The bus to the boat

South East Asia Diary #10

Vietnam is wide-awake at dawn and already motorbikes fill the streets when the minibus pulls up outside my hotel, a man walks past me into reception calling my name. “I’m here!” I call in at him, and he comes running back grinning and shaking my hand, taking my case.

Some of the other passengers are already belted in on the bus as I find myself an empty seat, and nod hello to these strangers who I’ll be stuck on a boat with for 48 hours. There’s one alright looking gay man, we clock each other and then pretend we haven’t seen each other yet, he continues to watch me in the window’s reflection, while I employ the inside corners of my sunglasses to rate his legs. I’m hotter than he is, but more of an acquired taste on account of my size and Jane McDonald t-shirt and unruly beard. He’s like anyone you could find twisting rope in a Sardinian boat yard, and consequently an easier sell. Shaved head, handsome enough to brush-up on Instagram but the kind of boy you’d tire of after a third meet. He’s a packet of crisps. I’m a giant casserole.

We have a tour guide who sits behind the driver on a seat facing the rest of us. His name is Manh but he says we can call him Super-Manh. I tried disguising his name in this piece but decided it was worth breaking his anonymity to share this detail alone - however - for my own peace of mind, I would like to remind anyone reading this that my writing is essentially a creative spin on my own recollections of the truth, and therefore (if the Vietnamese tourist board or communist party is reading this), please don’t hunt down Manh and send him to a training camp, he did an excellent job and everything I recall is probably incorrect.

Manh fills the two hour journey from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay with a tedious, terrible, corny scripted comedy routine that he has worked on for years . “Your name is Jack … Are you like the Jack Daniels or like the Jack Sparrow? He-he-he!” … “Do you drink whiskey? He-he-he! Or maybe you are like the pirates? Ah-ha-ha. He he he!” … “You look sad Jack Sparrow… maybe you are single man yes? This is okay. We will find you beautiful wife on the boat. Ah-ha-ha! He he he!”

It is 6.12am.

Manh is ignored by some passengers who simply watch Hanoi’s rush hour and listen to music on headphones. I am too English to point blank ignore him. Instead I endure everything and decide to bitch about it later on Substack. Manh is egged-on by a middle-aged American couple who look like they are both called Patty and who clearly think that they’ve won front row seats to a comedy store off Broadway. They chip in with their own riffs … “Jack Sparrow? Do you also wear eyeliner like … oh what’s he called baby … Jonathan Depp? Or is it guy liner if a man wears it?”

“Ah ha ha!”

“Keira Knightley is in that movie. She’s British isn’t she? Have you met her? Have you met the Queen? Oh we loved her didn’t we. The Queen, we mean.”

Manh takes a break from giggling to turn to me solemnly and say “I am very sorry to hear that you have dead Queen” and I give him a curt nod of wistful appreciation as if I knew The Queen personally. “I’ll pass on your condolences to Charles” I say.

Behind Manh’s upbeat patter there is a calculated surveillance flicking across his dark eyes. He is reading us, pairing what he sees with his mind’s database of thousands of boat tours gone by. I sense that I am one of the bus's enigmas to him - a solo male traveller in a female musician’s merch tee and hot pants. Manh tries to pin me down with questions like playing social profiling Guess Who.

“Do you like to do the kayaking Jack?”

“I’m excited to try it!” I reply.

“Do you have children in your United Kingdom?”

“Not that I know of!”

This raises a chuckle from a tattooed man somewhere behind me who also sits alone, wearing Ray-Bans, looking like he smells of weed but I can’t tell because there’s a wall of cheap perfume between us - the teenage daughters of a Spanish family. The Spanish family listen and watch, but don’t participate in the bus banter. It must be infuriating for them - the latter years of English being a global second language, make it die already. The Spanish Dad is quite hot. Could look like Enrique after a few pints.

“Do you support the football team Jack Sparrow?”

“My family support Leicester City”

“Who is your favourite Leicerster football player?”

“Gary Linekar” I say, and the stoner at the back laughs again. He leans forward and says

“I'm English too by the way pal, Birmingham, names Baz” and we shake hands.

The gay Italian is smiling at this communal conversation too, which gives me permission to look at him again, he looks at me, I look him up and down at the speed of light, he looks me up and down at the speed of light, this time with a tiny hint of warmth, and then we silently agree to ignore each other again.

The bus has more pick-ups. A wealthy-looking middle-aged Kiwi couple who are on their 25th wedding anniversary have lots of bags, and white linen trousers and take a while settling into their seats. Some Vikings join - a tall grinning lad with shoulder-length hair proudly holding hands with a pale flat-faced girlfriend who looks like she might strangle you with her own hands if you won at Uno. He sits upright in his seat as if going to war and beams around at everyone. His eye catches me, and then Baz, but it’s the searching brotherly look of a straight lad looking for bros to drink with when his girlfriend starts to piss him off.

Eight loud Italians arrive who partly met each other at the start of their Vietnam trip - some sort of Italian holiday initiative for divorcees or people who got fired or something. “We all sign up for this holiday programme. It is for Italians who want to travel together with Italians and see Asia” one explains to Manh, who frowns trying to add up the levels of tourism within tourism. He goes through his mental rolodex of Italian chat.

“Do you love spaghetti or rice?” he asks “ha ha ha!”

“Is you fan of Super Mario” - “He he he” - “maaammma mia!”

The American couple chuckle good heartedly at first but their energy wanes, like Lara Croft struggling to swim underwater without oxygen, they can’t cope without an American lens cast across the entire conversation. “In America” says one of the Americans “We have a leaning tower of Pisa in Chicago”

The other Patty adds “And I think there’s one in Vegas”, they nod, as if anyone asked.

I thought about saying “I believe they have a replica of the Twin Towers in Naples”, but it’s too early, I’ve not had breakfast, I can’t judge how inappropriate I am without All-Bran snaking its way through my intestines.

One of the Italians is gay and checks me out, I slump back in my chair and spread my thighs, looking gruffly out the window, to confuse his gaydar. He keeps looking at the Jane McDonald t-shirt then back up at my beard and my shoulders, unable to make a decision. He’ll find out later.

Super-Manh asks the Italian gay if he likes a football player, sounds like Paulo Nutini and can’t for the life of me remember who. The Italian gay shakes his head, and Super-Manh shifts uneasily in his seat, his face flashes with light concern for a moment - is this bus all faggots?? where are the football fans??

Four excitable Chinese Mums join us, taking photos of everything including photos of Super-Manh, photos of the melons that he is holding in a carrier bag for some reason, and taking photos of each other taking photos. They do not stop grinning and they record Manh’s entire comedy routine in landscape mode while not actually paying much attention to it themselves in real time. I wonder if in China they still have a tradition of gathering around to watch holiday videos. Or maybe it’s to show elderly relatives. Somewhere in China, on a woman’s phone, is a video with my voice in the background explaining who Jane McDonald is to a Dutch man.

An Indian family get on, but keep themselves to themselves, managing to somehow greet Super-Manh while also conveying that is the end of that - they’re not here to chat, they’re here to be driven somewhere. They have two sulky children, a beautiful teenage daughter with braces and a young adult male who wears an unflateringly tight green Polo top over his barrel-gut. He needs a haircut and he sits with his mouth hanging open. I’m often amazed by people who just don’t seem to be fully present as people? It’s impossible, looking at this man, to imagine him striking up a conversation with anyone, or introducing himself using his own initiative, or making an observation. Some people are like bum fluff or the discarded end piece on a loaf of bread. What’s the point in them? To buy PlayStations I guess.

The Indian parents are dressed for some sort of Alpine excursion with heavy-duty trousers, clunky trainers with thick socks and shirts buttoned up over under layers - it’s a lot. The Mum has successfully brought an entire breakfast buffet in two bags and Manh notices this saying “By the way please madam - there is no food and drink allowed to be taken onto the boat today. We give you all food for free, and one complimentary alcoholic beverage per dinner. All drinks must be bought on board of this boat,” - I feel like adding “so DOWN IT FRESHER!”, but it’s too early and Super-Manh beats me to it, breaking the awkward silence with - “Except for Jack Daniels… he is the only whiskey who can come onto this boat. Ahahahaha!”

One of the Americans turns to me “I love Jack Daniels don’t you”

“Can we eat this now?” asks the Mum holding up her hotel’s worth of food.

“Yes yes. Please eat” says Super-Manh, without a hint of humour. It’s a colossal task, and I’m assuming they’ve eaten already before setting off. Dutifully the Mum begins loading her husband and childrens’ cupped palms with dragon fruit, spring rolls and random pastries. Neither child gives any kind of expression that acknowledges the ridiculousness of the situation or lets us in on the joke of these unexpected proceedings. Nor do they offer any food around to the rest of us. They just eat silently with bowed heads, the son chewing with his mouth open, hunched over, the top of his head pressed against the seat in front, radiating pointlessness.

Certain things that we drive past trigger small gusts of trivia from Super-Manh, with an intriguing ring of nationalist spin. He explains how great the water pressure is in some houses that we pass, and that having a water tank on the roof is a great idea. I vaguely remember seeing a diagram of water tanks on British rooftops in a vintage children’s encyclopaedia that I had as a kid. We hear how useful it is to have regular trains, how hard local women work, how happy the neighborhood is, how regularly people go to church, and how thankful he is to some group or other for building a road or roundabout of some sort. He talks about how many houses have air-conditioning, how life expectancy is high in this neighbourhood and how people no longer eat cats.

“We have come to realise” says Manh proudly “That cats are our friend!”

There is a stony silence on the bus, and then Manh adds:

“While in the past people do eat the cat. This is no longer such the case”

He points at the Indian family who are halfway through their dumplings marathon and says “No cat today - ah ha ha ha” They don’t look up at him.

“In America” says one of the Americans “People like to keep cats as pets. Lots of them! We have a friend in Vermont don’t we, and she has seven or eight cats. So many! Can you believe! All over the place, on the porch, on the couch, up on top of the curtains”

Her exasperated tone confuses Manh, she’s somehow managed to convey sonically that cats are a problem in America. Perhaps she is saying that people still eat them in Chicago.. Super-Manh shakes his head sympathetically. “Important to make the cat the friend” he says. He looks at the Spanish teenage girl and says “Do you have cat young lady?” She looks up from her phone, then at her parents, then at Super-Manh and says “No”

Slowly, it dawns on me, that we are passing the devastation caused by the recent typoon. We pass a water park that is in pieces, upended slides snapped in half, their tubular shoots hanging in midair, going nowhere. We pass houses that have been crushed to rubble. Police men assessing broken fences, people are piling up sacks and lifting tree trunks. Super-Manh looks out at the scenes, and is about to speak, but stops himself. I sense he isn’t supposed to dwell on the topic too much but he says “It is very very sad, we have lost everything in the storm”

The sour note seems to give people permission to nod-off for a bit using a respectful silence as a segway into napping. Patty and Patty start snoring so I put my music in finally. I wake up from a disturbed dribbling doze and find that we are outside a large dusty service station. This is our final chance to buy cigarettes or secret food supplies for the ship. I buy some body lotion, hoping it might come in useful later with my new friend. I very loosely tail the Italian gay around the shop but he doesn’t notice me, engrossing himself in shelves of tacky souvenirs and trying hats on using selfie mode to make a decision.

Half an hour later we pull up at the Ha Long Bay boat tour terminal. We can’t see the islands yet, only a wide marina with dozens of groups climbing on and off buses, disappearing into or coming out from the large depot which is bright yellow and looks like the entrance building of a Wild West themed roller coaster.

“I’m Michel”, the Italian gay from the group is offering me his hand to shake.

“Jack”, and we help each other reaching for and unloading our bags off the bus.

I cast a glance at the first gay, the one who was on the bus before me. The Viking has struck up a conversation with him but it seems already to have petered out. They stand with hands on hips surveying the depot while the spoon-faced girlfriend takes photos of it.

I look for Brummy Baz, he’s off to the side, rolling a spliff but he catches my glance and looks up at me smiling. “How we doing Captain Jack?” he calls, gesturing if I fancy a toke, but I decline smiling.

Super-Manh has re-appeared holding a blue flag. “Follow me! Everybody follow me now thank you!”