The father and mother sitting next to me at Hanoi airport are glued to their phones, their two little girls run around the unbelievably clean gate area, content in the knowledge that they can see their parents and that there are lots of people to take them back to their parents.
I love your very poetic description of Hanoi. I deeply enjoyed your wonderful descriptions of this beautiful city.
Your observations about how tourism has changed from a unique cultural experience into just another Western bubble transplanted into yet another country are palpable. Unfortunately, this isn't just limited to tourism. The charm of cyclos pushed by men in countryside attire with conical hats is disappearing and being replaced with corporate imitations of a Soviet era communist war themed cà phê shops. Most of the older citizens have been trying their best to forget the American war for the last 30 years, not to mention the French, Cambodian and Chinese wars of the same period. Previous generations are war weary who would much rather look at their new iPhones and spend the day sipping cà phê and their nights pounding cans of bia than reminisce on a culture they are trying to forget. This is a tragedy of the cultural exchange, where a person goes to a country to experience a quant local lifestyle only to leave a tiny bit of Western culture behind, slowly stripping the host country of what truly makes it unique.
I love your very poetic description of Hanoi. I deeply enjoyed your wonderful descriptions of this beautiful city.
Your observations about how tourism has changed from a unique cultural experience into just another Western bubble transplanted into yet another country are palpable. Unfortunately, this isn't just limited to tourism. The charm of cyclos pushed by men in countryside attire with conical hats is disappearing and being replaced with corporate imitations of a Soviet era communist war themed cà phê shops. Most of the older citizens have been trying their best to forget the American war for the last 30 years, not to mention the French, Cambodian and Chinese wars of the same period. Previous generations are war weary who would much rather look at their new iPhones and spend the day sipping cà phê and their nights pounding cans of bia than reminisce on a culture they are trying to forget. This is a tragedy of the cultural exchange, where a person goes to a country to experience a quant local lifestyle only to leave a tiny bit of Western culture behind, slowly stripping the host country of what truly makes it unique.