04/01/12, 12:01 p.m. EDT
I’m still not completely convinced I didn’t just dream up the past four weeks of my life. I have, after all, been taking an antimalarial drug called doxycycline which is known for causing hallucinatory dreams. Thus, it’s entirely plausible I went to bed on the night of February 26th, dreamt a month of fantastic escapades, awoke the next day, and have been involved in some grand calendar prank in the few days since then. That wouldn’t explain the tan lines, the wakeboarding bruises, or the deep sense of self I have acquired. Solipsism aside, I guess I can be sure all the people I met and all the things I did in my month in Vietnam actually existed. I flew in late Wednesday night and have been slipping in and out of a jetlag and spring allergy-induced fog since then, so now on Sunday I’m finally able to focus on more than just YouTube episodes of the self-explanatory show “Will It Blend?” and can actually reflect.
I suppose I left off right before leaving for northern Vietnam last week. What an adventure! I flew into Hanoi Thursday morning and had the whole day to myself before meeting up with Becky and Karly, who would be arriving from their Sa Pa trek. Unlike most of the other backpackers in the Aussie-run hostel who stuck around the common room and ate Western food, I wanted a more authentic experience. I wandered away from the hostel until I found a Vietnamese woman selling bun (soup) on the street. When I pointed at it, I think I surprised her, but she pulled up a chair right next to her and sat me down. The warm bun was perfect for the foggy, cool day, but I couldn’t explain that to the squishy white tourists who kept giving me puzzled looks from their cyclo rides. Alright, I can’t win. I’m in culture limbo, and now everyone in Asia stares at me. I did get the authentic meal I was looking for, because it was like I had also hired a Vietnamese mother—a few times when I stopped eating to text the VPV staff, I received a firm tap on the shoulder and nonverbal commands to finish my food. When I had thanked her and she had her fill of showing me off to her friends, I departed with a street map to see how much of the City of The Soaring Dragon I could lap up in half a day.
I bought a ticket for a water puppet show, which is the thousand-year-old art that originated in northern Vietnam, but had some time to squander before it started. I was ambling along one of Hanoi’s many lakes when I heard the doleful sounds of the Vietnamese bamboo flute, called sao truc. I walked to a bridge where there was a man with no eyes playing for money. I stood there mesmerized for awhile before giving him some dong and noticing that he had extra flutes. I asked if I could try one, and when he said yes we spent the next half hour or so taking turns playing for each other and the bemused tourists who passed by—some of whom actually took pictures! Judging from my actions so far that day, either I’m terrible at being a tourist or extremely good at it. I then made it to my water puppet show, which was like an aquatic Punch and Judy number with an elaborate set and a thrilling live pit orchestra of traditional instruments. After leaving the theater, I cranked up my walking pace to “New Yorker” and hit the Women’s Museum, the lavish Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh’s Presidential Palace, and the Hoa Lo Prison—better known to Americans as the Hanoi Hilton, the place where American POWs were kept during the war. I was a bit disappointed by what I saw, seeing as most of the prison doesn’t exist anymore, but especially because the placards only mention the horrors that were housed there when the French used it to detain Vietnamese political prisoners. Senator John McCain cannot lift his arms above his head anymore? Oh, we don’t talk about that. This does not surprise me, but it was my first experience with blatant censorship, other than no access to Facebook, while in Vietnam. It was late afternoon and I was studying the koi in a pond outside the Ho Chi Minh Museum (which had closed—curse my flute jam session) when a weathered Vietnamese man approached me, shoved a paper listing various points of interest at my nose, and asked if I wanted a motorbike tour. My first instinct was to politely but firmly decline him, but then I realized I might as well, seeing as I wouldn’t be able to get into any more museums that day. “Tran Quoc pagoda? You’ll take me there?” I asked. “Yes, yes, yes, get on,” he chirruped. I may have enjoyed the ride itself more if I wasn’t constantly thinking, “If he tries anything, I think I’d be able to do some damage to his nuts with my enormous water bottle,” and, “Didn’t I get a chain email once saying you can stab an aggressor under the chin with a key?” but sure enough, even though we detoured at the pitifully barren B-52 Victory Museum and zipped through back alleys, we arrived at the islet on which sits the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest pagoda in Hanoi. I hastily tried to cover my bare knees with my sweatshirt, but I don’t think any of the worshippers noticed me through the dazzling gold and hazy incense. The most awe-inspiring item there was a tree that apparently started as a graft of the original bodhi tree under which Siddhartha sat, a gift from India. After the pagoda, my driver took me back to my hostel, tried unsuccessfully to demand more money than we originally agreed upon, although I did end up giving him a bit extra, and bade me farewell. I found my Canadians sitting in the hostel common room and knew the fun had only begun.
We embarked on the cramped, 4-hour journey from Hanoi to Ha Long Friday morning, and when we finally stepped off the bus our bathing-suited, beach-ready bodies were greeted by pounding, chilly winds. Confused, we noticed there were no boats out in the water. We were all taken to a restaurant for lunch and given the news that there were typhoon conditions that morning, and there was a police blockade on the wharf. My heart sank because my whole northern excursion was centered on this tour, and I had given up work days and paid for plane tickets for this. The tour guide, Dustin, grimly told us that busses would be returning to Hanoi so we could try again the next day or get a refund. We were a large group to accommodate, but we asked if we could pay for a night in a hotel in Ha Long to avoid 8 more travel hours, and after several phone calls with the hostel and behind-the-scenes planning, Dustin broke the news that for only the second time in the tour’s history we would be staying in Ha Long for the night. At first Karly and I weren’t pleased, because we had paid for the 3-day tour, but had a flight back to Saigon Sunday night and would have to cut it short now. We shrugged it off for the time being and were quite entertained by the chaos of the night, including but not limited to a fire extinguisher going off in the hotel and a random baby stroller in the elevator.
Saturday morning was the official beginning of the “Rock Long Rock Hard” Ha Long Bay tour, but it was already enhanced by the bonds we were able to make with the other travelers on that strange first day. We cruised out into the bay on our boat, dubbed the Phoenix, and got the chance to dive off the boat into the cerulean water. Later, I kayaked for the first time in my life to an intricate cave formation where we explored for awhile. After dinner back on the boat, Karly and I had heard so many tantalizing stories about what was to come the next day on Castaway Island that we knew we couldn’t leave with the 2-day group the next morning. After phone calls on deck with the hostel (should cell reception be allowed in one of the 7 natural wonders of the world?), we were able to book a new flight for Monday night. There went a third missed day of work, but I knew that completing this experience would end my Vietnam trip on a really great note, rather than a regretful one. And this logic ended up being absolutely sound. When we docked at Castaway Island Sunday morning, we had a day filled with wakeboarding, rock climbing, beach volleyball, and Ultimate Frisbee ahead of us. The night brought dancing under the stars and swimming with bioluminescent plankton that illuminated the rippling water with their eerie glow. The next morning, after the Phoenix made it back to the wharf in Ha Long Bay, I was certain that I had discovered paradise. The throbbing music on the boat may have been a stark juxtaposition to the serenity of the breathtaking limestone formations protruding from the foggy bay, but I couldn’t have asked for a better tour. Plus, my group ended up getting 4 days out of it! Defeated by exhaustion, we drove the 4 hours back to Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel, and Karly and I said final goodbyes to Becky before flying back to Saigon late Monday night.
Of course we were back at work Tuesday morning! Sleep is for quitters. I asked if I could go to LTK, the clinic, in the morning and the pagoda in the afternoon so I would get the chance to bid “tam biet” to all the children who have challenged, enriched, and returned my affection over the past month. Long, an intelligent little boy at the clinic who can’t speak, always holds up 2 fingers whenever I leave at lunchtime, asking if I’ll be back at 2 p.m. My heart wrenched and my eyes oozed hot tears as I had to shake my head no for the first time. When I hugged Minh, the 20-year-old with CP but pretty good English, he sputtered, “Don’t—ever—FORGET—me!” Leaving was so hard, but I knew I had to do it all over again in the afternoon. At least whenever I leave the pagoda in the late afternoon we put the kids to bed, so symbolically I felt my goodbye had more closure as I lay them down in their cribs and stroked their heads before departing. I don’t know if most of them will remember me. I can’t be sure some of them knew I was there at all. Whatever the case may be, I’ll always have them with me, like a handprint on my being. They’ll be there whenever I’m patient, or courageous, or tolerant, or silly, or singing “Till There Was You.” I miss them so much, but they’ll be there.
With these thoughts in my head and emotions in my heart, I had my last supper with all the volunteers at a local Vietnamese restaurant on the Saigon River. I sampled a seafood hotpot, where they bring you hot broth and raw ingredients and you cook it yourself, and was even brave/insane enough to try chicken feet. Bawk bawk. I had to be at the airport at 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, so despite my residual tiredness from Ha Long Bay and the draining goodbyes I had had at work, I decided it would be easier to stay up and then sleep on the plane. By the time I sat down on the airplane after scathing remarks from the check-in lady for not having my itinerary (in America you can simply give them your name!) I was so fatigued I was falling apart. I clutched the air sickness bag and couldn’t eat anything during my Saigon or Tokyo flights (I’m still trying not to blame the chicken feet), and I must have startled the Vietnamese man sitting next to me by talking in my feverish, restless sleep, because it even woke me up. Yet somehow without my knowledge I was deposited back in the States in Chicago. Due to massive, theme park-worthy lines at customs, I almost missed my flight to Philadelphia, but I made it back home without any more drama late Wednesday night (or so local East Coast time told me) and slept until 3 p.m. the next day.
I’m still recovering—I’m practically narcoleptic and I chug any milk I lay eyes on—but I’m home, and it’s springtime in Kennett Square. Buttery daffodils stand at attention along the creek that gurgles across the back of the development, and robin red breast perches on tree branches thick with buds that are rosy and swelling.
