Vietnam, A Journey of Discovering Many Faces One by One—A Spontaneous and Wandering Travelogue of Vietnam: Introduction

Dedicated to the great writer Ghon Cook, who brought the passion of tango and the poetics of soccer to my travels in Vietnam.

Outside this universe we can observe, there exist countless other universes with different physical laws and histories—this is a concept that is being seriously discussed in modern astrophysics.

Of course, I do not know if that is true. However, if only as a metaphor, I think of something similar every time I set out on a journey.

Even in countries only a few thousand kilometers away on a map, different histories flow, different values breathe, and people live in slightly different times. A journey is not just about marveling at beautiful scenery. Is it not the act of learning about the formation of a world different from one's own and reading that country like a book?

This is a very personal travelogue for those who want to savor such a Vietnam a little more deeply.

For Japanese people, Vietnam is said to be a popular travel destination, following South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States, including Hawaii. However, many trips last only three to four nights, and the cities visited are limited to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, or Da Nang.

Of course, that would still be a fun trip. However, it seems a bit of a waste to me.

To me, it feels as though one cannot speak of Vietnam without walking through the ancient capital of Hue. The landscape of Ninh Binh, woven with strange rocks and rice paddies, is also unforgettable. A leisurely time flows in Hoi An, which retains its nostalgic townscape. And in Da Lat, a highland city built as a summer resort during the French colonial period, there is a cool air that does not feel like tropical Vietnam.

Now that I have finished my 16-day, 15-night journey, those towns remain in my heart as the various faces of this country.

Of course, traveling across Vietnam is by no means easy.

You are rocked on a night sleeper bus, and when morning comes, you are dropped off in some unknown place. Sometimes things do not go as planned, and you end up wandering around on the spot. Even so, there are landscapes and people you can only meet in that inconvenience. That hardship was also an important part of this journey.

The path I walked began from Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta, crossed the mist-covered Da Lat highlands, and continued through Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, and Ninh Binh to Hanoi.

A 16-day, 15-night journey where I walked spontaneously without a smartphone or hotel reservations.

I stood still at the War Remnants Museum and spent the night on a sleeper bus like a cigarette in a box.

I quietly pressed my hands together at an old temple dedicated to a white horse deity and visited the humble home of Ho Chi Minh.

I thought about cultural imperialism while tasting French cuisine and exchanged words with a young bookstore clerk who loves Yukio Mishima at a bookstore in Hanoi.

It was not just beautiful scenery that I encountered on this trip.

The scars of the Vietnam War.
The long memory of French colonial rule.
The complex true image of the revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.
A new perspective on re-reading Marguerite Duras's 'The Lover'.
And the life of a Vietnamese refugee saved by a Japanese tuna fishing boat.

As I continued my journey, I learned that this country could never be told in a single story.

Rather, I realized that countless contradictory stories overlap to form a single country.

I learned one thing on this journey.

Culture is often freer than the state.

People love the literature of enemy nations, study the philosophies of enemy nations, and are captivated by the cuisines of enemy nations. And then, they quietly incorporate these into their own cultures, transforming them into something new.

Vietnam was a country harboring such astonishing vitality.

This is not a travel guide.

It is not a history book either.

And it is certainly not a political commentary.

It is a record of contemplation by a clumsy traveler who, using small conversations with people met along the way as a starting point, continued to think about literature, music, food culture, religion, colonialism, war, and the present state of Japan.

In the end, I only skimmed the book that is Vietnam.

Even so, I could not close that book.

Even after finishing it, I sometimes remember it and want to turn one more page.

There are not many books like this in one's lifetime.

If this travelogue becomes the first page for you to open the book that is Vietnam, there would be nothing that makes me happier.

I know almost nothing about Vietnam.
Of course, I have some knowledge.
That it is a long, narrow country stretching north to south.
That it was once a French colony.
That it fought a war with America.
That in recent years, while it is a socialist country, private property is recognized and economic growth is remarkable.

Marguerite Duras's 'The Lover',
Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now',
Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried'...
However, those are the Vietnam seen from the outside,
and moreover, they are a Vietnam discovered by others.
Even if they were sincere depictions and earnest confessions for the authors themselves,
if you change your perspective, they could also be seen as telling self-serving delusions.

Then, as for the Vietnam told by the Vietnamese themselves,
it is quite difficult for us foreigners to come into contact with it.
That was a little strange to me.

The Mekong River.
Ho Chi Minh.
The city once called Saigon
is in recent years called by the name of the father of Vietnamese modernization.
(Thinking about it, Saigon was once the capital of the old South Vietnamese government,
but it was defeated by the communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War,
and as a result, as a symbol of Vietnamese unification,
the name of Ho Chi Minh was imposed upon it.)
The gentle conical hat (woven hat),
the long skirt with deep slits that flutters every time you walk,
the Ao Dai. (You wear pants underneath.)
Banh mi and Pho.
And for some reason, huge resort hotels.
(It seems there is a lot of South Korean capital.
If you're not careful, they have pools and even gyms.)

However, I do not know how these are connected to each other.
The same goes for the state of socialism in Vietnam.


That is why I decided to go on a journey.
I do not want to understand the state of Vietnam.
I just want to see what kind of face that country has.
Or rather, I want to confirm
that a country with only one face does not exist.

At the boarding gate of Haneda Airport,
young people carrying backpacks are gathering.
They are looking at their smartphones.
I am checking my boarding pass over and over.
JL 079 02JUN, 01:30
bound for Ho Chi Minh City,
arrival 05:20
There is no special meaning in that act.
I just wanted to convince myself that I was really departing
by checking my boarding pass.


Eventually, the plane took off.
Below the window, the Japanese archipelago in the darkness receded.

At that moment, I did not know at all
what I would see from then on,
or what kind of experiences I would have.

I also did not know that the Vietnamese railway
would not be the main character for traveling through this country.
(Although the Reunification Express sleeper train is laid out between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City,
the speed is limited to about 80 km/h at maximum,
and it takes about 30 to 35 hours between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Even if there are some railway enthusiasts who say that is good,
for me, in the end, the sleeper bus turns out to be much more convenient.)
At the same time, I never imagined that the partner I would spend the longest time with on this trip
would be a sleeper bus.
But perhaps this is exactly what a journey is.

To be continued