Biking Vietnam, The Courage to Fail

I met Rose when she convinced me to stay in one of the bungalows she owned. She convinced me before her glasses broke, but once they did I knew we would be friends. Covered head to toe in a burka and a floral shirt with a flowing pink skirt, her expression was cheeky. “Shit!” she cursed as the pieces fell into the grass. I happened to find one and, unable or unwilling to pronounce my name correctly, she said, “Thank you Anker Wat.” The next day when I asked if I could borrow a book from the collection of discarded ones in the corner of her office, she didn’t hesitate.

“Some people see no more in climbing mountains,” Walter Bonatti writes in the prologue of The Mountains of My Life, “than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed, but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.”

I read this in Malaysia a week after Max, George, Ewan and I ended our two months in Vietnam by climbing Mount Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Indochina. I sat in the shade of a palm tree as two monkeys pillaged the coconuts above, remembering the small trek we had just completed.

Coming off that mountain, and for the first time in my life, I knew how it felt to be truly proud of something I’d done. Not necessarily in the hike, but in all the days, and all the months and all the friendships leading up to it. I’ve realized that it’s the things you’re most afraid to do that allow you to become the type of person you want to be.

Just yesterday, through the sterile aisle of a supermarket, Max helped me get some last minute things for my next trip. That’s when I confided in him that I was afraid to go. He told me fear’s a good thing. He said fear means you’re doing something that’s important to you.

Travelling to me isn’t about climbing a tall mountain so that I can say I did it. It’s not about the perfect picture of me driving my motorbike off into the sunset. (These, of course, are the perks.) But travelling to me is about overcoming my greatest weakness, which is self-doubt. Sitting on the summit of Fansipan with a beer in my hand surrounded by three people I’ve grown to love so sincerely was worth the going up. It was one small victory in a long line of others over all the limitations I had set for myself.

As Max and George high fived my hands through the window of the airport bus, I realized the weaknesses I’d overcome and the new confidence that serves as my sole companion on this upcoming journey. Now all those people—Rose and Max and George and Ewan-- are elsewhere in this world, and still, I don’t consider myself alone.
I am with myself.

Of all that nature has revealed to me throughout these months-- sleeping under her torrential weeping, seeing the sky of a different night, the moon from a different angle-- the lesson that had the greatest effect on me was not the realization that really I am nothing. But that I should make the most of it.

So I’m writing from a plane that’s landing in Australia’s Gold Coast because for two years I’ve talked about becoming a cowgirl, and there’s cowgirl work in the Land Down Under. I didn’t think I would ever actually do it because somewhere lurking inside me was something present and barely visible and solemn, and it was fear.

In the same way the perfect words can line themselves up at the perfect time in someone’s life, the book Rose lent me voiced truths I hadn't myself put words to: “Fear has many aspects and facing it demands self-control. For me, it has often proved a spur to courage, including, if necessary, the courage to accept failure. ”

If I’d set out to feel this way and complete these tasks, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to do it. But I had the confidence to buy the ticket and sit on the plane. That plane took me to so many places I didn't know I was going and it showed me the importance in having courage-- the courage, if necessary, to accept failure, but the bravery to try anyway.

Biking Vietnam, Destinations

Technically it wasn't my fault, although I did quote Robert Frost when I sensed they were swaying.  In their silence, those who did not dissent agreed and as we sat on the side of the road debating the better choice, I quoted the poem. "Two roads diverged in a wood," I said-- and Generous picked it up from there-- "And I, I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference."

Instead of heading back to Da Lat and finding the main road which would lead us easily to lake Lak, we chose the road that "wanted wear;" the one we thought would lead us the scenic way to the same place."Tis the nature of the adventure," I said enthusiastically, as I so often do. Jessie narrowed her eyes in annoyance. ('Tis the nature of our relationship.)

Three hours later and having gone less kilometers than that, I emerged frantic from the jutting rock path entering the same pavement I had only recently exited. It was relief that filled me when my wheels squeezed the paved road and my engine stopped coughing as loudly.  Oil dripped in my wake-- my bike had suffered a hard blow. I needed a mechanic.

I tried to explain all this to Enri that night-- about the cutting rock roads, the deep water holes, the thin, rickety bridge, the decision to turn around and then the suctioning mud that eventually led to my ruin-- but with his limited English, he couldn't understand.  Instead he simply put his finger up for me to stop talking as his phone rang a country tune, interrupting all conversation.  It rang about every two minutes, plucking high notes on a synthetic guitar. He'd answer and pretend not to hear the person on the other line. Holding the phone out, he'd look at it questioningly then decide it must be broken and put it away, continuing the conversation.

Enri is the brother of Joseph and Joseph, having met us while my bike was being repaired, invited us to his house for wine. Throughout the night, Enri continued ignoring his wife's calls as his young neice poured water into a jug filled with fermented root. She handed the long straw made of thin bamboo and a plastic tube to Jessie first and then to me.  Its taste was sweet and bitter, the color of honey and once consumed, made your body temperature rise immediately. 

"I'm sorry," said Enri after putting his phone back into his pocket. "But we talk about me now. How do you like Vietnam?  America is my paradise." This surprised me less when I discovered his sister worked for the US army during the war (and now lives in North Carolina). Later, when I tried to speak to him in what little of the language I know, he said his tribe does not speak Vietnamese.

As Ri  began to explain how his tribe is a minority to Vietnam, his brother took out their Latin Bible and began singing Spiriti Sancti and Generous, quite sincerely, tried to sing along, mouthing the notes a half step too late and bending an avid ear to the singing man.  Looking on, Mekong's mouth got wider as he listened to Generous' poor attempt. "Whhot is he doing?"

An hour later, we were drunk dancing to twist and shout and Mekong was debating whether he should take the neice up on her advances.  In my attempt to explain (quite beligerently) how that would not be the best way to thank the family, Generous stepped in, called Mekong a twat and told me if I were a man he'd hit me in the face and then we all fell asleep.

Now, there are many ways to wake up after a heavy night of drinking.  Sometimes it's with a sore head, a heavy tongue, a physical hangover or a moral one.  But this wakeup was much different. Enri walked in, short and confident and said, "Good morning. I've lost my motorbike and I've lost my wife." As we sought for responses fresh from sleep, his attention quickly turned. "Oh! Come see," he said motioning for me to come out to the porch.  "There they are."  I looked out onto the light blue lake that stood a stark contrast to their bright green coffee plants, bushy on the bluff.  As I watched the two water buffalo cross gracefully-- their backs and horns reflecting in the early morning sunlight-- the mountain air,cool with the smell of wood smoke--I wondered about his wife..

"Before you go, we get fresh water." Ri insisted.  "Just a short kilometer for fresh water."  We agreed and stopped at a cafe along the road (where Ri also speculated he left his bike) and a  waitress brought out four large Pepsi's and popped the lids.  Ri motioned for us to drink up.

"Fresh wata!?" said Mekong.  "Oh, you ah a legend!"

Ignoring the statement, Ri revisited the matter of his wife leaving him.  "If she divorce me, I take my water buffalo and go live in the hills." I noticed him considering this possibility and his eyes began to sparkle gleams of appeal.

Two ignored phone calls, three hangovers of a higher evolutionary order and four "fresh waters" later, we hit the road that just yesterday led us to this lovely family: fresh pavement of another road leading to another destination. Our next immediate destination wasn't anything epic though.  And as a jackhammer crumbled the sidewalk outside, it wasn't particularly choice either. But as destinations so often are, our lunch spot was misleading as to what it actually contained. It was over lunch while scanning a copy of Lonely Planet when we realized where the road less traveled had truly taken us the night before.

"...While french-colonial rule recognized the Montagnards as a seperate community," Generous read aloud, "South Vietnam... attempted to assimilate them through... abolishing tribal schools and courts, prohibiting the construction of stilt houses and appropriating their land....In the 1960s the tribes were courted as US as allies against North Vietnam and were trained CIA and US Special Forces."

We spent the night with the Montagnards.

Generous, Jessie, Pete, Me, Ri, George, Joseph

Jessie drinking the rice wine