Chapter 23 Alternate.
The Mission Begins.
The mission started mid-week. We drove with one suitcase to ELP but went upstairs and got in line for the TSA entertainment area. Because their break room and bathroom was near our office door many of them recognized us and we got waved-on to pass through security without slave scanning but our luggage still got X-rayed.
We flew from ELP to DIA, then to LAX. Two hours later our connecting flight left LAX for HNL. That flight was full of young hetero couples with little kids so we anticipated five hours of crying babies. And there was the required highly intoxicated passenger that couldn't relax, couldn't stop talking, or follow simple instructions. Hawaiian Air was very forgiving of alcoholics, which pissed off all the Rule Followers on board. After five and a half hours of crying babies we landed safely on runway 8-Left.
I asked David why anyone would fly to Honolulu with an infant and he explained they were probably all Navy wives.
As always, we stayed at the Airport Hotel by the Nimitz Freeway. We planned on riding the bus into town since our CIA connection worked there and had our Euros and our new passports.
There's lots of hetero couples from Japan, Korea, and China that came to Hawaii. There's a lot of older Japanese that toured Pearl Harbor. Lots of them brought their family members, those often included younger males. Lots of young men took surfing lessons on Waikiki beach so we stood around and watched the shirtless Asia boys learn to stand up on a surf board. Although most of them were pale and slightly flabby they were still nice to watch. The China girls were all rather petite but lots of them were very attractive with their small breasts and perfect black hair. We ate at Hawaiian Aroma Caffe near the beach at Waikiki.
After eating we walked to the Hyatt Beach Hotel lobby across the street from the beach. Our contact was a smiling gray haired elderly local woman, we've met a few times in the past. We approached the concierge desk and she immediately recognized us. We exchanged greetings and spoke about the weather and the traffic.
After a couple minutes of chatting David told her it was nice to visit and we turned to leave but when we got about ten feet away she said, "Oh boys, I almost forgot, one of our guests left an envelope for you. I hope the rest of your visit to Hawaii is pleasant." She handed it to David and we all said, 'Mahalo,' and bowed slightly.
Out on the sidewalk we walked to the first traffic light and crossed to the beach side of the street. David shuffled the envelope so he could fold it and stuff it in his pocket. We walked back to the surf board rental place and watched the shirtless boys from the Orient learn to hop up to their feet on a surf board. I think we watched for half an hour. Not only did we get positioned between the surfers and the water but we also got to watch the large group of young men waiting for their turn learning to surf on the soft white sand of Waikiki Beach. We quietly whispered to each other which ones might be the best in bed. It was fun looking them over as if they were for sale!
This beach also attracted buff men from all over the world that wanted to strut around shirtless hoping to be admired by all, which was something I thought was a symptom of a personality disorder. We walked around the beach with our shirts off for a while until the clouds moved in. David looked a lot better on the beach than me. I saw lots of eyeballs glance at him. The young hetero couples that looked Chinese mostly couldn't see us.
David's Indian DNA meant his skin reacted differently to the intense sunlight on Waikiki Beach, better than my pale white Euro DNA skin. I burned easily but he just darkened.
Back at the hotel we ordered delivery for dinner: a 12 pack of Miller Lite and two orders of Korean ribs with extra BBQ sauces. We opted for baked potatoes instead of fries. He figured out how to set the alarm for tomorrow at 6:30am to shower, shave, pack, and take the free shuttle back to the airport. Our cell phones and wallets were in his truck at the airport in El Paso. When we woke up the next day was when we had to start using our new names: Gary and Brent. We practiced it at home a lot so we didn't blow it at critical times.
Our flight from Honolulu to Manila left at 8am on Malaysian Air flight 244. It was a 12 hour, non-stop flight in business class. I slept for nine hours thanks to two valiums, ear plugs, and an eye mask. Manila was 18 hours ahead of Hawaii so we arrived at 2pm Manila time the next day.
We stayed inside Aquino International Airport (it was raining hard outside) but walked around and admired the abundance of good looking young men in this country. It seemed like all of the younger ones showed off the tops of their beautiful hairless chests.
Our flight to Vietnam began its dash down the runway at 5:05pm Manila time and landed two and a half hours later but Vietnam was a different time zone so we arrived at 6:32pm Vietnam time. When we got to the hotel it was almost 8pm and it was dark outside. For a while my brain was confused about what day it was.
The hotel was two miles from the Tan Son Nhat International Airport. We got through customs and grabbed a tuk-tuk ride to the hotel, we could see the place from the sidewalk outside the terminal. I was trying to be all happy and smiling but inside I was already feeling anxiety, I think David did too but he'd never admit it. Taking Valium to sleep on the plane lessened my anxiety feelings. I actually liked Valium, and last year my husband gave me a bottle of 200 black market pills, .25mg (which was a very small dose). I still had a bunch of 'em.
We stayed at the Sunflowers Hotel which was almost within walking distance of the airport terminal, except it was very humid and hot and looked like it could storm at any moment. It was a three-star hotel but everything worked and the room was clean. We checked the bed and room for bugs but found nothing, not even a lonesome roach trying to climb up the insides of the toilet bowl.
In the hotel lobby was the ticket agent for Buddhist Temple Tours, LLC. We checked-in for the early morning departure. She handed me a sheet of instructions for tomorrow, most of the information was common sense stuff. I always liked seeing the Traveler's Prayer being handed out to tourists from China and America, because there's a lot of us that needed to be reminded. The problem was the ones that acted stupid and rude in foreign countries usually ignored the advice. To avoid generating a paper trail we paid with cash (Euros) for our tickets.
The bus started boarding on-time, 0510am. The driver and the tour guide made sure the people matched their passports and their reservations. We got seated in the back, the bathroom wall was behind our seats. I remembered long ago David told me when he rode the bus to school when he was a kid he always rode in the back, he still insisted on it but he never said why. Maybe he thought the cool kids sat in back and he could never turn his back on the 'back of the bus code of ethics.'
The meal carts were loaded after everyone was on board. They had two (airline style) carts that took two men to roll up planks into the bus and lock in place behind the driver where an airplane style galley was installed to store cold meals and heat parts of them rapidly in two tiny custom ovens. There were tiny fold-up monitors above the seats so she could narrate what we saw on our way to Cambodia. The bus was clean and comfortable inside and the AC worked quite well, they even allowed smoking in the bathroom! The seats were better than coach in the airliners.
It surprised me to see the people on the bus were not just fat old white American retirees but they were people from many countries and of all ages but we were the only two guys that sat together. We might have been the youngest looking couple on the tour too. Since we're both similar in size and appearance it might be obvious to most people that we were a gay couple. There were no children on the bus, thank God for that after the flight from LAX to Honolulu which sounded like choir practice for infants!
Our only planned stop on this all-day drive would be near the border crossing after we were cleared to proceed into Cambodia. She said there was a place with bathrooms and drinks where we stopped for 30 minutes. And slowly the bus left the hotel driveway but had to deal with the heavy traffic of scooters, horse drawn carts, and bicycles in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Sometimes it felt like we only moved fifty feet then stopped again for the traffic to clear, many intersections had no traffic controls, not even a stop sign. Most of the time there were no lane lines on the pavement either, traffic here was like well rehearsed chaos. But it seemed to work, we usually kept rolling forward.
I came to the conclusion that the game Musical Chairs must have been invented by Saigon tuk-tuk driver.
We stopped for a couple minutes at a major intersection with a uniformed man directing traffic. Beside the bus was an old guy on a wooden cart loaded with rice in burlap sacks, pulled by two un-healthy looking oxen. He looked at the bus, when our eyes met I waved at him and he smiled and nodded back. He was wearing cut off pants, reed sandals, a pointy round reed hat, he held the reins in his hands. His cart looked like it was built on the partial chassis of a Vietnam War era jeep. Just then one ox took a dump that went splot splot splot (just inches from his feet) on the pavement but he never seemed to notice. Then the bus started to move but he was still there waiting behind all the scooters in front of him. I whispered that the old guy looked very happy and relaxed to me but my husband had a hard time not laughing about the timing of the poop flow during our brief encounter through the window. I thought it did sort of sum-up life in Vietnam quiet well.
Traffic started to look like we were getting near the northwest edge of the city. By the time we saw the first farm fields the bus seemed to be doing a steady 35mph. There were lots of container hauling trucks on the road, sort of a cross-town highway with local access streets running parallel to it so once we got halfway out of the city there were no more scooters or oxen pulled carts to slow traffic. I think lots of the scooters here were the 49cc kind that only went 39mph. Lots of them were loaded down with cargo and passengers. Those people certainly knew how to get the most out of a scooter. I think you could even hire one like a taxi, with a lower price than a car with AC or even a tuk-tuk.
The road to the border was rather straight with a couple curves and a few turns, but the land was very flat. It was amazing to see how different Vietnam looked, I'll never forget all the people and stores I saw along the way. The road signs said we were on highway QL-22 that went to the border crossing at the Bavet Border Checkpoint. I think the city on the border was called Bavet, on the Cambodia side. We'd already studied this highway on G-maps.
Many areas of highway QL-22 had four lanes with small stands selling stuff the entire way. Most of the time it was impossible to tell what was being sold at the road side stands with a glance. Most of them had corrugated tin roofs with supports made from tree branches and rope.
The highway was in pretty decent shape most of the way. The land was totally flat, mostly rice fields full of standing water, and trees were everywhere. The tour guide said it was 53 miles from the hotel to the border crossing, then 65 miles to the suspension bridge over the mighty Mekong. Its 132 miles from the Bavet Border Crossing to the hotel in downtown Phnom Penh, most of the highway in Cambodia was only two lanes but it was in good shape.
There was a covered place for the bus to park after crossing so they could do their cursory check of names and faces. A few blocks from the crossing station the border was just a dirt road and an open field so authorities could watch when needed. Their border reminded me of our border with Canada near the town of Sumas, Washington where it was just wheat fields. In that town there were houses with yards that ended at the border. You walked out their back doors, across the back yard, squeezed between the bushes and then you're in Canada! But two blocks over were armed Immigration officers guarding the crossing.
The reality of travel in Southeast Asia was mentioned by the tour guide after we were nearly out of Ho Chi Minh City that the rest of the way to Phnom Penh there was no American style 911 service. If someone became ill unless they had special evacuation insurance you were pretty much on your own in rural Cambodia and Vietnam. She said they only had a heart attack one time in the ten years they've done these bus tours. I remembered reading about the risks when I read their information papers in the hotel lobby. It said there were no emergency services and usually no cell coverage in many sections of our route. Most towns had basic 3G cellular with data but not in the rural areas.
Once we got near the edge of the city and the bus was constantly moving along they started heating and serving breakfast. Each box was packed full of food, an Asian style breakfast with vegan spring rolls, hard boiled hen eggs, sausages, fried potato patties like hash browns, sticky rice, and sort of a pasta salad. It came with three small cups of different hot sauces, chop sticks, napkins, and drinks were handed out separately. It was actually a very nice and filling meal, the bus smelled wonderful. We had two rounds of coffee and split something like a 7Up. No adult beverages were available on the bus.
It was a slow process, all the boxes were the same, they opened the box, removed some food and nuked it then re-packed it and brought it to your seat. The seats had fold down tables like the airlines. Later came by with drink refills: hot coffee, cold bottled water, or a mango juice drink in a Tetrapak container. Since we sat in the back we were the last to be served. The tour guide lady moved quickly so the wait wasn't long.
We drove on I-10 and I-25 a lot back home, we're used to flying down the super-wide pavement at 75mph most days. Here, I think we hit a few places where the bus got up to 50mph. I started to feel a sense of frustration caused by all the delays and all the wobbly old farm trucks on the highway. After breakfast I closed my eyes and tried to nap for a while, David leaned against the glass and watched Vietnam whizz past the window.
When we got near the border town we talked about the tuk-tuks, they're all over the place but not out in rural areas. They looked like the front end was a motorcycle, but the rear chassis was replaced with an axle and two wheels, then they placed a fiberglass shell on top and installed a bench seat. It's basically an open air, two-passenger taxi with a roof and sometimes a back wall, sometimes they had side curtains of clear plastic in case it was raining. The driver had a windshield and a small floor but he held handle bars like a motorcycle. All of them were customized with bling, and decorations. Some installed Christmas tree light strings or added colored lights on top or inside under the roof. Self expression and uniqueness were big in the tuk-tuk business.
The bad thing was there was no protection for the passengers whatsoever, except from a light rain. There were no taxi meters but each one had a license plate on back. We talked about if they could be licensed in the USA as a personal transport, maybe something to run errands in town with. There were no doors to lock and no creature comforts except the air that blew in your face. Anyway we thought it might be neat to try to import one and license it in El Paso. Not sure what we'd use it for other than starting conversations or getting attention. Maybe it could be used like a rolling sign to advertise bus tours over in Cambodia!
There was a town where the highway slowed to around 15mph with thick traffic and tons of pedestrians. The road took a sharp left turn then a gradual right turn and fifteen minutes later we were building speed again and heading back out into the vast flat farm lands, mile after mile of rice fields and people wearing those pointy straw round sun hats, with matching sandals.
The highway forked and we kept to the left, the sign said it was fifteen miles to the Bavet Border Crossing. We drove through rain twice since we left the hotel.
There was no announcement when we arrived at the border. The arm was raised and we drove over the wide white line to the station building and parked under a roof so we'd be out of the hot sun. The border crossing building looked old but updated to look very nice, it was brightly painted yellow and white with flower beds and lots of flags.
Just like the youtube video a man in a military uniform came on board and stood by the driver and did a head count, then he slowly walked the aisle looking at miniature passport photos and the passengers, he checked off each person without speaking or smiling. It took about 12 minutes then he abruptly turned around and left. We heard talking outside the bus, the driver closed the door and we rolled ahead about 500 feet to a covered parking area. The brakes hissed and the door opened and the tour guide said: 'Thirty minute bathroom break, everyone out, stretch your legs, get some air, but don't leave the immediate area around the bus.' We'll leave in exactly 30 minutes with or without you!
We walked to the bathroom and peed then washed our hands and faces and stood around outside in the shade. It was horribly hot and muggy, the sun was intense, hotter than in Honolulu! The other men from the bus all smiled as they passed on the way to the bathroom but nobody spoke. Off in the distance away from the border crossing were small houses and shops, we saw lots of trash blowing around on the streets, and an occasional dog ran by. Dogs crossed the border like it wasn't even there. There were some oddly shaped rock formations in the hazy distance that were covered with plants. The entire area looked a bit foggy due to the humidity. Towards the north the skies were mostly clear but on the horizon to the south I saw storm clouds building.
In the distance around Bavet we saw lots of apartment buildings, some reached ten stories tall, but they all looked like government built structures. All around the area we saw factories on Maps, this was a very busy town with lots of citizens. I wasn't sure what they produced locally but it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of it was food related, or maybe clothing for Walmart.
The area was filled with the sounds of hundreds of gasoline powered scooters but I didn't remember seeing a gas station since we landed in Vietnam yesterday. We saw a constant stream of heavy trucks hauling shipping containers across the border, most of them had pre-checked papers and only stopped to show their stamped forms, then they took off. Most of the trucks had bad mufflers too and were very loud by American standards. We slowly ambled back to the bus and stood nearby and stretched and enjoyed standing up. A van arrived with two food carts, they removed the empty carts and two bags of garbage and loaded two full carts with our lunches. The bus smelled of hot food briefly.
Standing there near my husband I started to wonder what this place looked like back when my parents were in high school in the early 1970s during the war. Maybe someone stood right in this spot in the smoldering ruins of the crossing station and watched American B-52's way up in the sky flying into Cambodian airspace. It was very likely a lot of military vehicles have driven past here over the decades.
Then the driver gestured for everyone to get back on board, he did that without speaking, we slowly got back in our seats. The AC felt nice and my clothes were stuck to my skin, especially my butt crack.
Right on time the door closed and the bus started off with a hard turn to the left and drove out of the station area and through the rural town of Bavet then back on the highway to Phnom Penh. The tour guide said we were not yet halfway there. We heard a lot of sighs after she said that. She said it was roughly 190 miles from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh, but the speeds were so slow it would be like driving 600 miles on US Interstates. It was about 65 miles from Bavet to the suspension bridge on the Mekong River. She showed us video of the huge cable stayed bridge, it was a modern concrete structure. The Mekong was as wide as the Mississippi and the same color too, like liquid mud.
Our tour guide said the Mekong was just over three thousand miles long and started in Tibet and crossed China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It was the primary route for the transport of exported goods from China into Southeast Asia. As a joke she said the Mekong started at a toilet in a Tibetan Monastery that was being remodeled into a Walmart Grocery Market. Half the passengers laughed, but I think the others didn't understand the joke.
My husband (now called Gary and I was Brent) showed me the route map, it looked like that bridge was about the 3/4 point of our bus trip. So I closed my eyes and tried to take another short nap, both of us did.
Most of the highway across southeast Cambodia was only two lanes, most of the land was flat with lots of farms and standing water everywhere you looked. The amount of trash along the road was very disappointing. More than anything else we saw empty plastic bottles and food wrappers in the weeds along the highway and nobody here seemed to care. That bothered me. Such a beautiful country made to look like a third world trash dump by the local people. Probably most of it tossed out car windows. I tried to force my brain to ignore the trash but it was impossible. I expected that Phnom Penh would look the same. I didn't recall the roadside trash being as bad in Vietnam.
The commotion got loud when we approached the river. The bridge and its bright yellow cable stays could be seen far away. It was so modern and minimalist it looked grossly out of place. A cheer went up on the other side when she said we were now 3/4 of the way there. It was 1pm and she got out our lunch boxes and we had a similar hot meal as breakfast with spring rolls, chicken slices in a chicken broth soup loaded with vegetables and noodles. It came with flat bread you pulled apart with your fingers and used like eating a slice of bread with your meal. Some people soaked up juices or used like a spoon. It looked like a double thick tortilla made of rice flour. We chased them with 7Up and cold water.
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