Reflections on the return
This is a late post because of trouble I have been having with the blog.
As of Thursday, we arrived in Can Tho, Vietnam. As in the past, we were again met at the Ho Chi Minh airport by a representative from CTU, a young student of Lap’s. He graduated from the university just last year.
Walking out onto the plaza just outside the airport provides a snapshot experience of what it is like to be in Vietnam. The place is very, very busy, with cars, motorbikes, pedestrians pushing carts, pulling luggage bags, carrying children. On our drive from Ho Chi Minh City to the airport, it was a visual image that would repeat itself over and over, in different ways with different people and contexts.
As we drove down, I was again struck by how different a society this is from what I am used to; how different even from Thailand or other Asian countries. I wondered about Vietnam as an emerging economy, of the picture of the country that emerges from such development. It was hard for me to imagine that it would like other, more developed economies and countries.
By now, the journey seems familiar. Familiar places to stop on the way from the airport. Familiar buildings and communities. Familiar activities. Yet, beyond this sense of surface familiarity I know very little about this culture and society. The familiarity provides a kind of anchor but also a stark reminder about the power of assumptions.
As we drove down the street from the ferry landing in Can Tho, I scanned the streets for some of the faces that grew to be familiar on my “street walks.” It was hard to tell if any new shops had moved in. There are just so many and so different from one another. I would be hard pressed to remember if something that looked new was merely a shop that I simply didn’t see before.
The staff at the hotel recognized us. They are all still here. There is a kind of coziness to this sense of familiarity. I suspect they know more about us, though, than we do they. After the flights and the brief hotel stay in Bangkok, it felt good to settle in. The room is still the same, even though it is across the hall and a different floor from where we stayed in July. There is familiarity here as well.
In a few hours, we will be heading off to the university and the work of our third visit. In my head, the process plays out. There is a kind of deep pattern to all this, etched firmly within my memory, a deepness of a pattern that touches on only a fraction of the meaning of life here. But perhaps that is where and how meaning of a different culture forms and transforms. Perhaps a metaphor for the understanding of our own lives as well.
As of Thursday, we arrived in Can Tho, Vietnam. As in the past, we were again met at the Ho Chi Minh airport by a representative from CTU, a young student of Lap’s. He graduated from the university just last year.
Walking out onto the plaza just outside the airport provides a snapshot experience of what it is like to be in Vietnam. The place is very, very busy, with cars, motorbikes, pedestrians pushing carts, pulling luggage bags, carrying children. On our drive from Ho Chi Minh City to the airport, it was a visual image that would repeat itself over and over, in different ways with different people and contexts.
As we drove down, I was again struck by how different a society this is from what I am used to; how different even from Thailand or other Asian countries. I wondered about Vietnam as an emerging economy, of the picture of the country that emerges from such development. It was hard for me to imagine that it would like other, more developed economies and countries.
By now, the journey seems familiar. Familiar places to stop on the way from the airport. Familiar buildings and communities. Familiar activities. Yet, beyond this sense of surface familiarity I know very little about this culture and society. The familiarity provides a kind of anchor but also a stark reminder about the power of assumptions.
As we drove down the street from the ferry landing in Can Tho, I scanned the streets for some of the faces that grew to be familiar on my “street walks.” It was hard to tell if any new shops had moved in. There are just so many and so different from one another. I would be hard pressed to remember if something that looked new was merely a shop that I simply didn’t see before.
The staff at the hotel recognized us. They are all still here. There is a kind of coziness to this sense of familiarity. I suspect they know more about us, though, than we do they. After the flights and the brief hotel stay in Bangkok, it felt good to settle in. The room is still the same, even though it is across the hall and a different floor from where we stayed in July. There is familiarity here as well.
In a few hours, we will be heading off to the university and the work of our third visit. In my head, the process plays out. There is a kind of deep pattern to all this, etched firmly within my memory, a deepness of a pattern that touches on only a fraction of the meaning of life here. But perhaps that is where and how meaning of a different culture forms and transforms. Perhaps a metaphor for the understanding of our own lives as well.
posted by John at 9:10 PM
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