The Drive to Hội An

I heard my phone vibrating in my dream, but I remember ignoring it, because I didn’t want to wake up yet. Then they called the room phone, which I couldn’t find in the cold darkness, so I punched it, and when it hit the floor, I heard a faint voice saying, “Hello? Hello, sir?”

I grabbed the receiver and said, “Yeah?” 

“Sir, your friend ask me to call you.”

“Hugh? What does he want?”

“He says that you need to talk to the man here about the motorbike.”

“Okay, one minute.” I hung up and smacked Rosie on the butt. “You should go talk to the motorbike guy.”

She was wide awake now: “I booked the flights, the hotels, and I’m the one who found us these motorbikes, so how about you go fucking do it, you lazy piece of shit.”

The elevator wasn't working, so I took the stairs, and every step felt like a mini-aneurysm. In the lobby, I found Hugh sitting on the floor with a bunch of Vietnamese women, helping them fold t-shirts.

“About time you woke up,” Hugh said.

“What are you doing?” I asked, still adjusting to the morning light.

“I came down here to get some more beer this morning, and I found these wonderful ladies folding these t-shirts.” He waved at the ladies, who looked half-amused and half-worried. Then he held up a shirt. “They said that if I helped them, they'd give me a free one, so now I have a change of clothes, since you were so fucking worried about that. Here, you want a beer?”

I felt a wave of nausea, and I massaged my forehead to keep down the vomit. “Why does everything you do hurt my brain?”

He laughed and pointed outside. “You have to go talk to the motorbike cunt. He's fucking pissed.”

The rentals were parked out front: two old Honda Nouvas, both were scraped to shit. The guy took one look at me, rolled his eyes, and launched straight into an angry tutorial, talking over me as I tried to explain to him that I drove the same one in Saigon. Then he lit a cigarette and wandered off down the street, still muttering to himself as he turned the corner.

“All good?” Hugh asked, standing at the entrance.

“Think so, why?”

“That fucker took one look at me drinking beer this morning and went fucking nuts on the guy at the front desk — and that poor cunt had nothing to do with it! I was actually starting to think they weren't going to let us rent them, but good thing you look like the lamest fuckwit in the whole fucking world.”

“Yeah, good thing,” I said, walking back inside. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

He laughed. “Of course not.”

“Gonna be an interesting drive, then. Okay, I'm going to take a shower, and I’m guessing Rosie will want one as well. We'll meet you down here in a bit.”

“Want a line to start your day?”

I stopped and glared at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Lots of things,” he said, rummaging in his pockets.

‍

By the time Rosie and I were checked out and ready to leave, Hugh was a complete mess, on his knees, proposing to the women in the lobby, telling them over and over again just how much he loved them, and what a good husband he would be. They were laughing, but it was weird, and we wanted nothing to do with it, so Rosie and I packed up the Nouvo and were ready to leave when Hugh cornered two young backpackers who had just stepped out of a taxi in front of the hotel.

“Which one of you cunts stole it?” Hugh screamed, crouching in front of them, and waving his fists like a wild animal. “I fucking know it was you!”

“Don't have,” one of them said, with a heavy Scandinavian accent. “We don't have.”

I asked Hugh, “What are you looking for?”

“My fucking passport,” he said, still waving his fists at them. “These cunts stole it!”

“Did you even look for it yet? You probably dropped it somewhere.”

“I fucking know you have it,” he told them, backing them up against a wall. “You'd better give it to me, before I cut your fucking throats!”

“Let's just get out here,” Rosie whispered, showing me the map on her phone. “Before he gets us arrested.”

“One sec,” I told her, walking over to the backpackers, who looked genuinely scared. “You don’t have it, do you?” 

“No,” one of them said, “We don’t have.” 

“I believe you.” Then I went over to Hugh's motorbike, and his passport was sitting right on his seat. “Hugh, you dumb fuck, it's over here.”

“So, you had it,” he said, ripping it out of my hand and looking quite embarrassed.

“If it helps us to leave faster, then, sure, I had it.” 

He passed me a pair of driving gloves. “Here, these are your prize.”

“Where did you get them from?” I asked, trying them on.

He gave me a wink and said, “It's a secret.”

“So, you stole them ... whatever, I'm too hungover to care. Let's just fucking go.” But as soon as I had the kickstand up, Hugh grabbed his bag and ran back inside the hotel.

“What now?” Rosie shouted. 

“I need some beer for the road,” he replied.

“Leave him,” she said.

So I did.

We drove through Huế's quiet streets, Rosie giving me directions over my shoulder, and it wasn't long before the city thinned out to pastel homes, shops, and government compounds with posters of dead-eyed workers raising their tools to the sky. At a red light, on the outskirts of the city, we joined a crowd of motorbikes waiting peacefully, nobody speaking, and it was nice listening to the low rumble of our engines, until we heard a familiar sound — a carbonated hiss.

Hugh raised his can of Huda and smiled. “I found you.”

The light turned green while he was still chugging, so we raced ahead, rolling through the hazy morning behind a young buffalo on a cafe racer.

“He's so fucked up,” Rosie said, resting her chin on my shoulder. “He definitely didn't sleep last night.”

“Of course not,” I said. “And he probably won’t until he runs through his stash.”

“I know,” she said, pointing to a gas station up ahead. "Let's pull over here and fill up. Hopefully, he doesn't see us.”

We drove up to the pump and ordered gas with hand signals from a skinny kid in jeans and flip-flops holding a stack of cash. I handed him the money, and he licked his fingers before giving us our change, peeling off each bill like they weren’t a few pennies each. Around us, there wasn't much happening: a few kids ordering breakfast from a food cart nearby; some old men with coffees, chatting beneath a Tiger umbrella; and a lady in a conical hat sweeping away the dust and leaves, the gentle noise of her soft broom adding a nice metronome to the sound of the gas pump. Then I heard tires sliding over the pavement behind me, and I watched as Hugh almost ran over the gas attendant.

“Fuck me dead,” Hugh muttered, dropping his motorbike and bag of speakers on the ground. “They need to clean this place. It's slippery as fuck! Good thing I saw you cunts, because I almost drove right past!”

I felt the tension of a hundred witness statements, so I jumped on the motorbike and said, “We’re leaving.”

Rosie hopped on behind me and told Hugh, “See you in Hội An. Try not to die.”

We drove south, toward the distant mountains that grew slowly from the fields of flowers and train tracks weaving through the fields of rice. Everything seemed to be under construction, and most of the road was torn up and full of potholes. They looked like harmless puddles, but they were treacherous little bastards, and a few of them rattled our poorly-fitting helmets. Between the never-ending construction sites, our hangovers, and the transport trucks that kept roaring up behind us, blasting their horns at the last second, we were both struggling as we passed through town after small town, where scenes of rural Vietnam played out in markets that all kind of looked the same: the kids in school uniforms weaving erratically on bicycles; the fat mamas in colorful pajama suits with fistfuls of cash and distrust in their eyes; and the young men on loud motorbikes trying their best to wrap themselves around trees.

About an hour south of Huế, riding with the ocean to our left, and a flat expanse of farms, factories, and mountains to our right, I heard a horrible, high-pitched whine as Hugh flew past us with his arm in the air and a wind-torn stream of beer hitting him in the face.

“What a guy,” I said.

Rosie laughed. “Nobody else like him. That's for sure.”

When we came to the foot of the mountains — the start of the Hải Vân Pass — a police officer yelled at us because we had somehow missed the signs telling us that we were trying to take the cars-only tunnel through the mountains, so we had to backtrack a bit. Then we raced up steep and winding roads, climbing a paved serpent into the clouds. It was fun at first, leaning into the corners, but it was also getting colder, and the motorbike did not sound great, and we were still climbing. We both added layers, nearly emptying our bag, but we just couldn’t stop shivering, and the fog was so thick we couldn’t see anything.

As we weaved through the mountains, with nothing but an occasional headlight to snap us out of our misery, I had a vision of another cold morning, which almost seemed like a lifetime ago … a hand curled inside a glove, my breath floating in the air … swaying in a bus, high above Halifax Harbour, at some ridiculous hour, in a blizzard, for no other reason than I had to. I remember looking at the building where I would hide in a cubicle for the next eight hours, reading books to pass the time, and I knew I wanted to quit — to leave this life behind — but I still didn’t know if I could do it yet … then a pneumatic hiss, wind ripping through the cabin as thousands of tiny daggers hit me in the face, before stomping down the hill, into the Dockyard, following in the footsteps of those who'd come before me, those poor souls who'd already been through this, and I remember thinking to myself: this isn't living; this is waiting to die.

But those visions floated away as we drove into a mountaintop village of shanties, souvenir shops, and something that looked like a machine gun pillbox. A few people ran out to wave us in, but we were in no mood to compare prices, so we stopped at the nearest shop, where a woman scrambled out with chairs and set them between display cases of jade and silver. 

“Hot coffee,” I said, still shivering. “As hot as you can make it.”

“Where's your jacket?” she asked, laughing at Rosie, who went straight for the bathroom. “You should have a jacket!”

“I know, but we didn’t think it would be this cold.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Canada.”

“It's very cold there,” she said, rustling in the back behind a curtain. “This is cold for you?”

“We live in Ho Chi Minh City now, so we're used to the heat.”

“You work in Vietnam?”

“We’re English Teachers.”

“I meet another English Teacher today who also works in Ho Chi Minh City. Do you know him?” 

“Was he tall?” I asked. “White skin? Yellow hair?”

“Yes, that is him,” she said. “He is your friend?”

“Yeah, we're traveling to Hội An together.”

“He is very funny,” she said. “He is also very cold, like you, so I give him a hat.”

“Well, at least he made it this far,” I said, looking out at the fog. Across the street, there was an ancient-looking building, like a shrine, and a machine gun pillbox. “Is that building over there from the war?” I asked.

She looked and nodded. “Yes, the Americans come to Vietnam very near to here — in Đà Nẵng City. That is where they build the guns to shoot down the airplanes.”

“Did you have family in the war?” I asked.

“Yes, many,” she replied.

While my mind drifted, Rosie slouched into the chair next to me and shivered. “Well, that was fucking painful.”

“Squat toilet?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said, “and they're even worse when you're cold.”

The woman arrived with two steaming coffees and placed them carefully on the display cases next to us. “I want to ask you,” she began, “do you like living in Vietnam?”

“We love it here,” Rosie said. “Everyone's so nice, and it's so beautiful.”

“And the coffee is very strong,” I said, wrapping my hands around the cup to feel its warmth. “Just how I like it.”

The woman smiled. “I am happy to hear you like my country, and I hope you stay here to teach for many years.”

We paid for our coffees and soon fell out of the clouds, riding the brakes around tight corners until we could see Đà Nẵng's towers in the distance, like a mirage — a tropical oasis where it was warm and sunny and they served coconuts on the beach. And then we got trapped behind a herd of cows. 

When we finally made it into Đà Nẵng, it was already getting dark, and the bridge we wanted to take was — of course — closed for construction, so we had to find our way through a maze of narrow alleys and kids screaming “Hello!” as we drove into yet another dead-end. 

South of Đà Nẵng, it started to rain, and I couldn’t see a thing, because my glasses were wet and it was almost completely dark out in the countryside. It was like I was driving through a kaleidoscope of headlights, and I remember somebody passing us and I followed them for a while — until they turned into a gated compound, and then it was dark again.

By the time we got to our hotel in Hội An, my hands were arthritic, and I could barely walk. Rosie dealt with the front desk, while I parked the motorbike, and then we both jumped straight into the shower.

“Hugh demands that we come have a drink with him,” Rosie said, stepping into the hot water with me. “He keeps sending me angry messages.”

“Tell him to find new friends.”