I may be sharing some stories soon where you'll want some photo evidence, which unfortunately I cannot provide. This is the post explaining why.
Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:20am in Hoi An, on the central coast of Vietnam. Hoi An is a beautiful city with roots as a centuries-old trading port, with well-established Chinese and Japanese trading colonies. Their architectural legacies are remarkably well-perserved. As a major port in olden times but its modern position usurped by Da Nang, Hoi An has much of the same feel as Malacca in Malaysia. Though the shophouses have long been converted to cater their services (souvenirs and beer) to tourists, the old town center is kept motorcycle and car free, which is a HUGE relief. Vietnamese streets can be hectic and loud, with extremely liberal horn use making me ask the question whether cars and motorcycles should be designed without horns.
The port of Hoi An was likely settled over a millenium ago by the Cham people, who ruled the region before the modern Vietnamese (Kinh) people came around the 14th century. The Cham people were related to modern Malay and Indonesian people and practiced Hinduism, the region's first major religion. They built a ton of temples in their spiritual capital called My Son about an hour from Hoi An up the mountains. This was where I was heading to at 5 o'clock in the morning.
I was taking a bus to Buon Ma Thuot at 3pm, and the sunrise temple visit would be back by 10, so I figured why not. The My Son visit was a morning well spent, and the sturdy stupas of unknown construction methodology were fascinating. I was more moved though by a bomb crater caused by Americans with poor judgment that destroyed a major temple.
I got back to my hotel at 2:40 and I figured I had some time, so why not grab another Banh Mi. I was back 10 minutes later baguette in hand and was told that my ride was here. Early, but I don't see any bus? A rough-looking man tells me "I take you" and grabbed my luggage and threw them over his lap in the same motion he jumped on his scooter. Ah...I was hoping to not do a motorbike ride with all my luggage on me, but he ensured me this was just going down the street. And indeed a block later he jumped off in front of his travel company, only for someone else to take over and take me the rest of the way to the bus station. A much younger man got on and with one hand gripping the back of the seat and my other hand gripping the Banh Mi, I went on for a ride. And this ride was not just down the street. We weaved through traffic into the countryside, passing slow trucks and bikers while getting passed by cars. At one point a massive tour bus honks right behind us and my heart skipped three beats. Though my driver was going at a pace typical for what I'd seen in Vietnam, it was still absolutely terrifying. I'd driven my own scooter for a day in Sapa, and it was significantly scarier being behind someone else, completely out of control, than it was driving myself. I'd been on the back of a motorbike in Burma once, but that was in an empty countryside and felt very chill. This ride through the streets of Hoi An was the opposite of very chill. Now outside of the city going through rice paddies and sparse developments, I was barely able to appreciate the views around me. I spent more time thinking about which body parts I'd want to protect more in a fall - I really wanted to keep my teeth.
Finally mercifully the driver slowed down. I jumped off the scooter and gathered my belongings. In my pure terror I had morphed my Banh Mi into a panini. Looking around, I realized there was no bus station. I was at the side of the highway with a few people who seemed to work for the bus company, who I realized were basically helping me hitchhike onto the 16 hour bus ride. While I broke out my Kindle and tried to displace myself from this spot into storyland, this crew opened up a durian-looking plant and called me over. "You!" A guy peeled off a piece of this tropical fruit - it's rind was guava-colored and the fruit a bit more orange like - and mimed what parts to throw away and what to eat. It was a pretty delicious fruit and about as much of a connection as I could make at that time.
The bus did arrive and quickly my bags were thrown underboard and I was taking off my shoes and stepping aboard. Apparently you take your shoes off when you enter these sort of overnight buses and place them in a plastic bag. The bus has two aisles between three columns of double bunk leather chairs that can recline into a nearly flat position. I had taken one for a couple hours on the way up from Da Nang to Hue, and that one had been full of backpackers. This time I was the only non-Vietnamese person in sight. But there was wifi. I settled into my seat and dove into my Kindle.
I was reading "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze" by Peter Hessler, one of the diamonds in the China expat literature. Hessler is a well known China writer amongst China Watchers, and I'd heard him first in Sinica. I'd resisted reading this book because a) I don't really like hearing white people tell me what China is all about and b) I was worried he'd have a lot of great insights on China and that I'd really like. I think any person who ever dives deep into a very different culture, especially westerners in China, like to think that they're having unique experiences. To read lessons you learned the hard way written onto paper a decade earlier can be quite humbling. And that's precisely what happened. Hessler joined the Peace Corps volunteers in 1996 and was part of the first group sent to Fuling, China (now part of the massive Chongqing metropolis). My friend Devon had joined the Peace Corps in 2011 and sent to Guiyang. Because I had visited him there, I had some picture of the life of the volunteers - very budget, many personal relationships with English students, and very often being the first foreigner someone has ever spoken to. But every year China becomes easier and easier to live in - tracing backward to 1996, Hessler's experience is particularly impressive. As he writes about traveling multiple nights by boat down the Yangtze and waking up to find a rat crawling on him, I stopped feeling sorry for myself being on this 16 hour bus ride. Hessler also very cleverly showed his Chinese improving through this two years with more fleshed out conversation excerpts.
I snapped back into my decidedly less adventurous Vietnamese trip. The sun was dropping and we were still rolling down the coast, no sign of turning westward into the mountains. I had no control over anything - when you're on these local buses, it seems like everyone else knows what's going on except you. I could only stick to what I knew, and the wifi was slow - one of my podcasts took over four hours to download. Towards the end of the night we made a pitstop. Sometimes these stops are to stretch and pee, and sometimes they are to eat and I needed to guess what this one was. Other people seemed to sit down to eat, and I awkwardly looked around for a menu. No one was helping me and I was thinking of just saying "pho bo" (beef pho noodles) before I was invited into a table with five or six dishes. Very graciously we all shared rice, vegetables, eggs and meat in a comfortable and delicious meal. I regretted that my Vietnamese wasn't anywhere as good as Hessler's Mandarin and could only muster out thank you numerous times.
In the middle of the night, I awoke sweating, having fallen asleep with my jacket on. I was emerging for a deep sleep haze and in taking off my jacket I think my phone may have fallen off. My earbuds were still on me, but when I pulled on them, they returned unanchored. Well my phone must have dropped onto my seat somewhere. I reach this way and that, check my jacket pockets and come up with nothing. I resignedly get up out of my seat and in alarm I see that the phone isn't anywhere on my seat, nor clearly on the ground. I start grasping at the cracks and crevices at the sides of the leather seat and as the minutes pass I get more and more alarmed. The guy next to me stirs from his slumber and looks at me, clearly understanding that I've lost something. "iPhone six," I say. "iPhone sao" using the Vietnamese word for 6. The lighting is very dim though and I don't have much of a chance to look carefully. I'm exhausted and resignedly go back to sleep in an anxious state.
I need to use Find My iPhone. I can get my laptop in my backpack and access the wifi. We make another stop, to let a passenger off I deduce, and I go up and ask the driver if I can get my bag. He doesn't understand me and gestures at me to get back at my seat. I plead "iPhone sao iPhone sao" but he doesn't understand. I give an agitated sigh and go back to my seat. The rest of the ride was a bunch of frustrated searching in vain. My phone was just there in my hands, and now it's gone.
When we reach our destination, I angrily scramble and get my luggage and come back onto the bus. "I need to find something....I need to find something." Mutual comprehension starts to spread throughout the bus, and people start helping me search with flashlights. There are numerous hard to reach places on the back of the bus, and I get down on the ground to reach in behind the seats. These are some filthy places but I was desperate. One of the people on the bus gave me his phone and I made an international call, but the engine was still on and I couldn't hear anything. It took some shouting but eventually they turned the engine off. This time I heard buzzing! It seemed like maybe my phone had shifted all the way over to the other side of the bus, but I couldn't pinpoint it. We searched for maybe 20 minutes there before they told me we had to go. I pleaded with them, but they told I could stay on the bus. We had stopped some place outside Buon Ma Thuot and they would continue driving to their bus services spot inside the city and I could search there for a longer time. At least that's what I deduced after the fact - at the time, I was kinda freaking out and just nodding along.
With the weak wifi, it took me 20 minutes or so to get onto icloud. I buzzed and could hear a faint sound, and the laptop told me the phone was still on the bus. Try as I did though, I really couldn't figure out where the phone was. The other people kept calling it nonstop, even though I told them please stop, the Find My iPhone beep was louder. I google translated the word "unscrew" and got them to understand to take off some of the seats. They eventually unscrewed my seat and another seat, and with a flashlight I looked everywhere. Everywhere. Could not find it. They kept calling it until I must've run out of battery. The Find My iPhone showed a dead phone. Nothing. I was on the verge of tears the entire time. I'd been looking for it for over an hour and it was still not even 7am, and I'd barely slept on this 16 hour bus ride. It's among the lower moments I can recall feeling. Ultimately I believe the phone had fallen into some mysterious hole in the floorboards and was bouncing around underneath my feet. The vibrations and rings were echoing all over the place, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint. Anyway, it wasn't really possible to remove the floor boards on that operational bus.
I eventually left in anguish, taking their business card, looked up my guesthouse address on my laptop and showed it to a taxi driver. Then I put my laptop in my backpack and the trunk and sat back in defeat. The driver drove a block or two, started going really slowly in search of the address, then gestured for a map or something. I replied in frustration, "I don't have a phone...." Man I relied on that thing for everything. He said something that clearly meant I have no f***ing clue where I'm going. I couldn't have been more frustrated. Eventually I got out, opened the trunk and took my laptop out again. I opened up the email with the address again, and he took a harder look then backed up a block. He rolled down his window and asked someone on the street to throw him a lifeline, then eventually he turned down into the right street. Turns out my guesthouse was literally a block away from where the bus had ended, and where my phone was presumably hiding from me. The guesthouse was closed, but I knocked very loudly on the door in some desperation. It took minutes for a blurry-eyed man to open the door. "Sorry we don't have any open rooms right now," he said in great English, the first spoken English I'd heard in a day. I plead in response, "I'm booked here tonight! Sorry I'm early, but please let me in. I just lost my phone." He relents and informs me my room will be ready at 9am. He's a nice guy but I think he resents me for the rest of my trip for waking him up. I eventually brought him along to the bus people and told them I'd offer $100 if they found the phone, but this was actually laughed off.
So I had a terrible time in Buon Ma Thuot. The coffee was great, but not really that much better than everywhere else in Vietnam. While it was freeing in some ways walking around without a smart phone, like we all did pre 2010 or whatnot, I'll leave with this story of just how reliant I'd become. I stayed in town only one night, getting a ticket for the 9am bus to Ho Chi Minh City the next day. I couldn't set an alarm, because I used my phone for that, but I went to sleep before midnight and figured I'd be ok. I woke up peacefully the next morning and leisurely yawning out of bed, I checked what time it was on my computer. 8:54am. Holy crap. I hurriedly threw my laptop into my bag, grabbed all my stuff, double checked my valuables and ran downstairs. The guesthouse people see me and say "oh your bus is leaving soon!" Thanks guys, great help. They help me into a cab, take my money and luckily I do make it onto the bus. It's 8 hours to HCMC and I'm meant to stay at my friend Sam Axelrod's US state department housing. He had left me good instructions for how to get there, but unfortunately they were via Whatsapp, and I couldn't access that now. I had meant to wake up that morning and contact him, but alas I'd left without enough time. Luckily the bus did have wifi and I did have a kindle, which I had never previously used to access the browser. I managed to figure it out and send Sam a facebook message, and got his apartment name in English. However when I arrived the people I spoke to had no idea where this place was. I had to lug my stuff across a super busy Vietnamese horror show of a 4 lane street, and find a cafe with wifi. I found the address on google maps and wrote it out with the proper Vietnamese accents and finally hailed down a cab.
What's the morale of this story? Keep track of your phone while you sleep? (Yes) Be less reliant on technology? (Maybe) Don't worry so much about material objects? (Sure) I don't know. I bought a new phone in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm most upset about the loss of photos - everything in Da Nang and Hoi An were on that phone - and the cash I had to shelve out, which is still more than I've spent on everything else thus far on the month-long trip. Ultimately though it hasn't been too much of a setback, nothing like bodily injury or the loss of a passport. Life goes on.
Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:20am in Hoi An, on the central coast of Vietnam. Hoi An is a beautiful city with roots as a centuries-old trading port, with well-established Chinese and Japanese trading colonies. Their architectural legacies are remarkably well-perserved. As a major port in olden times but its modern position usurped by Da Nang, Hoi An has much of the same feel as Malacca in Malaysia. Though the shophouses have long been converted to cater their services (souvenirs and beer) to tourists, the old town center is kept motorcycle and car free, which is a HUGE relief. Vietnamese streets can be hectic and loud, with extremely liberal horn use making me ask the question whether cars and motorcycles should be designed without horns.
The port of Hoi An was likely settled over a millenium ago by the Cham people, who ruled the region before the modern Vietnamese (Kinh) people came around the 14th century. The Cham people were related to modern Malay and Indonesian people and practiced Hinduism, the region's first major religion. They built a ton of temples in their spiritual capital called My Son about an hour from Hoi An up the mountains. This was where I was heading to at 5 o'clock in the morning.
I was taking a bus to Buon Ma Thuot at 3pm, and the sunrise temple visit would be back by 10, so I figured why not. The My Son visit was a morning well spent, and the sturdy stupas of unknown construction methodology were fascinating. I was more moved though by a bomb crater caused by Americans with poor judgment that destroyed a major temple.
I got back to my hotel at 2:40 and I figured I had some time, so why not grab another Banh Mi. I was back 10 minutes later baguette in hand and was told that my ride was here. Early, but I don't see any bus? A rough-looking man tells me "I take you" and grabbed my luggage and threw them over his lap in the same motion he jumped on his scooter. Ah...I was hoping to not do a motorbike ride with all my luggage on me, but he ensured me this was just going down the street. And indeed a block later he jumped off in front of his travel company, only for someone else to take over and take me the rest of the way to the bus station. A much younger man got on and with one hand gripping the back of the seat and my other hand gripping the Banh Mi, I went on for a ride. And this ride was not just down the street. We weaved through traffic into the countryside, passing slow trucks and bikers while getting passed by cars. At one point a massive tour bus honks right behind us and my heart skipped three beats. Though my driver was going at a pace typical for what I'd seen in Vietnam, it was still absolutely terrifying. I'd driven my own scooter for a day in Sapa, and it was significantly scarier being behind someone else, completely out of control, than it was driving myself. I'd been on the back of a motorbike in Burma once, but that was in an empty countryside and felt very chill. This ride through the streets of Hoi An was the opposite of very chill. Now outside of the city going through rice paddies and sparse developments, I was barely able to appreciate the views around me. I spent more time thinking about which body parts I'd want to protect more in a fall - I really wanted to keep my teeth.
Finally mercifully the driver slowed down. I jumped off the scooter and gathered my belongings. In my pure terror I had morphed my Banh Mi into a panini. Looking around, I realized there was no bus station. I was at the side of the highway with a few people who seemed to work for the bus company, who I realized were basically helping me hitchhike onto the 16 hour bus ride. While I broke out my Kindle and tried to displace myself from this spot into storyland, this crew opened up a durian-looking plant and called me over. "You!" A guy peeled off a piece of this tropical fruit - it's rind was guava-colored and the fruit a bit more orange like - and mimed what parts to throw away and what to eat. It was a pretty delicious fruit and about as much of a connection as I could make at that time.
The bus did arrive and quickly my bags were thrown underboard and I was taking off my shoes and stepping aboard. Apparently you take your shoes off when you enter these sort of overnight buses and place them in a plastic bag. The bus has two aisles between three columns of double bunk leather chairs that can recline into a nearly flat position. I had taken one for a couple hours on the way up from Da Nang to Hue, and that one had been full of backpackers. This time I was the only non-Vietnamese person in sight. But there was wifi. I settled into my seat and dove into my Kindle.
I was reading "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze" by Peter Hessler, one of the diamonds in the China expat literature. Hessler is a well known China writer amongst China Watchers, and I'd heard him first in Sinica. I'd resisted reading this book because a) I don't really like hearing white people tell me what China is all about and b) I was worried he'd have a lot of great insights on China and that I'd really like. I think any person who ever dives deep into a very different culture, especially westerners in China, like to think that they're having unique experiences. To read lessons you learned the hard way written onto paper a decade earlier can be quite humbling. And that's precisely what happened. Hessler joined the Peace Corps volunteers in 1996 and was part of the first group sent to Fuling, China (now part of the massive Chongqing metropolis). My friend Devon had joined the Peace Corps in 2011 and sent to Guiyang. Because I had visited him there, I had some picture of the life of the volunteers - very budget, many personal relationships with English students, and very often being the first foreigner someone has ever spoken to. But every year China becomes easier and easier to live in - tracing backward to 1996, Hessler's experience is particularly impressive. As he writes about traveling multiple nights by boat down the Yangtze and waking up to find a rat crawling on him, I stopped feeling sorry for myself being on this 16 hour bus ride. Hessler also very cleverly showed his Chinese improving through this two years with more fleshed out conversation excerpts.
I snapped back into my decidedly less adventurous Vietnamese trip. The sun was dropping and we were still rolling down the coast, no sign of turning westward into the mountains. I had no control over anything - when you're on these local buses, it seems like everyone else knows what's going on except you. I could only stick to what I knew, and the wifi was slow - one of my podcasts took over four hours to download. Towards the end of the night we made a pitstop. Sometimes these stops are to stretch and pee, and sometimes they are to eat and I needed to guess what this one was. Other people seemed to sit down to eat, and I awkwardly looked around for a menu. No one was helping me and I was thinking of just saying "pho bo" (beef pho noodles) before I was invited into a table with five or six dishes. Very graciously we all shared rice, vegetables, eggs and meat in a comfortable and delicious meal. I regretted that my Vietnamese wasn't anywhere as good as Hessler's Mandarin and could only muster out thank you numerous times.
In the middle of the night, I awoke sweating, having fallen asleep with my jacket on. I was emerging for a deep sleep haze and in taking off my jacket I think my phone may have fallen off. My earbuds were still on me, but when I pulled on them, they returned unanchored. Well my phone must have dropped onto my seat somewhere. I reach this way and that, check my jacket pockets and come up with nothing. I resignedly get up out of my seat and in alarm I see that the phone isn't anywhere on my seat, nor clearly on the ground. I start grasping at the cracks and crevices at the sides of the leather seat and as the minutes pass I get more and more alarmed. The guy next to me stirs from his slumber and looks at me, clearly understanding that I've lost something. "iPhone six," I say. "iPhone sao" using the Vietnamese word for 6. The lighting is very dim though and I don't have much of a chance to look carefully. I'm exhausted and resignedly go back to sleep in an anxious state.
I need to use Find My iPhone. I can get my laptop in my backpack and access the wifi. We make another stop, to let a passenger off I deduce, and I go up and ask the driver if I can get my bag. He doesn't understand me and gestures at me to get back at my seat. I plead "iPhone sao iPhone sao" but he doesn't understand. I give an agitated sigh and go back to my seat. The rest of the ride was a bunch of frustrated searching in vain. My phone was just there in my hands, and now it's gone.
When we reach our destination, I angrily scramble and get my luggage and come back onto the bus. "I need to find something....I need to find something." Mutual comprehension starts to spread throughout the bus, and people start helping me search with flashlights. There are numerous hard to reach places on the back of the bus, and I get down on the ground to reach in behind the seats. These are some filthy places but I was desperate. One of the people on the bus gave me his phone and I made an international call, but the engine was still on and I couldn't hear anything. It took some shouting but eventually they turned the engine off. This time I heard buzzing! It seemed like maybe my phone had shifted all the way over to the other side of the bus, but I couldn't pinpoint it. We searched for maybe 20 minutes there before they told me we had to go. I pleaded with them, but they told I could stay on the bus. We had stopped some place outside Buon Ma Thuot and they would continue driving to their bus services spot inside the city and I could search there for a longer time. At least that's what I deduced after the fact - at the time, I was kinda freaking out and just nodding along.
With the weak wifi, it took me 20 minutes or so to get onto icloud. I buzzed and could hear a faint sound, and the laptop told me the phone was still on the bus. Try as I did though, I really couldn't figure out where the phone was. The other people kept calling it nonstop, even though I told them please stop, the Find My iPhone beep was louder. I google translated the word "unscrew" and got them to understand to take off some of the seats. They eventually unscrewed my seat and another seat, and with a flashlight I looked everywhere. Everywhere. Could not find it. They kept calling it until I must've run out of battery. The Find My iPhone showed a dead phone. Nothing. I was on the verge of tears the entire time. I'd been looking for it for over an hour and it was still not even 7am, and I'd barely slept on this 16 hour bus ride. It's among the lower moments I can recall feeling. Ultimately I believe the phone had fallen into some mysterious hole in the floorboards and was bouncing around underneath my feet. The vibrations and rings were echoing all over the place, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint. Anyway, it wasn't really possible to remove the floor boards on that operational bus.
I eventually left in anguish, taking their business card, looked up my guesthouse address on my laptop and showed it to a taxi driver. Then I put my laptop in my backpack and the trunk and sat back in defeat. The driver drove a block or two, started going really slowly in search of the address, then gestured for a map or something. I replied in frustration, "I don't have a phone...." Man I relied on that thing for everything. He said something that clearly meant I have no f***ing clue where I'm going. I couldn't have been more frustrated. Eventually I got out, opened the trunk and took my laptop out again. I opened up the email with the address again, and he took a harder look then backed up a block. He rolled down his window and asked someone on the street to throw him a lifeline, then eventually he turned down into the right street. Turns out my guesthouse was literally a block away from where the bus had ended, and where my phone was presumably hiding from me. The guesthouse was closed, but I knocked very loudly on the door in some desperation. It took minutes for a blurry-eyed man to open the door. "Sorry we don't have any open rooms right now," he said in great English, the first spoken English I'd heard in a day. I plead in response, "I'm booked here tonight! Sorry I'm early, but please let me in. I just lost my phone." He relents and informs me my room will be ready at 9am. He's a nice guy but I think he resents me for the rest of my trip for waking him up. I eventually brought him along to the bus people and told them I'd offer $100 if they found the phone, but this was actually laughed off.
So I had a terrible time in Buon Ma Thuot. The coffee was great, but not really that much better than everywhere else in Vietnam. While it was freeing in some ways walking around without a smart phone, like we all did pre 2010 or whatnot, I'll leave with this story of just how reliant I'd become. I stayed in town only one night, getting a ticket for the 9am bus to Ho Chi Minh City the next day. I couldn't set an alarm, because I used my phone for that, but I went to sleep before midnight and figured I'd be ok. I woke up peacefully the next morning and leisurely yawning out of bed, I checked what time it was on my computer. 8:54am. Holy crap. I hurriedly threw my laptop into my bag, grabbed all my stuff, double checked my valuables and ran downstairs. The guesthouse people see me and say "oh your bus is leaving soon!" Thanks guys, great help. They help me into a cab, take my money and luckily I do make it onto the bus. It's 8 hours to HCMC and I'm meant to stay at my friend Sam Axelrod's US state department housing. He had left me good instructions for how to get there, but unfortunately they were via Whatsapp, and I couldn't access that now. I had meant to wake up that morning and contact him, but alas I'd left without enough time. Luckily the bus did have wifi and I did have a kindle, which I had never previously used to access the browser. I managed to figure it out and send Sam a facebook message, and got his apartment name in English. However when I arrived the people I spoke to had no idea where this place was. I had to lug my stuff across a super busy Vietnamese horror show of a 4 lane street, and find a cafe with wifi. I found the address on google maps and wrote it out with the proper Vietnamese accents and finally hailed down a cab.
What's the morale of this story? Keep track of your phone while you sleep? (Yes) Be less reliant on technology? (Maybe) Don't worry so much about material objects? (Sure) I don't know. I bought a new phone in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm most upset about the loss of photos - everything in Da Nang and Hoi An were on that phone - and the cash I had to shelve out, which is still more than I've spent on everything else thus far on the month-long trip. Ultimately though it hasn't been too much of a setback, nothing like bodily injury or the loss of a passport. Life goes on.
1 comment:
Grippling story
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