I realised recently that I haven't really posted much about my travels outside Hanoi. So here is my effort at providing a concise but informative post about my recent trip to Southern China.
Here's the number one observation:
Young Chinese men love purses. Or man-purses or murses. Whatever you prefer to call them. Whereas in Montreal only a select few men would dare stroll around will a shiny-white Gucci bag (I'm thinking of one particular friend here), in China they were everywhere. I couldn't walk on the sidewalk in Guangzhou without being whacked by a Prada purse strapped underneath the arm of a tall Chinese 20-something in Capri pants yakking away on his touch-screen mobile phone.
And here's my second observation:
Clothes are cheap, stylish and plentiful. Whereas in Montreal I usually avoid clothes with a 'made in China' tag in favour of something more local... in China, this is local! Guangzhou (also known as Canton) is a huge clothing manufacturing city. Diep led me to the area full of 'fashion cities', buildings with hundreds of sellers wanting you to buy the latest knock-offs of DSquared and D&G for about $5-10 USD a pair. Hell yeah! And a new pair of shoes for under $20?? I'll take three - and I did.
The fashion district in Guangzhou, China
Although my trip didn't go exactly as planned (this will be the subject of another post), I am really happy with this entirely new wardrobe I've come home with. I didn't even spend more than $150!
Here is a video of driving through the Mekong Delta. This is one of the most important river systems in Asia. Covered in jungle but densely packed with people and rice fields this is a beautiful corner of Vietnam.
If you find this video somewhat dizzying, imagine 10 hours in a car that is swerving back and forth into oncoming traffic at speeds you doubt are suitable for the poorly maintained and potholed road.
The glistening surface of my flooded alley. Maybe about 30 cm.
Ok so, I never knew what monsoon weather meant. Even after learning about it in climatology class, I never really understood what made that different from our May Showers in Canada.
Well. Now I know that monsoon means a shitload of rain, wind, lightning and thunder in a short period of time. And this is usually followed by about 20 minutes of cooler weather, until the hot blazing sun comes back as well as the hazy humidity.
The night before last, there was a crazy storm that kept waking me up all night. Flashes of non-stop paparazzi lightning and jack-hammer rain pattering kept me tossing and turning from about 2am until maybe 6am. I kept waking up to open up my balcony door, expecting to see a witch on a motorbike cackle at me à la Wizard of Oz.
No witch. But my alleyway was flooded. My house is more elevated than the neighbours, and I could see they had sandbagged their living room and were using buckets to drain the knee-high water out of their house.
I decided that rather than risk getting an electric shock by driving my electric scooter to work (I ask: Can that happen?), Diep would drive me to work on his real motorbike. Bad choice. The larger boulevard, Kim Ma, was completely jam packed because it is about the only street in the area that doesn't flood (not something I call good engineering, but slightly better engineering). I sat there on the motorbike for about 10 minutes. Enough time to breathe in about 100 different toxic compounds and snap a few photos.
Kim Ma street grid lock. This is about the only street that doesn't periodically flood
We turned around to go back through my alley and out the other street, Doi Can. It seemed to have less traffic. We quickly realised it was seemingly traffic-free because two giant lakes at each side of my alleyway prevented any vehicles from passing. It was a real riot, people just idling and watching other motorbikes try and make the devilish feat across the lake, one-eye closed hoping water won't enter the exhaust pipe. We were not about to try that.
Doi Can street. Looks like some people decided to make the leap.
So. I went back home. Flood day!
Here's a video of when we decided to go back through the main alleyway. You'll notice a little bit of flooding.... but you soon realise that flood water came from the overloaded open-sewage canal! Just put your feet up.
(Once you hit the 35 second mark, you pass the alleyway to head to my house)
This morning I popped out of bed and decided I wanted to go and try bun bo Hue for breakfast. I had seen it on the breakfast menu of my favourite vegetarian restaurant, and and though it was twice as expensive as the usual breakfast item, pho, at only about 1.15 USD a bowl it was still a steal.
The vegetarian version of this soup from Hue has vegetarian beef and rice noodles and is flavoured with chilies and lemongrass. The main difference between pho noodles and bun noodles is that bun noodles are thin and round, and made fresh as I don't think they can be found dry. The soup also came with wedges of lime, more chilies (as if at the start of a 35+ degree day you really want to load up on the chilies), and a plate of fresh herbs and leafy greens.
It was different than what I am used to eating for breakfast: toast or cereal. No real Vietnamese would ever toast up some bread and spread it with peanut butter. It's still pretty rare to find a toaster or even an oven in the typical Vietnamese household.
The other day I introduced Diep to cereal. He didn't know what it was, but when I described it to him, he instantly knew what I was talking about. He had seen it on TV and in movies. Eager to try this new food, he followed me in the kitchen where I filled up a bowl with granola. He wasn't sure what to do next, so I instructed him to pour milk in the bowl. I had to do it for him, as he wasn't sure how much to put in.
In the end, he didn't really like it. It was cold and sweet. Something he just wasn't used to eating in the morning. I thought maybe we could alternate breakfasts between eating sticky rice and tofu (which is what he's been making) and cereal.
Oh well. I guess I'll just have to get used to eating more Vietnamese breakfasts, or risk him leaving so early in the morning.... trying to escape my dry toast and cold wet cereal!
So I splurged. With the financial help of my parents, I bought a brand new electric scooter!
The Yamaha Metis was a little bit expensive, but still dirt cheap compared to the price one of these would cost in Canada. I just still have to ride my bicycle to the market, or else the market vendors will overcharge me for sure!
Gone are the days of biking in 38 degree weather, or else having to take a motorbike taxi or wait for my friend to come and pick me up. Gone are the days where I arrive at a dinner in the old quarter, panting in front of my dinner friends with dark patches of sweat slowly expanding in size over my chest and back.
And those days have been more and more often. Except for a couple odd days this past week where the temperature felt a chilly 28 degrees, I don't think ithas dropped below 35 for months.
Now I can zoom around in my exhaust-free scooter, planting trees and flowers in my wake. Seriously. Instead of carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds spewing from the bike, hearts, stars and little princesses come out to tell you happy stories that smell like raspberry sorbet and vanilla.
You'd think this was true by some of the looks I get riding around! Sometimes I notice in my peripheral vision, a motorbike that seems to be riding at exactly the same speed as me. I only need to turn my head slightly to see a motorbike with three Vietnamese construction workers squeezed onto the tiny seat, all squinting at me with a puzzled look on their face. In those cases just nod and smile.
It's a pretty sweet bike. It goes about 40 km on one charge, takes about 4-6 hours to charge, and can reach up to 30-40 km/h. Traffic is often slow enough that I pass cars, motorbikes and bicycles easily!
Here's your chance: I haven't named my bike yet, so I need your help. I want to you help think of a name for it! Please leave your suggestions in the comments!
As if some sort of force out there is correcting an imbalance, I am now officially cool.
9-year old Jonathan would never believe that 24-year old Jonathan would be walking around the streets with complete strangers waving and saying Hello! Yeah. If kids said Hello to 9-year old Jonathan, it was probably to distract him while another kid would run over to trip him. They would then steal his package of Jolly Ranchers and run off.
No, not even 13-year old Jonathan would believe that people would want to be his friend, let alone talk to him. If someone would have told me 12 years ago, that 15-year olds would see me in the street and yell YO! How are you!, and give me a thumbs up I would have told them they had one too many blue-razz Slurpees.
There is justice in the world. Welcome to Vietnam.
On my recent business trip to Vietnam's south, I had to unexpectedly return back to Hanoi early. Because of bad planning logistics, I spent an entire day in the city of Can Tho. At the centre of the Mekong Delta, Can Tho is not a particularly interesting city.
I sat for many hours on a bench at the riverside, staring at people walking by and judging whether not a foreigner napping on a bench would be too strange a sight. It seemed already strange enough that I was sitting there watching what looked like ordinary children shovelling a pile of sand casually left on the sidewalk into used linen bags. In 30+ degree afternoon weather, what else is someone in Vietnam supposed to do? Everyone else of the benches were napping!
That, and the lady who makes mia da, an iced drink made out of crushed sugarcane. I watched her for hours in between reading Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, methodically shoving fresh sugarcane into her mill. After this video was taken, she moved to my side of the street and I quickly signalled to her that I wanted one. It cost me about 30 cents.
I'm sitting at a restaurant with co-workers and representatives of the local government. After one woman, a manager in the the Vietnamese army, explains how romantic her husband was in asking her to marry him (these stories are much too common), I somehow mention how tired I am. I say this in Vietnamese, which of course elicits laughter from everyone at the table. It was Saturday, about 35 degrees in the Mekong Delta, and I woken up at 5am that morning.
After lunch and the many questions regarding the reasons I was not yet married, she invited all of us to her home.
I suppose she had seen that I was, in fact, quite tired because upon entering her house she pointed to a hammock set up in the middle of her kitchen. I had about an hour to kill before the next workshop and she insisted that I sleep there until then.
So there I was, rocking slightly back and forth in my dark pin-striped slacks and button-up shirt tucked in, curled up in the fetal position in a complete strangers kitchen in the Mekong Delta.
Her mother would come into the kitchen every now and then and tidy up or perform some other domestic chore. She was not paying much attention to the napping white boy.
Dislaimer: This is an old photo, and I am slightly more handsome than portrayed in this candid shot
It didn't take me too long in this country to realise that people find me handsome. The first day in the office sitting around a table full of Vietnamese women (95% of the staff were female) all blushing telling me they didn't realise I would be so handsome kind of tipped me off. Many times when I visit a store, storekeepers tell me how handsome I am or call me deptrai- handsome in Vietnamese. It makes me feel awkward and sometimes I pretend that I don't know what I am supposed to say.
Even more embarrassing is when these shop owners go and grab their daughters from upstairs in an attempt to kindle some sort of multi-cultural romance too strong to be stopped by the limits of language. The other night, in Can Tho, I stopped by a smoothie street stall to grab a custard apple and avocado smoothie (my favourite). A girl in her mid-twenties served me kind of giggling. She immediately called over her mother and they began chatting to each other and trying to decide on words to say to me. The girl told me I was some hand. And they were grilling me trying to find out if I was married.
She ran inside her house and came out with a younger girl - the other girl's sister. She looked rather messy, as if she had been plucked from her bed. Her hair was tied up and she had pink pyjamas on. Her mother pushed her towards my direction and was telling me to talk to her. I just smiled and awkwardy stirred my drink.
Her mother then pointed to her daughter and leaned into me saying I love you me, and giggled. Her daughter just stood there unamused - this was obviously not the first time.
I wouldn't say that I am ugly - but I am definitely not worth the credit I am given here. I don't know what it is they see - the large nose, the big ears, maybe way my eyes widen out in the centre...
I am also popular with the men... I won't go into too much detail in this blog, but I have been in situations where straight men cannot stop mentioning how handsome I am (something that, now that I think of it, is somewhat of a fantasy for many gay men...). I must mention that it is much more acceptable her for both men and women to complement someone in this way.
But let's just say... I don't want to get used to this attention... or else I'm in for a depressing reality when I get back to Canada!
Long story, but I ended up spending about half the time of my Bali trip travelling by myself rather than with the friend I was visiting.
I rented a motorbike but had a little accident when driving of some construction debris at high speed, and decided to return it early. My bruised and scraped up body did not want to risk another brush with gravel (but I have to say it made me look tough).
In Ubud, I found a motorbike driver name Wayan who agreed to take me around Bali to visit Mount Batur, a volcano in the central part of the Indonesian Island and some other sights. For 10$ (and a beer at the end of the trip), he took me around for almost a whole day on his motorbike.
Bali is one of the more beautiful places I have ever visited, mostly because everyday details are so intricate. It seemed like in every wall there was some sort of decorate carving of gods or monsters. Even the round-abouts had amazing animistic monster statues towering over the road.
I hope you can get a good idea through this video.
I am on a boat in Nui Chua National Park. The blue-aqua waves are agressively smacking the boat back and forth. The boat is filled with environmentalists and those involved in the conservation of the reef that lies just beneath the boat.
A bright blue and red wooden boat is stationed around the side of a steep cliff, bobbing in the violent and thrashing water.
The passengers of my boat, all Vietnamese, start talking about the boat. I can only assume this from the very little Vietnamese i can understand. On the other boat, a diver pops his head out from the water and climbs onto his boat, and a young boy helps him in. The young boy starts yelling something to the people on our boat, and the park ranger on our boy has a heated exchange with him.
The driver of our boat takes a sharp turn and we quickly collide with the diving boat. The young kid scrambles to control the boat as the diver jumps back into the water to escape. My heart starts to race as we crash yet again into the diving boat. I turn to a colleague from the organisation with worry on my face
“What the hell is going on”, I ask.
She smiles nervously, “i’ll tell you later.”
The boat is rocking rather intensely and a girl from the biology institute leans over board and vomits in the white foamy sea.
With the dramatic cliffs as a backdrop, i think about how beatiful and amazing it is we are actively protecting this reef. It’s like James Bond for environmentalists i think to myself as we hit into the diving boat for the fourth or fifth time.
Down with these scoundrels, Save the Reef, I think to myself.
Finally it seems to me that the evil divers give up, realising that one more impact with our boat would make his wooden one crumble.
He throws over his loot: A glistening basket of what must be endangered shellfish,
We won! We showed these enviro-destroyers that the force is with us!
I turn to my colleague, eager to find out what is next
“What do we do with them now?” Wondering how we could keep them alive while holding them as evidence while we cuff the divers and bring them to the park authorities.
My colleague responds “What do you mean? We’ll cook them.”
Confusion washes over my face
She says calmly, “We just bought our dinner, what do you think we were doing?”
I am on a boat in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Nui</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Chua</span> National Park
While away from Hanoi, I got sad news about my friend Son.
On June 1st, he was caught in a wave off of the central coast of Vietnam.
My first real friend in Vietnam, Son showed me what the country was about. Even though it was a friendship of only 5 months, we had become quite close.
I studied environment and urban planning in Montreal. Tired with not being able to find a job, I left the country to get "real experience"... Whatever that means!
The fashion district in Guangzhou, China
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