m Vietnam, looking out over our vast Korean suburb and thinking that our week had encompassed such diverse settings and complicated history; I would have 
to attack the topic outline-style as though it were a college term paper. My mind was reeling with the combination of Vietnam, and the books I’d read while traveling there: When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, a memoir by a Vietnamese woman of her childhood during the American War (you know, the one we call the Vietnam War over there in the U.S.?), and That Old Ace in the Hole, an Annie Proulx novel about the TX/OK panhandles. The first is a natural choice for a trip to Vietnam, and the second, which I got as a trade for the first from the communal library at our hotel in Hoi An, turned out to have a pleasantly mind-bending effect during the trip as well.
I was thinking along some odd parallel lines. Both the rural and urban landscapes of Vietnam are lush, colorful, crammed with detail and texture and color. Meanwhile, in the book I
was reading, Annie Proulx described a barren, stark landscape that is wide open and neutral-colored – but her prose was as busy and colorful as Vietnam. And the effects of both were overwhelming. In the case of Vietnam, I loved being immersed in the swirl of Southeast Asia, and we’re already planning our next trip there for December. In the case of Annie Proulx, her writing is just too damn colorful – irritatingly, even laughably so, and I can’t say with certainty that I’ll pick up another of her novels any time soon.All the same, the opportunity to be in Vietnam and read about the Texas panhandle at the same time did teach – or rather, remind me of – something important. As much as I enjoy traveling in the tropics, where everything (the air, the
vegetation, the markets) is so thick and the scenery so crowded and vivid, I think my natural habitat is in wide-open, pale-colored spaces with temperate climates. Or maybe that’s just a habitat I miss, strongly. Lori Porter, a fellow tea
cher from KIS, was traveling in South Vietnam with her brother when we were there, and her comments about the contrast between her home (Casper, WY) and Vietnam provoked me to think about these polar opposites a lot. And as far as the writing goes – if I ever do manage to write something other than these long-winded musings about vacation travel, I should keep in mind that often, a lack of detail speaks more convincingly than a circus ensemble of outlandish characters and events.None o
f this has much to do with Vietnam, though. I’m afraid to write about that country because I loved it, but found it complex, and worry that I don’t understand it sufficiently to do it justice. Visiting a nation in which your own country waged war not so long ago produces an inevitable tangle of impressions and thoughts. I must have thought I knew something about Vietnam, but in retrospect, that “something” turned out to be little more than images from the standard list of ‘Nam movies, which may help to understand a certain American experience that affected my parents’ generation profoundly and continues to reverberate in the U.S., but teach little or nothing about the corresponding Vietnamese experience. I still know next to nothing about that, but I did find When Heaven and Earth Changed Places helpful in beginning that branch of my Asian education.So then, onto something I understand a little better: a great spring break. I’ve already taken up too much space in this entry with reflection, so I’ll try to keep the travelogue brief, and steer clear of topics such as communism and war scars. We flew in to Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City, where Dana, a friend of mine from college and junior year abroad in Spain, was kind enough to meet us at the airport
and take us to her house. Dana has lived in Ho Chi Minh with her Vietnamese husband, Kamh, for six years. I can’t stress enough how ideal it was to be picked up at the airport in that particular city – Saigon is as intense and crazy as any p
lace I’ve been to, with motorbikes clogging every major road in what appears at first glance to be a complete chaos. The heat, on top of the traffic, was stifling, and having such gracious hosts to put us up in their lovely home and show us some of the outstanding things Saigon has to offer was the perfect way to start this trip. We ate and drank well at night (the food in Vietnam is unbelievably delicious, by the way), and during the day, did our best to see the city on foot, interspersin
g many sweaty and terrorific street crossings with iced coffee and fruit shakes at some of Saigon’s great cafés. We couldn’t help noticing how easy it was to find restaurants and coffee shops with character, in contrast to the Starbucks jungle we’re used to in Seoul.After Saigon, we toured the Mekong Delta for two days with Innoviet, a tour
company we turned up on the Internet. Our tour group consisted of our tour guide, and us, and the unintentionally private tour, which included a homestay with a family near the town of Tra On on the delta, was incredible. We traveled by local buses, at least three different boats, cyclos (tricycle taxis), and bicycles, and of the many people we 
encountered and enjoyed at least some interaction with (rice farmers and refiners, cocoa bean shellers, brick cutters, fish farmers, coconut candy makers, rice paper cookers, floating marketeers, Buddhist monks and nuns . . .), exactly none of them were tourists like us. Innoviet advertised that they take their groups off the well-beaten Mekong tourist track, and they absolutely delivered. Our tour guide, Thanh (I’m certain that I’m misspelling his name, and my pronunciation of it is even worse) was a young, good-natured guy who gave us exactly the kind of experience we were looking for.After the Mekong, we had intended to relax on the beaches of Phu Quoc, a large island off the southwestern coast, for the remaining four days of our vacation, but flights to the island were sold out, so we changed our plans and flew north to Danang. Near Danang lies Hoi An, a town that was recommended enthusiastically by everyone we know who had been to Vietnam. Hoi An was no disappointment, and I doubt we could have enjoyed ourselves more on Phu Quoc. We were al
so able to visit the Champa ruins at My Son, go diving off the central Vietnamese coast, lounge on the beach at gorgeous C
ham Island, and explore Marble Mountain, an odd place between Hoi An and Danang where a mountain has been hollowed out and decorated with tranquil pagodas alongside creepy, sadistic statues straight out of the Temple of Doom.Hoi An draws tourists because its old town is virtually intact from older times – the port here was a major trading center from the 15th – 19th centuries. The town itself is beautiful, and on top of the scenery there are great restaurants and bars, and over 500 tailor shops where buying custom-made clothing and shoes is astoundingly cheap. We dabbled in the newfound thrill of clothes-fittings, and promised ourselves we would return for a second round (cashmere suits, perhaps?) when we visit north Vietnam this December. One of the best things about Hoi An was our hotel, the Minh A Ancient Lodging House. Not only di
d it look as intriguingly ancient as the name promised, but Ly, the young woman who managed the hotel, was the perfect mixture of kind, helpful, and charmingly sarcastic – she was one of the best people we met on our trip.Well, I’m glad I a
bandoned the college term-paper approach, or else I would never have finished this, and might have gone to bed with that horrible Sunday night anxiety bred by poor use of a Sunday and dread of the coming work week. As it is, though, there are only 7 work weeks left this school year, and only 2 left before our next trip, a long weekend in Jirisan National Park (camping and hiking) and on the south coast of Korea. That’s really not enough work to inspire any serious dread. We had a great weekend with sushi on Friday; traditional Korean dinner with Anne, our Korean teacher, last night; and a bargain-shopping bike ride this afternoon. Some Korea-focused blogging is in order, so I will prod Chris and do my best not to let months pass before the next bout of rambling. Hope all is well everywhere else in the world. Goodnight.
