China vs. Vietnam

Vietnam was a welcoming country that sharply contrasted our Chinese travels. In fact, we started a list of the differences we experienced in our short Vietnam visit:

Difference 1:

Ease of travel. Our challenge in China was navigating the system alone. In Vietnam, the challenge was escaping everyone who wanted to help us. We found tourist agencies everywhere. They have package deals on every bus, train and plane everyplace you'd want to go.

The agencies seemed legit and honest but we decided early to do things on our own. But nobody would give us information outside their own tour packages. "Where's the bus station?", we ask. "You don't need it, we'll book the bus for you," they respond. What a world away from the train stations of Beijing, no?

Difference 2:

Food. In China, there's a restaurant full of bored waitresses every couple blocks. Inside, we found good food, evenwith a Mandarin menu. We knew how to say "spicy tofu", "spinach or tomato and egg", "dumplings", "rice", or "soup". Now, who in the world could go wrong with that in China? Suffice to say, we ate well there. And the Chinese loved watching us do so.

Vietnam was a different story. The best things we found to eat were mock western foods--mostly of the breakfast type. Yes, the coffee was good and easy to find. But the food was not so. The local street food looked and smelled just plain bad. Very different from the Middle Kingdom.

Difference 3:

The businessmen in Vietnam weren't out-right assholes! Anybody who's spent time in China has heard the hollers and seen the drunken, red-faced, Chinese businessmen at their Bijou lunches. In Vietnam, we were floored to see a group of businessmen acting quite pleasant with one another and their waitresses. One night at a hotel in Lao Bao, Vietnamese businessmen packed the main restaurant to watch a football match between Vietnam and Qatar. We watched the game alongside them, making toasts and friends.

Difference 4:

Vietnam is more open and worldly than China. The TVs in Vietnam broadcast networks from America, France, Germany, China, Australia, etc. The Chinese mostly show a dozen versions of CCTV (the state-run television network), some Peking Opera, and soap operas set in the Ming Dynasty.

Many Vietnamese speak a bit of English and French and they don't gawk at outsiders. We got by on our English the whole way through Vietnam after limping through China on limited Mandarin and the occasional English phrase. (Then again, America's nearly as bad as China on this one--both kingdoms share a broad monolingual weakness, although America's gaining a Spanish understanding [But that's Un-American, I hear.])

We were also warmly greeted everywhere, even as Americans. Barely a generation ago, America bombed the bejesus out of Hanoi and much of North Vietnam. Nobody gave us any trouble over it. (This may be different in rural Vietnam and in the South, we didn't visit there)China, it seems, holds a grudge longer--or at least more vocally. Many Chinese still openly hate Japan over the aggressions of the 1930s. At the Summer Palace in Beijing, which was sacked by French and British troops in the 1800s, two students asked me my home country. They were glad I wasn't from the offending countries, they said, because then they would "beat me with limbs" from a nearby tree.

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It seems we're just bitching about China. Not so. We've met great people and fine institutions there. And our most memorable travels still begin in the Middle Kingdom.