Light Side vs. Dark Side

On Tuesday I unwittingly set in motion a series of events that ultimately led to violence. I’m subbing a wretched teenage class for a teacher that went home for the holidays. Anyways, I only have one more week left of the class, so my motivation level for maintaining the peace is considerably lower than it usually is. ***disclaimer…my motivation for maintaining classroom peace in general has been declining steadily as the end becomes nearer**** Also, I didn’t take any fancy “conflict-resolution” classes in college, so I’m woefully ignorant. Let me set the scene. First, there are 8 boys and about as many girls in this class. The girls, all of them perfectly behaved, sit right next to me and cause zero problems. The boys, 5 good and 3 bad, usually are dispersed throughout the classroom. Anyways, they all ended up congregating in the back of the classroom. Something I wouldn’t usually allow, but they told me “teacher, it’s too hot in the front” and admittedly, the air con unit was in the back. Anyways, unfortunately, the congregation was centered around one of the good boys who had previously segregated himself from the pack of wild Dingos. Anyways after a few minutes, he goes “teacher he just called me worse than a dog.” So without any conflict resolution or peace study courses under my belt I was left pretty high and dry. I did the only thing I knew how and asked the bad kid responsible why he was such a bad kid? Did he like being a bad kid? And his mother would be ashamed of him.

                Anyways, I told the good kid to move to the empty side of the classroom and throughout the class the two other good boys slowly moved next to him. Then I made the mistake of calling the bad boys the Dark Side and the good boys the Light Side. Big mistake. Somehow it set off a chain of thoughts in their little heads that the Dark Side needed to fight the Light Side. The Light Side’s pleas for help were quite funny as the good kids are hilarious. “Teacher there’s too many of them, it’s 5 vs. 3,” “Teacher you need to save us.” The battle was set for the break time when I would leave. Sure enough right when the bell rings, I didn’t even get out the door before one of the Dark Side jumps on the Light Side. I tore them off and tried to be mad but mostly was like you’ve got to be kidding me. “They were like teacher help ussssssssssssss.”  I responded, “There’s a security guard, go hover around him, he’ll help you” and proceeded down the stairs to go eat my dinner. Well, I come back and two of the kids are missing. “They were fighting and are in trouble now, Teacher” the girls tell me. ”One of them had a knife teacher.” I was like WTF, “a knife?!!!!!?????” The girls search for the English word and finally arrive at “the thing that makes circles in math class,” which made me have to wrack my brain back to geometry class. But sure enough, those damn compasses, with the needle points so sharp you could hurt someone.

                A few minutes later the two walked in looking very solemn. I felt really bad for the Light Side because I knew it was 100 percent the Dark Side’s fault… He showed me his arm which had two red claw like marks. “Is this inner-city Chicago??” No, this is the nicest part of Saigon, where people pay a 100 percent luxury tax on their Range Rover’s and Porsches in a town where 35,000 dollars a year would allow you to live like a king. I honestly believe it’s all the video games. Unless there’s some underlying sociopathic tendency in the Vietnamese people, there’s no other way in explaining this behavior along with the innumerable “I want to kill you/him/her(s)” I’ve heard come from otherwise normal kids.  Anyways, I might tell the Light Side kid to call the Dark Side kid fat next week as recompense.

Jimjilbang Golden Lotus Healing Spa Land

                Yesterday, we went to the Korean Bathhouse to do the aforementioned thing. Watch out Saigon, Andrew has found a hot tub. The first part of the rotation is honestly hard to explain. There’s a UV sauna room which is apparently special. There’s a Himalayan salt UV sauna room, also supposedly special. There’s an igloo room. An oxygen room with some sort of Japanese air, purportedly special. Hot/Cold footbaths. Volcanic room with hot balls you lie on…Yep, special. Honestly I think Wiki would probably do a better job. Although I would have been an instant true believer if this was a Japanese Bath House, the Koreans come in a close second on the streak of genius within the Asian hierarchy scale. But they definitely saved the best for the last, the locker room. The locker room had two temperatures of hot tubs, cold tub, steam room, sauna, waterfall showers, shaving basins, body scrub towels, everything to leave you feeling clean and above all AMAZING. I just kept going in rotations between hot tub, steam room, cold tub, hotter tub. Brushed my teeth, kept going for more water, cleaned my ears, and shaved in between rotations. It was like an Eden of tactile comfort. It took a second getting used to being the lone white guy in a sea of naked Korean/Vietnamese/Japanese guys.  One Japanese man was older and had the greatest face I think I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I was telling Libby it was like the human equivalent of the French bulldog. If I had a camera I think I would have asked him I could take a picture of his face. In my mind his name was Yamamoto, direct descendent of Isoruko Yamamoto, leader of some Mafioso.

Side Notes

The Christmas spirit is running full steam ahead here in Saigon. I’m sitting at a coffee shop next to the decorated (fake) Christmas tree and Christmas music has been playing nonstop. I am very grateful for the Christmas music as it gives a reprieve from the nonstop pop music, although I’m sure in 21 days this music may also drive me crazy. The department stores have quite elaborate setups out front and it looks like they may have lights going over the large boulevards but we’re not sure if that’s for Tet or Christmas.

Ps- it’s pouring as I’m writing this. It’s been raining almost every day now for the past two weeks. I’m confused because rainy season is supposed to be over. I’m even more confused because my Vietnamese friends are also confused as to why it’s still raining.

Our Christmas tree.

As I’m writing this, Libby is working part-time at a Korean pre-school.  She is subbing for 5 weeks for one of our VUS co-workers who has gone back to the US for the holidays.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up smuggling one of the children home with her. 

Happy Thanksgiving from 'nam

I’ve been criticized by the parentals and Libby for being too negative last post. I’ll let the irony of that one sink in for a second. It’s only going to be pure positivity from here on out, also it’s Thanksgiving so it’d be sacrilege. You know the movie Inception-dream within a dream within a dream. Well replace dreams with emotional roller coasters and you have a semi-accurate picture of life here. We had a dinner party on Monday night with an old friend(ish) I hadn’t seen in a while and the last time we he had talked, he told me about about going home soonish and he was like “I told you that? No I’m fine now, I’m going to stay for a while.” Had a new teen class. Thankfully VUS seems to stop just short of shooting both your kneecaps off. Shockingly they were nice, well-behaved teens and the three hours breezed by.  Anyways, good food, classic rock and roll and not-Dalat wine was a nice reminder of relaxed enjoyment (it’s hard to escape the throbbing of techno music or bad pop music here in Vietnam). Of course our small talk at the end devolved into telling stupid stories of our classes…sort of felt like complaining-lite…

I feel like I understand the crusty old guy teachers at VUS. They’re constant whining and bitching is a simple self-defense mechanism and a substitute for the I’m assuming non-existent therapists here in Saigon (they just can’t help it). On this Thanksgiving day I’m thankful I’m not resigned to the crusty old teacher’s fate. My therapy will be google-searching plans for our backpacking excursion…If anything can help me escape the screaming children, Google can!  I think I mostly have The Innocent’s Abroad to blame for the poor tone in the last post. If only I could have read this book 6 years earlier I think I could have unlocked some sort of creative genius. Now I just have a botched attempt at replicating his superhuman humor that manifested itself as disparaging depression. I’ve been telling everyone to read this book. You should read it and then maybe my post won’t seem so depressing. It is beyond hilarious. I think it might’ve replaced Catch-22 as the single funniest book I’ve ever read. I had just finished reading Anna Karenina when I picked this book up, and yes, I think I recognized its greatness, but it was missing that spark you get when you’re reading a great and fun book. I think maybe Anna Karenina disqualified itself from being fun with its length alone.  

Anyways, we’re going to a Thanksgiving party/dinner tonight.  I’m sorry I sort of wished I could have guilt-tripped y’all by saying we were going to go sweat outside and eat some noodles for dinner alone on Thanksgiving. I think the proper term I’ve been seeing from my friend’s parties back home is “Friendsgiving.” I’m curious about the turkey, it was $150, maybe they kept it alive on the flight over from the states or something?!?… I’ll let you know how Ferguson tastes…Ya, I’ve already named him Ferguson. Mark Twain and his crew had a running joke of calling every tour guide they hired Ferguson…and asking every Ferguson if the creator of every monument/artwork/document they saw was still alive in as straight a face as possible (ex. Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus, Ancient Egyptians). If you find that as funny as I do, you should give the book a try.

Ps- Very illuminating article (first 2 paragraphs at least) about Thanksgiving…I sort of feel like I just found out Santa Claus wasn’t real… http://tomnichols.net/blog/ ….not sure if I was the only one who thought Thanksgiving was loosely connected to Native Americans

Where did all the good Russians go? (Why is it raining again?)

Went to Dalat this past weekend. Met so many Russians. I have a new life dilemma. Would the transiberian railroad outweigh all the Russians I’d inevitably encounter? O well, I have a lot of time to think about it. Russians are just as bad as you’d expect. Well, maybe worse. One of them had the foulest smelling odor that had ever originated from a human being. Libby literally lifted my arm up to smell my armpits and I was like nope, it’s that dirty Slav something like 5 meters in front of us. I didn’t know BO could waft so far. They all obviously had the archetypical Russian scowl on their faces. I can’t really blame them though; they all had to wear lanyards with corresponding numbers identifying which tour bus they belonged to which had to be humiliating (think “J 04”. Again though, we can’t blame them for signing up for these enormous bus tours, Putin’s been telling them which bus to get on for years, and before that it was Stalin, and before that they were probably serfs. The saddest part of all was that none of these tour destinations were worth going to in the first place. There were some pretty waterfalls, nothing extraordinary, but the Vietnamese had managed to pimp out these natural features in a Disney-land esque manner. No, Disneyland is a little generous, think more county-fair accoutrements surrounding the 30 foot waterfall. Shoot the bow and arrow (50 cents), see the gem museum (1 dollar), ride the elephants (5 dollars) or ostriches around in a circle. Yes, Elephants and ostriches are cool, but I’m no animal-rights activists and even I felt bad for those poor Elephants and ostriches. Which got me thinking, Russia must be really f****** ugly to attract literal busloads of their people to come and take in these natural spectacles.

(ps-Libby does not approve of this stereotypical and narrow minded view on Russians)

(pps-Andrew again, am being completely open-minded…only need to meet a single kind and thoughtful Russian to change my opinion of the lot of them…maybe you will say, I know plenty of nice Russian-Americans to which I will say, same here, but they are all north of 80% American. It would be like me being sympathetic to Poland annexing a little sliver of Russia… then again I think the whole world would be supportive of having a little less Russia in the world. My Australian friend had a perfect expression- “Years ago there used to just be two groups here- Vietnamese and Foreigners… Now there are Foreigners, Vietnamese and Russians.”)

There was one waterfall worth going to see. The biggest and best one happened to be 40 km away which thankfully was too far for the Russian tour buses to reach. It was about an hour, hour and a half motorbike ride. I thought the whole ride was going to be through rolling hills and fields of wild flowers. Unfortunately, the hills were only for the first 8 km and the flowers were only for the last 8 km. The rest of the drive was through “quaint” countryside towns. The only problem with developing countries is that country side towns aren’t quaint. They are afflicted with corrugated metal roofing and plastic trash everywhere. It’s okay though, it was good to get a feel for the heart of Vietnam. I wouldn’t recommend it.

You’re probably starting to think we hated Dalat. By no means did we hate it, it just wasn’t this picture-perfect fairy tale I had started to conjure up in my head as the days of suffocating and smog-filled Saigon heat wore on us before we left. On top of that I had to teach the whole weekend while being sick. Even in tip-top physical shape, teaching all weekend drains everything out of you so needless to say I was drained around Saturday afternoon, and felt like I was crawling on my hands and knees for the next 4 or 5 classes. And to top it all off we were met Sunday morning with a flat tire and had to take a taxi to work and fix the flat during lunch. And to top off the topper off I had to teach my nightmare class twice that weekend (in place of the Vietnamese teacher who teaches the other half) and just to give a little snapshot they were pulling each other’s pants down this weekend. There are mechanics on almost every corner so all in all the flat was a minor inconvenience, it was just the timing of it all. Finally to top the weekend off, we had our Teacher’s Day banquet which is just a nice buffet dinner…and the dance. We pulled off the dance quite well, everyone acknowledged that our dance was the best, and in the only way they could make our dance performance even more meaningless they didn’t even choose a winner this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For all I know, every dance team could be writing about how they were the de facto winners of the dance competition, damn it all! It looked pretty good on video, but then again if we couldn’t make a 3 minute dance look good after FOUR hours of practice a week for FIVE or SIX weeks maybe we should fly back home and cry.

The best thing about Dalat was the weather. At times, it felt downright freezing, I think it got down to the mid 70’s at night, but I just told myself to think back to when my teeth were chattering on the moto bike when I’m back melting in the Saigon heat. It didn’t help that Libby unpacked my only pair of pants as a “space-saving” measure (I purposely packed nylon sweatpants as a “space-saving” measure). She used a combination of “you’re from Michigan,” and “its character building,” neither of which seemed to stop my teeth from chattering. Her time will come. The first place we stayed at had a hot-tub. It was amazing. It was actually the only reason we stayed there. It was only open from 4-7 so of course I made Libby dictate our whole itinerary to be back at the hot tub in time for 4 o clock opening. OF course the hot tub wasn’t hot at 4 but the owner said the hot tub would heat up so we walked up the street to get a bottle of the local Dalat wine. Our only prior experience with Dalat wine was not a pleasant one, so we upgraded from the previous 2 dollar bottle of wine to the Dalat Superior “vintage” which clocked in at 5 dollars. The hot tub ended up heating up and the wine proved quite decent actually. It was a striking contrast, here the French gave the Vietnamese amazing architecture, drinkable wine, coffee, an interest in cheese, and what did the Russians give them? Taught the Vietnamese how to totally disregard the concept of a line or queuing up. The Vietnam War made a little more sense in my head after the trip to Dalat.  Anyways, stayed in the hot tub for 2+ hours of course. The Vietnamese cuisine in Dalat isn’t noteworthy which wasn’t a surprise as the Vietnamese cuisine in Dalat isn’t known for being noteworthy (unlike Danang, Hanoi, Nha Trang, Hue). We had good fried rice in Dalat, I will say that. The coffee shops/café’s on the other hand really held their own. One of, if not the nicest café I’ve been to in Vietnam was situated on the lake that Dalat encircles. The café takes up a whole little peninsula and has beautiful grounds along with lakeside views, really special. Across the café was the botanical gardens, worth going to see for the Hyndrangeas as big as Libby’s head. The “valley of love” which was supposed to have flowers equaling or even surpassing the botanical gardens was not worth visiting. We did however get the **wonderful** picture of Libby and I inside the oversized Dalat 2014 heart.

The French architecture was as amazing as I’d hoped for. The only problem is that it is so scattered around the city that it’s hard to get a single panorama of just French architecture which would be beautiful… Instead you get glimpses of the rest of Dalat which are quite a few notches below the 1920’s, 1930’s French Architecture. You’d think the people in Dalat would have made more of an effort to evolve or simply replicate the French architecture. I guess I’m forgetting that Vietnam’s entry into the industrialized world is quite recent and that most of the “modern” development has been limited to Saigon, Hanoi and most recently Danang. Ironically the only spot to see just French architecture was in the resort Mr. LeCorgne so graciously surprised us with for the last two nights of our Dalat street. Sweet mother, it was both a blessing and a curse. Everything was so amazing it made the re-entry back to reality that much more difficult. You forget how amazing a comfortable bed feels, Libby likened it to a cloud-I concur. The pillows…did more for my neck than any massage in the past 6 months. And finally the bathtub. The best part about it was the limitless supply of hot-water, which is RARE here in Vietnam. If you can’t tell I’m a hot-water fiend which extends to but is not limited to: hot springs, hot tubs, bath tubs (probably in that order). I took 6 baths in two days, but who’s counting!

Speaking of counting, they are exactly 9 weekends of teaching left before we say Sianora to those kids whom I hold zero fond memories of (maybe I’m being a bit jaded, the kids who tell me they love me are OK). We broke through the double digits of teaching weekends left but don’t feel very accomplished about anything at this point haha. Coming back from Dalat didn’t leave us very recharged and revitalized, rather it was sort of like a wow, it really sucks back here. I feel like we are staring at the beginning of the Bataan death march. At least I don’t have to work as much as Libby. The cash-cow must’ve gotten tipped over in the middle of the night because like a shooting star, he’s gone already. There are 3 scenarios for why he left so abruptly. First and most likely, he was offended at Libby jacking up the hourly rate by 50% from 20 to 30 dollars an hour. 2^nd and also likely, was that the looming spectre of her boyfriend (me) wasn’t seeming to go away. Not surprisingly he canceled 2 days after he suddenly canceled at the “movie-date” that included me. 3^rd and least likely, was that he somehow read about being called a proverbial cash cow and didn’t much appreciate the nickname, though it’s for the best if number 3 proved correct because that would just be creepy if he was google-searching Libby. Anyways, Libby is still maintaining her sugar-momma breadwinning position because our friend at work went back to the states for 6 weeks and Libby is subbing for her part-time preschool job. I feel bad I’m pulling a little less of the weight but there’s no debating I hate teaching much more than Libby does. It’s funny, most people come here trying to escape the cubicle lifestyle (actually it’s usually more like restaurant work but you get the picture) and here I am thinking a cubicle surrounded by real adults doesn’t sound half-bad! After the “Teaching makes me want to die-esque) excuse I get to use the “you’re about to be a poor graduate student for the next years of your life” and finally my ace in the hole rationalization card- “coming to teach English in Vietnam was your idea ultimately.” I know in my heart of hearts our 3 month backpacking trip come February will make it all worth it but crap. Also, to my brother who did this whole teaching thing for a full year in Korea. I’ve met multiple people who’ve been teaching in Korea before Vietnam and they all say it’s like Disney-land and isn’t really like teaching in Korea. So at least I know he hasn’t bested me in this instance, because that would unacceptable.

Back to triumphs, for the first time, I was the directions-savior. I’m writing this blog post now while Libby is at the pre-school. Well, she dropped me off at a coffee shop and 15 minutes later she rushes back in in a panic and says she can’t find the pre-school and she’s going to be late. I say, I know the way! And sure enough I found the stupid thing. Honestly, if the aptitude tests in grade-school consisted of a maze they might have a put me on the short bus. So I’m basking in triumph right now. Well that’s all for now. ‘Till next time

(note: will append pictures soon!) 

The Skies, They are a Changin’

I think fall is upon us here in Saigon. Boy does it bring amazing skies. It hasn’t rained in like 3 or 4 days, so I think the rainy season is finally abating. If I want to translate 4 seasons to 2 seasons as literally as possible, I guess we’re approaching winter. The skies have had amazing lighting this past week or so. I’ve been trying to capture it with the SLR but so far no good. Obviously, it’s hard to explain in words. There is something tangibly more beautiful and the only reasonable explanation I can give without resorting to google is that we either have less atmosphere or at least the angle is flatter for the sun to come through here at the equator. The one little piece of symbolism that seemed to fittingly represent the skies these days was as an amazingly huge rainbow arcing over the Bixteco Tower (largest and only real skyscraper here in Saigon)… What was the kicker was that it never even rained! The sky was somehow able to magically produce rainbow. The rainbow appeared on the way home from work Sunday so when I went home I immediately ran to grab the camera and get back to a good vantage point, but alas, it was gone by the time I returned.

On the teaching front, a lot of my classes have ended recently, and some of them have yet to be replaced, so I have had a relatively light teaching load. It has been heavenly. All my new classes are dreams compared to my one nightmare class. It really is just like babysitting in that one class, there are these three absolute ****heads. I sometimes stick one in the corner and make them face the wall which is pretty satisfying to do, but really there’s no saving these kids. I took one of their watches today, and he flicked me off, all 8 years old of him…not sure where he learned that one.  Not all the kids are grime, some of them jump on you, tell you they love you, follow you around the school, ect. But some of the kids leave a bad taste in your mouth. Also, I seem to get all the crazies, too. In one of my new classes which is more of an upper level one so it’s much smaller, there’s 9 great kids and 1 bad one. He named himself Sacrifice (The self-designated “English” names are ridiculous) and goes around saying “I will sacrifice you” to the other kids. It would be annoying except it is really funny watching the whole class shame him into submission. They started calling him worse than a dog (which as you know they eat here) and that really chilled him out for the rest of class. He started rolling around on the floor with 5 minutes left of class and which remains inexplicable to me. There must be something in the water here in Saigon.

2 hilarious notes I forgot to mention last post. First, was at the teacher development workshop. Our very last activity together was to find a new teacher and ask them why they enjoy teaching (hah). Well I was pretty burnt out and aimlessly wandered until finding a Vietnamese teacher. I gave something along the lines of “It’s rewarding watching my kids develop and when they smile I can’t help but smile too,” something very safe and perfect cover for my incognito existence as the malcontent teacher. Of course the seminar woman asks if anyone would like to share their PARTNER’S answer and sure enough my partner shoots her hand up immediately…. My partner somehow botches my answer and makes it even more sentimental and sappy and the whole workshop busts out in “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww” and the icing on the cake was one of the head teachers starts crying, I kid you not; all the while I’m dying of embarrassment while also laughing on the inside at my superteacher alter ego that is nothing more than a mirage. A scene like that belonged in a movie I swear.

Next point has to do with Canadians. We have a Canadian friend that is, SUPER Canadian. Honestly I feel like I could start a new blog dedicated to this guy’s –isms. Anyways, my brother made this very poignant point about Canadians when he was teaching English in Korea years ago and it rings so true today. He said something along the lines of “people in Canada act like their domestic activities are GLOBALY newsworthy and also that non-Canadians CARE about their domestic activities.” It was regarding their recent Parliament shootings. The day after the shooting we were teaching together and during break and delivers this slow and somber-“so did you hear what happened to Canada yesterday.” I was nonchalantly like “yeah I read the headlines, but I haven’t really read too much into it (because there was little to read into).” He was like, “this is A BIG DEAL” “things like this don’t happen in Canada” and drum roll please……………………………………. “this is like our 9/11” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really it took a lot of self-control to not bust out laughing. Thankfully he redeemed an ounce of self-respect when two minutes later he conceded the glaringly obvious disparity in casualties (1 vs. 2,977). I won’t even mention the symbolic difference in physical destruction.

Hung out with our Vietnamese friends last week. It really is an enjoyable time every time we hang out… It’s so innocent and simple it ends up being quite refreshing. We played board games and ate street food and had a generally jolly time. It’s probably the closest I ever get to those idealized visions of strolling through the steamy Saigon streets at night and idk what else.  Honestly I think my daydreams take place in 1950’s Saigon.  Our friends range from like 19-23 years old, and it’s really funny because the two 19 year old girls were already talking about how it’s high time to find a husband and get married. This led Libby to ask one of them what she wants to do when she’s older. “I want to find a good husband, be a good wife, and have a good family.” And yes, she goes to University.

                Libby was meeting these girls she randomly found who wanted tutoring at a coffee shop when some guy asked her if he could get lessons too.  Well he’s certainly a cash-cow as he wanted 4 hours of tutoring a week and he owns a car which automatically makes you super wealthy here; so I’m hoping Libby can milk the proverbial cow for the next 3 months as we continue saving. The only problem is his crush on Libby. She’s trying to increase the hourly rate from 20 dollars an hour to 30 as I write this blog, I know she didn’t make her middle school or high school play but hopefully she can play an Oscar-worthy role. It makes me feel like some sort of pimp, if he continues dishing out these free gourmet lunches I’ll have to don my suit and go to the nearest Western coffee shop and scatter some English-tutoring books ha.

Something about Apocalypse now getting sucked into the jungle…

Two weeks ago today proved to be a very chaotic week so I needed a full week (last week) to nurse my body and mind back into shape.  I got the “Vietnamese Flu.” Not really sure how to describe it, but it was a combination of sweats and chills and devastating achiness. The lowdown: Sunday night, just finished 22 hours of work, Libby and I were feeling pretty popular (mostly Libby) since we had multiple invitations to do things. It was our co-worker’s birthday so we opted for that… It was very fun and very Vietnamese. We went to a very stereotypical Vietnamese restaurant with 50 cent beers half indoor/half outdoor with tons of small dishes. Everyone is mot/hai/bah, yo’ing (cheersing) and since we had such a huge table there are like one of two staff devoted to not letting your glass fall below half empty and ensuring your beer is always ice-cold (bad pun, I actually enjoy drinking beer the Vietnamese way, with Ice/Da).  Anyways, long story short I was extremely hung over Monday morning when the flu-aches started coming on… only I didn’t know I was getting the flu and just attributed it to some combination of working on my feet for a whole weekend and being hungover. So I told Libby we had to get massages…anyways it was really strange and I honestly couldn’t tell whether it felt good or not getting my flu-achiness massaged, it was really weird. Libby had bought our AO show tickets the week before, so we had to go to that. The AO show was very good, it’s directed by some former Cirque Du Soleil producer or something and you could see the similarities. I’d expect Cirque Du Soleil to be more jaw-dropping and the choreography to be more perfectly executed, but the AO show was still professionally done. They utilized traditional bamboo woven fishing baskets and bamboo poles for their stunts but my favorite part was probably the accompanying “orchestra,” which really was only 5 guys who were playing traditional Vietnamese instruments… Hearing traditional Vietnamese music is hard to find, let alone talented traditional Vietnamese music.  Anyways, we finished our “spectacular” day of spa, cocktails, AO Show with dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. At which point my aches were so bad and my appetite so gone that I just sat there like the hunchback of Notre Dame staring blankly at food that I knew to be delicious… It turned out to be just an OK day honestly.

The worst part about it was for the next three days I had 8-4 professional development workshops. Not paid of course. The only reason I said yes was because they had asked me like 6 weeks earlier and also guilt tripped me like no other. “Only two other teachers get to go, you get lunch free, you get a certificate.” I was sick for the first part of Tuesday but after like 8 missed calls from my boss I went to the afternoon session on Tuesday. The workshop was useful, but I mean… The lunches were bad; they even managed to have shrimp on the last day. The certificate won’t be here for another 6 months, at which time I don’t plan on even being there so, I guess I don’t get my “Oxford Teaching Academy” certificate. At the end of my 8-4 on Thursday I had to teach my worst class. Some other teacher gave it up so it was up to me to finish it out to the end. Some of them were real S***heads. The worst was this half-American girl… She was the worst… like all the bad words in the world embodied here… and she was like 13 years old. Her English was great, so she could be a sassy *****, obviously her dad didn’t love her enough to teach her himself because he totally could have/should have, given he is AMERICAN.  My favorite line of hers through the 4-5 weeks I had to teach her was something she told the Vietnamese teacher when she told her to stop talking one week: “I really like to talk and nobody can stop be.”

After that those lovely three hours, it was practically Friday, which meant dance practice… Getting pretty dance’ed out, ready to just get it over with…and then of course it was the beloved weekend, except this time I had a boat anchor of a cold (carry-over from the flu) to carry along. By the time last Monday rolled around I was ready to crawl into a fetal position and sleep a couple of days away, which I did. Trying to think of memorable things we did last week, and they were mostly few and far between. Went back to the Jazz club again, never disappoints. The keyboardist was spectacular, they were playing blues covers and he was playing one hand on the grand piano and one hand on the electric piano sitting on the top of the grand, and of course the owner is amazing, he comes out like 45 minutes into the set and blows away the first Saxophonist who is no slouch. The friend we had brought along said it was like Ron Burgandy coming out. The best part is when he busts out the traditional Vietnamese instruments and plays what he calls Jazz Fusion music.  That weekend I was talking to one of my coworkers about how great that place was and he was calling it tacky and over the top touristy. And yeah the décor is over-the-top trying to be so cool it’s not cool feel and the majority of the audience are older white tourists…But I just like to think of them as Aron’s dad. The fact of the matter is these guys are consummate musicians. They play 3 hour sets day after day and say they never like to play a song the same way twice… that’s dedication that’s hard to find in the United States these days.  It’s weird because when we were there a group of four Vietnamese ladies walked in a bit late and were talking obnoxiously loud during the songs. It was obvious by the Band’s looks that they certainly weren’t enjoying the “authentic” audience (and yes there were also attentive/respective Vietnamese in the audience as well). Which led me to thinking, is Jazz some sort of apex of cultural sophistication/maturity, and what does that mean exactly? Certainly there seems to be some sort of empirical evidence in the fact that many college-aged people we’ve met love Hannah Montana and other Disney shows that cater to the adolescent audience back home, but maybe that’s the norm not the exception… There was a point, when I can hardly remember that I enjoyed a Maroon 5 song or two and other pop songs that are all the rage here for people of all ages here but maybe that’s just personal preference… Anyways deep questions with vague answers… I’ll have to check back on the music scene here in a decade or so.

Funny conversation thread I have going with the same Jazz Club coworker. How Mondays have turned into the day where you pick up the pieces of your shattered physical and emotional self… Physical because I left my Birkenstock dress shoes with cork footbeds at home like an IDIOT, and only brought boat shoes and loafers; soles/arch support=zero. Idk though, I really love those shoes and it’s practically inescapable of not getting your shoes soaked in rainstorms while driving home plus there’s some modicum of comfort knowing I could run to the airport and fly home and not really care what I left behind, but I can’t really see that ever happening.  The emotional shattering to pieces is what really drives home the point that I really could never do this for some extended period of time; but who knows, maybe after a certain number of RPG’s to my pride, enough pieces would become lost in the cleanup that I could embrace it… Idk though, it feels pretty degrading when some 8 year-old, completely out of the blue, tells me “You’re stupid.” I really just want to flick him off but then again, he’s 8 years old. It really is fun sharing these instances with one another in the break room though, one of my coworker friends is gaining a beer belly and the students in one of his classes tells him he’s getting fat, in the spirit Halloween, one of the students in Jazz club coworker’s class drew some twisted Eulogy of him looking like the Devil. Still taking measurements, but I think it’s the heat here in Southeast Asia that makes the kids more squirrelly than the other Asian kids. 

Ba Cà phê sữa đá

Cafe Suoi Da 

175 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia

Bang Khuang Cafe

2 – 9 Thai Van Lung, D1

Mono 

12 Nguyen Dinh Chieu, D1

Cafe Tram

111 Duong Nguyen Phi Khanh, D1

Hai Cà phê sữa đá

More adventures in coffee shop exploration

Cafe Anh

Nguyen Khac Nhu and Tran Hung Dao, D1

Thuy Truc

197 Dinh Bo Linh, Binh Thanh

 La Fenetre Soleil

44 Ly Tu Trong Street, District 1

M2C Cafe

 44B Lý Tự Trọng, D1

La Rotonde 

77B Ham Nghi, D1

Regina Cafe

82 (?) Nguyen Du, D1

Chai Cafe 

393/6 Tran Hung Dao, Dist. 1

Shelter Cafe 

13 Le Thanh Ton, Dist. 1

 

 Casbah
Alley No. 59, Nguyen Du St., District 1

Beer Plaza 

Cong Quynh, D1

Tram 

100 Trần Huy Liệu, Phú Nhuận District

Id Cafe

34D Thu Khoa Huan St, D1

Pet Me Cafe

179 Tran Huy Lieu, Phu Nhuan District 

The Fig 

15 Nguyễn Thị Huỳnh, Phú Nhuận

Id Cafe

61 Tu Xuong, D3