Man of a Million Lies

That’s one of Marco Polo’s nicknames after he got back from his travels around the world and wrote a book describing all the marvels he has seen. His tales were so fantastic that they strained credibility. After Marco Polo's, the European account of the exotic Orient that had the widest readership in the early modern era was probably the ''Peregrination'' of the Portuguese adventurer Fernao Mendes Pinto, called ''The Travels of Mendes Pinto.'' His descriptions of China, however, seem to be the result of what he heard or read and have been characterized as ''arrant nonsense'' by one later critic. In fact, even in the 17th century, the fabrications were so obvious that Mendes Pinto had become a synonym for liar. [http://tinyurl.com/mf23e]

Nowadays of course, traveling abroad is no longer a privilege of the rich or the adventurous, so lying about one’s trips abroad is not as safe nor as tempting. And yet, some fools are still trying!

One of them is apparently «a 55 year old American embarking on a year of travel apart from my job, family and friends on a sabbatical to encounter three Asian cultures and countries (with a bunch of side stops in between)». The man has a blog [http://tinyurl.com/k2oxm] where he writes about his stay in Vietnam and his meetings and conversations with the local people, and where he posts pictures he supposedly took on his trips. Unfortunately for him, one of the pictures he posted of a homeless kid living under a bridge, which he described as a newspaper seller near where he lives, was recognized by another blogger as being taken by a friend. That blogger is the director of the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation [http://www.bdcf.org/], a volunteer organization registered in Australia, with Vietnamese and international volunteers working together to help the most vulnerable children and their families in northern Vietnam. After recognizing the picture, he put a comment on the Father’s blog (yes, the guy’s a priest!), denouncing the fakery and demanding an apology. He also reported the incident on his own blog [http://vietnamstreets.blogspot.com/]. With his lie exposed for the whole world to see, the Father quickly deleted all his previous posts save for the last two, and emptied his archives. And now, it turns out that it was not the first nor the only picture the good Father posted as his own. Go read the details at the Vietnam Street blog and hurry and visit the Father’s blog before he shuts it down completely and goes spread his lies somewhere else.

Hai, who was living under a bridge in Hanoi until Blue Dragon staff met him, befriended him, and eventually assisted him to return to his family in Thanh Hoa province.

The French has a saying for this syndrome: «À beau mentir qui vient de loin». I don’t have an English translation at the ready. [Update 25th March - Someone suggested: 'Tis easy to lie when you're from faraway]. All I can think of is : Liar, liar, pants on fire, Father!



Update on 18-03-2006:
Too late! The travelling priest has deleted his blog. He's probably started a new one somewhere else. It's too bad, cause it's always less painful to deal with one's problem when it's still in its infancy. Once it's become part of your character, denial (no, not the Egyptian river) will be an automatic reaction.