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December 21 On vacation. Only the sun and the smells and the streets to distract me. My usual, groggy fatigue is lifted with an incredible lightness. I walk outside with no purpose other than to absorb life. There is something clean about all this distance. *** December 28 Travelling through Sapa, Vietnam. We bounce along on the scooter, my hands wrapped around Vahla—my guide—and I smile at the passing farmers with their chickens and pigs tightly secured. The children wave, smile big, they are wearing Calvin Klein and Armani. They do not yet understand this paradox. Mountains rise up all around me, reside peacefully. Ask for nothing. We turn a corner, and my heart jolts sharply. I yell for Vahla to stop! What are they doing? I say as I point at the giant cavity in the mountain. For the hotel Miss. Road to the new hotel, see. And she points to the hill beyond the cavity. I step off the scooter and stand paralysed at the edge of the muddy road. Where the explosion has ripped through the mountain I am reminded of a missing tooth, the large void tearing through the landscape with an abrasive, jagged presence. The hole is filled with the sky, dirt and red mud of the landscape beyond and I can’t help thinking that it looks as if the land has been weeping. A new hotel Miss. Many of them, said Vahla as she swept her hand across the vista in front of me. I cry then. Suddenly and quietly. I make no attempt to swipe my tears. They have done it for us—the white people with money—and they will not stop. And we will not stop coming. It is in us, for us, and all about us, this insatiable need to conquer. I stand—transfixed and saddened—guilty at my place in it all, and so overcome with hopelessness for the destructive nature that we humans are capable of inflicting on this world. *** January 1 I’ve come here to heal, and so today I rode on the back of a motorcycle in the heavy rain. I stuck my tongue out to the sky and caught the monsoon rain, and everything in my world for one small moment felt perfect again. *** January 2 The rain continues to fall, but I absorb this climate from the shelter of a café street front while Hanoi continues on, wild and undisturbed. A sea of coloured ponchos whirs past me: like rainbows on rubber wheels, the city folk on speed, enduring this world in their unperturbed, vibrant way. *** January 9 It is Saturday night and I am enjoying dinner at a restaurant perched halfway up the main street of town. The constant chain of cars and scooters has suddenly ceased, replaced by a flurry of waving sheets. I watch on as dozens of local women rush forth to claim the street, and within minutes, the road is an arrangement of white, tartan and plastic sheets. The bitumen alive with the spectacle of dancing fabric. Their collective display—all mismatched and tattered—bears no reflection on the pride these women take in arranging their stalls. Drop-sheets are adjusted to the millimetre, pulled exactly taught, and then carefully fastened at each corner. Woman bark orders at each other, wave their hands, aggressively kick at their neighbours sheets. And in the next moment, they are laughing, chuckling, their entire bodies bouncing with uncontained glee. Transfixed, I watch on as they produce from worn hessian sacks, the most beautiful, elaborate, hand-stitched work. They work fast, pulling a constant source of magic from their hessian sacks, their displays coming to life in vibrant, swirling colour. Revealed to me then in that world of màu, fabric and womanhood, is the resilience of the Vietnamese people and the tremendous, unfailing spirit of their daily life. Empowered by their pride, I pay-up and walk out into the market, hoping to buy a little piece of this spirit to take back home with me.