For the love of Saigon.

I’ve been all over Vietnam, a place where I feel I have never left. A place where I have returned many times and continue to dream of returning one day. This country that has left memories well beyond my own expectations and has impacted me beyond expression. Too this day, I feel as though my life will never be as free as I was during my stay in Vietnam.

An excerpt from Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American, sums up the feeling perfectly:
“I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman’s voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there’s a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again.”

This sentiment is shared by all who has had the great fortune of being able to travel this wonderful country filled with the kindest people and the dankest food one can conceivably crave.

Something about this city ebbs and flows in ways that I have never witnessed in my life. A chaotic order that just makes no sense at first glance but soon bears significance and reason only when you begin to travel its great cities on a MOTORBIKE.

So much of my love for this country is expressed in the the moments captured in the photos below.
Without the motorbike, there is no movement, and without movement, there is no life. Such are the ways of Vietnam.