26.06.2004

On the road

Posted by justin

With around 70 million people inhabiting a country of two poles joined by a sliver of coastline and serviced by a single-lane national highway it is only obvious that overtaking is an 'interesting', and often-occuring experience.

Think back to a time when you gazed on a large public bus compound on a Sunday night. Times the buses by a thousand and line them up in your mind vision. Add some big, dirty, overloaded trucks. Now split them up and have them travel along at speed going in opposite directions overtaking with hair-raising recklessness. Turn up the frequency of overtaking wherever there are blind corners or inclines. Add yourself to the bus.

I honestly can't say whether I've exaggerated the dangers for effect here or not. What I can say is that it's interesting to record what thoughts, morbid or not, drift in to engage your mind. At first I rationalised that if I saw an oncoming truck I would brace myself for impact against the seat in front of me in what I later concluded would be a futile self-preservation gesture. Very futile.

I then recalled that it is generally assumed the safest seat is behind the driver. My recollection was tainted by the realisation I was a good five seats back and in all likelihood if the driver had time to swerve off the road I may just be the next point of impact.

In the end these musings just led me towards seeing the bus journey as a simple metaphor for life; an illustration of how fate's hand will slap you whenever fate decides, and, well, stop worrying. and such is life. and Desiderata says "Do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are borne of loneliness and fatigue".

When we pulled up to a western-style petrol station and the driver hopped out to light-up with all the other drivers while the petrol-assistant assisted in pouring the petrol in the still running bus I was not concerned. In the slightest. Fate seems to get tempted so much here that it just couldn't be bothered, and neither should we.

We arrived in Nha Trang safely anyway. A large sea-side resort town with the best scuba-diving and beaches and islands around. A little way up the coast of Vietnam - a five hour journey from Ho Chi Minh I've already mentioned. We'll spend Sunday on a boat trip out to some islands before catching an overnight bus to Hoi An.

We spent Friday at a little seaside place called Mui Ne, puttering around on a bike to check out sand dunes and fishing villages.

Our time in HCMC was spent doing the tour of the war museums and the reunification palace with the gates that the Viet Cong tanks rolled through to take over the south of Vietnam. On top of visiting the S21 concentration camp of Pol Pot in Cambodia a few days earlier we were really starting to feel the impact. A lot of pics and thoughts and feelings we'll have to record down another day.