Orphans in Kontum At our journey’s end, we again found ourselves in the jungle and I was reminded of Dung, on that first day, yelling back to me, “You see real Vietnam.” I came to understand in the days in-between that like the jungle, Vietnam is a tapestry of textures, shapes, and shadows, all woven together in a cloak of unity. It’s a place scarred from its long history of war, with old wounds that haven’t quite healed and new wounds opening up every day. It’s a place with open arms and closed doors. It’s enigmatic, diverse, and multilayered, with a varied landscape and a rich cultural diversity. It’s a place of beauty and strife, pride and prejudice.
When the road we’d been traveling met up with Highway One, congested with tourist busses on their way to Nha Trang, Dung pulled over one last time at a shack selling sugar cane water. “I show you real Vietnam,” he said after some time of silence. I looked at the bored faces staring out from windows of the tour busses speeding by and replied, “Yes Dung, you did.”
