OK, so I spent 25 days in Vietnam, and saw a pretty good chunk of the country. Because I was on my own a good deal of the time, I got to interact with the locals without the filter of a guide or handler, and without the cocoon of fellow Westerners shielding me from bumpiness that often happens when foreigners meet.
It was a revelation, and a pleasant one. First, I am still astonished by the friendliness and decency of the Vietnamese people I met here. Not just some, but every single one. Well OK, there was that desk clerk in Dalat. But still, my point is that most of the people I met asked me where I was from. And when I told them I was from America, not a flicker of reserve or animosity crossed their faces. On the contrary, most of them expressed delight that I had traveled so far to visit their country (And without wanting to kill any of them! Well OK, there was that desk clerk in Dalat). And given what I’ve seen and learned, they have plenty of reason to feel animosity toward us. Believe me, I did think about that before I came here. But I feel certain now that for the Vietnamese, the war is distant history.
Then there’s the sheer beauty of this country. I can’t begin to describe all of the stunning scenery I traveled through. If I had better skills as a photographer, and enough time to sit and wait for the perfect light, I could make your eyeballs dance.
And the food! My goodness. I fear that I’m in for a rude shock when I step on the scale back home. And cheap? You can eat like a king here for ten bucks. And eat very well for two or three.
Now, the tourist infrastructure here still has a few kinks to work out. But they haven’t been in the game very long. They could really use some road signs, for instance. And in the main tourist towns like Hue and Hoi An it’s almost fun to watch the Vietnamese hustlers calling out to Westerners Cyclo (bicycle taxi) or Moto (motorcycle taxi) as the tourists hurry away shouting No Thank You, No Thank You. The hustle is pervasive. But that sort of entrepreneurial activity might explain why I only ran into only a handful of beggars during my entire stay, and Vietnam is a desperately poor country.
Part of being a desperately poor country means that there is very little attention paid to environmental concerns. Garbage is everywhere. The banks of the Mekong are littered twelve feet high with it. And wildlife has been almost completely eradicated. The environment is, sadly, way down on their list of concerns.
But our way of thinking is not their way of thinking.
I met a Canadian expat who was traveling with her mother in Ha Long Bay, who has lived here for three years teaching English. She told me that thinking along Western lines in a country like this is a sure way to drive you crazy.
One example she gave me was in the nature of relationships between Westerners and Vietnamese. She told me that she’s not made any real friendships in the Western sense here, that Vietnamese are so desperate to break out of their own poverty that their calculation is always: what can this foreigner do for me? Even her own Vietnamese boyfriend has made it plain to her, she said, that the relationship will only last as long as he can gain something from it.
That sort of relationship would seem awfully depressing to me, but that’s Western thinking I guess. Can’t say I understand it. But I know better than to make snap judgments about it.
It seems to work for them. And they’ve been a successful culture a lot longer than we have.
But even though it’s a very old country, it’s a young country. The median age is somewhere in the twenties. Everyone seems optimistic about the future. And given what I’ve seen, they have reason to be.