http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
We all want to be “happy.” How can we box up glee and call it good? Could this volatile emotion be so simple? There have been countless research studies done on happiness and which cultures maintain it. I believe visiting other countries and observing what brings joy to the inhabitants is imperative. Travel out of your own microcosm brings perspective to everyday life, even if it’s just a stopover across the tracks of your neighborhood. In some places, this can feel like another country.
Vietnam has provided a supreme example for escaping my western life. It is a contrasting lifestyle, which is often considered poor, corrupt, dirty, and inefficient. It takes a face to face throw down to gain my own angle. I look around me as the 90 degree air weighs heavily with humidity on my shoulders and I laugh. I laugh at my discomfort and irritation while a local below my shady balcony is pushing a massive cart piled with a boiling pot of pho, a crock of rice noodles, various toppings and plastic red stools that will all be assembled on a street corner to make a couple bucks for the day. As my wise husband often says, “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it buys you options.”
I think of Sam, the 22 year old, Hmong woman guide Matt and I met in Sapa. As we trekked through the mountain villages, this tenacious woman joked with us in her self taught, excellent English and illustrated her daily life for us. She’s up at 4:30am. She cooks breakfast over an open fire and gets her kids and husband ready for the day. She tidies the cement floored house then hikes the 3 hours to the market to sell hand sewn bags. She returns home, works in the rice paddies and cooks dinner. She stays up late sewing clothes with the hemp thread she’s created into fabric and dyed with the indigo plant. I stare at her with awe. She laughs wryly, “In my next life, I think I’d like to be a boy.” (Males push water buffalo plows in the rice paddies, drive motor bikes, and sip home fermented rice wine while chain smoking cigarettes.) Sam still smiles widely with joy when we run into her small boy playing outside. I can see her bright will shining despite a difficult life.
Children in Vietnam are constantly giggling, running and playing with each other. Two or three pile on a bicycle and scream through the streets. They toss flip flops like frisbees, kick decrepit soccer balls or simply blow plastic bags into balloons. On Matt’s and my visit to Ninh Binh, just south of Hanoi, we encountered a gaggle of kids on the rustic road. They yelled, “Hello!!!” and followed us chuckling to each other as they alternately posed questions to practice their English.
“What is your name?”
I replied, “My name is Jenny. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
They nodded, eyes already off in the distance as they worked out the next question, which is usually, “Where are you from?”
Soon, they dash off, pushing one another and giggling with the ease of innocence.
Vietnam has a tumultuous past and the struggle continues. Currently, it has one of the most flourishing economies. Unfortunately, Vietnam still suffers from gender inequality, inaccessibity to health care and income disparity. People here, especially women work hard. They labor to protect their families and to hopefully give their children a more prosperous future. Despite the hardships of life in this communist country, locals are still quick to grin. Even as I haggle for a couple of ceramic mugs, we still smile and say, “I’m happy, you happy.” (I’m not going to lie here because sometimes I’m not psyched with the end deal and sometimes the seller lets me know with a sour face that she’s not at all pleased.)
Matt and I visited Hoi An and noticed an omnipresent “happy hour”. It’s happy hour all the time and that doesn’t just include mojitos. Folks selling keychains would tell you at 2pm that it was happy hour. I’m not sure if that implied 2 for 1 keychains or what. I did wonder if there was a “ladies night” keychain sale though.
Le Ly Hayslip wrote about happiness in her fascinating memoir of the Vietnam War titled When Heaven and Earth Change Places. She muses,”In the West, for example, people believe they must “pursue happiness” as if it were some kind of flighty bird that is always out of reach. In the East, we believe we are born with happiness and one of life’s important tasks, my mother told me, is to protect it. It seemed strange to me then, when the Catholic teachers told us that little babies were “born into sin” and must spend their lives struggling miserably to overcome it. How can one be happier than a little baby? They come into the world with nothing and could not before pleased about it. How long must a pious rich man live to be happier than a baby?”
Perhaps the final truth is that everything we think we need to be joyful, we already have.
Hanoi Beer on a cruise of Halong Bay. Smiles all around.
Cat Ba Island Bungalows
Cargo Bike, Ninh Binh
Leprechaun husband biking outside Ninh Binh before the rain storm forced us inside for a beer.
Unbelievable feast we shared at the Saigon Hotel in Ninh Binh with the hotel owner and her family. Incredible kindness.
Touring the Forbidden City in Hue.
Vietnam War remnants in Khe Sahn. Nothing will grow here except weeds due to Agent Orange.
Vinh Moc Tunnels. People lived in these hand dug tunnels during the war for 6 years. Luckily, Vietnamese tend to be smaller than Westerners.
Quite the contrast- a Buddist altar behind with seasoned war heads in front.
Hoi An, the lantern city
My borrowed hat for the ferry ride to the market in Hoi An.
You want it? They have it.
Including toads on a leash. Bag ’em up.
Out of the mire grows beauty. Lotus flower.
Laughing Buddha. If you are lucky, you can sleep inside the quarters in his belly.
Luscious Light 