There’s a story about a turtle in a pond. He grew up in this pond, thinking his entire world was the pond. He had a routine, he had his friends, his family, his favorite places. He knew when to eat, when to sleep, when the sun rises and set. He was content and thought he knew everything there was to know.
One day, an eagle came and swooped down and snatched him in her talons. Flying higher and higher the turtle saw his beloved pond growing ever smaller and smaller into a tiny blue and green dot. Then he saw other blue and green dots, larger ones, much larger than his home. So many of them. Then he saw trees and large hills. What was all of this? How can this be? There was a whole other world out there!
Sudden he felt the eagle’s grip loosening and he started to fall, faster and faster until he splashed into warm water. Ahhhhh, he was finally back home.
But unbeknownst to him, the turtles he met in this new pond saw the world differently. These turtles moved faster and were always hungry. Their sun was more piercing and had her own rhythm. He was out of sorts, a visitor. He knew nothing he realized. Up was down and down was up in this new pond. He only knew one thing that held true, and that was he missed his friends and family.
He stood high until he spotted the eagle and braced her talons to bring him home. Ahhhhh, plop! Back in his pond, forever changed by his adventure.
So, to answer the question: are we in Vietnam? Yes, but the new Vietnam, the future Vietnam. The old Vietnam we left in 1983 is no more. She’s the sum of her parts, the sum of wars and famine, of brutal colonization by the Chinese(111 BC - 939 AD), French(1858–1954) and Japanese(1940-1945). The sum of every heart and soul of the Vietnamese people who are moving towards a modern technologically advanced world. The people here are hungry, you can feel it. It hums here like a bee hive.
As I write this in a coffee shop, 2 min walk from my birth home, while my sister is having her hair washed, a metro train zipped past above me! Who would ever have guessed that 42 years later, when once we were begging for rice that a metro train is zipping by my birth house? No one in my family that’s for sure.
This trip has been a crazy adventure. I had to turn my Canadian brain off and just be present to it all. You blink and you miss something. It’s really a lot. So much for the senses to process it all.
I’m ending this blog and thank you for following on this journey with my wonderful sisters Tina, Tu, Tam and Tina’s husband Richard(who just had hip surgery and is a trooper).
I look forward to the cold again, to my little pond…
Here is a photo and video cache. Enjoy….
