VN note August 25, 2013

Xe om 

Reluctantly Saturday Kim persuaded me to travel with tour bus to Ben Tre.

The convincing brochure omitted any mention of visiting a coconut farm to watch the manufacturing of candy. Driving south, the Saigon river to our left, the guide picked up a karaoke mic and shared the itinerary for the day. I would miss only the final lunch event when I ditched the company in Ben Tre after some water travel out of My Tho with visits to a honey farm - the guide Hum likes honey - a trip in a big boat - Hum in means tiger in Vietnamese - transfer to a small boat sized for no more than five - if you are a pretty girl Tiger will share a boat alone with you and take special care of you because trust me Tiger does not lie - and a coconut farm where we'll watch local people make delicious coconut candy - yes you Westerners who like sweet things are not alone we Vietnamese like coconut candy yes yum.

The bus stopped forty minutes outside of District 1 near Ben Luc, a third of the way to My Tho. WC (water closet, toilet, narrow little thing) and coffee carts. Six buses. I'd rather roast in the sun than listen to Tiger tell more stories. 

To make matters worse just as soon as he had the chance Hum picked up the mic and began a thirty minute lecture in botched English that sounds like a pinball hitting rubber bumpers how VN relies on the Delta for its food, how of the 88 million population 22 million live down here and other statistics that bear mentioning until he started in like a teen sports fan with statistics on rice production capacity and export markets in competition globally. Fine again though no mention of the actual agrarian issues such as sowing, harvesting schedules though there might be three per year bc the delta rains are normal and unaffected by typhoons like north in the country. Hum was fine again I was holding out patiently. Then he turned back into Tiger. Thailand is number one and India is never two and Vietnam is number three and always will be the third largest rice producer because India and Vietnam cannot compete with Thailand and they never will and .... Tiger does not lie. No you can trust me Thailand will always be number one and ... Tiger does not lie. 

Dear reader, if you feel a loss of altitude we have just descended to sea level. 

Fourteen minutes and thirteen seconds after the microphone off button barely made an aural snap the bus pulled into a My Tho parking lot to become totally randomly normalized among no less than twenty other buses. We were disembarked en masse along side a large tourism building that I'm sure is the only industry in Vietnam that competes with rice production - the stats on that economic race were apparently saved for the return trip. Two hundred people stood around looking at the alluvial wash of a milk chocolate colored river where some boats of various sizes would take us somewhere and perhaps separate from the love boat Tiger had arranged with a lucky pinball playa. 

The phrase for get me the fuck out of here is spelled like this: toi muon bat xe di ta Ben Tre bang xe bus. 

Actually try it and there will be great uncertainty among groups of three or more working people sitting along a roadside who either have no formal education or can actually read and write better than a couple of tourism agents in an ac office buttoned down in polyester. The term bat is outdated; nobody uses this word thing I've written a ta which might actually be meaningless; and the word for bus is buyt. 

About seven thousand tourists take the same pre packaged trips a day mostly from Saigon where the stay in guesthouses or upscale hotels like Kim or the Caravelle. Where mat weaving demonstrations take place the weavers only look busy when groups pass by and at night they undo the weaving and recycle the materials the next day. 

It was about 80/80 in the partial sun for a three kilometer walk in a general direct the polyester duo set me on. 

Of the fifteout hello with a twist of outstretched handlebar hands the last one was the best. All got a subtle smile, more that you get from me in Saigon, which probably added to the gloom of the past couple days. This guy asked where I wanted to go and I said Ben Tre (pronounced them as bun tree) and with a small laugh and an offer on his moto; when I declined and walked five fucking feet he shouted then that the bus station was directly on my left. 

of the people standing around no one knew where i wanted to go. didn't know where ban tray was either and being tourism illiterate my note made no sense so a couple pointed to the list of destinations and the very bottom was where I was going; the only bus without need for a ticket; the passengers were infected with laughter and my banshee destination and when I mumbled can mon instead of cam on for thank you two women rocked on their torn vinyl seats. A large Buddha of gold and a stand of burnt incense stick stubs was on the dashboard. 

The ride for an hour cost fourteen thousand or seventy three cents US. The clutch to the bus also warrants an expletive so take your pick. At one point the kid collecting money and closing the door almost shut with his foot took a very large spanner wrench and screwdriver to the underside of the buyt beneath the driver. This mechanical adjustment was necessitated following his check in the engine from a trap door below the deity. The women never stopped smiling when our eyes met and I haven't so non-cruised in a long spell. 

The bus dropped me off at just the right place though I didn't know it. Going to the Oasis hotel without an address meant finding wifi. Wifi meant finding someone young to point out a router friendly place. That was going to be the Vut Uc hotel according to eye glass vendors in a cute shop that could have been on Court Street. Walk that way turn right then left. And the first hotel I came to I met Tam (pronounced Tom) who gave simple directions across the river to Ken's place. I tried to thank him and walked off then paused, turned around and went back to his small tourist agency determined not to let bad experiences get me down again. By this time I had become obsessed with xe om bikes and since talking to a Canadian economist in Saigon who bought one for two fifty US in Hanoi and sold it in Saigon for one fifty I was salivating but hesitant when I asked Tam two things: how to pronounce Ben Tre and it was possible to buy a moto. his suggestion to rent one sounded great. and why not rent. Of course he knows someone who rents motos and looking at my excellent map (International Travel Map by ITMB Publishing, Vancouver) settled with her on four days. Six hundred thousand or thirty USD and I bought a new helmet for five hundred thousand or twenty five US and I rode over the bridge to Oasis where I met Ken as he was rebuilding a pump he designed and built, I shook his greasy hands without pause. He likes the map too and turned me on to a trip south in the afternoon to Ba Tri in the southern Ben Tre provence. Down there, there he said, thirty km away they don't know what to do with whites because they never see them and if the police stop you they'll think the worst because what else would you be doing there. Kens from New Zealand his wife Hien is Vietnamese. Nice guy and warrants the praise you'll find on his website.

It's Monday morning at seven and the ferry to Tra Vinh I've wanted to take leaves at nine ish. Ill take the moto on the cargo boat that stops at the oasis pier. They'll load it I to the boat and unload at Tra Vihn. The plan is to drive south to Ba Dong where there's an old French hotel on a beach. Tuesday I ride to Cau Quan and catch the ferry over the river to see Kymer temples in Soc Trang on the way to Bac Lieu where ill stay tuesday then Wednesday morning ill ride to Nga Nam, where Nam means five and Nga means a meeting place and floating markets begin early. 

Lots of driving but the distances are all kind if short at forty or sixty km. 

oh and Ba Tri was amazing but I took no photos. 

Ben Tre