The excitement of traveling to a new place always comes with the stress and anxiety of the unforeseen. These emotions were on full display as we exited the terminal in Vietnam, ending an almost 24 hour commute.
It sounds hyperbolic, but it was like being on another planet, and the similarities between Hanoi and the town in North Carolina where we live were nonexistent. Not only did it look different, it felt different. It smelled different. Everyone was dressed like they were in a 70s action movie, with colorful tailored suits, a cigarette dangling from their lips, just waiting to jump out from behind a column and murder Charles Bronson. At this point, the anxiety was overcoming the excitement and I, like Dorothy after her whole world had been transformed, realized that I was a long way from home. Thankfully, our guide who was tasked with taking us to the hotel, found us wandering the terrace. He was so nice and welcoming, and I immediately felt better. But in seemingly the same instance that he appeared, he was gone, leaving us holding the sign with the names of the other individuals that were taking the bus to the same hotel. Finally, he returned, we corralled our entire party, and boarded a bus that would take us to the old city of Hanoi. The scenery on the way to the city center continued to emphasize how far we were from home.
As our bus drove into the unknown, I asked our guide the most sensible question that any newcomer could ask. It was a question shaped and hardened in the kiln of my mother’s rearing, who spent her waking hours convincing my siblings and I that there was a lot out there to be afraid of. To this day, my sister won’t stick her hand out of the window of a moving vehicle, for fear that it will suddenly and spontaneously fall off. It was essentially the same question that Susan asked Mr. Beaver in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when he was telling her about Aslan the Lion. Susan asked “Is he safe?”, and Mr. Beaver, thrown back by her inquiry, replied, “Safe? Of course he isn’t safe…but he is good.” I asked our guide the embarrassing but essential question every traveler needs to know. “Is it safe… you know… to walk around?” Only our guide did not seem thrown back by the question at all. It was almost as if he was waiting for it, dreading the moment when one of these tourists asked about the dirty underbelly of the place we had all willingly journeyed to spend our vacation. He looked concerned, took a deep breath and sheepishly said, “You just have to be confident, don’t make any quick movements, but also don’t be hesitant. Just look at where you need to go… and go. Walk calmly at a constant speed and you will be fine.” I was so confused. I was expecting him to give us tips on how to avoid being robbed or worse. I was asking him which streets to avoid and when to be back at our hotel, or if it was even safe to leave our hotel in the first place. That type of danger never occurred to him at all.
My perspective and previous experience informed what I was thinking and I assumed that was universal. I was worried about getting mugged, and getting taken advantage of because I was obviously not from here. He was worried about us crossing the street. This was a prescient warning, because the thing about the streets of Hanoi, and really all throughout Vietnam, is that they operate in a completely different paradigm as the streets we are accustomed to. Someone described it to me as “organized chaos” which I disagree with. Instead of cars, the roads are filled with motorbikes and mopeds, weaving and darting through seams in the traffic, moving in every possible direction. The street lights and stop signs are more of a suggestion – one that no one follows. It’s chaos. It’s not organized at all. The lesson we all learn as kids, to look both ways before crossing the street, would make you pass out in Vietnam. This was hard for me to fathom because looking both ways before crossing the street was a habit conscripted into my personal experience from the youngest age.
Some of my earliest memories, believe it or not, emphasize this fundamental rule. When I was younger, my grandmother owned a trailer along the coast of North Carolina, which was located within walking distance of the beach. Between us and the beach was the main road cutting through the middle of the island. Every day, we would make our journey with the need to cross this primary thoroughfare, on the way to our destination. At the crossing, our parents would shout “Everyone stop!!!”, and my cousins and I would halt immediately. The adults would pace the lines, like generals during battle, inspecting their infantry before assaulting an enemy’s stronghold. They would stamp down any horseplay, demand absolute focus, and direct us to follow their every command. Instead of spears and shields, we carried boogie boards and beach chairs. We would wait, still and quiet, only moving to turn our heads left and right like spectators in the front row of Wimbledon. When the moment arrived, the generals would lower their swords, signifying the opportune time to strike, and we would charge across the expanse. And it worked… every time… hundreds of times. Our Vietnamese guide knew about this. Not because he also owned a trailer off the coast of North Carolina, but because he watched people like me, revert back to their previous experience and struggle. He observed that this was leading to injuries and something even more tragic. His advice was to completely change what we thought sensible and fundamental. He took something ingrained into my experience and turned it on its head. And like all good advice, regardless of how counterintuitive it is, it turned out to be true. It worked every time. We would get to an intersection, continue without stopping at our regular gait into the sea of motorbikes, which would subsequently maneuver around us like a school of fish swimming around an incoming predator. We only got into trouble when we instinctively reverted back to our old mindset. It was incredible and a lesson that, for me, had a multifaceted meaning. I tend to approach life like how I was taught to cross the street. I find myself cautiously deliberating when and how to handle situations, weighing the chances of success and failure, then reacting. If it looks unpassable or unusual, I make the sensible and measured decision to stay where it is safe. That mindset was turned on its head as well.
Life might be more like crossing the street in Hanoi, where hesitation and reflexive movement can get you into trouble. Where getting to where you need to be is about being confident in yourself, ignoring the incoming traffic and focusing on where you want to go. Once you have the other side of the street in your sights, just go, regardless of the obstacles in your way. The antidote to confront the chaos is to tune it out and believe in yourself. It’s an empowering mindset and a beautiful way to look at life. For me, it was transformative. I never thought I would have my worldview altered by a Vietnamese man riding on a bus in Hanoi. I never thought I would even go somewhere like this. Leading up to the trip, I was worried that something tragic would happen along the way; that someone would get sick, or injured, or worse. It would’ve been much easier and much safer to cancel the trip and stay home. To avoid the potential for catastrophe. Vietnam taught us that the catastrophe would be letting fear dictate where we go. The most tragic thing… would be to not cross the street. It’s really exciting on the other side. We learned that in Hanoi over and over again. Every corner revealed something new and unexpected.
I found a restaurant online that I wanted to try our first night in town about a mile from our hotel. We crossed a lot of streets to get there. We got lost multiple times along the way. I didn’t think we would ever find it but we did. It had an outside dining area with string lights creating a canopy above our heads. The tables were decorated with colorful mosaic tiles. The staff was so welcoming and the food was fantastic. It was a quiet respite compared to the roadways we just navigated. We ate and reflected on our day, in the same clothes that we wore during our 15 hour flight to get there. The sun was setting, just like it does at home. We were changed.
We want the following to be a reflection of that change. Our hope is to document and direct our attempts to live out this new mindset, that instills confidence over extreme cautiousness. A mindset that will push us to do things we never would’ve imagined, and challenge us to learn from every situation. We want to be able to adapt to different situations and adopt what we learn. We believe we can do this by metaphorically (and literally) Crossing the Street.
