17 | October | 2012 | Lisa and Brad's Travels

Final Thoughts

Now that we are home and have had a reasonably good night’s sleep, a few final thoughts are needed before we close out this blog. It’s the little things that you appreciate when you arrive back home from a long international trip; being able to brush your teeth with tap water, not worrying about mosquitoes biting you that might give you dengue fever or malaria, the cool temperatures with no humidity, cars that actually stay in their lanes and stop at stop lights, and crossing the streets without fear of death by motorbike!

But besides those small inconveniences, our trip to Southeast Asia surpassed all of our expectations in so many ways. Going into it, I think we knew we were going to see sites we had never seen, eat food we had never heard of — although rats and buffalo lung weren’t on the list. We were hoping to travel with some like-minded people who were interested in expanding their minds and viewpoints. Our group of 15 just clicked from the beginning. Everyone was up for adventure and soaking up as much culture as we could. The benefits of our trip was that each couple had a private guide and a variety of experiences to choose from each day. We would then all get together for drinks at the end of the day and share and compare all of the different things that happened to us each. By the end of the trip, we were fast friends and were all sad to say good-bye and see the journey come to an end.

What we weren’t expecting from our trip was how well we would get to know some of the people who were our guides and hosts. We had the luxury of spending full days with four young men who care deeply about their countries but who also are worried about the situations they find themselves in. They taught us so much about the culture that we could never have read in a guidebook or seen in a documentary.

Our last guide, Hien, really stole our hearts. He reminded us of our daughter’s boyfriend, Kai, and had an enthusiasm for life that was contagious from the minute we met him with his big friendly handshake and “How are you, Mr Brad and Miss Lisa? I hear you like to be adventurous!” We spent two full days with him around Saigon and we learned about his family. How he was born on a rice farm with six other siblings. How his father fought in the Vietnam/American War and was taken to a re-education camp. How his father was sick in his head after the war and turned to alcoholism and died when Hien was relatively young. We heard about how his older brother escaped from Vietnam in the 70’s as one of the boat people to come to America because he knew he would end up dead from all of the fighting in Vietnam. We heard how his brother sent back money so that Hien and his sister could leave the rice farm and make a better life and go to college.

And Hien does seem to have a good life. He is in demand as a tour guide, loves to tell stories about his country, has the history down cold, loves to watch American movies to work on his English, has a girlfriend, has a great sense of humor and laughs quickly. But he is worried because his country is still very undeveloped and poor and his freedoms are limited. Simple things like Facebook are prohibited by the government. There is an election every five years with only one candidate and there are no opposing viewpoints allowed. We asked if he could ever come to America and visit his brother in Tennessee and he said it was impossible for him to get a Visa even to come for a two-week visit. He said he can travel to other countries in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong but because he is a young man in an under-developed country he cannot get a Visa to go to the Western countries. He jokingly asked if we could go home and talk to Mr. Obama about this so he could come to America and visit his brother.

We take our freedoms for granted in America. Most of the time we never even think about them when we go about our daily lives. But when you talk to people who don’t have freedom and a voice in their country you realize how valuable and precious it is. We know there is a slant to our media coverage but when you are only allowed one point of view and it is one filled with propaganda even I will have to admit that the freedom to have Fox News in America is a good thing. We complain about the negative politicking and back-stabbing in Congress but living in a country that gives the opportunity for people to have a voice and protest and run for an opposing party is not to be taken lightly. One of the tour guides we met in Cambodia is thinking of running for an opposing party (Cambodia is a kingdom and is not Communist) but he is afraid of what might happen to his wife and children so he is not sure if he should run or not. Brad and I even experienced our own forms of censorship. We are pretty sure that our blog got blocked in Hanoi. Not sure if it was Brad’s bad jokes or the fact that we were on an American website that they didn’t like but we couldn’t send anything out at all in Hanoi. We thought it was just a bad internet connection but since we could get on everything else, we now think it was the blog website that was restricted.

The people of Southeast Asia got under our skin because of their kindness and hope for a better future for themselves. They all see education as the key to the prosperity of their countries and their families but when the government only pays for the children to go to school until 5th grade and 70% of the people are rice farmers, it is a select few who can afford a high school degree much less a college one. The economy has improved for these countries in the last twenty years but it is slow going and the standard of living is still very low. They are a people who have seen a lot of suffering on their own soil and in their own families but they are also happy because they have seen much improvement in their life times as well.

I am not sure if we will ever get back to Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia or if Hien, Du, or La can ever come back to visit us in America but I do know we will never forget their stories and their countries.