Saw Sea

Getting to my hotel turned out to require perserverence (and bug spray), but the next morning when I dived into the warm ocean in front of my little hut, I realized that it was well worth the effort.

Before getting into it, I must note that at this moment I am surrounded by twenty Vietnamese teenagers instant messaging over the internet, vocally chatting to each other in the room, singing out loud in their headphones, laughing, and writing flirty notes with pen and paper to each other. Super rad.

I found the hotel where I planned to stay here on Phu Quoc through google. You should check out google - it's a really good search engine. Upon arriving I was told that the place was about 10km down a particular road in town. The island roads had thus far been simple affairs so I wasn't too worried about getting lost. Ha.

By the time I left the market it was night and after two dead-ends and three forks in the road I was directed by a bored looking beer salesman that I was to turn immediately left off of the paved road and onto a road that looked like it was built by ESPN's extreme sports division. I triple-checked with the guy that he understood where I wanted to go and grudgingly followed his finger down the dusty dirt track.

Here in Vietnam, outside the cities, when its dark it's pitch black. This road was as bumpy as I've been on, with occaisional sand traps and lots of cattle crossing the road. There were also other travelers on the road kicking up dust and making for eye troubling riding. I traveled about the right distance (my tachometer broke about ten minutes after taking possession of the bike) and found myself so out in the middle of nowhere with no signs or anything. I must have ridden 25km that night over a 5km stretch of road, squinting my eyes and trying some crazy ass roads that went nowhere. I found that the Minsk does very well in the sand when one is moving. Stop however, and one finds oneself shit out of luck. I followed one hidden turnoff and went about a kilometer before deciding that the road was much much too hostile for a hotel to be at the end of it. As I attempted to turn the bike around I accidentally hit the kill switch. Since the headlight of the Minsk only works when the engine is running I found myself immediately shrouded in a penetrating blackness. The next thing I became shrouded in was bugs. Just out of nowhere a million buzzing little insects of different ilk flocked to me and started crawling on my face and arms and up my shirtsleeves. Ewwwwaaahhh! I scrambled to turn the bike around and get it started again stopping on several occaisions to ineffectively brush the insects off. Unfortunately I had backed the bike into a relatively deep sand pit. The back wheel began spinning, digging itself deeper into the sand. I clicked into neutral, hopped off and started pushing with all my might, strongly encouraged to succeed by the creepy feeling of bugs I cannot see crawling beneath my clothing. At some point I had to laugh because the situation was so ridiculous. A kilometer down a nowhere road off of another nowhere road covered in bugs and running in place like Charlie Chaplain. A bug flew in my mouth as I chortled, bringing a sharp end to the hilarity.

Out of the trap and back on the main road I decided to give up and head back to where I started. Two kilometers later I saw the turn off and the accompanying signs declaring the presence of my hotel. I rambled down the ruddy, rain molested road, following the signs until finally reaching the hotel. Hotel is probably the wrong word. It's just a collection of bungalows with a large gazeebo in the center that serves as the restaurant, bar, office and laundry facilities.

Stepping into the light of the main building I took a look at myself and saw a man dressed up as a huge dust ball. I was covered head to toe in red martian dust except for a wide streak around my eyes where I had rubbed my sweaty arm across my face. The staff was nonplussed.

The owner of the bungalows is a German guy who came here for holiday 13 years ago and never left. Well, he spends six months in Germany and six in Vietnam, gathering all his income from the resort. Nice, huh? Turns out he owns the only Minsk on the island and was very stoked when I offered him Mike's spare clutch cable. He and I and another German sat up drinking, waxing on the state of the german auto industry and talking shit on George Bush and Adolf Hitler until about 11pm when my eyelids ceased hovering.

The generator is shut down when the owner goes to bed and that means lights out. So soon after retiring I heard a loud click and the flourescent light wavered and died. The windows of my little room were propped wide open, letting in a cool healing breeze, and though I couldn't see it, I smelled the sea and heard the soft lapping of tiny waves on the nearby shore.

The next morning I awoke about 10 meters from the beach. I got up, got some fruit and yogurt, and went down to check out the beach. Directly in front of the bungalows is a small stretch of sand littered with large rocks which form tidepools around the edges. A jetty juts out from the right side of the beach, marking a barrier to the 5 kilometer long beach that runs north into a fishing village. I grabbed a book and walked about 200 meters down the beach to a nice little spot with a soft sandy bottom stretching infinitely into the crystal clear water. The water is warm swimming pool warm. I don't know how an entire ocean gets that toasty, but damn, it's nice. I swam out, rolled onto my back and watched the sparse clouds float overhead, letting the small wave crests splash gingerly over my face. The accumulated stress of travel, of forks in the road, of making sure I'm getting enough oil into the engine, of bus drivers burdened with Andretti envy, of broken racks and tricky clutches was slowly being replaced, syrum-like, with a satisfying sense of serenity and relaxation.