A Mother's Love

Sean and I woke a little late this morning. You know that you're in a hurry when you don't even have time for instant coffee. We power-walked towards the main street. Today I wore a lime green polo, which meant that I was getting more stares and giggles than usual. At the corner where xe om drivers wait for fares we approached a couple of the friendlier and more familiar drivers. I expected to get quoted an inflated price but instead he quoted me the fair price of 5000 dong. Elated, I balance on the pleather seat, placed my flip flops squarely on the foot pegs, and held on for dear life. The driver scooted into the Hanoi traffic, crossing against the flow - a reassuring beginning for sure. I told myself, "it's just two minutes, I can do this."

Traffic was light once we crossed into the northbound lane. Apparently, people are beginning to heed the newly installed traffic lights. About a hundred meters ahead I could see two men in the aviator glasses and beige uniforms of traffic cops slowly stepping off the sidewalk into the street, waving as they advanced. Being unfamiliar with traffic ettiquete and the practices of the traffic cops in Vietnam, I was perplexed by these officers' actions - but my driver wasn't. He cluched wildly at the break lever and we lost all of our momentum. He shouted something over his shoulder to me in Vietnamese as he put the bike into a tight U-turn in the middle of the street. As we head back down Nguyen Trai - in the wrong direction - other drivers began taking the same action to avoid the ad hoc road block being set up by the two traffic cops. Within seconds the light changed at the first intersection that we had gone through and a wall of motorbikes was traveling towards us at forty kilometers an hour. My driver slows and eases the bike into another U-turn to put us squarely into the center of the pack of motorbikes. That way he could avoid being stopped by the traffic cops. We passed by the traffic cops unmolested and protected by a wall of other motorbikes. Both my driver and I were relieved: he because he just avoided supplying the cops with their morning coffee money in the form of an arbitrary traffic fine and me because I only had to spend a few more minutes on that godawful contraption with that maniac of a xe om driver.

We whizzed down the street weaving in and out of lanes, cutting of cars, motorbikes, and bicycles alike. The next intersection was congested with more morning traffic, but did that slow my driver down? Of course not. He aimed the bike directly at a Toyota Camry stalled behind hesitant motorbike drivers. At the last moment he leaned the bike towards the rear of the Toyota and we passed within inches of the rear bumper. Since I'm so tall I have to bend my legs out farther than everyone else who rides the motorbikes, thus my knee passed within a hair's breadth of the bumper. If my knee had whacked that bumper the car would have needed some minor body work and a little touch up paint, I would have needed major reconstructive surgery to put the mush of my knee back together.

At this point I began thinking to myself that it was so poetic that the day after Thai sees a motorbike head injury causing a young man's death I am speeding down the road getting myself nearly killed just to get to class on time. I should buy a helmet just for occasions like that. I think I'm going to take the bus from now on, thank you very much.

When we finally arrived at Dai Hoc Nhan Van my hands were shaking and I could feel my heart pounding out a strong bass line in my chest. I paid my aviator-spectactled driver (who also drives with the standard $1.30 helmet) the agreed upon fare, which, to his credit, was the fair price of 5000 dong. He left me shaking and waiting for Sean and his deathride. I hadn't caught sight of him since the beginning of my journey so I couldn't tell if he was ahead or behind me. I was sure that if he had gotten to school before me then he would have waited for me to arrive - wouldn't he? After a few minutes of waiting my motherly instincts kicked and I started to assume the worst. "What if he got caught in the road block? What if his brains are all over Nguyen Trai. What if the driver drove him into a dark alley and relieved him of his worldy possessions - and his life to boot? It was my idea to catch xe oms anyway. He didn't even want to come to class today. His mom's going to kill me." After ten minutes of grieving and hand wringing I gave up and decided to check to see if he was in class. I power-walked towards the language class room and found him chortling about the exploits of the previous evening with other EAP kids. In that moment I felt the stinging anger and the soothing relief that every parent feels when their kid walks in the door two hours after curfew.

Class was, as you might expect, a little tough to get through today. Throughout the day I felt the familiar gnawing of hunger and the hazy giddiness of mild sleep deprivation. The best thing about days like this is the moment when you can sit down on your bed and close your eyes. It something like hitting your thumb with a hammer in anticipation of the ecstasy of the future lack of pain.

Here's a band that I've discovered while over here. Y'all should visit their website, they have some really interesting music for downloading. They're called flashpapr and the URL is www.flashpapr.com.

This helmet cost me a dollar and thirty cents and it's the most serious head protection that anyone in Vietnam wears while driving motorbikes. - Thanks Steff.

We walked through a parade just before National Day and this girls' school was one of the groups participating. - Thanks Steff.

This is a really cute picture from our layover in Taiwan. Very few of us actually new each other at this point but everyone was already friendly. This is from someone else's camera.

Someone else took this picture of the three snake hearts that Tan, Christine and I ate a few weeks back. They were still beating.

Today, Sunday the 18th, we got up pretty early and traveled across the province to visit a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Hanoi. After breaking free from the gravitational pull of the city we set out across plains of rice paddies.

I'd never seen rice cultivated on such a large scale before coming to Vietnam. I've seen a few fields in the US devoted to rice but rice is such a staple here that in some places it covers the countryside from horizon to horizon, continuous except for the occassional family cemetary plot or bamboo hedgerow. On windy days the rice undulates with each gust of wind; it's reminiscent of midwestern wheat fields.

The temple is wedged between the stone escarpment of a small tree covered hill and a traditional Vietnamese village. Children played soccer barefoot in a small muddy clearing just before the temple. The village houses themselves are almost Hacienda style with clay tile roofs and brick and stucco walls. We ascended the steps of the temple from the base of the hill in a hushed procession. At the top of the stairs I half expected to see an old man sitting, full lotus style atop a satin divan, stroking his snow white fu manchu beard (like in Kill Bill vol. II). Instead we were greeted by a gregarious monk dressed in the somber coffee colored robes of a Mahayana Buddhist monk.

Our host, Thay Thanh, led us around the temple and gave us an extensive overview of the history of Buddhism in Vietnam from the 3rd century to today. We toured rooms devoted to different buddhas and historical figures of interest to the buddhist community. Before leaving we dined on a luxurious vegan meal with all manner of meat substitutes - it was delicious and satisfying to know that no living being was harmed in the making of the meal. We also visited a site, just up the hill from the rear of the temple, that supposedly occupies the intersection between several different magical power veins running through the earth. The site is infused with the power of these veins and is very spiritual. Several columns have been erected at the site and a pit - similar to a lion's pit at a zoo - was dug into the ground and lined with rocks and a carving of a dragon. I would be lying if I said that I felt anything magical coursing through my spirit as I knelt to touch the rocks - but it was cool anyway.

One foot in the first world, one foot in the third

Sean and I were in the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies library this afternoon when it started raining. Rain in Hanoi is real business. There's none of that sissy 'drizzle' that you guys in the States are used to. It's either pissing like a race horse or dry as Mormon country on Sunday. It's actually pretty humid even when its not raining - but anyway. We quickly trudged back to our dorm but we were blocked by ankle deep water with no easy way around. We read the writing on the wall and knew we were beat. We took our socks and shoes off to wade through the last 100 meters to our dorm. Mind you, this water is gross and warm, almost kiddy pool-esque. I was reminded of our first day of class, which was three weeks ago. It started raining heavily at about 5 in the morning. By the time we left for class at about 8:30 am the streets were flooded. We waded about two kilometers down Nguyen Trai Street to get to class that day. Can you imagine the look on the locals' faces? Here I am, two meters tall, 200 pounds, white as a sheet, with my pants held up around my thighs as I walk down a busy street in an area of Hanoi that sees very few Westerners.

This makes me wonder - what is Hanoi like during rainy season? Does it flood every day? Wouldn't that be one of the top priorities of a municipal and federal government - make sure your capital doesn't flood on rainy days?

Another anecdote. On one our first evenings here we visited a restaurant in the center of Hanoi, right across the street from Ho Hoan Kiem. The restaurant sits atop one of the largest buildings around the lake and it is called, appropriately, Cityview. The meal was typically Hanoian: nothing too special, although it was kind of expensive because of the location. At the close of our meal, as we were eating ice cream in the evening heat of Hanoi, the lights blinked out. At first it was the block we were on, then the whole city blinked off, block by block, until the whole grid was down. "Don't worry," said chi Ngan, our guide / friend / administrative assistant, "this happens all the time." Apparently, Hanoi derives all of its energy needs from one power plant. Occasionally, when that plant is overwhelmed, it shuts down for minutes or hours at a time. We were looking at a helpless metropolis of four million people without any power. We had stepped back in time 70, 80, 90 years in an instant. I felt as though we were in the middle of a WWII air raid in London. This must be what it felt like a couple of years back when the Eastern Seaboard had that catastrophic cascading power outage - except this happens all the time. Within 30 minutes the lights blinked back on and Hanoi rejoined the flow of global development. This is a country that is in serious negotiations for accession to the WTO and they can't keep the lights on in their own capital city for chrissakes?

These two anecdotes illustrate a larger point that I think I and many people are making about Vietnam and other developing nations. These states have one foot in the third world and one foot in the first world. The staggering poverty is shoved right in with the opulent wealth. People pedal and motorscoot alongside Mercedes CLEs and Hummers. Its one big mixed up opera with a thousand tragedies and two thousand comedies every day.

In Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers, Rogers describes his impressions of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital city. He has just driven across the steppes of Central Asia and enters a city of neon lights and cold steel. Ullaanbaatar is one of the most high-tech, wired cities in the world. I think he said that there is more fiber optic cable per capita running through the veins of the city than any other city in the world. I guess Mongolia knew what to do with all the development aid that so many other countries and NGOs have been pissing away for the last few decades. It's a good book and a quick read.

Crafty xe om drivers

The crafty xe om drivers have banded together in a guild to bilk us out of our money. For the first few weeks that we were here they were perfectly willing to drive us the kilometer to the university where we have class for 5000 VND (about 30 cents). Now, after they've figured out that we are in a hurry when we hire them, they've upped their prices - in some cases demanding twice what they did formerly. Sean thinks it has something to do with the increase in the cost of crude oil and gasoline at the pumps here. I doubt it: first, any refining shocks because of Katrina can't have worked their way through the system this quickly; second, the government is smart enough to know that the Vietnamese people are going to get uppity if gasoline, which is driving Vietnam's economic boom, doubles in price - I don't think they would pass the increase in cost on to the people that quickly; third, the price of fuel has been rising over the past few years so why would they double their fee to us in just a few weeks. I'm on to those crafty xe om drivers. They won't cheat me. I'm just not going to ride with them.

The first grass I've seen in Vietnam

One of the buildings at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi

I am finally feeling like this is an actual academic experience. I'm trying to keep up on the readings and I'm being forced to choose between social activities and academic activities. In order to get the most out of my time here I should find the right balance between the two - something that I've never been very good at. In the past, I have almost always put much mroe emphasis on the academic portion of college. Being in Vietnam with a bunch of cool people makes me more intent on having fun this semester though. We'll see what happens.

Nothing too interesting happened last week. On Thursday we went to the Pumpkin Cafe to celebrate the birthdays in this month and next month. We had a good time.

On Friday we visited the Temple of Literature in Hanoi. The Temple was a Confucian academy established in the 1400s to convey the message to China that Vietnam was indeed civilized and that they didn't need the tutleage of their large neighbor. There were dozens of steles with the names of the Confucian doctors who passed their exams throughout the centuries that the academy was in action. We also saw a musical performance by a band that plays at the temple. They were incredible. It was easy to see the influences of different societies on the musical style of Vietnam - Chinese, Cham, even some Austronesian elements. Afterwards Sean, Gerard and I visted Finnegan's Irish Pub at 16A Duong Than Street. It was just like home. They had a dark beer that tasted damn close to Guinness. It brought me back to the evenings that I spent during this summer in Kensington at the Circus Pub with my friend Zoe.

On Friday night we visited the Dragonfly Bar at 18 Ta Hien Street. The bar was very cosy and it had great decor. The DJ was also the owner, and I guess he is a friend of Gerard's. The music was more mellow than we've experienced at the dance clubs. It was a more conventional mix of hip hop and R&B. We arrived just before happy our ended so we quickly ordered all of our drinks at half price. After leaving the bar we struggled to keep the group from fracturing; some people wanted to go on to a club for the rest of the evening but we had to veto their motion on the basis that it was unsafe to splinter. We finally hopped into a seven person taxi at Ho Hoan Kiem after being pestered to buy weed by a stoner on a motorbike.
Saturday evening we headed to the Sheraton Hotel's dance club. It was very nice but the atmosphere was creepy. The hotel is popular with business travelers so there were many old white men with lithe young Vietnamese escorts / prostitutes. The drinks were also very expensive. And Carlsberg - always with the Carlsberg. Why do these bars serve the worst beer, yuck!

Sunday was strictly a recovery day. While sleeping on Saturday night I got a horrible cramp in my leg and had trouble walking all day. For the first time I also felt pretty sick. I think that I may have come down with a 72 hour flu or something. I feel better now though.

Sean and I went through about a pack and a half of 555s between the two of us. We weren't feeling to well the next day.

A Ha Long Weekend

This weekend was long and eventful . The weekend really started on Thursday afternoon when my roommate Sean and I went out with the Vietnam education abroad program director Gerard for some beer and food at a bia hoi across the street from our university. After approximately seven draught beers (or bia hoi) , I traded my Cal ballcap for the shirt off the back of one of our waiters. I'm doing my best to collect as many of these franchise-specific shirts in the time that I'm here. That hat meant a lot to me - but I know that his shirt meant a lot to that waiter and that he was really putting his ass on the line to trade it to me. I appreciate his sacrifice. Approximately five beers later, and after being subjected to a minor grope session at the hands of an over-friendly Hanoian who, along with his friends, we befriended during our time at lunch, we walked out of the bia hoi, one t-shirt richer, one ballcap poorer, and me being a little shaken up over our new friend's unsolicited groping.

Six hours after we walked in, the three of us stumbled out of the bia hoi and crossed Nguyen Trai street to our university, a major accomplishment at normal periods of traffic flow in Hanoi, a hurculean feat at rush hour after a dozen beers. Gerard sped off into the organic flow of Hanoian traffic as Sean and I shook off our buzz and headed to the opening lecture of our class on Vietnamese foreign policy. I vaguely remember the professor's lecture. Sean tells me that I was asking innane questions with a drunken slur during class. I can't say that he's wrong, but I can say that the professor's anwers did not do justice to the spirit of my questions. :P Hopefully our next foreign policy lecture will involve a lower blood alcohol percentage. After lecture I was in no mood to go uptown to the city center as the rest of the class was. I headed straight home on the bus and plopped down into bed at the ripe hour of 8 pm.

We awoke the next morning to calls that the bus to Ha Long Bay would be leaving in ten minutes. Sean and I knew full well that this meant that the bus would not be leaving for at least another half and hour. Our group was going on a weekend long trip to the UNESCO world heritage site of Ha Long Bay, north of Hanoi. The outing was planned by a group of students at the university where we are living, the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies. Most of the students that are interested in hanging out with us are tourism or international business major that are interested in improving their spoken English. This weekend was an opportunity for them to plan and implement a tourist outing.

We packed our bags for the weekend, remembering to include a full suite of alcohol and chaser beverages in anticipation of a laid back beach atmosphere. We crowded into the buses unshowered and hung over from the previous afternoon's binge drinking session. I sat next to a pair of guys that began playing games on their palmpilots with the sound turned up full blast. To combat their inconsideration for my comfort, I shoved my earbuds into my ears and turned the Counting Crows up so loud the Adam Duritz's shrillness even overcame the hum and periodic horn blaring of our coach bus. At this time I realized that my shirt smelled horribly of mildew thanks to the dorm staff's processing of my laundry. I don't mind that they didn't do the laundry correctly - I consider it a privilege that they do it at all - but the fact that I paid for a service and they didn't perform it kind of irks me. The knowledge of my mildewy shirt made me miserable and the smell began churning my stomach.

A short nap later and our caravan pulled into an open-air textile factory / cafe that caters to tourist clientelle traveling between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. The factory sold all manner of textile products at prices that are far too high for Vietnam but far too low for the West. What was interesting at this particular extablishment was that the textile workers, who do cross-stitching by hand, are displayed for the buyers to see. I'm guessing the message that the proprietor was trying to send was, "look at this, we provide good working conditions and living wages to our workers". But instead, it came off as a bizarre exposition of a way of working that hasn't existed on a large scale in the West since the turn of the century. I shrugged off whatever meaning I could have gleaned from the experience and swiftly visited the toilet. I switched buses to get away from the palmpilot duo and to find space on the bus with more leg room to fit my legs.

When I awoke after the second leg of the journey, we had arrived at Ha Long Bay. The few limestone outcroppings I could see from the bayside were mostly obscured in the smog the industrial element of Ha Long and in the fog that accompanies enclosed bays like Ha Long Bay. We lunched at a restaurant specializing in seafood. Seafood has never been my favorite, and having a hangover did nothing to change that. During lunch I made three trips to the restroom. After lunch, we boarded two separate boats that looked as though they were about thirty or forty years old. The boats looked more seaworthy than many of the other vessels docked at the tourist's pier. The windworn crew of sailors was confident in their handling of the roaps and the gangplank - I had faith in them. We pulled away from land headed out into the world famous Ha Long Bay.

Our first stop was a national park based on an island in the bay. The first impression we had as we got off the boats was that we had arrived at a Vietnam Disneyland. The island had piped in safety instructions, trash cans in the shape of dolphins and penguins, and, inside the caves, the mineral formations were lighted from above and below by unnatural blues, yellows, and greens. I had the eery feeling that an animatronic Ho Chi Minh would pop out from behind the limestone formation and give us a dissertation on the nationalist foundations of the socialist state (it was actually September 2, Vietnam National Day, celebrating the supposed 60th anniversary of Vietnamese independence). The gift shops, which were plaved onto the hillside like mountain climbers' bivvy sacks, sold water and Ha Long kitsch at vastly inflated prices. Creeped out, we boarded our boats once again. The boats pulled out of the treasure island-esque cove and made a bearing for Ha Long Bay proper.

The next few hours were absolutely magical. Our boats navigated through the massive limestone formations jutting stright out of the slate grey water. Each island a potential hideout for 1) political dissidents, 2) monkeys, or 3) pirates. At times, we would hold our breath as small fishing boats cut across our course with meters to spare in waterborn reenactments of the traffic negotiations that play out countless times every day on the pavement of Vietnamese streets. The beauty of the bay and the islands is overwhelming, but, as with many beautiul things, overexposure to them becomes monotonous and banal. The vast majority of the islands remain unnamed because there are just so many of them. By our fourth and fifth hour on the boat we were ready for landfall.

We arrived at the island where we were to spend the night at about 8pm. We quickly dropped our bags and showered in our hotel rooms and went to have dinner at a local restaurant with enough seating to accomodate our group of approximately fifty students and faculty. My table was populated by all of the best drinkers from EAP and the HUFS contingent. The seven of us went through more than forty beers during the meal. Unfortunately, the HUFS students couldn't hold their beer as well as they let on; one threw up while another would later become awkwardly forward with some of the women EAP students. The meal ended with a shocking turn of events. Ice that we had used to keep our beer cool during the meal had melted and created a sizeable puddle of water under our table. Just before we were ready to go, Sean and Thai noticed that they were transferring a large number of electrical shocks between each other. Every time they were close to each other or passed something between themselves they were both shocked. I saw that there was a large puddle under the table and realized that a large oscillatign fan's electrical cord was frayed and laying in the water. These are things that we rarely have to deal with in the United States but in Vietnam you must be vigilant of circumstances such as these. We could have been badly hurt if all of the current were passing through us. As we rushed out of the restaurant we pointed out the problem to the staff but I somehow doubt that they will do anything about it.

Much of our group worked our way back to one of the large hotel rooms to have an after-dinner party. The HUFS students insisted that we sit cross-legged on the floor despite the fact that there was adequate couch seating. Then they started to get all creepy with some of the girls in EAP. I don't think that the HUFS students were used to the idea of women drinking beer, let alone hard alcohol, and so they didn't exactly know how to interpret it - also they were really drunk. The awkwardness hastened the end of the evening and we all went back to our respective rooms so that we could wake up and spend some more time on boats in the bay. The one reprieve of our time on that island was that the view was charming. The houses and shops on the island were nestled up against the towering rock formations.

We got on the boats once again and slowly worked our way out of the harbor. Apparently, the shipping lane in and out of the harbor on this small island has a very shallow draft this season. One of the two boats ran aground at one of the points where the draft was particularly shallow. The boat I was on (the free one) was hitched to the stuck boat and we tried to pull them off of the shallows. After about an hour we were able to pull her free. However, the rutter of the boat was broken and the boat was lashed to ours with ropes. This turn of events made for a more interesting voyage as were were able to jump back and forth between the boats and hang out with everyone - instead of only half of the group. Despite this added amusement, the trip was long and by the time we arrived at the next evening's island, hunger had become an issue.

We pulled into the port and within a few seconds were were packed six to xe om / cyclo combination vehicles. The vehicles took us about a kilometer to a footpath that met with the road under a Western ranch style gate. We walked about two hundred meters along the path and found ourselves at a bungalow with a restaurant beneath it. The bungalow was to be our large bedroom for the evening. We sat down to a lunch of, what else, seafood. Then into the ocean we ran. We were at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. There were no islands between us and the horizon. The water was more salty than the water that we are used to in the states - but it was so warm. The beach was beautiful. White sand stretched about a kilometer in each direction. In both directions the beach tapered upward into five hundred foot tall limestone mountains. Someday I'll go back just for the beach.

After swimming, we showered and napped. Then a seafood dinner with some birthday celebrations. Gerard's girlfriend, Quynh, and one of the HUFS students, Quoc Anh, each celebrated their birthday on that Saturday. Revitalized, we headed back out to the beach for a dance party and bonfire on the beach. The dance party was great fun and, for the first time in weeks, we heard some hip-hop and some R&B music for dancing. During the bonfire we played icebreaker games that were intended to let us get to know each other. The evening tailed off as people headed to bed in anticipation of another long day on the boats and buses.

The next day was as expected. We woke up, got on boats, stayed on boats for a long time, got off the boats, ate lunch, got on buses, got off buses for a little while, got on buses and got home. The only really interesting thing that happened on Sunday was when we stopped at a rest stop that was similar to the outdoor textile shop during Friday's bus trip. At this store they sold all manner of crappy goods to tourists willing to pay too much. The interesting thing was that they had chosen to place three of their workers in the center of the store as if they were on display. Each of these young women were physically disabled. I didn't understand the point that the establishment was trying to make about their textile workers or their morals.

In any event, once we returned to D8 (our dorm) we were shocked with news of the death of William Rhenquist and the widening of the scope of known disaster and death in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Americans have been cognizant of the fact that the chief justice had thyroid cancer and that he might not survive but we were nowhere nearly as ready for his death as some Americans were ready for Reagan's death or the Pope's death. I'm not going to put Rhenquist above the importance of Reagan and the Pope throughout their lifetime, but his death at this juncture in American political history has the potential to truly upend the political culture in our country. The uneasy truce that had essentially settled on the acceptance of John G. Roberts as O'Connor's replacement must now be renegotiated with an eye on the coming appointment of Rhenquist's replacement. If both of these justices are replaced with young people who are anti-abortion in their ideological outlook, American women's reproductive rights will almost surely be limited in the coming years and the decisions of the court will take a drastic turn to the right for a generation. Unacceptable.

The Ha Long dance party in full swing.

Thuy and Thai get to know each other a little bit better.

Sean made a good friend on the trip.

Kristy, Noah, Christie and Diane at our Ha Long dance party and bonfire.

One of our Ha Long Bay cruise ships.

A typical Ha Long rock formation.

The view from my and Huy's hotel room outside of Ha Long Bay.

Ha Long as viewed from the limestone caves.

Diane and I do our best impressions of tigers, or lions, or some kind of cats as we approach an island cum theme park in Ha Long Bay.

I traded my hat for this waiter's shirt at a local bia hoi.

Excited for a long weekend in and around Ha Long Bay.

Sean and Gerard say goodbye to some friends we made at bia hoi.