Coming Home To Ho Chi Minh

Wednesday 3oth December 2009, 11pm, Bui Vien Street Bar - Ho Chi Minh City

I'm going to write about something which I guess is quite personal to me, it feels pertinent to talk about it today. I won't censor myself for fear of what others will think of me as this is my blog after all, and if I don't write about it then this entry will only be half the story, and these days I'm looking for completeness.

When I was 16 I spent a portion of my summer holiday living and working in an orphanage in Kenya. The orphanage was on a farm (called 'Graceland' as it happens) in the remote Kenyan countryside on a hilltop overlooking the Rift Valley with views of Mount Kenya. The area was relatively secure but we were told not to walk too far on our own especially at night, tribal gangs being an unlikely but still possible threat to our safety. But I was 16, disobedient, and having the most incredible experience of my life to that date, so one evening at dusk I went a-wandering. I found myself at the far Western corner of the land, looking up at the Water Tower - a wooden platform resembling a raft that was home to a huge water tank, perched precariously on 4 wooden stilts with a shoddily built bamboo ladder of about 100 steps going up to the platform, 30 feet or so in the air; and I climbed it. I don't know what possessed me really, not much thought went in to it at the time other than 'I want to sit up there', it was an utterly spontaneous and probably careless thing to do. One of the more worthwhile stupid decisions of my life though. The sky was blanketed with stars, the far horizon on the plains still aubergine purple from the touch of the sunken sun, the moon was so close you could make out the craters, the smell of smokey African dust was in the air, Elephants were calling to each other in the forest, and the sprawling Kenyan wilderness is still the most beautiful landscape my eyes have had the fortune of looking upon, I was alone in silence with the wonders of the natural world at my feet. It literally took my breath away, I was quite tearful but never more at peace, I felt like I'd been given an intravenous shot of adrenalin or Prozac or Ecstasy or Holy Spirit or whatever you want to call it... liquid happy.

If you have ever felt that you truly belong somewhere, that you've come home to a home you've never known before, that there was a specific place in the world that revealed itself to you and showed you where you should have been all along, 'Surprise! Here I have been waiting for you and at last you've found me!' then you may have some inkling as to how I felt that evening. Frequently miserable, always troubled and far too self-critical and introspective to be healthy, a 16 year old Grace on top of the Water Tower had no memory of previous pain in her heart, worry in her head or weight on her chest. If someone had told me I could have flown off the top of that platform I would have jumped and trusted that wings would sprout from my back. I was up there maybe 20 minutes, maybe an hour, I don't know, but I eventually had to come down after a couple of concerned grown-ups in our party realised I was missing and sent the Kenyan guards armed with bows and arrows to search for me - everyone was cross with me for scaring them and for endangering myself by going up the ladder, but I couldn't find it in me to care too much about that.

So why have I chosen to share this now, having only told a handful of friends about it in the 7 years since it happened? It is because, albeit in a less dramatic way, I feel like that again. I've not had the perspective altering thunderbolt of a moment that I did in Kenya, but definitely a gradual realisation that I've come home - because the concept of 'home' is changing for me. I think I've hit my stride, I've been travelling for over a month now and suddenly feel like I've found my feet. Having been a backpacker virgin and strictly a 2 week summer holiday kind of a girl, my soles are now inexorably glued to my Havaianas, my hair doesn't remember what it felt like to be straight, I have all manner of beads and trinkets and wicker bangles adorning my wrist, and I'm nearly always wearing something cotton and creased. But of course it's much more than the change in my physical appearance, although numerous friends have told me that that they've never seen my face so mellow as in recent photos (my mouth seems to settle into a smile more easily now I think).

I've realised, apart from how much I hate my hair, that I can make anywhere a home, temporary stays in big cities no longer feel like tourist excursions. I live here, I live in Ho Chi Minh City. Since Sunday evening I have been a resident and it feels as natural for me to be here as it would anywhere else in the world, and why shouldn't it? I drink black, muddy ice coffee in the morning at a roadside cafe, I jump on and off motorbike taxis that navigate their way through the mazes of city back alleys, I eat egg noodle soup and pak choi spring rolls and coconut pastries from street vendor carts, I ask for prices in Dong not Dollar, I lie and read in the grassy shade of the palace garden, I sip rice wine and play with street children and gossip with shop girls and read the local paper and only ever say 'thank you' in Vietnamese. Whilst Ella was fast asleep in bed this morning I got up, threw on another crumpled linen trouser and vest combination, scraped my poor old curly mop of hair into a scarf (for one of my friend's at home - it's not a scarf, it's the dreaded 'head snood' we laughed about at dinner!) and went wandering round the town, skipping on and off the broken pavement, dodging the endless stream of 2 wheeled traffic flooding through the Pham Ngu Lao district and tried to assimilate myself into the city, becoming just another stitch sewn into the patchwork of Saigon.

It's like Kenya in that it's home but no home I've ever known before. It's louder, faster, busier, smellier, more buzzing and endlessly 24/7 frenetic than any of the world cities I've ever seen. Ho Chi Minh is a 10 year old boy with attention span problems who's just eaten a packet of Skittles, Ho Chi Minh makes London look like a retired 60 year old with arthritis who spends his days tending the garden, Ho Chi Minh is Bangkok's more boisterous younger brother who stays up after lights out and jumps on his bed. Ella remarked to me that it feels cozy here, despite the pace and noise of the place. I know exactly what she means, almost as though there is a ceiling on the city - everything is so close and contained - the aromas of street cooking and trash cans invade your nostrils, the humidity sticks to your skin, the motorbikes run over your toes, there are always a hundred things to look at directly in front of your eyes, and the locals are tactile and touchable; in a city of 10 million people and 4 million motorbikes they've not had much cause for learning about 'personal space'.

Ho Chi Minh is a personal space though, crammed full to the invisible lid with the sweetness and the stench of human life - a city made of people not of buildings, of community next to commerce. Maybe this is why it feels like a home to me, because one more human being (even one with such outrageously large curly hair as mine) can go relatively unnoticed as she merrily potters about town with an inane grin on her face. The city has carried me with it, woven me into it's kaleidoscopic quilt. Never has it felt so good to be anonymous, it is a privilege to be one faceless thread when the whole tapestry is as rich as this. A couple of weeks ago one of my oldest and dearest friends sent me an e-mail and one sentence read 'I'm really hoping you find your Water Tower moment, some inner peace.' Well my darling, more and more right now, even in what has to be the busiest city on earth, I feel very peaceful indeed. As at home here as if I were back in my beloved Kenya, sat with my wings resting on my back, on a raft 30 feet in the sky.