Nefelibata

Once upon a time, there was a woman who by no coincidence came to Ho Chi Minh City as a tourist and visitor. The year was 2022. Two complete rotations of the Earth later, she came back. Only this time she had decided she was coming to stay for a while longer than just holidays. She wanted to at least spend a bit longer than any tourist, to become a local, to try to immerse herself into the bustling life of an unimaginable metropolis. She found a place to stay, and she went on working remotely. When summer ended, the travels, the hotels, the delicious foods and cold drinks also pretty much stopped.

Come fall, she managed to settle into a semblance of a routine. Her mornings were packed with either late breakfasts in cozy cafeterias, walks on the very few pedestrian streets heading to mostly historical museums, or reading and writing at home or in other nice little coffee shops. Lunchtime was usually for eating out with or without family in typically traditional Vietnamese places. These were diners on the sidewalk, ten feet away from speedy traffic, where people usually had their tasty soups and highly palatable dishes, part rice, part meat, part vegetables wet with generous amounts of iced green tea sitting on super low tiny plastic stools. Of course, lunchtime was sometimes also for staying in and eating while watching some show on Netflix.

Whereas locals went back to work after lunch break, our protagonist went back home, not without one plastic glass of Vietnamese coffee (all parts ice, dripped coffee of strong brew, and condensed milk) to go. At home, there came the time for checking in on the cat: she was either impatiently waiting at the door, to check the hallway with full-on curiosity, as if it were the newest thing she ever saw, entirely different from a day before, or sleeping callously on the bed, the couch, the fridge, the bathtub edge or simply hidden in the wardrobe. It was time for work. Emails, video calls, Excel sheets, databases, short text conversations with peers back at work in Spain, solutions, decisions and then time was up. 7 pm already and already dark outside.

Dinnertime was all so quiet weekdays. Alone with the cat, enjoying, as always and as fully, the peace and quiet of her new and already cozy home. Maybe reading on the comfortable sofa placed right under the huge windows whose view displayed the skyscrapers and the tallest, most famous building in South-East Asia defined the skyline. Or doing some writing after having put on the AC at 25 degrees Celsius precisely and turned on the bright bedroom lights for writing and reading. Alternatively, catching up on posting some long-overdue blog entries or Instagram posts. Checking the news all over the world. Or just watching a movie, going on with that crime TV show.

Weekends were not much different — except for the work part. So more coffee shops, more trying out new delish spicy food combinations she had never thought of before while in Europe, trying to catch a ride on the newly minted Metro line, only too many people still, trying and failing to stay away from the touristy areas, spending time with family and so on.

And there came the long weekends or brief holiday time. One Friday off this month, another bank holiday on that Monday the next, and so she came to be a tourist again. There was, she realized, a manner of fondness in any memory of a place she came back to now, in a photo she checked of the same place she first visited at some point in the past. The tenderness persisted when she thought she was now a local, living in Vietnam, and visiting striking places again, when she saw herself back then with the innocence of the past, when she only had two or three weeks to see and check all that beauty.

There was a fondness to coming back to a dearly beautiful place, on a lovely beach she basically had, now as back then, all to herself, to stepping again in a nice little tailor shop where she had bought summer dresses or checking the flea market to look for wonderfully embroidered silk slippers.

Her heart was reminding itself of that wish from back then: she was now a traveler.