Perfect Simplicity

Sweat poured down my face and coated my entire body. It was the type of air that you are cocooned in: no matter how many deep breaths you take, you feel like you are slowly suffocating. We cruised along the Mekong Delta, I watched the people who lived in the stilted corrugated iron huts which lined the river. They washed their clothes in the river. They washed themselves in the river. They dried their clothes by the river. They lay wistfully in hammocks by the river. At sunrise, the river became a mecca of floating markets, boats overflowing with dragon fruit, ripe mangoes, onions… even boats offering aromatic coffee hooked onto our boat like pirates.

Whole pineapples meticulously cut like giant golden lollipops on sticks were waved in front of our boat. I exchanged my money for the fruit and the young limber boy smiled back with his crooked teeth. I bit into my lollipop: ripe juice trickled down the sides of my mouth and I felt like I had not experienced pineapple before that moment. Golden happiness.

The Mekong Delta wasn’t just a river: it was life. The locals attached themselves to the river and were intrinsically linked to it, the symbiosis was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. They would grow and die with the river. Their lives seemed encased in the perfect simplicity that I yearned for. It contrasted starkly with the life I had run away from: a life of expectation and secret dreams that had become as clouded as the water of the Mekong Delta. I wished deep down that I could share my life with the river too.