Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as the driver dunked an empty gas can in the water and then opened the hood of the
bus, unscrewed the radiator cap with his hand wrapped in his shirt, waited a bit for the
steam to dissipate and refilled the radiator. I walked by to take a look; the ticking engine
was incredibly hot.
Every now and then I'd get impatient and walk up the aisle to pester the driver. I'd
look over his shoulder and point out the front window: “A Luoi?” I would say—AH-loo-
ay—and he would nod, and I'd feel reassured for twenty more minutes. Albert, mean-
while, slept most of the way. When he awoke he said he felt a little better but not great.
Finally, we entered a deep jungle, darker and greener than anything we'd driven
through, and suddenly the bus made a left turn through a portal in the trees. About a
hundred yards later, we pulled into a large clearing within which was nestled a village.
The bus stopped with a finality it hadn't previously evinced, and the passengers, taking
the hint, filed out with all their stuff. The monkey man magically unburdened the roof.
“A Luoi?” I said to the bus driver, and he shook his head: no. We got out of the bus,
and he pointed back out of the clearing and indicated that to get to A Luoi we'd have
to continue along the main road. Our bikes were still on the roof, and it hadn't yet hit
me that the bus wasn't going any farther. I don't know what I thought, exactly, maybe
that the village—its name turned out to be Ta Rut—was some kind of remote dispatch
center, a bus hub for the jungle. In any case, I figured we'd have to wait a bit before we
took off again, and I explored the village, which wasn't much more than a dozen huts
arranged around the perimeter of the clearing.
Albert, I saw, was talking with the driver and they were looking at the map. He was
a blusterer, yes, but he had a gift for bludgeoning people into understanding him and,
more impressively, making themselves understood. After a few minutes, he explained the
situation to me. This was the terminus of the bus route; from here it would turn around,
go back over the Da Krong Bridge, and end up back in Dong Ha, where he and I had
begun our ride together.
Our group would still be there; they were scheduled to ride south to Hué the next
morning, and Albert said he was going back on the bus to join them. A Luoi, he said,
was still twenty or twenty-five miles away, and he wasn't up to the ride; he was done.
It was four in the afternoon or thereabouts, maybe three hours of daylight left—it
was January—and obviously the idea of going on alone was nervous-making. The jungle
was thick, the region was entirely unknown to me, and our map was only intermittently
accurate. It was foolish, perhaps, for me to press ahead, but the remoteness, the uncer-
tainty, and the potential danger of it all were, of course, as much a spur as a caution. I'd
come all this way, been intrepid enough to get here to this spot, and I knew I'd never
