moirae

I had wanted to go to India since I did an essay on it in college. it seemed to me to be the most different place that I could imagine (being from the West Coast of Canada). I was living in Korea and thinking about where to go for my vacation and India called to me, so I went. I spent a month there doing the usual tourist route (Delhi, Varanasi, Agra, Rajasthan, Goa, Mumbai) and, even though I was utterly exhausted when I left, I felt like I was just getting it. India is a tough one, but so very rewarding. I’m going back, this time for longer and this time I’m staying put for a while to get a better sense of the place, rather than zipping off here and there snapping pictures. I leave in less than two weeks and I’m thrilled.

I spent my childhood sitting on the living room floor reading National Geographic and I reckon this is my inspiration to travel and see the world. A lot of traveling I have done, however, has been along the tourist route and although great and nice, not all that life altering. Then, when I was in Vietnam, I had a full on NG experience. I was staying in this small hilltribe village in the mid highlands and as soon as I arrived, a pig was captured and hogtied right in front of me. OK, I’m pretty suburban so this in itself was exciting but then it just got richer. A man in the village had just finished building a new house and starting that night there would be a 3-day ceremony to celebrate the new home and I was invited. I was told to bring cigarettes for the owner as a gift and just show up. It was a longhouse on stilts and when I entered I noticed that all the women were sitting at the back and the men were sitting at the front (with me I guess cause I’m a foreigner). It was explained, though, that the women were actually sitting at the front of the house in the place of honour and that I had simply come through the back door. Anways, all along the middle of the house, people were sitting on small wooden blocks and sipping rice wine out of big jugs through long staws. After much rice wine was drunk, all kinds of clatter began and the local ‘shaman’ came out with little piggy’s head on a platter. he was chanting and some people were hitting gongs to a seemingly random although very entrancing rhythm. The shaman came around and blessed various parts of the house by dabbling a bit of blood on the beams with the pig’s foot. The rhythm and clanging and chanting and smoke and wine made me feel like I was in a swirling dream, but it was very real. After the shaman had finished, he sat near me, put on his barret (love the french influence here!) and lit a long pipe (and I don’t think it was tabacco he was smoking) and just sat there with a sly grin. The rest of the night faded away in smoke and drink and I think I left before making an absolute ass of myself.

The next morning I woke up to see an elephant outside of my window! We spent the day at the village across the lake where there are no roads at all; the only access is by boat. As we arrived, we witnessed a calf being born. Our guide brought us to a friend of his who invited us in and showed us his home—another long house. It was so very simple, but adequate for his needs. He told us, through our guide, that he had just lost one of his elephants and that he had to go out into the jungle to find another one. (Hell, I thought buying a car was a pain!) Our last stop was where the women were, sitting together in another longhouse weaving cloth. They were very shy and I felt a bit intrusive but they were kind and smiled at us and giggled amonsgt themselves—probably at us and our long noses and hairy arms.

There was nothing touristy about this place except for me and my pal and it really changed the way I saw, well, just about everything. Mostly though, I was utterly boggled by the fact that people are out looking for elephants in the jungle to help them get their daily needs accomplished while others are racing through urban jungles in their SUVs, talking on their cell phones and eating their big macs. two totally different worlds!

I went to Vietnam in 2000 and it blew my mind. I had been to Thailand, Bali and was living in Korea at the time so figured I had a pretty good sense of what Asia was about but there was something about Vietnam that really cracked my head open. Everywhere I looked was a postcard moment. What got me the most was how diverse the country is with all the different peoples living there. i spend through the country from Saigon to Hanoi in a month and could have easily spent another month there. I highly recommend this trip!