If I were young, I'd flee this town

I spotted this article in the Viet Nam News today and thought it was worthy of a post given what I've seen on my travels and casual comments made by me in previous posts.

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=02SOC260908

Agent Orange victims fly to US

(26-09-2008)

HCM CITY — Representatives of the Viet Nam Agent Orange group will travel to the US on Saturday to speak in various cities about their lawsuit against American chemical companies that used the toxic chemical dioxin during the war.

Speaking at a press meeting on Wednesday, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, vice chairwoman of the Viet Nam Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims’ Association (VAVA), said two AO victims, Dang Hong Nhut, 72, director of the HCM City Vocational Training School for Orphans and the Disabled, and Tran Thi Hoan, 22, a student at HCM City Huflit University, would be joining the group.

VAVA’s first lawsuit filed in January 2004 was dismissed by the US District Court and the US Court of Appeals turned down the group’s appeal in 2007.

VAVA seeks compensation from 37 chemical companies that supplied US troops with Agent Orange 30 years ago.

The group will visit 11 cities in the US to hold talks with various organisations and concerned citizens.

According to VAVA, there are more than 3 million Vietnamese AO victims nationwide, including 150,000 children. — VNS

My thoughts:

The figures alone in this article should speak for themselves. I know I was completely ignorant of the true damage done until taking this trip and my sympathies grow as I read more and more in the daily papers and in books about the war.

I hope their trip succeeds in getting the attention and appropriate response it deserves. This is not an anti-America post, but accountability must be taken when war crimes are committed. How can a country honestly excuse their use of chemical weapons and so blatantly deny those affected the compensation they deserve.

Whilst working in London I had the pleasure of working with on Avipaul Bhandari. Twice a week we sequestered ourselves to an office in 'the land of ladies' to work on projects related to web accessibility. Little did I know that I was in the presence of a living legend. Whilst he mocked the irish I took great pleasure in mocking his people...Hounslow folk mate, they're rough as a badgers arse!

Anyway the combination of desi music and funk is a nod to Prince and Avi's own roots!

A new style being carved out by a great soul.

Check it!

I know I've put this song on the blog before. But as my time here in Hoi An closes and I realise that the banality that wracked my brain for a while was really nothing more than everyday energy levels.

Well today is one of those days where the energy is a little bit higher than most.

So here's yet another tribute to the legend Mic Christopher. ( he does bear an uncanny resemblance to Michael Sheehan!)

Hope you all have a Hey Day today!

So after much deliberation I have decided to arise from my Facebook deathbed. I know, this will incur the giddy wrath of all those I piously mocked about Facebook in the past.

I'm back on Facebook for a few reasons. Doubtless its going to help keep in touch with those I've met along the road and have left behind....it is for these reasons alone that I return. And I promise not to poke a single soul!

I'm not sure whether I'll stay - but I guess once I've reopened Pandoras box its not likely I'll go closing it again even if I wanted to...

ohwell....I'm smiling through it all..

A while before I took to the road a friend(Cillian) sent me a youtube clip that had a profound affect on me. I can't imagine anyone I know who wouldn't be affected by it and as I prepared to go on my travels I decided to take some of the inspiration from the experience and wear it on my sleeve.

Hence, on the right hand side of my blog you see a list of goals I wished to achieve in the following months. Some of these may seem banal or facile. But to be honest if it was all that I achieved in those months and then the unspeakable were to happen, then you could rest assured I died a happy person.

So back to The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch was in his own right an exceptional person. And given the nature of humans, when we meet an exceptional person we either A) aspire to be like them, B) resent them or C) admire them, but think that they are made of a different salt than you or I.

For your information I fall into the A category.

There is not a whole lot of reason to for me to give background on this man, if you watch the clip you'll know as much about him as I do( well not quite, but theres always wikipedia!).

The presentation basically introduces the idea of achieving your childhood dreams. The beauty of this presentation is that it is not preachy, it is not one of those "you gotta be Alphamale to get to the top" speeches. Infact, its not a speech its a presentation. A presentation of one mans life through his eyes and and explanation of how he has fulfilled his childhood dreams.

Sadly for me I can't recall my childhood dreams, I can recall situations from my childhood that make me happy and through those I can extrapolate possible dreams.

Some of which that spring to mind -
1. I wanted to be a farmer ( much to the laughter of those in my class, possibly because Siobhan C. offered to be my wife).
2. I wanted animals, lots of animals in my life - I should open an abattoir perhaps?.
3. I wanted the cute girl,(shallow at age 6, eesh!). I always wanted the female lead in the play.

So anyway, these are my truths and possibly my dreams. As childish as they seem they are quite likely still true today. To be honest though I have formulated more concrete dreams in adulthood which stand on top of those childhood dreams. In the Last Lecture, Randy presents his dreams in a list and one by one goes through how he achieved each.

For me, the beauty of the presentation is that as he talks about his dreams he shows how dreams can grow, how dreams are not just one singular goal but a space we aim for to explore and digest once there. It is encouraging (for me atleast) to see that dreams are more than definitive words. They are a nebulous concept which we aspire towards. So at any given point along the way to your dream you are infact closer to the reality than you realise. As soon as you take the first step you are stepping into that cloud and therefore already living that dream, even in its most discrete essence. That isn't to say that you stop as soon as you roll the dice for the first time, keep rolling and keep going. If you watch the clip then you'll get a better understanding of what it is I'm trying to explain.

I do understand that to reach our goals we need focus and stepping stones, I'm not arguing against that. But I guess I'm trying to sell the idea that our dreams are always there for the taking even if they've been dormant for bluergh'ty something years.

So its a while since I left Nha Trang, but I figured I should pen down some of my journey before I commit the memories to the grave through excessive partying.

I decided to take a 3 day motorbike tour to get from Dalat to Nha Trang. On the way the guide stops off at many beauty spots and many interesting locations. The trip involvd me sitting on the back of a motorbike for 3 days ( roughly 6 hours a day) earning myself one of the finest 3rd degree sun burns on my knees the world has ever seen. I now refer to it as the EasyRider knee. I eventually covered them up with a bandana( thanks Jacinta!) and a torn t-shirt. So the rest of the journey was a pure joy.

Cruising through the countryside, stopping off along the way to hear about coffee plantations, the history of highway1, where the americans unleashed the much reviled agent orange. Its clear to see still the areas that were affected. The trees lining the route are obviously younger and of a different breed than that which would have originally existed there. Agent orange takes a while to leave the soil, and as such the legacy of the chemical scarred the land just as much as it did the people. BTW, the American government has yet to apologise for the use of agent orange. They cite the need for scientific proof...as if generations of mutated children isn't enough...such is the power of the Chem. Industry.

Further along the route we stopped to watch local children (bonafide ethnic Vietnamese) harvest bamboo. Filling baskets made by their own people, (each basket unique to their own local group) with the fruits of their labour. With the end result being a basket that weighed around 50kg. If you check the picture you'll see a particularly menacing looking Richard with said basket on his back. I look more like an axe wielding maniac than anything else, but the kids didn't seem to mind - we'd bought their trust with sweets. ( mental note - must inreduce, "Danger Stranger!" concept to Vietnam).

Throughout the route as we rode through roadside villages and mountainous regions the people went out of their way to give the broadest smiles and "hellos" they could muster. I quite frequently threw the bike off balance as I turned 180 to wave at the folk we'd just passed.

Along the route we met men cracking rocks for a living, by choice. Hammering away at boulders the size of your average mini car and splitting them in short time. I can't recall the exact rate of pay, but for them it was quite lucritive if not exceptionally backbreaking business. I opted out of picking a fight on this occasion - they looked a little frazzled from all the strenous muscle building work!! Seriously, these folk were built like - well like brick houses...

Further along the journey my guide Hong stopped off at various places just to let me soak in the country. I really appreciated that. He didn't prattle on about history or any such nonsense. We just sat in silence and soaked it in. Frogs chirping like birds, birds cawing like the sound of trees being felled and those friggin beetles...man the noise they make - I need to check if they have ears and if not, then god gave them one of the most annoying and useless skills on planet earth. The gift of a 130 decibel humming noise that couldn't possibly be used to attract a mate. Now that I think of it, maybe its the communication method *after* beetle marriage....hmmmm

At one point I had the opportunity to ride an elephant( put your puerile giggles back in their adolescent bags this instant!). As I was on my lonesome they paired me with this Vietnamese girl who mentioned as we took to the road in a Hannibal'esque caravan, that she was prone to travel sickness. "No fear here love" I thought, its an elephant - not a JJ Kavanagh bus. But no sooner had our Elephant made his way into the lake( oh yeah, the elephant trekked us through a lake, suhweet!!) than my new colleague started barfing over the side...onto the side of our Elephriend.I can't imagine he was too happy, and I think I caught a snap of him glaring at me. As if i'd do such a thing....puking on an elephant, thats such a Kilkenny thing to do! ;) ( just testing to see who actually reads the blog!)

There are countless other memories to recollect, too many details to write in the blog and to be honest I dare not fall foul of that damn Formatting error again.

Arriving in Nha trang wasn't much of a thrill, and its funny - the gut instinct was too subtle to properly perceive on arrival. But by the time I left I was
delighted to put the place behind me. It was the closet to Ibiza I've ever gotten in my life. That said its nothing like Ibiza. But the party atmosphere there was a little too much in the end. And although the younger me got sucked in, ah the folly of a 29 year old! :) the older me now knows better....ummmmmm yes...yes he does!

Check the photos for some nice shots along the route from Dalat.

Curious fact for the entrepreneurs out there - 4 rubber trees produce 1kg of rubber a day. 1 kg of rubber sells for 10$. You can plant 4 trees in a 3 metre sq'd area. So given my rough estimates you could plant atleast a million trees...okay not a million, I'm shit at working this kind of thing out. But lets say for arguments sake that its 1000 trees(it is more like 1300 me thinks). You've got a daily yield of 250 kgs of rubber a day! which if prices remain static that equates to $2500 a day. You can harvest for about 200 days a year. All that from 1 acre! Money does grow on trees apparently..

Feel free to work out the real amount of trees you could get in an acre - but needless to say it seems like a damn lucrative business. Also, the trees are very robust, you hit them a kick and they just bounce back! Arf! Arf!