The young driver is way too hyper for this time of day. I tumbled out of the train at half-past five. The enterprising taxi drivers welcome you immediately at the train door: 'Hoi An?' - 'How much?' - '300'. 10 euros for 45 minutes of travel time isn't worth negotiating so early in the morning: 'Okay, let's go..'. He speaks insider tips into his translation app and hands me the display while speeding through the village at 70 km/h. I have to try Cau Lau, a chicken dish typical for Hoi An. My Son, a great temple complex. 'Cảm ơn.', thank you, is noted!
The sun rises over rice fields, canals, and beaches around the Venice of Vietnam. Once again, I have to realize: Vietnamese people are early birds. Perhaps another reason why they beat the Americans. While they were still opiated in the shelter, the Vietcong had already begun digging tunnels and wedging sharpened wooden stakes into the ground hours ago. Now - in peacetime - I watch at dawn as the moped traffic is already in full swing, groups practicing Tai Chi, and shop owners unfolding umbrellas and adjusting plastic stools.
The speedboat takes 20 minutes from the port of Hoi An to Cu Lao Cham. Again, taxi drivers are waiting immediately for you. But there don't seem to be any cars on the island. So I have no choice but to ride a moped as a passenger. I've never done this with my full luggage before, but an hour of walking with my 10-kilo backpack at 30 degrees and sunshine isn't an alternative either. I calm myself with the mantra: 'I'm not the first backpacker they are carrying.' Every time I go downhill, I get pressed forward to the driver, and I have to hold firmly to the back handle while going uphill to avoid falling off. But she safely drops me off in front of Lao's Homestay. He welcomes me with the usual green tea and a guestbook where he proudly shows me very favorable entries from his guests. 'Where from?' - 'Germany'. He flips to a few pages where Germans left their praise: 'One feels like part of the family... wonderful four days... Trung took us to a great place for snorkeling.' That sounds promising. I postpone my first snorkeling to tomorrow and gesture that I want to explore the island on foot after a nap.
'Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder,' Werner Herzog described the jungle with this quote once. Okay, a bit of an exaggerated comparison. I'm walking on a paved road and am just 30 minutes away from one of the two villages on the island. But to my left and right is dense jungle. It rustles now and then, and I see one of the black salamanders that our guide spotted in Angkor and described as highly toxic. There are two species. One shimmers, the other does not. One of them can be deadly. I forgot which. Earlier in the café, I saw one of the little lizards dart under my lounge chair. They would only bite if disturbed or accidentally approached too closely. As skittish as I am, I still jumped up. Suddenly my attention is drawn to a bright scream that I first attribute to a bird. As I get closer, something hops through the treetops. It’s monkeys. Their shrill calls are directed at me, as they become more numerous and louder as I continue walking down the street. The silhouette of a macaque is outlined on a branch, but judging by the sounds, there must be more of them. I walk steadily and cautiously through the green-framed corridor. Completely quiet. I just want to pass through. 'Hey stranger!' - It feels like I am slowly riding through the muddy streets of a Wild West small town, while behind the curtains, suspicious pairs of eyes stare at me. Are they the threat, or am I?
The boats are nutshells. This metaphor has never fit better. The simple fishing boats, which the islanders paddle out with, are 1x1 meter plastic bowls with a board for sitting. With this, the young Trung, son of the homestay owner, takes me along with the family dog LiIi to the next stand. He only puts the goggles on me and ensures that the mouthpiece, which has just been rinsed in salt water, fits well. The rest is self-explanatory, and Trung and Lili search for a shaded spot. Snorkeling is child's play. And yet, I fumble quite clumsily. The diving goggles work like a magnifying glass. With them, I can see perfectly well even with my nearsightedness. However, this makes the schools of fish and corals appear much closer than they are. In panic, thinking I’m going to scrape by, I forget to breathe through my mouth and to grasp the mouthpiece correctly and get some saltwater in my airways. Yuck! That happens to me several times. In the end, my mustache is probably to blame. The diving goggles stick better to smooth surfaces. Lao even lets me use his razor. That leaves me with little choice but to subdue the mere externals. Off it goes. Trung then takes me with a moped to another beach and zooms off again. Alone, I have even more respect for the deep blue sea, also because now in the afternoon, with more waves, the sand is stirred up, and the water is even murkier. I can barely see more than two meters. An irrational fear envelops me. Thalassophobia, as my brother later informs me. Fear of deep waters. It's nice that today you can define everything. Maybe one day I'll find a self-help group for that. For now, I come to terms with the fact that diving and snorkeling are not really my thing and sit down in one of the many lounge chairs under palm trees. On the beach lie garbage bags that a monkey rummages through in search of food. A man comes running with a rake and chases it away. What tourists exoticize is everyday nuisance for locals. The garbage men and women come here by boat and load the waste.
On the way back, I walk the hilly road to the village when I suddenly see a monkey standing on the asphalt. Not a small cute one, but a fully-grown muscle primate that doesn't shy away from stress. The macaque dude makes no move to even take a step aside. As I walk past him at a respectful distance, he jumps forward, and I jump back two steps. Chabos know who the Babo is.
On my last evening on Cham Island, I talk with the other guests at the accommodation. A couple, Vincent from
France and Carolina from Peru, has just arrived and were riding a motorcycle around the island.
A Russian tries to strike up a conversation with me via a translation app. He speaks into his phone that he would currently be living in Mexico. He is tired of meeting Russians everywhere in Vietnam and has had enough of the 'hyperactive patriots' in his country. Maybe he is one of the reflective ones, I mistakenly think. The man, whom I estimate to be in his early 50s and who keeps emphasizing his German roots, turns out to be a dyed-in-the-wool racist. His comment on the different mentalities of 'us' and Latin Americans is followed by a sentence that begins with 'To quote Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and ends with 'superiority of the white race.' Oh dear, I thought I had left that kind of people behind in Eastern Europe. In my translation program, I write something along the lines of 'This way of thinking led to the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.', but he won't change my worldview, and I won't change his. I leave the obese human master chain-smoking at the table. 'No more politics, good night.'
For me, it's one of three evenings in the secluded holiday paradise, for the locals just one of many in their village. Instead of gazing in awe at the sunset like the few tourists, they sit together in table circles, singing karaoke, and occasionally hitting the notes of Vietnamese pop ballads.
I sit by the shore. A monk burns a pile of dry leaves and rings a bell. Across the rocks on the beach, a father walks with a bowl in his hand and his two sons in tow, both in Bayern jerseys. We greet each other: 'Xin chào.' - 'Hello.. hey.. hello'. Maybe they were out collecting shells.
Is this what happiness looks like? Watching the locals live and the sun set with a sunburn at the harbor - Sittin' on the dock of the bay, wasting time...
