Occasionally I feel a little guilty about days like today.
We got up early to go to the yoga sanctuary, repaired to a park to eat banh mi chay, a vegetarian version of a Vietnamese lunch specialty, essentially a filled baguette to rival any of Subway's offerings, repaired to a coffee house to drink Vietnamese coffee, went back to the park. Later we plan to go home to attempt to cook more Vietnamese food before getting an early night (Vietnamese style). I think I am hoping that saying 'Vietnamese' in front of everything will make us seem less lazy.
Certainly it is both cheaper and more easy to retain a state of unchallenged serenity on days like this. But shouldn't we be rushing around, backpack perpetually on, cramming in pagodas and temples and museums and bus trips and viewing days like today as a deplorable waste of time? After all, we could learn yoga in England. We could sit in an English park, go to an 'English' coffee house like the ubiquitous Starbucks and, frankly, become just as obsessed with an English cat. We have cats in England. Get over it. As I write this, Martin is photographing Vietnamese squirrels. The same would apply, except they genuinely are quite different. Smaller, cuter and more stripey. (And yes, they are squirrels and not chipmunks. We asked them.)
We do, I think, both have a confused sense of what a 'proper traveller' should do or look like and a tendency to worry a little about whether or not we are matching up to it.
'Do you think we should be more deprived?' asks Martin. I know what he means, though neither of us can explain it exactly. We are trying to measure ourselves up against an image which is blurry and second hand. It will be nice to meet other travellers in the same way it is nice to meet anyone but we have deliberately steered largely clear of the backpacker district to attempt to speak to Vietnamese people and to go to the places they go to. In actual fact, I don't think we are alone. A lot of travellers probably want to do that. The trouble is, we have put together this shadowy traveller persona out of bits and pieces of second hand information and a fistful of stereotypes. Let's call him Brad, because that sounds like a traveller's name. Brad is ultra relaxed and ultra confident. He talks to everyone with ease, though always in English. Brad eats only once a day to conserve money and always at street stalls. He never stays anywhere more than a couple of days during which he manages to see all the top sights of any given place. He gets up early and goes to bed late and no matter how poor he is, he always has money for beer, which he drinks with much laughter and bonhomie, regaling a crowd of admirers with his endless supply of adventurous anecdotes and generally being the proverbial life and soul. He doesn't stay anywhere which costs more than a dollar a night, tops and is an adept surfer, diver or extreme sportsman. Brad can bargain better than a local. And he doesn't like us.
We are not Brad. And I think we are a little bit worried about it.
But really, as with anything, you have to consider what your own aims actually are. We wanted to experience culture more than we wanted to see things. We would miss the top ten must see sights in favour of one interesting conversation. And we like food too much to deprive ourselves of it.
Also, and as much as I may just be justifying us to ourselves, you can learn as much about a country by simply sitting still. I use the exercise equipment in the park, children play on them and adults (and me) genuinely work out. Going for coffee is a very Vietnamese thing to do and by sitting quietly in the park we get to see not only the squirrels (actually they really might be chipmunks), but also a mouse, poking its nose out from between the tree roots and a Vietnamese lady who is so excited about the squirrel-munks that she telephones her husband and he brings her entire family to see them.
We are not Brad. If he even exists. We are, and always will be - us. For better or worse, as our friend in the yoga class said, wherever you are, the constant is always what you bring with you in your head. Improve it or accept it - I'm not wise enough to know which. And just about honest enough to know we have not yet managed either. But if at some point we actually achieve either of these, we are winning.
And that doesn't leave all the excitement to Brad. My mind is a roller coaster. Riding it can be an extreme sport.
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