The alleyways

I'm going to try to convey a sense of some of Ho Chi Minh's back alleys. This is a work in progress since I struggle with bringing out my camera in fear of irritating people. (Or getting my camera stolen.) My photos here also don't quite get at the calmness you find when you turn into one of these winding mazes off of the crazy, congested streets outside.

The alleys feel relatively quiet and still but there's an enormous amount of activity going on, starting at dawn and continuing well after dark. Every door is open, and people always seem to be hanging around in their front living rooms -- many of which have been turned into some kind of business, like a store, food stand, coffee place, Internet cafe, beauty salon, laundry service, tailor, etc. And people spill out of their homes into the alleys, squatting on these ubiquitous tiny plastic stools, eating and drinking and talking, or just sitting by themselves.

So these photos aren't too beautiful; I took them tonight hurriedly because I felt self-conscious, and at one point I was scolded, which made me feel horrible. A difficult task!

Lots of babies

I went to the Go Vap Orphanage in Ho Chi Minh this morning with Stephanie and Alison, two women who work for my school. Stephanie goes every Saturday morning and is always looking for people to join her. We held and fed the babies, said hello to the terminally ill children and walked by the corpse of a baby who had died and was covered with a sheet. The kids were desperate for our affection and attention.





When we put them back again into their metal cribs, they cried.


This room below, pictured in the next two photos, is reserved for the kids who are going to die. Many of them had Hydrocephalus, a few had Cerebral palsy and Spina bifida, and others I think must have had cancer. Stephanie at one time was a medical school student, so she was trying to diagnose the children.



Stephanie says many of the children are abandoned by prostitutes. Some are left behind by parents who can't afford to keep them, especially if they're ill. Due to official wrangling between U.S. and Vietnam, and tight laws meant to protect children from being sold to parents or traffickers, it's difficult for Americans to adopt Vietnamese kids.



This flower -- an Iris it looks like? -- was growing outside the orphanage.

(I didn't bring any babies home with me, by the way!)

More che, and a day for the dead

This che -- swallowed yesterday after lunch -- was thick with licorice jellies, and on top you can see specks of a black seaweed. Other ingredients: unidentified little dough balls that looked like fish eggs with a black speck in the middle.

Here's Lena: my source for all che facts!


Vien, the son of the hotel proprietor, tells me that twice a month, his relative here (someone other than his grandmother but he didn't clarify) offers up a few plates of food outside the front door and burns incense for the family's ancestors. (Vien is studying acting at the university, but he and his sister both dutifully help their mom run her two guesthouses.)

I saw several of these little shrines on my way back from school today. I wonder why incense is burned? Does the smoke purify the environment so souls can return to earth?

Maybe Daddy, Grandpa, Cammie, Grandaddyaddy and Grannieannie all would be pleased if we cooked them some food and laid it out at Mum's place (as long as we kept Ben from eating it first).

Here's what wikipedia says about the tradition of burning incense: "Incense fragrances can be of such great strength that they obscure other, less desirable odors. This utility led to the use of incense in funerary ceremonies because the incense could smother the scent of decay. Another example of this use, as well as of religious use is the Botafumeiro, which, according to tradition, was installed to hide the scent of the many tired, unwashed pilgrims huddled together in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela."

Xin chao em!

Cecily is not Vietnamese, nor is it likely she's ever eaten Vietnamese food or seen a rice paddy or probably even considered this place in her rabbity little two-year-old's head, but I am going to include her nonetheless in my Vietnamese trip blog because I think she's cute and I miss her!

(Xin chao em is "hello little girl" ... but there is a missing accent.) If there were more Cecilies, I'd be very pleased. But here in Vietnam, there are many more little boys than little girls. Viet Nam News, an English language daily, ran this story recently: Births put yin and yang out of balance.

The paper says, "Males are beginning to outnumber females so rapidly in Viet Nam that an estimated 3 million men are likely to have difficulty finding a mate in about 30 years. Statistics show the ratio was 105 boys for each 100 girls in 1979. This increased to 107 boys to each 100 girls in 1999 and 112 to 100 last year."

The story hinted that ultrasounds and abortions were behind the trend, and indeed, the aborting of female fetuses is a tragic and persistent problem here. But there may be more than misogyny behind this mystery.

In 2004, a Harvard graduate student, Emily Oster, became "intrigued by several small-scale studies ... that suggested that if either parent was a carrier of the hepatitis B virus, the couple were more likely to have male children," the New York Times reported in 2006.

Oster's continued research revealed that countries with higher rates of hepatitis B in the 80's, such as China and India, also tended to be the countries with the highest number of missing women. Oster concluded that hepatitis B could account for about 45 percent of the "missing women" in China, Egypt, western Asia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

The NYTimes is quick to point out, though, that the widespread distribution of the Hep B vaccine should have reversed the sex ratio imbalance. But in fact, the male-female imbalance in Asia has only become worse in recent years.

The Times continues, "The chief reason, it seems, is ultrasound: if a fetus is female, she is more likely to be sex-selectively aborted. Ena Singh, the assistant representative of the U.N. Population Fund in that country, describes the misuse of ultrasound as 'an unholy alliance between tradition and technology.'"

"While Japan breaks the trend with signs of girl preference, countries like Vietnam are joining the ranks of the girl avoiders: in one province there are 128 boys for every 100 girls. Such numbers have led analysts to worry about rising violence, more trafficking of women for marriage and more prostitution."

"Population experts caution that valuing girls may take a cultural sea change. Perhaps the more than 20 million lonely, surplus men predicted in China in 2020 will be the ones to bring it about."

Viet Nam News noted that some appear to be optimistic about the gender discrepancy. (I have often noticed a positive lilt to articles in this paper.) "My two daughters will have an abundance of choices, not like the girls of my generation," it quoted Nguyen Viet Ha, 30, as saying. The accountant also speculated that the imbalance might make Vietnamese men "less self-important."

And the paper interviewed the seemingly dotty Professor Le Thi, who researches gender and families at an unnamed university. She saw the relative paucity of women as an opportunity for self-improvement (although I don't quite follow her rationale). The paper paraphrased her as saying, "Women would do better if they worked to perfect their attractiveness to the opposite sex rather than waiting for men." She told the reporter,"My research finds that women’s morality is most appreciated and followed by a stable occupation and good health."

The newspaper summed up: "Women were born with their looks but had countless ways to perfect themselves."

So here's hoping that Cecily will pursue those countless ways to perfection! Just kidding! We love you just the way you are!

The many wonders of che

My days are filled with mostly boring ESL stuff, so I am forced to write about small things I notice on the street. But focusing on the everyday stuff, the nibbles and bits, is one way toward everlasting peace I've heard! I have discovered che (I bought it for 25 cents from a street stand) and once again I'm struck by this feeling that though Americans adore their sugary coffee and other dessert-like drinks -- a desire whetted undoubtedly by the rise of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts -- the Vietnamese are so much more advanced than us on this front.

Che, sometimes also called the rainbow drink, is basically the equivalent of a shake you might have for dessert, but it's also very refreshing and packed with good, but not certain, prospects for health. (I've neglected the accent on che. I have to figure out how to do accents in my word program.) It's wildly popular here.

Lena tells me there are many varieties -- almost an infinite number of them it seems -- but the one I had, pictured here, contained seaweed, tapioca pearls, sugared black beans and green mung beans, ginger syrup, a mint green sticky rice mush, licorice and jelly. The whole assortment of small, chewy things was topped with a few spoonfuls of coconut milk. My drink was served with ice, but you can find hot varieties as well: like hot yam che. Other ingredients can be red beans, pomegranate seeds, dates, lotus seeds, dumplings, mango, water lily bulbs, grapefruit, bananas, and the list goes on and on.

A rainy start to the winter monsoon

This boy stood here contemplating the torrential afternoon rain shower in Ho Chi Minh City for many minutes.I hope this cute little boy does not break out in a rash. (Note: He several times lay down in the puddle after splashing around; he didn't fall, like one viewer thought!)

Why is it still raining? The hot, dry season should have started already, complains Lena, who is from here. She worries that climate change is messing with the monsoons. But I'm wondering if the downpours we've been having for the past week are not too abnormal because we're still in transition?

Vietnam’s winter monsoon– the dry season -- starts roughly mid-November and blows around until the end of March. The arid winds start off cold, born from icy high-pressure zones above eastern Asia before arcing over Siberia and China. They carry a chill with them to northern Vietnam, according to the book “Vietnam: A Natural History.” (No chill for the weary in the south, however! Except from my delicious iced espresso with a splash of condensed milk in the morning. Pic of the woman who makes it for me to come. She runs a little coffee bar out of her home two doors down in the alley where I'm living.)

The summer monsoon gets going from June through September, with moist winds streaming up from the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Thailand southwest of here toward China’s mid-section. Along the way, they dump heavy daily rains onto Vietnam. Summer is typhoon time, as well.

A mundane shopping trip, with no pics of any stores

Lena, who is from Vietnam and went to university in the states and is studying to be an ESL teacher, took me to a cheap place to buy clothes called Saigon Square, and later to Lucky Plaza. The shopping excursion wasn't very lucky. Along the way, we saw this fat furry sausage on the street. Here's a close-up.


Below is a pic of Ben and Lena, which I've included to tell Mum about Ben, who was a peace studies student at the University of Bradford and knew about Grandaddyaddy. Lena's helping Ben with some of the tonal sounds of Vietnamese here. We met him for lunch at his cousin's cafe, which had an exciting, extensive menu of dishes that it didn't actually have the ingredients for, such as a brie, artichoke and pesto sandwich. It did have rice, beef, chicken, tofu and green beans, so that is what we ate.


Finally, Lena and I drove down this street lined with party banners. She said there was some type of government conference going on. The party is not terribly popular here. The banner says something like, A warm welcome to the delegates from the Fatherland Front Office.


Oh, last but not least on this uneventful, overcast day, I am including a picture of my very simple hotel room after having requests from both Mum and Brian to see it (I'm not sure why, but that's OK, I appreciate the interest!). It looks quite drab, but it actually has its charms. Below this pic is a view at night of the bright Buddhist shrine in someone's apartment as seen from my window.

Dried squid, koh muc (spelled without accents)

I've had a request to identify these hanging flags with dangling tentacles. Mrs. Loan, the owner of my hotel, has explained that these are dried squid cut in half and dried in the sunshine. You can eat them -- maybe nibble on them? -- with beer or wine. I've yet to try one!

Toxic air pollutants and beauty ideals

The air in Ho Chi Minh City is a potent mixture of fly ash, dirt, diesel smoke and dried raw sewage, according to The Word, an Engish magazine printed here. Before reading this article, I had figured I was breathing in mostly exhaust and perhaps an assortment of factory emissions, so I was a little put out to discover dehydrated fecal matter was another airborne possibility! Consequently, the Vietnamese try to protect themselves by wearing face masks when they ride their scooters. The Word says, though, that most of these masks don’t help, and you really need a particulate respirator.


Women in particular go to great lengths to cover their faces, arms, necks and hands while they’re on their bikes, partly to try to prevent inhaling the toxic smog, and partly because they’re chronically concerned about maintaining the whiteness of their skin. Mrs. Trang, who is one of my students and took me to play tennis this morning, explained to me that the Vietnamese woman’s never-ending battle to obtain and keep her pearly skin in this hot, (mostly?) sunny climate does not help attract men. She’s decided (and at 62 years old, her observations are worth something here) that men don’t care much whether their girlfriend is light or dark, and that the only ones who notice skin shades are other women. (Mrs. Trang’s opinion was almost immediately contradicted by a 33-year-old female tennis player who said, out of earshot of Mrs. Trang, that men are indeed more attracted to women with pale skin.)


As far as I can make out, the men, when they make an effort to notice at all and risk looking up and around in this jammed city, seem to pay most attention to well-dressed women, especially women in heels and hot pants!

Banh mi and some rice stuff

Today I had banh mi (spelled here without accents) for breakfast, a Vietnamese sandwich that is one of the few French customs the people here decided was palatable enough to adopt and adapt, along with strong, dark coffee (which is often served with sweet condensed milk on ice, way better than those thick, sugary Starbucks drinks! But just as gruesomely bad for you). For more on banh mi and the system justification theory, read this review of Kim's Cafe in Portland, Maine by a political theorist/food critic gone amok.

Okay, truth be told, banh mi is a whole lot of bread with not so many ingredients inside. (If you order it without meat. But I found a stand that sells one with cheese, veg, pickle and chili for about 60 cents.) Even better than banh mi is this dish below. (Warning: glistening sliminess ahead.) The woman with the food stand at the end of my alley makes these rice patties and cakes that she then serves with this sauce pictured here (I'm going to research this in greater depth this weekend. I know there's chili and green onion in there.) Although the rice patties are fairly bland, she slightly sweetens the thicker rice cake with coconut milk, and then sprinkles peanuts over the whole kit and caboodle. An Australian woman I met tonight who was sitting and eating here says she has only ordered meals from this one spot since arriving in Ho Chi Minh two days ago. And then she admitted she only travels to eat, which sounds reasonable, otherwise there is little reward for such a hugely tiresome endeavor.

Yin yang, more food

Beware, photos of grotesque dishes below that were really delicious but look hideous here!

The other day I had lunch with some other foreigners and we were served french fries with a small dish of salt to accompany them. Someone dribbled the salt onto the fries, and only when we bit in did we realize that we had been served sugar. As I chewed I decided it was not awful, the salty fry with the sweetness. Two days later, I bought a bowl of fruit for breakfast and the woman made up a plate for me with a small amount of salt flavored with hot pepper to go with my pineapple and papaya. (Left on dish.) It wasn't so good this time.


This woman cooks at the end of my alley, and she makes the most delicious unidentifiable food! ...Although I'm zeroing in on the ingredients. It probably doesn't have enough vitamins and minerals to keep me from contracting Dengue fever, but it's yummy. (This photo is washed out...very smoky and I am finding that I can't upload edited images for some reason.)


This seems like it might be a fairly reliable essay on Vietnamese food.