Creature from the black lagoon

Several of the teachers, including Trang, received promotions last week, so today we had a  celebratory 10:30am lunch. 

How to participate in social drinking in Vietnam:
At any celebration, there will be drinking. Even though proper demure Vietnamese women don't drink, you, as a westerner, fall under a different umbrella of social expectations. You will probably be served beer. It will be served with a huge block of ice because nobody actually refrigerates beers even though no one wants to drink them warm. This ice will be replenished over and over again throughout the meal, easily transforming a single bottle of beer into a multi-glass watery experience. The Vietnamese take not drinking alone very much to heart. Every time you want to take a sip or swig from your glass, raise it high and proclaim, 'Do!' (pronounced 'Yo!'). Everyone will shout 'Do!' with you, clink, and drink. You should always reply in kind to every call for do. But, it is up to you how much you drink each time.
Be wary of calls for trăm phần trăm, or 100%. It means exactly what it sounds like: bottoms up. Fortunately, if you are a woman, you can coyly decline. 
If you are a woman, expect to be asked how many drinks you can drink and whether you've ever been drunk. As with most Vietnamese interactions, a shy giggle can excuse you from actually answering.
If there are shots involved, women are usually exempt. However, a man might come offer you a shot glass, but the expectation is only that you take a sip, then pass it back to him or on to the next person, who will complete the shot. It is also worth noting that shot glasses here are significantly smaller than those in the states.
Refusing to drink altogether, especially if you are a man, makes you seem standoffish and unfriendly. Most business lunches, which are usually post-meeting meals that actually accomplish more than the meeting itself, are watered with a river of alcohol.



Just call me Swamp Thing. This evening my room was flooded worse than ever: deeper water and a farther expanse. It was after 5pm, so I called and texted almost everyone in my arsenal. The maintenance man's wife, who sometimes cleans my room, was sent to help but when she saw the water still spewing from my drain she just left. A small part of me felt guilty for not sucking it up and cleaning myself, but being inches deep in drain regurgitation while it kept on coming was just too much. The text I got from Mr. Luan, an administrator said, 'I know about your room. I very sad.' Not a valid reply. I wanted witnesses and solutions, not sadness. I was supposed to be teaching the teacher's English club, but instead I was seeking high ground -- easy enough to do since the floor is bowl-shaped, though unfortunately the lowest point is my bedroom -- and trying to ignite a solution. I texted Mr. Luan again saying something along the lines of 'I know you know but I want you to see this'. To no avail.

Part of what made the experience so frustrating, aside from its recurring nature, is the fact that anger is pointless. Getting angry, shouting, all of that, just makes you lose face. It won't make anyone take you more seriously; it will just make them feel sorry for you because you are embarrassing yourself. When I was still wading 30 minutes after discovering Lake Adelina's Room, you can be sure I was angry. But, instead I had to put on my nice face.

After getting no results from my text messages, I took a more direct approach. I marched my way over to the room where the club was meeting (under Morena's generous substitution), and told Mr. Luan in person that I needed him to come to my room and see. He seemed to find the idea funny, but he stopped laughing when he saw just how much water I was dealing with. Then, the fact that it was English club night came to my rescue. The Vice Rector is one of my students, and he and another teacher came over to survey the situation as well. After group wading and pointing and extensive discussion in Vietnamese, decisions were reached.

The maintenance man was sent to cover my drain to keep water from coming out (or going in). The students upstairs were told to STOP using whatever drain they have up there that feeds into mine. The cleaning helper returned and started sopping everything up. Tomorrow, people will come and fix things. If it works, I won't even complain about having to get up at 6am for them to do so. Here's hoping for a dry day.

From the source and down the hall. Still gushing.

There and back again

 “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

This weekend was just the right length to transition from:

1. frenzied quest for western comfort foods
2. calming down long enough to do some sight seeing and hitting the major sights
3. having time for aimless (or misguided) wandering
4. actually discovering delicious and reasonably priced, non-tourist-oriented eating establishments
5. feeling ready to go home but still looking forward to going back to the city in the future

and now for the details.

Morena and I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) on Friday morning with no plans other than a hotel reservation. After a few hours of lounging around -- which for me meant appreciating having a pliant mattress again -- Kelly arrived as well and we began the search for lunch. We ended up at a place with alternative phở, alternative in this case meaning more expensive, smaller, less flavorful, and with noodles made from pumpkin.

The orange noodles are the pumpkin-based ones

Our next stop was Ben Thanh Market. It was an intense experience that put us on a fast learning curve. When I had gone to the Ben Tre Market, vendors seemed vaguely interested in my presence. Here, as soon as we walked in, wares were being shoved in my face and I was being implored to buy. Once, I asked about the price of some shorts, which cost more than I even had on me, and as I tried to walk away I was seized by the wrist in a death grip and another shopkeeper came to help her friend box me in. As I struggled to free myself, the price dropped lower and lower and lower. It would have been helpful if I were really interested in buying the shorts, but I wasn't. I made a mental note not to express interest in anything unless I was really seriously interested. I also noted just how inflated the prices are that they were willing to lower it so much just to make the sale.

By that time, Andrea had arrived, and we met her at a café. After the requisite hour or more of catching up on the joys and grievances of life in Vietnam, Brittanye had also joined us at the café. We spent the rest of the afternoon roaming until we came back to the tourist area for an indulgently western dinner. And when I say indulgent, I mean indulgent. I had a pizza and a plate of pasta.

After that, Violet finally made it in, and all of us went out to enjoy the city at night from above.

Saturday we gave ourselves the luxury of sleeping in. When we visited Da Nang we awoke to the city symphony of motorcycle horns; here, we awoke to the sounds of chanting, wafting in from who knows where. Once we got rolling we chose our destinations over breakfast and started with a visit to the HCMC museum. It was an interesting collection of artifacts, before and after maps and photos showing how the city has changed over the years, and documentation of revolutionary struggles. After that we roamed around and hit many of the major sights, including the Reunification Palace, the Hotel de Ville, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. With all of the grandiose French architecture, it was almost easy to forget that we were in Vietnam. In the midst of that, of course, I managed to squeeze in some shopping and got a new dress.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum

Reunification Palace

Hotel de Ville, HCMC City Hall

And then I ran into this guy. Check out his shirt!

Our next stop was the botanical gardens. We thought that the zoo and gardens were two separate entities, but it turned out that they were kind of fused together. Animal enclosures were surrounded by trees with taxonomical signs nailed into them. The conditions for the animals looked about how animals were kept 10 or 15 years ago in the US. Not inhumane, but not really optimal. We tried to go to the Jade Emperor's Pagoda, but the walk was longer than we anticipated and it had closed just a few minutes before we arrived.

On Sunday morning, a few people had to head back to their respective provinces. However, Violet, Brittanye, Morena, and I still had time. We went back to the market and did some damage. I got some desperately needed new shoes and continued to hone my bargaining skills. We shopped until we dropped, and then Brittanye and Violet said their goodbyes. Morena and I returned to the Pagoda that we had attempted to see the night before. As with any place of worship, I felt like my attempts at cultural appreciation doubled as intrusion, and I felt somewhat guilty about being there as a tourist while people were obviously practicing their faith.The temple had many chambers honoring different deities and gods, but since it was an active temple and not a museum, I didn't have much guidance regarding the significance or symbolism in each room.

Morena and I let our feet follow our stomachs after visiting the museum, and boy did our stomachs lead us right! We discovered a very curious looking setup with a bunch of clay hemispheres over a fire. Our curiosity was assuaged by a young lady who was fluent in English, and she explained that this was bánh căn, made with rice flour, shrimp, squid, and egg poured into these hemispheres. We decided it was worth a try, and ordered one each. What we didn't realize was that an order of 'one' meant a plate of eight. Luckily they were extraordinarily delicious, especially after being topped with chives and a peanut fish sauce, and only our self-control kept us from ordering even more. It will be a mandatory stop for all of my upcoming visitors.

Sorry for poor photo quality. In the upper left, one woman is adding raw shrimp
to the rice flour mixture that the woman on the right has already poured in.

Scrumptiousness

We spent a good while chatting with An, the young lady who encouraged us to give it a try. We found out that the restaurant is owned by her boyfriend's family, and that she and he help out on weekend evenings. Morena had been jonesing for a massage, but I'd heard so many stories of fellow ETAs stumbling into massages of ill repute, or just plain bad ones, that I had been reluctant. However, I thought An might be able to point us in the right direction, and the next thing you know we were headed to an after-dinner massage. I'm still on the fence about it. Some parts of it were great; some parts were kind of painful; and some parts just made me want to laugh.

I did get a pretty good view of downtown HCMC from the balcony, though.

We had gone through many proposed plans for Monday, everything from going to a beach to going into the Cu Chi Tunnels to just going back. We decided to go to Cholon, also known as Chinatown, instead. We knew what street it was on and we figured it was walkable, but our plan had one major (or minor, depending on how you look at it) logical flaw. We didn't know the cross street. After an hour of walking we had stumbled upon a great open air market, bustling traffic, and some street snacks, but still no discernible Chinatown.

Lots of squirmers at the market

Fried rice cake snacks, xôi chiên, which I though would be plain but then got
stuffed with mystery contents that I suspect included dried pork.

 
We tried asking for directions but only got vague hand gestures that mostly seemed to suggest that we just needed to cross the street. We had barely more than an hour before we had to check out of our hotel, so we decided to bite the bullet and take a taxi. Cholon wasn't a sufficient landmark, but luckily I remembered that it is known for its market, and I remembered the word for market, so we got on our way. Based on the taxi's trajectory, I have no idea if we ever would have found it, had we persevered. Binh Tay Market was interesting, but not particularly notable. It's structure looked Chinese, but from guidebook descriptions I had expected Cholon to be an entire neighborhood dominated by old Chinese architecture. We wandered around for a while before deciding it was time to head back.

Market entrance

Row upon row of dried goods

In the market courtyard

Now comes the story of my awesome street smarts. The last time I came to HCMC I took a xe ôm (motorcycle taxi) to the airport for 40k VND. The airport is pretty far, so I have figured out that if normal taxi fare will come out to more than 40k/person, it is cheaper to take a xe ôm. Given that the taxi for just the last leg of our walk to the market had been a total of about 50k, it was time to start bargaining with the motorcycles. Morena was a little worried about finding trustworthy xe ôm drivers, but the first ones we ran into were wearing uniforms, which was comforting whether or not it was really significant. For 40k each of us had a swift, riverside ride from the market back to our hotel, which was pretty far away. I was proud of myself for being a good traveler, and for now being able to recognize streets and make sure we were going the right way. One of the many good things about xe ôms is that since you agree on the price ahead of time, there is no incentive for them to take a circuitous route. Another good yet adrenaline-releasing thing about them is that traffic rules apply to them least of all, so they are often the fastest mode of transportation, even if they rarely get above 30km/hr. Anyway, we made it to the hotel with 15 minutes to spare before checkout, and after that it was time for our next round of xe ôm-ing, this time to the bus station. The first pair we encountered insisted it couldn't be done for less than 80k VND, but I knew better. I was shooting for 30k, but the next pair offered us a price of 25k, right off the bat. Perfect. I showed them the bus company's business card and address, and we were on our way. But things didn't look quite right. We 'arrived' at a company that was not the one I intended to depart from. After a lot of yelling and passing around of the business card, it was revealed that this bus company didn't even send buses to Ben Tre, so the drivers carried us onward, this time to the right place. When we arrived they tried to charge us more, but I insisted that their failure to take me to the right place the first time around did not earn them a bonus. This was a situation that demonstrates the value of having exact change when taking a xe ôm. We arrived a comfortable 15 minutes before the departure of the next bus home. So, all in all, I was very proud of myself for savvily navigating both the city itself and its transportation options.

Crossing the bridge back into Ben Tre

Drinking and dining

How to look like a pro when drinking a cold beverage in Vietnam:
1. If it has ice in it, make sure you pump your straw and long spoon up and down repeatedly before drinking it. Sometimes this has the discernible purpose of mixing things better, and sometimes it has no apparent purpose, but you should do it anyway.
2. When you are ready to drink, make sure you hold your glass off to the side of your body. Otherwise, the high condensation on the outside of your glass will dribble all over your lap and make you look incontinent.
3. Embrace the pace of life. You may only have twelve ounces of liquid in your glass, but you should make it last at least 30 minutes. If you chug it thirstily in the first thirty seconds you will have nothing to do with your hands for the next twenty-nine and a half minutes while everyone else drinks and chats. If you fail at this step, you can repeat step one, though this time it will be absolutely pointless. If you succeed at this step, you'll find that the slowly melting ice increases the amount of beverage at your disposal, facilitating your slow imbibing.
3b. If you really fail at step three, don't worry. Most places bring you complimentary cups of iced tea to help you compensate, and you can try again.



Today was largely uneventful. I stayed in until the afternoon, whereupon I discovered that the weather was breezy and cool and perfect. Morena and I went to get a sinh tố. As a part of my new, active approach to language learning, when I got that avocado smoothie a few days ago, I took a picture of the sign so that I could later translate it to find out what the other options were. Armed with that knowledge, today I requested a jackfruit (mít) smoothie. So good! I am committing to trying all of the flavors before I let myself pick a favorite and stop trying new ones.

Tonight I had plans with the same students that I had breakfast with yesterday: Hông, Tho, An, and Lei. We went out for my favorite fried goodies and I finally know their names in Vietnamese: bánh bào chiên and bánh tiêu, the meat-filled bread and sesame bread, respectively. I also had bắp nấu, corn on the cob. Because of my corn purchasing, I ended up learning the Vietnamese words for corn on the cob, kernel corn, and popcorn, and sharing the English words. These students are really helping me jump into language exchange. Originally we were in a hurry because I was supposed to meet Trang less than an hour after I met the girls, but Trang called to cancel so we sat down at a sidewalk cafe to consume our food purchases and wash them down with some ice cold nước mía (sugar cane juice).

After dinner I invited them over to my room, and we chatted, listened to American music, and we wrote down the evening's vocabulary for each other.