More Soap Box Dribble

We might have been able to appreciate Vientiene if we hadn't been in such a bad mood. Instead, we slept late in our dingy hostel and spent several hours inside an air conditioned Internet cafe drinking Beer Laos- a local beer that was purchased in recent years by a Belgian brewery with the intention to reformulate it before they realized it kept winning in blind taste tests. Like most Asian beers we tested, your first one is delicious but by the third time you try it, you never want to drink it ever again.

We hemmed and hawed over where to go next. The destination in question was Vang Vieng- a town our guidebook described as once charming and eclectic but now completely soulless.
It made me sad to think of visiting a town that had prospered because of indulging the tastes of the backpacker crowd but completely lost its identity in the process. It was once an almost secret destination with an obscure and appealing beauty but now it caters to the post-high school or university-grad European travelling on Mum and Dad's pound and Euro with its "Happy" Shakes, opium slum-dens, "Friends" bars (that loop all nine or ten seasons of the TV show), "Funny" Brownies, and shrooms.
It was, however, the half-way point between Vientiene and the place I really wanted to be- Luang Prabang. It also famously touted among the backpacker scene one of Kady's favorite activities- one I've purposely avoided my entire life- River Tubing. So to avoid another twelve hour bus-ride, we purchased bus tickets to Luang Prabang with a twenty hour stop-over in Vang Vieng.

Our second and last night in Vientiene, I was feeling stubborn and didn't want to pay twelve dollars for the three-bed hostel we had shared with the now-departed Helga so I insisted on wandering the streets trying to find a better or cheaper room.

Kady had given up, but I exclaimed, "I just want something good to happen to us!"
Exiting a too-expensive hotel we inquired about, a woman called out to us, "Are you looking for a room?" and after some gentle haggling, we had one of the nicest rooms of our entire journey for some $16.

We slept like babies and were on the bus listening to bloated British boys brag about drug overdoses on their parents' dime by eleven the next morning. We arrived in Vang Vieng somewhere between two and four pm and I once again stubbornly wandered around looking for a room. We settled on one that was about four dollars. Just because, I tried to haggle it down a little.

We ate lunch and headed to the river where we attempted to appreciate our G-rated version of the whole scene. It was late in the day and we refused to pay for a tube so we just asked to borrow these British peoples' tubes to float about fifty feet down the river which sated Kady's craving until she can get to Apple River. We hitched a tuktuk back to the center of town. Kady got in an argument about the dangers of being sixty years old and solo-cycling India and I hated all of these people for ruining this town and the town for succumbing.

When we returned to our room to shower, we discovered the largest cockroach of our entire trip in our bathroom. I would wake in the middle of the night to find it trying to sneak from the bathroom into our sleeping quarters and murder it while sobbing.
We walked around town weaving in and out of Brits dressed horribly inappropriately in tiny swim suits for DINNER no doubt coming off of miscellaneous drug cocktails. We were handed a flyer for a "free whiskey bucket", which we of course had to investigate. "What's the catch?" we asked. The catch was that it tasted like lighter fluid bubble gum. On the way out of the bar we spent a total of five minutes at- long enough to get our free bucket and depart- we realized there were young British girls working there. Upon questioning them, we learned they worked there for free food, booze and discounted lodge. We still couldn't figure out how anyone was making money at such an operation but the talkative girl said she was working there until things got better in Bangkok. I asked what the latest was to which she replied, "Oh, things are much worse. The airport is shut down and they blew up all the embassies!" None of this was even remotely close to the reality of anything that had happened but she seemed, by the wideness in her eyes, to believe this with near-religious fervor. Kady and I wondered if she was milking the tepid-at-worst waters of Bangkok's political unrest to keep the parents padding her account.

That next morning as we left this now culture-less black hole of a town, I caught a glimpse of what had brought people there in the first place.

We had eight hours on the bus before arriving in Luang Prabang.

A Thankfully Heroine-Less Harrowing Adventure

Catbah was like three days in a spa. Which is good. Because things are about to get hard for us. Very uncomfortable and hard...
However, before it got bad, it stayed good for a couple hours...
The bus from Catbah Island to Hanoi picked us up from our hotel room around 6am. I sat next to a man whose thumb nail belongs in the Guinness book of world records (the men here and their grown out nails... ugh). I saw a cute puppy.

We got on a speedboat...

then seamlessly onto another bus that had Vietnamese karaoke (click here).

The last twenty minutes of the bus ride where I came the closest I've ever in my life been to having an- uh oh, you're in/urine trouble- accident was a gentle foreshadowing of things to come...

We arrived at the bus station and I stumbled off the bus in tears as the taxi drivers swarmed towards my big pink face. I pushed them away with my hands screaming toilet toilet toilet toilet toilet toilet!!!!
They led the way and were waiting for me with Kady when I exited the facilities.
We had a powwow and decided taking a taxi to the heavily travel-agency-populated area of town was our only option. We boarded a taxi and asked him to blast the AC. It was a scorcher.
We were in the taxi perhaps three minutes when we began to suspect something fishy was going on. Another minute confirmed it and we yelled for the driver to pull over.
We threw money at him and exited. We had just lived through our first "fixed-meter" taxi experience. The numbers clicked by in nearly $1 per kilometer increments, more than three times the legitimate fare. We were still some 7 km from our destination. Angry, hot and dejected, we decided we were in desperate need of some food.
We were on a street surrounded by cafes so this should be easy. Delicious, even. We stopped into the first cafe. No food, only coffee. We stopped into the second- no food, only coffee... and so on and so on until we had checked six or seven cafes. What kind of sick joke is this!? one of us screamed. The dizzy shakes were coming on so we decided to just stop, have some water, hopefully find Internet, and have one of the famous Vietnamese coffees. After all, they contain sweetened condensed milk so that's at least some nourishment right?
We were finally assisted onto a bus that took us to the part of Hanoi where we had spent an hour waiting for our van to Halong Bay/Catbah Island with Liz the Austrailian some three or four days earlier. We busted into the first travel agency we saw to find tickets to Laos. I couldn't believe we were about to get on another bus when we were already in such a miserable state. I asked about flights but they were too expensive. Kady reasoned with me and we gave ourselves permission to, in the future, take a future flight from Laos to Cambodia where we would be flying to Korea. This seemed logical and more than reasonable.
So we paid $18 for a ticket on an air-conditioned coach tour bus with comfortable reclining seats. At least they better be comfortable as this was going to be a twenty hour bus ride.

We spent the afternoon walking around the sweltering Hanoi:

We visited the P.O.W. Museum that has been nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton". The museum is housed in what was once the actual prison. Once again, I left a war museum learning nothing about this war, but the photos of all of the American prisoners posed doing their favorite activities such as making handmade Christmas cards, having guitar sing-alongs and playing badminton while they were incarcerated at this WAR CRIMES PRISON IN VIETNAM! were thoroughly appreciated.

We bummed a shower at the travel agency and dressed in the clothes that we would become ONE with over the next 20 hours on a bus. Two motorbikes arrived to take Kady and me along with all of our luggage to the bus waiting point.

Somehow Kady's driver got far ahead of mine. Now, these motorbike taxi rides are nothing short of terrifying to begin with (click for video), but to make matters worse, this particular "Hurry up and Wait"-ing point for this particular bus just happened to be in a preposterously suspicious isolated location. Her driver attempted to leave her there in the middle of this dusty no man's land construction site all by herself but she wouldn't have it. Needless to say, she was fairly agitated by the time I arrived nearly twenty minutes later. Her driver tried to extort me for my motorbike fare. I refused as this was not part of our agreement with our travel agency. He threw his hands up in frustration after I said, "No, nope, no money. No charge. No," then walked a few feet away to make a call. When conversing on a mobile phone, every single Vietnamese person sounds like they're threatening their listener's life. I observed his particularly heated conversation then smugly gloated as he hung up the phone, walked over to my driver and paid him from his own wallet.

I should have savored this feeling of vindication as it would not last long, nor be felt again for some time.

Kady and I waited for about ten minutes when a taxi van pulled up. I approached the large group of miscellaneous Europeans that filtered out and confirmed that we were all headed to Laos. I walked back to Kady to relay this good news and we gathered our belongings to go join the group. However, Kady's driver yelled at us to return to the spot she and I had been waiting at. Hesitantly and begrudgingly, we obeyed. Ten minutes later, a sole Swedish girl named Helga was sent over to join Kady and me.
We tried to brainstorm reasons why we three would be separated from the others. We commiserated over the discovery of the higher price-tags of our tickets but hope hope hoped this meant we were being put on the nicer bus...

The first bus arrived as it began to get dark. The group that had grown to some fifteen waiting Europeans shuffled aboard and Kady, Helga and I grew more and more discontent as we watched what we were convinced was the nicest bus we'd seen on our journey drive off and leave us waiting in the dark. Ten minutes later our bus arrived. It hardly came to a stop as we were forced to run after it on the side of the highway and board with all of our luggage.

Passing some eight or nine Vietnamese men, we clumsily made our way to the back of what we were convinced was the shabbiest bus of our entire journey. There were no tourists. This was no air-conditioned plush-seating coach bus. This was a local bus. With a 100% local non-English speaking crew and a hodgepodge of locals also on their way to Laos. The bus seemed to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to pick up and drop off locals en route.

At this point, I had a pretty bad attitude that would take me the next 96 hours to shake. I looked awful with this huge swollen gash on my face, I had waited too long to eat, there was nowhere to get water, and I was thirsty after walking around dripping in 110 degree weather all day (this dehydration would pay me a favor in a couple hours however). I therefore stubbornly refused to share a seat with Kady as I was directed to do by the "over"-staff made up of- in addition to the driver- the tall lanky one, the eric-elvendahl one, and the nondescript one I can't even remember. (He was so nondescript I'm actually beginning to wonder if he even existed.)

"No, I tell you what- I'll sit wherever I want," I said with disdain. This disdain in both Kady's and my voice would grow more and more spiteful over the next twenty hours, emboldened by the staff's lack of English-comprehension and, might I add, not at all unjustified.

After a solid hour, perhaps two, the bus was about two-thirds full having stopped (or, rather, slowed down) every ten minutes or so (for the nimble locals to hop aboard). So we were intrigued when we made an unusually long stop on the side of the road. Enormous green bundles were brought aboard. Kady was first kicked off the bench in the back row we had every intention of taking turns using as our bed over the next twenty hours. We three foreigners watched in awe as they continued to bring bundle after bundle onto the bus until the aisles were completely filled and we were trapped in our seats by an enormous green barrier.

Then, the tall lanky one pulled out a huge machete no more than six inches from Kady's face. He sliced it through the green bag, its guts spilling forth to reveal hundreds and hundreds of individually cellophane-wrapped Lacoste shirts.

We laughed and began snapping photos of this absurdity.

Our amusement was quickly converted to a different emotion when our cameras were confiscated by the crew who aggressively threatened to turn the lens on us. By "us", I mean "down my shirt". Their faces were menacing but then broke into large smiles as we snatched our cameras back. They're just kids, I told myself. They're just kids. They have no idea how this could be potentially terrifying to three foreign girls who have been separated from a large group of fellow-travellers. I repeated this as the eric-elvendahl one tickled my toes while I tried to sleep, as the tall lanky one fondled Kady's hung-to-dry swimsuit with a pervy smirk on his face, and as this random dude had something underneath the blanket he wanted me to photograph.

Kady was shooed out of her seat and we watched them disassemble her bench with our jaws hanging open. They took it apart, stuffed its cavity to the brim with the shirts, reassembled the seat and pushed her back into it.

They repeated this with Helga, then me.

At this point, the uneasiness we three had been feeling for four hours or so escalated to a level just shy of panic.

We were on a local Vietnamese bus headed to Laos that was smuggling Lacoste t-shirts. WE WERE ON A BUS FULL OF VIETNAMESE SMUGGLERS.

This rightfully raised the following questions:

"What else was this bus smuggling?"
"What were they intending to slip into our bags?"
"Why had we three been separated from the group?"
"How were we going to stay awake all night watching our bags?"
"Why were we three separated from the group?"
"How would we fare in Laotian prison?"
"Why were we three separated from the group!?"
"Had we been sold?"

Our voices grew shrill and Kady's eyes got a little teary, which was not something I'd seen on this trip. We discussed getting off the bus at the next stop but as we looked out the window, we were reminded of the sobering fact that we were in the middle of nowhere. IN VIETNAM.

My anger grew hotter as I imagined how awful it would have been if Helga had been on this bus all by herself. This protective maternal feeling for her would intensify over the next several hours, punctuating my already justified righteous (ok, that's a stretch) indignation.

Not only had we not had enough to eat or drink that day, adding to our growing hysteria and overall sense of impending doom, but Kady had to go to the bathroom. Badly. She spoke to the tall lanky one. "Toilet?" she asked. He nodded enthusiastically. She interpreted this to mean that we would be stopping shortly but some thirty minutes went by. She approached him again, this time her voice a little more shrill, "Toilet? I need a toilet!". He nodded and motioned to the front of the bus. "What does that mean? Why are you pointing up there?" She mimed his motion to the front of the bus with an angrily distorted look on her face. He nodded vigorously, tapped her on the side of the arm and motioned once again to the front of the bus. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me!" she screeched. He responded in Vietnamese, tapped her arm harder and motioned again to the front of the bus. "I don't know what THIS," she once again tapped his arm and mimicked his gestures, "means. I don't speak Vietnamese!" For the third round of this interaction, his arm tap turned into a smack and she turned it right back on him, smacking his arm as hard as she could.
Finally, it was communicated that Kady needed to go make her request known to the driver.
"Toilet?" Kady asked. The driver turned to her and laughed as he rubbed his thumb against the pads of his pointer and middle fingers in an all too familiar gesture ($). I retaliated by threatening to urinate on their bus. Of course, this threat was emboldened by their lack of English- comprehension but, again, not at all unjustified.

Within twenty minutes, a toilet break was finally made. For the first time, there were no disgusting toilet facilities we had to navigate. There were no awkward smelly holes in the floor we had to squat over with quivering legs. In fact there was no floor. Actually, no toilet facilities at all. The toilet stop was in a ditch on the side of the road. Nearly the entire bus shuffled off. The only privacy was provided by the various nooks and crannies the giant bulldozer on the side of the ditch had to offer.
What's that you ask? If the bathroom break consisted of merely pulling over to the side of the road, why couldn't it have been made an hour ago? Well, obviously, because... Oh, that's right... There is no. logical. reason.

The next time the bus stopped would be at a restaurant with no English menu or English-speaking staff where we were practically refused service. We watched pitifully with groaning stomachs as the other tables were served giant steamed prawns, grilled fish and heaping plates of vegetables and rice. We finally went around to the other passengers' tables until someone was willing to order us some food.
Ten minutes later, a plate of white rice, a bowl of murky broth, and a plate of wilted greens arrived at our table.

For this practically inedible fare, they would attempt to extort us for nearly seventeen dollars. I narrowed my eyes at this price and tilted my head, "Oh really? 300(thousand)dong? YEAH. RIGHT." They looked at one another and laughed because they knew it was an obscene and absurd price and not only would they never shame a local by serving him such a disgusting meal but had a masochistic local requested it, it would have cost some twenty cents or so if there had even been a charge. They lowered the price to what was still an unreasonable amount. I gestured towards all the other locals, "Oh really, so they paid _____? And those guys over there paid _______? They all paid more than two days wages?" I threw down a fraction of what they asked for and stormed off dramatically. They called after me and gave us a look as if to say, "Aw, come on, man." I threw down the equivalent of another two dollars, still furious.
I may or may not have yelled, "Thanks for nothing,____!" and called them something that may or may not have rhymed with "Bass Poles".

After some deliberately slow deliberation, we three boarded the bus once again, but not after taking our sweet time as the bus sat full and waiting for us.

We wrapped our bodies around our bags and tried to settle into comfortable positions to sleep. I was just drifting off as I felt something tickle my arm. I didn't want to open my eyes. I kept them pressed closed and willed myself to believe that it was just a loose hair... a piece of thread... anything but what I knew it was. I didn't want to see it... but there it was- a huge cockroach walking across my arm. I flicked it off and whimpered knowing I would feel cockroaches crawling on me for the next fifteen hours.
Hours ticked by and I rested my eyes- occasionally being lulled into a very light slumber only to be awoken by the unnecessary elaborate honking or over-sharp turns of the driver as he negotiated the mountain roads in a halting, jerking, clutch-grinding mere thirty or so miles an hour.

I think it was the closest I got to falling into a true sleep during the night hours when all of the sudden a huge gunshot bang went off. My feet shot up in the air as what had slapped against them felt like jumping flat-footed onto concrete from some ten feet above. "OUCH!" I yelped, disorientated. I looked out the window to see that directly beneath me, a large portion of the side of the bus had split open. I laughed maniacally.
The crew jumped into action and climbed off the bus followed closely by an amused, if not giddy Kady. She laughed out loud as the eric-elvendahl one grabbed a tiny baby allen wrench and ran to survey the damage with a pricelessly exasperated look on his baby-face. The driver saw Kady observing their futile efforts and stomped his foot at her several times yelling and gesturing for her to get back on the bus. While the crew worked on their makeshift repair for the next twenty to thirty minutes, the three of us once against discussed whether this should be where we bid farewell to this nightmare. But somehow we weren't afraid any more. I looked out the window and saw these four completely bewildered and overwhelmed little boys that appeared so menacing and tough just a few hours earlier as, well, people with machetes tend to appear. I was still furious; I still hated their guts and wanted to kick them in the face. But I was no longer frightened. They were just a handful of Vietnamese workers trying to make a buck and, like mean boys on the playground, having a little too much fun toying with the three frightened foreign girls.

Their pitiful repair

We decided to stay and I think I actually slept right up until the border. We climbed off the bus at the Vietnam/Laos border crossing and bumped into the other group of Europeans from the day before. Since we had been imagining them laughing and having fun and drinking mimosas and having sing-alongs on their plush coach bus, we were perhaps a little more delighted than we should have been to learn that their bus experience was as uncomfortable and abusive as ours, though lacking the intriguing element of terror as there were fifteen of them. We also found comfort in the daylight seeing their bus was just as shabby as ours.
We did our best to follow the confusing border exit regulations, paying our exit tax and getting our stamps. But the line was long and the bus decided to get one final jab in when it left us in Vietnam and drove the half mile across the border into Laos. We walked after it, berating them and finding our revenge as the entire bus had to sit waiting for us to get our visas.
walking into Laos

They had robbed us of not only 18 dollars (at least 15 dollars more than anyone else on that bus had paid), but every last shred of dignity. Even more so, they had led us through every extreme on the spectrum of human emotion. All we had left was our sarcasm -which was incomprehensible to them, our urination threats, and the act of making them wait for us. We performed all of these to the greatest and most proficient of our abilities.

The view as we drove the three or six hours (time had become irrelevant) from the border into the capital of Laos was breathtakingly beautiful. We were weaving up and down and in and out through green, baby-goat-covered mountains draped in ribbons of thick white fog. I would find something so astonishing I needed to share it with Kady but found myself so exhausted that by the time I turned my face to wake her I had already fallen back asleep. Later, she relayed the exact same experience.

By the third broad-daylight side of the road bathroom-break,

I didn't even mind.

And I was so numb and exhausted I was able to tune out the gory horror flicks they played on the TV during the daylight hours.

We arrived in Vientiane, Laos with post-traumatic stress symptoms of anger and mistrust that would last for at least four days which was exactly how long I realized it took me to smile at a local. I felt guilty about this, but we were in rough shape. I'd never felt so haggard in my life. We adopted Helga for the short period of time she spent in Vientiane. We found a room to split three ways for about $12.

I laid down on my filthy twin bed and waited for my turn to shower.

However, before my turn came and even as tiny ants crawled over me, I fell asleep and slept for sixteen hours in the same clothes I had spent the previous 24 hours wearing on a bus.

The next afternoon as Kady and I perused our guidebook to decide upon our next destination, we stumbled upon this juicy tidbit...

"Many travellers have fallen victim to the Vientiane-Hanoi bus scam, in which agents -- often guesthouses -- sell tickets for 'air-con tourist coaches' that turn out to be rattletrap public buses or minivans packed to the limit with Vietnamese bringing cheap goods home from Laos. These trips can be mini-nightmares, including a long wait at the border, and some Vietnamese drivers treat Westerners extremely badly."

Touche, Guidebook, I thought to be worthless. Touche.

One Night in Catbah Makes... You Humble

I was determined to eat crab in Catbah. We were interested in eating on one of the floating restaurants but all we wanted to do was see a stupid menu. You have to take a boat to get out there and we were worried that we might find the prices too high but then be held hostage... Which is pretty much exactly what happened although we were only stranded for some fifteen minutes.

We stepped off the return boat taxi onto the dock and perused the menu at the next restaurant we walked past, found "crab" and followed the hostess to be seated.

I had washed my hair and showered. So you could say I was feeling pretty good about myself despite the unexplainable giant swollen rash all over my eye and my new found cystic acne that Kady had pointed out earlier. There is nothing like a hot water shower after two days of bus travel to give you some new perspective.

We arrived at our table and the hostess who would also serve as our waitress looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed, "Beautiful!".

I was about to get a big head about it when she turned both to Liz, the Australian-"Beautiful!" and Kady- "Beautiful!".

I opened my mouth to lament how I thought she was only going to compliment me when the hostess whipped back around, gestured toward my upper region and cried out, "BIG!"... My face turned red and I was thankful for the diversion as she turned to Kady. She opened her mouth- "SMA..." but something went horribly awry as her glance fell to Kady's belly which was, admittedly, shrouded in in empire waist sundress that could easily function as a maternity dress...

"BABY! Oooh! Baby!!! Baby baby baby!"...

We were all mortified. Except for the waitress/hostess who we decided was either afflicted with a disability or intoxication.

"Baby likes beer," was all Kady could say. Then she ordered a 32 oz beer.

The next night, Liz accompanied us again to a bar/cafe that advertised pedicures. We could not think of anything better. As we stepped from the patio into the open air cafe, I saw a big old mama dog sleeping in the middle of the floor. I went near to pet her but was warned that she was mean from having just delivered a litter of puppies. After the waitresses saw my reaction to the word "puppies", I was greeted no more than five minutes later with a newborn puppy whose eyes weren't even open.

arm is larger than it appears?

Cheap gin and tonics, $1 pedicures, and puppies!? You've got to be kidding me! You're killing me, Catbah Island!

Catbah Island

The ferry ride to Catbah Island could have lasted for twelve hours and I would have been content. I couldn't snap photos of the constantly changing light, landscape and floating fishing villages fast enough.

The rather unamused and non-compliant staff also made for some good shots.

Our plan when disembarking was to ignore all of the tuktuk and motorbike taxis and follow the locals to whatever bus they were getting on. Of course the three of us and all of our luggage were accosted with drivers spitting their ridiculous fares at us:

"Ninety(thousand) dong!"... "Seventy(thousand) dong!..." "Fifty(thousand) dong!"... their offers dropping lower and lower as we neared the local bus. We paid 15 thousand dong, boarded and looked out the window smugly.

One of the bus employees asked if we needed a place to stay and we were delivered to the door of a Seven dollar hotel room with wi-fi and air-con. Awwww yeah. Life was sweet.

View from our room

Halong Bay and Catbah Island

There aren't a whole lot of mirrors in these parts. Most bathrooms don't contain soap or toilet paper so a mirror is a lot to ask for. I exited the bathroom at the travel agency in Hanoi and sat next to Kady at the computer. All around us were young attractive Australian boys.

"Hey, how 'bout those zits on your face?" Kady asked loudly and not so much as a question.

I pouted, more out of morbid curiosity than embarrassment. Kady apologized, exercised her most determined self-control to keep her fingers off my face, and we purchased tickets to Halong Bay. By this point, Kady and I are more than well-acquainted with the whole HURRY UP AND WAIT!!! mentality of these travel agencies so we resisted the urge to walk briskly as we were rushed to the waiting point for the bus. I was downright sauntering, searching everywhere for some sort of reflective surface.
I mean, you learn to let go of most of the vanities you secretly harbor when it's more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit and you've been wearing the same clothes for 48 hours. But I still found it ironic that when I finally found a mirror... it would belong to the caption:

"Worst Idea Ever".

Kady and I hurried up and waited for at least an hour. Liz, the Australian joined us at around the thirty minute mark. When we boarded the air conditioned mini van and realized it was just the three of us... the clouds opened and the angels sang a song.

It was all worth it, I thought. This is our reward.

Kady told Liz her life story within twenty minutes and the other two hours and forty minutes belonged to the relaying of our best FauxFrenchie stories. (We would spend the rest of our trip quoting her but then nervously looking over our shoulder, convinced she would be standing there, no matter what country we were in.)

With not a terrible amount of trouble, we arrived on the set of a Disney movie.



But seriously, the hour and a half ferry ride from Halong Bay to Catbah Island reminded Kady and me what the heck we were doing in what her father would call this God-forsaken place.

FauxFrenchie

So I'll just come out and say it: Kady likes people more than I do. She likes talking to them. She's interested in their lives, where they're from, where they're headed.

She asks them questions. She listens to their response. She may or may not care. But she likes the exchange. She is an extrovert through and through. This is her fuel. This is what makes her not only tick... but this is what makes Kady Hexum glow.

Me, on the other hand- well, I like animals.

Kady's extroverted nature led to us meeting a lot of nice and interesting people on our travels. It's also how FauxFrenchie was introduced into our lives.

Kady liked FauxFrenchie's pants. This led to what I found to be a tedious conversation about how she designed them... but the tailors got them all wrong... she threw a fit til they were right... bla bla bla.

We also learned a little too much about how she gets around/around (yes that's exactly what I mean) her detestation of all things American, and her general means/style of travel/life:

"I get off zee bus and I go up to someone and I say, 'are you from a vee-lage?' and zen I ask if I can leev wees zem and zey take me to zair veel-age..."

This is actually almost interesting, if you ask me. But when she tells it, it is dripping with a little too much superiority.

She had knocked on our door earlier that day asking if we were also headed to Hanoi. We were. I cursed Kady's magnetic personality. FauxFrenchie complained about the price of the bus ticket "here" and went off to find cheaper tickets elsewhere. She succeeded and three were purchased.

She was so unpleasant and condescending I don't even want to pay any homage to her with this post, but she offered Kady and me some of the most memorable quotes of our trip so, you see, I have to...

Her laptop had been stolen in Cambodia. On it was a novel she had written. It is gone forever.

At this, she merely shrugs.

Kady: "I'm so sorry your laptop was stolen. That's so awful."

FF: "Zey are just tings... You cannot be so attached... eet eez zee way when you leev your life free..."

Kady: "Was your book about your trip?"

FF: "Eets not a trip; eets my life"

Kady: "So are you permanently retired or will you have to go back to work some day?"

FF: "Everyday I am working. My life eez my job."

I diagnosed her as the least likeable trustafarian I'd ever met and quite possibly a prostitute. Every comment was snarky and supercilious (I know I know- insert eye-roll). I never once indulged her by expressing any interest in her or her way of life. Kady on the other hand couldn't help herself. Then as FF's responses grew shorter and more disdainful, Kady reeeeally couldn't help herself and began baiting her by saying really stupid crap just to illicit a condescending remark.

Kady: "Have you noticed (stupid and not very interesting observation about Vietnam)?"

FF: (snide and patronizing non-response with as few words as humanly possible)

When we arrived at Hanoi, after a particularly awful overnight bus ride where I had to cling to my bus "bed" for dear life so as not to fall the five and a half feet off of my bunk into the aisle where several Vietnamese men slept on the floor AND my face decided to punish me by inexplicably looking like this:

I offered this as a summary of the evening: "Worst. Night. Ever."

FF: "Zen you've add a pretty good life..."

That was the final straw. Kady and I didn't even need a powwow. We were moving on to the next city.

She was offended at our change of plans and parasitically attached herself to Daniel, the nice boy from Oregon I had smiled at knowingly after he expressed confusion at her being from Minnesota ("Oh... I thought I detected an accent...").

He looked longingly and pitifully at Kady and me as we said goodbye but we couldn't help him. He'd have to find his own way (out).

Now Things Start to Run Together...

... So then there was another overnight sleeping bus. Destination- Hoi An, Vietnam. Not to be confused with Hanoi. This one included British girls who had been roaming the streets wearing only bikinis who now slept on the bus wearing only bikinis. There were two bathroom stops at what were and are officially the two grossest, most insanely horrendous toilet facilities we were subjected to (I am writing this at the end of my trip and this remains true).
At the first one... I don't know how it happened... but out of nowhere my chapstick fell into the stagnant puddle of urine and my hand instinctively shot down and retrieved it.

I would give anything to have these sort of reflexes in normal life; it happened in a millisecond. But why then? Why at that moment? Why save the chapstick? Did my reflexes mix it up with an infant? Why why why did I just baptize my hand in decades old urine?

To top it off, there was no running water on the premises. I had a miniature meltdown and then broke down and purchased a water bottle to wash my hands with while whimpering softly to myself. It was like pouring liquid gold on the ground.

The next stop had two separate bathrooms. On one side of a brick wall was a sort of "shelter" for women and then on the other side, one completely shrouded in darkness with crumbling concrete rubble for flooring. A sassy and loud-mouthed Vietnamese woman had stormed off the bus. She yelled at all of us standing in line for the women's "facilities" to follow her to the men's. She demonstrated how to use the urinal then walked over to the queue, grabbed Kady, dragged her to the urinal and forced her to use it!
Kady did not have a positive experience and I therefore stood my ground as the woman yelled at me in Vietnamese. Finally! Kady was the bathroom guinea pig. She always makes me go first to see if it's worth holding it or not. (But I get back at her by never ever ordering a coffee until she has had a sip of hers. I've avoided paying for some really bad coffee.)

Kady and I arrived in Hoi An and checked into a decadent $13 hotel. I say decadent because it actually contained a bathtub. Those are like mirage unicorns in southeast Asia because all bathrooms have slanted floors with a drain and the "showers" are a mere hose coming out of the wall. This luxury, most unfortunately, will go unused as Kady and I are still horribly sunburned at this point. For that reason we avoided the outdoors in general. When venturing out, we covered nearly every inch of our bodies with clothing. We never made it farther than a few blocks away from our hotel.

Hoi An has a well-known beach but is more famous for its (once) affordable and (once) skilled tailors. People come from all over and have custom suits, dresses, coats, shoes, and the like made.

We didn't make it to the beach but we did succumb to the temptation of getting some clothes made. They're not quite of mediocre quality but hey, I've got custom clothes from Vietnam. Only hundreds of thousands of tourists can say the same.

As Kady and I were discussing what we might like to have sewn, a woman approached the restaurant that we ate most of our meals at as it was about fifteen steps from our hotel. I looked at her and decided based on her her teeth, frail frame, and the way she wore her scarf, that she was French. As Kady drew her into a conversation like she does with every single stranger we encounter, her accent seeeemed to confirm my diagnosis of French-ness. She told us the story of getting thrown in Cambodian prison and having to surrender her passport and how an American passport goes for around $10,000.
"You have an American passport?" Kady asked. I was also perplexed but not interested in talking to her.

"Yes, I'm from Minnesota."

But... WE'RE from Minnesota Kady and I thought in unison...

"Oh... where is your accent from?" Kady asked.

"I don't know. I think maybe from France."

"Oh... is that where you live now?"

"I have no home. I am a nomad."
(You're all reading zees een a dreeping-ly frahnch accent, yes?)

I was sick of this girl and made a point to avoid her.

Later that night as Kady and I were once again back at our restaurant, we met a girl somewhere around our age travelling alone. She was perhaps the first American we'd met (besides Faux-Frenchie, who is from "nowhere" now). She was a doctor from San Fransisco and Kady and I liked her a lot as she laughed very hard at our jokes.

The restaurant doubled as the owners' home and there were lots of adorable children climbing all over . We took copious amounts of photographs of them and then let them take my camera to photograph us and one another.

My skin still burned but I was feeling good in it. I was feeling like I was in with these people. I was truly happy and content and comfortable. I belonged right here.

The $1.20 gin and tonics might have aided in this euphoria. I was in that perfect relaxed state where I knew I would actually sleep well that night and not be awoken by sharp sunburn pain every time I moved.
It was eventually bedtime for the kids and Kady and I were discussing the clothes we were having made when I started realizing that I had no way of fitting any new clothes into my bag and would have to get rid of some of the items I had packed. I was at peace with this because I brought some pretty disposable stuff. I told the doctor and the Fake French girl that had since seen and joined us at the restaurant that they were welcome to some of my clothes including the dress I was wearing. They seemed intrigued and even mentioned taking the dress I was wearing to the tailor's and having it reproduced. I told them I would leave a couple items outside of my room and they were welcome to pick them up. I was feeling very content with this plan. That's when I made the mistake of ordering one more. They were so refreshing! They were only a dollar!

But sunburn+dehydration+sleep deprivation+one more... does not a good decision make.

I needed water and I needed to be in bed. Immediately. Kady and I threw money down on the table and walked the fifteen steps to our hotel and grabbed two waters. We asked the price, were unsatisfied, put one back, payed, and headed to our room.

I chugged water, remembering that alcohol with a sunburn is a bad idea, rummaged through my suitcase and somewhat neatly placed several items outside of my hotel room.
I awoke the next morning realizing that my now absent clothes probably had not been picked up by the doctor or Faux-Frenchie, but were probably being laundered by the hotel. Blurg, I thought; I really didn't want to pay for that. However, the clothes were mysteriously returned about 24 hours later, un-laundered and with two completely random bikinis that did not belong to me
"These are not mine."
"Yes, they're yours."
"No, they are not mine."
"Maybe you leave by pool."
"No. No pool, not mine."

As I checked out of the hotel, I was thankful to not have a laundry bill. However, there was a mysterious charge.
"What's this for?"
"For water bottle."
I found Kady and asked if she had gotten a water bottle and charged it to the room. "No, we just got that one water bottle that night. And I bought another one that other day but paid for it."
"We didn't charge any water bottles to the room," I explained to the front desk, "We paid for all of them."
"No, one night you come down and get one."
I knew this wasn't true. If you walked across the street, the water bottles were 30 cents. Here they were almost a dollar.
"No, this is a mistake."
"No, it was night you come home with your friend. You drink a lot."
My jaw sort of hung open. I was embarrassed. "Yes, we got one water bottle and we paid for it."
"You don't remember because you drink so much that night."
My face burned red with embarrassment then anger when Kady confirmed what I knew to be true: We had in fact retrieved two water bottles from the mini fridge by the front desk. We asked the price. It was too much. We put one back. We paid for one. End of story.
I repeated the facts to the haughty front desk woman as she looked down her nose at me.
"No, you get two. You don't know. You drink so much. Same night you drink so much then come home and you THROW your clothes out into the hallway."

The earth fell out from underneath me. I could not deny having too much to drink. I could not deny placing my clothes in the hallway. But I wanted to explain!
No no you don't understand, I was dehydrated and had a sun burn fever and I was DONATING my clothes, not flinging them into the hallway in a drunken fit.
But how is that going to possibly translate to someone who apparently can only say two things in English: "you owe this much" and "you are a gross drunk tourist".

I hung my head in shame. I bit my tongue and paid the bill. I knew we didn't owe it but I also knew it was only a dollar.
The moral of the story is- don't get sunburned.

Now to Hanoi with an unexpected travel companion- FauxFrenchie...