Hong

(PICTURE: Hong fruit.)

As I'm sure my mother will comment on, as a youngster I loved climbing trees. In the backyard of my first house on Longacre Drive, we had two evergreen trees. I'm pretty sure I climbed each tree about 1,000 times. In fact, I think me climbing those trees may be one reason my mother went a tad gray (before her hair naturally turned back to brown).

The morning after my day of horrific stomach pain, Huyen's dad force-fed me hong fruit. We don't have this fruit in America so I'm not sure what the English name for it is.
I like hong fruit but I was a tad skeptical when Hong, Huyen's father, encouraged me to eat it. A week or two earlier Huyen and I ate this fruit in Hanoi and Huyen told me that it was a good source of fiber. I'm no doctor but loading up on fiber when one has horrific dirrhea just doesn't seem like a good idea. However, Hong encouraged me to eat four hong. Well, they did the trick. After eating the fruit I felt a lot better...although it might also have been because I ate four bowls of plain rice and took anti-diarrhea medicine too.

(PICTURE: Hong collecting hong.)

Later that afternoon, Huyen's parents suggested that we go to her old house and pick hong fruit from their garden. As Huyen and I started to leave, her father said he was coming along. Now, I love my father and think he's an amazing man but there's no way he could do what Huyen's father did on this day. Huyen's dad scampered up the hong trees and collected a huge bag worth of hong. Hong (again Huyen's Dad, not the fruit) is 57 years old and easily climbed these trees way better than I ever could climb when I was in my climbing prime...roughly eight years old.

(PICTURE: That's me climbing about fifteen feet lower than Huyen's dad.)

Diarrhea

There are few things worse than having horrible diarrhea. However there are many things that can make having horrible diarrhea even worse. Here's a couple that uh, um, a friend of mine experienced the other day:

Making Diarrhea Worse #1: Riding 50 Kilometers on bumpy roads to visit the future in-laws.

Making Diarrhea Worse #2: Being force fed dinner upon arriving at the future-in-laws.

Making Diarrhea Worse #3: Being force fed all the parts of a fish that you normally consider gross but Vietnamese consider the best parts (i.e. the egg sack inside the female fish).

Making Diarrhea Worse #4: Having to sit on the floor, cross legged, while your girlfriend translates "Ben has diarrhea" to her parents. I mean, "Ben's friend has diarrhea."

Making Diarrhea Worse #5: Being given traditional medicine by your girlfriend's parents. The medicine (I'm pretty sure Tiger Balm) is applied by rubbing it directly onto your stomach. After a couple of minutes your stomach starts to burn. So your stomach and butt are now on fire.

Making Diarrhea Worse #6: Having explosive fart noises which most likely could be heard through wooden doors in a large house and can definitely be heard through a screen door in a small Vietnamese house.

Making Diarrhea Worse #7: Having to share a bed with your girlfriend's brother while your stomach feels like it could erupt at any minute.

Goodbye Dong Da Lake!

(PICTURE: One day children living on Dong Da Lake will think this picture was altered in photoshop.)

Last week I wrote a post about the disappearance of Dong Da Lake. I had been told that it was just being cleaned and this was reinforced by a blog reader's comments. However, I have just been told by a reliable source (a thirteen year old boy who I tutor around the corner from that lake) that in fact Dong Da Lake is gone forever. There are signs posted near the lake saying that a railroad station will be built where the lake is. Needless to say, this makes me very very unhappy. If the railroad station was actually a subway that could help the traffic I could potentially be swayed into the necessity of destroying the beauty of the city. However, that is not the case. Goodbye Dong Da Lake. I really loved you.

Bear Bile Update

Last June I wrote a blog about the horrific practice of extracting bear bile for traditional medicinal means. Well, there appears to be some good news -- organizations are starting to crack down on this practice in Vietnam. My friend Sam sent me this article from the Huffington Post:

TAN UYEN, Vietnam — The three tractor-trailer containers sat in a row, divided with metal partitions into 19 tiny, sweltering cells.

Massive claws and furry black noses poked between the iron bars: 19 rare Asiatic moon bears awaiting their next gall bladder milking. Their bile is a coveted traditional medicine ingredient used to treat everything from hemorrhoids to epilepsy.

Some paced nervously inside the cages, panting and foaming at the mouth with wild bloodshot eyes. Others laid in their urine and feces, resting on the cool concrete floor. They devoured the bananas and chunks of watermelon – including the rinds – offered to them, a welcome treat from their usual diet of rice gruel.

The bears were found at an illegal Taiwanese-owned operation in southern Vietnam. On Friday, four days after being hoisted onto tractor trailers and driven 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers) north, they reached a new home with grass and tire swings at a rescue center about two hours outside of Hanoi, the capital.

The newly rescued bears – two of them missing limbs and one blind – were sedated and removed one-by-one from their tiny cages Friday at Tam Dao National Park. They are joining 29 bears already at the rescue center.

Ultrasound tests found evidence of thickened gall bladders, a telltale sign of milking, said Animals Asia veterinarian Heather Bacon. She said some may need to have the organ removed because of extensive damage.

Many of the black bears, some standing 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall on their hind legs and weighing 330 pounds (150 kilograms), have been caged since being snatched from the wild as cubs up to seven years ago, said Tuan Bendixsen of Animals Asia Foundation in Vietnam, which rescued the bears this week.

Bear bile has been used for thousands of years in Asia to treat fevers, pain, inflammation and many other ailments. In the 1980s, China began promoting bear farms as a way to discourage poaching. The bears were housed in small cages, and the green bitter fluid was sucked from their gall bladders using crude catheters, sometimes creating pus-filled abscesses or internal bile leakage. Many bears die slowly from infections or liver ailments, including cancer.

The idea caught on in Vietnam and elsewhere as demand grew alongside the region's increasing wealth. Bear bile products are also illegally smuggled into Chinatowns worldwide. An informal survey by the World Society for the Protection of Animals found 75 percent of stores visited in Japan selling bear bile products, followed by 42 percent in South Korea. In the U.S. and Canada, it was about 15 percent.

Bear bile harvesting remains legal in China, where the government says 7,000 bears are milked on about 250 farms, though animal welfare groups say the real number could be double that. Demand for illegal wild bear bile, believed to be more potent, is also increasing, they say.

Amid international pressure, Vietnam outlawed the milking practice in 2005, and some 4,000 bears in captivity were implanted with microchips to help identify any new bears added illegally. Owners were warned not to tap them for bile. But the practice continues, and a black market thrives.

"We want this industry to end. Government has decided to phase this out, and we understand it's going to take time," said Chris Gee from the World Society for the Protection of Animals in England. "Across the whole of Asia there's probably 20,000 bears on bear farms."

Last year, a farm in northern Vietnam was raided for selling bile to busloads of South Koreans, who watched it being extracted as part of their sightseeing tours. Some of the farms in Vietnam are owned by South Koreans and Taiwanese.

"They're more organized and bigger. They're run like a business now," said Bendixsen. "It's part of a package tour."

Bear bile contains a high concentration of ursodeoxycholic acid. A synthetic version is sold as a pill and used in Western medicine for treating gall stones and liver ailments.

The pill is sold in China but cannot be used in traditional medicine because it is not derived from a natural source.

In a paper published last year, Yibin Feng from the School of Chinese Medicine at the University of Hong Kong suggested herbal substitutes that produce the same healing elements for various ailments could replace bear bile.

Another option is to use bile taken from slaughtered pigs or rabbits, which contains lower concentrations of ursodeoxycholic acid, or use artificial bear bile, which has a similar chemical makeup and produces the same medicinal effects.

"We found some animal bile and plants have better effects than bear bile in some diseases," Feng said. "Given all these, people in China should accept these alternatives. Of course, some people in mainland insist that no matter how close those substitutes can be, it is still not as good as the real ones."

The moon bears, named for the tan crescent-shape marking across their chests, will remain in quarantine for 45 days. They will then be moved to a building with large living cells where they will learn to mingle with other bears, before moving to a bear house where they can play outside in an enclosure with trees, grass, tunnels and swings.

They'll also be spoiled with dollops of honey and peanut butter.

Cars, Cars, Cars

Despite the government changing the traffic patterns in the city, traffic is getting worse. In theory, the traffic patterns might have worked but there is one intangible the government didn't take into account -- cars.

I arrived in Hanoi in April of 2008. In nearly two years, I would say that that amount of cars in Hanoi has at least quadrupled. Two years ago nearly every car you would see would be a taxi. Now there are less taxis than regular cars. It seems that every upper middle class family and higher has bought a car. This morning I consciously took note of all the different brands I saw. There were GM cars, BMWs, Mazdas, Mercedes, Toyotas, Lexus, Mini Coopers and a few other companies I didn't recognize.

The increase in cars is a huge problem. Besides the fact that they take up more space on the road when they are being driven, they also take up space when they're parked. This city wasn't built with car parking lots which means cars are parking on sidewalks, sides of the road and basically any free space they can find to occupy.

Are You Serious?

(PICTURE: A garbage can in the stands.)

I've mentioned on my blog before that the Vietnamese like to throw garbage on the ground. It is just what they do here whether it be on the street or in a restaurant. It's part of the culture. You're in a restaurant and blow your nose in a napkin, chuck it to the ground. You're on the street and finished with your water bottle, toss it on the curb. This is the hardest part of the culture here for me to adapt to. I've gotten more than a few looks when I've kept a dirty napkin on top of the table rather than chucking it on the ground where it belongs.

Well, at the soccer stadium I got a taste of my own medicine. When we went to the Vietnam vs. China soccer game, Huyen and I had bought some roasted nuts outside of the stadium and brought them into the game with us. After I shelled a nut I threw the shell under my seat -- you know how we do it in America. I immediately heard a gasp to the right of me followed by, "What are you doing?!" Huyen was appalled that I would throw the shell on the ground. I actually wasn't sure if she was serious and brilliantly asked, "Are you serious?" She said yes and told me to put the shells in the garbage. Sure enough, there was a garbage a few feet in front of us. If only there were garbage cans on the streets in Hanoi...

By the way, one thing I found really interesting about the soccer stadium was that they made an announcement banning smoking at the stadium. Smoking isn't banned anywhere in Vietnam. To me this was a huge progressive step forward for the country...that is until seemingly every male lit up a cigarette at halftime (not in the stands but in the corridors, bathrooms, refreshment area, etc). Even worse than people smoking though was that the vendors were selling cigarettes despite the ban. One step forward, two steps back.

Vietnam vs. China

(PICTURE: Huyen and I at My Dinh National Stadium.)

Last week Huyen, me and about twenty foreigners went to My Dinh National Stadium to cheer on the Vietnamese national soccer team against China. The game was a qualifier for the 2011 Asian Cup. Unfortunately Vietnam has already been eliminated from qualifying and thus the stadium was 80% empty. Regardless we saw a really exciting game.

Vietnam put early pressure on China and had a few very close scoring chances. However, China quickly countered and scored two goals before halftime. In the second half, Vietnam came out with a fire that they didn't show in the first half. The Vietnamese team turned up the physicality level of the game and it seemed like a minute didn't pass without a Chinese player dropping to the ground while I Vietnamese player was issued a yellow card. The medical cart came out no less than four times in the second half. If you ask me, the Chinese players have been watching the Italians play too much. In fact, after about the fifth yellow handed out to Vietnam, the refs issued a yellow to a Chinese player for diving.

On one play a Vietnamese player was issued a red card for some apparent foul. Clearly the fans didn't agree. However, playing shorthanded seemed to inspire the Vietnamese. I could go on and write a blog how the Vietnamese historically like to be the underdogs in battle but will only just state the fact that Vietnam dominated the second half once they were down a man. With only fifteen minutes left a Vietnamese player was fouled in the box and issued a penalty kick. The player took the kick and it was saved by the Chinese goalie. However, a Chinese player had entered the box before the kick and the referee granted Vietnam a do-over. The player didn't miss again and Vietnam halved the scored.

In the final few minutes Vietnam had a couple extremely close chances. Twice the ball skidded along the goal line, somehow not going in. In the end, China held on and won 2-1.