Spar Spangled Banner

Occasionally I've questioned my decision to travel alone. Not for safety reasons, but b/c it seems as if everyone in this part of the world is traveling as a couple or in a group. There are TONS of tourists everywhere I've been, but as you can tell from my postings so far, I haven't found one particular person to travel with. I like to call this the "New York factor" - the same reason why it took me a year to make friends in NYC. It's like when there are a bizillion people around, it's actually harder to meet people.

But any lonliness I was feeling was put to an end tonight - thanks to a hilarious elderly Vietnamese man who sang the Spar Spangled Banner for me. No joke - I have it on video. I decided to go across the street to the park to chat with some of the Vietnamese people hanging out. It's very common here for people to hang out in the evening for many hours - either lounging on their parked motorbike or playing sports. In this case, a group of guys were playing what looked like hackeysack, but with a shuttlecock, and lots of people were sitting around watching and talking. So I popped a squat and soon enough someone started talking to me - in fairly decent English. (I've only got 2 Vietnamese words down so far!) So we talked for a while and then when I started to go, this elderly Vietnamese guy and a group of girls in their late teens and twenties stopped me. Suddenly, this guy - who had a guitar - started belting out the Spar Spangled Banner. Then he asked me to sing with him, so what the hell? Why not? I let it rip. Then another elderly man came up to me and started talking in near perfect English - turns out he was an interpreter during the war. They were all very kind and I said I'd try to meet them there again tomorrow. As I crossed the street, I peered into the main tourist bar on the corner and saw loads of foreigners drinking and not a Vietnamese person in sight. Blah! If I were traveling with others, I'd probably be in that bar with the bunch of them, but instead, I got to hear an elderly Vietnamese man sing and made some new Vietnamese friends. Afterall, I did pay a shitload of money to travel to Vietnam and that could've been any bar around the world.