Geckos

I didn't realize that I would be getting some new pets when I volunteered to work in Vietnam, but, lo and behold, I have a whole assortment of little friends wandering my ceiling and walls. Geckos are everywhere in Vietnam; virtually every room in this country seems to have at least one gecko on it somewhere. They're cute little guys, and for the most part they're are useful. They eat bugs, which are also everywhere in Vietnam. Geckos seem to be somewhat territorial. They stay hidden for the most part in the day, but I think the same ones come out every night. I can identify a few of them through distinctive markings. One gecko is missing part of his tail (I call him Stumpy).

Geckos are not all good, though. They leave little presents for me in my bathroom, where they usually hang out. In fact, one particular corner in my shower is saturated with droppings, a virtual gecko litter box. Geckos aren't quite as loyal or cuddly as my dog Niles back home, but it is kind of nice to have someone (or somethings) to come home to, even if they crap all over my bathroom.

Culinary Adventures

So when I agreed to teach in Vietnam, I knew that the cuisine would be different. I had read that the Vietnamese do eat dog, and I expected a few exotic dishes. In spite of these warnings, Vietnam has exceeded my expectations on the gastronomic front.

Ever since arriving at Dong Thap, I have been invited to several dinners and luncheons, which is really quite kind of the faculty and staff. That having been said, the meals here are not like those in the United States. This past Monday, for example, I was invited to a luncheon by the school's athletic director to honor the opening of the gymnasium for the new year. I accepted, and rode to the restaurant in town on the back of my friend and host Tam's motorbike. We arrived at the restaurant, an open air building with plastic chairs and folding banquet tables. I shook hands with the guests, and took a seat.

The first order of business was the beer. I should add here that the lunch was at 11 AM. Any American rules of waiting until 5 (or even noon) do not apply in Vietnam. The Vietnamese love to drink, especially at official events. Everyone was given a 355 mL bottle of Saigon Special (which I think sounds like some kind of mafioso's prized pistol). As we waited for our food, I began to sip my beer, as I normally would. Every time I tried to take a drink, though, someone would offer a toast, and clink glasses. After a few rounds of this, it dawned on me that whenever someone at the table took a drink, everyone took a drink. As you might imagine, this led to a significant amount of imbibing by all.

Then came the food. In a Vietnamese meal, the courses are served in big bowls or plates, and the guests than take a few bits at a time and place them in their personal bowls. The first dish was lotus seeds, which was pretty good. Then came the peppered cuttlefish, a.k.a. squid. Now, I like calamari, and actually have enjoyed squid in Vietnam before. I've even ordered at a restaurant of my own volition. This, however, was no ordinary squid. This stuff was potent, and was so spicy that I found myself sweating. At a Vietnamese meal, however, it is polite for the hosts to put pieces of food into the guest's bowl. The more important the guest, the more food the host puts in the bowl. Being the foreigner, I am almost always the most honored guest, and my bowl was rarely empty of spicy squid. It is also very rude for the guest to not eat the food placed in his bowl by the host, so I found myself in the awkward position of continuing to eat the food that was making me mop my brow from sweating. I was happy to see the squid finally finished.

At this point Tam informed me that the next dish was crab, a Dong Thap specialty. Being a proud Marylander, I told Tam that I ate crab a lot, and liked it very much. The table was surprised and pleased to hear my enthusiasm through Tam's translation. I was quite shocked, then, when the "crab" looked strikingly mammalian. I asked Tam to explain this apparent discrepancy. He kept saying that this was crab. I finally asked him to spell the name of the dish, and he spelled R-A-T.

That's right, the main course was rat, field rat to be specific. I had read of the famous field rat of Dong Thap, so I wasn't totally taken off guard. Still, rat is rat. The Vietnamese dug in with gusto, and placed half a rat in my bowl. The Vietnamese eat half of the rat all at once (the head is removed), and then spit out the big bones. I couldn't quite bring myself to pop the whole thing in my mouth at once, so I ate it like chicken. To be fair, the rat wasn't bad. At the risk of sounding cliched, it tasted like chicken. It wasn't something that I would order again any time soon, but I decided that I would eat it again if it was served.

Which turned out to be a very good decision, because rat is what was served at the English Deparment's celebratory dinner that same evening. I thought that the second round of rat was a little overdone. At this rate, I'm liable to become a rat connoisseur, which is a heck of a skill to bring to the folks back home.

Rocking Out in the Mekong Delta

After a month of training in Hanoi, I've finally arrived in my new home, Cao Lanh, a laid-back city of 150,000 people in the Mekong Delta. The trip from the airport in Ho Chi Minh City took a little over three hours. After about an hour's worth of driving we began crossing a new bridge every ten miles, so many, in fact, that I lost count. This was my first hint that we'd arrived in the Delta.

I'm quite happy with Cao Lanh. I expected it to be much smaller, but its downtown is actually a hopping place. There's plenty of places to explore, and a lot of people were walking, shopping, and motorbiking when I visited at about 8 PM. The city has dozens of cafes, and a young population that frequents them. There are also several parks to enjoy. One, just off of the downtown district, lies on a small lake with fountains shooting water into the air. It's quite scenic, and I hope to visit soon.

Cao Lanh is clearly not used to Westerners. I've been told by Tam, my university host, that most of the town knows that there are two Americans at the University, and everyone is quite excited. Consequently, I feel like a rock star. I get stares wherever I go, and everyone seems to know that I'm the American man that has come to teach. Today, for example, I walked into the gymnasium with Tam to visit the physical education head. There must have been four hundred students getting ready for a meeting. About half of them stared at me as I looked out over the balcony. I felt like Barak Obama before a rally.

All of this attention seems to be positive, and I don't get negative vibes from the Vietnamese. Most of them seem curious and even happy to have me in their city. They return my smiles, and are put at ease when I say hello or xin chao. Furthermore, I'm not unfamiliar with semi-celebrity status. When I was SGA President a lot of people recognized me on campus. The difference, however, was that I also knew most of the people who knew me. Here, I really do feel like a rock star in that I have no idea who most of these people are. Hopefully my newfound celebrity won't drive me crazy. I would imagine that in time Cao Lanh will get used to me, and that I'll make friends among the student body. Who knows, maybe I'll regret returning to a life of anonymity back in the States.

A Visit to Uncle Ho, Part II

In addition to the mausoleum, my group also toured the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was not what I expected (par for the course in this country). The entryway had a grand staircase that culminated with a giant statue of the man himself. Upstairs, the bulk of the museum seemed to focus on the times of Ho Chi Minh rather than the life. His years abroad, for example, were a rather confusing hodgepodge of images of the Western world from the time period of about 1880 to 1930, with a few images of the likes of Voltaire, hot air balloons and the US Declaration of Independence. Ho himself really didn't make an appearance, but this visual cacophony was meant to succinctly describe about thirty years of the leader's life.

Symbolism seemed to be the key. The American War (aka the Vietnam War to those who remain stateside) was represented by captured American equipment and old North Vietnamese weaponry. Ho's development of Communist ideology was represented by a sort of recreation of the cave he hid in during World War II. The struggle against fascism, which really didn't factor that largely into my reading of Ho's life, was represented with a partial 3-D depiction of Picasso's "Guernica." The museum seemed more dedicating to describing the struggle of the Vietnamese people according to the Party Line than to describing the life of Ho Chi Minh. In my mind, this depiction made the museum all the more fascinating a place to visit, especially as the vestiges of Communism become less and less prevalent in the post-Soviet world.

A Visit to Uncle Ho

This Saturday the group visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, which was a truly unique experience. The Vietnamese have a profound reverence for Ho. The West seems to view Ho Chi Minh only as a Communist, but to the Vietnamese he was a nationalist leader who freed the country for imperialist invaders. This dynamic is particularly important to the Vietnamese, who suffered for a thousand years under Chinese rule. Vietnamese independence is fiercely valued, and Uncle Ho is seen as having led to march to a home-ruled Vietnam.

Despite this emphasis on the nationalist side of Ho, there's no way anyone visiting his mausoleum or museum could possibly forget the leader's communist ideology. Red is splashed all over the compound (and yes, it is a compound), and hammers and sickles abound. The mausoleum itself isn't visible from the main entrance, which only adds to the mystique. The line wraps around the complex for a few hundred yards like lines for a roller coaster. Security is tight. Bags must be checked, and I had to go all the way to the beginning of the line when I foolishly forgot to leave my Swiss army knife at the door. Fortunately the line moves quickly.

Visitors to the mausoleum approach from the side. The building itself is quite formidable and is perhaps the size of the Lincoln Memorial. Military guards in crisp white uniforms patrol the ground, and stand unsmilingly. The line goes up a set of stairs and into the mausoleum itself. Visitors are asked to remove their hats, and my friend David was told to take his hand out of his pocket. Signs state that visitors must act in a solemn and respectful manner, but this doesn't seem necessary, as the Vietnamese themselves remain silent upon entering the tomb.

After going up some more stairs, we finally come to the man himself. Lying in a case in the center of a marble-walled room is the body of Ho Chi Minh. Visitors walk around case slowly. The body is displayed under a sort of eerie orange light. A red star and a gold hammer and sickle are inlaid into the marble wall behind the body. The body itself seems, well, a bit odd. To be fair, I can't claim to have much experience with people who have been dead nearly forty years, but Ho didn't seem quite right. Ho had a plastic kind of look to him. I don't want to make the accusation that the body was fake, or a wax dummy, but I must admit that such a revelation wouldn't shock me.

Perhaps more fascinating than the body itself was the Vietnamese reaction to it. Everyone was silent as we walked past; I felt like I was in a church. The reverence the Vietnamese show for Ho is incredible. This reverence translates awkwardly in the form of the Ho Chi Minh museum, but I'll write more on this next time.

Communism? What Communism?

Today the Fulbright group went to Big C, which is perhaps one of the biggest displays of capitalism and consumerism I have ever seen, certainly not the kind of thing one would expect to stumble upon in Hanoi. Big C is like a cross between Wal-Mart and a shopping mall. The complex rises three stories, looks quite modern. The bottom level has a definite mall feel, with rather fancy stores displaying pricey goods like watches, athletic shoes, and jewelry. The top layer is the Wal-Mart section. The store sold virtually everything, soap, electronics, clothing, motorbikes, camping gear, food, you name it. The top level had a small video arcade. In short, Big C would have fit quite nicely in the suburban America that I know so well.

To cap all of this consumerism off were several restaurants, including Legends Beer (a great place resembling a German beer hall that I'll describe in another post), Highlands Coffee (think Starbucks with a wider food menu), and, believe it or not, Pizza Hut, where our group had dinner.

Truth be told, capitalism seems to be popping out all over Hanoi. Stores line virtually every street and alley, their wares so multitudinous that they spill out onto the sidewalk. Banks and Western businesses are opening up all over the city, their names all over the high-rises that have gone up and are going up on the skyline. The Vietnamese seem to love to shop and haggle, and watching them do business at an open-air market is really quite a treat. Quite frankly, the Vietnamese seem more capitalist than us Americans.

I was told by Vietnamese friends back home to expect a lot of free market enterprises, and the news reports I read told the same story, so I can't say that I'm totally shocked. Still, seeing so much capitalism in a place where the hammer and sickle is still stylish is nonetheless surprising.

Not the Hanoi I Expected

I'm now living in the neighborhood of Cau Giay in West Hanoi. The University of Hanoi is close by, which makes the morning commutes through the sea of motorbikes short. The district follows along a boulevard, also named Cau Giay. Trendy clothing shops line the boulevard, and shopkeepers sport fashions that seem straight out of California or New York.

This trendy thoroughfare is only half of Cau Giay, however. Behind the flashy Western-style storefronts is an entirely different world. Tiny alleys wind and twist for miles. These alleys are also filled with stores, but these stores sell goods and services that seem more accustomed to the Hanoi I was expecting. Food stalls, Internet cafes, motorbike shops, barbers, and fruit stands line the alleys. There are so many shops selling what essentially seem like the same thing that I wonder how they all stay in business.

Having no real obligations today, I simply wandered around the alleys. I'm always amazed by how much is going on in the back streets, and thoroughly enjoy just taking it all in. The shopkeepers stared at me from their storefronts. They don't seem like they're used to seeing Westerners, especially big tall ones like myself. I've caught several Vietnamese raising their hands over their heads as I walk by, presumably referring to my height.

Tomorrow I go back to language training and orientation at the university. The language training has been slow, though I am happy to report that I can read a few key Vietnamese words. I now know that "xin chao" is hello, "tra" is tea, "xe buyt" is bus, and, of course, that "bia" is beer. Pronunciation is difficult, and most Vietnamese seem to have a hard time understanding what I'm saying. Still, I'm happy with any progress, and look forward to perhaps maybe possibly forming complete sentences in the next few weeks. I'll be happy if I can speak like a three-year-old in a couple of months.