Life on Mars

After some very welcome sitting in the sun, watching bright jelly fish in the water (though the biggest one did turn out to be a plastic bag), we walk down the road for half an hour to visit the 'fairy spring'. This, according to the internet and the guide books, is a small stream running through a canyon of red and white sand and stone. We pass a small market in which everything, including the food, seems to be made largely out of bamboo. Men at every corner greet us and ask whether we would like to hire their motorbikes. 

We watch a man balance a fifteen foot bamboo ladder on his shoulder and then drive off on his bike. It is at least twice as tall as he is.

Two children squat in the sand, playing the drums with chopsticks on a tin tray. I smile at them but they stop drumming and shrink back a little, staring at me with wary eyes. I don't blame them. I am a monstrous red and white thing in a huge, flapping hat and sunglasses. The image isn't helped by the fact that despite all our careful applications of factor 40, we have managed to catch the sun in angry little patches.  Tomorrow will be spent in the shade. We are delicate English flowers and really shouldn't be allowed out at all. Except perhaps to cheat at croquet whilst drinking cocktails on a carefully cropped and shady lawn. 

When we arrive at the helpful sign for the 'stream of angels', as it is translated this time, it looks very unpromising. Some steps made out of sandbags lead down to a dirty looking stream with some rubbish floating in it.

"This can't be it." says M incredulously.

"It doesn't look very angelic." I reply. Either that or they are very untidy fairies.

Our ruminations are cut short when some ants, seizing their chance while we hesitate, swarm over Martin's feet and then bite him.

"What? Ow! OW! They're biting my foot. Ow! OW!"

His tone of absolute indignation and the accompanying hopping about,is, in retrospect, quite amusing, but at the time I am a brave and caring wife and I hustle him back up the steps and away from the little varmints. Don't knock it though. It was a near death experience. I have seen what the ants here can do to a live cockroach, and it's not a laughing matter. 

Later, I will be convinced I have been bitten by a snake or a tick, and it will turn out to be a mole. The skin kind, that is, not a small burrowing creature known for messing about on the river with ratty and toad. (And if you don't understand that reference you are far too young. Get off my blog and stop making me feel old).

Congratulating ourselves on our death defying survival skills we are approached by a friendly Vietnamese man.

"Fairy spring?" he says, pointing back down where we escaped from, "down there. You wade."

We are a little suspicious but it does turn out to be the only entrance we can see to the spring. And sure enough, after a while of wading through somebody's rubbish tip (it's an exaggeration. It was just the odd plastic bottle or carrier bag), the waste matter gives way to clear waters, coloured by the red sand beneath. This seems more promising, the water is cool and so we keep going, under leafy canopies reminiscent of the Mekong Delta. It's quiet and very peaceful. Even the beating sun is muted.

Finally we emerge. And it really is breathtaking. Either side of us, but especially to the left, as we moved upstream, rose high jagged cliffs of red sand and white. Here and there the underlying stone, bleached white, has red drips of sand down it, like running ink or blood. Mostly though, the landscape is a deep and unearthly red. It reminds me, not so much of either a fairy or Angel dwelling, but more the way I have always imagined Mars to look. I am walking on Mars. This sense of awe is somewhat muffled by 'Leo', who apparently 'luvs Theo' and has felt the need to scramble up to inscribe this on the sand dunes. At least they have the good fortune to have rhyming names. Its a bit more of a poetic offering than 'LP' who, it turns out 'wld heart 2 fk DS'. (Use your imagination). These inscriptions fade out as we move further in though, making the extra terrestrial effect more enhanced. Presumably Leo and LP were too love sick to have the strength to carry on.

We spend quite a while there and walk a long way in before we decide to turn back. The stream grows suddenly deeper at this point and retreats into greenery again and we don't want to be caught down here without a light when the sun goes down (which happens quite suddenly around half past five). We make our way back.

Over dinner, discussion turns to the problem of 'being wholly present in the moment'. It sounds like a lot of claptrap but we have talked about this quite a few times since being away. The fact is, somehow you inevitably start to respond like a passenger on your own vehicle. You are driving, but you fall into a sort of dazed state in which you can appreciate things, but at the same time normalise them. I can be walking through Mars and I am awed by the experience, but not surprised.

Travelling for any time at all is essentially like living on another, unexplored and ever changing planet. The landscape is incredible, but you get used to it being incredible. As early as a week into our journey we spoke to my parents over Skype. Seeing them was fine because you carry the people with you in your heart. (Don't vomit - really you do). What really threw me though was the sight of their lounge, in the background. My parents lounge is deeply familiar to me but it looked oddly alien. I was taken aback by my own reaction.

The fact is your mind normalises constantly. It has to, to keep sane. You would be exhausted if you constantly walked around being utterly surprised by where you were. We have to rationalise ourselves somehow, to place ourselves in our surroundings. Not to do that would cause enormous anxiety.

One part of you must be driving, you decide each day where to go, what to do. But there is another part which just obediently tags along. By taking things slowly I am not sure if we are exacerbating the sense of normalisation or whether it would be worse if we took things at breakneck speed and saw everything in a maximum of one or days before racing to the next.

M is a little troubled by this. He worries we are not really being in the moment, our minds constantly interpreting and digesting our experiences to recount on blogs, making it feel perfectly normal to live on Mars. I am not so concerned. I think blogging focuses my mind on what I'm seeing, not allowing me to lapse into a state where I stand before one wonder with unseeing eyes as I think about dinner, or plan our trip to the next. 

Eventually, M and I conclude. Our human minds are amazing. It is just this capacity for normalisation which makes the unthinkably new experience possible. But it doesn't have to create a lack of gratitude. To the God who created it. Or, even if you don't believe in creation, to the set of circumstances, upbringing, support networks and good fortune, that leads you to have the opportunity to see it.

If you are no longer surprised that you are living on Mars, that's OK, as long as you still have the capacity to be awed.