TWINS!!!

It's official: We had twins!!!! Don't they look just like their daddy?

Alright, alright, Mom, don't freak out: Huyen and I aren't even close to the baby-making stage....but I've been lazy with the camera (sorry, Steve) and had this picture.

Yesterday I went to pick up Huyen to take her to a quick dinner since she was studying for her FINALS. As I pulled into her COLLEGE and drove up to her DORM right outside of the UNIVERSITY QUAD the thought struck me: I'm dating a college girl.

Then another thought struck me: I'm totally awesome!

Then another thought struck me: I'm kind of like all those old creepy guys who date young girls out here (although they are generally around 25+ years older than their girlfriends).

Then another thought struck me: OW! This thought hurt...because it wasn't a thought that struck me. It was Huyen. She was punching me saying, "I kill you!!!" No, she wasn't mad. That's just how she says hi.

My Nightmare Class

This was my nightmare class. Don't be fooled, these little kids were/are devils. Thank goodness it's done.

The 7th Sign Of The Apocalypse

(Brad and Kari on the first day of the rest of their lives togther.)

Congratulations to Brad and Kari who got engaged on Sunday! For the rest of us, I'm sorry. The world is clearly coming to an end. If you had told any LHS graduate in '97 that Brad would be one of the first to get married from our group of friends we would all have agreed that it would be a sign of the Apocalypse. However, Brad is officially engaged...to a girl...and a fantastic girl.

For those of you who read my blog and don't know Brad, he's one of my oldest and best friends. I basically taught him everything in life except how to have a committed relationship. He clearly learned that from someone else. And, I guess he taught himself school stuff too since he's always been exponentially smarter than me. Actually perhaps the only thing I ever taught him was how to use the internet....although I learned how to use the internet on his computer while I used to house sit his cats (also where I learned to despise cats...which Brad loves. Shoot, I haven't taught Brad anything).

Anyway, If you're wondering how this relates to my travel blog, well, I guess it means I'll officially be coming home at some point now since I have to go to the wedding. I'm pretty certain my parents are bribing Brad to have the wedding as soon as possible...

My Second Encounter With The Police

(PICTURE: My first encounter with the police about a month ago in Da Nang)

Technically if you drive a motorbike out here you're supposed to have a Vietnamese driver's license. But come on, nobody does that. It doesn't really matter unless you get pulled over by the cops...which I've been told happens a lot to foreigners. However, even in those cases you just need to slip the cop some cash and be on your way. Ironically the other day while I was with Huyen I asked why some cops had just pulled over a few drivers. She told me that they had driven through a red and were going to get a ticket. Driving through red lights is something people do here. It's second nature to them. Literally you can wait at any traffic light and count the seconds after a light turns red that cars/buses/bikes still go through the intersection. On average I'd say it's "Three Mississippi." Although, I once actually counted to "5 Mississippi" and drivers were still shooting through the red. Huyen commented to me that she got a ticket last year for going through a red and I replied, "I'm not worried about that happening to me since I always follow the law."

Of course one of the rules in life is if you say something the opposite will soon happen. And of course, that happened yesterday morning. I was driving to Language Link at 7AM when I made a right on a red light. Like in NYC, apparently it's illegal. In a case of perfect timing, a cop was standing ten feet away in the street. He blew his whistle at me and waved his night stick at my face signaling for me to pull over. He started ranting at me in angry Vietnamese and all I could think was, "How much am I gonna have to pay this guy?" (For those LA friends, this is similar to our trip to Mexico when we had to pay off the cop because I ran over the curb with our RV). Anyway, I don't know what struck me but I had a moment of pure inspiration. I looked at the cop, opened my eyes wide and made the worst grimace I could possibly make. I grunted out, "My stomach. My stomach" and winced like I was about to poop my pants. The cop just looked at me and began yelling even more and making motions with his stick. Once again I winced and pointed at my stomach. This time I added, "I teacher. My stomach. School. There (I pointed down the street). I teacher. My stomach. Ughhhh." I gave one more painful look at the cop and then he miraculously waved me off. Yeah, I got off free! That's right, my luck is turning!!!

Now I know some of you are saying to yourself, "I didn't know you were such a good actor, Ben." Well, don't be so shocked. I am the same person who was once called in to an audition after Steven Spielberg himself saw me in my friend Sam's short film. For those of you not familiar with this story I'll give you the ending: I blew the audition. Yeah, I'm basically only good at acting like I've got diarrhea*.

* The truth is, if you read my previous blog, I was only half acting.

Cold, Flu or Dengue Fever?

(VIDEO: Huyen cooking me lunch to make me feel better)

For the last couple of days I've been pretty under the weather. I've got a slight fever, extreme body sweats, congestion in my head, a runny nose and aches in my muscles and joints. If I was in the USA I would just assume I have a nasty little cold or a slight case of the flu. Further evidence of this would be the fact that Ryan has been sick for about a week.

That said, I'm not in the USA which makes me slightly paranoid that I may have something worse than the cold or flu. For example I'd say there's a fifty-fifty shot I've got Dengue Fever. It's prevalent in Southeast Asia and all it takes to get it is a bite from an infected mosquito. According to wikipedia here are the symptons:

This infectious disease is manifested by a sudden onset of fever, with severe headache, muscle and joint pains (myalgias and arthralgias—severe pain gives it the name break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease) and rashes. The dengue rash is characteristically bright red petechiae and usually appears first on the lower limbs and the chest; in some patients, it spreads to cover most of the body. There may also be gastritis with some combination of associated abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.

Other symptoms include:

• fever;
• bladder problems;
• constant headaches;
• severe dizziness; and,
• loss of appetite.

These symptoms are quite similar to the common cold/flu. Making me even more nervous is that I just had a rash. Granted it's gone but still, I had a rash! And well, my stomach always hurts! And on top of that I've only been eating one serving of food at meals. I think that easily constitutes a loss of appetite. Oh, god, I have Dengue Fever!!!!!

By the way, I turned the camera off too soon on this video. A second after I turned it off Huyen says, "I am Vietnamese. I am strong. I do not get sick like you."

TRIVIA: Can you name these two fruit?

(PICTURE: Two very common fruit)

This is just a small example of the language difficulties. Take a guess what these two fruits translate to from Vietnamese to English.

Ahoy Hanoi Thanks Steve Song

(PICTURE: Steve and I at the snake village)

For weeks I've been secretly composing a blog entry to post when Steve left. Being a pacifist I didn't want any awkward confrontation after I posted this: "When I first arrived in Vietnam a local told me that the Vietnamese hate Korean people more than people from any other country. I asked why to my local friend but, because of the language barrier, she could not communicate the reason very articulately. That said, after hanging out with Steve for a few weeks I'll never ask why someone would hate a person of Korean decent again. To be fair, I could honestly say I don't hate Steve-- I loathe Steve. I then went on to list 319 reason why it was taking all my internal strength not to smother Steve with one of my $2 pillows in the middle of the night.

However, I'm not going to post that entry because -- to loosely quote Dumb and Dumber -- Steve totally just redeemed himself. Yesterday morning, as he was sitting shotgun in the airport taxi, he had the cab driver roll down his window and called me over. Steve said, "Hey, look on your bedside table. I left you a gift." I assumed he had just left me the same gift he'd been leaving for weeks--toe nail clippings on my floor. However, this time he left me something a little bit better--his digital camera. That's right, Mr. Paparazzi himself left me his camera which has literally been on his body every second for the last couple of months. This was beyond a nice gesture and I, and all Ahoy Hanoi fans, are grateful. This means new pictures will soon be posted with my blogs. So, on behalf of America, thank you Steve Song. (For Steve's version of why he left me his camera I once again direct you to his blog: www.songeruncensored.com).

In other news, I went to the library yesterday and they have exactly 56 fiction book in English. Out of those I've read about half of them already. Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "28 book is enough toilet reading to keep you busy for the year, Ben." Well, you're right. The problem is you can't read Vietnamese library books on the toilet. In fact, you can't read Vietnamese library books anywhere except a designated place in the library. Books in Vietnamese libraries can't be taken home with you. Yeah, you have to go there and read. I mean, really? Who reads at the library besides senior citizens?

For Those Of You Who Thought I Was Kidding

I'm about to take the final step in becoming a local. Nope, I'm not getting married. It's that other step--I'm getting a library card.

For those of you who are wondering, no the snake didn't sit well.

Fear Factor Trained Me Well

(PICTURE: The lucky snake.)

Steve returned to Hanoi yesterday after his ten days of exploring Southeast Asia on his own. Well, I think some solo time put some hair on his chest. When he showed up on my front steps he literally looked more like a man than he ever had before....although the hair on his chest was actually just thirty whiskers on his chin.

Before Steve had left, we promised him we'd go to the snake village when he returned. I'm not sure if he really even wanted to go to the snake village but I sure did. So Ryan, Steve and I hopped into a cab and took off. Well, we wanted to take off but the cab driver didn't know what the hell we were talking about despite our very obvious snake gestures. So I called Huyen and put her on the phone with cab driver. A minute later we were off...


After some heavy negotiation at the snake restaurant the owner/cook agreed to make us a nine course meal, including rice wine and snake blood, with a fresh snake. Second later the guy pictured in the purple shirt brought out a live poisonous snake. We took some pictures and then he preceded to slice open the snake and remove it's beating heart. He put the heart into this little shot glass:




The guy then motioned for one of us to drink the heart. Well, I knew Steve wouldn't do it since he recently bragged on his blog about how brave he was that he ate a fried cricket. That's Single A versus the majors of eating a beating snake heart. I thought Ryan would want to try the heart and was prepared to rock, paper, scissor him for it. But, alas, Ryan passed too. So it was all mine...


(PICTURE: Snake heart mixed with its blood)

It was delicious.

Reason 183 To Learn Vietnamese...

...to learn how to say, "Just cut a little bit."

I thought showing with my fingers how much I wanted cut would do the trick but clearly not. Now if only I could find a hat that fits me in this freaking country.

A Few Quick Anecdotes

Yesterday was a blogger's dream. I had a ton of hilarious things happen to me and here's just a few:
1. I began teaching. 75% of my classes were fantastic. The other 25% was an hour and a half of six year olds who don't understand a word of English and have more energy than any kids I have ever seen. A few highlights from that class were:
a) A sandal flying by my face twice. Apparently they use them like boomerangs.
b) A "slow" kid who sat in the corner and broke the window shades and picked his nose and put it onto my teacher's book when I asked him if he did his homework.
c) Announcing homework five minutes before the end of class and then promptly having fifteen kids rush for the door. Apparently it's like Pavlov's dog. They are so conditioned to leaving when told their homework that they don't look at the time. I literally had to block the door and fight over fifteen kids...who are a lot stronger than they appear.
d) Just when the class couldn't get any worse I let everyone out and one kid pushed another who fell into a little girl. The little girl proceeded to cry hysterically for ten minutes. I brought her to the office since, again, she didn't speak any English and didn't understand "are you okay." She was okay. I wasn't though.

2. On my lunch break I met the teacher whose classes I took over and he said to me, "this afternoon you've got a kid who is obsessed with bananas." I just nodded and said, "Sounds good." Sure enough in my third class I had everyone introduce themselves and this awkward 13-year-old in the corner says "My name is Banana Boy." After that literally every other word out of his mouth was banana.

3. One of my class lesson plans was based around this CD that comes with the book. Sure enough when I put the CD in it was the wrong one. I ad-libbed on the fly and made it work.

4. At the end of the day while teaching a class about natural disasters, a crack of lighting struck outside the window. It was followed by eight hours of pouring rain and lightning.

5. Huyen came over for dinner. I cooked some pasta and after about two bites she announced, "Vietnamese people cannot eat this." More for me.

6. Huyen used my bathroom and walked out holding "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", the book I'm reading. She said to me: "I see you are in the habit of reading on toilet. Me too." I then said, "I thought you don't have a toilet." She replied, "Yes, only at my parent's house."

7. At 9PM Huyen said she must leave. She put on her raincoat, plastic bags around her feet, windbreaker etc. She screamed out, "So dangerous!", laughed, and then took off into the typhoon. Five minutes later she called my cell phone, "I must come back. I am lost and it is very wet."

8. At 12:30 at night I was awoken by knocking on my door. It was Ryan: "Yo, um, our house if flooding." The roof had about six inches of water and was waterfalling down the four flights of stairs into our kitchen. Ryan braved the elements and went on to the roof and cleaned the drain with a hanger. Problem solved...kind of. Two minutes later the drainage pipe in my bathroom ERUPTED with black water. After ten minutes of blowing up in my bathroom it stopped and all was normal.

Good times.

I Didn't Tie Peter Cullen For Nothing

(PICTURE: Members of the Vietnam Ultimate Frisbee Team)

Some of you might recall that I tied Peter Cullen for "senior athlete" in the senior superlatives. Yes, it's still as shocking today as it was in '97 that people actually thought I was as good of an athlete as Pete.

Last weekend I joined the Hanoi Ultimate Frisbee Club (http://www.hanoi-ultimate.com/). I played pretty well despite my $15 knock-off Adidas cleats coming apart in the first ten minutes of the game and having a pretty hard collusion on the first play of the game. After the practice I was told that the following Saturday (yesterday) there would be a tournament. Sign me up!

All week long I was psyched to show my fellow Hanoians what I got. The only thing worrying me was I was unbelievably sore all week. Not having done any exercise since leaving NJ, I was in, well pretty bad shape. And apparently I was in worse shape then I thought since I pulled my hamstring in warm-ups yesterday. Yes, warm-ups. I was gimpy all day running up and down the field yet still managed to hold my own on the pitch. In fact, I scored the first touchdown of the tournament and immediately went down on the ground and asked someone to stretch me. This guy David (apparently "one of the top ultimate players in southeast Asia") came up to me and said, "you can't get hurt on your first catch.

Anyway, long story short --and I have to run to my first day of class-- my team ended up winning the whole tournament. I've got a fancy new hat to prove it...although the hat is clearly made for Vietnamese people since it doesn't come close to fitting on my head.

Um, yeah, I might have a Vietnamese Girlfriend

(PICTURE: Huyen wearing a traditional Vietnamese dress in front of The Temple of Literature)

So Huyen (the girl who asked me if I "was going to make water") and I have hung out a couple more times recently. She and her sister came over on Tuesday night and cooked an amazing house-warming dinner for Ryan and I. Then yesterday she swung by during the day to talk for a little while and to drink fresh melon shakes.

Now the question is, how many times does it take for a boy and a girl in Vietnam to hang out before they are considered boyfriend and girlfriend?

In case you're wondering here are Huyen's stats:
Age: 23
Occupation: College Student at the University of Hanoi; finishing her thesis in economics.
Languages: Vietnamese (A+), Russian (A+), English (B), French (C+), Japanese (C+)
Height: 5'7 or 5'8. She's a giant out here.
Extra Curricular Activities: Badminton, Cooking, Riding her motorbike, going to the movies, hanging out with family.

One negative about Huyen is that she literally might kill me. Yesterday I made a joke about her bothering me and she started to strangle me and said, "You are so mean!" I'll keep you posted on this budding romance. If it does turn into marriage, I expect everyone to fly out for the wedding.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

(PICTURE: Vietnamese Dong. Everyone's a millionaire here)

Minutes ago I embarked on an adventure: Finding my neighborhood pho shop. At my "old" apartment I had a couple of great pho places that I frequented every morning. When Ryan and I looked at this new apartment the first thing I asked the landlord was, "Are there good pho stands nearby?" She responded, "Of course. Everybody loves pho." Well the other day Ryan and I went walking to find one and it took us about twenty minute before we came upon a shop. The pho was half decent but when the bill came we knew we'd never come come. The bill was 120,000 Dong for two phos and one fried rice. That's almost exactly 4Xs as much as any place I've been yet.

So this morning, solo, I went for a walk in the opposite direction. It took me only about two minutes before I found a street pho place where the soup was literally cooking on the sidewalk. There were three old ladies sitting around the ingredients and an ample amount of flies for me to know this place was legit. I took a seat, got my usual "why is this white person here" stares and ordered a steaming hot bowl of beef noodle soup.

On my pho scale I gave the soup a solid B+. However, it will be a long time before I go back to this particular stand. While I was finishing my soup I watched the only other patron pay. He handed over 15,000 Dong and went on his way (this is about the right price for pho although my favorite place is 12,000). After sucking down the rest of my broth and proceeding to sweat profusely because of the chili floating on the bottom, I got up to leave. I handed the money lady (one lady handles money, one lady handles pouring the broth, one lady handles cutting up the meat) a 50,000 Dong note and she gave me back only 30,000 Dong change. I asked her, "is that it" and she shook her head no and stared down at the ingredient table, refusing to make eye contact. I had clearly been ripped off by 5,000 Dong or roughly thirty eight cents. That's a lot of money out here. The moral of the story is this: if the lady had been honest she would have had a regular costumer for months on end. However, she wasn't and I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

In other news, I went to the Apple store yesterday and was told that "my file is very big." Come back this afternoon. In the afternoon I got this text message: "Hi Mr Benjamin August. I'm from Apple's istore 63 Kim Ma Str. Your hard disk drive got some problems.it changed to blue screen or got computer hanging problem while it is running. we will try but we are afraid that we can not keep the memory in your hard disk space. could you come back tomorrow afternoon?" Yeah, not looking so good....

SOMETHING ELSE WAS MISSING THIS MORNING!!!

(PICTURE: Some random dude with a more disgusting rash than me)

...my heat rash!

Thank god for Jewish doctors. Last week I met Steve's friend David and Michael Shapiro. Immediately upon hearing that Michael had just graduated Georgetown Medical School I whipped off my pants and showed him my lingering heat rash. Well, turns out it wasn't a heat rash at all but a fungus: "Kind of like athletes foot." (How do you like me now ladies! I got a fungus on my groin) Michael walked me into the local pharmacy and helped pick out the proper cream. One week later, I'm all cleared! Watch out world...

In other exciting news I now have skype. That means I can call the states for a whopping two cents a minute (plus a ten cent connecting fee) or for free if you have skype. So, can someone go to my house in Livingston and install skype for my parents. Thanks!

Good News And Bad News Part III

(Dr. Marcus Brody -- I'm sans camera and I refer to him later so yes, it makes sense)

THE GOOD NEWS:

I got a job teaching English at a really good private language school called Language Link. Here's the website:

http://www.languagelink.edu.vn/index.php?lang=en

If you look at the picture on the top of the homepage I'm the white guy in the front row...or at least will be soon. The job is perfect: it pays well for Vietnamese standards, is right near my apartment, has free bottled water, gives me a cubby for my stuff to be properly stolen from, allowed me to sign a six month contract with bonuses for finishing it (most schools want one year contracts), gives me money to join a gym and has a plethora, yes a plethora, of cute girls working there. The best part is that I only have to work a few hours each day and don't have class until 4PM every day so I can write in the morning and make my body look damn sexy at the gym in the early afternoon.

THE BAD NEWS:

Some of you may recall a little incident in which I was robbed of all my belongings in the middle of the night while sleeping. You know, that whole Ninja thing. Well, you may also recall the "good news" in that blog entry. I believe I mentioned how I luckily had recently saved everything from my computer onto an external hard drive and that somehow the robbers didn't take it. I think I said to at least thirty people, "Thank god my hard drive wasn't taken." If that isn't the exact quote it's a damn close variation of it. Well, yesterday I bought a new mac and plugged in my hard drive. Immediately some message comes up:
"Would you like the Time Machine to back up your hard drive on your passport (passport is the name of my external hard drive)."
I thought, "yeah, that sounds good. I want my stuff backed up." So I clicked yes.
Then another message came up: "Erasing External Hard Drive."
Um, what? Excuse me? Then the wheel on my screen starts to turn as if it's starting to work. I freaked out and did the only thing someone who doesn't know crap about computers would do--I pulled my external hard drive plug out of my Mac. Phew, saved it. Um, not so much. I then tried to plug back in my external hard drive and well, the computer wouldn't recognize it. Panic started to set in, more so then when I realized I was robbed last week.

I took a few deep breathers and thought, "I'll just try it on Ryan's mac." I went up to Ryan's room and plugged in my external hard drive into his slot (that is not a gay joke and for the record since I've gotten a few too many emails about this: RYAN AND I ARE NOT GAY LOVERS). Well, his computer couldn't recognize my hard drive either. Yeah, I think I did what the robbers couldn't do: I LOST ALL MY PICTURES/MUSIC/SCRIPTS/ETC!

Hold on, hold on, there is some possible good news:
1. This morning I took my hard drive to the apple store here (which by the way I'm pretty sure isn't really an apple store and, like everything else, is a rip off of a major brand) and the IT guy said he thinks he can fix it. I left him my HD and was told to come back tomorrow.
2. The other day I put all of my scripts onto Steve's computer. Well, Steve is traveling in Cambodia and Laos at the moment so who knows if he'll make it out alive or with his computer. It's kind of like that scene in Indiana Jones when Dr. Marcus Brody has the grail and Indiana says he could never be caught but in reality he could easily be caught. In this scenario I'm pretty sure, based on his blog, Steve would trade his laptop for a night of spooning with a girl.
3. I recently put online all of my Australia and China photos. Also, Ryan stole a bunch of my Cambodia photos which I'll soon steal back.

The moral of the story is never, never ever, hit "yes" on your computer if you don't know what you're doing. Ironically the thing called "Time Machine" won't allow me to travel back in time and fix this problem.

Tom Tancred, this is for you...

(VIDEO: My class in HCMC celebrating Bruce's endorsement.)

Is it any coincidence that just a couple of weeks ago Bruce Springsteen endorsed Obama and since then Obama's been collecting super delegates like it's been going out of style? I've been saying for years that Bruce Springsteen in the ultimate superdelegate and well, it now appears to be the truth. I speak for all of 'Nam when I say, "Hillary, it's time to drop out."

By the way, the best part of this video is the first girl's reaction after I slap her high five. Enjoy.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

(PICTURE: Mom and I at Zev's Rehearsal Dinner. NOTE: The problem with having all your stuff stolen is that pictures are hard to come by and snapfish only allows you to steal tiny ones from your albums like this one)

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I tell you every single year, and I'll tell you again (this time for the whole world, AKA ten friends, to read): I could not imagine a more wonderful, caring, loving mother in the world than you. You're not just an amazing mother but an amazing person too. I love you!

I know you wish I could be home to have dinner with you tonight but instead think on the positive side: The great thing about having a child in Vietnam is that you get to celebrate Mother's Day for an extra day since we live in the future over here!

Please send my love to Grandma and Nanny too. Hannah/Zev, give them both a big hug and kiss for me.

Learning The Language II

Learning a new language isn't just hard for us Americans. Tonight I went to dinner with Huyen, a great girl Steve and I met at the airport when we picked up Devin. Huyen is literally the person who welcomes foreigners to Vietnam as she stands outside the arrival gate, wearing a traditional dress and passing out literature about Halong Bay.

Huyen is in her final few months at the University of Hanoi and is an extremely smart person. Besides her native tongue, she also speaks Russian fluently, English well enough to work part time as a tutor, French and a little Japanese.

But it's the English I want to talk about. This is just a little side anecdote that I found hilarious. Huyen and I walked into the movie theater and I, having a small bladder, asked where the toilet was. Huyen asked, "You have to go make water?" I wasn't exactly sure what she said so I asked, "What?" "You have to go make water?"

Yes, this English tutor was seriously asking me if I had to piss by saying, "You have to make water?"

Learning The Language

(VIDEO FLASHBACK: My favorite Vietnamese teacher, Linh, teaching me the vowels)

It's been six weeks in 'Nam and the language isn't getting any easier. I'm decent in restaurants and asking for directions but the rest of the time I'm useless. Frankly, I've never been good at learning foreign languages. And by "never been good" I mean that I suck at learning other languages. Here's me in class, back in HCMC, attempting to just say the vowels...

My Boyfriend's Back And He's Better Than Before...

(PICTURE: Enjoying a late night coffee)

...Hey now, Hey now...Ryan's back!

They say that distance makes the heart grown fonder. Well, Ryan flew to Ho Chi Minh City last week to begin his teaching career. We had a heartfelt goodbye here in Hanoi, parted with a hug, and accentuated with a blog entry.

Well, 72 hours later I got an extremely long email from Ryan. Here are the first three sentences: "So I am moving to Hanoi. I'll probably fly to Hanoi on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. I have been utterly bored in Saigon..."

He went on to make a whole bunch of excuses as to why Hanoi is better for him than HCMC. But come on, I can read between the lines as well as anyone and he was clearly saying, "I miss you and I know that you need me right now. It's too much for you to lose all of your stuff and have your heart broken in the same week." So, Ryan came to my rescue. Even more so, we've decided to take the next logical step...

We're moving in together. I can already hear all of you ahoyhanoi fans gasping: "The shame! They're going to live in sin!" Well, rest assured that we've decided after much debate to get two bedrooms (even if it is just for appearances). I'll keep you posted on our new apartment but Dad, don't be surprised if Ryan shows up at work one day asking for my hand in marriage.

Halong Bay

(NOTE: This is not a good video of me. Because I don't have my own camera any more I can't exactly direct. That said, some British kid I met on the boat has a better video which I will post when/if he emails it to me)

In the movies -- and possibly in real life -- whenever someone gets raped they always end up crouching down in a shower and just having the water wash over their body. Well, I finally understand that scene. After having my personal space completely violated on Saturday and all my possessions stolen from me, there was no better antidote than a shower/baptism in the famed Halong Bay.

This is a video of David (Miriam's friend from Spain who is visiting), Song, Devin and I jumping into the water from the roof of our junk boat. You can see me for a split second at the end. I'm the one who looks like a jumping swimsuit model.

Exciting News: I've decided to get a new laptop, camera, cell phone and ipod...

(PICTURE: There is no picture because, well, read the blog)

One of my worst memories from my time at Syracuse University was the afternoon I strolled into my apartment after class, walked into my room and sat down at my desk to check email. I plopped down into my seat and noticed something strange, my laptop wasn't there. It took about a half a second for the math to process in my head: this is where I keep my laptop, there is where my laptop was before class, there is where my laptop should be now but isn't = I was robbed.

Turns out I was a victim of this thief who ended up robbing about thirty apartments. His technique was quite original: He would stroll up to apartments, test the door to see if it was unlocked and if it was, walked in. Had their been someone home he would say, "I'm sorry, I'm looking for Winston Churchill" and then leave. On the day I was robbed both my roommates were home. Shankles was in his room (probably watching pornography) and Alex was in the shower. The thief had even gone upstairs where they were, into Alex's room and went through his change container. Clearly I had gotten the worst of it, my computer (and hiking backpack) were gone forever.

FLASH FORWARD EIGHT YEARS:

Saturday night my house had a party to celebrate Miriam's birthday (and supposedly my arrival too). We had about thirty people show up including a few local Vietnamese girls we've befriended along the way during our first week in Ha Noi (by "we" I of course mean Song. He's the master of approaching anyone. I just try to reap the benefits after). Devin, a friend from college who is visiting for a few days (yes ANOTHER visitor already), couldn't take the humidity of the house and passed out around 10PM. Song quickly followed him to my bedroom and retired around 11PM. I stayed up for a couple more hours, whipped out my really expensive camera, and took lots of pictures/talked photography with Pallavi's visiting friend Bridgette who was also snapping away on her really expensive camera. At around 1:30 the party decided to go to a club and I decided it was time to go to bed. I brushed my teeth and tip-toed into my room. However, I wasn't tired so I whipped out my laptop and checked my email (and to see if anyone had posted a comment on ahoy hanoi). I typed away for a minute or two and then plugged my laptop into the wall to charge. I also plugged my cell phone into another outlet since I hadn't charged it in four days.

The next morning I woke up at 6AM and decided to be a good roommate and go clean up from the party (and because the people who live in this house are --what's the nicest words to use here-- basically content on living in filth and would wait days for the cleaning lady to come before picking up a piece of trash or washing one of their own dishes). While cleaning up I found a 10,000 DONG note on the ground (roughly sixty six cents or 3/4 of a bowl of pho and a coke)and thought, "my lucky day." I proceeded to walk back upstairs to grab my laptop and blog about the party and my finding money when I noticed something odd in my room: my laptop wasn't on the floor. The familiar feeling from senior year hit me as I did the math: this is where I put my laptop last night, this is where my laptop should be, my laptop isn't here: I was robbed. History was repeating itself.

The math though in this case was a little fuzzier since:
1. I had gone to sleep at 2AM and woken up at 6AM. A small window of time for a robber.
2. Three people were sleeping in my tiny room and surely one of us would have woken up had somebody entered.

However, reality struck me hard when I opened my closet and saw that my camera wasn't in there. Then reality struck me again when I looked across the room and my cell phone wasn't there either. And then reality struck me again when Steve asked me if I knew where my other camera was (the one that I had FedExed home from Australia, had my mom get fixed by Nikon since it was under warranty, FedExed to Devin in Buffalo and had him deliver to me in Ha Noi). That camera was gone too. And then reality hit me again when Steve asked, "where is your ipod?" Yup, that was gone too. That's when I told Steve, "Stop asking me if I lost stuff!"

Long really f-ing depressing story short: I WAS ROBBED BY NINJAS!

Turns out that the front gate wasn't locked when people went out to the club at 1:30AM. Sometime after I had gone to bed, people broke into our house and stole:
1. All my stuff that I listed.
2. Bridgette's expensive camera and two additional expensive lenses, everything except her credit cards from her wallet and her cell phone.
3. Miriam's computer and camera.
4. Lindsay's phone.

Do the math, I lost the most again. If you add up all the stuff that I lost it comes to roughly $2,600 dollars or in Vietnamese language, about 3,000 bowls of pho.

I took the realization of being completely f-ed over pretty well. I think my experience in 2000 taught me that life goes on and that objects are well, just objects. Also, there is SOME good news: two weeks ago I bought an external hard drive and backed-up everything on my computer so I still have all my scripts and 99% of the photos I've taken thus far.

So I was taking it pretty well until I started taking inventory of what was lost around the house and asked Bridgette if Pallavi had a computer that might have been stolen (Pallavi was basically comatose until noon. Seriously, we tried waking her and told her we had been robbed but nothing registered) and Bridgette told me, "No Pallavi doesn't have a computer. It was stolen a few months ago when the house was robbed and all the French people had their stuff stolen." "Excuse me" I said. "You know when the house was robbed a few months ago in the middle of the night and the French people had their stuff stolen." No, I definitely did not know this. Pallavi failed to share this tidbit of information with me when I was looking into the house. She also failed to share this tidbit of information with me when I moved in and said, "the lock on my door doesn't work." Turns out, well, just like I was told: The house was robbed in the middle of the night when people were sleeping just a few months ago. Clearly this house is cased out and some thief just checks the front gate every night to see if it was left open. Not cool. And yes, I'm moving ASAP. And no, I have no insurance that covers any of my stuff.

Off to Halong Bay today with Steve and Devin where I'll rely on them to take pictures for me.

Charlie wins again.

Ben

My Cousin Justin

My cousin Justin literally doesn't know what "on time" means. This has been the case his whole life. One quick example was when I was in New York City about six months ago and he was supposed to meet up with my friends and I since he was coming in from Boston. He called me and said, "I'll see you in about a half hour." A half hour was already about two hours later then we had originally planned. Well, four hours later at 2:30AM he strolled into the bar my friends and I were waiting at. He had some excuse, but really who can remember it. I'm not complaining about Justin since, well, I love the kid for who he is. The whole point of this is that I awoke this morning with a happy birthday email from him that contained a video. Here's the video. It's ridiculous.

Rainy Day

(PICTURE: An adoring letter from my former student)

It has rained on and off all day today which is exactly what the doctor ordered for me (that's just an expression I'm using and not what the pharmacist who is treating my heat rash told me to do). 

Today was literally my first lazy day in three months and it has felt great. The only problem with lazy days is they don't make for great blog entries. Luckily, former Vietnamese girl students who have crushes on their teachers do and one such girl happened to email me today (she asked for my phone number in Saigon and I just gave her my email instead). This girl is the same one who handed me (and Ryan) a letter on my last day of teaching in HCMC. I promised then I'd eventually post the letter and well, today's the day. 

For those of you who can't click on the letter to read it, it says: "Dear Mr. August, Deep in my heart, I'm very happy when my English teacher is you _ Benjamin. How do you feel when you taught us? For me, thank you for teaching enthusiastically. Every class, I learnt them by my heart. I know I sometimes made a noise in our class. :-) Sir, i don't like to finish our class. Huhuhh, I feel so sad asq I don't look at you. Who teachs me? After the class, I hope you have a lot of happiness from teaching English in everywhere. Thank more again so you were my English teacher who has a cool smile, friendly face and seldom you have a strict face. For me, I like your cool smile (very friendly). May happiness follow you where just like we do. A student of you. Nguyen Xuan Hieu. 

That was the very sweet letter she handed me. This was the email she sent to me today:

Dear Ben, (BLOGGER NOTE: We're now on a first name basis apparently)

Hi, sir. How are you? I'm a student in your class, Hieu. Remember me. now, where do you live? What did you do? when will you come back to HoChiMinh city? Are you going to work in VietNam or USA in the future? ah, How many places have you been in Viet Nam? How do you feel them? My dream is to meet you again at USA by my earning. That time I hope my pronunciation is better to talk to you about everything. I miss you! May you have everything wishing for. Student of you HXN.

I've still got it!!!