War & Peace

One of the great things about having so many visitors is that it guarantees I see everything in Hanoi. PJ and I went for a ride around the city last week and stopped in two places I had never been. The first place was the oldest pagoda in Hanoi.

Immediately upon entering the pagoda, which is on the edge of West Lake, we heard some chanting. We followed the noise to the back of the pagoda where about thirty women and one man were chanting Buddhist hymns.



After this peaceful morning we decided to balance it with a little violence -- we went to the Vietnamese War Museum. The museum is basically a collection of old USA (and a few French) war materials: choppers, fighter planes, tanks, bombs, guns, etc.

The cool thing about the museum wasn't the war supplies but rather the Flag Tower at the front of the museum.
The flag tower was built in 1812 and is one of the most recognizable symbols of Hanoi. I've passed it a hundred times but finally got a chance to climb it. The views from the top were pretty spectacular. The coolest view was of a soccer field behind the War Museum where some soldiers were doing drills with their rifles. There was a sign on top of the tower that said pictures weren't allowed to be taken. Being a law abiding citizen, I obeyed the sign. However, PJ, being a celebrity thought the rules were for regular people and snapped away a few pictures. Oddly though the pictures didn't come out. I chalk it up to communist technology.

Dinner With A Celebrity

(PJ holding a bootleg copy of his show's DVD. Sadly for him he'll see no residuals from this Chinese rip off DVD set.)

Twice over the last month I've had dinner with random fans of ahoyhanoi who have been in town. They have emailed me for advice about Hanoi and asked if I'd like to join them for dinner. I knew it would break their hearts if I said no, so I helped make their dreams comes true.

Well, this past week I got my chance to have dinner with a celebrity -- my friend Paul James, star of ABC Family's Greek came for a visit (Feel free to check out PJ's IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1482818/ ).

About a month or two ago I emailed PJ saying that I saw a bootleg copy of Greek Season I on the streets of the Old Quarter. To be honest, I'm pretty sure he came to visit just to see the bootleg copy since it was the first sight we saw the morning after he arrived. After picking up the copy PJ started to hysterically laugh. There were some glaring errors on the DVD. Here's just a few that I remember:

1. The four names on the top of the DVD included PJ, two other stars of the show, and one random extra who had appeared on an episode.

2. The back had a glowing review from Roeper and Ebert giving the show, "Two Thumbs Up." One problem, those guys don't review TV shows.

3. The back of the DVD also said it featured a new hit song by Emminem. Yeah, no such song inside.

Anyway, the highlight of picking up the DVD was when I pointed out to the shop owner that PJ was on the cover of the box (it's hard to see from this picture but he's in the red cup on the top left and on the back of the DVD). The lady smiled from ear to ear and pointed at PJ, "You." PJ smiled and said yes. He clearly made her day...although she still charged him full price.

The Vietnamese Tattoo

Tattoos aren't that common in Vietnam. However, there's one you see all the time here:

(PICTURE: The Vietnamese tattoo)

Okay, yeah, that's not a tattoo. It's a scar. However, literally 50% of Vietnamese women (and maybe 70% of foreign women living in Vietnam) have the same scar. What is it and why do they have it? Well, it's quite simple -- it's a burn from a motorbike.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that engines get hot when you drive them. Well, on motorbikes part of of the engine is exposed and perfectly level with one's calf. I've heard many different accounts of how girls have gotten this scar. Generally it's either from:
1. Falling off their motorbike and having the pipe land on their leg. Ouch.
2. Just being stupid and getting off the bike and glancing your leg up against the pipe.
3. Parking in a packed parking garage. In this case they don't get the scar from their bike but rather from the one next to them which hasn't cooled down yet.

I don't have a scar -- luckily. About four months ago I burnt myself doing a combination of #2 and #2. I parked in a very tight parking lot and decided to get off my bike on the right side...which I never do. I got off and all of a sudden felt a warm sensation down my right leg...I was leaning up against the scalding hot pipe on my bike. I immediately yelped and poured some luke-warm bottled water on myself. Somehow that did the job and I've remained scar/tattoo free.

VETS

A couple of weeks ago I had a comment from LH in Kentucky. He was responding to my first post about Hayden and wrote:

Dear Ben,
I hope your friend Hayden recovers quickly. The jungles of southeast Asia aren't very forgiving to those how get lost in them.
I've been reading your blog for about a month now and have enjoyed reading about your experiences very much. I'm a disabled Marine combat veteran and I spent alot of time in the jungles of Vietnam. I also put alot of time in the QueSon mountains.
I've always wanted to return to Vietnam and experience all the good things Vietnam and it's people have to offer. But for now I guess I'll live vicariously through your adventures.
You and your family have my prayers for your safety while from home.
Have you ever been to Quang Tri or Quang Nam? If so' please write about them on your blog if you have time.
All The Best, LH (in Kentucky)

LH's comment got me thinking: I haven't met any American Vets from the Vietnam War since moving to Vietnam. My only brush with a American Vet was when I was taking my two week training course in Cambodia. While on a break at the university in Phnom Penh, I had a brief conversation with an American. The guy, who to me looked like he was in his early 40s, asked me what I was doing. I told him I was taking a course to get my TEFL since I'd be teaching in Vietnam. The guy just kind of shook his head and said, "You're going to Vietnam? Cambodia is as close as I can come to going there." Naively I asked him why -- again, thinking he was way too young to have served -- and he said to me, "Because I spent a lot of time there awhile ago." I was shocked and blurted out, "You served in the war? You look way too young." He told me he was nearly sixty and assured me he wasn't crossing the border back into 'Nam anytime soon. The point is, he's the only Veteran I've met in six months in southeast Asia. I know there are a ton out here, but I just haven't met them.

Anyway, I'm glad that LH is reading my blog and is taking an interest in Vietnam and its people. Conversely, I've talked about the war here with many Vietnamese people, and not one has said that they or anyone in their family fought in the war.

New Face, New Place

Yesterday's post got me thinking about a post I should have written a long time ago. At some point during my first month at Language Link I was emailing with a friend of mine back in LA, and during our exchange she wrote me:

Do you know an American girl in Hanoi named Mikka Hall? I'm working with her father in Phoenix right now on a VH1 show. She moved there the same time you did. Miss you!! Elizabeth Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Well, in fact, I did know a girl named Mikka Hall. She started working that week at Language Link...and her cubbie was three down from mine:

Mikka has turned out to be one of my good friends here despite the fact that I think she's a compulsive liar. She claims to be from LA, yet thinks there's is a place here in Hanoi with a decent burrito. Mikka is pretty hilarious, but sadly I don't think she was kidding on this one.

Old Face, New Place

I mentioned a while ago about a gas station attendant who had taken a keen interest in me. Basically every time I went to this one PetroMax station near my school, I would have a case of deja vu with this man. He would start filling up my tank and say, "Where you from?" I would then say in Vietnamese, "I'm from America." He would then exclaim, "America!!!", shake my hand, and tell me I was going to be his English Teacher. Each time I went I would throw a new Vietnamese word into the mix which would always get him excited. I asked how he was one time and said goodbye another. He appreciated the effort.

Well today Huyen and I went across town to eat at one of my former student's family's restaurant. The place was pretty far on the south side of town, on a road I had never been on. On the way back from lunch I pulled into a random PetroMax station. I parked Huyen's bike next to the pump and opened up the tank when I looked up and saw a giant smiling face. It was my gas station attendant. Simultaneously we said, "Hello!" We each were extremely surprised to see each other and instinctively shook hands and patted each other on the shoulder like old Elementary School classmates. Meanwhile, Huyen realizing what was going on, started to hysterically laugh and asked, "Where's your camera?" Sadly I had forgotten it.

I think it's funny that one day I'll think back to my adventures out here in 'Nam, and the friends I've made, and this man will come to mind. We don't know each other's names and can't speak more than ten words to each other, yet we both greeted each other like long lost best friends. That's a nice feeling.

People Are The Same Everywhere

I've always believed that people are the same everywhere. My students have asked me many times, "What country has the nicest/meanest people?" I always say, "There are good people everywhere and bad people everywhere. For example, there are many kind people in Hanoi but there's also a handful of Ninjas who robbed me of everything I owned the first week I was here." Shockingly, my students actually know what Ninjas are. I think it's the 16th English word they learn.

That said, the other night, I had to rethink my belief that people are the same everywhere. About fifteen minutes after school ended, I was driving home and stopped at a red light. As I stared at the handy countdown clock (all the traffic lights countdown the seconds till they will turn green or red) I heard, "Hello, teacher!" I turned to my left and sitting on the back of a motorbike was Linh, one of my teenage students. I immediately noticed two things:
1. Linh's mother was driving her.
2. Linh wasn't wearing a helmet.

I looked at Linh and said, "Linh where is your helmet." She smiled at me and said, "It's right here." She held up her far hand, which was holding the helmet. I said, "Linh, put on your helmet!" Her mother then smiled at me and said in broken English, "It's okay. We live close." I quickly responded, "It doesn't matter. It's dangerous. Put your helmet on." Her mother quickly agreed with me (she clearly wants her to get a good grade) and made Linh put on her helmet.

As the light turned green and I rode off two thoughts struck me:

THOUGHT ONE: My mother would NEVER let me ride on the back of her motorbike (yes, this is EXTREMELY hypothetically speaking) without a helmet. So perhaps people aren't the same everywhere. But then the second thought struck me...
THOUGHT TWO: There are irresponsible parents in America too. And on top of that, there are also overly responsible/nosy parents. For example, I know one very well -- my father. As a child, whenever my father would see a kid in another car not wearing a seatbelt he used to pull up parallel to them and motion for the kid/parent to put on their seatbelt. This used to embarras the hell out of me. However, I now realize that I'm equally as overly responsible/nosy as my father.

So, yeah, my core belief is still true -- people are the same everywhere.

Community Cups

(PICTURE: Water cooler and cups at school)

I had a post a few weeks ago about the community combs in public bathrooms. Well, this one tops them all. I've been meaning to post about this forever because it's just unbelievable. At my school are a bunch of water coolers for the students. Next to each water cooler are four cups sitting upside down in a little basin. The basin has about a 1/4 of an inch of water in it. These cups are for the students -- for all the students.

That's right, these are community cups. All x-hundreds of students who come in and out of Language Link each day share these cups. They fill them up at the water cooler, take a sip, then put them back. The next kid picks up the cup, fills it up, takes a sip, and puts it back. I know kids get sick from each other at school but COME ON!!!!

There Is No Hope

If you read yesterday's blog entry, my class tonight was supposed to discuss when a woman will become president of Vietnam. As soon as I walked into class I was greeted with a chorus of, "Can we change the topic? It is very boring." The chorus was all the girls in the class. I tried to argue with them that it was perhaps the most important topic we could talk about but they didn't want to hear about it. Instead they wanted to talk about something much more exciting -- autumn.

I take back what I said yesterday. There is no hope.

A Tad Behind The Times

I start all of my adult advanced English classes the same way. Every time class starts, we have a fifteen to thirty minute discussion on a pre-assigned topic.

At the the beginning of the semester I have all the students write on a piece of paper a topic they'd like to talk about. We then draw a topic at the end of class to discuss for the next class. I figure this keeps them interested and allows them to think about school on their off days rather than assigning homework, which the adults never do anyways.

So the topic in one of my classes the other day was "My Ideal Lover." First off, don't get too excited. The students didn't want to talk about flexible women, or well-endowed men. The topic is "lost in translation." What it really means is, "my ideal boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife." Yeah, much more boring.

I called on the first student, an 18 year old, and asked, "What is your ideal girlfriend like?" He immediately replied, "My ideal girlfriend is very beautiful and must be good at housework." Nobody batted an eye in the class, not even the four girls who were present. I said, "Really? That's it?" The kid nodded his head as if to say, "Obviously, idiot." I called on another guy and got nearly the same answer, "My ideal girlfriend must be beautiful and cook and clean well." The third guy I called on said something pretty hilarious: "I was married six months ago and she is not my ideal lover." "You mean your wife is your ideal lover, right?" I asked. "No. She is not. I don't know what my ideal lover is like." I wonder if he said that when he proposed.

I wrote a long time ago how Huyen told me right when we started dating that she, "didn't want to be a slave to her husband." Hearing first hand the attitudes on sexual equality made Huyen's point a lot clearer to me. It also made something else clearer to me, Huyen problem likes me because no Vietnamese men would want her! I'm her last resort!

I don't like to impose my political/social views on my classes but the discussion was still bothering me during my next class that night. It was time to assign a topic and I said, "I'm going to choose the topic for next week. The topic is When Will A Woman Be The President of Vietnam?" Immediately a boy said, "Never." I was about to say something when one of the girls proudly said, "I'm gonna be the President of Vietnam." There is hope. We'll find out exactly how much tomorrow when my class talks about the topic.

My Favorite Sign In Singapore

Yes, this is a lazy blog entry. However, this sign caught my attention in Singapore:

I was extremely surprised when I sat down to eat in the restaurant and found out that they only served chicken.

Durian Fruit

If you were blind and wanted to be able to tell the difference between an Asian person and a Foreigner, you could easily figure it out by doing what I call "The Dorian Test." Durian is a gigantic fruit that nearly every Asian person I've met loves. Here are the facts I know about Durian:

Fact 1: They smell. They smell really really bad. They're literally a stink bomb wrapped in a spiky shell.

Fact 2: X amount of people die every year by being plunked on the head by Durians. As someone told me in Cambodia, "Don't lay under a Durian tree at night." Apparently the flower opens at night and that's when they drop.

Fact 3: Durian's are called, "The King of Fruits." Apparently in the fruit kingdon royalty must smell like doodie.

Fact 4: Huyen loves Durian. She literally goes, "Oooooohhhh" whenever we pass a stand selling the fruit. Her "ooooohhhhhh" is simultaneously greeted by my "uhhhhhhhhhh" noise. She once bought a bunch of ice pops for my freezer. I opened one up and put it in my mouth and nearly gagged -- it was a frozen durian pop. I asked her why she bought me Durian and she yelled, "Those were for me! You ate my durian!"

Fact 5: Durians aren't allowed on the subway in Singapore:

Construction

I'm an early riser...and apparently so are Vietnamese construction crews. Since last week a demolition crew has been drilling/smashing/doing-other-exceedingly-loud-things literally feet from my head at 7AM every morning. The noise level is ridiculous. I've resorted to wearing ear plugs and blasting my music but still find myself with a migraine around 7:45AM every day.

The good news is the construction gives me a reason to leave my house everyday. I've been walking around my new neighbor exploring the streets and reading in a local park. The bad news is that I'm going to keep having to explore my neighborhood for another month. The construction has just started.

I knew this house was too good to be true (minus the dolls in attic).

Me vs. Lilah

(PICTURES: Lilah's Press vs. My Press)


I recently taught Lilah a very important life lesson -- you can't upstage me. Lilah had her birth announced in the West Essex Tribune last week (that's the Livingston, NJ town paper) and well, someone else had an announcement too--me.

I don't want to gloat, but only one of us got our picture in the paper. Nice try, Lilah, but you gotta wake up prettttttttttyyyyy early to one-up your Uncle Ben.

P.S. I've already got a huge announcement planned for the the day you say your first word.

Huyen's Name

-This post is quite overdue. I've had a couple of emails asking me exactly how you say Huyen's name. Well, who better to tell you than Huyen herself:

6 Months!

(PICTURE: One of my favorite classes and me...)

My Visa expired this week which means one thing -- I've now been in Vietnam for over six months. Lets take a look back at the top five highs and lows:

Top Five Highs:
1. Meeting Huyen. Every day I spend with her is another adventure. Some adventures are big (like taking road trips to the mountains) and some adventures are small (like trying to explain to her that I'm allergic to shellfish and constantly finding her ordering/cooking it for me).
2. Traveling around this amazing country. I've been to the Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City, Mui Ne, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Da Nang, Hue, Halong Bay, Hanoi and a bunch of small places in the country...
3. Living somewhere completely out of my comfort zone. Every time I step out the front door I'm reminded that I've never been anywhere like where I am now.
4. Never being at a loss to find amazing food. I'm about to jinx myself, but I've also only taken two Immodium ADs in 6 months. Yeah, the food here agrees with my system roughly 20X's better (or 78 less Immodium ADs better per six months) than the food in America.
5. Being roughly a foot and a half taller than everyone I meet. I like to think I'm inspiring some future writers to write a new version of Gulliver's Travels.

Top Five Lows:
1. Being away from my family and friends for so long and especially missing the birth of my niece.
2. Being robbed by Ninjas in my sleep.
3. Being evicted and having ten days to move because my girlfriend slept over.
4. Having to work Sundays as of two weeks ago. I hate working on Sunday!
5. Not being able to jump on my bicycle and ride to the beach in two minutes like I have the last couple years in Santa Monica.

Overall it's been a pretty amazing six months and I have no doubt the times ahead of me will only get better and better...

Thanks to everyone for reading the blog these past six months. The blog truly started as something to keep my mom from daily panic attacks and has grown into an international phenomenon. Okay, maybe it's not quite that big but it's really nice to know so many people are taking an interest in my life...so thanks!

Mid Autumn Festival

Despite it being a blatantly appalling spit in the face of the environment, tonight's Mid-Autumn festival was quite beautiful. The festival has something to do with the lunar calendar, but to be honest, I'm really not sure what. Regardless of what the original point of the festival was many centuries ago, today it basically translates too, "Lets fill the sky with burning china ball/tube things and watch them drift away towards some far away place where we don't have to watch the water buffalo choke to death on them."

The ironic thing about basing holidays around the lunar calendar is that the sky here is so polluted that sometimes it's hard to even see the moon. Upon reflection, I think this is why the festival is so popular -- when you can't see stars, you need to create them yourself.

Here's a video I shot of someone launching their china ball/tube thing:

Hayden Update

Good news on Hayden! After lots of ups and downs and very scary moments, Hayden is on the road to recovery -- literally. Hayden was flown back to Brisbane, Australia a couple of days ago where he'll continue his treatment and rehab. 

I've gotten tons of emails asking about Hayden (and according to google analytics, lots of people were reading about him on my site) so thank you all for your good thoughts towards him. 

All the teachers at Language Link signed a t-shirt for Hayden which was delivered to him about a week ago. Hayden said the shirt was, "Beautiful." I like to think that we were all kind of the final push towards getting him better! 

My First Accident

Yesterday I had my first motorbike accident. You never picture your first accident but if I had, it wouldn't have gone down like this. I was on a basically empty street (very unusual for Hanoi) when all of a sudden two high school students cut directly across the street on their bicycles. The two were chatting with each other and didn't bother to look either way before crossing the street...Or in other words, standard operating procedure for Vietnam. I was going about 35KM an hour (21 MPH) when I saw them crossing my path just about twenty feet ahead. My natural instincts took over and I found myself doing three things:

1. Screaming, "WHOAH, WHOAH, WHOAH!!!!"

2. Squeezing both the hand brake and pushing down on the foot brake at the same time....something I believe they tell you never to do in motorcycle school (which I took three years ago in LA).

3. Putting my left foot on the ground in hopes of it being a third brake -- yeah, like in a cartoon.

Despite my fast reaction, I couldn't slow down in time and I nailed the bicycle's back tire. Immediately I started to apologize to the kid, "I'm so sorry...." However, the kid just looked at me, glanced at his tire and then crossed the opposing traffic...without looking.

Thankfully nobody was hurt...

Teacher Of The Year

It's official: My students love me.

A couple weeks ago one of my classes finished and after the last class two of my students bashfully came up to me and presented me with presents. I got a sweet new key chain and a mug that says, "Friend Forever." That's right, I've got a Vietnamese friend forever!!!

(PICTURE: My new favorite mug and key chain)

I really appreciated the gifts but what I liked even better were the cards:

In case you can't read the cards they say:

CARD 1: I wish you have a good life and a succeed job. Thanks to you, my speaking and listening is better. Student, Van <=Cloudy>

CARD 2: The course has just finished. I have a gift for you. And I want to say that during the course, you done very well. I regret to not continue studying there. I am always your friend. Best wishes for you, An.

Now the question arises: Why didn't my other twelve students write me cards/buy me gifts!

My Sister

My sister's job is to deal with the press and well, to get good/bad information about people out there. Hannah's great at doing her job for other people but not so great at doing it for herself. Simply put, Hannah hasn't been mentioned on Ahoy Hanoi in months -- and well, if you want to be anyone on the internet you need your name on Ahoy Hanoi.

All of the good press as of late has gone towards my brother. Having a baby will do that. Well, I think my sister is starting to mount a campaign to get her name back out there.

Last week Hannah was at the Democratic National Convention. Every morning I would wake up to watch the speeches with the hopes of seeing Hannah in the background. When Hannah wasn't too busy bumping elbows with politicians she managed to send me an email or two. On one of the first days I commented to her that I thought Montana's Governor Schweitzer gave a great speech. Well, just a few days later Hannah sent me this email:

conversation*:

Me: Hi, Governor. My brother lives in Vietnam but he saw your speech and raved about it.
Schweitzer: He lives in Vietnam? How did he watch it?
Me: The internet I guess? Anyway, if we took a picture together I think it'd make him really jealous.
Schweitzer: Yeah? Let's do it! For your brother.

*it went something like that. The party was very loud.

Welcome back to Ahoy Hanoi, Hannah. And a big welcome to you Governor. And yes, I'm jealous.

Google Analytics

Some of you may have noticed that about a week ago I took down the counter on my website. I decided that instead of having a counter with some annoying advertisement I'd instead sign up for google analytics.

For those of you who have never heard of google analytics, don't worry, neither did I until last week. Basically it's a free google site that tells you nearly everything about who is visiting your website. When I say nearly everything, I mean nearly everything. It's basically the real life version of Orwell's Big Brother. I can now see where people are logging on to my site, for how long, how often, where they are coming from, going to, etc. So yeah, those of you who pretend to read my blog, I now know you're not OR just reading it for two seconds.

After a week here is some of the cooler information I've gotten:
1. I had 582 visits on my site last week.
2. I had 236 Unique Visitors. That means 236 different people read my blog. That's 234 more than I thought...the two being my mother and I.
3. The Average person reads my blog for 5 minutes and 18 seconds.
4. The Average Person in Livingston, NJ (my hometown) reads my blog for 1:31 seconds. That means my MOTHER gets bored from my website faster than almost everyone else!
5. In the USA, I'm the most popular in California. I had 97 hits there last week. That's followed by 90 in NYC, 50 in NJ, 12 in Colorado (Hi, Ryan's family!), and 11 in Illinois. After that I've got people in 17 other states reading my blog. Pretty cool....except for the fact that only 8 people are reading it in DC. Come on, Hannah, I thought you got your friends to bookmark my site!!!
6. My blog is also popular in other places. I currently have people reading my blog in 18 countries: USA, Canada, Vietnam, Israel, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Greece and China.

That said, the COOLEST thing about google analytics is I can see how people FOUND my site. For example, what did they put into google as search words that gave them ahoyhanoi. The number 1 search people have used is pretty obvious: "ahoy hanoi." Well, the second one isn't quite as obvious and well it is frankly HILARIOUS. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you ten seconds:
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Okay, the number two search put into google to find my website is: "VIETNAMESE GIRLFRIEND NEEDED." That's not as random as you think. The #8 most used search words were, "Vietnamese Girlfriend." I also like the 16th and 17th most searched words: "Hanoi Famous Massage Place" and "Hanoi + Massages." Number 23 is great too: "Meeting Girls In Hanoi."

Ahoy Hanoi offers a little something for everyone!

The Callahan Rule

Overall I had a pretty good tournament. I made some nice catches, scored a bunch of points, and had zero throwing turnovers (I also dropped three frisbees...which has been haunting me since).

That said, the memory I'll take away form this tournament has to do with the Callahan Rule.

You're probably saying to yourself, "What's the Callahan Rule?" Well, that's what I said when I received an email a few days before the tournament with official rules. In the rules, which I glanced over, it said something about "Playing with the Callahan Rule." I didn't think twice about it until the night before the tournament. At the tournament registration party a few of us got to talking and one of my teammates, Long, said, "Did you look at the rules? It said something about the Callahan. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says if you intercept the frisbee in your endzone you get a point." I said, "Cool." The subject quickly changed...

For the record, here's the Wikipedia definition:

Scoring

A point is scored when a player catches a pass in the endzone his team is attacking. In older versions of the rules, only offensive players could score. However, current UPA and WFDF rules allow a defensive team to score by intercepting a pass in the endzone they are defending. This play is referred to as a Callahan goal or simply a Callahan. It is named after well-known ultimate player Henry Callahan.

CUT TO:

It's the second game of the day on Saturday. We're playing Bangkok and are currently leading 2-0. Bangkok intercepted a pass from our team and quickly turned around and marched towards our endzone. I read the Bangkok play, turned on my jets and dove to intercept a Bangkok pass in our endzone.

If I can gloat for a second, it was an awesome defensive play. I stood up from the ground and declared, "CALLAHAN!! That's a point." I then slammed the frisbee down. Well, nobody was sharing my excitement. Not from my team or Bangkok. In fact, a couple people were laughing. I think the only person who was on board with me was Long who may have given me a fist pump from the sideline. Well, the team captain of Bangkok walked up, laughed and said, "Dude, Callahans are when you intercept it in that endzone." He pointed to the far end of the field. Turns out it's only the endzone you are attacking. What I did turned out to be a turnover on me since I threw the frisbee down. Bangkok got the frisbee on the goal line and promptly scored.

I walked over to our sidelong and approached Long: "I thought..." Before I could finish my sentence, Long said, "I guess Wikipedia isn't always right." FU Wikipedia.

The Tournament

(PICTURE: VUDOO NORTH)

Our team is called VUDOO North. VUDOO stands for: Vietnam Ultimate Defense Offense Organization. Like much of recent Vietnamese history, VUDOO is divided into North and South.

That said, our team was hardly a true North Vietnamese team. Originally we had about fifteen people going from the capital but during the month leading up to the tournament, player after player kept dropping out. David Jensen (back row in the picture, third from the left) from HCMC became our honorary captain and put together a rag-tag crew to represent the north of 'Nam.

It should be noted that David Jensen is an ultimate frisbee legend. Before I met David I had heard a lot about him. Out of all the quotes my favorite one was, "He's ranked as one of the top ultimate players in Southeast Asia." Upon hearing this I just remember thinking, "Really? There's a ranking system?" And then my egotistical self thought, "Do they know I live in Southeast Asia? I was the co-senior athlete at LHS in '97 so I've got to be at least in the top 100, right?" Anyway, after seeing David play it was pretty obvious that even if there isn't a ranking, he's definitely one of the best players in Asia. The guy is sick.

Besides being great at frisbee, David is also a great team manager. Within a week of our team falling apart David put together a solid crew of freelance ultimate players. Our team ending up having a core from Hanoi but also four players from Japan and four from Singapore. Oh, and our free-agents happen to be awesome...even the two high school girls we recruited from Singapore (Let me make the joke for you: Ben, I knew you moved to Asia to hang out with high school girls).

On the first day we played one of the better teams from Singapore. Yes, one of the better teams. Maybe you're asking yourself how many teams are there in Singapore. I'm not exactly sure but there are at least 8...oh, and it's a STATE SPONSORED SPORT. These teams get money from the government to recruit players. They also practice three days a week.

Now our team, well, we practiced once -- the day before the tournament...and about five of our players weren't there...and we didn't know each other's names...and I was probably in the fourth best shape of anyone....and I hadn't run a mile in six months. So what I'm trying to say is, if I was a betting man, I would have bet on Singapore. That said, we beat them by three. It helps having one of the best players from SE Asia on your team.

Our next game was against a team from Bangkok. We kicked their ass too. I think the score was 13-4.

Next up was a team from Australia. They took an early 2-0 lead on us. David -- have I mentioned he's pretty freaking good at ultimate frisbee -- put his game face on and quickly got our team on the board...a few times. In the end we kicked Australia's ass also. Vudoo was 3-0.

In our final game of the day, in basically a monsoon, we played Vudoo South. It was a classic case of civil war. Well, almost classic. After being told by David we needed to have a large goal differential in order to get a good seeding the following day, we annihilated the southerners 13-1. History repeated itself. The north won again.

At the end of the first day we were 4-0. We were all on cloud 9 and told that the following day we'd be playing one of the best teams from the pool above us. This is where I should mention there were two pools: A & B. We were in the B pool. AKA: the weaker pool.

The next morning we played the second best team from Singapore...and they whooped us. I think the end score was 13-5. After that we played perhaps the third best team from Singapore...and they barely beat us 12-10. In the end, out of 24 teams from about fifteen countries I believe we were ranked around 14th -- not too shabby for a bunch of strangers competing against teams who live and breath frisbee.

At the end of the day I watched the championship game and realized just how far I/we had to go to get to to the top of the Southeast Asian frisbee world. The championship game was between the Philippines (who I was told took 2nd at the World Beach Ultimate Frisbee Championships) and a team called Pyro who happened to be all American dudes with a few American girls and some Chinese/Japanese girls too. I was told that Pyro had been playing together since high school and that their high school was, "famous for ultimate frisbee." Well I believe it.

Both teams were SICK. I mean they were AMAZING. Every single player was basically on the level of David Jensen. They could throw the frisbee a half dozen different ways with ease, having it land forty yards away on a dime. They could all sprint for an hour and not look tired. and jump a solid foot or two in the air like young Jordans... Simply put, these guys and girls were athletes. I thought to myself, "I thought frisbee was for hippies." In the end Pyro won 15-14 in sudden death overtime. It was thrilling...and almost inspired me to get back into shape.


(PICTURE: After our second loss on Sunday. The field was a tad bit muddy. I blame it for our loss.)

Singapore - The Flight

(PICTURE: Singapore's Parliament)

The days preceding my trip to Singapore made me reminisce about my teenage years. I felt like my young pre-pubescent self getting all excited for the annual Memorial Day Tournament that Livingston Lighting, my traveling soccer team, used to take. The only big differences between now and then are:

a) I'm not in good physical shape now.

b) I'm playing for a Vietnamese team. Sure the lightning had Matt Shin and Ben Park but they were Korean-Americans.

c) My parents wouldn't be driving me to the tournament...which meant no Peter, Paul and Mary
or John Denver on repeat for 6 hours of traffic.

d) I was going to play ultimate frisbee instead of soccer -- a sport I just started to play about four months ago.

I got to the airport early and met up with a few of my teammates who were on my flight. Ngan, one of the girls on the team looked pretty nervous and I asked her, "Is this your first flight?" She shook her head yes so I told her everything would be okay. I also told her that sometimes people's ears hurt on flights so she should either chew gum or wiggle her jaw. Ngan didn't believe me...probably because I also told her all women on flights are supposed to bark like dogs during take-off. Well, she should have barked like a dog and chewed gum because about five minutes into the flight I looked at Ngan and she had a pained expression on her face. She pointed at her ear and winced out the word, "Hurt."

But that wasn't the highlight of the flight. The highlight of the flight happened about fifteen minutes later: I was reading my book (Billy Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything) when an all too familiar smell hit my nose. It smelled like dog shit. I looked up and guess who was walking down the aisle towards me -- Minh! That's right Minh, my landlord who had thrown me out of my old house just days earlier (and who I basically called a liar to his face when he cheated us out of about $40 on our security deposit giving us a bogus exchange rate).

Minh and I briefly made eye contact and I smiled at him. He immediately darted his eyes towards the ceiling as if a Michelangelo fresco was painted there and kept walking to the lavatory (where I can only assume he was going to clean the bottom of his shoes off). A couple of minutes later he walked back down the aisle and sat down. I saw him casually whisper something to the person next to him. Sure enough that person casually turned around a minute later and it was Binh. I smiled at her too and she too darted her eyes away. It was like I was Medusa.

Despite my LHS and Syracuse educations I'm really really bad at math. But come on! What are the odds that my landlords would be on the same exact flight as me just days after throwing me out of their house (quick recap for new readers: my girlfriend Huyen slept over my house and my landlords evicted me). Whatever the odds are they aren't good. I'm not a very superstitious person but immediately the thought struck me, "this can't be a good sign for the tournament."

Okay, Maybe A Few Ninjas...

I got back from Singapore and Malaysia yesterday and was greeted with some good and bad news:

Good News: The kitchen is finished and it is really nice. In fact, when the taxi dropped me off Huyen was inside my house preparing a feast (no she doesn't have a key yet, Ryan was home). She cooked a huge meal for Ryan, Jessica and myself as a welcome home meal. It was delicious.

Bad News: Ryan informed me that he left his keys in his motorbike last week and when he returned someone had snatched the garage door opener. All the other keys were still on the key chain except for the garage door opener. So yeah, scratch that blog from yesterday -- the ninjas might in fact have the key to our castle.

No More Ninjas

Check out my new front door which I purposely left off my blog yesterday. Yeah, I'm attempting to stretch a single into a double. That said, my new front door is AWESOME! There's no way Ninjas can break into this house...unless they climb one of our four porches.

Tour Of My New House

My Mother asked for it and I'm delivering. Here's a tour of my new house. For contrast go back in my blog and watch the tour of Huyen's house. This place is ridiculous...

Me and Huyen

The day I was robbed four months ago I had two thoughts running through my head:

Thought One: Maybe I should leave Vietnam. I had been here for nearly a month and a half and had seen most of the country. It would have been just as easy for me to pack up my bags and move on to another country and begin to teach somewhere else. I started to look into teaching in Japan and even emailed someone about my options there.

Thoughts Two: I had just met this really great girl and didn't want to leave until after having gone on a couple dates with her.

Four months later -- and one eviction -- I couldn't be happier. Happy Anniversary, Huyen!

The Lion City

I am currently in Singapore playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. I wrote a couple entries before I left to automatically post so that my die-hard junkie(s) wouldn't freak out. If I get a chance during frisbee madness I'll post some new stuff...but I can't make any promises. You know how crazy these frisbee tournaments get.

A little chuckle to get you through the next minute: I was packing for Singapore and put on my favorite green army-ish button down. Huyen looked at me and said, "You look like Forrest Gump. Do you know him?" I said, "Forrest Gump?" She said, "Yes, he's very famous. There is a movie about him." I said, "You know he's not real right?" And she said, "He's not real? He fought against Vietnam in the army."

Man, I love Vietnam!