It rained the other day...

...and how.

This was not your typical Pacific Northwest drizzle, nor was it even your not-as-typical Northwest downpour. This was Southeast Asia rain, and for a while it felt as if the entire South China Sea had been picked up and dumped on top of us.

We were in the middle of language lessons when it started, and the rain was falling so hard we were having a little trouble hearing each other talk inside our apartment. By the time it stopped a couple hours later we had a good five or six inches of water in our courtyard, and parts of the alleyway outside our house had perhaps a foot or so of water. I looked outside to see leaves, bits of styrofoam, garbage bags, etc. flowing out into the alley and on out of sight.

Except for putting on ponchos and grabbing umbrellas, people in the neighborhood more or less carried on as normal. From our roof, I saw that one of the ground-floor offices near our place had opened both their front and side sliding doors, apparently so that the waves that were being kicked up by passing motorbikes could flow through their place more easily. (Reason #75 why tile is a good idea and carpet a very bad idea in Vietnam.)

Our language teacher was stranded at our place for an extra hour or so, reluctant (with good reason) to venture out on her motorbike in all the water. Steven couldn't restrain himself and had to go out and take a few pictures. He made sure to wash his feet and soak his Chacos in bleach water when he returned.

We've put together a video for you to get at least a little taste of what a Vietnam rainstorm is like. And yes, we were assured by our other language teacher the following day that storms/mini-floods like that are a common occurrence here during the summer. Anyone got an extra couple pairs of hip waders they'd like to ship to Hanoi...?

Quick note about the video: You might want to turn your sound down a bit before you play it. For some reason the volume came out really loud.

Funny Things

In case you had any doubts, we're here to tell you that Vietnamese culture is rather different from Western culture. History, economics, religion, climate—there’s a whole lot that goes into creating a culture. Occasionally the cultural differences might scare us or irritate us, but for the most part we’re able to appreciate the differences.

But every once in a while there are things that are just plain funny to our American sensibilities. Often, hilarity ensues when—for one reason or another—an attempt is made to imitate Western culture (often by advertising a product with half-baked English.) Take, for instance, the microwave oven we saw for sale in the supermarket this weekend. Big, bold letters proclaimed that the main selling feature of this oven was its cutting-edge “Disinfest baby Function with Light Microwave.” Sure enough, where less-advanced microwaves might have preset buttons for “baked potato” or “popcorn” this oven had a button labeled (quite disturbingly) “Baby.” We didn’t stick around for the in-store demonstration.

Another cultural difference we occasionally get good chuckles from is the extreme over-use of creepy mannequins in Hanoi. Whereas most American department stores since the 1980s have tended to take a ‘less-is-more’ attitude toward the use of creepy mannequins, any store in Vietnam even remotely related to clothing must have at least two of the marginally humanoid things sitting on the sidewalk out front of the shop. The calendar "Narsty Mannequins of the East" will be forthcoming in 2009.

Then, of course, there’s the food and drink. There is plenty of Vietnamese food that’s absolutely delicious, and healthy to boot. There’s also a sizable share of Vietnamese food that would make a health inspector's hair stand on end—fermented this and deep-fried-head-of-that. Yikes. Then there’s a whole genre of food that isn’t delicious and isn’t disgusting, but is merely…interesting. Take the Bird’s Nest beverage we found in Quy Nhon. Why anyone would look at a bird’s nest and decide to make a beverage out of it is simply beyond the realm of our comprehension. This particular drink tasted a lot like chunky sugar water. Unfortunately they printed the ingredients in English so we could tell that the chunks were, in fact, White Fungus. (Sometimes it’s good not to know.)

The final funny thing for this entry has nothing to do with Vietnamese culture and everything to do with the fact that I (Steven) am quickly becoming an old man. This past weekend I joined a friend of mine who had been asking me for quite a while to play basketball with him and a few others on Sunday afternoons. Naturally, being “the tall one,” I got matched up against the one other large fellow who had played ball for Willamette University a few years ago.

On the very first play of the game, Big Guy got the ball out near the 3 point line and I dutifully ran out to guard him, trying to recall the training I’d received as a one-time JV starter for the Rochester High School Warriors. He fired off a lightning pass which to everyone's surprise I successfully blocked--with the tip of my right thumb (not at all the recommended technique.) After shrieking and leaping about with my hand stuffed under my armpit for a few moments we resumed the game, but after a few minutes I could tell something wasn’t quite right. With Joelle’s help, I got to a clinic for some X-rays and, sure enough, had a little T-shaped fracture at the end of my thumb. Everything had stayed where it was supposed to, so they just splinted me up and said to come back in three weeks for more X-rays. Overall a positive first experience with medical care outside the US. At least they didn’t try to disinfest me with their light microwave.

Quy Nhon visit

UPDATE: Since this post was originally written, we've learned from our organization that Quy Nhon will indeed be our home next year. Woohoo!

We recently returned from a trip to Quy Nhon (pronounced “queen yawn”) a smallish port city about two thirds of the way down to Saigon. It is a potential placement (i.e. permanent home) for us starting next fall, so our organization paid for us to go down, check out the city and university, meet our potential teammates who work there already, and get a feel for the place. There were a number of things that were noteworthy about the place.

For one thing, people take their nap time very seriously. Most people in Quy Nhon follow a strict regimen of early to rise, late to bed with a big old nap in between. It’s not that people are lazy (far from it) it’s just that it’s so dang hot during the afternoon that no one in their right mind would be outside. At dawn, the streets, parks and beaches are packed with people walking, jogging, playing volleyball and generally enjoying themselves. The first university classes start at 6:30 AM (and I used to complain about having an 8:00 class…) and most everyone is where they need to be by 7:00 or 8:00. Because they get up so early, lunch starts around 10:00 or 10:30 AM. By noon, the city looks like a ghost town—the streets are deserted and most of the shops close down as people head home to sleep through the heat of the day. But once the sun drops toward the hills in the west, life starts up again and the beaches are packed with locals playing soccer, swimming or just enjoying each other’s company. It’s a much different world from the 9 to 5 lifestyle and we enjoyed it.

We also noticed that we, as foreigners, stuck out even more in Quy Nhon than we do in Hanoi. Even though it’s a decent sized city (250,000) foreigners simply don’t travel there very often. It’s off of the main highway, and the city of Nha Trang (a few hours to the south) has much more developed tourist facilities. We observed a few English classes at Quy Nhon University and spent some time hanging out with students outside of class time. At all times we felt like we were the most exciting thing that had happened in years—students crowded around, eager to ask questions and get to know us. A little exhausting, perhaps, but we certainly felt welcomed.

Finally, there is the obvious fact that Quy Nhon is a lot smaller and less crowded than Hanoi. With about 1/20^th the population of Hanoi, it’s the first place in Vietnam that we’ve felt comfortable enough to venture out and start exploring on bicycles. Its size also makes it easy to get out of town quickly—there’s a beautiful road that heads down the coast to several quiet beaches, and the rice paddies and hills of central Vietnam are right next door as well.

All in all, we loved the city, enjoyed meeting the students and our potential future teammates, and were a little sad to leave when it was all over. Depending on how everything shakes out, we may be on our way back there to stay come September.