There is a duality to Vietnam that possesses the landscape and its people. A puzzling double entendre whose irony therein lies in and of itself—foreign to the tourists, but integral to the locals’ daily lives.
To the tourist, the paradox of Vietnam slowly reveals itself, whispers itself to you like a secret. Step off the plane and the airport security coerces bribes and then offers to help you find your luggage. Walk through the streets and see the skyscrapers jutting out like mountains from the ground, juxtaposed by the patches of wildlife interspersed throughout the country—even in the big cities—like Spanish pueblos. Stop to listen and hear the sprinkling of English in the local tongue; henceforth emerges a hybrid language and its unusual dichotomy. Maybe it’s because of our catalog-cut culture, or our modern-day archetypes and fashion hypes, but the cultural incompatibilities feel almost incomprehensible.
But just like translations of languages distort meanings, translations of lifestyles blur reality.
I was born in Vietnam. Though admittedly—to some embarrassment—I do return on my trip as a tourist, pieces of a memory of an early Vietnamese childhood still linger; the soft yet coarse hum of my father's still-running-after-10-years moped takes me back to the time when my mother, sister, and I would hop on the back (and front) of that same beaten-down moped driven by my father, raising the total number of passengers to four. Together, our tumultuous set-up would become a part of the collective humming, honking, and screeching of the streets of Vietnam—a grand, symphonic cacophony.
Viewing from the outside, Vietnamese traffic appears to be a single super-organism, which seems wondrously efficient and contrasting to the recklessness of American drivers; viewing from within, however, you realize how much of it is really just an illusion: The super-organism is really just an amalgamation of drivers each with the same motive—to fight, honk, and screech for their lives.
Yet, there is still some truth to both sides of the looking glass; much like the coexistence of grassland and skyscrapers in the Vietnam scenery, the paradoxes of Vietnam do not clash: They coexist. Though the streets of Vietnam are much more hectic than the highways of America, there is nevertheless an incredulity to the masterful skill with which the average Vietnamese biker navigate his roads. And though the honesty of the Vietnamese people in exuding a warm, welcome hospitality and friendliness to tourists is indeed genuine, that same honesty can take a chilly turn.
A vacation can offer much more than a break from everyday life to the observant tourist.The duality of human nature reveals itself to anyone that’s willing to look just a little more closely.