I recently read a blog post by “...and what do you do?” called “Things will be different for my daughter”. The observation was made that the older quaint Vietnamese tourist culture is slowly dying away as the previous sophisticated European tourists have been replaced by a different class of tourist since her last trip to Vietnam over a decade ago. It is an account of what I assume was the first day or two of a vacation to Hanoi. I made the following response post.
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 began thinking about the profound concept Anna was sharing. There is a scientific principle which states that the very act of observing something can change the observed subject. This concept is called the observer effect and it is most famous within particle physics and was the basis of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. I would add there is an additional observer effect that the very action of going into the world to see other cultures also affects the host cultures.
I am sure many are aware of the Mursi and Tirma tribes of Ethiopia. They are the people with large disks in their mouths and ears. People often see pictures of them in their beautiful tribal garb. Some people may not be aware that they don’t actually live this way. They are quite western. They wear t-shirts and blue jeans and drink plenty of Coke. These people were westernized a long time ago, but keep the act going so they can still receive the tourist income from photos or souvenir sales. The very act of people going to take pictures of these tribes gave them enough money and western influence to modify their culture into something much different. Now they play up the old ways for the tourists to preserve their tribal customs.
This isn’t just true of the Mursi and Tirma tribes. This same thing is happening all over the world. Have you ever been to Paris …to the famous Champs-Élysées to have a McDonalds cheeseburger with some mayonnaise on French fries? What can be more French than French Fries?
What about going to the beautiful beaches of Bali for Nyepi? This is the famous day of silence holiday with beautiful colored statues, made by each neighborhood each year. During this holiday, everyone is locked away in their homes or hotels for the next day. When you finally emerge from this day of silence, you realize it isn’t so special because a couple thousand other tourists had the same idea and the streets are packed.
This is the great tourist exchange. This is where you go to explore other cultures, but don’t realize they are also exploring your culture. You take a conical hat home with you to mount on your tourist shrine wall and the natives start to wear blue jeans. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as both parties are taking the best from the other culture and incorporating it into their own. Unfortunately, this cheapens the tourist experience for the next guy as he looks around at everyone in t-shirts and cut off blue jeans and wonders …what happened to all the native clothing?
Vietnam is certainly not immune to this exchange. Even in the most rural villages, the simple rural outfits have been replaced by t-shirts and cargo shorts. Discarded western clothing has been bundled up from their host countries and shipped off to every corner of the world until your local football team jersey is worn by a remote African Pygmy. That cute cheap “girl power” t-shirt made for a friend's bridal party is now being worn by a poor girl in a remote village stirring the pot above a blisteringly hot wood fire stove. Fast fashion has made the entire world western.
Do you know Coke and Nestle have done more to bring clean drinking water to sub-Saharan Africa than any NGO? They don’t do this because they are such nice people. They want to sell their sugar water or baby formula in every market in the world. A weird byproduct is clean water for everyone. Now everywhere you go in every country, you will find small plastic bottles of beautifully clear filtered water sold at local corner markets and convenience stores.
The other thing to keep in mind is that people don’t really want to remain quaint. In Vietnam, people really wanted to start forgetting the American war by the early 1990’s. It was a terrible period of history and the economic embargo following the war by the American led west was even worse. There was massive inflation where Vietnam had the highest inflation rate for several years. This is where the countries of East Asia dumped their goods that weren’t good enough for western markets. Without access to fertilizer or pesticides, people starved and some people died.
The fall of the Soviet system changed everything. John Kerry and John McCain made their trip to open up trade and presumably to work out some of their demons from their traumatic military service in Vietnam. Following them were thousands of veterans of the war who came to pay their respects and let go of their past. Then came the tourist seeking a little adventure in a country which was closed off to western tourism for a decade and a half. Finally came the Tây Ba Lô which means backpacker in English, but is really more of a slur for a certain type of tourist who doesn’t really spend any money.
Tourists bring money, and lots of it. Some estimates I have seen peg the revenue from tourism to be 5-10% of GDP. Of course, the effects are much higher as the money in Vietnam tends to stay in Vietnam, being passed to Phở venders and locally sourced food venders in corner shops. The service industry is highly resilient and there are many people to mend or repair nearly every product imaginable, so goods tend to be used much longer than in western countries.
To keep this sweet tourist money coming in, the Vietnamese need to play the game. Although no one wants to talk about the time before opening in the early 1990’s, tourists want to see a country affected by the American war, so they play it up. There is a chain of Soviet era coffee shops, which isn’t quite suitable for Vietnamese taste who prefer the sweeter drinks, but they are highly popular in the tourist districts. Vendors sell old Zippos or empty bullets which the old GI’s might have used, but are really mass produced in a replica factory. Tourists are crammed into museums which go on and on about the travesty of the war crimes committed against the Vietnamese people or the mutations caused by “Agent Orange”, only to be greeted by the guy with an arm missing asking for money from guilty tourists, despite the fact that he probably lost that arm in a farming accident.
I can’t think of a single Vietnamese person who actually thinks about the war. I have friends who fought in the war against Americans who will never talk about their experiences. They just keep pushing me more beer and I proceed to một, hai, ba, dô and down another watered down ice beer. They have much more important things to think about than something that happened nearly 50 years ago. Most Vietnamese generally love Americans ...a lot. The kindness I have experienced from Vietnamese when you travel to a rural area is mind blowing. Throw in a few butchered Vietnamese words and you have friends for life.
It can be sad when some people come to Vietnam and find that it is not the quaint place they imagined it to be. It’s even sadder when they realize they may be the last ones to see the old culture. This is all part of the cultural exchange where both parties take the best from the other culture and make it their own. Everyone should take plenty of photos to document the experience of this time which is disappearing fast. In the end, everyone's a little richer for their experience and the tourist leaves with pictures to post on Facebook and Vietnamese leave with pictures of their exotic Western friend they met to show to their rural farming friends who may not have ever met one of these weird yellow hair, blue eyed, pink skinned people before.