Da Lat Vietnam Part Two

Tags

Dalat, Enlightenment, Minimalism, Spiritual experience, The matrix, Travel writing, Vegan travel Vietnam, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

For more photographs of Da Lat see a previous blog here

There were little dogs everywhere. One of the guesthouse dogs, a small whitish pug like dog, was, ‘Not friendly, she will bite you, she already lost one owner and is scared she will be taken away again,’ the hotel woman told me. The other dog was like a small brown poodle with curly chocolate fur, it looked like a cuddly toy and was very friendly. It was young and too bouncy for the other dog, always wanting to play; the woman told me that each day for a few hours it went to her friend at another hotel to give the older dog a break.

During our stay it had a haircut, we thought at first it was a different dog, not only was all its curly fur gone but it was huddled in its bed not greeting anyone. Apparently it was traumatised as she hates having a haircut. ‘She won’t speak to me, tomorrow she’ll be okay.’ The woman said. By the time we left she had began getting back to normal.

Again we had an An Chay restaurant right opposite our guesthouse, the woman who ran it was friendly with a tiny bit of English, and there was a woman assistant who had no English. We were confused by the menu, she showed us a small piece of paper which someone had hand written a translation on. It turned out it was all fake meat but we didn’t realise that at first. I ate rice, tofu and veg, it was very cheap, and beer. Once there was a big ginger cat, like a big cat from home, the size of a small dog, who let me stroke it. Another time I went in by myself to eat and to do my blog, there was a chatty American man there, he told me he had a Vietnamese girlfriend and planned to retire here, apparently there were lots of ex pats in Da Lat.

In Vietnam there are people who are totally vegan or vegetarian all the time and many other people have one day each month where they don’t eat meat. Although generally Vietnam is very meaty, where there are all vegan restaurants, they are superb. In DaLat we found an incredible place, again thanks to Happy Cow. It had signs up saying no meat, no eggs, no fish. At the front it had a Banh Mi stall, these were wetter with different flavours and sauces to the ones in Nha Trang, and inside was a big restaurant. There were lots of tables, and often big family parties would eat there. There were poster menus on the wall and big laminated book menus on the tables. They did a lot of fake meat; it’s not something I’m into per se, having never missed meat but it was nice to have a variety of food and plenty of protein. Everything was vegan. We ate lovely sausages, fake chicken wings, fake shrimp, tofu fake meat, fresh stir fried veg, and my favourite, the most lovely dumplings, dense like pie crust or short crust pastry. And glasses of warm soya milk, delicious and healthy, which I missed so much when I couldn’t get it.

I went to the hairdresser to get my unfortunate orange henna from Kerala dyed over (dying over henna isn’t usually possible which I knew but I tried anyway.) I was very excited about going to the hairdressers. ‘Make brown,’ I said. The hairdresser tried hard and looked far more disappointed than me when it didn’t work. She called a man over who spoke some English to ask if I was happy with my hair which was possibly ever so slightly less orange but I might have been kidding myself. Anthony had made me take his phone for the translation app, ‘Just in case.’ I used it to try to explain that it was henna, it wasn’t her fault, but they didn’t understand.

In a reverse to the waving cats aromatherapy thing, which I’d seen first on Atypical on Netflix and then seen in real life; we saw a cockroach in the room, and then cockroaches were mentioned on Atypical. We couldn’t catch it and so ended up living with it in the room which I was very proud of myself about. We never saw it again; they stay on the floor, they like the dark, they avoid humans. That’s what I said to myself anyway.

We found our way back to the area we’d seen from the taxi; a street full of small vintage and original fashion shops. We bought little cakes at a small bakery which also sold small waving cats, white or gold, in plastic boxes. Near the second hand/fashion street was a yellow wall where we watched countless tourists take photographs of themselves against its backdrop.

On a main road with lots of shops with big signs and hoardings, a little like Triplicane High Street in Chennai where Broadlands was, we were suddenly caught up in two schools pouring out, a crazy log jam of bikes. The uniform of one school was traditional trousers with long skirt overlay with a side split all in white silk, the other was sporty navy blue. Opposite a temple we stopped at a shop to buy water, the man in the shop encouraged two school girls who were in there to speak to us to practice or show off their English. We had a short chat and the shop man looked pleased.

Near the indoor clothes market area, big wide flights of stone steps led down to an outdoor market area with fruit, including tall perfect piles of strawberries in baskets, built one by one in an expanding wall, fascinating to watch, beyond the fruit endless cheap clothes. We bought grapes and satsumas.

We sat on the steps with our thin blue carrier bag of satsumas with the leaves on, and relaxed. It was good to just look. Behind us was yet another hotel called Dream something. Nice Dream, maybe. It’s like we’re being told, ‘It’s a dream!’ And just like that, everything felt trippy and shiny again; the two of us feeling high, feeling like it’s a matrix or an illusion.

Thank you very much for reading!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Waving Cats and Dream Hotels: Da Lat, Vietnam

Tags

anxiety, Atypical, Dalat, death, Enlightenment, meditation, Netflix, spiritual awakening, Vietnam, waking up

For more photographs of Da Lat see a previous blog here

Straightaway we loved DaLat. All of a sudden there were old buildings, full of character, old shops and old flats above shops. Apparently there was a tacit agreement from both sides not to bomb Da Lat during the American/Vietnam War hence all the old buildings. It made us realise the contrast with where we’d been before, that all the new, boxy, functional buildings were new buildings built after the war.

There were street food stalls with great big pans of eggs, some looked like chicken eggs, some were small like quail eggs, and big pans of stew or noodle soup. There were grills with tortillas on, with egg poured on to cook omelettes on top of the tortillas. In the street were stalls with piles of scarves, and furry hats with ears on and ear flaps with long furry scarves attached, like kids hats. It was a big change of temperature, again.

From the window of the taxi we saw lots of hair dressers and shops selling cool looking vintage clothes, and tried to remember where we were relative to our guesthouse. It was such a relief to be in DaLat, it was as if we’d left the bad behind in Nha Trang, immediately we both felt better even just driving through.

Ours was a family run hotel, we tried the wrong one at first, we knew it was wrong as it looked too posh, but both had similar names something like My Dream and Dream Hotel both with dream in the name anyway. Ours was a small homely guesthouse run by a well dressed woman with nice waved hair. In the reception were two little dogs.

 

Our room was in some ways old fashioned with a big wooden wardrobe and a sideboard, and in some ways modern with black and silver flock wallpaper. In the room we were aware of the change in climate; the room smelled very slightly damp, and a bit of mildew when we opened the wardrobe. In the wardrobe, and in a neat folded pile at the bottom of the stairs, were the thick synthetic blankets that were so popular in Nepal and which we’d seen elsewhere too, in Pushkar. I always like to know there’s another blanket, just in case.

Again we were reminded of the difference in tolerance for noise between us from the UK and people in South East Asia generally. Across the road from our guesthouse was a van parked outside which beeped all day, apparently no one complained.

I continued watching Atypical on Netflix which I’d started on the train to Nha Trang. The show is about a teen with autism, in one of the episodes I saw in DaLat he goes to stay at a friend’s house for the first time. His friend has done his best but we see the unfamiliar environment through the main character’s eyes; there’s a waving cat, (the gold cats originally from Japan and China with beckoning paws), an aromatherapy diffuser glowing a colour and puffing out visible scent, and a gold and noisy halogen heater. All these things loom large and become too much for him to cope with.

The next day I saw a waving cat just like the one in Atypical. And on the stairs of our guesthouse was the very same aromatherapy diffuser, the same style but in a different colour…

Mind you, as it turned out, there were waving cats everywhere. One day we sat at an Italian vegetarian cafe, we had vegan cookies and tea. On the sofa next to me sat a real small orange cat, who let me stroke them and purred. In the window of a shop across the road was a waving cat positioned at such an angle that we were facing each other both at matching angles, me turned slightly towards the real cat, the waving cat turned slightly towards me, so that it seemed to be waving directly at me.

I can’t remember if we meditated in Nha Trang or not but we did in Hue and we did in DaLat. In DaLat I found that meditation was helpful for my anxiety. In meditation I felt my anxiety change to excitement, or maybe I was able to reinterpret the anxiety as excitement and to change fear into possibility or excitement; rather than fear of the future, excitement about life’s unknown possibilities. In meditation I was distracted by wanting to think about to my do list. With great effort I dragged myself away from that and asked myself, Why do I want to do this? The answer: because I’m anxious. But beyond anxiety, there was calm, and in meditation I was able to access that, the calm that is always with us.

For every meditation in DaLat I sat on the end of the bed facing the window with my eyes open. There was a pair of silvery white curtains, a net curtain, and a slight gap where I could see out unhindered. Outside the window wasn’t much of a view. I could see two electricity wires. In meditation these represented free will and fate, or free will and possibilities, or ‘you’ and ‘environment.’ I thought about how molecules bond. About how if you raise your frequency you attract ‘better’ things or at least you attract a match.

The mind tries everything- the past, the future, guilt, ‘shoulds,’ things to do, but if you step back from that and let it go you realise that in order to have peace that’s all you have to do: Not do anything the mind is telling you to, or not then anyway. Most of it is not practical or possible, you can’t go into past, for example, so just experience peace, without thoughts. Choose not to think about it. Even if it is practical or possible you can’t do when sitting. Deal with stuff in its present moment when the time arises. Or not…

I thought of what someone (Peter Klopp) had said on WordPress, about light and shadow. He had said, ‘The brighter the light the darker the shadow.’ This was different; people say, the darkness lets the light in, know suffering to know happiness etc. But this seemed to be saying that if you have a bright light, you have a dark shadow as well, as a kind of balance or side effect, something that has to be managed, or accepted maybe. It resonated strongly with me and was strangely comforting even though I felt like I didn’t understand it fully.

In meditation I often thought about Atypical, that’s okay I thought, at least I’m not thinking about stuff I’m anxious about. I felt a pain in one arm and the centre of my chest. I thought about heart attacks, and the tarot man in Thailand telling me I needed to look after my heart. Both my granddads died of heart attacks, I hoped that’d be how I went, easy, one in his arm chair, one at the pool side at the swimming pool.

We are animals that have become conscious. We know we’re alive and that we’re going to die. It’s not ‘spiritual’ or new age or complicated. It’s just if you realise, really realise, I’m a being, I’ve got a life, I’m here, wow, it’s going to end, I don’t know when; then that’s so exciting! Is that waking up/enlightenment? And maybe that’s why people in the East seem to enjoy themselves more, because they are okay with death, whereas we in the West tend to push it away. Oasis in Nepal saying matter of factly, ‘So I die, I die, they be sad for a couple of weeks.’ People of all ages in Vietnam and Cambodia dancing and exercising and socialising simply and cheaply, our Thai friend always laughing and joking…

I began to see the benefits of yoga and meditation, after the low period in Nha Trang. Even my arms felt a little different. I used to do loads of yoga and arm exercises at Sea Win in Kerala relative to now or before now although at the time I didn’t think it was that much/very good.

Just like hitting x number of followers, I look forward to it but when it comes it doesn’t actually do anything.  Or when I was one stone lighter, yes I was pleased but I don’t think I ever felt I was there, I always wanted to be thinner, I never felt my body was perfect. Although, I didn’t have a sense of it being wrong, even before that, just kind of neutral. I could wear all these clothes, buy stuff on eBay, anything fitted and felt good, but it didn’t really do anything, I knew it was just a surface thing.

Thank you very much for reading!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Photographs of Da Lat, Vietnam

Tags

Dalat, Life on a narrowboat, Midlife awakening, Minimalism, Minimalist living, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, spiritual awakening, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel writing, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

I’m still working on the Da Lat chapter, in the meantime here is another pictures only post.

All photographs by my husband Anthony John Hill

Thank you for visiting!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

September Update

Tags

Abstinence, awareness, karezza, meditation, Meditation exercises, Minimalism, Screen free Saturday, Screen free Sunday, spirituality, Travel memoir, Travel writing, vegan for the animals, Voluntary simplicity

 

We are over halfway through September so here is a quick and dirty update on our No Sex, No Drugs, No (Greggs Vegan) Sausage Rolls September programme

Meditation

As of the time of writing we have meditated every day. I met someone at a family do recently who asked me how to get started. Maybe you’d like to meditate but are finding it hard to start? We were out of the habit of meditating regularly so we started at just five minutes and increased it by one minute every day. We take it in turns to ‘lead.’ Also, if it helps/is of interest, here are all the things we have meditated on so far this month:

1. Take stock of yourself, where you are physically, emotionally, spiritually, how you feel going into this programme etc.
2. Do your own thing
3. The Twelve Lessons (above)
4. Meditate on your energy
5. Meditate on The Nature of Existence
6. Meditate on Identity
7. Meditating on energy which no longer serves us being sloughed off. This was post a little pagan ritual, we did one the last night of August- the night before we started- and one on Day 7 at the end of week one.
8. Meditate on your Identity within your Family
9. Meditate on The Nature of Love
10. Meditate on ‘The answers lie within’ from the 12 lessons (above)
11. Meditate on The Nature of Eternity (not in a religious sense, description here)
12. Meditate on golden healing light, imagine pulling energy in through the top of your head and sending it/allowing it to flow all through your body especially onto any aches and pains
13. Do own thing: Relaxing and recharging
14. Post ritual the end of week two which was also a full moon, we meditated on the full moon, what this means, and on renewal, etc
15. Meditate on the four elements Air, Fire, Water, Earth- their practical manifestations, your relationship with them, what they mean to you, or on their associated qualities.
16. Do own thing/Things you are grateful for (this was John’s turn, I was in a bad mood, he wisely added the second part, and by the end I was in a much better mood, even if I started off saying ‘Nothing’ petulantly to myself…

For more here is a link to a previous post Meditation Methods

Food

This has been very successful. Like stepping through a portal, suddenly I am no longer a person who eats GVSRs all the time, I now happily snack on walnut halves and dried apricots and effortlessly and joyfully prepare and eat things like the dishes above.* Even some processed foods like Linda McCartney pies and baked beans have begun to taste less appealing. My diet was overall pretty good and I was brought up on whole foods, so it hasn’t been a huge adjustment. *basically a thick smoothie made of soya milk, a banana, an apple, a pear, oats, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, cacao, maca,  linseed, peanut butter, topped with muesli, dates, nuts and seeds, all bought cheaply either in bulk from Grapetree or just cheap at Aldi

Walking, Yoga,

Fine, plenty, photo above of us and sheep on our regular walk, just got up and went and not at all media ready!

No cigarettes or alcohol

Fine, none. I hadn’t smoked any cigarettes since Harlequin Fayre in early August so that was easy. I have fond memories of my last glass of red wine though and may have another one in October.

Writing productivity

I’m on DaLat, the second to last place we went to in Vietnam. The last place was Ho Chi Minh City. I may or may not completely finish that before the end of the month, but either way I am happy with the progress I’ve made this month.

No sex

We have stuck to this and probably managed better than previous times. We’ve been respectful of the fact that it is difficult, and been careful about our behaviour, avoiding talking much about it, avoiding getting undressed in front of each other, avoiding flirting etc.

Not having sex can 1. Dip one’s mood, and 2. Take away a method for cheering oneself or each other up. When I said that to Anthony, he said, ‘Can’t you think of another way to cheer me up?’ And that’s a good question, because I have found it easy for that to be my go to method, whereas cooking a meal, tidying up my piles of clothes and papers, or just being in a good mood, would also be effective but would require more work/less enjoyment on my part…

One Screen Free day each week

Yes we have done this, one was easy as I was at work for most if it, the other was harder, I didn’t even allow myself Word laptop writing time, so I felt a bit discombobulated. In the evening we listened to the radio and then to an audio book, Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. The fact that it felt hard makes it worth doing regularly I think.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

‘It’s broken here:’* Nha Trang, Vietnam Part Two

Tags

Connection, depression, despair, Guilt, healing, Nha Trang, self awareness, spiritual memoir, suicidal thoughts, Travel fatigue, Travel memoir, Travel writing, waking up

WARNING This post discusses a period where I experienced suicidal urges, thoughts and feelings. It explores suicidal ‘logic’ and mentions thinking about methods.

I’m now okay now, these feelings come and go over the years, I keep myself safe and it passes.

If you are experiencing similar feelings PLEASE SEEK HELP. Here is a page I have found very useful in the past 

DRAFT extract from book chapter

The day of the beach walk, when we walked to the Incense Tower the wrong way… I wanted to stand and look. Anthony walked off, thinking I wanted to be alone. Being left behind is a trigger for me. A misunderstanding; over sensitivity, a bad atmosphere, the atmosphere between us deteriorated and my mood plummeted.

Thinking, ‘It would have been better if I hadn’t woken up.’ Thinking about the past, imagining going back and preventing things with my son turning out as they did. Thinking, ‘Better to be an asleep person, who could take pride in having had a successful family.’ Decisions, my responsibility. But what did I actually do that was so bad?

And on and on, thoughts spiralling down and down. ‘I left my children for you.’ Anthony said to me once. Oh God, and I’d painted myself as so good, getting their room ready, buying things, cooking. It wasn’t only my kid I messed up. Lots do it, women break up families, but they’d already been separated for years. But he did move to me not vice versa.

The ultimate destination of these thoughts for me is suicide. So many reasons to die: As a punishment. As a I don’t know how to live with myself. As a solution to every other worry or concern. To take responsibility. All I do is harm. I do no good. My son is doing well without me. Wow, the matrix/me really did a number on me. Such dangerous thoughts: If he’s done this well when I stepped back, and done even better when I went away for a year, then how much better would he do if I wasn’t here at all?

I remembered in Kerala, Sea Win, lying on the floor. Me: ‘Why do I feel so bad?’  The answer seemed to come from the light above me: ‘It’s your programming.’

It’s the mother of all battles undoing this. Do I want to? Or do I want to die? All this talk between us re The Future and getting older; who am I kidding? One day I’m going to kill myself and this is why. I’ve not yet got the method planned. Maybe I haven’t reached the end of my tether yet. Maybe I don’t want to enough. Maybe when I do, I will.

Walking along the beach, going into late afternoon, grey light, me thinking of methods of committing suicide, thinking about drowning myself, getting up early or coming back late.

On the sand there were big chunks of mosaic. I remembered there was mosaic on the stairs at the hotel too. (mosaic is kind of a thing for me). A grey bicycle was chained up on top of a ridge of sand so that its background was the cloudy sunset sky. Then, a shiny apple lying on the sand with only a few bites out. Then, some beautiful driftwood. Then a sparrow pecking at a discarded corn on the cob on the sand. Another sparrow, another corn on the cob. A light koru, the Maori symbol of new life. ‘It’s no good showing me all that,’ (good stuff I’d usually like, things of beauty I’d normally connect with) I said grimly, in my head. But then I realised, ‘All that stuff is always there.’

An old Vietnamese lady walked past selling buns, bags of tiny sponge cakes. She smiled and was friendly. I smiled at her, was friendly, and bought some. I felt bad about being so sad, as if she could catch it.

On the beach, mountains one side on a spit, partly concealed by high rise blocks of hotels ranged in front of the mountains, the juxtaposition was shocking.

In Kerala at the beach cafe, at the place where we’d been in a film, I’d read a tatty newspaper pull out/magazine. In it there’d been an article by a food/travel writer. In the wake of two recent celebrity suicides he’d written about how he’d travelled to all these amazing countries, stayed in great hotels and eaten all this wonderful food, that was his job, but at that the same time, ‘For two years I wanted to die,’ he said. I thought it would have been better if he’d written about that too. Like the social media thing of people tending to only put up the good stuff. ‘No one posts photos of themselves sobbing on Facebook.’ I often say. I know there are sites of self harm etc, but are they another extreme, all bad, would it be healthier if we all put everything, or at least a balance, out there?

The trigger to all this was another news interview raking over the past of twelve years ago when my son was a teenager and out of control, and a few cross words between me and Anthony.

Once awake, awake. ‘Enlightenment’ is accepting all of it, somehow, and somehow making peace with it.

As Anthony and I have discussed previously, being conscious doesn’t mean you’re nice. Some heads of big businesses that destroy the environment and people’s health for money to fuel their pleasure lifestyle may well be conscious. They may have decided it’s all an illusion so just do what you want it doesn’t matter. But like I’ve said before, even if it is only a game, I will still recycle, I still won’t hurt animals. And being conscious definitely doesn’t mean its fun. Sometimes you’ll wish you were still asleep.

But I made all the mistakes before. Before I woke up, whilst I was still asleep. So was that all my script? My back story like in Blade Runner to make me less likely to wake up? In Blade Runner they gave the robots memories, even a family, ‘To make them easier to control.’ Or if we don’t believe in some malignant power, that it just made it more of a challenge for me to wake up. Like George Harrison Isn’t it a pity. Or some people say the sadness triggers you waking up; the cracks let the light in, etc. And Now provides the chance to go off script and deprogramme myself, should I choose.

Back in the room, thinking about how just a short time of silence and awkward atmosphere will plummet my mood. One to two hours of it and I’m at suicide methods and my mind is dangerously out of control. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘I may not be in control of my thoughts but I can control my actions.’ I hugged myself and thought of the suicide prevention workbook (that I wrote!) ‘Curl up into a ball, you can’t hurt yourself then.’

In bed something in the room screamed method: the curtain pole. Compared to Dong Hoi, where I had admired the curtain pole’s glittery beauty, here, the pole was a suicide option. I was scared of it. Would I just do it, like I slapped myself the other day, involuntarily? That night, so depressed… ‘Just get through the night,’ I said to myself.

Later, talking myself out of it… You think committing suicide will wipe out (or atone for) all the bad you did; but of course it doesn’t, and actually makes it worse. It’s another bad thing. A really terrible thing. It ADDS to the sum of the harm you’ve done. If you were to ask them if that’s what they wanted, of course they wouldn’t say they wanted that. But of course even to ask would be an awful thing to do… The ‘logic’ of a suicidal mood state can be terrifyingly dangerous. In the past I’ve even thought people would WANT me to do it and agree with me that it made sense and that it was a good idea if I were to ask them. One particular time, after a particularly awful Mother’s Day, when my son had stolen something and run up a one hundred pound phone bill, I decided to go to bed, sleep on it, and if I still felt definitely that it was, I’d run it by my friend M, ask her if she thought it made sense, and if she did, I’d do it. Of course I woke up and thought there’s no way she would, and crisis averted.

That night in Nha Trang, I woke later, realised it was no threat- the method I’d been scared of, the curtain pole. And the next morning, I saw that the curtain pole had a screw loose, it wouldn’t have held, it was not dangerous, and me, feeling better, noticed glitter on my leg which reminded me to include the nice Dong Hoi curtain pole in the story.

Nha Trang abounded with patterns and metaphors, the trapped huge variety of beautiful/fascinating animals dead/alive; the non communication, we spoke to other people only twice. The longing to connect… I wished we could all speak the same language or that I knew another language but to really connect you’d need to be absolutely fluent and how long would that take and which language to choose… And how few people I can absolutely connect with even in our first language… Even Anthony and I lost each other for a while…

*One day halfway down our street, on the other side to our hotel, I passed a young Vietnamese woman wearing a red t shirt. Printed on the t shirt, over her heart area, were the words, ‘It’s broken here.’

Thank you very much for reading

I found that my mood dipped as I was writing this chapter. I found this song helped:

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and feelings PLEASE SEEK HELP. Here is a page I have found very useful in the past 

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Nha Trang, Vietnam

Tags

Nha Trang, Travel, Travel tips, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling, Vegan, Vegan travel Vietnam, Vietnam

DRAFT book chapter extract

The two of us can be indecisive, and our usual indecisiveness was exacerbated by illness, exhaustion, missing India, and the ever closer end of the trip and return to the UK which triggered fear re what are we doing/what have we done/The Future.* (*now that The Future is here, I don’t feel scared at all, and my everyday life doesn’t seem at all scary)

So we ended up booking a week in Nha Trang, which was super touristy but not with fellow Westerners and provided us with yet another completely different experience. As we’d said right at the start, this trip was about having experiences, and that doesn’t all have to mean good.

As soon as we arrived we knew it wasn’t us at all, a glitzy shiny lit up holiday resort, like a very upmarket Great Yarmouth (link to blog explaining why I love Great Yarmouth so much!) with late night shops, restaurants and lots of ‘ordinary’ tourists rather than backpackers. We watched dazed from the cab, and he dropped us off in amongst it all, at the top of a main street, off which a smaller street, still busy with restaurants, was where our hotel was. As it was so near the end of the trip though it was even easier to just go with it, to say, it doesn’t matter, it’s all experience.

My first impression was how bright everything was, how lit up, hotels, everyone out, lots of busy little street food stands, like a very small version of the Khao San road in Bangkok, everything smart and shiny.

This was very much an ordinary looking hotel, lots of floors, lots of rooms, shiny marble floors but still very cheap, five or six pounds (US$7) a night. The room was again very good quality like Hue, clean and painted white with two double beds, a desk, a fridge, a big wardrobe and a bathroom with a bathtub!

Nha Trang was the site of a Russian naval base, it had been used for R&R by the Russian Navy and had become a tourist destination popular with Russian families. Vietnam generally is affordable plus Nha Trang is hot with a good beach. Russians had opened businesses such as travel agents, jewellers and shops with everything written in Russian.

The menus were in Russian first and sometimes not in English at all. Like in Sihanoukeville, it was a useful reminder that we aren’t the centre of the world. From our Western perspective, it can seem that Western culture and the English language dominates. We’d travelled around India and been spoilt with so many people speaking English. In Sihavoukeville in Cambodia we had realised how many Chinese tourists there are now and how important they are. And that we as Brits are insignificant, numbers wise anyway. We met no other Brits in Nha Trang; we heard only one group of Americans. The other tourists were Russian or Chinese.

‘Things to do in Nha Trang,’ still came up on Anthony’s phone several months after our return to the UK, which always made me smile, as we found very little to do there. We did walk to the Incense Tower (below)

The first time we tried to go to the Incense Tower we walked the wrong way and ended up having a long beach walk, which turned into something else (see next post.) We didn’t give up though and walked back the right way and got to it. We’d started our walk on the beach in the early evening when it was cooler and by the time we’d walked to the tower it was dark with all the neon lights lit up. All around that area were hotels, many with names in lights. ‘Happy Hotel.’ Huge hotels with only small gaps between them. One looked like honeycomb. So many hotel rooms. Really, they were all needed? It was hard to take it in, the numbers, the facilities.

The Vietnamese shop assistants spoke Russian, a few times they spoke to us and we didn’t understand and then they realised we weren’t Russian, ‘Oh you are not Russian!’ A Russian man outside a bar gave us a flier, ‘I thought you were Russian,’ he said. We went out for a meal at an Indian restaurant; the Indian head waiter spoke Russian to the other diners. I was so impressed, maybe he already knew English, maybe not, but certainly he had had to learn Vietnamese, and then learn Russian as well.

It was interesting to observe a different group of tourists. In the evening their (the Russian tourists’) skin was often bright red. This was in sharp contrast to the other tourists who were Chinese, who covered up from the sun with hats and tops and who also wore pollution masks. Walking alongside the beach we saw the Russian style of sunbathing, which was standing, arms outstretched, baking, in bikinis or brief trunks. Although when I reported all this to my cousin back home in the UK she said that she sometimes sunbathes like that too to make sure she gets an all over tan.

 

On the walls of a restaurant on our street were photographs of all the animals they served, before and after, a photograph of the animal alive next to a photograph of it prepared to eat or in a meal. A photograph of a live chicken and then a whole chicken raw and plucked, a photograph of a frog, an alligator, an ostrich, a snake, next to a photograph of the animal cut into chunks in a meal. This became known as ‘the place with all the animals.’ But nowhere was any better. Everywhere was the same.

All the restaurants had tanks, aquariums, at first glance they looked like fish tanks for decoration, then no, it was to eat. And outside almost every place, all along from the corner of our road and all down the main road were bowls, like large plastic washing up bowls, all the same in pale green as if bulk bought, some stacked on top of each other. There were lots of these bowls outside almost every restaurant and in the bowls were what looked like every kind of sea creature. It was as if every sea creature you could imagine had been captured. Crabs with their claws bound with a rubber band, I couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead. Two big fish in a plastic bowl the same size as them who looked almost dead; there was a limit to what they could endure. Lobsters clearly alive. All sorts of small creatures, strange kinds of squid. They changed the water and it spilled out onto the pavement; every day we walked past, through the poor creatures’ water, slippery underfoot. As well as all the sea creatures, shops sold dead baby alligators with pearls in their mouths as ornaments. Heated barbecues on the street cooked lobsters and other creatures.

The Happy Cow app saved us while we were in Nha Trang. A tiny stall, a little cart, run by a woman for twelve years, serving Banh Mi (filled baguettes) with all vegan ingredients; different kinds of seitan meats, sauces and salad, for about twelve pence each. Her cart

Part Two on Sunday

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

 

Hue, Vietnam, Part Two

Tags

Great Yarmouth, Hue, spiritual awakening, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel memoir, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam, Winter Gardens Yarmouth, writing

Extract from draft chapter: Hue, Vietnam

For more photographs see post Picture of Hue The other touristy thing we did was to visit the abandoned water park. We let the hotel manager book our lift, his relative, to take us there. The water park was officially long closed but the security guard on the gate turned a blind eye to visitors ‘sneaking in’ for a set fee, explained to us in advance by the hotel manager and the driver. The driver asked us how long we wanted and then arranged to pick us up, he wasn’t allowed near the entrance and had to drop us discreetly on the path. We walked down to the gate, paid the security guard, and he pointed us to a track.

It was a bit of a walk through what reminded me of Norfolk, England, where my mum walks her dog, or where the festival we go to is held. Like heath land, dusty paths, heather, bracken, patchy trees and scrub.

The first thing we saw was the big painted dragon at the entrance, faded and distressed but all the better for that. We had brought water with us, and snacks, not expecting there to be anything there, but there was a woman who had set up a little stall with cold drinks and two hammocks under the trees; very enterprising. We bought cans of Red Bull. On the bridge/walkway leading to the dragon there was a Western couple, she had dyed pink hair and tattoos, they looked punky/alternative. They were taking pictures of themselves and seemed kind of impatient for us to pass. ‘What, don’t you want us in it?’ Anthony said. Even the cool people are obsessed with selfies, everyone is.

Inside the dragon was a staircase, everything moulded out of fibreglass, cracked, plants growing through, graffiti, the paint colours had become interesting over time, sepia, tea, burnt yellow. The staircase led up to the top and from inside the dragon’s mouth was a view out across the water and the park.

Our guesthouse was on a narrow street with a few small restaurants and bars, including small places with bench seats or plastic tables and chairs, a cabinet selling cigarettes; hotels and hostels and massage places. At the either end were bigger streets, beyond one end was a market area used by locals, the other end had shops selling luggage and back packs and led onto the tourist area.

Hue had lots of massage places, karaoke places and hairdressers. Many women had glamorous hair. Between our place and the market area there were lots of hairdressers; some were tiny with just enough room for two clients and two hairdressers side by side. On the main roads there were formal karaoke places but people also just did it themselves, near our place on the way to the market we passed a front room with a family sitting on a front room floor with food dishes and one person with a microphone belting out songs.

The other end led to the tourist bit past lots of shops, we passed whole shops selling crash helmets- people wear them in Vietnam. In the tourist area we passed a smart clothes shop with women cutting out fabric on the floor, a toddler was wandering around with a cutter in their hand, which worried me, ‘Let it go Rachel,’ Anthony said. I admired a thin young white and brown cat that was just inside the shop, a woman who was just coming out smiled at me, picked it up, and put the cat into my arms in one swift movement. I was transported into a blissful cat cuddling reverie. ‘How long are we going to stay here, just asking,’ Anthony said.

Beyond this area was the riverside tourist area with restaurant boats and people trying to get visitors onto them, a big bar, and a beautifully lit circular building- a restaurant- lit with changing colours green, pink, blue, yellow, so beautiful. It reminded me of the Winter Gardens in Yarmouth, a smarter version, but nonetheless. Link to blog re why I love Yarmouth so much. We sat on a low wall at the edge of the river near the lit up building and people watched. There were glamorous looking tourists; women in traditional clothes, wide leg trousers, long suits with split, matching hairband, and yellow long fitted dresses, a group of three women in beautiful immaculate outfits, perfect hair and makeup, tall and elegant. A boy aged twelve came up to us and asked if he could talk to us and practice his English, he talked to us for a while in excellent English.

Just before we left we walked beyond the market area, we passed what looked like a nail place, the decor bright shocking pink with Astroturf on walls, it looked like a sitting room with bright pink beds close together, giant teddies, a child and two fluffy dogs one white and one brown running around the room and bouncing about on the beds. It looked like the set of a wacky children’s television programme. We walked over the bridge and crossed the river, suddenly a world away, even from the market area, let alone our street or the tourist area. Beside the river on the other side were makeshift dwellings like a tiny shanty town. We carried on down the road where there were a few shops and cafes and restaurants and stopped for tea.

The place we chose had crazy decor, the walls looked like a children’s nursery, painted with giant pink snails, insects, flowers and food, we realised some were probably television characters. We ordered peach iced tea and chips, they also had baguettes, we thought well we could eat here. It’s possible to live on chips and baguettes if not the most healthy option. If people (especially us) were expecting us to come back slim, Vietnam was our undoing with the baguettes and the fries. Of course when we did return, no one was rude enough to say anything though being British.

On the way to the train station from the window of the cab I saw a series of perfect images like art postcards: A woman in black and a conical hat on a shiny bright red brand new looking bicycle. A woman side saddle on the back of a scooter wearing a very short lacy dress, one long leg sticking out with a stiletto shoe. A woman on a bike wearing a black tweed suit jacket and red stilettos. A woman on a bike- bare legs, white stilettos, a hooded top and a pollution mask, she struck me as a perfect example of the Vietnamese style I’d seen. Hue, all legs, flowers and fruit, I said.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Hue, Vietnam Part One

Tags

Hue, spirituality, Travel, Travel memoir, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam, Vietnam train journeys, Vietnamese hospitality, writing

 

For more photographs see previous post

Extract from draft chapter: Hue, Vietnam

There were television screens fixed to the ceiling on both sides every few seats, showing adverts on a loop and some programmes including a nature documentary, everything a bit too loud for my sensitive ears.

It felt refreshingly easy to have a relatively short daytime train journey (from Dong Hoi to Hue.) Travelling just three hours south made such a difference in temperature; when we stepped off the train it was just like stepping off a plane at a holiday sun destination. Hot!

In the cab we saw an chay (vegetarian) restaurant and got excited but then we wheeled away. After a few minutes the cab looped back, down a narrow side street. I who have zero natural sense of direction didn’t see this but Anthony said that we were at the other end of the street to the restaurant and then there it was, right opposite our hotel, a big sign ‘An Chay.’

The hotel looked quite smart with a reception desk and shiny polished wood tables downstairs, with a well dressed looking manager in a white shirt and chinos and smartly dressed female staff in skirts and blouses. Our room was lovely, painted white with a window and a balcony both with wrought ironwork. The standard of accommodation seemed very high. ‘Any complaints, I fix,’ the manager said, meaning the reviews online, which are such an important aspect of hospitality and booking now- he addresses everything they raise. We had our own bathroom, which he apologised for, ‘It will be painted’ but it was just fine, luxurious compared to many places we’d stayed. Everything was clean and there was even a fridge in the room and a wardrobe with hangers. Such luxury, for five or six pounds or seven US dollars a night.

We let ourselves have the windows open for a bit as it was still early, not yet mosquito time. The balcony was too narrow to stand out on but it had glass doors that opened and it looked out onto houses made pretty with plants on their balconies.

Breakfast was included there the same as in Dong Hoi, at the shiny wooden tables in the dining area in the reception downstairs, a big chunk of baguette with a dish of teeth-tingling super sweet jam and black coffee. The manager was very friendly and talked with us over breakfast and told us his story. He had left home and paid for an English course and then practised and polished his English with an Australian at the same time as working. Like many people he had come from a poor family and had to learn a whole new language to better his financial prospects. There were a few other guests but we didn’t meet people, it seemed like people were all on a busy itinerary/schedule with tours etc. It didn’t have the hang out do nothing languid chatter of some of the places we’d stayed in India or Nepal.

At the an chay restaurant we ate a hot pot, it was a classic dish but we’d been scared to order at other places we’d seen it in case it had meat or meat stock in. The hot pot, a metal saucepan with a lid, comes to the table on a gas burner, very hot and bubbling away, with a separate big white plate with uncooked mushrooms, the long thin white ones, on top of a bed of greens, plus a plate of cold rice noodles and small white bowls. You add the mushrooms and greens into the hotpot, which already has vegetables,and herbs including big sticks of lemongrass and three kinds of tofu, turn it down, wait for a few minutes and serve yourself. You put some of the rice noodles in the bowl, add some of the hot pot on top, which heats the noodles (and also the noodles help cool it as it is so hot) and Voila! It’s a work of art, an activity, a nourishing meal, kind of simple and complex at the same time, a beautiful experience.

If Vietnam had the best fruits of any country we’d been, Hue had the best fruits of Vietnam. Anthony went out alone one day and bought a bag of fruit from women selling fruit on the pavement in the market area. ‘I don’t know what I got,’ he said, ‘she just took control and gave me stuff.’ One looked a bit like a passion fruit or a pomegranate from the outside, inside it was pale pink and fleshy with a white centre and a stone, and the fruit dripped milk. You couldn’t make it up, I couldn’t have imagined something like that. I was enchanted, enraptured by the fruit. Another kind of fruit was dark purple on the outside, inside there was a pink firm and spongy layer which seemed not to be for eating, and inside that were white segments a bit like lychees but arranged in the round in segments like satsumas.

As well as the fantastic fruit, the vegetables were lovely too; we found another place to eat further along our alleyway that did stir fry vegetable dishes with big chunks of vegetables, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, alongside soft white tofu baked in tiny rounds. At the an chay place one day we asked the woman what the green vegetable was that was sliced with bobby edges, like a circle drawn with a very shaky hand, it tasted strong like pickle. She brought a whole one to show us it looked like a knobbly, spiky cucumber. ‘What is it called in English? She asked. ‘We don’t know,’ we said, ‘we don’t have.’

We did two touristy things. We walked to a small palace, it was very hot, we stopped at a bakery on the way and bought buns and cans of weird drink, strange tea in a can, they let us take two plastic red chairs and sit outside.

Even though the walk was hot and tiring it was good to walk and see the shops, especially the women’s clothes shops with outfits on mannequins and rows of skirts or tops on hangars. Black office skirts or short skirts in black and neutral, with women’s fitted shirts; little denim shorts and t shirts- the women here covered the top half of their bodies from the sun- pinafore dresses with white blouses, and amazing sparkly princess dresses. We passed a shop just selling pyjamas, in the window were mannequins in typical pyjamas, silky button through shirt tops with loose trousers.

In the street we saw women wearing traditional style long dresses and trousers, lacy dresses, jeans or active wear and t shirts, comfy clothes in matching colours, and pyjamas. The Vietnamese men were very handsome and the women were so beautiful. Hue had the least amount of cars we had seen in Vietnam, more scooters, and more use of scooters for everything; we saw a scooter with a flat trailer on the back with a big tree in a pot.

The palace was quite small, and reminded us of an English National Trust house; with vintage/antique wallpaper, gold seats and paintings. There were no ropes or glass for protection, just signs and hardly any restricted areas.

On the walk back we stopped at a coffee place. I ordered coffee and Anthony ordered ginger tea and we both got the standard free iced tea on arrival which had a hint of caramel. Anthony’s ginger tea was a work of art; a ginger tea bag, saucers with salt, sugar, lime, ginger, and balls like hard dried truffles maybe a herb bundle or root of some kind, and an orange slice. Salt and sugar together was quite common in Vietnam, maybe for the hot weather and rehydration like the salt and sugar lemon sodas in India. It was so hot that we were astonished to see women in padded jackets, and one woman go past on a scooter in a padded parka with a fur hood.

Along the streets in amongst the trunks of trees were shrines, on the way back we saw one with dragons, it was made out of concrete and built into the tree. Another had once-lit cigarettes which were now pillars of ash, standing upright alongside the incense. So many people smoked in Vietnam, tailor made cigarettes were cheap and everywhere, as if the health message hadn’t reached yet.

Part Two on Sunday

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Pictures of Hue, Vietnam

Pictures only. No draft chapter this time- still working on it.

For Ms Lockwood at The Lockwood Echo (not a real newspaper) who is saving the reading of my travel chapters ‘until the book is finished’ and she can ‘read it all together.’ Ms Lockwood’s faith in me is deeply and dearly appreciated. Her blog is very funny and completely original, please show her some love and check it out.

Hue is pronounced ‘Hway,’ so I’m afraid this title doesn’t really work as a play on The Cure song Pictures of you even though I couldn’t help thinking of it.

All the below photographs by my husband Anthony ‘John’ Hill

Above pics, the abandoned waterpark

Above pic, the view from our room balcony

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