Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
These girls, however, were different. They were pretty and curious and silly, pedaling
away alongside me as I pedaled just behind the cop, pointing at me but never really giv-
ing me more than a glance, giggling and chattering away among one another but never
saying anything directly to me. I tried saying hello—or “Hello!”—but didn't get much
of a response.
My police escort never altered his bland and serious expression, never registered the
presence of the girls, even as they arranged themselves on either side of me and took
turns reaching out to stroke my forearms as we rode along. It was bizarrely erotic—for
me, I mean. I don't know what the titillation factor was for them, but they were inter-
ested enough to keep up their flirtation for ten, maybe fifteen, minutes, and then they
simply stopped, suddenly and irrevocably bored the way teenagers everywhere become
with adults, and they turned onto another road and disappeared.
It was nearly full dark when my escort turned of the road into a compound of barracks
surrounding a courtyard. Parking our bikes, we climbed the porch of one of the bar-
racks, where several young men were sitting at a picnic table, and entered into a small
room where a slender man with a thin mustache and a Vietnamese flag insignia—a yel-
low star against a red background—sewn on the crown of his brown military cap was
sitting at a desk beneath a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. He gave me a wan
smile, and I couldn't help thinking of an evil Chinese Communist from central casting,
perfect for a James Bond movie. My escort gave him my passport and he shooed us out
of his office, and we went back on the porch, where news of my arrival had evidently
spread because the crowd around the picnic table had grown to a dozen or so.
No one said anything; they were all very young, maybe a little wary, more likely a
little bored. I, of course, was nervous, and I grew more so as minutes ticked by. Every so
often I'd look in on the officer with my passport—he was wearing a brown uniform shirt
and was clearly the boss—and, like the guy on the side of the road, he was examining it
closely, flipping the pages, seemingly mystified and frustrated.
Eventually, he came out on the porch and tried to speak with me, pointing at the pass-
port and asking me questions in Vietnamese, but of course it was hopeless, so he tucked
my passport in his shirt pocket, where my eyes followed it, and he gave out some in-
structions to the young men around the picnic table.
It was the separation from my passport that made me the most uneasy about my situ-
ation, as if having it would allow me to go merrily on my way, even though it was pitch-
black outside and I had no idea where I was. I'd been entirely cooperative and even do-
cile up to that point, but not understanding why I was being held, maddened by the
