Tibet 2014
1. Khởi đầu của chuyến đi khá thuận lợi. Tôi bay HAN-BKK-PEK-LXA. Máy bay cất cánh đúng giờ. Ngồi trên máy bay còn nghe văng vẳng lời Bà Cô dặn với theo: “Thầy đi Tây Tạng nhớ mua cho em vòng…”
Gió thổi tạt đi nên ko rõ vòng gì. Chẳng lẽ vòng tránh thai??? Nhưng mua vòng tránh thai cho Cô thì khác nào chưa có bò đã lo làm chuồng?
Nói đến chuồng thì link đến chuông. Nghe nói Tây Tạng rất nhiều chuông, có lẽ sẽ mua cho cô một cái chuông đặc biệt để đeo vào… Nửa đêm nếu cả nhà nghe tiếng chuông rung là có thể thở phào… Cô đã thoát kiếp ế… (những bạn nào thiếu context có thể tham khảo note Tôi có học, tôi có quyền ế phần 2 và 4, link: TBA)
Quay lại chuyến đi, đến Bắc Kinh thì bắt đầu xảy ra vấn đề. Chờ lấy hành lý ký gửi mất gần 40 phút. Sai lầm của tôi là vừa lấy được vali đã lập tức san bớt đồ trong ba lô đeo lưng sang vali cho đỡ nặng. Cảnh này lọt vào tầm ngắm của một tai mắt lảng vảng quanh đó và gã này lẽo đẽo đi theo tôi cho đến tận cửa kiểm tra hải quan, rồi thì thầm gì đó vào tai một nhân viên hải quan. Lập tức họ tách tôi ra và hành lý bị soi kỹ.
Không thấy gì đáng nghi, tôi được chuyển tiếp sang một ngăn riêng và cuộc đại thẩm tra bắt đầu. Làm nghề gì? Giáo viên? Thế có business card đề rõ nghề nghiệp ko?
May quá có mang theo cái danh thiếp NGỌNG THIỂU NĂNG TẠP
nhằm giới thiệu lớp ra thế giới
Tra hỏi mãi rồi cũng phải cho đi vì đối tượng bị thẩm vấn quá trong sáng, nhưng mất thêm 40 phút nữa. Nếu cứ theo lịch trình ban đầu (chuyến bay chuyển tiếp của tôi từ Bắc Kinh đến Lsaha chỉ cách có 90 phút) thì chắc chắn là tẻo. Cũng may tôi đi nhiều nên cẩn thận, đề phòng nếu có trục trặc gì cũng ko sợ nhỡ chuyến, đã yêu cầu hãng hàng không đổi lại itinerary (dù điều đó nghĩa là tôi phải rời Hà Nội sớm hơn và ở lại Bắc Kinh thêm một đêm). It worked out nicely in the end though.
Ấn tượng đáng nhớ đầu tiên về Tây Tạng không phải phong cảnh, mà là đi thiền viện nào cũng thấy mỗi chú sư đang trực bệ thờ thủ một cái iPhone trong tay. Chú thì công khai bấm bấm, lướt lướt mặc kệ ánh nhìn ganh tị của khách thập phương mới chỉ đủ tiền sắm Samsung. Chú ý tứ hơn (thường có tuổi hơn) thì lấp ló điện thoại dưới tay áo cà sa, tay che, tay bấm, mắt liếc ngượng ngập “Mô Phật, con không tránh nổi cám dỗ công nghệ…”
Thật đáng ngạc nhiên nếu Apple vẫn còn chưa cho ra đời phần mềm tụng kinh tích hợp trên iPhone.
2.
My Tibet group is comprised of five souls, all of different nationalities. Funny enough, each one of us exhibits some stereotypical traits of their ethnic.
Gareth, the British guide, cracks some wisecracks every once in a while. Ben, the American, greets every stranger he bumps into on the street (whether he means it or not & whether the other person cares or not) with a "Have a nice day" in Tibetan, which is harmonized nicely by some f-words from Sam, the Australian lady, who drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney. Morgan, the French, wears a suit to evening bars. Enough said, right?
And the quiet little Vietnamese, who flashes his signature smile at everyone while keeping his thoughts to himself only to pour out later in a travel blog for the whole world to read (smiling at myself as I’m putting down this line).
While I’m a linguist by profession, Ben is the one who should pursue a career in linguistics. So eager to learn new phrases and try to use them at every possible encounter with the locals. When we first met (we are roommates on this trip, by the way), he said something non-English, and I was like "I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese." and he was like "I was talking to you in Vietnamese!"
Turns out it was something (to be honest, I’m not yet able to figure out what it is) his Vietnamese food sellers taught him back in Quebec (he’s from Chicago but goes to college in Canada).
3.
The next morning, when I come down to the hotel's reception, something immediately catches my eye. There is a Chinese girl, who's sitting next, more like clinging, to Morgan - the French guy, in the hallway.
At first glance, it looks like she is part of another tour group and she just happens to sit too close to him, probably due to lack of space. The hallway is merely 50m2 big after all.
At second glance, she's sitting close enough to break down any cultural barriers. Plus, looking gorgeous but heavily made-up, she could easily pass for a hooker in Beijing.
So people in our group gives each other knowing looks and thinks what they are all thinking but no one vouchsafes a word. It's an "elephant in the room" sorta situation, you know.
After the girl takes off, the elephant sticks around a bit for the sake of politeness and then I, always the one with no manners, bring up the subject. Turns out Morgan picked her up in a bar last night. Ben was there too so he knows how the plot thickened.
I want to know where the girl's from. Morgan looks blank then embarrassed. He doesn't know.
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. Ben comes to rescue. "I think she's from Wuhan." I raise the remaining eyebrow (obviously we had no idea about the Covid-19 thing at the time): Wow, Ben knows stuff about the girl that Morgan didn't.
Reading my thought, the talkative Ben feels the need to explain himself "cuz I was the one who got her talking."
With Morgan being a man of very few words, me think "You must be the one who did any talk at all, eh?"
This is a classic case of Ben talkin' the talk but Morgan actually walkin' the walk. And seriously, he looks exhausted from just walkin *wink wink*
Morgan’s date becomes the running joke of the day as everyone can't seem to get enough of it. At lunch time, Gareth, the British, turns to Morgan and says, tongue in cheek, "We all know you ate Chinese last night, so should we try something else for lunch today?"
4.
We visit Namtso lake, the highest salt water lake in the world (at 4718m or 15479 ft asl), an about 5-hour drive from Lhasa. While the lake and its surroundings are out of this world, the same could also be said about the local toilets.
Those Tibetan style toilets are basically just big holes in the ground (big enough one may fall through if one trips) located outside the main house. The holes on our camp site show no evidence of any cleaning done, ever!
Ben is the first to explore and rushes back with some real bad news. "It's the worst thing I've ever done" he said, making a reference to pooping into that hole. Sam, the one from Australia, follows suit and she can't stand it either. This is, coming from someone who describes herself as a "hippie," really saying something.
So no one else feels inspired enough to go even though we all have to hold it since our last toilet break a couple of hours ago.
To spice it up, Ben, who speaks Chinese and has been around in China for a while, tells us a *true* story about some Chinese girl, who dropped her must-be-expensive phone in a certain hole and decided to come down to search for it. She died of asphyxiation caused by toxic gases (probably from years worth of feces), and so did the next guy who tried to get her out.
This hero and damsel in deep shit story with no happy ending really does it. Morgan decides that he'll wait till dinner, no doubt hoping that the restaurant should provide better holes (FYI, it doesn’t). I decide that I won't have no dinner because you know, no eating means no pooping. I'll catch up when we return to Lhasa the next day.
To get our mind off this stinky topic, we take some leisure walk along the gravel bank, taking in the lake's turquoise water, breaking ripples and jagged mountain peaks in the background while trying our best not to mind piles of baked excrement littering virtually everywhere else.
Obviously a lot of someone else are also afraid of asphyxia despite threatening public signs that promise a 200-yuan fine for anyone who is caught defecating or urinating outside (a hole).
Sam, for some reason, insists on flying the kite she brings all the way from Melbourne. She must be still high on whatever she drank at lunch, or worse, on whatever toxic gas she was exposed to in that hell hole of a toilet.
5.
We get ready for our 42-hour train back to Beijing. For Morgan and I, it’s gonna be an even longer time on train as we have another 24-hour train from Beijing to Pyongyang to look forward to. These are quite similar to the trans-Siberian trip I took a while ago.
To kill time, we come up with silly questions for each others. Sam, who is a vegetarian (yep, she smokes and drinks but doesn’t do meat), wants to know how to say “I’m a vegetarian” in Chinese. Bu chi rou meaning no eating meat. But Ben teaches her to say “qing chi wo” (meaning: please eat me) instead.
Ben asks me “Vu, would you rather have finger-sized legs or leg-sized fingers.” Me: “Let me think.” Ben: “Why bother? They are both equally impractical.” (then why this stupid question in the first place?) Me: “I’d go with the second option.” Ben: “Why?“ Me: “It’ll make you real good at fingering.”
Everybody bursts out laughing, including Ben, who’s still too under-aged for this kind of joke (he’s 20, btw) and excluding Sam, who’s still deep in practicing her new line.
Ben’s question for Gareth, the tour-guide, who travels for business by train all the time, is “Have you ever seen people hook up on a train?”
Gareth’s positive answer naturally leads back to Morgan’s area of expertise (remember the Chinese girl from Wuhan?). Indeed, the train is long and crowded enough (read: plenty of potential picks) for Morgan to re-attempt his “walking.” So the conversation carries on like this.
Gareth: “Morgan, you should start looking. Ben: “How ‘bout that girl?” Morgan: “She looks like she’s still in kindergarten.” Me: “Don’t you worry. She’ll be a teenage girl by the time we reach Beijing.” (and me think) “and a woman too, thanks to you, Morgan.”
Morgan's at it again. He’s chatting up yet another Chinese girl by a garbage bin on a transit platform (while the memory of the last date's still fresh).
Chinese girl: Vì anh là người Phớp, em lấy anh 2 ngàn tệ thôi nà.
6.
Our first big stop is NaQu, somewhere absolutely in the middle of nowhere. I guess the only passengers getting on from this station are defecting goats and yaks. Then, something happens that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Since the washing basins in my carriage are all out of service, I have to go to the ones next door. Of the three there, one is also out of mission, being clogged with something disgusting of red and yellowish (probably someone’s vomit as people tend to throw up a lot due to altitude sickness). And there is this Chinese woman, who’s hogging one of the two working taps, washing her bundle of grapes… one by one. Yes, you read it right: one by one.
She takes forever to scrub and polish each tiny piece of grape, completely ignoring the long line right behind her. Surprisingly, none of the locals present says anything.
This is one of those few moments I wish I could speak the language so I could give a piece of my mind right to her face. And here I am, cursing her behind her back and in Vietnamese, to little avail. The silver lining of this passive-aggressive behavior is that I come up with a brand-new curse for our big fraternal neighbor, which is “GO TO HOANG SA AND DIE.” Sorry if it sounds nationalistic. Hope it catches on though.
When this gross grape-groping goof of a graceless girl finally leaves (yeah, I rhyme better when I'm seething with frustration), she glances back in my general direction, and you know what, I didn't even bother with my signature Vietnamese smile. Yeah, I am THAT pissed.
Mục lục bài viết cá nhân bổ sung https://vuenglishclass.blogspot.com/2021/07/bai-viet-ca-nhan-bo-sung.html
Comments
Post a Comment