I think the Vietnamese equivalent of shaking your hand is the “ritual of 4 questions” (not to be confused with the Jewish 4 questions of Passover). Whenever I meet new people, be it random people on the street or curious co-workers at the office, the conversation starts with the obligatory four questions:

1. How old are you?
2. Are you married? (sometimes replaced with simply pointing to the ring finger and raising the eyebrows)
3. Do you have children?
4. Why not?

This complete set of questions really encompasses so much. I normally breeze through questions 1-3. Question no. 4 is a different story. In an attempt to diffuse the situation, I sometimes answer by saying that I do not have children but I have a “con meow”, which, as you can guess, means I have a cat. That really doesn’t go down very well. I get a look of pity mixed with bewilderment (naturally I don’t bother telling people about my face-to-whiskers video chats with Kevin and Cuggits while being away).

This openness, however, does not extend to all aspects of conversation. It would be no problem if I asked every person about their marital status, age, no. of kids etc but I would certainly not try to start a political conversation. It would just be too direct and perhaps, even rude.

That’s why I was very surprised the other night when a Xe Om driver started talking to me about the current situation in Israel/Palestine. Ever since the latest round of violence erupted in the region, many people have been giving me a piece of their mind (don’t get me started about the angry Frenchman lecturing me over breakfast). It is unavoidable as an Israeli traveling abroad and I’ve come to welcome that kind of debate (preferably not before noon). This was the first time a Vietnamese person chose to talk to me about the Middle East. The Xe Om driver showed me an article in the local Vietnamese newspaper about Hamas and Israel which I could not understand but it didn’t matter since he was offering his interpretation of the situation. Unfortunately, it was a very different view than mine but it was very refreshing to talk about something other than the “set of four”.

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