Vietnam

I’m so pleased to be able to stay here for one more year.  I was dreading having to go back to the UK. Anthony Bourdain knows how I feel and he’s exactly right – anywhere else just seems ordinary:

“I’m smiling – we’re all smiling so hard our faces hurt.
I love Vietnam.
I love it now.
I loved it from the minute I arrived for the first time, a few years ago.

Moments

moments

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Thoreau

Want

I know what I don’t want. Now I have to decide what I do want.

“You’re never going to get the thing you want
Not ’till you work out what it is you want.
You don’t actually want the thing you want.
You only want what you can’t have. You want
it blindly. What it is you think you want

is nothing like you actually want.
You’ve still got to work it out, what you want
and what it is, the real meaning of want.”

Ali Smith The Accidental

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

The Real Work

Wendell Berry

Land of Hope and Glory

When I was deciding to apply for my career-break I wrote a list of reasons for and against it.
Dissatisfaction with life in the UK was high on the ‘reasons to go’ list.

There were not many moments of pleasure in a typical day and 1,000 minor irritations wore me down. Traffic jams on poorly-maintained roads and shabby, expensive public transport full of idiot passengers. ‘Hoodies’ yobs and chavs, lanky youths on small BMX bikes riding on chewing-gum stained broken pavements looking for things they could steal. Ignorant aggressive people who never smiled. Children in buggies eating fast food while their parents stood on corners smoking and drinking.
Dirty hospitals. Tabloid media. Cheap food, fast food, bad food. Grey rainy days. ‘Retail therapy’ and rampant consumerism, but only shops full of cheap rubbish.

I’m not sorry to have left all this behind and am not homesick at all. It is a joy to walk down the street in Vietnam, a pleasure to go into a shop and be served by smiling staff.

I have thought for a while that there is something radically wrong in the UK and that trends are being ignored. I have met so many people who have left and are looking for a better place to live. From the Betting Shop manager (‘ Remember Brian, in England you’re never 4 miles from scum’), to the Surveyor and his wife who were tired of office politics, high taxes and poor value for money, everyone I’ve met thinks there are compelling reasons to leave and very few to stay.

Here are some links to articles that explore some of these reasons. Some of the comments are predictably racist and ill-informed, but others give a snapshot of the concerns and worries of British residents and expats.

The Daily Telegraph (I know….) asks why so many Britons are emigrating. (they say 207,000 in 2007- one every three minutes):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2007/11/15/view15.xml
There are 789 comments……..

In the Daily Mail (I know…) the figure has increased to 250,000, one person every two minutes:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=510701&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments”
100 comments.

Common themes are high-taxation and unreasonable charges – ‘Goodbye to rip-off Britain’:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/martin_samuel/article3634764.ece
229 comments.

‘Social evils’ is another one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7084044.stm

‘Greed and family breakdown mentions one report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7356713.stm
There are 89 pages of comments.

John Redwood (I know…) wrote about it on his blog (and says there were 400,000 emigrees in 2007!):
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2007/11/16/why-are-so-many-people-leaving-the-uk/
58 comments.

And there are other blogs from people who have emigrated, trying to make sense of the whole process:
http://escapengland.blogspot.com

The debate will continue, but here in Vietnam the skies are blue and people cheerful. And everyone accepts that not working is not an option: if you don’t do something, anything, then you won’t eat.

I’ve no evidence, but I have a sense that the global balance of power is shifting from the West to the East and that this is the place to be.

Be the hero of your adventure. All travel is inner travel, because wherever we are, we are processing our experiences internally. Remind yourself that you are the hero of all your journeys, and that all your travel in the outside world is really travel inward, toward ever higher spiritual consciousness.

Joseph Dispenza