Butterfly kisses

I have somehow come to find myself on a six day motorcycle journey through the Central Highlands of Vietnam, from Nha Trang to Hoi An to be specific. Never in my wildest dreams would have I imagined this experience. Prior to coming here, I had only ever had two fairly short motorcycle rides courtesy of Michele. This trip just sort of found me. I was walking to the beach in Nha Trang with the plan of hanging out there in the morning, returning to my hotel before noon to shower and pack my things, check out of my hotel, and take the night bus around 7 pm to Hoi An.

On my way to the beach, I was stopped by Mr. Hiep and offered a ride within the town. I quickly turned him down because I was only going a short way and didn't want to even look the slightest bit interested for fear of being hassled. He asked me where I was from and when I answered, he pulled his bike up alongside mine and asked if I had ever heard of the Easy Riders. I told him no, although I briefly recalled my friend Primavera mentioning something of the sort and when I was looking up some stuff online while still in the U.S. I had bookmarked a page with some information about how you can hire motorcycle riders to take you out into the country and act as your guide. He pulled out his book of previous customers rave reviews and we were off to a cafe so that he could show me his pictures and talk to me about the trip.

Going with my letting experiences come to me mentality, it sounded like a cool idea, I had been wanting to get out to the parts of Vietnam where having transportation is necessary, and I previously heard of these bike riders, so I signed up for the trip. I signed up for the trip knowing that it was a bit longer than I wanted to spend, but the shorter trips go South and I needed to go North, so I thought why stress about it and simply look at it as an adventure.

Today is the end of the third day and I am really starting to enjoy myself. The first two days, for some reason, I was focusing more on the negative aspects of the trip rather than looking deeper and trying to find the beauty. For one thing, while there has been plenty of beautiful scenary, I wouldn't say that anything has been over the top spectacular. I couldn't help comparing the beauty to other places I had been or to some previously conceived belief about what the scenery would look like on this trip. Additionally, Mr. Hiep, nice as can be, simply does not understand English very well. I would say that he speaks better than he can understand, but I think that this has come over years of saying pretty much the same things to all the tourists. At first, this was quite challenging for me because I wanted to engage him and not to simply listen to him tell me the same thing time after time; I really struggled to maintain my personality because he could not understand when I was trying to joke around and be silly.

On the ride today, as we drove through a series of villages, all of a sudden the sky was filled with swarms of yellow butterflies. There was not a direction I could look without seeing these butterflies. It was a surreal and magical experience, I couldn't help but to have a huge smile permanently attached to my face as we rode through the towns. The thoughts in my head (riding on the back of a bike gives the mind much time for thinking) told me, "How wonderous is this that in the midst of this trip that is about a soulful rebirth of sorts, I would be surrounded by butterflies - themselves the very symbol of change?" Also, at this time, I was hoping to change my perspective about the trip. Instead of viewing Mr. Hiep's lack of English as a nuisance, I began to see it as funny and entertaining. He has Hiepisms which are absolutely hysterical and I know that whenever I remember him in the future I will remember these. "Why not. If you never try, you never know" he always says. "Fucking cool man." or "We drink little beer. You drink little beer, you make sleep. No drink little beer, no make sleep." and "You make picture. Come on, make picture."

The thrill and feel of fredom from riding on the bike is hard to recreate in any other activity that I had done. And whether or not the scenary is the most eye catching in the world, passing by the towns and watching all the kids run towards the bike with huge smiles on their faces and their hands waving furiously back and forth is an image to truly remember. Any time I have gotten to thinkomg too much in my head, as soon as I see the children a huge smile finds its way to my face and I am brought back to the moment and to the beauty of this world. Beauty doesn't always have to be wrapped up in a nice package for it to still exist. We just have to look at the packaging in a different way. Thanks butterflies.