Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road

homestayin'

I arranged a homestay through the travel agent in Chau Doc, Vietnam. Uncertain of what I had just negotiated and booked, I boarded a bus for My Tho. Three hours and one Crocodile Farm visit later I had arrived in town.

I was met by a beautiful young woman wearing a pink and black sweater and white furry gloves. It was eighty degrees but I knew that this is how people dress for long motorbike rides - you never know when the weather or your vehicle will break down. She introduced herself in Vietnamese as Hanh and then spoke seven sentences that I did not understand in the slightest. Smiling and nodding, she grabbed my pack and put it on the bike between her knees. I strapped my daypack over my shoulder, put on a helmet and jumped on the seat behind her. We flew out of the dirt lot at light speed.

Wide bridges and wide roads became narrow bridges and narrow roads. There was no communication between us, other than nervous laughs as we went over bumps or nearly died crashing into oncoming vehicles. Somewhere in those seven sentences she probably told me that the trip would be forty minutes long but I was fucked if I knew how long it would be. I had a horrible itch on my nose but dared not take my hands off of Hanh’s shoulders, for fear of a bloody end.

Moving to dirt roads, we began to blow through villages as kids were being let out of school. They all pointed at us when we sped by. These people were used to seeing almost anything transported on motorbikes but we still turned heads – a tiny pink girl, a white man and one hefty backpack. This combination was about as improbable around here as seeing Scooby Doo nail Charlize Theron on a pool table.

We finally arrived at Hanh’s house. My friend Glenn has a habit of calling accommodations “property” and I snorted at what his description would be. “It’s, how shall I say, a rather modest property that has its own unique charm and atmosphere.” It was a house on a river with a brick deck. It was exactly what I’d hoped to see.

Seven or eight people came to check out the arrival. Everyone talked about me while I was standing there, the syllables ricocheting through my head like buckshot.

I imagined what it would like to be airlifted into my own family and realized that it wouldn’t be nerve racking, it would be downright frightening. My mother would be whizzing around with a 400 degree baking sheet of Fridays’ Stuffed Mushrooms, my sister would be yelling at football players on the TV and other family members would be discussing how horrible the world was going to shit, I tell ya, you can’t even go to Costco without running into goddamn Mexicans. This before Nana arrived with her nine plastic bags full of combs, Saltines, Sweet n’ Low and yarn.

So this was a piece of cake.

I wrote for a while, in between playing with the puppy and eating a lunch of Elephant Ear Fish. Hanh took me up river for a boat trek and it felt like a reverse African Queen with her as Bogie and me as, well, The Queen.

A couple of the neighbor girls decided to show me off and take me up to the village. I eyeballed lots of the normal market goodies - squirming eels, flopping fish and dried squid. More Scooby Doo pointing from the locals. One boy said something unflattering about me as I walked by (I just knew it). I turned around and walked back toward him like only a New Yorker could, with severe attitude - he screamed and ran away. Little bitch.

The kids started taking baths at 6 p.m. This involved taking some shampoo to the river, stripping and jumping in. The grownups lifeguarded and the little ones wore life jackets, lest they drown or get eaten by crocodiles. Adults hit the river around seven. I even saw one guy hurl a bottle of shampoo across the entire river to his neighbor.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a man make a chair. This sounds mildly interesting until you really process that I mean make a chair. Home Depot had not contributed. He had found the appropriate pieces of bamboo and carved holes in them, carefully piecing together the interlocking parts. No bolts. No drills. No Ikea tools.

Night fell and I had a great dinner. Everyone sat on the deck and told stories but I only listened because they sounded like this:

“Neow tong mee kayartima chee chee yowl horra meeeeeee.” Then laughter. I prayed that these were not tales of previous guests, all now kept chained in a pit.

Four French people showed up by boat around 10 p.m., looking for rooms. Their arrival ruined the whole balance that I had with the family. Worse still, they talked loudly and excessively. They spent a good deal of time ridiculing Vietnam.

My dreams were intense. I had popped my first pre-Laos anti-malaria pill and knew from a trip to Africa what would happen. I murdered the French people in my sleep.

I woke up at six and ate the same thing that has been served to me for the entire time I have been in this country - two eggs, a massive roll and the strongest cup of coffee you can imagine. The French were asleep and it was blissfully quiet on the river.

Hanh took me over the river and through the woods on her motorbike again. This time I recognized many of the kids from the previous day and they waved at me with a smile and familiarity.

“Hello Meester. Hello!”