Saigon Second Time Round

After the Bangkok airport crisis (trying to sound like some 24 hour news program here) prevented a return to Thailand from Manila, tickets were changed to end up in Saigon. I am very glad that it worked out that way. HCMC seems to me to have a vibrancy and friendliness that was just much harder to discover in Bangkok. Believe me I spent hours upon hours scouring the streets of Bangkok, but after a while the blocks full of used car stereos just made things less charming. I admit that travel nor my aims are always about charm or what is easiest, but when you can get charm along with a sense of energy, movement and difference I will opt for the latter.

I have seen possibly a million motorcycles in the last 5 days, heard people talking in tones that I didn't know existed, eaten some exceptionally fresh food and met some great people here in Saigon (and this is my second time here). The beer is fresh, things are cheap. I dunno, this is probably the most personal writing I may do on this trip. Not that you are going to see the inner workings. Merely that I can't help but be gushing about this place. I have run into any number of people over the last three months that have had plenty of bad things to say about the country. I just don't see it. I suppose I can understand (now I am going to go back into discourse mode):

Many people I have met assume that all of South East Asia is populated by these charming individuals who want to do nothing more than smile at you, where everything costs a dollar and every place you go is populated by a tourist industry that speaks good English (Thailand). Vietnam is certainly none of those things. People are not unhappy, just the opposite, but from where I stand it seems that they are much more caught up in their own lives. As people may or may not know Vietnam is on the road to being a middle income country in less than 15 years time. The economy is soaring. Things move a hundred miles a minute. There is a reckless sense of joyful lawlessness as you cross the streets. The psyche of the people has certainly been profoundly affected by colonialism, wars with China, France and the United States; a closed society and every other thing you could imagine a nominally communist state dealing with in the past 40 years. But still there is something cheerful and different about this place. (The Philippines had a similar vibe)

I am not trying to make excuses. People have bad times places. But I think that many of the expectations for what Vietnam is are merely unrealistic. It does not rely primarily on tourism. There is very little English spoken and less written. It is just not as easy a travel destination. This in the heart of one of the most traveled regions of the world. As I have heard so often from casual conversations on the streets of this region to intimate conversations I have been involved in over dinner Vietnam is lacking "authenticity". This immediately hearkens me back to my university days. What the hell is authenticity anyway? More likely what these people are referring to is the fetishization or romanticizing of a country, people, culture or region. Not to go all Said on people, but that is entirely unrealistic and lacks the understanding of what culture is and how it works. The interplay and connections between the east and west are too often blurred by our desires to experience a certain thing that we have built up in our own minds. I caution anyone from carrying any preconceptions into any other country be it England or Argentina, India or Uzbekistan. Yes, you can want the place to be beautiful. Have good food. Be a place you can enjoy. But you cannot assume because a people or region doesn't live up to what you thought it would be that it should be automatically relegated to the dust heap. Authenticity exists without that fetishizing. It exists because people live their lives. That is authentic enough.

So to get back to me gushing, I like Vietnam a lot. There is plenty here to offer and especially to someone who is from America. I went and saw the war remnants museum and the Cu Chi tunnels. Both fascinating things, but will be left for another essay I am preparing. In any event my trip will soon take me into the heart of the Mekong, Phu Quoc island and then into Cambodia for the last leg of my trip. Wish me luck.