The ability to travel as a commodity of wealth

6 May 2006

The ability to travel as a commodity of wealth

Posted by Bob Keith at 5/6/2006 1:30 AM

Categories: Commerce in Vietnam

It was not until my second visit to Vietnam that my wife Heide brought to attention the notion of "travel as wealth."  At our hotel in Saigon, I had been talking to a fellow ex-patriot American traveling in Asia.  He was a public school teacher. I was complaining that the street vendors, taxi drivers, cyclo (three-wheeled bicycle taxis) drivers, and wheeler-dealers would ignore my insistence that I was just a blue-collar poor American traveling on the cheap.  The vendors would still hound me for a dollar's worth of business.  "Look at us."  My wife and the teacher seemed to conclude at once. "By the very fact we can leave our homes for two weeks implies a type of wealth."  And so I added, "Of course - the intangible wealth of free movement."  It is a freedom we Americans take for granted until we can contrast our situation first hand with another culture like the Vietnamese.  So even though my pants were dirty, thin, and were beginning to fray, I was considered a wealthy American to the Vietnamese.

I think often about the doorman at the Rex hotel in downtown Saigon where I would go to catch a taxi or to cash a traveler's check now and then.  Even though I did not stay there (it is an upper-end place even by Western standards) he always opened the door for me no matter what disrepair my cloths or appearance had become after a day of exploring the endless abyss of streets in Saigon.  I am reminded of a fancy hotel in Dallas where I was once asked to leave by the doorman.   All I had wanted to do was see the elaborate design of the inner foyer.