Thanksgiving, Hanoi Style

This year the Feldberg Family joined President Obama in declaring an amnesty for some lucky turkey. However, unlike Barack and Michelle, we ate our Thanksgiving dinner on the sidewalk at the corner of Hang Bong and Duong Thanh streets, where a Vietnamese family had set up a grill and a number of low plastic tables, crowded with locals.  We squeezed into a space with Roz, Sarah and Mary perched on the tiny red stools while I, in an attempt to spare my aching knees, sat on a slightly higher blue stool. I was puzzled at being the object of some curious stares by the other diners until I realized I was actually sitting on what they considered a table (think of a guest in your house climbing up on the dining room table to eat – that’s me).  Before I share our Thanksgiving feast with you, however, let me say a few words about food in Vietnam.

We learned a little about the Vietnamese approach to food by taking a cooking class at the Hidden Hanoi center at 137 Nghi Tam, Tay Ho district (crossing the street to get there took all our courage). Our class started with an hour field trip to both the illegal neighborhood  “Moving Market” (so named because it can’t stay open in the same place very long or the authorities come to shut it down) and the larger neighborhood legal market.

Food is very important to the Vietnamese. Indeed they spend a significant portion of the day eating (I think we figured it out as about five small and not-so-small meals a day plus a break for iced coffee at a café). Freshness is highly valued and there are no cooling trays or misting devices here, so everything is brought into the city daily for sale (some items are brought in from the countryside twice daily).  Meat is expected to feel warm to the touch, indicating it is freshly slaughtered and unsold greens are discarded at the end of the day. The fish are swimming before being purchased. We purchased some essentials and headed back to the cooking school where we next met the two other people in our class (a couple of young Australian physicians who insisted their cab driver take a U turn so they wouldn’t have to cross the street!) and then spent a leisurely hour drinking tea with Ms Anh, who explains the philosophy of how flavors are balanced in each meal and how each meal is incomplete if some form of rice is not served.  Then it was off to the kitchen where we were each assigned a task preparing our ingredients and shown the best way to do it. The five of us worked together to prepare the “seafood menu” (a different menu is featured each day of the week). This consisted of green papaya salad, sweet and sour prawns, fresh spring rolls, sour fish soup and, of course, rice. With the assistance of three staff members, we finished in time to consume the efforts of our labors for lunch.

In the states, when someone mentions Vietnamese food, we mainly think of pho (pho  is actually a breakfast food in Vietnam, although it is available and can be consumed all day long). Pho is quite complex with each bowl prepared individually and each preparer creating something unique. But pho is a very (very) small part of the Vietnamese cuisine, which reflects the incredibly varied geographic and climatic regions of the country as well as the ethnic diversity of the population and the season. For example, each banquet and lunch I attended ended with a large bowl of soup and each soup seem to reflect a regional specialty. At our last banquet, the Vietnamese faculty were quite adamant that the soup was a specialty of a village that one of them had come from and was best sampled in that village. What characterizes Vietnamese cuisine is the large variety of  herbs  and fresh leaves that are used  in their varied  dishes. For example, they have a number of different kinds of mint, basil and cilantro and each form is used somewhat differently. They also value contrasting tastes in each dish and so any one dish will have both sweet ingredients and sour ingredients, or spicy ingredients and cooling ingredients. I regret to say that my taste buds have long since lost the discriminating power they once had and I was often unable to discern these subtleties

So what did we have for Thanksgiving? Bia Ha Noi (Ha Noi beer) of course and a selection of the skewers shown below. 

We had choices of salmon, beef, shrimp, snails, corn, fish, potatoes, several types of mushrooms, taro root, tofu, as well as a number of skewers with chunks of unidentified material. It was all very good and since no one around us spoke any English there was no familial discord and, like that First Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, it is amazing how  much can be communicated by  gesticulating and grunting  (like “get off the table, doofus”). 

and, of course

Hanoi Impressions -3 (In which another westerner is stunned by Hanoi traffic)

Hanoi Poem

Outside, car horns shout their concern.

I sleep

Inside, a mosquito whispers in my ear.

I awake

Probably the one aspect of Hanoi  most commented on by Western visitors is the general state of traffic anarchy.  It is almost cliché to bring it up, but it is the case that the traffic here is totally unlike anything I have ever observed. Sarah insists that someone who has not experienced it directly will not really comprehend it from my inadequate description (the analogy that comes to mind (mine, not hers) is giving birth – if you haven’t experienced it, you can’t understand it). Accepting that as probably true, let me attempt a description.

One’s first impression of the traffic here is actually auditory. There is the constant, unrelenting din of car and scooter horns. Here the horn is sounded to warn others not to get in the way, to alert others to one’s presence, to reflect one’s annoyance with other drivers and simply to register that one is still alive and a force to be reckoned with.  I suspect all drivers here are graduates of the Deathwish Driving School and Funeral Home, but that is supposition on my part.

The university is 6 Km (3.6 miles) from my hotel, but the path seems quite circuitous, with numerous turns, reversals of direction and vast uncontrolled intersections to cross.  I initially thought that as one got away from the center of the city and the Old Quarter, things might get a bit less hectic, but the opposite appears to be true.  Starting at around 4 PM it takes a full 50 – 60 minutes to travel the 3.6 miles. Imagine literally thousands and thousands of motor scooters, mixed with trucks, buses, cars (even SUVs) and bicyclists – everyone sounding their horn every moment and everyone trying to avoid stopping for anything. Scooters (even ones carrying small children behind the driver, sneak into the inches between moving cars and trucks.

There are many specific practices I might relate, but let me focus on just one to give you a sense of the place. This is the practice of commandeering the wrong side of the street whenever possible.  The center line of the road dividing the traffic into two opposite flow patterns that we take as nearly an absolute rule, is accepted here as a mild inconvenience. As my university driver approaches a red light he generally decides that if traffic is backed up on his side of the street, he would do best to pull over to the wrong side of the street since it is relatively (but not completely) empty of traffic. The idea is to get to the red light  as it changes so you can dash ahead of the line of cars waiting at the light. The strategy has several weaknesses. First there are cars and scooters turning right from the cross traffic whose way you are now blocking. Second, the cross traffic doesn’t necessarily stop when the light turns red for them  (some scooter drivers take the red traffic light as bad advice). Third, everyone tends to jump the red light and begin to go before it turns green. The result is that two flows of traffic going totally in opposite directions as well as continuing cross traffic meet in the intersection (I exaggerate not at all). Somehow the turmoil of cars, bicycles, scooters and pedestrians dodging one another on the same side of the road manages to resolve itself although precisely how this occurs I cannot tell you since by this point I generally have my eyes closed.

We leave Hanoi tomorrow so this will probably be my last blog entry from Viet Nam.  I may perhaps have some additional reflections to share as I continue to process this experience, but I hope that those of you who have read these rather long and discursive comments have enjoyed them. In the meantime xin chao.

Hanoi Impressions-2 (Life on Bao Khanh Street)

I haven’t entirely abandoned this blog, but since Roz and Sarah arrived late Friday it has been a bit harder to find the time to reflect on what I am seeing.  We also tock a two day trip to Halong Bay, which is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites and is certainly beautiful. 

But today it is back to Hanoi Impressions. Since it is impossible to capture the entirety of this city, I thought I might simply try to record what I see unfolding on the street outside our hotel. We are staying at the Bao Khanh Hotel (at 22 Bao Khanh St.) This is a very short street that runs from Le Thai To street, which borders the beautiful Hoan Kiem Lake, to Hang Trong Street at the other end. Both Le Thai To and Hang Trong are busy streets, but ours is relatively (for Hanoi) quiet. Next to us is another hotel that has been gutted and is currently being renovated. Next to that is the famous Kangaroo Café (worth checking out their web site), which, in addition to decent food, also does tour bookings to Sapa in the north and Halong Bay. The food and service are very nice but this is clearly an establishment that caters to Western tourists who need something a little less foreign.  Two doors to our right is a small storefront store that sells European chocolates, various whiskies, bottled water and cosmetics along with a variety of other essentials. At a diagonal across from our hotel is the crowded Bia Van Bao Khanh, a beer establishment that sets up low plastic tables and stools along the sidewalk and sells a very light local brew of beer for about 30 cents a glass.

The day begins quite early here. By 6:30 AM the street is filled with women crouched on the sidewalk wearing the traditional non la’s (conical bamboo hats), their shoulder pole with its two baskets resting on the ground, selling various greens and fruits that they purchased at the farmers wholesale market during the night. Down the street a few dead and plucked chickens adorn a low plastic table, their feet projecting skyward in what I imagine is a supplication to some avian deity who, it appears,  has failed them. Vietnamese insist on fresh meat and vegetables and shop twice a day, so those chickens were happily pecking at their breakfast a few hours ago. Around the corner on an alleyway vendors are selling freshly butchered meat and fish. I wondered how fresh the fish could be until I saw the supplier stop by with his bicycle on the back of which was a metal tank full of swimming fish. One escaped from his grasp as he handed it down to a vendor and there ensued something of a scramble as the two of them tried to grab the wildly jumping fish.

A walk down Bao Khanh to the Lake at 6:30 AM reveals many groups of people doing varied morning  exercises, each with its own group leader. A bit down the way, middle aged and young men are weight lifting. By 8 AM, the early morning market on Bao Khanh has largely disappeared and now the tiny storefront food vendors are serving out hot bowls of pho – the traditional Vietnamese breakfast.  By 9:30 AM, the breakfast eaters are largely gone from the sidewalks, but the stools in front of the coffeehouse near the end of street are filled with people taking a cup of iced Vietnamese coffee (strong and sweeted with condensed milk).  The “non la” women have largely abandoned their places on the sidewalks (I understand they actually make up an “illegal” market since they do not pay taxes the way the permanent markets do and thus can’t set up permanent shop anywhere). For the rest of the day these women will walk the neighborhood hawking bananas, dragon fruits, limes, oranges, and whatever else is fresh and in season. As the day wears on, the guy pushing the bicycle laden with wicker baskets, conical hats, etc shows up, as do the women who are aggressively hawking T-shirts.

By noon the Bia Van Bao Khanh beer establishment has begun to fill up its sidewalk with drinkers chatting with one another. Vendors continually walk by, men offering shoe shines insist your shoes are scuffed beyond being presentable and offer clogs for you to put on while they carefully polish your shoes (they do a good job!).  The din of taxis, scooters and cars makes a continual background music. A microcosm of Hanoi, all on this short street is commerce: buying and selling. Although people work incredibly long hours here, they still seem to have a smile of acknowledgment for the traveler.

Finally, it is 5 PM and dusk is beginning to soften the outlines of the hundreds of scooters parked along the sidewalks. Across the street, four 5-foot long fluorescent bulbs tied to the railing of the building flicker on in a glaring white light. Bia Van Bao Khanh is now fully busy with small red plastic tables spread out along 50 feet or so, each with four blue stools arrayed around them. Almost all the stools are occupied and have been for some time. Virtually every person there is male, but they are happy to welcome the occasional female or anyone else who has the 3000 Dongs for a glass of beer. Only one? But they are so cheap! Time to throw caution to the wind once again and search out just the right street vendor for tonight’s dinner.

Teachers Day in Viet Nam (During which I am both Honored and Humbled)

Rather than continuing  with my impressions of Hanoi, I need to both process for myself and share with you an event I found profoundly moving.  It was my good fortune to be here on November 20^th,  National Teachers Day.   On this holiday, students honor their teachers and retired teachers are honored by current faculty members. At Hanoi University of Science there is a formal ceremony in the morning, followed by luncheons for each biology division at local restaurants, attended by the faculty and the emeriti professors.

I was given a formal invitation to the ceremony and invited to join the luncheon with the Department of Vertebrate Zoology. My first impression on entering the auditorium for the ceremony was olfactory – there were perhaps 50 – 60 large bouquets of flowers spread two deep across the front tables. It is a tradition here to present such bouquets to individuals for all occasions (I was also presented with one). The room was filled with faculty members and elderly retired professors of both sexes. On the stage a white plaster bust of Ho Chi  Minh was backed by the flags of the communist party and the national flag of Viet Nam and was adjacent to beautiful decorations declaring the event.

The ceremony began with a short speech and the then several undergraduate students performed traditional songs that expressed their admiration and respect  for their teachers (a far better custom than our course evaluation forms).  The girls were striking in their beautiful ao dai’s (the traditional Vietnamese National dress) and also performed a beautiful dance  using large fans arranged to suggest flower petals while other girls fluttering fans to represent butterflies.

This was followed by a slide show that told the history of the university from its origins after the victory over the French (who prevented all institutions of higher education in its colonies) to its present day, including the time when the entire university was moved to the mountains to escape the American bombing of Hanoi. Ripples of excited comments and laughter spilled from the elderly attendees as they spotted pictures of their younger selves carrying weapons, traveling to outlying villages to educate the children and working in volunteer brigades after the war to rebuild the country.

For me, the most profound experience was the fact that I was positioned in a place of honor close to two of the most famous retirees, Dr. Mai Dinh Yen and Dr. Vo Quy. I had met Dr Yen previously when he attended two of my presentations because, even though he is nearly 80, he is still involved in issues of biological education in secondary schools in Viet Nam. After the ceremony he asked if he might meet with me to discuss some ideas and at which time he related some of the story of his life. I sat there amazed as he talked about being a child during the war of independence from the French, his struggles to earn a university degree and his work as the founding member of the department of ecology at the University of Hanoi.  The political fortunes of Viet Nam meant that he had to become fluent in French, learn Russian when science in Viet Nam was under Russian influence,  and finally English to ensure Viet Nam was not cut off from the scientific community. Dr Yen was one of the founding members of the University of Hanoi and laughed about having to quickly learn ecology when he was appointed chair of the ecology department.

At lunch I was seated next to Dr. Vo Quy, who will be 80 in a month but who is still an active scientist, serving on numerous international committees.  Dr Quy  received the Blue Planet award in 2003 (given to two individuals each year who have made significant contributions to our understanding of the environment). Dr Quy had done the key work on the effects of dioxin in the herbicides used by the US government during the “American War” on stillbirths and birth defects throughout the south.  A charming and gracious individual, Dr. Quy shared with me the fact that he was the only scientist smuggled into South Vietnam during the war in order to begin his study on the effect of herbicides on humans. We laughed and joked together and as I stumbled back to my office, bouquet in hand (we had a fair amount of Vietnamese wine at lunch), I felt truly humbled to have been a part of this remarkable event.

Hanoi Impressions (plus soup)

Ah, Hanoi. It is too easy to use terms like intense, overwhelming, chaotic, surreal but they don’t communicate the specificity of the place, so I thought I might try in this entry to draw for you a word picture of what Hanoi is like by focusing on just two aspects.

Let me start with the street food vendors. All along the sidewalk women have set up shop with propane stoves, caldrons of soup or oil and pails of greens, noodles, broth, etc. In addition they spread out low plastic tables, perhaps 12 inches high and tiny plastic stools on which one can squat. The streets are quite dark and at night the vendors and their patrons are shadowy figures, surrounded by parked motor scooters and it is impossible to see where one woman’s territory ends and the next begins. Each vendor prepares a single dish with slight variations. Last night, I finally found the courage to patronize one. As I walked the dark streets, I paused at the corner of Duong Thanh and Hang Bong streets  (one of the few places where light from an adjacent store meant I could actually see the woman and her pails of ingredients. As I paused, she looked up and said “soup?” and I thought “why not?” She gestured at an empty spot and I sat down on the tiny stool, my knees up around my shoulders. After she finished preparing a bowl for another customer, she turned and shouted something at me in Vietnamese. I initially thought it might be  "sit up straight, running dog of imperialism!" but the young Vietnamese couple next to me kindly translated it as "fish or meat?" (I assume they left off the running dog part). It was a lovely large bowl of pho and the total cost for it and a glass of cold tea (also ordered by my kindly neighbors) was $1.25. I was certainly the only non-Vietnamese around - so now I’m ready to go (as long as I always have a young Vietnamese who speaks English sitting next to me).

Another aspect that is striking here is the architecture. It is architectural cacophony. The visual equivalent of a thousand-member chorus with each person singing a different tune (and many off key). It is my understanding that at some point in the past, houses were taxed based on their linear frontage. The wider the house, the higher the tax.  As a result virtually all the old buildings are one room (perhaps 10 feet) wide and very deep and high. To accommodate a very dense population, the houses are adjacent with no space between them. But each house is of a different height and with a distinctive architecture and color. The juxtaposition of angles, levels, materials, etc makes a physical crazy quilt. In addition, almost all the houses (both in the distant neighborhoods as well as here in the tourist district) have a commercial establishment on the street level. Tiny little stores that range from elegant and stylish to dark caverns filled with who knows what. The strangest aspect to this is the clustering of stores. I understood this to be true for historical reasons in the Old city, but even in the neighborhoods, if you see one copy store, you will find ten others adjacent to it. And when you turn the corner you suddenly find twenty storefronts  in a row, all with identical men’s suits in them.  I wish I could adequately capture it with the camera.

   Finally, much of this very large city is a gigantic construction zone on an almost unimaginable scale. I remember thinking the City Center Project in Las Vegas (the largest privately funded project in the U.S. with several hotels, high rise condos, casinos and entertainment centers on 67 acres) was large, but the areas here on which the concrete skeletons of high rise buildings under construction stand is gigantic. Mile after mile what was once rice paddy is now a construction zone. What I find most striking about this building boom is that it suggests that the density of humans in the city is going to rise astronomically!  Which brings us to the traffic – the topic of my next entry.

Day 2: During Which I am Boiled, Beaten and Renounce Capitalism

   I am actually working quite hard here. I am picked up from my hotel at 8:30 AM by Vinh, the university driver who takes me to the Hanoi University of Science (20 – 30 min drive, after which I will never complain about Boston drivers again).  Starting around 9:15 I meet with Drs Quang, Duc and Hoang for 2.5 hours to go over in detail their new curriculum and what I see as strengths, weaknesses, problems, how it relates to what we do at Tufts, etc. These sessions, which are the reason I was invited, are, I believe, actually quite useful for them. We clear up a number of misunderstandings and I begin to understand the powerful constraints that the bureaucracy here puts on any effort to change the system.

   Then they take me out to a gigantic lunch (how are all these people so thin?) with many exotic local dishes (this is definitely not the place to keep kosher) and some local beer. I then have a few minutes to prepare my afternoon Powerpoint presentation which goes from about 2 – 4. Then a few brief minutes packing up, my driver endeavors to drive me home through rush hour Hanoi. Today, however, they have a new surprise in store for me (they tend not to give me much warning) and Mr Nga, Director of International Relations, shows up to tell me he has a special treat in store – he and Dr. Huan are taking me to the absolutely best Vietnamese water therapy and message parlor in all of Hanoi.

   At 5 PM we set out for the  Huong Sen Institute of Acupuncture. Fully equipped with separate areas for men and women – this is one place no tourist would ever stumble onto (it is in an outlying district and down a rather narrow and obscure alley. What is interesting is that Vinh, the driver is included in this rather special outing.  He is a nice man who braves the most insane traffic I have ever seen to pick me up every morning and drive me back to my hotel every evening. If anyone deserves a treat, it is that poor soul and I am deeply pleased that my visit has provided an excuse for him to enjoy this perk.

  The Huong Sen institute is quite a scene and there are definitely no instructions printed in English.  I follow my colleagues example, getting undressed and then handed a pair of boxer shorts in which I first take a cleansing shower (boy is that water HOT). Then I head for a small individual wooden barrel into which I barely fit and filled with HOT water and some herbal “restorative” that ends up leaving my skin stinging like hell. From there I move into a modern individual hydrotherapy tub with (you guessed it) HOT water jets and more herbal restorative.  This would be extremely relaxing if it weren’t for the stinging I experience over every inch of my body. From there it is into the obligatory steam room (kinda warm) for 10 minutes or so and then into the sauna room (which actually feels a bit cool to me – what’s with these wussies?). Finally, it is back into the shower, a quick towel down and we are awarded with a new pair of boxer shorts and a robe. We then each head off to a small room for a full hour Vietnamese message. Either this is normally an extremely  intense message or this young woman is making a powerful political statement against western imperialist tendencies.  I start out as resolute as John McCain, but do finally break down and fully admit the errors of our capitalist ways  when she starts walking on my back (she was not all that light!).  One thing of note – she really thought my beard was hilarious and couldn’t stop giggling  - must have tickled her fingers when she was doing the face message.

  After I get dressed, the whole event is completed in a dining room in which I am served ginger tea (very powerful!) and some kind of fish soup. I’m trying to think what would be the Boston equivalent to this experience, but absolutely nothing comes to mind.  Any suggestions?

The Vietnamese Language: Lesson One

Although it was my intention to listen to my Vietnamese language tapes  for 45 minutes a day for the two weeks prior to my trip,  it turned out I only managed get through the first 15 minutes of  tape #1 before I fell asleep on the flight from Los Angeles to Seoul. As a result, my Vietnamese language skills are not totally what I hoped they might be.

   In addition,  Vietnamese  is not for the faint-hearted. Although it is a monosyllabic language (all the words are of one syllable) it is very subtle in having six different tonal qualities. Thus a simple word (like “la”) can be said with a flat mid-level tone, with a low and falling tone, with a low and rising tone, with a high broken tone (starts a bit above mid level, dips slightly, then rises sharply), with a high and rising tone or with a low broken tone. And, of course, it has a different meaning with each tone.  Thus, depending on the precise tone, “la” can mean:

to be

to cry

leaf

very tired

pure    or

strange’

    This means that understanding spoken Vietnamese takes a much (much) more sensitive sense of hearing that I currently possess and it is relatively easy to be misunderstood should you have the courage to try to express yourself. For example, the standard Vietnamese soup, pho (which we quite naturally pronounce as “fowe” is more correctly pronounced “fa”.  Ask for “fowe” and the waitress will think you want your belly tickled (actually, I just made that up….. but you get the point).

    As a result, most of my communication with the vendors near the hotel has been by gesticulating and grunting (Roz will tell you I communicate in much the same way at home, but that is not entirely true). The hotel staff informs me that the vendors' nickname for me is now “Feral Tourist, Raised By Wolves”.

    However, despite my hesitations, I started my presentation today (having been coached by Mrs Huy and Long, the faculty visiting Tufts from Hanoi)  with the greeting

“Xin chao, cac baan” (sin jow kak ban) which translated (I hoped) as

(polite) hello (plural) friend

At which point they broke into spontaneous applause, which means I AM THE DUDE!

Sincerely

Ross Feldberg – Master Linguist

With A Little Help From My Friends

    Since I have never traveled in Asia I have no standard of comparison, and Hanoi may be similar to other big Asian cities, but there is no doubt that  Hanoi is INTENSE.  The level of activity, the density of motorcycles, people and shops  and the apparent chaos of it all make it both exciting and stressful. My introduction, however, has been made much (much) easier by the help of two individuals. Dr Nghia  (Nghia is his first name – the practice here is to use an honorific together with the first name – thus I would be Mr. or Dr. Ross), my main contact at the Hanoi University of Science, came by on Saturday morning with his nine year old daughter, Lam to help smooth my transition. His presentation of an envelope from HUS with some Vietnamese bills in it for me to use as spending money meant that I didn’t have to change money immediately.  After he went out on an errand to pick up an adaptor plug for my computer, his daughter, who had refused to talk at all, suddenly became very verbal. In the midst of our conversation, she looking around my hotel room and noted that there were two large beds. “There are two beds. When your wife come next week will you sleep in one bed or two?” Whoa, I’m thinking, “I’ve traveled (literally) half way across the world to discuss my marital relations with a nine year old?” When I ask her how she has learned such good English, she reveals it is all due to the Disney channel (eat your heart out PBS!).

   The second person who has made this transition much easier is our friend Mary Gallagher who spent last year teaching English in southern Vietnam and is spending this year teaching computer science at Truong Dai Hoc University in Hanoi. Before I even got here, Mary had purchased a cell phone and SIM card for me and left them at the front desk of the hotel (no small effort since I am at least 45 minutes by bus from where she lives). Mary came in to meet me on Saturday afternoon to show me the Old Quarter and teach me how to cross the street. Those of you have visited Hanoi know that this is the most essential skill to learn here. Indeed, there are two kinds of tourists who visit Hanoi. Those, who on the first day they arrive suddenly  discover that they subscribe to the life philosophy that everything they need is already on their side of the road and there is no need whatsoever to cross any street, and those who suffer from delusions of invincibility.  There are very few traffic lights here and the ones I have seen appear to be taken as suggestions, not commands. From the various guidebooks, I know that the trick to crossing a busy street is to walk slowly and at a steady pace without stopping so that the thousands of motorcycles and scooters can swerve around you. To that Mary adds the most important rule (missing from the guidebooks!) – you do NOT step in front of any car, bus or truck because they cannot swerve to go around you given that they are surrounded on both sides by scooters. The U-tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ud844wlAg

Shows the idea, but the road these young women are crossing is virtually empty compared to what is the normal pace of traffic.  I have now crossed the street twelve times and have begun to realize that everything I need in life is indeed on this side of the street.

    Tomorrow I start my work at the university. They have me scheduled from 9 – 5 every day so it should be a busy (and interesting) week. I do hope I have something useful to tell them. 

Two Things Never To Do in Hanoi

First to my initial misadventures… my entry to Vietnam was quite different from my expectations – and again stresses the importance of being sure you understand fully whomever you are talking to. I had read quite a bit about all the various scams the Hanoi folk use to extract money from naïve visitors and the American sitting next to me mentioned that Hanoi was indeed problematic in that regard.

   The First Thing They Tell You Never To Do (which, of course, I did)

. To my surprise there was no one to greet me on my arrival in Hanoi airport.  I stayed at the entry point for 15 minutes or so, but no one with a sign was there for me. Finally, a “nice” young man came up to me and asked if I was waiting for someone. I told him yes, and he then asked if I wanted to borrow his cell phone to call that person. That seemed quite agreeable and I called Dr. Nghia to find out what was happening. Now, perhaps it was due to my having gone 27 straight hours without more than an hour of sleep, but our conversation was confusing. A driver should have been there, but perhaps he was also picking someone else up or there was some other problem and maybe I should just take a taxi to the hotel. But, it was all a bit unresolved  and I failed to make sure I understood what was happening. At this point the “nice”young man asked if I wanted him to find me a taxi.  Yes, I said (FIRST MISTAKE). About 5 minutes later he comes in to get me, but it is his car that he is driving and not a taxi. He (and his friend) will drive me to the hotel for $15 – which I know is about the standard fee. Ok I say (but my brainstem is yelling “you’ve done this before schmuck, NO!) Attribute it to exhaustion or just my general state of confusion and finding no one to greet me, I get in. The “adventure” begins….

The first thing that happens – and this may have not been anything wrong, but after we leave the airport we take an “alternate route”.  The driver points out to me that the bridge leading from the airport is under construction and there is total gridlock – this is true I see, traffic is backed up for miles and going nowhere. We are going to avoid sitting in traffic for hours but will have to take a very roundabout route (60 km rather than 40 km). Off we go away from the highway and down a series of pitch dark back roads. I think what they tell me is true since the road is filled with motorbikes coming from the airport and all going in the same direction that we are. The ride is an adventure as we swerve around motorbikes, cross back to our side of the road as oncoming traffic looms up and sound the horn every 15 seconds to warn the unwary of our approach. After 5 minutes I decide that perhaps I should put on my seatbelt. It takes a long time to get to the outskirts of Hanoi, but the guy is a very good driver overall and the car is a nice modern vehicle. We make pleasant conversation but then the bomb drops. Once we are in Hanoi they point out they are low on gas and need some dong (local currency) for gas. We will need to stop at a cash machine and I need to get some local currency for them. (ALARM!!!!! – I’ve read about this one. You (not me!) get some local currency not knowing what anything is worth and instead of them taking 35,000 dong ($5) for gas they take 350,000 dong ($50) to rip you off. I may be tired, I may be confused, I may be a schmuck in the first place, but there is no way they are playing me for this one. No way, I say- take me to the hotel – we agreed on $15, but I have a $20 bill and just take me to the hotel and they can have the $20. Now ensures a shouting match. “You are an evil person!” they shout. “You are scamming me, forget it” I shout . This goes back and forth for  quite a while. Take me to the hotel, I yell. You are not a nice person they shout. At least they make no allegations about the legitimacy of my birth. We get back in the car and they drive another few blocks and stop at the corner of what has to be the darkest street I have ever seen (the corner is well lit, but the street leading off it is pitch black). Hotel down this street they say. I know this is bullshit, but I so eager to be quits of them,  I give them the $20,  grab my bags and get out of the car. They are kind of standing there waiting for me to set off, but there is no way I am heading down that dark street with the two of them standing there.

 The Second Thing the books say Never To Do in Hanoi:

 Having done the First Thing, well, why not do the Second Thing and get them both over with?   As it happens there is an old guy (well, actually my age) on a motorcycle who happens to come by at that moment. “You need ride?  (The extent of his English).  I pull out the piece of paper with the hotel name on it.   Yes, he confirms it is indeed down that dark street, but then (a detail the other fine fellows neglect to mention) it is a left turn and another 3 km.  Want a ride?  To show me how much he pulls out of his wallet a 20,000 dong note and a 10,000 dong note. With the exchange rate at 17,000 dong to the dollar, this seems like a reasonable price. I pull out 2 $1 bills. He looks a bit dubious, but pockets them and off we go. What do the guidebooks all say? Riding on these motorcycle taxis is very dangerous. Tourists should not do this, particularly with a large suitcase wedged between the driver and yourself and with a large backpack on your pack.  Now I find myself  with my backpack on my back, my large suitcase jammed between me whizzing through the old district of  Hanoi at midnight. Now it is us the cars are beeping as we swerve around various vehicles. I can’t see very much but the one thing I do notice is that he is wearing a helmet and I am not.  But this somehow comforts me – I am pleased that he is concerned about his own personal safety.

Five minutes later we do arrive at the hotel to my great relief. There is a phone message for me – please call Mr Nghia. Mr Nghia now informs me that he was looking for me at  the airport, but that perhaps he arrived a few minutes late due to the traffic. Now I am again confused… Didn’t he tell me that the driver might not be there that I should take a taxi? Again, a reminder to myself – don’t be afraid to ask the same question three ways to make sure they understand the question and I understand the answer. In any case, I did get here safely  (and with a story to boot!) and got some sleep last night and just had a nice Vietnamese breakfast buffet in the hotel. Time to call Mr Nghia again. He is scheduled to come by the hotel this morning and they have also scheduled to take me out to dinner tonight.

The lad has his own blog (Beware!)

Good Lord, I've just set up a blog account! And me, one of the last humans on the face of the earth without a cell phone ("just a passing fad" I maintain). Hopefully I won't bore you unnecessarily and promise no more posts until I actually have something to relate.