Water Guns in Ha Giang

Hanoi is the city of awakening eyes and overturned assumptions. The backpacking trip through Vietnam began there, the capital city in the north, and freshly outside the airport we were met with pure density in the air, each molecule an anchor puncturing the lining of my Metallica shirt and rendering it something beyond soaked. The blanket air from the all-spanning gray above reminded us of our Florida homeland although this was a new beast untamable. The humidity we knew left us dew to admire after dawn and offered a good morning. As schoolchildren in the grassy courtyard, the kicked-up water soaked our young ankles and this was our familiar. Yet now it seemed as though we were breathing the water instead of wearing it. That pure density was also in the bodies surrounding us. On foot, on motorbikes, the people came in fluid flocks but never touched one another. It was chaos of the orderly, bees with no royalty besides ambition. If in America there were a million motorbikes sprawling in our capital cities, there would be stacks of them littering the highway, broken and defunct and impossible. Chaos of the disorderly and selfish. But here the togetherness was immediately palpable beneath the hammer and sickle flags. 

The first booked hostel was in one of the most famous districts in Hanoi, the Old Quarter, where the French colonial architecture is long standing, preserved and respected. In it are bustling night markets where miniature Buddha figures are sold for ninety thousand dong amidst the motorbike’s smoggy exhaust. We passed through the alleys with our sweat-soaked backpacks, past ten live chickens in a single cage, past animal organs soaking in red vinegar preservatives, past smiling grandmothers sitting on the same stool they’ve sat upon for two hundred years. The smell near the hostel was rank, completely and utterly new to us. After dropping our bags we looked at each other in a moment of culture shock. We were here, already immersed in the captivating unknown. We headed to the central lake where children learning English are keen to find American travelers to practice on. Many approached us, bright-eyed and smiles beaming. Where are you from? What do you like to do? What’s your favorite food? Each foundational question transported us back to fourth grade.

I keep saying “we” and “us”. That’s because Jackson was there. My travel buddy and one of my best friends two years my junior, often literally called “Dane Junior” throughout high school given his looking and acting similar to me. The same brown hair over-gelled and slicked to the right, the same tight waist, the same shoulders thin but broad, the same Hawaiian shirts and tank tops and cheap chains, the same walk attempting to impress people who didn’t look, the same desire to wear jean jackets and smoke gravity bongs and listen to seventies progressive rock, and the same insecurity deep behind the eyes only perceivable by those who dared enter our social circle. As far as appearances go, our only difference was skin tone, his familial background being Colombian and mine being infinitely white. One of the Vietnamese students even remarked that he was “blacker” than me, which earned uproarious laughter from both of us. Back home we’re taught to verbally tiptoe, constantly avoiding what might offend someone. Now we were here to listen to observations as opposed to giving ours, which was a brand-new freedom. This is how we spent our Hanoi days, observing. Walking ten miles, completing districts, gawking at Taoist temples and Buddhist sculptures from the twelfth century, sitting with locals and eating pho on tiny blue plastic stools too small for our American asses, and smoking tobacco out of peace pipes. All while sweating through our clothes.

Back at the hostel on the fourth night I spoke to Pedro, a backpacker from Spain, on the rooftops as the sky turned black. We looked out at the rusted rooftops atop the French colonial buildings as they forever unfolded into the night. It was as if the redness of rust wasn’t turning darker itself but rather succumbing to the eternal strength of the moon. He spoke as the clouded stars reflected upon his eyes.

“I came here for something different. The spiritual. Things with essence. Back in Barcelona I am comfortable and that is not good. I want to make myself uncomfortable and explore what makes others comfortable in their routines. I do not matter, I am just eyes here.

“Have you seen the kids laying in their parent’s shops on the streets? They have no space, nothing at all, but they lay there scrolling Tik Tok, so relaxed and content…

“Giggling and enjoying it. Enjoying life. Can you imagine?”

“I’m anything but comfortable at home. I had to leave. And when I visit now, I can’t rest because of anxiety. I can’t do anything without wishing I was anywhere else. Sanford, Florida is no Barcelona mind you, and maybe that was the trouble from day one. I held a disdain for everything because what I dreamt soared so much higher than sea level. The same road I grew up on became my dreaded drive home. The half-working stop lights, once charming, became a hold-up. A waste of time. I became a negative person, Pedro. I grew out of childhood and the colors dimmed into something dark… I sent myself away thinking I didn’t belong.”

“So you’re more comfortable here? In the humidity and the communism?”

“I’m only comfortable in the places I don’t know.”

“You Americans fascinate me. All we have is home at the end of the day.”

“Then why are you and I standing here, as far away as possible?

“To open our eyes and meet people like each other.”

“… What are you most excited for here, Pedro?”

“Brother… The Ha Giang Loop. Are you doing three or four days?”

“What.”

“What day are you leaving?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Ha Giang Loop… Have you not booked it yet?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Brother, what are you doing in Hanoi?”

“Ha Long Bay, checking out the city, then heading south.”

“You aren’t going north?”

“No.”

“Brother! Up north is where the essence is.”

“This is the north!”

“Not north enough.”

“I don’t… If we had time, maybe…”

“Make time, brother.”

This moment sent me down a thought spiral toward hell. That was the first I heard of the Ha Giang Loop and I tried to convince myself we did not have the time. Only six days in Hanoi. We needed four of those to check out the city life. We did not have three days to spare on the back of motorbikes. We’d be wasting time. We needed new cities and villages, so we went south with a hole in our hearts growing darker and darker. Ninh Binh, Tam Coc, cave diving in Phong Nha. By the time we got to Hue, hearing about the Ha Giang Loop had become absolutely unbearable. What was initially at the back of our minds was now a shimmering billboard of our frustrations. We had missed the opportunity of a lifetime. We had come to do it all, and we had left a substantial part behind. Jackson and I went to check into our hostel. Upon our arrival, we met a guy from Philly named Jeremy in the lobby. We exchanged the generic formalities, the where are you froms and where are you goings. We mentioned we came from Hanoi.

“How did you guys like the Ha Giang Loop?”

“We didn’t fucking do it, Jeremy.”

“What?”

“Yeah, we didn’t really have the time, dude. Sorry.”

“What, so you just hung out in Hanoi?”

“We embraced an incredible city, did Ha Long Bay, and then moved on.”

“That’s wild. When I did it, it was the most special thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

I exploded internally. I could see the frustration and insecurity spreading across Jackson’s face, too. Regret everywhere. But we still had a chance to fix it. We could still go up there, but it would involve backtracking. A lot of it. We stormed out of the hostel and decided to mend the wound with an egg coffee, a Vietnamese tradition that began in Hanoi in the forties but eventually made its way down the countryside and into the other major cities and villages. The woman making the coffees behind the bar was in perpetual fluid motion and was stone cold emotionless. In America you can see the thoughts and emotions of every barista in your favorite café. Their sharp exhalations to signify ire, their brisk movements to get you the fuck out of their face. It’s all part of an obvious yet truthful performance. No such thing there in Hue. This was pure manufacturing, pure craft, pure results. The server came by and dropped off the coffees with a smile. The presentation was fantastic. The layer of custardy foam atop the deep black liquid was streaked with a light chocolate glaze and served with ice on the side. Jackson and I took our first sips and immediately slammed the coffees down in unison. This was the best coffee I’d ever had in my life. Egg foam dropped from Jackson’s mustache as he agreed. Jackson has what I can only describe as a Top Gun mustache. In fact, he’s simply a Top Gun type of person, with a dash of Evil Knievel. Born to wear helmets, swim daring waters, dance wild, and adventure wilder. If our airplane began plummeting from the sky and the flight crew desperately needed someone, anyone, please, our pilot has died, can anyone fly a plane? Let him try, I’d say, he's never flown before, but just look at him! He’s got a Top Gun mustache covered in egg foam!

“Jackson. I think we need to do something.”

“Hm.”

“Once we get down to Ho Chi Minh City. We need to fly back up north and do the Loop.”

“We absolutely should, right?”

“We can’t leave here incomplete. We would die.”

In Ho Chi Minh City, we had only a couple things on the agenda. Rest and hit the War Remnants Museum. Jackson was apprehensive about going there. Famously relentless in terms of graphic imagery and telling the honest painful truth, he thought it would pull us down to depths we couldn’t save ourselves from. If we were to cry, we wouldn’t stop crying. It’s just the way our inner sensitivities operated. Once the dam breaks, it cannot be mended. There were old American tanks outside the museum. Clearly painted over and made to be presented. The feeling was plastic, performative. Jackson thought they were Badass. That’s something we repeatedly said throughout the trip. That’s Badass. That pho we just had? Badass. The resort in Tam Coc? Badass. The egg coffee in Hue? Badass. And that was the thought going into the museum. Maybe this won’t be too brutal. Maybe it’ll be Badass. But the dam broke immediately and the flood was relentless as the stories we were exposed to. There were multiple showcase rooms in the museum, one of which was dedicated entirely to victims of Code Orange. Seeing their napalmed limbs almost moving inward toward the center of the body, completely immobilized, unable to walk properly, talk properly, live properly, but still able to smile. It tore us into pieces. There were multiple displays that explained just how much of an asshole Nixon was. Ordering the B-52 carpet bombings on villages who had nothing to do with the war, nothing to do with anything besides papaya trees, rice fields, and family. What did they do to deserve slaughter? Not only were many slaughtered, but some were burned to pieces, or watched their family burn to pieces while their six-year-old daughters contemplated running or burning with them. There’s a very famous image of “Napalm Girl”, a freshly burned child, alive yet wishing she weren’t, running from her freshly burned village, which was completely dead. She’s the dead center of the image and American soldiers litter the periphery. I imagined what it was like to wake up in the morning, picking mangos and dragonfruit from your trees, the same trees you’ve picked from all your life, just to look up to see tons of atomic metal dropping toward you. What could they possibly think in those moments? The confusion, the ugly, mortifying confusion that led to physical and mental anguish. That’s what it was when I looked closely at the expressions on all their faces, the kid and the soldiers. It was all confusion. The only difference was that the girl had clearly lost something, everything in fact, while the soldiers were trying to figure out if they had gained territory or lost their souls.

There was another room dedicated to lost war journalists. Many from countries who were barely involved with the war, if involved at all. Dutchmen, Germans, North Africans who were trying to cover a story shot dead, bombed, humiliated and mutilated. It was that, the innocence robbed, that ruined us. We sat sobbing on the second floor outside of those two exhibits. We were the only Americans in the museum, and we were the only people crying. Many visitors were clearly stricken, covering their hearts and holding back emotion. But they moved on as if the museum was just another stop on their tour. We made ourselves live in it. We deserved the pain and the torment. It wasn’t even a fraction of what our country made those people in the villages feel. I vividly remember hoping some old Vietnamese man would come and comfort us. Maybe he’d say that the history here was just in the past now, and all we have is love and connection and peace now, so let’s live in that instead. But no such thing happened. People passed us by as if we were an exhibit of the modern American male facing the guilt of their forefathers. Pure exposure and pure grief. Evidence from a crime we didn’t know we committed. How could we be so unprepared to face what our country actively committed? Terrible, just terrible. Put me in a tiger cage, I thought. Let me face that pain. I’ll accept it. Growing up in America is a fortunate and ignorant experience. The historical information we receive is hand-picked, chosen by the winners. But the Vietnam War is different. We did not win. So the writers of American history often glaze over it entirely. It’s the only war we’ve lost, they say, and then they move on to Nixon’s resignation and the Watergate bullshit. Much of the darkest parts of our history are completely concealed from our vision. So our biggest atrocities, tragedies, and shortcomings are, like the soldiers lurking behind the Napalm girl, hidden in the periphery.

The final piece we saw in the museum was a chart, an awful chart. It displayed the tonnage of bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam War compared to the total amount dropped by every involved country during the entirety of WW2. The US’s tonnage onto Southeast Asia nearly quadrupled the entire world’s output in the most famous war of all time. To this day, that is one of the most horrific moments of my life. Knowing that’s the country I come from. The towering ignorant soldier that is America, giving birth to both innocence and corruption, both inseparable and at times indistinguishable. Quadrupled. Not doubled, not tripled. Quadrupled.

The following morning we woke to news of Trump bombing Iran. An Aussie news outlet was covering the bombing, with opposing views within their programs. The two main anchors, apprehensively tiptoeing, seemingly wanted to keep things neutral, although the expressions on their faces said what they were unable to. When they handed it over to an international policy specialist, he was outwardly supporting the USA in this endeavor. One phrase in particular stuck out. “Many people will not commend this, but I certainly do. I commend the actions of our greatest ally.” Our greatest ally. What does it mean to be great? To be rich and large? Capable? Dangerous? Powerful? We took the remainder of the day to rest and be depressed. Here we were, Americans in Vietnam, learning about our overly ambitious war-ridden past and now experiencing those same features in the present moment. We felt like superheroes who could only use their powers for bad causes, or cry about our actions instead of doing anything about them. Even in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, it’s all anyone was talking about. It felt like they were talking about us. Perhaps that speaks to the all-encompassing ego Americans have, we hear whispers and apply it to ourselves, but this felt like an unwanted spotlight had been cast on us. I didn’t want to show anyone my passport. They would have me buffaloed.

Three days later we flew back up to Hanoi in preparation for our journey up to Ha Giang. We had contacted Pedro, who had just gotten back from his journey in the north country and was preparing to head south to Ninh Binh. He had a few hours to kill before his departure. It was a miracle that we crossed paths again. It had taken us over two weeks to travel all the way south to Ho Chi Minh city, and to come back. Meanwhile, Pedro had been in the northernmost parts of the country, drinking happy water, smoking Viet tobacco and letting the wind flow through his open spirit. All of us, deprived of sleep for weeks, had a conversation over Saigon beers in an empty bar on a Wednesday at eleven in the morning.

“Brother, you made the right decision coming back to do the Loop. It will change your life. After that you are done in Vietnam yes? You have done everything there is to do. Every big city, every stop. I cannot imagine the things you’ve seen and felt.”

“Yes, we are done after this. Although, we don’t want to be. We want to keep going forever. We’ve been away for a month, back home people think that’s a lifetime.”

“Is it a lifetime or just the time of our lives? Never stop. I want to go to Colombia. With you two. We need to travel together. I feel the connection of our spirits. Can I tell you something? Dane, you are twenty-six. Jackson, you are twenty-four. I am twenty-seven. We will never be as young as we are today. Tomorrow, many would say we are one step closer to death. But us, we are one step closer to life. One step closer to the next adventure. Don’t ever stop making the most of your life. Because life is so short. One day you are wishing you did the rest of Southeast Asia, and then you’re on your death bed wishing the same thing. Never grow old and you will never die. Traveling is the only way to live forever.”

All of us were on the verge of tears as we sat in that empty bar. The waiter was so confused. The time had come for Pedro to go, his limo driver was texting him frantically trying to find him, so we walked back to the hostel where he would depart. There we were, yes, the three of us weaving through the most complicated traffic pattern in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Pedro looking back at me with laughs and smiles as he zigged and zagged past all the fuming cars and motorbikes. In the hostel, Pedro grabbed his backpack and at the door, turned around.

“Goodbye guys. I love you guys. Remember what I said. If I don’t see you again in this life, I will see you in the next.”

And then he disappeared into the travel ether. Into that place outside space and time, where the body and soul are transient, awaiting the next experience to remind us that we are alive. Jackson and I sat down in the hostel lobby, we had met so many incredible people that it was hard not to overflow with emotion. I put my arm around him and held him tight. Our sleeper bus arrived at 7 PM to take us on the supposed five-hour ride up to Ha Giang. The first sleeper bus we took from Tam Coc to Phong Nha was incredible. Two columns of bedseats, pullable curtains, spacious and comfortable beds that leaned all the way back, we each had four beers for the ride. We were living happily and simply in the Vietnamese day. However, this ride up to Ha Giang was absolutely miserable. We left two hours later than we were scheduled to. There was a massive traffic jam getting out of the city at 9 PM. What type of city has traffic jams twenty-four hours a day? The seats we were given did not lean back, in fact they weren’t adjustable at all. We were stuck slightly upright, staring directly at the shaking ceiling wondering what we got ourselves into. Dirty blankets, no curtains, I felt exposed and surrounded by strangers. It was an overwhelming anxiety and yearning for the excitement of prior days.

We arrived to Ha Giang at 4 AM and were told our adventure would begin at 7 AM. We boarded the final bus that would take us to our hostel where we’d pretend to sleep. In the rain, our tour group boarded the bus and rode for all of ten minutes before we came to a sudden halt. There were fallen over trees and pounds of mud blocking the path. We could see the hostel’s light in the distance, a light so close and so far away that I now understood Jay Gatsby’s beaconed light calling to a lost lover. The driver spoke into his phone and then Google Translate spoke to us, “The road is blocked. We must go back to the original location.” There was communal sort of “fuck that” in the air. We were not spending any more time on buses. We, strangers united, marched out of the bus and through the Vietnamese drizzle. One of the first people to cross the blockade, I attempted to step on the broken branches to have some stability as I traversed through. It worked for the first step. My second step went directly through the branch and four inches deep into the mud. The shoe came completely off my foot. I said “Fuck!”, and then I took another step to hopefully get across. That step, too, went into the bottomless clay depths that absorbed my other shoe completely. There I was, in the black raining night, standing on the other side of the chasm shoeless and clueless. With just my slip-on socks, I reached into the mud and pulled out my shoes. Everyone else slowly made the trek over, their shadows in the foreground of the bus’s headlight beams. They made the exact same mistake I did. Shoes were coming off, people were falling over pissed, what were we doing here and why? I turned and saw Jackson come out of the adjacent woods. Absolutely resourceful and crafty, he had walked deep into the woods to get around the mudslide. He was as clean as a whistle. Not a speck of dirt on him and barely wet. He had fallen from the sky and entered the situation fresh and anew. I had no idea how he did it.

We arrived at the hostel all coated in mud and rain, except for Jackson. The lights that seemed epic in the distance now seemed familiar and janky. I looked around for a way to clean off my shoes. I spotted a little body of water that seemed like a display tank, so I immediately submerged my shoes in the water, rather they be soaked than filled with mud. Then I noticed something big moving around in the water. Then more squirmy movement. There were fish in there. I had just ruined an expensive koi pond. Then before I knew it, everyone followed my lead. Lines of the sleepless rinsing their shoes. Those poor fish were breathing dirt at five in the morning.

The hostel had a ghoulish emptiness to it. No duvets on the beds, only a single sheet, no soap or towels at all. We all needed to shower after a miserable day of travel and all we could do is add water to our grime without it coming off. I was the first into the communal showers and the first to realize the lack of facilities. The bathroom had a single used towel in it. It’s gray odor was of musk and damp regret. Surely it was the groundskeeper’s. What ground he kept, I had no idea. After standing in the cold water that refused to heat up, I stood there like a naked idiot in my shower sandals debating whether to use another man’s towel. I had no other choice, I thought. I had to do it. I used the wasteland towel only on my arms before giving up, I couldn’t subject myself to this. It would only make me dirtier. So completely soaked and not even clean, I exited the bathroom to Jackson standing there, looking mortified.

“No towels?”

“No. Just pain.”

“You’re kinda dry, though. Just your arms?”

“Just my arms.”

“How?”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

Most of the travelers had gone to sleep in another “fuck that” moment, regardless of how wet and dirty they were. I laid down in the section Jackson and I chose, completely soaked besides my arms, and wondering if we could abort this whole ordeal. We backtracked to our starting point for this? Why? Had we severely, completely, fucked this up? I was past tired, completely dead, and knew that I would be fucked for all of tomorrow. In that place out of time and out of mind, Jackson flopped down on the bed next to mine and exhaled deeply in a way that let me know our frustrations were on the same page.

We woke up as dead men forty-five minutes later. The lights came up and all of us were zombies. None of us even knew each other’s names, yet we had already lived and died together. Downstairs, though, everything started to buzz with life. We met some soon-to-be friends. There was Danny, a recent college graduate from New Jersey travelling before his move to San Francisco to work in tech. He was, like us, completely dead. He hadn’t slept at all. There was Patrick, a tall red-haired man of confidence and affability from Texas who was the type of guy to tell you a story before he told you his name. There was Lance and Tiran, two lads from the UK who had a shyness to them which would later turn into a respectfulness and friendliness. There were Kim and Payton, two beautiful blonde med school students from Alberta who had just come from the beaches in Thailand. Everyone else formed a shapeless social cloud of affirmations and laughter on that first floor. There were about fifty of us total that were split up into groups of ten. Two nights and three days we would spend together, sleeping in hostels, eating together, and drinking happy water. The introductions were a bit awkward and forced, we clearly felt as though we needed to connect with each other before embarking on this journey, but in communion we knew the awkwardness would alleviate and turn into true bonds. Bonds that would turn to memories that would last a lifetime. I knew the adventure would be gnarly when Li, the leader of the expedition, gave the most succinct introductory presentation I’ve ever seen. He pulled out a map that seemed designed for fifth graders. It had the entirety of the Ha Giang Loop on it, about five or so locations throughout the sprawling valleys that we would see in the coming days.

“Okay, so we are right here outside of Ha Giang City. Today we will go through the city and begin through the valleys. Tomorrow we will go through the second portion of the loop. Then on the final day we will complete the loop and come back to Ha Giang City. Also, your easy drivers. They do not know any English. But they do know what we’re doing. Does that sound good?”

That was it. Three days’ worth of plans in about eight seconds. Then we went outside to meet our easy drivers, who would drive us through. Mine’s name was Hu. He had the kindest demeanor to him. A stocky sort of familiarity, he wore a black cotton jacket, dark gray jeans, and flip flops. All the easy drivers wore flip flops. He also had a custom black helmet with bright blue streaks and white stars spattered across it. He was Badass and looked quite young, although from his build I knew he was couple years older than me. The Vietnamese way of life is often very youth centric. A palpable happiness within them as if they never stopped being children. He coincided with that motion of elated youth, and he brought the inner youth out of me, too. Initially, I didn’t think he’d be a person I would get to know. Language barriers. Cultural differences. Shyness on both sides. Between him and I there would always be this distance, but in Vietnam the only distance that exists is the distance you can close via motorbike.

Once everything was sorted, we took off like a ragtag battalion of clueless wantons on the way to something important. We were strapped up in helmets, Jackson looking much more comfortable than me, and immediately we both stuck our arms out as wingspans and pretended to be gliding pelicans. Jackson looked perfect in his bright red helmet, as though he was born with it on and was due to be shot out of a cannon later that day.

We passed villages with families picking papayas from overhead with large used water bottles with jagged cut edges. We saw grandparents carrying goods over their mighty worn shoulders and children in a mode of bliss running about the streets as if it was their first time, too. The villages were on the cusp of the most illustrious landscapes of verdant canyons and lush vegetation sprawling toward infinity and that same infinity was within us, too. Here we were, connecting our limited time on earth to time itself, to life itself, and there were the villagers, calmly farming rice as the sun rose and set, with seemingly no idea just how special their land was to foreign eyes. To us, this experience was completely revolutionary, something completely else. The universe breathed through their livelihoods and whispered to our souls. It spoke in their souls too, but in a deeper earthbound harmony. We were beyond privileged to be able to witness it, and yes, perhaps the villagers truly did know how special their homeland was, and yes, perhaps they knew more than anybody else.

When we arrived at the next hostel at five PM, I was more exhausted than I had ever been in my life. I felt as though I was watching my life through a passive window. I laid there in the hostel bed in my own stupor when one of the tour operators asked me if June 26th, tomorrow, was my birthday. I told him yes, it was. He walked away while checking something on a notepad. Deciding that exhaustion was just an idea, I went downstairs and joined the crowd. Danny was there, the bags under his eyes just as pronounced as mine. This gave me relief. I wasn’t the only one having a hard time. There were the girls, Kim and Payton, who may have been tired internally but only ever seemed alive and ready for the next moment. Then a group of Aussies that we connected with in Joe, Rua, Ben, and Tom. We had our first shots of happy water, a high-percentage rice wine equal to American moonshine. It sneaks up on you, goes down easy, and comes back up even easier. We were all living in the Vietnamese night completely susceptible to whatever drunken shenanigans descended upon us from the gods, who were no doubt drunk themselves.

It was karaoke night. Jackson and I sang “One Last Breath” by Creed. The next second we joined a game called “Fuck the Dealer”. We conversed with Payton and Kim about famous actors we’d like to go to bed with, how the trip has treated us so far, and what we wanted to get out of life. Shots. The happy water flowed through us like lifeblood and invigorated the night with possibility. I invited the Aussies over to play “Fuck the Dealer”. Rua asked if I was the dealer. Before we knew it, we sat at a table of ten people I now considered friends with two hundred cans of crushed beer spread everywhere, leaking. We played King’s Cup while the Aussies took digs at one another and playfully slapped each other around. Jackson and I would never do that. As we got more and more hammered, we began to talk about the Vietnam War. Unfortunately for me as I got more and more drunk, I became more and more sensitive, taking things personal when I shouldn’t have. When the Aussie boys got more and more drunk, they became more and more liable to shoot from their verbal hip. Rua specifically seemed like the type to thrive underneath the skin of others. He called all Americans genocidal maniacs and considering what we saw at the War Remnants Museum and that giant shame still lingering, I became enraged at his slighted truths.

“Fuck you.”

“He’s gonna send Nixon after me now, lads. Go start a war over slaves again.”

“At least we fight humans in our wars and not fucking emus.”

“In Australia we don’t need to have wars with other humans. We’re not bloodthirsty like you lot.”

“I thirst for experiences and true friends. Now I know who my real friends at this table are not the dimwitted cunts who slur their words and pretend to know everything.”

“Fuck off, cunt.”

“Fuck you, Rua.”

The fact is my heart was being daggered while he, completely blithe, simply let his thoughts flow from him like air. Joe noticed my heat and made an effort to calm things down.

“Don’t worry about him, Dane. He’s got this thing in his brain where he doesn’t have one. Any violence against him would only hurt your hand and nothing else. We’re all friends here, and we’ll all be best mates by the time this is said and done.”

The night rolled on in its incredible motion and the one moment of hostility amid a sea of friendliness meant nothing to anyone. Joe had a geniality and a collectedness that I envied. I could never be a great collector of anger and a manufacturer of peace. Rua and I butted heads because of this, we were both scattered people. Disorderly and instantaneous and susceptible to the peaks and valleys of the present moment. When the night eventually slowed down, the karaoke microphone rolled off the table and we had drunk the place bone dry. Everyone stumbled up to bed while Rua and I sat there for a minute. We looked at each other and laughed.

“You know the Australians were there, too.”

“Where?”

“Here. It was a time in the world where everyone was fucking up. Everyone was confused.”

“Everyone was a genocidal maniac like me, then?”

“Who said that?”

“You did.”

“Did I? Well, you’re no more genocidal than the rest of us, stepping on ants and going on about our days while children get murdered in the middle east.”

I passed out that night in a mixture of elation, shame, and retrospection. Another year under the sun had passed. Oh, how many sunspots I’d grown underneath that fat old giant! Jackson and I woke up slightly hungover, but the type of hangover that is not debilitating but rather infused with a forwardness, a pursuit of the next moment. We remembered that I had brought mushroom gummies from the States so we took them with our breakfast and set out for day two of the Ha Giang Loop. At this point I felt myself growing incredibly close to Hu. Whenever we stopped at an overlook, we would put our arms around each other and take in the moment. We skipped down driveways together like the Lion and the Tin Man. We spoke over Google Translate and I learned that he was twenty-seven with a wife and child. When he asked if I had a family, I felt odd in responding “not one of my own” and realized I should get after that someday. In a way we were glad that we weren’t able to speak conventionally, because instead we just laughed. Laughed at our inability to communicate. Laughed at how two souls that could not be more different could elate in the same moment. Everybody was jealous that I got the coolest easy driver while they sat in their isolated bubbles without truly connecting.

When the shrooms started to hit, Jackson and I sat on a dilapidated rail away from the others and looked up at a mountain towering over us. Laced throughout its body were zigzagged roads upon which the motorbikes were ants on their way to a colony far, far away. I felt like a child with an immense sense of control kneeling upon a play rug, planning every automobile’s arrival and departure because I controlled the world and nobody dared to play with God. That wonderment from my childhood transcended toward the ever-present now where I sat with one of my best friends amidst a life-altering experience as I turned one year older. We laughed in our way and expressed gratitude to one another. Nobody else would break their routine and send it to Southeast Asia. It had to be us, and it was. When we walked back to the group, there was dead-tired Danny, magnificent in his carelessness. He said he was getting by on Vietnamese iced coffee and vibes, so he didn’t need to sleep.

The easy drivers gave us all water guns. Hu was being a sneaky little bastard, peeking around corners Scooby Doo style, spraying me, and instantly disappearing. I simply couldn’t get him back; he was slick as morning dew. With each spray of water he giggled the most mischievous giggle while I plotted my vengeance. After riding through the wind for a while and letting him forget my plan of vengeance, we arrived at a village where we were scheduled to have lunch. When Hu parked the motorbike, I hopped off abruptly and pointed my water gun at him as if I had a culprit dead to rights within the first forty-eight. As my finger was about to press the trigger, he threw his hands up and shook them as if to say “don’t shoot”. Although he was smiling, the look in his eyes had a fraction of concern that absolutely crushed me inside. What did he really feel in that moment? That he didn’t know me, and couldn’t ever? That an unhinged, sensitive American had come for revenge for the “one war” they truly lost? That these water guns were like the real guns we pointed at each other only sixty years ago? That the relationships between countries were not mended or forgotten, but rather buried? Was Hu actually afraid of me, after we shared these moments together? Or was just I so selfish that even my guilt had become all-encompassing? I felt like a corrupt American soldier exacting revenge against the Viet Cong. When we glided upon the back of these Vietnamese motorbikes, had we really been acting as pelicans with our arms out in the air, or had we been B-52 warplanes, napalm-ready? Which was more ingrained in our nature as American men? To be peacefully gliding through the air as birds of time, or to be anything but peaceful, cutting through an unknown country, searching for innocent lives to extinguish? Never before in my life had I felt this extent of shame and humiliation.

I put my water gun down without shooting. Hu may have noticed my shame and apprehension, maybe he didn’t. I had no way of knowing, and I surely couldn’t articulate what I felt in the prior four seconds. Either way he sprayed me again, giggled impishly, and ran away. Newly damp and self-violated, I sat down with Jackson, Lance, and Tiran for lunch and we had a conversation that opened our souls up as the shrooms completely left my body.

“America is so big.” said Lance. “I’m surprised any of you leave.”

“Most of us don’t. I think less than half of us have passports in Florida.”

“Locked into their sunshine routine, eh?”

“Yes, the robots serving them pina coladas as they accept death. Afraid to get out. Or maybe afraid of what we’ve done, ashamed of it.”

“What do you think the biggest misconception about England is?” Jackson asked.

“Misconception?” They looked at each other, looking for an answer that wasn’t there.

“That depends on what you thought of us when you first saw us, I reckon. Or perhaps before you met us. Not misconception but preconception.”

“The poshness, maybe. That accent that screams I’m better than you.”

“Did you know? I read a study, almost every single supporting character from American TV that hails from England, they don’t speak what you’ll hear on the streets of New London or Bristol. They speak Queen’s English. As if they were transported from two hundred years ago to now.”

“And what about America?” Lance asked. “What’s the biggest misconception of the many?”

“How dumb we are.”

“And our guns.”

“And how dumb your guns are.”

“And what about your hearts bleeding red, white, and blue all over the place?”

“That, too. But I think many Americans can be quite smart, they’re just… inarticulate and private. They’d rather not talk to anyone. People see that and think they’re stupid when they’re not.”

“You both seem pretty smart. You think you’re smart for American standards?”

Jackson and I looked at each other.

“No.” we said.

“But what is smart?” Tiran said. “It’s surely not just exams and that. How high can you score, what can you get right? That’s not smart, that’s… bland. I want to get things wrong, me. I want to make mistakes and correct them. How can we get everything right, right off the bat? You can’t.”

“You can’t.”

After that lunch, I hopped back onto Hu’s motorbike and squeezed him tight. He offered an “awhhh” and we set off again toward the infinite moment that swallowed us eternally. Those King Kong mountaintops waving at us impossibly through the mist. Each village we passed was one more instance of proof that this was the greatest country that ever existed, for they existed purely, untainted by the rest of the world. They move at a slow pace, but a pace they chose, not a pace burdened upon them. With my water gun in hand we passed by a group of Vietnamese children outside a construction site. They seemed like they had been waiting for us. Was this something they did routinely? Waited for the world to arrive so they could soak in the truths of the outside? They had those classic smiles on their faces, beaming with the nothing they had. One of the kids, a little girl, looked defeated as the members of the tour group passed her by without even offering her a glance. To them she was a part of the construction scene that unfolded, living in the periphery. I reached out with the water gun and offered it to her as we slowly crept past. Her smile became impossibly bigger, spreading all the way across her friends’ faces and mine. She ran out onto the street and took the water gun from my hands. When I looked back, she rejoiced with this simple device as if she had never been given anything before. She jumped up and down with glee, boasting to her friends that she was the winner of the day. I made her day as she made mine, and I felt like a pathetic prophet as she aimed the water gun at her friends and they threw their hands up in the air, pretending to be petrified.