Clutter bin series: The Elephant

Clutter bin series: The Elephant

Status: On display

If you know me, you would know I traveled to Vietnam 2018. It was an amazing trip but, this elephant reminds me of quite the story. The Boo and I were riding toward the marble mountains on the typical traditional Vietnamese Honda moped. err, we were going in the general direction of the marble mountains……Okay we were clueless, but we could see the mountains they were just over there. Soo, eventually we got intercepted by a Vietnamese lady in broken English’s they asked if we were looking for the marble mountains we looked at each other had a silent conversation using our eye balls and face muscles and ultimately disagreed. Boo ” yes” Vincent “No” Vietnamese stranger ” okay , Follow me I show you where “

So we followed them despite my protest

Vincent: “You know this is going to bite us in butt” The Boo: “ehh”

After a few minutes we get to the marble mountains and boy look at that marble. The three mountains penetrated the earth crust vertically while the plants and trees make a futile effort to tear it all down. 

As we slow to a crawl we follow the lady to as small parking lot and shop and she instructs us to park in front of her store.

The lady “You Park here, when you done with the mountain, shop at my store ” in broken but direct English

Boo “ohh, yeah okay” 

We departed the souvenir shop street. Boo and I marveling at the mountains. To distracted to notice the maniacal evil laugh from the shop keeper.

Our tour of the marble mountains was absolutely lovely. The mountains are alone south of Da Nang. They are a maze of temples shrines and just plain good gardening. On top is a view of the city of DaNang.

After a good tour of the mountains. We get back to the shop only to see our scooter blocked in. We were trapped. but, its fine right we just had to buy something and……. Vincent ” soo, like how much is tiny fairly insignificant necklace” Sales person “3 million dong ” (about $120) Boo “how much for this tiny useless tree” other Sales person ” 4 million dong”

We were trapped! They had our scooter and we needed to buy something, anything, but everything was priced way to high even by American standards. Finally, after some asking around and wearing them down with dumb questions. Boo, found this elephant. They slipped up, cracked at 1.2 million dong. I can work with that, I can make that work. Then I remembered a past experience. A memory that triggers a side eye. A muscle memory, that sort of when a past injury is mentioned and the spot hurts again. Or someone untrustworthy asks where the super secret stash, the mind issues the order to keep quiet the mouth and body listen but the eyes point to where. Memory-Twitch or an ichy-memory. a “mem-or-ich”. I had a “memorich* this one pointed the eyes at Boo:

2015 in NYC:

Me: ” so, how much for the Magnet ” Vendor: ” Five dollars Each” Me: ” two for seven” Boo: ” oh come on” grabs $10 from my wallet and buys magnets   Me ” you know those prices are made up, like come on”

2016 at a Trump rally:

Vincent ” I will buy two buttons for $7 its all i got”

Boo: ” its not you got a ten right here ” takes money out of my wallet and pays the cart owner.

Me (looking at Boo) ” oh come on, Those buttons are like ten cent to make!! he would have taken it”

Back in Vietnam:

Shop owner “1.2 million dong ” Me: “150, thousand” Shop owner “1 million dong ” Me: “150 thousand ” Shop owner; “950 thousand dong ” Me: “200 thousand ” Shop owner “800 thousand dong ” Me: “250 thousand.” Shop owner “700 thousand dong ” Me: “350, thousand dong, its all I got ”

It was not in fact all I had. I had nearly two million more in my rear pocket and Boo had a million and a quarter but I made it look like it was truly all I had. Now my eyes was on Boo. I looked at her, almost staired, was she going to slip. Then she spoke. 

Boo; “…….yeah, he carries all the money we don’t have any more .”

The saleswoman sighed in defeat. The fish they were reeling in and was a lot smaller than she thought. She takes the $350000 dong and tells he assistant to get the scooter. The elephant was our key freedom. We hopped on the scooter and drove off.

Me; ” Boo, I am soo proud of you” Boo; ” what” Me; ” you negotiated”

*memorich -mem-or-ich: a memory that triggers a irrational mustle response. like an ich