Velibor Čolić has been living in exile for several decades, in the meantime he started writing and publishing his books in French with the most reputable publishers there. During the year 2023, he stayed in Vietnam and wrote a diary "About people, food and gods" in a Moleskine notebook during his trip.
"I passed through this country, through villages and cities, through the peaceful and wise lives of these people. I was careful as much as I knew and could not disturb their arrangement of things and substances," he says.
Čolić is a traveler, but not a tourist, he did not travel to Vietnam to see, but to have that world happen to him, to participate in it. He is a lucid observer, with the gift of easily switching from humorous comments to melancholic descriptions. Coming from the West, in writing the pages of this diary, he resists the established Western experience of Vietnam formed on American film. He says that he “walked down the greasy streets of Hanoi in flip-flops”, says that he “unsuccessfully photographed the Buddha’s smile on altars in villages on the Chinese border”, says that he “stared momentarily at the communist hammer and sickle flag on a bridge that led to the ancient, dark green mountains of Laos.”
He took hundreds of photos along the way, but he says that "I still believe in the word more than the picture. Those who don't write live and travel only once. And those who write, make their journey many times.
Semezdin Mehmedinovic