Happimess

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The people in HCMC and Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are definitely nowhere near as rich as Americans are, or probably even most Europeans, but it still seems like they have just as good of a life, and maybe even better.

 

I feel funny saying that.  I don’t really mean to say, “Oh, those people!  They should be happy to be poor!”  That’s not really what I mean.  I really mean that it doesn’t seem like there’s a terribly strong link between how much money you make/how many things you have and how happy and fulfilling your life can be.  To illustrate,

 

The first night in HCMC, I was walking back from a restaurant in the Rex Hotel with Catie sometime around 1AM, maybe a little after.  Right as we were nearing the port, we crossed the bridge, and at the foot of the bridge on our left was a man – a street-sleeper – in his lawnchair.  He had his legs spread, and his wife was in between them, leaning back onto the chair.  As we passed, we noticed that he was leaning over her, and cleaning her face as she slept.

 

Earlier on that same walk we had gone past a man sleeping outside his shop again in a lawnchair.  He had lit a fire in front of him, which was kind of funny considering that it was nearly 80F outside… but I guess Vietnamese people have to feel cold sometimes too.  I thought it was interesting how safe he felt doing it.  In Philadelphia, you would NEVER be able to sleep on the street next to a fire you lit in an area of town that doesn’t get any traffic after midnight.  But in HCMC, it’s standard, and if anything DID happen to you, it’d be a scandal.

 

Earlier in that same night, we had gone to the park right near the Ben Thanh market or whatever it was called.  In the day it seemed mostly abandoned and it didn’t command much of my attention, but at night the place was more alive than almost anywhere I had ever seen.  The sides of it were just lined and filled to the rafters with teenagers on their motorbikes coming to sit around, hang out, and talk.  I don’t think they were even drinking.  Inside, in the part that had some greenery and a brick-paved surface, people were playing the Shuttlecock game like we had played in China.  It was a bit different though – the piece was lighter, more streamlined, and less colorful.  Also, kids were playing it, and they were AMAZING.  They could kick their leg all the way behind their heads while looking forward and still get it where they wanted it.  They could bunch up their arm and swing their torso around and elbow it over to the other side.  It was seriously crazy.  Catie and I tried again to play, but sucked really badly.  Kids were running around with the little pull-off helicopters that you could win in arcades when you were little.  The only difference was that there were blinking red/blue/green lights on them, so they looked a bit more fun to play with.  The kids were seriously having a blast with them.  I noticed that often their fathers would follow them (not the mothers), and they seemed incredibly involved and attentive.  They picked them up and showed them how to do it and laughed and clapped along with the kids and ran after it for them when it got stuck on a tree or went over a ledge.

 

I really hadn’t seen anything like it ever in the US.

Or anything like any of them in the US, really.  And I felt pretty jealous, and maybe even a little disappointed.