I lost my camera somehow.

As I left my hotel in Hoi An, I peeked into my carry-on bag to make sure I had my camera, iPod, journal, book. Everything was there.

But when I unpacked, I found that my camera case – which was in my carry-on bag – was empty.

I’m sad to lose the camera of course, but I’m much sadder to lose the pictures I took on this last trip.
(

On my last full day in Hoi An, I went fishing on the river with Dao’s father.

Dao was there with her sister and cousin, and it was the first time they’d been out fishing with their father, so it was an event for all of us. We tried three different spots on the river but didn’t catch anything except a bunch of thumb-sized puffer fish, which were so plentiful in one spot that I hooked two of them by the tail(!) as I was bringing in my line. We snacked during the day on salted watermelon, boiled peanuts and ice cream.

And that day I finally got a bit of the true Vietnamese driving experience.

The intersections in the center of Hoi An are busy, and governed by neither traffic lights nor stop signs. When you approach, you slow down and weave your way through the cross traffic of pedestrians, bicycles, cars and motorbikes.

I drove Dao on her motorbike from the town center to the boat launch point in the morning. It was definitely nerve-wracking, but nothing compared to the afternoon drive. After fishing, I drove Dao’s sister’s motorbike from the river market to their family’s house. We carried six 12-foot fishing poles atop our right shoulders, like a lance, and this made the intersections almost harrowing.

Since we didn’t catch any fish worth keeping, Dao’s father picked up some things at the market, and at Dao’s house we had a feast, of…

Squid stuffed with mushrooms and fried rice

Steamed fish, cooked with rice noodles, onions and fresh herbs, then combined with fresh lettuce and thin strips of banana peel and wrapped in rice paper.

Baby clams, stir-fried with fresh herbs and chillis

And, of course, bowls of steamed rice

By sheer coincidence, I bumped into Anh last night. He’s the old man who drove me around Hoi An and the surrounding villages during my four day stay in January. I had looked for him and Son at Sao Mai earlier in the week, so it was a nice surprise to see him in town last night.

He took me to Son’s house – a tiny $10-a-month room he shares with his sister and girlfriend – and the three of us went out for drinks. Anh speaks no English at all but seemed content enough to just sit quietly off to the side.

I also met them for coffee the next day at the kind of crowded little sidewalk dive that is common in Vietnam and typical of where local people gather. They sit around low tables, on little child-size chairs and chat, watch people wander by or just stare off into space.

The most barebones of these places are usually men-only, although not by policy. Boys wander through, selling lottery tickets and newspapers. The nicer joints have a more diverse clientele – men, women, boys, girls, couples.

A cup of strong, delicious Vietnamese coffee at one of these places costs anywhere between 15 and 30 US cents. You can have it with or without sweet condensed milk, and it’s usually served with a chaser of Vietnamese tea – a very drinkable, weak brew of a yellowish colour, with a hint of vanilla. You can have these hot or iced, or one served each way, as you prefer.

You don’t usually see foreigners in these places, but the people are unfazed and always welcoming when you wander in and take a seat.

I woke up feeling pretty poorly today. I’m still shaking something off from last week, and mornings are the worst.

Last night I had a bowl of pho at Sao Mai and chatted with Uyen and Thanh – two women who work there, who remembered me from my last visit. Today or tomorrow, I’ll try to make time to go back and photograph them.

Across the alley, beside the river, a man and a young girl (his daughter?) were processing sugarcane – shaving the outermost skin and hacking it into arm-length stalks. Another woman collected the stalks and – when she had a customer – passed them through a press to deliver a fresh glass of sugarcane juice.

I’ve had this a few times in Singapore, and it’s not nearly as sweet as you’d imagine. It’s especially delicious on ice, with a slice of lemon.

Uyen caught me watching the sugarcane sellers and went to fetch us a stalk. She peeled it and cut it into bite-sized bits, and the three of us chewed and chatted for a while.

On my way back from the beach on Muoi’s motorbike yesterday, she stopped about a kilometer from my hotel and asked, “you walk from here?”

“Uhm…sure,” I said and started to climb off the motorbike.

“I joking you!” she said, cracking herself up.

This is how all the Vietnamese I’ve spent time with here have treated me, and they get me every time. I feel like the kid who always falls for the “what’s-that-on-your-shirt?” trick. At least I’m able to tease them right back. It’s great fun.

When these people describe their closest friends, they almost almost always use the word “funny”, as in “he’s funny” or “she’s funny,” which leads me to believe it’s not just foreigners who get their chains yanked in Vietnam.

Yesterday, before I went to the beach – and after – I was somewhat apprehensive about spending four lazy days in Hoi An. My friend Dao was supposed to have met me at the Danang airport Monday morning and then join me for a busy day of sightseeing. When I arrived, however, a driver from my hotel was there instead, so I decided to spend some relaxing, agenda-free hours at the beach – not knowing whether she’d try to connect with me later in the day.

I’ve been operating at such an intense pace over the past few months, that before today, the thought of spending more than a few hours just lounging by the sea seemed somehow unbearable. I came to understand why my friend Tracy had a kind of idleness-induced panic attack in Cambodia. I don’t have my computer here, so there’s a lot of work I can’t do, but my hotel has a small Internet access lounge in it, and I admit I’ve checked work email a few times here. I’ve even responded to things that didn’t really require my input.

For the most part, though, I’ve lounged – on the beach, in restaurants, bars and cafes – and so having spent the past two days here doing almost nothing, I no longer fear the life of ease. Actually, I dread going back – especially since I know what’s waiting for me in my inbox. I shouldn’t have looked.

Anyway, my friend Dao is a receptionist at the Thao Nguyen (a.k.a. Grasslands) Hotel. I met her last time I was here, and we’ve been corresponding by email and IM fairly regularly ever since. She was working yesterday, so she called her friend Muoi – the other receptionist – to ask whether she would go with me to the beach.

Muoi had teased me relentlessly about Dao all day Monday – calling Dao my future wife, etc. etc., so I told her that joining me at the beach would give me a good opportunity for payback.

It is true that many Vietnamese seem eager to marry themselves (or their friends, daughters, sisters) off to foreigners, so I’ve had to be sensitive about that and careful in my interactions. Van, Dao and Muoi understand this though and constantly reassure me – between their jokes and teasing anyway – that they do not share this motivation. They’re sweet, smart, family-oriented women who aren’t interested in foreign guys, except to enjoy a little conversation influenced by the outside world.

So today, Muoi came to fetch me on her motorbike. She asked me if I could drive one – because in Hoi An, the men drive – and I said I could. But just as we were about to embark, she reconsidered and said, “I drive.” So we switched places.

She didn’t want people to see her carting a man (and a foreigner!) around town, but this was trumped in the end by her fear of me wrecking her ride.

I spent most of yesterday at Cua Dai beach – reading, dozing, fending off vendors.

The vendors have a captive audience at the beach, so they’re a little more aggressive there than elsewhere in Hoi An. And Hoi An vendors in general are a little more aggressive than those found in the cities of Vietnam. Hoi An is a poor town, and the people here are more dependent on tourists for their income here than elsewhere.

At the beach, they sell everything you’d imagine, including fresh pineapple and dragonfruit, foot massages, bracelets and bangles, small snacks and toys. The youngest ones are cheeky and make fun of your efforts to shoo them away. They do this lightheartedly though, and everybody gets a good laugh. The middle-aged ones are more serious and tell you that business is so bad today. They mention their aching backs, poor living conditions, children they need to provide for.

But it’s the really old women who break your heart.

Leathery-skinned and toothless, they look at you with the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen. There is a puppy dog quality in this that they’ve perfected for sure, but just as certain is the fact that these women have endured generations of hardship, war and tragedy. Hoi An is not far from the DMZ, which was the most heavily-bombed part of the country during the American War, and my hotel is just a taxi ride away from the site of the Mai Lai massacre – the most infamously heinous war crime perpetrated by the United States since Wounded Knee.

Unfortunately though, the old women all seem to be selling the things I want least – cigarettes and soccerballs for example.

There’s a row of restaurants along the beach that vie for your business when you arrive, so you choose a restaurant in order to choose your spot on the beach. Unless your arrival coincides with a meal, you just start with a drink.

But the proprietors of the restaurants are amazingly alert when it comes to your appetite. As soon as I bought a small bag of peanuts from one of the beach vendors, the woman from my chosen restaurant appeared with a menu before I could even open it.

For lunch I ordered grilled fish with steamed rice.

I spent most of my one full day in Hanoi with Van. My original plan was to look at some paintings, with the hope of finding something to bring home. That’s how Van and I spent the first part of our day, and I did completely fall in love with one painting by an artist named Nguyen Dinh Quang, but it was priced at $3,000 and too big for my home.

It was a very simple painting of a few pieces of fruit laid out on a big silver table. In the background was a chair beside a window. Outside the window was nothing but a silvery-white fog, painted to match the flat surface of the table. It was the only painting of his that I saw that was not dominated by red and gold, which seem to be the standard colours of Vietnamese laquer painting. (They are the national colours after all)

Much of what I saw in red and gold – by many artists – was beautiful to be sure, but in each gallery you see so much of these colours that it’s the other paintings – other colours – that tend to stand out. In the end, I bought a small still life by a different artist. I may regret not buying the Nguyen Dinh Quang painting, but maybe I’ll have another chance to see his work someday.

After our little gallery tour, Van brought me to a nice city park, where we strolled and sat for a couple of hours, watching boats move lazily on the small lake there. Van asked me if I would sing to her for some reason, which I only agreed to as payment for her excellent motorbike services.

It’s a truly beautiful thing to ride behind a pretty girl on two wheels, catching the gentle smell of her hair as she negotiates death-defying merges and fleeting gaps between buses and cars.

When I tried to think of things to sing to her, the only songs that came to mind were by the Drifters. The only sensible explanation for this is that I’ve heard their songs sung a capella before. I chose Stand By Me, Up On The Roof and Under The Boardwalk, stopping between bars to repeat and explain the lyrics.

From the park, we went to the home of Van’s “sister” (actually childhood friend) Nga, where we drank tea and had a strangely serious conversation. Nga greeted me with the question, “When I hear you are an American, do you know what I think of?”

“What?”

“That period about 30 years ago. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course. I also think about that quite a lot when I’m in Vietnam.”

She talked in a very obviously loving way about ‘Uncle Ho’ (Chi Minh). Her birthday is one day before his, and she grew up feeling like his grandchild. Her obvious love for him is shared by everyone here in a way that’s amazingly present and real. Tears well up in their eyes.

After tea at Nga’s house, Van and I went to the Highland Cafe, on the edge of West Lake – the biggest of the nine lakes in Hanoi – where we drank fruit juices and watched the sunset. Then it was back to the Old Quarter for beef pho and ice cream – ‘chip chocoloate’ for her, coconut for me.

Finally, we wandered back to the Internet cafe where she works and chatted for a while with her friend Nhung.

Van is a 23-year-old computer student who has never travelled on an airplane, never been outside her country or visited many places within it – not south to Saigon or Hoi An, Hue or Na Trang, nor north to Sapa and the mountains. Even in her own city, she has never eaten Thai, French, Chinese or Italian food, which are all found in abundance – only Vietnamese.

She’s a student of the Internet age, however, who will graduate this summer with a firm footing in Java, PERL, ASP and C# (looks like Vietnam is gearing up to be another source for the outsourcers). So her tech skills are way beyond my own, and when it comes to getting around the city of Hanoi, I could not have asked for a better teacher and tour guide.

This morning my Malay friend Elena, whom I met in Hanoi, called me while I was waiting for my ramen to cool at the Lucky Plaza food court. It was an interesting coincidence, because I was hours away from flying back to Hanoi. It still amazes me that I can go Vietnam for a weekend, on a $100 plane ticket, spend $13 on a beautiful hotel room, and find myself surrounded by a completely different culture.

No matter how much I fly, I never tire of taking off, rising above skyscrapers and farms, trees and sea. Lately, as summer is approaching Singapore, the hazy sky has become a murky purple-gray. Through some optical trickery, the turquoise sea becomes the same colour at the horizon, so one flows seamlessly into the other. Boats and ships emerge from this uniform backdrop like a fleet of comets – dots and dashes of colour leaving trails of white foam.

I prefer cloudless skies. I like observing life from the angel’s eye view, and the equalising effect it has. Scattered chaos and discord on the ground are invisible at 35,000 feet, and the variety of human activity appears to flow together like the orchestral synchrony of a super-organism.

But clouds are beautiful too, and come in an endless variety. Sometimes you float above a layer of them so dense and blindingly sunlit from above that you could swear you’re looking down on the icy surface of Antarctica. Sometimes the clouds form a thin and heavenly gauze between you and the earth, and you wonder if you’ve drifted into a dream. Cloud formations in the distance, from an airplane window, can look like castles and cities – architecture of fantasy – and an expansive scattering of small white puffs can look like an epic flock of sheep.

So I’ve found myself back in Hanoi, in the Old Quarter, beside the beautiful lake where the teenagers hold hands and exchange small kisses. My soundtrack is once again the steady drone of motorbikes, punctuated by horns. At dinner with my colleagues Andy and Karen, I chatted with a waitress I recognized from my last trip, and when I walked into this very Internet café I was enthusiastically met by Van, a young student whom I spoke with just once, more than three months ago. In another bit of coincidence, there’s an email from her in my inbox at this very moment – sent earlier today.

She’s one of the many beautiful people I met in Vietnam, which is exactly why I decided to make this encore trip.

The Lucky Hotel in Hanoi sits on a quiet street a few hundred meters from Hoan Kiem Lake (the only lake in Hanoi that matters). It’s a short walk from the hotel to the Old Quarter, the Hang Da Market, the Water Puppet Theatre and basically all the best things the city has to offer. At US$20-25 per night, it’s not really a bargain by Hanoi standards, but the staff is very friendly, and that’s basically what kept me there for the four nights I was in Hanoi.

The Grassland Hotel (aka Khách S?n Th?o Nguyên) in Hoi An is a new, and therefore very clean, establishment located about halfway between the town center and An Bang Beach. Hoi An is a small town, though, so it’s a good location – especially since the price (US$12 per night) includes unlimited bicycle rentals. The family that runs the place were very sweet and invited me to join them for tea and fruit each day I was there. Hoi An is a really lovely town. I highly recommend it, and the Grassland Hotel. If you go, however, ask for a room that’s as far away from the street as possible – this goes for all of Vietnam.

Also in Hoi An, have a meal or two at a restaurant called Sao Mai. It’s right on the river, at the edge of the main market. It’s a family-run joint, managed by a young guy named Son. His mom is the head cook, and although her Cao Lau (a dish of thick noodles – the local specialty) is not the best in town, her other dishes are very good. Mainly, though, I enjoyed chatting with Son and his family. He hooked me up with a great motorbike and guide for a day, and he’s also a badass Karaoke master.