The Lost Girls (39 page)

“It is fortunate that some tour companies create education programs to address this problem. And it really is much better that people like you come to villages like this,” she added.

Supporting organizations that gave back to the local community and volunteering our time and money certainly was a start, but it didn't change the fact that at the end of the day, we got to return to our cushy middle-class existence, with its infinite opportunities, when most of the world's population didn't have ample food, clothing, or shelter. As I looked across the room, one of the kids got up off the couch and shuffled barefoot across the dirt floor to change the television channel.

Watching him, I remembered one particularly sweet little boy in the Hmong village Amanda and I had visited in Laos. He had been fully dressed on top with a long-sleeved shirt, sweater vest, and suit jacket, but no clothing to speak of on the bottom. Our guide had explained that because there were no viable diaper options, it was easier for parents to let their offspring go half naked so they could use the bathroom without having to be cleaned up afterward.

At first I'd been heartbroken and slightly baffled by the notion, but in reality, it seemed their solution was the most practical. And after spending the afternoon playing with the kids, I noticed that each and every one of them smiled and laughed and skipped around as if they didn't have any concerns at all. They happily played with sticks and rubber balls, and instead of rocking horses, they rode around on live turkeys, lifting them up and stretching their necks like Play-Doh with barely a gobble from the birds in protest. And though their parents and grandparents might have struggled to feed them, there was no shortage of love or hugs. Of course, my first instinct had been to immediately head back to town and organize a food and clothing
drive to benefit the families. But the experience did make me question whether our Western ideals really were superior to the values they'd already learned.

In fact, traveling in developing nations often raised questions such as this one in my mind, especially in places like Sapa, where tourists breezed through for a few nights, rarely staying long enough to see the fruits, or potential damage, of their travels. But as I watched our host family enjoy the same ample portions of fried potatoes, sliced beef with ginger, and a medley of garden vegetables as we did—rather than a small amount of rice or corn for dinner—it did seem that our presence had an effect that was more positive than negative.

After the residents had retired to their own quarters in a different part of the farmhouse, Amanda, Holly, and I lingered around the fire with David, Karen, Tsu, and Hai. The consummate cultural anthropologist, Holly peppered them with questions about their heritage, where they had grown up, how they had gotten started as tour guides, their families, and their criteria for marriage.

“We are allowed to date anyone that we would like and choose our own husband or wife. Mostly we meet people at the market, and then we go out to get a meal after. But I am usually with my friends only because there are not very many good men in my village,” Tsu said.

“Tsu, we totally understand that,” Amanda replied. “There aren't a lot of good men in our village either.”

“That is why Hai and I love to give tours, because we meet so many other people that way. And now we must all have a special dessert,” Tsu added, pulling a bottle out of her bag. Describing it as homemade rice wine, she and Hai poured us all shots and instructed us to gulp them down in one swift swallow. One part lighter fluid, two parts rubbing alcohol—so it seemed to our throats and stomachs, anyway—this popular local liquor
burned away any residual chill left in our bones and probably put hair in places we didn't want it.

“Come on, you have to have more,” Hai prompted, topping off our glasses. Good God, I was going to die right here, wasn't I?

Luckily, after several more polite acceptances of this seemingly lethal libation, our entire group was still alive and laughing up a storm. And the more we chatted with Tsu, the more she reminded us of our girlfriends back home. With her feisty disposition, razor-sharp sense of humor, and remarkable ability to throw back booze, she could have fit effortlessly into New York City life. In fact, her facial features and mannerisms were practically identical to those of my favorite producer from my past television life.

This wasn't the first time this sort of comparative recognition had happened to me on the road. But it never ceased to amaze me that no matter how far we were from home or how isolated the pocket of the planet we were exploring, people were inherently the same.

 

A
fter a thoroughly satisfying home-cooked breakfast of high-altitude pancakes, which, though flatter than their sea-level counterparts, tasted just as delicious, we got an early start for what Tsu warned us would be a rigorous five-hour hike. No problem. The weather was clear, and we had the Sapa Slide down to a science anyway. Unfortunately, we couldn't have predicted the challenge that lay before us.

The previous day's storm had done serious damage to the trails, which were now a complete disaster. Broken tree branches, slippery stones, and even thicker layers of sludge stretched for miles. Even the locals were taking baby steps to get down some of the more treacherous inclines, many of them adopting
the Sapa Slide as they tried to carry baskets of sticks on their backs. Just when I thought the worst was behind us—or rather, caked on our butts—we reached a sprawling rice paddy. Stepping onto the thin grass strip that was our only means across, Tsu motioned for us to follow. Perched precariously on the leafy ledge, Holly, Amanda, and I had only six inches of space to play with before we would become “one” with the watery crop below. Performing a delicate balancing act worthy of a circus tent, we stutter-stepped slowly along the makeshift bridge, lending a saving hand to one another during a few close calls. At one point Amanda and I slid into each other, nearly sending her camera to a watery death. Eyes fixed firmly on our soggy feet for the duration of the hundred-yard shimmy to safety, we finally reached the path that continued on the other side.

From that point on, we finally got the authentic trekking experience we'd been craving. The trail now wound around a series of steep but thankfully dry hills, through lush forests packed with bamboo, and over jagged rock formations. Despite our slippery start, we managed to finish the hike almost an hour ahead of schedule. Along with dozens of other hikers, our group settled around one of several small plastic tables set up in the middle of a field to dine on jumbo bowls of noodle soup and hot tea. Since Tsu and Hai were going to be continuing on foot to another village, we had to get all our hugs and tipping ceremonies in before our assigned van arrived.

“All right, my crazy girls. You enjoy your night in Sapa, and you should visit the market tomorrow. Maybe you will like the men there better than I do,” Tsu said with a wink before jumping in with another group heading down the hill. A quick pit stop at the ladies' bush and we were ready to brave the bumpy two-hour ride back to town. Unfortunately, we still hadn't prepared ourselves for the arctic accommodations we knew were awaiting us in Sapa.

Unable to bear another night of subzero sleep in our guesthouse, we made a collective decision to sell out. We forfeited the few Vietnamese dong we'd spent on our current room and moved to one of the other cheap hotels on the block that provided their guests with space heaters. We'd already proven we could tough it out on the trail. Plus, Holly and Amanda wisely realized that it was in their best interest to take all precautions necessary against the emergence of pure-evil Jen.

After waking up in a warm, toasty room the next morning, the three of us practically skipped through the cobblestone streets, well rested and motivated to pack in as much as we could before nightfall. Entering the city center, we were swept into a bustling bazaar that stretched down the sloping street. The lifeblood of the local trade industry, the market was flooded with hundreds of Hmong, who milled around selling everything from traditional clothing and handicrafts to livestock and heaping baskets of plums and cabbages.

After browsing numerous craft stalls and making a few requisite jewelry purchases, we made our way up Thac Bac Road to find Baguette & Chocolat, a French-style villa that doubled as a boutique hotel and café, rumored to have the best bakery in town. Settling into a white leather sofa lined with plush pillows, we spent more than twenty minutes perusing the extensive menu before settling on a decadent order of iron-pressed paninis, gourmet salads, a chocolate raspberry soufflé to share, and a round of the signature homemade hot cocoa.

“Have you ever had this drink before?” inquired a quirky-looking young Frenchman with a shock of charcoal curls who sat alone at the table next to ours. “It is absolutely exquisite. My favorite in all of Sapa,” he added, his accent confirming his nationality.

Seemingly plucked from the screen of an art house film, Emanuel was a fascinating character who soon became our
fourth dining companion. Immediately after graduation two years earlier, he'd accepted a position as a junior curator at an impressionist gallery in Hanoi, where he currently shared a house with five other expats. He was on a brief holiday to Sapa to visit some friends but was returning to Hanoi that night on the same train we were taking. Since our van was picking us up in an hour at our hotel, we offered to give him a ride to the station. While he dashed off to grab his bags from his hotel, we settled the bill. As it turned out, Baguette & Chocolat was founded as a vocational school to train disadvantaged youths and local hill tribe minorities in hotel and restaurant services. So, as we'd always done in the past, Holly, Amanda, and I made sure to drop a few extra notes on the table before we left.

Although I hadn't initially warmed to Sapa, as we made our way across the town square, which was now bathed in a soft gas-lantern glow, I couldn't help but feel an unexpected tug of affection for this frosty mountain town. It certainly hadn't been the luxurious escape I'd hoped it would be, but it had temporarily pulled Amanda, Holly, and me out of the mini-funk that had settled over us during our first few days in Hanoi. And though we still couldn't quite shake the weariness in our vagabonding bones, there was a reprieve in sight. In less than two weeks, the three of us would head back to Bangkok and then go our separate ways for a little while—Amanda and Holly jetting off to Myanmar to vacation with Amanda's family and me journeying across the Atlantic to visit my parents in their new Florida abode. It was a much-needed break that I knew would be good for us, but until then, Amanda, Holly, and I were going to lace up our muddy boots, hoist on our backpacks, and keep on trekking.

HANOI, VIETNAM
JANUARY

T
he pavement under our feet was oily slick with rain as we disembarked the train in Hanoi, the sky above us a squid-ink black that blotted out the stars. At 4 a.m., the only light came from the long row of lamps running between the tracks. Their gaseous amber glow bounced back at us from the long, smooth panels of the train and up from the puddles below, flipping the world into an eerie darkroom negative.

“Ladies, it was a pleasure to meet you. We stay in touch, yes?” asked Emanuel, kissing us on both cheeks before running off to find his motorbike.

Outside the station, a group of men were clustered together, chain-smoking inside a milky blue haze. As we stepped into their line of vision, they hurled down their cigarettes and swarmed into action. They encircled and darted between us, shouting prices, grabbing at our bags, and trying to hustle us toward vehicles hidden on side streets. Emanuel had told us to find a driver who'd use the meter (“Otherwise, they rip you off—no more than 35,000 dong to get home, okay?”), but most flatly refused. Others acted offended that we'd dared mention the word.

Just as we were about to give in, one driver emerged from the shadows and agreed to use his meter. Falling down tired, we didn't even consult one another before agreeing, trailing after the man in the wilted beige button-down as he tore down an alley. He deposited my bag inside the trunk, slammed it shut, then jumped into the driver's seat. The three of us wedged ourselves in the backseat just as the ignition sputtered to life.

“Meter, right?” I confirmed, and he grunted in response, slapping the small black box perched above the dash. I watched transfixed as the glowing red digits began ticking rapidly upward, compounding, it seemed, every half second or 1/100 kilometer we traveled. 20,000 dong. 32,000 dong. 45,000 dong. Northward it spiraled, posting numbers that seemed nonsensical to me. Was that the price we were supposed to pay? In my fogginess, it didn't make sense, but Jen—arguably at her sharpest in the predawn hours—instantly put two and two together.

The black box had been rigged. We'd been told that unscrupulous taxi drivers often fixed their meters to spit out prices that were five, ten, even thirty times higher than the standard rate, but we'd yet to encounter the scam.

“Sir, we can see that your meter is incorrect,” Jen said flatly. “You can either take us to our guesthouse for the fair price of 40,000 dong or let us out.”

The guy didn't say a word. Instead, he jammed his foot against the gas pedal, sending the vehicle careening through the lattice of foggy one-way streets.

“Excuse me, sir, we'd like you to stop the car,” Jen continued, making her voice more forceful. “Stop the car and let us out.”

He ignored her, and I echoed Jen's request. No response. I peered outside, trying to figure out exactly where we were. In about two hours, cyclos, motorbikes, pedicabs, cars, buses, trucks, vendors, and pedestrians would pack every inch of this pavement, but now the streets were utterly abandoned. The
tightly packed rows of buildings were shuttered and locked, gates clamped down over entrances like rows of steel teeth.

Jen kept repeating her request, over and over, her voice increasing in pitch as the cab picked up speed. To my right, a now-lucid Holly clutched the door, ready to evacuate the second the cab slowed enough to allow her to roll into the gutter.

“Listen, I know you can hear me!” shouted Jen. “Even if you don't understand my words, sir, understand my tone! Stop this car right
now
!”

She was screaming, and the message finally seemed to break through to the driver. But by the time he finally slammed on his brakes just off the centrally located Hoan Kiem Lake, our fare already exceeded 100,000 dong.

Just as Jen pulled 40,000 dong from her money belt, determined not to pay one bill more, it finally dawned on me that we had a problem. Every important document and valuable that I had was still sitting inside the trunk, tucked inside my overnight bag. The second Jen's cash hit the driver's palm, the man detonated.

“No,
no
! I say 100,000 dong! 100,000 dong!
You give me my money!
” He turned fully around in his seat, giving us a better view of the fiery lumps of coal burning in the sockets where his eyes should have been. This was no ordinary haggling situation. Jen, who'd seen enough TV crime dramas in her life to qualify for an honorary badge, later likened his behavior to that of a heroin addict crazed for a fix: the only thing standing in the way of his next high was our cash. Holly recovered quickly and yanked her door handle, ready to make a mad dash to safety.

“Wait, I can't leave my stuff!” I pleaded, sounding like one of those idiot girls in horror films who deserve to get offed directly after the opening credits. I would have abandoned almost anything in the bag—my money, camera, credit cards, travelers' checks, remaining plane tickets, even the damn albatross of a
laptop, but I couldn't and wouldn't relinquish the visa I needed to enter Myanmar.

Getting permission to enter the notoriously closed-off, military-governed nation had taken extraordinary efforts, not to mention a few white lies about my journalism background. I'd never be able to replace the sticker currently affixed to my passport in time. My family, who'd endured their own entry ordeal back in the States, would be flying halfway around the world to meet Holly and me there in less than two weeks.

Jen and I pressed the driver to release my stuff from the trunk, while Holly remained halfway outside the car, but the man was determined to hold the luggage hostage until we handed over the rest of the money. I'm still not sure why we didn't just toss the additional 60,000 dong (about $3.50) over the seat, grab my shit, and run, but at the time, giving in to a lunatic's demands didn't seem like an option.

Thinking like a Westerner, I suggested that we should find a police officer to intervene. That's when the driver went from ballistic to completely nuclear. Without a word, he whirled around in his seat and slammed the gas, driving us off into a shroud of foggy blackness.

“Oh, my God, we
have
to get out!” Holly screamed. “This man could be taking us anywhere! We're definitely
not
safe here!!”

Her panic infected all of us. The guy, utterly silent, shot down a pitch-black side street that might well have been a portal straight to Hell. While one man might not be able to hurt all three of us, he could easily be driving us somewhere to find people who could. He might radio ahead for reinforcements, drag us off under the remaining cover of night, and extract some horrible revenge for our attempt to cheat him out of his money. Holly leaned out of her open door; I yanked her back before she jumped out of the speeding car.

“Sir! You are scaring us. We want you to stop this car, right
now!” Jen said. “If you don't stop, I will open up this window and scream as loudly as I can for help!”

The driver called her bluff, never deviating from his original path.

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLP! HEEEEEEELP!” Jen used atomic lungpower I had no idea she possessed to alert every man, woman, and child within a thirty-kilometer radius to our predicament. The driver slammed on his brakes. He snapped around in his seat and tried to backhand Jen with his fist, which only made her scream louder. Stumbling out of the front seat, the driver yanked the back door open and pulled Jen out. She stood there, feet planted, her resolve and strength stunning both Holly and me.

“Open the trunk right now,
right now
, and let us get our stuff, and we will give you the rest of the money,” she seethed, grabbing a fistful of bills and holding them up.

Visual confirmation of cash broke through the driver's insanity. “You give me money?”

Jen nodded, and he moved around to the trunk and sprang the lock. I grabbed the heavy bag and, without thinking, reeled backward up the street. The driver was either terrified that I was trying to run or just crazed for his cash. He took a running start toward Holly, who happened to be closest, and kicked a foot in the direction of her gut.

Jen and I snapped. With no clear plan in mind other than defending Holly, we raced toward the driver. Seeing two furious women bearing down on him, the guy reeled backward, then thought better of it and charged again, hawking a huge ball of phlegm in Jen's face.

Now it was Holly's turn to lose it. She jumped between Jen and the driver to block her. He leapt back, then darted in to spit at us again. Finally, the schizophrenically unstable driver raced back to his car and slid behind the wheel.

We didn't stick around to see what happened next. Jen and I grabbed Holly, threw some bills over our shoulder, and ran like hell in the direction of the lake.

 

O
ur showdown with the cabdriver rattled our cages, to say the least.

Holly, who strongly felt that we should have ditched the scene a lot earlier than we did, became distracted and withdrawn. Jen, who believed that we'd never been in any real danger, had no regrets that we'd stood our ground and gotten my stuff back. And I was grateful that both of my friends had stuck by me in a crisis, but I felt horribly guilty that I'd compromised their safety. I replayed the scene over and over again in my head, questioning how I could have done things differently. Eventually Jen told me to stop beating myself up. We'd gotten my stuff and everyone was safe, so we might as well put the whole thing behind us. And once we'd reinstalled ourselves in the Quanghiep Hotel and gotten a few fitful hours of sleep, that's exactly what we tried to do.

According to the carefully plotted Excel chart schedule that Jen had created, we had nearly two weeks to spend exploring Hanoi, the longest stretch of time we'd devoted to any major city since we'd started traveling. While smaller villages and rural areas appeal to me more than population-dense metropolises (there's a sameness to big cities, whether you're talking about Hong Kong, Nairobi, or New York), I was fascinated by Hanoi, a place that during its thousand-year history has served as the seat of the ancient Viet Kingdom, the crown jewel of French Indochina, an incubator of socialism, the headquarters of Communism, and most recently, the cultural and political capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Like many cities across Asia, it's in the throes of transition.
Prior to receiving its current, somewhat unimaginative title of Hà Nôi (which means “inside the rivers,”), the city was called Thang Long, which means either “ascending dragon” or “to ascend and flourish,” depending on where you place the accent. Either way, the title seems to fit. Modern-day Hanoi has risen from its war-ravaged, impoverished third-world past to emerge as one of the continent's most cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile cities.

It's also one of the youngest. Thanks to a baby boom after the end of the Vietnam War (called “the American War” in these parts), nearly half of the population is under the age of thirty and a quarter are under fifteen, a demographic shift that we spotted as soon as we left the Quanghiep Hotel later that afternoon for a walk through the Old Quarter.

Spiky-haired, fashion-forward teenagers were all around us—they roared past on shiny chrome motorbikes, chattered animatedly into microscopic mobile phones, crammed into cybercafés to play online dance and soccer games. They were even break dancing to the nation's own politically correct, cleaned-up version of hip-hop music in Lenin Square. The young people didn't even acknowledge old man Vladimir's towering presence as they threw themselves into gravity-defying, tendon-twisting moves at the foot of the square's twenty-foot-high bronze effigy.

As Jen and I watched the dancers, Holly got to chatting with Allen, a college professor on a field trip with some communications students from Maryland. He explained that the statue, along with hundreds of other monuments built by the Russians in the latter half of the twentieth century, had basically become a relic of Vietnam's political past.

Though the country technically stands behind its Communist ideology, during the past two decades it has granted an increasing amount of economic and personal freedom to its citizens. In the mid-1980s, the government instituted a series
of reforms known as Dôi Mói (renovation), which essentially allowed people to have their own free-market businesses and conduct trade abroad. Not only did this help foster good relations with the capitalist West, it ultimately transformed the nation's economy into one of the fastest-growing in Asia, second only to China. Capitalism and tourism have exploded here in almost equal measure, with the number of international visitors quadrupling in the last decade.

As Holly, Jen, and I wandered through the maze of streets just north of the lake, we saw firsthand how quickly entrepreneurship had gone from being a dirty word to the name of the game. New businesses—hotels, guesthouses, nightclubs, bars, restaurants, art galleries, clothing stores, souvenir shops, tour operators, and travel agencies—had opened to service the flood of foreigners, and we got the distinct sense that everyone wanted a piece of the action. And why not? As Tsu had explained in Sapa, catering to tourists is often a far more lucrative enterprise than, say, rice farming or fabric dyeing. It makes good financial sense for young people to switch from trades their families have practiced for generations to ones that may pull in fifty times the profit. And therein lies the tourism paradox: the greater a destination's popularity, the less authentic it becomes.

 

I
n few places has the proliferation of tourism occurred faster than in Hanoi's Old Quarter, a warren of thirty-six tangled lanes and double-knotted passageways situated just above Hoan Kiem, or Lake of the Returning Sword.

Though the Old Quarter fills only a single square kilometer, there's more than enough humanity crammed into it to fascinate an observer for months, if not years. We had less than two weeks left to explore. So each morning, after getting scrubbed down and layered in our single set of mismatched winter gear,
the three of us would step from the familial hubbub of our guesthouse and into the freewheeling pandemonium just outside our front door. Blaring horns, bicycle bells, high-decibel shrieking, and the ever-present rush of traffic provided the sound track as we navigated through the jumble of passageways between our lodging and the lake.