Vietnam is one of the most fascinating places I've been, and not easy to figure out. Even on the flight over from Luang Prabang, the confusion began (Lao Air motto, I am not kidding: "You Are Safe With Us"). The captain made announcements like, "There is some turbulence, you should fasten your seatbelt, I don't know, for your safety."
Hanoi is a perfect example of how bipolar Vietnam is. It's a city chock-full of art stores and boutiques where people will (and do) eat anything and everything in order to survive. The baguettes are fresh....but so is the dog meat.
The people you meet fall into one of two extremes: the nicest people you have ever met or some of the angriest. Within hours of arriving, we met two Vietnamese restaurant owners in the street who took us to a beer hoi joint (fresh microbrewed beer that is found everywhere in Vietnam. It's watery but the tastiest beer in Southeast Asia). One adorable waitress passed me notes saying "peanut?" or "coca?" because she was shy but wanted to practice her English.
On the other hand, when one of the three Israeli career army men (good choice for someone to mess with, right?) broke an obviously previously defective kayak paddle on Halong Bay, a Vietnamese man and wife both tried to push him and Nate around because they wouldn't pay the US$30 demanded as a replacement fee. It wasn't just resentment of the West, either...we witnessed more than a few shouting matches between two Vietnamese. Unlike in Thailand, saving face wasn't a priority here.
I never felt uncomfortable being American in Vietnam, and probably got more flak from Canadians than anyone else about politics. This is despite the anti-American propaganda I saw at the Vietnamese Army Museum and the pictures of John McCain being "rescued" that were posted in the Hanoi Hilton.
Sadly, my time in Vietnam was cut short and I had to make the arduous journey back to Orlando, which as it turned out was 60 hours door to door. But I wasn't about to leave Asia without one more night (or a few hours) in Bangkok.
Rather than sleeping in the airport, I went to a Bangkok bar to watch the Russia v. Netherlands Euro Cup game with a few people I had met on the plane who had never been to Thailand before. I felt like a wizened old ex-pat, even knowing that I had to leave at 5am to catch my flight back to the states. There were some drunk and happy Polish men in the bar who were cheering for Russia - I gleefully told them that I was moving to their country in two weeks. All night, they had been substituting their own lyrics to "Guantanamera" and in my honor began singing, "Orlando, Flor-EEE-da!!"
It was one of those moments where I felt the ground shifting under my feet. It was time for a new continent...
No comments:
Post a Comment