The shuttle ride was so nice and comfortable on the way to Mui Ne; only a few backpackers we aboard and I had two seats to myself. I started chatting up with a Canadian girl, Shana, in the row next to me. She planned to stay in Mui Ne for about the same time as me and wondered if I wanted to share a room to cut costs. I thought it would be a good idea, but in the back of my mind I was still wishing for a week on my own to relax.
I realized in this moment that I had been on the road for about 5 months and the most time I’ve spent really “alone” was on a plane ride to China
A few times along the way our ride stopped to pick up locals. The seats in the shuttle started to fill and I was hoping no one would ask me to move my backpack off the free seat next to me. We stopped one final time and an older Vietnamese lady walked on with her two teenaged granddaughters. One girl sat next to me, one sat next to Shana, and the grandmother sat in the aisle on top of backpackers’ bags. Twenty minutes later she was asleep on my leg and I was smiling to myself about it.
All of a sudden one of the girls said something to her grandmother and made a face, the van attendant handed her a plastic bag and she held it in front of her. Then the girl next to me said something in Vietnamese and she too soon had a plastic bag in front of her face! Projectile vomiting of thick porridgey-like rice poured into the clear plastic bags and I prayed that the little bag would hold and I wouldn’t be covered in throw-up (and that she would feel better of course).
We stopped at a rest stop and I had some noodle soup for lunch. Back on the bus we took our seats and the two girls asked for plastic bags again. The grandmother was feeding spicy shrimp flavored chips and sweet candy to the other teenage girl while Shana and I gave each other sideways glances thinking the same thing, “not a good idea”. Less than two minutes later the girl was throwing up again. Luckily, for us and them, the family of three was getting off at the next stop. Again Shana and I had two seats to ourselves and were able to breathe again. I noticed another smile curl upon my lips... what a ride.
When we arrived in Mui Ne I had my guidebook in hand and list of places to stay. Shana asked me where I was headed and I read the description from my book of ‘The Watering Hole’. “That place sounds nice, where is THAT?” I heard from the back of the bus. “Yeah, I want to go there too!”. Ugh ohh.. I thought, probably a bad idea to announce a beautiful and cheap guesthouse while on a bus with backpackers. It worked out fine though and Shana and I split a room and a bed after only knowing each other for a couple hours.
We stayed at a guesthouse across the street from The Watering Hole, called 10-1 (still don’t know why it is named that), which had a small dining area in front, hammocks to lay in under the shade, and air-conditioned rooms in the back. For $5 each we had AC, hot water, a large bed, a nice TV, and free wifi. I thought to myself, what a perfect place to get comfortable for a week.
For the next few days I spent my mornings eating from the Vietnamese soup lady two doors down (for 50 cents a meal). She made the best noodle soup and always brought me extra vegetables and bean sprouts because I think she liked me. Although she didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Vietnamese, we were great friends. At the end of each meal she would sit with me and pat me on the back or leg and say things to me in Vietnamese as she smiled. I would just say ‘hello’ (sim-chow), ‘thank you’ (Gamm-on), “nice to meet you” (bien-vuy-tu), and ‘good bye’ (tam-biet).
On my second day eating there I held my stomach and said I was full! She said to me, “Ahh luang naah bum”. She made me repeat this about 10 times until I said it correctly and every day following would become so happy when I said it correctly. I learned I was saying something along the lines of, my stomach is full, or my stomach is happy. Something like that. A shortcut way to say it is, “Nah bum”, I’m full. After breakfast I would catch up on some writing and then head to the beach to relax with a book. The sun was hot and the breeze strong. It was perfect.
Just next door to my guesthouse was a restaurant where fresh fruit could be found every day. After the beach I would head to this place and order pomellos, watermelon, coconuts, or pineapples. A few hundred feet away was a lady who set up tables and plastic chairs around 5:00pm each evening and would display all of the fresh fish, shell fish, and shrimp caught that day. Shana and I went one evening and enjoyed a huge and filling plate of delicious shell fish for only $1.
When my roommate moved out and on to Ho Chi Minh, I moved into the community housing area that was lofted above the normal AC rooms. The large wooden room had thin cushions to lay on and hard cushion pillows. Each bed had its own mosquito net hanging above, an outlet close by, a rotating fan, and a blanket. When I moved in, there was only one other occupant in the room and his name was Barak, from Israel
For two days I made myself comfortable and caught up on my writing. I was happy to be on my own for the first time in Mui Ne, but Barak did a pretty good job of distracting me from my solitude. “You have to eat, right?” “Let’s go get some food”. Or in the morning, he would ask me if I was hungry (which if you know me, I always am), and then he would just wait to have breakfast with me. He couldn’t understand why I was on vacation and wanting to write so much, but when I showed him my blog, talked about how long I’ve been on the road for, and explained that I need to use these notes for a book I’ll be writing when I return home, he finally understood and was happy for me. Barak and I only had a couple of days together before he left Mui Ne, but we had some great conversations about the political situation in Israel and just about life in general.
The day I moved into that loft I had a conversation with the guesthouse owner, Jon. He asked me why I never eat at the restaurant here and I told him, “I’m trying to save money and I eat breakfast for 10,000 dong (50 cents) and lunch for 20,000 dong (one dollar), so I spend about a dollar or less on each meal”. Jon said, “well if you want, from now on, you can eat meals here with me and my wife and I will charge you only $1”. “Great!” I said and we made plans to have dinner at 7pm.
When 7:00pm rolled around I excitedly entered the dining room awaiting my first home cooked Vietnamese meal. What I saw on the dinner table almost made me loose my appetite all together though. Large, boiled squid bodies were in one bowl, while baby sized octopus with bug-eyes were in another bowl. That was dinner. No sauce to dip in, no rice… nothing. Jon and his wife (who knew no English) just stared at me and waited for their guest, me, to begin eating. “Well, here goes nothing” I thought as I picked up the baby octopus with my chop sticks, stared at it’s huge eyes and put the whole thing in my mouth. As I started chewy the rubbery thing, I noticed a huge pit in the center. It was really hard and impossible to chew through. All this time, as a million thoughts were running through my brain, Jon and his wife were starting at me waiting for a hint of satisfaction. I plucked the pit from my mouth and dropped it onto my plate and was met with the wife’s first words of English, “oh no! no eat that”. Great.
The wife pushed the baby octopus bowl towards me, but I pushed it right back with a smile and said, “no, no, that’s alright… they’re all for you”. In return, she started piling my plate with the large boiled squid bodies. “Okay, Lauren”, I thought, “this is just like Fear Factor… you can get through this”. I drowned the squid in soy sauce and chewed on the rubbery pieces of squid countless times before realizing the pieces were almost impossible to break apart and I might as well just swallow the whole thing. Needless to say, it was a very unforgettable dinner.
I told the dinner story to Barak and he laughed at me and said he wanted to be a part of the meals too. I spoke to Jon and he happily agreed, we were all set to have lunch at 12:00pm the following day.
No comments:
Post a Comment