Art and motorbikes

Stained glass next to the oldest lift in HCMC.

Getting up at 5:30 am is like being gifted an extra day. Yesterday I slept through breakfast; today I was one of the first ones in the dining room.

The buffet that greeted me offered an amazing variety: beef sandwich wedges, pho (pronounced like “fun” without the “n”; it’s a brothy soup with a selection of meat, noodles and fresh herbs), spaghetti, steamed green beans, sticky rice, roasted chicken, meat balls, veggie egg scramble, fried bananas, fried shrimp rolls, a variety of breads, quartered pancakes, cereal, tomato slices and fruit.

I sat down with a plate of steamed veggies, shrimp and egg and a cup of steaming Vietnamese coffee. The black liquid that comes out of coffee urns here is unlike anything else—thick, spiced and wicked strong. It’s traditionally served with condensed milk, making the consistency like syrup.

Around the breakfast room were people from all different backgrounds. I heard French from a table of retirees across the room; heavy British accents from a young couple with backpacks on who said they were in a hurry; Vietnamese flowed between two mothers and two young sons; and contented slurping came from the table next to me, where two men sat with two steaming bowls of pho.

Where I was slow and sluggish yesterday, today I felt like lightning. Before the clock struck 8 am, I had eaten, checked my email, listened to the news and headed out onto the streets in a new direction. The strong caffeine coursed through my veins and propelled me past dress shops, food stands, nail salons and endless motorbikes.

Smells hit me from all directions: the reek of garbage and sewage from the night before mixed with pungent incense and roasting chicken. Exhaust from the passing motorbikes perpetually made breathing unpleasant. And horns sounded all around me as drivers signaled they wanted to pass.

I saw a sign for a travel agent and veered inside. A plump man with thick-rimmed glasses and a big smile helped me book a bus for Can Tho tomorrow. He told his friend will pick me up on his motor bike in the morning to bring me to the station. I told I have two backpacks. He smiled and said it will be easy, no problem, and I realized my concern seemed ridiculous. Everything fits on a motor bike.

   

"Hong Sau, a war correspondent," by Bay Tra.

I left the beaming travel agent, receipt in hand, and decided to hit up a Hindu temple a few blocks away. I don’t like pulling out maps when I’m walking around by myself…so I just sort of wandered in the general direction I thought it was supposed to be. I happened to glance across the street as I was scurrying past a soup stand, and there it was, barely noticeable with construction almost obscuring the front.

It was practically empty, with two worshipers praying in an inner ring of wooden fence surrounding the deities. All of the signs were in Vietnamese and I wasn’t sure where I was allowed to go and where I was supposed to take off my shoes. Rather than risk offending, I stayed only a few minutes, then headed back to the street.

Next on my list was the art museum. It was the highlight of my day.

Last year, I spent several hours in the War Remnants Museum, where gruesome pictures of battle, Agent Orange victims and torture instruments decorate level after level of the building. Visiting helped fill in the gaps I’d had about the war, especially as viewed from the Vietnamese side. But the museum is very journalistic in its coverage, very factual. There are personal stories, yes, but very timeline driven.

"Ba Son Shipyard's Defense," by Nguyen Sien.

The art museum, for me, filled in all the war museum could not—the feelings of the people who were there. Art is a way to understand thoughts, emotions and internal processes. Paintings, sculpture, theater—all give us a window into mind of the creator at the time the piece was produced.

In addition to more classical pieces, there was modern art pre- and post-1975. It was amazing. I spent over two hours just looking at the modern pieces; then I couldn’t absorb anymore and had to leave.

As I turned the corner away from the past, I looked up to see skyscrapers with “Citi Group” and “California Yoga” in big letters on the side. I passed a man selling used, metal forks sitting outside of Highland Coffee, with a Starbucks just a few blocks up. Then the old market came into view.

The city is a blend of developing and developed on every block.

"An emergency operation," Huynh Thi Kim Tien.

The rest of the day I spent getting things in order to leave tomorrow, writing and drinking more strong coffee. I was able to meet up with the University of Montana students at their hotel in the evening, and joined two of my classmates for a dinner of yummy stir fried veggies and rice in an open air restaurant with bright yellow walls, white shutters and flowing curtains.

Eating with them was the most I’ve talked in three days.

Outside the restaurant more and more motorbikes began to appear. The traffic exponentially increased each hour today, with New Year’s Eve patrons congregating for a night of celebration. If I had been here for a few more days, or if I hadn’t been up so early, perhaps I would have ventured to pursue midnight. Even with a mild effort to stay awake, I was out before 10 pm. I will embrace the New Year first thing in the morning.

With gratitude for an amazing journey in 2015:

Thank you for the new friends and families who have entered my life—in the lab, in school, as babysitting clients, as friends from countries all over Asia.

Thank you for a wonderful place to live, surrounded by hilarious and supportive people, with fresh chicken eggs every morning.

Thank you for my health and safety, for dance classes and singing.

Thank you for the challenges that make me cry and make me want to quit.

Thank you for clean water and climate control.

Thank you for a mother who always says “okay” when I tell her my next idea, my next destination.

Thank you for a life of so much opportunity.

May the new year bring us all more peace, more compassion and more love.

With affection,

Shanti

The Plunge

Exploring the city is like easing into a scalding bath.

First, the big toe—the walk to the next block to buy a jug of water and sim card. Then both feet tentatively submerge; a stroll to a coffee shop almost half a mile away. Finally, the entire body sinks in, slowly adjusting to the heat; I enter the Independence Palace for a self-guided tour.

The architect intended to mix tradition with
modernity. Shadows are cast from the outside decor
meant to look like bamboo.

And so day one begins. The palace housed the South Vietnamese government when the country was divided into the communist north and American-backed south. When communist troops finally seized the building in April 1975, it marked the fall of Saigon, (now called Ho Chi Minh City), and the reunification of the country. The communist party has ruled ever since, though business was eventually privatized in 1986.

The palace with North Vietnamese troops out front.
More photos from the fall of Saigon at http://www.vintag.es/2015/04/vietnam-war-40-years-ago-75-beathtaking.html. 

Wandering the halls of the palace 50 years later is like stepping back in time. There are plush red carpets and 1970s velvet chairs; pictures of President Nixon and McNamara adorn informative signs. The old war room touts faded maps and retro, green chairs.   

The roof of the palace with
a commemorative helicopter.

The painting behind the chair
is lacquer, a traditional Vietnamese
art form.

Years ago, I took several classes with a Vietnam Veteran turned professor, Dr. Byron Dare. He is a Marxist expert, political scientist and the most intense professor I’ve ever had. All of his lectures somehow found their way back to the Vietnam War. Even lectures on Plato and St. Augustine. Being here, I can't help but miss him.  

After an hour of wandering the halls, I finally begin to relax. Just like adjusting to the heat from the bath, what was first uncomfortable now starts to feel good.

I leave the manicured lawns of the palace behind and find myself on a familiar street, one traveled a year ago. My feet remember the path to the grocery store and I end up strolling familiar isles of unfamiliar foods; the place smells of fish and fruit. I buy yogurt, then leave.

A lot has happened since I last walked these sidewalks, but somehow my body remembers. I remember how to cross the street, becoming a tiny boat moving across a rushing river. I stay calm and steady as the current of motorbikes passes around me, never stopping.

On the way back to the hotel I am approached by a group of six students. They are in matching white shirts and navy slacks. They ask to interview me for an exercise in their English class. Of course I say yes. The main interviewer has large, thick glasses that almost obscure the top of her face.

We chat about the weather, the traffic, the city. Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman photographing me on one side and a man on the other. For 15 minutes, I am a celebrity. One student films the interview head-on, another records it on her phone. Photographs come from behind, capturing the bags I feel collecting under my eyes. I'm exhausted. We pose for a group photo. Then the students are gone and I am once again weaving my way through traffic.

Park surrounding the palace; also where
I met the students.

I need to get out of the bath; I’m beginning to overheat.

Back in my room I eat a blessedly cold kiwi and guava yogurt cup and drink copious amounts of water.  It's 90 degrees out and humid. Friday’s high is projected to be 97. I feel the heat and the pull of Mountain Standard Time weighing down my body.

I need to eat real food. At 6 pm I head out. There is a café less than a block away and it’s a traveler’s paradise: cool, quiet and practically empty. Smooth jazz plays as I look around at retired cameras, rotary phones and records glued to the wall. Dried flowers decorate teal-painted window seals and the outlines of crows are stitched onto the pillows. I have yet to see a crow in Vietnam. This place was built for Westerners.

I devour tofu and mushroom curry with rice. A slice of pepper leaves me silently crying for several minutes and I’m embarrassed by my lack of spice tolerance. I'm eating alone, and too fast, the pepper harshly reminds me to slow down. It’s okay to be alone.

Dinner of rice (that looks like a waffle) and tofu, mushroom curry.

It's time to pull the plug and make my way back to my room. I change into shorts and dump my dirty clothes into the bathroom sink to wash them. I will draw myself another bath tomorrow. 

The day before Day 1

Last January in Cape Ca Mau National Park with Dinh.

Three hundred and sixty-six days ago, I stepped off a plane in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. I was looking to understand the lasting impacts of Agent Orange on local forests 50 years after the war. But after the first two days, I had forgotten all about that angle. Forest restoration was a side bar, an opening act to the main event: climate change and sea level rise. So I find myself back again, stepping off the plane on the same soil, among the same bustling streets full of motorbikes, trying to make sense of something daunting. I am only a few hours away, sitting on an airplane right now, and I am afraid.

Mekong Delta fashion, with Kelsie.
January 2015

Fear can be a crippling thing; a self-sabotaging force that can run away with me if I’m not careful. I don’t know why I was born so afraid. I’m not talking about the survival-instincts kind of fear; I’m talking about irrational, gripping anxiety. I’d like to believe no one is born this way, that we learn to psych ourselves out. But if that’s the case, then the irrational world got to me before my conscious memory begins.

Regardless of how the fear entered my body, it’s had a hold on me for as long as I can recall. I have a distinct memory of my mom sitting on the side of my bed when I was 7 or 8; I had red, plaid sheets and a pink comforter. It was dark out and I’d just started crying because in my dream, my dog was eaten by a shark. We lived in the middle of the woods in Colorado. I see her face vividly—half exasperated, half motivated—she recites an acronym: FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real. And she tells me I need to get a grip.

Today, I have better control. But I hate the part of me that still sometimes gives in—that part that keeps me awake at night, wondering about the what ifs, pondering past failures, projecting future ones.

As much as I hate it, though, somewhere along the way I began to see the irrationality personified, as my personal villain. I am the girl in the red cape, seeking an anecdote for the kryptonite hanging around my neck

So here I am, feeling alone among a hundred strangers, 37,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, exhausted. I am sitting in climate-controlled darkness, illuminated only by my laptop and the movie screens playing “Hollywood Hits”. I am psyching myself up to find a cab when I land in Vietnam 11 hours from now. I close my eyes to visualize a smooth ride to my hotel. I see myself successfully walk to the grocery store in the morning, getting on the correct bus to Can Tho New Year’s Day.

My backpack, deconstructed.

I am mediating on making it to the heart of the Mekong Delta without incident. I will be stronger than my villain and its newest fodder, my master’s project.

My life is the book where each page allows the reader to choose the next step. I will have enough faith in myself to make those choices with clarity and peace.

 Stay tuned for the next page.