Life in the Alleyway

This was supposed to be posted last night but the internet went out until today…

It is now about 5:30 pm on Thursday evening and I am upstairs on the third floor in my room waiting for Mrs. Zoom to get home from work so we can have dinner. I am listening to very heavy rainfall outside my open windows as it hits the various apartment rooftops in this alleyway and gushes out of poorly designed gutter systems. At all points of the day, it is very, very noisy in this neighborhood. Right now I also hear the sounds of children screaming, people sneezing, conversing, loud karaoke music, and dishes clanking together. I was lucky enough to have Tui (our program assistant who is 23, an incredible mentor and friend to have on this trip) take me home in this rainstorm on her moped so that I would not have to walk. Just when you think drivers are crazy here in normal, non-rainy conditions, it just gets more insane when it is raining. People cut corners completely, driving all over the sidewalk to avoid standstill traffic. As a result, the traffic patterns are even further from patterns and much more like chaos. Today I even saw a truck literally hit a driver on a moped and then drive off, leaving the moped driver on the pavement. My cab driver sped up to chase after the hit-and-run truck and proceeded to reprimand him by yelling out his window. Needless to say, the truck driver still did not turn around after this whole thing happened…

With today's moped ride as an exception, I always walk to the University and back each day, which takes about 35 minutes in each direction. Even though I'm the only SIT student who has to walk rather than being driven by moped by a member of the host family, I have learned how to appreciate this walk. I see so many unique fragments of street culture, many of which are literally engrained into my memory. Before reaching the main street, I walk through the winding alleyway, which to be honest has become my favorite part of my walk to school. These alleys are just filled with scenes of Vietnam that no tourist can see. Tourist books of Vietnam should recommend to readers to just find one of these alleys and walk down it, making note of whatever it is that you see. It is impossible not to be completely intrigued by the activities that go on behind the scenes of the main and hustling streets. The scenes down my alley I believe epitomize urban Vietnam as I have learned to understand it. Despite the narrow walkway, women squat to the side hand washing dishes with soapy water that overflows from the buckets and trickles down the path, leaving a smell of soap mixed with rotten food. I see the same man everyday sitting on a mini lawn chair repairing the soles of shoes. Women squat to the side carving pieces of red meat into various colorful bowls, throwing the bones or unwanted pieces to the side (though it seems like people here eat every part of the meat). Sometimes I can even look into the apartments and see little snippets of life as well, like what appeared to be a sewing shop with a wife and husband sewing together with the TV blasting a popular Vietnamese soap opera.

Once I exit the alley and hit the hustle and bustle of the streets, I don't just see mopeds swarming the streets but also other little scenes like the ones in the alley that are so unique to this city. For example, in the MIDDLE of the sidewalk down the road from my house, there is an independently standing reclining barber chair with a barber and all, in addition to a line of men waiting to get their hair trimmed by the various tools placed on a metal tray next to the chair. An elevated slab of concrete on one segment of sidewalk further down the road was the spot where six men and women played card games (and also gambling hence the 100,000 Dong bill placed next to the cards, which is about $5 dollars). Sunglass shops. Wooden, hand-drawn open carriages roaming up and down the street, filled to the brim with bananas and a scale to weigh them before buying. This morning I bought an entire plastic bag filled with bananas for 500 Dong, which is equivalent to a few pennies. Women squatting on the side of the road with a small handful of chom chom fruits (small red, spikey fruits…delicious). Cyclo and moped drivers begging me to have a ride. Men literally squatting, on the sidewalk, playing a game with small, round marble pieces. A woman methodically peeling pomellos in large quantities and throwing the thick, yellowish peels to the side. Motorbikes driving and parking all over the sidewalk so that there are actual blocks where you must walk on the street because of the lack of space to walk. I have also begun walking through the sculpture garden near the Reunification Palace to cut out an entire corner of heavy moped traffic. Unlike the parks I have run in here, this park is really beautiful and dozens of people do Tai Chi along the pathway near the sculptures. This park is something I now look forward to everyday! I have never been so appreciative of a semi quiet sculpture garden before. I know these are all just little segments, pieces, moments of my 35 minute walk, but to me these are the little moments that I remember each night when I go to sleep and that I hope I will remember when I leave this country and return back to the completely different pace of life in America.

I have finally found a park big enough to actually RUN here! It is around the corner and down the block from my house. There are actually people running in the park too! I never had a chance to write about my experience running in Can Tho in the Mekong Delta in the park each morning near my home stay there, so I will use this opportunity to write about both experiences! If I were a writer, I would definitely write a book about my adventures in Vietnam, told through my experiences running in various parks throughout the country. As annoying as it is sometimes to get up at 5:30 AM to run before the heat sets in, I have had so many memories made from these runs. The park in Can Tho was much smaller than the park here. It was essentially a deserted theme park with rusty carousels, swings, and other rides and sculptures. Men and women flooded the park each morning (unless it was raining, in which case I was the ONLY runner…I really don't understand the Vietnamese fear of exercising in the rain when it rains so often). Many played badminton along the path or did various forms of "movements" or "morning exercises" as they call them here. I say "movements" for lack of a better word. In Vietnam, no one really runs, except for the five or so runners I saw in the park this morning. Everyone else in the park exercising do MOVE their bodies, but these movements are completely different from running or playing any other sport. What I mean is, the men and women working out in the park simply move their bodies in repetitive motions while sitting on benches, standing, leaning against the park gate, or even lying on the grass. These movements include head bobbing, flexing arms and releasing them, swinging legs over and over while sitting on a bench, etc. Older women in the center of the park were definitely doing a variation hokey pokey. All these things make for pretty entertaining running experiences!

A note about food: we have completely branched out to the street food! It turns out that it is a) delicious and b) the cheapest food I have ever eaten. For lunch today, for example, I had a baguette with a cooked egg, salt and pepper, cucumbers thinly sliced, and soy sauce. This meal cost 5.000 Dong, which is probably less than 50 cents! The street coffee is also really delicious, and now that I've been here a month, I can even tolerate the ice without any stomach issues. Not only have we branched out to the street food, but we have stopped going to restaurants filled with foreigners or more expensive entrees (and by expensive I mean over 1 dollar). As long as you go to crowded places to eat, you are generally okay. Our favorite pho restaurant, for example, looks like the inside of a garage with a retractable door and everything. The tables are simple metal tables with little metal stools. On each table in restaurants like these here, there is a plastic canister of chopsticks, bottles of hoi sin sauce, a container of toothpicks, spoons (for the pho combined with chopsticks if you are eating it properly). There are also little plastic plates of cut up limes and chili peppers. Even though these restaurants look dirty, and probably are, the food is delicious and cheap, and no one has gotten sick at all yet from these types of places. In fact, my roommate in Can Tho had violent food poisoning one night after eating at a fancy restaurant. Needless to say, I didn't eat very much myself for a few days after this now infamous night of taking care of Abby. I definitely thought we would make it to the hospital at some point that night, but she was a trooper and survived without!

Also relating to food, I have had the opportunity to try so many foods that I never have tried before, and many of which I never hope to try again. For example, I have had a glass of bird's saliva. Yes, that's right folks. I did say a bird's saliva. It is this drink here called "Bird's Nest," which is made from the saliva of a certain bird that is indigenous to Halong Bay and whose nests are made from the bird's actual saliva. They basically extract the saliva and add sugar to it and maybe some water, and it is sold in cans (and is very expensive). My host family in Can Tho told me about it the night before I tried it and they were so excited to have me drink this special drink. Needless to say, I drank it with as much enthusiasm as I could possibly foster. It was the texture of …well, mucus. Maybe a little thinner with pieces of white specks floating in it. I'll stop talking about it now because I am trying to work up an appetite for dinner and I'm sure you all have heard enough too! I have also eaten duck eggs, fermented fish, and a whole bunch of mysterious meat substances and floating meat balls…

Generalizations about Vietnamese culture: we spent much of our Culture and Development lecture yesterday talking about the cultural domains in the U.S. as compared to Vietnam. Our professor reiterated to us something we have all already noticed. That is, the passivity and acceptance which are dominant features in the Vietnamese people. For example, the traffic situation here. Unlike in America where a traffic jam or unfavorable traffic conditions often cause road rage, outward displays of emotions, or even social action if the situation is bad enough, here people just accept the traffic chaos and deal with it. They don't resist or try to change it. In a lot of ways I think this acceptance can be a positive thing, especially given so many other realities of living here, but at the same time it can prevent the social change that is so characteristic of America. It prevents building the needed infrastructure to change problems. Other small differences in culture or rather differences in social norms, the Vietnamese have a completely different conception of time than in the U.S. It is almost considered RUDE to be early! In fact, for any social gathering, like a wedding for example, one should be at least 30 minutes late. I see this difference of time more as a "plus fifteen minute" rule, however. Any event, class, lecture, or place we go to, it is completely acceptable to be at least 10 minutes and up to 15 minutes late. Another small difference is the almost non-existent use of toilet paper. When I asked my home stay mom for toilet paper, she gave me a plastic container shaped like a puppy dog filled with cut up pieces of dinner napkins. And that I consider to be a luxury! I'm not exactly sure what people do without toilet paper, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.

A bit more about our excursion in the Mekong Delta and in particular our experience weathering a typhoon in a wall-less shack structure in the middle of the river (literally a 45 minute boat ride from any remnants of civilization). After two days visiting Tram Chim National Park, we spent the last night camping out at the site of this shack/wall-less cabin. We took a 45 minute boat ride through the beautiful water that was filled with lily pads, bright pink lotus flowers, lots of greenery, and so many rare, endangered birds flying overhead. We even saw a rainbow on the ride to the camp site. When we got there, we were greeted by a tall tower that allowed us to see the view of the sunset later that evening (see pictures already posted in the blog) and also the wall-less shack where we would be sleeping (in addition to the other SIT Vietnam program who we got to spend the excursion with!). After taking a million pictures of the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen…well, I guess it ties with the sunrise on Massada…we started preparing our dinner. The four men from the national park who were staying with us that night went out on the boats to catch snails, fish, crab, and the lily pads that would be the serving "plates" for our dinner once prepared. All was going splendidly until after dinner when the rains started to hit. We had a small tarp that we used for one segment of the structure to prevent the water from coming in. Rain is no uncommon thing here, so we thought nothing of it until it failed to stop or even slow down. Instead the storm began to intensify to such a degree that the lamp we had went out and the winds really picked up. Well, we ended up weathering a typhoon that night. We got word from the national park headquarters that the low pressure system was intensifying and turning into a typhoon. We would either need to evacuate or just tough it out. The problem with evacuating was that we were 45 minutes by small, rickety boats away from land and given the speed of the winds, it would be extremely dangerous. They were talking at one point about when the winds die down to get in the boats and go 15 kilometers to another site, but none of us were big fans of this idea either. In any event, it was a very long, hot, and extremely bug-gy night with very loud winds and a lot of rain. By no means a pleasant experience, but we are so lucky that it was only a minor typhoon because if it were any more intense than it was who knows what would have happened. In retrospect it is a great story, but at the time, EVERYONE was absolutely panicked and very worried. I hope never to be in a typhoon again, let alone stranded in a wall-less and non-durable structure in the middle of nowhere weathering the storm!