Movie Stuff and Other Musings

I've been watching a lot of French movies that I check out from the médiathèque at the Institut Français de Hanoi. I'll watch them first with English subtitles just to relax and enjoy the movie, then watch them with French subtitles (if available), and then without any subtitles at all. It is a pretty good method for learning oral comprehension, which seems to be one of the most difficult skills in learning a language. I feel like I've made a lot of progress in my French class, which ends this week. Yesterday I took the final oral exam, and Friday will be a day where we just show up to get the results of the oral and written exams.  I was a little surprised that we took our oral exams individually, one by one, in the classroom.  Everybody else waited outside while the person taking the exam was quizzed. I decided I would be the last one, so I went in last.  It was not too bad, but I have no idea how it was graded.  Everybody tried to pack a bunch of stuff into their heads to take into the exam; there was a lot of last-minute studying from all of us.  But the first questions were all about talking about ourselves...I'm guessing that was to have everybody clear their heads and talk more naturally, rather relying on a template that was hastily memorized.

A couple of the movies have been pretty good. There was one called “Do Not Disturb” (the title was in English despite it being a French movie), which is sort of a buddy movie gone bizarro. I don't want to give out any spoilers, but it's a pretty funny movie. And there is one called “Coers” (Hearts) that is pretty good too. It's sort of an intertwining-relationships movie, where several sub-plots follow the characters throughout. The main plot surrounds a woman who is providing care for a guy's seriously abusive bedridden father.

I'll be in Hanoi for a little over another month, and then I plan to take off on my motorbike, possibly to Laos. I've heard Laos is more basic than Vietnam, but a little more expensive, because they import just about everything. Maybe it's a little bit crazy to take off on a motorbike that has no gas gauge and sometimes has dificulty starting by myself, through who-knows-what road conditions and weather conditions, across territory that contains lions and tigers and shit. Oh well, I'll either survive it, or I won't.

I don't think I will have too much trouble with the gear that I will have packed on my bike. It's not too heavy for a bike, though it might be kinda bulky. I just watched in horror the other day while I was riding my bike down the street, and a bike ahead of me that was carrying about twelve toilets on it had the owner slowly lose control of the balance while stopped at a red light (some people do occasionally stop for the red lights here), and it dumped over sideways, leaving the toilets to spill into the street. But the motorbike winner from the past few days has to be the guy (the knight) who was carrying several pieces of pipe about four meters long (the lance), and a whole panoply of plate glass on both sides of the bike (the glass armor), and as he passed me, I noticed he had a passenger on the back of his bike, standing uncomfortably in a question-mark position around the pipe sticking out (the hostage).

I've got some kind of gruesome rash surrounding one of my eyes that looks and feels like a chemical burn. I'm guessing shingles or something like that. So I applied some of the magical ointment that I got in a pharmacy in Japan for my foot injury. Actually, it's probably not a magical ointment. I really have no idea what it is, since everything on the tube in in Japanese. But I'm choosing to fantasize that it is a magical potion passed down to me by sagacious medical wizards with wisdom from millenia past. Maybe then a placebo effect will be conferred on me despite the horrible misapplication of whatever medication this is. I'm guessing that it is a topical antibiotic and therefore will do no good at all, and possibly even contribute to the formation of some supermicrobe that will envelop the planet in some pandemic that threatens to render the human population extinct, until scientists come up with some kind of nano-muncher that eats all the bad shit. But I digress.

I'm a little bit concerned because part of it is right on the corner of my eye. But I haven't lost any sight yet, so that's a good sign. Anyway, I'll either survive it, or I won't. At least I haven't gotten to the “Phantom of the Opera” phase yet, where I'm fashioning masks to hide my deformities.

Backing Up Into An Abyss

I've been trying, in what might be a futile effort, to back up all of my photos on the SD chip from my phone. I have actually been trying for months, but I have given up several times due to technical problems. But it is coming to a head now. The chip is 128 GB, but is approaching capacity. And my phone, which has 16 GB of internal memory, keeps refusing to load any more emails periodically because it says internal memory is full. So I will have to dump stuff every once in a while, and I have dumped so many apps and files that now I am down to bare-bones. As I said, I've tried several times to back up the SD card. Supposedly, Dropbox is supposed to do this automatically, but it doesn't read the files on my card or something, because it does not see the directory at all that the pictures are in on the card. I've tried to manually back up from my phone, and that is no good either. So I've tried on several occasions to take the SD card out, put it in an adapter and slip it into my laptop's SD slot, but that is massively slow. When I was staying in hostels, I didn't ever have enough time. Now I think maybe it is doing it, but it tells me there are 79 days left. I tried to back my card up when I was in Korea, where they have super fast Internet, and it still told me it would take a week, but I didn't have a safe place to leave my computer connected in the hostel for a week. At least I can keep it connected in the apartment, but there are long stretches of time when the connection is not happening.  I've been uploading for four days and it has barely moved the needle. What is on Dropbox now is just a smattering of the files, and they are uploading...and uploading...and uploading. The files might not even be complete and useable.  It may not happen, yet again. Fun with technology.

I went to the Vietnamese Women's Museum today. My friend Paul said it was a good place to check out, so I want and visited it today. I watched a fascinating film that talked about how many of the street vendors in Hanoi come from little villages around Vietnam to sell their wares on the streets, then return to their villages with tiny amounts of money. One woman said she returns every 10 to 12 days with about twenty dollars. One woman says she gets up at 2 am to scour the markets and sell every day until about 7 pm. One woman said she stays is a dormitory packed with other women who sell stuff on the streets, and pays 35 cents a day to stay there. There were also a lot of stories about women who did stuff during the wars with France and the US. It was an interesting experience.

But, I didn't have my SD card in my phone, because it is sitting almost idle in my computer, getting the files to ooze slowly into on online backup, if it ever happens. Luckily, internal memory was enough to take some pics in the museum.

The weather was just delightful walking around Hanoi today. It was nice and cool, probably high 60s, with a strong breeze. It was great walking around weather. I came back to my apartment and left all the windows open so I could feel the wind in the apartment. I get great cross-breezes when it is windy.

Well, the presidential election in the US is today.  Finally, all the noisy bullshit will stop, and all the people who claim the world will collapse on Nov. 9th will finally shut the fuck up. Hopefully.

Various Ramblings About Hanoi

The weather in Hanoi has been phenomenal lately. It gets to high teens C (maybe low 60s F) at night, and low to high 20s (ranging between 70 and 80) during the day. In the last week, it has definitely cooled. It is starting to warm up again, but the trend is cooler. I don't think it gets below 50 F much in Hanoi during the winter, though. It is in the tropics here and there is not a huge temperature swing, though there are definite differences in temperature across the year.

I am taking the bus to school almost every time I go now. I find that if I walk the six kilometers to school, through chaotic traffic all the way, I am too tired and stressed to concentrate on the material as well. So I'll take the bus in, and often I will walk back. There are two buses I can take from Tay Ho to Hoan Kiem. One is the #55, and the other is the #31. It wasn't easy to find out the bus routes. I partially had to do it through trial and error, and some guesswork. But I finally figured out yesterday the way to get back home on the #31. I could have walked home, but I wanted to spend some time figuring out where the damn bus route was. I had had a difficult time with this bus, because apparently they have recently changed the bus route, but many vestigial leftovers of the old route were still left. For example, Google Maps still says that the bus stops are on another street, but they aren't on that street. I had reserved time after my classes on Friday to find a northbound bus stop somewhere, and I had narrowed it down to a few blocks of possibilities. I had tried on several different occasions to take this bus north, but could not find the right stops.

So I headed down to Hoan Kiem Lake and started walking south on the road that is one-way southbound that borders it. After walking a couple of blocks, I finally found a purported bus stop for the #31. So I waited about half an hour, watching other buses come up to the stop, some twice. But no #31. Finally, I see the #31 approaching from the south. I'm finally gonna figure out the northbound route, But, crap, it turns right on the block right before me. So the stop I am at is bogus, they just haven't changed the sign yet. So now I have to find the next (real) stop to the south. I walked a few more blocks down the street (hoping that the bus was continuous on this street, because it could have turned in from any other street) and found another stop for the #31. This one ended up being a real bus stop. The bus picked me up, and took me north. The route going north was completely different from the route going south; it would have been difficult to find this route just trying to walk the streets in the area. When I take the #55, it just goes straight down the Hell Highway (that's just what I call it, due to the prodigious street-crossing skills one needs to cross it...it is actually called Au Co street for the length of my neighborhood; it has several other names as it winds through different parts of the city) both ways, so it was pretty easy to figure out. But the #31 winds through the city down little busy streets. It is a lot slower, but if I take it back, I don't have to make the treacherous street crossing.

In my French class the other day, the teacher was going around asking everybody how long they had been learning French, or from when they started.  The teachers are constantly going around asking people about little bits of info about their lives to engage them in speaking the language.  Everybody was going around saying a few months, maybe one of two said a year.  Geez, I was thinking, I started learning French over 50 years ago (I didn't end up saying that in class, because she stopped asking before she got to me).  For having studied that long, I sure don't have much to show for it.  I mean, I can understand a good amount of it, but I have to get people to speak slowly and/or repeat themselves before I get it.  But, of course, I wasn't studying continuously that time.  I started speaking French with my mother when I was a small child; she spoke French because she was half Quebecoise.  I had a French class in my elementary school in Mexico, and then I studied it for two years in high school.  I placed out of a year for college, and then took another year.  And that was the bulk of my studies, though I have spoken some when I have gone to France and Quebec. But when I went to school in Mexico, my Spanish, which was the third language I had learned, eclipsed my French, which was originally my second language.  I became fluent in Spanish, but not quite so in French.  I finally wanted to take some more classes because I wanted to if I could burst through to relative fluency by studying some more of this language that I hadn't studied in thirty years. At first I spent a few months studying online at Lawless French (which is a great resource for vocabulary and grammar, but I needed more conversational practice).  But then I found out when I was on my way to Vietnam that there were courses I could take in Hanoi at L'Institut Français, so I jumped on that opportunity.  It also gave me the chance to sit for a while in a relatively cheap and interesting place.

Now let me tell you something about Vietnam, this place I am settling in for a short time.  There are a lot of places in the world where everybody will tell you the time has passed to visit such-and-such place.  The place has gotten overdeveloped, it has gotten too touristy and commercial, too expensive, and so on.  That is not the case for Vietnam.  The time to visit Vietnam is NOW. This place is happening, and it is seriously affordable. Of course, some promoters have come in in the last few years and fouled a few pristine spots with commercial trash.  But, for the most part, Vietnam is still a place that hasn't been completely taken over by mega-corporations, and a place where you will have amazingly authentic experiences.

English-speaking travelers can easily find jobs in Vietnam teaching English.  I see tons of listings where they are trying to fill openings for either regular teachers, or subs to take their places, and the credentials required for many teaching jobs are not as stringent as other places, though you will still find many that are strict about credentials, especially in elementary schools or middle/secondary schools.  Usually the jobs start at about $20 an hour and might pay more if you are more credentialed or experienced.  And $20 an hour goes a long way in Vietnam. That is the biggest and easiest-to-find source of jobs for English-speakers, though there are others.  They are constantly looking for foreign-looking models here, or people to be on television or in films. Also there are a few Western bartenders and waiters.  Another source of jobs are the many hostels here; you could probably get a job fairly quickly, but don't expect it to pay anything close to what you would make in the West, though you could live decently in Hanoi (especially with the free lodging that comes with it).  But a lot of under-30s (you have to be under 30 to do this) go to Australia and/or New Zealand to do their year-long working holiday, where they can make very high wages and save a lot of money, and then go traveling through Asia.

My friend Paul came to visit a couple of days ago.  He has been living in Sa Pa, and I met up with him when I went up there, but now it is getting cold in the mountains there so he is heading south.  We met up near the lake and I took him to a secret little speakeasy bar tucked behind another business; one where you have to know someone to even know where the place is.  It's a little place with a secret stone stairwell tucked into the wall leading up to it.  I don't even know that it has a name. There are always a bunch of bohemian/hippie folks that hang out there, both local and tourist, and sometimes there are folks in there painting murals on the walls, or playing acoustic guitar. We met up with some folks from the UK and ended up hanging out with them for a good portion of the night.  We had a good time hanging out there, and then Paul moved on to the next stage of his journey.

Fooding In The Flat

I've been doing a lot of cooking with the limited kitchen utensils that come with my apartment. For cooking, I have a rice cooker, a one-burner electric cooker that comes with a saucepan and boiling pan, and a kettle. That's pretty much it. Today I made a concoction in the rice cooker that is sort of like enchiladas without the wrappings mixed with Spanish rice, and it's delicious. I started with rice, split peas and lentils, added a bunch of sesame seeds, and brought to a boil with a whole bunch of tomatoes and chilis and garlic. I also included some mushroom broth from all the dehydrated mushrooms in the last week that I had soaked to reconstitute. I added some canned vegan “pork” that I found in the Lotte Mart's vegan section that is kind of the consistency of Spam, and some reconstitutable TVP chunks. Then I added a layer of chopped vegetables, including mushrooms, onions, eggplant, broccoli, and water dropwort, and let it simmer until the veggies had softened. Then I added some canned garbanzos and some cubed tough tofu, and smothered the top with pasta sauce, and let it finish cooking. It was so good I've been eating it all day, and I just finished the last of it.

I've been making decoctions of ginger with a little lime, to make ginger lime tea, and decoctions of turmeric root and black pepper for a turmeric pepper tea, also with a bit of lime. I've been making a bunch of stir fries as well. I made a lotus seed and veggie stir-bake in the rice cooker a few days ago. I've been making most of my own food while I have this apartment, which is a change from the eating on the street and eating raw fruits and nuts and one or two component ingredients I was doing while I was on the move.

To wash dishes, I have a tiny sink in the bathroom. It is the only sink in the apartment, and it only has three tiny jets of water that come out of it with very high pressure, but are a very small flow of water. If I need more flow, I can use the showerhead that is on a hose, and is removable from a clamp that holds it in place at shower level. The shower is not in its own enclosure, but the whole bathroom is the shower stall. The sink has a little swiveled disk that can be used as a sink plug; it is rubberized on the side and fixed to the drain on a pivot that attaches on either side of it.

The rambutans I bought the other day are getting juicier and sweeter as they ripen more.  They also don't stick to the seed as much when they ripen more.  I have a couple of different kinds of bananas; when I bought them, they were green, but they are ripening and will probably peak in the next couple days.

Hanoi Buses And Other Miscellaneous Stuff

It was pouring rain today when I got out of my French class, so I decided to take the bus. I've gotten used to the two buses that I can take back and forth from my neighborhood to the French Institute, the #55 and the #31. I know how to take both of them there, but I still have not figured out how to take the #31 back to my apartment. The Hanoi buses are not terribly transparent as far as information goes. The two buses that I did figure out, I kind of just got there by trial and error. The first day that I tried to take the bus, I ended up taking three buses to get to where I needed to go when I could have taken just one, had I been able to figure out the correct information. But I did learn about how to get there. And it's really no big deal to just ride on the buses for a while; each one costs about a quarter. Online, I have not found any map or time schedule. If I click on the link for the “schedule”, all I see are the bus numbers and a list of neighborhoods that they go through. That is not terribly helpful for someone who is not familiar with all of Hanoi's neighborhoods. Google Maps has a list of bus stops, but many of them are incorrect.

I would consider taking my motorbike to class, but parking is really difficult in the congested area where the Institute is. There is a parking garage connected to the Institute, but the cost is about the same as taking the bus both ways, so I figure it is better to leave my bike at home rather than let it sit downtown for a while. Maybe I'm just being overly paranoid about that, but the bus is just a better solution for me right now.

Eventually I am going to have to figure out where to buy a tarp to cover my backpack with for when I am in transit, in case it rains. I can probably go to the place I bought my bike, Style Motorbikes, and they will most certainly either know or sell them there. That place is a great resource. They will help you plan routes, show up for assistance if you have an issue with your bike, provide maintenance if needed, and generally provide all kinds of support. They were recommended to me by a guy from Georgia (the state in the US, not the country adjoining Russia) at the hostel where I was staying, and he did not steer me wrong. He also turned me on to the Facebook group where I found my apartment.

I found a place not too far from where I am living where I can rent a keyboard for 25-30 dollars a month, with a minimum of three months, and a delivery/set up fee of ten bucks. I am tempted to do it, but probably won't. First of all, I'm not going to be here for three more months. Second of all, there's not much room in my apartment to set up a keyboard. But I might stop by and check out the place. It would sure be nice to have a keyboard in my place to play, and I have only played piano a couple of times since I left the States. Maybe if I come back to Hanoi at some point (which I may well do at a later time), I can keep it in mind.

I have to leave the country for at least a day at the end of November to renew my visa. Well, technically I don't really have to, I could renew my visa internally, but that can be complicated and expensive. So leaving the country is, for the most part, the easiest and cheapest way to get another visa. I had just missed the new one-year visas that Vietnam has for US citizens, which started on September 1. Just my luck, I got here on August 31, and fell under the old deal, which was a 90 day visa. But even the new one-year visas supposedly require you to leave the country every three months. I say “supposedly” because the visas are new and the rules are not terribly clear yet, and some people seem to be able to help you figure out ways to get around many rules, or find loopholes, in any case. Some folks just ride their motorbikes across the border to Laos for a day or two, and then come back. You can pretty much do that for years...some people live here long-term and just take a short journey to another country every three months. So I went to Skyscanner to see what would be the cheapest place to fly to for a few days. The first place I found was Malaysia, but I didn't jump on that right away, so I didn't get that ticket. A few days later, I looked again, and at that time, flights to Bangkok were the cheapest at the end of November. So I bought a ticket, and Bangkok it is. I'll be there for five days, maybe that is enough time to take a short trip somewhere in Thailand. But if not, I'm not going to push it; I can just spend the five days checking out the city. The hostel is only about five bucks a night, so it is not like it will be super expensive or anything.

Class Struggle

I'm taking classes in both French and Vietnamese at L'Institut Français de Hanoi, which is housed in a building called L'Espace. I originally wanted to take intensive classes that were three hours a day, five days a week, after seeing that intensive classes were offered, but after the placement test, which placed me at the upper intermediate level, I found out that they do not offer intensive classes at that level. It was a little bit of a disappointment, but I decided that I would make up the time by doing as much side study on my own as I can. I have been watching a lot of French language television, as there is a TV station here that broadcasts solely in French. Sometimes it has English subtitles as well. Occasionally it will have French subtitles, but this seems to be strangely confined only to shows that originate in Quebec. Also, I can check out movies in French from the library at the Institut; I have a free borrowing card that comes along with taking a class there. I try to watch a movie a few times...the first time, I will utilize the subtitles (if there are any; not all the movies have them) and just try to follow the plot and catch any French I can. Subsequent times that I watch a movie, I just try to fill in the gaps in the words that I did not catch the first time.

So right now I am taking the regular classes, which are 1½ hours a week three times a week. One advantage is that they only cost a third of the price of the intensive classes. Either way, the classes are incredibly cheap. The intensive classes would have been around three hundred dollars for seven weeks, and the regular classes are costing me about a hundred dollars for the same length of time. Since I could not get intensive classes, I decided to try learning the Vietnamese language as well. They teach Vietnamese there, but the classes are taught in French. I figured that would be an opportunity for me to reinforce my French as well. And, besides, most of the class is in Vietnamese anyway, and it is only every once in a while that the teacher will explain something in French.

Originally, the French class was scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Vietnamese class was supposed to be Tuesday and Thursday. But a few days before the classes started, they moved the Vietnamese class to Monday and Friday. The advantage is that I only have to go to that end of town three times a week. The disadvantage is that I'm more burned out and probably would have had more alertness in class if I was starting fresh. But it is not that bad.

There is a completely different demographic in each of the two classes. The French class is populated with mostly young Vietnamese people, mostly around college age. The only foreign students are a German guy and me. In the Vietnamese class, everybody there except for me is originally from France, and they trend probably a generation older than those in the other class. Some of them have been in Vietnam for quite a while and it is evident that some of them have had a good deal of exposure already to the Vietnamese language, as there are a few who are able to make it through the class discussions much easier than others, and know many words beyond the ones we are covering. The textbook is kind of crappy. It does not have any vocabulary at all, and has a lot of exercises in it at the end of each chapter that call for words that have never been discussed in the lessons. Fortunately, the teacher gives out a lot of handouts and provides a lot of in-class material to fill the gaps in this sucky textbook.

I haven't studied Vietnamese for long, but I've made a few observations about what I have seen so far of the language. The vast majority of the words in Vietnamese are monosyllabic. I've been not only looking at the material we are covering, but also trying to look over signs and postings of regulations and such in public places. Sometimes there will be an imported foreign word that has more than one syllable. For example, I saw the word “carrageenan” on a list of ingredients (ha, this word isn't in my spellcheck either, and gives me “Narragansett” as the supposedly correct alternative). Also, verbs are never conjugated (at least from what we have covered so far and what I have curiously looked up online). A verb will not change at all between different persons, and for different tenses, there may be a helper word that is added to convey the different tense. There are accent marks for letters, and accent marks for words that convey the tone assigned to the word. There are six different tones that a word can have, and it can be difficult to figure out in the rapidity of a conversation which one to apply. Tonal languages are supposed to be difficult for westerners, and I can see why. The tone you impart to a word can often completely change the meaning of the word, but I have heard that when a westerner who is struggling with the language is speaking, a Vietnamese person can often compensate for their incorrect tone and understand what they are saying because of the context. The rising tone is a little bit like the rise in intonation you might add at the end of a question in English (and other languages) to differentiate it from a statement, but more understated, and much faster. Since a rising tone conveys meaning in a word, it means that Vietnamese do not rise their tone at the end of a sentence to denote a question. Keep in mind that these are just initial observations, and I could be wrong about any of this stuff or applying it in the wrong context; if you know otherwise, feel free to correct me in the comments. I am definitely no expert on the language and it is a struggle to learn it.

When I started learning Polish, it seemed to me that words in that language were really difficult to learn. And new words in Polish can still be difficult for me unless they spring from some root that I am familiar with, and/or utilize some rule that I am aware of to denote the correct part of speech. For some reason, verbs seemed even harder than other parts of speech; at least verbs beyond the initial few that one uses all that time. Probably one of the reasons verbs are so hard is that they don't denote a thing and therefore are harder to visualize. I think part of the struggle is that Slavic roots are so foreign to a Germanic/Romance language model, but you still might encounter something vaguely familiar occasionally. Vietnamese is a whole different ball of wax. You are never going to encounter anything familiar except for words that have been imported wholesale. And all these monosyllabic words with strict tonal guidelines look similar and are incredibly hard to memorize and keep distinct...particularly when there are words that are spelled the same but have different tonal or letter accents.

In my French class, we have two regular teachers. One is a middle-aged Vietnamese woman who comes in on Mondays, and the other is a younger French woman who teaches on Wednesdays and Fridays. There was another woman who substituted once. It is good to have the two perspectives on teaching as each teacher emphasizes different things. The Monday teacher seems to hew very closely to the textbook and seems to be more interested in details, while the other teacher tends to just kind of go with the flow and seems to be more expansive. Both of the teachers seem very knowledgeable and engaging.


On a side note, it has been raining a lot the last couple of days.  I know it is still the rainy season, which supposedly lasts through November, but it has not been raining much the last couple of weeks.  Now suddenly the rain has ramped up somewhat.  I am sitting in my apartment watching it pour rain outside from the window of my apartment.  It usually doesn't rain for very long, but the rain comes off and on throughout the day.  I don't think it gets very cold in Hanoi in the wintertime, but it may get down to slightly cool temperatures.  But by winter, I'll probably be moving again, checking out my next destinations.

Tense Motorbiking, Poor Connections, And Cheap Technology

Today I went for a long ride on my motorbike into the outskirts of Hanoi and the countryside. My bike has a USB charger and a phone bracket on the handlebars, so I plugged in my phone, mounted it, and put it on Google Maps. But Google Maps isn't bright enough for me to see in the daylight. So I had to constantly stop, turn off the bike, and check where I was at on the map. Not that I really needed to, I could have just driven and checked it out at the end when I wanted to come back. But you know digital culture, it addicts us and mesmerizes us, sucking us all into its demanding bosom, so like an obedient addict child of the the electronic monster, I sucked on the heroin milk of its reassurance constantly. But I eventually switched to maps.me, which was much brighter, and which I could see all the time. Problem solved.

I am hoping to get to the point where I am not just a tight ball of stress when riding my bike in Hanoi traffic. I constantly find that my body is rigid and tense, and that I am gripping the handlebars much too tightly, and I have to make a mental effort to relax. Then ten minute later I will notice again that every muscle in my body is rigid again, and I take a breath again, and relax my muscles. But it is hard to be relaxed in Hanoi traffic, especially when I am not all that used to motorbiking. The clutch and front brake (I hardly ever use the back foot brake, but I am trying to train myself to use it more) keep both my hands occupied. And traffic on the streets and at every intersection is just coming from all directions all the time. Nobody stops for any of the intersections, and right-of-way is based on survival of the fittest.

On the way back into town, I stopped at the Lotte Supermarket to do some food shopping. I like to take my backpack into the store near where I live, so I can fill it instead of using bags. But they won't let me do that at the Lotte. I even showed them that there was nothing in the backpack, but rules are rules are rules are rules, I guess. They make me put it in the locker, and they put a cable tie on my fanny pack. Pretty damned paranoid. So I have to get the groceries in plastic bags, beg somebody to cut the cable tie on my fanny pack at the end of shopping, and then repack all the groceries into my backpack. Then I tie the backpack onto the rack on the back of my bike. I have this awesome rack that they installed when I bought the bike for loading up my huge backpack when I eventually travel across Vietnam after my classes are over. But it is just bungee-corded on, so I hope nobody decides to relieve me of it.

Connectivity. I just can't get me much. The internet wi-fi at my apartment is sporadic and usually super-slow. It will often take several minutes to load Facebook comments, longer to load a web page from a link, and I can usually forget audio or video. If I can do audio or video, it is usually two seconds of streaming, followed by a minute of buffering, then another few seconds of streaming followed by interminably long buffering, repeat, and lather. Many times I just give up on try to see comments or likes on FB, links, etc. Or I will just let a link load while I do something else, and come back in about five minutes (sometimes I'll come back a second time in ten minutes) to see if it has loaded.  But sometimes the connection will surprise me and be really strong for hours on end. I had good luck with the wi-fi connection at the French Institute when I first started going there, but then it started being hit-or-miss too.

When I first moved in to my apartment, the wi-fi worked for about a day, then didn't work at all for several days in a row. So I decided to get a Vietnamese phone with a local SIM card, seeing as how I didn't have any data, and texts/calls are supremely expensive ($5.99 a minute for calls, fifty cents for each text). So I got a Vietnamese smart phone which is pretty decent for about forty bucks, and to top up for a month costs a little over five bucks. Not bad. But the phone has very little memory and storage, so I encounter the same problems with connectivity freezing as my phone's brain has little seizures all the time. I just can't win.

And that brings me to Vietnamese technological ingenuity. Vietnam is a fairly poor country; I think I read somewhere that the average salary is about two hundred dollars a month. Yet they mange to build devices that fill the same niche as the devices in the US and Europe for a fraction of the price. My Vietnamese phone weighs a fraction of my US phone, but still is pretty good for what it is, and the price was definitely affordable. The washing machine at my apartment building is another example. It probably weighs about a tenth of what a washing machine in the US does, though it is the same size. It is more like a tent than like a building; though the sides are solid, they are very thin. It is a top-loader with a drum that is like one of the old-style metal trash cans that people used to put on their curbs, but with much, much thinner gauge metal. The top folds and unfolds to cover the drum while it washes. Yet the Vietnamese have managed to design a fairly good appliance to do the job it is designed to do. I hardly ever use it, though, because I still mostly wash my last batch of clothes in the sink; I really just never get to enough dirty clothes for a full load. I did use it once.

So with the connectivity issues I have, I'll post this today if I can connect. If not, then it'll go up whenever it is possible.

Nope, just tried to post it, and got a message saying there is no Internet connection. For some reason my laptop will connect even less reliably than my phone(s). I typed this on the laptop, which is, by the way, a totally crappy laptop and has its own brain freeze issues due to inadequate infrastructure. And I bought it in the US. Cheapo technology, I guess, knows no bounds.   Oh, there it comes.  It just took about ten minutes to load the Blogger page.

Settling In For The Short Run

It was a breezy and cool morning today. The windows of my apartment in Hanoi were open, and it was the first morning that a cool breeze has blown in through the windows. So I decided to take advantage of the cool weather and go for a walk today, just to check stuff out. I wandered some in the back alleys behind the alley my apartment is on. I've been wandering down these alleys almost every day, there's not a lot of seriously interesting stuff there, but it is cool to check out the little labyrinths that wind their way into the nooks and crannies between the big highway road and the river. I found a place where there were some tennis courts...I wonder what it would take to use those? Of course, I don't know anybody who plays, nor do I have a racquet, so that's not happening right now. Then I turned back to the main part of Tay Ho to check out some parts of the little peninsula jutting into the lake that I hadn't been to yet. Then I stopped by the grocery store to get some supplies. The trip to the store is almost daily, because I just bring home what will fit into my little backpack on my back. I have shopped for groceries with the motorbike a couple of times (once to a bigger store farther away), but mostly I'm still bringing most of my groceries home on foot.

My motorbike is pretty cool, but I haven't used it all that much. It is a Win, it shifts one down and the next three up. I bought it nearly new because I didn't want to chance a breakdown or have to pay for an expensive repair while I am using it to travel. I maybe ride it a couple days a week in town, but more often I walk. I burned the crap out of my right leg, though, on the exhaust pipe. I was maneuvering it into a tight space in the parking garage of the grocery store, then grazed it with my leg while I was exiting through the narrow space. I've also figured out which bus goes to my French and Vietnamese classes, so occasionally I take the bus instead of walking.

Every day I chop a bunch of vegetables and then try to figure out what to put them in. Today I made some udon noodles with a pile of sauteed vegetables simmered down to a broth. I'm already chopping tomorrow's vegetables, though. I'm really settling into a highly temporary domestic bliss here. I love my little apartment, with the windows that open into the courtyard, where I can hear all the noises of the neighborhood. My fridge is stocked with plenty of vegetables to chop. I think I even know what all of them are now. I bought some little knick-knacks for the apartment...things like a mop, buckets for trash and washing and stuff, a few kitchen implements, etc. I figure I can just leave them for the next person who moves in here.

The Voting Shuffle

A few days ago I voted in the American election from Hanoi. At least, I hope I did. It can take letters from Vietnam up to a month to get to the US; if you are lucky, they get there in a week or two. Hopefully my ballot will get there in time, and I have until five days after the election for it to arrive and still count. Since I mailed the ballot on September 30, hopefully it will get there in time.

I had registered for an FPCA ballot when I was still living in Austin. You simply fill out a form, and the voting occurs under a federal program, so a lot of the regulations are mandated federally, rather than locally, but some of the rules are local. For instance, in some parts of the US, you can return your ballot by email, but not in Texas. They email me a ballot, and I have to get it printed, along with a host of other documents, and then mail it back. The rules are fairly byzantine, and you have to get it all just right for your vote to count. You have to fill out a signature sheet with some of your basic information on it, and there is an envelope you print out on letter size paper that you have to fold into an envelope and then tape up; you have to sign the back of the envelope as well. In some cases, you have to send in a scan of your ID and affirm your residence, but I didn't have to do that, probably because I did that the last time I voted (which was from Beijing).

When I first got the email, Travis County forgot to include the link to the attachment to the ballot that needed to be printed out. But a day or so later, they sent out another email with the correct link. So all I had to do was download the paperwork, print it out, put it in the envelope, and mail it. Easier said than done. First I had to find someone with a printer so I could print it out. I had to walk all over Hanoi to find the resources I needed, and I had no idea where they would be when I started walking. I just figured I would keep walking until I found the stuff I needed, and I had all day. I had managed to transfer the file to a flash drive, and while walking around, I found a photocopy shop that could print it from the flash drive. So I had the documents printed out.

Then I had to find some clear tape to tape up the approved sheet of paper into an envelope. I had no idea where tape could be found. I tried several convenience stores, but none of them had any. In addition, I had a difficult time communicating to them that tape was what I wanted. So I tried typing “tape” into Google Translate. That didn't work all that well. It gave me a word, but the word was apparently not all that comprehensible to the shopkeepers I showed it to. Next I tried Googling “scotch tape” and choosing an image of it to show to people. That didn't lead to very good results either. I thought the picture of the tape in a dispenser was pretty clear, but one shopkeeper puzzled over the picture for a while and then tried to sell me soy sauce. No good. Finally I walked into one convenience store, showed the woman behind the counter the picture of the tape dispenser, and, after initially getting the predictable puzzled response, I spotted a roll of masking tape on her counter, and picked it up to show to her. She initially pantomimed that there was none for sale in her store, but then got a flash of inspiration, and pulled out a wrapped-up roll with several rolls of clear tape in it, which was not intended for sale, but for her store's use. I wanted to jump for joy...I had finally found what I was looking for! She handed me a roll and indicated that she would charge me about 50 cents for it. So now I had a dispenser-less roll of tape, but at least it was something I could work with.

Next I wanted to find a coffee shop where I could sit for a while, hopefully inside with air conditioning and enough room to spread out all the paperwork, and fill out the documentation and my ballot. I found a place that suited me perfectly (minus the air conditioning but at least it had good fans), ordered a bubble tea drink, and sat down to complete all the papers and my ballot. It probably took me about half an hour. I was able to tape up the envelope to get it sent, despite my difficulties in finding the edge of the tape, and needing to keep it away from the roll by sticking the end of it to my finger, awkwardly cutting it with my pocketknife when needed, and repeating this procedure until the envelope had been created, the contents had been placed therein, and it was sealed.

Success! Now I needed to find a post office to mail the envelope with the ballot. Luckily, I knew where the main post office was, near Hoan Kiem Lake, so I headed off in that direction. I went into the post office, they weighed the letter and assigned me the appropriate amount of stamps (you still have to lick the stamps in Vietnam); I applied them to the envelope and dropped it in the international mailbox for mailing to the States. And then I embarked on the hour-and-a-half-long walk back home. So I was able to fulfill my civic duty, assuming the letter gets there on time. And all I had to do to vote was trudge around on foot for about 17 kilometers. You're welcome, America.

My Hanoi Apartment

It has been getting tiring staying in multi-bunk dorm-style places for the past few months.  Don't get me wrong, the ready camaraderie is nice to have at one's hand, and it is cool to get perks like free breakfast and all, but the lack of space and constant interruptions can take its toll.  So I decided to seek out my own place for a while, especially since I am now planning to stay in Hanoi for a few months while I study French and Vietnamese.  Talking to some people around here, and checking sources online, it was apparent that there is a steady source of cheap furnished apartments that are available for foreigners who want to stay on a short-term basis, but longer than your average holiday stay.  Most apartments of that type here in Hanoi will rent month-to-month, asking a minimum of a three-month commitment, but people are able to leave early if they want by soliciting someone to take their place on one of the online forums devoted to Hanoi life. And that is how I got my apartment.  There was a guy named Christian from Ireland looking for someone to take over his apartment as he wanted to leave a little earlier than his commitment was for, and I jumped on it.  The apartment is four million dong a month, which translates to about $180 in US currency, and my only other expense associated with it is the electricity; the water, cable and wi-fi are included. It is on the third floor of the building.  The washing machine and clothes drying area are on a covered rooftop deck.  I have a lovely view of a tree-lined alley out my window.

But let me back up just an eence.  A few days before I moved in, I was staying at the Hanoi Central Backpackers Old Quarter Hostel.  This place is probably one of the biggest party hostels in Hanoi, bolstered by its nightly free beer and then pub crawls after the hostel bar closes. And it doesn't hurt that it has its own built-in travel agency that arranges tours to just about any other place in the country you could set your sights on visiting, and those tours are incredibly cheap by Western standards.  I took a couple of tours, and the costs to me were probably between twenty and thirty bucks a day.  And they are even tacking on a bunch.  But they took care of every detail.  During each tour, I was passed to multiple operators along each way fairly seamlessly.  Most, but not all, spoke pretty good English, and even with those who didn't speak English at all, there didn't seem to be any problems or barriers.

So I was in my hostel room, and for once, I was fortunate enough to get an underpopulated room.  When I came back from my trip to Sa Pa, I entered a room that only had eight beds but one other guy in it, so most of the beds were empty.  That was the first time that had happened at this hostel, since it is usually fairly full.  Alex was a vibrant guy from Atlanta, Georgia, with a bushy beard. He was only staying for another day because he had gotten an apartment in Tay Ho and he was super stoked about it.  He told me that he found it on a Facebook group called “Hanoi Massive – A New Era.” So I ended up joining the group and looking for housing opportunities.  It didn't take long at all for me to find something. Christian put up his post about the apartment he was vacating and I jumped on it.  But, the problem was, I was just getting ready to take a three-day trip to Ha Long Bay. I told him that I was interested, and if nobody took it before I returned, I would get back with him.

Luckily, after my trip, I checked in with him again and he said nobody had grabbed it.  So I met with him, looked at the place, and decided I would take it.  He already had another place to go to, so he said he could vacate it as soon as he got his stuff out. A couple of days later, I was filling out the paperwork with the landlord and moving in.  I don't have much stuff; just a big backpack, and also a smaller backpack that I can wear on my front with mostly food in it. I repacked my bags and took the big backpack from the hostel to the apartment on foot; it was about a four kilometer walk.  I just kept behind the stuff that I would need at the hostel overnight in the smaller bag, which I walked over the next day.

The apartment is basically a studio with an attached small bathroom.  For cooking, there is a hotplate with one burner, a rice cooker, and an electric kettle to boil water with. Not much, but it'll probably do me.  There are also a few dishes, some pots and pans, and eating utensils.  There is a dorm fridge, and a TV with cable.  I haven't watched much of the TV yet...the only two stations that I have watched are CNN International (which I watched the debate on the other day...it started at 8 in the morning here), and a French channel, TV5Monde Asie.  There was only one desk-style table by the window, but Christian suggested that I ask the landlord for another one to put the cooking stuff on, because it was all on the floor...he said he never minded it, so he just left it like that.  So I got a second table to put the cooking stuff on.

Then it was time to unpack, or at least get out the essentials.  I was a bit worried because I had kept some fresh turmeric root in my backpack ever since I left the Philippines, which was almost a month ago.  It had just been sitting in my backpack the whole time, and I was terribly afraid that I would find a moldy mess having taken over my backpack.  But, apparently, the storage conditions were just about perfect for it in there, and some of the turmeric roots had even started to sprout a bit.  It actually thrived in there.

There is a supermarket about a kilometer away, so I set off to get my first bit of food for the apartment.  I have so far made three shopping trips, each time taking my small backpack to the store with me to carry my purchases in, in lieu of a bag.  Also, all the light fixtures (except for one long fluorescent tube), had incandescent, old-style filament bulbs in them.  So I picked up some LED bulbs at the store to replace them in one fixture; the other one has smaller candelabra sized sockets that I haven't found LED bulbs for yet.  The LED bulbs are incredibly cheap; they cost about a buck each. But the rub is, that to get to the store (or from my apartment to just about everywhere), I have to cross what is basically a freeway-style road packed with motorbike traffic that never lets up.  During rush hour this is super harsh.  And I don't even want to go into what this is like at night, in the dark, especially since many motorbikes don't have headlights, or often start by going the wrong way on the road until they themselves can inch their way over to the correct side.  Since the traffic will never let up, you just have to at some point just dive in to the morass (usually after a minute or two of “oh shit”-style contemplation), and make your way across, slowly, while keeping your eyes on every vehicle that is zooming around you.  Nevertheless, it takes a while to cross. You have to just look for the next opening and inch forward a few feet.  Hanoi drivers are at least fairly adept at moving around pedestrian (and other) obstacles, so they don't just purposefully or negligently run you down, as would happen if you crossed an interstate highway in the States.

After going to the store for the first time, I cooked my first meal in my apartment.  I made a mix of rice and split peas in the rice cooker, and after about ten minutes, I added a bunch of chopped vegetables, some minced ginger, garlic and turmeric, some chili powder that I had bought in China, and some really tasty hot curry powder that I had bought in Korea. I put in about a tablespoon of coconut oil, and a few minutes before it was all done, I put some chopped up tofu to steam at the top.  Once the rice cooker signaled that it was done, I mixed it all up together and made little nori rolls with the mixture in some nori sheets that I had bought in Japan. Man, it was good.  But, note to self, I gotta get more spices here.  Gotta have some kinda mix that includes coriander and cumin (though they might have been in the curry powder). And some hot chiles.  Gotta get hot chiles.

All the citrus here that I have seen has green peels.  It doesn't matter whether it is sold on the street, or in a store.  Oranges, lemons, and grapefruits all are green on the outside, but then when you open them, there is color on the inside. I haven't yet seen an orange-colored orange, but they are orange on the inside, just like grapefruits are yellow or pink on the inside, even though they are colored dark green on the outside.

The alley on which I am living comes off the afore-described chaotic freeway road, which is Au Co street; it has secondary access roads that run along side it on both sides.. The alley is big enough for cars for a couple of blocks, and then it gets too constricted for a car to continue on it, though there is motorbike traffic after this point.

As of this point, I have no idea yet how the trash collection works. I'm starting to think about that because I'm starting to generate some trash and at some point, I'll have to figure out what to do with it.  I don't generate a lot, but I've bought some stuff at the store that has wrappers, and had to throw them away.  Also minor things like toilet paper tubes, drink containers, etc.  And you can't flush your toilet paper here, you have to throw it away.  So I bought two buckets for trash; one is in the bathroom for the used toilet paper.  I lined them both with trash bags. I bought another bucket to use as a combination wash/mop bucket and laundry hamper.

The wi-fi in my apartment building is free, but is intermittent and janky.  For the past three days, I had almost no connection, but then it would sometimes kick in, at times just for a few minutes.  The only device I tried to connect with at first was my cellphone, and I din't have much luck.  There are three wi-fi points I can see on my phone in different parts of the building; two are password-protected, and one is an open connection with no security or password.  The open connection is the only one I have physically found the broadcast point for; it is in a tiny closet on the staircase up from the first floor.  Sometimes I can stand right next to it and get a connection, but sometimes I can't. And when I connect with a device on any of these connections (one of the secured ones seems to be the strongest in my apartment), my device will always tell me I'm connected, but then sometimes, it won't actually make the connection to the internet.  But, strangely, today my phone has suddenly been connected almost all day. But then I tried to connect my laptop, and it would not connect at the same time I was getting a connection on my phone.

Speaking of phones, since I had no data in Vietnam on my phone, and since my wi-fi connection at home is obviously going to be unreliable, I went to Viettel (which is the main cell phone company in Vietnam) and got a smartphone with a top-up SIM, so I can have some data.  The phone itself cost about 37 bucks, and it is not the greatest smartphone, but is still one hell of a bargain.  The top-up deal I got is about $2.50 for 3 gig of data for a month. Again, a pretty good deal.  So I won't use it for videos or much audio...I can hold out for wi-fi for anything more data-intensive.  There is a good wi-fi connection at the French institute, and many cafes also have it. And the new phone is just strictly for data at this point...I turned down phone and texting for this round, but if I top up again, I may look into it; I bet it is super cheap.

An Apartment And An Accident

I am pretty sure I have found an apartment in Hanoi starting this weekend. It'll be about four million dong a month, or the equivalent of about $180 a month.  It is completely furnished, and has about all the pots and pans, dishes, and eating utensils I need. It has wi-fi and cable thrown in, and the water and electric are a little extra (the guy moving out says he pays about $15-$20 a month). The apartment is in the Tay Ho neighborhood, which sort of has a reputation as an expat enclave in Hanoi. But it also has many Vietnamese living there as well. The expats tend to get clustered together in the same buildings, because apparently there are some restrictions on where foreigners  can live, so landlords end up having buildings that are just for foreigners. It looks like a really cool neighborhood, it is right off the east side of West Lake.

Walking back from checking out the apartment, there was a motorbike accident right behind me. I was walking down the street, pretty much among all the other traffic, because the sidewalk was taken up by parked motorbikes and merchandise (as it usually is). And a woman on a motorbike right behind me careened into the back corner of a panel truck that was parked. I didn't see it, because it was behind me, but I definitely heard it, and turned around to see her motorcycle whizzing and spinning down the street, right next to me. Jeez, that could have taken me out from behind if it had just spun about seven degrees in my direction.

So I walked back there to see if she was OK, and some local people were helping her to her feet. She shook all her limbs, and it didn't seem like anything was broken, but she had some nasty abrasions, and the other people there helped her inside. I couldn't do much because of the language barrier, but I stayed around until she had gotten on her feet and gotten inside.

Usually vehicles like cars and trucks just park in the street, since there is no room for parking. So the truck was parked blocking the lane, and cars and bikes just went around it on the other side. You have to realize, though, that traffic lights, stop signs, lines on the road, and the directionality of traffic here are treated as merely advisory, and people go through intersections helter-skelter, from all directions, and the traffic (pedestrian, bike, motorbike and big vehicles) just flows around that constant chaos. When you are crossing a street, you move in this slow dance across the street...if you do it skillfully, you don't ever stop, and you keep in your consciousness where all the other vehicles are, and their trajectory. I imagine it is a lot like being an air traffic controller.  I have heard that often when there is a wreck, it is caused by one of the motorbikes that is riding on the wrong side of the street. So you have to keep your eyes out for anything going the wrong way, too.

Scenes From The Life Of A Black H'mong Woman

On the second day of the homestay trek from Sa Pa, there were only two of us left; me and Scott from Vancouver. So we asked our guide a lot of questions about her life as a Black H'mong woman in Vietnam, and this post is based on the answers she gave us.

I really haven't had much contact with the H'mong men. I think a H'mong male was a bus driver on one of the treks I was on. But he didn't say much. The H'mong women are ubiquitous as guides on the tours.

A H'mong woman will usually go through primary school and secondary school (secondary school is analogous to junior high or middle school), which is provided for free by the state. But high school costs money. So most H'mong don't go to high school. And very few go to university.

There are very few H'mong who have been outside the area where they grew up. Very few have been to Hanoi. Even less have been out of the country of Vietnam, though it is possible. If a H'mong does not make it through high school (mostly because of the cost), then there is a choice of either continuing with the farm that is in the family, or trying to find a job. And if the job is chosen, then money must be paid to secure the job in many cases; the H'mong often have to save up money to buy their way into a job.

There are rules about how their property is passed down through the family, and family members who did not inherit and have not been able to get an outside job are usually cared for on the family plot of land and assist with the subsistence farming. The small amounts of land the H'mong own have usually been passed down for many generations, and it is the bulk of their wealth. Our guide told us they only harvest one crop of rice a year. I don't know why that is, because in Japan, they often harvest two crops, and Vietnam is even more temperate, being able to grow vegetables through the winter. But they don't usually have enough land to go beyond subsistence farming. They only grow enough to feed their families and animals, and cannot grow a surplus to sell. The meals they prepare are usually from the grains, beans, and vegetables that they grow, and from the animals they raise, so you almost can't get a more locally sourced meal.

A Black H'mong woman is expected to awake before anyone else in the household, as early as four in the morning. Especially if parents of either the woman or the man live in the house.  If the Black H'mong woman does not wake up to work on the farm and cook meals, she is considered lazy.

Most Black H'mong women are married between the ages of 15 and 17. If the woman is not married by her 20s, she is considered to be lazy, and unmarriageable.

Black H'mong women are expected to make the clothes for the family. If they don't make the clothes, they are considered to be lazy. There are a lot of points on the Black H'mong flowchart that lead to lazy, and that is not a good thing in the Black H'mong ideology.  Keep in mind that this "lazy" thing is not a value judgment I am making, but the description given to me by the guide.

Despite all the rigidity in what is expected of the Black H'mong, and despite the fact that they are desperately poor, work very hard for almost nothing, and they are not treated so well by the ethnic Vietnamese (who are the majority in Vietnam), the H'mong seem to be very happy, and some of the most carefree and spirited people I have met. They seem to survive through the strength of their will and the force of their collective character, and they don't seem to nurture so much a sense of grievance about their position in society or of any perceived wrongs that have been done to them. They seem to take what they have and really maximize it. Their lives are fairly uncomplicated.

There is a lot of hemp grown by the H'mong. It is spun into thread for clothing by the women of the tribe, who then make it into cloth.  They then dye the fabric black by soaking it for several passes in a solution made from the indigo plant. Once they have made the cloth, they then will sew clothing from it, and the clothing is heavily embroidered. The black cloth that they make the clothing from is where the Black H'mong get their name. Though they make most of their clothes, they do buy some items of clothing (our guide was wearing a windbreaker she bought), and they usually buy shoes.

The guide I talked to had never been to Hanoi, and neither she nor her husband owned any transportation vehicle, not even a bicycle.  Mostly she walks everywhere she goes, between the various villages in the close-knit area where she lives, with the exception of riding with the caravans that bring in the tourists. Though many of the guides learn to speak English to be able to guide tourists, they may not be able to read it at all