Vietnam Archives - Maggie InkMaggie Ink

How to make a dream come true

May 11, 2020

First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. This is the same thing your mom did; she put things off until it was too late.

Decide to do something about it.

Quit your job. Leave home. Book some flights.

Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”

Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check some things off the list.

Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Find work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.

Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.

Fly to Egypt and immerse yourself in ruins. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying, really dying. Fall down a tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.

Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel yourself unraveling.

Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.

Go to Ethiopia, an extraordinary country, and plod your way through it. Feel like you’re something less than human.

Go to India, where something in your soul clicks. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.

Go to Thailand. Work with elephants. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Stay with more friends. Say goodbye.

Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.

Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi. Ride on the back of a motorcycle with a man even sweatier than you.

Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.

Go to Ha Long Bay.

Wake up on a boat in a bay where everything is still. Everything is perfect.

Write that story.

Go to grad school to really dig into it.

Write that story again and again, edit it, excavate it. Work on it in scraps of time between your day job, when you stay up late, when you rise at 4 a.m. to have 20 quiet minutes before the baby wakes.

Sell it.

Have the perfect editor push you where you need it. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, but most importantly, he makes you better. He reminds you to slow down where it hurts.

And then one day, poof. You have a book.

Your story, between two covers.

It comes out tomorrow.

Enjoy.

PHOTOS: Bikes around the world

August 7, 2012

My sister has been obsessed with bicycles lately, to the point where she wants to redecorate part of her home with a cycling theme. It’s a really cool idea, especially since she’s so passionate about her own bike.

But I couldn’t stomach the thought of her paying a lot of $$$ for a framed bike photo from World Market or Target — especially when I took thousands of photos of everything around the world. I was positive I had something she could use. And I was right!

Here are just a few of the bikes I encountered on my travels.

Lone red bike in a neighborhood in Hoi An, Vietnam.

A line of rental bikes in Sukhothai, Thailand, because bikes are THE best way to explore the ancient city’s ruins.

It’s like Jem and the Holograms took over this street in Vientiane, Laos. Pink and purple power!

A mustard home on a side street in Hue, Vietnam.

Pretty bike on a New Orleans street.

I love this one the most, even if the bike isn’t the most photogenic, because we are two sisters.

This last one I wouldn’t put on any wall in my home. But I still marvel over this man in Mumbai with a seriously impressive stack of eggs. He is the eggman! He is the walrus! Or something.

What in the world?! Funny photos from around the globe

April 18, 2012

Here are some of my favorite funnies from around the world. Why? Because it’s tax day. And because today has been kind of a bummer anyway. And because you should stop asking questions.

Just enjoy these random bits that I collected on my round-the-world trip — like this command that was painted on a barn in Uganda.

It makes perfect sense.

Everything is slightly off in Bolivia, including this discount version of Uno.

Wise words from a Buddhist temple in Thailand.

The hottest curry at this shop in South Africa was the Mother-in-Law Exterminator.

An after-dinner condom jar in Thailand.

Uh, how many times does Taiwan have to tell you? DON’T sit on the bears!

Please to enjoy some cock at this Vietnamese shop.

Or sample the poo-poo platter here.

And drumroll please … my very favorite sign of all time. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

The last letter writer in Vietnam

October 20, 2011

Duong Van Ngo knows the power of words.

That’s because he is Vietnam’s last professional letter writer.

For decades Ngo has been writing and translating love letters between soldiers and their lovers, families and loved ones, parents and children.

Each day he arrives at the Saigon post office, an intimidating, peach- and green-colored colonial structure, at 8 a.m. sharp. He leans his bicycle underneath the sycamore trees.

Inside the building, Ngo situates himself at the end of a long wooden bench near a pastel portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Here the 81-year-old unloads books of postal codes, dictionaries, piles of files and stacks of papers. Finally, he pulls out a cardboard sign that reads “Information and Writing Assistance.”

It took me several laps around the expansive building to find him.

Translation is tricky business, according to Ngo, who is fluent in Vietnamese, French and English.

“Each word means something,” he says. “You must choose with care.”

Ngo is the last of his kind. There was another professional letter writer in Vietnam, also stationed at the Saigon post office, but that man died several years ago. After he passed, there was nobody to replace him.

“It’s a shame,” Ngo says. “Connecting people with words is so important.”

He knows what he’s talking about. Over the years, Ngo has negotiated business partnerships. He has reunited families. He has proposed marriage. He has used his words to bridge cultures, miles, time. He has wrapped up love in an envelope and sent it across oceans.

Though he says he never inserts his words into other people’s messages, Ngo is a master at massaging language. He has an instinct about what to say when and how. He knows when to use affection and when to remain aloof, when to gush and when to be restrained, when to be a professional and when to be poetic.

I hand over a postcard for Ngo to pen for my husband. I want it to be a love letter in Vietnamese, and I push him to help me write it.

Ngo’s blue pen swirls and swooshes with curls like delicate lace. He points to the first line, “This says, ‘My darling. Saigon is void of beauty without you here.'”

Every word is gold.

I ask if he ever uses a computer or sends e-mail. Has he ever felt pressure to adapt with the times and modernize his work?

“Never,” he says. “Machines are cold and have no soul. Letters have heart.”

When I try to slide some money his way for writing a couple of postcards, Ngo refuses.

“I love what I do,” he says. “It would be wrong for me to accept payment for something that is a pleasure.”

Homemade is where the heart is

August 21, 2011

I mailed a package from Hue, Vietnam to Palm Springs, California. I was told the package would travel by sea and take about 30 days to arrive.

That was three months ago.

I’m sure my package was tucked away in the bowels of a ship somewhere until today, when it showed up in my mailbox. The box is battered and bruised, completely soaked with the stench of petroleum, but it’s here — and I’m thrilled.

The contents included a suit, a coat and a dress I had made by tailors. A photograph for my sister. Three pairs of earrings carved out of coconut shells for my nieces. A gift for my mother-in-law.

Basically, every single thing in that package was made by hand. And that’s one of the things I loved most about traveling — seeing artisans at work.

I know we have craftsmen in the U.S., but unfortunately, I feel like it’s more of an effort to find them here. We relegate our artisans to gallery walks, weekend shows in parking lots, special markets, etsy.com. We don’t honor them as much as hide them.

In other countries, however, the integration is seamless. Art is woven into the fabric of daily life, found everywhere in everything. It is as common as rice and as essential as breathing.

A lot of that is born out of necessity, of course. If somebody doesn’t make something by hand, then you don’t have it. It’s that simple.

Need sandals in Uganda? Almost everybody in Mbale turns to these guys, who will fashion a pair for you out of old, busted tires.

Doing dumplings for dinner? These women in Hoi An make a special kind of dumpling called White Rose, which are stuffed and folded by hand in homemade dough. When steamed, they blossom like flowers.

Having noodles in Hanoi? This lady will knead, pull and slice them for you.

And that brings me to my favorite thing that arrived in the mail today — that gift for my mother-in-law.

I found this man in an alley in Vietnam, and I was blown away by his confident, decisive work. All day long he sits on the floor in a stuffy, cramped space, and he carves stamps out of wood.

A lot of his work is done for businesses or professionals, who use them to personalize stationery with a logo or signature. The other stamps he makes are just for fun. Art for the sake of art.

I thought about this man for two days straight, still marveling over his intricate work, until I decided I would regret it if I didn’t return. I wandered around the labyrinth of alleyways, got lost, asked strangers for help, frantically pantomimed somebody carving stamps and somehow found him again.

Then I gave him my mother-in-law’s name and 10 minutes.