I'm back in HCMC sitting with the girls in my program at our favorite nearby coffee shop called Trun Nguyen, savoring each minute of internet access after a wonderful five day excursion in the city of Dalat in the central highlands. We used the Phuong Trang Bus line, which is a public bus that runs throughout the country. After barely making the bus because of horrendous traffic on the cab ride to the bus stop, I felt both relieved and excited. Even though it is a relatively long bus ride to Dalat (it takes about six hours, but with traffic a few more), the scenery was just incredible. Here are a few things I observed on the bus ride. Similar to my experience landing by plane in this country, the colors are striking and unique. Even the poorest shacks and shanty towns we passed through on this drive were often full of color, exposing a hodge-podge of varying colors. Tarps seemed consistent as a means to repair holes or damage to people's homes. In addition, the laundry lines pinned with clean clothing added to this sense of color that seemed so tangible to me. In general, the scenery on this drive was completely in line with what I pictured the outskirts of HCMC to be like before I came – sort of a mix of tropical plants and trees with shacks, rural roads, girls wearing the au dais (traditional Vietnamese dress), more rustic mopeds than in the city, bikes, pagodas, and women selling produce on the side of the road wearing the typical Vietnamese conical hats. I know it may seem like a crazy analogy, but the mountainous landscape lined tightly with trees (and waterfalls!) looked just like broccoli. Just imagine a giant, massive piece of fresh broccoli and you will understand what the wilderness of the central highlands of Vietnam looks like!
Using a public bus like this one in Vietnam implies a pretty jam packed bus, a bus attendant to announce the stops, really awful Chinese action movies on the bus TV, and a few stops for the bathroom and eating lunch. Only in Vietnam can you stop at a rest stop and have vendors selling all sorts of tropical fruits, rather than fast food, beef jerky, ice cream, sunflower seeds, and whatever else American rest stops specialize in! The bathrooms at these rest stops are also quite interesting. Just like you would in any traditional Vietnamese home, you remove your shoes before entering and place a pair of indoor flip flops on, which the bathroom provides (pretty unsanitary once again if you think about it). At these rest stops, there are so many child beggars. Children who seemed to be between three and six years old walked up and down alongside the buses, barefoot and barely wearing clothing, with a small plastic bucket. Given their body sizes, these children were clearly malnourished. One of them was even holding a newborn baby in one hand and her begging bucket in the other. It was another reality check this country just seems to throw at me – we live such privileged lives in America. It is sometimes so painful for me to see how so many other people live and struggle to get by.
Once we arrived in Dalat, I couldn't help but notice the difference in temperature and landscape. Dalat is located in a much hillier terrain than HCMC and is built in the valley of mountains. Houses line the mountains surrounding the more developed city in the valley. Even though the streets are a bit narrower and curvier, the city is not rustic or rural. Right off the bat, the more European and romantic feel of the city was evident to me, which I found out later is very accurate considering the city of Dalat was built by the French. There is even an Eiffel Tower in the center of the city along the lake in the valley. A canal of water originating in this lake flows throughout the city as well. The streets are a bit more narrow, rustic, curvy, and intimate. Although there are still many mopeds, the distance between them is probably tripled compared to HCMC and the flow of traffic in general seems a bit slower and a whole lot calmer. In Dalat, you can take a deep breath and not feel as though you are contaminating your lungs as you feel in HCMC. Little European-like coffee shops are everywhere in Dalat as it is known as the coffee and tea capital of Vietnam. Even the food has a more French feel to it – rice almost consistently is replaced in the diet in Dalat by French baguettes. Dalat is also known as the flower and vegetable capital of Vietnam. Wild flowers, flower farms, and vegetable gardens are everywhere – so gorgeous! The weather is also significantly cooler and crisper– although the city has a five month rainy season, the cooler and less humid temperature (in addition to the quieter hustle and bustle of the city) was an extraordinary relief. This sense of relief became even more apparent once Alex and I met our home stay family and moved into their home for our short five day stay.
The first evening with Vy's family (home stay mom) was the best evening I've had since I got here so far. When we got to the hotel where all the host families greeted us with small bouquets of local flowers, I immediately (and superficially) wanted Vy to be Alex and my host mom. Her long hair with dainty ringlets, hells with bright pink outfit, and smiling face made her come across so inviting and friendly. When she turned out to be our host mom, both Alex and I were excited. We hopped in a cab with our luggage and drove to her home beginning on narrow paved roads, which gave way to rocky, curvy, dirt roads, leaving only enough room for one car and maybe a moped too if it squeezed next to the car. The area appeared quite wealthy for Vietnamese standards, with a colorful array of actual homes versus apartments located in alleys (like my HCMC host family), which ranged from single story to tall, narrow three story homes. We bumped up and down on these roads for a few more minutes and finally reached Vy's beautiful three story, bright violet colored home. So quaint and beautiful (which we found out later makes sense considering her husband is a well known architect in Dalat!). A rod-iron gate surrounded this colorful gem of a home while their small dogs barked from inside. The view from her home is also spectacular – a massive flower farm is just down the hill spanning nearly the entire horizon, with the bustling city center also in viewer eyesight. I can't describe his feeling Alex and I had upon entering her home. Not only was the home spotless, clean, artsy (her brother is an incredible artist), colorful, large, and beautiful, and peacefully quiet, but meeting the rest of her family was SUCH a treat! Her children and husband live in the main house together and her parents and sister's family live in a house sort of jointly built onto the violet house. The stronger sense of community and family became clear immediately. As I learned after talking more with the family (mostly through hand motions and constant use of the English-Vietnamese dictionary), people tend to be born, raised, and married in Dalat. Vy's father, who speaks no English but is an adorable old man that reminded me of Grandpa (hand gestures, smile etc) spent about half an hour with Alex and me drinking tea in the living groom while Vy cooked dinner. Although we could not really communicate, Alex and I realized that even a technically superficial conversation due to language barrier is really not superficial when it comes down to it- we used our hands, the Vietnamese language skills we are acquiring, a map of the United States, and our logic to figure out how to communicate. It was a fun and challenging experience.
Dinner the first evening was fantastic as well, even though neither Alex nor I could eat one bite of food without having one of the grandparents use their chopsticks to add more food to our bowls. They all complemented my chopstick skills, which clearly means that I have progressed in the last few weeks considering how awful I was before getting here. The grandmother also complemented how beautiful my eyes are, telling me that I looked like her people. I have been told I look Spanish or South American, which always gets me, but NEVER Asian! Alex and I got a kick out of that. After dinner, we went to Vy's coffee shop. Their two adorable kids (one boy who is five and one girl who is seven), piled into their old 1950's bench seat car and drove down the bumpy, gravely road as it started to drizzle. I felt like I was going back in time – from the car, to their style of dress, to the undeveloped roads around their home. The coffee shop was Alex and my favorite part of the evening. We are both the coffee addicts in the group, so they definitely chose well with the home stay families giving us the family who owns a coffee shop. The coffee shop was so quaint, located near Dalat University. It is a five room house, with each room a different theme, but all revolving around "love" (the name of the coffee shop is Eros Coffee and Dalat is often called "The City of Love"). Each room in the house was delicately arranged with tables, chairs, fireplaces, and beautiful art. The outdoor courtyard was also designed with beautiful outdoor furniture, a bon fire, a little creek running throughout, and swings as well. What a contrast to the uniform and boring design of Starbucks in America! Alex and I had the best coffee ever – which Vy made for us especially – a mixture of three types of strong blends from a coffee plantation in northern Vietnam. After an hour or so, the rain began to really pick up, so we got back into the family car and did a little driving tour of the town, the gardens, markets, and saw the gorgeous lake in the center of the town, and then headed home and went to sleep by 9:30 pm. It was SO relaxing and necessary after the last few weeks of intense travels.
The first day of the excursion we visited Dalat University after a breakfast of beef pho and a run that absolutely terrifying (EVERYONE was just staring at me! It is so much worse in this rural setting). We had a lecture by Professor Hung about Higher Education in Vietnam at Dalat University, which exposed to us the similarities and differences between the education systems in America and in Vietnam. The system here is clearly in need of some major changes, such as keeping the qualified students in the country to study rather than studying abroad, improving the male to female ratio among students, and increasing the number of qualified and educated professors). After the lecture, over green tangerines and sweet butter crackers, we talked with students in the English club at the University. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant, where the food was a bizarre mixture of French, American, Vietnamese, and whatever cuisine eats ostrich on a regular basis (it was actually really good). After a short discussion about coffee culture in Vietnam and in particular in Dalat, we had the opportunity to visit a coffee shop next door. We learned how in Vietnam, especially in Dalat due to the French influence, drinking coffee is as much about sharing company and partaking in social interaction as it is about the coffee. Coffee is just the excuse to converse. For this reason, coffee here, always brewed in individual French presses with a thin layer of sweetened condensed milk onto which the coffee brews, is a slow, slow process. Unlike the American "coffee on the go" culture with a focus on a huge, hot cop, Vietnamese coffee requires time, leisure, social interaction, and savoring the robust, thick flavor.
After our coffee we headed to a monastery up in the mountains. The silence and peacefulness upon entering the gates of the pagoda was absolutely striking. The smell of incense traveled from the meditation room, which coupled with the cool breeze, felt so cleansing. What a contrast to HCMC! Go Thanh (academic director) is Buddhist, so after she completed her meditation in the temple, we met with the head monks at the monastery library over small cups of green tea. We discussed Zen meditation, sutras, the five principles of Buddhism, and much more. Although the discussion was interesting and special considering these monks' status, the formality of the lesson was a bit intimidating. The meditation was so evident in everything these monks said and their behavior in general. When a fly landed on them, for example, they did not flinch or swat at it, they simply focused on the conversation we were having until they flew away. We had the privilege of entering the inner quarters of the monastery, where only a selected few may go and where silence is of the upmost importance. A slight misty rain accompanied us through the gates, where we were greeted by the most incredible and expansive gardens that I have ever seen, with the most intricate planting layouts and shocking colors. The head nun showed us through these gardens and into the nun meditation room, where the nuns meditate four hours daily in two separate segments, once from 3:30 – 5:30 AM and again from 7:30 – 9:30 PM. They also only eat two meals a day, skipping dinner and eating a simple broth soup instead. We got a chance to learn how to meditate and position ourselves in the unique Lotus position they meditate in each day. All the yoga I've been doing helped me snap right into the lotus position and it was actually really comfortable! At first when we sat in the library with the monks, I was both taken and impressed by the way of life these people lead and the permanence this lifestyle seems to uphold. By the time we spent four hours at the monastery, however, I realized how isolated and artificially immune these people are to the world. Relationships with others than themselves and those in the monastery are virtually impossible since they can only visit home once every three years.
After the monastery visit, we headed home and helped Vy and her entire family cook dinner. I loved partaking in this family affair of cooking dinner. We made rice flour pancakes with shrimp sauce and wrapped spring rolls together. Everyone worked together and Alex and I had such a special and unique opportunity to learn from them. That evening, Vy, her mother, Alex, and I made soymilk from scratch! Not only was it delicious, but the experience was so interesting. You soak whole soy beans for one whole day, wash them, place them in a blender with 1/3 beans and 2/3 water and then proceed to do a series of straining in order to isolate the liquid from the pulp. Although it took a while to make, it was DELICIOUS! I can't wait to try to make it when I get home to the States. Vy explained that she and her family drink a glass of this hot soy milk each evening before bed.
The next day was just as chalk full of activity, but I'm running out of time before class so I am going to have to condense my descriptions unfortunately! In the morning we had a relaxing class outside the hotel our academic director stayed at over coffee and tea and discussed the readings we have been reading about Vietnam and development. We had a Vietnamese language lesson as well (see we also study here!) and then went to this man's home up the hill on another hilly, gravelly road. He makes these beautiful calligraphy drawings for a living, although you would never know you were in Vietnam in his home. He wears a French burette, speaks French fluently, and his home was so European feeling and not Asian at all. Dalat in general felt this way a lot. We played some music together on his guitar and got a chance to do some of our own calligraphy using his materials. Having doodled in all sorts of scripts in my notebooks my whole life, this experience was completely up my alley! We had the afternoon to explore the city, so we all visited the Dalat outdoor market. Okay, maybe the city of Dalat feels French, but the market is completely Asian. There were crowds and crowds of people and so much fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish to see. Much of the meat selection were still living, including the bowls of maggots, fish, octopus, and so many other disgusting creatures impossible for an American eye to recognize. Because it was the mid-Autumn festival that evening, the Chinese dragon and parade came right through the market street as children sang and danced. We even ran into another white person, who happened to be the tallest man I've ever seen in my life. Alex (the basketball player in my group) went over to him and we took some pictures of them towering over EVERYONE in the street. It was really entertaining! That evening we attended a local school's mid-Autumn festival show, had dinner with our host families, ate the traditional mid-Autumn festival moon cakes (made from rice of course) and spent some more time with our host families.
The last day we headed to the Lat ethnic minority community house in their village. I guess you could equate this ethnic minority to a Native American tribe in the U.S. They live in a separate village and still uphold the traditions of their heritage. They eat everything (including monkey and tiger) and make this special wine from the roots of trees, which they ferment over a long period of time in special jugs. They also specialize in weaving. We hiked to the peak of the Langbian mountain with some members of the tribe, which was a pretty rigorous hike. The views were unlike anything I have ever seen in my whole life. That night we did a cultural exchange with them, learning some of their tribal dances. One boy found a special liking for me, asking me to dance with him every chance he had and asking me to share in a special drink of the strange wine with him. It was also so funny. We slept on the floor of the wooden cabin and swatted the cockaroaches off our blankets quite frequently, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. Our group gets along so well, so the lacking the small comforts is not a big deal to us. The next morning we got on the bus and headed back to HCMC. The traffic was horrendous, so it took a longer time than expected. We are here in HCMC until tomorrow when we head to the Mekong Delta for 10 days. Miss you all! Again sorry this is not the best post, but this loud coffee shop is not so conducive for my writing! I would love to hear from you all too! I love receiving your emails.
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