Felix anxiously looks at his watch again... the sleeper bus
from Hoi An to Nha Trang is half an hour late.
A sleeper bus had driven past about 10 minutes ago but the attendant
assured them ‘it’s not the correct bus’ … “nothing ever seems to be on-time”
Felix mutters to himself. Steph starts to get antsy too and steps out onto the
sidewalk in anticipation of the buses arrival.
Felix takes comfort in the fact that there are others waiting at the
café who seem to be waiting for the same bus.
Suddenly a bus arrives… but it is not the sleeper bus that Felix and
Steph were expecting. “Shit… scammed
again!” Felix thought. The people around
them start boarding the bus. Felix gives
the attendant a quizzical look…. “Not this one!” the attendant replied. Eventually, everyone boards the bus, leaving
only Felix and Steph standing at the café on the bustling street.
Many more agonizing minutes pass when suddenly, an
ear-splitting honk of a horn blares loudly…BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP
BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! The
sleeper bus finally pulls up but the honking persists. BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! BEEP BEEP
BEEP!!! Felix and Steph gather their
packs and head towards the bus. The
honking gets even louder as they approach it.
“We hear you already!!”
Just then, a big hairy European man runs into the street
from nowhere, his face puffed red with rage. He points at the driver yelling
and screaming in some foreign language while flipping him the bird. It is obvious that he wants the driver to
stop the honking but it just continues.
The driver then jumps out of the bus ready to confront the European,
screaming in Vietnamese. Felix was sure
a fight was going to break out but then the attendant jumps in between the two
men and manages to diffuse the situation.
“This is going to be a long night…”
Felix and Steph settle in on the bus… fairly cramped but
cozy enough. The bus driver gets back in
and pulls away.
Very quickly, everyone realizes that this driver has a
serious passion for the horn. Every 5 seconds, he has his hand pressed on it to
warn the world, that he is “COMING THROUGH! BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!” The honking was
loud enough from outside of the bus but from the inside, it was
bone-shattering. Steph looks across at Felix and rolls her eyes! She starts
thinking… oh why, OH WHY didn’t I pack my ear plugs! To make matters worse, the driver sticks in a
Vietnamese variety show in the DVD player with the volume on LOUD! Obviously, none of the tourists on the bus
understand what’s going on but the locals seemed to get a kick out of it… Steph
is quickly starting to regret not taking the sleeper train… even though there
was the off chance of another rat attack!
The ‘MacGyver’ in Stephanie takes tissue paper… rolls them up into
little buds… and shoves them in her ears, hoping and praying they will muffle
the jarring sounds.
As the journey continues, suddenly, out of the blue, Felix’s
ears perk up. That tune… it’s so familiar! “What is it???” The realization slowly
sinks in…. they are doing a horrible, Vietnamese rendition of “Ooops I Did It
Again!” Even Felix had to chuckle! There
is no McDonalds, No KFC… but even dear Britney is popular here….
Many days and another sleeper bus ride later…
Steph and Felix find themselves sitting on a rickety wooden
boat in a muddy river somewhere near the Mekong Delta…. Two other passengers are with them… a
Canadian and an Israeli. Propelling them
along this river was a 5 foot, 80 lbs tiny little Vietnamese woman who spoke no
words of English. The ride goes on for
over a half hour in the 30 degree heat and the poor woman struggles to keep the
boat moving. At one point, the water was
so shallow that she had to jump into the waist high muddy water and push the
boat forward. The picture of this poor
woman pushing this boat with 4 foreigners on it screams “Asshole Tourists” – a
term Felix adopted after reading an interesting blog from another fellow
traveler (http://journals.worldnomads.com/hotnoodle/post/13945.aspx).
Felix and the Israeli grab the oars, and help with moving
the boat. Together, they manage to move the boat forward and eventually reach
their destination. The woman is clearly
exhausted and walks to a nearby hose to wash all the mud off her legs. Other foreigners arrive shortly afterwards in
their own boats, each one being pushed from behind by a poor Vietnamese
villager trudging through the mud... Of
all the boats that arrived, only a handful had foreigners helping the villager
with moving the boat forward. The
majority of the foreigners just sat there while the villager struggled from
behind… ‘Asshole Tourists’...
Pham Ngu Lao – HCMC…
The boy was no older than 10… “Hey! Hey!”… he was trying to
get the attention of the foreigners sitting at the dingy bar set in the
backpacking district. “Hey! Hey!” He looks like just another street kid,
begging for money. But suddenly, he pulls out three batons and lights them with
fire. He then starts to juggle them… the flames narrowly missing his face with
each toss. His act also includes fire
breathing, flame swallowing and putting what looks like a piece of burning coal
into his mouth. Despite his greatest
efforts, none of the foreigners even gave him a second glance. “Hey! Hey!” He
then pulls out a string from his pockets. He starts to slowly insert the string
into his nostril, and then slowly pulls it through from his mouth….. he gives
it a pull, back and forth, see-sawing it through his mouth and nose. Still no
reaction from the crowd, not even an inkling of interest. His last and final
act, he pulls out a volleyball, and he starts to spin it on one finger, faster,
and faster. “Hey! Hey!” No one even looks at him. He then moves forward to the
foreigners in the bar, from one table to the next, asking for a donation. Of
the 15-odd people there, only one table acknowledges him and gives him some
money. Dejected, the boy packs his stuff and walks off to the next bar where
he’ll try his luck again. On his way out
he mutters something under his breath… most likely something to the nature of
‘Asshole Tourists’…
