Dec. 5, 2004
We had two birthday parties at our house yesterday. In the morning it was the 15th for the twins in our class and in the evening the 24th for our brother's son, Tin. He is in the seminary in Saigon and brought five of his classmates home for a holiday. To thank us they wanted to treat us to dinner. They had Huyen, the youngest Ho sister, fix a delicious casserole. Then Tin's father Ti and his mother Trang and Tuyet and her
two children came with a cake for Tin's birthday which wasn't until Saturday.
The children's party was special because it was for the twins so Yum had prepared a special dish for lunch for them. They were very happy and Yum said it was because they weren't accustomed to eating so well. (Apparently they told her this as they were taking second helpings.) True to Viet custom, when lunch was over, the boys all said thank you and left but the girls all stayed to clean up and even cleaned the whole house.
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The weekend of the 7th we went back to Saigon. Yum had a dental appointment and I wanted to get a paper from the US Consulate that is necessary for our
wedding to be allowed by Vietnamese law. When I got to the Citizen's Services window I was told I needed an appointment and I almost lost it but she said I should come back at 1:30 and bring Yum. We showed up and were told a Consular Official would see us and we
were to move to window 3, which was outside of the air-conditioned building. We walked into the room marked 3 to find a Vietnamese couple sitting there.
They had also been sent to the same place.
We sat down in the outdoor heat to wait and after a half an hour, another couple came for the same purpose. I went back in to check on the progress of the first couple and they were still waiting in front
of an empty window. They said someone had told them all the Consuls were in a meeting and they would have to wait. I determined that we had all been given the
same appointment time and by now it was 3 p.m. I told Yum to come get me if anyone showed up and went back
in to the Service Office. I excused myself to a Vietnamese speaking through the glass to the Vietnamese woman who'd sent us all to the same place at the same time and asked for an explanation. She
said everyone was in a meeting and we'd just have to sit still and wait. I said "I spent twenty years in one bureaucracy or another, trying to see that the public got the service its taxes were paying for and
they had better round up someone to assist the six of us who had been waiting". The room burst into cheers!
All the window personnel are naturalized American/Viet and most of the people they deal with are also or are Viets who want to emigrate and they treat them badly. I had had enough of their double-talk in our two previous trips and I wasn't about to keep putting up with it even though they had the advantage of the
bullet-proof glass and the locked doors.
Either my outburst startled them or they were good and ready to end their meeting; in either case, we finally got some attention. Sadly, the first couple
was trying to establish his paternity of her child so they could get married. (He was a naturalized American who wanted to return to Vietnam so he had some of the same paper work problems I had.) When the interviewer asked when the baby was born, he said 2001 and she said 2002. They were back to starting all over immediately.
Later in the day, my stepson Lu took me on his motorbike to one of the largest pharmacies in Saigon.This place is always a mad house and no one has a prescription. You tell them what you want, they check generics in the PDR, and bring out everything from physician’s samples to open bottles with a name on it. You never accept anything that isn't in a sealed foil pack from the manufacture; $500 worth of medicine will average $30.
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One of my real annoyances here is the large numbers of drivers with no lights. There are enough hazards without that. I have asked all my Viet friends how to say, "Turn on your lights?" and apparently there is a northern dialect version that sounds like "bac dan lan" and a southern one that sounds like "ma dan lan". Since this is the South I use that. There is usually no result. The other night there were three women on a motorbike with no lights and as I passed, I said "ma dan lan" which they ignored. When we came to a traffic signal together and again I pointed to their headlamp and repeated my phrase. They looked puzzled and then
smiled and turned on their lights and then all three started to laugh and pointed to the front of my bike --- no light!
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We now have a land telephone line and I am writing this in our bedroom instead of an internet shop. (I have finished it back at the Internet shop. My computer is so infected with viruses that I can't use
the Internet at all.) I ordered a three-in-one printer yesterday and when that's hooked up we will be modern again except no dishwasher till we build. They wash dishes with cold water and detergent. I really prefer
boiled dishes.
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The sheer enjoyment of working with the street children who now are studying in our house till the classroom at the bar is finished is indescribable. Some of the girls (5) stay after class every day to help Dung clean up or to cook. The other day we had a family from Canada on a year’s hiatus come by to help with the class. We enjoyed them so much we invited them to come for lunch the next day with our five
helpers. The Canadian children are 9 and 11 and the little girl has golden blond hair. Our 15-year-old girls were just fascinated with the yellow hair and each one had to try braiding it for her. It was such
a heart-warming thing to be part of.
The parents, in their 40's, were so taken by Nha Trang, they decided to cut out some of the country-jumping they were planning on and come back here for three or four months.
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Because of our paperwork being delayed, Dung and I have moved the wedding party to the end of February.
The architect who is designing our house came up from Saigon to look at the site with us. He had some good new ideas after seeing the surrounding buildings and
we may end up with two separate buildings --- one for the bedrooms, joined by a veranda on the garden. I suggested a fancy prefab shower from a magazine and he said it was $3,000; we spotted a picture of a shower that was a beautiful structure of stone and glass and
he said we could do that for $300. What a country!
We hope to start demolition on the old house in early December and Dung wants to let poor parishioners from our church salvage whatever they can before the
structure is torn down.
The weather here has been lovely all month. So far not much rain but much cooler. Dung tells me the rivers are high and the sea dirty from run-off in the
mountains but in Nha Trang its perfect. Except for the occasional mosquito! They don't use screens in Vietnam. Partly because of the cost but mostly they don't like the looks of them
I have been surprised by the amount of Christmas decorating and merchandising that is going on here.
Merry Christmas.
Dick and Dung
Dec. 30, 2004
Great news!! My daughter Jeannie, her friend Blythe and my grandaughter April are coming for a visit in February and will stay for my wedding, which is scheduled for Feb. 21. Ya'll come, too!
The sellers have finally vacated our house and the architect has gotten the plans revised the way we want them so we will start tearing the old house down after the New Year. Dung says we can't start building until after Tet, the lunar New Year, which comes Feb. 9, as everyone will be busy traveling to their ancestral homes and we wouldn't get anything done. Besides, her brother-in-law who will live at the site and supervise construction will be busy at the family restaurant in Saigon through Tet.
The weather has been absolutely delightful with the exception of an occasionally rainy day. The Vietnamese get out their jackets but the tourists are still comfortable in shorts and halters. The sea is very choppy so diving isn't as attractive but many still go.
I've been surprised at the amount of Christmas decorating that has gone on, including our house. Dung and a friend used a glue gun to hang pine bough (artificial) swags around the doors and hung them with multicolored lights. She's been playing DVDs of Christmas singers in the living room and decided she wants to have a Christmas party for the children.
We have moved school back to "Crazy Kims". She has built a room specifically for class with 10 old-fashioned two or three person tables and benches. She also has a huge shower, bathing pool, sauna-like stone arrangement in a room in one corner of the classroom which she says is for the kids to use for showers
although I think it's for the bar patrons to use at night. There is also a hook-up for a TV and DVD and a computer. We'll see how that all works out.
Kim asked Dung if I would teach English to her staff but Dung told her she thought I was too busy. I told her she couldn't afford me. I wouldn't tie myself to a commitment to do something like that unless there was a very large financial inducement. I prefer to help my friends for free on my own schedule. I do
love working with the "street" children at Kim's though. There is a nucleus of 12 children who seem to really be interested in being there. I don't know if it is the English, the companionship, attention from older people or what but they are extremely attentive and eager to be included. They seem to be very attached to me and Dung and Vy, the 23-year-old daughter of one of Dung's friends who wants to be a teacher and who is a regular participant in the conversation sessions we have at my house three days a week, as well as helping at Kim's.
When everything is going smoothly it gives me a sheer tingle of excitement and satisfaction to be a part of it. It is a feeling that, unfortunately, I never got when I was teaching in the U.S. (except, on occasion, at the university level).
Business has been good at Tropical but we have so many "penny" decorating items and elaborate cards that I don't think we are making much money. We leave it to Tuyet, although Dung and I both go in to help out most evenings.
The other day in our English conversation session we were talking about employment in Vietnam. Apparently getting any kind of career job is very difficult and expensive. In order to get a teaching job that pays 500,000 Dong a month, (about $30) you must pay 5 million, ($300). A job with the
government or a company with government connections may pay 5 million a month but you must pay 50 million for it. Also, just to get the chance to pay for a job you must have a sponsor, a relative or close family friend in a high position in the department or company. Of course the same thing operates in America for political jobs, and even for corporate employment, minus the payments. But not on the scale it does here. It amazes me that in the face of these obstacles so many young people are working so hard at getting an education.
Dung has been busy rehearsing with one of the choirs for the several Christmas services that are scheduled for the week. At the regular service on the 19th the church was decorated for Christmas and a quartet of teen-age girls sang Rudolph or at least that was the tune. Dung told me the lyrics were religious and was surprised when I told her the original words.
We have taught the children "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and they insist on singing them both at the end of every class, much to the delight of any Western visitors we may have. The evening of the 23rd, we had a Christmas party at our house for the children and some of the young people who come to speak English with me. Dung bought gifts for all the children and they were so delighted. We took pictures of each of them with the decorations in the background. They all wore their Santa hats that Kim gave them and they looked like a bunch of elves running around the house.
I'm writing this on Christmas night. Aside from a little too much church, this has been the best Christmas I have ever spent. I have received loving gifts and expressions of appreciation from students and Dung's family. We had dinner tonight at the Guava, the restaurant the two young Canadians run.They closed the place to tourists and just had family
and friends. We had turkey imported from Iowa, roast suckling pig, all kinds of vegetable and desert dishes and wine punch. The boys charged $6 apiece, 1/2 for children and I took 14 family and friends. Phong, the 16-year-old girl, who is a live-in housekeeper for Dung's sister Huyen, made 8 trips to the buffet. We got our money's worth on Phong.
Christmas eve in Nha Trang was amazing. The streets were mobbed with people walking and on motorbikes. Many had on Santa Claus hats and vendors were selling cards and gifts everywhere. At Dung's church the evening service was from 8 to 10 but at the Catholic Cathedral they had a midnight mass. Dung said the Catholics have more influence in the government than the Protestants.
I spoke to my daughter Heather and
they had had a terrible ice storm in Columbus. It's 70 here.
On the 27th, Quinn, the Chinese/Canadian partner in the Guava, got married and had a great wedding dinner. There were a large number of Westerners and many of the operators of other bars and restaurants who are all friends here. There was a lot of drinking and singing but no dancing. Other than a rather jerky motion that passes for dancing at the discos, Vietnamese do not seem to have taken to Western style dancing at all.
The past week the news has been dominated by the earthquake and tsunami on the other side of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. The impact on this part of the world will be ongoing for years. Someone commented to me that God must not have much affection for the poor because so many of the world's natural disasters happen in the poorest parts of the world.
I don't expect to make much fuss over the change of years. But, in the tradition of the West, Happy New Year.
Dick
