On Vietnam, CSDS, Cambodia and a rambling monk



Hoi An 14/6/15

There is something about solitude that makes me travel in time. I have glass eyes that are resistant to the busy, dirty watercolours that try and seep through. Instead they are looking inwards because time doesn’t exist and chronology is as chaotic as it is true. Peer through my glass eyes and you will see a million times that all exist at once. History and the now can duet like old friends.

And when I am occupied, I travel in space. Here I am in Hoi An, Vietnam; those crude watercolours morphing into shape and smell and noise. Wrinkly women balance alien fruit from their shoulder boards, timing their steps so as to match the rhythmic up-and-down of the weight. Dying fish in the market smack into one another as they wriggle and flop around in their own slime.

I am 19 years old. I am also 24 years old. Swedish. An ice-hockey enthusiast. A nice hockey enthusiast. Semi-famous scat singer. Part-time secret agent. Martian. I can be anyone I like, the more impossible the better.

In actual fact you can be anyone who you say you are, because none of it matters. What matters is the more human qualities; someone’s smile, if it shows their teeth or not. The way someone pinches their eyebrows together when they are thinking. How running on the sand makes them pigeon-toed. In this environment, you may meet someone for a day or a week, but ultimately you realise early on that what people say they are is far less important from what they are. I love the way travelling scrapes off the straight-edged society we have created and hurls you in as an equal.


I have just spent 5 weeks in Hanoi, mainly at the busy CSDS (Centre for Sustainable Development Studies) house, where every floor of the six levels was filled with noise and people from all over the world. There were volunteers, interns and uni students, aswell as the Vietnamese staff and local supporters who made us feel so welcome in such a wonderfully chaotic but foreign city.

Suddenly by myself again, you can see how the booming motorbike engines, shouting vendors and barking dogs seem so quiet. My thoughts seem louder and demand more attention. So I will leap back in time to when I first fell down the rabbit hole and landed with wide eyes in this sweaty, nonsensical and frenzied land…




Hanoi, 12/5/15


Dropped right in the middle without a safety net. In the middle of all those hats, faces, bikes, cables, shouting, smells and mostly obscure miscellaneous stuff.  My first achievement after a couple of days is being able to cross a road. The trick is to turn into Iron Man, or the Incredible Hulk (maybe better as the bright green colour may deter motorists) and then slowly (and without stopping) cross the road. It is also probably better to close your eyes.  One thing I couldn’t help think about was that hedgehog advert on television when I was younger with that catchy song about crossing the road. I wonder what the Vietnamese version would be like and whether it would have an 18 age restriction.

I also met mum today in Hanoi, she had flown here from Hong Kong where she was working. She was about as wide-eyed as I was, despite having travelled so much when she was younger. Her more recent trips to Cannes and New York had not been the best preparation for Hanoi, and her fringe was already showing signs of distress. That first night we went out for some street food and sat on children’s chairs in the traffic, eating lots of strange things including lotus flowers and chicken fluff. A man came up to us and made a small hole in my shoes. He then stuck his finger through the hole to poke my foot and told me that I had a hole in my shoe, would I like him to fix it? His other hand held super glue and as I tried to shake him off he was insistent that he would give me ‘Good price! Cheap price!’ to fix the hole I had just seen him make.






Night train to Sapa, 13/5/15

The train is swaying side to side and I drink my tea with condensed milk on the bed of our little cabin. Mum is straightening her fringe again and she goes cross-eyed. There is a little patch of air that surrounds Mum’s forehead where the gravity doesn’t work very well.

My feet ache from walking miles and miles around Hanoi, discovering hidden temples and laughing at the surprisingly hilarious traditional water puppet show. It was very squeaky and mainly involved puppets with painted cheeks splashing and flopping around after ugly monsters whilst the Vietnamese singers squawked like macaws on helium and twanged their stringed instruments.

In Sapa, we were hounded by a gaggle of friendly but persistent women who desperately tried to sell us their ‘homestay’ experience. They may not have been able to understand English well, but our white skin and tall, clumsy tourist limbs spelled out ‘money’ for them just as much as if we had been painted green and stamped with the face of George Washington. We followed one woman and trekked through beautiful paddy fields to her house, which was above the rice terraces and had scruffy barefoot children who ran round happily. They climbed on an old snooker table (which must have surely flown there?!), and an unkempt Ben-10 featured frequently on their torn t-shirts. I helped the women by cutting up garlic with a machete, and the rain thundered down like bricks from the heavy sky.




Hanoi, 25/5/15

I have now been at the CSDS house for 5 days and have squeezed about 50 days worth of energy into this busy little place. Even whilst napping I am very busy haggling with a rude Vietnamese vendor or dodging traffic.

This week I am working for a project called ‘The Little Seeds’ at Benh vien nhi, the paediatrics hospital in Hanoi. Each afternoon for about 3 hours they organise a creative arts camp with games and activities to help give the childrens’ parents a break and raise a few smiles on their faces which just warms my heart. The children in the ward are mainly waiting for kidney transplants and are sometimes very sick, too sick even to walk. The conditions there are difficult. Even at more than 40˚C and 100% humidity, there is no air conditioning and the place feels like a sauna. Up to five children would be sharing a bed. Every now and then a baby about the size of my hand would be wheeled past the project area (which was in the lobby), and the wrinkled white sheets around them would look as big as the sea. Still, every laugh and smile raised from ‘The Little Seeds’ would be worth it. The parents flutter around like anxious butterflies, wafting their protection in the only way that they can.


Hanoi, 31/5/15

My hands smell of water melon and belly pork which is a strange combination but I have been ‘helping’ the Sunday kitchen girl prepare lunch. She put me in a corner to chop things up, and I realised that as a western girl I probably appear quite incompetent in matters of cooking/ cleaning/ anything useful. I didn’t argue, it was probably true in terms of a Vietnamese woman’s standards. She asked me lots of questions about mash potato which it turns out I have quite a lot to say about.

On Tuesday the girls at CSDS had a football match against the local girls team. We all sprang/sprung around like chickens whos legs had suddenly grown like a meter and were then told to do the cancan and their legs could move around in all directions slightly impressively but also lacking any grace or control. In terms of what I looked like however try and imagine a tomato that has suddenly sprouted human legs with a characteristic penguin waddle. You may have noticed that the likeness of my face to a tomato is pretty frequent but really I haven’t found another vegetable that I resemble so much. Perhaps a radish. The next list is dedicated to some slogans written on Vietnamese clothing I have found:

                -‘FUCKIN BLAK JACKET’ written on a grey dress
                -‘Bread, Bread’ on a top
                       
I realise that this may not be long enough to meet the requirements of a ‘list’. There were many others that I have forgotten so anyone I met who has any to add message me.

The next few weeks at CSDS passed in a blur or happiness, motorbikes, crazy dancing, terrible karaoke and sweltering weather. I had a thoroughly wicked time in Hanoi and have memories and people that I will always make me smile. I will also add 2 more things to my bucket list (the next step up from the current- and completed!!!- cheese rolling competition and deep fried mars bars). I want to learn French, to a level that my Spanish is at now. Also I would like to learn how to play guitar so that I can air guitar to ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’ with a little more credibility.





Ho Chi Minh City, 20/6/15

WHUUUUMP or WHOOOOSH (this is the noise that time travel makes) forward in time, and here I sit at PP backpackers in HCMC drinking watery yoghurt coffee with the sky sweating and Georgie snoozing upstairs. It is the kind of heavy weather that sits on your eyeballs, pushing the lightness out and even a caffeine kick cannot shake it off.

Ho Chi Minh is not like Hanoi. Of course I am biased, Hanoi was my first taste of Asian life and I spent so long there. But here in the south the raindrops are fatter and sting, the Xe-Om drivers narrow their eyes and demand more money, the lights from Burger King reflect in the puddles that have caused my reed flip-flops to disintegrate. People here have not forgotten what the world has done to them and their ancestors. And the world is still, in some ways, apologising. Visiting the War Museum is a necessity - however, instead of just feeding you information, it feeds your uneasiness and guilt. The Vietnamese people still suffer from the crippling deformities of Agent Orange. War veterans are still tormented by psychological illnesses, and the physical scarring on the land is still recovering. And upon this troubled, uneasy earth they have plastered concrete monstrosities with cheap adverts and plastic faces. Tourists fill the streets, drawn in like flies to the tours, designer ‘Channel’ bags and cheap alcohol. Signs reading ‘no sex tourism’ hung in the hostels. Georgie and I arrived in our dorm room to find 7 absolute fucking LADS planning their next foot massages. One had an egg head after being hit by a fire extinguisher he had set off by mistake. Another was trying to sell me his old rucksack after buying a massive Louis Vuitton suitcase from the local market for an absolute (bargain) £80 (can you even believe it’s real NO you moron it is as real as a ladyboys GG boobs but at least some sneaky little Vietnamese woman has profited).


We went to the Cu Chi tunnels (a vast network of underground tunnels outside of Ho Chi Minh that allowed communication and hiding between the Viet Cong- the military arm of the National Liberation Front) , our guide displayed the Vietnamese’ ingenious methods to keep them winning as they fought bravely in a guerrilla war. One thing that dampened this impressive display of Vietnamese’ tenacity was the firing range, where tourists paid to fire AK47s. It just seemed inappropriate after what had happened there.









Outside Can Tho, 23/6/15

I’m not sure if it is me being clumsy and cynical after a day of travelling, or if hammocks are just overrated. These are particularly tricky to operate and look like ginormous banana leaves- maybe to try and blend in with the surrounding jungle of the Mekong drainage basin. I am carefully writing this entry from Hung’s Homestay, about 8km from Can Tho which is the capital of the Mekong. Hung is a chubby little man with none of the fuzziness of a chubby little person- his eyes are narrow and dart from me to Georgie. We are tiresome and a nuisance, I
think it may be to do with us not spending lots of money here and instead preferring to go ‘tour-less’ (utter this word carefully, fellow travellers, as it may be followed by gasps and scepticism as if you had instead gone ‘head-less’ or ‘knicker-less’).
Anyway I have had many an argument in the South with sly men suffering from all the usual ailments of small man syndrome and rolling their t-shirts up like crop tops. Georgie just gave an insightful comment about how small man syndrome is a relatively new thing because in the past everyone was a small(er) man and so there was no need to suffer from it. Also I think that I am probably very intimidating looking to them and it is possible that they feel threatened (haha).


Today we woke up at about 6am to visit the floating markets and see them at their liveliest. There was a storm and we were the only tourists about. The man driving the boat gave us some Jackfruit (awful awful). He told us very seriously using Google Translate ‘My brother’s name it was delicious’ and we nodded back meaningfully. Each boat on the floating markets have fishing lines with produce of each particular boat. So there were fishing rods with hooked bananas and caught carrots and I loved this idea.

After this we zoomed off to the centre of Can Tho and decided to get massages (£4 for 60 minutes) which pleased us as much as the masseuses and so there were all round smiles (by which I mean smiles all round as all round smiles may look something like this:  Ο ) Part of the massage involved ‘extreme bodily contortions’ which is lots to leave to the imagination and was one of the funniest things ever.



25/6/15

Phu Quoc: Island paradise. The REAL 3 S’s: Sun, sand and absolute sassiness. Unfortunately my lack of appreciation and respect for a little something called THE RAINY SEASON instead lead to 3 Ws (weally weally wet. ) And it is so rainy that it is actually pretty impressive. You can be soaked as quickly as you can say ‘umbrella’ or even just ‘um’.

So we decided to swim in the sea and also if you think about it also swim a little bit in the sky since as the sky was half way to being the sea. There was a huddle of Chinese women on the shore taking endless photos of themselves in different positions ie, holding carousel in one hand, then other hand, one toe poking in the water, group selfie, tickling a beached whale… that sort of thing. Later we rented motorbikes and zoomed around like happy monkeys until we got a flat tyre- but then we changed it and merrily zoomed off again on our way.









Phnong Penh 27/6/15

Yesterday we had quite an ordeal , crossing the border into Cambodia. Oh I am in Cambodia now!!

CAMBODIA!!!

I am still trying to suss it all out but one thing I have noticed is that everyone bows to us here but then again that may be because they are mistaken us for part of the royal family (you can’t rule out the possibility). Last night we stayed at Mad Monkey Hostel which was the kind of To2ly M4D you expect from drunk backpackers excitedly competing at drinking games. Conversation with a gap yah lad from Richmond mainly involved discussing the very serious possibility of selling one of his father’s homes in Santra Pay (which I have since discovered is St Tropez).

Anyway now Gee and I are sitting on the rooftop at a hostel in Phnong Penh, after walking around all day getting very hot and hassled (but politely so, which is a nice change from Vietnam). Because everything is so cheap here we are feeling very sophisticated and going on a river cruise later to watch the sunset and I am pretty chuffed to announce that we have found a HUMMUS café which is MARVELLOUS.

29/6/15

So today, instead of being carted off to the drugs trade by a man posing to be guardian and teacher for a load of orphans (a frighteningly near miss when all we wanted to do was help the children), we took a night bus to Siem Reap. It was one of the most uncomfortable nights ever, with Cambodian feet resting on our arm rests and the bus rocking and rolling on the dirt track to the rhythm of a Madness hit.

Both Gee and I are looking like the stars from 101 Dalmatians where there are only actually 4 dalmatians (being our legs) and these Dalmatians are red-and-white instead of black-and-white because of all the mozzy bites we are suffering from. Yes I’ll admit, quite a big plot change from the original story. We decided to have the least relaxing massage I’ve ever had this morning (and I have only had 4 and they were all pretty painful and one even damaged my back a bit possibly permanently). Whilst texting, she prodded and stood on nearly every nook and cranny of my whole body. When she ran out of things to do she gave my head a real good scratch for about 15 minutes and I felt like a monkey.

Back at the hostel, I had a bizarre conversation with someone from Manchester. He was the kind of person who would always tuck his trousers in to his socks. He was telling us about this high line/ zip wire course in Thailand, and how ‘even though they may tell you it’s however many metres above sea level, don’t be fooled because you can’t actually see the sea.’

We went to the Angkor temples, starting with tomb raider. The tree roots wrap their giant limbs around the stones and gently squeeze, sending off squiggly side limbs that tickle the ancient ruins. We saw great elephants with squishy feet and fat tourists clambering upon their backs. I couldn’t believe our luck at how we had seemingly stumbled upon this secret, magical place- in all its humble silence we explored in awe. There was a full moon and I wished more than ever that I could know what those cavernous, timeless eyes up there had seen. I wonder if they were curious, a thousand years ago when those great pillars of human skill and strength stacked higher and higher, touching the moon’s awesome face. And now, I wonder if he sighs in satisfaction, or exasperation, at how we reap the rewards of our ancestors’ sweat and blood, taking selfies against the crumbling stone.




On to Battambang, 3/7/15

I got mistaken for a Swede by some Swedish people (Yes! Another vegetable lookalike!). We also went to the Cambodian Circus, ‘Phare’ to watch their performance ‘Eclipse’. Their talent was astonishing and their cause wonderful. The Phare artists are from some of the most difficult social and economic backgrounds, and are able to transform their life through art.

All performers in Phare The Cambodian Circus learn their skills through Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS), an Association providing arts education in Battambang, Cambodia. We were later fortunate enough to visit the site of this school. Young people from the streets, orphanages and struggling families in the community come to PPS to learn, express and heal themselves through the arts. It is a brilliant idea and very successful, with over 1200 students attending the PPS public school daily. If you would like to learn more, visit their website: http://www.pharecambodiancircus.org/circus/  or http://www.phareps.org/



Right now all I am doing really is putting off the $1.50 bed (with free bedbugs) I have in ‘Tomato Guesthouse’- the only place with space last minute I could find. I am up on the top bunk which is so close to the ceiling I cannot move my nose. I shall look on the bright side as I always try to do in situations like this because it is character building.

6/7/15

We have got into the very British habit of saying how very real everything is once it gets particularly faraway and difficult. If we stand there and look out at the worn, suffering dirt streets we are surprised to catch a cheeky grin from a young Khmer face, sparkling in the dust and tie-dying the saturated monochrome. We decided to catch the sunset, and rode up ‘Ship Mountain’ a few miles out of Battambang. Freaked out by the steep, crumbling road, I gritted my teeth and urged the bike on and on to the monkeys at the top. A funny thought whilst watching that golden goblet drip further down the horizon was that at the other side of the world the fading segment would be a stranger’s sunrise. So we tried to stand on our heads to watch the sunset upside down and it made the colours seep out from the bleeding sky richer and richer. Cambodia you have captured my curiosity and my heart.

10/7/15

I have come, once again, to the top of the world. Each is slightly different and yet that feeling of giddy luck and space is like no other. This is all after a very unusual morning visiting Karen- who it turns out is not just one woman, but many and all with long necks. Theirs was a culture essentially based upon selling their long necks, which made me feel uncomfortable and confused at evolution. 



Now, however, after trekking up so high and sliding down a slimey waterfall slide we have arrived in a tribal village high up in the hills near Chiang Mai. Little muskrats run with bare feet, swinging around their younger siblings and karate chopping visitors legs whilst shouting the apparently universal ‘peekaboo!’. Gee and I have met up with Ross and Harry and got the night train up from Bangkok to take part in the pub quiz at the Irish pub (this was not the point in the trip up north but it gave me a peculiar sense of being in two places at once). I wondered what the world would become. In 20 years… 50 years… a great hot pot of chaotic culture and people. Mango burgers and sadza salsa eaten on tiny Vietnamese street chairs using curly wurly straws. Pub quizzes in yurts, peppered in tribal tattoos and followed by cattle wrangling with cowboy hats. I hope too much is not lost.






13/7/15

And so 4 have become 1. My chest feels heavy, like when you are little and your cousins leave and you chase their disappearing car down the drive.  I have collected a lovely little list of quotes especially from Harry who’s unfiltered mouth blurts out a steady stream of… something. For example, his ‘black names’ Chestnut and Doorag, and his description of humanity ‘We are just like complicated ants.’

Tomorrow I start my 4 day meditation course at the International Buddhist Centre at Wat Pradhat Doi Suthep. The monks there run a donation-only retreat to learn and practice Vipassana meditation. I have bought white robes in preparation but unfortunately I have no white pants and probably it is not appropriate to be going commando with lots of meditating monks.

14/7/15

Okay so currently going commando with lots of meditating monks. Actually, have just had a good hard laugh at myself which is important to do once in a while. I am sitting on my rock hard bed at Wat Doi Suthep (you must abstain from luxurious places for sitting or sleeping, or overindulging in sleep), simultaneously doing about 5 FORBIDDEN RULES:

1)      I am writing this, an ABSOLUTE NO NO

2)      I am listening to a rather ironic piece of music, to the backdrop of fighting dogs, screaming cicadas and chanting monks it really sums up my bizarre predicament. (Clementi- Sonatina Op.36, No. 5 you will understand)

3)      A nipple is peeping out of my bath towel and I am pretty sure (given that women are not even allowed into many temples) that whilst I am here I am probably not really allowed nipples, let alone peeping ones.

4)      Around my neck I wear my shell with the cross inside, that I got after completing the Camino de Santiago to Finisterra. Whilst I am no Christian, I am no Buddhist either. I am exploring, and trying to be respectful and reflective.

5)      I have a bag full of emergency Chupa chups. (we are not allowed to eat after 12 noon)
Today, my teacher (a monk) said that meditation helped to balance a busy mind as a result of a busy world. Even though the body may be stationary, your mind is able to leap around in time and space- back to the future and a thousand miles away. It is wonderful, but because it is no physical object you cannot just put it away once you have finished- like a book. Imagine a book ALWAYS there, stuck to you- it would irritate and there’d be no escape. A mind is the same, but lacking the quantifiable dimensions that would make it easier to understand. A mind is a fidgeting shape-shifting time traveller that drenches you with thoughts and emotions that you have little control over. Meditation aims to give you more control over this. Mostly so far it has given me a headache and a craving for more Chupa chups.

16/7/15


Written in the dust on one of the windows of the meditation room is ‘open your mind’. After practicing meditation for hours and hours these last few days, I am trying to decide whether I agree or not with meditation ‘opening’ the mind. To begin with, you are stripping the mind back to its very core, resisting anything external. What I am learning to do instead of resisting, is accepting thoughts and feelings and sounds of the chaotic world inside and out, and simply labelling them without judgement. In Vipassana meditation you focus on four types of meditating: sitting, standing, lying and walking. With walking, you prepare yourself 3 times. There are then 3 parts to the walk- rising the foot, moving the foot, and lowering it back down again. It sounds simple, and it is. Imagine purely focusing on these 3 parts, moving very slowly and lightly. Your mind wanders very easily, but you learn to label this wandering and thereby gather control once more. My question is whether this is ‘opening’ or ‘freeing’ the mind? Or just putting a cage around it? Perhaps it is essentially calming it, stroking it softly so as to gather a clearer, more simple shape from it.






23/7/15

My body still aches from Total Wipeout Ko Phangan that we did yesterday, not only because of the course but because of an accidental back flop which left my back all red with squiggly lines all over and also unfortunately ‘Don’t give a fuck’ in henna written right across. Fortunately Ross has a little curly henna moustache and goaty which cheered me up.



I have tuk-tuked and shake-shaked around this part of the world, dipping my toes into life here. It is a strange thing, a journey. Whilst you are on it, everything else fades away and the moment lulls you into a limbo. This is when you can slow down and catch up with yourself, and realise that maybe your mind and body are wandering in a hundred different directions and times.

Travel proves to me again and again that the world is so full of wonder. Wherever and whenever we may be, we are all fidgeting time travellers and space adventurers; and even though our astronaut suits are imaginary and the tardis is only inside of our heads, we are all extraordinary. 




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