Weather

Every day the weather report says the same thing--temps in the 90s, feels like the 100s, scattered thunderstorms, chance of precipitation 50%. But it rains 100% of those days.

The most common thing is some thunder in the distance and a shower that lasts about 30 minutes, usually around 4 in the afternoon. Sometimes you see enormous thunderburst clouds in the distance. A couple times we've been hit directly with thunderstorms that made us jump out of our skin--like the worst we ever saw in Iowa.

Life goes on. Some people duck inside and wait it out--like we did yesterday at a store downtown--and some people use a kind of large rubberized poncho especially for motorbikes. The vendors selling them seem to appear on the street in an instant.

One crazy thing we saw was when we had gone inside for dinner just in time. It was a kind of open air building very common here--long and narrow from the street to the alley, with no front and back walls and a high ceiling. The kitchen is just plastic laundry hampers of vegetables and meat and charcoal stoves, and the dining room is dozens of plastic tables and stools, and the waiters rush back and forth.

When the rain started, the place filled up with customers fast. And then suddently the ceiling sprung two fantastic leaks as heavy as the downspouts from a roof gutter. The furniture was scattered to make room for those waterfalls, and the waiters slipped through the puddles to keep serving the food while someone swept the water out the front door. Eventually a kid climbed up a ladder through a hatch to get between the ceiling and the roof while someone else handed him pieces of sheet metal to patch the leaks.

--Robert

Typical days in our room

Not much exciting to report the last couple days unless you want to know about Delhi Belly. We're settling into working routines. We wake up early and Ilene heads to the gym while I get coffee at the stall across the street and work in our room for a couple hours. After Ilene gets back and her tutor shows up, I head to the gym and get lunch at a bun bo hue stall and kill some more time reading in the park. We do our laundry in the sink and work the rest of the afternoon in our room trying to ignore the various construction noises in and around the building. We made ourselves a little pantry out of some cheap plastic shelves from the supermarket down the street and stock up fruit and American-brand cookies for snacks. When the stalls open up at Cho Ben Than at 6 p.m. we walk down there for dinner and stroll the streets for awhile.

Here are some exterior shots of our neighborhood--our building, the street, which is relatively quiet, and the view out our window in the back of the building. There are a few apartment buildings back there and in one of them a woman works on her painting each morning and then puts it on the balcony to dry while she lights some incense and prays.

--Robert

Chom Chom Farm

As exciting as it is to go to Vietnam for two months, it was a little hard for me to leave Connecticut knowing that I'd miss strawberry picking season; imagine my delight then, when Kim, who has been my Vietnamese teacher in Connecticut for most of the past year, set me up to visit our mutual friend Ti's fruit farm in Long Khanh, about 80 kilometers to the east of Ho Chi Minh City. Ti (his name is Thay Thien Ngo--Thay means monk, so Ti is a nickname he invites Americans and the kids at his temple in New Orleans to call him) arranged for a car for us and took us out with a few other family members. His brother grows chom chom at the farm--see pictures--as well as sau rieng (durian). Chom chom look prickly, but are surprisingly soft--they taste a little like lychees, and you can cut them open with a knife or a decent fingernail. I was a little bummed not to get the whole pick my own experience until I saw that this required ladders and long sleeves in the heat to protect against scratchy branches. We brought a trunkload back with us, as well as durian. Durians are as sharp as they look--a cross between an armadillo and that dinosaur with the spikey back, and about as easy to break into. The smell is a unique one and people are either repulsed or thrilled by it--there's no middle ground. I'm a fan. We took one back, which immediately went into the restaurant's refrigerator as a special favor so it doesn't stink up the room. We tied it up good in its plastic bag. My plan is to eat it tomorrow when Tuan arrives for my Vietnamese class. Since he's a monk, Ti eats vegetarian, so we had a nice lunch served to us. Best new discovery--hem chay, which is a soybean product but better than tempeh, I think. "Hem" sounds enough like "ham" in English that you can make the following joke--In American, ham is meat, but in Vietnam, hem is a vegetable. (OK, this sounds funnier in Vietnamese--trust me).

-Ilene

Country style

We had a long and interesting day with a lot to report, but the combination of traveler's tummy and smog fatigue is sending me to bed early. Ilene will tell you more about it another time.

-Robert

Banh mi

Fish banh mi. The fish is cooked in an iron plate over a flame in a red gravy. Crack open the loaf of bread and fill it with the fish, gravy and condiments to make a sandwich.

Working day

Today was our first attempt at a working day now that we're past the point of spending energy on getting ourselves set up. Early breakfast at a sidewalk stand across from the hotel, writing in the hotel room for a couple hours, a trip to the gym, a snack of yogurt and fruit in the room, work some more, lunch at noon, work some more, then a long walk to dinner and back.

Wedding

Last night we went to a wedding banquet for the brother of Ilene’s tutor. It was part Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, only with more fireworks and screaming loud V-pop, and part like any other large family wedding you’ve been to. Armies of amped-up children in party clothes, greasy banquet hall food. The room had a runway running down the middle to the stage. An M.C. brought on a series of entertainments, including a group of ballerinas in red tutus who performed a routine to disco music and then danced around the bride and groom, who then poured champagne in a large decorative tower of champagne glasses while fireworks shot out of it. But no champagne was actually served. Same with the cake.

As always, Ilene and I were the subject of a lot of attention, and we’re finding that every social engagement breeds two more. Our table mate invited us to tour his ice factory and see the seaside in Vung Thu (which was a major embarkation point for Americans 40 years ago.) Ilene has two offers to have ao dai sewn for her to wear at the other weddings we’ll presumably be going to. I managed to find pants that fit at a local shop, but I miscommunicated about the length of the hem so I look like I’ve outgrown them. Since the only socks I brought are white gym socks, I resembled Thriller-era Michael Jackson.

Careful, it has bones in it

Fresh seafood is everywhere, but I never know what variety of fish it is. One problem I have is that my technique for removing the bones is no good. At this meal I ended up eating several bones, and my throat was sore for a couple days after.