Singing Grandpa

This guy was the official tour guide of a cave (war-time hospital) and it seems he and his granddaughters pass the time between visitors by singing patriotic songs, the most common of which is creatively named "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh"

Oh, and the BEACH :)

And then, last month...

Well October was a long month, obviously it's already 10 November and I'm only now getting to talking about it... Anyway, just a couple pictures from October, so that I can't technically be accused of missing a WHOLE MONTH on my blog...

This first photo is of my neighborhood for two weeks. You can see the Hanoi Towers in the background - incidentally they are built on the same block as what is left of "Hanoi Hilton" which is now a museum of sorts. That was a prison where some captured American pilots were kept during the war. Anyway, the view is from my 4th floor hotel room in the old quarter, which I moved into after suddenly leaving my apartment for various reasons the most pertinent of which is that the police caught up with my landlady who had not properly registered me as a foreign renter like she was supposed to do ... Anyway, that's a funny story but I'm tired of it. Nice view, eh? I liked that room, and the people who run the hotel are very nice, I would recommend the place to anybody who comes to visit me here, the room with a view.

This is Truc Bach Lake, in front of a strip of cafes and neon, in front of a luxury hotel. There's a reason I didn't move to THAT hotel when I left my flat - no one would speak Vietnamese to me there... Actually they probably would, only it would cost a lot more!

In honor of everybody who likes trees and tree pictures. Not newsworthy, but this isn't news it's only my silly blog.



Xem lai Ho Truc Bach, with a endless river of motorbikes pulsing back and forth on Duong Thanh Nien.

Thursday Ramblings

Friday of last week, the last day of the term at my school, all the students went to watch the film Baraka. I had heard of this film before but hadn’t seen it, and I was impressed. It is made somewhat in the mold of Koyaanisqatsi, if that’s familiar to anyone. I’m not sure what exactly to say about it, but if you like simple but remarkable photography, and mesmerizing music, check it out. Here is a link to the associated website. The students thought most of it was too boring. Sometimes I think that my students are sadly sheltered and maddeningly immature. Sometimes I think that I am old and peculiar and staid. I’m probably right on both counts.

The terms at my school are only five weeks long, so they go by pretty quickly. My new class this term has seventeen students, which is rather larger than usual. I had one class last term which was fourteen or so, but remembering their names was a challenge. There were two Ngas - Thu Nga and Thanh Nga, three Trangs - Thu Trang, Quyen Trang and Huyen Trang, two Hungs - Manh Hung and Trong Hung, then a Huong and a Phuong and a Phong... I knew most of their names by the end of the term but it took most of the term to get that far! Anyway, my new class is a lower level than I have taught before. So far it is going pretty well, I have to amuse them a little more than the upper level students, but on the other hand I don't have to explain subordinating conjunctions!

Having been back in Vietnam now for almost six months, I have finally realized that my Vietnamese is not going to improve much by osmosis. Sad. So I am back in language class, at the same university I studied in the first time I was in Hanoi. I enjoy it, although that class is quite noticeably above my level in terms of vocabulary. To offset that I am also taking a sporadic Vietnamese language class at the school I teach in, which is free for teachers, but is noticeably below my level since the other teachers taking that class haven't studied Vietnamese at all, or not until two weeks ago. So I come back from one class confused, exhausted and thoroughly convinced of my monumental inability to accomplish much, and from the other class slightly amused by my colleagues (language professionals, all of them) who can't remember, much less pronounce, the Vietnamese tones... Maybe with the combination of both classes I can move forward!

Tonight I found, behind a very small door on a rather large street in the middle of town, a German restaurant. The Kaiser Kaffee is appealing, if for no other reason, simply because it is called The Kaiser Kaffee and it is in Hanoi! It actually looks sort of German - old fashioned low ceiling with (fake but tasteful) exposed beams and straight-backed wooden chairs like any proper PA Dutch restaurant would have at home. The lady who seemed to be in charge of the place is, well, an unusually German-sized Vietnamese lady who kept on speaking German to me... I guess my Vietnamese was bad enough she couldn't tell what language it was! Anyway, BRATWURST, they have bratwurst. How cool is that! I had bratwurst and Vietnamese fresh spring rolls... The silliest things make me happy!

And speaking of the silliest things, here are my favorite news stories recently:

Man Bites Panda - cute and NOT cuddly
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5364058.stm

The Ancient 26-year-old Terracotta Warrior
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5355546.stm

Vendredi heureux a tout le monde :)

Ba Vi - Rhymes with La Vie - Rhymes with My Tea (in Mississippi)

Motorbikes are ridiculously efficient. My motorbike cost me roughly $600. The last time I bought a car for that much, I spent one solid day every week squirming around underneath the car, kicking and cussing and generally insulting it and myself in as many ways as possible. After that, and buying gas in America (…), I had transportation.

I’ve had my motorbike for about two months. I fill it up with gas maybe once a week, for about $2.50 or $3.00. I had a flat tire last week. It cost me almost $4 to have the tube patched by someone sitting on the sidewalk with a screwdriver and a bucket of water, about 30 meters from where it blew out. It was making a funny noise so I took it to a shop where they washed it, changed the oil, greased and adjusted the chain, and replaced something that was missing which made the chain noisy. That was almost $4 too. That means I’m up to like $30 in maintenance. I just thought I should say that for anybody out there on the other side of the world who is living on ramen noodles to preserve gas money…

Anyway, last weekend I went to Khu Du Lich Vuon Quoc Gia Ba Vi – Ba Vi National Park. Allegedly about 60-70 km west of Hanoi, I figured it shouldn’t take so long to get there. Well at the edge of Hanoi there is a road which, for about an hour, is a solid mass of parked trucks and cars flooded by beeping revving smoking sweating motorbikes. Motorbike traffic jams are truly annoying. You breathe smoke. You try not to burn your leg on your neighbor’s exhaust pipe – and you really can, that is how packed it gets. You constantly bump into folks next to you, although usually nobody cares. Well after that is smooth sailing for a few minutes, then you have a long stretch of road construction. That was mostly too dusty to see anything, bumpy and missing bridges and all that. Well. Whatever. According to my map this is a reasonably serious road, I guess I just picked the wrong day to try it!

Ba Vi, on the other hand, is really cool. Almost cold, in fact. It is green and lush and flowery and switchbacks are fun on a motorbike. Thanks to my freshly greased chain I got up the mountain with no real complaints from my motorbike. I hiked a bit more to the actual top. The day was slightly hazy, but the place was beautiful anyway. Living in Hanoi, I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy solitude. It is so rare to have actual silence here. It was only a day trip, maybe too short to really enjoy the place, but good anyway. And on the way home I went a longer way which involved and very nice road, paved smooth straight flat almost empty, and two hours flat instead of three and a half … go figure.

So, here are some photos of the park, as well as a thrilling video of cycling down the mountain… Enjoy!

These are flower pictures for all the flower people out there!

Ba Vi Xe Say

For anybody who is both reading this, and understanding Vietnamese, neither I nor my motorbike were exactly "say" at that moment, but it sounds better to pretend that one or both of us was, after looking at the video!

Fruit-of-the-day

Na. That's the fruit. Na. Want some na? Na. I'm waiting to discover the fruit called Nope. Or Not-today-thanks.


Ho Soc Son. There is a reason this lake is not on the tourist trail - no Coke machines. No kitch vendors. Not much of a road. Not much shade. Plenty of cows, though, that's always a good sign!




Hang Bac Street. Nighttime in the old quarter. Blackness and neon, hot food and gold shops without customers.

Hang Bac Xe To

Coughing, Quoting and Cackling to Myself

For anybody who cares (even if it is only enough to open a webpage), I am at the moment in a reasonably good humour but have an inappropriately prodigious nose. Most unfortunately for somebody who is supposed to make a living by teaching, I am also accompanied by the infamous tickle in the throat leading directly to a most indecorous hacking, and crackly whispering vocables that native speakers crinkle their foreheads at, while ESL students hear rumblings and beginnings of thoughts like 'Why school hire American accent teacher very not interesting'. So, I am not teaching today. I was going to do one short two hour class, but my supervisor sensibly told me to stay away. So now I have no reason not to write another blog.

Work itself is going on pretty much as expected. This week is a new term – I introduce myself to my classes as the teacher who croaks. I have a level 6 class this term, new heights of grammatically fortified students expecting me to enlighten them. That is an evening class, primarily adult students, so at least I am mostly unburdened of the testosterone gallery of the class!

Say No To Dishonesty
Speaking of education, I found this article on education in Vietnam exemplary of, what should I say, verbosity masquerading as obtusity, or perhaps the opposite, I’m not sure. That’s the point.

Foie Gras Feast
I always read the important news from the good old US of A. Open invitation to anyone interested in foie gras to head for Chicago. Illegality is so appealing. This fact is demonstrated by what I saw this morning. Red lights, here in Hanoi, are sort of like a gentle suggestion. Typically, about half the traffic stops, the other half guns it and shoots through the congealed blob of stopped motorbikes like hornets through the crack in your window. Usually this is when you use your horn. Today I saw a kid do it on a bicycle, going about as fast as you can go on a bicycle like that, whipping past the motorbikes and, upon hitting the middle of the intersection, he just let out a piercing scream to attract the attention of any traffic foolish enough to assume that a green light means you can go… Think of it as a swarm of Mayflies in Michigan being swatted with a radio antenna, you’ll hit a couple but the herd moves on. On my motorbike, unlike in my life, I try to run with the herd!

Chillies Aid Sumatra Jail Break
Pocket a habanera next time you see one, you never know when it might come in handy.

Prison guard: "The is the first time chilli has been used to get out of this penitentiary,"
Recaptured prisoner: “Nothing takes the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth like … ketchup or yoghurt or bread or anything but chillies!

Can you tell that I am reading a Bill Bryson book right now?

I have never kept much of a reading list, exactly, but here are a few comments on what I’ve read lately. Upon finishing my training in Saigon, I read Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, which is a really fascinating, um, history of the world. The most interesting part, for me, was not so much the history itself, but his ability to summarize and synthesize information from many different disciplines into a comprehensible whole. It’s a great book to read when you are jobless – it is dense and it makes you feel like the tiniest blip on history’s radar screen. Somehow that is comforting when you are just watching TV and waiting for the phone to ring all day. And, on top of that, it’s not that difficult of a book to read, not like a textbook.

There were few other books in there somewhere, and one of them was Memoirs of a Geisha which is very informative for anybody interested in Geisha, or, indeed, humans in general since most of us are more similar than different. Even if you have no clue what a Geisha is, you are more similar than different.

Finally, my quote of the day from Bill Bryson’s book on Australia, Down Under.

“Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting on a
rowing boat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren’t biting; it’s
like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps to not
know what’s going on. In such a rarified world of contentment and
inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.”

Anybody who can do what Bill Bryson does and apparently make a living at it deserves my attention!

Xe toi

I got a motorbike, and a helmet so that I still look funny driving down the street. I have decided that in order to drive safely in Vietnam you must have Buddhist instincts which I don't have, so I got a helmet instead.

It is a blue honda, used indeed. The speedometer and odometer don't work, the mirrors wobble, the end of the handlebar falls out if you pull on it, but so far it usually goes when I want it to, and stops as well.
And so, now that I am mobile, I try to stay in the middle of town as much as possible... It is nice to have West Lake accessible. That's maybe 20 minutes. Having wheels doesn't mean that I want to spend hours at a time on them!