Where have all the motos gone?

               After being somewhere for three months and having fallen into a routine that is rewarding but utterly exhausting, the mere thought of a vacation piques feelings of excitement and angst to get out as fast as you can! On the eve of my 26th birthday, we packed our bags and headed for the airport en route to Kuala Lumpur (KL as the locals call it), the largest city in Malaysia, inhabiting roughly 7 million people. 1.5 hours and a good meal on Vietnam Airlines later, we stepped into one of the most culturally-diverse places I have ever seen. 

      Declaring its independence from the British in 1958, Malaysia and KL in particular has continued to expand despite vicious riots between the Chinese and the Malays. Since that time, the muslim Malays have much of the political control over Malaysia, and KL became the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur in 1974. As a result, KL is a melting pot for three distinct groups of people and their perspective religions : The muslim Malays, the Hindu Indians and the Chinese buddhists. 

         At first, we were mesmerized  by the variety in public transportation systems that service the city, starting with a 28 minute high-speed train from the airport to the city center. Looking out the window, we noticed rows and rows of palm trees and deep, lush green jungle that eventually just opened up into a cosmopolitan city. Though the transportation systems in KL are many, they have a ways to go with respect to their pragmatism. We had to walk from one train to the other over a bridge and across the street, making the connection from train to monorail not as smooth as one would hope. Upon arrival in the neighborhood of Bukit Bintang, one of the more touristy areas of KL, we navigated the multiple shopping centers (one that actually has a theme park) and coffee shops to arrive at our hotel. I cannot really comment on our hotel in KL, except to say this: Location, location, location. We found a spot (pool included) smack in the middle of all the action and despite its many other shortcomings, you can't really argue with prime location. 

         Our first day was short but sweet, as we made our way to Jalan Alor, a special street just next to our hotel serving delectable Chinese street food. From dim sum, to satay and the all-too -familiar durian fruit (if you have not tried this fruit, steer clear) it smells as close to vomit as you can imagine but for some reason, people in SE Asia cannot get enough, including Philip! 

The street stalls on Jalan Alor are filled with locals and tourists alike and each place seems to out do the next. We tried 3-4 stalls during our time in KL and were never disappointed. 

         In our short trip we managed to experience the three cultures that dominate Malaysian society from a stroll and (of course) taste of Little India and a visit to a beautiful Hindu temple, to a walk through Chinatown and Pedaling Street which is essentially a Bazaar selling everything you can imagine that is as fake as can be from Northface to Prada, Louis Vuitton, you name it.  Funny enough, the goods don't look as fake in Asia as they do on the streets of New York.  We also visited an intricate Buddhist temple, dominated by hypnotic incense.We dined at an upscale Malaysian restaurant, Bijan, to celebrate my birthday and had a feast of curry, mango salad and grilled calamari. The food continued to impress and each meal seemed to be more interesting than the last one. 

                We even headed to the Traders Hotel, one of the trendier hot spots to stay and play in KL. With a sky bar located at the top, you have a tremendous view of the Petronas Towers, KL's symbol of success. From inside our posh surroundings (an extensive bar with pool and jacuzzis), we sipped way-to-expensive drinks and took in the view, excited to actually visit the towers the next day. 

              The Petronas Towers, built in 1996, are the headquarters of the Petronas oil & gas company. Covered in silver steel, the towers glimmer from all corners of the city. In order to visit the tower's skybridge, which connects the two towers and is about 170 meters above ground, you have to wake up early and wait in line with the rest of the tourists until it is your turn to pick a time to visit. We chose an early evening time slot and, without coffee or breakfast, continued on our trek to see as much of KL in three days as possible. Our next stop was a highlight of the trip, the Kuala Lumpur bird park. Say what you will, but this open-air aviary (there is a canopy to keep the birds from escaping) was an incredible sight to see. We talked with a white cockatoo (no joke) and dodged the hornbills that were so attracted to our breakfast they actually flew close enough to be sitting with us at our table. (There is a very cool cafe in the middle of the bird park where you can enjoy a cool drink/meal and watch the birds fly around at the same time). My favorite sight were the gorgeous peacocks, while Philip was partial to the storks. In all, this is an absolute must-do in KL! 

                  When we finally made our way back to the towers, wondering would this actually be worth it, we did enjoy the transcending views from the 41st floor and the cheesy 3-D movie we watched before as an introduction to our "sky-bridge" visit. 

             By nightfall on our last evening in KL, we were full and satisfied, both culturally and gastronomically. One more stop on Jalan Alor for a little more street food and some Hookah at a Turkish restaurant for dessert rounded out an exciting three days. 

         There is no doubt that being back in Vietnam is comfortable, even if we were stress-free from the sounds of the motor bikes zipping up and down the street. We both agree, at the same time, that visiting KL truly is eye-opening. On the one hand, the city is littered with shopping malls, banks and other symbols of wealth, prosperity and capitalistic values, while at the same time, the home you see walking down the street look dilapidated and worn, creating a sharp contrast that you cannot help compare to some of the French suburbs and not to the rest of SE Asia.  

     In addition, the diversity of its people is so evident as you walk down the street and ride their public transportation, both in a satisfying and somewhat troubling way. I found myself thinking at times, how do they coexist and is it peaceful? With terrorist activity in Southern Thailand, KL seems like a paradise of harmonious living, but reality is often deceiving. I hope for the sake of KL and their many projects to expand and continue to grow this metropolitan capital that the tensions within remain what the seem--maybe not perfect but content. 

Reality kicks in...Time and Relativity

Hello friends and family,

Looking back at my last post on September 14, I cannot believe almost six weeks have passed since I last wrote. I apologize to my followers, time flies by even when each day brings a new set of obstacles or experiences. When you first arrive somewhere new, your mind takes a series of notes. What are the smells? What are the tastes? How do people look, act, speak, etc. Once you settle in, those sensations turn into everyday occurrences. For example, when I leave my apartment and head over to Vo Thi Sau Street where I teach English during the week, my walk is ten minutes of repeated experiences that now are second nature. First, I trip over the telephone line that should be hung in the air, but mysteriously always seems to be lying on the ground. Then I am asked 2-5 times, “motorbike?” As in, do you want a ride? Afterwards, I endure countless stares, a few cat calls (though not as many as you would think) and I smell noodle soup and pastries mixed with garbage and dried mud. It’s a funny smell, somewhere in between lovely and terrible. I hear the taxi cabs honking incessantly and I always smile and say hello to the same people each and every day: The bistro next door to school, the vespa/sexy motorcycle shop near our house, etc and then, low and behold, I arrive at my destination. Yet, what once sounded like a nightmare and a hassle, now is part of my routine. In fact, like time, I barely notice the “motorbike?” questions or even the cat calls. You fall into a rhythm and it feels good, even if you will never get used to hearing horns honk incessantly, how can they even do that? Or, people telling you one thing, when they actually mean another. You look for the signs now, do you really mean this, instead of just assuming.
Routine also means that your purpose has changed. I came to Vietnam with an inkling of what I may do, but the steps to actually reach that point, i.e. get a job, were a bit fuzzy. I stated with a TESOL certification course given by TEFL international, a huge organization run out of the UK. I spent four weeks in the classroom learning and applying methods dealing with teaching English to foreigners. The inputs were interesting, specifically one called “direct teaching”. This class was designed to transform the teacher-to-be into a beginner student, being exposed to a foreign language for the first time. The language of choice: Thai. Our trainer stepped into the room and for 90 minutes did not utter a word of English. It was frightening at first, but the result was clear: How difficult and scary must it be for beginner Vietnamese students to hear English for the first time? In that class, we learned the famous saying, “less is more”, especially with regard to speaking. Using gestures, pictures and facial expressions proved to be more helpful than any sort of speaking, evidently, since we knew no Thai whatsoever. In the end, we all could say three phrases and we had truly learned something. I found the TESOL certification class to be, overall, a successful experience more for the fact that I knew, after finishing the course, I could step into a classroom and conduct a class at various levels. We had the chance to try out the methodology at two different Vietnamese schools, working with children and young adults from 12-16 years old.
After finishing the certification course and with the help of Philip, I was able to find a job relatively easily. Philip and I now work for the same language center, though in different branches and I teach English around 20 hours + per week. The ages vary and so do the levels- from pre-intermediate to very advanced learners and children to adults. I find a lot of satisfaction in the classroom, specifically when I explain a certain grammatical rule or vocabulary word and the students transform from looking confused to actually understanding the new word or idea. It doesn’t always happen that way, and especially with Vietnamese students, it is sometimes difficult to evaluate whether they understand or not, but for the most part, they are motivated, enthusiastic and looking to succeed. This will be my first week of teaching “young leaders”, high-school students, and probably the most difficult group to teach. I will have to find a happy medium between how I teach children and how I teach adults and see what works for them. More on that later…
During other parts of my day, I work for an after school program (geared toward Western families) a bit outside the center of the city. We teach a variety of movement classes for children ages 3-7 years old. Right now, we are trying to expand the curricula and include a more technical ballet class, which I am excited to start teaching! Working with this program, Saigon Movement, allows my time to be split in two different worlds. On the one hand, I have the opportunity to interact with Vietnamese students and understand their learning process but on the other hand, working with young Americans, Canadians, etc gives me a little taste of home. In addition, I am starting to play a more managerial role, dealing with enrollment, scheduling, etc and honing those skills that I learned back in New York. It is always great to be able to use what you learned and to apply it somewhere new!
Life goes on in Vietnam, never easily, but always with adventure and, thus, never boring! Yesterday, we counted the number of times our taxi driver beeped his horn. Under a mile from our place, we counted over 16 times. Can you imagine? At the same time, we visited a modern shopping mall with name brand, designer items, where everything we looked at was $100 and under! It’s always give and take. We have eaten our share of great food over the past six weeks including spicy Indian, upscale Western and French fare to down and dirty noodle soups. We even found a hotel pool that charges $2 to use its facilities for the day, a great way to get in some exercise which is a bit lacking here, unless you count walking and sweating.
I have realized that normal is relative. Normal in NY: Get up, eat on the run and drink Starbucks, take the subway work until lunch, eat lunch, work until the end of the day, take the subway, eat dinner in or out, catch up on TV, sleep….Normal in Vietnam: Get up + Eat, do errands, prepare lessons and go for a swim, nap and eat again, go to work. It’s a bit opposite but the idea is still the same: Work, sleep, eat…Oh yes, catching up on shows is a bit different here too---We watch what you watched two months ago!

Some upcoming news: We will head to Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia the first week in November, can't wait for a little vacation, photos from the trip to come!

Goal of the month: Hang out with some cool people and get out and about

That's all for now, I'll keep you posted...

No longer a tourist

Hello followers!  

If you wondered whether I had given up blogging, I can assure you I have not. The excuse list I drafted to make up for why my last blog was posted almost two weeks ago is lengthy, but I'll keep it short: Ants infested my computer. The internet connection was temporarily lost in our apartment. I started work and I began an English teaching course and, therefore, am currently not finding myself in between motor bikes or battling the scorching heat as often as I had been, and therefore, my "interesting" stories have suddenly become all the more mundane.   

     Yet, in two weeks, a lot can happen in Saigon. My last week before starting "real life", Philip and I spent in search of furniture. Many of the streets in HCMC are organized by what they sell, even if it is as random as safes or lockers. We found "couch street" ( I use this name instead of its real name because it is a) easier to spell and b) easier to remember which also happened to be "dresser street". It is amazing the high quality furniture that is sold on the streets in Vietnam. The items are not as pricey as what we are used to back home, but for street shops, it is all very deceiving. You have an idea that you are going to pick out a table for 180,000 VND (about 10 dollars) but you end up realizing that these "street stores" are legitimate furniture stores, despite their appearances and could cost hundreds if you went for the really "chic".

     It truly all depends on where you are in the city and the more central, the more expensive.  The center of HCMC is characterized by its international hotels such as the Park Hyatt, Sheraton, Rex Hotel, Caravalle, etc. The streets are not particularly more esthetically-pleasing, but the plethora of foreigners walking around (more the "tourist" than the "backpacker") transforms the neighborhood and the prices shoot up.

 At the same time, when you are sick of rice and noodles, this is all the best area to find some good old-fashioned Western food. Last Saturday, we fell out of bed in need of a real brunch. Breakfast is a pretty foreign concept for the Vietnamese and usually consists of noodle soup, but sometimes, eggs or a sandwich is a must for an 11am meal. Enter Au Parc, a cafe in the dead center of town across from what I like to call "make-out" park. It's the area near Notre-Dame Church (yes, they have one too) where young, Vietnamese couples go to do the PG stuff they can't do at home in front of their families. It's like a drive-in movie with motorbikes instead of cars and, yea, there's no flick to be watched, at least on the big screen. Au parc has a Vietnamese, English-speaking staff and serves sandwiches, pasta and burgers for a price that is, well, not what you are used to here, but good enough to not feel too badly after you roll out of there fuller than you have been in a month. The same area has some some other Western choices like Pomodoro (Italian food) and Pacharan (Spanish); all more pricey than the street Vietnamese food, but well worth it for a change. Over the past week I have indulged in the western fare I missed from home like Caesar salad, chicken and turkey sandwiches and pasta. Luckily, I can, fairly easily, switch back to noodles after a while---my wallet thanks me too.

In between catching up on the food I missed and decorating the house, I started observing and assisting at an afterschool program in District 2, about a 15-20 minute ride from the center of town, depending on traffic. District 2 is located just over the Saigon Bridge and the area of the school is known as An Phu. As you enter An Phu, it resembles any other area in Saigon but with certain stark contrasts: The roads are narrower and there are less of them. It actually seems like a bit of the country, or at least a half-way house. The other striking difference with An Phu, especially the road of the afterschool program, Thao Dien, is the increasing number of foreigners walking around. In my area, Philip and I are anomalies and we can probably count the number of times we have seen foreigners around our neighborhood on one hand.

 The first time I visited to An Phu, I came face to face with a handful of “McMansions”, though in this case, we’ll call them “McVillas”. Many of the residents of these areas have traveled the world and often don’t come to Vietnam to stay forever. Instead, Saigon represents another stop or post in a list of interesting and exotic places of residency. I was intrigued by the laundry list of crazy countries some of the people I met had come from and the culture and worldliness their children were being exposed to, many of them, at a very young age. Of course there are always negative aspects of such upbringings, but from my 25-going on-26 perspective, it is fascinating to hear their stories. 

         Being here a month now and no longer a wide-eyed tourist, quivering every time I cross the street (only 2 out of 5 times), I can safely say, this is one cool place to live. In one day, you are exposed to so much, triggering numerous, conflicting emotions from happiness when someone understands your basic Vietnamese to frustration after sitting in traffic for an hour to utter amazement at how a simple Chinese lantern actually can contain 30 different parts needed to assemble it properly. No day is easy and every new one proves to be more challenging than the last, but you learn something new every day. From vocabulary to what not to do, being a foreigner in a city like Vietnam is a lesson in patience, appreciation of new culture (food included) and learning how to laugh at the daily nuisances that come your way.

     I just started a four-week intensive course in teaching English as a foreign language and, so far, I am finding the class to be enlightening. I look forward to teaching my first class this week.

 

I’ll keep you posted…

Another rainy day in Saigon and Memories of BBB

Hello all,

It's 9:30pm Saigon time and it's still raining. This is the third rainstorm of the day and has lasted five hours. When they say rainy season, it is no exaggeration. In fact, most of one’s day is spent watching those ominous ,cumulonimbus clouds and plotting how to get what you need to get done before the next downpour. Philip and I, almost un-phased at this point by the rain, trudged through the busy streets in matching ponchos, as the motos zipped by, displaying a wide range of ponchos in countless designs, forming a colorful sea both pleasing and frightening to the eye. How “in” we feel having ponchos of our own! We searched for routers, bug zappers and badminton birdies, only finding the latter, which while navigating a rainstorm, is quite impressive! Neither drenched nor squashed, we had found ourselves back into reality after a weekend away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
This past weekend, we traveled to Mui Ne, a fishing village-turned- beach resort, a five hour bus ride from the city. Mui Ne is actually only 2 hours or so from HCMC but given the one-lane highway, trucks with a maximum speed of 30 mph and unpredictable weather, arriving in five hours is quite lucky. Mui Ne is a town of many facets. It seeks to embody the ultimate vacation-destination ideal, complete with golf course, five-star resort(s) and a beautiful beach. Yet, with the constant construction and thirst for more build-up beachside, roadside (a one-lane highway) is not as relaxing. Motos still zip up and down, even taxis but the same vigilance about crossing the street in Saigon is needed in Mui Ne. Still the sand, ocean and beach bars create a beautiful oasis that transports the visitor, if only for a moment, to a world of tranquility and of course banana shakes!
We indulged in the three B’s of Mui Ne: Beach, bungalows and banana shakes…. Not forgetting of course Philip’s fourth and ultra important B: Beer! Our hotel, Sunrise Resort, was a the perfect example of Mui Ne- beachside. With rooms surrounding a large, infinity pool and the beach just steps away, we were in heaven. The schema of the weekend went something like this: Wake-up, eat a banana pancake (sort of like an omelette marries a crepe with bananas), lay out by the pool with multiple swims to cool off, lunch at Lam Tong (beachside restaurant with seafood specialties like shrimp with garlic and lemongrass and squid with tamarind sauce among others), a dip in the ocean or a walk on the beach, a nap with the AC on full-blast, dinner, drinks at a beach bar, sleep. Besides the relaxation aspect, the weekend was truly memorable. We met some fellow expats, who have been living in Saigon for several years and were intrigued by their experiences. Each had a different story to tell and offered sound advice about living in Vietnam. It was refreshing to meet new, interesting people with very different backgrounds from our own, yet all sharing the common thread of choosing to live in Saigon.
Sunday afternoon, as the bus weaved its way back to the city and another rainstorm began, we welcomed the traffic and busy streets we had left on Friday night and did the only thing you can do: We took a deep breath and swam home. This week should prove to be a wet one full of more errands. Hopefully by the weekend, we will be in the “decorating” phase of putting together our new home.
I’ll keep you posted…

New Kids on the Block

Hello from HCMC,
Since my last blog, we have moved into our humble abode on Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Street in District 3. Nam Ky Khoi Nghia is a funny street because it acts as both a main intersection bustling with traffic and then transforms into a small side street (once you are far enough) with street vendors and small cafes/restaurants. Our house is off of the main portion of the street tucked into a meandering alley with about 25-30 other small houses. Part of the house is outside (the bottom floor) and the top floor is more of the “apartment” where we spend most of our time, especially when the heat is overwhelming. Most of the weekend was spent “setting up” the apartment so that it is partially livable- including buying dishes, fans, two sets of wicker drawers and some basic food for the refrigerator. If you are familiar with Monoprix in Paris, Co-op mart in Saigon is very similar. On one side of the store, you have home appliances, towels, toiletries, even clothes; while on the other side, you have a grocery store. I enjoy the one-stop shopping though not being able to read what is in which aisle can be daunting.
The neighborhood in which we live is very different from the location of our guest house. We are practically the only foreigners and by nature, we are often the subject of countless stares. At the same time, most of our neighbors seem slightly intrigued by the “new people in town” and some even try to start up conversations. I enjoy the chance to say hello and how are you, but often stumble with the pronunciation and do not get much further than simply, Hi. It’s interesting to stick out here, you cannot really tell whether people are interested or bothered by your presence or perhaps they are unmoved completely. I wonder how I would feel, though New York is diverse in a way that it would not be too shocking to see people that look “different” from you right next door. It’s a funny position to be in, one that is both challenging and humbling. An unknown turf and a language that sounds about as easy to learn as deriving the cure for a rare disease. On the whole, the people we’ve met in passing, from restaurant personnel to shopkeepers and neighbors, have been welcoming and helpful and interested in expressing themselves in English as we strive to understand certain basic Vietnamese words like “the check” and “to take home” which "mang ve", I think pronounced like oy vey.

A bit of History…
Last week, before the major move, I took in some of the cultural sights and I wanted to mention my experiences briefly. The first major monument of interest in HCMC (says the Lonely Planet masters) is the Reunification Palace, a very modern-looking building, seemingly frozen in time. Walking through the building, you realize that this landmark has remained virtually untouched since April 1975 when the Republic of Vietnam was overthrown. The upper floors are simply different meeting rooms, roped off to the public, but in the basement is the old communications center with long-winding tunnels and multiple rooms equipped with differenct telecommunication equipment and maps. The second stop on my cultural quest was the War Remnants museum (very close to the Reunification Palace). This was a difficult museum to walk through, as it focuses on photographs from the war and specifically atrocities committed through the emotional words of the victims and their families. Outside of the museum, you can see examples of various fighter planes.
Daily life here (or as it seems to be taking form) is always eventful. There is no such thing as easy, but it is definitely not a struggle that one might think when traveling to a new place for the first time….albeit one that is 8,000 miles away from home. People eat, sleep, work and enjoy themselves and their joie de vivre is evident. For me, a hassle-free few hours of avoiding motos and enjoying a banana shake in an air-conditioned café is blissful. Did I mention you can buy DVDs for 50 cents here? The quality is pretty good and, as those of you who know me and my collection well, this type of shopping is very much up my alley. This week, I will have a second Vietnamese lesson and travel to one of the closer beaches (About four hours from HCMC by bus) to escape for the weekend. Sand, water and more banana shakes, here we come!
I’ll keep you posted…

Floods, Real Estate and Harry Potter

Hi devoted followers,

I apologize in advance for the lack of photo, I have been attempting to take some good shots but the rainy season makes the whole procecss a bit difficult. Each day (or that seems to be the trend) from about 12:30pm to 2:00pm, Saigon is submerged in a downpour with all the fixin's: thunder, lightning, kids swimming in the streets, you name it. In fact, I took a taxi to the cinema yesterday and a child was surfing on cardboard tied to the end of the cab! It was sort of frightening, but I wish I had my camera at that moment. The driver seemed unaffected, even when I gestured "Child on back of cab". That's the language barrier thing again. I have mastered the name of the big street near our hotel and the word no "khong". Thank you is "cam on" but this word I say very quietly because I am not exactly sure how one pronounces it. When a Vietnmaese person says thank you, it's very tough to replicate that sound. I am actually taking a Vietnamese lesson today, so perhaps by my next blog I will fluently write and speak in native tongue. At least I can dream about it...
On another topic, getting an apartment in Saigon is no easy task when you don't speak Vietnamese. In fact, I must thank my friend Hau at HSBC for acting as the middle man between Philip and me, the real estate broker and the owner. We found a cute house in a more residential part of the city (District 3) off of a main street. It's two stories with kitchen and dining room on the ground floor and bedroom/bath/living area upstairs. Everything is stone and wood and very unique. There is a lot of light and we even have a small garden upstairs. Most of the apartments for rent to expats are in buildings and have a typical set up, like in a college dorm. Bed, bathroom, kitchen, maybe a couch. It's clean but extremely uninteresting. We were lucky to find this place, but we only signed a three-month lease, in case in the end we prefer the sterile, institution-like apartments made for "foreigners".
As negotiations began, I realized that putting down a deposit for an apartment in Saigon is not as easy as writing a check in NY. Most owners prefer cash and the atms usually do not allow such large sums of money to be taken out. The Answer: International banks. Thanks to Citibank and HSBC we were able to do what needed to be done, but not without certain pitfalls along the way: Philip's atm card was eaten by a machine, though we were able to retrieve it and I couldn't seem to explain the situation to the owner who didn't understand why we weren't showing up with millions of dong for her. All's well that ends well, and by Friday, we will have the keys to our new place!
With the apartment situation squared away, I wondered what one does on a rainy day in Saigon. I decided I would try what anyone would do back home and I headed off to the movies. Of course I had to call a cab that practically drove into the hotel in order to avoid the water that was about knee-deep by 2:00pm. Don't worry, parents, it drains out fast and was gone by nightfall. In any case, I headed to "Galaxy Cinema" a movie theater that plays all the American movies and, just my luck at the moment, Harry Potter! As many of my followers know, I tried to see this movie countless times back in NY and was never successful due to extenuating circumstances, but this time, nothing was going to stop me from seeing Dumbledore kick the bucket. Sorry people if you haven't read or seen the movie, but all avid followers are aware of this sad fact.
As I walked into the theater, they took my temperature and sprayed my hands with sanitizer, not your typical Loews, huh? At the ticket counter, they showed me a huge computer screen and I chose which "assigned" seat I wanted. It was more of my pointing and their saying, "yes yes good". The cost: $2.50. The popcorn is not something I would try again, it's sweet and not salty, sort of like kettle corn but not exactly satisfying when you don't expect that type of taste, but then again, for $1, it was pretty "sweet". Inside the theater you see something very typical in Saigon-lots and lots of signage. In this theater, Heineken was being advertised and each seat had a little heineken cloth over it. Everywhere in Saigon from bars to cafes and restaurants there is always a product being promoted, either a beer (usually) or a soda like Pepsi and there is signage all over. So, I sat in my Heineken seat, drinking bottled water with a straw and watched as other people filed in for the movie. With more than 250 seats in the theater and probably about 30 people attending the show, everyone chose to sit in the same general area, unlike in the States where you sit as far away from people as possible. 2.5 hours later, I sauntered out with a hop in my step (I love Harry and I love teenage angst) and met up with Philip at Bin Thahn, the market that at night is outside and has a number of very good food stalls at which to eat dinner. We devoured Vietnamese summer rolls, sugar cane shrimp and some weird pork thing that I avoided, while watching people (both locals and foreigners) walking through the market. By 8pm it's cool enough not to be sweating and the feeling is blissful after a day of sweltering heat. I cannot say I didn't enjoy my rainy day in Saigon, but tomorrow, hopefully the gods will wait till I visit the Reunification Palace before they decide to go bowling. ha ha ha
I'll keep you posted!

18,000 Dong to the Dollar

Hello!

I am currently writing you from our bathroom floor-yes, it is 3am and the insomnia has kicked in, perfect timing for blogging. Yesterday (Saturday) was my first real day in Vietnam and as I sweat through the streets, I was pleasantly surprised and equally engaged by what I saw. Saigon has a reputation of being dirty and loud (think lots of motos buzzing around at one time), but this was not at all the impression I had as we hiked our way from District 1 (Central Saigon) to District 3 (more residential, but still quite central with many expats living there). The streets and sidewalks are filled with motos, making crossing the street a royal challenge. I regressed back to kindergarten when you were indoctrinated to hold hands, look both ways and then cross vigilantly and carefully...times about fifty. Normally, the motos go around you if you are careful, but the cars, those you have to actually put your hand out so they know to stop. By the end of the day, I was getting the hang of it, but it definitely proved to be a "shocking" difference between Southeast Asia and home. Besides motos and moto shops, each street is strewn with outside stores selling everything from Louis Vuitton (real or fake, you couldn't even tell) to Northface with many, many more brands to name. Yet, the sleeziness that usually accompanies stores that invade the sidewalk (think Canal Street) is somewhat absent here. It's a way of life and it's everywhere. In between the shops are countless cafes and restaurants with plastic tables and chairs for seating. A special noodle soup (Pho) is one of the many specialities and with the 95 degree heat, I was not yet ready to pick up that traditional Vietnamese habit of eating soup in the sun.
Later that evening, however, we tried one of the better restaurants in Saigon (picture to your right) and I was blown away. Everything from the rice to the produce tasted better than I could imagine, piquing senses I was not even sure I had. We ordered for two: A lotus salad (shrimp, pork, mangos and other spices), a shrimp pancake, Vietnamese spring rolls, a pork dish with rice that I steered away from, nervous my stomach wouldn't be able to handle it...and noodles! Finally some real noodles have entered the picture. They were typical rice noodles and you eat them along with a spring roll and a lettuce cup. Delicious combination. What makes this restaurant particularly interesting is that all the cooking is on display, much like many of the small restaurants around the city. You are seated and then have the option to go to each station and decide what you want (See picture).
Six dishes and two desserts later, we happily left with a bill of fourteen dollars. Incredible.
As we fell back into our air-conditioned room, I thought that it was a perfect first day. Tomorrow (or today for me) is apartment-hunting day and I look forward to divulging all the secrets of Vietnamese realty to you in the next few days!
I'll keep you posted...