Taliswomen

Ho Chi Minh City is filled with motorbikes, street vendors, Pagodas and noodle soup.  From the skyscrapers, you see its urban residents move up and down the allies, across the rivers and through the parks.  Ho Chi Minh City wakes up early and doesn’t stagnate until late that same night.  Ho Chi Minh City sleeps lightly.

But I’m not there now.

I am on a floating house in a mangrove forest, where monkeys steal food and pigs run between trees.  A rooster crows.  The river is so low that my floating house rests on the muddy, soft, riverbed, while crabs and lungfish fight over the insects remaining.  By night, the tide will be high again, elevating my house up higher while the roots of the mangroves will protect the village inland, from the sea.

And I am not there now.

I am on a sampan on the Mekong Delta and we are moving slowly.  The stroke of the single oar fractures the silence, and no one can see us.  Not long after, I am in the vicinity of sleep in a hammock on a salt farm.  Filled with fish and rice wine, it is too hot to be outside, so I rest here while the owner of the household smiles on kindly.  She finds my tiredness entertaining, and she is happy I enjoyed the lunch.

I am there now.