Busted Pipes and Crooked Dreams

Hoi An, Vietnam

But not for much longer, it’s been a week already, it’s SO time to move on.  Not the least because this town will bankrupt me if it’s the last thing it does, with it’s avenues of tailor shops, silks and suedes and drifting cotton.   Row after row of sweet little ladies just begging to whip up the dress of your dreams.  Though I don’t really dream of dresses, to be honest.    Given unlimited funds I’d wind up with one or two, I guess, but mostly it would be vivid wool coats with floppy hoods and wicked pants made short enough to not require amputation and magic badass shoes that straddle the incredibly fine border between Awesome and Practical in Dawson Fuckin’ City.    Ok, maybe there would be a dress in there.  Something blue with a sweet little waistline and big white buttons.

but dear lord, I have to keep eating, too, Hoi An!   So quit your siren song, sweet tailor ladies.   I have other plans. 

Like… going… Home.    Homehomehomehome.    Sigh.   It’s calling me, my god, I can’t help it.   I thought I’d want to stay out here until MARCH??  my god, who did I think I WAS?    Y’know, we meet these people on the road here who are doing their one-year ‘Round the World type trips.   Actually, we’ve met an astounding number of them.  And they all… seem…  just… Tired.   They don’t seem jazzed or enthused or lively and thrilled about their next or last destination.  They seem exhausted, lonely, and express only the most token appreciation of the trip they’re on.

“Oh my god, Mongolia?  What was That like???”  We ask the french guy in Udomxai.    “Um… it was ok.   Y’know.”     Shrug.

It doesn’t make me jealous, let-me-tell-you.

So as lovely as this is… as much fun as I’m still having… and that’s a lot, don’t get me wrong…

I’m still feeling that thing.    I miss friends, and home, and Bed – the same one every night, no matter what it’s like it’s the Same All The Time and I swear, that’s something to be appreciated.  I miss cheese, my god in heaven I miss cheese.    And I miss Dawson.  It’s sweet little streets underfoot, I miss the old familiar juke joints and friendly faces.    I’ve begun thinking longingly about the frigid winter streets and silent white hills all around.   I just want to head down to the Pit and have beers with the lovely folks it would be a cinch to wrangle for just such a thing.   I want to wake up in the morning, brew an enormous pot of coffee in a quiet house, and read the morning away with my feet in Freddy’s lap and the smell of frying bacon coaxing us sweetly into the waking world.

I love the road but it’s a long, hard thing.     Being woken up every single morning to the cacophony of honking horns – used here like reverse sonar – announcing the constant position of every single moving vehicle on the road.   “I Am Here I Am Here I Am Here”    Most of the buses have horns that honk three or four times per honk – in a descending scale – “HONK honk honk honk…HONK honk honk honk…”      And are used at all times, always, constantly, by everyone.

I have become uncomfortably familiar with the smell of my own, undiluted urine.    Ick, I know.   It’s the toilets here – I realise that we, as North Americans, are used to peeing into an incredibly large volume of water.   God, there is SO MUCH in a normal toilet!   Out here, there’s like, a couple inches max, and without that extra fluid to dilute it, maaan oh man it smells!   I’m not even saying you leave it there long, just enough time to wipe and flush – and still, it’s enough to dose you with the distinctly warm, acrid stench of it.    And then you’re just throwing your T.P in the trash, which I’ve gotten used to but still feels distinctly distasteful.     And I swear to god I do not understand how one is supposed to use a squat toilet without the pee ricocheting and splashing off the edges of the basin and splattering your feet.   I have tried EVERY angle, every possible squatable height, wide as my feet can go, it doesn’t seem to matter – also a stream of pee is not exactly a constant thing, so I mean, you have it one moment so it’s fine and then the volume lessens and your angle changes and suddenly you’re peeing on your feet again – Jeusus Fucking Hell, man.    I came out of this insanely dank alleyway squatter one night – a Bia Hoi night in Hanoi, a lovely one – and look down at my boots and my left one has the inner side of it fully darkened with splatter marks.   Like,  Fock.   And Eww!    But that’s still better than when you’re in sandals and shorts and it’s just on your FEET.

You boys, you have it easier, way up there standing, but squatting ain’t easy…   let-me-tell-you.

Yesterday we were kicked out of our Guesthouse, after they somehow booked our room out from under us, thanks a lot.    And what might be termed “service retrieval” in a staff orientation seminar back home, well, the extent of it here is pretty much giggling and blinking and waiting for you to just give up and leave.     So we moved to a different place on a nearby block, which was a little nicer…  and we rented a DVD player and stayed up all night mainlining Game of Thrones…   finally went to sleep at two A.M… only to be woken up like a shot at six by the sound of water shooting at mach ten out of some kind of faucet or pipe very nearby.     Turned out a hose had suddenly, somehow, come off something in our bathroom and there was a seven foot jet of icy water spraying across the room.   First time I’ve been thankful that instead of shower stalls  they just have drains in the goddamn floor.     Freddy found the shutoff valve and we managed to cap the hose and in the morning we didn’t even care that the shower water wasn’t hot, just a trickle of cool water in a cold and rainy town.

Whatever, man.    We’re on a sleeper bus to Nah Trang tonight, hopefully for some warmer weather, if that hurricane that just kicked the Phillipines ass doesn’t have much left in it for Vietnam.

And we don’t have much time left.  With our tickets re-booked we’ll be back in Dawson within a month.   We get to see rad friends in Siem Riep beforehand, which is awesome, and then a few days in Van, and then…  home.   Home, home, home.

I’m not sad.   It’s going to be great.