Thursday August 10: A Terrible Trip

Despite the joy of being back in the city after three weeks of rural life, the trip had one more planned excursion. After more than two months with our roommates, we had a few days scheduled to travel to their hometowns, meet their families, learn more about their life growing up, and enjoy one last journey together.
Que lived in My Tho, a province in the Delta about two and a half hours from the city (but not quite in the same direction as Ben Tre). He had brought his motorbike home before we went off for our work on Green Summer, so the plan was to take the local bus to his village and then ride his motorbike back.
Rising early Sunday morning, we made our way across town to the bus terminal. The operation of long-distance busses is an interesting study in privatization. The government controls ticket sales and attempts to maintain order in the hectic depot area, but all the busses are privately operated. Many of the busses are family-run enterprises, with a family member driving and another managing tickets, money, and squeezing additional passengers on while managing to never come to a complete stop to discharge other passengers.
Our bus was full when we left the station, but not overfull—that would be illegal. However, just about a block away, we made our first stop to add additional passengers, seated on little plastic stools in the aisle. I was assured that some trips can be worse—our aisles were never jam-packed, but we had quite the collection of travelers.
My Tho’s primary export is rice, so the province looks much more like the endless patties of Tra Vin than the coconut fields of Ben Tre. The houses are still classified into hamlets, but because each family has its own rice field, you don’t feel the same sort of cluster organization. To get to Que’s house from the highway, we had to take a motorbike from the highway about ten kilometers down a bumpy, pot-holed, atrocious road through a town market and then out through small family plots. It had rained recently, so the roads were a muck-filled mess. Very quickly Que began to curse the local government under his breath. He got as angry as I’ve every seen him, explaining to me that every time he returns home, he grows even more frustrated with his province’s terrible local government. They continue to demand that a very high proportion of the costs for the roads come from local residents who can’t afford such expenses. As a result, the government just does nothing and the roads remain terrible.
After about the ten kilometers, we suddenly just stopped, but I didn’t see any house that looked like what Que had described. In another road difficulty, a construction project that had already “worked” for many months required the closing of the road directly to his house and it was necessary to take a small dugout canoe, as people had done until just a few years ago when they had put in the road now under repair.
Thus, after a two hour bus ride, thirty minute motorbike schlep, and a quick but perilous aquatic journey, we arrived at Que’s family house and rice field. It was a nice house, built with a lot of space. The prize accoutrement was a refrigerator/freezer that even had an ice machine. However, the trade-off was that there was no real bathroom or squatter—just a platform into the canal.
Que has two older brothers, both of whom are married and live with the family (though his eldest brother has his own house just behind the main house). Their wives and two babies also live there. The kids were really cute and it was clear that everyone in the family was especially doting—throughout the time I was there, there was always someone holding or playing with a child. Que’s recently married sister had gone off to live with her now groom’s family. Interestingly, though Que is the youngest, he says that because he is the only family member to go to university, he commands the most respect and is treated as the oldest brother. In a country where social and age hierarchies are paramount, this illustrates the real importance of a college education.
Que’s mother was a down-to-earth, very practical seeming woman. After asking me a few preliminary (but in the US considered quite personal) questions, I seemed to pass some sort of first test. This meant that immediately she suggested that Que should marry my sister. For me, though, her family seemed out of options.
One highlight of the day was helping to bag the rice harvest. Our arrival was very near the end of the year’s third rice harvest. Though it is the smallest of the three, it still contributes a great deal of the family’s annual income. After the rice is picked and bagged to get it in from the fields, it must be spread out to dry for a day and then bagged again so the barge that brings the rice to be processed could pick up the bags. All over the province we noticed people drying their rice, with grains sometimes even spread right across the main road. The wet weather we were having was not just inconvenient—if any of the rice or bags got wet, they would rot and be ruined. Thus, it was extra important to keep the drying areas covered and protected and to move the rice through as fast as possible. The minutes before an afternoon shower were filled with frantic activity to get everything covered. In the evening, using large rakes and shovels, every fit adult in the family joined to get the harvest into the bags and loaded. Que’s mother made sure to point out to me in front of him that this was how hard the family worked just so that he could go to school, so he better not screw it up!
We also sent much of our trip visiting Que’s various extended family member. One grandmother was a Hero Mother from the war, living in a government-provided house. The other set of grandparents lived in a house that looked like a clone of Que’s. His grandmother eagerly exclaimed that I was the first American she had seen since the war in 1975. Everyone seemed to remark on my nose—apparently the high American nose is a feature in great desire by Vietnamese. I guess I had always taken my nose for granted, but it clearly is pretty special!
The family gathered for dinner and then we spent an hour or two chatting, followed by another hour or so reading. At the end of all that, it was still only 8:30. Yet, there was nothing else to do. I suppose they could have watched a little television, but being removed from an unlit road by a dugout canoe trip precludes any sort of journey from the house. No matter--this was bedtime for the family, whose labor would start early the next morning. I could understand Que’s aversion to long trips home though—after living in Saigon’s perennially buzzing atmosphere, returning home to what was perhaps the most peaceful place on earth, but also one of the least exciting.
The title of this post is “A Terrible Trip,” but thus far everything sounds wonderful, and it was. Things didn’t take a turn downhill until a few hours after bedtime. I felt the first pangs of a cramp moving into my stomach, but just minutes later, my gut felt twisted and knotted. I barely made it outside in time for the first vomiting to escape. The rest of the night was absolute misery, and I didn’t get more than a few minutes of sleep until the sun rose the next morning.
Vomiting is fairly easy to do outside, but when the cramps moved lower and the runs moved in, I was faced with a bit of a quandary. With no bathroom, I had to make it down to the canal in the pitch black. The afternoon rain left a bog several inches thick that I had to wade through to get to a tree where I could cling desperately while attempting to aim below. Que awoke one time when I was racing outside and made some sort of anti-diarrhea drink for me, but the next vomiting a few minutes later brought it all back up.
I’ve decided that in the future, if I’m going to be violently ill, I would prefer that there be some sort of bathroom. If that is not possible, a lit, dry alternative would suffice, as long as there aren’t clouds and clouds of mosquitoes biting my ass, as I had to endure that night. I would also like to have a bed to huddle in between episodes of emptying myself. Alternating between violent chills and profuse sweating on a bamboo mat over a hard tiled floor just doesn’t cut it. I’d also like safe water to drink as I’m losing all of my bodily fluids. Finally, I will remember to bring the vast assortment of medicines that my mother ensured that I packed on excursions of this type. All that said though, perhaps I’ll just wish to be dead next time!
Though there were times when I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the morning, the sun did eventually rise. Que’s very concerned mother fed me a shot of some sort of god-awful Chinese vodka said to stop the runs and we took a motorbike to a local pharmacist, who dispensed a variety of multi-colored pills. The worst was over, though it took a full week to completely recover. We’re still not sure exactly what happened, but it seemed that the tea at dinner was made with rain water that, though boiled, had then sat in a vat in the kitchen for an extended period of time.
We had planned to stay in the village for another night, but though I tried not to show it, I was thrilled when Que that it would probably be a better idea if we returned that afternoon. We spent the morning driving around on his motorbike, visiting the country’s longest bridge, built in a joint development project with Australia, and seeing the site of a long-running floating market. Traveling was slightly impeded by frequent bathroom breaks, but the multi-colored pills eventually kicked in to ease the problem. Nothing, though, eased the pain that riding on the back of a motorbike for hours. Later in the week, Jim would say that motorbikes were hell, and he was right—if you’re not in shape for hours of riding (and we weren’t), they are pure hell.
After sightseeing, we embarked on the three hour motorbike trip back to Saigon. The rain had returned, pelting us with cold furor on the highway, and my stomach cramps and sore legs and ass provided internal pain to complement the weather. The journey was probably the longest three hours of my life, counting down kilometer by kilometer as we approached the city.
It was near ten o’clock when we finally arrived home. I promptly flopped into my bed, unable to move. Que looked at me and just began to laugh. “A terrible trip,” he said, “we had a terrible, terrible trip.” I couldn’t help but laugh either—the past 24 hours were pure misery. I then turned over and slept like a rock for more than twelve hours.