Making Friends in Lang Co
Spent the night in a cheap backpacker hotel before boarding an air conditioned tour bus the next morning for Danang. On the way to Danang though, we pass through Lang Co, a small town stretched out along a pretty island-like palm-shaded beach on one side of the road and a quiet bay filled with hundreds of fishing boats on the other. So I got off the bus when it stopped for a break and stayed for two nights…making friends with Mr. Nguyen Thoi Binh, (Binh must be a common name) a dear dear man who took me home to his wife and family and made me promise to write to him from America.
Nguyen speaks English and French fluently. He reads a lot, when he can afford to buy a book, and wanted to know what I thought about a hundred different things…the Kennedys…what life is really like in America where his sister lives in Louisiana with her husband who was a Colonel in the South Vietnamese army. He talked about how Vietnamese men give their salaries to their wives (as in Burma) and then ask for a little money when they need it…helps keep them faithful to their wives so they don’t spend money on women, he says.
Nguyen talks honestly about the Viet Kiew but his experience was quite different than Mr. Binh’s…when she visited him last year, his sister slept in his home, he said proudly. She sends money regularly to pay for his children’s schooling. But he has 8 brothers and sisters so he explains that she cannot send money to him all the time. As we motorcycled along the highway, Nguyen pointed out several nice houses…that one is family money from Colorado…this one is from New York…and that one is a Minnesota house. The brand new shiny hotel I stayed in for $8 a night was paid for by family in Florida. They are probably paying off a loan for the money, I told him, as not very many people could come up with $20,000 cash (not including the cost of the lot) to pay for a new hotel in Vietnam…and the look he gave me was one of incredulity.
After spending a day sitting by the ocean listening to the surf in Nga Trang, I took another night train for Saigon where I am hibernating for two days with my computer…
Tags: Conversations, Reading, Viet Nam
Zoe