The next two days were spent touring the city. The city is unimpressive with North Vietnam being a lot less friendly to westerners. The shop keepers were outright hostile with one even refusing to sell us items, and screaming at his wife when she tried to talk to us.
The highlight and grand finale was an overnight boat ride to the Islands of the dragon. We boarded a Junc boat (nothing junky about it) after a three hour drive. The boat was awesome, with the shape being that of a pirate ship, with cruise ship like bedrooms on the lower section. We had a pirate party that night, and we were required to dress up like pirates, with some unable to come up with costumes, so at the last minute it was renamed to a toga/pirate party and the ones that couldn’t find costumes just draped themselves in their bed sheets.. The party was incredible and the views just spectacular. We visited awesome caves, and went kayaking to “Monkey Island” where the monkeys come right up to you. I was sitting on the deck, just enjoying the amazing views, and breathtaking views, listening to music, and I remember thinking to myself “The only way to describe this is PERFECT” it was a perfect moment. I remember meeting a backpacker somewhere along the way and she asked me “what was the happiest moment of my life”? The question intrigued me, and tried to think back at a moment I can identify as “the happiest” and couldn’t come up with anything, so I asked her if she knew what the perfect moment in her life was? She responded that during her one year travel around Asia, she was tubing down the river, and as she lay there alone surrounded by the beauty and calm, she realized “that was it” that was the happiest moment of her life. Although I admired her quantitative ability to measure happiness, I would not be able to do so. People spend their entire lives just trying to define what happiness is, I wondered if I could ever define it enough to be able to pin point a moment, let alone find the best of those moments.
The pirate party was another night of craziness, with an underlying feeling of dread, as we knew it was almost over, and we will be going back to our regular lives, and never get to see each other again ( at least most of us). We went out that night for a final dinner and it was so awkward it was almost comical. Nobody likes saying goodbye, much less a good bye that could be forever. It felt like one big awkward funeral, and everyone got really cold and awkward as a sort of defense mechanism.
The last day before the airport we got a taste of real communism. We went to visit the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. We were ushered in twos along a line that extended around the block, while soldiers urged us along and to keep walking. There were no cameras or talking allowed and the seriousness of it all was palpable. We then entered the memorial that was a carbon copy of the Mausoleum of Lenin in Red Square in Russia. We hurried along while Ali was paranoid they would jail us and put us through torturous interrogations for laughing or talking while on the line. I guess being an Arab that fear is always a possibility, but I laughed at the theatrics of it all. Once inside the building which was air conditioned to a freezing temperature, we were greeted by a perfectly preserved Ho Chi Minh laying there in his glass coffin, as if he were taking a nap. He looked like a wax figure. It was a perfect conclusion and complement to the general energy of the North, and summed up the Vietnamese culture quite well. They were slightly oppressed but didn’t know it. They were too busy struggling day to day to contemplate what’s wrong in their life, or if it could be better. The roads and driving are insane, stressful ,chaotic, yet they show no road rage. It was what it was, and passing through we were just flies to them, as they are to us. We fly by, not impacting each other much, nor wary much of the others true existence. Just like the fly iit of a nuisance, and we know it has has its purpose out there, yet we don’t know exactly what it is. There is a saying that says “The misery of others, comforts only fools” although this may be true, it gives you a healthy perspective, reminding you to appreciate what you have, makes you miss home, and love your life with a new respect for it. At the end of the day, I know that none of us throughout our journey thought “I wonder what it’s like to be one of them, (Asians) or “I would love to have their life”. I wonder if they have the same feelings about us and about our lives seeing us.
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