On Returning Home After Six Years Abroad

I've been in Europe nearly six weeks and have not posted a single thing to the blog. Ahemhem. Oops! Europe has gotten in the way of my solitary online diary, mostly because family and­­­ friends have taken precedence here; I've been spending less time alone and, in fact, more time working (several weeks building the foundations of a straw bale house at the foothills of the Pyrenees, and a little less than a week gardening and hauling hay and wrapping goat cheese in Alsace... and while I relish manual labor after four years in an office, it's nevertheless equally -- if differently -- exhausting). I've been diving into my French identity again, choosing soirees and rendezvous and fetes and full-throttle absorption over an expat's commentary; humming along to Basque folksongs, tasting all the wines of Provence and all the beers of north England, making apricot jam and picking blackberries, attending comedy shows and village festivals and circuses, cooking for twenty hungry laborers, discussing life and death and love and politics in French with two phenomenal women over tea and hand-rolled cigarettes. Naturally I feel more at home here, less like a starry-eyed outsider.

Qu'elle est belle, la vie.

The last time I was in France was summer 2003, which is crazy, as I've dreamt of returning to my French self so frequently for so long that the idea that it never happened until now is appalling. But what I've discovered is that Sara la francaise is just as present, if not somehow more so, than she ever was. I keep on saying, "C'est parce que j'avais un copain francais, c'est pour ca," (it's because I had a French boyfriend, that's why), which gets me a range of replies, usually a sly smile and a wink, or a sweet aphorism like, "l'amour fait des miracles." (Sweet, but come to think of it, rather insulting... like, hell, if this girl can speak French, there had to be some kind of miracle!) I am learning more every day, though. For instance, my heretofore nonexistent farmwork and construction site vocabulary can now help me find a screwdriver, shovel, pail, pitchfork, wheelbarrow, trowel, nail, hammer, cement mixer, and bucket, as well as gather hay, pull weeds in a greenhouse, and milk a goat. Ok, milk a goat, well. Language is of no use there. And as for sheep, now THAT is nigh on impossible. I imitated the deft movements of the Romanian shepherd as best I could, but no milk to speak of. So I gave up. Quickly. I love animals, but apparently I hate milking them. I just cant bring myself to do it properly. It seems so wrong somehow, sticking your hands between the legs of a shit-covered woolly mammal ass and squeezing a huge, nubbly sac not surprisingly reminiscient of testicles! Especially because the animals seem to find it intrusive, too -- despite the farmhands' insistence that "it doesn't hurt them. Even if you squeeze hard." Eeewww.

Now that I'm back in the blinding wealth and cleanliness of Europe, things make sense (almost too much sense -- a dizzying homecoming within homecomings; where oh where do I belong?), but that first landing was something of a jolt. Culture shock is always more extreme, I find, when you revisit what was once the norm. I felt like Dorothy as I stepped out of the Paris metro, direct from from the chaos of Delhi. When I gingerly opened the door, there I was in an entirely different world -- golden bricks, castles, emerald cities, the works. Paris can't be real, can it? It's a fairytale, a movie set. Likewise for Toulouse, Avignon, Strasbourg: they're too cute to be true, gingerbread and icing and gorgeous brunettes with Loreal lips pursed round cigarettes and glasses of Perrier. It seemed I'd flown instantly from the cowshit-strewn pathways of broiling Varanasi (the oldest living city on the planet, squatting on the Ganges for five thousand years) to streets paved with glossy shop windows, mind-bogglingly spotless boulevards, and public gardens as manicured as the painted villages inside snowglobes. The relative wealth is like a slap in the face. The price of one lunch in Paris easily equals two weeks' lodging in India. And another thing: everyone was making out. Everywhere. There were dozens upon dozens of couples cuddled and cooing on benches and on street corners and in gardens, sucking face or just tangled helplessly, arms and legs entwined on the grass. I asked myself if Paris was really that romantic, if the French were that into PDA, or was I just shocked to see so much skin and sexuality after three weeks in a country where the mere glimpse of a female shoulder is taboo?

After two weeks in Yorkshire and Edinburgh and several days in Barcelona, I bussed to Toulouse, my long lost hometown. I admit I was a bit weepy as the bus skirted fields of sunflowers and creaked into the Matabiau station, but my old stomping grounds, happily for me, haven't changed much. They've gotten smaller, of course, as all remembered places do. The strangest part was how far away it seemed, how echoingly long ago; how young I was, despite my alleged adulthood at the time, and how hard it was to remember the map of the city. I just wandered blindly till I stumbled into a memory: eating mountains of moules frites near Pont Neuf; my little corner grocery; Place St. Pierre, where the drunken college crowds (now painfully infantile-looking) would gather of a Friday night; my favorite boulangerie; where I caught the bus to go to choir rehearsal.

What I've discovered is it's not Toulouse that I miss, that I feel is so much a part of me. It's France, it's French, the language, the culture, the people, the strongest example yet of an alternate reality, another life entirely, a very real fork in the road.

Often, these last days in Europe, the idea of being American escapes me altogether. I talk to myself in French when no one's around. I wake up with French songs in my head. I coo to the dogs and cats and cows and goats, "que t'es mignon" and "allez, les filles!" I can't stop saying "pardon" instead of "excuse me" and have forgotten half the words I know in English.

Other times, when I'm tired or when my head space shifts for some reason or another, I remember that the backlog of my life in English is so much longer, deeper, richer, with so many more years of connotation and nuance and vocabulary, that suddenly I'm stuck with a lightning bolt of nostalgia, and my mouth won't focus its vowels, my brain won't recall the genders of nouns, and I'm helpless, stumbling, foreign again.

I find this troubling: the more I know about something, the less I seem to be able to write about it, to form concrete opinions about it. I guess that's just 'the more you know, the less you know,' but it's still not easy for me to answer, "What are French people like?" even in a facile, chitchat way -- I'm too consumed by the muddiness of truth and I stumble over it, again and again. Likewise for those inane queries I still get loads of, such as "so, is it true that Americans like to have guns at home?" or "Are young people in America interested in being ecological?" Um.... yes and no yes and no, what IS America anyway and why do I feel like everyone else knows a whole lot more about it than I do?

I used to think the French Sara was a different Sara altogether -- one I had to put away for years, and bring out again whole, untouched. Maybe I just know myself better now, but they don't seem so disconnected anymore, despite the fact that the only metaphors I can come up with to describe it are "self" or "side" or "identity." Now I know, at least, that I never left her in college, in Toulouse. She's come all this way with me... fragmented, splintering, and always, always changing.

Beautiful Bhagsu

After two planes, one painful night train in sleeper class, two public bus rides, one rickshaw, and one torrential hailing thunderstorm that stranded me with my bags in two different cafes, I finally made it from Ho Chi Minh City to Bhagsu, India. 'Twas an excruciating and illuminating twenty four hours that had me in tears by the time I was trekking up and down the hill in futile search of Best View Guesthouse where my Berkeley friends were staying (I think when it comes to fatigue I'm not far from an infant: When I'm tired and I can't get what I want, I cry.)

In the end, however, I was blissfully pampered by cookies and chai and friendship and an exquisite traditional Odissi dance performance (featuring our very own Natalia Pinzon: she was AMAZING). Bhagsu -- the little village above McLeod Ganj, home to the Dalai Lama when he's not traveling the world -- well, it's Berkeley in the Himalayas, what can I say. I recognized the attire and the attitude immediately: Scarves and homemade jewelry and dreadlocks and yoga and wide-eyed spiritual earnestness. Although this expat hippie enclave is obviously "not India," per se, it is still utterly beautiful. At an altitude of almost nine thousand feet, the air is crisp and alpine, and despite some daily rain, is sunshiny, warm, and dry; the village of Bhagsu and its charming guesthouses climb up the rocky ravines among countless footpaths that lead further and further up the mountainsides or down into deep valleys and waterfalls. My room cost me two dollars a night (wow), smelled exactly like the mildew in the family homes in the Adirondacks (very comforting), and every morning I awoke to the moo-ing of a sweet cow named Joshi who licked our hands like a dog and provided all the rich milk for our masala tea and mango porridge.

Bhagsu residents (and by 'residents' I mean tourists; they make up the majority of the population and certainly dominate it culturally) are as draped in colorful fabrics and liberal eccentricities as any Indian-influenced Western community (I'll say it again: Berkeley!!). It's awfully predictable, but so lovable for a hybrid hippie like myself that even I got sucked in enough to extend my stay a few more days. Everyone's from everywhere -- all over Europe, South America, Israel, India -- and as is my wont, I fell in to the francophone community pretty quickly. The food is delicious, if not very Indian; most restaurants brag in that puzzling way that they specialize in "Italian, Israeli, Chinese, Thai, Tibetan, Indian, and Continental food," as if so many cuisines in one restaurant could feasibly be called "specialization" (my favorite in this regard is the one that above this lengthy list aptly calls itself "Mystery Cafe.") But Tibetan momos, or steamed dumplings, are delicious... and where else in India can you so feasibly get raw beet salads, muesli, and brown rice as a matter of course? Many of the shanti-shanti expats here have fallen in love with locals and started jewelry shops, sweets shops, or yoga and massage schools. You can take classes in everything -- from traditional Odissi dance to tabla and flute and sitar to belly dancing, silver jewelry making, chakra healing, ayurvedic medicine, every kind of yoga and meditation (including a Vipassana retreat center). Once you spend a little bit of time here (i.e. a couple days) you start crossing paths with the same people and, like at Burning Man, develop deep-rooted, serendipitous friendships with whichever creative-crazy fool you happen to link arms with for a few hours.

It's also amusing to me that the hash-smoking culture here is so widespread that the infamous "Bhagsu cake" -- described at every single restaurant as being both "the" original and best, and touted far and wide as Bhagsu's claim to fame -- is SO obviously a stoner's creation. Buttery graham flour crust, covered in a melting layer of caramel and chocolate. A cross between candy and cake; very addictive. Made for stoners, by stoners, clearly!

I had some breakfast one day with a decidedly eccentric German ex-photojournalist named Deter who's been living in India since 1981 (and claims to be "trapped" in Bhagsu). He has an endless reel of theories and philosophies, built up over the years into a grizzled, Socratic wit. His "Holy Grail": "To make all the world belly laugh. Our only salvation is in comedy." He did strike me as someone you could imagine sitting in meditative pose in a corner somewhere, a laughing Buddha, belly shaking and eyes narrowed to gleeful slits. He obviously liked to think of himself that way, imparting his age-old wisdom to young, energetic protegees like myself. (I asked him if he'd ever thought of doing stand up comedy, and he said, "Oh no, no need to stand up. One can do this lying down." Mwa, ha.)

While I want to make a living telling stories -- a.k.a. through media -- Deter made the not-too-surprising claim (especially for Bhagsu) that "no one is living in reality anymore. Only a mediated reality." Basically the Be Here Now speech, in the sense that all the television and movies and books and preconceptions and projections we layer over ourselves and heartily embrace are just blinding us to what is really here right now. Okay. But he seemed to damn even absorption in a book, which, for me, is one of the ways I find myself the most wholly present. Is it so bad to have ideas, to want to tell stories and read other stories to make sense of our lives? Am I too much of a scholar to be a yogi? But Deter, too, is clearly a scholar -- the kind of fellow who mentions a book and then brings it out of his dusty bedroom -- so I know that this was just a pontification he was trying on for size. (The man was full of pontifications and assignments: a biology graduate named Pierre was urged, in my presence, to discover ways to replicate the bioluminescence generated by fireflies and use it to light people's homes).

When I told Deter I was going next to Varanasi, he immediately launched into a speech about a man who claimed that once upon a time Om was sung "in a spiral" instead of "in a direction." Apparently this voice guru was probably dead because he would have been well over a hundred if I could find him still living in Varanasi, but in any case Deter thought it should be my "mission" to find him and solve this "mystery." He slipped a note under my door that reads, in part: "The intention is to discover and record the musical and vibrational reality between these two symbols" (referring to two different representations of Om). "I think [the voice guru's] son should be able to provide you with other contacts that should be helpful. Among these are a Kundalini teacher who claims to teach Sanskrit eight times faster than at the university" (then he draws me a little map). "I suggest you treat this as a journalistic assignment with a tight deadline to save the world for comedy."

Yes, Deter. I'm on it.

In all, Bhagsu strikes me as a very good place to escape the world and write a book for a while. It has everything I'd want for that scenario: Stunning environs, very sweet (and sweetly insane) people, an incredibly inexpensive cost of living, and ample opportunities for spectacular hiking. Such hiking!! This was most of what I fell so madly in love with: First I climbed with Wallis to Triund, a ten-thousand foot ridge that acends from the villages below to a sweeping, staggering view of the snow-capped Himalayas; later I took a five-day trek to the snowier peaks beyond.

That was all the meditative medicine my soul needed: strenuous hiking, rugged shepherds and hundreds upon hundreds of maa-ing sheep and goats, sweeping, soaring, Sound of Music-style vistas, mountain thunder, spring flowers, snowmelt rivers, silence, rock caves to sleep in, and a new-new best friend, Cecile, a German Swiss who planned to live and meditate in one of those caves for a week. We spent one dreadfully cold and sleeting night bundled up in Snowline Cafe (one of the little tarp setups that serve piping hot chai and dal and rice), and the next one in her cave, smoking little beedis and singing hippie girl harmonies to the tune of her traveling guitar.

As I came down the hill back to Bhagsu, high as a kite on endorphins, I met so many wonderful people, learned so much from each one in a matter of minutes, and was so convinced that everything made perfect sense and had a meaning and a purpose and that every step of my journey was a metaphor for the entire thing, that I knew I had found at least my version of unmediated reality. Thank you, Himalayas; I'm coming back.

From Ha Noi to Hoi An

Yes, it's the inverse both in word and deed -- thank you, Hoi An, for bringing back the love! I was on the verge for a while there; up and down, middling, mildly frustrated with the whole Vietnam experience (despite my inevitable relishing of challenges overcome). Then I made it to Hoi An -- which, of course, bears its own brand of tourist-trail frustration, but there's something relieving about it nonetheless. Maybe it's the absolutely paradisaical beaches, the darling, crumbling architecture, the delicious seafood, the ubiquity of squeaky bicycles, the relative calm. It's a small enough town that you can hear yourself think. There are actually pedestrian streets with no motorbikes (gasp). Two white-sand beaches are only a couple of kilometers away, and a one-speed bicycle can be rented for fifty cents a day (a ratty little cruiser, but still! Ten thousand dong and no deposit! If I hadn't become a regular at the restaurant across the street, I could've stolen that thing, incognito). In Hoi An, I was able take the time and the personal space to pause, absorb and breathe, which I've decided is my favorite kind of travel: finding a smallish town to stay in for at little while, to go a bit deeper, instead of skimming the surface of too many "must-sees," constantly packing and repacking the bag and spending the whole vacation on a bus.

Hoi An's Old Town, made of relatively intact centuries-old buildings, bridges, and temples that blend Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese architecture and culture through the ages, is classified as a World Heritage site. Only recently a tiny fishing village with the benefit of these ancient treasures, it's now, of course, another buy-something tourist haven, bearing myriad tailored silk shops (yup, everyone and their mother owns a tailor shop in Hoi An. I never cease to be amazed by this kind of business model: They're succeeding; if we do the exact same thing, then clearly we will too. And of course the second I descended from a sixteen-hour bus in the broiling heat with a big backpack, I was accosted by a micromachine-talking tailor who shoved her business cards in my face and prattled on after my retreating figure that her shop was far better than all the others and if I was staying at the Dai Long Hotel then I'd better be careful since those swindlers were going to convince me I should buy from them... sound familiar? Jesus.) Lovely clothes all around, but it was too deathly hot to even think about entering one, in part because most advertised smart little European jackets (?!), and mostly because, what can I say, I was dog tired of being ripped off.

Despite what I'd grown to believe was a Vietnamese inevitability (is it because they were once communist and are still ruled in part by that ideology that they are all so aggressively capitalist? Like a kid who's been refused sweets, who's always been told to share?), Hoi An is inexpressibly charming. Soft music croons through the motor-less paths of the old town center; silk and Japanese lanterns flow and twinkle; old houses hung with vines and creeping mold bear mother-of-pearl-plated mahogany furniture and exquisite China teasets; dozens of art galleries with gorgeous paintings face dimly lit cafes with delicious seafood and cheap beer and fruit juices galore, all lining a lazy brown river strewn with fishing boats.

To further this relaxed, self-pampering charm, I also took an overnight trip to Cham Island, a.k.a. Tropical Paradise, a jungle-rock-white-sand oasis with just two tiny fishing villages about 10km off the Hoi An coast. Though I thought I'd just be snorkeling, I ended up scuba diving for the first time in my life via a "discovery dive," probably something that would be totally illegal in the U.S. but got by for about 20 bucks in Vietnam: a quickie forty-minute tutorial and then all right, boys and girls, let's put on the gear and start breathing underwater. Absolutely petrifying, but glorious, and not that hard after all -- scuba diving is like meditating because it's all about breath. Yes, you're breathing underwater, and if you don't continue to believe that you can you're done for (rule # 1 of scuba diving: breathe, breathe, breathe). And so your breath is slow and concentrated and loud in your ears and in your being, and as you peer at enormous starfish and urchins and clams, you breathe, and breathe, in and out, and in and out, as steady as you possibly can under the circumstances. I gained so much gumption just from the experience (as our French instructor told us afterwards as we tremblingly peeled off our wetsuits, "It is lot of emotions, yes?") that I officially added "scuba certification" to the list of life goals.

Also, speaking of gumption, despite my deep-seated aversion to motorbikes I climbed right into the lion's mouth and let myself be convinced to daytrip from Hoi An with quaking arms wrapped round the waist of a fifty-year-old Vietnamese motorbike tour guide from Danang. He was a very good driver, and now, I must admit, I kind of love riding on motorbikes... Let me just be cliche for a moment and say "What a great way to see the 'real' Vietnam!" The sights I saw that day were breathtaking -- Ba Na Hills (a little Swiss-built skytrain up and up and up over lustrous jungle to a misty ridge and an enormous buddha), Monkey Island (a tangle of morning glories and another snow-white buddha presiding over the blinding blue sea), and the Marble Mountains (temples carved into limestone cliffs that were once islands when the whole of Danang was a mess of coral and blue starfish). And, another cliche, but Uyen, my tour guide, seemed the first genuinely kind and straightforward Vietnamese man I'd met. Well, okay, until he started to pick me flowers and say things like (I quote), "Sara, you so tender. If you were my girl, I take care of you all the time." Ugh. Still, he remained harmless, and thanks to Uyen I learned a lot about Vietnamese language and culture, grew to appreciate motorbikes (a huge step... perhaps in the wrong direction, but hey, I'm still in one piece), and had by far the best pho of my life (delectable Vietnamese noodle soup layered with spices and greens and slices of savory meat that you eat with a spoon and chopsticks at the same time; for some reason, I just love that, and intend to replicate the use of these two tools somehow in my own cooking soon enough).

Something I find interesting is that while every place I've been in Vietnam has been on the tourist trail, and sometimes to a nauseating degree, all this has happened in the past few years. The road to Sapa was only built about five years ago, and now the nonstop screech of construction blares across the mountainsides from dawn until dusk. Likewise in Hoi An -- always one or two of its pedestrian boulevards was being dug up and improved. Beach resorts are springing up along its coasts.

Where does Vietnam get the money, I wonder? I asked Uyen, and he said the government, and from family members working abroad and sending money home. But it seems like it must be more than that. If France is one big cigarette, Vietnam is one big construction site. It's really incredible. I'd be interested (and I'm sure saddened) to return to some of these spots a year from now and gasp at how much it's changed.

One more note on the Vietnamese tourist trail: when I stayed overnight on Cham Island, an Italian expat named Ivan who works with the Italian-run Cham Island Diving Center told us that "when you go where there are no tourists, you know that this is military country." Apparently he's been touring and working in Vietnam for years, and as an example of what he meant, he explained that once when he was riding his motorbike through the countryside and pulled up to a random town and entered a random hotel to spend the night, they told him he couldn't stay there since they weren't allowed to play host to foreigners. If he really wanted to stay the night, he'd have to go to the police and fill out reams of paperwork and subject himself hours of tortuous questioning with dubious results.

I'd have to do a lot more research about contemporary Vietnamese history to begin to understand this, but this man's tale gave me a feeling of deep relief: I wasn't just an incompetent traveler... Vietnam really does aggressively regulate its tourists' experience! It's hard to travel here for everyone, even for Ivan, who's had three years, while I had only three weeks. Phew.

Apologies for the delay....

Life (and India) got in the way. Tossing up a backlog of posts from the comfort of my sister's Yorkshire home...

Buy Something From ME?

After recovering from intestinal woes, I booked a tour (oy, but what's a tourist to do?) for a two-day trek and overnight village homestay in Sapa, that former French hill station in the Tonkinese Alps. It is a pretty fascinating place; you'd almost think you were in Europe, wandering through a colorful mist-shrouded town of cobblestone steps and moldering turrets, except for the hundreds of local tribeswomen in indigo and crimson relentlessly (and I mean RELENTLESSLY) hawking their wares. You also notice, if the mist clears for a moment, the dizzying view of the rice terraces below (plus, of course, things like roast dog on a spit and people dragging bamboo logs behind their motorbikes).

This "trek" into the valley below Sapa was hardly a trek by my standards; mostly a stroll down some muddy trails along muddy rice paddies to several different farming villages intertwined with well-beaten tourist paths. Especially after hiking the Kalalau trail alone in the rain with a huge pack, I was amused and at first rather insulted by the tiny Hmong grandma offering to hold my hand... until of course that hand came in handy on a few occasions.

Overall, it was beautiful, and fun, particularly because the two French and British couples I'd been randomly grouped with were all sweet, hilarious, liberal. Getting out of the city was also superb. We had delicious, fresh meals, went swimming near a thundering waterfall, watched ducks and kittens and water buffaloes, slept under mosquito nets on bamboo thatch floors, drank rice wine with our Hmong guide ("wine," that is, if by wine you mean moonshine), and saw plenty of rice cultivation up close. I love villages, what can I say. Strangely enough (or perhaps not so strangely?), a huge part of the reason I like to do things like village treks and homestays is because I covet the lifestyle. This is ironic, at least in Sapa, because the whole ethos of the homestay thing seems to be a mix of ignorance, curiosity, and something akin to pity. The villagers who follow you for miles and eventually demand that you buy something from them seem to solicit it, at any rate. That's the frustrating, annoying, sad, relentless card they play, making it seem more and more wrong that you're even there. It's the whole system, of course, that I find the most troubling, pitting tourist against local in a voyeuristic, guilt-driven, manipulative power play, a wad of cash the only thing bridging the chasm between them. As our guide, a vivacious and giggly eighteen-year-old named Chi, told us, "The people used to be afraid of the tourists. Now, the tourists are afraid of the people."

Although I had a good time in Sapa, this dynamic is very, very uncomfortable, especially for a softie like me. I am, despite all the thorns I've grown in India and Vietnam, easily swindled. Despite my instinct that it's all a lie, I find myself cornered; the white man's burden surfaces, along with the much stronger desire to avoid confrontation and to please others, and I collapse under the pressure of their three-pronged attacks. I guess this really happened only once in Sapa, this prying the dong out of me though I didn't want a thing they were selling. It's that stupid voice that says, "Well, that IS a traditional Hmong purse, and this IS a tiny, ancient woman who shouldn't be working anymore, and maybe SOMEONE would appreciate it as a gift, and it IS only two dollars..." that does me in in the end. The merest sliver of hesitation, and you're cooked. As Rob, one of the Brits in our group and the most gregarious, told me, "Y'see, it's like this: Lions hunt in packs, see, and they prey on the littlest, weakest ones...." Totally accurate.

(After that last defeat, I simply repeated NO NO NO NO NO NO NO in a constant hum, avoiding eye contact at all costs; wish I could have worn some kind of a NO VACANCY sign round my neck. Very few times have I had a stronger desire to scream LEAVE ME ALONE at the top of my lungs.)

What fascinates me most about the vending culture in Sapa is that every single woman and child selling something, from the heavily touristed villages to Sapa town, uses the same ubiquitous phrase in English: "Buy something from ME?" with a huge leap in pitch and volume at the end. This emphasis is so extreme that you begin have the distinct impression that everyone sidling up to you is crooning, "ME? ME? ME?"

I don't know why they all say this. The vast majority never went to school beyond the primary grades; even Chi, who spoke English incredibly well, said she learned it from the tourists. So... who taught these ladies to chant ME, ME, ME? Did they come up with this formula, this specific lilt and tone? Is it a translation, an imitation, a Darwinian evolution? I'm intrigued because it makes perfect sense. Every single thing these women are selling is identical. The same earrings, the same purses, the same pants, shawls, hats, pillow cases. The same Hmong embroidery (there were other tribes: the Red Tzay, the Dao, but they weren't nearly as prevalent, nor as loud), the same "Sapa Silver," same, same, same. Even the fruit stands and pho noodle restaurants in the markets are the same. In fact, this is the case throughout Vietnam and most of the developing world. Surely there is some difference in quality among all these identical products, but how can the customer be expected to know? The only way to differentiate is to make it personal. It's psychological warfare, and it works.

For example, a horde of women started on our trek in Sapa town and came all the way down into the valley with us, holding our hands, keeping us from slipping in the mud, asking us questions and handing us these incredible braided grass creations (I was offered a flower wreath and a heart-shaped wand). One of the women, tiny and grizzled, chose me as her charge, and asked me the usual where was I from and so on. Then: How old is your mama? That was unexpected. Where is your mama? She shook her head and cooed as I described how far away my mother was.

Naturally, then, by lunchtime, when we were suddenly bombarded with dozens of women chorusing ME ME ME and battling each other to get to us in an absurd cacophony, the woman who held my hand gave me a pout and said, "But ME? You should buy from ME!" I caved and bought some earrings (which I do love, actually) and then the chanting grew louder: surely, if you bought one thing, that means you can buy everything, if not for any other reason than "You buy from her. You don't buy from ME?"

This is how they make a living: Forming these mini-relationships, guilt-tripping the cornered tourist into a purchase she had no intention of making, because, in the end, it has nothing to do with the product itself. It's only about the favor that you're doing the woman who's selling it. The time of my great defeat occurred because an ancient great-grandma silently took my hand as we walked along, not to help me through the mud since it was a flat, easy path, but just because.... because.... um, actually, why is this little old lady holding my hand? But what was I going to do about it? Throw her hand away in disgust? Say something she couldn't understand? She didn't speak a word, just walked calmly along, holding my hand in her small, dry one, until about fifteen minutes later she slyly unsheathed her embroidery, making sounds and gestures to suggest that of course, now that we were friends, I'd buy something from her.

It sounds silly, but in the moment, believe me, it's infuriating -- and heartbreaking.

Hatin' it in Hanoi

Ok, I don't hate it; i just liked the alliteration of the title. But still. Rough seas in these parts, starting with the first major illness of southeast Asia, which lasted about a week and at the time of typing the jury's still out on whether I've completely kicked it. Inevitably, then, my first impressions of Vietnam were layered with a fine film of nausea and pain and exhaustion -- hardly objective.

Nevertheless, I maintain that Vietnam is a handful and a half. My main gripe is this: the seemingly impenetrable walls of a tourist industry that has expectations and systems in place to tangle the feet and blind the eyes and basically convince the tourist that there's just NO other way to do things. (Interesting when you consider northern Vietnam's political history. The lemming-like adulation of Ho Chi Minh alone no matter what kind of man he was gives me the willies.) The Vietnamese way to do these things, as far as I can tell: a sick amount of tour packages. Tour packages like you wouldn't believe. Ubiquitous, identical, mind-boggling tour packages. Just in the way everyone and their mother in Thailand has a food stand selling meat on a stick, everyone and their mother in Hanoi owns a tour agency. Halong Bay and Sapa, the beautiful karst formations off the coast and a former French hill station in the Tonkinese Alps, are the two most desirable destinations, and therefore the most touted. I spent days wandering around goggle-eyed, wondering who the hell to trust, and what value could I really be getting out of a trek and village homestay if everyone, everyone offered the exact same thing?

It's not that you find yourself among a bunch of "dumb tourists" -- to be honest I've been fine with the tourists, they seem like a fairly intelligent lot -- it's that you're hopelessly convinced that you can't see or do anything of value unless you buy into the game, i.e. buy one of their prefab packages, thereby releasing your person to the Vietnamese authorities for the period of days in question. In Thailand, there were plenty of tour packages, too, of course, but as I felt so uncomfortable buying one of those "treks to Karen Longneck village" or whatever, I didn't, and the difference was that there seemed ample opportunities to volunteer and explore and see plenty without going on a group tour. Autonomy, flexibility, freedom: These things were available to the tourist. (Obviously autonomy is what I'm going for; if I didn't want that, WOULD I be all alone here typing on a little laptop at a cafe in Hanoi waiting for a night train to take me to the mountains?) I guess I was spoiled in Thailand. Here, it's rubbed in my face so abrasively that I'm a tourist and that I want tourist things, I've almost decided to take it in stride.

This is helped by the fact that I've been so sick and had such a hard time eating anything. I want simple, bland, western foods. I want fresh air. I want silence. I want to walk down the street without my life being threatened at every moment by thousands of motorbikes hurtling past at breakneck speed. Despite all my efforts, I've still actually been hit; it is a tough game to play, crossing the street in Hanoi. They just do not stop. I knew this, I was told this, and laughed it off, but when faced with the reality every day, it's completely and totally nerve wracking! You're supposed to "cross without stopping," "even if they keep moving," because they gauge their speed based on yours. Ok, despite all better judgments and a healthy sense of self-preservation, just "keep moving" into oncoming traffic. Got it. But the problem with that is I've seen plenty of Vietnamese people pause briefly at intervals and I think it requires a subltler sense that I've yet to master. After having been hit by a motorbike (not hard, but hit) twice, and (of course) laughed at and coddled by the Vietnamese passerby, my very real fear doesn't help. It is a gamble every time. Sorry, Mom... but it is!

(Side note: I actually spent 20 thousand Vietnamese dong -- about a dollar -- to be helped across the street by a woman who said she worked for the Red Cross. I was gaping in fear and frustration at a street corner for ten minutes when this angel came out of the dust clouds and offered her arm, in exchange for a donation to her cause. All I can say is that was a dollar very, VERY well spent.)

I was in Hanoi for a few days with my friend Kristine and her partner Thom, who are living in Hong Kong and soon moving to Germany. We explored Hanoi backwards and forwards and really did have a great time. I've warmed up to it a lot. The Vietnamese-French hybrid is intriguing, particularly to a francophile like me. One meal I was able to keep down was quite delicious: cha ca, the single dish served at a lunch-only place (white noodles and flaky braised fish and fresh dill and fish sauce and chiles and peanuts and greens), and we had a marvelous time chatting and sipping intense, sweet Vietnamese iced coffees on the tiniest little preschool-sized stools on the sidewalk. (It is the cutest thing ever. All the sidewalks are crammed with teeny, tiny stools and tables, made for preschoolers literally, but everyone of all sizes and ages uses them. Adorable!) We visited the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex (unfortunately the mausoleum itself was closed, but I definitely got a sense of the place through the museum, YIKES propaganda) and the Hoa Lo prison (where John McCain was kept for five years -- pretty amazing -- there were photos of him as a young, injured pilot, too); saw a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show (the music was the best part) and a gorgeous, breezy old-style house full of Vietnamese antiques. As an aim to "get out of the city" we sort of regretfully booked one of the ten thousand two-day tours to Halong Bay, thinking that of course there was a way to get there without a tour, but given Kristine and Thom's limited time, it was probably easier to just book one.

It was, by far, the most insanely touristy thing I've ever done. I felt sick for most of it, so again, grains of salt, but for me the idea of going to "nature" where thousands of other identical boats are doing the same thing is not nature at all, it's another kind of city. Thousands of boats going to the same destination, giving their tourists the same fifty minutes on a kayak and twenty minutes in a limestone cave and twenty minutes for swimming and now it's time for lunch and now it's time for bed and now it's time to cart whoever's going on a THREE-day tour to another boat because we've got even that all mapped out and yes there is a method to this madness but as long as we have your money we will be happy to never explain it to you.

Of course it was pretty; the karsts were quite stunning. But the water was drizzled with chemicals from the boat engines and most people couldn't sleep due to the roar of the engines going all night in this sea of boats with roaring engines -- and say, is that a jellyfish, or a plastic bag? What I wanted was to be alone on a kayak, using my own autonomous arms to bring me from place to place, and to pitch a tent on a beach. Maybe this is possible in Halong Bay. It certainly didn't seem so to me.

p.s. On the subject of Vietnamese culture, I find this interesting: Vietnam Airlines' slogan is "Bringing Vietnamese culture to the world." First of all, how fitting. Secondly, when you visit their website, it's unclear how to get any flight outside of Vietnam. Ha!

(Still, I know this pride is well-earned; Vietnam was under colonial rule for centuries and has suffered an insane amount of barbarism at the hands of the French, the Americans, the Chinese. It really is no wonder Ho Chi Minh is such a legend. It IS a wonder that they don't shove hate and animosity in the faces of all the French and American tourists. They don't. Just the tour packages.)

Culture Wars

I had two conversations in succession recently, both over a beer and spicy delectables from the Chiang Rai night market, both on the balcony of my guesthouse. While the content and structure of the conversations were remarkably similar, the viewpoints presented were pretty opposed.

The first was with Jake, a devoted, impossibly kind British man who is the whole reason I ended up staying and working in Chiang Rai for the ten days I was there. Ok, maybe "reason" isn't the right word... more like "the first in a line of related events." He was Gabby's contact for the story about corrupt Christian missionaries that I actually wasn't shitting you about, and as we were determined to start with him, we hightailed it from the Chiang Rai bus station to his homebase. The only reason we stayed at that guesthouse is because of him, and the only reason I met Paul, the head of the Khom Loy Development Foundation (www.khomloy.org) where I volunteered for a week, is because Paul happened to be there one morning, Gabby happened to ask him how to get to the Hill Tribe Museum, and he happened to offer to drive us there.

Long story very short: There is an INSANE amount of Christian missionary work in the Chiang Rai province, the area where Thailand meets Myanmar/Burma (I hear mostly Burma still, in these parts) and Laos, as well as a short-ish distance from China's Yunnan province. Many different ethnic minorities from the region, known in the Chiang Rai area as "hill tribes," or nomadic peoples with their own languages and traditions, are now, like so many indigenous communities, butting heads with modern nations and their economic agendas. Most hill tribes in Thailand are denied Thai citizenship, which can mean limited access to public education and health care. They are often shooed off their land, discriminated against in a variety of ways, and live in increasingly desperate poverty. They are also, and have been for generations, relentlessly pursued by Christian missionary organizations from all over the world. Those organizations have in some cases been entirely successful. The Karen, for instance, famous for a subgroup that once encouraged young girls to wear successive metal rings around their necks to stretch them (there are now bulletins plastered with "Trek to Karen Longneck Village" across Chiang Mai, and I heard a rumor that this is a tradition that is only continued for tourists' benefit), are almost all practicing Christians now.

The story as a whole I find incredibly depressing (partly because, of course, it's so goddamn familiar): People who are living close to the land and close to each other for generations upon generations, developing localized languages, spiritual practices, herbal-medicinal knowledge, and all manner of interesting, valuable, necessary things, are suddenly confronted with a force that says: You are not enough. You do not have enough. This is because you do not know MY God. Therefore, your children need to come with me, and I will provide them with food and shelter and education, and they will know My God, and they will love My God. (Chatting with two recent college grads from the UK who were also volunteering for Khom Loy confirmed this kind of thing pretty literally: They attended a church service in Chiang Rai with some kids from the orphanage they were stationed at, and reported with surprise that a free lunch came with it. "All right! I mean, a free lunch, can you believe that? I'd go to church for a free lunch!" I laughed and replied with a sigh, "That's right, MY God gives you free lunch. Does YOUR God give you free lunch?")

Enough free lunches and educational or vocational opportunities, and slowly, slowly, over time, the former religious practices and cultural values of a community fade and subside. Languages die, beliefs disintegrate. This seems impossibly sad to me; this nightmarishly repeating story of imperialism and colonization the world over (though of course missionary work is sometimes -- not always -- less bloody). In some cases one might argue that this kind of blending, merging, submerging of cultures is inevitable (such as the clash between tourism and these populations); in this case I find it to be disgusting, morally abhorrent. To make matters worse, the story Gabby and I were planning on researching was about corruption that exceeded even the corruption that in my view is inherent in missionary work. (We didn't get very far since it seemed such an impossible wild good chase, especially given her limited time in the country before she took off to India.)

The investigation was regarding Bobby Morse, a Christian missionary born of Christian missionaries with his fingers in lots of exploitative pies, but especially among the Akha, a group a couple million strong in total but with about 70 thousand in northern Thailand. He and his organization would encourage Akha families to release their children to his missionary boarding school, where he promised not only free lunch, but free room and board and education. Not a tough sell if you're talking to people who've got too many mouths to feed. Unfortunately, not only are these schools brainwashing tanks, but Morse and his assistant were arrested by the Thai police for consistently molesting and raping Akha girls. The sickest part of the story is that, rumor has it, he was acquitted after a brief trial due to a big payoff by the American embassy. There was no media coverage of the incident besides one article in a local Thai paper, and by a few human rights activist organizations (specifically the Akha Heritage Foundation, www.akha.org, the reason Gabby was tipped off to this whole thing in the first place.) Gabby and I decided that, were we to pursue this further, our central question would have to be: Why (!!!!!) is the American Embassy protecting Bobby Morse? We were sent down a dizzying wormhole of conspiracy theories by Gabby's contact at the Akha Heritage Foundation, including the allegation that the CIA and Christian missionary organizations have always been in cahoots in the Golden Triangle due to the now-dying but historically lucrative opium trade. Ay yi. You can see, I hope, why I decided to drop the ball on this one for the time being.

Here's the link to the Bobby Morse story:

http://www.akha.org/content/missions/mossarrested.html

Anyway, back to Jake. A filmmaker of both documentary and dramatic films, he's interested, first and foremost, in promoting, documenting, and preserving extremely localized native cultures. He has been working for AFECT (Association for Akha Education and Culture in Thailand, www.afect.org), making DVDs and promotional materials for them, writing grants, developing fundraising ideas. He heard of the Bobby Morse ordeal and gave us a few names and a lot of background on this whole messy corner of the planet. After a few good conversations with him, especially the last one, I came to understand where his passion lay: in the folklore of the most untouched peoples in the remotest corners of the earth. "That's what's really good," he'd say. "That's where you get stories." (Wish I could include his accent in this post: long, curving British vowels..."stOHwries"...and he pronounced his "th's" like "f's".)

His viewpoint was this: We've got to preserve and protect these cultures at all costs. Document them in order to celebrate them. Almost as if these people were relics from some lost Paradise, innocent, unique, whole.

As a collector of stories myself, I can't help but rather agree. Certainly when it comes to missionary work, or unFair trade, or the bastardizing forces of tourism, or other blatant violations of human rights, it seems commendable to support and protect those who've lived mostly an isolated existence from all those legal and religious and economic winds... which is, perhaps, why there are so many NGOs in the region.

This brings me to my second conversation. This was with a young college grad from Vancouver Island, who was a nice enough guy and had some hilarious stories and interesting things to say, but I have to admit I started zoning out when he got to his obsession with zombies, kung fu movies, and drinking games. (In Pai, northern Thailand's tourist haven, there is a bar that apparently charts drinking champions by number of shots and country of origin on a big wall-sized chalkboard.) This fellow (don't remember if I ever got his name) is convinced that one rosy day, the whole world will speak the same language, use the same currency, all be the same "pale brown color," all be "earthlings" rather than belonging to any nation-state, and cultural norms, such as needing to take off your shoes and cover your shoulders when you enter a Buddhist temple, will be themselves only relics that he hopes people will preserve in museums. My first thought: Heaven forbid. Second thought: You poor, poor naive little fucker. But then, I admit it got me thinking: As the world "flattens," as we become increasingly "globalized," people are finding it more and more necessary to learn the same language, use the same currency. Today, it's English, it's the Euro, it's the dollar. I wonder how long this will last. Is there an ending point? Is there a limit to which we can use these things to be more connected, to more easily trade with one another? When and if we reach that limit, is it inevitable that the next superpower will step in and usher the next era of cultural ubiquity?


I'm obviously getting into really sticky territory here, as what does the word "culture" even mean... but... where do we strike that balance between equity and cultural preservation? If we're talking about the hill tribes, at what point does the presence of tourism or missionaries or a larger nation with a larger economy become a way through which these people can better themselves and their standard of living? Is it so wrong to provide choices to people in a world so sated with choice? That's what the NGOs are doing, trying to do: Provide these people with choices. (And maybe that's what a missionary would say, too: I am giving these people the knowledge, and therefore the choice to believe). Given the choice, people may opt to move out of that village, forget that needlework, stop speaking that language, stop believing in that god. Which is natural, which can and does and should happen; it just seems that, often, it's not exactly about choice...

I guess what struck me was the two opposing attitudes: Jake was so gung-ho about preserving these individual cultures at all costs, and the guy from Vancouver Island seemed almost to advocate for a seamless blending of cultures, as if this would plant us in a future of global harmony.

I don't think either is possible.


Photos: The Akha Foundation, not to be confused with the Akha Heritage Foundation, is a Christian missionary organization just outside of Chiang Rai, that I passed twice, once on motorbike and once on bicycle. The Akha swing, the teepee-shaped figure in the second photo, is present in all Akha villages and is part of regular ceremonies; interesting juxtaposition with the cross. Kids from a Mien village outside of Chiang Rai; mother/seamstress from a Hmong village called Tha Thong; toddler who adored me from that same Mien village, wearing a traditional hat (made, clearly, for far cooler climes); photo of Tha Thong from a hill.

All village shots are from the two days I spent traveling with Patricia from Khom Loy who runs Izara Arts (www.izaraarts.com), which will soon feature some of my words and images under the "producer profiles" link.