How long has it been since i returned here? 2 months almost. wow. a bit discouraged from continuing everytime i log on to see that somewhat.... narcissitic post.
But 2 months. What has happened? Been to the Nam, met some great people, travelled down Vietnam together, had a splendid Christmas on the sand at Phu Quoc (the Eden - which as the night went on begun to resemble a hospital with the casualties hobbling in from the sea), came back, started a new term, back to routine....
Vietnam was... a bit predictable. Like, same same but (not so) different. It didn't feel so different, so unique, like Laos and Cambodia had - that edgy, gritty, cool feel. Vietnam was mostly just another string of big cities - with Topshop, Calvin Klein's, Gloria Jean's coffee, and millions of motorbikes rushing to the (capitalist) future. Maybe it could easily have been Bangkok, Malaysia (Kuala L'impure, as Theroux mentions) in the mid 80s. Especially Saigon - with the high rises, seedy Pham Ngu Lao, commerce, snaking telephone pylons, hordes of motorcycles, sad little pho shops by the roadside with old men drinking beer and staring at you late at 2 a.m. in the morning...
It wasn't really a fascinating, eye-opening, jaw dropping trip, the way India-Nepal was - more of a holiday, actually - it was more a matter of "ok, so this is Hue..." rather than "god. i can't believe i'm here" - which i felt more than a few times around India and Nepal, going up the Himalayas. This trip was mostly taking things slow, i remember walking in Vietnam's big, fast developing, and obviously affluent cities - mostly faceless places like Da Nang (it takes your soul away - so sad, at night, the concrete buildings soaring skywards into the night, the lights, the casinos, the neon signs, and no one), depressing rainy Hue (2 obviously foreign enclaves, an ancient citadel with the hammer and sickle draped over it), the gleaming new concrete wonderland of Ha Long city...
It is not meant to be so depressing - and it wasn't, but Vietnam, i probably remember more of the company, my friends, rather than the places, although some were really nice, soothing - i liked Cat Ba island, much better than Ha Long bay, its like staying at one of those rocky karst outcrops that jut into the sea in the perpetual fog-mist that hangs over the boat (which is, in brutal honesty, a diesel chugging, overcrowded wooden monstrosity that ploughed its way through the karsts on the way to Cat Ba to drop us off before making a U-turn back to Halong city). It was really, riding into the town in the evening, Jurassic Park - like taking a trip back through time across the island's wild and untamed, gorgeously rugged and raw scenery. So far away.
And there is also peaceful, tranquil Tam Coc at Ninh Binh, where i remember banana trees by the water's edge, a flooded paddy, and little stilt houses, the sea of luminescent green weeds under the boat, swaying noiselessly, fluidly, as we glided down the water. Alongside were the towering, rocky karst outcrops - a surreal, pastoral Halong bay on the rice paddies.
I will also not forget Hoi An - anyone who has been to Malacca will see the similarities right away. The straits chinese houses with the broad wooden shutters that open up into the street, the fading yellow facades, distinctly tropical vegetation - frangipanis, banana trees, leafy palms, and a river neatly dividing the town into 2, where the merchant ships used to come in and trade.
