Singing farewell to friends and strangers I’m reminded of a quote by Georgia O’Keefe, “There are times when one spends an afternoon with someone whom they will never see again.”
We roll inside flying clouds through deep mountain passes, past deep brown running rivers, sculptured terraced green rice paddies. Thin bamboo walled hut homes, teams of boys driving water buffalo home, invisible valleys, forests, mist shrouded habitats tucked into distant hills.
Peaks obscured by fast clouds, road construction crews dreaming/living in hovels with one change of dry clothing, past women nursing infants near wood fires inside dark dirt floor interiors where smoke escapes through porous bamboo splinters.
A smiling Red Dzao women thumbs a ride, heavy laboring trucks and we rolled into Lao Cai.
It is a noisy miniature Hanoi. You notice the heavy air, polluted by vehicles dancing commerce, irate impatient motorcycle beepers, horns, whirling traffic, people competing for time and money. Drivers from Sapa get a kickback from hotel owners.
At a restaurant near the station is supply and demand value exchange. Touts are on us like flies on shit. They scramble, Here, Here, you can leave your bags here. Sit down. See the menu, says a suave hustler boy.
The sidewalk is littered with tables and chairs. The woman owner offers green tea.
Japanese, French, English, Thai and Vietnamese tourists drop their packs and collapse. There are three evening trains. Blow whistle blow. Southbound.
Tables are packed with middle-aged Thai tourists. The fat men wear watches studded with blood diamonds. Fat wives’ hair is styled. One woman is the jokester. She teases people. She laughs long and LOUD. The men swill beer, the women green tea. They talk loud and fast. Their tour group is on a four-day buying mission from Bang Cock. Their numerous bags, suitcases and boxes of Chinese appliances fills the restaurant, spilling into the street. Their cargo will clog train passageways.
A seven-month pregnant Vietnamese woman serving people moves around tables toward the sidewalk and slips on a cement slope. She hits the street. Flat on her belly. People rush to help her up. She’s shaken not stirred recovers her composure and collapses in a flimsy plastic chair.
A shoeshine boy in his late teens on a serious economic cleaning mission wearing a torn white t-shirt and baseball cap points at my dirty climbing boots, Mister, your shoes need waving a white plastic bottle of liquid in the air. I stare at him. No words. He tries again. No thanks. He doesn’t understand. No, thanks.
This is English 101 on the street of dreams with life’s economic expectations hustling and selling a quiet determined desperation.
He waves the bottle, pointing at my shoes. His confidence wavers. He loses eye contact. He knows he has no sale but tries again ... Your ... before he can repeat his pitch, I level his glance with a slight tonal breath. No thanks.
He wanders to another potential sale trapped in a plastic chair waiting for food, waiting for their train to leave, waiting for their next destination, waiting to die on their tourist trail of quest love. Smart ones avoid his words, his eyes. This always works. Avoidance.
Pretend someone doesn’t exist. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is fear.
A young angry spoiled girl-child in the diner with her grandfather plays with a mechanical Santa Claus sleigh toy. He winds it up, sets it on the floor and lets it go. It plays Jingle Bells, rolls along the floor and crashes into a glass door. The sleigh rocks back and forth as Rudolph bashes his red nose into glass as spinning wheels ring Jingle Bells. Dancing all the way. The girl plays with this toy for three minutes gets bored and whines. Her grandfather collects her babbling esoteric poem.
Two kitchen girls at a table shucking green beans peal the skin of whining children.
A guy comes in and makes small talk. He pulls out an 8GB iPod. He fiddles with the dials, displaying photographs. Want to buy this, cheap, $200.
No thanks, I have one.
Yeah, this is new, I bought it from a tourist before they died of beggar fatigue.
You’re very clever, good luck selling it maybe you can trade it for a landmine.
The 2015 Lao Cai express prepares to depart for Hanoi. The boisterous group of Thai tourists reading gold time watches grasping Gucci Florentine handbags wrestle impossible suitcases and cheap Chinese appliances into the train.
Their leader works for Herbie Lives Organic and a freelance tour guide. He leaned over with unmitigated glee displaying his lapel pin with the bamboo company logo and heart saying, All Natural.
Sapa was magnificent, just what a traveler needed for peaceful fresh air nature and human connection. Bliss. Mountains fog mist clouds rain sun valleys and rivers. You know you’re in the zone when ten days feels like ten eons.
After dismissing Hanoi taxi touts Tran’s Dream Sweeper collects dreams from sleeping monkeys. Shh, the bats are roosting in palm tree serenity outside the window.
Book of Amnesia Unabridged
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