In The Blink Of A Teary Eye
- krolesh
- Jul 24, 2023
- 20 min read
Dà Lat
What a complete change of scenery this is.
I feel like I’ve been transported into a completely different world.
I’m sitting at a small umbrella-ed table outside a little café, alongside the main markets of this large hill town.
My view
There’s some sort of major argument going on very close to me, a crowd has gathered to watch, the police have just turned up. A woman has been screaming at someone for awhile now, not a pleasant vibe, but I can’t really get a sense of what she’s upset about.
The weird thing is that the crowd of people seem to be quite ok with surrounding the screaming young woman and staring at her as she fully goes off, and occasionally making comments to each other, sometimes giggling, other times looking strained.
The police seem content to just watch, and let her get it out of her system.
Ok, another young guy has just turned up, and she’s jumped on his motorbike and ridden off.
I wonder what the hell that was all about.
The crowd disperses.
Chó Dà Lat (Dalat Market)
The markets here are really amazing.
Yeah I know I say that a lot, but these ones are particularly special. You can buy absolutely everything here, from truffles and orchids to dried apricots and fresh juicy strawberries and cherries.
Lichens
Truffles, fungi, roots
Exotic plants
Orchids
The main market building
Lanky avos
Notice the artichokes bottom right. They’re a fave here, people drink artichoke tea, they serve it as a specialty food dish too.
Every type of food you can imagine is here, fresh or dried.
And that’s just the beginning.
Lali’s gone off, she’s floating in Thrift Heaven. The second floor of the market building’s awash with new and second hand clothes, absolutely cheap as chips. Nice things. Interesting things. Retro stuff, and super interesting retro at that.
Such a bummer I’m cycling, I’d’ve picked up a load of great clothes too. But, pray tell, where to put them?
I was there rummaging for about an hour or so, now I’ve left Lali to do her thing, we’ll meet later.
It’s so much cooler in this town, the temperature’s at least 10 degrees less than in Nha Trang, where we came from this morning. That isn’t at all surprising, considering the elevation here is about 1500m.
The weather’s quite refreshing, but I needed to buy something with long sleeves, as it’ll get much colder tonight, maybe down to 15 degrees. That’s cold for me. I haven’t felt 15 degrees since my last Oz winter, in a former life.
Or maybe I have, in one of those Indonesian train-fridges, 6 months back.
I inadvertently left the one warm item of clothing I own, a fleece, in one of my bike panniers in HCMC, and I also accidentally left my well-used Singapore Airlines shawl on a bus a few weeks back, for someone else to enjoy forever.
I can be quite disorganised sometimes, you may have noticed.
About Town
Dalat is a hill city of about 400,000 people, and is the capital and largest city of the Vietnamese Central Highlands.
The city’s about 350km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.
It’s a beautiful place, with many French colonial buildings, a bustling city centre, and a beautiful lake right in the centre of town.
It was a really easy trip here, the van we came in was one of the most luxurious vehicles I’ve ever travelled in, the chairs felt like they’d been stolen from Changi Airport’s massage lounge, it was unbelievably comfortable.
And cheap too, of course.
Pillow photobomb
Lush rice fields
Beautiful hill scenery, as we head further and further up into the range
Fish out of water.
We stopped for a toilet break, just as a local guy netted these two large freshwater fish from a large pond. Shortly after I took this pic, the dude then proceeded to bash their lights out with a large piece of wood, until they were well and truly extinguished. Obviously someone’s lunch.
I didn’t film that bit.
Then we made it to Dà Lat, and, of course, off we went exploring.
Where there’s a lake, there’s a-swanning
Notice the real plants growing in the cracks in the wall
Very happy, pre Indian feast
The Nearly Best Exotic
Chip packets produced down at sea level puff up into cute air pillows up here, with the altitude'n'all
The rain was heavy in the afternoons, the buckets many. Even in large shops and the ritziest of restaurants there were leakage problems.
Morning coffee and cards, overlooking a lotus pond
Some parts of this town feel so Swiss, or French, believe it or not. It’s the hills, the lakes, the cafés and the architecture of some of the buildings that does it.
Of course, it doesn’t take long to be reminded of where you really are, when you trip on something protruding from the footpath in a random spot, or almost get wiped out by a motorbike going the wrong way as you cross the road.
The Dà Lat Chicken Church. The cathedral is actually called that, officially, due to the sculpture of the chicken at the very very top of the spire. So chic, so chic-keny even.
The burbs
The Artichoke Café, in Lam Vien Square.
For carting tourists around
Another thrashing
This woman is playing a t’rúng, a traditional Vietnamese upright bamboo type of xylophone instrument, often played using nursery rhyme-ey major scales.
Hang Nga (Crazy House)
This is the trippiest place you’ll ever see if you’re on a trip but not tripping.
It’s a multi-storey Gaudi-esque Steinery earthy masterpiece, a series of building structures with an incredible array of intricate walkways and passageways, bridges, staircases, and the most beautifully designed rooms, spaces and gardens you’ll ever have the chance to feast your goggle-eyes on.
It’s a treehouse, a fairyland, an underwater coral garden, a spider web, an organically random forest, it’s really everything your imagination could ever create.
The place is the brainchild of Vietnamese architect Đặng Việt Nga, who studied architecture in Moscow, and decided to create her masterpieces in this town. And while many structures here are complete, it’s still a work in progress. Nga, who’s still alive, paints pictures of her ideas, and then gets local craftsmen to try and build structures based around them.
The exterior is like a multi-storeyed banyan tree, with branches and vines reaching out in various directions. The interior has themed rooms and spaces, with amazing sculptures and quirky design features.
Viet elf guarding the craziness
Giant treehouse
Tribal vibe
The bear room
The tiger room. Don't you love the eyes.
A maze of narrow walkways and passageways
The particularly stylish Madam herself
There's an amazing undersea ballrooom and dancefloor. It’s the best spot ever for a party.
You wouldn’t need psychedelics.
Lali, blissfully unaware of what's about to happen.
Masses of high bridges and precarious walkways
The Bo Dai Summer Palace III
As if one weren’t enough.
The Vietnamese royal family, when they were royal, had a bunch of palaces around the traps, as Royals do. It made sense to have a few in the hills, so they could get away from all that stuffy summer heat.
The Nguyen royal family dynasty, which had ruled Vietnam since 1802, finally came to an end in 1945, when Vietnam declared independence from the French.
When the Japanese left Vietnam in 1945 and Ho Chi Minh took power, the last emperor, Bo Dai, was forced to abdicate, as he had collaborated with both the Japanese and the French occupiers, and was regarded by many as a traitor, and a puppet head of state.
So when the French returned to power in Vietnam they reinstated him, but their stay, and his, was short-lived. He was finally persuaded to relinquish power (booted out) in 1955.
But he did have a nice summer palace.
Nice in a 1930s kinda way.
Lali travelled there by elephant.
I pork barrelled it.
From the outside, the building reminded me of one of those old, large, and a little run down country hospitals in NSW, that have been superseded by a new whizbang one down the road.
It even had the orchids in the lobby
Lali in her velvet clogs
Not exactly sure how much intimate living happened in this room
Café et macarons anyone?
Empress Nam Phúóng in her new 40s digs
Princess Lalika Joya in her pre-loved 60s clobber
A snake in the bush
Mui Né
Well, Lali’s admiring her new and rather well defined tan lines, and I’ve been busy sorting out my new money belt, (my old one disintegrated). We’re both doing our own thing, after being out for lunch at a seaside eating place, where I suffered more inevitable card game thrashings.
We left Dà Lat a couple of days ago, and had a beautiful trip out of the ranges, through numerous vast coffee plantations, to eventually hit the coast again.
We’re staying in Hám Tién, on a coastal strip between the two townships of Phan Thiet and Mui Né, a little closer to the Mui Né (eastern) side of the coast. The whole area’s full of guesthouses, hotels, shops, restaurants, cafés, massage places, and anything else tourists could possibly want.
The coastal strip is built up, but not too much, the hotels are generally low-rise, and mostly sorta low-key. But it’s not a rustic bamboo-bungalow-on-the-beach type of place either. Those days have long gone.
Most of the tourists are Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean or Japanese. There’s a few Russians about too.
In fact, a couple of particularly volatile ones are staying in our guest house, and are rather uninhibited in the early hours of the morning, after probably polishing off a vodka or two (bottles).
They just seem to randomly start screaming at each other, bashing furniture around and making all these weird sounds, it’s pretty unnerving for us room neighbours. They seem quite sweet during the day, but maybe the alcohol’s making them do the Dr Yekyllov and Mr Hhydd thing at night.
One night our guest house owner even came bashing on our door in the middle of the night, thinking Lali and I were the ones making all the racket.
As if.
We’re like mice compared to those bloody bellowing stampeding cursing buffaloes.
The sweet owner was pretty embarrassed by his mistake, he kept apologising for ages after that, and even apologised to us on behalf of the Russians, saying “oh, they just had a fight.”
No shit.
So Lali and I have been chilling out for a couple of days, and exploring the whole coast.
Our first lunch spot. Too windy for cards.
The area is a Mecca for seafood lovers, and the coast right around our guesthouse is jam packed with seafood restaurants, selling a huge array of exotic species.
It’s pretty sad to see, I gotta say.
Yes, they’re live sharks
Iguanas (land-based ones), but still up for dinner grabs
A beautiful pagoda around the corner
Seafood restaurant, our pre-dinner drinks spot
People choosing the marine life they wish to have slaughtered
The small and old school Mui Né markets. We stocked up on rambutans, lychees and dragonfruits, as usual.
The view from Lali’s room. We had our own rooms at this place, what a luxury.
Strolling down our laneway to the beachside
The beach strip at dusk
Pineapple rolled icecream with chocolate topping. Hand made. Mouth watering.
Hell, I can’t recall ever seeing cobra on the menu
How the other way-less-than-half live. We considered dinner here but decided against it, as the menu was particularly meat-heavy.
One day I had a little jam with the guest house owner, he sang a wonderful Vietnamese song, and I played the chords. He was so happy and proud, he called his wife over, and we did another round so she could video the whole thing.
It was fun playing with him, he was such a sweetheart.
Yesterday we took a Grab (Southeast Asian Uber) to a nature reserve, an untouched coastal area consisting of massive orange-red sand dunes. As we walked in it started to rain. It was amazing. We were literally the only people there, which, considering we’re in coastal Vietnam, is unusual, and a huge treat.
It was beautiful to find such a large patch of natural dunes and bushland in this area. The views from the top were amazing, as the rain clouds whipped around different parts of the coast. We got drenched, but it cooled us, and then the sun dried us up in no time.
Watching the rain come in
Wet'n'Wild
A huge armada of fishing vessels
Later we headed to the beach, walking through a private resort to get there, and then had a long walk, right down the coast.
Mui Né beach hosts a couple of fishing villages, it was really interesting watching the locals go about their fishing business.
There were so many boats off the coast, way too many to count. It really amazes me that all these boats manage to remain economical, given the limited ocean resources they share.
Loads of crates of whitebait, probably sold for fish food, as bait for larger fish, or for processed fish food products
Round coracles, used to ferry people and produce to the shore from the fishing boats, and back again. It’s amazing how they steer them, with only one oar attached to a metal ring at the front of the round vessel. The fishers move the oar backwards and forwards, somehow steering as they paddle.
Unfortunately, and totally unsurprisingly, their livelihoods are under threat. Deep sea fishing trawlers have been devastating fish stocks for the past few years. Although illegal, the trawlers operate at night, avoiding authorities, and use nets with tiny spacings, that catch absolutely everything, including tiny fish and even bloody fish eggs.
Obviously that devastates the breeding cycles for many species, and local fishers say that certain species that were once abundant in these waters no longer even exist here.
Local fishers have been leaving the business, trying to find work on the land, as there’s not enough income in the industry anymore.
I gotta say, it was really messy around the villages, with plastic rubbish all over the place. They def need to sort that one out, it’s devastating for marine life, and looks really bad.
Moo-i Né.
Pun (c)Lali
Fairy Stream
Yeah I know it’s a bad name.
But this place is actually a real fairyland, a beautiful yellow sandy creek that runs up into the bush from the coast.
The thing to do, apparently, is to walk upstream, right in the creek, to eventually reach a small waterfall at the top.
Lali and I were maybe a little skeptical before we saw the place, but it was actually fun, and beautiful, albeit quite small.
We decided to rise early (shock horror) and got there by about 8am. There were loads of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean tourists there already, summer dresses hitched up to their knees, gingerly negotiating the sandy waters of the creek in bare feet, looking like fish out of water, whilst in water.
We zipped past them, most of the precious darlings and all their cute chidlings only venturing a short distance up the creek, but of course we carried on right to the end, as I’m a hero and I’m training Lali in heroine.
The coloured sandy eroded cliffs were beautiful, the waterfall at the end was small and a little underwhelming for waterfall a-fish-ianados, but still beautiful nonetheless.
I’m careful not to be too fussy about such things. There’s almost always a more spectacular place that you‘ve seen somewhere else in the world, but there’s only ever one place just like this.
And it was beautiful. We stayed till we were on our own, always a good strategy to really appreciate a place.
Back to Ho City
Yeah, so the time came to get back to HCMC, as all good things must come to an end(lessly amazing other good thing).
Yes it is Benny
Haven’t tried this yet, it looks dodgy as
This is actually a transparent sort of hologram-type screen we saw in a big supermarket, I’ve never seen one before, my camera shutter somehow cut off part of the image, which was complete to the naked eye.
Lali sporting her impressive tan, all ready to be darkened up more in Bali. Ho hum to skin cancer.
Btw we had a tough bus ride back to the Big Smoke, particularly for me, as I was smart enough to drink loads of green tea before I got on the toilet-less bus, and then, in Sunday late afternoon complete traffic gridlock, in our allocated seats right at the back of the bus with a whole pile of local passengers around us, I was in absolute bladderagony for a number of hours, trying desperately not to piss my pants.
I tried to cope by being mean to Lali.
I was even quietly hatching plans to try and surreptitiously piss in some receptacle or something.
Don’t tell Lali that though, she’d be horrified.
Anyway the whole affair was really bad, and I highly unrecommend it.
Lali was in a similar predicament, but had the forethought to WC before getting on the bus, so she was not quite as desperate.
And then, when we changed buses, Lali heroically insisted I race off to the loo first, while she watched our gear, and then she didn’t end up getting time to go herself, and had to hang on for another hour or so, until we could get to the city and she could run into Burger King for pretty much the first time in her privileged life.
It was fun to get back to HCMC. We went out for a major dinner that night, then played pool, chatted, and drank beer till the early hours of the morning. It’s so good to get to know each other more.
No matter how well you think you know someone, there’s always way more to learn.
And it's a complete blessing to have Lali in my life, I feel incredibly grateful.
Vietnamese/American An, whom we met at a billiard bar, was particularly taken with her, he kept drunkenly telling me how “lovely” she was, but tried to tell her that her psychology studies were “all bullshit." Lali, unsurprisingly, smashed his dubious arguments all over the court. Then An kept calling me an American, forgetting that I’d already told him five times that I hailed from the Sunburnt Country.
He also didn’t believe that Lali was my daughter.
Well, at least I get that one.
She’s so amazing that I can’t believe we’re actually related.
And then, before I could say, “please no, not yet,” Lali was all packed and excited and ready to leave Vietnam, all set to continue her own journey with some buddies in Bali.
We got up at pre-sparrow’s fart, and Grabbed it to the airport.
And then, in the blink of a teary eye, she was gone.
The Cower Of One
So, I’m staying in the same hotel room, but suddenly there’s no Lali in it.
It’s sad.
It’s quiet.
It’s strange.
I’m happy for her, off on her first trip to Southeast Asia without a parent (or two), and she’s really excited to meet up with her friends.
What a precious time for me, to have the chance to spend a couple of weeks travelling together with her, just the two of us.
And now it’s time for us to do our own thing.
I have absolutely no idea when we’ll see each other again, in person.
Ouch.
So, as usual, I have a visa deadline, and need to be out of the country in about a week. You can’t extend a tourist visa here anymore.
I’ve purchased a new online visa, but need to get out to be able to use it.
So rather than go back to Cambodia the way I’ve come, I’m gonna jump on a train to Nha Trang, north of here, with my bike, and then cross into Laos, before turning around and coming right back into Vietnam.
My time here’s not done.
So I spent the day collecting my bike from Ronald’s place, sorting out freighting it on the train, getting my own train ticket, and re-sorting my gear, ready to travel on 2 wheels again.
I’m so sorry I missed this gig.
Lali and I shared the full moon from different countries.
It feels great to be back on the bike, even if so far it's just been to hoon around this crazy city. I love not being reliant on anyone else to get around, nor beholden to timetables, seat availability, and advance bookings.
It’s a true freedom.
Ronald and I had a great dinner together on my last night in HCMC, he showed me a few new spots, including a street where all the restaurants serve only dog food. Dog-as-food that is.
But I forgot to take a pic.
If you couldn’t read Vietnamese you wouldn’t know they were doggy-style restaurants, they just looked like regular street-side eating places.
But the meat in the counters looked decidedly grey, which is exactly the colour of the dog meat I’ve been unlucky enough to eat in the past.
Vegan Ronald jokingly suggested trying some food there, but of course I doggedly refused.
Tân Dùc
I just checked out the menu at this little eating place I’m sitting at, right across the road from a park on the beachfront, they’ve got everything you can imagine here, from squirrels, hopping snails (true), wild boar, frogs of all varieties, snakes, and every single type of seafood I’ve ever heard of.
Not a word of English either.
The only thing to drink is beer or water, I really don’t feel like a beer right now as I had such a hot dehydrating ride here, I’m pretty famished, and a little sun-stroked and headachey.
One drink I thought they’d know was Coke, so I asked for one, a caw-ke, an old guy gave me an unusual thumbs-up type of hand signal, then proceeded to head off on his motorbike, and came back with a six pack of warm Coke cans, which he plonked on my table.
And then a girl came over with a glass of ice and a smile.
Aaah, it’s good to be back in completely unpredictable wild small town Asia. I know it probably doesn’t look like it in this shiny pic, with a flash car in the background, but it really is pretty wild once you get outside.
It was a stunning ride here today, particularly at the beginning, and at the end.
Yesterday I took the train from HCMC to Nha Trang, the same train Lali and I had taken 2 weeks before.
Déjà vu
It was lovely chatting to Vietnamese student Ní on the train, she’s studying business at a university near Da Nang, and is pretty close to graduating. She’d just been in HCMC visiting her parents and sister.
I wonder if she’s related to the Knights Who Say Ní?
Ní said she’d love to travel, but said she doesn’t have the chance. It must‘ve been hard for her to hear that my daughter, who’s basically her age and also at uni, can afford to travel all the way from Australia to Vietnam for a couple of weeks and then head off to Bali for another couple of weeks after that. All in her semester break.
She sort of went a little quiet after I told her that. I wish I’d thought of it beforehand.
Ní was really nice, and quite open minded. She was quite keen to hear about what life was like in Australia. Her English was ok, but we needed the Translate app a fair bit. I especially loved it when she asked me when my happy birthday was.
Later she borrowed my powerbank, and accidentally completely drained it, leaving me with just a sliver of charge on my phone to find my hotel when I got to Nha Trang. She did give me a super sweet custard bun thingy though, it was worth it.
And so I finally made it to Nha Trang, collected my bike, and zipped over to my hotel. Soon after, I ended up sitting next to this wildly drunk extended family, all guzzling rice whisky from a large plastic bottle, as if it were going out of fashion.
But it def isn’t around here.
Finally Heading North Again
The coast north of Nha Trang is stunning, and there’s no better way to see it than on a bike.
Leaving Nha Trang
As soon as the road left the coast, the hills started.
Magnificent pagoda
Aquaculture galore
And then I made it to this place, Tân Dùc, found a hotel, and went for a walk along the seafront to watch the dusk magnificence.
A bunch of people were flying beautiful kites.
First yoga studio I’ve noticed in this country
Happy birthday party
It was a long ride today, I seriously need to crash and recover.
Not that sort of crash and recover.
Been there done that.
Tuy Hoa
What a beautiful day it was today.
I somehow managed to leave my guesthouse by 9am, I don’t know what came over me. I knew I had a long day of riding in the hot sun, and I also knew I had 1000m of climbing to do.
It wasn’t long before I got the chance to leave the highway, and I hugged the coast, as the road climbed higher and higher, through the cliffs and headlands that border the stunningly bright and beautiful blue ocean.
It was bloody hot, my head was cooking as I climbed, I felt like a thermometer that was about to pop its top. Thank Confucius for the descents, that’s all I can say.
It’s summer here. Around 35 degree maximums at the moment. Feels like at least 40. Clear hot days.
But luckily I’m by the coast, the breezes, when they do come, are magnificent.
Great fish market as I left town
Brunch spot
I saw loads of separate flocks of ducks today, all cheerily hanging together at water points, any thoughts of their inevitable fate refusing to enter their consciousness, like water off a duck’s back.
One of the many magnificent beaches I passed today. Unfortunately this particular one was below a large stormwater drain, hence the plastic pollution all over the place.
Most of the others were pristine, clean, clear and very refreshing.
Another day, another architectural masterpiece
Kuan Yin, at the top of a pass, little roof tassles jingling sweetly in the sea breeze
Speaking of religion, I was surprised to discover that roughly only about 16% of the population of Vietnam regard themselves as Buddhists, and most of these aren’t members of any official Buddhist organisation.
Another 7% say they’re Christians.
More surprisingly, around 45% of the population engage exclusively in rituals from Vietnamese folk religions, particularly during festivals and special occasions. The most widely practised of these rituals is ancestor worship, with many Vietnamese homes having shrines to their ancestors, where offerings and prayers are made regularly.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is officially an atheist state, and the government maintains control over organised religions. However the law does allow all citizens to practice religion freely.
Incredible granite nipple
Utilising every scrap of flat wet land for rice
Da Rang Estuary
Crossing the lake into town
And so I made it to my lovely family guest house. I asked one of my young hosts, Tin, if she knew of any vegetarian places to eat. She gave me a great recommendation, and then asked me (via Google Translate) “do you practice?”
I know that many vegetarians here practice Buddhist rituals, so I told her that yes, sometimes I meditate. She said her husband was trying to use meditation to help with his psychological disorder, and asked me if I could teach her to meditate.
Well, I told her I’m not a teacher, not by a long shot, but suggested a couple of things. One thing I mentioned was that an important part of meditation practice for me is to not wish for any particular outcome from the practice, as this just goes against what mediation is all about - to just allow whatever is there to be there. To watch it, to let it go. She was grateful for the tips.
In the late afternoon I headed to the beachside, and ended up at Highlands Coffee, of all places, it’s sorta like a Vietnamese Starbucks. I know. It's embarrassing. Lali and I went to a couple when she was around, the coffee’s delicious, and the teas are next-level juicy.
That’s real peach in my tea, and that’s a real slice of tiramisu (but not a very good one, unfortunately). Don’t judge a book by its cover.
It was another stunset at the beach, as usual, although of course the sun’s not setting over the ocean, which is in the east. Those young dudes at the table had a wireless mike, connected to a massive speaker set up close to where I took the pic from. Reverb up, V-pop karaoke. Well, more like V-soft-rock.
It was a pearler of an evening
There’s a large and very chilled park that stretches right along the beautiful long beachfront, all the tourist hotels are set back from the beach, so the area feels so chilled, and relatively natural.
This is a typical streetside restaurant. Outdoor eating is so big in Vietnam, as it is everywhere in Southeast Asia.
Or, should I say, outdoor living is big.
People generally have small houses, and small business premises and restaurants, and they fully utilise the public space outside them.
The climate makes all that possible, and preferable. It’s generally bloody hot inside, unless you’re airconned.
Coffee culture’s also massive here. Another begrudging tick for the French.
Not only is the drinking of coffee ubiquitous, but so is its production. It's unbelievable for the size of the country, but Vietnam is actually the second largest coffee producer in the world, after Brazil. It produces over twice as much as the next two countries on the list, Colombia and Indonesia.
I went to a locals vegan eating place for dinner, where I met Dûng (pronounced Yueng, of all things). He’s a beautiful local man, just turned 60. We chatted for ages, I played him a few songs on his (dodgy but playable) guitar, he drew a portrait of me in one minute, which was remarkable, considering his state of mid level inebriation.
He said he was “so happy in his heart” that he’d met me, and it was a very special day for him. For me too.
He’s quite a sad man, and obviously has stories to tell, but language and other barriers intervened. Tears came to his eyes when I played one of his requests, “Yesterday.”
I really feel for Dûng.
All his troubles aren’t so far away.
More Lessons
I’ve noticed something around here.
There seems to be a surplus of troubled men.
I’ve been approached by a number of them lately, talking rapidly at me, or wanting money for alcohol, all looking as if there’s a lot of grief or trauma going on behind their eyes.
It doesn’t surprise me.
Everyone over 48 years old here has experienced the horror of a brutal war during their lifetime. 60 year old men and women were teenagers during the carnage. The grief and the horrors they experienced can hardly be imagined, and this is roughly the age of the men who’ve been approaching me.
Those traumatised war survivors then had kids, who inherited the psychological and emotional impacts of that trauma. Many kids were born with physical deformities from Agent Orange as well, or physical injuries from unexploded ordnance, including land mines, that they were unlucky enough to detonate after the war.
Physical disabilities are quite common to see in the streets.
Yeah, we all know how horrible war is.
And, tragically, the horror doesn’t just end when the war does.
And so, on I travel, heading north, with the blazing hot sun at my back during the middle of the day.
Seeing more amazing places, meeting more incredible people.
And learning more sobering life lessons❤️
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