There are two things that I have done an above-average amount of in the last few weeks:
Thinking about the usefulness of my (now-completed) degree
Crying in public restaurants.
Please don't misunderstand me, despite the amount of crying I've been doing, I really am having the time of my life.
However, for whatever divine reason, every time a travel day rolls around on my itinerary and I begin the process of shoving all my clothes and chargers into my backpack, dread slides down my throat like a mouthful of hot noodles.
I'll be the first to admit I'm a dramatic person, but when another travelling friend tells me that I'm the backpacking embodiment of Murphy's law, it makes me think:
How the fuck do I keep getting this unlucky?
My travel days are nothing short of a hellscape of misfortune, but one particularly bad one really made me start pondering both how I'd ended up there (crying next to a Bánh mì stall, having been abandoned by my bus driver who kicked me off the bus at 4am, three hours away from my actual destination) and where the hell I was going next (life/career/goals-wise).
It just so happened that on that particular day, I received an email from the University of Sydney saying that I had completed all the requirements to graduate, but I still hadn't paid my Student Services and Amenities Fee for the semester so I actually wasn't allowed to see any of my results <3.
And, you know, this got me thinking about how I'm starting to lose track of how many times the people I've met have asked me what I'm planning to do with a degree in English and Italian and I've usually answered with:
"Uhm, not a whole heap."
So, whether it came about out of subconscious spite, or if I truly feel a divine connection to one exiled 13th-century Italian in particular, this blog post is a reflection on my degree, my consistent bad luck on travel days, and my superiority complex about not having passed out (yet).
For those who aren't aware, in Inferno (1321) by Dante Alighieri (the person), Dante (the character) faints so. many. times.
He's so dramatic. I love him.
If I had more time I would have tried to figure out exactly how many but, well, I'm busy putting off packing my bag again by writing this blog. I'm just trying to postpone all travel misadventures at this point and that starts with packing.
Anyway, some scholars have argued his fainting was an early attempt at representing neurological problems like epilepsy (Mula 2015; Riva et al 2015), while others interpret Dante as fainting out of both compassion for the tormented souls and respect for divine law (Carr 2020). The epilepsy stuff is interesting, but we're not going to get into that. Instead, I want to talk about why I think that fainting is actually a bit of a cop out (and why I'm literally so brave).
First of all, it is, admittedly, very sweet that Dante gets so overwhelmed by his compassion at times that he just straight up passes out, like when he listens to Paolo and Francesca's love story in Canto 5 (can't believe Dante wrote an entire Canto about my favourite Hozier song, that's crazy).
However, let's talk about when he's just straight-up shit-scared. And look, I'm not here to criticise (yes, I am), he's seeing some freaky things! But if I'm going to prove to myself that I can make my degree useful for the complete career-shift that I've begun, then you best believe that I am going to infer that Dante is a wimp.
Alright let's get into the five times I think I was braver than Dante (in chronological order):
The Guide
All I'm saying is, Dante had a working guide who knew his way around the place, and had valuable insights, didn't just make up locations, or glitch out mid-eight exit roundabout at peak traffic time, simply saying "make a U-turn" repeatedly (WHERE?), and still he fainted when Virgil guides him to the first circle of hell.
Fuck, what I would give for Ancient Roman Poet Virgil to tell me where to go, instead of godforsaken Google Maps.
More specifically, the first time I think I was braver than Dante because I didn't faint was when I was trying to get from Hoi An to Hue on a solo motorbike trip. My Google Maps decided that the most logical way to go was up through someone's driveway, and then down along an alleyway that was full of sand, which meant it was much more difficult to manoeuvre my bike back around through the alleyway and back down said driveway when a rabid dog began to chase me.
I know he was dealing with a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf, but have I think if Dante had tried to turn a motorbike around in the sand while a frothing dog starts at him then the Divine Comedy would have been a hell of a lot shorter.
The Great Abandoning
If you cast your mind back a few paragraphs, you'll recall a brief mention to crying next to a Bánh Mì stall.
Let me tell you this story.
So I've paid a fair bit of money to get an overnight bus from Phong Nha to Cát Bà Island, which is about 12 hours away on both bus and ferry. I'm informed by the bus company that I'm going to be getting off the bus at some point to get a taxi to a ferry to get to the island.
So, when I'm woken up from a restless sleep at 3:30am to the bus driver shaking my leg and saying "Taxi!", I logically think, oh boy! This is my taxi! The one they told me about!
I get off the bus and ask the driver if the taxi is taking me to the Cát Bà ferry, he gives a thumbs up. I'm thinking, "Great! This is too easy", and even when another guy gets off the bus and hops into the taxi with me, telling me he's going to Hanoi, not a single alarm bell starts ringing.
Somehow, in my sleep-deprived mind, I've decided this guy is an absolute IDIOT who doesn't realise he's going to the Cát Bà ferry. I'm honestly even feeling sorry for him, and keep bringing up that the company told me about the taxi.
That is, until I see the directions on the driver's Google Maps and I think to myself that that looks like an awful lot of city and not an awful lot of water for ferry, given we seem to be only 10 minutes away from our destination.
So I pull out my own Google Maps (with hatred) and see that we are, in fact, in Hanoi. No problem! I'm historically an optimist and have never ever been known to spiral ever.
The panic sets in quickly.
Maybe there's going to be two stops? One to Hanoi, which is ten minutes away, and another one to the Cát Bà ferry terminal...........
which is three hours away.
There wasn't another stop.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent the hour of 4am to 5am crying on the steps next to a Bánh Mì stall.
Our two heroes (me and Dante) both cried when they were left alone (Purgatorio, 30.49-54), which is a very normal response to suddenly finding yourself without company. However, Dante was about to literally go to Heaven, and I had to wander the streets of a city I'd never been to with 30kgs worth of backpacks on in an attempt to find a bus to take me the rest of the way.
No need to say it, I know. Very brave behaviour.
The Illness
This one was rough.
I eventually did make it to Cát Bà and had a beautiful three days, until I came down with the worst stomach bug I have ever had in my life. On day three (out of six!) of the stomach bug, my friends and I had to go back to Hanoi and I was still not well, but it was nothing compared to what was about to happen.
One by one, as the four-hour bus ride rumbled along, the girls went down.
It was genuinely horrific, and of course, they knew that I had given it to them, so I was fighting off accusations that I'd given them the travel curse, dealing with the guilt of being ever so slightly better while they dealt with the worst of it, and focussing on not being the third person to throw up on the bus.
Sorry Dante, babes, I win this one in a landslide.
The Witnesses
On account of the fact that every single bus I had been on in Vietnam had me stepping off shaking (either with nausea or panic), I decided that I deserved a little sleeper train treat when going to Ha Long Bay via Hanoi from Sapa.
But first, I had to get on a shuttle bus. Where I met a mid-40s Australian couple (let's call them Patrick and Sally), who just so happened to be Jehovah's Witnesses.
Very early on during the shuttle bus ride to the train station, Patrick made an abrasively homophobic joke—something about King’s Cross and drug dealers and homosexuals (sounds like a party), so I was quick to bring up being gay after that.
I was hoping, nay, praying, that this would put them off continuing conversation with me.
It didn’t.
To get out of tough conversations, my mans, Dante either faints or relies on Virgil to get him out of there. I did not have either of those options.
So, I decided that, if I was going to be stuck in conversation with two Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was going to have some fun with it.
To my surprise, despite their refusal to believe that bisexuals were real, they were actually quite interested in my journey to figuring out my sexuality.
(Sorry, you think there is a man in the sky and that evolution being taught in schools is abhorrent, but bisexuals are where you draw the line??)
But, when an opportunity arose as I said, “Yep, liking women has always been a certainty for me”, and Patrick responded “Me too”, I fucking took it. I reached my palm across the table and high-fived a Jehovah’s Witness about liking women.
Truly an accomplishment for lesbians everywhere.
Sometimes you just don’t realise that something needed to be on your bucket list until you’ve done it.
I love the Divine Comedy, but I genuinely think it would have been even better if there had been at least one high-five with a Jehovah’s Witness present.
The Fire
By the time I arrived in Ha Long Bay, I was physically exhausted from the shitty cold I’d caught in Sapa, and emotionally exhausted from holding conversation with the Witnesses. As I stepped off the bus, the smell of smoke hit the back of my throat immediately. It didn’t take me long to find its source. I guessed it to be a couple of kilometres away, but it was slow-burning so I brushed it off as nothing more than a bit of back-burning, which is a rationale I often use to calm myself down over my significant, long-time fear of bushfires.
The fire flickered in and out of my vision over the next day, crawling its way over the mountainside.
As dusk settled and the burnt orange sun floated down behind the sea, I went to sit in the communal area of my hostel, which is when I realised something was wrong.
To start with, I was clearly the only customer left in the hostel, which didn’t immediately alarm me because there had only been a few the day before. But, I realised that I could see the fire about 300 metres away. So, naturally, I asked one of the workers what was happening and tried my best not to show the panic on my face as he explained that the fire was not under control, as I had assumed.
Noticing that the other workers were standing above me on the balcony, I went up there too.
It turned out that, yep!, there definitely was one fire line about 300 metres away, but there was also another one closer to 30-40 metres away and I could see the flames enveloping the trees from my dorm window.
But still, I did not faint (even if I’d wanted to). I packed up my shit and bolted, but I did take this photo just so people would believe me.
I made it down to the water line, sat down in a seafood restaurant and burst into tears while I ignored texts from the hostel (who did not give me my money back for that night) telling me I had an unpaid drink bill from the night before.
I know Dante walked through the river of boiling blood and fire in the seventh circle, but I reckon we’re pretty much on par in regards to journeying through burning fires.
Dante’s fainting is the subject of much debate—what does it mean? Is it just a narrative device? Is it an early literary representation of narcolepsy? Is he just a bit of a wuss?
To quote my beautiful friend, Liam, on Dante fainting all the time: “I think he was a huge bitch but writing a whole epic poem about how you’re a massive fucking hater is vibes”.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I took away from my degree, too.
I actually did consider continuing on with my studies in Honours, focussing on Dante. Fortunately, I realised that I would much rather write a blog post about why I’m braver than the man who arguably had the greatest influence on the unification of the Italian language.
I don’t know, I think he would’ve fucked with the blog, honestly. At his core, he was a dramatist who loved telling a good story as a way to figure out what the hell was going on in his life.
And, I mean, if we’re going to draw that parallel…
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