029 – On the Road in Vietnam

At least once a day I see something on the road that is entertaining, amusing, and/or impressive. Vietnamese traffic would give you the best eye spy ever. I also live on one of the major highways into the city, so double trouble.

For example, a full fishtank on a back of a motorcycle.
Or a bike full of flowers.
Or six people on one motorbike.
Or furniture tied to a motorbike.

Today, I saw the most impressive/amusing/slightly scary thing to date. Coming home from downtown a few minutes ago, we saw a HUGE truck carrying a missile that was bigger than the truck bed and leaning against the top of the truck.
I’m going to hope it’s inactive.

028 – “The Blacksburg Murders”

It is vaguely surreal to watch coverage of “The Blacksburg Murders” on an Australian tv station in Vietnam. I’ve been following the stories since ten minutes after they posted the first one – I might have been half way around the world, but thanks to the internet I knew about it before my family back in Virginia did. How shocked I was to see “Virginia Tech shootings” on my google homepage!

This is the first time I have seen any tv coverage, just a few minutes ago. The coverage and criticism on gun use in the United States, particularly in Virginia, was bitterly entertaining.
Their misinformation and a surprising lack of knowledge regarding U.S. culture and geography was also noted.

My Vietnamese roommate told me that they talked about this in class. This sparked a conversation based around speculation that this was “normal in the United States.” Apparently there was a student in the class that made the argument that such violence was an everyday occurrence in the U.S., and he wasn’t the only one who thought that.

On an interesting Vietnamese cultural note, one of the first things my roommate said about this whole thing is,”If that happened in Vietnam, the parents of the boy who killed the victims would not be able to avoid the bad talk about them.” His family is Asian. Not to generalize on countries with Confucian influences, but I’m sure they feel that way, I am sure even his cousins and other distant relatives back in South Korea are appalled at the act, and shame brought on their family. (Read about “the world’s reaction” here)

I am so relived to not recognize any of the names of the victims. I was scared I was going to see the names of the people I ate lunch with, the people I joked with and did school projects with. Not that it makes it any better, really. Just less personal. That’s a connection I’d rather not make. Regardless, I have periodically been close to tears whenever I check the news on it.
I think I am glad to be away from the constant media barrage and the shock and gossip that always surrounds such things in the States.

027 – Dear Humanity: Can We Not. Please?

So today has been an interesting day. And by interesting I mean increasingly depressing.

It started off early – midnight my time – with the news of the Virginia Tech Shootings. It was only 20 reported dead at that time. I graduated from high school in Virginia – probably about a fourth of my graduating class is attending Tech (Class of 2008). I am not particularly close with any of them, but close enough that I am anxiously waiting for more names to be released to the press so I can make sure that it wasn’t one of the folks I ate lunch with every day back in high school. Furthermore, Virginia Tech is only about forty minutes away from my college. I’ve been to Tech (it’s in the middle of freakin’ nowhere), I know the buildings that this happened in. I pass the hospitals in Roanoke and Salem on a regular basis, and that is where some of the victims were sent (so the news tells me). Tech and Hollins have a small little relationship going, even if it’s on a social basis – there’s a lot of inter dating that goes on.
It is just appallingly close to home for me, without being close enough that I’m (as far as I know) directly effected. Considering the high percentage of Virginia high school students that end up at Tech – this is something that is effecting so many Virginians alone, without even factoring in the out of staters and the international students¹.

When I woke up the count had gone up to 33.

I was looking for coverage on the tv, hoping that the dubbed-over (all the dubs in Vietnam are awful, by the way) CNN would have some video coverage. It didn’t at the time. Rather, I caught the current body count for the day in Middle East.

I spent the afternoon in a coffee shop downtown (periodically checking the updates on the computers there) reading When Broken Glass Floats, which is an autobiography that I needed to read for my History class.
It’s about the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Around the scene where the kids are starving (which is 2/3 of the book) and the Khmer Rouge threw their sick mother, alive, into the dead body pit, and then burned/buried her, I decide that
I’m really very sick of the human race and the awful things that we do to each other.

¹ We’re told the shooter is a 23-year old English major. The media loves to emphasize the fact that he’s a South Korean native. Only a handful of reports have mentioned that he was a legal resident alien in Northern Virginia (Centreville which is a few towns over from my hometown). We let him in folks. Not only that, but he was here long enough to get residency. He probably graduated from high school in NoVa, went to school with the senator’s children, children of CEOs, etc. Why is it even relevant what country he is from, or what his ethnicity is? There are underlying factors at work that have nothing to do with what he looks like or what country he was originally from.

026 – VA Tech

At least 20 killed in a Virginia Tech shooting.

I have a lot of friends from high school that went to Tech. They and the entire Tech community have my thoughts and prayers.

025 – The Body. Etc.

At home, you get sick, you pop a pill, you go on.
Here it’s like every time I get even a little bit sick my entire system shuts down. I get more dehydrated, I get so completely exhausted (as Erin put it -) it’s hard to walk. The heat exasperates all of this and what would just be an annoyance in the States turns into an all out I Am Completely Useless. I can pop pills all I want but they will not necessarily do what I need them to do, or they might but then they’ll go in the opposite direction of what it was doing before. Or they might just repress what is a healthy reaction of my body, which is not good.

Here I get the kind of sick where my entire stomach tenses up, where I am routinely woken up by my stomach or large intestine. Once sick, wincing in pain is not uncommon. I Have a Ridiculous Pain Tolerance.

And so a day goes where my entire body rebels, only to feel just dandy the next day. Not that I’m complaining, I’d rather just be out of action for one day than for any longer. It’s just frustrating because my body is like “I’m better yay!” [a week later] “What is this?!”

I have never been simultaneously less and more aware of what goes into my body and the effects that it has on it. On the one hand, I am pretty regularly thinking about what X is going to do to my body and what kind of energy it might give me. I am more aware of how carbs, dairy, spices, and protein effect me than I was previously. On the other hand, I continuously eat things that I couldn’t tell you what it is. Mystery meats. Vegetables and fruits that I only know the Vietnamese name for. Strange drinks or desserts a la Vietnamese traditional style.

Sometimes what works and doesn’t work for my body is surprising. For example:

Experiment A: I don’t know what that meat is, or what the sauce is, but it tastes good on banh mi (bread) it’s only 5,000 VND, and isn’t far to walk to.  [Experiment successful, no adverse side effects.]
Experiment B: I don’t know what that meant or vegetable is, but it tastes okay and is the cheapest place to eat on campus. And they serve tofu.  [Experiment unsuccessful, sick in some manner or another until I made the connection].

So. Yes, I am not feeling well. I will feel better by tomorrow though, because being sick is damned inconvenient when you have classes and term papers.

Also, I have heard that some people from CIEE HQ and Brian have read/are reading this blog. Hello.  All really is well on this front. Will return to normal state of quasi health shortly. After copious amounts of sleep and water.
(I don’t even know if this post made any sense at all. If it didn’t, apologies.)

024 – Frustration

In this post: an email from Brian (our resident director of this program) and my own current emotional state.
In a future post: Hue, and pictures from Hanoi and Hue.

023 – Hà Nội và du lịch (Hanoi and tourists)

(Note: ranting regarding tourists for the first part. Skip down to the ”Read More” for a less ranty part.) 

I came to Hà Nội expecting to fall in love with the city, to love its apparent French influence, to enjoy the sight of the Chinese-influenced pagodas everywhere. Now that I have been here for a few days I have to say I haven’t fallen in love with the city. I like Ho Chi Minh City better. In HCMC, the people are more friendly, the food is better, things tend to be cheaper, and they know how to make their coffee. Hà Nội has a lot of European influence. Which would be fine if it had left the Europeans in Europe. The majority of the tourists in Hà Nội are French. I never thought that I would find a group of tourists more obnoxious than Americans, but the French are it. Yesterday I saw a French tourist blow up at a Vietnamese woman who was just doing her job – he was swearing in French and he threw his ticket at her. They consistently cut in line, speak down to the Vietnamese, and speak pretentiously about the French-influenced food. Seriously, I’ve only been here two nights and I have lost count of the amount of times I felt the desire to apologize for a French tourist.

American tourists? If I see one more person wearing one of those damned camera vests and holding their 1,000 USD camera in such a careless way that I could steal it, I just might do so. Or, if one more know it all American says something stupid and historically inaccurate about the Vietnam War I might just scream. In general, American tourists are stupid. The French are obnoxious and insulting. I’m speaking less about the 20-something crowd and more about the middle aged This Is My 5,000 USD Vacation kind of tourist.  have my own rants regarding the 20-something crowd, but that’s enough for today.

I guess a lot of it comes from the fact that I am staying in the tourist district. I hate the tourist district in Saigon as well, but I rarely find myself there so it’s alright. I had forgotten just how little of a culture you actually get to know if you just stay in the tourist district of a city. I love living about twenty minutes outside of the city.

022 – Mui Ne and the Environment

I might have spent last weekend lying on a beach under a palm tree drinking mango smoothies and eating really fresh seafood.
I might have been really obnoxious about it to friends and family through postcards and phone calls. I mean really, what better way to spend a mini-spring break?
If it makes you feel any better, I am now covered in bug bites from that trip.
The pictures are on my flickr account, knock yourself out. Still no pictures of me. I tend to avoid such pictures, thank you. Though I will note that *gasp* I have a tan!

The trip was perfect timing. I’ve been kind of down and mopey lately. I couldn’t really tell you why, but it’s involved me doing very little interesting of late. I have noticed, however, how despite the fact that I get Starz, Cinemax, and HBO, the movies all kind of blow. The telling point of all this is the fact that they repeat themselves and play the same movies over and over again. Sometimes you just have to love the parts of American culture that get transplanted.

Mui Ne is a gorgeous little area whose main source of income is tourism. It has sprung up in the past five years as a beach resort town, and with its sand dunes, blue waters, and white beaches, it’s not surprising.
It hit me, sitting on the sand dunes as the sun rose above the dunes and the dunes rapidly filled with bus loads of people, just how all this is affecting the very reason why everyone comes. There are no precautions in place to take care of the environment, and it is the environment is why people come. Five years from now, Mui Ne will be yet another trashed line of beach. Already the garbage is scattered around the beach and the waters, and the water that seeps up from the ground and flows into the ocean is suspect The dunes will be eroded beyond repair by all the people who sled down it, litter it, and the simple fact that hundreds of people every day tread all over it.
Five years from now, what will the people do for a living?
It is one of the more sobering effects of Vietnam’s rapid economic growth. The pollution, wherever there is economic success it seems to come hand in hand with trashing the environment. This isn’t just Southeast Asia – the same can be said of any nation, industrialized or developing. It just breaks my heart to see this country’s natural beauty eroded in such a way.
When do you think they’ll realize it?

I just got an email from Hollins asking me if I intended to return in the fall (I am currently on a leave of absence in order to do this program). They sent it electronically because they first tried it a la USPS and I hadn’t responded… so you know, two weeks before the deadline where they would apparently automatically withdraw me, they send an email. Luckily I have a lot more internet connection than I thought I would, and that I’m in Vietnam and not Cambodia presently, because it is entirely possible that I could go two weeks without checking my email. Beautiful. Sometimes my school makes me want to hit my head against a brick wall. Repeatedly.
I miss Hollins, though. I miss the classes, my professors, and the crazy girls who have my love and thoughts. Not that I want to be in Roanoke right now, but I’d rather have all that here. I don’t think many of them would complain.
We should totally establish a Hollins in Southeast Asia. I can think of several professors off hand that would be thrilled. First, an Asian Studies department. One thing at a time, you know.

I leave for Hanoi tomorrow. I’m looking forward to traveling on my own and exploring a city where apparently the temperature actually gets below 88F (irony: I looked up the weather and lo and behold, one of the days I am there the temperature is 102F, the highest in a two week period! Bugger it all, I’ll never escape it). I am so sick of sweating. It’s not that I even notice anymore that it’s hot. It’s that regardless of how I look at it mentally, 95F and 88%+ humidity is hot. My body lets me know its hot and that I’m a dumb ass for wearing jeans on a pretty regular basis. Mostly, I just hide in my air conditioned room during the heat of the day. So do the locals, though they do not have the luxury of air conditioning. Oh man. Probably the only reason why I’m not in a home stay.That and the call of wireless. I’m a wimp. I can live without both of them, but if I have the option… technology calls.

021 – Monkeys are Fuckers

Today we went on this random day trip out to Can Gio. This trip involved: a van to the harbor, a two hour boat ride to the area, a rickety truck, a tiny boat where we were basically sitting on the water, a bus, and a speed boat. That was just getting there.

Can Gio has a set up akin to Jamestown (the tourist one, not the historical one) where they have recreated a North Vietnamese special forces resistance camp. It was from here that the North Vietnamese would take apart old unexploded bombs (dropped by the Americans) and remake their own. Once a new one is made, they would swim underneath American boats and using a magnet, attach it to the bottom of the ship.
This camp is in a swamp and getting there involved the speed boat going around many, many sharp turns. There is no way I could have found the place if it weren’t for the driver knowing where to go, and until you are practically sitting there you can hardly see it. It was interesting, but only for about three minutes.

However, it is because of this trip that I now can say I was attacked by a monkey.
Three of us were in one of the sites when I noticed a monkey the size of a toddler come into the site. I pointed him out to the others, and shortly after I did so the monkey lunged at me and we fought over my water bottle. I let him have it, and he proceeded to sit in the doorway of the site (no other way out) and chewed on the bottle until he lost interest.
Then he thought my messanger bag (which is generally to the side with the strap across my chest) looked interesting. He lunged again. He used his grubby little hands to hold onto my arm, dangling mid air as he tugged on my bag. So here I am, in a swamp, with a rather heavy monkey fixed to my arm and hissing at me with his big assed yellow teeth. I start to swing him around in an effort to shake him off. He wasn’t going to get my bag and even if I wanted to let him have it he was on the arm that would be required to take it off. I don’t remember the exact order of events afterwards, but I belive that I swung him off and he was chased away by one of the Vietnamese attendants.

The monkeys are everywhere in Can Gio. They have that matted look of stray cats and really look and behave like large, more obnoxious, rats. By everywhere, I mean the road on the way in is covered with them. They follow people and regularly steal whatever they can get off of them. The entire way back I was a lot more aggressive with the little dirty fuckers and did what the locals did in the hissing and kicking (though I never actually kicked one, just the fact that I was aggressive and not like most of the tourists meant they left me alone). I have some pictures, and I’ll post them in a bit.

020 – The many kinds of dog

I am still roommate-less. She was supposed to move in today, but it could be any point after today so it looks like another night by myself (which is fine, especially since I need to wake up early tomorrow).
I decided to break for dinner. There’s this place next to the hotel that is always absolutely full, mostly of men. Places that busy are normally really good and it’s also a good sign that the food won’t make you sick (though it’s no guarantee).
As I walked in, I finally noticed the sign – turns out it is one of the many places in the area that sell dog.
I got a lot of amused smiles and stares as I sat down (somewhat uncomfortably) at the low tables with the short step stools for chairs. One man at the table next to me, after I had been sitting for awhile, pointed to his plate and said, “dog.” I nodded and replied with an, “I know.”
When my food came, it had four different parts of the dog on it. One of the kinds (the muscle) tasted similar to a combination of pork and steak. Closer to steak, only not as tender with the consistancy of pork. Another kind (small intestine?) wasn’t that bad, it kind of tasted like sausage wrapped in seaweed (only there wasn’t any seaweed in it). The last kind I tried tasted like straight up sausage. This was probably my favorite, because it just tasted like sausage, only a little bit different and more difficult to eat with chopsticks. There was one more kind on my plate, but it had bones in it. I can’t handle bones on chicken, I wasn’t able to handle it on dog. Overall, the meat tastes okay, but it’s not something I’d want to order again. On purpose anyway.

While I was eating the man who had pointed out what the meat was came over and I got my first taste of what a few of the other girls have already expierenced. He liked me, thought I was beautiful, he is a well off manager, will I help him with his English? He offered some of his table’s rice wine to me (rice wine in an aquafina bottle, the way to drink it here) and I had a few shots over the course of this broken conversation that quickly ended when he got into the “I love you” phase. He probably does not understand the implications behind the English translation and he was really nice and friendly, but it was still the first time I was in a situation that required giving someone the wrong number.

As I tried to remove myself from the situation, I completely lost my appetite when I pulled something coarse out of my mouth that turned out to be a short, white, distinctly not human hair.
After that, I couldn’t bring myself to eat anymore despite the fact that I felt like a pansy westerner leaving most of my plate still full.
He wouldn’t let me pay for it, even though I tried to argue (which I normally don’t, it’s just now I feel bad for giving him the wrong number whereas if he hadn’t paid for it I wouldn’t have felt as bad).
When I stood up I think even he was surprised that I was more than a head taller than him. I’ve only somewhat gotten used to being as tall as the tallest guys. I have no clue how one of the girls, who is around six feet and blonde, deals with it.

I presently feel kind of sick, but I can’t tell if its the dog, the rice wine, or my mind reeling at the experience.

(I might have brushed my teeth thoroughly twice, flossed, and washed my hands three times in order to get the taste and smell off of me.)