Hey, Don't Pop My Bubble!

One of the problems of being a long-term expat in southeast Asia is developing a positive and sustainable social circle. I agree with what I've read on other blogs about finding Western friends here which is that it's not hard to meet people, it's the quality of those people that's the problem. Additionally, in Vietnam, there's also the issue of the ever-looming departure date and the short-time or vacation mentality that accompanies it that you'll find with almost all foreigners you meet in the tourist areas.

At this point, I've developed a small social circle of English-speaking foreigners that I've met through teaching and teacher training and just hanging out in a few bars. As unhealthy as bars can be, they also serve a useful purpose, which is providing a venue for people from disparate walks of life to sit down together and get to know each other, people who would never meet any other way. If you're patient and selective you can find good friends from bars.

As your stay here lengthens you'll begin to slowly find out about aspects of life for foreigners other than what's found around the tourist areas and you learn about options to branch away from that, but it's not particularly easy and certainly not automatic.

During my time of living within a short walking distance of the Pham Ngu Lao backpacker area, I met a total of 1 foreigner with whom I felt a good connection based on shared views of life and Vietnam. He happened to be from Sacramento, California and maybe the fact that he was a fellow American had a lot to do with our friendship since we didn't need to work our way through the nationalistic antagonism I sometimes find with foreigners here.

On that subject I can say I've never run into any real anti-Americanism here amongst the Vietnamese. I'm sure the sentiment is harbored amongst some of the old guard Hanoi Boys, but I don't ever come in contact with them. But interestingly enough, the only person I've encountered here who does display open antipathy towards the USA is, believe it or not, Canadian!

Here in Vietnam there are numerous websites for and about expats living here. They provide lots of useful information about the important everyday and other aspects of life here. One of the more popular websites has a forum for Saigon where anyone can post questions or comments and respond to others'. The forum is moderated by a Canadian Vietnam resident who in addition to using his position as forum 'moderator' to openly rail against some American companies and the government's policies has other agendas directed towards foreigners in Vietnam and he promotes and defends those by actually censoring or deleting posts that he feels contradict them. This is one foreigner who has truly gone native.

Another foreigner complained to me about the declining value of the US dollar last year when it suffered an exchange rate decline. I guess he somehow thought I owed him something! While he could have made a good point regarding the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency, he was just whining because he felt he'd lost some money and wanted to blame someone. Since he obviously wasn't equipped to engage in a real conversation about money and its value, I just told him he had never really had as much money as he thought he had and shouldn't complain. He hasn't spoken to me since.

These days we often hear about a global wealthy elite who live in a celestial world not defined by national borders. Well, there's also a global community on the other end of the social spectrum who are unwittingly united in their identical displays of banal nationalism. Minus the jet-set standard of living of course. It's ironic that the only difference between most foreigners who rant anti-Americanism or anti-anywhere else and the average American redneck is what national borders they happened to have been born within. On the other hand I appreciate the many foreigners I meet here who rise above all that and those are the people I want to spend time with.

Since being here, I've learned to accept the fact that America is viewed as a brand and an image as well as a nationality. There's nothing I can or even would do to hide the fact that I'm American so I've learned to use it to my benefit whenever I can and lay low about it otherwise. So underneath it all, we're all the same.

Since the foreigners you meet in the tourist areas are just that, they spend their time here in a tourist or vacation bubble. That's what tourists everywhere do and are supposed to do, but sometimes I'll meet a long-term tourist (meaning over 6 months here) who still tries hard to maintain his vacation bubble as if it can be a permanent way of life. It can only become a permanent way of life if it's somehow artificially sustained because life here is not a permanent vacation and in fact is still quite harsh for most Vietnamese and can't sustain a foreigner's vacation bubble for long. If someone has enough money and restricts their haunts to the nicer developed urban and tourist areas, it is possible to live a permanent vacation here, but it's fragile and artificial and eventually starts taking a psychological toll.

There's a fellow American here now who just returned after being here last year before going back to the states for 6 months. He was here for 6 months last year, so he qualifies as a long-term tourist. He's a nice guy whom I enjoy eating and drinking and talking with, but we have a problem in that he's still in a vacation bubble. It's interesting because at the same time I feel he's not being realistic about Vietnam, he feels I've become too cynical and jaded and maybe I need to leave. This starkly differentiates our agendas for being here.

Soon after he arrived here last month, we got together and while walking around, he became hungry and wanted to eat at one of the many street side cafes where the patrons sit outside in plastic chairs at plastic tables and enjoy food served on plastic dishes. So while he wanted to experience some of the real Vietnam, it was our differing opinions about it that was significant. I declined to eat anything as I wasn't hungry, but I also prefer to eat at real restaurants now. I've already experienced the street food in Vietnam and while it's ok and very cheap, I can do without it. There's nothing novel or interesting about it for me anymore and I'm also concerned, maybe unjustifiably so, about hygiene. He, on the other hand ,was immersed in the idea that it was so cool to be eating street food in Saigon. I can guarantee you the Vietnamese workers and students we were surrounded by found nothing cool about eating there. It was all part of his tourist fantasy about Vietnam.

While I know that I'm more realistic about Vietnam, he wants to continue enjoying his vacation bubble and we've both become wary of each other. He, because he knows that if he lets my realism rub against his vacation bubble too much it will pop, and I because I believe he's the type who will experience something negative one day and the next he'll be on an airplane out of here never to return.

While I now regard Vietnam in many of the same ways I regard life in the US, he feels that it's 'just better here'. I don't disagree that it can better here, but the reasons someone feels that way have to be real and explainable. I can state exactly why I'm here. He can't or won't. I think he has a day of reckoning coming.

So while he wants to protect his bubble, I don't want to invest too much emotionally in someone whom I don't believe has a healthy sustainable mindset and who therefore literally poses a flight risk. Hopefully we can continue to enjoy food and drink together. At real restaurants.

From last October, the Nha Trang surf colored brown as a result of recent rainstorms.

A restaurant in Tay Ninh (Tây Ninh). Thịt = meat for eating. Chó = dog. Served with a local alcoholic brew and with a 'special aroma and flavor'. Sorry, I can't give you a review!