Narrative by Meredith Stephens & Photographs by Alan Noble
The tour to the Mekong Valley had finished. Rather than return straight to our hotel, we left our luggage from behind the counter of the tourist office so we could explore the nearby markets unencumbered. Later, after we retrieved our bags and headed outside to wait for the taxi, our guide emerged from the office and smiled at us.
“Where are you going next?” he enquired.
“To Hoi An, and then Hanoi,” Alex informed him. “What’s it like up there?”
“I don’t know. When I was a uni student I went with my friends to Hanoi, but I didn’t have any money, so I just walked around the town rather than going anywhere. Now that I have a two-year old child I can’t travel anyway.”
“Does your wife work?” I asked.
“Yes. She works in a shoe factory.”
“Who looks after your daughter?”
“My mother does. Both my wife and I need to work to pay the bills so we can’t really go on holiday. I work seven days a week. Paying the rent, the bills, and our daughter’s education, are very expensive.”
Our taxi arrived, so we carried our luggage and put it in the boot. Our guide stood by the car, smiled at us, and waved us off. There was one piece of advice he had given us that stood out in my mind.
“If you need to cross the road, raise your hand to let people know and cross confidently!” he had advised.
We had alighted from the taxi too early to visit a cathedral, but it was closed, so we decided to walk the rest of the distance to the railway station. After all, it was only just over a kilometre. Or so we thought.
It turned out to be just under three kilometres. The footpaths were blockaded by motorbikes and rubble, so we had to detour via the street to make our way forward. What was much more challenging was crossing the intersections. The pedestrian crossings were disregarded. Instead, you had to make eye contact with the motorcyclists, raise your hand, and stride ahead. Alex and I stood helplessly on the footpath watching hundreds of motorcyclists slowly turn the corner. A young motorcyclist looked at me as he slowly turned along with hundreds of others and gave me a wry sympathetic smile. The traffic turned to gridlock, so Alex held up his hand and weaved his way through the stationary traffic, with me following. Finally, we safely reached the other side. One of our tour guides, referring to traffic lights, made light of it saying that the drivers were colour blind. We did witness a minor accident, so there is no way I can advise how to safely cross the road in Vietnam.
We continued to pull our luggage along the footpaths, veering onto the road whenever the footpath was blocked, which was frequently. Then Alex decided to provide some relief by heading down a narrow lane, which he thought was a shortcut. Residents gave us surprised looks. A grandmother handed her grandson a lettuce which he placed in his bicycle basket. We greeted each other. At the end of the lane, we arrived at another main road clogged with motorcycles. We paused wondering which way to go. I saw something dark scurry towards me and brush across my sandals. It turned out to be a rat which rushed behind me under some buildings.
“Oh no!” Alex exclaimed. “My phone’s run out of battery and I’m not sure of the way to the station.”
I looked around for someone to ask, but the few people who weren’t on motorcycles appeared to be intent on whatever they were doing. More importantly, I didn’t have the Vietnamese language skills to ask them. Alex and I were stranded in rush hour and unable to find the station. Would we miss our train? We looked up and saw the sign Ga Sài Gòn. The first word sounded like it might have come from French gare, meaning ‘station’. We followed the signs and within a few hundred metres we reached our destination, the station. Alex’ phone had expired at the very moment that the sign had appeared.
We were in good time for the sleeper train and headed towards our carriage, fifteen minutes before departure. There were four beds in each cabin, and we had secured all four beds for just the two of us to ensure our privacy. The train departed exactly on time. My favourite cure for insomnia is lying on a train sleeper. Soon after the train had departed the gentle motion of the train rolling over the tracks, and accompanying sounds, sent me into a comforting sleep.
There was no dining car on the train. Instead, hawkers would board the train at the various stops. The next morning, we couldn’t start the day without coffee so we bought one from one of the vendors. A few hours later, we looked across the train tracks while the train was stopping at a station. We made eye contact with an elderly lady on a distant platform. She was holding two cups of iced coffee in plastic bags and calling out urgently to us. Normally, hawkers who are too insistent have the effect of turning me off, but not this woman. We nodded, and she ran across the tracks and held the coffees up to us. We took the coffees but were unsure of how much to pay. We held some cash out, and the conductor happened to be standing next to us. Unable to communicate with the vendor, we looked at the conductor. She took 20,000 duong from us ($1.00) and handed it to the lady. She took it and made her way back to the platform. The train departed and we returned to our sleeper compartment. The ice was in one cup and the coffee and condensed milk mixture in another. We tipped the ice into the coffee and savoured this new taste.
When we alighted at Da Nang many people touting for business made eye contact and called out to us. We looked for the driver we had booked. Finally, we found him, and followed him back to the taxi, from which he drove us to our destination, Hoi An. We briefly relaxed in our hotel room before walking the streets to the market. We crossed the streets in the same manner as we had in Saigon, making eye contact with motorcyclists and raising our hands, before making a show of confidently striding across. This remained stressful but instead of hundreds, there were tens of motorcycles.
We reached the river, alit with colourful lanterns. The streets were lined with throngs of fellow tourists speaking multiple languages. Touts and hawkers would stand directly in my path, call out ‘hello’, and try to engage me. I looked straight ahead and stepped around them. There were too many choices of where to stop, and the throng of displaced westerners, like us, was disconcerting. The westerners outnumbered the locals, but it was not a group of westerners with a shared culture, but a mixture of visitors from far-flung locales. When we decided on a place to stop for dinner, we shunned the ones who were standing in our way pressing us to stop, in preference to a stall-holder who did not even make eye contact with us.
There were two locals who stood out in my mind during our first few days in Vietnam. One is the lady who called across the rail tracks from the platform to sell us some coffee. Other hawkers, standing in my way and behaving like they are my best friend, I confess to have found annoying, but Alex and I completely dropped our guard down for this lady prepared to go the distance to sell a drink to strangers on a train that was passing through.
The second person was our tour guide in Ho Chi Minh. The tour itself was informative and fascinating, but the impression that lingers was our brief conversation after the tour when we were waiting for the taxi. The next time I purchase a well-priced and crafted product that is made in Vietnam, I will recall those who have brought it into my hands, maybe working seven days a week, paying exorbitant rents, and having others look after their children.
.
Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Borderless 