off the map, off the (paved) road (cont)

the springer show starts to suck me in when someone taps me lightly on the shoulder. i turn to see a man saying hello. he extends his hand and introduces himself as hoc, the english teacher. we make an awkward shake and i take notice of his facial features: an enthusiastic smile attempts to hide a worried frown. the combination yields an open mouth, as though someone were tugging on the corners of his lips directly from behind. his concerned eyes bulge. his eyebrows intersect.

hoc tells me he studied english for six years at quang binh university. he says he is a very busy man. i can tell he's either not happy the police burdened him with the task of translation or perhaps he's worried for me. he asks me if i am lost. hmmmm. good question. it's true that i have no idea where i am. so i am lost. but i also don't feel lost because lost is where i want to be. usually getting lost is something unintended. so if you're lost, and lost is exactly where you want to be, are you still lost? confused, I just answer no.

i ask him why i'm here. he explains that the road turns to dirt and becomes bumpy past town. hoc says I have to go back to xuan son. phew. i'm not in trouble (i think). it's already three o'clock and although i'm not keen on backtracking, i'm not entirely opposed to the idea given how beautiful the ride was. if i go back, though, that means i have to return to the coast, which is something i'm trying to avoid. i fish for alternative options.

"what about a guide?" i ask. his face relaxes while he translates his answer inside his head. then when he gets ready to talk his face fills back up with tension: half smile, bulged eyes and furled brows--every time. "maybe. maybe a guide tomorrow," he says. you could sleep here at the school.

the other teachers break up our conversation so they can converse with hoc in vietnamese. meanwhile, I look out the window where I see children standing in a loose phalanx formation. the boys have wooden sticks; the girls have wooden circles. a teacher standing in front of them shouts out something and everyone puts their objects up in the air. then he shouts again. they move to the right. he shouts again and they jump. the students look happy; some uninterested children lag in their responses to the teacher. it's gym class. they're playing simon says.

back to the conversation, hoc keeps pushing for me to head back to xuan son today but he's concerned i won't find the way. won't find the way? i'm confused. there was only one road, except the marked intersection where the road goes to lao, and that was way on the other side of the mountains near xuan son. so long as you don't turn toward lao, the other two roads both lead to xuan son eventually. his concerns don't make any sense to me, so i set aside the confusion. then he asks me if i took a boat. a boat? we're really on two different pages! i think. i'm dead-center confident that i can find my way back. i watched carefully and there were no other roads.

hoc gets a piece of paper and sets it down on the table. the paper gets wet from a small pool of tea formed from my sloppy pouring. he gets another piece and starts to draw a map. i notice the ring finger on his left hand is missing everything past the first knuckle. i think about all the chemical weapons (mostly agent orange) the u.s. military used in the war here and all the adverse health effects its caused and continues to inflict today. children are born without eyes and limbs. others have strange skin conditions.

hoc sketches a crude map that includes a fork in the road that i don't recognize. we're both confused and decide to stop. halfway through all this i notice the policeman is sitting on the other side of the table from me. i didn't even see him come in. he asks me some simple questions and the teacher translates. Q: "where did you enter vietnam?" A: "mong cai" Q: "why are you in vietnam?" A: "tourist" Q: "where did you stay last night" A: "xuan son" and so on. the questioning ends and the grumpy policeman picks up his paperwork and walks out. hoc and i resume our conversation.

i try and push for the guide idea, thinking it'd be good to get off the paved road. we go back and forth discussing options. i feel bad for taking up his time and we finally resolve that i will stay at the school tonight and leave for xuan son in the morning. whether or not tung, a math teacher, will accompany me is uncertain. i can't tell whether my surprise visit affords tung a lucky excuse to go home for the weekend or if it's a favor for the "lost" foreigner. i don't want to burden tung (because i know i can find my way back) so i try and clarify this confusion but the english teacher's english isn't very good so i drop it as well.

hoc tells me to follow him and tung by motorbike. i think we're going to hoc's house? we pull up at the local military headquarters. hmmmm. what's going on? i wonder. hoc explains that he's going to check with the soldiers to see if i can stay here tonight. errrr. right. stay with the soldiers. (what about the school?). it'd be interesting to hang out with these guys but i feel safer with teachers than with soldiers. i don't say anything and just let hoc determine my evening's destiny.

the base's buildings sit tiered on a hill facing the river. all the structures are painted yellow and look just like the school. there's a tall vietnamese soldier hanging out with us. he's wearing green slacks and no shirt. his burgundy belt sports a five-pointed star buckle. another man lazily sits in an open window and passes time groping for leftover food in between his teeth with a toothpick. at the end of the driveway there's a four-wheel drive jeep and a small fleet of shiny honda dream supers. (i only have a honda dream II).

we're waiting for someone so we squat on the concrete steps that lead to the next tier of buildings. (most vietnamese and chinese people squat when waiting. it's a strange position and requires some careful positioning and balance. you keep your feet flat and let your rump just hang down so that the backs of your quads get pressed up against your achilles. This puts enormous stress on your knees so i fake it and let my butt rest on the next step up).

hoc lowers his voice and says in a whisper: "there are dangerous men in the mountains. They sometimes lay siege on our town." woah. rebel forces in vietnam?? now that's something you don't hear about. he continues: "that's why we have so many soldiers and why it’s too dangerous for you to go south from here".
"how many of them are there?"
"I don't know"
"what do they call themselves?"
"they don't have a name."
"what do they want?"
"they want lots of things".
"like what?"
hoc names a few things and i can't understand any of them except 'land' and something about socialism. i press him to elaborate, but digging for more information about the rebels in the mountains is like pulling teeth and i can tell he doesn't want to talk about it when he keeps saying "don't worry, we have many soldiers and they rarely attack". it's now i realize this place isn't in the lonely planet.

we're ready to go see whoever it is we came for and we walk up the stairs and enter a small room. i find the same agitated policeman (still looking unhappy) behind a desk; he's scrawling some sentences in a well organized book. i get asked some of the same questions and within five minutes we're out of there. we leave and return to the school. there i learn that hoc needed permission from the police to have me stay the night at the school. "here" meant "here in town" and not "here at the soldier's quarters".

everything is ok. back at school, the teachers and i sit down for some grub. everyone is very friendly. there's hoc, tung, and about five other men whose names i don't recall. there's only two women, and they don't eat with us; they serve us. one seems to stay in the shadows and i never meet her. the other is the music teacher. she recently married the younger math teacher. she has a beautiful voice and often softens the moments with a quiet song. she asks me if i sing or play the organ and i regret i have to say no. the food is messy and we wipe our hands and faces with--oh my god, is this students' homework? it is.

we spend the night watching a chinese tv program (they switch over to english-speaking channels during commercials for me), drinking a little wine, playing a pool-like game and visiting neighbors where we drink tea. it's late and back at the room we exchange addresses. i promise to write and we all go to bed.

tung rouses me from a deep sleep. as i wake up i think: where am i? oh yeah, vietnam. i put away the mosquito net and walk to the doorway to sit on the narrow, concrete steps. i rub my eyes. the sun is just rising. roosters boast nearby. there's a small, slow-moving cloud hugging the high hill above. i see one student dash from the gate to the schoolhouse. tung sits at his desk, writing a note. nobody else is up or around, it seems.

i pack my bags and set the gear on my bike. tung walks out of the building all suited up to head home. i've never really had much time on a motorbike (until this trip) and i think it's a better idea that he drives. tung agrees. he starts the engine and i see the other teachers (still in pajamas) emerge at their respective doorways. everyone waves goodbye and one man reminds me to write. tung hits the gas and we putter away.

we stop for gas but not for breakfast. about ten km out of town, there's a bend in the road to the left and we pull over to stop. tung points behind me and i look where i see a dirt road peeling away from the main highway. i remember seeing the road, but I figured nobody actually used it--at least not on a motorbike designed for the paved road. the mud is thick but there’s two eight-inch deep parallel trenches made from a heavy truck that passed through here. i guess we can ride in the wake of those tire tracks?

tung can't speak much english and i can't speak much vietnamese so we supplement our limited vocabulary with charades. he explains this way is much shorter--only forty km. I point to the dirt and put my hands together and move them away from each other to ask: is it a dirt road the whole way? he says yes.

figuring the local knows best i agree and we go on. tung directs us into the right trench. it's just wide enough. the front tire is a bit worn and there's a little trail of mud in the center of the trench. this makes it hard to keep the bike in the center, and tung has trouble keeping control of the motorcycle. he is constantly correcting our direction. we come over the top of a bump and as we go down the bike slides to the right and the foot pegs (and our feet) dig into a wall of soft mud. tung decides to hang his feet down near the ground so he can brace the bike before we crash.

this method only works satisfactorily for so long. the going is slow, and i'm getting frustrated with how nerve-racking the ride is. a few times we narrowly keep ourselves from crashing and i soon realize it's only a matter or time before i end up face-first in muck. it happens many times. tung even loses a shoe to the suctioning soil and we dig it out. the sun is high in the sky, and we stop to climb down an embankment to mop up our muddy mishaps in a nearby stream. there's no shade to rest under and we get back on the bike to struggle forward.

this goes on for hours. we sometimes stop at streams to wash up, and each time i hope it will be the last. it never is. four hours into the ride we reach a small town and i know we're getting close. i hope we're getting close. we catch up with another man who's also having problems. his bike is stuck and he's knee-deep in mud trying to push it out. i'm already dirty, and i think what the hell. tung stops and i hop off and stomp my way into the knee-deep crud to help push. tung guns the engine to try and romp our bike through the trap, but he gets stuck too and the hot engine sizzles when it hits the mud. i help tung push my bike out and he looses his shoes again...we sit under some trees to rest.

i'm looking at tung and he's looking back at me. i point to all the mud on my clothes and start laughing. he does the same and then he yells: souvenir! which sends us into stitches. we get back on the bike (which is the only thing we can do) and about five painfully long kilometers later we finally reach pavement. with clenched fists held high, we yell out in celebration.

tung takes me to his home where a crowd of neighborhood kids huddles around to watch the two dirt-covered men clean the motorcycle with a hose. tung's wife, anh, comes out to meet me and she just laughs at the two of us. i wash my clothes and shower. the neighborhood kids are all giggles and i spend some time talking with them and showing them neat things in my bags like the compass. anh invites me in for tea, and later we eat some rice and fish on the floor of the kitchen. anh and tung invite me to stay the night and i accept. anh insists i take a nap while she and tung take my motorbike to the police station where they have to ask permission to have me spend the night.

i grab my phrasebook and go upstairs to lie down. i sit in bed memorizing the phrase: "a com an nguan qua" (thank you for making me such a delicious dinner). ba com an nguan qua, ba com an nguan qua, ban com an nguan qua, ba com an nguan qua....