Kyrgyzstan: Bizarre Bazaar

A vendor at the Osh Bazaar.

I'm not 15 minutes into the Osh Bazaar-- searching for remnants of the storied Silk Road through rows of cheap plastic trinkets and countless racks of knockoff Adidas track pants--- when I feel a less than gentle tug at my backpack.  It's your friendly Kyrgyz policeman, starched spinach-green uniform, absurdly wide, crescent brimmed hat and all.

He wants to see my papers. As he leads me away, my passport in his hand, he assures me everything is fine.

"Then what's the problem?"
"No problem, no problem," he smiles.

Sensing a bribe in the near future I discreetly take the bulk of my money out of my wallet and stuff it into my pocket. This makes me feel no better.
He leads to me to a red unmarked shipping container at the edge of the bazaar. Inside, a small desk sits at the far end under a tiny, square tinted window. By now I've got visions of former Soviet Bloc interrogations dancing in my head.

Pictured: my interrogation chamber.
( Source: my brain prior to being taken inside)

A plain-clothes officer comes in, quickly flashes what I judge to be a dubious looking badge, and reassures me again that there is "no problem". My knees feel gelatinous and I'm smiling my broad     "I'm-inoocent-and-totally-not-nervous" grin entirely too often.

They make small talk while I empty the contents of my bag. But this quickly leads to, "you like drugs? you do drugs?" The plain-clothes officer mimics injections into his forearm and somewhat impressively pantomimes a junky nodding off so I get the picture. I assure him I don't do drugs. He's visibly disappointed, but his face perks up when the other officer, now rifling through my stuff on his own, comes across my sack of tobacco. He seems genuinely excited. I see payday in his eyes.

 Now, I get what he's thinking. In less developed countries only the poor, country bumpkins and street-side stragglers, smoke hand rolled cigarettes. In Thailand and Laos it's the surest sign that you're a farmer or don't get into the city that often, at least. A bag of their tobacco runs about 15 cents U.S. and tastes like sin--- and that's not even considering the papers that come with along with it; those are thick and burn like garbage. So I get what he's thinking when he's pantomiming (even more impressively this time)taking a huge hit and falling into a stoned stupor.

The absurdity of the situation hits me and I begin to feel lighter. My hands are still shaky, but I roll him a cigarette and even though he looks very suspicious he smokes it and marvels at the taste contentedly.

A moment later a few really rough looking characters were brought into our shipping container and the plainclothes officer walked me to the door. I began to stroll back into the anonymity of the crowd when he called out to me in Kyrgyz. I looked back with my stupid and confused grin expecting the worst. He smiled, spread his arms out wide for effect, and translated " I love America!"

Kyrgyzstan....Oh my Buddha.

A Downpour, a Monk, a Wanderlusting Fool, and a Dose of Generosity

( I found this entry in the yellowed pages of my scrappy little travel journal. The experience was so special, so unspoiled and peaceful, that I can't believe the whole thing was able to slip my mind, that I haven't looked back on it lately and jumped on my bike to try and find it, or something like it, again. I found the photos and decided to just copy it here from my notes. Always keep a journal.)

Sitting in a monastery on the outskirts of Kaukme, a town itself on the outskirts of everything, I recalled the day's motorcycle ride in silence. Silence seemed necessary here, as it was a holy place. Besides, I couldn't communicate with any of the others in the room. My English, Thai, spreckles of French and Spanish had no effect on my new Burmese friends: the novice monk, no more than 10 years old, an elderly woman and man rolling candles and preparing gold-foiled merit accessories { for the Buddhist merit-making ceremonies; a sort of prayer, but not quite}, and a lone monk quietly smiling on a cushion nearest a rain-battered window. Upon my arrival, out of the vicious downpour that brought me, and only after finishing my tea and crackers, I was bade by the old woman to choose a candle (based on the day of the week I was born; Thursday felt right), light it, make merit, and place it in a candelabra at the foot of the enormous Bamboo Buddha. The woman, and everyone else, seemed very pleased I was able to understand and complete the simple task and they quickly went back to the candles, the gazing, and the napping that was consuming their day. I sat on the wood-planked floor, breathed in the damp air, and wondered when the rain would stop, how long I would be here, and began to smile, even withholding a few chuckles in the staid atmosphere,  as I recalled how I'd even gotten here.

 I'd been on my way to Hsipow from Pyin oo Lin and according to some imperfect calculations, nearly there. The road ran along brown and dried fields, cracked and burnt by the sun. Over hills and barely mountain passes the temperature didn't change much, remaining hot and stagnant, with pulses of
old wind working its way through the skeletons of long dead bushes and roadside
bramble. Small villages of latticed bamboo huts dotted dirt roads that were barely a meter wide and worked over hard by roaring tractor trucks, engines running like jackhammers, farmboys perched on their roofs grinning betel-stained teeth.

The roughest part was in a tight valley between two mountains so close they may as well have been holding hands. The steepness of the road wouldn't have been a problem, not the horseshoe curves lined with the type of loose gravel known to make a motorcycle slip and tumble either, but the big rigs and their no doubt amphetamine addled masters made this section of the journey nerve-wracking. I came within a granny's chin hair of bumpers on a number of those curves while simultaneously being an outstretched rooster's claw from the edge of a road with no safety railings.

Eventually I was back out on the desolate highway, the open road, and was again breezing through towns. The beauty of having your own bike is being able to see a sign, a dirt trail, an interesting landmark or village off in the distance, and take it. I've sat on too many buses in my life wandering, "what if?" What if I just got off here? There's a small town in the distance and the same bus probably rolls along tomorrow, there's probably a room somewhere I could stay, what if I did it? And the town passes and I settle back into my seat and wonder some more. 

The sky was growing pretty dark with a nasty storm looming behind me. I'd been outrunning it most of the day and then I had one of my "what if" moments. On the roadside a little beaten sign read " Giant Bamboo Buddha" and pointed to a narrow trail leading over a wooden bridge and into a village big enough to have a name, but too small for anyone other than its residents to know it. I slowed and, looking over my shoulder at sure rainfall, decided to pass it. I wasn't a kilometer away when I turned back determined not to miss the opportunity to see this funky Buddha and rural village. I rolled into town and the downpour began. I couldn't figure out where this Buddha was supposed to be and the townspeople just kept pointing at the sky, pointing at me, laughing, regaining composure, and then pointing to the temple where I could take shelter.

I pulled into the empty complex and sat in the outside corridors at first, but as the rain started whipping in, sheets of it soaking me, I walked up to a second story landing where I met a monk who silently led me inside. 

And that was where I found myself, having lit my candle, paid my respects to the bamboo Buddha I'd been looking for, and calmly sitting in the naked emptiness of a simple monastery, staring out a window into the storm that drove me here, my mind sputtering a complete blank. I looked to the monk and he smiled, and I smiled, and the novice monk smiled nervously, and the old woman smiled, and the old man chuckled. And I took a sip of my tea. And we looked out into the storm and thought of nothing at all.

Days in Pakokku, Myanmar

A child selling fried goods on the dusty streets of Pakokku

          I walked through the streets of Pakkoku on my first day with my shoulders squared and a purposeful forward-lurching gait. Of course I had no idea where I was going, but if I’d learned anything from my first solo trip abroad so many years ago--- where wide-eyed me got roped into a $60 cab ride, locked into the backseat when I refused to pay, then finally handed over everything in my wallet just so the unscrupulous driver wouldn’t call the police--- it was to act as if you knew exactly where you were going at all times. I'd just gotten off a bus to shy,bemused double takes and only a few timid offers of "taxi" from men with rotting red, betel-stainded teeth and would soon learn that Pakokku had nothing at all to do with the seedier side of San Jose, Costa Rica.

         

The simple amenities of central Myanmar.

 As simple as the journey ended up being, I almost didn’t make it there at all. Back in Bagan (some 150 K southish) I’d developed a thirst for some real adventure after all the hawks, touts, and cons aplenty around the 1000 or so-year-old temples. I couldn’t blame them for it. A buck is a buck and Myanmar is otherworldly poor. These characters were hardly pros anyhow. They were more likely to break into laughter while bartering than push the hard sell. And most were children. They hung around other temples that were themselves a con, the Burmese government having recently constructed them to apparently flesh the place out. Myanmar’s cultural Disneyland, taking cues from the Chinese tourism model (don't just have it, sell it!), but on a Burmese budget 

          Wanting to contrast this with my vision of real Myanmar, the idealistic trueness travelers everywhere seek to find, my heart set on some deep, lonesome travel, the type that realistically could have only happened at least 20 years ago, I drove my rented bike down to the banks of the Ayeyarwady River looking to see “a man about a boat” as I put it to the first confused local I encountered. A crowd formed as often does around confused foreigners in distant locales and after some haggling I got the price down to 30,000 Kyat ( a little over $30) for the journey. Still too pricey for my budget; I was staying in rooms for $1.50 a night, harassed by mosquitios, vermin, and hemmed in by concrete walls --- all that squalor and discomfort to waste it springing for a two and a half hour boat ride on a dry-season depleted river. No thanks.

The morning markets.

        

        The bus was equivalent to a little over a night in my standard style suite and just as quick as the boat. Bus adventure! Almost as good. I was convinced. Finally getting to my riverside guesthouse I realized how lucky my penny-pinching decisions were. The river was bone-dry as far as the eye could see in both directions. People were using it as some sort of storage area for bags of grain and were also swimming in small water holes that had yet to be lost to the heat that rippled every horizon like a looming apocalypse. Giving simple temperatures, numbers, could never allow anyone a full grasp of the choking, and almost spectacular, heat that was rocking the country at this point. I trudged through it with hundreds of stares on my back and countless smiles.

A young monk, known as a novice, pauses to pose for the camera.

Children at a temple excited to get their pictures taken.

         In every city of Myanmar, from touristed to off the beaten track, people retain this sense of wonder towards the traveller. Children wave and shout hello in most of Southeast Asia, but here grown men and women do as well, all seeming equally enamored and proud that someone is visiting their country. The inevitable pushback coming in future years will be sad to witness and maybe only a place as empty and beautifully forlorn as Pakokku may escape it.
         Here even in a lively market packed with people, the atmosphere stops, or lurches slightly, as I enter the fold. This was a particularly sincere virtue of Pakkoku, the peculiar city of street corner water wells and Internet cafes, of traffic jams and oxcarts, of intelligent college graduates who had never even ventured as far as Yangon, itself a tepid reminder of Myanmar's stunted growth these past few decades. I walked the streets a daytime celebrity, offered homemade liquor (that looked like dishwater and tasted about the same) from midday alley boozers and photo ops from many who acted like they had yet to see a picture of themselves. Maybe they hadn't.
     

In the makeshift classroom after a 2-hour lesson on day one.

         Eventually I was approached by a man who seemed to be following me on a motorbike.
        "I learn at an English school. Do you desire to go there?"
I smiled at his odd expression and what also amounted to a pretty decent understanding of English, one I hadn't been exposed to in a while.
        " Yes," I said. " I do desire that."
        The school sat riverside, or where the river used to be, and a joke I made on the stage in the picture to the left about going swimming absolutely killed(you had to be there). I taught an impromptu lesson, talked with Dude the monk and then was swarmed by adults and children with a litany of questions ranging from grammar points to extremely obscure vocabulary found in dog-eared copies of The Scarlett Letter and Oliver Twist. We went to lunch ( below), with the typical burmese fare--- soaked in oil.
       

In Myanmar, many restaurants simply place every single dish available on your table, then add up the cost of the dishes you've eaten.

          Their zeal for learning was really indescribable. I was not left alone for at least five hours straight.   The monks kept ordering the young children to bring cups of well water as my throat was completely parched from continuously talking. I didn't tire, completely in awe of their enthusiasm. I've taught for years and have never seen anything like it. Adults and children, in a town where I and one other man arriving the next day were the only visitors, saw an opportunity to take advantage of and it was inspiring.

This is Dude, pronounced "Dooday". I saw a quote in one of the student's books saying something to the extent of "be peaceful and enjoy life--- Dude" and laughed thinking for a split second that it was somehow a reference The Big Lebowski.

       I left after three days and regretted it. Dude walked me out on my last day and wished me peace, luck, and happiness on my journey. Then before reaching the path leading out of the school,"Ok, go now. I don't want to say goodbye," he said and quickly spun around, heading back to the bamboo huts where I could hear students dutifully parroting verses from books written over a century ago. And that was the last I saw of the soft-spoken, affable monk of For Life Language School.
       Reaching Mandalay, a behemoth by Myanmar's standards, I longed for the tiny, dusty lanes, the unassuming tea shops frequented by anyone with a moment's free time, the midday lulls in life when no one is stirring for the heat, for the guesthouse that was really just a house with extra rooms and a grandmother who fussed over me, for that balcony from which I watched the river not flow, for Dude beaming widely at his enthusiastic students, for the quizzical and guarded looks, for the friends I'd made.

A note in my journal sums up my sentiment well: " Now in Mandalay, I feel I left Pakkoku too soon. But I suppose special little nowhere places will always pull at you more than larger ones."

Darjeeling, Land of the Gorkha!

           The train from Kolkata. 

         I left Darjeeling by dawn's twilight, a dry, cold wind worming through my coat. Crawling out my room's second story window I balanced, teetering, carefully on the narrow ledge affording myself one last solitary moment to take it all in. Down the weathered street chai stalls were coming back to life, exhaling long held breaths of steam. Further on, the hunchbacked silhouettes of laborers slowly emerged from a dense morning fog rising out of the valley. Loads of bricks on their backs, slung up by a paltry piece of fabric across the forehead, they lurched jerkily ahead like the seconds hand of an antique clock.

         Weeks later I would be on a town local puttering through mud-hut villages, the relentless sun searing parched countryside and transforming my rickety aluminum bus into a furnace. I saw my immediate future as well: I would walk in the cold, limping through old and empty lanes, trying to catch any crease of dappled sunlight to warm my back. Back to the town center I'd arrived at nearly a week earlier I'd see virtually the same sight, everything already on full tilt and clamoring. Cars, busus, tuk tuks, smoke billowing from them and seemingly everywhere else, mingling with the mist, the great cloud fueling itself. But, at that precise moment dripping with clarity, I knew that I was out on an old ledge that had surely seen greater fools, recollecting the beginning of a odd journey.

        Now, after many years, Darjeeling can be a difficult town to remember. Like anything that seems so right in its place you struggle with its existence, like recalling a myth or dream. The memory of its dirty, dank alleys will funnel you back to a journey along its streets you couldn't possibly have taken. Everyday experiences that had even become normal to the point of banality at the time now hold a tinge of regret, as though having been there was a sort of carnal pleasure you may have been better off not partaking in. Over time, in this case three years, distinct moments fade to snapshots; mere glimpses of untold stories that may just as well stay that way.

Darjeeling

       We arrived as a group, the five of us, all equally unburdened travelers who had met in Kolkata and were all heading in the same direction. We laughed uproariously and often in our northbound train, at everything, all of us having caught that same contagious traveler delirium of being in a strange place with strange folks who weren't even so strange; at the rats scurrying over our feet, at the bombardment of nuts and snacks from vendors. Our cabin's other passengers not sure what to make of it all. We weren't entirely sure either. It was indeed a fine start.

       Then our bloodshot eyes were given their first glimpse of Darjeeling, the cobbled mystery, bathed in culture, history, trash, and grime. Ringed by beauty and wild, yet rising above like the old, rusted bow of a ship sunken in shallows. We climbed the crooked alleyways that cross all the snaking roads in a straight shoot to the top. To a dilapidated hotel with a homely sitting room and a view into a peculiar and beautiful valley. Our shared room was a cold, reclusive place, stacked with hard-mattressed beds and scant furniture. It had an untouched, noble air about it and I really only went there to sleep, wearing every sweater I had.

    

       Days the group would split and fracture, walking for miles to do nothing and sit on benches and the steps of old churches, talking about nothing. Javier the Chilean and I would visit the rolling hills of tea, always returning to the town square to recoup, drink 10 rupee chai, and watch the afternoon loll by and watch old ladies feed birds and young children ride ponies and watch the sun and its light slowly drift away bringing back that dank, sullen cold. For a time it seemed we entirely subsisted on chai, momos, and chicken and onion filled rotis. There were candlelit chess games when the whole town lost power and we welcomed the lukewarm beers our hosts provided. Days like this would wallow open and shut at seemingly interminable intervals then ending in sonorous swirls, the last mutterings of an old town falling back asleep.

     

      Staring back into all of this, I finally leapt and took my plunge. Landing poorly, I was instantly mauled by chilly ,dew-slicked cobble, morning mist , and a stray dog that scared easily. The fog was cracked slightly with an awakening sun and, even with only a vague idea of where I was going, I knew that the day would unravel fine. 

     

      

        

The view from a pass in Darjeeling, a Gorkha flag waving in the wind.

This slogan was everywhere. The Gorkhas, a little-known ethnic group who are pushing for separatism.

The ubiquitous stairways that push through the heart of the city.

Students warming in the sun.

The view from inside a Darjeeling tea factory.

A temple skirting the town's North side.

Prayer flags in flight.

India: Tibetan Opera

          McLeod Ganj

Tibetan monks participating in ritual in which
one monk airs his grievances while another lends
a helpful ear.

            Mcleod Ganj is well known as the Dalai Lama's home-in-exile; his temple is discreet, off a slight road from the town square, perched overlooking the valleys and winding roads every visitor here must take by bus. A mass of Tibetan refugees accompany him as well, making this tiny hamlet set high upon the hills of Himachal Pradesh yet another one of India's faces. Markedly distinct from the rest of the country, and from anywhere else really, it is, like so many of its fellow villages-turned-stars of the tourist circuit, an adducible of India's depth. Tibetan temples spark the hills, their multicolored flags waving, and humble locals slip quietly through the streets. Vendors and shops sell Tibetan dishes here, lacking the panache of spices redolent in the rest of the country, while shops sell their unique brand of crafts and religious items. All very Indian but all so not. McLeod Ganj's very existence is indeed predicated on India itself. A tacit agreement, from what I've gleamed off locals, between the Indian government and the Tibetan government-in- exile has resulted in a more than temporary home. They've been here for many years; there are generations of Tibetans who have yet to see their homeland.
                I met one such man in a small tea shack on the outskirts of town. Arriving here on my early morning wanderings, I was out to get a hold of my bearings after a "deluxe" bus ride that defied all conventions of the word. The man, a young guy really, seemed of a laconic, thoughtful nature and certainly in no rush with anything or anyone. In short, precisely the type of person you'd expect to meet in a dilapidated tea shack on the hills that ring the Dalai Lama's ersatz hometown. We spoke infrequently, which seemed to suit us both, content to take in the pleasant atmosphere. Splifs were later passed in that sleepy little shack, people coming and going while the creaky door announced everything, the whole day lost in a nice, aperture-wide-open, view over the valley. My new friend was kind and polite, passing small two-finger cups of chai to visitors with his left arm held across his chest, a customary show of welcome and decorum.

             A two hour walk out of town yields this.

                


                McLeod Ganj caters to its refugee population and a steady stream of tourists seeking a special cultural experience. Small shops hock genuine wares and these merchants snooze through the languid afternoons as people shuffle in and out. Two or three-man groups of saffron-robed monks muddle their way up and down the hills seemingly oblivious to the cadres of visitors gawking at them. There's the obligatory fisherman pants wearing, dreadlocked, counter-culture (congruent, really) hippies who almost seem to parody themselves as they walk the streets, sham stoicism and all, trying to gain a quick four-day or two-month enlightenment before heading off to their next revelation. And there's the locals, not hotel owners and not the merchants there for visitors. The ones riding rusty pickups into town with goods or walking them in from outlying towns, smaller towns with small schools, small valleys, and excellent paths for strolling and rambling without a care. 
            Sure, it can be touristy, but isnt everywhere, and weren't those cackling ladies serving me hot noodles in strange porridge so nice. Didn't those characters on the road out into the snow-flecked hills laugh with me. I will say that McLeod Ganj is indeed fantastic.


 'Prince Drimeh Kundan' Opera


          The opera reflects heavily on Buddhist beliefs in the arc of its story.
          In a kingdom there is a prince, the only heir to the throne. A noble an benevolent soul, he is deeply saddened by the misfortune and suffering of others, particularly in the presence of his enormous wealth. His father, impressed by a mentality reminiscent of a bodhisattva (बोधिसत्त्व), gives the prince full reign over the kingdom's riches. The prince disperses them at will, without prejudice or reticence. 
          He soon marries and starts a family, invigorating hope in the King's ministers that new responsibility will quell his desire to aid all those who suffer, thus preserving the kingdom's riches. It does not. Indeed, he vows to give even his wife and children should someone ask.
           It is not long before the prince is banished from his kingdom along with his family. A beggar, at the behest of an evil king from a land far away, asks for the kingdom's sacred "wish-fulfilling" gem. The prince gives it to him. Even in the eyes of his father he has now gone too far. As he exits the land of his birth the prince continues giving alms ,having long forsaken his wealthy existence and status, until even his own provisions are gone.
            Along his journey the prince gives his children to Brahmins who ask this gift of him. The prince and his wife retreat to a forest full of goulish, howling demons. They spend ten years there meditating on existence and the fundamental truths that are found within.
            Eventually, told by a bird that their children are safe and awaiting them, they leave the forest. As a final test, a blind Brahman begs the prince for alms. But he has nothing to give. To his wife's horror he gouges out his own eyes to give to the man. News of the prince and his continuing atruism in the face of the suffering of others reached his former home. Gods grant his wish of new eyes. He arrives to a resounding celebration.
           Together he and his wife preside over the most prosperous period the kingdom has ever experienced. Eventually, they attain nirvana.

Indian Stories ( with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

 A rickshaw and its driver shuttling past a portrait

 of the venerable Mother Teresa, her eyes ever watchful

over the city she spent her life protecting. Kolkata, 2009.       

My Indian journey starts here.

        Let us ignore platitudes about India. It's steep, rich, longstanding culture, once nascent, it seems, at the beginning of history itself yet still undaunted by the tides of time. By globalization. By the car, the airplane, the Internet, nor by redoubtable cultures administered by force.  Indeed, it's rickshaws, many now motorized,  are still driven by men with bundled, burning feet and aching back. It's cities cradle de facto tourist spots, net cafes, hectic bazaars, lepers dwindlig on street corners, and flashy cars with drivers lilting limp cigarettes from cracks in tinted windows. Swindlers and ascetics and beggars and merchants alike muddy streets already full to their brim 

          Perhaps a rephrase is necessary. We cannot avoid the platitudes popularly fed to us about India; or, India is as immune to platitudes, and the truth or lack thereof found within, as is a stoic holy man  ( a sadhu) to the torrent of fluid life rushing by him, through him. A king on streets which have no such thing.

         India the battered, proudly showing scars. India the backwater, now on the precipice of economic behemoth. It's distended new wealth and it's even more distended belly of poor. It's Bodhisattva tree where Buddha gained enlightenment and its ancient desert fort cities from where it played defense to Mongol hordes. Rickety buses charter and swarm through towns of mud-thatched huts, tiny blips on its berth, carrying cell-phone squawking passengers to bustling virtual metropolises.  In full circus mode, so feel the cities, and on full tilt so feel all but the locals when navigating them; India's grasp is captivating, eliciting love or hate and often both, from all who enter. 

      

        Just a stall like any other in a hive  set among the  alleyways, lanes, and mere dirt paths that vivisect India's heart, Varanasi.

        

        India occupies its own atmosphere, its own time and place. Many, realizing this, try to adapt to India, try to morph into what they feel India wants, expects, of them. Draped saris and dreadlocks are the traveler common. Not to forget fisherman pants. Abercrombie & Fitch: India Collection. Many others get lost in its grip, consumed by its crooked alleyways and cobbled lanes, chai stalls, and its overall unparalleled weirdness to modern Western sensibilities. To be sure, India is modern : it has skyscrapers, amenities that will argue any money you can offer, and a soaring upper class.  But it does not cloak itself (it cannot) in its own tale of modernization. India is raw, unfiltered, and, truly, mystifying.  

         But of course it's been so long now since my one and only trip; 3 years. My beliefs, my idealism, regarding India may be just as moored in the fantastic dreams of a young man yet to meet its shores as it is in my own crumbling vestige of mental snapshots of a journey undertaken with the dubious mixture of naivete and purpose.

Please enjoy, but take it upon yourself to go. 

Journey's End

        I drifted down from those mountains with their soggy roads and crisp air into the aimless heat of the coast. Jackets and various layers were stripped off along the way and stuffed under bungee cords already tenuously holding a severely distended backpack and a sad little guitar I picked up in Dalat. Eventually I found myself on a straightaway with a parched landscape on each side, happily sporting a t-shirt and rain-dirt-mud-weathered jeans. Around a bend, Mui Ne's sand dunes rose and that sweet salty smell wafted in.
       This region isn't painfully hot like some locales across SE Asia: call it fluidic, you float and you wade in its hazy indifference; some drown, most figure their afternoons in the shade, cold beer in hand. There's always later, probably an unspoken mantra in Mui Ne, and later is always there.

        I came here partly because of Andrew, a guy I might while we were both cowering from the cold in our terrible hotel's unheated ballroom-turned-restaurant during my stay in Ninh Binh. He cursed himself for getting that far North away from the beaches, the late nights, the DJing frenzy, and the dingy hut that he had been calling home for some time. The place sounded idyllic, we planned to meet up; though most travelers view these sorts of plans as mere platitudes at best, or even downright lies, I was yearning to see a familiar face, speak some English, and get my damn party on.

       I had planned for a few days, then I found a beautiful reason to stay. A week later I would be off to Ho Chi Minh City, trying to sell the bike with hand-scrawled signs posted on street lights in the tourist district. Fumbling around, just trying to leave, the way the end of trips usually go.

       I was tired, beat-up downright from the endless nights of partying with new friends. My memories even exhausted me as I tried to gather them: the dumping rain in the first half of the trip, my naivete and lack of any sort of knowledge regarding what I had planned, the streets of Hanoi that spilled forth history, the damn, unexpected cold and the knockoffs from tiny markets I tried to shelter myself in, the helpful and the would-be crooks, the long stretches of road shrouded in silence, the truck drivers at a lonely cafe feeding me wooden bong tobacco hits, the ones that ran me off the road, the locals laughing at my silly confusion in unknown towns, the wrong turns and bad directions with good intentions, the Montangard villages, the fear of the bike breaking down during so many stretches of empty highway, the eery scars of war and the mute man who showed them to me, the big smiles and bigger laughter,  the love and the joy. Vietnam. Yes, yes.

Pogo's, Andrew and Caleb in full force.

Beachside, buying mangoes and thankful to be out of the bush.

 The beauty of Mui ne's dunes at sunset.

    
       .