Friday 29th January 2010, 10.20pm, Satri Lounge Bar - Luang Prabang
Time is such a blessing. Really, the best gift I have ever been given, or given to myself as it were. I've only realised this today I think, being on my own, having no agenda, no demands, nowhere to be and no one to answer to, only the long hours of the day stretched before me on a blank canvas awaiting my scribble. Talking of scribble, this is my second blog of the day, how productive I am with hours to fill! If I'd given up work a year ago and spent 12 months sitting in bars I would probably have written that elusive novel by now! Either that or just been very drunk, all the time. I thought that on leaving Ella I would be in a huge state of panic to find others to adopt and entertain me, but that's the furthest thing from my mind, it has been a pure luxury to be a quiet, anonymous observer of everyone else. And if there's anywhere on earth that befits solitude so gracefully, it's Luang Prabang. It's been a thoroughly glorious day.
After my temple siesta, determined not to give in to my sickness, I fought the good fight and walked in sunshine for a few miles along the other river which borders the town, the Nam Khan. I stopped at L'Etranger, a bookshop library and cafe (is there a more complimentary combination of establishments in existence?) and reclined in it's treehouse hammock for a couple of hours, reading my book and taking in the sights on the water. One thing I must tell you. L'Etranger plays a different film each night at 7pm in it's rooftop lounge area. I asked the patron what film was on this evening,
'The Road', he said.
'Oh, I've not heard of that, maybe it's a new release. What's it about?'
With an almighty booming voice, completely at odds with the one he had just spoken to me in, he summoned a deep, Hollywood trailer voice-over persona and resonantly replied, 'In a moment... the world changed forever.' He seemed happy with this explanation and also rather pleased that I had jumped backwards in the air at the shock of it. People are great aren't they.
Some more aimless wandering and e-mail correspondence later I went home to get changed and was invited to share coffee and conversation with the family who own my guest house. Their broken English and my non-existent Laotian made for some stunted sentences and misunderstandings but it was fun nonetheless feeling welcome and relaxed in their company. I believe that the discussion mainly focused on the baffling question of why, at the grand old age of 23, a young woman such as myself would still be childless and most shockingly of all, single?! They looked at me like a pariah of society past her prime, foolishly gallivanting when she has no time to waste before the biological clock starts winding down. It's a good job that I'm such a Luang Prabangophile because my love of their town thankfully redeemed my unmarried brazenness and eventually they took to me like a duck to water. They probably think I'm a lesbian.
For the past couple of hours I have been at Hmong Night Market. A treasure trove of cross-stitch quilts, silk pyjamas, opal vases, satin sheets, pewter bangles and technicolour dreamcoats that would make Joseph proud. On my first night here I bought myself a glass ring which, on getting up for the bathroom during that nightmare evening, I languidly knocked off the dressing table and sent shattering in to 20 pieces. To make amends for this injustice I purchased another ring, that is sturdy and silver, and that should be immune even to my clumsiness.
Strolling home just now I've been in pain again with crippling heartburn and the taste of acid reflux in my mouth; despite avoiding food altogether today my body is clearly determined to throw up something. Well then, I thought, I need either solid or liquid that is milky, cooling, bland, alkaline, creamy but not thick: something to neutralise the acid. I know what you're thinking - milk, yoghurt, a banana, ice cream, maybe even some cheese, and do you know what I was thinking? Baileys. This is because I am dastardly clever and perpetually sneaky at finding ways to justify the drinking of liqueur. In this case, through logic and the powers of deduction, the glass of Baileys and ice I now sit swirling in my left hand, can be excused, 100%, as a medicinal substitute for Gaviscon. I. Win. So regardless of the fact that my day has been lacking in culinary delights, I will go to bed soon full instead with the pleasures and peace that time on my hands has fed me.
N.B. The poem referenced in the heading, it just made for a handy title, but I feel the need to say that I have never liked To His Coy Mistress. What kind of man scares a woman with talk of earthworms eating her decomposing flesh and the loneliness of the grave purely to rush her in to bed? Andrew Marvell, thanks for the quote mate, but I hope she told you where to stick it.
Friday 29 January 2010
Picture Perfect
Friday 29th January 2010, 1.20pm, Wat Xieng Thong Temple - Luang Prabang
I'm not a big photo taker. In fact, this is a simplification of the matter. I haven't taken one photograph in about 4 weeks, shameful I know. Ella is much better at remembering to do this than me and I have been resting on her laurels, happily posing when instructed but on the whole highly uninterested by the activity. Really, people who spend their entire time photographing everything wind me up something chronic. Yes, when you return home you'll have 4000 fabulous stills that neither capture the beauty, atmosphere nor synaesthesia of places you saw to bore your friends and family with - it's a universal truth that no one likes looking at other people's holiday photos - yawn. Maybe if you spent less time behind a lens and more time letting your eyes actually look at things then you wouldn't need to capture it all on film for remembrance's sake - it would already be indelibly engraved on your memory, with or without pictorial aid. A particular bug-bear of mine is when other tourists tut or sigh when you, God forbid, walk in front of the 900th shot they've taken of the same sunset. Oh I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realise this was your beach and your sun and your dusk, here, let me stand completely stationary and idle to one side of your tripod for 15 minutes whilst you get the light exposure just right. Cretins. You won't know what this photo is of when you get home because you didn't spend any time living in it!
For the past hour or so I have been at Wat Xieng Thong temple, a short walk away through rustic villages and wildflowers from the centre of Luang Prabang town. With Ella gone AWOL I decided it was about time that I acted like a grown-up and and assume partial responsibility for taking at least a few photographs of my own. Up until this point, temple fatigue had very much been setting in and I was beginning to get disgustingly blase about these magnificent, awe inspiring religious structures. Seen one giant bronze Buddha in a marble roofed dome surrounded by ancient gold leaf wall paintings and carved wooden pillars - seen 'em all. Wat Xieng Thong has cured me of this ingratitude though. For the first time in 4 weeks I was moved enough to make like a Chinese tourist and excitedly rooted in my bag for my abandoned camera, turned it on, and was instantly informed 'Battery Empty' before the useless thing promptly turned itself off. How can your battery be dead, I've not used you in a month?!! I expect it is trying to teach me a lesson for being so negligent. Typical, because Wat Xieng Thong really is a work of art and divine idolisation.
I am extremely glad that I have attempted to contend with my illness today because I can think of no better destination for rejuvenation than here. I managed to hold down an entire can of Sprite this morning and am currently making very concerted effort to keep said Sprite inside me, rather than depositing it over temple gardens. The guidelines for respectability here entail that you remove your shoes, you have to wear clothes that cover your arms and legs, and talking to or touching other people is frowned upon - I hardly think they'll appreciate me vomiting everywhere. Although it doesn't make any mention of this in the rules.....?
Unlike any temple I have seen before, these structures are covered in mirrored mosaic tiles depicting events from the life of Buddha (what a fat, happy little man he was). The sun blindingly reflects off every surface, casting it's rainbow light spectrum across the white stone courtyard and bushes of orchids and frangipani. One building is covered entirely in gold with tiny black silhouettes of dancing gods painted intricately along the frames, arches and turrets. Inside the main temple a few tourists are cross-legged on the molting, red, Ali Baba carpet and with closed eyes sit in quiet contemplation and incense smoke before the impressive 10ft gold Buddha who sits opposite them, mimicking their pose. In the temple garden, next to a silver-tiled elephant statue and a palm tree full of ivory butterflies, a monk is shading himself under a charcoal grey umbrella and playing the pan pipes. I am sat on a step looking out over the muddy Mekong River which borders the temple grounds and runs all the way from the Yunyan province in China to it's deltas where I have previously sailed it in Southern Vietnam. A bamboo village community on the opposite bank has lit a bonfire on the shore, the occasional fishing boat drifts past with it's nets floating lazily behind it, it's proprietors sit snoozing and sun-drenched on the deck blowing tobacco smoke through their noses. Scores of small caramel-skinned, almond-eyed local children are playing in the water, squealing and singing with delight every time one of them falls under. This is the Asia I dreamt about, but never really dared believe existed.
A functioning camera would have been a bonus I suppose. But only this, only a bonus, because such sights as these will be impossible to forget, and disappointing photographs might only taint my memory in years to come through their inadequacy. I do not want to be a snapping paparazzi tourist, not the photographer. I want to be a barely visible bystander with her back to the camera sitting in the corner of the frame, gazing out and inhaling views others will only take the time to look at through pixelated shadows of ill-remembered perfection.
I'm not a big photo taker. In fact, this is a simplification of the matter. I haven't taken one photograph in about 4 weeks, shameful I know. Ella is much better at remembering to do this than me and I have been resting on her laurels, happily posing when instructed but on the whole highly uninterested by the activity. Really, people who spend their entire time photographing everything wind me up something chronic. Yes, when you return home you'll have 4000 fabulous stills that neither capture the beauty, atmosphere nor synaesthesia of places you saw to bore your friends and family with - it's a universal truth that no one likes looking at other people's holiday photos - yawn. Maybe if you spent less time behind a lens and more time letting your eyes actually look at things then you wouldn't need to capture it all on film for remembrance's sake - it would already be indelibly engraved on your memory, with or without pictorial aid. A particular bug-bear of mine is when other tourists tut or sigh when you, God forbid, walk in front of the 900th shot they've taken of the same sunset. Oh I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realise this was your beach and your sun and your dusk, here, let me stand completely stationary and idle to one side of your tripod for 15 minutes whilst you get the light exposure just right. Cretins. You won't know what this photo is of when you get home because you didn't spend any time living in it!
For the past hour or so I have been at Wat Xieng Thong temple, a short walk away through rustic villages and wildflowers from the centre of Luang Prabang town. With Ella gone AWOL I decided it was about time that I acted like a grown-up and and assume partial responsibility for taking at least a few photographs of my own. Up until this point, temple fatigue had very much been setting in and I was beginning to get disgustingly blase about these magnificent, awe inspiring religious structures. Seen one giant bronze Buddha in a marble roofed dome surrounded by ancient gold leaf wall paintings and carved wooden pillars - seen 'em all. Wat Xieng Thong has cured me of this ingratitude though. For the first time in 4 weeks I was moved enough to make like a Chinese tourist and excitedly rooted in my bag for my abandoned camera, turned it on, and was instantly informed 'Battery Empty' before the useless thing promptly turned itself off. How can your battery be dead, I've not used you in a month?!! I expect it is trying to teach me a lesson for being so negligent. Typical, because Wat Xieng Thong really is a work of art and divine idolisation.
I am extremely glad that I have attempted to contend with my illness today because I can think of no better destination for rejuvenation than here. I managed to hold down an entire can of Sprite this morning and am currently making very concerted effort to keep said Sprite inside me, rather than depositing it over temple gardens. The guidelines for respectability here entail that you remove your shoes, you have to wear clothes that cover your arms and legs, and talking to or touching other people is frowned upon - I hardly think they'll appreciate me vomiting everywhere. Although it doesn't make any mention of this in the rules.....?
Unlike any temple I have seen before, these structures are covered in mirrored mosaic tiles depicting events from the life of Buddha (what a fat, happy little man he was). The sun blindingly reflects off every surface, casting it's rainbow light spectrum across the white stone courtyard and bushes of orchids and frangipani. One building is covered entirely in gold with tiny black silhouettes of dancing gods painted intricately along the frames, arches and turrets. Inside the main temple a few tourists are cross-legged on the molting, red, Ali Baba carpet and with closed eyes sit in quiet contemplation and incense smoke before the impressive 10ft gold Buddha who sits opposite them, mimicking their pose. In the temple garden, next to a silver-tiled elephant statue and a palm tree full of ivory butterflies, a monk is shading himself under a charcoal grey umbrella and playing the pan pipes. I am sat on a step looking out over the muddy Mekong River which borders the temple grounds and runs all the way from the Yunyan province in China to it's deltas where I have previously sailed it in Southern Vietnam. A bamboo village community on the opposite bank has lit a bonfire on the shore, the occasional fishing boat drifts past with it's nets floating lazily behind it, it's proprietors sit snoozing and sun-drenched on the deck blowing tobacco smoke through their noses. Scores of small caramel-skinned, almond-eyed local children are playing in the water, squealing and singing with delight every time one of them falls under. This is the Asia I dreamt about, but never really dared believe existed.
A functioning camera would have been a bonus I suppose. But only this, only a bonus, because such sights as these will be impossible to forget, and disappointing photographs might only taint my memory in years to come through their inadequacy. I do not want to be a snapping paparazzi tourist, not the photographer. I want to be a barely visible bystander with her back to the camera sitting in the corner of the frame, gazing out and inhaling views others will only take the time to look at through pixelated shadows of ill-remembered perfection.
Thursday 28 January 2010
The Worst Club In Asia
Thursday 28th January 2010, 1.50pm, Chittana Guest House - Luang Prabang
Woe is me, somebody please strike up the violin because I don't think I could feel much sorrier for myself than I do at this moment in time. I was cruelly struck down overnight with the kind of stomach bug familiar to Western constitutions all over South East Asia. It's somewhat of a travelling institution, if you don't get it at one point or another then really you've missed out on being part of the club that openly and unblushingly discusses their bowel movements and toileting habits in group conversation, sometimes over dinner. It is a backpackers' phenomenon, this fervent willingness to tell anyone who'll listen about how an excess of noodles and indistinguishable street food has either prevented or catapulted your ability to poo. Apologies, I don't mean to be crass, it's just I'm part of the Stomach Bug Crew now, and apparently we just love to talk about bodily waste.
I am very cross though, because I was already initiated into this club for a miserable 24 hours in Sihanoukville, I have my club card and I do not wish to renew my membership. On that occasion, Ella made me go out, forced a couple of vodka and Red Bulls down me, and hey presto I was fine. But now I have no Ella to "nurse" me and no desire to consume anything (given that my body even hates water today), all I have is a hollow tummy and a strop on - I so desperately want to go out and see Luang Prabang, grrrrrrr.
I managed to potter around town for a few hours this morning, I also had a sneaky ice cappuccino in a perfect Starbucks-modelled coffee house called JoMa Bakery - it's a chain, I couldn't help myself. Do not give me that condescending raised eyebrow please, if I'm going to be running to the toilet every 10 minutes because of water consumption then I figured I may as well drink something fun and delicious before I throw it up. Plus, it's a winning situation, calories won't touch me today, I already feel about 7lbs lighter. Fuck it, I might go and get some cake. That's the spirit.
Current plan of action stands at lying here for a while longer until insides stop convulsing, then hitting the streets and attempting sight-seeing (whilst being constantly mindful of where the nearest bathroom is and how long it will take me to get there). Additionally, while I'm out I can find people to talk about my gastro-intestinal issues with, Ella would usually love this chat being a card carrying club member herself, but I'm sure I'll have no shortage of other partakers. As I said, besides 'where have you been and where are you going', 'will you add me and tag me?', and 'Malaria tablets: actually doing something or just a placebo?', 'the number of times I go to the toilet in a week' is excruciatingly and hilariously, every traveller's favourite conversation topic.
P.S. No it wasn't the spaghetti, I didn't have any in the end. I had about 3 mouthfuls of Tom Yam (spicy fish soup) before setting my spoon down and pelting home. Personally I blame half a pizza I ate on Tuesday lunchtime... it tasted like jam, which places the pizza directly at the forefront of my suspicion. Lesson = do not eat food that tastes like jam if it is not jam.
Woe is me, somebody please strike up the violin because I don't think I could feel much sorrier for myself than I do at this moment in time. I was cruelly struck down overnight with the kind of stomach bug familiar to Western constitutions all over South East Asia. It's somewhat of a travelling institution, if you don't get it at one point or another then really you've missed out on being part of the club that openly and unblushingly discusses their bowel movements and toileting habits in group conversation, sometimes over dinner. It is a backpackers' phenomenon, this fervent willingness to tell anyone who'll listen about how an excess of noodles and indistinguishable street food has either prevented or catapulted your ability to poo. Apologies, I don't mean to be crass, it's just I'm part of the Stomach Bug Crew now, and apparently we just love to talk about bodily waste.
I am very cross though, because I was already initiated into this club for a miserable 24 hours in Sihanoukville, I have my club card and I do not wish to renew my membership. On that occasion, Ella made me go out, forced a couple of vodka and Red Bulls down me, and hey presto I was fine. But now I have no Ella to "nurse" me and no desire to consume anything (given that my body even hates water today), all I have is a hollow tummy and a strop on - I so desperately want to go out and see Luang Prabang, grrrrrrr.
I managed to potter around town for a few hours this morning, I also had a sneaky ice cappuccino in a perfect Starbucks-modelled coffee house called JoMa Bakery - it's a chain, I couldn't help myself. Do not give me that condescending raised eyebrow please, if I'm going to be running to the toilet every 10 minutes because of water consumption then I figured I may as well drink something fun and delicious before I throw it up. Plus, it's a winning situation, calories won't touch me today, I already feel about 7lbs lighter. Fuck it, I might go and get some cake. That's the spirit.
Current plan of action stands at lying here for a while longer until insides stop convulsing, then hitting the streets and attempting sight-seeing (whilst being constantly mindful of where the nearest bathroom is and how long it will take me to get there). Additionally, while I'm out I can find people to talk about my gastro-intestinal issues with, Ella would usually love this chat being a card carrying club member herself, but I'm sure I'll have no shortage of other partakers. As I said, besides 'where have you been and where are you going', 'will you add me and tag me?', and 'Malaria tablets: actually doing something or just a placebo?', 'the number of times I go to the toilet in a week' is excruciatingly and hilariously, every traveller's favourite conversation topic.
P.S. No it wasn't the spaghetti, I didn't have any in the end. I had about 3 mouthfuls of Tom Yam (spicy fish soup) before setting my spoon down and pelting home. Personally I blame half a pizza I ate on Tuesday lunchtime... it tasted like jam, which places the pizza directly at the forefront of my suspicion. Lesson = do not eat food that tastes like jam if it is not jam.
Tubing Schmubing
Wednesday 27th January 2010, 7.30pm, Pack Luck Wine Bar - Luang Prabang
Why did no one tell me? Ask any practised traveller about Laos and all they mention is sodding tubing. Yes, Vang Vieng was buckets and buckets of whisky drenched, hedonistic, half-naked, Magaluf style fun. But why on earth, pray tell, did not one person ever bother to mention what a completely utopic, charming, picturesque and enchanting town Luang Prabang is? To be honest, at the moment my only conclusions are that either No. 1 no one ever escapes the lure of Vang Vieng to go anywhere else in Laos or No. 2 everyone is an idiot, and I'm veering towards the latter.
Luckily for me I am too curious and seeking of culture than all these idiots I've been talking to, because here I am in Luang Prabang, wondering how I will ever leave and casually looking for estate agents to see if I might use my credit card to purchase a house. Oh dear, I've just realised I've turned in to my mother. Going on holiday, liking it too much and then looking for estate agents is pure Pat Gillman behaviour. If anyone hears from Ella in 3 weeks to say that I haven't turned up at our Malaysian meeting point then I think your best bet is to tell her I'm still here. Here, with it's wooden slatted cottages, Gallic wine bars, Italian coffee shops, ethnic jewellery retailers, lantern-lit gravel alleys overflowing with shisha pipe gardens, live music venues, spa parlous, portrait galleries, and lovers sharing spaghetti on the street over candlelight. The indigo placidity of the river paralleling the town juxtaposed with the sunburnt orange robes of the monks who ride their wicker basket bicycles along it's ebony banks, and all of this encircled by soaring misty mountains dense in vegetation, peaks visible above thin white clouds.
After a lonely and hellish 8 hour bus journey throughout which I found myself praying for my life every time the coach too quickly rounded a mountain curve or overtook a motorbike on a clifftop bend, I arrived here and instantly all near death experiences were forgotten. I could have cried for the second time today, but on this occasion with happiness at being alive - and alive in Luang Prabang. This was exactly my sentiment on my first night in Siem Reap, I was cautious on this occasion to realise I was making a snap judgement, but I fell in love with Cambodia so I'm throwing caution to the wind here, how can I not? I'm sat in early evening warmth on a bean bag, outside a bar which stocks 200 varieties of vino, Ella Fitzgerald serenading me on the stereo, a bowl sized glass of rich Merlot in hand, overlooking the main street and revelling in the easy flow of human traffic which wanders past. Clearly I am not the only tourist enamoured with the place for everyone who walks past is staring starry-eyed at their surroundings, smiling at strangers (such as myself) and stopping to converse with locals; they're probably all asking where the nearest estate agent is.
It would have been quite easy for me to have already made friends in the past 3 hours that I've been here. Numerous groups of backpackers have looked on me sympathetically and invitingly, obviously terribly sorry for me sat all on my own. I have taken the conscious and indulgent decision of solitudinous selfishness this evening though. I want to be on my own to meander the streets at leisure and breathe it all in, I do not want to talk, I just want to basque in the beauty and see with grateful eyes. There will be plenty of time for making friends tomorrow, or the day after, or in 3 years time when I still live here.
Right, that is all I will tell for now, I'm nearly at the end of my wine and off in search of spaghetti... no lover to share it with but that's good as I'm hungry and not in the mood for conversation. The only sweet nothings I have to whisper are about Luang Prabang, and I'm sure I will whisper them to my notebook again soon. Come to think of it though, even a hard-nosed, distrusting, too often burnt cynic like myself might easily fall in love here - there's just something in the air. Either that, or the second glass of Merlot was a grave mistake.
Why did no one tell me? Ask any practised traveller about Laos and all they mention is sodding tubing. Yes, Vang Vieng was buckets and buckets of whisky drenched, hedonistic, half-naked, Magaluf style fun. But why on earth, pray tell, did not one person ever bother to mention what a completely utopic, charming, picturesque and enchanting town Luang Prabang is? To be honest, at the moment my only conclusions are that either No. 1 no one ever escapes the lure of Vang Vieng to go anywhere else in Laos or No. 2 everyone is an idiot, and I'm veering towards the latter.
Luckily for me I am too curious and seeking of culture than all these idiots I've been talking to, because here I am in Luang Prabang, wondering how I will ever leave and casually looking for estate agents to see if I might use my credit card to purchase a house. Oh dear, I've just realised I've turned in to my mother. Going on holiday, liking it too much and then looking for estate agents is pure Pat Gillman behaviour. If anyone hears from Ella in 3 weeks to say that I haven't turned up at our Malaysian meeting point then I think your best bet is to tell her I'm still here. Here, with it's wooden slatted cottages, Gallic wine bars, Italian coffee shops, ethnic jewellery retailers, lantern-lit gravel alleys overflowing with shisha pipe gardens, live music venues, spa parlous, portrait galleries, and lovers sharing spaghetti on the street over candlelight. The indigo placidity of the river paralleling the town juxtaposed with the sunburnt orange robes of the monks who ride their wicker basket bicycles along it's ebony banks, and all of this encircled by soaring misty mountains dense in vegetation, peaks visible above thin white clouds.
After a lonely and hellish 8 hour bus journey throughout which I found myself praying for my life every time the coach too quickly rounded a mountain curve or overtook a motorbike on a clifftop bend, I arrived here and instantly all near death experiences were forgotten. I could have cried for the second time today, but on this occasion with happiness at being alive - and alive in Luang Prabang. This was exactly my sentiment on my first night in Siem Reap, I was cautious on this occasion to realise I was making a snap judgement, but I fell in love with Cambodia so I'm throwing caution to the wind here, how can I not? I'm sat in early evening warmth on a bean bag, outside a bar which stocks 200 varieties of vino, Ella Fitzgerald serenading me on the stereo, a bowl sized glass of rich Merlot in hand, overlooking the main street and revelling in the easy flow of human traffic which wanders past. Clearly I am not the only tourist enamoured with the place for everyone who walks past is staring starry-eyed at their surroundings, smiling at strangers (such as myself) and stopping to converse with locals; they're probably all asking where the nearest estate agent is.
It would have been quite easy for me to have already made friends in the past 3 hours that I've been here. Numerous groups of backpackers have looked on me sympathetically and invitingly, obviously terribly sorry for me sat all on my own. I have taken the conscious and indulgent decision of solitudinous selfishness this evening though. I want to be on my own to meander the streets at leisure and breathe it all in, I do not want to talk, I just want to basque in the beauty and see with grateful eyes. There will be plenty of time for making friends tomorrow, or the day after, or in 3 years time when I still live here.
Right, that is all I will tell for now, I'm nearly at the end of my wine and off in search of spaghetti... no lover to share it with but that's good as I'm hungry and not in the mood for conversation. The only sweet nothings I have to whisper are about Luang Prabang, and I'm sure I will whisper them to my notebook again soon. Come to think of it though, even a hard-nosed, distrusting, too often burnt cynic like myself might easily fall in love here - there's just something in the air. Either that, or the second glass of Merlot was a grave mistake.
No Man Is An Island
Wednesday 27th January 2010, 9.50am, Bus to Luang Prabang
I have spoken a lot about goodbyes over the past 2 months. From that very first goodbye when we left Koh Phangan and with watery eyes and heavy hearts had to bid farewell to some very dear friends, I have known that this would always be my travelling Achilles' Heel. Since then my heart has been arrow-punctured all over with holes left by the absence of people who filled it so completely when they were with me. When you are constantly on the move as I have been, when places and not people are the priority, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of putting yourself and your itinerary first. Every time you gain a friend, the foreboding shadow of loss places it's hand on your shoulder, preparing you for the inevitability of separation. Having already this morning very sadly waved off Greg and Rich, two fantastic travelling accomplices for the past 9 days, today then brought the hardest goodbye of all.
Way back at the beginning of December (which feels about 2 years ago now), we met a guy called Dan who had just completed a 10 day meditation course at a monastery in Surat Thani, 11 hours South of Bangkok on the West coast of the Thai Gulf. Ella took a keen interest in this and after pummelling Dan for information decided that this would be something she would like to do later on in our trip. We subsequently found out that the course only runs for the first 10 days of each month, she settled on February, and so we have been aware for quite a while now that Ella would need to be back down South by January 31st to register for the programme. Knowing this and living this have been two very different things though. For the past few days I have been having some very disturbing and anxious dreams - running through war zones, getting lost in Vietnamese countryside and no one knowing where I am, returning to England to find nobody speaks English anymore and only people I've met travelling can understand me - could this be my subconscious illustrating my fear of losing her?!
I, unsurprisingly enough, did not fancy the prospect of 10 days sleeping on a stone bed, eating 2 vegan meals a day, learning to achieve spiritual enlightenment through meditation and yoga, being woken up by monks at 4am, and worst of all: NOT BEING ALLOWED TO TALK! I find silence difficult for 10 minutes and can also frequently be caught nattering away to myself/animals/inanimate objects. I would be banished in disrepute from the monastery in no time at all, probably for singing in the shower or chatting to a chicken or pondering out loud 'where did I put you camera charger, come on little charger, show yourself please!'. Therefore, my inability to stay quiet and behave myself and Ella's desire for rest, recuperation and reflection have meant that we have been forced to separate.
We've known for weeks that this day has been on the horizon and yet now we've sailed our boat to it I feel unprepared and unable to cope. She walked me to my bus this morning and we managed to hold it together, but just now as I took my seat I was fishing in my bag only to find that she had stashed a letter in there for me. This stow away has now brought on the tears I managed to fight whilst gripping her to me at the bus station. She offers love and thanks and regret at our separation, and then the most creative and thoughtful surprise, she has devised a wordsearch for me. The questions on various experiences, people and private jokes from the past 2 months, the answers only I would know.
I am filled with trepidation this morning. I feel like my right arm has been cut off, it's a wonder I'm even able to write. I'm excited and hopeful that the meditation course brings her all the fulfilment and peace she expects of it, and I'm excited for me too - branching off alone to explore more of Laos and Northern Thailand, but this goodbye leaves a gap incomparable to other partings. I must remember that it's not forever though, in 3 weeks we will be reunited in Malaysia, I'll have my arm back, my sidekick, my crutch, my rock, my wing-man, and we will have so many new stories to share with each other. It seems unthinkable now that 10 weeks before we came away we had yet to meet, I was intent on embarking upon this huge feat by myself, and she hadn't even bought a plane ticket.
My upset at this situation this morning has led me to think about the human condition of need, more specifically, of needing other human beings. It is frightening how quickly you can become dependent on another person, how a recent stranger can suddenly become vital, how we can fall in love with someone we meet at a party and then spend a sleepless fortnight praying they'll call, how we so desperately rely on each other for our happiness, and how precariously these relationships begin to hang in the balance when we take each other for granted. Some people claim they are immune to these feelings, but I'm afraid I will never believe anyone who tells me that they don't need other people to love, and as importantly, for that love to be reciprocated. People who love you but tell you they don't need you are only trying to protect themselves against the agony of loss.
Of course I'm no longer just talking about my lovely Ella, but for this morning at least it is her that I openly admit to needing and missing. Need is not shameful nor pathetic nor childish, need is not a weakness, it is human, and a testament to our unique and enviable capacity for love, compassion and friendship. A few friends of mine have all happened to e-mail me recently for any words of wisdom or advice I might have on their recent relationship dilemmas, and this morning it has just occurred to me what I should unanimously and dogmatically be telling them. As John Donne rightly said, 'no man is an island'. Do not trust anyone who is prouder of their isolation than they are that someone as wonderful as you might be able to love them. Most days, you needing me, well that's all I'm proud of.
See you soon Ells Bells, I hope you got the message too. x
I have spoken a lot about goodbyes over the past 2 months. From that very first goodbye when we left Koh Phangan and with watery eyes and heavy hearts had to bid farewell to some very dear friends, I have known that this would always be my travelling Achilles' Heel. Since then my heart has been arrow-punctured all over with holes left by the absence of people who filled it so completely when they were with me. When you are constantly on the move as I have been, when places and not people are the priority, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of putting yourself and your itinerary first. Every time you gain a friend, the foreboding shadow of loss places it's hand on your shoulder, preparing you for the inevitability of separation. Having already this morning very sadly waved off Greg and Rich, two fantastic travelling accomplices for the past 9 days, today then brought the hardest goodbye of all.
Way back at the beginning of December (which feels about 2 years ago now), we met a guy called Dan who had just completed a 10 day meditation course at a monastery in Surat Thani, 11 hours South of Bangkok on the West coast of the Thai Gulf. Ella took a keen interest in this and after pummelling Dan for information decided that this would be something she would like to do later on in our trip. We subsequently found out that the course only runs for the first 10 days of each month, she settled on February, and so we have been aware for quite a while now that Ella would need to be back down South by January 31st to register for the programme. Knowing this and living this have been two very different things though. For the past few days I have been having some very disturbing and anxious dreams - running through war zones, getting lost in Vietnamese countryside and no one knowing where I am, returning to England to find nobody speaks English anymore and only people I've met travelling can understand me - could this be my subconscious illustrating my fear of losing her?!
I, unsurprisingly enough, did not fancy the prospect of 10 days sleeping on a stone bed, eating 2 vegan meals a day, learning to achieve spiritual enlightenment through meditation and yoga, being woken up by monks at 4am, and worst of all: NOT BEING ALLOWED TO TALK! I find silence difficult for 10 minutes and can also frequently be caught nattering away to myself/animals/inanimate objects. I would be banished in disrepute from the monastery in no time at all, probably for singing in the shower or chatting to a chicken or pondering out loud 'where did I put you camera charger, come on little charger, show yourself please!'. Therefore, my inability to stay quiet and behave myself and Ella's desire for rest, recuperation and reflection have meant that we have been forced to separate.
We've known for weeks that this day has been on the horizon and yet now we've sailed our boat to it I feel unprepared and unable to cope. She walked me to my bus this morning and we managed to hold it together, but just now as I took my seat I was fishing in my bag only to find that she had stashed a letter in there for me. This stow away has now brought on the tears I managed to fight whilst gripping her to me at the bus station. She offers love and thanks and regret at our separation, and then the most creative and thoughtful surprise, she has devised a wordsearch for me. The questions on various experiences, people and private jokes from the past 2 months, the answers only I would know.
I am filled with trepidation this morning. I feel like my right arm has been cut off, it's a wonder I'm even able to write. I'm excited and hopeful that the meditation course brings her all the fulfilment and peace she expects of it, and I'm excited for me too - branching off alone to explore more of Laos and Northern Thailand, but this goodbye leaves a gap incomparable to other partings. I must remember that it's not forever though, in 3 weeks we will be reunited in Malaysia, I'll have my arm back, my sidekick, my crutch, my rock, my wing-man, and we will have so many new stories to share with each other. It seems unthinkable now that 10 weeks before we came away we had yet to meet, I was intent on embarking upon this huge feat by myself, and she hadn't even bought a plane ticket.
My upset at this situation this morning has led me to think about the human condition of need, more specifically, of needing other human beings. It is frightening how quickly you can become dependent on another person, how a recent stranger can suddenly become vital, how we can fall in love with someone we meet at a party and then spend a sleepless fortnight praying they'll call, how we so desperately rely on each other for our happiness, and how precariously these relationships begin to hang in the balance when we take each other for granted. Some people claim they are immune to these feelings, but I'm afraid I will never believe anyone who tells me that they don't need other people to love, and as importantly, for that love to be reciprocated. People who love you but tell you they don't need you are only trying to protect themselves against the agony of loss.
Of course I'm no longer just talking about my lovely Ella, but for this morning at least it is her that I openly admit to needing and missing. Need is not shameful nor pathetic nor childish, need is not a weakness, it is human, and a testament to our unique and enviable capacity for love, compassion and friendship. A few friends of mine have all happened to e-mail me recently for any words of wisdom or advice I might have on their recent relationship dilemmas, and this morning it has just occurred to me what I should unanimously and dogmatically be telling them. As John Donne rightly said, 'no man is an island'. Do not trust anyone who is prouder of their isolation than they are that someone as wonderful as you might be able to love them. Most days, you needing me, well that's all I'm proud of.
See you soon Ells Bells, I hope you got the message too. x
The Frat Party
Sunday 24th January 2010, 8.40am, Vieng Champa Restaurant - Vang Vieng
I'm sending out a distress signal. A self-inflicted distress signal. This S.O.S. is for my health, my brain and my heart. I woke up this morning thinking that I had died because my heart rate had been so slowed by liquor and Red Bull that I was convinced it was no longer beating. Then I realised I couldn't possibly be dead because I was thinking about being dead, and your brain stops ticking long before rigor mortis sets in. Then I decided that actually my brain wasn't working at all, not even a little bit, for me to be having such idiotic musings. Well then, if my brain, as I deduced, was not functioning, and I couldn't feel my heartbeat, then could I be.....? This moronic private conversation and circling of "facts" continued for a few more minutes before I fell out of bed whilst trying to check my pulse, drank a pint of water and felt much better.
For 3 days now Ella and I have been in Vang Vieng in Laos, famous for one thing and one thing only: tubing. On the Nam Song River that flows through the mountains surrounding the town you will find a collection of waterside bars overlooking various life-threatening water sports, from trapezing yourself across high wires, to 20 metre high bamboo diving platforms, and of course the tubing itself - hiring rubber rings in which to float downstream in deep, extremely fast flowing and dangerous, strong currents of water. Lots of people who say they have been tubing do not even actually go in the river, they simply frequent the bars. The whiskey flows like water and isn't much more expensive, apparently 8 lives are lost to tubing in Vang Vieng every year, and it's not difficult to see why.
The atmosphere is pretty damn terrific though. If you picture a Cancun Spring Break, or one of the American Pie movies, then you're close. We have arrived at one big frat party in which people drink themselves into oblivion from dawn until dusk and then throw themselves off the side of the bars into the river. It's no surprise then that this place is very man-heavy. A 5:1 male to female ratio I would reckon, but it's just boy heaven here. Girls in bikinis, enough cheap alcohol to forget your name and have a viable excuse for forgetting hers, a sandwich seller on every street corner, bars with beds that play Family Guy on flat screen TVs, a party every day with all your fellow bachelors, and the opportunity to perform risky water-based stunts in the hope of impressing some young, lithe, tipsy female. Boys of a certain age and disposition clearly find it difficult to leave the sickly bright lights and seedy charms of Vang Vieng, and they're all slightly over-excited.
In the past few days for example I have been chucked in mud pits, I have had my bikini clasp attacked in attempts to remove my top, I have been scooped up and carried around like a rag doll only to be put down when I poured beer over his head, I have been pinned down and had a cockroach put in my hair, I have been written on, I have been dragged from bed and sleep by my ankles and slid across a hotel hallway, I have had my mattress upturned throwing me on the floor into a table, and perhaps strangest of all... when hanging around in their room with them two new travelling companions find it highly amusing to become naked and then showcase their dancing skills for me (Greg and Rich, see?! I told you this would make the blog, congrats x). I guess these things are what happen when you make friends with giddy boys rather than sensible girls.
Injuries and damaged retinas aside though, so far it's been a positive experience. The thing about male company in this situation is that it's up front, it's in your face, and it's honest. There's nothing complicated about the relationships, it's just visceral and boisterous - much like living in a chimpanzee colony; and yes, I am making a comment on the painfully slow process that is male evolution. If you establish yourself as a fellow primate playmate and become initiated into the fraternity, you have to fore-go any expectation of soft treatment or feminine licence. In Vang Vieng I can strongly attest to the fact that chivalry is dead (what single woman in her 20's really believes that chivalry exists anymore anyway? I know very few men who can even spell it). What lives though is camaraderie and mischief, and for the next few days at least, I'm sure I can hold my own with that.
I'm sending out a distress signal. A self-inflicted distress signal. This S.O.S. is for my health, my brain and my heart. I woke up this morning thinking that I had died because my heart rate had been so slowed by liquor and Red Bull that I was convinced it was no longer beating. Then I realised I couldn't possibly be dead because I was thinking about being dead, and your brain stops ticking long before rigor mortis sets in. Then I decided that actually my brain wasn't working at all, not even a little bit, for me to be having such idiotic musings. Well then, if my brain, as I deduced, was not functioning, and I couldn't feel my heartbeat, then could I be.....? This moronic private conversation and circling of "facts" continued for a few more minutes before I fell out of bed whilst trying to check my pulse, drank a pint of water and felt much better.
For 3 days now Ella and I have been in Vang Vieng in Laos, famous for one thing and one thing only: tubing. On the Nam Song River that flows through the mountains surrounding the town you will find a collection of waterside bars overlooking various life-threatening water sports, from trapezing yourself across high wires, to 20 metre high bamboo diving platforms, and of course the tubing itself - hiring rubber rings in which to float downstream in deep, extremely fast flowing and dangerous, strong currents of water. Lots of people who say they have been tubing do not even actually go in the river, they simply frequent the bars. The whiskey flows like water and isn't much more expensive, apparently 8 lives are lost to tubing in Vang Vieng every year, and it's not difficult to see why.
The atmosphere is pretty damn terrific though. If you picture a Cancun Spring Break, or one of the American Pie movies, then you're close. We have arrived at one big frat party in which people drink themselves into oblivion from dawn until dusk and then throw themselves off the side of the bars into the river. It's no surprise then that this place is very man-heavy. A 5:1 male to female ratio I would reckon, but it's just boy heaven here. Girls in bikinis, enough cheap alcohol to forget your name and have a viable excuse for forgetting hers, a sandwich seller on every street corner, bars with beds that play Family Guy on flat screen TVs, a party every day with all your fellow bachelors, and the opportunity to perform risky water-based stunts in the hope of impressing some young, lithe, tipsy female. Boys of a certain age and disposition clearly find it difficult to leave the sickly bright lights and seedy charms of Vang Vieng, and they're all slightly over-excited.
In the past few days for example I have been chucked in mud pits, I have had my bikini clasp attacked in attempts to remove my top, I have been scooped up and carried around like a rag doll only to be put down when I poured beer over his head, I have been pinned down and had a cockroach put in my hair, I have been written on, I have been dragged from bed and sleep by my ankles and slid across a hotel hallway, I have had my mattress upturned throwing me on the floor into a table, and perhaps strangest of all... when hanging around in their room with them two new travelling companions find it highly amusing to become naked and then showcase their dancing skills for me (Greg and Rich, see?! I told you this would make the blog, congrats x). I guess these things are what happen when you make friends with giddy boys rather than sensible girls.
Injuries and damaged retinas aside though, so far it's been a positive experience. The thing about male company in this situation is that it's up front, it's in your face, and it's honest. There's nothing complicated about the relationships, it's just visceral and boisterous - much like living in a chimpanzee colony; and yes, I am making a comment on the painfully slow process that is male evolution. If you establish yourself as a fellow primate playmate and become initiated into the fraternity, you have to fore-go any expectation of soft treatment or feminine licence. In Vang Vieng I can strongly attest to the fact that chivalry is dead (what single woman in her 20's really believes that chivalry exists anymore anyway? I know very few men who can even spell it). What lives though is camaraderie and mischief, and for the next few days at least, I'm sure I can hold my own with that.
Sunday 24 January 2010
My Humble Thank You
Friday 22nd January 2010, 3.20pm, Santi Villas - Vang Vieng
A strange thing has started to happen in the past week or so. Every time I am in a public place scribbling in my notebook (which is more often than not, I don't want to hole myself away in my room), I have had people around me enquire as to what I'm writing, and then after a brief explanation about the blog, have asked, 'will you put me in it?'. In the past week alone I have had roughly 12 or so requests for blog immortalisation, sometimes from people who have had little more than 3 minutes conversation with me before wondering aloud if I will become their holiday journal ghost writer.
My now standard jesting response is 'well that depends on whether you do anything interesting or clever'. I will though make an exception for a curly haired, baby faced, cheeky Australian scamp who we spent a few days with in Hanoi and Halong Bay, and who shouted out to me across the beach on Monday, 'Hey Anne Frank! You writing about me again?'. Not interesting or clever Andy, but it did make me laugh. I've met a lot of people, some will be friends, some will not, some deserve my time to write about them, others barely deserved my company; but I am not thinking about any of these people today. Today I am thinking about Sarah and Jo.
Two unfathomably beautiful, fiercely smart and successful young women, and I am pleased to say, long-standing friends of mine. In a completely serendipitous circumstance girls, you sent me almost identical e-mails within 24 hours of each other and I read them both earlier this afternoon. I write this now only for you two, to let you know how bowled over I was by your generosity, loyalty and love and to say thank you in the most public way I can. Without knowing it, Sarah and Jo, you have sent me your words at a time when it was very important for me to read them. You have made me feel special and worthy of kindness, and that - you will have to trust me on this one - was something I greatly needed today. It's like you both knew.
Thank goodness for good friends. For people who can make you feel better from halfway across the world, for people who support, rally and believe in you, without any expectation of it being recognised or written about. xxxxxx
A strange thing has started to happen in the past week or so. Every time I am in a public place scribbling in my notebook (which is more often than not, I don't want to hole myself away in my room), I have had people around me enquire as to what I'm writing, and then after a brief explanation about the blog, have asked, 'will you put me in it?'. In the past week alone I have had roughly 12 or so requests for blog immortalisation, sometimes from people who have had little more than 3 minutes conversation with me before wondering aloud if I will become their holiday journal ghost writer.
My now standard jesting response is 'well that depends on whether you do anything interesting or clever'. I will though make an exception for a curly haired, baby faced, cheeky Australian scamp who we spent a few days with in Hanoi and Halong Bay, and who shouted out to me across the beach on Monday, 'Hey Anne Frank! You writing about me again?'. Not interesting or clever Andy, but it did make me laugh. I've met a lot of people, some will be friends, some will not, some deserve my time to write about them, others barely deserved my company; but I am not thinking about any of these people today. Today I am thinking about Sarah and Jo.
Two unfathomably beautiful, fiercely smart and successful young women, and I am pleased to say, long-standing friends of mine. In a completely serendipitous circumstance girls, you sent me almost identical e-mails within 24 hours of each other and I read them both earlier this afternoon. I write this now only for you two, to let you know how bowled over I was by your generosity, loyalty and love and to say thank you in the most public way I can. Without knowing it, Sarah and Jo, you have sent me your words at a time when it was very important for me to read them. You have made me feel special and worthy of kindness, and that - you will have to trust me on this one - was something I greatly needed today. It's like you both knew.
Thank goodness for good friends. For people who can make you feel better from halfway across the world, for people who support, rally and believe in you, without any expectation of it being recognised or written about. xxxxxx
A Creature Of Habit
Wednesday 20th January 2010, 10.15pm, Mixay Guest House, Vientiane - Laos
Apparently no matter how far you flee and irrespective of everything you see and do on the way which changes you, some habits are too ingrained to relinquish.
In the summer term of my third year at University, way back in 2007 now, I had 4 fortuitous weeks after my final exams to wile away as I pleased, free at last from the shackles of study and the miserable afternoons wallowing in the muddy trenches of third semester library battleground. Casting off at last my albatross of educational duty, I spent an absolutely blissful month sat in Starbucks and worked my way through a multitude of long pined for literary fiction. I have always been an avid if not an obsessive devourer of novels, and although a keen and conscientious student, I resented every exam from my year 6 SATS right up until that last University test, because they prevented me from reading for pleasure without severe guilt pangs that I should have had my nose in a textbook instead. But it's not my love of books that has caused me to put pen to paper this evening, more my love of coffee shops.
Those 4 weeks where I made an indent in the sofa at Starbucks in Leamington Spa permanently solidified my consideration of these institutions as Grace-havens. They represent for me a sanctum of safety. From the low amber lighting to the chugs and clicks of the barista's work, the whirring hum of the smoothie machine, the bottomless cocooning of feather-stuffed armchairs, Joni Mitchell trilling away delicately in the background and of course, the best aroma in the world, coffee beans, hanging seductively from every oak wood, leather covered, brown tiled surface; what self-indulgent sanctuaries these places are to me.
I have been delighted then to discover these home from homes hidden around South East Asia. So far I have been a customer at three major chains - Bobby Brewers and Highlands Coffee in Vietnam, and True Coffee of Laos, where we turned up this afternoon after a mammoth 20 hour bus journey from Hanoi. What is more rewarding than arriving tired and expectant in a new city, nae, new country, than to be greeted by the sight of a major franchise coffee house round the corner from your accommodation? I'm stumped to think of anything. I can guess what some of you may be thinking about this Caffeine Addicts Anonymous admission. How exceptionally inane of me to go halfway round the world and spend my life savings to sit in evil, multinational, American inspired, corporate Capitalist conglomerations of glorified cafes. You may have a point, but I'm going to have to be stubbornly unrepentant on this one I'm afraid.
I have been, on the whole, a very well behaved tourist - diligently adhering to the advice of his Lordship the Lonely Planet and seeing everything I can of cultural interest everywhere I go in order to expose myself to true representation of the strange and exotic places I am lucky enough to visit. But sometimes you know, we all need a little bit of familiarity. To continue appreciating the new life you are leading it is important to remember the mundane, everyday habits which made you happy in your other life, otherwise how will you ever give up the strange and the exotic to return to coffee shop monotony?
The other day a friend of mine posted a link to a song on my facebook 'wall'. The song in question is by Charlene D'Angelo and entitled 'I've Never Been To Me'. It tells the story of a woman who spent her entire life travelling, searching and exploring the world for experiences and places which would fulfil her, only to realise at the end of her life that if she had stayed still, stopped looking, and listened to what her heart told her she wanted, happiness would have found her itself through love and family, and familiarity. My friend assures me that he was making no insinuations and quite adorably and typically of him just sent me the song because 'the video is hilarious Gracie.' Even if he didn't mean anything by it, I do see it's relevance, and give it credence to my own situation. I do not know when I shall return home or where will even feel like home anymore, and I am not sure what can make me happy or what it is that I have come looking for. I am comforted however, by the fact that I'm as equally likely to find it in a foreign tropical paradise, as I am in the humdrum familiarity of a coffee shop.
Apparently no matter how far you flee and irrespective of everything you see and do on the way which changes you, some habits are too ingrained to relinquish.
In the summer term of my third year at University, way back in 2007 now, I had 4 fortuitous weeks after my final exams to wile away as I pleased, free at last from the shackles of study and the miserable afternoons wallowing in the muddy trenches of third semester library battleground. Casting off at last my albatross of educational duty, I spent an absolutely blissful month sat in Starbucks and worked my way through a multitude of long pined for literary fiction. I have always been an avid if not an obsessive devourer of novels, and although a keen and conscientious student, I resented every exam from my year 6 SATS right up until that last University test, because they prevented me from reading for pleasure without severe guilt pangs that I should have had my nose in a textbook instead. But it's not my love of books that has caused me to put pen to paper this evening, more my love of coffee shops.
Those 4 weeks where I made an indent in the sofa at Starbucks in Leamington Spa permanently solidified my consideration of these institutions as Grace-havens. They represent for me a sanctum of safety. From the low amber lighting to the chugs and clicks of the barista's work, the whirring hum of the smoothie machine, the bottomless cocooning of feather-stuffed armchairs, Joni Mitchell trilling away delicately in the background and of course, the best aroma in the world, coffee beans, hanging seductively from every oak wood, leather covered, brown tiled surface; what self-indulgent sanctuaries these places are to me.
I have been delighted then to discover these home from homes hidden around South East Asia. So far I have been a customer at three major chains - Bobby Brewers and Highlands Coffee in Vietnam, and True Coffee of Laos, where we turned up this afternoon after a mammoth 20 hour bus journey from Hanoi. What is more rewarding than arriving tired and expectant in a new city, nae, new country, than to be greeted by the sight of a major franchise coffee house round the corner from your accommodation? I'm stumped to think of anything. I can guess what some of you may be thinking about this Caffeine Addicts Anonymous admission. How exceptionally inane of me to go halfway round the world and spend my life savings to sit in evil, multinational, American inspired, corporate Capitalist conglomerations of glorified cafes. You may have a point, but I'm going to have to be stubbornly unrepentant on this one I'm afraid.
I have been, on the whole, a very well behaved tourist - diligently adhering to the advice of his Lordship the Lonely Planet and seeing everything I can of cultural interest everywhere I go in order to expose myself to true representation of the strange and exotic places I am lucky enough to visit. But sometimes you know, we all need a little bit of familiarity. To continue appreciating the new life you are leading it is important to remember the mundane, everyday habits which made you happy in your other life, otherwise how will you ever give up the strange and the exotic to return to coffee shop monotony?
The other day a friend of mine posted a link to a song on my facebook 'wall'. The song in question is by Charlene D'Angelo and entitled 'I've Never Been To Me'. It tells the story of a woman who spent her entire life travelling, searching and exploring the world for experiences and places which would fulfil her, only to realise at the end of her life that if she had stayed still, stopped looking, and listened to what her heart told her she wanted, happiness would have found her itself through love and family, and familiarity. My friend assures me that he was making no insinuations and quite adorably and typically of him just sent me the song because 'the video is hilarious Gracie.' Even if he didn't mean anything by it, I do see it's relevance, and give it credence to my own situation. I do not know when I shall return home or where will even feel like home anymore, and I am not sure what can make me happy or what it is that I have come looking for. I am comforted however, by the fact that I'm as equally likely to find it in a foreign tropical paradise, as I am in the humdrum familiarity of a coffee shop.
Dragons Before Geography
Monday 18th January 2010, 2pm, Castaway Island - Halong Bay
The sunshine was nearer than we knew, and I write this from the beach. Not any old beach either, but Castaway Island, a solitary and private strip of 1km long sand, lonely and stranded as it is in Halong Bay. Halong Bay is something of an ecological rarity, more than a rarity in fact. It is so unique that locals are campaigning, rightly so in my opinion, to have the area named officially as one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the world. I'm not sure how this works though, why aren't they allowed 8? The National Wonders committee can't very well say 'sorry Niagara Falls, you've had your day, there's a new kid in town and it's got jet-skiing', can they?!
Right, I'll try my best with this, but really can I just implore you to google it for an image or something, in your absence you are missing a sight your eyes deserve to see. For 500 million years off the North Eastern coast of Vietnam, shifting of tectonic plates, the advance of the sea, the raising of the bay area, and climate and water erosion have created a dense cluster of 1,969 limestone monolithic islands, secretly hollowed in their underbellies with enormous caves and each topped with thick jungle vegetation, rising spectacularly from the ocean up to 100 metres high. But none of this tells you how stunning it is here does it. The result of all this geological activity is these series of islands rising from the sea, so vast, weathered, imposing and painstakingly crafted by nature they look as though each one could have filled God's palm as he pulled it from the top of a volcano somewhere on Mars, and then threw it down to Earth's oceans to see if he could make anything interesting with it.
These rocky outposts, dotted sporadically through the sea, have had a strange effect on the water around them which I am afraid I am at a deficit to be able to explain. I seem to remember being too busy in GSCE Geography classes asking for the 153rd time, much to Mr Chapman's annoyance, what the hell is the point of a Demographic Transition Model anyway - I worked this one out eventually but now know nothing about tidal patterns and always lose at the 'Guess the Capital City' game. I digress. The sea is dead, not partially still or calm when the weather is nice, but as flat and as silent as the proverbial pancake and grave. There is not one hint of a wave or tide, the huge, craggy islands do something to interrupt it's course I imagine. It is also cobalt blue, a different shade to the lighter, transparent hues of reefs and sunshine holiday coastlines, this blue is far deeper and thicker - this blue is so undiluted that it looks like you might come out stained and streaked with it yourself after a swim.
We spent yesterday sailing through the quiet richness of it all on a Junk Ship with 30 other 20 something year old backpackers - mainly men, mainly Australian, ipso facto, mainly drunk. Last night we slept on the boat and despite my A. frequent mentioning of the Titanic and the similarity of large rocky islands to icebergs and B. complete disappointment at the lack of any male form even remotely resembling Leonardo Dicaprio, it was incredible to open our cabin door this morning and be greeted with the silent wildness of an undisturbed ocean view. So wonderful waking up on a calm sea, oh it's a pirate's life for me. Yesterday being colder than today there was also a thick layer of mist hung suspended in the air around the islands, hanging omnipotently like Saturn's rings. Maybe you have a better picture of it all now. If you are imagining a scene of tranquil, natural beauty, a multitude of varying flora and fauna, an atmosphere tinged with eeriness to the point where you feel like pirates must have fought and died in these caves, a landscape of sky, sea and mountain so endless and epic that you don't think you could feel any smaller and insignificant than if you were looking at the whole earth from space, if you are imagining this, then I guess I didn't do too bad a job of describing it. Ooh, one more stoke of the brush for you to the add to the composition; over the top of each island soar eagles in large numbers with wingspans of at least 4ft, utterly majestic and mesmerising silhouetted against the violet sky. There you go, painting complete.
Our tour guide told us that the local people on the mainland, although I'm sure respectful for the tectonic plates explanation, have little or no interest in this theory as they are able to explain the existence of Halong Bay without the need for silly old science. What really happened you see, is that when the Vietnamese were fighting Chinese invaders, the gods sent a family of dragons to help defend the land. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. The people kept their land safe and the dragons liked the area they had created so much that they decided to stay. 'Halong' in Vietnamese means 'where the dragon descends on the water'. I love this.
In truth I've found Vietnamese people quite tricky customers to deal with in some respects. Although I've met many warm and wonderful people over the past 3 weeks, there have equally been many very difficult encounters - sometimes just cold and contemptuous, others rude, aggressive, pushy. There seems to be an unvoiced suspicion of tourists and perhaps rightly so, given the centuries of White colonisation and interference here I expect they are always on their guard for future invaders and risks to their freedom. But Halong Bay leaves me floundering in affection and admiration for these people all over again, as I felt in my initial love affair with Saigon and it's inhabitants. Leave science to worry about land mass movements and tidal anomalies, how much more exciting and precious would life seem if we could all look at the world the way they choose to; through eyes that can cast off a history of war to still see magic and dragons.
The sunshine was nearer than we knew, and I write this from the beach. Not any old beach either, but Castaway Island, a solitary and private strip of 1km long sand, lonely and stranded as it is in Halong Bay. Halong Bay is something of an ecological rarity, more than a rarity in fact. It is so unique that locals are campaigning, rightly so in my opinion, to have the area named officially as one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the world. I'm not sure how this works though, why aren't they allowed 8? The National Wonders committee can't very well say 'sorry Niagara Falls, you've had your day, there's a new kid in town and it's got jet-skiing', can they?!
Right, I'll try my best with this, but really can I just implore you to google it for an image or something, in your absence you are missing a sight your eyes deserve to see. For 500 million years off the North Eastern coast of Vietnam, shifting of tectonic plates, the advance of the sea, the raising of the bay area, and climate and water erosion have created a dense cluster of 1,969 limestone monolithic islands, secretly hollowed in their underbellies with enormous caves and each topped with thick jungle vegetation, rising spectacularly from the ocean up to 100 metres high. But none of this tells you how stunning it is here does it. The result of all this geological activity is these series of islands rising from the sea, so vast, weathered, imposing and painstakingly crafted by nature they look as though each one could have filled God's palm as he pulled it from the top of a volcano somewhere on Mars, and then threw it down to Earth's oceans to see if he could make anything interesting with it.
These rocky outposts, dotted sporadically through the sea, have had a strange effect on the water around them which I am afraid I am at a deficit to be able to explain. I seem to remember being too busy in GSCE Geography classes asking for the 153rd time, much to Mr Chapman's annoyance, what the hell is the point of a Demographic Transition Model anyway - I worked this one out eventually but now know nothing about tidal patterns and always lose at the 'Guess the Capital City' game. I digress. The sea is dead, not partially still or calm when the weather is nice, but as flat and as silent as the proverbial pancake and grave. There is not one hint of a wave or tide, the huge, craggy islands do something to interrupt it's course I imagine. It is also cobalt blue, a different shade to the lighter, transparent hues of reefs and sunshine holiday coastlines, this blue is far deeper and thicker - this blue is so undiluted that it looks like you might come out stained and streaked with it yourself after a swim.
We spent yesterday sailing through the quiet richness of it all on a Junk Ship with 30 other 20 something year old backpackers - mainly men, mainly Australian, ipso facto, mainly drunk. Last night we slept on the boat and despite my A. frequent mentioning of the Titanic and the similarity of large rocky islands to icebergs and B. complete disappointment at the lack of any male form even remotely resembling Leonardo Dicaprio, it was incredible to open our cabin door this morning and be greeted with the silent wildness of an undisturbed ocean view. So wonderful waking up on a calm sea, oh it's a pirate's life for me. Yesterday being colder than today there was also a thick layer of mist hung suspended in the air around the islands, hanging omnipotently like Saturn's rings. Maybe you have a better picture of it all now. If you are imagining a scene of tranquil, natural beauty, a multitude of varying flora and fauna, an atmosphere tinged with eeriness to the point where you feel like pirates must have fought and died in these caves, a landscape of sky, sea and mountain so endless and epic that you don't think you could feel any smaller and insignificant than if you were looking at the whole earth from space, if you are imagining this, then I guess I didn't do too bad a job of describing it. Ooh, one more stoke of the brush for you to the add to the composition; over the top of each island soar eagles in large numbers with wingspans of at least 4ft, utterly majestic and mesmerising silhouetted against the violet sky. There you go, painting complete.
Our tour guide told us that the local people on the mainland, although I'm sure respectful for the tectonic plates explanation, have little or no interest in this theory as they are able to explain the existence of Halong Bay without the need for silly old science. What really happened you see, is that when the Vietnamese were fighting Chinese invaders, the gods sent a family of dragons to help defend the land. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. The people kept their land safe and the dragons liked the area they had created so much that they decided to stay. 'Halong' in Vietnamese means 'where the dragon descends on the water'. I love this.
In truth I've found Vietnamese people quite tricky customers to deal with in some respects. Although I've met many warm and wonderful people over the past 3 weeks, there have equally been many very difficult encounters - sometimes just cold and contemptuous, others rude, aggressive, pushy. There seems to be an unvoiced suspicion of tourists and perhaps rightly so, given the centuries of White colonisation and interference here I expect they are always on their guard for future invaders and risks to their freedom. But Halong Bay leaves me floundering in affection and admiration for these people all over again, as I felt in my initial love affair with Saigon and it's inhabitants. Leave science to worry about land mass movements and tidal anomalies, how much more exciting and precious would life seem if we could all look at the world the way they choose to; through eyes that can cast off a history of war to still see magic and dragons.
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Six Faces
Saturday 16th January 2010, Backpackers Hostel - Hanoi
'...different pieces of ground told different stories to different people. We also knew that for years now there had been no country here but the war.'
I've not known where to start with this. Picking up my notebook and pen numerous times, carrying them to the nearest bar or coffee shop, ordering a beer or a banana shake, expectantly holding pen above paper, and then promptly placing it down again on the table, unsatisfied with what I was about to write. I would then sit in contemplative quiet for 5 minutes before giving up all together, striking up conversation with whichever hapless soul was unwittingly sat at the table adjacent to mine - it's not like being in London, here you can talk to strangers uninvited without them assuming you've just escaped from Broadhurst.
At first I had delayed writing about this because I didn't understand it properly. The more internet research I did, the more books I read, the more people I questioned, the less I could grasp the situation. More information only made me more confused. Also I was reluctant to write anything until I was properly versed on the subject. The whole topic is already so frustratingly marred with misconception, red herrings and emotive historical rewritings that I was adamant my writing should not simply add to the mass of biased entanglement which exists on the subject. I'm talking of course, about the Vietnam War.
In the three weeks we have spent moving North from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, I have observed an obvious and marked change in attitude towards the country's history. This wasn't a huge surprise given that American involvement was initiated by the Northern Communist government changing it's policy of 'political struggle' to 'armed struggle' to the Catholic South in 1960. The country was split in two, battle lines were drawn at the Ben Hai River and the remnants of this North/South civil war can still be very much detected in the way in which Vietnamese people discuss their past. On a trip around the De-Militarized Zone of the Ben Hai River a tour guide from the North told me, with a Rictus grin fixed unnaturally on her face, 'Now we are all one Communist country!'. For the sincerity of it she may as well have said 'we are all one big happy family!'. People in the South have whisperingly confided in me that despite the prominent Capitalist ethos of a country full of business minded, money focused, entrepreneurs in the making, Communism still casts an ugly shadow. The government allows the people to go through the rigmarole of voting for local leadership at election in the pretence of democracy but the decisions have already been made. The ballot boxes are a cursory distraction from the autocratic state rule. The only way I could think to accurately tell you about the multitude of suffering on all sides, the devastation to life and freedom for all who were here between 1963 and 1975, is to offer you the testimonies of six different faces which have stayed with me. Faces which illustrate this war and cover a broad enough spectrum of experience so as not to colour your opinion with bias. It's going to be a long one, and I imagine you might get bored and want to give up halfway through, but three faces will only mislead you, so either stop now, or read to the end.
The first of these faces is Stefan, one of our Easy Rider drivers in Dalat. During the war years Stefan fought in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam alongside the American, South Korean, Australian and New Zealanders that were deployed here. When the war ended in 1975, the Northern government stormed the gates of what was the parliament building in Saigon, what is now named Reunification Palace, and the last American troops escaped from the roof of the building by helicopter. Men who had been fighting for the ARVN, their families, and indeed anyone who was suspected of being a supporter of the Republic, were imprisoned in re-education camps. Stefan was among these captives. From 1975 until 1977 he was held in detention in a makeshift cell with 80 other men with no promise of trial, escape or release and subjected to water torture on a daily basis in an attempt to institutionalise him to the Communist regime. For America, for the Northern troops, for the historians and for the worldwide press, the war was over, but still innocents were silently incarcerated. Stefan was one of the lucky ones, in 1977 he was driven into the countryside and allowed to walk home to his family - no concrete case or evidence could be brought against him, many more of his former cellmates were executed by firing squad. Erased from history, unrecorded, missing in action, taken for revenge after the world declared peace in Vietnam. When Stefan was telling me all this he mimicked being blindfolded and shooting a gun and said 'they kill them, they kill them.' I said the word 'executed' and he took a notebook from his top pocket, scribbled the word down, thanked me for helping to improve his English and said 'I never forget this word now, I not forget it.' No, I bet he won't.
Andrew X. Pham, the writer of Catfish and Mandala, was a 7 year old Vietnamese boy living in Saigon during the war years, and he is my second face. When the Viet Cong (Communist guerrilla army) had taken the South, his parents made the decision to evacuate the family by boat to America. His father had been the director of an anti VC propaganda movement meaning that after 1975 it was obviously too dangerous for him to stay. Catfish and Mandala is Pham's memoir of his travels around Vietnam by bicycle, 20 years later, in search of his broken heritage. He recalls a time when after 18 months in America he shouted at his teacher in a history lesson over the way in which the Vietnam War was being taught, 'America left Vietnam. America not finish war. One more day bombing, Viet Cong die. One more day! No. America go home! America chicken!'. So many wanted them gone, and yes, they should never have been here at all, but for some, their departure was the hardest blow to bear. It signalled abandonment and defeat, waving the white flag to a war that was never theirs to surrender and leaving others to deal with the consequences after they had made their escape.
Of course though, there is no escaping the fact of the damage American troops did throughout their occupation. Ella and I visited Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi this morning, the jail where captured American POW's were held, amongst them the former presidential candidate John McCain. There is a proudly displayed photograph of him being dragged from a river by a group of VC troops after his plane was shot down. There was also video footage of the bombing to the North of the country. There were no targets, everything and everyone was fair game - schools, residential areas, markets, temples - by the climax of the war the G.I.'s had become so trigger happy that all men, women and children who crossed American paths became bullet fodder. 'If it looks VC, it is VC. Shoot it', a line I picked up somewhere on my reading. My third unforgettable face is a North Vietnamese woman from the video at the prison. The camera sticks to her as she frantically searches for her baby through the rubble of what was a nursery building. Cutting her hands on the concrete, black from ash, breaking her back from the work and barely able to see through her tears, the camera is still rolling when she unearths the lifeless body of her little boy, no more than 3 years old. She screams with a sound more animal than human, throws herself over him, and the camera pans away as she lies heaving with sobs in the dirt next to her dead child. Ella left the room at this point, and I know she won't mind me telling you that later she realised 'that was the first time I've cried in 2 months.'
On our tour of the De-Militarized Zone we were taken to the Vinh Moc Tunnels. This area, just on the Northern border of the Ben Hai River, endured endless years of American gunfire given the positioning of a G.I. base on the other side of the water. Rather than move from their land into dangerous jungle territory strewn with chemicals and landmines the community dug a network of tunnels, and 300 people spent 6 years living in the dark, dank, humidity of it. This became common practice around the countryside in the highland provinces, by 1973 there were 10,000 North Vietnamese living underground. We went down in to the tunnels and were led around with torches for 30 minutes or so and let me make this very clear - I am not afraid of the dark or of creepy crawlies, and I am not claustrophobic, but offered the prospect of 6 years down there I can honestly say that I would have run to the surface and taken as many bullets as they could fill me with. In the museum connected to the tunnels there was a photo of a smiling little girl who had lived in this community, 17 babies were born underground and she had been one of them. Embarrassingly I cannot remember her name and did not think to write it down at the time but learnt that she later grew up to write about her experiences. A quote under her photograph read 'My childhood, what have I got? It is the ground that I lie on and the tunnel that I walk in.' She is my fourth face that just will not go away.
I picked up a book the other day which I'd been hunting for since we arrived here. After some amiable bartering the street seller who sold it to me told me that I was his last customer of the day, which would give me good luck. Someone told me this when I was their first customer the other morning but I've found it's best not to argue logic with Buddhists, wonderfully they have zero frame of reference for it. Anyway, I was overwhelmed and unconvinced by the 3 weeks of anti American propaganda I had swallowed at every corner of our journey in Vietnam. The War Remnants Museum in Saigon, although unquestionably informative, heartbreaking, and for the most part, depressingly accurate, still looks like an A to Z historical manifesto of why America is the Devil. The Communist-run museum believes firmly in the principals of black and white: Viet Cong = good, America = very, very bad. The problem I had when walking around there is that I knew this was not the whole truth, there is no black and white, everything about this was was grey. So I bought Dispatches. An incredible book by the war correspondent and journalist Michael Herr, it gives an account of his time spent with American soldiers at ground level during the war. He writes that before going out on night patrols the medics would give the soldiers pills. Amphetamines to hype them up, blur reality, clear their vision and intensify every sound. Like little boys carrying plastic guns fighting in a computer game world, they would run through the jungle in the darkness high as kites looking for people to shoot at. They were attempting, I suppose, to make it less real for them, so that they could kill without the messy interruptions of conscience and independent thought. The American army destroyed these young men, pumping them with drugs, placing them in situations of unimaginable gore and bloodshed, forcing them to become interrogators and torturers and then wondering why so many found it hard to readjust on returning to the comforts of home.
Herr recalls, 'I knew one 4th Division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it... In the coming hours he'd stand as faceless and quiet in the jungle as a fallen tree, and God help his opposite numbers unless they had at least half a squad along, he was a good killer, one of our best.' This man, my fifth face, was sent mad by all he saw. Herr writes that on his return, this nameless soldier 'couldn't hack it in the real world.' He would sit all day in his bedroom at his parents' house pointing a rifle out the window, training it on people and cars that passed by. He was forever frozen to that time, the perfect student of all he had been taught, distrusting of everyone but his gun and permanently on patrol. And he can't have been the only one can he.
If you are still with me, thank you for your patience and interest, we are nearly there. At the War Remnants Museum they have a section on the victims of Agent Orange. One of the many, and if not the most heinous war crimes committed by the Americans was the dissemination of this herbicidal acidic poison. Spread across vast areas of jungle as well as populated land the aim was to create deforestation thereby minimising the VC's opportunity for ambush, as well as for outright chemical warfare - infecting all who came in to contact with it. Vietnam is strewn with beggars who are disformed, disfigured and missing limbs, these are the descendants of this crime, generations of disabled babies born to people who encountered the chemical. One photo in the museum is of a South Korean veteran, his arms near paralysed and contorted behind his back.
I have left him until last, face and body number six, because his quote underneath the photo summed up everything for me. It made me understand why I couldn't understand. Nothing is as clear as right and wrong, there were no pantomime baddies or dashing goodies, nobody won, everyone lost. However inadequate it may be this is the only truthful conclusion I can make from looking in to the eyes of these six faces, as I do, day and night, night and day. His quote read, 'What am I? Not a hero nor a criminal, but a victim of the history.'
'...different pieces of ground told different stories to different people. We also knew that for years now there had been no country here but the war.'
Dispatches, Michael Herr.
I've not known where to start with this. Picking up my notebook and pen numerous times, carrying them to the nearest bar or coffee shop, ordering a beer or a banana shake, expectantly holding pen above paper, and then promptly placing it down again on the table, unsatisfied with what I was about to write. I would then sit in contemplative quiet for 5 minutes before giving up all together, striking up conversation with whichever hapless soul was unwittingly sat at the table adjacent to mine - it's not like being in London, here you can talk to strangers uninvited without them assuming you've just escaped from Broadhurst.
At first I had delayed writing about this because I didn't understand it properly. The more internet research I did, the more books I read, the more people I questioned, the less I could grasp the situation. More information only made me more confused. Also I was reluctant to write anything until I was properly versed on the subject. The whole topic is already so frustratingly marred with misconception, red herrings and emotive historical rewritings that I was adamant my writing should not simply add to the mass of biased entanglement which exists on the subject. I'm talking of course, about the Vietnam War.
In the three weeks we have spent moving North from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, I have observed an obvious and marked change in attitude towards the country's history. This wasn't a huge surprise given that American involvement was initiated by the Northern Communist government changing it's policy of 'political struggle' to 'armed struggle' to the Catholic South in 1960. The country was split in two, battle lines were drawn at the Ben Hai River and the remnants of this North/South civil war can still be very much detected in the way in which Vietnamese people discuss their past. On a trip around the De-Militarized Zone of the Ben Hai River a tour guide from the North told me, with a Rictus grin fixed unnaturally on her face, 'Now we are all one Communist country!'. For the sincerity of it she may as well have said 'we are all one big happy family!'. People in the South have whisperingly confided in me that despite the prominent Capitalist ethos of a country full of business minded, money focused, entrepreneurs in the making, Communism still casts an ugly shadow. The government allows the people to go through the rigmarole of voting for local leadership at election in the pretence of democracy but the decisions have already been made. The ballot boxes are a cursory distraction from the autocratic state rule. The only way I could think to accurately tell you about the multitude of suffering on all sides, the devastation to life and freedom for all who were here between 1963 and 1975, is to offer you the testimonies of six different faces which have stayed with me. Faces which illustrate this war and cover a broad enough spectrum of experience so as not to colour your opinion with bias. It's going to be a long one, and I imagine you might get bored and want to give up halfway through, but three faces will only mislead you, so either stop now, or read to the end.
The first of these faces is Stefan, one of our Easy Rider drivers in Dalat. During the war years Stefan fought in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam alongside the American, South Korean, Australian and New Zealanders that were deployed here. When the war ended in 1975, the Northern government stormed the gates of what was the parliament building in Saigon, what is now named Reunification Palace, and the last American troops escaped from the roof of the building by helicopter. Men who had been fighting for the ARVN, their families, and indeed anyone who was suspected of being a supporter of the Republic, were imprisoned in re-education camps. Stefan was among these captives. From 1975 until 1977 he was held in detention in a makeshift cell with 80 other men with no promise of trial, escape or release and subjected to water torture on a daily basis in an attempt to institutionalise him to the Communist regime. For America, for the Northern troops, for the historians and for the worldwide press, the war was over, but still innocents were silently incarcerated. Stefan was one of the lucky ones, in 1977 he was driven into the countryside and allowed to walk home to his family - no concrete case or evidence could be brought against him, many more of his former cellmates were executed by firing squad. Erased from history, unrecorded, missing in action, taken for revenge after the world declared peace in Vietnam. When Stefan was telling me all this he mimicked being blindfolded and shooting a gun and said 'they kill them, they kill them.' I said the word 'executed' and he took a notebook from his top pocket, scribbled the word down, thanked me for helping to improve his English and said 'I never forget this word now, I not forget it.' No, I bet he won't.
Andrew X. Pham, the writer of Catfish and Mandala, was a 7 year old Vietnamese boy living in Saigon during the war years, and he is my second face. When the Viet Cong (Communist guerrilla army) had taken the South, his parents made the decision to evacuate the family by boat to America. His father had been the director of an anti VC propaganda movement meaning that after 1975 it was obviously too dangerous for him to stay. Catfish and Mandala is Pham's memoir of his travels around Vietnam by bicycle, 20 years later, in search of his broken heritage. He recalls a time when after 18 months in America he shouted at his teacher in a history lesson over the way in which the Vietnam War was being taught, 'America left Vietnam. America not finish war. One more day bombing, Viet Cong die. One more day! No. America go home! America chicken!'. So many wanted them gone, and yes, they should never have been here at all, but for some, their departure was the hardest blow to bear. It signalled abandonment and defeat, waving the white flag to a war that was never theirs to surrender and leaving others to deal with the consequences after they had made their escape.
Of course though, there is no escaping the fact of the damage American troops did throughout their occupation. Ella and I visited Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi this morning, the jail where captured American POW's were held, amongst them the former presidential candidate John McCain. There is a proudly displayed photograph of him being dragged from a river by a group of VC troops after his plane was shot down. There was also video footage of the bombing to the North of the country. There were no targets, everything and everyone was fair game - schools, residential areas, markets, temples - by the climax of the war the G.I.'s had become so trigger happy that all men, women and children who crossed American paths became bullet fodder. 'If it looks VC, it is VC. Shoot it', a line I picked up somewhere on my reading. My third unforgettable face is a North Vietnamese woman from the video at the prison. The camera sticks to her as she frantically searches for her baby through the rubble of what was a nursery building. Cutting her hands on the concrete, black from ash, breaking her back from the work and barely able to see through her tears, the camera is still rolling when she unearths the lifeless body of her little boy, no more than 3 years old. She screams with a sound more animal than human, throws herself over him, and the camera pans away as she lies heaving with sobs in the dirt next to her dead child. Ella left the room at this point, and I know she won't mind me telling you that later she realised 'that was the first time I've cried in 2 months.'
On our tour of the De-Militarized Zone we were taken to the Vinh Moc Tunnels. This area, just on the Northern border of the Ben Hai River, endured endless years of American gunfire given the positioning of a G.I. base on the other side of the water. Rather than move from their land into dangerous jungle territory strewn with chemicals and landmines the community dug a network of tunnels, and 300 people spent 6 years living in the dark, dank, humidity of it. This became common practice around the countryside in the highland provinces, by 1973 there were 10,000 North Vietnamese living underground. We went down in to the tunnels and were led around with torches for 30 minutes or so and let me make this very clear - I am not afraid of the dark or of creepy crawlies, and I am not claustrophobic, but offered the prospect of 6 years down there I can honestly say that I would have run to the surface and taken as many bullets as they could fill me with. In the museum connected to the tunnels there was a photo of a smiling little girl who had lived in this community, 17 babies were born underground and she had been one of them. Embarrassingly I cannot remember her name and did not think to write it down at the time but learnt that she later grew up to write about her experiences. A quote under her photograph read 'My childhood, what have I got? It is the ground that I lie on and the tunnel that I walk in.' She is my fourth face that just will not go away.
I picked up a book the other day which I'd been hunting for since we arrived here. After some amiable bartering the street seller who sold it to me told me that I was his last customer of the day, which would give me good luck. Someone told me this when I was their first customer the other morning but I've found it's best not to argue logic with Buddhists, wonderfully they have zero frame of reference for it. Anyway, I was overwhelmed and unconvinced by the 3 weeks of anti American propaganda I had swallowed at every corner of our journey in Vietnam. The War Remnants Museum in Saigon, although unquestionably informative, heartbreaking, and for the most part, depressingly accurate, still looks like an A to Z historical manifesto of why America is the Devil. The Communist-run museum believes firmly in the principals of black and white: Viet Cong = good, America = very, very bad. The problem I had when walking around there is that I knew this was not the whole truth, there is no black and white, everything about this was was grey. So I bought Dispatches. An incredible book by the war correspondent and journalist Michael Herr, it gives an account of his time spent with American soldiers at ground level during the war. He writes that before going out on night patrols the medics would give the soldiers pills. Amphetamines to hype them up, blur reality, clear their vision and intensify every sound. Like little boys carrying plastic guns fighting in a computer game world, they would run through the jungle in the darkness high as kites looking for people to shoot at. They were attempting, I suppose, to make it less real for them, so that they could kill without the messy interruptions of conscience and independent thought. The American army destroyed these young men, pumping them with drugs, placing them in situations of unimaginable gore and bloodshed, forcing them to become interrogators and torturers and then wondering why so many found it hard to readjust on returning to the comforts of home.
Herr recalls, 'I knew one 4th Division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it... In the coming hours he'd stand as faceless and quiet in the jungle as a fallen tree, and God help his opposite numbers unless they had at least half a squad along, he was a good killer, one of our best.' This man, my fifth face, was sent mad by all he saw. Herr writes that on his return, this nameless soldier 'couldn't hack it in the real world.' He would sit all day in his bedroom at his parents' house pointing a rifle out the window, training it on people and cars that passed by. He was forever frozen to that time, the perfect student of all he had been taught, distrusting of everyone but his gun and permanently on patrol. And he can't have been the only one can he.
If you are still with me, thank you for your patience and interest, we are nearly there. At the War Remnants Museum they have a section on the victims of Agent Orange. One of the many, and if not the most heinous war crimes committed by the Americans was the dissemination of this herbicidal acidic poison. Spread across vast areas of jungle as well as populated land the aim was to create deforestation thereby minimising the VC's opportunity for ambush, as well as for outright chemical warfare - infecting all who came in to contact with it. Vietnam is strewn with beggars who are disformed, disfigured and missing limbs, these are the descendants of this crime, generations of disabled babies born to people who encountered the chemical. One photo in the museum is of a South Korean veteran, his arms near paralysed and contorted behind his back.
I have left him until last, face and body number six, because his quote underneath the photo summed up everything for me. It made me understand why I couldn't understand. Nothing is as clear as right and wrong, there were no pantomime baddies or dashing goodies, nobody won, everyone lost. However inadequate it may be this is the only truthful conclusion I can make from looking in to the eyes of these six faces, as I do, day and night, night and day. His quote read, 'What am I? Not a hero nor a criminal, but a victim of the history.'
Friday 15 January 2010
Blank Pages
Thursday 14th January 2010, 3.40pm, Bcakpackers Bar - Hue
Gallivanting and Goodness is not my first foray into the writing world, I would like to think this is evident but am too woefully aware of my limitations and position as a novice within this forum. I used to be employed as a freelance director for a children's theatre company in London and I wrote a couple of scripts for them, I also collaboratively penned a play in my last year at University. I kept a journal between the ages of 13 and 17 which I can no longer look at: sometimes it's painful because of the cringeworthy teenage angst of it all and sometimes, well, it's just painful. I have a collection of around 40 poems, the first few draft chapters of a book about my experiences working for Social Services, 300 or so saved e-mails between myself and a couple of very close allies that I have started to tweak and embellish in the hope that they would become some kind of Bridget Jones-esque comment on contemporary female conversation and friendship, and pages and pages of planning, notes and ponderings for my unattainable first novel about a lonely writer and an amnesiac librarian. I very much doubt that any of it will ever see the light of day, which is a knock to my ego, but that's already functioning at a pretty low frequency level anyway so the non-disclosure of my writing is nothing it cannot handle.
All of these scribblings sit growning in ignominy in various notebooks scattered and hidden about my bedroom at home. Everything goes on paper first, only a few favoured notes have made it to the relative permanency of my hard drive. I am a notebook hoarder. Apart from the few that have seen the afore-mentioned jottings, I have a collection of many more empty notebooks gathering dust. Leather bound, ring binders, embroidered covers, silk inlaid, hard backed, parchment, margined, lined, coffee stained, frayed at the edges and tobacco brown or crisp and fresh with that new book smell, I have shelves of blank pages; the physical embodiment of writer's block. All of them beautiful in some way because this is the reason I would always purchase 'just one more'. Hopefully kidding myself that the quality and exquisite loveliness of this new notebook would entice and inspire me enough to write something of substance and gravity within it's pages. I mention this now because I am writing in a new notebook today. The travel journal which has served me so well is now ink tattooed from it's first to last sheets, and I, for the only time in my writing "career", have had to buy a new notebook not to encourage my imagination, but out of necessity. I have filled a WHOLE notebook!
This new notebook that I now set my pen to is conspicuous by just one case in point from all those empty books that await me at home: there is nothing remotely decorative or handsome about it. The only one I could find whilst wandering the foggy, damp streets of Hue today was A5, case bound, covered with black plastic and in the top right hand corner of the front cover is enscribed in gold lettering the word 'Business'. Amusingly then, I'm getting down to my sole business venture these days, christening this new notebook with a blog about notebooks. It is close to ugly and purely practical, but, I imagine, will come to encase stories and musings over the next couple of months that will far outweigh in substance and gravity anything I have ever written. Here's to the unsightly new notebook, I promise I will try to exceed the scripts in adventure, the poems in romance, the e-mails in wit, the working memoir in drama, the novel in characterisation, and the journals in honesty, however painful. Farewell blank pages, I have things to say.
Gallivanting and Goodness is not my first foray into the writing world, I would like to think this is evident but am too woefully aware of my limitations and position as a novice within this forum. I used to be employed as a freelance director for a children's theatre company in London and I wrote a couple of scripts for them, I also collaboratively penned a play in my last year at University. I kept a journal between the ages of 13 and 17 which I can no longer look at: sometimes it's painful because of the cringeworthy teenage angst of it all and sometimes, well, it's just painful. I have a collection of around 40 poems, the first few draft chapters of a book about my experiences working for Social Services, 300 or so saved e-mails between myself and a couple of very close allies that I have started to tweak and embellish in the hope that they would become some kind of Bridget Jones-esque comment on contemporary female conversation and friendship, and pages and pages of planning, notes and ponderings for my unattainable first novel about a lonely writer and an amnesiac librarian. I very much doubt that any of it will ever see the light of day, which is a knock to my ego, but that's already functioning at a pretty low frequency level anyway so the non-disclosure of my writing is nothing it cannot handle.
All of these scribblings sit growning in ignominy in various notebooks scattered and hidden about my bedroom at home. Everything goes on paper first, only a few favoured notes have made it to the relative permanency of my hard drive. I am a notebook hoarder. Apart from the few that have seen the afore-mentioned jottings, I have a collection of many more empty notebooks gathering dust. Leather bound, ring binders, embroidered covers, silk inlaid, hard backed, parchment, margined, lined, coffee stained, frayed at the edges and tobacco brown or crisp and fresh with that new book smell, I have shelves of blank pages; the physical embodiment of writer's block. All of them beautiful in some way because this is the reason I would always purchase 'just one more'. Hopefully kidding myself that the quality and exquisite loveliness of this new notebook would entice and inspire me enough to write something of substance and gravity within it's pages. I mention this now because I am writing in a new notebook today. The travel journal which has served me so well is now ink tattooed from it's first to last sheets, and I, for the only time in my writing "career", have had to buy a new notebook not to encourage my imagination, but out of necessity. I have filled a WHOLE notebook!
This new notebook that I now set my pen to is conspicuous by just one case in point from all those empty books that await me at home: there is nothing remotely decorative or handsome about it. The only one I could find whilst wandering the foggy, damp streets of Hue today was A5, case bound, covered with black plastic and in the top right hand corner of the front cover is enscribed in gold lettering the word 'Business'. Amusingly then, I'm getting down to my sole business venture these days, christening this new notebook with a blog about notebooks. It is close to ugly and purely practical, but, I imagine, will come to encase stories and musings over the next couple of months that will far outweigh in substance and gravity anything I have ever written. Here's to the unsightly new notebook, I promise I will try to exceed the scripts in adventure, the poems in romance, the e-mails in wit, the working memoir in drama, the novel in characterisation, and the journals in honesty, however painful. Farewell blank pages, I have things to say.
Rainy Days and Mondays
Wednesday 13th January 2010, 5.45pm, Halo Guest House - Hue
It's raining. Not drizzle, not just a light sprinkling, it isn't spitting, its not that fine rain which soaks you right through. It's pouring, coming down hard and fast and heavy on the streets of Hue today. The rain started, or rather we caught up with the rain, on Monday morning in Hoi An and we have followed it here to Hue city. It would undoubtedly be entirely unfair of me to group these two places together in any other blue skied and warm climed situation, but rain has that unforgiving bestowing quality of making everywhere look the same, that is - wet, unkind, closed.
The more observant amongst you will notice that my last blog entry was written on the bus on my way to Hoi An at 2am, no, I didn't get much kip on the "sleeper" bus. So we arrived at our new destination, seriously sleep deprived, wearily pounding the streets with our backpacks in search of accommodation, to find the town cast under a veil of grey mist. I'd heard so many great things about Hoi An and they were all merited. A quaint, antiquated old town set on a river, the buildings are wooden, ornately engraved, balconied, crawling with overgrown ivy and teeming with character from a bygone era of French colonisation and architectural aesthetics. The roads are narrow and cobbled, the market abundant in local handicrafts and jade jewellery, conglomerated on street corners sit groups of old men huddled over chequers boards and coffee with condensed milk, and the attribute that really characterises Hoi An, the reason it has become such a famous and frequented stop-off on the tourist trail - the tailors.
Any time you ask someone who has been there about Hoi An I guarantee that the first thing they will say is 'great for getting clothes made.' Hoi An is as famous for tailoring as Sheffield is for steel, as Yorkshire is for mining, as Cornwall is for pasties, as Essex is for white stilettos, as Milwall is for violent football fans. Every other shop, and on some streets, every shop, is a tailor's. Pick a design from a catalogue, from fashion websites, from catwalk stills or simply sketch your own creation, get measured, pick your fabrics, and voila! Hand picked haute couture is yours within 24 hours. But it was raining. I had forgotten what rain can do to a place and a mood, even in a perfectly pretty little fashionista playground such as Hoi An. In this instance rain acheived the remarkable - it made me not feel much like shopping.
I was, however, cured of this rare and fleeting ailment when I arrived in Hue this morning, soggy in flip flops, leggings and a thin-knit sweater and so bitterly cold that I felt aged by the brittling of my bones. Blue-lipped and wet-nosed I have done today what I could not quite muster the enthusiasm for in Hoi An, I went shopping, not for haute couture, but for clothes that will prevent frostbite setting in. I should mention here, save you thinking me a completely unprepared moron, that when I came travelling I did bring with me a beautiful, snug, fleece lined hoodie as well as a pair of retro neon-fantastic Nike Hi-Top trainers. For reasons owing to my forgetfulness and haphazard way of mooching around the globe, my trainers are at a friend's apartment in Bangkok, and my hoodie - if you can believe this - is living with another friend in Melbourne, Australia. 'But you haven't been to Australia yet Grace?!' I hear you say. Yes, you are correct, I have not, my hoodie has made it there before me; it's nice that my possessions are getting a holiday too isn't it.
I have fixed this little problem though. I am now the proud pneumonia-free owner of sneakers, Adidas leggins, thick knitted socks, a Hollister hoodie, a red Nike waterproof jacket and black combat pants, a scarf, and my utmost favourite item... a wooly bobble hat embroidered with the words 'I Love Snow'. I am currently wearing all of it. I look like I'm about to round up my huskies and ride a sled to the Arctic Circle (damn I should have bought gloves), but I do not care, because I am no longer cold. The realisation has just dawned upon me that people I am sharing dormitories with might take offence at my new wardrobe choices - it may appear that I'm insinuating distrust. 'You all look like theives. You shall not be stealing my belongings though, for I have devised a cunning plan in which I wear everything I own all at once so that there is nothing left in my backpack for your greasy little fingers to pilfer, ha ha!'. I hope you are enjoying the mental image as much as Ella is stood before the abominable snowman monstrosity of it. I jokingly asked her earlier if she would still be happy to walk around and be associated with me if I continue to wear every warm item of clothing I have at the same time and she laughed, nervously. If she ditches me tomorrow then I'll blame the hat. It's probably the icing on the cake, or the bobble on the idiot as it were.
So there you have it, an unfortunate but unavoidable bias against Hoi An and Hue. Both places completely undeserving of so harsh and rash a judgement but I will openly admit that if I had seen these towns in bright light then my fairweather reporting would have given a drastically different verdict. This forecast is only temporary though, the North of Vietnam and our next couple of planned destinations will also be cold but after I have had sufficent pay-per-wear benefit from my new purchases we will be back to the reliable heat and humidity of Southern Thailand. Where I imagine I'll throw out all my new things because I'll be moaning about how heavy they are in my backpack, and then inevitably will get to New Zealand in March, have to buy it all again, and complain that nobody warned me glacier hiking might be chilly.
The Carpenters were right, about everything actually, there is nothing that Karen Carpenter could sing with that voice which I wouldn't believe, and yes, sometimes Solitaire is the only game in town. Rainy Days and Mondays always get you down. What The Carpenters neglected to mention however, is that it's nothing a new bobble hat, a cup of coffee and the promise of sunshine can't cure.
It's raining. Not drizzle, not just a light sprinkling, it isn't spitting, its not that fine rain which soaks you right through. It's pouring, coming down hard and fast and heavy on the streets of Hue today. The rain started, or rather we caught up with the rain, on Monday morning in Hoi An and we have followed it here to Hue city. It would undoubtedly be entirely unfair of me to group these two places together in any other blue skied and warm climed situation, but rain has that unforgiving bestowing quality of making everywhere look the same, that is - wet, unkind, closed.
The more observant amongst you will notice that my last blog entry was written on the bus on my way to Hoi An at 2am, no, I didn't get much kip on the "sleeper" bus. So we arrived at our new destination, seriously sleep deprived, wearily pounding the streets with our backpacks in search of accommodation, to find the town cast under a veil of grey mist. I'd heard so many great things about Hoi An and they were all merited. A quaint, antiquated old town set on a river, the buildings are wooden, ornately engraved, balconied, crawling with overgrown ivy and teeming with character from a bygone era of French colonisation and architectural aesthetics. The roads are narrow and cobbled, the market abundant in local handicrafts and jade jewellery, conglomerated on street corners sit groups of old men huddled over chequers boards and coffee with condensed milk, and the attribute that really characterises Hoi An, the reason it has become such a famous and frequented stop-off on the tourist trail - the tailors.
Any time you ask someone who has been there about Hoi An I guarantee that the first thing they will say is 'great for getting clothes made.' Hoi An is as famous for tailoring as Sheffield is for steel, as Yorkshire is for mining, as Cornwall is for pasties, as Essex is for white stilettos, as Milwall is for violent football fans. Every other shop, and on some streets, every shop, is a tailor's. Pick a design from a catalogue, from fashion websites, from catwalk stills or simply sketch your own creation, get measured, pick your fabrics, and voila! Hand picked haute couture is yours within 24 hours. But it was raining. I had forgotten what rain can do to a place and a mood, even in a perfectly pretty little fashionista playground such as Hoi An. In this instance rain acheived the remarkable - it made me not feel much like shopping.
I was, however, cured of this rare and fleeting ailment when I arrived in Hue this morning, soggy in flip flops, leggings and a thin-knit sweater and so bitterly cold that I felt aged by the brittling of my bones. Blue-lipped and wet-nosed I have done today what I could not quite muster the enthusiasm for in Hoi An, I went shopping, not for haute couture, but for clothes that will prevent frostbite setting in. I should mention here, save you thinking me a completely unprepared moron, that when I came travelling I did bring with me a beautiful, snug, fleece lined hoodie as well as a pair of retro neon-fantastic Nike Hi-Top trainers. For reasons owing to my forgetfulness and haphazard way of mooching around the globe, my trainers are at a friend's apartment in Bangkok, and my hoodie - if you can believe this - is living with another friend in Melbourne, Australia. 'But you haven't been to Australia yet Grace?!' I hear you say. Yes, you are correct, I have not, my hoodie has made it there before me; it's nice that my possessions are getting a holiday too isn't it.
I have fixed this little problem though. I am now the proud pneumonia-free owner of sneakers, Adidas leggins, thick knitted socks, a Hollister hoodie, a red Nike waterproof jacket and black combat pants, a scarf, and my utmost favourite item... a wooly bobble hat embroidered with the words 'I Love Snow'. I am currently wearing all of it. I look like I'm about to round up my huskies and ride a sled to the Arctic Circle (damn I should have bought gloves), but I do not care, because I am no longer cold. The realisation has just dawned upon me that people I am sharing dormitories with might take offence at my new wardrobe choices - it may appear that I'm insinuating distrust. 'You all look like theives. You shall not be stealing my belongings though, for I have devised a cunning plan in which I wear everything I own all at once so that there is nothing left in my backpack for your greasy little fingers to pilfer, ha ha!'. I hope you are enjoying the mental image as much as Ella is stood before the abominable snowman monstrosity of it. I jokingly asked her earlier if she would still be happy to walk around and be associated with me if I continue to wear every warm item of clothing I have at the same time and she laughed, nervously. If she ditches me tomorrow then I'll blame the hat. It's probably the icing on the cake, or the bobble on the idiot as it were.
So there you have it, an unfortunate but unavoidable bias against Hoi An and Hue. Both places completely undeserving of so harsh and rash a judgement but I will openly admit that if I had seen these towns in bright light then my fairweather reporting would have given a drastically different verdict. This forecast is only temporary though, the North of Vietnam and our next couple of planned destinations will also be cold but after I have had sufficent pay-per-wear benefit from my new purchases we will be back to the reliable heat and humidity of Southern Thailand. Where I imagine I'll throw out all my new things because I'll be moaning about how heavy they are in my backpack, and then inevitably will get to New Zealand in March, have to buy it all again, and complain that nobody warned me glacier hiking might be chilly.
The Carpenters were right, about everything actually, there is nothing that Karen Carpenter could sing with that voice which I wouldn't believe, and yes, sometimes Solitaire is the only game in town. Rainy Days and Mondays always get you down. What The Carpenters neglected to mention however, is that it's nothing a new bobble hat, a cup of coffee and the promise of sunshine can't cure.
Monday 11 January 2010
Saints and Sinners Statistics
Monday 11th January 2010, 2am, The Bus - somewhere between Nha Trang and Hoi An.
We went for dinner the other night in Dalat with Hitan and a cute German couple Julia and Chris, and the five of us had a rather strange encounter with an inebriated American man named Mark. Over our dinner of vegetable curry and mashed potato (I'm just so sick of rice, I can't bear to even look at another grain, plus when I order mashed potato it gives me an excuse to do my Bodger and Badger voice - my sister appreciates this reference I think!) he chatted away incessantly about a company he started up whilst he was still at business school in America. This company is called Hufu, and this abbreviation is short for, wait for it... Human Tofu. His business was advertising tofu, shaped, flavoured and textured to resemble human flesh as a healthy alternative food product for cannibal communities. Minute taking and shorthand practice at work were suddenly useful - I unashamedly scribbled in my notebook as he pattered on... "I think that a lot of the pleasure of eating the Hufu product, is imagining you're eating human flesh. For that moment, you can join the fraternity of cannibals. If you really want to come as close as possible to the experience of cannibalism, Hufu is your best option." Uh-huh.
The whole concept and creation of the company was a joke, a marketing scam, an exercise in self-promotion and manipulation of the press to see how much interest and media attention he could amass from claiming to have produced this foodstuff. Mark told us that he received nationwide coverage in the US and even a small article in a London paper; his experiment worked - be crazy and inflammatory enough and people will accordingly sit up, take notice, and ask to interview you on TV. Apparently when he made his televised appearance on The Daily Show the interviewer asked him how he knew that his tofu tasted like human flesh and he told her he'd carried out ''extensive market research". He even went to the trouble of manufacturing Hufu t-shirts, he was modelling one on the evening that we met, and told us that he'd sold 3000 of them. So I guess this proves conclusively that at least 3000 Americans are either gullible or deranged.
On returning to our room after our meal with Monty Python's answer to Hannibal Lecter, Ella and I got to talking about the "characters'' we've met on our travels. As opposed to imagining a fantasy dinner party of famous guests that you would want to spend an evening with, we discussed the slightly more unsavoury or just eccentric oddballs that we've met who we would like to force to have dinner together, in order that they could inflict themselves upon each other, rather than us. Obviously we'd want to be able to watch through mirrored glass, it would be pure car-crash voyeurism. As a side note I thought that they should be served snake wine on this occasion, Ella and I both tried a drop on the Easy Rider bike tour - rice wine stored in a substantial glass jar with the huge, dead coiled bodies of 10 different pickled snakes fermenting in the alcohol. The snakes are meant to offer supernatural health and libido benefits but to be honest I'd rather take a lifetime of illness and celibacy than ever drink that fiery poison again. I think that's what ethanol tastes like, or bleach, reptile flavoured bleach. Am I selling it?!
The reason I mention the encounter with Mr Hufu and our cruel yet entertaining little game, is that on reflection, for every person who might justifiably earn a place at The World's Most Excruciating Dinner Party, we've met another 10 who we'd take to dinner and foot the bill ourselves. Hey, I'd even drink rancid snake wine again if they wanted to, purely for the pleasure of their company. Take the last few days in Nha Trang for example; Mark and Mark from Holland, Olivia and Sophia from Sweden, Joanne from Hong Kong, Phil and Treno from Australia, Dave from Canada - we've been hanging out, having fun and mucking around with some achingly cool, funny, interesting, just purely likeable people. I loved Nha Trang anyway, the bustling little seaside town with a beautiful coastline, hip nightlife, fresh lobster on the beach for a dollar and opportunity for island hopping, but it was the people that made it for me. The reason I was so miffed to be getting on the bus 5 hours ago is that once again, as hit me particularly hard after Koh Phangan and Sihanoukville, I didn't want to say goodbye. I wanted us all to stay there for another week or so, going to dinner together, dancing on boats to live music from Vietnamese "Indie Rock" bands, swimming out at sea whilst drunk on a concoction not dissimilar to cigar scented sherry, requesting Michael Jackson medlies at the local D-I-S-C-O, or just mooching around town and lazing on the sun-loungers slurping banana shakes and winding up the street sellers. I didn't want us to go our separate ways, people I like are just so selfish what with their refusal to cancel their own itineraries and accompany me to places they've already been purely for my happiness and amusement. It is getting rather intolerable that no one I meet is wiling to sacrifice their own plans and follow me to the ends of the earth. Humph. Selfish and intolerable.
Yes, I know, I didn't cancel my plans to follow them either did I. Ella, attempting to boost my spirits on our departure from Nha Trang, suggested that I take solace in the fact that fate had ordained our paths to cross with these people at all, that even for a brief period of time serendipity thankfully placed us all together thereby unexpectedly enriching our lives for a few days. But I didn't want to listen to all this reassurance and rationality, I was busy having a strop. I know she's right though. If we'd not met them I would have loved Nha Trang anyway, had a riotous old time and never known any different. As it was, I was additionally blessed with cracking company. I also know that in terms of travelling companionship and friendships, lightning definitely strikes twice, and more than twice, because it already has for me. Somewhere in the Southern hemisphere as I write this now, there are future friends and companions of mine whom I am yet to meet, what a comforting and utterly lovely prospect. Who knows, if I'm really lucky then maybe my path will cross over again with those of the acquaintances already made in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I do hope so, 'goodbye' can be weathered so much more temperately if I believe that it is really only 'so long for now'.
So, 3000 Americans are gullible or deranged, there's nearly always going to be one person at the table whose drink you'd like to spike with snake wine, and after 6 weeks of travelling you could organise a whole dinner party of people who really deserve each other. But so much more important than this, by the law of averages as we've seen it, there are far more good people in the world than bad. And to my mind, that is a blog worthy statistic if ever there was one.
Yes, I know, I didn't cancel my plans to follow them either did I. Ella, attempting to boost my spirits on our departure from Nha Trang, suggested that I take solace in the fact that fate had ordained our paths to cross with these people at all, that even for a brief period of time serendipity thankfully placed us all together thereby unexpectedly enriching our lives for a few days. But I didn't want to listen to all this reassurance and rationality, I was busy having a strop. I know she's right though. If we'd not met them I would have loved Nha Trang anyway, had a riotous old time and never known any different. As it was, I was additionally blessed with cracking company. I also know that in terms of travelling companionship and friendships, lightning definitely strikes twice, and more than twice, because it already has for me. Somewhere in the Southern hemisphere as I write this now, there are future friends and companions of mine whom I am yet to meet, what a comforting and utterly lovely prospect. Who knows, if I'm really lucky then maybe my path will cross over again with those of the acquaintances already made in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I do hope so, 'goodbye' can be weathered so much more temperately if I believe that it is really only 'so long for now'.
So, 3000 Americans are gullible or deranged, there's nearly always going to be one person at the table whose drink you'd like to spike with snake wine, and after 6 weeks of travelling you could organise a whole dinner party of people who really deserve each other. But so much more important than this, by the law of averages as we've seen it, there are far more good people in the world than bad. And to my mind, that is a blog worthy statistic if ever there was one.
Saturday 9 January 2010
Favourite Things
Wednesday 6th January 2010, 5.55pm, Phuong Tranh Guest House - Dalat
Oh Dalat, Je t'aime Dalat, tu es magnifique, vous etes belle et si gentille! Qu'est-ce qu'un moment merveilleux, oh Dalat une ville parfait! There aren't enough superlatives in the English language for this stunning highland town and I've exhausted them all anyway raving about other things - hence I'm resorting to some very ropey and limited French, the language of love, and very applicable in this instance given that Dalat is more French than France. Really though, it is beautiful here, don't go on holiday to Italy or the Canary Islands this summer, buy a plane ticket to Vietnam and stay in Dalat - you won't regret it.
A small, provincial looking town set around a lake and bordered on all sides by the Truong Son mountain range, the matchbox slate-roofed houses are painted in pastel shades of mint green, candy pink and sky blue. The countryside is evergreen and lush, the winding streets snake past bakeries and fishmongers, tailor's workshops, chocolate shops and art galleries. The air smells like roses and petrol and coffee, the town centre has been meticulously and laboriously planned and is dotted all over with fountains, statues and flowerbeds, and the climate is warm without being humid or sweat inducing - like England on a sunny Spring day. Apparently Dalat is prime Vietnamese honeymoon territory, and it's not hard to see why.
Being thankfully without grooms in tow, myself and Ella managed to have us our own little romantic afternoon when we arrived here on Monday. Unbeknown to us before scheduling our Vietnam itinerary back in Saigon, we have happened to be in Dalat on the week of the annual Flower Festival. The whole town looks like a Florist's on Valentine's Day; garlands and bouquets and huge floral sculptures are lining every spare piece of pavement, the wind tastes like carnations. We had a picnic on the grass bank at the side of the lake of sweetbread, Dairylea and beer - we had gone shopping in the Patisserie local to our guest house hoping for baguettes, Brie and red wine but then we remembered that we are supposed to be backpacking travellers and must stop being so frivolous and spoilt. We hired a pedalo shaped like a swan (although Ella wanted the Dolphin one because she said it looked like it could go underwater - we had to have a little chat about the difference between pedalos and submarines) and worked off the cheesy bread and Budweiser by peddling around on the lake for an hour taking in the surrounding scenery. This proved harder than expected seeing as it was the first noteworthy exercise either of us had undertaken in a month and was made doubly difficult by the effects of the alcohol and my appalling steering, we were stranded in the centre of the lake laughing away for some time before Ella's nose turned sun-blush pink and we had to find the strength to manouvere ourselves in to some shade. We petted the ponies in the field next to the pedalo shop who are there to pull the innumerable lovestruck couples around town in kitsch wooden carriages, we sat on the kerb and watched a ballet recital performance by a teenage Vietnamese dance troupe, and then spent the rest of the day pottering around town eating strawberries and trying not to buy Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry from the market. That evening we cosied up in woolen socks and hoodies - the temperature here drops rapidly come nightfall, and went for dinner at a restaurant on the lake overlooking a Fireworks display commissioned in honour of the Flower Festival. We may also have had a bottle of Dalat red wine that we had denied ourselves earlier in the day but now thought justifiable considering it's insulating properties on such a chilly evening; you can't argue with science.
Today has been similarly dreamy. The three of us (Hitan from Hainault is back, we obviously did our best to shake him but his face just kept popping up everywhere we went so we've surrendered to the inevitable and adopted him officially) hired Easy Riders - Vietnamese, Harley Davidson driving, perfect English speaking men who take you on a day trip around the mountain range on the back of their motorbikes, stopping off in the local minority villages. We saw the coffee plantations, rice wine producers, strawberry and flower farms, Elephant Waterfalls (so christened because the rock formation at the bottom of the ravine looks like, you guessed it, an elephant), and visited the silk factories where Ella purchased a gorgeous grey silk dressing gown for the pricely sum of $10, oh the lure of the dreaded Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry! We also did some mountain trekking which my legs were less than happy about given that I spent most of yesterday throwing them down cliffs. When we reached the top of the hill climb I spun around with my arms spread and circling me, running over the grassy verge and gleefully belted out 'The hills are alive, with the sound of music!'. No sodding part as an extra for me, this time I was full blown Julie Andrews, and I much prefer Maria Von Trapp to Mary Poppins anyway, in your face Mui Ne.
Oh Dalat, Je t'aime Dalat, tu es magnifique, vous etes belle et si gentille! Qu'est-ce qu'un moment merveilleux, oh Dalat une ville parfait! There aren't enough superlatives in the English language for this stunning highland town and I've exhausted them all anyway raving about other things - hence I'm resorting to some very ropey and limited French, the language of love, and very applicable in this instance given that Dalat is more French than France. Really though, it is beautiful here, don't go on holiday to Italy or the Canary Islands this summer, buy a plane ticket to Vietnam and stay in Dalat - you won't regret it.
A small, provincial looking town set around a lake and bordered on all sides by the Truong Son mountain range, the matchbox slate-roofed houses are painted in pastel shades of mint green, candy pink and sky blue. The countryside is evergreen and lush, the winding streets snake past bakeries and fishmongers, tailor's workshops, chocolate shops and art galleries. The air smells like roses and petrol and coffee, the town centre has been meticulously and laboriously planned and is dotted all over with fountains, statues and flowerbeds, and the climate is warm without being humid or sweat inducing - like England on a sunny Spring day. Apparently Dalat is prime Vietnamese honeymoon territory, and it's not hard to see why.
Being thankfully without grooms in tow, myself and Ella managed to have us our own little romantic afternoon when we arrived here on Monday. Unbeknown to us before scheduling our Vietnam itinerary back in Saigon, we have happened to be in Dalat on the week of the annual Flower Festival. The whole town looks like a Florist's on Valentine's Day; garlands and bouquets and huge floral sculptures are lining every spare piece of pavement, the wind tastes like carnations. We had a picnic on the grass bank at the side of the lake of sweetbread, Dairylea and beer - we had gone shopping in the Patisserie local to our guest house hoping for baguettes, Brie and red wine but then we remembered that we are supposed to be backpacking travellers and must stop being so frivolous and spoilt. We hired a pedalo shaped like a swan (although Ella wanted the Dolphin one because she said it looked like it could go underwater - we had to have a little chat about the difference between pedalos and submarines) and worked off the cheesy bread and Budweiser by peddling around on the lake for an hour taking in the surrounding scenery. This proved harder than expected seeing as it was the first noteworthy exercise either of us had undertaken in a month and was made doubly difficult by the effects of the alcohol and my appalling steering, we were stranded in the centre of the lake laughing away for some time before Ella's nose turned sun-blush pink and we had to find the strength to manouvere ourselves in to some shade. We petted the ponies in the field next to the pedalo shop who are there to pull the innumerable lovestruck couples around town in kitsch wooden carriages, we sat on the kerb and watched a ballet recital performance by a teenage Vietnamese dance troupe, and then spent the rest of the day pottering around town eating strawberries and trying not to buy Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry from the market. That evening we cosied up in woolen socks and hoodies - the temperature here drops rapidly come nightfall, and went for dinner at a restaurant on the lake overlooking a Fireworks display commissioned in honour of the Flower Festival. We may also have had a bottle of Dalat red wine that we had denied ourselves earlier in the day but now thought justifiable considering it's insulating properties on such a chilly evening; you can't argue with science.
Today has been similarly dreamy. The three of us (Hitan from Hainault is back, we obviously did our best to shake him but his face just kept popping up everywhere we went so we've surrendered to the inevitable and adopted him officially) hired Easy Riders - Vietnamese, Harley Davidson driving, perfect English speaking men who take you on a day trip around the mountain range on the back of their motorbikes, stopping off in the local minority villages. We saw the coffee plantations, rice wine producers, strawberry and flower farms, Elephant Waterfalls (so christened because the rock formation at the bottom of the ravine looks like, you guessed it, an elephant), and visited the silk factories where Ella purchased a gorgeous grey silk dressing gown for the pricely sum of $10, oh the lure of the dreaded Stuff We Don't Need And Can't Carry! We also did some mountain trekking which my legs were less than happy about given that I spent most of yesterday throwing them down cliffs. When we reached the top of the hill climb I spun around with my arms spread and circling me, running over the grassy verge and gleefully belted out 'The hills are alive, with the sound of music!'. No sodding part as an extra for me, this time I was full blown Julie Andrews, and I much prefer Maria Von Trapp to Mary Poppins anyway, in your face Mui Ne.
The most thrilling thing about today was again my unadulterated love of motorbike transportation. It was breathtaking, sitting astride a Harley for a few hours racing through the mountains at breakneck speed along the bends and hilly gradients of the road pass with views for miles of unspoilt countryside coloured in like Autumn but lit with Summer sun. Once more, as I have in numerous moments during the last 6 weeks, I felt vividly alive, as though someone had just painted me in after years of living in black and white. The lightning bolt of 'lucky' struck me again, coursing it's electric shocks along my veins. The whole day has been fascinating and beguiling and a pleasingly authentic cultural encounter with the hill tribe people, but more importantly our drivers - Stefan, Titi and Li - were invaluable sources of information. They told us all they could about the war years, the Napalm bombing, the brutality of the soldiers, the devastation to the land, the horror of re-education camps and the facts of living under the Communist government which still graps and suffocates Vietnam in it's iron fist. But I can't write about this now, I'm still digesting everything I have read and learnt about this country's history and I'm just not ready to put pen to paper about it. Not now, but soon.
Oh Dalat Dalat, merci, merci pour tout mon amie. For strawberries and mountains and waterfalls and abseiling, for sweetbread, for silk, for kind-hearted people with motobikes and stories, for red wine and roses and fireworks and ponies, for these are a few of my favourite things and here it's impossible to feel bad.
Rewriting My P.E. Legacy
Tuesday 5th December 2010, 4.30pm, Peace Cafe - Dalat
I am very proud of myself today, and for good reason. I don't know how many times in my life I have felt genuine pride in something I have done but I think I could count the occasions on one hand - in fact now I deliberate it I'm struggling to remember any! OK, so passing the entrance exams and earning a place at my secondary school, having some work I'd done in my GCSE Drama class photocopied and handed round to other students as an example, getting a 1st on an essay at University that everyone else failed (although this one is questionable, it was the fluke of the century). Those three will do, and all mundanely and sedately academia related, because as a general rule I'm a thinker not a do-er; I can get full marks on a theory test having never read the teaching manual or looked at the practice CD-rom, but I can't actually drive the damn car. Not today though! Today I tried my very best to not think at all, otherwise I may very well have not abseiled down a 25 metre high waterfall, which I DID.
We went Canyoning. When we booked this day trip yesterday I was mercifully ignorant as to the exact nature of this sport, I knew it involved something to do with waterfalls, swimming and perhaps some light trekking, and I figured these activities were all within my coping remit. However, as I discovered from 8am until 3pm today, I was woefully mistaken about Canyoning. It is in fact rock climbing without ropes, clambering down jungle mountain slopes, jumping off 10 metre high ledges into natural pools of freezing water of which you can't see the bottom, sliding head first on your back down steep, rocky, fast flowing streams. It is abseiling over the side of sheer vertical drop cliff faces and gargantuan torrents of waterfalls until your guide instructs you to 'drop the rope!' so that you are plummeted underwater by the full force of the 25 metres of gushing fall above you, before you bob up like a drowned little rat somewhere down stream and are dragged on to the muddy riverbank by your helmet. This is the most accurate way I can describe Canyoning, and I forget to mention that after a day full of these kind of adventures you then have to hike for 30 minutes back up the cliff face in order to reach the highway and your ride home - by which stage you are so physically exhausted and battered from limb to limb that you feel like taking one more step might kill you. I could have kissed that minibus driver when I saw him waiting for us on the road, so relived was I to not have died and my gravestone epitaph having been engraved, 'She always thought but never did, but then she did and now she's dead: some people are not cut out for extreme sports.'
This reminds me of a time at school, when the P.E. staff, attempting some impression of being a real subject in order to justify their classification as "teachers", asked everyone in my year group to write a sporting epitaph for themselves, 'what would it say on your gravestone in regards to your sporting career and accomplishments?' I, being highly derisive and contemptuous towards anything P.E. related, and thinking it hilariously and inappropriately morbid for "teachers" to ask 15 year olds to write their own obituaries, did not take the set exercise too seriously. I handed in a piece of paper that read simply, 'At least this is one place they can't make me run.' It didn't go down too well, but my working relationship with the P.E. staff continued as it had always done - they thought I was a lazy smart-arse, and I thought they were uneducated, barely literate Neanderthal bullies who had only managed to secure employment because they were good at throwing and catching. There was an unspoken mutual understanding.
I am a girl who treated cross-country as an afternoon nature walk, stopping off to stroke and feed the horses in the neighbouring field to the dulcet accompanying tones of an exasperated Mrs Barratt screeching 'Grace! Move!'. I did handstands in the swimming pool when I should have been participating in relay races, I ducked out the way if someone threw a ball at me, whilst in defence at an inter-house hockey match I invented the ingenious game '100 Things To Do With a Hockey Stick Other Than Play Hockey', tennis lessons were spent impersonating Wimbledon stars of the 80's and calling out nonsense scores, 'that's 40 love juice 20 advantage match point to me!', I point blank refused to do anything on Sports Day other than sunbathe and read a book, and with a sly grin and a glint in my eye I would tell Mr Marshall, 'I'm awfully sorry Sir, I won't be able to do the long jump today because I'm on my period.'
So you see, this is why I am proud of myself. I, Grace Gillman, P.E. "teacher" arch nemesis and worst nightmare, spoiler of team games and competitive sport, Professional Lazy Smart-Arse, today amidst the beauty and the ferocity of Dalat's jungle mountain range of waterfalls, accomplished daredevil stunts and feats of physical exertion that I did not know myself capable of (the next time I go to the gym I shall laugh in the face of the cross-trainer). It was bloody hard work and a good 80% of the day I was filled with abject terror, I have a few more cuts and bruises and every one of the four others I went Canyoning with agree that their legs also now feel like lumpy jelly. But it was incredible, a pure adrenalin rush and one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I would do it all again tomorrow... or maybe the day after tomorrow, even the finest sporting superstars need muscle recovery time.
Before I came away one of my friends was telling me about a self-help book she had recently purchased called 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway'. On the sleepless, restless nights of the week before I boarded my flight I repeated this title to myself whilst staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom in the darkness; yes Grace, you're terrified about leaving, but do it anyway. That is what I feel I have achieved today, I was scared, but decided for once in my life to just DO without thinking, and boy was it worth it. I know some of you will be greatly amused by this, but I loved it so much that I am actually considering taking up indoor rock climbing and abseiling as a future sporting activity!
I'd like to think that my former foes, the P.E. staff at Coopers Coborn School, would also be proud of me today. That they would take heart and encouragement in the fact that I didn't turn out so bad, eventually I learnt to embrace physical activity as an enjoyable pastime. Now, as for my sporting epitaph, my gravestone testimony, hmmm....
'Once upon a time there was a day when she did the unthinkable and went Canyoning, and it didn't kill her. Unfortunately a traumatised, revenge-seeking, cricket bat-wielding Mrs Barratt did. But she probably deserved it, the lazy smart-arse.'
I am very proud of myself today, and for good reason. I don't know how many times in my life I have felt genuine pride in something I have done but I think I could count the occasions on one hand - in fact now I deliberate it I'm struggling to remember any! OK, so passing the entrance exams and earning a place at my secondary school, having some work I'd done in my GCSE Drama class photocopied and handed round to other students as an example, getting a 1st on an essay at University that everyone else failed (although this one is questionable, it was the fluke of the century). Those three will do, and all mundanely and sedately academia related, because as a general rule I'm a thinker not a do-er; I can get full marks on a theory test having never read the teaching manual or looked at the practice CD-rom, but I can't actually drive the damn car. Not today though! Today I tried my very best to not think at all, otherwise I may very well have not abseiled down a 25 metre high waterfall, which I DID.
We went Canyoning. When we booked this day trip yesterday I was mercifully ignorant as to the exact nature of this sport, I knew it involved something to do with waterfalls, swimming and perhaps some light trekking, and I figured these activities were all within my coping remit. However, as I discovered from 8am until 3pm today, I was woefully mistaken about Canyoning. It is in fact rock climbing without ropes, clambering down jungle mountain slopes, jumping off 10 metre high ledges into natural pools of freezing water of which you can't see the bottom, sliding head first on your back down steep, rocky, fast flowing streams. It is abseiling over the side of sheer vertical drop cliff faces and gargantuan torrents of waterfalls until your guide instructs you to 'drop the rope!' so that you are plummeted underwater by the full force of the 25 metres of gushing fall above you, before you bob up like a drowned little rat somewhere down stream and are dragged on to the muddy riverbank by your helmet. This is the most accurate way I can describe Canyoning, and I forget to mention that after a day full of these kind of adventures you then have to hike for 30 minutes back up the cliff face in order to reach the highway and your ride home - by which stage you are so physically exhausted and battered from limb to limb that you feel like taking one more step might kill you. I could have kissed that minibus driver when I saw him waiting for us on the road, so relived was I to not have died and my gravestone epitaph having been engraved, 'She always thought but never did, but then she did and now she's dead: some people are not cut out for extreme sports.'
This reminds me of a time at school, when the P.E. staff, attempting some impression of being a real subject in order to justify their classification as "teachers", asked everyone in my year group to write a sporting epitaph for themselves, 'what would it say on your gravestone in regards to your sporting career and accomplishments?' I, being highly derisive and contemptuous towards anything P.E. related, and thinking it hilariously and inappropriately morbid for "teachers" to ask 15 year olds to write their own obituaries, did not take the set exercise too seriously. I handed in a piece of paper that read simply, 'At least this is one place they can't make me run.' It didn't go down too well, but my working relationship with the P.E. staff continued as it had always done - they thought I was a lazy smart-arse, and I thought they were uneducated, barely literate Neanderthal bullies who had only managed to secure employment because they were good at throwing and catching. There was an unspoken mutual understanding.
I am a girl who treated cross-country as an afternoon nature walk, stopping off to stroke and feed the horses in the neighbouring field to the dulcet accompanying tones of an exasperated Mrs Barratt screeching 'Grace! Move!'. I did handstands in the swimming pool when I should have been participating in relay races, I ducked out the way if someone threw a ball at me, whilst in defence at an inter-house hockey match I invented the ingenious game '100 Things To Do With a Hockey Stick Other Than Play Hockey', tennis lessons were spent impersonating Wimbledon stars of the 80's and calling out nonsense scores, 'that's 40 love juice 20 advantage match point to me!', I point blank refused to do anything on Sports Day other than sunbathe and read a book, and with a sly grin and a glint in my eye I would tell Mr Marshall, 'I'm awfully sorry Sir, I won't be able to do the long jump today because I'm on my period.'
So you see, this is why I am proud of myself. I, Grace Gillman, P.E. "teacher" arch nemesis and worst nightmare, spoiler of team games and competitive sport, Professional Lazy Smart-Arse, today amidst the beauty and the ferocity of Dalat's jungle mountain range of waterfalls, accomplished daredevil stunts and feats of physical exertion that I did not know myself capable of (the next time I go to the gym I shall laugh in the face of the cross-trainer). It was bloody hard work and a good 80% of the day I was filled with abject terror, I have a few more cuts and bruises and every one of the four others I went Canyoning with agree that their legs also now feel like lumpy jelly. But it was incredible, a pure adrenalin rush and one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I would do it all again tomorrow... or maybe the day after tomorrow, even the finest sporting superstars need muscle recovery time.
Before I came away one of my friends was telling me about a self-help book she had recently purchased called 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway'. On the sleepless, restless nights of the week before I boarded my flight I repeated this title to myself whilst staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom in the darkness; yes Grace, you're terrified about leaving, but do it anyway. That is what I feel I have achieved today, I was scared, but decided for once in my life to just DO without thinking, and boy was it worth it. I know some of you will be greatly amused by this, but I loved it so much that I am actually considering taking up indoor rock climbing and abseiling as a future sporting activity!
I'd like to think that my former foes, the P.E. staff at Coopers Coborn School, would also be proud of me today. That they would take heart and encouragement in the fact that I didn't turn out so bad, eventually I learnt to embrace physical activity as an enjoyable pastime. Now, as for my sporting epitaph, my gravestone testimony, hmmm....
'Once upon a time there was a day when she did the unthinkable and went Canyoning, and it didn't kill her. Unfortunately a traumatised, revenge-seeking, cricket bat-wielding Mrs Barratt did. But she probably deserved it, the lazy smart-arse.'
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