Mikes Thoughts

visit from Hanoi

Life truly comes full circle. An email from DK and then my friend David that lives and works in Hanoi Vietnam let me know he will visit in August. I met David two years ago in the Airbnb we shared. Both of us really loved the living there. The host, a wondrous Vietnamese person named Van, treated us to dinners at her house for tet. We would invite her and her son out for burgers. It always seemed that three weeks in 2023 was the start of me visiting often. I always have needed Vietnam and without it in my life I feel diminished. Like something essential is taken. The last years have slowly and surely reduced me to looking at photos and remembering. Then that cues writing or hijacking some blog like this one to reach back.

hanoi

There it was then. Back in the lockdown days. When I gladly stayed in Hanoi and the little world I found seemed safe and distant from world events. Vietnam was like a safe harbor then.

Then things fell. And I left. I found myself riding on Amtrak toward Chicago and then back to Los Angeles. Then a flight to Mexico. And then. Then. Then. So many then things which all bubbled up to now. Now sitting in a coffee shop in Siem Reap and watching the slow parade of all the then things.

And the years after 2023 hustled by and I only visited Vietnam one more time. Then with my wife which was pretty much a disaster except for Bana Hills outside of Da Nang. I overlook that visit as a thing that just did not work. It seemed broken from the get go.

And now I come full circle to David visiting here. Find myself in the nice coffee shop. My iced coffee slowly diminishing. I write it all as it goes. What to say. Where did the years go. The same with the email from DK. Things all connect even when I don’t want them to. Little events in big places. From here to Merida Mexico. And back to here. It’s a slow move.

I know things changed after 2023. My wife’s health intervened. It has become difficult to go even in Cambodia. We gave up Malaysia for a week because of her health. That hurt too. It would have been really bad if it had been Hanoi.

So you see. It all comes around. Like I etched in the little missing parts.

There it goes

David tells me the last bit of his plans. His hotel here in town. Now just need the days. It will be good to see him. We will eat and drink a bit and talk. See some Siem Reap together and then let him go off on his own.

Just like I will let this go now. Over to the tender mercies of 11ty. I’m grateful for the freedom to write as I do. The little moving parts are not difficult most of the time.

Just like David visiting. Not difficult and this little part of Hanoi comes here. I like that.