TRAVERSE 171
TRAVEL- VIETNAM
LEIGH WILKINS
CHAOS, COFFEE AND KINDNESS
The Mekong doesn’ t rush. It moves with a kind of quiet authority, a slow, deliberate force that seems to carry not just water but memory. By the time I reached Chau Doc, pressed up against the Cambodian border, I had already begun to understand that Vietnam reveals itself in layers, and rarely on your terms. You don’ t arrive here and immediately grasp it. You drift into it, much like the river itself, carried, guided, occasionally nudged in directions you hadn’ t planned.
Chau Doc feels like an edge, not just geographically but culturally, where influences blend and blur. The markets are alive before dawn, the air thick with humidity and the scent of fish sauce and fresh herbs. Boats nudge against one another on the river, trading goods and gossip, and somewhere in all of that, you realise you are not the centre of anything here. You are simply passing through, a brief interruption in a rhythm that has existed long before you and will continue long after.
My scooter looked almost apologetic among the chaos, dusty, yet too new, a little out of place. I pulled my backpack on and stood for a moment, unsure whether I was ready to move on. It wasn’ t the distance that gave me pause, but the unknown. Vietnam has a way of humbling your expectations before you’ ve even left the starting line. I didn’ t get far. Not even ten minutes out of town, a man waved me down from the side of the road. He was sitting on one of those impossibly small plastic stools, the kind that seem designed more for children than adults, outside a makeshift coffee stand. His smile was immediate, unguarded. He gestured to an empty seat beside him and mimed drinking. It wasn’ t a request. The coffee arrived in a small glass, dark and thick, sweetened with
TRAVERSE 171