Translation

Vietnamese people love to talk on the phone at restaurants. It's just something they do here and don't consider it to be rude. Well, I still consider it to be rude so I put my camera in Huyen's face the other day while she was on the phone. I then had a Vietnamese friend translate what she was saying to me and do a voice-over. After learning what she was saying, I can't be that upset since she had such nice things to say:

Who is this man?

The other day I had the following conversation with Huyen:

BEN: Do you know what a Jew is?
HUYEN: Not really.
BEN: Do you know what the difference between a Jew and a Christian is?
HUYEN: (shakes her head no)

To be honest, I found this really refreshing. Huyen is technically Buddhist but doesn't consider herself to have a religion. This is very similar to me who considers himself a Jew by tradition but an Atheist in belief.

Ironically later that day Huyen and I went for a walk by one of the only churches in Hanoi. Watch the video, it's classic:

Tighty Whities

Ever wonder what happened to tighty whities? Well wonder no more. Last night I went to a sauna with some local Vietnamese guys from my ultimate frisbee team. We walked into the locker room and BAM every guy was prancing around in tighty whities. It was like 1986 in there. Even weirder was that I quickly noticed that people were looking at me as if I was a freak. I'm pretty sure it was because I was wearing boxers.

Why Pay For Dry Cleaning?

After lots of scrubbing Huyen saved my pants and 97% of one shirt. To get out the other 3% from the shirt she took out a bottle she bought from the store and said, "This will get the rest of the color out." She put the liquid on my freshly saved shirt, began to rub and took out the last of the pen...as well as all of the color from the shirt. The special liquid was bleach. Hey, at least the pants were saved!

MOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!

About a month ago Ryan did a load of laundry and left a pen in his shirt pocket. Result: one stained shirt. Since then I've been extra careful about only putting a few articles of work clothes in the washing machine at one time. Well last night, high on spicy curry, I put basically ALL of my clothes into the washing machine. Oh, I also left a few pens in my shirts/pants. Yeah, not just one pen but three pens. Three FREAKING PENS!

All of my clothes have stains on them. Some small, some large. I just googled online how to get ink stains out. The #1 way was to use Oxy Clean. The #2 way was hair spray. I went to the supermarket and of course they don't have Oxy Clean. I called Huyen and had her tell the workers my situation. They told her, "in Vietnam we don't have things strong enough to get ink out." I told Huyen I needed hairspray or nail polish and she laughed at me and said that wouldn't work. I was on my own. I found a tiny thing of hairspray and just got back to my apartment. I put hairspray on one shirt and immediately the ink stain started to come out...and spread all over the shirt making it twice as bad. I went back online and read another article that said to, "Make sure you put a rag under the shirt and blot it out a little at a time." Now I know why. Oh, did I mention I also put back in two pieces of clothing with hairspray on them in the meantime? Guess who is going shopping this weekend?

Jealousy

The problem with giving shout-outs or putting video/pictures up of friends is that it naturally causes some jealousy. Yesterday I received countless emails (two) asking why they hadn't been featured on the blog yet. Ahoyhanoi envy is just one type of jealousy. Then of course, there is the old fashioned jealousy. Yesterday Huyen read my blog about wanting to kiss the Statue of Liberty on July 4th and this is what she said:

Yeah, that's right, she's threatening to shoot the Statue of Liberty. What are the odds the Immigration and Naturalization department will one day read this blog? Or worse yet, Homeland Security?

By the way, have I always had a speech impediment?

This Could Be You!

No, not a greying 29-year-old who still thinks it is cool to wear a backwards baseball cap. And no, not a man who works in sports yet could never win a full set in tennis against me. And no, not someone who can't afford ANY decorations for their wall.

What I'm referring to is that you could be video-chatting for free with yours truly. All you need to do is get skype and a video phone. Well, that's if you're a guy. If you're a girl and not a blood relative you also need to get some sexy lingerie. Alex put on the sexy lingerie after I turned the camera off...and surprisingly he looked better than you would think...