So it’s the next day. We slept at a hostel the night before. The bed was a glorified concrete floor with stilts on it. Not complaining, just describing, ok maybe complaining a little. Didn’t matter at that point, we’re off the bus and one step closer to where the Lord asked us to go.
Morning comes, and its time to find a cheaper joint closer to town. My team is already over budget this month from expenses local and long distance travel. At the end of the month we fly from Hanoi to Bangkok before the squad meets up to depart on what seems the most roundabout journey, and last leg of the race, to Nicaragua.
Hanoi to Bangkok to Tokyo to LA to Miami to Managua.
Thank goodness for a logistic support team in the states. Not a gig I envy.
Back to the story. Over-budget yada yada yada…so we forgo the cab in favor of walking the 3km to the hostel while carrying all of our gear across town. Now two packs with your whole life in it may not seem like a lot to you…but carrying that stuff all over the world makes me realize how much crap we live with that we don’t ever use or need. The word “need� gets whittled down more and more on the race, bringing it back to its original meaning. There is a large difference between “need� and “have.� A larger difference even between “need� and “want,� but that’s another blog for another day.
Moral of the story being my junk is heavy to lug around. I gotta drop some pack weight. So I drop a couple shirts, a pair of plaid shorts popular in the late 90’s I’ve managed to hold onto this long, and tear out some 150 pages I’ve already read in a 350 page book on how ‘Che’ Guevara was probably much more of a communist tool than the hero revoluntionary naive college sophomores where around campus. How about that for a run-on sentence?
Anyways, tangent averted. Story continued.
The girls took the pack thing in stride though. No complaints. We’re a walking tourist attraction here; one pack on our backs and one on our bellies. Tourist attraction meaning people are attracted to the tourist. Not in the pushy “bye-my-stuff-discount-for-you-sir� type way, but in a curious “what-are-these-whitey’s-doing-here-lets-welcome-them-to-Vietnam� way. Lots of smiles. Mostly laughs though. You get used to the stares after country two and constant finger pointing with shouting of “mzungu’s� throughout Africa.
We make it to our destination but turns out the words “yes� over the phone has translated to “no, no.� We can’t stay.
See its Tet holiday, the Chinese New Year, and we have arrived on New Year’s Eve in a town where few foreigners ever stop. People go to beaches when they travel. They hit up the largest cities and stay where all the other tourist stay to find deals on overpriced drinks, cheap smokes, and over synthesized techno music. In fact, I would wager to say most travelers never actually see what actually makes up the countries they visit. They see what they want to see, they see what’s comfortable. It’s my opinion few travelers dive into the unknown. Thus why we are in a fairly large city of 200,000 plus and haven’t seen one foreigner in three days.
Sorry. I did it again. Tangent number two. My bad.
The reason we can’t stay here has been explained to us by our translator friend on the phone in HCMC that they are afraid they cops will come wondering why five Americans and a Canadian are here? The hostel owner politely invites us in for tea and then to be on our way.
I’ll spare you the cliff hanger.
The Lord provides.
Read the next one.
In an undisclosed location,
Salley
