Orange and the Daily Grind

Remember that Simon was staying in the "backpacker district?" Well, when we were house searching (who knew it would turn out to be "castle searching") we wanted to avoid all houses that claimed proximity to the BD. Too touristy and, um, scummy, we thought.

However, it doesn't take us long to discover that we are a fifteen minute walk from it, and now we admit that it does have many coolness factors: for example, at any given time of day or night you feel like you at the UN - people from all nations line the sidewalk cafes and open tourist travel agencies claiming "Manila-$10," or the Indian food I eat tonight, chicken tikka masala (going back for the dosa - an Indian crepe filled with onions and potatoes), or this picture I buy in one of many artist copy shops. I walk by one shop and do a double take at "Starry Night" -- from a distance you really can't tell the difference. Men sit in the shops with a print of the painting they are copying and paint away with their oils. So I choose this painting. Don't you think it will go well with pink and baby blue? I also buy this lamp. Brian, I don't know what is drawing me to your color...

Back to the mototaxi quest: this morning I find my guy. He's low key, drives slowly and carefully, wears a blue shirt with a red helmet, and charges 15 thousand, straight. I'm so enamoured with his driving style that when he drops me off and I see Iain the Scottish science teacher who has been here for two years, I ask him to make a request to this driver to come back for me at 5:00.

So now, in the mornings, this is how my day goes: I walk through the alley market out to the main street to my sandwich lady's stand. I hold up either one or two fingers to let her know how many sandwiches for the day and she whips them up so quickly...shredded chicken, cilantro, carrots, cucumbers, no pate, a little salt and oil on a French Baguette (Banh Mi). They are yummy. This morning Mr. Blue Shirt Red Helmet sees me at the stand and offers me a ride and smoothly drives me the ten minute route to school through the nastiest of all nasty intersections. When the guard at the front of the school sees me, he uses his walkie talkie to alert Fourth Floor Security. I climb the four flights of stairs to my room and I find it unlocked with the air conditioning on.

Nice. Then massive amounts of sixth graders fill my life for hours and hours. I really like them. And I like learning about Sumer.

At 5:00, there is my mototaxi guy waiting patiently, in his blue shirt and red helmet. I show some enthusiasm that he is there, but he merely nods and starts his bike. I hear a "hey!" from across the street and it's Creepy Taxi Guy from yesterday. He laughs a sinister laugh and I just shake my head. I will tell people about that ride for the rest of my life. My guy takes me home nicely and I tell him, "See you tomorrow!" when I slide off the bike, and he just gives me that same emotionless nod.

And then-- because I am wearing the beautiful purple dress that my next door neighbor made for me, before going the two doors down to my house I step up into their shop to show them the dress on me. Both she and her work partner smile and laugh...they are so happy to see that I am wearing the dress and that I like it. I tell them how much I love it -- it's a great moment. How lucky am I? My seamstress is the definition of "sweet," too. I don't like to use that word to describe people, really, but that's what she is. Kind, gentle, unassuming, a little bit of sly humor in her.

Just thinking --I have been here just short of a month and I have a sandwich maker, a personal driver, and a seamstress. I know where lamp street, rug street, furniture street, Electric Avenue (start singing again), ban xeo street and vegetarian street are. A turmeric rice cake maker is just minutes away from my castle rooftop, on which I sit nightly in my hammock under my palm tree like a princess. And today I feel like I can handle this job. I am smarter than a sixth grader. It seems like six months ago I arrived at the Lan Lan Hotel, it really does.

Nice Castle Guests but not Mototaxi Drivers

This is Simon from New Zealand and he is our first guest on the balcony. Katherine met him out this weekend and asked us if we could invite him over...he's backpacking around SE Asia until he takes a job as a lawyer in London (like all New Zealanders do (Tarn did the same thing--actually, they are from the same city, Wellington). We could save him a bit of money, she says. Tarn and I are all for sharing the castle with people passing through.

Nicest guy in the world, and K and I get the balcony guest room ready -- we already got our landlords to put a single bed in, but now there is a small table and a guest towel as well. What else do you need? What a gracious guest. He comes in and is in absolute awe of the castle. He loves his balcony and cannot help himself; he recites something from Julius Caesar: He wants to stay with us longer (especially after we take him to the roof and he swings on the hammock under the palm with a beer in hand), but the rest of Vietnam calls him and he will catch his bus to Hanoi in the morning. K and I decide that we will post pictures of all of our guests in the room. We plan to have many of them between the three of us.



By the way, both Pam and Jessica, friends who plan to visit from Seattle (actually Pam will be stopping by while on her world journey) write to me today asking: when I come, do I get a party with DJ's too? The answer is "of course!!"



OK, now for a re-creation of an interaction with a motortaxi driver after school. Scene: dark clouds, smells like rain, nighttime (sad, at work until 6 again), wondering--do I get a taxi or a mototaxi?



(Keep in mind that he is speaking Vietnamese. But I know what he is saying.)



"Motorbike, miss?"

I show him my address. "How much?"

"Twenty (thousand)."

"Fifteen."

"Twenty."

"I can walk down to that street and get one for fifteen."

"OK, get on. I'll do it for fifteen."

I get on and The Intersection is massively congested. He spins a wheely and goes onto the sidewalk. His bike dies. I get off.

"I will not ride with you if you go on the sidewalk!" I say.

"OK, OK, no more sidewalks."

I get back on and then begins my wild Saigon ride. He weaves in and out, in and out, into oncoming traffic, in front of cars. Finally, when he is about a mile from my house, he goes not on the sidewalk but on the side of the road that is kind of a walkway. He is going the wrong way on the walkway, swerving to miss pedestrians. He swerves onto the road again and just misses an oncoming bus and curses at the bad bus driver, getting in his way. I hit him on the shoulder.

"Let me off!"

He stops. He's confused.

"Let me off. You are scaring me! I will walk the rest of the way," I say as I slide off the bike. I pound my heart. "You scared me to death!"

He is wide-eyed. "But miss, I am a good driver. I know exactly what I am doing. I will take you the rest of the way home, like I promised."

"I don't want you to take me home. You are a crazy driver and you were weaving all over the place and you almost hit some people and a bus. Here, take your fifteen thousand and let me walk."

Now he pounds his heart. "But miss, I am a good driver. I have been driving this motorbike since your uncle was in Saigon forty years ago. I have won medals for my superb driving skills. The way I weave in and out of traffic, it's what I am known for. It would be against my honor if I don't take you the rest of the way home."

This goes on for a few minutes. He will not take my money. I tell him if I get back on, he has to stay on the right side of the street, and he must go very slowly. He agrees.

He drives slowly all the way to my alley. I get off and he tells me that even though he swerved everywhere, he is a good driver and got me home faster than anyone else could have.

Crap. I only have a twenty thousand bill. I give it to him and he shrugs. He doesn't have any change. "It's OK miss, I won't charge you, since I scared you so badly." He hits his heart. "I don't want you to think badly of Saigon motorbikes...this one is on me. Have a nice night."

I start to walk away. Only, oops...I translated that last one incorrectly. What he said, evidently, was, "I did such a good job, you should really pay me twenty."

Because he suddely produces change.

He gives it to me, tells me "Thank you" in Vietnamese and makes me say it back with perfect intonation before he lets me go.



Now. What do you think his translation of this interaction might be when he is having a beer with his fellow drivers tonight? Something like "I was just driving this lady home and she kept getting off the bike and pounding her chest like a mad woman!"

Other news: I finally found a can of Raid in the backpacker district where K and I met Simon tonight. When we get home, the ANTS are GONE!!

I picked up my first dress and shirt tonight from the seamstress next door. She did a fantastic job! When you come, bring your patterns and ideas!

A Lesson on Dong

What do you do when you are driving a Saigon motorbike and you get to an intersection that is COMPLETELY jammed? Use the sidewalk. Nothing is sacred. Pedestrians having the right of way? What a strange law to remember.

I've already forgotten so many of them.

The intersection by our school, which happens to be right next to the largest pagoda (Giac Lam) in the city, is what I've been telling you about. I take my third motorbike taxi trip this morning and the guy is smoking a cigarette the entire time, blowing smoke right in my face, and when we get to the jam he does not hesitate to swerve onto the sidewalk. That is when I tap him and tell him I'll walk the rest of the way.

A bit about dong...the mototaxi costs me 15 thousand dong, or about 90 cents (every thousand dong is about 6 cents), each way to school. A regular taxi costs around 40 thousand, or $2.40 in the mornings and as much as 50 thousand, or $3.00, in the evenings, just because the jams are harder to negotiate. So it's $1.80 per day for the motorbike or almost $6.00 per day for a regular taxi for transportation back and forth to school. Many teachers have already found regular guys who pick them up for school and back on a daily basis. My smoke blower will not be hired again. But there are many guys lining our street in the mornings. "Motorbike, Miss?" "Motorbike, Miss?" Now that I am in the swing, I will look for the best one and hire him. And I will tell him "absolutely no sidewalk scootering!"

My uncle, who was in Vietnam from '66 to '67, just wrote to tell me that the videos reminded him of Saigon 4o years ago, except that there were more three-wheeled carts and not as many cars. Hard to imagine that it has stayed the same for so many years.

Now, back to dong:

It's funny how quickly you switch into another currency and things seem SOOO expensive when they really aren't. To give some perspective, I will be paid $2600 per month here, which is about half of what I'm paid in Edmonds. We also get a $300 housing allowance per month and the castle rent is $1100, split three ways. The three of us will spend just a bit over our allowance on this place, which we can't believe. We got such a great deal.

Dinner can cost between 10 thousand and 100 thousand dong, depending on where you eat. Karrie and I tried to keep it under $5 per day for food when we crossed Mexico; I could do the same here without much effort at all.

Most teachers who have been here for a while can save quite a bit. As soon as we get our castle the way we want it, I'm going to try to live on as little as possible, giving priority to 1) travel and 2) food, or possibly 1) food and 2) travel. I'm thinking that the weekend after this one, after the big grand opening castle party where my roommates will be DJ's on different decks and balconies, it will be time to venture out of Saigon. We have a big map by the door and are putting sticky notes all over it, marking places we want to go.

To answer a few questions: Amy, pictures of the castle (including the lamp) will come as soon it is picture ready. And Chris, the pirated movies we have purchased are too many to list (again, at 90 cents a piece) but include: The Kite Runner, Letters from Iwo Jima, Sex and the City and Into the Wild. You have to pick through them a bit because the main staple is action, but everything is there.

It's Monday night and we are off to some kind of acoustic guitar place. Good morning, Seattle, Montana, Norway, Canada, China, America, etc.~

Snips and Snails and Fat Piggy Tails

Hey, thanks, Brian, for posting more videos of HCMC motorbike madness! (why didn't the comment link appear?) I hired another mototaxi today to find lamp street...now it's no big deal. Tomorrow I will take one to school. (And I did find a lamp on lamp street. What's next? Stereo Speaker Street, also known as "Electric Avenue" in Chinatown.) This is a picture of our fruit basket. I can't remember the name of the prickly fruit but it's really good...

Not much time to post tonight because I have been studying Ancient Sumeria, but I do want to tell you that not much happened today for the Autumn Festival. I did see many people eating moon cakes during the day and sliced fruit with a berry sauce tonight out on the street. And...I did notice that much grilling of fat pig tails was happening in the alleys during market time. Who knows if this is a festival thing, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed them before. But, hey, every day I see something new. Like today...I walk by a shallow bucket of frogs and think they are dead, but they aren't. What's worse is that they are tied together, five to a package, wriggling all over the place. Their movement scared me to death. They were right next to a bucket of live eels. I'm pretty sure those critters won't make it into my newly seasoned wok.

And--the best news of all...I saw HER tonight, making her magic cakes. She is real after all! But I had just eaten, so I had to just take the sight of her and feel happy.

Goodnight, Saigon--

Traffic in Vietnam

Hey Marjie,

I found a couple more videos of traffic in Ho Chi Minh City. Is this pretty accurate to what you see? I find them somewhat mesmerizing... (I a "I'm glad it's not like that here" sort of way")

This first one is just 10 seconds:


This one is death defying for just over a minute:


-Brian

Plant Street Today, Lamp Street Tomorrow

Katherine and I find plant street today. The man who runs it speaks French, as does Canadian Katherine. They communicate and barter as he leads us around his nursery and then we see IT-- a nine foot tall PALM TREE. We look at each other and think the same thing. The Deck. It's meant to be. But how do you get a nine foot tall palm tree home? Well, you put it on the back of a motorbike, of course. (This is the small plant!)

So we are completing our transaction while our tree and two other plants for the living room are being bungeed to the back rack of two bikes when a motorbike taxi driver pulls up, points at the sky and lets us know it's going to rain. Katherine has been hiring them for weeks now, and I know it's going to happen sooner or later; I can't spend my entire contract here afraid to ride them. So I give the nod. It's a ten minute ride back, and yes, it's kind of fun. And it does begin to pour, so we wait under an awning for our plants to arrive.

At the shop, we are asked if we need help getting it upstairs (since everyone lives in stacks). Katherine says, "Oh, I think we can handle it." I remind her that we have five flights of stairs and a ladder up to the roof and that the tree is nine feet tall. We need the help. When the bikes and trees arrive, these two poor guys have to heave the tree all the way to the top; they are sweating and sweating...

Katherine says, "Let's not tell Tarn about the tree. Let's just see his reaction next time we go up." But the plant delivery has left a very thick trail of dirt through the door and up the stairs, and both of us are so tired from having them heave it up five stories that we fall asleep. Eventually, I see Tarn through my window, following the trail up the ladder, so I follow him. His reaction is great, he loves it. We are going to decorate it with bamboo hanging candles.

Our deck now has a rainbow park bench, a hammock (more hammocks to come--my roommates are jealous) and a PALM TREE. How can you not want to come and hang out on my roof? You don't even have to enter lesson plans, you can just sit there, swinging on a rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City...

Last week the park bench was delivered by cart:

Today feels like a real Saturday. We're getting settled so we all take on projects- my project is seasoning the wok we bought last week in Chinatown. I am so ready to start cooking in our kitchen...we haven't even had time to think about it. When the wok is ready, I step outside to the market and take my time choosing vegetables: oyster mushrooms, garlic, peppers, onions, beans and fresh tofu cakes...I keep it vegetarian because of Tarn. I'm not sure how to use the sauces here, but figure it will be trial by error. It's not the best stir fry ever, but we have a nice first lunch together.

The market is going to be a highlight of my year. Today I see halibut cheeks, clams, prawns, all kinds of dried fish-- soon I will be buying all of it each Saturday. Imagine, having all of this right outside your castle!! And our neighbor the seamstress fixed a hem on my pants this morning for thirty cents, and has been hired to make more shirts and skirts. How can I walk past all of those material stalls and not buy some and have something made?

It's really something to wake up here on the weekends. Our house has grates near the ceilings, so it seems that the neighborhood is inside every morning. Construction next door (yes, contruction is going on next door wherever I am in this city) begins early, as does the man who coughs for an hour. But the sounds of the market are the best. Buying and selling --- it ends at about 11:00 and we wonder: where do all of the vegetables, fish, fruit and goods go? To their homes? It's another mystery. Today my market find is a woman who makes her own taffy: sesame and molasses. I have found my dad's Christmas present.

Tonight I'm invited to a dinner party at Steve and Sharon's. They are from Florida and Steve is teaching math while Sharon looks for work with a non-profit. Nice couple...met while working for Habitat for Humanity in Atlanta. Steve used to have hair down to his waist and two hoop earings when he worked in Jamaica for the Peace Corps, but now he is clean cut and wears a tie every day. He is the leader of the "Glass Half Full" group. He is sooooo positive, in the best way. In the middle of dinner, we hear a band playing outside so we go out to the deck to take a look. A dragon is dancing down the street because it's Autumn Festival tomorrow. Moon cakes are being sold at every corner in red and yellow stands (the national colors) that will be collapsed tomorrow, just like our fireworks stands. We're wondering what kind of fun our neighborhood might have~

But we will have to leave it briefly, for tomorrow, we look for lamp street.

Street Crossing and Scallop Dating

I could write about motorbikes every single day. I just spent an hour trying to upload a video of me crossing a street, but the video would not load. Actually, pictures just barely load, so I was thinking positively. If you had been able to watch me cross the street, you would have said, "That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen Marjie do."

So I will just have to talk about motorbikes a little more: parents wear helmets and kids do not. Sometimes you see three kids on the back of a bike. Or one really little kid standing on the baseboard in the front. Or a mother driving with one hand and holding her child with the other. Or someone text messaging or smoking with a free hand.

Oh! I just found two YouTube videos that will help you understand my world...do not pass up this opportunity to click (the first is 12 seconds and the second is two minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5fr0v5QwE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJK0l3PWoBI&NR=1

Still, I want you to see MY intersection.

This past summer, Dennis made me buy a scooter. Here they are (mine is the cute little one, a 125 Yamaha Vino, his is the big mean Bergman 650):

Every time we rode somewhere together, he would advise me on how to ride more safely. He was of the opinion that I turned in front of oncoming traffic in a risky way, or that I didn't use my peripheral vision when crossing intersections. Here the kids are not taught to look both ways before crossing the street. They just look the way they are going, which is what drivers do, too. You are in front, you have the power. Turn in front of anyone if there is room. Dennis, like Jaci regarding bathroom napping, did not understand that I was connecting with my future culture.

Now, about school, today is better. The jackhammer is quiet for a few hours, and I make some decisions that I feel pretty good about, which I will get to in a second. But the highlight of my day is when four of my cute girl students come in during their lunch and say, "We want to have English ALL day long. We don't want to have math or social studies or science, just English." Well, it's not because I am following the IB protocol, that is for sure. It's because we played "Around the World" with their vocabulary words. At one point, two boys were competing against each other and the word was "revolting." One kid, Tommy, wanting so badly to win, points at me and says, "Disgusting!" I say, "I have never had a student point at me and yell "disgusting" before!" Now THAT is an example of sixth grade humor. They love it. They get so wound up I have them practice "silent cheering." Then I make up a tongue twister out of the story. They must stand and say it twice, quickly, without messing up. "Some silly people slurp soup and some silly people slurp shakes" (from "The All-American Slurp"). There are four groups of tables and tables get points. All I have to say is, "The first table to have books and notebooks out gets a point!" and it's chaos to make it happen. "Anyone who can say this tongue twister twice quickly without messing up will win a point for his/her group" and the hands all go up and they whine to be chosen. Such enthusiasm. That never happened at Scriber.

As for Decisions to Make My Life Better: My first priority for next week is to find a gym. I need endorphin released. Secondly, I'm having my mom send my pants. I did not bring any of my professional pants from home and I hate wearing skirts and dresses every single day. Pants are hard to come by in my giant size and I'm not too excited about having pants made. Can't tell you what a relief this is. It's not too hot to wear them, either, because of the air conditioning. Another decision: I'm going to keep a low profile, not complain or draw attention to myself, but I'm also not going to post things every day on that awful site (until they make it more user friendly) and I'm not going to worry too much about my weekly plans. If the kids are learning, then I will be happy. If the admin is really worried about it (and they have a lot keeping them busy right now), then they will come to me I guess. But like I said, I'm not heading toward IB, so I have no one to impress. How does that sound, principal Kathy?

Now, about that date with the scallops...Katherine and I go to Rug Street after school today. It's not just me that names these streets thematically, the Vietnamese women in the copy room that I have befriended also call it Rug Street. They also tell me where to find Lamp Street and Plant Street. So we find a rug after visting about ten rug shops, one after another, all with the same product but with different prices. I do feel like I am in college again because nothing in the castle matches. We have pink curtains, baby blue design below the curtains, rainbow colored pillows, a Mexian tablecloth that Tarn contributed, and now a traditional blue flowery livingroom rug. Who cares?

After rug street, we return to our grid and stop at the seafood place that caught our attention last night. All kinds of mollusks sit outside the restaurant in a cart, and the cheery waitress brings us a "Photo Album" of all the ways you can have them prepared. We choose four: scallops on the half shell with peanuts and green onions, mussels in tamarind sauce, clams dipped in lime, salt and chili and another kind of clams I have never seen that come with a side of spicy fish sauce. They put a big waste basket under the table and you just chuck your shells into it. All of it=delicious. The whole meal costs us three dollars a piece, and our waitress is so passionate about showing us how to eat them.

As we wander the few blocks home, we gaze into the lives of our neighbors. Everyone has open doors on the bottom floors of the Lego stacks. We can see what they are eating and what they are watching on TV. We see them playing cards or badminton right outside. We see their shrines and pictures of their relatives. I want this kind of community in America.

And guess what? It didn't rain today, so we take beer to the roof and I get to swing in my hammock. That's all I ask, really, is for four good plates of seafood, a beer and a hammock. And possibly the return of my TRCL. And for four girls to say they want to be in English ALL day long, and for a 12 year old boy to point at me and say "Disgusting!"