-^-for posterity-^-

to live in a world and feel unique. then to have other people who live in a parallel world come and visit you and everyone realizes they’re just another drop in the bucket.

two teachers from a nice town called ‘rach gia’ came up to long xuyen to visit the foreign teachers because of a chance encounter at a restaurant in a remote village on the way up to ho chi minh city. they were quite nice people and we talked about vietnam quite a lot. we talked about our own cultural perspectives and how vietnam has shaped us and what all of us youngsters would do in the future.

we brought them to the lovely tiger island. tiger island is the home of the uncle tom memorial. uncle tom was the second leader of vietnam after uncle ho. the island is quite fascinating and is quite an anomaly in a part of the world that is quite industrialized and concrete-busy. because there is no access to the island by bridge and one must sit on a noisy ferry for twenty minutes or so, it has developed in a vacuum and still retains a quaint quality that is hard to describe. it is peaceful and doesn’t bustle and humm like the city does.

we drove around on bicycles through palm tree covered roads. we waved to little children as they screamed, ‘HELLLLAAAOOOWWWW!’ as we drove by. we were scorched by the sun.

eventually we ended up at a hotel/restaurant where we sat on the third floor and observed the land around us like kings, or minor gods. there are not many places of any substantial height in the delta and there are surely no places in rural areas. ones perspective skews a bit after spending so much time looking at the world around you from the ground floor. climbing to the top of this hotel and breathing the cool air as it passed over the river and rice paddies was a shock and i saw the island in a different light.

we went and ate and caught fish from a small pond. we used a large pile of brown dough-like bait that resembled a giant, dried out cow dropping one would find in the rolling hills of eastern pennsylvania. we broke off chunks and baited hooks tied to string tied to bamboo poles held in our hands. we plunked them in the pond and fish ate. they robbed us of bait on a number of occasions and we were only catching small, violently colored fish. they would drag the line down and we would pull them out and their bellies and mouth were reddish orange and it looked like they were bleeding. it was a massacre. i didn’t do a good job of taking hooks out of mouths and others helped. there’s something about holding a pulsing mound of slimy flesh and tearing a barbed hook out of its eye that disturbs me greatly.

one large fish was caught and it was not caught by me even though i put forth much effort. the person who caught the fish was quite proud and finally had to rescind her barbs after finding the fish quite bony and not as tasty as the fish the restaurant provided for us.

i was jealous.

we took the ferry back to long xuyen and left the cool, peaceful island alone. the boat chopped through the water and the wind blew in our faces and the sun was still there making everyone squint and sweat.

friends are wonderful.