Road Trip

In the back of Volvo, not just the back seat but the open plan boot of that old yellow estate. My father used the car for company work that took him length and breadth but during school holidays we piled in, the gang of four children and headed for summer Lake District or winter Darlington. Being the youngest and of course the smallest I was put on the bench seat at the back of the car, getting bumped by bags and ribbed by unwoven spears of wicker as the picnic basket unwound.

In a here and now minibus with room to stretch we have an altogether different, decades later, view. At first we see town planning as vomit on a drawing board, as sophisticated as a backhander to a man in a suit. Any suit. Any where. But here. Here, it is okay to build a road connecting someones A with someones B, it's okay that we can speed through communities that have grown up beside the road even before the last tar of mac. It's okay because people can and do make a living beside the road, with cha da and pho all on offer. Then a woman still living in yesteryear, still being treated and paid as of yesteryear, tries to cross the road on her rickety bicycle and she is ploughed through by both lorry and bus, a double whammy of vehicular action, of human corrouption. Note to self and to censor: Don't let the people make their home by the motorway.

One night when I was some age, old enough to give words and image to memory but young enough still to have my Rupert the Bear pyjamas, my father came home after a long business trip. At that time he was working in Novi Sad in the former Yugoslavia, a good job by all accounts but one which kept him away for months at a time. This was a journey back from the East to our West Coast home. I remember a few things. The expectation of seeing him; my mother worrying about his late arrival and busying herself with supper arrangements and breakfast preparation and then the news, breaking as it would be called now, breaking our calm as it would be called anytime. A pile-up - which seemed to happen more then - on the M1, dozens of cars involved, thick fog at play. A number of fatalities. When my father walked through the door, several hours later, he was walking wounded; ashen and frail, a limp arrival, a forlorn but desperately needed welcome home. Turns out that the back seat that I had so resented sometimes, that me and the vomiting, shitting dog had shared had been concertina'd along with the long bonnet while my father remained safely cocoonned at the wheel. As he shakily told the story of his journey back from Europe, he told us that the driver in front was okay but the one behind had been killed, the tail end of the pile-up still having enough force to take life.

Dalat. Buon Me Thuot. Mui Ne. The road once we were beyond town planning horror provided a suitable artery to witness the many lives of people here. We stopped by a road side cafe and sat on ubiquitous too small chairs. We were the only customers apart from 6 soldiers nursing six strong iced coffees and enjoying a raucous game of dominoes. Apocalypse that GI image. Not exactly roulette and dear deer hunter; not really the colonel in his labyrinth... These cheery and welcoming soldiers were seemingly unaffected by the offensive fire of incredibly loud euro techno that had us shouting out orders to the gum-chewing waitress. Yet again, we were witness to the fact that the only real danger to life here was the bombardment of bad taste; the flack of crap...

We lurched to a river and my companions bathed in the cool mountain water. We were truly in the back of beyond,a local sketch/map and a resourceful driver our best hope. Finding an antless rock to perch on it was possible to be still for a moment after the bumpy journey across coffee country and trees abundant with limes and dragon fruit. Here two whities bathing in the water brought much mirth from the dark skinned children who had been playing in the shallow, dry-season river. Just beyond them, adults were using the river as their valuable resource, a place to wash themselves and their clothes. Two men carefully assembling branch and twine to build a bridge between the two shores took time out to wave at us all. More people, adult and children came to the water's edge. We were sudden and unexpected entertainment. It was their stage. We trod lightly, carefully. These same people must have stared up in wonder at the approaching roar of engines, the sky suddenly filled with noise. These same people must have wondered who would have wanted to burn their land and fill the air with the smell of burning gasoline.

Please have a look at the two Quicktime movies added to the links above. Phu Quoc Island and Day of the Cicada. Both give a flavour to the journey.

Mekong

So much of movement, of relocating from A to B, in transit, en route and in the hasty retreat from work is done by taxi. Our metered chauffeurs are usually silent, the language barrier scuppering clichés of chatty cabbies or grumpy road experts. But not always silent. In the throb of Ho Chi Minh traffic, many a driver ( man and woman) seems capable of haughing up a steady stream of flem to be spat out the hastily rolled down window or indulge themselves liberally in neck twisting and knuckle crunching to be accompanied by self-congratulatory sighs while a few mad and fairly scary times, a driver has sung airily into the vanity mirror while swigging from a bottle of rice wine.

In the Mekong, a few hours ( sober) ride from the city we had come to a homestay, where a Vietnamese family give up a portion of their house and play host to sweaty foreigners who pay a small amount USD for an incredible experience. Within half an hour of arriving we are sharing a beer while losing balance in hammocks stretched across the wooden balconies that overlook a slow-moving and tiny tributary of this huge array of water.
 
Our water-taxi, a pleasure boat with eight itsy bitsy chairs phfut phfuts along the canals allowing us to breathe in green scent and then travel on further and apparently deeper into foliage, where we can see trees gracefully holding fruits; green upward-pointing bananas, balanced like clustered dancers on their points; and stranger fruits hanging like swollen red lips, the Nah,whose flesh is very sweet and disturbingly warm. A fond kiss. Aye.


Our water taxi driver silently, perhaps deafened by the ceaseless chug of the boat’s engine , takes us as far as he can into smaller and smaller canals. There is no moan from him, no capitalising on our apparent riches, no anger or frustration when other boats come near or when knotweed threatens to engulf us all. Instead, he takes us serenely into the lightness of being, the ease of sightseeing, of gliding on silk water. Of course, I trailed my fingers in the water. Of course, we saw Vietnamese half-immersed in the water we dallied in, their hands lifting carefully arranged nets and cages, hoping that they had trapped some useful life.

Later, the noise of boats fades into the dark and our homestay hosts having been warned of our vegetarian status lay a table in the middle of the wooden platform and put on a Blyton-esque spread of wonderful food including green aubergines we had seen growing along the river bank and now fried in garlic and lemongrass and we smile when we see our tofu. Half an hour earlier a canoe paddled by a woman, swaddled against the burn of the dying sun, bumped against the wooden jetty and she held up a bag of tofu, fresh from the market. The process to this food was a privilige to witness. This was far away from a supermarketed life. We knew exactly where our food had come from.

Follow the 'Mekong' link for a little Quicktime movie and see what you make of this somewhat large spider.

Chuc Mung Nam Muoi