Salon Wanderlust | Hitchhiking Vietnam, page 2 of 2

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
What makes a travel book truly great? Discuss your favorites in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Getting into Chechnya
By Thomas Goltz
A journalist's heart-stopping adventure slipping by Russian border guards
(05/26/98)
Letter from Jakarta
By Jeff Pulice
When all hell breaks loose, what's an expat to do?
(05/22/98)
Mondo Weirdo
Oh, those tropical nights!
Readers relate their nocturnal adventures in the wilds of Australia and Indonesia
(05/21/98)
"A Walk in the Woods"
By Bill Bryson
An almost-encounter with two big animals in the middle of the night
(05/20/98)
A talk with Bill Bryson
By Don George
On writing, hiking and other arduous pleasures
(05/20/98)

Browse the
Wanderlust Passages archives

__HITCHHIKING VIETNAM .|. PAGE 2 OF 2
The tourists arrived in white minibuses, dazed and stiff-legged from twelve cramped hours on the winding, wretched road. Other, more courageous souls flooded the train to Lao Cai and got fleeced by the bus conductors on the long ride up the mountain. They arrived late Friday night and filled the rapidly expanding guesthouses to the bursting point. They left Sunday afternoon, their film duly exposed, each clutching some piece of intricate embroidery a tribal woman had labored over for many days. They left behind a small mountain of banknotes that was turning the economy on its head and affecting everything from dowries to death rites.
Virtually every Hmong woman carried a basketful of embroidered clothing on her back, ready for sale. They descended upon the tourists brave enough to forsake their balcony rooms for a ground-level view of the bustling market. They spoke not a word of English and only a smattering of French, enough to say "Jolie, jolie!" as they clustered around the towering white strangers, tugging on their sleeves and reaching up to slip indigo skullcaps on bare heads and tunics over broad shoulders.
Oddly enough, the clothes they sold looked nothing like the clothes they wore, lovely tunics with multicolored stitchery and delicately sewn seams. The tourist garments were a patchy shade of purple and made of poorly matched panels that puckered and sagged. I snagged one for a closer look and realization dawned. They were reworked secondhands. The women had torn the collars out of old jackets and cut the broad, embroidered edge out of their tattered skirts, then stitched the pieces hastily together. The sacklike jackets were then immersed in homemade dye to disguise the battered embroidery and clashing colors. The same was true for the popular skullcaps made exclusively in foreign sizes. The bumpy embroidered patch across the front was really an old collar, baptized in a vat of dye and stitched to a piece of plain blue cloth.
The Hmong did brisk business selling their grungy clothes to grungier tourists who seemed to welcome the secondhand look. I wondered how they kept themselves supplied with used clothes. Surely they had cleaned out their own rag bins months ago.
The answer arrived in the form of several men with bulging sacks who set up shop outside the apothecary. They were immediately inundated with native women who snatched up the best pieces, squinted at them briefly in the sunlight, and tucked them into their bodices before they could be seized by other dye-tinted hands. It was all over in minutes, the women drifting away from the tattered remains. I wandered over to have a chat with the frazzled-looking men.
They were from a hamlet on the far side of Lao Cai, they told me, and business was good. They had long since emptied the surrounding villages of old clothes and now traveled 200 kilometers on horseback through the mountains in search of new sources. Some of the skirts were fifty years old, having been passed on from mother to daughter. The traders were getting desperate, and rich. Dwindling supplies had pushed prices up sixfold, and even the most ragged clothing now found a ready buyer.
I asked if I could go with them on one of their treks if I brought my own horse and gear. They turned pale and shrunk in upon themselves, shaking their heads like angry buffalo and insisting that my mere presence would spoil business. Not even an offer to pay my way with tobacco and rice wine could bring the color back into their cheeks, and they didn't look healthy again until their bags were packed and they were safely on their way.
I slunk off, feeling rather unwanted, and tried to lose myself in the boisterous crowd of Hmong and Zao that gathered around the traders' mats. A close-cropped Hmong man squatted near a pile of small-animal traps, wistfully opening and closing their rusty teeth. He stood and shuffled off and another took his place. This man clutched several bills and motioned to a stack of razor-thin saw blades wrapped in twine. For the next thirty minutes he examined every single blade, testing each tooth with the ball of his thumb until his fingers were bloody and he had finally found one to his liking. He paid and was quickly pushed aside by the next eager customer.
Few of the items for sale were basic necessities. This, then, was the disposal area for the newfound wealth from the embroidery trade -- I had wondered where the money went. Certainly not for dental work, since most of the women had only a few token teeth and those that remained looked like they would soon be on their way. I wormed my way forward to inspect the mats.
An entire section was devoted to bangles and strings of plastic beads. Tiny bottles of dragon oil and hand-rolled pills were also quite popular, the brighter the better. The hardware section was exclusively male turf, and here the traders outdid themselves in their effort to introduce gadgets indispensable to every village household. A Hmong man picked up an old pair of barbershop clippers with interlocking blades. He played with them for a moment or two, then grabbed a friend's head and cut a broad swath of his hair to the crown. He seemed quite pleased with the result and immediately sheared off one of his own sideburns. His friends were saved from further impromptu barbering by the trader, who snatched away the clippers, shook them clean of hair, and shooed all but serious buyers away.
The market was winding down, the sellers packing their supplies onto lethargic horses and the buyers hurrying home with their new purchases secured to their backs or dangling from their fingers. I was retracing my steps to the guesthouse and a cold shower when I heard an imperative hiss from the corner of a chicken stall. Cham, my Czechoslovakian-speaking builder, gestured me urgently into the shadows. I followed, and we huddled like spies exchanging top-secret information.
"The horse," he said, and nodded impressively.
I didn't know whether to agree or not. "The horse," I said.
The formalities over, he pulled out a rumpled piece of tissue-thin paper with many eraser marks and a few holes. It was a bill, or rather a wish-list, for an overly optimistic Hmong. I scanned it and handed it back. He assumed that I hadn't yet acquired the basics of arithmetic and squatted down to walk me through it, line by line.
The horse itself, a virile young stallion, would run me 300,000 dong a day, about fifteen times the going market rate. By comparison, the horse's owner was a bargain at a mere 40,000 dong. Pound for pound, he was worth less than a third of his steed. My Czech-speaking friend, however, was a prized commodity, valued at ten strong Hmong men per day, or one and a quarter horses. The two companions he had chosen to accompany him would accept no less than 100,000 dong each, plus -- a penciled-in arrow led me to the small print -- thirty cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey, per man per day.
Of course, Cham added casually, a few important extras, like food and gratuities, hadn't yet been calculated. He looked at me expectantly.
Yes, I agreed. Food certainly was an important extra.
Cham tapped the total impatiently with his index finger to keep me on track. I reevaluated the list. "About the horse," I said. Three hundred thousand dong a day seemed a bit steep. And this virile bit was somewhat disconcerting. What if he should lose himself in the presence of a young filly and make off with my expensive camera gear?
A mare, he promised quickly. He would procure me a young female. Obedient and pliable, as all members of the gentler sex should be. He gave me a pointed look.
And then, I added, there was the small issue of his salary. Did he really think he was worth more than the horse? How much did he intend to carry?
He snatched back the bill and stared at it for a moment, then motioned for a pen. I found one and handed it to him. He carefully scratched out the 300,000 price tag for the horse and wrote in half a million. Then he stuck my pen in his pocket and handed the paper back to me. An ingenious solution.
I could see nothing else wrong with his arithmetic except the extra zero on the end of each number. I stood and wished him a good day. He called after me, insisting that I owed him a finder's fee, since he had spent an entire day writing up the list. I thought for a moment, then offered him a few token bills, but I was off in his estimation by at least two decimal points and so even that negotiation fell through, a victim of incompatible arithmetic and the vagaries of human nature.
SALON | May 27, 1998
Karin Muller worked in the Peace Corps and on Wall Street before setting out on her dream journey through Vietnam. In addition to her writing, she also films documentaries of her travels.
From "Hitchhiking Vietnam: A Woman's Solo Journey in an Elusive Land," published by The Globe Pequot Press, copyright 1998 by Karin Muller. Excerpted with permission of the author and the publisher.


	T A B L E_T A L K What makes a travel book truly great? Discuss your favorites in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Getting into Chechnya By Thomas Goltz A journalist's heart-stopping adventure slipping by Russian border guards (05/26/98) Letter from Jakarta By Jeff Pulice When all hell breaks loose, what's an expat to do? (05/22/98) Mondo Weirdo Oh, those tropical nights! Readers relate their nocturnal adventures in the wilds of Australia and Indonesia (05/21/98) "A Walk in the Woods" By Bill Bryson An almost-encounter with two big animals in the middle of the night (05/20/98) A talk with Bill Bryson By Don George On writing, hiking and other arduous pleasures (05/20/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives		__HITCHHIKING VIETNAM .\|. PAGE 2 OF 2 The tourists arrived in white minibuses, dazed and stiff-legged from twelve cramped hours on the winding, wretched road. Other, more courageous souls flooded the train to Lao Cai and got fleeced by the bus conductors on the long ride up the mountain. They arrived late Friday night and filled the rapidly expanding guesthouses to the bursting point. They left Sunday afternoon, their film duly exposed, each clutching some piece of intricate embroidery a tribal woman had labored over for many days. They left behind a small mountain of banknotes that was turning the economy on its head and affecting everything from dowries to death rites. Virtually every Hmong woman carried a basketful of embroidered clothing on her back, ready for sale. They descended upon the tourists brave enough to forsake their balcony rooms for a ground-level view of the bustling market. They spoke not a word of English and only a smattering of French, enough to say "Jolie, jolie!" as they clustered around the towering white strangers, tugging on their sleeves and reaching up to slip indigo skullcaps on bare heads and tunics over broad shoulders. Oddly enough, the clothes they sold looked nothing like the clothes they wore, lovely tunics with multicolored stitchery and delicately sewn seams. The tourist garments were a patchy shade of purple and made of poorly matched panels that puckered and sagged. I snagged one for a closer look and realization dawned. They were reworked secondhands. The women had torn the collars out of old jackets and cut the broad, embroidered edge out of their tattered skirts, then stitched the pieces hastily together. The sacklike jackets were then immersed in homemade dye to disguise the battered embroidery and clashing colors. The same was true for the popular skullcaps made exclusively in foreign sizes. The bumpy embroidered patch across the front was really an old collar, baptized in a vat of dye and stitched to a piece of plain blue cloth. The Hmong did brisk business selling their grungy clothes to grungier tourists who seemed to welcome the secondhand look. I wondered how they kept themselves supplied with used clothes. Surely they had cleaned out their own rag bins months ago. The answer arrived in the form of several men with bulging sacks who set up shop outside the apothecary. They were immediately inundated with native women who snatched up the best pieces, squinted at them briefly in the sunlight, and tucked them into their bodices before they could be seized by other dye-tinted hands. It was all over in minutes, the women drifting away from the tattered remains. I wandered over to have a chat with the frazzled-looking men. They were from a hamlet on the far side of Lao Cai, they told me, and business was good. They had long since emptied the surrounding villages of old clothes and now traveled 200 kilometers on horseback through the mountains in search of new sources. Some of the skirts were fifty years old, having been passed on from mother to daughter. The traders were getting desperate, and rich. Dwindling supplies had pushed prices up sixfold, and even the most ragged clothing now found a ready buyer. I asked if I could go with them on one of their treks if I brought my own horse and gear. They turned pale and shrunk in upon themselves, shaking their heads like angry buffalo and insisting that my mere presence would spoil business. Not even an offer to pay my way with tobacco and rice wine could bring the color back into their cheeks, and they didn't look healthy again until their bags were packed and they were safely on their way. I slunk off, feeling rather unwanted, and tried to lose myself in the boisterous crowd of Hmong and Zao that gathered around the traders' mats. A close-cropped Hmong man squatted near a pile of small-animal traps, wistfully opening and closing their rusty teeth. He stood and shuffled off and another took his place. This man clutched several bills and motioned to a stack of razor-thin saw blades wrapped in twine. For the next thirty minutes he examined every single blade, testing each tooth with the ball of his thumb until his fingers were bloody and he had finally found one to his liking. He paid and was quickly pushed aside by the next eager customer. Few of the items for sale were basic necessities. This, then, was the disposal area for the newfound wealth from the embroidery trade -- I had wondered where the money went. Certainly not for dental work, since most of the women had only a few token teeth and those that remained looked like they would soon be on their way. I wormed my way forward to inspect the mats. An entire section was devoted to bangles and strings of plastic beads. Tiny bottles of dragon oil and hand-rolled pills were also quite popular, the brighter the better. The hardware section was exclusively male turf, and here the traders outdid themselves in their effort to introduce gadgets indispensable to every village household. A Hmong man picked up an old pair of barbershop clippers with interlocking blades. He played with them for a moment or two, then grabbed a friend's head and cut a broad swath of his hair to the crown. He seemed quite pleased with the result and immediately sheared off one of his own sideburns. His friends were saved from further impromptu barbering by the trader, who snatched away the clippers, shook them clean of hair, and shooed all but serious buyers away. The market was winding down, the sellers packing their supplies onto lethargic horses and the buyers hurrying home with their new purchases secured to their backs or dangling from their fingers. I was retracing my steps to the guesthouse and a cold shower when I heard an imperative hiss from the corner of a chicken stall. Cham, my Czechoslovakian-speaking builder, gestured me urgently into the shadows. I followed, and we huddled like spies exchanging top-secret information. "The horse," he said, and nodded impressively. I didn't know whether to agree or not. "The horse," I said. The formalities over, he pulled out a rumpled piece of tissue-thin paper with many eraser marks and a few holes. It was a bill, or rather a wish-list, for an overly optimistic Hmong. I scanned it and handed it back. He assumed that I hadn't yet acquired the basics of arithmetic and squatted down to walk me through it, line by line. The horse itself, a virile young stallion, would run me 300,000 dong a day, about fifteen times the going market rate. By comparison, the horse's owner was a bargain at a mere 40,000 dong. Pound for pound, he was worth less than a third of his steed. My Czech-speaking friend, however, was a prized commodity, valued at ten strong Hmong men per day, or one and a quarter horses. The two companions he had chosen to accompany him would accept no less than 100,000 dong each, plus -- a penciled-in arrow led me to the small print -- thirty cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey, per man per day. Of course, Cham added casually, a few important extras, like food and gratuities, hadn't yet been calculated. He looked at me expectantly. Yes, I agreed. Food certainly was an important extra. Cham tapped the total impatiently with his index finger to keep me on track. I reevaluated the list. "About the horse," I said. Three hundred thousand dong a day seemed a bit steep. And this virile bit was somewhat disconcerting. What if he should lose himself in the presence of a young filly and make off with my expensive camera gear? A mare, he promised quickly. He would procure me a young female. Obedient and pliable, as all members of the gentler sex should be. He gave me a pointed look. And then, I added, there was the small issue of his salary. Did he really think he was worth more than the horse? How much did he intend to carry? He snatched back the bill and stared at it for a moment, then motioned for a pen. I found one and handed it to him. He carefully scratched out the 300,000 price tag for the horse and wrote in half a million. Then he stuck my pen in his pocket and handed the paper back to me. An ingenious solution. I could see nothing else wrong with his arithmetic except the extra zero on the end of each number. I stood and wished him a good day. He called after me, insisting that I owed him a finder's fee, since he had spent an entire day writing up the list. I thought for a moment, then offered him a few token bills, but I was off in his estimation by at least two decimal points and so even that negotiation fell through, a victim of incompatible arithmetic and the vagaries of human nature. SALON \| May 27, 1998 Karin Muller worked in the Peace Corps and on Wall Street before setting out on her dream journey through Vietnam. In addition to her writing, she also films documentaries of her travels. From "Hitchhiking Vietnam: A Woman's Solo Journey in an Elusive Land," published by The Globe Pequot Press, copyright 1998 by Karin Muller. Excerpted with permission of the author and the publisher.