James Bond

(PICTURE: Nguyen. Huyen Nguyen. Shaken not stirred.)

Huyen and I saw the new James Bond movie the other night. We both thought it was great and left the theater pretending we were spies. I'm now trying to convince Huyen to introduce herself to people like Bond: "Nguyen. Huyen Nguyen." It just rolls off the tongue.

Anyway, there are always reminders that I'm living in a socialist country and seeing the movie was just another small one. It was quite clear that portions of the movie had been edited to fit Vietnamese cultural standards. Frankly, I paid money to see Daniel Craig with his shirt off and only got a glimpse of his Adonis like body for a mere two seconds. Clearly they had edited out the sex scene(s). From what I could tell there was just one but who knows. There was also another time or two during the movie that the action would just cut and resume in a different scene indicating something was missing.

Despite that the movie was still really enjoyable. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Daniel Craig is the best Bond yet.
(PICTURE: Wayyyyy more skin then they showed in the theatres here.)

Google Analytics II

This week Ahoy Hanoi reached a milestone: 900 unique readers. That's right, according to google analytics, 900 different people have signed on and read my blog. Out of those 900, 55% of the people have visited my site more than 8 times (75% more than 1 time). That means about 495 people are reading my blog on a regular basis. That's like the whole state of Delaware!!!

Just a few fun facts:

Fun Fact 1: I'm now being read in 45 countries. In the order of most read: USA, Vietnam, Australia, Germany, Israel, Canada, Singapore, France, UK, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico, Cambodia, China, (a random country whose IP address isn't being recognized), Thailand, Hong Kong, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Phillipines, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Austria, Denmark, India, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, Laos, Croatia, Egypt, Indonesia, United Arab Emirites, Ireland, Taiwan, Finland, Poland, Latvia, South Korea and Costa Rica.

Fun Fact 2: Ahoy Hanoi is being read in 40 US States. That's right, screw you Louisianna, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virgnia, Indiana, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Vermont! I'm especially disappointed in Louisianna for not reading my blog. After Katrina, you would have thought someone in that state would have found my site looking into the Vietnam floods. How soon we forget...

Fun Fact 3: Most people are finding my site these days by googling "Ahoy Hanoi" into the search field of their search engines. "Hanoi Massage" and "Vietnamese Girlfriend" have dropped all the way down to the 7th and 8th most commonly searched words that led people to my site. Some other fun searches were: "sexy voice recordings", "I had to pee so badly", "flood in hanoi catch fish in the street", "hanoi bar girls" (which was next to "hanoi meeting girls"), straight up "hanoi sex massage", "massage hanoi happy ending", and of course "tighty whities locker room."

Keep on reading people!!!

My First Vietnamese Wedding

NOTE: This is two days late because my sister had to be born on November 22nd.

In America last year I went to thirteen weddings (technically twelve in America and one in Italy). You can say I'm a wedding expert. That said, I haven't experience anything like my first Vietnamese wedding. The wedding was for my former student Trang and her fiance/now husband Dzung. Trang is one of my favorite students I've taught. She's frankly hilarious in a half Woody Allen half Rodney Dangerfield way. I was really honored to be invited to her wedding and she seemed extremely happy that I came.

Anyway, I'm sure some of you are asking, "What is a Vietnamese wedding like?" Well, just based on this one experience I wold that the best analogy to describe a Vietnamese wedding is that it is like a sporting event. Here are some similarities:

1. People come dressed in whatever they want. Some people come right after work and wear suits and ties, others just wear jeans, sandals and t-shirts.
2. They have loud ear thumping starting line-up like music to announce the families (okay, we have that in the states too).
3. They have indoor fireworks.
4. They have a jumbo-tron of sorts.
5. People leave whenever they want. Literally there was a mass exodus as soon as the food was gone.
6. Like a game, it lasted about two hours.

Here's some classic video footage:

Happy Three Months, Lilah!

Three months ago Lilah August, my niece was born. I haven't been able to see her in person yet, but I get to see her grow bigger and cuter every day thanks to my brother's emails. I've had a couple requests from friends to see more pictures of Lilah so here you go. Happy three month birthday, Lilah!!!

Happy Vietnamese Birthday, Hannah!!!

Here's a short list of the things my sister is better at than me:

1. The SATs
2. Running marathons.
3. Helping to get Democratic senators elected.
4. Not eating meat.
5. Being a clutz.
6. Having imaginary friends until one is in their mid teens.
7. Being dependent on one's childhood blanket until their mid twenties.
8. Making spicy dips.
9. Patience.
10.Yearly/monthly resolutions.
11. Internet stalking.
12. Knowing people at Houlihans the night before Thanksgiving.
13. Singing.
14. Acting.
15. Dancing (we're tied though on making stupid frog-like faces).
16. Throwing up in cars.
17. Throwing up on boats.
18. Throwing up from smelling throw up.
19. Not leaving America due to a quarter life crisis (although she is leaving America exactly two weeks after she is turning 25. Hmmmm....)
20. Being amazing...and about a million other things.

Happy Birthday, Hannah! Have an amazing day and don't work too hard...it's not like the future of the world depends on what you're doing.

Vietnam Teacher's Day

Today is Vietnam teacher's day. My students yesterday gave me a few presents to honor my totally awesome teaching skills. I got:

1. A silver and white tie...exactly like a blue and white tie I was given by another student. I'm 90% sure both ties are from the Vietnamese equivalent of Costco.

2. A Vietnam travel book....which I'm 100% sure is from the Vietnamese equivalent of AAA. You know those books you always get free as a member? The ones that are 2% information and 98% adds for restaurants and hotels?

3. A dozen beautiful pink roses. This present was given to me by some of my former students. The present they gave their current teacher: one red rose. Yup, I win.

4. Two pairs of mittens from Huyen (she said everyone must appreciate teachers, not just their students).

5. A cup of coffee from Van, one of the three marvelous Language Link CSOs who are taking my Intermediate 1 class. I should mention that someone made Van the cup of coffee and she didn't want it so she handed it to me.

Ironically, I took Teacher's Day off today because one of my former students invited me to her wedding. Details on that tomorrow!

Six Months

On Monday I wore these pants:

(PICTURE A PAIR OF NORMAL GREY SUIT PANTS. MY CAMERA ISN'T WORKING AGAIN)

I had these pants made for me in Hoi An about seven months ago. However, the only time I ever actually wore the pants was on May 17th. How do I know that? Well, because it was my first day of work. While at school that first day I realized I was by far the best dressed and decided to scale my wardrobe down to dockers versus dress pants.

On Sunday night, while eating at the chicken speakeasy, I sloppily dropped about an eighth of a chicken on my legs. I was prepared to wear my pants again the next day but Huyen persuaded me to wash them. This was significant because my other pair of slacks was also in the wash. This left me with two options:

Option 1: Wear jeans. This is againt school rules. In fact, a teacher who wore jeans got fired on Sunday. Yeah pretty strict, right? (Actually he was fired because he showed up late like four Sundays in a row...while wearing jeans).

Option 2: Wear my dress slacks.

I went with Option 2. I know what you're thinking, "Is this really blog worthy?" Well, yes it is. I hadn't worn the pants in six months. Exactly six months. I wore them on May 17th and then again on November 17th -- the last day of my contract. That's right, I've officially completed my contract at Language Link. Six months passed in a blink of an eye. Some rough figures off the top of my head:

- I have taught over 400 different students.

- I have failed two students.

- I have skipped one student ahead a level. i.e "Skipped a grade."

- I have told eight parents their child is "naughty."

- I have told countless parents their child is bright and a pleasure to teach.

- I have received six gifts...but many more words and emails of thanks.

Although my contract has finished, I told Language Link I would continue to teach my Monday through Friday classes until the end of the month. After that...well, you'll have to wait for some upcoming blogs. But don't get too excited, I'm not leaving Vietnam yet.