A Country Bumpkin Goes to the City

by | Mar 16, 2014 | family, travel | 10 comments

        leaving the United States

leaving the United States

A layover in Tokyo.

The baby was sleeping in the infant bed the hotel provided. The girls were cross-legged on the floor, their eyes unblinking as Japanese cartoon characters flitted across the TV screen. My husband was in the bathroom, shaving.

Only three weeks earlier I’d been in the hospital in Sedro-Woolley, WA, giving birth to our third daughter. Now, here I was on my way to Hong Kong to meet my father-in-law for the first time, and then, on to Manila to start a new life.

I opened the curtains and looked out on the cityscape. Building after gray building filled the space like a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Where, I wondered, did it end? And how in the world could anyone become familiar with this city when the buildings all looked the same?

In the town where I grew up, it was possible to know every single street. Even in Seattle where I spent my college years, I’d been able to memorize the names of major downtown streets and avenues. Tokyo was fifteen or twenty times bigger than Seattle. And yet, I thought, it must be knowable.  

When my husband came out of the bathroom I was still standing at the window, staring at the one thing on the street below that didn’t make any sense.

“Eugene,” I said. “Come over here. Look.” I had a feeling I was about to ask a stupid question, but the urge to know trumps everything. “I don’t understand why so many people are coming out of that one small building and nobody’s going into it?”

He laughed. Eugene went to high school in Yokohama, so he knew his way around Tokyo. “It’s a subway exit,” he said, shaking his head, not unkindly.

Of course it was.

Catching a taxi in Sydney, Australia

Photo by Tony Vo

Photo by Tony Vo

Many years later, we moved from the Philippines to a small town in the South Pacific: Port Vila, Vanuatu. It didn’t take me long to forget the big city ways I’d learned in Manila. So when my husband’s doctor sent him for a consultation in Sydney, once again I was out of my element.

After our flight from Vila, we checked into a nice little hotel near Bondi Beach. The following day, my husband saw the doctor and had some tests taken. Then we wandered around, looking at the sights until we were worn out. By then, we had no idea how to get back to our hotel. Time to catch a taxi.

We found a spot and started waving. It was approaching rush hour, though, and most of the taxis were full. I stepped down from the curb and waved harder. People around us were catching taxi’s. Why couldn’t we?

I was worried. My husband’s health was shaky. We should have started back sooner. By the time I finally succeeded in waving a red taxi over, I must have been feeling frantic. “Eugene,” I shouted. “Over here. The red one.” I grabbed the taxi’s door handle and called again. “Eugene?”

Didn’t he see me? But no. Instead of heading my way, he was stepping off the curb.

“No, Eugene. Wait!”

He opened the back door of a red car that was waiting for the light, and climbed in. Unfortunately, the red car wasn’t a taxi. It was a privately owned red Mercedes.

The owner must have thought he was being carjacked because he just stared straight ahead without saying a word. Eugene must have thought taxis in Sydney were especially nice because he stayed put until I knocked on the window.

Fortunately the red taxi waited for us. A country bumpkin like me would have had a hard time catching another one.

10 Comments

  1. CrazyChineseFamily

    I grew up both in the city and the countryside so I saw over the years many rather funny events. Such as a city person going first time to the countryside and vice versa, it is just so new and strange for them and I would never realize it on my own as I grew up in both environments

    Reply
  2. Jocelyn Eikenburg

    Ha, so funny Nicki!

    Of course, I think this is happening to me in reverse. I grew up in the city and now here I am living a “country bumpkin” life in the countryside. Wonder if I’ll have a hard time flagging down taxis next time I head to the big city? 😉

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Very funny! It sounds like you’re having fun adjusting to the countryside.

      Reply
  3. Chick Sandifer

    Nicki–Hmm. What? No red taxis in Sedro

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Not that I know of, Chick. Can you imagine waving down a taxi in Sedro-Woolley?

      Reply
  4. Hari Qhuang

    I get to see “bumpkins” a lot in my daily life.
    Our province is a developing state where one can find people who are really modern or really traditional. (That, I think, is a very nice way to put it) 😀

    I have seen historical grandmothers who used the escalator for the first time, screaming all the way and then fell down as soon as they reached the end of the escalator.

    I have also encountered a child who got dizzy so bad and puked inside the lift. His family was so traumatize that they asked if there were “normal ways” to reach the lower floors.

    There is a very mean term – used by the local Chinese folks – to “label” these bumpkins. It is “Sua Pa Kau” which can be loosely translated as a monkey who gets out of the forest for the first time.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Good stories, Hari. I feel sorry for the grandmother on the escalator, but it must have been a funny sight.

      Reply
  5. nrhatch

    Great tale well told, Nicki!

    I don’t like cities. They overwhelm me. Give me a rock overlooking the ocean, or a country lane, or a rushing mountain stream any day.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I like to live in a place that’s not too crowded, not too quiet. It sounds like you live in a very pleasant spot, Nancy.

      Reply
  6. katecrimmins

    Great story! I love your stories about living abroad in such unusual exotic places. What a great experience.

    Reply

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