Day 231: Worn Down by Being a Tourist
Today was one of those days that felt like it was crammed with travel activities for travel activities’ sake — and as a kind of painful final straw, prompted us to pause/reflect/change things.
As with all our stops in Asia, we’ve booked our Vietnam weeks via an operator on the ground here, and they’ve helped plan the itinerary, book our lodging and supply us with drivers and guides.
On paper, it all looks amazing, but in hindsight, we signed up for too much. And it’s not just that. While some of the experiences across Asia are special and memorable, others have felt more engineered/manufactured and/or box-check-y and/or tourist trap-ish than we like. So not only are we over-programmed for our family’s style, we’ve also at times felt like we’re on a tourism conveyor belt.
Add to that having to be “on” and chatty with lovely but eager-to-please tour guides, and it can feel downright exhausting.
Today was a good example.
At 9 am our guide and van drove us about half a mile down the road to a river bank, where we boarded a colorful wooden tour boat for a 30-minute ride.
This is the kind of “experience” that we could do on our own without a guide and van…but actually wouldn’t do if we were on our own. Does that make sense? A little contrived, not that scenic — and total souvenir trap.
I tried to sit by the window and enjoy the view, but the local boat driver was determined to sell us something from her pile of trinkets.
She held up a sign in English that said something along the lines of “Buy some of this stuff so I can support my family” and pointed to a photograph of three adorable small Vietnamese children, presumably hers. I hate sounding like a cynical asshole, but…. I didn’t want to buy any of these souvenirs and I didn’t like feeling trapped. I said no about seven times as she repeatedly returned to my side with a different set of “silk” pajamas and kimonos and outfits to consider.
We disembarked at a famous Buddhist pagoda where Jan, bless him, tried his darnedest to make it interesting for the kids.
Appreciate the effort, but by this point, it takes James about 7 seconds to identify — and bow out of — a historical sightseeing visit. It’s a skill he learned in Egypt and has honed in our time in Asia. It goes like this: Old buildings? Crowds of tourists? Guides standing in one place in this heat talking about kings/emperors in English I don’t understand? SEE YA. Commence wandering off to poke dirt with a stick for ten minutes before whining and sitting and begging to leave.
Willa was slightly more polite because Jan was directing his spiel to her and she knows better than to just ice someone out like James.
The next stop was cool. A well-respected Vietnamese Kung Fu school popular with tour groups — the school has a little amphitheater set up for groups like us to come and watch demonstrations. The school’s run by a former South Vietnam soldier who was in a communist prison for 20 years after the war. We met him and got his story. Yikes.
His prison time had a happy ending though — while locked up he practiced meditation and Kung Fu every day and emerged a master — and now has schools all over Vietnam and abroad.
The kids were mesmerized by the demonstration.
When James (not Willa) was invited at the end to give it a try, he shyly declined. But Willa was game and only after we/she declared loudly and clearly that she wanted to give it a shot did anyone realize there was another child in the room — a girl! — who was interested. Proud of our girl for jumping in.
The van picked us up and drove us to…another historic stop. This time, the Royal Tombs. A beautiful, lovely spot atop 200 steps, with a mausoleum decorated with incredibly intricate mosaic reliefs.
As beautiful as it was, James was flopping around, moaning to pleeeeeease leeeeave.
As is sometimes/often the case, we were kind of grateful for the excuse to ask a guide to wrap it up.
Next stop: A master kite-maker’s house in the old Citadel part of Hue to “make our own kites.”
Our kite-maker host had pre-made most of the parts and done the drawing-on and painting-of the wings — so we spent 2+ hours basically assembling parts with rubber cement. It’s our fault for jumping into this activity at 11:30 am, but by 1:30 everyone, myself included, was ravenous and irritable, kind of bored and really just wanting this lengthy activity to conclude.
James:
At last the finished products! Our guy was so sweet. Not sure what we’re going to do with these…
With a packed morning of touring wrapped, we had Jan drop us at a restaurant in town — a place called Zucca that served Vietnamese and Italian — and proceeded to inhale a massive lunch.
We wandered back to our hotel, stopping at a pharmacy to pick up some cream for a rash on Willa’s chin (ringworm? Who knows).
Back at the hotel I gave Teddy a break and took the kids to the pool.
It was a short-lived outing, unfortunately. After about 25 minutes of pleasant playing and frolicking, the two had a tiff and it ended with James jumping into the deep end…on top of Willa, who was treading water there. He pushed her under and her little face came up panicked and gasping as he clung onto her shoulders — not realizing/caring he was pushing her head under.
I had to run, jump in and separate them and grab Willa! Ugggggh. She was shrieking crying in fear and her little twig legs were shaking uncontrollably for the next ten minutes, poor girl.
James was instantly contrite and scared, but it still ruined the rest of the afternoon.
We hunkered down in the room with some screen time and room service — and Teddy and I launched into what would become 48 hours of existential discussions about the course of this year, and what we needed to do to right the ship in terms of how we’re spending the remaining third of 2019.
More to come.
