Doing Nothing - And It Feels So Good! Post #15

But first: A quick final note on Vietnam: We finished our Hanoi-based tours with a day in Ninh Binh, which is about two hours from Hanoi and is supposed to be an unspoiled area of natural beauty. It is beautiful, but the commercial tourist trade has taken root and there were boat rides and hikes and caves, all with a ton of folks wandering around. The highlight was supposed to be a 1 1/2 hour boat ride which was just plain boring. Except that most of the rowers were rowing with their feet. Neat trick. So several of the rowers were on their phone. One was actually reading. The last day we toured Hanoi, including the "Hanoi Hilton" and Uncle Ho's Mausoleum (he still looks good!) and that was an interesting day. And we ended up at a free outdoor K-pop concert with a few thousand screaming young Vietnamese who acted just as crazy as any kids their age. Fun.

Uncle's Ho's Forever Home

The sense we had of Vietnam by our last day was complicated. There was the chaos and noise of Ho Chi Minh City, the beauty and fun of Hoi An (despite the rain), and the more organized sense of activity in Hanoi. Everywhere in Hanoi we saw signs of nationalism and reminders of the great victory in the American War. But two conversations on that last day stand out in making some sense of Vietnam today.

The first was with Anita and Martha (8 year old daughter) in a coffee house we stopped in because they had a pastry shelf and I needed a fix. For some reason we took our purchases upstairs to a small, low-ceilinged seating area with two tables so close together that it was natural to start talking to our neighbors. Anita is from Wales, works in education, and has been in Vietnam for 6 years, now living in Hoi An. She made two points: (1) in her time here she had acquaintances, but no close friends. She said she had worked all over the world and had friends everywhere. But not in Vietnam. (2) She saw people working so hard to make money that the family was getting lost. She was concerned that a lot of kids had no one at home when they came back from school and relied very much on their screens for companionship and entertainment. She thought she perceived a rise in ADHD and other cognitive and behavioral issues that Anita attributed to crazy chase for increased income. It made sense based on what we have seen.

Kirin (right) and Jack

The second conversation was with two 22-year-old Vietnamese men, Jack and Kirin. They said they were working full time and going to school full time. Susan challenged them on this and they said "we study on weekends". They want to get ahead - fast. They stated that they have full freedom of speech and behavior, they just cannot criticize the leadership or the system. As an example they said the LGBTQ rights were recognized and accepted in Vietnam. We had the feeling that this was personal to them. We were talking about the income/wealth inequality in Vietnam and I asked about the committment of communism to "spread the wealth". Jack jumped in quickly and said, "No! Our leaders learned very soon that to build an economy they need to reward those who work hard and produce the most." Interesting. So you have communism layered on capitalism, layered on Buhhism, layered on thousands of years of Viet and other tribe cultural history. And now they have the rapidly changing technologically being bolted onto a culture that still honors their elders. There are enough conflicts inherent to boggle the simple mind.

But they are making it work. The World Bank has raised Vietnam from a "poor" country to "low middle income". They are moving on up. And seeing the frenzy and chaos of HCMC and Hanoi

reinforces the feeling that every Vietnamese citizen is in the race.

One way they hold it all together is the constant reminder (at least in Hanoi and the north) of the victory in the American War. The reminders are everywhere. But most of the Vietnamese people were born after the war and like Americans. The contradictions are difficult to reconcile but the reality appears to be that the entire country seems to have bought into the belief that Vietnam will be an economic power and everyone will get rich. By the time we left Vietnam we were exhausted.

So for the next 17 days we spent our time recovering on the beaches in Phuket (12/20-12/30) and a week in Koh Lanta. We discovered the art of doing damn near nothing. We went to the beach and read, napped, swam, and ate some very good street food. Then we would go back to the apartment, find dinner, go to sleep and wake up and do it all over again. We are both amazed at how much fun that was. Susan read more books than she has in ages and loved it.

Another sunset - Koh Lanta

Fire show - New Years Eve in Koh Lanta

We spent Christmas on the beach in Phuket and New Years Eve on the beach in Koh Lanta. The NYE celebration was so much fun - a fire show, EDM/trance music with a DJ on the beach with dancing, a light show. And I had spent the day so sick from some bad food. I tried not to be too much of a party-pooper and Susan loved dancing to the trance music. Then we tried to go to sleep around 10:45 p.m. - not a great idea, because the fireworks started around 11:45 p.m. and went on for 45 minutes. We jumped up and ran down to the beach where there were hundreds of folks bringing in the New Year. The fireworks were being shot off about 30 feet from us. It was fun and felt a little bit dangerous. Welcome to Thailand.

Perhaps the most exciting incident in Koh Lanta was our encounter with the Belcher sea snake. We did a snorkel trip in Koh Lanta on a speedboat with about 12 others. We went to three locations and they were pretty good - the reef seemed reasonably healthy and we saw some fish we are pretty sure we did not see on the Great Barrier Reef. So, Susan tugs at my flipper and points out a sea snake wandering among the coral. It is about 32 inches long, with pretty black and white stripes, perhaps an inch wide along its body. Then it starts rising to the surface, seemingly headed towards Susan. She backed away with no problem and we swam off. The next day we are online looking at photos of fish in the area to identify what we saw. And we saw a photo of our snake.

The headline next to it is: "Most Venomous Snake in the Ocean". It can kill a human within 30 minutes of a full bite. But no worry, the Belcher sea snake is shy and rarely bites humans. And it does not always inject a full dose of venom in each bite. What a relief. Again, welcome to the excitement of Thailand.

To sum up: the beaches were great, the street and restaurant food has been wonderful, we got our tans back for a while. And we really learned what being relaxed is like. Then we headed to Bangkok and a little more intense existence. We will remember fondly this beach time and the deep sense of rest and peacefulness for those 17 days.