Not even a mouse

Day 95 - Hội An

Umbrella eh? Would you like an umbrella sir? Eh Eh? Cometh the rains in central Vietnam (and they do cometh) cometh the men with the means to keep you dry. My path had crossed Rory's again and we were sat outside a bar in Hội An as rain gently pattered the glistening streets. We took it in turns to politely decline the repeated offer from the salesmen who appeared in their multitudes after the first drop hit the ground.

There was however no need for their flimsy, mass-produced protection from the elements. We *were* the elements. Toughened and smoothed by hills and valleys and time. Two pebbles in the stream. I'd got to Hội An the night before and realising that Rory was in town had agreed to join him on an organised pub crawl. It was like a form of speed-dating without the prospect of a date at the end of it. Most conversations with the other 'crawlers lasted only a few minutes and covered the basics of name, nationality, where you'd been and where you were going before the morass span and twisted and you were stood in front of someone else. Rinse, repeat. The most sustained conversation I had was with an American girl and consisted of both of us telling the other one how intelligent were were. Overall an interesting experience that I wouldn't do twice. Or once. The next day we'd taken in Hội An's palaces and museums including a spectacularly dull one devoted to ceramics. Really, unless it's a priceless vase and some unfortunate visitor is knocking it off a pedestal in the British Museum or some ex-colony is griping about having it back, it's hard to raise an interest in ceramics. There was also a particularly old and beautiful bridge to see which was currently identifying as an out-of-town storage unit and so looked neither old not beautiful.

We still had to pay for the pleasure mind. I couldn't begrudge the ticketing though as, judging by the old town, the money was put to good use. The buildings were all well preserved or restored and the tourist numbers unsurprisingly commensurate. And so, after a suit fitting for Rory, we sat drinking beer, smoking and watching the tourists rustle about in their ponchos and under their new umbrellas. I never am much of a people-watcher when alone, rather I reflect on myself. You could call it self-obsession or, as one person put it not long ago, narcissism. Either way I find people-watching to be a game better played with two. So we sat and we drank and we smoked and we conjured wild backstories of the tourist hordes. And I relaxed into it with the knowledge that I wouldn't be riding today. The schedule to Saigon was tight but I could afford a zero day. As night fell colourful lanterns flicked on above us and painted the wet street in picturesque hues. As we crossed a bridge on our way to dinner small boats bobbed with more coloured lanterns. Maybe it was all a bit Disneyfied but I felt like forgiving that for once. A break from cynicism is good for the soul. And it's pretty hard to be cynical with Rory around anyway.
Morning found me spinning right round, baby. Karl and I were in a coconut boat. Karl was American but also German which, by American standards, was quite restrained. He was staying in the same hostel as Rory. Rory had his own coconut.

I don't know why they are called coconut boats. You can fit me, a Karl and the guy who was spinning us inside them so too big to be actual coconuts. They resemble a coracle if that means anything to you. Or a contraceptive diaphragm if it doesn't. After spinning for a bit we continued the predictably leisurely progress of a boat shaped like a diaphragm. We meandered in convoy with a great quantity of other boats also shaped like contraceptives. I'd love to tell you that there were vessels shaped like morning after pills, like condoms, like bottles of Jack Daniels but there weren't. We had all been deposited into diaphragms. and my feet were wet. The reed-lined waterway we bobbed down opened out into a large lake and we headed towards a cluster of other boats. At the centre of them there was a Vietnamese guy on a floating platform shrieking karaoke into a microphone. We were encouraged to quantify our enjoyment of the performance by tossing money into his basket. I found my enjoyment equated to zero dong but since I didn't have the paddle we remained up shit-karaoke-creek. After some torturous minutes we left.. for the next platform and an identical experience. It was probably the most touristy thing I had done so far and that is coming from a man who had been to Ha Long.
I bid farewell to Rory for potentially the last time but said I'd visit him in the Netherlands if the chance arose. I might once have expected such an offer to come to nothing. Without a hand-written, gold-edged invite I'd assume it was all so many words. But the new me will see about that. A day without riding had refreshed me and getting back on the road was a pleasure rather than a chore. But dark clouds were gathering on the horizon. Not metaphorical clouds. The literal kind. The wetter sort. I was aware that monsoon season was approaching and keenly aware that should it hit my riding would become significantly more challenging. Just how much more challenging became clear as my sunglasses became unclear. Raindrops covered them and bent light, swirling shapes into Van Gogh's rainy afternoon. I took them off and the rain beat fiercely into my eyes instead. The locals had pulled over their bikes onto the side of the road and if they weren't chancing it then neither was I. We huddled under a shop awning to the percussive din of the corrugated iron rood. The storm was mercifully brief, fifteen minutes or so, but as I pulled back onto the road it had left a small lake near a foot deep. I prayed for no more of this while ploughing slowly through, feet outstretched like something out of the Royal Signals Motorcycle Display Team (ah, just Google it). I prayed because there was still a thousand kilometres left to go and I hadn't seen any kayak shops yet.
I reached some no-name town shortly after dusk and found a hulk of a hotel right on the beach. The tourists had yet to descend on this place so local amenities were thin on the ground. Or local amenities were thin on the ground so the tourists were yet to discover this place. Which comes first? The chicken or the utter ruination of a place? There was only one restaurant around which streamlined my decision-making process. It was an open-air kind of affair abutting the sand and was apocalyptically empty. Staff lounged on day beds in the back and watched TV. Having caught their eye they stirred into muddled action. Hand gestures indicated that I could choose anyone of the 20 empty tables that took my fancy. The menu had no English and neither did they and a dismembered goat spun slowly on the spit of my nightmares. I managed to ask about beer but rather than accept the relative success of the bottle of Heineken that was brought I decide they must have something more local. After some rummaging they found some rust-ringed bottles of Qui Nhon from god-knows-where. They were room temperature so tasted no worse than room-temperature Heineken. I'd accepted the necessity of ice in beer by this point though.

I ordered something and as the waiter and, by extension, humanity, receded the only sound was breaking waves and the buzz of the several fans that had been placed around me. The near-solitude sparked a deep and slightly unnerving introspection. I felt like I couldn't avoid peering deeply into my being. I was the emperor of this place and I was wearing new clothes tonight. It was probably the sudden absence of the un-static static of this country that caused the oddness of my feelings. I felt like I was standing nose pressed against a wall papered by every thought and emotion I'd had over the past three months. My lowest ebbs and greatest joys had been rolled into a thin canvas of identity. All that I currently was, or pretended to be, was between glass and under a lens. I was a bit uncomfortable with the proximity of it. Luckily the prawns came. Five chunky, shiny crustaceans lay on a plate and for 3 quid I'd ensured their troubles were over. Their black eyes stared and the fans whirred, the waves broke and in the wider world not a creature stirred.