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.
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