Happy birthday em Thao!!

Chúc Mừng Sinh Nhật

June 16, 2009
em Thao turns 25!

I met up with em Na in the afternoon at Ben Thanh market so that we could shop and walk around a bit before the dinner party. Em Na bought some flowers for Thao (they met previously at the Jazz club outing) and I had my gift ready (some printed pictures of our recent outings and to Bac Lieu, the Twilight soundtrack, and Oil of Olay lotion) and just needed a card.

We met up at the medical school dormitory and there were lots of people there ready for the birthday celebration. We went to a nearby restaurant for ban xeo, beef hot pot and banh trang, lots and lots of food. em Na and I practiced our Vietnamese, as we were meeting many of Thao's friends, all medical school students or doctors already. I met Thao's roommates (6 girls in the room) and other classmates; everyone was very friendly and spoke English, but willing to talk to me as I practiced my Vietnamese.



Thao said that this was the first time she'd celebrated with friends; normally she goes home and celebrates her birthday with family. Keeping with tradition, Thao paid for the dinner because she invited us all out. Completely different from what we do in the US, but I suppose it makes sense?

After dinner, we all headed to a nearby ice cream and coffee shop for more celebration and cake! There were two beautiful and yummy cakes; one traditional cake has gelatin on the outside, then the flour cake inside, it was so delicious!



Best picture of the night: Tuan sneaks a bite of a cake from Minh...



Thao gave bookmarks to everyone and gel candles that she had wrapped with tissue paper. She seemed to have a great time and it was really fun to share the event with so many people!

all pictures from em Thao's birthday celebration

Bac Lieu, Vietnam

Last weekend (June 5 - 7, 2009) I traveled with some friends to Bac Lieu, Vietnam (about 7 hour bus ride south west of Ho Chi Minh City) to spend time in the countryside and attend an engagement party. The bus is really like an extension van, about 15 seats, and so the ride isn't bad, depending on how crazy of a driver you have. I traveled with 4 other girls (all doctors!) and they all had to take medication to prevent car sickness. I survived, but the driver was a bit maniacal.

Like "HOLY WTF we're going to crash head first into oncoming traffic as you pass these 4 trucks....wheeeeew that was a close one!!!!!". And repeat...

I talked with em Thao a bit, it has been really nice to make a good friend here in Vietnam. And I was able to sleep, thanks to the help of my ipod. I think otherwise, it would be have been a bit difficult for me with the honking, music, and general crazy noise of the trip. We did have two 30 minute rest stops to use the bathroom and eat/drink, so that was nice. There was also a really cool ferry ride across the Mekong River, where we passed through the city of Can Tho.



We arrived in Bac Lieu about 10:30 pm and the town was very quiet, it was actually difficult to get a taxi to take us to the Bride's home. But we finally made it, and met with the the Bride's family and their friends. We had a late meal and then the family took us to the hotel where our group would be staying the night, a small guest house with a great big room with 4 beds. And air-conditioning...which is all I really needed as Bac Lieu was hotter than HCMC, if one can even imagine that...seems like there are less big trees, more flat land countryside...


But the countryside is beautiful, watching the buildings pass by, seeing how simple life can really be and also how poor the country really is. Often I'd see something really interesting: above ground coffins facing all the same direction, rows of lamps illuminating pools of water (em Thao though this may be somehow related to raising shrimp or crabs), a huge house every now and then, a large factory with rows and rows of motorbikes and bicycles. Seems like everything is fascinating out in the countryside.

Saturday morning, we woke up around 6:30 and prepared our dresses for the engagement party. Bich and I were the only ones who chose to wear ao dai - and it nearly killed me, because it was so stinking hot and the ao dai is supposed to be tight fighting and therefore very hot. At least we suffered together and we did look very nice!

We arrived at the house close to 8 and watched Minh (the bride) get her make up and hair done. Minh is already a beautiful girl but these people can really do some magic with these glosses, powders, and sticks of color. And the hair! Lots of hairspray and pins, and they even hot glued pearls in a crown shape. Sounds weird, but it was so beautiful and really reminded me of a fairy princess.

I have only ever been to family weddings, so am familiar with some of the traditions of the Vietnamese wedding. But I was still interested to see how this engagement party was the same or different...Engagement parties take place in the Bride's home while the actual wedding ceremony takes place in the Groom's home. Then there is of course a celebration dinner and reception at a restaurant or hotel, but the ceremony of Vietnamese Buddhist tradition takes place in the home, in front of ancestors, family, and friends.

At 8 am, Tuan (the Groom) and his family arrived. As is tradition, they walk in a ceremonial process from the driveway to the front of the house. First is the Groom's representative (often a good family friend), followed by the parents and grandparents, then the Groom himself. Following him is a procession of other family and friends, each holding a gift offering to the Bride's family - all in all, it's about 30 people.

Meanwhile, the Bride's family is lined up at the house entrance, ready to greet the Groom. The Groom's Representative introduces the family and makes an offering. The Bride's family offers tea to the Groom's parents and the Groom's family is escorted in. The Bride has yet to be seen.

The parents, grandparents, and other high family members sit across from each other at a long table and one by one, make offerings and prayers to their ancestors and greet each other. Then the Groom makes offerings to the Bride's family, says prayers...and then the Bride comes down. Together the Bride and Groom make offerings to their ancestors and to each family member at the table. The Bride is presented with gold jewelry and other gifts. It takes about one hour and there's lots of bowing, clapping, blessings, and presentation of money.

It's a beautiful ceremony, enriched in tradition and with gestures to family, past and present. I really would like to have such a ceremony for my own wedding. Often at cousin's weddings, because not many people can make it to an engagement party (whereas here, most family from both sides live in Bac Lieu), it becomes a part of the wedding day celebrations. So in the morning you have the celebration at the Bride's home, then the wedding ceremony (either at Groom's home or church or other location), then the reception. It turns into an all day event, but I've always found it to be fun and interesting.


Minh the Bride is on the far right, in a traditional pink ao dai. Her wedding ao dai will be red. There is also a traditional ao dai for men as well, but nowadays they elect to wear the Western suit and tie.


Friends (and doctors!).

After a hearty lunch, our group of 5 girls headed back to the hotel to change and rest. At 4 pm, we headed back out to tour Bac Lieu and make the most of our (essentially) one day excursion to the countryside.

First up, a visit to the Goddess of the Southern Seas, a popular statue and temple in Bac Lieu.




The landscape is just incredible...those are clouds, not smoke from incense. Absolutely beautiful.

Then we headed out to the ocean. The Mekong Delta does not have beaches, it is rather muddy. And there are fascinating creatures that live in the mud, amongst the mangrooves. Small crabs the size of your thumb that have one huge claw the size of their body and the other claw tiny. Or weird amphibian/fish-like creatures that look like large tadpoles and can swim by moving their tail but like to get around by hopping on top of the water. They can also climb onto sticks and mud - it was really weird, like I was imagining these were prehistoric fish and they were going to evolve into frogs or land animals...if that makes any sense.

Best of all the ocean is shallow, so you can walk basically out into the sunset and it's a fantastic sense of really being on the edge of the world:







Urgh, I feel like I'm using all of these adjectives, but still cannot really describe how cool this place was. I really wish we had more time to be here, because walking out into the ocean like in the above picture would have been really awesome.

Then we met up with a larger group of friends and headed to dinner at a small restaurant that specializes in turtles. Yeah, eating turtle was kind of a weird thing, and definitely following the group into the back kitchen area was a bad idea (!!). Oops It was a novel thing to see, but I think when you see the process of live animal to dead animal, it makes it difficult to follow through with eating the thing. I think really only the guys were into the meal, the girls not to much. We kept asking for more noodles, to fill our stomachs with something. I didn't even remember to take pictures, as unique as this meal was.

In fact the most interesting part of the meal was probably when we were waiting for everything to get ready, we ventured into the back, where there was a great view of the sunset and countryside filled with rice paddies, banana trees, and a few ancestral burial grounds...


Sunset in Bac Lieu

After dinner, we all headed to a famous large hotel, restaurant, and cafe in Bac Lieu. Built in 1919, it was formerly owned by the richest man in the province. He was so rich (through owning land and farms) that apparently he once burned money to cook an egg. Whack! Anyways I think probably the government seized the property after the war and now it's a hotel, restaurant, and cafe. A few of us walked around the area, it's about as big as a city block, and then returned to finish our drinks.



Turns out some people were still hungry (yes indeed!) and then we all ventured out to experience some special Bac Lieu seafood noodle soup. The small local restaurants have tiny chairs and tables that make you feel clownish and can put a kink in your back and cramp your legs. But some of the best food (and always super cheap!) comes in these locations, so it's just a part of the culture. And really these people, guys and girls, are tiny so it's okay for them. Haha, us Americans would be thinking, "Uhh you expect my butt to fit where?!"



And so after this late meal, our group of girls split ways and headed back to hotel to clean up and get ready for the overnight trip back to HCMC. Taking the 11:30 pm bus seemed like a good idea at the time (save time! sleep on the bus and you save a whole day!) except it was much harder to me to sleep. And plus there were still the 2 30 minute stops, where you have to get out while they clean the bus, so it's not a good sleep. At 5:30 am we arrived in HCMC, and I think we all still slept for another few hours after that....

It was really a fun trip; I really wanted to get out of the city and see something new, and spending time with these ladies was really great!

Special Bac Lieu album here, as I cannot post all of pics on the blog

HEI outing

Sunday afternoon was my "goodbye" outing with HEI, the medical English club that I've been meeting with a few times during my trip. There was a big group of us that went out, most were the HEI officers and 3rd year medical students. We headed out to district 4, across the river, for what was an eventful night.

First on the menu? ốc! Snail!


We had little ones that you had to poke out with a fork, larger ones that just came on the shell, and these "fingernail" snails, called because of the shells they come in.



I have never eaten so much snail in one sitting, but it was quite good - though we all knew that one cannot really get full just eating snail!

Second course was a real sit-down dinner of fried rice, vegetables, noodles, and french fries!



After dinner, we headed back to district one so that we could walk around and burn off the meal. We ran into a group of bicyclists who had left Cambodia that morning and just arrived then at their hotel in Vietnam. That's the coolest thing about being in District 1: you can just walk around and see cool, fun things and run into a great variety of people.



We walked around a night market that was just closing up, enjoyed some coconut gelatin on the streets by Nhu Lan (where I had one of my first meals in HCMC with Chuong), and then continued walking. I ended up finding the new "Vietnam Quilts" store (64 Ngô Đức Kê), which was totally random, but there were two women still there and invited me inside to see the new shop. It's really big and beautiful inside, I hope to return in a few years and buy more quilts! (Total purchases for this trip include 4 quilts, 4 custom ordered pillows, 2 baby quilts, some aprons, and a bag - yeah my motto has become "buy now, worry about packing later".)

We also went through the large Fahasa bookstore, where I bought three more children's books to bring back with me. These books are about Vietnamese myths and have English and Vietnamese on the pages so that I can learn the new vocabulary quite easily. There were a ton of people in the store, even though it was so late, probably because it was nice and cool inside!

After this, it was time for goodbyes. One first year gave me a keychain that she and her roommates had made by hand out of beads and wiring, so sweet! Em Khue, who was my original contact person for the group, presented me with a small gift: a small display of 3 dolls dressed in traditional ao dai from the North, Central, and South Vietnam, a bookmark, and a note of thanks. It was really sweet, I know that they don't have a lot of time or money and their generosity is just overwhelming; these students are a lot of fun to talk to and are just so nice and friendly! It was really great to get to know them and I really hope our paths can cross again.

Water Puppet show

Friday night, went out with em Hoang to see the Water Puppet Show (Golden Dragon Water Puppetry Theatre, 55B Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, D1). I had seen a show in Hanoi back in 2004, but it's always a fun sight to see the myths and Vietnamese fables in action and to wonder how on earth the puppeteers are actually moving the puppets around.



The puppeteers are hiding behind the screen and move their puppets in sticks (somehow?) underneath the water. But the puppets criss cross in fighting or running action and there's just so much movement that it seems impossible to do this without the lines crossing? I don't know really how to explain it, but it's awesome. Em Hoang said that the puppeteers must train for many years before they are qualified.

Super cool!


Extra large life-sized water puppet...

Afterwards we walked around the theater and then went back to around the med school area to get some dessert. Many restaurants around this area were advertising "Che Thai Lan", which is a special dessert and I immediately found to have lots of durian in it.

Oops, "Tôi không ăn sầu riêng được", I cannot eat durian!

So I got some other che dessert and we talked for a bit about school, post graduation life, living in Vietnam. At this point, I have two weeks left in Vietnam and will be doing a lot of traveling, so we also knew that this would be a good-bye meeting. It's hard to say "Bye" when I just finished saying "Hi!".

more pics from water puppet show:

last day of school!

Last day of class with co Mien.

Hooray got a 98/100 on the examination, I am an elementary Vietnamese superstar!

But now I am jealous that my classmates will continue onto the next level of classes and I wish I continue too, so I can really speak with my family. I'll just have to keep practicing at home and keep with my books and cds that I am bringing back with me.

And of course, the best part about school being out are the reunion parties! So after the examination we all went out to EunJi's family's Korean restaurant, near Le Thanh Ton street and had a feast of Korean food.


Of course, the American and the Japanese had to have special "non spicy" meals ordered while everyone else had at the kimchi. I think it was actually my first "real" Korean meal, and who better to go with then people who know what to get!

Recovery

Monday night until Wednesday morning I was really sick with something and spent all that time holed up in my room. It got to the point where I thought I might have appendicitis and became one of those freaks who tries to Google every symptom and make a diagnosis (WebMD is going to be my professional enemy, I can tell, it makes everyone think they have cancer). I started to worry about a foreign hospital visit and made a list of the doctors that I could see on my travel insurance. Who can I call for help and support? What medicines do I buy? How can I get more electrolytes if they don't sell Gatorade?!

It really was the first time I truly missed home and my parents.

Well the stomach virus is gone and so today I went out and about with some expat friends who showed me the uber touristy area:

Tay Ba lo is slang for "western backpacker"

and this area is all about the foreign backpackers. Not the uber rich foreigners, no there are huge department stores and designer shops for them (more expensive than in US because retailers pay 100% import tax, WHAT?!) - this area is all about the fake dvds (13000D for one, 150000 for box set - it's incredible! That's right, the entire Sopranos series Dan bought for less than $10), cool print tshirts, artwork, and hip bars and restaurants serving all sorts of cuisine.



With Linh (She's from Chicago, lived here for 2 years) sending a message to our mutual friend

I had a chicken sandwich with a salad and potatoes for 75,000 D. The salad was small (it's okay! they advertise that they wash everything in purified bottled water and make their ice from that too!) and I got three little potato sticks - but it was a piece of Western food that I'd really missed.

And the music? Tracy Chapman to Beatles to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It was nothing like I'd ever expect in Vietnam, yet somehow as I walked around with Linh and Dan afterwards, a part of me was fascinated and yet also disappointed.

Who really comes to Ho Chi Minh City to go to sleazy bars and eat pizza?? Right at the main intersection of this "Tay Balo" area, they are building a huge 3 story nightclub that advertises hiphop dance floor...there is a donut shop around the corner...

This is not Vietnam, this is not Ho Chi Minh City.

HCMC music scene

(100th post! I'll make it a good one)
5.29.09

What a fun weekend of music!



Friday night was Ratatat at Pacharan Tapas and Bodega, right next to Caravelle Hotel and behind the Oprah House on Hai Ba Trung Street. I love this band (great study music because no lyrics!) and have not been able to see any of their small touring shows in the US - so what are the odds that they would be playing in Vietnam in the same city and date that I am there? Clearly it was a sign that I had to be there.

Super small and intimate venue, basically in a small room with a bar - it was packed so tightly that it took maybe 30 minutes to get a drink. Clearly a fire hazard and the music was BOOMING. The guys were so crazy and amazing live, but I could only stay for a bit over an hour because it was so loud and hot and sweaty inside that room. And also I had waited for the show since 9 pm and they didn't take the stage until 11 pm. hrmpf =/ Oh well, got to hear them play some new stuff and one of my favorites, so it was all good!




RATATAT playing "Lex" from their "Classics" cd!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO. ^_^

Saturday night I met up with em Thao and 2 of her friends for dinner. They are all from the same city, Bac Lieu, about 6 hour drive from HCMC and all have graduated from medical school. Minh is an OBGYN intern year at Benh Vien Tu Du, the hospital with the children's dormitory. Her fiance, Tuan, is in his third year neurosurgery residency at Cho Ray Hospital - the largest hospital in the city.


We must have been hungry - look at all of that food!!! haha

em Thao is sitting across from them - I see her about once a week so we have become good friends. She is in her internship year as a physical therapy and rehabilitation specialist.

We had dinner at Mon Hue - restaurant specializing in Hue food - and talked a lot about medical school, working as a doctor, and international and public health. Apparently Cho Ray hospital is very popular as an elective rotation site for foriegn doctors, especially in surgery and emergency medicine - no Vietnamese language necessary. Which I found a bit odd, but Tuan explained to me that there are many international doctors that work there and so the language is not an issue. Very cool, something to keep an eye out for when I get to that point. That would be awesome!

Their stories are really fascinating - Tuan's older sister was the first and only person in their province to get a full scholarship to study medicine in Australia. Full scholarship! Medical school in another language - INCREDIBLE!

They invited me to their engagement party in Bac Lieu over the weekend. How awesome - a countryside party!!! And I get to wear my ao dai =D

After dinner we went to Sax 'n Art Jazz club (intersection of Le Loi and Pasteur Streets), home to a great house band that includes a famous saxophone player, Tran Minh Tuan, who actually studied music out in California.



I'm usually not a huge fan of jazz music, but Chu Tuan mixes classical Vietnamese songs into the jazz style and it's amazing. And all of the other players are so great at improvising - they invite anyone from the crowd to join them and are able to play along, it's great!

I met up with my friend em Na, a fellow student in my class who studied music and goes to this club every weekend. He is a regular and so usually goes on stage to play with them - tonight they asked him to join! His parents were also there so he had a big fan club


Group Shot: em Na, me, em Thao, Chi Minh, and Anh Tuan
Sax n Art Jazz Club

Drinks were about 95,000D for mixed drinks, 50000 - 75000 for beer; $3 for cover charge for the Jazz Club.
It was a really fun time, the first weekend that I stayed out late and attended an event. I know that the med students don't usually do this either, so I think it was a treat for all of us.

And I am really excited to be attending the engagement party, how cool is that!!