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Much like China, Vietnam is a country of contradiction: a communist state embracing a free market economy, a former enemy eager to be a friend, a land of people who will eagerly and genuinely embrace you but charge you more than twice what they would their neighbor for everything from chewing gum to silk pajamas. We love this Vietnam, the one that on the outside seems comfortable and familiar. But inside, at the core, there lurks a disconcerting past that Tom and I felt we could not ignore or gloss over. We decided to visit some of the tough places with the kids, hoping they would help them get a grasp on the country’s history and our evolving relationship with its people.

We started in Hanoi with the Hoa Lao Prison (Hanoi Hilton), Ho Chi Minh Museum, and Presidential Palace. Each site was a fierce statement of the Viet people’s struggle for independence and a stark reminder of the sacrifices they made–millions upon millions of lives lost–in shedding their colonial skin and pushing out foreign powers. Of course, this is a tough one for us, since we were the last country to stake a claim here. Despite their obvious propaganda, cracks in the museum facades reveal the paradox that has made modern Vietnam possible.

As a schoolboy, Ho Chi Minh learned the power of revolution from his country’s colonial rulers, the French. In a letter displayed in his museum, he described communism, or its early 20th century manifestation, Leninism, as the most effective ideology available for achieving independence. He didn’t profess it to be truth or even wisdom but a means to an end at a moment in history. Our involvement in Vietnam stemmed precisely from Uncle Ho’s decision to follow the Leninist model. Had he couched his actions in the rhetoric of the American Revolution and proclaimed himself a champion of democracy, things might have gone much differently. The American War might have become the Russian or Chinese War.

The irony of course is that thirty years after winning their war against the capitalists and 16 years after the collapse of their communist sponsor, the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese are voraciously embracing many of the things we thought we were fighting for. There was no easy solution to the Vietnamese dilemma back then–neither of the Cold War superpowers was willing to let the country fall under the influence of the other without a fight–and there’s no easy resolution to our emotions today. As Americans we think, “58,000 of our people died so the Vietnamese could one day welcome us back as financiers of their failed economy?” The Vietnamese think, “Why didn’t the Americans just leave us alone? Why did millions of our people have to die fighting for self-rule, a tenet each and every American intrinsically appreciates?”

At home we visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington and are inclined to chalk the conflict up to the tangled web of world politics, but here (if you don’t ignore it) the war is in your face. While in Hue, I wanted to take us even closer to history, so I completely abandoned good sense and signed us up for a day tour of the DMZ. Twelve hours riding on a dirty bus with broken air conditioning, being hustled and hurried by an obnoxious tour guide, and eating the worst two meals we’ve had in Vietnam confirmed why we should always hire a private driver. Even so what we saw was humbling. We started with the Rockpile, a former American recon post, where we got approximately 2 1/2 minutes to jump out of the bus and snap a few pictures from the side of the road. We continued on to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is now a highway, and marked by a visually arresting bridge. Here we got about 7 minutes to sprint to the other side, watch a guy apparently sweep for landmines in the river bed, and talk to the dirty yet adorable kids who surrounded us and chimed, “Money, money, money.” We finally got a generous 30 minutes to explore what is left of Khe San Military Base. Khe San in situated at the top of a mountain and surrounded by dense jungle. American forces were dropped in by air and tried to use the base as a vantage point for spotting southward movements of North Vietnamese forces. It didn’t work. After heavy loss of American and Vietnamese life, we withdrew in 1968, never to return.

I could see right through the glossy photos of smiling female NVA volunteers. If you believe the museum’s curator, every NVA and Viet Cong soldier had a bounce in his step and a twinkle in her eye as he or she marched off to battle. Likewise, I sensed the editorial slant in the same 15 photos which are used repeatedly to portray the Americans as dejected, beaten foes with no hope of victory against their wronged opponent. This all seemed harmless enough, but the mangled wreckage of American aircraft that sits on the lawn outside made my heart skip a beat. It was a far more powerful testimony that my countrymen actually died here than a few blurry old black and white pictures. Even this I could handle, given the distance that time and rust provide. Instead it was the two Vietnamese men circling the complex who provided the real kick to the gut. “You want dogtags…American dogtags…American medals…Vietnamese medals?” I stared in disbelief at the trays they held out which contained dozens of small, metal reminders of both Vietnamese and American death. I was sick. I picked one up, fingered it, and read the name. That name represented someone’s father, brother, husband. That tag once rested against his chest, which expanded and contracted with breath. Had that breath been extinguished just a few feet away? Was he one of the 2,000 Americans whose bodies, either dead or alive, have not been recovered from this country, or did he make it safely home without his tags? Either way, why doesn’t our military come and reclaim these?

I walked away in a sad reverie, lost in thought, until McKane whispered in my ear: “Mom, did you hear that? The salesguy asked that tourist if he wanted to buy dogtags, and the tourist said, ‘You know I won’t be able to get those through customs.’” Thank goodness for that. History may be hard, but it shouldn’t be tactless.

Technorati Tags: DMZ, Family travel, Hanoi Hilton, Ho Chi Minh Museum, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hoa Lao Prison, Hue, Khe San Miltary Base, Lenin, Rockpile, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Viet Cong, Vietnam, Vietnam War

We are currently in the city of Hue’ in central Vietnam. Hue’ has a rich history. It was once the capitol of Vietnam and a center of learning for the higher class. Even after being taken over by France, it remained a center of power and intelligence. There are large numbers of temples, palaces, and fortresses all over Hue’, one of which is the Purple Forbidden City. This was our first historical stop in Hue’ and for what it was hyped up to be, it was not very impressive. It was said to be modeled after the Forbidden City in China, but far less grand, and it was purple. Purple. We payed the overpriced admission and walked through the most impressive part of the entire city, a large stone gate. There was one building that was intact. It was decent, nicely decorated with a real wimpy emperor’s chair in the center. We exited and moved on. We looked out on the city and saw nothing. At all. Really it was all burned down in a fire. All that’s left are a few foundations and a small wall. We walked around for a little while and looked around. We stopped and got some ice cream for the little kids and after sitting down on some little plastic chairs were suprised to see elephants! Yes, elephants.

Three of them. They were chained up and despite a few minutes of intense thought, we couldn’t figure out why there were three full-grown elephants chained up in the middle of a burned down purple city. Hey, they were fun for the little kids to look at. We moved on to another reconstructed building where we saw some tourists getting their photos taken in some traditional Vietnamese wear. Kieran immediately said, “Mom, I want to do that!”. McKane and I also thought it would be a fun opportunity and so bought some tickets and went into a back room to get dressed. We donned bright, bright yellow man dresses, put on moon boot like shoes, and wore hats with springs and little fuzzy balls poking out randomly. Asher refused to wear any of the clothes so our mom took her place. We entered back into the other room with a little wooden throne and cart with a chair. Our dad took various shots of us. But after what seemed like an hour and was probably more like five minutes of sitting around in a dress in the burning heat, I was ready to get out. I jumped at the chance to go back and change into my normal clothes again.

We kept moving around the city, but didn’t find anything more than ruins. We decided to go to the traditional museum, more like a room with a few dresses and old pottery shards in it. I had had enough. We headed toward the exit gates and what seemed like an eternity of walking through the Purple City for ever we arrived. The gates were locked. The Purple City was not done with us yet. We continued on back tracking towards the entrance which was the only exit. We arrived at a huge koi pond where Kieran and Asher bought some fish food. They threw a few little pellets into the pond and what seemed like an eruption of fish spurted from the pond. There had to be at least ten thousand fish fighting for the two pellets the little kids threw in. They continued having fun in this manner until they had run out of feed. Then finally we exited the city. We got in our cyclos and headed back to the hotel after a long day of train rides and disappointing ruins. At least lunch was good.

Technorati Tags: elephants, Hue, nugyen, puppy, puppy, purple forbidden city

Like in one of my other posts, “Dinner with China,” I’m going to write more about the friends Asher has met in Vietnam. First there was the girl from the hotel in Halong Bay. Asher and KIeran were so destined to have fun that they met a little girl whose mom worked at the resort and started hopping around on her “taun tauns” together. (That’s the name Asher’s friend James Bothwell gave these bouncy things at home. He thinks they look like the furry white creatures in The Empire Strikes Back.) They literally played with her all day except for when she had to change her clothes and eat. When everyone was ready for a peaceful dinner, that’s not what they got. Asher, Kieran, and their little friend ran from the dinner table to the pool table, jumped on top, and started playing. They even put the taun tauns on top of the pool table and started throwing the balls at them, which caused the balls and the taun tauns to fly everywhere. I had to go up to stop them from doing multiple things including playing “easy pool,” which is when you are up on top of the pool table and you drop the balls into the pockets, take them out, and do it again and again. But the funniest part was that Kieran and Asher had no idea what the little girl was saying, and she had no idea what they were saying. So Asher learned how to use her hands to make the girl follow them and do other stuff.

Even on the train from Hanoi to Hue Asher made a friend. There were three kids on the train, but she decided to play with one. He was a six year old boy who was bored and kept walking past our room and looking in. The two other kids were a boy and a girl. The boy would run through the hall as fast as he could followed by his green dolphin balloon and his mom chasing not far behind. The girl would walk by occasionally to go to the WC. Asher started playing with the boy the same way she started playing with the girl in the restaurant in Beijing. When he came by she popped out at him and made faces through the doorway, and then he did the same. Then he had to go back to his room. Asher followed this time. I followed behind her, but Kieran didn’t because he was asleep. When the boy came back out, they started playing with a bottle cap, from flicking to kicking, and then they started kicking a crabapple sized fruit. Then Kieran woke up and joined the fun. They played until it was time to get off the train. As we drove away in the van to the hotel, they waved goodbye.

Asher can have fun with a Vietnamese child just about anywhere, even on the street outside our hotel. When mom and Asher were walking down the street, this little 3 1/2 year old boy popped out and punched her in the stomach. The moms were both astonished, but Asher just laughed. I don’t know how many friends she is going to make in Vietnam, but it’s gonna be a lot. From Hanoi to Saigon, from Saigon to the world! She will meet so many children in so many places it reminds me of one our favorite books, “Come Over to My House.” Like the kids in the book they’ll probably all be saying in their own languages, “Come over to my house! Come over and play!” From China to India kids will be saying, “Remember that girl, the one with the yellow hair.” Friends upon friends upon friends. Ash will have so many friends all over the world.

Technorati Tags: beach, friends, toys

I remember spending 50% of my bank account to take Anne out for Vietnamese food before her college graduation. It was a nice little Vietnamese restaurant in New Haven and and from that point on, I have counted Vietnamese as one of my favorite cuisines. In fact one of my favorite restaurants in the world is Vietnamese. It is kind of a dive but, If you happen to be in San Francisco, you can check out Thanh Long. Order the garlic noodles and the fresh crabs; you will not be disappointed. My good friend Annie Miu Hayward took me there years ago, and each time I have gone back it has been just as delectable. However, after being in Vietnam for a a week, I realized my love of Vietnamese food was based entirely on my experience with the country’s more upscale cuisine. Our experience here has all been with more common food. We’ve eaten at a number of restaurants, some of them strictly Vietnamese and some of them serving a mix of Western and Vietnamese foods. Most of them have been good but not outstanding. Rather than being amazed by the entire cuisine the way we were in China, we have instead found a few things we like and focused on those dishes.

The entire family has embraced the national beef noodle soup pho (pronounced fur) bo. Anne and I love the spring rolls and everyone chows down on grilled pork, fresh fruit, and baguettes. We eat 80% of the time in restaurants. There is cheaper and sometimes better looking food prepared on the street, but we usually walk right on by. Let me point out that when I say prepared on the street, it literally is prepared on the street. Women carry their restaurants around on their backs, choose a spot, set their stools out, and start cooking on their portable charcoal cookeries. The selection is varied and all the customers appear to be enjoying their curbside meals. We remain a little cautious about what we buy off the street. If there were not six stomachs at risk, I think we would be more daring, but getting sick this early in the trip isn’t worth the risk. On some future trip I will return and sample the street kitchens.

One of our culinary highlights has been a street food cooking class. Dax, McKane and I spent about 4 hours learning to make spring-rolls and bun cha and how to carve pineapples the Vietnamese way. Before and during the lesson we learned a whole lot about the Vietnamese culture and their cooking. A number of things stood out to us as major differences between our cultures. The first was their use of the marketplace. The Vietnamese women go to the market once or twice a day. They buy everything fresh and cook it the same day. In Vietnam freshness is critical and everything at the market is straight off the plant or from the slaughter. We were told if you buy pork around lunchtime, the pig was killed in the morning. If you buy it in the afternoon, the pig was killed around noon.

McKane, Kieran and I took a walk through one of these local markets. Each vendor has a selection of goods they sell. Most of the time they fit one general category such as meat or vegetables. Sometimes they are very specific like dog or shrimp. Occasionally a vendor with an odd selection such as pork and pineapples would be in the mix. The paths you walk to get through the market are one person wide with shops on either side. The zoning laws appear to be somewhat random with a fish shop next to a grain shop next to a fruit shop. Most of the food was recognizable, however there were a few items we needed to ask our cooking teacher, An, for help understanding. We had some guesses but didn’t believe a whole plate would be dog testicles or all the slimy things in a bowl were “centiworms.”

Our teacher and the owner of the cooking school, “Hidden Hanoi,” was the lovely An. She is married to an Australian who runs the local backpacker hostel and her English is great. Perhaps that is because in a previous life she taught linguistics at university. She welcomed us with a great big smile and immediately became our friend. McKane asked me if she was really that friendly or just doing her job. I told him I found her genuine and loved the insights she gave us into everyday life in Vietnam and the differences between our cultures. Most of our conversation centered around food. An explained to us that most ingredients are confined to their season here. When it is time for nice little mandarins, all the markets have them. When the season is over the fruit goes away. At home I pay attention to the growing season for a few fruits, such as apples, but we have become spoiled to have most fruits and vegetables available year round.

Another major cultural difference is the kitchen. Vietnamese kitchens are small 2×3 ft spaces just outside the door to the house. The women (not a sexist comment, men don’t cook here) sit cooking on the floor. They can’t imagine leaning over a counter to cook. They use only fresh ingredients and have no need for refrigeration, as they eat what they buy each day. Though many newly wealthy Vietnamese families now have refrigerators as status symbols, they leave them empty, occasionally even unplugged in their apartments or houses. Many build fully equipped, purely decorative Western kitchens in their new houses, but still use a second, small Vietnamese kitchen outside. We found one Western kitchen which was used as a parking structure for motorbikes.

The boys did a great job cutting, cooking, and even eating the food from our lesson. I explained to them both that if they remember how to put this whole meal together, they will score some great points with the ladies when they get older. That was beyond their level of comprehension, but I predict we will look back five years from now and one or both of them will use some or all of the skills we picked up to woo members of the opposite sex. The only problem with the whole experience was the boys learned that all Vietnamese food uses fish sauce. I had tried to convince them is was a different kind of soy sauce, but now that they understand it is made from small fish and not small beans, the tenor of our meals has changed.

The single biggest thing I was looking forward to in Vietnam was the food. One of my favorite blogs for the last few years has been Stickyrice.com, a blog about food in Vietnam. I love it for a number of reasons. The first is their shared enjoyment of everything edible. The second is the wonderful photos of food they always have in their posts. Their portrayal of Vietnam as a land of simple yet wonderful epicurean delights set high expectations, one I am not sure the country is meeting. However, this leg of the trip is not over, and I will keep eating pho and continue to try new things, centiworms and dog testicles excluded. What I hear from the other travelers is we all need to be packing on the kilos before we start shedding them in India.

In 1978 my family moved from suburban Maryland to New Orleans. Compared to our previously homogeneous environs, the Big Easy was a veritable melting pot, a simmering gumbo of exotic races and ethnicities. One of the largest minority groups I encountered at school was the Vietnamese. As a 10-year-old, I didn’t necessarily understand the significance of their presence, but I heard rumors that they had come on leaky boats from a war-ravaged land. I remember stealing quick glances at their scar-covered arms and faces. My mind would conjure images of distant jungle battlefields where I imagined bombs and bullets had inflicted these wounds, enduring reminders of an ugly chapter in both our nation’s histories.

For the most part, my Vietnamese classmates kept to themselves. They were not shy; they just preferred to hang with kids who spoke their own language and shared their traumatic history. They were refugees from South Vietnam and thereby officially allies of the US, but our teachers treated them more like enemies. To this day I have a vivid image of one particularly nasty lady, Mrs. Gallagher, screaming at them on the playground, “I don’t care what you did where you came from, when you’re in this country, you’ll speak our language.” So much for empathy.

After a little research yesterday, I learned that my classmates were undoubtedly part of a relocation program implemented by the Catholic Church after the fall of Saigon in 1975. French Catholic missionaries had a long history in Vietnam. In fact, as I write, I am only blocks away from an imposing Gothic cathedral, one of Hanoi’s landmark buildings and the site of regular masses throughout the week. Thousands of South Vietnamese refugees were sponsored by the Church in Gulf Coast communities that shared similar a climate and industries as their homeland. I am thunderstruck when I realize that my classmates had lived the entirety of their short lives in the midst of a war only to be transplanted halfway around the globe in a completely foreign environment.

Today 2/3 of Vietnam’s citizens are under the age of 30, born after the conclusion of the American War. They are taught about their country’s history of conflict but have no first hand knowledge of it. They didn’t run for cover from bombs or feel the burning effects of napalm on their skin and lungs. They did not hide from gun-toting soldiers or live in underground tunnels. The world they know is radically different than that of their parents or my former classmates.

Our tour guide on last week’s Halong Bay trip was 27 and a proud member of this huge demographic segment. He used our 4-hour bus ride north as an opportunity to lecture his captive audience on modern Vietnam. While many of our new friends were bored or perturbed that he kept waking them up with his microphone monologues, I whipped out my trusty notebook to capture some of the magic that was Luan.

Luan was difficult to understand at times. He had the unusual habit of adding a -ch to the end of 75% of his words, punctuating every pause in his speech with a dramatic “however,” and repeating each sentence at least four times. Despite these curious communicative annoyances, much of what he had to say was fascinating. His most urgent desire was that we understand the plight of the modern Vietnamese man in winning a wife. According to Luan, a young man in this country requires three things to be marketable to a potential spouse: First, he must be handsome, which Luan explained, he is not. Second, he must have a steady job, which because he is a seasonal worker, Luan does not. Third, he must have a motorbike, which Luan does. Unfortunately, it is worth only a few hundred dollars, and in a land where a motorbike is the ultimate status symbol, the babe magnet models run anywhere from $2000-7000. (Mind you, Vietnam’s annual household income is $550 per year.) Poor Luan.

This is novel information, but it gains added significance when considered in the context of Vietnam’s tumultuous history. During what Luan described as “feudal” times, which ended with the cementing of Communist rule in 1975, the ultimate sign of wealth and thereby attractiveness to the opposite sex was a water buffalo. Things changed slightly under traditional communism from 1975-85, and a man could hope to win the attention of the ladies by owning a bicycle and/or a radio. Since the initiation of Vietnam’s economic “open door” policy in 1986, things have changed radically. Vietnamese men can now expect to own their own motorized means of transportation, choose from a variety of professions, and win a wife based on charm and good looks rather than possession of livestock.

Vietnam’s official goal is to become a “developed” country by 2020, a lofty ideal Luan thinks is far beyond reach. He remembers the days not too long ago when most people could expect meat and milk only twice a month on government handout days, and when jobs were nonexistent. He knows that foreign investment is the key to Vietnam’s continued growth and hopes that visitors like us will help to fuel the process. In the meantime, he’ll continue to regale tourists with his “woe is me” spiel and perhaps save enough tips to buy the macho motorbike he needs to settle down.

Technorati Tags: Doi Moi, Family travel, Hanoi, Motorbikes, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, tour guides, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Anne often accuses me of being overly sentimental. I on the other hand am glad she is not; as with many of our other traits, we have found that we balance each other out on this front. On holidays, the differences between us become a little more pronounced. From our first Halloween to our last 4th of July, I have gained more pleasure from the anticipation and excitement leading up to the holiday than the holiday itself. I feel let down when something doesn’t go as I had hoped, while Anne enjoys the day regardless of how it goes.

2006 is the year of our Vietnamese Thanksgiving. Since my sentimentality is not grounded in tradition, I was happy to abandon all semblance of the common American Thanksgiving in favor of an Asian one. We would exchange turkey for pork, potatoes for rice, and pie for glutinous rice balls with bean paste. This is our regular Vietnamese menu, so to mix things up, I thought about going to a 5-star restaurant in honor of the special day. A quick look at the guest list, which included Kieran and Asher, made this a pipe dream. They are trained enough to make it through KFC or a mellow cafe, but the certainty of a spill, the likelihood of launching the periodic food projectile, and an inability to sit for more than 20 minutes keep upscale restaurants off our agenda. At home we’ve talked about skipping a Thanksgiving or two to work in a soup kitchen but as of yet have not. As far as we know there aren’t any soup kitchens in Hanoi.

In fact there appear to be no homeless or beggars in Hanoi. This was a big shock to us after China, where we frequently ran into both. We didn’t expect this, and I joked with Anne that the government had bussed them out to the country because APEC was in town. Well, it turns out they did one better and rounded up all the street kids as well. The city’s undesirables were taken to a rehabilitation centers out of town in an unofficial effort to sanitize the city for foreigners. Journalists and human rights groups are not allowed inside the center, but according to witnesses, it is a horrible place where detainees suffer abuse and deprivation. It sounds like something out of Dickens or the genesis of Australia.

The street kids tug hardest on our heartstrings. We knew we couldn’t help those being held in detention nor those who escaped the recent dragnet. They’re beyond our traveler’s reach. We found two organizations, however, that are helping some of the kids. Both Koto and Cafe Smile take homeless youth off the street, give them a place to live, and train them in the hospitality industry enabling them to one day get jobs in hotels and restaurants around the city. These are great examples of organizations teaching men and women how to fish rather than simply giving them a fish. (As most of the kids come from rural villages the statement is particularly relevant and slightly ironic.)

One of the ways we can support these organizations is to eat at their restaurants. We ate lunch at Cafe Smile on Tuesday and planned on making Koto the location for our Vietnamese Thanksgiving dinner today. We spent the morning doing laundry, purchasing train tickets for the Reunification Express to Hue, and navigating the 3-4 kilometers through hordes of motorbikes to Koto. When we arrived ready for a feast, we were greeted by a sign telling us the restaurant was closed for the next 2 weeks for renovation.

Our responses are where Anne and I differ. I was crushed. To me this would have been a perfect way to celebrate the holiday. In one fell swoop, we could have filled our bellies (a Thanksgiving requirement), had an opportunity in this faraway setting to reflect on all the comforts we enjoy at home, and played our own small part in the empowering of a few young Vietnamese. Anne rolled with it and suggested we go to another restaurant a few blocks away. I moped momentarily then grabbed a couple of cyclos (bicycles with passenger carriages in front) to take us to the other venue. I was, and still am, a little bummed our plans didn’t work out, but I realized there was still something I could do to help. I’ve replaced one of the pages on this site with a new page listing all the non profits we work with or get to know through our travels. We can’t vouch for the efficacy of any money you might choose to donate, but we can assure you we have first hand knowledge of the work they do and attest to the difference they are making in people’s lives. If you have a moment, check them out by clicking on the “Nonprofits” tab above.

We hope your Thanksgiving was filled with gratitude and look forward to enjoying our traditional tryptophan-induced stupor next year. I for one, already have the whole thing planned out in my mind.

Technorati Tags: cyclo, gratitude, Hanoi, nonprofit, vietnam, restaurant, Thanksgiving

We had an interesting conversation last night with a fun young British couple who are on their own 12-month round the world quest. We started sharing stories of China, where we’ve both been, and I drilled them with questions about India and Africa, where we have yet to go. We discussed our motives for leaving it all behind and our loved ones’ responses to our mania. 10 years younger than we are (as most of our fellow RTW’ers seem to be), Jon and Lisa sold their house and left jobs and befuddled friends behind. I must admit there are still days when my competitive, type-A side sweats the financial and career sacrifices we are making in order to do this, but Jon summed up the justification for our adventure succinctly: “Unlike many of the people here (in Vietnam), anything I had before, I can have again.” It might take a while and his new home might be smaller than his last, but he feels the experience he’s gaining now is more valuable than an extra bedroom or a year of career advancement.

Since Jon and Lisa have been on the road for four months (check them out at their website), they’ve met a lot of other travelers along the way. I asked if they’d encountered many Americans and to my surprise they said they had. To my even bigger surprise, however, they said more than a few had denied their nationality in the beginning. It seems there are some Americans who masquerade as Canadians, even going so far as to sew Canadian flag patches on their backpacks to avoid criticism and unwanted attention. I was floored. Tom joked about doing this from a safety perspective before we left, but we never imagined people would actually do it. Our nation’s foreign policy may have been highly unpopular over the past 6 years and we may not always agree with our elected officials, but we would never in a million years imagine denying our citizenship. We live in arguably the greatest nation on the planet, certainly one that affords its citizens the greatest freedoms and opportunities; and a big part of why we are exploring the world is to gain a greater appreciation for the United States rather than to escape it. I felt like I had just discovered Benedict Arnold in my midst; cowards skulking around the world pretending to be from Toronto because doing so avoids difficult questions and disapproving looks. I could understand if Americans were being targeted by assassins at the border and concealing your identity allowed you to live another day (remember the Israelis still stamp a piece of paper, not your passport, so you won’t get harassed in Middle Eastern countries) but these are people who don’t want to defend themselves against European travelers. For shame.

I’ll admit it. Like our grumpy New Zealand driver pointed out, Americans are not a traveling people. Well, at least not an internationally traveling people. Though he claimed 90% don’t hold passports, the real number stands somewhere between 75-85%. At first I thought this was an embarrassment to our nation, but in our three months on the road, I’ve come to see things a little differently. While in New Zealand, I realized that though the country is lovely, it affords it citizens limited opportunities for education and employment. To hop the ocean to Australia or Europe or anywhere else, Kiwis need a passport. Same goes for Aussies, who for the most part are enthusiastic about everything and wouldn’t turn down a passport if it meant they had to miss out on doing something fun somewhere else. For Europeans, passports are a basic necessity. Brits have to leave the country just to get to their favorite beach and those on the continent can’t go more than a few hours in a car or on a train without crossing a border. In the US, we have seemingly limitless educational and professional opportunities within our own borders. We can drive from one ocean to another without leaving the country and have thousands of miles of spectacular and varied terrain to explore in between. Until January 23 of next year, we could even travel to the Caribbean, Canada, and Mexico without a passport. With an entire continent at our disposal, why would we spend $95 and a day in line at the post office to get one unless we really needed it?

While I would love for each and every American to be filled with a spirit of discovery and get a chance to explore the world, I know many are content to stay at home and enjoy what they have…and that’s ok. Most of us have everything we’ll ever need to be happy and find meaning in our lives. I should qualify this, however, by saying that those who stay stateside have a duty to seek to understand the world beyond US borders, even from the relative comforts of home. We would be foolish to think that our future is not inextricably linked with the countries that provide our fuel, manufacture our electronics, and finance much of our debt. What’s clear from being out here is that our position on the world stage is tenuous and our power waning. Where we go from here may largely depend on the American public more than its leaders. So for now, I’m going to do my part by proudly proclaiming myself an American wherever I go. I don’t think I’ll get shot, I might end up paying a little more, but at least in the lingo of my boys I’ll “represent.” Hopefully I won’t prove too much of an embarrassment.

Technorati Tags: Family Travel, Passports, Patriotism, Round the World, Round-the-world, RTW, Vietnam

Prologue

As most of my friends know, I’m not much of a adrenaline junky. Well, as of this weekend, I’m more than I used to be. My fear of adrenaline rushes started when I was 10 and one of my long-time best friends, Austin McBride, asked if Dax and I wanted to go to Lagoon, one of Utah’s theme parks. I said, “Sure why not?” I was wrong. I went on the the slowest coaster their was, and I was terrified. I never wanted to go on one again. But since then I’ve been progressing slowly. I think I’ve passed the point I was at when I was 5. My love of adrenaline rushes started decreasing when I was 6. But, after going to Disney World and Seven Peaks Water Park, I’ve started wishing that I’d gone on some of the rides I was scared of, like Everest at Disney World.

Three months after my last trip to Seven Peaks I’m standing here in the land of Vietnam at the Golden Sun Hotel, and I’m going to tell you about the jumps off the boat I made this weekend. It started with my family booking the 3 day/2 night trip to the Ocean Resort island. We all loaded up in the bus to the 4 hour away Halong City where we would get on the boat that would take us to the island. They told us we would go to the caves, then the beach, and then take a swim in the ocean. What they didn’t tell me was that we would jump off the boat. I didn’t want to swim after the beach and neither did Dax, so we changed out of our trunks and into our pants. But, when they said they we were going to jump off the second floor of the boat, I thought, “Oh, I’ll try it.” Then I saw how far it was down. I was so scared. I almost chickened out, but I faced my fears and jumped. My stomach went up to my chest, and I didn’t know if I liked it or not, so I did it again. I loved it! I did it 6 times until everyone was done. I actually went two times after everyone was done, so I did it the most.

Later that night I heard some people talking about jumping from the top in the morning, I thought, “I can’t do that.” In the morning everyone was too tired from playing Jack*** late into the night to jump before breakfast. But when the second boat that would pick us up was an hour late, which we had no idea would happen, we started jumping from the top. I think half of the people jumped off the top, including me. I was even more scared this time. It was pretty high for me, so me and another guy named Dan said we we would go on 3. He counted “1…2…3″ and jumped. I didn’t jump on three, but I counted on in my head to 5 and jumped! ¡ It was the best ! I loved it! I did it again and again and again and again. But suddenly everyone stopped jumping because they were tired! But that meant the bits could start. They said they wanted to jump, but when they got to the edge, they were scared. We told them whoever jumped first got ice cream. After a while dad got tired of being in the water and said this was their last chance so Asher jumped. She loved it. Kieran did it too. So in the end almost everyone jumped from somewhere. Come to think of it mom was the only one not to go in the water. At the end of the trip the jumping was my favorite thing. Andrus, out.

(Note from Anne: I learned a lesson here. I didn’t jump because I was taking pictures and trying to keep the little ones from falling off the side of the boat. Next time I’ll be sure to switch duties with Tom so my kids don’t think I’m a wimp!)

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