VN pic Lua 082813

I am told the drying of rice is called lua. The process seemed to occupy a lot of roadway as smaller farms had little room to place the drying tarps in front of their homes and elsewhere. In addition to rice grasses that might have been hay were also aired out on tarps and in many cases on the roads. I don't recall riding over rice but it was necessary to drive over straw often. 

Soc Trang

VN note Finding Alternatives [n.d.]

While riding through the Delta on the Yamaha I met many people who tried to say a few words more than hi. Nearly all had as little command of English as I have of Vietnamese. In Soc Trang I met a high school English teacher who gave me a thought about learning a second language after realizing that her tongue, pallet, mouth or all inoperative together are unable to pronounce certain foreign words. A pretty common problem. 

I thought then that second language classroom instruction should include synonyms and antonyms in addition to teaching definition, pronunciation, etc. to encourage fledgling learners obtain a wide range of words to consider when expressing an idea. Where the tongue can't curve for clarity the brain might strain for a similar meaning more pronounceable. 

But in Bac Lieu I ran into a different challenge, one that in spirit spoils my theory. The Vietnamese pronounce "tr" so it sounds like "j" to my ears. Checking out on on the sixth day I mentioned to the receptionist at the King Diamond hotel I was traveling to Soc Trang and she replied something to the effect of: "oh, sep jen". I thought a road had been washed out so I pressed her for clarification. We tried for ten minutes before it became clear that "sep jen" is Soc Trang. However useful a thesaurus would be alongside a dictionary in a language course, there simply isn't a comparable word for a city name. This brought about the challenge that the problem is not with the Vietnamese speaker but with the non-native listener. Whether I accept their speech or insist my hearing predominate displays only pretension if not arrogance. 

Soc Trang, the province and city, are located in the south central Delta and however many times I told people I was going to Phoung Hiep or Phoung Loc, cities in the province, people said seemingly with pride, "sep jan". Elsewhere, such as in Ben Tre or Saigon, people pronounced Soc Trang with slight variations such as "sept jen" or "soc jane". By that time I was ready for it and heard the distinction. I heard the tongue and anticipated the inflection or accentuation; I let my listening ears and literate third eye disengage. 

So to get along it became necessary to find alternative ways of thinking about language in its communicable role. Even now, back with the cat in Brooklyn I realize there's learning gained in the self-reflection that helps me to tell these travel stories with honesty. 

VN note River of Dreams [n.d.]

For thirty years and for personal reasons I had imagined myself on a voyage by boat from Saigon up the Mekong River to Phenom Penh. Imagining boats on the river, I had envisioned arranging passage then exploring the fantastic world the river might have been with green foliage on the banks and photograpic fields beyond. I dreamt myself into such a  voyage, or series of voyages and I was lost in the dream. Lost to realities I was unprepared to accept. 

Naive of me but I carried that vision around with me in a bankers box stuffed between the sheaths of a mental manila file folder. To say I should have known better is hindsighted, but time's learning had no effect on that memory of a spectacular voyage. When a recent event altered my life I resolved to live out the dream. I had no idea that my preconception would be turned on its head. 

As for what I thought Vietnam and the Mekong Delta would be like the  battery of Hollywood war films did little to prepare me for what I would encounter. Very  few times did I witness little brown people in dark cloth garments beneath triangular hats stooped low in the fields. As for violence once I felt slightly threatened while outside of Saigon and I believe that was more circumstantial than a reflection of the people involved. 

While my assumptions were formed in the early eighties, back then I was trailing in the wake of a sea story decades old.  Fifty years is a long time for any locale without war and economic boom to in their own rights dramatically alter what once was. 

Times have changed. The government restructuring of the transportation system includes the construction of significant bridges over two wide branches of the river, at My Tho and at Can Tho. What formerly added hours of travel to transport harvests from the Delta to markets in Saigon and beyond are now subtracted from shipping times. I'm told this has resulted in the loss of need for boat travel. 

A decline in the need for ferries has, I assume, effected all water travel in the Delta. On the rivers I saw coconut and rice on boats and small ships but the boat I traveled on from Ben Tre to Tra Vinh, withs its small hauling capacity, is likely to be replaced soon by trucks. Perhaps the reason the Hiep Loi remains in business to this day is for the remote area it covers and across bodies of water unrealistic to expect any commercial trucking company to service as affordable. Again, just an uneducated guess. I know that the cargo boats that once departed from the foot of Saigon's Nghi Dam street are indefinitely suspended because, as I was informed by the dock master of sorts, the combined need for water transportation and adventure tourism didn't warrant continued use- that's the way I'm interpreting "no more".

Water travel is one of many changes made to my prior notions of what I would find in Vietnam. It might not have been the most significant but it was something of a threshold that once crossed, when I came to realize the fact that river travel was not going to be a viable means of travel, I was forced to alter my plans. 

The short ride through Saigon on the xe om really put the hook in me and in Ben Tre I found myself with an opportunity to rent a moto and explore the country. Abandoning the riverboat plan made possible many more experiences, or different experiences. I rode that moto for six hundred kilometers in twelve days across the lower provinces of the Delta and have the stories and photos to prove it was in many ways an important journey. 

VN pic Rice Field Cultivation 082813

There are two tractor in this field. The third shot in sequence caught my interest and I either did a quick downshift or more likely doubled back to stop by side of road. Olympus in right pocket; phone in left I reached for phone while farmer in red cap actually paused before pulling out of the  field's corner. I noticed his stall and waved just prior to snapping the first frame. 

Again, the frequency of Anglo tourists venturing into these provinces and onto the small routes I made would put this interaction between farmer and the moto traveler a couple times a decade. I'm confident in claiming that regardless of what the future holds. 

He paused for the photo, for my benefit, smiled big at my wave of gratitude, and pressed on with his fieldwork. 

Soc Trang

VN note The Next Day 082713

Waking up on Tuesday and hitting the road I stopped a short distance from the gate of the resort at a ca phe. I took off my helmet and sat at one of the plastic tables with tiny chairs definitely not suited for my five-ten frame. I asked for ca phe sua nong but at that point I blumbled cafe sir nam at which I wasn't paid the slightest attention. I waited a while and a woman came out from behind a counter. I fumbled through the botched refrain and she brought out the usual glass with condensed milk and a short layer of coffee dripping from the tin filtering reservoir. 

When I got up to leave she came over and I gave her a five thousand dong note. She indicated that wasn't enough. I questioned how much more she wanted and she leaned over the brim of my wallet and pointed to a fifty thousand note or about two-fifty USD. While I broke out into a sudden belly laugh I didn't give anymore money. I found another place that charge five later that day but the standard price is six to ten thousand (1USD = 20,000 VND). I admit I rode the rest of the morning looking over my shoulder wondering if a cop or army battalion were going to arrest me and take me back to that woman's roadside ca phe to pay a few more dong. 

I've mentioned before that my map is very detailed and has those graded road indications: thick red, narrow red, narrow grey and finally no road just the names of a few towns randomly scattered in the remaining geography. That's the case in the lower end of the Tra Vinh province. If I'm going to find myself at Ba Dong, I thought back in Brooklyn anticipating the trip, then I'd like to check out the various random dots disconnected. Again the bike made the dream come true and for the next three hours I covered a geographical area on the map that was about the size of the tip on my pinky finger. 

I was lost trying to get off the southern end of the province. The map didn't show a bridge or ferry to cross a straight blue line bisecting the region. The road that appeared a main roadway showed no sign of ending as I rode around in one large circle past farmers and fishermen and women with children watching me pass by repeatedly. I stopped at the same ca phe three times to clarify directions. Each time they same four men pointed to the road in the same direction and I repeatedly thought of the woman at the ca phe earlier that morning. 

Finally I realized that the other motos I passed had all ducked onto and off of the paved road via a narrow little ramp where pavement met a red dirt pathway. 

I asked at a bike shop if I was heading in the northerly direction and a woman picking up her repaired bike indicated I should follow her. Another five km later we were at a ferry landing featuring an impossibly rickety pier of coarse cut wood slats and a ramp about the width of those plastic chairs in ca phes that catch my butt when I stand up. There were about ten bikes cued up and the coolest set of eyes I'd see the rest of the trip. I impressed nobody but myself at that moment but the impression of wonderment - shit, how did I find such an amazing place- was trumped by the sort of uncertainty that teeters on panic staring back and forth between riverscape and boat ramp. 

When the ferry arrived thankfully one of the two operators rode each bike down the ramp saving me from a certain soaking shame. The ferry crossing cost four thousand VND or twenty cents USD. I'lI try to calculate the numbers: ten bikes times four - forty - and another ten pedestrian at about two each - twenty - that's sixty and gas at about forty a liter which probably gets three round trip crossings at twenty minutes of motoring per leg so sixty times six is six forty minus sixty for fuel is five eighty profit per liter for two hours of crossing times five for a ten hour day equals around two hundredand ninety thousand per day in gross after gas divided by two or about one hundred fifty thousand divided by twenty to the USD and for their labors the two man crew working sunup to sundown earn about seven USD if their ferry has ten bike and ten passengers each trip.

For comparison Vu on the Hiep Loi earns one hundred thousand per two day round trip from Ben Tre to Tra Vinh to Ben Tre, and one million a month net per his claim. A couple poverty experts who stayed at the Oasis informed me that the poverty line in Vietnam is five hundred thousand per month or twenty five USD. At poverty the state provides basic assistance. 

Once across the river I remained lost through the rest of the morning trying to find a special location called Loo Cu among more disconnected dots. Everyone I met pointed in different directions and tepeatedly thought about a scene in a movie where Dogtown surfers and beat up non-locals who ride their turf. Perhaps I was projecting a bit when I met a crew if laborers loading a truck with perhaps hundred pound rice bags. I confidently stopped the bike and inconsiderately interrupted their work to produce my excellent map and humiliating speech with the usual inquiry.  Such cultural relevancy cost the crew about five minutes of deliberation.  It wasn't but a couple minutes after leaving the crew that one of them rode up beside me with his cell phone to his ear speaking broken English asking if I wanted him to call ahead and have someone meet me there. At the same time one of the other crewmen rode like hell past us. The guy with the phone broke off when I told him thanks but no thanks and when I got past the tree line and could see the horizon there appeared to be only a massive decaying factory about a mile toward the river.  Another film, Matt Dillon in Cambodia, came to mind as i became concerned about the guy on the bike who would up there somewhere. at that time a bridge appeared to my right leading north and i abandoned my quest Loo Cu. 

The bridge took me north along the coast toward Cau Quan and through more small towns where people were very nonchalant about seeing me. I'll say it again I'm sure but there's something to be said about entire communities who, upon meeting an outsider, uniformly pay no mind. Saigon at a hundred and fifty kilometers away might as well be Hanoi for most of these people in small towns but a tall westerner does phase them. One of the things that can be said for that is that possibly they're not very interested in talking with outsiders; distrustful, embarrassed, angry, hateful, or simply peaceful to the point of appearing passive up front. 

About anger, I sometimes get that way when encountering people treating others without apparent respect. In such cases I tell myself I'm not like that. I I justified my actions when comparing to others' actions by replaying scenes whete i thank busboys for water or hold doors for strangers. im the guy who helped Vu take on cargo loaded onto the Hiep Loi. As I recall these small acts however frequent and unconscious, I also think about the simple encounter that a laborer has with a tourist from America with a massive western frame and a shiny moto, how just having a map with all the disconnected dots doesn't make me geographically sensitive or culturally aware. 

I'm not proud to be an outsider who rides the surf of locals but I'm uncertain how to reconcile my desire - to find Loo Cu or to connect the dots or to cross an open ferry - within the context of this chasm of economic and social and cultural differences between our cultures. 

I think what I wanted to find out there in the outlying regions of the province far from the thick red lines was a citizenry of people like Vu. He initiated a six hour conversation with me in order to share our differences - establishing inequalities, gifting each other with small things. It's in that realm of exchange - intellectual, emotional, humane - that I am comfortable and collected. I'm not cool anywhere else and when my moto failed or I became seriously lost or mumbled through conversations with people who spoke some English I may have been a fool but I tried to make good and present myself with as much humility and humanity as possible. I wonder how much this sort of interaction plays into my desire to travel; I've only once gone anywhere for the beach. 

Back on the main road I crossed another ferry and its twin between Tra Vinh and Soc Trang provinces from Cau Quan. The ferries stop at either side of an island and yhrough traffic races like hell to the other boat. In Soc Trang I rode through a rain storm for some eighty kilometers right up to dark when I arrived in the coastal city of Bac Lieu. I had ridden for eleven hours almost non-stop on pavement, dirt, concrete, gravel, on narrow paths and major highways, off the map lost in the space between dots and circling around boulevards searching for a place to sleep at the end of the day.

Of those eleven hours and unrecorded number of kilometers my mood fluctuated between speed and serenity. The longing for flight was soothed by a hammock - almost every roadside venue be they a ca phe or a pho shop has hammocks for patrons to lounge. When the rain stopped or tea leaves dried out I pushed off with a kick to swing back on the road. Another reason I like to travel is for the motion. 

Later that night in Bac Lieu I began to reflect on the trip. I had begun this blog with pre-trip postings that anticipated an experience I projected from a stressed mind in Brooklyn. A week into it, with the main premise for being in Vietnam no longer possible there came time to confront that big question that was the final New York anticipation worth holding onto: why am I here. I might have thought river, jungle, crowds, rest, weather, but it was existential inquiry I knew for certain I would face. 

I recognize in me a distinction between traveling and being on a journey. when I take a road trip in February to Montreal the border crossings are to be expected; yes sir, no sir, some people just like the cold. And even I questioned why I wanted to travel to S.E. Asia in monsoon season of late August. But travel for me takes on more import when I can get thoughtful of the experience and my part in it. That night I opened up a copy of Michel Montaigne's essays. Never having read the 16c. Frenchman I was relieved to find someone else self-reflect. 

VN pic ca phe 082613

Typical roadside stops where ca phe or pho is served among other food and beverages. The Vietnamese are very proud of their coffee an I took on a real liking to ca phe sua nong, or transliterally coffee milk hot. And the soup is served with vermicelli rice noodle a a big slice of pork among some basil and other greens I immediately soak in the water while its still piping hot. I ate a lot of greens after a  few days so long as I could dunk them in hot water to give at least an allusion of disinfection. While greens grown close to the ground are subjected to unclean water my practice seemed to work as I never had any of that uncomfortable stomach bug or worse. 

The tall stainless cylinder is for chopsticks that also get soaked in steaming soup broth. There are lots of parents taking care of kids not exclusively their own (as kids would run from one house to the next as if the whole block were open to their curiosity). The ornament is a disco ball of sorts or a lamp made with primary significance of plastic cups. 

VN note Ba Dong 082713

Following the six hour transit on the Hiep Loi from Ben Tre to Tra Vinh I rode that afternoon to a point at the southern end of the province. I had seen a blog posting about Ba Dong where a couple of touring cyclists had visited the seaside resort a few years back. I don't remember if that post or the tiny umbrella marking on the map got my curiosity first but I set my mind to going there if means were available. Ken at the Oasis recommended the place so with access by bike I set that as a destination to close out the fifth day in Vietnam.

The coastal community of Ba Dong features a state run resort and nearby some type of old French hotel i didn't find. This was where holidays were had during the French colonial era and now where Vietnamese go for holiday. 

There is a wood and palm covered patio as an outside dining area to a kitchen that made a couple items on a seafood menu that might have been bilingual VN/English. Two of the guys working there wanted to pose with me for photos if that's any indication of Anglo-American frequency to the resort. I was there on a Monday evening and rented a bungalow with an ac and tv. Paint peeled off the walls while I stared at them as i dont find television entertaining even if Vietnamese might be novel and worth reporting in. 

A spider built a web in the bathroom doorframe overnight. The lizards played their radio next door loud all night as I saw no other guests and all the keys were on the attendant's pegboard when I checked out at six the next morning. 

David Lynch affectionados might like the place if it hasn't washed away before you read this. The dark brown seawater turned five colors into the horizon as a rainbow arched the sky. Shoreside brown the color of rivers changed with a clear band about a mile out to sea (going on assumption horizon at sea level is seven miles out) into a soft tan suede tone. Beyond that the colors in the evening light with a setting sun to my back eastward reflecting off distant storm clouds pulled through a sobering spectrum shades of turquoise to grey. The beach is practically nonexistent as the cyclists' blog shots imagined.Large imported rocks at waters edge; a short stacked fence of sand bags inland about three meters is bordered by floatsam debris of plastic and paper; a broken slabbed concrete path sunken into the loamy soil leads from restaurant to bungalows. The ground is like that where tree lines approach waterfront giving a sandy consistency to decomposing layers if fallen leaves and needles. For some reason I recall evergreen trees at Ba Dong. 

Any number of other idealistic cinematic scenarios might give me reason to return to the place if I'm back in Tra Vinh province. Funky, trashed, decayed but also subject to government funding, high salt content; intense rains and humidity; the occasional typhoon and frequent South Sea storm; and the bungalow-thrashing gingko bands that disrespect Yankee acoustic sensibilities.  It's been said that Vietnamese like their music loud and ill have more to say about that after about three hundred kilometers.