The Southeast Asia Journals: A Visit

(Continued from "The Southeast Asia Journals: Part Two," which was posted Thursday, February 11, 2010)

January 19, 2010

On the moped, I watched hills and rice fields fly past while I clutched the seat handle behind me. Mr. Ng would every now and then shout back tourist information – here were rubber trees, or here was a nice view, or here were minority villages.

As we drew closer to Phu Bon, we saw more and more minority buildings. They looked somewhat like I imagined they would – boarded one-room houses that sat on stilts above dusty ground. The walls weren’t thatched like I’d seen in pictures from the sixties. Only the roofs had straw.

Every now and then I’d see a man or woman walking along the side of the highway with a great basket strapped to his or her back. They were the basket backpacks Lap had once described to me during a translation session for the dictionary. He’d sketched them on a notepad, and together we’d written a description.

The landscape was more open than I had pictured. Not much jungle, just open dirt and rice fields, and sometimes a hill. From my seat, I could see far into the distance.

The main Phu Bon street felt almost like Pleiku or Hoi An, except that it intersected with dirt roads that led off to the villages, and most of the storefronts were shabby.

Lap’s family wasn’t there when we arrived, and I was afraid for a moment that we wouldn’t see them. A phone call to one of the family members revealed there had been a miscommunication. The family had understood we would arrive at nine, but Mr. Ng had meant to express that we would leave Pleiku at nine. It was now close to eleven. After waiting for several hours, the family had gone back to the village to eat lunch.

I felt anxious – were they upset that they’d had to wait? My discomfort grew when I heard Mr. Ng speaking with them on the phone. I didn’t know what he was saying to them, but he wasn’t hiding his frustration. When he got off the phone, he told me, “The minorities, they don’t understand nothing.” He kept smacking his lips and sighing. Not until this point did I sense his prejudice, and I thought, What have I done?

I was made uneasy not only by Mr. Ng's attitude, but also by the miscommunication I’d just witnessed. I knew it was only a small taste of the language barrier that would soon confront me. Mr. Ng was operating in broken English, and the family would be operating in Vietnamese, their second language.

We sat down, and the three men ordered coffee. I kept trying to ask Mr. Ng about the meeting between Benny and the sisters. How long had Benny stayed? Where did he go? I didn’t know if I should offer to buy a meal for the family, or where we could eat. Mr. Ng kept saying his signature phrase: “Don’t worry nothing!”

As we waited, I learned he had served with the Southern Vietnamese armies during the war.

“What happened to you when the U.S. left the country?” I asked.

He laughed. “I went to prison.”

I don’t remember now how long he said he was held. I only remember that he kept laughing like usual and acted as if the imprisonment had been no big deal.

“Tell me,” he said. “If you did not go here with me, who would you go with?”

I told him about the man at the travel agency.

He laughed. “Ah Cham! He my friend! I know Cham. He speak English very well. He works for the government. I fought with the U.S., so I can’t work for the government. The government don’t care about me.”

So here, perhaps, was the reason why he could bring me to the sisters and translate, and Cham couldn’t. Knowing that Cham worked for the government made me somewhat grateful I hadn’t held out for his help, but even so I wished for his perfect English and calm, collected manner. Mr. Ng's smiles and high-pitched talking bothered me.

When the waiter brought the bill for the coffee, Mr. Ng said he didn’t have change to split the cost with Joe.

“I owe you,” he said.

Yeah right, I thought.

After a half-hour or forty-five minutes, two mopeds parked in front of our tables. A man, a woman, and a younger boy and girl. Only one of Lap's sisters had come. I noticed her right away; she looked like Lap. I’d been imagining what his relatives would look like. I knew it was them. But my heart was beating hard. I stood up, but I didn’t know what to do. Approach them? Hug them? I didn’t know them. I decided to take a few steps toward them and smile. I didn’t know a word of their language, not even 'hello.' I contemplated shaking their hands. In the end, no introduction took place at all. We simply beheld each other, and smiled. Mr. Ng immediately started speaking to them in Vietnamese, then turned and asked me if I wanted to stay here, or go to the place where they had eaten with Benny.

I said we should go to the place where Benny had gone. I didn’t like our time being so completely under Mr. Ng's direction, but I didn’t know what else could be done. I didn’t know if the family had eaten or not. We had yet to say a word to each other when the decision was made, and everyone immediately climbed back on the motorbikes. I tried to smile at the slender woman, the face that looked like Lap, as much as I could. But I already felt despair that I could say nothing meaningful to her.

It took some time to find the restaurant. When we did, we found it occupied by a wedding. Mr. Ng disappeared, and Joe and I stood by the mopeds, silent and stiff. The family members were wandering about, looking to see if there was an empty room. Finally, Mr. Ng returned saying that we could not stay, so we got on the motorbikes. I didn’t know where we were going now. Soon, we drove into the garage of a white building down the street, and entered a large room filled with checkered table cloths. We sat down in a circle. Still, so little had been said. Mr. Ng looked bored.

“Tell them I am very happy to see them,” I said.

I kept hoping to see the faces of the family smile at me -- some sign that they were pleased or happy. They did smile, in the quiet moments. But when I tried to tell them something, their faces looked confused and drawn. I prayed Mr. Ng was telling them what I was actually saying, and he was probably doing his best. But even for the simplest phrases I expressed, I am doubtful that the right message was passed on.

I had written questions in my journal. I wanted to ask about the war, about what H’Blu felt when her brother left, or what she felt when her father was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese. Now I realized such conversation was not possible through Mr. Ng's translation. He often needed me to repeat a question two or three times before he could pass it on.

H’Blu gave me a small, strapped basket like the one Lap had drawn pictures of, and a drinking gourd. Mr. Ng told me H'Blu had made the basket, and that the gourd was used to drink wine.

I suddenly felt rather ridiculous to pull out Lap’s 123 page thesis. I hadn't before considered the impracticality: most of it was in English. What would they do with over a hundred pages they couldn’t read? I gave it to them, and tried to have Mr. Ng explain what it was. I said I thought maybe they’d like to see what Lap had been working on for so long. She took it, and passed it on to the next person, and each family member looked at it. I watched their faces. I confess I had been half-hoping for smiles or tears, and was somewhat disappointed when they responded with neither. I was thankful that Lap had sent me pictures to give them, and a letter -- surely these items would be meaningful to them.

I wanted to know so much what they felt, or thought. But often, when I asked them a question through Mr. Ng, he never returned me an answer at all. The bulk of the conversation was them saying “thank you” through Mr. Ng, and me telling them that the basket and gourd were “very special” to me. Beyond that, I don’t remember much of what was said. Ultimately, very little was communicated. I remember asking them their ages, and it took some time before they had finished discussing with each other and speaking back and forth with Mr. Ng. Finally, Mr. Ng wrote on a napkin the ages he had understood. The boy and girl were eighteen, he said.

I asked what their work in the village was like, and Mr. Ng asked the question for me, but then gave me his own answer: “They’re rice farmers,” he said. “All the minorities are rice farmers. Poor.”

I vaguely remembered what Lap had told me about the process of planting rice. He had tried to explain the tool they used – some sort of long, hollow stick was used to plant the grains in the mud.

The food came, and we ate silently. The family had not suggested anything to eat, and of course Joe and I knew nothing of Vietnamese food, so once again to my regret, the situation was placed in the hands of Mr. Ng, who chose whatever he wanted – there was chicken, pork, rice, squid, soup, and I don’t remember what else.

I took pictures and videos of the family, and then we left. H’Blu hugged me tightly. I looked back over my shoulder at her as the motorbike pulled away. I spent the two hours back to Pleiku wondering if the meeting had benefited them at all. I clung so tightly to the basket and gourd H’Blu had given me, that my arms were sore when we arrived at the hotel. I reminded Mr. Ng to pay Joe for his coffee, and he did.

August 4, 2010

Last week -- six months or so after visiting the Siu family -- I visited their brother, Lap, here in the States. He speaks with H'Blu and the others regularly by telephone, and I wanted to hear what his sister had told him of the visit, and to give him my account as well. I was surprised (and not surprised) to hear that soon after I left the town of Phu Bon, police stopped Lap’s sister as she rode back to her village. They questioned her, and took from her the dictionary and letter that I had given her. Most surprising of all, someone knocked on her door a day later, returned the papers to her, and said he was sorry.

I'm Back

...back in the States, and back on the blog. Sorry for the six month absence. Blogspot is blocked by the Chinese government, so when my internet proxy died back in February, I could no longer access Blogspot.

I'm returning to China in September to begin my second year of teaching. I think I've found a proxy that will allow me to keep posting when I get there.

I do still plan to post the last of my journal notes from the Southeast Asia trip -- Southeast Asia Journals, part 3, is coming soon. In the meantime, here are some brief thoughts I wrote during my second semester in China.

3.22.10
As the second semester flies past, I find my students more comfortable and more honest in their interactions with me. I can ask their opinions in class now, and get answers. We’ve talked about cloning, about whether or not the Chinese should be banned from eating dog meat, and whether, as Christopher McCandless said, “Happiness is real only when shared.” Last week we talked about inventions. Our textbook unit was titled, “I Like This Machine!” It gave a lot of outdated scientific discoveries as conversation topics and suggested I have students practice labeling the parts of a computer. Instead, I gave them play-dough, and asked, “What invention do you think will be created in the next twenty years?” They presented flying cars, UFO’s, time machines… my favorite was a machine that records our dreams at night, and transmits the memories onto a TV screen so that we can watch them when we wake up in the morning. Food, clothing, or mechanisms that would allow us to live forever were quite popular, or inventions that would free us from any kind of labor. A robot that does all our work for us. A machine that fixes our writing mistakes. Edible books that, when consumed, fill our minds with knowledge that we could otherwise only attain through reading. Many suggested a chewing gum that would allow us to never go hungry – chew a piece of gum and be filled.

I am enjoying the change of atmosphere. Last semester I felt restricted to simple, objective topics. This semester, class feels much more real.

“Life Forum” was an activity suggested to me by the other freshmen teachers: for large classes, split the students into groups and have each group choose one question to ask their teacher. Today, the first time I tried the activity, I told my students they could ask me anything – questions about my life, culture, travels… whatever subject they were interested in. Some groups asked the questions that I expected to hear: “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Do you like China?” “Tell us about your hometown.” Others asked questions that were more meaningful then I expected, especially since their class has a much lower level of English than others.

One group asked, “Why did you come to China?” Thirty students looked at me, waiting for my answer. This class has behavior issues, the worst of any of my classes. Usually I can’t get them to keep quiet, but the room was silent for this question.

“Well, I wanted to learn how to live in another culture,” I said. “I wanted to see what life was like here. And I wanted to become friends with college students like you.”

A few faces brightened -- the few that understood what I had said.

Then came the question I wasn’t ready for: a member of the last group stepped forward and asked, “Do you love us, and why?”

She had to repeat the question for me. She’d said it perfectly the first time, but I thought I had heard wrong. I hesitated to answer. Last semester, due to their low level, behavior issues, and large size, I dreaded their class more than any other. Now, they were waiting for me to offer some proof that I cared about them. I felt challenged – the tone of the question was unmistakable. These students had seen my worst moments of frustration and impatience, had watched me stumble through poorly crafted lesson plans. A part of me was not surprised that, when given the opportunity to ask me anything, they chose to ask me if I cared about them. They must have been wondering.

I stalled at first, tried to think. Somehow the first few words that came out sounded more like an apology. I told them I knew that sometimes I make mistakes, but that I do want to know my students, and that the more I know my students the more I love them. Their looks told me that either no one understood or no one was impressed by my answer.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “I love you.” But that was easy to say. They wanted me to give them a reason. I had to prove I was telling the truth.

“I don’t know all of you very well,” I said. “But I like to talk with you.” I still wasn’t giving them a reason. I finally gave in, and stated the simplest, most tangible reason that came to mind.

“Well yes… yes, I love you. I love you because you are much better students than I know I would ever have in America.” I didn’t have to wait to make sure they understood. The room erupted in applause. After class, four of them came to me, assured me they loved me too, and asked if they could visit me.

The Bribe
Parents, apparently, don’t need encouragement to be open with me. Last Monday, a student made her first appearance of the semester. Halfway through class, I noticed that she was limping. She came to me afterward and said she’d been missing class because her leg was hurt. She wanted to visit me, and catch up on all the material she’d missed. I wasn’t thrilled at the thought of a private tutoring lesson, but I figured she had a good reason, and I was happy to see that she wanted to catch up.

I scheduled a meeting with her, and just as we finished talking, another woman entered from the hallway. I saw the resemblance immediately. She carried bags of food. I introduced myself. She took my hand. She had better English than her daughter, and asked me to sit down at one of the desks and eat lunch with them. She offered me a spoon in place of the chopsticks, punctured a bag of yogurt with a straw, gave me tissues, and kept repeating that I should “Eat much.” I didn’t really want to eat. I knew it would be a mostly silent lunch. She insisted, and I thought maybe it was good for me to stay.

I sat sideways in the row in front of my student, reached over the back of the chairs and picked rice, tofu, and sprouts from the bags that sat on the built-in desk. The mother told me I was beautiful and young, that I could learn Chinese very quickly. I didn’t know how to respond, but to keep telling her she was kind, and to obey each time she pointed to a bag and said, “Eat this, eat this – very delicious.” Her daughter sat quietly the whole meal, and looked at her mother for help each time I asked a question.

When I convinced the mother that I was full, she insisted I take the food home with me. She gave me more napkins, took my empty yogurt, and tied each plastic bag.

The student will come to my room this Friday, and I will spend an hour reviewing the lessons and practicing pronunciation with her.

The Southeast Asia Journals: Part Two

1.15.10

There are moments when I begin to strongly dislike Asia. Just now, our bus stopped at a roadside café. The tourist busses always stop at these places to let the tourists use the bathroom, and lure them into buying expensive coffee, snacks, and souvenirs. When I walked down the dirt road to the waterfront behind the store, a woman in platform shoes tried to sell me the trinkets she carried on a tray. She was very loud.

“Where you from?” She said.

I told her, and she threw her head back and laughed.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Americans are not lucky. I don’t like Americans. They always angry.”

I didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Actually I have American boyfriend.”

I wondered if she was drunk. “You have an American boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but I think I don’t want him.”

“Oh.” I looked at the ground and kept walking. She decided she would get nothing from me, I guess. She went across the street to a group of Dutch tourists and began to cry and say she could sell nothing.

The people in the tourist areas of Vietnam, and later in Cambodia, were more determined to sell to me than many of the street vendors I’ve encountered in China. In Vietnam especially, there were times when I was almost made lonely by the feeling that no one spoke to me unless he or she had some ulterior motive of getting something from me. In Cambodia, I talked with a taxi driver outside a ruin. I was waiting for my friends, and he was waiting for his passengers; he was lying in a hammock in the shade. I assumed he’d have no reason to sell to me – he had customers already, and I had clearly gotten transportation to the ruins. I thought maybe we could have normal conversation. He asked where I was from. Then he asked what I would do the next day. I told him it was my last day in Siem Reap – there could be no selling now, I thought. I wouldn’t be needing a driver the next day. I tried to ask him about his family. While I talked I sat on the bike I’d rented to ride out to the ruin.

“Why you ride bike?” He said.

I knew why he was asking. “It’s more fun, it’s good exercise, and… it’s cheaper.”

He laughed. “You can’t take your money when you die.”

I felt angry at the assumption, at the accusation, that I was stingy. “The Americans you meet here," I said, "they don’t want to spend money do they?”

He nodded.

I had to prove to him now that I had a good reason for not spending money. “Well, I don’t have a lot of money.”

He smiled lazily. I knew he believed me no more than I believed he didn’t want money from me.

“You should take a car,” he said. “Bikes take too long.”

“I’ve been on a long trip,” I said. “I don’t have much money left.”

“You have money in a bank account?”

“Yes, but not very much.” But I sensed that having money in a bank account was enough to prove to him that I was rich. He kept trying to tell me to hire a driver instead of taking the bikes. Oddly enough, he invited me to come to dinner at his house, too, but he’d dogged me about the bikes so much I didn’t feel I could trust him. Up to that point, I’d been offered nothing by a Cambodian that was free. I’d talked to him long enough to think that he wouldn’t be an exception. Maybe I was wrong. His passengers came eventually, and he rolled up his hammock and went to his car. My friends and I got back on our bikes to ride to the next ruin down the road.

1.17.10

I hit hurdles today. I just now read a five-day-old e-mail from a Vietnamese contact of Benny’s, telling me that the government will not let foreigners go to the Cheo Reo village, the home of Lap’s sisters. The contact said we can try to meet the sisters in a town outside the village. Even worse – she told me that the translator I’d asked for would not be able to come with me. I tried to call the contact. All this time I’d been thinking she was just a friend of Benny’s, someone who wanted to help us. When I finally got through to her, I realized I had misunderstood the situation. She was a travel agent, ready to book us a hotel, sell us a tour.

We were on our last day in Hoi An at this point, and had that morning decided we would leave for Pleiku the next day, thinking we would meet a driver and translator there and go together to the village to see Lap’s sisters. Now, we found we could not go to the village, and that we didn’t have a translator. Neither did we have any information in our guidebook about Pleiku or the Central Highlands. As I sat at the computer reading the five-day-old e-mail, it was already approaching evening. I could e-mail another contact of Benny’s, someone who could be our translator, but who knows how soon he would respond. Our travel group had to decide: either wait in Hoi An until I secured a new translator, or go straight to Pleiku in the morning and hope that things would work out there.

The other contact Benny had given us was Mr. Ng – I’d e-mailed him once before and been frightened by his response, and by Benny’s warning that Mr. Ng would try to get an extra cut from any meals we ate while going around with him. Here’s a sample of one e-mail I’d received from Ng:

Tue, 5thJan 2010

hello ANNE and your friends

thanks for reply me soon. i am understanding all whats you wrote in this email .

yes, you can take a bus from HUE to PLEIKU . pleasecall or email me whenever you arrive in PLEIKU bus station , i will pick you up from there to the hotels , would you like i help you to booking the rooms … about a van , a driver , a guide ? ! don't mind nothing ! i will help you like i have ever did with BENNY before [ i have read your email , that you sent to BENNY ] .

you asked me that; you need for a permit ! no , you not necessary to use it , don't worry nothing

about ! not problem nothing for travel in the highlands [ i knew what i do by myself for help you ]...

...i will provide more information for you when we meet each other . so, please tell me where would you like to traveling and how many days you can stay in the highlands ?!

please give me your plans in advance so that i can charge for you

long journey plese show me and we can continue ........wherever........

ANNE- remember: give me your plans in exactly .plese reply soon. sincerely.

NG'S TOURS

The exclamation marks and broken English told me I shoudn't hire this man. But now we needed a translator, and he seemed to know where the sisters were, and how to get to them. He lived in Pleiku. I e-mailed him again, asking for his price, and my companions and I took a bus to Pleiku the next morning. I hoped that by the time I arrived in the city I would have a reply.

1.18.10

We are in a cramped van headed for Pleiku. The city is not mentioned in Joe’s guidebook. We have no maps and little information, only a few numbers and addresses of some places we might stay.

The Joes have decided they will not try to see the sisters, so if I do get a translator, only Rachel and I will go. If I am to go, I really must hear from Mr. Ng today, or find a translator at some tour agency in Pleiku. I need to be able to visit the sisters tomorrow or the day after. I don’t think my companions will be willing to stay in Pleiku any longer than that. I’m praying that I’ll find an e-mail and a fair price from Mr. Ng on the computer tonight. I think the town where I may meet the sisters, Phu Bon, is about an hour from Pleiku.

Our van slowed moments ago to pick up more passengers. There is one empty seat now. The van slowed again a little later and passengers leaned out the open door to spit onto the road. I was happy that they weren’t spitting inside the van, but then the man in front of Rachel leaned over and dropped a wad somewhere by his feet.

There is a box under my seat, so I don’t have much space. Vietnamese talk radio blares. Nine hours to go. We will arrive in the city after dark, probably late.

...I was wrong – there were two empty seats left, one was a folded metal chair in the aisle. The van just stopped again, and now there are no empty seats. The new passengers brought a big yellow sandbag, and the driver placed it under the seat in front me; my feet are wedged between the box and bag now.

...We’ve been driving on for four or five hours. We just picked up another person – I didn’t think there were any seats left, and maybe there weren’t. He was holding a puppy in his arms when he climbed in. Now there are twenty people in our van, the puppy, and two ducks we’ve discovered are packed behind our seat in the very back. The ducks have been quacking for the last twenty minutes at least. We’ve had two bathroom breaks – just pulled to a stop on the side of the road each time. I sat still for the first one, to observe. The men got out first. One barely took two steps from the van before he unzipped his pants. The women hung back for awhile, then got out all together and walked to some bushes a little further away.

At the second stop I would’ve gone, but there were no bushes. The men went, and then one woman climbed out of the van. I watched her carefully to see where she’d go. She walked a good distance away, but then dropped into the grass right by the road, barely covered. Rachel and I looked at each other, and Rachel said, “That’s not gonna happen.” Neither of us have gone since we left the bus station. I’m holding out for big, leafy bushes.

...Twenty-one people in the van now. I can’t make out from back here what everyone is sitting on…and not everyone is sitting. A bus employee is standing on some unseen ground. I can see his head popping up as if from a box of crayons – a little higher than all the rest.

We got to Pleiku at nine forty-five and booked the first hotel we entered. I found when I got up the next morning that Gia Lai Tours, the only Central Highlands tour company we’d seen mentioned in a guidebook, was across the street. I was anxious that morning. A woman at the tour company spoke good English. She said I could hire a translator for thirty dollars, but thought the only way I could see the Siu sisters is if I asked them to come to Pleiku. I left to find an internet café. I wanted to see if Mr. Ng had written me.

We didn’t find an internet café until late morning. Mr. Ng had written: he offered a van, driver, and translator for ninety U.S. dollars. Too much for me.

I went back to the tourist company and this time had quite a different experience. The lights were off, and one man sat at a table inside. He was dark-skinned. He reminded me of Lap, so I thought he might be Jarai. I found out later that he was. I didn’t think he would speak English, but when I told him I had spoken with a lady there that morning, he said perfectly, “What was the name of the woman? Everyone was still out to lunch. Rachel and the Joes were with me now. We sat down at the table, and I started to explain to the man what I wanted. Workers began to trickle in, still wearing their facemasks and motorbike gloves. Just as I began to explain, a woman spoke to him in Vietnamese. She didn’t speak English, but she had been there when I first asked for help that morning. She was explaining for me. I nudged Lap’s pictures closer to the man, and he began to look at them. A half-hour or more of conversation followed, a half-hour in which I felt questioned and tested. He was Jarai himself, which I hoped would cause him to sympathize with me. I showed him the pictures and the dictionary, I told him Lap hadn’t seen his sisters in fourteen years. I asked him if I could hire a translator from the travel agency, and go to Phu Bon by public bus.

He first asked why I could not simply ask the sisters to come to Pleiku. I struggled to give him a direct answer. Saying that I didn’t want to be rude to the sisters wouldn’t convince him, I knew. I tried to tell him that I didn’t think it would be right to ask them to come two hours by bus the very next day.

“They don’t know me,” I said. “I don’t want to be rude – I think it would be easier for me to go to them.”

But he repeatedly suggested that I ask them to come to Pleiku. He said that I could pay their bus fares.

Maybe that would work, I thought. But certainly it wasn’t ideal. Up to this point, I hadn’t personally contacted them at all, though Lap said they were expecting me. They would have no warning.

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” said the man. “So, in Vietnam, do as the Vietnamese do.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“We have laws. I think it would be better for you to ask them to come to Pleiku.”

“Is there a public bus I can take to Phu Bon?”

“If I authorize my translator to go with you there, and you go into the village, who has the problem? I have the problem.”

I had thought this was why he didn’t want me to go there – he was afraid I’d try to do something underhanded.

“But I won’t go to the village,” I said. “I will stay in the town. I just want to see Lap’s sisters.”

He was talking with just three of us now, Joe M, Rachel, and I. He asked us to move to a small table, where he served us tea. He began to ask us simple questions, as if he’d entirely forgotten my request for a translator. Where were we from? What were our jobs? Where in Vietnam would we go next? He gave us bus information to Dalat, and a small map of Pleiku. He answered our questions about the city and joked with us.

I wanted an answer from him. I was beginning to see that I may not be able to go to Phu Bon. Fine. I was willing to let him call the sisters and arrange for them to go to Pleiku. I tried to express that. But still he evaded giving me a clear answer. He said that the government had laws concerning his tourist agency, that he had a tour program he was to abide by. He did not know if he could lend a translator for something so personal.

He kept taking calls on his cell phone, and I wondered if he was trying to get some sort of permission. Sometimes he would be off the phone, and still there was a lull in the conversation. Then he’d ask more personal questions or questions about our trip. Sometimes he’d return to the issue at hand, as if he’d suddenly thought of a new question. How did I know Lap? What was my purpose in seeing the sisters? Finally he said, “I’m trying to think of what I should do, whether or not I can help you.”

I could see that he was. During all his slow questioning and small talk, I knew he was mulling over the situation, and sizing me up.

I never could get an answer from him. He took H’Blu’s number, and mine, and told me he’d call me or come to my hotel. At first he didn’t even want my phone number…said it’d be easier to discuss with me in person. I should have seen then that he wasn’t going to do anything about my request, but I was hopeful. I made sure he would tell the sisters that I’d pay their bus fare, and as I left I asked him when I could expect to hear back from him. I think he said that he’d call them, and then consider it, and after that talk to me. He patted my back and said, “Please understand. As much as I can, I will help you.”

I went back to the hotel. Mr. Ng wanted an answer to his ninety-dollar offer. He wanted to come to the hotel and work out a deal with me in person. But I wanted to hear from the Jarai man at Gia Lai Tours before I saw Mr. Ng. I thought maybe the Jarai man was more trustworthy. I waited at my hotel for the next hour and a half, but he never came or called. I told myself I’d wait until four o’clock. At one minute after, I called Mr. Ng. I told him I would meet with him. I didn’t even have to tell him which hotel I was staying in – somehow he already knew.

He puttered up thirty minutes later on his motorbike, and when he took his helmet off I was surprised to see so many grays. He wore aviator sunglasses. We sat down in the lobby, and I asked him how he knew which hotel to come to. He slapped my shoulder, and said, “Small town!” His eyes got wide and he laughed – he gave that manner of response to almost all my questions. He liked dramatic facial expressions, shrill tones, and laughter. He often said to me, “You don’t mind nothing!” or “It’s easy,” and he’d spread his arms out every time as if he were giving a sermon.

He wouldn’t go lower than eighty. At one point in our conversation, I was ready to give up.

“Mr Ng, I don’t think I can pay you more than sixty dollars.”

But he wasn’t coming down. I found hope when he started giving me alternatives. He could bring the sisters to Pleiku, he said, and then I’d pay him to translate. Not quite what I wanted, but something.

He knew he was my best option – who else knew where the village was, and what the Siu sisters looked like? And even though his English was difficult to understand, it was much better than what I would likely find around town. He kept telling me how easy it would be for him to take me. He knew the sisters. He had taken Benny to the sisters.

“If only one person come, I can even take you to the village,” he said. “I know that village – no police there.”

“You could take me inside?” I said.

“For sure! If one person, I take on my motorbike into the village. No police. It’s not legal…” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

“You could take me to Phu Bon on your motorbike?” I said.

“If just you, yes.”

“How much?”

The laughing stopped, the smile disappeared. He became motionless and stared out to the street. He did that sometimes when I asked him a question, or if he needed to think of the right words to use. Finally he said, “If only you, on my motorbike…thirty dollars.”

It was the lowest price I’d heard for anything. But should I go alone? He’d already told me the town was two hours away, not one hour like I’d thought.

“What if my friend comes?”

“It’s easy! I get my son to drive another motorbike. You pay sixty dollars for two motorbike.” He thought again. “If you take two motorbike, I charge you fifty-five.”

I told him I’d think it over, but I already knew what I would do. Even if I paid sixty dollars for one of the guys to go with me, I’d be paying less than for a van and driver. I ran it by my companions later and we settled on it – I’d go with Mr. Ng and Joe M would come with me. I’ve no doubt I would have been fine by myself. I wasn’t afraid of going alone, but some part of my mind thought it was smarter to take Joe with me. I knew that once my mom heard the story she’d be happy to know that I hadn’t gone alone.

Mr. Ng and not his son, but his nephew, came to the hotel the next morning and drove me and Joe the two hours to Phu Bon.

(Video from the back of the motorbike)

The Southeast Asia Journals: Part One

Various e-mails from December 2009

Subject: Merry Christmas from China

Dear Friends and Family,

...in five days I will begin a month-long excursion through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand with three other foreign teachers... I have a very important visit I want to make [in Vietnam]... As some of you know, last semester I helped a friend at school with his Thesis project: a Jarai-English dictionary. The Jarai people are an indigenous tribe that comes from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The indigenous people of Vietnam are known as the Montagnards -- mountain people... My friend's name is Lap Siu. He is Jarai, and because his father fought on the side of the U.S. during the war, Lap immigrated to the U.S. with his parents as a teenager. Two of his sisters had to stay behind, and he has not seen them in the fourteen years since he moved to the States... I worked with him briefly on his dictionary project in my last semester at school, and now would like to try to see his sisters in Vietnam during my travels. Currently, I have only their addresses, a phone number, and three travel companions who are willing to try to get to them. The Vietnamese government has in the past restricted travel in the Highlands... One American did recently visit Lap's sisters, so I know it's possible to get to them. Seeing them would be very special for me, for my travel companions, and for Lap and his sisters. We will try to go to them sometime in mid-January.

Subject: First Official e-mail of the Southeast Asia Sexies

Distinguished members,

At the first meeting, our secretary Joe Matar FORGOT to take the MINUTES! So there will be no record of what we said or did. It was a complete waste of time.

Yours sincerely,

Joe Lennon

RE: First Official e-mail of the Southeast Asia Sexies

Distinguished members:

One more costly mistake like that, and I move we hold a vote to appoint a new secretary.

Sincerely,

Anonymous distinguished member

Fellow timewasters:

I believe if you refer to the SE Asia Sexies Official Rulebook, you'll find that a new secretary is only brought in when the previous one dies. Therefore, I will be continuing my sub-par performance in my current position for the foreseeable future. I would urge the other members not to attempt to plan some sort of uprising/murder to push me out of my position. That would be far too predictable.

Regards,
Disgruntled Secretary

Fellow Distinguished Members,

As you know, I take my self-appointed position of treasurer very seriously and am greatly insulted by the lack of sexiness presented by Joe Matar. This will not be tolerated. Therefore, I motion that we demote him until he can prove his current position in our elite group is indeed deserved.

Sincerely,

Concerned Member

1.1.10

I’m writing from my first train ride in China. Rachel and I are off to Guilin to meet Joe Matar and Joe Lennon, to begin our month-long excursion through Southeast Asia. We have named our group the Southeast Asia Sexies, and I’ve saved a series of e-mails we’ve sent to each other over the past two weeks. Most of the travel decisions have been left up to the Joes. Rachel and I are proud of ourselves, I think, for even making it safely to our train in Zhengzhou this morning. We woke up at six, and caught a bus to Zhengzhou with the help of a Chinese friend. We had a wonderful breakfast at McDonald’s (hotcakes, hash browns, and coffee), and were at the train station by ten thirty.

Now we are on our way, and I only hope we have all we need. A passport and three thousand kuai are tucked away in my coat’s breast pocket. The past two to three days I’ve been frantically trying to get information about the Central Highlands from people who have been there. Lap told me he knew an American vet who was able to visit the Siu sisters. I e-mailed the vet, Benny, but had no response. When Lap tried to get a hold of him for me, we fared better. Benny has offered to connect me with his contacts in Vietnam. I still don’t have all the info for the contacts, but I’m hoping there will be an e-mail in my box by the time we get to Hanoi.

I want to get to Lap’s village and see his sisters. I’ve brought his completed thesis, the Jarai-English dictionary – all 125 pages. He also sent me a Jarai letter and pictures to give to his sisters, so I have those with me as well.

There is no info about the Highlands in the Lonely Planet guidebook, and next to nothing about it online. The nearest big cities to the village are Tuy Hoa and Pleiku. We need a translator and a van, which I just don’t think we’ll get unless we get a name and number from Benny, someone trustworthy that can be our guide.

I’m looking now out the train window, at the railway yards and the backsides of gray buildings. Everything looks desolate, but once or twice we’ve passed a small platform of people. I see factories with cement spires and smokestacks -- metal structures that I can’t describe and don’t really know the name of. They probably made the clothes that I’m wearing.

A couple is patiently trying to converse with me, and I wish I understood what they were asking. I told them the little I can say: “I come from America. I am a teacher.” I think they’ve given up now. They are silent, but probably watching me. Maybe God is giving me patient Chinese people so that my desire to learn Chinese will grow. This morning at McDonald’s, a young boy was talking to me. He seemed so disappointed that I couldn’t respond. He stood and stared at me for a long time, and I guess maybe he was hoping I would remember how to say a few more words. He left and brought back French fries and ketchup, told me they were for me, that I should eat them. Then he stared at me again, but I couldn’t tell him any more than I told the couple on the train just now.

1.3.10

We arrived in Guilin at six in the morning. Joe Matar was waiting for us at the station. After putting our things in his room at the hostel, we wandered empty streets hoping to find breakfast. Around eight, we finally saw a sign with a picture of baozi, so we went inside and ate anything familiar – baozi with pork, dumplings, hard-boiled eggs. We took a van to the Li River and paid too much money to ride a bamboo (actually it was PVC pipe) raft down-river to Yangshuo. It was rainy and cold, but the mountains were pretty. We got to Yangshuo that evening and found a westernized tourist town. There’s a McDonald’s, a KFC, and lots of little coffee shops and bars. We ate at Dumpling Dynasty and had coffee at a café near our hostel.

1.4.10

We go to meet the final Sexy today. We’ll take a bus from Yangshuo to Guilin, and then take the train to Nanning, our last stop in China.

Yesterday we rode bikes outside of Yangshuo, on a path between the hills and the Yulong River. We rode through villages and even, by accident, crop fields. We left at eleven and didn’t get back to the hostel ‘til five. It was much more enjoyable than the cold bamboo ride the day before; the sun was shining, the sky was as blue as it ever is in China, and the hills weren’t hidden by clouds.

A guidebook in a café said that we don’t need a permit to go to Pleiku, a city near Lap’s village in Vietnam. But permit and guide are likely needed for travel around the Higlands, it said. It gave a name of a travel agency in Pleiku – Gia Lai travel. We might be able to get a guide, permit, and van there. It is probably the next best option if Benny’s contacts don’t come through. The guide said Pleiku is accessible by bus…

I’m writing from the bus now – that’s why my writing is shaky. We were late getting to the station because our breakfast was slow, and I doubt we’ll make the one twenty train out of Guilin. We’ll have to settle for the next closest time.

1.6.10

We are on a bus bound for Hanoi, backing out of the bus station in Nanning. Vietnam is within our reach. I’m glad, because I’m ready to leave China. I’m half-hoping that the change of culture will curb the complaints that have been voiced within our little group of travelers: it’s obvious that my travel companions are just as ready as I am for a break from the gray skies and pushy crowds of China. Much as we may attempt to love the country, sometimes we are overcome by the parts of it that we don’t like. I don’t expect to find less crowds or cleaner streets in Vietnam, but a change of scenery and people may draw our attention away from the challenges of living in the Chinese culture.

Hanoi was a break from Chinese culture. The first, obvious changes were the motorbikes that flooded the streets, the readable street signs, and the French influence that we saw in the buildings and the food. We could eat French bread from street stands, and find coffee on almost any street.

One of the highlights of Hanoi was my visit to Hoa Lo prison, known to American POWs as the “Hanoi Hilton.” When I went to the prison, I was reminded of a PBS documentary I’d seen many years ago, a documentary about the conditions the POWs lived in at the prison. The prison has striking yellow walls (like a lot of buildings in Hanoi, actually…I found out later that yellow was once the color of royalty in Vietnam…don’t know if that has any bearing on the prison walls, or the popularity of the color throughout the country today). It was these yellow walls I remembered seeing in the documentary; despite them, the building looked drab and dark to me.

The museum within the prison presented a description of the POWs conditions that was very different from the one given by the documentary I’d seen. The museum has pictures of the prisoners playing basketball, decorating for Christmas, smiling into the camera…

1.9.10

We left Hanoi today for Ha Long Bay. We booked a tour through a company that was much cheaper than many others, though our guidebook told us that we’d get what we pay for. The junk we sail on is no luxury liner – the rooms are small and smell musty. Our lunch was seafood…I didn’t like it much. We have just concluded a thirty-minute wait for the one-night, two-day customers to kayak in the bay (we purchased a two-night, three-day tour, so we will kayak later)… we’re not sure why we had to wait, but we are reminded of the guidebook’s warning. A few in our group are angry because we have just discovered that drinking water was not included in the price of the tour. The bottled water on the ship is over-priced.

I really don’t mind the setbacks of the tour, if you want to call them setbacks. I like having a small boat, warped floorboards in my bedroom. The view of the bay is lovely. We’ll sleep on the boat tonight, and tomorrow we’ll kayak and go biking and hiking on one of the islands.

1.12.10

We are on the train to Hue – we should be there soon. We have a nice four-person sleeper on the train, though we are fairly certain we saw a mouse run past the door last night.

We’ve spent enough time together now, our traveling group, that I probably speak for everyone when I say I’m happy for any chance to be alone. I’ve had enough experience of hostel dorms and close train and bus rides to develop a new appreciation of privacy and quiet.

1.14.10

We have been in Hue the past two nights. From what I understand, Hue was sort of the seat of government when Vietnam was still an empire. Joe L and I wandered the old citadel yesterday, where empire officials lived and worked. The guidebook said there wouldn’t be much to see there, but I walked around inside for two hours. Vietnam stopped using it in the forties – by then the emperor was only a figure-head because the French had occupied the country for some time. It’s strange to think a place could so quickly experience abandonment and deterioration; parts of the citadel have already become ruins.

While in Hue we also visited the tombs of three emperors, some of which have also fallen into ruin.

It was also outside Hue that I experienced my first Vietnam War site: we took a bus several hours north to the former Demilitarized Zone. The seventeenth parallel is on a tiny strip of Vietnam where one could easily visit the coast and cross the Laos border in one day. This part of Vietnam looked more like the Vietnam that I had pictured before arriving in the country: hills, trees, rivers. It still doesn’t look exactly like the jungle I imagined it would be, possibly because of deforestation caused by Agent Orange and napalm, or possibly because Hollywood movies didn’t give me an accurate portrayal of the landscape. We drove through Tuan Anh, a city once occupied by the U.S. Marines. Near the parallel, a rusted American tank still sits on the side of Highway One, and nearby is a memorial to the North Vietnamese soldiers.

Our bus drove us across the Hien Luong Bridge, above the Ben Hai River, the barrier between what was once North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

The advertised highlight of the tour was the Vinh Moc tunnel – twenty-eight kilometers, thirty-eight entrances, with meeting rooms, a hospital, a bathroom. At one point three hundred Vietnamese lived in these tunnels.

Though Vinh Moc was much taller and wider than the combat tunnels I later toured in Cu Chi, there were times I felt frightened by the closeness of it, especially when I had to stop and wait behind other tourists. The tunnels were too small to stand in, and they were stuffy and hot. The exit we took led right to a stone wall along the sea. What a sight that must have been to the people cooped up in the tunnel, after spending a weekend or weeks in the darkness.

There was a very short Vietnamese man in a red cap that followed me through the tunnel. He walked close behind me with a flashlight, and when I stood with a camera in hand at the stone wall outside, he pointed at the sea. I guess he was showing me where the good photos were. He kept brushing my shoulders and back, as if the tunnel had left dirt on them, but I don’t think there was anything there. I realized later that he wanted money.

After the Vinh Moc tunnels we went to the site of the former American base at Khe Sanh. American accounts of the battle that took place there differ somewhat from the account given at the tour ... my tour guide made it clear that the siege of the base was a momentous victory for the communists. The museum on the site called it the "hell" of Khe Sanh -- which, no doubt, it was. The communists laid siege to it for seventy-seven days. According to our guide, there were 30,000 men killed in action.

I was curious to see what would be left of the base. Everything was blanketed in fog when the bus stopped at the site of the base. Mist billowed over the few things that remain at the site -- aircraft remains, sandbags, a sign with a picture of the air strip that once existed. A man was walking through the mist with a wooden tray, selling rusted Vietnamese and American dog tags, pins, and medals. I started to bargain with him, but then I thought maybe it was wrong to own, even more so to bargain, for the dog tags of a dead soldier. It suddenly seemed irreverent for something like that to be sold as a souvenir. I walked through the bunkers, looked at the pictures in the one-room museum. The fog made everything seem surreal.