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.

    
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