Throughout summer I experienced that which Mrs. Kincaid thought to be the most dreadful thing a person can be in their lifetime, a tourist. The journey or the decision to take this trip around the globe (literally) came to the mind of my sister when she told me that if my internship application - specifically speaking of the Brazilian visa - didn’t come through she would like me to go out and travel to a land which has history incrusted in their soil from years of war and years of suppression, it was Vietnam.
The purpose of the trip was to accompany my sister to one of her best-friend’s wedding in Ho Chi Minh - the girl is from Chinese descendence and her mate, now husband, is from Vietnamese. The trip sounded as exciting as you can imagine. Visiting Asia was never in my plans, but as soon as the days came to be, I realized that it was really going to happen and I was going to be in a continent whose culture has been revered as one of the most influential in human history.
First thing (right of the bat) is that I hated the ride over there, it was something of 20+ hours to get to where were going to go. Once we arrived in the city of the day/week (we changed the venue of ours to see more in less time, started in Hanoi, then Da Nang, then Ho Chi Minh and we finish of in Hanoi (once again). During the trip there were certain patterns that were always present. In the streets you could notice that they were always packed with food carts and a lot of people, so much that even when you had to cross the street, you had to do it with your heart in your mouth because people really don’t stop their destination for you, instead they go around you carefree (this includes both on foot and on motor). To believe it you have to live it, pictures won’t be sufficient for this experience. Since money was limited we tended to fend off from restaurants and live the country first hand by going to from cart to cart eating anything that seemed within our limits. This mentality landed me a bacteria in my stomach from which I was in bed from 11pm at night to 11am of the other day, only getting up to go to the bathroom and back (hands-down one of the worst experience in my life).
From a tourist’s point of view, people there are very incrusted with their families, usually living all of them together. They live for them and stay connected with everybody from the little ones up until the great grandmothers. It too beautiful to expound on paper the feeling you get just from viewing this first-hand.
The tourist act I know it’s hard to live by because in a place where all of the people are asian, you are kind of an outsider, so they will stare (just in case you were planning a trip there). It made me feel somewhat uncomfortable, like an outsider that people don’t want there. I could say that this and the bacteria have been sufficient for my first (and maybe) last time in Asia. Maybe in the future, I’ll go back and try to relive everything done there to see how my view has changed. All-in-all, I think that my next (far) trip will be something in the Africa region, but then again I’ll be in the same uncomfortable place of a tourist who people don’t to be there and that’s hard mentality to surpass.
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