The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

I found an apartment with a great view of the city. It's not the nicest building but it's a pretty good location and the apartment itself can be made nice and it has a bathroom, kitchen, living room, and spare bedroom/study.

My landlord demanded one month's rent up front plus two months' rent for the security deposit, for a total of $1200, or 20,000,000 VND. In cash.

It is difficult to exaggerate what a momentous sum $1200 US is in Vietnam. That's roughly the national per capita GDP. Demanding it in cash is like asking for a suitcase full of money.

But, when in Rome...

From the beggining, there was trouble. The money I thought would be in my account on Sunday wasn't there on Monday. Then I couldn't take out enough from the ATM on Monday. The I still couldn't take out enough on Tuesday. The nadir was having my Vietnamese motorbike driver take me from bank to bank seeing if they would dispense the necessary cash (they did not).

Finally I had my Vietnamese fixer show up in the middle up the night with the last 4 million VND. I was finally able to pay him back today.

So I survived. But it wasn't easy.

All's Fair...

The other day I was wandering around Diamond Plaza, Saigon's swankiest shopping mall, when I noticed the following advertisement pasted onto the wall:

Goodness, that's an unusual-looking Vietnamese woman; she rather looks as if she's been bleached. What's she selling?:

Ah.

I can't say I wasn't warned. Most of the women here wear hats, gloves, and masks when they go outside - partly because of the pollution but also to avoid a suntan. My own pallor has gotten a number of admiring comments from women (men don't seem to care whether they tan or not).

At heart, this is a class issue and not a racial one. Yes, Vietnamese people want to look 'white' - but white as in the literal color and not as in Caucasian. This stems from the agricultural nature of society, where only the rich and leisurely can afford to stay out of the sun.

In one sense I suppose it's unfortunate that people feel the need to alter their appearance so drastically to feel beautiful, on the other hand people in the West do the exact same thing in the other direction, going to tanning salons and giving themselves skin cancer on the beach.

I am curious, though: as a practical matter, wouldn't a whitening deodorant (assuming it comes in powder form) make a person look uneven and streaky?

1 Class Down...

300 to go?

A few days ago I taught my first genuine English class. Unfortunately, due to this being the transitional week between summer school and regular school, some genius decided to schedule three 45-minute 6th-grade classes in a row. With the same students. And that's what I had to teach.

It could've been worse. I actually taught for the first session and by then their attention was pretty much used up, so I played some high-energy games with them in an effort to wear them down.

Really, though, the important thing is that I survived...

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

Most history books will tell you that after crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace in 1975 the first official act of the victorious Communists was to rename Saigon, that symbol of Western decadence and imperialism, after the late hero of Vietnamese unity and the People's War, Ho Chi Minh. Now, the clumsy title of Ho Chi Minh City is rigidly enforced by the nation's Communist overlords in stark denial of the city's rich history, and woe betide anyone caught calling it 'Saigon'.

The truth is a bit more complicated. For one thing, the vast majority of what is now Ho Chi Minh City is manifestly not Saigon. After the end of the war and reunification the city underwent such massive and rapid expansion that many suburbs and outlying small towns were swallowed up. The most famous example of this being Cholon aka Chinatown aka District 5, which until the 1960s at least was several miles away from Saigon. Of the city's 24 urban and suburban districts, only three or four were even partially incorporated into Saigon before the 1970s.

Also, there's nothing subversive about using the old title. Most Vietnamese will use the terms interchangeably, and if they don't it's usually to distinguish the modern city from the old historic center. The government itself doesn't seem to care; the airport code is SGN, and even the official city tourism office is called SaigonTourist.

Of course, Saigon is a lot easier and sexier than Ho Chi Minh City, so I'll stick with that.

Street Eats

I'm not the first person to 'discover' the joys and pitfalls of street food in Vietnam, and no wonder. It's head and shoulders above what you'd find in any other country I've been to, and it's everywhere.

The Vietnamese concept of a 'restaurant' is a great deal more complex than in the West, where you basically have street stalls, sit-down restaurants with menus, and not a great deal in between. In Vietnam there is a huge gray area in between those two. I have tried to pin down some of the gradations:

1. Proper street stalls, usually selling sandwiches (banh mi), small fried doughnuts with sesame seeds, or fruit.

2. One-pot establishments with only one thing to order, usually a soup or rice dish - actually, usually pho.

3. Same as above, but with several dishes behind glass to choose from.

At this point, the eatery in question probably still doesn't have its own piece of real estate. Instead it will have three or four plastic tables with small plastic stools. On those tables (depending on the dish) will be anything up to and including: a toilet-paper dispenser in lieu of napkins, a small bowl of chili oil/chili sauce/fresh chilis, fresh herbs like basil and coriander, bean sprouts, nuoc nam (Vietnamese fish sauce), soy sauce, lime wedges, and salt, as well as chopsticks, forks, and spoons (but never knives).

The picture above is a good example of 2. It was where I usually got breakfast and it served delicious grilled pork com tam, or pork ribs over rice (20,000 VND).

4. Now the restaurants has its own address and maybe even a menu, though usually written on the wall rather than on paper. The decor is still minimalist, by which I mean cheap.

5. Now all the cooking takes place out of sight and there is a printed menu, though the english translation (if there is one) may take sme effort to figure out.

6. Western-style restaurants with waiters and menus (usually in Vietnamese and English - the menus, not the waiters).

Some words of caution: for what I assume are reasons of economy, Vietnamese dishes often leave the bones in, including in soups and stir-fries, which can be a hassle. They will also laugh at you if you can't use chopsticks right.

One last thing: the Vietnamese concept of how much food makes a filling meal is very different from the US, which is not surprising. I was hungry the entire first week here, and others simply ordered two servings of everything. As a result I lost five pounds - the Vietnamese Diet.