BEHIND THE PHOTO - Street Celebration in Hanoi

The United States has a complicated history with Vietnam. A history that I am admittedly poorly versed in; and heading into a four-day stop in Hanoi in 2018, I found myself intimidated by my own ignorance.

However, my ignorance also made me a blank slate to observe and absorb the contrasts between our cultures and discover that in many cases our traditions are as similar as they are different.

Like Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., Hanoi has formidable traffic. Except in Hanoi, an army of motorbikes navigate congested streets zipping through vehicles, rickshaws, and pedestrians.

Students explore their heritage on school field trips. However, in Vietnam, all students, some as young as pre-school, take a field trip to visit the heavily guarded, precisely managed, and publicly revered Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Like American students visiting a natural history museum, Vietnamese students show great enthusiasm for the visit to the communist leader’s final resting place.

Finally, Vietnamese are fans of their hometown athletics.

We had just wrapped up a home-hosted dinner with a local family – a great exchange, where we enjoyed homemade food and drink, and learned how the average Vietnamese family lives, and said our goodbyes before boarding the 10-passenger van for a seamless return to our hotel in the city center.

At first, we spotted just a few Vietnamese national flags. Then a few more, and a few cars started honking.

After a few minutes, the flag-waving crowds and drivers blasting their horns picked up dramatically. Soon, when we were pulling off the main thoroughfare and making our way into the heart of the city, our driver could no longer navigate the road. Streets had been closed, overtaken by hundreds of Vietnamese, young and old, celebrating because the Vietnamese football team qualified for the Asia Cup finals – the first time in the nation’s history.

Our walk back to the hotel was slow as we shuffled through the crowds of excited football fans. The streets were loud with people playing makeshift instruments and vuvuzelas. After 15 or 20 minutes we arrived back at our hotel, but the evening’s festivities were far from over. People stayed in the street until the wee small hours of the morning, and I went to bed with echoes of enthusiastic chanting and singing.

A month later, after we were comfortably back in the United States, the Philadelphia Eagles won a long-awaited Superbowl, and an estimated 700,000 (or 3.5 million depending on who you ask) fans took to the street to celebrate. Chanting, waving flags, celebrating with friends and strangers alike.

So, while the U.S. and Vietnam are undoubtedly different. How different are we?