Traditional Values and Morals

Okay, this is amazing. Perhaps you won't find this as funny as I do but I just can't get over what I'm about to tell you. So as you know, Ryan and I are being evicted from our house. The reason given to us is that our girlfriends -- really just Huyen -- slept over. Our real estate agent told us that Binh and Minh, the landlords, are very "traditional." I took this to mean that they have traditional values and morals. Fine, whatever.

So today Ryan and I signed our lease on our new house. When paying our deposit the real estate agent said to us, "If any of the neighbors ask you how much you pay, tell them you live here for free. The landlord doesn't pay taxes. They just pay the police." Immediately something clicked in my mind and I asked, "Did Binh and Minh pay taxes?" The real estate agent looked at me and laughed, "No. Just the police."

For those of you who aren't finding this as funny as I do, let me remind you of something. Minh, my landlord, is one of the heads of Vietnam. He works directly for the Prime Minister and travels to other countries for him. His wife told me he's in charge of, "Education, Arms, and a few other things." So, basically the Secretary of State of Vietnam IS NOT PAYING TAXES ON HIS RENTAL PROPERTY. And this is just one of their properties. But that's not the point. The point is, just to be repetitive, THE SECRETARY OF STATE OF VIETNAM IS NOT PAYING TAXES ON HIS RENTAL PROPERTY.

Can you imagine if this happened in the US? Wait, things like it do but the politicians generally resign or withdraw from the posts they are nominated to (i.e Bernard Kerik and Bobby Ray Inman come to mind over illegal housekeepers/taxes, etc.).

One of the problems with living in a communist country is that they control the papers/news. If I had a story like this in the states it would be the front cover of the New York Times tomorrow. Here, well, it just ain't making the papers...and I'm pretty sure if I tried my Visa would mysteriously not be renewed next month.

In conclusion, traditional values apparently means no sleepovers...but tax fraud is a-okay.

A Walk In The Woods

On June 27th I went to Finnegan's Irish Pub for a farewell party to my friend and fellow teacher Hayden. Hayden is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. He's one of those people who is always smiling and has nothing but good things to say about people/things/life. When I first started teaching Hayden was my go-to guy for any questions I had and he was always more than willing to lend a helping hand.

Here's a picture from Hayden's party that I took of Chi, one of my favorite Language Link employees, and her friend (Welcome to the blog, Chi!).

(PICTURE: Chi on the left. Her friend who owes me two beers for beating her in Connect Four on the right)

So why am I posting a picture of Chi here instead of one of Hayden. Well two reasons:

1. I didn't take any pictures of Hayden that night.

2. Chi comes into play right here:

A week ago when I walked into school Chi came up to me and said, "Ben did you hear about Hayden." "No," I replied . The last I had heard about Hayden he was headed to Laos before going home to Australia. Chi then let me know what it was that I needed to hear: "Hayden got lost in the woods in Laos. They found him. He's in the hospital." "What? Lost in the woods? Is he okay?" Chi just looked at me and said, "That's all we know."

Over the past week I've asked quite a few people whether they had an update on Hayden. Nobody did. The only other information I found out was that Garth, one of the other Language Link teachers, had been in Laos and was supposed to have a drink with Hayden. Hayden never showed up for the drink...and well, Garth heard about Hayden being lost the same time I did... BACK IN HANOI.

So tonight I just got an email from Jessica with the subject line: "I think this is Hayden." Here's the article that a link took me to:

Aussie survives 11 days in Laos jungle

August 19, 2008 - 6:23PM An Australian man missing for 11 days in the jungle of Khammuan province has been found alive, but is in a critical condition.

The Vientiane Times has reported that the middle-aged man was transported to Bangkok for treatment, but remains critically ill.

Australian Ambassador to Laos, Dr Michele Forster, told that the man was attempting to walk to the well-known Tadsanam waterfall in Hinboun district.

He left on the afternoon of July 31, but the Australian embassy was not notified he was missing until August 8.

On Sunday, the embassy and the Red Cross organised a helicopter search and located the man at a different waterfall in the district.

"At the time, it was raining in the village, quite cold and the conditions were every difficult," Dr Forster said.

"The village community and local government had done a lot to try to find him but they had been unable to locate him."

The helicopter could not land in the jungle and the man had to be carried out over land.

It took villagers almost four hours to transport the man on a stretcher, cutting their way through the jungle.

"When they found him his condition wasn't good. He was very weak and sick and obviously cold because he had been exposed to the cool weather over the last few days," Dr Forster said.

The man was brought back to the local village and transported to Vientiane by helicopter, before being taken by ambulance to a hospital in Undon Thani, Thailand, and then later transported to Bangkok.

Australian Embassy Second Secretary, Emily Russell, said the area contained thick jungle and it was easy to become lost. She said rising water may have covered the main track in the area, causing the man to lose his way.

Khammuan Tourism Department director, Thaiyaphone Singthong, said the waterfall was a beautiful and well-known site which attracted a lot of visitors, including foreign tourists.

Mr Thaiyaphone said he thought the man may have wanted to go upstream from Tadsanam waterfall, but was warned against doing this.

Dr Forster said the embassy planned to support a small tourist development office with guides to lead treks to the waterfall and the surrounding jungle.

"We will be looking at different ways to support the community, particularly the office, in terms of possibly putting up signs or providing training to the local guides to thank them for all their help," Dr Forster said.

"We feel deep gratitude to the local villagers and authorities that assisted us."

GET BETTER SOON, HAYDEN!!!

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.)