Mad dogs, Englishmen...and Quy Nhonese?

Let me begin by saying that Joelle and I come from the Pacific Northwest, a part of the world that receives only slightly more direct sunlight each year than the dark side of the moon.  When the sun appears in Washington, people flock to it.  We soak it in, knowing that it might not appear again for weeks or months.  In the long days of summer, when it’s light out until 10:00 (or later) at night we eat dinner outside, play Frisbee or go for long bike rides at 8:30 at night, delay going to bed until midnight…all so we can catch a few more of those precious rays.  Embedded deep in the psyche of every true Washingtonian is a simple equation that states:  SUN = GOOD.

So it was funny to me at first when I moved to Vietnam and realized that people here avoid exposure to the sun as assiduously as I might avoid exposure to, for instance, anthrax or news about Justin Bieber.  When class is over and my students are going home for lunch, they transform from pleasant, casually-dressed college students into armored, bicycle-mounted UV-battling warriors with nary a millimeter of skin showing.  Jeans and long-sleeve shirts with sweatshirts over top, gloves that go past their elbows, face masks that drop all the way down the neck, toe-socks to cover the feet and yet allow for the wearing of flip-flops, topped off with an umbrella (not for rain but for sun).  We’re talking UV-Protection Level Midnight. 

This has become completely normal to see over the years and it’s quite understandable. If you’ve ever spent more than 10 minutes uncovered in the sun here you quickly realize that your primary goal in life has become finding shade (preferably air-conditioned) and staying in it until nightfall.  Here's a typical beach scene in Quy Nhon between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:30 PM.  Notice:  Population zero.

That’s why I laughed in my friend’s face when he mentioned in passing this morning that today was a special day.  A holiday of sorts in which lots and lots of people go to the beach at high noon to take a dip in the sea and look at the sun.  Those were his words:  look at the sun.  At noon.  Not only did this sound foolish and potentially dangerous, it sounded like the least Vietnamese thing imaginable.  It was as if once a year everyone just went crazy for 10 minutes and did the precise opposite of what they were supposed to do.  It would have been like the whole population of Bellingham running up to Canada to go shopping and buy gas at Canadian Costco for an afternoon.  Never happen.

I wasn’t sure I believed him, so at 11:45, forsaking lunch and my family (for 20 minutes), I grabbed my camera and headed down to the beach.  Sure enough, the world had gone mad.  Quy Nhon is known for looking absolutely deserted from about 11:00 AM till 3:00 PM.  People who arrive in town for the first time at midday sometimes wonder if the zombie apocalypse has actually begun.  No one ventures outside if they can possibly avoid it.  The old saying from India about “only mad dogs and Englishmen” going out in the sun rings true here, as the only type of person you would tend to see on the beach at that hour (other than a fisherman) is the pasty European kind, punishing their skin because hey, they’re on holiday and they figure a raging sunburn will make everyone back home jealous. But the beach today was far from deserted.  Kids and parents, grandmas and college students—up and down Quy Nhon’s 3-mile long crescent of sand, they were sprinting or hobbling or sauntering out to the water and splashing around in the glaring hot sun like it was no big thang.  

Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people were out there, many of them fully clothed, enjoying a little dip, laughing and playing.  There was something wonderfully childlike about it all, as though some usually strict parents had allowed their little ones to stay up past their bedtime just this once.  

I even saw a guy waterskiing behind a fishing boat, it was that nuts.  (I’ve never seen anyone waterskiing in Vietnam, let alone behind a fishing boat.)

The most I’ve been able to find out about this holiday, named Tết Đoan Ngọ, is that it falls on the 5^th day of the 5^th lunar month every year—shortly before the summer solstice.  (That, incidentally, would explain why I’ve never heard of it because we’ve always been back in the States for the summer).  Tradition says that a dip in the sea at this time is supposed to wash away bad luck and give strength and health for the time ahead.  Like many traditions that people here might not fully understand themselves, it probably came “from China.”  It’s also interesting in that the whole dipping-in-the-sea-staring-at-the-sun part of things seems to be almost entirely localized to Quy Nhon.  When I do an image search for the name of the holiday, the only swimming pictures I get are of Quy Nhon’s beach.  Students who came to Quy Nhon from other provinces have confirmed that this is something only "those crazy Quy Nhonese" do.

 In any case, I walked along the beach for a bit, enjoying the atmosphere though not partaking in the actual process of it all.  After a while, soaking wet people started filtering back to their motorbikes or running back to their houses across the hot sand.

It was a good reminder to me that sometimes life refreshingly chooses not to fit the mold that we like to put it in.  Expectations get turned on their heads, and I recall that I still have a whole lot to learn about this place and these people.  I also saw it as a kind of cheerfully defiant act of civil disobedience toward the sun itself, which can start to feel like a merciless dictator in this season.  Distant echoes, perhaps, of the children of Israel turning their backs and walking out on Pharaoh (who was, after all, supposed to be the embodiment of the sun god himself).

I’m willing to bet that an hour after I left, the sun once again ruled over a desolate beach.  I can’t be certain, though, because by that time I was taking a nap with Micah in a dim, air-conditioned room and leaving the beach to any mad dogs or stray Englishmen who happened to be about.

The kids

Some videos of the kiddos that made us smile.

Our first one shows Micah's first experience with chopsticks (albeit a pair of training chopsticks with Thomas the Tank Engine on them).  Our teammates got us a set while we were all on a visit to Hanoi in April.  Micah loves them and figured out how to use them remarkably fast.  The other people in the video are ELI Vietnam folks; we were all in Hanoi for some leadership team meetings.

Video numero dos is Micah falling asleep at lunch one afternoon.  For some reason the kid can't help waking up at 5:30 in the morning, so by lunch he's usually more than ready for his afternoon nap.  This time it was a little more extreme than others...

And finally, a sweet one of Sedakah cracking up at Micah.  She smiles at everyone, but doesn't really laugh for anyone except her big brother.  We agree with her that he's a pretty funny kid.

Peanut butter and jelly, Vietnam style

Sometimes life in general just takes a lot longer in Vietnam. While it's true that we don't have the distractions of TV or cars or Wiis or iPhones to make life complicated, sometimes even really simple things--like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich--can get complicated here. Watch the video below and see what I mean.

How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich...in Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

(If you're reading this on Facebook and the video isn't embedded, try this link: http://www.vimeo.com/7093323 )

Ways to know you're back in Vietnam

Should you one day wake up to find yourself in the middle of a hot, humid country and you begin to wonder exactly where you are (Belize? Brazil? Bangladesh?) it may be useful to check the following telltale markers to determine whether you are, in fact, in Vietnam.

Marker 1: Whilst walking on the sidewalk, do you find yourself frequently having to avoid motorbikes that don't fit on the street? If so, you may be in Vietnam.


Marker 2: Are shower sandals provided in your hotel bathroom? Are said sandals much, much too small for your feet? If so, you may be in Vietnam.


Marker 3: Whilst standing in your hotel shower, does the showerhead point directly at your belly button? (See "A") At the same time, are you in immediate danger of giving yourself a concussion on the water heater? (See "B") If you answer "yes" to both of these, chances are quite good that you're in Vietnam.


Marker 4: Do you see people taking advantage of a road flooded by an overflowing lake to wash off their motorbikes? Further evidence that you may indeed be in Vietnam.


Marker 5: Are you astounded and humbled by the beauty of this place--the sky, the rice fields, the ponds, the people? Have you answered "yes" to each of these questions? Then yes, you can safely assume you've found yourself in Vietnam.


We're baaaaaack...

The Year in Review...

Exactly one year ago today, a plane out of Hong Kong touched down at Noi Bai airport outside of Hanoi and disgorged two very tired, rather disheveled and discombobulated Americans. These travelers' names were Joelle and Steven and they weren't coming to Vietnam to take pictures, buy a few silk scarves and leave. Like a stubborn case of athlete's foot, they were going to be around for a while.


In the twelve months since then, we've seen a fair bit of this here country. We've tasted its food (even some of the stuff that looked gross), swam in its seas, hiked its mountains. We've made friends, embarrased ourselves on numerous occasions, had close calls with pickpockets and purse snatchers, been hit by a speeding motorbike, and somehow gotten a newly-purchased wardrobe stuck in a tight spiral staircase. We've ridden on planes, trains, basket boats, xe oms and elephants. We've watched mold grow on every single piece of clothing and furniture we own, battled hordes of giant cockroaches, sweated more than we ever imagined possible, and witnesed our bus driver getting punched in the eye by a rival bus driver. More than that we've laughed till we cried with our Vietnamese friends, had deep conversations in broken English over strong iced coffee and wondered how on earth a place so different from our home could still be so dang beautiful and sometimes feel so much like...home.


It hasn't all been easy. There have been broken bones (two of them), miserable nights spent in the bathroom, and tears (lots of those) over loved ones so far away. There have been birthdays that we've couldn't make it to (including several literal days of birth, with babies back home popping out like to make Orville Redenbacher throw a fit). There have been hikes we could have gone on, massive snowstorms we missed, foods we have longed for, and people on the other side of the ocean that we really wish we could have just sat down and had a burrito with once or twice.

Has it been worth it? Yes. Absolutely.

Are we excited about coming home for the summer in a few months? Yes. Absolutely. As wonderful as they are, Skype and Facebook are no replacement for a real chat, and we're so looking forward to being able to see many of you this summer. We're also incredibly thankful for the support, encouragement, emails and blog comments y'all have given us over this past year. We miss you guys.

As a parting gift for our one year anniversary, we now present to you the Shetterly timeline--a few key pictures from the past year in Vietnam:

Spring 2008: Encountering the joys of learning a tonal language, our first six months in Hanoi were focused largely on language study. Here we are with one of our tutors.

April 13, 2008: Approximately 8 seconds into his first basketball game in Vietnam, Steven blocks a bullet pass with his right thumb, which promptly breaks. Here he is awaiting medical care at the clinic in Hanoi.

May 2008: The weather grew warm. Uncomfortably so. The logical course of action was to stick a big fan up the back of one's shirt and look like a body builder for a while.

May 2008: 90 degrees in the shade with 70% humidity and somehow she still manages to look good.

June 2008: Ninh Binh, our first escape from Hanoi without the aid of someone who speaks Vietnamese. We survived, and saw a rice harvest in full swing to boot.

Summer 2008: East meets West. The pervasive influence of punk culture extends even to this young, impressionable Vietnamese caterpillar.

July 2008: A scenic shot of the historic battle site of Dien Bien Phu...and Joelle's forehead.

September 2008: A bird's eye view of Quy Nhon, our new home, confirms that yes--this is indeed a dang beautiful place.


October 2008: A class of Vietnamese students goes to the beach for a picnic and invites some foreign teachers along. A good time is had by all.

November 2008: Steven makes a fool out of himself by singing "Stand By Me" with his teammate Jason in front of 500+ students. Joelle continues to look really good. Both receive flowers.

December 2008: Christmas parties and excited students. Fun.

Christmas 2008: Visitors from distant lands arrive to celebrate the day with us. We are blessed.

January 2009: Three Iblings siblings and Steven make their way through southern Vietnam on the way to Thailand for classes, a conference and elephant riding.

Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.

-Ps. 126

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.

Swan Boats in Love

One of the more endearing things we've observed about Vietnam so far has been the large number of giant swan love boats. Let me explain.

Hanoi is a city full of lakes. Walk more than five blocks in any direction and you're likely to run into one. Granted, it may be surrounded by apartment buildings and have bits of trash and dead fish floating in it, but it's nice in that it breaks up the city a bit and gives a convenient place to go exercise or just hang out.

One particularly scenic lake is just down our alleyway and across the main avenue. (Our lake is especially cool in that it has a zoo on the far side.) The common denominator in all of the truly cool lakes in Hanoi is this: giant swan paddle boats. These aren't your everyday, run-of-the mill paddle boats. No, they are giant swan paddle boats and therefore they are romantic.

It was explained to me on one of our first days in Hanoi that a truly heartfelt gesture of love for my sweetheart would be to take her out for a paddle in one of the swan boats. And though we haven't quite gotten to that point yet, we've enjoyed watching them on several of the lakes around town.

Most days, perhaps a third to a half of the available giant swan boats are being pedaled around our neighborhood lake by lovestruck couples but today was different. Not only was it a Saturday, it was International Women's Day (an apparently worldwide holiday that I didn't realize existed until earlier this week). On International Women's Day--much like on Valentine's Day in the US--it is a man's solemn duty to do something over-the-top romantic for his sweetheart. So today, to the surprise of no one, every single swan boat was in use and there was a line-up of folks waiting on the dock for their turn to pedal/paddle their very own Fowl of Love.

We took a walk down by the lake this afternoon and decided that this was a phenomenon that simply had to be recorded for posterity. Steven took some time-lapse movies of the swans from various locations around the lake, as well as a few still shots and regular video. The compilation video below should give you a fairly good idea of just what this little piece of Vietnamese culture is all about.

The Cyclo, The Spray Paint and the Wardrobe

Sounds a bit like a C.S. Lewis classic, doesn't it? This is kind of a long entry, but worth it (I hope). It was our first real Vietnamese cultural experience...

It all started with the wardrobe. Our apartment was furnished when we moved in—sort of. We had a bamboo table with some bamboo chairs, some other bamboo chairs and a bamboo couch, some bamboo shelves and a bed that feels like it’s made out of granite. In other words, most everything we would need to survive, if not thrive. What the apartment was lacking, however, was any sort of place to put our clothes. I take that back; we do have a tiny built-in cubbyhole that smells like it’s had wet rags stored in it since the 1970s. We elected not to store any of our clothes in there.

Since we didn’t feel like living out of our suitcases for the next six months and since we’d been given some start-up funds by our organization for occasions like this, we decided to get ourselves something to keep our clothes in. With the help of Shelly, our country director’s wife (who speaks Vietnamese), we headed down to “Furniture Street,” about three blocks from our apartment.

When I say “Furniture Street” (not to be confused with “Bamboo Wicker Furniture Street,” which is in an entirely different part of the city) you might well imagine a street with a few good-sized furniture shops on it. You would be wrong. Rather, furniture street is a virtually unbroken string of tiny furniture shops that runs, near as we can tell, the entire width of the city of Hanoi. People make, sell and buy furniture all along Furniture Street, and sometimes even partially into the roadway of Furniture Street. It's also been dubbed “Crazy Street” because it has no sidewalk and though it is only about as wide as a single “U.S.” lane of traffic, it inexplicably carries more scooters and buses than virtually any other street we’ve seen in Hanoi.

With Shelly’s help, we found our way to a relatively inexpensive shop on Furniture Street and chatted with the owner for a while. He offered us a cheaply made but reasonable-sized wardrobe for about $65. We took it, and the fun began.

The question after purchasing the wardrobe then became: How on earth would we get it to our second floor apartment four blocks away? The owner answered matter-of-factly, “Cyclo.” A cyclo (pronounced SEE-clo), for those unfamiliar with Vietnamese culture, is a modified bicycle. Kind of a reverse tricycle, actually, with one wheel in the rear and two wheels up front, with room in the front to carry tourists, vegetables and—apparently—wardrobes. The fact that it would have never in a million years have crossed my mind to try and move a wardrobe with a tricycle didn’t slow the process down a bit. The furniture shop owner got on his cellphone and a few minutes later our cyclo driver pulled up. He and the shop owner hefted the six foot tall wardrobe onto the cyclo, tied it down, and we headed off, walking alongside our driver.

The cyclo driver pushed his heavily-laden trike along Crazy Street and ran with it down a steep drop onto the side street that we live on. Things were going swimmingly for the first two blocks until we reached Obstacle Number One. Our side street is called a pho, which means something like ‘alleyway,’ and which is not to be confused with “pho” which means ‘noodly breakfast soup.’

In any case, our pho is not the narrowest of streets in Hanoi, but it’s pretty dang tight and is made tighter by the fact that there are several cement poles in the middle of it. While trying to negotiate his way around one of these poles our cyclo driver made a slight misjudgment and bashed the top corner of our wardrobe into the pole, gouging the side and partially separating the top piece from the rest of the wardrobe. Whoops.

Without missing a beat, our driver parked his cyclo in the middle of the ally, rummaged around in his belongings for a bit, pulled out a can of dark brown spray paint and proceeded to ‘repair’ the gouge on the spot with a quick shot of paint. Voila, problem solved. (It was pretty clear that he’d been through this routine before.)

We reached the front gate of our apartment building, whereupon the driver parked it again, pulled out his screwdriver, and re-tightened the top section of the wardrobe which had been loosened in the crash. Good as new.

Steven and the driver then picked up the wardrobe and began to carry it into the building. Soon they were confronted with Obstacle Number Two: the tight spiral staircase that climbs up to our second floor apartment. It was at this point that Shelly, our translator, had to leave to pick up her son from school and it was at this point that things began to break down even more. The cyclo driver looked at the staircase, made some “tsk, tsk” sounds, said something in Vietnamese and started to disassemble the wardrobe. He pulled the doors off to make it lighter and—as we later discovered—to keep them from getting gouged all to heck. Then he and Steven lifted the wardrobe again and started up the stairs.

At the first hairpin up the stairs, things got ugly. The wardrobe jammed tight between the wall and the railing and would go no further. The driver—who was lifting it from the top—started motioning and saying a lot of words in Vietnamese to Steven, who was lifting from the bottom. He could have been saying “push it,” “turn it,” “move back,” “I quit,” “why don’t you let your wife do it,” or any number of more colorful sayings—it didn’t matter, though, because Steven couldn’t understand a word of it. Though the wardrobe was clearly stuck, Steven just kept lifting and pushing, for lack of any better ideas.

Finally, the driver decided to take matters into his own hands. He handed the top end of the wardrobe off to Joelle and somehow contorted himself around it and down the stairway to take the bottom end from Steven. A few vigorous jerks of the head and more Vietnamese words made it clear that Steven should go elsewhere. So he clambered his way up the railing of the spiral staircase to help Joelle at the top end of the wardrobe. After another minute of lifting and gouging, the wardrobe somehow came free and squeezed around the hairpin. From there it was a straight shot into the apartment, thankfully.

After setting the wardrobe down in our apartment, the driver—looking somewhat sweatier and less congenial that he had initially—gave the wardrobe a few more shots of fix-it-all spray paint and left without saying a whole lot further. For our part we laughed and decided a couple of things: 1) It would be good to learn some Vietnamese if we’re planning on living here and 2) Though we’ll be moving elsewhere in six months, the wardrobe isn’t coming with us.