In The DMZ Bar in Hue, Vietnam

So this is an extremely surreal experience for me. I am literally in a bar that has taken the horrors of the Vietnam War and turned it into kitsch.​

There are Vietnamese people working here. No foreigners. And everyone who drinks or eats here is a tourist (including myself - I consider the fact that I chose to patronize an establishment that caters to tourists as an act of tourism and not traveling).

If there was an equivalent of a Vietnamese Haruki Murakami, this place would figure prominently in one of his stories. That is if he chose to write about the people who have changed, invaded or corrupted his country. 

I imagine a story where the proprietor finds something alluring about a visitor who decides to spend a week in Hue but comes to this bar every day. Avoiding the hawkers for cyclos, motorbikes, hats, fans, food...the story is writing itself. Of course, the story will  weave itself in and out of weird Bun Bo Hue street stalls, boats on the Perfume River, dogs and cats and birds in cages and that subtle feeling of displacement which given the setting of a post-colonial culture is not entirely a far stretch storywise.

To be honest, if it weren't for the cheap booze, I would probably be pretty disappointed in myself...maybe. It's complicated navigating the world of colonized and colonizer.