Don't Hate the Playa, Hate the Game

Finally made an uneasy and tearful exit from the island and after a quick boat ride to the mainland I was reintroduced to the dichotomy of adventure and beauracracy that is Vietnam.

In the last few days on Phu Quoc I became friends with a trio of gregarious youngsters who would eventually adopt me. They first made my acquantence by inviting me to go swimming with them. Sinh is sixteen, Dhao is twelve, Bao is eight. Coolest damn kids you ever met. They taught me a ton of Vietnamese and just hung around me whenever I was around the bungalows. As I was loading up the bike they gathered around and we exchanged hugs and we all got a little teary-eyed. The simple laconic meloncholy permeating the departure made me feel like I was leaving my family for college or the army or something. The kids and their parents and close relatives watched me and waved as I bounced up the uneven dirt road away from the sea. It sounds really strange to say after such a brief encounter, but I think they were actually sad to see me go - and I in turn was really sad to leave them.

Took the express boat to Rach Gia on the mainland. This time my photocopied passport was quite a problem as five hotels would not accept me as a guest. Apparently hotels are required to submit a list of visitors' passport numbers or perhaps the actual passports themselves to the police every day. Lately the police have not been keen on non-originals so the look of fear was immediate when I handed over my flimsy facimile. The first couple rejections did not discourage me but after five I was thinking I was going to have to drive all night to Saigon. Finally, farther from the tourist center I found a fancy but cheap place that had only recently been constructed. Perhaps they were desparate for customers or maybe they had been spared earlier run-ins with the law. Whatever the case, I was ecstatic to check in, wash my face and watch a half hour of Japanese television. So far in Asia I've watched about three hours of Japanese gameshows and I haven't understood a single minute - but they're fun as hell to fixate on. They're like sadistic IQ tests. Let's see... that puts me in the severly retarded percentile.

It's about eighty degrees here, so I decided that night time was the right time to walk about and check out the town. My first visit here had been a bit of a disappointment probably due to my poor attitude and road weariness. This time the city seemed refreshingly alive. Someone mentioned that it was a school holiday, explaining the droves. I stopped to buy an ice cream and noticed that next door was what I'm going to call a ping pong parlor.

I squated around the threshold with a sizable crowd of middle-aged men to watch the fierce play on three busy tables inside. These guys are our parents' generation and they were ruling it. Eventually the novelty of my presence got me invited into a game. It was me against a sixty year old man with neatly combed and creamed hair wearing a tank top covered by a button-down short-sleeve shirt. He smiled at me politely as I stepped up to the table, borrowed paddle in hand, then proceded to kick my ass. We played five games and he stomped me 11-6, 9-11, 11-2, 11-3, 11-3. Normally I'd excuse the humiliation by saying that I haven't played in so long, and I was rusty and this guy plays every day, etc. But I was playing really well and this man was twice my age. My excuses are worth about 500 duong. It looked like he could have spent his leftover concentration filing his fingernails as he nonchalantly returned my curvy underspins and forehand smashes. He managed to put a strong spin on almost everything he threw my way and on the rare returns where my ball landed back on his side of the table I felt glorious.

Needless less to say, the crowd that gathered to watch the beating was more than satisfied at the result. Each time I scored a point they would persecute the old codger, laughing and mimicking his off kilter swing. Score was kept by a teenage kid who spoke English and would anounce the numbers in both languages. I'm surprised he didn't include French too just to make it seem really olympic. At the final point, my t-shirt was drenched in sweat and my head looked like a dewy Coca-cola bottle in a magazine ad. My opponent only needed to dab his brow with a thin square which poked shyly from his shirt pocket. In the end they bought a pitcher of iced tea and we sat together to comment on subsequent matches.

These experiences are making an impression on me. Next year when I return I will have acquired a smoking habit, gotten frightfully good at ping pong and billiards, and will have memorized important socializing phrases like, "Hey, you're not too bad, why don't you put your money where your mouth is on this next game and we'll see who the true god of this table is."