Don't Drink the Water

I was asked by Donson the other day if they have sports drinks here in Vietnam, like Gatorade, or Powerade.

'No, I don't think so. I haven't seen any', I said.

'I wonder if you can get them into it?' he asked me.

  

Here is a typically cryptic statement by Donson. About half the things he says, I like to think of it as a masterstroke of Dadaist ambiguity. Or as he would self-describe it, 'I'm just bad at explaining things.' With about 20 minutes of prodding, usually I get down to the bottom of it, and typical of a poet, his off-kilter statements always mean a whole lot under the surface, full of unconventional wisdom and genuine insight.

Our little conversation was through online chatting, and since we are twelve time zones away from each other and the time in which I can talk to everybody back home is through a very small window, I didn't exactly feel like questioning what he meant by it, so I just let it slip by and continued our timely conversation about the earthquake and Nostradamus and stuff. 

I kept thinking about that question, about Gatorade. About how Gatorade, or Powerade, could possibly fit into the picture with my time here in Sapa, a small town known for the congregation of many ethnic minorities like the Hmong and Red Dzao, who have been making their living as experts in rice farming for centuries. Their villages outside of Sapa, in which they still reside, aside from the occasional television or ubiquitous cellular phone, wouldn't look too different than it probably did a few centuries ago. My students still cook rice in a large cast iron pot and a wood fire at the school, their clothing is lavishly adorned with their own stitchwork, and long treks and descents down mountains are done in plastic jelly slippers that wouldn't pass quality control at Family Dollar.

Regardless, the jagged terrain of Northern Vietnam is their dancefloor, and the ease in which they traverse it is made all the more mesmerizing due to their nonchalance while doing so. Their walking and climbing prowess reminds me of Tom Hulce's portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus, a man so thoroughly talented at what he does that he is incapable of even comprehending his superiority. Instead, all he could do is let out little giggles of disbelief as he casually improvises an eternal masterpiece. My students' giggling comes in the form of watching my fellow teachers and me try to follow them down a mountain with their sweat-less ease. They're not boasting, they just don't understand how we could be so uncoordinated at walking on our own two legs. 

Okay, this isn't very informative but I tried to snap a video without
Mai's knowledge and clicked record too late.

So does the Gatorade question allude to the fact that I need to teach these kids some athleticism, to inform them on how to take care of their bodies through competitive sport? There is no other sport here but soccer, and there is nothing that I can teach them concerning that weird game where you pretend you have no arms. Soccer obsession is of course, like everywhere else, very real here: one of my students, since my first day, has insisted on going by the name Fabregas (he of Arsenal fame, for us Americans).

One day recently, my coworker Sharon brought up an interesting revelation immediately following class.

“Every time I go to the bathroom at the school, I never have to wait. Not once have I seen it occupied.”  Thinking a bit, I realize I’d never run into that problem either. We’ve got on average of about 25 kids in the class, one bathroom in use, and yet there’s never once been a conflict with me or the other teachers.

“I just don’t think they ever have to pee,” Sharon continued.

As a general rule, we all have lunch and dinner with the students, meals cooked by the students and served on a long table with the teachers interspersed amongst our pupils. I think it’s very old fashioned and a great idea, creating quicker bonds and is a way for the students to repay their teachers with their cooking. Plus the food is pretty good, too. We all get our bowl of rice in front of us, chopsticks, and generally some morning glory with garlic, tofu with crushed tomatoes, pumpkin stew, and chicken ‘bacon’. The rice is plentiful, and we often help ourselves to multiple bowls. The only thing we don’t have is water, or a glass to drink out of at the table. Not just water, but no tea or any other kind of beverage. This actually suits me fine, since I don’t drink much water while I eat, yet the girls are so accommodating with all of the teachers’ needs, I do find it surprising that none of it is even offered.

I do know there’s probably some pretty logical reasons why the Hmong, throughout their history, have not drunk much water, but I’m not just talking about at the dinner table. When I go on treks with my students, we’re not talking about an hour stroll on flat roads. The ascents are easily about 50+ degrees incline for long stretches of time, and we’ll go a total of about 6 hours in a day, so to not have a sip of water during the entire trek is remarkable. And it’s not because we don’t offer it to the students; of course we’re carrying those giant grain-silo sized bottles, and they’ve never once taken us up on our offer of water. On top of that, our students often even feel the need to carry one of our backpacks, where it can easily, from what I can estimate, weigh about a third of their body weight. Even then, not even a sip.

So what is all this about having 8-12 glasses a day. I’ve heard it’s essential, and I’ve also read it’s hogwash. I think I’m going to have to lean towards hogwash now. Personally, I’m still going to do my part in fulfilling that water quota that’s been pounded into head, but human physiology can’t be all that different from people to people. Maybe we’re being had by some Coke and Pepsi instigated bottled water fallacy. But my students, who are physically small in stature but tough as titanium nails in just about every facet of their life, are doing it with what literally might be zero drinking water. Maybe they don’t like water. Maybe they need Gatorade. Maybe I’m wasting my time with English; I cannot think of a better way to wave my American flag than to fight for the Western-physician recommended nutritional plan of double digit glasses of water a day. I honestly wish I was cool enough to nix water for life.

Is that what you meant, Donson? How did you know about this fascinating little tidbit about my students? Yes! I do want to get them into Gatorade. I want to continue my imperialistic American duty by indoctrinating my students with the importance of having a Sigg and to get them hooked on Voss water.

In the realm of sports, I’ve competed against the girls in only one: foosball. They’re good enough at that to where I have about an 0-25 record against them. 

Whoa whoa yeah yeah-hee

If anybody is familiar with Tommy Lee, drummer of Motley Crue and
Chairman of the Rotary Club Santa Monica Chapter, you might know that he once awed the heavy metal world by doing a series of drum solos upside-down at the Crue's live shows (yes, I can call them the Crue because I actually know a couple of their albums [thanks, Kimling]).

Here is Lee, in the process of being turned upside down.

I don't know the relationship between playing an instrument upside down and looking cool, but if Ozzy Osbourne set the world on fire by eating a live bat at one of his shows, I guess Lee figured looking like a bat at his would do the job. Of course, people went batshit all over it, resulting in the charmed life, undying love of the adoring masses, and the unanimous respect and admiration from Nobel laureates that we all associate with Tommy Lee. 

There is a twelve hour differential in Vietnam from Central Standard Time USA, so I'm exactly half a world away from Texas. No matter what all these foreigners I've met in the last month, from all over the world, tell me, USA really is the center of the world. That's why we're in the center of all the world maps (the ones printed in the U.S, at least), duh. Since the USA really is #1 ("USA Number one!", right Peter?), we are always upright, and everyone else is either about to tip over, or hanging completely upside-down.  I'm dangling for my life here in Southeast Asia. To top it off, I'm living in the shadows of the highest point in Vietnam, ever so closer to falling off into space.

I've been upside-down from my loved ones for about a month now, and what do I get? Where's my luxury bus with a built-in Atari and top of the line high-bias cassette deck by Emerson? Where's my lucrative clothing endorsements from Gloria Vanderbilt and Etonic? Where are my groupies in jeans with pink tassles and flammable hair? I'm looking around. Nowhere to be found.

Vietnam is where I'm at and happy to be. That said, I miss everyone back at home enough to disguise it with writing multiple paragraphs about a hair metal has-been, so let's go the soft-rock route; to everybody close enough to read this stuff, Leo Sayer said it best: I love you more than I can say.

Sapa

Were I in a 70's prog-rock band, I'd have played all of my shows in Sapa for the free fog machine.

If I started my own winter wear label to be sold at JC Penny

and Montgomery Ward, I'd call it Sapa Fog.

If I opened up a pho restaurant here, I'd call it

Phog

I’ve seen a jovial, skillful hackey-sack game become unplayable with the ball in mid-air due to the onset of aggressive, impromptu fog here in Sapa. The street vendors and market stalls are at the mercy of the weather’s unpredictability, where the temperature can drop 15 degrees in seconds and make the streets so completely blurry that one cannot see 10 feet in front of them, bringing business activity down to its knees. 

It's sad, frankly, that my introduction to Sapa involves the mundane reality of its fog. It's not really that big of a deal. It's cold for Vietnam, but not really all that cold, as it's still winter. Yes, the fog is somewhat unique, but it becomes a nuisance very quickly and unremarkable equally fast. I speak of the fog for the same reason other people speak about the weather when talking to strangers: you don't know what else to talk about. You might really want to say something much more personal, but you stick to the weather, as it's safe and easy. Why can't you get personal? Because you might not do justice to sincerity. Stick to the surface. Show a bunch of mediocre photos and keep it simple.

Entrance to my hotel. The lady sweeping: expert sweeper, bad 

at hospitality.

Maybe this is common in other countries, but do hotels usually close?

"We close at 11," the owners of the hotel tell me. 

"What if I stay out until past 11?" I ask very reasonably.

"We close at 11," I'm retold in exactly the same manner.

I'm not talking about the hotel staff closing the front desk, or to the restaurant, or to the other amenities usually available at hotels. I'm talking about a guest being shut out of their rooms if they get back too late, locked out at the front door of the hotel. It's a bit of a shock, as it's a relatively decent hotel. If this is normal, then just call me unworldly.

View from my balcony

Balcony view panned to the right from 

previous photo. Hoang Lien Mountain Range is in the distance.

View from above.

Honestly, one of my favorite things about being in Vietnam is randomly hearing a lone man, woman, or child shriek at the top of their lungs, when the streets are completely silent "Im di! (Shut your mouth!)", "Toi biet! (I know!)",  "Sua! (Milk! or Fix!, I'm not entirely sure which they meant at the moment)" or something to that extent. I often hear group shouting or laughter in Vietnamese, usually from some bar, of course, but when I hear that lone blast of scattershot Vietnamese from my balcony, it's very amusing, and always a happy reminder of where I'm at.  

I came into this post with the idea that I'd make it photo-centric because I've neglected to post anything in the past couple of weeks, and since Sapa is a very scenic town, it would only make sense to at least give a basic rundown of what I've been seeing for the past fortnight. I don't like many of the photos (my camera is far too limited lens-wise), though, but I've basically been at a loss for words, so I found myself not wanting to post any photos nor write anything that wouldn't do right by Sapa. There's plenty to write about. I reckon there cannot be too many places like this in the world. 

It has only recently dawned on me that the largest reason for my befuddlement is that I’ve never spent significant time in a small town. One could travel from one end of Sapa to the other in about 5 minutes on a motorbike, and I’m thinking I wouldn’t even make it out to the old Phar-Mor by Almeda from Mom and Dad’s place in 15. It's obviously not that big of a town, and the grand total of tourists from abroad wouldn't figure so high either, however, the ratio of tourists to locals is likely pretty high, as evidenced by the clientele at the coffee house I'm writing this in: I'm surrounded by French, German, Vietnamese, British, and Norwegians or Swedes (one is sporting a Mayhem t-shirt, so I figure a Scandinavian). Yet it's a small town. A small Vietnamese mountain town. I don't know if I knew there were mountains in Vietnam a couple of years ago. A town where my supervisor at work gave me the telltale "You do one thing in Sapa, and the next day, everyone knows about it," advice when I first arrived in town. Surely a part of why I'm hesitant to write much, or anything at all, is that I feel I might be violating some type of small town code by doing so. 

Furthermore, you see, I have been teaching while I've been here. I've been teaching some very special students who come from very special circumstances, are currently living very demanding and unique lives, and are likely to have very singular and bright futures ahead of them if they play their cards right. I want to respect the boundaries of the classroom and not make mention of them outside of it, but as a whole bunch of my time has been spent working with them since I've been in Sapa, that leaves me not much to write about without feeling a bit uneasy. I even debated putting up the previous photos of two of my students, though I feel it's a bit more okay as it was a weekend trek they took me and my fellow teachers on, on a Sunday and outside of the classroom. 

What to write about when I feel I cannot write about it, and what to snap photos of with a camera I have no confidence in? I think I can only write about Sapa once I leave.

Fansipan in the distance.

Mt. Fansipan is the highest point in Vietnam at 3,143 meters. It looms over Sapa like an ever watchful mother. This is not just some fancy metaphor. All I could see  when I first laid my eyes upon it is my mother's very iconic signature (at least to the members of my family). This photo doesn't quite capture its similarities to Mom's signature, as the jagged peaks in person are just as dramatic as Mom's spastic-heart monitor autograph. I think of you, Mom, every time I see it, and I was looking at it when I spoke to you on the phone during your birthday. I love you, Mom. Happy Ash Wednesday.

Students, Sugarcane, and I

Even more treacherous than it looks. They don't listen to their teachers on a Sunday, though.

Writing more very soon. Love, David.

Strange, I've Seen That Face Before

Normal sleeping hours were never usually my strong point, and after four days here, it's been more erratic than normal. Maybe it's the loud clanging of tin bowls down the street from me at six in the morning, but I've been getting an average of about three and a half hours of sleep a night. I'm not Donald Trump or Martha Stewart, so that's just not going to do. A couple of days ago I went to get some pho, then next door to get some tea, where I was slurring my words, asking for hot che (a dessert) instead of hot tra (tea). The girl at the counter asked me if I meant tra, knowing full well that I did, as the name of the cafe was 'Tra'. She said it cost 17,000 dongs, wherein I gave her a 100,000 dong bill and was awaiting my change. It was actually a 10,000 dong bill in my hands, so she just looked at me, waiting for me to catch my gaffe. She probably waited a lot longer than she had wanted to, because she ended up correcting me.


"Go have a seat, I'll give you the tea at your table," the clerk explained to me.


About half the Vietnamese cafes here are outdoor affairs, where you drink on those little plastic chairs you find at Asian Flea Markets, and the other half are typical cafes we'd see in the West. I purposely chose a Western style cafe because I wanted the coziness and comfort of the indoors, as it was very nippy and in the low 50's. I found my table next to the entrance door, and by the time she came with my tea (a sad little cup with a Lipton brand teabag steeping amber colored bitterness), my head was leaned up against the wood paneling, eyes in a daze and the woodgrain forming an imprint on my cheeks.


I went back to the hotel for a nap.


That four hour nap I had was one of those incredible ones where you know you're having a nap all the while enjoying the physical benefits of napping. Meaning, I'm basically two people during this nap. One, I'm the person napping, and I don't know what in the world is going on other than sleep. The other person is this separate entity you become, this guardian angel of napping, where your sole duty is to watch over yourself sleeping, where you are awake just enough to revel in the fact that you are having the sleep of ages. If that wasn't articulated in a satisfactory manner, I feel bad for you, as you've never had one of those naps and you must think you're the shit for owning the Miss Universe pageant.


One of the drawbacks of such decadence is major disorientation upon waking up. In the past, for me, I always woke up right at sunset, had the nastiest taste on my mouth, and most inconveniently, a Phil Collins song would find its way to my ears somehow, some way. Two days ago, it was already dark, I immediately chewed a piece of gum upon awakening, and Grace Jones was humming in my ears when I stepped out onto the streets, so things had improved from the past. Nevertheless, this night felt different from previous nights in Hanoi.

Northwest of Hoan Kiem Lake

Usually a popular photo taking location north of Hoan Kiem

At Non Son, a chain hat and moto-helmet store

Nguyen Thien Thuat, hub for street food

High ceilings at Pho Gia Truyen

The old gates of Cua o Quan Chuong

Couldn't tell what fruits these were

Knowing that I would be in Hanoi for a lot longer than my initial week here before Sapa, I am trying to keep a lot of its attractions and mysteries undone and unsolved until I get back for the longer haul. I know I'm going to miss the winter weather and I hope nights like these do not disappear along with it. Each little step you took were the streets whispering a story. Every which way you turned and everything in your line of sight was fit for a Christopher Doyle or Robby Muller-shot film. Coincidences would be the norm, not the exception.

As it was both cold and starting to drizzle heavily, I was thinking to myself some scotch would do. I had only been to a place for a drink the night before, had liked it, and wanted to go back. What can be nice about being in a new place is the lack of options floating inside your head - if you liked a place, why mess with a good thing? You go back. I'm walking up Ta Hien to get to Mao's Red Lounge, one of those bars that will always make it into Rough Guide and Lonely Planet as it attracts both locals and tourists equally. 

Mao's Red Lounge patrons can bring their own music! Obviously, there is a dark side to this. I heard Heart's "These Dreams", or whatever it's called, the first night I came here.

Unfortunately, there was not a single customer inside, and I didn't want to be that guy in the bar drinking alone, so I decided against going in. I continued walking north on Ta Hien to look for some of the other notable bars on the street. Alas, the Cheeky Quarter, Tet, and the Funky Monkey were also empty, so I walked back down south on Ta Hien to retrace my steps back from the way I came, since some prankster in the Hanoi Civic Planning Authority thought it would be funny to arbitrarily change the name of the streets every few blocks, making it very easy to get lost in the Old Quarter. Walking halfway between the Cheeky Quarter and Mao's Red Lounge, I notice a bright building, the only one painted white on the street, advertising Fresh Juices and Coffee at Low Low prices. Juice also sounded nice at the time, so I walked in.

Pansy

Calling itself Pansy, with unabashedly proud superlatives stickered to its windows, I thought this would be some Japanese inspired, super-clean, super-cutesy little boutique-y dessert establishment aimed at little kids. I stepped through its glass doors and saw a small huddle of teens around a table, hoping to catch a glance at what they were drinking in order to get the same for myself. They weren't drinking anything, so I looked for the front desk or main menu on the wall with the list of drinks. That was nowhere to be found. I stood there for a very long ten seconds before the oldest girl of the group, probably 18, came to me with a menu in hand.

"You wanted to order something?" she sincerely asked me.

"Juice?" I asked in English. 

In the less than a minute that I was in there, a few things were painfully obvious to me. First off, I was their first customer of the day. It was 7:45 pm. Second, I could have been the first customer since Pansy's inception. Now, I don't know when exactly their grand opening was, but there was absolutely nothing about Pansy that would suggest it was even a business. 

"Hey!" the head teenager screamed up the staircase to the right of entrance. "Hey! We got a customer here, he's going to come up!"

She smiled and pointed the way, handing me the menu as I made my way up.

"Ooh! Take off your shoes!" she asked of me after I was already halfway.

I walked back down to take off my shoes, embarrassed that I didn't notice the pile at the foot of the staircase. I felt more naked than I should have with only my socks on. I couldn't know what to expect what was upstairs with how professional things were downstairs. For all I knew, some fat slob watching Paris By Night could be clipping his toenails on one of those little pink plastic chairs, angry that I interrupted his nightly routine.

Before catching sight of what was going on upstairs, I banged my head on the low-hung ceiling above the staircase. It was hard enough to make me wince, and though I don't know if anyone actually saw me smash it, a huge gathering of teens, about eight of them, saw me grimacing as I made my entrance. They were playing cards around a small plastic table, all sitting Indian style, all looking at me in exactly the way you'd expect them to if some stranger interlopes on your nightly fun with a mean look on his face.

"Please, sit on the balcony," the head teen asked of me.

She didn't have to ask me twice. I am just about to be completely in the balcony when I take a closer look at these kids and notice that they look awfully familiar.  Just the day before, on Valentine's Day in KFC, a scenester-ish looking clique of girls, one with Paul McCartney hair circa Shea Stadium dyed lime green and about 4'6" tall, sat next to me giggling, making jokes, crunching on fried chicken. In fact, that entire group of girls, upon closer inspection, were all there, along with their respective boyfriends, slapping down the cards in defiant fashion as they razzed their opponents across the table. They saw me looking at them long enough to realize that I was the guy eating by himself at the fancily decorated KFC the day before. They looked at each other for a brief second, but wasted little time in going back to playing cards.

The empty seat next to me

I understand this story would be a lot more impressive if I had actually described these girls the day that I had initially seen them  in order to accentuate the fortuitous accident, but alas, you're just going to have to take my word for it. Hanoi is a city of 6 million + people, and here I have, by nothing short of a miraculous coincidence, stumbled upon their little social hall. 

I knew then I had hit the jackpot. Yes, my cousin Chinh showed me around the city that second day I was here, but he is 29 with a three year old boy and another girl on the way, so he wasn't a part of the youth culture anymore. Of course I often think about what my other self in Vietnam would be like had we not emigrated from here. I also think the existence of youth culture, no matter how derivative or insipid it may be, is indicative of a nation's vitality. If kids are allowed to be kids, then the adults are doing their job.

I settled myself out on the balcony, watching the kids through a slit of the gossamer thin purple curtains which obstructed my full view of the card game ensuing behind me. The balcony was carpeted with artificial turf you'd find on a miniature golf course, and despite the cold and misty night, the ground felt soft on my socks. I felt comfortable, like I was in the home of some friends from work for the first time, not exactly knowing all that much about them in the beginning, but having all of that change by the end of the night. 

I ordered a dragonfruit juice drink with the head teen out on the balcony, where she then closed the sliding glass door behind her. It was a pretty cold night, I would want to stay warm, too. One of the girls closest to the sliding door, with her back to me, closed the already mostly closed curtains a bit. Maybe this one wanted to symbolically keep herself warm from the outside.

View from the balcony

There was a lot of good people watching to do from the balcony looking down at Ta Hien. It was fun playing Guess the European from far away, where I would mentally hypothesize what nation the oncoming couple was from, only to find my answer when they got close enough to hear their conversation. That actually only worked for about half the people; the other half, I had no clue as to where the accent derived from. I kept peeking behind myself to see what the kids were doing, if they were talking about their first customer of all time, sitting outside all alone on the balcony. I could see one of the girl's hands splayed out in plain sight of my eyes- 3 Aces, a Queen, two 6's, a 3, and a 2. 8 cards. I didn't recognize the game they were playing. If I had, I would have asked to join in.

My juice came and it was definitely fresh, handmade, and pretty tasty. The head teen gave it to me by sliding open the door and sticking her hand out, not wanting to catch a cold, of course. And the kids inside, they just couldn't get the right amount of closure on that purple curtain, which was pretty sheer to begin with. They were constantly fiddling with it, as if they were vampires in reverse, wanting to keep out the darkness beyond the glass doors.

My juice was done, but I wasn't ready to leave. I ordered a Heineken, which, as in Europe, was way better than it tastes in the States. I watched the kids play cards through the inevitable slits in the curtains. Some would do celebratory dances that looked just like the ones I see my nieces and nephews do back at home. I heard them cuss, yet it sounded way scarier than any American teen could ever attempt in English. And I was watching them not give a damn about the old timer out on the balcony, all so oblivious to his curiosity on such an un-extraordinary night for them.

The face of a man dejected?

Beer done and contemplating another, I stopped myself as the thought occurred to me that I might actually be keeping one of these kids up past their bedtime by staying here too long, so I got up to go. I did want to try one more attempt at a connection with them before I left, but as I was walking down the stairs, I just couldn't think of anything. One of the kids at the far end of the room, I saw, at the corner of my eye, looked a lot like Stan Cullimore of The Housemartins, or Graham Coxon of Blur, or basically any boy with thick glasses and asymmetrical hair.

"Is there anywhere in Hanoi where I can hear some punk music?" I asked.

"Pung?" one of the boys responded, a friendly looking lad who would be considered the leader by way of his gregariousness.

"Yeah, punk music." I strummed a guitar as a way of assisting my definition. 

He nodded his head and looked around at his mates, who were now all staring at me, enraptured. I had their full attention, but none of them knew what pung music was.

"What about just live music, could you tell me where to go?" I asked, still strumming that guitar.

"Oh, nhac song? There aren't too many, but you can find some (sentence still spoken fully in Vietnamese)," he happily told me. Nhac song literally translates to 'living' music, or 'alive' music, so I thought that would actually sound like an incorrect usage of the word in this case, which made me laugh. He hurried downstairs in order to give me directions and to take my payment, which looked like it ended up going directly into his pocket anyhow. On my way down, the kids were still staring at me, up until the point where I couldn't see them anymore. Still not saying a word. 

Snappin'

I remember 11 years ago, I took a photo of a bowl of pho I was about to enjoy. I had borrowed a Nikon from Thu and I was just taking random photos that day when I decided to stop down at Wok N Roll underneath the Scientology building on Guadalupe. If you lived in Austin in '99, you might be saying what the hell are you doing going there for pho, but I'm telling you, it was better than 90% of the offerings in Austin at that time. I had a few exposures left on the roll, and as I'm sitting down to enjoy it, that pho bowl was inordinately pretty to me at that moment, so I took a photo of it. It was a moment I wanted to preserve. I developed the roll a few days later, and the photo looked better than it did in person.

I hung it up in my bedroom because it was certainly worthy of being hung on my wall, or in this case, scotch taped. All I knew was that if I was having a shitty hour, I could always go eat pho.

Back then, I got a lot of quizzical looks and questions asking me what it was doing up on my wall. What, do you not like beauty, weird person?

I've seen peoples' Twitter and Facebook pages the past couple of years and there's a shit load of food-photo-taking going on.

The last thing I would want while I'm eating a Double Stack at Wendy's is to get an update, on my cell phone,  from my very good friend, showing me how good their meal was at the moment. Just like how I don't want to be at a red light on Kirby and Westheimer, with some tool rolling up next to me, revving the V-12 engine on his Bentley as it rattles the duct-taped side window of my '97 4Runner.

The food is really good here in Vietnam. I get it, you get it. But no photos of food from me.

Pho Gia Truyen lived up to its reputation. No lime or Hoisin, though.

What's great about food is that no matter how beautiful it is in the beginning, it all ends up looking the same at the end. For all of us.

Some of us exit the digestive tracts a little quicker

(To be sung to the tune of Aerosmith's "Cryin'")

There was a time
When I took a pic of my pho meal
With a borrowed Nikon SLR
I developed the photo, yeah
Hung it up on my bedroom wall
You went and asked me "What would you do that for?"

Listen, all I wanted, was beauty to lighten up my mood
I know, now all I see on Facebook are photos of your food.

Now you're snappin' pics of your meals
And I'm wonderin' what's the big deal?
Your hypocrisy is killin' me

Don't take my pho-to

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I didn't know they celebrated it all over the world.

I doubt there's a KFC this romantic in Kentucky

Alas, my first American meal in Hanoi was still a family affair. Four of my siblings got their paychecks from the Colonel back in the day, and as a young boy, I sure ate a lot of it as a result of their 'no one-day old chicken will be sold at Kentucky Fried Chicken' policy. A couple of buckets were a common sight at my house come 11 pm, about the time Alfred Hitchcock Presents aired. 

The KFC was decked out with balloons forming the shape of a large heart. I'm sorry I couldn't spend Valentine's Day with you, Valerie. I hope you can take comfort in knowing that the chicken just wasn't the same without you, and that I still prefer our good friend Popeye's.

As R & B Jewel once said, Me - You =  Blue

I wanted to say Happy Birthday to one of my best friends Steve. I just heard I'll very likely be seeing him this summer, and we can celebrate it then. You're a good one, Steve Tran, and I know you would never send me a photo of your meal unless you made it yourself.

You Will Endure Asian Americans and Their Identity Issues, Again.

My second cousin Chinh came to pick me up at my hotel room after my first night here. He’s only a tad more than a year younger than me and was about my height. I wouldn’t find it notable to mention his height, except for the fact that the second question my mom asked him over a cell phone, after having never spoken to him before in her life, was “Who’s taller, you or David?” I think he’s actually a bit taller, though he responded “About the same.” It’s nice that cheaper international rates for phone calls have lent itself to weighty conversations like these

The night before, I had asked Chinh to assist me in finding a charger for my camera which I had forgotten back in Austin, and voila, first thing in the morning, before 10 am, he pulls out a black box from his jacket pocket with my camera battery fitted inside, ready to be charged. That turned out to save me about 300 US dollars, as the electronics here run a bit more expensive and are somewhat behind technologically. I would have bought one anyway, as going without a camera wasn’t really an option, so I was very enthused he could get me one before I would be setting out to see the city for the first time. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about,” he said, with a face as modest as his words. Chinh has this placid demeanor where every word he uses, he makes count. Maybe that’s because he is stooping down his Vietnamese to my level, yet whatever his reason, I appreciate it. It made for easy conversation without me having any reluctance on behalf of my limited Vietnamese. I suppose our ensuing conversations were that of a couple of 8 year old boys who were meeting for the first time.

“When you are here, you should go by the name of Vi, not David,” Chinh mentioned just before leaving. “It could save you some money.”

I was planning on going by Vi while I was here anyway, but his advice surprised me, as I had always assumed, from the many family and friends who have been over to Vietnam, that I would obviously not be a native Vietnamese.

“You mean they won’t know that I’m American just by looking at me?”

“Na,” he said frankly.

I liked the idea that I might have some extra cash in my pocket because I would be blending in, but what of all these stories about my pending harassment by all types of desperate Vietnamese both men and women alike, how I would be an easy mark for the locals, that the American-ness I would exude could literally be seen a kilometer away?

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

We walked downstairs and hopped on his Vespa, a new, fully automatic white model just like they sell in the U.S. He had me hop on the back portion of the seat, but I didn’t or couldn’t mind, as the streets here operate on a completely different kind of logic when it comes to street traffic and I wasn’t ready to brave it on my own at the moment. I actually didn’t know there were traffic lights until about halfway through our trek, though it was clear to me some of the locals here still don’t know. Yet just as advertised, I never came close to seeing a single wreck, though in reality, I probably could have lost my fingers holding the handrails of the Vespa on at least ten different occasions. There was never much cause for concern though. There was a collective understanding with this street traffic that was clearly evident, though I was never a part of it, since I was riding bitch and was merely an observer.

And observe I did. Not so much the city streets, the buildings, the storefronts, or the parks as Chinh was taking me around. I could only look at their faces. Even though I didn’t necessarily look American to this particular Vietnamese, I still say all of these Vietnamese people whizzing by on their motos certainly didn’t look like me. They didn’t even look Vietnamese. They looked Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, Malaysian, or Burmese. It was all of East Asia blended together.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum creeped up to my left out of nowhere. We didn’t get close enough for me to see exactly what it was made of, though it looked like a black marble Monticello crossed with Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in D.C. It looked foreboding, all the more so with the overcast sky and thick haze which surrounded it the first time I saw it. I’ve of course seen it before in photos, though it’s usually photographed with the typically clear and sunny skies of Hanoi.

“That’s Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in there. He was a very famous leader of Vietnam,” Chinh dutifully informed me. The whole tour guide narration was odd to me, as he had previously let me take in the sites with very little explanation or exposition before getting to the Mausoleum. “If you look at all of the Vietnamese currency, you’ll see Ho Chi Minh on it.”

Was he really explaining to me who Ho Chi Minh was? If I looked so Vietnamese, and could theoretically pass for Vietnamese, what could explain this poor excuse for a biography?

“Some people here really revere him,” Chinh continued. “Yet some other people don’t think very much of him.”

“Yeah, I know Ho Chi Minh,” I muttered.

There was no hint of condescension in his delivery. He knew I knew who he was. I don’t even know if Chinh meant to show me the mausoleum. Maybe he rode by there on accident. It seemed a topic he didn’t really want to address but knew he had to. What could he say to me with the verbal handicap he had in speaking to me anyway? I would imagine eight year olds would have more intelligent conversations about Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Four year olds would have given us a run for our money. But what could we say about Ho Chi Minh that other people haven’t already said better?

Maybe it was then that Chinh finally saw me for what I really was: just a regular American that couldn’t talk politics.

Our remaining ride was lazy and lighthearted, where he gave me a tour of all the main neighborhoods on our way to Cau Dung’s house for lunch.

“Over there is where we can eat dog later if you want,” he said as he pointed to the right at a white banner with “Thit Cho” written in red.  It was spoken with an obvious chuckle, though he was genuinely waiting for a response on my part.

“Maybe,” I said with a laugh, actually meaning it.

I’m an American, we thought.