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Back to Vietnam: the astonishingly beautiful airline hostess who sat next to me and struck up a conversation merely from curiosity. No joy from Toy, or as she spells her name, Thuy, the Saigon tourist agent who is so delicately polite, but underneath has the resilience of bamboo. Ot the MissVietnam beauty contest winner, whose first question is, "How much money do you make?" The tiny 14 year-old who knows three sentences in English and is determined to use all of them. The newspaper seller who gets apoplectic with rage because he thinks I'm trying to scam him for ten cents. The immigration officer who gets angry because I can't tell him the name of the hotel I stayed in. The dog whose back was broken by our bus as we rolled through a dusty village, left flopping and wheeling in the middle of the road, as the driver lights another cigarette.
The woman who is elbowed in the back by a young Vietnamese kid because she is walking with a foreigner; the guy who attacks a woman selling lottery tickets and they roll in the dust punching and scratching until three women separate them. An eighteen year-old daughter of a communist administrator dancing voluptuously in an underground disco, disguised as a seedy cafe selling mouldy cakes. The Chinese guy who runs a hotel in downtown Saigon, takes a look at my passport, "Oh, handsome!" he exclaims as he hands me the key to a room where a tiny gecko hides in a cool, dark place, safe until he is swirled by powers beyond his strength into the toilet bowl. Vietnam is a country which leaves impressions, which sears itself on the consciousness. None of the carefully wrapped packaging of Japan. People show genuine emotion, whether positive or negative.
Historically I see many parallels with Japan. A nation which always has to deal with its giant neighbor. A nation that was able to resist the irresistible Mongols, and actually defeat them militarily. A nation of prickly nationalism, which actually has very little to show of its past. It's a country I want to visit again. Perhaps later next year I will, as time drips slowly like the turbocharged mud sold as coffee in Vietnam, and I wait impatiently for my next chance to take a trip. I would like to take a trip embracing S.E. Asia, the overpowering mother of East Asia, China, up into Mongolia, where I hear they only eat mutton, into Siberia, and then take a ferry back to Japan from Vladivostok. I'll close with a Mongolian culinary story. A tourist, tired of eating only mutton, caught a fish. He gave it to his hosts in the hotel and said he'd like them to cook it for him. They were confused by such a request, but they hit upon a solution: they threw it into a mutton stew and when they figured it was done they pulled it out, flopped it onto a plate, and dished it up.
Enough said. Time to work on something really difficult. Tidying up my room. Cheers.
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