Vietnam Smiles All The Way

You can either approach your Vietnam trip as a tourist or as a traveller - the country will respond differently, but the smile on their faces will remain ubiquitous. Here’s an account from the pages of a traveller’s diary.

- Sudipto Roy

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. If you don’t see Vietnam, you will never realise how a country in the south-east Asia, that has had more than two centuries of oppression, can evolve as a country with so much love and compassion. The sheer generosity, naturally exhibited by the people in Vietnam, is far from being false and a narrative describing just its people can fill pages to enchant readers all over the world.

We Indians have a creepy knack to get involved in affairs that hardly matter to us. It is there in our genes or should I say we have a history of connecting to civilisations. Despite the fact that my maiden visit to Vietnam a couple of years back was more business than leisure, I was amazed by the streets of the Ho Chi Minh City, the nearby provinces and their lifestyle and most importantly the spirit of the people around me, who unfailingly smiled on every eye contact. Smile heals they say, and these expressions of munificence can never go unrequited; at least from an Indian traveller’s perspective, I thought.

Vietnam by facts

The shape of the country gives an impression of the alphabet 'S' and this densely populated country on the South China Sea shares its borders with China to the north, Laos to the north-west, Cambodia to the southwest, and shares the seas across the Gulf of Thailand with Thailand and Malaysia and, with the Philippines and Indonesia across the South China Sea.