nothing major misplaced, no real injuries save a blister and a bug bite or two. No unsafe episodes, despite our inclination at times to walk around at night with three heavy bags; one on our backs and one slung over each shoulder. Come, take our wallets, we have the agility of pregnant hippopotamuses and can't really stand up straight, let alone run after you. Our diet has been good, keeping to a high bread content mantra and washing down any suspect local meat and veggies with generous portions of local beer, as to effectively kill any bacteria. So far, so good; only a few stomach flutters from either of us. Knock on wood.
Also, Peggy and I feel as if we have hit the jackpot here in Vietnam as the exchange rate has made us certified (as opposed to certifiable) millionaires. In fact, our recent ATM statement reveals that we're worth the greater part of a billion dong. After I make my first billion, the rest of them are just going to come easy. Shit, I'm carrying a million units of the local currency in my pocket as we speak. , maybe I'll just sit back and live off the interest for awhile. Then again, you know what they say, mo' dongs, mo' wrongs.
The Sapa weekend has just begun. We took an uneventful, but luxurious train ride through the night up to this city amongst the clouds. We got off at 6am only 3km from the Chinese border, at the transfer station of Lao Cai. Our guest house room rate included a minibus pickup, who were waiting for us with placard in hand as we got off the train. I had called to confirm in broken English a few days ago to confirm that they would indeed pick us up and this caused some confusion. A gentleman with the sign reading Cawthon was standing next to a man with a sign saying Cawtham. Apparently this failed to ring any bells at the guest house in that it might be the same reservation. As we piled into the minibus for and waited twenty minutes for the other guests to filter in, the Cawtham gentleman was seen still dejectedly wandering around the parking lot looking for his lost connection. We were not in the mood to try to set the record straight.
We were the only people in the 14 person capacity minibus initially. Then we were joined by three French women (ribbit). Then nearly a dozen teenage rejects from the regional quarterfinals of the Vietnamese Idol television show piled in, bringing the total to 17, including the driver. The trip was to be a 45-minute extremely windy drive up and over the mountain, with four of the boys tellingly choosing to pile into the back row.
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As we were puttering out of town, there was some implicit banter going on between the teenage drama class and the Vietnamese driver. A few blocks later, and only three minutes since we had left the station, the minibus pulled over at a small sidewalk produce store. I thought, 'sweet, he's getting us all bananas to pass around'. Unfortunately, he only brought a bunch of clear pink plastic bags and proceeded to pass them directly to the back of the bus.
Here's where the drama really began. We began to slowly wind our way up the mountain, making switchback turn after switchback turn. The rambunctious teenagers in the minibus suddenly grew eerily quiet. I've had an experience like this before, where on the way back from a Sierras choir camp as a kid, one of the boys (who was sitting in the back row) got sick and puked directly into his friend's shoes. This quickly set off a chain reaction that cataclysmicly caused nearly the entire bus to start blowing chunks. Eventually, the bus had to be pulled over and hosed down because the stench got to be so bad. As an 11-year old with little empathy at the time, I was immensely entertained by these events.
As a 31-year old with now even less empathy, I still did not wish to repeat the experience. Peggy and I closed our eyes, retreated into the confines of our tired minds and just tried to maintain even keel. Waiting, cringing for the damn to burst. The calm that settled in the bus was unnerving. The kid to the right of me fell asleep and played the game of allowing his head to rest against my shoulder to 10 seconds before realizing he was doing it. He'd then jerk his neck back upright and repeat the process all over again. About halfway up the mountain, the boy who had the noodle soup for dinner last night finally had them again for breakfast. I unplugged my hearing aids as to better block out his convulsions of nausea. He slid open the window immediately to Peggy's left and began to deposit his homemade pink plastic bombs every five minutes or so, the last payload being indiscriminately dropped in the middle of Sapa town square. We're absolutely thrilled to be sharing the guest house with this outgoing, yet unapologetic group for the entire weekend.
posted by ncawthon at 7:23 PM
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