It’s not everyday you meet a practicing member of a group called ‘The Spiritual Human Yoga of South Grand’.
And when one asks you to take their photograph on Mui Ne beach you can’t really refuse.
‘The Universe helps things come my way – I wanted to have my photo taken here and you are here to do it.’
Victor, a Viet Kieu, was keen to tell me about his Grandmaster who has been sent to heal the people of the world, but who is having some problems with the authorities in America. He rubbed his fingers and thumb together – “Money. The drugs companies are not interested in healing people because it affects their profits. It’s the same in Switzerland – this is why the Grandmaster has sent me to Vietnam.”
He promised to tell me more the following day – about the Scottish girl who had been so amazed at the power of the healing she had left her job and gone to work for the organisation in Houston, and how the cosmic energy is fresh so healers don’t get tired as they do with other forms of healing.
But when I spotted him from my hammock he was deep in conversation with the family who he said had paid for his stay in the hotel so that he could heal their sick daughter.
Travelling alone presents many opportunities for such short, random yet interesting meetings:
- Tony, the Irishman who has been travelling for 17 months and is in no hurry to go back.
- Nick, the 64 year old Croatian-Australian with his 35 year old Lao wife, spending half the year in Australia and the other half travelling in Asia.
- Louise and her Brazillian partner emigrating from the UK to New Zealand and enjoying South east Asia for the first time.
- Erika the German businesswoman and her husband, in Vietnam for a conference but stealing a short holiday.
- Adam the American, travelling before starting a well-paid job with a law firm, bemoaning the sounds of gunshot he regularly hears from his apartment in San Francisco.
- Owen the gap year student enthusing about Myanmar, convincing me to go (we’ll see how the crisis develops before January).
- Simon the Australian finding the comparisons with Australian and Vietnamese women uncomfortable.
Who will I meet tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? Would I have met them in Warrington?
I’ve been experiencing travel magic all my life. It’s like this: when you start traveling, especially if you travel “loose” with space in the itinerary for the unexpected and a willingness to say yes to it, the coincidences start flowing. You meet who you need to meet. You go where you need to go. At the very least, you have the feeling as you travel that you are meeting the best possible people and going to the best possible places for the particular journey you are making. Things happen. You make certain decisions. And your life changes. I love it. It occurs to me that travel magic happens in the meta-journey that is our lives, in exactly the same ways. If I travel loose…pay attention and practice gratitude…say yes…then in retrospect….
Wide awake on the edge of the world 