Cultural Adaptation

So, today I was really struck by the human capacity to adapt to lifestyles and cultures that are very different to those they have been raised in. Judging on my own behaviour (handful of words of Vietnamese, number of Confucius texts read: zero, retaining regular cravings for mashed potatoes and eggs Benedict) adaptation doesn't mean assimilation or even understanding, more a distant observation and figuring out of one's place in the new order of things. I would, however, like to consider myself slightly more globally streetwise than the two elderly American women currently standing behind me in the passport queue, who are regaling each other with stories of how they go on and off the same door on the train in Singapore. Just think of it: the same door. Not the opposite one: the same. Apparently this caused some confusion about who was waiting to get on and off at which point.  Gosh. 

To add to this cultural shocker, here are a few amusing and bizarre and shocking things that I have witnessed recently that have seeped into the mundane, but really, are blog worthy if the blog is made up of vignettes of my life rather than a big, Li Hi event. 

1. The Queue of Monks

For many months, in fact, since I moved to Vietnam, there has been a big temple under construction near our apartment block. Progress has seemed stop-start for the last year or so, and we had all started to presume that it would never be finished. A few nights ago, however, I noticed that there were some Buddhist flags flying in the very spiritual neon green and orange lights that now lit up the central part of this pagoda, thus, I reasoned, it must be open for business.

I didn't realise, however, that this would mean some form of official importing of a very large group of monks and nuns and sundry Buddhist supporters from one place - who knows where - to the new temple next door. Running late for work one morning, I was even further delayed by this trail of people, that had presumably gathered for the inauguration of the temple. The queue, to put it in Anglo-Saxon terms, was at least as long as the queue for ground tickets at Wimbledon, and was being managed by a group of young, Buddhist Y-WAM equivalent youngsters in yellow tshirts. 

That is quite a lot of people for 7:10am!

2. Bikes

Bikes are awesome and liberating and convenient and the mode of transport in Vietnam. I love Roger Red Bike more than any other inanimate object I own because, unlike my MiniPad or bassoon, a motorbike can get you to higher ground when the tsunami is coming. This sounds like a distasteful joke, but it is not: it is a genuine concern in many of the countries I holiday in, and there are signs pointing out the direction to higher ground on most coastlines. 

What's more, you get to experience traffic like this, which makes you feel like your a part of some important historical event and is so cool that you don't even care that it's made you late:

However, bikes are also heinously dangerous and I am shocked that I am no longer shocked by this. For that matter, I am no longer surprised that it took four times and about three years for an official person to give me permission to drive.  Cars are so dangerous, too!  We forget that.  

The immersion into bike-risk is so complete that last weekend, when driving to the airport on a road where there is almost always an accident every time I ride on it, Frenchie warned me not to look at the man lying in the middle of the road with blood leaking from his head, and my first thought was 'I wasn't looking, I was trying to get through the traffic.'  How awful. And most people are the same, including the police who were about twenty metres in front of the accident but hadn't seen/heard/noticed it and so we're doing nothing. 

Kites dropping into the highway cause accidents; dirty and dazed women sitting in the middle of the road cause accidents; dangerous driving causes accidents; men who stink so much of beer that they seem to be soaked in alcohol like a sponge cause accidents but, somehow, dogs that sit in between their owners' knees with their feet up on the dashboard, unsecured, or behind their owners in a relaxed, lying down position, do not cause accidents by leaping jubilantly into the road as I would expect a dog to.  Neither do sleeping children who sit in front of their parents, leaning heavily on one of the arms responsible for steering, their un-helmeted heads lolling like dead people, by falling sideways into the road like I would fear constantly were I that child's parent. 

Because of these multiple, unexpected and creative dangers associate with bikes, I have joined the helmet police. My hatred for non-helmet-wearers equals my father's hatred for mobile-phone-drivers and cyclers-on-the-pavement (I ride my motorbike on the pavement - oops - don't tell him) and yea verily, I will fight this cause with equal vehemence. I have now turned into one of 'those' adults that stops driving when I see any students riding their own bikes without helmets. I have yelled manically across the street, whilst slapping my own helmeted head for effect; I have cruised along slowly with young couples re-enacting that scene from 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', explaining in long and lecturing tones that there is nothing romantic about a crushed skull; I have become that shrill woman that the cool, sporty types hate because I make a habit of pointing out times I have seen them without their helmets on and reminding them that they are role models to impressionable children. 

I'd dislike myself and shun my soapbox if I were not so terrifyingly aware of how dangerous bikes can be. 

Really dangerous, guys. Like.  Really. 

3. The Fire Swamp

From my apartment window, you can see over the undeveloped land that, until recently, has been used  by construction workers to live in. These families build houses out of whatever they can find, often sell meals to the taxi drivers and have a market (though I don't know with what regularity), often have children and a dog. 

About six weeks ago, when I was still intent on running another half marathon, I was trotting home from a run only to discover that this whole area had been set alight and all the grass was on fire. I slowed to a bewildered jog and had the terrifying thought that the children might still be there (the children!), but nobody else was running around waving their arms and screaming, so they probably weren't. In fact, nobody seemed bothered by it at all. I wanted to run around, yelling 'FIRE FIRE FIRE!' at the top of my lungs, or at least call someone and say, 'look: there's a bush fire and nobody cares. Isn't that mental?', but instead, I tripped past, waiting for the world to press the 'play' button on this clearly insane moment and see everyone rushing around collecting their belongings and running for higher ground, but that didn't happen. I didn't even get a photo and the next day at school, nobody even mentioned it, even though someone else must have seen it. It was like it never really happened at all!

Maybe I did just make it up?

4. Aeroplanes

Curious Stranger: so, are you just visiting Singapore for the weekend?

Me: uh... kind of: my husband is based there. 

CS: oh, he lives in Singapore?

Me: no ... he lives on a plane.

CS: I'm sorry?

Me: that's probably where he spends most of his time...

CS: he's a pilot?

Me: no, he makes crocodiles out of bags. 

CS: ...

Me: do you want my seat?  I've seen the sunset from this angle five hundred and seventy six times. Ugh. This is the same Jetstar/Tiger magazine as last week. Boooooooring.  Oh, and look, Huong the stewardess has done her hair differently to normal. I wonder if that's allowed?

Me: and I walk past this architect's version of a human being almost every Friday evening. He gives me nightmares. 

CS: ... !

Clearly, Curious Stranger will learn not to be so nosey and ask strange little Afro-haired girls many questions on her next tourist flight!

The point is, Frenchie and I fly a lot, yo!  Our carbon foot print is so big we're probably solely responsible for the death of an entire blue whale.  Do you think the whale thinks our true love was a worthy thing to be sacrificed for?  And I now consider getting on a plane the same as getting on the tube. I pack in the morning before work and sometimes stay too long marking and think, 'it's fine, they'll wait/there'll be another one'. I remember a time when taking a flight was so exciting that I stayed up the whole night watching 'Requiem for a Dream' rather than risk missing it and read the safety briefing card and identified my nearest exit. 

5. Sunsets

Talking of sunsets, Saigon sunsets do still make me think, 'wow' because they are actually quite sci-fi and scary. I keep putting off taking a picture for you, because every time I leave work early enough to see one of these sunsets, I am riding my bike and hesitate about stopping and then the sun elusively sinks below a building, and I am also probably on my way to a close-shave check-in, and when I did stop to take a photo, I realised that pointing your camera directly at the sun just results in a white blob rather than the blood orange that I can see from where I'm standing. It is so red and so enormous, it's quite scary. I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere. Is it bigger because we're nearer the equator?  Does that make scientific sense?

6. Farm Animals

And obviously, there are these guys who couldn't make life more surreal even if they tried:

Why are there cattle and wild boar grazing and rooting for truffles outside my apartment buildings, an area of land which is basically just a dusty, destitute construction site?  Who do they belong to?  How are they regulated?  How do they know not to wander into the Imperia courtyard and drink from the baby pool or poo on the reception steps?  I don't understand where they have come from!  Is it some form of migration, like wildebeest and what I am seeing is the impact of the rapid industrialisation of man invading and disrupting the natural world?  Was the Imperia site once a mighty river across which these cows leapt in a sort of bovine coming-of-age slow motion nature documentary way on their passage to the paradise fields of the central highlands?  It makes no sense to me. 

So there we go. The mundane of the expat lifestyle.