Vietnam had blown through my life like a hurricane. A swirling vortex of landscapes both spatial and social. Not destructive, but powerful. Absorbing my energy like moisture evaporating from the warm South China Sea.
The Sunline Paon Hotel in Hanoi was the eye of the storm for me. I was still surrounded by a cyclone of traffic, and raw surging experience. But for now at least the winds had subsided enough for me to reflect on the group of amazing animals who had been my family for the last 10 days.
Sharing Something
It’s hard to imagine what brings some people together and separates others. The busy riverside road running past the DMZ sky garden bar in Hue, is itself a kind of river. An endless stream of tooting mopeds, each with up to four humans aboard and occasionally a pet dog.
As they aggressively jostle for position it is amazing there are no collisions. Each traffic tributary somehow finds the path of least resistance, and they all go about their lives never having met.
Yet right in the middle of this confluence of disparate lives are group of people with sometimes 15 years between them, homes thousands of miles apart. They play pool, chat, drink and sing together as if there were more between them than just a few shared experiences.
What that thing was, I was sure I’d never understand.
Little did I know that Hoi An would change all that. Like the mysterious mountain resort on Ba Na Hill, there was something there to be understood, but it would take me time to lift it from the mist.
The Bike Ride
The rain ran off the rusty bikes soaking into the fake plastic grass outside the Hotel Paradise. At the time I couldn’t imagine anything further from paradise.
Our ears still ringing from the previous night in Tiger Tiger. Our clothes still wet from the torrential rain/river/swimming pool incidents on the way home. The prospect of a bike ride in the rain was not at all appealing. Especially not with such bizarre sounding stops as the recently bereaved half of the happiest couple in the world. Or watering someone’s allotment and sniffing some herbs.
But I was dead wrong.
Perhaps in part it was, the exercise or the restorative shots of rice and banana wine. But by the time we were all bouncing down the river in conical hats and coracles I was so happy to be there.
Same Same
Later, in Hoi An’s gorgeous old town, the river would reflect what I’d realised. The lights of bars and boats and lanterns all mixing in the water suddenly made sense.
We had our little groups and our own styles, like the clusters of similar shapes and colours on the river. The enthusiasm for that rainy bike ride was same in all of us though. Like the bright candles behind all that coloured paper.
By the time we’d reach Hanoi I’d have shared ghost stories with some, travel nightmares with others. Heard tales of tragedy, music, heartbreak. Shared beer, football, mystery. Even random drunken birthday cake.
I’d realised that just like those lanterns on the river, we were, as they say in Vietnam, “Same same but different”. Through it all together we were something bright and colourful, that I was glad to be a part of.
