Hanoian Birthday Party!

This past Friday, my friend Phuong and I celebrated our birthdays with a big 'ole birthday bash. Phuong works at this bar/restaurant called House of Son Tinh up towards West Lake (a very posh neighborhood). Therefore, we decided to rent out the private floor and invite all of our friends. My friend Ryan has a band with three other Nigerian guys, and they call themselves The Only Reggae Band, which is very fitting because they are, indeed, the only reggae band in Ha Noi. They played a lively little set and had the whole party dancing. Upon my request, they gave a wonderful rendition of my favorite Bob Marley song, "Could You Be Loved", followed by a reggae-fied Happy Birthday. We had over 80 people show up to enjoy music, food, and drinks. The band brought a bunch of their Nigerian friends along, so we got to watch a whole group of them do some "native dancing", which was really cute and, naturally, I joined in. It was an awesome experience to have such a mix of Vietnamese and foreigners, and it turned into quite a lovely cross-cultural celebration. After the party died down, a bunch of us went to one of the few late-night spots in Ha Noi. The government has a curfew set in place, so most bars are supposed to be closed by midnight. Usually, "closing" involves shutting the doors and windows and trying to appear closed, and letting everyone stay inside. The bars only completely close when the police bust in and tell everyone to leave, which happens on a very regular basis. So, there is one "club" that is situated a bit out of the city center, bordering the Red River. It's hidden through a garage, and I have yet to see police close it down. So, given that this place was likely still open, we all hopped in taxis and made our way to Phuc Tan. There, were proceeded to dance to some out-dated techno or chat on the back porch when we needed a break. With ears ringing, we headed back out into the street and jumped into one of the taxis that was eagerly awaiting the arrival of white people.

The next morning, a couple of us met up at a favorite brunch spot, Cafe 129. This place calls itself "slow-food", which is not far from the truth, because you always end up waiting over an hour for anything to arrive... so you can only go here if you have time to sit around. This place makes the best "American breakfast" I have yet encountered; they make pancakes using imported Bisquik, which is really a huge improvement from all the other "Western pancakes" I tried before (which tend to be a lot more like tasteless crepes). After enjoying a much-needed brunch, I went with Son to his house to visit his father, who recently had knee surgery due to a motorbike accident. I had never been to Son's house before, and had been constantly warned that it was "really old", and "out of date". I think Son was a bit nervous for me to come since my house is brand new, super modern, and very clean. Given my propensity to love anything with architectural history, I had been hankering to visit his house for some time, since it had survived the war and was over 100 years old. So I finally got my chance, and really loved it. It was a very old, very traditional Vietnamese house. Small ladders took the place of stairs, and antique wooden furniture decorated the main living space. I particularly liked the kitchen, which had ancient tiles and a vast array of potted plants. Really, the whole house was a great lesson in traditional Vietnamese living; I tend to get pretty jaded living the "foreigner lifestyle" and I very much enjoyed seeing a house that had barely changed for over a century. Hopefully I will get to go back and take some photos, it had such lovely charm!

Well, my friend's band is now playing a little set down the street at Puku Cafe, so I am going to run over there and see if I can catch the end of it.

Christmas Fever

Yes, that time of year has hit Ha Noi... hard. The whole "Christmas Thing" is a relatively new phenomenon here; Son said Santa Claus and Christmas Trees appeared when he was almost out of high school, so between 5-6 years ago. Celebrating Christmas is a way to become more Western... and a way to spend some of the money that appeared after the globalization of Viet Nam's economy. I've been starting a project on Ha Noi's middle class, which is a pretty new thing as well (considering) and I'm thinking it goes hand-in-hand with the emergence of Christmas culture.

Stores have been playing English Christmas songs (although most of these tend to be techno versions, which are even more annoying than the originals). Christmas trees are appearing in the posh places in town, and animatronic dancing Santas have been lining the stores. I took a photo of a street-side Christmas shop for proof that

those scary moving Santas are unavoidable, wherever you may be. I was hoping that I would get a bit of a break from all the hokey Christmas stuff, but no luck. Since it's an even newer business here, people are really going all out. Ha Noi is covered in lights all year round anyway, but people are opting to add more, not giving much thought to discretion. It's all pretty cute in it's own Hanoian way, and I feel pretty lucky that I get to experience 2 versions of Christmas Time this month, since I will be returning with 4 days of the American Christmas frenzy to go.

I'm getting so incredibly excited to see all my family and friends, now I'm just contemplating what ridiculous gifts to bring home. Snake wine anyone?

Saigon Seafood

The weather has been amazing this weekend, and I've been doing my part to get out and enjoy it. It's been a cool 75 degrees, no humidity, and lots of sun, but since this is Ha Noi winter, everyone is in down jackets, hats, gloves, and boots.

So Son and I were driving around West Lake on a lovely Thursday afternoon and came across some men getting their chickens ready to fight. Usually I'm not a fan of cock fights, but all these guys were sitting around in a beautiful lakeside park, and I figured I might as well enjoy a

typical Vietnamese past time. Son informed me that the men breed the cocks especially for fighting and feed them all sorts

of special food. These birds are definitely the ugliest birds I've seen, and they are fed rice soaked in alcohol before a fight, apparently it gives them more stamina. So, the birds were put in the circle and went at, all the while men were shouting out bets. After about 20 minutes, they took a break to wipe the birds down, give them water, and restore their energy for round 2. These fights can go on a long time so after 20 minutes I decided I'd had enough and was back on the road.

That night we celebrated Son's birthday in style, and all met up at this place called Vine Cellar Door, that has wine tasting every Friday. It costs about 10 dollars to get 8 glasses of wine, and if you come in a group of four, you get a free pizza next door. Since we had so many people show up together, we ended up with 4 pizzas and bottles of wine that cost us 2 dollars, all and all an incredible deal. Usually I'm not a big wine drinker, but this place was really nice and had a great assortment of wine and a really nice crowd of people. I think if I'm feeling classy I will head over there again. Here's a picture of myself and Son...

On Saturday evening, a couple of my friends got together to go to this incredible street seafood that is cooked Saigon style. They had an amazing assortment of shell fish and snails, and served crab claws in a really tangy sauce. They grilled oysters filled with a light sauce, chopped shallots, fried onions, and peanuts. I've definitely never had oysters this way before, but really really enjoyed it. I'm mad at myself for not taking more photos of the food, but I was too concentrated on actually eating it.

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Freedom!

So I'm officially done with Singapore International School (well, not exactly, still have to pick up my last paycheck). The new teacher has taken over, I said goodbye to the kids and received some really cute "good luck" cards/poems/songs. I'm sad to leave some of the adorable kids behind, but excited to start living like an actual English teacher, rather than a full time classroom teacher... which is a drastically different life. All of my friends work at after school English clubs or teach English to adults. This mean they don't work every day of the week, so week nights turn into big party nights for a lot of the foreigner English teachers living in Ha Noi. Since I was doing a full-time gig, I was going to bed by 9:30pm on week nights and saving my energy for the weekends, the days that most of my teacher friends would go to bed early. So, the swap in lifestyle means seeing a lot more of my foreigner friends. Speaking of, Anneliese and Carlo officially left Ha Noi on Tuesday to go visit Egypt and then back to the states. Son and I decided to take a break from bit tet and do a different sort of street meat for their goodbye dinner. A bunch of us met up on Cau Giang road and sat down to some pans of hot oil atop a coal burner. Next, we proceeded to marinate our beef in a deliciously spicy sauce, then went on to fry the beef, along with eggplant, onions, and french fries. It was by far one of the best meals I've had on the street so far, and I will definitely be returning soon. Obviously, there is a trend developing here involving my love of street meat...Yesterday, I joined my friends Flip and Ryan for some lunch (something I was usually never able to do given my job at SIS). We met up around the corner from St. Joesph's Cathedral at the fried food lady. Here, we were taken into the "VIP room" (I think because Ryan was still in his teacher clothes) where we were able to dine with the big shots. Well, big shots were men on lunch break from some nearby financial office. You actually had to walk through the fried food lady's house to get to this room, which was slightly strange, but very typical. We had some banh goi (meat samosas), nem chua ran (friend meat rolls), nem ran (spring rolls), and bun noodles. After eating way too much fried stuff, we settled down to play some Phom, the traditional Vietnamese card game that I have mentioned in earlier posts. It is really quite addicting and I've found myself playing it at every opportunity. After I managed to win a little over 10,000 Dong, we decided to switch venues. We walked down to the corner and sat on little stools that are in the shade of St. Joseph's Cathedral. Since this is also directly next to a school, this "cafe" is called Sinh Vien Cafe (or Student Cafe, very creative, I know). Here we had some tea, played some more Phom, and watched Flip pass out tour package information to tourists. I was very much enjoying sitting next to such a lovely example of religious Architecture on a beautiful day, and thinking how cool it was that all these 8th graders have such a great after-school hangout. Honestly, I would hang out by the Drug-Fair, or Super Stop and Shop after school. These kids get to sit on the steps of one of the oldest and most famous buildings in Ha Noi... lucky.

Mai Chau and the 1,000 Step Stairway

My buddy Flip recently started working for a tour company that offers tours of the ethnic minority village Mai Chau, about 3 hours outside of Ha Noi. His business partner recently purchased a communal stilt house in the heart of Mai Chau, so all of his friends were invited up to do the initial tour and take some pictures to use in the brochure. It cost us each around 400,000 Dong (equivalent to 20 USD), and this included transportation to and from, one night in the communal house, four meals, an ethnic dancer performance, and 2 walking tours around the village. Obviously this is an incredible deal, and one of the main reasons I plan on staying in Viet Nam so long! Honestly, what could you get for 20 bucks in NYC, a taxi ride around the block?

Anyway- I had been to Mai Chau on a Connecticut College excursion almost 3 years ago, and the place looks exactly the same. The only difference is the incredible influx of the dog population. There were AT LEAST 3 dogs to each house, and all the female dogs we saw were either nursing or pregnant. I am a huge street dog lover, but it's really just ridiculous! The village is doing absolutely nothing to control dog reproduction, and I can't even begin to imagine it being any worse than it already is. I got very little sleep, since any sound in the night started a cacophony of dog barking that would sweep from street to street. The communal houses were made of bamboo and therefore functioned as a very poor sound barrier. It sounded like the dogs were barking directly into my ears, and all the other people sleeping in the stilt house agreed with me. Despite the dog issues, I had a wonderful time and now that I got the dog rant out of the way, can go on about the rest of the the trip.

The village consists of stilt houses clustered in the middle of rice paddies. Walking in any direction for 3 minutes will put you out into a field with fish/duck ponds, vegetable gardens, or rice paddies (mostly the latter). Each house has an assortment of scarves, blankets, or other little trinkets for sale. I ended up picking out a very cool-looking stitched bag, then had the woman tailor it to fit my cell phone, all for a whopping 1 dollar. The first day, we walked out of the actual village and around the outskirts, running into the kids, cows, poultry, and other typical countryside things. These people definitely live with the bare minimum, and it's always interesting to experience such a lifestyle (although our hut had newly renovated bathrooms, which was an absolute blessing). Everyone sleeps together in one big room underneath mosquito net "tents". We ended up being short a couple beds, and ended up sleeping 3 to a mattress pad for 2, which definitely didn't help in addition to the dog barking. Roosters (which there was also a very large number of) started going off around 5, and didn't stop until 9am, so that was yet another reminder of my being in the countryside.

The next morning, running on an almost empty battery, we walked through the main market (which was as equally smelly, jam-packed, and interesting as all the markets I've seen in Viet Nam thus far) and then made our way to the 1,000 Step Cave. This is actually not quite accurate, since there are in fact 1,270 steps, and by the end of the trek up, those 270 extra steps made a huge difference. It was incredibly sunny and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached the top, but the cave was definitely worth it. I had made the journey up before, and once I hit around 500 steps, remembered that I had told myself that I would never do something like this again. Yet, here I was, climbing up a ridiculous number of crumbling stone steps to get to a cave. We sat around enjoying the coolness of the cave before we headed down and back to the stilt house for lunch. The way down was a lot more enjoyable, as we could actually appreciate the view of the village from above, since the way up was mostly spent panting, sweating, occasionally cursing, and ignoring the inner dialogue telling you to quit. My legs are still feeling it today, and walking up and down the stairs to get to my classroom didn't help my case. Either way, I'm happy I did it again.

Below are some pictures for ya'll to enjoy.

Teacher's Day

This past Friday, we celebrated Teacher's Day at my school. They take this "holiday" very seriously here; every school throws the teachers a celebration party and gives them all gifts. My school was no exception, and we spent almost 2 hours being handed bouquets of flowers, watching students sing songs and dance, and even enjoying a faculty party complete with catered Vietnamese food and wine. The bouquets of flowers are packed full of colored paper and other little trinkets, so they end up being as a big as a garbage can. Since I received 5 of these, I had to enlist the help of Son and his motorbike to help me get them home (can you even imagine me and 5 gigantic bouquets on my tiny motorbike?). I was also given a huge assortment of gifts (a majority of it being perfume or beauty supplies) and was really impressed that the families spent so much money on the gifts. A majority of my gifts came from high-end designer labels (i.e. Chanel perfume, Ferragamo wallet), and it felt like some absurd form of Christmas. Son insisted that Vietnamese families believe that the nicer the gift, the better the grade. If that really is the case, all my students will be getting A's. I also was given a bunch of material with which to make an Ao Dai (the Vietnamese traditional dress) and I am currently debating whether I should actually use the material for that purpose, since I'm not sure how often I would wear an Ao Dai. My best gift was a big, hardcover book that is called "Traces of Old Ha Noi". It is full of pictures of Ha Noi from a hundred years ago, and it's so interesting to see all my familiar hangouts in these pictures. I'm excited to bring it home to show everyone.

In addition to the presents and flowers, I got a great many cards. A majority of these are incredibly funny, given my students (and their parents') limited English. Some examples are below:

"I wish you are beautiful, have some good children, you live happily. -Cam Le"

"I very love you because you is very beautiful. Love, Phuong Linh"

"I hope you will more pretty and you are helps me in Term 1. You help me everythink of I learn and everythink too. I wish you are my teacher. -Thu Trang"

"I wish you beautiful and a good teacher for a year with children and strong. From, Son Ha"

"I wanted you to live forever. Love, Tuan Duc" (my favorite)

I'm not sure why, but all the cards I have received as of yet (and this includes Woman's Day cards) have something to do with staying beautiful and healthy. I think America could use a bit more of this mentality.

A Movie and some Frog

This past Thursday I got together with a bunch of my Vietnamese friends to go see the new movie "Mastermind". Apparently it is quite the big hit back in the states, but I had heard nothing about it and went along as it was something to do. Per usual, I was the only white person in the audience, and most certainly the only American. This made a big difference because (as some of you may already know) this movie is absolutely hysterical. I spent almost the entire 2 hours laughing out loud at all the jokes, which was a very nice dose of American humor. Due to this cultural comedy, a lot of the time I was the only one laughing. There were multiple Obama references, and other things that really only someone raised in the USA would get, which resulted in a lot of head turning and people wondering just what the heck was so funny. As annoying as I may have been to all the other audience members, I had a great time listening to the voices of some of my favorite comedians (Will Ferril, Tina Fey, and David Cross just to name a few...) and didn't care that I seemed slightly crazy. Just another day as an American in Viet Nam. :)

Afterwards, I got to experience some straight-up Vietnamese cuisine, which was a nice contrast to my previous experience at the movie theatre. We all got on our bikes and drove to a place that's specialty is frog. From there, we went on to enjoy grilled frog with chili, fried frog skin with lemongrass, and a frog hot pot accompanied with mushrooms and bamboo. I have a particular fondness for boiled bamboo, so that last bit was my favorite part of the meal. Frog is actually really tasty, and even the skin was (mostly) enjoyable. I'm wondering if it's possible to get bamboo for cooking back in the states... anybody know? I would love to make some traditional bamboo soup for everyone!

On a side note, I was thinking about some ridiculous encounter I had when Luke was here that totally slipped my mind. It was so interesting that I need to get it down in my blog before I forget- Luke, Son, Flip, and myself were sitting on this roof top cafe admiring the view of the lake when this older Vietnamese man next to us whips out a giant poster of a Vietnamese boy band and starts pointing at one of the musicians, smiling. We all had no idea what was going on until Son did a bit of translating for us. As it turns out, this group is considered the most famous "rock band" in Ha Noi, and the man sitting next to us was the father of the guitarist. This group, called "The Wall" in English, was putting together a reunion tour (apparently they hit it quite big in the 90's) and they had just printed out posters from a recent photo shoot. Naturally, the photo was a bit hokey (cowboy hats and tight pants...) but it was really pretty funny that we just came across this guy in a cafe. Son went on to explain that this music group is a big deal in Ha Noi, and that we were all very lucky to come in contact with someone who's son is "sooooo famous!" I tend to meet a lot of interesting people at cafes, ranging from old opera singers to people working for National Geographic. Well, now that I have got that down and I will no longer be forgetting it, I'm off to cook to some rice.