Introduction to Vietnam

August 21

Whew, Vietnam!  You thrill me!  Everywhere I go I have to maintain my animal alertness, a watchful eye for funny quirks and motorbikes on the sidewalks, dodging the smells that make me sick and the people sitting on those funny baby plastic chairs a few inches off the ground.  Dien Bien Phu sucked (I know it’s harsh, but really, it was bleak when I was there).  I would have been normally happy to find only pho stalls to eat at, but the smell worsened my already plan-changing stomach cramps (thank you, bad chicken in my spicy soup the day before) and I had to bargain down for a bowl of plain, steamed rice.  I don’t know how they eat rice every day, and love it!  I can’t figure out the equivalent that we have, not cereal, not bread, something simpler, like carbohydrates or water.  They love it, they can’t live without it, they ask me twice about it when I refuse to eat it with my curry.  “I’ll eat it like a soup, thank you”.  

Dien Bien Phu…noisy with dogs and car horns that don’t beep but rather undulate in a rhythm that makes me wonder if the car is broken.  In Hanoi, I thought, I will try and eat comfort food to recover.  I should probably go to the hospital, or take my Cipro, because every time I turn, my belly seems to remind me that there is a plant, or a seed, or a tree, or something non-human growing inside of it.  At least that’s what it feels like.

I thought I should suffer through the 12 hour bus ride (during the day so as to be more alert and not waste a sleepless night and risk getting sicker) to Hanoi as soon as possible so I could fully rest there amongst things I thought I would need, like water and breakfast (things that were hard to find in Dien Bien Phu).  Yes, a bus with air conditioning, or at least the vents for it!  I got a window seat; it was the type of bus, like a tourist bus, with two seats on one side and one seat on the other.  I wanted to sleep so I took the one seat to myself.  It didn’t recline.  The gap between the window and seat was too big for me to rest my head there.  It was fine; I can sleep in an upright position.  Before I knew it, luggage was being pushed into the bus to fit into any leftover space that human flesh did not occupy, meaning I had no legroom (I am bigger than the average Vietnamese person so I especially had no leg room).  The aisles had a pull out seat and within the first hour the bus (which also served as a local bus, post office, and party bus) was sitting five or six people across the aisle, with people climbing over other people, bags, and in and out of windows to get on and off.  My stomach was not up for this, but there was no bathroom on this bus and we only stopped three times during this ordeal. 

Ok, I have to admit, it wasn’t that much of an ordeal, minus the constant musical honking (honking because we’re turning, because someone is in front of us, because someone is to the side of us, because there is something on the side of the road, because it’s raining, because we’re braking, because there’s a turn in the road and we need to see if people are coming our way, honking for the sheer delight of it, to say hi to people, to tell them we’re full, to tell them to get on, etc etc) and the blaring Vietnamese music and videos (party bus), the people yelling into their cell phones, and the general discomfort of a bus at almost 200% capacity.  BUT, the scenery was stunning.  Water buffalo walking up the hills, being herded by kids with sticks…water buffalo actually chilling in the water, children and women walking with harvested corn in baskets on their backs and heads, bright green rice paddies, beautiful mountains and hills that we precariously climbed, picking up packages for people to be dropped off hours later at precisely the right pick-up spot (how did the driver know exactly the intersection in the town to go to?), people in traditional clothing, people in modern clothing, unpaved roads and shaky bridges -as long as my Vietnamese bus-riding pros did not make a worried face about the safety of our little town on wheels I knew we were ok.  Cars overturned in ditches…pouring rain that turned into minor flooding…people not wanting to sit next to me and not feeling comfortable enough until I offered them some food and then they fell asleep on me…all  part of this fabulous, sleep-less, rotating, moving sub-communal bus-ride. 

Did I mention the three stops?  Yes, the three stops.  For starters, the men here have a tendency to smoke something out of these huge bongs.  In trying to figure it out, a guy who was on a previous bus with me surmised that it was ground up bamboo, but then on further study I noticed that the bong was made of bamboo and that there could have easily been some miscommunication.  Opium is huge here.  At each stop, the men would sit in a circle, cigarettes in one hand, passing around this huge bong while eating fruit and drinking tea.  The women just ate and drank.  Yes, even the driver partook in this smoking circle.  I was nervous!  But they weren’t.  My local transportation fear-gauge seemed to be managing just fine.  When South East Asians get freaked out in a bus or car or train or elephant, it’s time to get the hell out.  

During lunch, the second stop,  the bus mate/money handler/hustler/driver-in-training tried to get me to eat, but once I motioned that my stomach hurt (absolutely NO English spoken on the bus whatsoever, not even hello or thank you.  People would speak to me in Vietnamese and expect them to speak back to them, making me think that they think its hilariously outrageous when tourists come up to them and speak a string of English words and then expect an answer), he settled on buying me a “Rhino-S” energy drink and offering me a cigarette, clearly the cure-all for immense stomach pain.  I took the drink, declined the cigarette, and only sipped it when he was watching me, not sure when the next bathroom stop was.  It was five hours later. 

Sure enough, bus mate invited me to the Men’s Circle.  The bong circle.  I was terrified.  I didn’t want to smoke, for a lot of reasons.  Plain and simple, I would never, ever do drugs and risk being thrown in jail in a place like Vietnam.   Secondly, I had no idea what was in that massive bong.  Thirdly, being invited to the Men’s Circle was odd.  Fourthly, if it was opium, this bus ride was already hellish enough without any external substances.  If they were smoking herbal sleeping pills or Pepto, that would have been a different story!  But I couldn’t decline at least sitting down in Men’s Circle and “joining the conversation”.  I drank some tea, which automatically made my whole mouth feel like the Mojave Desert, forced down a few more shots of it because all the Men were looking, and ate some strange green apricot fruit.  The bong was safely in the hands of the driver.  Safely?  The mate was engaging all of us in the most serious of serious conversations, eyes bulging, arms flailing about, voice showing even more emotion than the run of the mill Vietnamese, which already sounds really emotional.  He was really pulling me into his heated argument, or story, or philosophical debate, or opium-induced rant.   It went a little like this:

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!”  Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “Yeah, man, that sounds gnarly”.  I make my eyes wide and nod my head.  Men’s Group follows.

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!” Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “I have no idea what you’re saying, but it sounds super serious.  But then again, I don’t speak one word of Vietnamese.”  More eye-bulging and agreement from the Men.

This went on for a few more minutes until he decided he was finished and we all got up and got back inside our packed bus.  My introduction to the mystifyingly beautiful Northern Vietnamese male culture was interesting and a little scary.  I laughed to myself, grateful that through all of this, through hectic bus rides and women sleeping on me, through water-buffalo traffic and small fights breaking out in the bus, I could still maintain a sense of humor.  

Thank you, Laos

August 19

I’m nervous about going home.  I don’t know where else to go, but being in Laos gave me some clear vision, or the beginnings of a clear vision - I actually get to make that decision on my own now. As long as I don’t end up doing the things I know I don’t want to do, I’ll be ok.  I just don’t know what I want to do, but I can figure it out…I know that at least I’ll be guided but what I feel now is a passion for something, a motivation to try things out and shed them if I don’t think they fit.  

Thank You Laos, for giving me that, for allowing me to have profound conversations with people who have done that, for allowing me to sit on a hammock and look at amazing scenery, for allowing me to see and enter into a completely foreign and beautiful place; the most rural and untouched form of life I have ever seen, for reminding me that these people work hard and live hard lives and for making me realize that inevitably, I will have to do something-it depends on my motivation to have that something be the thing I want it to be.  I will never forget the rurality, the duality of tourism and traditional living, the naked children running down the river banks and jumping into the Nam Ou River, the way people go about their daily, casual, tough lives and making a living in incredibly difficult circumstances.  

The boat ride from Muang Ngoi Neua to Muang Khua ranks among my favorite connections that I have had, ever.  Sitting on a plank of wood, meandering slowly upriver through the muddy water, with a six year old boy and two young men (one mate and one driver) and five travelers.  Blissful, peaceful, quiet.  We stopped to check shrimp traps, watching naked children make mud towers on the banks.  We stopped at numerous villages along the way and watched as people led their lives in front of us.  We stopped to buy fish, to put banana tree trunks in the boat that the boys’ parents chopped down, to drop off the boy, the bathe in the river, to buy cigarettes for the driver.  It took three hours more than it was supposed to, and I couldn’t have been happier.  Watching mud fights erupt on the banks, watching men check more fish traps, watching women and their babies watch us, it was something I felt few people will ever get to see, a glimpse into a life that is virtually untouched by everything that touches and harasses my life on a regular basis.  

So thank you Laos for giving me peace of mind, for giving me a piece of your mind, for being a country that I had not known about before, that seems forgotten by the world, a country that I will never forget.  

Thank you Tom, for listening to my rants about people in my life who have hurt me, for always making conversation, for buying me beer and knowing when I needed to be alone.  Thank you Mel for letting me know that I can work abroad in an incredibly meaningful way if I want to.  Thank you Akemi, for letting me know that I am not so privileged as to think that I don’t have to work and can just travel forever, and that its ok for me to like going home, that it shouldn’t matter as long as I carry me and my happiness with me.  Thank you Nong Khiaw for making me feel grounded again, and Penny for making me realize that I have a talent for getting people to open up about their most personal life stories.

Thank you Laos.  Now on to Vietnam.  For a whole new type of gratitude.

Pictures of Mae Sot and more

Here are my last few pictures from my time in Thailand - documenting some serious human rights issues to the alcohol-soaked Full Moon Party.  Enjoy!

https://picasaweb.google.com/114379609394765551921/MaeSotAndTheFullMoonPartyTwoOppositeEndsOfTheSpectrum?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCI6ru7jsh4iAMw&feat=directlink

A Memory Reenacted

August 13^th

I saw it today, a flash in the past, a quick jaunt in the black of years ago, a gleam of color in what was forcibly forgotten.  I saw him, a little Laotian boy, as he eyed the puddle of mud near the bear sanctuary that his family worked at, cooking snacks for the travelers.  He was about two or three, much younger than I ever remember being, but his presence and what he did sparked something in me and for a moment I forget the pain that ensued in my years to follow.  He saw the mud, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.  He looked at it carefully, not sure what to do, and then saw the potential for playing in it.  I watched from afar, recognizing something I hadn’t seen in a while.  He teetered over to the puddle, watching it as though it would move suddenly or just as quickly as it became something fun to do it might turn boring.  When he saw that that that did not happen, he promptly sat down and dug his hands in, feeling the coolness ooze through his fingers.  A similar coolness ran through my veins, one of familiarity with that hesitancy, with that impatient patience, not sure about getting dirty but absolutely positive that this would turn out to be the highlight of the afternoon.  He sat there, the bear sanctuary to his back, and I watched him, still from afar, not sure how to engage this ripening memory.  I took a few photos, breaking my rule of asking first, to see if it would assemble the pieces floating around in my head, but it didn’t.  His mother approached him, smile lines aplenty, like another great mother I knew, and she gave him the look.  “You know you’re gonna need a bath after this, and you know I don’t want to give you one” her eyes pleaded.  I watched.  Give the look back!  I thought.  I didn’t know what look it was quite yet, but my memory was beginning to form.  He gave it!  He gave the look!  “Mom.  This is mud.  You know how much fun this is.  Don’t let a bath get in the way”.  Cuteness prevailed!!  But it was only momentary.  She approached him, smiling brightly, as though rays from the sun were so used to her face that a mutual dependency was forming.  I thought silently, “Little Laotian Dude, she’s gonna try and pick you up.  Give the look again, only this time do the dead weight thing.  You know it works.”  I don’t know how I knew this so well, but the synapses happily told me that a younger me was well-versed in mud play.  She came near.  She pulled at him to get up.  Fight for it!  Dead weight!  He did it!  She, mama, was unsuccessful.  He dug his toes in the mud, and his hands followed.  She sighed, smiled, and tugged at his shirt.  And then it came flooding back.  She tugged at his shirt and for a moment both me and the boy thought the fight was over, that she had won and it was bath time.  But no…she was only taking his shirt off so that he wouldn’t get it dirty.  Glorious!  Mud time! 

I remembered! 

Grandma’s house, sick with “pink eye” (my early school years attempt at ditching to hang out with my grandparents).  A belly full of soup, I head outside.  The sun seems to blind me as I walk down the creaky wooden steps and I worry that I may fall.  But I see the prize ahead of me.  The mud puddle at the bottom of the stairs, a little underneath them.  If I can only get away from grandma for a few moments, saunter down the stairs (avoid the heavy temptation to run my hands down their old-fashioned heater, making the coolest noise EVER), then I’ll be safe.  But I’ve practiced the look, so even if I’m not safe I should still be fine.  We haven’t finger-painted yet, and she just finished re-telling me the rules of how I can get into Heaven while we ate soup and goat-crackers outside (even if I hit people, I can still go!  I just have to talk to someone about it first).  The coast is clear, and, due to the imperfect sun-conditions, I decide to head down the stairs in backwards-crawl-position, so as not compromise my sight.  I’m not the best at going down stairs.  Plus, I have to make it to the mud-puddle before grandma sees me.  She wants to pick walnuts.  I still want to finger paint and we only have so much time before her show starts.  

But this, wonderful slimy mud, is a rarity!  Alas, after going down the stairs I’m in the mud.  Oozing through my fingers and over my legs, I make drawings and mud-crayons and those lines on my cheeks like they do in the movies.  Uh-oh.  She’s coming.  Creak, creak, she slowly comes down the stairs.  How on earth does she know I’m down here?  She sees me.  Even though I plug my ears, she still sees me.  Amazing, this woman and her talents.  She gives me the look.   “You know you’re gonna need a bath after this, and you know I don’t want to give you one” her eyes plead.  I give her the look back.  “Grandma.  This is mud.  You know how much fun this is.  Don’t let a bath get in the way.”  She approaches me.  She is shaking her head.  No walnut picking.  I stay strong with my look.  I’m pleading with my look.  And then it happens.  The shirt tug!  Not the shirt tug!  This is war!  Or is it?  From somewhere in her apron, it emerges.  The Yellow Mud Shirt.  Off with my shirt, on with Yellow Mud Shirt.  Victory is sweet.  I can play as long as I want to in the mud, because grandma is sitting down in one of those stringy chairs and watching me.  Her face looks like the sun and it makes my eyes hurt a little from looking at it, but somewhere I know that she is my silver lining. 

Next, it’s bath time.  Wonderful bath time.  Oddly, there are no toys in this bath.  This must be a grown up bath.  I must be a grown up.  I’m still small enough to have her wrap me up in a towel (my favorite thing!) and stand me on that little wooden stool that comes out from the wall while she combs my hair (not my favorite thing.  Grandma doesn’t use Johnsons no tangle shampoo.  Being a grown-up must not be that much fun).  But then…she lets me open up her secret mirror that is on the wall and I see them…perfectly lined up like they want me to look at them.  Her lipstick collection!  I can’t look long because her show is about to start and I cannot put any on because, even though I took a grown up bath and she brushed my hair with a comb and not a brush, I am not a grown up.  I can look at them, and open them too.  My favorite is the orange one.  There are pinks, and reds, and even purples, and I think that it’s funny that grandma, when it comes to coloring her lips in, can barely stay inside the lines. 

I go over to the mud puddle and sink my hands in, the memory flowing through me like they all should.  I tell him that it’s neat to feel the mud and squeeze it out through your hands like this.  He tries it, but would rather make a mud tower.  That’s acceptable.  He talks to me in Lao, I talk back in English, it’s a full-blown conversation with the younger, male, Lao version of me.  If only I had Yellow Mud Shirt to give him.  He shows me how awesome it is to fling the mud from your hands onto everything around you.  Hmm.  That is fun!  I show him about mud crayons and it captivates him until his legs are covered in little drawings.  He shows me his mud towers.  I help him make as many as possible until he gets fed up with my small contributions and refuses to accept them.  I tell him that on my side of the puddle it’s mostly rocks and leaves.  He shows me how to incorporate the rocks and leaves into the mud tower.  Brilliant.  People are taking pictures.  I am smiling like I seem to have forgotten to. 

Vientiane, Laos!

August 8, 2011

Sitting on a balcony overlooking Vientiane I couldn’t really ask more from life.  This used to be a concept I couldn’t even grasp my brain around for long enough to understand its simplicity.  There isn’t much more I could ask from this life right now in this moment - as families ride by in motorbikes and as the noise of other cities…of Southeast Asia, slowly evaporates and people feel free and light enough to walk in the street.  Vientiane, Laos, so far away in my mind, so close now I can taste it, feel its pale yellowness and large boulevards and hear and smell how different it is than any other place.  It’s French, and although I heard the man at the Vietnamese embassy speaking French today, it’s not at all French.  It’s small, but one tuk tuk drive shows me how large it really is.  It’s calming and enveloping; saturating me in the same food I’ve known before, only with different smells.  No bright lights, no pounding music, just hazy sunshine making it look like an old photograph come to life.  It’s dusty here, a feeling my feet had forgotten in the soaked streets of Mae Sot.  It’s luxurious.  People hold hands, children play badminton in the street and bowls upon bowls of leafy green vegetables are served at breakfast.  The language rhymes at every turn and the letters, or symbols rather, look like the people; round and small with smiles so big you think that it would break their face in half.  If I lined up a group of Lao people and told them to smile, a story would emerge.  I love it!  

Only a few hidden anxieties are still present within me….my inability to make my own decision, or rather my ability to choose not to stay when I know I love this place so much.  Traveling makes it so that I never want to go back to a schedule, where timeless days are all I could possibly live for and where rigidity suffocates me.  All of those options back home seem that way…suffocating. Yet I am choosing to be there when I don’t have to be, when I could spend my money and time here looking for a job, when I could live here happily and endlessly in the dripping heat, drinking mango lassies and eating nameless fruit.  But at the same time I feel like my time here, for this cycle, is up and that I want to fill my head with more knowledge before coming back to a place like this.  

We shall see, nervously, we shall see.  I will never, in this process or in any other, lose myself, not even long enough to lose sight of myself…I will never even lose touch of myself.

...Going

August 7th

Leaving Mae Sot was like leaving home for college – painful and reminiscent, making me aware of time passing and how the creation of love and friendships can somehow erase it, or make it non-existent until it comes crashing back to you and you’re looking out the back of a car or tuk-tuk as your friends (your new loves) wave goodbye.  I felt so much there, I was filled up with it, with that little blue light, and I will always have that to carry around with me.  The change that I saw within myself was brought about by the love and experiences that could only be contained in that tiny town, but spread all over the world if I want it to be.  It was my decision to leave Mae Sot because of some external circumstances, yes, but also because I was (am) ready to shine this light elsewhere.  I am confident and purple, light blue and heartful, heartfelt and serious, laughing and pink.   I am totally, completely in love with Asia, with Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, and the next places.  I am so completely in love with myself that it’s hard to tear me away from me and be around other people sometimes.  I am so completely in love with life here; with trishaw bicycles and casual attitudes, with hellos springing from skinny men on motorbikes, with children smiling in ways that their whole mouth comes apart, with moms and dads together loving children and wearing traditional clothing, with tourists and tattoos drinking beer at 2pm, with locals laughing at foreigners over silly misunderstandings.  With the beauty that is so gently laid upon the sprawling boulevards, the temple oases, the children in monk attire, the people genuinely happy to be there, to be who they are, to have suffered and survived, to be quietly joyous in the most loud way.   

Ooooh, this was not what I expected from Asia but it was what was told would happen to me and now I feel it.  This life to me is normal; no expectations, living all the time not just when you feel like it - casual, peaceful, cultural.  Going back home will be a challenge to say the least.  This is the place where my heart grew up and allowed itself to feel.

Leaving

August 31, 2011

Looking back now as to why I’ve left Mae Sot, I feel a pang of sadness and nostalgia.  I know I left at the right time; before all my friends left and I was the last person to go (I hate being the last person to go) but at the same time I wish I could have had the clarity that I have now- sitting in a hotel room in the beautiful Hoi An, Vietnam with a new friend and the beginnings of a new outlook.  This isn’t anything special; it’s just clearer and lighter, like stepping out of a shower.  It’s rejuvenating and, I guess I’m free to say this now, exciting.  I am open to new things and the part of my brain that was closed off, for whatever reason, is now creating pathways to new openings. 

I am hurt, yes, but healing. 

I left amazing people who did incredible things.  I left friends who I may never see again, I left the feeling of new butterflies in my stomach, I left my luxurious flat overlooking the town, I left the most amazing organization in which I was able to help (rather limitedly) put in a crisis hotline in a community that really needed it.  I left a group of loved ones, nights where we sat around and drank whiskey and formed even deeper bonds.  I left drinking beer with my friends on my balcony, laughing uncontrollably, new adventures every day, planning little (and big) trips.  I left long and painful conversations about leaving the best time in our lives for perhaps better, or perhaps more difficult times to come.  I left memories of the raucous, hellishly amazing Full Moon Party (never again) and the freedom of riding my bicycle on the peaceful, trembling, emotional streets of Mae Sot.  All to come back to an ideal that shattered.  And now I am here doing what I love, being who I love, picking up the pieces and finally, finally arranging them where I want to put them.  I would give anything to go back to where I was before and to have that certainty of love lost and found again, to have the feeling of a full heart.  But it’s not there and reality is a painful thing to recover from. Vietnam knows that and is showing me how to do it best.  I have new plans that are slowly forming;  my mind is shifting and I see things now  I never thought I was able to do without this love that I used to think needed to be in place.  I see my happiness, that little blue light o’ mine, as being mine.  My happiness with others, for others, can be separate.  I can let that happen.  I can carry my happiness with me and let it shine, wherever I go, with whomever I’m with, but most of all with myself.  Such a blissful revelation!  Looking back, leaving Mae Sot was a necessity to get me here.   I miss my friends, my soul loves, and the place I called home for a little while.  It was the beginning of this great and magnificent dust-settling.