Beautiful, Ugliful 3.02.10

When people see some things as beautiful
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

From Tao te Ching #2

All along the highways. All along the urban and exurban routes there is commerce in Vietnam. Capitalism is relentlessly present. Life appears hardscrabble; extremely difficult, dangerous, monotonous, demeaning and tentative here. But the people here are tenacious, proud, obdurate. Mostly people are either taciturn or cheerful. At least that is their appearance. I think that most people are driven to succeed. The rungs on the ladder are widely separated and the code is the international standard – women and children are least favoured.

At once the ‘differentness’ presents challenges to the relatively unseasoned traveller (me). The rot and rust and dust and decay, the kitsch and clumsiness and blandness have a kind of charm, sometimes aesthetic, sometimes emotional, but it’s not a simple charm. Things are beautiful and ugly, inelegant and charming, oppressive and refreshingly different. On the surface there is a lot of yang drang but the yin shines through in the spirit and enthusiasm of the people we have met. My God they are resilient.

To underline that last thought, I'm having a blast photographing everything that moves, floats or crawls. And there's some cool roadkill here too Nancy.

Today, many more hours in buses and boats, cruising down to the Mekong Delta, the land is very rich here, abundant with easy access to water, lots of water, so lots of irrigation. In the middle of many rice fields there are stone sarcophagi. The value and scarcity of land make it a necessity to bury one’s ancestors in the family plot of land so to speak. I was thinking that these ancients are providing the plants with nutrients - phosphorous, carbon, iron, calcium – the ancestors continue to contribute to their lives.

Homeowners also put small offerings on altars to appease the dead who lived on the property in ages past, not family ancestors but the restless spirits of people long dead who once occupied that land. It is a practice that should have a place in Canadian culture. We should spend more time contemplating and giving thanks to those who have disappeared into the mists whose spirit and energy continues to dwell with and around us.

We saw a beautiful decrepit French Colonial home in the Mekong while we were cycling. We were told that not many colonial houses remain in that area because the VCs used them for shelter - so the US Navy shelled them to smithereens. The interior was straight out of a dream – crepuscular light, rust-stained walls and ceiling, perfectly cracked and shattered tile and dust everywhere. Gorgeous.

We saw water coconuts which have a magnificent shell and little mudskippers, those wonderful fish that come out of the water and hang out on the muddy banks. The Mekong is a brown river but the people bathe in it and it seems quite clean – which is amazing since it passes through five countries on its way to this estuary. The Homestay was a little bunker with a rattly fan but the scenery was magnificent and the boat trips along the channels and river were fantastic. The Cai Be floating market was a bit underwhelming but interesting nonetheless. I’ll try to get some images up on Flickr or some other public site. We saw rice paper and rice puff candy and coconut candy being made which sounds rather mundane but it is quite rich – they don’t use computers you see. The weird thing is; people do things with their hands (and feet) it’s quite fantastic really. We should have thought of this. The eighteenth century trappings aren’t really slick but it has a nice period feel.

And on..