Vietnam at Another Level

OK, so I've published posts on food in Vietnam, a tiny sliver of the arts scene, and even where to buy some exceptional embroidered work, for you crafty types. Yet ultimately, my experience of Vietnam was a deeply spiritual one, and that is not a reality that I have touched upon yet in this blog. I suppose it took nearly two weeks back to even begin to process what the trip meant to me, and what it might continue to mean...and it will be, I can see now, an ongoing journey...

As I've said earlier, I spent time living overseas in South Korea; for me, probably my single most pivotal life experience. And I've spent years wondering where and how that experience would continue to fit into my life--a life which, pretty much, has evolved into a fairly ordinary existence, punctuated by trips overseas here and there, especially after having married a citizen of Ireland. 

I discovered in journeying to Vietnam that my life long fascination with all things Asia is really and quite simply a very deep and true part of who I am, and a part which, at midlife, I have determined to simply accept and enjoy. When I came back and announced to my husband that we need to honor this as a couple and perhaps make a journey of our own together to Asia in the next two to three years, he didn't go running for the hills. He sat and listened to me, and accepted that this was something we need to look at together. He also said he would support me in my need to keep this vital thread alive...

I discovered a new Asia from the one of my childhood; a global, vibrant, evolving reality juxtaposed with the ox plowed rice paddies, sleepy villages and open markets of my childhood. Sky scrapers and folk art, ancient operas and rap music in Vietnamese--it's all there in Asia at this point. And I met many Asians like me--people who perhaps did graduate study in the States and returned to their countries...changed. Forever alerted in who they are, by their experience of, and love for, my own Western culture. What touched me most deeply in my interactions with the Vietnamese is how many of them loved and deeply cared about the country I'm from and the culture I represent, and this coupled with feelings of ambivalence, or bad memories, or having experienced a degree of loneliness, prejudice or alienation in trying to enter into another culture--my culture! Because as anyone knows who has tried to live between or in two cultures--well, it ain't always a pretty or easy experience! It certainly is not for the faint of heart, or for those who want a black and white, well defined world...

So I continue my morning ritual of Vietnamese drip coffee here in Florida--enhanced by the little steel drip dispensers I bought in Hanoi, as well as a packet of Highlands Coffee which is quickly disappearing. And over my morning cup of coffee, I continue to listen to my heart...listening to the wonder of this beautiful experience, and listening to how I might continue to let Asia into my heart and into my life...