A Very Long Day

It has been a very long day. It started at a few minutes before 6 a.m., when Zane, lying nearby, woke me by saying, “Dude, I think we’re burning.”

Survival instincts kick my adrenaline into instant overdrive, and I bolt up, smashing my head into the wood two feet above, and knocking my knees against the bars of my miniature metal cage.

Our bus is filled with smoke, pouring through the floor and ceiling vents in the back. It’s also wafting by outside my window, and I realize we’ve stopped. Again. The twelve-hour ride has already been pushed back four or five times due to arbitrary stops throughout the night.

I gather my bag and shoes and try to worm through the aisle. The bus is built like an airplane, with three rows of beds divided by two small walking spaces. It’s no bigger than a normal bus though, so I’m forced to scoot sideways through the smoke towards the front of the bus. My shoulders are significantly wider than the average Vietnamese, and it takes me almost a minute of coughing before I make it to the exit.

It smells like burning rubber, chemical oxidization, cancer. As I stumble out of the bus I realize that most people have already made their way out onto the street. For the early hour it’s remarkably crowded on the small highway. Semi trailers whiz bye ever minute and scores of children on bicycles pedal their way to school, while country folk ride to and forth on motorbikes laden with goods: giant bags of rice, a portable grill, a live pig.

 

What seems like every Vietnamese man from our bus has cluttered around the back to look at the engine, smoke cigarettes and not do much of anything.

The next hour and a half was a long one. We occupied ourselves by entertaining the gaggle of children that stopped to watch us. It seems like they were playing a game of Who can get closest to the white person without freaking out and running away. Needless to say, this was just as fun for us as it was for them.

 

When it seems like some action is going on in the engine maintenance department, we turn around and see that four men have gone to work. Two are siphoning water out of a bucket and pipetting it into what must be the radiator, while another two have removed a metal elbow joint and are trying to clean the grease from its fittings.

After a while we realize what they are using to protect their hands from this messy task.

“Hey those are my boxers!” Zane shouts. “Look at those. Those were in my bag!”

The driver and his colleagues apparently went under the bus and, in what I see as a very communist style action, simply removed the boxers from the nearest bag and used them to the betterment of the entire group. Poetic, in a way, because the striped Calvin Klein shorts were in fact made in this very country.

 

After angrily trying to ask “Why?” and only receiving smiles, Zane and I lumber back onto the bus, which after 90 stagnant minutes, has thankfully been vented of the corrosive fumes.

Luckily, the engine manages to cool off, and we are off on the last leg of our journey to Hue (pronounced Hway), the Vietnamese imperial capital during the 19^th century Nguyen Dynasty. When our massive motor coach finally rolls into town at 11 a.m., we are greeted by a blinding sun and a heat that reminds me this is a SE Asia trip. Hanoi was the coldest spot on our itinerary.

We follow some British friends we met in Hanoi to the hotel that they booked at, landing ourselves a stress-free room. We also follow them to breakfast. For Zane and I, this is our first time setting foot in a restaurant this entire trip. Up till now, eating in Vietnam has been a matter of picking the best street food. The restaurant was catered to western tastes, with a massive menu containing burgers, pasta, pizza, and a small section of Vietnamese “classics” like Singapore noodles. WTF?  Everyone except us seemed to love it. All I loved was the coffee. This will be the last restaurant for a while.

The traffic in Hue is moderate compared with the clotted arteries of Hanoi, and our motorbike appetite has been whetted by the quick moto-taxi trip we took over the bridge to our hotel. When we ask a sunglass vendor where the best place to rent a motorbike is, using hand gestures do display revving an engine, he points across the street. Before we are finished turning, four men in white are screaming “MOTORBIKE!” flailing their hands like maniacs and sprinting across the street to smile up at us, eagerly.

After some quick haggling we find ourselves with two sexy looking Yamahas, and are off towards where my guidebook says the royal tombs are located.  Today, it’s safe to say, we got our religion on. We visited three tombs, a monastery and a Buddhist pagoda.  The beautiful part was, we stumbled upon most of them accidentally – hidden secrets just off the tourist track.

 

The road out of town ends abruptly, turning into a winding dirt track through rice fields. It’s been raining this week, so much of the road has turned into a rich jungle mud, very pretty and very dangerous for two amateur motorbike riders. Deciding to ‘man up,’ we trudge through, making it perhaps a kilometer before Zane takes the lead and almost winds up face down in the road. It’s a scary moment, but the hilarity doesn’t escape.

 

We walk through the muck after rescuing his muddied ride, and find ourselves staring up at two enormous stone towers topped with lotus carvings. They are guarding the entrance to a massive tomb built into a hill. Climbing the stairs we look out at the commanding view this dead guy has. Old Chinese characters cut out of blue ceramic pepper the entrance to the inner courtyard, declaring something we can’t hope to decipher. For myself, the coolest part was seeing where the land was slowly reclaiming the space, grass and dirt pushing away at tiles, breaking stone pediments. At the top of one of the twin towers, a small tree was growing up towards the sun.

 

My Vietnam time thus far has been smog, fog and haze. Beautiful sites whose views are dampened by the water-soaked air. Here, muddied and mosquito bitten, I finally get to see the Nam of my imagination. Ancient culture superimposed over a truly wildlandscape. Green like you’ve never seen green before. We enjoy the afternoon sun by scrambling over the stone ruins and then riding back through the muddy road, wind in the face, free to roam the roads of Hue.