On Pairing Up

Somewhere on the 12 hour bus ride from Hoi An to Hanoi I managed to acquire a roommate.  She was a forty year-old American woman who claimed to have been traveling for six years (I would later start to question the veracity of this statement). We chatted over dinner when we both ended up at the same local restaurant across the street from the expensive tourist-trap at which the bus had made a commission-stop and when we arrived in Hanoi she asked me about sharing a room to cut costs. The funny thing is, I was repelled by her from the moment we met, marking her as a showoff, a desperate seeker of attention and validation; which is to say that she was a glaring funhouse reflection of my flaws, a carnival caricature that highlighted and augmented my worst attributes.  But this town has expensive hotels and the prospect of cutting my lodging costs in half was tempting enough to push my reservations aside and tell myself that this was another "peculiar travel suggestion", an opportunity to welcome a little oddness into my world and see where it takes me, and so I accepted her offer.  


After two nights I bid her farewell again. It wasn't only because of her insistence on arguing with locals over everything, from a bottle of water to directions, or her dismissing my general sense of security in my travels as naiveté.  It wasn't just that she almost stormed off when I questioned the details of a story she told; an absurd claim to insider knowledge of a vast conspiracy taking place in the United States with the goal of perpetuating the illusion of democracy, culminating in the election of President Obama; a story wherein she failed, as the pathological often do, to make a shred of sense and yet still managed to be deeply wounded by my skepticism.  It wasn't even when I realized later that the story conflicted with her travel timeline.  Those might have been enough, but the deal-breaker was something else.  As I wandered the streets that morning I started to doubt my motives, becoming concerned that my choice to spend time with this woman was a symptom of my own need for acceptance, a product of road-weariness and perhaps a fear of being alone.  So I told her I needed to be on my own for awhile, checked out of our hotel and checked into a new one.  


I've now managed to stay unattached for two full days and life feels normal again.  This is not to say I won't still wander the bars and seek conversation with fellow travelers, but I certainly won't be as quick to take on a partner. On my own I'm more productive. I'm working out more often, studying Mandarin Chinese with renewed diligence and, in spite of a higher hotel bill, spending less money.  My visa granting me entrance to the PRC (143.00 USD, 30 days. Ouch.) should be arriving by the 20th which gives me ample time to settle in and explore this town.  So far the locals are less friendly than in the south which could have something to do with a conflict a few decades ago.  There also seems to be two menus with distinctly different prices for white people and Asians.  But apart from those small issues it's a lovely town and I feel just fine about being stuck here for awhile.