I just showered and borrowed a ‘Big Blue Diving’ pen from David to complete this entry. The other night we got quite drunk with the police force of this town, but I woke up feeling alright and ready to make the 115 kilometer journey from Coc Pai to Ha Giang.
We left Coc Pai around 11.00 after I got a new exhaust installed for 200k Dong. After a scenic and twisty ride, we arrived in Ha Giang at about 17.00, exhausted after a full day of riding. The weather co-operated, providing us spectacular and at times dizzying views of terraces–like slices of green ham on the landscape.
They were calling me Captain Slow all day on account of my slow speed. I’m still a little shaken up after my crash. A hand injury is the worst–a constant reminder of the accident while you ride. You can feel it rubbing against the throttle when you accelerate, nagging you incessantly. After a stellar ride through the mountains we are dumped onto QL2, the first road wider than a single lane we’ve seen in almost a week. We roared down it full throttle, racing each other for kicks. We closed the 60 KM to Ha Giang in no time. We checked into Nha Nghi Trac Tien, which provided a nice balcony view of the river for 250k Dong.
We got food at the place next door, and Shin-Chan was on the television! I’ve only seen it a couple times, under the dank haze of marijuana smoke in some Mission District apartment in San Francisco, bearing its presence while making plans to vacate the premises immediately. I didn’t get it then, and I sure didn’t get it now. His girlfriend really hated that show…
We all got Com Rang Bo (Beef Fried Rice). It was delicious. We set off back towards the downtown in search of a fun bar. A big group of sailor girls waved and yelled “Ha-lo!” at us. We crossed the bridge and saw a lit up restaurant floating on a barge in the river.
We ventured down, at first zig-zagging through a knee length hedge maze on the seawall. It must’ve been cut into some design or letters viewable from a distance. To us it was just an obstacle course. We descended one of those ubiquitous Vietnamese honeycomb retaining walls and walked through an automobile tunnel to get to the waterfront.
The party had arrived. We crossed the gang-plank and entered the restaurant. Much less fancy than I expected for waterfront dining. David ordered us eight cans of beer and we shotgunned one each on the gangplank. All the children and staff watched in awe as we downed the beers. We looked like a bunch of fucking savages.
We drank about six beers each over the course of 90 minutes, ending up pretty wasted. After the first shotgun I announce to the table: “$20 says one of these people does a shotgun with us by the time we leave.” Beers continue to accumulate on the table.
After about an hour this 18 year old–probably younger–kid working there asks us for a cigarette, and all three of us are suddenly pushing packs of Marlboro Gold in his face. We motion to an empty chair and yell “Join us!”.
We crassly ask for the leftover shots of vodka from a bottle another party had just abandoned on their table–about half a bottles worth. “One for you!” we say. We get him to take one with us after some light persistence. We cheers in Vietnamese and then take the shot. Then we shotgun a beer with him.
“Cheers!” we say to him, clinking our glasses after running that gauntlet together. We take a drink, but he starts downing the whole thing! We all exchange wide-eyed glances and follow suit. This is how we found out that if you cheers in Vietnamese you usually have to chug the whole thing! It’s definitely a fun way to do it.
We stumble out of the restaurant, and head back up to street level. We see a 50 person group of teenagers in uniforms of some sort, hanging out in-front of a store. We say “Hey!” as we walk by. “Ha-lo!!!” they all respond in unison. We start serenading them with Backstreet Boys songs–boyband mode engage. We quickly get bored of the whole ‘white people on exhibit’ thing and grab a beer at a close-by street stand for the walk back to the hotel.
About halfway back we stop in at some Karaoke place and grab a beer. In no time everyone’s buying us drinks. Vietnamese men keep trying to converse with us. One brings me to his Karaoke room, and tries to get me to talk to these two girls he brings over. They want nothing to do with me. I eat some of the watermelon spread in this room, and then head back to the lobby. We didn’t have to pay for a thing. David gets bored and leaves, and so do I.
He’s walking and puking at the same time, so I decide to piss and walk at the same time. What an image for the other two boys and anyone watching. One man puking and another pissing as they continue walking onwards. David and I get back to the hotel ahead of the other two who had stopped following us at some point.
Kevin and Andreas burst in the room five minutes later frantically yelling “Lock the door! Lock the door!” Some guys from karaoke followed them home. Gay or overly friendly, they didn’t know. Kevin’s finely tuned gaydar couldn’t seem to get a lock.
David’s passed out, and Kevin and Andreas are fucking with him. Dry humping him, slapping him, trying anything to wake him up. They throw a puke bucket at him and then start jumping on his bed while he’s knocked out on it. One jump, two jumps, three jumps, BOOM! The bed collapses catastrophically. Now he’s awake! Somewhat. He recounted the incident like this: “I woke up with me ‘ed on the floor, and me feet in the air wondering what the hell…I couldn’t be assed, so I just turned around and went back to bed.”
The bloke from the front desk appears a minute later, knocking on the door. “Should we answer the door?” Kevin drunkenly shouts to Andreas. They open the door, and he walks right in to find David starfished face down at a 45 degree angle. The bloke looks at him in this state and then looks at us wondering that the hell.
Andreas tries to explain us out of this situation. “He just SLEEP” making the action with two hands beside his head for sleep “…and bed just COLLAPSE–boom!” both hands wildly flying up in the air. The bloke just shakes his head and says “No”. He must have heard the whole thing from the moment we stormed back into the hotel. “OK OK, we pay” says Andreas. He shakes his head again and walks off.
We woke up early the next morning, and I had forgotten completely about the incident. I wondered aloud why David was sleeping backwards, but my memory came back as Kevin and Andreas tried to fix the bed. They said this to describe their efforts: ”As long as we don’t touch it, it shouldn’t collapse”.
When we checked out the bloke immediately comes and inspects the bed. He looks under the mattress and just flatly says “No”. The construction workers then came in to inspect the bed and couldn’t stop laughing at us.
So it turns out I was right. Someone did shotgun a beer with us by the end of the night.
