Take a close look at our new profile photo - yes, that is a scooter immaculately tailored in hand-stitched leather. Every square inch of it. If I sat still for too long here, I might end up looking like that...
Cinda awoke at 3 AM on our last day in Hoi An and busied herself with I-don't-know-what until she came back to the room at dawn. She was excited about the sunrise and so I went to the roof with her to see a pale tangerine sun shining weakly through the morning haze. After a quick breakfast we commandeered a couple hotel bikes and pedaled to the beach through the rice patties and hastily constructed concrete buildings. Shrines dot the roadside everywhere you look, and Cinda was particularly fond of one at the edge of a field that included a can of Coke and a beer. I'd never thought of it that way before, but I bet you can really work up a thirst when you're responsible for bringing the rains and good harvests and healthy families all day long. Bottoms up!
Our last errand before leaving Hoi An was at the shoe store. The shoe stores here look like ordinary shoe stores, in that there are racks and walls covered with different styles to choose from. But that's where the similarity ends. Once you find something you like, you take off your own shoes so they can measure your feet, and then pick out the materials and colors that you want. The order is handed to mom and she jumps on her scooter and races off, returning the next morning with a pair of brand new hand-stitched shoes, still reeking of glue and polish. After airmailing our goods back home, we headed to the train.
The women on the train platform in Da Nang stack and organize their wares in precision tiers, a stadium of snacks, dried fish, fruit, and drinks. Yet there are no players on the field in this stadium. Why? Because the Train Station Lady runs a very tight ship, and no one is allowed out the door onto the platform until the train arrives. I found this out the hard way, as I pushed open the door and stepped out to watch the single locomotives pushing a boxcar or two around the yard. I hadn't gotten two steps before TSL grabbed me and shot me a look of disgust and disappointment, folded together and topped with powdered pity. Cinda - as she does - found this very, very, very amusing and proceeded to dare me to go back out on the platform many times, but I have no stomach for such spectacle.
At last our train arrived and the women on the platform had their fleeting moment to sell their goods to the boarding passengers before the TSL once again isolated them. We found our 1st class overnight berth, and without going into specifics, let me say that it did not look like the picture. As we pulled out of the station, we decided to try the age-old traveler's trick to survive such a trip and got 4 ice-cold Heinekens from the dining car. However, we couldn't stay in the dining car, because it was filled with unidentifiable grill smoke (see: carcass car on Chilean trains). We found some backward-facing seats and watched an awesome landscape of steep tropical slopes ringing small palm-lined rice patties that grew right to the sandy beaches at the water's edge. Despite the beauty, we called an audible and stepped off our overnight train in Hue, the ancient capital, and caught a taxi to the airport.
Our taxi driver called ahead to check on flight times from the one-gate airport and confirmed that we could make the last flight. He even brought us into the terminal and handed us off to the ticket agent. Tickets in hand, we stepped out into the pleasant night and sat on the quiet curb, watching the moths in the streetlights and listening to the dance music quitely bumping from the back of a taxi to a throng of drivers who sat on their heels, whispering and laughing. I had been having some problems with digestion - or more precisely, a lack thereof - so Cinda got out her acupuncture needles and gave me a treatment right there in the drop-off zone. No one paid us much mind, but eventually a pair of older ladies in floral print shirts stepped closer, and began pointing at the locations of the needles and the points that Cinda was massaging. It seems one woman was familiar with Chinese medicine, and she recited the names of each point in Vietnamese, while Cinda echoed her in Chinese. And based on the points that Cinda was treating, the woman looked at me and circled her belly with her hand while blowing out her cheeks, apparently the international sign for constipation. I sheepishly nodded and she smiled sympathetically.
We arrived in Hanoi with only enough time for a quick walk and a bite. I ordered a pizza which was surprising good, given that it was essentially a pile of vegetables and a sprinkle of cheese on a thin cracker (like the 'serving suggestion' on a box of Triscuits). And now I'm wandering the Old Quarter of Hanoi on a hazy morning while Cinda rests, and marveling about how much Krazy Glue the shoeshine guy just put on my shoes.
-Nate
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