let lemons be angry

Last night's dinner: vietnamese seafood crispy pancake wrapped in wasabi leaves, dipped in a sweet sauce. Jumbo prawns the size of lobsters, i kid you not. I was thinking, manda! Prawns wrapped in a rice spring roll. Mango pulp, coconut juice.

I feel like Adela Quested in India, looking for the "real Vietnam". But will it only be real to me if it matches my memory of it ten years ago? Or is this the new reality i have to now associate with the word "Vietnam", as uncomfortable as it makes me? I was seven or eight years old when i made frequent trips to Vietnam, but i was old enough to grasp the fundamental things that gave it distinct character. Limbless beggars crawled on every street corner, the few shops around sold rattan creations, carven wood, lacquered bowls, painted slats, miniature wire bicycles. It was quiet, dry, pleasant. The Vietnam i'm seeing now is in which capitalism is just starting to catch fire, like oil in a hot pan beginning to crackle. A bit of Hong kong, a bit of Thailand, a bit of Korea. The people are having fun with the relative novelty of buying and selling, dealing with bargaining tourists, and keeping up with fashion trends from someplace else. They say there still are beggars, but i haven't seen a single one. People have learnt to work for their loose change instead, peddling fruit, roses, balloons, with the persistence of their predecessors. It is a city that has gotten over war and politics enough to adopt the traits of its former enemies. Will my "real Vietnam" be further away from the city, where the rice terraces are and where the Mekong River bends? Or maybe in a war museum, with pictures that i will identify with, having learnt about them? Or more realistically, is this it? Is this Vietnam? Have i figured it out on my first night? Perhaps i have. It's the tourist who walks around thinking of a country's history and supposed culture, while the locals look instead to the future and work towards it. But until i go home, i will continue to search, perhaps with naivete, for that piece of soul.