Why I started this blog and gave the name it has...

I visited Vietnam in February 2011 and took a train from Saigon (HCMC) to Hue. The journey was 20 hours and I shared a berth with 3 locals. One of them was Dang Ngoc Hieu a 24 year old shopkeeper from Tuyen Quang. Only one person in the berth could speak English so using my phrase book and drawings, we chatted. For 20 hours I was overwhelmed by a sense of being the centre of attention in the most innocent way. This boy from Tuyen Quang had never met a foreigner; he lives in a small village, an 8 hour drive north of Hanoi, closer to China than Hanoi.  He asked for my phone number and in rough English asked me to visit Tuyen Quang province if I ever returned to Hanoi.  A totally innocent experience that felt like my first ever crush and so hard to put into words.  Our lives are very different.  And the coconut tree? Hieu was delivering it to his village from relatives in Saigon. He carried it almost 2000km by the time he reached his home in Thuong Lam village. So in February 2011 I made a promise to a Vietnamese villager that I would somehow return to Vietnam and visit him.  I did manage to visit him twice and spend 5 days in his province, 3 days in his village, and 3 days in his home.  And to do so I turned my life upside down. I left my job, I trained to be an English teacher and I said farewell to an apartment that had become an albatross around my neck. How do I feel now? I feel sad, happy, confused, stupid, amazed and everything in between.  I cried on Tuesday when I left Tuyen Quang. My friend Hieu on his motorbike drove alongside the bus and shouted “I love you” through the bus window, as he patted his chest to indicate his heart. I cried. It was innocent, nothing happened. A silly 42 year old man and 25 year old villager from Vietnam but those few days were beautiful and I will never forget them. They made me feel alive again and reminded me that love doesn’t have to be complicated, not about selfish, me me me, or giving up part of yourself, it is about being yourself and if you are yourself, someone will fall in love with you and it will change your life.

So now my 4 months here is almost over. I am returning home. I no longer have a home in London but I will find somewhere. I will return to the family and friends I have missed and somehow my life will resume with few changes, I have more grey hair, I lost a few kilos, I am no longer a gym addict, my coffee addiction is worse, I am a few thousand pounds poorer but I am Seany as always, not always happy, not always sad, always wanting to make people laugh and with a re-discovery of love and what it means and if I never experience it again, I had

Originally written in November 2011.