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Trailing the flooded forest banks of the Mekong Delta; staring down an endless throat of sagging palm fronds, distant echoes of jovial karaoke battles ringing in my ears, the breathless motion of a bat zipping past my head, but all I could feel were ghost stories. When the children running along the edge of the water waved at us with feverish excitement, doling out smiles we didn’t earn, all I could see were bamboo straws poking out of the water gasping for air through holes no bigger than my finger tip. As the muddy water cradled both sides of the boat I looked down, too afraid to caress its warm surface for fear that a hand would reach out and grab mine. Eyes stared back at me from the darkness beyond the mangroves, stories of war cut through the thickness of the air, landing in my mind and chewing holes like rats in cardboard boxes. I felt the presence of pain, my heart splitting open as we turned down each canal, each one telepathically communicating to me its very own story with increasing volume and distortion of the real world. Unease followed me everywhere I went in the South of Vietnam. I smelled death rising from the ground as a product of my own imagination, a gripping fiend that would not release its hold on me; telling me how I should feel about this place before I had even seen it for myself. What is the value of history when travelling? What is the toll you should pay while exploring the past of countries whose scars lay wide and bare for all to see? If ignorance is bliss then should we lay the tangled remains of the past gasping for air on the floor where they belong? I had to unravel these threads upon my arrival to Vietnam, coming to terms with the fact that life has moved on in flourishes, the turbulent past being held in walls of thick glass, in absolute reverence. The pho broth still bubbles in the street, old ladies still pick their nose with reckless abandon, smiles are still wide and toothy bearing the soul through windows of the black spaces in between. The light of life creeps and crawls its way through even the darkest of nights, it burns up what we thought to be broken forever and breathes life anew, challenging the common perception of the past and weaving it as it was always meant to be seen. When I look back in reflection at my time spent in the mighty river lands of Southern Vietnam, the picture is one of abundant life, joy without measure. A completely different experience. Back on the boat, gently snaking along the labyrinth of canals in the Mekong Delta I had the privilege of seeing into a Barbie-dream house version of life fed directly by the water. Toys, clothes and buckets for washing body parts and vegetables alike lay strewn in the overgrown backyards of open concept houses. Roots, a deep emerald shade, gnarling through the thick concrete walls as a constant reminder of an ever-present connection to nature. The halcyon mood was palpable as we drifted horizontally past each diorama, each life, a community of people existing simply; dogs with low hanging bellies, mango slowly decaying on the ground, emitting a sweet overripe perfume in the air that mingled with the warm musk from the river beds. It is all an intricate and crucial web that has been built solely to survive off the generosity of the water, the benevolence of the land. This was not the American-made fever dream I had envisioned. This was not the horrified look on my grandmother’s face when I told her I was headed to Vietnam for two months. This is a delicate ecosystem, the living, breathing and embodiment of forgiveness and reconciliation. Vietnam is a kaleidoscopic dream. A turbulent force of snarling beauty and stories that are far more vivid and alive than what the past has told us to be true.