Rock Long Rock Hard

04/01/12, 12:01 p.m. EDT

                I’m still not completely convinced I didn’t just dream up the past four weeks of my life. I have, after all, been taking an antimalarial drug called doxycycline which is known for causing hallucinatory dreams. Thus, it’s entirely plausible I went to bed on the night of February 26^th, dreamt a month of fantastic escapades, awoke the next day, and have been involved in some grand calendar prank in the few days since then. That wouldn’t explain the tan lines, the wakeboarding bruises, or the deep sense of self I have acquired. Solipsism aside, I guess I can be sure all the people I met and all the things I did in my month in Vietnam actually existed. I flew in late Wednesday night and have been slipping in and out of a jetlag and spring allergy-induced fog since then, so now on Sunday I’m finally able to focus on more than just YouTube episodes of the self-explanatory show “Will It Blend?” and can actually reflect.

                I suppose I left off right before leaving for northern Vietnam last week. What an adventure! I flew into Hanoi Thursday morning and had the whole day to myself before meeting up with Becky and Karly, who would be arriving from their Sa Pa trek. Unlike most of the other backpackers in the Aussie-run hostel who stuck around the common room and ate Western food, I wanted a more authentic experience. I wandered away from the hostel until I found a Vietnamese woman selling bun (soup) on the street. When I pointed at it, I think I surprised her, but she pulled up a chair right next to her and sat me down. The warm bun was perfect for the foggy, cool day, but I couldn’t explain that to the squishy white tourists who kept giving me puzzled looks from their cyclo rides. Alright, I can’t win. I’m in culture limbo, and now everyone in Asia stares at me. I did get the authentic meal I was looking for, because it was like I had also hired a Vietnamese mother—a few times when I stopped eating to text the VPV staff, I received a firm tap on the shoulder and nonverbal commands to finish my food. When I had thanked her and she had her fill of showing me off to her friends, I departed with a street map to see how much of the City of The Soaring Dragon I could lap up in half a day.

                I bought a ticket for a water puppet show, which is the thousand-year-old art that originated in northern Vietnam, but had some time to squander before it started. I was ambling along one of Hanoi’s many lakes when I heard the doleful sounds of the Vietnamese bamboo flute, called sao truc. I walked to a bridge where there was a man with no eyes playing for money. I stood there mesmerized for awhile before giving him some dong and noticing that he had extra flutes. I asked if I could try one, and when he said yes we spent the next half hour or so taking turns playing for each other and the bemused tourists who passed by—some of whom actually took pictures! Judging from my actions so far that day, either I’m terrible at being a tourist or extremely good at it. I then made it to my water puppet show, which was like an aquatic Punch and Judy number with an elaborate set and a thrilling live pit orchestra of traditional instruments. After leaving the theater, I cranked up my walking pace to “New Yorker” and hit the Women’s Museum, the lavish Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh’s Presidential Palace, and the Hoa Lo Prison—better known to Americans as the Hanoi Hilton, the place where American POWs were kept during the war. I was a bit disappointed by what I saw, seeing as most of the prison doesn’t exist anymore, but especially because the placards only mention the horrors that were housed there when the French used it to detain Vietnamese political prisoners. Senator John McCain cannot lift his arms above his head anymore? Oh, we don’t talk about that. This does not surprise me, but it was my first experience with blatant censorship, other than no access to Facebook, while in Vietnam. It was late afternoon and I was studying the koi in a pond outside the Ho Chi Minh Museum (which had closed—curse my flute jam session) when a weathered Vietnamese man approached me, shoved a paper listing various points of interest at my nose, and asked if I wanted a motorbike tour. My first instinct was to politely but firmly decline him, but then I realized I might as well, seeing as I wouldn’t be able to get into any more museums that day. “Tran Quoc pagoda? You’ll take me there?” I asked. “Yes, yes, yes, get on,” he chirruped. I may have enjoyed the ride itself more if I wasn’t constantly thinking, “If he tries anything, I think I’d be able to do some damage to his nuts with my enormous water bottle,” and, “Didn’t I get a chain email once saying you can stab an aggressor under the chin with a key?” but sure enough, even though we detoured at the pitifully barren B-52 Victory Museum and zipped through back alleys, we arrived at the islet on which sits the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest pagoda in Hanoi. I hastily tried to cover my bare knees with my sweatshirt, but I don’t think any of the worshippers noticed me through the dazzling gold and hazy incense. The most awe-inspiring item there was a tree that apparently started as a graft of the original bodhi tree under which Siddhartha sat, a gift from India. After the pagoda, my driver took me back to my hostel, tried unsuccessfully to demand more money than we originally agreed upon, although I did end up giving him a bit extra, and bade me farewell. I found my Canadians sitting in the hostel common room and knew the fun had only begun.

                We embarked on the cramped, 4-hour journey from Hanoi to Ha Long Friday morning, and when we finally stepped off the bus our bathing-suited, beach-ready bodies were greeted by pounding, chilly winds. Confused, we noticed there were no boats out in the water. We were all taken to a restaurant for lunch and given the news that there were typhoon conditions that morning, and there was a police blockade on the wharf. My heart sank because my whole northern excursion was centered on this tour, and I had given up work days and paid for plane tickets for this. The tour guide, Dustin, grimly told us that busses would be returning to Hanoi so we could try again the next day or get a refund. We were a large group to accommodate, but we asked if we could pay for a night in a hotel in Ha Long to avoid 8 more travel hours, and after several phone calls with the hostel and behind-the-scenes planning, Dustin broke the news that for only the second time in the tour’s history we would be staying in Ha Long for the night. At first Karly and I weren’t pleased, because we had paid for the 3-day tour, but had a flight back to Saigon Sunday night and would have to cut it short now.  We shrugged it off for the time being and were quite entertained by the chaos of the night, including but not limited to a fire extinguisher going off in the hotel and a random baby stroller in the elevator.

                Saturday morning was the official beginning of the “Rock Long Rock Hard” Ha Long Bay tour, but it was already enhanced by the bonds we were able to make with the other travelers on that strange first day. We cruised out into the bay on our boat, dubbed the Phoenix, and got the chance to dive off the boat into the cerulean water. Later, I kayaked for the first time in my life to an intricate cave formation where we explored for awhile. After dinner back on the boat, Karly and I had heard so many tantalizing stories about what was to come the next day on Castaway Island that we knew we couldn’t leave with the 2-day group the next morning. After phone calls on deck with the hostel (should cell reception be allowed in one of the 7 natural wonders of the world?), we were able to book a new flight for Monday night. There went a third missed day of work, but I knew that completing this experience would end my Vietnam trip on a really great note, rather than a regretful one. And this logic ended up being absolutely sound. When we docked at Castaway Island Sunday morning, we had a day filled with wakeboarding, rock climbing, beach volleyball, and Ultimate Frisbee ahead of us. The night brought dancing under the stars and swimming with bioluminescent plankton that illuminated the rippling water with their eerie glow. The next morning, after the Phoenix made it back to the wharf in Ha Long Bay, I was certain that I had discovered paradise. The throbbing music on the boat may have been a stark juxtaposition to the serenity of the breathtaking limestone formations protruding from the foggy bay, but I couldn’t have asked for a better tour. Plus, my group ended up getting 4 days out of it! Defeated by exhaustion, we drove the 4 hours back to Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel, and Karly and I said final goodbyes to Becky before flying back to Saigon late Monday night.

                Of course we were back at work Tuesday morning! Sleep is for quitters. I asked if I could go to LTK, the clinic, in the morning and the pagoda in the afternoon so I would get the chance to bid “tam biet” to all the children who have challenged, enriched, and returned my affection over the past month. Long, an intelligent little boy at the clinic who can’t speak, always holds up 2 fingers whenever I leave at lunchtime, asking if I’ll be back at 2 p.m. My heart wrenched and my eyes oozed hot tears as I had to shake my head no for the first time. When I hugged Minh, the 20-year-old with CP but pretty good English, he sputtered, “Don’t—ever—FORGET—me!” Leaving was so hard, but I knew I had to do it all over again in the afternoon. At least whenever I leave the pagoda in the late afternoon we put the kids to bed, so symbolically I felt my goodbye had more closure as I lay them down in their cribs and stroked their heads before departing. I don’t know if most of them will remember me. I can’t be sure some of them knew I was there at all. Whatever the case may be, I’ll always have them with me, like a handprint on my being. They’ll be there whenever I’m patient, or courageous, or tolerant, or silly, or singing “Till There Was You.” I miss them so much, but they’ll be there.

                With these thoughts in my head and emotions in my heart, I had my last supper with all the volunteers at a local Vietnamese restaurant on the Saigon River. I sampled a seafood hotpot, where they bring you hot broth and raw ingredients and you cook it yourself, and was even brave/insane enough to try chicken feet. Bawk bawk. I had to be at the airport at 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, so despite my residual tiredness from Ha Long Bay and the draining goodbyes I had had at work, I decided it would be easier to stay up and then sleep on the plane. By the time I sat down on the airplane after scathing remarks from the check-in lady for not having my itinerary (in America you can simply give them your name!) I was so fatigued I was falling apart. I clutched the air sickness bag and couldn’t eat anything during my Saigon or Tokyo flights (I’m still trying not to blame the chicken feet), and I must have startled the Vietnamese man sitting next to me by talking in my feverish, restless sleep, because it even woke me up. Yet somehow without my knowledge I was deposited back in the States in Chicago. Due to massive, theme park-worthy lines at customs, I almost missed my flight to Philadelphia, but I made it back home without any more drama late Wednesday night (or so local East Coast time told me) and slept until 3 p.m. the next day.

I’m still recovering—I’m practically narcoleptic and I chug any milk I lay eyes on—but I’m home, and it’s springtime in Kennett Square. Buttery daffodils stand at attention along the creek that gurgles across the back of the development, and robin red breast perches on tree branches thick with buds that are rosy and swelling.

                

Fight Like A Dragon

03/21/12, 5:47 p.m.

                I’m packed and ready to hop on a plane tomorrow morning. Thank goodness it won’t be headed anywhere near the US! A little over a week ago, I decided I would meet my friends who are now traveling up north in Hanoi, the chic capital of Vietnam. I arrive in the morning to this city nicknamed Thanh Long, or City of the Soaring Dragon, and have a day allotted for guerilla tourism (throwing dong at various museums as I hurry by) before our Ha Long Bay tour begins Friday morning. Ha Long Bay is one of the seven natural wonders of Asia, and its name means Descending Dragon. I’m looking forward to a weekend on a boat, complete with night swimming in luminescent water, high-speed tubing, rock climbing, kayaking, and camping on an island. I know, right? Super dull.

                I did have to relinquish two days with my kids in order to go on this trip, and I do feel guilty. I turned down my friends’ offer to join them for the entire week, so this seemed like the optimal choice. I have been curious to see Hanoi, the grand old dame of Asia where moments of Paris mingle with the tempo of new Asia, even since before my trip to Vietnam. Even so, no matter how much fun I’m having swimming in the dazzling Ha Long Bay, a part of me will wonder what the children are doing right then. I only have two measly days of work once I return before I head back to America next Wednesday, and I know I will not be able to shake that wistful feeling even after my departure. Especially haunting are my pagoda babies; their futures are pretty dismal, as many have not been off the grounds of the temple in their memory and they probably will never get that chance. Under Vietnamese care, it’s heartbreaking yet understandable that this would be the fate of the children with severe cerebral palsy, yet the real tragedy is the little girl with a textbook case of autism. No eye contact, fixation on picking up and fiddling with trash, an almost constant humming that sounds like a staccato version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” If Fortuna would have had it that she would be born into an American family, she most likely would have been diagnosed early on, and would be given help with socialization and the chance for mainstream education. Yet here she is—barefoot, head shaved, scrawny and knobby, and with a nontransferable, one-way ticket to the Ky Quang pagoda.

                However, if I have learned anything about the Vietnamese in my time here, it’s that they are doggedly resilient and creative. Resolve to fight pumps through their bodies. You see it in the Cu Chi tunnel system, where people thrived for years underground, only emerging for ambush attacks in the American War. You see it in the Binh Soup shop, which I visited and ate at on Sunday, where an undercover Viet Cong sympathizer would serve pho to American GIs on the ground floor (the military base in Saigon was about 100m away) while planning the Tet Offensive of 1968 up a few flights of stairs. It’s apparent in the motorbike driver schlepping a ladder and a refrigerator through the congestion. It’s even there in the massage parlor where my friend on the VPV staff took me this weekend, which hires deaf and blind people as masseuses. Our head massages consisted of a lot of vigorous, circular cheek rubs and thumb pressure on the top of the head, and I even had my head yanked side to side in a manner that resulted in crunchy sounds exuding from my neck, but you couldn’t complain that it was ineffective.  So, perhaps there are opportunities for these kids. I can only hope that what I’m doing here is bringing them closer to a future for them. Then there the small snapshots in time, like my “boy band” at the physio clinic today that was gathered around the recording function on my cell phone and having a blast wailing into it. It’s going to be so hard to leave Saigon, because if nothing else, maybe I’m making their present just a little less of a struggle.

They See Me Strollin'

03/15/12, 12:38 p.m.

                This is a post about why I hate Vietnam.

                This is a post about why I love Vietnam.

                After a really wonderful beach weekend in Mui Ne, I was floating on fond memories. I could almost still hear the sound of the ocean when I was grabbed by the scruff of my neck and yanked back down to earth. I hadn’t opened my purse since Sunday night before we left the hostel, and when I opened it again on Tuesday I felt my stomach contort. My iPod and all the cash that was in my wallet (around $50 because I had just gone to the ATM) had vanished. The key chain was even neatly placed back inside the wallet the way I keep it, and it was zipped up again. Thanks for cleaning up after yourself, I guess. Being from LA, going to a fairly urban high school, and living for three months in Cape Town, all without incident, I was kicking myself for letting it happen. To be fair to myself, after we had to check out of the hostel at 11 a.m., we were told we could keep our bags in a locked room until we left on the 1 a.m. bus. At the time, leaving my purse there inside my backpack seemed like a better option than walking around at night with valuables on my person, but in hindsight I should have taken the option of looking like a target by holding a purse. After all, the staff and everybody else who was storing a bag could get in if they wanted as well. $50 isn’t a fortune, but it’s enough to be sorely missed, especially in a country like this, and my forlorn 5-year-old Classic did have a lot of music that isn’t on my iTunes. My travel insurance doesn’t cover “mysterious disappearance” of “personal effects,” and the owner of the hostel wouldn’t help at all because it can’t technically be proven that they were stolen on his property. The bright side of this pretty sour situation is that I outsmarted this upstanding member of our society in terms of hiding my debit card and passport. And, above all, there was no force—unlike my friend Hannah who had her handbag, and about half her shirt, grabbed off her by a motorbike on her second day here.

                Feeling really lousy about scammers in Vietnam, I went to a karaoke bar Tuesday night with a bunch of volunteers and program staff for a birthday party. The karaoke itself, with renditions of the Beatles, The Little Mermaid, Sonny and Cher, and “Gangster’s Paradise,” was a lot of fun, but we ran into some trouble with the one taxi company one should be able to trust here. Kevin paid the cabbie on the way there, and realized afterwards that he accidentally handed over a 500,000 VND bill instead of a 50,000 (all the zeros do get confusing sometimes) for a 45,000 trip. The driver didn’t give back any change at all before speeding off. On the way to our next destination, the driver tried to take us on the most winding route possible to a place that we had been to before, so we knew it should have been a straight shot. We finally made him stop and let us out, and we all paid only a fraction of what the meter said. On our way home that night, we had a man who spoke Vietnamese tell our cabbie that we knew where we were going, and—surprise, surprise—received a very reasonable price indeed. Working here for a month, I’d appreciate it if people didn’t always assume we’re tourists who stumbled off the tarmac yesterday. When that happens, both here and when I was in Cape Town, I want to flail my arms and shout, “I work for you! I’m on YOUR side!” It’s easy to brush these experiences off scornfully as being common occurrences in a country like Vietnam, but in general crime here is actually pretty rare, and volunteers who have been here for months can attest to that. With a culture that values order and honor, Vietnam is a far cry from being the lawless frontier. Thus, I will move forward from this experience with my debit card, passport, computer, and wisdom in tow.

                Plus, there’s nothing like a happy child to make you forget about scheming adults. I usually spend most of my volunteer time at the pagoda taking children on walks by foot, stroller, or wheelchair around the temple so they get some fresh air and sunlight. They never want to go back inside, but my conversations with them are mostly monologues, so I’ll sing to them as we circumnavigate the premises. Having exhausted all the songs in my mental catalogue, I have started composing songs for a “Ky Quang Pagoda: Greatest Hits” album. Vietnamese chart-toppers include “She’ll Be Comin’ Around The Temple When She Comes,” “They See Me Strollin’, They Hatin’,” and a little ditty to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March:

                                Strollers, they go very fast!

                                Strollers, they make the fun last.

                                On strollers, we are high rollers,

                                We are gangsters, and we like to go drifting.

Maybe the rhyme scheme isn’t perfect, but the last line is true. In the muggy heat, nothing here happens very fast, so it’s conspicuous when I charge past with a kid shrieking gleefully in a wheelchair and spin around like a sports car to go back the other way. Old women and staff alike all think it’s great fun to watch the silly white chick swerve around the Buddha statues and make engine noises, so everyone wins. I’m not brash enough to do it in front of one of the orange-robed, shaven-head monks, but whenever I walk by with a child they always smile down lovingly at them and nod to me in approval. This is in contrast to some cruel, repulsed looks from visiting adults and teasing from wicked able children that I’ve sometimes come across on these walks. I am working in settings where these kids are lucky enough to be getting attention and acceptance, but I know all too well that

6:26 p.m.

Sorry, Karly and I had to flee the café where we were sipping iced coffee and relishing the AC, because we realized we only had 10 minutes left until we had to leave again for our afternoon shift. I then came back to the Peace House, had dinner as usual at 4:30, and then went to the park with some staff and volunteers to kick a shuttlecock around like a hacky sack. That’s really popular here, and by the time we had to leave the original six of us were outnumbered by joining passersby. Before I smacked my computer shut, I meant to say I know all too well that outside the walls of places like this, these children can be completely ignored, or even worse, abhorred. Even in the clinic, some children are being diagnosed with what translates to “retarded syndrome.” Thank goodness that the vast majority of them have inspiringly sunny dispositions. At LTK, the clinic, a child named Long who doesn’t speak will nonverbally ask me every time I leave in the morning if I’ll be back again at 2:00, and there is always much hugging after the “yes” answer. At the pagoda, I taught a small blind boy how to beatbox, and now all he wants to do is sit on my lap and make music. Plus, there is nothing more flattering than after merely making eye contact with a child rolling spastically on the floor them laughing hysterically. I don’t know, maybe I just have a funny face.

The thunderstorm this afternoon dispelled the humidity and acted as ablutions of the recent negative experiences. The insistent drumming on the roof of LTK was triumphant and optimistic about the prospect of the next two weeks.

Becoming Miss Saigon

03/12/12, 8:13 p.m.

                I’m long overdue for another blog update, but with this past week being my first week of work and my glorious weekend at the beach of Mui Ne, I guess I have been more concerned with accumulating new experiences rather than documenting them. And that’s not so bad, right?

The learning curve is steep but I’m steadily becoming more and more acclimated here. The fishbowl effect of being white in the non-touristy parts of town (essentially where I spend all my time) will never stop being unsettling, as hundreds of heads on motorbikes rotate to ogle the creature with the funny blue eyes waiting at the bus stop. I wake up early with the rest of the city, sometimes participate in the Vietnamese siesta from 12-2 p.m., and go to bed early. I have mastered the rudimentary shower situation, but have at the same time become accustomed to the ever-present sweaty veneer which turns my cheeks rosy and curls my hair into what I’ve dubbed the “Nam Fro.” Watch for it on the runways this spring. I have mastered the apologetic smile, which can be poetically translated to, “Do you seriously think I speak Vietnamese?” and how to jump on and off a moving bus, but I’m most proud of my new street-crossing prowess. This seems inane, but it’s actually quite a feat. The traffic of motorbikes, taxis, and buses never subsides because of the lack of stop signs or lights in most places, so if you wait at the “crosswalk” (a chimera of sorts) you will never cross. You have to quell all self-preservation instincts and step out into the street, making eye contact with the motorbike riders and walking slowly and predictably. While cars and buses do always have the right of way, you simply have to trust that the motorbikes will go around you, despite all the honking they might do. After only two weeks on the opposite end of the map, I’m quite proud of all I’ve absorbed—and that doesn’t even include everything I’m learning on the job.

I spend my  weekdays alternating between working at LTK, a physiotherapy clinic for children with disabilities, and the Ky Quang Pagoda, which serves as an orphanage to over 200 children—most of whom are disabled. I occupy the daycare center of both of these places, playing with and feeding children who mostly have cerebral palsy, Down’s Syndrome, or are blind. 1 in 40 children in Vietnam are born with CP, a staggering statistic, so the majority of my charges have some form of it and it has been both enlightening and humbling. The most important, and rather heart-breaking, part of CP is that you can never judge a proverbial book by its cover. At LTK last week, I sidled up to a boy who looked about 7 years old and kind of vague, and started to draw pictures for him with a crayon stub on a scrap of paper. After a few minutes, he motioned for the crayon and, to my dumbstruck amazement, scrawled out, “Name,” in English. I wrote “Taylor,” and in response he gestured at himself and wrote, “Tre.”His next written query was simply, “Age,” which is actually very common here so people know how to address each other, next to which I wrote 18 and he 15! Before I had to go, he scribbled, “Origami,” and grinned. I had just had a pleasant introductory conversation with a boy I thought wasn’t even there, let alone a fan of Japanese paper art. From that moment on I knew never to assume, and since then I have had all sorts of verbal and nonverbal interactions with these children who are dying for someone to give them a chance. At the beautiful Buddhist temple setting of the pagoda, you can tell the difference between the kids there and the perky, sometimes spoiled little ones at LTK who go home to families every afternoon. They often smell a little worse and are a bit tougher. However, as soon as we volunteers shut the gate, the ones who can walk are pulling you in every direction to play with toys, or trash, or even right out the gate again to walk laps around the pagoda, an activity in which you can get stuck for hours if you aren’t firm. I was once out for a long stroll when the kid of indeterminate gender at this point (most of them wear the same clothes and have shaved heads) I was accompanying wanted to go inside the central temple. This kid has a fixation on collecting stick-like objects (used incense sticks, straws, plant material) and usually doesn’t show interest in anything else, but while in the temple something special happened. I lifted them up and over an uneven part of the tiling, and upon landing they looked up at me and actually cracked a smile. While heading back out, I suddenly received a baby kiss on my upper arm and then a head nuzzling underneath my chin. I hugged back as a wave of tenderness passed over me. I may never know this child’s story, and I’m not in their life for very long, but judging by their subsequent friendly interactions with other volunteers and me, I like to think that some sort of pilot light was turned up. It is times like those that make the bites, scratches, spit-up rice or flat-out refusals to eat, endless pagoda laps, ball retrievals, and helping the heavy kid with male and female genitalia put on his shorts all worth it.

However, all the tribulations definitely made this past weekend in Mui Ne even more of a reward. From sunning outside our hostel (beach view for $8 a night) to traipsing through the muddy Fairy Springs to quad biking in the nearby expansive sand dunes to fabulous fresh seafood enjoyed with my volunteer friends and new ones made almost immediately upon arrival, it was well worth the sleep deprivation I’m feeling now. Becky, Karly, and I took the 1 a.m. bus for the 5-hour trip back to Ho Chi Minh City and went to work today, so I’ll be dragging myself into bed tonight without continuing with my rereading of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. The unnecessary and wildly destructive American bombing of Dresden during WWII, the focus of the novel, was almost a foreshadowing of what would come a generation later in this country. The neatly planted rubber tree groves we passed on the way to Mui Ne betray the fact that the original foliage and country itself was obliterated in the war, but the bustle of the modern motorbike traffic and the genuine smile on a disabled child’s face portends well for the future of Vietnam.

So it goes.

Good MOOOOORNING, Vietnam!

03/04/12, 10:15 p.m.

                Well, this has certainly been the best weekend I’ve ever spent in Vietnam. I spent each day doing a different tour that took me a couple of hours or more away from the city, which lent itself to pretty scenery but fairly long days. My brain was having a new sensory information field day, and there were definitely a few unexpected surprises.

Yesterday, two other girls and I took a trip east to the Mekong Delta, where life drifts down the system of languid, murky rivers and canals. When we arrived, we got off the tour bus and onto a slow, wooden boat that sounded like a grumbling old man as it churned the lazy water of the Mekong River. We passed floating houses that act as stations for the fishing of catfish on our way to Phoenix Island, where we ate lunch and saw the process for making rice paper. When we hopped off the boat at the next island I was almost immediately handed a board laden with some honeycomb and lots of honeybees, much to my alarm. These little busybodies make the honey that we sampled in the form of honey-lemon tea (it seems like that would just be a hot toddy, but it was actually the most delicious and unique tea I’ve ever tasted) and a form of honey roasted peanuts. Next, we were taken by horse-cart dragged along by some tired little ponies to a village where we sampled produce like dragonfruit and a strange sort of citrus. While there, we were treated to live traditional Vietnamese music filled with pentatonic scales, local string instruments, and singers who use vibrato on consonants—like Broadway stars, actually.  I was just waiting for Yul Brynner to arrive. At the end of the concert, we were indignantly eating the untouched fruit off the other tables and wondering why there was a crowd over in the corner. Suddenly, a man was offering to let me hold a boa constrictor. Just like the motorbike ride, this was an offer I could not refuse. After being led grudgingly through a souvenir shop, we were able to take a ride on a rowboat pushed by a woman with a long oar. If God forbid I never make it to Italy and partake in a gondola ride, I think I’ll be set with this experience. It was so soothing as we passed through the lush palms and assorted tropical greenery, with the placid murmur of the oar pushing its way through the silt and water. Of course, as soon as we arrived back at our original boat and tipped the woman, on came the boat motors as she and the other rowers whirred away. To their credit, I guess I wouldn’t want to do that all day either. Our last stop was a coconut candy “factory” (some women with really deft hands under a thatched roof) to see how this Laffy Taffy-like candy is made. Only, unlike their Wonka sibling, the coconut candy is wrapped in the edible rice paper, so you don’t have to worry about unpeeling it! Why this has not caught on in America, I cannot say, but it seems like we would enjoy eating as much as we possibly can, including probably our own selves if it weren’t detrimental. After that, we got back on the boat and then on the tour bus. After vast stretches of verdant rice paddies dotted with the occasional conical rice hat gave way to increasing motorbikes and urban bustle, we arrived back in Ho Chi Mihn’s District 1 as true to the phrase “fat and happy” as possible.

As if we hadn’t been eating all day, we stopped by vegetarian restaurant for dinner that one of my friends had been meaning to try. I think the slogan of this place must be “don’t worry about it,” because it seemed as if we had walked in on the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Either that or they were messing with us because we were the only westerners in the entire (yet mostly empty) establishment. The spring rolls arrived with a plate of lettuce and basil sprigs that we didn’t know how to use, and I’m sure the staff was giggling as we said, “What the heck,” and wrapped the spring rolls in lettuce. I found goat on the menu and was confused by its presence in a vegetarian restaurant, but decided to order it since I’ve never eaten goat. It showed up tasting deliciously of an entirely mushroom dish without any trace of a billy goat or his gruff anywhere. Alright, makes sense. Yet, somehow my vegetarian friend’s vegetable dish ended up with bona fide meat in it, even though we confirmed with the waiter by pointing at the menu that no dishes had been switched. AND they charged me for the rice in a dish that said “with rice” on the menu, but it was just kind of an absurdly funny event. Nothing, after all, is ever certain or guaranteed when you’re traveling.

Today, Becky and I woke up early again and were back on a Sinh Tourist bus headed for the Cao Dai Temple and the Viet Cong’s famous Cu Chi tunnel system. Caodaism is a specifically Vietnamese religion that started in 1926 and was started because its founders observed that there are too many religions in the world that all say basically the same thing and yet everyone is constantly fighting because of them. My thoughts exactly! It mainly combines the tenets of Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and saints include Jesus Christ and Buddha, as well as Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill. It fell into the callous grip of the government after 1975, but was finally given official sanction in 1997. The temple in Tay Ninh (close to the Cambodia border) is fantastically ornate with depictments of the Seeing Eye and dragons winding around pillars everywhere. We arrived in time for the noontide prayer, where hundreds of worshippers dressed in white sat in neat rows that put marching band to shame and bowed their heads and chanted to the molto largo metronome of a bell. I would have been spellbound if it weren’t for the rabid tourists who kept pushing to get their camera to the front, talking loudly during the prayer, and not letting worshippers through the crowd. I wanted to shake somebody’s shoulders but figured that probably wouldn’t go over to well in a temple.

After a lunch of pho at a local restaurant, we drove an hour and a half to the village of Cu Chi, home of the famed tunnels. During the American War, as it is called here, the people living there were sympathetic to the Viet Cong and ambushed American troops while living totally up to three or four bomb-proof levels underground. Schools, hospitals, marriage, and in fact all daily life was conducted down there, unbeknownst to the US soldiers above. Like at the War Remnants Museums, it was an interesting experience to sit through an old propaganda movie that described schoolgirls joining the voluntary forces, killing many enemy troops, and being lauded as “American Killer Heroes” for their bravery. As we walked around on top, we were able to see craters caused by B-52s, model reenactments of life in the belly of Cu Chi and a booby trap exhibit I like to call “How to Best Puncture a Dumb American,” and I was even able to wedge myself into a foxhole. Unfortunately, I left my fingers sticking out as I shut the lid, so I wouldn’t have made a very effective soldier. This point was confirmed when I got the chance to fire five bullets out of a carbine gun (yes, you read correctly!) and managed to hit the target only once or twice. What can I say, I’m no fighter. The moment we were all anticipating arrived when we started down into the actual tunnel system. The parts that tours go through have been widened for visitors, but only ever so slightly. I’m no NBA star and I had to crouch, crawl, or slide backwards the whole way. In that cramped, dark, airless environment, I forced bouts of claustrophobia out of my mind as almost all the other tourists gave up and peeled off at openings along the way. It’s just like Bright Child. You had your seventh birthday party in tunnels like this. 100 meters later, blessed daylight revealed a model of the hospital and the rest of my tour group. Living down there indefinitely with just bamboo shoots to the surface for air seems like an impossible feat to me. That just shows how resilient they were and how they had no other option, as the entire forest overhead was a noxious funeral pyre. While I also cannot begin to imagine the paralyzing and traumatizing fear American soldiers felt when confronted with an invisible enemy and the constant threat of booby traps, even the US had to agree that the plan was ingenious.

After such a literally breath-taking experience, we were back on the bus headed towards HCMC once more. Staring out the window, my imagination performed acrobatics trying to recreate what life here must have been like 40 years ago. This city and this country improved by immense strides, but there is still so far to go. So many are still haunted by the past—including those who weren’t even alive to see the turmoil, yet they still bear the memories of Agent Orange and leftover land mines in their disabilities. Entering that world begins tomorrow.

Motorbikes and Musings

03/02/12, 8:06 p.m.

                My two-day orientation is now over, so after the weekend I’ll dive right into work. Or trip and fall off the diving board, which seems more likely given that anything can happen on the first day at a care center for children and even some adults with disabilities. My roommate, Karly, who has been here for a month already warned me about the boy who takes awhile to warm up to new volunteers, and bit her on her first day. But he’s a sweetheart after that! Come what may, I am giddy with anticipation. On Monday I’ll finally obtain what I’ve been seeking for quite some time now: a purpose. Through all the preparation up to today, I have been stamping my hooves at the starting gate, and I’m ready to give myself to this project and this experience. Countless travel stories from my grandparents tickling my imagination and goading my curiosity, four years of Circle of Friends participation (the club at my high school that makes an effort to include students with disabilities through various social activities), three months in South Africa working with children, and two supersaturated days of orientation have prepared me as much as one can be prepared, and the rest will reveal itself shortly.

                Yesterday, we had to get through the “signing papers and watching PowerPoints” part that makes every orientation so thrilling in the morning. In the afternoon, local VPV volunteers arrived to give us our basic Vietnamese lesson. Over two hours of wondering why sometimes I say a word correctly and sometimes I don’t when it sounded the same to me ensued. By the end, though, I was able to recognize enough to answer simple questions in Vietnamese. If all else fails, I still have my handy-dandy “Vietnam is a beautiful country” in case I ever get in trouble. After the lesson, one of the staff members, named Max, offered to take me to a local cell phone shop to get a Vietnamese SIM card for the phone I brought. On the walk there through the maze of alleys surrounding Peace House #3, I found out that 19-year-old Max had been a normal volunteer not too long ago when the last international volunteer coordinator left. The staff apparently acknowledged his people skills, offered him the job, and he hasn’t been back to England since. The lucky little so-and-so. After buying the SIM card and bringing it home, I realized to my dismay it would not work with the phone. To avoid another long walk in the heat, he asked if I would want to ride on the motorbike—the motorcycle’s runty cousin and Vietnam’s most popular mode of transportation. Obviously, this was like asking me if I would like a piggyback ride from Gustavo Dudamel, world peace, and a basket of kittens. Riding on the back with the wind in my face as it zipped through the throngs of bikes, it was all I could do to hold in shrieks of glee and I settled for a big, dopey grin the whole time. Being from the land of Harleys and leather jackets, it seems almost comical to see businessmen or mothers with babies, all with helmets and many with surgical masks, getting around this way, but I was glad (exultant!) to be a part of it. I acquired a phone, brought it home, and let out a sigh of defeat when it had no battery power and I couldn’t put the charger all the way in to remedy this. Back on the scooter we went. Upon our third arrival of the day to this tiny store, the shopkeeper’s eyebrows betrayed a “Really?” expression as it dawned on me that I had pulled a Classic Taylor Move. He simply flipped the battery over, plugged the phone in (even if still only halfway), and the phone revived in perky defiance. Max shook his head and chuckled as I felt the dunce cap appear over my head as in the Looney Tunes. There was no time for dopey grins between the profuse, embarrassed apologies on the way home. Luckily he didn’t seem to mind, and after all, maybe subconsciously I just wanted another excuse for a motorbike excursion.

                Today was the all-day tour of Ho Chi Minh City, where I melted the rubber off the soles of my Converse walking all around the city in the humid, 97-degree heat. First on the agenda was the War Remnants Museum, which houses artifacts and photos of American war crimes. Needless to say, it was quite eye-opening to be an American in this museum built around the other side’s point of view. There were disturbing pictures of the effects of napalm and Agent Orange, accounts of atrocities such as the My Lai massacre, reconstruction of the cramped, barbed wire “tiger cages” into which the South Vietnamese army, under the auspices of the US, forced many of their prisoners, and real bomber jets and unexploded ordnances. The images and stories of brutal and grotesquely creative violence stung my eyes and brought a lump into my throat. Disemboweling a 6-year-old and driving nails into prisoners’ skulls has never been, and shall never be, a valid strategy for encouraging democracy. Even coming from progressive Santa Monica, where history teachers tell you the truth about Christopher Columbus and the Taino massacre, our founding fathers and their slaves, and the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was shocked at how much objective information about the Vietnam War was missing from those fairly narcissistic lesson plans. Woodstock is mentioned far more often in terms of protest than the active, international efforts of the youth and elders of countries all around the world. GIs shooting at cowering children in the street simply because they are there rarely is acknowledged. The somber statue made out of bomb and grenade remnants, entitled “Mother,” and I grimaced at each other. It was indeed interesting, though, to talk to the local VPV volunteer who was guiding us about the aftermath on both sides. She had no idea that American Vietnam veterans suffer from immense trauma and are often homeless and forgotten, and I was surprised to find out that the war isn’t discussed much at all in Vietnamese schools outside of the dry dates of battles. We both bemoaned the fact that the nightmares of that war were not exclusive to that one conflict and have continued in variations all over the world up until the present. I was still brooding when we left for the Reunification Palace, the home of the South Vietnamese president during the Vietnam War and the site of the end of the war when a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the gates. Somewhat anticlimactically, it now serves as a government building. After a lunch of the noodle soup bún bò Huế, we paid a visit to the other popular tourist traps of downtown HCMC: the Ben Thanh market, the Notre Dame cathedral (literally all its materials were imported from France), and the original post office from the late 19^th century. It was my first day outside the neighborhood of the Peace House, and my fanny pack sighting quota was definitely fulfilled for quite some time.  

                Now properly oriented, I get to look forward to my first weekend here, and with it the chance to explore. Two other volunteers and I are going on an all-day boat tour of the Mekong Delta tomorrow, and I hope to check out the North Vietnamese Cu Chi tunnel system on Sunday. Given that all that goes well, and the mosquitoes that have decided to devour my flesh, and only mine, don’t succeed too quickly, I’ll be off to work on Monday to hopefully make a difference. After everything I experienced today, I feel that Americans need a fresh reputation in this country—a compassionate one, rather than one of aggressive politicians and naïve, hedonistic tourists. And apparently a fresh wardrobe is required, too, as I’m pretty confident that fanny packs are a war crime. 

Orienteering

02/29/12, 1:43 p.m. (UTC+7 hours, Vietnam time)

                Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.” When looking at your life, if you don’t like what you see, spin around three times and look at it again between your knees. Something was stagnant about my time in Kennett Square—the fresh, country air was almost suffocating. The same menial tasks, the same lonely routine, the same waiting for Godot were all muddling my brain and nothing seemed to work right. I knew the precious sand of my gap year hourglass was slipping away and it was time do something important. While in South Africa, I may have been able to get rid of the ringworm, but I caught the international volunteerism bug pretty badly. So, to remedy my situation, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. Okay, not quite. I went to Saigon because I wished to give my time to disabled children and live in a completely different world than anything I had ever experienced. I went to go retrieve myself from the lost-and-found.

            A month or so after this decision, with getting a visa, typhoid vaccination, antimalarial prescription, travel preparations, and a few Vietnamese phrases out of the way, I boarded a plane destined for Chicago. Then Tokyo. Then Ho Chi Minh City, the post-Vietnam War name for Saigon. I arrived last night addled and stiff after 25 hours of flight time. When the automatic doors opened, Saigon exhaled her heavy, muggy, smoky breath on me and the voices of many people shouting to loved ones, business partners, and other airport pickups danced in my ears. Somehow I was able to find the unassuming Volunteers for Peace Vietnam (VPV) staff member with the tiny sign in the crowd, and we chatted for a few minutes as we waited for the other volunteer arrival to show up. A few minutes turned into more than an hour, and she was just about to give up and call the office when he finally came over to us. At this point I had been awake for over 30 hours and glad to be going towards the prospect of a bed.

            The taxi ride to Peace House #3 in the Phu Nhuan district seemed like a tour through a Hollywood set, it appeared so unreal. It took awhile for it to sink in that Cape Town was on a different continent, but the motorbikes, small sidewalks, distinct architecture, and neon signs in Vietnamese that lit the sultry night all mingled to create a very clear message that I wasn’t in Kansas, or Kennett Square, or even the western hemisphere anymore. Upon my arrival at the volunteer house, which doubles as the VPV office, I kicked off my shoes and a shy, Irish volunteer named Kevin showed me up a few narrow flights of stairs to my room. I picked at my luggage listlessly in the semblance of unpacking before climbing gratefully into bed. Well, onto bed because with the ubiquitous heat there are no covers on it, but rather a merciful fan I put at the foot.

            It’s a good thing it’s impossible for me ever to sleep in, because I was greeted this morning by jackhammers, a real-life crowing rooster, a Vietnamese message over a loudspeaker somewhere, and a train of other volunteers coming into my room to use the bathroom—the only one on the floor. The house emptied as everyone went off to work for the morning and I decided to figure out the shower. By shower, I mean a handheld shower head with cold water, a bucket, and a drain in the floor of the tiny bathroom. I added “bathing in Vietnam” to the list of benefits of short hair. I didn’t see anyone else for the rest of the morning, save for an awkward encounter with the cook, who didn’t speak any English, and I, who didn’t know where anything in the kitchen was. At lunch I met far more faces than names I could remember, but it was a happy gathering in the cramped common area of people from Australia, England, Ireland, Spain, and Japan as well as two other Americans and of course Vietnamese volunteers and staff. I was happily surprised at how much more diverse the volunteer base is here, both in terms of nationality and gender. Half or even more of the volunteers are men, which is a brownie point for males since the majority of the volunteering here is working with children, not building houses. It’s an amicable group and I’m excited to explore the city for the first time on a walk this afternoon with my Australian roommate, Michelle. She has been here for awhile already, so hopefully we won’t get lost. If we do, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Thoreau wouldn’t think so.