I sat on the balcony of my hotel room in my bath-robe, reading at midnight, under the humid, sticky air of the night sky. Below me, the night was filled with bright lights and noise, the buzzing city of a thousand lives speeding by below, as I sat here on the balcony and read into the early hours.
River of Time, by Jon Swain, a memoir of life in Vietnam, preparing to embark:
“This day was given to myself
For the preparation of leaving...
packing uniforms and one last look,
folding memories neatly inside of myself
and folding underwear into bags...
taking only what I need
and hoping that will be enough”.
On the first night I arrived with a friend, in Hanoi, Vietnam. We came to the lake at night, lake Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, the “Lake of the Restored Sword”. Vietnam story, being formed before my eyes with a thousand hopes and dreams.
By the lake, I saw strangers passing by, wanting to learn about their lives, yet here in Hanoi, I was the stranger. What could I teach them about this place that was not already here?
An old man came here every morning to the lake, practising t’ai-chi, gazing at the still green waters ahead, in peace and stillness. A picturesque red bridge, named “perch of the morning sunlight”, leads across the lake to the Jade Island.
Yet at night, the lake is transformed. The Temple of the Jade Mountain, a glowing pagoda is beautifully illuminated on the lake, reflecting on the ripples of the water at night.
By the next morning, the old town is frenetic, a hive of activity, the grubby streets alive with busy lives of public exchange. A lady in a restaurant is chopping onions in a frenzy, a driver on his motorbike is speeding to deliver a package before it is too late, a lady in a traditional conical hat shuffles past, balancing a bamboo rod on her back, weighed down on each side with a basket of heavy fruit, on her way to her morning stall, ready for the market of life. I passed many that gave the appearance of drifting through the lazy day, a driver laying face up on his morotorbike, dozing in the sticky haze of the mid-day heat.
In the frenetic old town, dodging the careless tuk-tuk drivers speeding through, used to walkers jumping out of the way, one saw people living their lives in public, in the street-side cafes, in the makeshift restaurants of flavour packed into rice, in the street corners where smiling marketeers thrust a selection of cheap t-shirts in your face.
Dragon ascending, this is a city reborn from its war-time pain, at once a place of peaceful beauty, intertwined with its ancient hustle. The northern Vietnam I knew then differed substantially from south Vietnam, both in aesthetic and behaviour, and indeed in the past these were two separate countries caught in an ideological and physical battle.
I preferred the aesthetic of the north, for here in Hanoi, there was a tranquil side to the city, around the quiet stillness of the lake in the centre of the city, where I sat down in a cafe by the water and slowly sipped on an orange juice while gazing out at the lake’s island beyond.
It was an area of colonial French design, and elegant colonial houses and embassies lined the streets around the lake. I almost imagined being invited to a cocktail party here in Indo-China, having a conversation with W. Somerset Maugham about his collection “Far Eastern Tales” and sharing stories with colonial expatriates on this side of the world. Instead it was only my friend, with whom any conversation that did not involve chasing after any female walking was met with a raised eyebrow. I had long ago tired of this and went out alone.
One misty day, I walked out to a lake somewhere in the north of Hanoi. On the lake, a lone figure in a boat emerged from the mist and one saw the soft outline of the buildings on the horizon, like a painting from a childhood dream. It is titled “Alone”, and it remains one of my favourite works. I was reminded of the beautiful film Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring by Kim Ki-Duk, set on a house on a lake and depicting the Buddhist cycle of the seasons, telling the life story of a young man living on the lake and being given life lessons by an elderly monk. Lessons of self-sacrifice and engagement with reality. I have seen the film many times, and learned from it what it means to break free of the recurring cycle of the seasons of life.
I walked through the city, and I walked, and walked for hours on end, past the red pillars of the Temple of Literature, past the government buildings, past the hustle of the market stalls. Walking allows one to experience, to think, to understand. Walk the walk, before you talk the talk.
At night, we boarded an overnight train to the south. The view from the sleeper car passed the most stunning coast-line viewed from the railway tracks high above, looking out at the raging seas swaying on the cliffs beneath. I travelled on through the heart of darkness with a heart of lightness.
There was no apocalypse now, just peace and restraint. Smiling locals, people asleep by the railway tracks.
We eventually came to the picturesque town of Hội An, with buildings of darkened yellow, in every place among the cluster of ancient streets. Colourful lanterns hung swaying in the breeze among the yellow houses. In the yellow light-night, a waiter stood outside the door of his restaurant, smoking slowly, looking away.
I walked down to the river, past the crowded marketplace. I looked out at the reflection of the lights as they shimmered and played on the night water, many colours flickering, red, yellow, amber, black, rippling like the forgotten remnants of a rainbow in the eye of a kaleidoscope.
In the morning, I walked on, and looking into an empty restaurant of plush red seats beneath yellow lanterns hanging above her like lotus flowers, I saw a woman sitting alone, looking down. Time passing, dreaming alone.
Later, at night, in front of the lantern-lights illuminating the restaurant behind her, I saw a lone waitress looking out and away, dreaming of the falling ashes of her fading youth. The nostalgia of these moments of yearning was captured forever in the photographs from this lonely place.
Somewhere in Vietnam, I wondered well off the beaten track along my journey, yet I do not remember where. I came across a silhouette among the forbidding height of the trees and framed against the white, a photograph from the absolute nowhere projects a powerful sense of mystery about unknowable subjects and unknowable lives.
Eventually, I arrived in Saigon. Now known as Ho Chi Minh city, the air was sticky and humid in the breathless heat. The stifled air burdened with a heavy need. The sweat poured out of my body like all my past lives. A sticky, breathless affliction.
Saigon reverie, where I walked for days in the misty haze.
The day turned into darkness. Bring out your ghosts, in the dead of night, in the pitch-black alleys of night-time Saigon.
Perdition city, this place had driven many a man crazy before me, bursting with repressed longing for physical release, that never came.
I sat in a Saigon cafe, and reflected on all that I had seen. Despite the grime of the city around me that surrounded the whitewashed colonial architecture of French occupation, this was a beautiful country. I was reminded of the film, The Beautiful Country, by Hans Petter Moland and the melodies of its soundtrack composed by Zbigniew Preisner, and the lessons and meaning that the film holds.
The film tells the story of Bai, a young man who sets out on a long journey from his home in the watery paddy fields of the Mekong, as he faces hardship on a boat as an immigrant to America. He is on a life-long search of his father, a former American soldier. His journey is a symbol for the search for love, family and identity, and his father represents America, and the search for an “American dream”, a new life in the beautiful country. Yet when he finally discovers his father, he realises that his father is blind, that the streets are not paved with gold, and he comes to understand and accept the limitations of the world and the nature of his dream. That in the process of the journey he has found himself, that the dream of the beautiful country is an illusion, and that perhaps, the beauty was there in Vietnam, his home, all along.
For me, there was beauty here all around. Vietnam is a country flowing with the gift of the river, as it flows into the future. I travelled on through Vietnam, along the Mekong river, like the old lady in my photograph, wearing a traditional conical leaf hat, sitting cross-legged on the boat, as she pushed off with the oar into the River of Time. It was a time of new beginnings. Far away, in mind and body, leaving the remnants of an old life behind. On the river of time, I floated by.
Read on for the next chapter via the home page, as we are about to enter our journey together to - CAMBODIA......