It was a strange feeling to stand in the airport looking around the terminal and know that this would be the last time i would be within that structure. English signs, white people, clean everything would not be common. It was like a drug to know that your world was going to change. There was some new awful sitcom that was playing on the little televisions. Every window on the walls of the aircraft was closed. It seemed like people would rather watch a box then see the earth from 30,000 feet in the air. Speaking of feet, it would be appropriate to learn the metric system here pretty soon.
The airplane from san franciso to hong kong held easily over 500 people. Flight attendents were lined up in alternating order depending on race so both chinese and english could be heard. Gus and I did a round of stretching befor the flight which was set to be around 13 hours, 6916 miles across the ocean. Ya.
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and we chased the shit out of that sun. I dont know who decided where east and west started but my geographical location was 'here' and nowhere else. We flew over the clouds and it reminded me of something someone once told me that 'no matter how dark the sky seems to be, there is always the sun on the other side of it.' Which was true but not appropriate because i was far from being upset. The huge cargo ships trudged across the ocean water like wales. Months from now i would purchase one of the products on that ship, the tag would say 'made in china'.
Time is like a river that races by with you floating upon it with a raft, you can never move upstream. I clearly remember turning in my last final four months ago. Summer was a blink. And here i sat. On a plane. Somewhere over the ocean. A chinese woman sat next to me counting her remaining US currency while her husband stole my sleep style of resting your head on your crossed arms on the tray table. Already things are differnet. The husband offered me his salad when he saw that i finished mine. Not an english word was spoken through the transaction. I offered my chewing gum, the best i could give. The wife sneezed and my impulse was to say bless you, but she might have given me a weird look.
Flying into hong kong the air went progressively from clear to so smoggy that we could hardly see the ground. Hundreds of cargo ships littered the glassy water like orange fireflys. We landed in china and for maybe the second time in my life, I was the minority. On the intercom it is the asian language spoken first, then english. This is their land, you now come second. It was an interesting feeling, almost liberating to know that i was not where i had been all my life.
Three weeks earlier, the man at the post office glanced over my visa application envelope when i sent it to the embassy of vietnam. He asked me where i was going, for which i had an answer, and why, for which i did not. He told me he'd been there once but his trip was for a different reason; the war. 'Be careful, be aware of your surrondings. They'll know youre an american the moment you step off the plane." He said. "Dont be scarred, there's no reason. You're young and you need to know about the world."
On the fligjht to Ho Chi Minh I sat next to two vietnamese boys from vermont who were going back again to see their family. There was an hour long Q&A session that ensued- covering everything from how to say hello, to the sanitation level (of the water), to silly things i would see, to the millions of motorcyclists.
We landed at 12:25 in the morning. Or here, 00:25 hours.
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