Rock the Cat Ba

Coming off of a long week of teaching, building, and travelling all over northern Vietnam, we have a well-deserved break on Halong Bay.  When we first glimpse the bay in the distance, everyone is awe struck.  We are no longer in the midst of rice paddies and skinny multistory concrete buildings.  We look up from our Kindles and other reading devices, wipe the sleep from our eyes and find ourselves in a place like nowhere else on the earth.  We are even more awestruck when we realize that we will get to stay on a boat on the bay for a few days before we head to Thailand.

We find ourselves on our own private boat where we put on a fancy night for the girls and go night fishing directly off the back of the boat.  We gradually make our way to Cat Ba Island, stopping at some of the other sites of Halong Bay.  We see caves and beaches and get to go for a swim and a kayak ride.  When we arrive at Cat Ba we are able to tour the island on bikes before setting into our hotel.  Since we only get to stay for one night, we have to make the most of our time here.  Alex Lange and I plan a great adventure for the next day and turn in after a late night of SHOUT and hanging out.

Suits and sandals for fancy night

The only catch of the night

I plan on waking up at 5 AM to find a geocache with Alex but my alarm is foiled due to the fact that I stayed out a bit too late the night before. Miraculously, I wake up on my own volition at 7 AM anyway and am able to catch breakfast. Note that I am not in the least bit packed or ready to leave at this point in time.

I run into Alex at breakfast and it turns out he knocked on my door and I slept through that too. He went for a swim anyway. Another one of our goals for the day is to rent motorbikes and tour around the island. We find a place and I manage to get a bike for three hours and a half tank of gas for only USD $5. Alex opts to fill his bike up from one of the street vendors who sell liquor bottles full of gas.  We head into the national park and I feel the wind rush through my lack of hair (as I recently had it shaved in Phu Tho by a barber on his porch). After draining the tank about half way, we decide to turn back. We will make it way before our time deadline but we decide to pass off our bikes to some other members of our group so we can actually go hunt for the cache. We pass off our bikes and with my bagged GPS and a little bit of swag, we hitch a ride on the back of Josh’s scooter over to the beach (yes, there were three fully-grown men on one scooter...).

The island in the distance

When we reach the beach it is 10 AM. It is a beautiful day with clear skies and calm waters, the perfect day for a swim. Not being an experienced swimmer, I am mildly wary of the swim but I quickly disregard and sense of worry and dive in. After about 15 minutes of an awkward doggy-side-stroke in Keens and cargo shorts while carrying a GPS, I miraculously make it ashore.

Surprised at the speed and actual accomplishment I have just completed, I turn on my GPS so it can begin to gather signal and walk around in the general direction of the cache. Seeing a cave I wander in to explore, not thinking I am anywhere near the cache. As I look around I see a suspicious looking area and after further inspection, I discover that this is in fact the cache! I let out a roar of victory in celebration of my first FTF and an epic one at that!

When we open the cache, we are dismayed to find that there is no pen inside. We decide to try the most epic way of signing this log to go along with the approach to the cache, the location and the day in general. Taking one of the many jagged rocks from the ground, we attempted to draw enough blood to write in. Unfortunately, we could not get a good enough flow to write in. Next we proceeded on to try squeeze the juices out of a plant to write in but the markings proved too light. Finally we settled on an ink made of dirt and spit which we wrote on to the log with a pointed rock.

After leaving my signature Golden Molar, a CA state quarter, and a surfer smashed penny from Santa Barbara and taking a shell key chain and a very old piece of gum, we swam back just in time to jog back to the hotel, pack up and ship out.  One boat ride and bus drive later and we found ourselves on a plane. Vietnam was just a memory and we were on our way to our next adventure in Thailand.

My Battle Wound From Vietnam

It is a hot day at the Phu Tho commune where we had just finished class in the officials’ meeting room.  We have just completed lunch which consisted of many delicious traditional Vietnamese dishes and many bottles of homemade rice wine.  It is customary for the officials to come around to each table and offer a toast to the table with a resounding “Chup su quai!”  Being in the center of the commune where all of the officials work, there are many rounds of toasts.  Luckily the rice wine is clear and I begin cutting my shots with water after about eight, knowing I still have a full day of manual labor ahead of me.  Even with the water shots, at the end of the meal I have taken about 12 shots so as not to be rude as all males are always expected to toast the leaders and I could not fill my glass with water before the next official walked up.  After a short time of lethargy, we are challenged to a game of volleyball against the officials after we finish our day of work.  Having a decent core of the Rhino Slammers intramural-championship-winning team, we jump at the chance to play some “real” competitive volleyball. 

When they initially invited us to play I was skeptical of their skill.  They had seen our interest in their game two days earlier and asked if we wanted to challenge them.  We had dinner reservations so we were not able to that day but we promised that we would come back the next day with a full team ready to play.  Vietnam is not well known as a volleyball powerhouse.  They have not sent a team to the Olympics for either indoor or outdoor volleyball and they are only average in the Southeast Asian Games.  I saw some of our opponents playing earlier and they seemed decent but that was only with a few smaller stature players and they were not even playing the rules tight.  Could they really field a full team of six that could compete with our height?

It turns out that they were able to compete with our height.  The day before we had just lost a game to them.  They managed to pull ahead early and we were unable to stage a comeback before it was too late.  Towards the end I was able to get a serving streak that threw them off but I was unable to bring us home to victory.  This time would be different.  This time we would have a rotation set before the game.  This time we would maximize our individual skills and match up players according to their weaknesses. 

We are directed to the center of the commune where a net had been strung up on the crumbling brick courtyard we had just walked through earlier.  Some of the officials are warming up, barefoot and shirtless.  Doing my best to be “culturally sensitive” and to beat the heat, I immediately join them, losing my already sweat-soaked shirt and clay-covered Keens which are dirtied from a long afternoon of laboring at the health center.

We begin the game with a clank of a rock on the steel standard.  The opponents are quite impressed with our average height (slightly skewed by Alex Lange who was a head taller than any of their players).  Lange is next to me in the line-up, providing a formidable front-row block, which disrupts their offence and instills fear into their hearts.  We can tell that it is a close game only after a boy begins tallying the score on a chalkboard nearby.  The tally marks form a box with a diagonal crossbeam which makes reading the numbers much easier than the traditional American method.

 As Lange and I come down from yet another block attempt, I turn to transition off the net at the same moment as Lange.  His large, bony elbow whips back and with a solid “Crack!” makes contact with my left temple.  Lange, my good friend of 2.5 years, later reveals to me that this was the first time he had seen a look of visible, agonizing pain on my face.  All I can think of in this moment is the realization that I might lose consciousness and I begin to prepare for impact with the brick court.  Luckily, I manage to hold on to the threads of consciousness and it never left me.  Coming out of the almost-fetal position I am in, I quickly shake myself back into reality, ready to play.  As I turn around to my teammates, their looks of awe and horror clue me in to the severity of the collision which must be much more intense than my initial assessment.  I ask if I am bleeding, touching the location of impact and feeling nothing.  A dazed Dana looks at me saying, “You should probably get off of the court…” 

I walk to the sideline, stoic as usual, still completely unaware of the magnitude of my injury.  I reach up to touch my temple for the second or third time and finally the moist, crimson blood appears on my fingertips.  It had taken quite a few seconds for the bleeding to begin but once it has, it is the Red River of O+.  Photos later reveal the extent the bleeding, which resulted in a stream of oxygen-rich, literally blood-red fluid gushing from my temple down to my chin.  If I leave it unchecked, I will surely pass out before the scab stalactites can form on my jawbone.

Those who see my injury are much more worried about it than I am, probably because I am not worried at all and they tend to overreact in general.  Someone quickly smashes a tissue onto the impact zone to try to stop the bleeding, telling me to hold it there and put pressure on it.  I repeatedly remove said compress to show my friends my new souvenir.   I am fervently ushered around the courtyard with no end destination in mind as more and more spectators crowd around to get a closer view.  Someone goes to fetch one of the doctors from the nearby health clinic.  It takes him a while to arrive and as I wait I stand around, showing others the wound, making jokes the whole time.  I am elated that I will have a scar from this trip and especially from Vietnam.  The fact that I received it while locked in a vicious competition against the leaders of the local commune increases my excitement tenfold.  When the doctor finally arrives, he makes a gesture that appears to be shooing me away but I eventually gather to mean “Please, come into my office.” 

This “office” is the same dining/meeting/propogandizing room we had just finished our meal in.  There are still empty Bia Hanoi bottles that recently contained the homemade rice wine strewn about everywhere and a few people are cleaning up left over food and empty shot glasses.  The good doctor directs me to his “examination table” which is actually a table recently cleared of food and rice wine bottles that still have some school supplies that were recently put there at the end opposite me.

The doctor has the same mind-set as I do.  He seems non-phased by the cut and quickly dresses it with hydrogen peroxide, iodine, and a fat roll of gauze.  The bandage makes it look much more serious than it actually is.  The spider webbing of athletic tape he uses to secure the gauze covers half of my forehead.  I am told that the combination of the bandage and my newly shaven head make me look quite intimidating, especially with my default blank stare face looking like more of a scowl than a blank stare. 

With that I am released with a great scar and a great story.  I try to return to the court but the overcautious leadership requires me to refrain.  They suggest I “take it easy” for a while as I need time to “recover.”  Obviously they do not know me very well.  To appease their unwarranted worries, I watch the game unfold from the sidelines.  Unfortunately the game results in another loss. I am disappointed that I was not able to participate in the redemption game with my team although I am happy that I gain a permanent bodily remembrance of one of the most interesting volleyball games of my life.  The story was definitely worth the wound.