a culture shock: vietnam, russia and the usa

Those two words have been buzzing around my head a lot lately. Firstly, because we’ve been watching this show by Luke Nguyen, an Aussie/ Vietnamese chef. There are dogs and black baby chickens and cobra hearts still beating in shot glasses. My WORD. The Hub and I just sit on the couch with eyes like bush babies thinking, what the hell have we done. Why didn’t we just go to England where the most exciting food is haggis and you have to travel 800 km North to find it in some obscure Scottish pub? Why Vietnam? We start to question our very fibre, why must we always operate so far out of our comfort zone? Why do we need to adventure all the time? Why can’t we just be normal? They eat PUPPIES. Deep breaths...it is breathtakingly beautiful and we have booked through a reputable tour company with a Vietnamese English-speaking guide included. So if we are in any doubt as to whether that is pork or COBRA, he can translate or at least recognise the form of protein. My shattered sensibilities. I don’t even eat COWS for goodness sake. Vietnamese culture shock…coming April 2014.

Then to add insult to injury, two of my cousins are doing a year in Russia and I’ve been catching up on the blog their friend has started. Brave, brave girls. It’s called Adventurous Matryoshka (I know. I’ve linked it here for you, don’t even try and spell that in your Google search box. I got some beauties – all blocked by my browser security). Matryoshka are Russian nesting dolls but that doesn’t sound half as cool. These 20 somethings are tutoring the rich and famous of Moscow and surrounds by the sounds of it. Alison writes so well you must take a look. Anyway, this all brought back the times when I felt most culture shocked. The freaky old gypsy ladies in Italy, the public toilets in Germany and Austria, the nerve jangling ride up the gondola in Lucerne, the cold in England over Christmas…and mostly the US. I did a ski season there a few years ago, and I would rather have to beat off 1000 Italian gypsies with a stick than deal with that culture shock ever again. The food, the noise, the accents, the cold, the EXPENSE. And I was a mere 21 years old. And this was AFTER I’d travelled the UK and Europe and Contiki’d myself into oblivion at age 19. It was such a different world to me, I spent the first 2 months in a state of constant homesickness. What made it worse I think, was that we worked with lots of South Americans, most of whom were divine and sweet and kind. But the Brazilians. Mi palabra! They were just plain scary. My Argentinian friend, Nati, told me that because Brazilians are the only ones in South America to speak Portuguese they consider themselves superior. And because we hung out with the Chileans and Argentinians that made us inferior by association. Never mind we couldn’t speak or understand a word of Spanish OR Portuguese. We sucked. A whole lot.

I got the but you’re not black thing I think most of us get in the US (and Russia from Alison’s blog descriptions). They looked at me as if I had fallen out of the sky when I pronounced tomato correctly and not as tomayto. Or basil correctly and not as baysil. I have a degree in finance you idiots, I wanted to scream. My grandmother was born in England you idiots, I wanted to scream. You realise you speak the English language created in ENGLAND you idiots, I wanted to scream. But I needed their green and shiny American dollars to fund my Vegas/DC/NYC trip after my work contract ended so I kept that to myself. The people I loved most in America where the South Americans. How is that for ironic. Once I had travelled a bit more, out of the back end of Colorado; and we shall not mention the obese, tracksuit wearing, cocktail-funnel toting hillbillies in Vegas; I saw that the US is full of intelligent, worldly folk. Who lecture you about apartheid and why you should feel guilty because have you not heard about the slave trade? That one got my blood pressure up. Travelling the US was an experience I would love to repeat. With the Hub, with an extra 50 grand. Fortunately at the time it was worth it for the ski pass. I got home and dug up some photos of my time in the US of A. How I have aged.