Vietnam and climate change

Yesterday as I was walking home from a day out shopping, I got caught in a torrential downpour, which is odd considering it's the dry season (Note: these are not my pics. I didn't bring my camera with me.) These abnormal storms are convincing Lena and her parents that the end is nigh. Thankfully I had my flimsy lavender poncho to slip over me and my backpack, which helped at first, but eventually the rain seemed to sneak in through the porous thing and I got soaked, blinded and demented (causing me to jump onto the wrong bus and head 15 minutes in the wrong direction. Today the rain ruined my new haircut.)

And my shoes! My L.L. Bean low-cut hiking boots quickly became waterlogged as I waded through one-foot-high water coursing down the streets and gutters, carrying with it whatever snatched goods offered up by the city, from cabbage leaves to motor oil to even more odious fluids and smears, ugh.

Because the rain was falling after dark, and the city is still relatively dimly lit after nightfall, the scene took on a slightly nightmarish hue. The water that suddenly filled up the streets looked to be burning under the weak lights of all the motor scooters. And everyone was hooded in their dark rain cloaks, heads down against the onslaught. Very Apocalyptic!

Speaking of Apocalypses: Vietnam is looking at a sorry future when the climate warms up a few degrees. A Gaurdian reporter recently wrote this: "Which country will be most affected by the steady rise of the seas? Which country could see more than a tenth of its population displaced, a tenth of its economic power crippled and a tenth of its towns and cities swamped by the end of this century? The answer, which may surprise you, is Vietnam, named by the World Bank as the nation with most to lose as global warming forces the oceans to reclaim the land.

Just a one-metre rise in sea level would flood more than 7% of the country's agricultural land, and wreck nearly 30% of its wetlands, the bank says. (If you click on the first live link you can read what Oxfam says will happen to the poorest of people.) The government claims it's preparing for the catastrophe.

A wished-for ode to the durian fruit

I bet Pablo Neruda, had he ever sampled a durian fruit, or sầu riêng ("one's sorrows"), would have written an ode to the common thing. To eat the buttery yellow fruit is a novel experience for someone from away, and it has inspired many writers over the centuries. It tastes like a dose of amber honey that's been cooled to form a smooth, firm but pliable candy. Every time I leave the house, I keep my eye out for a street vendor selling the fruit pulp, which comes from a head-sized, thorny husk. Picture yet to be taken!

Here's a rousing excerpt stolen from Wikipedia from the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (one of Darwin's predecessors), writing in 1856, who goes so far as to call the durian "perfect." (I wonder what else he considered to have evolved to its final stage of enlightenment? I would guess an avocado.) And he calls it worth making the long trip over here. (I agree.)

“

A rich custard highly flavored with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavor that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. ...It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience.

And here's another:

Writer Mai Van Tao (who is this? I can find no reference to this person)...Oh well, someone once wrote, "The fragrance of Durian is a mixture of smells which come from a ripening jackfruit and that of a shaddock [something like a grapefruit over here]. It can also be compared to the strong smell of foreign-made cheese and is rich as a hen's egg. ...Those who have not enjoyed the fruit before may find it hard to eat. But once they have tried it, they are likely to seek it again.

The consistency is somewhat like a creamy cheese. In fact, the fruit, which is the color of egg yolk, would be lovely with brie and eaten on a piece of thin, toasted brown bread, light like a cracker. I will miss this fruit. (Like everything, it has its naysayers. I'm excluding them.)

A vain post, but one that has some cultural undertones to redeem it

I wish I had brought my camera along with me to document my walk home from the beauty parlor, which took me across a greenish-brown river that smelled like industrial byproducts and bygone sewage, but which nonetheless had a certain foul, putrid charm to it, as did the homes teetering on the river's edge. I thought my nose was going to fall off as I breathed in the rank air, and stinging tears popped out of the corners of my eyes.

Speaking of pretty-ugly, I got my hair cut and highlighted at Duc's Design. Lena guardedly recommended this salon after getting her hair cut here (she's got a glamorous mane), with the warning that Duc has a penchant for cutting women's hair so they end up resembling Korean rock stars.

(Below: This is BoA, South Korea's Britney Spears.)


Duc is a fast-moving, middle-aged hair stylist with spiky hair that has a hint of maroon mahogany to it. After ensuring that I wanted yellow highlights and not white ones, Duc first trimmed my hair while making intense faces in the mirror -- narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips, and pausing periodically to measure my facial dimensions with his fingers -- and then he dyed it. This is what it ended up looking like! (After my sweaty walk home during which I also got caught in the rain, that is.)

Certainly no BoA. The highlights are shiny and gold, almost brittle. They look very fake and very great!

The cultural undertone was this: a head massage went with the haircut. In Vietnam, when you get your hair cut, you get your head rubbed and tapped as well. At times the massage felt like water torture -- the hair dresser put a wet towel over my face and poured water on it -- but it was overall quite relaxing, and she gave me Q-tips pre- and post-massage to clean my ears. Perhaps the Vietnamese believe that beauty is not just superficial, but requires a certain serenity and surrender as well?

Postscript: I will not be surrendering to Duc's highlights, but will likely get them amended back home so they look more sun-kissed, less frosted.

Ever more orphans

Here's some pictures of attractive, well-dressed people paying attention to orphans.

A study in orange

More color studies that cannot legitimately be considered studies, I'm pretty sure!

The leaves are changing! Perhaps this means we're in some kind of autumn? When Tet starts -- around the end of January -- the country shifts into spring. This means winter, Vietnam's odd hot autumn/winter, lasts from October to January? I'm wildly hypothesizing here!

Encountering an elephant

I walked a few kilometers north of a nature preserve I had wanted to visit (Yok Don National Park, pronounced Zok Don) after the park attendant told me I would have to hire a guide for $20 -- which I didn't have on me -- due to the park's proximity to Cambodia, a reason I really didn't understand.

I got hot and sweaty walking along a long road, but at last reached the Daklak Rubber Company plantation -- a wondrously weird dead end.

I couldn't make sense of this plantation whatsoever. It appeared to be a posh retreat type of place where rich city people could rent villas with thatched roofs by a small lake and ride elephants through a few paths that weaved among the rubber trees. The place was pretty much abandoned, except for me, some workmen, two men standing waist deep in the lake fishing and a family of elephant caretakers.

Although I saw no evidence of it on this day, I think rubber might still be harvested here, made from tree sap. (Here's a little info on rubber trees!) The Daklak Rubber Company's head office is in Buon Ma Thuot, I think. (For more on this city in the Central Highlands, read the entry below.)

One of the cottages had a herd of cattle grazing in the yard. (I believe these are traditional Mnong longhouses.)

Along my wanderings, I stopped by to stroke the trunk of a humongous and gentle (tolerant, rather) elephant -- the first time I've ever been so close to one!

The elephant had many folds in its thick, cool skin, tiny bristly hairs growing out of its trunk, and bright orange eyes. Why does an elephant have so many wrinkles? Rudyard Kipling says the wrinkles, at least on rhinos, came about after a Parsee man took revenge on one that stole and ate his cake, by slipping cake crumbs under the rhino's skin as the animal bathed. (The rhino had slipped out of his skin to take a swim.) The crumbs tickled him so much the rhino created great folds in his skin as he rubbed and rubbed, trying to ease his torment.

I think someone should use elephant wrinkles in an anti-Botox advertising campaign.

A study in greens and yellows, and a sense of misrepresenting the country

I am not sure if I can get away calling these photos "a study," since no painting went on, just walking. I walked by these bright rice paddies Friday on my way to the very peculiar Daklak Rubber Company tree plantation about an hour's bus ride outside of Buôn Ma Thuột, which is a city north of Dalat. (I had the best coffee of my life here! Unbelievable! So strong and delicious! I felt it cure of me some unnamed lurking malaise, at least momentarily.)

I feel a bit guilty because all my photos depict a lovely Vietnam, which exists of course, but the reality is that a lot of the scenery is abject and dismal. I am beginning to feel an obligation to add here on this blog something that more accurately represents what I see walking around or from the window of my bus. Like this photo below, which is not even that bad -- more of a hybrid of less-than-lovely (the garbage-strewn street of a poor village) and arguable beauty (as in the uplifting mountain views)!

I suppose this is true for all places -- the human habitation of the planet is mostly grotty. And the grime, development and debris is only interrupted by a quick glimpse of something more beautiful (unless you have that aesthetic that appreciates the allure of ugliness, which is a lucky gift I think).

A hike up Lang Biang Mountain, near Dalat

Views. For most of the hike, I walked through a cloud, but it was clear at top.

I rented a motor scooter for $5 in Dalat and rode through coffee country and then beyond into mostly uninhabited hills (recognizable from Vietnam War footage in all sorts of films!). For long stretches I was the only vehicle on the road, such a rarity in this country that feels as if it's sagging under the weight of its huge crowded population like a thin and smelly old mattress. (Sadly.) The air was cold, but the sun occasionally came out -- at last I've seen the sun, and even blue skies, in Vietnam. I stopped off at a large unexpected botanical gardens, hidden in the middle of nowehere, which reminded me of the Coastal Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, except this one had many bonsai trees instead of rhododendrons. Besides the three or four sets of young Vietnamese couples canoodling between the flower beds -- the woman wobbly in their heels on the stone pathways and always giggling (I think it is very feminine here to keep up a constant sweet chortle) and the men following behind and snapping photos -- the garden was quiet and almost otherwordly. Behind the gardens, I followed an overlooked trail to a river's edge, coming across horses and buffalo grazing together. If you zoom in on the last photo, you can see the horses running after they catch my scent. I took a nap by the river; no one came by.