Written by Jonathan Smylie
Between Hue, the French colonial capital and even older Nguyen Dynasty capital and Ninh Binh, 56 miles southeast of Hanoi, we took an overnight train. The 600-kilometer ride through this north central part of Vietnam lasted twelve hours from 4 pm to 4 am, during which we crossed the DMZ.
We settled into our cabins and dined on Vietnamese style guacamole that Amy and Tanh had cobbled together with ingredients bought at an outdoor market. Tanh was correct in his assumption that we would not like the boxed food included in the cost of the ticket. After dinner while the last of the sunlight waned, I stepped into the aisle and began taking pictures of the passing countryside. On the train’s west side were tall distant mountains, jagged silhouettes in the dimming light. On the train’s east side stretched flat, rice-paddy-covered green fields as far as you could see.
Since taking pictures had become a bit of an obsession with me by this point in the trip, I clicked away, hoping to capture something interesting, but explicitly wanting an image of the train’s long line of cars. After tightening the camera’s nylon handle securely around my wrist, I would stick my left arm as far as I could out the open window and click away. Then with my hand still stiff-armed, I turned the camera and pointed it on a few of us looking out the window. When we flipped the camera over and examined the digital image of smiling faces and wind blown hair we went wild with laughter. The fun was contagious and everyone wanted in. Again and again two or three or five of us would crowd around the window and stick our faces into the wind while I clicked away. Then we’d jumped into position, heads close together to view the results and invariably break out in laughter.
It was one of the most joyous moments of our trip, filling us all with youthful energy. Here we were, all children again in a cabin hurling northward through the night, half way through our trip, acting just like the children who surrounded us in village after village, who wanted us to take their pictures and then once seeing the images, would exploded into laughter.
Later that night, after the women had headed to their cabin for sleep, Mike asked Tanh if he wanted to watch any of the war documentaries he had brought along. Tanh was very interested and for the next hour Mike played different parts of two or three CDs on his laptop. Here we were, four men watching a war documentary, sharing a train compartment, sipping a little Scotch. If Tanh and I or Mike or Andrew were 18 or 20 or 25 in 1968 and in this country we could have been fighting each other. Andrew had a draft number, but was never called up. Tanh was born just north of Hanoi in 1976. His uncle was killed fighting for North Vietnam. On a metaphorical plain, we killed his uncle and Tanh beat our entire army into retreat, giving America the first lost war in its history.
I couldn’t imagine fighting this kind man after having cycled together for a week, eaten dozens of meals together, having received his help with everything from staying hydrated through the hottest part of the day to making sure I didn’t take the wrong turn, to showing me, the only one who wanted to go, the old Cham towers at the end of one of our longest cycling days. This was his country yet he was speaking my language.
In this moment and there were many like it, I was grateful to be here, grateful to experience it with Amy and the others so we could be witnesses to each others lives, grateful that I had not had to come here as a soldier.
Between Hue, the French colonial capital and even older Nguyen Dynasty capital and Ninh Binh, 56 miles southeast of Hanoi, we took an overnight train. The 600-kilometer ride through this north central part of Vietnam lasted twelve hours from 4 pm to 4 am, during which we crossed the DMZ.
We settled into our cabins and dined on Vietnamese style guacamole that Amy and Tanh had cobbled together with ingredients bought at an outdoor market. Tanh was correct in his assumption that we would not like the boxed food included in the cost of the ticket. After dinner while the last of the sunlight waned, I stepped into the aisle and began taking pictures of the passing countryside. On the train’s west side were tall distant mountains, jagged silhouettes in the dimming light. On the train’s east side stretched flat, rice-paddy-covered green fields as far as you could see.
Since taking pictures had become a bit of an obsession with me by this point in the trip, I clicked away, hoping to capture something interesting, but explicitly wanting an image of the train’s long line of cars. After tightening the camera’s nylon handle securely around my wrist, I would stick my left arm as far as I could out the open window and click away. Then with my hand still stiff-armed, I turned the camera and pointed it on a few of us looking out the window. When we flipped the camera over and examined the digital image of smiling faces and wind blown hair we went wild with laughter. The fun was contagious and everyone wanted in. Again and again two or three or five of us would crowd around the window and stick our faces into the wind while I clicked away. Then we’d jumped into position, heads close together to view the results and invariably break out in laughter.
It was one of the most joyous moments of our trip, filling us all with youthful energy. Here we were, all children again in a cabin hurling northward through the night, half way through our trip, acting just like the children who surrounded us in village after village, who wanted us to take their pictures and then once seeing the images, would exploded into laughter.
Later that night, after the women had headed to their cabin for sleep, Mike asked Tanh if he wanted to watch any of the war documentaries he had brought along. Tanh was very interested and for the next hour Mike played different parts of two or three CDs on his laptop. Here we were, four men watching a war documentary, sharing a train compartment, sipping a little Scotch. If Tanh and I or Mike or Andrew were 18 or 20 or 25 in 1968 and in this country we could have been fighting each other. Andrew had a draft number, but was never called up. Tanh was born just north of Hanoi in 1976. His uncle was killed fighting for North Vietnam. On a metaphorical plain, we killed his uncle and Tanh beat our entire army into retreat, giving America the first lost war in its history.
I couldn’t imagine fighting this kind man after having cycled together for a week, eaten dozens of meals together, having received his help with everything from staying hydrated through the hottest part of the day to making sure I didn’t take the wrong turn, to showing me, the only one who wanted to go, the old Cham towers at the end of one of our longest cycling days. This was his country yet he was speaking my language.
In this moment and there were many like it, I was grateful to be here, grateful to experience it with Amy and the others so we could be witnesses to each others lives, grateful that I had not had to come here as a soldier.
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