noon at Sam Som

It's been a long time since someone invited me to a hotel room in the middle of the day. Okay, it's actually never happened. So it came as a surprise when, on our excursion to the beach with my students, Tuan asked me (and my kids) to come with him to a hotel. Sure, why not. I motioned to the kids to come (palm down, four fingers beckoning) and they did, peppering me with questions, spoken quickly so he wouldn't understand: Where are we going? Some hotel. A hotel? That's what he said. Why? I don't know. For how long? I don't know that either.

We blindly followed him down two blocks to a building, unmarked apart from the numbers above the three doors interrupted by three large windows. We were given Room 106 by a woman (the owner?) and shown in by both her and Tuan. He assured me that we could rest, said something about three hours and promptly shut the door.

The kids turned to look at me perched haphazardly on the end of the twin bed nearest the door; them expecting some answers, me not having any. So I BSed a bit. Well, you know in Viet Nam everyone takes a nap after lunch, Tuan knows you are tired. I mean, come on Audrey, you fell asleep on the way here. We're all gonna rest and then we'll head down to the beach.

Neither of them were particularly excited about this plan of hanging out in a bare hotel room for the next hour or three, but there wasn't much to be done. I tried to get them to lie down. Stuart let out the hermit crabs he had pilfered from near the fisherman earlier in the day, allowing them to click-click across the tile floor. Audrey tried to rest, as did I, but the third person in the room just couldn't stay quiet. Until he went to use the bathroom and we quickly dozed off in the silence.
Our rest didn't last long. Making a grand entrance from the bathroom, Stuart explained all the intricacies of this particular bathroom. It stinks. The toilet doesn't flush. The sink only works when you turn the shower on. The toilet paper is wet. Another only-as-a-last-resort bathroom. It ended up being that for all of us.

After almost two hours of almost falling asleep, demanding quiet, begging for the whining to stop and pleading for the crabs to be put back, we moved outside the room, within earshot of the rest of our crew, and the kids sang songs, walked around, got a little stir-crazy and woke up everyone else with their antics. It didn't take long for everyone to don their swim clothes (short and tanks for men, jeans and long-sleeve shirts for women) and off we went, students, children and teacher-18 in all, down to where the water came onshore.