Vietnam Day 32 (7/9/09)

I went to the cafe by myself this morning to write in my journal. Apparently I drink too much coffee on a regular basis, because when I ordered a mango smoothie, they though I just got the words mixed up and tried desperately to indicate that what I actually wanted was a cafe sua da. I didn’t think I was that bad about coffee – after all, I did eventually get my sinh to xoai this morning. I then met up with the Americans and (after earning some incredulous looks from the cafe people by ordering another smoothie which was actually for Kendra) we took the bus to Ben Thanh Market.

I got a slew of gifts for relatives. These gifts represent my crowning achievement in the art of bargaining. Part of my success lay in the fact that I didn’t try to use Vietnamese, because the vendors know English anyway and I’m certainly more confident using it. I did some quick calculations in my head, set my price, and refused to budge. The saleswoman kept trying to get me to go higher, but my price was completely reasonable so I kept shaking my head and repeating my price. Eventually she conceded and I bought them for a million dong ($50) less than her original asking price. I think I could have gone even lower, but she was really nice and patient in finding me all the different designs I wanted so I was content with what I paid.

After finishing up at Ben Thanh, I met Bert Covert, a well-known American primatologist working in Vietnam, and incidentally my friend Catherine Workman’s mentor from school. He was extremely nice and gave me lots of useful information about the different conservation projects going on all over Vietnam. It sounds as though I could find work in any part of Vietnam if I look hard enough.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the park with my journal. After I’d been writing for a while, a group of students from the Saigon Institute of Technology approached me and asked if I would take a survey on culture shock. Since I’ve been taking surveys for the past few weeks, I know what a trial it can be so I was more than happy to help. They were all really nice and spoke great English and were so excited that I was willing to talk with them. While they were there, a little boy had come over to me begging and the students had pushed him away. After they left, he came back and I was so tempted to give him something except somewhere in the back of my mind I figured the students had pushed him away for a reason. Then of course he made me feel like an even more horrible person by sitting down next to me, innocently watching me write. Fortunately at that moment the calvary arrived.

Alex, Van, and Alice found me and we all went for smoothies (interestingly, Alice’s trick for escaping the little boy was to invite him along, which scares away the kids here since they’re afraid of being kidnapped). I tried pomelo, which was good but Alice’s custard apple smoothie was the best. Alice is an extremely interesting person to talk to. She leaned Chinese to go grad school in China so she could study human trafficking there. Now, straight out of grad school she’s the new director of CET (pretty impressive).

For dinner, we went to a vegetarian restaurant in the backpackers district (most of the veggie places are there because so many backpackers are vegetarian). I had Indian food since that’s always the best vegetarian, but of course this restaurant didn’t specialize in Indian food so it was less than amazing. After dinner, we walked around the backpackers district for a while looking at overpriced T-shirts and mass-produced art. All along the way we were accosted by very aggressive night club employees, trying to hand us flyers advertising happy hour. These guys were incredibly forceful, some even following us to the other side of the intersection to try and get us to go to the Crazy Bull (a really touristy new dance club/bar with a huge, animated bull made from neon lights hanging over the door and standing taller than the door itself). We thought about trying one of the rooftop bars but all of the “ushers” as I call them were all too aggressive so we just went back.