Kitten in the Road!

Our first view of Vietnam from the plane yesterday looked like a treasure trove of twinkling lights the size of small gemstones and I wanted to reach out enthusiastically and gather it up to embrace it. (Bear in mind the free champagne). Obviously the airport looked disappointingly akin to, well, an airport, but the rest of the evening was lovely. We passed in a daze of relaxation through an easy taxi journey to the house of our host, who I shall call 'O'.

O wasn’t there but had asked her brother to greet us and the house itself is even better than expected. (Even more than that – it contains a small cat!!) It is an unassuming, quirky, arty little abode built on a series of shallow levels and filled with quotes and pictures designed to lift the spirits. ‘The happiest girls are the prettiest’ sings the shower; ‘everything is going to be OK’; chirrups a frame on the table in our bedroom; ‘life is short, smile while you still have teeth’ quip the steps leading up to it. It is a house in which it is literally impossible not to be cheerful. We get to meet O, the designer of all this, on Tuesday and I can’t wait! ‘Arrive as guests’, it says on the door, ‘but leave as friends’. OK. We’ll do that. I am nothing if not obedient.

This, followed by a very relaxed meal at a vegetarian restaurant surrounded by statues of buddhas and laughing elephants in lily covered ponds, did nothing to depress our mood. This is the life, I thought as we fell asleep. How very clever we were to get so stressed about the actual act of leaving. Now nothing could touch us.

I will never, I tell myself and M, plan anything ever again. Planning is the root of all evil. No one should plan. It takes all the fun away.

This level of smug can only be sustained for so long. We wake up in the morning, M much more jet lagged than me for some reason, and start out excitedly. We begin well and locate both the yoga sanctuary, at which there is a very nicely timed free introductory lesson starting tomorrow, and the vegetarian café nearby, where I eat another of the Vietnamese soups I am fast becoming addicted to. Then we follow the course of the river which will take us into the town centre.

It is a little hot. Local girls are flawless and sweatless. I have hair which would rival a duck for greasiness and when I touch my face my fingers come away covered in actual slime.

Seriously, I have face slime.

And, oh I would so love to not care. The happiest girls, I tell myself, blinking sweat out of my eyes, are the prettiest.

We walk along, and I cannot keep myself from wondering if we are going too fast, too slow, not purposefully enough, or too purposefully. Is M carrying his camera too openly? Do I really need the belt bag I have? Are we horrible distrusting westerners who just don’t understand, or are we clear targets? I want to take my brain out, turn it off, bash it a few times, and put it back in upside down.

Essentially, I want to forget I am a tourist. That’s what we said, after all. We wanted to live like locals. To experience, a month at a time, what it would be like to live abroad.

Around this time we notice with horror that there is a tiny kitten, mewling, eyes barely open, walking straight down the centre of the road. The roads in Ho Chi Minh are filled with traffic. There is a system, but at first glance it appears to be entirely random. There are literally hundreds of motorbikes with a smattering of cars and buses and an almost constant sounding of horns. This gives the impression of being heart stoppingly dangerous, but when you look more closely you realise the average speed is very low and the awareness of other road users incredibly high. There are neither accidents nor near accidents, and the sounding of horns is more cheery, “here I am” than “get out of the way you idiot, we are about to kill each other”.

Even so, the kitten is very small and its chances don’t look good. We, and another, Vietnamese couple stop and lift the kitten out of the road, putting it back on the pavement. It immediately turns and walks back into the road. We place it carefully on the other side of the road. It turns the other way and once again, heads back into the road. “Where is its mum?” asks M, with slightly comical indignation. I don’t get the impression he thinks much of the cat’s mothering skills. Other than “In the road?”, I don’t really have an answer. What I do note however is that the drivers are all stopping, not just swerving, but stopping to pick the kitten up, to help it back off the road, and, eventually a lady simply pops it into her purse and zooms off, presumably with enough local knowledge to take it somewhere it could be better looked after. For all the smallness of the kitten and the ferocity of the road, it comes to no harm, despite its apparent suicidal tendencies.

And I like this story, because for much of today I have felt like a kitten in the road. I know what I want to get to but not how to get there or where it is. And everyone around me has somewhere to get to, and is going there at speed. But if Vietnam has anything, it is heart. This is a friendlier city than London or Bangkok, from my previous experience. And if I am a kitten, perhaps I could learn to enjoy being small and unknown in this friendly chaos.

This wisdom is welcome, but does not immediately take effect, as the ensuing wandering about in town proves. M is very happy in his first few days away. He likes that everything is unfamiliar, and he likes the challenge of finding his way. I like to know where I am and what I am doing. It doesn't have to be a complex itinerary, but I like to have one. If I wander for too long I find it hard to continue to enjoy the wandering. It feels aimless and uncomfortable and I want to be scooped up immediately and taken, in somebody’s purse, to safety.

M and I discuss this over dinner this evening. We have walked back circuitously and happened  upon an open air zumba class, which has the usual effect watching any kind of dance has on me, namely I well up for no clear reason, and have to spend a while grinning soppily and wiping my eyes whilst simultaneously wondering precisely why. It’s heartening however, and the kind of thing you happen on purely because you have allowed yourself to wander. (We hope to catch a class there at some point before we leave, because, as per the mantra, that is what we would do if we lived here, and for this month, we really do).

Somewhat more chilled we chat over dinner, and I know that there has been a space of time today in which I was unsettled, and made M so. This is sad and a Big Bad Thing because this is the part he most enjoys. I ask him to teach me to enjoy the wandering, and to love the unfamiliarity. (I love it in principle and for the longer part of most trips - my problem is with the very first few days). We resolve I will be map reader more often, so I can enjoy the feeling of finding my way through unchartered territory.

Newly enlightened, we head home. On the way, I realise that we are going to the yoga sanctuary tomorrow morning, and have talked about spending the afternoon in the Tao Dan park in town, followed by the Ao Show at the Opera House in the evening.

This sounds, suspiciously, like a plan.