Hàng Ngày

Yesterday I visited An Phu district with Eric, Tyler, and three students from 6D1 and 7D1 (first and second years). We went to visit another 6D student who lives in this district that borders Cambodia. The trip started at 7:30 and the motorbike ride there (Tyler drove, not me ) was about 1.5 hours along wide expanses of rice paddies and long stretches of the river filled with fishing boats and small ferries. We crossed the ferry in Chau Doc town and after a few minutes in An Phu Tyler pointed out an interesting tourist site: a mosque! A huge mosque, and then another one about 100 meters away. An Phu district is the area in An Giang province where there is a large population of muslims, and on our way back at 5 PM we actually saw people in the mosques gathering for prayer. The mosques were beautiful, and had an interesting fusion of Islamic and Vietnamese architecture.

We got to Mau’s house and right away she fed us delicious food and made us drink beer (yuck!) which she actually joined us in drinking! After the meal we went out behind Mau’s stilted house to walk around the fish pond, the duck coop (like a chicken coop?) where the ducks were all attacking one poor, weakling duck. A little bit funny, in a way, but not really…behind Mau’s house, the pond, and the ducks, is a wide expanse of rice, for as far as you can see, with only a few dots of trees and tombs in the distance. An and I walked out into the rice fields, despite the blazing heat of the sun, and he said he was surprised that I was able to walk on the narrow walkways so well: city people can’t usually do it, he said. I laughed at this: now I know that my early years as a “gymnast” are paying off!

We returned to the house and played cards for about an hour while some took a nap. They play this game during Tet called “bai tien len” which is basically like the American game “asshole,” for all you college students out there. It was fun, and we gambled for watermelon: the loser had to eat the watermelon slices that Mau’s mom had set out for us (we were really full at this point, so it was a real punishment!) I taught the students how to play blackjack, which Nguyen, the first year student,  turned out to be really good at. Good thing we weren’t playing for money because she would have left us all broke!

The last activity of the day was karaoke (of course). Countryside karaoke is totally different than in the cities, although the one in An Phu was actually not bad. Usually it is just an empty cinder block room with a TV/Karaoke set up in one corner. Somehow, with this simple system, the music is still deafeningly loud, and the microphones are programmed to have so much echo that the feedback is sometimes unbearable. The pictures on the TV screen don’t correspond to the music at all, and are usually street scenes or tourist locations from random places in Europe. My favorite was the karaoke place on Tiger Island, where I went with An and his friends earlier this week: part of the “music video” that played over and over again was shot through the window of a health club in some Western country: horribly ugly pictures of overweight, sweaty westerners walking on treadmills. With cheesy Vietnamese pop music in the background. Classic.

And with that trip, Tet holiday seems to be coming to a close. It’s back to the grindstone on Monday, and I think I’m ready to go back to teaching. I’ve had some of my most memorable and valuable experiences this week: visiting students and friends in their homes and seeing what countryside life is really like in Vietnam. They are experiences that I will never forget, and although I don’t have many pictures, the images will remain in my mind for a very long time.

It is now day four of the new year (mong bon) which means that many people will go back to work and life as normal. The past three days have basically been an eating, drinking, talking, and visiting festival. On mong hai (day 2) I got a message from a student at about 6:15 AM asking if I wanted to come visit his house on Tiger Island. Of course, I said yes, and by 8 AM I was on a ferry boat to his house. He met me on the other side with his bicycle and his cousin, and we rode the few kilometers back to his house, through rice paddies and fruit orchards.

An’s house is a traditional Vietnamese countryside home, the floor made of wide wooden planks, as well as three of the walls. The front of the house is open to the air, with a railing across it to serve as a sort of balcony. An has a large family, although fairly typical for Vietnamese in the countryside: he has three older sisters, two of whom are married, and a younger brother. His sisters live with him, as well as their husbands and children, so the house was full of people, all of whom seemed slightly terrified of me, the foreigner, sitting on a stool in the front of the house. One of the babies even started crying when I tried to talk to her. This is fairly standard baby behavior upon seeing “nguoi la” (strange looking people.)

After eating lunch with An and one of his friends from high school, we went for a bike ride around the island. Tiger Island, although it is only a 15 minute ferry ride from Long Xuyen, is much less “developed” than the city. In order to use the internet, An must leave the island, for example. Almost all of the people on Tiger Island are farmers, and although there are a lot of people, and the roads are lined with houses, it still has a very quiet and peaceful atmosphere that is more like the countryside than the city. It took us about 30 minutes to make it from An’s house on one side of the island to Uncle Ton Duc Thang’s temple, on the other side of the island. An, his cousin (also named An) and I walked around the temple and associated gardens for a few minutes, and then visited the Ton Duc Thang museum. The museum, like many others in Vietnam, is a collection of documents and artifacts charting the hero’s revolutionary activities and struggles. It always makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable when I look at the exhibits about “The Struggle Against the Americans, 1954-1975.” There are usually pictures of American soldiers being slaughtered by Vietnamese, or of Americans unjustly torturing innocent Vietnamese civilians. An didn’t seem to bat an eye at these, and I didn’t ask about it, but sometimes I wonder what my students have learned about Americans, particularly in their history classes, and how that affects the way they perceive me.

After a quick coffee break in a nearby garden, we made the trip back to Long Xuyen where I took a much needed nap (the sun is brutal at mid-day, which is of course when we were out). Later on I went to have evening coffee with An and some of his friends from high school, who also live on Tiger Island, but came to the city to hang out for the night.

Yesterday, day 3, I visited the home of one of my best friends in Long Xuyen. Yen is the same age as me, and also just started teaching at An Giang University this year, after graduating from the same school in 2006. Yen lives with her parents and her eight year old sister on the main street of Long Xuyen, and one of her students was ther as well. We spent the morning playing “Bai Cau,” a card game in which each person gets three cards, then counts the value of the cards (face cards worth 10) and whatever the last number of your total sum is your number (for example, if your cards total 27, your number is 7). The one with the highest number from 0-9 wins. This is a game purely of luck, but apparently is also a very popular betting game. We also exchanged card tricks and palm-reading techniques, at lunch and “rau cau,” a kind of gelatinous dessert ( I know, Dad, pudding, but it’s a little stiffer than jello or pudding, so it’s actually ok.)

Last night I went to the home of the vice-head of the English department, Ms. Nhiem. She lives with her husband and three children down a back road behind the university, which we had a bit of trouble finding (especially Steven is his semi-drunken state from the day’s partying). She prepared a delicious meal of chicken salad, roasted duck, “thit kho” (a tet holiday pork specialty), kim chi, and dumpling soup. We drank homemade wine that her husband brewed, and it tasted and looked a little bit like white port. It didn’t even cause a headache this morning!

And today, today we are going to Tri’s house (who works in the IR department) to help his wife cook Indian food. Tri is cham ethnic minority, a group that originally came to Vietnam from India several hundred years ago, but was eventually defeated by the Vietnamese invaders (yes, the Vietnamese too have a history of expansion and empire building). And tomorrow, the next day, who knows, plans here seem to spring up at the last minute, and typically the last minute plans tend to be the most exciting: those times when I have no idea where I’m going and who I’m going to meet and what I’m going to eat or drink and what we’re going to do. The excitement of living in a foreign country!

On a completely unrelated note, I saw a funny promotional advertisement on the bus ride back here that I keep thinking about. It was at a motorbike store: “Buy a new Honda motorbike and get a free helmet and case of beer!” I wonder, which was the first present they thought of? The case of beer and then they figured they should throw in the helmet as well? Or was it the other way around?

This has been a busy week of visitors and visiting! Sunday I took the trip to HCMC where I met up with Julie, a fellow VIA volunteer from Hanoi, and Erick, one of my friends from the US. Sunday we went to a great live music club in HCMC called Yoko where the band plays your favorite rock-n-roll covers (including the beatles of course). We started out with only a few people, but ended up with a group of about 10 friends-of-friends-of-friends, as these situations tend to go, including Julie’s friends from Hanoi, Saigon, random travelers, and a friend of mine from LX who I just ran into on the street!

Monday night some other Mekong Deltoids showed up and the five VIA vols as well as other random friends (once again) went to this famous fried chicken place (on Tu Xuong, by the way, for my SIT-VN friends. I can’t believe I’d never discovered this place before!) The place is famous in Saigon because the chicken is fried using a special contraption that the owner designed himself. It sprays the chicken with oil from above, which makes it extra crispy on all sides. Yummy!

Tuesday the China vols arrived, a long awaited visit from me. It was so nice to see them again after almost 6 months and countless teaching and living abroad experiences to share. We went to a good binh dan place for dinner and then wandered the backpacker district and the flower market drinking fruit shakes and catching up until we found a little street vendor with dried squid, beer, and plastic tables. We sat ourselves down here and played with the snake that had been in a bottle of rice wine, among other antics.

Saigon doesn’t really have much to do during the day if you’ve already seen all the tourist attractions, and plus it was quite hot, so I basically spent the days just walking around, drinking coffee with friends, and relaxing. Wednesday night we ate Mi Quang on the street and we introduced the China vols to a little Mekong Delta rice wine tradition: we bought two la vie water bottles full of banana wine and a little shot glass and sat around the table sharing shots of the poison. After we were sufficiently satisfied with the rice alcohol we made our way to the trashy Apocalypse Now dance club, which I hadn’t been to since I was a student here. It was pretty quiet when we got there, but thankfully, Allister (china vol) started the dance party and before we knew it, we could barely move because the dance floor was so packed!

At 1 am the China vols and I got on a bus to Dalat, which was maybe a crazy move on my part because I wanted to be back by Friday night for new year’s eve in LX, but decided to just go with it anyway, and of course was not disappointed.

The one day I spent in Dalat with China vols was great, relaxing, and just what I’d needed. The weather, as usual, was quite cool. Scott and I walked around for about 4 hours in the afternoon and visited a few different temples where we talked to the monks about their pagodas and about the preparations for Tet holiday. It was really interesting, and I am usually not too confident to just up and talk to monks in temples, so I was glad Scott was there to push me a little bit. We visited the university (no students, however) and once again I felt myself pulled to move to a different teaching position next year…I’m sure it’s partly the cold weather, but something about living in Dalat seems really appealing to me.

Picnic of Banh Mi and Banh Tet in Dalat

In order to get back to LX by Friday afternoon I had to get on a bus at 6 am Friday morning from Dalat and go through HCMC. The bus rides were pretty miserable in general, but here are my top five highlights:

5. It was soooooo freaking hot on the bus from HCMC to LX (left at 2 pm) and nothing to block the sun from coming in the windows, so we all had to hold our jackets up to the windows with our hands.

4. On the bus from Dalat to HCMC, the music was playing the entire time, and it was so loud I could hardly hear myself think. The only thing louder than the music was the driver honking his horn (about every 5 seconds) to warn drivers that he was passing by.

3. There was a sign on the bus from HCMC to Long Xuyen that said “no smoking.” The driver decided this meant that when he wanted to smoke, he should just open his window. I was sitting right behind him and was covered in ashes after the third cigarette.

2. The woman sitting next to me on the bus from Dalat got carsick and vomitted into one of the cute little black plastic bags they give you for the purpose. She then tied the bag shut and put it in the pocket on the back of her seat. When we stopped at a rest area I got off to go to the bathroom. When I came back she was gone. However, the cute little bag of vomit was still in its place. I guess she forgot to take it to the trash??

1. On the bus from HCMC, the front door wasn’t quite closed, and so the driver asked the woman sitting in the passenger seat to lean over and open and close it (in-motion). She tried and failed, and in the process lost her shoe. We had to stop and back up over these people’s yards so that she could retrieve it.

Overall a great trip, returned just in time to have a bonfire on the roof and view the new year’s fireworks with the boys. I will leave you with some pictures of the Tet holiday market and the fireworks. Chuc mung nam moi!

This week has been a bit of a reunion of sorts for a large contingent of Vietnam and China vols. Three volunteers from China came to HCMC on Tuesday to join four mekong delta volunteers and one Hanoi volunteers as well as an eclectic mix of friends, acquaintances, and random travelers.

 Sunday night Julie (Hanoi volunteer) took us out to some of the coolest places in the city: Yoko music club, where the band plays rock-n-roll covers to a hip Saigon crowd, and the female singer sounds eerily like Alanis Morissette. Then we went to “Lush” club, where there was a strange mix of dancers including a cocky Vietnamese student (who’d studied in England and thought he was all that with his punk hair cut) and a middle-aged white guy with a neck brace on (still dancing!) It was good to go out to a dance club, exactly what I needed after 5 months in sleepy Long Xuyen.

 On Tuesday the China volunteers arrived and Tuesday night found us spiking our fruit shakes with Hanoi vodka while walking through the flower market and then sitting on the side of the road eating dried squid at little plastic kiddy tables. Last night we went out to the infamous Apocalypse Now dance club that I hadn’t been to since I was a student in Saigon. It was pretty quiet when we got there, so we basically had to start the dance party (well, Allister did) and by the time we left it was packed. Then the three China vols and I said goodbye to the others and hopped a 1 am bus to Dalat, which is where we are now. It is cool and refreshing, a lovely change from the big city, and being here again makes me want to stay. VIA will have a new and interesting post here next year dealing not only with the English department but also with the community development department, and it’s very tempting to leave Long Xuyen. If my students weren’t so endearing…

The Annual Department of Foreign Languages came and went with all the fanfare that the weeks of preparation promised. The show began late, of course (the Vietnamese idiom “time is a rubber band” is becoming so normal to me now) and lasted a whopping three and a half hours! Even Rector Xuan, in his closing speech given to an audience of yawning teachers and empty plastic stools at 10:40 pm, said that next year we should try to make it shorter…

The performances were a mixed bag: some were quite impressive, such as the play “Justice Pao,” written and performed by a group of rowdy third year students. They created a raucous courtroom scene in which the defendants, a hit-and-run motorbiker (a vocabulary word they learned from their foreign teachers…) and the mistress of a brothel pled not-guilty and proceeded to beg for mercy at the feet of the judge (after strutting themselves around stage a few times, of course). It was hilarious. Some were not so impressive, such as the teachers’ play that I participated in…simply long and not as funny as we thought. However, it did have a cute love scene between me and Tyler, including cupid shooting me with arrows, which I’m sure the students loved and I will never hear the end of.

The dance with my second year students went well, after all of our hard work and practice. Our costumes were classic Vietnam dance: short jeans, with a piece of bright yellow fabric wrapped around our waists like skirts, and a blue and red plaid shirt tied at the waist to show a little bit of your stomach (I wore a shirt underneath so as not to expose the shiny ring in my belly button, scandalous!), backwards blue baseball caps, and some sort of black string tied around our ankles. The students were really excited at the end of the evening when we received second prize for our dance performance.

Despite some of the shortcomings and the length of the evening, it was a lot of fun in general, and very surprising that it came together as well as it did, seeing as we had a scant four weeks to prepare everything for it, and were still running through the dress-rehearsal mid-afternoon the day of the show. A good lesson in last minute throwing things together. Enjoy pictures below!