When you live somewhere long enough you start to take things for granted. These can be good things like a nice view or an amazing beach - both of which I have in Da Nang, Vietnam - or they can be bad things like the constant construction noise, beeping of car horns, and overuse of amplification on just about anything, which is something I have no shortage of in Da Nang, Vietnam either.
I am currently in Southern Mexico visiting family and they live in a country area that is pretty far away from cities you might have heard of. I believe we are about 10 hours drive from Mexico City and about 90 minutes for Guadalajara, which I believe is the 2nd most populated city in Mexico. I avoid both of those places because they both have at least 4 times the population of Da Nang, and I am in no hurry to be near crowds while I am away.
There isn't a whole hell of a lot to do here but that is just fine with me. When I wander around or even just hand out in the yard, I am treated to something that I almost never get in Vietnam, and that is blessed silence.
It's difficult to depict "silence" in a picture but the area around the little neighborhood that my parents and some of my siblings live in, is surrounded by agricultural land that is mostly used for growing raspberries. I'm not going to pretend to know what goes into having a farm of this sort, but whatever it is, at least during this time of year, it involves hand tools and a lot of everyone being quiet.
I cannot stress enough how much this means to me. It is so damn noisy everywhere that I go in my daily life in Vietnam that I sometimes become quite grouchy because the only place I can go for respite is to stay in my apartment on the 10th floor with sound-proofed windows.
Everyone gets cabin fever and I certainly do. But every time that I wander outside to maybe take Nadi for a walk I am immediately greeted by the horrible sounds of the city that I live in.
Mexico is not a silent country by any means. The love fireworks and amplifiers as much as the next developing country does, as I experience almost any time we go out to dinner. The do NOT however, have a culture of beeping the car horns all hours of the day.
Out here in the raspberry fields though, you can hear nothing but birds and an occasional dog barking in the distance.
Everyone wants what they do not have
I think this is definitely true. I would be willing to bet that the people of this silent area, especially the young, would really enjoy the hustle and bustle of the area that I live in and perhaps they even seek it out when they get the chance. For me, I am subjected to rather intense levels of noise pollution almost every day of my life and even though there really isn't anything exciting to do here, I just love the fact that I can sit somewhere and hear nothing. I am in a room typing this right now and I can hear that tinnitus sort of sound of whistling in my ears that only happens when you have absolute silence.
This NEVER happens in Da Nang, even in the middle of the night someone is going to be banging on something, beeping, or playing music really loud.
The area around here is all massive raspberry farms. If you live in the United States or Canada and you ever eat raspberries from the supermarket, there is a very good chance that it comes from this area. The farmers out here, or the workers, one of the two, will sell buckets of the fruits that are considered unsuitable for foreign export for next to nothing. There are so many raspberries that according to my family, you just give them whatever you feel like giving them for a bucket of them. There is no price tag.
But now that I say that I truly enjoy this silence, it is only because I have such a lack of it in my life that I feel this way. My family keeps asking me if I am bored because we just mainly sit out here and talk, then eat, and maybe around 4 will have a beer or two. We don't really have any events happening per se, and I am totally cool with that. I don't really want to go and do anything because my life back in Da Nang it seems is one activity after another.
What I'm saying is that even though I kind of loathe the noise of the place I call home, this silent area I am in now would become very boring to me if I lived here full time. I know this is the case.
For me, a real vacation - which is what this kind of is for me - is just sitting and enjoying the sound of the breeze, and the wind chimes, and the sound of my parents' voices. Then going to sleep early and not hearing a damn thing because the area is dead quiet.
If you live somewhere quiet I would be willing to bet that you take it for granted. if you live somewhere in a busy city like I do where almost any activity that you can imagine is just a short taxi ride away, you probably also take that for granted.
I don't think it is possible to have both. We just have to decide which is more important to us and perhaps vacation at the other.
