I have spoken and written many times about the fact that there are so many stories around me that I simply cannot write them all.
I think it would be a shame to think that I cannot help it. Most of the simple moments become stories because of my own narrative.
I cannot help it.
This makes me happy.
Tuesday and Wednesday
I arrived in this city on Tuesday, as I mentioned in the post “Huế”. The first evening I took a long walk to get to know the city. The rain forced me to stop several times. Finally, I had to take a forced break 300 meters from my accommodation for a beer. There is quite a lot of water when it rains.
Wednesday was a working and easy day, I didn’t do anything special.
Maybe it was preparing for the next few days?
A gem and a few people
I started this Thursday with a long walk. After passing through the imperial city (more on that on Sunday), I went to a tiny cafe 5 km away. I got there based on a friend’s recommendation. I’m grateful to him for this tip.
I discovered a real hidden gem. A small garden courtyard and a tiny building. That’s enough for heaven, I’m absolutely sure.
The garden was full of plants. The most beautiful flowers and bushes were crowned by trees that provided shade. There were chairs and tables placed under them in several places. The owner was sitting at one of the tables. He was reading and drinking coffee. He was so engrossed in his book that I first saw a guest in him. I didn’t want to disturb him. Later it turned out that the place was closed at the time of my arrival.
My roommate friend was already in the cafe, he showed me around. There are two rooms on the lower level. Lots of books. I love being among books, so I felt right at home. For a long time, I was just busy exploring. I didn’t just look at the books. There’s also a huge DVD and vinyl collection waiting for visitors. All sorts of technical wonders: record players, jukeboxes. What made me feel like I was in an enchanted castle were the many little things that were beckoning me from everywhere in the rooms. A small statue here, an interesting collection of Beatles badges there.
I really enjoyed being in this place. I sat down to work. The owner came in from the garden, but everything was so chill that he didn’t ask anything. Who are you, what are you, why are you here. He brought me a glass of water, which I took as a very kind gesture. Then of course I ordered coffee.
I came from Phong Nha on Monday night. The manager of my accommodation there asked how I was on Tuesday. That’s all he wrote.
“I miss you.”
After that, it was a great pleasure to meet him in this place. He is from Huế, his parents and his girlfriend live here. He came to visit them, and maybe me too.
So we sat, talked and drank coffee with a new and even newer friend. A Vietnamese girl joined us. The conversation with him was especially exciting. When I told him that I write a blog, he had a lot of questions. He immediately started reading my page and had even more questions. It was a good feeling to watch him laugh and enjoy what he had read. We said goodbye to him, saying that he hoped he would have the opportunity to see me again and talk. That was how we planned it, but we never met again.
Other stories awaited me in the following days.
The first dinner in a row
I had dinner with my boyfriend and his girlfriend last night. In a cozy little restaurant, away from the noisy city center.
I will write a post about Vietnamese hospitality soon. So I won’t go into the details of the dinner now. Suffice it to say that I tasted a lot of good food. Moreover, some that were prepared in a local way. There was also pork, goat and frog meat on the table. With the variety of flavors alone, it would have been possible to live well, the quantity would not have been important. And of course, beer is an indispensable part of the dinner. It turned out that Vietnamese women can drink as much as men.
The most beautiful story of the dinner was not even the food itself. But the moment when the couple said that they were planning their wedding next year. Which I wish I could have come to.
I would really like to finish this story in a year with a new post, with a title like “How did I feel at a real Vietnamese wedding ceremony?”
The future is a mystery. But the wonderful gift of the moment was undoubtedly for me that this honorable invitation was born at all.
A Vietnamese family
I had an average Friday.
It was just spiced up with so many micro stories that I won’t write down for the exact reason I indicated at the beginning of the article. It would be too much and I would never finish it.
I received another invitation for the evening.
This time, I was in the heart of the city, in a restaurant in the middle of a bustling intersection with a thousand people. The evening was different from yesterday. And not just because of the location.
I had dinner with a family with two children and my friends. It was an experience to have dinner with a family with small children. I could feel the dynamic that only the presence of children can create.
My own memories came alive when I saw them. The immeasurable joy that a piece of gum brings to a little girl. Then the immeasurable despair when it turns out that it can’t be eaten. The sadness that comes from being scared because she has just ruined something. The father’s attempt to save the situation. The mother’s disapproving look, which reads, “How could you be so stupid to buy him gum?”.
This family atmosphere was clearly the story of the first half of the evening for me. I didn’t need an explanation as to why the family had to leave. Everything was so familiar. The couple didn’t speak a word of English. Yet everything that happened was understandable. We are parents. We spoke a common language.
Life, of course, doesn’t pay attention to the passage of time, it tells stories without stopping.
The three of us took a long walk along the beautiful Perfume River. The riverbank is incredibly tastefully designed. Every square meter encourages you to spend your evening here. Long paths over and next to the water. Green lawn. Stairs, terraces, decks.
I really like the fact that Asian people also use these spaces. They sit in circles, talking. They eat together. They sit with a cup of tea in their hands and listen to music. Or sing. Or play the guitar. Not just any way! With an electric guitar, a mini amplifier!
It’s nice to see that social life is alive and well in this part of the world in a different way. It doesn’t matter that it’s 11 o’clock at night. Life is vibrant and beautiful, even if I just look at these people.
But this evening I didn’t just look at them.
There’s a Vietnamese game. It’s called Đá cầu. Some people stand in a circle and hold a small device decorated with feathers in the air, kicking it to each other. Everyone can pass it on with just one touch, so the game is full of spectacular, acrobatic movements.
There was a larger space on the riverbank, where they played this game in two rounds. At midnight. My friend suggested I try it, and I decided I’d never played it before. Fortunately, he answered what I knew exactly: If you don’t try it, you’ll never know what it’s like.
I played for 45 minutes with 10+ Vietnamese guys. I sweated like a horse. I missed every second kick. Of course, I also succeeded every second one. I daydreamed a lot and was amazed at how skillfully the others played. I got a few signs of appreciation if I happened to be skillful.
We had to go because my friend’s partner was tired. I would have stayed until morning if I wanted to. Not because of the signs of appreciation. Not because of the usefulness of the physical training. But because they accepted me into the team. Because I felt incredibly good with them. Because that hour became one of the defining memories of this city in my mind so naturally and simply.
Next time, I’ll join the guys on my own.
A mountaintop
For Saturday, I planned to rent a motorbike and see two interesting places in the city.
Breakfast time brought something different.
I had exchanged a few sentences with a Canadian guy in the past few days. Shared accommodation, shared lifestyle, everything was given to us to talk.
We happened to go to breakfast at the same time. Among the many words, it turned out that we were both planning a day of hiking. He was talking so enthusiastically about what mountaintop he was going to. A sudden feeling made me ask: “Would you mind if I joined you?”
I specifically thought that we would both rent a motorbike and go. He immediately reacted differently. Let’s rent a motorbike and go. So an hour later we set off on a shared steed. By the way, he was a great driver.
Climbing the mountain was an exciting job. It was only two kilometers to walk to the top, but it involved a three-hundred-meter elevation gain. We reached the top in about 35 minutes, in the forty-five-degree heat. The guy was at least a head taller than me and fourteen years younger. His strides were longer and he set a fast pace, but I never fell behind him. When we reached the top, he said that I looked like an experienced hiker. All I thought to myself was: I could still keep up the pace.
I made one mistake. I didn’t bring water with me. A big mistake.
I was about to open my mouth to ask him for some water, but he spoke first.
Accompanied by the phrase “I have a little surprise for the two of us,” he took out two bottles of beer from his backpack. Two cold beers, to be precise…
The city of Huế could be seen from the top of the mountain.
But from the vast city, no one could see that two guys were sitting on a bench with two bottles of beer. They were listening to music, sometimes singing. They were sharing the thoughts that defined our own worlds. And they could tell each other that they were both grateful to be living in each other’s company in the present, which they both called beautiful.
This moment lasted almost two hours. There were so many happy moments in those two hours that if I had been given a gold thaler for each one, I could hardly have carried my backpack off.
The Last Dinner
We still had time to have lunch together after we got down from the mountain. Among locals, in a small hidden restaurant. This could be a short paragraph, but I don’t want to present two meals in one day.
Because I was invited to a family dinner. 25 km from the city center. Where there are no tourists. Where there is no fancy menu. Where there is a riverbank and a small courtyard where 10-15 people can sit. A family occasion. With friends. And with a stranger.
I incredibly enjoy the way the atmosphere of such gatherings changes. They greet the white man in the baseball cap with the obligatory politeness. Then they discover that we are not so different from each other. The obligatory, respectful acceptance, along with the dinner, boils into a tangible acceptance.
I eat with chopsticks like a pro. I drink beer the way a Vietnamese man drinks it. (One of the older guests told me that a real Vietnamese man drinks at least 10. A real Hungarian certainly wouldn’t be left out.) I eat snails for the first time in my life with such pleasure, as if I had always done so. I show my appreciation for the eel (also tasting it for the first time in my life) that I enjoy its taste incredibly.
When they met, they couldn’t have known that this was not such a foreign place for me. But they soon noticed.
Moreover, this afternoon and evening it turned out that I was on familiar ground. I was given the trust of two little boys and a little girl. The silent little boy – who didn’t even dare to return my greeting – held my hand on the way to the restaurant fifteen minutes later. By the end of dinner, he was enjoying the fact that I was lifting him up in the air with one hand.
The little girl accepted the birth of trust by handing over her toys.
The other little boy also started shyly. At the end of dinner, he came over to give me a kiss and a hug. Hugs are happiness for everyone. The little boy’s fear is happy that he doesn’t have a job today. My soul is happy with the trust he has received. And the family is finally convinced that there is no difference between us.
I’m not saying that without that trust, we wouldn’t have gone to a karaoke bar back in Huế. I’ll never know if that was part of the original plan or if it was just an idea.
You know what! I don’t care.
We showed each other what we could do with a microphone in our hands. That’s enough points. And I can definitely say that it’s a great experience to swim with a microphone in our hands.
Of course, all the calories from the huge dinner were burned off with the great singing. So at one in the morning we visited a very, very secluded restaurant in the city.
Here I thought that the whole place evokes the most beautiful moments of our family pig slaughter, both in terms of the environment, the smells, and the cleanliness of the place.
But for some reason these circumstances are not important.
I have eaten in many such places. By such a place, I mean that a more delicate Westerner would not even set foot in. For me, these circumstances are invisible, not interesting.
The deliciousness of the food is much more important. But even more important is that this last dinner was spent in the company of two excellent people. Perhaps we will remember this evening at their wedding.
Imperial City
Huế is an imperial city.
Of course, I wanted to see where the emperors lived.
This post has become long.
I only have two thoughts left.
The imperial city deserves that the reader type the search terms “hue imperial city” into the search engine.
I will take with me the hour I spent in the imperial garden, sitting on the grass with my back to a tree.
The ladies walking in the garden, the officials, and the emperor surrounded by servants only appeared in my imagination.
However, the stories of the city were real.
It is irrelevant whether the city wrote them or I.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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