A middle aged man carrying a baby wrapped in an ocean blue scarf on his stomach, while jerking on the rope in his right hand holding a small black goat. A tiny kid curiously but alerted on the doorstep of his worden house by the sound of our motorbikes passing. An old grey man on a bycicle snapping a gigantic pair of rusted metal scissors repedeatly.

A bowl of fishsoup in a shabby restaurant with broken red plastic chairs, soup so disgusting that we only ate the shrimps and noodles. Men coming to our tables asking where we come from in the little english they can, then asking us if we are married. Restaurants where you have to fish your fish out of a bowl.

Rain so thick and heavy you could see it, smell it and feel it in the air from kilometres ahead, awaiting to drive into his grey arms. Rain so thick we could only see 1 and a half meters ahead on the small ‘paved’ road through the jungle, best known by the name of Ho Chi Minh Trail. Trucks overpassing other trucks on that small paved road. Paved road turning into sand and stones while you just got to gear 4 for a downhill, causing you to almost slip right into the ricefield on your left.

A boy smacking his dead chicken back into the front basket of his paddlebike. A fat bee stuck in the holes of my saddle, upside down, stinging me in my left thigh.

Warm beer with ice. A bag of food including what we thought was a napkin, turning out to be a rice paper for spring rolls. A child pushed forward by his excited mom to go up to us and practice his school taught english. A captain America action figure left behind on a stone bench.

A scary new sound possibly coming from the engine. An old sales lady also hiding for the rain in the only ‘cafe’ in the jungle, speaking Vietnamese to us louder and louder hoping we would somehow understand what she said if she’d scream. Showing the Netherlands on google maps to the heavely nodding sales lady and the café owner. ‘Yes, yes, America!’.

A fish jumping out of one of the many dirty grey bowls crowling over his own kind and jumping onto the market road, trying to escape his inevitable fate. A young ox outrunning his mother and his owner, skipping and swaying its tail happily in the last drops of rain.

Plankton lighting up around my hands while I slowly swim through the dark ocean. A hot shower in a skecthy hotel somewhere mid-vietnam. Walking on the ridges of the endless ricefields. A tiny gecko running on the white-turned-yellow walls. Sand in my eyebrows.

A pregnant lady convincing Maria to buy a necklace of her Vietnamese ‘birth animal’ (a cat). A skinny man with legs like twigs and without muscles on the street, passed by by bypasser, like me. A cute labrador look-a-like puppy with legs like twigs and without muscles, enjoying the attention we give him. A man and the street food stall we are resting offering me a cigarette. The man then offering me incredibly strong black tea that apparently goes with cigarettes, because Maria wasnt offered any.

The sound of waves clashing into a men made beach. A voice through public speakers asking people not to leave trash in the sea and the sand, and also ‘not take your dog in sea with you. Use toilet properly. Not have a dinner party on beach. Thank you for attention’.