Heroes

I'm about halfway through this odyssy and it feels like so long ago that Darryl and I walked Hanoi's cold, rainy streets. I've met so many remarkable people since then. Let me remember...

1. Bill and Gwen must be over 70, their love spanding half a century. I'm young enough to be their grandchild, still they confided how Bill met her and recommended she read a book. She was moved by the book and became interested in him. It was decades later her admitted he'd never even read the book. He's an Irishman and she's a Scot. They share a love for old heist films and a distaste for the English. They own a hostile in the hills of Spain where pilgrims from all over the world come to climb. Bill waits for someone to pick up his guitar and play old Irish tunes with him. They said, "we don't drink," but Darryl and I shared a bottle of whiskey with them in a small cabin on a ship in Halong Bay. Unfortunately, Darryl and I found ourselves on a geriatric cruise and I think Bill and Gwen felt sorry for us. We spent a night drinking, telling stories, playing guitar and acting like equals. I parted hoping to see eachother again on this journey and we did.

2. Vu and Hero- Vu's old and his English vocabulary is extensive. He wants nothing more than to talk politics and philosophy but I can't understand anything he says. It's obvious he's lived through the Vietnam War and the years of political upheaval since. But he talks really low and deliberate. I gathered that his family comes from the South. His relatives are imprisoned for fighting with the Americans on the losing end. He wishes we'd won the war. Vu smokes 2 packs a day waiting for some tourists to take around the country on his modest motorbike.

Hero is his younger sidekick. He looks like a perpetually stoned college student but his ID says he's 37. (You'd think after all these years in Asia, I'd be able to tell their age, at least within 10 years). Hero doesn't speak much English but he makes up for it with a constant smile that says more than Vu's mumbles. It's obvious Hero's the one who really knows the streets of Vietnam. He barks at the entrance and will get you in any door. They put us on their bikes and showed us the country's coastal landscape.