Like chickens, I’m generally not much engaged by speculation about
geo-political change. To cite but one example: remember all the books about
how Japan was going to dominate the world’s economy? Returned to our dear
home, I sat to compose and was immediately interrupted by Mimo shouting that
she’d laid an egg. No matter how many times I’ve heard this cry, I still find
it engaging. I slid open the door, grabbed my souvenir and stepped into the
Spring sunshine. She was in full flow, “I’VE LAID AN EGG…I’VE LAID AN
EGG…I’VE…”
“Mimo! How are you?”
“Well if it isn’t the long-lost god!”
“Returned from Vietnam. Spit if you will.”
“Where’s Vietnam?”
“Not far from where your species originated.”
“Oh yes? And do we still have a Presence?”
“You do. I brought you back a painting: chickens in a Vietnamese village.”
She glanced at it without enthusiasm. “Very nice. I hope you’ve not brought
any of those foreign diseases.”
“Funny you should mention those,” I began. But she was off. “Mustn’t tarry,”
was what I caught, but my ears are still blocked from all that flying. Could
be she said, “Must meet Barry.” I took a couple of deep breaths of wonderful,
un-polluted air and stepped back inside.
Hanoi’s smog is truly awful. Everyone today who has any money wants mobility
and in Vietnam the vehicle of choice is a fifty cc motor bike. If you want to
imagine Hanoi streets, think of the first outpouring of water from a hose,
crossing a dusty sidewalk; where it can go forward, it does, where it cannot,
it goes around. Stand by a junction in Hanoi and you’ll see motorbikes coming
from all directions threading their way through. Rule one is: big wins. Cars
honk to indicate that they are bigger than bikes and so, like bellowing bulls,
are demanding the right of way. But bikes outnumber cars and everyone wants
to get to wherever they’re going, pedestrians included. Thus rule two is,
“pick a line and do nothing sudden.” Those stripey lines on the road?
Irrelevent. Stop lights? Mere suggestions. Because no one zooms, or behaves
in a manner different from everyone else, there are few injuries; I saw only
one guy fall off his bike. But the damage to everyone’s lungs from all the
smog will be invisible for a while. Locals wear masks; people like me didn’t
know to bring one.
I enjoyed getting a haircut. We were walking around the lake where John McCain
dropped in, trying to ignore all the rubbish floating where water met land and
to concentrate on the hint of red sun glimmering. Suddenly we came across a
barber who had a queue of three men lined up. I asked a guy from Dublin what
the deal was. “He’s the best. Everyone agrees. Put yourself in line.” So I
did. And I would have been fourth but for some Dragon Ladies who turned up to
thrust their men to the front. Eventually my turn came. By this time I’d had
a good chat with the guy from Dublin, learned that the barber was totally deaf,
worried just a tad that everyone was getting really short cuts. Before the
previous guy could leave I pointed to the top of his head to indicate how long
I wanted and to the side of his head to indicate that me and the U.S. Marines
differ in our taste, hair-wise. The barber was both skilled and diligent. If
you want a haircut then you clearly want all else to be in proportion, so out
came the lather and brush and the straight-edge razor. I ended up trim all
over and happy with the result. I was embarrassed by how little it cost. He
was very clear that the price was the price. No slipping him a little extra.
I walked on, finding L. in a bar just past the “Shiny Apartments."
We arrived at the embarkation point for our cruise on Halong Bay after a mere
million mile drive. What made the journey seem so long was a gap in the
education of our van driver. His version of gear shifting was one, two...five,
and once he was in top gear nothing but the threat of stalling was going to get
him to drop down. He had earphones on and so was spared listening to the
engine. Thus we lugged along, often at twenty five mph in fifth gear. Of
course there was also the obligatory Third World stop at the tat -and-
Digestive- biscuit shop. I took a photo of excellent wine, which was handily
labelled, “Excellence."
On the first afternoon we were invited to practice kaya-King (an approximation
of the tour host's pronunciation). Since it was cold and I sensed a cold
threatening, L. and I skipped this. The guide seemed to think this the right
move for an old git. Next morning however I felt more spry, and so showed them
how kayaking goes. Some of you won’t know that I’ve been kayaKing since age
eleven and while never as strong as my brother, had a little success in
competition. A highlight of kayaKing was a ray leaping out of the water maybe
twenty feet from us. There were three repetitions.
I couldn't fight off the cold and it has proved fierce. Mimo was right to
give me plenty of distance.
I was thinking about geo-political change because I began Robert Kaplan,
“Asia’s Cauldron” on the journey back. He’s worried about the South China Sea
and who wouldn’t be given the history of the region. In Hanoi I saw three men
who were old enough to have fought, each dressed in U.S. Marine fatigues.
Otherwise people’s attitude to the war was very much like what you see at a
wedding when someone over-does the drink. In the women’s museum we got, “Here
are the colorful folk outfits our women wear; here are tales of war heroism…and
here now…our current women’s fashions.” When I told someone that immigrants to
Oregon had recently been arrested for failing to follow guidelines on what size
and sex of crab you may keep, he instantly said, “Probably Chinese.”
We paid to go make knives. The blacksmith’s shop was bare but for a couple of
display cases, a small furnace and a dog chained to the wall, which the owners
ignored. There was a battered rooster in a tiny cage in the next shop. The
animals' circumstance seemed cruel. Eventually it occurred to me that neither
animal was being kept as a pet; one was for fighting, the other…
If I drew any conclusion from our visit it’s that the term “post-colonial” does
not apply to this part of the world. They are post post-colonial, in some new
era, pushing on in a manner that makes hand-wringing and guilt seem ridiculous.
No one there is going to listen to, “I’VE LAID AN EGG.” They’re all busy
making their way through another junction.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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