I walk the 1.5 miles back to the main bus station of Dong Hoi in an attempt at being responsible and buying my ticket in advance. No luck- tickets are only sold the day of departure so I'll need to be back at the station at 6:30am. One of the more frustrating feelings of my time here, though its a feeling I've grown accustomed to, is being grounded when my feet are anxious to move on. The public transport is confusing, with time tables that make no sense and buses that fill up at a moments notice. So, I take it in stride and prepare to hunker down in Dong Hoi for one more night.
I wake at 5:30am and try to check out so I can haul ass to the bus depot. Again, no luck- the overnight manager speaks no English and cant help me check out or get my passport back until someone else gets there to help him navigate the process. I'm on a time crunch so I deliver my best attempt at miming the words, "return passport please" but my fumbling efforts are met with a blank stare from his half asleep eyes. Somehow, he does know English for "5 more minutes," since he continues to say it every 5 mins. for the next half hour. Finally someone arrives who can help, & I'm off!
The bus ride should take about 7 hours. We seem right on track for about 11. The driver stops about every 3 miles to pick up few roadside hop-ons, whom I can only assume are paying about 1/10 what my "foreigner priced" ticket cost at the station. Locals hop on with giant bags of rice, only to get off three towns down, trade the rice for a stack of red plastic chairs, then continue riding on. Passengers are yelling at each other, shuffling bags of food and boxes of goods about the bus. I'm beginning to realize the ways of the local Vietnamese bus system, and the breadth of commerce taking place within its carriages and the corridors it cruises down. I see a sign saying we're 30k from Hue. I think, "Good- we're almost half way". Then we stop again for a passenger and goods reload...then again for another.. then again for a car wash (yes, a 30 min wash of a bus half way through its journey...I didn't understand the point either, but we all felt shiny and clean for the remaining 3 hours). An hour later and we've moved 10k..I close my eyes and wish I had gotten that over the counter Zanax they sell for $3 a box (presumably to many a traveler for situations such as these).
Finally, we arrive in Da Nang and my skepticism melts as I realize we've somehow still made it in under 7 hrs. We pull into the bus station to a scene that looks like Beattle-mania. Motorbike drivers chase down our bus, banging the sides and clawing at the windows until they've managed to open them from the outside. They jump onto the bus while its still moving, throwing their heads in the windows to find the most tourist looking passenger that they can overcharge for the ride to nearby Hoi An. Naturally, I've been pegged as the front running candidate. I'm not even off the bus before hands are hitting my shoulders and 5 men are around me fighting to grab and direct me to their motorbikes. I politely remove their hands from me, keep saying "no", and walk onward. To my luck, the local bus to Hoi An is right in front of me so I hop on.
I immediately make friends with an old man sitting on the bus alone smoking a cigarette. He says to me in perfect English, " I speak very good English." When we begin talking, I realize he used the term lightly and knows only a few words of English. All the same, he's lovely and he likes shaking my hand repeatedly, so I enjoy our meaningless conversation immensely. He asks me if I'm American or French- apparently those are my only two Westerner options. He has the kind of eyes and face that you know his experience of Americans over the past 30 years, is probably complex and complicated to say the least. Yet, he is so excited that I choose "American", that he points me out to each boarding passenger. They all look and smile and wave and stare a bit and it's all very endearing/ embarrassing. Now that its been established that there's an American on board to provide the in- transport entertainment, we ride on exchanging handshakes and smiles for the next 30 mins. Sitting on the bus, I feel lost for the first time. Not 'lost' as in I don't know where I'm going, but as in nobody else in the world knows where I am. I'm a bit off the grid, where nobody speaks English and I'm completely alone. I feel disconnected and rootless, wandering around a pocket of the world where I'm unreachable by a single person I know. I feel my own smallness in a never-ending spin of the world around me- the feeling is exhilarating and profound. Pulling into Hoi An, I realize I haven't checked my watch in hours. It's 4pm, I've put in a 9 hour day of travel and couldn't be happier with where I landed.
Hoi An riverfront
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