Life Preserver Street

Hanoi is famous for having streets that all sell the same thing. Well recently I pulled down a small side street and found myself surrounded by life preservers and life jackets. Sure there are a lot of lakes in Hanoi but how how there possibly be enough business for a half dozen shops selling life preservers and life jackets? It is definitely the weirdest goods street I've seen so far in this city.

900th Post!

I'm only gonna take a moment to recognize this milestone for Ahoy Hanoi. This entry is officially the 900th post! Personally, I can't believe I've written 900 times. The sheer amount of it just seems, well, huge. I guess it has been like building a house, you lay one brick at a time and at then end of the day you take a step back and realize you've just built a wall.

900 seems like a huge number but really how can I celebrate it with my 1,000th post just around the corner? Doing some simple math (which is all I'm really good at), if I write a blog a day for the next 100 days, my 1,000th entry will post 10 days before my wedding. Realistically though, I'm gonna miss a day once in a while (sorry, mom, but it's true). So in actuality, my 1,000th blog might be about Huyen's and my wedding. I don't know about you, but I think that'll be a pretty cool way to celebrate a really momentous milestone.

For those of you who like statistics, here's the latest from Google Analytics*:
- Ahoy Hanoi has had over 126,000 pageviews.
- Ahoy Hanoi has had over 19,000 absolute unique visitors.
- 3.37% of my readers use dial-up to log into the site. Seriously, dial-up.
- Ahoy Hanoi has been read in 133 countries including Iraq, the Palestinian Territories and Bosnia and Herzegovnia. It has also been read in places I didn't even know were countries like: Tajikistan, Greenland (It's part of Denmark, right?), Macedonia, Guernsey and Vanuatu.
- After going two years without a viewer in South Dakota, I've now got seven!...two more than in North Dakota.
- I've got more readers in California than New York and New Jersey. I guess we know who wants to win the East Coast vs. West Coast re-settlement debate!

*These stats do not include the first seven months of the blog.

Which Is More Morally Wrong: Bribery or Killing Rhinos For Their Horns...or both!

Two of the things I hate most about Vietnam were just mentioned in one article together. The first thing, corruption. The second thing, the fact that people still pay money for parts of endangered species because they think it gives them good health (and boners). You can't make this stuff up:

Headline in Viet Nam News (11/8/2010):

City business couple get life for bribery, bank fraud

HCM CITY - The HCM City People's Court has given life sentences to a business couple for bribery and cheating a bank, and 26 years' imprisonment to a former district chairman for abuse of power.
(SKIPPING AHEAD FOUR PARAGRAPHS)
Khoe took VND 1.4billion ($72,000) and half a rhino horn worth $10,000 from the couple.

Hello Medicare!!!!!!

(PICTURE: One super good looking guy...and me.)

Happy 65th Birthday, Dad!!! This is a big one -- can you say Medicare!!!! Is it strange that I'm jealous you now get government health care since finding health care for Huyen and I is now stress #16 on my list? Anyway, happy birthday, Big Guy!

It pains me every year that I'm not home to celebrate with you, Dad. Next year we're gonna have an extra large birthday party to make up for all the birthdays I've missed over the last few years. Until then though, I'll say what I always say: Not a day goes by that I don't feel lucky having you as a father. I miss you, Big Guy, and can't wait to hug you in December! Love you!

Ben

Congratulations, Anthony!

(PICTURE: Anthony and his awesome wife Elissa at the Primetime Emmy awards.)

Congratulations to my good friend Anthony Carbone for winning a Primetime Emmy in the category of "Outstanding Reality Programming". Carbone was the Supervising Producer on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, not only a very successful show but one that Anthony truly believed in from the moment he started working on it. One of the realities of working in reality TV is that we often work on, well, crap. However with this project, Anthony felt from the beginning that it could not only be entertaining but also have a positive effect on society. And that's why this Emmy really couldn't be in better hands. Besides being an extremely talented producer and editor, Carbone is by far one of the best guys I've ever known.

A couple of years ago I went to Sicily to celebrate Carbone's wedding to his childhood sweetheart Elissa. Their wedding was definitely one of the highlights of my adult life! As I've been planning Huyen's and my wedding, I keep thinking about Anthony and Elissa's and how we can make ours as memorable as theirs was. It's going to be quite a challenge especially since it looks like Anthony and Elissa will be attending!

On another note, if I can get my other Emmy award winning friend Alex to attend, this wedding will have by far the most American TV award winners present in the history of Vietnamese weddings!

Educational Differences: Bribing Teachers

(PICTURE: The bribe scene from "A Serious Man.")

In the recent Coen Brother's movie, "A Serious Man" there is a storyline about a Korean student who tries to bribe his university professor to give him a passing grade by giving the professor an envelope with a bunch of money inside of it. In the film, the professor was appalled at the attempted bribe as I imagine the majority of professors in America would be. However, after watching the film, it occurred to me that this is actually a cultural difference.

As crazy as this sounds, it is common practice in Vietnam (and I'm assuming other places in Asia) to bribe teachers for better grades. Basically students go to their professor's houses with their whole class and leave behind individual envelopes with money and their name on it. Usually they'll leave the envelope in a box in the front room of the house and then they'll meet with the professor in another room where they'll have tea. The students meet with the professor for a few minutes and then leave the house, often crossing paths with another of the professor's classes which is coming by to drop off some money.

If you talk to most expats -- and many Vietnamese -- they'll complain about the corruption in the country. However, when we usually think of corruption and bribes we associate it with the government or police. The idea of bribing teachers -- which has been told to me by various university students -- shows just how ingrained corruption and bribery is in the society here. By doing some simple math with one of my students, we figured out that professors at their university can make five figures a year just on bribes.

I know what you're asking yourself, "Has anyone ever tried to bribe you, Ben?" Unfortunately extra-curricular English classes aren't deemed bribe worthy...and that's why I'm sending in my resume to every university this week!

Educational Differences: Maturity

(PICTURE: The planet that always gets a chuckle in American classrooms -- Uranus.)

Don't let the post's title fool you -- teenagers in America and Vietnam are both totally immature. However, their immaturity is expressed in different ways. I'm not gonna even pretend to understand the cultural differences in immaturity but I will tell a funny anecdote from the other night:

Right now I'm teaching a teenage class at Language Link. The students range in age from 11-15, which is to say there are A LOT of immature kids in the class. Every class I get lots of snickers and some misbehaving which would be the same in a similar class in America. Well, the other night I was teaching a science section about the planets in the solar system and I had all of the students repeat the planets after me: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

The students repeated the planets without a chuckle. Not one chuckle was emitted from a classroom of pre-teens and teens who had just said the word "Uranus". Can you imagine that happening in an American classroom when a teacher says out loud, "Uranus"? While listening to the silence following the students and me saying "Uranus" I thought to myself, "This is so unAmerican." There was only one thing for me to do and that was to say, "Okay, lets try that U planet again -- Uranus." The students followed with a perfect repetition of "Uranus." I smiled to myself and said, "One more time everyone - Uranus." Yeah, I guess I'm a little immature sometimes too.

A minute later I told the students to turn over a sheet I had given out: "Okay, everyone flip over the sheet." Sure enough, one or two of the boys chuckled, "He said shit."