Christmas, sort of.

It has been nearly a month, but Christmas Day 2006 was indeed memorable so I will do my best to recount it here.

My friend Mark and I woke relatively early at our $7-a-night guesthouse in the small beach town of Mui Ne. Absent were any signs of Christmas--no tree, no lights, no presents nor stockings. Only palms, the nearby ocean, and a few nice smells coming from the adjacent restaurant which attracted us immediately. Though a far cry from my own family's Xmas morning Three Kings Bread tradition, we ate a hearty meal of beef pho, fried eggs, fresh French baguettes, and lovely coffee. Bellies full, we mounted our motorbikes and rode in to the village to check out the local market. The market was a collection of several dozen stalls, selling everything from meat and seafood to shoes, kitchenwares, toiletries, and the small plastic tables and chairs seen so often on sidewalks. The stalls mostly surrounded a central area covered by a blue and white tarpaulin, where ladies in the iconic conical (iconical perhaps?) hats sat on their haunches shoo-ing the flies off the fish they were trying to sell, eating from bowls, and jabbering spiritedly with each other. Almost no one spoke any English and all the Vietnamese seemed quite focused on commerce, but being the incredibly strange and outgoing characters that Mark and I are, we still managed to coax a few smiles and have a few laughs with several of the vendors.


After walking around for sometime, we decided to meander down one of the side alleys leading from the market area (and back to our parked bikes). We passed a small salon, where two young women and an older lady sat on the patio. We smiled and called out Xin Chao ("Hello"). They smiled back, returning a "hello" and called us over. Much obliged, we sat down on some of the tiny plastic chairs. We had exhausted our Vietnamese, and quickly discovered their English was little better, and yet between a few more smiles and pointing at things in our trusty phrasebook, we managed to begin a conversation. The young women had been snacking on fresh crab from a small pail, and immediately offered us some. In fact they even did the dirty work, removing the shell and passing us large chunks of crab meat. I don't even like crab and I must say it was delectable.When the crab was finished, out came the scallops, and when the scallops were gone, out came the fish stew and rice and before we knew it, we were having quite a wonderful Xmas lunch with three kind women whose names we could not pronounce and who we hadn't known 30 minutes before. The phrasebook was quite handy and provided much entertainment when the conversation died. We managed to teach each other some Vietnamese and English, though I do believe I forgotten nearly all of it. After the meal, the young women insisted we stay for a shampoo, head massage, and a facial. We did not quarrel. An hour and some 65 cents later, we bid our new friends goodbye, though with plans to go out for coffee later in the evening.


Feeling like kings, we shed our shirts, hopped on the motorbikes again and set off for a long afternoon ride, first along a beautiful coast road, and later just inland through terrain that was more like desert/savannah than the tropics/jungle I had expected. The sky was exceptionally blue, and the nearly empty road made for perfect conditions for cruising. After a couple hours, we stopped for a drink in a roadside cafe in a tiny village, well off the tourist beat. As we parked our bikes, a half-dozen shoeless young boys appeared, all flashing huge grins, a few of them brave enough to say "hello". As we sat down to a cold 333 beer, the 6 boys became 10 and crowded around us. They told us their names and we tried out some new words on them; I successfully communicated my age in Vietnamese, which drew some smiles. I also taught a few of them a secret handshake, of which they never tired. The final part of the handshake requires lightly punching eachothers' fists; the boys tried to prove their toughness (both to me and their cronies) by hitting my fist as hard as they could. Mark wowed them with his digital camera, which also provided seemingly endless entertainment. They appeared to me the happiest group of boys I'd ever seen.



Refreshed by a beer, a bottle of water, and about 1000 smiles, we got back on the bikes, allowing a few more final handshakes as we revved our engines and drove away. I too, felt about as happy as I could imagine, enjoying the late afternoon sun, the open road, and the tremendous vitality of Vietnamese culture. As we neared our guesthouse, we had an incredible view of the soon-to-be setting sun throwing a few of its last rays on the local fishing boats in the harbour.



Back at our guesthouse, we rested and got cleaned up. Shortly after dark, we returned to the salon to meet our new friends, whose names I couldnt pronounce in the first place and now cant remember. We'll call them Phuong and Thuy, two female names I do remember, but likely say incorrectly. Anyway, they were just closing up shop, and needed to get cleaned up themselves, so we accompanied Phuong to her family's home. Immediately we were invited inside and introduced to the rest of the family, which, besides the parents, consisted entirely of young women. While our "date" took a shower and changed clothes, Mark and I chatted with the father (a devoted Catholic who spoke a little English) and evaded politely as we could his offerings of engagement to his daughters. That is to say we accepted them with great laughter and smiles, hoping they were joking as we were! The youngest daughter, who was mute and perhaps still in her teens, seemed the keenest of the bunch and appeared ready to go anywhere with either of us. Luckily, Phuong returned quickly and within minutes, we had said goodbye, were back on the motorbikes and on our way to pick up Thuy. We had planned to just go for coffee but we were all quite hungry and decided on dinner instead. Phuong and Thuy directed us to a nice restaurant, with a 2nd floor that was rather like a posh treehouse. The waiter spoke some English and helped translate for bit, before disappearing to the kitchen to relay our order. While waiting for our food, the language barrier became more evident, and our conversation all but dried up. A phrasebook can only take you so far, we discovered. Yet, we still managed to have a few laughs and our feast orders of goat, crocodile, and seafood stew arrived shortly thereafter, to which we turned our attention. The croc was quite nice, though the flesh was quite fatty. The goat was absolutely delicious, though very very tough. The seafood stew, with scallops and shrimp and greens all cooked in a nice broth and ladled over "bun" (rice noodle vermicelli) was outstanding. Mark and I ate and ate and ate, and when we thought it was gone, they brought us more noodles and more seafood, though the latter we declined, for fear of bursting our bellies. It all made for a fabulous and most unique Xmas dinner.

Bill paid, we returned Phoung and Thuy to their respective homes, and then drove back to the more touristy part of town in search of nightlife, which is a story altogther itself.