The Typhoon That Wasn't

(PICTURE: Hanoi didn't get hit by Conson but Hai Phong did.)

If you've been following the weather news for the last few days, you would have read about Typhoon Conson that hit the Phillipines and China. After it soaked China, it was widely reported by CNN that the storm was headed towards "around Hanoi". CNN wasn't the only news outlet to report this, as I think every Vietnamese newspaper, radio and television station gave the same weather prediction. With the huge floods just two years in the rear-view mirror, Hanoi was in total panic mode to prepare for the incoming typhoon. The supermarkets were busy, the markets were mayhem (the vendors doubled their prices) and seemingly every candle near my house was bought up (we got four).

On Saturday, the winds in Hanoi were ridiculous. I could feel my motorbike drifting every time I was driving down the road. However, there was no rain. On Saturday night, Huyen and I had dinner plans with our friends Dave and Elissa. When Huyen and I fought the winds at 7PM to go to their house, we were one of the few motorbikes on the street. While eating dinner at Dave and Elissa's the wind was absolutely fierce outside, but again, not a drop of rain. After our great meal and a triumphant evening of spades (props to Huyen who just learned the game and was a fantastic partner) we headed home at about 1:30AM. On our way back to our apartment, the skies opened up and absolutely drenched Huyen and me. However, this wasn't the typhoon that was predicted as the news was reporting it would now arrive the next afternoon.

Well, the next day the weather was absolutely beautiful. The best part though was that everyone in the city stayed inside thinking the rain was about to come. It was nice to have the city be so calm for a change. In the end, the typhoon never came and now we've got a fridge full of food.

Mai's America

The other night Huyen and I saw "Mai's America", a documentary about a Vietnamese girl who studies abroad in America and gets placed with a self proclaimed Redneck family in Mississippi. For those of you who have a Netflix account, put it on your list!

If you're a teenager in Vietnam and reading this, DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM BECAUSE IT WILL SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF YOU!!!! My friend Jim -- thinking the film was just about Vietnamese studying abroad -- took two of his students who were about to study abroad to see this film; by the end of the film one no longer wanted to go to America. Jim said that he talked the kid back into going and promised that if he got stuck with a bad family he'd personally come rescue him.

The documentary was shot in 2002 and aired on PBS. Here's the full movie description from PBS's website:

Mai's America is a personal journey that defies all expectations. Mai, a smart, vivacious, and resilient Vietnamese teenager, travels to America for her senior year of high school, shouldering her family's high expectations and her own visions of western-style success. Yet, nothing in Mai's wildest imagination could prepare her for what she finds in rural Mississippi, where encounters with white Pentecostal and black Baptist host-families, a local transvestite, and South Vietnamese immigrants challenge her long-held ideas about America, the concept of freedom, her identity and even her homeland of Vietnam.

Mai's father, a successful Hanoi businessman and proud veteran of what the Vietnamese call "the American War," sends Mai to the U.S. as a high school exchange student expecting her to secure admission — and the necessary scholarships — to attend a top-ranked American university. Mai may have arrived in America with the desire to make her family proud, but her journey through the Southern heartland reveals the surprising common bonds that span global boundaries and link Mai to her American counterparts.

It's a tale as old as immigrants coming to America — the clash between dreams and reality. But each generation writes a new chapter of this essential American experience. Relatively privileged in Hanoi, Mai finds herself on a lower rung of the American economic ladder when she lands in Meridian, Mississippi. Her host family, composed of self-described rednecks, proves a challenge to her usually outgoing and upbeat personality. Plagued by unemployment and depression, the family shows little curiosity in their Vietnamese guest. At school, she finds it equally difficult at first to form real bonds.

But Mai is nothing if not persistent. She soon wins the heart of her host grandmother, who expresses an interest in her Vietnamese culture, and finds a worthy mentor in her high school history teacher. During her class, Mai experiences a remarkable revelation about the Vietnam War, when she realizes that the American soldiers she'd grown up thinking of as cruel killers were no different than the boys seated in the desks all around her.

Mai doesn't find genuine friendship, though, until she meets Chris (a.k.a. Christy), an outgoing transvestite nightclub performer with whom she immediately forms a sympathetic attachment. Drawn together by a shared sense of being outsiders, they dance, trade make-up, and have long talks about life and the difficulties of being true to oneself. With Christy providing a boost to her self-confidence, she works up enough courage to change host families, and moves in with a young, African American couple who include Mai in their active social lives.

Mai's window on the world opens even wider when she meets Tommy, an animated South Vietnamese immigrant whose father fought alongside the Americans before fleeing Saigon when Tommy was only three. Children of former enemies, Tommy and Mai engage in spirited conversations about the war and its after-affects. Through Tommy, Mai also meets an expatriate Vietnamese community that clings to the pre-war way of life. When Tommy takes Mai to a South Vietnamese celebration in a nearby town, she feels like an outsider among expatriates from her country. To Mai, they seem to cling to the Vietnamese lifestyle that they knew before the war - a culture vastly different from the Vietnam she grew up in.

(PICTURE: Mai with filmmaker Marlo Poras.)

"Mai's story is a wonderful story to have had the opportunity to tell," says filmmaker Marlo Poras. "I think we are able to see a reflection of ourselves in Mai — in her drive, her disappointments, her humor, and her dreams. Her story was nothing I expected, and yet it was incredibly familiar. And for me, it came to be very much about both the value and the cost of the American dream."

Given extraordinary access to Mai's activities and thoughts throughout her stay in the U.S., Marlo Poras has crafted, in Mai's America, a very 21st century take on seeking the American dream.

Cape of Good Hope

(PICTURE: Can you say self-timer shot!)

One of the other highlights of Cape Town was driving to Cape of Good Hope, the south-western most spot on the African continent. It was a beautiful drive down the coast which was quite reminiscent of the PCH in California.

The Cape of Good Hope is part of a national park and we actually saw a zebra and a bunch of ostriches while driving.


(PICTURE: An ostrich taking in sunset.)

For those of you reading this in New York, this point is exactly 12,541 kilometers from New York City. I know that because of this sign:

Table Mountain

(PICTURE: Me freezing my butt off on the top of Table Mountain.)

When you first arrive in Cape Town, you can't help but notice a bunch of really big mountains. One of the mountains is totally flat on the top, like a table. In fact, it looks so much like a table that it's called Table Mountain.

There are hundreds of different ways to hike Table Mountain. There are "easy" ways and very very very difficult ways. In fact, a couple of days before we hiked the mountain, a teenager died hiking with his parents. Hearing this, the guys and I decided to take one of the easier ways.

We started up the mountain pretty early in the morning and quickly realized that it was freaking freezing. Right before we started to climb, Dave and I met a few people from California who had been planning to hike the mountain but came completely ill equipped -- they were wearing shorts.

Dave, Chris and I made it to the top of the mountain in about an hour and ten minutes. Devin, made it up about ten minutes before us -- the dude was booking it. Some of the interesting things about the climb were:
a) It was really slippery.
b) Did I mention it was cold? It had actually snowed the night before and there were still patches of snow as we climbed.
c) The view was spectacular...until an extremely dense fog came in.

Actually, in regards to "c" above: Table Mountain is notorious for having fog envelop the mountain. They call this fog "The Table Cloth." Check out this picture:

(PICTURE: Moments before you could see the city of Cape Town. Not so much once the fog came in. Also, check out the snow on the ground.)

Cape Town vs. Johannesburg

(PICTURE: Leaving Jo'Burg...happily.)

Don't be fooled by the title of this blog entry -- there is no comparison between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Let me state this very clearly: Cape Town is awesome. Johannesburg sucks.

(PICTURE: A view of Cape Town while hiking Table Mountain.)

Cape Town is a beautiful city with lots of nature, good eats, cool things to do and places to visit. On top of that, it felt safe. The same can't be said for Johannesburg where every house has an eight foot wall with barbed wire and an attack dog in front of it. Evert story I heard of carjackings and robberies was in and around Jo'Burg. In comparison, Cape Town felt like Pleasantville. Actually, a Cape Town taxi driver summed it up best for me: "The problem with Cape Town is that tourists feel safe here so they're not scared to walk." Despite this particular taxi driver's bitterness at not making more money, he was a fair an honest driver. "Fair and honest" are two words I would never use to describe 90% of Jo'Burg taxi drivers who repeatedly tried to rip us off and on one occasion tried to intimidate us into paying an exorbitant amount of money.

Jo'Burg has some nice places but they're all basically malls and promenades. If I wanted to see malls and promenades I could have gone to Los Angeles. That said, if you're going to South Africa you should definitely stop in Jo'Burg. Let me draft an itinerary for you:

Morning: Fly into Jo'burg and go to the apartheid museum. The museum documents the history of apartheid and is a can't miss.

(PICTURE: The guys at the Apartheid Museum.)

Afternoon: Go to Soweto. There's a lot of history in Soweto and it's definitely worth a walk around.

Late Afternoon/Before Evening: Go back to the airport and fly to Cape Town or one of the other nicer cities in South Africa.

I hate to be so negative on Jo'Burg but without a doubt it is the least favorite city I have ever been to...except for maybe Detroit.

I had a great time in South Africa but there was one big problem -- we had to spend wayyyyy too much time in Jo'Burg since most of the games were in and around the city. If you're from Jo'Burg and reading this, I apologize if this offends you. Having lived in Los Angeles for seven years, I can't tell you how many times I annoyingly heard people obnoxiously say, "I could never live here." Well, it's my turn to be annoying and obnoxious: I could never live in Johannesburg.

Dancing With The Locals

The other highlight of our excursion was when we pulled up to a house with a bunch of goats in front of it. We all got out of our van and walked between the fenced in goats and a neighboring house. When we got to the neighboring house we immediately started to hear some whistles being blown. Before we knew it, four old ladies came dancing our way:



The ladies grabbed Devin and Chris and led our group around to the back of the house:



Behind the house was a local choir.



The choir sang some traditional songs to us and then began to dance. After they had shown off their moves, they grabbed all of the tourists and had us form a circle. They continued to sing as they pulled one tourist at a time into the middle where the attempted to teach us some local moves. Chris went first and infused some Buffalo hip-hop style into his South African booty shake:

Devin went next and attempted to do a little grinding:



Dave went next and showed off his moves:


The girl Dave danced with though didn't seem so impressed:


(PICTURE: Maybe my favorite photo ever.)

Of course I danced too. However, "engaged guy" must have been written on my face because I found myself being dragged into the middle of the circle by a dude.

Witch Doctor

(PICTURE: The local Witch Doctor.)

In Part 1 of my South Africa series, I'm gonna recount my trip to see an African Witch Doctor:

One of the cooler things we did during our safari was to take a trip to a local village. Sabi Sabi donates a lot of money to a village where the majority of their local workers are from. While visiting the village we went to a small hut and met with an African Witch Doctor.

To communicate with deceased ancestors, the Witch Doctor used a series of different items. Some items you might expect a Witch Doctor to use (lion/impala/rhino bones) and other items you wouldn't (dominoes and dice).

(PICTURE: The Witch Doctor throwing all of his future telling items.)
(PICTURE: The domino has spoken.)

The Witch Doctor would do his thing and begin to explain what the spirits told him. This was translated to us by the Sabi Sabi worker who was in charge of bringing guests to the village. The translator told us that the first thing the Witch Doctor was going to find out was what the score of the South Africa and Mexico game was going to be (remember, we went on this safari before the World Cup began). Well, the Witch Doctor did some chanting and dropped the bones/dice/dominoes on the floor. He quickly glanced over what his ancestors were telling him and decided he didn't like the outcome of the game...so he chanted again and dropped the items once more. Well, the ancestors were stubborn and were still predicting a Mexican win. The Witch Doctor -- clearly a soccer fan -- wasn't ready to accept this and once again dropped the bones/dice/dominoes. The third time was the charm and the spirits predicted a draw between South Africa and Mexico. Personally I'm not a believer in astrology or fortune telling but a couple of days later Bafana Bafana tied Mexico 1-1.