Here I am, at my workplace at 11.30 at night, feeling strange and displaced. My head is made of lead and my arms are suspended from my body by fibres of light and spun cheetos. My energy right now is that much provisional.
Anyway I'm back from Vietnam and I am wondering if it sounds a tad condescending to say that I am moderately enamored by this charming land. My head's still spinning from shuttling frenetically between the chaotic urban sprawl that is Hanoi and the countryside with the new Panasonic factories lifting away its fogged slumber. On the road, hills and mountains greet me from the horizon, then dart back behind the wall of buildings. I am not a stranger to having motorcycles and scooters swerve about inches away from you, like dragonflies negotiating the still damp air, but the experience of these streets is constantly overwhelming. I'm not sure whether it overwhelms me in a good or bad way, but the flow of traffic strikes me as a daily celebration of human instinct and flexibility. I feel more, if you will, human on these streets because I'm constantly making eye contact with the motorists, graciously giving and taking the spaces on the roads, using instinct to negotiate my way to the other end. Walking across the street is an indispensable urban language here. It's a refreshing change from glancing at the disembodied faces behind the darkened windshields, parked neatly behind the lines, impatient for your crossing (whereby you are never fast enough) and the traffic light's changing (no matter how inevitable it is.)
"The traffic lights here are merely a suggestion," says S, our Singaporean guide who is now based in Hanoi, as she walks breezily across a busy traffic circus. Another thing about the streets - you can't be taken seriously if you get cold feet mid-stride. Everyone is sure to identify you as a first-timer, a greenhorn to the dissonance of such casual deregulation in a communist state. Taken further, to feel apprehension in the middle of the road is to doubt the delicate ecosystem of confidence between its users. It takes a great deal of trust to know that the Vespa won't plow right through you despite being 8 metres in front and traveling at least 50 km/h.
The urban-rural divide is a false dichotomy here. Sidewalks seem to spew greenery from either side of the roads, with vines getting tangled in some rusty second-floor balustrades, creeping up the power cables, plaiting them clumsily together as if friendship bracelets frayed by time. In the countryside, industry emerges from the fertile ground in grey blocks of economic promise. Oxen walk along the highways, from the market, oblivious to the thunder-like rumble of container trucks.
Of course, I am looking at the different landscapes through voyeuristic, touristy lenses. It's hard not to romanticize experiences of traveling in a land so foreign to your own, because we are so distanced from the reality of uncertainty and discomfort within these memories, but it's a long night and some nights are not worth sleeping.
