Kill the Myth

As I begin to draft this blog, entitling it 'Friday week 4' I am amazed to think that it really is Friday week 4. We move to Chau Doc on Monday and out of Vietnam, into Cambodia on Wednesday. I can't quite believe it but I am also ready. Eager to learn from my experience, I keep trying to track how many nuggets of amazing inner knowledge I might have gained. I seem to remain just as clueless as ever. But it's early days. Just wait. 

Don't hold your breath though.

As we spend all of today on a bus, and much of that sleeping (my waterfall high of yesterday didn't allow me to stop buzzing long enough to sleep) this blog will focus instead on a subject I  growing more and more fanatical about.

There is an idea that there is only one kind of travelling. It's odd because people generally understand well that there are many different types if holiday. But only one accepted form of travel. 

What complete and utter rubbish. This myth is responsible for the enormous number of people who said to me as I prepared to depart,

"Wow. That's amazing. I'm so jealous. But I could never do it."

You could. You don't have to. It's possible to have life defining experiences without leaving your home. But you can if you want to. You can do it.

What people mean when they say that is that they could never do a particular type of travel which is presented as being the only way. They could not move from place to place in quick succession, constantly seeing things day and night time, following a 'tourist trail largely prescribed for them and all of it on a tiny budget. They could not arrive somewhere in the evening with nowhere to stay and book a cockroach filled dorm on the hoof. For pennies. And probably whilst wearing those tie dyed balloon pants or possibly a bandana.

Fair enough. I could never do that either.

I could do this though. 

M and I are staying for a month in one place in most countries, using it as a base to explore from. We are hiring something basic and self catering, or a home stay. Where we need to stay in hostels we found a private shared room was less expensive than two beds in a dorm. We have a budget but it isn't unreasonable and we saved up for years to do it, and are doing it later in life than the average person. We don't have a packed daily schedule and are largely avoiding doing or seeing things purely because its what people are supposed to do and see. We have a project each to work on, my novel and M's photography plus daily blogging and so sometimes we spend hours sitting still, just plonking ourselves in a place and drinking it in. Worse still, focusing on other things.

It's not a better way. Its just our way.

The fact is there are as many different types of travel as there are types of people. There are infinite possibilities. 

Some people are serial monogamists. They move from place to place, to live and work there for years before moving on.

Others travel to many places in succession, but their interests are narrow. We met a man who had travelled purely for the surf, for example. He stayed in each place for a long time and always lived on a beach. 

Some people need to play it safer with their home lives. They travel very gradually, picking their annual two week holidays carefully, ensuring these are in interesting and exotic places.

D, who we met at the Dalat homestay, was in many ways a very atypical traveller. She was afraid of mud, animals, spicy foods, heights and the smell of manure. I wondered at times how she managed to leave home in the first place. 

 But what D could do better than anyone else was build a relationship. Within hours she was chatting away to the host family, swapping cooking advice. Within a day she was knitting on the sofa, a child who was afraid of other tourists, playing contented by her side. By the time we left she and H's wife had made plans for a girly evening, complete with ambitious manicure plans. She was the first to help with the dinner and the first to clear away. She knew things about family life that the rest of us hadn't begun to explore. Whether D knew this or not, this was her gift. Her style of travel was all about the people. I don't know how she fared scrambling down to the waterfall. But if she didn't make it, it doesn't matter. Perhaps this is the most authentic way to travel, whether D had planned it that way or not.

There are a thousand different ways to travel. O does it by staying at home. We come to her and she collects our stories.

So, for the last time, let's kill the myth. You do not have to be fearless. (See Bryony Holland's blog, 'Working Wandering and Worrying' for more inspirational stories on this issue) You do not have to have money. You do not have to be comfortable with your backpack on constantly.

The only indispensable thing you bring with you to each situation - is you. And it doesn't matter if the you isn't perfect. Or if you aren't ecstatic at every available moment. Or you haven't become spiritually pure and enlightened after a couple of weeks.

There's only one way to travel - and that's your way. Do it differently. Kill the myth.

Forget Heroine. Try a Waterfall.

We have agreed with L and A the previous evening that travelling offers a good opportunity  to face our fears. Accordingly, M and I are going on a motorbike tour of the countryside and L and A are going canyoning. Canyoning, in this instance means abseiling down the face of a huge and powerful waterfall. Or two. Along with some water slides and a couple of jumps. Off cliffs, that is. Into water. L is afraid of heights. In contrast our cushy little trip sitting casually on the back of a motorbike driven through jaw dropping countryside by the ever careful H, seems somewhat of a cop out. I admire her courage, and I am actually quite excited about the end of the day when we can meet up again and swap stories.

Having said that, our trip had its own exhilaration, if admittedly, no actual danger.

I don't know exactly what it is. The countryside itself which is verdant and magnificent, the height, the pure air and wide, winding mountain paths or the physicality of the way you experience it, wind in your face, snatching your breath as you ride, the smell of the air and the crops and the coffee skins, holding onto a gentle man with a shy smile, who you met two days ago and who navigates the route with careful pride. Whatever it is, it makes things swell up in me. I have the sort of sudden stirring of unidentifiable emotions that I associate with the opening to a piece of theatre, the birth of my nieces or the day that I  walked down the aisle.

The day is packed with colour and information. We walk to the top of a smaller mountain to gaze at a panoramic view of Dalat.

We stop at a flower farm and H explains how the Gerboras grow, the investment from large Dutch companies and the sale both to local markets and to large business who buy in bulk to sell in the city. The city in question, can be Vietnamese or in any number of overseas locations.

H explains how the communist government supports the poor, providing them with a chance to do well, because the land costs the same for rich or poor. This means that the rich cannot drive up the price until only they can afford it. Its cheap enough for anyone to give it a go. Once again I reflect that the western view of communism seems based on extremists. Certain aspects of it seem really to work. And the form of communism adopted in Vietnam still allows for open borders, international trade and the ability to earn a reasonable wage. In fact, if what H tells us is truly representative, it is more possible, at least in the rural areas, to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps and make the kind of journey H's family have made. Possibly, as in the UK, some of this potential for social mobility is largely theoretical, and there are subtle factors such as peer group, accent and education which form a glass ceiling. But if that's the case H certainly doesn't tell us. Nobody so far has told us anything bad about the government. That rather goes without saying, but H in particular is grateful for it. The system has allowed his family, at least since 1986 when the land was no longer owned by the government, a clear path to prosperity, and affordable land on which to forge it.

We stop at a coffee plantation, where the coffee is grown, processed and, eventually sold. We taste the bitter fruit of the various trees, and H teaches us how to tell a Moka coffee tree from an Arabica or Robusta. He also tells us about weasel coffee. Weasel coffee, as we explain later to our fellow housemates, much to the absolute disgust of D, a traveller from Isreal, is coffee made from beans which have been predigested by weasels. In the digestive system the enzymes give the coffee a special flavour. When the weasels, not to put it too delicately, poo it back out again, the beans are still whole and are washed and roasted. And then, yes, you can drink it. And yes, to D's incredulity that night over dinner, we do drink it. 

Actually we hadn't expected to. Not from disgust but because we were concerned that we might find the weasels crowded cruelly into cages, with nothing to eat except coffee beans, in which case we didn't want to dignify this process by tasting the outcome.

Perhaps a testament to the quality of the tour, this weasel farm houses sleepy but happy looking weasels in roomy cages complete with houses to shelter in, bars to balance along and, all importantly, a food tray containing not just the beans, but also some banana. 

"He sleeps now" says H, "because he ate coffee all night and he couldn't sleep." 

It's a nice explanation. Though actually I think they're nocturnal.

We taste the weasel coffee. It's rich and bitter and not as expensive as we've seen in the city. A word though. I think weasel farms work rather like meat farms. Some are humane. Some less so. And there is the fundamental problem of whether humans have the right to encage wild animals. Almost certainly not. But I have no intention of spreading rumours which put the weasel farmers out of business. This, like all animal products, carries some risk that the animals have not been well treated. But there's no way to know. 

Having given ourselves a buzz with the coffee (as if we needed one), we move to a rice wine factory where the highlight for me is seeing a cat. Yes. I know. My priorities are skewed. Alcohol before felines. I don't need to travel all the way to Vietnam to see a cat. 

Luckily M is paying attention. H shows us how the rice wine is made and explains that when it is first distilled it has an alcohol content of 75%. It is then mixed with water to bring the alcohol down to a mere 40%. H dips a shot glass into a plastic bottle and brings it up, with a small taster of liquid inside it. He hands it to me. I drink it. By this point a group of lads, also tourists have arrived with their guide who seems considerably less informative than H. I am enormously pleased to note that they cough and splutter after their taster. I find it strong, but fairly pleasant. Clearly I have alcoholic tendencies and an iron stomach. H dips another glass and hands it to M. This time it's pretty much full to the brim. M is man enough to drink it all down without a fuss.

"So, what percentage did you say this was?" I ask H. "Forty, is it? Or was it thirty five?"

"No," says H casually, "this is seventy five. Later it is forty."

Excellent. We wobble back onto the bikes. My feeling of euphoria is mysteriously intensified. 

The euphoria produced by the rice wine, however, is nothing compared to what comes next. We visit a noodle factory and a silk factory, both of which are hugely interesting, and the methods used ingenious and only very lightly mechanised. The silk factory however, does create further animal based misgivings. The silk worms are friendly looking white creatures which peer inquisitively at H when he picks one up to explain the process. They create a silk cocoon in which they will hibernate until the triumphal moment when they burst out as a moth - and fly to freedom, laying their eggs and thus renewing the circle of life. Cue rousing Lion King based sound track.

Except they don't quite get there. The cocoons are placed in warm water where the gossamer thin, almost invisible thread of the silk is gradually unraveled until only the small, silicone transparent bubble remains, and the silk worm inside. Whether at this point the worm has died or is only sleeping, I am not sure. Either way, in true Vietnamese tradition, nothing is wasted. You can eat crispy fried silkworm with spring onion on your way out. 

An aside - I am in no way accusing the Vietnamese of cruelty. Or at least of any special kind of cruelty. Humans the world over utilise animals for their own ends, and different places eat different creatures and domesticate others. The silk process in the UK is probably similar. When H offers us the bowl of fried silk worms, noting as he does so that as vegetarians we will probably not eat them, but a photo would be OK, M moves to say no, disapprovingly. He doesn't want to be part of a process which leaves us sad for the silk worm. But I stop him. We are travelling and will see things we would never countenance at home. Not partaking is one thing, but the worm is dead. It's a picture of a culture which doesn't waste. It's really no different to eating cows. Or chickens. And to some extent I wonder whether, really, it isn't more respectful, if you have killed an animal, not to simply throw its carcass away. I am not sure how convinced I am of that argument, given that the animal will contribute after death to the ongoing cycles of life, by decomposing, nourishing the soil and creating plant life. But its really not a simple issue. I would venture that a way to harvest silk without the destruction of the silk worm inside is possible. I would venture that the death of a silk worm in this way, to earn a living and provide for your family is more reasonable than, for example, the eating of live bugs by people who have more than enough alternative options, and who don't even find the creature appetising, purely for dubious entertainment value on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. And other such edifying programmes. I know. I am a TV snob. But really. Give me The Killing any day. At least nothing actually dies in that.

The really amazing part of the day comes next, though. We drive to Elephant Falls. I know it's a waterfall. I expect to peep over a fence at a natural phenomenon, drink in the beauty, maybe hear the roar of it and be awed. I expect it to be, well, pretty. And nice. A good photo opportunity. Then I expect to hop back on the bike and continue our leisurely wind through the countryside. And I'd have been happy with that.

H's other driver, who I realise later is another brother, gestures to us to follow him down a path. There are three stone elephant statues.

"Photo?" says our guide. We obediently pose.

Then he gestures behind us and, sure enough, there's a fence we can lean on and drink in the view. The waterfall is truly huge. Its very high and the water roars as it pours, at an incredible speed, off the side of the rocks. At the bottom is a large rock which could, if you squinted a little, be interpreted as a large elephant crouching in the water.

"Beautiful" I say to our guide. He just nods. Sure it is. But he sees it every day.

We are hustled away from the fence and down a winding path. To the foot of the waterfall I guess. It makes sense. Half way down our guide stops and points back, above the trees at the side of the falls. Rising up high into the air is a cloud of thick steam from the impact of the water with the rocks at the foot of the waterfall. I stop very still, watching it. Its really quite incredible. The scene is eerie, the roar of the water,  the slow plume of water droplets like smoke far above the trees. There's no road noise, no birds that we can hear above the roaring. No other people.

We continue down. Eventually the path becomes a series of rocks making footholds down a reasonably steep bank. The red mud is very slippery. I try not to look down. We are reasonably wet now, from the spray. We keep going. Half climb, half slither. I am a little shaky. I'm not terrified but also not comfortable with heights. And I don't trust my climbing ability. Not at this stage anyway. Later in this trip I will be properly intrepid. Or that's the idea. And scrambling down slippery rock paths is the way to get there. 

We keep going. After a while I think we start to curve to our left. I can't tell where we are anymore. I can only see rocks and mud and the roar of the water fills our ears. No one speaks. There isn't any point. 

Suddenly, and without warning our guide jumps down and moves right. We do the same. And suddenly. Instantly. We are drenched. I am standing just beneath the wall of water and a little to the right. There is no safety rail, no perspex screen separating us from the water. We are literally standing on the rock surface at the corner of the waterfall.

Our guide is laughing and nodding. I am laughing too but I don't know why. I nod back at him but we are saying things I don't believe I can put into words.

Then he gestures to me again. Come. Stand here. I move to the flat peice of rock where he is standing. I have forgotten everything. M, who is busy in the dry, trying to capture the moment on camera, where I am, where we will go next, what my name is. I have never cared less about the small stuff. If you told me in that moment I had lost my job, gone bankrupt, mislaid my passport or was seriously ill - I don't think I could have comprehended what it was you were talking about. It was just me and the water. Standing on that flat piece of rock I can see above me a wall of roaring water, almost too thick even to admit the sunlight. I am directly underneath the waterfall. The steam is so dense that when I inhale I take in less air than water. And the force of the body of water above me, literally takes my breath away. I stand there, gasping, arms open, face up towards the water and I feel the kind of rush of euphoria which I assume is what people take drugs to experience. I cannot express it. But I just stand there, summon what little breath I can. And scream. I want to scream louder than the roar of the water. I want to scream obscenities. And if that sounds a bit disrespectful to the waterfall itself and the God who made it, I can only explain that it was something so powerful that I couldn't find an adequate human language to express it. I reached for the most extreme words that I knew. I didn't actually shout any swear words. I just stood there and roared back at the roaring water. I think it, and God, understood.

When we finally make our way, drenched, back up to the top, my heart is thumping and my legs are wobbly. I don't remember the scramble upwards, though I am covered in red mud when I get there. It is the single and most amazing natural high I have ever experienced. For me, this far, it's the defining moment of our travels. And it's enough. If nothing else tops it I'm still happy.

It's hard for anything else to match this. We discuss Buddhism with H over noodle soup. He is much more devout than anyone I have met in the city. From the way he speaks this is common in his community. It may be a terrible generalisation but perhaps in the country, where there is more time for reflection, where you are, agriculturally, far more obviously at the whim of nature, and the God you believe understands or controls it, and where natural forces like the Elephant Falls outnumber the manmade roads, towers and devices, it is simply easier to feel closer to God.

We go to another, stepped waterfall where H, carefully guides us out on the ledge and we stand with the shallow water rushing past us to fall to the level below.

We go to a pagoda. We go to a minority village in the centre of which is a large concrete chicken. The myth is that a boy and girl fell in love but the girl was too poor and so the boy's father forbade the marriage unless the girl could find a chicken with spurs on its legs. Such a chicken does not exist. The girl goes into the jungle to find it. Worried for her, the boy runs away after her. Both of them die in the jungle. To this day the stone chicken reminds the people never to value money above love.

We see a mushroom farm, a lake and then we take a cable car high up the mountain.

We see the French quarter and we visit an ATM. Everything is amazing but a little blurry. I still have a waterfall in my mind.

Back home we catch up with the others. There is a lot of excited chatter. The canyoning has been a real rush and everybody, fearful or not, has done everything and is suitably proud. We are all exhilerated. Dinner is deafening.

I finish a section of Neville the novel before lying down and trying to sleep. I am still pumping.

Over lunch H has told us that to traffic or produce heroine is punishable by death. We agree generally that heroine is a dangerous thing.

What I can't work out is why anyone bothers. Just go and stand directly beneath a waterfall. It's free.

Friends, Frogs and Countrymen

Dalat is a mountainous area of Vietnam, north of Saigon and close to the Central Highlands. The air is cool and clear and the scenery a green patchwork of farms, growing vegetables, flowers and coffee. Workers in conical hats squat among the strawberry fields, pruning and tending each fruit by hand. Herds of bison plod, unhurriedly through the winding streets, responding resignedly to the flick of a bamboo switch wielded by a farmer, moving to or from a field ready for ploughing. It looks like a picture of Vietnam in a guide book, or a more South East Asian version of one of Wordsworth's ideals.

We are woken, fittingly, by the crow of a cockerel. We see and hear cockerels everywhere in Vietnam but this one seems to have made a special journey to crow as loud as possible right outside our window. Less fittingly, it is followed by loud banging sounds from the ever growing extension being built on the side of the home stay. 

I say less fittingly, and it hauls me, groaning, out of bed, but actually it's enormously fitting. The Vietnamese generally do get up with the cockerel and work very hard. In Dalat especially, that work is largely manual and must be done with the light. As the light disappears as early as five in the evening, and there are crops which need tending, children who need feeding, guests to be given breakfast and houses to build, it makes sense to have an early start.

It fits too, with out host family. The women tirelessly cook and clean up after us and won't hear of help with the washing up. We help cook but are given easy jobs (which in my case we manage to get surprisingly wrong). The brothers who look after the home stay, H and J, are building an extension to house more guests as well as running a tour company and a coffee farm. H's sister also runs a flower farm. His wife sells fruit on a market stall. It's multi tasking to the max, long days and hard work but nobody seems to mind. 

"Sometimes it is hard when he is away doing two or three day motorbike tours." says H's wife, her hand on his. Their small daughter, afraid of so many pale western faces, peers at us with a mixture of shyness and mischief and then buries her head in her Father's shoulder. 

"When she was younger," says H, "when I came back from the tour, she didn't recognise me."

He means his daughter I think, not his wife.

That is the nearest we hear to a complaint. Everybody we speak to explains, 'we do this so our parents are comfortable. We do it to look after our family.'

Old people are like boxes full of priceless experiences, memories and insights, which, all too often, are somehow locked, either by illness or our own condescending attitude towards them. In H and J's father's case, there is a padlock made of language barrier. But J, talkative and brimming with energy, tells us his story.

Fighting in the 17 year war, H and J's father injured his leg. The war ended shortly after. When their father was discharged from hospital, he came home to find his wife had gone. Gossips in the village talked of a white man, who came to see her shortly before she disappeared, but there has never been any definite evidence and to this day, H, who is actually J's step brother, has no knowledge of his mother after that day. 

"She could be anywhere" says J, "in America with a new husband or dead or somewhere in Thailand or Vietnam."

Whichever version is true, it's a familiar story in the aftermath of war. 

There in the agricultural community of Dalat, in a country devastated by a war which seemed to last forever, and chemical attacks which maimed people, their children and the landscape, H and J's father found himself too weak to work the land. People in the village grew angry because he couldn't help the community as others did, each helping to recover one another's livelihood. Times were very hard and the family grew poor. Of eight children, four died because there was little to eat. War and circumstances combined to bring the family down.

But, in Vietnam, as H explains to us later, you can work hard, start simple and, little by little, pick yourself up. (Though this may be more possible in an agricultural region than in the city, and I am sure there are still some who don't manage to do so, or who don't have the luck).

H's father remarried to J's mother and, little by little, bit by bit and through extreme hours of backbreaking work in the fields, especially for J's mother, being stronger than his father, they saved enough to move from wooden house to concrete and from working as labourer on another's farm, to investing in their own until they were able, when H married, to give him a coffee farm of his own. J trained in the tourist industry. Between them they ensure that their mother and father, who worked so hard for them, get to enjoy their retirement.

Looking at their father, who beams at us from beyond his black thick rimmed glasses and peak cap and their mother, who talks warmly to me in Vietnamese, smiling widely and alternately hugging me and patting my arm, I think they are enjoying it. And that they must be very proud of their children.

After breakfast, which includes home made strawberry jam as the star item, we are given a lift for free into Dalat city by H on his motorbike. This being the first time I have set my fearful western bottom on a motorbike since our attempt to hire one, (a motorbike, not a fearful western bottom) there is a cold little thrill through me as we set off, and I have a strong urge to make like a child at a theme park, and shout at the last minute, 'stop! I don't like it! I want to get off!'. I set my teeth doggedly and force myself to remember that motorbikes are different here and that H is experienced and very careful. 

"You won't let me fall off, will you?" I say to H, trying to smother my fear with humour. 

H smiles one of his habitual, gentle shy smiles mixed with the same mischief I detect in his daughter.

"You will not fall off" he says. 

I take him at his word. And I don't. It's fine. I am fearless and brave. I am basically Tarzan.

I get a chance to prove this when we get into town and are dropped off at what is known as 'the crazy house'. It's an enormous, sprawling structure, full of hidden corners, pathways, staircases and surprises. With its concrete pillars made to look like the large, winding roots of the trees here, mixed here are there with the graceful legs and bent neck of a giraffe, its walls painted and shaped to look like the eerie red hues of stalacmites and stalactites of an age old cave, and scattered with silvery spider webs, winding green concrete vines and here and there, a deer or a rabbit, it looks like some great living organism. The fact that there are several places still under construction only reinforces that. We have some fun skipping up, over, into and round it and then bump into the German couple who are staying at our homestay.

I really like the German couple, L and A, and I'm pleased to have found them. We approach them carefully, though, trying to give them the option of not spending the day with us if they wanted some space. It's all fine though, and we set off together. From our breakfast conversation I know our plans for today are similar - to explore the town on foot, taking in the various sights, which are rather handily arranged in a rough circle, and then heading home.

Moving in order around our route, we begin with what is known as the 'chicken church', and are mutually baffled by the lack of chickens, chicken motifs or any other indication as to why it's named as such. We walk around it. It's a nice building. But we don't find any chickens apart from a small weather vane on the top of the steeple.

We propose various explanations. Perhaps inside it is full of chickens. Perhaps it is a church for pious chickens. We are not able to enter the building to test these theories. Next to it is a smaller, barn like building with a cross on it.

"Perhaps that's the chicken church" says A.

Later we discover the reason for its name is, indeed, the weathervane. They are rather less common here than in Europe.

We walk on, and begin a walk around the lake, detouring briefly to the French colonial 'Old Railway Station which, complete with both steam and diesel trains, reminds me of the watercress line in Hampshire, England. We walk around for a while before a diesel train arrives and spills out an enormous number of tourists, tour guides and megaphones. We beat a hasty retreat and continue our walk round the lake.

The lake is relatively peaceful and we stroll round revelling in the cooler climes of Dalat. In fact it's quite deceptive and we all get quite sun burned. The sun in Dalat is the kind that burns you, whereas in Saigon it sort of boils you from the inside.  As we walk we talk, A and I in particular get so into the conversation we nearly forget to turn off to see the old rail station, though luckily both L and M are better at multi tasking. 

L and A are the first travellers we have met so far who I have found it easy to talk to. A lot of back packers talk seems largely to centre on quite a lot of moaning. Whilst I sympathise with complaints which are often difficulties or culture clashes which we too have noticed, it doesn't feel right to sit in a country and complain about its customs and its people. I am very conscious that we are all very lucky to afford to be here, that the complaints only require small adjustments to get used to and are far from life threatening, and that a good number of issues are also prevalent at home. Vietnam, for example, does not have the monopoly on beggars, pushy sales people or overinflated prices. Interestingly, in this home stay none of the other guests have this tendency, but in L and A I feel an affinity. They travel with an open mind and a ready smile. If they are afraid or overwhelmed by something they don't assume its the local's fault but try to learn to understand, assimilate it or, if it is a fear, face it. I like to think M and I travel this way, but even if we are still working towards it, L and A are an example of what I hope we can be as travellers.

We talk about travelling with a conscience, without exploiting people by bartering for unreasonably low prices, especially given the very favourable exchange rates. L talks about trying to travel with a relatively low carbon footprint, choosing long bus journeys over flights for short distances, for example.

L and M talk about the home stay they had in Laos, staying with a family in the jungle and picking fresh fruits from the garden. It sounds amazing.

We spend a while over coffee deciding what M's new career should be. Suggestions include housewife and mother (this seems to be more sensible than it actually is, given that it included M physically carrying the baby as well, to avoid my needing to take maternity leave), and airline pilot

 The latter is apparently the most overpaid job you can have (allegedly) as pilots mostly play angry birds and flirt with the air hostesses. As this would involve travel and to keep him away from the air hostesses, there was some talk of my joining him as an air hostess. However this would require me having my hair in one of those perfect buns and being generally flawless and perfectly ironed. That might happen for approximately five minutes in the morning but would be, let's face it, unsustainable. I am naturally rumpled. I like to think of it as a sort of tousled charm... So I will be his mechanic. That's it then. Sorted. I'll give up the day job and get me a boiler suit.

This is, I admit, a massive digression. But the last few days in Dalat have been bursting with activity. It has been a concentration of exhilarating moments, friendship, humour, awe and beauty and I have to represent it all or I will burst with it. 

Also I am writing this on Thursday, after the event and during an eight hour bus journey. So I have time to explode with information and various unnecessary details. So there. Dear reader, live with it. If you have read this far you are used to waffle.

But back to the point. We get home, after an amusing taxi journey in which we basically get in knowing we are about to be overcharged and then go with it anyway. 

"You have to be careful with meters" says A, "because the driver can go the long way and then charge you double"

"This will be on the meter" says our driver.

"OK" we say cheerfully, and pile in.

The driver immediately sets off in the opposite direction.

There is a bit of sheepish giggling and then we bite the bullet and point out to the driver that the home stay is just over there, and that we should be there by now.

"What?" says the driver, craning his head round to look at us as he drives, "yes. Home stay. This way."

We give in with good humour. We'll get there in the end. We knew what we were getting into. And anyway I would prefer that to further neck craning resulting in a possible, unexpected dip in the lake.

We arrive. We are charged more than we have been told by H it would cost. But it isn't too much more and in the grand scheme of things none of us is going to be bankrupted over it. 

When we get back M and I go, with another couple for a walk with H around his coffee farm. We don wellington boots and set off. I feel most intrepid in the boots. Like a proper farmer, as I comment to a gently indulgent M. As we walk to the farm, through first dirt, then mud tracks, breathing in the scent of fresh air, manure and farmland, scrambling down through wet earth from one level cut out into the hillside to another, and grasping at moist red mud as we scramble, I entertain a brief fantasy about being a farmer.

"You have to go through each plant" says H, showing us a strawberry plantation, "and pull out the leaves as they grow old to allow the plant to last longer and yield more." Up on the mountains and hills of Dalat, it is strawberry season all year round. I imagine myself, humming gently as I work, in my boots, skin grown brown and hardy in the sun, greeting my fellow workers cheerfully each morning and taking in great, contented lungfuls of clean mountain air.

"It takes a long time" says H. "So you have to start very early. When you finish the field it's time to start back again at the beginning."

Do not be misled by my pastoral ideals. Farming here is back breaking, difficult work, in all weathers and for little money, in an environment which, thanks to ongoing climate change, does not always guarantee a harvest. I wouldn't manage one day of it.

Frogs croak in the ditch by the side of a cabbage field. I point them out delightedly.

"Frogs?" says H, bemused. When you are running a farm to feed your family you don't really have time to have raptures over the various amphibious life forms in your irrigation system. So I keep quiet about the kittens I spot a bit later.

Thankfully, though due more to hard work than to luck, H and his family are not quite in the hand to mouth position I described previously. H explains as he shows us his sister's flower farm. When you begin you work on someone else's land. You save little by little to buy your own plot, and then, depending on what you are growing, your own greenhouse. Greenhouses are made of bamboo and plastic sheeting and cost around 5000 US dollars, an enormous amount of Vietnamese dong. Once you have this you gradually work up to employing your own workers, all the while keeping money aside for a new greenhouse, for when this grows old in ten years, new crops for when the time comes for rotation, and provision for your family and your children. When your children get married you will gift them your land for them to farm to provide for their children and for your retirement. Obviously, being a few generations in helps here, H's parents pulled together a farm from nothing. But H and his sister were each given a plot when they got married. That's about as easy as it gets though. And H and his siblings worked hard themselves in the fields from a very young age, and often went hungry. 

The farming is largely done by hand, aided by a few ingenious systems, such as a pump to take water from natural streams and the lake, regularly replenished by rain water, and the use of palm leaves in place of plastic to pack around the rows of crops to protect them. Nothing is wasted. Coffee bean skins are used as fertiliser for H's Moka coffee plantation. Animal waste is dug into new land to make it more fertile for the crops and rice husks are used to help retain moisture in the soil for crops which need wetter conditions. Most farms are just over or just under one 'hectare', though some of the richer farmers in other areas have more. 

H's manic juggling of farm, homestay and tour guide for his brother's tourism company is explained slightly by his choice of crop. Coffee does not require much watering and is harvested once a year in November. It's a relatively hardy plant which thrives in this soil and climate. It can be sold as it is, the purchasing companies generally having more space and wherewithal to dry and roast the beans before sale. Harvesting must be done by hand though, with plastic being spread on the ground and then the beans stripped by the branches in much the same motion as you might strip fresh rosemary or thyme. H hires workers in to help him.

I still haven't quite lost the fantasy of being one of those workers. And on the way back I can't help it. I still slow down to listen to the sound of the frogs.

Dinner again is so exuberant and the conversation so wide ranging that it blurs into a sort of joyful cacophony. Again after dinner we sit chatting, but this time I excuse myself relatively early, struggling with a headache and finding myself falling asleep.

Clearly, I would make rather a pathetic farmer. I am very happy though. I spend a bit of time with Neville the novel, though he understands about the headache and then I fall into bed, images rushing around in my mind. 

I love Dalat. Unreservedly. I love the family, the other guests, the landscape, the frogs. I love the cheeky taxi driver and the warm red mud. I love this journey. I love M.

"Me too" says the latter. "Now stop eulogising. And go to sleep."

What is it about the countryside?

When we arrived home on Monday, we found that our poor host, O, had been whisked off at short notice to travel to the capital to review an event. She'd had only two hours to pack, during which time she had actually gone shopping for us, so that we had some food to cook for ourselves. M, being generally brilliant at this sort of thing, was able to craft us something lovely out of the ample ingredients. Amusingly, among them were cornflakes! I am not sure I could bear to go back to eating cornflakes for breakfast now!

We had been planning to go to Dalat, so we booked a bus and somewhere to stay, in the hope that we could be away and back at the same time as O, and get to see her again before we leave Vietnam.

And so, here we are!

The bus journey takes most of the day. During it, I am virtuous enough to keep my resolve and write another chunk of Neville, who is very pleased. He and I are getting on better and better. He definitely improves with attention. 

I also read Alain de Botton's Art of Travel, which M has been raving about. In his opening chapter, he recalls a trip he made to Barbados, which had been long anticipated. When he got there, however, surrounded by swaying palm trees and warm sands, he finds himself worrying about whether the lunch was included in the price, a tricky problem at work, and arguing with his wife about something petty over dinner. It seems, he reflects, sadly, that I have accidentally brought myself with me.

I can identify. 'I thought we would be all zen and chilled out' I write, bemusedly to my good friends, 'but we still worry about small things - and sometimes bicker about them, in a way we don't even do at home'

I am hoping this is normal. That this is travelling. That you aren't supposed to have a brain transplant somewhere on the flight here which renders you unruffleable and beatifically calm. The answer, from both friends and Mr de Botton, is a resounding yes. You are still a human being, wherever you are currently located. You still love deeply but perhaps imperfectly, you still worry about everyday inconsequentials. You still sweat the small stuff.

You spend more time together, says a friend who has travelled a lot with her partner, so there is more opportunity to bicker. Nothing is routine. So there are more decisions each day, more pressure. Even on holiday for a week, says another, my husband and I can get snappy together about what food we should eat!

M and I are lucky enough to be largely harmonious in general. I have had no doubts about our love for each other, but noted a rise in the number of petty disagreements.

"Guess what!" I say excitedly to M, as the bus rounds the corner towards our home stay, "We're normal!"

M of course, has known this all along.

Tell you what though, I think I'm still going to aim for perfect calm and harmony. In a whole year, we might have time to make it.

Following this reflection on the obvious, we arrive at the homestay suitably exuberant, and are greeted equally exuberantly by the family. We are warmly invited in and shown to the kitchen where a group of other travellers are laughing together and trying, somewhat thwartedly, to help make dinner. There are a number of generations in the house. Small children run in and out of rooms, crying out various woes, chasing each other and tumbling unexpectedly down the stairs. Our host and his wife are smiling and humorous, and his sister in law who is cooking the dinner, instructs us through the medium of limited English, smiles and several warm, impulsive hugs. I think I might be being especially gormless so seem to be treated to extra hugs and affection. I love it.

We chat to the other travellers in a way which hasn't happened very naturally when we've crossed paths with travellers on other trips. We chat all through dinner, and then repair to the lounge where we continue. We laugh a lot, conversation flows. In the end we and a German couple we have particularly enjoyed talking to, sit up discussing films before retiring to bed.

Tomorrow our host will drive us into the city, and if we are back by three, he will take us on a walk around his farm.

What is it about the countryside? The greenery? The pace of life? Everyone seems full somehow, of so much more life (though I am excepting from this the energetic and city dwelling O). I feel myself relax, the best parts of me exaggerated, the worst quelled or tamed.

I am ready to eulogise, Wordsworth style, on the virtues of countryside dwelling. And to think I found Wordsworth really boring. I am a philistine. Nature and I are one. This is the home of my soul.

I undress, happily, and then realise one besandled foot has been bitten to death by mosquitoes.

Not all nature, I think crossly, rubbing yet more anti mosquito lotion onto every available inch of my body, and a few unavailable inches, is welcome. In Wordsworth's considerable volume of collected works, 'Ode to a Mosquito' is conspicuously absent. That manuscript must have been mislaid over time.

A Word to the Wise

Yes, yes. I know. I'm supposed to tell you what we've been doing. We exercised in the park this morning like proper locals and attempted to wriggle, swing, push, pull and wobble our pasty western flab off. Well mine anyway. M is still working on the previous instruction, ("You must eat many, many rice"). 

Then we went to a coffee shop where we gently wheezed for a while, and I spent some quality time with Neville.

A little bit of wandering turned into a rather more purposeful march as the rains came in and we returned to the bia hoi place we enjoyed so much the first time. We spent an undisclosed amount of time there. (In our defence, it was raining.) We planned the next installment of 'K and M's riveting voyage of discovery in southern Vietnam', which shall take place in Dalat, a small town a little further north.

We came home. The cat triumphed over her long unvanquished foe, the fabric wardrobe, and sat on top of its conquered corpse, grinning at us and going to sleep on our towels.

But none of that is important. The paramount issue here is what we are going to tell the Prime Minister when he summons us to advise him once we get home. Whoever he or she happens to be by then.

Because of course we will be sent for. To share our wisdom. 

And this is what we will say:

Things England should instigate immediately, learning from its Vietnamese neighbours.

1) Smiling (compulsory for all, and particularly at foreigners)

2) Cockerals. There just should be more of them

3) Free exercise equipment in parks

4) Better weather (to facilitate 3)

5) Free WiFi everywhere

6) Coffee houses. Cheap ones, with extensive menus. Serving much more than just coffee and not having ridiculous names (what IS a flat white when it's at home?)

7) Fake meat. That actually tastes good AND is made of actual food.

8) Cheap, decent bus services

9) Food that isn't necessarily a heart attack. Wrapped in blubber.

These should all be implemented immediately. 

However, Mr or Ms Prime Minister can be congratulated on the following:

1) Equal opportunities

2) New men

3) Lack of bartering

4) Social services

5) Free speech

6) Craft beer

7) Pavements

Here endeth the lesson. Take note.

Creativity and Compromise

Neville the novel has conspired with O to make me pay him some attention. When the internet fails and O needs to write an article and send it to her newspaper she suggests we all repair to a coffee house to use the WiFi and have breakfast. 

"You could work on your novel" she suggests, twinkle in her eye.

"Of course" I say with dignity, "I am always working on my novel."

Actually it is a welcome chance to properly get stuck in and I don't surface until O's friend, who we will call P (I realise I will run out of letters of the alphabet soon), joins us. 

As a reporter on arts and culture it's not surprising that O's friends are of a creative bent. P is a director and producer of documentaries. During the course of what is a hugely interesting and wide ranging conversation, covering language skills, music, family relationships and martial arts (P has recently produced a series on the martial art practised in the Binh Dinh region), we have exchanged email addresses, shown videos of M practising Aikido and been given free tickets for next Saturday to see the Vietnamese version of So You Think You Can Dance live! 

The conversation is all fascinating. P talks enthusiastically and passionately and O, still working on her article, chips in occasionally, often with a wicked humour. On being shown a video of M performing a series of aikido moves which begin with both partners on their knees she says, incredulously "so you just sit on the floor?". "Shh O" I say, stifling giggles, "it's very impressive."

And it really is. Looking at it I miss our very good friends who we met through M's aikido. We are lucky, we keep saying to people, to be doing this trip. But, you know, we were lucky long before that.

The conversation turns to art (once I have managed to stop squealing in delight about the free tickets). 

P talks about the gap between the type of documentary she would like to make and what would actually sell. She talks about the artists compromise because, being employed by a business, commerciality always comes above personal interest. P describes the artistic style she likes to employ when she makes her documentaries but the conflicting concerns of her employer that if she gets too creative, the viewers won't understand. We talk about whether they would in fact understand, whether people, both here and in the UK are routinely patronised by popular media or whether it really is the best policy to play to the lowest common denominator. After all, shouldn't entertainment, especially educational entertainment, work hard to be accessible? Equally, does constant over exposition cause a nation to become lazy, to gradually lose the ability to interpret, to think for themselves? P wants to take herself more out of the frame, to put the people whose story she is reporting, firmly at the centre of what she is doing, to make the viewer relate more directly to the subject, to feel as well as to learn. It sounds fantastic. I tell her all the most inventive artists had to go against the grain. We all nod sagely. We are, in that moment, all tortured geniuses, unrecognised in our time.

Time, of course, is another problem. P can, theoretically, pursue her own interests, under her own terms, in her spare time. But for that, she would need a lot of time. And there is always that pesky need to somehow earn a living. 

O and P tell us about another friend of theirs, who is ultra talented at painting and writing. But she is always too afraid to make a break from her work to pursue it. She saves money continually, and is always asking, "is this enough?" In O and P's opinions she has already saved more than enough but it takes more than money to break with that security, the peace of mind that comes with a regular income, and a job that you're good at, and which people actually want to pay you for.

We sit talking for the vast majority of the day. Then we pick up M's camera, which he had to have mended following some somewhat successful attempts by the red sand dunes to infiltrate it's inner sanctum. We are relieved to find it works. For M, it's like another arm. He's been fidgety without it. And he can't possibly eat food without taking a picture of it.

The day ends quietly, talking to O over another beautiful dinner and then chatting to my parents over Skype using the borrowed internet connection of the little coffee house next door.

But the conversation has been food for thought. I understand perfectly the concerns of O and P's friend. But this is my year. This is my year to write in.

And so?

Well really I am supposed to be writing. I fall asleep resolving to give Neville a respectable amount of time each day, the way I had originally planned it.

Which is just what O and Neville wanted. The sneaky little varmints.

Loving in the City

We get up. We go to yoga. We have done this before. But today I notice something I haven't noticed before. I have grown to love the friendly bustle, the cheerful honking of horns, the colourful markets, the calling voices mixed with cockerel crows and the weaving, purring motorbikes, piled high with incredible and unwieldy loads (I mean baggage, I'm not being rude about the Vietnamese). I have grown fondest of the roads which, initially, most bewildered me.

When I reach yoga we have a different teacher and it's only us in the class. This, and the fact that we have now learned ten of the twelve basic postures (the remaining two are deemed too difficult for the beginners course) means that our class is faster moving, with less explanation needed. By the end I feel limber, supple and truly exercised. I walk tall.

We meet up with O and go out, together, for breakfast in a small coffee house, tucked away from the main road. It's owned by a friend of O's. This, and its general atmosphere, make it feel cosy and peaceful. The food and drink also happen to be brilliant. 

Interestingly enough, the conversation turns to love. We talk about the difficulty of ending relationships, about the impossible decisions love requires of you both, the guilt of walking away from a relationship when the other person seems to need you, the fact that there is never a good time to say goodbye.

It's fitting for more reasons than my personal feelings towards Vietnam, and my imminent need to say goodbye to it (we leave the week after next for Cambodia). Tonight O has to attend a dance performance as part of her work, as an arts and culture reporter for a Vietnamese newspaper. We have decided to tag along, though probably in less VIP seating! It's a UK dance group, choreographed by James Cousins, and we were initially in two minds about it, trying as we are to sink as fully as possible into Vietnamese culture. Until we read more about it and realised the performance was inspired by Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood', an author and novel we both admire. 

And, again, fittingly, one of the themes of the novel is love, specifically love for a person who desperately needs you, who ultimately can become a drain on you, who, however hard you try, you cannot cure of the malaise they seem to struggle with. That's a simplification. Read the novel. Murakami does it much better than I can.

I think, (cat, to my delight, curled on my lap), about this when we return home for a 'rest' from our oh so great exertion this morning. O has imposed this and as soon as we get home the skies open and one of Southern Vietnam's legendary monsoon showers begins. How does she know? She has suggested we go out again at three,  notably this will be when this apparently unforecast shower has finished. She suggested that this morning when the skies were blue and the sun was blistering. The girl might be magic. 

I sit, cat warm in my lap, and consider the difficulty of loving and being loved without dependency. Love, by its nature, makes you vulnerable. There was a long time when I avoided it for that very reason, feeling that the pain involved when the relationship ended was greater than the love itself. It rendered it, in my eyes, emotionally uneconomically viable. I got over that, of course. You tend to once you actually fall in love. Love doesn't give you much alternative. The head very rarely rules the heart. 

But by loving you give the other person a handle on your heart. They have the power to hurt you, simply by walking away. The nicest people in the world have had to walk away, at least once, from a relationship in their time. There's no guard against it. No guarantee. 

This kind of dependency is fine, provided it's mutual and symbiotic. The mutuality may not be completely consistent, in my experience you tend to take turns over time. But as long as, on the whole, you both love and are loved with roughly the same intensity, it's OK. It's an interdependency. 

But what if something changes? Or if, from the start, one person required extra care, or special handling. What about if your partner suffers from depression, agoraphobia, anorexia, or any other of a number of very difficult disorders. Their battle may be life long. And it's your battle too. How do each of you manage this? So that the one retains dignity, and the other their strength? 

These instances are extreme, and can be permanent, but even the most level headed of partners might go through an especially traumatic period, rendering them more needy and, very often, less loving and pushing the partnership towards a precarious imbalance.

We vow to each other, 'for better for worse', 'for richer for poorer', 'in sickness and in health'. And, usually, we mean it. But it's hard when that's tested. M are I tested the 'in sickness' part quite early after our marriage, when I had major surgery and was laid up for some months. M was fantastic, though I am sure it was hard for him - and the hardest part of loving  person who is in pain is that they can't spare the energy to love you in as positive and active a way as they normally might have done. The 'strong' partner needs reassurance too. They need times when they are allowed to not have to be the strong one. They need, every now and then, to turn the tables and lie back and have their partner mop their brow. And that, depending on the circumstances, might not be possible.

And it's hard, too, for the afflicted partner. I was fighting my weakness and losing. I was ashamed of my inability to see past the pain sometimes. I constantly questioned myself about the reality of my need for rest. Was I actually weakened? Was I just being lazy?

Being the dependant half is deadening. We each need to be needed and it is when we become too aware of ourselves as an unmitigated drain that we tend to make drastic and unwarranted decisions. We all need, sometimes to be the strong one. It's an act of love to allow your partner to take care of you, and an act of love to receive it without panicking. If one of you seems to always be the more dependent, based on their personality, circumstances or the kind of ongoing battle I mentioned earlier, it's part of the responsibility of the supporting partner to allow themselves, in some small way, to be supported back.

Nothing gives you more strength than doing something for another. And everyone deserves the opportunity.

It's not that simple. Some battles are so huge and so all consuming that such a philosophy simply doesn't register. Some supporting partners are so tired and so ingrained in their role that they can't find the strength to allow themselves to be supported.

My heart goes out to both people struggling in that kind of relationship. Being the supporter doesn't necessarily feel heroic.

 Often in fact it feels as though the weaker partner might actually be stronger without you. As though perhaps their struggle is somehow your fault.

It's hard. Love is really hard. And it takes effort. Sometimes gargantuan effort.

We go with O to District 7. We eat a gargantuan amount of ice cream. District 7 us newer, cleaner, quieter and posher than other areas of town. In comparison, it's like a ghost village. It's nice and a respite fLoving in the City

We get up. We go to yoga. We have done this before. But today I notice something I haven't noticed before. I have grown to love the friendly bustle, the cheerful honking of horns, the colourful markets, the calling voices mixed with cockerel crows and the weaving, purring motorbikes, piled high with incredible and unwieldy loads (I mean baggage, I'm not being rude about the Vietnamese). I have grown fondest of the roads which, initially, most bewildered me.

When I reach yoga we have a different teacher and it's only us in the class. This, and the fact that we have now learned ten of the twelve basic postures (the remaining two are deemed too difficult for the beginners course) means that our class is faster moving, with less explanation needed. By the end I feel limber, supple and truly exercised. I walk tall.

We meet up with O and go out, together for breakfast in a small coffee house, tucked away from the main road. It's owned by a friend of O's. This, and its general atmosphere, make it feel cosy and peaceful. The food and drink also happen to be brilliant. 

Interestingly enough, the conversation turns to love. We talk about the difficulty of ending relationships, about the impossible decisions love requires of you both, the guilt of walking away from a relationship when the other person seems to need you, the fact that there is never a good time to say goodbye.

It's fitting for more reasons than my personal feelings towards Vietnam, and my imminent need to say goodbye to it (we leave the week after next for Cambodia). Tonight O has to attend a dance performance as part of her work, as an arts and culture reporter for a Vietnamese newspaper. We have decided to tag along, though probably in less VIP seating! It's a UK dance group, choreographed by James Cousins, and we were initially in two minds about it, trying as we are to sink as fully as possible into Vietnamese culture. Until we read more about it and realised the performance was inspired by Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood', an author and novel we both admire. 

And, again, fittingly, one of the themes of the novel is love, specifically love for a person who desperately needs you, who ultimately can become a drain on you, who, however hard you try, you cannot cure of the malaise they seem to struggle with. That's a simplification. Read the novel. Murakami does it much better than I can.

I think, (cat, to my delight, curled on my lap), about this when we return home for a 'rest' from our oh so great exertion this morning. O has imposed this and as soon as we get home the skies open and one of Southern Vietnam's legendary monsoon showers begins. How does she know? She has suggested we go out again at three,  notably this will be when this apparently unforecast shower has finished. She suggested that this morning when the skies were blue and the sun was blistering. The girl might be magic. 

I sit, cat warm in my lap, and consider the difficulty of loving and being loved without dependency. Love, by its nature, makes you vulnerable. There was a long time when I avoided it for that very reason, feeling that the pain involved when the relationship ended was greater than the love itself. It rendered it, in my eyes, emotionally uneconomically viable. I got over that, of course. You tend to once you actually fall in love. Love doesn't give you much alternative. The head very rarely rules the heart. 

But by loving you give the other person a handle on your heart. They have the power to hurt you, simply by walking away. The nicest people in the world have had to walk away, at least once, from a relationship in their time. There's no guard against it. No guarantee. 

This kind of dependency is fine, provided it's mutual and symbiotic. The mutuality may not be completely consistent, in my experience you tend to take turns over time. But as long as, on the whole, you both love and are loved with roughly the same intensity, it's OK. It's an interdependency. 

But what if something changes? Or if, from the start, one person required extra care, or special handling. What about if your partner suffers from depression, agoraphobia, anorexia, or any other of a number of very difficult disorders. Their battle may be life long. And it's your battle too. How do each of you manage this? So that the one retains dignity, and the other their strength? 

These instances are extreme, and can be permanent, but even the most level headed of partners might go through an especially traumatic period, rendering them more needy and, very often, less loving and pushing the partnership towards a precarious imbalance.

We vow to each other, 'for better for worse', 'for richer for poorer', 'in sickness and in health'. And, usually, we mean it. But it's hard when that's tested. M are I tested the 'in sickness' part quite early after our marriage, when I had major surgery and was laid up for some months. M was fantastic, though I am sure it was hard for him - and the hardest part of loving  person who is in pain is that they can't spare the energy to love you in as positive and active a way as they normally might have done. The 'strong' partner needs reassurance too. They need times when they are allowed to not have to be the strong one. They need, every now and then, to turn the tables and lie back and have their partner mop their brow. And that, depending on the circumstances, might not be possible.

And it's hard, too, for the afflicted partner. I was fighting my weakness and losing. I was ashamed of my inability to see past the pain sometimes. I constantly questioned myself about the reality of my sickness. Was I actually weakened? Was I just being lazy?

Being the dependant half is deadening. We each need to be needed and it is when we become too aware of ourselves as an unmitigated drain that we tend to make drastic and unwarranted decisions. We all need, sometimes to be the strong one. It's an act of love to allow your partner to take care of you, and an act of love to receive it without panicking. If one of you seems to always be the more dependent, based on their personality, circumstances or the kind of ongoing battle I mentioned earlier, it's part of the responsibility of the supporting partner to allow themselves, in some small way, to be supported back.

Nothing gives you more strength than doing something for another. And everyone deserves the opportunity.

It's not that simple. Some battles are so huge and so all consuming that such a philosophy simply doesn't register. Some supporting partners are so tired and so ingrained in their role that they can't find the strength to allow themselves to be supported.

My heart goes out to both people struggling in that kind of relationship. Being the supporter doesn't necessarily feel heroic.

 Often in fact it feels as though the weaker partner might actually be stronger without you. As though perhaps their struggle is somehow your fault.

It's hard. Love is really hard. And it takes effort. Sometimes gargantuan effort.

We go with O to District 7. We eat a gargantuan amount of ice cream. District 7 us newer, cleaner, quieter and posher than other areas of town. In comparison, it's like a ghost village. It's nice and a respite from the roads but also a little sterile. Its a restful afternoon.

Afterwards, we go to the performance. It's fantastic. As someone who has read and loved 'Norweigian Wood' I was spell bound. Midori was played by a man which really helped to show the struggle the main character has being not just between two women, one more dependant than the other, but between the dependent and ultimately hopeless Naoko and the rest of his life. It also emphasises the issue of dependency and interdependency I had been thinking about when I wrote the earlier part of this blog. (I appreciate that this makes little sense if you haven't read the book! But indulge me) The dances between the main character and the Midori character are full of balances, but the main character struggles also to reach out to a fragile Naoko all through the performance. Dances with Noako are very one sided in thus sense. He quite literally supports her. He holds her up. And all the time she is stalked by the ghostly figure of her previous boyfriend, who committed suicide so many years before. He is both that memory and a figure of death, which, in the end, she embraces.

The second performance, 'Where we were then' was James Cousins' award winning choreography, which earned him the Matthew Bourne award a couple of years earlier. (I know this because they announced it at the beginning, not because I am actually culturally well read.) Its a two dancer piece and throughout the entire  performance, the woman never touches the ground. In the end the nan walks away from her, leaving her still suspended mid air. He is sad, but he is also free.

Love is hard. You have to work hard to keep yourselves balanced in your daily , weekly, monthly dance together. Each of you has to bear some weight. 

But I was wrong when I thought it not worth it. Love is tough. But, if it's right then it's worth the gargantuan effort that it takes, over time, to keep it so.

The Art of 'Getting it'

We are greeted by excited meowing  and a beautiful breakfast when we emerge, refreshed from our sleep. O is responsible for at least one of these. I am full of appetite and energy this morning, residual queasiness from the long journey having rendered me frustratingly unable to eat much of the truly amazing meal O had prepared for us last night. I have slept it off, though sadly we were not joined by Chiba the cat in the night (I am sure she has a boyfriend. She has been gallivanting about on rooftops a lot more recently).

We eat sticky rice with herbs and salad and spring rolls, followed by 'dessert', a creamy porridge with tapioca and sweet potato. 

We walk to the Fine Arts Museum of Ho Chi Minh city. It's an interesting building in itself, with art deco stained glass windows and French style shutters. The art is divided into modern, pre 1975 and post 1975 and ancient. 

The guide book has been somewhat disparaging, referring to the number of paintings which deal with the 17 year war as being predictable and propagandising. I don't agree. Obviously the pre 1975, being pre peace, deals primarily with the war, and quite a lot of the modern art does too. But art of any era, reflects the feelings, preoccupations and new ideas of the time. And any country which has been embroiled on such a long war on its soils is clearly going to be deeply culturally, emotionally and artistically affected and altered by it. Our generation was born into peace, everyone older than us will have, at least for some period, lived with it. There are plenty of Vietnamese older than us and than O. Her parents will remember it. In fact, I have read that Vietnam has a very young population. Maybe that means the majority of people do not remember the war, but they owe the fact that they are the majority to it.

However, whilst the war related pictures and sculptures are moving, the ones which really capture my interest are in the more modern sections.

A forest scene, three small silhouettes around a cooking fire in the centre of it, gives such an impression of light and life in the tree tops, rather than the figures, that I feel they are being allowed a privileged glimpse into a much deeper magic among the leaves. Or possibly they are simply oblivious to it. The artist has evoked that idea in me purely with a few lighter brush strokes among the green leaves, notably not present in the three silhouettes.

Another is painted in red and orange hues and shows a cacophony of boats, recognisable as such by the eyes painted on their prow as part of the Buddhist tradition to bring luck. Though the colours were in fact nearer to shades of green and brown, it evokes strongly in me the impression of the Mekong Delta, and the warmth of both climate and people there.

A black and white pen and ink drawing entitled 'the tree of life', depicts a mass of branches, among which are nestled various faces. It makes me shiver a little. If the tree is giving life as opposed to simply representing it, it chills me that some faces are expressing pain, some elation, some anger. Are people born into a particular emotion which will characterise their life? Or, if the tree simply encompasses life as it is, is the suggestion that life requires all of these people, all these emotions, to give it contrast, depth and breath?

A black sculpture, depicting what I think is a seated woman, in the cross legged yoga position, with her hands clasped above her head, is entitled 'cheerful'. I like that where her head would be, there is a head shaped gap. Her head instead rests on her feet. 'How nice', I think happily, 'the woman is calm and serene, so much so, she can separate her thoughts from her body and thus get away from bustling 'busy' thoughts and reflect instead on the important things, as symbolised by the detachment of her head'.

"What?" says M when I show it to him, "that's a man with his hand on his arms and his body in the air, legs crossed above him." The 'breasts' of my lady  are in fact the buttocks of the man. M leads me round the back of the sculpture where there is a small carved penis. "He's naked" says M, unnecessarily.

I am deeply disappointed.

But the trouble is that we can't read what little explanation there is in Vietnamese beside each painting, and are not already familiar with the particular preoccupations of each artist. It's a guessing game. 

I suppose the question is whether this matters. Assuming you haven't got anything as fundamental as the sex of a statue wrong, is it OK to interpret art how you want to? Can you get it so wrong it's offensive to the artist? Or is all art in the eye of the beholder?

There is one particular painting which really intrigues me. It shows a group of young girls, looking excitedly at an orchid. They are in black and white, as is the room they stand in. The flower of the orchid however, is in bright colour. One girl holds what looks like a letter. To the left of them is a colour scene which is clearly depicting another place. It shows an open door standing on its own in a field. Through it, is a bright blue sky with pure white fluffy clouds. It is entitled 'companions in arms'. Before I read the title I saw it as a group of young girls, the orchid representing their precious innocence, and the open door their future. After I read the title I saw it as one of the girls being in love with a soldier who had sent her the orchid, and the open door represented his impending death.

Probably, it represents neither of these. Probably also, I could look it  up on the internet and find out what it means. But I sort of don't want to.

I would hate to insult an artist's work by being clueless, but isn't the creation of alternative theories in the viewer the sign of good art? 

Is there a limit, a threshold at which a viewer can cross from being imaginative and inspired by the work to being insultingly misled and uninformed?

I don't know. And I don't know where exactly on that continuum I would fall. But I enjoyed the museum, was inspired by the art and came home happily to tell O about it over dinner. (Which was characteristically amazing).

If that doesn't make an artist happy, what would?

Impressions of Vietnam

Having spent the majority of today asleep on a seven hour bus journey, I have decided to take this opportunity to tell you about some odds and ends of Vietnamese culture that I have picked up along the way:

Exercise: we walk past parks at six or seven in the morning and the sane time in the evening. They are a hive of activity. People are using the free exercise equipment, jogging around the paths, doing exercise classes, yoga and zumba, or practicing salsa in band stands. O tells us her parents get up at three in the morning to exercise until five. Exercise is a big deal here. 

Food: the Vietnamese cuisine is rice based but also hugely varied. This and the green and jasmine tea, combine to make a very healthy diet. We have not drunk much alcohol except dalat wine in Moi Ne and the odd bia hoi. I feel fantastic. Having had quite major surgery before travelling I have not had any pain or digestive hitches since being here, except once when I ate European food again for a couple of days in tourist heavy Moi Ne. 

We have generally eaten only two meals a day. Breakfast because the breakfasts here are substantial and really set you up for a day of walking and general overstimulation. And dinner because O cooks beautifully and we like the opportunity to sit down with her. She has an addictive personality in so far as you can become addicted to it! In between we often don't bother with lunch because we don't need it! 

I ask O how people eat here expecting the midday meal to be light or one of the meals to be skipped given the size and variety of each meal. Vietnamese, she tells me, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and often afternoon tea into the bargain! Vietnamese are not purely naturally slender. They eat a healthy diet and they exercise with real commitment. They don't necessarily eat less. Take note, fat Britain! I suggest to M that our government supply free exercise equipment in parks. M reminds me about the English weather.

Toilets: are often western, and in poorer areas or ones which are less touristy, are more traditional. The traditional ones involve a careful squat over a hole, while you try to avoid accidents involving your clothes, if you are an ungainly westerner. Again Mr Binh's comment about western bottoms being too fat to sit, swims through my mind. Once you are finished, you flush the toilet using a saucepan shaped plastic bucket, usually supplied in a larger tub of water outside, scooping up water with it, and pouring it down the hole.

These toilets look to be gradually dying out. The majority are western but they have something in common with the more traditional versions. Toilet paper is sometimes supplied but not always. What is always supplied, however, is a small showerhead or at the least, a bowl of water. What I at first took for an accidental oversight in respect of toilet roll is I think a provision for you to shower yourself clean. When you think about it, it's probably more effective than a cursory wipe. 

Also, to our dismay we recently found out that Vietnamese toilets are not designed for you to put toilet roll down them. You are meant to put it in the bin. I dread to think how many Vietnamese toilets M and I have blocked in our ignorance. We are the toilet blight of Vietnam. Perhaps that's why they don't supply toilet roll. It lessens the damage caused by tourists.

Dogs: "The dogs here are much less scary than in Thailand" we overhear a tourist remark to her partner. Having holidayed once in northern Thailand, we know what she means. The dogs there tended to be strays and often had thin faces. They didn't look angry or overtly threatening, but they did look a little as though they thought it might be fun to give you a nip on your bottom.

Vietnamese dogs are often pets and seem to be fluffy with little friendly faces. Why they are fluffy I don't know as it's always hot here, there are two seasons, wet and dry. The temperature doesn't dip much.

I apologise to any dogs who are reading this. I appreciate I am judging you purely by your cover.

Street Drinking: is not what you might imagine and does not always involve tramps with brown paper bags. There are plenty of little drinking establishments set up on the street, which consist of some cheerful little plastic chairs, the size that a western primary school might have, and you sit on the street sipping your beer and people/ motorcycle watching.

Street Entertainment: when, as O tells us, you are having a drink on the street with your friends, someone might come past on a motorcycle and give you a short performance of some kind. After, he will sell you a snack to have with your drink and you pay him for snack and entertainment. "It's sometimes annoying" says O, "when you are trying to talk to your friend and you have to stop and listen to some song or something." We stand corrected. We had heard piped music from motorcycles and sometimes speech, and assumed it was a political message. "No" says O, "either they are selling something or they are an entertainer."

Shop and Restaurant Service: customer service involves the shop keeper following you round the shop. Sometimes it's a hard sell but often seems to just be part of serving you. It can be awkward as a westerner because our associations are different. Similarly in coffee houses, restaurants and street restaurants, the waiter or chef will hand you the menu then wait while you decide. For us, being both hopelessly indecisive about these things, this does speed up the choosing a bit. When your indecision means you are tying the poor waiting staff to your side, its a pretty good advert for getting a move on!

The cat: Chiba the cat, O tells us, has missed us while we were away. This is lovely. Though it's possible that what she missed is getting into our room and hiding in our rucksacks.