I am an excellent correspondent.
Whether it’s through text, email, or DM, I will make the effort to keep in contact with you if you make the effort to keep in contact with me. This mutual effort has allowed me to maintain worldwide friendships for two decades. What I love most, however, is correspondence the old fashioned way: through the post office. I enjoy sending birthday, thank you, and just because mail. I love gift or stationary stores that have an eclectic mix of greeting cards for me to peruse and stock up on. I used to like sending postcards while travelling, but in the past few years I’ve enjoyed taking post cards home and then using them as thank you or just because material, especially the ones I pick up from art museums.
I went to the post office just last week, and I thought about how, so far, it might be the place I dread going the most here in Saigon. The anxiety I get around the thought of maybe having to mail something to someone has completely wiped out my previous love of doing so. But, of course, sometimes there are moments in life when an email is just not enough so I had to prepare myself to go.
The lack of queue culture here is very hard for me as a stereotypical polite Canadian, but in most situations, I can be patient or do my best to get in the scrum and try to garner some attention. The post office is a different ball game to me. The employees at the counter seem to be so intently working on other things that helping customers would be listed as “and other duties as required” in their job description. My poor Vietnamese language skills only make it worse because I’m never quite sure how to get the attention of the person who knows I’m right in front of them but has an uncanny ability to stay completely focused on the computer screen.
My skin crawls and stomach turns as I try to find the courage to be bold and get their attention. I feel so uncomfortable because, according to me, I will have to be rude. I just do it. I’ll wait for eternity if I don’t. I move my envelopes over the counter and toward their sightline so they’ll have to take notice. It’s the mix of disdain and annoyance that I feel shooting from their eyes as they move up that I dislike most of all.
But it’s momentary. They stamp the envelopes, take my money, and I leave, checking my watch and being thankful that it took much less time than I was expecting. Because I just did it. No arguments, no huffs, business as usual.
Prior to this post office visit, I had been thinking about the act of taking up space here in Saigon—literally and figuratively. I had had a lightbulb moment about a month ago that should have given me more confidence at the post office than it did, but c’est la vie or c’est my senility.
The illumination occurred as I used a crosswalk close to home, one that I might use around 25 times in a week. It’s a proper crosswalk with traffic and walk/don’t walk lights at a T-intersection. The bulk of vehicles I walk past when I cross want to turn left, so when the light turns red, they do wait. But there are some who want to turn right, and I imagine that a right-turner never has a “stop on red” thought here in Vietnam. So they plough through and make their way to turn, nary a thought about a possible pedestrian. The classic quandary of safely crossing a busy street in Vietnam. And this intersection has lights!
The bikes flowing through to make their turn (the size of cars means they stop) whether they are on the the road or the sidewalk, are like the post office employees. Focused on where they need to go, they have no desire to think of my need to get to the other side. I have to just do it. I have to take up space in front of them, slowly but surely, so that they know I’m not here to wait. I want to cross, so notice me. If I don’t take up that space, I will have to wait. Who knows how long. The next light? In rush hour, maybe never.
Crossing the street becomes easier once you know that you have to take up that space. Confidently. You have to move forward cautiously but continuously and get dangerously close to bikes and cars to ensure they take your crossing seriously. Once you start to understand this, it’s remarkable how much easier (not easy) it can become to cross and see how vehicles will slow down or move around you. That whole school of fish concept of Vietnamese traffic. There are moments when the bikes swerve around me that I feel like Moses at the Red Sea.
While I may stall in the post office due to my perception of rudeness, I know not to stall when it comes to traffic. And I know that if I want to get anywhere, I have to take up space, whether in the road when crossing or on the sidewalk when walking. But in all aspects here, you have to—and are welcome to—take up space to do what you need to do.
That was my real light bulb moment: nobody really cares if you take up space. They just go about their business and either deal with you (like the post office employee) or move around you. You may play games of chicken to get the space you want, but no one begrudges your attempt to take it. This is very obvious when it comes to physical space, but I feel it extends to figurative space and the incredible entrepreneurial spirit here.
I know that there are permits and regulations when it comes to sidewalk businesses, but I still can’t shake a view of liberty and autonomy when I see them. Saigon has a no-rules vibe to me like few other places when it comes to “if there’s a will, there’s a way.” Whether it’s someone selling drinks from a cooler or a vendor with a proper cart, they take up space. A sliver of sidewalk that I might want for walking now becomes a site of business, and I must adjust my path to work around it.
That’s still physical, fair. And Saigon is hardly the only city in the world to exude ambition. I mean, I lived in New York City. Ambition might be why the bagels taste so good there; its as characteristic of the city as its water.
But I’ve yet to experience a place where a just do it/just take it energy feels so naked and raw. I’ve discussed similarities between HCMC and Mexico City, especially related to street life, but in the latter, Mexican manners and propriety make the ambition feel a bit more buttoned up. Saigon space taking isn’t crass, however, it just doesn’t feel the need to hide. I want to do _____. There’s space. I’m doing it.
The best way for me to explain my thoughts are to look at a very hypothetical example about me. In one significant way, I loved the two and a half years during the pandemic of spending the majority of my time in my apartment. Baking. The joy and creativity that characterized my time in the kitchen was amazing. The feedback I got on Instagram for my visuals and ideas had me sometimes wonder if baking for income could somehow be part of my future.
I reminded myself, though, of all the things, all the expenses, that would be required for me to have a cottage industry even on the smallest scale in Edmonton. As an outsider looking at others who had started their own, it looked incredibly difficult. I don’t have that much ambition. Nor would I have had the time.
But once here, I did give half a thought to it. Before I rented my apartment, I had secret goals of not only having enough space for a regular oven, but a pizza one, too. I met a couple one night who fawned over my pizza when we exchanged Instagrams and said that I should think about doing pop-ups or the like. Even if I had the physical space for an oven, I lack the confidence.
Still.
The way they brought up a business was not pie-in-sky friendly conversation between strangers. This is a place where you can do such things with low overhead. Success is always the wildcard, but you can go from idea to business overnight if you really wanted to. And no one would discourage you.
Everyone here understands the value of space and how taking some, for a moment or forever, gives you an advantage. I am always shocked at how bikes will often come up behind me when I’m crossing the street and narrowly miss my toes as they cut in front of me rather than just turn behind me. It’s because they won the space. For half a second, they got to that patch of pavement quicker than I did. They got to the next patch half a second faster than if they had slowed slightly. Slowing would have meant waiting for me. That’s not the goal.
You take, so you don’t wait.
so good… i usually think of this as “cowboy capitalism”, based on american history (past and contemporary), but maybe it’s a natural stage of early to mid stage capitalism in general!