Culture Shock

I almost cried tonight.

Standing on the roof of San Francisco’s Intercontinental, a full sushi and dumpling spread laid out, not to mention a very open bar, I stood talking to a CEO of a start up tech company, one that had already been priced at the millions upon millions of dollars. We discussed the best business strategy for acquiring other companies. I have no idea what that strategy is, however, that didn’t seem to hinder our conversation. He had no problem waxing on about the fine art of acquisition.

After three hours of milling and mingling we all took town cars to a swanky back alley restaurant. Who knew that a meat packing house could be so modern? Sleek and shiny and almost unforgivably cool, I felt like an impostor  wobbling in my 5 inch heels and my little black dress that I recently picked up from a sale rack.

Many, many, many more drinks later we finally sat for dinner at 10:30pm. There was lots of shop talk and networking and general friendliness. All of a sudden I looked down at my place setting and actually realized what I was seeing. In front of me sat three glasses of red wine (all different, all at varying heights), rustic French bread with goat butter, seared swordfish (the only thing on the menu that I could pronounce everything that came with it) and various other small bites provided as “compliments from the chef”

Exactly three weeks ago I was squatting on a street corner eating soup out of a plastic bowl served to me by a man with 5 teeth.

All of a sudden I was very tired.

Learning Like A Child

If we are going to be honest, I don’t know a lick of Vietnamese.

Yes, I aced my language final. Yes, I can order correctly at restaurants (usually). Yes, I can tell you my name, my age, my country of origin, what my family does for a living, and I can explain that I am a student and don’t have any money so when the cops/market sellers/taxi drivers try to rip me off I can make them understand that I’m really a terrible target. Sometimes I get cocky with these few paragraphs I know how to repeat. Sometimes I pretend I know what I’m doing. I can listen to the Vietnamese roommates’ conversations, and even though I can only pick up on a few words, it’s not as if they’re discussing theoretical physics, I can get the gist of any conversation.

Every so often, however, I am humbled. It’s not by the roommates, or my professors, or the market sellers who make fun of me. It is always the same. It is always by children.

Today I was sitting outside enjoying what is sure to be one of my last avocado smoothies, just taking in the afternoon, trying to not count the hours until my flight home. The heat had receded a bit, and it was only in the low 90s thankfully. The afternoon rain helped to cool things off. I watched the children playing in the street, and they of course watched me right back.

After a few minutes of observing from afar they started circling, almost like sharks. Finally one of them had the guts to come up to me. In rapid fire Vietnamese she asked me a question. I looked at her with a completely blank stare. She saw me order my smoothie (sin to bo) in Vietnamese so she assumed I must speak at least a little bit of her language. I replied to her question with “I speak a little bit of Vietnamese. Just a little”. She tried another question. And another. Then she got frustrated. I’m pretty sure she yelled something along the lines of “How can you say you know a little bit of Vietnamese? You can’t understand me, and  I’m  only 9!” With a frustrated hurumph she pulled up a plastic chair and sat right down next to me. She now had a mission. She was going to teach this oversized foreigner how to really speak Vietnamese. She called for some paper and pen.

I spent the next hour and a half being quizzed by a 9 year old. She wanted to make sure I understood the basics before I got too advanced. Please note that she spoke three words of English: “love”, “tomorrow”, “Sunday”. We struggled. We pantomimed. We pointed. We drew. We yelled “troi oi!” (my goodness) every so often when I finally got something right.

This little 9 year old girl lined up all of her friends on the street to come up to me and say all the English words they knew to make sure I could translate them properly into Vietnamese.

The greatest teachers are the ones who look at a student and decide “You. I will do everything in my power to help you learn, and we will work together until you get it”. I didn’t realize that sometimes the greatest teachers are very determined 9 year old girls.

You can only learn so much in a classroom. 

Takou (The Video Game)

Level One: Lowland Forest

• Cram 12 people into the back of a closed truck bed in 100 degree heat
• Navigate through jungle lowlands: no signs, no roads, no way out but to keep going
• Make it through the sand dunes
• Avoid eating the poisonous seeds of the delicious fruit
• River crossings containing carnivorous plants

To beat this level: Stay hydrated during these tasks as your only water source for the day was in Ho Chi Minh City

Level Two: Accommodations

• Minimal unstable electricity for one hour per day
• No running water
• No English
• Mold. Mold. Mold.

To beat this level: Maintain sanity by playing countless hours of card and dice games. Beer optional.

Level Three: Monkey Watching

• Silence is golden. You speak the animals run.
• Only step on the boulders
• Stepping on the leaves between the boulders results in an automatic loss. There are only two options for what are below the leaves:
• There is nothing beneath the leaves. Your foot falls through.
• There is a King Cobra’s nest beneath the leaves. They like to make their dens in the rock.
• Use hanging vines and tree branches to make it to the landing

To beat this level: Make it through the physical obstacles and then power through the mental task of remaining silent and frozen for hours until the primates appear

Level Four: Ascend the Mountain

• 798 meters above sea level. Straight up
• There is no trail
• Avoid local people. They will threaten and chase you if seen
• Avoid poisonous and/or thorny plants
• Watch where you step! You could find rare orchid and accidentally discover a new species for bonus points

To beat this level: Simple. Make it to the top.

Level Five: Descend the Mountain

• Everything level four described, except in opposite
• GAMER CHEAT CODE: Sit down and slide.

To beat this level: Have all bones intact at the bottom of the mountain

Level Six: Home Base

• Make it back to HCMC safely
• Avoid head on collisions with dump trucks
• Try to block out the Kenny G played by the Vietnamese bus driver who strikes a stunning resemblance to Che Guevara
• Avoid food poisoning by not eating the raw meat in the pho
• Cankles  from the bus ride will slow you down

To beat this level: Comprise a 10 minute PowerPoint outlining your trip to your professors

Current Status of Player: Winner. 

North/Central Vietnam

I had five different entries written and ready to be posted about my trip to the Central and Northern regions of Vietnam. Rereading over the posts before finalizing and publishing I realized that I hated them. I had somehow lost my voice in each of the sections, and if I put them up I would only end up being disappointed with myself.

Why did I hate these posts? They all sounded like a travel brochure or a review on trip adviser. None of them were able to effectively capture my adventures. While I understand that blogging is supposed to allow people to live vicariously through others, please believe me when I say that some things just have to be experienced.

The best stories are never the ones that people write about right away. The best stories are the ones shared between friends in coffee shops, remembered late at night while trying to fall asleep, or the ones that come much later when they are triggered by a pungent smell, a loud noise, or the sound of someone’s laugh. I’m sorry that I can’t share my best stories now, as I don’t know what they are just yet, but I promise, if we get the chance to go out to coffee (or ice cream!), I’ll have plenty to say.

What I do have now are some incredible pictures, a decent play by play recap, and some really cool souvenirs from my trip. Take a look: 

Nha Trang

Snorkeling off the coast of one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We spent 5 hours out on the sea, exploring sea caves, coral reefs, and playing with TONS of fish. (Think "Finding Nemo" for your underwater images) 

Hue

The ancient capital city of Vietnam, Hue is full of historical landmarks. Both the colonial French and the imperial Vietnamese architectural styles led to massive monuments and incredible memorial sites. 

Hoi An

The shopping capital of Vietnam, you can get literally anything you want handmade in Hoi An. I ended up with a dress, custom leather boots and a pea coat (all pictured below) as well as a myriad of other pieces of clothing and accessories. Hoi An is also known for it's monthly lunar festival which includes hundreds floating lanterns. We finished our stay at Hanoi with a Vietnamese cooking class. 

Champa Ruins

The indigenous Champa people of Vietnam, (one of 54 ethnic minorities) built huge temples to the Hindu gods that date back to older than Angkor Wat. These temples were used as a hideout for the Vietcong and were heavily bombed during the Vietnam/American War in the 1970s. 

Hanoi

Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, is defined by its tiny bustling streets overcrowded with people, motorbikes, and street vendors. We visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum where the body of the revolutionary leader is preserved and on display (yes it is a creepy as it sounds). We also drank Hanoi's famous "bia hoi" or "homemade street beer", and lived to tell the tale. 

We Were Not Arrested

“We were not arrested” Rachel grinned and hopped off the motorbike.

“See, the whole time I kind of wish we were. Then we could be on the front page of the New York Times. How cool would that be?” I replied.

Let me just start off by saying that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Well, anything that I understood to be wrong.

It started off as a typical Friday night. 11 of us were crammed into a small Vietnamese karaoke room. Rachel and I were the only Americans. Vietnamese karaoke is an interesting thing. Many of the songs are in Vietnamese. However, there is a big song book of American music that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been updated since 1978. Some of the roommates’ favorites include Neil Diamond hits, John Lennon ballads, and the most requested song: “Country Roads” by John Denver. Surreal is a good way to describe the situation.

The karaoke bar closed at midnight, but still full of energy we drove around town on our motorbikes. (Disclaimer: I don’t drive a motorbike, I would die. I hop on the back of one with a roommate who has been driving for years). Saigon at night is one of my favorite places, and the roommates wanted to show Rachel and I the best view of the skyline. We hung out there for a while, enjoying the night, watching the boats go by on the Saigon River, and just generally being college kids.

L-O-Y-O-L-A

Then all of a sudden the laughter stopped. Two police officers pulled up on their bikes. Every single one of the Vietnamese students’ faces turned to ash. I didn’t know what was going on, but I realized we were in trouble.

Here is a quick breakdown of the police officers in Vietnam:

Green Uniform: Carries a beat stick, least educated, has no real authority. The only thing they can do is pull you over and confiscate your bike and/or drivers license. They usually can be bribed for a lump sum.

Khaki Uniform: Carries a beat stick and a hand gun. Has more authority than green officer. When green doesn’t know what to do about a situation they call a kaki officer. They can do everything a green officer can do, except it’s going to cost you more. Plus, they can arrest you.

Black Uniform: Carries a beat stick and an AK-47. No nonsense. No excuses.

It was green officers who were interrogating us. ID’s were to be shown, license and registration for each motorbike, as well as an explanation as to what we thought we were doing.  Rachel and I stood helplessly by as the Vietnamese students would pass us every few minutes and mutter instructions under their breath to us. We tried to be the ones to reason with the officers. We were just students and tourists looking at the city. We even have photographs to prove that we were just taking pictures. No dice. After a few minutes of consulting with each other the green officers told us that we weren’t allowed to move. We had to stay here, and there was nothing we could do about it. They were calling in the khaki officers.

Negotiations

As the stakes went up, so did our game plan. Tung, one of my closer friends, urgently looked at me and said, “Cry. Now.” I knew those acting lessons as a child would someday pay off. I can breakdown in tears like a pro. And breakdown I did.

My performance was worth at least a Golden Globe, if not an Emmy, a Tony, and an Oscar. I sobbed into my hands. I demanded to go home. I stomped off. I curled up into a ball on the corner of the street, hid my face and wailed. The hardest part was not laughing the entire time. I made quite a scene. People passing by on motorbikes kept slowing down and staring at my grand performance. A homeless guy even walked up to watch what would happen next.

When the khaki officers finally showed up nearly 30 minutes later, I was hiccuping in a corner loudly bemoaning my fate. The green officers couldn’t even bear to look at me. In the next ten minutes, negotiations were settled. Instead of paying the initial 2 million VND (~$100) per person, and confiscating all the motorbikes, we would only have to pay 200,000 VND (~$10) total because that was “all the money we could pool together” . At that point the khaki officers didn’t even seem to care about the money, they just wanted to make sure I stopped crying and got off the street as soon as possible. The line that got us off the hook was, "these are American's you don't want to make a bad impression, do you?"

When we finally escaped I couldn’t help but laugh as the Vietnamese students explained the details to me. It could have been (and should have been) much, much worse. The cops were out to make money or fill their jail quota, and we looked like prime suspects.  Unfortunately for them, it didn’t exactly turn out as planned. 

By this time it was 2:30 in the morning. What do you do at 2:30 in the morning? Go for pho of course. Just another day in Vietnam.

Cambodia Part III: Bits and Pieces

1. I got to hug an elephant

2. I got to stand at the center of the universe

3. I ate a spider. On purpose. (My face says it all)

4. I enjoyed the nightlife of Siem Reap.

5. I got my feet cleaned by sucker fishes. Without the red wine I probably would have shrieked the whole time.

Cambodia Part II: Angkor Wat

Before arriving in Cambodia I had heard of Angkor Wat once. National Geographic did a whole spread on the ancient ruins when I was about 13. I have a vivid memory of sitting on my couch with my mom looking at the pictures while she read me the article. I remember thinking, “ It would be cool to go there one day” And that was the end of that.

Blearily waking up at 4am I stumbled downstairs. I went to bed the previous night well after 1am and was running on 3 not very restful hours of sleep. I sleepily jumped into a tuk tuk (a motorcycle with an open carriage attached to the back) with Rachel, an anthropology major who I’m pretty sure had been dreaming about Angkor Wat since she was five. As we catapulted through the dark, I wondered if it would all be worth it. For all I knew I was going to go look at the sunrise over a big pile of ancient rocks. Would it be cool? Maybe. Would I care? Probably not. Oh, I was so wrong.

The sunrise was spectacular. It wasn’t that pretty of a morning, as the tropical rainforest mist obscured most of the colors, but the most beautiful part was watching the transformation of light. When we first arrived it was pitch black. I couldn’t see two inches in front of me. Another tourist actually walked off the path and fell into the moat surrounding Angkor Wat, that’s how dark it was. Our tour guide situated us just outside the temple. Slowly shapes began to take form. I saw a tower, a tree, a reflecting pool. And then all of a sudden the fragmented pieces came together to form a whole. An entire castle was standing in front of me, backlit by the morning sun. My pictures don’t do it justice, but they at least remind me of the moment.

I spent the entire day at Angkor Wat Geological Park. Angkor Wat is the biggest and most famous temple in this park, but there are actually well over 450 temples in the surrounding area. We spent 5 hours touring Angkor Wat and learning the history, and then we also toured Angkor Thom and Tap Proham a city of over 1 million people.

It was fiercely hot all day. I didn’t even notice until someone mentioned that it was 35 degrees Celsius (roughly the upper 90s in Fahrenheit) and even then it didn’t stop me. We were allowed to climb and explore all over the tunnels. I took advantage of every opportunity I got. I jumped, I climbed, I slipped, I thankfully didn’t fall, but I explored every nook and cranny I could get into. Even then, I feel like I could go back to the three temples we toured for the next 10 years and I still wouldn’t know everything about them. That’s what is so fascinating about Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples, once you think you finally have a grasp on them, you find another secret tunnel, another statue that you missed, some more writing on the wall.

I hiked and climbed and jumped until 5pm at which point we trekked to the highest point in the geological park to watch the sunset. The high amount of humidity in Cambodia in addition to the heat led to quite a bit of clouds which obscured the sunset, but that didn’t matter to me. As I watched the sun go down, I realized that this was it. I was in Angkor Wat, a place I’d never thought I’d be, watching the sunset. Life is good.

Fun Facts:

No adhesives were used in the building of these temples. Instead, the stones were cut at perfect angles to fit on top of each other exactly. Use gravity not glue.

During the American bombing of Cambodia many people fled from their homes and lived in Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples because U.S. forces wouldn’t bomb a World Heritage site.

In the mid 1700s the temples fell into disuse and were abandoned. They were only brought back into the public eye when French explorers were brought there by locals. The discovery of these temples was a large driving force for French colonialism in this region.

Of the 2 million visitors to Angkor Wat each year, only 100,000 are American

Cambodia Part I: Teol Sleng and the Killing Fields

On Wednesday morning at 6am I boarded a bus to Cambodia. There are places that you dream about, but never imagine that you’ll actually go. And then there are places that you don’t even think about. Places that never cross your mind. For me going to Cambodia was like going to Mars. Not an option. That’s why since the moment I got on that bus, to unfolding myself out of another bus 5 days later, nothing seemed real.

I was in Cambodia, a country I only knew because of my 9^th grade history teacher, thank you Mrs. Thomassen, for teaching me about the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields. Not that I knew a lot, or actually really anything at all beyond the murder, violence, and destruction in the late 1970s.

Once I fully comprehended where I was going, fear set in. Would I be caught in the middle of political corruption? What about an old grenade exploding out of nowhere? Would the U.S. rescue me if something like the Khmer Rouge happened again? Stupid worries looking back, but the signs on every building that banned grenades, machine guns, and durian (a really bad smelling fruit) didn’t alleviate my woes.

Mere hours after arriving in Cambodia we got off the bus at Toeul Sleng, the high school turned torture center, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and tortured educated Cambodian citizens until they falsely admitted to being a spy, or else died from malnutrition, disease, or violence.  Like seeing a real Monet painting in person, I’d read about this high school, but I never guessed I would see it in person. Eerie doesn’t do it justice. There are still blood stains on the floor throughout the building. The torture devices, solitary isolation rooms, and public beating sites were chilling. Today the school is a memorial site for all the victims.

A trait of mass murders is their obsession with orderly documenting their crimes. Every man, woman, and child brought to Teoul Sleng had their picture taken and all their information written down. All of this was memorialized throughout the rooms of the school. The oppressive tropical heat, the stench, and the subject matter made me woozy more than a few times.

Later on we visited the Killing Fields. There is not just one killing field, as the Khmer Rouge had mass graves all over the country; however, there is one large field in specific that has been memorialized. I don’t have words for most of what I saw. I could describe it here, but I cannot adequately encompass the horrors of that place. Most people who arrived at the Killing Fields were not dead yet. Through a variety of ways and means each and every person met their fate in a brutal unimaginable way. The Killing Fields flood each year and when the water recedes more bones and clothing items and human remains wash up. All of these items are preserved on site. The human remains are encased in a large glass mausoleum at the entrance to the memorial. I only took one picture of this, and did not go inside. I think that after all those people went through, they should rest in peace, away from a gawking tourist.

The weight of Cambodia: its poverty, drug scene, horrific history, and terrible corruption, brought most of us down.  But after seeing all the historical tourist sights, our group went a bit off the beaten path.

We visited ‘The Center of the Dove’, a former center for Khmer Rouge atrocities, after the regime fell the site was bought by Jesuits. The Jesuits turned it into a haven for survivors of landmines. In Cambodia, physical disabilities are highly stigmatized, and many people are shunned from society. Unable to get an education, work, and many times neglected by families, there was a whole population left on the fringes. The Jesuits built a trade school specializing in woodworking, weaving, metal working, engineering, and agriculture for those with disabilities. Housing 120 students, the Jesuits teach a marketable trade skill to these people for 1-2 years before sending them back to their village and helping them start a business.

I was lucky enough to meet some of these courageous people. Ranging from teenagers to men and women in their mid 40’s the center doesn’t turn away anyone, but instead welcomes all with open arms. To see people who live on the fringes of society, rejected by their own family, but are still so happy and hopeful, touched my heart.  These people are just normal people, trying to make their way in the world. I conceptually understood this, but it wasn’t until as I was leaving, a girl with no legs waved to me. She said, “Goodbye! Goodbye my sister! See you soon.” It was only then that I realized how close we are. We’re not so different at all. 

Trip to Monkey Island

Yes, you read that right. I went to Monkey Island.

This weekend my environmental science class went on a field trip to Can Gio, a mangrove forest south of Saigon. We were supposed to focus on the environmental harms that shrimp farms were causing on the mangrove forest, but mostly we looked at the monkeys. I am not dismissing the environmental hazards that shrimp farms cause, I’m just easily distracted by cute furry mammals.

Monkey Island is an island among the mangrove forest that has a large colony of monkeys. The park rangers allow visitors to walk through.  There’s a gift shop, a small carnival type thing, and a taxidermy museum full of dead monkeys.

Now, coming into this trip I had the mental image of Curious George as the monkeys we were going to be seeing. These monkeys were the size of George but had the temperament of King Kong (yes I know monkeys and apes are different, but please go along with the comparison)

These monkeys while cute, were mean and aggressive. Quite frankly I don’t really blame them. If I had a whole bunch of tall, loud, smelly, ugly, white things shoving a camera in my face every day I would probably get pretty upset too.  

Before we went into the park we were warned to make sure that our  bags were tightly fastened to our bodies, and all of our zippers were tied together, because monkeys can jump you and open up just about anything. Most of us only partially heeded this warning, going in with the mentality, “I’m human, I’ve clearly evolved faster than you”

Well it turns out we really haven’t evolved that much at all.

One girl, Hannah, while getting far too close to take a picture of a baby monkey, had her water bottle snatched out of her backpack and ended up playing tug-of-war with another monkey to keep her camera.

It was mamma monkey who stole the water bottle, and there was no way that Hannah was going to get that back. As she watched with dismay, the monkey colony ripped apart her beautiful Camelback water bottle, dissecting it and destroying it, piece by piece. The message was clear, don’t mess with baby monkey, or mamma monkey will mess with you.

Don't mess with mamma monkey

After the monkeys we got to feed some crocodiles. By feed, I mean dangle a large fish off a string in the air and watch the crocodiles snap at the bait. I opted not to do it, not out of fear, but rather I felt like I was taunting the poor creature by dangling food over its head. I didn’t feel bad enough to not take pictures though.

The last part of our trip was a tour of an old Vietcong guerrilla base in the middle of the forest. It is near impossible to walk through a mangrove forest, and navigating the rivers and the complex waterways to get to the army base was so confusing that it’s no wonder that no one ever found these troops. While the remains of the base were cool, I had very mixed feelings about standing “on enemy ground” touring a place especially designed to kill Americans.  One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Vietcong base hidden among the mangrove trees

All in all, the trip was incredibly enjoyable. Monkeys, crocodiles, mangrove forests, all in one day, what could be better?