Homestayin'

I arranged a homestay through the travel agent in Chau Doc, Vietnam. Uncertain of what I had just negotiated and booked, I boarded a bus for My Tho. Three hours and one Crocodile Farm visit later I had arrived in town.

I was met by a beautiful young woman wearing a pink and black sweater and white furry gloves. It was eighty degrees but I knew that this is how people dress for long motorbike rides - you never know when the weather or your vehicle will break down. She introduced herself in Vietnamese as Hanh and then spoke seven sentences that I did not understand in the slightest. Smiling and nodding, she grabbed my pack and put it on the bike between her knees. I strapped my daypack to my back, put on a helmet and jumped on the seat behind her. We flew out of the dirt lot in light speed, me clinging on for queer life.

Wide bridges and wide roads became narrow roads and terri-fucking-fyingly narrow bridges. There was no communication between us, other than nervous laughs as we went over bumps or nearly died crashing into oncoming vehicles. Somewhere in those seven sentences she probably told me that the trip would be forty minutes long but I was fucked if I knew how long it would be. I had a horrible itch on my nose but dared not take my hands off of Hanh's shoulders. It was my own kind of waterboarding.

Moving to dirt roads, we began to blow through villages as kids were being let out of school. They all pointed at us when we drove by. These people were used to seeing almost anything transported on motorbikes but we still turned heads - tiny pink girl, whiteman and one hefty backpack. This combination was about as improbable around here as seeing Scooby Doo nail Pamela Anderson on a pool table.

We finally arrived at Hanh's house. My friend Glenn has a habit of calling accommodations by the synonym "property" and I snorted at what his description would be. "It's, how shall I say, a rather modest property that has its own unique charm and atmosphere." It was a house on a river with a brick deck. It was exactly what I hoped to see.

Seven or eight people came to check out the arrival. Everyone talked about me while I was standing there, trying to figure out what they were saying. This would happen repeatedly over the next day. It was like being an infant...I only knew five words in their language and Poop doesn't get you very far in conversation.

I imagined if it would be this crazy to be airlifted into my own family and realized that it wouldn't be nerve-racking, it would be downright frightening. My mother would be whizzing around with a four hundred degree baking sheet of Fridays' Stuffed Mushrooms, my sister would be yelling at football players on the TV and my uncle would be skunk-drunk by four pm and discussing how horrible the world was going to shit, I tell ya, you can't even go to Costco without running into goddamn Mexicans. This before Nana even arrived with her nine plastic bags full of combs, Saltines, Sweet N Low and yarn.

So this was a piece of cake.

I wrote for a while, in between playing with the puppy and eating lunch (something called Elephant Ear Fish). Hanh took me up river for a boat trek and it felt like a reverse African Queen with her as Bogie and me as, well, the Queen.

A couple of the neighbor girls decided to show me off and take me up to the village. Lots of the normal in the market - squirming eels, flopping fish and dried quid. More Scooby Doo pointing from the locals. One kid of thirteen years said something unflattering about me as I walked by (I just knew it). I turned around and walked back toward him like only a New Yorker could, with severe attitude - he screamed and ran away. Little bitch.

Six O'clock is when kids start taking baths. This involves taking some shampoo to the river, stripping and jumping in. The grownups lifeguard and the little ones wear life jackets, lest they drown or get eaten by crocodiles. Adults begin taking river baths around seven. I even saw one guy hurl a bottle of shampoo across to his neighbor, who had clearly run out of Herbal Essence.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a man make a chair. This sounds mildly interesting until you really process that I mean MAKE A CHAIR. Home Depot had not contributed. He had found the appropriate pieces of bamboo and carved holes in them, carefully piecing together the interlocking parts. No bolts. No drills. He used leaves to sandpaper it. I am impressed when I make fajitas from an Ortega kit. This dude...this dude made a CHAIR in an afternoon.
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Night fell and I had a great dinner. Everyone sat on the deck and told stories but I only listened because they sounded like this:

"Neow tong mee kayartima chee chee yowl horra meeeeeee".

Then laughter. I prayed that these were not tales of previous guests, all now kept chained in a pit.

Four French people showed up by boat around 10pm, looking for rooms. Their arrival ruined the whole balance that I had with the family. Worse still, they talked loudly and excessively in, get this, French. Each person smoke ninety two cigarettes and none of them made an effort to communicate again with me or the family. I am sorry to generalize about an entire people but

I
Fucking
Hate
The
French

Worse still, I have three school years of their language and could understand half of what they were saying. They spent a good deal of time ridiculing Vietnam. As an American, I have spent some time being judged by The French and I wanted to kick them all in the balls and vaginas. Had they asked where I was from, they surely would have scoffed or done that lipcurl-while-smiling thing. Like when I order a Croque Madame in Paris. Yet here they were in the home of a people who had been tortured and "colonized" by their ancestors. Laughing at them. Not sure how to properly say "suck me" in French.

My dreams were intense. I had popped my first pre-Laos anti-malaria pill and knew from a trip to Africa what could happen. Crazy dreams are a common side effect. I do not recommend French Anger and UFO podcasts before a first night of Larium sleep. Like, whoa.

I woke up at 6am. I ate the same thing that has been served to me for the entire time I have been in this country - two eggs, a massive roll and the strongest cup of coffee you can imagine. The French were asleep and it was blissfully quiet on the river. Then Hanh took me over the river and through the woods on her motorbike again. This time I recognized many of the kids from the past day and they waved at me with a smile and familiarity.

"Hello Meester. Hello!"

Do I really have to go back?