For Starters

There’s no visible gecko crap anywhere, so a big hurrah for that! Very exciting. Today was interesting – lots of time in the car. A Mercedes Sprinter, for the curious out there, is indeed a minibus/minivan type vehicle, with plenty of room for all, so that’s far more comfortable than our previous “eight people in an SUV” modus operandi.

We’re seeing the same problems crop up and hearing the same misunderstandings over and over on these projects, and it’s kind of interesting how it’s so uniform. There are also some things that are uniform to the point of being suspicious, but there’s little I can do to prove the suspicions, all I can do is report the data I have. Nonetheless, it’s still a good trip so far. There are a couple new guys with us, who are quite nice. A guy at the commune today said that if I wanted to stay in Vietnam, he’d introduce me around and see if he could help me find a husband. I tried not to snort when Itsy Bitsy told me what he said, and said “that’s a kind offer, but I really must decline” or something obsequious like that. He was joking (99.9%), but perhaps a teeny bit serious. PM was telling me yesterday that when women in Vietnam get to be my age, the ancient age of 29, people are worried if they’re not married, and their odds of finding a husband decline dramatically. I said that I didn’t see much point in getting married until I met someone I actually wanted to marry, so if that decreased my odds, then I was okay with that tradeoff. But that still remains the one question that every single person here asks me – it’s a very typical Vietnamese “getting to know you” question. It doesn’t bother me, although I think people expect that it will for some reason, it’s just funny.

Of course, I need to practice saying “yes, I am” for when I get to Yemen. A fake wedding ring is no good without the proper answers lined up, no?

I finally received the Terms of Reference for the Yemen project yesterday. Unfortunately, however, I’m in Ha Tinh province, at the mercy of a very s-l-o-w dial up connection. So it will have to remain a mystery until Friday or Monday, depending on when we head back. There is some talk about heading back on Thursday night, which I’m all for, even though it will mean a very late arrival back in Hanoi. If my hotel can take me a day early, I think I’ll go for it.

For reasons that defy understanding, PM has taken to correcting my English the past few days. It’s usually when I use an idiomatic expression or a secondary meaning of a word, and he doesn’t understand it. I said something that was a coincidence was funny, and he said “you shouldn’t say it’s funny. I would say that it’s ‘interesting’.” I started to try to explain what I was saying, and then gave up because he was insistent that I didn’t know how to speak properly in my own language. That’s going to get old quickly, especially when I have to edit his writing. I remember Millie telling me, in no uncertain terms, that Vietnamese men can be very difficult. I haven’t really experienced that per se, but it’s interesting to watch PM sometimes. He can be very nice and accommodating and interesting – and then he can be a complete tool. I’m never really sure which side I’m going to see from day to day. Keeps me on my toes, I suppose – but I much prefer working with Eye Patch, if I have a choice.

The more I travel, the more I notice that people really do think that Americans live the way we’re represented on TV and in movies. I suppose that’s not an unreasonable assumption, but since I know that it’s a load of crap, and I know virtually no one whose life resembles a TV show, although there are a few candidates for “The Simpsons”, it’s just strange. They’ll ask me questions about life in the US and are dumbfounded when I say that yes, we do have poverty in the US, and yes, it’s a very real problem, and yes, there are people with no electricity and nothing to eat. Perception is a tricky thing, I suppose. Of course, I think there are plenty of people in the US who think that life, at least for some people, really is what it looks like on TV and in the movies – or that it should be.

We had some time to kill before our afternoon meetings at the commune, so we went out to the beach to chill out for about an hour. Some people grabbed hammocks, which seemed like such a good idea that I was scared I might not get up were I to grab one myself, and the rest of us walked on the beach a little, then came to sit under this large cabana-palm-roof-hut-thing. I’m sure that it’s probably a restaurant in the summer months or something. In any event, I was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt and some khakis and the weather was perfect. There was a light breeze coming in from the ocean, and it was just quiet – the gentle whoosh of the surf was the main sound I remember. Every so often, some fisherman would come down the shore with some nets or hop into their boats and shove off to the ocean. There were little sand crabs digging all over the place, chucking perfectly formed spheres of wet sand out onto the surface as they burrowed. For some reason, I didn’t want to destroy that inadvertent artistry, so I did my best to step around them. It was a lovely and unexpected interlude – kind of like stepping into Gilligan’s Island for an hour, but without all the wackiness. It was one of the times when I didn’t mind at all that people were talking in Vietnamese all around me – it made it easier to tune out everything but the surf and the ocean breeze.

We’re off to some more communes tomorrow, so that should be fun. Itsy Bitsy is scared of dogs (well, she’s scared of a lot of things, to tell you the truth, including “anything with more legs than necessary”), and there are dogs all over the place in these areas. In the cities, too. But we’ll be at a restaurant and there’s usually a dog or three wandering around, hoping for table scraps. I think the dogs are cute, although I do remember that it’s probably not a good idea for me to try to pet them, but she just coils up into a little ball of tension – it’s kind of funny. Or maybe I should say “interesting.” In any event, it should be another interesting day. Now comes the fun part – where I try to dial in and see if it works…