Ahoy Hanoi Thanks Steve Song

(PICTURE: Steve and I at the snake village)

For weeks I've been secretly composing a blog entry to post when Steve left. Being a pacifist I didn't want any awkward confrontation after I posted this: "When I first arrived in Vietnam a local told me that the Vietnamese hate Korean people more than people from any other country. I asked why to my local friend but, because of the language barrier, she could not communicate the reason very articulately. That said, after hanging out with Steve for a few weeks I'll never ask why someone would hate a person of Korean decent again. To be fair, I could honestly say I don't hate Steve-- I loathe Steve. I then went on to list 319 reason why it was taking all my internal strength not to smother Steve with one of my $2 pillows in the middle of the night.

However, I'm not going to post that entry because -- to loosely quote Dumb and Dumber -- Steve totally just redeemed himself. Yesterday morning, as he was sitting shotgun in the airport taxi, he had the cab driver roll down his window and called me over. Steve said, "Hey, look on your bedside table. I left you a gift." I assumed he had just left me the same gift he'd been leaving for weeks--toe nail clippings on my floor. However, this time he left me something a little bit better--his digital camera. That's right, Mr. Paparazzi himself left me his camera which has literally been on his body every second for the last couple of months. This was beyond a nice gesture and I, and all Ahoy Hanoi fans, are grateful. This means new pictures will soon be posted with my blogs. So, on behalf of America, thank you Steve Song. (For Steve's version of why he left me his camera I once again direct you to his blog: www.songeruncensored.com).

In other news, I went to the library yesterday and they have exactly 56 fiction book in English. Out of those I've read about half of them already. Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "28 book is enough toilet reading to keep you busy for the year, Ben." Well, you're right. The problem is you can't read Vietnamese library books on the toilet. In fact, you can't read Vietnamese library books anywhere except a designated place in the library. Books in Vietnamese libraries can't be taken home with you. Yeah, you have to go there and read. I mean, really? Who reads at the library besides senior citizens?

For Those Of You Who Thought I Was Kidding

I'm about to take the final step in becoming a local. Nope, I'm not getting married. It's that other step--I'm getting a library card.

For those of you who are wondering, no the snake didn't sit well.

Fear Factor Trained Me Well

(PICTURE: The lucky snake.)

Steve returned to Hanoi yesterday after his ten days of exploring Southeast Asia on his own. Well, I think some solo time put some hair on his chest. When he showed up on my front steps he literally looked more like a man than he ever had before....although the hair on his chest was actually just thirty whiskers on his chin.

Before Steve had left, we promised him we'd go to the snake village when he returned. I'm not sure if he really even wanted to go to the snake village but I sure did. So Ryan, Steve and I hopped into a cab and took off. Well, we wanted to take off but the cab driver didn't know what the hell we were talking about despite our very obvious snake gestures. So I called Huyen and put her on the phone with cab driver. A minute later we were off...


After some heavy negotiation at the snake restaurant the owner/cook agreed to make us a nine course meal, including rice wine and snake blood, with a fresh snake. Second later the guy pictured in the purple shirt brought out a live poisonous snake. We took some pictures and then he preceded to slice open the snake and remove it's beating heart. He put the heart into this little shot glass:




The guy then motioned for one of us to drink the heart. Well, I knew Steve wouldn't do it since he recently bragged on his blog about how brave he was that he ate a fried cricket. That's Single A versus the majors of eating a beating snake heart. I thought Ryan would want to try the heart and was prepared to rock, paper, scissor him for it. But, alas, Ryan passed too. So it was all mine...


(PICTURE: Snake heart mixed with its blood)

It was delicious.

Reason 183 To Learn Vietnamese...

...to learn how to say, "Just cut a little bit."

I thought showing with my fingers how much I wanted cut would do the trick but clearly not. Now if only I could find a hat that fits me in this freaking country.

A Few Quick Anecdotes

Yesterday was a blogger's dream. I had a ton of hilarious things happen to me and here's just a few:
1. I began teaching. 75% of my classes were fantastic. The other 25% was an hour and a half of six year olds who don't understand a word of English and have more energy than any kids I have ever seen. A few highlights from that class were:
a) A sandal flying by my face twice. Apparently they use them like boomerangs.
b) A "slow" kid who sat in the corner and broke the window shades and picked his nose and put it onto my teacher's book when I asked him if he did his homework.
c) Announcing homework five minutes before the end of class and then promptly having fifteen kids rush for the door. Apparently it's like Pavlov's dog. They are so conditioned to leaving when told their homework that they don't look at the time. I literally had to block the door and fight over fifteen kids...who are a lot stronger than they appear.
d) Just when the class couldn't get any worse I let everyone out and one kid pushed another who fell into a little girl. The little girl proceeded to cry hysterically for ten minutes. I brought her to the office since, again, she didn't speak any English and didn't understand "are you okay." She was okay. I wasn't though.

2. On my lunch break I met the teacher whose classes I took over and he said to me, "this afternoon you've got a kid who is obsessed with bananas." I just nodded and said, "Sounds good." Sure enough in my third class I had everyone introduce themselves and this awkward 13-year-old in the corner says "My name is Banana Boy." After that literally every other word out of his mouth was banana.

3. One of my class lesson plans was based around this CD that comes with the book. Sure enough when I put the CD in it was the wrong one. I ad-libbed on the fly and made it work.

4. At the end of the day while teaching a class about natural disasters, a crack of lighting struck outside the window. It was followed by eight hours of pouring rain and lightning.

5. Huyen came over for dinner. I cooked some pasta and after about two bites she announced, "Vietnamese people cannot eat this." More for me.

6. Huyen used my bathroom and walked out holding "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", the book I'm reading. She said to me: "I see you are in the habit of reading on toilet. Me too." I then said, "I thought you don't have a toilet." She replied, "Yes, only at my parent's house."

7. At 9PM Huyen said she must leave. She put on her raincoat, plastic bags around her feet, windbreaker etc. She screamed out, "So dangerous!", laughed, and then took off into the typhoon. Five minutes later she called my cell phone, "I must come back. I am lost and it is very wet."

8. At 12:30 at night I was awoken by knocking on my door. It was Ryan: "Yo, um, our house if flooding." The roof had about six inches of water and was waterfalling down the four flights of stairs into our kitchen. Ryan braved the elements and went on to the roof and cleaned the drain with a hanger. Problem solved...kind of. Two minutes later the drainage pipe in my bathroom ERUPTED with black water. After ten minutes of blowing up in my bathroom it stopped and all was normal.

Good times.

I Didn't Tie Peter Cullen For Nothing

(PICTURE: Members of the Vietnam Ultimate Frisbee Team)

Some of you might recall that I tied Peter Cullen for "senior athlete" in the senior superlatives. Yes, it's still as shocking today as it was in '97 that people actually thought I was as good of an athlete as Pete.

Last weekend I joined the Hanoi Ultimate Frisbee Club (http://www.hanoi-ultimate.com/). I played pretty well despite my $15 knock-off Adidas cleats coming apart in the first ten minutes of the game and having a pretty hard collusion on the first play of the game. After the practice I was told that the following Saturday (yesterday) there would be a tournament. Sign me up!

All week long I was psyched to show my fellow Hanoians what I got. The only thing worrying me was I was unbelievably sore all week. Not having done any exercise since leaving NJ, I was in, well pretty bad shape. And apparently I was in worse shape then I thought since I pulled my hamstring in warm-ups yesterday. Yes, warm-ups. I was gimpy all day running up and down the field yet still managed to hold my own on the pitch. In fact, I scored the first touchdown of the tournament and immediately went down on the ground and asked someone to stretch me. This guy David (apparently "one of the top ultimate players in southeast Asia") came up to me and said, "you can't get hurt on your first catch.

Anyway, long story short --and I have to run to my first day of class-- my team ended up winning the whole tournament. I've got a fancy new hat to prove it...although the hat is clearly made for Vietnamese people since it doesn't come close to fitting on my head.

Um, yeah, I might have a Vietnamese Girlfriend

(PICTURE: Huyen wearing a traditional Vietnamese dress in front of The Temple of Literature)

So Huyen (the girl who asked me if I "was going to make water") and I have hung out a couple more times recently. She and her sister came over on Tuesday night and cooked an amazing house-warming dinner for Ryan and I. Then yesterday she swung by during the day to talk for a little while and to drink fresh melon shakes.

Now the question is, how many times does it take for a boy and a girl in Vietnam to hang out before they are considered boyfriend and girlfriend?

In case you're wondering here are Huyen's stats:
Age: 23
Occupation: College Student at the University of Hanoi; finishing her thesis in economics.
Languages: Vietnamese (A+), Russian (A+), English (B), French (C+), Japanese (C+)
Height: 5'7 or 5'8. She's a giant out here.
Extra Curricular Activities: Badminton, Cooking, Riding her motorbike, going to the movies, hanging out with family.

One negative about Huyen is that she literally might kill me. Yesterday I made a joke about her bothering me and she started to strangle me and said, "You are so mean!" I'll keep you posted on this budding romance. If it does turn into marriage, I expect everyone to fly out for the wedding.