There are two coffeeshops adjacent to each other just down the street from Anh's. He likes them because they have trees, and pet dogs, ponds with goldfish and carp, and walls that shut out most of the street noise. They also have rats. Lots of them. The dogs don't chase them (there are no cats around) and the people don't either. There are perhaps thirty. There could be several times that many, for all I know, but they are small, cute, curious brownish-gray creatures who wander the gardens in a completely calm and playful manner. If someone throws a bun in the pond the fish will nibble and pull at it, and shove it to the edge of the pond; a rat or two will reach down and try to grab a piece of the bread. The other evening Deb and I walked home on a nearby street and saw a rat scuttle under a garbage bin, but we're getting used to seeing them. A young couple walked behind us, closer to the bin. The girl screamed and jabbered a little to her male companion. "She saw the rat," said Deborah.
A young boy came up to us on a street with several restaurants set up for the tourist trade. He begged from us and from Lloyd and Esther, who we'd just met in the street on their way to supper. We told him no, and he had an amusing little tantrum, stamping his feet in annoyance with us. His brother, following behind, didn't bother to approach us, but didn't stop the little one from appealing to restaurant patrons nearby.
There are beggars lining the approach to the Buddha at the Long Son Pagoda; they are mirrored by beggars on the roadway into the Cathedral. Anh says, "It frustrates me to see them here, pretending to be crippled; they walk home at the end of the day." One fellow, who clearly could not walk, was on the sidewalk outside a tourist restaurant we walked past first thing this morning, presumably brought there by a friend or relative. He flashed us a beatific smile, and both Deb and I were tempted to give him something. But we're constantly told not to give money to the beggars because when begging becomes successful, they proliferate. Who feeds the man with the beatific smile? Does he have family to care for him? Is he truly destitute? Begging is a shameful thing among most Vietnamese; although tricking money from foreigners by any means, fair or foul, is acceptable.
There is probably no one right answer to questions of this nature. Vietnamese people may be as variable in their social attitudes and mores as westerners are, in spite of deep traditions that shape common expectations with regard to loyalty to family and ancestors, filial piety, guilt-induced consensus, the desire to bring no bad luck to your family now and in future generations through any wicked or shameful behaviour. What constitutes wicked and shameful behaviour, may vary according to the recipient of those behaviours - if they are people outside of your village, cultural group or nationality, they may be subject to different behaviours, as happens in many other cultures and almost all pre-modern cultures.
The extent to which a visitor should be on his guard against price-gouging, bait-and-switch pricing, outright theft, begging (I haven't seen the kids begging from anyone but western tourists) is really difficult to judge. My natural inclination is to admire Vietnamese people for their honesty and open-heartedness, but remain vigilant against behaviour that falls outside of that realm. In that, I am helped by people like Anh, who sometimes helps us with purchases or gives us a frame of reference for our pricing expectations. Having been here for nine weeks already, we're becoming pretty savvy about people, prices, and awkward situations. We know where to expect to pay more, and why, and also where and when we will probably pay less, even right here in the tourist quarter where there are restaurants for tourists and restaurants for locals side by side.
Still, no matter how secure my understanding is becoming about pricing of things we buy, it is difficult to feel certain in your convictions about the beggar with the beatific smile, or the child beggar who throws an amusing tantrum that makes you wish you at least had candy in your pocket.
Jan 30th: It is Lunar New Year's Eve. Deb and I had a long afternoon nap, and then went out for a lovely meal of fresh spring rolls with chilies and peanut sauce. Anh will ride his motorbike downtown and park it outside our hotel around 10 p.m., so that he can join us to watch a little of the stage show on the beach and the fireworks at midnight. We'll also tour a photographic exhibit that has been set up just south of the stage, and if we can actually hear ourselves talk, he might share interesting background information about some of the photos.
Jan 31st. The stage show was a repeat of similar Hollywood or Las Vegas style New Year shows, but it was a good show, and the fireworks were great. They didn't have fireworks for the occidental New Year, a month earlier. We went to bed quite late, then got up early to go to a breakfast buffet that we like north of the bridge, but there were no buses operating this morning, so we cut short our sleep for nothing. We tried a different breakfast buffet which turned out to be a disappointing alternative, but we filled our bellies for the day, and then went back to bed. We'll spend the day reading, viewing TED videos, having Vietnamese coffee, and strolling the beachside park. Most Vietnamese are spending today with their families, so we don't expect to meet any of them, or drop in on a conversation class.
Feb 1st. The beach was filled with people today. Well, not exactly the beach; thousands of Vietnamese people picnicked on the grassy stretch between the beach street and the sand. They strolled the concrete sidewalk through the sculpture garden, which contains many very attractive and pleasant sculptures. Gangs of adolescents cruised the park like schools of fish. The temperature was 27 degrees and much hotter in the bright sunshine, but they all wore long pants. Many wore jackets, even down ski jackets and fake fur. Most wore jaunty new hats, often twinned with a friend or other family member sporting the same model. An astonishing number of women wore gloves, and many women not actually sitting and eating wore their fabric face masks. When I first saw these in Saigon, I thought they were to protect against pollution, but learned later that their primary purpose is to protect the women from getting tanned on their face. Meanwhile on the sand, paying $2 rental for their loungers, the already fair-skinned Caucasians loll like beached whales, burning until their skin becomes red like cooked lobsters in the sun. As Jeremy Taylor sings, "Tell me, tell me, tell me why...I wanna know de fact - why all de black people, wanna go white, and de white people wanna go black?"
We've agreed to meet with Lloyd and Esther for dinner this evening, but at about the same time we're also anticipating a text from Angela, a young Chinese Couchsurfer arriving in town late in the evening without a booking for a place to stay. Although she would understand the concept of the Lunar New Year, she apparently asked for a "host" who accepted her and then said he couldn't accommodate her, only yesterday. I suspect many Vietnamese who are new to Couchsurfing think it is a wonderful way to reach out to foreign people and practice other languages, but they don't clue in right away to the fact that "hosting" in most countries generally means providing a place for your guest to sleep. So young Angela is arriving late in a town with hostels already fully booked for the next five days at least, where young travelers are cruising small hotels like ours with their backpacks, looking to share rooms. They're being quoted four times the normal rate.
I don't know what they'll do if they can't find a room they can afford. Backpackers can usually count on finding cheap accommodation right off the bus in any town in Vietnam, if not the whole of Asia, but Nha Trang is not prepared for this annual spike. The beach loungers don't get used at night, and it might seem like an opportunity for an enterprising beach lounger rental vendor, but I suspect that beach camping won't be permitted. I may have heard that police will round up park campers and beach campers and take them to a holding area, which makes sense; there aren't toilets for most of the beachfront. Campers would certainly eat, drink alcohol, and leave a lot of litter, not to mention using the bushes and holes in the sand as toilets. Tourists here on tours, or those who've booked their rooms in advance with the expectation of a pleasant beach holiday wouldn't be impressed with the sights, and maybe the smells, the next morning.
I haven't seen any actual crime. I haven't seen or heard of the snatch'n'grab motorbike thieves we were warned about, and we haven't been targeted by pick-pockets. Restaurants and street vendors do jack up their prices about twenty to twenty-five percent. Some simply add about it to the bill automatically as a Tet surcharge; maybe it helps to cover the extra labour costs of getting fill-in staff while your regular staff gets to enjoy their annual family reunion. They get significantly fewer holidays throughout the year than we do. Tet seems like a great moneymaker to the fewer restauranteurs who stay open, which makes sense in a pure free market context - increased demand with no increase in supply automatically leads to higher prices.
Still, no matter how secure my understanding is becoming about pricing of things we buy, it is difficult to feel certain in your convictions about the beggar with the beatific smile, or the child beggar who throws an amusing tantrum that makes you wish you at least had candy in your pocket.
Jan 30th: It is Lunar New Year's Eve. Deb and I had a long afternoon nap, and then went out for a lovely meal of fresh spring rolls with chilies and peanut sauce. Anh will ride his motorbike downtown and park it outside our hotel around 10 p.m., so that he can join us to watch a little of the stage show on the beach and the fireworks at midnight. We'll also tour a photographic exhibit that has been set up just south of the stage, and if we can actually hear ourselves talk, he might share interesting background information about some of the photos.
Jan 31st. The stage show was a repeat of similar Hollywood or Las Vegas style New Year shows, but it was a good show, and the fireworks were great. They didn't have fireworks for the occidental New Year, a month earlier. We went to bed quite late, then got up early to go to a breakfast buffet that we like north of the bridge, but there were no buses operating this morning, so we cut short our sleep for nothing. We tried a different breakfast buffet which turned out to be a disappointing alternative, but we filled our bellies for the day, and then went back to bed. We'll spend the day reading, viewing TED videos, having Vietnamese coffee, and strolling the beachside park. Most Vietnamese are spending today with their families, so we don't expect to meet any of them, or drop in on a conversation class.
Feb 1st. The beach was filled with people today. Well, not exactly the beach; thousands of Vietnamese people picnicked on the grassy stretch between the beach street and the sand. They strolled the concrete sidewalk through the sculpture garden, which contains many very attractive and pleasant sculptures. Gangs of adolescents cruised the park like schools of fish. The temperature was 27 degrees and much hotter in the bright sunshine, but they all wore long pants. Many wore jackets, even down ski jackets and fake fur. Most wore jaunty new hats, often twinned with a friend or other family member sporting the same model. An astonishing number of women wore gloves, and many women not actually sitting and eating wore their fabric face masks. When I first saw these in Saigon, I thought they were to protect against pollution, but learned later that their primary purpose is to protect the women from getting tanned on their face. Meanwhile on the sand, paying $2 rental for their loungers, the already fair-skinned Caucasians loll like beached whales, burning until their skin becomes red like cooked lobsters in the sun. As Jeremy Taylor sings, "Tell me, tell me, tell me why...I wanna know de fact - why all de black people, wanna go white, and de white people wanna go black?"
We've agreed to meet with Lloyd and Esther for dinner this evening, but at about the same time we're also anticipating a text from Angela, a young Chinese Couchsurfer arriving in town late in the evening without a booking for a place to stay. Although she would understand the concept of the Lunar New Year, she apparently asked for a "host" who accepted her and then said he couldn't accommodate her, only yesterday. I suspect many Vietnamese who are new to Couchsurfing think it is a wonderful way to reach out to foreign people and practice other languages, but they don't clue in right away to the fact that "hosting" in most countries generally means providing a place for your guest to sleep. So young Angela is arriving late in a town with hostels already fully booked for the next five days at least, where young travelers are cruising small hotels like ours with their backpacks, looking to share rooms. They're being quoted four times the normal rate.
I don't know what they'll do if they can't find a room they can afford. Backpackers can usually count on finding cheap accommodation right off the bus in any town in Vietnam, if not the whole of Asia, but Nha Trang is not prepared for this annual spike. The beach loungers don't get used at night, and it might seem like an opportunity for an enterprising beach lounger rental vendor, but I suspect that beach camping won't be permitted. I may have heard that police will round up park campers and beach campers and take them to a holding area, which makes sense; there aren't toilets for most of the beachfront. Campers would certainly eat, drink alcohol, and leave a lot of litter, not to mention using the bushes and holes in the sand as toilets. Tourists here on tours, or those who've booked their rooms in advance with the expectation of a pleasant beach holiday wouldn't be impressed with the sights, and maybe the smells, the next morning.
I haven't seen any actual crime. I haven't seen or heard of the snatch'n'grab motorbike thieves we were warned about, and we haven't been targeted by pick-pockets. Restaurants and street vendors do jack up their prices about twenty to twenty-five percent. Some simply add about it to the bill automatically as a Tet surcharge; maybe it helps to cover the extra labour costs of getting fill-in staff while your regular staff gets to enjoy their annual family reunion. They get significantly fewer holidays throughout the year than we do. Tet seems like a great moneymaker to the fewer restauranteurs who stay open, which makes sense in a pure free market context - increased demand with no increase in supply automatically leads to higher prices.
We've been lucky, since we got enough warning to anticipate this problem even though we'd never experienced it. We managed to negotiate our room rate on the understanding that we have a "long stay discount". We haven't been told that our rate will be increased during Tet; we're keeping our fingers crossed that they don't try to charge us more when we present ourselves at the front desk to pay our bill, which we've opted to pay week by week, this coming Monday. Of course, if they do we'll have to threaten to move out to another hotel for the next five weeks - demand spikes during Tet but then drops like a stone right afterward, so they know we'll have no trouble finding another hotel that'll want our business. But so far there's no sign that they intend to try to extract more from us for this incredibly short high season.
Our young Chinese girl Angela Zhu has just texted us. As it turns out, her Vietnamese Couchsurfing "host" who told her at the last minute that he couldn't accommodate her but would pick her up at the bus station and take her around to find a place to stay, didn't even show up to meet her. That's odd. It's very bad manners for a Vietnamese, and certainly for a fellow Couchsurfer. We managed to find her one hostel near ours which has about twenty bunk beds in a dorm. It is suddenly double the price it was yesterday, but at least she has a mattress for the night.
Feb 2nd. We went for supper with Lloyd and Esther last night, and took Angela with us. During dinner, and again strolling home, we were passed by an open backed truck filled with lion dancers and drummers who solicited business owners in the neighbourhood. The businesses would hire them to perform the dance in order to attract good luck for the New Year. The elaborately costumed dance troupe was a pleasure to behold but difficult to photograph in the dark.
This evening we went with Vicki and Trinh, a former employee of our hotel who married an Italian and now lives in Milan, and Angela, to the Lac Canh, the oldest restaurant in Nha Trang, which is incredibly popular with Vietnamese and those foreigners who've heard the buzz and show up in droves. We had a BBQ in the centre of our table and platters of thinly sliced tender beef, chicken, squid, plus some vegetables and fried rice. We grilled our own meat and ate it hot and fresh. I washed mine down with giant bottles of San Miguel beer.
Feb 3rd. A very still, hot sunny day. We took Angela to the Fairy Bay breakfast buffet, which has an amazing view of the beachfront from the 10th floor, and then Anh met us and he took her for a walk on Hon Do island. They wore our hats while Deb and I sat in the shade and chatted about Buddhism as practiced in Vietnam with the daughters of some worshipers at the temple. Angela will go to Vicki's for the next two nights. We've managed to rescue her twice, with Vicki's help the second time. Angela had tried to book a bus but couldn't get a ticket out of town until two days later than she'd planned because there are so many Tet travelers. Her hostel bed was only available for two nights, so Vicki volunteered a futon in her apartment.
Here's a funny story: about a month ago Trinh informed her family in Vietnam that she was about to write her Italian driver's exam, having acquired enough Italian to deal with that (she also speaks excellent English). Vicki was with her family. "Oh," cried Vicki, holding up both hands with her fingers crossed, "I really hope it goes well!" The family all looked at her in horror, their mouths dropping. Later she asked Anh what she'd done wrong - nothing in her previous five years in Vietnam had prepared her for that reaction. Anh, squirming and embarrassed, told her that in Vietnam the sign is used to represent a couple entwined in coitus. I guess the only way it can mean good luck here is if the couple is trying to conceive. Later Anh sent me a jpeg depicting hand gestures that are considered rude in different countries. I can tell you that you want to be careful how you wave hello in Greece; don't go hitchhiking in Thailand; and don't play "I've got your nose" with a small child in Turkey!
Vicki also confirmed my impression of the terrible rudeness and cheating manners of the people of Ha Long Bay, which she and other travelers have also experienced. No other region in Vietnam has people quite as bad as that. She says that particular group emigrated to Canada in the 1980's, settled in the Gold River and Campbell River area and commenced clam digging, which is their traditional method of making a living. They have been in court for decades for overfishing, but have learned that the Canadian prosecution is a joke. They quickly learned that the $25 fine is more than covered by the extra cash they get from overfishing. They can delay appearances in overcrowded courts indefinitely, and nowadays they don't even bother showing up for a hearing. They simply send in their lawyer. However, with the extra "black money" they've earned from selling shellfish illegally, they've branched out into other kinds of crime in order to launder it, including taking advantage of poor kids in the area - and from Quadra Island, where Vicki lives in the summer months - by getting them hooked on "free" heroin and then into gang debt and illegal activities to try to pay off the debt, including prostitution and drug trafficking. So although Vicki loves Vietnam and Vietnamese people, and particularly the many friends she's made in Nha Trang over the past five years, she has nothing good to say about that particular corner of the country.
Later, at Mac's free conversational English classes, we asked Hang, his personal care attendant, and one of his former star pupils, what she thought of the people of the Ha Long Bay region. Her face twisted into a scowl. "Oh, those people!", she replied. "They are known throughout Vietnam as terrible cheaters! And they are all mafia there. They even have guns." Dan, a Russian CS'er who was part of the conversation, asked "Aren't guns illegal in Vietnam for private citizens?" "Yes, they are", she replied, "but those people are mafia..."
Feb 5th: the pandemonium continues in our cul-de-sac, where Vicki's prediction of the population quadrupling has been realized. We endure kids playing in the halls and with the elevator beside our room. Parents send them out of overcrowded hotel rooms rented for the entire family. Five more days of "Super-Tet" to endure...
I've included a photo of our bathroom in the photo album. The Vietnamese version of a western bathroom leaves one major item to be desired: a shower stall or at least a shower curtain. The shower head sprays the whole bathroom, leaving the floor wet and the walls needing to be wiped down every day by the cleaning staff. After a shower one always gets wet feet again entering to brush your teeth or to use the toilet. The drains are slow, which means that the bathroom floor sometimes threatens to overflow into the main room over the rather tiny lip. And oddly, there are no squeegees.
Our young Chinese girl Angela Zhu has just texted us. As it turns out, her Vietnamese Couchsurfing "host" who told her at the last minute that he couldn't accommodate her but would pick her up at the bus station and take her around to find a place to stay, didn't even show up to meet her. That's odd. It's very bad manners for a Vietnamese, and certainly for a fellow Couchsurfer. We managed to find her one hostel near ours which has about twenty bunk beds in a dorm. It is suddenly double the price it was yesterday, but at least she has a mattress for the night.
Feb 2nd. We went for supper with Lloyd and Esther last night, and took Angela with us. During dinner, and again strolling home, we were passed by an open backed truck filled with lion dancers and drummers who solicited business owners in the neighbourhood. The businesses would hire them to perform the dance in order to attract good luck for the New Year. The elaborately costumed dance troupe was a pleasure to behold but difficult to photograph in the dark.
This evening we went with Vicki and Trinh, a former employee of our hotel who married an Italian and now lives in Milan, and Angela, to the Lac Canh, the oldest restaurant in Nha Trang, which is incredibly popular with Vietnamese and those foreigners who've heard the buzz and show up in droves. We had a BBQ in the centre of our table and platters of thinly sliced tender beef, chicken, squid, plus some vegetables and fried rice. We grilled our own meat and ate it hot and fresh. I washed mine down with giant bottles of San Miguel beer.
Feb 3rd. A very still, hot sunny day. We took Angela to the Fairy Bay breakfast buffet, which has an amazing view of the beachfront from the 10th floor, and then Anh met us and he took her for a walk on Hon Do island. They wore our hats while Deb and I sat in the shade and chatted about Buddhism as practiced in Vietnam with the daughters of some worshipers at the temple. Angela will go to Vicki's for the next two nights. We've managed to rescue her twice, with Vicki's help the second time. Angela had tried to book a bus but couldn't get a ticket out of town until two days later than she'd planned because there are so many Tet travelers. Her hostel bed was only available for two nights, so Vicki volunteered a futon in her apartment.
Here's a funny story: about a month ago Trinh informed her family in Vietnam that she was about to write her Italian driver's exam, having acquired enough Italian to deal with that (she also speaks excellent English). Vicki was with her family. "Oh," cried Vicki, holding up both hands with her fingers crossed, "I really hope it goes well!" The family all looked at her in horror, their mouths dropping. Later she asked Anh what she'd done wrong - nothing in her previous five years in Vietnam had prepared her for that reaction. Anh, squirming and embarrassed, told her that in Vietnam the sign is used to represent a couple entwined in coitus. I guess the only way it can mean good luck here is if the couple is trying to conceive. Later Anh sent me a jpeg depicting hand gestures that are considered rude in different countries. I can tell you that you want to be careful how you wave hello in Greece; don't go hitchhiking in Thailand; and don't play "I've got your nose" with a small child in Turkey!
Vicki also confirmed my impression of the terrible rudeness and cheating manners of the people of Ha Long Bay, which she and other travelers have also experienced. No other region in Vietnam has people quite as bad as that. She says that particular group emigrated to Canada in the 1980's, settled in the Gold River and Campbell River area and commenced clam digging, which is their traditional method of making a living. They have been in court for decades for overfishing, but have learned that the Canadian prosecution is a joke. They quickly learned that the $25 fine is more than covered by the extra cash they get from overfishing. They can delay appearances in overcrowded courts indefinitely, and nowadays they don't even bother showing up for a hearing. They simply send in their lawyer. However, with the extra "black money" they've earned from selling shellfish illegally, they've branched out into other kinds of crime in order to launder it, including taking advantage of poor kids in the area - and from Quadra Island, where Vicki lives in the summer months - by getting them hooked on "free" heroin and then into gang debt and illegal activities to try to pay off the debt, including prostitution and drug trafficking. So although Vicki loves Vietnam and Vietnamese people, and particularly the many friends she's made in Nha Trang over the past five years, she has nothing good to say about that particular corner of the country.
Later, at Mac's free conversational English classes, we asked Hang, his personal care attendant, and one of his former star pupils, what she thought of the people of the Ha Long Bay region. Her face twisted into a scowl. "Oh, those people!", she replied. "They are known throughout Vietnam as terrible cheaters! And they are all mafia there. They even have guns." Dan, a Russian CS'er who was part of the conversation, asked "Aren't guns illegal in Vietnam for private citizens?" "Yes, they are", she replied, "but those people are mafia..."
Feb 5th: the pandemonium continues in our cul-de-sac, where Vicki's prediction of the population quadrupling has been realized. We endure kids playing in the halls and with the elevator beside our room. Parents send them out of overcrowded hotel rooms rented for the entire family. Five more days of "Super-Tet" to endure...
I've included a photo of our bathroom in the photo album. The Vietnamese version of a western bathroom leaves one major item to be desired: a shower stall or at least a shower curtain. The shower head sprays the whole bathroom, leaving the floor wet and the walls needing to be wiped down every day by the cleaning staff. After a shower one always gets wet feet again entering to brush your teeth or to use the toilet. The drains are slow, which means that the bathroom floor sometimes threatens to overflow into the main room over the rather tiny lip. And oddly, there are no squeegees.
On the plus side, we have nice desk staff and an elevator, which saves us four flights of stairs up and down. Elevators are relatively rare in a cheap hotel. Our rooms (we've been in two) are clean, with good mattresses, bright fresh paint, wifi and air conditioning. The hot water isn't, most mornings...usually it is at least lukewarm, however. Our deal with the hotel staff is that we get moved back to the front room on Feb 10th, and we haven't been charged anything extra for our smaller room during Tet, for which we count ourselves lucky. I'm glad I got them to agree to that "long stay discount" when we first arrived.
Today we're having a "farewell lunch" at Hanoi Corner (Goc Ha Noi) with Angela, and Anh, who also might leave tomorrow for Hanoi. He expected to leave on the 6th, but could delay until the 10th, apparently. Angela, stuck in Nha Trang for four nights during Tet, stayed in the hostel beside our hotel for two nights but couldn't stay longer because all the dorm beds were booked, but she was welcomed into Vicki's apartment for the other two nights. She's anxious to treat us to lunch today as a farewell gesture of gratitude. Interesting girl - an excellent artist who has done several detailed sketches while she's been here, and who is in her third year of animation at a university in Beijing, although her home town is Guilin. Her mother was a state prosecutor who now gathers evidence for anti-corruption trials; she was an agent in the field, but Angela says she does mostly paperwork these days, which is safer and quieter. She has had to attend executions in the past, which is how China deals with corruption. It wasn't fun for her.
Feb 6th: I'm including a link from Lloyd's blog. (2021 edit: I don't know how long Lloyd's blog will remain live; he died early this year of covid, after a plane trip home to the U.S. from Cuenca.)
Today we're having a "farewell lunch" at Hanoi Corner (Goc Ha Noi) with Angela, and Anh, who also might leave tomorrow for Hanoi. He expected to leave on the 6th, but could delay until the 10th, apparently. Angela, stuck in Nha Trang for four nights during Tet, stayed in the hostel beside our hotel for two nights but couldn't stay longer because all the dorm beds were booked, but she was welcomed into Vicki's apartment for the other two nights. She's anxious to treat us to lunch today as a farewell gesture of gratitude. Interesting girl - an excellent artist who has done several detailed sketches while she's been here, and who is in her third year of animation at a university in Beijing, although her home town is Guilin. Her mother was a state prosecutor who now gathers evidence for anti-corruption trials; she was an agent in the field, but Angela says she does mostly paperwork these days, which is safer and quieter. She has had to attend executions in the past, which is how China deals with corruption. It wasn't fun for her.
Feb 6th: I'm including a link from Lloyd's blog. (2021 edit: I don't know how long Lloyd's blog will remain live; he died early this year of covid, after a plane trip home to the U.S. from Cuenca.)
He and Esther have rented an apartment here and will stay for six months. He served in the central highlands during the war and was medivac'd to a hospital in Nha Trang. He always remembered it as a piece of paradise he wanted to return to. They're retired now, Jewish by heritage (his grandfather owned a hotel in the Catskills), Ethical Humanists by choice, and very pleasant to spend time with. One of several things in his blog that I found amusing was his description of the bathrooms in the apartments he viewed - he described the one in our current hotel room to a T.
I played badminton all afternoon with Danila, Tarras, Hung, Vuo, Thu, Penny and Graham. I'm terrible at it. I can't get used to the tiny little badminton racquet head. I can't even serve, and I miss the overheads completely. But I'll try to get a chance to practice by going out a few more times while I'm here. We had burritos for supper with Bits, Simon and Anastasia, Bits' latest conquest by all appearances.
Feb 7th. How NOT to organize a picnic! We got an invitation from Ngan to attend a beach picnic put on by Mac's students, scheduled for 4 p.m. No specific location...and the beach is several kilometres long. We asked for clarification by text message and by email; hearing nothing, we headed north to Mac's for the start of his 2:30 conversation class, in case the students intended to leave from there. No students came, so we sat and chatted with Mac...and waited. Eventually we got a phone call from Nadej, the French girl working here on contract as a kindergarten teacher. "Ngan and I are here at my apartment, cooking", she said. "We'll be there at your place at 3:30." Mac asked, "Vietnamese time, or U.K. time? And where on the beach, in case other students want to know...?"
I played badminton all afternoon with Danila, Tarras, Hung, Vuo, Thu, Penny and Graham. I'm terrible at it. I can't get used to the tiny little badminton racquet head. I can't even serve, and I miss the overheads completely. But I'll try to get a chance to practice by going out a few more times while I'm here. We had burritos for supper with Bits, Simon and Anastasia, Bits' latest conquest by all appearances.
Feb 7th. How NOT to organize a picnic! We got an invitation from Ngan to attend a beach picnic put on by Mac's students, scheduled for 4 p.m. No specific location...and the beach is several kilometres long. We asked for clarification by text message and by email; hearing nothing, we headed north to Mac's for the start of his 2:30 conversation class, in case the students intended to leave from there. No students came, so we sat and chatted with Mac...and waited. Eventually we got a phone call from Nadej, the French girl working here on contract as a kindergarten teacher. "Ngan and I are here at my apartment, cooking", she said. "We'll be there at your place at 3:30." Mac asked, "Vietnamese time, or U.K. time? And where on the beach, in case other students want to know...?"
"Oh, U.K. time," Nadej replied, "and we've been discussing location since yesterday. I still don't know...it hasn't been decided." And she didn't know where any of the other students were either, the ones who hadn't shown up for Mac's class.
3:30 came and went. Penny and Graham arrived home at 4; by 5 p.m. we finally had a complement of students who'd loaded food, ice, a beer cooler, and a game of Mac's called "swing ball". Then we decided: the picnic should be right across from our hotel, back down on Tran Phu! So we hiked all the way back, with Mac racing ahead in his wheelchair at a pace none of us could match.
3:30 came and went. Penny and Graham arrived home at 4; by 5 p.m. we finally had a complement of students who'd loaded food, ice, a beer cooler, and a game of Mac's called "swing ball". Then we decided: the picnic should be right across from our hotel, back down on Tran Phu! So we hiked all the way back, with Mac racing ahead in his wheelchair at a pace none of us could match.
There was a little bit of daylight for us to enjoy the view, and Mac enjoyed the view of traffic on Tran Phu, which amused him. He said he doesn't actually get out much. I picked up a bag of cold Saigon beer cans from my hotel frig, and we used that plus what the others had brought to wash down lovely fried spring rolls, skewers of beef and veggies grilled on a charcoal BBQ, and Nadej's very rich chocolate brownies. All turned out well except for one little overnight episode caused by one of those pieces of meat (only for me; Deb's stomach was fine).
We've pretty well decided we'll have to sell our home this summer - our friend Ian has hurt his back, our neighbour Winston has burnt his hand and can no longer use his snowblower, which leaves only one alternative, a newfie named Brent, with his own back issues, to shovel the snow on the sidewalk in front of our house and up to the back door. Fortunately he seems to be in good health at the moment, and he gets a kick out of running his snowblower, so that should solve the problem until we get home in March. If we're lucky the snow will be gone by then.
We've pretty well decided we'll have to sell our home this summer - our friend Ian has hurt his back, our neighbour Winston has burnt his hand and can no longer use his snowblower, which leaves only one alternative, a newfie named Brent, with his own back issues, to shovel the snow on the sidewalk in front of our house and up to the back door. Fortunately he seems to be in good health at the moment, and he gets a kick out of running his snowblower, so that should solve the problem until we get home in March. If we're lucky the snow will be gone by then.
They've had the most snow in twenty years, of course. That's Murphy at work. For next year, if we're still in that house, we'll have to consider a snow removal service - another ridiculous extra expense for a house that we only live in seven months out of the year. So this summer we'll hunt for a condo we can actually agree on that meets our needs; between that and the yacht club, we should be comfortable all summer long. Or maybe we should become "5th wheel trailer" or Airstream people. The alternative is to stay home all winter to take care of our own home and snow removal, but Deborah is as loath to do that as I am. The only thing we'll miss if we sell the house is the garden, and that's always been an awful lot of work anyway.
Today we met Michael at the Sailing Club. It's not actually for sailing, it's the name of a Sandals resort bar on the beach near our hotel. We explored what we might be able to do at his language school for the next month before we go home. Serendipity placed Penny and Graham a few feet away at one table, and Lloyd and Esther down on the beach just in front of us. Michael and Lloyd both served in units here in Nha Trang and in the Central Highlands not far away at the same period of time during the "American War", so it was a bit of a thrill for them to meet each other. They'd both done R&R on the very beach in front of our restaurant patio. Deb and I eavesdropped on unit names and numbers and military lingo as it zipped back and forth between us.
Speaking of education, Michael told us that the English teachers in the Vietnamese school system, who are Vietnamese, don't make enough money, and can't speak English, so their students don't do well; so they began holding after school classes in their homes - the same teachers, teaching the same material to the same students. The gov't said, "Hold on, that's not fair, these teachers are making too much money off their students", so they prohibited the practice. That didn't stop the deficit in educational attainment, so they scheduled the same extra evening classes, but inside the schools. With the same teachers. And the gov't paid the teachers...and collected the extra fees from students, and skimmed off their portion. Everything was solved, but nothing was solved. Meanwhile, no non-Vietnamese national is to set foot inside a public school classroom, so even the most gifted language students will never have a chance to hear and emulate English spoken by a native English speaker, and have their pronunciation problems heard and corrected. It must be a very bizarre world inside the minds of Vietnamese Education Ministry officials.
We were hungry after our chat, so Deb and I hiked up for a feast of fresh and fried spring rolls - also called "Imperial Rolls", I've learned - at our favourite local spring roll place, Bo Bia Sai Gon. Later we met our old friend Joe from Saigon. He's the one who came all the way here with a young lady who returned to her parents in Nha Trang for Tet, although she also studies in Saigon - law, I believe. Apparently all is going well with him, his coursework is finished and he's doing a marketing internship to finish off his degree. He will graduate in June. The girl's parents like him, he's been dating her for sixteen days and all seemed great until this evening, when she got mad at him for taking off to come and see us, and didn't want to come with him to meet us. It sounds like some strange sort of jealousy or control issue, but what do I know? In any case, I hope it all works out well for him.
Here are some perils of relying on tourist restaurants catering to Vietnamese ideas of western tastes:
1. the prices are double, triple or more for the same dishes, the only real advantage being that you get to sit on adult chairs instead of kindergarten furniture. An extreme example is the Sailing Club, where a coffee with sweetened condensed milk - the most commonly requested coffee drink here - costs six times the price of the identical coffee in the identical glass at Hanoi Corner, which also has adult tables and chairs, but is not beach front. Meals are correspondingly higher as well. You can get "western" menu items, just like you can at the Sheraton, but why fly all the way to Vietnam to order western dishes?
2. At the Venice "coffee and fast food" restaurant (loud music, smoking patrons) we had a Tet surcharge - they'd increased all the prices with gummed stickers, but there was also an unexpected surprise: the English words below a "Chao" dish said "fried noodles with seafood" so that's what we ordered. At least that's what I ordered; Deb tried to order the same thing, but the waitress walked away without asking her what she wanted - it took some time to get her attention and make her realize there were four of us hoping to be fed at our table! In any case, what arrived for both of us was a bowl of very watery congee, in other words rice porridge that was more like rice soup. Anh was with us. I said, "Anh, what's this? It's not what we ordered." "Yes, it is," he replied, "That's Chao." I showed him the English words on the menu right beneath the Vietnamese entry. "Oh...they've translated it incorrectly - probably don't even know the meaning of the English words."
Hmm. I wondered, how can I improve on this menu accident? I should have simply sent it back and demanded that the manager provide what was written in English on the menu, but ever the polite Canadian, I decided to order a banh mi and butter to go with it. A simple bun, in other words - what we'd get automatically with a bowl of soup in a western restaurant. "Jam?" asked the waitress. "No, just butter," I replied. It took a long time to come...finally three pieces of white bread, warm and dry but not actually toasted, arrived at my table with an enormous ball of butter. "But this is not banh mi," I complained. "Doesn't banh mi always mean a baguette?" "Yes, usually it does," said Anh, "although technically it just means bread. They probably thought you would want this instead because you are a westerner."
Oh, for Pete's sake, I thought. Hello? Isn't a baguette French bread? How more western can you get than that? So I asked Anh, "Do you think I should send these back and tell her that all I want is a simple baguette?" "You should," he replied. So I did. The baguette arrived, sliced into five pieces (first time I've had my baguette pre-sliced for me) and accompanied by the same huge ball of butter. I used a very small (normal) amount of the butter and sent the rest back to the kitchen. When the bill came, I was charged 37K dong for the baguette...and presumably the enormous ball of butter, as well. Now, you should know that baguettes are ubiquitous here and are far and away the most common form of bread item. Restaurants in the tourist quarter usually charge 20K or 25K for a "baguette, butter and jam" for breakfast. But they only cost 2K dong in the market and 4K dong if you buy them unfilled from a lady who makes banh mi sandwiches at a glass wheeled vendor's wagon, which you'll find on every street corner. So I got charged 18 times the market price of a simple French baguette...without the jam. That's my reward for buying my food at the "Venice Coffee and Fast Food" restaurant. Altogether a ridiculous experience. And that's why we generally only eat in Vietnamese restaurants, where Vietnamese people eat and there is no mystery - beyond reading menu items in Vietnamese - about what you're going to get, and how much you're going to pay for it.
Mind you, the western buffet breakfasts in the hotels are good value for money here, but one tends to eat too much when you pay an "all you can eat" price.
Today we met Michael at the Sailing Club. It's not actually for sailing, it's the name of a Sandals resort bar on the beach near our hotel. We explored what we might be able to do at his language school for the next month before we go home. Serendipity placed Penny and Graham a few feet away at one table, and Lloyd and Esther down on the beach just in front of us. Michael and Lloyd both served in units here in Nha Trang and in the Central Highlands not far away at the same period of time during the "American War", so it was a bit of a thrill for them to meet each other. They'd both done R&R on the very beach in front of our restaurant patio. Deb and I eavesdropped on unit names and numbers and military lingo as it zipped back and forth between us.
Speaking of education, Michael told us that the English teachers in the Vietnamese school system, who are Vietnamese, don't make enough money, and can't speak English, so their students don't do well; so they began holding after school classes in their homes - the same teachers, teaching the same material to the same students. The gov't said, "Hold on, that's not fair, these teachers are making too much money off their students", so they prohibited the practice. That didn't stop the deficit in educational attainment, so they scheduled the same extra evening classes, but inside the schools. With the same teachers. And the gov't paid the teachers...and collected the extra fees from students, and skimmed off their portion. Everything was solved, but nothing was solved. Meanwhile, no non-Vietnamese national is to set foot inside a public school classroom, so even the most gifted language students will never have a chance to hear and emulate English spoken by a native English speaker, and have their pronunciation problems heard and corrected. It must be a very bizarre world inside the minds of Vietnamese Education Ministry officials.
We were hungry after our chat, so Deb and I hiked up for a feast of fresh and fried spring rolls - also called "Imperial Rolls", I've learned - at our favourite local spring roll place, Bo Bia Sai Gon. Later we met our old friend Joe from Saigon. He's the one who came all the way here with a young lady who returned to her parents in Nha Trang for Tet, although she also studies in Saigon - law, I believe. Apparently all is going well with him, his coursework is finished and he's doing a marketing internship to finish off his degree. He will graduate in June. The girl's parents like him, he's been dating her for sixteen days and all seemed great until this evening, when she got mad at him for taking off to come and see us, and didn't want to come with him to meet us. It sounds like some strange sort of jealousy or control issue, but what do I know? In any case, I hope it all works out well for him.
Here are some perils of relying on tourist restaurants catering to Vietnamese ideas of western tastes:
1. the prices are double, triple or more for the same dishes, the only real advantage being that you get to sit on adult chairs instead of kindergarten furniture. An extreme example is the Sailing Club, where a coffee with sweetened condensed milk - the most commonly requested coffee drink here - costs six times the price of the identical coffee in the identical glass at Hanoi Corner, which also has adult tables and chairs, but is not beach front. Meals are correspondingly higher as well. You can get "western" menu items, just like you can at the Sheraton, but why fly all the way to Vietnam to order western dishes?
2. At the Venice "coffee and fast food" restaurant (loud music, smoking patrons) we had a Tet surcharge - they'd increased all the prices with gummed stickers, but there was also an unexpected surprise: the English words below a "Chao" dish said "fried noodles with seafood" so that's what we ordered. At least that's what I ordered; Deb tried to order the same thing, but the waitress walked away without asking her what she wanted - it took some time to get her attention and make her realize there were four of us hoping to be fed at our table! In any case, what arrived for both of us was a bowl of very watery congee, in other words rice porridge that was more like rice soup. Anh was with us. I said, "Anh, what's this? It's not what we ordered." "Yes, it is," he replied, "That's Chao." I showed him the English words on the menu right beneath the Vietnamese entry. "Oh...they've translated it incorrectly - probably don't even know the meaning of the English words."
Hmm. I wondered, how can I improve on this menu accident? I should have simply sent it back and demanded that the manager provide what was written in English on the menu, but ever the polite Canadian, I decided to order a banh mi and butter to go with it. A simple bun, in other words - what we'd get automatically with a bowl of soup in a western restaurant. "Jam?" asked the waitress. "No, just butter," I replied. It took a long time to come...finally three pieces of white bread, warm and dry but not actually toasted, arrived at my table with an enormous ball of butter. "But this is not banh mi," I complained. "Doesn't banh mi always mean a baguette?" "Yes, usually it does," said Anh, "although technically it just means bread. They probably thought you would want this instead because you are a westerner."
Oh, for Pete's sake, I thought. Hello? Isn't a baguette French bread? How more western can you get than that? So I asked Anh, "Do you think I should send these back and tell her that all I want is a simple baguette?" "You should," he replied. So I did. The baguette arrived, sliced into five pieces (first time I've had my baguette pre-sliced for me) and accompanied by the same huge ball of butter. I used a very small (normal) amount of the butter and sent the rest back to the kitchen. When the bill came, I was charged 37K dong for the baguette...and presumably the enormous ball of butter, as well. Now, you should know that baguettes are ubiquitous here and are far and away the most common form of bread item. Restaurants in the tourist quarter usually charge 20K or 25K for a "baguette, butter and jam" for breakfast. But they only cost 2K dong in the market and 4K dong if you buy them unfilled from a lady who makes banh mi sandwiches at a glass wheeled vendor's wagon, which you'll find on every street corner. So I got charged 18 times the market price of a simple French baguette...without the jam. That's my reward for buying my food at the "Venice Coffee and Fast Food" restaurant. Altogether a ridiculous experience. And that's why we generally only eat in Vietnamese restaurants, where Vietnamese people eat and there is no mystery - beyond reading menu items in Vietnamese - about what you're going to get, and how much you're going to pay for it.
Mind you, the western buffet breakfasts in the hotels are good value for money here, but one tends to eat too much when you pay an "all you can eat" price.
Next diary entry: School Daze
