With our day's destination only thirty kilometers away, I was afforded the unusual Brat-treat of a morning stroll. At five forty-five, the beach was in full swing, teeming with Vietnamese of all ages, all engaged in some sort of frenzied activity. Do these people ever sleep? On our way out of town, I was once again impressed by the seemingly indefatigable vitality of the Vietnamese. The road to Hoi An --which didn't even figure on our maps---was jam-packed full of bikes, most of them hauling something or other. At one point we were riding behind a couple of brightly festooned cyclists.
Fred shouted out, \"Look, tribal people!\" But in fact the pedaling pair proved to be traveling brush- and broom salespeople. Ugly concrete suburbia quickly melted into fields of newly planted rice and a world of hallucinatory green. Even here, people were everywhere, busily engaged in the business of growing more food. The misnamed \"Marble Mountains\" came next. Our excellent road led right through these bumps on the landscape. A nearby village was abuzz and a-clink with the efforts of marble carvers whose product line ranged from tombstones to gigantic lions of dubious taste. \"Hoi An\" announced a sign after less than an hour and a half of pedaling (today can hardly qualify as a riding day).
This ancient trading town beguiled us immediately. While swarming with tourists --Westerners and Vietnamese alike---the place retains a feeling of authenticity. Many of its beautiful houses date from the seventeenth century and are remarkably intact. We rolled past the colorful little river harbor before being forced to get off and push through the throngs at the swarming market. It didn't take us long to find a decent room with a view of the river and we were cleaned up and exploring the town in the scorching heat in no time. On our way back through the market (on foot this time) a small person accosted us, urging us to come to his stall.
In excellent English, he said his name was Bu, and I couldn't help noticing how grabby (not to mention effeminate) he was. Only five minutes in town and we'd already found a sister. Fred was dead-set against following our new friend, but I thought it might be amusing. With his remarkable powers of persuasion, Bu coaxed me into ordering some silk boxers, and was especially thorough in taking my measurements. He was very eager to fit Fred for a pair too, but Fred steadfastly refused. Our new friend said the shorts would be ready later in the day, but we told him we'd pick them up the next day, since we planned to go to the beach that afternoon (after two nights at My Khe, we'd become addicted to the Vietnamese beach scene).
When Bu heard this, his eyes lit up. \"What time will you be there? What side of the beach are you going to? I'll bring a friend and we can all go swimming together.\" Sure enough, when we showed up at the beach (an hour earlier than we'd told him, in order to do yoga), Bu was there. He and his bitchy friend followed us up to a shaded, relatively peaceful sand dune and watched us sweat as we did yoga for an hour. It was a little disconcerting, especially with their impatience growing visibly by the minute. By the time we had finished and I was ready for a swim, all of Bu's energy was focused on placating his friend.
I think he might have promised his friend more than he could deliver, and now the friend was pouting that Fred wasn't paying more attention to him. Bu ended up having to shuttle the friend home to avoid his throwing a giant hissy fit, but not before promising to bring us back to the beach to watch the full moon. We had dinner in a beautiful place run by a friendly Frenchman. The food, drinks and service were all excellent. The owner, Christophe, invited us to come back later to watch the World Cup final, but we both doubted we'd still be awake at two a.m.
The slow-paced dinner had made us late for our rendezvous with Bu, but our miniature friend was faithfully waiting for us on his motorbike when we got back. Fred, pleading fatigue, elected to forego the nighttime beach scene --which turned out to be disappointing. I had expected there to be bonfires and revelry, but in reality the beach was practically empty. And hot. The wind had died and the temperature had risen, causing me to sweat from the mere effort of drinking a beer by the seaside. Adding to the disappointment was the fact that the moon never rose; the clouds obscured it totally.
Redeeming the whole experience, however, was Bu's fascinating life story. I found him to be refreshingly straightforward and articulate. He told me how he came from a large, poor family and that his mother died last year. His father is a *cyclo* driver and Bu himself had to earn his own living from a very young age. \"When I was little I was selling the lottery tickets, and then later, when the tourists coming --five, six years ago---I sold postcards. I hated it.\" Then he met up with an older Vietnamese homo (the details were fuzzy here) who lives in Saigon.
Bu moved to Saigon and studied English for awhile before coming back to his hometown and running a tailor shop for his friend. Now he supports both himself and his younger brother, whose schooling he pays for, and dreams of moving back to Saigon. \"This is no place to be gay,\" he said, \"but in Saigon there are many places, many gay people. What I really want is a boyfriend, a Vietnamese boyfriend. I like the foreigners, but not for a boyfriend.\" When I asked Bu if his family knew he was queer, he told me they did, but he preferred not to talk about it with them.
\"Do you find it difficult being gay in a small town like Hoi An?\" I continued my interview. With a decidedly defiant tone in his voice, Bu declaimed, \"I don't really care what people think about me; No one can tell me what kind of person to be.\" Coming from a four-foot tall, twenty-one year old Asian boy living in a communist country, this remark really impressed me.