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.
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.
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