Monday, March 05, 2007

Red Asphalt

Ba Ca was a whirlwind of activity. We photographed, haggled, slurped soup and did shots of villager distilled corn whiskey; all before noon. On our way back to the train station, our driver of the Ruski jeep speed his way daftly down the mountain. We came a across a back up of cars, proceeding to cut ahead of three minibuses to angle ourselves for a better look at the commotion. It turns out there was a head-on scooter collision, with both bikes left in a mangled mess in the middle of the road. Thankfully, no visible injuries or wounded as we came on the scene. Just to paint the picture a bit further, this is very rural Vietnam, people were squatting on the hillsides to watch, chickens walking to and fro, rice paddies being paddied by women in triangular hats in the background. A farming road at best, running its way through villages. So, it struck me as odd that a guy was drawing a rudimentary line in red paint around the silhouette of one of the smashed scooters. We've confirmed before that there is no insurance here for scooter or tuk tuk, only automobiles. I dunno, it just looked a bit humorous, as if he was being very official in detailing the murder of his fallen steed.

Once the road cleared, our jeep driver tried to edge his way around the asphalt gravel truck in front of us. For those of you familiar with asphalt gravel trucks, they are quite heavy industrial vehicles, the tires being huge and the payload and body of the truck high off the ground. Our driver, trying to avoid the ditch on our left, accelerated the right side of the jeep into the back of this massive vehicle. The impact shattered the right half of the windshield, sending shards of glass into the cab. The passenger's side mirror was mauled completely, freely swinging towards the ground. The entire front right frame of the jeep buckled and distorted from the force of the collision, preventing the door from opening. The surrounding villagers, who had already gathered around the scene from the first accident let out a collective 'Ole' yell, understandable in any language.

Su, our guide sitting shotgun, was visibly shaken. The driver didn't stop due to there likely being no damage to the truck, and we progressed on in silence. Peggy and I, fine in the backseat save a few shards of glass and mirror at our feet, looked at each other with raised eyebrows and an 'Oh. Shit.' expression on our faces. A good half hour later, the driver tried to banter a bit in Vietnamese with Su, who wasn't really of the mind to hear any of it. 'My dad's got this killer set of tools; I can totally fix it', I imagined him saying.

The evening didn't turn out much better than the afternoon. We were dropped off at a local Pho (noodle soup) restaurant five hours early for our train departure. Reassured that our bags would be safe should we want to walk around the gritty Chinese border town of Loa Cai, we grabbed some plastic chairs and neglected to let them out of our sight. The tickets issued for our train stated that they were indeed 'train tickets', but we needed an additional boarding pass type of slip to make it on board.

With four hours to kill, I set off to figure out how to get said boarding slip. Walking through the train station parking lot, I found a minibus driver from one of the hotels in Sapa who pointed me to go over to a phone booth outside the station to get the slip. Not really understanding what he meant, I went to an office immediately behind the phone boot. The gentleman there, who had just sat down for his afternoon tea, led me purposefully by the hand (which was a bit weird) to the huddled masses surrounding the ticket windows. I picked one of the eight swarming queues and tried forcing my way to the nearest window.

Unbeknown to me, the Hanoi train was close to selling out. There were people yelling and shoving, women trying to buy their way to the front of the line. Cadre policemen were yelling at people with their megaphones and escorting them out of the station. Just another afternoon at the Loa Cai train station. I finally got up to the booth after being cut in front of about fifty times, well after the Hanoi train sold out. The disgruntled ticket agent lady just shrugged and handed the tickets back to me. The two other people standing around whom I had asked for advice both gave me different but consistently vague answers on what I needed to do to get on this train.

Back at the noodle restaurant, Peggy was trying to forget she saw a mouse scampering towards the kitchen and unsuccessfully finding something to order for dinner. She took the boarding pass cause upon herself and tried her luck with the owner of the restaurant, who said that he knew what to do and would help her. She gave him our tickets when he said that his wife knew a guy that would come over in ten minutes or so to help out. Forty minutes of no-show later, we were sweating a bit. With an hour left until our train was due to pull out of the station, we decided to forcefully retrieve the only thing that had our names on it and try our own luck at the station again.

As we approached the terminal, the restaurant owner zipped by on his scooter from a block away and said he would again help us. A few paces later, we reached a young twenty-something year old guy, sitting on the steps with his friends, only a few yards from the same phone booth I was directed to. He casually looked at our tickets and produced our needed boarding passes, stapling them together. No payment requested from either person, very little formality in the process at all. It was one of those events that leave you scratching your head going, 'hunh, how did that work?'

posted by ncawthon at 3:32 PM