Surprise

The loud explosion tore the stillness of the night. Numerous incendiary bombs rained down from the sky, spraying sparks over the small village. Light exploded all around, trapping me in confusion and mayhem.

Then with a frightening suddenness, I convulsed violently, punching a hand on my chest, gripping my red-stained T-shirt. I dropped to my knees.

Explosions. Gun shots. Then an eternal silence. I screamed.

I jerked, turned my head frantically, searching for my parents. It was another nightmare among countless ones that had been plaguing me since I came to this refugee camp. Sometimes, dreams came in waves, up to three to four times a day, whenever I closed my eyes.

Two weeks had passed silently without any news from my parents. Fourteen days ago, on the night of the bombing, my family was still together under the warm dimly lit candle light. Then everything changed with the roaring sounds of the plane engines. Abrupt. Fast. Someone found me lying at the corner of the street, bruised, unconscious and alone.

After that fateful night, I totally lost track of my parents. I had been trying my best to search this vast refugee camp to hunt the smallest piece of information but nothing surfaced. Some said the whole village had been killed in that air raid while others said the survivors were staying in similar camps hundreds of kilometers away. Although one might never find out truth in this merciless war, I always clung to one hope, one belief in my heart – that was, they were alive.

Every desperate day crept by, I always climbed up the nearby bamboo watchtower. From there, I could scan the horizon trying to spot familiar faces, those that now haunted me like ghosts. However, all I could see were thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, like churning brown ocean, stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. All of them looked uprooted, hopeless and silent.

The war was overwhelming.

Days passed quickly. For some days, I often buried myself behind a mango tree, watching a family nearby gathering and having their dinner. There were five of them: grandfather, the parents, one girl about my age, and a plump baby. They always sat in a circle, around a fire lit by several gleaming charred wood. Then plates of newly cooked rice and pieces of dry fish or sometimes skewered chicken were passed around. The fragrance of the long-grained white rice drifted in the air, steamy and sweet, mesmerizing me. Everyone was bustling around, fretting, discussing and talking about a peaceful future.

At a faraway corner, wrapped by the dark cloak of night, I watched silently, all alone, isolated, feeling unwanted and neglected. The warmth of the fire could not reach here and neither did the warmth of having a family. The uneaten chunk of rice in my hand felt cold and frozen like ice. It was all that I had for dinner.

As always, I ran back to the tent and wept. All by myself, I could feel the darkness, loneliness gradually intruding my heart. “What if I can never know the truth? What if they are not alive?” I trembled violently, hugging my knees tightly, trying to restrain those bad thoughts but question after question flooded my mind.

Frightening. Desperate. Hopeless.

Finally, I decided to follow a convoy heading for another camp at the south border. The oxcart was cramped with people but I had cleverly taken the front seat in the early morning. In the chaotic crowd of people inundating the gate post, I spotted someone resembling my mother arriving in a convoy from south-west Vietnam.

The familiar voice. The figure that I had been longing to hug so tightly. The moment lasted until eternity.

Is it reality or just another dream?

[ (misty) + (SAPA) ]

One of the most famous tourist attractions in Vietnam is Sapa, a valley buried beneath a sea of mist which cannot be easily noticed even from a helicopter. Why do tourists and millions of people flock to Sapa each year and why have they become to love this place so much? The answer is very much simple: once standing on one of the foggy mountain peaks embracing Sapa, one cannot help but be dazzled and intrigued by the mysterious, charming beauty of nature.

Sapa is a stunning beauty even when one has not got off the 3-hour bus for Hanoi to Sapa which slowly and laboriously struggles to climb up the high way spiraling one of the mountains hugging the valley, offering an aloft view of a misty Sapa. The valley seems to play hide-and-seek with the coach from afar. The city suddenly appears and evaporates from view, veiled by the thick layer of fog and the long and irregular mountain range.

From here onwards, one loses the actual sense of seasons. At low attitude, the air is cool, fresh and clear, giving visitors a feeling of an early monsoon spring when nature is lovely, green, noisy like a young bird at the first time being allowed to fly off its mother’s care. Going higher, temperature drops drastically to less than 10C where mist engulfs everything. White. Chilly. Soft to the touch. It is like cotton from thousands of pillows scattered everywhere around. That is when one is bewildered by the early typical northern Vietnam winter coming unnoticeably with freezing atmosphere and a silent beauty of nature.

Sapa’s charm not only lies in the scenery and unexpected weather but it is also hidden in its people. They are tribe men and women whose farming traditions and unique life styles fascinate every visitor. The women wore exquisite head dresses in the tradition of their individual tribes. The Hmong young men were dashing in embroidered caps and sashes with large, bone handled knives in the waistband. The children were stunning in their miniature versions of the traditional outfits. They live in thatched houses that are raised above the ground by pilings scarred by criss-crossing ruts which form a network under the house. There are a verandah and a wooden staircase outside each household. Each only possesses one single compartment with one corner as the cooking area. Families often gather in the middle of the house to have meals and discuss important issues.

Life is quiet, regular but full of colors. There are dancing festivals which at least hundreds of tourists are found there, holding each other’s hand, singing songs praising the rice god, joining the locals in each dance, mingling with each rhythm. There are also harvesting festivals followed by celebration and offering to the Sun.

Food culture is also something unique about this remote valley far away from the dusty hustle of city life which can be found nowhere in Vietnam. Plain dishes are served with local fish salt and decorated by colorful vegetables picked up in the wood. Supply of rice comes from local harvests. White. Steamy. One cannot help but be mesmerized by the special aroma drifting across the room from a bowl of cooked rice. It is definitely enjoyable to sit down with a local family, be taught the right way to eat the food and then let each bit of fragrant rice melt on the tip of your tongue. The nutty, sweet taste seems to dissolve throughout and impregnate the mouth.

There are many reasons that make Sapa an exceptional place of attraction. So what about sparing it a visit and discovering the world of yourself?

#flighT#

The loud explosion tore the stillness of the night. I woke up to my father’s shouting, “Get up! Japanese air raid!” Fear grasped me as planes roared overhead and bombs crashed all around. When I was buried to my bed at the moment, my father grabbed me and we hurdled toward the darkness outside the torn-down door with my father and sister.

Outside the darkness was chased away by tongues of flame stretching hundred of meters into the night sky. Thick, acrid smoke swirled down the devastated streets. The incendiary bombs rained down from the night sky, sparkling and spraying sparks. I looked up, being entranced. “Look! Like meteors! So beautiful!” I murmured.

Since I could run faster than my mother and sister so from time to time, I would stop to look back. However, as the road was inundated with a flood of people running around and screaming chaotically, I lost trace of them. I looked around with my threatened eyes, desperately searched for their silhouettes. Thousands of faces were whirling past but none looked familiar to me. Suddenly, a cold shiver was sent down my spine and I was overcome with intense panic. I began to scream and cry as loudly as I could. I soon became bathed with my own perspiration and tear.

Suddenly, a tall, big man grabbed my hand and pulled me away. “Follow me!” he shouted. I did not realize who he was but I gripped his hand as tightly as I could to ensure I would not lose him. Together, we darted along a narrow lane filled with eerie orange glow from the scorched ruins around.

My VillagE

The sign “Lua village” appearing on the side of the road announced that I finally reached there. In front of me was the recently paced road stretching till the far-away paddy fields. New and totally unfamiliar. Somehow I managed to recognize those red ixora flowers growing around the village’s ancient communal hall. The perennial banian was being shaken by the seasonal wind, letting the yellow and red leaves fly and scatter all over the ground.

It suddenly poured down heavily. Dark clouds, lightings and thunders engulfed the sky. It was cold but I could feel warmth glowing inside me, Rains in the countryside were not as chilly as those I experienced in the densely-populated cites. They were like long lost friends whose images attached to leave my childhood memories.

One of my childhood memories was gazing at the heavy rains that turned the whole sky into a grey curtain. Lighting tore the sky into parts and thunder sometimes made my little bobby stand upright, run around and bark furious at no where. Far away, small-thatched houses stretched across the horizon resembling a thin dread on the grey background. People were working hard under the rain. Theirs bellow together with the dogs’ barking composed a familiar distinguished concerto of the village. I could hear oozing of bare foot on muddy ground coming near and fast. The farmers were chatting excitedly about the new crop plantation and new rice seeds that were rumored to be enchanted by the fairy hands of the scientists to be resistant to both harmful insect and harsh weather conditions. ‘Mud, paddy field and water buffalo are their beloved friends and those little white seeds that we eat everyday are their sons. Remember, my son. Rice is more valuable than gold because rice can nourish man,’ my father once told me. That lesson has been squeezed into my heavy life luggage till now.

After the rain, children besieged their parents, shouted to compete to graze the buffaloes. They pastured the buffaloes and wandered the nearby meadows. They created games which I thought were present in this countryside. They divided themselves into halves, battling each other, ridding the buffaloes as luxurious carriages which were only preserved for the feudal nobles and holding reeds as their tribe’s flag. The king of the victorious tribe would be carried pick-a-back around the village. They also played the king sport by replacing the ball by pomeloes which were grown in their parents’ gardens. Once my team won the championship but then I fell down a muddy drain because of the slippery ground. Many holes were punched through my new shorts, making them a rag. I was ordered to lie down and beaten by my father afterward (money was hard to make at that time so I had only two pairs of shorts!) but I still felt a triumph growing inside me. First I cried, then I smiled to myself, enjoyed a child’s sweet victory and my own self-adoration.

Night soon fell down after heavy rains. At night, the paddy fields were full of people holding glaring torches. They were catching toads, gossiping excitedly and boasting about their bamboo baskets which were soon filled up with toads. Toads were then used to make a special kind of sausage. Ground toad meat was mixed with pork, “lot” leaves and other ingredients in which my mum called the magic recipe. The distinguished and concentrated savor once swallowed seemed to last forever on my tongue. Once in a while, my parents sent me some as home-sweet-home gifts.

A motorbike grumbling nearby brought me back to reality. Behind the rain stood the high and modernly designed concrete buildings. Rain was still falling but seemed to make no sound to me. I suddenly found myself strange and unfamiliar in my hometown. I did not see anyone rushing for the plantation season. Each house then had a plating machine. I wondered, ‘Where are the buffalo battles that we used to boast about now?’