VIETNAM!! and communal couriers

You know that one part in Home Alone where the mom is on the airplane and finally realizes what she's missing and sits upright in her chair and screams "KEVIN!" Yes, well, that's about what I did this morning when I realized that in one short week I would be boarding an airplane for Vietnam. But I screamed Vietnam instead of Kevin.

I can't believe it's already time to go! I'm so stoked to go back - hopefully I'll have time amid all the traveling to visit some of the friends I made back in 2004. But all of my excitement and forward-looking is kind of on hold while we do all the mundane packing and stuff. And because of a subtle tradition in Vietnamese America (and diaspora in general, I hear) that will not believed unless/until experienced, I am waiting for someone to ask me to bring something back to Vietnam with me. I call it the "communal courier" tradition.

Full disclosure: With a week still to go, I am happy to announce that this trip is not too influence by the communal courier tradition. Yet. But to put it in basic terms, my understanding of this tradition is that there is this large vacation detector in the sky that records all of the trips made to here and from there, and then transmits that info via ham radio or bullhorn to the inhabitants of the earth who are looking to send a gift or medicine or money or the kitchen sink, who then find the trip-taker and approach them with the following pick-up line: "Hey, I hear you're going to ___________? Sounds great! Hey, I was just wondering..." and they proceed to invite you to carry their item with you and deliver it to someone in the land of destination. It's that simple. Why pay international postage when you can send it with someone for free? But is it really for free? The eerie part of it is that there's also a large karma detector up in the sky that has entered into a contract with the vacation detector to keep track of all those who have invited their friends, family members, co-workers or total strangers to bring something along with them, and sooner or later the inviter turns into an invitee and the cycle continues until the original trip-taker has the favor returned to them. Am I making sense? I hope not, but I don't understand a lick of it. But somehow, the whole city knows when we're going to Vietnam and many of them seem to have things they would like to send to Vietnam, without hassling with the postal system. Phew!

Looking at the amount of stuff we have to prepare for the trip (as this is my first introduction to much of my wife's family back in Vietnam and they all expect pictures :), I probably won't be blogging until I'm in Vietnam proper. See ya'll then!