My Protanoptic Life » long xuyen

Heading to Phu Quoc

Daniel — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:45:54 +0000

The morning of May 18 we woke up with no power and again made plans again to go to Ha Tien beach. We went to LX to have lunch and surf the net and check out the bus station schedule. We passed a white man with a white trimmed beard and thick nerdy glasses riding a bicycle through the back streets of LX. We decided to go to Phu Quoc instead of Ha Tien, and decided to go the next morning. We'd hoped that somebody from tiens family would come but everybody had reasons to stay so it was just us two. Early on May 19 we woke up to catch our bus. There were men outside of thus house digging a ditch for a pipe of some sort. They were chiseling right through the tile on thus front patio, and not one of them was wearing protective eye gear. Even though it was early I didn't feel tired like I had for the previous few days and I remembered that my body adjusts it's energy level for the pending activities. Now that we had plans I was wide awake and ready to rock. As we headed out I got a feeling that I setimes get on motorbikes... The naked feeling that I should buckle in somehow, as if I'm in a car. Of course there are no seatbelts on motorbikes, and in VN there aren't often seatbelts in cars or buses either. If they're there they don't get used. On the ride to the bus station I saw a woman go to adjust the mirror on her motorbike and have it break clean off. We left the station at 8:10 and before long we found ourselves driving on the wrong side of the road with a man hanging out of the open bus door yelling. We sped past two trucks on our right as a tinny voice blared out of a loudspeaker to our left and the sound of an alarm could be heard from somewhere ahead. Just another typical day of travel in Vietnam. We stopped at a cafe where there was a sign with some Japanese fantasy character on it. The word "internet" was followed by some Chinese characters and then the words "Final Step 3.0"... oh squaresoft, look what you've done. Same to you, internet buzzword machine. The bus continued it loud caper down the highway which parralleled a river all the way to the coast. There was a shrine on the dashboard and a spare incense holder affixed to the frame of the passenger side window. We got off at Rach Soi and took motorbike taxis about 12 km to the superdong ferry in Rach Gia. The ferry only left twice daily and we were early, so we ate some food and waited. I noticed them loading motorbikes on and off of other boats and had tien get th price of what it would cost to take a motorbike. At 170k it wouldve been a much cheaper alternative. Next time. The boat ride was pretty smooth and we passed many small islands. The seats were pretty small though and I was glad when we finally arrived. The boat hadn't let us off where I thought it would. I thought it was dropping us off in the city and so we hadn't bought a bus ticket to te town. We ended up getting a taxi for not too much more who took us to a decent hotel where we got a room and rented a motorbike. We were hoping to go swimming and so we headed off in the bike to cruise the coast in search of a nice beach, but it was too dark and the road was under heavy construction which made it hard for us to navigate. We ended up going back to the hotel and taking a quick dip in warm, dark water with rapidly breaking waves. The swimming conditions weren't good so we headed back to the hotel, grabbed the bike and heade to the night market for dinner. The night market was small and didn't have anything interesting, so we had our food and retired. Over dinner I thought back to one year ago when I was preparing for my first trip to VN. it was strang e to think that in one year, trawling internationally, staying at random hotels in random places and discovering new areas has become normal. It wa strange to think back to a time when my comfort zone was so small that each night I wanted to be in my own bed. Now I don't even own a bed, much less care where I sleep.

Day to day in Binh Hoa

Daniel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:30:15 +0000

Friday we woke up and did some internet stuff. I was catching up on a lot of Internet in the morning. Tien got me a breakfast sandwich and made me a banana and strawberry smoothie. What a lucky guy I am, my fiance bringing me food at my computer! Tien found the information we needed about how to get me a drivers license in Vietnam and it was incredibly simple. We headed to Long Xuyen to get the things we needed in order to apply for it: a photograph of 20x23mm and a notarized translation of my CA driver's license. We also cruised around to look for a DC power adapter since I forgot the one that goes with the WRT54G that I brought from America. We found one near a park, and after buying it I decided to go take some photos in the park. I was looking for high places to photograph down from in order to make the miniature perspective of the tilt/shift work, so we also headed up to the Panda Cafe on the 6th floor of a building overlooking a main intersection and had some drinks and took some more photos from there. We then cruised down to a local market area, past a block full of flower vendors that smelled a lot like San Jose smells in the spring. I told Tien about this as we were passing through. We picked up some stuff for Thu and headed home to spend the evening hanging out with her family. I tried to hook up the WRT54G and found that the power adapter did not work. Saturday morning we woke up and headed straight to the translation service and then to the police station. It was a day for people to drop things. While we were riding along I saw three people drop things off of their motorbikes. I've also noticed that school is in session now because the streets are full of uniformed students. The girls look beautiful in their all-white traditional clothes, and the boys have a classic schoolboy look in their blue pants, white shirts and red ties. Most of them ride bicycles to school, some hitching rides with others or on motorbikes. When we got to the police station they informed us that they couldn't give me a driver's license unless my visa was good for at least 3 more months. This was mildly disappointing and I couldn't help but wonder if it was a subtle attempt at extortion. I didn't care enough to find out so we left and went to have brunch at a cafe where we often used to go to surf the net. The food was OK and the drinks were great. We talked about our plans to travel to Nha Trang and possibly to Thailand, what else we would do while I was here, and about whether or not I would return to the USA on Nov 25th, which I think is likely. We went and swapped the power adapter for one that we thought should work even though it was slightly underpowered, cruised the 20 minutes home from Long Xuyen and found that it did not work. I really didn't think it would be so hard to find a 12v 500mA DC adapter, but surprise surprise, Vietnam is full of surprises. That evening we went out in the neighborhood for a walk. We stopped at a little cafe where some locals were watching a ridiculous television show. We ate ice cream and mosquitoes ate me. My ice cream was one of those triple flavors, chocolate, mint and durian. That was interesting... it's the first time I've had durian since I knew it was the "stinky fruit." It definitely has a very, very odd and distinct flavor and scent. Tien and I ate dinner on the floor with her mom and sister that evening. I was a little melancholy and I think this made them slightly uncomfortable, but it's not like we could talk about it. The side-effects of not being able to speak to anybody except Tien were beginning to get to me. Aside from nonverbal communication, another thing that was getting to me was a pain I'd had in my ankle. Ever since I got off the plane in Tokyo I had a pretty significant pain in my left ankle. I thought it might be a pulled muscle or a bruise on my ankle, but the more I had thought about it the more I thought it might be something with my ligaments. It is a pain stretching from the middle of my shin on the inside, down to the top part of my ankle joint, and also is affected by the arch of my foot. Tien gave me a massage and rubbed some Ben Gay™ that her brother in law had brought from america and that made it feel much better, though not healed. Sunday morning I woke up at 7:15, which is early for me. While Tien and I were at the market having breakfast I saw a shirt that said "Do u know now much plannet u mean to me" and thought that was pretty funny. We talked a bit about where we wanted to go on a trip, and afterwards we headed to Long Xuyen to find yet another power adapter. After visiting about 10 stores we finally tracked down a 498mA power adapter and decided to buy it even though the man at the shop said it was not very good quality. We took a back road to get back to the main road which I always enjoy because I like seeing new areas. The road took us by the river and on the way we found a crowd of people standing at the waters edge. They weren't celebrating, but they weren't frantic either. Tien listened to what they were saying and told me that a child had fallen into the river. A man away from the crowd began to shout, but nobody payed attention. I thought this was interesting because it seems that Vietnamese people shout a lot. This ended up being one of those "never cry wolf" situations because he was trying to tell them he saw something in the water. A few more people also began shouting and soon a teenage boy ran over and jumped in the water to look for the child there. Several people swam along the shore, which dropped off very steeply, and were diving under looking for the child. We stayed a while but the child was never found... I had talked to Tien before about how children here are not taught to swim which leads to many of them drowning, and here was a real life example of such a tragedy. I feel stupid and ashamed that I never thought about the fact that the children in Tien's family can't swim and it wasn't until a few days later that one of her other family members suggested that they be put in swimming lessons. Tien couldn't swim when I met her, and I wondered if anybody else in her family could. When we got home I tried the power adapter on the wireless router and it was too unstable and thus did not work. I decided to give up on the whole thing, I'll just mail the power adapter once I get back to the USA. That night I opened a bottle of Da Lat red and had wine with dinner. It was the first wine I'd had since leaving California and it was delicious and familiar. It felt good to have a familiar taste that is heavily bound to California. That night I slept deeply. Tien and I had planned to go to Nha Trang on Monday, a beach resort town up towards Danang, but that morning Tien said we weren't going to go. She had a sore on her mouth and did not want to travel far until it was healed. I wasn't sure if this was for medical or aesthetic reasons, though I suspected both and agreed. At breakfast I was trying to teach Ngoc some english words and realized that she had a very difficult time saying words that begin with the letter S. I asked Tien about it and she said there are very few words in Vietnamese that begin with that letter. I thought about phonetics exercises and games that we could do to train her mouth to say english words. Instead of going to Nha Trang we talked about going back to Mt. Cam where we could hike up the mountain and swim in the pools of the stream that go down from the lake on top of the mountain. We made tentative plans to do this the next day. We also made tentative plans to teach Ngoc and Nhi how to swim in the pool in Long Xuyen. We had lunch and I wondered about why there were no tuk tuk's in Vietnam. Tien said that her dad and brother both used to be tuk tuk drivers, but a while back the police said that people weren't allowed to have them anymore. She couldn't explain the detailed reasons why, but said that one of the reasons was because there were too many motorbikes. I suspected that the tuk tuks were causing accidents or clogged traffic. I found it hard to believe that anything was limited on the streets of Vietnam, it seems like you can ride whatever you can build on the street. That afternoon was very uneventful and empty, and the boredom of Binh Hoa began to set in. We were going nowhere and I couldn't talk to anybody except Tien. I was sitting idle and feeling like I was wasting away. Tien and her sisters decided that evening that we would go to a Catholic All Saints Day festival that was going on up the highway. I wasn't in much of a mood to go by this point, but it was better than sitting at home and I was up for anything at that point. The crowd was huge. People were filling up the little two lane highway and vendors came to sell flashy lights, stuffed animals, foods, all sorts of trinkets and just about anything. There were hundreds of people walking along the highway buying things, chatting, riding bikes, talking on cell phones, etc.. Some were going to the graveyard to burn incense and light candles for their loved ones. Very few were going to church to pray. I felt very uncomfortable in that crowd. It was like being so famous that every single person in the crowd knew me, but I wasn't famous for necessarily good reasons. And it was like I had a sign around my neck that said "please say hello." Hundreds of eyes watched me as I did absolutely nothing interesting. People laughed and joked while watching me. Dozens of people shouted "hello" and dozens more said things that I couldn't understand. If I had been in a better mood I think it might have been OK, but with my frustrations from being so idle I wasn't really in a good mood for it. Instead I just tried to take photos of stuff, but was uninspired. The night was also very dark and it was hard to get a clear picture. We went to the church and I took some photographs of that, lamenting that I had no tripod. I resolved to buy one or make one. The incense at the church smelled wonderful on the air and there was a full moon. That night I talked briefly with Tien about how I was frustrated with the inability to communicate and the fact that we weren't finding anything to do except be lazy at home. We decided to go ahead and go to Nha Trang.

Returning to Binh Hoa and Long Xuyen

Daniel — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:42:02 +0000

Wednesday we got breakfast at a new place. It was in the tourist area in Pham Ngu Lao and had a menu in English, French and Vietnamese. We both ordered orange juice that was fresh squeezed and not sweetened. Its natural flavor was delicious and a nice contrast to the MSG overload from the previous night. The food was so so, you really can't male a tomato omelet too bad or too good. We headed back to the hotel where I heard from David that he thought he might be contagious and didn't want to expose us, so he declined a meeting and wished us well. With that we decided to plan our return to binh hoa. Tien heard that her cousin was driving to Saigon and back that evening. At first we thought this would be great, but she changed her mind after hearing that there were many people coming along because it was a bus. She said that because we would be guests it would be a cultural obligation for us to buy food for everybody, which would be fine if it were just a few people in the car, but not with a bus full of people. We decided to get bus tickets instead. She arranged them, we packed our bags, checked out and headed off to the bus stop in a taxi. The taxi took a route that was unfamiliar, through new, wide streets with overpasses and bridges over a river. It was unlike any roads I'd seen in Saigon. It was modern, something I'd expect to find in Hanoi. It made me happy to see Saigon taking on this sort of project. We were dropped off at a bus stop that I don't think we've ever been to before. After getting our tickets we had thirty minutes left so we got food and coffee. This may have been the dirtiest bus stop I've ever seen, but the food and coffee were delicious. We boarded our bus and it was very familiar. It's interesting to be familiar with something when you don't understand any of the words that are being said there. I doubt I could navigate this bus system myself. Incidentally though, the man sitting next to me spoke English, which may be a first for Vietnamese buses. Tien and I played wurdle until the bus pulled out of the parking lot, which felt like it was pocked with craters. The music went on and tien fell asleep. I wrote this, and now the man on my right and tien on my left are Leaning their heads on my shoulder as I peck away on my iPhone. I wonder if the camera on the iPhone has a wide enough angle to capture this scene... Our bus stopped at the usual spot to refuel and let us all move our legs, freshen up and get food. Tien and I ordered pho and it was absolutely delicious. This was great not only because I have a head cold, but I have had a long string of mediocre or bad pho for I don't know how long. Coffee and tea were also nice. We headed off again and got to Binh Hoa after dark. Mai and Thu met us down the street from Tien's house with motorbikes and rode us home where the family was waiting. It was really great to see everybody and to be home. Tien and I sat in the living room with her mother and sisters and nieces enjoying each other's company and catching up on the last few days. I passed out some gifts I had brought from America, jewelry for the ladies and Jelly Bellies for the kids. Tien's brother said that he was raising frogs. Everybody thought I should take medicine for my cough and that I should eat food, but honestly I wasn't hungry. Tien warmed some water for me, I took a shower and passed out. It's amazing how traveling can wear you out sometimes. I had a good night's sleep despite that I had to wake up and pee twice during the night. At Tien's house this isn't such a simple thing. You have to unlock this huge steel gate and slide it back, which makes a loud screeching metal sound. The day was already warming up and I took a cold shower that felt nice. Tien's sister in law was out on the back porch mincing a bunch of tiny fish. I had seen a slap-chop in CA before I left and thought it might be a good gift. I still wonder how it would've gone over...

Tien and I went to the market for breakfast and had hu tieu and coffee. Familiar food and familiar faces. Afterwards we went to see Thu's new house being built. It is a two story brick and cement house at the edge of the market in Binh Hoa, about a city block from Tien's parents house. Later Tien would show me a rendering of what it will look like and it looks pretty cool. It has an upstairs patio, which I love. Thu found one that is similar but looks different and more to her liking, but the builders say they can't make changes after they've started building. We headed back through the market and went shopping for fruits and vegetables. This is an open air market with fruits and meats laying out in the open air. There were several fruits that I didn't recognize. Thu bought one and cut it up for us to eat and it was very delicious. It tasted like a grapefruit but had a much thicker rind. In fact, it did end up being a grapefruit, but not the ones commonly seen in America. We headed home and took a nap. I couldn't sleep much so I played Field Runners, which I haven't played in a long time and not since they upgraded some features. Tien gave me a massage, one of the things I really missed. That evening we went to Long Xuyen and had dinner on a boat that cruised up and down the river. It was fun, but the boat was really loud and vibrated a lot. Nhi's spoon kept shaking in her bowl, I guess she had the epicenter of the vibrations below her. I spotted a medkit and felt like I was in a video game.

The return from Malaysia

The Engagement Party

Daniel — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:24:34 +0000

Tuesday was the day of our engagement party. We woke up and went to the bank to withdraw some money that was a gift from my parents and my grandmother. This took a long time. We then went to a jeweler and Tien bought a lot of jewelry, then we exchanged the remaining dollars for dong. This also took a long time. The jewelry was beautiful though, and it is tradition to buy these types of jewelry with the money given by the family of the groom. We got lunch and headed home at mid day and took a nap. When we got up I thought I was supposed to get ready for the party, but I wasn't. Tien had gone to get her makeup done so I just hung out and played on my computer even as the guests began to arrive. A girl came in and began speaking to me in very basic english, very unsure of herself. Her name was Ngoc and she was 15. She was Tien's cousin. We talked a little about music and other standard chit chat. I soon thought it was time for me to get ready, but alas it was not and Tien's sister Thule told me to take another nap. Then when I got up she told me to come out and visit with people and gave me coffee. Tien soon showed up and said "get ready!" I explained that I had been trying to, but her sister kept making me drink coffee and take naps. I showered and put on my suit, the one they hadn't measured me for. It actually looked pretty sharp and fit pretty well. I was happy with it. A good suit makes a man happy in a unique kind of way. I went out into the room where the party was taking place and there were a bunch of people I didn't know, including a table of all men. A man came up to me and spoke to me in broken english. Ngoc said he was going to fill the roles that my father would fill if he were here. Somebody gave me some things to hold in a specific way, then grabbed a bunch of the men and gave them things to hold, then we were all told to walk outside. A photographer was directing us on where to stand and how to stand, but of course I couldn't understand anything he was saying. The photographer had a disfigured hand but was rockin' the camera like a true pro. The group of us stood there in the gentle rain with traditional engagement gifts and had our pictures taken by the disfigured photographer. Then we went inside and had our pictures taken in there. Then I had my picture taken alone in there, still holding that stuff in that specific way, still not knowing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Somebody took the stuff away from me and instructed me to do some traditional poses while I had my picture taken. I itched my ear and noticed that there was a mosquito bite on it. I also had one on my eyebrow. There is no part of my body that is free from those suckers. The photographer ran off to do something else and the man who was acting as my father said "You stand there alone for ten minutes until your bride comes." So I stood there by myself for about ten minutes while a bunch of other people had their pictures taken, and things were opened and candles were lit and more pictures were taken. The man acting as my father came up and asked me something about religion, and I wasn't sure what he was asking, but when I asked a clarifying question he just said a statement and didn't respond as if he still needed an answer to his original question. I realized that this is a common phenomenon with miscommunication. Somebody will ask you a question, but when that question isn't understood they simply turn the question into a statement about their stance on what the answer had to do with. Tien appeared in the door and had her picture taken. Then she came out where I could see her. She was wearing traditional clothes and looked amazing. I think she looks great in red, and that's what she was wearing. One by one I took the jewelry that we'd bought earlier in the day and put it on her, posing for a photograph with each piece. We were then instructed to do this and that, and I was really confused as to what to do because there were several people talking loudly to each other in my immediate vicinity. Tien tried to explain something to me, but a man was shouting in my other ear so I decided it was probably best to just go along with whatever. I thought about how I was a lot like a dog living with Tien's family. Her sister tells me to go sleep, then feeds me. Everybody talks in a language I don't understand except for a few words. They feed me, laugh with me, I entertain them with tricks. Then when a group of people show up I get confused as to who to listen to and do my best to behave the way I think I should, but I honestly have no idea how that should be other than behaving, smiling and minding my manners. Tien and I were instructed to walk slowly outside to have our pictures taken. Traffic was flowing on the road near the front of her house where there were flowers adorning the entryway. Trucks and motorbikes passed by and honked, and for a moment I thought they were honking congratulations but I then remembered that they always honk like this and were simply driving by. We made our way out to a van, piled in and drove off through the rain to a restaurant in Long Xuyen. As we were driving I again appreciated how nice my suit was. I felt like James Bond looking so sharp in a nice suit in a third world country passing by a river with boats and machinery around it. I tried to think of a spy plot but couldn't come up with anything specific. We crossed over one half of a bridge where the other half was still being built. One of the cranes had fallen into the river because the ground below it slid out from underneath it. Thankfully it landed on the river bank instead of on the one good part of the bridge. I thought about the paradox between the actions of reality and the ceremony that celebrates an occasion. We were celebrating this engagement between Tien and I, an occasion that is romantic and amorous, but I felt like I was participating in a play where I was merely playing a part but wasn't actually supposed to feel anything. Like I was supposed to appear in love, but couldn't actually act on the feelings of actually being in love. We arrived at the restaurant and had more photos taken at the entryway. When we got to the dining room floor everybody was already seated, eating and drinking. Tien and I had more photos taken in the surrounding area. We walked down the aisle between the tables, having our photo taken, and got onto the stage where we had our photo taken. I was finding it very hard to concentrate because a light nearby was trying its hardest to set something on fire, and I could see and smell the smoke. This was going on right by a big cake that we were supposed to cut, and we cut it while we had our photos taken and the light bulb kept trying to set things on fire. As we got off the stage there was this really loud, really awful music playing. I looked up towards the DJ booth and saw a karaoke display cuing words, but nobody was singing. We had instrumental karaoke music. Soon the man who had acted in place of my father got on stage and said some things, and then began to sing. Tien and I were finally allowed to eat. They brought me Saigon Red Beer, and gave us food and people sang. I was having a really good time. The singing was fun, the company was great, the occasion was great, the beer was good, the food was good. I asked Tien what it was we were eating but she didn't know what it was called. She just said that it was part of a pig, and after looking again at it I guessed it was pig stomach. It was delicious. The table of men who had been at Tien's house was now sitting at one of the tables at the restaurant. They were a bunch of badasses. They were smoking and cheering and saying loud things while pointing like they were totally going to go do something awesome as one big gang. One of them got up on stage with Tien's brother and sang karaoke with him. A woman next to me was trying to get me to eat my rice quicker, so I obliged, but when I did I got the hiccups. Then I thought I was going to look like a drunk with the hiccups so I drank beer to wash the rice down and that probably made me look more like a drunk. Tien sang some songs, and after one she stayed on stage and danced a little and then I got on stage and danced with her and we had our photos taken. Then the end of the song erupted into another big photo session with everybody in the restaurant coming up to take turns being photographed with Tien and I underneath a green light. This went on for some time, and all the sudden the party was over. The music was off, people were going back to the van and it was dark out. We hadn't even eaten a single piece of cake. We took the cake, got in the van with a bunch of other people and drove back to Tien's house. When we got there Tien's mom started cutting the cake up and putting it in bags for people to take home. There were hardly any people left though, but some of us got spoons and started eating the cake right off the platter. It was delicious. There were butterflies and flowers made of white chocolate and mint chocolate. We ate until we didn't want anymore and there was still half the cake left over. Then everybody left and I laid in the hammock for a while and somehow ended up asleep in my bed. It had been a great party, even if I didn't understand a word of what was said during the ceremony.