Check These Out

So I'm going to take the easy way out on this blogpost, simply giving you some other links to follow of awesome writing others have done about experiences, life, and perspectives in Vietnam. Why bother rewriting what's already been said well by others?

1. One More Scribe - Sarah recently blogged about a trip we took to the middle/south of Vietnam, gosh, about 9 weeks ago, already. http://onemorescribe.wordpress.com/author/onemorescribe/

2. The City that Never Sleeps In - the writer of this blog comes from Australia and has lived in Vietnam several years. Her blog is hilarious and witty, and often captures the anomolies of life here in Vietnam. Her writing puts into words/pictures many of the things I've noticed about life here in Vietnam...or warns me of things I haven't yet experienced. ;) I'm invariably laughing after reading her entries. http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/

3. REI - Vietnam Blog. Great posts by other REI Vietnam resident staff, including information about a new cafe one family recently opened, and a great post titled "Hiccups in the Year of the Dragon," talking about expectations, adjustments, and goals during transition here in Vietnam.   http://reivietnam.org/blog

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam's most renowned locations, and it finds itself listed among UNESCO's World Heritage sites. It's apparently also been a film location of a James Bond movie scene. Even though it's only a 3.5 hour bus ride from Hanoi, I hadn't made it there this year until last Thursday. With Sarah, a couple of Vietnamese friends, and a Singaporian acquaintance, we took a very long day-trip to visit. The early morning started off with a four hour bus ride, and then continued on a two-decker wooden boat where we saw this:

As you can see, it's a bay scattered with thousands of these karst islands. (I recently learned that a karst mountain/island is a large piece of limestone jutting upward out of the earth.) At the beginning of the tour, our guide told us that we would get to see the largest of the fishing villages. What I didn't realize is that the fishing villages are villages made up of boats and rafts (see below). One boathouse was even the designated school. Can you imagine growing up here?

Brings a whole new meaning to the words "mini-mart" and "concession stand." (I can't decide which is the better comparison).

There are a number of caves that have formed inside these karst structures over the years and we got to take a whirlwind tour of the largest. Of course, it woulda been boring with just white lights. Gotta have the color so that, amidst all the incredible formations, you don't forget you're in Vietnam.




 Then we had a 20 minute kayaking adventure. Nga's first time ever! Well, mine too, for that matter, I guess. We weren't the most coordinated but we manged to get around without crashing into anything.

And of course, it wouldn't be Vietnam if there weren't construction going on somewhere nearby. Check out the guy IN the tube and ON the type welding.

After about four hours on the boat, we arrived back at the dock, loaded onto a bus, and survived the four hour trip home again, exhausted. Good but full day.

You Know You're Not in the U.S. When..., Part 2

As life continues here, fewer things come as surprises, but there’s still plenty to remind me that I’m not in the U.S. So, here goes installment 2. You know you’re not in the U.S when…

…it’s easier to find a karaoke bar than a gas station

…it’s perfectly acceptable to pick your nose unashamedly anywhere and everywhere…in class, driving your motorbike, walking in the park.

…paper isn’t 8.5 by 11 inches. (Which, I guess, why would it be when the vast majority of the world  [though not including Britain, I learned today!] measures in centimeters, but I was still rather shocked when a piece of paper from here wouldn’t fit into the “normal”-sized sheet protector I’d brought with from the states.)

…it’s considered polite to hand things using two hands, not one – especially if you’re in a position lesser authority

…“please do not squat on the toilet” signs are necessary in bathroom stalls with traditional western toilets

…luck is a very important consideration in the taking of pictures (3 in a picture is unlucky), setting of dates (there are unlucky years to be born, unlucky years to get married, and lucky dates for almost every event), and many other aspects of life. And rather than setting New Year’s Resolutions, people go to temples to wish for luck and success.

…all holidays have to have corresponding songs; when sharing about Thanksgiving traditions, our students couldn’t believe that there was no such thing as a Thanksgiving song

…milk is bought off of a shelf, rather than from the refrigerator section

…aerobics and tae kwon do classes meet in public squares, and life around them goes on as normal. (You know, this really doesn’t strike me as that funny anymore. Am I acculturating??)

…motorbike or bicycle parades of identically dressed employees flouting a company’s banner weave nonchalantly in and out of traffic as a real, live advertisement mechanism. Who needs billboards? I once saw a line of 5+ petite Vietnamese females dressed in matching blue Santa Clause suits and wearing fake white beards riding along the street in front of our university. On the one hand, I have no idea what they were advertising, but on the other hand, it sure got my attention.

…manikins never wear zipped pants because the pants that perfectly fit the customers are too small to circumference the manikin’s waist

…it’s more common to see men peeing in public than to see two people kissing in public

…pajamas are perfectly acceptable street wear/outdoor attire

Would You Rather? -Vietnam Edition

You know the game. Now it’s time to do it up Vietnamese-style. Some of these situations may or may not have been based on real life experiences.

Situation 1:
Would you rather ride on a bus that is so crowded you’re basically spooning with the people in front of/behind you and then have a woman start puking (but you know where you’re  going, still, and can get to your destination
     OR         
Catch a xe om (motorbike taxi) and start riding, only to find out that the driver doesn’t actually know where he’s going (you have your final address, but don’t know how to get there either), doesn’t speak English (and you don’t speak Vietnamese), and is shouting in Vietnamese the entire ride?
 

Situation 2: Would you rather be in the afore-mentioned xe om situation,
     OR
Be lost on a bicycle with no map (and no knowledge of Vietnamese)?

Situation 3: Would you rather take an overnight train with 5 other Vietnamese sharing the same cabin who decide to talk and sing loudly all night,
     OR
Take an overnight bus and be sitting next to a couple who’s making out for most of the trip?

 

Situation 4: Would you rather listen to Vietnamese music 24/7 for a week,
     OR
Boy bands from the 90’s?

Situation 5: Would you rather eat pig ear,
     OR
Eat dog meat?

Situation 6: Would you rather use a western toilet with a slightly shaded/blurred glass window in the door (common, even in restaurants),
     OR
Use a squatty-potty?

The choice is yours. So. What’ll it be?

Signs of Singapore

Sarah and I were recently able to travel to Singapore over the Lunar New Year break in our teaching schedule. It's the largest holiday celebration here (think like Christmas in the US), so universities had 2 weeks vacation from class. While there, we enjoyed the warmth (80-90 degrees and sunny), the efficient infrastructure, the greeness & clean(er) air, the delicious food, and being able to communicate in English.

We also got a few laughs out of some of the signs we saw.

#1: Snow Route - This one made me feel at home. Granted, it was placed in a New York set at

                                   Universal Studios. But still. 

 #2: Unecessary Noise Prohibited - Hanoi definitely needs one of these signs. Actually, many.

 #3: Beware of Peacocks - Gosh darn birds and their "overt courting behavior." 

#4: Beware of Monkeys - Man, Singapore and its animals!

#5: Press for Little Green Man - So our first question was, where's the button for a tall, dark, and handsome? 

Belated Merry Christmas!

Below is a video I made as a Christmas gift for my family of my life (and some of its hilarious or strange moments) here in Vietnam. I had to split it into 3 parts so it would upload. Enjoy! If you're just looking for a good laugh, skip to the third video: "Strange, Intersting, or Random Pieces of Life."

1. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog1.mp4

2. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog2.mp4

3. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog3.mp4

Also, I have a new photo site, as my former flickr site turned out to be very limited in the amount you can upload. So photos from the past couple months can be seen here: http://photobucket.com/sjyoung2388

Home(sick)

Despite the wonderful experiences here, one theme of life these past couple of months has been homesickness. I passed the 3-month mark of living in a foreign country, which is my longest stint thus far. And 3 major holidays have recently passed. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years were all celebrated away from home for the first time. I truly missed them. The season brought many remembrances of home and traditions that I would not be keeping this year. (Did I mention I ate a McDonald’s-like cheeseburger on Thanksgiving, Mexican on Christmas Eve, and Popcorn Christmas day? Ha!)

Yet beyond simply being gone for holidays, I’ve experienced boredom, loneliness, longing – often feeling the dull drone and ache of life. I’m forced to recognize that simply being “home” would not satisfy those desires. I’d find the dull drone and ache there also. Perhaps it’d be more easily staunched, cauterized by familiarity and materialism. But it would still leak out at times.

C.S. Lewis writes, “If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” In his address “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis expounds. The appeal of a gold, pearly, shiny eternity is, admittedly, not very appealing to our senses. But have you ever felt a deep, sad, beautiful, paradoxical longing after listening to beautiful but ethereal piece of music? Or a thick nostalgia after digging through old photos? Even the happy or bittersweet endings of movies—from romantic comedies to epic hero tales—that leave you with this twinge of desire or longing?

These things that we name nostalgia, romanticism, or adolescence with its passions and dreams, are really a stirring in our heart for something more fulfilling than any of those things themselves can ever be. Lewis writes,

“If we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. …In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence. …We cannot tell [this secret] because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it

…Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. …But all this is a cheat. …The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

I’ve been experiencing a homesickness for true home. If I take away from this year a recognition that this world is not truly home and a hunger and restlessness for my real home, it should make the difficulties of the process worth it. I’m also encouraged that the Son himself probably experienced many of these same aches throughout His time on earth, and it is just one aspect of what makes him a perfect intercessor, familiar with our weaknesses.