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Published: October 24th 2005
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Sweet shot of me!
On the top of Brian's guest house...finally there's a photo of me on my BLog! Killing time between lessons right now - I'm quite exhausted and need a few moments' relief from the academic environment. As I've bumbled around the past few weeks, I've struggled to figure out how to best convey what life is like here, and how it is so radically different from what I knew before. I immediately sought to express the large changes - my daily routine, food prices, millions of motorbikes... now I feel that my life might be better defined by small details. I've realized that in an attempt to adapt as smoothly as possible, I almost immediately accepted what I encounter daily as 'normal' or expected - so I forget that describing these encounters might illuminate how life is so radically unique here.
Top X Number of Things That MUST Be Mentioned (X because I will probably add to it as time goes on):
1) All day, but especially at night, there are men who ride around on bicycles ringing small handbells, which signal that they will give (only) men massages on the street. Consequently, it's not unheard of to see a man lying face down the blanketed pavement, receiving a somewhat intimate massage
Xe May shot
Marta, Joe, Brian on Brian's xe may! (nonsense or no-nonsense depends on the customer)
2) Every car plays a tune when it is in reverse...jingles can consist of bad pop music, Christmas carols, and Happy Birthday. This doesn't wear on the nerves too badly, although once I was in a taxi who used this safety procaution when he but on his turn signal.....TOO MUCH!!!
3) There are men here who drive around with carts that have hanging dead squid...this is one of the top three most repulsive smells I have been confronted with! For those of you familliar with the world-famous 'asshole sauce' - that's it! But biking around the city, so it's sometimes hard to escape!
4) same same; different different...sometimes these two phrases comprise the whole of a vendor's vocabulary. I now use it jokingly
5) Mole hair is definitely in style here, and men (who are fortunate enough) sport thin clumps of hair that are typically 5/6 inches long... NOT cool, especially when it's on your xe may driver's neck and you're a mere tweleve inches away from it
6) Geckos are like flies here...they're in my guest house, on the walls of buildings, inside restaurants...EVERYWHERE!!! it's pretty sweet!
Oooops!
I rented a xe may to practice driving...obviously I need a lot more work! Thankfully this was the extent of my injuries after a small crash. Needless to say, I'll be purchasing a helmet soon!! 7) men walk the streets at night with large electric scales on wheels and offer to weigh you...yesterday Marta and Sam hopped on, to find that they'd both grown a centimeter or more, but lost weight! Marta was quite happy (according to the dude's machine, she's finally reached 5'2") - 2,000 dong for an ego boost, not a bad way to spend 15 cents!
8) At almost any establishment directed as Western business (aside from bars) the only music you'll hear is Kenny G, Celine Dion, or a Kenny G cover of Celine Dion... where or where did they get the impression that this music would appeal to us?!???
9) Monsoon rains happen almost daily right now. It generally doesn't last too long on a good day, but sometimes, it rains torrentially for an hour or more. On these days, it's wisest not to venture out for a few hours after the rain lets up...Marta and I risked a walk to the tailor the other day and the streets were flooded 4/5''. In addition to turning the city into a filthy mess, it brings out the cockroaches and rats! Sometimes cockroaches will climb into the guesthouse rooms
UUUGggggghhhhHHH!!!
This is your run of the mill squid cart...looks quite unassuming, but I assure you, the smell is at times almost unbearable. Oddly enough, the squid tastes quite nice - I never would have tried it, but some of the girls who work at the guest house let us try theirs. through the drainage holes in the bathroom....Thankfully I haven't yet expereinced that! (haha, Sarah has, and she's the easily the most squeemish in our group)
10) Almost all the dogs here look similar to each other, but different from those in the states . They're pretty much all squat, short creatures with really long torsos, and generally disproportionate figures. I'm not really sure what happened, but my theory is that there's one pimp dog who gets with all the stray girls...hence the striking resemblence among 50%-60% of HCMC's canine population.
The abovementioned top X describe the somewhat bizarre constants in life- now let's talk about what makes each day unique! For example, this week:
1) I found a bird in my alley way that does flips all day: He sits on his perch, jumps in the air, does a flip and lands! I'm not sure he's trained to do this, but he really seems to enjoy it. If I get a house, I might try to buy him : ).
2) I was walking down the street on Friday and I came across a set of conjoined dogs. The confusion here lay in the fact that in addition to being conjoined, they didn't seem to be related - their features were quite different! I just sort of wandered around in a daze after that...
3) saturday morning at 6:30, I woke up to the sound of a marching band playing right outside my window! It turns out there was a wake going on in a house across the street and they were beginning the funeral procession...but the conductor danced in front of everyone like Michael Jackson...
4) I went to the Museum of Fine Art yesterday...and found a cockroach on one of the paintings!
5) I saw my first Agent Orange victim earlier this week (I'm not sure that's what happened, but he was severly deformed and was being pushed around in a wooden cart). It was more than a bit sobering.
I suppose that's all for now...Over and out.
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Mom
non-member comment
injury
Moira, what body part is it that was injured? I can't tell by looking.