Phone call from Thailand lifts heavy burden
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This is how you know you are overweight: You go to Vietnam for Christmas and revelers in the street think you look like a beardless Santa Claus and one or two touch your stomach for luck in the manner of the lucky Buddha.
(Memo to self: Must lose weight in the New Year.)
Vietnam is not, I grant you, an obvious destination in the festive season, but the Henry family -- father, mother, son -- went there to see daughter Allison, 23, who has spent the past few months in Ho Chi Minh City teaching English and volunteering in an orphanage.
I blame myself for this odd turn of events. I first went to Vietnam 35 years ago as a soldier in the Australian army, and I fell in love with the country despite the tragedy of war. Four years ago I went back and found that peace had swept away the fear but not the beauty and the charm.
As a result of Allison picking up on my enthusiasm, the nightmare of every Pittsburgh parent became personal reality: Our baby moved away, and to old Saigon no less, a spot more outlandish than Cleveland.
At least in Cleveland you are safe from traffic on the sidewalks. That is not necessarily the case in Ho Chi Minh City. The traffic, 85 percent of it motorbikes, is truly crazy.
The most important piece of equipment of any Vietnamese vehicle is the horn, without which driving is impossible. Although everybody is honking at everybody else, and people are often driving on the wrong side of the road, running red lights and attempting insane maneuvers, no one blinks an eyelid and road rage is rare. Many thousands are killed on the roads every year in Vietnam, but the wonder is that every intersection isn't routinely the scene of mass carnage.
On Christmas Eve in Ho Chi Minh City, the normally nutty traffic was multiplied many times over as whole families piled on motorbikes to come downtown. The authorities had strung the main thoroughfares with lights, and a concert was staged in front of the Opera House.
Logically, Christmas shouldn't be a big deal in communist-ruled old Saigon, even with its small but significant Catholic presence. In fact, it was a huge deal. The people, with their cell phones and growing prosperity, were in the mood to be merry.
Perhaps much of it was simply Sparkle Season-Vietnamese style, and perhaps Santa says the only logical thing in the circumstances: "Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh," but peace on Earth and good will among men were much in evidence.
It seemed like half the kids were dressed in Santa suits. When a grown-up Santa arrived in the lobby of our hotel, he was besieged by kids dressed as angels. And when one set of parents found that their child couldn't have a picture taken with Santa because of the crush, they did the next best thing: They found a pretty blonde American girl -- that would be our Allison -- sitting in the lobby and happily plopped the kid down on her lap for a photo.
First Published January 4, 2005 12:00 am
