I didn't know much about Vietnam when I decided to go on a short exploring trip, about 2 years ago. At that time I was based for about half a year in South Korea, and from there to Vietnam there was only a 5 hours flight.
Little did I know back then that I will be hooked, and for good reasons. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I will save some of the most interesting Vietnam stories for the second part of this writing challenge.
For now, we'll just look at some of the most unusual things that I encountered here.
Without further ado, let's go.
Crossing The Street
It may sound silly, but believe me, it's not. Crossing the street in Vietnam (ok, maybe just in Saigon) is one of the most challenging things I had to do. And I ran ultramarathons.
You see, traffic in Saigon is a beast of its own. 97% of the Vietnam population owns a motorbike. Kids go to the school on motorbike. Entire families go around like that, and sometimes you see 3 or 4 people on one scooter. Everything is done by motorbike here. The subway opened a few months ago, but it's still not very popular, and my guess is that it's also way too small to alleviate the huge amount of motorbikes traffic.
As a result, crossing the street is one of the most surprising, and, at least in the beginning, frightening experiences in Saigon. To be honest, I thought it's impossible at first. It took me about 2 days to be able to do it for the first time, and probably about 6 months to do it while feeling safe.
The secret is that you have to exhibit confidence. If you wait for the scooters to stop, and give way, you will die of old age. It will never happen. Instead, you have to show them that you really want to get on the other side, and, when you do this, something akin to magic will happen: the motorbikes will start to gently go around you, sometimes even brushing you gently.
I call this strategy "combing", because it feels like I'm just combing through the endless stream of motorbikes, until I get on the other side. which means none of them is stopping, they just gently avoid me.
One thing that is derived from this, and it was also extremely surprising, is that every Vietnamese has incredible driving skills. If you take just the average motorbike driver from Saigon and put it, let's say, in Madrid or Lisbon, people will think they are witnessing a race pilot. But more on that in a future post.
The Drinking Situation
This is not only related to Vietnam, but to Asia in general. People here drink a lot. When I first witnessed this, while living in South Korea, it felt surreal.
And I'm not talking about the amount. I think people here drink about the same like, let's say, UK or Germany. What's different is the drinking culture and the fact that this is not vilified.
Drinking is not, generally speaking, considered a "bad" thing here. It's just something you do. Nobody shames you about it (well, unless you get really drunk and do bad stuff, then you get to face the consequences, normally).
Sometimes I will get the last subway home in Seoul, and half of the wagon is filled with people barely standing. Drunk like logs. But nobody gives them the look, or talk bad about them. Maybe not even eye contact. Even more, some of them are trying to help: when the train reaches the final destination, they take them out, dragging them to the nearest bench in that station. All in all, it feels like they're taking care of some deeply wounded soldiers, after a big combat.
The Italians of Asia
Another surprising thing was the diversity of the Asian culture, by nation. As someone living in the West, we tend to believe that, culturally speaking, they're all the same. I'm sure they also think the same about Westerners too.
Well, it couldn't be more different. The Northern Asians, South Korea and Japan, they are more like the Germans of Asia. Very disciplined, extremely developed and rich (compared with South-East Asia, at least). Most of the time serious and not too much fun to have around.
The South-East Asia, Vietnam, specifically, feels like Italians of Asia. They're loud, open, always ready to party, and generally speaking, fun to be around (at least until they start to be too much). Like Italians too, they're always ready to flirt, and that can be said for both men and women.
For me, personally, it seems like Vietnam is a little bit overcompensating with the fun, and drinking and flirting stuff, and that's because they had an incredibly hard time in the last century: up until 1979 they had war after war, with France, United States, Pol Pot's Cambodia and even China. All of these wars were won, but the price was very, very high. So now they're kinda try to get back in shape, at an historical scale.
There are way more things to be said about Vietnam, which is an amazing country, but that was enough for one post. Step by during next days, this writing challenge just started.