Joma: A Slice of America

To satisfy a recent craving for American breakfast food Emily and I made our way to Joma, a lovely café that Gerard introduced me to. Ironically it's just around the corner from Lenin park off the 2 bus line. The instant you step inside you begin to question weather or not you are in Vietnam any more. Everything from the style of the menu (blackboards with hand drawn chalk images), to the merchandise for sale, to the comfy chairs and lighting says café from somewhere in California. The menu has classic items: American style coffee (yummmmmmmm mochas), breakfast burritos, carrot cake, pumpkin pie, salads… you name it. Truly different from the practice of Vietnamese restaurants serving only one or two dishes. Probably requires a god deal more storage space and refrigeration capabilities to keep up such a diverse menu; and probably more wasteful because of it.

Menu

Pies! Carrot Cake! Pumpkin Pie! OMG!

The café was populated by a good number of foreigners reading newspapers or typing furiously on their computers. Even the waiters spoke beautiful English, giving the illusion that you weren't in Vietnam. The only hint that we were in Vietnam was that the prices were lower. 64.000đ/$3.20 for my oat covered French-toast with mangoes, 32.000đ/$1.70 for my half of the eggs and bacon breakfast I split with Emily and 40.000đ/$2.00 for my large mocha (136.000đ/ $6.80) is a far cry from the $20+ I would have to pay for the same breakfast in the states. And of course no tip or tax. Of course this one break from American reality was cheerfully accepted by all of the customers.

American Style Cafe Merchandise

On one hand it was nice. I needed a little slice of home after being in Vietnam for 2 months. And I actually managed to get a bunch of reading done while we were there because the atmosphere was so quiet and relaxing. On the other hand it was a little weird. It felt like a fantasy version of America transplanted into Vietnam complete with lower prices. There was nothing -- and I mean nothing -- to remind me that we were in Vietnam. IT really made me think about just how much culture can be created and manipulated. Enough so that with a careful eye to detail you can create a little plot of America in Vietnam. I do think though that I will offer to take some of my HANU buddies there if they are interested. I think it would be cool for them to see a little slice of the world I come from.

One last note: on the way back from Joma we hoped on one of the new 02 busses. The bus was clearly manufactured by an American company as the warning labels were written in English and were exactly the same as the ones on the busses in San Diego. (I kind of wonder what good they do seeing as most people here can’t read English). Course the bus trip was still distinctly Vietnamese. The bus driver almost hit someone on a motorbike and spent the rest of the drive honking louder then usual and stopping for even less time to allow people to leap onto the moving bus. Nice to know I was back in Vietnam.

Vietnamese Healthcare System

I apologize for my blog being posted late this week… perhaps the content of the blog will explain.

After having a lingering cold for a week I was hit by some kind of infection this Tuesday. The lymph node in my throat started to swell painfully and within a few hours I had spiked a 102 fever. Fun times. Luckily the wonderful Chi Moc took me to the doctors where I got medicine and an interesting window into the differences between the Vietnamese and American Healthcare systems. I’ve mainly recovered although I still have fairly limited energy. Good thing I’m not going to Sepa this weekend.

One of the most striking differences was the way medical privacy was handled. Chi Moc was allowed to come with me into all of the various places we went (much to my relief) with no questions asked. She was allowed to read my paperwork and know what prescriptions I was receiving. In the US I have to sign paperwork allowing my own parents to view my medical record because I’m over 18… even though they are the ones paying. It was a relief to not have to worry about such ridiculously strict rules, although I suppose if I was there for an STD or something I would have felt differently. I was also often in the same room as other patients. The waiting room in the private clinic we went to was also used for medical procedures like clearing people’s sinuses with pressurized air (which I got to see). In the US all of the procedures are done in separate rooms so that nobody knows what your at the doctors for.

Another interesting difference was that we went directly to a doctor that specialized in ear nose and throat medicine. In fact the entire hospital specialized in those three things. In the US you always go to see a primary care physician who then sends you to a specialist if something needs further testing. It was kind of nice to skip the primary care physician and go straight to where I needed to be. However I can imagine cases where you could think one thing was wrong and go to the wrong doctor who would give an improper diagnosis because they only specialize in one thing. It also leaves a lot more guesswork to the patient. Chi Moc spent a significant amount of time trying to figure out what was wrong with me so that she could take me to the right doctor.

However the most striking difference was the cost of the healthcare and the way it was paid for. Everything was paid for in cash up front. Pictures of the inside of my ear nose and throat, a cell culture from my throat and three prescription drugs came to… 850,000 vnd or $42.50. While Chi Moc was busy being shocked at how expensive the price was, I was floored by how cheep it was. Chi Moc said she had rarely paid more then 200,000 for a doctors visit ($10). For me I’ve never gotten into a doctor’s office for that little money. Furthermore that was probably some of the most through healthcare I could have received. In the states they probably would have shined a flashlight down my throat, prescribed me antibiotics and been done with it. And it would have cost me WAY more. The medications alone probably would have cost that much. And I would have had to deal with a total insurance headache afterwards. Of course to really understand what the cost of medical care is here I would need to know how that compares to an average person’s income. Certainly something I want to learn more about.

Rice Harvesting

This weekend was one of my favorite weekends in Vietnam so far. On sunday we went to a village about a 45minute drive outside of Hanoi to harvest rice. While I was sad about missing the HAD meeting and nervous for how much work harvesting rice would be I was super excited. It turned out to be an even more amazing experience then I had imagined. The field was supposed to be dry but recent rains had made it semi flooded. While many people complained about the mud and I was intially freaked out by the thought of all the creatures living in there, I quickly grew to love the way you could sort of glide through the mud with little effort. Soon we were all 6 inches deep in mud attempting to cut rice plants with little blades. At first i was a little unclear on the concept and spent alot of time and energy sawing at the rice stalks. It didn't help that the first patch I tried to cut was blown over by the wind so I couldn't distinguish individual rice plants.

I eventually figured things out and and got into a rhythem: thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thunk. I would grab the rice plants upside down about a foot up from the base and give one quick thwack with the sickle. After four thwacks my hand would be full of rice and i would set the stocks on a pile either on the side of the paddy or on top of some of the already cut area. I managed to clear a whole corner of the field by myself -- a truly satisfying experience. After we finished cutting the rice we had to haul it to the side of the paddy and then cary it on shoulder hoists to the mechanical thresher. Then we spent a considerable amount of time collecting the rice that was left in the field. It was amazing to see how inefficient we had been--there was leftover rice everywhere and a considerable amount had been destroyed by being stamped into the mud. I also started to understand those old parables from the bible where poor people would gleen grain from the fields. I don't think there is a similar occupation in vietnam because if you do it right the method of rice harvesting is actually incredibly efficient.

After harvesting we had an amazing meal (the nem which I helped make tasted particularly delicious :P ). Then we went out and interviewed people in the village. It was amazing how much of what was said about job diversification in the article was true. One store keeper we talked to said that she and her husband worked in the fields as well as owning a shop. One of her sons worked as a driver and the other son worked in a factory. Very much representative of a household trying to spread out risk through job diversification. One interesting thing I saw while in the village was several women at the temple who had black teeth and bright red lips. Irene was telling me that this is an older fashioned beauty practice.

Overall I had a great time rice harvesting. However I'm sure I would feel differently if it was my main occupation. I am still waiting to see just how little money my labour would have earned me... I'm suspecting not enough to compensate for the damage it does to your back and your skin. Probably not enough to really cover much other then food.

Central Vietnam: Reflections on the Highlands

This trip to Central Vietnam was a truly amazing experience, but for very different reasons then I expected. Perhaps one of the best examples of the way the trip surprised me was my visit to the minority village:

Walk to the village

 The walk into Ko Tu Village was one of the most beautiful experiences ever. After two hours of hiking through farmland over a dam, and past beautiful stilt-houses I could barley contain my sense of excitement. This was heightened by the enthusiastic cheers of the school children when they saw our group walking in. As we approached the beautiful communal house where were going to stay a huge feeling of relief washed across me. I felt like unlike Mai Chau this time I would really experience village life... not a canned tourist version but real village life.

Communal Hose

Yet when I left Ko Tu Village I felt a strange sense of disappointment. I felt like I hadn’t learned much about the actual way people lived in the village. The normal language barrier was intensified because not all of the villagers knew Vietnamese, while feelings of shyness, and intrusion seemed to cause many of my UC friends to freeze up and not ask questions. I felt so frustrated and wished once again that I knew some Vietnamese so that I could bypass the other UC students and just ask questions, regardless of weather or not it felt like intruding. But when I did meet the English speaking guide I was too nervous to ask questions, and felt like I didn’t even have enough knowledge to know how to begin asking questions. I feel like much of this dynamic was left over from our class discussion about the impacts of tourism on minority villages, and I have to question whether that discussion was really productive or simply served to prevent us from truly learning and experiencing things for ourselves. Due to these various issues I left the village not knowing what an average woman did during her day, not knowing anything about village power dynamics, not feeling like I could picture living there.

This perception of not learning colored my view of the experience until I sat down to brainstorm about the trip and suddenly rediscovered the vast wealth of knowledge and questions I gained from those two days we spent in the central highlands. Suddenly it hit me what a truly amazing experience this was. While I still can’t understand what village life is really like, I got a brief snapshot of the political social and economic issues effecting the central highlands that really entice me to learn more about this unique area. Once again Vietnam has shown me that when I go in trying to learn one thing, I invariably come out learning something else. It’s important to truly appreciate the things I wind up learning rather then lamenting the things I thought I’d learn but didn’t.

 I’ll use the rest of this blog post to muse over some of the specific things I learned and the many questions I have.

Logging:

"King" style house

One of the truly interesting experiences in the Highlands was witnessing first hand the effects of illegal logging. I experienced logging in five snapshots which, taken together, help explain the many complicated aspects of the logging industry in Central Vietnam; 1) Clear cut hillsides. 2) Logging trucks rolling past government offices and military outposts in broad daylight. 3)New minority houses being built out of bricks because it’s illegal for them to cut down old growth trees. 4) The minority guide explaining that when villagers wanted to build a new stilt house all they had to do was sell the hardwood beams and they would have more then enough money to build a new house (of course with lesser quality materials).5)Tanks rolling into the minority villages at 7:30 in the morning (no way to hide new stilt houses from the government).

Traditional style house

Logging Truck

While the government enforcement of logging is clearly corrupt and possibly motivated by ethnic tensions it does make sense from an economic standpoint. By allowing illegal logging but preventing the minority groups from harvesting logs for traditional ways of life the government is able to maximize it’s revenue. It can get bribes and kickbacks from the loggers for ignoring the many logging trucks rumbling by while simultaneously extracting fines from any villagers who decided to build hew houses with hard wood. Truly a lucrative situation for the government.

Cash 

Crops/Water Usage:

With the encroachment of King people into the central highlands has come the practice of raising cash crops to make a living. All along the bus ride there were fields of sugarcane, rice, rubber etc. The problem with this type of agriculture is that it is extremely water intensive, something that the central highland doesn’t have much of. Thus the water table has been dropping steadily. While it’s easy to write this off as a “King” problem my experience walking to the village showed that ethnic minority groups were contributing to the problem as well. Along the road to the village there were many traditional small crops but there were also large fields of cash crops owned by minority farmers. One minority house even had a tractor to harvest the cash crops faster. Meanwhile the well in the village was nearly empty… enough so that they had to wait several hours before they could gather enough water to flush the toilets for us tourists (which also calls into question why they built the toilets in the first place). In essence what I’m saying is that the ethnic minority villages faced the same economic pressures to modernize as the king people, despite seeing the very direct consequences of modernization. 

Status Symbols:

            Our guide talked about some of the ways things like rice wine and water buffalos served as status symbols in traditional village life. Fermented jugs of rice wine showed that you could afford to turn the rice into alcohol for a party rather then eating it. This got me thinking about modern status symbols in the minority villages. Have the jugs of rice wine been replaced by the tvs and satellite dishes that were in almost every house. Is the motorbike seen as a status symbol or a necessity? How quickly do things switch from being a status symbol to a necessity?

Farming Techniques:

            In all of the villages we went to there were chickens everywhere. I got to wondering what the ownership system for chickens was. Did each family keep a flock? If so how did they prevent neighbors from stealing some of their chickens? Did the chickens tend to wander freely or would they always return to the same house for food/shelter? Were eggs collected? How closely was breeding monitored/was it monitored at all? Must say I’ve never thought so much about chickens in my life. I have similar questions about rice farming, winter-melons etc. but I’ll not list them all because I don’t have many answers.

Hanoi: 1000 Years

Probably the most interesting thing I did this week was go to the kick off celebration of Hanoi’s 1000 year anniversary. The event was put on by a large number of youth groups including many local youth unions. The tow themes appeared to be the environment and anything to do with the number 1000. I woke up at 6:15 in the morning and arrived at the festivities in time to see 1000 people perform a martial arts drill. I then met up with the group of volunteers to pick up trash and watched more of the festivities. My favorite were the inline skaters performing tricks (one of which was wearing a tee shirt with the American flag at the 100 year anniversary of Hanoi—go figure). While waiting the head of the youth union I was waiting with taught me a song about a crow.

            After nearly two hours of waiting we all donned gloves and trash bags and headed to the park to collect garbage. I was super excited because the entire time I’ve been in Hanoi I’ve wanted to pick up some of the numerous piles of trash that litter the streets. My excitement was added to by the Vietnamese girls asking me “do you ever do volunteer work in the states?” and telling me about some of the volunteer projects they do. Soon all 25 of us were happily picking up trash---for 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it at first when they said we were done, but when people started asking me if I was tired from all our hard work it started to sink in that we really were done… so much for my dreams of cleaning up Hanoi. I went back to the larger festivities and looked around. All of the booths were run by students and most were selling things to fundraise, however it wasn’t clear what they were fundraising for. There were only one or two booths that actually had boards explaining what they did. There was also a big gigantic blood donation tent and dancing in the streets. However my favorite part was the 1000 pinwheels for the environment. They were attached to a big board by stickers… and everyone threw the sticker paper on the ground. Fun way to honor the environment. Overall it was a very interesting experience…

Linh’s village

I apologize in advance but I will eventually be posting three blog entries this week because I did so many different things this holiday weekend and I really want to remember all of them.

The first place I went this weekend was Linh’s Village. It was probably the favorite part of my weekend. It was a little odd having tons of people point and stare at me Linh told me that in the whole time she lived there she had never seen a foreigner there so I guess it makes sense. The village was beautiful. The open air market made the market near campus look like a tiny hole in the wall. People carried live chickens home for dinner and fish swam in tanks waiting for somebody to pick them. There were tons of vegetables… including one that Linh said she hadn’t seen before (her mom does the shopping, not her). The temple was also beautiful; by far the largest I have seen in Vietnam so far. I guess there is more room for temples outside of the city. I was fascinated by how many things took place at the temple. Linh pointed out several painted lines in one of the temple courtyards where children practiced sports and held competitions in the summer.

At one point a monk showed us into the communal living quarters for the monks in the temple. There was a beautiful garden filled with grapefruits and other fruits. Eventually we reached the temple wall where we could see the surrounding countryside. It was amazing how much change the village had seen in such a short period. There were several large factories nearby that Linh said had been built in the last 5 years. There was a brand new road that cut through sever farmer’s plots of land… I wonder how much they were (or weren’t) compensated for that land.

I was also interested to see how close the graves were to the fields. There were literally morning glories (the food not the flower) growing right on top of some of the graves. Guess they make good fertilizer. Oh… another random thought about food. I had never realized just how much stuff lives in flooded fields. The morning glory field looked like it was shivering because so many frogs kept on breaking the surface of the water.

Another really interesting thing we did at Linh’s Village was interview Linh’s father and her neighbor about their jobs. Linh’s father works as a mechanical repairman fixing things like rice cookers fans and TV’s. While the jod sounds simple it was clear he was incredibly skilled. He had to study at a University in Ho Chi Minh city to learn his craft. I watched him pull out tons of complicated parts tangled together in boxes and explain from memory what each one did. Even though I couldn’t understand Vietnamese it was clear that he was incredibly proud of his job. He kept on putting his hand over his heart while he was talking and there was a certain gleam in his eyes that made it clear that he truly loved his profession. I’ll be interested to learn exactly why he loved his job so much once the interview is translated.