*(From Jim Leitzel)
The propeller plane and my at-this-time-not-yet-lost jacket *sniff*.
Me and my travelling partner BD had crossed the Cambodian border by bus the previous day (the bus had free fruit juice, which I'm a sucker for) and rested for a day in Ho Chi Minh City. That morning, we trolled around the city for a while, and then came back to our tiny hostel, which offered us a lift to the airport. Our next stop was the be the central city of Hue, ancient capital of the Vietnamese emperors and home to its own well-restored Forbidden Purple City (like China's, only purple). Our original plan had been to take a train there, but after a train agent used his desk calendar emblazoned with X's to laugh us out of the prospect of buying tickets, we then bought plane tickets from a snappy HCMC agent to complete our trip, out of Ho Chi Minh City, and from Hue to Hanoi. The only problem was there was no ticket direct to Hue available, only to a nearby city, Da Nang. (In fact, I remember my dad telling me that some of his friends' older brothers were stationed at Da Nang...it was apparently a large base of the American armies during the war, since it was so close to the DMZ). Indeed, the travel agent assured us all we had to was get a bus to Hue, which was extremely easy, he assured us. But, I guess, that's what travel agents are supposed to do.
The two places are about a 3 hour car drive apart, but there were buses that ran reguarly, and we saw no reason to spend big bucks on a personal taxi since it was still afternoon when our plane arrived in Da Nang. BD looked up the words in her Vietnamese dictionary for "bus station", and a smiling (perhaps smirking) taxi driver took a very long time to take us there. Night was falling, and as soon as we arrived at the bus station, we were pushed and fell gratefully into an empty pink bus that read 'Da Nang-Hue', egged on by our taxi driver and the apparent bus assistant (there are benefits to being in a country with a letter-based language from time to time). The assistant smiled and said things like "Hue, Yes, Hue, Yes". Our large backpacks were thrown in the trunk, and the bus was left idling outside a local convenience store for nearly an hour, for reasons that were totally unknown to us. We had absolutely no idea whatsoever what was going on, nor did we have any idea how to reach our hotel in Hue for any sort of direction. So we sat. And we sat. At least the bus was relatively empty.
For a while. Soon various merchants came onto the bus and worked us over with the old "silent sell". I was offered many a pack of cigarettes with no words exchanged whatsoever, simply a smile. I smiled back a no. Finally after a nerve-jangling hour, the bus roared off, with a few passengers. Hey, I could live with this, I thought. It soon became extremely crowded though- there were no official stops, but the bus assistant stood at the open door and yelled "Hue-a, Hue-a", prompting seemingly random passersby to hop on board. And oh, the things they carried. Backpacks. Clothes. Groceries. Bushels and bushels of string beans. Enormous glass mirrors. All were squeezed into the tiny bus, which careened through the Viet Nam night for 3 hours on its way to Hue, scaling mountains and zooming around hairpin turns, sometimes even more dangerous than I've experienced here (and I've been on a few clankers in China).
One of the most interesting interactions was payment. We of course had no idea what the cost would be, nor could we adequately communicate with anyone else to ask what the price was. How was it done? The assistant took a 100,000 note out of my hand (about 16 USD) and gestured with it, saying "You". So we each paid 100,000, resulting in much mirth from the other customers. BD turned around and asked someone else "You pay? You Pay?" The man nodded and also showed us a 100,000 note, though I still think he paid for himself and his 6 brothers with it. What could we do? Nothing we could do about it.
And then, we were in Hue, apparently. The final stop was a dark and lonely gas station, at which the whole bus disembarked, then about half-full. So there we were, 11 PM, sporting two enormous backpacks, and having only the address written in BD's Lonely Planet to go on. The other passengers had taken an interest in these two lost foreigners, and the LP was passed between them, as they tried to help us. One man took me aside and told me something very passionately, though whether it was about trusting Hue taxi drivers or his new conical hat, I certainly couldn't understand. There were two fellows with taxi-motorbikes waiting at the gas station, and the friendly passengers engaged them in conversation and pointed to us. We tried feebly to ask things like "Take us here" and such, which were greeted with large nods. And then, before I really knew what was happening, there we were, speeding away on the back of those two mysterious bikes, with our large backpacks into the mysterious night. I'll always remember BD's "I think we can trust these guys. Alright, I've decided that we're going to trust these guys." After ten minutes of our high-speed racing through the streets, my brain settled down enough to remember that I'd forgotten to take my jacket out of the top compartment of the bus, where I'd stuffed in during the fray of people coming and going for "safe-keeping". Safe-keeping indeed.
In the end, it worked out, and after a false-start or two, the guys indeed took us to our hostel, at which point the hostel manager was so happy to see us she took care of the price of the motorbikes and hugged us, showing us to our room. We collapsed and then used the bathroom. It had a cockroach. We then asked to collapse in a different bathroom, exhausted and humbled by a day in which we felt fortunate to finally arrive at our pleasant little hostel.
There were many other interesting things that happened on that trip, but that's the sad story of my jacket, lost somewhere between Hue and Da Nang. Its probably right where I left it, since nobody wears winter coats in Viet Nam. So long, old friend. Your broken zipper, ripped cuffs, and dirty appearance belied a gritty interior.
1 comment:
The jacket story more than lived up to the intense buildup and anticipation. Bravo.
Now what about the cat with the bandage...no, no, no more requests, at least for now.
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