Hàng Ngày

This weekend was very uneventful. Last night I went to bed at about 10:30. I slept late for me (past 7!) and spent the day wandering around the city. I went to the marina. I went to the golden gate bridge. I sat on a chair in my backyard (!!) basking in the sun and reading a book. I sat in my living room with my roommate and chatted online with people in Vietnam while he played “Dday” the computer game and drank wine out of a bottle until he was wasted. I tried to get him to go out and have a beer with me (I was going stir-crazy by 9 pm), but he said he was too drunk to get there. Fine. I’ll go alone. So I went alone to a neighborhood bar, and I drank 3/4 of a beer and watched people. It was fairly interesting, and I talked to two of the bartenders. One of them asked how long I’d been in the city. I said a few weeks. He asked where I’d moved from. I said “Vietnam.” He laughed at that and asked me again. I told him again, “Vietnam,” at which point he said, “I mean, where in the US did you live before this??” I told him New York. That seemed to satisfy him, and after that he stopped talking to me.

The Vietnamese have this word ” một mình” that means”by yourself.” The Vietnamese hardly ever do anything “một mình.” It’s not vui (see previous post on the meaning of ‘vui.’) I used to find this somewhat oppressive. I liked my “một mình” time. I mean, I guess I still do. But the Vietnamese also have another word, “cô đơn” which means “lonely.” They don’t often use this word, and I used to wonder why. Later I found that it was because being alone implied being lonely. This is a strange concept in the US, I feel, because for us being alone doesn’t necessarily imply loneliness. Tonight, I went to a bar by myself and got laughed at by the bartender. I mean, I’ve learned how to deal with being alone, I really have. I learned to deal with loneliness well when I was in Vietnam. I feel lonely here when I’m surrounded by a crowd of people, and I think that’s something that maybe neither the Vietnamese word “cô đơn” nor the word, “một mình,” could ever imply.

For those who have lived in New York City, the act of procuring new furniture by way of finding things on the street is nothing new. But what do you do when you find the perfect sofa-bed for your living room just waiting to be dragged the 10 blocks to your apartment, but find it is too ridiculously heavy for you and your two roommates to even lift? Well, thanks to Craigslist, procuring street furniture has become amazingly easy. While sitting in the living room trying to brainstorm ways we could mount the couch on wheels or otherwise get it to the apartment, I was surfing Craigslist for a bed. One listing that came up was not for a bed to sleep upon, but a truck bed…interesting, I looked closer. It was an ad for Chris, who owns a van, to come and pick up anything you want and transport it for a mere $45. Hm…we went back to see if the couch was still there and I called up Chris while Joanne sat on the couch on the street. Chris was there in 15 minutes, and 10 minutes later, I am sitting on the couch in the living room, writing this post. Apparently Chris does this for a living. He drives around the city and moves big things for $45 a pop. Not a bad deal. (Dad, you should consider this as a retirement career). He said there are about 100 guys in the city who do this for a living. What a cool place. What would we have done in Vietnam, where there are no guys with vans? We probably would have figured out a way to mount it on one or two bicycles and pedaled it back home…

The term “nhớ nhà” means “homesickness” or “to be homesick” in Vietnamese. Usually my students used it when talking about how much they missed their families and their hometowns when they lived in the city for school. They talked about missing the quiet of the countryside, missing their parents’ cooking, missing lazy days spent fishing in the pond outside their house.

This weekend, I realized that I also nhớ nhà. But different from my students who missed their hometowns, the “nhà” that I miss right now is my home in Vietnam. I miss the sounds of Vietnam: the neighboring coffee shops with their dueling cheesy pop tunes blasting at full volume; the smell of cơm sườn, grilled meat with rice, smoking on the side of the road, the sun blazing hot, my bicycle, the coffee, oh, I really miss the coffee. I miss my life in Vietnam. Most of all I miss my friends, my family there. I miss my students, I miss Minh and Jenna and Phil and Kirsty and Sunday afternoons spent drinking coffee at Ngọc Hạnh and talking about how to change the world. I miss H’Rim, Long, Giang, Thang, and all of their families who took me in and made me part of their lives. I miss riding my bike down small dirt tracks surrounded by rice paddies on both sides. Nhớ nhà is the best way to express it, the word “miss” in English just doesn’t get at the feeling of nhớ nhà. Tôi nhớ nhà.

So, I’m settling in to San Francisco. I like it, I really do, I don’t even need to pretend. People here are really friendly. I am now worried that I need to be careful about who I’m friendly back to…because in Vietnam, I could just start a conversation with anyone, and I knew it would only be a language-exchange experience, or maybe even an insight into Vietnamese culture, if I was lucky. Here, talking to a stranger is, well, strange. On the subway today, I talked to a strange guy who seemed to be talking to himself, and everyone around me was looking on like, ‘girl, you are getting yourself into trouble.’ But you know, it was fine, we talked about St. Louis, New York, about adjusting to a new place, and that was it, I got off the train. Maybe Americans are more skeptical than they shsould be?? Think about that one, Americans.

San Francisco is beautiful. Despite the homelessness, the drug addiction, the blatant poverty amid blatant wealth, it’s beautiful. I live five minutes from the botanical gardens, which are free, and open to the public from 9-5 every day. That’s really cool. There are a lot of interracial couples, which may sound like an odd compliment, but I think it’s a characteristic that I’ve rarely seen in other places I’ve lived. In New York, different people live together because they have to, but don’t necessarily communicate…

And lastly, the sunset here is the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in my life. Last Sunday, I was sitting in my friend’s room, had finished dinner, and was figuring what I should do for my first day of daylight savings time. Then, I saw this ‘mountain’ out my window, and remembered my friend saying it was amazingly beautiful to see the sunset from there. I quickly put on my jacket, my gloves, my scarf, and embarked on my (short) journey to the top of that hill. I arrived just as the sun was falling on the horizon over the ocean. The Golden Gate bridge was to my right, and all of the city of San Francisco, glowing with the twilight sun. In front of me was the rays of pink, gold, and amber, spread across the sky, lighting up the smattering of clouds across the water. And I was on top of a hill covered in tall trees, and long buffalo grass. It was amazingly romantic (although I was alone) and I enjoyed watching the drawn-out sunset and thinking of my friends in Vietnam who had just asked a few days before, “what is the sunset like in the US?” My answer to them was “It’s more beautiful than Vietnam, because it lasts longer.” While I have certain unforgettable memories of the sunset in Vietnam, from the roof of the International Guesthouse in particular, I definitely appreciate my new sunset experience her in SF.

I have been in San Francisco for approximately four days now, and already I feel that I have been here a lifetime. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I have already worked three days, and feel like I’ve accomplished the amount of work I would get done in a week in Vietnam…

My first day was spent wandering around the city, checking out neighborhoods to live in, getting a feel for the atmosphere and the people. I liked what I saw. I walked through various neighborhoods with different characters (skaters, punks, hippies, trendy, granola-family…) and climbed some hills I would have never thought it was possible to build houses on. The city is beautiful. At one point I was walking along Washington street, towards the west and all as I reached the top of a steep hill was almost breathless with the view of water and mountains that stretched out before me (maybe also with the climb). The green spaces and parks are immaculate, and I have already fallen in love with the smell of redwood trees and the feeling of the crisp air on my skin when I run through Golden Gate Park in the mornings.

The thing that has been the most salient in my mind so far about San Francisco, however, was something I did not at all expect to see so prevalently here. I work on Mission Street, between 6^th and 5^th streets. For those who know San Francisco, this is traditionally known as a fairly “rough area.” I had heard this, but had no idea that each of the seven times I walked down 6^th street to my office or back o the train I would feel that I was the only person on the block who was not addicted to drugs. The people on the street were all colors, ages, and genders, but they had one thing in common: they were obviously all strung out on heroin, cocaine, meth, or some other kind of hard core drug that I am oblivious to in my sheltered existence. The area around my work is the worst concentration, but in fact, I have seen these types of people everywhere. Sometimes they are laying on the sidewalk (quite literally, in the middle) in a fancy-shmancy neighborhood, passed out and sprawled awkwardly on the ground. Sometimes, they are pacing up and down the block outside of a bank or an office building muttering to themselves. Sometimes they are talking, or rather shouting, with each other, making a scene in front of a bus stop or next to a dog park. They are everywhere. Homelessness has also stood out to me as a prevalent theme, and again, in every neighborhood. The destitution, desperation, and hopelessness in some of these people’s eyes has made a deep impression already, maybe the most prevalent image I have of San Francisco right now.

Coming from Vietnam, a developing country with poverty-stricken regions and segments of the population, I have seen a lot of hardship in terms of the human condition, and I also have some deep impressions of the poverty I’ve seen in Vietnam, especially among the elderly. But for some reason, the poverty, the homelessness, the drug addiction I see here has already had a more powerful impact than the poverty I saw in Vietnam. Maybe I just got used to the rural poverty in Vietnam, the houses with dirt floors, no running water, and children in ragged clothing. Maybe part of it is that the poverty, the homelessness, the drug addiction here, happen outside of trendy bars and swanky office buildings, posh apartments, and streets full of BMWs. It’s almost as if the juxtaposition of the destitution and the wealth and prosperity is more disturbing than just the sheer poverty itself. And the reactions of the people around, the invisibility of these impoverished segments of the San Francisco population, is appalling to me. I simply don’t know how to deal with it yet, accept that it makes me want to learn more about drug addiction in this city, what is being done, and potentially how I can get involved (in my spare time, ha). Who knew…

Was spent with my friend Vinh’s brother and neighbor (Vinh was conveniently absent, having “something to do”) in their boarding house in Hanoi. It has become a home away from home for me, like so many places in Vietnam, and it felt right to eat my last rice there. After dinner we watched cheesy Korean music videos. An appropriate last evening in Vietnam for a while.

My flight left from Hanoi at 11:35 am on China Airlines, so as soon as I got on the plane, there was no more Vietnamese spoken around me.

When we took off, there was a tightness in my throat and stomach as I looked down at the brown squares and irregular polygons of rice, and despite the barren-looking land, felt it was so beautiful. Vietnam is so beautiful, I thought, and wondered how many people, both foreigners and Vietnamese, know just how beautiful Vietnam is. It’s beautiful even in its ugliest moments: I have made the metaphor before of my relationship with Vietnam being like a love affair. But I never thought it would come to this level of more mature, developed love. I have seen so much of Vietnam, both the bad and the good, and have come to love and appreciate the place and people for what they are: not perfect, and maybe sometimes seemingly impossible to understand or connect with. But in the end, worth all the difficulty, worth the confusion, worth the anger, frustration, and physical and mental hardship. I continued staring out the window as we passed over mountains jutting out of the brown, fallow rice paddies. As we climbed higher and higher into the atmosphere, the countryside became more and more obscured by a slight haze stretching out to the horizon. I didn’t even know if I was still looking at the landscape of Vietnam or if we had passed the border into China already, but I kept my eyes fixated on the jagged squares of rice paddy folding into the small peaks of rocky mountains spattered about randomly, until the plane banked steeply to the right and the horizon rose in my windowpane. When the plane leveled again all I could see was haze below me. Vietnam was gone.

The last visit to IFP fellows that I took was to Lao Cai, a northern highlands province on the border with China. Lao Cai town, where Ms. Thang lives with her husband and two teenage daughters, is smaller and sleepier than Long Xuyen, and the temperature in late February (for someone coming from the Mekong Delta) was freezing. This year was colder than ever, and the Lao Cai residents who don’t have heat, were forced to spend Tet holiday indoors huddling under blankets.

I arrived in Lao Cai by train at 6 am, and was greeted by Ms. Thang, who took me immediately to her large, comfortable home in town. The first day was spent wandering around: we went to the college where she teaches English, we went to a pagoda, we went to the central market, we went to Ms. Thang’s childhood home, and we went to the border with China. Mostly it was a time for me to get to know Ms. Thang, the oldest student in my class, and a really interesting and quite adventurous woman.

The second day in Lao Cai we hopped on two motorbikes, bundled with coats, scarves, gloves, and helmets, and headed 50 km south to Ms. Thang’s brother’s home. This home, Ms. Thang explained, was where her family had moved in 1980, when the Chinese invaded Vietnam, and everyone in Lao Cai city fled to the remote mountainous areas. She wasn’t kidding when she said “remote, mountainous areas,” by the way. It took us 2 hours to travel the 50 km, the last 40 minutes being on a dirt/mud road up mountainsides where it seemed unlikely that there were any inhabitants at all.

Ms. Thang’s brother’s house is next to a small pond for fishing on the side of a mountain, and is essentially a concrete block floor with bamboo walls, no toilet at all, and no running water. Apparently the electricity was just installed last year, and this was evidenced by the TV constantly running throughout the visit, although no one was watching (thank goodness, because it seemed  to be some sort of Christian proselytizing channel??) Ms. Thang showed me where her family grows cassava roots, which look like giant poles sticking out of the ground, which you pull out of the earth and take the root from. Apparently you can then simply jam the stick back into the ground and eventually another cassava root will grow. Talk about low-maintenance farming! I met Ms. Thang’s brother, his wife, and his wife’s family, all of whom are Dao ethnic minority, although they all seemed much more integrated into Vietnamese culture than the minority groups I met in Gia Lai province.

In the back, Ms. Thang and her husband, in the front, Ms. Thang’s sister in law, brother in law, and sister-in-law’s brother.  

When we got back from her brother’s home in the afternoon, we hit the road by motorbike again almost immediately for…Sapa. The treasure of Vietnamese tourism, Sapa is famous for it’s breathtaking mountain and waterfall views as well as its unique combination of ethnic minority cultural heritage. My fist view of Sapa on the motorbike ride up was…fog. There was so much fog we could barely see the road, and I was amazed by Ms. Thang’s ability to drive under such conditions ( I never could have done so). When we got to Sapa it was…freezing. Even more freezing than Lao Cai. I didn’t feel my feet for about three days straight on this trip.

After a nice warm hot-pot dinner, Ms. Thang and I went walking around the small town. It was cold, and foggy, and there was a blind man sitting in a corner playing a melancholy tune on the flute that threw a somber shroud over the entire scene. We walked to the market area, and were immediately bombarded with throngs of pre-teen H’mong girls, dressed in traditional dress, trying to sell us silver bracelets, purses, and other handmade goods. Their English was impeccable. One woman even came over to me and started whispering in my ear something I couldn’t initially understand, or maybe didn’t want to understand “you, marijuana, hashish, smoke, ok, I sell for you.” I was first caught off guard, then angered at the fact that she would automatically assume that me, the western tourist, would want to smoke weed, and secondly, that there was such a demand for weed among foreign tourists that this woman had taken to supplying it on demand. I held my tongue, and just shook my head in disgust.

The next morning we woke up early to climb Ham Rong mountain, in the middle of Sapa town. From this mountain there are spectacular views of the surrounding countryside, but…it was so foggy we couldn’t see any of them. Instead, Ms. Thang and I spent time talking about her apprehensions in study abroad, my apprehensions in my new job, and her experiences growing up. She was very apologetic about the scenery, not knowing that I was having a wonderful time just getting to share her life a little bit (despite the not-feeling-my-feet).

After climbing the mountain, we headed down towards Lao Cai and stopped on the way at a Red Dao and Mong village about 7 km outside of town. When we arrived there were packs of women sitting around small ground fires, dressed in traditional garb. A few of them got up to show us the small town, and we took a short walking tour. Their Vietnamese was about as good as mine (maybe mine was even better?) so communication was interesting. They told us that because of the cold everything had died: the buffaloes had died, the cows had died, the chickens had died, and they had no means of making money (as they couldn’t start their farming of traditional medicine, their usual staple crop) so all they could do was depend on tourists buying their brocade handbags and tablecloths. The village consisted of a concrete road (government built) and a smattering of wooden houses. We looked into a few houses, spoke a little more with the women, and left giving them a few thousand dong each, but without any brocade, despite their persistent efforts to sell to us. The desperation in this village was apparent through these women’s words, although it looked like people were decently fed (and the women told us as much) and reasonably healthy. After the visit, Ms. Thang and I headed back to Lao Cai where I got to spend my final hours with her family, and helping her with school enrollment papers, until I boarded the train back to Hanoi, my memories of Lao Cai being fog, cold, depressing images of ethnic minority people throwing themselves at tourists for survival, and Ms. Thang’s wonderful, warm, loving family.

Ayunpa is a small town in the center of Gia Lai Province, in the central highlands region of Vietnam, home to a large percentage of ethnic Gia Lai people, among other minority groups. The bus ride from Tuy Hoa to Ayunpa took four hours due to the constant stopping along the side of the road to pick up various bedraggled-looking passengers loaded down with bags of wares, bicycles, and hand-luggage. The road wound up through the foothills, and the crops changed from rice to cassava, sugar cane, and corn. Traditional longhouses of some of the ethnic minority groups of Vietnam lined the main road in some places, although much of the area we drove through was sparsely populated. The last 15 kilometers of the trip were on an unpaved road winding through the forest.

H’Rim picked me up on the side of the road and took me back to her small rented house where she lives with her husband and her 2.5 year old son Vuong. They also run extra classes out of their home, and the room I stayed in seemed to be some sort of makeshift computer lab. We got started with “the program” almost immediately, going to H’Rim’s high school after lunch to monitor the teachers room and meet some of H’Rim’s colleagues. I was surprised when the vice-principal of the school came into the room at about 3 pm and cracked open a few cans of beer for the teachers to enjoy during their break period (!!) The Vietnamese word “nhậu,” meaning ‘drinking,’ became a theme of the Ayunpa trip.

In the evening, after going to nhậu with H’Rim, her husband, and some friends, we attended her husband’s dance class at the local cultural house. I practiced tango, cha-cha-cha, and some dance called “beebop,” that also seemed similar to cha-cha-cha. After getting our groove on we went to have some rice porridge and more rice-wine, and I talked to H’Rim’s husband Dung about the club, and how the students in the dance class were seen as “bad people” for joining the club, and how “revolutionary” the whole business was. I realized then that H’Rim and her husband are quite a unique pair (H’Rim drinks and goes out with the guys), and that their work in the small town of Ayunpa, even their presence there, is probably having a huge impact on the community.

Hanging out at Suoi Da with H’Rim, family, and friends

The next day was Sunday, and according to “the program,” we went for coffee early in the morning while Dung procured a few bicycles for me and his friends. At about 10 am we set off on our ride, going about 3-4 km through rice fields before arriving in a small commune of the Gia Lai people. The ethnicity of the people was obvious from the rows of stilted long-houses lining the dirt road, and the village had an atmosphere similar to that of Native American reservations in the US…

We stopped at the home of H’Rim’s and Dung’s friends, also Gia Lai people, and enjoyed a meal with them as well as the customary “ruou ghe,” a magical clay urn filled with unknown dried substances that turns into alcohol when you add water. The potion is drunk through a long bamboo straw while sitting on the floor, and one swig (about a small bowl full of liquor) pretty much knocks you out. I was drunk after two, as was everyone else, at which point they decided it would be fun to dress me up in traditional Gia Lai costume and take pictures.

Dressed in Gia Lai costume, drunk off ruou ghe, in front of H’Rim’s friends’ house

After this hilarious activity we took off on bikes again to Suoi Da waterfall, where we climbed on rocks and made a fire to grill meat and sit around talking. After returning home in the afternoon I thought the day was finished, but in fact we still had to visit the home of the school principal, and sing karaoke with some of Dung’s break-dancing students. More alcohol was of course involved. I finally collapsed into bed at about 11 pm, exhausted, but thankfully not drunk anymore.

On monday, February 18th, H’Rim took me to her family’s home, about 10 km from Ayunpa town. Surprisingly, they didn’t live in a traditional Gia Lai house, although we still ate Gia Lai foods cooked in the backyard, and half of the family members that were introduced didn’t really speak Vietnamese. For the first time in a long time I sat around at meal time having no idea what was going on around me. In the afternoon we went to H’Rim’s school again, although I was not allowed to attend her class because I lacked the proper letters of introduction, so I just hung out with the other teachers in the lounge. That evening we visited two more good friends of H’Rim’s, also Gia Lai people, who talked very candidly about the cultural differences between Vietnamese and Gia Lai people, about the war with the US, and about their family’s upcoming migration to North Carolina. I got a very warm feeling from all of H’Rim’s friends, very genuine and openly honest about their lives.

On Tuesday morning H’Rim, Vuong and I hit the road for Pleiku city, where H’Rim had to conduct some business related to her scholarship, and I had a chance to hang out alone for a while (after intense family relations for over a week!) I got to meet H’Rim’s friends and younger sister there, who took me out to a swanky tea shop where we sat on the floor sipping cups of hot water full of what looked like trash collected from the street. Pleiku is a bustling city and I didn’t get a full sense of it from my one day wandering, but I really liked the feeling somehow. I also knew that this was the place where one of my uncles had been stationed during the war, and after all of my conversations with H’Rim and her friends about this (the first people I really talked to about it in VN) I had a lot of thoughts going through my head about the area.

Wednesday night H’Rim’s younger sister took me to the bus station where I got on a freezing night-bus to Hue city. As we rolled out of the city, I took my time to soak in all of the mountain scenery, the full moon, and the cool air seeping in through the windows, thinking already about when I would get another chance to come back to this part of Vietnam and these people who made such an impression on me.

After a few days in HCMC, my journey continued with a trip to the central coast province of Phu Yen, where my student Giang lives with her family (this was February 13th-15th, mung 7-9 Tet). After a bit of a scuttle with the bus company in HCMC, I got a seat and arrived in Tuy Hoa city at 5:30 am where it was…freezing! Windy, cold, gray, and compared with sunny An Giang, I was in shock.

The first day in Tuy Hoa was spent touring around the city with Giang on her ancient motorbike. She took me by her school, a private high school in a new area of town, past the waterfront, where the waves were breaking violently on the shallow beach due to the strong northern wind, and to visit some of her friends. Tuy Hoa is famous for this giant Cham tower perched on the top of a small mountain, and we visited with a few of Giang’s old friends from high school before returning to her house for lunch. Giang lives with her mother and father, retired farmers, and her hearing-impaired younger brother. It is a very quiet house, and I realized why Giang is such a quiet, introverted person. That day, however, relatives from around town were over for a small party, and we enjoyed chicken, soup, and some strange blood dish eaten with plenty of “banh trang,” and tasting a little, oh, I can’t even describe it.

At the Cham Tower with Giang

and friends Hai Anh and Huy.

That afternoon Giang took me to a pagoda with a giant Buddha statue where we walked around a bit before heading to the famous Thuan Thao park, the disneyland of Phu Yen province. Here we enjoyed dinner with her friends and walked around viewing the various rides, games, and lady-boy shows. All of this set among vast green rice paddies and irrigation channels. A bit surreal.

One phrase I had heard often in An Giang was “tu nhien, nhu nguoi Long Xuyen,” meaning to make yourself at home like you are from LX. When I got to Phu Yen, I was very surprised the first time Giang’s mother told me, “tu nhien, nhu nguoi Phu Yen.” It was comfortingly familiar in a new place, and made me really feel like part of the family. There’s really no good translation for this cute rhyming phrase, and maybe I’ll just have to bring it back to the US with me.

On Thursday I visited Giang’s school, met the principal, and also toured the school’s affiliated English Language center where I met a few other volunteer teachers. They seemed to have an interesting experience of Tuy Hoa town, very isolated with few foreigners, and later in the evening we had coffee with one of the vols who seemed like she hadn’t spoken with another foreigner in ages: a lot to get off her chest. Valentine’s day passed with a nice “girls night,” with Giang, her friend Truc, this other volunteer, and I enjoying a freezing cold evening of coffee and early night’s rest.

Friday I moved from the hotel (which Giang’s school had graciously booked for me) to Giang’s house, and spent the day hanging out with her brother and communicating via English-Vietnamese picture dictionary. In the afternoon Giang took me to visit her grandmother and a few aunts who lived far from the city center, driving the motorbike out into the rice paddies towards the distant mountains, the wind whistling around us. Some of her relatives live in very difficult to get to places, and it’s a wonder that the children still attend school, she told me.

Saturday morning, after a good night’s sleep in Giang’s tiny bed with her, I set off on the next leg of my journey to Gia Lai province, hailing a bus on the road and trekking up into the mountains, stopping every 10 meters to pick up another passenger, bicycle, or bag of goods.