Farewell My Bed

Southeast Asian beds aren't exactly -- what's the word, what's the word -- soft. Lets say the worldwide mattress scale of cushie-ness ranges from 1-10.

Cushie 1: The bare hard floor.
Cushie 2: Huyen's bed. This "bed" is a bamboo mat laid on top of wood strips.
Cushie 3: A blanket laid on top of a bamboo mat laid on top of wood strips.
Cushie 4: A 1-inch hard piece of foam on top of wood strips.
Cushie 5: An egg-crate mattress put on nothing but the hard floor.
Cushie 6: Your below average pull-out couch with springs protruding out.
Cushie 7: Your fully blown up air mattress.
Cushie 8: My brother's childhood bed. AKA, a nice sturdy American mattress.
Cushie 9: My childhood bed. AKA, a nice American mattress with a bunch of bounce to it.
Cushie 10: One of those space-age foam mattresses that contort to your body.

My Hanoi bed is a solid 4. Literally it's a SOLID four. My bed is rock hard. If you were in the military and dropped a quarter on it you wouldn't have to worry about it bouncing. Change dies upon contact. If your forget where you're sleeping and sprawl onto the bed, well, you're going to have some bruises and possible a broken chin if you don't hit the pillows exactly right.
That said, I love my bed. Never before in my life have I slept as well, or as much, as I have on my Vietnamese bed. This discovery will:
a) Help my back in the long run since I believe hard beds are supposedly better for you.
b) Save me a bunch of money since I'll eventually need a new bed (I sold mine when leaving in LA). Instead of purchasing a $1,000 mattress I can just steal the cardboard container for someone else's mattress, wrap it in a sheet, and call it a night.

Anyway, leaving this house has its ups and downs. However, one of the biggest downs is that I absolutely will miss my bed.

AAA - Vietnam

(PICTURE: My new favorite bike "garage.")

After karaoke I drove Pamela back to her hostel. About three blocks from where she was staying I felt my bike starting to wobble. I pulled over and said to Pamela, "Can you tell if the back tire is flat?" Pamela looked down and said, "Looks good to me." I figured maybe I hit a rough spot on the road and started to drive again. It took going only about eight feet before I knew I definitely had a flat -- my bike started really really wobbling.

I pulled over again and sure enough the tire was totally flat. This was the THIRD TIME in about a month that my bike tire was flat. Two out of three times it was a direct result of driving another Westerner. To say these bikes aren't designed for foreigners, let alone two foreigners, is probably a gigantic understatement.

Well, within seconds of pulling over a Vietnamese man walked out of store and asked if he could help us. Mind you, it was eleven at night already. I pointed at my flat tire and he in turn pointed diagonally across the street: "You can fix it there." Sure enough a man had set up shop on the corner and was fixing bikes.

This is a common site in Hanoi. Throughout the city are sidewalk motorbike repairmen. Literally someone just brings their tools, an air pump and a bucket of water and fixes bikes right on the sidewalk. Why the bucket of water you might be asking? Well, to find the hole in the inner tube they inflate the tube and stick one part at a time under the water. When air bubbles begin to form they've found the hole. They then shave the hole, put some kind of super glue on it, then a patch and it's good as new. It took this guy roughly four minutes to fix my bike. Cost: $1.15

On a side note, this little anecdote serves as a good way for me to say how much I love Vietnamese people. Within minutes there were two acts of kindness:

ACT OF KINDNESS 1: The stranger asking if he could help us. How many times have you gone up to a random person having car trouble and asked if you could help?

ACT OF KINDNESS 2: When it was time to pay I was having a hard time understanding how much the repair guy was saying it cost. I thought he said 100,000 Dong. I started to hand him two 50,000 Dong notes and he shook his head at me. He then peaked into my wallet and took out two 10,000 Dong notes and smiled at me. You have to love honesty. This guy could have taken the 100,000 and called it an early night. However, he didn't.

Karaoke Videos

(PICTURE: My Irish friend Pamela, who I met in Australia, was in town and joined the singing frenzy)

They love Karaoke in Vietnam. Last night I went karaoking for the fifth time since I moved here. For those of you who are counting, that's five times more than I ever went in the states. A few things always strike me as amazing whenever I have a karaoke night:

1. Vietnamese people sing their hearts out with no embarrassment...when they are stone sober.

2. For a tonal language, the majority of Vietnamese people are tone deaf.

3. Despite winning the vocal music award at Mt. Pleasant Elementary School AND singing at Carnegie Hall* with Showstoppers (the "elite" singers of Mt. Pleasant Middle School**) I know I'm no Sinatra. That's putting it mildly. Frank-ly, I'm a horrible singer. My brother and sister got ALL the musical genes in my family. That said, I still get HUGE applause every time I sing a song here and inevitably get at least one, "you're very good" from someone in the room.

(PICTURE: Huyen and the ladies going crazy for the sweet sounds of my tenor voice)

4. The karaoke videos are amazing. Usually they are literally long videos shot by some guy riding a motorbike through the country. The video is usually wobbily and the footage is of traffic and street scenery. However, on occasion you get slightly better quality video. Here's a snipet of what we had last night. My favorite parts are the monkeys and bees...




* It was a wing of Carnegie Hall. Despite practicing for months to sing at Carnegie Hall we didn't know until that night we were basically singing in the coat closet. But hey, it was still in Carnegie Hall.

** I was most definitely not an elite singer. The group had 10 very talented girls and I believe 7 very talented boys. They need three more boys to match up with the girls on stage. Somehow I was selected.***

***Being selected may or may not have had something to do with the fact that my father was on the Board of Education at the time.

House Hunting

With the prospect of being homeless in ten days Ryan and I hit the streets of Hanoi with wild abandon. Here were the candidates for our new house:

House 1:

The first house San took us to was right near Lenin Park -- the biggest park in Hanoi. It was also much closer to Ryan's office than our old house and about two times the size of our old place. Those were the positives. The negatives were that it was in an alley and I was having flashbacks of my first house experience (for you newcomers search the blog for when I was robbed by Ninjas in my sleep). The house was also really dirty and just didn't have any real charm to it.

House #2:

San took us out to Tay Ho district, the Beverly Hills of Hanoi. We saw this AWESOME house that was somehow transported directly from the 70s. There were huge glass windows with tons of natural light and a garden in front of the place. There was also a gigantic rooftop deck with a view of West Lake. The problem, and this was a big problem, is that it would be a really far commute for Ryan to get to work. We figured it would take at least 25 to 30 minutes. That's just a pain in the ass. San suggested to us a couple of times that this was the house for us but we decided to wait a day or two before rushing into a decision. Plus, we took what San said with a grain of salt. After all our landlord is on his butt to get us out of her house as quickly as possible.

House #3:


Huyen joined the house hunting process and called a bunch of real estate agents for us. This morning we were told to meet at the Oprah House to see a nearby place. This was really exciting since the Oprah House is in a great location and could be a very cool spot to live. We were also told that the house was extremely nice. This would have been a good combination. Yes, "would have been." We showed up at the Oprah House and met the agent. He told us to follow him. We jumped on our bikes and started to follow...and follow...and follow. After we got on the highway I started to realize that perhaps this house wasn't so close to the Oprah House. After about seven minute we pulled up in front of the place. After another fifteen minutes the owner finally showed up and let us in. Indeed the house was fantastic. It was huge, clean and had a nice Vietnamese feeling to it (i.e. a Buddha shrine in the attic). The problem was it was way off the beaten path. While there though the real estate agent told us about another property right near our present house. He said, "It is a much better place." So with that, we motorbiked over there...

House #4:

This house was awesome. House is actually the wrong word. It was a compound. It felt like an old mansion. There were chandeliers, multiple entrances, a rooftop basketball court, hardwood floors, marble staircases, a full stacked kitchen....and a Frenchman living in it. Unfortunately the Frenchman wasn't a butler, he was a tenant. We were told he'd be out at the end of the month but that would make our move just a tad bit trickier. After all I'm pretty sure Binh and Minh will be having the police escort us out on the 25th. God help us if we asked for six more days...especially when we were told today by San that, "Binh asked me to try very hard to get you out by the 20th." That's five days earlier than she told us we had.

House #5:

I found a property on-line which looked pretty ideal. Huyen called the agent and we made an appointment. We jumped on our bikes and headed over to the house...which was in a vaguely familiar neighborhood....my old neighborhood...the neighborhood I was robbed in. It wasn't directly on the same street but it was connected through the alleys. It's actually a famous neighborhood because there is a shot down US fighter plane half floating in a moat in the middle of the alley. The potential house we were checking out overlooked the rusting US plane. Yeah, that probably isn't the best omen when looking for a new house. Oh, and the place was a dump. I mean it was disgusting.

House #6:

San was back in the picture. He called me this morning and said he had two more houses. We showed up at the first one and were escorted to the front door...where we were told to peak in through the glass. Apparently the power was out and they couldn't open the electronic door. All we could see was a couch. San's assistant said, "Very nice, right?" It wasn't a very nice couch so I could only assume the rest of the house wasn't too great either. They asked if we could come back to it later when the door MIGHT open. We passed.

House #7:

San had one more property to show us. We drove to the neighborhood and waited for the landlady to show up. After waiting about fifteen minutes this old lady finally rolled up sitting on the back of some dude's motorbike. Immediately something was obvious: she had no idea where she was. She was literally shielding her eyes while looking at different houses. Huyen explained to me that the landlady couldn't remember where her house was. We were told to wait on a street corner till she figured it out. She literally drove in circles around the neighborhood. Finally after sitting down at a local cafe and ordering drinks the old lady found the house. We gulped down our drinks and went to check out the place:

(The outside of House #7) San told us that the house was brand new. They opened the front gate and indeed it was brand new. It was so brand new that it wasn't even finished. The place was covered in a one inch layer of dust. There was no refrigerator...or furniture. It also had one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in the third floor bedroom:

(PICTURE: The only previous tenant)

Keep in mind, this house has not been lived in. I repeat, nobody has lived in this house. Nada. Not one person. Zilch. Yet there is this creepy freaking doll perched up against the wall on the third floor bedroom. Where did it come from? Who's doll is it? Why is it standing? Why did this picture come out blurry despite me using a flash? Man, I'm still creeped out.

And that's not all that was inside this house. When we got up to the fifth floor (yes, there were five floors) Huyen let out a scream. She saw this on the ground:

(PICTURE: Just your standard decomposing rat).

Ryan and I looked at the rat and I think the same feeling struck both of us, "This feels like home."

We decided to take the house...

It'll be ready in a week...

Hopefully the doll will be gone.

Worm Noodels Part II

(Huyen eating her bowl of eel noodles)

For those of you who don't read all the comments on the blog, you wouldn't have read the one posted by Anh in regards to my "Worm Noodles" posting a few weeks ago. Anh kindly pointed out that what I was eating was not worms at all but rather eels. Huyen confirmed this to be the true in a "lost in translation" moment.

If you recall, I didn't exactly like the "worm soup." Well, I thought I'd give it another chance now that I knew it was really just eels (Do you hear that noise? Yeah, it's my mom saying, "you think eels are better!". Well, yeah, I do. I happen to love eel sushi).

Huyen took me to a better eel noodle restaurant and indeed the soup was delicious. I estimate that I ate about thirty strips of eel.

While there Huyen told me there was something else delicious on the menu -- pigeon porridge. I got one as an appetizer:
(PICTURE: Yup, that's a full pigeon dropped into a bowl of porridge.)

Evicted

Tonight Ryan and I were due to pay our rent for the next three months. I had texted our landlord on Monday and made a plan to meet tonight at 9:30. Ryan and I got our money together and knocked on her door right at 9:30. We sat down, ready to pay when she said, "We need to talk."

In broken English she then told us we had to leave the house within the next two weeks. She told us that the Police had called her and said that, "More than two people were living in the house." I told her I didn't believe her that the police called and eventually she conceded "my friend who is a policeman" called me. This I'm also certain is probably a lie.

The fact is our landlord has been rude to us from the very beginning. Her husband has always been a decent guy until the last week when he couldn't look us in the eye and just mumbled complaints about our motorbikes. The problem is simply that they don't want Huyen staying over the house...and now Jessica too. That said, Huyen has stayed over three times in three months which is also the same amount of times Jessica has stayed over.

I'm sure we could argue this and stay but frankly I would feel awkward and don't want to have to come home to a place every night where I'm not wanted. What sucks though is that this house is AWESOME! I just emailed the real estate agent who found us this apartment and he wrote me right back:

Hi Ben & Ryan,

I heard her complaints several times and today she also informed me that she wants you out by 25^th August. It is the bad things of living near the landlord, which are old fashioned that we did not consider before.

Yes, I have a nice house near there, will show you tomorrow.

How long will you stay in Hanoi to calculate from now? If it is too short, it will be a difficulty in renting a house as most of landlord wants long term lease.

Anyway, we will meet and discuss tomorrow. Pls give me a message when you are free.

Regards!

San

So in conclusion, I'm being evicted for the first time in my life. Ironically this is probably the best I've ever behaved in a house. I've literally never even drank a beer here. Never had friends over (without telling the landlords weeks in advance and turning over their passport). Never played loud music. Never broken anything. And never complained except to get rid of a rat and to have internet that works. Ryan and I are just hoping their next tenants are a complete nightmare.

F'ing Vietnam...

Huyen's Thesis Defense: AKA Vietnamese Idol

(PICTURE: Huyen and I outside of her classroom. And no, I didn't buy her any of those flowers or the pillow. I'm a jerk. Read below.)

On Sunday Huyen defended her thesis at the Foreign Trade University. Her thesis was something about International Business and Human Resources. To be honest, I really couldn't understand a word of it, and no, not because it was in Vietnamese. I'm just clueless when it comes to business...or basically anything that is a cousin of math. Frankly, I'm 29 years old and still don't understand my father's job. Seriously, what exactly is a bond?

Anyway, I went to Huyen's university at 7:45AM to see her present her thesis. I had wanted to buy Huyen a copy of Dr. Seuss's, "Oh, The Places You'll Go" but couldn't find it. To be honest, i didn't look that hard since no Vietnamese person I asked had ever heard of Dr. Seuss. So instead I just wrote Huyen a card which kind of summed up the message Dr. Seuss put into the book. I thought I was being nice...until I showed up and EVERYONE at the school had HUGE bouquets of flowers for the graduates. Well, that is everyone except me. Yup, you can say it, I'm a bad boyfriend. I felt terrible until I handed Huyen the card I wrote. Her face immediately lit up like it was Christmas morning.

When I got to the classroom I was immediately surprised at how small it was. I mean it was tiny. I had pictured a large lecture hall but the room was no bigger than the classrooms I teach in every night. This meant I had a great seat--row two, baby! I gotta tell you, it was like sitting ringside at a prize fight.

Basically this is how it worked:

STEP 1: 7 girls were given a time slot between 8AM and 11AM.

STEP 2: The 7 girls were told at 8AM what order they would be presenting. Huyen was number five.

STEP 3: One at a time a girl would present her thesis for between five and ten minutes.

STEP 4: When she finished a three-teacher-panel would take turns RIPPING apart the thesis. Obviously I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying but facial expressions go a long way. I turned to Huyen after the first girl went and said, "That teacher in the middle is really mean." She looked at me with wide eyes and nodded really fast.

STEP 5: The students would take notes while being ripped apart and then respond to the teacher panel's criticism.

STEP 6: The teacher-panel would rip apart the response and dismiss the students.

STEP 7: The students would run/walk away from the stage to a round of applause from the audience...

This process may sound slightly familiar to you. Yeah, it's basically the formula American Idol uses. A performer goes, a panel rips them apart, the performer defends themselves, the panel rips them apart again. The teachers also reminded me of American Idol: one was nice most of the time, one was ridiculously mean most of the time, and the third was sort of drunk.




Huyen did a great job. The whole time she was going I was on pins and needles. I think I was more nervous than she was. When the male teacher started to rip her apart I had to take a bunch of deep breaths because I really wanted to get up and pound his stupid-clown-shoe-wearing-baggy-pants-ugly face into the blackboard. I wanted to yell out, "Those who can't do, teach, A-hole." But then I remembered that I have the utmost respect for teachers...and, well, I'm a teacher too. It also occurred to me that I if I beat up the teacher it would probably hurt Huyen's score.

After the last student presented her thesis, the teachers read out-loud everyone's scores. Huyen got a 8.73 out of 10. This wasn't the highest score and it wasn't the lowest score either. Huyen was momentarily upset about her grade. Personally I thought she did a phenomenal job and I told her that a number can't measure how amazing she is.

Oh by the way, I didn't realize until this week that Huyen's been going to TWO universities at the same time. She graduates from the Foreign Language University in December. Yeah, that's right, two schools...at the same time. My girlfriend is totally smarter than I am.