It's Bohemian

I have three journal entries that are half finished about different towns in Vietnam, and I have had a difficult time painting the picture of my experiences. I came to realize that it is hard to capture the complexity of Vietnam in words the way it's difficult expressing the smell of curry in words. There is something very "Vietnam" about every moment, and I guess that can be said about any country.

We rented motorbikes yesterday for the first time in Vietnam and went to Marble Mountain, across the road from China Beach, near Hoi An. When you rent motorbikes (in Thailand or in Vietnam) you want to go until the tank is empty. This is how you get it, and you don't feel like you got the most out of it until you're either exhausted or the tank is empty, the latter taking precedence. I think they siphon the gas for their own use and give you the bikes empty otherwise. When we got back at the end of the night, Jess and I decided to ride as fast as we could (with safety in mind) to rid ourselves of an overflow of energy and to empty our tanks. We crossed a bridge near our hotel and immediately came to a stop as we saw a large chunk of concrete fly through the air, lobbed across the street by a guy holding a wooden bat, the projectile disappearing into the opening of a restaurant; seconds later a large grey mass was returned, projected out of the hollow that was the restaurant at the guy with the bat; two on one side, one on the other, we had entered a street fight of the kind I had never encountered before. Someone at that restaurant had done something to offend the other; more blocks of concrete went flying back and forth though the air; some aimed into the restaurant, some at the sign of the place, some back at the guys across the street - they seemed extremely drunk - the rage in their eyes was intense. I thought to myself "I hope the guy in the restaurant takes a second to call the cops" and then realized I had not seen a cop in the city since I arrived. I had not seen a single member of the law; the city was lawless and it seemed that order was maintained the way you would expect in a small village, and this "city" was not much different than a small village that was being transformed and modernized by tourism. You are constantly reminded that you're in a third world country when you order food and have it returned with at least one questionable object - a piece of hair or a shard of bone is not uncommon but not a big deal - you ask yourself "what kind of meat is this?" - you make sure to order bottled water and swat flies off your food as you eat - the food smells great but drafts from the market pass by from time to time carrying with it a mixture of fish and meat and molding greens and oil and grease and sweat. And then it's times like these that you realize there is life here outside the world that we have created for ourselves; life outside of tourism; and that this IS the third world and not just your third world experience. You realize you're not at one of the parks within Disney World, although you often wonder if their purpose for maintaining whatever forms of history it could is for the sole purpose of tourism. The fight continued and we were too close; we went zooming off to see the countryside, leaving that little "experience" behind us, and I thought "if this was happening in my own country (wherever that is) I would not just get out of here and zoom into the countryside to see what else I could see. I would do something about it. But here, I'm a tourist.

Sitting at a restaurant today we saw a girl no older than six walk up to a group of Australian women at another table and try to sell them trinkets. Wooden dragonflies that balanced on their nose when you placed them at the tip of your finger. "She's a trained hustler" said Jess, and it occurred to me that this was part of what I was missing. Child labor? Was this some huge chocolate corporation running kids around the street to provide us with the things we crave? No. This girl was being brought up to survive, possibly as a slave in a gang, possibly as the little daughter of a women sitting at another corner selling soup or trinkets herself, her husband out on a motorbike posing as a taxi, trying to make some money, or by directing "us" to his sisters or mothers or daughters tailor shop (everyone has a family member who owns a tailor shop in Hoi An); their son running around doing the same….this town revolved around "us," the tourists, and we were molding Vietnam because we are it's ability to survive; we are it's ability to shelter a family, to find food for the day, to make it by…to live. And it's a sad thought, to hear a certain amount of desperation in the voice of another when they ask you to buy; when they all seem to sell Pringles as well as bicycles, as well as tour and motorbikes, as well as custom tailored clothes and postcards, as well as a massage. A desperate plea that "no one has bought from me today, will you, please, I give you good price, please, you buy…" as you start ignoring them, tired of saying "no, no thank you, no, no I have one, no thank you, no, I only have a little room in my bag, no, I'm sorry."

While watching that girl at the restaurant a boy who should have been approaching manhood came to our table and tried to sell us postcards. We said we were not interested, to which he replied "I have not sold today; you help me; buy is good luck for me." This is a common notion; the first customer of the morning is likely to get the best deal because if they let you leave without a sale, you may set the luck for the day against their favor; if you buy, you swing luck in their favor. He had no sold anything all day, which could mean anything from he wasn't actually selling anything earlier because he was doing something else to he didn't sell anything because he was down on his luck. "We bought these at the beach. Maybe 12 of them" I replied. He wanted to know how much I paid, and I honestly didn't remember because we purchased them out of guilt for a women who looked 70 and had sat by us for about 10 minutes asking us to buy in the me guilty plea; her eyes looked moist as if she were blind; as she sat there I wondered how many nights she lay awake as "my country fought to guarantee my freedom," and I felt that now I had to pay to guarantee her a meal. He then tried to sell me Tiger Balm and I told him we had one already; we had bought one in Thailand thinking it would help our heat rash. Ours is a bigger pack and he said the smaller ones are better, using the "you help me, bring me luck" line a couple more times. When I said "no, thank you" for the 10th time (at least, no exaggeration) he said "this is not fair" and walked away. Not fair…the words echoed through my mind as we ate. "Why is that my problem" was one of the responses in my head. "Okay, I'll buy one" was the other. We constantly struggle with "well, it's only fifty cents - what's fifty cents to us?" and he fact that we too are unemployed. I think about a lot of this as an alms, or as a tax I have to pay for turning their lives into an object of my experience if not my amusement. But I wonder why I should have to pay this price. And I wonder why it is that I want this place (this region) to remain cheap so I can afford to be here - as if wanting them to remain in poverty so that I can find a room with AC for cheap.

I am beginning to understand Vietnam. Not so much it's history, but the present as a result of both history and a difficult trek into the future. I am beginning to understand that the things that annoy me (hello you buy) are their least aggressive form of survival in the midst of the only income they can rely on - ours. The street fight I witnessed was a more aggressive form of survival (most likely) - gang warfare over a corner, not around drugs but around silk or wood carvings or a pho stand. Who's dipping their hands in my ability to get some money from these tourists…

They see us for what we are…we are people walking around their land, looking at their lives as if it were entertainment. We are curious, but the things that we are taking pictures of are 4 year old girls in rags sitting in mud playing with a plastic bag and straw that contained a drink that one of "us" finished earlier; men sitting in a hybrid bicycle and wheelchair, both legs missing either because of a mine we placed there years ago or some other ailment, trying to sell me something I don't need but feel obligated to buy - something I would probably throw away or just give back, making it the same charity we are asked not to perform; an old man who looks 60 or more pulling a cart full of hay or bricks or coal, not thinking that this man is just doing another day's work except he doesn't get to sit at his desk under air condition and doesn't have labor laws protecting him. Our tourism - the things we marvel at - this is their lives. We come in looking for an AC and wifi and hot water; we come looking for good food and cold bottled water; we come looking for all of this luxury that only exists because we can afford to pay for it as we marvel at their poverty, and we want it cheap. Sure, there is a sign at the hotel that reads "Vietnamese Price - Foreigner Price" and our price is nearly double theirs for the same single room, but I doubt the Vietnamese guest is taking pictures of the old woman hunched under the weight of fruit or coal balanced on her shoulder as she walks the street without bottled water in the same heat we complain about.

I am having a hard time writing about Vietnam because I am lost in my own tourism, and not sure where. I have seen so many beautiful things, in Delat, in Hoi An, here in Hue - I have seen the Tomb of Minh Mang, and of his son, the last emperor; I have seen the elephant waterfall, trekking down the slippery and jagged rock face to the foot of the fall and stood in the mist and marveled; I have seen silk being made and was offered a silk worm to eat; I have stood in front of the Happy Buddha in Delat and walked though the gardens of the Pagoda; I have been taught about the ways of Buddhism at the Dragon Pagoda, the oldest is Delat; I have seen en elephant sitting in the back of a truck zoom by us on the road in the city; I have seen beautiful misty mountain tops and an expanse of green that's almost overwhelming in it's magnificence; I have eaten well, eaten poorly, eaten questionably, all wonderfully; I have experienced more in the last few weeks than many do in months or years or lifetimes, and yet…all I have experienced is life…someone else's simple, impoverished life - the backdrop to their desire to survive.

Chill and just enjoy it? No...