Mikes Thoughts

escape to Vietnam

Sometimes an idea grabs me. It’s a thing buried under some time. Some moments watching my daughter here just go. They will go to places when they want. Find some happiness and joy with the going. I sit here sometimes and have to admit I feel envy. It seeps in under the solo moments at coffee shops or now drinking beer after yet another argument. The arguments almost always have the house as the baseline. I feel we just are used for the money. We pay this much and the landlords do that much. They don’t equal. Instead I feel jilted. Like my moments were stolen.

I don’t much like it. So I dream of escape. Where? We’ll always the place which held me close before. Vietnam. For whatever reason it always offered solace and respite. One time feeling lonely with an ice cream sundae watching families Christmas shopping. Saigon Santas. Lights. I could forever just take Saigon by the moment. I never really wanted to spend longer there. It was like a quick take. Then often some plane ride. Hanoi always held me closer. Whispered its sweet and sensuous emotions.

Saigon though

Is an escape. And I used it many times. I would run away. Find something else. I messaged my dear friend lily in can tho. Told her I may go. It made her day or month. It’s been two years. She would always hop a bus from the Mekong to Saigon. Find her way to me. Often we ate and drank. Then ate and drank some more. Somehow life then balanced itself. I found myself rather drunk in some small bar in Saigon with empty Saigon beer bottles and lily laughing. Her soft and infectious laugh. Her genuine happiness at life.

Maybe that’s the thing with these Vietnamese people. This sense that what is given at the moment beats out all plans and histories. Beef steaks and bbq. Pho and helping me replace a stolen iPhone. Lily.

So perhaps I need that escape. That run. That movement both away and toward a thing. Like a sunset in Hanoi just waiting for me.

hanoi sunset

Escape from or running to

It matters little. Watching the rain fall and our latest argument fall away I feel this desire to go. To just find my own way again.

To the alley in Saigon where I found draft Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. And I felt I had made my way yet again.

From sadness and hatred to something else. Vietnam always seemed to just open up. Let me find my way no matter where I started.

Now I want back.