Vietnam Flashbacks....

Things I miss about Vietnam:

--The blindingly, achingly beautiful countryside with its rice paddies and limestone cliffs, peppered with tiny villages, clusters of gravestones, and the small peaks of conical hats working in the fields.

--Having these songs stuck in my head constantly.

--The cool, damp weather (a stark contrast to Bangkok's humid inferno).

--The small surprises of color that spill endlessly out of tucked away corners. The vendor carrying tulips on her bicycle. The shop selling scarves out of a hallway so narrow that two people could not stand side-by-side in it at once. The one blue pastel building interrupting a row of earthen-colored ones. The balconies with various shades of red laundry hung up to dry. Arms carrying bright green spears of paddy.

--The FOOD!! The amazing beef and baguettes and cheese and pho and drip coffee and noodles and ginger...none of it too spicy or greasy or heavy.

--The strange feeling of standing in a place that had been so gruesomely torn apart by so much gratuitous violence that it captivated an entire generation on the other side of the world. It was the unwitting womb that gave birth to a counterculture. So many images flashed through my head--the atrocities of war, a little girl covered in napalm, a monk burning in protest, long-haired hippies marching on Washington. It was all so terribly cliche, but that place holds its ghosts fiercely and desperately, and the bloodstains there are indelible and deep. I overheard a woman talking about how her entire village was destroyed and how, when the air cleared, she remembered seeing half of a human body in the branches of a tree above her. She was seven years old.

It was truly an unforgettable trip to an indescribably beautiful place. It was nice having a week off. I'll write more about it tomorrow. For now, it's off to bed (and back to work tomorrow).

In the meantime, for those of you who may be interested in learning more about the Vietnam War through a very human perspective, I highly recommend The Girl in the Picture. I bought it in Hanoi and have been absolutely unable to put it down.