30May2011 This evening I stood in the edge of the park next to the biggest roundabout in the center of Saigon, waiting for a Vietnamese friend. Motorbikes, cars, busses, traffic, people, noise, lights, a gentle drizzling rainy season rain.
I stand up on the ledge of the flower bed so as to be clearly visible.
On the other side of the flower bed a young University age Vietnamese lady walked past, smiling brighly.
I smiled back and she wandered over to talk.
"Where are you from ?"
"Australia"
Practicing her English I assume.
"Melbourne or Sydney...?" she really tried hard to remember the names of those two big cities.
Going through the "where are you from....? What do you do.... ?" routine usually makes me cringe. But the happy enthusiasm with which she spoke was disarming. Genuine and friendly.
"What do you ...."
"I teach Electronic Engineering....blah blah blah..."
"What are you doing ?
"Just playing" she says. I assume this to mean just wandering around to practice her English.
People who practice English sometimes use it as a front to sell tours or gems or whatever schemes.
That's not the case right now.
What strikes me most about her is that is she is genuine.
I'm actually shocked that a complete stanger, would simply smile and talk to another complete stranger just like that. It's me who has to overcome my cultural inhibitions.
She tells me in all earnestness about her dream, that she wants to learn Italian but has trouble finding people to practice with.
My friend now arrives. On a piece of paper, I write the name of a site where Vietnamese and foreigners meet in a safe, monitored space ( Couchsurfing.org Saigon group ). It is for people to stay with others on their floor or couches and it has a nice informal social group in Saigon - and most major cities of the world. She might find italian or other other language exhange there.
What surprised me most was the simple human trust, not stupid naivety, but trust in herself, to judge who to talk to. The guts to talk to a total stranger.
I don't think it has much to do with me, - though then again I have noticed that even in a long line of people, beggars will often magnetically gravitate to me. Why ? Who knows.
As we talked all the Western warnings about strangers whizzed through my mind. I simply couldn't imagine his happening in my home town. I'm used to a guarded scowl on the face of strangers and someone asking me the time, makes me suspicious.
....I rode right across Europe and into the Middle East. Far from being the dangerous place I had always seen on the TV News, people waved to me as I passed, families invited me to stay the night in their homes or join them for a meal. I learned a crucial lesson about the world during those hot, dusty weeks: whatever governments are shouting angrily about, whatever extreme sections of society may be doing, the vast majority of people on Earth are good, ordinary people just like you and I. I rode through 60 countries on my circumnavigation, and in each country this held true. The world is, by and large, a good place. Traveling opened my eyes to that. .... from: Alastair Humphreys writing about adventure
Vietnam has had a horrific history of war, children are still being born deformed from the effects of the war. And yet, I can walk around this city and experience such things. Amazing.31May2011... update: the lady I wrote about above joined Couchsurfing and was pleased to see THIS blog here, about our meeting.
Small world.
