Vietnam Day 16 (6/23/09)

This morning was our last Vietnamese class. I'm kind of disappointed that we don't have more instruction but I suppose we have enough vocabulary to get by as long as we keep practicing in real life. This afternoon, Van Anh and I went out to the backpacker's district to start conducting our surveys. Despite my normally outgoing nature, I was kind of nervous to approach people. I'm not usually keen on taking surveys myself, so I felt bad about asking other people to do them for me. But at least I had Van Anh with me and she urged me on. We worked out a good system whereby she would get permission from the Vietnamese cafe owners (who were frequently skeptical because they thought we were from the government) and I would approach the tourists.

Everyone was very nice once we explained ourselves. Not one of the cafes turned us away and only a couple of foreigners declined to take the questionare. Mind you, some of the toursists were more willing than others, under the influence of the empty beer glasses in front of them. No one was too drunk - they were all very nice and mostly coherent (though I had to speak a little more slowly at times so they could understand me). I was concerned at first that this might skew the survey in a negative way but I soon realized that the more beer they'd had, the more frank and chatty they were. Since part of my goal was to engage people in conversation beyond the survey questions, it worked out perfectly. I had some very interesting conversations with people from all over the world about their travels and we compared notes on our impressions of Vietnam. When I say people from all over the world, I of course mean primarily Australians, but I did talk to people from some unexpected countries like Sweden, Belgium, South Africa, and even Mexico.

On our way back from surveying, Van Anh parked the motorbike on the sidewalk next to a little stand and we had iced milk with bits of kumkwat mixed in. It was delicious and apparently others agreed with me because within minutes, there were tons of motorbikes crammed in around the stand, all of us drinking our milk without ever leaving the seat of the motorbikes. For dinner, we went to a small street-front restaurant to get bun, or "special noodles." There wasn't enough room for the whole group downstairs, so Kendra, Wen, and I proceeded to the even tinier upstairs landing (me bumping my head on the way up). It was as if we'd walked into Alice and Wonderland. We'd sat at small kiddie tables with little plastic stools before, but for some reason everything about this place seemed exponentially smaller. We were giants living in a miniature world, with only an incomplete roof to give us some much needed headspace. The noodle soup was excellent, especially after adding absurd amounts of hot sauce. Half-way through our meal, a complete stranger joined our table as if it were completely normal. He was very polite - he just ordered his food and sat quietly and even helped us get the check. Sharing and communal living are just common practice here and, I have to say, it's quite refreshing.

By the way, I think my Vietnamese accent might be getting even worse, because today I asked My where Van Anh was and she thought I was asking for a banana. So, I guess now I have a Vietnamese name and Van Anh has an English name (both based on food, interestingly enough). One of the other minor difficulties I've encountered while being here is laundry. So far, my white shirts have all turned lovely shades of purple and green and there's always the lingering question of how clean our "delicates" are. I suppose it's just part of living here.