Nanette in Hanoi

Send Banana Bread Recipes--FAST

2010-10-16T12:41:00.007+07:00

A couple of weeks ago we visited Tam, an interpreter from the Vietnamese Statistical Agency that Dan (and me by extension) has become friends with.

We had her and her husband over for dinner last year at a time when their marriage was stressed because they were having trouble getting pregnant. Apparently it was a good dinner because they became pregnant very soon after. I'm not sure if it was the food or our proximity to phu Tay Ho (a pagoda that is known for its fertility granting powers) but we are now "co" and "bac" (aunt and uncle) to "Cherry" their newborn.

We had been out to Tam's village at Tet and had a fantastic time. We thought Fred and Liz's visit would be a good time to go again.

Even though we are friends with Tam and her husband only by extension, we went to the husband's family's house first. His brother (and the brother's wife) had recently built a new three-story powder blue house with all the modern amenities next to the old one-room house that they had been sharing with his mother.

They had prepared an amazing meal for us. We ate, chatted, wandered in the garden among the pomelos, bananas, and other trees, took a walk though the rice fields with a neice and nephew. We then visited the Pagoda in the Village. It was great. First the head Monk welcomed us to the pagoda and then we wandered around with Tam, her husband and the kids.

We then went back to the husband's house to drop off the kids. On the way, we stopped at his sisters house. We drank some tea and watched the neighbor's monkey eat some bananas. Then, before I knew what had happened, I was holding a gift of a stalk of green bananas. I was very touched and realized almost immediately that they were all going to ripen on the same day.

I brought them home, responded to Hang's inquiry "why you have so many bananas?" and carefully placed them in a corner to ripen. I figured they would turn yellow and then I would start eating them. A couple of days ago Hang said "you need to eat the bananas." I looked incredulous "they are still green." But when I felt them I realized immediately that today was the day I had imagined a couple of weeks ago. (I know they look quite yellow in the picture but believe me....they are greenish). Anyway, I've now eaten more bananas than I care to count and several of my friends have been gifted some bananas as well but there's still several dozen left. Thus the call for your best banana bread recipe.

I should take this opportunity to finish the story about our trip to Tam's village. After we dropped the kids off we went to visit Tam's mom. We drove on a one "lane" packed dirt "road" between rice patties to get there. It was 4pm which is apparently prime time for harvesting because the patties were dotted with women in their conical hats and the road was lined with carts that were being filled with stalks of rice. Tam's husband got out a few times to reposition a cart so our car could get through.

Tam's mom doesn't get to see Tam and her grandchild very often because they live pretty far away (It takes about 1.5 hours by car to get from Hanoi to Bac Giang) and when they take the trip, the husband's family seems to gets the lion's share of the time.

We said hello, had some tea, and made some local kids giggle their minds out as they clearly had never seen anyone as tall as Fred, and headed out. We stopped to buy some banh da (humongous rice crackers)--the specialty of the area, and drove back to Hanoi.

2010-10-09T11:25:00.010+07:00

In a response to my blog asking for suggestions on what could be a little "off" about the monkeys riding the bicycles, Chilly in Calgary responded "there is a someone directing traffic."

Although Chilly should be commended for his/her/their insight into Vietnamese culture, it is not entirely correct. It should have read "the monkeys are responding/respecting the person directing traffic."

There are police officers on some of the busy streets "directing" traffic and encouraging people to follow the traffic lights. Since I don't really know what the intersections would look like in the absence of the police, I certainly can't comment on their effectiveness.

But...in the last few days Dan has had the opportunity to ask a few young men what profession they would like to have. Several said "police officer." When Dan asked "traffic cop?" they all responded with such disdain. It is apparently not exactly a high status job.

Nevertheless, Chilly has proven that they are prepared for their upcoming visit and we're really looking forward to having them.

What's wrong with this picture?

2010-09-23T09:52:00.004+07:00

There are at least two things in this picture that make it an improbable scene in Hanoi.

1. There is only one monkey on each bike

2. There are no obstacles in the street

3. Both monkeys are going in the same direction

Can you think of others?

Dan's singing career

2010-09-19T15:55:00.004+07:00

Dan's singing career is really taking off.

First he won the Top male fashion model at the World Bank retreat for his representation of the Earth.

Then he beat out all government officials and other development agency staffs to win the singing competition at the Trade Union Hotel in Son La for the meeting of the Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project.

Then...as reported previously in my blog, he sang at the Blue Dragon stall at Long Bien Bridge Festival.

And today...in the best venue yet...he sang, to great applause, an a capella version of "From Me to You" at an impromptu get together in the Ba Na Rông Communal House at the museum of ethnology.

We had gone to the museum to meet with Thanh and Toan (more on them in another post) and enjoy the celebration of the mid-autumn festival. After lunch we were wandering around the grounds of the museum noting all the creative place where Vietnamese people were napping and relaxing before the afternoon activities began when we hear music coming from the communal house. We climbed in and almost immediately a Vietnamese guy asked Dan if he wanted to sing. The rest is history.

Gym training session #2

2010-09-16T12:10:00.005+07:00

Several days ago I described my first session with a personal trainer at the new western-style gym in my neighborhood.

I wondered how the trainer would put together a reasonable training approach given that she never asked about my goals, my level of committment etc.

Today I learned the answer...The gym assigned me an English speaker this time....think Jillian Michaels (from the biggest loser) in the body of an in-shape tiny Vietnamese woman.

At one point I thought, "wait...I'm not on the biggest loser...I didn't sign up to see how hard someone could push me before I cry...plus, this trainer acknowledged that she read on the form filled out last week that I had lower back problems but that didn't seem to affect the routine...I don't trust this woman."

Well, I am writing this blog while lying on the couch with a pillow supporting my lower back.

I think I'm done with personal training in Vietnam.

Equal Access--Vietnamese Style

2010-09-12T18:16:00.006+07:00

Vietnam's Disability Law was approved a couple of months ago. Among other things it reinforces the equal access provisions include in the existing Barrier-Free Access code and construction standards as well as the National Action Plan for People with Disabilities.

So...it was with some hope that I watched the construction of a sidewalk by the newly-finished road that circles the lake.

This hope turned to frustration as I watched workers build planter boxes into the sidewalks that are only a few inches smaller than the width of the sidewalk.

But today, as I was walking on the street next to the sidewalk, praying to any diety I could think of that no type of moving vehicle would hit me, I realized that I have exactly the same amount of access to the sidewalk as someone in a wheelchair.

Equal Access..Mission accomplished.

A Whole New Appreciation

2010-09-12T17:52:00.004+07:00

Last spring a friend invited me to dinner. After the meal her daughters wanted some chips. She gave them a bit of money and sent them off.

A few minutes later they returned with the goods. I looked at my watch and said "Where did they go. I thought the mini-mart closed at 8?"

She responded, without a hint of irony, "The Detartment Store."

I have never laughed so hard.

That was the beginning of my true appreciation for the Detartment Store. I've never actually been inside although I can gather from the outside that it is roughly the equivalent in size to my living room and that it does not have many (any) different departments.

While many new stores adopt the names of successful stores to confuse shoppers with no (enforceable) law against it, and Hang Giấy and can be easily confused with Hang Giày, The Detartment Store stands alone. It is a useful landmark. It is always safe to say "Let's meet in front of the Detartment Store."

Back in Hanoi

2010-09-10T21:33:00.005+07:00

Check out the sign that Dan had made for me. I think it means "Welcome Home Nanette."

It is beautiful...with the same color scheme as all the government signs. Ahhh...so romantic.

I can't imagine the animated discussions that went on between our guard and the two guys that take care of the house across the lane. Dan had mentioned that they all helped hang the sign.

Over the course of several days, they all welcomed me back and motioned how nicely the sign had been hanged...bamboo cut to the perfect length..wire wrapped around the bamboo and the fence...a truly expert job.

Gym training session

2010-09-10T21:30:00.002+07:00

Boy it sure is great to be back in Hanoi, the land of honesty (or at least a certain type of honesty)...."you much bigger"... "you ate a lot in America."

The issue has even made it to discussions between Dan and our Vietnamese teacher. Apparently Dan told her (in Vietnamese) that in Vietnam I will eat a more healthy diet and then I will lose weight. She told him that his sentence was gramatically correct but it didn't make any sense. The language is based on the idea that healthy eating makes you bigger. But, obesity is starting to creep into Hanoi so they will need to figure out how to talk about it but that's a bit beside the point of this post.

Luckily, the gym that has been under construction for the past year very near my neighborhood finally opened. It is similar to a upscale US gym (except it is 3-4 times the price)..a bunch of cardio equipment, several classrooms for aerobics, dance, pilates etc, a spinning room, and a pool. It's all very posh.

If this had been my first year in Hanoi I might have thought that joining such a western-style gym would divorce me too much from Vietnamese culture and comprimise my overall experience. But, given that this is basically the beginning of year 3, I joined up in an effort to jump start my weight loss.

Today was my free introductory personal training session.

I set up the appointment a couple of days ago so I expected an English-speaking trainer. But out trots a small fit Vietnamese speaking Vietnamese woman. But luckily a young Vietnamses man was available to translate. The sum of their weights was roughly equivalent to mine.

First she takes my measurements. All my measurements...like a tailor. She calls them out in Vietnamese while the young male translator dutifully writes down the numbers. My Vietnamese is not very good but if there is one thing I can understand it is numbers...plus I am pretty good at math so when she called out my bust size followed by my waist size I could calculate the ratio pretty damn quickly. I certainly appreciated their ability to keep straight faces.

Then it was on to the schnazzy scale. I swear that thing could have told me what elementary school I attended. After my weight was established the trainer (speaking through the translator) walked me throught the percent body fat numbers showing me which overall number was me and which number was the target for a women of my age. I didn't really need her to explain the same thing for my upper body, my midsection, and whatever the third area was (I had stopped listening by then) even though the translator was still at it. I had gotten the jist that my numbers were much larger than the target numbers. Some things are unfortunately not lost in translation.

Suffice it to say the “evaluation” went down hill from there. As I sat on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me, I stated very firmly that I understood that she wanted me to lean forward and touch my toes but that despite the several people cheering me on, I could not do it. My actual words did not seem to translate well but by try #3 my tone of voice seemed to convey the message.

Etc

Etc.

Now, I figure I have two choices for my second free training session. I could have a heart to heart with the manager of the gym and share my concerns and request a western trainer but that might be a bit culturally insensitive. Plus, my curiosity has gotten the better of me. I am kind of interested in seeing what kind of exercise program she will put together since she did not ask me (1) my exercise goals (2) my past exercise experience (3)what I like to do (4) what I don’t like to do etc etc etc. Apparently those questions weren’t on the form that she was dutifully filling out.

Reunification Day

2010-05-01T08:27:00.008+07:00

Yesterday was Reunification day commemorating the day that North Vietnamese troops barrelled into what was then the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace. In America we refer to it as "the fall of Siagon."

It was two years after the US pulled its troops out of Vietnam but it was the point at which the American war...all the lost Vietnamese lives...all the lost American lives...all the devastation to the country..had proved worthless/misguided/etc.

So there was a certain irony last night when I stood by West Lake watching American-style fireworks (just like we see July 4) oohing and aahing along side young Vietnamese families and their children for whom the whole thing is ancient history.

Lesson

2010-04-29T11:35:00.009+07:00

Its been a long time since I've posted....and its not because I haven't been doing some blogworthy things. I'm not sure why.
So why did it take a 17-year-old in Danang to motivate me..Here's the story.

I am working with a small NGO that runs a community based rehabilitation program in Danang(more on that in another post).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit two program beneficiaries.

The first beneficiary had a physical impairment and the program had helped her renovate a house and buy a sewing machine so she could eek out a living mending clothes. Her parents had died and she was living with a teenage sister who had the wherewithall in this difficult situation to be attending University. Because of the absence of accessible transportation, accessible sidewalks etc she couldn't venture very far from her home. But...on this day the extended family was all at the newly-renovated home preparing the altar and a meal to commemorate the passing of the parents. It was quite hearwarming. It was a true success story for the program

We then moved on to the second beneficiary.
We walked into a home with a hair salon off the living room.

It was me, an Australian physiotherapist who is just starting to work with this NGO and also needed to learn about the program, a Vietnamese-English interpreter, a Vietnamese-sign language interpreter, a mother, the hairdresser (a man), various other people, and a 17-year old girl with great hair.

You know how sometimes you meet people and just know that in different circumstances this person would be your boss? That was the case with this girl...but this girl grew up in significant poverty, had a 7th grade education, and according to the "system" wanted to be a hairdresser.

I conducted the interview as I would for someone who had 7 years of education and dreamed of being a hairdresser...watered down even more because between the english-vietnamese translation and very slow vietnamese-sign language interpretation it was a bit like playing telephone...a VERY SLOW game of telephone.

She had been in a special school for the deaf in Danang for 7 years. She chose not to continue her education because she would have needed to move to Siagon for a high school for the deaf and that didn't seem viable. She had thought about going to a mainstream school but said that doesn't work too well in Danang. The program had set her up with a neighbor who was a hairdresser and agreed to teach her hairdressing skills.

She dutifully answered my questions and, at one point when the sign language interpreter had trouble conveying the question to the girt, the mother stepped in, made eye contact, and asked the question in Vietnamese. She answered the appropriate question thus proving that she can read lips which is no easy feat in a tonal language.

When the interview was over I wanted to follow up with some finger spelling I had learned a few weeks ago. I had learned that to make the vowel â you make an "a" just like in America and then you make a hat like a peace sign with the two fingers bended at both joints. But I hadn't learned how to make the "ă" so I figured I would ask the beneficiary. I tried unsuccessfully to ask the question through the game of telephone.

I wrote â on my notepad and finger spelled â
Then I wrote ă and shrugged my shoulders assuming that was the universal sign for "I have no idea."

She showed me the sign for ă.

She then took my pad and pen and wrote "Where are you from?"

I wrote "tôi là người Mỹ" being careful to include all hooks, hats, and tones and showed it to her.

She wrote USA?

It was somewhere in this 30 second period that it suddenly occurred to me that a 17-year-old deaf girl in Danang with 7 years of education just wrote in English.

I ripped the pad out of her hand and wrote emphatically "You Speak English!!!"

She smiled and through the game of telephone said she had a friend from Germany.

"You are VERY smart." I wrote.

She smiled and wrote something in Thai....

...and then something in Korean.

I've worked in the disability community for a while and I should have learned not to ever underestimate anybody.

But it took a 17 year-old girl in Danang with really nice hair to really drum it into me. If there is any justice in this world she will. at a minimum, be running a chain of hair salons in Danang in ten years.

My aó đải

2009-12-22T19:55:00.004+07:00

So...what do you think? Here's a picture of my new made-to order aó đải that I will be wearing to the wedding in India. It is a slightly westernized version of the traditional aó đải and made for the "older" figure

Jingle Bells

2009-12-22T08:39:00.005+07:00

In his comments on my Christmas in Purgatory post, Harry asked why we were having a Christmas party since most part Vietnamese are not Christians.

Best as I can tell, the Vietnamese take traditions from a variety of religions and put them all together even when they are not theologically consistent.

Plus..they are always open for a reason to decorate and celebrate. I'm guessing that they don't really understand the point when we say that we don't celebrate Christmas because we're Jewish.

I can't say that Hanoi is completely decked out for Christmas but there are lights in some places (including a few downtown streets) and a bunch of stores are selling fake Christmas trees, ornaments, and other Christmas doodads.

The picture above has santa hiding out in the old quarter amongst the motorbikes. I will know that Vietnam has really embraced Christmas when I see Santa ON a motorbike.

I've seen a few people selling skinny pine trees from the backs of their motorbikes. Apparently they are trying to shake the entrenched fake tree market but until they can get some trees that wont buckle under the weight of a few ornaments they have an uphill battle.

Hoa came over Sunday to shine our shoes wearing a Christmas hat. Despite the serious bruise on his face from being hit by a motorbike when he was his bicycle, he was lightheartedly singing Jingle Bells... He was singing in English but did a nice performance in Vietnamese upon request.

He then gave us a Christmas hat and ornament...very sweet...

Now we are especially glad that we did not give our business to a competitor who was ringing doorbells in our neighborhood last week.

Micro climate

2009-12-20T12:39:00.003+07:00

Yesterday we made a good-bye visit to a friend of Dan’s.

It was in the mid 60’s and Vietnamese kids were walking around in heavy jackets and gloves.

We turned into the Swedish compound* and it looked like a micro climate. The Swedish kids were running around in shorts and sleeveless shirts.

*The Swedes came here in 1969 as the first westerners to provide development aid to Vietnam. Since Hanoi wasn’t the safest place to be at that time, they built a small gated community of 8 homes near their embassy to house the aid workers and their families. Swedes still have the option of living there.

Fending off the criminals

2009-12-18T22:14:00.002+07:00

After spending a couple of hours looking at silk clothing and getting every part of my body measured for a made-to-order blue jacket with black embroidery, a burgundy ao dai (pronounced ow zai) with black beads, and a pair of black silk pants, I was walking through the Old Quarter with a friend.

I usually wear a money belt around my waist but because I had been trying on clothes I put it in my purse.

All of a sudden I felt a slight tug on my purse and a sudden loss of weight. I knew exactly what had happened.

I turned around quickly scanned the area and saw a guy who had turned away from me and seemed remarkably suspicious. As soon as I moved towards him I saw him trying to hide my money belt under his jacket.

I grabbed his upper arm (which turned out to be so skinny my hand almost fit around it), yelled "give it back," grabbed my money belt from his hand and walked away feeling somewhere between smug, hard as nails, and completely shaken.

There are two parts of this post that may sound surprising:

1. I had the guts to grab the arm of a guy who just stole my wallet

2. I was buying fancy clothes

I assure you. They are both true. Dan and I are meeting Alex and Simon in India next week and Shonali, a woman who Dan worked with on a couple of World Bank projects in India has invited us (along with about 996 other people) to her wedding. Interesting new clothes seemed to be a necessity.

Christmas in Purgatory

2009-12-14T10:16:00.014+07:00

This past Sunday I joined a group of about 120 expats and Vietnamese for a Christmas party at an "orphanage" in Ba Vi about an hour and a half outside of Hanoi.

Although it housed a small number of youngsters without disabilities (maybe 20 or so), it actually wasn't an orphanage so much as an institution for about 140 children and adults with disabilities.

I can't think of any words to describe the place more apt than those used by Burton Blatt in describing institutions in the US circa 1966--Christmas in Purgatory.

Of course, one of the most striking differences is that unlike Blatt who surreptitously snapped pictures using a small camera attached to his belt, I and many others with cameras were welcomed to take as many pictures as we wanted. I don't know if the orphanage leadership was proud of their facility or whether they figured that allowing people in was the best way to get some desperately needed help.

I'm not a very effusive person in these situations and I'm a little shy about picking up babies or hugging kids so I used my camera as a mediator.

One girl was peering out from a locked room the whole duration of the party. I learned from one of the staff members that she was sick. I assumed that meant she was contagious and being quanranteed but I'm not sure. I shudder to think of the implications if her "sickness" was more than temporary.

She stuck her hand out through the hole that, on most doors would house a knob, I played with her fingers for a while. Her expression didn't change.

I held her hand for a while. She squeezed tightly but her expression didn't change.

She tried to pull my hand throught the hole. I gave her one finger...two fingers...three fingers...four fingers...I started seeing visions of a bunch of Vietnamese men sawing the door because some stupid-ass foreigner got her hand stuck in a knob-hole so I never tried to give her the fifth finger.

This guy was lying on a bed in one of the rooms around the courtyard. I stayed with him for a few minutes, we slapped a few high fives, but the odor of the room was sadly too overwhelming and even after going out into the fresh air, it took my over-active gag reflex a few minutes to settle down.

This guy was sitting a bit apart from the others outside a room bordering the courtyard. I sat down next to him. He scootched over a little. I scootched a little closer and he glanced at me briefly and stayed still. He was keeping beat to the music and I tried to do the same. Those of you who know my capacity for keeping a beat are rightfully thinking that he was much better at it than me.

A few other visitors came over to the area and the child seemed to get a little overwhelmed so he scootched away..down a couple of steps...into the courtyard. That's when I realized that scootching on his butt was his mode of ambulation.

The place was not all sadness. In fact most of the residents who came to the courtyard reveled in the activities and attention that the Christmas party offered.

This guy loved...and I mean loved getting his pictures taken.

Carrying a picture taken at last year's Christmas party, he posed. When I showed him his picture in my camera's screen, he went around the courtyard posing for me and then coming to look at the image. When I suggested that he smile for the camera, he went all out.

Most of the housing was across an almost traffic-less street. Small buildings, each with one-four rooms housed infants to elderly folks. For the infants and toddlers....a picture tells a thousand words.

I visited the area with the older folks too. When I lifted my camera, pointed to it, and said "OK?" theis woman rose from her chair, hunched over her stool and, using it as a walker (the only walker I saw in the room), pushed it to the door where she carefully placed the stool and sat on it as if in a formal portrait.

I conversed in Vietnamese with this woman. I learned that four people live in her room. She has lived their for five years. Two people in her room can't understand or speak.

I told her that I only speak a little Vietnamese and I was really impressed with her ability to figure out which Vietnamese words she could use that I would understand. She didn't have a visible disability. When I asked on of the Vietnamese visitors she theorized that the woman "couldn't act right." I'm pretty sure she meant that she thought the woman had a psychiatric disability.

After taking a few pics of the adults, people started putting out their hands begging for money. I have a steadfast rule about not giving to beggers that I certainly was not about to break in a situation that would have opened the flood gates. But...arghh.

Every time I saw Devon (a social worker) in the next few hours, this child had his head on her shoulders with his arms grabbed around her. He looked so content. I jokingly asked if she was ready to adopt. "No," she said, "but, I'd love to get him some early intervention."

Touché

See the whole set of pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/TripToTheOrphanage#

More about "tây"

2009-12-12T15:57:00.002+07:00

After Thanksgiving I had the following conversation with my Vietnamese teacher.

Me: What is the Vietnamese word for turkey?

Chi: gà tây..western chicken..fat chicken

Me: What do you call the chicken that we eat in the west..the nice meaty kind. (She knew I was making the distinction between the chicken that the westerners buy and stringy chicken that vietnamese eat).

Chi: Industrial chicken.

Ups and Downs

2009-12-10T21:21:00.008+07:00

Most of the time I recognize what a spectacular experience it is to spend three years in Hanoi and I realize how lucky I am in comparison to most people in the world. Unfortunately, being away from family, friends, and a job takes its toll.

My emotional ups and downs are far from unique. Books have been written about the experiences of expat "trailing spouses" and some people I meet talk pretty openly about it.

It seems that difficulties in the second year of a placement are pretty common. We have solved most of the tasks and challenges associated with daily life...learning where to buy stuff, figuring out how to pay bills, and making a house into a home. So...we don't have the excitement and wonder of the first year plus we have a lot more free time.

Everyone responds differently. For the past month or so, my body has felt heavy; I haven't had much energy; I'm torn between just wanting to be alone on my bicycle and knowing that I need people and community to help me out of my funk.

To top it off, when I'm bummed I can't write a complete sentence; So, I haven't posted to my blog in almsot a month. I've started a number of entries but I can't seem to finish them.

It is too bad that it works out that way because I think that the root causes of the "emotional lows" are sort of interesting...you know...the stuff of literature.

I haven't really sorted out why I bummed and rather than waiting until I can paint a coherent picture I'll share some of my less-than-coherent thoughts.

-How do you redefine yourself without children and without a job in a country where, because of the language, you cannot begin to belong to anything beyond the world expats? Is that enough? How do you experience the place as something more than a long-term tourist?

-Keeping busy helps with the blues but sometimes just "keeping busy" seems self indulgent. Yet, feeling bummed also seems self indulgent when I am surrounded by people who are working hard and struggling to put food on their table and to build their country.

-One of the joys of living here is that I get to use Vietnamese culture as a mirror to assess my own culture. For me, it has highlighted the difference between "want" and "need." It has made me appreciate the value of being able to talk freely about government and the ability to question authority. It has strengthened my distaste for heirarchy. But the irony is that the most charming and appealing aspect of Vietnamese culture is the role of community and family. So here I am learning to value it more and having it less.

-I just read a book that included a character whose very famous husband has just died. She is very accomplished in her own right yet she writes: "there are people who don't recognize me without him, people I'd have conversations with, had cooked dinner for here at the house, people I knew, not dear friends but people who should have known me. He became the sole context for their perception of me. It wasn't [his] fault.....and of course, my pride was terribly wounded."

I was hopeful that the book would explore this feeling. Unfortunately it didn't (In fact it was a really horrible book) but that paragraph struck me as so relevant to the "trailing spouse" experience.

-Making friends is like dating. First you meet someone in a big group (like a women's club function). Then you move on to lunch with a smaller group. Eventually, you move to a one-on-one encounter. It is a little easier than dating because you don't have to deal with the monogomy stage. Recently I met someone and immediately went to third base (spa date and lunch). What an amazing feeling to not have to work so hard once in a while.

Because most expats are here for only 1-3 years you never get to stop dating. I have now been here about 14 months (OK..really only 10 since I was in the states for 4 months) but even still I have had friends leave and will see more leave in the next few months.

-A book group in Hanoi whose members pass through quickly is a pale replacement for my group in the US that has been together for 13 years.

-For the past three weeks I've been babysitting two dogs. In Vietnamese I joke that I have two sons (hai con trai--pronounced chai) in America and two dogs (hai con cho) in Vietnam. It turns out that dogs are not good replacements for children...and to make matters worse...they are not even my dogs...they will go back to their mom in few days.

Hopefully I have reached rock bottom and am on my way back up. Once I can write again, I'll finish all the posts I have started.

Facebook Blackout

2009-11-17T17:10:00.007+07:00

I started hearing reports from friends today that they couldn't access facebook. I don't use it very often so I didn't notice. But...a quick google search indicated there is a rumor that the government sent out a memo telling internet service providers to block 8 sites due to subversive content.

There is some question about the authenticity of the memo because it doesn't have an official government stamp. Plus, it seems odd to me that the memo came out in August and we just lost access this week. Lonely planet has a link to the memo. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelblogs/377/17364/Vietnam+Blocking+Facebook%3F?destId=357846

I tried the other banned sites. Indeed, they were all blocked and by looking at the cache'd version and by using a combination of google translation and cutting and pasting into an on-line vietnamese-english translation site I could get a sense of what kind of sites were blocked.

I'm not sure how the cache works. I got cached versions from different dates between Nov 9 and Nov 17 but I don't know what this says about when I lost access to the sites. It could be that these sites are always blocked.

1. Facebook
2. Facebook
3. Democratic party of vietnam
4. A site related to Bat Nha where there was a violent expulsion of 300 zen buddhist nuns and monks last month.
5. Viet talk-I'm not sure what it is but the cached version has news from around the world.
6. pro democracy site—english version is titled "rallying for democracy."
7. A Very anti-communist—anti Ho site. Seems to equate the current government with fascists
8. Couldn’t see an cache’d version

The quick internet search also suggested several ways to get around the blackout including using facebook lite or setting up a proxy server. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091115191339AAyvcdR

Hmmm.

Hòa's new business

2009-11-11T12:26:00.006+07:00

Hòa, the shoeshine guy that comes by our house almost every weekend on his bicycle (Dan has really shiny shoes) has diversified into cell-phone decoration.

After I expressed interest in having my phone decorated, he came by with a bucket full of rolls of this thin plastic stuff with a sticky back (kind of like contact paper) and a flip book full of decals. I chose purple with a subtle sparkle and butterfly on a rose decal.

He stretched the plastic taught and then melted it slightly section by section with a cigarette lighter. He then cut it carefully to fit the phone using a straight edge razor.

About a half hour and 50,000 vnd ($3) later, I had my new beautiful phone. I feel so young and hip.

If you live in Hanoi and want Hòa to cover your phone, let me know and I'll give you his number.

By the way, Hòa also did a very nice job repairing the soles of my Naot sandals that I had worn down very unevenly.

HIWC excursion to Dong Ho village

2009-11-11T08:33:00.020+07:00

My second HIWC excursion didn't go quite as well as the rice harvesting experience. Today, 37 women went to Dong Ho Village about 40 kilometers from Hanoi. The village is known for producing folk art pictures but in more recent years most of the villagers have turned to something a bit more lucrative--votive paper.

Unfortunately, the guide had an emergency in the morning. The travel agent who joins us on each trip acted as an interpreter and answered some questions but I don't think most of the participants came away from the trip with an appreciation for either the folk art or the votive paper...both of which I personally find fascinating.

Folk Art

The history of the art goes back somewhere between 300 and 500 years. At one point almost everyone in the village was involved in producing Dong Ho pictures and the pictures were sold on the streets of Hanoi and in rural markets. They were very popular especially at Tet.

The art languished in the second half of the 20th century after the village mostly burned down in the 1940's during the war with the French. A few families passed on their knowledge to their children.

In 1991, after working for 30 years in Hanoi as a lecturere in fine-arts and an expert for the Cultural Publishing house, Nguyen Dang Che started reviving the art. He spent five years travelling around the village buying old wood blocks used in printing folk paintings. At that time, many people were selling them, throwing them away, using them as firewood, or even covering their hen coops.

UNESCO has named Dong Ho a historic site adn the village has provided funds to build a beautiful set of 3 building to house a workshop, a store, and an extra building for whatever. The centre consists of three old-style buildings. The workshop includes hundreds of wood blocks stacked around the room.

With Nguyen Dang Che explaining and Chi interpreting we learned a bit about the process of producing the pictures--they are woodblocks printed on paper made from the bark of the Dzo tree. They die the paper orange, or yellow with with a conconction made from flowers and then they coat it with mollusk shells ground to a poweder to give it a subtle sparkly look.

They use a limited number of colors and the inks come from a variety of fruits, flowers and leaves, as well as eggshells and stones. These raw pigments are mixed with a thin glutinous rice to make an ink-like paint that will neither absorb through the paper when wet not chip off after drying. The rice might explain why there were flies hanging around the ink pads.

They have several woodblocks for each picture (one for each color). They apply one color, let it dry, then apply the second and third etc. The last step is the black outline.

When we scouted the place a few weeks ago I asked if we could make our own prints. When we arrived today, Che had two types of pictures with the colors already applied laid out for us to add the black outline. The woodblock had two little pins we needed to line up with two little holes in the paper so the outline would be in the right place.

We had a choice of two pictures.

The first was described to us as "a happy family."

The other is the story of a man who loves the second wife more than the first. The picture depicts the first wife going after the second wife and the man with a pair of scissors. The man, with one arm around the second wife's shoulder with his hand touching one of her naked boobs is trying to defend himself with the other hand.

With all the Vietnamese men asking Dan why he doesn't have two wives (one American and one Vietnamese) I thought that I should have a copy of that one in my home.

Unfortunately, although we learned a bit about the process of making the pictures we really didn't get to hear the the history of the paintings or why they are so significant.

When I got home I started googling and reading more about the pictures. Different sites talk about the pictures representing people's innermost feelings, poking fun at human foibles, and criticizing of the corruption in feudal society. It seems like, for its time, it was cutting edge social commentary.

For example, in the “Wedding of the Mice” a dark line across the picture divides it into two. At the bottom there are the mice going to a wedding, with the groom leading the way and the bride riding a sedan farther back. At the top the leaders of the rodent community are bearing offerings for a cat so that the fat cat will will leave them alone and let the wedding proceed without a hitch. Ahh, it seems bribery has been a topic for discussion in Vietnam for centuries.

In "Picking Coconuts" a woman peasant reveals part of her thighs as she pulls up her skirt to gather coconuts to point out the hypocrisy of the morals of the time. (This is the picture that was described to us as a "happy family" when we were making our prints.)

When Dan and I were in Dong Ho a few months ago we bought one of the sets of four pictures that represent the story of Thuy Kieu. A very famous Vietnamese epic poem of a young, beautiful, learned women from a good family who was in love with a young man. When disaster falls on the family (her father and her brother were imprisoned) she has no choice but to sell herself. From then on it is catastrophe after catastrophe. It is a commentary on the fate of human beings in the feudal society.

Many of the pictures are scenes from everyday life...a kid playing the flute on the back of a water buffalo, a dragon dance, a child and a chicken etc.

Some of the pictures are intended to bring good luck such as the carp, the pig with a yin/yang symbol, a baby with a golden goose, or the chicken with many chicks.

I feel really bad that I didn't do the research before I went. I think I could have provided people with a much better appreciation for the art. The pictures are pretty simple not necessarily my taste in art but I believe that supporting this dying art is really important.

But...live and learn I guess.

Votive paper

The Vietnamese believe that when you die you go to a sort of parallel universe and everything you needed in this life, you need in your next life. It is the job of your descendents to "provide" those things. In order to transport the objects into the after life, the Vietnamese buy a paper replica of the object and burn it. The smoke brings the object to the after-life.

When we scouted the village a few weeks ago many people were in the process of producing votive objects--horses, hats, shirts, motorbikes, shoes, cars, airconditioners...

Unfortunately, today many of the people in the village seemed to be taking a day off. We saw some votive items but not that many, and most were wrapped and ready for transport to another village or city.

The people making the votive objects are pretty consistent in their refusal to let foreigners buy the object. Apparently they are concerned (rightly) that we will use them as decoration in our house rather than for their intended purpose. So..I was quite taken aback when one guy came out of his home/workshop/store and actively tried to sell me a silk conical hat with a dragon embroidered inside. When I turned that down, he invited me in to look at his entire inventory. I ended up buying a tiny pair of shoes. I knew they weren't for burning because they had rubber soles but I had no idea what they were for.

I was carrying my new purchase when I spotted a woman in a courtyard coloring paper by brushing a very watery paint (or something like paint) onto white paper and then hanging the paper to dry.

As I was going in to the courtyard, the woman clearly indicated (using mime) that I needed to leave the little shoes outside her courtyard. Once I put them down, she happily invited me in and had a fun little talk about colors in Vietnamese.

Later, Chi the travel agent explained that the people who help you talk to your dead relatives have highly decorated rooms and that many of the objects the man was selling were decorations. The shoes help the medium contact children who died young....Ahh, no wonder the paper painter didn't want them in her house. I don't even believe this stuff and I am a little uncomfortable having the shoes in my house....Had I known, I would have bought the conical hat.

The New Me

2009-10-31T08:14:00.006+07:00

Dan seems to be traveling a lot more this year than last so I am reinventing myself into an adventurous independent traveler.

That explains my wanderings around Beijing and my Scuba excursion to Nha Trang.

But...it took my thighs five days to recover from climbing the Great Wall and now I am nursing the rawness on the back of my ankle from the flippers used for Scuba.

So far, the body of the new me isn't really keeping up with the program.

Post Scuba in Nha Trang

2009-10-30T21:44:00.024+07:00

By the time the final exam was over (I did embarrassingly poorly but I still passed) and I had my picture taken for my certification card it was after 5 so I walked up the beach a few kilometers.

Just like any good beach resort town, Nha Trang has a tacky sea shell store. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to buy a water buffalo with a flute player sitting on its back made out of shells. It will be a great addition to the collection of oxen/water bufffalo we have accumulated since Tet in honor of the year of the ox. Plus, it is such a beautiful example of the fusion of east and west.

In order to avoid problems with nitrogen and decompression, you are not allowed to fly the same day you dive so I planned a day to explore Nha Trang after class ended.

In the morning I rented a bike to explore the town. Guided by a map I picked up at a tourist information center the night before, I rode along the beach for a while.

I started a little north of where most of the westerners would be but the beach was pretty empty. I read that most of the locals enjoy the beach between 5 and 8 am and in the evenings when it is a little cooler. Plus, being light skinned rather than tan is considered more attractive so the Vietnamese avoid tanning. Even in the hot weather many of the women and girls in Nha Trang were wearing long sleeves, hats, and face masks while they were walking and biking.

At one point I passed over a bridge with the ocean on one side and a small harbor full of blue and red fishing boats (all flying the flag) on the other side.

I made by way to Po Nagar Cham Temple (Tháp Bà in Vietnamese). The temple, situated on a little island 20 meters above the sea, was built during a period when the area was part of the Champa Kingdom of Panduranga. There are still some Cham villages in Southern Vietnam.

There are four towers on the site. Each one dedicated to a different diety. The largest one is dedicated to Po Nagar, a Hindu goddess of the Cham people. One website said she is credited with teaching people weaving and new farming techniques. Another said she is credited with creating earth, eaglewood, and rice.

I love places that are dedicated to worshipping goddesses. I try to make it the norm in my household but it doesn't always work.

Anyway, I walked around, took some pictures, and then met an American guy who had based in Nha Trang in 1969. He bemoaned the toll that capitalism is taking on the beauty of Nha Trang. I listened.

From Po Nagar I could see a huge white Buddha in the distance. It looked pretty cool so I rode to the nearest place on my map identified with a big red star--The Long Son Pagoda.

I got to the temple and was immediately welcomed by a girl who seemed to be about 12 and her accomplice--a boy about the same age. She directed me to pay the guy standing around 2,000 vnd to park my bike and then suggested that I pay an old woman 10,000 vnd to buy incense which she said I should use in the temple.

I obliged.

She said that she is an orphan living in an orphanage near the temple and she would give me a tour and then ask me to buy some postcards. In a moment of weakness I failed to resist.

She lit my incense, brought me to the entrance of the temple and took my picture. We walked another few meters. She showed me the steps up to the big buddha and told me to buy the postcards from the boy for 200,000 vnd. I reluctantly agreed figuring it wasn't worth the hassle to do differently. She then told me that I needed to buy postcards from her too. I told her to share the money with the boy and left.

I went up a few steps and was waved up a few steps to my left. I thought the steps up to the big buddha were to my right but I wasn't sure. I stupidly thought the guy was telling me that I was going the wrong way.

He took my picture standing near a lying buddha and told me to pay him 100,000. Stupidly, I did. Then he pointed to the locked box for contributions to the temple and told me to make a contribution.

I am posting these pictures not because they are particularly good but because together they cost me almost $17.

After I got through the orphans and the old man hitting me up for money, I climbed the 152 steps to the humongous buddha.

The Pagoda was originally built in 1886 but has been rebuilt and restored several times. Its current iteration, the base has relief portraits of the monks who immolated themselves to protest against the Diem regime. Each monk is framed in flames.

The grounds around the Buddha were covered with rows and rows of urns. There must have been several thousand people's ashes.

After Long Son, I returned my bike and headed out for the airport.

The airport is in Cam Ranh about 40 minutes south of Nha Trang. It was a beautiful taxi ride on a very wide, very safe-looking mountain road over looking the China Sea...quite beautiful.

We passed the Diamond Bay Resort going about 60 mph so the fact that I know that they hosted the Miss Universe Contest in 2008 is a testament to the size and number of signs advertising this proud fact.

I had a great time but...I think I’ve done Nha Trang and except for more diving I don’t need to go back.

Nha Trang--Learning Scuba

2009-10-30T21:41:00.017+07:00

Dan went to the Northern Mountains for the week so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to learn to Scuba dive. I had wanted to go to a dive school in Hoi An--less than an hour flight from Hanoi but it was closed for the season so, after a little hemming an hawing, I decided to go to the dive capital of Vietnam--Nha Trang.

My guide book listed several dive schools but said one was "the standard setter for diving in Vietnam." Perfect. On Friday afternoon I booked a three-day certification course for the following week, a flight for Monday, and a hotel across the street from the dive school.

The course included about 6 hours in the classroom (mostly spent watching videos), about 7 hours in a pool and 4 open water dives (2 each day) in the beautiful South China Sea.

The class had three students (classmates below), a teacher and an assistant (picture to the right)--pretty good teacher-student ratio.

I'm not going to say that the time in the classroom and the pool was fun. In fact, it was rather trying and exhausting but the skills I learned gave me the confidence to go into the ocean and enjoy the fish rather than fear for my life.

I learned the basic hand signals to communicate with my teacher and classmates. I learned what to do if my mask fogged or came off, if my regulator fell out of my mouth, or if I got a cramp in my leg. I learned how to avoid the basic risks like descending withouth decompressing my ears or ascending too quickly. I also learned how to handle many events which were significantly less likely such as running out of air or needing to remove and replace my gear underwater.

The open water dives made it all worthwhile. About half the time in the water we were practicing skills, the other half we were swimming around enjoying the sites.

The first dive was about 10 meters (30 feet). I basically spent the entire time trying to maintain “neutral buoyancy” (eg, not sinking to the bottom or floating to the top). This is no mean feat. I was wearing 7 kilo of weights which I needed to offset by inflating a Bouyancy Control Device (BCD). Of course, as you ascend and descend, the amount of air you need in the BCD changes a little because of the pressure of the water. Add to the equation that every time you take a big breath of air your bouyancy changes a little.

By the second dive I had gotten a little better at controlling my buoyancy. We dove down to 12 meters and got to explore a few reefs. Orange clownfish with thier white strips, black-white-yellow banner fish with their elegant long dorsal fins and moorish idol (similar to the banner fish but had a really long snout) swam among the jet black sea urchings with their little neon blue dots on their topsides, sea anemones, and coral of different shapes and colors. Our instructor pointed out a black and white nudibranch (a species of slog-like creatures) that looked like a flatworm. As we were about to ascend, I saw a big fat sea star lounging on the coral. What a treat.

On the boat ride back to the harbor I peeled off my wetsuit, put my gear where it needed to go and took in the scenery..blue water...mountains...fishing village...rất đẹp.

We spent the afternoon in the pool and the evening in the classroom.

The next morning we went back out for two more dives.

At one point on the third dive as I was waiting on the bottom of the ocean for one of my classmates to complete a skill test, I tilted my head back, a movement that I hadn't been relaxed enough to do before then and watched my air bubbles rise to light on the surface. Just like in the physics books suggest, as the bubbles rise they become a little bigger because of the reduction in water pressure. It was beautiful...almost meditative.

During another of our skill sessions, a few fish were watching us practice taking our regulators out of our mouths for a few moments and replacing them. I imagined them thinking ....what the hell are they doing? Don't they know they are not fish.

At one point our teacher Alex directed us to set our compass and swim about 15-20 meters. We then had to reverse and come back to the place we started. Thankfully we had started at the edge of a reef with a distinctive piece of whitish coral hanging from the side like a thick rope swaying with the current.

After practicing a bunch of skills we explored for a while. We found a turtle hiding under some coral, a bright yellow tubular-looking trumpet fish, a translucent flute fish that looks just like its name, a school of groupers hanging out on the reef that were so much larger than the other fish we saw it was almost jarring. A few times I got to see the little tree worms popping back into their holes in the coral as we swam near them.

I also saw a small translucent fish with a big eye in the middle of its body to fool predators into thinking that it is bigger than it actually is. I feel like there is some need life lesson I should take from this approach but I’m not sure what it is..your predators are stupid? a little cosmetic change can mean the difference between life and being eaten for dinner?

When I got back to the dive shop I took advantage of their small collection of reference books on tropical marine life so I looked up what I saw.

There are still a few things that I don’t know…like a little red animal/plant living on the coral that looked like it would have made a great bow for a little girl’s hair. It might have been a tree worm but it didn’t move or pop into a hole in the coral when I swam near it.

On the whole it was a great course. The class was small, most of the staff were incredibly nice and helpful, and they even had magnification lenses for the masks so I could actually see.

Unfortunately the young tattooed and pierced French woman who "assisted" our teacher failed to get the memo that you are not supposed to show impatience with students and you are to attend to every need and concern rather than saying "Its fine don't worry." Suffice it to say, it created a huge problem for me. But bygones are bygones.

Beijing Day Four

2009-10-21T12:53:00.013+07:00

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I’m not sure if it was the caffeine in the tea I had with dinner, the severe pain in my thighs from climbing the steps of the Great Wall, or the heart burn from eating almost a whole roast duck.

My ability to wake up early came in handy. I got to the Forbidden City 15 minutes before its 8:30 opening. I got to stroll through the place and not have to fight for a position to see the thrones and accoutrements. By the time I left at 11 there were throngs of people. I know that I keep using the word throngs to describe the scenes in Beijing but I can’t think of any more appropriate word.

My automatic guide was pretty entertaining. She described how, in one room, separated by a wooden screen, the emperor heard appeals and the empress, sitting behind the screen made and handed down the decisions...True power behind the throne.

In one of the throne rooms an emperor cried at his coronation when he ascended to the throne at age 3.

The buildings had great names like “the palace of heavenly beauty,” “the hall of prosperity,” “the hall of mental cultivation,” and “the hall of imperial tranquility.”

In one of the buildings, an art school was having an exhibition and sale of works by students and professors. I was helped by a very sweet young women who explained the meaning of every piece I looked at.

The art varied from very traditional to mostly traditional with a bit of a twist. I bought a couple of pieces one of which was a laquer painting by Lisa, the young woman who was helping me.

The line across the top is the husband. The three dots underneath used to represent 3000 concubines but now refer to the wife. The bottomless rectangle is a house. One of the set of curved lines means friendship. The other means love. How sweet.

I had a little time to spare before I needed to meet Dan who was working at the World Bank Office so I had coffee at Starbucks and a turkey sandwich at Shlotzkis. Why on earth with all the great food we have in the US do we export Shlotzki’s, McDonalds, and KFC?

After a little shopping at the airport (including buying a supply of ground espresso beans at Starbucks) we took off for Hanoi.

Beijing Day Three

2009-10-21T12:52:00.000+07:00

I set out today to go to the Great Wall at Badaling. All the websites said it is the closest to Beijing but is packed with people and very touristy. I thought it sounded appealing because you could take a cable car to the top and there was a museum at the bottom.

A brochure that I picked up in the Hotel lobby said that the 919 bus goes directly there from a bus terminal at the north end of the city.

I wish I could describe the sequence of events and the thoughts that that lead me to get into a car with 6 Chinese people (2 of which could thankfully speak a little English). It went something like this. I took the metro with throngs of people to the bus terminal. When I got there, a guy was standing by some 919 buses telling us in Chinese that there were no more buses going to Badaling. A bi-lingual tourist was translating. It is possible that he was telling the truth and the buses I saw were going the other direction but I was quite confused.

Magically, a driver with a car was offering to take a bunch of us to the Great Wall. There was another 15 minutes of shananagins which included me leaving the car to quickly explore other options for getting to the Great Wall only to realize that without some facility with the Chinese language I didn’t have much of an option. After much negotiation in Chinese, one of the bi-lingual Chinese people explained that the car was going to take us to a walking-only entrance. I figured, given my extensive range of other options, climbing the steps up the Great Wall rather than taking a cable car sounded great.

I’m sure the other people in the car knew where we were going but I was clueless until after I paid my entrance fee and got a little card that said Great Wall at Badaling Juyongguan entrance. Obviously I have nothing to compare it to but it was really nice. It was perfect weather. It wasn’t too crowded (a little crowded on the way up but pretty empty on a slightly different route on the way down) I got a great sense of the massiveness of the wall since I climbed only a small part and I‘m not sure when my thighs are going to recover. I got a nice view of part of the wall on the ridge of a mountain near where we were climbing. I particularly liked taking pictures out through the "windows" in the watchtowers.

When I got near the bottom a guy asked me to take a picture of him using his cell phone. He then took a picture of me using my camera and asked where I was from I answered. He replied that he was from Iran. We both laughed uncomfortably. I said “We don’t like Iran very much these days.” He said “Iranians are good.” I said “Americans are good too.”

I thought we were having a bonding political moment.

He encouraged me to sit down. I obliged.

He sat next to me, put his arm around me tightly , and said “I’m yours.”

But alas time was running short.

I helped a very old Chinese lady down some steps, bought a “I climbed the Great Wall” t-shirt and made my way back to the waiting car. I was so pleased to see the car since I had given it a 50 percent chance that he wouldn’t return for us since we had paid 80%of the $14 round-trip fare upon arrival at the Great Wall.

By the time I got back to Beijing it was too late to follow my original plan of going to the Forbidden City so I walked around Tianamen Square. Despite its big communist-looking statue honoring the workers, huge video screens playing scenes from the Olympics (opening ceremony, medal ceremonies etc), and a backdrop of beautiful traditional Chinese architecture, I couldn’t get past that it was the site of brutal suppression of dissidents.

I had been taken aback by my inability to get on face book and my blog thanks to government control of internet access but visiting Tianamen brought it into a different light.

Dan was busy until late tonight so I decided that this was my opportunity to go shopping and eat Peking duck.

My map indicated that the Quianamen shopping area, a recommended tourist destination, was only a few km away and a Peking Duck Restaurant was identified on the map. When I got to the area, I put my name on the restaurant waiting list, went shopping for cloisonné , and checked back to see my progress every 45 minutes.

When it was clear that I wouldn’t be eating until after 9pm I walked into the first hole-in-the wall Chinese restaurant I could find that had the ubiquitous picture of the roasted duck on its menu. (I am pretty sure all the restaurants use the exact same picture). Before I found the hole in the wall restaurant I had mistook several store fronts for restaurants since I am so conditioned to think that any neon sign in Chinese is a restaurant.

I know I probably didn’t have the best Peking Duck in Beijing but I gotta say, after hearing so much about it, it was not all that special. I was very nice duck served with thin pancakes (like you get with MuShu), sliced green onions, cucumber, and plum sauce. This is not exactly the best dish to have when you are dining alone since they serve you the whole duck.

Beijing Day Two

2009-10-21T12:51:00.026+07:00

For the rest of our time in Beijing Dan will be busy in meetings so I'm exploring on my own.

Today I woke up intending to go to the Great wall but it was so foggy I figured I should do something else so I went to Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. I walked a bit, bought a roasted sweet potato and snapped some fun pictures before I tried to flag down a cab to go to the Temple.

Thank goodness Dan had heard that many of the cab drivers were illiterate or I would have been really concerned when two drivers refused to take me to my destination after I showed them a map and pointed to where I wanted to go.

When I travel with my family they strongly discourage me from renting the electronic guides. Since I was touring alone for a few days I leapt at the opportunity to rent them everywhere I went.

The Temple of Heaven: The Temple complex was built in the 1400s. Emporers from the Ming and Qing dynasty went there to pray for good Harvests. I had the option of buying a single ticket or a "through ticket." A helpful Chinese tour guide explained that I needed the "through ticket" to see all the buildings.

I couldn't figure out why anyone would buy the single ticket until I entered the garden area (accessible with the single ticket) and found tons of activity--a guy paiting chinese words on the walkway with something that evaporates a little slower than water, people playing a game that looked like hacky sack with wings, people taking dance lessons, silk scarf dancers, and tons of elderly folks playing cards. It was also cacophony of sounds. Each within a 10 yards of each other were flutes, banjoes, electric harmonicas, crooners, and an amateur opera singer (OMG--that’s a sound/nasally squeal that isn’t particularly appealing to the untrained ear).

I moved on the the central building of the Temple of Heaven--the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests--a beautiful circular building built on a stone base with both an interior and exterior ornately painted. I then moved to the area that the emporer changed clothes before he entered the temple. It was very cool. I could really imagine the pomp of it all.

The circular mound altar was interesting--it was an empty circular platform on on three levels of marble (each with 9 steps) with a stone in the middle called the "heaven heart stone.” When emperors stood on the stone and spoke the echo was so significant that it sounded like the gods were reading the words of heaven. My government-approved (I assume) electronic guide was quick to debunk the myth and remind us that the echo was designed to cater to the needs of the emperors and the gods are nothing but intelligent architects and craftsman. People stood in line to get their pictures taken standing on the stone.

After a few hours at the Temple of Heaven I took a cab to the summer palace. Actually, that is a little bit of revisionist history...I should have taken a cab..actually I got snookered into taking a car with a driver who pretended to be a cab driver until I saw the car and, with all my miming, indicated that I did not see a meter and I did not see the taxi light. He offered me a price that I knew was too high but...whatever.

The Summer Palace: After I realized that my automatic guide was saying “plague” when he meant “plaque” things started making sense and I started wondering through the massive site which has something like 3,000 structures.

I particularly liked the Opera Hall. The picture to the left was taken in the indoor throne room across a small courtyard from the opera hall where the emporer sat to watch the show. I confirmed that the sound I had identified earlier in the day was indeed Chinese opera as it was now being squealed into my head set.

The summer palace has a lovely island in the middle of a huge lake. Unfortunately, by the time I started heading over to it, the weather was pretty nasty. The lake had white caps and the wind was quite gusty so I skipped that part of the palace.

I climbed the 100 steps up to the Hall of Incense. According to my electronic guide, this means I will live for a 100 years.

Here I was standing in the Hall of incense, 550 meters feet above sea level with the center of Beijing in the distance on my right, mountains on the left and a little palace island in front of me. As they say in Vietnamese..rat dep..very beautiful.

The Hall of Incense housed a huge hindu statue and a small gift shop. Among other things, the gift shop sold playing cards. They had decks with emperors, scenes of Beijing, Mao, Kobe Bryant, and Saddam Hussein.

I bought a set of emperors. About 20 minutes later I realized I should have bought the Saddam set. It would have gone well with my Iraqi-despots-targeted-by-the-American-military deck. (I don’t actually have that deck but it is one of those things I wish I had bought for posterity when they were available).

Apparently the emporers wanted to shop and since they couldn't go into town they built a shopping area on the palace grounds. It is still a shopping area but, although a few shops were selling playing cards, I couldn't find the Saddam set. I cut my shopping a little short because the gusts of wind made walking on the narrow walkway between the water and the shops a bit unnerving.

I did enjoy seeing the guy who would draw your likeness as a cartoon and mount it on a silk scroll. A true fusion of east and west.

After all this sightseeing it was time for a true cultural experience…a trip to the bathroom. F***! Squat toilets!

I did so well with that cultural experience, I figured I’d try the Beijing subway (at rush hour). I successfully got back to the hotel only 45 minutes after I had planned. Dan said he was 15 minutes away from being "really worried."

In the evening we met up with a couple of Dan's colleagues from Hanoi (Son and Lan) who were in search of some good shopping. We ended up in a Russian indoor shopping area with tons of shopping stalls. It was a bit surreal. All the non-Asian people were Russian and all the Chinese shop owners were encouraging us to come to their shops in Russian. I was equally confused in two languages.

There were a bunch of tea shops where the salespeople were offering tastes of the tea. Each shop had a large tray of tiny teapots, frogs with coins in their mouths and buddhas. Eventually we stopped at one.

Each time we tasted a tea, the salesperson brewed it in one small pot, strained it into another small pot, poured a little in a tiny cup, emptied the cup on to the buddhas and frogs, poured some into tiny cups for us and handed the cups to us using large tweezers.

Apparently giving some tea to the buddhas and frogs will make the shop owners rich and bring them good luck.

Of course, we bought a tea set, some tea, and a frog. I will report back on the financial impact of providing our frog with tea.

Beijing-Day one

2009-10-21T12:51:00.014+07:00

Thanks to the Chinese government's limits on access to certain internet sites, I wasn't able to access blogspot while we were in China so I wrote these postings while we were in Beijing but I am posting them a few days later from Hanoi.

We arrived at our hotel in Beijing late yesterday afternoon.

We solicited suggestions from the reservation staff at the hotel for a nice area to walk around where we would find a restaurant. We walked for about 5 km and found that the place they had circled on our map was a strip mall of real estate agents. This was our first clue that translation might be a problem. "Restaurant," "real estate"--close but not quite the same.

We were pretty hungry so we bought a roasted yam from a street vendor. Later we bought some candy made of nuts and dried fruit from a bicycle vendor (above).

For most of the time we were walking near one of the five ring roads that cirlce the city. We stopped into a jade market place and got quite a lot of information about jade artistry and jade quality from a salesperson who seemed very pleased with the opportunity to practice his English. We passed on the opportunity to spend upwards of $100,000 USD on a gorgeous jade sculpture.

When we turned off the major road the traffice changed from cars to bikes, electric motorbikes, horses, and these little three wheeled motorized contraptions that have been modified to hold people (the picture to the left is a very fancy and well maintained specimen). It was such a sharp contrast to the major road.

Eventually, we hailed one of the three wheeled things and headed back to the hotel with me trying to capture the perfect picture out the back window.

Tây

2009-10-14T14:30:00.003+07:00

There are two types of bananas in Vietnam. The short fat ones are called tây chuối. The others (similar to the ones we have in the US are just chuối). Since tây means west or western I asked my Vietnamese teacher why the "western bananas" are the ones that we don't actually have in the west. It turns out that many things that are big and/or fat are called western.

Hang has informed me that the Vietnamese people in the neighborhood call me "ba tây." I am not sure if I should take this as a complement because they refer to me with the respect given to someone my age combined with an acknowledgment that I am a foreigner or as an insult because I am being called fat grandma.

Long Bien Bridge Festival

2009-10-12T19:03:00.002+07:00

The Long Bein Bridge is an iconic image for Hanoian. It was designed by Gustave Eiffel 100-years ago. At one time the bridge was one of the longest bridges in Asia and the only to connect Hanoi with places on the coast like Haiphong.

The bridge has two narrow lanes on either side of a train track. Normally, it is filled with bikes and motorbikes (no cars allowed). The Hanoi side of the bridge bustles every morning with a wholesale market where the retailers stock up with fruits, vegetables etc.

Today was the Long Bien Bridge Festival. The bridge was closed to traffic. One section of the bridge was decorated with flags of over 60 nations. Another was decorated with 100 flute kites. Over 100 paintings of the bridge were displayed. White fabric lined the fences on which visitors write their thoughts, painted picture, or wrote poems.

The festival was really well attended by both expats and Vietnamese. I read one newspaper article that said over 50,000 people went to the opening ceremony. We skipped that and walked across the bridge on Sunday when it was significantly less crazy.

It was a little foggy but we got great views from the bridge down to the river and the the river bank.

We took some steps off the bridge down to a little island that, from the bridge, looked like a big corn field with a mass of shade trees in the middle. It turned out that there was a small community living in huts under the shade trees. They got a kick out of my taking pictures of them and showing them the image on my camera.

On the Hanoi side of the bridge vendors were set up selling candy, herbal medicines, embroidered pictures, and food. Blue Dragon, an NGO that does phenomenal work with street kids, had a booth set up to entertain and give out literature. A friend of Dan's who works with Blue Dragon invited him in to perform with some drummers. With about 50 people squeezed in on the other side of the information table, he sang two songs. He was a huge hit!

See more pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/LongBienBridgeFestival#

Friday night at Hoan Kiem

2009-10-12T10:30:00.012+07:00

Saturday was both the beginning of the 1000th year of Hanoi and the 55th anniversary of Hanoi's independence from France in 1954. The city was full of celebrations.

On Friday night we (and thousands of other people) went to Hoan Kiem Lake. There was a lot of action:

A large dragon boat had been built behind the statue of Ly Thai To.

The lake was circled with vendors selling festive foods like cotton candy and popcorn produced by a cotton candy spinners and popcorn poppers on the back of the bicycles. Boiled corn and cooked white sweet potatoes were also available.

A stage had been set up at a major intersection at the north end of the lake. It looked like Hanoi's version of Times Square with huge ads behind the stage and the neon lights of a bank and Highland Coffee.

The street had not been closed to traffic which watching a guy balancing a stack of glasses and plates on his chin pretty interesting.

Quan Ho Music

2009-10-09T12:11:00.005+07:00

Back in March Dan and I hired a taxi and went on a little impromptu excursion to Dong Ho, a village in Bac Ninh Province. On the way back we noticed a bunch of people standing by a lake and we asked the taxi to stop and wait for us while we explored.

We found four singers in some sort of traditional garb in a small wooden boat. After they spent a bit of time singing in the middle of the lake, they made a trip around the shore and put out a basket of money. We understood that we were supposed to contribute but other than that we had no idea what was happening or why it was happening. But...I had my camera so I snapped the picture to above.

So you can imagine my surprise this morning when I opened my Thanh Nien Weekly and saw a huge (1/3 page) picture of the singers with a story announcing that the 800-year-old quan ho folk music has just become a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind.

The article mentioned that the art form, which is based on "sophisticated antiphonal singing" dates back to the 13th century. In the "old days" villages elders would select two pairs of matching voices among young children (4-8 years old) who would then practice the art and participate in contests between villages. Nowadays most Vietnamese have never seen a traditional performance of quan ho.

I'm feeling pretty lucky to have seen it....and even luckier to now know what it was.

25 scythe-wielding foreign women (and a couple of guys) on an airconditioned bus looking for a rice field to harvest

2009-10-06T15:38:00.020+07:00

At 4pm yesterday, the leader of the village with which we had made plans to bring 25 women to harvest rice today called to tell us that the harvest in his village has been completed.

I'm not exactly sure what happened. Chi from iTravel and I met with him less than two weeks ago and discussed the dates of his harvest and the day we would be coming. In addition, Chi been in contact with him since then.

Luckily, my friend France, Chi, and I were on our way back to Hanoi from the village of Dong Ho where we had been scouting out the November women's club excursion when Chi got the call.

We were driving along (actually Luyen, France's driver was driving while we were thinking nervously about what the **** we were going to do with a bus load of women expecting to harvest rice) when we saw a couple of women in a rice field. With me standing by her side looking sheepish, Chi spoke to the women. They said something along the order of "...sure there will be people harvesting tomorrow morning. Just come on by. I'm sure they'll be happy to have you."

We figured that since we will be descending on a village unannounced we should bring our own tools so we stopped by the local village and went into the hardware store. The tool we needed looked like a small scythe with serated teeth. I'm not sure what they are called in English so I'll just call them "scythes."

No scythes at the hardware store. The proprieter sent us to the outdoor market. There were women waving plastic bags over pig snouts, dogs, and various other types of meat to keep the flies away..but no scythes. One women sent us back in the direction of the hardware store, another sent us the other direction. Eventually we were directed to a store which was closed. The proprietor of a neighboring store told us where the scythe proprieter lived.

Off we went, though the market, down the narrow lane, by the barking dogs. Thankfully the proprietor was happy to open his shop for us. By this time, I am pretty sure the entire village knew that the well-dressed Vietnamese lady and the two foreigners in the nice car were looking for scythes. I'm guessing that they were a bit confused. We bought out the proprieters stock of nine scythes (which were hand made in the shop), paid him 225,000VND and headed back to the car. The villagers smirked expressively as we walked by proudly carrying our tools.

When we got back to Hanoi I quickly shot off an email to the participants telling them that our well planned outing will be an unplanned adventure which may or may not include harvesting rice and gave them the option of backing out.

This morning 25 people showed up at the Sofitel Plaza (our meeting point) at 8:30. By 9:00 as we were getting within a couple of kilometers of the field we had identified the night before I noticed that no one was harvesting. My heart sank. The next few kilometers went very slowly.

After we passed through the village we had gotten to know the night before I saw our fields--they were dotted with conical hats--it was like one of those scenes out of a shmaltzy movie when sun peeks out over the horizon and the main character knows that everything will be OK.

In two hours we helped cut the rice in two plots, carried the cut plants to the side of the road, fed them into a thresher, caught the rice coming out of the thresher in baskets, poured it into 50 K bags, and threw some of the hay left over from the threshing onto a horse-drawn wagon.

I don't speak Vietnamese well enough to know what the villagers were saying about us. The women who were harvesting the fields seemed to quietly appreciate the help (and the donation that we gave them for putting up with us).

The men seemed to think the whole thing was pretty funny. One guy who was stomping down hay in a horse-drawn flatbed and a guy heaving the hay to the top of a very large stack motioned for us to help. As they joked with each other, I caught the word du lich (tourist) and a laugh.

All in all, it was a successful trip. We helped to harvest about 200K of rice We got some great pictures. We got to see and the feel of the process and develop better appreciation of why rice so revered in this country. We got to amuse the locals. Plus, I think that we sped up the process rather than slowing it down.

Mid Autumn Festival-Tết Trung Thu

2009-10-05T11:17:00.015+07:00

Yesterday was the 15th day of the 8th Lunar month--time for Tết Trung Thu (the Mid-Autumn festival).

Hang Ma street has been flooded for the past week with people stocking up on masks, dragon heads (for the dragon dances), toys, and decorations.

Shops all around town have been selling Banh Trung Thu, boxes of moon cakes. Some of the cylindrical "cakes" some are made sticky rice and filled with sweet mixture of lotus seeds, pumpkin seeds or green bean. others are made with mixture of egg, pork fat, fried onion, peanut and lemon leaves inside. Many have a round egg in the middle to represent the moon.

A few days I heard drums outside my window. When I went out to explore I found dragon dancers and a bunch of kids going form house to house. Apprently, if accepted by the host, "the dragon" will come in and start dancing as a wish of luck and the host will make a contribution.

Last night was the big event. The vietnamese in our neighborhood invited some of the foreigners. The area was decorated with lanterns and the ground was covered with sedge mats. Some of the kids were dressed in costumes.

A few Vietnamese children put on a short show with songs and text. It was really sweet. One of the kids read the text in English for the foreigners.

We then went on a parade through the neighborhood with lanterns, dragons dancing, and people playing drums.

After about 45 minutes we returned to the sedge mats that were filled with plates of food--mostly fruit, beer, and mooncakes that had been prepared by the Vietnamese women of Xom Chua while we were gone.

We ate, drank, and got to know some of our neighbors.

It was great fun and we were really touched to be included in the celebration.

More pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/MidAutumnFestival#

Rice dough figurines

2009-09-26T17:07:00.003+07:00

Next Saturday is the Mid-Autumn Festival. We have been invited to a party hosted by one of our Vietnamese neighbors.

Dan asked a Vietnamese work colleague what we should bring to such a party and she said "Go to Hang Ma and buy a bunch of toys...especially the little plastic headbands with ears and other..." and she made the motion of little squiggly things.

We, of course, are taking her suggestion.

Today we went to Hang Ma. Last time I was on the street it was filled ( and I mean filled) with Tet decorations, now it is filled (and I mean filled) with toys--mostly cheap plastic toys--for the mid-autumn festival.

Apparently, before the advent of cheap chinese imported toys, rice dough figurines were all the rage. Preparing the dough and molding it into figurines was an art. Dough preparation was a carefully guarded secret and passed from men to men in only a few villages.

I was introduced to this art back in December at the World Bank Christmas Party. At that time, I waited patiently until the artist produced figurines for all the kids and hoped he would make one for me. He didn't.

Today, there was a rice dough artist on Hang Ma Street. I watched as he fashioned a couple of figurines. I was ready to empty my wallet for one. I didn't have to. Each figurine cost 5,000 VND (30 cents). I bought two and watched as he wrapped them in plastic for protection.

Getting them home on the back of the motorbike while I was also holding a bag full of Chinese toys was a bit challenging but seeing as though I have become an expert on the back of the motorbike (being sure to keep my shoulders down), I got the pieces home unharmed.

Scouting for my first HIWC excursion

2009-09-25T11:44:00.007+07:00

I am now the excursion coordinator for the Hanoi International Womens club. That means that I work with a travel agent to identify and design two half day trips to the outskirts of Hanoi each month (one weekday and one weekend).

I have gone on most of the excursions coordinated by Monique, my predecessor and they were really good so I'm feeling a little pressure.

Chi, the travel agent, suggested that we join some women in the fields and harvest rice. This sounded like a great idea to me. I must say though, the idea has received notably mixed reactions among the women that I have mentioned it to. But, with almost 400 women in the club, I figure 12-20 of them will want to share the experience. I suspect that it will attract a different group than I expect will come to the excursion to the Silk Village in December.

We went to scout the place yesterday and set up the trip. I rode on the back of Chi's motorbike (with my shoulders down wearing my US motorcycle helmet) through the busy and dusty streets of Hanoi. After about an hour we turned off the main road and were almost immediately in this beautiful bucolic village of rice paddies, rock formations, and two famous pagodas (one of which is in a cave under the rock formations).

Chi was a little worried because the paddies were all golden yellow and a lot of people were in the fields harvesting. She explained that these fields will all be harvested by the time of our trip (a week and a half from now). We parked the motorbike and walked down a little hill from the road to the paddies.

We were welcomed by a group of boys who were so excited to say "Hello" to a foreigner and pose for pictures. For a little added excitement they showed me how they could climb a tree and jump to a soft landing on dried rice plants.

Chi explained what we wanted to do to a couple of the women harvesting the rice. They looked me over a laughed a couple of times. I have no idea what Chi said but I imagine them thinking..why the hell do a bunch of foreigners want to harvest rice. It is backbreaking work and it is hot out here. Anyway, they said that their harvest will be done by the tenth day of the lunar month (next Friday) but we should try the next village.

We went up the road about 2km, past three sets of people carving huge stone sculptures. We were in luck, the rice was a little greener. Chi spoke to a man who was sitting by the road. He called over a man carrying a briefcase. Much Vietnamese was spoken. Chi wrote down a bunch of phone numbers that the guy was reading from his cell phone.

I surveyed the situation and said that it would be fun to harvest the rice, carry it, spread it out to dry etc.

We got back on the motorbike drove slowly through some small alleys that lead to the dinh (community center) and a pagoda. Across the street was a small store selling mostly drinks and snacks. We met with a guy who seemed to be the equivalent of a mayor....not really a village elder (he was only 48) but clearly someone who made decisions for the village.

He was hanging out with an older woman and a younger pregnant woman. Again, much Vietnamese was spoken. Again, laughter ensued. The only thing I understood was when they wanted to know how old I was. The young pregnant woman wanted to know if I was strong enough to harvest rice and reminded me to wear long pants and a long sleeve shirt when we harvest the rice. I think the woman said a bunch of things about me (especially the fact that I was wearing shorts) but Chi refused to translate that part of the conversation.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes we all shook hands. Chi explained that the man we were speaking with will find someone to "host" us in his field...a vet or someone who could use the extra help. The village will gather enough scythes for us to use. We will harvest for a while and then come back to this area around the pagoda and share a snack with our hosts. We will pay our host a little bit (I'm not sure how much...I think that it is in the range of 200,000VND). There is some paper work and some approvals involved. Chi will take care of that. I am currently not exactly sure what day we agreed to go because the whole discussion was in terms of the lunar calendar. I will ask Chi before I send out the notice asking for people to sign up to go.

We got back on the motorbike and I tried to take pictures of the Hanoi traffic during the evening rush hour.

If you are thinking to yourself, "what role did Nanette play in this scouting expedition? " you would not be alone. I wondered the same thing. I don't know if amusing the coordinator is part of the price that the travel agent pays to do business with us or if I was a prop to show that foreigners may actually want to harvest rice.

To be honest, I'm not sure I care. The scouting trip was really fun.

In a few weeks I will let you know how the excursion turns out.

Xe Om

2009-09-24T12:06:00.003+07:00

I have been having a lot of pain in my shoulders lately so I went to my massage therapist. She is American trained and certified and, unlike most of the Vietnamese massage people, actually knows about muscles, can feel when they are tight, and knows what to do about it.

Noting which of my muscles were the most sore, she diagnosed the problem. Apparently when I ride on the back of a motorbike and put my arms behind my back to hold onto the frame, I bring my shoulders closer to my ear (like a shrug). The shrug is hurting my shoulder.

Yesterday afternoon I needed to meet Dan downtown to see a film at the Cinematique and I fugured I would take a cab to save my shoulders.

Unfortunately, when I went to the area near my house where the cabs normally line up, none were there.

A guy came by on a motorbike and quitely said "xe om" (motorbike taxi). I sighed and told him (in Vietnamese) where I was going and asked how much. He said 40,000 VND. That's about half the price of a cab. I hesitated a bit and said "No, want taxi."

He rode next to me for a few seconds and then said "30,000." I sighed, said OK, and put his spare helmet on my head. After wearing my US motorcycle helmet, and even my much lighter but higher-end Vietnamese helmet, this thing felt like a metal mixing bowl with a chin strap and I am guessing that it provided almost as much protection.

We sped through town passing not only the cars but also most of the other motorbikes. We weaved through cars, bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, etc. I held onto the back of that bike like my life depended on it (which it probably did). The whole time I was thinking "You are so stupid....Keep your shoulders down and relaxed...How can I relax, I am going to die...shoulders down....how am I going to explain these feelings in my blog...shoulders down...shoulders down...You are sooo stupid."

When we reached my destination I took the mixing bowl off my head and gave the guy 40,000 VND (I hadn't actually meant to bargain him down to start with). He smiled. I almost kissed the ground.

Trip to Sapa

2009-09-15T18:28:00.022+07:00

I met an Australian woman last week on the women’s club excursion to the pottery village. She mentioned that she was hosting two visitors and they were looking for a fourth person for a trip to Sapa. Since Dan went to Sapa when I was in the US, I figured this was a great opportunity to see the place and get away from the Hanoi heat for a few days.

I figured, how crazy can a few Aussies be any anyway? (Picture to the right: Betty, Sue, and Colleen). It wasn't until we arrived in Sapa that I learned they were all in the same motorcycle club in Australia for people 50+ (Sue is a junior member). I imagined them in leather jackets riding big Harleys. They didn't have any visible tattoos so I figured I was OK. They turned out to be incredibly fun and easy going. And, except for a few stops to admire particular motorbikes, I barely noticed their similarity to Hell's Angels.

We left the train station in Hanoi on Friday night and slept in our very air conditioned sleeping berth for four-two upper and two lower beds (one class down had the same size berth for 6, one calss up had a similar size for 2).

Our guide May, an 18-year-old Red Dao, met us at the train station in Lao Cai at 5am on Saturday. After breakfast in Lao Cai (a sort of ugly industrial-looking town about an hour from Sapa), we rode in an SUV to what seemed like a trail head on the side of the road.

From there we started on what was billed as an "easy three hour walk" to Ta Phin, May's home village. For four semi-middle aged (47-58) women, "easy" was a bit of a misnomer." It was, however, a beautiful walk.

It is rice harvesting season so most of the terraced rice paddies are a golden yellow (with green risers). After the paddies are harvested and the rice is removed from the stalks, the stalks are burned. The ashes lay in a heap until next season when they are spread to improve the quality of the soil. So across the landscape there were plumes of smoke and in some places the landscape was dotted with these black heaps.

We passed schools, wooden homes, rice, more rice, oxen (and their associated dung), men and women working in the fields, carrying traditional baskets, and building a steel bridge.

We passed kids, some clearly too young to be in school, others I wondered why they weren't in school. May explained that kids around here don't go to school every day. If their parents need someone to help in the fields, tend their younger siblings, or tend the water buffalo then they don't go to school that day. Although we saw a bunch of kids doing these tasks, we also saw a group playing marbles in the middle of the path. This was a striking scene because, throughout the trip we saw little kids hanging out or working but this was one of the few times we saw them playing.

Had we walked a little faster we may have seen the birth of a water buffalo. Instead, we saw the newborn resting while the mom enjoyed a snack of placenta. I'm a bit of a city-slicker so, unlike the Aussies, this was the first time I had seen this particular aspect of nature.

On the corner where the path met the main road into the village we were joined (accosted is a more appropriate word) by about a eight women carrying large straw baskets on their backs jockeying into position to split us up from each other and talk to us. "What your name?" "Where you from?" "How old are you?" "You buy from me!?" Sue said this is pretty standard in China but it was more aggressive marketing than I had seen in other parts of Vietnam

Followed by the women,we walked through the village up to May's home. May stopped along the way to buy vegetables and then she and a few relatives, with the help of some members of the "the retail sales brigade," cooked lunch. I helped destring and break the green beans into bite size peices and remove the tough part of the plant from the morning glory (one of the many leafy green vegetables served every time you turn around.)

The kitchen was pretty large (larger than my kitchen and dining room in the US together). The prep area was in one corner , a half stop down from the rest of the kitchen sloped slightly to the back of the house. There was no sink but there was water running into a tub which May scooped out with something similar to a small sauce pot with a handle. She used the water freely to pour over the vegetables to wash them, to rinse the cutting boards, and clean the utensils. The water ran on to the floor under the feet of cooks and the small dog roaming around the prep area.

The food was sauteed over an open flame powered by bamboo in the middle of the kitchen adn then served to us on little plastic plates on a little wooden table covered with newspaper.

It tasted pretty good but, shocking as this may sound, my stomach did not recover from this meal for four days.

After lunch we took a bus to the city of Sapa and checked into our hotel. The hotel had a special character. We were welcomed by a little dog with hair dyed like a lion doing tricks.

The hotel room had mold on the ceiling, a shower/bathtub enclosure than drained directly onto the bathroom floor, an unbelievable view of the valley from the balcony, and a handy list of "items free of charge" (shampoo, tea, soap etc) and "Items not free of charge" (TV, chairs, blanket, etc). We were a bit suprised when came back after dinner to find our beds folded down with a rose carefully place on the pillow.

No girl's weekend would be complete without a visit to the spa and after the morning hike we felt like we thoroughly deserved foot massages. So we indulged.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon roaming around town and saying "no" to the multitude of women and young girls all trying to sell us the exact same things.

It was raining pretty hard so we had an early dinner and went back to the hotel. The rain scared us away from going to the love market where apparently Hmong men play a bamboo instrument and interested girls dance for them. Over the course of the next two days we saw the bamboo instrument in a variety of sizes being made, displayed, played, and for sale. Of course I wondered whether the size of a man's instrument was related to the size of his instrument but that compelling question remained unanswered.

On day 2 we followed small path down to the valley of the Muong Hoa river and passed by the Black H'mong village of Lao Chai and a couple of other villages. The Black H'mong are the largest minority group in the Sapa area each of which wear very distinctive clothing even when they are farming or just hanging out in their homes. Some of the Hmong men carve stone but mostly the economy of the region is based on rice farming and textile crafts. We went into several homes and got to see the differences in house design. I was most fascinated by the differences in the kitchens. (I'm not sure why since I don't spend a lot of time in mine). The terrain was gorgeous.

On Day three we walked up dragon mountain in the morning and saw beautful views of Sapa. As the brochure for the park described, we had a great view of the town of Sapa, a "microwave" (aka telecom tower), and a huge rock formation at the top of mountain known as the mouth of the dragon.

May got a kick out of looking through Colleen's binoculars. "Very close," she giggled.

In the afternoon we walked down to Cat Cat village--a village of Hmong. I got to feed my fascination with indigo (thank you Rena) by stirring some cloth that was dying in a vat of indigo. We saw gorgeous waterfall and watched an exhibition of traditional dance nearby.

Our guide May was wonderful and learning about her life really gave me a better understanding of the area.

She has four sisters. Two are married to Red Dao men that her parents chose for them. Despite the tradition that the wife lives with the husbands family, one of May's brother-in-laws moved in with her family. When I asked May if her parent's chose well for her sisters she kind of giggled and said "no." In retrospect though, I'm not sure she understood my question.

Another of her sisters is married to a Norwegian who, as a traveler stayed at their house during a vacation in the area some years back. At the time, May's sister was about 14. He came back many times over the next few years until she was old enough to marry him. They now live in Norway.

May was in no rush to get married. She seemed a bit nervous about it. She wanted to find a husband on her own rather than having her parent's choose for her. She explained that this wasn't an issue yet because her parents needed to find a husband for her older sister before they turned their attention to May.

She explained that all the ethnic minority villages in the area get along well. Although they border each other, there are no disputes about land. When we asked if she would consider marrying a man from a neighboring village of a different ethnicity, without hesistation she said "No." When we asked "Why?" she responded tentatively, "Cultural differences. I wouldn't even know how to make their clothes." Hmm, she somehow perceives a bigger cultural difference with the neighboring village than with Norway. We showed her a picture of a tour guide that we knew from Hanoi (he's kinda cute) and asked if she would consider him. It was clearly not out of the question. But, when I got back to Hanoi and asked him if he would consider her it seemed like her "from the mountains" status made her undesireable.

May was obviously bright, motivated, and pretty "worldly." She had learned English from talking to foreigners. She was just as comfortable in her traditional dress as the jeans and tailored shirt she wore a couple of times. She was giving tours so that she could afford to live in Sapa and pay the school fees required to go to high school. We asked if she planned to go to college. She said she would like to but the thought of relocating to Hanoi, finding a place to live and a job to support herself and pay the fees seemed so overwhelming to her she couldn't even consider it. Sad.

All in all, a fascinating and beautiful trip. You can see more pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/Sapa#

Where is the ****ing coconut cream?

2009-09-15T17:15:00.008+07:00

Today I thought I'd take a little bike ride, stop for a mid-afternoon snack and pick up the ingredients for dinner on my way home.

I stepped outside and was immediately drenched with sweat so I skipped the bike ride and went straight for the mid-afternoon snack.

After a some fresh fruit and yogurt and a lemon slushee-like thing, I went to FiviMart. FiviMart is part of a Vietnamese chain of grocery stores and by far the largest store in TayHo. It is about one-third the size of Safeway in King Farm (MD) and includes a ton of things from food to cooking utensils, cleaning materials, towels, childrens clothes, and alcohol (wine, beer, whiskey etc).

For seven months the coconut cream has been on the back wall of the store between the refrigerator case and the small wall of canned goods so I confidently walked to the back of the store. It wasn't there!!! It had been replaced by dried seaweed.

I asked one of the dozen or so young female employees who seem to walk around the store trying to look busy, "Where is the coconut milk." She stared blankly.

I went over to the fresh fruit case and picked up a coconut, put my finger on one end like I was drilling a hole in the coconut and pretended to pour out the milk. She brought me over to the soda and fruit juice aisle.

I said "no" so she brought in some back up. Still holding the coconut, I picked up some bat cari (curry powder) and mimed the process of mixing the insides of the coconut with curry powder. They both looked at me like I was from another planet.

Despite my protestations that it was not necessary, a German friend of mine decided to help. She translated my English into her English for a third employee. A little Vietnamese transpired and the first employee happily marched over to the freezer and brought back coconut ice cream.

Mustering all the Vietnamese I know I said exasperated "Khong Kem" (not ice cream).

On a good day I would have laughed. Today I almost burst out in tears.

Eventually the third employee said "We don't have." I'm sure they have it. It is a key ingredient in many vietnamese dishes.

I paid for my curry powder and some apples (imported from Washington State), went to the new underground parking lot, retrieved my bicycle, and went to the mini mart staffed with excellent English speakers and bought imported coconut cream.

Farewell to Thanh Nien Daily

2009-09-07T18:06:00.008+07:00

We've been subscribing to Thanh Nien since we got to Vietnam last year. In contrast to the other newpaper that publishes an English version, Thanh Nien has been pushing the envelope on free press in Vietnam and it has been fascinating to watch. While the Vietnam news has a cover picture of the president or prime minister shaking hands with a different foreign dignitary every day, Thanh Nien reports on low level corruption and changing societal norms and expectations.

Unfortunately, Thanh Nien, has recently announced that it will no longer publish an English version of the daily paper and will instead become a weekly. I'll really miss my daily dose of news and such.

Thanh Nien has provided op-eds about whether Vietnam should retain the death penalty for crimes such as bribery, corruption, and production of counterfeit food and pharmaceutical items.
It has helped me better understand the evolving culture in stories such as "premarital sex is an inevitable and growing social trend as young Vietnamese vacillate between traditional values and the rapidly changing new ideas of an increasingly open society."

It has reported on education issues such as schools without bathrooms, the stress of University entrance exams, excessive and illegal school fees, and the cut-throat world of pre-school (parents want their kids to master reading and writing before they sit the first-grade entrance exam).

It has reported frequently on how well Vietnamese women are doing in a plethora of beauty contests.

It has explained that the desire to have children born in 2007-the Year of the “Golden Pig” (a particularly auspicious and lucky year that only comes every 60 years) resulted in kindergarten applications that far exceed the capacity of public schools. for the academic year 2009- 2010,

And of course, Thanh Nien has provided us with important health information like the increase in dengue cases, a cholera outbreak, bacteria found in a number of bottle water brands, and dangerous rancid goat penis. It has given us tips of how to avoid being a "two-pump chump"--remedies for premature ejaculation" and just today (sorry I can't find a link) they published an article entitled "Hard as a rock" which provided useful recipes to cure impotence including beef penis and wolfberry soup, young cock with seahorse and false pipefish, and black rooster with gecko.

I'll miss Thanh Nien Daily but look forward to their weekly publication.

Things that have changed

2009-09-06T10:04:00.009+07:00

After the war with America, Vietnam instituted a Stalinist-type centrally planned economy which turned out to be so disasterous that people were starving.

In 1986 the government instituted "Doi Moi"--reforms that changed the country to a "market based economy with socialist direction."

From everything I've read, heard, and seen, the pace of change since Doi Moi has been mind boggling.

So I thought I would take a micro look at change. What has changed in the Tay Ho district in the last four months?

-The apartment building by the Dinh (community center) has moved from the brick stage to the cement stage and the workers who were living in a tent next to the building seem to have moved into the building

-Several new construction projects have started. A bunch of buildings are being renovated. there is definitely more construction than when I left. (I'm not sure if this is related to the weather or a recovering economy.)

-The road construction projects on Dang Thai Mai and around the lake have been completed. (thus increasing my life expectancy substantially)

-There is a new pharmacy on Xuan Dieu whose proprieter speaks almost no English but is very happy to suggest appropriate medication even if she doesn't understand the ailment (a common approach among Vietnamese "pharmacists).

Even given these pretty significant changes, without a doubt the number one change in TayHo is GARBAGE CANS.
I think there are about a dozen of them on Xuan Dieu and To Ngoc Van.

I'm not the only one who thinks this is exciting. The other day I saw an expat standing in the middle of Xuan Dieu (a pretty busy road) carefully focusing her camera. I was cursing her stupidity until I realized that she was taking a picture of the garbage cans. We had a brief bonding moment talking about how excited we were with the new additions to our neighborhood.

The big question is ...are these just garbage cans or are they the beginning of a movement of Hanoians rethinking how they deal with garbage.Will they stop throwing crap in the street for the for the garbage lady to sweep up with her straw broom? Will Hanoi become cleaner? Ahhh. we can only hope.

Another advantage of jet lag

2009-09-04T19:22:00.007+07:00

The thought of eating pho for breakfast like the natives has never appealed to me. I have always felt like my body needed a little time to wake up before it could handle beef. But, with jet lag my body felt like it was the middle of the day but all the authentic pho "restaurants" were still open. Perfect!

This morning at 8am I went with a friend to her favorite pho place in the meat/vegetable market near the flower market.

The pho broth is kept hot in pots over small stoves. They add that to a bowl of rice noodles, thin pieces of beef that cook in the hot soup, and a few herbs (mostly green onions and basil). It was pretty good. But I have to say, it didn't taste all that different than the pho restaurants in Rockville. But, at 12,000 VND, its a lot cheaper.

I'm not a convert. Tomorrow I will be going back to having oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins for breakfast.

After our pho we spent a couple of hours in enjoying the airconditioning in my house and then went to the botanical gardens. There must have been a dozen couples having their wedding photos taken. It was quite a sight!

Flower market

2009-09-02T18:46:00.016+07:00

After spending the late spring and summer in Maryland, I came back to Hanoi on Tuesday.

I decided to put my jet lag to good use by going to the wholesale flower market at 5:30 am. The market starts and 1 or 2 am so by the time I got there most of the bicycle vendors had already stocked up for the day and were on there way to set up their mobile stands across Hanoi.

A few were still across Au Co Street trimming their purchases.

The market is organized roughly by flower type. Entering from the north end I wandered by Ixora (or jungle flame) which must be very seasonal because I had not seen them sold in Hanoi before. Next came the flash of yellow chrysthamums and various daisies followed by tea roses (with their buds carefully wrapped in newspaper). Then came an area of what I would consider more exotic, more "tropical looking" flowers like birds of paradise and other large flowers on thick stalks.

Sprinkled throughout the market were vendors selling flower-related items like greens for bouquets, strips of bamboo to tie flowers together and tie them to bikes and motorbikes, and pho to sustain the vendors and shoppers.

At first I was a bit intimidated and overwhelmed to actually buy anything but a vendor selling beautiful gerbera daisies caught my eye and for 30,000 VND how could I pass them up? By the time I got to the end of the market (which seems to be the equivalent of about a block and a half) I had bought chrysthanamums, strawflowers, flowers that looked like a skinny orange bird of paradise, some purple thing with a thick stalk, and a lotus flower in a bouquet of lotus pods. 120,000 VND ($7) later I hopped on my bike with all my flowers which the vendors had tied down with bamboo and home I went.

Unfortunatly, I had only three empty vases.

By the way, Don't be too impressed with my knowledge of flowers. I found a website with pictures and names of tropical flowers found in Vietnam.

Click here to see more of my flower market pictures.

Another happening on West Lake (Ho Tay)

2009-04-11T10:32:00.005+07:00

Yesterday, a few folks were fishing with a huge net in the middle of the West Lake. It was quite a sight.

People were lined up on the road that circles the lake. A few couples were smooching on their motor bikes. Some people were fishing. Some were just watching the fishermen. One person had even set up a small business selling tea, sodas, and snacks to people who wanted to sit on little red stools and watch the action.

Too bad the lake is so polluted that I wouldn't dare eat a fish from it.

Another Lake story

2009-04-11T09:04:00.012+07:00

On the Google Earth image in my last post, I labeled a small area northeast of my house as "point 2." If it has a name, I don't know it. I walk by this area often and have been taking pictures of the division between the small lake and the big lake.

In November, this little blue abandoned house was sitting in water covered with with vegetation.

In January, water was being pumped out of the small lake. (I used the passive voice in this sentence because I don't know who was pumping out the water).

After a couple of weeks, the little blue house was sitting in mud that stank to high heaven.

About a month later, the lake was fully refilled.

Now lotus plants are growing.

After a bit of sleuthing I learned that the lake is drained every year to promote the growth of the lotus flowers.

I still don't know why there is a little blue house in the lake.

Yesterday on West Lake

2009-04-10T19:43:00.017+07:00

As you can see from the Google Earth image on the left, my house (shown as the yellow push pin in the middle) is very close to West Lake (the large body of water to the north and east of my house) and a few smaller lakes cut off from West Lake by narrow road (such as the one due south of my house-point 1) or a narrow body of land (such as the point 2 east and a little north of my house).

I love living so close to West Lake. It is a constant source of beauty and amusement.

Take yesterday for instance. I walked up to the main road in my area (Xuan Dieu) in the top right corner of the picture. I went the long way by taking a left from my house and walking around the peninsula.

First, I get to the square lake that I have labeled point 1. When we first moved here, the area was a traditional "lake." In other words, it was filled with water.

Several months ago, we saw some fisherman clearing the lake of fish.

A few weeks later the lake was drained.

A few weeks after that, rice was growing in what used to be the lake.

Today, water was being allowed to flow from West Lake back into little lake and the rice was about half covered.

I have no idea why.

I'm not sure what the little stilt house is doing in the middle of the lake.

I kept walking around the peninsula past all the blue dots (The Tay Ho Pagoda). It was windy and there were actually a few whitecaps on the water. Bad weather must be good for catching fish because there were about a dozen people in the lake doing various things.

I watched this woman for a minutes and when I started snapping pictures she lifted up the clam to show me what she was doing.

This guy is ready for a day of fishing--motorbike helmet, cigarette, and fishing rod.

Caught one! Now its time to store it until I'm ready to go home.

I have no idea what these people are doing.

Fishing the old fashion way!

Will this kill me?

2009-04-09T18:00:00.012+07:00

In the past week or so the fruit vendors have been selling a small fruit that looks a tiny apricot. Each time I "discussed" this fruit with a vendor the only word I understood was du'o'ng-sugar (du'o'ng could also mean "street" but I surmised from context that they were referring to sugar). I thought they were telling me that the fruit is very sweet so I figured it was worth risking the 15,000 VND ($1) and I bought a half kilo.

When I got home Hang explained that the fruit is a "qua mo'" (pronounced qua muh) and you are supposed to mix it with sugar (in a ratio of 1:1) and let it sit for a year. You then mix a little bit with water and drink it.

She said it tastes good and it cures stomach ailments. She said that in her house, there is a bottle of this stuff that has been there for ten years. She uses it every time she is beginning to feel a little queasy. Her mother keeps two bottles handy. Once one is emptied, she starts making another.

As I was walking through the neighborhood, I ran into an Australian chef who has written some Vietnamese cookbooks from whom I had recently taken a cooking class. She confirmed that the fruit is an apricot (under-ripe) and when I told her about putting it in sugar for a year she looked at me like I was out of my mind.

In the name of cultural experimentation I told Hang that I wanted to make some and asked her to buy the necessary materials. They do not sell mason jars in this country so I was very curious about what type of jar she would bring home (see picture to the right). Notice the absence of a sealable lip.

So...we mixed the apricots (washed and whole) with the sugar and set the jar on the counter.

Nothing else. The bottle had been washed but not sterilized. The fruit had been washed but not boiled.

I brought Hang to my computer, typed the word "botulism" into the English-Vietnamese translator and showed it to her. She said "no, that never happens" but her explanation of why it never happens was not based on any science that I had ever studied. Of course, since I don't know how the website translated the word, I don't know what she was responding to.

Anyway, worried that I wouldn't know when my qua mo' was ready, I told Hang that she had agree to still be working here in a year. She laughed. I sure hope that means "yes."

When I said that when it was ready she could taste it and then I would have some two days later, she laughed again.

Now I'm worried. Is this dangerous? If not, why not?

A typical bike ride to downtown Hanoi

2009-04-04T20:05:00.004+07:00

A couple of days ago I rode my bike to the Women's Museum. Before I left I got the address-36 Ly Thuong Kiet.

I couldn't find a map but I figured "I've lived here almost seven months. I've ridden downtown numerous times. I can find it." So I put on my bicycle helmet, hopped on my xe dap (bicycle) and off I went.

As I was biking I was thinking about how much I wanted to share this experience with my friends back home. Since you can't actually be here, I'll try to evoke the experience as best I can.

In order to understand the story, you need to know that one of the ways to get from my house to downtown is to go through the Old Quarter. The street names reflect the guilds and type of shops that could be found there in the 16th century. For example, Pho Hang Bun means Vermicelli street, Pho Hang Bac means silver street etc. Shops of the same type are still located on the same street but the items they sell are slightly different.
________

I bike out of my neighborhood Xom Chua, down the road that has been under construction since we moved here. I turn onto Xuan Dieu and see a few outdoor eating establishments selling traditional Vietnamese food like Pho and Bun Cha next to the western groceries and restaurants.
I go down Yen Phu...no western stuff here.

Oooh the women on the corner are selling particularly pretty flowers from their bicycles today.

Arghh, the street-side chicken vendor looks disgusting.

I still think the pieces of jackfruit that the vendors sell individually look like a pastries.

After a skillful crossing of a major road, I pass the Sofitel Plaza and enter into the Old Quarter.

I'm doing OK. There's the big communist-looking statue of workers that signifies that my two way street is turning into a one way street. I take bed linen street to the corner with the construction (used to be a the famous Hang Da market but it is now a construction site for a new shopping center).

Arghh, traffic jam. I'll take a right.

Oh shit. It's motorbike seat cover street. This street curves. By the end I won't know if I'm going north-south or east-west

How did I end up on the corner of Dien Bien Phu and computer supply street. I get my bearings. The huge statue of Lenin is to my right (NW)?

Whatever, Dien Bien Phu signifies that I am out of the Old Quarter.

Ahhh-there's the Temple of Literature. For all I know this street will change names and become Ly Thuong Kiet. No..there is the forced right turn. Oh, I know where I am. Highlands coffee is up ahead. I think thats Ly Thuong Kiet.

Ahh yes.

Now I just need to find 36. On my right is 89 and on my left is 62 so I know that 36 will be on my left. But..as is true on all streets in Hanoi, the numbers on the right and left bear no relation to each other. Both sets of numbers are decreasing but at different rates. 36 might be one block ahead or it might be 5 blocks ahead.

There it is. I park my bike, pay my 20,000 vnd entrance fee and spend a couple of hours looking at the two exhibits--Street Vendors and the role of women in the American war.

When I'm done, I hop on my bike and head home.

I stop to buy a couple of new maps.

Up shoe street, right on stone headstone street, past the corner with the long poles of bamboo.

The only problem with this route home is the is forces me to bike on the the major road. Most people call it the dike road because it is easier than calling it by its actual name which changes three times in the 3.5 kilometers between downtown and Tayho (Yen Phu, Nghe Tam, Au Co)

I am cursing something fierce as I cross over 3 "lanes" of traffic so I could get in the lane with the bicyclists (mostly school children and fruit/flower vendors). I chuckle a bit at the sight of guy with a small engine, and computer screen (the old fashioned kind--not the little flat screen), and various other things tied to the back of his bike trying to navigate the traffic.

I bike fast and can almost keep up with the motorbikes.

I struggle a couple of times with the age-old questions, "if someone is coming towards you on a bike or motorbike and they are on the wrong side of the street, on which side should you pass?" and "Does the answer change if they are talking on a cell phone?"

I turn off the dyke road and immediately feel my blood pressure reduce. Then I turn off of Xuan Dieu (which is a little crazy) on to Dang Thai Mai.

Crap. Its 4:00. The kids are getting out of the school down the road from my house. That means dozens of parents are waiting on motorbikes on the street, many kids are riding off on their bicycles (sometimes with a sibling or friend sitting on the back) and some kids are walking home. Plus, a few vendors set up to sell sweets and unknown fried things to the kids. It is craziness.

I navigate through without hitting anyone and turn into my very quiet neighborhood of Xom Chua. Ahhh.....relax.

I love riding my bike.

Bargaining

2009-04-04T19:24:00.001+07:00

I really enjoy buying stuff from "mobile street vendors" (aka women on bicycles) and fixed vendors selling at informal markets (aka, the vegetable lady) but I hate bargaining. There are a few indications that I overpay for stuff:

1. When I ride my bike down the street, the vendors from whom I have previously bought fruit (or those who have been near the vendors that I have bought from) yell "madame, madame" and try to wave me down.

2. When I bought some fruit the other day, a vietnamese customer giggled a bit.

3. I later realize I could have paid less if I had bought the item in the air conditioned covenience of the supermarket.

I've really come to embrace overpaying for fruits and vegetables when I buy from the women on the street. I was having trouble articulating why until last week when I went to an exhibit about street vendors at the women's museum. Between what I learned from the exhibit and what I found on the internet, here's what I know about street vendors:

A majority of the street vendors come from rural areas on the periphery of Hanoi. They cannot generate enough income from their farms to feed their family so they street vend to supplement the food and income generated by the farm.

The women's museum interviewed a few dozen of the vendors and aksed why they needed the additional money. It was remarkable to me how many said that they needed it to pay school fees.

I must say that I am dumbfounded that in a communist country, parents have to pay school fees. It seems so antithetical to the whole notion of communism. What could be more equalizing than access to education? Anyway, that's a bit besides the point of this blog posting.

The majority of street vendors (60%) buy their products in urban wholesale markets, the rest buy either from rural wholesale markets or farms (12%), or sell their own products (22%).

The average income of a street vendor is about 10 million VND/year ($600 USD), accounting for 54% of their household income. There are some situations that they work regularly with good health, they can earn about 22 million VND/year, however, some people earn less than 4 million VND/year.

A profit of 60,000-100,000 a day is considered pretty good. That means, these women get up at the crack of dawn to buy fruit from a wholesaler and spend the day hanging out in one of the richest parts of Hanoi and if they are lucky they go home with $5 at the end of the day. Many of them don't even go home at the end of the day. They share overcrowded crummy apartments in Hanoi during the week and go home only on weekends. Many of them barely see the children that they are working to send to school. They rely on their parents and extended families to raise the kids.

Our family income is hundreds of times that of the vendor and many times higher than most of her vietnamese customers.

If she wants to add on a 5,000-10,000 vnd "foreigner tax" for each kilo of fruit that I buy, I'm fine with that. It used to bother me that the vendor thought I was stupid or gullible and that they got the better of me. Now I don't really care.

Trip to the Northwest

2009-03-29T13:16:00.003+07:00

I just got back from a four-day trip with the Friends of Vietnam Heritage. We went up to an ethnic minority area in the Northwestern region of Vietnam. It was amazing. This guy John organized the trip and this wonderful young Vietnamese woman Duong (pronounced Zun) came as an interpreter/guide.

Heading North-Museum of Ethnic Groups and Ba Be Lake

First we stopped in the city of Thai Nguyen for a visit to the Museum of the Cultures of Vietnam’s Ethnic Groups. With exhibits on traditional dress, handicrafts, house construction, agricultural techniques, and lifestyles, the museum provided a nice overview of the different minority groups such as the Tay and Nung that we were to see in the next few days.

After lunch we started the 4 hour ride up to Ba Be Lake. We stopped a few times to take pictures of the mountains, terraced rice paddies, and different flora and fauna.

For a while we followed four sedated but live pigs strapped in pairs, tummy side up, to the back of two motorbikes. Every so often one would try to lift its head. Nice cultural experience!!

We passed through the little town of Cho Ra which was in several different stages of development. Some of the houses were built from red brick, others clay, others unfinished wood slats, and some finished with plaster just like in Hanoi. Amidst this very "developing country" feel we noticed an internet cafe.

We got to Ba Be after dark, took boats across the narrow Lake and to our homestay (the Vietnamese equivalent of a bed and breakfast) Hoa Son, a stilt house (just like we had seen in the museum) in the small Tay village of Pac Ngoi.

We dined on a traditional Vietnamese meal prepared by the proprietor, chatted a bit and hunkered down for the evening under our mosquito nets.

Luckily none of us were traveling with our spouses because the rules of the house, posted in every room, clearly stated that if you were sharing a room with someone of the opposite sex you had to had to be able to show your marriage certificate (not something we generally carry with us).

The night was a little too interesting for me. The thin pad covering the wood bed didn't quite compare to my posturepedic mattress so I had a bit of trouble sleeping through the sounds of the roosters, cicadas, frogs, and motorbikes.

My 2am trip downstairs to the bathroom (with thankfully a regular toilet rather than the squat toilets that we had to use on much of the trip) was not for the faint hearted.

The next morning we took a walk through the neighborhood. Women were washing clothes in the lake; lots of roosters were running around; and cute kids riding their bikes off to school etc.
After a breakfast of fruit and amazing crepes, we packed our bags and went back to the boats. In retrospect, I'm guessing the crepes were good (not amazing) but since I had anticipated having pho every morning I was soooo pleased with crepes.

Ba Be is a narrow lake (actually three connected lakes) running between steep mountains. Some of mountains were covered in vegetation and others showed faces of limestone. Ansel Adams would have had a heyday in this area. We stopped at the Dau Dang waterfall and rode the boat through the Puong Cave.

The boat dropped us a small dock and we walked a bit through a cornfield to our bus. While we waited we ate the sticky rice and pork that the homestay family had cooked and wrapped for us in banana leaves tied with bamboo.

Heading West-- Cao Bang and Ban Gioc Falls

On our way to Cao Bang we stopped at a Nung village by the side of the road. We wandered through the village of 20-30 traditional Nung stilt homes each with steps up to a bamboo porch and living space. Most of the homes had a front built from wood and sides from wattle and daub.

We were greeted quite warmly. An elderly man was sitting on the porch of his home and, in French, explained that he was 88 years old and had fought in the French Army against the Japanese. He seemed excited to be speaking to the Francophones in our group.

A 50-year old woman in traditional indigo dress invited us into her home and served us hot water and some sort of corn alcohol. We shared the drinks with the woman, her son who looked to be about 20 and a friend of his. They were listening to an English language pop group that is apparently very popular in Vietnam.

With Duong interpreting for us, she told us about the kitchen in the middle of the living room-- un-vented so you could see the smoke residue on the ceiling above, the two small branches with leaves in the top corners of her front door frame were to ward off evil. The ceramic rice bowl tied with bamboo to a beam that ran under her wood roof had something to do with a recently deceased relative. The vat on the porch was for dying indigo. In the garden she pointed out some herbs and the indigo plants.

John, thinking about FVH marketing, gave both the 50-year-old woman and the 88-year-old man cloth bags with the FVH logo and snapped a few pictures before we moved on toward our next destination.

We spent the night in Cao Bang and woke up early to venture out to Ben Gioc Falls. Along the way we stopped at a festival of school children celebrating March 26, the anniversary of the founding of the communist youth movement. Tents, each with a decorated entrance, had been erected around a square filled with hundreds of school children in their matching blue and white jackets. Duong explained that later in the afternoon there will be a competition for the best decorations.

We listened to two individual singers and a septet of army singers before we drove on to the Falls.

The Ban Gioc falls. After we left our passports with the authorities to ensure that we wouldn't try to sneak across the river to China, we hopped onto boats (more like bamboo rafts with three small benches and a tarp roof) and went right up to the falls, and took pictures of each other perching on one of the large rocks poking up from the water.

The Falls are part of the Quy Xuan River which is the border between Vietnam and China. So I can now officially say "I saw China."

We passed several boats of Chinese tourists (The boats looked exactly the same except the Chinese boats had a stack of life preservers). The Chinese were all snapping pictures of us. They seemed particularly enthralled with Jon with his long gray-blonde hair tied in a pony tail.
March is sort of a dry season in this part of Vietnam so the water was wasn't flooding over the rocks like it is in the glossy pictures you see of the Falls in every cheap hotel in Vietnam. But it was, as they say in Vietnamese, rat dep (pronounced zut dep)-very beautiful.

On the way back to Cao Bang, we stopped to take photos of things of interest like the red "flower of the rice" (which one person described as a glorified red badmitton puck).

Heading South-Lang Son, Tan Thanh Cave, and Dong Kinh market

On day four, we explored the market in Cao Bang and then headed back toward Hanoi. We took highway four south to Lang Son. Although the highway saw a lot of action between the French and Viet Minh in the 1940s, we all knew of it because "Highway 4" is a chain of Hanoi restaurants.

At the Tan Thanh caves we listened to the bats, looked at the stalactites and climbed the steps to the “gates of heaven” (according to the sign below) with its views overlooking the city.

We took a quick stop at the Dong Kinh market to buy some cheap Chinese goods and then headed back to Hanoi.

Throughout the trip we saw traditional cultural icons of the area--the dress, the style of homes, the bamboo baskets, and the rice cultivation. We identified a few "emerging" traditions that seemed to cut across different minority groups including a lot of pool tables, brick construction, and satellite dishes with the receiver covered with a plastic water bottle to protect it from rain.

We had an amazing driver who navigated narrow winding roads without scaring the crap out of us. You have no idea how unusual this is in Vietnam.

Bangkok

2009-03-28T09:52:00.021+07:00

Dan and I went to Bangkok last weekend.

See more pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/Bangkok#
Friday

When we arrived in Bangkok on Friday, we dropped our bags, went to a cheap, nondescript Thai restaurant in a mall that was amazingly good, and then took a long walk through the city. The food vendors on the street had much more elaborate set ups than those in Hanoi. There were grills, big bowls of different fried things and mushy things, cut up fresh fruit etc. We weren't too adventurous. The only food we bought was a mango that came with a suprising tasty spicy dry dip (the consistency of salt).

We passed the Erawan shrine--a Buddha near all the fancy malls. It was hopping. Lots of people praying and mulling around. We are still not sure why some guy was standing near the shrine with three cages (each not much bigger than a shoebox) filled with small birds.

Near the shrine (in fact near all the Wats) vendors sell jasmine flowers strung like beads into bracelet or necklace-length chains with red roses or yellow flowers for color. Most people offer them to the Buddha. I bought one and found to it do be a great antidote for my over-active olifactory sense. Sticking my nose into a handful of jasmine covered up some of the less than appealing aromas that we encountered the rest of the day.

After we had wandered long enough we took a tuk tuk (a little motorized rickshaw) to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel where we walked on a path lined with absolutely beautiful orchids to a dock. We took a boat across the Chao Phraya River that runs through town over to a restaurant that Dan knew of from his last trip to Bangkok. We were kind of early so we walked around for about a half hour and ran across a small village of Wats in a very populated part of the city. These seemed like day-to-day working Wats in contrast to the famous Wats we saw the next day that were more grandiose.

As the sun set and the air cooled down a little, we were overlooking the river and eating great Thai food. Lovely, Lovely. After a couple of hours of relaxed bliss we hopped on the boat and crossed back to the other side of the river.

To top off the evening, we stopped for a one-hour foot massage. The hardest decision we had to make was which of the four or five massage parlors lined with cushy chairs should we choose (because it was a foot massage rather than a body massage we didn't have to worry about accidently choosing a place that provided "special" massages).

What a perfect evening!

Saturday

Continuing our effort to use as many modes of transportation as possible, we took the sky train to the river and then took a short boat trip on a dragon boat around a narrower part of the river through some residential areas, a fishing village, and a couple of places designed for people on the dragon boats (like a snake show). It was fun but it definitely reminded us that Bangkok is not all glitzy Wats and fancy hotels.

The dragon boat dropped us off at the first Wat and we took short boat trips and foot power to explore a few other Wats.

The Wats are all incredibly overdone by our standards. Most Buddhas are bronze covered with gold leaf and are restored and maintained to their original lustre.

For the most part, every inch of the building is covered with mosaic.

They almost look like something you would find in a 1960s amusement park-- garish? potschkied?

After seeing a few wats, each more dramatic than the last, the sheer "overdoneness" of it all started looking beautiful.

Each Wat had the same Buddha but it is can be in one of 67 positions (a meditation pose-both hands on her cross legs with her palms up, warding off the demons-left hand up facing outward, etc).

Several of the Wats had courtyards enclosed by walls lined with Buddhas. Under the Buddhas are the ashes of many generations of the the benefactor's family. In some Wats, benefactors can erect tall structures for the ashes.

We took a tour at Wat Pho-the Wat of the reclining Buddha. We thought this was a good opportunity to get a tour of the Wat but also to get answers to our general Thai Buddhism questions.

The building was constructed around a huge gold Buddha lying on its right side with the right hand propping up the head (46 meters long, 15 meters high). A row of 108 metal bowls representing the 108 "auspicious characteristics of the Buddha" lined one wall of the room. For a donation of 20 BHT (about 60 cents) we got 108 fake coins and walked slowly down the row dropping a coin into each bowl. It was actually a bit meditational.

At each of the Wats we saw people on their knees "praying" to the Buddha. Since I knew that Buddha isn't a diety I was a bit confused. Our guide explained that the people are not are not praying to a deity but rather turning to the representation of the Buddha to gather together their internal strength and decision-making skills.

That led to my next question--In a religion where the ultimate goal is the separation of the physical from the spiritual and the separation of ourselves from material goods, why are the Wats so elaborate?

Our guide explained that people come to understand the spiritual in different ways and for some people, it is the physical beauty of the place that draws them in. For this reason, they feel it is important to keep the Buddhas and the Wats shined to their original lustre (if they have the money). To me, it makes Buddha seem as new today as it was 700 years ago rather than being a historical artifact.

Sunday
Sunday morning we went to the Chatuchak weekend market. it was HUGE and with something like 9,000 stalls it had everything from clothes, silk, and pottery to food (dried fish etc). We contributed our bit to the Thai economy and then headed back to the area around our hotel and spent the afternoon eating lunch, enjoying free tastes at a high-end grocery store, wishing such a grocery store was in Hanoi, and getting another foot massage.

Everyone talks about the great shopping in Bangkok. I checked it out. The cost of the kind of clothing that I wear was about the same as it is in the US. Apparently the great deals are on Feragamo, Cartier, Versace etc. Since I am coming home for the summer in less then a month I spent most of my shopping time on Thai doodads.

We pretty much crashed at night so we missed some of the scenes for which Bangkok is best known--the wild night scene and the prostitutes. Oh well.

The Vegetable Lady

2009-03-11T18:50:00.009+07:00

Several months ago I discovered that two women sell vegetables on a street that is about a 5-minute bike ride from my house. They both set up at 4pm and they both sell essentially the same stuff with a little variation now and then.

The first time, I randomly chose one woman bought a few things. She was very rude and dismissive and she completely overcharged me. Since I hate to bargain, I paid the 35,000 vnd ($2) and left.

The second time, I went to the other woman. She was much nicer, more patient, and approximately half the price.

From then on, I've been going to the second woman about three or four times a week. She really is very nice and I actually look forward to my interactions with her.

I made a few mistakes at the beginning (1) I was supposed to buy basil and ended up buying mint and (2) I was supposed to buy spinach and bought some leafy green vegetable that Hang described as "sticky" and "I don't think you want to eat it." I should point out that these mistakes are not nearly as stupid as they sound as Vietnamese spinach and basil look much different than their American equivalents. Plus, there are a ton of leafy green herbs and vegetables here and they are all stacked on top of each other in a rattan basket. (Actually the periphery of basket is really low so it is somewhere betwen a basket and a really huge rattan plate)

Since these incidents, when I need a specific leafy green thing, I bring a 6-page computer printout that Hang brought with her to work on her second day that has a picture of each herb and vegetable, the English name, and the Vietnamese name (I knew as soon as she brought those pages that I was in good hands). I show it to my favorite vegetable lady and all is well.

That brings me to yesterday.

I needed basil. I brought the picture and the vietnamese word. My favorite vegetable lady (shown above) didn't have it but she yelled over to the other lady, discovered that she had it, and sent me up the street exactly 10 steps.

The mean vegetable lady was very slowly picking through some leafy green vegetable, pulling off some stems that didn't have leaves and putting them stem by s-t-e-m in the bag for a Vietnamese man waiting on a motorbike. I showed her what I wanted. She nodded and then went back to her other task. I waited patiently.

OK, I was not so patient on the inside but I truly believe that I looked patient on the outside.

Anyway, a Vietnamese women came by and spoke a few words to the vegetable lady. The lady stopped picking thought the leafy green vegetable, got up, walked around to get the woman what she wanted and put it in a bag. Money was exchanged. Then the vegetable lady went back to slowly picking through the leafy green vegetable.... leaving me waiting less than patiently. After a few minutes I left and bought my vegetables at Veggy's, an incredibly over-priced little grocery store down the street where every one speaks English and they have American basil.

Earlier in the afternoon I had shared with Hang my feelings about the World Bank's lack of attention to the needs of spouses (this is a major understatement) and she had witnessed my major meltdown over the same issue last week. So when I came home from my afternoon vegetable expedition and told her about the mean vegetable lady, we had the following conversation:

Hang: You should go back and take her picture.

Me: Why?

Hang: You can put it on your blog.

Me (completely stunned that Hang would know about dissing people by posting their picture on the internet): That's a great idea!!!

A little laughter ensued.

So here it is:

IF YOU ARE EVER IN THE TAY HO DISTRICT OF HANOI ON THE CORNER OF TO NGOC VAN AND XUAN DIEU, DO NOT BUY VEGETABLES FROM THIS WOMAN.

Don't worry, I am not a psychologist but I know that I have a little issue here with displaced anger but I don't think the mean vegetable lady will feel much of an economic impact from this dissing as I don't believe her core clientele reads my blog.

Hue

2009-02-26T13:41:00.020+07:00

Dan had a conference in Hue this week so I tagged along. Hue (pronounced Whey) is about 400 miles south of Hanoi (a 1 hour flight), and about 50 miles South of the 17th parallel (the 1954 division between North and South). It was the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty from 1802-1945.

The hues in Hue were brighter than in Hanoi (sorry, I could resist using the pun). The ancestor worship shrines were decorated with bright colors and many of the sites associated with the emporers were decorated with bright colored mosaic.

It seemed a bit more traditional than Hanoi. There were a lot fewer cars and a lot more cyclos.
The school uniform for older girls is a white ao dai. We didn't quite get to see the scene that is ubiquitous in Vietnamese tourist art (young vietnamese girls with conical hats and flowing ao dais blown slightly to the side by unseen wind), but it was close. The girls were all riding bicycles with their ao dais carefully pinned up so the white silk doesn't get caught in the bicycle gears.

I replaced my Hanoi pastime of taking pictures of crazy-ass things on the back of motorbikes and bicycles with taking pictures of crazy-ass things on cyclos. Most cyclos were taxis so I'd see either one foreigner or 3-4 Vietnamese people on each one. But every so often, there'd be a doozie--a bookcase, a potted plant market, four mattresses, piles of fruit etc.

Hue is steeped in history. In addition to being the capital during the imperial dynasty

-both Uncle Ho and General Giap went to primary school there

-In 1945 the last of the Nguyen emporer abdicated to Ho Chi Minh at the Citadel in Hue.

-It was part of the Tet offensive in 1967 and the site of a fierce battle with the US/South.

The city is split in two by the Perfume River. On the north side of the river is a walled city.

Inside the walled city is the walled Citadel--the imperial palace and the area that housed the emporers mother, his wife, all his concubines, and other people who served the emporer. It has a throne room, a theater, a pleasure palace and all the other imperial necessities. The imperial palace and environs were damaged during fighting with the French in 1947 and again in the battle of Hue in 1968 (first by the North and then by the US/South) but some of it has been rebuilt.

The south side is a more modern and has most of the hotels and restaurants and farther afield are tombs of some of the emporers and some really cool Buddhist temples.

After I roamed around the citadel for a while, I rented a bike and rode around the walled city a bit and then headed out to the Thien Mu pagoda, a Buddhist temple/monastary about 4 Km from Hue. The Pagoda lies right near the river and the tower at front of the Pagoda is the symbol of Hue that shows up on all the key chains, plates, pictures etc.

The temple is guarded by 12 huge, wooden temple guardians who have real facial hair. Most of the guards looked Asian but one was Black. I don't know enough history to understand this.

The Buddhist temples in Hue were a hotbed of protest when Diem cracked down on the Buddhists. In fact Thich Quanq Duc, the guy that burned himself alive without flinching in Siagon in 1963 was from the Thien Mu temple. The car that he drove to Siagon is quietly tucked in the corner on the pagoda grounds.

As part of the Tet offensive the North Vietnamese attacked Hue and in less than a day had control of the city. They used the heavily fortified citadel as their base. After a month of house to house fighting the US/South took back the city despite being seriously outnumbered. There were heavy casualties on both sides. It was seen as a military victory and is still studied as a lesson in urban warfare. It, like the rest of the Tet offensive, was a political disaster for the US. There's a video of the fighting on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDy0Z3HSkTE . It was interesting to watch the video because the sites were all familiar to me now.

Several people told me I looked Asian and asked things like "are you sure you don't have any Vietnamese in you." They commented on the color of my skin and my long straight hair. (I am a little tan now so I have a bit of a Vietnamese color). I guessing that, because US forces were based here, there were a bunch of babies born of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Maybe they thought I was one of them. I look just about the right age...35-40 (tee hee). I wonder how they would have reacted had I been an American with half Vietnamese ancestory.

We ate at a restaurant/bar called "the DMZ." It looked like and felt like a great bar for 20 year-olds in the 1970's. Along with cheap beer, it had a pool table, graffitti on the wall, and old music playing. It had great pasta but it was kinda weird to be in a place that was designed to hearken back to the good ole days of war.

There's a book "The Country of Memory" that talks how the tourist industry, in an effort to attract American and other Western tourists, tries to evoke "memories of the past without the pain." Hue has really perfected this. There's no big memorial to the battle of Hue. Guides and written materials mention that the citadel had been heavily damaged during war but assigns no blame.

The DMZ

2009-02-26T12:22:00.014+07:00

On our second full day in Hue while Dan was busy working I took a bus tour the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) otherwise known as the 17th parallel--the line that separated the North and South. Despite its name, the area saw a huge amount of fighting during the war.

Unfortunately the guide was not very good. Her English skills were less than stellar and she seemed to be not very well-informed. The only saving grace was that I think she was a "government approved" tour guide so we got to get a sense what info the government wanted us to hear. For example, it was interesting to hear her refer to the South as a US colony.

During the war, the area had network of tunnels and above ground trails through the jungle making up part of the Ho Chi Minh tail to transport supplies to the Viet Cong. The Americans dropped bombs and sprayed Agent Orange to destroy the cover.

The area is now reforested thanks to an effort in the mid 1990s by the Vietnamese government and some foreign funders. Apparently they had tried to replant earlier but the ground had not yet rid itself of the chemical so the plants didn't grow.

On the trip we saw:

The Ben Hai River (the actual line)

The Rock Pile (a former marine lookout south of the river)

Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Dakrong bridge

Cemetaries for Viet Cong soldiers

Memorial for guerilla soldiers

Museum at Khe San

Vinh Moc Tunnels

The Museum at Khe San was pretty interesting..and it was interesting to hear our guide invoke the image of Dien Bien Phu (a famous battle where the French set up a huge base in an area surrounded by mountains figuring the Vietnamese couldn't get equipment up the other side of mountains only to get completely destroyed when a million Vietnamese pulled the heavy equipment up.)

The caption on the picture to the left is "The American soldiers' panic at Lang Vay Base. What was President Johnson thinking?

The Vinh Moc tunnels were definitely the highlight of the trip. The tunnels were a bit north of 17th parallel and used by 350 people (60 families) to protect themselves from bombings. I'm sure that it was also used to protect guerillas but that was not mentioned in the musuem or in the guided tour.

It had three levels with a school, a hospital, a meeting room, and little nooks, one for each family.

Actually the hospital was just a slightly bigger nook. Its an amazing place. Its 2K long, has three levels. It has 13 entrances/exits that were used for passage and ventilation. This particular tunnel was hit only once. The hole left by the bomb was used for ventilation. (Other tunnels in the area were not so lucky. Bombings caused several to collapse with the residents inside. But this too was not discussed). 17 children were born in the tunnel's hospital over the 6 years that the tunnel was occupied between 1966 and 1973.

All in all, it was a pretty interesting day but it was gut wrenching to be in this area.

A lot of our guys died here.

Bike Ride through the Suburbs of Hue.

2009-02-26T10:33:00.014+07:00

On my third day alone in Hue I really wanted to take a long bikeride. One of my guidebooks recommend that I head east and visit Uncle Ho's childhood home and sun myself at a beach on South China Sea.

This sounded appealing and I figured, how hard can it be? I just follow the river. I am bounded on three sides, to the north is the Perfume River, to the east is the South China Sea, to the west is Hue.

I should have been a little suspicious. The guidebook actually said "think of getting lost as part of the adventure."

So I rented a bike and off I went....through a small village...over a bridge...through some rice fields.....past some cemetaries....past some rice fields....past some cemetaries...rice fields....cemetaries.

It was wonderful. The rice fields were amazingingly green. And the ride was so quiet. No cars. An occasional construction truck. Motorbikes that only honked when they really needed to. Mostly bicycles.

After a while the road dead ended into a T. Right or Left? I was pretty sure the river was still to my left and the map showed a road that parralleled the river so I chose left. I passed by a school, more rice fields, more cemetaries, some small houses. The area looked pretty well-off economically.

The houses all had something that looked like the picture to the right. I had just watched "Close Encounters" so I thought it might be a model of where the space ship is going to land. But, when I got back to Hanoi I showed the picture to Hang. She said that they dry the grassy part of the rice and use it for fires.

Several small herds of cows were dining on the grass in the cemetary near the road. The area is really green but there is actually only a small amount of land that would not be like quicksand to a cow. There were even some oxen.

A bunch of kids were riding their bikes back to school after going home for lunch. In a couple of the groups, kids poked each other trying to get someone else to be the first to yell hello. When I said hello back, they all giggled and responded with a sea of "hello's." Others were bolder and just came right out with the hello. One boy (I'm guessing he was about 8) said very formally "Hello, how are you." When I slowed down and said "I'm fine. How are you?" his response was an equally formal "I am fine, thank you." It was very cute.

By this time of course I was completely lost. When I started to become overly fascinated with all the burial sites thinking that I might end up in one, I decided it was time to turn around. I started retracing my route when a young woman rode up in a motor bike who asked me why I was riding my bike in the middle of the day when it was so hot. We started talking.

I learned that she was a 20-year-old student at the University in Hue. She is studying English pedagogy and saw me as an opportunity to practice her English. This explained her near perfect English.

She learned that I am a crazy American who rides my bike in the hot sun because I only have a few days in Hue and I wanted to see the outskirts of the city. She also learned that I was completely lost.

Part of the conversation went something like this:

Me: I find it interesting how much language reflects our culture and shapes our culture. Like the pronouns in Vietnamese that refer to age. In Vietnam everyone wants to be older. In America, everyone wants to be younger.

Her: Yes, we respect our elders.

Me: And your relationship with family is wonderful. I live 1,000 miles away from my parents and my children might end up living 1,000 miles away from me. I think it is kind of sad.

Her: Yes, in America you live with just one or two generations. Here, we live with four generations.

Me: Is that a good thing?

Her: It is both good and bad. In America you have much more freedom. But it is good to live with older people. We can help take care of them and they like to tell us their stories.

Me: Do they tell you stories of the time when it was very hard to live in Vietnam.

Her: Yes, they tell me about the American war.

Me: Yea, sorry about that. I'm amazed that the Vietnamese are not angry at us. (I thought this was a particularly appropriate comment given how close we were to major fighting)

Her: It is the past. There is no use being angry anymore.

Her: make a right at the main road.

Me: Really?! (I was so turned around at this point that I was sure I should be making a left)

I made a right, rode along a major road (a highway by Vietnamese standards) for about a half hour until I reached some roads that were on my map. I navigated back to Du'o'ng Le Loi, one of the few streets in Hue that was familiar to me. As I turned the corner, I saw a cyclo carrying a huge desk. Ahhh, back to Hue.

More on Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand

2009-02-05T15:55:00.005+07:00

In one of my older posts I said that "The cost is determined by a mathematical combination of supply, demand, bargaining strategy, mood, frustration level etc."

It turns out that I should have added pregnancy to that list. It seems that selling something to a pregnant woman (especially first thing in the morning) brings good luck. Needless to say, this means when a pregnant woman goes to the market the fruit and vegetable vendors compete for the sale each offering a lower price--lower than they would ever sell it to a non-pregnant person.
This is an interesting alternative to the WIC program--a public policy approach to ensuring that pregnant women eat a healthy diet. I wonder if it is replicable in other countries? :-)

Happy 79th Anniversary of the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party

2009-02-03T14:48:00.007+07:00

I rode my bike over to the other side of West Lake to pay my electric bill. There were a bunch of signs on the side of the road with the following:
hammer and sickle
3-2
1930-2009

Being the keen investigator that I am, I googled February 3, 1930 and communism and found that

"The Party was founded by Ho Chi Minh and other exiles living in China as the Vietnamese Communist Party (Việt Nam cộng sản Đảng) at a conference in Hong Kong February 3, 1930. At the Hong Kong conference two competing communist factions, Indochinese Communist Party (Đông Dương cộng sản đảng) and the Communist Party of Annam (An Nam cộng sản Đảng), merged. Although the third Vietnamese communist group, the Indochinese Communist League (Đông Dương cộng sản liên đoàn), had not been invited to the Hong Kong conference its members were allowed to become members of the new united party."

The other big news in the first sentence of this posting is that I successfully paid my electric bill all by myself.

The mail system is pretty skeletal so each month 5 bill collectors hand deliver bills (water, cable, phone, internet, and electricity). Most bills are pretty small (under 170,000 VND) so I pay them on the spot in cash (neither checks nor credit cards are accepted). But the electric bill is real money (2.7 million VND this month) so someone has to deliver the cash to this government building on the other side of the lake.

Last month I had Hang do it. This month, I took the adventure. I hopped on my bike, tootled around the lake and found the right street. I couldn't find the building because the bill had only the street name and I had no idea what the building looked like or what the sign on the building would say. I made extensive use of my Vietnamese language skills by showing my bill to several people and saying "o dau (where)." Eventually someone pointed to the building right next to where I was standing.

Banh Chung: The Vietnamese equivalent of Fruit Cake

2009-02-02T09:46:00.008+07:00

The Vietnamese have their own version of fruit cake. That is, they have a Tet delicacy that everyone gives as a gift and serves at festive holiday meals. However, no one seems to actually like the taste.

Banh Chung (for which there is thankfully no English translation) is a brick of sticky rice encasing a tasty mix of buttery mung bean and bits of pork and pork fat. I used the internet to find out what was actually inside the rice because I couldn't figure it out by look or taste--the lovely texture masked the nuances of the ingredients.

Apparently, these delicacies take talent, practice, and hours to make. We have been lucky enough to have them offered to us twice. Bang (one of our guards) brought us two Banh Chung right before Tet (along with 6 bu'o'i and a HUGE amount of dry rice noodles) and Thai and Giao served it to us at a Tet lunch on Saturday.

By the way, with Nguyen's help we burned the money that we put in the Ancestor worship shrine before Tet (see the Ancestor worship posting). So..the ancestors are taken care of.

A few thoughts about Kuala Lumpur

2009-01-27T08:54:00.001+07:00

Our hotel is very near the Pavilion, a large upscale shopping mall. It had a food court with a huge variety of multi-ethnic food choices. Although I didn't actually eat it, my favorite sight was the booth that sold pizza crust wrapped like an sugar cone around pizza toppings and other stuff. The good news is that any country that sells a chocolate drenched banana in pizza crust has pre-made clothing in my size.
________________

The walk/don't walk signs are pretty advanced. When it is time to walk the malay word for walk flashes green, a timer starts counting down the seconds until the light will turn against you, and little animated green guy starts walking. The funny thing is that after a few seconds, the animation speeds up and little green guy starts running giving you a heads up on how the traffic will react if you don't get out of the way.
________________

We went to the 88-floor Pentronas twin towers and took a short stroll on the bridge between the two buildings. The bridge looks really cool from street level. It is two levels, mostly glass, suspended between the two buildings on the 41st and 42nd floor. Being up there provided a fantastic view of the the city.

Built in the mid-1990s, the Petronas towers are just as icnonic a symbol of modern Kuala Lumpur as the World Trade Center towers were to New York. For me, it was a poignant reminder of some of what we lost on 9-11. Plus, it felt, for lack of a better word "odd" to be standing in the twin towers of a Muslim country. Dan termed it cognitive dissonance.
________________

We took an afternoon/evening trip to Kuala Selangor to feed monkeys, eat Chinese food, and see fireflies. The fireflies inhabit a certain type of tree on a certain river in the area. We took a 20 minute ride up the river with a local guy rowing.

We shared our row-boat for four with a young couple from the United Arab Emirates. The woman was dressed in a head to toe birka. All I could see were her hands (thin fingers, partially worn off nail polish) and her eyes (heavily madeup with several different colors). When we were in line she had her black veil completely covering her face but when we were getting ready to board the boat she repositioned it so her eyes were uncovered.

Her husband responded to us when we spoke to him. She didn't. We don't know whether this was because she was not allowed to, was shy, couldn't speak English, or thought we were infidels. ___________________
In the Indian area of town the streets were packed (and I mean packed) with young men just hanging around. Our guide to Kuala Selangor explained that Malaysia has brought in a large number of men from Bangledesh and Myanmar to work in construction and other low wage work. They all have two days off for the Chinese New Year so they were relaxing. Our guide said that these workers are causing problems (crime and unruly behavior). Maybe this is because there are NO WOMEN.
____________________

Stuff that felt weird:

Looking at a sign outside the Kuala Lumpur city mosque that looked like it was calling for a Palestinian intifada.

Looking at a sign outside the Malaysia National mosque that was calling for a boycott of American goods (Starbucks, coke, dollar bills) because of our support for Israel.

Donning a head scarf in order to visit a mosque.
_____________________

At the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple we saw a Hindu ritual where the priest poured liquid over some diety. The liquid started off as water and got progressively thicker with each pitcher that was poured. Eventually they poured what looked like thick coconut milk, We still have no idea what we saw.

___________________

The country gained independence from Britain in 1957 in what was termed "the great negotation." We watched a short movie about independence which talked about how the Brits made the Malaysian leadership prove that different race/ethnicities (mostly Malay Muslims, ehtnic Chinese, and Indians) could all live together. So the country was founded on multiculturalism. Pretty cool.

I immediately wondered how that works since the national language is Malay (although most people also speak English) and the national religion is Islam. A quick google search indicated that there's quite a bit of tension.

Tension..but no violence...not bad.
_______________________

Our hotel has a phenomenal buffet breakfast every morning. Because it is catering to customers from east Asia, South Asia, and western countries it has a huge variety of foods. So we get to experiment with "make your own" fusion cuisine. It turns out that an omelet with Malaysian dhall is really good.

Among our daily choices is a sandwich of smoked salmon, lettuce, tomato, onion, and sprouts made on a round piece of bread with a hole in the middle. I had it this morning just so that I could say that I was a Jew eating a bagel and lox sandwich in a Muslim country. But alas, the bread may have looked like a bagel but it was most certainly NOT a bagel.

_______________________

We went to the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) and took a beautiful hike up a mountain to a canopy walk above the trees. Not exactly the most intelligent vacation option for two people who do not particularly like heights (that's a bit of an understatement) but it was pretty cool--tropical forest below, KL in the distance.

Fish Food

2009-01-25T19:13:00.000+07:00

After weeks of frantic preparations, Hanoi shuts down for Tet. About half the city's residents return to their villages. The other half visit relatives in-town. No one works so everything is closed including grocery stores, taxis, restaurants etc. So....we're spending Chinese New Year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Today we went to a fish spa.

The spa has an elevated wood floor with huge tanks of garra rufu fish swimming around below floor level. You sit on the wood floor, put your feet in the water, and the fish nibble the dead skin off your feet and lower legs.

To complement the fish therapy you can choose different types of spa services. We chose the head to toe option. We started with a one-hour foot reflexology, followed by a half-hour shoulder massage and half-hour accupressure head therapy, followed by a half-hour in the fish area.

We started with the baby fish. At first it tickles but once you get used to it, it doesn't feel like much at all (it just looks incredibly weird). After about 10 minutes I moved up to the larger fish which take actual nibbles out of your feet. I must of had a lot of dead skin because the fish swarmed my feet. By the end of the 30 minute session all the nibbling was taking a toll on my legs--it actually hurt a little. I think I would have to go for many fish therapy sessions before I would actually notice a difference in my feet.

The guys who did the relexology and other spa services were a bit rough.

Dan described the experience as "I went through two hours of agony so I could have fish eat my feet."

Tet offering to the ancestors

2009-01-23T10:02:00.000+07:00

Last night we brought a small Tet gift (a basket with fruit, candies, and whiskey) to Thai and Giao (our landlords).

While we were there, they gave us a bu'o'i, some green bananas, some fake paper money (a stack of VND, a stack of US $100 bills, paper with a coin pattern, red paper with a big gold square in the middle representing gold), and a small package of incense. They explained (using mime and Vietnamese words that we could understand) that we should put the fruit and money in the ancestor worship shrine and light three sticks of incense.

In three days, we are supposed to take the fruit out of the shrine and eat it. We can then burn the money sending it up to heaven for the ancestors to use.

In return for making the offerings, their ancestors will put in a good word for us up in heaven. We'll have a lucky year and the house will be protected.

Our guard Nguyen helped us carry out the ritual. It was really beautiful.

I did a little internet reading about Ancestor worship. Vietnamese think that in death we don't pass away. Instead, we pass on to another world that invisibly exists beside the land of the living. It is the duty of the living to meet needs of their dead ancestors. In return, the ancestors give advice and bring good fortune. The dead people to whom no worship is given, are disturbed in death and prey on the living.

Ancestors who behaved badly in life will bring bad luck to their children. It sounds like instead of being eternally damned if you behave badly, you bring the damnation on to your children. One website noted, "This is a powerful influence on the behavior of the living."

I had thought that the ancestor shrine was a way for the Vietnamese to honor their ancestors which is a lovely tradition in and of itself.

It seems that the relationship goes both ways--they honor the ancestors and the ancestors take care of them. In some ways, I feel the same way when I make a loaf of Challah.

With a mezuzah on the doorpost, the ancestor shrine outside, and a prayer from our favorite Episcopal priest, we're well on our way to being totally covered.

A note for Alex--I thought the fact that they send four different kinds of money up to the ancestors was kind of funny. Perhaps they are protecting against heavenly inflation.

The most common site in Hanoi a week before Tet

2009-01-21T19:06:00.001+07:00

Tet is less than a week away and the usual craziness of Hanoi has reached a whole new level.

No Vietnamese house is complete without a kumquat tree or a peach blossom branch for Tet. (In the south they use a different kind of tree). So people come to the kumquat groves to pick out their tree, have it dug out of the ground, and planted in a pot. They they tie it on the back of their motorbikes and off they go. You can just imagine the scene.

Econ 101 in Vietnam

2009-01-18T22:04:00.000+07:00

In Econ 101 everyone learns about the supply and demand curves and that the intersection of the two lines is the equilibrium price. Later in the semester we learn about price discrimination and the ability to charge one group a different amount than another group.

How do they teach these concepts in Vietnam? There is no equilibrium price. Every sale is different. The cost is determined by a mathematical combination of supply, demand, bargaining strategy, mood, frustration level etc.

I guess that it is really just constant price discrimination.

In economics we also learn why car dealerships (and other types of businesses) tend to locate in the same area as other dealerships (or similar businesses). It works out OK because the products at each dealership are differentiable from other dealerships (a Toyota is different than a Honda).

So please explain the following:

8-10 women line up about 50 feet apart along one side of a highway each selling the exact same type of bread or the exact same fruits. No one goes to the other side of the road to tap the market going in the other direction. No one sells a good that is complementary to the bread (like the Vietnamese equivalent of peanut butter and jelly).

Now lets talk about why the all the electrical supply stores, or all the candy stores, or all the bike shops are in the same area. It would seem that it would follow the same theory as the car dealerships. But there's one big difference. You walk onto any one of these streets with multiple stores selling the same type of item and they are all selling exactly the same things--completely indistinguishable from each other. So you think this is great...perfect competition. But it is not like you can compare prices between the different stores. There are no posted prices and you don't negotiate the price until you're pretty sure that you are going to buy it. Could you have negotiated a lower price in the store down the street? There's no way to know.

Ahhh. Adam Smith....Please explain how the invisible hand works in Hanoi.

Perfume Pagoda

2009-01-14T14:55:00.000+07:00

Chua Huong (Perfume pagoda), a cluster of temples and shrines, is located in Huong son 70 km southwest of Hanoi.

Visiting the Perfume Pagoda requires multiple modes of transportation. For most our other excursions we just hired a cab and explored on our own. For this one, we used a travel agency which provided us with a guide and all the logistics.

First we took a two hour car ride southwest from Hanoi. We saw loads of rice fields and a leather shoe village.

Next, we took a 45 minute ride in a small boat rowed by a woman who couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds. It was a gorgeous ride between mountains and limestone cliffs. We saw women working in rice fields and men fishing from small boats.

We stopped at Den Trinh--the registration shrine--where we were supposed to announce our intentions to the Buddha. We next stopped at Thien Tru--the heavenly kitchen.

Then we took a cable car to the summit where a Buddhist shrine is built in a cave in one of the mountains. There is a long winding path up to the summit but we took the easy way up and walked down. There are a bunch of stalagmites and stalactites within the grotto. Each is given a name for their purported features. Our guide pointed out two stalagmites--one that looked like a boy and one that looked like a girl. Supposedly couples who wish for children go to pay homage. There was also a stalagmite that looked like a large breast with water dripping into an indendation on the tip. Pregnant women and new mothers pay homage to this one to pray for enough breast milk for their babies. In addition to the natural features of the cave, many small shrines have been set up in the nooks and crannies of the cave.

Right after Tet, there is an 80 day festival during which the Buddhists take an annual pilgramage to the Perfume Pagoda. Apparently, the place is packed. Instead of making one trip every two weeks, the paddlers take four trips a day. Throngs of people walk up to pagoda.

When we at the Pagoda workers were setting up for the event. The sheer strength and balance of the workers was impressive. We saw a group of young men each carrying two 50 Liter bottles of water up the steps one on each end of a wooden bar balanced over their shoulders. All up and down the steps men and women were carrying long planks of wood and bamboo. Workers balanced on bamboo narrower than a balance beam to build the stalls which had wooden floors and bamboo frames.

It reminded me of the excavations near the wall of the temple in the old city of Jerusalem. Both places are set up for pilgramages with stalls selling food and stuff you need for prayer. In Jerusalem, they would sell stuff for the sacrifice. Here they sell incense and paper with prayers on it for burning (the sweet smoke from the incense and the smoke from the paper takes the prayers up to heaven).

Sights and sounds of a couple of craft villages

2009-01-10T10:44:00.000+07:00

Van Phuc Silk Village--This is the first place I have ever been where the sound itself described the scene.

All over town weavers are producing gorgeous silk. For some reason, most of the places we poked our head were producing one of two white on white patterns.

But the amazing thing was the rhythm of the town. Everytime we turned a corner we heard the beat of a loom.

We went into one house where the owner happily showed us his loom, the wood patterns that run through the machine to create the pattern and the beautiful white silk that he was in the process of weaving. He was set up tourists. Of course, he didn't speak any English which limited his ability to describe the nuances of weaving, but between Dan's Vietnamese and a lot of miming, we had a great time.

He had a small jar of silk worms to show us and a table full of silk pajamas and kimonos for us to buy. We obliged. I just wish I had taken a picture of Simon, Alex, and Dan all wearing their matching silk pajamas. See http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/VanPhucSilkVillage# for more pictures.

So Noodle Village--
Like everything else in Vietnam, rice noodles are produced with a minimal amount of technology. Rice is ground into a liquidly gruel. The gruel is passed through a machine that presses it into thin flat sheets which are laid on bamboo. The sheets then need to dry before they are shred into long thin noodles.

The sheets come off the pressing machine pretty quickly so everywhere you turn, you see rice noodles drying. See pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/SoNoodleVillage#

Hanoi Nanette

2009-01-09T21:15:00.000+07:00

We went to the Hao Lo prison (aka the "Hanoi Hilton"), the military museum, and the Ho Chi Minh mauseleum and museum.

Hao Lo prison was originally used by the French to imprison Vietnamese so most of the museum is dedicated to showing how the French tortured the Vietnamese. A couple of rooms showed how Hao Lo was used during the American War. According to the exhibit, the American pilots were treated quite well while they waited for the war to end. The pictures showed them playing cards, celebrating Christmas, getting medical care, and receiving mail and treats from their families back in the US. It looked like one big party.

The military museum had a "sculpture" made from downed American planes and displays of captured American tanks and trucks.

The Ho Chi Minh museum portrays a brilliant visionary--the architect of indepence--who led the country out of the reigns of French imperialists. The text on the exhibits touted communist ideals.

At the Ho Chi Minh mauseleum, Vietnamese line up for hours to pay their respect to Uncle Ho. (Personally, I was a bit uncomfortable looking at an embalmed body lying in an air tight container . Perhaps if I had gone to pay my respects rather than to see a tourst attraction, I may have had a different reaction.)

Almost every day we pass a big statue of Lenin. Generally people are playing soccer by his feet and badmitton on the sidewalk.

The largest park in town, a favorite of joggers, walkers, and photographers taking pictures of newlyweds, is named "Lenin Park."

I constantly wonder why the Vietnamese don't hate us. More than half of the country is under 30 so they don't remember the war. But we were sitting next to Thai's 90-year-old father (Nguyen's grandfather) at Nguyen's wedding and I just wanted to lean in to him and quietly whisper, "Sorry for bombing the s*** out of your country."

At the same time I have a vague understanding of why the US so completely misunderstood this country and its relationship to communism and the Russians.

I have been mulling this feeling over since we decided to come here. Before I left the US, I went the Vietnam War memorial to pay my respects to the men and women who died here and feeling this vague sense of guilt that I was moving to a country that has evolved into almost what we had been fighting for even though we lost.

This is why the url of my blog is HanoiNanette. It is a reference to Hanoi Jane. I don't actually feel like a traitor but I do have a yet undefined feeling about the idea that 50,000 Americans lost their lives here and I am lightheartedly buying doodads at the market.

Breathing

2009-01-09T17:01:00.000+07:00

I am hoping that someone can come up with a brilliant solution to this problem.

A few weeks ago I got a cold which turned into a pretty nasty acute bronchitis. The bronchitis held on for a long time and led to some asthma. Since then, I have needed to use an inhaler every so often.

The doctor suggested that my habit of riding my bicycle in the terrible Hanoi pollution contributed to my difficulty in shaking off the original illness and is likely to be an ongoing problem.

He suggested that I stop riding my bike. This is a HUGE problem. Giving up my bike would seriously affect my weight loss regimen, my social life, and my ability to be independent and spontaneous.

About half the Vietnamese people riding around on motorbikes have their noses and mouths covered with either a scarf or a cloth face mask. I asked if it would help if I used one of these options. The doctor responded, "Not really. Those only filter out the big chunks."

So, I tried an N95 mask. Those things are quite thick and difficult to breathe through. Plus, when I exhale the warm air fogs my glasses. So...I tried a mask that has a charcoal filter....same problem with the glasses.

I looked around to see what Vietnamese people who wear glasses are wearing over their faces. It turns out that very few Vietnamese wear glasses and the ones that do must have really strong airways because they are not wearing face masks.

Any ideas?

Chuong conical hat village

2009-01-08T08:43:00.000+07:00

There are about 50 craft villages around Hanoi and we visited four of them with Alex and Simon.

In order to really experience a village you have to walk the alleys and find people plying their craft. At first I was a little uncomfortable doing this. Homes and workshops are one in the same so basically you end up peering into people's living rooms. However, now that we understand that we are as amusing to the locals and they are to us, we've gotten a little bolder. Plus, it gives Dan a great opportunity to practice his Vietnamese.

After roaming for a little while through Chuong conical hat village, we came upon two women who were making hats in front of their house. They waved to us (This may have been in response to my rather loud proclamation that we had found what we were looking for and pointing) so we walked down a small hill to their house where they showed us two stages of the hat making process. They talked a lot, Dan understood some, I understood less. We asked if we could buy two hats. Alex and I modeled them for the camera and we walked on.

Next, we saw a rice miller (where they separate the rice kernel from the husk) and poked our heads in to a little building see what they were doing. The woman at the machine explained the milling process as best she could using no words and put bits of rice pre-milled and post-milled into our hands.

She looked at our newly purchased hats and pointed out that they were missing a finishing piece around the rim plus they didn't have a place to tie the chin strap. Because we didn't expect to be wearing the hats often and because we bought them mostly as a vehicle to give some money to the two women who spent about 20 minutes talking to us, we were OK with our unfinished, substandard hats.

We walked on a bit and another woman approached us and pointed out the faults in our hats (which at this point we were carrying in a clear plastic bag). We quickly figured out that the rice miller sent her. She invited us to her house where we thought she was going to finish off our hats but instead she showed us her hats which had the finishing piece and the place to tie the chin strap. Within a few minutes about 8 women, including one who was 100-years-old and another who had a stack of pink chin straps joined the party.

We attached pink chin straps to two hats and modeled to a very appreciative audience.

Dan took a picture of the old woman and the younger ones explained to him that he should give her 2,000 VND. Dan happily gave the woman 5,000 VND and the woman thanked him profusely and affectionately rubbed his hand. (Remember, there are 17,000 VND to the US dollar so Dan was being showered with appreciation for about 30 cents).

We paid the price of the new hats. We were not able to communicate that we still wanted the substandard hats so we left with two hats and ended our day at the village.

Alex proudly walked through town back to our waiting cab wearing his conical hat with the pink chin strap. He also noted that the miller manually moved the rice from one machine that removed the husk from the rice to the next machine which removed the bran rather than stacking the two machines. He concluded that the Vietnamese aren't very efficient but they sure do have "great customer service."

These may have been the most expensive conical hats ever purchased in Vietnam

First two conical hats-50,000 VND

Second two conical hats-50,000 VND

Payment to the 100-year-old woman for taking her picture-5,000 VND

The experience-priceless

More ideas for using all the kumquats

2009-01-07T09:50:00.000+07:00

I just got a helpful email from our local travel agent (iTravel) titled "A Beginners Guide to Tet." In addition to describing some of the Tet traditions, it included recipes for brandied kumquats and pickled kumquats!!!

Both of them take a while to stew so I'll let you know how they are sometime in March.

Stephanie Alexander's Brandied Kumquats
1 lb. kumquats, whole
1 lb. Sugar600 Ml.
Brandy
1 Vanilla Bean
Place the kumquats in a large, sterilized jar. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and with the back of your knife, scrape along the inside of the bean to scrape up all the tiny little seeds that look like bits of dirt. Don't skip this part! Those tiny little morsels are where all the flavor is, and if you leave them trapped in the pod your finished product won't be as good! Add the sugar and the brandy to the jar, and stir with a skewer. Don't worry if the sugar doesn't dissolve, just continue to stir once a day for the next few days until it does. Label, stick on your shelf, and open in two months.

Stephanie Alexander's Pickled Kumquats
1 tsp. Salt600 M
l. water1 Lb. Kumquats
2 Oz. Sugar
½ Stick, Cinnamon
1 Tsp. Cloves600 M
l. White Wine Vinegar
Bring the salt and water to a boil, remove from the heat and add the kumquats. Allow to sit for 12 hours. Drain. Simmer the sugar and spices in the vinegar until the sugar is dissolved. While mixture is simmering, pack the fruit into a hot, sterilized jar. Top with the vinegar mix, and seal. Let sit for two weeks. You can use both the fruit and the syrup. Delicious with duck, chicken, or pork!

Beating the Heat in the After-Life

2009-01-05T20:33:00.000+07:00

As we were driving through the rural areas today I noticed a lot of burial sites in the rice fields and on the edge of the river near the Perfume Pagoda. According to our guide, the water keeps the souls cool so they do not get angry.

Another Bu'o'i mystery solved

2009-01-05T20:23:00.000+07:00

When you go into a pagoda there is often a plate a fruit on the Buddha shrine. According to our guide at the Perfume Pagoda, the Buddha blesses the fruit and the person who placed it there comes back later to retrieve the blessed fruit.

So...I told our guide the story about the bu'o'i in our ancestor worship shrine. He said that it sounded like the ancestors blessed the bu'o'i and Nguyen then brought us the blessed fruit.

Tourist schedule

2009-01-04T17:33:00.000+07:00

Over the next few days (maybe weeks) I am going to post blurbs/thoughts related to some of the things we've done with Alex and Simon. In order to give you some context, here's our basic itinerary:

Dec 25-Alex and Simon arrive at night

Dec 26-Welcome lunch hosted by Thai and Giao, Tay Ho Pagoda

Dec 27-Old Quarter and Temple of Literature

Dec 28-Alex and Nanette to Bat Trang pottery village, Dan and Simon to authentic Vietnamese restaurant

Dec 29-Military Museum, Hoa Lo Prison, and Water Puppets

Dec 30-Halong Bay

Dec 31-return from Halong Bay

Jan 1-Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and museum

Jan 2-Van Phuc Silk Village

Jan 3-Chua Tram Gian, So Noodle Village, Dong Ky Woodcarving village

Jan 4-Nguyen's wedding

Jan 5-Perfume Pagoda

Jan 6-Home, haircut, KOTO for dinner

Jan 7-Relax, Chuong conical hat village

Jan 8-Cooking class, airport

Kumquats and other fruit

2009-01-02T09:57:00.000+07:00

One of my loyal readers (Thank you Jessica) addressed a compelling question in her comment to my New Years eve post--"What are you supposed to do with all the kumquats?"

Thuy said that I should keep the kumquats on the tree for decoration. About a month after tet the kumquats will fall off and I should make jam from the fallen kumquats. Hang suggested that we should pick the kumquats after Tet and make kumquat juice.

I'm pretty sure that at this point if someone told me that it is traditional to make kumquat earrings I would believe them.

In order to avoid walking through the street with tiny oranges dangling from my ears, I googled "kumquat and tet" to see if any of these traditions are described on English websites.
I didn't find anything but I did learn more about the fruit basket that Vang (see the Bu'o'i posting) brought us before Christmas.

The traditional 5-fruit tray is supposed to bring a comfortable life and best wishes. The 5 fruits symbolize the 5 "basic elements" out of which the universe was created-- metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. The tray has to have at least five fruits, including banana, bu'o'i, and orange. Mine also had a custard apple, a dragon fruit, and a breast milk fruit. I was touched that Vang would stop by with her son to visit and deliver basket but found that the last three fruits were somewhere between tasteless and disgusting.

Halong Bay and alternative lifestyles

2009-01-01T16:38:00.000+07:00

We've been relishing the role of "tourists" now that Simon and Alex are here visiting.

This week we went to Halong Bay. Its a gorgeous bay about 3.5 hours east of Hanoi. We took an overnight cruise on the "Red Dragon Junk" through hundreds of small islands that dot the Bay. We ate, cruised, ate, visited a cave on one of the islands, ate, kayaked, ate, rested, ate, swam, ate etc. After dinner the crew sang a few songs followed by some songs performed by the passengers. The 5 Brazilian women contributed heartily. Not to be outdone, Dan sang "From Me to You" accompanied by Simon beat boxing.
More pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/HanoiNanette/HalongBay

One of the most amazing sites was a fishing village with about 300 residents living in 57 houses. It had a primary school and a community center (which doubled as a gift shop).

We saw folks tootling around the neighborhood in small row boats. Others were relaxing in hammocks on their porch. Others were cooking on small fires. Others were tending to small children.

The kids go to primary school in the fishing community. If they choose to continue their schooling, the government pays for their housing and schooling on the mainland.

Apparently, until the mid 1990s most of the fisherman lived in the bay independently but this was really hard on the environment. So, with help from the government, the fisherman created communities. The residents each have a container that holds their waste water. They buy big barrels of fresh water from merchants that come through the 'hood every so often.

They sell their fish to wholesalers who come to the community to buy or they sell it on the mainland.

It was fascinating to think about this kind of lifestyle. Could I do it? How do these folks live in such close, isolated quarters without killing their families?

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T19:48:00.000+07:00

Thai and Gaoi brought us a kumquat tree today. It is a traditional gift for Tet (the Vietnamese New Year). I guess they figured that it would work for our new year too.

Christmas--Vietnamese style

2008-12-21T20:45:00.000+07:00

Its Christmastime in Hanoi. The fact that only about 10% of Vietnamese people are Christian (mostly Catholic) doesn't seem to put a damper on the season.

The shopping centers are decked out with trees, sleds, reindeers, santas etc. There's not much in the way of the more religious symbols like mangers and crosses.

We sat by Hoan Kiem lake last weekend. It was amazing how many little kids were wearing Santa outfits. But it was the sanitation worker (I think she is one of the many recyclers in the city) who was quietly collecting garbage wearing a santa hat that really caught our attention.

Spoiler Alert-Don't read this until you've read my previous posting about bu'o'i

2008-12-20T18:21:00.000+07:00

Mystery solved: According to two reliable sources (my vietnamese teacher and Thuy-the realtor/furniture producer) bu'o'i has a very long shelf life if it is kept in a shaded space. Most Vietnamese houses are short on space and the fruit is pretty large so it became traditional to store bu'o'i under the bed.
Apparently, houses in the rural areas often keep dozens of bu'o'i under the bed.

Some bu'o'i stories

2008-12-18T18:05:00.000+07:00

Bu'o'i (pronouced boo-ee but swallow the vowels): An oversized grapefruit with a really thick skin, a lot of flesh, and tough membranes. Rather than being juicy and tart, it has a really mild taste.

My relationship with the bu'o'i started at Sedona Suites (see my first blog posting). When we arrived in our room a basket of unfamiliar fruit was sitting on table. I quietly left it there for a few days. On the third day, Vang, the maid who cleaned our apartment asked me if I wanted her to peel some of the fruit. She started with the bu'o'i. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship.

Her English was pretty good and her warmth made up for any of the words that she didn't know. Over the course of a few weeks she told me about each of the fruits and about her life. She brought me some vegetables from the market and showed me how to cook them. She only laughed slightly when I asked her how to use the rice cooker. She was in her mid 40's with two kids--the son in Hanoi University, the younger daughter in school. Her husband had died two years ago from heart disease. She earned $130 per month at Sedona.

She showed me how peel and eat the bu'o'i and when I said that I really liked it she brought me more. When she peeled, the fruit came out in identifiable segments. When I tried, I got bu'o'i bits. Dan even had the gall to suggest that we buy the pre-peeled bu'o'i at the grocery store.

With this background, you can imagine my delight when I saw a bu'o'i tree among the many potted trees at my new house. Using the realtor as an interpreter I asked Thai and Giao(the owners of the house) when my bu'o'i fruit would be ripe. Thai said that my bu'o'i would be ready in a couple months but invited me to her house any time I wanted ripe bu'o'i.

Last week I noticed that a bu'o'i had been placed on a plate in our ancestor worship shrine.
A few days later, our guard came to our door to give us the bu'o'i from the shrine.
We don't really know who put the bu'o'i in the shrine or how the ancestors feel about having the bu'o'i removed. It is all a bit of a mystery.

Today Thai came bearing two bu'o'i (and a beautiful bunch of flowers). I made a lame attempt at peeling one of the fruits but mostly I looked on helplessly as Thai and Hang (my housekeeper) chatted, laughed, and peeled.

Thai said (or at least this is how Hang, in her broken English, interpreted it to me) that I should put the bu'o'i under my bed.

I thought that this was some weird superstition and asked "why, will it ensure good sex?" Hang looked at me blankly. So... I whipped out the English Vietnamese dictionary that we keep in the kitchen to clear up those blank looks and pointed to the words for "good" and "sex."

Both Thai and Hang laughed hysterically.

Apparently, I was way off.

But, I still don't know why I would want to put a bu'o'i under my bed.

Buying oranges using only Vietnamese

2008-12-15T16:57:00.000+07:00

A good friend of ours works for WWF in the US. The WWF office in Hanoi is near our home so we our constantly on the look out for great photo ops that incorporate the WWF sign. A couple of weeks ago I saw a great opportunity. I bought some fruit from a couple of street vendors and took their picture.

The woman in the foreground of the picture is often in our area selling fruit. Ever since the picture day she waves and yells xin chao when she sees me. Since she gave me a fair price for the pomelo I bought on the first day, I'm am inclined to buy from her again.

This might look like two kilos of Vietnamese oranges (minus a few that I ate before I took the picture.)
However, they hold special significance. They are my first business transaction using only Vietnamese. The following transaction occurred with the seller in the picture above:

Seller: Xin Chao (hello)
Me: Xin Chao. bao nhieu tien mot kilo (Hello, how much for one kilo)
Seller: moui nhin (10,000)
Me: Ok. mot kilo (Ok, 1 kilo) (I hate bargaining--more on that in another post)
The motorbike taxi driver standing next to the seller: Hai kilo (two kilos)
Me: Khong, mot kilo (no, one kilo)
The seller: silence as she was adding additional oranges to the bag and putting it on the scale.
Me: Mot kilo. Mot kilo (one kilo, one kilo)
Me: silently paying 20,000 vnd for two kilos of oranges.
My housekeeper Hang when I proudly showed off my oranges: Eye rolling because we already have a refrigerator full of oranges from my previous excursions to practice what I have learned in Vietnamese language class.

The #%$^ metric system

2008-12-15T16:39:00.000+07:00

The computer paper is 210 x 297 mm or 8.3 x 11.7 inches. It is both narrower and longer than the 8.5 x 11 inch paper that actually fits into my printer. Arghhh.

The scales are in kilos. It is 2.2 times as difficult to lose a kilo than to lose a pound!

A Jew Celebrates Christmas in a Buddhist Country*

2008-12-14T17:58:00.000+07:00

Saturday night was Dan's office Christmas Party. This is a tradition well beloved by the Vietnamese staff but not necessarily embraced by the 12 or so expat families involved.

It was a huge party. I'm estimating there were 400 people--about 75 of which were kids.

The evening can be divided into four parts--food, a puppet show, kids performances, and Santa giving out gifts.

Highlights of the puppet show included:

-Large puppets singing the ABC song with Vietnamese accents.

-Kermit speaking in vietnamese (see picture above)

-Flying puppets--I'm sure that the puppets being flung from one side of the stage to the other were part of the plot but with the exception of the ABC song everything else was in Vietnamese so I'm not really sure what was going on. Dan believes that they were hopping frogs. This is a viable theory.

kids performances--the expat families were ably represented by three incredibly cute girls singing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. They were followed by about eight acts by the families of the Vietnamese staff members. The Vietnamese seem to revel in watching their kids perform and Dan was asked multiple times why our children were not performing. Unfortunately Alex and Simon were in the US. I am sure that they would have leapt on the opportunity if they had been here.

Santa came in on a bicycle as there are no sleighs in Vietnam because of the absence of snow. He ho ho hoed and gave out gifts to each child. The part of Santa was played by Severin, the tallest guy in the office and the rural sector coordinator. I would like to take this opportunity to point out what an outstanding job he did and formally nominate him to play the part next year too. This is not because I am married to the second tallest guy in the office.

Throughout the evening an older gentleman was crafting small figures from a rice flour dough (it looked a little like sculpy) for the kids. He explained quietly in Vietnamese (translated by another guest at the party) that the rice dough sculpting was a traditional craft in Vietnam but is vanishing because few young people want to learn.

It was incredibly artful and I spent about an hour just watching him.

OK, I really wanted one and I thought if I waited long enough all the kids would dissappear and I could get a dragon.

I was wrong.

Today Dan and I went to an Indian restaurant for brunch. We were two Jews listening to Christmas music sitting in a Hindu restaurant in a Buddhist Country. I believe that may be the maximum number of religions that we can put in one sentence and have the sentence still make sense.

*This isn't really a buddhist country. I will write more on that another day.

Humbled by the furniture makers

2008-12-10T18:34:00.000+07:00

We were supposed to rent a furnished house or apartment. However, the house we liked wasn't furnished. Our realtor Thuy (who seems to be involved in many businesses) solved the problem by producing furniture in her "shop."

The furniture they make here is really beautiful. But...labor is cheap and materials are not. As a result, a huge amount of time goes into a piece made of inexpensive wood that has not been dried completely. That, combined with the brutal humidity, makes many of pieces crack over time. But that's a bit besides the point.

Today I had the opportunity to visit the shop. There are 10 workers. They live in the shop; they eat in the shop; and, of course, they work in the shop....and then they deliver the furniture to the huge expat houses.

A cook goes to the market in the morning and cooks three meals a day for the workers in a little hut which has a pot on top of small fire. Thuy says that the cook can produce the three meals a day for 15,000 VND (a little less than $1). I'm guessing this is per person and not the total for all ten.

After taking several woodworking classes at the woodworkers club in Rockville, I fully understand the amount of skill and patience that building furniture requires....and I was learning in a spacious workshop with every power tool known to humans. I'm humbled.

Tidbits about the Vietnamese language

2008-12-08T17:56:00.000+07:00

I am taking a Vietnamese language class aptly called "survival." It is teaching me the basics of reading, taking a taxi, ordering in a restaurant, buying stuff at the market etc.

The structure of the language is pretty straightforward (no verb conjugations). But the pronunciation is incredibly precise. My teacher told the story of a student who thought he was asking for the bill in the restaurant but ended up getting fried eggs.

There are a few fun tidbits though.

First, you address someone older than you as chi (for a woman) or anh (for a man) and someone younger than you as em. So "hello" is chao chi, chao anh, or chao em, depending on who you are talking to. So...the first time you meet someone it is perfectly appropriate to ask their age. This is very fun.

Second, it is perfectly appropriate to ask someone if they have a family. Rather than answering "yes" or "no," the answers are "already" and "not yet." In this country, family is everything. The language doesn't even allow you to plan on not having kids.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-06T09:52:00.000+07:00

After two weeks in Vietnam Dan went on mission to some rural areas in the Mekong Delta for 8 days. He had been home for about a week and a half when his chronic arhythmia kicked in and his heart went out of rhythm. It was never life threatening but it sure was stressful. I know that in order to understand a country you should understand its health care system but next time I think Dan should opt for a tour and a few focus groups rather than the "experience it yourself" approach.

He started out at the International SOS clinic where the docs wanted to send him to Bangkok…and when the airports there were shut down by protesters, they started talking about Singapore. Given that our passports were with the Vietnamese government getting processed for our permanent visas and that the course of treatment to get his heart back in rhythm was pretty standard, he opted to stay in town and go to the “fancy” Vietnamese-French hospital. It looked and felt just like a US hospital 20 years ago.

His Vietnamese cardiologist was incredibly good. She was from the South and had worked in Banh Mai (the public hospital next door to the fancy hospital) during the war patching up North Vietnamese. Compared to that, Dan's case was no sweat.

She put him on amiodarone for a few days but when that didn't get his heart back in rhythm she did a cardioversion (shocked his heart with paddles). Each step along the way they did all the tests humanly possible to make sure that they didn't accidently give him a stroke (even though the risks were incredibly low). But...when you've got the World Bank Medical Officer in Australia and the International SOS docs asking for updates at every step, overly cautious seemed like the right response.

The docs and nurses were clearly touched that Dan trusted them. Unfortunately, the only place in the hospital where they could monitor his heart was in the ICU which had very limited visiting hours. He was incredibly bored but spent a lot of time reading and practicing his Vietnamese language—much to the amusement of the nurses.

After 4 days Dan was released with a heart beating in rhythm just in time for us to go to an expat pot-luck Thanksgiving celebration.

I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to make the same sweet potato casserole that I make every year in the US (Lauren Hyberg’s recipe from the Candlewood cookbook). But…the sweet potatoes they have here in Hanoi are purple...and not all that sweet...Facts that I didn't know until after I had cooked them. Of course, by then it was too late in the day to whip up another dish so I persevered and brought a purple sweet potato casserole. It tasted only marginally better than it looked.

Just a spouse

2008-12-06T09:38:00.000+07:00

One of the hardest parts of moving across the world for your husband's job is being "just a spouse."

"What brings you to Hanoi?"
"Are you working too?"
"Are your kids here with you?'

I went to the Hanoi International Women’s Club welcome coffee and met a bunch of other women in the same position. It’s actually an incredibly interesting group of people. Some are the wives of diplomats. In fact the person who gave the welcome speech at the coffee is the wife of an Ambassador and in her speech she talked about the dual purpose of the club. First, it is a service organization. Second, it sponsors a variety of activities for women and she actually said "because if we're happy, our husbands will be happy."

Luckily, I found other women who thought their happiness was a legitimate end in itself. In fact, a lot of women had given up careers and businesses for the adventure and to keep their families together. I’m still struggling with how this fits in with feminist ideology.

I've also met some men who are here for the wives' jobs. I wonder how they feel?

My short experience with riding a motorbike

2008-12-06T08:04:00.000+07:00

The constant use of taxis was starting to get old so I rented a motorbike and decided to experiment on it in my quiet neighborhood. I figured how hard can it be? Everyone drives them. I saw a woman in wedding gown and high heels driving one. I saw a guy driving one with a clothes dryer on the back. Actually, sometimes I just like watching the traffic to see what crazy-ass things people are transporting on the motorbikes.

Anyway, my rented motorbike unfortunately did not come with a user’s manual that could tell me details such as “how do you turn it on?” When I googled “Yamaha mio and users manual” I actually hit a page that said “why do you need a users manual, just get on it and go.”

Luckily the owners of the house we are renting stopped by. Giao (pronounce zhow—rhymes with chow) (the husband) showed me how to turn on the scooter and make it go forward. Did I mention that he doesn’t speak a lick of English (this is a theme). As I drove slowly away he and his wife Thai were laughing nervously. I drove to the end of the street at about 5 miles an hour and when I turned around to come back I realized that Thai had assembled her friends for the entertainment. It was a bonding experience. Anyway…within a half hour I crashed the motorbike into a fence and got a few scrapes and bruises.

I decided to give up on the motorbike for a few days. By the time I got up the guts to get back on it, the electric starter wasn’t working plus I was out of gas. I pushed the motorbike to the nearest “gas station” but they had no gas and suggested the gas station up the street (see pictures above). So, I pushed the motorbike up the street. I explained that I was out of gas by pointing to my gas gauge because, did I mention-- the mechanics didn’t speak a lick of English. They didn’t have gas either but a bystander picked up a plastic jug and said he would get me 2 liters of gas. (I know this because of the nice Vietnamese customer who knew a small amount of English) I asked him how much (because I had been in town long enough to know that you always ask “how much” first). He said 50,000 VND (Vietnamese duoung)—that’s about $3. I knew a liter of gas should only cost 15,000 but I was perfectly happy to pay the extra 20,000 for his trouble especially since I didn’t know where the next gas station was. Anyway, a loud discussion ensued with several Vietnamese yelling at this guy for taking advantage of me (or at least that’s what I think they were yelling about). It was quite funny and I must say completely out of the ordinary because most Vietnamese are quite happy to overcharge westerners as much the market will bear.

Anyway, he came back with the gas and the motorbike still didn’t start. The mechanics took out a little box from under the seat of the motorbike while I looked on helplessly and cluelessly. After a while I realized they were recharging the battery. By this time it was dark out. I was just standing there with no idea how long it takes to recharge a battery and unfortunately the nice customer who spoke a little English had long since left. After a few minutes, one of the mechanics brought over a little plastic stool and I sat down. I at least had the sense to laugh at the situation. About a half hour later. The mechanics charged me 20,000 VND and sent me away with a working motorbike. It’s a weird feeling. In the US, I was pretty independent and “able.” All of a sudden, I felt incredibly inept.

I’ve given up my motorbike in favor of my bicycle which I had shipped from the US. I could say that I did this because it seemed safer but the real reason is that if I ride my bicycle, I can lose weight without doing any other exercise. Once I get to a good weight I will start buying the silk clothing made to order as I need to continue doing my part to keep the economy here going.

Welcome to Hanoi

2008-12-05T13:41:00.000+07:00

It's taken my a while to start a blog so I'll give you a brief review of my first couple of months.

We stayed at a hotel in the center of Hanoi for the first two nights. The sites, sounds, and smells that would normally seem exotic were completely overwhelming when I thought of encountering them everyday for three years. Everywhere you turn someone is trying to sell you something….and the traffic is completely crazy. The streets are filled with motorbikes, cars, bicycles, cyclos, people pulling “wheelbarrows” with bricks or other building materials, women in conical hats carrying fruit in two baskets balanced over their shoulder on a wood stick etc. Everyone is sharing the street because most sidewalks are either motorbike parking lots or kitchens/restaurants (more on that later). The funny thing is that…it is considered polite for the drivers to honk lightly to indicate where they are. So, on top of all this chaos is constant honking.

There are very few lights so when you want to cross a street you find a small break in the traffic and go for it…Basically, you just trust that the vehicles will go around you.

As I am getting more adept at the art of street crossing, I realize that the bicycles and motorbikes are pretty responsive and that it is really just the cars and buses that you have to worry about. Oh yes, I tend to be careful of the people who are texting on their cell phones while they are driving a motorbike.

Anyway, within a couple of days we moved to an "executive residence"--sorta like the
Residence Inn in the Tay Ho district of Hanoi. It’s about 2 miles from downtown but much less hectic. Tay Ho is where most of the western expats live (lots of French and Australians). The Asian expats tend to live on the other side of town.

We went house hunting...saw the 10 houses that were available for rent in Tay Ho, and picked one pretty quickly. We then just needed to wait until its renovation was complete, our shipment from the US arrived, and they could furnish the place. The place is HUGE. It is in a small neighborhood called Xom Chua (which literally means neighborhood of the Pagoda). So there's a pagoda about a block away, kumquat groves all over the place, and we overlook West Lake which is a favorite hangout for fisherman and teens-in-love.

Xom Chua is owned (as much as you can "own" land in Vietnam) by several generations of a Vietnamese family. It used to be completely filled with kumquat groves and little shacks for the families. In order to make a better return on the land, the families built about 60 huge houses to rent to foreigners. The shacks and some of the kumquats are still there. So, I stand on one of the two balconies on my fourth floor, and I have this gorgeous view of the lake...as I look out over all these shacks...one of which is my landlord's!! How weird is that?