The Long Road Back

Yesterday was our last day in the field, and for some reason it feels like it’s been more than a day since we rolled back into HCMC. We had some more roads to see in the morning, then it was just a matter of heading back to the city. It was nice to stop going in loops and swirls through rural roads that may or may not have actually been there. In some places there is going to be extensive resettlement work to do, which should keep things interesting. It feels in some ways like I’ve floated through this first week a little, so I’m looking forward to earning my keep next week, when the major work starts. Of course, I’m also really looking forward to the facial that I’ve booked for tomorrow. It’s all about balance, I suppose…

There were two peculiar things about these places we were driving through in the delta the past few days. One was that almost every house or store, whether the roof was made of palm leaves, corrugated metal, or ceramic tiles, had a television set, with people sitting in the floor in front of it, totally absorbed by whatever they happened to be tuned to. The other was that every place that looked remotely like it might qualify as a being big enough to be called a “village” seemed to have a dress shop in it, with a mannequin dressed in some elaborate, hoop-skirted or crinolined confection, sealed up in a plexiglass box, with a row of more hanging in the back. Clearly, people everywhere need clothes. But in places of tremendous poverty, I suppose I was just very surprised to see places to buy formal wear among the palm leaf huts.

We ran a ton of errands today – I’ve never had to set up an office before, so it’s been kind of interesting to have to think about all the little things that go into it. After that, I decided to take some time and do a little more wandering, picture taking, etc. In the middle of all this, the daily thunderstorm hit, and it was quite the event. I ducked into a nearby hotel for a beverage while the storm passed. Two (allegedly) decaf cappuccinos, a tomato and mozzarella salad, and a bottle of mineral water later, the storm had still not passed, although at least the torrent had slowed to a mild sprinkle and I could “walk between the raindrops”, as my grandmother used to say. It’s funny to see the effect that extreme humidity has on me, more specifically on my hair – it’s a mass of corkscrew curls these days, which is kind of fun. Who needs a curling iron when I can just head for a tropical climate?

I went back to Ben Thanh, the massive indoor market, today with a couple of specific goals in mind, which is helpful in a place like that. After taking a couple of pictures, because you have to see this place to believe it, I set about actually finding what I was looking for. A travel book that I read accurately said that it brings to mind the legendary slogan of US country stores: if they don’t have it, you don’t need it. I’ve found that I have been getting much better at bargaining. Much to my surprise, when people would tell me the price of what I was looking at, and I would smile sweetly and tell them what I wanted to pay, after a smidge of back-and-forth, it actually worked! But I shouldn’t get too used to it – as my mom said, when she returned to the US, she had to remind herself that the people at Hecht’s wouldn’t really be receptive to any attempt to haggle – took a bit of reprogramming. In some ways it feels like I’ve been in Vietnam longer than I actually have, but mostly it just feels like I’ve been away from home for a really long time.

I went to a great Indian restaurant last night, which was very good to find, since I love Indian food, and I knew what things were on the menu! I realize that it’s a little odd to come to Vietnam from Pakistan and get Indian food, but…well, I’m a little odd, too. If I end up coming back here, I’m definitely keeping the place in mind, I have a feeling that I could become a regular. That’s actually something nice about being in such a big city – you can find something that’s familiar if you just look for it. Maybe I’m missing the point of traveling, looking for familiarity. It’s not that I haven’t been trying plenty of new things, because a lot of the past six or seven weeks have been nothing but new things. Maybe it just comes back to balance.

Things

Things That Remind Me I’m Not in Pakistan
- I saw a girl walking down the street wearing black booty shorts that looked as though they’d been shrink-wrapped to her body
- I don’t hear prayers broadcast in Urdu over public loudspeakers five times a day
- Every single eating establishment I’ve been to has a plentiful supply of alcohol, and people aren’t afraid to use it

Things that Remind Me I’m Not in the USA
- A hotel minibar that consists of ramen in chicken and chicken curry flavors, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter
- People smoking anywhere and everywhere
- A “bathroom” that was a semi-circular screen made of palm leaves that faced the back of a restaurant

Today was probably more time in the car than I’d ever want to spend, although I’ve taken longer road trips. It’s just that this isn’t really a road trip, and it’s not even like my visit to Sanghar District in Pakistan. This is just me and two other people on the project, and a driver, driving the project roads, with no playful banter about where to stop for lunch of what music to listen to. We don’t stop to meet people who might be affected by the project, I have no idea what I’m looking at when I see things that are cool, so it’s basically just…driving in virtual silence, no music, and not a whole lot of conversation. I think that future field trips out here, assuming that I do more work on this project, are likely to be more interesting, but the project manager wanted us to just get a feel for the area. Well, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve got one after two solid days of driving, with a third one on the way!

I do, however, think that I’ve managed to get some good pictures. The other problem with this trip being so purely functional is that I can’t really say “hey, can you pull over – I want to take a picture of that!”, so I’ve taken some pictures out the window that I really hope will come out. I have no idea what the shutter speed is on my camera, since it’s an automatic everything, but if it’s fast enough, some of them may have worked. If not, I haven’t taken all my pictures like that, and I got some really cool ones in Vinh Long this morning.

I am currently writing from a much more hygienically sound hotel room in a city called Can Tho (pronounced “cahn toe”), which is the biggest city in the Mekong Delta region. By the time we got here, it was already dark, so I don’t have much of an impression of the place yet, but I already like it better than Vinh Long. I wouldn’t think that being vegetarian in this part of the world would be too difficult, since most people live on rice and vegetables anyway. But the Vietnamese are dedicated carnivores, and fish is very prevalent, among other things like chicken, eel, squid, pork, and dog. My efforts yesterday to try to be a good sport and try to eat some things that had been cooked with fish didn’t turn out too well, so today, I knew that I’d have to be more of a pain. As most of you know, I’ll try anything as long as it doesn’t have meat in it, and I don’t generally consider myself picky, apart from that. Well, I ordered mixed vegetable broth for lunch with some rice. They brought me something with shrimp and pork that wasn’t remotely broth-like, so I’m guessing they misunderstood what I was pointing to on the menu. We clarified, and I had a little rice while waiting for my broth with veggies. Broth with veggies apparently comes with big ol’ hunks of pork in it. So that was a miss as well. Since everyone else was almost done with what they were eating, I decided to have some more rice and that would be fine – although we stopped for fruit later, fortunately, because two small bowls of rice just wasn’t doing it.

We had a really long day of winding around rural roads, some of which were only roads in the technical sense – they didn’t have trees right in the middle, and were basically clear of vegetation, but it was like being on a rollercoaster some of the time. It helped to underline for me the necessity of this project, seeing people try to get places on this rutted mud track on their bicycles or motorcycles. It was difficult enough for us in a four-wheel drive vehicle. Then that sound came – that rush of tropical rain that comes on so quickly and can soak you inside of thirty seconds. Most people on two-wheeled transport, which is most people, pull over for shelter in someone’s house or store, as the rain is very intense and can be dangerous. The unpaved roads can then become unbelievably slippery and it’s easy to get stuck. It’s interesting to look at the sky here, though. I know that this is a term generally applied to parts of the western US, but the sky here just looks so big. It’s enormous, and it makes you feel really tiny when you stop to think about it. So to see the charcoal-colored storm clouds rolling in toward you can be quite the sight to behold. I got a couple pictures, but I have no idea if it’s actually going to capture that feeling.

We stopped for a break to let the driver fuel up on some caffeine, and I asked where the ladies room was. We were in a café that was in a but made of woven palm leaves, which was what they could afford, not an attempt at tiki kitsch, and the girl pointed out to the back. I headed to the back and saw nothing other than a little semicircular screen of woven palm leaves, about six feet high, resting on some rocks. I thought “well, that can’t be right…” and went back to ask the girl, or rather, mime to the girl, that I didn’t quite understand. She smiled and pointed again to the screen. I stood there for a second, then said to myself “suck it up, Princess, this is your only option, you’ve peed in the woods many a time and this isn’t that different, so just go for it.” That was almost enough of a pep talk, and I headed over, and then I saw the opening faced the back of the café next door, where several people were calmly having a drink and talking. Having an audience was too much for me, and I was going to resign myself to crossing my legs for the next few hours, when one of the neighbors came over and offered to let me use their restroom out back. I have never been so grateful to anyone in my life.

The route we had to take was ideally supposed to have two loops, and we were going to do the inner loop in the morning, and the outer loop in the afternoon, as it was going to drop us closer to our final destination. We’d been in the car for about seven hours as we were traveling up the last leg of the outer loop, and we happened upon an interesting discovery. The road was under construction, and completely impassable due in part to a missing bridge, despite being clearly marked as whole and complete on the handy-dandy map we were using. This only became a real problem because the road network here isn’t exactly extensive – that’s why we have a job to do. So it meant that we had to double back over about 90 minutes worth of roads. It reminded me of a scene from “Speed”, where the people on the bus have to jump over a gap in a bridge because construction has fallen behind and it’s incomplete. The police captain supervising the whole operation says “What??? But it’s finished on the map! That’s it, you’re all fired, everyone is fired!!!”

We had to take one last ferry tonight to get into Can Tho, and it’s a very popular one, as evidenced by the massive line of cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles waiting to get on. As we were waiting in line, calmly minding our own business, someone came up and started banging on the windows, really hard. He was yelling something, and our driver was yelling back, as he locked the doors. My first instinct was to think that this was my fault, as I am a freak magnet – just ask Jenn Bowes McCann who was with me as I was serenaded by some guy singing “PYT” on Boylston Street in Boston one night. After some other guy had asked if Jenn and I were sisters. Jenn is about five or six inches shorter than me, and she’s half Korean. If there is someone with a chemical imbalance or emotional disorder within a five-mile radius, they will find me irresistible, it’s a proven fact.

I was delighted to find out, however, that this guy is a fixture in the area, and while I’m not quite sure what his deal is, he basically tells people that he has to drive their car over to Can Tho or something. I didn’t get the full explanation. The police are aware of this guy, and he’s been told not to get on the actual ferry or bad things will happen to him. He is, however, allowed to harass people waiting to get on the ferry, since the police know he does it and do nothing about it. I don’t understand it, but at least my gift for attracting weirdoes doesn’t appear to translate in foreign countries – at least, not in Vietnam. Well, not yet.

We eventually rolled into Can Tho around 7:30, checked into the hotel, and headed straight for dinner. I had only had two small bowls of rice and some fruit the entire day, so I was definitely in need of a little food, and fortunately there were several restaurants within walking distance. The first two restaurants we passed were hosting weddings, and let me tell you, the Vietnamese do not waste a party. There was music blaring, people shouting and laughing and dancing, decorations and pictures everywhere. It looked like a lot of fun. The third restaurant we went to did not have a wedding, although most of the staff were standing in the doorway staring at the wedding across the street. It also had a nice, big “vegetarian” section on their menu, for which I was very grateful.

After a delicious dinner, we headed back to our very nice hotel. There are no geckos on the walls, and it’s a good deal nicer, by which I mean cleaner, than the place we stayed last night. That was the type of situation where my little silk sleeping bag comes in handy – best purchase I ever made, and perfect for staying in places with a somewhat casual approach to hygiene. Originally the project was supposed to be based here in Can Tho, but the project manager nixed it, citing the lack of things to do when we weren’t working. I have to say, I know very little of Can Tho, but I like enough things about Ho Chi Minh City to be grateful for that decision. Not, of course, that I know whether or not I’ll be heading back to Vietnam. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m definitely looking forward to some time at home – a month or two, at least. I don’t know how all of this scheduling is going to work out, as they’re also considering bringing me back to Pakistan for that project as well at a later time, but that’s really not my problem at the moment. And I have a feeling that they won’t tell me until a couple weeks beforehand, if past experience (i.e. this one) is anything to go by.

It seems crazy to think about coming back here again in a few months, but that’s part of this job, I suppose. And I did say I wanted to travel. Well, like I said before, I’ll know when it’s time to quit – I just don’t think it’s time yet. I’ve got a couple more continents to visit, and some more pages in my passport to fill…

Down in the Delta

Well, it’s been the end of a long day, although not nearly as long as it’s been for our driver. We got going early this morning, and I thought I would have ten more minutes than I ended up having, so I had to skip breakfast. We left at 7 am, and it really only felt early because I couldn’t make myself go to sleep last night. The lights were out, I was in bed in my usual sleeping position (left side, semi-fetal…), my eyes were closed…and my head was just buzzing. I don’t know how long it actually took me to fall asleep, but I know how long it felt. I put my alarm on the other side of the room to make sure that I’d actually get up.

I also had a long day yesterday, which probably contributed to the brain buzz – more wandering around the city after work stuff was done, and I’m delighted to say that my Christmas shopping is mostly done! I was in this one store, and I picked up a little wood carving that was cute, and asked the sales girl how much it was. She said 160,000 dong, which is about $10. I put it back down, not because I thought $10 was such a terrible price, although it was too high, but because I wasn’t all that interested in it. She then began to bargain with me. “How much you want to pay? I give you discount!” and I said “no, thank you, I’ll just look around a little more.” One thing about shopping here, and if I’m remembering correctly, Taiwan was the same, the sales girls will spring to their feet the second they see you, and stay within two feet of you the entire time you’re in the shop. It actually really drives me insane, as I like to browse. But I understand that it’s the way things are done here, and they’re just being attentive – fair enough. This particular girl, however, took customer service to a whole new level. She started to sing to me as I walked throughout the store. I am not making this up. I had to try really hard not to giggle, and I almost bought something just for that. But I decided that it would be that much harder to avoid laughing, and since I wasn’t all that interested anyway, I thanked her for her time and left the shop.

Another thing that reminds me of Taiwan is seeing things in English that make no sense, but that people will buy because it’s got English lettering – kind of like how Westerners like things with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. Well, walking through this one market, I was surrounded by stalls and stalls of bags, clothes, fabric, etc. Everything you could imagine. And even, some things I couldn’t have thought of, like a t-shirt featuring Mickey Mouse saying “I love Vincent! How fun to make and have love friends!” Then there’s “Happy Shop”, where the people don’t look all that happy, and “Beautiful Store”, which isn’t all that beautiful, to be honest.

I must conclude that Vietnam is the hot vacation spot for the Australian crowd, because you can’t swing a pocketbook without bumping into a group of Aussies in Ho Chi Minh City. I ran into a nice couple from my mom’s hometown of Newcastle and had a nice little chat as we looked over some jewelry, and the place where we ate dinner was also brimming over with Aussies. Particularly some strapping, young Australian men. I must go back and explore my roots a little…

This morning, it was really cool to – okay, I just need to take a moment and share with you that I just saw a gecko dart up the walls of my room. It’s true that geckos are friendly little things that eat bugs and such, and I certainly don’t object to them on principle, but I’m not sure how I feel about a hotel where lizards are part of the décor. (Or are they amphibians? I can’t remember – I think they might be.) Well, I’ll call him Gary. It’ll make things less awkward.

Moving right along.

As I was saying, it was really cool to drive out of the city early this morning. We were weaving our way through the southwest corner of the city, through a couple of wholesale markets. I saw people stacking fresh eggs into crates, piling up fruits, vegetables, and meats into carts, all set to move out into the city to sell over the course of the day. I love seeing that kind of thing – the stuff of everyday life. It’s all well and good to play in the tourist areas, and I’m a big fan of that myself, but it’s also fun and interesting to see how real people go about real days, when their reality is so different from yours.

We made our way out of the city into the Mekong Delta region, which is a very lush, fertile, colorful place. The primary color is green – the almost artificial, plastic green of flooded rice fields, the yellowish green of banana trees, the emerald green of the bamboo trees, and the green palm and bamboo trees that sway in the breeze above all of it. As in Pakistan, the women typically dress in very colorful, festive-looking clothes, so you see these columns of brilliant color, capped off by a conical woven hat, in the middle of rice fields as you drive by. Because the water table is so high in this area, they have to bury their dead above ground, so you also frequently see gravesites that are set up off the ground on a concrete slab, usually in pastel colors. One thing that’s interesting to see as you drive around is the houses. About half of the houses are little one-, two-, or three-room, simple concrete buildings, but they’re painted in pretty, soft colors, have tile floors that go out to the verandas, and generally look like nice little bungalows. But they’re situated next to little clusters of dirt-floor huts woven out of palm leaves from walls to ceiling, so it makes for a strange contrast. I’d be curious to know if there’s a story behind that. The government buildings are also not what I would have expected - they’re all painted a nice, buttery yellow color, with red clay tile roofs, and actually look like cheerful little buildings. Somehow that doesn’t jive with the images in my head of modernist, Communist architecture. However, they blend nicely with the tropical landscape, and I’m glad that it’s not what I expected.

The Mekong River splinters into a million little canals and tributaries, which help to keep the land irrigated and fertile. The upshot of this is that I can’t count the number of bridges and ferries I’ve been on today. They run continuously, and as they pull into the dock, you pile on with all the people on scooters, on bicycles, and on foot – cars, or anything with more than two wheels, are definitely the exception. Once you dock on the other side, the ferry attendants try to direct traffic and say who should get off first to make getting off as orderly as possible. It’s cute that they try. I think their time would be better spent getting out of the way.

There are a few bigger towns/small cities in the Delta region, so we’ve tried to plan our trip so that we’ll be staying in those places at night. The first more cosmopolitan place that we visited, meaning that it had a traffic light, is a town called My Tho, pronounced “mee toe”. After evaluating our likely future options, we decided that this would be the best place to stop for lunch, as options later on were likely to be scarce. We pulled into a restaurant aimed primarily at the tourist crowd and settled down for a nice lunch along the river. I politely turned down the fish soup, which had a very large fish head boiling away with all the veggies and spices, but the veggies and rice noodles that I had were very tasty. They had a little stand with a sign over it that said “Great Balls of Rice”, which made me chuckle, and I took a picture. Well, that was before I saw the staff arrive and start to prepare these great balls of rice. My roommate Marie often has her mother bring back rice balls from a deli on Staten Island when she’s there visiting family, and I have to admit that I love them – very tasty little concoctions involving rice, cheese, breadcrumbs, and a deep fryer, all in a little piece of heaven the size of a small orange. I had to take another picture upon witnessing what they were producing, because the “great” may have also been referring to taste, but it definitely referred to the size of these gargantuan things. I have never seen a rice ball the size of a cantaloupe or kickball before today, and if I weren’t so full, I probably would have had a Homer Simpson moment (“Mmm….rice balls”). However, the knowledge that I would have to sit in a car over miles and miles of more project roads this afternoon kept me from asking if they had a “to go” bag.

We got back on the road, and I have to admit that I dozed a little, finding myself in the throes of a post-lunch food coma. Since we’re driving the entire length of the project roads that have been identified so far, we are going off the tourist path by quite a bit, and there’s a lot of looping and weaving to do to cover everything. It’s been fun, though, to see these out-of-the-way places. Every stretch of road is covered by people on some form of two-wheeled transport. As we get farther from urbanized areas, the mode of choice appears to be bicycle. It’s funny to think how some Americans will spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, on bikes, bike shoes, bike shorts, high-performance cycling jerseys, and all that other stuff, to bike a few miles on the weekends, when your average Vietnamese person in a rural area looks at a bicycle as an efficient way to get from point A to point B. The thought of spending what little money they have on special shoes or shirts for biking would be absurd. Of course, I can’t even begin to think how someone would explain the Atkins diet to a population with phenomenally low rates of obesity and heart disease that subsists largely on rice.

The fact that I was feeling tired wasn’t particularly notable, but when our driver, Mr. Tan, said that he was feeling tired, we decided that it was time for a coffee break. We pulled over to a little café (I use that term loosely) by the side of the road, to get coffee for the driver and coconut juice for the rest of us. I have discovered that I really don’t like coconut juice. I like actual coconut, but the juice (not to be confused with coconut milk) is a bland, sweetish substance that doesn’t taste like much of anything, until you add a little sugar and some lime juice. And even that does little to improve it. This café was, as most are, a small family-run establishment, and the owner was sitting around with some of her friends in the corner, talking and passing the time, with her daughter asleep in a hammock, a jumble of arms and legs as she took her afternoon nap. I had the chance to chat a little with Mr. Tan, who is a very nice man. His family has always been from southern Vietnam, and his brother fought in the South Vietnamese Army. His brother subsequently left the country by boat in 1977, and resettled in southern California. Mr. Tan has never been to the US, but he wants to visit and see his family. I know that things like plane tickets are much cheaper if you buy them here, but it’s still a lot of money, so I hope that Mr. Tan can go one day.

We finally rolled into our hotel for the evening, located in the town of Vinh Long. It seems nice enough, although I’ve noticed that hotels in Vietnam want to keep your passport while you’re in town – I think they need to report to the police that they have foreigners staying there or some such thing. I, however, don’t like having my passport sit in an unlocked drawer in a hotel lobby. It makes me uncomfortable, and you really never know when you’ll need your passport. The place I’m staying in Ho Chi Minh City gave it back when I said I’d pay for everything up front, and this place let us collect it after dinner tonight. I’m not trying to be difficult, as I know they just have a job to do. But yeah – I don’t like having my passport sit in an unlocked drawer in a hotel lobby.

We had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town, and even though it’s only 8:30, I’m hoping to be in bed soon. We drove around today in amiable silence most of the time, so I’m hoping, then, that the noise inside my head from last night has had time to sort itself out. There’s tons of street noise outside my room, but I imagine that will fade once I get settled into bed.

Corrections

I must make a few corrections to inaccurate statements that I’ve made to date. First of all, my e-mail connection isn’t so-so. It’s actually quite reliable, it’s just s-l-o-w. But that’s fine – I can handle slow. It allows my Freecell game time to improve. I will absolutely rock at Freecell by the time I leave. And, although I don’t think I’ve ever said that Pakistani traffic is the worst I’ve ever been in in my life, I can see where it would look as though I had implied it many times. Well, let’s take that back. Vietnamese traffic is a whole other animal. I’m glad that I had a chance to practice my “don’t look at the traffic on either side of you” skills in Pakistan; they have served me well here, and are helping to keep my blood pressure nice and low. I’ll have to post some pictures or something – although I have a feeling that a still picture would look as though there was an accident about to happen, because traffic just moves from all directions, and cars and scooters will come at you head-on, only to swerve out of the way at the last minute. If someone has to make a left turn, they’ll just move on over to the right side of the road, into oncoming traffic, to cut off that corner and save a little time. It’s interesting. As in Pakistan, the horn is an essential and constant companion for any driver.

We had some errands to run today, mostly related to setting up the office, since we don’t have one yet. We looked at this loft apartment that we’re likely to take as the office, and it is the most beautiful apartment that I’ve ever seen in my life. It is gorgeous. It’s got beautiful dark hardwood floors, a loft separated by shoji screens, and it’s the corner unit, so it has a wrap-around balcony that overlooks a park. So, even though I’m not likely to ever be able to afford to live somewhere like that (*sigh*), I may get to spend some time there. I’m not sure how quickly the office will be set up, but if I have to come back to work on this project, then I’ll get to work there. All of our errands, including arranging for a car and driver for our field visit that we’re taking on Wednesday, were in District 1, which is the main downtown area, which caters to tourists. After we got everything settled and set up, I decided to walk around and see the city a little. I stayed in District 1, but I got to wander a little and do some shopping, which was fun. Vietnam is known for its silk, and there are rows of stores that sell silks in every possible color and pattern. I bought a couple pieces, and I’ll probably use some of them for clothes and some for pillow covers and stuff.

I’m not going as overboard with shopping as it may sound, but it’s just so nice for me to be able to walk around and do things. It’s still a little disorienting here, but I like it. There are still plenty of remnants of French architecture and French culture, such as things on menus written in Vietnamese that will insert French words like “jambon” and “frommage”. Or the shop sign I saw that said “Nguyen Frères”. There are also a lot of French people who live here. We were in a café today where we stopped for some ice cream, and it was hard to remember that I was in Vietnam, if I didn’t look out the windows. I was in a European-style café, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, and sitting next to a table full of Frenchmen who were smoking and talking animatedly, waving their hands around. But outside, there were little ramps leaning up against the curbs so that people could drive their scooters up onto the sidewalk or into hallways. You don’t really see that much in Paris.

I saw a few souvenir shops with signs announcing their genuine antiques and such. They had some lovely woodcarvings on the shelves and hanging from the walls. Among them I saw a lovely carving depicting the Simpsons. I’m guessing that they’re not all genuine antiques.

I wish I’d bought a Vietnamese phrasebook or something before I got here – although I’m not sure how much good it would really do me. The letters that they use are all English letters, but that has no bearing on whether or not you can pronounce them. There are numerous symbols that they use on top of, or below, the letters that change the way they’re pronounced. Even knowing French does nothing for my ability to pronounce words and phrases, although there is a French influence in pronunciation as well. There was a young kid following us around last night, trying to sell us some books, and his English was better than that of most adults I’ve spoken to here. Or in the States, actually. Interesting.

The place where we’re staying has a pool, but it has been mostly frequented by little kids so far, therefore I’ve been running again, since there’s also a small gym on the premises. I’m glad that my running hasn’t deteriorated as much as I’d thought it might have, since I hadn’t tried it since I left the States. There’s more that I could do here, but I figure that, since I’m in the habit of almost-daily exercise, I should be a good girl and keep it up. It really does make me feel better…plus, I’d like to be able to continue to fit into the clothes I’ve had made.

After my day of wandering around the city, I was fairly well wiped out. I came back to the apartment, made myself some rice and veggies for dinner, and have had a fairly quiet night. Another team member is arriving tomorrow, and Wednesday we head out to the field. I’m excited to see the Mekong Delta and the rural areas. I took some pictures around the city today, and plan to take lots more when we’re out and about. It’s interesting to be in a Communist country where you can pay for things with American dollars and see signs for Coca Cola and Nokia products everywhere. I have a feeling that this isn’t quite what Ho Chi Minh had in mind.