Phlem this morning. Woke in early afternoon and realized why moto riders, mostly girls, wear masks - reminds of how smoggy is the air.
The masked faces are monkeyed and Disneyed and animated. Helmets pulled low, long sleeved arms pressed together in unregimented formation at lights swerving insanely around cars pedestrians bikes carrying stacked baskets five feet high above seat so driver one handed hold one handed steers and the couple men with an eight foot pipe nearly take apart my hip.
Threaded through it all is industry and the building trades; and the masked motos. My nose hasn't felt this clogged since first arriving in NYC.
[(Wunderground dot com reports 82/74 temp/humidity. It's mild my notes read.]
No more than heat spell of last July that zapped all strength. If this were the sauna at the Y I'd wring water over the coals.
Quick notes walking.
[ I went to the foot of Ham Nghi where one edition of one guidebook noted boats to the delta cities. I asked people in broken English spoken slowly with hand gestures. I must have looked like an octopus and sounded like a seal. I wanted to take a boat from the ferry dock that services the beach town that's not far from here. Where all the tourists go to break and burn. The trip I sought was from Saigon to Ben Tre.
No go. That service was discontinued a few years back. From the touts stood out a white shirted Saigon Travel lets call him a representative who told me about a ferry leaving from District 4 in the mornings. Its about four kilometers. He will take you by moto there for fifty [50,000] and indicated with a guiding hand to his right at a man standing rather humble but decidedly eager. My slow reaction of cost exchange, trustabity, veracity, safety took a couple stuttering moments. Ill talk about negation momentarily. Put the guy behind the deli counter into a jam where he squeezes his ass daily looking at the beach burned set in their pale or plastered coming or going and put him in a position of playing servant to the representative of touristic economy and we're light years away from the furtive eighteen year told he was on the block hoping to get more than a kiss from his girl. My umming ended and walked his way to the bike. Behind me the rep shouted to hurry to bring the moto over to take the customer to the ferry site to be safe to collect the fifty to come back to thank me [to thank me]. I missed something that I couldn't foresee him saying as I watched the driver run like the non-runner he was over to the bike. I can say I wanted to run with him but something told me to stop and wait for him to bring the bike to me. I did neither. He handed me a helmet and waited til I put it on. I straddled the seat and footed the pegs patted him on the waist and he drove off. I gripped the back of the scooter where the seat meets the frame where there's just enough room for my mits to hold on. These bikes are called xe om, where xe is moto and om means to hold on with your hands wrapped around the waist of the driver. We immediately left the lot and entered traffic in the wrong direction. I took note that it was the wrong fucking or fucking wrong direction but having witnessed the riders for a mere twenty four hours though nothing of his determination to cross kitty corner Ton Duc Thang. This is the most restrictive road I've crossed on foot with a major red striped barrier separating traffic in opposing directions so for him to get through it took that permanent scrunched ass character I'd initially succumbed to.
My biggest fear became my own ability to hang on should he slide out or brake hard. My thighs and feet were solid and my seat unsettled and arms relaxed but sturdy and grip locked tightly.
It was a trip. A navigation of extreme confidence in a greater belief of society. If there is anything more compassionately met with chaotic reality it's the spirit emitting from the xe om driver getting through town with a white man on his bike. I hope that sentence makes sense. The horn. The horn. And zoom zip a bike too close and like Asteroids the horn dissolves the imposing threat and again the horn as a truck pulls out crosswise to his route and from over his shoulder the truck transforms into a backhoe that was only jerking forward releasing a load.
My attention returned seconds later to the road in front of him. I was a spectator and had I been omming I might have felt his heart. The horn again and I thought of the battery drain of my camera each time I shoot and the lens retreats into the frame. Lucky for him the moto has a generator. Sometimes he spirits and then almost he stops. He pulls to the left of a truck and the right of that guy with the stacked baskets. He pauses on the gas as the bike goes low into its gears then turns down the throttle and back into a sprint. He crosses what might be a line in places or no division mark to get left of that truck where his shoulder might clip the mirror; oncoming traffic simply pull a bit to their right like people up and down the subway steps back home. He turns against traffic like push hands give way a bit then he's himself and defensive or offensive, it's hard to tell but there's a change. I recall distinctively how much this transit was a major success by negotiation. Again, I have little understanding of how this all work; I say today with three books of interest on my hotel desk that describe society in greater detail but seldom have I encountered in all if my travels a sublimely intent to believe in the other with certainty they believe the same, believe back. Chaos might be the wrong descriptor.
My notes do not capture this. I had no time on the streets to reflect. We arrived at the dock and there was nothing there. Two older women, older like seventy five and eighty, sat in chairs under partial shade of a cargo truck with a small table holding two cups of coffee and a stainless steel pot answered the drivers questions my questions as to the ferry. We had pulled into two previous lots along the water before he realized this was the place. There was a place where a large ferry of about fifty feet might pull up where flotsam held place by an industrial wharf. The ferry leaves at five today. Pause for inquiry. I leaves all days. Pause. How much, i ask. Seventeen. How long? Six hours. The tickets, i ask. Office? There's no office. On the boat. On the floatsam pile ill drop my cash like a burni g prayer into the water. I can't imagine a Vietnamese with an office job going down there at five am to catch a boat.
We rode away with him asking where I wanted to go. I told him to take me to District 1. He asked if he should take me to the hotel. I was vague. More of the traffic and it all felt normal like. The oncoming cars motos, there was one black Bronco-like truck that didn't seem to care about shit but he lasted one fifteenth of a second from my point of view. Half the moto riders wear masks and very few smoke cigarettes.
My notes don't read this. I had a chance to write a bit after stopping for soup I hope won't sicken me.]
Table plastic soup steams pork curled lettuce leave horns pitch high gears grind low what to do with plastic seal of Aquafina.
Dock at foot of Ham Nghi no go on cargo boat. Xo Am bike drove to district 4 dock where ferry leaves for Ben Tre at 5am everyday.
Silly me I didn't mark the spot on a map! That early is too soo to travel on memory.
The plastic table is on Le Thi Hong Gam at Ky Com. I came up Calmelte from where the driver left stopped over the Cau Calmelte. If we were in district 4 and I remember the general direction we rolled through the ferry was on the Cau Kenh Te canal or river I guess along Ton That Thuyet and I guess I didn't see a bridge leading over the canal or river I guess into district 7 so I'm going to ask Kim to ask if she knows of a ferry landing near Ton Dan a Main Street in D4.
Oh shit, now I see a temple on the map and recall one on a street so I'm all confused by the map itself. Kim will help.
I'm photographing hardware stalls & storefronts. There are small plastic baskets in what we might separate spoons in a kitchen door. Nails. My pulse races quicker than in a room full of bar girls. And then there are the sinks hanging from the awnings and steel shelves dismantled and a minuscule lady reclining in a plastic chair waiting for - who? - the competition is fierce along Calumelte not to mention - but I've just - the market full of tools and building supplies I wandered through yesterday looking for a simple small pocket knife and simple string. Nothing simple going on and a commercialism I can't fathom like that in the lives of deli workers back in the City but then again much more so. I've been hungry with shit jobs and broke with a poor attitude but I've never ... been ..
I am consoled by an improved breeze blowing the leaves, now limbs above me. Bikes pass by in both directions with such persistence I think of Aggasi and Federer. I don't know tennis either and feel my spirit decline. I harbor guilt over a quarrel I had with the xo am [xe om] driver when he dropped me off and we disagreed on the rate. He was right, the trip originally was priced at 50 [50,000 or 2USD] but I told him I would give him only 50 - he dropped me off not at the destination but in D1. He drove an extra kilometer out of his way and I pointed out that 50 isn't that much (to his disagreement) and that where we stopped is on his return to the pier at Ham Nghi.
When I withdrew a million earlier the receipt said I have 5 million remaining [available credit.] I can only hope that's not the case as there certainly should be more reason for me to be a rich white tourist. He'll I should be a multimillionaire.
There's nothing like crossing Trang Hung Dao to revive my spirits.
A man cleans a gearbox on the sidewalk. The part is in a plastic pan like you'd wash a baby. His brush dips into the solvent and strokes the steel casing.
Police in Poland once followed me three blocks while I stopped to write about everything and photograph all I saw.
[There are police and security and federal officers and they wear blue and green and tan and carry holster that have tools or bound pads but they don't carry guns except the heavies in high boots. These regulars sit on stools or stand around chatting or lean against upright poles outside banks and scooter stores and the fish vendor and the shoesman's stall where two hundred styles of brown and black rubber sandals are displayed.
I don't like this place but its beautiful in its way.
I try to get the xe om driver out of my mind he lurks there for a couple dollars. I've just fucked myself. How to forgive I don't know.]
Tom: The beauty you desired to find in your earlier posts looks like you are having difficulty locating as you race through the streets. I can only imagine the feelings you must have felt as you held on while a driver you not only don't know, but also have difficulty understanding drives frantically to get you to the dock on time. No wonder you forgot to get the location on the map... you were probably very grateful to be alive!
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe you wrote all of this on your iPhone!!!! unbelievable. I enjoyed reading this entry. I felt like I was on the Xe Om with you. I would have totally fallen off that thing. Can't wait to read your next entry.
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