Virtual-Doug

Eating “Vietnamese”

I couldn’t stand it any longer - - I just had to have a bowl of phở.  Off we went to Hop Tung, where I could get my fix, and the Mystery Guest Blogger could get some of her favorite food too.  It was really quite good, but I couldn’t help but compare prices.  At our favorite place in Huê, Phở Sài Gòn,   my bowl was 12,000 Vietnamese dong – about 75 cents.  Here it is $5.95.  Yeah yeah – I know – everyplace here is air conditioned, labor is more expensive, yada yada yada.

My apologies – postings have been few and far between lately.  Between recovery from the surgery and preparing my mother’s new place, there has been precious little time to write.  I love to write, and this blog is my vent.  I just haven’t had the time.  I have many ideas, some in the development stage, for future postings, but for now there will be few.  In the morning we leave for two weeks to see family, then to move my mother, so most likely, I will not post.

But - - I’ll make up for it.

Retirement in South Texas

In my last posting, I spoke of retirement.  I also mentioned that Americans want to live by themselves as long as possible.  Many choose to live in the same house where they raised their children, but others prefer to move, often to a warm climate to live among other retirees.

The Mystery Guest Blogger and I live in such a place.  In fact, you have to be age 55 or older to own a home in our community.  We live in deep south Texas – about 5 kilometers from the border with Mexico.  The weather here is quite similar to Huê’s – except the humidity is not quite as high.  Most of the other folks who live here have moved from the upper mid-western area of America, and many of them found this to be a nice place to retire when they vacationed here in prior years.  (Be sure to click on the map to see a larger version.)

Our little community is a “retirement home park”, separate from the rest of our city, and it has a gate to restrict those who come in and out.  All the homes in the park are a distinctive type of house called a “mobile home.”  No – that doesn’t mean our home is ready to roll down the highway – it means it was built in a factory, then moved to its present location where it was set in place permanently.  This is our home, which has been modified with an extra room added on which we use as a library.

And this is a comfortable place to live.  Across the street from us is a golf course.  No – not a professional course.  This course is designed for old people.  The longest hole is only 150 yards, and the course is so short there are no par ratings.  Nobody cares – golf is just an excuse to spend time with friends. 

There’s a pool as well – actually there are two of them.  To the left of this pool is the social hall, where folks gather for parties, card playing, billiards, quilting, or any of a myriad of other activities.

At this time of year (summer), only about a quarter of the homes are occupied.  The rest of the owners are “Winter Texans” – folks who live in these homes only during the winter months when their homes in the upper mid-west are cold and snowy.  They will begin arriving in late November-early December, then the park will be full – and busy.

And all the folks here do not want to be a burden to their children – they want to live by themselves as long as possible.

The Silence is Deafening

Việt Nam is noisy. 

I said that many times while living in Huê.  When I mentioned it to a Vietnamese colleague who had studied in America, he cocked his head and said something about honking horns and karaoke bars.  Of course, he is correct as far as it goes, but America is quieter than merely the fact people seldom blow their car horn.

In Huê, riding a bicycle is a social event.  It is the norm to see school kids pedaling down the street  chatting away. Not in America.  Not only is everyone riding in an automobile, but the windows are rolled up to keep in the air conditioning.  When on your môto or bicycle in Việt Nam, one hears all the other motorbikes, horns, and street noise that one does not hear in a sound-deadened automobile.

 

Việt Nam’s noise also comes from the fact that all buildings are “live.”  Floors are hard tile, walls are plaster over brick (not the paper and gypsum drywall used in America), and there are few if any drapes.  Any spoken word echoes and reverberates.  In America, rooms have heavy carpet, walls that absorb sound, and lots of sound-deadening drapes.

I never thought of the United States as “quiet” before – not until I lived in another culture.  Moving between cultures has opened my mind.  I now see my own culture in ways I never noticed before.  The whole idea of “quiet”  dawned on me as we drove into the neighborhood where we live.  You see, we live in a “retirement park.”  You have to be over 55 to buy a house here.

And the retirement park is quiet.  I mean quiet!  Old people like things quiet.

I am moving into the American subculture of retirement.

And I am as clueless about this new culture as I was about the Vietnamese culture.

I shall try to use my newly acquired observational skills to look at this new world of American retirement just as I tried to do when living in Huê. 

I should have ample opportunity to do so.  We live in a retirement park, and therefore are surrounded by older retired people.  After living in Việt Nam, I realize the very idea of older Vietnamese living apart from their children is anathema, but theirs isn’t a society based on individualism.  In America, the mantra of older folks is “I don’t want to be a burden to my kids.”  The Vietnamese could not be more opposite.  Children’s filial duty is to care for their parents.

My elderly mother will be moving to live in this same park.  Living in Việt Nam, I learned that it is my duty as the oldest son to care for my mother.  So be it.  Expect to see posts on interacting with one’s mother as she progresses past the age of ninety.

Finally, I blame my friend Mr. Cu for reigniting a passion for photography that I ironically acquired in Việt Nam a long time ago.  (I still have the Canon FT I bought in 1970.)  My digital Konica-Minolta A2 served me well most of the time, but the harsh environment of Việt Nam did in the viewfinder.  I will have it repaired, but the new Canon 30D is on the way, and I intend to use it – a lot.

Blogs develop their own personalities.  We’ll all see where this one goes.  Retirement.  Photography. Travel.  We’ll see.  We'll see.

Personal side note:  the return to our US home has not been easy.  I’ve had a bit of a medical problem.  It’s a bit delicate, so lets just say it is very painful to sit down.  I had surgery the other day to relieve the problem, but the recovery is proving slow.  I guess this means I’m not only a pain in the ass, but have a pain there too.

No Huê

By the time this is posted on the web, we will be in the air on the way home.  If home is where the heart is, then Huê is one of our homes.  We believe we now have three homes:  one in Angel Fire, New Mexico, another in McAllen, Texas, and the third in Huê.

Thinking of Huê as home is certainly not what we had in mind when we came here one and a half years ago.  We were certainly looking forward to the adventure of living in another culture, and eager to be useful to others, but we had no idea how the city and its people would pull us in – capture our hearts – change our worldview.

Many readers of this blog may not know that the Mystery Guest Blogger and I met in Việt Nam in 1969.  We are both veterans.  That was our association with Việt Nam – it was a war we had endured.

Oh – how that perspective changed.  We hardly ever think of the war now.  Instead, we are like anyone else living in their home town - we think of teaching, and friends, and students, and where to eat, and complaining about the weather, and running errands, and bitching about the traffic.  With a certain smugness, we reply to tourists who ask us where we’re from by saying “We live in Huê.” 

Sure, we want to see our grandchildren.  Of course we both want to see our elderly mothers.  Yes – we have missed our families.  Of course we look forward to seeing old friends, especially those at our church.

But we sadly leave friends behind.  We will miss Cu and Thanh a lot.  We hope to see Trang, Vi, Ai Nhân, Tuân, Julie, Lâm Anh, Chương, Thao, Ngok, Phương, Dung, Nhu Hương, Thao Hiên,  Mark, Kami, and Dani, the staff at the Guest House, and all the others in the future.

Indeed, home is where the heart is – and Huê is home.  And, everyone wants to go home again.  But for now, The Mystery Guest Blogger and I must say “Tạm biệt, Việt Nam.”

Time

Time has caught up with us.  I have cheated a bit – I wrote this post well before the day it was posted simply because our Internet connection was terminated a few days ago.  Getting email is about all I want to do in an Internet café.

There will be one last post before we leave, then everything will be done back in the US.  Some of you have asked if I will blog after leaving, and the answer is that I have been blogging for three years – well before coming to Việt Nam – and I will keep blogging.  I suffer no delusions of grandeur – I know the readership this blog has increased greatly because it is about an unusual place.  I know I will lose many readers once I get back to the mundane topics of home.  I have many photos I will continue to post to my photography site at www.pbase.com/doug_young, and most likely there will be a few other things I will write about Việt Nam.  I am sure I will have a rants about reverse culture shock.

We have plans to return in the future – hopefully two to three trips a year.

We’ll see.

Thanx to all of you who have been loyal readers.  I again apologize to my fellow Việt Nam bloggers for not keeping up with their posts, but one computer and the busy-ness of goodbyes and packing have precluded that.

I promise one last different picture in the last post – stayed tuned.

Sharing

One of the regular commenters on this blog is Tom.  We’re about the same age, and we both share a passion for Việt Nam.  Tom is a professor of education at an American college, and he recently brought four students here to see “the real Việt Nam”.  I matched them up with a group of Vietnamese students – then turned them all loose.  The objective was for the Vietnamese to show off their country to the visitors – and to make friends.  My only admonition was that the Vietnamese could not show them any of the usual tourist stuff, but rather show them places and introduce them to people tourists never see.

I thought readers might enjoy this shot taken at the get-together dinner.  One American student ordered banh khoái (a crepe filled with bean sprouts and seafood covered with peanut sauce) and asked her new-found Vietnamese friend to show her how to use chopsticks.  The two of them cracked up laughing.  It was obvious these students bonded immediately.

The next day was spent riding motorbikes to a village outside Huê, swimming in the Perfume River, taking pictures of water buffalo, and generally having a great time.  I was happy to hear that the father of one of the Vietnamese students went along on the swim time – just to be sure everyone could swim. 

They ate at Huyên Anh (the best bún thịt nương in Huê), they wandered around the An Cựu market, they went atop Vọng Cảnh hill overlooking the river for a picnic, they shared experiences of being university students, visited an orphanage where they distributed food - - and maybe even developed a short “summer love.”   In the meantime, Tom met with various faculty members and officials in the hopes of developing a full-blown student exchange program in the future.

The best and brightest of Việt Nam and the United States.  You’re looking at the future of the two countries.  After seeing them, I know both countries are in good hands.

Thanh Toàn Bridge (Updated)

Most tourists call it “The Japanese Bridge,” but its not Japanese at all.  I suspect some call it that for its resemblance to the covered Japanese bridge in Hoi An. 

In fact, the original bridge was built in 1776 by a lady of the village who had the good fortune to marry a wealthy mandarin.  Taking pity on her former neighbors, Trân Thị Đạo built the bridge with her own money so they would not have to wade or ferry themselves across the small creek.  However, she also wanted a son, and building the bridge was part of her prayers.  Another local legend has it that she indeed had a son who fell deathly ill at the age of sixteen.  The illness was traced to the ghost of a young girl who had died before she married and had children, and being unfilled, her spirit fell in love with the young boy, inhabited his body and made him ill.  To this day, some local people make offerings to the girl at the small shrine in the middle of the bridge.  Regardless of which of the two stories you believe, it is recorded that her good deed brought great fortune to the village.  The King noticed her virtue, and in November 1776, proclaimed that from henceforth, the villagers were exempt from being drafted into either the army or doing forced labor for the government.

The bridge was severely damaged by typhoons in 1844 and 1904 and rebuilt each time, and restore in 1954 and again in 1971.  Today it’s a great place to sit on the benches that span the length of the bridge. enjoy some conversation, and watch Việt Nam go by.

The village used to be named Thanh Toàn, hence the name of the bridge.  The name was changed to Thủy Toàn some time ago, but near the edge of the village is a shrine dedicated to venerating Trân Thị Đạo - - the lady of the bridge.

(My thanks to Steve Boswell for the information about the bridge and its builder.)