Countdown to the end...

Please play this song when reading this post.  Unless you live in the USA then play the second song.  Yes, I take blogging to the next dimension.

So I've been accused for painting a negative picture of my "homeland," but only from one person and her opinion doesn't really matter anyways.  Looking back, I would say yes, the term Hanoian Assholery could be taken as a less than positive term and there are some posts about the more darker sides of the Vietnam.  Still, I stand by my blog (unless later on I get called out, then I will deny, deny, deny) because I feel I defend VN a lot in many ways and (hopefully) don't illustrate VN in terms of black and white, but messy, conflicted, and complex grays, perhaps similar to the way I see and feel about VN as a person who straddles the line between local and foreigner.  Plus, if I only did positive posts, wouldn't that make me a communist propaganda machine?

As much crap as I give Hanoi, I really enjoyed my time there (turn the music up if you are on track 1) and it was a pretty sad time to leave (I left two days ago).  It was much harder than I imagined to "chia tay" (literally split hands but used as semi slang for breakups/leaving relationships) with people, though I blame all these people for giving me gifts that made me go over the airplane weight limit by 50 kgs.  (However, I was only charged for 30 because either I was cute or the woman behind the counter was really bad at math.  Considering she's Asian, the only logical conclusion was that I was so cute, she saved me 40 dollars.)

So special shout out to my research peoples, who considering the nature of my research, were surprisingly really open about their work and literally took me in as family.  Another to people who helped me out with my Viet, get settled in with research connections even before I got here, and took me out to see the city of Hanoi.  And last in my monkey sphere (not really an academic source but good enough for this blog) are the people who introduced me to the concept of the monkey sphere slash jump until you want to vomit and pass out club (a special post will be dedicated to y'all later).  And thanks for the shirt, as I have a pair of cutoff jeans that would totally rock that look.

Ummm, so in dedication to the special city of Hanoi, I will try to list some of my most memorable experiences there, good and bad.  While filled with Hanoi Assholery, there is much charm and a different kind of friendliness that accompanies the assholes.  I would definitely visit it again and if things work out, perhaps live there for an extended amount of time again.

One of the first memories I have of Hanoi is the bus system.  Standing one day by a bus stop, a bus pulls up and does the normal "I can't fully stop or the bus will explode!!" routine and seeing a pregnant woman, I'm guessing 6 to 8 months, waddle-run while using her hands to hold up her stomach as the bus was creeping away at a fairly fast pace.  Yeah, this isn't Kansas anymore--unless the pregnant woman was black, then that probably happens all the time in Kansas.

Another bus story involves the great navigation of VIP in a bus in Thanh Hoa.  Visiting her family in the countryside, we were on local bus that goes near her family's house.  She asks the bus worker we needed to get to this stop and it seemed like everything was set.  Until about 20 minutes (longer?) later, she asked when the stop was coming.  Hah, the look on that guy's face.  It kind of said "Shit, I forgot you guys were there!"  It turns out we missed our stop by a bunch of kilometers and the WHOLE bus was laughing at us city-folk (or at least they were in my head).  We got off and we had the option of walking to the next bus stop to retrace our route or call her family.  However, at least the weather was nice and cool and the views of mountains and the green farms pretty relaxing.  This was perhaps due to being in the city too long but it was eerily quiet and if we were minorities (which we kind of were), we would have been murdered Texas Chainsaw style.  Fun trip, considering VIP was very consistent in her ability to get us in the wrong direction (we had another bus incident in the morning).

 Another "first" memory was my first time going to the market to buy veggies.  After selecting about 3 kilos of food, I asked how much and the lady said 16,000 dong (80 cents).  Now I really thought my Vietnamese was crap because there was no way that was correct and was somewhat bummed because I thought I at least mastered numbers.  Turns out, I did know my numbers and that was the correct figure.  Gosh darn that's cheap. 

And that's with me not even trying to bargain.  One time, I was trying to buy toys for Christmas and I only had 300K.  So in my mind, I was like "Let's do this, under 300k!!"  So I picked out like 5 toys and I asked a very generic how much, expecting some relatively high price for VN, around 500K and I was planning to HALF that as my goal to get under 300k.  How much?  220,000.  Oh.....I'll take it.  Damn.

Two more quick points.  I have learned that here in VN, you should NEVER go to the movies by yourself.  I needed to see Rio, the Vietnamese VO version to compare it to another translation of the film.  I managed to catch it on the last day it was playing, which was like a Tuesday and there were only 2 times: 9 am and 11 am.  Fair to say, it was a random movie at a random time and I felt like some fun "Tony" time.  So I went to Megastar and brought a ticket.  The girl behind the counter asked, "Just one?" and gave me a puzzled face.  I said "Yup."  She laughed at me.  I then went to the person that collects tickets.  "Just you?"  "Yup."  She laughed at me.  When I left the room, the people who clean up the popcorn laughed at me.  I told a friend about this and she said, "You went alone...?"  And then she laughed at me.  "WHY?"

Apparently, you are suppose to go to movies with other people so afterward, you can chat about it.  It's like a tradition or something.  So I tried it with my cousins and they picked the wonderful Transformers 3, though you have to give the Bay credit, he certainly can film an action scene.  My impressions of the film:  I found it amazing that Rosie Huntington-Whitely survived the last hour of the film (which was one huge battle scene) in heels.  She ran across Chicago while it was being devoured in heels.  Anyways, this movie led to the funniest/weirdest quote I've heard in VN a la my cousin:  "It had too much talking!"

tony