We are Vietnami
if you pli (pa pa pa pom pom)
We are Vietnami
if you don't pli (pa pa pa pom pom)
(Think of the Siamese cats in the Lady and the Tramp. Also, Vietnamese
tend to cut off the 'z' at the end of words. Us foreigners tend to
mess up the vowels since we have less than a third than they do. Fair
is fair.)
So here I am. On the other side of the world, first time in Asia,
understanding absolutely nothing, completely unable to pronounce
anything right. And, strangely enough, it feels eerily familiar and
comfortable.
Doesn't make much sense at first, but, trust me, it does if you
lend me your ear for a while.
I grew up in the downtown of Athens, Greece in the 70s and 80s. By
many measures, Greece was a developing country at the time. Unlike the
rest of Europe that quickly rebuilt after World War II, Greece had a
civil war, a controlled currency, general political instability
(including a dictatorship and a socialist government for most of the
80s), major immigration waves from the countryside into Athens,
etc. Nowadays, Athens is pretty much on par with the other European
Union capitals --- if you correct for the idiosyncracies of daily
Greek culture --- but this wasn't the case while I was growing
up. FYI, it was only in 1981 that Greece joined the EU.
Anyway, here is a scene from my life growing up... Living in an
apartment, from which I'd walk the 2km or so to downtown in order to
buy electronic parts to build yet another contraption. On the way, I'd
walk half the time on the sidewalk, half on the street as cars and
motorbikes conveniently parked on the sidewalk. I'd have to be careful
not to trip as the old sidewalk had cracks and unstable tiles, either
due to the weight of parked cars... or due to the roots of the scrawny
trees seeking some clean water... or due to the cable poles
overburdened with streetlamps, signs, and myriads of overhead
telephone and electricity cables.
Running parallel to me, there were streams of honking cars,
motorbikes, buses. Sure my parents taught me how to cross at traffic
lights but (a) many intersections did not have lights, (b) who wants
to go 100m down the street, cross, and backtrack another 100m when I
could just cross the bloody street right here and reach the store
across in 30m. So I'd step on the road and start walking... somehow,
by magic, out of this seemingly chaotic system, order came about and
I'd reach the sidewalk across the street in one piece: order can be
either externally imposed (by following common rules such as traffic
laws) or by aggregate individual common sense (each driver making
locally optimal decisions while aware of their immediate
surroundings). It was all much like an ant colony: each ant has very
simple behaviour, there is no grand overseer, yet an ant colony looks
like a well-organized, efficiently-run nation to us humans.
Anyway, I'd reach downtown and look for my parts. I'd try one little
store that specialized in capacitors. Then one that had resistors. If
I was looking for an expensive part, I'd haggle the price a bit too
(or arrange to have a grown up come with me and
do the haggling for really expensive items).
Around noon I'd get hungry, so I'd stop at the grimy corner shop for some
souvlaki (kebab: pork meat on a skewer) for $1, or buy a koulouri
(sesame bread ring) for $0.10 from a street vendor who carried them on his
tray. And throughout my walk, I'd see congested cars, hear their horns
and plenty of swear words in Greek, and breathe in the unhealthy
fumes of leaded gasoline. Among those sounds, there'd also be the
occasional gypsy in a pickup with a loudspeaker horn on top
advertising his wares... Or sometimes the gypsies would beg for money
(they'd bother the grown ups, not me) as their kids ran around, often
half-naked until fairly old (and, of course, they'd do their business
on the street).
If this was one of those very rare (but oh so blessed) days when
private school teachers were on strike, then I'd probably go by a
public school or two at the end of the school day, and be surrounded by other
kids, all dressed in their blue uniforms. That is, if I walked through
the small back streets. But if, instead, I walked along one of the
main avenues of Athens (Vassilissis Sofias, where my parents still
live), I'd pass in front of many foreign embassies, each with a
pillbox guard stand in front, in which a consistently bored young man
holding an automatic gun would be sitting. Sometimes, I'd see a lost
tourist staring at a map and give them directions; and maybe tell them
how to get to their destination by bus to avoid the unscrupulous cab
driver who'd glady take them via Rome, Italy to charge a high fare.
Reaching home, I'd hurry to the TV to catch the kid shows that opened
the daily program of one of the two TV stations. The one I liked was
about making things from old stuff, e.g. a picture frame from
cigarette boxes. As a result, I had a very large collection (four 60
gallons trash bags) of my dad's cigarette boxes that I'd collect by
rummaging through the trash cans around the house. And, no, they did
not all become picture frames.
At night, after the TV signal was cut off at midnight, I'd relax with
my parents on our balcony. No, the stars were never visible; too much
smog and humidity. But there was a nice breeze. The traffic would be
sparser, and its persisting white noise was strangely soothing at this
lower volume. The sidewalk sweepers would arrive and push the street
trash over the edge of the sidewalk... whatever everybody conveniently
discarded on the sidewalk... such as cigarette butts and many a
lottery ticket bought from the street vendors downtown. The garbage
trucks would then arrive and collect it all, including the necessary
narcotic to sustain life in such chaos and the lost paper hopes for
riches.
That was then. And this is now, in Vietnam, while Athens has moved on
(for the most part). It was truly bizarre landing here and feeling
everything being so awfully familiar... Christine is the one who
speaks the language but is a foreigner in every other way: she feels
very nervous crossing the street, and she is learning how to haggle. Yet,
for me, this is the town I grew up in.
Mind you, I don't like most of this: I don't find it particularly
charming, I don't enjoy the smell of leaded gas, nor the haggling, nor
the begging, nor the lack of large self-service stores. I didn't like
it in Athens, and I don't like it here as a place to live. But, as a tourist visiting
with my wife, it is truly wonderful. Out of the blue, having no
expectation we'd encounter this parallel world, I can show Christine
the world of my childhood... how many people have a chance to step
into such a time warp?
Anyway, as a short-term experience, it's thoroughly fun and
refreshing because:
I'll close with some very weird, non-Athens-like experiences I had.
We already bought me sandals (Teva equivalents for $7.50... haggling
started at $12.50). I've asked Christine to buy me a conical hat and
peasant pyjamas. I'm looking for a bamboo pole, and two baskets (one
for my computer, one for the textbook). Maybe this will help make me feel
more comfy.