tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77187736059541703722023-11-16T08:33:39.512-08:00Brighten the CornerElisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-50520763404273239402013-08-01T23:40:00.000-07:002013-08-01T23:41:11.474-07:00 Beijing to Ulan Bator, Mongolia (29 hours)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Scarred
by the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hanoi experience, and tired and
frustrated with Beijing, I have a panic attack the night before my early
morning departure from Beijing when I realize that I’ve failed to ask my guide
to give me my ticket. He’s scheduled to pick me up in the morning and deposit
me on the train, of course, but I can’t shake off the worry. Then I remember
that Adam is the Chinese Rain Man, and I calm down a little. The half of a valium
and beer help, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
station is monumental and impressive. Built “with the help of the former Soviet
Union,” it’s all high ceilings, marble, muscular communist fixtures. It also
has the same leather seats the Soviets must have installed decades ago, and now
they are cracked and stained. Naturally, Rain Man and I are early, but soon
enough groups and pairs of western travelers appear. One woman and asks if she
can follow me since she thinks I know what I’m doing. I tell her that I don’t,
but Adam does, and when it’s time to board, Adam remembers, finds her, and gets
her and her husband on the correct carriage. Later, I will buy them both a beer
so I can break a US $20 bill and will talk too much.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHISYkNualpmsGWgm7kOju1wnF-_k4gJujaop1DzwN1zjkB97rBHga3AoRumkVa5ZfkBN7y_OjG1o756L1GzMKAUuoLM7-KCicvmfwXlgW7bvZTCrZLwHwebt7goGL_B-H4lWNnKePyM/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+196.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHISYkNualpmsGWgm7kOju1wnF-_k4gJujaop1DzwN1zjkB97rBHga3AoRumkVa5ZfkBN7y_OjG1o756L1GzMKAUuoLM7-KCicvmfwXlgW7bvZTCrZLwHwebt7goGL_B-H4lWNnKePyM/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+196.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mongolian boy and Schulz practice whistling</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
get lucky with the housing lottery on this train, having paid for it with the
mice and the staring, (spitting and yelling), half-dressed Chinese men on the
other one. My roommates are Australians: she an anthropologist and he a writer of novels, and learner of languages. The bonus is
that they lived in Ulan Bator for a year while she did field work for her PhD,
researching lay priests of Tibetan Buddhism. Our carriage seems
to be mostly local travelers, but up ahead on the way to the dining car (which,
by the time I get there, has degenerated into a messy, smoky club car -- just my style),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>where they keep the rich western travelers.
The two-berth compartments are wildly upholstered and cozy. They look exactly
like the color photos the Trans-Siberian advertises, and absolutely nothing
like ours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ours
is fine, however, and because Saskia speaks a little Mongolian we get to make
friends with some of our fellow travelers, including a hyper-active 8-yr old
boy, who, once invited into our orbit, will not leave. Most of the annoyance is
forgiven, however, when he engages the whole lot of us, including the old, rich
white people in 1<sup>st</sup> class, at one of the two protracted and
uncomfortable border crossings in a game of “knock over the plastic milk bottle
in the middle of the room with the wobbly sparkly ball while throwing from a
lazy sitting position.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Outside
the window, the world is changing. The red brick buildings and cultivated
fields of settled people give way to more open space, herds of horses, sheep,
cows, and goats. The sharp limestone and granite hills of inner Mongolia soften
and wear down. Before too long white <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ger</i>,
the traditional – and current – home of Mongolian nomads begin to pop up. These
are round tent-like structures, made of felt and now plastic sheeting, with
gently domed tops with openings for chimneys. They can be dismantled and
relocated as seasons change and the need for pasture demands. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOFWzOYqG7ZLGa-oqeC0VZHWcSkgsAE8obMV1c0BOPfOG4N_jTV4V_ECp2WJZvOi9aQdvOl4xUbfflxeMo9qUAlNO0ajzPDFOUR685xqY_r1h9JRhsjkpyrgmu7iVh8m5xKZCBdwUZaQ/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+220.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOFWzOYqG7ZLGa-oqeC0VZHWcSkgsAE8obMV1c0BOPfOG4N_jTV4V_ECp2WJZvOi9aQdvOl4xUbfflxeMo9qUAlNO0ajzPDFOUR685xqY_r1h9JRhsjkpyrgmu7iVh8m5xKZCBdwUZaQ/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+220.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mongolian people
love their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ger</i> so much that they’ve
imported them to the city, simply packing themselves up and setting up house on
a piece of land and building a fence around it. City planning and
infrastructure in teeming Ulan Bator, where half of Mongolia’s 2 million people
live, has not quite caught up to this trend, and many of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ger </i>“suburbs” are little more than
slums with no running water or sanitation facilities, breeding grounds for
alcoholism, violence, and infectious disease. Outside the city, however, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ger</i> are as elegantly suited to their
environment as anything you could imagine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVVzN5wSfILOUvxM_To5wuycJjWYuGrk25Vtl-Nm3QaTAsf_IMIZyhw0I1hSs7GkAUrzhyphenhyphendqv4K4BAdWOQJQEL-SXqLkqc3PbYcvYIaaby4dIZgFC3ydoCynQD6QmhGq09Q3Fxgj-ymz8/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+188.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVVzN5wSfILOUvxM_To5wuycJjWYuGrk25Vtl-Nm3QaTAsf_IMIZyhw0I1hSs7GkAUrzhyphenhyphendqv4K4BAdWOQJQEL-SXqLkqc3PbYcvYIaaby4dIZgFC3ydoCynQD6QmhGq09Q3Fxgj-ymz8/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+188.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Something outside the window, somewhere.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
nomadic herder settlements thin out as we approach the Gobi, and when I wake up
(too) early in the morning, I’m treated to a sunrise over a landscape I’ve only
imagined and read about: desert, going on forever, roadless, muted, unforgiving. I am giddy
about seeing my first Bactrian camels, first one, then a pair, then small herds
sitting or standing, waiting for something to happen or someone to spit on.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
the Gobi, the land turns to steppe. I don't have photographs of the camels, or sunrise in the desert, or the graceful <i>ger </i>camps set in the gentle green hills with animals grazing around them, or the the solitary Mongolian horse and rider racing up a ridge where some sheep have strayed, looking like his ancestors have looked for centuries.It all goes by too quickly to capture any of it on camera, and it's one of the challenges (and gifts) of this kind of travel to learn to relinquish the acquisitive instincts to possess images and fix experiences into metonyms and artifacts. Since I may be a little like Don Draper in only liking the beginnings of things, looking at the unknown world out the window is a pleasurable exercise in writing first lines of stories and poems I'll never have to do the hard work of finishing. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">"Two children wrestle down by the stream, a boy and a girl. Like all Mongolians, they love to wrestle, and she is not yet at the point where someone will tell her she'll have to give it up because she's a girl. Today something changes in their game when she finds herself kneeling over him and bends down to kiss him as if commanded by the wind." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">"He liked to sit at the back of the garden alone and look upon all their possessions: the rows of vegetables, rusted satellite dish, the old house his parents built where he was born and where he and his wife raised their children before they all moved away and she died. He wonders if they've wandered from the old, straight path or whether the same people who build the big building that blocks his morning sunlight have hidden it from them." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<![endif]--><i>Coming up: Ulan Bator to Irkutsk</i>Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-35579543561079847982013-07-29T21:29:00.001-07:002013-08-01T22:52:54.411-07:00Trains, Part One: Hanoi to Beijing<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i></i></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hanoi-Beijing
(42 hours)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is the one that no one thought I should take. All my Vietnamese friends kept
telling me that I should take the plane, and I met no one in Vietnam, including
the grungy, cheapskate backpacker crowd who had taken or planned to take this
train. It was a little difficult to buy, costs a little more than a flight, and
takes 42 hours, all of which probably should have dissuaded me from the notion,
but it didn’t. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
like to think that I am only afraid of a few things, but then I start listing
them, and there are more than I few. I have fewer persistent anxieties than
many people I know, but the ones that haunt me are fierce. Fears include
unleashed dogs, fish touching me underwater, caves and other small enclosed
spaces, and very sheer heights. My worst anxiety is about being late, and the
second worst is about being lost, alone, and confused. Just about every single
bad dream I have is about disastrous travel logistics, in which both of those
anxieties are fused. There are often fish, dogs, and heights added for drama in
these nightmares. I’m so obsessed with getting to airports and train stations
on time that I’ve taken to calling myself a chronopath. So, it was inauspicious
that this leg of the journey began with the hotel staff in Sapa forgetting to
buy me a ticket for Sunday night to Lao Cai so I could get to the train
departing Hanoi on Tuesday night. The Monday night train would be just fine,
because only I would worry about having only about 13 hours to make my connection.
Thirteen hours was only sufficient by about 8 minutes, as it turned out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hanoi
has four train stations, and the train to Beijing leaves from one I’d never
been to. I spent all day afternoon in the day lounge in my hotel in Hanoi, the
last few of hours of which obsessively asking the helpful staff if they knew
which station I needed to get to. Many phone calls, internet searches, and
examinations of my inscrutable ticket later, and the woman said she was 100%
certain that she knew which one, and when we needed to leave. I would have left
earlier, of course, but I trusted them. The nice young man who was going to get
me on the train and in the right compartment and I set off in a cab in the
height of Hanoi rush hour at 5:15 for my 6:30 train. Thirty minutes later we
arrive at a tiny station in a remote neighborhood all the way across the river,
and I knew immediately we were in the wrong place. We have to wait a few
agonizing minutes for another cab to materialize and then have 40 minutes to
make it all the way back to where we started and to another station. Sitting in
the back seat praying that we’re going to the right station this time, I watch
the driver navigate the Hanoi traffic with such speed and daring that I almost
forget to panic. We only barely hit one motorcycle along the way, and I
actually said out loud, “whatever happens, just don’t stop.” After we screech
to a halt in front of the huge and unmistakably correct station, my guy from
the hotel hustles so fast that I can barely keep up with him. He throws some
money on the desk of the surly lady who collects the fee for porters, guides,
and, presumably family and friends, who want to see someone off on the train.
We fling ourselves into the carriage, get pointed to one of the compartments, and
in it, to my great relief and delight, is a smiling middle-aged western man. I
have to call him Sam, for South African Man, because even though we spent about
24 hours together, we never exchanged names.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He’s
on his way to Gui Lin for some sort of Tai Chi thing, after spending a few
months in Na Trang. We are, as it turns out, the only western travelers on the
train, and, even weirder, the only people in this carriage, which, until we
reach the Chinese border, is the only car on the train. The two of us are being
personally escorted to China.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRYXRn-iPscoNNhTxlCngK7yaqMQsk04Xa8x9TcTIYKRGri-cg340-diY0rZXZ7t2qAiWyUfQNR4R35xpbqO6g51ztgB8by19K9ZdGD27b1VXUcNoGKwOBEpPeEEjFotEYr7zMyWpxqFY/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+105.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRYXRn-iPscoNNhTxlCngK7yaqMQsk04Xa8x9TcTIYKRGri-cg340-diY0rZXZ7t2qAiWyUfQNR4R35xpbqO6g51ztgB8by19K9ZdGD27b1VXUcNoGKwOBEpPeEEjFotEYr7zMyWpxqFY/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+105.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Somewhere in southern China</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
the border crossing at Dong Dan, we are met by another personal escort, a
smiling woman in uniform who takes us to a holding area where we sit for
several hours. We do not have our passports because we’ve surrendered them to
another uniformed person on the train. An hour or so later, we are walked to
the main station, where we meet a platoon of people inspecting, discussing, and
finally, stamping our passports. They’re perplexed that Sam’s passport says
he’s African, and yet he’s white. They think we’re married to each other. Who
knows? It’s midnight something, and children wave at us from outside the window
and run around and try to snap candid photos with one or both of us. Finally,
another uniformed person escorts us to the Chinese train, where we are
initially placed in a nice, clean compartment in what again appears to be a car
for only us. Shortly, however, we’re moved to the next car and a compartment
that also seems to be celebrating its first communion, except that it has been
peed on. Oh, well, at least it doesn’t have mice like the Vietnamese carriage
we were in from Hanoi to Dong Dan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jNOKwv7bm2tUhW2tAeNsf5RW0LLKYP6WP8RF4sBqzQeIB1-nPFtNhFkGjoI_9RhE-aZa5ITH-xnluiMggfl5pKCQMFwPrQTJir_-ZawLAK0s6eFNoJHEzIoAIeIcJMDdqbtA2IxrYE8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+106.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jNOKwv7bm2tUhW2tAeNsf5RW0LLKYP6WP8RF4sBqzQeIB1-nPFtNhFkGjoI_9RhE-aZa5ITH-xnluiMggfl5pKCQMFwPrQTJir_-ZawLAK0s6eFNoJHEzIoAIeIcJMDdqbtA2IxrYE8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+106.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
eat the gross instant pots of noodles we’ve managed to buy and try to get
settled. Every now and then, someone stops by to stare or to berate us for
something. Sam has a few words of Chinese, which only seems to encourage them.
For a long time, a Chinese man stood in the doorway and urgently explained
something to Sam. I was grateful that my middle-aged woman cloak of invisibility
left me out of the discussion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
lock the door and settle in for the night, but in the morning the hallway is
full of Chinese men – including the train staff – in various stages of undress
just warming up for a full day of spitting, yelling, and shoving. The hoiking
is audible throughout the carriage. At Gui Lin, Sam gets off, handing me a
handful of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yuan</i> because I have no
Chinese currency, and that’s the only way I can buy water, beer, or more gross
noodles. I’ve begun to panic a bit about whether the guide will be there at the
station to meet me in Beijing because the arrival times listed vary by about 90
minutes. This anxiety is assuaged by observing Sam’s experience: he’s told he’s
arriving at 12, 1, or 4. He actually arrives at his destination at about 2:15.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
Gui Lin, I am alone as the only western traveler on the train, and I am in a
now quite crowded carriage filled with Chinese people. I try to leave my door
open for air and neighborliness, but it proves to be impossible because people
stand in the doorway and stare. Sometimes they even step in and start
gesturing. I conclude that they’re distressed that I have so much space to
myself while whole families are jammed into other compartments, with children
sharing bunks with each other or with adults. I do not feel guilty. But I do
have to shut myself up into my little lacey, pee-smelling cell for the next 24
hours or so.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
watch southern China go past outside the window. The more I look, the less I
understand about the place. Parts of it are beautiful and haunting, some with
limestone karsts rising out of green fields in scenery that’s indistinguishable
from Vietnam. But the buildings are all different. Chinese houses are mostly
brick, low, graceful affairs with walled or fenced buildings. Villages of
these, with figures working fields with buffalo, go on for miles. But suddenly
you begin to see those red brick buildings in states of disrepair or
demolition, and hulking, unforgivably ugly apartment blocks begin to appear.
The older ones are terrible looking, and even on the uppermost floors, everyone
has caged themselves in with wire or bars on their patios. Later I try to understand
the purpose of these, asking a guide if the wire is for keeping people or
things in or out. He says it’s to prevent burglars from getting in, which I
find completely unbelievable, because I can’t imagine that a thief with the
skills to scale a building would bother to rob those awful-looking places. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
crumbling old buildings are bad, but the new ones are even worse. Monstrously
scaled, their refusal to acknowledge the landscape or the traditions of the
people around them is like the taunts of a hulking schoolyard bully. They dare
you to defend the idea of beauty, of the dignity and solace of grace and art. I
wonder who will live there, who will have to accept the dehumanizing and
de-civilizing effects of living in such a geometry of contempt. Around these
arrogant towers, the remains of one-storey red-brick homes crumble and kowtow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Watching
the ratio of ugly towers, smokestacks, and garbage dumps to farms, brick homes,
and rice fields increase as we approach Beijing makes me sad and even more anxious.
The hot Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can with an actual pop-top that the snack cart
lady sold me out of a pillow case helps a little, but not much. I have a
premonition that I won’t like Beijing, but I have 5 nights to spend there
anyway. My more immediate concern, however, is whether the guide will meet me
at the station, so when we pull into Beijing and I can see a man with a sign
with my name on it, I am enormously relieved. He is running in the opposite
direction, and I chase him down against the tide of shoving, spitting, and
yelling Chinese people.</span></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-4721247705680441522013-07-19T21:21:00.001-07:002013-07-19T21:21:12.033-07:00Walking Tour of Sapa, Part Two<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
walk from the café involves two more flights of steep, chipped stairs, some
scary dogs, and, surprisingly often, rain, fog, and darkness. The photos here
are from a daytime trip we all took with the children, so you’ll
have to imagine the rain, fog, and darkness.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zTzSGtxrMWvkbNKRt-nml-m9uhnBDrBxgmks5RbV1jUpZbuBFXU0aKB4P8v6b79UpH2480t2vAvlFUZdIAiovf58mbOvJLBfOSum6SpIqPVzOcDMiqWfMLNHdLDb_EVi8H_dfrkeFhg/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+099.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zTzSGtxrMWvkbNKRt-nml-m9uhnBDrBxgmks5RbV1jUpZbuBFXU0aKB4P8v6b79UpH2480t2vAvlFUZdIAiovf58mbOvJLBfOSum6SpIqPVzOcDMiqWfMLNHdLDb_EVi8H_dfrkeFhg/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+099.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Although
it isn’t uphill both ways, the way to school is seriously uphill one of the
ways, and, at 8:45 when class is over, dark on the downhill. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7Zh2cpyDnDlohrzhwvOiFg5NJoXFKcdepDZ32DMG-MNbrFq7rlY947egx0btNMsuQglRo9MKiTsL5HyjkbkbPRXZIQexCv1HdgHCVIJPb278hcxxSpJz0zhmd3y8F_sWUWv95L0QG0g/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7Zh2cpyDnDlohrzhwvOiFg5NJoXFKcdepDZ32DMG-MNbrFq7rlY947egx0btNMsuQglRo9MKiTsL5HyjkbkbPRXZIQexCv1HdgHCVIJPb278hcxxSpJz0zhmd3y8F_sWUWv95L0QG0g/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+100.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
this day, we went a slightly different way than usual because we were coming
from the park where again Bruce and Ann bought all the children ice-cream. Ann
had one or two leftover after some of us declined, and she sought out other
children to give them to. Before long she went back and bought another big bag
of cones and gave them to all the children in the park. For at least one little
pants-less boy, it was his first taste of ice-cream. We also gave a cone to our
70-year old Hmong friend who had followed me to the lake earlier in the day.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCVtcmDDh7wbBHa8Oj9K3pqwBMgoYeM1PyOUvDeGMe1yxpG2O0gji8KhhPs47gYMIk96GESLE6Gp3eLU1V_I7cbrEJDeX2fFzLjFF5xNHZHDSge8kUlCCa6xvJozGdTCUMQUqsCbZnguU/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+070.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCVtcmDDh7wbBHa8Oj9K3pqwBMgoYeM1PyOUvDeGMe1yxpG2O0gji8KhhPs47gYMIk96GESLE6Gp3eLU1V_I7cbrEJDeX2fFzLjFF5xNHZHDSge8kUlCCa6xvJozGdTCUMQUqsCbZnguU/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+070.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMuMioHX3rdR_5LsObOh_6IzgaBOLxhdldA2dj0TSrgAE1okmtshhFC5Lte4-y95XBQ_Q7uQ9q6eosXAqqGMd4sylt2Yy6noe1ycvqiDz4kYmOoqzM29DDinYO_v1qQz-si1lFRtk9p24/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+069.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMuMioHX3rdR_5LsObOh_6IzgaBOLxhdldA2dj0TSrgAE1okmtshhFC5Lte4-y95XBQ_Q7uQ9q6eosXAqqGMd4sylt2Yy6noe1ycvqiDz4kYmOoqzM29DDinYO_v1qQz-si1lFRtk9p24/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+069.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
ice cream, our whole group started up the first flight of stairs to school.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPcjvVAvX9VriiIe_rIV3DOqHn2vSBRe0hLroIKnB-PLt2B8uzO7ZTdMGpmV67iy6ariRDt5Lw0OxXwrrOgjydaFuXmsvj-R4Ealqj5Cd1UG2APvqXXJ8triSDB3BXiWBXwKyrvkD1xcg/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+076.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPcjvVAvX9VriiIe_rIV3DOqHn2vSBRe0hLroIKnB-PLt2B8uzO7ZTdMGpmV67iy6ariRDt5Lw0OxXwrrOgjydaFuXmsvj-R4Ealqj5Cd1UG2APvqXXJ8triSDB3BXiWBXwKyrvkD1xcg/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+076.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88F6ean0Sv07oDBM9eU3pP4mtoeCUf61jnaYtS0-tlxiJdBtnH2u5KhUu2kOpfbuDNlk1wVuk3k7OjH6UL5JosGvS-wdDqSMXxjss-2BIlGLDEdfm065lJSilDkIzNK2asa4E5-VWGrQ/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+074.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88F6ean0Sv07oDBM9eU3pP4mtoeCUf61jnaYtS0-tlxiJdBtnH2u5KhUu2kOpfbuDNlk1wVuk3k7OjH6UL5JosGvS-wdDqSMXxjss-2BIlGLDEdfm065lJSilDkIzNK2asa4E5-VWGrQ/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+074.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrJnbaffYbcGhf_caFRx5ojWiNbpkN4_vzy0m6cT2Bb6QDYfh9Yv3yYEUUBoOISQJh8sdBQbubkLjAw5qAI8spIg3Q6-7Vznwn4_FtqzgKSXd4JbepI5hoRyuH0vSf8K0PLdwCNiZoqpI/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrJnbaffYbcGhf_caFRx5ojWiNbpkN4_vzy0m6cT2Bb6QDYfh9Yv3yYEUUBoOISQJh8sdBQbubkLjAw5qAI8spIg3Q6-7Vznwn4_FtqzgKSXd4JbepI5hoRyuH0vSf8K0PLdwCNiZoqpI/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+080.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then
the second ...</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBCr5cJb2ZF0FfBtS8nQkGbgyhShSgedZFzw2ncsmkl2pag6GAInA8j_w8fpHXYr84jYpTdIaeV6ucbuaYluI3nJPVxOLvCzB9okj2IREAKbKapwtfmpG3tM-wtnQKsdi7CkHGqf4p58/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+087.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBCr5cJb2ZF0FfBtS8nQkGbgyhShSgedZFzw2ncsmkl2pag6GAInA8j_w8fpHXYr84jYpTdIaeV6ucbuaYluI3nJPVxOLvCzB9okj2IREAKbKapwtfmpG3tM-wtnQKsdi7CkHGqf4p58/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+087.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And finally, the last hill. Here is the
classroom building with children’s laundry drying outside. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhltoN-Ykktp00skCNRfd3UUu07Be3dooon5hzdWOdl4MzgYm2C5FA5F4nSkhqctK8hoeI6l5lJCG5F5JFcA-Ed9OJpz0MwP5lpNMUuONb_wgmewexTf47sd32oEBYSSrsNngruQD5qA1s/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+088.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhltoN-Ykktp00skCNRfd3UUu07Be3dooon5hzdWOdl4MzgYm2C5FA5F4nSkhqctK8hoeI6l5lJCG5F5JFcA-Ed9OJpz0MwP5lpNMUuONb_wgmewexTf47sd32oEBYSSrsNngruQD5qA1s/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+088.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrysQ1bc59Omq2USuH4K43xrzkNw1wLhgWbLEAp5KIfkiQT_V5nBTU6Ldv4LHPnRzxX3V6iryWfO7d1pLNDjfmu0WQ0DX4gkslXnn_YBBYAZn3kNGjZfxtqro_TDs8ohACAvl5Je-7Ukg/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+090.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrysQ1bc59Omq2USuH4K43xrzkNw1wLhgWbLEAp5KIfkiQT_V5nBTU6Ldv4LHPnRzxX3V6iryWfO7d1pLNDjfmu0WQ0DX4gkslXnn_YBBYAZn3kNGjZfxtqro_TDs8ohACAvl5Je-7Ukg/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+090.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2qcLVI3Tn7DPplnvcPLtHO3r7URdzSgU43_awKHuBh2pPJ3blcfy3uyxtxshiH1IaKsoEzbPeu5HTWmMClUUa705qd_-kh25vVn7E3cnYz6SErqLe7mHSSY7JC5PTIIvIChYmS9sQFA/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+091.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2qcLVI3Tn7DPplnvcPLtHO3r7URdzSgU43_awKHuBh2pPJ3blcfy3uyxtxshiH1IaKsoEzbPeu5HTWmMClUUa705qd_-kh25vVn7E3cnYz6SErqLe7mHSSY7JC5PTIIvIChYmS9sQFA/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+091.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The children spend a
lot of time washing their clothes in a tub by hand with cold water, and Bruce
and Ann wanted to buy them a washing machine so that they could spend more time
studying and playing, and less time on chores, but others vetoed the plan
because they feared the girls would not be able to readjust to hand-washing
once they returned to their villages.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-61721652253067315652013-07-19T20:37:00.001-07:002013-07-19T20:37:23.076-07:00The Wife Shoppers<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(<i>I wrote this weeks ago, but I wanted to wait until I left Vietnam to post it. For all kinds of good reasons, there are no photos.)</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
two are new: An Indian (Singaporean? Malaysian?) man and a chirpy Vietnamese
woman. She looks nice in her high purple heels, which I can’t imagine wearing
in Sapa’s chipped filthy streets, and her short chambray dress with a shirttail
hem that reveals even more thigh as she moves in the strong breeze on the
terrace. She’s perfectly made-up and her bobbed hair has a slightly auburn
tint. They order coffee drinks and take many pictures of each other drinking
them. I hear her in her good school English explaining something about the
American South. They do not know each other very well.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
the photos and the lectures on American history, she moves over to the other
side of the table to share his bench and begins rubbing his furry earlobes
between her thumb and forefinger and mussing his shoe-black hair.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
join creepy guy, my next door neighbor, who’s been here a couple of days,
formally sharing meals with a youngish French-speaking Vietnamese woman with a
small child. We sit on the terrace at the same time and pass each other
frequently, but only once has he returned the “hello” I’ve proffered. I am fine
with pretending each other doesn’t exist, but then I have to hear him all the
time through our thin shared bathroom wall, hacking up his Gitanes, or whatever
else he’s doing in there. His girlfriend/prospect isn’t allowed up here in his
room, so at least I don’t have to hear that. After the first time I saw them at
their candlelit dinner in the hotel, I saw him on the front porch of the hotel
hunched over his netbook, and I imagined he was going in to refine his search,
looking for a prettier, Francophone, educated woman who would marry his old
ass, but one without a cumbersome child. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
know this is none of my business, but it really creeps me out: the aversion to
western women with all their inconvenient notions of autonomy and equality, and
the naked racism of the desire for the Indochine body, with its suggestions of
social submissiveness and sexual expertise. I understand the Vietnamese women’s
point of view, too, unfortunately. The marriage prospects for educated women
here are dim, and whatever social reforms have been enacted, not to mention the
communist pledges of gender equity, have failed to reach the level of the family.
Women do all the work, inside and outside the home, and many just don’t want to
sign up for a life like that. They want to marry a westerner with money and get
the heck out of here, where they imagine they’ll have a much better life, with
limitless consumer goods and financial security. Leaving behind their families
doesn’t even particularly trouble them. As my friend in Hanoi, who is married
to a New Zealand man with whom she has never lived, says, “it doesn’t matter, I
am the girl, the extra child, I am not important.”</span></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-65363801104991195542013-07-08T22:50:00.002-07:002013-07-08T22:50:37.123-07:00Walking Tour, Part One<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1x_Pcs-XKT9iWGyYRBDDEgx-oN-AWerROXeq45QcacZMQNqK3U172cxkZs6NxUZnaa1_g6gvBtY4OaU0Soma9hhe37xziOQlFwUtkWrZ2sGK6ln7LFW2yE5oEZOWJy4G_wiZmKyMnWc/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+053.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1x_Pcs-XKT9iWGyYRBDDEgx-oN-AWerROXeq45QcacZMQNqK3U172cxkZs6NxUZnaa1_g6gvBtY4OaU0Soma9hhe37xziOQlFwUtkWrZ2sGK6ln7LFW2yE5oEZOWJy4G_wiZmKyMnWc/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+053.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
get to SOC café and office, you turn right out of the hotel and start up the
first hill. On your right you’ll pass the dingy little stand where a woman
cells cigarettes and cold drinks and men hang out all day drinking, gambling,
and arguing. After dark, the motorcycle toughs and drinkers and serenaded by a
old blind Hmong man playing a wooden flute for pocket change. On the opposite
corner a man offers you a motorbike ride every time you pass. There may be a
gaggle of Hmong girls and women on the corner two, having been herded there by
the tourist police. Then you plunge into the market, through the fruit and
vegetable stalls, dodging tourists and local shoppers and alight your first set
of uneven, slippery stairs. The passage through the upper level of the market
is a knot of sellers and buyers of everyday goods and trinkets on the left, and
handicrafts and fancier-looking “authentic” trinkets on the right. Then it’s
down the few stairs clogged with sellers, onto the street swarming with
motorbikes and dominated by the occasional bus. Turn left on the main street of
Sapa Town, heading away from its center and up another hill. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtgSsrHKLs1aJIhPkG62qgpdkW3odzRaDnCs-7ogWLRAkvfgSsHhgRvxTbrSSmZS2PVmclDFgL-M2yhsu93XCAxKiySsbdi_2rMN30jeKJ4fQablyM7MhUxLpCH4M0Q6D7WBJozQRwVNg/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+055.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtgSsrHKLs1aJIhPkG62qgpdkW3odzRaDnCs-7ogWLRAkvfgSsHhgRvxTbrSSmZS2PVmclDFgL-M2yhsu93XCAxKiySsbdi_2rMN30jeKJ4fQablyM7MhUxLpCH4M0Q6D7WBJozQRwVNg/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+055.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZH7Lesyfs6KgqfhKQckxWWNWHvDW2eQ7JiWkOvf12dTL6FhfhngC3V_YvRhELZno4OM8P8JXL_81exN_kPoAm_XzUWHO756PndgZorlV1JTcGM8HQTgMHhRBMZ0FI15CsFHViAu-Vk8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZH7Lesyfs6KgqfhKQckxWWNWHvDW2eQ7JiWkOvf12dTL6FhfhngC3V_YvRhELZno4OM8P8JXL_81exN_kPoAm_XzUWHO756PndgZorlV1JTcGM8HQTgMHhRBMZ0FI15CsFHViAu-Vk8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+056.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZltdSTqaatWAZsLCmGZKL7AN7mfGFwAPJRM6vZs9RZrsadJHDlDoqDpyKXnDwC8fLLYepVdwKYHbpWWrxcZpm0nuuOLOI8L4Km3m58nNypcB1WUmyR_sSERWBEcfaQ_TJA1dfizRI54s/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+064.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZltdSTqaatWAZsLCmGZKL7AN7mfGFwAPJRM6vZs9RZrsadJHDlDoqDpyKXnDwC8fLLYepVdwKYHbpWWrxcZpm0nuuOLOI8L4Km3m58nNypcB1WUmyR_sSERWBEcfaQ_TJA1dfizRI54s/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+064.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
lot happens on this street, unfortunately most of if alcohol-related. Once I
saw a drunk man heave a very large rock at the back of two people on speeding
motorbike. Worse, one afternoon I watched – as if that was going to do some
good – a drunk young man with a K-Pop hairdo drag his girlfriend down the hill
by her arm. She was pleading and beginning to cry, and feebly hitting him with
her shiny red clutch handbag, braking hard in her platform shoes on the steep
slope. You used to see a buffalo in town every now and then, but the police
must be keeping them away, too. Continue up the hill past the tourists eating
bad food on pretty terraces, past the massage places and the Be-Bop disco,
through the intersection where yet another gang of men hawk motorbike rides or
bikes for rent. You will be walking in the street up this hill because Hmong
and Dao women have spread their tarps and their wares across the sidewalks on
both sides. Some are very old, and some are very young. Women have babies on
their backs and lying on blankets under leaning plaid umbrellas. You try to
tell yourself you’re doing the right thing when you say “no shopping.” Ann
walks through here and gives fruit, juice boxes of milk and books to the
children. You wish you were that kind of person.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThvxdu2BASGlAraNV4a2fyseEGxtQ7xaQfrfaZaN-61VaWBOnpgDbrhBq9yruKb6eFFYuytaO6JuxP4Rc8WVnbsDDmZfOmRUIDpKluWoqWsmT-mgFTSMZHGskLQJDrdWaj84OtqMuGF8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThvxdu2BASGlAraNV4a2fyseEGxtQ7xaQfrfaZaN-61VaWBOnpgDbrhBq9yruKb6eFFYuytaO6JuxP4Rc8WVnbsDDmZfOmRUIDpKluWoqWsmT-mgFTSMZHGskLQJDrdWaj84OtqMuGF8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+057.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAoqDPs6Z7h1UqRYUC2bPrBFU36AMMEOS-mS682IAq_uiNFnwydYJ4QInKCaR_syLdm53Q8ZSObkM28CwZE3tBHTt5v2cQkoOHYu67xxdx_dFgJXl7cWbBCLUhoeQDsLKV3OzxKZpOvyw/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAoqDPs6Z7h1UqRYUC2bPrBFU36AMMEOS-mS682IAq_uiNFnwydYJ4QInKCaR_syLdm53Q8ZSObkM28CwZE3tBHTt5v2cQkoOHYu67xxdx_dFgJXl7cWbBCLUhoeQDsLKV3OzxKZpOvyw/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+058.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
second, and much longer, set of stairs feels like something of a relief because
there are fewer, if any sellers there, but it’s trash-strewn and smelly. At the
top, turn right and coast a little downhill while you catch your breath.
Sometimes another (the same one?) blind flute player sets up shop at the top.
If there’s room to walk on the sidewalk, that’s best because this road is
curved and busses, trucks, and motorbikes drive as if it isn’t. On the right
you pass a guest house, a barber-shop/beauty parlor/massage parlor, an indoor
roller-blading rink, of all things, and an incongruously diurnal karaoke bar.
The sidewalk is patrolled by a very pregnant dog, toddlers who occasionally
break free of their handlers and wobble toward the busy street, and the
clusters of teenagers that skating rinks all over the world attract.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHujNIpsNB_W_15oyrdLkK7xu9bNuKXHI9S8VfuD16VFSY2AP-uFe3pv2IyDdNLuJB9-pPB-BJe78S11DSQeNfpR3VW6pfrUAUPGs_SKjPG8icpYNWqv-D6YKfZgsYQuSszCmzr1lihc/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+098.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHujNIpsNB_W_15oyrdLkK7xu9bNuKXHI9S8VfuD16VFSY2AP-uFe3pv2IyDdNLuJB9-pPB-BJe78S11DSQeNfpR3VW6pfrUAUPGs_SKjPG8icpYNWqv-D6YKfZgsYQuSszCmzr1lihc/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+098.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the top of the stairs.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAzdJUVaLQzInubmFnq63BFPKkZTfyYZFxcMbVsyrOJ2feMUWOXADgP2fbZ7J6BxthRuwqDh_QrJEEEm28uDXCAG1JASsI3PXoFuJIaxQCnfJPaPKJkh4VKqAOV59ogYwy7-NcarvKvU/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+099.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAzdJUVaLQzInubmFnq63BFPKkZTfyYZFxcMbVsyrOJ2feMUWOXADgP2fbZ7J6BxthRuwqDh_QrJEEEm28uDXCAG1JASsI3PXoFuJIaxQCnfJPaPKJkh4VKqAOV59ogYwy7-NcarvKvU/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+099.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from near the bottom.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Last
week they emptied out the massage/beauty parlor to make way for the rumored
pool hall, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and put the trash on the
street. Who doesn’t love Christmas in July?</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij1KfgtNi6HwEpIQF-9GU2UvJQVYuQdkifhxhsTn8n2Sb8MEGSU9CZZQYso3sdG2dhNgXk7uao7fs86ZfB1gipTyttsT2rIhuEYgKdJJWKgHsmGbW8dXTk0EYDPj-_16PV2l_CYar7iq8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij1KfgtNi6HwEpIQF-9GU2UvJQVYuQdkifhxhsTn8n2Sb8MEGSU9CZZQYso3sdG2dhNgXk7uao7fs86ZfB1gipTyttsT2rIhuEYgKdJJWKgHsmGbW8dXTk0EYDPj-_16PV2l_CYar7iq8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+050.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-69007001939127569322013-07-04T21:01:00.000-07:002013-07-04T21:15:10.597-07:00Some People and Things I Forgot to Write About<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6slPu9qvZYHIs5V4BbvRJJ3f4A-kDCysy_Kf3fmv14wBBqmNsl-rENnPKyd4PcaQKWJ8LhqrvqUuugfTvQ38ecND8cnLDSuOyYh00IakShuSi3ke-zaThCsNGL21AYPEtUshHVg3HzL8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+038.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6slPu9qvZYHIs5V4BbvRJJ3f4A-kDCysy_Kf3fmv14wBBqmNsl-rENnPKyd4PcaQKWJ8LhqrvqUuugfTvQ38ecND8cnLDSuOyYh00IakShuSi3ke-zaThCsNGL21AYPEtUshHVg3HzL8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+038.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francoise plays hard-core badminton with a student in front of the school residence.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
morning the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Austrian Artists </b>leave
on a bus to Dien Bien Phu. I admire their fortitude; they said they really
enjoyed the other long-distance VN bus ride with the chickens in the aisle and
people sitting on sacks of potatoes. More power to them; I would find it much
less fun. Plus, the road to Dien Bien is twisty and turny, and muddy and
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
forgot to tell you about the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Austrian
Artists</b> . They’re tall, long-wasted short-haired hearty young women. I
thought they were a couple until the one with the lip-ring showed me the
package she was sending to her girlfriend studying in New Zealand. They turned
up last week, having volunteered to paint the café and offices, which they did
with great diligence, talent, and good humor. As usual, I was the skeptic, wondering
why they’d relocate everyone in the offices, and wary that they’d do what I
would do: make a mess, start the job, and not finish it. Instead, they painted
murals, refreshed the ones the children had made, and squatted in the street to
re-paint the concrete wall in bright yellow with the SOC logo. Plus they were
self-aware, kind, and surprisingly funny. One evening I came by the café, and Sabine
(‘m going to call her Sabine) said “You missed the Dutch boys painting,” which,
when you think about it, is very funny in a stereotypical kind of way. She says
they were “dressed funny,” and when I ask what they were wearing, she says,
“not much.” Apparently, to protect their clothes -- and their beards, Sabine
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
were also great company on the walk to Cat Cat. Drily, Sabine wonders how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Francoise</b>, the French IT teacher, had
managed to get himself out of France and all the way to Sapa. Francoise is a
tall, awkward, myopic and googly-eyed Frenchman who teaches the children how to
use the computers. He’s irrepressible and totally ingenuous, and the children
love him. They all want their pictures made with him, and every time he poses
he throws up single or double peace signs. As he climbs up the valley carrying
water bottles for everyone in his pack, children circle and cling to him. He
lets loose enthusiastic Francophone syllabic utterances from time to time,
which I think are “oh, yeah,” or “oh, no.” He lives at the school, and likes to
play games with the children after dinner. I have to hand it to Jaya: he would
have been a terrible English teacher – on account of not speaking
understandable English --, but he’s absolutely marvelous at what she’s assigned
him to do. Without revealing his real name, I can say that the children
pronounce it something like “EEE—AWN,” like a donkey braying.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You might be interested in a brief <b>Colin </b>update. His hard luck continues. Two days ago, he bit into a Snickers Bar and broke off his front tooth, which he's terribly embarrassed about. People keep suggesting that he go to Thailand for destination dentistry, which they say might take 6 months. Not helpful. </span></div>
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Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-69872268547355999542013-07-03T03:04:00.001-07:002013-07-04T20:49:59.239-07:00What is there to do in the evenings?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is the question that appears in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lonely
Planet</i> phrase book that caused everyone to blush and fall out laughing
every time Graeme and I tried to say it back in Bac Ha a few years ago. I think
it’s one of those mistranslated bombs that LP plants in its books. We thought
it was our poor pronunciation that caused the hilarity, but when the Hmong men
literally fell backwards of the drinking bench and started making universal
hand gestures, we surmised that whatever we were saying, we were probably
saying it correctly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
this case, however, I mean it in the chaste and literal sense: what does one do
in the evenings in Sapa, especially when one is here for an extended stay? The
answer is, not much. Sapa has a late-night backpacker drinking and game-playing
scene, but I have never been to those places, and don’t really want to. The
dimming of the day is when loneliness comes on, and I do best when I hold to a
routine. Teaching from 7:30-8:30 gives shape to the evening, and by the time of
the students runs me to my hotel on his motorbike, it’s close to 9:00. Then two
Bia Hanoi on the terrace, and I go in to compulsively arrange my mosquito
netting and crawl in with my Kindle (I know, I know, I resisted the Kindle, but
now I love it, especially because I can read in the dark). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I often just snack on something for dinner or
just skip it entirely; I don’t notice or suffer from my aloneness until I sit
among all the families and couples. I recently discovered the communal table at
the Hill Station Restaurant, but last night, I sat between a family of four and
a family of five. Felt like the least popular kid in eighth grade. (But it was
worth it for the food: smoked buffalo with pickled local greens and a glass of
Norton Shiraz. Total cost –not that it matters: $7.50.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
big danger for unstructured evenings is starting the happy hour beers too soon.
None of the usual checks obtain here: there’s no car to drive and no big tab to
pay, and usually I’m on the terrace a few steps from my bed. Though normally
not that good with consequences, even I have learned that even one or two more
than my usual two beers leads to sloth the next day, which leads inevitably to
anxiety and homesickness. But, every once in a while I just to concede to
fatigue and inertia. Saturday, after the long hot walk to Cat Cat and back, I
drank two beers, showered when the power finally came back on, meant to go out,
but just got in the bed at 7:30. The tipping point was the thought of coming
back up the five flights of stairs to my room after dinner. My legs were
seriously tired.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then
there’s always Vietnamese television. Most channels feature Asian boy-bands in
videos or contests, both of which would be much more diverting if it weren’t
for the execrable music. Often there’s some martial arts contest of some sort.
In recent years I’ve been able to find Aussie football – which I love – but haven’t
been seen it this year. Flipping through channels the other night, I saw found
what I can only surmise is a patriotic flag waving contest (Russian?). Distinguished-looking
men wearing outfits with brass buttons – one was wearing riding boots – stood on
a podium and swirled and twirled large flags with great seriousness, while
judges judged and audiences cheered solemnly. I have no idea. A click of the
remote brings me to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” with Vietnamese subtitles,
one more click and then the Hong Kong TV broadcast of Wimbledon, which exists
in a timeless nether world, where matches featuring East and South Asian
players are looped constantly. Update: Li Na is still losing in the third set
to Radwanska. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
And finally, one's evenings are constrained by what is in effect a curfew. The hotel locks the doors at 10:30 p.m. (11:00 on Saturdays!). You can knock, or ring the bell, and summon a sleepy worker from the darkness, but you feel ashamed and guilty. </div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-64574836478738582612013-07-02T18:40:00.000-07:002013-07-02T18:40:02.062-07:00Some pictures from trip to Cat Cat and other stuff<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKg3SW47KpdR8jvgAqRfYzyX96TLJIkASn24wotqbBMP9PLWQR2vqCUOVb7DdH84_fEck9MCH07nGb6lnExZFsQevYgfRk2niuiBaDnH46DZyD7NAtOynxuO_DdGNbS_BA2EMLbQbfhyphenhyphenQ/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKg3SW47KpdR8jvgAqRfYzyX96TLJIkASn24wotqbBMP9PLWQR2vqCUOVb7DdH84_fEck9MCH07nGb6lnExZFsQevYgfRk2niuiBaDnH46DZyD7NAtOynxuO_DdGNbS_BA2EMLbQbfhyphenhyphenQ/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+005.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Oh, just a typical view from the terrace outside my hotel room.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEc4AaXsNrMPH2OeQ9CIMbPxR7wkc-0Gkmfszq7K7D3PYvpDK94ZPQn5vgteyejyD_qyZkRQw9b8v76_SGmG6t4PdG6EO_KwGmclundOdzdQHjqIvThkTJj28L0GskuNraw3yo-_uLUos/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEc4AaXsNrMPH2OeQ9CIMbPxR7wkc-0Gkmfszq7K7D3PYvpDK94ZPQn5vgteyejyD_qyZkRQw9b8v76_SGmG6t4PdG6EO_KwGmclundOdzdQHjqIvThkTJj28L0GskuNraw3yo-_uLUos/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+008.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
On Saturday, Bruce and Ann took the children (and me and Francoise) to Cat Cat Village.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqfq_nUrAz_CE0COKweFWcQCbR3FCB7TDRhbSwB6VD-laFoKjqEb0nZmIjMKoeHMMBSQn8JxnU46f1iARe4YiQwtL5hyphenhyphenGH1KIRDzwXFhDOSKwgze0TX_qHO6lUeNqVqShiJOHrgVmNA5s/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqfq_nUrAz_CE0COKweFWcQCbR3FCB7TDRhbSwB6VD-laFoKjqEb0nZmIjMKoeHMMBSQn8JxnU46f1iARe4YiQwtL5hyphenhyphenGH1KIRDzwXFhDOSKwgze0TX_qHO6lUeNqVqShiJOHrgVmNA5s/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+010.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
We took many pictures in front of the waterfall....<br /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PPg6DdnszvAoonQ5ROoe0qEB43ptrudqKEZklRRxSCk9-f4wJ7yirPRrfPwkKfzD8YDr3BRrxiNoxaT89VcpZH5jup7ocS1_vWp9jK_SgWcHztaCN1sSSgGlmaF9RQxhmQL55MwGqzU/s1600/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PPg6DdnszvAoonQ5ROoe0qEB43ptrudqKEZklRRxSCk9-f4wJ7yirPRrfPwkKfzD8YDr3BRrxiNoxaT89VcpZH5jup7ocS1_vWp9jK_SgWcHztaCN1sSSgGlmaF9RQxhmQL55MwGqzU/s320/Vietnam+2013%252C+week+one+011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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We saw some children playing on a pretty cool swing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-T_Qz8GZMLHwtWpkCNlH-E3qpqmWg07fEwzmJLXjNLGH3YCAHKmWdXhuUDI9CCUlDrnfggMk0jMD2p-KhNoFv6mXKEPDZngkxKCda0ZnCUJKomxRp51S8BA0fIrprcd955wHFFJHhI8/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-T_Qz8GZMLHwtWpkCNlH-E3qpqmWg07fEwzmJLXjNLGH3YCAHKmWdXhuUDI9CCUlDrnfggMk0jMD2p-KhNoFv6mXKEPDZngkxKCda0ZnCUJKomxRp51S8BA0fIrprcd955wHFFJHhI8/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+013.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And some other very small children climbing on a cable bridge (warning: American mothers might not want to look).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfi23On79qG13UxXiAtZQjVwjjaKHgLBW5gG19ANqfy5-bFBoXQtemkvxYPvygY-MZTY4KdTfeM7zo_1IasQcF2evLofjGOuP6QcMibuEcm4mWUHsuQ5mLzGbi3gkOBpdesqKseRQ674/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfi23On79qG13UxXiAtZQjVwjjaKHgLBW5gG19ANqfy5-bFBoXQtemkvxYPvygY-MZTY4KdTfeM7zo_1IasQcF2evLofjGOuP6QcMibuEcm4mWUHsuQ5mLzGbi3gkOBpdesqKseRQ674/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+014.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-5630927794109352013-06-29T21:08:00.002-07:002013-07-02T18:25:28.045-07:00Seen, Heard, & Overheard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
wake up early here, sometimes really early, but I doze in the canopy bed of
mosquito netting and look out my open windows at the mountains and the mist,
lately mostly at the fog and rain. If I fall back asleep I am sometimes
awakened at about 7:30 by the soft voices of the Hmong girls talking to each
other and sweeping the terrace outside my window. Where Vietnamese is
clangorous and sharp elbowed, and always sounds urgent and impatient, Hmong is
rounded, patient, and well-worn, its syllabic repetitions as comforting and
they are mysterious. The other day one of the girls was sweeping under the
table right outside my window and singing. I like to think it was an ancient
traditional tune, but more likely it was a pop song that I didn’t recognize. When
I look up from my bed, we exchange smiles and good mornings, which I should
learn how to say in Hmong and surprise her one day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Downstairs
at breakfast I check the email and Facebook posts that have come through from
the American day while I was sleeping. Sometimes I chat with other guests, but
mostly I just like to observe them. Every morning busses from Lao Cai disgorge
tourists into the hotel lobby fresh off the (often literally) nauseating ride
from the night train from Hanoi. Often they are tired and cranky, and lately
the weather has been so rainy that this has made them worse. Today, I watched a
woman put on a world-class pouty-face performance so dramatic that I couldn’t
turn away. I think she saw me watching her, but since her own friends refused
to notice her, my attention was probably better than no one’s. I couldn’t tell
her nationality since her disdain was as mute as it was theatrical. She stared
at her bowl of fruit and yogurt like it was road kill, and nibbled resentfully
on a corner of dry toast. Then she picked up her mug of tea laboriously with
both hands and bent her whole body over it like it was the hemlock she’d been
hoping for all along. Occasionally, she lowered her face into both hands. I
wonder if she went trekking today, and her companions and guides just left her
in a village by the way somewhere.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
wolfing down my perfect vibrant orange-yolked local free-range runny eggs with
French bread and butter, I usually write and read on the terrace all morning
and head up to the SOC café and offices after lunch. Today I had an early
meeting and walked out into the rain and up the hills shortly after 9:00.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Arriving
at the café, I first see Colin, whose skinny pitifulness is exacerbated by the
stripes of hickey-like marks on his neck, a sign that he’s sought out local
folk healing methods for some malady. He tells me he’s had food poisoning for
several days. When I ask what from, he says, of all things, “sushi.” Let me
remind you that we are far from the ocean in a mountain with intermittent electricity,
which is a night train from Hanoi and does not have an airport. When he swears
that he’ll “never eat sushi again,” I get the feeling that the lessons of rehab
may actually stick when it comes to raw fish.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
meeting with Jaya goes okay, but I am baffled by her assertion that I should go
back and teach the ABCs to my fledgling adult ELLs. She says they need to learn
the letters for their sounds so they can learn to pronounce English better. I
then suggest that I put the words “though,” “through,” and “tough” up on the
board and see how that goes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
is deafening out on the front porch of the café, with the trucks and
motorbikes, and inexplicable morning karaoke sounds, but it’s ear-splitting
inside the café with the tile-cutters working on the new bathroom. I’m glad I
stay out on the porch, however, so I can overhear the much more absurd and
acrimonious meeting that Ann has with Jaya. The conversation they’re having has
a history, as Ann has told me, but hearing it live still surprises me. What Jaya
wants Ann to do is create a lesson-by-lesson record of everything she teaches
in the classroom. She’s concerned, deeply concerned, as she says, that as a
teacher, Ann isn’t accountable to anyone else in the organization. Naturally,
she thinks it’s herself that Ann (and her successors), should be accountable
to. She tries every way she knows how to get Ann to see things from her,
self-described management point of view. “Why don’t you write a log entry for
every day of teaching,” she suggests. Ann says, that’s absurd, that’s not a
reasonable request of a teacher, and concedes that she might be persuaded to write
weekly progress reports, but adds that since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she’s </i>not the paid volunteer coordinator she can’t exactly be
responsible for who succeeds her. Score. Not good enough, says Jaya, “Then why
don’t you just send me your lesson plans for everyday?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this, Ann snorts, “Lesson plans? I just
come up with an idea and a theme at breakfast or in the shower,” which makes
Jaya’s hair stand on end.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jaya makes
one last futile pass at it, asking Ann to at least write out the grammar
lessons she teaches. Ann’s response that that’s impossible because she doesn’t
teach grammar lessons leaves Jaya fuming, and she finally goes meta and pleads,
“why are you so difficult to talk to?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
gives me no small amount of satisfaction that all the while this is going on,
I’m dutifully drafting the handbook for adult ELL learners that Jaya has asked
me to write, and going on at some length about Whole Language theory and zones
of proximal development and the demonstrated pointlessness of atomized grammar
lessons as a way of acquiring basic speaking ability in another language. I
completely share Ann’s belief that a professional educator – and a volunteer
one at that –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>should not have to report
someone with no experience in or knowledge of educational theory and method,
but in a small way, I understand Jaya’s frustration, too, because she doesn’t
know what she’s talking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the
end of her rope, Jaya asks, “how will I know what’s happening in the classroom?”
to which I almost interject, “I guess you just won’t.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
each holster their dueling pistols and walk away. For now.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-49980340970651082782013-06-27T00:54:00.003-07:002013-06-27T01:00:38.145-07:00Try Not to Be the Asshole in the Story<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">WARNING: I use the word "asshole" in this post. A lot.</span><br />
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is one of the guiding principles of this trip, and for writing about it: try
not to be The Asshole in the Story. I formed this ambition in part by
re-reading my work from previous years and seeing that I seem to spend a lot of
time telling tales in which I am the aggrieved victim of various forms of
stupidity. Upon reflection, however, I see that there’s one common denominator
in these stories: me. I may be The Asshole. Nobody likes a relentlessly cheery
travel writer, but no one likes an unreflective lunkhead, either. And so it is
that I’m making a conscious effort to run a little asshole heuristic before I
write anything. Of course, this may be the very definition of Asshole: being
certain that you’re not The Asshole.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
had really worked myself into a froth over several incidents so far at SOC.
First, there was the manipulative and puerile way that Ian organized the Friday
Night Social. Here’s how it worked: email goes out to say there will be an
event at an undisclosed location, to which Ian will “lead us through town like
the pied piper.” Uh, how about you just tell me when and where, and I can turn
up? Trying to be a team player, I hike up to at the café at the assigned time
and we wait, and wait, and wait for every last person to arrive with Ian
gathering us up and taking roll like we’re church campers. Then Bruce is
instructed to lead us all to the store so we can each buy what we want to
drink, in accordance to the BYOB policy Ian has negotiated. About 16 people
crowd into this warren-like store and begin complaining bitterly about the
prices, dusty bottles of Vietnamese red wine, Vang Dalat, being $5 instead of
$3 (the horror!). We have to wait until every single person makes their miserly
purchase before Ian arrives – on his motorbike! – to lead us on foot 3 blocks
to the restaurant where we will have a pre-arranged Italian dinner. There
follows even more chaos as we are instructed to sit in the lounge seating area
and enjoy a drink, with no wine openers or glasses. Eventually that’s sorted,
and then the garlic bread appetizer comes. I really do appreciate that you’ve
managed the money and ordered the food, Ian, but I don’t need to be told how
many pieces of garlic bread I’m allowed to eat (one, as it happens). If you
know me, how I like to entertain, how I don’t like to travel and dine in packs,
you know how berserk I am going right now. Plus, at this point I haven’t slept
in about four nights, so I’m becoming even more bratty than usual. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
the garlic bread has been parsed, the ersatz-penurious young people drink
copiously of their overpriced wine and their now tepid beers in plastic bags,
and eat like wolves from the buffet of gloppy pasta and soggy pizza. My night
was saved by Bruce and Ann, the retired Australian couple who could see me
sitting there fidgety like a caged animal and trying not to be an asshole, and
invite me to sit at a table with them. I veered dangerously close to asshole
territory one more time when Ian got up and rapped on his glass with a spoon
and made a series of meaningless and self-serving toasts, but mostly I
acquitted myself fairly well despite a simmering rage at being treated like a
summer-camper. Have to say, however, that my crankiness helped form a bond, now
a friendship, with Bruce and Ann, no-nonsense retired professionals in their
60s who also have no taste for this kind of pied-piper performance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
is it about the population of people, especially the young ones, who want to do
this kind of work that makes them self-involved, bossy, control freaks?
Probably they were like that to start with, but I think it’s also that so few
of them have had actual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jobs</i> in which
some of these habits would have been censured, or at least tempered. I was
about to get really furious with Jaya, the volunteer coordinator, however, when
it occurred to me that I might be The Asshole in the Story. Yes, I have a job,
but not in the ordinary sense where people, you know, tell you what to do. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
had asked Jaya if I could observe Ann teaching the Hmong children in their
regular classes, because I wanted to see how an expert did that, she told me
no, I couldn’t, because they had a hard and fast closed-door policy against
classroom visitors. This rationale I totally understand because I know that
these children have been an exoticized spectacle their whole lives, with people
asking their names are and how old they are and patting them on the head and
taking their pictures. I get it. And one of the reasons I get it is that I’ve
worked with this organization for several years and have even been the teacher
in the classroom where well-meaning but disruptive visitors would arrive
unannounced regularly. I say that letting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>
in the classroom still honors that policy, but she keeps insisting that you
can’t have one rule for one person and another for everyone else. When my
argument boils down to, “but it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>;
can’t you see I’m an exception?” I realize I might me The Asshole, and let it
drop. It also occurs to me that I might have a problem with being told what to
do, and with working and playing well with others.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“But
it’s ME” is an asshole argument, to be sure, but Jaya wasn’t exactly telling
the truth, as it turns out. I learned from Ann yesterday that Jaya let Kate
come in and teach an entire morning’s lesson just so she could put on her
resume that she had experience teaching ELLs. What was the first thing she did
in class? “What is your name, and how old are you?” Ann was fit to be tied,
outraged that her 40 years of professional experience and judgment counted for
nothing against a 20-something British woman looking for a way to finance the
rest of her trip around the world. It was all Ann could do to stop Kate from teaching
her planned lessons on the history of Malta and the importance of cod (I swear I
am not making this up). Kate is the same woman who, Ann says, is asking for
compensation for the trekking guide handbook that she <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">volunteered</i> to write, threatening not to hand it over unless they
pay her. Her reason? If she doesn’t get paid, then she can’t continue the next
6 months of travel. When Ann told me this story, we said in unison: Then go
home and get a job.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Looks
like I may not be The Asshole in this particular story, after all, but there’s
plenty of time left.s</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-42792087883524831072013-06-27T00:40:00.001-07:002013-06-29T21:12:38.261-07:00Cast of Characters Using Pseudonyms<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ian</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">: Alternately
charming and infuriating, a 30-yr old university educated Brit in a
relationship with a 20-yr old illiterate – and now preening – Hmong girl. I first
met him 2 years ago when he was the lead teacher in the school, where his
narcissistic and needy teacher-centered teaching drove me to distraction. The
only jobs he’s ever had are seasonal ski-instructor in Japan, and international
vagabond volunteer teacher. His paid position at SOC represents his first
“real” job.</span>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jaya</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">: First, this is
obviously not her given name, but an Indian name she has taken for herself to
better reflect her yoga and religious practice. She, too, is a fair-haired Brit
who has spent a few years traveling the underdeveloped regions of the world,
and helping them by just showing up and offering yoga classes. She has
professional experience working in NGOs and is now Interim Volunteer
Coordinator, busy seriously bossing people around for a few more weeks until
she socks away enough from her meager salary to make her way back to India.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Colin</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">: Looking and
sounding like a man who just wandered off the set of that Gordon Ramsey reality
show where he teaches British prisoners to cook, Colin turned up here just a
few days before I did with some money, a dream, and at least part of a Program
to work. Skinny, nicotine-stained, stooped, and fidgety, Colin is a
20-something recent rehab graduate with years of experience in the hospitality
business. Apparently, the story is that his father sold his café, and Colin
decided to travel the world until he found the right place to give his money
and expertise to. He talks about giving back to the world and making amends;
everything about rehab seems to have stuck except the part about not drinking.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bruce</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> and his wife <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ann</b>: Wiry, stentorian, 68-yr old from
Perth, Western Australia, Bruce is bald and be-spectacled, with the rake’s
lifetime habit of flirtation, and the engineer’s decisive certainty. He and Ann
will spend 4 months of this year volunteering in two different locations in
Vietnam. They both approach their work as though it were their full-time
salaried gig. Ann brings 40 years of experience in elementary education to her
task, and she is at the school from 8-4 4 days a week. Bruce is in the office,
kicking ass, taking names, and reading people the riot act like a new boss who
just got transferred in from the main office.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cu</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">: The
30-something Hmong woman who started this whole thing, Cu has been my friend
since we met in 2009. She’s inspirational and maddening, a visionary with a 5<sup>th</sup>-grade
education, Cu can do a lot of things, and, unfortunately, she usually wants to
do them all at the same time. Tight-fisted, emotional, and impulsive, Cu is the
heart and soul of SOC, but drives everyone crazy. She is a former street-seller
herself, and has a 6-yr old spoiled and beautiful daughter. She hopes someday
before too long to hand over the reins of SOC and go abroad to study.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Becca</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">: Oh, my god,
why are they all British? Becca is my teaching partner for the adult education
class. She loves doing research on the intuhnet about curriculum and teaching,
but other than a volunteer for walk-in English classes in a café down the
street for a week or so, she has no experience actually teaching. Nonetheless,
she’s convinced that she should be paid to teach in order to finance her
travels around the world, a point of view that Ann, with her decades of
professional experience, finds especially irksome. She likes to paint a streak
of shiny pale green eyeliner across her lids and wears the studied motley of
the young traveler. She is very young. We disagree about how important
correctness is for English language acquisition in adult learners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kate: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cut from same cloth as Becca. Her signature
feature is bells on her sandals instead of green eyeliner.</span>
</div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-71100424000103935922013-06-23T21:06:00.000-07:002013-06-23T21:06:04.907-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE59mpAod4WeXTJFi829bndB798C1FJ_YK9IPteS-zArWNPzQLtXtDwszcJ_8AI1XlPxVUL8zWMMJcgngQp48_-hGhF42fW1U1HSISbcX34Hb8FmXjTmcctcJ-xCBvpSk38pJaPJwZx0A/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE59mpAod4WeXTJFi829bndB798C1FJ_YK9IPteS-zArWNPzQLtXtDwszcJ_8AI1XlPxVUL8zWMMJcgngQp48_-hGhF42fW1U1HSISbcX34Hb8FmXjTmcctcJ-xCBvpSk38pJaPJwZx0A/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+014.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ummmm.... seaweed Pringles ....</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-87664450123848533072013-06-23T21:01:00.002-07:002013-06-23T21:01:53.698-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJUH6SxvTE4SqGyER6WTXkdO6vaeDULGRCI2YHsfY-Ru3JXd8NxBZtjgLHMnvmmYiYcm0mrTWJc986vB_ywfIMjXSFWadEUQ32WXvJ7y-N_MRCD0xmWMNQaQiUhUYqy7MSr6gtPuBHiWU/s1600/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJUH6SxvTE4SqGyER6WTXkdO6vaeDULGRCI2YHsfY-Ru3JXd8NxBZtjgLHMnvmmYiYcm0mrTWJc986vB_ywfIMjXSFWadEUQ32WXvJ7y-N_MRCD0xmWMNQaQiUhUYqy7MSr6gtPuBHiWU/s320/Vietnam+2013,+week+one+008.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunrise from my balcony in Sapa. One advantage of not sleeping.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-16146407349199079862013-06-23T20:58:00.004-07:002013-06-23T20:58:55.309-07:00Rough Landings & Good Signs<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
trip has had a rough take-off and landing, not literally, but in all other
ways. The flights were long but fine, except for the 12-hour leg in the middle
seat with the gum-chewing fat man encroaching on one side and the old
Vietnamese nose-picking man on the other, but I drugged myself like a crated
puppy and got through it. The turbulence started the night before when the
student who was supposed to come with me, Paige, reported from Dallas that she
wasn’t feeling well. High hopes for her rebound battled it out with
increasingly serious updates about her condition, and by very late Saturday
night, hours before we were to leave for the airport in Austin, news came that
she had acute appendicitis and would need surgery. Not knowing what else to do,
but worrying fiercely if<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my decision was
ethical and in keeping with the spirit of the university funding of the trip,
and holding out hope that the procedure would go smoothly and Paige would join
me in a few days, and got on the plane and left. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had lost money on her ticket, and would
have lost more on mine, plus the various hotel reservations, and train tickets.
But the anxiety and stress wasn’t exactly about the money, it was about uncertainty:
I didn’t know what to do, what the university expected me to do, what the
ethical thing to do was. I got on the plane.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
I came anyway, and I also departed Hanoi for Sapa, each day and night not
knowing if I needed to rearrange our itinerary or take the night train back
round-trip to Hanoi to fetch her, or would it be okay to have the hotel take
care of her? I confess it was with some measure of relief that I read the news
in an email late Thursday night in Sapa that she was not going to get medical
clearance for this year’s trip after all. I also began to realize how fortunate
we all are – Paige, mostly – that he symptoms presented 12 hours <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before</i> we began a 29-hour trip to a
place with sub-standard medical care. Next year, Paige, I promise, next year: I
literally still have a plane ticket with your name on it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Still
seeking my traveler’s angle of repose as I prepared to travel by night train
north, some early signs, if you believe in such things, began to appear that I
might be in the right place in the world after all. The very nice man at the
Hanoi Elegance Ruby found a woman who wanted a train ticket and sold her
Paige’s, so I now had a traveling companion and bunkmate. She also lucked into
Paige’s gorgeous hotel room next door to me on the top floor of the Boutique
Sapa hotel. A professor at BYU, currently working with students in China, she
was charming and reassuring company and really grateful for my help and local
knowledge. That was sign #1, I guess. Sign #2 came at the end of a sub-optimal
van ride from Lao Cai to Sapa. They kept us waiting in one van for nearly an
hour before moving us to another crowded one to make the twisting and turning
ride. That was bad enough, but then people actually barfed in the van into
little plastic bags. An inauspicious entry to Sapa, for sure. Then we pulled up
in front of the hotel, and the owners Huyen and Son literally ran out of the
door to embrace me and welcome us: sign #2. My BYU friend was in love with the
place and the people at first sight. This was Thursday morning, and I still
didn’t know if I’d have to travel back to Hanoi to get Paige. By Thursday night
I was co-teaching the first session of the new Sapa O’Chau adult staff English
class, which was really fun and exciting, and I felt like I knew what I was
doing – sign #3.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
this point in the yarn, I should interject that except for a few fitful
intervals, I hadn’t slept since Friday night in Austin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thurday
night brings that news that Paige isn’t coming, and I should feel better and be
able to sleep, but I don’t. Trying to find the right path, Friday morning I decide
to cancel our excursions to Hue and Hoi An and just stay here another week and
work. The minute I make this choice I feel better and hope sleep will come
tonight at last. It does, but it takes more than a few days’ rum rations (in
the form of Vang Dalat, semi-skanky Vietnamese red wine) to summon it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Coming
up: A gaggle of US professors, including a guy who’s read my so-called “work”
on VN, a terrifying walk up stairs in the rain and fog, strange fruit and
seaweed Pringles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-76441383984219796142013-06-16T08:18:00.002-07:002013-06-16T08:29:10.693-07:00Let the circumnavigation commenceWelcome back to my tired old Blogspot. I don't have time or energy to make it new and snazzy, so we'll just have to be patient with each other as I try to keep the writing up to do and add more visuals and links. But, most important, this is where I'll be writing about my 6-months of adventures traveling first to Vietnam to do some research and work with a remarkable student from Southwestern, followed by a month-long journey going from Hanoi to London by train and a couple of boats. I will travel from Beijing to Moscow by myself on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and then will meet Bruce in Moscow. Together we'll make our way to St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Turku, Copenhagen, Esbjerg, and across the North Sea to Harwich, where my London landlord will pick us up and install us in my apartment in Kensington. Bruce will return to Texas a few days later, and I'll stay to teach in Southwestern's London Program until December 7, and when I land in Austin, I will have achieved circumnavigation. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?gmp=msp&mid=zx-IOIDF6kZk.kh_o4Qw9XFKw">The Vietnam phase of the trip: 17 June to 9 July</a><br />
Here's a link to a map that shows our itinerary for the 3 weeks we will be spending in Vietnam <br />
<br />
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?gmp=msp&mid=zx-IOIDF6kZk.kh_o4Qw9XFKwElisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-42774227302750088162011-07-19T16:18:00.001-07:002011-07-19T16:20:02.540-07:00Was that "tasty," "testes," or "intestine"?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq77_pz0gcLhvRnaHXjrM9sNLJIkp72s-nXh8n368rc-NkbP2IcdO5WA9QjXtHW9To4c8iKmxls9xkUoK7iI8aB0tLHh2X4H-NN62i8qL5apD6BokPUYDrRKHf3sqSUDzHGbq5I4RYwmc/s1600/two+schools.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq77_pz0gcLhvRnaHXjrM9sNLJIkp72s-nXh8n368rc-NkbP2IcdO5WA9QjXtHW9To4c8iKmxls9xkUoK7iI8aB0tLHh2X4H-NN62i8qL5apD6BokPUYDrRKHf3sqSUDzHGbq5I4RYwmc/s320/two+schools.jpg" alt="" 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font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >After the visit to the school, 0ur little party of visiting dignitaries prepares to leave Son Hai and repair to Pho Lu for lunch, and the children walk back down the hill to their home, from which Tuyen had fetched them up, picking her way through the mud and dung in her tight skirt and heels. We’ve left the huge bag of candy at the village center, but I remember I have my stash of Kind Bars, so we hand one to each child, and the oldest one asks if she can get one for her younger brother who is one month old. Good try. I don’t know if I like myself for doing this, but I do it anyway. It wasn’t my idea, and at least they’re nutritious.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >I am so hungry at this point that my eyes are crossing and I forget that on these kinds of occasions I will have almost no control over what food is put in front of me. Food in these small villages can range from homey and very good, to weird, to downright septic in my experience. I know this will be a high-stakes lunch, but still I am unprepared for what is to come. The obligatory meeting in the village center earlier that morning is a preview. I’ve screwed this part up before, first by disappointing with my female-ness and then by failing utterly to charm the grumpy and resentful local chairman. I need and want things to go better this time, and I know Le will be a better and more sympathetic diplomat and translator. And I will need all her help. We convene in the village center, with its U-shaped tables covered with blue acetate cloth that sticks to sweaty arms like napalm, under the watchful eyes not just the ubiquitous Uncle Ho, but Uncles Karl and Vladimir as well. Awkward conversation made much more awkward by this arrangement, it’s just minutes before the awkward foods arrive. First, huge and beautiful grapes with a pronounced pesticide flavor to the skin and enormous pits that I don’t know how to get out of my mouth. I swallow them. Next, very appealing warm peanuts. Great, I know how to eat these. But, no, the shells resist all my ballgame and barroom skills and refuse to give up their nuts. Tuyen eagerly cracks them for me and delivers a little pile of pale, larval, unsalted, and I guess, raw nuts that taste awful. The warmth is from the sun of the road on which they were probably drying. I eat. Next, bowls of the legendary Bac Ha plums, little round ones in Impressionist shades of green and magenta. They are trying to trick me, I know, but I have to bite and praise. The first note is chemical again, followed by astringency so powerful that makes your tongue feel like it’s been dry-cleaned and your face draw up in a cartoonish pucker. The finish is sweet and lovely and welcome, but by now you have a slippery magenta pit in your fingers and juice on your chin and nothing but a sad little Kleenex to help you. Thank god you don’t have to swallow the pit. Later, I discover purple dots far down on my arm, and I say aside to Le, “how did I get this all the way there,” and she says, “I think that’s from me; I squirted juice onto you,” and I feel better. I tell her I will always remember her and this day every time I put on this shirt and see the stain. The final course is watermelon, which is delicious, but comes with yet another pit problem. I swallow some more before I notice everyone else is extracting the seeds with toothpicks before they eat the fruit. Still, the meeting goes well, and there are warm handshakes and photographs of me presenting notebooks and pens. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Lunch will be like this, except I will have to be even more alert to secret codes and, ha, pitfalls. Be the open-minded and grateful eater you say you want to be, I counsel myself in the car. Not “adventurous,” because other peoples’ food isn’t a theme park or an test of strength; it’s food, and it is meant to be shared – and appreciated. We pull into the restaurant in dusty Pho Lu to find that behind the usual craptacular façade is a stunning old beamed Chinese-style house. Promising. Let the impenetrable tea rituals begin. And they do. Somewhere among the pouring and the rinsing and more pouring, Le says to me, “you don’t mind dog, do you?” I’m mortified to report that my actual, thoughtful response was, “Well, I don’t much care for it, but I don’t mind if other people eat it.” Much to her infinite credit she does not say, “You don’t ‘mind’? What kind of fucking answer is that, and who the fuck do you think you are?” Just gives me the Vietnamese smile and nod.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >We move to a semi-air-conditioned chamber for lunch and the plates start arriving, the first a plate of sliced roast something. “Is that duck?” I ask Le, and we get so confused with the similarities between the words that I ask “quack quack or ruff ruff?” “Yes, ruff ruff,” she confirms. Nothing to do but have the smallest bite possible and hope other foods come soon so I can distract attention by eating them instead of the dog, which is, in fact, not vile, And what a spread it is: another dog dish, and three goat dishes. The curried goat is pretty good, but since no rice has arrived yet, it’s not very easy to eat. One of the other goats is okay, so I decide to try the third, and my luck runs out. Halfway through a chewing marathon, which was, regrettably, beginning to yield up some flavor, Le says, “it’s tasty.” No, it most certainly is not. Oh, no, I realize, she didn’t say “tasty,” it was either “testes,” or “intestines.” It hardly matters which at this point, and dear reader, I had swallowed the fruit pits, the sour plum, several shots of grain alcohol, and the slice of dog, but I did not swallow that bite of goat unmentionable. I really tried, but I knew if I did it would come up with everything else in a rainbow of plum and curry and watermelon and pumpkin vine. I almost pulled a Seinfeld and put the Kleenex of goat-whatever in my bag, but, alas, I just dropped on the floor behind me, and raised another toast in my half-assed Vietnamese, downed it in a single shot, and charmed the living shit out of the robustly drinking female teachers and male local leaders. You gotta play to your strengths.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-49566702202340552712011-07-18T17:00:00.000-07:002011-07-18T17:08:54.813-07:00Two Schools & and the Hunger for Literacy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBhUPZTdYEwpj60wh1dtXp_-ULOUQPAHL4XLF3yCWJLMynyOUGI7bHQ2YgDqw76zs3WeMJukK9WzbSI40pnCRkcAD8fhFH6Gb3nnrl7VBBbKlWyTxGNBAqktHWh4p6xTsVioFy-Ja7Rps/s1600/two+schools+005.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBhUPZTdYEwpj60wh1dtXp_-ULOUQPAHL4XLF3yCWJLMynyOUGI7bHQ2YgDqw76zs3WeMJukK9WzbSI40pnCRkcAD8fhFH6Gb3nnrl7VBBbKlWyTxGNBAqktHWh4p6xTsVioFy-Ja7Rps/s320/two+schools+005.jpg" alt="" 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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >I would say Sunday was a long day, but it’s hard to say when one day ended and another began. I’m sure meth-heads and emergency surgeons and bipolar people on the ragged edge of a manic binge know the feeling of going days without sleep. I know I used to dabble in it when I was younger for schoolwork and partying, and more usually my inability to balance the two. But when you add the elements of physical travel through space, language barriers, and encounters with unfamiliar and troubling food, you find yourself in a strange psychological state, one that’s not entirely unpleasant. Clumsy, unable to keep track of my belongings (I lost and found my sunglasses three times, and my readers and my camera once each, in the space of twenty-four hours), I crawl into my bed at 8:30 on Sunday night, the first bed I’d slept in since Wednesday in Austin, Texas. Woke up at 1:00, took a Lunesta and slept until 5:30. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >So, it is with a marginally clearer head that I start the real work of this trip this morning: teaching English classes at Sapa O’Chau to H’Mong girls who have had to drop out of school to make money for their families in the villages by coming to town and selling handicrafts to tourists on the street. It turns out that about a third of the students are boys and young men, some well into their twenties. Those who learn to speak English and Vietnamese move up to jobs as tour guides, which is better than street-selling, but since many of those cannot read and write in H’Mong, English, or Vietnamese, the next rung on the career ladder, slippery and rickety at best, is just too far a reach. According to Tan Shi Su, Sapa O’Chau’s indomitable 25-yr old 4’6” creator and director, there are 88 students currently enrolled, with ages ranging from 10-30. Thirty of the girls sleep at the Center, some as many as 10 to a room so that they can continue to study, and work on the street, without having to walk miles a day through the mountains to their home villages each day. I suspect those who work as tour guides and walk as much as 30-40k a day are especially grateful. On the drizzly Sunday afternoon when Le and I visited to center, Su led us to the top floor classroom, and we sat and talked about curriculum and logistics (me, quietly panicking) while three small girls with waist-length silken hair wearing a motley mix of modern and traditional H’mong clothing tended a huge pot of rice they were cooking for their dinner in the open fireplace in the corner. They talked and giggled and occasionally poked at another girl curled up asleep on the sofa. On the front steps when we came in, we <span style=""> </span>had passed another three girls, at work on exquisite pieces of traditional embroidery. I’ll write more details about Su and Sapa O’Chau, H’mong, Sa Pa, tourism, education, and the complex nexus of them all in future posts. For now, I just want to add that I’ve never felt more humbled by what people – children, mostly -- will do to get an education. I’ll be teaching from 8:30-11:00 and 2-4 Monday through Friday.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Earlier on that longest of Sundays we visited another classroom, empty of students for the summer save for the three little emissaries summoned from their home down the road. <span style=""> </span>This is the school that Phil Deering and I raised the money to build, and I’ve come to see if everything is <span style=""> </span>as it should be and to meet with the local officials and teachers. We crouched in the classroom on the kindergarten in Son Hai, its wall decorated with a combination of the universal semiotics of early childhood education (talking animals, letters, numbers, etc) and communist dogma (picture of Ho, pledges of obedience), tiny chairs with imprints of cat faces on the backs lined up along the walls, heat and humidity kicking the ass of the ceiling fan, talking to three tiny local girls. In my case, talking is a huge exaggeration because both they and I can barely speak Vietnamese, and share few if any vocabulary words. They were barefoot, small even for their ages, bright-eyed and curious, but deeply skeptical of me. And they were filthy. Dirty faces, visible boogers, matted hair, torn and mud-crusted clothing. Does that matter, I wonder? Is cleanliness an indicator of quality of life? If one of your jobs in your family is tending water buffalo, then I reckon you’re going to be pretty dirty, and you’re going to stay that way in a house without running water. In our world, we would read these children’s appearance as an indicator of neglect, if not abuse, but I don’t know if that’s true. Of<span style=""> </span>course, I think the runny noses and bare feet and skin conditions are signs of health issues that should be addressed, but there’s no way to say they aren’t loved and cherished even if their childhood contains much more hard work and much more primitive conditions than we would find acceptable. I don’t know. Shoes, though, I’m drawing the line on shoes. I’m sending a box of those cheap, ugly Chinese sandals. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-39572498811982091502010-05-29T01:14:00.000-07:002010-05-29T01:21:27.633-07:00I hate everyone, and other sensitive cultural observations.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXU-Znlfo4LYNKOd01IpY7TUoyGThmiUc7CrvFTpPO7pkowLTRNFSvPaSqiBZ7nSzTFgaxro0aMDOYIgybk7W_qOkcsfwfsXs1FQvaAcvqhcSJa6jkniajI3ayQYAvmpzQjdXMP-owlE/s1600/week+one+VN+2010+072.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXU-Znlfo4LYNKOd01IpY7TUoyGThmiUc7CrvFTpPO7pkowLTRNFSvPaSqiBZ7nSzTFgaxro0aMDOYIgybk7W_qOkcsfwfsXs1FQvaAcvqhcSJa6jkniajI3ayQYAvmpzQjdXMP-owlE/s320/week+one+VN+2010+072.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476603766409590146" border="0" /></a>
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.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This appeared earlier on Dog Canyon (dogcanyon.org), but I'm reposting here.</span></span></span> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Travel broadens the mind, but it also narrows it, especially when you are traveling alone as an invisible person, otherwise known as a middle-aged woman. In truth, it’s not really my mind that’s narrowing; it’s my patience and tolerance, and those two strands of my character are winnowing into a frayed spitty end of a short rope. Not my patience with and tolerance for the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and even the frightening, necessarily. I’ve been studying and trying to use a new and difficult language, weathering regular power outages, rats and roaches, and have even survived being hit by a motorcycle while riding my bike. What I can’t stand is the other travelers. Not every single one of them of course; far be it for me to make such broad and unfair generalizations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >I hate the fake raggedyness of the backpacker crowd, wearing their collection of tattered bracelets and “I went tubing in Laos,” t-shirts, but who never leave the safety of their movable cliques. I hate those stupid Hammer-Harem hybrid pants the women wear, imagining they’re dressing like some lost tribe (I’ve never seen a local person anywhere in Vietnam or Cambodia where those things), the gesture of conspicuous authenticity illuminating their western privilege like white phosphorus. I hate the shirtless men with their dumb-ass tattoos and stupid hats and sunglasses (yes -- precisely the kind of folks who should be given cheap beer and motorcycles!). I hate how rude they are to the Vietnamese people in cafes and hotels. I hate also their callowness and ignorance. The rudest of a pack of insufferable English women in Sapa, sat reading a Judy Blume novel in the lobby of the hotel while her friend occupied every other square inch of the place with her gear and yelled loudly into her cell phone to some hapless Vietnamese driver. If you’re old enough to travel in Southeast Asia, you are <i style="">too old</i> for Judy Blume: go home. And I hate myself because I can’t help but envy their youth and beauty and unfettered fucking fun and their easy ignorance of the responsibility to think more deeply and complexly about the world and their places in it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >You know who else I hate? The older richer tourists in search of some Asian Resortiana, some unholy spawn of Orlando-Vegas-Waikiki-Cancun, Canlandowaicun, if you will, with “such cheap prices” and “nice people.” A very angry woman from California with whom I shared a cab from the train station to the airport in Hanoi, yelled at a Vietnamese man (who was actually trying to rip us off, but not by much) to fuck off. Then she launched into her critique of the whole country: “Vietnam is too scammy. We’re going back to Thailand!” Because the combination of low-wage service workers, tourism, and wealthy business interests appears to be going quite well there, doesn’t it?.Here in Hoi An, the men have their suits made for them and while the women get spa treatments, then they eat steaks and sea bass with knives and forks in fancy restaurants. Soon the central coast will be lousy with these people, although the actual residents of Hoi An town need hardly worry that they’ll spend more than a few hours here in its hot dusty streets filled with actual Vietnamese people. The road from Danang that runs south along the coast, past the beach now named for an American television show, past the beach where decades ago American helicopter pilots sometimes dipped the bellies of their machines low enough in the shallow waves to wash out the blood and mud and body parts, that road now blocks the view of the beach and is lined on both sides by enormous walled golf resorts where people can experience the exotic world of Vietnam without getting any of it on them. When these places are all open, beautiful Vietnamese women will wear <i style="">ao dai</i> and serve tea and cocktails, and small, wiry men will carry huge bags of clubs over what used to be sand dunes, descendents of the men who carried artillery piece by piece up and down mountain paths more than 35 years ago. On the day I came in from the airport, I saw an old woman in a conical hat stooped over with a short handled broom sweeping the sand and dust from a small patch of St. Augustine grass outside the wall.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >And finally, I hate that the Vietnamese government – or someone – can’t or won’t do anything about this kind of crap. I shouldn’t blame them: They simply need the money. But these are the people who expelled the Chinese, the Portuguese (very briefly), French, Japanese, French again, and then the Americans. They fought off the Mongols, for crying out loud. I wouldn’t think bad-back Greg Norman and that little ill-tempered turd Colin Montgomerie could put up much of a fight.<span style=""> </span>But of course, they’ve probably never been here.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-15962658024772294302009-07-28T02:40:00.000-07:002009-07-28T03:50:10.811-07:00The land is sliding<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSGy6PbDNuCd8kLxYiSmN2S5JtoA5wIXKSLD4h9S40qqeT2hR2a1FMxw3sLdGTe7AjahAFdg0IsJhubZj6L0kUGcYzK2CN96NRYRva86H54p6aHxgdE3kRkjN8M27yc7wqGS_MiaRhtqA/s1600-h/last+days+in+Bac+Ha+018.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363461483172493042" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSGy6PbDNuCd8kLxYiSmN2S5JtoA5wIXKSLD4h9S40qqeT2hR2a1FMxw3sLdGTe7AjahAFdg0IsJhubZj6L0kUGcYzK2CN96NRYRva86H54p6aHxgdE3kRkjN8M27yc7wqGS_MiaRhtqA/s320/last+days+in+Bac+Ha+018.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVG7M-ARKzTuffte__6PBXlGJhzxFfGV_ii_mut-YIRbDAe-qy6v2I4g1pg0fE5P9KHxegYeeZG9UCd5yrL0BJqrQvAI1myY3YIcIt-uaaH9bXX8HTnePSVDIxJz59HAhOMniQZgd5Us/s1600-h/last+days+in+Bac+Ha+021.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363451025205199154" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVG7M-ARKzTuffte__6PBXlGJhzxFfGV_ii_mut-YIRbDAe-qy6v2I4g1pg0fE5P9KHxegYeeZG9UCd5yrL0BJqrQvAI1myY3YIcIt-uaaH9bXX8HTnePSVDIxJz59HAhOMniQZgd5Us/s320/last+days+in+Bac+Ha+021.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div>My time in Bac Ha has rushed to an end as quickly as the beginning seemed to crawl. I had the company of a friend the last two days, a fellow English professor also traveling solo through Vietnam. We have a former student and friend in common, who put us in touch, and I am profoundly grateful for the chance to talk about our experiences for hours over coffee and other beverages that were not coffee. On Monday morning he leaves early to return the rented motorcycle and get the train to Hanoi. I have a few hours to make my goodbyes to the people I've come to know here, though there's a part of me that just wants to slip away without a word. I'm not sure I know how to do this.<br /><br />The hardest parting will be with Hoa, the young woman who works at the Cong Fu with whom I've spent many hours working through English and Vietnamese words and sentences, she so much better at her new language than I am. I come by the hotel around 9:00, and we sit at the oversized table in the lobby, awkward and formal. She busies herself by working on the tea, and I rummage around in my bag for the ceramic Texas-themed shot glasses I’ve brought, trying to decide if they would appreciate that corny addition to the tea service at the hotel. I've already given her a personal gift of a small writing notebook. I plunge ahead and present the cheesy souvenirs from home, and everyone is kind of taken with the strange offering. I like that I leave a little bit of Texas there on the table. Hoa and I dance around the farewells a few more times, struggling to understand the platitudes we are each uttering, prolonging and complicating an already awkward situation. Making small talk, she asks if I get carsick, but it takes forever for me to figure what word she’s saying because I can’t see that one coming. She means airsick, but carsick is as close as she could. get Why is she asking me if I have cussing, because, hell yes, I do. Or maybe she wants to know if I have cashews. Or cousins. I don’t know, but I’m grateful for the distraction. Other employees and the manager come by for some solemn handshaking and promises that I stay at the Cong Fu next time I come to Bac Ha, and when am I coming back. Maybe one year. More bowing and nodding. Finally, Hoa and I have to make a final goodbye, and the semi-jerky manager breaks the ice a bit by making crying noises and laughing at us. It’s his final victory in the battle of wills we’ve waged these past weeks. You win -- I’ll cry. And Hoa and I both do, stepping outside for a little privacy. We clasp hands the Vietnamese way and then draw each other into a glancing hug -- very much not the Vietnamese way. I shove my sunglasses on my face even though it's raining and try not to let all the people on the curb and the stoops see that I'm crying, and make the same little circuit of town I’ve done every day when I was sure that no one knew or cared how I was feeling. This time my emotions are hanging out like a shirt-tail sticking out of my fly.<br /><br />After a few more stops, I pack-up all my stuff and check-out. All I have to do is sit in this hot, dark, empty lobby at the Sao Mai for a half an hour for Thanh and his driver to arrive. I'm grateful that no one is around because it's midday on Monday, the slowest day of the week, and all the Vietnamese people are at home for lunch and naps.<br /><br />Now I’m done; I’ve already departed emotionally, and just have to make it through the half-hour lag time between my mind and my body. But turns into an hour and a half because my ride is late. I’m sorry, Thanh says, we’re late because the land is sliding. He means that there was a landslide on the road and they were delayed, but I feel the same. The land is sliding, tilting me toward home. </div></div>Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-86750823731961721852009-07-22T19:11:00.000-07:002009-07-22T19:34:49.081-07:00If it was easy, everyone would do it<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzuYyScXDfVAQGZwXjXcMBChJ4tbrCkuFShEe_JDD5p98BqIlNpuNIvxz6QpAhoOTIbYQLizcUw5Q_QqIaXZp-gRxcJboLtbAsqZRks7b2CH6PBfiu1A3JFKuoJsb1vBa76BFtrQmGRU/s1600-h/more+landscape+%26+people+005.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzuYyScXDfVAQGZwXjXcMBChJ4tbrCkuFShEe_JDD5p98BqIlNpuNIvxz6QpAhoOTIbYQLizcUw5Q_QqIaXZp-gRxcJboLtbAsqZRks7b2CH6PBfiu1A3JFKuoJsb1vBa76BFtrQmGRU/s320/more+landscape+%26+people+005.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361477709766708882" /></a><br />This is a story about both the power and the limits of good intentions. I thought a lot about whether I should post it, but I’ve decided to do it anyway, with identifying information and real names omitted. I want to share because the questions it raises are complex and difficult, because it makes me try to puzzle through the hidden assumptions and partly submerged desires that animate the good intentions which brought me back to northwestern Vietnam this summer. Also, some of it's pretty funny.<br /><br />I'm going with a small group of Americans affiliated with a US-based NGO to the village of Na Hoi, where they will teach a class to women on basic health and hygiene and work on a sand water filtration system they are installing. When we arrive in Na Hoi, a 10-minute drive from the hotel, the women take over the village meeting room and the men go off down the path to work on the filter. There’s the typical milling about and unpacking and setting up the laptop (oh, god, transnational, bilingual powerpoint hell?) before getting started at nine. We're early, and after a teacherly confab, it’s decided that we need to play a game to fill the extra 20 minutes. Ugh, my least favorite thing, but I’ll have to participate and be nice. The game goes like this, but takes several long minutes to explain and translation: we all stand in a circle with our legs apart and the person who is “it” pivots in the center and tries to throw a pink squiggly ball between someone’s legs; if it gets through, that person is "it." Grasping immediately the sexual innuendo of the game, the women are laughing and teasing each other. If N, K, and J get it, they betray not one wit of that, thus making the whole thing infinitely more hilarious, as the capri-panted women bounce up and down on the balls of their feet and wiggle their butts from side to side. <br /><br />My hunch is that this game comes from a prepackaged development curriculum and that it’s supposed to be about sexually transmitted disease, but even then, the analogy breaks down, because once you fail to close your legs chastely, you become infected and then aggressively use force and deception to infect someone else -- for fun. Lesson, exactly? For the American women leading this exercise, it might as well be duck-duck-goose; they want to make sure everyone is included and has a turn at being “it.”<br /><br />We all take our seats, all women now, the few curious men who were here before nine have gone, and the lesson begins. It will have three parts: hygiene, nutrition, and dental health. It is a five-paragraph theme. Part one is based on what I have to admit is an ingenious piece of curriculum, a richly illustrated, step-by-step overview of germ theory of contagion, graphically mapping the various vectors by which wee beasties travel from poop to mouth, with a little aside about sneezing (into your arm, not your hands! No one addressed the local snot-rocket epidemic.). Visual aids include a laminated drawing of a man taking a dump (cross-culturally hilarious), a plate of fake poop, and a giant plastic fly almost the size of the poop itself. N and K go at it with a verve of aggressiveness, to borrow the felicitous language the Sao Mai Hotel uses to describe its staff in its brochure. N is every inch the retired schoolteacher, urging, repeating, demanding response and participation. K is all Office of Human Resources, insisting that T translate the rules verbatim, stern, minatory. By the time we wrap up this topic by doing a group fist-pump cheer and chanting “No to germs,” (no translation -- English only), I’m worn out; it’s taken more than 30 minutes, and still two more paragraphs to go. If you gave me a quiz, I’d have to say the main take-away is about hand-washing. I’m all for it. In particular, however, it’s about the need to construct field hand-washing stations called Tippy-Taps, which hang on trees, of which there are few to none on the high slopes where they when tend their crops. It’s a great idea, to be sure, but it seems to me that any initiative that begins by asking these women to carry one more damn thing on their backs up the mountains is unlikely to gain much traction.<br /><br />I can’t help thinking that the women in the audience must have thought it was a diverting and unusually theatrical discussion of poop.Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-52157370954297385012009-07-20T04:15:00.000-07:002009-07-20T04:33:30.141-07:00Adventure comes in small packages<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC6c9v-Mf7C0gLWNikd-vDyV5WZXyJe4TlZ3LSNakr7E65VcHi3ZtvBSjBAxcxXcQZ2lybNYtDUa2GWrysE-SwMcpEjW0307rm-pwufFTMqTKL_uPg-FLVFtuYZNeAR6a2bj9wgMXtBNY/s1600-h/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+020.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC6c9v-Mf7C0gLWNikd-vDyV5WZXyJe4TlZ3LSNakr7E65VcHi3ZtvBSjBAxcxXcQZ2lybNYtDUa2GWrysE-SwMcpEjW0307rm-pwufFTMqTKL_uPg-FLVFtuYZNeAR6a2bj9wgMXtBNY/s320/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+020.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360503923067524450" /></a><br />This trip isn’t supposed to be about big adventure, though I keep finding myself writing about that. It’s supposed to be about small adventure: finding a place, staying here through good days and bad, though my mood whipsaws back and forth in intervals much shorter than a day. It’s about trying to live here instead of visit here. The exceptional moments become not the high mountain passes and motorcycle rides, but when people greet me on the street, when I’m invited to sit with their family for a meal.<br /><br />Sunday market day comes around for the third time, and although I don’t have much desire to go back down into the bowels of it anymore, the pull is hard to resist: a flood of women in their best elaborate dresses, some sporting little high heels underneath, surly buffalo, ponies, men eagerly awaiting the day’s drinking and card-playing. I’m headed that way when I get pulled aside by a large-ish woman in a conical hat. I recognize her; she’s the woman who worked in the kitchen at the Cong Fu, older and more stubbornly more “country” than the other employees, she rarely said a word to me, only shaking her head at what I did or did not eat. Now she wants me to sit down at a table outside what I now realize is the Cong Fu Restaurant, around the corner from the hotel. So I do, and order a coffee. She wants to know if I’m alright, if it’s ok at the Sao Mai. I reassure her I’m fine and that the Sao Mai isn’t as nice as the Cong Fu but that I needed the internet in order to work. I don’t know how much of that went through, but it seemed to be the first step in healing from the slightly less than amicable divorce between the Cong Fu and me. When I ask her for extra hot water to lengthen my powerful Vietnamese black coffee, she just plunks the battered metal thermos on the table, as if to say, you know how to do this, you’re one of us, not some exotic bird who just arrived in town. Soon, on foot, motorcycle, and bicycle several other employees from the hotel come by to shyly say hello, even the manager, who’s brought the magical shield of his adorable daughter with him. Now I know I can stop by the hotel for tea and there will be no hard feelings. I smile and nod a lot like an idiot from a Flannery O‘Connor story, but it works.<br /><br />Realizing I can get all the pleasures of the market from this perch without having to walk through the mud and smoke and smell and umbrellas poking me in the eyes (because I'm so tall!), I think I’ll just have another coffee, and when it arrives, two scruffy looking guys from the UK turn up and take seats opposite me at the long table. I’m so happy for the English-speaking company that I babble on and on, but soon we settle into a normal rhythm, and I learn that they are both doing year-long trips around the world, just seeing where it takes them. Ian, who’s older, close to my age, I guess, and more serious, has worked for years for NGOs in Africa, has so many interesting things to say about western interventions -- tourism or other forms -- in the developing world. I feel very much the country mouse in this situation; it’s almost unimaginable to leave my life behind and just go for a year. I know so little. Still, Ian is interested in how I’ve weathered my puny one-month experience. When he asks if I would do it again, I surprise myself by saying, yes, but if you had asked me three days ago I would have said definitely not. What’s changed?<br /><br />I appear to have made friends, is what’s changed. At this café I help the seasoned travelers order their coffee and tea in Vietnamese, and when the hotel manager’s daughter comes up to me and smacks her hands on my legs, the guys say, wow, she’s very friendly. No, it’s that I know her, I say.<br /><br />As hot afternoon turns to evening, I sit on my balcony and try to work a little, but there’s too much to look at: the tide of people from this morning reverses, having traded one load for another, families walk back up the hills toward home; tourists wander back to the hotel and wonder what to do for their remaining 12 hours in town. I can see into the Hoang Yen from where I’m sitting, and watch to see when they’ll put their family dinner on the table. If I go over now, I know they’ll invite me to join them, and I’ve already done that twice and don’t want to take advantage. I wish I knew which was more impolite: to just show up and be fed, or to be implicitly expected and not show up. What I’m doing -- sort of alternating -- is probably the worst strategy, but I don’t know what else to do.<br /><br />I can see they’ve cleared the big round rice cooker and most people have gotten up from the table, so I head down the 4 flights of stairs and across the street. There’s an awkward moment when I walk in, and I realize that they could see me the whole time and must have been wondering what I was thinking. Did I not want to eat their food? It’s the opposite: I’m too embarrassed to accept more of their generosity.<br /><br />By the end of the evening, an quiet equilibrium is reached. I’ve worked for an hour with Bon revising the draft of a list of their trekking services that he has amazingly produced, considering he has taught himself English from television and sheer necessity. I put a copy on my flash drive and tell them I’ll take it home and work on it. Nghe won’t let me pay for dinner, but he takes money for the beer. I promise to come tomorrow night to talk about it. They’re expecting me.Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-45067396137925851672009-07-17T03:35:00.000-07:002009-07-17T04:39:02.489-07:00Maybe kilometer has several meanings<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFs1zlz0iQ3FsUctLhzhFYb7txqGwXU9U0tP-0ETLEG3nLq-gdESn0qCAnEBXAARPvocYC1B4f_32Yju6BEiHCb77me0f5wd4RjvZ5521m3QXmVBWKaWk8eIhoL6nMWaeR4RK5QlUvd0/s1600-h/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+050.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFs1zlz0iQ3FsUctLhzhFYb7txqGwXU9U0tP-0ETLEG3nLq-gdESn0qCAnEBXAARPvocYC1B4f_32Yju6BEiHCb77me0f5wd4RjvZ5521m3QXmVBWKaWk8eIhoL6nMWaeR4RK5QlUvd0/s320/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+050.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359385575396976114" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECxB3LGPC5lgZwv287dAIf249K3n5mZZRp_dIPPfqQtLWJx2CNzMlT4C1ZjnjxXe6dm8IMTsL_NI2Q_PE7J3HK9hlSdUvorzQsb9bIrqjBUxCGrG_wJ2UC4SdrBGU9gbeDcgaMUjH4V4/s1600-h/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+022.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECxB3LGPC5lgZwv287dAIf249K3n5mZZRp_dIPPfqQtLWJx2CNzMlT4C1ZjnjxXe6dm8IMTsL_NI2Q_PE7J3HK9hlSdUvorzQsb9bIrqjBUxCGrG_wJ2UC4SdrBGU9gbeDcgaMUjH4V4/s320/walk+to+Ban+Pho+%26+long+hike+II+022.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359385139366485890" /></a><br />Thao -- my guide for Saturday's fate-tossed hike -- is driving the motorcyle I'm clinging to the back of on an ass-rattling ascent up a dirt track to the starting point of today's hike. On a particularly steep patch, <span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">he</span> asks, over the whine of the over-burdened engine, “how you way,” or something like that. I was still trying to figure it out in kilos when I felt the bike slow and waver and heard him clutching madly down through one gear and then another to wind up enough torque to haul my fat American ass up the mountain.<br /><br />The motorcycles leave Ban, a guide with five years experience, and me in a high green valley, the hills corrugated with rice fields and dotted with a few small homes and villages. We’re high up the ridge, but not high enough, so we start up on what's supposed to be a 15k hike. No chance to ease into it and alert the legs, all bowed and stove-up from the ride, of the work to come. We just start up. It’s only a little after nine, but full sun and getting hot. I’ll not make the same mistake I made last time of getting into deficit so early, so it’s slow and steady, keeping the rhythm by shortening and lengthening the steps as the trail steepens and levels a little. Place each foot, get full extension, breathe, back off when you feel the lactic acid coming on, try not to anticipate. It’s more than an hour up, but on a path that mixes steep with gradual. On a narrow trail skirting the edge of the hillside, I’m surprised to see a small black dog come up and overtake us, followed soon after by a Hmong family with two ponies in tow, walking up to the their fields on the high slopes. They have reed baskets on their backs and carry heavy hoes on their shoulders. They must have already been walking for hours, and will work all day in the sun before walking all the way back down to wherever home is. Before long they disappear around a curve, moving faster than us. I’ll be taking advil and writing about this tomorrow, and they’ll be doing it again.<br /><br />There are more shades and textures of green than I knew existed, even a few stands of tall pine trees that used to forest these hills before they were taken over by agriculture, and thus became dangerously prone to tumbling down onto each other and everything in their paths. I don’t know how policy-makers are supposed to solve this problem: it’s hard to convince people that they need trees to look at more than they need food to eat. The sinuous beauty of the rice fields makes you almost forget how labor-intensive this crop is. I tried to ask both guides, is there any time of the year when rice doesn’t need hands-on care? Both of them just shook their heads: maybe they didn’t understand the question, or maybe it was just patently absurd.<br /><br />For lunch we sit in the child-size chairs at the tiny table inside a small Hmong house, enjoying the shade and the breeze that blows now and then across the valley and through the reed wall of the house. I notice a small red plastic mirror nailed to a post. Oh, yes, to keep out evil spirits; I’ve read about that. Then I see the comb. Nope, just a mirror. Reminds of my first stay in Sapa when I heard from my hotel balcony a tinny and mournful song coming from the distance and was moved by the thought of the local people mourning a death or or summoning the ancestors. It was probably someone warbling Stairway to Heaven at a karaoke bar.<br /><br />After lunch, Ban says it’s two or two and a half hours more to go, mostly downhill, which sounds just about perfect to me. So, off we go. But, no, there’s been a discussion with the local man about a shortcut, which would supposedly take an hour off the trip. Uh, ok, but this has not gone well recently. First, the backtracking, and then the turning down a narrow muddy track, and I’m getting a sinking déjà vu feeling. But Ban is a very experienced guide, so surely this won’t turn out badly. Wearing just well-used running shoes, I’m finding the steep, muddy, rocky descent very uncomfortable. It’s hard on the feet, but it also calls for a measure of agility that I don’t seem to be able to muster. Maybe this is an age thing, but I’m afraid of falling and hurting myself. Some scrapes and bruises are not problem, but a badly sprained ankle, a blown-out knee, snapped fibula, or a head banged on a rock would be beyond my field medicine limits. I don’t want to have to solve a problem of that magnitude and urgency. So I go very slowly, and, I’ll admit, start to complain when the trail heads toward the rice fields and begins to pick its way along dikes and down spill-offs. Coming to yet another place where muddy track braids into another equally unpromising one, we meet an old woman who has harvested her corn and spread it on a tarp; she’ll then load it up and carry it on her back up the hill we’ve just come down. She says, pointing out the small house across the valley, that it’ll take us an hour and a half to walk there. She’s so wrong; we make in in 89 minutes.<br /><br />Now we have to walk the rocky, sunny (why, oh why, is there not one measly cloud today?) road all the way back up this side to where we can at least get cell phone service, call the office and find out how far away it is to Ban Voi, where we’re supposed to be picked up. Finally stumbling into the shade of the porch of a school, I lie back on the cool-ish cement and Ban calls. To his surprise -- not to mention mine -- it’s another 10k to Ban Voi. We have already been walking for 6 hours on this supposedly 15k hike. This time I don’t have to be the one to call for 2-wheel rescue; Ban’s already on it.<br /><br />Shortly into the ride down the rutted and rocky descent, however, I’m wishing I had walked that 10k. We got ourselves sandwiched between one hulking, belching, dirt-throwing truck over-laden with projectiles-in-waiting covered by a half-assed tarp, and its evil twin menacing us from behind, sometimes less than 10 yards away. Thao is my driver again, and he somehow manages to bounce and fish-tail and downshift and skid and flat-out <em>will</em> us down the hill, peering through a dense cloud of dust and fumes, when one slip would send us to certain death under the wheels of the truck. I almost forgot to worry about brake failure on the part of our pursuer.<br /><br />At long last at Ban Voi we stop for a cold drink and to let the bikes cool off before heading up the pass to Bac Ha. The woman who runs what amounts to the convenience store there at the fork in the road is pouring gasoline from one worn jerry can to another, sloshing it down the side and on to the cement. Then she siphons it into green glass 1-liter beer bottles and expertly upends them into the gas tank of the motorcycles. The air is hazy with fumes, and an old man comes over to the table looking for the ubiquitous bong, which as it happens is right between my legs. Having just escaped death by motor vehicle, I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in a bong-related explosion. I pretend I don’t notice him and refuse to move. Sometimes being the giant, rude, clueless foreigner pays off.Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-34612269860489863562009-07-14T00:21:00.000-07:002009-09-03T09:30:01.640-07:00Thank you for visiting. Now please go away.Hospitality conventions in this part of Vietnam are built more for one-night stands than long term <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">relationships</span>. We’ll all do just fine so long as we have a lot of fun and we don't have time to get on each others' nerves. I may give you an awkward cup of coffee in the morning, but then please gather up your crap and go. And, no, there will not be clean sheets and towels and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">declarations</span> of affection.<br /><br />Yesterday began and ended well, but there was one bad episode in the middle when I got into an argument with the hotel manager (over <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">internet</span> access -- again), which, though I think I prevailed, left me feeling ashamed and unwelcome at the place where I plan to stay another 12 days (not that I’m counting). And because I have no one to confide in, or even talk to I second-guessed not only my reaction to the situation, but reading of it in the first place. Did I think he was saying table when he was really saying cable? Was I the giant jerk in this drama? I realized then that I’m working from the assumption, which has a lot to do with unexamined white privilege, I ashamed to say, that people will basically be nice to me in whatever <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">transactions</span> we manage to cobble together, that they will be grateful for my presence and will forgive my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">transgressions</span> as if I were a poorly socialized child or a doughty old person. In truth, I don’t just expect people to be nice to me, I assume they’ll like me. But why would they? The people I interact with every day must have the same kinds of gnawing annoyed reactions to my habits and practices -- the way I move in space, and eat, and drink -- that I guiltily admit I have to theirs. Dealing with these things once or twice is fine, but difference can be abrasive, and the points of contact get raw and exposed over time like blisters.<br /><br />Here’s what gets on my nerves: the insanely loud slurping noises while eating soup; crew socks with dress loafers; looking over my shoulder at my computer screen if I happen to be using it downstairs; how the men sit around and drink all the tea but always expect the woman to get up and replenish the supplies; the littering and spitting; and the shouting, dear god, the shouting. I'm just bracketing out the horn-honking.<br /><br />I’ll guess what they hate about me: that I won’t go away, won’t leave the hotel all day on outings and look at stuff so they can sit around the lobby and nap and play computer games and smoke that stinky bong that sits in the bucket; that I drink beer and water straight out of the bottle; that I want fresh towels every few days; that I don’t speak their language; that I’m so physically large and white and sweaty. Mostly, they probably just wish I would go away because my presence makes things so much more difficult. I’m sure it’s not just the Cong <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Fu</span> or this particular manager (who is arguably the worst hotel manager ever), it’s that my overstaying the duration of a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">conventional</span> visit has exposed the fault lines in a much larger system: east meets west, privilege meets the developing world. The fledgling tourism industry in Vietnam is the laboratory where they forces collide.<br /><br />The manager isn't very easy to deal with. He seems lazy and surly and unhelpful and sometimes downright deceitful in his attempts to maintain his strict standards of laziness and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">unhelpfulness</span>. His staff is cheerful, eager, and very hard-working. And bewildered most of the time. His bilious temperament <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">notwithstanding</span>, the breakdown in hospitality conventions <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">isn</span>’t really his fault. Vietnam has watched Thailand, Cambodia, and even Lao capture big hunks of the Southeast Asia tourism market, and they want their share. Yes, there are models of how it can be done: fancy resorts at the beaches and luxury hotels in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">HCMC</span> and Hanoi with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">multilingual</span> staff and ice cubes in the drinks, but the people who work here have never been there.<br /><br />They’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">ve</span> never been anywhere. I can’t yet determine if they don’t have any desire to travel -- can’t understand why anyone would do it -- or if they just shelved the ambition long ago because they know they won’t able to, because it requires leisure time and cash, which they do not have. I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">ve</span> never heard a young Vietnamese person say, “I’d like to go there,” even in response to my telling them about another place in their own country. So, you have drivers who barely know how to drive, or <em>only</em> know how to drive, and waiters who may have never eaten in a restaurant, guides who never been beyond their local and learned routes, and hotel managers who have never stayed at a hotel. As you can imagine, this leads to problems. Every request from a hotel guest probably sounds <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">idiosyncratic</span> and bitchy. When they hear, do you have a newspaper? Can you recommend a restaurant? May I move to a room where the toilet <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">doesn</span>’t leak? Must they chisel the tiles off the wall right outside my window at 6:00 am? They must think, who the hell do you think you are? We put a copy of the rules on a faded, misspelled photocopy in a sad page protector in your room, gave you a sliver of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Camay</span> and a little ration of toilet paper, and turn the electricity on for you most of the time, what more do you expect?<br /><br /><br />We're all in unknown territory here, but if we're stuck together like a snowbound one-night stand, we might as well work on it. I was helping <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Hoa</span> with her English this morning and wrote out a list of questions that I thought guests may ask and others that she might ask guests. She was stumped by “may I have a wake-up call,” but admired the novel concept once she got it. Borrowing from the Lonely Planet Phrasebook, I also included, “do you have an adaptor plug,” but made no headway in explaining what is was until I went upstairs and got mine and showed her how it worked. I also had to explain that people from different parts of the world would need differently configured ones. Why anyone would need one at all was a revelation to her. Moving to the other list, she was very pleased to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">pronounce</span> “are you happy with your room” perfectly, and glad to know “is there anything else I can get for you?” for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">waitressing</span>.Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-15316204590149315802009-07-13T06:24:00.000-07:002009-07-13T06:31:17.133-07:00Shut up and walk<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvc7PbhK3VZABLaJf2q6rIeSfwyx9CWjILRtrZ2H4mfyX_8fGPZmovjpIPKhVDJVVCiCnBRHXpTBqpFmiuytivYjUdytrda7w4b4AP82EmgopF8h6jwGdgw2gqWXJqo-LuIZhXuXOnx0/s1600-h/hiking+and+markets+026.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvc7PbhK3VZABLaJf2q6rIeSfwyx9CWjILRtrZ2H4mfyX_8fGPZmovjpIPKhVDJVVCiCnBRHXpTBqpFmiuytivYjUdytrda7w4b4AP82EmgopF8h6jwGdgw2gqWXJqo-LuIZhXuXOnx0/s320/hiking+and+markets+026.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357936177440214402" /></a><br /><br />Let me shut up. All the stuff I wrote before about the abstract joys of walking? I couldn’t be more full of shit if I were a port-o-john at a curry cook-off. The walk I did on Saturday not only kicked my ass; it took it prisoner and sent it to re-education camp. In retrospect it had all the elements of a classic clusterfuck: incomplete information, hasty prepration, inexperienced guide, and some very bad weather luck. Add to that a major language barrier and the poor infrastructure of a very undeveloped part of a developing nation. At least it only cost $24, plus the soaked and limp $5 bill I tipped the hapless guide, who almost wept with apology at several points along the way.<br /><br />He wasn’t the only one near tears. I knew it would be a demanding hike in the first place. The woman at the restaurant who booked it, who herself admitted she hated to walk, said it was about 20k and there was a mountain. I should be able to do that without too many problems, other than I hadn’t eaten very much in the past several days. Just less of me to haul up and down, I figure. I should have known it wasn’t going to turn out well when the first hour was a blisteringly hot climb up the mountain we had come down on by motorcycle to Can Cau market. On that climb I remembered I had forgotten sunscreen. Uh oh. I can also tell, but shove the thought to the back of my mind, that this first hour has been very costly metabolically speaking, and that I’m already dehydrated and don’t have enough water. Surely he’s brought more, or there will be someone selling bottles at one of the scenic and charming villages we will surely walk through. Because if I know one thing about Vietnam it’s that there’s always someone there to sell you something. I’m always amazed how you come up the top of a high pass on an unpaved road in some remote part of some remote province, and right there on the shoulder of the road in the mist are women under blue tarps selling plums and tea and Fanta and sticky rice stuffed inside bamboo, and some unmentionable bits charring on hibachis. So, surely, we will be able to restock water.<br /><br />At the top of the mountain we turn off onto a dirt path, winding down and along the ridge, more pleasant than the hot road with its blaring, belching trucks and minibuses. But this is just the beginning of a series of increasing narrow, muddy, and often dead-end paths we will follow ever deeper into hiking purgatory. There’s so much doubling-back and gaining and losing and gaining back precious feet of elevation that I have no way to know how long we ultimately walked. I do know that it took the better part of eight hours, which, to be fair includes the break we took when we had to plummet down a muddy hill to the Hmong house to take shelter from the pounding rain. Of course by then I’d already slipped and fallen on my butt in the mud (and probably some species of ubiquitous dung) and my shoes and socks are soaked and caked. But here’s where things take a turn for the worse.<br /><br />Tao and I have a “conversation” about what to do now. I say that it’s time to bail out, though not in those words, to call the office and the other guys on the motorcycles and have them meet us. We’ve walked a long way already and are too wet and muddy and the paths are too treacherous. And we’re out of water. With all the nodding and smiling and agonized apologizing I have no doubt that he agrees with me. But he doesn’t; he doesn’t have any idea what I said. So when we start back up the mountain we have just come down in search of a path he will not find, I think we’re on the way to the road and a ride, and I’ve calibrated my mood and my energy expenditures accordingly. He’s talking and texting away; evacuation plans must be in motion. After another hour or so, I’m frustrated and confused. Why, oh, why is this taking so long? But, finally --mirabile visu -- up ahead at the top of this long climb is a village where surely there is water and a road and waiting motorcycles. How long, I ask. Ten minutes. I swear he said ten minutes, but I guess it could have been an aural hallucination. Thirty minutes later we get to the village, which is certainly some failed socialist experiment in rural living because it’s dominated by a large building with a locked gate and there are no people to be seen. There is also no water and no road to speak of. And there are no waiting motorcycles.<br /><br />Three hours to Bac Ha, he says. My turn to almost cry. I takes me a very long time to communicate that I will not be able to walk for 3 hours with no water: I have to have some soon, or I’ll be sick. I sit on the steps of the locked-up building until Tao returns with water, probably from someone’s house: please let it be boiled or filtered. A liter later and I’m ready to go. It is 5k to Bac Ha, he says, all flat and downhill. Great, we’ll be there in a little over an hour. He says it’s three hours. Two and a half hours later when I can finally see Bac Ha far below, I have to concede he was right, but that was a LOT farther than 5k. Now, I’m really tired, and this rock-strewn path is killing my feet. <br />I’m not sure my I was aware that my lizard brain had been plotting my revolt, but apparently it had been at work at it for some time. When we come down the hill into Ban Pho village -- where I’ve walked several times and know that it’s 2k to town -- and he says it is less than 1 kilometer to go, I just pull up and stop. I’m done; call the motorcycle. <br /><br />As usual, it takes a while to make my point, but when he finally understands he‘s shocked by the novelty of the idea. Call for the motorcycles? I never heard of such a thing! What a radical thought!Elisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7718773605954170372.post-90150699237205980792009-07-08T23:04:00.000-07:002009-07-11T20:45:10.953-07:00More about walking and knowing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmHCjAQ7C-kC9K44ZNbH8WuUJ3P3im3an2xwbIGlFzJFqD7bjVx14QrB7ncnuLL0xv7-FS-JnRYB9KxX6Biw9A8jN4vcPtkHBgiN053HzhF8sDDbK6Errqbv7o6GmFZvjzYQfEknJOuKI/s1600-h/IMG_1226.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmHCjAQ7C-kC9K44ZNbH8WuUJ3P3im3an2xwbIGlFzJFqD7bjVx14QrB7ncnuLL0xv7-FS-JnRYB9KxX6Biw9A8jN4vcPtkHBgiN053HzhF8sDDbK6Errqbv7o6GmFZvjzYQfEknJOuKI/s320/IMG_1226.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357414388374238018" /></a><br />[Tried to post this on Friday, then was out all day Saturday, so here it is, the belated story from Thursday]<br /><br />Yesterday’s walk was all about the comforts of reiteration, the knowledge that comes from re-inscribing. I wanted to walk the same path I knew, so I could say to myself: there’s where the men were loading the corn onto the pony that the women had gathered; there’s where the the skirts of the Flower Hmong were drying on the wall, semi-circles of brilliance against mud and dust; there’s where the children ran out of the house to say hello. For a few moments I want to not learn something new; I want to already know something. This got me thinking about my relationship with learning and knowledge. <br /><br />In academia we say we like to learn, to experience a new field or an unread book as an open prairie. An epistemelogical song of the lark moment. But, really, it’s temporary, or, rather, artificial, contrived. It’s like a carnival ride that simulates tumbling and falling and not knowing up from down, but we never genuinely lose our bearings. In a sense we come to know new things because we already know them, never truly losing our place on the map of the known and knowing world. We have access to powerful uses of language, unlimited resources, and people around us who know why we ask the questions we do. This, on the other hand, is real not knowing, and I am not used to it.<br /><br />I did not know; I have not known; I shall not have know; I will not know. That’s my condition in all its conjugational permutations. I did not know, for example, when I got back from my walk yesterday, hot, and red as a tomato, how long the power had been off and when it would come back on. I deduced it was off in the whole town because the squawking loud speaker was silent. I tried to ask someone in the hotel, but couldn’t formulate the right question or understand the responses. So I just hosed myself off with cool water, closed my windows and curtains against the afternoon sun, and lay down on the bed to wait. As it got closer to sundown, panic crept in. What would happen when there was no more light even to read? How would food be cooked for dinner? Can I just go to bed in this stifling room at 7:30 and hope to be awakened in the middle of the night with the lights and the a/c coming back on? It’s not the heat, or even the palpable humidity, it’s the close darkness of aloneness and not-knowing. So, the sun went behind the mountain, and dusk came to the town, and the streets filled with families. The sun off my balcony, I pulled out my chair, got a Bia Ha Noi from the now sweating cooler downstairs and watched everyone adjust. Dinner came later tonight, the ladies who walk the circuit around town in their plastic sandals doing those wacky floppy Vietnamese exercise arm movements came out a little later. Everyone adjusts to what is there and what is not. It’s possible to be and to not know, but it feels like somersaulting through space.<br /><br />The walk that was supposed to be about reiteration turned out not to be. A dog that didn’t chase me the first time, did this time; they are about to kill a pig up ahead and I have to turn backElisabeth Piedmont-Martonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882161488615575874noreply@blogger.com1