On the Road in June and Beyond

Hullo people,

I'm starting a four-to-six week motorcycle trip in the morning, so I may resume this avenue of communication to keep people up on what's happening to me and the bike. Not sure yet how involved I'll get. Maybe Facebook will be more useful to people. I'm a newbie at FB so I'm not sure. I hear the kids are migrating to Pinterest. 

Anyhow, hope you all are doing fine and we'll see about this. If anyone's listening, I don't even know if I have followers.

Wednesday June 8 2018

Good days make boring stories. Today I rode to Paracas to see all the skulls and bones in the necropolis, bike broke down in the desert, walked it some kilometers back to town, found a mechanic who cleaned the corruption off the battery, went back out, took a wrong turn, came back to see the museum, got snarky at the staff and left without going in or getting my money back, headed for town, lost the bike on slick mud, had to have it lifted off me, rode the hour back to Ica, went to the ER, spent a couple hours or three watching people do paperwork and looking at the casualties on the gurneys in the corridor; got the good news that nothing is broken, limped home. Bought some ice for the foot which soaked the sheet. Now the guys in reception will think I wet the bed. Fine. What if I did? I may have to take a physical health day tomorrow while the swelling goes down. had to pry the foot clutch away from the engine with a wrench to shift gears. Handle bar is bent out of shape. Never saw no skulls or bones. Is that a good story?

After Action Report

Got back on the third dazed from sleep deprivation, retrieved the cats over the next couple days, putting my house in order step by step.  

The cats were thrilled to find themselves in their birth home again, deliriously affectionate. Now they're becoming acclimatised, and treat me with the same casual disregard and assumption of entitlement as ever. As it should be.

I seem to have lost what I hoped were some haunting twilight shots of  An Bang village at the end of Tet, paper lanterns in the night, so I leave with a pic of my favorite restaurant. I was tickled to see the red flags all around; they won and I'm glad. 

I now know how to remain here for as long as I want, but for one day out of country each year. Peru is good about that. So, as far as I can see, here I'll stay.

Hẹn Gặp Lại Viet Nam

See You Later, Viet Nam

End of story. In one day and a wake up, if nothing much happens, and whatever does will probably be just more same same, as they say here. 

Moved from Hoa's Place near Marble Mountain to Hippy House in An Bang village on the beach near Hoi An. One day I tried my "waterproof" video cam in the surf.

Went to the Old Town in Hoi An city, a tourist destination, and got me one a them pointy coolie hats. It is a colorful town. Vietnam is a colorful country. 

Hit a place where I had nothing to do but same same, so I broke up the tedium by getting a massage every day. I always liked a massage. The 60's were full of them, sometimes given with love. There are "spa's" up and down the street - these are real massage salons, "happy endings" are illegal here - so I decided to try a new place each day. Tet came, so some places closed, and I ended up being fought over by two, across the street from one another, the V Spa and the Coconut Spa. What fun. 

Not really, it's sort of uncomfortable; and finally narrowed down to the same masseuse anyhow; Nguyễn Xi. Both spas called her to come because she lives nearby and is good at her work. She gets better every day too, because she...well, I don't know why, she just does. 

So that's it, one more day, then five more airports. Vietnam is cool, I may come back; but finally there's nothing of personal interest here, I wasn't in the war. No Incas.

Warm beaches, fast internet, good food, and difference; those are what I came for, those are what I found. Now I know, I need to see the sea from time to time. If you listen back behind the rush of the surf, there's a deep primeval thunder, with a rhythm like a heartbeat. And the motion, the moving of it, measures time so beautifully.

Chùa Non Nước

Marble Mountain

There's Chùa Non Nước, Water Garden Temple, touristed as Marble Mountain, and it's true, there's a lot of white marble in its bones. It looks kind of like Pincuylluna in Ollantaytambo, which is a hard four-hour hike to the top, so I saved it for a good day. It was a good day, so I went up. Not so tough, but the steep stone stairs require a rest for breath every now and then.

It's full of painted temples, fancy with sculpted dragons and pagoda roofs, mostly modern moulded concrete, and cookie-cutter Buddhas - the Machu Picchu of Vietnam; but likewise, the mountain does have its spirit and behind the new-age music piped from plastic rocks there is a serenity that endures. And a 360 degree view full of choreographed feathered beings.

Hoa rented me this 100 cc Honda Wave.

Took the bike into the countryside a couple days ago. There is a lot of beauty here, much colourful architecture, real farmers in coolie hats planting rice paddies. Such an easy place to live, so smooth, will it seduce me away from the hard strong mountains and chill nights? As I secretly feared coming here?

And the crash - the definitive intentions of the word don't describe what the waves do, but the sound of the word, the onomatopoeia, does; carashhhhhh...

The crash of the surf, the mighty unending motion, is a panacea for the soul. A profound nourishment. The vision of it and the sound. What a great place to pace, if you want to think, or just reverie.

The construction is a virus, a new wall went up this morning blocking the view from this street. New sprawling resorts everywhere. The Vietnam vets talk of the thatched huts that used to be metropolitan Danang. This little street is I think government-owned, and for at least fifteen years will not be overbuilt. After that, the beaches will still be there. And if we fish the oceans out, leaving nothing but jellyfish, or anaerobic bacteria in the Challenger Deep, wait a while. It'll be back. With new and alien creatures, not ours or us.

Tôi bắt đầu hôm nay

It starts today


It was a bad night, last night. Again the urge to bug out. 

It doesn't come often anymore, the darkness, the times when the essential nature of the universe seems hostile. When it does, it's as if someone has turned a switch from "Good" to "Bad," and the needle of the meter drops back below the zero tick. 

Just little events; restaurants rejected me. I searched for a fancy place to get me some of that Vietnamese cuisine; finally found some big open places with tables spilling onto the sidewalk, perfect, but one place just ignored me, and when I asked the second place for a menu the girl looked at me with an unflattering eye and shook her head. Now I twigged that these places were for drinks, not food. Cafes. So I foraged for evidence of food, and found a place with photos of food on the wall, and an 8-year-old girl in a blue dress working hard to be professional, ushering me in with that bowing sweeping gesture. Too young for English, so I said, struggling to remember and pronounce, "Toi muoc an thuc an."  I have to repeat it. At this point her big brother enters stage right; she says to her bro, "thức ăn," correcting my accent from "took" to "tuck." The young guy comes at me with a lot of Vietnamese, though I'm obviously incapable, and they seem to be laughing at me; at any rate, they didn't move in the direction of taking an order and getting me some thức ăn, so I go away.

At last a place with a sign reading "restaurant," and those pictures of food on the wall. I entered, and asked in VN and english for a menu. The guy, about 25, kind of scowl/sneered at me and just said "no." He turned away, I went away.

That was that hit on my mood, plus I'd observed that the pants guys and another cabbie had both overcharged me a lot. And I let them.

And it is so clear that my Vietnamese studies will never amount to more than a game played to ingratiate myself with the locals.


The natives don't seem so friendly any more, the place has a sinister lens over it.

Then there were the expats. Keith and John, Peter, Paul, Tom and his Asian wife who never says anything. For good reason, her husband talks over everybody all the time.

Okay, in these is Peter, an Aussie who seems to have the most time in country, Keith, a Vietnam Vet (27th Marines, '68), his big, strong looking buddy John - they met working in Alaska, travel together to various continents - an airforce guy who knew Hoa in the war; and tall Tom. There's a surfer dude, a French kid, and more coming and going.

Tom annoys me; whenever anyone says anything to him he grabs the conversation at the first pause and shoehorns his own story into it. But he's gregarious, he welcomes everyone into his world, he is a warm place to go. And in contrast I feel like a sour snotty snob. The others too, all friendly, always greeting me by name and pulling me into their circle. Keith gave me a little lump of 420, Paul a rolling paper. 

And Thuy, my would-have-been hostess, emailed me inviting me to dinner tonight at a restaurant in downtown Da Nang. I know she's doing it because she feels she owes me for that canceled rez; she doesn't really want to spend her friday night with an old man. I can't ignore the certainty of that fact.

So now I'm a little in debt to the expats. Keith won't take payment. And I refuse Paul's invitation to join him and the French kid playing pool, and later Keith's invite to join them in his room for "a smoke." I just didn't have it in me to be other than alone. Every one of these things is a little hit on my store of good feeling. It's bleeding out, and my sense of myself is tanking because of these events. I don't like or admire myself.

Early on the surfer guy showed up, in his mid-fifties I'd guess, tall, long blond hair, wide shoulders and slim hips, flat belly. All the flat bellies around here, even the grown up Viets, slim and hard, and kids, their guts go in under their ribs, not out, they're what young men should be.

I've been ballooning for almost three years now and I hate it. I can't find a way out. Before, in the States, I lived on Slimfast drinks during the diet months, exactly 120 calories per; and the calorie count is printed on just about everything you buy there; I had a spreadsheet for the rest. I had weights, and worked out six days a week; and ran about four miles, too. Then I moved away from those things and lost control. 

All this turned the dial to back below the zero point. I recognised that black smoke snaking around me from long ago. I don't want to go back there again.

Woke at 1:30 am, went downstairs for a connection (wifi was still not up in my room), dicked around on the web until after 3 am, came back up. Mosquitos kept strafing me. I got up, turned on the over-bright overhead lights, went hunting. Turned out there were two of them. Never got them, as far as I know, but they did desist after a while so I tried to sleep. Don't know if I did.

But come dawn, there is some of that "new day" thing, and I'm ready to consider choices. I have an inner list of things to do. The big one is:

No more. It ends here. Today I start working back to a 32" inch waist and don't stop until I'm there. How? 

Run. Six days a week. 

Never eat 'til you're full. Small portions, no alcohol, roll the starch back. 

Resume stretching (for the self respect), and working out. Pushups, sit ups, and knee bends I can do these without a bench. Keep it up in Peru.

I ran the beach; it is the best track in the world, or none better. Hard sand and beauty all around. Ran south, past the resorts, to where the citizens come down to net-fish in the surf. Pulled up above the tideline, coracles. Yes, those round boats the Irish used to...I don't know what they did with them, they seem like the silliest sea craft to try to steer, you'd just paddle in a circle? But there they were, maybe a dozen. Then there was no one. Fuh. A fine wide two-hundred-million dollar tropical beach and at seven in the morning no one on it but the fat old fuck. I try to keep running, not plodding, but have to remind myself over and over when I slow to think. 

After a while, I'm going, "why am I not out of breath?" Well, really, why? I don't know. Keep an eye on it.

And while I ran, I thought, "you want to crumple up in a ball because the popular guys in 7th grade are mean to you? That's all it takes? They were mean for real once, me all alone in hostile country, and I left their stinking corpses on the battlefield and walked off licking my sword clean.

Can't pinpoint the turnaround I took, but guessing conservatively it was about 3.4 kilometers down.

I try the stretches. Ow ow ow. Be three weeks before I start to feel right.

But now, peeps, I have something worth doing while here. So I bought breakfast for the expats - got Hoa to not tell them until I had paid, and they, bless their hearts, didn't mention it to me. I know what to say to Thuy, the wifi finally reached my room, Hoa will let me stay until the 23rd - he closes for Tết - and he has agreed to rent me a Honda Wave 100 cc motorbike for a month, at VND 800,000. That's like $35. The pretty girl in the place in town was asking VND three million. 

(Parenthetical: I just found Hoa quoted in a 2015 article of the Guardian newspaper; and the main character in the story was by here today.)

So this place is harder to take than Peru, not so easy to understand, to talk to people, to find what you want. Not so easy to feel tough here. But damn if I'm going to cut and run; I'll do my time in the world. And then go look for my cats. 

Proof positive that cargo cults exist in modern Vietnam. And volcano virgins.

I notice that you can't see the drone flitting around overhead if you full-screen the vid; only in the little version. You need that flying tech for the cargo cult reference.

Tôi muốn mua quần

I want to buy pants

Yesterday I did a couple hours locked in conflict with a cab driver and lost. Police were involved, the cab company, various civilians. He said I hadn't paid him the two hundred and fifteen thousand dong (about $9.50), I said I had given him a blue 500k bill. Variables were involved but in the end he could prove he had taken fares enough to explain the 500,000 dong bill in his pocket, but I didn't have figures to show I was short that amount. I didn't really remember how many $20 bills I'd given Hoa, the hotelier, to change,so I didn't know how much I should have left. The driver had a good reputation and seemed like a good guy to me, except that I could remember damn it handing him that bill.

In the end I caved. I went home bewildered and aback, still trying to put the pieces together. Now I lean toward him being right and me wrong, parsing out the data. Funny though, I noted I would rather be wrong, memory tricking me, than that I be tricked by them. I wonder what that says about me.

All right. I got back with my suitcase - that's what I needed the cab for - and a local sim for the cell. Still digging Vietnam.

I'm thinking now, even, that I'll cut out all the travel in the middle of this trip - to Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia - and just stay here. I just want to be here. Not to do all those airports, security checks, visa hassles. Might could even push the return date back a while. If Hoa gets the wifi put in; now I'm piggybacking on his personal wifi, which doesn't reach all the way to my room.

But this place is great; a moonlight walk on the beach was so beautiful it made me lonely. The air is warm and embracing. I was anticipating a complex aroma of spices, sweat, incense, but this isn't the teeming Orient in 1922; many of the scooter riders wear mouth and nose masks against the pollution from Da Nang. I don't notice anything.

I can see the beach from the balcony, between the Wermacht bunkers of new resort construction, surreal in the soft blurred night with a rainbow ring around the moon. 

But the pants, man. I knew I'd need shorts here, but chose not to bring any because I wanted to get them organically, in situ. Today was the day. I picked a hopeful direction, east, and walked past the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and long bearded maybe Lao Tsu's and stylised lions, all smiling, all statues, into the town of blocky concrete buildings with balconies, and didn't see a store for half an hour. After a while I jigged onto street with some little groceries, a lot of tea shops, mechanics - children said "hello" to me, I came back "chào bởi sáng," a woman too hello'd me as she directed her wheeled cartload of bricks onto the street. She's not getting fat. Once I saw a little hole-in-the-wall tailor.

Thing is, I'm in Buddha Statue District. Those stores continue to dominate the economy clear up along this great wide street, half a kilometer from my street, also full of Buddha statues. Cargo Pants District must be somewhere else.

Finally a big boulevard, three lanes each way, but block after block the closest I came to an emporium of cargo pants was a sports store with some bike shorts I wouldn't wear. On and on, block and block of motorbikes parked up on the slanting curb (one of those tricked me and I fell on my hands amazed), bikes and cars honking at each other, Asians talking Asian. Google maps told me I had doubled back way past my own territory, behind the pagoda peak in post below. 

I figured, one more block and I'll cut across to my road, the one that runs by the beach, not so likely but maybe something there. Got to the corner, hesitated, thought okay, one more block. In the middle was a cargo pants store. I kid thee not. Two skinny guys ushered me in and we laboured to find a 36" waist in this land of small lean men. Yeah, I used to be a 30". So. Just as I shrugged it off and walked to the door guy #2 called me back and now I wear these perfect, just what I wanted, pocket pants. How close I came to failure. 

Pantsed, I cut back across the beach road to the sea, walked the two or three kilometers past endless high-price resorts shoulder-to-shoulder, paying maybe $450 a night for a beach view, and the windows all curtained and nobody on the beach but me. 

And I pay $20 a night and sleep with the window open to listen to the surf.

Yeah, I might stay here and settle in for a while. But then, too, I'm looking forward to not having to study Vietnamese anymore. I like the language but I don't want to have to have to learn it.

Tôi không phuct trên China bãi biển

I am not phuct on China Beach

Looked like I was phuct last night, I stared into the malignant scowl of the "I'm getting out of here right now" monster.

I know I said this blog was done, but this is just too interesting. 

Every little thing went smooth on this trip, and everything I did was right, until I landed in Vietnam.

In Changi airport, Singapore, I learned by email that I had given Thuy Le, my hostess near Hoi An, the wrong arrival date. I didn't count all those hours. So she waited at Danang airport for two hours and I didn't show.

Rushing through customs to get to her before she lost faith again and left, the world threw obstacles at me. A form I hadn't (seen or) filled out, time at the visa window, time at lost and found because my main bag got stuck in LAX and won't be here until later today (if). 

She showed up all smiles and I learned - shoulda known - that she doesn't have a car, she's got a little bitty Honda scooter. She crammed my carryon between her legs, I got on the back, we did the 45 minutes to her place. 

I put down my bags and took a walk to the beach. Joked with her that I'd get lost and spend the night shivering in the rain.

I did get lost. Her folks' place is behind a crowd of bigger-than-life Buddhist statues between two hotels. Can't miss it.

The street is lined with places selling big Buddhas, and I couldn't, in the dark, find two hotels divided by a crowd of them. 

Mean Buddha Nice Buddha

Finally I did, further down than I thought, and got back to be told I had to pack up and go. Her drunk dad had a fit about strangers in the house. I was her first Airbnb guest and I guess they hadn't really wired the old dude into it.

I realised also that because of the hurry I have no Dong. My money's all in US dollars.

She sets me up with a place next door, one of those hotels, for the same price. I get inside, and find that none of the wall plugs work. I can't recharge my electronics. That's critical; the battery on this Mac air drains fast and I'm going to have to do a lot on online work to get myself out of this.

On top of all that, nobody here even recognises that I'm trying to speak their language. The simple phrases I've learned mean nothing to them.

Seriously, I'm ready to get the fuck back to Peru on the next flight out.

But hey.

In the middle of the night I notice that the bathroom light is on; it wouldn't light up when I was testing the plugs. I try the laptop, the charger light comes on.

Main bugaboo bugs out.

Dawn. I fire up the internet (wifi's good and strong), start checking out other places. But on the walk to the beach - China Beach, the place that 80's Vietnam War series with the loopy Irish nurse takes place - I saw a hotel-type place with gringos knocking back beers, and a skinny local dude waves to me in English. So I check it out. 

Now note, my bag is a day late. Thuy had a scooter. If my bag had been on time, no way we could have got it on that bike. It is big and heavy. And no place to leave it at the airport. Bad thing is good thing. And Thuy's room, well, I didn't like it. The cabinets were all clearly her family's and the only other thing in the room was her bed. I would not be comfortable there at all. But the place next door is a commercial hotel with a standard private room. So when her dad 86'd me, he did me a favor. Good thing.

This morning in the foyer, the little lady understood my Good morning and Thank you and lit up; and the rest - her man, sister, friend, gathered 'round and helped correct my accent and the like, all smiling. One man asked if I'd been to China Beach, the location in Vietnamese and then English, and since I had nothing to say in VN I just said, "Wet feet." They got that and laughed.

My room is chilly so I go out with the bomber jacket, but outside it is wet heat. Not oppressive, but too much for the jacket, so I take it back upstairs.

Here is Vietnam. Balmy, full of Buddhas and motorcycles and those mountains, those aren't American north or south; those aren't European. Those are cool chocolate drop hills from Chinese watercolors. And the air is different. 

Hoa's not there yet, but his wife cooks me breakfast, and it's good, and it's cheap. Then he comes.

Hoa - he's on the web, he's been there for 26 years - speaks our tongue, he's been hosting gringo expats probably since the war and knows the slang. He's friendly and he's got rooms for $10, $15, and $20. He's kind of a legend.

The $20 has a balcony and looks out over the ocean. Damn. My dream. I've got a place right on the beach. 

And, dig it, this is his new place. Just moved. First day open. I'm his first guest. He changes out my $US for Dong at a better rate than I had calculated ($1.00 = 22,569 Dong. Breakfast was Dong $4000). Cab to the airport will be about D15,000. I've run out of problems.

Now, wifi's not in yet; but he gives his word it'll be running today. So I'm still in the old place until maybe noon to keep wired.

If that comes true, I've run out of problems and I'm in a helluva place. So much to check out. Warm days and wide seas.

I want to tell you about the ride in last night.

On the back of Thuy's scooter, holding her lightly by the waist, nervous at first because I'm not confident of her skills and the streets are crazy crowded - thousands, no shit, of small bikes, weaving in and out of each other like a vast school of fish, like a great flock of of birds taking off over the sea, shifting and swirling. Dark falls, the night is warm, the city is strange,I learn to trust her; we thread across lanes of hundreds of bikes, tail lights and head lights like paper lanterns, all beeping but knowing the drill, making way for each other like, magically, impossibly - she cuts right across the flow of traffic four lanes wide to make a turn, and somehow it works. Riders come directly into traffic the wrong way at speed and everyone is cool with that. She makes a turn into slight traffic, quiet, there is a pagoda, then back into the luminous throng, I feel like I'm in a dream. Pressed up against her I'm tempted to get a hard-on, but I decline. Or am just too far gone. All the riders young and old with multicoloured helmets and raincoats. There's a guy with US kevlar on his head; a girl with an iridescent poncho flowing, a vast flight of others in the night. 

Chào mừng bạn đến viet nam. Welcome to Vietnam. I've figured out what words I need to know next. I should be able to pull this off. 

There may never be another good selfie mirror