By Garrett Cooper
On our second night in Vietnam, we were forced into doing our second stealth camp of the expedition, the first being when Matt almost got stepped on and slept through the whole thing. We hadn't seen a place to camp all day and there weren't any towns with a hotel either. There was too much big boat traffic to paddle at night so we hugged the shoreline until we found a spot without lights on the edge of some crops. We laid out our Oware sleeping pads and our Snugpak sleeping bags, but before laying down I told Matt that the most likely avenue of approach was the path he was next to. I told him he needed to be in the mind set of waking up to any sound, if for nothing else to make sure he wouldn't get stepped on.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to someone very nearby yelling "Who are you!? Who are you!?" I tore open my sleeping bag and said "Matt wake up!" Matt was rolling around, grunting and making a big commotion. I thought he must have been wrestling someone I couldn't see in the dark, but then the struggle was over and all I could see was Matt sitting up, still in his sleeping bag, with the mosquito net stretched over his face. No one was there besides us. The whole tussle was just Matt flopping like a fish on the ground.
It took me a moment to realize what happened, and when I did, I couldn't stop laughing. Matt did get in the mind set of investigating sounds during the night and being aware of our surroundings, but instead of waking up to look around, he was talking in his sleep saying "Who are you!?" Matt startled me and when I told him to wake up, he was startled and was struggling to get out of his sleeping bag in all the excitement. To add to Matt's panic, both his arms were asleep and he wasn't able to get out of his sleeping bag. Later, he said that when he realized he couldn't get out of his sleeping bag he resigned himself to defeat and just sat up with his sweaty sleeping bag twisted around his body.