I will be the next Rocky

Just had a very nice evening eating ice cream on a bench next to Hoan Kiem Lake, trying to spot the turtle that lives in there. It was quite romantic. The ice cream was potato flavour.

We moved house today, so I expect all my problems in life to henceforth be resolved. Good things about the new house: the bathroom floor isn't rotting, there's a punchbag on the roof, and we've ditched the two irritating bossy housemates. Bad things: I can currently hear EVERY WORD of Dave's phone conversation upstairs, including the part when he was talking about me. I listened carefully but it was all positive, so he may live.

I also feel I should point out that my last post was intended not as an outpouring of hatred, but as a reflection on the idiosyncrasies that have made me fall in love with Hanoi. If I wanted to live somewhere that made perfect sense to me, I would've stayed in England, and be bored to shit.

A happy rant.

Hanoi doesn't make any sense. I don't understand the people, I don't understand what they say to me in Vietnamese and why they don't understand my Vietnamese. I don't understand why my motorbike is always parked in the wrong place, regardless of where I park it. I don't understand why people in shops think it's acceptable to either charge me extortionate prices, or refuse to serve me altogether. I don't understand how men make a living when all they do is lounge on the pavement all day. I don't understand why they hide beef inside tofu. I don't understand why everyone wears pajamas on the street. I don't understand why motorbike exhaust pipes are so hot yet so exposed. I don't understand why it's necessary to be so fucking noisy all the time. I don't understand why I've been robbed twice but my housemates not at all, or why it's taken the police two weeks to conclude that the thief probably came in through the unlocked front door. I don't understand the appeal of eating dog, pig's uterus, horse, or fermented prawns. I don't understand why my Vietnamese friends don't get my jokes, when I am so funny. I don't understand why the music is so, so bad. I don't understand why it smells of raw sewage outside my front door. I don't understand what's so funny about the word 'cool'. I don't understand why living here seems to be getting harder, rather than easier, the longer I stay.

I quite like it here though.

Getting out of Hanoi pt. III

More adventuring out of Hanoi this weekend. My Sunday class was cancelled, meaning a generous whole two days off, which had to be taken advantage of. On Saturday we got a bus down to a town called Ninh Binh about three hours away from Hanoi. Ninh Binh is actually hella ugly, so we got a 20-minute taxi straight to the smaller village and our main goal, Tam Coc. Tam Coc translates as Eight Caves. I assume there are eight caves there, although I only saw evidence of three. There's a river running past, and these limestone karsts sticking out of the water. You can hire a little canoe to go down the river and back, which goes through three caves, and takes about 1.5 hours. The lady rows down the river using her feet, impressive skills.


The first night we got there just before dark, so post-roast-goat dinner (local speciality) we went for a walk by the river, past some of the karsts and some little houses. Then we walked through the town, but it was tiny and almost completely dead, so we ended up watching the Arsenal-Spurs match on what appeared to be the only TV in the town. I think that's still cultural, just a different culture.


The next morning we got up super-early to get a boat ride. We managed to avoid the other tourists, and the people who go to sell hawk bananas and embroided tea towels to the tourists; the only people on the river were a few women in the traditional Vietnamese hats scooping out weeds with a net, and some men in the water who might have been fishing. It was totally blissed out and quiet and relaxing and awesome, the perfect antidote to Hanoi and its relentless motorbike horns.

After the boat ride we had (goat for) breakfast, and then tried to find some motorbikes to rent. This was no easy task, but thanks to my superior Vietnamese communication skills (...) we eventually hired three little banged-up mopeds for way more than they were worth. We drove around for a couple of hours, around the karsts and little unmade roads, past goats and puppies and buffalo. It was more like driving bikes in Pai in Thailand, where your main fear is the quality of the dirt track and whether you will get charged by a buffalo, rather than fear of the jumped-up teenage boys speeding to impress their girlfriends that you get in Hanoi.

After a couple of hours we ran out of things to see, and my friend's bike broke down, so we called it a day. Our bus home wasn't for a couple of hours, so we ended up sitting around chatting for a few hours, and I read some of my book. It was good to do nothing much for a while, as I feel like I am constantly busy at the moment. My book has been on the go since April and progress is slow. In all honesty, the last week or so has been pretty crappy, and a weekend away doing nothing was much needed.

me in the middle

Saturday was National Teacher's Day. Three of my classes got cancelled, and I got loads of presents, awesome. My haul: five bunches of flowers, a large box of yoghurt, two scarves, a 'Prada' handbag (now deceased), two bottles of wine, two boxes of chocolate and, slightly oddly, a box of glass tumblers.

A pictoral guide through my adventures

I've bought a strange kind of device for uploading pictures, so now my blog will be in glorious technicolor - you lucky, lucky bastards.

this pretty incredible-looking templey thing is right by my house but inexplicably invisible unless you're actually looking for it. i'm still not sure whether it really exists.

roadside draughts

this photo summarises the daily activity of the majority of Vietnamese: woman working really hard, men sitting around being lazy

gourmet dining

impractical method of transport

fermenting rice + rice vodka

Yesterday I went on a school trip with some students from one of my schools. It wasn't necessarily how I would choose to spend a Saturday, especially since they aren't even my students. But it was good to get out of Hanoi, and I was plied with food all day, so I can't really complain. Maybe I will attempt a commentary on these pictures but I can't really be bothered.

We went to a nature park in a province called Ba Vi, about 1.5 hours out of Hanoi. This province produces loads of the milk you get in Hanoi, and so we got given loads of fresh milk and yoghurt. It was pretty tasty. (I guess that answers the question of whether I'm still a vegan or not.)

For a nature park, it wasn't very natural. They had bears in cages, which made me feel very sad and angry for a bit, until I got distracted and wandered off. The best animal of the day was the deer. Frustratingly, no one will tell me the Vietnamese word for deer, a minor yet irritating obstacle in my ongoing quest to know everything. Someone said it was 'con de' which I already knew means goat. Then for a while I was satisfied in thinking it was 'con gai', but my Vietnamese friend said that means goat as well. I asked him what the word for deer was, and he said there wasn't one. Why have two words for goat but none for deer? What kind of language is this? I'm getting quite angry now so I'll move on.

day con la gi?!

I have never been a fan of monkeys. In fact monkeys are at the very bottom of the list of fluffy things I like.* I was initially excited to see them at this park, since there were loads of them running around free-range stylee. But my attitude quickly turned from excitement, through boredom, to fear and to rage, and then back to boredom. I am still not a fan of monkeys.

*This list is a hypothetical one. I promise that I have never sat down and written a list of fluffy things I like.

irritating a monkey with my camera

monkey attack!!

My enthusiasm for commentary has just run out, so here are some more photos:

before

after

a failed attempt to disguise my hideous ogre-osity

post-sticky-rice-binge hammock-nap, hell yeah. woke up an hour later to some free fresh papaya, double hell yeah.

this kid at the front ended up crying because he was on a team with weedy girls who don't know how to pull

These photos are from last night, which as usual mainly involved beer and motorbikes (not that I'm complaining). I love the expression of complete over-excitement in the second one:

Lastly, I would like to say hello to the poor hapless fools who stumbled across my blog from India, Iran and Columbia. I recommend more specific search queries. This is no place for you.

Stripping and shredded hands

Fings what did happen lately:

(1) Last night a bar was playing O Brother Where Are Thou as part of a series of moustache-related films in aid of Movember. What a film, what a soundtrack.




(2) I had to have a health check this morning, for my work permit, for my visa. It was lengthy and occasionally traumatic. The first check involved being stripped completely topless, shoved against a wall, and having my arm twisted back by an doctor shouting angrily in Vietnamese, in a completely open and busy room. I also had to wander around the hospital for an extended period carrying a vial of my blood and a vial of my friend Jason's blood. It was AIDStastic. The hospital had a charming 'indoor-outdoor' vibe; I believe that it's called al fresco, or perhaps just unsanitary. Oh, and I wasn't allowed to eat any breakfast. Anyone who knows me knows that a hypoglycemic Rej is friend to no one.

(3) I think my class this afternoon was a massive improvement on the ones that have gone before. The kids in this class are about 13 years old, but some of them don't know much English at all, and the textbook I'm supposed to be teaching them from is ridunculously hard. As in, they are still not properly forming the present simple (e.g. "he has..."), and the book is asking them to analyse literary devices in Shakespeare and write formal letters to the UN. I listened to the CD that goes with the book and the first track was fucking Chaucer. But I've been trying to break it down loads, so we'll do a whole double lesson on one exercise, and I've been making worksheets with sub-tasks, also with pretty pictures. I like making worksheets. I think it's helping, because they're getting through the work now, and some of the kids who always messed around before are producing really good work - I guess they just zoned out when they didn't know what was going on, but now they think they can actually do it, they want to try.
Ok teacher chat/brag over now.

this is not me

(4) This evening my friend took me to an indoor climbing wall in some guy's house, it was so much fun. It is just in a little room on the top floor, and not very high - maybe 8 feet - but that was definitely adequate for my current level of nodule-grabbing. All the other people there were super-skillful and muscular and swinging around all over the place, and I felt like I was getting in the way by just going up and down, but my friend Jesse was teaching me the techniques, and everyone else was giving me tips as well, and when I could do a little bit I felt quite strong. While I was recovering, I could listen to reggae and watch men use their muscles, so it was very enjoyable. My hands are in bits now though, I need to get me some calluses.

this would be more accurate

I think my lesson tomorrow afternoon is cancelled, so I might have time to find a new camera cable, and then you can enjoy an enriched blog-reading experience once again.

pay me attention

Why do I have 1,326 page views but only 10 comments?!*
GIVE ME LOVE!



*N.B. it is possible that 1,316 of the page views were me checking to see whether I had any comments yet.

Last night we went to a Futureshorts film festival, where they screen lots of arty-type short films, showing the same films in cities all over the world. It was wicked. It was on the top floor of a former hotel/brothel, which from the street looked pretty abandoned, but we went up about 8 flights of stairs and there's an artists' space, and they had two rooms with the films projected onto the wall. There was also a balcony with a beautiful view over the city and the lake, but everywhere had that cool scummy abandoned vibe. So we sat on plastic stools and drank beer and ate free bananas, and watched these awesome films.

The first one we saw was some trippy animation with elephants merging into Superman merging into genitals merging into I don't know what. There was one about anarchists in Stockholm/a love story/a lady going insane in prison. Another good one was about the life of a plastic bag, narrated by the plastic bag. It was much better than it sounds. He thinks the woman who uses him is his true love, but she throws him away and he ends up on the rubbish heap, and he goes on a quest to find her, carried along by the wind. I think the time scale was supposed to be very long, because it would take a plastic bag a long time to travel around the world, and there are no people left. At the end he goes to the 'Vortex' which is that place somewhere in the Pacific Ocean where there is a huge area covered in rubbish, just floating on the sea, that is going to be there for millions of years because it's not going to rot. The film was funny because of the plastic bag's commentary ("But I am strong, resourceful, and intelligent, and I will persevere"), and it was really beautifully shot, with the plastic bag being buffeted around by the wind, and in fields with horses, and when he goes out to sea and there are jellyfish all around. It also made me quite sad because it's about the longevity of our rubbish: it's going to be floating around the world for millions of years, even after all the people are gone, skanky plastic bags in beautiful green trees and in the ocean.

After the interval they showed three Vietnamese films, which I really wanted to like so I could be all local and cultural rah rah, but they were just shit, really really bad. Although there was a puppet sex scene to rival Team America's.

After the film festival finished we motorbiked around for a bit, and then went to the wedding party of someone Luke plays football with or something. It was next to a pool and there was an open bar, immense. I met lots of interesting new people and got very overexcited practising my Vietnamese. I also liked the bridal moped, replete with bouquets.

Today I had to work on a Sunday, boo. Because it's a new class in a new place, my company pays for a taxi to take me there - oh how thoughtful, how helpful - but in their characteristically totally shambolic style, it was completely unhelpful. The taxi driver didn't know where to go, and when we got to the street he pointed me at a building and said that was the place. I went in and the security guard asked where I was going, and I told him I didn't know, but that my friend would be here soon and she would know. So the security guard and I sat in front of the school for about 20 minutes, drinking green tea and having a 'conversation' which mainly consisted of me saying something in Vietnamese, and him not understanding, and then him saying something in Vietnamese, and me not understanding. I did ascertain that his name was Sen, and he was 40 years old. He was nice. But when it got to 2 o'clock and there was still no sign of any students or anyone I knew, I rang my coordinator and she was like, "Yeah I can see you, you're in the wrong building". I hope Sen didn't mind having to unnecessarily look after a lost and incoherent foreigner for 20 minutes. I enjoyed the company and the tea and practising my Vietnamese.

The adventure continues.

Già đển mối

Another of my favourite things about Hanoi is the old men on bicycles wearing berets, cycling leisurely down the middle of the road, apparently unconcerned by the mania around them. It's like Hanoi's grown up around them, and they haven't really noticed. It makes me imagine what it was like here 50 years ago, without the motorbikes and tower blocks and noise and supermarkets and pollution and foreigners, just old men smoking pipes in winding streets. According to Wikpedia, "at the beginning of the 20th century the city consisted of only about 36 streets, most of which are now part of the old quarter" which pretty much blows my mind.

It kind of shows the dichotomy in Hanoi's character: on the one hand, it's this hectic city with a booming economy, 6.5 million residents and almost as many motorbikes; but at the same time, it still has this old-worldy charm, with crumbling buildings, smelly meat markets, men playing draughts in the street, and tiny alleyways that meander but never seem to lead anywhere. It's like Hanoi hasn't quite caught up with the city it wants to be, or something.

Anyway I reckon it's rad.

Spotted: hysterical shopkeeper lady beating a rat with a metal pole.