Viet Nam: Sweet Sour Salty Spicy Crunchy

Chaco Canyon

2011-07-28T07:08:00.000-07:00

Chaco Canyon hosts the densest collection of pueblos in the American southwest, and the most significant pre-columbian ruins north of Mexico. I wish I had time to write about the significance of this site (especially the the astroarchaeology stuff - that's my favorite), since I have spent the past two days learning about it from two of the leading archaeologists from the region and two Pueblo scholars (Tessie and Joe, pictured below) - but, seriously, we are scheduled to the minute! I am stealing minutes now after breakfast. The last picture here is of the "Two Marjies." Margie Connolly is the director of the NEH program - truly lovely person. Today we go out in the field for dig #2, so more dirt, dirt, dirt~

Monument Valley

2011-07-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

Digging in Very Old Dirt

2011-07-23T07:12:00.001-07:00

This is Ellen from New Hampshire and she is holding up our "find of the day" - a core chip stone. We were archaeology buddies on our
2 x 2 plot of the Basketmaker III pithouse site yesterday.

We dug for two hours in heat near 100 degrees and found shards of pottery, charcoal, chip stones and lots of sandstone. Actually "sandstone" becomes a curse when you are "out on the field" because it is really cool looking and allows you to believe you have found some pottery, but you haven't. So when the lead archaeologist, Steve, says "sandstone," you feel absolutely crushed.

The site is about a ten-minute drive from the campus, and these people here are very, very excited about their excavation. We actually couldn't believe how fast the time flew; I guess it's like being a kid, getting lost digging in the dirt. I think that is how these adults must feel every day.

Anyway, after you find your pieces, you take them over to sift them in this area:

After digging, we went to the lab to learn how to clean, sort, classify and infer. Like I said, they are covering all the bases. Today was really fun, but honestly, I

don't think I have what it takes (patience and focus) to succeed in this field!

2011-07-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

This is the view of the Mesa Verde Mountains with a wheat field in front - this is taken during my nightly walking route, just about ten minutes from the hogan ranch (pictured below).

Almost every minute is scheduled here in the desert...not much time to travel to the main lodge to get an internet connection.

This past week, we have analyzed Pueblo artifacts dating back over a thousand years to recognize time periods, we have started fires (see video) while sitting in a reproduction of a Pueblo pithouse, we have made rope, we have thrown spears, and we have listened to a lecture from the leading archaelogist from the region - a guy with a thirty year resume. Today we will spend a few hours digging at an actual site ("working in the

field" is what we like to say), which is just a few minutes from campus. It's a "Basketmaker III Site" - and this actually means something to me now. Then we will go to a laboratory to learn how to analyze the data.

When you're a teacher, you usually hope and pray that the educational value of your inservice sessions or classes will be quality...I am so relieved to say that they have been extremely thoughtful in the design of this seminar, so that learning builds upon learning. Experiential learning at its best.

And just a short word about the food: the "camp chef" is originally from Ballard and he is fantastic. I can hardly wait to see what he has created for each meal. It may be eggs and hashbrowns smothered with a chile verde sauce or barbecued ham or jambalaya...all accompanied by a huge salad bar every lunch and dinner. Hard to even consider it camp food.

This weekend, a group of us will visit Durango - which, supposedly, has good shopping, food, hot springs - and a good two-stepping cowboy bar. Will keep you posted.

Signing off from Hogan Town~

Unassuming Wonderfulness

2011-07-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

There is a little stand at the entrance to the Mesa Verde Cliff Palace dwelling that suggests a donation of fifty cents to borrow a little guidebook to help you navigate the ancient Pueblo world of the 1200's. I guess you could do it that way, or you could take someone with you who is a direct descendent of these ancients, who will stand in front of the dwelling and imagine with you what their lives might have been like. We took Tessie Naranjo with us today (pictured left), and with unassuming wonderfulness, we became participants with her in this world that reminded me of the days of digging dirt hole forts in Candy's back yard (only a little more advanced).

The Pueblo communities of today are the only modern communities that are directly descended from ancient societies - the ancients have often been referred to as the Anasazi, but now are simply called "Ancient Pueblos." Crow Canyon Institute focuses on three areas: research of this region, education (their camps are only a part of that), and the integration of local tribes (Pueblo, Utes, Navajo, Zuni, etc...) as advisors in everything. This is where they differ from other centers, from what I understand. Every single person involved in this program is gifted with extreme graciousness - especially Margie Connolly, who is the director of the institute, as well as a respected archaeologist. They are all thrilled to be doing what they are doing, and they are as respectful as possible to the people whose ancestors they are studying (and excavating)...they are inviting them in as the spiritual and living experts on their subject. So respectful, so appropriate, and - from what I now understand - so rare.

And, there's more: after touring sites from 600 AD to the palace dwelling above all day, we were invited to the home of a famous archaeologist, who is Margie's next door neighbor in Mancas (not far from Cortez). Florence Lister and her husband spent their lives in the field; he (now deceased) specialized in Southwestern archaeology as a professor of anthropology at Colorado University, and she specialized in pre-Colonial Spanish pottery. Florence is 91 and her home is a museum of Mexican pottery (mostly from the Puebla, Mexico region (near Oaxaca), southwestern artifacts, and just overall really, really cool stuff. We sat in her backyard for a picnic, with a view of the Mesas. I am way too tired to tell you about the food we are eating right now, but that will definitely be a blog post on its own. Florence is also purely gracious and the kind of witty that only a 91 year old who has lived an amazing life can be. She told us stories of how the cliff dwellings were discovered...by relatives of the family who own the property next door to her (they lost a cow and went looking for it when they stumbled upon the site). I am including a picture of her in her younger days because I forgot my camera at home and am finding all of my pictures on the internet until my camera arrives.) She and her husband, both, are accomplished in their field and have written many books.

A day with so many highlights...I will write about a few I am thinking about right now. One is that Tessie had shared with us that her mother is buried in her kitchen (in her modern Pueblo house in her community), because her mother wanted to be a part of everything in her daughter's life after she died. About a half an hour after explaining this, our National Parks group tour guide, a charming Bostonian, told us that many remains had been found in kitchens, but they didn't really know why...(!)

One last highlight for tonight: after her talk, Florence walked a few of us around her house and told stories about some of her "things." Every piece had a story: flint pieces from the Nile, grave markers from Mexican cemeteries, and a pine church pew that she had made into a coffee table.
Yes, I am a pretty lucky person~

I'm at Archaeology Camp!

2011-07-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

I am holed up in a hogan dwelling, hiding from a fierce lightning storm with someone who just told me five stories about almost being hit by lightning. The lightning is passing right overhead and we yelp and jump each time the thunder roars through and shakes our little structure..."we" is Ashley (nickname: Lightning Rod), an English teacher who told her lightning stories with a cute North Carolina accent, Jan, an art teacher who could tell them with an even cuter Tennessee accent, and me.

I am at the equivalent of adult summer camp, at a National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute in Cortez, Colorado (near the four corners in the SW)-

This is the point at which Karen, one of the program staff, dressed in serious rain gear, knocked frantically on our hogan door and told us to "take cover in the main building - downstairs." A tornado had been spotted close by, and winds were expected up to 65 mph.

So - in case you read over my first paragraph, thinking that perhaps I was exaggerating - I wasn't. Yep, that is what we did on our second night at archaeology camp - we ran up a path through lightning and thunder and took refuge in the basement of the lodge, playing card games until the all-call was made for our return to safety. Ironic..."Zero" precipitaion to date this year read the weather report the other day, but it has rained each of the three days I've been here. A rainy summer for this Seattleite, anywhere she takes herself...

Now I am back in the hogan (pronounced "ho-gone"), which is similar to a yurt, where deer, jack rabbits, owls and prairie dogs (and perhaps a mountain lion) will greet me when I wake up tomorrow (or when I have to walk from the hogan to the bathroom in a few hours), as we board the bus to see Mesa Verde on our first field trip. Some "people in high authority" have ruined the word "awesome" for me, but this program, "Bridging Cultures: Diversity and Unity in the Pueblo World" is just pretty awesome. Twenty five teachers are here from all over the US (I'm the only one from the NW) as well as 25 high school students who are attending their own camp. You'll have to wait to hear what else these NEH wizards have planned for us. Oh, and there are two other "Margies" here. Three of us. That has never happened to me before~

The Times They Are A-Changin'...

2010-06-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

This morning I put three mangoes on T and T's home altar, then identified myself to the house god and the money god, repeating after Thanh: "I am Marjie. I go home today. Give me lucky, happy and money." We did the prayer gesture three times, then put the lit incense in the sand.

I should have prayed for lucky before going to get rice cakes on my last morning, because she wasn't there. I usually only get cakes on the weekends so I can take my time enjoying them. I went to T's house a little distraught, so after the incense lighting, Thanh said we would at least go to her house to say goodbye. But...she wasn't home. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe I would have choked on those cakes while crying over them.

I got banh cuon from the vendor who never acknowledges me instead, then had two last amazing spring rolls. Because everyone knew it was my last day, many mutual wishes for lucky and happy were exchanged. Tomorrow is the half year Tet day, so Thanh made sure I tried both of the traditional treats present in the market: sticky rice and mung bean wrapped in bamboo leaves (good) and rice soaked in wine (not so good).

I stopped by Nam's house to see if Minh could rustle him up - we'll see if he comes by later. I also sat with Nam's mother for a while - she is sitting up now, but still quite gaunt and twisted from her stroke. She gave me a very gracious farewell.

Last night T and T came over and swung in the hammocks with me for a while. After Thuy went home to cook "salad and cow" for her new husband ('s family?), Thanh and I went to get a double shot of pomelo/pineapple juice and also took a trip to the neighborhood temple. There we lit three sticks of incense to Phuoc Ba- one for the world, one for our families and one for us. We wished the world, etc, "lucky, strong, and busy."

On the way home...I still cannot believe this... right across from wonton soup man we saw a BRAND NEW SUSHI RESTAURANT. It's indoor, bright, polished and cheery - completely unlike all of the other plastic stool restaurants on the street. I eat wonton soup all the time and never saw this going in. Sushi on our street. Wow. I wish I still had a camera so that Katherine would believe me, but it was swiped the other night at the restaurant (don't want to talk about it).

The new road that went in behind our house connects our street with the city in a major way. New sidewalks went in a few months ago, and now buildings are going up all along the new road where the Crispy Vietnamese Ravioli stand is. Thanh says that things will continue to change very quickly on our road. This frightens me.

The T's and I have plans to go to dinner tomorrow night, after we turn in my motorbike and get our hair washed at the Bum Bum (and after I get a last massage and swim and work out at the nicest gym I will ever belong to). I told Thanh I wanted Nguyen Canh Chan Sushi on my last night- nothing raw though! I'm not quite sure why that appeals to me, since it represents the change I dread, but it does.

And after that, we will all go to the airport. T's told me last night that their father wants to come, too. I am very honored - he is really cool. He always says "Maggie! America good!" every time he sees me.

America - it will be nice to see you again~

The New Queen of Nguyen Canh Chan and more Neighborhooding

2010-06-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Katherine bought this really cool big yellow cushy chair when we first moved in - I sat in it all the time during "debrief sessions." Before we left for the airport I asked her who should get it and she said, "T and T's mom."

This morning I woke up really early and decided to take the chair over. I probably should have taken it over at night, because every vendor (now they all know we are leaving and have been giving stuff away) jumped up and motioned that he/she would love the chair. But I made my way to my friends' house and placed it down in their living area. It looked so huge and yellow and modern in that small house!

Their mother beamed and sat down in it like a queen on a throne. Her signature greeting to me is to squeeze my hand very tightly, and this time she squeezed it and held on extra, extra tightly (even though I told her it was from Katherine; in this case it was better to be the messenger than the giver). She told me through Thanh that it felt really good on her back. They are so used to sitting on little plastic stools, I bet it does feel good!

My other favorite gift recipient is Ut with Katherine's bike. As we walked by their shop on our way to the taxi yesterday (after K stated the following to the castle ceiling: "Castle, you will never be topped!"), K mentioned how nice her bike looked - Ut had cleaned it and shined it up quite a bit. "That makes me think I should have cleaned it more," she said. We looked in and waved and Ut was still smiling proudly over that bike. I think he will be smiling for a very long time.

After my morning run, I came back to set a few last things outside the castle. I'm not quite sure how this happened, but Henry and Candle Lady's sister popped their heads in and I motioned over to where all of our dishes were, like "do you want them?" They still needed to be washed, and I was going to do it (I swear) but all of a sudden, both Henry's and Candle Lady's families were in the castle, doing the dishes, wiping down the counters, sweeping the floors, their kids jumping on the couch and chairs and flying airplanes up into the extremely high castle ceiling - I think there were about twelve people in the house altogether (Franco was still sleeping). They took the carpet, the coat rack, and worn-out shoes.

It was such a party that I kept running upstairs to get more things, like the hangers in my closet and a porcelain Vietnamese doll a student had given to me but I didn't think I would take home. When I brought the doll down, all of the women in the room let out a gasp at the doll's beauty - she wears a green ao dai and a conical hat. Henry's six-month old daughter grabbed it immediately and all of the women laughed and laughed and said something to the effect of, "Well, I guess it's her doll, then!" That baby just smiled and smiled at that doll. A six-month old!

When everyone was done cleaning and taking every last thing, I thought of the Grinch and that last Christmas ornament he grabs before he heads up the chimney - but in a good way. The only thing left was a lone cut out paper snowflake hanging from the balcony; my niece had made it to cool down a very hot Christmas.

Then my neighbors brought me out into the alley to take every combination of people pictures possible - me with the baby and the doll, me with Candle Lady and her sister, me with Henry's wife and baby, etc. Henry asked me to keep my ears open for any job openings in seafood quality control - like so many here, he wants to bring his family to America to make some money. I told him I would, really wishing I had that kind of power. And all of them wanted to know...how did I like Viet Nam? I told them again and again how much I loved Viet Nam - this made them so happy to hear and they wished me lots of happy and lucky back in America.

Yes, Castle (and neighborhood), you will never be topped!

Chicken Soup Here!

2010-06-13T06:23:00.000-07:00

"You go home, I very memory of friend. Don't know when friend come back Viet Nam."

This is an email I got today before taking K to the airport. I had put my email address on the bottom of the notes to my vendor friends not knowing if any of them might actually use email. K and I theorized about who it might be, and then K said, "If you write and ask, they will write back telling you what they sold." She was right.

I wrote back, "Thank you! Who is this?" and I got this message:

"Chicken soup here! I am a friend from a small. Some time you go to eat at my place."

Of course! Chicken soup man and his wife looked especially disappointed when they read my leaving note. They wave to me every morning as I pass and I sit down for a bowl of their delicious soup a few times per month. Look how inviting they are...don't you also just want to sit down on a tiny plastic chair and have a bowl?

I texted K with the answer to the riddle as she waited for her flight to Bangkok.

"Chicken Soup Man wrote you an email? That is AWESOME!" she wrote back.

Yeah, "Chicken soup here!" is pretty awesome!

Goodbye K

2010-06-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

Only for Katherine would I go out at at 1:30 am to a bar to watch soccer. That's what time the US/England soccer game was here, and K is an avid soccer fan and player, and it was her last night in Saigon.

In fact, she is so avid

that she flies out today to Egypt en route to South Africa, where she will watch Portugal play North Korea in the World Cup. As for the rest of her summer, allow me to bore you with t

he details... after Egypt and S. Africa, she will fly to London to stay with her sister for a bit and then together they will travel in Croatia.

I know.

And then she will return to her beloved city of Montreal to try to find a PE job in a very tough job market. But - Montreal is where she wants to be, ultimately, and she knows that sooner or later she must put in the time to get into the system - so why postpone it any longer?

So on her last morning, we got rice cakes. A double order. Then we climbed up on T and T's stand to do a little business.

What to say now?

My experience in Saigon would have been nothing without this partner in crime I found on my very first day here two years ago. And I mean nothing.

Katherine is... well, she is just comfortable in her own skin. She is solid, funny, 100% loyal, fun, supportive, loves a challenge, is always ready to laugh at herself or at any story she is told, and is, as Rita wrote in her post,"the best listener in the world." This might not sound like a compliment, but to me it is of the highest order: she is an easy friend.

For two years we have figured it all out together - finding the castle and discovering the market, learning to cross the Saigon streets from a blind man, seeking the best food, spas and tailors in the city, Sunday night cooking with the T's, throwing up together on New Year's Eve in Thailand, theorizing what happened to the pomelo man this past month (no sight of him at all), organizing massages in the balcony, getting a palm tree up five flights of stairs, teaching these great kids, and getting mugged by a motorbike thief. We have figured it out and then debriefed all of it, most significantly while swinging in the hammocks on the roof. We agree that one word that could best summarize our friendship would be the word "debrief."

I appreciate so many things about how people look at life here, but one of my favorite sayings is "I wish you very lucky." That's what it's all about in this harsh life, what luck might come your way. Katherine came my way in a definite form of lucky, and I wish Katherine nothing but lucky returning to her life in Canada (the country I am so much more familiar with after being in Vietnam even though I have lived two hours from it for most of my life). I will quote Dorothy here in her honor:

"I am going to miss you most of all Scarecrow."

Morning in the Castle Alley

2010-06-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

This morning we had a big give-away in the alley outside of the castle. We set up a table and kept bringing items out; every single thing disappeared just like that - even all of our English books, funny plaques our students had given us, and an elf costume of Franco's. K and I brought our pots and pans to T and T this morning (they had already laid claim to the big ticket items they wanted), but they were adamant that our neighbor, Candle Lady, needed the pots and pans more than they did. Candle Lady was thrilled.

Sweet Seamstress' brother, Ut (whom we thought was her son until just a few days ago) very sweetly asked for Katherine's bike, and he broke out into the biggest grin when she told him it was his. SS got the coat and shoe racks, iron and shelves. T and T's brother's wife - the mother of Monkey Boy - came and took all of our dishes and food. Henry - our endlessly gracious neighbor across the alley (laughing grandpa is his father) got some of Franco's shirts, a table, a lamp and some things for his kids. It was really fun - and such an example of a community deciding who should get what. No one here owns many items outside of the "need" column.

K had given Thanh a gift certificate for a facial for her birthday, so yesterday the four of us took an hour and a half at the spa. It was a first for those two - Thanh, especially, would never allow herself such a treat. Afterward she told me, "I forgot all of my worries." (I cannot say it was a first for K and me - we are two people who have become experts on the spas in Saigon, just ask us.)

K and I "did" the market together this morning and I gave out more of my notes. Banana lady gave us some complimentary bananas, Make-Up Lady gave me a free bonus lip gloss with my purchase (better than Macy's) and Sweet Seamstress gave us our last clothes orders "from her heart to ours."

I took donuts to the seamstress I love across town (where Tarn has accused me of running my own sweat shop) and she hugged me for a long time, gave me her email address and told me she would continue to make me clothes and send them to America - all I must do is to send her a picture of what I want. (K thinks this was bad for my addiction.)

Back to the topic of the neighborhood: I've mentioned it before, but many of our colleagues were not so fortunate with their neighbors. I feel so much gratitude to these people who have not only welcomed us into their alley, but who have kept their eyes on our house, paid our electricity bills to keep us in power when we were negligent on occasion, and who have held candles out windows when we came home to darkness late at night. Those kind of people are fun to give to, you know?

Design

2010-06-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Friend-

I will be returning to my home in Seattle, Washington, USA on the 15th of June. I want to thank you for all of the kindness you have shown to me over these past two years - and for all of the good food. Living in the Nguyen Canh Chan neighborhood has been a highlight for me.

I wish you lots of luck and happiness in your life!

Thank you,
Marjie

This is the note I had Lisa (remember the student from last year who helped me with my Nam problems?) translate for me to hand out to the vendors I have grown to love over these past two years. I personalized a few of them - one to the rice cake ladies, telling them their cakes were my favorite meal in Saigon - and one to the spring roll lady, telling her how much I love her rolls. Katherine gets a kick out of Spring Roll Lady because whenever she runs into me in the market, she talks to me as if I can understand every word she says.

The others, I just photocopied them and handed them out this morning. I didn't want to leave it to the last minute, and I definitely did not want to leave with no word of goodbye.

A thought I had right before doing my rounds this morning (there are twenty two vendors on my list - I did about twelve this morning), I considered that some of them may not be able to read. I was right. Rice With Mung Bean Lady had her neighbor read it to her, and Banh Cuon Lady set the note aside without reading it. She did say "Thank you" though, so I think she understands. Spring Roll lady grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly, towel lady made the motion of tears streaming down her face (while laughing) and Garlic Lady kept asking when I would return. Banana Lady knows English quite well - she is so gracious and kind...she said she knew she would see me in the market again.

Rice Cake Lady will get her note on Sunday, when Katherine and I have our last cakes together. K leaves Sunday afternoon, and T, T and I will go to the airport with her. Tarn leaves today and I said goodbye to Alice last weekend because she left for Bangkok to begin year two on her master's, and Steven and Sharon fly out midnight on Tuesday, just like me. Last night, after the graduation ceremony, ten of us went to a nice, quiet restaurant and dined mightily. It was as if I hand-picked all of my favorite people to be there at this goodbye dinner, but really it just happened. It was really nice. I will include this picture even though it includes only half of me...

As for T and T... Thuy cries easily. She is openly emotional and has scrunched up her face with tears a few times in the past few weeks, especially the night that Tarn took us all out for seafood. Thanh, however, stays pretty stoic. This morning, however, I brought them flowers from the ceremony and Thanh did not greet me with her usual lightness of being. She looked at the flowers and went inside the house for a long time. When I went to check on her, she was coming down from the loft wearing sunglasses. You don't have to guess what my response to that was...

I still have the feeling that I have been living in a surreal Disney neighborhood, a kind of Old Saigon Street of Dreams designed especially for me.

These past two years seem as if they were designed especially for me.

Top 20

2010-06-06T15:27:00.001-07:00

Since what I will miss of my castle-food-neighborhood-good-friends-limitless-travel-maid-massages-hair-washes-hammocks-on-the-roof-amazingly-sweet-students life here is pretty obvious, here is a list I've been making of the things I will not miss (perhaps because it makes it easier to leave...I have had a few panic attacks lately) (listed in no particular order except #1):

1. The heat. I really can't take being sticky all the time any more.

2. The rats I run over on my motorbike every day. They are flat rats that have already been run over by many other motorbikes so if you were to pick one up it would float in the wind, like a paper rat.

3. Horns honking incessantly. Even though I know objectively that horn honking is not rude here, it will always seem rude. I have been staring each honker down, like "did you REALLY need to do that?" I have not honked my motorbike horn once this entire year.

4. Vendors telling me to "sit down" in a very commanding voice. I don't know why I react so strongly against this, but I refuse to sit down when even my sweetest vendors tell me to.

5. The vendors pointing to all of the food they sell every time I pass. Yes, I know you are selling pineapple today. You have been selling it for two years and I will buy some if I want it...again, why does this irritate me so much? A few vendors I truly love never, ever point to what they are selling. I adore them.

6. Parking my motorbike in very small spaces next to other motorbikes that have the potential to sear my legs in new places.

7. Hearing about motorbike thieves at least once per week now. Friday night, my neighboring teacher friend, Sarah, had her bag around her neck and a motorbike thief grabbed it and dragged her until she lost consciousness and broke her arm and injured her head. These attacks are getting more and more frequent, it seems.

8. Teenagers speaking in a language I don't understand. Yes, they are endlessly sweet - but what are they saying? They are teenagers, after all.

9. Parking my motorbike in my house. It's just not great decoration.

10. My countertop and sink that is made for a very small person. I am tired of leaning over to cook or do dishes, so therefore I hardly ever cook or do dishes. The other day I forgot how to make one of my favorite signature recipes...

11. Being an Amazon. At home I feel so normal-sized!

12. The air pollution. I don't even want to think about what my lungs look like now.

13. The dengue fever potential flying around in the mosquitoes here. I got the flu last week and had the same symptoms I did with dengue - I was terrified!

14. The obstacle course on my daily ride to school. Sometimes it's kinda fun, but lately it has really bugged me.

15. Asian cable TV.

16. Ants attacking any sugar I leave out for even five seconds.

17. The cockroaches that apparently still inhabit a box above my bathroom. Don't you just hate the way they run/scurry across the floor?

18. My weak shower that gets my toilet wet. I hate this shower. My Phinney condo has the best shower I have ever showered under, and it will shower me again beginning on the 20th.

19. The stand-off with the deaf/something-else-wrong-with-her- pineapple lady. She's the one who sells onions and garlic, but she got very irate with me when I bought pineapple from a vendor sitting right next to a vendor I had (unknowingly) bought from the previous week. I have not bought from either one since. And the second one - well, she has the best looking avocados lately. I am afraid to buy them because vendor #1 also has avocados - but not at all as attractive as #2's. What a pity.

20. The frogs that are skinned alive - heads snipped off and still jumping - that sit in a bucket next to the banana lady each morning.

OK, 20 is a good place to stop.

Of course, for each of these complaints there are five positives. Katherine and I - while debriefing in the hammocks one recent night - talked about how we had changed over these past two years. We came up with the same word to wrap it up: resiliency. Vietnam has made us both much more resilient.

AmyT, who comments regularly here, taught in Hungary for two years. Years ago we were out to eat and I found a hair in my food. When I mentioned it, she asked me a simple question: "Human or animal?" and when I answered "human," that told me what my reaction should be - absolutely nothing. I wanted that same thing she had. Maybe another word for that quality is "perspective."

Resiliency and perspective. I hope these qualities stick for a while~

I Call it "Crispy Vietnamese Ravioli"

2010-06-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

...but it's actually called "Chao Luoi Phan Thiet." The "Phan Thiet" part means it's from a place near the beach town Mui Ne. The other part means something like "Rice paper packets filled with minced shrimp and pork, grilled over coals and wrapped up in more rice paper and filled with mango, cucumber, basil and lettuce and then dipped in the best peanut/fish sauce ever."

Thanh took me here a few weeks ago - one of her customers just opened this stand on the sidewalk of the "new road" right behind our house. She had never tried this dish before, and had promised her customer she would come by. Fortunately, she brought me along. Now I am hooked, and I got Katherine hooked as well as a few friends from school. For a while, I was calling it "Packets of Deliciousness," but was told that "packets" did not sound very appetizing, so it was therefore renamed "Crispy Vietnamese Ravioli."

The "ravioli" are grilled on skewers over coals that are lit in a wide metal bowl, and when the packets are brought to your table, you wrap everything up just like you would with the many variations of salad rolls here and dip it all into the sauce. The sweet strips of mango contrast with the crispy packets...talk about crunchy, spicy, sweet, sour, salty and amazing.

And - according to Thanh, the sign reads "5,000 VND per chopstick." That amounts to about thirty cents per stick, and since each person uses two chopsticks, we pay about sixty cents per person for this meal.

After two years, we are still finding the best food in the city right outside our door.

Directions for Alice and Liem (and whoever else reads this in Saigon): You can see the Van Do buildng directly across the street as you eat these on the "new sidewalk." Just go across the bridge from District 4, turn right on Tran Hung Dao and take another right on Nguyen Canh Chan. At the end of NCC, you turn left onto the "new road." Walk down a few blocks and you will run into the stand on the sidewalk. She is open from 2-8 every day.

My Mini-Me Club

2010-06-03T19:49:00.001-07:00

I led an after-school club this year called the "Cross-Cultural Club." We started out doing many cross-cultural activities, such as studying festivals and celebrations from around the world and doing art projects to go along with them. Food was a part of the deal, too. One time we made fresh salsa and quesadillas and once we ordered Indian food. After first semester- when my club was assessing what we wanted to do for the rest of the year- my members were straight with me.

"Ms. Marjorie, all we really want to do is eat," they said. A tear appeared in the corner of my eye; twelve twelve-year-olds who liked to eat as much as I do were sitting wide-eyed in front of me, wanting me to lead them, simply, to eat.

So our second semester "Eating Club" was born. We spent the rest of our time learning about food and finding restaurants to order from for our after school Thursday club. We tried Lebanese, Thai, Mediterranean and Italian (no pizza or spaghetti allowed) and even went on a field trip to a Mexican restaurant for a five-course meal (of guacamole and chips, quesadillas, tostadas, tacos, carnitas and rice).

One member, Truong, is the most Mini-Me of them all. He is obsessed with what he is going to eat for each meal, loves the taste of food, and knows almost as much about it as I do. Pre-Eating Club, he knew how to pronounce "gnocchi," he had already tasted carnitas in this Mexican-food-deprived- city, and he already ordered Masala curry every chance he got. His parents, at times - when they know they will not be home for dinner - give him money to order whatever he wants. So he knows the best menus all over the city and places calls from his cell phone at school so it will be there when he gets home. Needless to say, I get a big kick out of this kid. We are kindred food spirits (here he is pictured with an empty plate).

When we went to the Mexican restaurant, he kept telling me he brought enough money to order extra food for himself, in addition to our pre-set five courses. Well, he was quite full afterward, but there was one thing we didn't get that he had his heart set on: nachos. At the end of the meal when we were all getting ready to go, I saw Truong up at the counter pointing at the menu, getting his wallet out and paying the cashier.

A few minutes later, he was handed a take-out bag.

He walked past me and said, "Ms. Marjorie, I ordered nachos to go." And then he turned and added, "Supreme."

The other day I had an extra menu on the front desk for an Italian restaurant my staff sometimes orders from at lunch. I saw him pouring over it when the rest of the class was signing yearbooks.

"What are you going to order today?" I asked him at the end of class.

"Pasta Arrabiata and Pizza Gorgonzola," he answered. I was so jealous.

The purpose of after-school clubs is for kids to find a place to belong, where they are pursuing an interest in something that other like-minded people share. It certainly worked for me.

A Few Updates

2010-06-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Honestly, every day I have things to report and now Blogger is not blocked anymore. However, it was blocked for long enough that I got out of the habit of writing. But - not fair to keep all of you hanging about the T's mom...

Happy to report that she came back from the hospital on Thanh's birthday, after ten days of fever. The most I can understand about what was wrong was that she had a problem with her lung but that it is being treated with medicine. She now lies in a stretched out hammock most of the day. Thanh stayed by her side for the majority of the ten days, just monitoring her fever. On the day of her birthday, she was close to exhaustion and slept all day. She had mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she was interested in trying sushi, so Tarn, Katherine and I were able to whisk her away for dinner that night.

As with most other foods we have introduced her to, she didn't really care for it. She had no idea that sushi meant "raw" in most cases. She picked at the rolls and ate a little of the deep fried shrimp and avocado and kind of liked the miso soup, but overall I'm sure she is just fine with Vietnamese food. I find the quest and the disappointment amusing with her, but with anyone else I would probably be really annoyed. The fact that she hasn't tried many foods and shows interest is great - the fact that she doesn't like it when it's in front of her confuses me, because she is such a great cook and knows flavors so well.

As for Thuy, no honeymoon for her. At the stand at 4 every morning, setting up by herself, then to the hospital to be with her mother at night. Not one word of "why me" complaining, either. It would have been her third time out of Ho Chi Minh City in her entire life.

In other news: Our friends Steven and Sharon had their baby, Hazel, last weekend. Sharon had really battled to have her baby naturally in a country where having babies is not really something that involves personal choice of experience. Everyone gets drugged up, period. So that was a battle. And the day she was born - already a week late - Sharon experienced contractions in the morning so Steven took her to the hospital - on the motorbike. When she arrived, they told her she wasn't suppsed to come until Monday for her C-section...oh, wait, the appointment is Friday...when she told them, "I am having my baby now!" But they sent her home, saying it would still be hours. So they went home - on their motorbike. When they got home, the contractions started to come very quickly, so they turned around and went straight back to the hospital - on the motorbike, where Hazel arrived within just three hours. Sharon hopes for a better all-around experience next time.

As for me, I am finishing up saying goodbye to my 6th grade angels and starting to pack up my stuff. Every day, Katherine and I both lament and welcome the fact that we are going home. Like my dad said a few times - what a place of contrasts!

T and T's Mom

2010-05-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Two days after the wedding, T and T's mom suffered some form of heat stroke and she has been in the hospital all weekend.

She did not make it to the evening ceremony on the day of the wedding - Thanh said she was "too tired." She has a hard time getting around and I'm not sure what her diagnosis is, but that was a very long day for her. Like I said, it was hot, and she had just a little bit of celebratory wine - something she never does - and her fever has been up and down ever since.

Thanh was supposed to run the fabric stand alone so that Thuy could go on her honeymoon to Hue; now, Thanh has been at the hospital since Friday night and Thuy - looking quite exhausted - is at the stand, getting up at 4:30 because she must set it up by herself.

I know we are constantly reminded how unfair life is, but this seems a little bit to the extreme of unfair to me. Please keep them all in your prayers.

The Reception and Dinner

2010-05-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Vietnamese brides go through at least three dress changes during their wedding day - that's why you see Thuy in a white dress and a pink one in these reception pictures.

One minute she was wearing a beautiful white gown and the next she was in a pink princess dress. We're not sure how she slipped in and out of a dressing room so quickly, but I think she might just be a really good onstage performer.

Wedding receptions here seem to consist of coming, eating and leaving, which Katherine says is what the ants chant about the grasshoppers in the movie "Antz." "They come, they eat, they leave..."

That's basically what we did. The food was delicious - five courses - and the only one of us who was disturbed by the food at all was Katherine. After getting the baby pig's ear placed in her rice bowl, she began to comment upon a "'theme" in her life: getting undesirable animal parts at weddings (from a Western perspective, that is). Her fear stems from the only other wedding she went to in Vietnam, when a fish head was placed in her bowl. Tarn - only three months from turning from vegetarianism - took the hit, or took the baby pig's ear in this case - a favor he reminded her many times through the night that she "owed him for." (In the picture below, Tarn is perfecting his "blue steel" look).

Yeah, so after the five courses, we looked around and the two-hundred- or-so-guests began to disappear. There was no dancing, no lingering...after the female performer sang three songs up front and Thuy and Dung made their way around the tables toasting, we realized that the tables were empty. Maybe because it's such a long day for everyone.

Well, it's official, Thuy is married. For the first time her life, Thanh will go home without her sister - something that I can't think about too much. Thuy will still be at the fabric stand every day, but she no longer lives down the alley. I saw Thanh sort of linger saying goodbye to Thuy at the reception (right after this picture was taken of the six of us), but Thuy waved her on and just said, "go." I don't think they can think about it too much, either.

Tarn, Katherine and I agreed that this is a nice way to "go out." We all started this thing together, and we are all going our separate ways in less than a month. We are having a goodbye party at the castle on Saturday night. Time keeps on slipping into the future...

The Ceremony

2010-05-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

The ceremony began with Thuy waiting behind the deer curtain for Dung's family to come down the alley. When they arrived, Thuy's father - who looked so proud and handsome in his suit (I have only seen him in a tank top and shorts) greeted Dung's uncle who got permission for Dung' family to enter. Candles were lit and Thuy's father honored the ancestors, then the bridesmaids (is that what they're called?) came in with the traditional trays of fruits and beetlenuts.

Thanh and her mother then went behind the curtain and brought Thuy out - she had been dressed in her heavy ao dai for two hours already, just waiting - and then the other ceremonies took place: drinking of tea and Dung and Thanh putting earrings, necklace and bracelet on Thuy. Thuy's mother then joined their hands together...I love the somewhat blurry picture of this because it captures her jolliness - both she and her husband are such gracious and happy people.

Thanh looked especially gorgeous and was the perfect hostess - serving tea and drinks to everyone. I didn't get a chance to get my picture with them...the ceremony was quick and suddenly Thuy and Dung were heading down the alley to a taxi. Now they will go to Dung's house to host a lunch reception. I was invited to this, but opted to teach in the afternoon. Katherine, Tarn and I will attend the reception at a restaurant tonight at five.

This ceremony moved me - I am not a crier but I did cry when Thuy looked over at me and waved with such happiness before she reached up and wiped the streams of sweat from her new husband's face. This was about the same time I realized that the guest sitting next to me was their family rooster, kept in a cage underneath the fabric stand (I noticed him because he crowed right then), so it was a laugh/cry situation.

As I walked back to the castle, I got many nods and comments of approval from the women in the market, admiring my ao dai while smiling at me from under their conical bamboo hats. I am including a picture of Rita and me at Alison's wedding since I didn't get one today - I think I looked basically the same today...

Happy Birthday, Ho Chi Minh, and congratulations to my sister, Thuy~

The Morning of Thuy's Wedding

2010-05-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

Live coverage from Thuy's wedding, Nguyen Canh Chan neighborhood, morning of Ho Chi Minh's Birthday.

You can't get any more traditional than this...

I'll try to give a play by play of the day. I'm taking the morning off, putting on my ao dai and going with the rest of the neighborhood to witness Dung's family coming to Thuy's house where the official marriage will take place.

I ran over this morning and got to ascend the ladder to T and T's second story room, where Thanh was having make-up done and where I got to help snap Thuy up into her traditional red and gold ao dai. Thuy is giddy with joy and excitement today.

Their house has been cleared of fabric (the neighbors are storing it) and the refrigerator and sewing machine have been pushed to the back and all is covered by a curtain with a beaded picture of a deer and the traditional wedding altar.

Thanh has spent hours cleaning and putting up the traditional decorations: the name of both Thuy and Dung cut out in styrofoam on the wall and lots of paper streamers - like what we might do for a birthday party. Tables have been set up around the house to receive guests for the ceremony.

I have been coming over each night to share in all of the excitement. For two nights, T, T, Dung and T's mother and father and I have sat on the cool floor saying not much at all, drinking ice water to cut into the night's humidity.

That floor has become one of my favorite and most comfortable places in the world. Every time I round the corner and stick my head into that house, I am received like a queen. The only thing I am not excited for today is the heat - it's a hot one here in the city. Stay tuned!

Saigon Cowboys and More Saigon Souvenirs

2010-05-14T05:13:00.000-07:00

Katherine and I have experienced a lot together here in Saigon over these past two years, but we had not yet experienced a motorbike wreck caused by motorbike "cowboy" thieves. Now - unfortunately - we can add that to our list.

Thursday night we were coming home from a party at about 11 pm - Katherine on the back of my bike, holding her bag around her shoulder but close to her chest with both hands (like we have been taught). We had already manouevered around a construction zone with a fifteen foot pit, a bulldozer and a crumbled sidewalk. "Classic Saigon," I said to Katherine.

So we were riding pretty slowly down a busy street when suddenly I heard Katherine gasp and felt her weight shift dramatically. I had no idea what was happening but was trying to keep the bike balanced when I felt a final huge shift which sent the bike out of control. We were heading toward a parked taxi on the side of the road and in that cliche "slow motion moment," I knew I had the choice of crashing into the taxi or dumping the bike. I chose to dump the bike.

My first thought when we went down was that we were going to get hit by a motorbike coming from behind us, so both of us scrambled to the curb. A crowd of people surrounded us and this was the first time I understood what had happened. A pair of motorbike purse thieves - called "cowboys" - had ridden up beside us and had gone for Katherine's bag - even though she had been securely holding it against her chest. She had put up quite a battle and when they finally gave up and let go (they didn't get it from my strong Canadian friend) - that was the force that sent us flying.

The three men who stopped to help us were angels. They pulled my bike to the side (at first I thought one of them was going to steal it since this is another popular crime here and the keys were still in the ignition), gave me a wet tissue for my bleeding elbow, and after sitting with us for fifteen minutes as we calmed down, one of them took us to a nearby hospital to get checked. K had only a scraped knee, but I had hit the ground much harder on my left side and my arm was hanging kind of funny and I thought that maybe my ribs were broken. Short story - nothing broken, but I was in a lot of pain.

My mom's purse was stolen by a cowboy thief at Christmas as she crossed the street during a busy Christmas cruising night, and Alice's purse was stolen a month ago while she was on the back of a bike. A friend of ours saw a man get his camera bag slashed off of him, and his ribs were also slashed in the process. These guys are very hard to catch because of the nature of their crime. Every once in a while you will hear of someone going after one of them in a vigilante way and they will be cornered and taken in. This is definitely the dark side of Saigon, and it sure is sobering to realize that these people have absolutely no concern about injuring or even killing someone just to get a hold of a bag.

Thuy and Thanh, of course, were very concerned and told Katherine that she should have kicked them off their bike. Thanh sent me a text message that said, "You are my human hero, man!" which made me laugh in a way that really hurt my sore ribs. They also told me that these "cowboys" "smell heroin" - which - I'm guessing - translates to "sniff coke." Drug addiction explains a lot.

The good in Saigon definitely outweighs the bad by far, and we were very, very lucky the other night. But, I'm telling you, my legs are getting more and more ugly the longer I stay here. Now I have scrapes all down the left side of my body and three more bleeding knee scrapes to add to my two motorbike burns.

My legs are begging me to get the heck out of Saigon!

Thuy and Dung

2010-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

This is my beautiful Vietnamese sister, Thuy and her soon-to-be husband, Dung, the kind and handsome jeweler. Their wedding will take place on Wednesday, May 19th, on the morning of Ho Chi Minh's birthday.

Yesterday, Thuy took me over to her future home - where she will live with her mother and father-in-law and Dung's three older sisters in a two-story, two-room house. We drove over on the motorbike to pick up her engagement picture album. I wish I could display all sixty pictures here - they are both beautiful and culturally fascinating.

The wedding industry here is huge. It is tradition to go to a "wedding shop" months before your wedding to have pictures taken. None of the dresses - nor the jewerly - are Thuy's; brides go there to have make-up done and to be dressed up, and somewhere along the way, the grooms insert themselves into this series of sentimental shots, most with backgrounds of classic Vietnam scenery (and sometimes with guitars that they don't play): Notre Dame Cathedral, the shores of the beach resort Nha Trang, and Lover's Lake of Dalat.

Don't you wish you could see them all?

Thuy has been walking on a cloud for the past month - it's really fun to see her so happy. And I will wear the same ao dai I wore to Alison's wedding and take the morning of Ho Chi Minh's birthday off so I can witness the marriage of my very good, loyal friend.

Ah - Back in the Hood

2010-05-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

This pretty breakfast is called banh cuon; the white noodles below the fried bread, cucumbers, basil, crunchy onions and red pepper are made from steamed rice flour sheets. I had a double breakfast today, heading straight for this after a rice cake starter.

In the picture below, you can see the round pot that is topped with linen... the sheets are steamed and then lifted off the linen with a little bamboo stick. Some banh cuon - like this one - is then filled with a mixture of ground pork and wood ear mushrooms, rolled up and cut into chunks. Of course, the whole thing is covered with nuoc cham, the fish sauce, lime and red pepper sauce that makes everything even better.

In the past two years I have traveled in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and - of course - extensively through Vietnam. All of this Southeast Asia traveling has confirmed one thing for me: I chose the right place to live for this adventure. Vietnam wins in so many categories.

I love Vietnam. I love the way it moves, the way it smells, and - of course - I love the way it tastes. I love its people, its coziness and its craziness. Mostly, though - love for a place equals a whole lot of intagible qualities all tangled up together.

The food here isn't as diverse as in Malaysia, but I love the sweet aspect that is absent in so many cuisines, and I also appreciate the freshness. Everything is made right in front of you, even though oftentimes you wish they had done some of it ahead of time because of the wait required.

Anyway, it's good to be back~I think it will always feel good to be back.

The Doctor and The Man

2010-04-29T19:30:00.001-07:00

I am heading back to Saigon tomorrow. I miss Saigon. Yes, the food of Malaysia has drawn me in, but I sure am glad I don't eat this way all the time. I would be soooo fat- because the food is rich and oily, in addition to being legendary. I am at an internet cafe back in Kuala Lumpur, hiding from the rain again, listening to Neil Diamond, wondering if they really love him here, or is it just coincidence that I have heard five of his songs within six days? Also, the theme to "Chariots of Fire" plays everywhere.

So while I wait for the rain to pass, I will tell you about two characters I met this week. They were my "favorite" in retrospect - in that while I interacted with them, I was thinking about writing about them, and that's the only way I kept my patience in each situation:

My favorite character of the week was Dr. Cheong Fung, the wine-medicine maker and masseuse that I escaped to during part of one (of four) days of rain this week while walking through Chinatown in Penang. He led me through a shopfront "owned by Pakistanis who do business without money" into his tiny little house where his wife was making dinner for their son.

He spoke a very broken-English stream of consciousness, but he added "I know that you don't believe me" very clearly at the end of each sentence. Such as:

"My son," he said (within hearing distance of his son), "He eighteen. He no interested in my medicine. He think he know everything. Very stupid boy. I know that you don't believe me."

"I healed a woman who couldn't walk. I know that you don't believe me."

"You should take up tai chi. A big, tall woman like you (I was twice his size), it would make you strong. From here (he pointed to his core). I know that you don't believe me."

"I healed a man that was struck by lightning. I know that you don't believe me."

"I have had diabetes for twenty years. I married and had my son when I was 55. I know that you don't believe me."

"The government no believe my medicine. They try stop me. They jealous. They send people after me. I know that you don't believe me."

"I am 75 years old. I know that you don't believe me." And then he had me squeeze his shoulder blade and punch him in the gut to show me just how strong a 75 year-old man could be. I said, "Wow," but actually, I have no idea how strong a 75 year-old man can be.

And my favorite:

"Most Americans don't like Obama because (then he broke into a whisper) he is black." He looked at me for my response to this shocking news. "I know that you don't believe me."

"Um," I finally interrupted, "Americans elected Obama by voting."

At this he stopped and looked at me as if surprised he had a speaking client, and then continued on. "I loved president Kennedy. Do you know him? They killed him. It was conspiracy. I know that you don't believe me..."

As I left, I said to the doctor, "I believe everything you told me" - just to see how he would react. He didn't. He just stared at me blankly.

"Tell people you meet about me," he called after me. And he didn't add anything to the end of that sentence.

In second (last) place: Azhar, my replacement rent-a-friend on Penang Island. I had chatted with a roly-poly, friendly guy named Lee at a travel agency the night before and liked him instantly. I liked him so much that I asked him if it would be possible to pay him to take me around the island on his motorbike (I had tried to rent on my own, but didn't bring my license with me and Malay policy, unlike Indonesian policy, is seemingly very strict on this matter). He lit up when I said I wanted to "see the island and taste some local food." I could just tell that Lee would be my food guy. He said he would really like to, but that he had to check with his boss. "No one has ever asked to see the island by motorbike," he told me.

When I showed up the next morning, Lee introduced me to Azhar, presumably the owner. "He's going to take you around," he said, and he looked and sounded disappointed. I was, too, because the first thing Azhar said to me was "I know exactly where I will take you" in a very dominant way. For every easy going Muslim man like Lee, there seemed to be three hard core, in-charge know-it-alls like Azhar. The contrast in Malaysia seems pretty severe.

"Um, well, I already know exactly where I want to go, so I will tell you," I said, and showed him on the map the area with the national park and the local village in the middle of the island. "I don't want to do anything touristy." But I could tell he wasn't listening.

The first place we stopped was a touristy "Spice Farm." Of course, it sounded a little bit interesting, being about spices, so I went ahead and bought a ticket, even though I knew I shouldn't have.

At the beginning of our "garden tour," Azhar stopped at an English description of a fern tree, read it silently, then translated it for me in his heavily accented English. I just looked at him incredulously and wanted to tell him that, actually, I could read and understand English. But I didn't say anything.

"This tree is from the fern family," he said. Which is what it said on the placard.

"Hmmmm..." I answered. Suddenly I felt very, very tired.

We crossed a bridge that went over a little stream and Azar pointed down to the stream. "That water comes from up there," he said, then pointed up to a little waterfall. I was having flashbacks of Nam at the castle doorstep grabbing corn on the cobb and showing me that it needed to be peeled before being eaten. Streams come from waterfalls? Imagine!

We passed a few plants that had no placards and when asked, Azhar had no idea what kind of flora any of it was. Then we came upon a platform with a swing that had ropes reaching high into the treetops. "Look," said Azhar, "it swings from way up there. It's a fun swing! It's a tree swing!"

I had had enough. "Azhar, I don't want to be here. I told you I didn't want to do anything touristy and this is very touristy. I could do this on my own if I wanted to."

"I see," he said. So we got back on the bike and who did we see enjoying a huge plate of food at a little hawker stand on our way out? Lee. He waved to me and I waved longingly back as Azhar whisked me away to our next tourist destination: a pier with boats that rowed out to a fishing village. "Do you want to go to the fishing village?" he asked.

"Azhar, listen to me. I don't want to do anything touristy. I just want to see the island and eat local food. I don't want to do anything touristy."

I guess it took Azhar three times to hear things because he finally nodded and said, "Oh! OK, why didn't you say that back at the agency?"

"I did."

"I want to give the customer what they want, so you should have just told me what you wanted."

"I did."

Well, he did drive me around, and as long as he wasn't talking, he was an OK motorbike driver. We did stop in town and eat at a local Malay restaurant, which was good, but that required me to have a fifteen-minute conversation with him. Which wasn't good, and which I really don't even care to record here.

Believe me.

The Legendary Food I Ate Today

2010-04-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

I started my day with THE Penang specialty, Assam Laksa soup. Looking back, it was my favorite taste of the day, but each dish I tried after that made me waver on that decision momentarily.

Because:

The food in Penang is legendary.

Laksa broth is made from mackerel, which is poached, deboned and then joined by lemongrass, chilies and tamarind. The noodles are thick vermicelli, and after those are placed in the bowl, they are topped with lettuces, cucumber, onions, pineapple and fresh mint. On top of all of this, a spoonful of shrimp paste is placed on top for you to mix in yourself.

When I say that everything is represented here, it's in a Sweet, Sour, Spicy, Crunchy kind-o-way. Unforgettable. I would eat this every day for the rest of the week, at least. Cost = $1.

Next came Hokkien Mee, or "prawn noodle." This soup has a thick pork and prawn base and is garnished with water spinach, hard boiled eggs, shrimp, slices of pork and crispy shallots. The same spoonful of paste is placed across the bowl as mentioned above, but this one is filled with chili paste for a little more spice.

I adored this soup. Please, oh please, Malaysian restaurant in Seattle, please carry these two soups!

Cost: $1

I am nuts about the won ton soup in my neighborhood - just ask my family about it, because they got hooked on it, too.

So when I read about Wan Tan Mee, I had to carry my won ton competition to another country. I chose to have mine dry, like in the picture - but you can also have it as soup.

The dry form is served over thick soy sauce and you can toss it up as you like. Mine - which I waited for for at least 45 minutes at a hopping roadside stand - was topped with one fried won ton and two dumpling won tons and a row of delicious barbecued pork.

For dessert, I had cendool. The beans are thick and sweetened red beans, and the green worms are made from starch and the coloring comes from the pandan leaf. The syrup is made from coconut milk and is sweetened with palm sugar to give it an almost-coffee taste. All of this is served over shaved ice.

And what did I do during my three hours intervals in between meals? I saw the town - museums, old colonial mansions and state buildings and forts. I hid from the rain in my hotel where I watched a really stupid movie, and then hid from the rain some more with a 75 year-old Chinese healer who massaged his secret wine sauce into my wrists after he told me he had cured a man with it who was struck by lightning. I'll let you know if my wrist pain goes away.

Oh, and a confession: I also had chicken curry in Little India. It was delicious, but I knew that I wanted to try the wan tan mee, so I ate only half of it and only one piece of naan (I can exercise self-control in these situations). So I left with the deliberate thought, "No one will ever know about this..."

Well, I was wrong. I was sitting there eating my wan tan mee beside the road when a man I did not recognize approached my table. "You didn't like the chicken curry at the restaurant?" he asked, a little confused.

I had been caught, red-handed, slurping an egg noddle. "Um, no, I mean, yes, I liked it a lot," I answered as I wiped soy sauce from my chin. How could I explain my odd behavior to this man, who, probably like everyone else in that restaurant, had seen the light-haired foreigner leave half of her chicken?

"Why did you leave it?" There it was.

"I wanted this, too?" I said, smiling sheepishly.

The man belly laughed and said, "Good, good!" and went away.

Can't wait for another day in Penang~

(I got all of these pictures on the internet - they are better than mine!)

My Destiny Lies with Legendary Food

2010-04-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

KUALA LUMPUR, Spring Break -

It took a while to find a taxi driver willing to take me to the bus station. "It's far from here," the owner of my guesthouse told me, "so you might have to ask quite a few drivers before someone takes you."

He was right. Just when I thought I might not make it to Melaka - a colonial/cultural food destination two hours south of Kuala Lumpur - without paying a very high price to merely get to the bus station, Mano stuck his friendly hand out after seven turn-downs and said, "I will take you there."

Friendly and chatty, Mano wanted to know my plans while in Malaysia. "Ah," he said in response to "Melaka," and then in a sing-songy, bored voice he said, "Ev-er-y bo-dy goes to Me-la-ka."

"I shoudn't go to Melaka?" I guessed.

"You will be bored after three hours. What will you do after that?"

I had no answer, so I asked where he would go, if he only had a week on peninsular Malaysia. Mano became quite animated with this question. "I would go to Penang. Many things to do on the island. The beach, the national park, the town" and then he added three magic words, "and the food."

"The food?" I was awake now. "What about the food?"

"Ah, best food in Malaysia," Mano sighed, and went on to describe the Chinese, Indian, Malay, Thai and Nonya influences.

I quickly looked up "Penang" in my Lonely Planet and read the words, "...affectionately known as 'The Pearl of the Orient'...the only of the country's 13 states to have a Chinese majority, giving the island a distinct character all its own. The quality and variety of the food in Penang is legendary..."

Just as I read the word "legendary," we pulled up at the bus station and a man was yelling into my window, "Going to Penang? The bus is leaving NOW!"

I looked at Mano and shrugged. He said, "Go to Melaka next time." He nodded at the man and said "yes." The man opened the taxi door, pulled me out, grabbed my backpack and pushed me toward a window to buy a ticket. Within minutes, I was on a bus traveling north for five hours instead of south for two.

I am in Malaysia by myself. After two years of traveling with friends from school and home, spring break seemed to be announcing itself as a "Do it yourself" kind of vacation. Everyone had something else going, or was going somewhere I didn't really want to go. So - what destination did I choose? The one known for legendary food. And you know what? I had spent zero time planning for this trip. After reading up on Indonesia for hours, and after planning trips for eighteen castle guests, I decided to just allow this trip to happen, with my only real goal being to eat well. Extremely well. Legendarily well.

Already I had spent two days in Kuala Lumpur's "Golden Triangle" and had explored Chinatown and Little India. I had decided - after trying roti canai the first hour, that I would eat roti canai every day for the rest of the week. I had tasted it in Seattle before (at our one Malaysian restaurant), this unleavened bread that is fried and then served with a little bowl of curry/lentil/potato dipping sauce, but seeing it being flipped and grilled on every corner was just too much to resist. So difficult to resist, in fact, that in two days, six stalls of roti canai had drawn me in. And then I tried beef rendang at the Old China Cafe near Chinatown, and I decided that I would have to eat beef rendang (beef slow cooked to absorb lemon grass, chili, ginger, galangal, turmeric leaf and then topped with kaffir lime leaves) every day for the rest of the week.

But now I am in Penang, a very interesting place where you kind of see it all: covered women, uncovered women, fake flowers laced into the pedicabs, Indian gods, steamed buns, Chinese medicine, and signs that tell you to "Come in and have your bad luck changed." I just walked down to Little India (I love those two words placed side by side) and had the best tandoori chicken and mushroom and pea dosai (rice flour pancake) I have ever tasted at a simple little roadside stand. As I am eating, wondering what I can possibly find to do for the next three hours until I am hungry again, I am thinking that I will have to have tandoori chicken and dosai every day for the rest of the week...

How To Fall in Love with Vietnam in Ten Days

2010-04-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

by Rita

Sitting on an Asiana flight or at the Seoul airport for 28 hours provides plenty of time to contemplate what it'll be like to see Marjie in her element! It was a visit so worthwhile. I am still living it, although it's been a week. Marjie is indeed in the heart of the old city, District 1...where every darn time a taxi driver stared with disbelief at the Vietnamese hotel card, doubting that the little unknown hotel was, indeed, the destination of this westerner.

Once arrived, I found the room large and clean with views of District 1's morning hustle and bustle of the local - what more does one need when one has authenticity?

Whereas many of her teaching colleagues live in the wide-street 'burbs with foreign restaurant choices and gated communities, Marjie and her roommates have found the closest place to heavenly Sweet Sour Salty Spicy and Crunchy.

To find her, however, you must wind your way down narrow, sunless alleys, very conscious of where you step, very aware of a constant stream of motorcycles and scooters winding their way, uhh....both directions, in the most narrow of spots. They somehow slow for a mother and child holding hands, slowly walking in the middle. I, like a typical foreigner, dancestep nervously to the edge of the path the first few days.

Women, men, and children did look, sometimes staring up at my tall redheadness; but if I smile, so do they. Days later, the little children dart out and try to speak a little English and the women wave first. Their homes are their family business. Content with only a few rooms, there they reside with a little t.v., a game board on the floor, and often the men seek a cool peace by lying directly on the floor.

Motorcycles command this city. Sometimes 10 abreast, sometimes up on the sidewalks. Many going the other direction on "your side" of the street. And it all flows like the Saigon River. Men riding motorcyles with 5 family members squeezed in tight. Pairs of school girls giggling and texting while cycling; man holding his hand on an untethered, bright pink birdcage in back while driving; another deftly carrying Gulliveresque cages of chickens...anything comes and goes!

The load kept falling off of this man's treasure.
It's so fascinating, especially on the back of Marjie's motorcycle. A nightmare and an amusement ride that rivals anything from Disney's creations. She's amazing, you guys!

With this noisy backdrop, Talented Travel Planner Ms. Marjorie, helped me plan for some escape: bus rides to the lush Mekong Delta for a country wedding of her friend. It was held in the family's largest room, a steep-peaked temple room with Buddhist shrines, tables laden with food and drink, air conditioning that stopped when all electricity was cut off in the common "rolling black-outs", and a bevy of little children and women staring at us Westerner women/teachers through the open windows.

Alas, faithful friends, I have no photos of Marjie looking ever so beautiful and excruciatingly hot in her long, 2-piece aio dai. Sorry to say: my camera was swiped at the very end of this unique wedding, as I briefly left it on a table for one last photo request from a local. I lamented my folly for days...still do.

Marjie then suggested a trip to the cooler Central Highlands, to the fabled Flower City of Da Lat, where I spent two glorious, tranquil days. The cheap, round trip flight was so worth it. A million fruits and flowers stands beckon you ..a city so fragrant that your senses literally write you a daily thank you card. Take a fun train ride to a village on an old, wooden cog train. Put it on your Bucket List.

In the interim, I rode with Marjie to school one day to teach. She must deftly maneuver through torn-up streets and mounds of dirt with her cycle. You would not believe it! But, being with her clever, fun, and friendly 6th graders was worth it. I read each class a story, showed them a powerpoint of Marjie's 'Other Life', and watched devoted Marjie interact with a wacky sense of humor and still expect top quality work. They'd walk on hot coals for her. See last post - the photos are on her camera.

The Travel Planner Extraordinaire provides again the final destination while lying on the hammock on her roof one night: "Let's go to Mui Ne and do some beach time on the South China Sea!" Ya gotta love her spontaneity!

This luscious location costs literally only a few dollars to share our cottage on the beach with roommate, the lovely and best listener in the world, Katherine. While Marjie and I read and drink fruit smoothies in the shade, Katherine prepares for her triatholon by swimming in the high waves. The wind not only rips the pages from her book, but over 50 well-built guys are also kite-boarding with gusto. Bad timing not to have my own camera for close-ups.

So much to say, so long is this post.

But, I've left out the amazing cheap massages, the excellent coffee or tea that D'Arcie, art teacher from MHS and I

discovered one morning, or the
lucious market meal prepared by her two Vietnamese friends, the tour to Cu Chi tunnels - an underground maze of Vietnamese families and Viet Cong living under the U.S. army base in the late 60's, and of course, the amazing food we had every breakfast, lunch or dinner!

But, that's Marjie's bag, I mean blog.

Explanations and Sweet Students

2010-04-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't given up on blogging, but blogging has kind of given up on me. "Vietnam" has blocked Facebook - we can only use it at school because they have "found a way around it" - and Blogger almost never works through Internet Explorer anymore. Sometimes it works through Firefox, like now, but most of the time, it is unaccessible.

Anyway, that's why I haven't blogged lately. Rita is going to write one now that she is back in Seattle, so she can tell you all about her/our fantastic time... I don't think any of my 18 guests have utilized their time as well as Rita did. She MOVED all over this place during her 8 days. But she can tell you all about that (and about how her camera got stolen during the last two minutes at the wedding to explain why there are NO pictures of the day or of me wearing my ao dai in 100 degree heat).

I am going to just take this opportunity to post pictures of my students. Rita came in one day and taught all five of my classes - of course they loved her. In the picture, she is reading to my class filled with stuffed animals. The best athlete boys started to bring their stuffed animals to school, so then they all started...sometimes I call on their animals to answer (I was born to teach 6th graders, I know).

Anyway, here you go:

My class with glasses

My class of six...that's right, six. We take turns bringing treats for the "whole class."

This class wants to be known as "the studious class."

There is one more class that is undocumented here...they can't think of a theme for their picture (other than tatoos or earrings - mostly boys). After two years of teaching sixth grade, I have not had one discipline problem. A few turn in late work, one doesn't turn in any work.

But all of them, when I returned from my Dengue Fever stint and was exhausted after teaching for one hour, allowed me to lie down in the back of the room and they kept each other quiet while practicing their skits. "SHHH! Ms. Marjorie is sick! Be quiet!" I heard all day. Talk about sweet and spoiled, that would be me. I truly look forward to every day of work.

A Kind and Handsome Jeweler and Rita Magic

2010-03-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning Thuy tells me that her boyfriend, Dung (it looks like you would pronounce it like cow manure but it's actually "Yom" - and you kind of blow your cheeks out when you say it) is bringing his mother over at 5 o'clock Sunday afternoon to "discuss the wedding." They have set their date - May 19; it's a Wednesday, and was chosen because it's Ho Chi Minh's birthday.

"Maggie. I want you here."

This is a big moment; Thuy has been sort of dating him for a year and I have not met him. She keeps making excuses - sometimes he's "busy" or "sick" but often she just says, "He's not handsome." Oh, and she also says, "He's afraid to meet you."

So I had stopped asking.

But now, she is asking me to be there. "You are my sister," she says.

So at five o'clock today - a very hot afternoon - I walk down the alley to meet Dung and his mother. They are not there when I arrive, but Thuy's parents have set up a fold-up table in their tiny living space; three plastic chairs surround the table: one for his mother and two for them. His father lives and works in the Delta, so he could not be present to "discuss issues." On the table are a tin of Danish cookies, huge purple grapes and cold tea. Thuy's mother is dressed in a traditional Vietnamese yellow and green silk blouse and her father is in his usual casual attire. Thuy and Thanh are freshly showered and are dressed casually as well- in jeans and blouses. For a first-time parent meeting, it feels very un-ceremonial for a country so rich on ceremony.

Thanh sets up two plastic chairs against the wall. "This is where we will sit," she tells me. As we wait for Dung and his mother, Thuy and Thanh and I just look at each other and laugh nervously.

They arrive ten minutes late; Dung's mother is on the back of his motorbike. They stop outside in the narrow space in the alley and he gently lifts her off of the bike. He comes in and greets me with "Ciao Co" - "hello teacher." I greet him, by mistake, "Ciao Ba"- "Hello older honored woman." Everyone laughs at this, so I realize my mistake and quickly recover with "Ciao Anh" - "Hello Man" and greet his mother correctly. His mother greets me and Thuy's parents and the three of them sit at the table, exchanging a few words. Dung and Thuy stand at the end of the table. Dung is nervous... streams of sweat run down the side of his head. Thanh sees this and runs across the alley to buy him some tissue to wipe his face.

As the parents talk and Thuy and Dung stand at attention, I keep stealing glances at Dung. I've been expecting some kind of horror show to appear, but he is actually very nice looking. And better yet, he is very kind and gentle. Every few minutes, he turns to Thuy and whispers something. They seem to be at ease with each other, like good friends.

The parents meet for about 30 minutes. Thanh tells me they are talking about the restaurant, and about the jewelry that his parents must present to her on the wedding day. Dung is a jeweler, so he will make the traditional gifts himself. There are many gaps of silence and, being an American who is trained to keep conversations going, I feel uncomfortable. But I am also unable to assist, so I just sit and watch - a spectator at a sporting event - every once in a while whispering questions to Thanh.

"Will they go on a honeymoon?"

"If they have enough money."

"Where will they live?"

"At his house, with his mother and his three older sisters. All of them are unmarried."

I try to let this sink in, but I can't. I can't imagine an equivalent to this scenario at home. How will she do that? Will those sisters eat her up? She's a tough one, but in their home...She will be 40 at the end of May and he is 42; that plays a factor, too.

Suddenly, the meeting is over. Everyone stands up and Thuy and Dung both bow to Thuy's parents, greet me again, get on their bike and drive away.

Thuy's father - who always greets me with a strong handshake and an "America, good!" statement, comes over and asks me what I think of Dung. Thanh translates.

"I think he is a very kind man," I say.

He laughs and says, "Good!" And something like, "the wedding is on!"

Thuy comes in and sits down next to me, hugging me, giggling, and asking, "Maggie. What you think?"

"Thuy," I say, "Dung is so nice and kind. And he is very nice looking!"

Thuy squeals and says, "Oh, Maggie, I am so happy! I afraid you not like him. OK! I am happy!"

I just laugh. "Thuy, why do you say he is not good looking? He is."

She gets a serious look on her face. "I look inside him and see he is good. So to me he is good looking."

"That's right," I answer.

She squeals again, "Oh, I am so happy. If you don't like him, no wedding!" I know she is joking, but I also know she feels relief that we have met. I do, too.

Next weekend, I am taking part in the wedding of a friend from school, Alison, who is marrying a Vietnamese man, Van. Five of us are getting ao dais made for this - the traditional Vietnamese dress.

Rita will be here to experience it all with me. She had written me a few months ago asking if we could "visit a village in the countryside." I wrote back saying that was a very romantic ideal, but that it took hours to get outside of Ho Chi Minh City and I would have no idea where to find this kind of village. One week after I wrote that, I was told the details about this wedding: we will get up early on Sunday morning and take a two hour bus trip deep into the countryside of the Mekong Delta to take part in the traditional ceremony at Van's home.

I forget, sometimes, that there is always a little bit of magic sprinkled in where Rita is concerned. So that's where she will go on her second day here: to a place and a ceremony I haven't been witness to during a year and a half of living here. And two months later, I will experience another wedding in the alley of my neighborhood, for my Vietnamese "sister" who is marrying a very kind and handsome jeweler.

What Nightmares May Come

2010-03-18T06:01:00.001-07:00

For years, I have had this recurring nightmare that I am unable to get to school. Everywhere I turn there is a roadblock, and at times I cannot even leave my house. I am always aware of the dream clock - class has started and I'm not there.

I have these dreams only in Seattle, where there would be no foreseeable roadblock or flood outside my door (on my high Phinney hill).

I have never had this nightmare in Saigon, where - on more than one occasion - I have woken up to inches of water outside my door and where I have negotiated Road Challenges every day of this school year.

But on Monday morning, I literally could not get to school. I did my best through the Back Way Obstacle Course of holes and cement water pipes and sprinklers, but was stumped at the semi truck parked across what used to be our open-river-sidewalk-in-the-opposite-direction. I was within one hundred meters of the school, but had to backtrack four miles, re-cover those same four more miles back toward the school, overshoot the school by one mile and navigate a U-Turn to get there.

I was ten minutes late, and I cried when I got into my classroom (I have first period planning, fortunately. First period planning is never part of my Seattle school nightmares). What usually takes me fifteen minutes had taken over 60. The main reason for the crying, however, was not the roadblock issue. It had to do with my next topic: Scars from 'Nam.

I now have:
1) One very deep motorbike burn (Saigon kiss) on my right ankle (acquired in Sept. 09)

2) One huge, ugly motorbike burn (Saigon souvenir) on my left calf (acquired the day I got Dengue Fever, Dec. 09...people gasp when they see it it's so horrible...)

3) The memory of Dengue Fever

4) One dislodged crystal from my right ear that still causes me some vertigo (dislodged Nov. '08 when Nam and I were rear ended)

and now, added that same Monday Roadblock Morning:

5) One scraped left elbow and

6) One scraped right toe.

I acquired the scrapes right out on my little street - I saw one of my favorite rice ladies crouched on a sidewalk as I was driving out to the main road. As I made a slight turn towards the sidewalk, a motorbike was passing me on the left - one of the most annoying Saigon tricks. He barely hit me, but I lost my balance and went over. Not bad, but still, another wound from 'Nam.

So - I was crying not because of pain, but because I was mad that this scar was going to come with me to the wedding I'm going to next weekend, along with all of the others.

Your Commute, My Commute... Same Same but Probably a Little Different

2010-03-12T06:11:00.000-08:00

The new road that runs past the middle school opened about six weeks ago, which came as a relief to many of us who "go the back way" to avoid 45 - minute traffic jam mornings. The back way was great, except for the three blocks we had to swim upstream on the sidewalk against the heavy morning commute. Now that the new road is open, we get to swim upstream on our own open river sidewalk. What a relief.

But the construction continues, and we never know what Challenge the sidewalk will meet us with each morning. There may be The New Pile of Gravel Challenge, or perhaps a bulldozer will be parked in the middle of it and we will get to try the One-foot Wide Path with a Two-foot Drop Challenge to go around it. Usually, I can take this all in stride; I feel very comfortable on my Honda Wave 150 in Saigon traffic and construction zones. So far, these Morning Motorbike Challenges have not been able to stump me (do I still need to add "while wearing heels?").

But this morning was a true test of my problem-solving aptitude. The "back road" that turns onto the "new road" (that turns into the now un-occupied sidewalk "open river") was completely torn up. Three bulldozers were busy tearing it up more, and three hoses stretched across the piles of dirt squirting water up into the air, creating a thick, messy Mud Pie Sprinkler Challenge. Motorbikes were still using this street - of course... the swarm just goes and goes, over and around everything. The thing that made me stop and consider whether I should proceed was a combination of what I was wearing (silk) and the fact that the woman in front of me got completely splattered with mud when one of the hoses went a little bit wild on her.

I looked to my right and spotted an alley, turned down there and was happy to find a new back way off of the already-back-way to the new road. Feeling very smart and successful, I then turned onto the gravel sidewalk and drove two of the three blocks to the school. That is when I encountered an 8 ft. hole in the middle of the sidewalk with a very narrow motorbike trail winding around it- providing no opportunity for driver error. I watched a colleague successfully attack this path in front of me, but I was gripped with fear. It was a Friday morning, after all, and I didn't feel like dropping into an 8 ft hole. So I turned around, made a perpendicular crossing of the sea of traffic on the new road (they all just go around you, trust them...), got into the opposite lane and drove a mile past the school, did a U-turn, and entered in the other "back way."

When my friend Steven and I discussed the morning's route to school, he said, "It was like Sarajevo..."

I returned to the sidewalk two hours later during my lunch to document it on film - but guess what: the hole was filled. No proof whatsoever of the Morning 8 Ft. Hole Challenge.

After school, however, we got to enter The Sidewalk Lake Challenge. Six inches of water greeted us then, as well as the Challenge of Negotiating Between Two Huge Trucks through Sand after we made it through the water challenge.

It's so much fun, getting to and out from this school.

If you're wondering what the school buses do, or what the taxis that drop off and pick up kids each day do, well... the guards have been spending a lot of time escorting kids up to the new road, over lakes and gravel hills to meet these larger vehicles. It's Saigon - here no one would think of complaining about this. You just go on and live.

I realized just today that the earthquake-like shaking of the school has stopped - the shaking was caused by digging construction really close to the school. But what continues is the power outages (I'm assuming these are caused by other digging close to the school). Yesterday we had three of them during our seventh period. I was in the middle of a lesson - projecting something on the screen - and it all went blank... three times. The generators started up and the power went back on within a minute after each outage. But when this happens three times in a fifty-minute period, it does become a bit invasive to a lesson, especially when you must re-boot your computer each time.

On the topic of my morning commute, I will show you my two favorite morning women: They sell glutinous rice balls filled with yellow mung bean paste. Some people get morning coffee from a drive-through, but I get to drive up, pay thirty cents and get three of these heavenly pillows from the most gracious women in Saigon (other than the most gracious women in my morning market...)

You know what, I think this is the best commute I have ever had.

Interlude: Scriber Students, Turtles and Chris Brown

2010-03-04T15:16:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, many of you supported the 15 Scriber Lake High School students that Chris Brown and I took to Costa Rica to "save the turtles." The generosity of our family, friends and community really, really touched the whole group.

In August, Chris and I were able to see the majority of the 2008 Costa Rica team at a reunion, and it turned out to be a summer highlight for both of us. We could still hear the excitement in their voices as they recalled meaningful and funny experiences, and listened as they verbalized how this experience had made them more confident in pursuing life goals.

(For those of you who haven't heard of Scriber Lake HS, it's an alternative high school in the Edmonds School District, north of Seattle.)

One girl received a scholarship to study nursing in Pennsylvania and told us that "Costa Rica was the beginning of what I want my life to be." Another student has continued on to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, and also viewed the trip as a beginning for him. Just recently, I received an email from another who told me, "If I did that (set the goal, raise the money and make the trip), I can do anything." Almost all of them had made future plans that somehow connected to the trip. As I drove home, I thought, "If only all of the people who gave could actually see all of this..."

So - what your generosity really did was "save the students." It gave them so, so much. Does it sound corny if I say that it "gave them the world"? Yeah, it does. But it did.

Rita Ireland, soon-to-be guest #15 at the castle at the end of this month, sent me a link to this article in The Herald from Tuesday, describing Chris Brown's effort to make another trip happen this spring (it also gives a summary of what the trip is about):

http://heraldnet.com/article/20100302/NEWS01/703029931

I am so happy that Chris has taken on this HUGE endeavor this year, and am extremely impressed that he is doing it all by himself. I know that I could have never pulled it off without having him as a partner - figuring out how to tap all of the resources available is a really tough job...so, I want to help him in any way I can.

So, I thought of this: suggesting here that you consider supporting this year's trip.

When we received your checks in our teacher mailboxes two years ago, it was so much fun to go to our "Turtle Tuesday" meetings and watch students open the envelopes and wonder out loud, "But this person doesn't even know me!" in response to a $20 check. When the article ran in The Herald before, many people sent checks anonymously; these acts of kindness were almost incomprehensible to our students. They loved the personal notes, too... people would write things like, "Allow this experience to change your life..."

So, if you would like to donate to these students, Scriber's address is:

Scriber Lake High School
23200 100th Ave. W.
Edmonds, WA 98020

Checks can be made out to "Scriber Lake HS" and you can just write "Attn: Chris Brown" and the name of the student on the envelope.

I can't think of a better person to trust with this kind of thing than Chris - he has been a devoted teacher for over 30 years, and he is still making a huge impact on the lives of teenagers at Scriber Lake.

Thanks, everyone!

Back to Bali: "Spicy"

2010-03-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

To make "Spicy":

5 shallots
4 cloves of garlic
small piece of turmeric root
1 candlenut
shrimp paste
salt
pepper
ginger
aromatic ginger

When you grind up all of the above with a mortar and pestle, you have a paste - called "Spicy" - that you can mix into most all of the Balinese food we made, including:

Young Peanut Soup with Papaya
Small Potato Pancakes
Steamed Chicken in Banana Leaf
Shredded Chicken with Coconut and
Sambal (like an Indonesian salsa)

What did not include the "spicy" was the Black Rice Pudding, which is my new favorite dessert.

We learned how to make all of these dishes in Munduk - a town set into the mountains - on Day Three of our Magical Mystery (Motorbike) Tour through Bali, in an outdoor kitchen overlooking terraced mountains. Our instructor was a sweet woman who spoke little English.

The Lonely Planet's description of Munduk does not do it any justice at all, but this lack of attention means it is not overrun by tourists - a true find. Sue and I asked to be shown five "homestays" before we made our choice, and we chose based on the best view from the outdoor restaurant. Our advice: if you want to stay in a lush, untouristy mountain town for a very cheap price, go to Munduk. We saw incredible places to stay for between $20-$50 per night. All of these places offer nature hikes, cooking classes and massages in their purist form.

By the way, the peanut soup - it was insanely good. I'm so spoiled by soups here in Vietnam, and that soup took first place. Well, maybe behind the shrimp and pork soup in my market...

Another highlight during this Munduk mountain morning - because our cooking class didn't begin until 10 am, we decided to follow a path that wound down around the side of our homestay. After walking in zig zags down for about 45 minutes, we heard music coming from a place up and over some steps. We crept up the steps a bit to see about 25 children doing their morning exercises to a tape recorded song. They must do it every morning, because they knew all the moves. One of the teachers saw us and motioned for us to join in, so we did. The kids, from grades one through six, kept looking back and giggling at our attempt to follow their lead.

After exercises, we got a tour through a few classrooms and met the 6th grade teacher and the English teacher (who was afraid to speak English with us). A chalk board and desks were all that filled them - complete simplicity. And the kids - they were so bright-eyed and respectful. I thought about staying there on a teaching contract...however, there was no offer of a teaching contract.

Verdict: go to Bali, rent motorbikes, stay in Munduk for a couple of days. Your soul will be very happy. And so will your stomach.

Danny, Our Charming Rent-a-Friend

2010-02-27T19:08:00.000-08:00

This is Danny. He is as charming as he looks. We met Danny one day as we were trying to find our way to the public market in Yogyakarta (or Jogya, as it is affectionately called by the locals), in eastern Java. We were just leisurely walking down the street, not too concerned about finding the market, when I looked next to me and was greeted by his huge smile. I said to him, "We're looking for the market," because he seemed to be the kind of guy who would be interested in knowing.

He laughed. "I am heading there right now. My mother sells spices there and I am going to help her. You can come with me."

So Danny ended up walking us through the huge market for about an hour. We met his grandmother at the spice section (his mother had already left) and asked him all kinds of questions about Java. Even though he was a transplant from Sumatra about ten years earlier, he knew his stuff. Little did he know, we were actually interviewing him as a potential "rent-a-friend" for the day. This is a technique that Sue employs on all of her trips: she seeks out a local and pays him/her to show her around. This practice has resulted in some of her best overseas experiences.

After an hour with Danny, I turned to Sue and said, "Is Danny our Rent-a-Friend?"

"I think so," she said.

When we brought up the idea to Danny, he laughed. "Yes, I would be happy to take you around. To be honest, I am a tour guide in my spare time..."

One of the things Sue and I wanted to do was to climb Mt. Merapi - an active volcano about a two-hour drive from Jogya - but we had heard what a strenuous hike it was, and that most booked tours began at one a.m. in order to make it to the top by sunrise. Danny told us he knew of an alternative route where we could drive most of the way, walk a few miles (leisurely), camp at the crater, and just wake up to the sunrise. He told us he would take care of all of the food, too. Perfect.

So we met him at his place of work at 8 p.m. - he is a musician at a nightly museum performance of a shadow puppet play depicting the Hindu epic story of The Ramayana - and left for the mountain after the show, at 10 pm, in his friend, Andy's, car. They drove us the magic back way. We set up camp, cooked over an open fire, set up tents under the stars, and woke up to a magnificent sunrise with a view of the entire island of Java. We got this amazing experience for the SAME price as the guided tours we had read about...

OK, well, that is not exactly how it happened. Actually, it happend considerbly different than that. It is a little embarrassing to actually read over what I just wrote down...the promise of a "special back way" - "no strenuous hiking involved" -"sleeping next to the crater" and "for the same price as the tour..." I mean, really... if this were all actually possible, why didn't every tour package offer this same thing?

No, what happened was that when we arrived at the puppet performance, Danny told us that he had made some phone calls and that the road he spoke of had been closed. We couldn't go the back way.

But he could take us the other way.

"You mean, the way with the difficult hike?" I asked.

"No, it's not difficult," he answered.

"What about sleeping at the crater?"

Well, that wasn't possible, either, since we couldn't go "the back way."

"If we leave at 10 and get there at 1, when will we sleep?" I asked.

Danny just looked at me, a bit sheepishly.

"We won't sleep? I clarified.

Danny nodded.

Sue and I pulled away for a private meeting. We should cancel, we said. We couldn't pull an all-nighter, especially if it required us to hike for a good eight hours in the middle of the night. I knew that I, for one, would turn into a monster the next day. And now we were wary of our charming rent-a-friend. But the thing was, we had booked a flight to Bali for that next night, so if we didn't go that night, we would miss out on Mt. Merapi altogether.

We had read that what many people do is stay in the village below Mt. Merapi and sleep in a room in a house, wake up early and hike from there. We asked Danny about this, and he said, "Sure, we can do that. We don't have to start hiking until 3 am anyway, we can get to a good lookout by sunrise."

So we decided to go anyway. We could sleep in the car on the way up, we thought.

When Danny's friend came with his car, they had set up pillows n the back seat for us, and it was actually almost comfortable. A few hours later, we were somewhat aware of making many hairpin, steep turns with a lot of stopping and then hushed yet stressed conversations that, of course, we could not understand.

"Danny has no idea what he is doing. He is making this all up as he goes," Sue said.

And all I could think was, "Crap."

Finally, Danny was waking us up. "OK, you're going to stay in this house and sleep for a few hours." He had found a villager on the road and had secured a room for us. We dragged ourselves out of the car and up into a little room where Sue and I would share a pretty small bed. Sue laid out her rain coat over the sheets, in response to a very bad experience with bed bugs somewhere in Central America a year ago.

Our host showed us to the toilet. We had to take our flashlights and walk over what seemed to be a concrete balance beam to a very rustic squat toilet. Back in bed preparing for three hours of sleep, we were just settling into sleep when a bright light went on outside the door, followed by much loud conversation.

"I can't believe this," I said to Sue. The talking continued for about ten precious minutes that were eating into our three hours of pre-hike sleep. Finally, it stopped. About one minute later, a muted cell phone began to play Celine Dion's "Titanic" song. "I am drawing the line at Celine Dion," I declared, and I was up and out the door. The cell phone music was Andy's, our driver's, who was just wasting time out on the couch in the living area. I guess he wasn't sleepy or something. But when he saw the look on my face, off went his cell phone, and I motioned for him to turn off the bright lights.

Finally, we went to sleep. But I swear it was only ten minutes later that Danny knocked on the door to get us up. Back across the concrete balance beam we went to perform the morning squat exercise. And then we finally started up the mountain - Sue, Me, Danny, and the guide that we were required to hire from the village, Mauri. Straight up. Straight. Up.

"Danny, this is pretty straight up," I said. "Is it like this all the way?"

"No," he said.

But we continued to go: Straight. Up.

About 45 minutes into the hike, Danny let out a little yelp. He was behind (and below) us, and it seemed he had hurt his foot. He continued on for ten more minutes and then said, "I am sorry, I cannot finish. I think I twisted my foot."

So he headed back down, to where we presume he took those comfortable pillows in the car and had himself a nice, long sleep. And we... well, we headed up and up and up behind our gentle mountain guide. We got to the first lookout at about 6 am, after hiking straight up for three hours. It was stunning, and did allow us a view of a string of volcanoes. To get to the crater would take about two more hours. We were pretty sure that Katherine and Alyssa were on the mountain this morning (through email correspondence), and I knew Katherine well enough to know that she would reach the top. So we wanted to see the crater and we wanted to see them, but I was done. Sue talked about going on, but after the stop and some extremely weak coffee made by Mauri, she decided it wasn't in her, either. So we headed back down Mt. Merapi.

Danny and Andy were waiting for us at the bottom. I must admit, I was pretty disgusted by Danny at this point. He was walking with a limp, but it wasn't a consistent limp. And he did not meet us with food at the bottom, either. I asked him about it and he said, "Oh, I thought Mauri had food for you in his backpack." He promised us food and did not deliver; in my book, that is extremely disgusting behavior.

So we ordered the best fried rice on the trip from the woman at a stand at the bottom of the mountain - it had a garlicky fried egg on top - and then asked Danny what was next. He had, after all, told us he would show us around all day (part of how "his trip was better than the booked tours"). But he stammered and made lame suggestions, and didn't come up with anything good. Finally, Mauri suggested that we come to his house in the village. This turned out to be a highlight for us. His wife fixed us ginger lemon tea and we sat in his sparsely furnished house - with only two pictures on the wall, one of his older son and one of his younger son - and then got a tour of his little farm out back. Sue gave him her Seattle Firefighter hat when we left him. He was a true, gentle mountain soul.

But then we were back in the car with Danny and Andy, tired as anything. I'm going to shorten this part of the story and say that, in the end, Sue and I can truly say that we ended up liking Danny. He took us to a local fire department so that Sue could have a look around, took us to eat an amazing lunch at a place where you catch your own fish and they grill it to perfection, and then took us to a hotel near the airport where we could shower and sleep for four hours before heading to Bali.

And we got to hear his story over lunch: Danny had grown up in Sumatra in a very strict Muslim family. At sixteen, he decided to head out on his own to escape the harsh requirements of his father, and he came to Java. He got himself schooled and learned English. He met a down and out traveler from Spain who had all of his money stolen, and since Danny helped him in his time of need, this friend made good on a promise to buy him a ticket to Spain. Danny went to Spain and stayed for six months in order to learn Spanish, and had come back to Java with the intention of becoming a tour guide. He was a natural at it, and earned money quickly. He earned enough money to buy a house.

One May morning in 2006, Danny woke up early. He got up, made breakfast and went outside. That is when the earthquake, measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale, struck. Danny's house crumbled, along with every other house in his neighborhood. Almost 6,000 died, and an estimated 1.5 people were homeless.

Of course, the government promised to pay 75% of the damage, but Danny has yet to see the money. He still owns the property, and is slowly buying bricks to rebuild his house, so that he and his girlfriend of four years can get married and live there. When we suggested that he was welcome in Seattle any time, he said, "A plane ticket equals many bricks!"

Sue and I had decided that we needed to be really honest with Danny, so near the end of the conversation, we told him that we had really enjoyed meeting him. That he was very charming and gracious, and that he had a lot to offer as a guide. However, we said, he needed to present things acurately to people, not sugarcoat things... no one likes that, we said. People need to know that they will be hiking straight up, then straight down (my leg muscles hurt for three days).

When Danny dropped us off at our napping hotel, he gave us both a hug. "I'm sorry for any mistake I made," he said. And this charmed us...'cuz we're easy.

And, as a post-script, when we met up with Katherine and Alyssa in Bali our last night and were trading a hundred stories between us, we told them about our day and night with Danny.

Katherine got a funny look on her face. "Does he work as a musician for a museum puppet show every night?" she asked.

They had met him, too. He had walked through the market with them as well, and had told them he was heading to Mt. Merapi that night with two foreigners. Of course, that was me and Sue. And he had charmed them. Actually, Danny had confessed to me that the day I asked him where the market was, he was not in the mood to "meet" tourists. "I saw you, but decided it wasn't a good day for me. Then you talked to me!"

So, yeah, we fell for something. But, sometimes, it's not all bad to fall for something. We were looking for a different experience, and we surely got one.

p.s. I turned into a monster the next day, anyway.

Bali: The Magical Mystery (Motorbike) Tour

2010-02-26T03:40:00.000-08:00

As Sue and I walked down the path in the middle of a procession to make an offering to the manifestation of the Lake Batur God - behind an ornate lion and in front of beating drummers and bell clangers - I asked her if she happened to know anything about Balinese ceremonies concerning manifestations of Lake Gods. "For example," I specified, "if they don't have a hen or a goat to offer, would the manifestation of the Lake God be satisfied with the sacrifice of two American tourists?"

How did we find ourselves in the middle of this procession? The short answer: we were on Day One of our three day motorbike trip through the middle of Bali, up through the Mt. Batur region from Ubud (where Elizabeth Gilbert stays in Eat, Pray Love), and we just stumbled upon it.

The long answer will be explained by backtracking a bit. The reason we saw the preparations for the ceremony at the temple before the procession began was because the temple was right next to a crucial food stop. It had been five hours since breakfast, and Marjie was about to enter into her food coma state. They had ridden for three of those hours, had gotten sidetracked into a meditation ranch for an hour (where, because of lack of guests, they were practically begged to stay for half the price - free yoga and meditation included), had been stopped by Bali police, gotten a tour of a $3,000/per night hotel where the rich and famous would, upon opening day March 1, be helicoptered into this spa hotel by the shores of Lake
Batur, with a striking view of the active volcano steaming beside it. And Sue was not tired nor hungry. In fact, she had just mentioned that she "sure would like to find a road down to the lake, just to touch it and see what it feels like." This suggestion received an eye roll from Marjie and a punchy response, something like, "I would be much more interested in touching the lake if I could eat something first..."

Sue offered Marjie peanuts or a Luna Bar. Not good enough, Marjie replied. "I need something real." Sue, who really wanted to touch that lake, did a scan of the area. "There's a cart over there," she said, and pointed back down the narrow road.

They rode back to the cart and found a little piece of what Marjie considers heaven. It was a gado gado cart...sticky rice that had been steamed in a bamboo package was opened and sliced. Fried tofu and tempe, steamed greens and bamboo sprouts went on top and a peanut sauce was ground right in front of their eyes.

While Marjie calmed her stomach demons, Sue disappeared up the street. Eventually, Marjie followed her, and suddenly they found themselves inside the temple, being invited to put on sarongs and to follow the few hundred villagers to the lake after having grains of rice stuck between their eyes.

After the noisy ten-minute walk down the path, passing rows of corn and red pepper plants and with the steamy lake mixing with the late afternoon sunrays, part of the procession

went up to a platform and part of the procession went down to the lake. We followed our self-appointed guide up; looking down, we saw the villagers circling around a man in a row boat. He wore a long, white robe and his hair was tied in a tidy bun on the top of his head, fastened by a pearl scrunchy.

"Is it their holy man?" I asked Sue.

"It is the holy man," replied our somewhat disturbing, constantly interfering guide, who had just asked to have his picture taken with me, and who had placed his hand firmly on my butt for the shot.

So there the holy man stood in the center of the rowboat, with the hen offering next to him in an airy bamboo cage, when suddenly his hand went up next to his ear. Sue and I gave each other the look you give your traveling partner when you witness the ancient juxtaposed with the modern; the holy man was talking on his cell phone.

"Do you think he may be asking someone high up if perhaps they should lose the hen and replace it with a more meaningful offering?" I suggested. Which is about the time that the holy man looked up, met our eyes on the platform, and gave us a little wave with his free hand. Talk about feeling conspicuous...Sue suggested that we leave the manifestation offering ceremony to the villagers. Our annoying guide followed us up the hill, and disappointingly said that we must pay for the use of the sarong. A small price to pay, I suppose.

Sue was dead set against back-tracking, and even though she had been told a few times that we could not go up over the mountains to reach the northern beaches, she would not take "no" for an answer. She finally found someone who reluctantly told her it could be done (this person looked concerned, though), and up up up we headed -- into the most beatiful scenery we would see on our whole trip. But no beauty was to be had without treachery.

About half way up the mountain, the already narrowly-paved road began to narrow, and narrow... and narrow even more, until it was literally a strip wide enough for a motorbike tire. Soon there was no pavement at all, only huge clumps of red dirt. And then rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. We met lots of villagers coming up and over the

mountain, either on foot, or on real dirt bikes. Let's just say that we, on our 125 scooters and carrying backpacks, were a bit of a shocking sight to them. On and on, up and up, and then down, down, down we headed. Down, with no view of the ocean that we could smell, taste and feel. It was misty, and we were losing the sun. Our hands ached from gripping onto the brakes, and Sue dumped her bike once when it turned on a big rock. She laughed all the way down, but I was keeping quiet - realizing the beauty, but still hoping that we would reach the bottom during daylight. When we finally did catch a view of the Bali Sea through the mist, it was still really, really far away.

We reached sea level at about 7 pm. We had left Ubud at 9. Exhausted and dirty, we figured we would ride along the coast until we spotted a hotel. It would have cold water, only, we figured. And a really uncomfortable bed.

But within minutes of heading west, we both spotted the sign at the same time. It had the words "spa" and "resort" in the title, so we gave each other a hopeful nod and turned down the path. What we found was another slice of heaven. An "executive" room with an ocean-front view, lounges, dining on our own personal deck, and massages by the pool as the sun set. All for $60. We took it, and dove into the pool - dirt most likely rising to the top of the water (but it was dark, so no one could see...)And we enjoyed telling the staff that we had come up and over that mountain, on the road that wasn't even on the map.

"No one will believe that all of these pictures came from one day," said Sue. Nope, it was hard for us to believe, too.

Back to before the lake ceremony, before we reached Lake Batur and decided to "turn down and just see what's down there" (Sue), I want to return to the police pull-over. Before leaving, my friends Steven and Sharon had warned me that if we planned to ride motorbikes, we should take a half day to get international licenses. "If you do get stopped, it could be really bad," Sharon told me. Well, of course, we did not take this advice. And we got stopped about an hour into our trip. By the King of the Road, too.

Officer Budiawan was charming from the get-go (we weren't so sure about his sergeant and other buddy watching from the sidelines), but he let us know that we were in serious doo doo. He went from "I will have to confiscate your bikes for 30 days" to "you will have to pay a big fine" to "well, maybe you can just pay me a little something" to "I don't want your money, go and have a safe trip." I have to give all of the credit to Lieutenant Stangl of the Seattle Fire Department for this. I sat there and listened to her work him, how she complimented him from his boots to his profession, how she gave him the glory that Kings of Roads like him demand. And he loved her muscles. He wanted to know, did she arm-wrestle? Beat people in weight lifting competitions? (I had to answer for her: yes to both.)

"That was incredible," I said to her, later.

"I've worked in the fire department for over 20 years; I know how to massage an ego," she stated.

Yes, she does.

She even got him to take a picture with her, after four refusals. "If we get stopped again, we will just say that Officer Budiawan is our friend."

The next two days brought many more adventures, beauty, and a three hour deluge and lightning storm riding back down through Mt. Batukau, but fortunately, we did not have a need to show the picture of our Officer Friend to any more members of law enforcement.

So, within 10 days, we visited only two of Indonesia's 17,508 islands: Bali and Java. Stay tuned for a few more Indonesia stories - I will probably backtrack to Java for the next one...then bounce back to Bali again. I am embarrassed to admit these things:

1) I thought Bali was a country, rather than an island, up until I bought my ticket to Jakarta
2) The only reason I went to Indonesia was because Katherine found a $70 round trip ticket from HCMC to Jakarta. She and her Montreal friend, Alyssa, and Sue and I, all began and ended our adventure together.

But Indonesia: what a fascinating place...

When Monkey Boy Grows Up...

2010-02-06T03:30:00.000-08:00

When I visit T and T's stand this morning, Monkey Boy is jumping out of his skin. "Maggie, come!" he says, and beckons me back inside the house.

Thanh laughs. "When Monkey Boy grows up, he wants to be the Lion for Tet," she tells me as MB lifts up the heavy costume and puts it over his head. Her mother is sitting on a stool towards the back with a drum. When she begins to beat it, Monkey Boy starts writhing to the beat, making the heavy head go up and down, up and down as their father and the gathering crowd laugh at this tiny little boy controlling this great big huge head.

Monkey Boy always has a lot of energy; however, today he has twice his usual - in contrast to T and T, who are exhausted from selling almost all of their Tet candy stock.

I love this time of year; there's an energy here. People are cleaning, clearing things out, painting and placing flowers outside their homes. Gigantic pink and yellow lanterns line the major streets, along with tigers, to welcome this Chinese Lunar New Year - the Year of the Tiger. The flower markets are open and you see people on motorbikes carrying huge wrapped gift packages filled with liquors, cookies, crackers and other treats.

Today is the day that the Kitchen God is dispatched to heaven to make his report on the moral conduct of the family. I wrote about it last year here:

http://marjiebowker.blogspot.com/2009/01/kitchen-god-tale-gung-hay-fat-choy.html

And since Seattle firefighter Sue is on her way to travel to Indonesia with me for our eleven-day Tet holiday starting on Wednesday, I will direct you back to last year, again, to my very special Tet day experience with Thuy and Thanh:

http://marjiebowker.blogspot.com/2009/01/tet-with-thuy-and-thanh.htmke

I am kind of sad to miss this time here, but how can one really be sad when on her way to spend five days in east Java and five days in Bali? I know, it's not right.

Hopefully I will be posting from there. So, for now, happy Year of the Tiger, everyone!

Them Without This?

2010-02-01T05:35:00.000-08:00

The morning my dad left Saigon, he said he wished he could lift up the whole neighborhood and move it to Seattle.

That's where my mind goes when I think about leaving here, too.

Sometimes I think about suggesting to T and T that they come back to America with me, but what would they be without their family, their community? So yeah, just lift it all on up and...

When Katherine came back from spending Christmas in Montreal, she was showing Thanh pictures of her neighborhood covered with snow. She pointed out her house, the one at the end of the cul-de-sac. Thanh's only response was, "Where are all the people?"

Exactly. Where are they?

*****

I haven't mentioned yet how much my mom and dad loved Thuy and Thanh, and how much Thuy and Thanh loved them back. Thanh is more of a "mother" person - for a year and a half she has questioned how I could live away from my mother - and she especially loved my mom. Thuy, on the other hand, especially loved my dad. Every weekend now, after asking after my parents, she will look sideways at me and ask, "Does your father remember me? (Does your father miss me?)"

"Yes," I have told her five times now, "my father remembers you." And she gets a little teary.

My mom had a dinner party for her friends last weekend and made pho like Thuy taught her. I told them about it on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, Thanh was so excited to ask me: "Maggie. Your mother. How was dinner?"

Thuy called them "Mum and Daddy." She pronounced daddy "Dad-dee." She usually walked with her arm intertwined with his. And whenever I talked to them when my parents weren't with me, she would ask if he was resting. "Yeah... Dad-dee needs rest," she would say. The way she said it seemed kind of, well, admonishing. I'm certain she disapproved of all of my planned travels and activities for my poor parents.

So despite this connection, my father - when he made this comment about picking up the neighborhood - could not even suggest that they actually move to Seattle. What would they be without THIS? So yeah...

Now you'll understand why it is an understatement to say how surprised I was when Thuy said the following to me last weekend:

"Maggie. I want to move to Seattle. I will open a restaurant."

"Really?"

"Yes. Two years. Then I come back."

This piggy-backed on another surprise I heard from her the last night my family was here: Thuy has been dating someone for almost a year now, and we at the castle have never met him. He is scared to meet us, she keeps telling me. So when we were all out to dinner that last night, Thuy announced that she might marry "Yom" next year. I was dumbfounded at this. So:

"But what about Yom?" I asked her. "You will move to Seattle with him?"

"No. Two years there, I come back to him."

The longer I live here, the less I understand. But, then - go to America, send money home, come back and live better here after a time. I guess. That's how it's supposed to go, right?

So I told Thuy I would check into it, and I will. However, why do I feel like I would be committing some kind of crime if it ever actually happened?

Mom and Dad, it would be a crime, wouldn't it? Them without THIS?

You Very Love...

2010-01-31T02:00:00.000-08:00

This morning I experienced love for my neighborhood times about 100. After a three-week hiatus from my beloved rice cakes, my two cake makers were visibly happy to see me. I get special treatment here, being a foreigner who cannot stomach eating the shells of the little shrimps on top of the cakes, so I always bring a book to read while I wait for the shells to be removed and then- when the cakes arrive at my table- while I wait for those hot little suckers to cool.

The green soy milk lady whose stand is next to theirs– well, she gives me special treatment, too. She knows exactly how much sugar I like and that I prefer a whole glass full of ice rather than just half.

Those cakes still make me so happy. Not long ago, as I sat there on a Saturday morning, I sent Katherine a text that said, “This is where I feel most happy in life. Does that make me weird?”

“A little,” she texted back.

The rice cake experience would have been enough, but there was more to come. The elusive tapioca custard balls that I was dying for my father to try the three weeks he was here – were finally back. I bought two. The lady who sells huge mangoes saw me coming and picked out two of the best before I arrived at her stand. My make-up lady, Linh, had two new colors of eyeliner she thought would suit me, and then threw in a make-up brush and sharpener for free. When I looked up from her to my left, I saw that my banana lady had already picked out the bunch of bananas she knew I would like: the ones with a little bit of green left.

As you know, I usually go to Thuy and Thanh’s stand first on Saturday and Sunday mornings to hang out before I do my market run. But today I woke up hungry and went for the rice cakes first. So by the time I got to them, I was already so full of cool market interactions that I’m sure I was exuding my thoughts: “I LOVE this place. I LOVE these people." After a year and a half, these mornings still get me at my core.

T and T greeted me with their typical warmth, then went back to helping a customer- a wrinkled woman wearing a traditional conical hat tied beneath her chin. This woman was in the middle of choosing Tet treats – T and T replace their fabric with cashew and peanut brittle, dried coconut covered with sugar, dried mango and durian candies, cookies and chips for the last month of every (Chinese calendar) year. The woman looked up from a bin of colorful jello and her eyes met mine. She paused for a significant moment, and, while still looking at me, she leaned into Thanh and spoke to her in Vietnamese.

When she finished, Thanh turned to me and laughed. “She say you very love Vietnamese people and you very love this neighborhood!”

That old woman had most very definitely just read my mind.

“She’s very right,” I said. And we smiled at each other for another moment, me and this wise old Vietnamese woman.

T and T were swamped, so I told them I would return later. I needed to drop off my morning groceries, anyway, and planned to come back out for a second run. On my way to the castle, I saw that a small crowd had gathered at Sweet Seamstress'. I peered in and Ut, her son, saw me. “Maggie!” he said, “look!”

He was pointing down to their cat, who was nursing two kittens. The third one had crawled away a little – they must have been at least a week old. They invited me to sit on their floor to play with the wandering kitten. After a while, I proceeded on to the castle when my other neighbor, Henry - whose extremely kind family lives across the alley - called to me. He and his wife just had their third child. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s their third child; Henry’s brother lives there with his wife and kids, too, so it’s a little hard to tell where one family ends and the other begins. I’ve been hoping to get a glimpse of the baby for a week, but she and the baby have remained upstairs, resting.

“They will come down today,” he told me. “You can come over.”

The man next door to him has been dying for about eight months now. Or, at least, it sure sounds like he’s dying. Deaths, births – of kittens and children – eating, sleeping… all of that is shared in this little alley grid that I was lucky enough to find in this corner of the universe. And these people have invited me into their lives with such openness.

I very love Vietnamese people. I very love this neighborhood. An old, wrinkled woman wearing a conical hat even just told me so.

Rambutans and Lychees

2010-01-22T02:57:00.000-08:00

Cheers with Milkshakes

2010-01-20T05:43:00.000-08:00

Or, as they say here: "Mot, Hai, Ba, YO!" (One, two, three, YO~)

Rice

2010-01-20T05:40:00.000-08:00

Comforts of Home

2010-01-19T17:34:00.000-08:00

It is 8:30 am and it is 70 degrees F. outside. I wore a coat on my drive to work this morning because I was FREEZING! It rained all day yesterday and continues to rain this morning. The forecast says it will rain through next week.

The rainy season is back, I think. But this is different. Usually it rains short and hard and it's over. This drizzly, constant fall, well, I cannot recall a day like this in the past year and a half.

I am hearing from teachers this morning that they ordered pizza, picked up a pirated movie or read a good book in bed with no air-conditioning last night.

Night Out in Nha Trang

2010-01-17T02:25:00.000-08:00

American Teenagers in Viet Nam

2010-01-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

Clarification: Even though these burgers made Devon and Megan very happy in this moment, all three of the kids were very adventurous when it came to the food here.

Megan doesn't like seafood (except for processed fish sticks) so that made all of us a little sad. But she dove into other treats, like Bot Chien - fried rice flour cake, beef with lemongrass and won ton soup. She definitely had her favorites.

Devon ate everything. One night in particular when we were in Hoi An, he and grandpa ordered a combination of regional specialties. It was fun to watch and overhear them sharing about ten dishes, asking, "What is this?" "MMMMM, try this grandpa" and "How do you filet this fish?"

Nolan had a taste for K and my favorite pho stand, water spinach, baked squid, the fresh bread rolls and of course the pork and taro spring rolls.

But sometimes, you just need a burger. Right, everyone?

John's Turn

2010-01-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

What a rich set of experiences in four weeks! Marjie suggested that we comment on the things about Vietnam we wish we could “keep” and the things we’re happy to “leave.” So here goes:

“Leave”
- The boys on a motorbike who snatched Carol’s purse.

- Crowded streets and impossible traffic. The norm seems to be very aggressive driving on either side of the road performed with acute awareness of where your vehicle stops and another begins (measured in inches) with the horn constantly providing warnings.

- Electrical wiring, both inside and out. Power lines so thick you can barely read the names on buildings. Casual 220 volt inside wiring such as twisted and taped connections for the wall mounted water heater within easy reach inside the shower. A public toilet with a towel rack and wet towel and bare wires inches above where a hand dryer used to be.
- Persistent smog in the cities we visited. There must be some long-term health effects for residents.

“Keep”
- Friendly, happy people. Thanks to Sharon for taking us to see Marjie when we arrived; Marjie was in the hospital recovering from Dengue fever. Many thanks to Katherine and Franco for their hospitality and use of their rooms in the Castle. Thuy and Thanh took such good care of us – home-made chicken noodle soup when we arrived “to keep us well” and fresh lemonade at their fabric stand. It’s tempting to ask them to become our neighbors, but we could never replace what they already have in their neighborhood.
- Great food, over and over. That includes the vendors in the neighborhood and the wonderful hotel breakfasts while we traveled. The numerous seafood feasts also need to be mentioned.

- Beautiful scenery, with Halong Bay at the top of my list. The cruise on a junk was a perfect way to see the islands.

- Spending four weeks with Devon, Megan and Nolan. What a rare opportunity to have extended time during this busy and quickly changing portion of their lives!

I’m so thankful that we had the opportunity to experience the people and culture of Viet Nam rather than a tour with western hotels and food and only a glimpse of the people from a big bus. Thanks for the memories, Marjie.

Knife Sharpener

2010-01-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

Herding Instincts

2010-01-14T07:45:00.000-08:00

Road Ready

2010-01-14T07:44:00.000-08:00

I will tell you when these are no longer "Lewis Photos."

What is the Reason for this Sale?

2010-01-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

An epic Lewis photo.

We Love Our Pomelo Guy

2010-01-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

... because he peels and sections it for us. He charges 4,000 VND for a whole peeled pomelo (less than 25 cents). At the store you could pay up to 20,000 VND. Megan is crazy about pomelo. I wonder how she is living without it? She kept this poor guy busy.

He also sells durian. We hate durian and it's a bad day in the market if that is all he has.

Best Spring Rolls in Saigon, Nguyen Canh Chan Morning Market

2010-01-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

Lewis was addicted to the noodles and beef for breakfast, too. Nolan must have eaten at least five of these spring rolls per day~ she laughed every time she saw him coming.

Pig Hoof, Ear and Tail

2010-01-13T07:31:00.000-08:00

Are these the ingredients in that yummy Vietnamese bologna?

Candle Neighbor's House, Across the Alley

2010-01-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

Pajamas, Brooms and Dried Squid, NCC Market

2010-01-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

Seafood - Nguyen Canh Chan Market

2010-01-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

Bananas on My Street - Nguyen Canh Chan

2010-01-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

Another Lewis photo~

This is Hoi An

2010-01-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

Another Lewis photo~

Devon's Turn

2010-01-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

What a trip. Before this trip, I didn't know what to expect. Now, after the completion of the trip, I have realized that it is nearly inevitable to not know what all to expect on such a trip.

Whew.

This trip included a few firsts for me. To begin, I have never been off the continent of North America. It feels strange to say that I have flown over the Pacific Ocean. We did a lot of travel within Vietnam too; I don't know that I've ever visited that many different cities in one month. HCMC, Nha Trang, Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, and Hoi An were all the cities we visited, that's five different cities in one month. That's a lot. At least to me.

HCMC was arguably the most exciting of the visited cities. Our time in HCMC started out with a taxi ride which marked our first experience with the roads of Nam. I still remember passing on the left with oncoming traffic. I have not forgotten that thrill.

And that first taxi ride was only the beginning.

Another first for me was attending a middle-school. I was home-schooled throughout my middle-school years, so I never did attend a middle-school here in the States. I find it odd stating that my first middle-school experience took place thousands of miles away from anyplace I have ever lived. My day at middle-school was... notable. Perhaps that is an understatement with my barfing in the cafeteria and later kinda-sorta unofficially getting asked to an official dance. Text fails to give a good reflection here. So, I'll move on.

Sleeper-buses were new to me. I really like my bed here at home, but sleeping on a bed on a bus was a neat experience. The aspect of falling asleep at the place of my departure and waking up at the place of my destination was sublimely a really cool deal.

Now I know this doesn't really have anything to do with Nam, but at one point on that sleeper-bus my left foot fell asleep so heavily that I practically couldn't move my foot. I tried to move my foot at the ankle, but it wouldn't. It felt really weird trying to walk when the muscles of one ankle wouldn't work...

Anyway, back to the subject at hand--

Nam, in general, has good food. That was a good experience, all the tasty food. It seemed that in any direction there was tasty food calling to be consumed, "Devon, Devon!" it would cry. A particularly tasty treat Marjie had in her neighborhood was fresh pineapple. I never quite understood why my Dad liked pineapple so much, but I think I do now. Tasting that amazing slice of happiness was like all the cares of the world melting away. Okay, okay, not like that. But really, that pineapple was one of the most delicious foods of the entire trip. No joke.

The weather of Nam was quite different from here at home as well. The continuing warmth of HCMC was something that I am not well acquainted with here in the Seattle area. How is that? I will say that I now have a better appreciation for milkshakes. =)

All of Nam was so much more than these words, but these are a few samples. I hope the readers have enjoyed my blogging.

And I want to thank my Aunt for her enabling my family to take this amazing trip to Nam. It has been a great experience, one that I will certainly not soon forget. Thank you very much, Aunt Marjie.

This is Devon Griggs, over and out.

Lewis' Eye

2010-01-10T15:11:00.000-08:00

Lewis took some really good pictures while he was here, so every once in a while I am going to feature one of them...

Reflections on our trip by Carol.

2010-01-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

For months we looked forward to our trip to Vietnam. Well, we're back and it seems like a dream -- a very, very good dream, however. Marjie took her best experiences from living there for 1 1/2 years and consolidated them into a very full and complete 3 1/2 weeks of adventures for us.

We experienced the motorbike madness of Ho Chi Minh City; enjoyed meeting Marjie's roommates, Katherine and Franco, and her good friends, Thuy and Thanh; sailed a junk on beautiful Halong Bay where we stayed in huts with attached full bathrooms on Monkey Island; visited cultural museums in Hanoi; stayed in two resort towns, Nha Trang and Hoi An, where we soaked up the sun on the beaches and swam in warm ocean water; had clothes and shoes made; visited Marjie's school and met many of her students; shopped in her neighborhood market; and ate many, many meals of delicious Vietnamese food. It was all wonderful, but I think my favorite was her neighborhood which I am going to write about next.

We stayed in a hotel about a five minute walk from the "castle." It wasn't a fancy hotel, but it had air conditioned rooms, tiled bathrooms, a refrigerator and TV, comfortable beds, and was very clean. The cost was $11.00 per night. Leaving the hotel we could walk down the street and purchase a dish of spring rolls and fried noodles, a bowl of pho', rice cakes, rice and chicken, or any number of dishes and drinks at the stands along the side of the street. Turning a corner and walking down an alley brought us to the morning market. There we could buy anything we desired from individual vendors. Along one side might be fresh fish, rice noodles, a stand selling pho', underwear, kitchen utensils, cosmetics, Thuy and Thanh's fabric stand, bananas and other fruit. The other side might be beef, grains, fresh rolls, children's clothing, toys, and a stand selling cooked clams and scallops on the half shell. The market opened at 6:00 and closed at 1:00; it was very crowded with people doing their shopping for the day. Then for two hours the streets became fairly empty as many people rested during the hot part of the day. Because it is so warm there, many of the homes are open to the outside. The living area of homes include the street in front of the homes, where you see many people relaxing, visiting, and children playing. It is noisy, friendly, crowded, and inviting, and makes me realize that we in America live in a very isolated, sanitized environment.

One day I asked Thuy if she would teach me to cook pho'. She agreed and we met the next morning to purchase the ingredients. At the first stand we bought the spices, the next we bought the rice noodles, then the beef, the herbs, the bean sprouts, and the sauces. That evening we cooked at Marjie's. She showed me what to do telling me to "taste and think" about the flavor throughout the cooking until I got it right. The pho' that night was delicious; hopefully I can replicate it here.

We couldn't have asked for a more unique, eventful, or wonderful time. We loved Vietnam; it is easy to know why Marjie decided to stay for another year. Thank you, Marjie, you were an excellent tour guide!

Same Old, Same Old- Happy New Year!

2010-01-08T06:04:00.000-08:00

I was reading Facebook updates Tuesday night and many people were commenting that it was nice to "get back into routine." I felt the same way. Getting on my motorbike and riding to school against traffic on the sidewalk felt so great!!

We sure had fun, but I don't feel very rested after this vacation and plan to do only that and gym stuff all weekend long.

I have asked my family - who is now back in the (much colder) greater Seattle area - to write reflective blogs sometime this weekend. They are busy sleeping off their jet lag, though, so we will see if that happens.

I am wondering, specifically, what part of Vietnam they would take home with them, if they could. (As well as what they would leave here. Which is obvious to me but maybe not to you.)

I don't even know where to begin to tell the stories of our three weeks together traveling through Northern and Central Vietnam, or how great it was for me to see my family become addicted to T and T, my seamstresses, my pomelo guy, rice cake ladies, spring roll lady, make-up lady, wonton soup cart guy, seafood alley people, yellow rice stand crew, the Bum Bum girls, etc, etc, etc... However, one morning in particular - I think it was Christmas Eve morning - all seven of them ran around collecting food for a few hours, and we used the castle as a Home Base Reporting Center for Neighborhood Eating. That was fun.

As for pictures, we have millions of them. But here is one of my favorites - Nolan and his new shorts with the neon green stripe - THE SHORTS THAT TOOK A VILLAGE TO MAKE. Remember, Thuy rode all over Saigon looking for the color he wanted and Sweet Seamstress really got a kick out of his design expectations. And here they are, on the flesh. Nolan was very very happy with those as well as his green and red checkered shorts and his designer shoes from Hoi An!

Ok, family, I am taking more time off. You tell a story - or whatever. It was so much fun to have you here.

Guest Blogger #7, Angie Griggs, Age Marjie plus 2

2009-12-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Vietnam has definitely been memorable. A few days ago our family drew names for our shopping, then went off to the Ben Thanh market, the huge tourist market in Saigon, to do our shopping. It's a little different bartering for the gifts you want to buy, and I must say the crowds were denser than anything I have ever seen on a Black Friday morning. But we succeeded! There is almost anything you could wish for at that market times ten!

Christmas Eve morning we went off into Marjie's neighborhood market to buy fresh fruit for our Christmas Eve salad (and of course rice cakes for our breakfast). Marjie had ordered a full turkey dinner to be delivered at 6pm, complete wth pumpkin pie. Believe me, we waited for it with not a little trepidation. We're so used to delicious turkey and all the fixings, and it would be such a disappointment if the dinner didn't taste good!

Marjie had invited Thuy and Thanh to join us, along with Tu and Monkey Boy. All of the gifts were wrapped, my dad played Christmas music from his mp3 player, and then at 5:30 up drives a guy on his motorbike with plastic bags full of our turkey dinner. Thuy and Thanh had never heard of turkey before. They called it a "big chicken." Thuy jumped right in and helped my dad carve it. We served our guests first, and were pretty relieved when they liked it! We took our first bites, and I think almost everybody ate seconds! Pretty tasty! Even the gravy, much to Megan's enjoyment.

I know none of us will ever forget this Christmas. Reading the story of Jesus' birth in 90' heat is quite a change from the foot of snow that surrounded us at Christmas last year, so we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas to get in our snow quota. T, T, T and MB loved it.

We are off to Hanoi tomorrow for more great Vietnamese food and adventure. Merry Christmas everybody!

My Two Mothers

2009-12-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

Guest Blogger #6, John Bowker, Ageless Plus Four

2009-12-21T23:54:00.000-08:00

Contrasts really strike me here:

-A large crowd of people in front of an open front building watching TV and cheering on the Viet Nam soccer team while a dense confusion of motorbikes go by in the street and a loudspeaker somewhere plays a US Hit Parade Song in English. When the team wins, the motorbikes increase with many riders displaying large national flags.

-Pedicab drivers who look you in the eye while grabbing your wallet, compared with restaurant owners who will chase you down the street to return a 3,000 VND (20 cent) overcharge for rice.

-A very active, narrow street market with a large variety of prepared food, clothing, raw fish and meat with a Willie Nelson song playing in the background.

-The lobby of the hotel in our neightborhood with a beautiful Christmas tree next to the front desk, complete with wrapped gifts and the hotel owner's motorbike parked beside it.

What an experience. Thanks, Marjie!

Devon's Back...

2009-12-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

I finished washing some dishes a few minutes ago, which was difficult. The washing dishes part was not an issue, but it was the height of the counter that was so awkward to use. The kitchen counter height is a foot or so lower here than back at home. There are oddities of that sort all around here. I regularly snicker to myself thinking of how my friend Eric, who is about 6'3", would fare here. I try to imagine him sitting on the short, little stools at the short, little tables, and I laugh. I would love to see him confidenly striding through the market place only to be clothes-lined by a low cord. I am about 5'10", and I have some troubles. I can only imagine what would happen to him.

I think of my shorter friends Christa and Mikayla too. They are about my shoulder height, and they would fit right in with the locals. Instead of not-so-gracefully bending over the sink to wash dishes like me, they would be standing with perfect posture scrubbing a mile a minute and putting me to shame. While I duck my head under tarps in the allys, they would smile to themselves and continue onward thinking of all the times I had made fun of them being "vertically challenged."

So maybe Eric and I are the ones that are "vertically challenged," maybe Christa and Mikayla are the ones who have it made. New experiences bring new ways of thinking.

Anyway, despite being "vertically challenged" here in Nam, I've been pretty happy with the various new experiences. Except shopping. I squarely failed my first attempt yesterday at the Ben Thanh market in District One of HCMC. I found the wallet that I wanted to buy, and I bought it. Afterwards I learned that I did my bartering poorly and what's more the wallet was damaged. Arrrgh! I did end up exchanging it, but still, "Epic fail!" as my friends would say. I had another chance to shop at the market today, but I happily declined. Shopping as a whole hasn't been a nightmare, but it hasn't been a pleasant dream either.

Well, enough from me. If I don't write again before Christmas, then have a merry one!

Guest Blogger #5 Lewis Griggs, Ageless minus 23

2009-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

While in the beach resort city of Nha Trang, Marjie recommended that we should go to the mud baths. Lets say that I was pretty skeptical of the idea. Then again I'm a boy at heart, and this would just add another facet to our Vietnam adventure.

After loading our eight member clan into the subcompact sized taxi, we honked and weaved our way through town, only to find the road with the largest potholes. At the end of the long windy road was the quaint mud bath resort.

After paying our entrance fee, we all got swim-suited up and climbed up a hundred or so stairs to the first treatment, in amongst the trees. The attendent requested that we shower first. And I asked myself why? We are only going to be wallowing in mud like pigs in just a few moments, what's wrong with a little perspiration added to the mud mix? With the language barrier, I didn't challenge the situation.

Imagine your family, extended family that is, in your hot tub with 15 gallons of mud silt thrown in. Think of it as a supersized warm mud facial that covers your whole body. Once covered with mud, soak for 20 minutes. There was a lot of giggling all around the tub. The mud mixture made us very bouyant. Now we know what it feels like to be a pig.

The treatment continued with a long traditional shower where mud just cascaded off our bodies and across the cement as we started to become somewhat clean again.

Next up was the pressure wash cycle. As we walked through an open stone hallway, many horizontal streams of water attacked our bodies from all sides.

The mineral soak cycle was next. It's a hot tub filled with warm mineral water. Soak time is 20 minutes. The water was clear when we started, and cloudy gray by the time we were done.

Finally we got to the swim and waterfall cycle. The relaxing pool was huge and was about 102 degrees. A little too warm for Michael Phelps. If that is not enough, stand under the warm waterfall and see what paradise feels like.

I have never felt that relaxed in my life. Thanks, Marjie, for recommending the mud baths.

Pop Quiz. Can you figure out who owns these body parts?

Family Display

2009-12-17T23:28:00.000-08:00

My family is at the beach - Nha Trang - and I am finishing up my last day of school, then flying to meet them today at 5:00. I hear it was sunny yesterday, but rainy today. I wish you could guarantee the weather when you are a travel agent for your family!

I know it's a cliche, but it truly does feel like the school clock goes backwards on the day before vacation...

The kids came to school with me on Wednesday and all three of them were huge hits. In fact, some seventh grade girls will probably give me the silent treatment for a while because they were not asked to take Megan around school. The energy surrounding the kids wherever they went was pulsating. Perhaps the most pulsating moment, however, was at lunch.

Devon had told me at breakfast that he "didn't feel well." I bought them all lunch in the cafeteria - a pretty safe grilled chicken plate - and at the end of lunch, he came up to me and said, quite diplomatically, "Aunt Marjie, I don't feel very good. Where should I go?" I took this to mean that he was about to throw up and I looked around to problem-solve this when... he did it. He threw up in front of half of the school.

To Devon's credit, he laughed about it the whole way through. He said something like, "I really know how to make a first impresssion, don't I?" And his display didn't even defer an eight grade girl from asking him to the winter dance for tonight (too bad, he can't go). We got him a t-shirt from the PE Department and he sat down in the lobby for most of the rest of the day while Megan and Nolan played dodgeball and took science tests. (Shared with permission from Devon.)

That same day, my mom, dad, Angie and Lewis took a taxi in a downpour (they got to see the flooding right outside the school) to meet us at the end of the day. My students were especially excited to meet my mom, who made them cookies as motivation for a school-wide reading competition (that my 6th graders ended up winning). She also chooses the best table names for groups each month. They were late because of the rain, but my students stayed in my classroom an extra 15 minutes just to meet everyone. I'm so glad my family got to see it all - rain, flooding students, etc. Because it's really hard to explain it all.

When my mom was ready to get on the bus the other night, she said, "I'm looking forward to the beach, but I hate to leave your neighborhood." This is how we feel all the time. My whole family is now quite tight with T and T - Nolan had a specific vision to make some shorts with a neon green stripe down the side, and Thuy rode her motorbike all over Saigon to find that neon green material. I'm sure that after Nolan's fashion hits the streets of Saigon, even more people will be wanting to touch him. But they turned in clothes to be made by my expert tailor at the top of district one, as well as Sweet Seamstress (who is making Nolan's design dreams into reality) nextdoor.

It will be really nice to come back and have my whole family at the castle for a few days before we all take off to Hanoi/Halong Bay on Christmas Day. I haven't really felt myself until just a few days ago - that Dengue was really awful - so I'm looking forward to giving my family a rightful tour of all the food outside my door that I love so much.

Stay tuned for more kid updates when we return next week (and Merry Christmas)!

A Minute with Marjie

2009-12-14T06:34:00.000-08:00

I could spend hours writing about how much fun it is to have my family here, but that will have to wait... the one thing we have all been laughing about is how much attention Nolan is getting from everyone. Everyone wants to touch him - whether it's to stroke his cheek or pat his bottom or just look at him with googley eyes and point him out to everyone who passes.

I took everyone to my Singaporean restaurant tonight and our waiter, who was male, could not keep from touching his cheek - over and over. He brought about ten of the staff over and pointed at Nolan. They all wanted to know how old he was and would he come back soon? It was beginning to get a little bit creepy how much attention they were lavishing on him. Nolan is pretty much unfazed about most things and he just kept poking his food with a chopstick and dropping it into his mouth, much to the entertainment of the entire wait staff.

We are wondering how we can make some money off of this Nolan Phenomenon...any ideas?

Guest Blogger #4 Carol Bowker, Ageless

2009-12-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City! Has it really been only four days? It seems like we have had a life time of experiences. When we first arrived Marjie was still in the hospital. Her friend, Sharon, took us to see her first thing. She was weak, tired, and covered in a red rash, but had a promise of release the following day. She gave us Vietnamese money, a phone, and a map and told us to go have some adventures. That we did!

We followed the map (carefully) to Thuy and Thanh's fabric stand. They greeted us warmly and told us to come back at 1:00 when their stand closed. We did and asked them to show us Marjie's favorite pho stand. They said "no;" they had fixed chicken soup for us to "keep us well." We were invited into their home which is behind their fabric stand and served delicious soup and an orange drink. When we tried to thank them, Thuy said "no." Then she pointed to her heart and said we were "one family." It was very touching. Marjie was quite surprised about the lunch; she has only eaten there once, and that was during Tet. Since that time we have seem them quite often. Yesterday they took John and me shopping at the morning market for ingredients for lettuce wraps, hot pot, and deep fried spring rolls, which they cooked for us that afternoon. Everything was delicious.

John and I also had the experience of being cheated by a pedi cab driver. We had taken a taxi to see the Reunification Palace (where President Thieu was taken by helicopter from the roof) and were trying to catch one to return to our hotel. A pedi cab driver just wouldn't take no for an answer. He kept saying "one dollar, one dollar," and practically pushed us into the cabs. Well, it WAS fun. At the end however, when John took out his wallet to pay, the driver's nimble fingers grabbed bills from the wallet and off he went leaving us with blank looks and mouths open. We think he got about $30. We learned.

Marjie is feeling better. She went back to work today; we are at the castle now waiting to hear how her day went. She is planning to take the kids to school with her on Wednesday. Another experience!

Guest Blogger #3, Megan Griggs, Age 14

2009-12-13T01:42:00.000-08:00

What was my first impression when I walked out of the airport and got into a mad man's taxi cab? "WOW" I was astounded and excited! The taxi ride was even better then Splash Mountain in Disneyland. It was a thriller experience. We drove on the wrong side of the road and almost ran over a dozen people on their motorbikes. We were trying to get to our hotel that is located about two minutes walk from Marjie's place.

This morning we got a magnificent tour of the market place where we bought huge amounts of food for paying almost nothing at all. As we walked though the alley ways of the market I felt like I was a member of the Cullen family in the series of Twilight. Every eye seemed to be fixed on us as we strolled along trying to mind our own buisness.... Awkward!

Grandma, Grandpa and I all tried some really good chicken noodle soup for breakfast this morning. They gave us a huge bowl with lots of noodles, chicken and all that jazz but then they gave us chop-sticks... "Great! This ought to be fun!" I said to myself. I attempted to use the utensils that were given to me only to hear everybody around the tiny little stand laughing. I had no idea how to use them! At home all that I would do is spear the meat or whatever we were eating with the chop-stick and it seemed to work pretty well, but my plan didn't succeed with noodles, trust me it doesn't work.

I also got to go to the Bum Bum, it is amazing! Some of the stuff that they did to my face kinda tickled, but it was definitely refreshing. Now my toes have been painted pink, my hair is straightened, and my face has been lushusly moisterized, what a treat! To sum up what I have seen so far, Vietnam is unique, delicious, and hot.

Guest Blogger #2, Devon Griggs, Age 16

2009-12-13T00:52:00.000-08:00

Our first Ho Chi Minh City experience involved a taxi ride. Now I've never been to New York, but I can imagine that a HCMC taxi ride is a step up from from an NYC taxi ride. Passing on the right with oncoming traffic is something I'd do in a videogame without a care, but in real life it is quite thrilling.

We made it to the hotel at about midnight or so, HCMC time. I counted one Christmas tree and eleven motorikes sitting in the lobby, and little open floor space. There are motorbikes everywhere! On the streets, in the alleys, in the lobbies, in the family rooms; one must be above the ground level to be away from them. Which reminds me, most buildings here are four plus stories tall, with twleve foot wide alleys in between. The markets are in the alleys, making the walkways even narrower, and what's more, the streets and alleys are teeming with people!

I feel tall here. There are an estimated six million people or so in this city, which is really a lot of people. I'm fairly sure that all of King County back at home doesn't even have two million people, for some comparison. Anyway, Pike Place Market in Seattle is high class compared to the alley market here, and Seattle is just a toddler of a city on the world scale, I have now learned. HCMC, however, is not quite entirely unlike home. Life has been good here so far, the sky is blue, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the time here in Nam.

Guest Blogger, Nolan Griggs, Age 12

2009-12-13T00:16:00.000-08:00

I just had the best yogurt in the world. My first thinking of Vietnam was...''so hot, so muggy, so humid.'' Every thing is so cheap. But not cheap in a bad way at all. SWEET SOUR SALTY SPICY CRUNCHY is quite right. It is 1 dollar to 18000 dong. For a coffee it is 30 cents. For a bowl of pho it is 60 cents. SO CHEAP!!!!!! the food is not normal but is still vvvery tasty.

Within the 2 Meter Thick Walls of the Citadel

2009-12-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

*This post was written just hours before I got really sick with Dengue Fever and had to spend the week in the hospital. My parents arrived and have been impressively independent - they have already been treated to lunch at T and T's house and have been out in the hood for two days straight. I don't think they even need me...

I'm writing about Hue backwards...today I've posted pictures of the citadel, which we saw when we first arrived. The view from the train between Danang and Hue was breathtaking, just as we had heard it would be (if only the windows of our sleeper train didn't have an inch of dirt on them!). But the ride along the coast and through the foggy hills was a highlight for both of us.

We arrived in Hue at 4:00 and went straight to the citadel. The air inside the 2m thick walls was so pleasant and breezy and so absent of motorbikes, it felt like heaven. This place, however, is the setting for where "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places" - the name of the famous book that was made into a movie by Oliver Stone. I am going to quote the Lonely Planet's descrption of what took place here because I am too lazy to summarize it myself...

"Hue was the sight of the bloodiest battles of the 1968 Tet Offensive and was the only city to be held by the Communists for more than a few days. While the American command was concentrating its energies on Khe Sanh, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops skirted the American stronghold and walked right into Hue. Immediately on taking the city, political cadres implemented detailed plans to remove Hue's "uncooperative elements." Thousands of people were rounded up in house to house searches, conducted according to lists of names meticulously prepared months before.

During the 3 and 1/2 weeks that Hue remained under Northern control, over 2500 people - including wealthy merchants, government workers, monks, priests and intellectuals - were shot, clubbed to death or buried alive. Shallow mass graves were discovered at various spots around the city over the following years.

When the South Vietnamese army units proved unable to dislodge the occupying North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, General Westmoreland ordered US troops to recapture the city. Over the next few weeks, whole neighborhoods were leveled by VC rockets or US bombs.

Over the next month, most of the area inside the Citadel was battered by the South Vietnamese air force, US artillery and brutal house to house fighting. Approximately 10,000 people died in Hue, including thousands of VC troops, 400 South Vietnamese soldiers and 150 US Marines, but most of those killed were civilians."

So the peace Jessica and I felt there upon our arrival somehow didn't flow with the history of what we were reading. How is it possible that this place saw so much pain? The grounds were so well-kept and absent of any of the city's past. I guess that's what time is supposed to do, isn't it?

Thank You Emporer Duc

2009-12-03T05:28:00.000-08:00

Emporer Tu Duc (1848-83) expected 50 dishes to be prepared by 50 cooks and to be served by 50 servants at every meal. If I had a lot of money, I think I would spend it that way, too. Anyway, ETDuc is to thank for the variety of food in Hue. Although we did not try an elaborate imperial dinner, we had many good tastes there.

The famous soup in Hue is the one pictured here: Bun Bo Hue. Again, my internet research led me to the restaurant known for this local soup...with more spaghetti-like noodles than in pho, and the balls of meat are tasty and a little spicy. Other than that, I was honestly a little disappointed in it. I am so spoiled by the soups in my market...this soup is great, but it's not my market soup, and I definitely could only handle eating one bowl, prepared by three women and served by one moody man. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.

My favorite tasting experience occurred in the public market right before it closed the night after our motorbike trip. As we passed this woman, she beckoned us over with the catch phrase "no meat!" Jessica and I both agree that walking through markets with a lot of raw meat makes you want anything but meat. So we sat down and she served us a smorgasborg of "vehicles for glutinous rice." (Jessica's catch phrase).

My favorite glutinous vehicle was the one up front in the picture - believe it or not, the green filling is pesto. I could have eaten 50 of them, both prepared and served by this one friendly-yet-overcharging woman. The dish behind it was good, too - crunchy little tofu squares were topped with glutinous rice and shrimp powder. She kept placing plates in front of us, which was a very effective strategy. As usual, I should have asked "how much?" because I'm quite sure she charged us double. I guess that 60 cents per dish instead of 30 isn't that bad, but...like I said, you lose perspective when you live as cheaply as we do here in Vietnam. And when you are spoiled and live steps away from a market where people don't cheat you...

Another night we ate in a restaurant that served traditional Hue food, and it wasn't until later that we discovered that the entire family who served us was deaf; we read it in the guide book later and then remembered that they used a lot of gestures when we ordered. There we had three regional specialties:

1) Banh Khoai - a pancake with shrimp, meat and egg that you wrap up in lettuce, figs and green bananas and dip in peanut sauce(pictured underneat the top dish here).

2) Banh Cuon - rice steamed rolls filled with Pho beef and lettuce - dipped in nuoc cham sauce (fish sauce), and

3) Banh Beo - pictured on top here - shrimp and meat sauce over glutinous rice.

#1 won the prize for me. I could have eaten ten of them, prepared and served by five members of a deaf family.

Honestly, though, the vote for best overall food may have to go to a Japanese restaurant called "A Japanese Restaurant." This place is run by a Japanese man who has made it his mission to educate Vietnamese street children. 52 kids have been put through school because of his efforts, and this restaurant is run to help a percentage of them learn the hospitality business - a kind of Hue-style FareStart. Every taste was extremely delicious, and was prepared by someone who was given a break. Just like at FareStart, you feel grateful for the opportunity to eat for good karma.

Last but not least, here is Jessica with our two local Huda beers. Not bad, out of the choices available for Vietnamese beer. But it doesn't win any prizes, and I was so tired, I could hardly even drink this one huge Huda made by a local brewery and served by one long-haired Vietnamese bar owner.

Cemetery Fantasy Land

2009-12-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Of course I have been hearing how great Hue is for a year now - this former imperial city and its citadel, the royal tombs surrounding it, and (of course), its reputation for food. "The Food Center of Vietnam"...are words that have drawn me, yes.
I will talk about some of those things - because we loved Hue (I may end up calling it my favorite city in Vietnam) - but not today.

Today I am talking about this quirky little side trip that Jessica and I took during our day-long motorbike ride. I did some research on TravelFish and found a reputable guide named Mr. Trung who works with the You and Me Restaurant in Hue. When we met him, we felt like this man dressed in trousers and a sweater was going to be our Vietnamese father for the day. Jessica, who was his passenger (I followed behind) found out quickly that he had been born in Hue and was in the thick of the fighting in '68 (central Vietnam is where most of the hard fighting was...the Tet Offensive took place in Hue), so he went to Danang for a while to escape all of it before returning years later.

Something I did not know about Jessica before her visit is that she is a Seeker of Cemeteries. She kept asking me about them but I provided very little information to satisfy her curiosity. Thankfully, she was asking Mr. Trung about them, too, so that might have been the reason for our side trip.

Anyway, after riding outside of town for almost an hour through boat and water buffalo scenes that Jessica referred to as "a series of postcards," we came upon the most peculiar town. We drove past a row of very high-end houses and down a long dirt road when suddenly, we seemed to have arrived in "Cemetery Fantasy Land." Ornate towering pagodas stretched for miles and miles on each side of the road. The scene immediately reminded me of Bryce Canyon, where the hoodoos give you that same sense that you are looking at valleys filled with castles.

Mr. Trung explained that this village was extremely poor during the war - poor and very hungry. Many locals escaped on boats after Saigon fell, and - apparently - became quite successful where they landed. With their newfound wealth, they sent money back to bury their ancestors and relatives in style. And you should see the style - these pictures cannot capture the magnitude of the scenes. One side of the road is where the Buddhists are buried, and the other side is for the Christians. What a juxtaposition to see Mary or Christ standing with arms wide open at the top of an ornate pagoda~

Well, the Lover of Cemeteries and I could not get enough of our grave exploration. This town is not mentioned in any of the fourteen or so guidebooks that have accumulated at the castle over the past year. Mr. Trung says there is no other cemetery like it in Vietnam, and I believe him; I sure haven't seen any like it. I just wonder why it is not on the tourist track, and I wonder why some of the country's poor don't just take up residence out here in these beautiful structures...

After interacting a bit with the water buffalos who were hanging out at the site, we got back on our bikes and drove out to the beach where we drank out of coconuts and ate some fish under a little private tent. I wish I could tell you that the meal was perfect, because the setting sure was (if you ignored the random piles of garbage that are ubiquitous on all Vietnamese beaches).

Stay tuned for more traditional reports on Hue~

How to Kill a Cockroach

2009-12-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

The best way to kill a cockroach:

1) Get him running across an open space while you are holding a large, heavy book (I have found literature collections to be great for this)
2) Hold the book right above his running path and then DROP it . This will smash him well.
3) After a few days - when you are out of large, heavy literature books to drop - pick up the books (which may or may not have been sitting there for a while) and scrape the corpses from the bottom into the toilet.
4) Flush.

Cockroaches, ants... you stop sweating this kind of thing when you live in a place like this; you just learn to kill kill kill. And you get really good at it and share your killing strategies with others. You stop sweating it until you realize you are killing way too many of them on a regular basis and you think that they are coming from inside the box that is lodged in the corner of your Rapunzel Room bathroom ceiling.

Then you tell your landlord, who is usually pretty responsive. He may tell you to go and buy a can of Raid, but don't let him pull that one on you like I did. I let him pull that one on me for a week, until I could see multiple antennae coming out of the box and hear them like a carnival at night and until Katherine found one on her bed and until I came home to five of them on my bathroom floor. Then I sent him a text late at night that said, "We can't live like this anymore. Please get a professional exterminator here tomorrow."

He did get one, and we came home to many, many cockroach corpses. I guess we will be coming home to them for a while now. Big ones, little itty baby ones... the cockroaches are dying. When I asked how many were in the nest in the box in my bathroom, he smiled, shook his head and said, "Many."

That is the best way to kill a cockroach.

From Hue to Hot Pot in One Day

2009-11-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

All good news to report regarding our Thanksgiving Hue trip (and Jessica's beach trip - thanks for sending the good beach vibes her way), but all of that goodness will have to be reported "later."

Jessica and I got up early this morning for the beautiful bus ride from Hue to Danang and flew back in time to celebrate Thuy's birthday at the Weasel BBQ Place. (I'm really glad that Jessica got to see weasel being grilled on her second to last night in Vietnam.) Here she is posing with the best hot pot I have had yet:

We had a great dinner - T and T, Jessica, Tarn, Katherine and I - but we are all extremely tired. Take a look at Katherine, who has the most right to be tired - she was the first woman to finish a race to the top of the Black Virgin Mountain near Tay Ninh on Saturday (Tay Ninh is where my Uncle Rex was stationed in '68 and he still talks about that mountain). I'm very proud of my castlemate! And we are also tired from fighting cockroaches in the castle, which is something I will post about at another date, too.

I hope my family still wants to come after reading that last sentence...

Good News and Bad News

2009-11-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

The good news is that we had a superior teacher day buffet dinner at The Majestic Hotel - the oldest hotel in Saigon. Jessica also experienced a White Lotus spa day, is getting quite proficient at Bum Bum hair washes, ate rice cakes and did the Ben Thanh market - all of this before she decided to get sick, and this just a few hours after she took a bad spill right on her tail bone and scraped up her arm in the backpacker district (this is the bad news). After the spill she said, "I think I will go back and lay down in my balcony room where it's safe."

And later, after she got sick in her safe balcony room, she said, "It's kind of interesting to get to know how the medical system works in Vietnam."

Something else she said (that really bothered me) was, "Maybe it was the rice cakes that made me sick."

I didn't say this to her, but I will say it to you: "Impossible!"

So, ever the optimist, Jessica - despite many mishaps and a sickness that lasted more than 24 hours - has maintained a good attitude. Right now she is on the bus to Mui Ne to rack up some beach time while I work. She is on the bus with the most nasty of nasty Saigon kisses, an arm scrape, and a mere, "I'm feeling well enough to go on a five-hour bus ride" perspective.

While Jessica did her sick thing on Sunday morning, I went shopping with Thanh for ingredients to cook Indian chicken curry. Every single time I go to the market, I get some kind of surprise; on this morning, I learned that Indian spices are sold together in little packets at a few of the vegetable stands. One spice packet includes cumin, curry powder and bay leaves, another includes a mixture of curry oils.

In this picture, Thanh is mixing up chunks of chicken (hacked with a cleaver just minutes after the poor chicken was killed) with the oils and spices. While the chicken browned in oil, she poured boiling water over the shaved coconut meat and then squeezed it out to make fresh coconut milk. The curry was fantastic. Everything these girls make is fantastic.

The highlight for Jessica, though, was the entertainment that Monkey Boy provided. He is getting awfully cute and warm in his old (5 years old) age. While we cooked, she, Tu and he played computer games on the Disney Website. (Her highlight was not going to Family Medical to drink terrible electrolite formula to replace all of the nutrients she lost the night before.)

Everyone, please send Jessica the most positive of beach vibes. She could use them!

Alley Rice Cakes - 5th Visitor to Try Them...

2009-11-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

Within a month, that number will more than double!

It kind of looks like a creepy hand is about to grab Jessica from the ledge behind her, but she ate her cakes unencumbered. We are supposed to cook with just Thanh tomorrow, and it looks like we are going to make Indian chicken curry, of all things...

For a Guy Hate Writing Like Me

2009-11-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

November 20, Teacher's Day in Vietnam. It's such a great day.

Cards, flowers, gifts, cakes...kids saying "Happy teacher day!" all day long - and the school is hosting a teacher dinner tonight at a cool old hotel by the Saigon River. Jessica gets to come.

Here is what is written in my two favorite cards:

"Happy teacher's day, Ms. Marjorie!" You're a fun teacher. First thing when I stepped into Language Arts class, I thought it will be boring but nah, your class was fun, for a guy hate writing like me." - Long

and this one, from Luan:

"When I study Language Art, I see my grammar is better. Thank you to teach and help my gramma better."

Does anyone know of another country that has Teacher Day? Or perhaps Doctor Day? Lawyer Day?

Jessica's Epic Day

2009-11-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Guest blog from Jessica: Hello Marjie's faithful readers. I am Marjie's friend/former student who is visiting for the next two weeks. I arrived Tuesday night, and this is the story of my day yesterday.

I met Marjie downstairs at 6:45 after a restful sleep in the balcony room. I'm sure Marjie has mentioned this before, but there is open grating high up above the front door of the Castle and so it sounds like everything that is happening in the alley is happening in the house. In other words, when the neighborhood wakes up, you wake up. And they are all up very early. We walked down the alley into the market and Marjie pointed out her favorite vendors to me (or where they would be if they were there this morning, which some of them were not). We stopped by Thuy and Thanh's fabric stand to find material for the clothes I want to have made. They didn't have have what I needed so we moved on to the food. I ended up with two spring rolls, a bag of rice with beans and tapioca, a mangosteen (amazing little fruit that looks like wet garlic but tastes like candy) and some rice cakes (but not THE rice cakes). Oh, and coffee. Sweet, sweet Vietnamese coffee. We said hi to vendors and saw an escaped crab make its way down the alley.

Nam picked me up promptly at 9 outside the castle and we began our adventure. I had ridden on the back of a motorbike yesterday, so I knew the drill a little bit (like which side to dismount from - painful lesson), but as we pulled out into traffic I couldn't help but adapt a line from the movie "Almost Famous": "I'm riding fast through Saigon on the back of a motorbike, and we're all about to die." Nam was a very cautious driver -- especially after we saw a four-bike accident - including a woman holding a child - happen a few feet away from us.

Our first stop was Reunification Hall. In short, this was the White House of Southern Vietnam and was where Northern Vietnamese troops drive tanks through the gates on April 30, 1975 ending the war and reunifying Vietnam. The place is amazing. It was rebuilt from the French building that once stood in its place by a Vietnamese architect in 1960 and is basically frozen in time. Very mid-century modern. I only made it as far as the second floor though before getting asked to leave the tour group that I was apparently crashing. Marjie had mentioned that I should take a tour rather than just walk through on my own and as soon as I walked in, there was a little tour starting in English, so I figured that was where I was supposed to be. When we got upstairs to what was essentially their situation room (detailed maps on the walls and a row of different colored phones on a table) a man in the group turned to me and said that it was a private tour that they had paid for and that it was really rude of me to tag along. I asked if he was asking me to leave but I'm not sure what he answered, I had already turned away to go. Another man said that it was ok for me to stay, but I certainly didn't need to be in a group where I wasn't wanted.

So I left and told Nam to take me to the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the American War Crimes Museum. I'm not sure if it was the jet lag, the heat, or the gravity of the photographs, but by the time I made it to the two rooms filled with pictures of Agent Orange deformities I was past fighting back the tears. I randomly bought an American soldier's dog tag and a Vietnamese uniform patch from the little gift stand and left.

When I got back to Nam- the bossy driver who Marjie has told us so much about- his bossiness started to show. He pointed through the fence where you could see the front of the museum and told me to take a picture through there and then from a different angle. His art direction of my photography continued for the rest of our tour. The next stop was Cholon, which is Saigon's Chinatown. About a block away from the main market Nam's bike broke down, so we walked it around the corner to a bike shop and then he directed me to go to the market. He proceeded to direct me through the maze of knock-off handbags, shoes, hats, plastic things (chairs, containers, etc), spices, pickled things, meats . . . . finally to a beautiful courtyard with a dragon fountain. We lit insence and then headed back into the maze.

I tried to ask him if we should both sit down and eat but apparently he wasn't hungry because he led me over to a counter, pulled out a stool for me, told me where to put my bag and ordered lunch for me. Then he told me that either he was going to go have a drink and come back for me or go get his bike, I'm not sure, but I was able to communicate that I would wait there for him. I held my bag between my feet on the ground in front of me, but had the phone Marjie had bought for visitors on the counter in front of me. There are people who come around asking for money here who hold these little tickets. I'm not sure what they are, I like to think they are lottery tickets, but I'll have to ask Marjie. Regardless, an old woman came up to me with them while I was asking how much my lunch was. I felt really uncomfortable since I obviously had money out in my hand but was trying to be polite and tell her no thanks. She stayed right by my side through the transaction but disappeared suddenly before I turned back towards her. My phone disappeared with her. Luckily, I already had a plan to meet Marjie, I'm just hoping the phones are as cheap as everything else is here...I'll be filing that under "miscellaneous travel expenses."

After we left the market there were still two hours before I was supposed to meet Marjie at her school. From the way Nam exaggerated his hand making an around the clock motion (it was from then until 2:30) I got the feeling he was done with me. We looked back in my guidebook and decided to go to the general post office. After my 10 minutes looking at the giant poster of Ho Chi Mihn (keep in mind that Nam just sits outside wherever I am waiting for me to finish), I thought it best to just have him drop me off at Marjie's school so I could read or something until she was ready. I was also hoping to have a chance to visit the school nurse so that she could have a look t my "kiss" which I had been covering with a make-shift bandage of a tissue taped around the edges with bandaids that kept slipping off and falling out from under my pant leg.

The rest of the day was great. Marjie's school was air conditioned -- so much so that I was actually a little chilly by the time we left. I was able to use a computer in the lobby until Marjie came down and retrieved me and her whole class greeted me when I came in the classroom. Then we bought fabric and dropped off clothes to the seamstress and headed across town to the Continental Hotel for drink at the rooftop bar. Except they apparently don't have rooftop bar like I could have sworn I read in a guidebook. We went into their non-rooftop bar but it wasn't right. See, we were going there because that is where a lot of the Graham Greene novel The Quiet American takes place. This falls under the lesson that you should not try and recreate scenes from books or movies, as your own experience in the same places will never be the same.We instead went down the street to the Sheraton where they did have a top floor bar and a breathtaking view of this massive, sprawling, living city. Over a dinner of Banh Xeo, Marjie and Katherine told me about my many options for day spas that I should try out today and I think I will do just that . . .

Getting Kissed In Saigon

2009-11-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

It took me over a year to get kissed in Saigon, but it took Jessica only one day.

Unfortunately, I am talking about the most unromantic kiss imaginable...it's the burn you receive when you dismount a motorbike on the wrong side and sear your leg on the exhaust pipe. I got my first one after school a few weeks ago right above my ankle.. let me tell you - it is painful. Jessica noticed it when I picked her up at the airport.

"What is that?" were her exact first words to me (after "hi!").

"It's called a Saigon Kiss - you don't want one," I answered.

Well, the next day I received a text from her in the morning (I bought a "guest phone" for everyone about to visit) saying that she had already met Thuy and Thanh, had taken a xe om (mototaxi) and had already been kissed in Saigon.

She didn't think it was too bad. Then.

But look at it now... it's bad.

It is also referred to as The Saigon Souvenir. She is going to take home a big souvenir.

Impressed with her bravery and accomplishments for the first day? Me too. Well, I will let her tell you about Day #2 with Nam, but will "spoil" it by telling you that she met me at school in a very cheery mood despite the fact that she had witnessed a bad motorbike accident, gotten her phone stolen, had experienced a bike breakdown with Nam, and had been kicked off of a tour at the Reunification Hall.

Not bad, Jessica, for only 48 hours in Saigon...

Just Like Old Times

2009-11-16T23:46:00.001-08:00

It's 7:15 when I hear Franco yell up the stairs, "Marjie - there's someone here to see you!"

It's just like old times. I know it's Nam, here to non-communicate with me about Jessica's visit. I had hoped he would bring Minh by earlier so I could write an itinerary; however, that didn't happen. Of course, he is here now, right when I need to be gathering all of my stuff together and heading out the door.

I run down five flights of stairs to communicate with my ex-mother. "Hello, Nam!" I say.

"Mari, hi, see you again!" he says. Very sweet, this man.

"My friend?" he asks. Nam says "my friend" for everything concerning friends, whether it is his friend, his friend's friend, or my friend. To him, it is just one word.

I make the Vietnamese negative gesture and say, "Not today. She comes tonight." To which he responds with his own Vietnamese negative hand gesture and an "I don't know" - as in, I don't know what you are saying.

I spread my arms like wings and pretend I am an airplane. "Tonight," I say, then when I know he still doesn't get it, I just say, "Minh?"

"No Minh," he says. Then he points to his phone; he wants to exchange numbers again. Knowing Nam, he has probably lost five phones since we last communicated with phones in June. I sigh because I have left my phone charging upstairs (and I have been too lazy to memorize my number that I have had for over a year now) - all five flights up. I tell him to wait and sprint up to get it.

I bring it back down, find my number and hand the phone to him so he can enter my number into his phone. His freakishly long fingers still shake when he handles the phone; he is not used to it yet. He enters a number and tries to call. The "no number" recording sounds. He enters another number. Same thing. I gesture to him to let me try, but of course Nam can do it himself. He won't let me try.

Katherine comes in from her morning market run and I roll my eyes at her. This is taking so long, and I wanted to get out to the market...it's Vegetarian Day (Full Moon Day) - my spring roll lady sells sweet potato spring rolls only on this one day per month. Believe me, Katherine rolls her eyes right back at me. Remember, she is my physical extension when it comes to Nam irritation.

Finally, on the third try, Nam gets the number right. I save his number. Then he asks again, "My friend?"

"Not today."

"My friend, when?" he asks.

"Tonight. But you will drive her on Thursday." Of course he doesn't understand.

"Minh," I say. Get Minh to call me, I gesture. I will explain it to him.

This transaction takes fifteen minutes. I still have to climb the five flights again to get my gym bag and the pants I still must iron, plus trek to the outskirts of the market for the sake of sweet potatoes.

When Nam leaves, I look over at my bike and feel like kissing it.

Tart, Soft, Oily, Oregano-Y and Olive-y: They Didn't Like It

2009-11-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

I made dinner for Thuy and Thanh tonight. I made a Greek salad and babaganouj from the eggplants that are roasted in the market to go with it. I picked up some naan from an Indian restaurant and found feta cheese for the salad. I brought the Greek olives from home. It was delicious.

But... they don't like raw tomatoes. They both made a pile of the feta and olives in the middle of their plates. They spread the babaganouj on one piece of naan and didn't touch it again.

The only things they ate were the cucumbers and the naan.

Katherine tells me that I shouldn't worry about giving anymore; I should just focus on taking. They get so much pleasure from being my cooking instructors - that is enough, she says.

I think I will listen to her.

The Wall of Flight

2009-11-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

Jessica comes Tuesday night around midnight (all of my guests arrive at midnight...I need to train them better) and so my string of visitors is beginning. I think I am ready.

Here is the bedroom wall I told you about- I will refer to it as The Wall of Flight: on it are confirmation tickets for two people to Hue (Jessica and I are going to Central Vietnam over Thanksgiving to explore the food capital of the country), tickets for eight people to Hanoi for the Halong Bay cruise, etc, tickets for eight people to Danang to see Hoi An, tickets for eight people back to Ho Chi Minh City (my family's trip), tickets for two people to Jakarta (Sue is coming back in February and we are going to Java/Bali over Tet, and one ticket to Phuket, Thailand for the last weekend in January (Katherine found round trip tickets for $50, so we are giving Thailand another try...)

I took Katherine to my new favorite Haianese Chicken place - Singaporean food - last night. Over steamed chicken, barbecued pork and black peppercorn beef, our conversation turned in a very familiar direction: our lives are good here. The above-mentioned plans, the food that is so amazing and cheap, the personal hour and a half long home massage I have on the calendar for Monday night, the endless cheap movies and HBO series to watch on the roof, the fruit juices made for less than sixty cents, having clothes made, waking up to a market full of freshness every single morning, good friends to cook with, a friendly neighborhood, hair washes, pedicures, manicures, lying by the pool after school and on the weekends...

Yeah, we have been mourning the idea of leaving this place ever since we got here. We know we will never find another Saigon. That's what we talked about over our feast last night, the feast that ended up costing us about $5 total. I was so enamoured by it, I forgot to take a picture of the food. It was both beautiful and delicious.

I saw Nam today - the first time since he spied on me at school. I hardly ever pass him on the street anymore because a new road opened up for my journey to school and it takes me in the opposite direction. But I found Minh this morning to request Nam as Jessica's driver, and went to confirm it with Nam. It was good to see him; he had just gotten a hair cut and was wearing his classic blue driving shirt. We shook hands and communicated in our normal, inefficient manner. He is happy to have a purpose coming, so Jessica, hope you are ready.

Hope you are ready for hair washes and markets and great cheap food and clothes making and massages~

All ________ People Look Alike (choose a color)

2009-11-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention the best part of a story from a few weeks ago...

The Sunday I was showing T and T pictures of my family - when I got to the picture of my parents - Thanh literally gasped.

"They look just like Katherine's parents!" Then she ran over to Thuy to show her.

"Just like Katherine's!" Thanh repeated to her as she showed her The Replicas.

This statement was seconded by Thuy. "Exactly!"

Both T and T now have my family memorized; good thing Katherine's parents don't return until after my parents are gone... how would they tell them apart?

It's Not Even Thanksgiving!

2009-11-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

Have any of you muttered the words "It's not even Thanksgiving!" yet- disgusted over the shameless grasp of Christmas consumerism that seizes our society at the earliest possible moment? We have to say these words every year, right?

Yeah, I've said them already, too. This morning, I see a man walking through our old-world market selling Christmas wrapping paper.

"It's not even Thanksgiving yet!" is my automatic American thought-response. Then I remember where I am: the seller is in bare feet and tattered clothing; he's not exploiting anything, he's just trying to feed himself.

I get back to the castle to report this to K and she says, "I know! Did you see the Dancing Santa at T and T's stand yesterday?"

No, I didn't. And I didn't see it this morning, either. So I run back to the stand to get a picture and only Thanh is there - no Thuy nor Santa.

"Where is your Santa?" I ask.

She doesn't understand.

"You know, Santa Claus? Ho ho ho?"

Completely blank.

"Merry Christmas?" I do a little dance to show her I am speaking of the doll.

"Oh! The Christmas Man?"

"Yes!"

She hops off of the table and disappears inside to retrieve him.

"He will bring us good business and welcome customers!" she tells me, producing the doll. She turns him on and he begins his little dance. Seems that Santa - to her -is more like one of their Business Buddhas, meant to bring luck and money to their year. I don't have the heart to tell her that what Dancing Santa actually inspires in people is a desire to grab an axe and chop him up into little tiny pieces.

"Where did you get him?"

"Monkey Boy (our nickname for her nephew)," she says. And then, "What you call him?"

"Santa Claus."

Angie, Mom, Dad...I think I know what you need to bring: your Christmas movies. "The Grinch," "Rudolf," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." We need to educate these girls ~

Speaking of my family, I have everyone's itinerary hanging on my wall: calendars, plane ticket confirmations...and a list of everything I want them to eat. I am beginning to enter my Food Panic Mode. The voices in my head often fight over food priorities when it comes to what I want other people to experience, and I don't really like this personality trait I have.

I'm sure, though, that the clam woman around the corner from the castle is a top priority. These two plates of clams are so delicious - one plate is long-necked clams and morning glory stir fried in tamarind sauce and topped with peanuts, and the other plate is clams steamed with lemon grass and beer.

Both plates come to $1.80. Yep, top of the list~

p.s. I thought it was pretty cool that the first Vietnamese member of Congress, Anh Cao, was also the only Republican representative to vote in favor of the health care bill. He was born in Vietnam and "fled with two siblings after the fall of Saigon in 1975 to live with an uncle in Indiana," according to the New York Times.

Salsa and a Flat Tire

2009-11-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

When I got up early this morning to buy 15 tomatoes, five onions and a few peppers at the market, dice them up and put them into a huge container and balance it on my motorbike for the ride to school, how could I have had any idea that these tomatoes, onions and peppers and I would spend an hour and a half sitting against a wall by the side of the road on one of the hottest mornings in Saigon so far this fall?

I’ll begin the story of my morning's saga by explaining about the vegetables:

At most international schools, teachers are required to run some kind of after-school club. Last year I helped with Drama Club, and this year I am in charge of Cross-Cultural Club. We – fifteen of us – decided to focus on a certain country for three or four weeks; our goal is to learn about food, music, art, holidays, etc. Our first country of focus has been Mexico (I influenced this a bit). We got a late start on clubs this year, so our first meeting was just a few weeks ago. We learned about Day of the Dead (Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, the days the dead come back to visit) and did a skeleton art project; skeletons were supposed to be doing something the kids love to do – the whole “death as a part of life” idea. That's why mine is eating two tacos:

The kids were really excited to make quesadillas and fresh salsa today, so that’s why I had everything chopped up and ready to be mixed, cilantro’d, limed and salted by them. I was very excited for this, because I love giving cooking demonstrations. I really wanted one of those adjustable mirrors that the real cooks use, but had to settle for a plain old table. I had set it all up and talked to the sweet cooks in the lunchroom, asking for permission and for the location of pans, cutting boards, etc.

So I was on the road this morning, all loaded up, when I felt my tire go flat. No surprise... flat tires are rather common in this City of Motorbikes. But, for some reason, I panicked, and I forgot about all of the tire fixers at most every corner. I thought that, just maybe, I could make it to work and then deal with it.

But then I felt the tube blow out, too, and I was forced to the side of the road. I got a hold of a friend who reminded me about the tire fixers on every corner. I saw a guard sitting inside the pumping station where I had stopped and pantomimed my dilemma. He gestured over just around the wall, and, sure enough, there was a tire – fixer stand. The tire fixer, though, was nowhere in sight. The guard walked over to the cart and lifted the tarp covering it. A man emerged - from what I'm guessing was a twenty- year-long deep sleep.

Not a Sleeping Beauty sleep, though - he looked at me and smiled with his three remaining teeth and seemed happy to go right to work on my bike. “Great,” I thought, “Better than Jiffy Lube! I will be out of here in no time!”

I notified the school at eight that I was late, but it wasn’t a big deal because I have first period prep. So I leaned against the wall to wait. When the guard brought me a plastic chair, I felt comfortable enough to pull out my book and read, sweat already pouring off of me.

After fifteen minutes, I looked up; my tire fixer was crossing the busy street. I looked over at the guard and he informed me that he needed to buy a part. Fine. I went back to my book. Tire Fixer came back and worked some more. I continued reading. And sweating.

After fifteen more minutes, I looked over to the station; he was crossing the street again! The guard looked at me and made the Vietnamese negative hand gesture, indicating, “This guy isn’t really so good.”

I was beginning to wonder when he had last fixed a tire. 1982? He didn't have any parts.

After another twenty minutes went by I looked up and my heart literally stopped: my bike was gone, and so was the guy. I looked desperately over at the guard. “Have I given my bike to a con-man?” was the look I gave him- because motorbike theft is rampant here.

But the kind guard assured me it was OK, that he just had to take the bike somewhere. Again, I got the "he is a crazy tire fixer with no parts" hand gesture. OK. I waited ten more minutes, and during that ten minutes I called my principal again and told him the latest. He didn’t like the sound of my bike “going away” and told me he was going to send someone who spoke Vietnamese over to help. This entire process should have taken about fifteen minutes.

But fifteen more minutes went by before my bike returned. Tire Fixer was rolling it right by me, dressed in his greased – covered grey jumpsuit. Taking a closer look, I could see his hands; I couldn't tell where the fingers ended and the fingernails began – they were completely black.

He took it back to his station and continued working on it. Meanwhile, enter a passing crazy woman who was obsessed with my collection of tomatoes, onions and peppers. She took them out of my bag and spoke to me in non-stop Vietnamese, like I understood her (just like Nam's family). Finally, I took my bag from her and walked away and pretended to receive a phone call. What a hot, strange morning this was.

Finally, Tire Fixer rolled the bike over and told me it was fixed and quoted me the price I was expecting: about four dollars for a new tube and 90 minutes of "labor" - or "part-finding." I waited for Nate to get there and we learned that my tire fixer didn’t have any air, either. He had no parts nor air. So he had to wheel my bike to a place that had it – a place that, I am thinking, was just a block or so away. That place most likely had parts and tools, too, and a tire fixer that had been awake for at least some portion of the last decade to fix tires.

He sure was smiley, though.

Anyway, my salsa ingredients and I finally made it to school by the end of second period - my hair ruined for the day from sweat.

The after-school quesadilla making was a success - despite the stress that the vegetables had to endure. The kids loved the quesadillas and wanted to go home and make them for their families. My favorite part: the kitchen staff was so curious to watch us mix the salsa, fry the tortillas and fill them with shredded cheese (you don’t see cheese much here) and were so gracious to assist in any way they could, so I topped three quesadilla triangles with salsa and took them to the kitchen. The cooks were shy at first, but then one took a piece and said, “Thank you, Teacher!” The others followed, and their eyes lit up at their first taste of salsa.

Every once in while, you get that feeling that you’ve just done something very good. When those eyes lit up at tasting salsa, I definitely had that feeling.

And giving that tire fixer a job- The Most Unprepared Tire Fixer in Saigon. That made me feel really good, too.

Classroom Management

2009-11-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

Last year, one of Katherine's first graders, Giami, came in to teach her one Vietnamese word per day. It was nice. She was cute. Giami would teach the word, then leave.

Words like "mother," "father" and "teacher."

This year Katherine has a teaching partner, Ron, who shares her office. Giami still comes in at lunch to teach the one word per day, but Katherine says that as a teacher weighing the heavy load of TWO students, she is beginning to really take things seriously. She has come up with systems - like her tally system: she will say a word like "dog" and they must repeat "dog" correctly ten times before she will pass them on that word.

She has implemented techniques to handle inattention, too. Whenever they get distracted by anything, such as students or phone calls, she uses her Hang Man Strategy: when they misbehave, a limb goes up on their respective nooses (they each have their own).

Lately, she has become quite weary over her teaching load, saying things like, "I'm having a bad day," and "You're not listening," and "I'm gonna quit."

Katherine thinks that this weariness has forced her into using more "Non-Western Teaching Techniques." The other day, after a lunchtime filled with other-student distractions, Ron and Katherine looked up to see the following messages on the board: (the first one says " You are better than Ms. Katherine - just a little bit!)

Mungo, I couldn't help but think of how fast you would have been hung in Mr. Smith's class. That strategy would have saved you from having to do those fake book reports, right?

Seems that Giami, as a seven-year-old teacher with experience, will be able to weigh the pros and cons of positive vs. negative reinforcement a lot sooner than most of us~

Sunday Night Spring Rolls

2009-11-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here are the beautiful shrimp in their cooked (boiled) form, and below is Thuy ready to eat a head. She ends up eating every one of the heads and does not pressure me at all. She doesn't even eat any bodies, she is just so happy with the heads.

Aren't the legs of the Daddy Shrimp great?

We roll these guys up into fresh spring rolls tonight - along with rice noodles, lettuce/basil, star fruit, crispy onions and my favorite fish paste mixture with lime, chili, sugar, pineapple and water. Pictured below is a pre-rolled spring roll.

Because my family will be here in about five weeks, tonight I give T and T pictures of everyone so that they can learn names. Thanh practices during Thuy's dinner preparation...she calls my brother-in-law Lewis "Lewey" and notes the similarity between "Brian" and "Brain." What a strange name, so close to "Brain." (She's memorizing you, too, Brian and Kristi, just in case you come...). She likes it that Megan's name is so close to mine ("Maggie").

Dinner is, of course, so tasty again that I ask them if they will move in and cook for my family in December. "You can sleep in the balcony room and make us breakfast, lunch and dinner," I tell them.

Without hesitation, Thuy replies, "One hundred dollars a day."

I'm afraid that they are finally understanding what they are worth~

Successful Losers

2009-10-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

My homeroom did not win the Halloween contest this year. All that really matters, though, is that the rubber snake they rigged above the door did in fact drop onto the judges' heads when they entered.

For the rest of the period, I heard, "Did you see that? That was so funny!"

Definition of "success."

Like I said, that's all that matters. I am able to put my ego aside, I think. (Brian, I am working on making the black streamers that say "losers!" now.)

The class that won - which includes many members of my great 6C class from last year (remember Alex and the "I hear that people from Seattle..." entries?)- created a "Horror Hospital." They all wore white coats and had bloody babies being operated on one table and Lucky being operated on at another (with a knife). It was pretty cool.

And another cool thing is that I bought this blonde wig at the Ben Thanh Market and I love it; I am going to buy two more before leaving Saigon (the women running the stand really liked the dark brown bob, but when I told them it was for Halloween, they insisted on this one). It cost $12, and my black leather cowboy hat cost $3. (I was much happier about it than the picture suggests.)

The kids thought it was fantastic. They kept asking me if it was my real hair and I wasn't quite sure how to answer them. They are so...funny.

On to another topic, aren't these the most beautiful shrimp you have ever seen? Thuy and Thanh are coming over to cook these guys tonight, and Thuy has informed me that I must eat their heads. I told her I didn't think I could eat their heads and she just laughed a laugh that said, "You are going to eat their heads."

I have not really enjoyed my day since that laugh. I will let you know how the shrimp head eating goes.

Thriller Reputation at Stake

2009-10-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

All homeroom classes are supposed to decorate classrooms for Halloween tomorrow. I'm really dreading it. For weeks now, last year's members of 6E -of the epic Thriller Dance Halloween win- have been seeking me out to ask, "Ms. Marjorie, you're not going to teach this year's class the Thriller Dance, are you?"

Of course, I get very serious and answer them, "The Thriller Dance was OURS. I will not share it with ANYONE!"

Usually I get a response like "Yeah! It's OURS! Thank you Ms. Marjorie. You're so cool!" (here's the story:

http://marjiebowker.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html)

Well, my homeroom this year has only seven students - six girls and one boy. They heard that my sixth grade class won last year so they are putting pressure on me; they have high expectations that the sixth graders can pull it off again for another shocking win.

I've given it my best shot, but for one week, all they want to talk about is what they can rig up above the door entry to fall on the judges when they enter the room. Homeroom conversations have gone something like this:

Me: OK, listen up everyone. The thing that impressed the judges last year was that we had something different than everyone else. What can we do that is different?

Nhung: We should put something up above the door so that when the judges open it, something falls on their heads!

Whole class: Yeah!

Me: Well, OK, we can do that, but that is just one thing. I was thinking that we could read the Halloween stories that we are writing out loud; that would be really cool and different.

Jessica: Maybe we could put a bunch of fake spiders in a box and that could drop on the judges' heads!

Whole class: Yeah!

Me: OK, well, I guess that would be good. But I was thinking that to set the mood for the stories, we could find a Halloween track of scary noises to add a spooky background.

Maria: Or we could put a bunch of black streamers in with the fake spiders and all of that could fall on the judges' heads when they come in!

Whole class: Yeah!

Me: That would be funny. And we can dress up to read our stories and have special lighting on us so that the room looks really creepy. We could cover the windows with black material and put white blinking lights behind the material.

Truong: Maybe we could put red paint above the door, so when the judges open it, blood will fall on them!

Whole class: Yeah! That is so cool!

Me: Well, I'm not sure about the red paint, but...

You get the picture.
I'm just not convinced that I will be able to uphold my reputation this year.

Traveler's Tales that Make You Want to Stay Home, Part Two

2009-10-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday night in Dalat and six of us are wandering around looking for something to do - Dalat is not a real happening place at night. Karaoke was the plan, but the cool-looking Karaoke place is "fully booked." Down around the corner and back up a hill, we see another sign for "Karaoke." It's a hotel/Karaoke place, and this tells us something right from the start. It tells us that Karaoke is definitely a side business, that their other business is~ well, it's something else. Six small voices whisper to six foreigners that this might not be the best place, but twelve ears choose not hear the whispering.

At $5 per hour, it's a good deal. So we take a Karaoke room.

Right away, the painted hostesses bring us four trays of goodies: one tray of pomelo, one tray of grapes, one tray of apples and one tray of dried squid in packages - none of it requested. Again, six small voices tell six foreigners "Don't eat the fruit." But, again, twelve ears do not listen to the voices. At one point, K asks, "Is this free?" But the woman pretends she doesn't understand.

We pick at the fruit. On the up side, the list of songs is fantastic and the microphones and speakers are better than we've ever had in Saigon. We sing, drink beer, and eat a few pieces of the fruit. But the fruit is not so good, so we leave ninety percent of it on the plate.

After two hours, the painted hostesses bring us the bill. It is not $10 plus beer, as it should have been. It is $41. Each tray of fruit is listed as $6. Our pomelo guy in the market peels the most delicious pomelo for us and charges us 4,000 VND - about 24 cents. All three trays of fruit, together, possiby cost them under a dollar to buy, but the bill claims something very different. The woman comes back and we begin to fight with her. We didn't even eat this fruit, we tell her, and she points to about six grape seeds. We tell her how bad the pomelo is...we tried one piece, but it was inedible. She argues and argues, but then finally tells us she doesn't speak English. She's done, and she leaves the room. We do get her to remove the package of squid from the bill, and the wet towelettes - both unopened. Finally, we decide to pay $30 and just be done with it. In hindsight, we should have just paid for the two hours and the beer, but we didn't listen to those six voices, either.

You lose perspective, living in a country where everything is so cheap. Five dollars each is not a lot of money, but it seems like a fortune when you are paying it out to dishonest people who are most likely laughing at your stupidity as you walk out the door. Stupidity that shouldn't be stupidity. We all know better by now.

One more Tale for you: the last hour, I ask K if she wants to see the skinned dogs being sold in the market. She looks guilty but her answer is "yes." I had seen the skinned dogs the day before while with another friend and had suppressed a gag reflex many times (they were right next to caged ducks sitting one right on top of the other, and next to that the seafood section of the market - not lovely smells. ) We have both been here for over a year, and this is the first dog-for-eating either of us has witnessed. I'm acting pretty brave, leading K over to the dog section. But suddenly, I just can't do it again. I'm feeling really, really sick. I tell K I can't go back and she says she can't stomach it, either. We both get out of that market as fast as we can, and when we are out we are thinking the exact same thing: our market is so cool and so clean and doesn't smell like death.

Hotel karaoke, anyone? An eight hour bus ride, with comedy? Dog for dinner?

Traveler's Tales that Make You Want to Stay Home, Part One

2009-10-26T05:35:00.001-07:00

Trip to Dalat #2 happened this past weekend. If you want to hear how great Dalat is, see the Dalat blog from one year ago and read about what a beautiful mountain town it is, how the air is fresh and the hills are beautiful and how the lake is surrounded by immaculately kept gardens and how you can mountain bike or rappel down waterfalls.

http://marjiebowker.blogspot.com/2008/11/36-hours-in-dalat.html

In this post, you are not going to hear about the good stuff (there was lots). You are going to hear about the down side of traveling - the kind that wears you out and makes you promise yourself you will stop doing this crazy thing sometime very soon.

The bus ride from Saigon to Dalat is supposed to take about six hours. Part of the road is washed out, though, (six of us leave after work on Friday, at 5:15), so - instead of six hours, the trip takes over eight hours.

When we go to book the bus back to Saigon on Sunday, we are told that the only bus available will be leaving at 5 - all of the earlier ones are booked - this according to our hotel guy, Rot. Not wanting to get back at 2 am the night before a work Monday, we check into flying. Flights are booked, too. Feeling despair, we reluctantly decide to book the 5:00 bus back to Saigon.

But at the last minute - after witnessing our agony for over half an hour - Rot says, "Well, there is another bus that I can check." When we ask him why he didn't mention this other bus before, he says it's a "second-best" bus. We check to make sure that "second best" doesn't mean "high fatality rate" and when he calls, we get 1:00 tickets on the Mai Linh bus. Mai Linh is a taxi service that we all like, so we feel pretty happy. We get on the bright-green bus promptly at 1:00 and rave over the neck balloon pillows that are provided.

"We've upgraded!" we all proclaim. "This isn't second-best, this is first-best!"

And then, when the bus gets going, The DVD is inserted. The DVD is Vietnamese slapstick comedy, and it comes with a laugh track. Like everything else played through speakers here, it's turned up to distortion. We are instantly miserable. But it can't last long, right?

After three hours of listening to comedy in a very loud, tonal language we don't know, we stop at an odd tea room/rest stop. Over artichoke tea, we come up with a plan: I am persuaded by my fellow-travellers to dig out my newest Michael Jackson DVD (I collect them, found this new one in Dalat - started this before he died, just FYI) and give it to the bus officials in hopes that they will switch things up in our favor. "He is the god of pop," they tell me. "The whole bus will love it."

So I ask the driver to open the storage under the bus and fish out my DVD. I give Michael to the assistant on the bus and she smiles and says, "Yes!" She looks excited, too.

We all move to the back of the bus feeling light and full of expectation, just waitng for the DVD to appear on screen. We are all laughing, joking and happy. However, not for long. I notice it first: the DVD is struggling to play. After a minute of the swirling icon, it says, "Cannot read DVD." Our hopes are dashed. Michael is ejected and Vietnamese slapstick comedy goes right back in. It plays for the rest of the trip - for eight hours total. Every so often, I look around because I think that, surely, the patrons on the bus will tire of this loud formula. But no; most of the people on the bus are thoroughly enjoying the never-ending comedy show. They are laughing their heads off.

I try to concentrate on the book I am reading: it's called Sold~ it's about a British girl and her sister who are sold as Yemeni wives/slaves by their British/Yemeni father. The laugh track in the background serves as a twisted sound track to the tragedies the book describes.

When the bus finally arrives back in Saigon, the DVD continues to play until every last person steps down from the bus. We are the last ones off. We have listened to over eight hours of purgatory comedy.

During the taxi ride home - all of us sitting in stunned silence - I wonder if I have been permanently damaged by the ordeal. All night I dream of things that are supposed to be funny but aren't. Somewhere in there, what is not funny has something to do with British women being sold as Yemeni wife-slaves.

Tales That Make You Want to Stay Home, Part Two will air tomorrow.

How to Peel a Mango

2009-10-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

I'm walking through the alley at night- the alley that by morning is the market - when a group of people I'm always friendly with says hello and waves me over. In the evenings, many families sit outside their homes reclining in lawn chairs, just passing the time.

The woman in the group- who, by morning, sells me baguettes from time to time - offers me some dried squid. You know how much I love squid...but in its dried form, it is nothing like its former self. It's smelly. Men ride carts around with dried squid hanging from a wooden bar and I almost get up and run from them to escape the smell when they and their dried squid pass.

Of course I pretend to enjoy this woman's squid and say "Cam on" (thank you).

I begin to walk away but she calls me back. She runs inside her house and comes out holding four baby mangoes. They're so cute, and these little ones are always extra sweet and juicy. I don't see them much in the market. "Cam on!" I say, no longer pretending.

But then, listen to what she does. As an afterthought, she grabs one of the mangoes back. She looks at me to make sure I am watching and makes a peeling gesture to the mango, like, "You have to peel these first, then you eat the fruit inside." She does this a couple of times so that I am sure to get it. The others in the group sit quietly...patiently, while this woman demonstrates the necessity of peeling fruit.

Does this remind you of anyone? Maybe I was too hard on Nam; I mean, maybe this culture really believes we have no clue as to how to peel corn on the cob or fruit, or how to wash lettuce. Maybe it's part of the cultural propaganda that our entire nation eats at McDonald's for every meal. Who knows.

But the point is...what is the point?

It brought back uncomfortable memories. I have not yet reached cultural peace with this type of Vietnamese kindness.

I'm so glad my banana lady has never tried to show me how to peel a banana.

I Made it to the Gym This Time...

2009-10-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

Remember this "Nam left" picture of the street outside the school from my post of a few weeks ago?

Well the picture below is what the same street looked like today after just one half hour of rain.

The current is strong enough for some white water rafting; I was hoping one would come by to whisk me away. From a construction-and-very-poor-water-drainage perspective, I think the school is saving a lot of money on the location of this middle school...

One positive is that my socks did not dry on the line last night, and they didn't dry at school today, either. So when I changed into my gym clothes at school, I thought great, I have to exercise in
wet socks today. The positive is that my shoes and socks got completely wet during my ride to the gym, so they would have been wet, anyway.

p.s. Hello Dyllyn!

Panning for Fish Eggs

2009-10-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

A few of us decided to visit a town where the Saigon River meets the sea this weekend - Can Gio. We heard about this resort:

https://mail3.ais.edu.vn/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.cangioresort.com.vn/

What we did not hear about, though, was the interesting culture here- in this place that isn't even mentioned in the Lonely Planet.

We arrived around 11 am to see lines of people walking home from a morning out in the water. They carried long poles with nets, but we couldn't see anything in the nets; we thought for sure they should be packed with clams or something.

This morning (Sunday) the tide was way out and we saw hundreds of people standing in the sea, silhouetted against the horizon; the scene reminded me of the gooey duck digging that goes on at dusk at Ocean Shores during the fall. So we went to investigate. This beach walk turned out to be one of the most culturally interesting mornings I have experienced in Vietnam... I guess the element of surprise added a lot to it:

Men and women alike - we figured that every adult from town must have been out there - were dragging these long nets through the sand under the water. Eventually they would stop and put the sifted sand into buckets, then take that sifted sand to a designated expert who would put samples of the sand onto glass plates (pictured here). Once the dirt was on the plate, water was added and contents scrutinized - it seemed that they might be panning for gold. The inspectors would swish it around, sift it some more, and then dump it out. Again, we saw absolutely no seafood. Nothing visible at all. And there was never an indication that they saw what they were looking for.

What were they looking for? Was it some kind of precious metal? We couldn't see a thing.

This friendly guy actually tied the rope around my leg and showed me how to pull the bag behind me for a bit, laughing in a jolly way as I did (his friends enjoyed it, too). In most of Vietnam, people wait until you smile at them to greet you back times ten. But this guy sought us out and showed us around.

After about an hour of walking around watching this activity and wondering what could be going on, a young guy greeted us in English. We asked him what they were looking for and he stumbled for the words, "Fish eggs!"

This made sense to us. On the bus ride out, we saw fish farms - rows and rows of canals built to farm fish. We don't know what kind of fish, but at last we were satisfied with a partial answer. They were panning for fish eggs.

When the tide began to come in, the people started heading in en masse for the inspections, and we saw some monetary exchange taking place. These people of the water were getting between 15 to 20,000 VND (about 90 cents to $1.20) for the contents of their bowls of dirt...pay for a morning's worth of hard work.

I kept thinking of the Zora Neale Hurston novels I've read and thought this is probably not so different from a story set in the 1930's on the Mississippi Delta. Except that people in those stories would not be wearing Versace coats and Be Be sweaters...right? And it was especially hot and muggy this morning, too~

The bus ride back - an hour to the ferry, the ferry ride, and the hour from the ferry back home - cost 7,500 VND = 42 cents. I guess that makes sense when a day's work only nets twice that much.

Five Elements of Cool

2009-10-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

Cool

I'm lying on the balcony room bed with the fan blowing on me, but not because it's hot. I was just telling Katherine that I felt cold on my way home from the gym tonight. I could have used a jacket. It's been a cool fall - or perhaps I am just acclimating to this climate. But I think it's a cool fall.

Cool, Too

I am lying here waiting for our castle massage therapist to arrive. This will be Tran's (pronounced something like "Chung's") fourth castle visit since our return this cool fall. Remember how distraught we were last year when she left the Bum Bum? K and I were inconsolable. But now she comes to us regularly. We discovered that it was Tran's decision to leave the shop; evidently, she was bored. Her friend there, Chin, told us that Tran wants to make money all around the city instead of being in a salon all day long.

K and I both knew she was special since the beginning...that's why we counted her as our blessing all year and kept saying that she had to be too good to be true. When we got massages at the Bum Bum, we paid between 30 and 50,000 VND - between $1.80 and $3 - depending on the room location (was it noisy and light? or dark and solitary? the answer to that was about a $1.20 difference in price), and who knows how much of a cut Tran was getting out of that. For castle visits, K and I pay her 150,000 VND - about $9 - for massages that last an hour and a half (Katherine's usually last longer because Tran loves her most, I'm afraid). So she makes $18 in one night - a great wage for her. She is shy about receiving this much money, too; she usually tries to hand some of it back. She defines "unassuming person." We really love her.

Every time she leaves, I start plotting for her future. I usually say things like, "Let's start a business for her, she can come here and massage all of our friends and she'll make way more money than she could anywhere else." Or "I want to put Tran through massage school" - not for technique purposes but just because she is that good. K always answers my plotting with "You just don't stop with her, do you? You just can't help yourself."

She is a little bit difficult to communicate with, though. Take, for example, this text K got from her yesterday in our attempt to schedule an appointment:

“No froblem, 13 Tuesday tran buzz! See you 14 ok?”

K's email to me to communicate this was: So she can’t come tonight cause she’s buzzing, do you want me to tell her to come for you tomorrow night?

But when the 90 minutes is properly scheduled and carried out, usually one of us will say to the other:

Our lives are so cool.

Cool, Three

I got a little lost on my way home tonight. Traffic was bad following a rain storm, so I took some back streets. It was the coolest kind of lost because I ended up in what must be "Little Singapore." I saw a packed restaurant called "Singapore Hainamese Chicken Rice," and to me, a packed restaurant screams "stop your motorbike and try me now!" So I did. Yum. Except I didn't get the chicken, I got the char siu (barbecued pork) on rice with a mystery side sauce that was heaven - for about $1.20. I keep accumulating restaurants that I want to visit once per week. How can I attain this goal?

Cool, Four

Today I had my (total) 43 students write blues lyrics to the tune of BB King's "The Thrill is Gone" from the perspective of a down-and-out character in our current novel. Not one of them thought it was stupid to get up, sway and snap to the music, or sing the lyrics crazily. In every class a few of them used their tennis rackets as air guitars and they passed my sun glasses as they shared the lead singer role. Not only did they not think it was stupid, they thought it was cool.

Cool, Five

Post massage now. I fell asleep about an hour in and reached that "other dimension" place. We asked Tran if she can come every Monday night from now until forever. She said yes. Cool.

Five Element Correspondence: How Wikipedia Ripped off My Blog Title

2009-10-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

The other day I decided to do a little research on soup, because, you know, our market does not have signs telling us what we are eating. Sometimes, I feel I should be more responsible and know what to call what I am eating.

I was horrified to discover that under "Vietnamese Cuisine," Wikipedia has completely ripped off the name for my blog in how they describe Vietnamese food. Read this:

Five element correspondence

Many Vietnamese dishes include five spices: spicy (metal), sour (wood), bitter (fire), salty (water) and sweet (Earth), corresponding to: five zang fus: gall bladder, small intestine, large intestine, stomach and urinary bladder.

Vietnamese dishes also include five types of nutrients: powder, water or liquid, mineral elements, protein and fat.

Vietnamese cooks try to have five colours: white (metal), green (wood), yellow (Earth), red (fire) and black (water) in their dishes.

Dishes in Vietnam appeal to gastronomers via five senses: food arrangement attracts eyes, sounds come from crisp ingredients, five spices detected on the tongue, aromatic ingredients coming mainly from herbs stimulate the nose and some meals, especially finger food, can be perceived by touching.

*Vietnamese food must be eaten with right people, in suitable places, in a happy atmosphere.

I came up with my blog title all on my own. I'm a little mad.

What's in a Name Change?

2009-10-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

You know about English nicknames, right? When students join English speaking schools in Asia, it's fun for them to name themselves and it makes things much easier for their teachers. So some kids pick a new name as early as the first grade. That's why many have names like "Spiderman," "Pink" and "Little Bean." This year, one of my favorite nicknames is "Wattle." Tarn once had a Chinese student called "Star Power," and I had twins there named "Sonny and Cher."

When "Little Bean" grows out of her name, we simply receive an email stating: "Little Bean will now be called 'Mia'." And just like that, it's done.

But more and more frequently, students are changing their reasonable names, too: "Selena" changed her name to "Anna," "Susan" changed her name to "Justine," and "David" changed his name to "Joe."

These changes are annoying, for sure... but this one really got me: One of my students from last year, Jack, has one of those devious personalities I find quite endearing. By "Near Perfect Vietnamese Children" standards, he was considered a "trouble-maker" - and of course, he was one of my favorites. To me, the name "Jack" is fitting for someone with a bit of a dark side, and I thought he had chosen a perfect nickname for himself.

At the beginning of the year when I saw Jack in the hallway, I said, "Hey, Jack!" and he replied - with some uncharacteristic seriousness - "Ms. Marjorie, I'm not Jack anymore, I'm Jared." And then he flashed his Rocket J. Squirrel smile at me.

I couldn't help but say, "Jared? No way! You will always be Jack to me!" He put up a bit of a fight, but I wasn't having any of it.

Finally, he came up with a compromise. "Well, I guess you can call me 'Baby Horus' then," he said, which was his favorite god name from last year. That settled alright with me and now I refer to him as "BH." It makes him laugh every time I say it.

It goes the other way, too, at times; for example, "Lucky" became "Extreme" (not the Lucky you know from last year) during his junior year.

But there is a trend happening that I really like: many kids are returning to their Vietnamese names for school. My sixth graders are Khoi, Luan, Quan, Vi, Thuy and Nhung; last year not one sixth grader was called by his or her Vietnamese name.

As for my own name, now that I know most all of both the sixth and seventh grade classes, I hear my name hundreds of times each day - but that's not a bad thing. EVERY student who comes into class says "Hello Ms. Marjorie." And EVERY kid I know says "Hello Ms. Marjorie" in the hallways or at lunch (we all eat in the cafeteria with them). That's a lot of "Ms. Marjorie's" to hear every day, but each one is said with such genuine enthusiasm, I never get tired of hearing it. Even if I see a kid going up the stairway and see her again on the way back down, I am greeted with that same enthusiasm. These are truly amazing, respectful kids.

I do like using my birth-certificate name...I have tried it before but it has never stuck like it did last year. It seems fitting and a little more formal than just "Ms. Marjie" - and it is a bit sadistic and fun, since many kids must struggle with it and usually say "Ms. Ma - jo - rie..."

But I take part in my own, secret name change almost daily; I will share my secret with you. You see, by the time I teach the same thing for the fifth time each day, I am really, really tired of saying things over and over. So in between 5th and 6th periods, I become "Roxanne." "Roxanne" is my alter-ego; she is the one I call on when I need to do something that takes a little more guts or nerve or endurance. I just say, "Take it from here, Roxanne..." and then it's her doing it, not me. I decided on Roxanne's name because that was the runner-up to "Marjie" when my parents named me, and because it sounds kind of tough. It came in handy during my first month at Options (a school for at-risk kids): on the way to school, in the car, I would say out loud, "You are not Marjie anymore, you are Roxanne. They cannot hurt you, they can only hurt Roxanne. And Roxanne is a lot more tough than Marjie is, so she'll be fine." So when 5th period leaves and 6th period comes in and I just don't think I can do it again, I give it to Roxanne. She is usually fine with it. She thinks this is nothing compared to that first month at Options.

I actually admitted this strategy to one of the school counselors at Scriber, and she thought my split personality idea was a pretty healthy and cool practice (I didn't tell her about the long, interesting conversations Roxanne and I have, though...).

To end this commentary on names - my "point" I guess - is this: I want to tell "Tubagoa" that I really liked "Mungo" better. And that I am tired of everyone changing names on me, all the time - even on my blog - and that I don't think the practice is OK or healthy. Except when I do it myself, secretly.