Outside my window this morning is something completely different...

Vietnam. Its different from anything I have experienced before.

My expectations were limited, save for a difference. That I expected a lot of. Never having been to Asia I could only think about it in terms of the opinions of others who have.

I entered the country via the usual method one does that these days: a flying hunk of metal, plastic, upholstery and humanity. But here’s the thing, just having come through the Hong Kong airport, which was ridiculously awesome (FYI), I didn’t, for some unknown reason, expect Vietnam to be as, well to put it bluntly, third-world. I don’t know why I never thought so, but that was my largest surprise. Of course I don’t have a problem with that having been dragged by my parents to a few different places, but it threw me through an initial loop. But enough with expectations and differences and all that, I’ll tell about it in a much better way: stories.

[Traffic.]

I was picked up in the airport by a driver who spoke a few words of English and carried a sign bearing my name. I have heard that Vietnamese traffic is crazy, and boy are they right. But, its not as bad as I thought. I was told to expect randomness, chaos, unparalleled anarchy. But that is not true at all. There is lots of pattern that I began to see on the way to Can Tho. Even though traffic goes everywhere and every-which-way, those driving are constantly aware of their surroundings. Honking alerts other traffic of one’s presence. The traffic flows very smoothly and beautifully. Lines on the road are very basic guidelines, but the flow of traffic rarely needs to follow these guidelines. If a motorbike pulls onto the road you can see a visible “shockwave” where the traffic on the road responds to the new vehicle. The traffic moves around and engulfs it. The flow is not disrupted, just shifted and restored. Its seems to me after my first week, that flow best describes the traffic here. It is quite a graceful dance for the most part. Which is what makes crossing the road such an awesome experience (albeit scary at first). If one moves predictably and smoothly things go well. Unpredictably and erratically, the flow can’t smoothly respond and dance around you, so something bad happens.

[Floors.]

Another thing I have noticed: floors. Flying and flowing down the road, flashes of floor would hit me. I would focus on the flash and in slow motion the floor would clear itself in all its clean and beautifully tiled grandeur. The walls around it seemed separate, not wanted to soil the floor with the accumulated dinge of their years. Don’t get me wrong, not all floors were sparkling, but in many cases they provided a stark contrast of note and interest.

[First meal.]

My first meal in Vietnam: pho. Not to be pronounced in any way you would think based on the typed word. The markings are all missing. The vowel is almost like an open schwa lengthened and given a little flare by swooping the pitch of your voice a little. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised to find that assessment to be completely wrong tomorrow when I hear someone say it again.

“Dinner,” asks the driver. I motion “sure.” We flow the car over to a road side “restaurant”, git out and sit down on metal chairs at a metal table. The floor tiles are blue and green. The front of the eatery is open to the street, as most stores are (those that choose to close themselves off to the grime of the street are usually quite fancy, and thus expensive, it seems). The driver motions to a lady and mutters a few syllables. Not even minutes later a plate of greenery is placed on the table. All beautiful herbs attached to the stem. Another bowl of quartered lime and hot peppers. Also at the table is a little “condiment” organizer including plenty of chopsticks and spoons, and soy sauces of various sorts in little covered dishes. Soon after, enter little dishes of fish sauce and bean sprouts. Literally five minutes from when we ordered, two steaming bowls of pho are placed in front of us. I sit there trying to look all non-touristy, but still not sure how to say thank you. (But that’s not really done much here from what I can tell. Everyone seems pleased to hear it when I say it for everything, but they could just be smiling at my ignorance. There are a great many things to be learned about interpersonal interactions (that seems redundant)) I wait for my driver to do something before I do anything. I will then follow suit. He begins slowly, with a deep sense of sure-ity, to defoliate the stems of herbs into his bowl. I naturally follow suit. Then heaps on sprouts. A little soy sauce. A hot pepper or two. Chopsticks and spoon in hand. Now the bowl itself looks like this – broth over flowing with white rice noodles, bean sprouts, stuffed with fresh herbs, various other floaty things included thin strips of beef. We dance our spoons and chopsticks up and down in the bowl mixing the concoction together. Now to eat. The spoon for slurping the broth, chopsticks for everything else. Now to taste. Beautiful. Fresh. Beautifully fresh. Basils and salts and garlics and who knows what else. I daintily avoid the meat being a canine-d herbivore myself. But the rest is superb. Very different. I was warned of its lip-lickedness, but wasn’t sure what to expect. Of course, I did not enjoy it as much as I should have because I was too busy trying to look and act like a local (a local who hadn’t been in the sun much, was tarred and feathered only in the mouth region, oddly enough, and hadn’t a clue about what was going on). The best part of the meal: afterwards. No, not like that, that was perfectly normal. The tastes continued to float around my mouth long afterwards. A slight movement of the tongue would bring back basil.

Well, that’s all for now. Some initial thoughts, bound to change. More to come. I could go on forever, but no ever wants that, except for all those vain princesses in the stories we are told as children.

Mark.