WHY K-POP WASN'T ENOUGH

Life is food. Food is life.
Seriously, I kind of knew this prior to Vietnam, or I thought I did.

Then, silantro entered. Coriander. Lemon grass. Banh Mi. Pho Bo. Fresh spring rolls. Che. Anything dipped in fish sause.

Ca Phe Den. Ca Phe Saigon. Ca Phe Trung. Ca Phe Sua.

These magic words are 'Open Sesame' to a world of never-seen-before flavour experiences.

But unfortunately, talking more about food would require some kind of pictures to keep you from finding a better blog to read, and I have just been way to eager to eat the lovelies in front of me to give in to the Instagram generation-way of thinking.

So instead this post will be about... Well, you'll just have to scroll on to find out.

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THE PROBLEM WITH TOO MUCH BEACHIN'

So what do we do here in Da Nang? Depends on who you're asking.
Claudia would say we are BEACHIN. ALL DAY. EVERY DAY.

Every day she wakes up, puts on the trainers and takes to the beach for a morning run, while I am still sound asleep in the room. I admire her enthusiasm, but I do not understand it. 

Then she gets a shower, usually in time for my return to consciousness, and then she go back to the beach to tan. She finds a spot that will be her fort for the next 8 hours and there she stays, getting more and more tanned as the hours go by. 

However nice that sounds, knowing my skin, this is not an option for me. I didn't care about moderation in sun hours and stayed with Claudia on the beach all day some days ago, which just ment I found my skin burning later that night.

Yes, again. Maaan. When will I learn? 

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MY NEW FRIEND

So the next day was a day for shadowhunting. I took to this ice cream place which served great, cheap black coffee (ca phe den), tasting almost like Swedish brew and were absolutely as happy as Claudia was in the sun a few hundred meters away.

My plan was to write about all the small things that cross one's mind while traveling; well mostly, I wanted to write about the food we eat.
But I managed to get half a sentence down on paper before the traveling gods started interfering. A guy asked me how to order at this place, since there was no one there.
"Just scream!" I laughed and then a conversation was born, one that ended a good four hours later.

Meeting new people is incredible in itself, just the pure feeling that someone who is supposed to be a bypasser suddenly gets a name, a story, a short chapter in your own life.
Even more fantastic is it to do this in broad daylight, dead sober.
Even MORE fantastic than that is the fact that this would never ever have happened in Sweden. At least it has not happened to me in my 23 years there.
Talking to someone you dont know, sober?
Not in a club?
WAIT WHAT, IN A CAFE?
That's lunacy!

Although one could be very sad about the fact that Sweden is a country consisting of introvert people, so much that our culture now is built around it, I was struck by gratefulness when I realized 'at least I'm not there now'.
And though all of this is temporary and I know that I will have to return to Sweden and all its peqularities sooner or later, I find peace in knowing that I've seen other worlds as well and that I right right now are so far away from the restraint from meeting strangers that lies within my home culture.

I feel like a kid seing snow for the first time. This is new, glistering, fringed with childlike wonder.

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CLAUDIA'S NEW FRIENDS AND OTHER... ACQUAINTANCES

While I was talking to Ramon, the interferer at the ice cream place, Claudia had found new friends of her own. Two girls from Brazil and Taiwan who were also going to Hoi An the next day and also wanted to spend the night drinking, preferably on the beach.

I just love when you find people with common interest... 

The four of us went to the supermarket and bought vodka for 30,000 VND (11 SEK // 1,3 USD) and we talked and we drank and four became six when two Korean guys sat down to join us.

Remember I talked about how I loved talking to new people? Well, that requires actually being able to talk.
Like, in the same language.
Which we could.
Until we were about to say something other than Hello.

...I don't ever think Google Translate failed me like that before.
It seems korean just have a completely different way to build sentences than English, so even after one of the guy's persistent attempts to answer the simplest questions, we sang a couple of K-pop songs (kamsahamnida Jonas for that!) and then called it a night.

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There is a peculiar calmness about being surrounded by chaos. Writing this, we are sitting in a café and the men playing poker loudly are actually the least bothering background sound. There are the neverending honks again, the sounds of coffee beans grinding. Scooters growling. Vendors screaming. Vietnam is an orchestra of sounds and smells and flavours. I can sit in this intermezzo all day and be completely carried away by it, in the best of ways.

I love that Claudia has this big need to write. I never met someone else who sees writing as medicine before, but when too long of a time has passed without her writing in her diary she seem to get this itches in her body.
I respect that, because like you probably figured out by now... I'm like that too.

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Also, you wont realize how much you miss "good" music until you sit on a cafe and hear yourself sing your heart out to James Blunt's You're Beautiful just because you know the words and the sounds.
To put it this way... if someone came up to me and gave me the chance to be a famous Vietnamese singer, I just don't think I would take it...

Last note now, we are going to do things outside the world of my laptop now:

I HAVE SAND. EVERYTHERE. THE SMALL FUDGKERS ARE CRAWLING INTO MY BAGS, MY BED, MY EARS AND I DO NOT FIND THAT NICE, LIKE, AT ALL.

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KISSES

IN LOADS

AND LOADS

AND LOADS

FELICIA