I’ve been quiet these past few days because I’m Nha Trang, Vietnam’s premier hang-out spot. Nha Trang is perfectly calm and perfectly pleasant. I spent the better part of yesterday in a wicker chair.
Today I went on a Booze Cruise. This is not as horrible as it sounds. It involves drinking a lot on a boat, occasionally splashing around in the ocean, and visiting various islands for small allotments of Planned Fun. I guess that’s exactly what a Booze Cruise sounds like. Regardless, taken for what it is, it’s enjoyable.
Planned Fun is a remarkable thing. It is precisely calibrated to be absorbed by sun-baked, beer-soaked tourists without causing any lasting damage. “40 minutes!” the boat hands call as we shuffle onto a cement walkway. A billboard announces in frank terms what we can expect to find on this island:
- DRINKING UNDER THATCHED PARASOL
- PARASAILING
- VARIOUS FORMS OF MARINE LIFE
- GIFT SHOP
- FRESH SEAFOODS PREPARED FOR YOU
Invariably someone starts videotaping the billboard.
There were a few amusing moments provided courtesy of the boat hands, who long ago discovered that they can cruelly insult tourists with impunity if they do it with a smile on their faces. “I don’t like you because you are fat!” a deckhand says to one Canadian, grinning wickedly. To an extremely overweight Hell’s Angel-looking guy from Australia: “You are so soft! I want to grab your breasts!” I don’t necessarily condone this sort of thing, but it was priceless watching the conflicting emotions crawl across the biker’s face as he realized that he had been dressed down in front of a crowd of tourists by a man 1/3 his size and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The tourists on the cruise, weight issues aside, were an interesting bunch. Yung is my age, an Australian of Vietnamese ancestry, who met her mother for the first time last year, at age 28. Now they were visiting Vietnam together for Tet, so that Yung could meet her relatives. Yung is as much a tourist as I am, and is perfectly happy about that fact. Australia suits her fine.
Dan is a Californian expat raising his American son by himself in Vietnam. Dan is 26, and his son is 8. Dan needed to get his life together after his father died, so he came to Vietnam on the toss of a coin, wrote a book, learned to speak Vietnamese, and now teaches English. I’d like to say that his story is inspiring, and in a small way it is. But mostly his life seems hard. His pay was docked $100 when he publicly reprimanded another teacher for beating her students. The abusive teacher was fired, earning Dan the hatred of the rest of the faculty. Dan’s son attends his school, but the boy’s Vietnamese is rudimentary, so teachers let him sleep through class. When Dan drinks too much, he complains bitterly to me of people who accuse him of being a bad father.
Dan’s son, Carl, has enough personality for several adult-sized people. He recently received an address book as a gift, and to fill it he has been asking women for their phone numbers. If a woman wants to know why Carl needs her phone number, he has a ready response: “Because I love you.” Carl always calls the next day.
Carl quickly befriended a tourist on our Booze Cruise. Dragging the tourist over to his father, Carl asked if the man could stay at their place in Saigon. Looking sheepish, the tourist said he would try to meet them in Saigon. “That means he’s not coming, Carl,” Dan said. Dan is a good father, but his circumstances are not easy.
It’s time for me to leave Nha Trang. I’ve been waiting for various body aches — a pulled hamstring, a twinge in my ribs — to go away, but they won’t. So I’ve given myself an easy day’s ride, with a stopover on exotic Monkey Island. From there, it’s straight up the cost to Hue.
