Over dinner, I tell the parents my winter break conundrum: go to Indochina (with very little chance of a three-week train ride across the Vietnamese coast, if my mother insists on coming), go to Europe (and get a chance to say hello to the boys in Britain, but how much will it cost me?), or take the Greyhound around the U.S. (accomodation in the U.S. is not cheap).
My mother tsks before getting up to wash her hands. “You know, you should just come back here so we can go to Cambodia and Vietnam, but not for three weeks.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I argue. “Would you rather just have me shell out more money for Europe or the States than take the train up the Vietnamese coast?”
“You know,” my dad starts, “I think you should travel while you’re still young. Young people have a lot of energy, so I think it’s a good idea to go see a lot of the world while you still can.”
“You can still go travel too, you know; you’re not that old,” I retort.
My dad frowns and sits up straighter. “I’ve already done a lot of traveling. Had a lot of interesting experiences along the way as well. When I was about your age — maybe slightly older — three friends and I went through the whole Indonesian archipelago by way of 4×4. An interesting thing happened when it was time to go from Jakarta to Medan.
“So we had just arrived on the island of Sumatra and were making our way north. It’s six in the evening and we decide to just keep going until we find somewhere to sleep for the night.
“It’s getting later and later, darker and darker, but there’s no village in sight. This was the early seventies, so the road was basically a stretch of dirt and stone that cut its way across the thick jungle. Before we know it, it’s pitch black except for our lone headlights, and we had no idea where we were going, so we just followed the beaten path — the very beaten path.
“Suddenly we see three men standing in the distance. We realized they were blocking the road, and they each held very big, intimidating parangs. They indicated for us to stop, but we knew they weren’t out in the middle of the night, on a dirt road surrounded by a jungle, just to help lost tourists.
“These guys are thieves, one of my friends say. They’re gonna kill us after they take the money, another piped in. So as we were deciding what to do, the guy at the wheel, without consulting any of us, makes the decision for the rest of the group: he throws all of his weight on the gas and runs over one of the guys.
“The body of the thief hits the windshield, and I could hear him fly over my head. The guy driving just kept on driving without looking back, but the rest of us were so shocked that we couldn’t speak.
“It was either all of us or one of them! my friend behind the wheel yells. If I stopped back there, you all know we would’ve died. I am NOT going to die in the middle of some jungle!
“A couple of hours later, we finally spot a village and stop there to eat, fill up the tank, and inspect the damages. We get out of the car, and we see a lot of blood on the grill and bonnet (hood); we clean up the blood and find a place to sleep, but I tell you: I did not get any sleep at all that night. That was my worst travel experience.”
I sit there wide-eyed and mouth agape. “So…your buddy killed a guy?”
“Like he said, it was us or them,” my dad defends.
“But did the guy like, die?”
My dad shrugs. “Judging by the amount of blood on the grill and hood, I’d say…yah. I’m pretty sure he died.”
“Whoa.”
“So there you go. You should travel while you’re still young.”
“And the moral of the story, Where You Almost Got Killed But Your Buddy Kills a Guy Instead, is…”
“Travel. While you’re still young.”
Ah. Thanks, Padre.
Posted on August 3rd, 2006 by Antiguit
