Hopeful in Hanoi

Well, that's all, folks!

2008-08-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

So this is the last entry - I'll be wrapping things up. According to Blogger, this is my 61st entry, which means I reached double my goal of posting once a day. I have a few friends (not naming names) who started reading this but didn't bother to keep going because "you just wrote so much!" That's fine, I don't mind - I like telling the good stories over again anyway. I'm very excited to get nice and pompous and show-offy and start every sentence with "Well, when I was in Vietnam for a month . . ." It's very exciting to hear about all the people who have been reading this, and it's great to get comments from friends and family and know they've been following along and be able to share this incredible experience with them - if you've been reading this all along, or just a little every so often, or even just once, please, drop me a comment or send me an email so I can thank you, or at least know. Like my mother once said about seeing psychologists, it's an incredible luxury to have people listen to your feelings and ideas and care about what you have to say. It has gotten addictive - it makes me want to start a new blog just to record my daily life, to force my inner thoughts about regular life on the world. But I don't think that's going to happen. But next time I go traveling (and I definitely will be going traveling again) I'll probably start up a new one, with another title that could be almost clever but isn't really ("Hopeful in Hanoi" was supposed to be a kind of play on "Sleepless in Seattle," but unfortunately there aren't any words that start with H and end in -less that were remotely appropriate.)

In the end, though, this blog was always for me, so that I could keep track of this incredible trip and never forget it. It was only a month, but it was a huge experience. So even though I wrote too much to expect my friends to read it all, I doubt that I actually got down all of my thoughts and every detail of my experience, but I think I came close enough.

So, thanks for reading! I can't wait to see all of you in person now that I'm home. Time to get back to real life, now.

Things I Learned in Vietnam

2008-08-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when faced with a frustrating situation, the answer is not to go on the offensive and push and shove and use force to solve your problem. It can be much more effective to smile and be patient and take the time to think about why the problem exists and how it affects other people, not only you.

Never trust the Vietnamese transportation system to get you anywhere on time. Taxis, buses, trains, planes – it doesn't matter. Always work getting late into your timing.

When you are lost or you've made a mistake, it's always better to smile and ask for help and laugh at your mistakes than to suffer for them. People will be more than willing to help if you're friendly.

Always try the local food, unless it's the seafood, in which case avoid it like the plague, because it might actually have the plague.

It is never a bad idea to bring toilet paper with you. Always bring more than you think you'll ever need.

Likewise – when on an overnight train or bus or any situation where being sick would be unpleasant, bring way more medication than you would ever use, just in case. It's always worth it, even if you don't use it. Just think of the alternative.

Sweatiness is a state of being. Just accept the sweat. It will never, ever go away.

Hygiene standards are subjective. It's very difficult to care about bugs and lizards in the bathroom now. Flies covering your feet is also a state of being.

Absolutely terrible tan lines are still better than skin cancer.

It's okay to not want to eat dog, but just prepare yourself for the possibility that you've eaten it accidentally when you thought that the soup had pork in it.

I am incredibly, incredibly lucky to have been born in a place where I absorbed English at the same time that I was absorbing basic ideas about how the world worked, way at the beginning, when I had nothing better to do than to learn to speak, and walk, and eat. It's such a ridiculously useful language and so many people have to struggle to learn it.

Children are the same everywhere in the world, and you don't need to speak their language to know it.

Vegetarianism is by no means a universal concept.

There's a certain beauty to being a traveler – you make friends with people so quickly, and then when you leave them soon after, you'll most likely never see them again. There's also a certain sadness to that, because I love to hold on to the people I've met. It takes effort, but it's worth the effort, I think.

If you are unhappy with your situation, it's useless to sit around and complain about it. You have to make the most of it in whatever way you can. Sure, you can blame other people for disappointing you and leaving you in a bad situation, but it's no good to blame anyone if they're not going to fix it. In the end, you make your own decisions and you make your own happiness.

It's so easy to reach out to someone and give them a little kindness, but it means so, so much. We need more unconditional kindness in the world. If there's any one thing I'm taking away from this trip, it's that. I didn't know people could be so kind, so welcoming, so giving, even when they had so little. People aren't like that at home. I know many people at home who are lovely, lovely people, don't get me wrong, but we just don't approach hospitality the same way. There's no separation of private and public space in Vietnam, which can be infuriating when people crowd you and bump into you and ask you questions that are too personal, but it also means that all your troubles are their troubles, and they are willing to give you anything they have. I hope I can try to live more like that. Pay it forward, as Rob would say.

Something my mother taught me years ago, but it applies – like with kindness, it takes so little effort to show your appreciation for something, and it means so much when you do. Always say thank you.

I love everyone so much. (This I realized when I got home.)

My first night back

2008-08-22T04:17:00.001-07:00

Last night, I kept having dreams where I was stuck in an airport and couldn't leave. Just stuck, waiting and waiting. I wonder where in my subconscious this could have come from.

I'm home!

2008-08-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been in the US for almost two hours now, which is a wonderful feeling. Because I ended up flying Air France, the flights were actually really nice and I enjoyed them. Lots of space, good food (for airplane food, anyway) and my flight from Paris to NY was far from full so I had plenty of space. I managed to smuggle in my epic amounts of DVDs and my Vietnamese cooking supplies, no problem.

It was a relief just to be in the JFK airport - I could look around and know that the staff was American. It isn't a racist thing, it just is so much easier to deal with people who have been raised in the same culture you were, who speak and understand the language you do, who you have common ground with you don't have to dig for. It was great to see my dad (my mom had a meeting and my sister's in Ireland) and wonderful to see American highway signs and American traffic and the familiar streets and houses of my town, to smell the Pelham summer air and feel the Pelham summer heat. The air feels different from Vietnam, no question.

So now I'm going to take a decent shower and put on nice clothes, and get outside a little before I unpack and start to deal with my life again. Ohhh, it's good to be home.

By the way, this isn't the last post on this blog. There are probably a few loose ends to tie up before I can put this baby to sleep for good. So I'll see you all soon!

Pictures of the end

2008-08-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

My Epic Airport Nightmare

2008-08-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Okay. So the plan was to leave the Hanoi airport at 8:35 on a plane bound for Guangzhou, which connected to Beijing, and then from Beijing to DC, and then from DC to New York. 27 hours. Sounds fine. Sounds simple. So, so deceptively simple. So I arrive at the Hanoi airport at 6:30, ready to go. Lam comes with me because he's a good friend and wanted to see me off. I tried to get him not to come because it's so early to get up, but he was insistent and it turns out that it was the best thing that could possibly have happened, in these circumstances.

So I go to check in, expecting everything to be fine, and I have a hard time beliving it when the woman at the check in counter tells me that actually, to take a connecting flight from one airport in China to another requires a Chinese transit visa.

What.

So I can't take my flight.

I call my parents. They call United Airlines who confirm what we think: that to go through shouldn't require a visa because I'm catching a third flight out of the country and it's within 24 hours. Nevertheless. I talk to a representative from China Southern Airlines, who tries to be helpful and calls for me and tells me that, despite anything that makes sense, I still need a transit visa, and I shouldn't get on the plane because the Guangzhou airport can't guarantee that they can get one for me, and if they can't, I'd be shipped right back to Hanoi.

(Imagine this whole thing with me on and off the phone with my parents and Lam talking to various Airport people in Vietnamese, by the way – I could never have figured this mess out by myself.)

So I try to talk to the people who booked my flight over here, but their offices are closed. I go to the China Southern office to see if they can change my reservation to get me a new flight. It looks like they can't. My mom finds a possible new route through Thai airways leaving at 11:15 – Hanoi to Bangkok to Tokyo to San Francisco to New York. Okay. We go to the Thai Airlines office and find out that they don't sell tickets at the airport, and the ticketing office is 40 km away. We call the director of the Peace House who gets in contact with my father, and they decide to abandon the Thai plan and try to use the travel agent the Peace House usually deals with. The Thai Airlines people are nice and let us sit in their office. Meanwhile, my dad says that as a last resort we could possibly book with Air France and fly through Paris, so that by the end of my trip I'll have flown all the way around the world.

The only option seems to be getting a visa and doing the same Guangzhou-Beijing-DC-NY thing another day, so we head back over to China Southern. It turns out getting a visa is still no certain thing, and we don't know how long it will take, so they suggest taking a direct flight to Beijing, but the next one is on Friday morning. Please god, don't make me stay until Friday. I'm already here at the airport, I'm already ready to go. Come on, universe, cut me a break. I call my father and it turns out it would probably be easier to wait until Friday – I can fly from Beijing to DC and arrive in DC Friday night, and since I have to be in DC Saturday morning for a STAND conference, and my dad will be in DC on Friday to meet with the US Department of Energy, it would all work out nicely. Except for the fact that I won't be able to come home for another four days. But it looks like everything's worked out. So I hang up with my dad, and Lam and I trudge back outside to get a taxi to go back to the Peace House so that I can stay for another two nights before I actually leave.

I'm making my peace with it. I change some more dollars to dong so I have some money. Maybe tomorrow I can go see the Hai Ba Trung temple I never got to. We get a taxi for 200,000 VND, which isn's bad at all, and head away from the airport. Until my father calls me and tells me that actually, it would be more expensive somehow to switch my flights to Friday than it would to book the Air France thing today. So we tell the taxi to turn around and head back to the airport. When we get back, the taxi driver wants me to pay 150,000 VND - $9 – which is ridiculous because it's three-fourths of the price all the way back to Peace House and we were in the car for maybe ten minutes. He claims we went thirteen km. Uh huh, Sure. Apparently there's a higher charge for going two ways instead of just one way. Except that the two ways combined couldn't possibly be half the distance of going one way. Come on, people.

Lam argued with him for me for ten minutes or so – longer than we were in the car, probably – and I get really, really angry because, come on, can't something go right today? Please? And I offer him 100,000 just to leave us alone, but no, he won't back down. So eventually I just pay him because I feel bad that I'm making Lam argue for me, which isn't very fair to him, especially when he's been so incredibly helpful all day.

I go to the Air France office where I give them my confirmation number and for once, everything is fine, and the woman prints me a boarding pass, and I'm good to go, except for the fact that it's noon and my flight leaves at 7:45. But whatever. Doesn't matter. (Funnily enough, when I explained my situation to the woman there, she looked up airline policy and agreed that no, I shouldn't need a visa since I'm catching a connecting flight to another country within 24 hours. What the hell, China?)

And everything is set. I take a deep breath. Hug Lam goodbye. Thank him, thank him, thank him. He leaves. I find a cafe place, get some food, get some ice cream, use the internet. And here I am now. Six hours to go until my flight – Hanoi to Bangkok to Paris to Kennedy, arriving home Thursday morning. I think I'll just stay here and tell them to keep the ice cream coming – I've got lots of dong to get rid of now. Everything's going to be all right. At least, let's hope so.

I can't wait to be home. Where are ruby slippers when you need them?

My Last Day

2008-08-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

I started my day yesterday by filling in my evaluation form about the Peace House, where I was brutally honest about all its shortcomings, and then headed into the city center to buy a very extravagant amount of DVDs. 42 disks in total. I'm not even going to tell you how much it all cost. But way, way, way (way, way, way, way) less than it would in the US, I promise. I can't tell you everything I got, either, because a lot of them are presents for other people. I've bought so many presents, I'm so excited to give them to everybody, but my sister is getting back from Ireland on Sunday, so my family's going to wait until them and we're going to have a crazy Christmas-in-August gift-giving extravaganza.

Took a bus to the school, stopped at my little cafe where they know me as the odd foreigner girl who keeps showing up, and ordered my last tra Lipton sua – tea with milk – got some lunch, used their wifi. When I went to the school at 3:00, the teachers and the principal had a whole gift-giving goodbye ceremony. It was crazy. The teachers themselves gave me some small things, and then we went to see the principal and the school officially gave me some beautiful flowers (which I had to leave at the Peace House,) a cute little bag, and two packages of green bean cake candies which, upon later examination, are not green and taste like cookie dough. One package is gone – it disappeared mysteriously into the digestive systems of the Peace House people – and the other one is coming home with me. Apparently you're supposed to eat them with green tea, and fortunately a student gave me a package of green tea as a present.

I had bought the teachers some scarves in Hue, so I gave them to them, and then we went to my last class. Not much teaching was involved. The students gave me more little presents, more drawings of me (the girls draw in Japanese anime style, no surprise there,) some tea, a little canister of popcorn (which also disappeared mysteriously when I got back to Peace House.) I taught the kids how to sing the “I love you, you love me, we're a happy family . . .” song, wrote up my home address and email on the board – I'd love for them to write to me, and how cool would it be for them to have an American pen pal? They could brag to all their friends, except that their friends would also have an American pen pal. Maybe I'll try to play them off each other in my letters and cause trouble – and defined “miss” for them. They practiced their English goodbye-saying skills on me and I taught them that the proper way to use it is “I'll miss you very much,” not “I'll very very miss you.” And then we hugged and took pictures and it was all over.

At this point I thought I was going to leave, but I was mistaken. Remember Mrs. Binh and her son? Well, all day she'd been reminding me that I would email him after I got back to America, and after class she made it clear that she actually had him waiting at a cafe nearby to say goodbye to me. She asked me if I wanted to sit down for some orange juice, for chrissakes. I had made it very clear the day before that I absolutely could not spend time with her son today because I was very, very busy packing, so no! I can't stay! I'm sorry! I have to go home! So he waited with me at the bus stop – again – and I took a very crowded bus home toting a big bag heavy with gifts from the school, all the DVDs I bought, my flowers, and my handbag with my computer and a book in it. I don't think I would have made it if a nice older Vietnamese woman hadn't held my flowers for me.

Can I just say something here? This whole thing was cute at first, but it's just become annoying now. I like Mrs. Binh's son, but really. Please, just let it alone. Something like this would never happen in America.

I joked at the Peace House that she wanted me to marry him, but Lam shut me down immediately – oh no, Vietnamese mothers would never want their sons to marry foreigners. Ruin my fun, why don't you, Lam.

So my last night was nice. I managed to fit everything into my suitcase, left behind my sheets and towels and some bug spray and medical supplies and toilet paper for any other Peace House people who might want it, hung around and played memory with Simone, Lam, and some fun work camp people, and then everyone went up on the roof until around 1:00 AM, when I went to bed, and slept for four and a half hours, and it was time to get ready to go. But that's a whole other epic story. I can't wait to tell you.

So, she was trying to set us up.

2008-08-19T00:39:00.001-07:00

So yesterday I went on what I'm pretty sure Mrs. Binh wanted to be a date. It wasn't all that bad. When I was done teaching, she had a taxi waiting outside with her son sitting in it, and she shipped us off to West Lake, the biggest lake in Hanoi (and it's pretty big.) The taxi ride over was somewhat awkward because I was trying to make conversation but I think he's a bit shy, and I was also trying to gage what level of English he's at. It's always difficult to find the right way to speak so that you'll be understood but you won't be talking down to them. But it got better. After we arrived at the lake, he showed me around a beautiful pagoda there, and then we went over to a nice little ice cream place by the water and had some ice cream. They serve everyone the same thing – a little glass with one scoop chocolate, one scoop vanilla, and one scoop mint on top, with a little biscotti stick thing. The Vietnamese are very classy about their ice cream, I think. Presentation is key.

While we were sitting, the conversation got better. I don't think he understood everything I said, but I think we mainly communicated well. From what I can gather, he's very close to his mother and his brother (less so his father) and his grandmother, as well. He has no problem with expressing his love and affection for people, which is a nice change from American boys. Side note: in Vietnam, many families live with the paternal grandparents, and mothers-in-law will play a large part in raising children. We'll probably stay in touch using email. He also told me that he wants to study in American someday – a lot of Vietnamese people I've spoken to do, and they ask me about how much it costs, and I try very hard not to be discouraging. It costs a lot – but there are scholarships! There are student loans! I want them to succeed so badly, but I don't know how many of them will ever get there.

We talked about his school and he told me that there aren't many girls at his school because it's a school for gifted students and apparently not many girls can or want to study hard enough to go there. Which I took great offense at. Also, he said that the school focused on sciences and math, and they don't have a Vietnamese class (the equivalent of an English class in the US) and so girls wouldn't be as interested in attending. Which I also took offense to. But it's difficult to explain how social factors would cause girls to believe they cannot achieve as much in school and so not work as hard, or be discouraged from pursuing sciences, when you're speaking a high school student who only knows English from school.

So we got some food and then he called back the taxi we had used before. We waited around for the taxi for a while, and then when we got back to the school, he waited at the bus stop with me like gentleman. You don't understand how nice of a gesture this is until you've waited for a 13 bus at rush hour in Hanoi. It takes forever.

So I got home without incident, and spent the night with Peace House people. Two seventeen year olds from Hong Kong, originally from New York, can here together and were here about a week before I realized it because I was all off doing my own thing. We get along well and it's really nice to spend time with people my own age. And we hung out with the workcamp people as well, including a Japanese guy name Ichi (I have no clue how to spell it – pronounced Ee chee) who was hilarious and a lot of fun. You make friends so quickly here that you'll never see again. We all went down the street to a “karaoke bar” and karaoked to our hearts' contents. All in all, a very good day.

Discipline

2008-08-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Something I forgot to mention in a post last week: the way they discipline children in school. There's no corporal punishment - I've never seen them hit a kid - but they like to make them stand facing a corner for long period of time if they're bad. I've seen a girl who was forced to stand facing the window for a whole class period, balancing on one leg with her arms stuck out, because she talked too much. The individual teachers do the disciplining - the principal isn't involved in it.

I'm sitting in a cafe right now near the school, using their wifi on my lunch break. All cafes have simple things like lemon juice or orange juice - orange juice is generally around 25,000 dong a glass, or about $1.50, which compared to the $17 glasses of orange juice we got in Italy, seems pretty damn cheap. They always have tea, and you can order it hot, cold, and with or without milk. They use condensed milk, which they pour into the cup first, and then add the water and tea bag. It makes it really syrupy and sweet - lovely. Same with coffee. Lipton has a complete monopoly - your choices are always to order Lipton tea or Dilmah tea. The brand is synonymous with the kind of tea.

This afternoon, I was going to go buy some bootlegs but now apparently I've been roped into hanging out with Mrs. Binh's son. Okay then. I like him, and I don't mind spending time with him, but I hate when people decide what I'm going to do for me, especially when I already have my own plans. So I'll have to go tomorrow morning, and I guess try to pack tonight. The worst part is I can't even communicate to her that I want to go to buy gifts for my friends today, and tomorrow I won't have much time, because she has such a hard time understanding. People here want to give, give, give but it gets stressful trying to handle everything they're giving you.

What are you talking about? I'm totally 21.

2008-08-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday didn't exactly go as planned, but that's a good thing, not a bad thing. I met Lam at the Peace House and mentioned to him that I wanted to head out into Hanoi to get some lunch and then look for a present to buy my sister, maybe some jewelry, so he said that he knew a place and that he'd take me, and he also knew a good place to get Vietnamese food. Well, I'm never going to ignore advice from a native. So around quarter to eleven, we headed out on his motorbike – they're so much more fun to ride when you aren't dreading getting ripped off at the end – and he drove me around to his university, the University of Technology, I think it was, because it was on the way. All the buildings are big blocky structures, painted the same golden yellow color as every other building in Hanoi. Lam says that his university is very difficult to get into, but ultimately disappointing for the students, which is really a shame. He wants to go to graduate school in America – a lot of Vietnamese students I've spoken to do. The difference in tuition between Vietnam and America is huge, though. All the schools here are state-run, of course, and students only have to pay minimal tuition. It really seems like the government is training a super-generation to take over the country from them.

Then he took me to a little shop selling lots of cheap little trinkety things, rhinestone headbands and whatnot, which really wasn't what I was looking for, so I found a pretty (and cheap) pair of earrings and bought them to be polite. It doesn't even cost a dollar to not hurt someone's feelings. They actually are pretty – I'll probably keep them for myself.

Then he drove me over to the West Lake, which I had never seen before, and around to a small, crowded, and fantastic Vietnamese restaurant. It was pretty cheap, and looked exactly like every other small, cheap Vietnamese restaurant I'd seen, but the food was fantastic. I would be too scared to go into one of those places by myself – just because I wouldn't be able to communicate anything and the whole experience would probably be a failure – but with Lam, it was a lot of fun – and very good food!

A side note to what I just said: even though I'd still avoid going to one of those places, those really native places, I have learned to care a lot less about what people think of me. I've come to accept that here, I'm going to make a fool of myself at least once per day, doing something stupid or getting lost or having a misunderstanding. It's inevitable that people will stare or maybe laugh, and it's inevitable that I might have to ask someone for help, and that's the only way I'll get to where I need to go. Inevitably it will all work out. To quote someone I don't particularly want to emulate, I've relied (quite successfully) on the kindness of strangers.

Then he drove me over to Hoan Kiem Lake and we got some ice cream and sat around and talked. I love sitting by that lake. It's so, so beautiful, and when you're by the water, you can completely forget there's a city buzzing around you on all sides. Hanoi is like that. You'll walk down a street of shops and shouting and traffic and come across a door to a pagoda, traditional Vietnamese architecture, in the middle of a busy city street. Go in and there's a little bit of peace waiting right there.

He had to leave, so I went to a cafe nearby to take advantage of their wireless (I'd brought my laptop.) I ordered some “tropical fruit” ice cream and got a little cup with four scoops of different flavors. I have no clue what any of them were. Two were yellow-colored, one was pink, and one was purple. All were very good. Then I went and wandered until I found something to buy Maddy, and then went back to the lake to get a chance to sit and take stock (as surreptitiously as possible) of how much cash I had left. Not much, but that's okay. I want to go out for Indian food on Tuesday night, and other than that I want to blow all my extra money buying bootlegged DVDs. Mmm, piracy. Between the cooking supplies Mrs. Thanh gave me and these bootlegs, I'm going to become quite the smuggler coming home. Let's not even pretend I know how much money I spent here for filling out the customs form.

So the second I finish counting my money, a young Vietnamese man sits down next to me and asks me if he can talk to me. I hug my bag to my chest and ask if he wants to sell me anything. He says no, so we start to talk – and then a young Vietnamese girl sits down on the other side of me and asks to talk to me. Everyone in Vietnam is studying English, and everyone needs to practice on real people. They do fine on paper but when it comes to speaking and listening, they generally have trouble. So then another young man comes and sits with us. Three people total. Insane. More lies, more lies. No matter how much evidence I get that people like this are friendly and mean no harm, my New York instincts won't leave me alone.

When I took the bus home to Peace House, the girl sitting behind me on the bus asked to talk to me as well. Jesus christ. So I said sure, and we began to chat, and she actually called me out on it when I said I was twenty-one (which wasn't a shock – who in the world would believe I'm twenty-one?) but I refused to give in – she was getting off soon anyway.

The buses home were lovely today – I guess it's Sunday so not as many people had to commute to/from school/work. I actually enjoy being on the buses, when I can sit down and it's not so crowded that I can't see out the window to check if it's my stop, or actually get to the door in time when I realize that it is.

I use hyphens way too much when I write. I'll have to do something about that.

Tomorrow's my last full day of teaching, and then Tuesday I'm teaching the Special Children again, and then we all say good bye. The time's gone by so, so fast.

So, apparently . . .

2008-08-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

The movie I saw on the bus is called either Lord of the Wu Tang or The Kung Fu Cult Master. It was supposed to be a trilogy but it was so bad that the other two movies were never made. Pity, really. I think I need to buy it now and make all my friends watch it.

Pictures from Hue

2008-08-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Saigon

2008-08-17T00:30:00.001-07:00

Hue Day 2

2008-08-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

I got up in time for an 8:00 boat ride down the Perfume River to see some tombs and pagodas that lay a bit outside of the city. The people coming to pick me up were late, so I actually got there around 8:40, just when people on the boat were starting to complain about the boat leaving late. It was hot on the boat until it started moving, and then the breeze from the river was very cool and nice.

Emily and Sam from the bus happened to be on the same boat, so I spent most of the day with them. Another new set of friends, another new set of lies. Oh, how good I'm getting. This time, I was nineteen years old, going to Williams (a school I know something about but it's likely they haven't heard of) and didn't know what my major was. What classes are you taking? Oh, a little bit of everything. I explained how the American college system and liberal arts education worked, which seemed to mystify them – apparently in British schools you really only study one subject your whole way through.

We saw the Thien Mu pagoda – on a hillside overlooking the river, with a large, octagonal tower and then temples and gardens stretching back for a long way. Monks actually live and work there and seem to be operating a school. I wonder how they feel about tourists tromping all over their home every day. The pagoda also had on display the car that Thich Quang Duc drove in to the site where he committed self-immolation. They had a picture.

We also went to see some of the royal tombs, which were incredibly beautiful. The emperors actually spent time at their tombs while they were still alive, using them as quiet places to relax and compose poetry and whatnot. The tombs take up a lot of space because there are many buildings involved – the actual tomb, temples, tombs for mothers and wives and children, a courtyard for ceremonies, and ponds and moats and pathways. Extremely beautiful, extremely peaceful. Not bad for a final resting place. It makes the Egyptian pyramids seem positively tacky in comparison. They just seem to be saying, look how much power I commanded while I was alive, that I could force slaves to build this for me. Just big blocks of stone – power, blunt force, indestructibility.

It makes me wonder about the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh's body is kept in a large, imposing, stone block of a building. Just cold, hard stone. That seems to be the message the Vietnamese Communists are sending about HCM and what he represents. There's no grace there, no consideration about giving him a beautiful, peaceful place to put his soul at rest (never mind the fact that he himself wanted to be cremated.) There's just a bold, blunt statement by the Communist party.

When we got back on the boat to return, I was getting anxious, because it was three o'clock and I was told to be at the travel agency to catch the bus at five-thirty. Our guide assured me that it would only take two to two and a half hours to get back (!) and I spent those two hours hoping and praying. We hit the dock at five on the nose, I ran to the hotel, got my backpack, ran to the travel agency, and got there, sweating and gross, at 5:18. Go me.

The bus back to Hanoi was very frustrating. For some reason, they wouldn't let me sleep on the bottom bunk. I don't know. So it was even more difficult to find a comfortable position up top when I was always terrified I was going to fall off. I could barely get any sleep. The only redeeming factor was the movie they played – this crazy Chinese Kung Fu movie about Mo Kei trying to avenge his parents' deaths and taking control of the Ming Sect, set in a crazy fake Ancient Chinese time. There's the running theme throughout that you cannot trust a woman, except of course Siu Chiu, who's adorable and lovely and Mo Kei falls in love with. She says she's a maid, but I think there's something she isn't telling us, because she was locked in unbreakable chains by Mo Kei's grandfather, and she knows all these crazy secrets, apparently because someone “told” them to her. Right. Then there's No Mercy, some sort of fighting Buddhist nun with a crazy sword, and whenever she shows up, everyone says, “Damn nun!”

The quality of the movie was terribly, so a lot of the time it was hard to tell what was going on. All the female characters keep the same elaborate hairstyles the whole movie, though, and they always look perfect even after being in battle, so it makes it very easy to identify female characters. All the old men have the same crazy long white beards, eyebrows, and mustaches, so that's a bit more difficult. The problem was that the credits rolled without anything being resolved, so I assume this is the first part of the series. I need to find out what it is and watch the rest of it. It's so crazy but Mo Kei and Siu Chiu are so cute.

The bus dropped us off in Middle-of-Nowhere, Hanoi, so I took an overpriced motorcycle ride back to Peace House, where the lovely man didn't even see fit to give me correct change, so there you go. I was very annoyed and discouraged, especially by the fact that there wasn't any water, so I had to use the spare water in a big plastic barrel to wash myself. It turned out not being too bad, because the water was the perfect temperature to cool down with but not freeze, and it's always refreshing to dump a big plastic saucepan-full of water over your head when you're a bit upset. Clean, dry clothes, a fan, and everything is all right. There's no internet either, so later, I'm going to head into Hanoi, stop at a restaurant with Wifi, get a nice lunch, post this, post some pictures, check up on things on the home front, and then go wander and look for some last-minute gifts for people. Writing this has calmed me down and I feel better. So now I think I'll take a nap. Good bye.

Hue Day 1

2008-08-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

So I took a sleeper bus to Hue (pronounced “Hway”) on Thursday night. I had a good time on the way there – I slept fine for the most part, and it took a while for the novelty to wear off. I met two nice British backpackers, Emily and Sam – they're just friends, mind you – and we talked for a little bit while we waited for the bus to arrive. It's nice to have been here for so long that I can actually comment on travel and the experience here. My first few days in Hanoi, I really didn't talk much because I had so little to say that was relevant. Now I have stories to tell and opinions to give to the newcomers. Oh, how the tables have turned.

They packed us onto the sleeper bus like sardines. The beds weren't fully flat – they were like chaise lounges, so that your back was angled up from your legs, so that they could fit more leg room for the person behind you under your back. Meanwhile, the backpack I was traveling with was too small to put in the storage compartment under the bus so I had to stuff it down with my legs. I still managed to sleep well, though. And the lack of curtains meant that I woke up when the sun rose, which was beautiful.

So when I arrived in Hue, around 9:00 in the morning, I didn't need to stop to take a rest at my hotel or anything. I checked in, took a much needed shower, loaded up on eggs and cheese and bread, and got going. The people at reception were very, very friendly and helpful. I rented a bicycle from them for the day and headed off towards the Imperial City with a 1.5 L water bottle in the basket. It didn't stay cold for very long. The temperature had to be at least 90 degrees, at 10:00 in the morning.

Hue is divided by the Perfume River (Apparently it's a mistranslation, since the river itself doesn't smell particularly like anything.) The part south of the river is the more modern part, and that's where most of the hotels and nice restaurants are. The part north of the city is mostly made up of the citadel, a square, walled-in area. To get inside the citadel, you have to bike across a bridge to the other side of the river, and then enter across a moat through a large gate in the wall. It's all very official and imposing. I was very impressed. And then inside the citadel, it just looks like a normal Vietnamese city, with dust and poverty and people selling you bananas and pho. Except that within the first wall, there's a smaller walled-off section – the Imperial Enclosure. This was built by the emperors of the last Vietnamese dynasty, the Nguyen Dynasty, in the early 1800s. It's solely for the emperor and his court, with homes for his family, temples, and buildings where official functions were held. Many of the buildings were destroyed by natural disasters or war, but the Vietnamese have restored a lot of them. They're so beautiful now that it's hard to imagine how beautiful they were originally. I'll post pictures later. It's funny, though – even though the recognize the potential of Hue as a tourist site, they don't seem to care particularly about protecting the parts that are still ruins. You can just go tromping around through broken stone, and I swear people are living in some of the abandoned houses.

I spent a few hours exploring there, and by then I was exhausted and tired (so hot!) so I went back to my hotel for a bit of a nap, and figured out what else I wanted to do with my day. I knew I wanted to buy some presents for some of the staff members at Peace House and the people I worked with at the school, so I asked the people at reception and they told me that there were lots of souvenir places around the river. I went out walking and exploring – it was lovely to walk along the river – but funnily enough, there really wasn't anything by the river itself. Just hotels, really. So I crossed the river to go to the Dong Ba Market, the biggest market in Hue. I love exploring markets – it's a lot of fun to see all the crazy stuff on sale – and honestly, I'm getting so sick of people asking me to buy from them like I owe them something that I've started to enjoy saying no. Except I'll never enjoy saying no to motorbike and taxi drivers – I just wish I didn't have to deal with them at all. They were worse in Hue than in Hanoi – I was never left alone for an instant.

But in the market, I bought a few cheap wooden bracelets, and then when I worked my way to the silk section, a woman grabbed me and started chatting in a friendly way, and then started wrapping something silk around me, and I firmly said no and asked her if she had silk scarves. She wanted to sell me three for 900,000 dong, which was ridiculous, and I said that the max I would pay was 300,000 (around $18.) She gave in when I started to walk away, but did not look happy about it.

After that, I crossed the bridge again and sat in a nice little sculpture garden by the river for a while, watching the sun set. Except for occasionally being harassed by people asking me if I wanted to take a boat ride – one hour! very cheap! - it was very peaceful. Then when it was getting dark, I made my way back to my hotel, relaxed for a little while, and turned on the TV, which is hardly ever a good idea in Vietnam. First I got kind of entranced by this Vietnamese music video about a man at a restaurant with one girl when the girl he's in love with shows up. It got pretty annoying because both of the girls were pouty and irritating, and his hair was just awful. Switch. Found a Korean TV show with English subtitles set in some time in the Imperial past that was pretty entertaining, but not in a “so bad it's good” way. When that ended, I was getting hungry, so I ventured back out to a restaurant Lonely Planet recommended.

It was very nice – live Vietnamese music (with no familiar instruments – one woman who also sang used a kind of castanets that looked like two small teacups in each hand she would clink together,) a friendly waitress who liked to chat – and the food was very good. I got the Hue version of beef noodle soup, which I eat every chance I get, and Hue “cake,” which was this sort of circle of fried dough folded over to make a pocket, full of bean sprouts and egg. Peanut dipping sauce. Very tasty. By the time I got back to my hotel, it was around nine, and I was exhausted.

Money Money Money

2008-08-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

My dad sent me some money via Western Union, and picking it up worked extremely smoothly. I already knew where to find a Western Union because there was one in the bank where I picked up my ATM card, but I saw at least four just on the bus ride into the city. And then on my way from the bus stop to the bank, I found another one, so I stopped there. Went t0 the hostel where the bus to Hue is picking me up, dropped my stuff - I have a few hours until the bus comes - and went to look for the internet cafe where, coincidentally, I am now, and I saw at least four more on the way here. Insane.

When I'm in Hue, I definitely need to buy lots of presents for the wonderful people I've met here that have been so kind and helpful - the teachers I work with and some of the staff at the Peace House. I'm leaving in a week, and I'm already starting to be sad that I'm going. There have been a lot of problems here, and my living conditions haven't always been lovely, and hell is probably defined in the dictionary as taking the 57 bus in Hanoi at 6:30 in the morning, but I love being in Vietnam, I love the people I've come to know, I love the children I work with. All the girls in my advanced class adore me and bring me presents and draw me pictures. They're all so sweet and adorable (yes, even the boys) and I wish I could stay longer to watch them grow with their English. They're so talented and enthusiastic - I'm sure they'll go far.

But lately I've been forgoing Vietnamese food in favor of PB+Js. I do miss home.

Becca asked me if the language barrier is a huge problem. It is and it isn't. It's frustrating to be talking to the teachers at the school because they aren't nearly fluent, so we can't just have a fast conversation about things that aren't important. Everything takes longer than it's worth to find vocabulary everyone understands and speak slowly enough so they'll understand it. For all you Lord of the Ringers out there, it's like Treebeard said - "It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say." Sometimes I'll mention something unimportant in passing and then end up spending ten minutes trying to explain it.

But the people at Peace House speak really good English - they understand pretty much anything I say, at regular speed. I didn't realize how much about communication I took for granted - it's really a miracle that people can speak to each other at a fairly rapid pace and be understood completely, and get a correct answer back. A lot of the time, the trouble isn't when you're talking to someone who doesn't know English - then, you're usually trying to buy something and smiles and sign language do fine - it's when you're speaking to someone who knows English badly, and you need to get information out of them. They'll give you an answer, but chances are they don't understand the question and have given you the wrong answer.

So, my bus leaves around 6:00 tonight, and I get in at Hue at 9:00 tomorrow morning. I want to see the old citadel and the tombs around Hue, and maybe a museum or two. I'm very excited to go. And then I get back Sunday morning, teach Monday and Tuesday, and leave Vietnam for good Wednesday morning. Wednesday night New York time, I'll be home.

Tidbit for Alliana

2008-08-14T02:38:00.000-07:00

Most Vietnamese people don't like cheese, because they just don't really do dairy - it doesn't really factor into their cuisine at all - and they're all really concerned with avoiding fattening foods. The only cheese I've really come across here is Laughing Cow, and apparently that's because Laughing Cow was invented by the French f0r French soldiers in Vietnam, because they needed a cheese that didn't need to be cold to be preserved that could be packaged so that it could be opened and eaten without soldiers' dirty hands touching the cheese. Aren't the French brilliant?

Hospitality Part 2: Definite pros

2008-08-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, I taught another extra class for the smart kids in the morning, which was so much fun because they're so enthusiastic and they like me a lot, which is always nice. And then Mrs. Thanh, who I teach with on Wednesdays as well as during the special classes, took me to her home for lunch. It looked like her family had more money than Mrs. Binh's family, but it was still a small place on a dirty street. She had prepared these spring roll things ahead of time, she just needed to fry them and whatnot, so I met her children and tried to speak to them for about an hour while she got everything ready. I had really enjoyed speaking to Mrs. Binh's son, but Mrs. Thanh's children, a daughter that's 12 and a son that's 15, didn't seem really interested in attempting to talk to me. I'm guessing it's just something their mother forced them to do.

She served a really, really good meal – fried pork spring rolls and rice noodles, with a little bowl of sauce that you dip everything into. So good. And then afterwards, she took about an hour to try to tell me how to make it, so that I could make it for my family when I got home. We had some trouble trying to translate the names of some ingredients, but I think it'll all work out. She even gave me some rice paper and this sort of fungus to use, so I'll be smuggling those into the US. Hopefully she hasn't given me some illegal kind of shrooms. I swear, officer, I thought they were Vietnamese spring roll tree fungus!

She was plying me with fruit all the while, and I tasted jackfruit, as well as this melon kind of thing, and she gave me some melons to take back to Peace House, as well as a dragon fruit, which is the coolest looking thing ever, even if it doesn't taste like much. I had a wonderful afternoon – I loved spending time in a real Vietnamese home and getting to know this woman outside of the school setting. She's so warm and welcoming and lovely – as are so many Vietnamese people I've come to know.

Today, during lunch, a student teacher who's been working in our class invited me to her house for lunch. Three homes in three days – I'm not doing so badly for myself. She took me to her apartment where she lives with her husband, her baby, her mother-in-law, who takes care of the baby while she's working, and her brother. It's on the fourth floor, and it's very small, with sparse furniture. Vietnamese beds don't really seem to have mattresses. The baby played on a sort of straw mat on the floor in the bedroom, the same straw mat where we ate. There was a small kitchen and another small bedroom.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to insult these people by describing their homes. I'm just trying to give an accurate picture of what they were like. It was very difficult for me to be there because I'm constantly aware of the difference in our situations – just the fact that I can go to Vietnam to work without pay shows that I have much more money than they'll ever have. I take for granted so many things that they can't afford, or will never experience. And yet they are the kindest, most welcoming, most generous people. You don't find people like that in New York. Always so incredibly giving.

We played with the adorable baby while her mother in law made lunch, and then we ate. Chicken on the bone cut into chopstickable size, tofu, some kind of sprout vegetable, rice. The idea is you eat out of a small bowl that you just keep refilling until you're done. I couldn't quite master eating chicken off the bone with chopsticks, and eventually just gave up and used my hands. Babies, I was told, learn how to use chopsticks when they're two years old.

After lunch, she had to take care of the baby so she told me to lie down on the bed and sleep. I read for a little while, and then took a nap. Mmm.

When I was leaving the school for the day today, Mrs. Thanh asked me if I could maybe look over some English practice her son was doing and do some of the exercises he couldn't for him. After some initial confusion – I thought she was asking me to do his homework for him, and I have never done someone's elses homework for them and don't intend to start now – I figured out that it was practice outside of school, and agreed to do it. It took me no time at all, and it's the least I can do, after how kind she's been. I'm leaving to go to Hue tomorrow night, so I'll have to buy them all some presents to thank them for everything.

Communism? What communism?

2008-08-13T06:11:00.002-07:00

Let me tell you something about the state of communism in Vietnam: it is clearly dead. Materialism is rampant. Everyone has something to sell. Everyone is out to make as much money as they can, and it's never more clear than in the tourism industry. Everyone wants to rip the foreigners off. And whatever happened to class equality? You'll see regular people with awful, disgusting long fingernails – even people like cab drivers – who keep them that way just to show that they aren't farmers. No one respects the farmers, who probably work harder than anyone to produce the food they all eat. It's pretty ridiculous. The only aspect of Communism that survives is the authoritarianism. Even though Vietnam isn't the scary police state everyone thinks it will be when they first get here – the police don't follow you down the street or have raids on the Peace House – everyone is very accustomed to being told what to do. Even students are studying things they don't enjoy because that is what they must do to help Vietnam. I'm actually not clear on whether they can choose what university to go to or whether it's decided for them. No one can give me a clear answer.

My ATM kerfuffle

2008-08-13T06:11:00.001-07:00

So, Monday after work, I went to the city center to do some errands - found a bus that went right to Hoan Kiem Lake, a nice central location, and got off near an ATM, got some money, went to pick up the dress I bought on Thursday but was having altered (which fits perfectly now) and then up to a hostel where I could book a round trip sleeper bus to Hue. Hue is right in the center of Vietnam, and it was the old imperial capital for a thousand years before the French arrived. I'd wanted to go as a sort of abstract thing, but figured it was too far for a weekend until Sydney told me it had only taken her an overnight bus. So I'm going, which is exciting. On the way there, I stopped at a silk store because I can never help myself when it comes to looking through all the beautiful clothing, and bought a gorgeous silk shirt for $14.

And then, when I was paying for my bus tickets, I realized my ATM card was gone. I forgot to get it back after withdrawing money.

Raced back to the ATM, panicking, hoping some kind soul had handed it in to someone instead of stealing my money and running away. Got to the ATM. Card is of course gone. Go into the post office – the ATM's outside a post office – to ask about it. Get a very unclear answer. Get on the bus to go home. When my parents call as scheduled, tell them to cancel the ATM account. Get home, tell everyone what happened. I am informed that my card can't have been stolen because these days, ATM machines swallow the cards to prevent any such thing from happening.

Breathe.

Call my parents. Go back the next day, after work and lunch at Mrs. Thanh's house (another story for another entry.) Get the card back fine. Call my dad to tell him. He calls Chase to reactivate the account, Chase tells him I have to call and do it myself. He gives me the information. I meant to call that night, but I got involved in other things and forgot.

So I called tonight – had to call on my US sim card, of course, and spend ridiculous amounts of money – just to find out that I can only reactivate it within 48 hours. So now I have no ATM card. After all that time and effort and money on the call. So my dad's gonna figure out how to wire me money. Yesterday I was sure this story had a happy ending and everything tied up neatly. Oh well.

Pros and Cons of Hospitality

2008-08-13T06:00:00.001-07:00

So Monday began my fullest week of teaching yet – four days! The scandal! During morning break, I make the mistake of telling Mrs. Binh I was a little tired because of the whole return flight adventure and getting up so early in the morning. I complain all the time at home, and so does everything else, but that doesn't mean we want to do anything about it. Soon she was suggesting I take the day off and go home, or that I sleep through a class or something, and I tried to explain that I was here for such a short time that I wanted to teach all I possibly could and so no, I wanted to stay. Oh, it was horrible. She ended up bringing a portable bed sort of thing into the teachers' sitting room for me to sleep during the three hour break, even though I didn't want to.

She invited me to her house for the last hour of break, so after I ate lunch I went for a walk to explore the area around the school, and then came back fifteen minutes before she said we would go and pretended that I had been sleeping the whole time. I thought the area wasn't very nice but it looks like I was wrong. There are lots of cafes, and not-very-nice apartment buildings – but no one in the area has much money at all – and then some nice clothing stores, and even a store where they hand-make pillows and things to order. These places are awful because it's so tempting to order something just to have something hand-made just for you. I had to keep reminding myself, I don't need any pillows. I could probably get pillows cheaper at home if I needed them. These are not special Vietnamese pillows.

Mrs. Binh drove me to her home on her motorbike, stopping on the way to pick up a photographer she had hired, I suppose. I met her sons there – one of whom is seventeen – and we chatted for a while. Her house, like other Vietnamese city homes, doesn't really have a front wall, just a front gate. All city buildings are very narrow and then go back a long way. They pull their motorbikes right into the fronts of their houses. I've been in three Vietnamese homes so far, all of teachers, and none of them seem to have very much money at all. But Mrs. Binh had chocolates, and little cake things, and - I had mentioned earlier in the day that I liked apples – she had apples for me! It was so nice to have them – I love them and they're so comforting and familiar among all this crazy colorful fruit.

So I chatted with her son, who seemed genuinely interested in talking with me, which was nice. He's going to some kind of high school for gifted students, and is studying IT. I'm not sure how the Vietnamese education system works but students specialize in a subject while they're still in high school, and then they go to a university for a particular subject. More on that later. So he goes to school from 7:00 to 12:00 and then has the rest of the day to do homework (and of course play World of Warcraft.) We traded emails and he chatted with me later on gmail, which was cool. It's difficult to have a casual, friendly conversation with someone who doesn't speak the language very fluently, though – I always find myself asking all these stupid, awful, basic questions that would be insulting someone's intelligence to ask at home, just because it's the only way to really talk to people. I'd love to have a real, in-depth conversation, but because of the language barrier, it's impossible.

But Mrs. Binh was lovely, and it was clear this meant a lot to her, and I was really touched – these people just take you to their hearts so quickly.

Saigon Part 2

2008-08-13T05:01:00.001-07:00

So, after our tour we went back to our hotel room and collapsed for a little while. When we had gotten the energy to get out of bed and showered, we checked her Lonely Planet (everyone here lives on their Lonely Planets, or, if you're me, Lonely Planets you occasionally steal from other people) and found a nice French restaurant to go try. We got the woman at the front desk to show us the way on a map, and found our way there, past a park where couples on motorbikes seemed to be hanging out, past a huge bus depot, past large, shiny buildings and into an area that seemed to be solely devoted to bootlegged CDs and cheap electronics, into a nice restaurant district. Of course the restaurant was full and too expensive to be worth waiting for – once something gets into a Lonely Planet, the prices shoot skyward – so we found a nice place nearby that had good old hearty western food, and I had myself some fajitas while Sydney enjoyed some pasta. I have to warn you – this was not a Vietnamese weekend in terms of food.

The next day, we decided to explore a bit on our own, so we did a walk that was suggested in Sydney's National Geographic guide, past all these beautiful old French hotels from Saigon-that-was and normal office buildings that used to house the CIA or something during the war. You can't escape the past in this city. Saigon is a modern city that still conspicuously bears the scars of its history; Hanoi's history seems to be blended in with the present. Hanoi is what it is – thoroughly Vietnamese, thoroughly in transition all the time. There is no absolute “now” and “then.” We also saw a lovely mosque that was tucked away between two city buildings - a bright blue mosque – and walked up to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, which was supposed to be very beautiful.

On our way to the pagoda, we were looking for somewhere to stop to get a drink and a snack, and found the most adorable little ice cream diner in the entire world. The place was all pink and green – Maddy would be in heaven – and they had big comfy booths with pillows everywhere. The had about thirty different ice cream dishes you could get, including a mickey mouse ice cream, which is exactly what it sounds like, and a Venetian gondola ice cream, and a painter's palette ice cream – which is served in a dish like a palette with ice cream scoops where the paint would be. I, of course, ordered the Mickey Mouse. Sydney got a big pineapple bowl full of fruit and fruit-flavored ice cream. Almost the highlight of the Saigon trip.

So we found our way to the Pagoda, but we were surprised because again, it was just tucked away into a little corner of the city. It reminded me of Catholicism in a lot of ways – there were several altars to different . . . gods, I suppose? It was a Taoist pagoda – cluttered with all these religious objects and offerings. They sold incense there for people to burn – there's always a profit to be made in religion. In the Notre Dame cathedral we went to the day before, a statue of Mary had a neon, flashing halo, and, in that vein, a statue in the pagoda had plenty of flashing neon lights, including a neon swastika. I know it's an old Buddhist symbol, but it's still pretty jarring to see it flashing at you.

The best part of the pagoda was probably the architecture of the roof, which was very elaborate, with sculpture everywhere. When we left the pagoda, it was time for lunch, so we went straight back to the little ice cream place, ordered croque monsieurs and fries, and then more ice cream. Mm-mmm. Good day. And then it was time to head back to our hotel and catch planes home. We were on different flights, and mine ended up being delayed an hour because another plane headed to Hanoi had technical difficulties and had to turn back. In typical Vietnamese fashion, no one wanted to give me a direct answer about anything, if they could speak enough English to do it, so I just had to wait and figure out for myself what was going on and when I could board the plane. And then it took forever to get in the air, and even when it was in the air, everyone was loud and disturbing and awful. Ugh. Did I mention I hate Vietnamese transportation? And when I got off the plane, the man I had been sitting next to took pictures of me on his phone.

One skill I've perfected while I've been here: sitting still, keeping quiet, and accepting that I cannot change the conditions I am in. There is no point in getting angry. It won't help anything. Just smile and close your eyes, and eventually your plane will land and you can get to bed.

Do you know California?

2008-08-12T08:16:00.001-07:00

Saigon was pretty awesome. (It's officially called Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone still uses Saigon. Calling it Ho Chi Minh City after the war was over just seems like an awful slap in the face.) It was annoying to get there, though – Vietnam is wonderful, but the transportation to get anywhere almost makes it not worth it. No matter what kind of transportation it is – bus, train, plane – it's loud, and crowded, and people push you, and have no concept of personal space. Ugh.

I got to the airport three hours before my plane left because a staff member from Peace House was going to pick someone else up at the airport anyway, so hey, free ride. I had to wait to check in for an hour, so I sat down on a bench next to these four large black men who were asleep, and when a fifth came to sit down, I got up to go because I thought there wasn't room, but he insisted there was and so we struck up a conversation. It turns out they're all Nigerian and they're here because they want to import Vietnamese cosmetics to Nigeria. He asked me how old I was and I lied, as usual, but it's getting very annoying to lie because when you're talking to someone who's better educated and knows more English and you say you're 20 or 21, they ask you where you go to school and what your major is and blah blah blah, and you have to invent a whole life story that is probably very easy to see through.

The man mentioned that Vietnamese people were staring at him because he was black, and when he said that, I had a very odd experience that I have never had before and might never again – I felt a shared experience with this African man because of our races. Vietnamese people stare at both of us because we both look very very conspicuously different from them. I've never felt like a minority before in my life, and it's been a very strange experience. I'll never get used to people staring at me like I'm an exotic animal in the zoo. Whenever I catch people staring, I smile so that I turn into a person. But that doesn't always work. No matter how much I smile, when I walk down the street, everyone can look at me and know that I'm an outsider. I don't think I could ever get used to that.

The plane didn't board until five minutes before it was supposed to leave, which was nerve wracking, and besides the fact that I was next to a woman with two young children on the plane, who kept eating Choco Pies and watching Asian Power Rangers on a portable DVD player, the ride was fine. Two hours – and it felt much shorter. Sydney was waiting for me at the airport, where a van from the hotel picked us up. We got out first view of Saigon at night – wide streets, endless motorbikes, tall sleek buildings and bright neon-colored signs. Definitely not Hanoi.

Our hotel was fine – we fell into bed – and breakfast was nice – bread, egg, jam, banana – and then we booked a tour that left at 8:30. It was definitely worth it because we got taken around in an air-conditioned bus, and didn't have to bother finding our way. All the sights in Saigon are very conflict-heavy – either they're explicitly about the American war or the French war, or they have conflict implied. We went to see the War Memorial Museum – very, very explicitly about war, obviously, with awful, brutal pictures of US soldiers doing terrible things and children who are deformed because of Agent Orange. The pictures were powerful enough to speak for themselves, but the Vietnamese government wouldn't settle for that – oh no, they added the most descriptive captions they could, loaded with adjectives and adverbs like “brutally” and “cruel.” Lovely. We went to Reunification Palace, which was not a very attractive place, to be honest – the décor was a mix between awful,tacky seventies design and Asian design. And then we went places like Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Post Office, which was built by Eiffel, and drove past lots of other French buildings – the beauty of the architecture seems like a cruel reminder the French planted in Vietnam. It's the same with all the American culture and good that are here. Maybe Vietnam kicked out the French and the Americans, but France and America survived without controlling Vietnam, so much so that France and America and still integral parts of Vietnam, culturally if not politically.

The tour guide was very talkative, and asked us where we were from. I said America, and he said, “From California?” No, New York. “Oh. Do you know California?” Oh dear. And when Sydney told him she was from Canada: “Oh, from Quebec?” No. Toronto. So Sydney and I spent the rest of the trip going, “Do you know California?” “No, do you know Quebec?”

We stopped at a pretty amazing (and amazingly crowded) market for about an hour, selling everything from food to cloth to kitchen supplies, and Sydney bought a little Vietnamese coffee maker that sits on top of you mug and makes the coffee right into the mug, and then we went around sampling Vietnamese candy, bought some cashews, and some peanut brittle type stuff. For lunch, we went off and got some pho, and then ate all the cashews.

The part of the tour that really annoyed me was when we were taken to a lacquer workshop with handicapped workers - “Handicapped Handicrafts” - cute, right? It was interesting to see how the lacquer was made, but of course they just want to sell us things and the lacquer work they had on sale was overpriced and clearly just for tourists. They also took us to a place that sold silk embroidery, which was beautiful, but the cheapest thing on sale was for $4,000, so I think we were taken with the understanding that it was out of our range.

I have to get to sleep so I can be conscious tomorrow morning. So tomorrow, I'll finish up about the Saigon trip, and then tell the good folks at home about my ATM card kerfuffle, among other things.

Pictures from the school and the One Pillar Pagoda

2008-08-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

Hanoi in the rain

2008-08-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

After working at the school yesterday, Noel and I took the bus to the One Pillar Pagoda, which was a lovely building but much smaller than I had thought it was. It's a Buddhist temple rising on one pillar out of a square fishpond with lily pads and goldfish. It was destroyed as this arbitrary act of cruelty by the French, so this is a rebuilt one.

It was raining, but we didn't want to take a taxi, so we took a cyclo, one of those things where the man is on a bicycle behind a seat with a little canopy on top. Fun, but even with the plastic sheet he put on our laps, rather wet. We went to a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant, because Noel's vegetarian, and it was very, very good, and very, very cheap. I got some "beef" and "catfish" that tasted very good and remarkably like beef and catfish, as well as these crazy good potato things called snow balls. I was very surprised at some of the food they have here - potato, and also pumpkin, which shows up as "pumskin" on menus sometimes.

Then, in the pouring rain, we went to the hotel/travel agency/internet cafe where Noel was booking a trip to Korea, so I took advantage of the internet there while he dealt with travel things, and then we went to this little "shop" where you could get tall cups full of fruit they pour yogurt on and give you some crushed ice to add. I'm still having trouble adjusting to Vietnamese fruit. Sitting eating our fruit, we watched the people in who ran this shop and their customers eating their fruit, living their lives in this sad, dirty little bit of storefront, with their altar to their ancestors in the back, and Noel began talking about how he thinks these people are happier that people in the west. Because they live simply, by their traditions, and they don't know that there are things to want, but in the West, everyone can experience so much that they've had a lifetime of experiences by the time they're thirty, and are unhappy because they want more more more but there isn't more for them, and more will never make them happy. I don't know. I think it's an oversimplification to assume that impoverished Vietnamese people are happier than rich Western people. I also think Noel is a very deeply unhappy person. It's a complicated question, and there is no simple answer. Maybe I would be happier if I lived in a little village never knowing their was life outside of simple traditions, but I would never choose to live that way. That kind of happiness come along with ignorance - it chains you down.

We parted ways after that and I went walking (in the rain) down to the Revolution Museum, puttered around there for a little while. I get annoyed at all these Vietnamese museums because the exhibits are filled with random objects from people's lives, many of which I assume are fake - "This is the teapot Blah Blah Blah used the night before he signed the treaty of Blah Blah Blah" and things like that - along with photographs and documents that are very interesting, that they provide captions for, but they don't give you any kind of context to put it all in. They need to put up those big blocks of text on the wall that explain the history behind it - the point of a museum is to learn.

I was going to meet people from the peacehouse at the north end of Hoan Kiem Lake at 6:30, and the museum was south of the lake, so I worked my way back up and found this little clothing store where I bought this sort of dress-jacket thing. I felt terrible trying anything on because I was all wet and sweaty from the rain and walking around. The shoulders are a bit too wide, so they're taking them in for me at no extra cost. This is the kind of thing you can do everywhere in Vietnam. It's wonderful. So I'm going back to pick it up next week.

Then I found this random street market, with enough awnings to almost cover the whole street from the rain, and wandered through it. They were selling everything - live fish, live turtles, little bags of spices, chopsticks, bowls of different kinds of rice and grain, all kinds of meat, flowers, pastries, little fried things, everything. It was very narrow and crowded, but people were still riding their motorbikes through, very slowly, stopping every so often to do their shopping.

I found a stall selling some English language books and bought When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, found my way out of the make of stalls, and made my way to the north end of the lake. Found a little cafe near our meeting point that was out of the rain, ordered a banana smoothie, and just sat and read for an hour. The movie theater was difficult to find because the entryway didn't advertise it, and you had to walk down this little alleyway that people live off of to find the actual theater. Saw two documentaries, one on the Hanoi Hilton which wasn't very informative - it just really creeped me out by raising the possibility of there being POWs still held somewhere in Vietnam - and one on and Australian reporter who's basically in exile because he chose to report from the communist side during the cold war.

Got home, hung out with Lam for a little bit, had a conversation where I ended up trying to explain the American Dream to him. It was difficult to make him understand without making it seem to be all about greed, which I don't think it is. Ended up bringing in The Great Gatsby. I wonder if a book that's so deeply connected to American thinking can ever really be fully appreciated by someone who isn't part of that culture. So the question of the day seems to have to do with materialism and happiness.

Went to bed. Lovely to sleep. I might take a nap now, actually. All I'm doing today is teaching one class at the peace house and flying to Saigon tonight. Normally I go crazy stuck in the peace house for too long, but it's nice to have a lazy day every so often. I'd just love a big cozy chair to read in, is all.

Far from home

2008-08-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

I miss some of the most simple, odd things. I miss wearing nice clothes. I miss having a desk. I miss big, comfy chairs to curl up and read in. Being in Asia, it's not foods so much I miss - it's the little details of the way I live at home.

Yesterday, I got a copy of When Heaven and Earth Changed places, and started to read it. The book begins with a description of village life during the war with France, and it's incredibly moving. These people's lives even without war are incredibly difficult, but they survive and they find happiness in their traditions. The violence and death that comes with war is devastating - the pain of having traditional life disrupted is inextricably linked with loss of life. One thing that really got me was when she was talking about the ghosts of those who had died - especially the ghost of a little boy who was begging for someone to replace him in death so that he could return home.

They really like me!

2008-08-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

So this morning I got to work with the more advanced children, handpicked from their classes to come to school for extra time to practice their English for some competition next year. Apparently the school is actually only open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so there's no way I could have been teaching five days a week anyway. I'm lucky because I can teach four days next week - Monday and Wednesday all day, as usual, and Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

So this morning, Noel and I taught the same thirty kids continuously for two and a half hours. We had a lot of fun - with a smaller class and much more time, we could accomplish much more. We worked on pronunciation and inflection, as well as practicing conversing. These kids are really good, and it's great to give them a chance to show off what they know.

We took a break halfway through, and the kids were playing and drawing on the board, and one drew a picture of me anime-style. So I took a picture, which started a flurry of group pictures and whatnot - so I have a bunch to post. The kids are really sweet and affectionate, too. There's this one girl who reminds me so much of a girl I babysit at home, Madison DiFrisco - she's dramatic and outgoing and really friendly, and opens her eyes wide in the same way. Also, she loves High School Musical and Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers. No matter where you go, you can't escape the Disney Channel. Her English is good enough that we can actually have a conversation about what we like. I think it's really good for the smart kids - the ones who really get the language and who are going to follow through with it - to get a chance to talk to foreigners and practice actually speaking. It's so much fun to talk to these kids and joke around with them. I'm definitely giving them my address when I leave - maybe they can make it a class assignment to write to me. I wish I could stay longer, if only to create a real relationship with the students.

Mrs. Thanh, the teacher, told me that the school is government run, not private, so students have to pay for lunch, but that's really it, and it's a mix of upper class and lower class families. We discovered today that a lot of children have parents who are soldiers, including mothers. She also told me that her children - twelve and fifteen - study English in school, but their classes are so large that they don't get a chance to practice. So I was invited to her house as well to spend time with her family. My week next week is starting to get pretty booked - Monday at Mrs. Binh's, Tuesday at Mrs. Thanh's. It's amazing to travel to place like this, but it's meeting the people and getting to know them that makes it really worth it, I think.

Pictures from Ha Long Bay

2008-08-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

Tribal houses and pink puffy wedding dresses

2008-08-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

Today I taught again, and this time Jana came with me, because even though she didn't really want to be teaching English, she wanted more to do with her time. So I showed her the ropes, because I'm such an old hand at things. Things worked the way they did when I was teaching with Erik - alternating classes - except this time, I took the first class to show her how it was done. Ohh yeah.

We were teaching with Mrs. Thanh, who is lovely, and also a very good teacher, from what I've gathered. She went away to a beach for the weekend, and actually brought pictures to show us and gave us bracelets she bought us there. Such lovely, generous people here. The only downside to teaching today was that there was a Vietnamese student teacher here as well - four teachers is three too many - and even though Mrs. Thanh would leave the room to leave us to ourselves once we knew what we were doing, the student teacher would just get in the way. Yes, I am American and I don't speak Vietnamese, but I've been here longer than she has and I actually know what the children know, whereas she would keep butting in unnecessarily to give them the answers to things. Come on, lady.

During our lunch break, we went to the Ethnology Museum, which is just a quick walk across a park from the school. It was very interesting, with information on all the various ethnic minorities in Vietnam, and exhibits showing traditional dress, pottery, weaving looms, weapons, etc. There was a really, really cool outdoor exhibit where they actually built houses in the styles of various ethnic minorities. There was this incredible community house with an absolutely enormous roof - apparently it takes around six or seven months to build. I had read that people come here to take wedding photos, and we saw at least three couples having wedding photos taken around the houses. Mum and Maddy, you would have loved it. The brides were wearing the huge puffy ball gown dresses I'd seen in shops, but not white ones - purple, or pink, or cream.

And of course, a man who worked the the museum in one of the houses struck up a conversation with us, about the differences between Vietnam and America, and asked me to help him pronounce some words - he's studying underground construction, so the words were things like "ductile" and "malleable." And he asked for my email address so I could help him learn more about America.

The whole working very few days a week thing seems to be working itself out because I took on some classes here, but they're actually starting morning English classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays for advanced students at the school, so I have to give up some of the classes I took on to teach at the school, which is fine by me. It's tiring, but I really enjoy myself there. So now I work Monday and Wednesday all day, and Tuesday and Thursday in the morning, so I still have time to explore Hanoi, and I have classes at the Peace House Wednesday evening, Friday at noon, and Friday evening, although I'll have to miss my class this Friday night because I'm taking a plane to Saigon to meet Sydney. So excited! It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Master of my domain

2008-08-05T05:54:00.001-07:00

I've started teaching English lessons at the Peace House, which will fill up more of my time. I started today teaching a class with Sydney at 10:30 this morning. We only had one student, a twenty year old who is studying at university, and our lesson basically consisted of us having a conversation with him, since his English was good enough to be able to talk with us, but he needs help with listening comprehension.

After lunch, I went into Hanoi with the intention of going to the Women Museum, and then to Hai Ba Trung temple, which is dedicated to the Trung sisters who led a revolution against China ages and ages ago. I figured I'd learn about them at the museum and then go off and pay them tribute. Turns out the museum was closed for renovation except for two exhibits, so I didn't get to learn about the Trung sisters, but I did get to see an exhibit about women in the Vietnam-American war. It was actually very moving, because they went straight for our emotions - love letters to sweethearts and letters to mothers on display. They showed pictures of women who were tortured or killed, and embroidery women did while being held in prison. They also had a series of photographs showing protests against the war from women around the world, which I thought was interesting.

While I was looking, the Vietnamese girl who was sitting at a desk in the exhibit came up to me and actually asked if I thought the view of the Vietnam War presented here was too biased, because she said a lot of American visitors thought that. I mean, it is presented as very "pure victim vs. evil aggressor," but I think it's understandable that the Vietnamese would feel that way and I told her that. And we ended up having a really interesting conversation (her English was excellent; she's actually the person who translates that captions on the exhibits,) and when I was ready to leave I told her that I wanted to go to the temple and she told me it was much, much too far to walk. So I'll leave that one for another day. She pointed me in the direction of some bookstores in the area and I went on my way - I've been told a few times that When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by a Vietnamese woman about the war is incredible, so I'm hunting for a copy.

So I ended up wandering around Hanoi for the afternoon, going into clothing stores and jewelry stores and whatnot and looking around. I found this one jewelry store that sells all sorts of necklaces and earrings with pendants of bugs caught in amber. The clothes they sell are both awesome and ridiculous - they really love shirts with lots of ruffles down the front, for example. And walking down the street, you'll see a store selling wedding dresses or ball gowns that are out of some three year old girl's fantasy - huge puffy skirts in crazy bright colors that I can't imagine anyone actually wearing.

I'm at a point where I can operate the bus system well and I recognize landmarks and street names when I walk around Hanoi, and I'm pretty proud of myself. On my first day here, when I took the city tour, I was just blindly following my tour guides along, feeling shell shocked and making stupid mistakes and feeling incredibly out of place. And now, even though people still stare at me, and treat me like a tourist - it's impossible to fully become part of the landscape when you're white - I walk with confidence. The city's becoming mine because I know I can manage it now.

Monday

2008-08-04T18:00:00.003-07:00

Taught again today, which was lovely. The woman I teach with is so nice – I'm the same age as her son, so she invited me to her house next Monday. Let's just hope she doesn't try to arrange a marriage for us or anything.

The school schedule, as far as I can gather, since no one tells me anything straight out, consists of 35-minute periods, with at least a short break for the kids to run around every two periods. In the first break, they do exercises in unison to the beat of a drum (a ten year old kid gets to beat the drum. I want to be that kid.) The second break is lunch and then three hours off to nap or do whatever. Then two more periods, and I think another recess – this is when I go home.

The classrooms are set up around a central courtyard, and when one class ends, a man beats a drum in the courtyard to signal that it's over. There's a teacher for every subject, so the teachers switch classrooms, not the students, and when recess has ended, the teachers all wait for the students to get to the classroom before they go. The children are well-behaved for the most part, and when they get too loud, the teacher raps a ruler on her desk to get their attention. At the beginning of class, when we walk in, the student leader person says, “Stand up!” and all the students stand up and say, “Good mor ning tea cher,” and when class is over, they stand up again and say, “Good bye tea cher seeyouagain.”

I think I was a bit too harsh when I first judged how the students are taught English – they know how to produce it a lot better than I thought, and they understand more than I thought. I also didn't realize that they only start learning around nine or ten years old – for first-year students who only has English class once a week, they're pretty damn good.

Today, we were reviewing vocabulary for families, so I helped them with pronunciation – th is an awful sound for them to try to say, and a lot of the time it comes out at z, and most family words have th – mother, father, brother, grandmother, etc. Then I asked them questions so they could use the word – How many people are in your family? Who is in your family? The responses I got were interesting – most of the kids only had one sibling, and most of them also lived with at least one grandparent. These kids seem pretty comfortably middle-class – when we were reviewing job vocabulary, many had engineers, doctors, and teachers as parents – but Vietnam is extremely overcrowded, so I'd guess it's more typical of poorer families to have more children, but I think the grandparent thing is very revealing. It makes a lot of sense, anyway.

Ha Long Bay

2008-08-04T18:00:00.001-07:00

Saturday morning, the bus picked us up to take us to Ha Long Bay – they told us they'd come at 7:00, but I suppose to the Vietnamese that means 8:30. We got to Ha Long Bay around noon, and once we got on the boat, everything went so smoothly, it was unreal. The extra $10 really made a difference on the whole trip. People who went with the same company and paid $55 had cockroaches on the boat and bad food, but we paid $65 and everything was ridiculously nice. We were greeted on the boat with cold washcloths and tea. They served us a really nice lunch, with so much food. The boat was really nice, and our rooms were lovely, and they even had air conditioning (or as the Australians say, air con.) And the bay was so incredibly gorgeous, you can't even imagine.

I didn't do any research about it before I went on the trip – I was just told by everyone I met that I should go – and it turns out that it's this area of water filled with these incredible rock formations rising out of the water. It's so, so, so beautiful. Pictures definitely to follow. We went to explore these incredible caves inside one of the rock formations, and then went kayaking around the bay, and later, as it got darker, we went swimming in the water (with someone on jellyfish watch.) “We” is Jana (New Zealand,) Rob (England,) Tom (Australia,) Simone (Germany,) and me.

Then they served us another incredible meal, and we went upstairs while the staff are their dinner, and once they were finished, we went back downstairs and had them turn on the music – lots of terrible and terribly fun techno. We were the only real young people on the boat, but it wasn't very late, and it was completely reasonable for us to be making noise. This Italian family – a father and two daughter in their early thirties – went to bed at 9:30, and immediately afterwards one daughter stuck her head out of their door and asked us to turn it down. Which we didn't. Because it was 9:30.

They came back out at 10:00 and asked us to turn it down again. We turned it down a reasonable amount, but really, come on. The staff told us we had to turn it all off at 11:00, which we had no problem with. They had karaoke, so of course we had to try it, and at 10:45, while we were singing our hearts out to Roxanne, the Italian man cam storming out of his room shouting at us in Italian, and I truly think he was going to rip the speaker off the wall. The crew had to subdue him. Then his daughter came out, also shouting her head off, except in English - “This is not your home! This is not your home!” Well, it isn't your home either, darling. At that point we turned it off because it was close to 11:00 and, well, we'd been attacked. So we went up to the top deck and contemplated what would happen at breakfast.

It turned out there was no breakfast showdown – the Italians just wouldn't make eye contact with us, or anyone else for that matter, since everyone was on our side. Breakfast was nice – they really know how to fry an egg in Vietnam. We sunbathed and hung out on the deck for the morning. I had a nice conversation with a couple who live in Philadelphia – the man is British and the woman is American. The man's theory about why you don't see any Americans traveling (and you don't, at all) was, refeshingly, not that Americans are just lazy and ignorant and uncultured. It was that workers don't get any vacation time to start with – apparently factory workers in Germany still get a month paid vacation – and education costs so much that people don't have to ability to travel after they graduate from school. They need to get a job. My friend Sydney, who's a med student in Canada, says that she decided to come on this trip because she's already in so much debt that a few thousand dollars more won't matter so much, and when she become a doctor, she'll make so much money that she'll have no trouble paying it off. Nice and comfy. Being here is kind of changing my attitude towards money.

So, all in all, a very nice trip – we got to see some some incredible natural beauty, and got to be waited on, sleep with air conditioning, and take nice showers. Money well spent. And once again, I booked a trip that turned out extremely well (I was the one who ultimately booked the Sapa trip.) So I'm thinking maybe I should go into business here.

Is it better?

2008-08-04T03:22:00.000-07:00

So, as of yesterday at 11:00 pm, I've officially been here two weeks.

So far, I haven't gotten food poisoning, I haven't gotten traveler's diarrhea, I haven't been pickpocketed, I haven't gotten too lost to get back home again, I haven't gotten malaria, I haven't gotten sunburned. Not too shabby, eh?

Friday night was more eventful than I expected it to be. Where'd I leave off? Silk shopping? After all that, I hung around the Peace House for a while, and then went into Hanoi because I was tired of sitting around, and after monopolizing a table at a little cafe for a few hours, I went walking around Hoan Kiem Lake and took pictures of all the cute couples. It's such a beautiful place. Then this small, older woman with one leg, sitting on a bench with her crutches next to her, saw me and said something along the lines of, “Are you American? Come sit with me.” So I sat down next to her and we spoke for a little while.

It turns out she lost her leg in 1972 in the war. She spoke very, very good English. We talked about what I was doing in Vietnam, and she told me that she can't get a job and so she sits by the lake and waits for tourists to walk by and asks them if they want her for a tour guide. I can't imagine she'd make an money that way, but many, many Vietnamese people seem to be making a living in a way that can't possibly make them any money. She didn't seem very interested in talking to me – she was more jaded about westerners than anything, which is definitely out of the ordinary in Vietnam, but it makes sense in her case. So eventually I asked her for directions to the bus stop and left.

That night, Vietnam was playing Brazil at soccer at a sports stadium really close to where I'm living, so some of the people at Peace House actually found a way to get tickets and went, but the rest of us watched it from the peace house. Well, watched, and also had a good time with Lam and Hai answering questions about English phrases and pronunciation and American culture. Brazil beat Vietnam 2 to 0, which frankly is much less brutal than everyone was expecting. Lam made his peace with the fact that Vietnam lost, saying that Brazil won, but Vietnam still displayed more skill and better strategy – Brazil just had luck. He has so much pride.

It's really very inspirational, how much pride people in Vietnam have in their country. It's not remotely like national pride in the US – here, people are proud of how much power and brute force the US has. the Vietnamese people are proud of their country for being the underdog and surviving no matter what, and they're proud of the potential they see in Vietnam. There are a lot of Vietnamese university students at the Peace House, and whenever I ask them what they want to do or study and why, they never tell me that they do it because it's what they personally want to do – they tell me that they do it because it will benefit Vietnam for them to do it. Vietnam needs electrical engineers to help it develop, so Lam is proud to be studying electrical engineering for Vietnam. Vietnam needs international business to develop, so Phuong and Nhung are proud to study international business. People just don't think that way in the US – they don't have to. I wonder if it's better to live in a developing country rather than one that's at the top of the food chain, if it's better to be a victim than an aggressor – you suffer, but your motives are purer. You have more to believe in.

Pictures from the school

2008-08-03T22:09:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the museums

2008-08-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Sapa

2008-08-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

My political compass

2008-08-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

Remember how Lam took the political compass test? I just took it and ended up in about the same place left-right as he did, but much farther below the x-axis than he was above it. Hmm. Some questions I probably didn't answer the way I would have had I taken a long time to think about them - If I take it again in a couple of years, when I'm all college-student-pretentious, my results will probably be different.

2008-08-01T02:06:00.000-07:00

So, Thursday – I didn't have any work to do because the at the school I work at, they only have me teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays, which is not enough to fill up my time at all. I really enjoy teaching there so I'm very disappointed that there isn't more for me to do. Next week, I'm going to start teaching classes at the Peace House as well to fill up my time more. I was told that once August started, I would be working five days a week, and I wish I had known that that wasn't the case, and I'd still only be working two, because then I would have asked for more to do earlier on.

I hung around with Lam in the morning and we taught each other some of our respective languages – my Vietnamese pronunciation is atrocious, and I'm never going to be able to do the different tones correctly. The way Vietnamese is spelled makes a lot of sense – for each sound a particular letter can make, there is a different mark that goes above it, and for each tone, there is a different mark. There are up to six different tones a word can have, and two words can be spelled the exact same way, but with different tones, they mean completely different things. The tone marks make perfect sense – the little accent mark that goes up means the sound goes up, the little accent mark that goes down means the sound goes down, the dot below the vowel means it's short, low, and heavy, the one that looks like a question mark means the sound goes up and then down, and one like a tilde means the sound is broken. If there is no mark, it's a flat tone. It makes sense, but they're difficult for an American like me to say.

I taught Lam when phrases like “Good lord” and “Oh my god” are appropriate, as well as when it is appropriate to use “pissed off” as opposed to “ticked off,” both of which Lam seemed to think were too aggressive. The Vietnamese approach to solving a problem is interesting – my first instinct when bargaining with a cab driver or, say, trying to get a refund from a travel agency, is to be aggressive and forceful – or, at least, more aggressive and forceful than the Vietnamese tend to be - and I think that definitely comes from being raised in America. But the Vietnamese approach is to try to avoid unpleasant confrontations at any cost, and even though sometimes that means that problems aren't dealt with, I think we could learn from that.

After lunch, I went into the city with Simone to pay for the trip we're taking to Ha Long Bay this weekend, which should be lovely – we're staying overnight on a boat – and then we went to see the Hoa Lo Prison museum. It was extremely interesting, because the vast majority of the museum focused on the amount the Vietnamese suffered when they were being held there by the French, and how they still managed to fight for the revolution and support the cause even under these awful conditions. Then there are two rooms dealing with the war with America: one showing the US bombing Vietnam and being generally awful, and another showing American soldiers being held in the prison – funnily enough, they show the Americans being able to cook Christmas dinner and receive letters from their families and keep pet cats, and other fun, pleasant things like that. Hmm.

They do realize that John McCain is a big deal, and definitely highlight the fact that he was held there. They also definitely appreciate the contributions women have made to the country – they always take time to show the sacrifices women have made. There's actually a women's history museum I definitely want to get to before I leave Hanoi.

Thursday night, Simone, Julia, Noel, and I went to the Friendship Village to watch the work camp people put on a “culture night” for the disabled people who live there. I finally found out what the friendship village is – it's care and rehabilitation facility for the disabled. The Koreans did some dance and a school uniform fashion show, and the Vietnamese sang traditional Vietnamese songs, did traditional dances, and did a fashion show with traditional clothing. I've made friends with the Vietnamese people in work camp, so it was fun to see them perform.

Friday morning, Julia and I went to the “silk village,” this little place a few bus stops from the Peace House, where there are loads and loads of shops selling silk products for much cheaper than you can get them in the Old Quarter in Hanoi. Beautiful things, too. So I spent a good amount of money there. And now I'm all caught up! I took the bus into Hanoi with Noel because he's staying at a hotel in the city for the weekend, and then found my way to a nice little cafe, ordered a chocolate milkshake, and posted everything I had typed up so far. Hopefully when I get back from Ha Long Bay, the internet will be back up, and I can post on Monday, and upload photos.

Poverty and pirates

2008-08-01T02:05:00.002-07:00

On Wednesday night, we went to the little internet cafe again, and then stopped at an actual cafe on the way back, if I can get away with calling it a cafe. We call it the Swiss Family Robinson cafe because you have to walk over a little bridge that crosses a muddy stream to get to it. The family that owns it lives there, and the tables are under a sort of leaf-thatched roof. There isn't a front wall, but there don't tend to be for Vietnamese stores – their fronts are completely open to the outside. There are red Christmas lights strung up everywhere, and actually one of those Christmas tree shaped light-up things in the back. The family's cats and dogs wander around, and their children sit in the middle of everything watching TV.

You can get the most incredibly good mango juice there because if you order one, the man who owns the place will take a mango out of the fridge, peel it, do whatever he has to do to juice it, and serve that very mango to you right there. It's about as fresh as you can possible get. I'm getting to be a very big mango fan.

The way they live seems very typical of many Vietnamese families in the city. They own this tiny bit of land, or store area, and set up a sad, dirty little shop that sells water and soda and maybe some little bits of packaged food, and I can't imagine how the hell they make enough money to stay alive. People do wear the conical hats in the city, but they're the women who are walking down the street balancing a stick with two baskets hanging from the ends on their shoulders. The baskets hold fruits or vegetables, and these women just walk around the city trying to sell them. They're from the country, and they come to the city to try to make money however they can, but again, I can't imagine they make very much at all.

In the Old Quarter of Hanoi, the streets are very confusing and twisty, and the names change every block, because historically, each block sold a different product, and that still applies. You'll walk down a street, and every shop will be selling stationery supplies, or stuffed animals, or buttons. And there's also an area that seems to specialize in pirated DVDs, so I'll have to go take advantage of that before I come home.

Teaching, Day 3

2008-08-01T02:05:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, I taught for the third time, but it was a bit of an epic odyssey getting there and back. I got up at six, had breakfast, and went to wait for the bus with Noel (I'm not sure how it's spelled, but you pronounce it “No WELLE,” the French word for Christmas) at six thirty. We were talking about how discouraged he is because he feels like he isn't getting a genuine experience, since Peace House is so far from the center of Hanoi and he isn't working as much as he'd like to. The bus wasn't coming, and when one finally came, it just turned around and started going back the other way. Okay then. So we got off and kept waiting, and it was very clear that we were going to be late, so Noel decided he would just stay home, since he only taught in the mornings anyway and the amount of time he would teach once he got there wasn't worth the bus ride there and back. So I did the bus ride by myself, and got there just fine.

The thing is, when I got there, I was so late that everyone was in the middle of classes, and I didn't know where to go. I started peeking in classrooms to try to find the teacher I thought I had that day – Lan, the young one – and when I saw a woman who looked like she knew what she was doing, I asked for Miss Lan, and she steered me towards a classroom. I was so, so relieved, until the woman in the classroom turned out not to be Lan at all, and didn't speak a word of English, and it looked like it was a math class. And somehow, she didn't even seem surprised or confused I was there. I tried to ask for the other Miss Lan, and she brought up this nine year old kid who was in my class on Monday to translate, but he doesn't really know English, so there was absolutely no communication going on, and eventually I gave up and went down to the office. There, they found the real Miss Lan, who steered me away and eventually got around to explaining that she wasn't at the school earlier this morning, that she's only a substitute English teacher, and she's leaving for another school. so I'll be teaching with Mrs. Thanh. Okay then. Why don't these people ever explain anything ahead of time? Is that really so much to ask?

So we found Mrs. Thanh, and I taught with her for the rest of the day. I like her – she;'s a much better teacher than the other two, she speaks better English, although of course her English still isn't great, and just seems to all around know what she's doing much more. We reviewed telling time, going over someone's daily routine, and practicing talking about jobs. (What is your father's job? My father is an engineer. What do you want to be? I want to be a rock star.)

There's a three hour break in the middle of the day, from 11:00 to 2:00, so I ate lunch, which they give you in these cool cylindrical lunch tins that have everything stacked on different little trays inside, kind of like pringles. They provide a bowl of broth to dump everything in as well. The philosophy towards food here seems to be that everything is better if you drop it into a bowl of broth before you fish it back out again and eat it. You don't drink the broth, either – you just use chopsticks to eat the meat, or rice, or noodles, or veggies, or whatever else is in there. The gave me something that turned out to be a fried boiled egg yesterday. Yummy.

After I finished lunch, I had to go to the travel agency we booked our Sapa trip with to get our refund for the tickets back we had to buy ourselves, so I walked down the street looking for a xe om (zay ohm,) which literally means “hugging cab” - it's a motorbike taxi, so the name comes from the fact that a rookie has to hug the driver in order to not fall off. My first ride on a motorbike, I held onto the driver, but now I'm comfortable enough to hang onto the back if we're going really fast or if the road is bumpy, or just rest my hands on my thighs like a local. When you're just walking around Hanoi, xe om drivers will constantly shout “motorbike!” at you, but of course, when you're actually looking for one, they're nowhere to be found.

I walked down the street from the school to look for one and eventually asked some random guy where I could fine one, and he brought me to a little store where a few men where hanging out, and one went fishing in the back for some helmets and we got on his bike. Note: always, always, always agree on a price beforehand, and try to haggle it down as much as possible – you'll still get ripped off, but not nearly as much as you would otherwise.

Halfway there, the motorbike broke down, and I had to get off and wait while he pulled out a wrench, messed around for a little while, took off a piece of the bike, and finally got it going again. The people at the travel agency were very nice and gave me the money back, although they called me later that night saying that we apparently got refunded 300,000 VND at the Lao Cai train station, which is ridiculous because we didn't even stop at the Lao Cai train station on the way back. Got a motorbike back to the school, taught two more classes, took the bus home. I was doing fine on the bus, changed over at the right station, but I missed my stop because I thought I was going to be on the opposite side of the street from the one I was actually on. Had to get off the bus, wait for another one to come from the other direction, get back on, and make my stop. It wasn't that big of a deal – it was just stressful, and a bit annoying, since I was getting kind of proud of myself that I could work the bus system.

Common decency ain't so common

2008-08-01T02:03:00.002-07:00

Somehow, I have a cold – I have no idea how it happened, but I do. Like a sniffling, runny nose, occasional sneezing kind of deal. It's just so ironic – you come to a place like this expecting food poisoning and traveler's diarrhea and other unpleasant foreign things like that, and you end up with the annoying and miserable ailment you get back home. Maybe it's because Hanoi doesn't seem to care about air pollution. I don't even want to know what kind of fumes I'm inhaling. We're in tropical weather, so no one has tissues, so I'm tapping into my store of toilet paper to take care of it.

It was a very, very good idea to bring a few rolls of toiler paper because in many public bathrooms and bathrooms in restaurants and stores, they don't provide it. Icky icky icky. At the school I work at, they don't even have a proper toiler that you sit on – it's a toilet installed in the ground you have to squat over, with a little garbage pail waiting for you to throw your used, brought-from-home toilet paper into. I can understand why someone might want to squat instead of sitting on an unclean surface where many, many, other people have also sat, but please – provide toilet paper!

I love Vietnamese people for the most part – they're so friendly and always willing to help – but their cultural standards of decency and politeness are very, very different. Like the train situation, for instance. It's perfectly acceptable in Vietnam to push people out of the way – there's no such thing as a line. That's kind of the philosophy that governs traffic on the road – it looks like chaos, but there is actually a system. The biggest vehicles have right of way, and the motorbikes just fill in all the spaces between cars. I was wrong about why people honk – it's really just to let people know you're there. Lanes tend to be optional, as do stoplights, unless the police are around. If everyone's aware of everyone else and understand the fluid nature of the system, it works out pretty well. There really isn't traffic, unless two trucks are coming from opposite directions down a narrow road.

There's really no concept of customer service or any kind of “the customer is always right” mentality. The other night, Andrea, my roommate, who left on Wednesday, was taking a cab back from the city, and had agreed on 150,000 VND as the price for the trip. The taxi driver decided he disagreed halfway there and actually physically pulled Andrea out of the cab and would have left her on the side of the street alone, but he finally let her back in and drove her here, and then still demanded 200,000 VND when he got here. All the western volunteers were outraged, but Lam, who was brought out to mediate the situation, and is a pretty open minded guy, agreed with the taxi driver – he said it was all justified because gas prices have risen recently. People feel entitled even when they're not, by our standards. On the flip side, though, there's also a tendency to try to avoid conflict – when we were at the train station in Sapa, trying to figure out our ticket situation and getting very pissed off, the woman we were dealing with started laughing, which I found infuriating until Sydney told me that it's the way Vietnamese people try to defuse a tense situation. It just completely doesn't translate.

Try to see it my way . . .

2008-08-01T02:03:00.001-07:00

On Monday night we all went out into the city to celebrate Erik and Erina's last night, and we met these three guys who had met traveling and were traveling together now – a British guy who was in med school, an Israeli guy who kind of had a neckbeard and just finished up being an officer in the IDF, and another British guy who's 18 and is on his gap year. He's interested in ecology and conservation and he's taking this incredible trip across Europe, trough Russia, Mongolia, and China, now to Vietnam, and then Laos and Indonesia, where he'll be doing conservation work, and then on to South America, where he wants to live. We talked for a bit and ended up making plans to meet up to go see some museums together to Tuesday before he left Hanoi to explore around northern Vietnam.

So, I got myself to his hostel on the bus – I'm figuring out the bus system, even though it's very complicated – and we went to the Fine Arts museum, which was more cultural art than fine art, and then went to the park where there's a huge statue of Lenin, and then went to the military history museum. The fine arts museum was interesting because a lot of the traditional art had very clear Chinese influences, but it also had exhibits of traditional clothing and Vietnamese sculpture, some of which was pretty incredible. A gigantic sculpture of a many-armed god of some sort just stopped me in my tracks. It was unclear exactly who it was – I don't want to say it was any Hindu god because I don't think Hinduism is a presence in Vietnam. It's still incredible either way. There was also more modern art done in an old-fashioned style that dealt with modern wars, so for example, a painting would be full of nature but have a tank poking out of the trees. It was very interesting and very effective.

Afterwards, we got a little lost but wound up in the park with Lenin, and got something to eat at the Highlands Coffee or whatever it's called, sort of the Vietnamese equivalent of a Starbucks. I got a Croque Madame – a sandwich with ham, cheese, and a sunny-side up egg, which, if you know me, is a list of some of my favorite foods. It's good to take a break from rice every so often.

So then we went to the Military History Museum, which was really something. It's all about glorifying Vietnamese victories in the revolution, and of course, the Vietnam War. It's pretty incredible – they don't even try to be unbiased. They either demonstrate how the Vietnamese succeed against all odds, or how they were humane and morally superior to their enemies – there are lots of pictures of Vietnamese caring for wounded French soldiers, for example. And then there's all the stuff about the Vietnam war. It was a very bizarre experience, to see this war from a Vietnamese perspective – it's a war I think was wrong, and I wouldn't defend US actions, but seeing it presented with the intense national pride the Vietnamese feel about being able to defeat the aggressors was upsetting. It's like if someone insults your family – maybe you think the same thing sometimes, or even gets in fights about it, but it's not okay for someone else to insult them or accuse them. It upset me to see photographs of US political figures in defeat, like the Vietnamese are taunting them with their loss. Sometimes I feel very, very disconnected from America, and I never would claim to have very much national pride, but maybe I do more than I thought I did.

They have a huge amount of US planes and tanks they shot down or salvaged, and even made this bizarre, intense sculpture out of the wreckage of a US plane. They have actual missiles on display as well. It's a very, very powerful thing to see – I couldn't help running my hands along the tanks to feel something that was in the war. It's something I feel very distant from because it was long before my lifetime, but seeing the museum and touching the tanks brings it much, much closer.

They had this weird brick lookout tower thing we could climb, which we did, and ended up meeting the three British guys who may or may not end up staying in the Peace House – small world, huh?

I figured out how to take the bus home – it's not so hard because all I need to do is find a bus going to Ha Dong terminal, and then take the 57 to the Peace House from Ha Dong. The only problem is finding a bus stop, and the Vietnamese people I asked for help were more than willing to point me in the right direction, whenever they could understand what I was asking. Between my map, my broken bits of Vietnamese, and a lot of pointing, we can usually figure out a way to communicate, though.

On the bus to Ha Dong, a girl who spoke very good English helped me out, and we ended up having a nice conversation, and exchanged phone numbers and emails. Everyone's so friendly! It's incredible! So I got home okay, was pissed that the internet still wasn't working, had dinner, went to an internet cafe, looked up prices for a trip to Ha Long Bay this weekend, came home, took a shower, collapsed at 10:00. Ahhh.

Teaching, Day 2

2008-08-01T02:02:00.001-07:00

On Monday, I taught English for the second time, but with a different teacher, Mrs. Binh. She's older than Miss Lan and has been teaching for twenty eight years. Her English, however, is very broken and she pronounces things badly. It's very difficult to communicate. She's very friendly, though. She's much more traditional than Lan – we were doing review, so she had the kids brainstorm vocabulary having to do with the school, and then I wrote up some exercises from a workbook on the board with multiple choice and fill in the blanks, and waited around while the kids did the exercises in their notebooks (or notabooks, as they say it) and then went over them. These kids have incredible handwriting. It's really unbelievable how good it is. It's like perfect calligraphy. I've had to retrain myself to write in a way that's more like how I was taught way back in kindergarten so that they could even read my writing – it's warped so much over the years. And it's really bizarre how quickly I've been able to change my habits. I write my a's the way I used to without even thinking about it now. It's very upsetting, since even though my handwriting is terrible, I'm fond of it, so I hope I'll be able to switch as easily again.

I've also been training myself to speak more clearly and slowly – I'd been noticing, back in NY this year, that my speech was just getting faster and more smushed together every time I spoke. Now even with native English speakers from Australia and New Zealand, I'm speaking more slowly and clearly. I'm really curious how quickly I'll break my new good habits when I get home.

One week anniversary!

2008-08-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

So the cast of characters has changed. This week there's a lot of turnover – people are leaving, new people are coming. My roommate, Andrea, is leaving Wednesday. Erik and Erina left on Monday. Mariam, who I barely knew, left Tuesday. I'm sure more people are gone but I can't remember. Sydney's staying for another week, and the weekend after she leaves, we're going to meet up in Saigon to explore it for a couple of days. Very exciting.

New people so far:

Simone – German, very nice, studying political science and Japanese, doing NGO work here.

Rob - British, 29, living in Australia, very outgoing and loud, got along very well with Eric while they could spend time together. He's very nice and very friendly, but a very large person – not fat, mind you, just large – and I always find myself wondering what it's like to take up that much space in the world.

Valentine – French girl, very nice. Going to live in the friendship village, I think.

Jana – From New Zealand. Tattoos, pale with dark hair, very funny, very friendly.

And then there are three British guys who arrived but then were told there was no space for them here and went to stay in a hostel for a few days, and they'll be coming back later this week. They might end up living with a group working in the Friendship Village, which is where people doing work camps work. It's very confusing – people who are technically “long term” do work camp, and then people who are technically “work camp” also do work camp, but these people are a very tightly monitored group of Vietnamese and Korean teens who work together all day and do group activities all night. They live in the Peace House with us, but they don't really interact with us – they just take our food and use up our shower water. I did get to talk to some of the group leaders, who are in their early twenties, and they're very willing to get to know us. I love talking to them because they speak very good English, so it's easy to have a very good conversation and find ways to relate to them.

Skinny man! You buy from me!

2008-08-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

So let me tell you about my Sapa adventure. The first thing you have to know is that overall, it was amazing. I firmly believe everyone should go to Sapa before they die. It's probably the most beautiful place I've even seen, and it's a lot of fun. But getting there from Hanoi and getting back were both nightmares.

Sydney, Erik, and I booked the trip with a travel agency on Thursday, several hours before the train left. The train left at ten PM, but the people at the travel agency were going to meet us there at 8:45 to give us our tickets. So we left Peace House in a taxi a little after dinner and it was this frantic mad rush to make it there on time, which wasn't helped by the fact that I forgot my passport and we had to turn around to go back and get it, and then we all needed to stop for various things – I had to get to an ATM, Sydney wanted to buy some bread, Erik wanted to buy some Vodka. But we made it on time, if pissed off and aggravated, and the men met us there and gave us our tickets, although with hazy instructions about how to get our tickets for the train home.

When we boarded the train, we were the only ones on there, but it filled up completely before it left – and when I say filled up, I mean filled up. We have soft reclining seats, but there were people sitting on little plastic stools in the aisles. It was awful. (The Vietnamese love their little plastic stools – people selling pho soup on the street have them to sit on as you eat, they have them to sit on in houses and buildings, they even have them in churches.) The train was endless because it seemed like it was going about 5 miles per hour, and we got to Sapa at around 7 AM. But once we got there, it was smooth sailing and amazing.

A van from our hotel picked us up at the train station and drove us through the mountains for about an hour before we reached the town of Sapa. It was incredibly, incredible beautiful – and it only got better once we got to Sapa. Sapa is a town near a lot of ethnic minority villages, who still wear traditional clothing and live traditionally, farming and doing traditional embroidery, although one has to wonder whether they would still wear the traditional clothing if it weren't for the tourists. The people of the villages speak incredible English because they learned from the tourists. When we got off the van, a swarm of little girls in traditional clothing mobbed us, all of them going, “Hello! Hello! What's your name? Where are you from? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Do you have a boyfriend?” And they'll pretty much understand anything you say. Even the older people in the villages, or the less smart little girls, can say “You buy from me! You buy from her, you buy from me!” And they say it – pretty much all the time.

The hotel was lovely – we got to have a real, hot shower, and the view from our room was incredible. We even got a balcony. And it was really nice to have eggs and bread for breakfast. We hung out in the hotel room for the morning, taking showers, sleeping, playing cards – Sydney taught me a game she learned from the kids at the orphanage that's pretty much the same as spit, except when she asked the kids what it was called, they said the name was “Who can do it the faster.” After lunch, our tour guide, a local woman names Shom, met us at the hotel, and we started “trekking.” The first day, we went to the village of Cat Cat, where the Black H'Mong live, so named because their clothes are all dyed in indigo, which is almost dark enough to be black. Two of the girls from the morning followed us part of the way and chatted with us, and then we realized that it was because they wanted to hook us so we had to buy things from them later. A scam, but a very cute scam.

The village was very cool – people were trying to sell things to us at every turn, but we got to see some really amazing things. Snake wine, for example – snakes coiled up in a big jug of alcohol – for medicinal purposes. Rice terraces – I got to see the actual rice right off the plant. Indigo plants, the the pig vats where they soak the plants in water until the dye is created. We “trekked” around the village and then up into the hills on a stone path that had been constructed a few years ago. It's quite possibly the most beautiful place I've ever seen. The hills are huge and covered in green, this deep, rich green, and then where rice is growing on terraces, the hills are broken into stripes of green, and then the reddish-brown, sort of tandoori chicken color of the dirt. They have to grow rice on steps because they need them to be soaking in water, I suppose, but they grow corn and indigo up the steep inclines of the hillsides with no problems at all. Oh, it's so gorgeous! I can't wait to post pictures.

The thing is that Vietnam is a very quickly developing country – next year, the face of it will be completely different than it is now – and that even extends to Sapa. The pathways were built several years ago, a good, sturdy bridge was built a few years ago, and the people are very savvy about how to milk tourists for all they've got. You can do a homestay for a night with the tribal people, but I've been told it's very, very touristy. I don't know if Vietnam has the resources or the understanding to protect the beauty of the landscape while developing the country at the same time.

That night, we explored the town of Sapa a little bit, and of course, bought some things. All the products there are incredible beautiful – they're trying to rip you off, but they're ripping you off on quality products. And in the end, it's all cheaper than it would be at at home. Sydney bought a beautiful silk two-piece dress for USD $32, which is pretty incredible. One vital skill I'm picking up in Vietnam is haggling. You have to haggle with taxi drivers – never go by the meter because they're messed up and your driver will probably get “lost” anyway and charge you more – and you have to haggle with little girls trying to sell you embroidered bags in Sapa.

The reason I don't think the little girls are annoying is because they're a hell of a lot of fun. We passed by this random bar that advertised pool and steak and other lovely American things, and these H'Mong girls were looking in the window, and Erik said something about the “little girls” watching the pool game, and they heard and ran over, indignantly saying they weren't little girls. (It's very weird to try to tell ages with these people, because they're very small, and you won't believe girls who tell you they're 14 or 16 because they look like they're ten, but everyone you see in the villages either looks ten or forty – even the young mothers look old. Very bizarre.)

Erik said something like, It's okay! You're little girls, just like I'm a skinny man! (He is a very skinny man.) And then they followed him around for the rest of the night calling him “Skinny Man!” “Skinny man! You buy from me! Skinny man!” Then there was this crazy girl who came up to him and was like, “Skinny man! Are these your girlfriends?” No, emphatically not. “You have two girlfriends! You very busy! You kiss them both – don't kiss just one, the other will get jealous! You very busy! No sleep all night!” And then she started haggling to buy Erik's clothes – everything except his beard for one and a half dong (which, for reference, is worth about .0000882 dollars.) We're getting she was on something – this girl was insane.

The next day, another nice eggy breakfast, and then we went trekking again, for real this time, with a few tribal people following us. At first we were walking on paved road, and then dirt road, and then the road stopped completely and we were just going in a general direction down this middy hill. The weather in Sapa had been cool and rainy, which was wonderful for hiking, but it also meant that it was very, very muddy and slippery, and I did fall down once or twice. I had to hold the hand of our guide to make it through alive. Erik was helped by an old woman, and Sydney was offered help by a woman carrying a baby on her back, but she did the trek on her own because she would feel awful if she fell while the woman was helping her, pulled her down, and hurt the baby.

We saw two villages that day that were pretty similar to the first one, but also very, very beautiful. The local people must have thought we were crazy to be taking pictures of water buffalo and chickens and goats and pigs, but these things were very exciting for us. When we got back to the hotel, we showered, put on the least sweaty clothing we had, and got ready to leave on the van that would take us to the train station. The concierge at the hotel – the most helpful person besides Lan I've met in Vietnam so far – told us that there had been a mudslide destroying the train tracks between Lao Cai, the station we were supposed to leave from, and Hanoi, but he had arranged it so we could pick up our tickets at the next closest station. So we took a bus three hours to the station, which was this sketchy, dirty little place, with the most crowded, dirty train station in the world, and found out that our travel agency had booked our tickets for Sunday night instead of Saturday night. So we had to have a huge tussle with the people at the train station, who barely spoke English, and then eventually bought scalped tickets for that night for 200,000 VND (twelve bucks.) Absolute nightmare – for a while it looked like we weren't going to get on the train at all, and we'd have to find a place to spend the night in this sketchy, awful place.

We met people at the train station – European tourists – who were covered in mud up to their waists, and that was because their bus from Sapa had run into muddy roads and just refused to go any further, kicked them out, and forced them to walk two kilometers with all their belongings to the train station, which is very indicative of how things work in Vietnam. There's also no such things as lines – etiquette consists of smiling and pushing other people the hell out of the way. There's also no concept of customer service, and people are basically not helpful at all. Even if they attempt to answer your question, their English is so bad that they'll probably give you the wrong answer.

But, we got on the train. I think the worst part of the train ride itself was the fact that the man sitting next to me had a little phone thing with very loud speakers, and he played his music very loudly around 5 AM, and Vietnamese people have a tendency to listen to really, really awful romantic pop ballads. I don't understand it. So, we got back to Hanoi, and just booked a hostel for the day to relax, shower, and have somewhere to dump out stuff. We went to the travel agency to yell at them, but there was only a girl who didn't speak English working there, so we have to go back. We got massages at this really quality spa place, which was lovely. Got back to peace house, collapsed.

So, in conclusion:

1.See Sapa before you die, preferably as soon as possible.
2.Never, ever, ever have anything to do with the Vietnamese train system.

And that was my Sapa adventure.

Sorry, sorry!

2008-07-30T05:53:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't updated in ages and ages, but it's because I was away for the weekend and then when I got back, the internet was down at the Peace House and hasn't come back on since. I'm in an internet cafe right now with computers from the 1990s and a sticky keyboard - it's less a cafe and more a narrow, dingy room lined with computers with accompanying headphones people don't bother to use. But I'm writing up entries so I don't forget anything and and saving them on my laptop, so if I can get somewhere with free wifi I'll post them.

I have some incredible pictures from Sapa, though - it's probably the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life - so stay tuned!

Pictures from the Ho Chi Minh museum

2008-07-24T03:41:00.001-07:00

Pictures from the school

2008-07-24T03:10:00.001-07:00

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

2008-07-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

So today I want to talk about Lam. He's a twenty-two year old Vietnamese man (who, as always, looks much younger than twenty-two.) We have some amazing conversations because he's a Vietnamese person who's been raised in a Communist country, but he's very smart and very thoughtful, so we have some amazing conversations. Like, we spent a long time last night sorting out American and Vietnamese history. He was understandably shocked to learn that America denied African Americans civil rights until the 1960s. I was really curious to see how a Vietnamese person would feel about the fact that his country had been colonized and basically raped by the French for eighty years, and he regards it, understandably, as an extremely dark time in Vietnamese history.

Ho Chi Minh is his personal hero – he completely idolizes him – and whenever we talk, he tries to reconcile what he thinks with what Ho Chi Minh has said. But he likened him to George Washington – a freedom fighter, the founder of the country as it is today, a part of the country's national identity and national mythology. That's definitely not a perfect analogy, since Ho Chi Minh is much more present in people's lives than GW is in America. However, his opinions on the economy and the government's role in it tend to be split pretty evenly between communism and capitalism. He thinks that personal incentive needs to be a motivation for people to work – that communism is a good goal to have, to get to a “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” place.

Erik and I had him take the political compass test (www.politicalcompass.org) where you answer a lot of questions concerning your political, social, and economic opinions and it plots you on a sort of coordinate plane of politics – the x axis goes from liberal to conservative, and the y axis goes from authoritarian to libertarian. It was really interesting, first of all because many questions seem to be asking pretty clearly whether you are a communist or a capitalist, and Lam would take the time to think about each one, and came down on either side of the fence on a pretty equal basis. But on other questions – like social things dealing with women's roles and homosexuality – he answered the way you'd expect, according to traditional culture. He does not approve of pornography, homosexuality (never mind homosexual adoption,) or sex before marriage. He ended up slightly left and up of center – a tiny bit more communist and authoritarian than center. Hmmmm.

He's a sweetheart and I love him, even if he's very socially conservative. Erik showed him a him a history channel documentary on the life of Ho Chi Minh, which Lam said had some inaccuracies, but had the right spirit. So I'm curious to watch it and see what exactly he thinks the inaccuracies are. Lam admires Ho Chi Minh for his pragmatic approach towards fighting and then ruling, and of course his work as a revolutionary, as well as his morality, which I'll get to in a bit.

Erik and I went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum this morning, because this week we both only had work on Wednesday. It was so intense. We had to wait in this hugely long line, that they would only let you in if your shoulders were covered and your pants were long, and then they'd search your bags and make you take out your cameras, and then you'd wait in another insanely long line to check your camera, and then another line to get into the mausoleum. It's this huge cubic building made of giant blocks of gray stone. Very scary and imposing; doesn't seem at all Vietnamese. The military is marching all around. You walk into the building two by two, go up a staircase, guards correcting your posture to make sure you're respectful, and then walk into this rectangular room with Ho Chi Minh lying in a coffin sort of thing with a glass cover in the middle. You walk around three quarters of the room and then leave, and you keep moving the whole time. Everyone is silent; all you hear is the shuffling of people's feet. The room is dimly lit, and Ho Chi Minh's body is lit with this yellow color that makes him look almost ghostly. He barely even looks real. It's very creepy.

Then we went to the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was very close by. It was also a very crazy experience. On the first floor, there are two wing. One has letter from Ho Chi Minh and pictures of him; they don't tell much about his life, but they're supposed to show his “morality.”They're all of him working in the fields with peasants and that sort of thing. The other wing is filled with “Emulations” - examples of people putting in practice his “morality,” which I think amounts to him encouraging people to make themselves useful and contribute to the country. There are “high-quality products” like Vietnamese light bulbs and porcelain in glass cases and quotes from Ho Chi Minh saying that Vietnam can be become a modern, industrialized country by 2020. The amount of pride Vietnamese people feel towards their country is palpable.

Then, you go upstairs, and you feel like you smoked something on the way up without realizing it. It's full of modern art statue things representing abstract concepts about the plight of the Vietnamese people and their experiences throughout the revolution and all the other subsequent wars. I'm definitely posting pictures; it was incredibly, incredibly surreal.

I want to take the political compass test myself and see where I turn out.

Well, I'm a teacher now!

2008-07-22T22:51:00.001-07:00

Today is my first day at work. It's not done yet, but we get this awesome, substantial break in the middle of the day. The schedule works like this: we leave at 6:30, take the bus to the school, arrive around 7:30, start class - each class lasts 35 minutes, I think. There are four classes before lunch, which ends up being around 11:00, and then class starts up again at quarter to two. Everyone just naps! It's amazing! It's not just the schools - they do it at businesses too. Museums are closed for around two hours at lunchtime because everyone is sleeping. And then there are I think two more classes in the afternoon. I'm still on break, and I'm already exhausted.

I'm working with Erik and Noel. Noel teaches French some days and English others. I shared my classes with Erik today - he'd teach one class and I'd help, and then I'd teach the next class and he'd help. I'm doing fine - it isn't as hard as I thought it would be. We're working together with a Vietnamese English teacher - a twenty-three year old woman whose name is Lan and is very sweet and friendly - but we do most of the work. I hope it's really helpful for the kids because we can actually pronounce the words. The Vietnamese and English languages are so different that it's really difficult for Vietnamese people to make English sounds and vice versa. So far, the kids can't really handle g's, t's, r's, and sh's, and words like "today" end up sounding like "to die." "Geography" is a killer for them.

The Vietnamese teacher decides what she wants us to teach each day, and there's a book with lessons and exercises to go from, so it's not really difficult to figure out what to do once you get the hang of it. Erik taught the first lesson, which is good because I would have no idea what to do if I had had to. He's leaving next Tuesday, so then I'll be on my own, but I'll be able to handle it by then. The problem with the way English is being taught here is that it really focuses on drills, memorization, and repetition, but you don't know if the kids can actually produce the language or even if they really understand it. Hopefully once I get more used to what I'm doing, I'll be able to mix it up a little bit and get them to produce sentences and whatnot.

The kids are adorable, and their energy and participation really increased as we got further on into the day. They're excited to see foreigners, but most people are - they stare at me shamelessly. But all you have to is smile, maybe say hello, and they'll smile back. I've said this a million times, but I'll say it again - everyone is so friendly! I had a lot of fun on our lunchbreak today because after eating lunch, which they provide, we went to a nearby cafe (I got some fresh orange juice - in Italy last summer, we got orange juice that, we later realized with horror, cost $17 a glass, but this glass of orange juice, which was maybe twice the size, cost 25,000 Vietnamese Dong, which is about $1.50,) and then Erik and Noel wanted to use an internet cafe. While we were walking down there, Noel stopped at a barbershop and asked the two men there if he could take their picture (he promised his hairdresser,) and they were happy to oblige. At the cafe, I sat out on the steps and people-watched while I waited for Noel and Erik. A woman with her two little daughter was selling cold drinks and live chickens by the roadside, and while I was watching her, the two men from the barbershop came over, said hello, and then began asking me if I wanted them to pluck my eyebrows! So we had a trans-English-Vietnamese conversation about my eyebrows, what a weird shape they are, and then Erik's ponytail, and then I took a picture with one of them, and the woman with her children came over, and wanted me to take a picture of the children. (So cute - I'll post pictures later.)

And then a very weird conversation ensued with all of them - they were gesturing to show what I thought was height, because I am a little taller than both of the men I was talking to, and generally taller than most people, which is crazy, but then the woman began counting to show the ages of her children, so I figured they were asking about my age. I was advised to lie to the kids I teach about how old I am to get their respect, so I told them I was twenty-one, which is probably a little bit more than I can get away with, and I figured that was a good idea with these people too, even though there's no chance of them hurting me or anything if I told them my real age. So I guess at Peace House, my dormitory, I'm 17 but in the outside world I'm 21. People in Vietnam actually look much younger than they really are, so I guess I'll think about lying about my age as trying to assimilate.

Next, an old woman who knew the men started waving at me to - I think - come in and get a haircut, which I didn't want, but she wouldn't stop waving, and then she came over and tried to pull me out of my seat, smiling all the while, and she started rubbing my face and my hair. My paleness seems to be public property here. I've noticed a lot of women wearing cloth masks over their mouths with elastic straps that go behind their ears, with pretty patterns on them, and wearing long gloves that go all the way up their arms, and I was told that this is because in Vietnam, it's not a good thing to have dark skin, at all, and woman are terrified of getting tan. So, they're obsessed with my pale skin. It's nice to know my high chance of getting skin cancer is good for something. I'm curious if this attitude towards skin color comes from the colonial era when they were ruled by France - if it was instilled by European rulers - because isn't this attitude about skin color common in other non-white ethnic groups? Just another wonderful thing imperialism and slavery have brought.

Pictures to follow!

I forgot Andrea in my last post, which is terrible because she's my rommate. I don't know how old she is but she's Swiss and speaks German, and is leaving at the end of the week. Very nice.

Cast of Characters

2008-07-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's been so easy to make friends! Everyone here is so nice and willing to help, whether they're Vietnamese or a foreign volunteer. There are about fifteen volunteers staying here, and most people have been here together for a few weeks, but on my second day, it's not hard at all to talk to them and participate in what's going on.

So, here's some short descriptions of the people I'm here with:

Sidney - A Canadian woman with blond hair, glasses, and a nose that flips up a little at the end. Back home, she does autopsies for a living, and works for a really famous doctor.

Irena - A Canadian-Japanese girl, 19, who goes to McGill. She's here doing NGO work, but she's a little frustrated with what she ended up doing because it doesn't really fill up her time and it's not really what she signed up to do.

Noel - A Dutch (I think he's Dutch . . . maybe German?) man, 34, very soft-spoken and very very nice. He speaks so many languages - English, German, Dutch, French, Luxembourg . . . ese . . . He works at the same school I'll be working at.

Erik - Very tall and skinny man with long brown hair in a pony-tail, 25, liberal, atheist, very outspoken about his views, which are very strong. A little much for Noel sometimes. He also works at my school, and I'm going with him to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum on Thursday. He teaches middle school social studies in Detroit.

Hannah - British girl, in her twenties, studying medicine. Came here to do medical work but ended up being placed so that she just observes a Vietnamese doctor, who is constantly hitting on her. She has great stories.

Anna - An Austrian woman, very nice, who is very frustrated with her experience because the organization is very disorganized and she never really got to do the work she was promised, so she feels cheated and she's going home a month early.

Lan - A very very very nice Vietnamese woman who's kind of the one who's just there if I need anything. She works here as a paid job. So nice, so willing to help. Married, lived in Hanoi all her life. She's worked here for a couple of months and it quitting August 15 because it's so disorganized and she isn't well paid, and she has three great job offers because she speaks such good English and that's not common in Vietnam at all.

Chuong - The man who is sort of the caretaker, I think - he's the one who gave me the key for my lockbox and who gave me a fan for my room. Also nice - he's learning English and Irena and I tried to teach him what "kind" and "mean" meant tonight. Hilarity ensued.

There are a bunch of Vietnamese volunteers here whose names I don't know yet who speak very good English and are really interesting to talk to about Vietnam, the war, differences between Vietnam and the US, communism vs. capitalism, how the two are actually implemented, etc. (Really, really interesting - I'll post more about this another time.) You just can't talk about this with Eric around because he'll completely monopolize the conversation.

Mark - English guy who's teaching - you guessed it - English.

Woman and daughter whose names I've forgotten - Asian-Americans from California, very nice. The daughter looks like she's 15 but she's really 23.

Couple whose names I've forgotten - Canadian guy and girl, about to be seniors in college. Blond and attractive.

Mariam - French woman, don't know her very well.

Julia - German woman, also doing NGO work. Studied law in college but can't do anything with it, worked for a publishing company but quit when she got an offer to come volunteer here without a fee, needs to get a job when she gets back.

Did I forget anyone? Probably. Oh well. I'll post an addition later.

Many of the people here are leaving at the end of the week. A lot of them either came from traveling in other places, or will go traveling somewhere else after they leave. Or both! Everyone's gone on great weekend trips really cheaply so I need to get all their travel information. $4o for a trip to Ha Long Bay, everything included? I'll take it.

Pictures!

2008-07-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Exploring Hanoi

2008-07-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't sleep very well last night, but I'm not all that tired now, so I think I'll make it all the way to tonight without sleeping. It turns out that in daylight, my roommate is very nice. She's already been here for a week, and she'll be here for another week before she leaves, and maybe I'll get someone else and I'll be the experienced one. Oh, how the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. (Twelfth Night? Ninth grade? Anyone?)

I met some people at breakfast (toast and fruit and tea and coffee, but mostly lots and lots of water) and everyone seems very nice. Let's hope I make friends (dear god, let's hope so.) Then I was taken on a tour of Hanoi by two volunteers - young women, 20 years old, going to college in Hanoi, volunteering for the summer. They were very nice but I kept feeling awkward because I wasn't used to how things worked. Crossing the street, for example. It's terrifying. The vast majority of people ride motorbikes, and even though there are lanes and stoplights, no one really pays any attention to them. And yes, everyone honks their horn, all the time. In these completely unfamiliar surroundings, finally something I can relate to America: the belief that you are the one person who has the right to be on the road at any given time.

So, when you want to cross the street, you have to strategize, and walk out into a street full of oncoming self-entitled motorbikes, timing yourself so you just narrowly miss them all. One of the girls, Phuong, basically just had to steer me across the street the whole time because I kept nearly getting myself killed.

I'm sure I was terrible company for them today because I'm a little shell-shocked and wiped out emotionally and when I'm stressed, I get quiet and pull inside myself anyway, and I was tired, and got tired of walking around, and my contacts started getting blurry, and I was a little homesick. I realized today what culture shock means: it's when you are so removed from your own home and culture that nothing is familiar, and you have nothing you can relate to. It was really nice to come home to the refuge of my dormitory, where everyone is very nice and understanding, and some people speak English as a first language, and I have my things, which are little bits of home.

I want to upload some pictures, but the wifi's being screwy, so here's a description of what I would post images of if I was patient:

First, the Temple of Literature, which was built in 1070 to honor scholars, dedicated to Confucius. It's a beautiful place. We lit some incense and prayed a little bit for luck. You bow three times to show respect. Next, Hoan Kiem Lake, which is green and gorgeous.

Dude!

2008-07-20T18:04:00.001-07:00

Wifi! Yesss!

Greetings with a completely screwed up body clock from Hanoi

2008-07-20T17:36:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm here. I made it. I'm in my dorm room, which came equipped with mosquito netting, so Mum, you can hold onto the receipt from when we bought some. I have a roommate, but I arrived so late last night that all I really know about her is that she's from Sweden and her name is Andrea. No clue how old she is or anything. I wish she would wake up so I could ask her questions about the shower, though. It's just a thing coming out of the wall – no real stall thing to stand in – so I'm wondering if I just stand on the floor or stand in the large bucket that's in the bathroom or what. I really don't want to flood the place on the first day, but I also haven't showered in at least thirty five hours, so I might want to take a chance on it.

There was a really nice man from Laos sitting next to me on the plane from Seoul to Hanoi that I chatted with a bit and then he helped me fill out my customs stuff properly and seemed to be generally concerned with my welfare, which was nice. He gave me his card in case I ever want to go see Laos. Asiana airlines was really nice, too. All planes are really the same, but the things they provided were quality items – nice blankets, a meal on nice airline china with real silverware, warm rolls to go with dinner. I think I must have eaten five meals yesterday plus random Luna bars here and there, what with being awake for twenty seven hours and skipping around so many time zones on my flights.

My coordinator person, Lan, picked me up at the airport – she seems really nice, and she is really small. I feel very tall next to her. I think Emily Abeshouse would feel tall next to her. And we got driven by some man to the dormitory, who just honked at everything the entire time – drivers going to slow, drivers with their turn signals, drivers next to him, drivers in front of him – and chatted with Lan in Vietnamese, so of course I had no clue what they were saying.

I didn't really sleep last night – you'd think I'd have this overwhelming exhaustion and drop off immediately but I think my body's just too screwed up right now to figure out it needs sleep. Today is the day I get a tour of the city, and then tomorrow I have orientation and start teaching. Hopefully I'll get exhausted today and sleep really well tonight and be fine. It would be really nice if I could take a shower, though.

Writing prompt for Lisa: Write out the conversation that Lan and the driver were having. Have them be talking about something that is completely juxtaposed by their calm, lighthearted tone, so if you were someone who didn't speak the language (like me!) you'd have no clue what they were talking about.

Slightly more tired greetings from Korea

2008-07-20T17:35:00.002-07:00

(posted after the fact)

So, apparently, at home, it's 5:35 in the morning. I've gotten maybe two or three hours of sleep since I got up twenty four hours ago. I'm not doing too badly, though. I'm mostly just scared that I smell terrible. I discreetly brushed my teeth and topped up deodorant in the bathroom here, though.

That twelve-hour plane ride felt like it was never going to end. At one point I was sure we were almost there, and it turned out it had only been six hours. That was at the point when I had temporarily forgotten it was twelve hours long and thought that it would be ten hours total, so I had another rude awakening when I remembered that. This all makes that hellish six hour defensive driving course feel like nothing. To make matters a bit worse, if I can make a petty complaint, my little TV monitor in the back of the seat in front of me was broken, so I couldn't even watch a movie. Tragic – I really wanted to watch this Rachel McAdams movie they had where she has platinum blond hair.

I saw Japan from the window, which was really awesome. It's just so cool that I'm in Asia! The airport here was really easy to navigate because there's English everywhere (although there are far, far more Asian people here than there were white people in San Francisco, which is also understandable.) The bathrooms are also nice, which is important, and they have this cool plastic seat cover that you press a button to rotate before you go. Brilliant!

I'd really love to spend some time on Korea at some point, now that I'm here. It seems a shame that I can't explore a little bit. Although I'm not gonna lie – one of the reasons I'm excited about Korea is because of Jin and Sun. People who watch Lost will know what I'm talking about. Is this the airport where Sun almost left Jin before they flew to Australia? Ohh man, how cool.

I just saw a flock of flight attendants go by. They're all super skinny (maybe that's a prerequisite for being hired?) and are wearing these tight tan dresses and adorable little hats that I can't really describe but almost look like birds perched on their heads. I have no clue how they stay on.

I can't call home for some reason so my parents are probably freaking out, and I can't access the wireless because you need to pay, so I'm sending out thought waves to them saying that I'm okay.

Secret message for Lisa: As of now, I've already been to New York and San Francisco Bay, but you can take me to Chicago and LA!

Well, next time I talk to you all, I'll be in Hanoi!

Greetings from San Francisco

2008-07-20T17:35:00.001-07:00

(posted after the fact)

So, I got up at 5:30 this morning, left at six, got to the airport at 6:40, had an emotional goodbye with my parents. I was careful to have my little carry-on shampoo and conditioner in a separate bag, but they still pulled me aside at security because I'm so brilliant that I forgot that my huge container of contact solution was still liquid. But the security man was nice and let me keep it.

My plane trip to Hanoi is broken up into three parts: First, six hours to San Francisco, (and here I am!) then twelve hours to Seoul, Korea, and then four and a half hours to Hanoi, with enough waiting time between flights to make the whole thing take a total of twenty seven hours. Pretty intense, right? So now I have twenty one hours left. Jesus.

I've never been to California before, and I wish I had a chance to explore San Francisco a little. I got a look at the landscape coming over and everything was very dry and hilly and brown – practically no green. It's so cool and bizarre how one country has such vastly different climates and environments within it. One day we have to do that cross-country trip my mom has always talked about.

It's probably a sign of how sheltered I am that I'm not used to seeing as many Asian people in one place as there are in this airport; maybe half of everyone here is Asian, and I'm not just talking about my the gate for my flight to Korea. But it makes perfect sense that there would be, in California. I really need to spend some actual time here someday.

I'm getting so good at airports. I'm such a big girl. We'll see how well I do when I get to Korea.

Cam On

2008-07-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

So I've (a bit belatedly) started listening to my Vietnamese language podcasts to learn some key phrases (so far I've got "thank you" and "you're welcome") and this is turning out to be pretty difficult. Vietnamese is a tonal language so every syllable has to be the right tone, or it could mean a completely different word. I'm sure sympathetic local Vietnamese will be able to realize that the jumbled mess I make of "cam on" is actually an attempt to say "thank you." I'm interested to see how people who speak a tonal language put inflection and emotion into their speech - I don't know about you, but being a rather sarcastic person, I use the tone of my speech a huge amount in conveying my meaning.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with jet lag. My problem is that all my flights together plus time spent changing planes equals 27 hours, and Vietnam is 11 hours forward, so I'm leaving at 8:15 in the morning and arriving, 27 hours later, at 10:10 at night. I'll probably be exhausted no matter what time my internal clock thinks it is and just fall asleep immediately anyway. My strategy was going to be to get a good night's sleep the night before, but now, since I'm going to see The Dark Knight at midnight tonight and my sleep schedule will be all screwed up anyway, I'm thinking that I'll just stay up really late tomorrow night and be absolutely exhausted on my first flight, so that I'll wake up for Vietnam daytime. Whatever - I bet it doesn't really matter anyway and whatever I do will probably backfire on me somehow.

Everything I'm going to pack is sitting on the floor of my room in piles. Tomorrow I just need to wrestle it into a suitcase, and on Saturday morning, away I go.

Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

2008-06-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed reading Catfish and Mandala. The book was the author's memoir - Mr. Pham escaped to the US from Vietnam with his family when he was around nine, and then about ten years ago he made this pretty epic bike journey up the west coast, then through Japan, then around Vietnam. I'm not sure how often I've read memoirs before, probably not very, but I don't think I've ever felt such a personal connection to an author before. I mean, I've identified with characters, but that's not the same thing - you know they aren't real.

The book cuts between the story of the Pham family's life in Vietnam, their escape from it, and their life adjusting to being immigrants in America and trying to find their identity here, and the story of Andrew's, or just An's, bike trip. It's sad to read because you see the family struggle to find and identity in America and come up against the racism and exclusivity that Americans love and hold dear, never being allowed to be accepted as part of America, and then when An goes back to Vietnam, where he was born, he is seen as a traitor for having left them, and is seen as an outsider now. The Vietnamese just want to use him to profit off of his prosperity now that he lives in America, even though he has very little money. It seems as though the Vietnamese, and probably many other countries, have a very different kind of national identity than the US does. Our national identity is very fluid - we're a nation of immigrants, after all (which isn't to say that immigrants are always accepted as Americans, because, as clearly shown by this book, they aren't,) and we're used to feeling powerful because we're a very rich country and powerful in the world, for better or for worse. That must be very different from being an underdog country, in the third world, who's been stepped on over and over again by different greater powers throughout their history. A strong national bond would have to form through pride at having endured suffering as a nation and survived to keep trying to move forward.

I wonder if immigrants, or children of immigrants, in the US feel like they can share our national history. I mean, my great grandparents were immigrants from Ireland - I have no claim that my roots go back to the revolution or anything, but I still feel like I can identify with our history as my own. But what about people who just arrived? How many generations removed must you be to feel that your national identity is American, or most primarily American, and take on our national mythology so that the founding fathers are your heroes too? I wonder what it's like to be black in America - would you identify more with being African American than just American? Would the historical struggle you take national pride in that to end slavery and attain civil rights, instead of the struggle to overthrow British rule? Would you feel a disconnect from the founding fathers who were holding Africans as slaves as they were fighting for freedom?

I think that a nation's sort of historical mythology is so interesting - actual history will tell you about the actions of a nation's people, but the way they perceive their own history, the people they make heroes, will tell you about who those people are.

Getting Ready to Go

2008-06-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

So, on July 21, I'll be in Hanoi, Vietnam, in theory ready to start the amazing experience that's waiting for me but most likely exhausted and jet lagged and useless. I've got a month before I go.

I started this blog because I want to be able to record everything I experience there, in a way where I can share it easily with my friends and family and anyone interested in keeping tabs on me. Right now I'll probably post sporadically to blabber about all the preparation - shopping, getting shots, doing research, reading reading reading - but hopefully once I'm there I'll post every day, record everything, forget nothing. Take loads and loads of pictures. In the end, this is probably more for me than for anyone else reading this, so I'll never forget. I've been out of the country before - I've been lucky enough to go to places like England, Ireland and Italy - but as amazing as those places were to experience, they still fall within the realm of the familiar. I'm thrilled to be going to a place so completely different from what I've known all my life, with lifestyles and thoughts and food so foreign.

Meanwhile, I'll be experiencing a country and a people with a history painfully and inextricably intertwined with that of the US, a history that neither country can forget or ignore. My mother was a hippie in college, and she threw herself into protesting the war, as passionate about the atrocities of her generation as I am about the atrocities of mine. Now, she thinks that my going to the country she fought so hard for is bringing something full circle. Discussing possible locations for me to go, she heard old familiar names - Saigon, Mekong Delta, Hanoi - in a whole new context, the images of war and horror removed and replaced with hope and opportunity. Nice an poetic, a new generation healing the wounds of the old.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not pretending that me crossing the Pacific and teaching some children how to say "How are you" will heal the wounds of the Vietnam War. It's also pretty naive to assume that I and the people I encounter will come away with a new outlook on our lives and our places in the world. But hey, there's nothing wrong with hoping. In any case, I'll go somewhere completely new, completely foreign, and hopefully find a way to make it feel like home.