Stick Out Your Can, Here Comes the Charcoal Man.

Almost no one here has a kitchen as we know them. One reason is that almost no one has air conditioning, so cooking inside is not possible for most of the year. Too bloody hot. So everyone cooks on the street or in the alley in front of their house. We have a newfangled propane stove in our kitchen, but most people cook outside on a rudimentary charcoal stove (another reason why the air is so bad here).

Here's the basic set-up.
(1) Can for charcoal canisters. (2) Said charcoal canisters.
Just that simple.

All the restaurants use them to boil water or simmer the broth for pho.

Shopkeepers usually have one out front for tea.

This is the outdoor kitchen for a house three doors
down from us. The woman cooks for her whole family
on this. She's usually cooking all day long.

And naturally, the residue gets tossed wherever.

Of course, someone has to supply the charcoal,
so the charcoal men push their heavily-laden bikes
up and down the alleys all day long,
singing their enticing charcoal songs.

P.

Pineapple of My Eye.

Well, the weather was pretty good for a while. Sure, there were hot and humid days, but mostly it's been warm and soft, but not drippy. Until last week. Temperatures in the early hundreds and humid to the point that two steps out of the front door and your clothes are wringing wet. Summer's here, and believe me, no one's dancing in the streets.

The fritter vendor on the corner now sells fresh-squeezed sugarcane juice instead. And the chilled pineapple has become our god.

Oh, we tried the tiny pineapples they sell here a few times over the nine months we've lived here, but they are sour. You have to sprinkle them with sugar to eat them. So we mostly didn't.

But hot weather does have a few (very few) benefits. Suddenly the pineapples are incredibly sweet and tasty. Best pineapples ever, I swear. We can't get enough of them.

And the mobile pineapple vendors are always there to supply our addiction.

They prepare them for you on the spot. With a very
sharp knife, they skin the fruit, then with a few deft flicks
of the wrist make spiral cuts to remove the eyes.
In 30 seconds or less you have a delicious
chunk of fruit ready to eat.
We are so going to miss this when we go home.

P.

Coke Yeah!

Pride goeth before a fall. So I got into a cab today and said "Noke Ha," sure that I knew what I was saying, and the cabbie turned around and gave me that blank look that means my pronunciation still sucks. "Noke Ha?" I repeated slightly more tentatively. "Noke Haaaa!" he yelled chidingly. "Noke Haaaa!" (pronounced like Coke Yeah, the "a" is drawn out and the tone descends). It also helps if you open your mouth as wide as possible when you say it. Sigh. A work in progress.

P.

In the Morning, No Bombs.

I'm very proud of myself. I've apparently learned to pronounce the name of one of the main streets near us correctly. Saying "Ngoc Ha" is tricky. First we said "Nyahck Ha,' but after a while, we learned that "Knock Ha" was closer, so we've been saying that and it seemed to work. A few days ago, however, a cab driver took pity on me and explained that it's "Noke (like Coke) Ha."

So today I said "Noke Ha," and the cabbie turn to me and said, "Noke Ha. Very good Vietnamese. Very good." Then he asked where I was from, and when I told him he said, "Oh, America," then "Over there," pointing toward the dike road along the Red River, "over there many bombs. Many many bombs." I agreed. Many bombs. "Only in the evening," he assured me, "and over night. In the morning no bombs."

"Only at night?" I asked. "Yes. The avions come at night. In the morning safe." I asked him if he had been here during the bombing, and he said he had. I asked how old he was at that time, but I couldn't express the question in a way he could understand.

After a moment, he continued. "Then, American number 10 (as in very bad). Now Bill Clinton we like. Barack Obama we like. Bill Clinton good person. Bill Clinton bitte schoen. Bill Clinton merci."

And having reached the limits of our mutual language skills, we rode in silence until we got to Noke Ha. We said our goodbyes then and shook hands with a smile.

P.

Blowing This Pop Stand.

Yesterday, we made reservations for our return. We will be back in LA on July 10. It's been a little hairy getting to this point. Apparently, Vietnam is making it much harder to get visa extensions. Ours expired on May 7, and the school we work for had quite a difficult time getting us an extension to June 7. There was a lot of additional paperwork, including an 11 pm motorbike trip by our incredibly helpful landlady to the local police station to get a suddenly-required certificate. So we're taking a chance that we can actually get another extension until July 7, when we're due to leave Hanoi.

Everyone says we can get another month, and we know that if worse comes to worst, the usual fallback is to fly to Laos for the day, get a tourist visa there, then fly back. Everyone does this, but it's an expensive option that we hope to avoid.

We also got a scare when we called Continental to change our reservation. The agent told me (quite snippily) that there was no availability in July. After going round and round with her, I finally hung up in disgust, I called their international desk and got a far more helpful person. She worked for about half an hour and finally found us a flight back: Hanoi-Bangkok-Sydney-LA. No thanks.

But better than not going home at all, right? But just as I was about to capitulate, we were disconnected. I called back, got another helpful soul who found us a better flight: Hanoi-Seoul-Vancouver-LA. Still kind of ugly, so we decided to take it in stages. We have a friend in Seoul who went through the EFL training with us, so we will visit with him for two days, then fly on to Vancouver, spend a day there, then fly to LAX.

So that's it. In two months we'll be home. And the adventure will continue.

P.

Gimme a Pigfoot.

One of the most delicious, over-the-top, artery-clogging meals I ever had was at a little bistro in Champagne that was a favorite of the vineyard workers. It involved a pigfoot stuffed with foie gras, wrapped in thick slices of house-smoked bacon, then roasted to a perfect crispy goodness. It was comfort food of the highest order: incredibly tasty, but ridiculously rich. I could only eat about half of it, but the other patrons who had ordered it, including several svelte young women, were able to down the whole thing, then go on to the cheese course and dessert.

O., on the other hand, likes her pigfoot pickled. It's a fragrant, gelatinous memory of her childhood. Comfort food of the nostalgic sort.

Here's what isn't comfort food: Vietnamese pig's feet. The trotters are available at all the alleyway pork stands (of which there are dozens). They are charred on the outside and smell like burned hair. We've seen them for months, but only recently saw how they're prepared. Very simple: they are wrapped in newspaper, then set afire. This burns off the bristles and impregnates the meat with the toxic chemicals from the ink. The trotter is then ready for the soup pot. Not a high yum factor as far as I'm concerned. This is not a recipe we will be bringing home with us.

P.

Snow White and the Seven Schoolchildren.

Competition for students among schools is intense here, especially at the primary level. There are dozens of such schools in our local area. One of the ways they compete is to paint colorful cartoon murals on the walls of the school to attract the children and their mothers. Of course, copyright laws are not an issue, so Disney characters are very popular.

This mural is one of the better done ones, from a school in our maze of alleys.

The school itself.

A little further down the alley, its archrival proudly sports its own designs.

If I were choosing a school for my children, I'd go with
the pig and elephant boys.
How about you?

P.

I've Got a Frog in My...Bathroom?

Today, as she was preparing to water a plant in our bathroom, O. was startled by a frog leaping in terror out of the flower pot. O. also leaped in terror and let out a yelp that caused me to leap. I was finally able to corner the slippery little devil and carry him out to our fishpond, where he swam about for a few seconds, then leaped into a nearby tree, where he sat looking at us in froggy reproof.

P.

May Day! May Day!

May Day is, of course, the main commie holiday. It's a big one here, especially since it's the day after Liberation/Reunification Day.

There are Party posters everywhere.

Many people take advantage of the four-day weekend to go back
to their home village, so even in the tourist areas many shops are closed
and the streets are practically deserted.

Those who stay in town get some much needed relaxation.
(These people can sleep anywhere.)

Or they head to the ice cream parlor. (Kem means ice cream,
a corruption of the French creme.) Of course, you throw your trash
on the sidewalk. After all, someone's there to sweep it up,
and they need the job. (To each according to his needs.)

P.

The Rockets' Red Glare.

We went out with our friends Justin and Jyoti to a great little Moroccan restaurant last night, and just as we were finishing our dessert, there was a series of loud explosions. We all jumped up and looked out and saw the beginning of a huge fireworks show.

Earlier, we had noticed that there were more of the paddleboat swans out on the lake than we'd ever seen at one time. Must have been waiting for the show. The fireworks went on for almost half an hour. Then the streets filled with families on motorbikes. The traffic was intense, people were squeezing through even the tiniest opening, driving on the sidewalk, getting through any way they could.

We fled on foot back to J&J's place, which was within (long) walking distance. An hour later, when we left for home, the traffic had thinned, and we were able to make our way to Doi Can without any congestion.

And that was the end of the celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the end of the American War.

It was odd to be here today. Our students were a little hesitant to tell us what the holiday was about at first, but it led to some good discussions. They said (perhaps thinking to soothe our feelings) that it wasn't an important holiday to them, though it was a big deal for their parents' generation.

My generation, too.

P.

It's the End of the Month, It Must Be the Buttocks of a Dog.

Apparently, the end of the month, especially in cool weather, is the traditional time to eat dog meat. The Vietnamese believe that thit cho is more nutritious than any other meat, in addition to being delicious, and that eating it now will give you good health for the coming month. So our favorite beer garden behind the mausoleum was packed with tables of red-faced guys ordering heaping plates of dog. We also noticed that the restaurants we walked by that feature dog were full. Then, as we were walking through the alley toward home, a guy passed us on a motorbike. On the back was a small cage with four German shepherds jammed in so tightly that they couldn't move. Take-out delivery, I guess.

O.'s students told her that the dogs are killed by beating them to death, on the theory that this tenderizes the meat and releases chemicals that make it tastier and more nutritious. I wasn't inclined to try dog before I heard that. Now it's definitely off my to-do list.

P.

April 30, 1975.

Today is a national holiday in Vietnam: Liberation/Reunification Day celebrates the fall of Saigon and the end of the American War.

The image of this Soviet-built tank breaking through the gate

of the Presidential Palace in Saigon is iconic here.

Because the following day is May Day, also a national holiday,
the streets are decorated with banners. This is a major getaway weekend
for the locals. We didn't realize that we had a four-day weekend
until last week, at which point it was too late to book anything.

So this morning, we walked down to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to
see what there was to see.

Not much going on, but there were a lot of people milling around,
including many be-medaled veterans.
We'll go back tomorrow the see if the May Day festivities are bigger.

P.

Random Snaps. The Strangeness of Street Life.

After living here as long as we have, we tend to take a lot of things for granted. But every once in a while it strikes us how strange things are here, so utterly unlike the world we came from.

There are the live animal vendors, selling very fresh meat from
their bicycles or shoulder baskets.

Mobile clothes vendors push their bulky garment racks up and down
the maze of alleys, chanting little songs about their wares.
There are always vendors hawking a variety of products.
Each has their own little sing-song spiel, which they repeat endlessly.

Women from the countryside set up pretty much anywhere
on the sidewalk to sell their small baskets of produce.

Attention to hygiene is not a priority. The vegetables for sale
get plopped down on the sidewalk wherever.

Even right next to one of the horrible smelling, hideously polluted
streams that flow through our neighborhood.

The women at our local fish soup restaurant do all their prep work al fresco.

Our favorite bun cha place is set up in a dingy alley.

While you eat, the shoeshine guy comes by, takes your shoes and gives
you a pair of flip-flops while he buffs your loafers.

Mobile trash bins await pickup. Stray dog revels in the many ripe smells.

We often hail a cab going in the opposite direction. They have
no compunction about making a U or even, in this case,
a Y-turn on an insanely busy street, bringing traffic to
a wildly honking halt.
And of course, they never look or signal before doing so.

Most of the small businesses, and even construction sites, have
little altars set up with offerings of food. The gods apparently like
not only fresh fruit, but chips and cookies.

Most alleys have a chalkboard for neighborhood messages.

My little buddy from Ete Cafe.

P.

Hanoi Delights: Off-Road Street Food.

This is a great concept for a restaurant. Quan An Ngon gathers every variety of Hanoi street food under one roof (well, tent).

Everyone eats at long wooden tables. The place is always packed
with tourists and locals alike.

Around the perimeter are a dozen food stalls, each preparing
their own specialty. This means they have at least
a dozen kitchens, so they can feed a lot of people very rapidly.

The food is a little more expensive that real street food,
but it's also prepared and served in much more
hygenic surroundings. And they haven't dumbed it down.
The flavors are pungent and delicious.

You can even feast on crispy sparrows.
You eat the whole bird, bones, beak, and all.

P.

Another Loll Cat.

What is it about cats and motorbikes in this town?

"First I haz nap, then make cheezburger run."

P.

Death of a Fawn.

We walk by this restaurant most days, and they usually have a goat or a chicken tethered outside. Lately it's been a fawn. Don't know if it's always the same one, or if they find a new one after the dinner hour. In any case, as a copywriter I have to say there's no clearer way to say "Fresh venison here."

P.

I've Lost My Driving Passion.

I grew up in Southern California, so cars have always been a huge part of my life. I learned to drive as soon as it was legally possible and have never been without a car since. In fact, a few years ago we had, as a two-person family, five vehicles. I loved fast cars and motorcycles and bought many of both.

It's now been about nine months since I've operated a motor vehicle, and I can't say I miss it much. For most errands, we walk. We walk far more than we ever did in CA, way more than most people do here. If we need to get somewhere too far to walk, if it's too hot to walk, or if we need to get somewhere quickly, there are always motorbike taxis lurking in the alley no more than 50 yards from our front door. Or if it's raining, we walk a little further to the main street and flag a cab.

We couldn't have a car here even if we wanted one. First, they are far more expensive than in the US. The government makes sure the cost is high in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the already too-crowded streets. Second, the alley that leads to our house is too narrow for a car to get through. A motorbike is the only option, but the traffic is too crazy. Of course we put our lives in to the hands of the xe om drivers every day, but it isn't the risk of bodily injury that worries mes the most. After all, the speed at which traffic moves here makes serious injury unlikely. The problem is liability. If you get into a traffic accident here, there's no such thing as insurance, so any damages come out of your own pocket. And as a foreigner you're automatically blamed and, since you're obviously rich, fined heavily.

So we rely on our feet and taxis. It works.

P.

Yes, We're Still Alive. Ho Chi Minh, Still Dead.

Okay. We realize it's been a while since we posted, but rest assured, we are still alive. O. continues to recover slowly. In fact, she has had enough energy to do a few things other than teach.

This weekend, for example, we went once more to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Once again we were balked in our quest to see Uncle Ho himself. The mausoleum itself is open very limited hours which aren't posted and seem to change depending on who you talk to. Anyway, we've never timed it right. Last time we did get to see the museum. This time we were able to tour the house that Ho built and see a few artifacts from his life.

This Friday and Saturday were a national holiday in Vietnam commemorating the reign of the Hung Kings, a dynasty that ruled Vietnam for over 2000 years, ending in about 250 BCE. This was apparently a golden age in Vietnamese history. The streets were heavily beflagged for the holiday and as part of the run-up to the bigger May Day festival next weekend. We will have Friday and Monday off then, which is lovely except for the part about not getting paid.

The mausoleum was decked with smart new hammer-and-sickle flags.

The house of Ho is a tranquil shrine with lake and mature trees.

And a closely-confined peacock.

Honest Ho's House of Used Cars.

Ho's study.

Maybe next time we'll figure out when the mausoleum itself is open.

P.

...I'm only sleeping

The lunch nap is not to be interferred with. (yes, it's ok to end a sentence with a preposition - see grammargirl.com).

I was supposed to arrive at a new corporate client this afternoon. Not knowing how long the taxi ride would take I, of course, left a few minutes early. Arrived at my destination 10 minutes ahead of time.

At first I thought maybe I had misunderstood the start date; all the lights were off and the place looked closed. As I was standing there contemplating my next move, I noticed two people sneak up to the front door and very carefully let themselves in...so I followed them.

The place was definitely dark and as my eyes adjusted I begin to make out shadowy shapes of people on the floor and on top of desks. Then it dawned on me: it was still nap time. So I waited in a darkened reception room until 1:30pm when all the lights came on, people stretched and yawned and got up to face the afternoon.

Business as usual.

O.

Talkin' Trash.

Here's how it works: precisely at 5:00 pm (well, within a few minutes, anyway) every day (Sat. and Sun. included) the trash bell rings (one of those old-fashion bell-and-clapper bells), and everyone in our alley bustles out carrying the day's garbage.

The bell is rung by one member of the two-person (men and women do this job) sanitation teams that roam the streets at all hours of the day and night. Clad in khaki work clothes, heavy gloves, surgical masks, and fluorescent lime safety vests, they push a three-wheel metal bin about four-feet deep around the maze of alleys until it's filled, then push it back to the main street for collection by a large garbage truck late that night. The bins have clearly been recognized as inadequate for the amount of trash produced, so they have been modified with jerry-rigged wooden extensions that increase the depth to about 7 feet.

Everyone lines up (about 15-20 from our alley) to hand their two or three plastic bags of garbage to the sanitation worker who perches atop the contraption and packs as much as possible into it. Once everyone has brought out their trash, the team moves to the next alley, and one of them again walks up and down ringing the bell to summon the inhabitants and their trash.

It works.

P.

Moving Money.

So one day I'm walking the streets of downtown Hanoi carrying 90 million in cash in a brown paper bag.

The odd thing is that there's nothing particularly odd about that here. This is truly a cash-based society. No such thing as a checking account. A few places (mainly stores, restaurants, and hotels that have a significant tourist or ex-pat clientele) take credit or debit cards, but mostly people use cash. Stacks and stacks of cash (at 19,100 dong per dollar the bills stack up fast).

We get paid in cash once a month: big fat envelopes of cash. The largest bill we've seen is 500,000, so it takes a lot of them. We regularly see people at the bank depositing briefcases full of money, like drug dealers in a movie. We once saw a guy withdraw a sack of money so large he had to sling it over his shoulder like Santa delivering a load of presents.

It works because there's so little street crime here. People (especially westerners) can walk around with wads of cash without fear, even late at night.

The hard part is moving money out of the country. We have to submit a letter from our employer stating that we work for them as well as a statement of earnings that proves we earned the money here. Each time the process takes well over 45 minutes, even though they know us at the bank by now. Our financial system may have problems, but Vietnam's is about 40 years behind time.

BTW, I was carrying all that money to pay for our health insurance for a year. Can't write a check. Odd.

P.

Breathing is not overrated

Apparently when I get a bad ass cold that's accompanied by a severe cough, my throat spasms and cuts off my air supply. This happened again a few days ago. And while this is not the first time this had happened to me; it is, however, the first time I have been utterly scared that I would not be able to recover my breath in time.

Fortunately for me I experienced an ugly episode just as I walked into the doctor's office. They were GREAT - immediately went into action, the doctor did not leave my side, kept speaking to me in soft reassuring tones telling me that it would all be ok ( kind of like the soothing and comforting sound of a calm airplane pilot during hard turbulence). In the US when I have been rushed to emergency due to labored breathing, the staff seemed perplexed and it usually takes them longer than I'd like for them to start any kind of treatment. Again, I was very lucky that his particular doctor, Dr. Brian, knew just what was happening to me and went into immediate action.

Once they got me breathing again, they suggested I go to a hospital to be examined by an ENT (ear, nose & throat) doctor and to be stabilized. I looked at Dr. Brian and asked him what other options did I have as I was terrified of going to a VN hospital (have heard way too many horror stories). He hesitated for a moment, before he told me he understood and said yes, you can stay here and we will have the ENT come after his shift. So the first thing was to xray my lungs to exclude pneumonia - once they knew my lungs were clear, they set me up in one of the emergency beds, started an IV ( apparently I was dehydrated too, although I don't know why, I drink lots of water), and gave me regular doses of codeine for the cough, intravenous antibiotics for the nasty infection causing my throat to inflame, a bit of valium to calm my throat muscles ( and me), and oxygen as the level in my blood was low.

Throughout the afternoon my episodes slowly lessened from 1 every 5 minutes to about 1 every 10 minutes then one every half hour and then blessedly to about 1 every hour. Around 5pm, the ENT arrived and gave me a through examination. He also concluded that the problem was throat centered and the treatment was to relax those muscles and to get rid of the infection. Dr. Brian and the ENT wanted me to stay the night so I could be monitored since I was far from episode free.

Even though I continued to improve with the episodes becoming less severe and less frequent, they were reluctant to allow me to come home until I was episode free so they kept me a second night.

Feeling much better. Still on a fair amount of meds, cannot talk for a few more days and feeling weak. Still, MUCH better.

Family Medical Practice is stellar. The staff was attentive, caring and professional...and they all speak English. Dr. Brian is from Canada...I'm a big fan now.

Peter has been more than wonderful: in addition to his own heavy workload, he taught my 15 hour class last week and taught 3 other classes from a new corporate client. Plus, he managed to visit me often and help me heal just by his presence. I am truly blessed with
such a wonderful man!