C'est La Vie Pt. 3

I'm back. In the wonderful land of my beloved China. 

This strange and foreign place, after all of this time, has really become my home. Over mountains and under seas, down the mighty Mekong and across the white sand dunes of Mui Ne, I've been missing, yearning even, to return, to speak again my second language, to taste again the ma-la  of my Sichuan cai, to see and embrace and reminisce and remember and catch up. To chill-out.

And, now, fantastically, I've made it... Not all the way to Chengdu, mind you, that'll be the glorious homecoming of tomorrow. I'm in Chongqing. It only took forever and a day to get here, but Kerouac would have been proud. 

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The final leg of my Indochina journey began with me waking up at three something A.M., semi-consciously gathering my strewn belongings, and marching off into the rain of the pre-dawn morning. Humping my pack and positive that there was no chance in the world that I would make it the hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers - let alone across the Chinese border - to catch a plane in fifteen hours, I marched out to the highway, turned on my Nokia's flashlight, and hoped for what seemed like, at the least, something very unlikely: to hitch a ride on a north-bound Vietnam bus at 4:30 am in the rain. 

But Luck and the Fates showed favor upon my ponchoed head. I hailed down a Hanoi bound sleeper bus, reacted poorly to all orders and instructions, and promptly fell into peaceful slumber for the two hours from Ninh Binh to Hanoi; the journey had suddenly became a length of 'maybe', and The Impossible was vanquished.

In Hanoi, I hailed a senile old cabbie ominously driving a beaten up old black-and-yellow, and after the required though utterly pathetic attempt to pronounce the Vietnamese, I showed him the address at which, according to the nice lady's voice on the phone from the day before, I could be sure to have a magical ticket waiting for me, exchangeable for passage to Nanning, China. Being seemingly blind and senile, however, it took him forever and numerous inquiries to find the office. The office was annoyingly hidden away in some nondescript lot in the obscure out-skirt of the main city, to his defense, but nonetheless we arrived to find that I was in fact early, and that the office was closed until 7:30 am. Astounding. I got the cabbie to drop me off at some little street side Phở restaurant for a quick meal before whatever ordeal might present itself. I tell you though,  it was the worst Phở in the whole of Viet Nam. It was time to go home.

When I got back to the ticket office, I stepped through the wide-open double doors and quietly placed my bags in the corner. I walked over to the receptionist, and, restraining my excitement I asked, Ni hui shuo zhongwen ma? She self-consciously replied, "yi dian dian." "A little", not quite there yet, I thought... but then, OMFG! Freedom! Oh the beauteous glory of language and communication. The woman next to me was fluent in Chinese and Vietnamese! The lovely Xiao Chen responded to my inquiry. She helped me sort my ticket out and answered all my questions about time and place and money exchanging and everything in the wonderful dancing tones of Putonghua! It sounded like home. I wanted to hug this woman!

And we happily chatted in Mandarin, with several other surprised Zhongguoren joining in, for the next 11 hours.

.smile.

Arriving at the Nanning airport, I was giddy. Everything worked out so well, everyone spoke Chinese. I was full of good Phở by this time and in possession of a currency that made sense to me. I had gotten a good nap in on the ride to the border, and I had received word that my flat mate had successfully handed my business suit off to my associate. There was a hotel already waiting for me with all of its plush and free glory at the other end of the flight, and all I had to do - my job even - was to now, after four months of uncertain travels, sit casually with the lovely, though short-sighted, Xiao Chen as I waited to board the 7:55 to Chongqing. (Xiao Chen thought, incorrectly, that she could simply show up at the airport and buy the next ticket to Chengdu.. syke! Hopefully she made it by now though, and maybe I'll see her tomorrow... poor thing.)

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I thought for sure that it would have been an impossible accomplishment; fourteen days after I picked up my Chinese visa, and just one week from the moment I got on the Open Tour Bus leaving Saigon, I am sitting pretty, shaven, clean, sipping Chinese coffee with one of the many pulsing hearts of the Chongqing skyline glowing through my hotel window. I'm back in the land where the name An Xiao Long holds meaning, respect, a wage, dresses in shui suits and gets his expenses paid; I type on my equally longed-for 17-inch Powerbook, well fed and very content. 

But it hasn't been like this; I have been sick and poor and needy and aimless. I have with little success been trying to speak Vietnamese and trying desperately to find cheap and edible Vietnamese food as I waited for money that never came, money that was to be my salvation and the key to a dream come true. Saigon, oh, Saigon...