It's Not You, Geography, It's Me by Kristy Chambers

Author:Kristy Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2014-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Sometimes I think my contrariness is an asset, because whenever I veer too far in one direction, up or down, dark or light, I reach some sort of critical mass and the pendulum starts to swing in the opposite direction. If I’m beginning to believe that I can fly, for instance, my wings vanish, and if I go to bed unable to think of a single thing that’s good in the world and profoundly disgusted by the human race, I’ll wake up in a really great mood for no discernible reason.

Nothing had changed while I was sleeping; the world was still a vicious place where homeless people were used as targets for sport, dogs were eaten and children were exploited, but I woke up on our last day in Vietnam feeling unreasonably cheerful.

We boarded a ‘luxury’ coach outside our hotel and found, for once, that the adjective was warranted. Seated vertically in plush seats with airconditioning that worked at an appropriate level, cool but not frigid, we were driven to the Mekong Delta, our Vietnamese tour guide, Fong, loudly informing us in broken English of any notable sights during the ninety-minute journey.

After planes, trains, automobiles and cyclos, we were about to take our chances on a boat. The water taxi that ferried us across the river had a motor and lifejackets, but not so the wooden boats we transferred to, which were predictably rickety and presented a much greater potential for capsizing. If I did somehow end up in the caramel-coloured water, it wouldn’t matter if I had a lifejacket on or not because I’d die of a heart attack before I drowned. Anything could have been hiding in there.

Gliding down narrow waterways underneath a canopy of coconut palms, the scenery was reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, and although tranquil, it was unnervingly easy to imagine snipers hidden in the greenery and bullets whizzing by our heads like they would have during the war. But we had arrived forty years after the event and I had no capacity to grasp what had actually occurred.

Back on the bus in the late afternoon, our appreciative guide chose the medium of song as a special thank-you for joining him on the tour. As we reached the outskirts of the city, he serenaded us over the microphone, bastardising Ronan Keating’s ballad ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ like it had never been bastardised before. If I happen to hear that song now, I don’t feel the contempt for Ronan Keating that once burnt like a urinary tract infection: I feel happy because it reminds me of Vietnam, and the dulcet tones of Fong.

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