Avoiding white slavery…

My Free Will Astrology Horoscope for this week:

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In a series of articles about the Burning Man
festival a few weeks ago, the *San Francisco Chronicle* included brief
profiles of selected revelers. One woman named Mai testified that she
planned to do things differently in this, her third visit to the annual week-
long party in the Nevada desert. “I’m gonna try to remember more this
time,” she promised. That would be an excellent approach for you to use
in the coming days, Scorpio. The adventures will be arriving in fast and
furious abundance, and though it may be a challenge for you to recall
every single one of their many valuable teachings, you should try to do
just that.

Isn’t Rob Breszny just eerie sometimes? Especially since “Mai” is a common vietnamese name… in fact, my mom’s best friend Mai is here visiting!

THis is the worst keyboard in the 3rd world, so i am not even going to bother fixing mistypes. there goes my $1 manicure.

Too MUch People!

Going to the market in VN makes me think of Anibal and Melissa’s crazy neighbor, who leans over the fence and yells things like “too much people!” THere really are too much people.

Being at the market with mom and Mai is pretty tedious. Especially since i am a hit and run type shopper. Do you have my size in this color? HOw much? Too much! No thanks/okay, thank you. BUt with them there is LOTS of discussion without even getting to prices… Quite often, after all parties investing 10 or more minutes, we’ll walk away! I gotta hand it to them… most of the time, they’ll bend. but, you know, we’re americans and the prices are so cheap, i don’t mind the vendor making a tidy profit. but mai is v’mese, lives in cantho, and there was no way she would let us pay yankee prices.

Girl, you’ll be a woman soon

The highlight for me was getting a jade bangle bracelet, the kind some of the young women and 100% of the old ladies wear. I let Mai and mom look at hundreds of them… finally we found one we liked. Get this, i bought a cheap faux silk embroidered top and i am a size XXL. Yet i wear a small bangle. It’s not just wrist size, you have to get it over your hand and i have freakishly skinny hands, which has not escaped notice by my relatives. IN fact, when i first got here they looked me over head to toe, commenting on everything from my “good skin” (meaning, not too dark - OLay even has a whitening cream here! I bought it for SHana), and having a giggle over my big feet and long toes. I think they think all americans have fingertoes.

The bracelet is for good luck, by the way. Supposed to keep ward off evil spirits and protect me from illness. See, i didnt need those hep shots and typhoid pills! They are so hard to put on because you’re not supposed to remove them, ever.

My A

Back to My A, I wanted to post some pictures. This was the rural village where we stayed, where my mom and grandparents were born in Central VN.

These are the old folks. I loved them. THey chewed this fruit thing, mixed with paste in a jar, practically all day long. mY mom says she tried it when she got married and hallucinated a little. Their teeth were always smeared with this red stuff, which made getting kisses from them extra special. VIetnamese kisses, by the way, took me by surprise. You get pulled in close and sniffed really vigorously. I do not know what the fruit is called but I think that’s what makes elderly v’mese people have famously blackened teeth.

This is the well out front, which we did use for washing clothes and stuff, although they do have running water. I mentioned this in the blog earlier… look what they use to scoop the water! By the way, I am crap at getting water from a well. It’s not as easy as it looks.

THis is the nearby beach…

And here is a small child sleeping in my bed. note: no mattress.

In fact, here are some stats:

Total nights in VN: 20
NIghts in bed by myself: 3
NIghts in bed with 1 other person: 13
NIghts in bed with 2 other people: 4
NIghts in bed with no mattress: 10

Tomorrow, mom and i go to Dalat through SUnday. It’s suppposed to be really nice, and cool! I mean, not hot! I’m really, really looking forward to temperatures in the 60s.

FYI, i have been soooo pleased by the lack of corporate america . Of course, Coke and pepsi are all over, but no McDonalds, no Starbucks… BUt i was watching the news the other night and they showed the opening of the first KFC…. Nooooooooo! Rather, “cah-eff-say”. It’s the end of the world as we know it, but i feel fine.

Wasn’t there a band called Saigon Kick? Did they suck? I have a feeling Sue knows this…

Have fun storming the castle!

So what’s new. Went to Reunification Palace the other day. It used to be the Presidential Palace before ‘75. It was built in the 60s and the decor is so awesomely tacky, like an old James Bond movie (Sean Connery era). You know how we used to joke about the Contemporary Hotel in Walt Disney World wasn’t very contemporary? It was like that. It was a neat tour - they show the exact locations the bombs fell on the roof, and the tanks that stormed the gates are still on the grounds. I like the way the adorable and sweet tour guide said things like “when the Americans invaded” and “the puppet government set up by the americans”. I guess history really is written by the victors.

The basement bunker was very cool, with all the phone and radio equipment, and big maps, all of it still there.

Oh, and there was this big official room, like the Oval Office equivalent, where 3 presidents resigned in April 1975, which is weirdly funny to me.

We’ll kill the old red rooster

Yesterday we went outside of Saigon to my cousin Dung’s house for yet another feast. One of my new pet peeves is people putting food in my bowl when I am already done. Which happens at every meal. It’s getting harder to smile and eat politely. I feel like I have an eating disorder because I am figuring out all these little tricks to eat less: eat slooooowly, keep my bowl up to my face and out of reach of the old ladies (this hardly ever works, they are very nimble with the chopsticks), make sure my bowl is never empty, throw the extra food in my mom’s bowl when no one is looking. Tia, I am pro_ana!

Oh, my aunt threw a bunch of chicken in my bowl yesterday. including a beak. Me: “She put a beak in my bowl.” Mom: “Don’t eat it!” Me: “thank you.”

After that, we went to my other cousin’s house, oh god I can’t remember her name. She lives in a shack on a dirt road. That was by far the saddest house I have been in since I got here, and it made me really depressed. It was dirty and some of the walls were patched with linoleum tile and corrugated tin. Later on, my mom told me the whole story, that they have been living like that since the last time my mom returned (1996) but they have been unable to build a real house on the land because any day now, the government is supposed to buy it from them. But it has been over 10 years. If they build a house it will just be torn down. I don’t completely understand but evidently, they are stuck in this shack.

I was thinking, while I was there, that if Jeff or Alex ever lives in a big house with 2 live-in maids, I would be PISSED if I was living in a shack.

The house in Saigon, I think I’ve finally figured out who lives there and who was just visiting. It isn’t a big house, really, but by vietnamese standards it is. Here’s the census: my uncle and his wife, my cousin Duc, his wife, their 2 little boys, my other cousin’s teenage son lives there because it is close to his school, the maid and the nanny. A couple of my other cousins were staying there for a while to see my mom.

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Okay, since i havent figured out if I can reply to comments, I’ll reply here…

Stacie, i don’t know what they would think of you here, you Dresden doll. You would get sold into white slavery for sure.

Yasmin! Happy to see you. You know, I try to be discreet carrying wads of TP to the bathroom, but it does make me wonder if they think I am gross for not using water! Ew. But, like my brother asked me on the phone the other day “how do you wipe yer ass?!”

Re: vegetarians… There are lots of vegetarians here, not just the monks, because so many people are devout buddhists. But every home cooked meal I have eaten has been heavy on the meat. Lots of seafood and pork. My cousin’s wife will join us for meals and eat steamed veggies dipped in soy sauce with rice. And if we go to someone’s house, she will bring a package of veg ramen. The vegetarians here don’t eat fish sauce either.

The reason I haven’t been eating so many veggies is because I never have any say in what I get to eat! If we go out, my cousin orders for everyone and we eat family style. At home, it’s all meat, meat and veggies, rice… The exception is breakfast, but I do love having a big bowl of bun bo for breakfast. And the last few days, we have been going to this little place around the corner that has this soup, I have no idea what it is called. I watch the lady preparing the soup over and over again: egg noodles blanched in broth, cut some meat (really tough meat, I think it might be close to the stomach), cut some intestine, cut some other unidentifiable thing, blanch some lettuce, fill with broth… It’s so good! I leave the questionable meat behind but the noodles and greens are awesome.

Still, I think my mind is making me crave things that it knows I cannot have. Cinnamon buns, for one. I haven’t eaten cinnamon buns in ages, yet I would kill for one now. Earl grey tea with organic milk and sugar. This morning, when I was half asleep, I had a very realistic dream that I was eating soft rolls with butter and jelly. There is western food available, but just not in this neck of the woods. To tell you the truth, I am dying to have non-vietnamese food, just to see how the vietnamese do pizza, indian, chinese…

Tay, guess what, when I went to the Reunification Palace, there was a guy on our tour with a Ramones shirt! We looked so cute. Oh, and when I was in Hoi An, I was walking down the street and some brit on a bike rode by and went “woohoo! Ramones!” Anyway, you’ll probably see that shirt a lot in my photos, since I only brought a couple t-shirts and tank tops and i’ve been washing them daily with my knickers.

I tried to download your radio show but I can’t figure it out Still, I want you to send me a shout out next week. Play me mushaboom or something like that.

Denise, you are australian now? I love the gherkin too. And I of course I am on the internet all the time! What else can I do when I am under house arrest?

Speaking of which, my cousin just came to tell me that it is time for me to come home to EAT AGAIN.

(Edit to leave one more comment, for Tay and Stefan) Nhy and I practiced getting her in my suitcase! I would tell her to make herself really small, in a little ball, then I would try to stuff her in my backpack. She loved it. Also, I would collect her in the sheets when her mom asked for the laundry, and hand a wriggling pile of linens over. Slapstick is the international language.

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