My three month period in Vietnam has come to an end. The project isn’t over yet though, so I will continue to work for FLS from The Netherlands.
Today I want to show you these small traditional plates I bought as souvenirs in Hoi An. They are old, some are a bit chipped and their shine has gone with time. They’re all the same traditional blue-grey color, yet not identical. I like them a lot, because the irregularity and imperfection is exactly what gives them their charm. And, apart from their aesthetic quality, the memory of my time in Vietnam makes them even more beautiful to me. Which got me thinking about their previous owners. If it’s true what the lady who sold them to me said, these plates have a history that goes back 150 years. Isn’t it fun to imagine all the meals these little plates have witnessed, the cupboards they’ve stood in, the hands of their owners who cleaned them again and again? The world has changed a lot in 150 years, their maker has probably died a long time ago and now these silent witnesses have travelled half the world to stand next to my computer whith a piece of pure chocolate while I’m typing this blogpost. Amazing, don’t you think? I guess this is exactly why people pay millions for Michael Jackson’s socks. The illusion of being close to a person through the objects you’ve both touched.
But not only old objects, or the ones once owned by famous people, have a story. The gift you just bought for christmas has already got a history too. One of the things I learned from partaking in this project is how each product you see in the shops has been touched by many people before it’s on display. Somebody made it, somebody checked it’s quality, somebody wrapped it, somebody drove it to a distribution center. Each object has been touched by people who’s life you will never cross. And they in turn know nothing of your existence. If only objects could talk..

The Vietnamese are king in making do with whatever means of transport they have at hand. Most of the times it will be a motorcycle that has to do the job. By now I’ve seen a lot of unconventional items being transported on a bike (a full grown live goat, hundreds of goldfish in little sacks of water, complete trees to name a few), but this man is transporting more stuff on his motorbike than he could fit in a medium sized car.

Close to Ho Chi Minh City are the Cu Chi tunnels, a historic site now turned tourist attraction. The tunnels consist of a vast network of underground passages, created by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war against ‘the enemy’ as the introductory film near the entrance puts it. Heavily bombed and sprayed with agent orange, the people from Cu Chi literally crept into the earth to find shelter and to continue their guerilla. Now, some forty years later, tourists step into the (enlarged) entrances and get their picture taken. Or they pose on a tank, once lost and conquered (depending on your perspective) at the expense of young lives at both sides. To complete the experience one can, in exchange for a few dollars, fire a real bullet with a real AK 47.

To be honest, I had a hard time fighting tears and I can’t really say what I think of the whole. Time has one inevitable characteristic, it always carries us away from even the most awful experience. This place being a tourist attraction surely helps to develop the area and the people living there now, and it does keep the memory alive in some way I guess.

Do you buy souvenirs to bring home when you go somewhere? I do. Lot’s of people do. So, what do you buy? In Hoi An, a town famous for it’s charm and tailors, much of the money made comes from tourists buying things. Clothes of course, but also that funny object called a souvenir. In french the word literally means ‘memory’. A memory to the places you’ve spent a day, a week, a portion of your life. A tangible piece to help you defy the forgetful nature of your brain and hold on to the memory. As a product, a souvenir doesn’t need to be beautiful, nor does it need to have a function. The very act of buying it from that woman on the street (how come it’s so rarely a man) seals the memory. In exchange for a little money, you have a piece of material that now carries meaning and talks to you about the travels you’ve made. Isn’t that a miracle?

Every country has their own version of coffee, but I’ve never seen a ritual as elaborate as in Vietnam. A vietnamese cup of coffee is brewed individually in your glass, using a small drip filter. While I waited for the water to seep through I had time enough to take a picture, observe the busy traffic, the other customers and the beautiful color combination of the ivory condensed milk with the black-brown coffee forming in my glass. And the taste? Fruity, sweet and creamy: I’m addicted.

Today, when I wanted to walk home after my weekly yoga class, it was raining. Not very surprising, since it’s still rainy season. But today the weather, in combination with the extremely nice girls from the yoga centre, made me discover something. Since it was raining, the yoga girls offered me to borrow a hat. Not an umbrella, no, a vietnamese conical hat. Of course I’ve seen them a lot after six weeks of living here, but I never realized how perfect their form is for the weather here. Obviously the wide round shape keeps you protected from the sun, but today I discovered they are also a wearable rain shield. It worked surprisingly well to protect me from the light rain that was still falling. It also worked very well to make me a hilarious sight for any Vietnamese looking at me: the walk home effectively shattered any hope that wearing such headgear would make me blend in.

Fabric hunting down town.

The traditional fabric is woven upside down, to make finishing easier.

The first prototype in progress, exciting!