An Tet O Vinh Long

Celebrating Tet in Vinh Long

We just got here yesterday, and it's nice to be back. It's much quieter and more beautiful here than in HCMC. We're going to look into getting teaching jobs here in Vinh Long. There are now two English school here that have, or want to have, foreign teachers. Unfortunately, both are now closed for Tet. We think we'd like living here. We might get bored at times, but I think life here wouldn't take the extreme swings that it does, at least for me, in Saigon. There are days that I love Saigon and days that I hate Saigon.

It's especially beatiful here (and it Saigon too) because of the flower markets that are set up for Tet. The sidewalks along the streets around the guesthouse are now full of flowers for sale. The beauty is marred a little, though, by all the motorbikers cruising for flowers. In Saigon, the flower markets are in the parks, closed to motor vehicles, and are therefore more pleasant.

We just had lunch at the guesthouse with Uncle Han. I told him that I wanted to invite him and the rest of the men of the family to bia hoi -- the cheap draft-beer joints that sometimes also have pretty darn good food. Hoa reminded me to tell him that if we went to bia hoi, I would pay. This is important because they never let us pay for anything. Uncle Han responded by saying if we went to "bia om," he would pay. I'd never heard of "bia om," but eventually I realized that "bia om" is the alcoholic equivalent of "ca phe om," the coffee houses where you pay a little more than usual for your coffee to have a pretty girl sit in your lap. I asked if they have these places in Vinh Long, and he said there are many. I'm pretty sure he was kidding about us going.

I've been playing a little tennis. I went with the guy whose house we're living in to play again at the Reunification Palace. After we played, we all went to a restuarant ("Huong rung" -- something like "forest smell", but I think its sounds a little more poetic in Vietnamese; I haven't looked it up but "huong" may be better translated as something like "essense") that specialized in wild meats. We ate a number of different cuts of some kind of wild dog. And I can be pretty darn sure it really was dog, although not necessarily sure that it was wild dog, because I was fortunate enough to get the head, which was definitely dog-shaped, and perhaps terrier-sized. We also drank too much vodka and beer. I got to practice a little Vietnamese, but a couple of these guys spoke pretty good English so it was usually easier to speak in English. All the people, about 5 men and 1 women, were from Hanoi. So they were telling me that I should learn to speak correctly, meaning speaking with the northern dialect, for example saying "zuh" insteading of "yuh" for the "gi's" and "d's." Most people in the South seem to agree that the Northerners speak more correctly. But one of our teachers said that there is a "Vietnamese standard" taught in the schools that none of the regional dialects quite achieves. The Northerners I've met disagree. One of the men at dinner is a cop, who shares the cocky attitude and belief that he should be able to have as many girlfriends as he wants with many cops around the world. He's been telling me he would teach me how to get a Vietnamese girlfriend. When I told him I couldn't have a girlfriend because I already have a wife, he apparently thought this to be a common American attitude and said that we are a "backward people." I thought this was really funny, but he probably didn't intend it to be entirely a joke. The rest of the group is much more low-key and have told me not to listen to this guy.

Tet is only a few days away, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Tom

Xin Loi -- Sorry

Sorry it's been so long, nearly a month, since we've posted anything. Many of you probably have heard that things didn't go too smoothly in Hanoi. The short version is: Hoa left a bag containing her passport and our camera in the taxi we took from the train station (after returning from Sapa) to our hotel. We had no hopes of recovering the stuff since we didn't even know the name of the cab company and our attempt to find the cab at the train station failed. So we went to the US Embassy, where we were told that we needed a report from the Vietnamese cops. I think they said this would be necessary to get a new visa from the Vietnamese. So we went to three different cop shops, each telling us there was nothing they could do for one reason or another. At the third station, very near our hotel, the cops didn't speak English so they went across the street to get someone to "interpret," or rather, to simply tell us there was nothing they could do. The girl said it was "too hard" for the police to write a report. I said, no, you must not understand. It would be very hard to go find the stolen property, but that's not what we are asking for. We are simply asking for a piece of paper that says we reported this stuff stolen so we can get a new passport and visa. She still said this was "too hard." Hoa suggested I go back and get someone from the hotel to see if they could help.

While I was gone, Hoa continued to try to get a report. Now the girl said the police were "too busy." Hoa was getting a little frustrated at this point, especially since there were cops standing around doing nothing and the cop sitting across the table from her was reading the paper. So Hoa snatched the newspaper out of the cop's hands and waived it around saying, "they are not too busy, they're reading the paper!" Fortunately for Hoa, the cop thought this was funny.

Anyway I got back with the guy from the hotel, who somehow worked things out. So Hoa wrote out her statement in duplicate and got one stamped by the cops. We had our report. The next day we went to the embassy and Hoa paid her $100 and applied for a new passport.

Here's where things get crazy. About two days later, Hoa got up very early, about 4:30 am, when the train from Sapa was arriving, to see if she could find the cab. I was still asleep and didn't even know she was going. Now, this is really Hoa's story, and I'm not sure she's ready to tell it. So, the short version is she found the cab and the driver. The driver initially denied knowing what she was talking about, but eventually admitted he had the stuff. And, to make the long, fairly scary story very short: eventually he gave her the bag, including the passport and camera. He had deleted all our photos, probably 150 or so, and taken a few of himself and his family. So we lost all our photos from Sapa and Hanoi and Ban Me Thuot, and most of them from Cat Tien National Park. (I'd already posted some of the Cat Tien photos on pbase.)

I'll just say that given everything that had happened, Hoa was afraid of this guy and wanted to leave Hanoi asap. So we flew back to Saigon that night.

Travelling was fun, but it's good to have a home again.

We're back to studying Vietnamese at the Teacher Training University. It's going well. And it looks like Hoa has a job with an English school very near our house. She'll probably begin right after we get back from celebrating Tet in Vinh Long. I'll probably end up teaching English too, which I think I'll like a lot.

Things are going very well again, but I had a bad week last week. First I got the flu, which I haven't had in years. Then I started to feel a little homesick. I had a dream about skiing that may have helped trigger this. I even started to crave Western food for the first time. My cravings were definitely satisfied. First, we found a place called "California Burrito," that's pretty similar to the slighly upscale taco shops of So Cal and the SW like Rubio's. It was definitely the best Mexican food I've had here. Then, a couple days later, we went to the Texas BBQ in District 3 for the first time. Now this was the best Western food of any kind I've had here! I had the "Carolina pulled-pork sandwich," fries, coleslaw, and grilled corn on the cob. Hoa had Jamaican jerk chicken wings. And we had banh tao kem, otherwise known as apple pie and ice cream, for desert.

We've also been meeting some interesting people. And we both started playing tennis again. Hoa's taking lessons at the big, French-colonial era sport center. And I went with the owner of the house where we're living to play at the court at the Reunification Palace with a bunch of people he knows. He and I played doubles together. You'd play one set, then sit out a sit to let others play, then play another. We ended up playing three sets. It was the first time I'd played in about five years, so I'm still sore. It seemed pretty strange to be an American playing tennis with a bunch a Vietnamese people on the grounds of the Reunification Palace. If I'm remembering this correctly, the Palace was the "White House" of the South Vietnam, and the end of the war is considered to be the day in 1975 when the North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the gates. Things have certainly changed a lot over the past 30 years.

Time to get going.

Tom