Dispatches With Janice
The time is late afternoon on a Saturday and the sun is trying to kill us. The smog is hanging around to catch any survivors of the sun. Today is a bank holiday in Macau, a special administrative region of China that was a Portuguese colony until 1999. We are lost on foot with our rolling luggage, trying to find the bus terminal from the ferry. I trip up the stairs, banging my knee so hard on the cement that I see stars. I crawl back into the aircon of the ferry terminal and sit with my head between my knees before I faint. Hospital systems are not my favorite way to acquaint myself with a new country.
I recover after a few minutes, thankful for a best friend who makes sure I drink water and who is patient and sympathetic enough to wait until I am fully recovered to poke fun at my dramatic response to an injury that did not even produce a scrape. We eventually find the bus terminal just a city block away from the ferry and blame our stupidity on the heat.
The two of us check into our hotel, where we request separate beds since Janice tends to wet the bed when she’s drunk, whereas I tend to vomit, and this weekend might get messy. Macau is called the Las Vegas of China and we are here to see if the reputation is worthy.
Janice and I met working for the same organization in Hong Kong but in different offices. We both moved to the city sight unseen and knowing absolutely no one. Janice is from northern England, while I’m from Seattle, which makes us more like favorite cousins. We bonded over both our home cities being known for dreary weather, dark humor, and dive bars. Janice and I had one of those friendships that blossomed naturally one day when we finished a group hike and everyone wanted to go home, but the two of us decided we weren’t done being social and decided to go on an eating adventure to a Vietnamese restaurant. We were both single and alone in a new city and depended on each other for support.
We get glam and take a taxi to the casinos. We tiptoe around in our heels getting the sense that Macau is the Vegas of China in that there are plenty of gambling opportunities, but Macau is far less sexy than Vegas. At the slot machines, elderly Chinese men sit with a cigarette in their hand like it’s a sixth finger. The showgirls have thick Eastern European accents and don’t pretend to enjoy their work. We are able to find drinks, but no nightclubs or fun bars filled with young singles in their twenties like us. We purchase tickets to the water show, which is the only show in Macau. The show is an excellent dupe of Cirque du Soleil’s O, so we opt for the splash seats, which are grand entertainment and worth the price, and then go back to our hotel room with drinks and 7-11 snacks to make our own fun.
We lay hungover by the pool the following morning. I’m wearing the old revenge bikini Janice helped me pick out after a boyfriend broke up with me in a text message saying that he couldn’t see himself marrying me. I remember Janice and me sitting in a coffee shop splitting a slice of Lady M cake after our shopping spree and deciding to book flights to the Maldives, since I would need a gorgeous beach to debut my new bikini.
Macau is more like the Reno of China, if our pool is any evidence. The pool has the aesthetic of a miniature Silver Legacy Resort Casino, but there’s no swim up bar. We can’t go topless and there’s no DJ, which neither of us is missing with these hangover headaches.
We eventually pull ourselves vertical to go be tourists and walk around the Cotai Strip. We take pictures and eat classic foods like egg tarts and buy souvenirs to mail home to our families.
Macau is like Vegas in that one weekend is plenty of time. Janice and I nap on the ferry back home to Hong Kong and trade fashion magazines to read.
Janice and I spend another bank holiday across the border from Hong Kong in the beach town of Shenzhen. A man approaches us as soon as we step out of the train terminal, asking if we need a taxi. Neither Janice nor I had looked up taxis in China. Are they marked? Is there Uber or a Chinese equivalent? I shrug at Janice and mention that we do need transportation, and in my nonchalant attitude that causes my mother so much stress, I nod at the man without giving Janice time to talk me out of being a donkey.
We follow the presumed taxi driver around the corner behind the train station and through another building. Shouldn’t we be going toward the street and not away? Janice and I eye each other. She asks the man where the taxi stand is, but he doesn’t speak English. We are then free to speak about how uncomfortable we feel, but keep following the man up a staircase then into an elevator and through yet another building to a parking garage.
Why is his taxi parked? He motions for us to wait at the curb and tells us to “stay.” Could we find our way back to the train station?
“On a scale of one to kidnapping,” Janice asks me, “how many of your danger sensors are going off?” At least there are people around. A scream doesn’t need a translation. An old, unmarked car comes around the corner with all the passenger windows blacked out. The car stops in front of us and our smiling taxi driver motions for us to get in. Janice and I don’t look at each other or speak. We both run. Back toward the elevators, down the stairs, around the corner, hollering directions back and forth at each other until we finally make it back to the train station and out to the road to be in the middle of as many people as possible. Janice could never blend in with her fair skin and bleached blond hair, but at least there are people around, and we’ve always found the Chinese to be decent.
We spot what looks like a clean red taxi with a handsome young man who might as well be an angel driving a chariot. We show him our hotel address in Mandarin on our printed reservation, since neither of us has a Chinese SIM card yet. He nods, and as we are climbing into the back seat, our kidnapper comes running around the corner screeching in Mandarin and putting up his hands telling our driver to wait. We motion for our driver to Nascar his way into traffic. He ignores us to roll down his window and speak to the old man as Janice and I cling to each other. Our new driver punches a few numbers into his phone calculator, and we gather we will be paying double the fare. Whatever. We figure our safety is worth the price. We nod, and the younger man gives the older man a half of our wad of cash before pulling into traffic like he’s the champion of Formula One.
The next morning, we walk across the street to the beach where we are ushered through the gate without paying. Janice is descended upon with phones in her face as if she were Taylor Swift in the nosebleed section of an American football game.
“I didn’t know you were a celebrity here,” I say sideways to her, keeping my eyes alert and scanning the crowd that has begun to form. She is grumpy and pushes through the crowd, shielding her face and saying, “No pictures—I’m not a bloody celebrity—no pictures—I don’t know who these people think I am—no pictures,” like anyone understands. I follow her and gather from body language that the crowd has never seen a busty blonde in real life.
We set down our towels and swim out into the sea, leaving the crowd to wait for us on the beach. You’d think the people here would have seen more tourists, since we’re so close to Hong Kong, but apparently that’s not the case. We stay in the water until Janice’s shoulders are visibly burned, when we decide to make a run for it all the way back to our hotel.
This time, we find humor in the situation and giggle all the way back, with Janice saying, “No pictures—what do you plan to do with them anyways?! Bloody hell!” We go to a fancier hotel for dinner, where Janice’s blond hair wins us a seat at the chef’s table and a free bottle of champagne. We put our bikinis back on once we’re in the room to take a bath and try to sober up together while we rehash all the fun we’ve had over the past few years.
Neither of us has a tendency toward nostalgia, but we’ve made a pact to tell each other we love the other after one of our dear mutual friends was stabbed to death just after repatriating to the United States. Maris was in the wrong place on the Vegas Strip at the wrong time, when a man with a chef’s knife had a psychotic break. She traveled and lived more life in thirty years than most, and left nothing on her bucket list for us to complete in her honor. Maris was not shy about affection, so you knew if she loved you, which is one way we’ve vowed to keep her legacy alive.
Janice spends my thirtieth birthday weekend with me in Taiwan. We land late at night and once again get the transportation wrong. The train to the city has stopped running, so we do our best to navigate the way to our hostel by bus in the dark in a country where English is not useful. There is no one else with whom I’d rather be lost. We get off the bus as close to the city as possible and wander around the streets until 2 a.m., when we finally bump into a police officer who points us in the right direction.
I call my new boyfriend, who has told me I can be too “rock and roll” at times. He does not see the humor in the situation as I giggle my way through the story. Janice gives me the top bunk. We sleep a few hours, but set our alarms early. Saturday is our only full day in Taiwan, and we are not going to waste a minute on sleep.
We eat Taiwanese street food all day, from breakfast to the night market, talking about the other destinations we want to experience together: Japan, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea. Janice and I like to plan our next travel adventure while we are still on our current trip.
We stuff ourselves into bikinis the next day and set out for the hot springs before our return flight. I am nervous about missing it but don’t mention this to Janice, who seems confident. I wish I could live with less anxiety and more assurance that life often turns out fine.
We steam ourselves like two little dumplings next to an old Taiwanese man, chatting about booking our next flights to Thailand after we are added to a WhatsApp group for a friend who wants to celebrate his birthday in Bangkok. We’ll all stay in an Airbnb and get absolutely no culture aside from the dingiest peek into the horrific sex habits of rich old white men. Janice and I will be sitting outside a bar in Bangkok while our friends are still inside. She will have gotten 86’d from the bar. Janice’s head will be on the table, but while I will be content to people-watch, I’ll grow more horrified by the minute at the old man sitting at the bar across from us. He will be making a show of cracking jokes to the older women hawking various items to tourists. His hand will be on the thigh of a bored-looking twelve-year-oldish girl who won’t look up from her phone when he kisses her on the mouth. She will follow him out of the bar a few minutes later.
I’ll be sitting with Janice in our shared room the next day, after she’s been told off by the birthday boy for getting too drunk. In my propensity toward dramatics and extremes, I’ll ask Janice if she has a drinking problem. She will tell me that drinking problems are as American as school shootings and Thanksgiving.
A colleague in St. Lucia once told me that Americans don’t know how to relax, and this is a reason we are so uptight and violent. She told me this as I was refusing to have a drink at lunch in the middle of the workday. Our colleagues in Hong Kong drink in the office if there’s any occasion to celebrate. I’ve seen my boss fall out of her chair at a company dinner and have to be carried into a taxi. The English consider keeping a cheeky bottle of wine on your work desk an acceptable form of flair.
Janice and I rinse off at the hot springs and go directly to the airport with wet hair, unaware that this will be our last trip together. Our friendship group will expand, so I’ll fly to Fiji solo for my next trip while Janice flies to Vietnam. My boyfriend and I will become serious and will begin to travel more together. Janice will remain the bacon to my eggs, but our relationship dynamics will ebb and flow. We will have a trip planned together for Jordan that will be canceled by a scary new respiratory disease from China. My boyfriend will become my husband and we’ll leave Hong Kong together. Janice will meet a man in England who solidifies her decision to move home. We may not travel together anymore, but we will still make a point to say “I love you” before hanging up.
