Shorts

Some short boops about stuff that happened while I wasn't blogging. I'll be back to the original format soon.

The time the rain came. Six months of dry skies, we're sitting at Lam Cafe, sharing a chocolate banana pancake and drinking a couple rhum lemons. We stare out into the street as we see drops of rain coming down. The drops turn into a downpour in no time, signaling the beginning of Vietnam's rainy season. An American expat cheers the rain but then gives everyone the news: its going to flood, and there will be cockroaches. Then rats. True to his word, the water level was six inches high in mere moments and cockroaches started making there way into the cafe, the staff swinging their brooms at the archway and pouring boiled water onto them. One rat makes a dash inside, hiding behind the drink fridge. The whole time the American's hooting and hollering to his friends, drunk less so on booze than he was on Saigon.

Getting Daphne's bike fixed. Daphne's telling the mechanic his sudden price hikes are unreasonable. She points at her scar and at the bike damage and says, 'same accident! you said less!' As she repeats the word 'accident' for the third time, a woman instantly crashes her bike right in front of the bike shop. We decide to go to another mechanic.

Educating. After doing a reading about a blind marriage that led to divorce. One of my fifteen year old students says that divorce is very bad for the woman. Why? Because then she's no longer a virgin. I tell my student that in the West, chances are slim that she was a virgin when she got married in the first place. I observe his fifteen year old brain exploding behind his eyes.

Trip to Vung Tau. Vietnamese Freedom Day we take the hydrofoil to Vung Tau, the closest beach to HCMC. So did the rest of Saigon. After going to what was supposed to be a cleaner and quieter beach nearby, Long Hai, we found it to be just as crowded as Vung Tau and the ocean fortified with floating trash from one end of the beach to the other. In Vung Tau we try to get a place to stay but everywhere appears to be booked[which is what we should have done before going]. One place that is available and nice is $60 for the night. Thinking it too steep, we decide to go inland to the guesthouses, only to find that some of them cost even more. We head back to the $60 place, but the room is no longer free. I decide that if we're going to spend that much money then we should get more value instead of overpaying for four walls and a bed. We settled in the very cozy Royal Hotel for $100, enjoying a comfortable bed, good breakfast and spending all of the next day by the pool. For us, there's always a silver lining beyond the ring of floating trash.

Educating II. One of my students shows me a neat trick with the VN Dong bill. You can fold it so that it looks like Uncle Ho is smiling or scowling depending on how you hold it.

Books. There aren't enough of them in English. Just photocopied stuff for backpacking hipsters. Alchemist, Life of Pi, Bill Bryson, etc. When I come back from the States I'll be lugging back a suitcase of just books.

Waterpark. We spent the day at the waterpark with some of my coworkers from school. Favourite ride was one that looked like a toilet bowl. Its the first place I've seen where the Vietnamese obey the queue, which they don't even do at the airport. Also, its the most shaded water park I've ever seen. Fun times were had.

Educating III. My students don't know what Communism is. 'You are,' I tell them. Though the more I live here the more I realize that Vietnam is actually the most Capitalist country I've ever been to.

Vietnamese and sunlight. Many Asians prefer being pale, but the relationship between the Vietnamese and the sun borders on phobia. Although its 37 C outside, they're still running around fully covered in jeans, sweaters, stockings, gloves, masks and conical hats. I see some covering their heads with a jacket as they run through the street, as if they were avoiding getting their hair wet from the rain and not blocking the sun. But what really takes the cake is their behaviour at the traffic light. Instead of waiting behind the white line they instead will line up as much as 50 metres further back where there is shade. On one such occasion, I had seen a man stop at the white line just as the light turned red, he then proceeded to inch his way back on his motorbike slowly towards the shade some 15 metres back. Just as he makes it away from the sun, that's when the light turns green. I laughed out loud as I sped away.

Education IV. Category game. Name a genius. Student:"Hitler?" Me: Jaw on the linoleum floor. My students explain that they learned in history that Hitler and Napolean were brilliant leaders[Daphne also had a student once who said he admired Hitler]. I checked with my students to see if they were aware of the bad things he did, which, thankfully, they were, but they were still convinced that he was a great leader and it seems that his skills in leadership have made him a suitable role model here in Vietnam. Instead of arguing against his political abilities I chose to put things in perspective for them. "A good leader doesn't conquer for greed, he leads those that want to be led. Vietnam has been invaded many times by people who did not have Vietnamese interests at heart, Chinese, Japanese, French, Americans, and they were all beaten away because they weren't wanted here and only came for themselves. That's why Hitler was defeated. That's why Napolean was defeated. If they were truly geniuses, they wouldn't have lost because they would have never put their noses where they weren't wanted." This finally got nods from my students, who at first could only reply to my questions by saying, "that's what they told us in school." Days like this make me happy to be a teacher. Days like this also worry me though.

I call Daphne for lunch. She was supposed to meet me in front of the school to show her bike to an interested buyer. On the phone she says,"I'm around the corner at the wonton noodle place." "Why aren't you here?" "I don't have my bike with me. I got stopped by the police." This is bad news because Daphne, like myself, doesn't have a license. Meaning that her bike can be taken away for one month and to get it back she has to get a license and pay a 500,000VND fine[27USD]. So I meet her at the wonton place and ask for the full story: She did an illegal turn and got pulled over, the cop grilled her, and then let her go with a warning and nothing more. Yes, Daphne had punked me. Although, she did not tell a lie on the phone, she told it as it was, her bike wasn't there[it was still at work] and she had indeed been pulled over, the two just weren't related. She stopped laughing, however, when I told her that I already told the prospective buyer that there was no more bike for him to see.

Hoi An: Conclusion

Delay delay delay. For some reason my internet's been giving me grief, blocking only my blog site and nothing else. But without any further further delay I bring the conclusion of the Hoi An trip, thanks to the wifi in the Highlands Coffee downstairs in my building[no, nothing like the one in Cincy, this place is like the Starbucks of Vietnam].
Instead of boring you with minute details I'm going to shorten this last entry by focusing on the most entertaining chapter, our trip to the Marble Mountains.
The Marble Mountains are five small mountains in an otherwise flat landscape that have seen centuries of Buddhist temples, shrines and statues as well as marble excavation. Five mountains for five elements. Our plan was to visit all of them, having lunch after the first one. It was an uneventful 22 km drive north, just outside of Danang, and the mountains weren't hard to spot. But the entrance was. We passed a thin concrete bridge facing one end of one of the mountains. It certainly didn't look like much of an entrance, but we figured it was worth a shot. We parked the bike on the side of the road under a tree and went to have a look. There was a Buddha sculpture in a shabby state that made for a pitiful entrance and it didn't match the description in Lonely Planet for any of the five mountains. We didn't even know which one we were on. The strangest thing we noted was the lack of tourists, in an otherwise touristy location. But as we walked towards the base we found even more sculptures, covered in some family's drying laundry.


Under one structure there was the family, keeping shade and having a meal. Daphne and I debated over what mountain we were on, how to get up and whether we would have to turn back and find another route. We approached the family and pointed to the guide book.


The family pointed straight to the mountain and then nominated their three year old daughter to lead the way. The little girl, who was absolutely adorable, led us to the sketchiest little climb.

[Daphne didn't even see this sign]

When we reached the top we found...a lot. First there was a serene little Buddhist temple tended by a wide grinning midget monk and a couple other care takers. Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, looked over the remaining Marble Mountains and the town below.


As we climbed on, tourists started to appear as we found more temples, statues, caves and even someone dressed as Monkey God trying to charge for photo ops. We later realized that the reason nothing in the guide book seemed to make sense was because we were doing the mountain backwards[and not paying the admission fee, apparently]. It's hard to give the mountain the justice it deserves, there is just too much stuff on it. Hopefully some of these pictures hint at its beauty.

[Caretaker napping in the temple shade]

[Daphne tries to find out which mountain we're on]

[Entrance to a really cool cave with a giant Buddha carved into it]

[Guanyin carved into the rock face]

[We crawled through a tiny cave system to come out the top of the mountain and got a private view of the ocean and the surrounding countryside]

After four hours of hiking up and down the mountain, which we finally realized was named Thuy Son for the Water element, we knew we wouldn't have time to even set foot on any of the other Mountains.
And having done the whole mountain on only breakfast and in immense heat, we dragged ourselves back down the mountain to the bike and went on the hunt for a very late lunch. Choosing the beach road back we finally found the dingiest little hole in the wall, where they dipped the glasses in a tub to wash them clean. The food was cheap and pretty good, I left a tip bigger than the price because it seemed like no one had been to this place in ages.
That night, after a bowl of wonton noodle soup, Daphne and I sat at a river side bar in Hoi An, reflecting on the last week and writing notes to help me remember what to write in this blog. Drinking our 4000 VND[.2US] beers, we laughed when we remembered the Salsa Club, not noticing that the American who worked there was right behind us. As was the French couple we had met at the cockroach restaurant. 'Ici il n'y a pas des cancrelats, ne c'est pas?'
This was also the first night I noticed I was feeling sick. The next day I drugged up and went to the beach where I felt fine doing nothing but laying out and swimming. But that night, which was our last, we went to a wine bar and that's when I really started to feel it. It was an otherwise pleasant evening, the music was good, we had the place mostly to ourselves, a bottle of champagne and the power in the city kept going out adding to the charm and romance of the evening. But after a couple glasses I felt pitiful and spent the rest of the bottle with my head in Daphne's lap. The climax of my illness was the next morning when I woke up with the biggest fever I've ever had. Daphne ran downstairs and got some Ameflu from the front desk and brought it back with a cup of tea. Luckily, two of these did the trick and my temperature was back down with the quickness.
Ok. That was a not-so-brief entry I suppose, but there it is, that was Hoi An. Unfortunately, I'm sick again just two weeks later and after having completed my induction for school I'm starting my first class on Tuesday. I hope to be in better health by then.

Hoi An: Days Three and Four

Day Three
My Son
After breakfast and some procrastination we rented another motorbike for the day. This time I scrutinized it much more heavily because we were about to go on a 55km trip and everything had to not only work but be comfortable. Destination: My Son, the ruins of a Hindu temple set in a tropical valley. Ruined even more in the seventies with the help of American bombers, but still an impressive site to see.
It was the longest trip I'd ever made on a motorbike thus far, but it went relatively smoothly, minus an awkward sunburn that made my arms red down to my knuckles, where my fingers were completely white from holding the handle bars. Not much to say about the site itself except to show some pictures:

[Note the Sanskrit on the left column and the linga in the middle]

[If my understanding of Hindu symbolism is correct, then I am a dick]

The site was rather small, but it took us a while to figure it out as we looked at the map in our guide book and tried to figure out where the rest of it was. Our timing getting there and leaving was exactly the same as a small group of French tourists. So much so, that when we left and decided to stop for lunch about 10km out we incidentally stopped in the same little pho place. As we were leaving lunch, we noticed some serious storm clouds coming our way, with another 40km or so to go. We hopped on the bike and decided to race the cloud back to town. Lucky for us the cloud wasn't bringing rain, but unlucky for us it brought wind. Strong wind. In a very dusty area. We only had one pair of sunglasses between us, which I had let Daphne wear, but it got to the point where I had to steal them from her. We felt it was in both our interests that I kept my eyes opened while I drove, Daphne hid her her head and closed her eyes. We made back alright, but I think I still have sand in pores even today.
That night, Daphne and I decided we were done with the tourist bar scene and opted instead for a romantic sit by the river. In one quiet spot on the 'Vietnamese' half of town, there were straw mats laid out with a foot high table in the middle. An old lady comes and brings out cane juice. That's it. That simple.

Day 4
Old Hoi An
We waited until half way into our trip to finally do a proper tour of the town. Since its pretty much about seeing and buying, I'll spare the history lesson. Suffice it to say that the Chinese influence here is[or was] big and the hotels and souvenir shops know it. Here are some pics, they'll do the talking:

Our last stop on the tour was really hard to find. After several hours in the heat already we circled the same block five times trying to find a craft warehouse to watch a music and dance performance. When we finally made it we only got to see five minutes of the show[which was only ten minutes long anyways]. After that I refused to ever step foot on that block again, deciding that in five times, I had seen more than enough of it.

Fine Dining
We picked a recommendation from Lonely Planet called Des Amis. Its the most expensive place there, which doesn't say much, and there's a set menu that changes every night, depending on what the cook feels like doing. It was four courses, and really good, but it had one fatal flaw that didn't rear its head until after the bill was paid. Cockroaches. They slowly started coming through a window that faced a dark alley, and was right between us and the stair case leading out. Did I mention they can fly? I've never seen a cockroach fly in the States, but these do. Flip flops went flying too, as we fought our way through. I'd never seen so many in one place. So, while the food was good, I would recommend taking an early dinner if you every plan to check this place out, unless you're going for dinner and a show.