Farewell Vietnam, country #2
Sarah says:
We have left Vietnam, we’re now in Cambodia. Vietnam was officially our 2nd country but we never really counted Hong Kong. It was always only a stop-over. Vietnam was always #1. For an entire year people asked us where we were starting our journey and, although I was never ever able to actually picture myself there, I’d respond without hesitation. My response always conjured feelings that were at first hidden, not so hidden toward the end: disbelief, amazement, excitement, fear. I cried the night before we left because I was so scared. Now, after all that time and all those conversations we had with countless people about our trip that always began with Vietnam, it is behind us, a part of our trip that is over, we’ve seen it and smelled it and lived it.
It was overwhelming and insane on our first day and it was insane on our last day but not so overwhelming. I kind of fell in love with it and I’m really not sure why or specifically what I loved. I’ve really tried to put a finger on it and I really can’t say. The Vietnamese people always seemed weary of us at the start but would instantly beam a big smile back at us when we smiled at them. That’s fair enough since subtle cultural differences always had me feeling a little weary of them at the start as well. The greatest gifts came when we found ourselves in conversation with locals, children, shopowners. That’s where the beauty lied. I loved the choas of the cities, I loved the huge feeling of accomplishment I felt when I realized I was getting used to things, adjusting to the noise, the driving, the street crossing, the street cafes and food carts, and even squat toilets. Things became normal, we knew what to expect when we walked out of our guesthouse everyday and we felt like we were starting to blend with the energy of the city..
Of course, since this is sadly the only diary I’m keeping so far, I must confess for my own recolection some of my hard days:
1. I threw up on a long-distance bus. 2. When we were touring the Cu-Chi Tunnels I got a headache so bad that I started to cry and tried to hide behind David so that that other tourists wouldn’t see my crying. 3. I had more than one emergency bathroom trip where squat toilets were all there was, one time it was with a long line of Korean women noisily and impatiently waiting behind me. By some miracle, the countless times I had no toilet paper never coincided with the bathroom emergencies.
To be in Vietnam is to grow to love it but it’s also to grow immune and blind to many things. It was a constant battle to not impose my own value system on the Vietnamese culture, which I suppose is what traveling is all about. I had to evaluate and re-evaluate myself, my travel goals, my desire to know these countries we’re in instead of skimming only the easy parts beautified for westerners, with empathetic instead of judgemental eyes, every time I saw: 1. Every tourist and most Vietnamese who can afford it drink their water from plastic disposible bottles though there is barely a public trash can anywhere in the country, much less a recycle program. 2. We never saw a dog who didn’t look painfully neglected, a cow who wasn’t emaciated and tied up by a very short chain in someone’s very small front yard. 3. Children were out all hours of the night selling chewing gum, books, cigarettes, often times being dropped in front of tourist restaurants by their parents to try and make a sale. This is probably the most painful moral dilemna those of us with disposable income encounter in this part of the world. Parents would rather have their kids out on the street selling junk to tourists than have them in school. So if you buy from them, you’re encouraging this system and chances are the kids never get to benefit from any of the money. So, guidebooks say you shouldn’t buy from them but, on the other hand, they are lovely, beautiful if filthy children, with shoes woefully too big or too small and ripped clothing, who are only doing what their parents have told them to do. It’s a quandry every single day as we have no idea where these kids slept the night before or what they’re going home to that night.
But clearly, the most surreal thing I can say about our time in Vietnam was the sheer fact that we were standing where so much incredible violence had taken place. That we were tourists in a land that has seen so much tragedy - just to be tourists there is amazing.. It was pretty mind blowing just to be on the ground, looking around, with the ghosts of families torn apart, mothers, babies, young men and women and soldiers from around the world all around us. Just 20 short years ago, the Vietnamese were under a stringent rashining system that had families standing in line for hours for nothing more than a handful of moldy rice while I was driving around in my brand-new car, going to high school dances and spending my summers on the beach. We felt honored to be seeing this country in the dawn of their openess to tourism, we’re not the first wave for sure but we did feel like we were seeing something fresh and in its beginning stages.
As a close I’d like to share with you one of the last truly sweet things that happened to us before we left. Across the street from our hotel in Saigon was a 24 hour restaurant-bar catering to backpackers. This place fed us breakfast at 7am and turned neon crazy and thumped with bass until the wee hours. We stopped there a few times for coffee and always had the same waiter who remembered us after our first visit because of my voice (everyone knows by now that I’ve been teased my entire life because of my voice, right? And it happens here even in a tonal-language asian country - still they recognize something odd - geesh, there is no escape). So, we became friendly enough with him for us to gamble trying to ask for a full size mug of coffee instead of the 3 oz Vietnamese coffee we’d enjoyed for a month but it just never lasted long enough. We pointed to some other patrons who had big mugs and said to him, “coffee, big mug”. He smiled, said “yes, coffee big mug” and we thought we were on our way to our first whole mug of coffee since leaving home. Alas, over he came with 2 big mugs but with the traditional Vietnamese mini perculator on top which was in the proces of making for us………3 oz of coffee (don’t get me wrong, Vietnamese coffee is delicious -even coming from the coffee capitol of the US I can say that VN coffee is rich and smooth and probably better than, dare I say, what we get at home - the quantity, though, just isn’t enough) . Over the course of the next 15 minutes and I think 4 back and forth trips to the kitchen for our sweet little waiter, we finally were able to rudimentarally communicate and in the end enjoyed a full mug of coffee. Bearing the fruit of our labor, we invited our friend to sit down with us and we modeled for him how in America we lean back in the chair, relaxed, holding the mug, turning the pages of our imaginary morning paper and he began miming this action with us, everyone laughing and 2 out of 3 of us at the table feeling a little comfort of home.
We thank Vietnam for giving us a beautiful start to our journey.