Forget God, community, Mother Theresa or volunteerism; if one wants to feel a part of something greater than oneself, all one will have to do in the future is move to Bangkok. It was made very apparent that Asia is the new America, and culture is flowing at an amazing rate from this major world city.

No time to chat. Off to do three days of hiking in the mountains.

 Next up: Sa Pa, Vietnam

Jet set is right.

I’m a bit lagged, to be certain. But it’s not the few drinks I had last night-  nor the rapidly rising temperature in Hanoi today- nor the diesel fumes, rock quarry dust, days of notetaking, frantic attempt to grasp onto a few Vietnamese words or harrowing 7 hour car ride back that, on a few occations, had enough “close calls” to never recount to my mother-that have rendered this traveler on the sluggish side.

It’s the extremes between being in Nghe An on a trip to interview people living in the surrounding villages for a website I agreed to write for a local NGO, contrasted against being back Hanoi presently at a birthday party composed of expats and Vietnamese gay boys (“rice queens” as they refer to themselves).

And now I hop on a plain for Thailand in two hours.

I asked one woman, 24, with three kids, if she could have one thing in the world, what would it be? She said a cow. And this is not a unicef commercial. These were people who had to ride bikes 30 minutes three times a day to get clean water. I met a lot of wonderful people. We laughed, played with the kids, talked about how the community is working toward great things by instilling new agriculture techniques, animal raising, etc. - and now I’m sitting here drinking Maker’s Mark Manhattans with, I might add, a very stylish asian hair pin in my hair. Hm.

 I have a plane to catch.

“I travel half-way around the world, and all I get is this stinkin’ opportunity”

So, it seems like I can’t even get away from work, even when on vacation. Pfft! [rolls eyes disingenuously] Actually, I am very excited: I was speaking with my host-friend Jenny, who works in public health here in Vietnam, and she was telling me about a local NGO (Non Governmental Organization) that has gone through a re-branding effort, and now needs some assistance establishing itself. They do development work in some of the poorest regions of the country -work such as safe cooking practices, basic sanitation, and health education. And they needs a website.

In short, we’ve diverted plans and are heading out on a 7 hour car ride to Nghe An, a remote region of Vietnam, where we are going to work in the field doing interviews to gather information on what this organization does and how they work to better be able to write for them a website.

This is an opportunity for me to see some otherwise inaccessable areas of the country, work with one of the only local NGOs in Vietnam, (write!) and contribute to what I’ve seen so far is a wonderful organization.

I’ll be offline for the next couple of days. When I get back, it’s off to Bangkok!

Look Both Ways

At first I thought taxi rides were my favorite thing.
Weaving in and out of motorbikes, other taxis, and bicycles laden with every kind of cargo one can imagine: flowers, fruit, construction material, children, you name it. There is a chaos to it, but a kind of order, too.

Then I went for a walk along one street in the Old Quarter of Hanoi and I loved the energy at street level. I got to poke my head into shops, where young men are painting large canvases, girls selling silks and fabric, lots of little trinkets that looked familiar from San Francisco Chinatown shop windows (no doubt, also made in China). It was rainy yesterday, so I walked through the drizzle and the mud and let my eyes float over the street vendors with their worlds of sausages, sticky rice, meat stews, colorful ice creams (I recommend the ginger) and shrimps. With host-friends I visited the fabric market (rows and rows of fabric stacked 10 feet high of every kind of fabric imaginable, most at about $2 per meter) and purchased enough fabric for 4 outfits. We visited a tailor around the street (infamous, I was to experience, for cupping breasts as measurements are taken) to be fitted. I have waiting for me 6 tailored items. Late to a wine date, we swung quickly through the market below, which was too vivid for my wee little brain to take in completely. I could recount some things here, like fried doves, banana leaves wrapped artfully with twine, indistinguishable meats, passion fruits measured out with old rusty calibrating tools, etc. But I think it’s best we wait for when I can get the images up on Flikr. I mean, I’m a writer and all, but my descriptive abilities met their match when I found myself running through the market, shoes soaked through, large tarps leaking grey droplets into buckets (of dirty cleaning water? Or is that stew?), the cleaver hacking on wood tabletops mimicking the thump-thump of my sandals slapping the wet ground while neon lights scratch over glistening orange duck necks bent back into awkward angles –

Do you see? That last sentence was a run-on, and horribly inadequate to describe the surreal feeling of it all –rendered ironic because it it precisely the reality of Vietnam that is most difficult to process –and now I’m about to delve into the world of esoteric descriptions, and I really think we’re best just to call the whole thing off.

But, to answer the question I know you’re dying to ask: I only saw one dog in a cage –dinner. (He was yelping, however, and it made me rethink my entire willingness to try.)

And so, back to traffic.  Now let me tell you the most wonderful experience of them all: crossing the street. It’s very simple and very intense and I think I like it more than anything. As instructed by my hosts (although there is a fundamental disagreement between the two on whether or not eye contact is essential or desirable to avoid) it’s very simple: just walk.
With vehicles of every size and every speed whizzing around us, we step off the curb, without looking both ways, and, taking our lives into our own hands (or, rather, putting them in the hands of others) we walk out into the middle of traffic. Horns blare, bikes swerve, but in general (one hopes) everyone simply accommodates and works around. This seems to be the way.

Traffic in Hanoi is a lot like traffic in Marrakesh, Morocco; and, I would imagine, traffic like many places the world over that don’t believe in traffic lights: it’s a particular frenzied energy that somehow feels to me more natural. Sure, red and green lights help create “order” such that the whole system moves according to some Divine Traffic Plan, but it feels more organic to just let chaos ensue and know that, hey –“it’ll all work out.” It’s the age old quandary: is there more sense in order, or order in chaos?

Plus, I have yet to see traffic in Hanoi that compares to traffic in the Bay Area. Full stop.
 

A Review of Together:
Chinese violin soloist Tang Yun with the Vietnamese National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Tan.

This is NOT a review. I have very little working knowledge of classical music and am in no position of authority or expertise to critique it. So, when I say “review” I mean “re-view” as in the viewing again of an experience, a rehashing– a revisting.

This is also not a review because it may not make sense. This is not pure non-fiction. This is sensual word-garbage, made possible only by the wet-dream of an evening I had last night– 63 hours without sleep, 2 bottles of sweet sweet Mountain Apple rice wine, fried catfish & dill rice-wrapped spring rolls followed by a disorienting taxi ride through the center of Hanoi, a visit to a street stand, beer served up in a plastic cup with fat ice cubes (“just accept the ice, Shannon: you’re going to get worms no matter what” assures my host), followed by a performance at the Hanoi Opera House.

So you see, this may make little sense at first, if you think about it. But consider this is not a thinking matter at all. Consider that this is like the guttural throat-calls of the woman selling bread right now outside the kitchen window at 5:30am– it makes little sense, but means plenty.

* * *

The trill of flutes like a Tchaikovsky-syrup and just like that I wanted to make love to the conductor: he couldn’t have been much more than 30, but his passion was centuries old. I loved to watch him and then not watch him. With the simple swoop of his hand, he showed me exactly what to feel, and sometimes I had to look away so I wouldn’t know what to feel.

There were those kinds of moments when my vision would become piercingly sharp and clear, even though I knew I had in my old prescription contacts. That’s good music.

His spine was what got me. It showed through just barely his soft silk suit. It and the ever-thickening music pulled and pulled so good and then when I wanted it to pull some more there was calm.

It was a pride.

Young, wide-eyed Vietnamese girls in the audience, the swell of the tempo, “a culture more romantic than the French,” my host had said.

Adrian Tan lifts his right palm upward, cups his finders, and releases, as if blowing a dandelion or coaxing a young child; but it’s the other hand I liked, the passive wrist gliding, leading, supportive and integrating all parts into one.

I could be submissive to that wrist, I thought, I could easily submit to a lament like that– and then the orchestra pauses, such that I’m not sure they’re really stopping, or, as if on a comma,

Back after intermission, fingers like the undulations of an inchworm, little string shivers, chatter, crooning, seductive mourning…

Tang Yun takes to the stage, and there is a new energy. He and Adrian Tan shake hands, almost a high five, a pat on the back, they are grooving now, this is better than any rock concert, the crowd stands, vibrating, and then sit, stand, sit, stand, encore 1, encore 2, encore 3– even the First Violin can’t hold back a smile.

I had wanted only to feel my heart ache but I think instead my chest climbed up a wall. In this moment, you know my thought? Thank God I don’t have a cell phone right now.

Tang Yun’s solo at the end was like an old man groaning, the kind of groaning earned only through years of life. There is an accomplishment to it, that groan, it says “yes, you too, child, someday, you too: us all, us all, us all, we die.” But Tan Yun is younger than I am.

Let me tell you: sleep deprivation, rice wine, plus a solo violin equals a symphony in and of itself. Tang Yun and I made a loopy reverie of sadness together that night.

And, oh!
That last note:
held longer than anything should ever be held, too good, painful-good, scary like love, but there it is, you’re drinking it in spite of your good judgment, not sure now if I want it to continue or stop, for fear I’ll never want it to stop, no one should be allowed to live in that sweet moment for too long, life doesn’t work that way, and in fact, if it did I think I would break,

and oh!
That last note:
like an orgasm that never came and you’re glad it never did.

Service
First thing is an apology.  
“We ah soah sorry to keepa you waitin,” she raises an eyebrow, extends a hand toward me, asking with the inflection in her voice to please see my passport. I show her.
“Miss Deeshjong,” she emphasizes my name once she is privy to it. “We ah sorry, Miss Deeshjong, to keepa you waitin. We will be with you shortly. We thank you fohr your patience.” She smiles. It is an immaculate smile. Everything about her, crisp: her sharp collared jacket, her slick hair pulled back into a black bow, the squareness of her glasses., her pert but friendly lips. Even her ankle’s curve at an immaculate angle. This woman I imagine, has never had a run in her stockings, ever. I will see her later, while I am waiting to board, and she will glide gracefully down the escalator, respectfully taking up less than half a stair in the event others would wish to pass on the left, frantically dashing to not miss their plane; but she will stand to one side, never in a hurry, always with the right measured amount of time to get from place to place, and she will place one delicate wrist propped upon the center of her nice round bag at she floats down, down, and disappears below my line of sight.
 

Chubby kid
Bowl cut, purple pants, wobbling gait as tall as she is wide, I swear that this is the cutest, most  perfect square-headed child  I’ve ever seen.
 

Security (a poem)
I get “special treatment”
don’t even have to take off my shoes
only get to stand in a box  
glass door closed as
three pronounced puffs of air accost my
face chest thigh 1, 2, 3,
my shirt flies up I should feel
like Marilyn Monroe
but when the security guard puts up a flattened hand indicating
for me not to move,
I don’t.
(move, or feel like Marilyn)
 

Duty Free
For all those curious: 1500ml. of Ketel One vodka isn’t all that much cheaper at the airport.
 

Terminal
Little puddles of midnight rain on the runway, breath on the window, lit wing spanning I.N.T.E.R.NA.T.I.O.N.A.L – this is still all too familiar, and I’m awfully tired. Thank God I have nothing to do for the next 17 hours.
 

Boarding
One would perhaps think that arriving at the departure gate 2 hours early would ensure not missing one’s flight – but then one would be overlooking  several things: 1) that when one takes the red eye after very little sleep the previous two nights, there is a high probability of falling asleep at the gate despite uncomfortable stiff chairs, 2) that falling asleep might prevent hearing the announcement to board and 3) when traveling alone, there is no one to wake one up come boarding time. That is to say, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to my very favorite Cathay Pacific Airline employee who noticed I was the only soul left in the SFO terminal at gate 23, and woke me up after realizing I might be that last passenger who had not yet boarded 9 minutes to departure time.
 

Luggage
But then again, “favorite” Cathay Pacific employee is a little limiting, and may fail to include the lovely gentleman that found a place for my single piece of luggage – a backpack crammed with more duty free alcohol (gift requests of my Vietnam host) than clothes – last minute. And, who also knelt on the floor even while he should have been preparing for take-off, to retrieve the plastic Easter egg that had fallen from a side pocket… hey: a girl’s got to have her Cadbury.
 

Turbulence
I do not like turbulence. I do not like it because it reminds me of a very bad experience I had when flying back from the East Coast on a sketchy airline shut down soon after due to safety violations. It’s a good story, about me thinking I was about to die in a horrible plummeting-to-my-death, did-I-tell-my-mother-I-loved-her kind of way, but for efficiency sake, let’s just say the planes engine failed at 35,000ft. and I do not like turbulence. No, I do not like turbulence at all. It causes me a little bit of anxiety. So, I do not like it when the large 747 aircraft that is carrying my body presently over Osaka by the shear miracle of aerodynamics starts to shake. And I think I like it even less when the infant to my left starts to wail something  fierce and the elderly man who sits behind me starts to hack and gasp for breath such that the lovely manicured cabin attendants drop their drink trays and rush to his side to ensure he doesn’t choke to death. This seems to cause me a bit more anxiety. Yes, I like this not very much.
 

Layover
Hong Kong knows how to design an airport. Unfortunately, my flight got in late so I had time for little more than a rest stop and quick stretch before my connecting flight, but if I had I would have indulged in the services in the lounge: shower, massage, and seafood congee (which, just my luck, was served for breakfast instead).
 

Next up: Hanoi, Vietnam