Excerpt 2: Beneath The Mushroom Cap

6am 8th December 2016

The morning comes, and we awake to an atypical continental. There is dragon fruit, watermelon, and a specification Laden omelette. Something which seems a little over the top, until they make you exactly what you asked, and it envelops me. That in this culture what you ask for, you get. In Britain I guess the best we have is to ask for an omelette and see what arrives, so much so that even the choice of variability in Britain constitutes as a favour and not within the rights of service.

This is the most obvious and superficial difference between these two cultures, and I believe it is the expectation that Britain has towards traditionalism and the art of unspoken expectation which acts as the entitlement of this incivility and is the same reason why on a Christian holiday like Christmas, many Britons still received gifts of which they would have no purpose. As if they are afraid to ask for what they desire, and to seem as though they can read into the expectations built into British culture, they say nothing for the crux of British politeness. I do not find this to be true in many other European cultures, in which there is a directness and explicitness that is built into their culture which is implicative within English. This is why it seems so absurd to hear an assertive Briton who knows of what he desires, without the diamond-encrusted blinders of privilege, which acts in all capacities to dismay the prosperity of all, inclusively.

We finish breakfast and we take a walk through Hanoi. The plethora of human activity is unprecedented. We use the day to explore the history of this buzzing mini-metropolis, where we find an art gallery at which hosts some of the most famous pre-liberation Vietnamese paintings, which demonstrate tremendous challenges for living. I spend an hour studying and artistically narrating my experience, as if a tape recorder is within my brain, and I must at all costs, not waiver a minute. I see my mother staring at a pair of sandals that are so small they could fit only the tiniest of baby's feet. I see a tear in her eyes glint in the reflections of light that tumble into the room through Parisian windows that start by the thigh and end in the sky. It is here that I see the scars of colonialism, masqueraded as the badge of pride which has long gone responsibility for its imprint. If I were a painter, I would then wish to do a still of the art museum, for its very presence is the reason for its challenges to life. The voices of the artists bravery imprisoned in the echoes of architectured immortality. We leave the gallery along the centrepiece fountain walkway and greet the street and my other family members who opted to stop at a seated eatery instead.

We decide that we are done with enclosure-based tourism and seek an outdoor adventure. We load a map, and I insist that we visit the temple of literature. There are no quarrels, as this is opposite a ministry which accouples a state parade monument, which inhabits the traditionalist in all cultures, ancient religious investment. The wild card subsidiary of witch-doctoring black magic and the likes, though to say that modern pharmaceuticals are better is a long stretch in that, fixing the problems that are now forgone, only led us to newer ones. Ones which are supernatural, in that they are only found in the most sterile of environments, and so then are they the most hardened and surviving of all problems. The temple is enchanting, a sort of forest home for deep thinkers of their time, having unique and modest architecture to accompany the idealisms of their philosophy and art. Either side of the longitudes are tortoises with inscriptions embedded into tombstone shapes, rising from the tortoises' shell. They are ancient and idiosyncratic of mysteriousness, without technology it is very easy to believe in mystery, at which its progressions have invalidated the believability or fear of supernaturality. Today's fears are either human-caused or Nihilism, in that in Briton we are afraid of terrorism, or being annihilated by a worldwide nuclear war. (Two concepts very much avoided by pacifism.) Or as an act of backward thinking negligence, as to ignore the statistical certainties of our next generations and probably ours, frying to death by the increasing worldwide temperature, or drowning to death with no land to stay ousted from the water.

We leave, and I feel my spirit level raised, in honour of experience, and so to my absorption and observation of these fascinating peoples and intelligences. Who has showed nothing less than worship-like politeness, nobility, and humility? We walk for what seems like a good hour or two until we are met with a lake that is far bigger than the one hosting Jade mountain. It is at the side of the road and we are stopped by a native, who is, traditionally, selling terrapins to release into the water of the lake, for the blessings of life, freedom, and luck. I call mine Grumpus. We share a brief bond and we are compliant with the acts of master and slave, and for the first time in my life, I know the meaning of a God complex. For it is possible to give all opportunity to free the being from its prison, but to ensure it living, is impossible. I lower my hand into the water, and he swims away as if this is his life destiny, and I think how odd an idea that an animal knows exactly what it must before it has ever done so before. I suppose it to be biologically ingrained, hardwired into the system. While I held Grumpus, I felt the most tremendous sense of power, and I think that this is down to the fact that I was indicting myself as his liberator, and it is these rose-tinted glasses we must wear so to believe in our causes. And so, when he was released into the waters, I understood how one must watch from then on very blindly, and so it is this thought that must have left the creation of the universe unable to watch itself live.

We return to our hotel and the nice receptionist welcomes us in and asks of our day. We respond receptively, and she indulges us with typical life in Hanoi. I have university readings to undertake and research to perform, so it is now that I take my laptop and sit at the desk in my room. I have a few exercise worksheets to perform but other than this, I am essentially a free man. It is after a few hours of academic work that my father knocks on the door, and he is with my sister and brother and I simply say, "I'll grab my wallet then" We head to a food and drinks bar, that sit onto the street. We begin to finally let loose and after sufficient food and beverages, we talk a further stroll in the black skied city. We come across a hostel and my sister wisely advises "If you want a good night, we should go in there!" We take her well-travelled opinion, and before we know it they have lined up 100 shots on the bar, its 20k dong for a bar crawl, and its happy hour (the minute we arrive). I order a long island, and it is a mockery of a professional cocktail, but still very strong. To which they serve me two, I retire to the smoking area out the back, where I am introduced to a gentleman who claims to have managed to get past British security with 100 tabs of LSD in his anus. To which he, absent-minded as he is, continues to tell me and my father of the year just passed where he was robbed at gunpoint for his cameras memory card by a transvestite. I asked, "How did you know they were a transvestite?" to which he responded, "When you know, you know man." I think of this encounter as unindicative of traveling life, the nomadic culture which swept the western world as a way, much like spending 60k on an academic education, would give you skills and experience in maturity that education couldn't allow. To this end, I agree. Though many things are not encouraged, which is ties to the homeland and of its protection, care, and relevance. For why should an off-island Briton vote? When it should take no effect for any of their actions.

The conversation continues and as my sister then shortly follows by my brother, one-by-one appears outside after being served by the bar. The man is disbelieving all the more so upon each arrival, saying that it is very uncommon for a family to be travelling together, and he says prophetically "maybe this is the new norm" and I think something nice of it, that yes, maybe tomorrow holds new purposes for us all. After the man decides that being up for 36 hours is now too much, he trots off to his room, and I am not exaggerating about his gallop. I hear his bright yellow flip flops slap the heels of his feet as he mounts floor after floor of the ever-climbing stairs. Happy hour finishes and my father decides to go with us out to the first of three clubs. We make friends with two other travellers on the coach that takes us, and by the time we get out, we have made life-long friends. My father has chaperoned us, and he nobly says that he must be getting back to our mother because it is late, and he doesn't want to worry her. I think I have outsmarted him and I say, "But how will you get back?" to which my dad laughs and says "Ah, well before we left I picked up a card from the hotel, the address is on the back." My father winks and walks off alone down the street to hail a taxi.

Before we enter the club, our new friends have bought a bottle of Cointreau and the Vietnamese version of an energy drink. He mixes them and exclaims "Right, well, who wants a skittle-bomb?" I think of it as an unsettling way to describe a non-exploding drink. But we do around each anyway and then he continues to say, "I'm going to level with you. The club won't accept bottles from outside, so who next?" Having worked in bars back in Briton, I would say that most have the same idea of creating the synthetic ambiance of debauchery. Dark lighting, mirrored walls, laser beamers, despicable toilet facilities, and overpriced beverages. This was true of both the first and the last club, with the second being an exception. There was very little difference between the cultures of clubbing between my home and theirs, and so by the time we had even got to the third I had had enough and collected my brother and sister and led us all home. The last thought that intangibly passed through my inebriation is that the traffic never stops here, it merely retreats and advances, by regiment then brigade.