I feel bipolar. Yesterday before we took the night bus to Hoi An, I found myself ready to burst into tears and say, “Let’s just go to Laos, I’m sick of Vietnam.” Yet this morning, I found myself enchanted by what was quite simply the most beautiful scene I’ve ever seen in my life.
Last night I found myself just really feeling Vietnam-fatigue. This is by far one of the most difficult countries I’ve ever traveled in. While many people are kind and friendly, most people in the tourism industy seem to resent foreigners. I honestly don’t blame them considering the last 50 years of foreigners have brought nothing but war, agent orange, fat people in speedos, and pedophiles. But that’s not every tourist or traveler, and it sucks to have everyone either rolling their eyes at you, or muttering under their breath, staring at you with contempt, or just trying to scam you because everyone else who they’ve met has treated them like a slave or worse.
Anyways, the night bus was an interesting experience. The night buses are actually bunk bed-type seats. Not much room, but probably the best night bus I’d ever been on (Japan should import some of these things!) Nonetheless, it was a rough ride as the roads in Vietnam are pot-hole ridden and the bus driver drove like a maniac. After a toilet stop that horrified the foreigners, the bus soon started to smell of sewage (thanks to the over-usage of the on-bus toilet.)
Yet this morning, despite the smell and the cramping legs, I woke up to a ray of sun hitting my eyes. As I sat up and put on my glasses, I saw something out of a dream or a postcard, something that you never thought actually existed for anyone but National Geographic photographers and here I was sharing the view with a dozen other people from a stinky bus. The sun was bright red and rising right over a flooded rice paddy, violet-tinged clouds dotting the sky like they were placed there by the hand of God. In the middle of a field was a woman with a rice-hat on, bent over with a wooden sicle, doing the work she’s done every day, that her parents probably did, not posing for tourists, just going on with life. I wish I had a camera, but I don’t think the camera could have really captured this perfect shot that I have engraved in my mind.
Then of course, the enchantment was broken when we arrived at our hotel and once again it was another push-and-pull of smiling politely even when people are rude to us, or being bright and sunny (which I am not naturally) even when someone is looking me up and down and assessing how much I’m charging. Just another day in Vietnam, I guess, so much beauty made so ugly by tourism.
Tags: beauty, General, hoi an, sigh tourists, travel, Vietnam
