The smell of Chinese incense fills the air of the narrow streets of Hanoi's old quarter. It's a scent I know well – a scent that immediately puts me back in Taiwan where I smelled it every day for a year and a half.
So do the metal cans for burning "ghost money" – paper printed to look like cash that people burn as an offering to their deceased ancestors and the spirits who can both protect and harm them. Supporting one's ancestors is important as is showing respect for the spirits of one's ancestors.
In the more than 50 streets that form Hanoi's old quarter, ancient traditions live side by side with modernity.
The strange thing is that nothing feels strange. Emily and I find Hanoi almost relaxing. The culturally rich environment with it's French and Chinese influences is new to us only in that we've never seen them in this combination. The city is different only in that we've never seen a city laid out quite like this in Asia.
But the elements themselves – the pagodas, idols of Confucius, parking motor scooters on the sidewalk, insane traffic packing the streets, street food, people crouched and hanging on the side of the road, baguettes on street carts, women carrying baskets over their shoulders, gorgeous parks in the middle of a major city – these are nothing new to us.
It's like the pieces of a mosaic rearranged to create a slightly different image. A very pretty, enjoyable image, mind you.
It may be that after 10 months of travel, we've become harder to impress. Maybe we're jaded. Undoubtedly, if we had come here directly from home, Hanoi might be more surprising. We would probably find a little more thrill in the contrast.
It's also possible that we've been to a lot of places, seen a lot of things. There's nothing in Vietnam more shocking than other places we've been. Nepal is a much harsher, more eye opening environment. Taiwan offers less support for foreigners – including expats – and has far less tourism. Taiwan also has very little value on esthetics and lifestyle, while Hanoi is all about these things.
The most astonishing thing to us has been that we haven't had a single person beg for money. People sell all kinds of cheap knick knacks and things we don't need or want – and they are occasionally aggressive in trying to sell them – but no one asks for money they don't earn in some way. Impressive.
Last night, as we sat on stools that in America would be used for pre-schoolers, in an empty room adjacent to a stand where women sell Vietnamese ice-based desserts – two American girls came and sat across from us. They asked Emily – who loves the strange assemblage of sweetened beans, seeds, jellied fruits and sweetened condensed milk on ice – what they should order. Emily told them that it doesn't matter, they'll get the same thing anyway because customization doesn't go well.
Over strange iced desserts, we talked with these early 20's sisters from Colorado about their travels and lives. One was a nanny for a wealthy New York family who is now helping them transition to a move to Singapore. They paid her to come along for six months and help train the Filipina nannies in Singapore about how to handle their kids and household. How could she pass up the opportunity?
So her "family" encourages her to take short trips around the region. Her sister came out to join her as they explored Vietnam and the two of them caught the travel bug. Everything is cool, new, exciting and fun. The sisters are busy hatching ideas and plans to continue exploring the world and creating interesting, uncommon lives.
Naturally, Emily and I enjoyed talking to them and encouraged them to go for anything and everything. Take cooking classes, teach English, work as part of a film production crew in Nepal, backpack, eat street food, take chances and go through the depression of coming home and trading in the excitement for a world of community and deep relationships at home.
It was fun to be the people ten years older saying, go, do, experience – at 23, there are no real risks other than falling off a motorcycle.
In talking with them, we saw the wonder, excitement and amazement we had ten years ago – the joy of discovering a world that feels completely different than anything you've known, that breaks down your constructs and makes you want to dive in and explore ideas and phenomena you had no idea even existed.
I wondered today, walking around the city with its smells, sights and happenings that are so different from home, if perhaps Emily and I have lost a little something? Namely, that awe those girls had. Just the other day, we talked about how this trip hasn't been about opening our eyes to new things and challenging our worldviews, but instead more of experiencing cultures, places and each other in a different context. We've been really happy with it.
When we see a restaurant with dog meat in the menu, our jaws don't drop in shock. We just choose another restaurant and I tell a joke like "If you're a dog in Vietnam and someone invites you to dinner, say no."
When we get massages and a woman taps me, motions for me to stay quiet and shows me her cell phone with a message saying, "You want special baby?" with my wife about four feet away in an open-aired room -I don't think, "How shocking! I can't believe this happens! I can't believe the nerve…" I just nod my head "no" and close my eyes again.
Today we went to the market in the old quarter that everyone tells us is a "must see." We looked around for a my second replacement travel wedding ring. Not only did we easily locate the guy with the cheap rings (I've successively downgraded from a $50 tungsten ring, to $30 silver to $4 stainless steel), but we were unimpressed by the market. It wasn't as overwhelmingly giant as Bangkok's Chatuckak Market, as chaotic as most things in India and Nepal, nor as grandiose and well organized as the bazaars of Istanbul.
As we talked about this, I thought that perhaps we really are jaded.
But maybe, at 33 years-old, after more than a decade of traveling and living in other countries and after spending almost a year seeing 10 countries thus far – we're appropriately different than the people we once were.
Perhaps, we've become citizens of the world. We have become comfortable, casual and undaunted. More often than not, we see the way things are as the way it is. We sometimes have our thoughts, opinions and feelings about the way it is – and things we like more and less – but we have come to see that there are a lot of ways to live life. All are valid. Most importantly, there's almost nothing that isn't possible or that doesn't exist. There's just what you haven't seen or experienced.
As in life, there are some dark parts of the world, cultures and events. We – especially I – tend not to go chasing them. But they too are part of things and as ultimately to be expected. Our world has tragedy, sadness, hatred, pain and loathing. We bring on our own miseries often in ways we don't see at the time. Vendettas, war, vengeance, racism, bias, discrimination, thoughtlessness, selfishness, ignorance and hatred lead to so much unnecessary tragedy and suffering.
Maybe one lesson Emily and I have gained as we reach the final stages of our trip is that the world hasn't changed and we haven't grown jaded – but instead we've become more comfortable and accepting.
It's like a yoga pose, the longer you hold it, the deeper you go into it, the better you get and the less it hurts. The pose never changes. What hurt becomes painless because you become more flexible – and then it seems easy and natural (unlike the beginning when you can't believe someone would even think you could si
t that way or bend like that).
The even bigger lesson is that while it's okay to lose the shock and the thrill that comes with the discovery of contrast and differences, never lose the gratitude for the experiences.
Everyplace we've gone, everything we've done, every texture and sight we've encountered is a blessing.
It's in knowing that an old, chaotic market in the middle of town isn't abnormal and different – but part of the fabric of people's everyday existence, and that it's value is in how it serves them, not us – that we can measure our growth. And we can be thankful for the myriad opportunities in our lives – especially this one – to begin to figure that out.
Sent from my iPad
