Ryoko pulled her wheeled pink and white Hello Kitty suitcase out of the train station while Hiroshi hefted his backpack onto his back.
“It’s not too far,” he said as he checked his map.
“Good. I need a shower.”
“This way,” Hiroshi said and started walking north.
“We’re walking?” Ryoko whined.
Hiroshi knew she was going to complain. “Yeah,” he sighed. She wanted to travel in comfort, Hiroshi knew. He wanted to travel cheap, light, and fast, stopping only to meet people and absorb the atmosphere of a good place.
“But the taxis are really cheap,” she said.
“Every yen we save means we can travel that much longer.”
“We still have to get back to school before April,” Ryoko correctly pointed out. “It’s not like we can travel forever anyway.”
“Walking is good for us,” Hiroshi said, changing tactics. “Get our legs in good shape for the mountains.”
“Mountains?”
“Remember, I said I wanted to try to see the Dalai Lama? He lives in Nepal. And the road to Tibet is open now, so we can see Tibet, too.”
“They have taxis, don’t they?” Ryoko said as she wrestled her suitcase down the station steps.
“This is only our fourth country,” Hiroshi said. “We’ve got dozens more.”
“Well, this isn’t what I expected.”
Hiroshi knew what she expected and he wasn’t it. She wanted a honeymoon and people waiting on her. She wanted a daily itinerary that she could follow and feel as if she were back in Japan in her daily life.
“Adventure, Ryoko, is seldom what we expect.”
“Well, I don’t want adventure. I want comfort.” She yanked her suitcase over the broken sidewalk.
Hiroshi warned her a suitcase, even with wheels, wasn’t going to be as useful as she thought but she insisted, crying “It’s so cute!” (Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!) when she saw the Hello Kitty suitcase.
“I want a taxi. I’m not walking all the way with this suitcase.”
“Ryoko...” He hailed a taxi and paid 20 yen to go less than a kilometer.
Their argument wasn’t about the taxi or the cost, of course, it was deeper than that. Ryoko wanted to tour Vietnam as if she were a tourist: nice hotel, stores, the main sites and nice dinners in a nice restaurant.
Hiroshi wanted to see things from street level and talk with as many people as he could. And live cheaply, which meant dorm-style hotels where they met travelers in the common room, shared a kitchen and stories about good places to go and see.
But even their travel style wasn’t their real argument. She wanted a nice ‘safe’ life; Hiroshi was willing to take risks, push his personal space envelope, and was willing to try something new just because it was new.
They sat down for dinner at a ‘nice’ Vietnamese restaurant. It had plastic table cloths and clean water glasses that the water person kept filled throughout their meal.
“Hiroshi,” Ryoko said after they had finished their meal, mostly in long extended silences. “I’m going back to Japan.”
“When?”
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