Hellobeerbellook!ok!ok!hello!

After finishing a lunch of "farmerfood" (tempura fried pumpkin!), we walk lethargically to the shade where we've locked the front tires of our bikes together. Immediately, two elderly women come up to us and try to sell us coke, postcards and water. They are wearing conical hats, their wares tucked inside a tape-covered box. Like many in this area, they know only three English words: "hello," "whatever-they-are-selling," and "ok!" This manifests itself in increasingly - yet wonderfully - bizarre ways: Three hours before we were lazily drifting down a river on a bamboo boat, dangerous looking mountain peaks around ever corner. As we turned the bend, a woman was set up on a bamboo float "hello-beer-ok! hellohellobeerokok!"

Back in the parking lot, outside the small roadside restaurant 7 or 8 kilometers from town, the women watch us intensely as we are unable to open the lock.
"Hellook," asks one, pointing to herself.
"Ok," we gesture for her to try.
She tries.
"Hellook," she nods sadly, unable to open the lock.
We look at her, shrug our shoulders, think about the possibility of carrying the two bikes to town.

A Peace Corps/ESL teacher type person comes by. He gives the lock the old American try. Doesn't budge.

The woman mimes a hammer. "Hellook?"

PeaceCorps tells us we will lose our deposit.

"Hellook?" she repeats her gesture with the hammer.

"Ok," we say, and she grins, runs off. Suddenly, five more old women appear, all miming hammering our lock, sounding like seagulls at the beach.

"Hello-ok! Hellohello-coke! Hello! Ok! Ok! Hellohello okHelloHello!HELLO!OK!hello!"

We shrug. They holler into the trees.

A man comes out of the bamboo with a hammer and a brick. Two more men show up on a motorcycle, also with a hammer and a brick.

PeaceCorps shows off his Chinese skills and bargains the price of breaking our lock from 10 yuan to 8. We could have done the bargaining just as well as we could have paid the 2 yuan (about 30 cents) but we appreciate his help. One man gets to work hammering away our lock. The other locksmith drives off. The elderly women drift away. PeaceCorps walks away. The man sees that we are not with PeaceCorps. He stops, grins at us, says, "hello-10-yuan-ok!" We say 8. He keeps hammering.

Our bikes freed from each other, we ride down past the women under the trees. They smile and cheer to see that we are free. "Hello! Hello-ok!" cheerfully echoes as we cross the street and make our way back to town.