4/24: Denang and Hoian

View from Five Marble Mountain, outside Denang

We said goodbye to Saigon and caught an early flight to Denang. Unlike last year's trip, everything went so smoothly leaving the hotel, getting to the airport, checking in, the fight to Denang, retrieving our luggage, and then the bus to a restaurant in Denang. I remembered this restaurant from past years, and it was always one of my favorite "set meals," and I was not disappointed. The squid was so tender, maybe the most ever. The waitresses saw me checking out the other tables for uneaten squid, so they brought the extra to the "adult table."

After lunch, we drove to Five Marble Mountain. We had never visited it before, and I am so glad we stopped here this year. It will always be part of future itineraries. Besides very nice pagodas, there are three caves with incredible sculptures of Buddha or Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy.

Kwan Yin

From Five Marble Mountain, the bus ride to Hoian was only 30 minutes. After checking into our hotel rooms, we rode bicycles to the beach, about six kilometers from Hoian.

I wanted to talk to the students in the evening about assumptions, so I lied to them about our hotel in Hoian, telling the group not to expect such nice hotels everywhere we go in Vietnam.

Hoian Hotel

They were all pleasantly surprised when they saw the Hoian Hotel, the nicest hotel we stay at in Vietnam (I figure the more I lie, the better I get at it, so I practice as much as I can).

Evening reflection and meditation:
"In the summer of 1988 I went to the island of Sumatra. I spent six hours on a jungle trek. The forest was so dense that it was too dark to take pictures. I heard animals, but because they are wild, they hid in the tree tops and I never saw them. At one point in the trek, we came out of the forest to the river. So after six hours in the jungle, I took only six pictures, and five of them were of the river.

I used to do an exercise with my students: after showing them my photos of the jungle trek, I would ask the students to describe the jungle of Sumatra. And then we would talk about the process of recording history, how everything we ever read is subjective, biased by the author due to his or her culture, gender, ethnicity, time period, selectivity of what the author chooses to write about, and by his or her limited understanding or experience.

Recently I realized that this is not only true for the recording of history, but also for what we hold to be true in our lives.

Everyone makes assumptions. It is part of human nature. We are thinking animals, learning from our experiences, and generalizing from a specific situation to something much larger - our concept of what is true. There is nothing wrong with making assumptions, as long as we are aware that that is what we are doing. We are trying to understand the world around us, learning from the experiences we have.

What assumptions did you have before you came to Vietnam?
What have you found, in your brief experience of four days, that you now understand is not true?
What assumptions are you now holding after your limited experience of four days?

Here is an assumptions I hold: the more you investigate these experiences, the more you will come to understand, not necessarily about Vietnam, her people or culture, but the more you will actually understand who you are. For as I told you before, everything you experience is an interaction between what is going on "out there" and what is going on "in here," in your mind and heart.

Here are three suggestions I have for what you might meditate upon:
1) How is Vietnam different form what you expected?
2) What assumptions are you holding about Vietnam, her people or culture?
3) What was a precious moment you had in Ho Chi Minh City?"

After a few minutes of silent meditation, the students wrote in their journals for about ten minutes, and then we went around in a circle, sharing one thing.

Excerpts from the student sharing:
"Going into the tunnels made the war real for me."
"When I entered the cave and saw the sculpture of Buddha, and all the people speaking in hushed voices, it felt as if I was entering something holy."
"If you reach out to someone else, you end up learning more about yourself."
"More important than having these assumptions was getting to understand that I have these assumptions, and that was something precious."
"On the outside, with all the poverty, it looks like there is such disappointment in people's lives, but in the inside there is such joy and contentment."
"Defining some actions as awkward keeps me from going outside of my own boundaries."

A number of students mentioned that they learned more about other people in their class in these few days than they had previously done in years. Many students describe little interactions they had with Vietnamese people, even without a common language, and how precious they were. So we talked about expanding their definition of what "common language" means, for all humans beings have a common language when "hearts touch."