Nick, Why Casey!?!: I Have a Dream

I Have a Dream
by: Casey Pang

and/or Wiley Birkhofer

Judge not a country by the insensitivity of its tourists

or the flow of its motorbike traffic

or the portability of it’s produce

or the advancement of its fitness technology

Judge not a country by the potability of its waterways

or the danzkerity of its potables

The content of Vietnam’s character is colored by the kingliness of it’s taxi drivers

and the dexterity of it’s shoemakers

and the precision of it’s tattoo artists

and the affordability of its frog

and the suspension of poultry

and the intrigue of it’s spa treatments.

A country’s true color shines in it’s oceans,

its mountains,

its ocean mountains,

and most of importantly, the people who so deservingly inhabit them:

I’m not sure whether our photo essay or the wise words of everyone’s favorite Kazhaki, Borat, “Wawaweewa!!! (Give me your tears gypsy…or I will take them from you)” better embodies the insanity that is Vietnam. Neither does it justice. From the moment we stepped off our plane into the 40 degree celcius, 100% humidity climate in Hanoi, we knew we were not in Gwanju anymore. Our first impression - the heat, and our second - the motorbikes, would turn out to be representative of our greater Vietnam experience. Motorbikes are everywhere. People eat, sleep, and breathe motorbikes.

Coming from a country where televisions outnumber people, it may be less impressive that motorbikes outnumber humans in Vietnam, but not if you consider that half the population farms rice and has no need for automotives. The cities are swarming with motorbikes, each more eager to sell you a ride than the next. They will not take no for answer. At the end of our Vietnamese journey in Rach Gia on the southern coast, we had a man follow us 2 miles on his motorbike despite our urging that we did not require his services. We considered paying him off to reward his silly determination, but we didn’t want to offend an unaffiliated Vietnamese man who had joined our entourage but who hadn’t yet made his purpose known. He and the motorbiker got into an argument at one point when they noticed us trying to interpret their strange behavior. When we arrived at our destination, our pedestrian follower offered us something from some tattered literature he’d been toting, and was utterly surprised when we refused. How dare we. After he'd earned our trust and respect by waiting 30 awkward, silent, confusing minutes to pitch us his product?

Most Vietnamese are trying to sell you something, but so long as this doesn’t annoy or offend you, you will appreciate that the Vietnamese people are a fiery breed (who can blame them after having been a colony of the Chinese and then French for the past 500 years. Had the US done a little research before waging our war (called "The American War" here. The war museum is called "The Museum of American War Crimes"), they may have foreseen that the Vietnamese were not going to surrender their first independence in centuries without a fight. The French literally suffered the exact same defeat as we would just years before us, IN VIETNAM! How could we not have seen the parallels? Probably for the same reason we "didn't" see the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. Anyway, the Vietnamese are an inspiringly vital people and never unwilling to engage in a bark off with you in their beautiful, if chicken-sounding language...

Anyway, we had a great time here, and will divide our experience in half because four weeks of stories would make for an eternally long, enthralling, entertaining post. Here was our trajectory:

The North: Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Sapa

The Halong Bay tour we booked was a total scam, which is not to say we didn’t have an incredible and incredibly memorable time there.

Our tour guide was a complete pervert. He introduced himself to us by asking a girl on our tour if he could “climb her mountains”. Nick, Casey, and I broke out laughing, after taking serious offense of course, and assumed he misspoke. Mistranslations happen more often than someone accepts a motorbiker’s solicitations. Later on that day, I struck up a little conversation with Chau, our guide, and he proposed to me the following:

Chau: You like make boom boom?
Wiley: Boom boom?
Chau points to a woman trying to sell Casey and Nick something they didn’t want, winks, and claps his hands together suggestively.
"Sure. Why not?" I jest.
Chau smiles approvingly. “You take her nice dinner. Candle, opera, tablecoth. Make boom boom.”
“Sounds lovely,” I laugh.

Here is where our conversation departs from ordinary male banter into the Vietnamese unknown.

He continues, “You make boom boom. Then turn light off.”
“That's within reason,” I agree.

He then points confusingly at the woman and then me, and then does a little dance. I mistakenly think he is trying to arrange a date between us, and tell him no thank you. He insists I don’t understand. He patiently explains, “You boom boom. You no lights. Meet in bathroom. I boom boom. Like this, ok?” A lightbulb goes off; Chau hasn’t mixed his pronouns. Or has he? I ask myself the age old question: have I just been explained “the switcheroo” by our tour guide in Halong Bay, Vietnam - latitude 20, longitude 107. Is it a small world after all? Just to be sure, I ask him, “Me and her boom boom. I turn lights off. We switch places. Then you and her boom boom… without her knowing.” He claps wildly in applause. I can only imagine how many Americans he has failed to explain this to. I bring Nick and Casey over to share the achievement of our understanding, and he explains to them, to my surprise, what he actually meant. Why he couldn't have made it as clear to me, I will never know.

“Wiley and her make boom boom!” (Casey and Nick laugh appropriately). “Wiley and Chau make switchy switchy” (Casey and Nick nod in disbelief). “Then Chau and her make boom boom". Chau waits for the laughter to subside, and then looks hungrily into my eyes: "then we make boom boom."

There were no hard feelings; I let him down easy. We continued to positively reinforce his behavior, and during our farewells he even recommended that a girl from our group try “sticking a goat up her ass”. Nobody, except us, will ever know that he said what he meant and meant what he said.

Upon returning from the stunningly beautiful Halong to our headquarters in Hanoi, we took showers and were on an overnight train hours later to Sapa, a rural mountain town on the Chinese border. Word is getting out about Sapa’s mystically misty mountains, but for the most part we had the roads to ourselves. Or so we thought until me motorbiked upon a tribal H’Mong village. Instantly, we were surrounded by an army of the tribe’s most friendly and decorated women. They asked us about our basketball jerseys and offered to show us their digs. We told them that we didn’t want to inconvenience them, but they insisted on giving us a tour “free of charge”. The village consisted of one dirt path which wound through and around various rice patties, water buffalo, very modest bamboo shanties, and some seriously gorgeous greenery. We were so distracted that we didn’t notice the 20 or so tribeswomen we had accumulated over the course of our walk.

As our adventure was coming to a close, one of our guides (and subsequently all of them) began selling us H’Mong tapestries and textiles. “No thank you,” I said and looked back at Casey and Nick to warn them that they should prepare themselves for some difficult “No thank yous”. They must have foreseen the feeding frenzy because they were already walking a safe distance behind the pack, leaving Wiley to the wolves (this was generally their strategy in Vietnam). They had their bike helmets securely fastened and were fingering their keys in expecation of the impending awkward goodbye. As predicted, when we attempted to leave and thank them for their kindness, we were besieged by offers, promotions, and pleas that we buy a souvenir in exchange for our tour. Mind you these are the same unsuspecting, 4' 11" women from the photograph. Nick and I were able to escape by promising that we might come back tomorrow. Casey was not so lucky. He finally negotiated his freedom by literally swearing an oath that a double decker bus full of tourists was on its way to the village and would be arriving shortly. 15 minutes later on our ride home, we watched in horror as Casey violently crashed his motorbike. Scoreboard: H’mong – 1, Casey – 0.

Casey wrapped his ankle up in his favorite wife-beater, and gimped around the rest of the weekend with a bamboo cane, making it rain on each and every villager out of fear for their curses. Here’s some pictures: