HOOCH

That cackle was starting to freak me out a little....

I had just tossed back the shot of colorless homemade "hooch" that she had shakingly poured from an unlabeled plastic bottle and placed in front of me. It tasted of whiskey and the sea and of strange things unknown. It went down like napalm and I reacted dramatically - the way that an amateur reacts: with a frantic head-shake, and a rapid, machine-gun-like exaggerated, exh-a-a-a-a-led groan.

It was voluntary - that groan. I realized it even as it was happening. I could have just as easily prevented it. I'm sure that with very little effort, I could have probably scaled it down to, say, little more than a barely-perceptible grimace. Yet, I voluntarily chose that amateurish reaction and I wasn't even sure why. Perhaps, I thought, that was the kind of thing that might pass as a compliment in that small shack along the sea. Regardless of the motive, it earned me another unsolicited cackle.

Each one freaked me out a little more...

Oh, I wasn't freaked out in a "oh, shit, something bad is about to happen..." kinda way. I certainly didn't fear for my safety. I wouldn't imagine this group capable of, say, forcing me into a bamboo cage at the back of the hut, neck-deep in salt-water, laughing while I awkwardly craned my neck upward for breath as rats encircled my genitals....

No, nothing like that...

I was pretty sure that - other than "unintentional" liver cirrhosis brought on from ingesting the homemade formaldehyde that she was now offering me a second dirty shot-glass of - they were incapable of harm.

So, what was it then, I wondered...I mean, besides the dissonant, screeching, "fingernails-across-the-blackboard"-like frequencies being emitted from that near-toothless maw - that was concerning me so much...?

Perhaps it was "bartenders intuition": the most-times-useless ability to gauge levels of intoxication procured and often predict the direction in which that intoxication might be channeled...

Perhaps.

I am on Phu Quoc Island - a small tropical Island about 30 miles off the western coast of Vietnam. With a population of 80,000 and a geographical-area spanning only 30 miles top to bottom, it is an intimate island paradise. Phu Quoc is a "resort" destination for many Westerners and Vietnamese alike. As a resort-town it tends to be a little more expensive than most of mainland Vietnam, but it has a great little night market where the food is fresh and affordable. As with most of Vietnam, the people are very friendly and kind...

I had just made most of the 25 k journey up to the northern tip of the island on my rented motorbike.

The map showed one solid, steady black-line, rising from bottom-to-top, indicating, I had imagined, one solid, steady span of highway covering the same distance.

Reality painted a different picture, however - as it often does in Vietnam, as the roadway diminished in rapid succession from a legitimate two-lane paved highway to a one-lane paved highway to a two lane dirt highway to a two-lane rutted dirt trail (further on, that trail would taper all the way down to a single, "blind" jungle path complete with rickety bamboo bridges and washed-out stream crossings- it would be at that point - in the midst of the jungle, not a soul in sight, that I became frightfully aware just how far the gas-gauge had dwindled into the red on my motorbike). But I am getting ahead of myself...

It was there, on the two-lane rutted path that I chose the sharp right turn onto the dirt trail that headed toward the sea. I had seen not more than half a dozen faces in the last half hour or so..

It was there - at the end of that trail, where dirt-met-sand, where sand-met-sea, where sea-met-village - It was there, that I first met that cackle.

The village, really nothing more than a half-dozen bamboo huts, seemed to be awakening from the afternoon siesta. She - the orator of that cackle - sat on the open landing in front of her bamboo hut shrieking and waving as I passed.

An enthusiastic greeting was certainly nothing unusual. As a western traveler, one gets quickly accustomed to the constant greetings, the constant waving, the incessant shouts of "HELLO!" and "What your NAME?" from just about any dwelling containing a physical presence with a means of elocution.

I bid her my 'now-standard', "Xin Chao!" as I passed and headed toward the sea.

It wasn't until I was on my way back that the shrieking and waving became insistent.

As I rocked my motorbike back onto its kickstand and began walking toward that bamboo shack near the sea, I realized that there were actually three of them present on that cement landing. The other two were all but invisible until I got closer. That damned shrieking pretty much rendered everything else around her transparent. She invited me - with a big toothless grin and a shudder-inspiring cackle - to join her seated on the cement floor and immediately went to task pouring and placing that shot glass containing, what I would later learn was homemade rice whiskey - in front of me. (In Vietnam, shots are not done "group style" as they are in the U.S. - there is a single, shared shot glass passed from one to the next).

At that point it was fairly obvious that these three had, more than likely blown off the afternoon siesta in favor of an early-afternoon 'happy hour".

A muscular 20-something guy with a couple of tattoos lolled about in a hammock to my left. At my right - also sitting cross-legged on the floor - was a kindly, less-boisterous, 'cackle-free' middle-aged woman (his mother, I might have guessed). "She", the raucous cackler, clearly the ring-leader of this particular bunch, missing teeth and loose-skinned, sat at the twelve o'clock position. At closer glance one came to realize that there were all but a few teeth left in that skull, and based on their present condition, they would probably be jumping ship with the others in no time.

To be fair - I must say in all sincerity, that all three of them were very kind and openly welcomed me into their drunken-fold. They graciously offered food on arrival and made a very earnest attempt at introductions and conversation.

I kindly refused the second shot. By explanation, I raised both arms just below shoulder level, hands in down-turned fists, indicating, foolishly, I realized, that I still had to, at some point in the very near future, return to and operate my rented motorbike. I was met with blank stares all around as they collectively tried to comprehend the point. (Drinking and driving? These things, go frightfully hand-in-hand in Vietnam).

With an indifferent shrug, and yet another drunken-shriek, she inadvertently knocked back the shot that I had declined, touched my forearm lightly and slid a little bit closer to me on that cement foundation.

My bartenders-intuition went on full-alert.

I suddenly became painfully aware of what was freaking me out about that cackle...

It wasn't the cackle itself. It was what that cackle represented. Oh, I'd seen it before. Many times. Generally in a slightly - though not by much, younger demographic. That cackle represented a certain "lack-of-inhibition" reached. A certain lack-of-inhibition that, most times, channeled into unsolicited, awkward sexual advances.

Maybe I was overreacting... I mean, had the "accuracy" of that intuition actually been field-tested over "international boundaries"? We were on a Vietnamese Island in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand for Gods-sake! How accurate could it be?

Accuracy notwithstanding, one can't simply shut down eighteen years of hardcore conditioning. I mean Pavlov couldn't have been ringing that bell for longer than a month or so. Two tops. I'd been slinging drinks for a hell of a lot longer than that. It was simply no contest...

No, maybe I couldn't imagine her crouched down over a bamboo cage shrieking menacingly as leeches settled into my emaciated scalp....

I could, however imagine her pawing away at my genitals awkwardly while the others drunkenly chided her. No, there was no immediate danger present. Only a mild, uncomfortable feeling that any minute she might do something that would embarrass both of us - SCRATCH that - might do something to embarrass me. Though I hadn't been in this woman's presence for long, I could say with great certainty that this was not a woman that embarrassed - or regretted easily. If at all...

Whether right or wrong, as I just pointed out, one can't simply lay to rest so many years of conditioning. That bastard Pavlov didn't earn his Nobel Prize for nothing. His century old theory proved itself yet again. I, for my part chose not to test the strength (or lack of) of my own intuition.

Fortunately, along with intuition, a bartender masters many other, often-times, useless life-skills: tact being one of the more useful of them. Dipping into my long-acquired, bag of tricks, I deftly, graciously thanked my drunken hosts, returned myself to the great padded-seat of my rented Honda Motorbike and began the rest of the journey upward on the unknown trails of the Eastern Coast of Phu Quoc Island....