It’s not Les Parapluis de Cherbourg , or Catherine DeNeuve with her trench coat.
Just anything over the head to stay, well, less wet.
We got out of the pool, just to be wet all over again.
Tropical summer.
Impeding traffic and time planned.
Here in Vietnam, it takes a lot just to stay cool and dry.
Survivalist and minimalist.
Yet, magician is coming in town for three days of show.
Guy Kawasaki will also be here, to tell his Standford basket ball story.
And the controversial Bob Dylan was also here a while ago.
Jane Fonda started it all (by visiting Hanoi), then Bob Hope and Raquel Welch in the South.
From then, it’s like, you got to make a stop at the once-a-battle-field, to gain street cred.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckeberg, Robert De Niro, Brad and Angela have all made this stop.
Mind you. It’s not a major airline hub.
But famous people want it incognito (The Pitts visited Con Dao Island, once a French prison).
I am sure these people got hit by the heat, the dust and the rain.
Call it “Roughing it in Vietnam”.
Their own Matterhorn.
To feel the Sorrow of War.
The sadness of summer.
The frustration of dream unfulfilled.
What made people leave the comfort of their own homes, to come to a God-forsaken place.
Traffic is everywhere, especially at the French Colonial Roundabout.
You can’t even stand it, if it’s in Paris.
Yet people endure and emerge.
Having tried it hard to play catch up since 1985 and after, the country has been on the path of growth.
The trajectory went nicely for about twenty odd years, until recently.
Then, the rest is what is taken place now.
With its own “valley of death”.
Too much growth heats up inflation.
Too slow, the economy might crash.
It takes a village, albeit without the young people who had already migrated to urban centers, to come to term with modernity and progress.
Even with the best malls and fastest fast foods, no one can discount the force of nature.
So it rains, pouring rain.
And everyone dashes in and out of traffic trying to stay dry, to survive.
Nature, and human nature, are both blessing and curse.
Geography aside, human spirit and its resilience is all that’s left and working for this country.
I can’t hear the sound track of “It’s a wonderful world” today as played in Good Morning Vietnam.
I hear the chewing gum commercial of Rhythm of the Rain. And maybe Happy Together, to sell some Heineken, good to drown down one’s sorrow, amidst of misery, man-made or otherwise.
Thang Nguyen 555 