Late to bed, early to rise

 “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy 

After coming back from HCMC, I had been questioning my practice of blogging every day. Is it really necessary to write so much and so often? Does anyone really care to read about my life in so much detail (the blogger's dilemma, in a nutshell)? But then I remember that I care. Last night I was reading some posts from late August and early September, and it felt like it had been ages ago. If it weren't for my rigorous blogging regimen I wouldn't remember the first time I had hotpot or how I felt the first time I had to sneeze while on a motorcycle. Sure, it would be ok if the passage of time rinsed these daily details from my memory and they weren't preserved anywhere, but how nice is it to have them stored away somewhere for rediscovering and reliving? I validate myself.


Last night I stayed up altogether too late, but I knew I would have the luxury of sleeping in enough this morning for it not to matter. Or so I thought. "Một ha, một hai, một hai." I awoke to the sound of a microphone being tested, and the chatter of hundreds of people. I hoped it would stop soon, but once the microphone's functionality was confirmed, rousing, military-sounding music started playing. I got a text from Trang saying, "If you love taking photos, there's something happening in front of your room." Unfortunately, at 630am, I like sleeping better than I like taking pictures. But, at this point it was clear sleep wasn't going to be happening again any time soon, so I got up to take some pictures from my window. Indeed, there were so many people so densely packed in the courtyard in front of the dorm I can only estimate that there were several hundred of them.

Then, in just under an hour, the rousing speeches and music and cheering and chanting ended and the people dispersed almost instantly. I found out later it was a protest concerning the disputed Chinese claim over the Spratly Islands. Why the protest needed to happen outside my room at 630am is a question with no answer.

In less than two weeks I will be participating in an interdepartmental faculty singing contest. Morena and I are the English department's intended secret weapon, and we are to sing a song in Vietnamese. Obviously, in order to do this, we must learn the song first. We met up to go to a karaoke place to learn and practice the song, but first, lunch was in order. We went to a place that serves cơm niêu,  rice is cooked in a clay pot more or less the size of an individual's rice portion. Except when that individual is me. The dishes were the traditional sour soup, screaming fish, and a dish of fish stomachs, and everything was delicious. I tried to pace myself with the rice allotment, but it was all too good. Luckily, as soon as I finished my first clay pot I received another. There's something to be said for being an observant host.

Screaming fish and fish stomach

Rice, clearly

As for the karaoke, we sang the song so many times it's been stuck in my head for the rest of the day. I don't really know what I'm saying, but I can sing it well enough. I'm thinking singing in Vietnamese is easier than speaking; tone kind of becomes secondary when notes come into the equation. Eventually our companions got as bored of hearing the same song as we did of singing it, and the afternoon devolved into a full-on karaoke party. I have to say, it seems like every Vietnamese person was born with golden vocal chords.

Our private room looked more like a demented nursery than a karaoke place

I thought we were going home after that, but we went to the city center and then we went to the supermarket. At the supermarket I was finally able to do something I've been wanting to do for a while: just scope out everything they stock. My secret hope was fulfilled when I found plain old pasta. I also got rice to make with my new rice cooker and stocked my nonexistent condiment supply with hot sauce and sweet and sour sauce for my spring rolls. I never thought I'd have hot sauce in my (figurative) kitchen. It was only until I got home that I realized I don't have salt.