I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish

It’s with a heavy heart that I leave Vietnam. I really only have good things to say about the place and its people. While I was in the airport I thought about my whole experience. I had set goals for myself such as volunteer at a microfinance NGO, find a job, learn some Vietnamese, and make Vietnamese friends and I think I have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

My original motivation to return to Southeast Asia was to get involved and better understand microfinance. Vietnam was a poor choice considering how limited the microfinance industry is by the government. MACDI, the NGO I volunteered at, is a good NGO and is involved in some very interesting and positive things. My problem was that I came at a bad time and didn’t have that much to offer them. I ended up wasting a lot of time there and I used to fill my time by researching microfinance. My opinion of microfinance has moved from fanciful preconceived notions grounded in idealism to a sophomoric understanding based on idle research. Microfinance is not the game-changer I envisioned it to be. It does of course have the potential to help a lot of people but nations are not built by small, high interest loans.

I found my job at Language Link quite easily. Everything was smooth and stress-free for the most part. However, teaching English ain’t really my thing. I can do the job and I think some of my students liked me but it’s not a job I would want to do for much longer. The money’s good but that’s about all I can say about it. The most important thing about Language Link for me was being able to meet and make friends with local staff. I met a lot of very nice Vietnamese ladies and I really appreciate the friendships I made. It’s probably the nicest work environment I’ve worked in. I will always have a soft spot for the ladies of Language Link. I also met many lovely Western people at Language and around Hanoi. I definitely made some friends that I will be in touch with for the long term.

I think at the end of the day I just don’t really enjoy teaching because I don’t have a lot to teach. Teaching makes me feel disingenuous. Studying Vietnamese was much more interesting and I think I made some real progress in Vietnamese. Tiếng Việt rất khó nhưng tôi thích học về tiếng Việt và vân hóa của Việt Nam. Tôi nghĩ người Việt Nam rất thận thiện. Nếu tôi không có bạn gai ở Mỹ thì chắc chắn tôi muốn sóng ở Việt Nam. Ở Mỹ tôi định đọc xong Truyện Kiều trong tiếng Việt. Có lẽ tôi không thể làm vậy nhnưg I will try. Truyện Kiều khônh những bunồ mà còn thú vị nhưng tôi không thích kết thúc của Truyện Kiều. Tôi nghĩ Truyện Kiều nên có kết thúc không có hâu. Đây hay hơn.

 Khi tôi đã học tiếng Việt thì tôi dụng một quyển sách nhưng tôi quên ở nhà của bạn tôi. Tôi đã tức giận lắm vì tôi đã viết nhiều về ngữ pháp và Truyện Kiều nhưng có lẽ đây tốt hơn. Tôi phải học về điều mới.

Trong thời gian của tôi ở Việt Nam, tôi đã gặp nhiều người Việt Nam. Tôi đã dạy tiếng Anh và tiếng Nhạt cho các bạn tôi và bạn tôi đã giúp đỡ tôi với tiệng Việt. Tôi rắt vui vì tôi gặp nhiều ngươi Việt Nam thận tiện. Xin lõi vì tôi không phải là giáo viên tốt. I do really appreciate all the help all of you gave me.  

From time to time I think back about Cambodia and how pleasant that country was. Phnom Penh is a lively and fun place. I enjoyed my time there. Cambodia left an impression on me similar to the feeling I get when I awake from a good dream and that lingering pleasant feeling hangs over me but I can’t really remember why it was a good dream.

It is difficult for me to give an objective analysis of Vietnam since I grew emotionally attached to the country but objectivity really is a fallacy outside of the indisputable, such as 2+2=4. I don’t believe humans can separate their emotional identity and relationship with the world around them from individual rationality. Someone could try to quantify how they feel about a country like Vietnam. I could work out the pros and cons, pleasant and unpleasant experiences and portray this data with cheesy bar graphs but I think that kind of representation is meant to deceive investors and those interested in taking out a mortgage. You can’t adequately describe anything without using your heart. There could be something to be said about how Confucius’ terminology lacked a distinction between “heart” and “mind” and what that implies (that’s kind of stretch and is probably attributable to the difficulty of translating archaic Chinese into English but I thought it was a cute example). The idea Plato had of a transcendent rationality always floating above us is pretty ridiculous. He can go screw himself. All in all what I’m trying to say is that I love Vietnam and almost all the aspects of it but my opinion is of course biased because of my personal relationships and experiences. I can’t really explain why it is such a good place but I think if you read through other stuff I’ve written than you can get a better idea for some of the specifics.

Just as when I left Manila last year and spent about a week in Seoul to recover, I am going to let the friendliness and charm of the Philippines nurse me back to health.  

The War in Vietnam

As my time in Vietnam is coming to a close I feel strangled by sadness, happiness, and a sense of accomplishment. My sadness comes from leaving a country which I have grown a strong affection for. I feel happy for being able to reunite with Kristine and begin to the next stage of my life. My sense of accomplishment comes from my progress with the Vietnamese language and making numerous friends here both Vietnamese and Western.

The topic of the war in Vietnam was one that up until this point I have hesitated to mention because of the sensitivity of the issue. Before I came to Vietnam I expected to be confronted with bitterness and hostility from the people of this country who suffered greatly because of an unjust war. While I was studying Canada some of my Canadian friends used to tell me that when I’m abroad I should pretend to be Canadian because of Canada’s supposedly spotless foreign policy record. I think it is a bit much for Canadians to act like Canada is the beacon of peace and friendliness opposed to the bullying of the United States. I do give Canadians credit however for avoiding getting involved in the tragic wars in Vietnam and Iraq and they have led a relatively benign foreign policy in recent history.

Aside from being American I inherited three other citizenships from my parents’ European background so I could legitimately say that I am French, English or Swiss. I was born in America and I was raised in America. I owe most of what I have to the United States. I would never think of being ashamed of where I come from. I love America as my home but that doesn’t mean I agree with all of the policies the American government has undertaken throughout the years. It would be cowardly and disingenuous for me to pretend to be something I’m not just to avoid an awkward conversation.

It took me a long time to broach the subject of the war with the Vietnamese people I know. It was a subject that I didn’t try to avoid but I didn’t try to instigate any debates with local people. I quickly discovered that the bitterness and resentment that I expected to encounter just wasn’t here. I’m sure there are plenty of Vietnamese people that hate the United States but anti-Americanism is not fuming from the hot sidewalks.

One day I went with a Vietnamese friend of mine to her grandparents’ house. Her grandfather was a decorated veteran of what he called the American War. I didn’t have a good opportunity to really discuss with him because of the massive language barrier but I conveyed that I was American to him. He then pulled out his tobacco pipe and we shared a smoke which is a Vietnamese welcoming custom among men. This situation reminded me of a time when I was in Japan and having dinner with a Japanese friend of mine’s family in her hometown of Hiroshima. Her parents, aunt, cousins, and most importantly her grandmother were all there. At one point during the dinner her grandmother was trying to explain something to me that I just couldn’t understand. After some confusion her aunt came to my rescue and told me that she was trying to explain to me that when she was a child she witnessed the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I immediately regretted this rescue as the entire family went silent and turned to me to say something. My Japanese at that point was quite poor but I don’t think even now I would know how to respond. I humbly said that it is very sad and unfortunate that she had to witness that. At no point did I feel an urge to apologize but I tried to convey my sympathy. Her family was pleased that I said something and quickly changed the subject to something more lighthearted. Her grandmother ended giving me and my Canadian friend a nice bottle of sake and some nice ornamental chopsticks. The whole experience was important for me.

As I did then, I still feel no desire to apologize to Vietnamese people for what happened during the war. The war, like the atomic bomb took place far before I was born and I have of course have no responsibility but the real reason why I wouldn’t apologize is that it feels completely disingenuous. I don’t think anybody here is waiting for an apology from me and it would mean nothing anyway. I don’t want to and cannot speak for all American people. We can discuss the war as equals and share sympathy and hopefully empathy.

I have made friends here with some younger Vietnamese guys and one guy I know is an officer in the military here. He’s a friendly guy and his English is good enough that we could discuss things like politics and history (my vocabulary in Vietnamese isn’t good enough to have an actual serious conversation). As with almost all Vietnamese people I’ve encountered he expressed his antipathy for China. This is a pretty neutral subject since I don’t have a lot good things to say about the current Chinese government and I can understand the grievances Vietnamese people have with the Chinese. I do frequently end up defending the Chinese however since I think we should be able to reconcile a violent history alongside a currently aggressive government with the fact Chinese people are people too. The average Chinese person wants the same thing that we all want.

I liked discussing with this guy because I could voice my honest opinion about the war. As people who know me in America, I am not a defender of the war and America’s involvement. I think you would be hard-pressed to find Americans who still think that that war made sense. My friend and I discussed the politics of the Cold War and that Vietnam was the unfortunate victim of those times. Vietnam which had been fighting almost a thousand years to become independent became an ideological battleground turning Vietnamese people against each other.

In one of my teenage classes I assigned an essay about the history of Vietnamese-Russian relations. I was interested in seeing what they would write. They didn’t write much about Russia but instead wrote mainly about the war. I think a lot of people assume that people over here are all brainwashed by anti-American propaganda but the essays I read impressed me. 14 year old Vietnamese students could write sophisticated essays in English about the containment strategy the United States had during the Cold War and the fear of the domino effect that would occur if Vietnam became a communist state. It made me think that when I was in high school I believe we only spent one day on the Vietnam War. The history we learned that one day wasn’t white washed but I can’t say we were pushed to really think about the war.

I remember meeting an American guy in Cambodia who served in the war and he was annoyed that Vietnamese people think that the war was between Vietnam and the USA when actually the Vietnamese were primarily fighting each other. I do agree with him that after World War 2 there was by no means a unanimous consensus among the Vietnamese for what direction they wanted their country to go. I am no historian and there are myriad books detailing this part of history but the impression I got was that independence was the first priority. The ideology of the independent government was still up in the air. The division of Vietnam was really a deal brokered between the USA, France, China, and the USSR. The Vietnamese did not have much say in this. I think that as more and more US troops and US money came into the South to bolster the government, the government’s lost more and more legitimacy. When you combine the ineffective and corrupt government of South Vietnam with the heavy-handed tactics of the US military it is easy to see how Vietnamese people could become disillusioned with what the US government was trying to accomplish. A military cannot construct a sustainable society. It is disheartening to me that a lot of the American politicians from the Vietnam War generation seem content to make the same mistakes in Afghanistan.

I also had the privilege of meeting a young woman that works for Vietnamese television. She is interested in bringing stories of victims of Agent Orange to light. Agent Orange is some nasty stuff and millions of people were affected by it. People are still affected by it today since once it is in your system it permanently alters your genes so it could cause your children to genetic deformities. I see people that seem to have deformities associated with Agent Orange on a somewhat regular basis. There also numerous US soldiers that were exposed to it and are still living with the harm it did to them. It is kind of absurd that the companies the manufacture this stuff still insist that there isn’t enough evidence to conclude that it is harmful to human beings. This didn’t stop the US government from discreetly compensating the American victims of it.

War is terrible and always will be. We can debate the reasons and situational circumstances for why wars start but there is no debate about the damage they cause. I understand that there are wars of necessity but we can still recognize the tragedy. I believe the war in Vietnam was a mistake and I think Lyndon Johnson was irresponsible or worse a coward for letting the things escalate the way they did. That being said, I don’t really like the government Vietnam has today. The government has to take strong steps to root out corruption and loosen its restrictions of freedom of expression. I think Ho Chi Minh was a great man and it is really unfortunate that we will never know what he would have done if he would have governed a unified Vietnam. Because of the war over a million of Vietnamese were needlessly killed alongside tens of thousands of Americans. We also shouldn’t forget the thousands of Laotian and Cambodian people that were killed. There also millions of other lives that have been permanently damaged, Vietnamese and American, both emotionally and physically. There is a reason why so many of the homeless people in the United States were veterans in the Vietnam War.

At the end of the day I feel like we have to reconcile this past with the bright future. The Vietnamese people I know are not interested in dwelling in the past. They are interested in blazing a new path for their country. When we look to the future we have to remember the past even if it is painful. We cannot overcome the mistakes of the past through voluntary amnesia. This reminds of a conversation I had recently with another Vietnamese guy I know. He told me:

“Vietnamese people will never forget about the war.” I replied to him:

“Anh nghỉ người Việt Nam không nên quen về chiến tranh Hoa Kỳ và Ngươi Mỹ cũng không quen về chiến tranh Hoa Kỳ.”

“I think that Vietnamese shouldn’t forget about the war and Americans also shouldn’t forget about it.”

The Tale of Kieu and Vietnamese Society

My mom has just returned to America after visiting me here in Vietnam. It was really good to see her and I’m glad I was able to show her how I’m living here. We went to Ha Long Bay which was very beautiful. I introduced her to most of my friends here, both Western and Vietnamese. We definitely ate well. My mom being here reminded me that I am only in Vietnam for another 2 weeks or so. Recently I have been meditating and reading about Vietnamese culture and history. I have been devoting a significant amount of time at reading the Tale of Kieu (the most famous piece of Vietnamese literature).

The Tale of Kieu is a long epic poem (~3,000 lines). I have finished reading an English translation and I have worked with some of my Vietnamese friends to decipher some of the Vietnamese. I plan on continuing to work on this until I leave. As important pieces of literature go, the Tale of Kieu is not so old. It was written in the early 19^th century by a man named Nguyen Du. It is actually based on an older Chinese story but he rewrote and revamped the poetry. He also adjusted it to fit a Vietnamese context even if the story is actually set in China.

The Tale of Kieu has a very sad story. It’s about a young woman (Kieu) who is exceptionally beautiful and talented but has a terrible life. In the very beginning she meets her true love but while he is away she is forced to sell herself into prostitution because of a large debt her father supposedly owes to this unscrupulous man. The debt did not actually exist but she still had to sacrifice herself out of filial piety. After that she has numerous trials. She is coerced to marry a few other guys and basically oscillates between relative happiness to prostitution to economic depravity. She accurately describes herself as a flower aimlessly floating down a river. The story has a pretty improbable and I would say rather unconvincing happy ending.

I extracted two main themes of the story. 1. Beauty and talent can be a curse. In the prologue there’s this passage: Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen. In English this passage’s meaning goes something like: Even Heaven is jealous of those with beauty. Kieu has such a hard life precisely because of her extraordinary beauty and artistic talent. I see this as a critique on the common desire among people to be beautiful, attractive, special in some way, etc. and also critical of those who live their lives envying those other beautiful or famous people. I see this as a very wise point to make and relevant to today’s society. 2. Nguyen Du also offers a subtle critique of the rigid Confucian society and culture. When Kieu is forced to sacrifice her youth for the sake of her father, her father is devastated and insists that she save herself. He even threatens to kill himself if she leaves. She however cannot do that because of filial piety (hieu) and her moral debt (on) to her parents. Vietnam like other Confucian societies has a strong culture surrounding the family. I believe the Vietnamese put a bit more emphasis on worshipping their ancestors than say the Japanese. Every Vietnamese house will have a small shrine to their family ancestors and people will regularly pray and give offerings. Children are taught that they owe absolutely everything to their parents and so families rarely split up if they don’t have to. There are of course more “modern” or Western ideas of family entering the psyche of some urban Vietnamese but I would say a vast majority of Vietnamese people still hold this part of the culture dear to their heart. In the context of Kieu her father realizes that it is crazy to sell her daughter to dangerous men while she is so young and has so much to live for. If he let himself be taken instead of Kieu then it would bring an immense amount of shame onto them and could have even completely destroyed the family altogether. Kieu is the martyr because the rigidity of the Confucian system’s focus on maintaining harmony within the hierarchy of the family. In the Confucian perspective a family cannot function without a father at the head.

The Tale of Kieu is known by all Vietnamese people and every student has to study at least a bit of it. I get the feeling that some Vietnamese people like to look at as a metaphorical narrative for their own history. Vietnam’s history has basically been a struggle for independence from foreign aggressors. The Chinese dominated them for nearly a thousand years. They were followed by the French, Japanese, French again and finally the United States. Vietnam being a small country surrounded by more powerful neighbors and thrown into the geopolitics of the Cold War era probably did seem like a flower floating aimlessly downstream; lacking the agency to control their own destiny. I also believe that the protagonist being a woman is important. Since Vietnam is a Confucian country like China, Korea, and Japan, it is a patriarchal society. Women generally have less access to higher level jobs and are taken less seriously but I feel like this is a reoccurring phenomenon around the globe. Women have only won somewhat equal rights recently around the world. In Asia, Southeast Asia seems to me to be one of the few areas of the world where the societies were somewhat matriarchal and women enjoyed more rights. I feel like this trend has rubbed off a bit in Vietnam and I think women in Vietnam are in a better position in terms of social mobility and respect than their contemporaries in Japan or Korea. But that is just my vague and generalized opinion based on observations.

I recommend that people read the Tale of Kieu and learn about Vietnamese culture. Vietnam is a small country but has a distinct culture and voice which should be taken seriously.

Vietnamese Food

I thought I would write a bit about Vietnamese cuisine. I have some pictures to contribute to these descriptions which will help you get an idea of what I’m talking about. I was surprised with Vietnamese food and I realized how little I knew about it before I came here. The food here is definitely distinct from other parts of the world. I really like it. I think it’s really good and really cheap if you eat where the locals eat. One reoccurring ingredient I see is fish sauce or nước mắm. At first, I thought the stuff was disgusting. I had a brief bout of food poisoning about a month and a half ago and during that period if even smelled fish sauce I would get nauseous. Now I've learned to like it. It has a very strong smell which can be off-putting but it tastes alright. It can be a nice complement. There is also a more notorious sauce here called mắm tôm. It is notorious because foreigners are supposed to hate it for its exceptionally strong odor. In my experience more Vietnamese people actually dislike it than they like to admit. Mắm tôm is a sauce made from fermented shrimp and if you do eat it you will smell like it for a while. The main staples of Vietnamese cuisine are bún (these are thin white noodles), phở (these noodles are flatter and thicker than bun and they are the noodles you will find in most of the soups here), and cơm which is just normal white rice. Almost everything you eat here will come with one of these three. Vietnamese people also eat a decent amount of bread (called bánh mì). You can always find a nice baguette nearby. This is definitely a legacy of the French.

This first dish is called chả cá. It is a specialty of Hanoi. It is a dish meant to be enjoyed with friends. I was invited to eat this by a lady I do language exchange with and her friend. Basically, it is a fish fry up. There are hearty chunks of nice fish, I didn’t encounter many bones, and fish stomachs. I really like the fish stomach but I am one to be partial to intestines and innards in general. It is nicely seasoned and they bring plenty of vegetables and herbs that you add to it as you go. You have fish sauce and/or mắm tôm on the side to dip the fish or stomachs in. It was definitely a nice meal.

This dish is called hủ tiếu and I believe it is from southern Vietnam. I have only seen a few places in Hanoi that have it. This style is called hủ tiếu khô which is different from other kinds of soups because the broth comes in separate bowl. You can eat the noodles and meat with as much broth as you like. It comes with an assortment of grilled pork, kind of dumplings, shrimp, and things that I have no idea about. The broth was kind of sweet (I hear adding a bit of sugar to broth is a very southern Vietnamese thing to do) and very nice. I really like it and it is only $1.50 for a meal.

These next two are what most people think of when they think of Vietnamese food: phở. There are two main varieties of phỏ:  phỏ gà (Chicken phở) and phở bò (Beef pho). This one is a phở gà and I don’t eat it as much as I do phở bò. Phở gà is usually cheaper than its beef counterpart. There is an important distinction between chicken phởs. The normal phở gà will usually have pieces of chicken skin and other parts of the chicken in it which some people may not enjoy. I think it’s OK as long as there is a decent amount of actual chicken meat. The one in the picture was pretty good. If you see phở gà ta then you know that it is chicken to the Western standards (strictly breast and thigh meat).

I really like beef phở. There is wide variety of small and large restaurants serving phở across Hanoi and it is never obvious if you are going to get a good bowl. From my experience avoid the restaurant Phở 24 and the touristy “Food Street”. Both of those places charge at least double the normal price and are not even half as good as other places. Generally if you find phở on the street and locals are eating it then it is good. The broth is very important and I have found some good places which only charge a dollar for a big bowl with plenty of meat. You can order the beef to be cooked before it is put in the broth (phở bò chín) or you can order (I like it this way) the beef to be put in raw and then it is cooked in the broth (phở bò tái). In my experience the beef has been good quality. The one thing that I honestly have never seen over here which I expected to is the tendons and tripe in phở like you buy in Vietnamese restaurants in the States. Don’t ask me why. Also, phở is generally a breakfast food and is especially nice if it is cold morning up in Hanoi during the winter.

The street BBQs are great (called nướng). They may seem unsanitary but they are a great way to hang out and eat with your friends. They very much like Korean BBQs except you are sitting pretty much on the sidewalk and using a charcoal grill instead of gas. There’s really not much to say aside from you can get all sorts of different meats and seafood to grill along with buttered bread and vegetables. It’s not the cheapest meal but it is very nice. I usually eat BBQ while taking shots of Vodka Hanoi. I’m not sure if this is part of the local culture or if just something my friend who’s been here a long time just likes to do.

This next dish may look like rice but it is actually a bit different. It’s called xôi (pronounced soy). It is glutinous rice and is much more filling than normal rice. It is a common breakfast food. Even a small bowl with a bit of grilled meat and vegetables is enough to sustain me until lunch.

This is called bún đậu and is really quite simple. It is the bún noodles but they are cut up into cubes to make them easier to pick up with chop sticks and deep fried tofu. The purple sauce is the mắm tôm I was talking about before. I think this is a very nice and light lunch. Like most Vietnamese foods they bring you assorted herbs, lettuce, and bean sprouts to eat with it. While I was eating this particular bún đậu I was sitting next a Vietnamese guy I didn't know but we talked a bit and he was friendly guy. He ended up paying for my lunch altogether. I get treated to a lot of meals over here. Vietnamese people really do have a nice culture about paying for their friends, and even people they don’t know, food.

This is known as bánh mì sốt vang. The bánh mì is just normal French style bread. You can buy this practically everywhere and you can get good baguette sandwiches with egg vegetables and some Vietnamese style pate. Bánh mì sốt vang however is a bit different. The bowl is full of a nice meaty broth and hearty chunks of stewed beef. This particular one was kind of greasy but I really like this dish. You dip the bread into the broth and scoop up the meat or you can just eat the meat with a spoon.

This is what is called cơm rang which means fried rice. You can get fried rice with beef and vegetables or seafood or all kinds of other things. I think that fried rice is really just fried rice and I don’t think there is anything very distinctive about Vietnamese fried rice and fried rice I've had in other Asian countries. It is nice to order some of this when you are chilling and drinking beer with some friends. I generally don’t eat this in restaurants since it is so easy to make at home.

This bowl of soup, that many of you might think is phở, is called bún mộc. There are two major kinds of soup here and the difference lies in the kind of noodle. Basically bún noodles are thinner and phở noodles are wider but they are pretty much the same thing. (On a side note, there are also miến noodles which are made from something called cassava. They are see-through and I don’t have any pictures because I eat it very rarely.) Bún mộc is a meatball soup. I think it’s good. It’s quite simple but with some hot sauce it can be real good.

This interesting food is called bánh cuốn. I like it a lot and I was a bit intimidated at first to eat it. It is made on a pan that looks like a crepe maker. They use a white mixture (I assume flour and egg and some other stuff) and pour it out on the pan until it cooks into a thin white pancake. They then wrap it into a dumpling type food with various ingredients. Honestly, I have no idea what they put inside those things. I think there’s some kind of beans and meat. They also put some dried pork flakes on top which is nice. You’re supposed to dip in some fish sauce as you eat it. 

I saved the best for last: bún chả. This is a Hanoi specialty and a staple. There are bún chả restaurants practically everywhere. The noodles on the side are the bún noodles and you eat those alongside the bowl of grilled pork. The grilled pork is inside a bowl of a very nice broth which is made from vinegar, fish sauce, some sugar, and some other stuff. A usual side dish with bún chả is nem rán (fried spring rolls). The spring rolls are real good and can come with pork or crab meat. Bún chả is definitely a lunch time food and when I’m out looking for food I can always smell a bún chả place not too far away. This bún chả was interesting because the meat was wrapped in a leaf before it was grilled. 

Overall I rate Vietnamese cuisine very highly. There are a multitude of things I didn’t talk about; mainly because I don’t have pictures of them and this blog is already quite long. I also like how everything I mentioned can be bought for $1-$5 J

Withdrawal Symptoms

It was with a heavy heart that I confessed to the secretary and photocopy lady at my work that I plan on leaving Vietnam in May. Telling my boss was easy. I hardly know him but telling the Vietnamese staff was far more difficult. I invested a lot of effort into learning Vietnamese and getting to know the local staff at the company I work at. The secretary and photocopy lady are the ones that I am closest with and our discussion got pretty emotional. The photocopy lady doesn’t speak any English so I had to speak only Vietnamese and a bit of English to get my point across. I also wanted to speak Vietnamese so my boss and other coworkers wouldn’t overhear what we were talking about. It was a sad conversation and affected me strongly.  Even though I’m not leaving for another month I feel like it is just around the corner. Of course I am looking forward to reuniting with Kristine and starting our life together. I’ve dreamed about this for months now but I have grown emotionally attached to Vietnam and the withdrawal will be painful. I feel like I’m already saying goodbye and it depresses me.

Some people think I’m foolish for leaving so early. Financially it would make a lot of sense for me to stay and work for another six months or so. I could come home with a tidy treasure but that is one thing I cannot do. I have followed my heart when I made all of my major decisions. I decided to go study in Hawaii on a whim. I just wanted something new. I had originally gone to university to study biology or some kind of science but I developed a strong interest in Asia under the tutelage of Professor Michael Aung-Twin. I took his class on South and Southeast Asian history and it inspired me. Michael Aung-Twin is a very a nice guy from Myanmar and a great teacher. However, he is one of the few major sympathizers of the military junta ruling over Myanmar which makes me question his ethics. I originally had wanted to study Vietnamese but I got confused over the schedule and enrolled too late. I then decided that Chinese would be too difficult so I chose Japanese. From that point on my interest was in Japan and all of its culture and history.

Japanese language proved to be one of my most difficult endeavors but I believe that I have largely conquered it. I’m by no means fluent as a native speaker but I can tutor people in Japanese, teach it in a class, and carry on a conversation. Japanese language and my study of all things Asia really opened my mind to this part of the world. I had planned on teaching English in Japan for a year but was denied a nice job due to some run-ins I had with the Pittsburgh police. At that point I made a commitment never to let some stupid mistake ruin the rest of my life. At this point my record is clear and I intend to keep it that way. I lackadaisically chose to go to the Philippines and volunteer at a Japanese NGO. The Philippines had its ups and downs for me but it was an experience that shaped who I am today and I regret nothing.

Coming to Vietnam had been my plan since January last year. I met Kristine over the summer but I decided to stick to my plan. As difficult as this long-distance has been I’m glad I made this decision. I’ve made a lot of effort to learn the language here and understand the local culture. One of my motivations for studying Vietnamese comes from a family friend back in Pittsburgh. He was a retired school teacher that had been terribly ill and had been unable to get out of bed for years. He was basically on life support but he devoted his time to learning foreign languages from all over the world. Unfortunately, he passed away shortly before I came here. The last language he studied was Vietnamese. His widow gave me the textbook he used to learn the language and I promised her that I would do my best to learn it as homage to him. I’ve learned a lot about Vietnam and myself in my short time here. Vietnam went through one of the more terrible and unnecessary wars in recent history but you could almost not even realize it coming here. The scars of war and bitter resentment I expected to encounter just aren’t here. Vietnamese people have been genuinely friendly with me. This is something I was not prepared for. I have made so many good friends here; both Vietnamese and Western. It’s really going to be hard to say goodbye. After Vietnam I will be entering the toil that is working in the United States and entering graduate school. It would be a lie to say that I am not anxious about the next stage of my life but knowing that I will be with the woman I love gives me strength. 

Microfinance in Vietnam and My Failure

I have decided to quit my volunteering post at MACDI. My real problem was that I just didn’t have enough work to do. I don’t think they’ll miss me. I always have a sense of disappointment when I quit something; be it karate or volunteering. I must have failed somewhere but that’s not really important at this point. I’m going to fill up a lot of this newfound free time with meeting with more Vietnamese people to do language exchanges. The language exchanges are probably the most interesting thing I’ve done here. I really value the time I spend talking to Vietnamese people and learning their language. I also really like teaching Japanese; a lot more than teaching English. For me the English language is not a subject of study. It’s just how I communicate. I have been unable to dissect it in my head in the same way that I’ve done with Japanese and Vietnamese.

So, microfinance… Microfinance in Vietnam is very different from other parts of the world. More than three quarters of the microfinance activity here is done by public sector. It is very difficult to open and operate a private microfinance institution. There are steep capital requirements which most startup companies can’t afford and there are many other regulations they have to adhere to. The government-run microfinance institutions also charge a subsidized interest rate that is far lower than the market rate. This makes it very difficult for the private microfinance industry. The conventional wisdom among economist is that private businesses function more efficiently than state run enterprises. In a lot of ways I see their point. As we are seeing now in Europe, governments can be very irresponsible with their finances. Aside from the mismanagement there is also the problem of corruption. Vietnam, like most Southeast Asian countries, has major problems with corruption. The government really just puts itself in the way of businesses and private citizens to extract more money. I think it has been the major issue holding the Philippines back from developing economically as we all want it to. Vietnam has the same stubborn problem of corruption with the government and police. There is a lot to be said about corruption and I think it is a very important issue to debate. One thing that is for sure is that it is not a cultural thing. This is a fact of life and part of the human condition.

So what are the upsides of the Vietnamese microfinance system? Well the average people do spend considerably less on interest than their contemporaries in other parts of the world. Mr. Yunus’s goal was to help impoverished people improve their own lives without just receiving hand-outs. If poor Vietnamese can get access to cheap microloans from their government than I don’t see anything wrong with that. There have been plenty of examples of market failures and microfinance done wrong; like what happened in Andhra Pradesh. Really the mission of microfinance is to help poor people; not make them poorer. Has the Vietnamese microfinance program had success in last two decades? In the beginning of the 1990s almost half of Vietnamese people were living in poverty. Now that number is around 12%. That is some major improvement but I don’t think the microfinance program was the game changer that was the turning point in Vietnamese history. Vietnam has developed off the backs of hard working people and new private business opportunities that government decided to tolerate. I’m sure plenty of Vietnamese have bettered their lives due to the fact they had access to affordable credit but I think having a job or an education opportunity is more valuable than being able to borrow $100 with cheap interest.

The government of Vietnam has all the same problems that governments face. There is mismanagement, corruption, nepotism, etc. At the same time, their track record recently is quite good so you have to give credit where credit is due. I do believe that the microfinance institutions will probably have long term financial sustainability issues and the government will have to be gradually pushed out. The government should of course still be involved with regulating the industry. It’s important that there’s oversight but the distinction between hindering and effective regulation is very hard to draw.

Vietnam still has major problems with poverty, especially with the ethnic minorities. The recent development of Vietnam has not benefited all people in Vietnam equally; far from it. These are serious issues and I’m sure the government will take some action. Whether or not it will be the right course of action is anybody’s guess but I’m sure the Vietnamese people will weather the storm like they have the last hundred years. 

In Lenin's Shadow

On my journey back home every night from my evening class I walk past the robust statue of Lenin in Ba Dinh district. It is located in the aptly named Lenin Square. It’s probably the only place in the world that Lenin is surrounded by palm trees. During the day there are tourists milling around to visit Uncle Ho along with the other sightseeing points of interest in this historical neighborhood of Hanoi. At night however, the scene is dominated by the Vietnamese youth. Every time I walk past I see something different. I’ve seen young people break dancing and middle aged ladies aerobic classes. I’ve seen football (soccer) games and skateboarders doing their thing. The one thing you can’t say is that Hanoi is not lively at night. A common complaint among expats and party seeking travelers is that Hanoi’s nightlife is subpar compared to Ho Chi Minh City. This is true if you are only looking for clubs open all night and cheap bars catering to Westerners. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong places. This is the essential difference between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City accommodates foreign people. Hanoi forces you to accommodate to it. This is of course a massive generalization but I think it is one that fits in this context.

Vietnam emerged from the fury of the war with a government that was bent on transforming Vietnamese society into an agrarian utopia. They followed the example of Stalin and Mao and the results are up for debate. Their US imposed isolation from the international economy subjected the Vietnamese to a harsh economic reality. The Vietnamese government has been pragmatic however; unlike the North Koreans. During the 1980s Vietnam began opening its doors to foreign investment and the tides of globalization. It is still up for debate whether the government really rescinded its control over the national economy but what is clear is that Vietnam has been a success story ever since. Bill Clinton (who is Vietnam’s favorite US president according to the people I’ve met) removed the embargo and thus aided the rapid economic development that Vietnam has been experiencing. There are still some very difficult issues surrounding Vietnam’s current success such as the growing disparity between the rich and poor; the urban and rural. The government is apparently taking steps to rectify this situation but we will see how they react in the years to come. The Vietnamese government is not the most transparent and their decision making seems to happen behind closed doors.

The conventional term to refer to current Vietnamese society is “soft communism”. I think this characterization is adequate but it does not illuminate the entirety of this transformative phase that Vietnam is in.

Vietnam has painfully torn from its traditional roots and jettisoned into the global politics by French colonialism. There was initial resistance which was crushed by the French military. By the beginning of the 20^th century the French had consolidated power across Indochine and this was a period of intellectual ferment in Vietnam. There were conservatives advocating a boycott of foreign values and there were forward thinkers trying to incorporate aspects of Western society into the society of Vietnam. Most intellectuals fell in between. Ho Chi Minh is a product of this period. Ho Chi Minh was a visionary for his country and although Vietnamese people still debate (behind closed doors) his political legacy he is a great hero of the nation.

Vietnam today is being transformed yet again as it was in the early 1900s. I believe this is a turning point in the history of Vietnam. I’m not sure but I think that people in my age group ad younger make up the majority of the population. There are intellectuals debating the future path of Vietnam. There are the opportunists trying to make a profit on the economic boom. And there are just normal people trying to make a living in these interesting times. Vietnam is changing in fascinating ways and the vitality here is unquestionable. It is anybody’s guess how it will look in a decade or two but I’m sure there will still be the youth expressing themselves in Lenin’s shadow. 

Some thoughts about Microfinance and Andhra Pradesh

I have been thinking a lot about microfinance recently. This volunteering has allowed me to spend more time researching about microfinance and other aspects of the world economy. I have now read over a dozen accounts of what happened in Andhra Pradesh and why the Indian microfinance sector is imploding on itself and I think I have a decent mental framework of the situation.

Andhra Pradesh was the initial hot bed of microfinance in India and expanded much faster than the rest of the country. The microfinance institutions (MFIs) generally followed Yunus’s example and his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. One of the larger MFIs in Andhra Pradesh is known as SKS and is run by a man named Akula. He made a controversial move which apparently upset Yunus. He decided to make the MFI public and allow foreign investors in the picture. Yunus was against this because he thought allowing foreign investors to have a stake in an MFI would askew the essential mission of an MFI. To be clear, Grameen bank is also a for-profit MFI but there are some important differences. Grameen bank has a policy of forced savings and borrowers are forced to buy a share of the company, giving them partial ownership of the enterprise. The savings serve as equity to cushion against the risk of loans defaulting as well as allowing poor people access to saving as a financial service. The idea that the borrowers also own a part of the bank is a nice idea but I get the feelings that this is really just smoke and mirrors. I think that the vast majority of managerial decisions made at Grameen Bank are still made behind closed doors. The borrowers do occasionally get some return on the shares however which is definitely a good thing.

The regulatory environment in India is a completely different story. The MFI’s in India are not legally allowed to take any deposits as savings. I believe that this policy can be attributed to a legacy of Indira Gandhi and her program for nationalizing banks. At this point the government of India still has a grip over the financial industry; both macro and micro. It seems there was tension between the entrenched government authorities and the private MFIs; some kind of petty political fight over control. If MFIs could take deposits and thus operate like legitimate banks they would threaten the dominance of the state controlled banks.

Akula himself used to work for an NGO funded through development grants and philanthropy and he was apparently disillusioned by how little outreach his organization was able to accomplish. They had to continually turn people away because of lack of funds. He found this really frustrating and decided to try and develop his own for-profit, financially sustainable MFI. He thought that if it could expand on its own that it would grow much faster. I sympathize with this idea but the problem really came with the inability of private MFis to take savings. In order to maintain steady growth and keep up with growing demand he was pressured to open the doors to foreign capital. Once these doors were open he was subjected to even stronger pressure from these investors. Investors expect a return on their investment. Investors generally have a herd mentality and so if SKS would show signs of slowing down than some would jump ship which would pressure others to do the same. Some investors jumping ship would cause the shares to decrease in value and thus make the prospective lack of financial liquidity a self-fulfilling prophecy. The microfinance industry continued to boom in Andhra Pradesh and it became clear that there was a bubble forming. The market was getting saturated with MFIs. SKS in order to placate its weary investors was forced to become more aggressive in its loan collecting methods. They used much more coercive means to collect the money.  There were around 300 suicides in India by microborrowers which ignited this crisis. At this point I believe there have around 13 suicides attributed to SKS’s “coercive techniques”. One story goes something like a microborrower was struggling to pay off her loan to SKS. She took out numerous loans from other MFIs but she could not get out of the spiral of debt. One of the loan collectors told her that if she could only get out her debt if she drowned herself. The next day she did.

The Indian government has been cracking down on MFIs and the entire industry has been collapsing. There are some lessons to be learned from the crisis in India. There is a difference between growth bubbles and actual development. Just because there was a lot of money circulating around the rural communities of Andhra Pradesh doesn’t mean that there was real wealth creation. The kind of financial bubble that occurred in Andhra Pradesh could prove to be more harmful than beneficial. Without a sustainable policy of savings/deposits MFIs could end up becoming mere pyramid schemes.

MACDI vs. Bloom

So I have eased my way into a pretty decent schedule. I teach full time on Saturday and Sunday from 8 AM to 6 PM and I have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class in the evening, I volunteer at MACDI in the mornings Tuesday to Friday, and I meet with three different Vietnamese ladies (trust me it’s all very innocent) throughout the week to practice my Vietnamese. I wake up at 6 AM every day except for Monday which I can sleep in to 7. All in all it’s a pretty busy schedule and I spend most of my time trucking around the city. As I continue teaching I will inevitably take on more classes and I will get even busier which unfortunately will probably interfere with my studying of Vietnamese. I really enjoy this life style. The challenge and stress of each day inspires me. Melancholy no longer hangs over me as it did during the month where I had literally nothing to do. I have to continuously stay busy to escape my history of depression.

Anyway, I have been volunteering at this microfinance organization known as MACDI (Microfinance and Community Development Institute). I have been brought in to help MACDI set up a tourism program. I’ve been doing some research and apparently the government of Vietnam has been actively pushing rural tourism as an important tool to alleviate poverty in rural areas of Vietnam. Anyone who has travelled around Vietnam can attest to the stark disparity between the quality of life in the rural provinces and the city centers. Vietnam is developing fast but the wealth creation has been concentrated in larger cities such as Hanoi and Saigon. I believe this phenomenon is quite common in developing countries.

Microfinance has an important role in helping the economic development of rural Vietnam. MACDI operates in provinces surrounding Hanoi. Last year MACDI commissioned a small charity known as Bloom Microventures to set up a tour to some of the villages in which MACDI operates. The tour is a day trip out to the Vietnamese countryside. Bloom organized the itinerary of the tour and it consisted of picking up tourists in Hanoi, busing them out to a small idyllic village where they met with a woman (98% of MACDI’s clients are women) who is an example of microfinance success story. The tourists can hear her story via translators and then they are guided around to points of interest in the surrounding area. Then they enjoy a traditional Vietnamese lunch and lastly visit a person in need of a microloan. This microloan in theory comes from the money the tourist paid for the tour itself.

It is a very nice idea and is definitely a good attempt at sustainable tourism. The tour was going great for about a year but Bloom let their success go to their head. At the beginning of the tourism program, the tours usually consisted of about 10-12 people and the customers only had to pay $40 per person. The deal was that Bloom had to pay MACDI $100 for each tour (this money would go directly to the microfinance operation) and the rest of the money should just cover their expenses. Bloom is a registered UK charity after all and not supposed to be in the business of making money. Bloom itself is not a microfinance institution and is only granted access to the rural commune because of their contribution to MACDI which is the actual microfinance institution. The tour was so successful and the popularity of the tour grew so much that they even will get a mention in the next Lonely Planet Vietnam. They have subsequently raised the price to $75 dollars per person and run tours 1-2 times a week with 15-20 people each. The problem is that the cost of running the tours has only marginally increased because of the increased volume of tourists but they still only pay MACDI $100 per tour. This means that there is a great deal of money that is unaccounted for. The director of MACDI has asked Bloom to renegotiate their agreement and she asked for more transparency about Bloom financial status. The head of Bloom refused both and thus MACDI has formally cut them off. There are two scenarios which initially come to my mind. Either they are merely pocketing the money which would be highly unethical or they could be raising capital with the profit in order to become an actual microfinance institution which is less bad but still is taking advantage of MACDI. I am very puzzled by the decision of the guys at Bloom. It seems to me that either they let their success get to their head and disregarded the danger of biting the hand that feeds them or I am only getting one side of the story. I am leaning towards the latter because I don’t think the people at Bloom can be that irrational or unethical.

This is where I come in. MACDI wants to set up a tourism program independent of Bloom and I am part of this effort. At this point I have only drafted some brochures and other fact sheets and flyers to post around. I am going to help them create and promote this tour. It will be pretty much the same tour as what Bloom had so it shouldn’t really be difficult to set up. It’ll just take some legwork. I haven’t really done all that much since I have started volunteering there so I have used my idle time there to do further research about microfinance in Vietnam and around the world. I found the microfinance crisis of Andhra Pradesh very interesting and I think you should check it out.

Microfinance is not yet a mature market and is developing around the world very differently. Some people view it as a tool to empower women, others see it as mainly a tool to alleviate poverty, and plenty of others see it as a new market to make money in. I have my own ideas about microfinance but I try to avoid being dogmatic. I do believe that microfinance has had a positive impact of the world and has raised millions of people out of poverty already. There have also been market failures, such as Andhra Pradesh, and other abuses of the system. I am so happy to be able to see how microfinance works from inside an actual microfinance institute. My real reason for coming to Vietnam was to understand how microfinance works which is kind of funny since Vietnam is one of the worst markets for microfinance. I’ll tell you about that later. 

Vietnamese Language

I thought I would write a bit about Vietnamese language and my progress so far. I did do some self-studying while I was in Pittsburgh before I arrived so I could familiarize myself with the grammar and writing system. This has really helped me since I have a basic level to start from. Now that I have set my schedule for my work and volunteering I have been able to organize my study of Vietnamese around my other obligations.

I refrained from enrolling in any Vietnamese course or paying a private tutor. I purchased a couple of text books for some structure (I also bought a Japanese textbook for Vietnamese students which has been useful in interesting ways). I posted an ad on a Hanoi website looking for language exchange. I offered to teach anyone interested English or Japanese in exchange for Vietnamese. I had a lot of responses and at this point I meet with 3 different Vietnamese people. I meet with one girl who wants to learn Japanese and she is the best teacher since she is fluent in English. The other two want practice with English conversation so it doesn’t require any effort from me aside from just talking. This language exchanges have been very fruitful and I am glad that I decided to do them.

Vietnamese is an interesting language. There seems to be three main dialects which are based on geography: northern, central, and southern. Northern Vietnamese is considered to be the official language and that is the dialect that is usually found in Vietnamese textbooks. The dialects are not wildly different like the myriad languages of the Philippines or India. There are differences in vocabulary and pronunciation but they are essentially the same language. Luckily, the Vietnamese long ago abandoned the burdensome Chinese characters and adopted the Romanized script created by a French missionary. It is thus very easy for me to read (unlike Japanese).

There are six different tones (although they only recognize five in the south). This means that seemingly identical words can have a completely different meaning. They signify different tones by using diacritical marks over top and below the words. For example, giay, giáy, giày, giảy, giạy, giãy are all completely different words. I know one of them is shoe but I forget which one it is. I don’t know about the other ones. There is a rising (giáy) , falling (giày) , and flat tone (giay) which are easy enough to figure out but the other three were tough for me to get my head around. One of them is like a sudden stop so it makes you swallow the word (giạy). One of them makes you make a glottal stop in your throat and rises sharply (giãy) and the last one starts low, goes lower and rises again (giảy). I’m sure not all of those “giay”s (the gi is pronounced like a z)  are real words. I just wanted to show you guys the tones. There are also plenty of other marks that are used to mark vowels to signify they have a completely different sound. A normal Vietnamese sentence looks like this: Tôi là người Mỹ và tôi muốn biết tiếng Việt nhưng tiếng Việt khó lằm. That means “I am American and I want to know Vietnamese but it is too difficult. The writing system is kind of intimidating at first but it’s honestly not that hard to learn.

The grammar is easy enough for me to understand. The grammar structure is subject+verb+object which is how I’m used to talking. Japanese language is structured quite differently and so it forces me to say things in a way that is contrary to my English thought process. I really have to get into a Japanese mindset to adequately speak Japanese. I don’t have that problem with Vietnamese. The verbs also do not conjugate. They signify the past, progressive, and future tense by small “helping” words put before the verb. However, if the context is obvious then they are usually dropped.

Every Asian language I have encountered has had some built in grammatical system to demonstrate status and show politeness. Tagalog (Philippines) was the easiest. You just have to insert the word po after whatever you say and it becomes polite. I’m sure there are other nuances but I didn’t dive into Tagalog in enough depth to be aware of them. Japanese has a very complex and tedious system to show politeness in varying circumstances. I know the two basic levels of politeness and I have an idea how to construct some of the honorific speech but I gave up trying to learn any more of it. The verbs completely change along with a lot of the vocabulary depending on if you are honoring the person you are talking to or humbling yourself and honestly it seems like a different language. It is only used for those working in strict Japanese companies or other sensitive circumstances. The system is so hard to use correctly that I heard a lot of young Japanese actually take a class to learn how to do it before they start working.  In Vietnam, the system revolves around pronouns. How you refer to yourself, the person you are talking to, or somebody you are referring to depends entirely on your and his/her age. It also based on how old your siblings and mother and father are. If the person you are talking/referring to is about your older sister/brothers age there is a special pronoun to use for them. If there is a person who is about your uncle/aunt’s age there is a pronoun. The keeps going past mother/father to grandmother/grandfather. So there’s about a dozen different pronouns.  They also don’t have fixed meanings so they could mean you or I depending on the situation. For example if I am talking to a man who is older than me but not older than my older sister then I would refer to him as anh and myself as em. This process is reversed if I am older. Em seems to be general pronoun used if you are the younger.  There are other irregularities such as how my friend has to refer to her younger cousin as if she was older because her cousin’s father is older than her father. It was very confusing system at first for me to learn. There are some nuances as well such as it is usually polite to refer to women as one level younger than you think they are. I guess it makes them feel young but more often than not I have just been corrected so my attempt at being nice falls flat. This is part of the reason why one the of first questions Vietnamese people ask is how old you are.

At this point I can carry basic conversations and navigate my way through markets. My vocabulary is expanding like a haphazard tapestry but eventual I’ll tie off the important loose ends. I am certainly not going to become fluent while I am here but I hope I can be pretty decent by the time I leave. The only problem I encounter is that the pronunciation can be so difficult that people will just stare at you blankly as you speak and will think you are speaking English. This is really frustrating but it gives me impetus to work harder at it.

Getting Started

I apologize for not writing any blogs recently but so far I have spent the majority of my time in idleness. Tet New Year is really a boring affair for non-Vietnamese. There is literally nothing to do but luckily I found a Will Smith collection DVD which has entertained me. The box indicates that Will Smith is “One of unique ability and odd brand black movie stars!” and that he is “The Whole People Superman”. I would have to agree.

I have just began teaching and it’s going pretty much as I expected. Dealing with kids is very tiring but I think I have the patience for it. I can’t really relate to the other teachers that are so sensitive to the kids being bored since I grew up with a majority of my teachers being mediocre and uninteresting (of course there were exceptions). All that mumbo jumbo about effective and engaging teaching is really an idealization. There are of course better methods than others but at the end of the day but judging the quality of teaching is subjective. Test scores say a little but that’s it; just a little yet that little can drastically affect someone’s life. That is the essential mediocrity of the system.  I believe that teachers should not completely cater to the students (except in the case of small children or children that are disabled). Once they hit teenage years than they deserve minimal leeway. The world only bends to those with a silver spoon or extraordinary talent. The majority of people have to work within the system and the system is not forgiving. Aside from all of that, I do like the students. They can be adorable at times.

I have finally found an NGO dealing with microfinance that has given me the opportunity to volunteer for them. This is a major accomplishment since I was giving up hope altogether. Vietnam’s microfinance market is not easy to get involved with but I’m glad I have a foothold. That was the whole reason why I came here.

I am warming up to Hanoi. I understand the bus system for the most part which has made my life a lot easier. I am not going to invest in a motorbike since I think it’s kind of a waste of money. I keep thinking about what that French girl told me on the train. That Hanoi is a poetic city. It’s hard for me to say if I can fully agree with it. Hanoi was at first quite abrasive for me. The weather has been terrible. I have seen the sun a few times this month and it rains almost every day. I will put more thought into this and respond later.

 My Vietnamese is slowly improving which has made my life much easier. I’ve been meeting with some Vietnamese people to do language exchanges and this has proved fruitful. Vietnamese is a complex language but I don’t know a language that isn’t hard to learn.

I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about the rest of my time here. I’m glad I finally have work to do. I hate not having any work to do. It really drains my sense of being.

Journey to Ba Vi

During the doldrums which is Tet (Chinese New Year) in Vietnam some friends and I decided to go on trip to a nearby mountain. On a side note, I’m interested at just how little Vietnamese do for Tet publicly. There was a firework display but aside from that everything just shuts down. So for someone who doesn’t have Vietnamese people to celebrate with you get stuck with nothing to do.

There were six of us and 3 motor bikes. I didn’t drive since I haven’t practiced at all. We were drinking on Monday night and decided impetuously to go. We planned to go to the Ba Vi national park which is home to a 4,000 foot mountain and is only about 50 km from Hanoi. It was drizzly and cold on our drive up. Luckily we spotted a lady selling gloves. Otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised if we got frost bite. The road is easy enough. It’s a pretty much a straight shot from Hanoi through vast agriculture. I was struck by just how flat this part of Vietnam is.

Up until we arrived at the small town of Son Tay which was about 20 km from the foot of the mountain I didn’t see any signs of elevation. We looked for a hotel in the ghost town that is Son Tay during Tet. As we drove around aimlessly we stumbled across a two star hotel that could put us up for 5 dollars a night per person. I thought this was reasonable since we were only staying one night. With only a finger pointing us in the direction of the mountain we set off hoping that it should be quite obvious where this goliath is. It was still raining a bit and the visibility was bad. There always seems to be a fog that hangs over much of Vietnam, especially at this time of the year, but that day was especially bad. I couldn't even see the mountain as we continued down this country road. We also assumed that a national park as big as Ba Vi national park would have an obvious sign. We were completely mistaken about that and we ended driving until we got to a dirt road littered with pot holes. It was definitely doable in a Land Rover or 4X4 but those little Honda Waves were more like scooters than actual motorcycles. There was a ferry crossing just where we stopped so I tried to ask some people directions. It was no easy task since my Vietnamese is still quite bad but I got the idea that we had gone too far and had missed a turn off somewhere. We turned back and stumbled upon a road that seemed like it could lead to a national park. It was definitely headed toward the mountain. We drove down this idyllic road through the rice paddies into a small town. Just beyond the small town were a large gate and a toll man. It looked like we had finally found the right place. We paid the man and took off in great excitement thinking that we could finally drive up mountain. After about a hundred meters we were directed to a parking lot and we had to get off the bikes. We were confused since we were told you could drive up to summit but just went along with it. As we started walking through this strange place I began to think we had made a mistake. There were plastic dinosaurs scattered around with play grounds and a child’s swimming pool. The place was surreal and not at all what I expected. There was a nice waterfall and a trail that seemed to go up to the mountain so we decided to hike a little bit.

 We got stuck at one stream crossing since the Vietnamese built a pretty ridiculous bridge that was so narrow one of my feet was too wide. A couple of my friends made it across using the bridge but I crossed using the myriad treacherous stones. We hiked a bit farther but it was definitely a dead end but it was a nice scamper about.

We headed into town a bit disappointed that we couldn’t find the actual mountain but determined to find it the next day. It took ages to find a place to eat because of the paralyzing effect of Tet but we eventually found some nice pho. Son Tay was a nice town and the people were all very friendly.

In the morning we got up and headed out hell bent on finding this mountain. We decided that the turn off has to be on the same road since there really was only one major road. All of a sudden we spotted one of many small signs directing people to Ba Vi. I finally learned the word for national park which is quite different than the word for park which I already knew. On a whim we tried it out and finally found the mountain. We biked straight up the mountain and the road is actually pretty well maintained. There was only one incident of one bike falling into a ditch but they survived. The weather was better but the visibility was still bad and for the last quarter of the trip up the mountain we were in a cloud. It was also freezing cold and damp. Once we made it to the top we just had to hike for another 30 minutes or so the actual top where the Vietnamese built a spectacular temple and a shrine for Ho Chi Minh. 

Unfortunately, you couldn’t see anything from the top of the mountain because of the heavy fog. Mountains covered in mist are beautiful but difficult to photograph. I stood at the top of the mountain and I could just imagine how spectacular the view could have been. At times you could see notions of the horizon before us. Fog is like lingerie. It can give you a glimpse but hides the essentials. It is enticing nonetheless.

From the top of the mountain we made our way down and stopped a few times to photograph the scenery. If you look really carefully you should see the temple at the very top of the mountain.

After that we beasted it back to Hanoi making real good time. It was definitely a good trip. I really enjoy mountain air.