How do you say: "Slow down" in Vietnamese

Or if not that, then how do you say ‘please follow the traffic rules?’.  Too bad I didn’t even know how to say anything but I was already so tired of walking around the center of Hanoi that I would have taken a ride anywhere.  The ‘ride’ this time was in a motor-taxi.  I usually take motorcycle taxis in Bangkok as they are a convenient link between a BTS stop and your destination, but Vietnam has a lot more motorcycles than Bangkok, and traffic goes a little faster than the traffic molasses we're used to in Bangkok.

We were staying at the Hilton Opera which is just on the other side of the Hoan Kiem Lake from where we stayed at a previous visit so I was not as familiar with the area at the time.  I stepped out of the hotel without a map or even being able to see the sun to tell which way was North or South but sometimes I love to just get lost and see if I can find myself.  I don’t mean to brag, but sometimes is not easy to get lost.  I am usually very orientated but Hanoi doesn’t have a big landmark that you could see from the distance so on a cloudy day you have no idea which way you’re walking.  So lost I got.

Not scary lost, just fun lost.  Every turn I took, I expected to see something that I’d recognize but would be surprised when I happened to have been completely wrong, again, and again, and then again.  By this time I was getting tired of the walk and needed to get to the hotel a little quicker.  So, I motor taxi offered his help and I grabbed it.

I did manage to negotiate a price before jumping behind the guy.  I got it for half the price.  Although we ended up only going half way so I’m guessing he won the bet at the anyhow.

The ride was as expected, very exhilarating to say the least.  To start, he was safely wearing his helmet, and I had my skull exposed to the elements.  But his driving made me think that I had negotiated a ride to the hospital instead of to the hotel because he rushed like there was no tomorrow.   A red light, meant ‘proceed with minimal caution’, oncoming traffic meant ‘finagle your way around them without getting hit’, and obstacles on the way meant ‘you have permission to cross to the other side of the street to avoid them’.

Wish I had known all those rules and I would have negotiated a little harder, or at least learnt how to say a few more key words before taking the ride.  So we didn’t end up at the Hilton as requested, we ended up at the Hoan Kiem Lake but by then I should know how to get to my new hotel from there.  Half price for half the distance, not bad.

Actually, getting up a little earlier gave me the opportunity to stop at a street café.  I love how everyone here in Vietnam sits on tiny plastic chairs on the sidewalk and have their lunch or snack just about anywhere throughout the cities.  So I was tired and a little hungry and saw an empty stool so I sat down on it.

The mid-afternoon menu was no longer the lunch menu so it was mostly about coffee and yogurt.  But I wanted a little more than that.  When the “waiter” came by me I tried to explain that I wanted a yogurt drink but also something to eat as well.  We weren’t getting through so a kind young woman sitting with a friend of hers asked me in English if she could help.  When I said that I wanted something like what they were having, she offered and gave me a sample of her fried cheese-sticks and something else.  She offered to order for me if I liked them.  At the end I offered to pay for her meal but they both refused.   I ended up not ordering any more as they had given me enough so with my yogurt drink I was set to find myself my next motor taxi to places unknown, and with prices to match.  Enjoying Vietnam!

Mind games we play

I think it was Covey that first taught me that we have a lot more control and power over how we react to things than over the things that get thrown our way.  It was about 25 years ago that I read that but the concept has taken a sweet old time to finally sink in.  Of course we have more control over what we do than with what others do to us and not only we have that control but we can actually choose from multiple ways we can respond to it.  And respond we will.  There is not choice in that.  One way or another we will react.

I remember a few years ago that I was having a deep conversation with a friend of mine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  He was recently divorced and living a life that on the outside looked like having a lot of fun but as he later confessed, in the inside it was actually more painful than he showed.  As I also confessed insecurities and uncertainties of my midlife, he told me “Orlando, if you wanted to, you could be divorced within a year from now”.  It’s not that he wanted me to be divorced or that I had told him that I wanted to get divorce he just said that to tell me that in his own life both of them had drifted apart and in a way made the choice to make their own separate lives and within the year he was a divorced man.

That’s very powerful.  I could be a divorced man like my friend was.  I could also be in a mediocre marriage.  But I could also be happily married.  It was my choice.

Of course, in this particular example it does take “two to tangle” as they say.  Both of them had to decide the same path or one of them would be unhappy about being driven to that unhappy end.  But if they both chose to give up, then they both ended it ended where they knew it would have.

The point is that I have a choice to make.   If I know that something can make me bitter, then its easy to brew up some poison that you can caress for months until you end up where you knew you’d end up.  But if you, knowing that the bitterness affects you more than anyone else, choose health instead, you will choose to react in a way that will take you where you want to be.

Last week I had an opportunity to practice what I’m preaching.  I was enjoying Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and was almost saying that it had become one of my favorite Southeast Asian cities.  Until a couple of thugs tried to rob of that experience.  They succeeded in robbing me of a few personal possessions such as my wallet containing money and credit cards, but I don’t want to let them rob me of my whole experience in the city.  Why could they have that much power that they would ruin my trip to Vietnam?  I refuse to give them that much.  They took the wallet, but that’s all I will let them take with them. 

My experience in Vietnam and my reaction to their indecency are mine.  And I will choose to do what is right for me.   I will continue to think that 99% of the people of Vietnam are just going about their business trying to make a decent living.  I will continue to have good memories of the country and its cities.  Yes, for a time I will probably be more aware of potential danger and guard myself a little closer.  But I refuse to suddenly define my experience in Vietnam on what those two did to me.  It is my choice if I want to continue giving them of myself, and I chose that it was enough already.

It’s taking me a few years but I hope it’s finally sinking in.