Vietnam is one of my favorite places ever. The landscape is gorgeous, the food is incredibly yummy (and full of variety! yay!), and the people are so warm and friendly.
Not that people aren't warm and friendly in other countries, but I'd say the Vietnamese have some pretty good reasons not to welcome Americans with open arms.
Some of my favorite stories come from American "liberation" in Vietnam, though. Heart of Darkness is the biggie, and is so very awesome and heartbreaking, but The Things They Carried is my one true love. Although it confuses the hell out of me, it also makes me cry, laugh, and scream very loudly in my brain. 11/10 would recommend.
I visited Southern Vietnam two summers ago, with my family. I had the most sweaty, scrumptious, scooter-ful time. Staying in Vietnam helped shape the way I see culture, food, and even politics, to an extent.
I'm actually not in Vietnam right now, but I needed content, sooo... Considering the major impact that Vietnam has had on me, (and my late idol, Anthony Bourdain), I figured it'd be a perfect way to start this blog.
*I wrote this bit when I was fifteen, for a class assignment. I published it on Teen Ink about a year ago.
**It gets cheesy. I'm not sorry.
The Man with the Blue Guitar
The clouds were screaming white against the motionless blue sky, and light moved every time the green farmland would sway in an invisible breeze. My calves burned against the hot metal of the gleaming orange Vespa, tuck-tuck-tucking along the skinny, elevated dirt path. This path, along with the broken houses in the distance, was the only thing that didn’t reflect the sun into my eyes.
My hair was whipping back and forth, into my eyes and my mouth. We weren’t going fast enough for my eyes to water- that was a few nights ago, in Saigon. In Saigon the speed at which a tiny Vespa could move was shocking, especially with the traffic. There were more motorbikes than cars, and the motorbikes had right of way. From the back of the Vespa I was launched through the city, running red lights and riding neck-to-neck with endless bikers. I felt like a tiny part of a massive swarm of beeping, speeding, anarchistic bees.
Traveling to Hoi An from Saigon was so abrupt, it felt surreal. Barely two hours on a plane, and I might as well have been on a different planet. Everything Saigon was, Hoi An wasn't. Out here I was alone, with nothing but green and blue and white and a bit of brown, all rushing by like the repeating backdrop from a low-budget movie. Looking back on it, I don’t think I was very comfortable- I’d been on and off old, slightly broken motorbikes for the last couple of weeks, so I was pretty sore and a little bruised. I was wearing a thin, white cotton dress that kept flying up, so much that I had to clench one corner of it in my left hand. Every time the Vespa went over a bump I would fly up half a foot from the seat and crash back down, hard. Still, the constant landscape and the breeze in my hair made everything seem serene.
The motorbikes ahead of me turned left, and mine followed. The path narrowed, then went bump over a white arch bridge. Underneath me I could see land morning glory, smiling up through the gaps in the bridge. We took a sharp right off the bridge, and I found myself on a paved road, with a few shacks scattered on the sides. The shacks looked like they'd been dropped out of the sky- they were a bit flattened, and sat haphazardly along the edge of the road. We took a sharp left into another road, this one unpaved, and stopped in front of a little garden with a broken fence. The garden was a little messy, a little overgrown, but the durian trees and fish pond were organized and well maintained. Inside the garden was a mangy little dog, chewing on what looked like the front half of a chicken skeleton. He slipped through a gap in the fence and trotted up to a porch in front of a little blue shack.
My parents and I hopped off our Vespas and let them sit against the leaning white fence. We stepped up the creaky steps onto the front porch, which sagged, craterlike, in the middle. We were met by a smiling young man with no teeth, who almost pulled the screen door off its hinges.
“Xin cháo,” I said uneasily. He howled with laughter at my greeting.
He led us through the entrance, still laughing. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed, and he had little scars on his cheeks. He clenched his fists tightly when he walked, and his gait was lopsided. He didn't say a word to us, in English or Vietnamese.
Inside was a room with a giant shrine against a cracked wall, and a woven grass mat on the orange and green tile floor. The shrine was hung with fluorescent pink lights and plastic swastikas, and in the center was a gleaming metal Buddha, who, sitting down, was as tall as I am. Hanging around his head were beaded, dyed scarves in blindingly bright shades of orange, purple, and green. His neck was adorned with grass necklaces and white flower chains and even more pink lights. At his feet were small paper ornaments, red candles worn down to the stub, tiny vases with wilting flowers and miniature versions of himself, often missing their heads. He sat there, with the most serene look on his face, as though he’d found peace within his fortress of cracked concrete and plastic lights.
A middle-aged woman with a flowery apron and a full belly emerged from behind a curtained doorway and shooed the toothless man away, then led us past the shrine and into a smaller back room. As soon as we walked in, the smell hit me.
It was like a rolling wave of fermenting yeast had crashed over my head. I felt like I was drowning in it, but after a minute it didn't seem like such an unpleasant smell. It just took a moment to get used to.
Once I regained the rest of my senses, I noticed how dim the room was. There was only one light bulb in the center of the room, and it kept flickering, so the room relied on the broken parts of the wall to provide light. To my right were two pig pens, each housing two enormous pigs. I'd never seen pigs the size of recycling bins before, and I don't think I ever will. Beside the pig pens was a series of black barrels, filled to the brim with rice in various stages of fermentation. On my left were yet more barrels of fermenting rice, and shelves stocked with plastic jugs of rice wine.
The apron lady had disappeared, and in her place stood a tall, thin man with a big smile in a loose white shirt and brown pants rolled up to the ankles. On one foot he wore a rubber sandal and his other foot- his other foot wasn't a foot at all, but a rubber attachment shaped like a foot. It was attached to the end of a metal rod that disappeared under his pant leg. His hair receded back from his forehead, and stuck out in tufts of black frizz.
“Xin cháo,” he said, grinning. His cheeks dimpled when he smiled.
He showed us the black rice bins and the buckets of yeast that he kept in a far corner. He also introduced us to his pigs, who licked my hands when I pet them. It tickled, but I didn't stop them.
When he showed us the wine making machine, he kept holding his hands in front of our faces. First he'd hold up six fingers, then five. My parents and I couldn't figure out what he meant.
“You're sixty-five?” I asked. I pointed at him to clarify.
He made a motion with his left hand, a combination of the American movement “so-so” and turning a doorknob, which I'd learned earlier on the trip meant “no.”
He held a shot glass under the metal spout on the machine and filled it up with rice wine. He pointed at the wine. Six-five, he signed again.
“Is the rice wine sixty-five percent?” My mom asked.
He nodded vigorously, and I swear his smile lit up the whole room.
After he showed us the rest of the room, he showed us through the shrine room and into the room the apron lady had come from. There wasn’t much in it, other than a small wooden table and four red plastic stools. On the walls were a few world maps and some paintings of Vietnamese men with long beards.
Sitting in one of the seats was another man, in an orange shirt. He spoke some English, and he told us the story of the man with the missing leg.
He used to be a farmer, living with his family in this same shack, before the Vietnam war. Then he was enlisted in the army. He didn't fight long before he was injured in a major bombing, and had to have most of his leg amputated. So he was sent back home, to deal with PTSD and a missing leg.
He couldn't farm anymore, or do any kind of hard labor, so he was left with nothing to do but sit around the house. He lived like that for a while- simply existing, no more and no less- until his friend showed him how to make rice wine. And here we are.
While the man in the orange shirt was telling the story, I couldn't help but notice the most beautiful blue guitar hanging from the wall. It was an acoustic- lighter blue in the center, with burnt edges lined with light wood. He noticed me eyeing it, and brought it down and put it in my lap. It was lighter than I expected, and so perfectly balanced in my hands that I could have stood up and played it without a strap.
I gave it a strum, and picked with my thumb and index finger, just to get a feel for the strings. The first three strings were strong and heavy, and made a resounding hollow bong when I plucked them. The last three strings were thin and light, making each note sound like wind chimes. Everything was perfectly tuned.
After I finished, my parents and the man in the orange shirt started to talk about the Vietnam war. I would have listened, but I was busy with the guitar , gently strumming so that I wouldn't drown out their conversation. I played around with the mood of the guitar. D minor, just to make the rolling waves sound like tears. Then back to the riff. Easy does it, let the licks float on the chords like a bird on the wind. Hold, up down up, bring the ring finger into it. Let the fingernail give it a twang, then go back to the thumb for a quiet effect. My guitar playing was (and still is) unsteady, cautious, and definitely not perfect.
I was so lost in the song that I didn't see the man with the missing leg walk into the room with another red stool. I finally noticed when he sat down, and I instantly stopped playing and blushed furiously. He said something to me in Vietnamese.
The man in the orange shirt smiled.
“He tells you that you practice, every day for thirty years, and you master,” he told me. I smiled shyly, still red, and handed the guitar to the man with the missing leg.
The guitar sat comfortably on his metal leg, and he tapped the song out with his rubber foot. He began to sing, and everyone was quiet.
His fingers were soft and easy on the blue guitar, picking out riffs and sliding from chord to chord effortlessly. The guitar welcomed him with open arms, like an old friend, and their voices were in perfect harmony.
I had no idea what his words meant, but I could feel the emotion behind them, cutting into me like a dagger. It was lamenting, sad, and truthful. It echoed on the cracked walls and dirty tiles and seeped through the corners. It was raw, dirty, and honest, like he was opening his own chest and letting his history pour out.
Later I learned, through the chopped English translations of the man in the orange shirt, that the man with the missing leg- now the man with the blue guitar- had faced severe depression after coming back from the war. He had no job, no purpose, and nothing to do. His life was meaningless. His friend, who taught him to make wine, however, also taught him how to play the guitar. This guitar, he said, became his new leg. He still couldn’t work the fields, but he could bring joy to his family and friends, and express their stories through song. This was better than any leg, he said. With his wine business he could feed his family, and with his guitar he could bring them happiness.
Soon we said goodbye to the man in the orange shirt, the serene Buddha, the toothless man, the apron lady, and the man with the blue guitar. Their smiles were full and wide as we left, waving from the back of our Vespas until we turned a corner and couldn’t see them any longer.
As we rode over the stunted bridge, I watched the pale green morning glories smiling up at me. I couldn't help but marvel at what the man with the blue guitar had done so well, despite everything he'd gone through. He'd found something that made him happy, and worked at it until he could use it make others happy too.
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