the old-school guestbook archives
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sister survivors ~ November 17, 2002 - 7:17 a.m. still sick... this morning I was feeling much better. I had a cushy bed on the 24-hour train ride down to saigon from hue, so I spent most of the time sleeping. four of us in the compartment, which felt friendly, intimate, even though I don't speak vietnamese and only one woman spoke a tiny bit of english. her husband is in houston, texas, she told me, but I couldn't get the question across to ask if she'd go there to join him some day. she had an adorable son, maybe 9 years old, who kept poking his head out from under my bunk to check me out. I'd grin at him when he did, and he'd dimple up with the sweetest smile. we did that all the way to saigon. all I ate on the train was some plain white rice, more to be sociable than anything else, because the woman with a few words had invited me down to eat with them on their bunk. I was feeling much better by the time we pulled into saigon this morning. caught a motorbike taxi to the hotel I'd picked out of the guidebook. no room there, but they took me next door to their sister hotel. sweet, sweet people there. the rooms include free breakfast and dinner, and all-day-long coffee, tea, and bananas. $10 american brings a lot of perks in this part of the world. so I got cocky, feeling better like I was, thought I could eat real food. bread and jam at the hotel, with my thick, black vietnamese coffee, and then fried noodles and veggies for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant called the bodhi tree. I can never resist a name that smacks of dharma. so I got good and sick after lunch, and spent most of the rest of the day in my hotel room, watching a show about indigenous people in cambodia on the discovery channel. did I tell you? my room has a tv. this happened to me once before, but the only channels in english were a sports station and BBC2. hanoi. the night I flopped in my hotel room and saw on BBC2 that the hate-mongers have taken over my country. and cried, and cried. this tv, though, gets the discovery channel (which I fall more in love with every time I see it) AND the cartoon network. I could be sick in a worse place. so tonight I dragged myself up and out, needing to upload some photos to go with the monday entry I only this morning got off to the folks at TravelingEd. some fabulous photos of hanoi and ha long bay, check them out. my goal is to actually empty the camera tonight, which I've been trying to do for days. I've been jinxed with slow connections, crashing computers, and the whole sick-as-a-dog thing. but such is life in southeast asia. I can't believe it's almost over. I can feel myself pulling away, though, letting go. I cut my nails tonight, trimming back the wild growth that hot-climate living inspires. yesterday, my body pushed out the last piece of the splinter under my nail I picked up the night before I crossed the border into laos. the little bit of thailand I've been carrying with me. did I tell you? I lost my amulets in hanoi. every single one. left them on the bedpost in my hotel room when I left for ha long bay, in spite of the compulsive last-minute-doublecheck I always do. when amulets fall away, it's for a reason. so, I let go. letting go... it feels as if so much has fallen away in vietnam. two days after I spent that lovely night with toan, I discovered that the bead to my belly button ring had fallen out, and the ring had come loose. it's a gold ring, a nice one, and I've always liked it. I tried to put it back in, but I was having trouble, and then the realization hit me: psycho boy gave me that ring. which has been resting just above my second chakra, which was so blocked after that whole mess of a relationship that I didn't let anyone touch me for six months. and when I finally let sweet patrick in, it was slowly, with much resistance and fits of weeping. patrick and I healed a lot of the damage done in long, sweet nights together. I don't think I'd realized just how much until I sat in that dingy hotel room in dong ha with my bellybutton ring in my hand and remembered how effortless it had been to let toan in. I didn't even give it a second thought at the time, because it felt so natural. are you following all this? maybe I'm just rambling... but the upshot of it is that I let the gold ring go. like so much. I've healed from that experience in so many ways, I'm ready leave it behind, like the broken circle of gold ditched in my dingy hotel room in the poorest province in vietnam. maybe someone there has a use for it. and I left the earring he gave me in a cybercafe in hue. it's just so satisfying to leave his gifts behind, those material tokens that were his substitute for any real expression of caring. to be fair, I think he wants to love. he's just too crippled to know how. I wish that for him, I do, in spite of the creeping rage that still haunts me sometimes late at night. mostly, these days, I just don't think about him, except in moments of realization like I had in dong ha. when I start to get angry, I just leave the thoughts behind. yes, everything falls away in vietnam. who knew? it's not a country that ever topped my list of places to go. I came to this part of the world following a call to thailand, but I have loved this country well and deeply, with all its scars and all its strength. I have learned so much from it, and ached with its beauty. maybe vietnam and I are not so different, in the end of it all.
(((rings))) |