VIETNAM: It's generally not a good sign when you wake up, peeling your eyes open, and the only word that comes to mind is Pathetic. I feel pathetic, I thought at 7:30am in the Lao border town of Lak Xao. I had planed on spending the day out in the countryside visiting with a few of the plateau people of that particular region in Laos. And then the next day I was to board a small truck to the Vietnamese border and then find another bus to the next major city to catch a night train to the old capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi.

I pulled some clothes on, splashed some water on my face and dragged myself outside to stroll limply through the Lak Xao market. Pathetic, I thought again. Women and children sat selling roasted rats on sticks and live frogs tied to a stone with twine and all I could do was stare dumbly at them and smile. I couldn't even put two thoughts together about whether I felt one way or another about the rat-roasting-frog-selling ladies. In this state of mind I decided that I should just head to Vietnam; i wasn't going to be any use to myself or the Lao I met if I stayed. I went back to the hotel to grab a coffee and further debate my plan. Looking off into the distance I downed my first cup of coffee. This is horrible, I thought as I finished the glass. In a country where the coffee can make you smile and your eyes literally open wider with the mere wonderful smell, I had found the one spot where it didn't. As the lady came over to ask if everything was okay, I nodded my head and because of my pathetic state I didn't even protest as she took my nodding as a request for one more horrendous cup.

This was just the beginning.

I packed up my things, slowly -- forgetting, of course, that the weather at the border was cold and usually wet, it being a mountain pass, and that my one fleece was packed at the bottom of my pack. I rolled to the bus station and proceeded to wait for an hour until there were enough people for the minibus (truck with two planks in the back that served as seats) to make the one hour trip worth its effort. Paying double I filed into the vehicle and squeezed into a seat between one teenage Lao boy and a minority Lao villager with a small child in her lap. Ten minutes into the bumpy ride it started to rain. Figures, I thought, and the boy tried to put his baseball cap on my head while grabbing at my hand because he wanted, I discovered later, to try and read my palm.

An hour later, wet, palm read (disapproving clicks from the reader) and sore from the bumpy roads I huffed my way through the mountain fog to the Vietnamese customs office. I fully expected the check-in to be unpleasant (rumors about this crossing are rampant in Southeast Asia), and sure enough two hours later, after waiting for one official and then another, I had my entry stamp. I was the only tourist up there in that muddy mountain post and the officers were bound and determined the drag out the entertainment for as long as possible. Figures, I thought again, and walked away to enter the next challenge of the day: the Vietnamese taxi.

As it turns out there are no buses that run to this remote spot, only a few taxis wait in the rain for pathetic travelers like me. "40 dollars," the driver said. I laughed because in Laos I was told not to pay more than five. "Yeah, okay, five," I said. Upon which the driver nodded very seriously and answered with a "37." I stood around in the rain humoring the fellow and the other four drivers for ten minutes, just enough time to realize that 37 was as low as any of them was going to go. I have all day, I thought, and decided to just start walking. There must be a town down this hill somewhere. Villagers walked past me carrying goods to take over the border (illegally, of course) and I thought I'd walk down to where they must have been walking from. I told the taxis to shove off and hoofed it down in the mud and the rain. Seeing as there was nothing else to do one of the taxis followed me, nearly bumping my shoe as I walked. "Okay," he kept on saying, "37 dollars." I just sort of grunted, a small kind of chuckle that looks just like a hiccup to the observer, the word Pathetic coming to mind over and over again.

A few kilometers down the road I came to a bunching of trucks, people loading and unloading good to take up the hill. "Vihn?" I asked out loud to anyone while waving a five dollar bill in the air. A couple of takers seemed interested but shied away when the taxi driver began yelling something at them, something I couldn't even begin to comprehend. I was getting angry. "Listen, I'm not going with you." I said. I was almost ready to pay 50 bucks to anyone else out of principle. Deep in the middle of this argument, the driver finally coming down to 30$, another taxi pulled up, trying to squeeze by with two foreign women in the back. Seizing the opportunity, I grabbed through the window and yelled "stop!" I threw open the door and with the help of the women threw my things inside. "I'm coming with you, okay?" I asked -- pleaded is more like it as "my" taxi driver tried to grab me and pull me out of the car. After a few minutes of tug-o-war the two Swedish women won and I sat breathing next to them on my way to Vihn.

Three hours later and 15 dollars poorer I arrived in Vihn. I booked a ticked for the night train to Hanoi and grabbed some rice with the Swedes. The rest of the evening was uneventful. I made it to Hanoi feeling less and less pathetic as the train neared. And at 6:00am sitting on a small stool across from the Hanoi train station munching on freshly baked French bread and sipping coffee while ragged motor-scooter taxi drivers smoked little balls of opium at the table next to me I felt good. That day was over.


(Sapa, Vietnam: Life hasn't changed much in the highlands of northwestern Vietnam.People seem to live as they always have, adapting to the various visitors (wanted or unwanted) as they come and go.)

 I guess when you are served some chicken and vegetable stir-fry and the little Vietnamese server bids you happy Thanksgiving and you just stare dumbfounded you know that you've been away from your native mounds-of-potatoes-and-drumstick society for a while. After the Forth of July, Thanksgiving is my favorite US holiday -- owing to, perhaps, the fine wine and chat with my family while tearing into some roasted fowl. The one time I managed to remember what day it was I thought, Ooh, if I could only have some of my Aunt's apple pie... Vietnam is not a place to get such things though, so I continued slurping away at my stir-fry and banana shake.

I am back in Hanoi after spending a few days in the very northwest of Vietnam in a place called Sapa. Sapa is home to a few of the many Vietnamese ethnic minorities. A mostly Hmong dominated (with smatterings of Deo here and there) area, Sapa's main attraction roams through the two streets of the town selling their wears -- finely embroidered blankets, silver jewelry, pillow covers -- to the few tourists passing through. But as soon as you leave the confines of town the minorities go back to doing what it seems they've done for hundreds of years. Don't get me wrong, little 4'2" minority women and their daughters, hunkering by with ten-ton loads of wood on their backs, still try and sell you a thing or two, but in general they are fairly shy and will either stare at the ground or glance furtively sideways as you pass them on the high mountain roads, occasionally peeping "Okay. Okay." in their high little voices.

You can see them on you way into town from the train station, most of the minorities wearing their traditional garb -- hemp cloth dyed indigo with embroidery throughout, large silver hoops around their necks. It makes you wonder who's choice it is that they continue to wear their traditional clothing. But when you tramp through the mountain paths and see a small family coming from the woods on the other side of the valley -- piles of wood strapped to the women's back, a riffle in the father's hand, children chattering and hopping about -- you can tell that that's just the way they do things. In fact, walking through the villages you can't see too many modern additions. No television as yet. Just a few new motor bikes buzzing past, the new driver nearly killing the engine as he learns to ride.

Vietnam is quite a place to celebrate Thanksgiving, communists that they are. But the nip of consumerism has arrived in Hanoi and there are even signs -- a wreath or a few Santas in doorways -- that the greatest of capitalist holidays, Christmas, has too found it's way. It's only a matter of time before the apple pie too makes its appearance.