Vietnam's Most Mysterious Shoplady

Every Saturday, I walk out of my school at 12:15 and attempt to cross Ba Hom street. It might be the single most dangerous thing I do all week. Swarms of motorbikes fly in every direction, and honking buses plow through the streets with a singular disregard for human safety. In one weekend there were three separate accidents in front of our school. Cops stood in the middle of the road making chalk outlines and collecting debris.

My destination sits under a large sign bearing the words 'HIỆP PHÁT'. It is a small storefront piled high with boxes of soda, toothbrushes, and squid-flavored potato chips. An old Vietnamese woman sits at the counter. She's well dressed in bright traditional clothes, with gold bracelets on her wrists and elegant jade earrings. I grab a bottle of tea from the refrigerator, place it on the counter in front of her. I reach for my wallet and she laughs as she produces a bag full of home-cooked food from beneath her stool. Then she reaches around for gum, candy, cigarettes - anything handy, really - and tosses it in the bag.

 I stand there like an idiot, smiling and brandishing a fistful of bills, muttering cam on ('thank you' in Vietnamese) again and again. She ignores the money, and eventually I give up and mutter cam on even more emphatically than before. Then I trudge back across the street, clutching my free lunch and spitting obscenities at the buzzing motorbikes.

This has been going on for months. It is one of my most baffling experiences in Vietnam.

The Lunch Lady.

There is a certain art to buying things in Vietnam, especially foodstuffs. Consistency is paramount.As an illustration - the neighborhood sandwich shop. Every morning, I stop there between 10-12 am to buy two banh mi op la (omelet baguettes). The process is incredibly efficient. As soon as the woman hears my motorbike approach, she cranks on the gas range and begins cooking the eggs. I park my bike in front of her cart, and wander off to buy fruit and coffee. By the time I return, she has wrapped two steaming sandwiches in old book pages. I climb on my bike, she clips the food to my bag, and I hand her 25,000 VND ($1.25 USD). We do this every day. We have the routine down pat.

However, should I deviate from the routine by ordering, say, one sandwich, the transaction devolves into utter chaos. All the painstaking familiarity gained over weeks and months suddenly evaporates and I am reduced to holding up fingers and pointing at loaves with the authority of an indecisive toddler. Eventually she concedes and makes the sandwich, eying me mistrustfully the whole time and staring at my money like it is made of human skin. This scene will repeat itself over the next week or so, until I regain enough credibility to qualify for automatic, expedited service. 

Now some might say, 'Nick, this problem could be easily resolved if you simply acquired a working knowledge of basic Vietnamese.'

This is true.

But Vietnamese is hard.

~

For the first three months I lived in Vietnam, I had a similar breezy routine with the Lunch Lady. On weekday afternoons I would pull up just before 6 pm, always buying a small Coke. On weekends I stopped by around noon for a green tea, carrying my customary lunch of com chien (fried rice) in a yellow plastic bag. Occasionally I'd buy some ChocoPies or squid chips for a particularly good class, which were always fetched by the Lunch Lady's teenage son, whose facial expressions ranged from intolerably bored to possibly comatose. We had a polite and uncomplicated relationship - take goods, give money, repeat as necessary.

One day, I noticed a small flower shop half a block from the HIỆP PHÁT. For reasons inexplicable considering my 5 am wakeup that day, I was in a lighthearted, gift-giving mood. So I bought a bunch of flowers and brought them over to the Lunch Lady. I stepped into her store and handed her the bouquet of rich purple…somethings. They matched her outfit that day, and I made a big show of saying 'dep, dep!', meaning 'beautiful' in Vietnamese. She blushed furiously and placed the flowers in a vase next to the cash register. She wouldn't let me pay for the tea. I silently congratulated myself for being an awesome human being and headed back to school, where I would go on to blatantly mail in my last two lessons with the help of pirated Doraemon DVDs.

The next Saturday, the com ga restaurant where I bought lunch had disappeared. Everything from the deep fat fryer to the sign outside were gone. When I appeared at the for HIỆP PHÁT for my tea, the Lunch Lady immediately noticed the absence of my little yellow bag. 'Com? Com?', she asked again and again, repeating one of the only Vietnamese words I was likely to understand. I gave her the double upturned handshake, the ubiquitous local sign for 'I am absolutely clueless.' 

After that, the Lunch Lady was born.

~

The first offering.

The first time she made me lunch, I was flabbergasted. It was a Saturday afternoon, around the usual time, and I had shown up more out of habit than anything else. I was planning on skipping lunch and binging on Indian food that night. So when the cute old lady handed me a bag full of freshly sautéed beef and vegetables, steamed white rice and (peeled!*) apples, I could do nothing but stammer 'thank you', unable to utter even a single word in Vietnamese. When I tried to produce my wallet, she unleashed a torrent of Vietnamese that admonished me, in no uncertain terms, for being a complete fucking idiot. Her actions completely subverted everything I previously understood about the business-customer relationship. I gave her a polite little bow, remembered that the Vietnamese don't bow, got even more embarrassed, and practically sprinted out of the store.

Bewildered and slightly hungry, I wandered back to the teacher's room and unpacked my grub. Ms. Ngu, one of the teacher support staff and possibly the sweetest human being ever born, looked confused and asked me if I had made lunch at home (since foreigners are generally assumed to subsist only off KFC and Heineken). When I told her it was a gift from the woman across the street, Ngu looked at me as if I was speaking Flemish. 'Foreigners are just the weirdest,' her face said plainly.

Better than a Famous Bowl, probably.

The same thing happened next week. Suddenly, my money was useless at the HIỆP PHÁT. Since she wouldn't accept money, I began to search the city for little gifts to give her. As the weeks passed and the free lunches continued to flow, it turned into a bit of a game. Every weekend she would deliver a fresh batch of com with all the fixin's, and I'd deliver a little glass figurine or another bouquet of flowers.

Step 1 to becoming a fatass.

 Every week was something different. Once she handed me a heavy box of fried rice with a dozen giant shrimp buried under the fragrant grains. Another Saturday's bag contained an assorted sampler of Vietnam's finest processed meats, which I delicately disposed of in an outside bin to keep it from smelling up the entire office. My lunches began to attract attention from coworkers, who teased me that I now had a new girlfriend across the street. Even the normally reserved Ms. Ngu tossed words like 'seduction' around, which was equal parts hilarious and horrifying. Others suggested that perhaps she had a daughter she wished to marry off, though I never saw anyone but her expressionless son hanging around the store. 

The gift war escalates.

Then the gifts began to come. For weeks I had been bringing her little trinkets and gifts, considering it a utilitarian trade of art for food. She placed them together on the counter, a steadily growing little pile of gratitude and guilt. I felt a very Midwestern need to be 'even' - something in Minnesotan blood curdles at the idea of being out-generous'd by somebody else. My father is a prime example of this - if the man borrowed your car for an hour, he'd return it with a full tank of gas, new brakes, and a copy of CCR's Greatest Hits. The gifts were my way of compensating for the time and energy she put into my weekly lunches.

When the food began to be accompanied by fashion accessories, I felt a twinge of panic. Things were beginning to escalate quickly - they could easily get out of hand fast. One week she gave me two beautifully wrapped boxes containing a leather wallet and belt. The next there was a silver watch nestled in a dark red box. Some other notables - a backpack filled with a motorbike helmet, poncho, and face mask, a traditional Vietnamese wind chime, an entire carton of cigarettes, and the coup de grace:

verysexyhot, baby!

At this point, I was afraid to even walk into her store. Merchants in Vietnam are usually ready to gouge foreigners to the utter limits of reason - my favorite example being a woman who once tried to charge me 500,000 VND ($25 USD) for a single coconut. People don't simply give stuff away, especially to foreigners who make comparatively exorbitant salaries. And storeowners never, never lavish expensive gifts on their customers while refusing to accept payment. A coworker joked that not only did she want me to marry her daughter, but also donate a kidney to her cousin. I laughed along with him and patted my sides nervously. 

One day, there was a light blue envelope inside my lunch bag. I opened it to find a beautifully written note, full of curly T's and elegant sweeping G's. The Vietnamese still practice handwriting in school, and reading their letters sometimes feels like studying calligraphy. In polite, formal English, the note informed me that that the lady had asked a niece to translate her words; the condensed version read something like this:

Every day I see you at my store and I feel happy. Your smiling face is very handsome and you have a kind heart. It must be difficult for you to live far from your family and homeland. I hope that you will remember me, and have a happy life in Vietnam. 

How do you reply to that?

~

I eventually wrote the Lunch Lady back, enlisting my talented coworker Ms. Phuc to translate my letter into Vietnamese. Phuc is a bit of a smartass - apparently she majored in literature or poetry or something while in university, and is thus a talented writer. 'How do you want the letter to sound? Polite? Respectful? Grateful? Romantic?', she asked, winking suggestively at the last one. I settled on grateful and polite, and began the difficult task of thanking someone whose kindness has exceeded all reasonable expectations.

In the end I have no idea if I found the right words to show my gratitude (or if Phuc ignored my instructions and wrote a steamy ode of lascivious dirty talk). But we've exchanged a few more notes since then, and the stream of food and gifts continues unabated, always in both directions, never entirely equal.

I'll never know exactly why she decided to show such kindness to a clueless, lunchless foreigner with long hair and lousy taste in cosmetics, but I am comfortable with not-knowing. Vietnam teaches you very quickly that some questions are not meant to be answered. A little mystery keeps things interesting. And everybody knows there's no such thing as a bad free lunch.

Although if she ever packs me squid rings again, I might torch the shop.

Teachers' Day in Vietnam: Puttin' on the Ritz

In many countries around the globe, October 5th is celebrated as World Teachers' Day. In Vietnam, a country where pleas for punctuality are made with a wink and a nod, teachers are recognized on November 20th. As I found out last Sunday, it is worth the wait.

~

Last year, I 'celebrated' Teachers' Day in Korea, where I worked at a private language academy for the pampered scions of Samsung middle managers and LG junior account executives. The owner of that academy, who could be charitably described as a twitchy runt (or something similar), decided that teachers would not be allowed to keep presents given on Teachers' Day. Ostensibly, this was to prevent any sort of favoritism toward students who lavished expensive gifts on their teachers in hopes of receiving preferential treatment. 

In practice, this meant I had to look a bunch of Korean kindergarteners square in the eye and politely tell them, 'Sorry Ji-Su, teacher doesn't want your monogrammed hankerchief. And this glittery card has to go back, too.' Meanwhile, the Korean staff hovered outside the classrooms waiting to swoop in and confiscate all tokens of gratitude, which would later be returned to confused and angry parents. The whole day was such a fiasco that the owner eventually announced that the school would be closed on Teachers' Day in the future, just to avoid the whole thorny issue of employee recognition.

Gimme yer gifts.

~

Teachers' Day 2013 in Vietnam was quite a different scene. The celebration was held at the Sheraton Towers in downtown Saigon, one of the city's swankiest hotels and a place that few of us had any business being at under normal circumstances. People accustomed to squatting at roadside stands while slurping suspiciously aromatic noodles were suddenly confronted with modern man's greatest fear: multiple forks.

How many salads can one person have?

The polished marble floors and elegant wood paneling of the Sheraton are an interesting juxtaposition to the madly boiling chaos of 'real' Saigon. Bellhops wait at the front doors, alternately helping people out of shiny new Lexuses and dinged-up Vinasun taxis. Once inside, a smartly-dressed person* can wander at will past banks of elevators that only go to one floor and extravagant seafood buffets featuring an endless array of expensive, French-sounding dishes.

*I  returned the next day on my motorbike to pick up some belongings at the concierge. Wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, I didn't make it halfway to the door before two very polite bouncers** asked me where I was going, and if they could help me, and if I wouldn't mind leaving as quickly as possible.

**Is there a classier word for a dude whose job essentially boils down to keeping out the lower classes?

The clothes make the man.

Places like the Sheraton always make my skin crawl until I've had a few drinks. Like many Millennials I am reverse-adaptable, a pretentious self-defense mechanism in which I critique post-modern literature at dive bars and make fart jokes at the opera. I felt like an impostor in my three-piece suit, as out of place as Kenny Powers at a Venetian fashion show. As I wandered around enormous chandelier-lit ballroom, it became obvious that many of my coworkers felt the same way. My roommate Kieran*, sharply dressed in all black like an Irish Johnny Cash, quickly found a bottle of tequila somebody smuggled in and was soon drunk as a lord. As it turns out he was one of the lucky ones.

*Kieran later went on to win the award for Best-Dressed Teacher. It was a remarkable accomplishment for a man who spends most of an average day wandering around the house hungover in his boxers.

Much to general dismay, the 'free booze' portion of the evening was not due to start for several hours. Apparently this was due to some unfortunate events the previous year, in which one foreign teacher became so uproariously drunk that he attempted to dance on the VIP table where all of VUS's grandest poobahs sat. When he was politely instructed to sit elsewhere, he threw a glass of wine at the president and lit a tablecloth on fire. Some, probably most, of the story is apocryphal, but in any case the promise of 'open bar at the Sheraton!' turned out to be misleading.

By the time the ceremony started, half the crowd was drunk anyway. Expats are nothing if not adaptable.

~

Bringing the ruckus.

Eventually the lights dimmed, a diminutive MC in shimmering ao dai traditional dress beckoned us to our seats, and the ceremony began. A team of fierce-looking drummers in red garb rushed the stage and began to beat the everliving shit out of some impressively large drums. Seated close to the stage, I could feel the percussion rattle my ribcage as my organs bounced about like bingo balls at the old folks home.  Their performance was kinetic, enthusiastic, and about 75% too long. There are only so many ways to hit something with a stick before it all becomes a bit repetitive.

When the drummers finished and their instruments were whisked off the stage by a team of burly roadies, our pretty little MC grabbed the mic and uttered the seven most horrifying words of any corporate event: 'And now, a word from the President.'

Synergies! Pro-active solutions! Market research optimization!

The President of VUS is a very nice, soft-spoken man with a decent tailor and an extensive vocabulary. He is also either impressively deaf or remarkably mellow, because at no point during his lengthy speech did the room ever approach 'silence' or even 'a dull roar'. Apparently the entire back of the room was now NASCAR-fan drunk off pocket-bottle whiskey, and even the President's occasional pauses and exasperated chuckles did nothing to quiet the noise. Those of us in the front breathed huge sighs of relief when his speech came to its merciful conclusion.

Next up were the awards, and there were many to bestow. Like most Asian countries, Vietnam puts great importance on appearance without any of the 'it's what's inside that counts' doublespeak bullshit we favor in the West. So it was fitting that the first people called to the stage were the recipients of the prestigious 'Best-Dressed Teacher'. After sitting through 45 minutes of 'increased market saturation' and 'cutting-edge technologies', we were finally given something to ogle.

Looking good, kids.

And ogle we did. This was my first formal corporate event and thus my introduction to an unsettling reality of adult professional life - a lot of your coworkers clean up real, real nice. People you would normally describe as 'nice' or 'cute' or 'friendly' suddenly appeared as glamorous, radiant sex-deities. And as you'd expect, eyebrows were raised.

Other, less interesting awards for stuff like professional dedication and exemplary performance followed. Luckily, there were many 'repeat' winners so the flow of eye-candy continued uninterrupted. Beauty and success, as always, go hand in hand. At this point however the audience had thinned out considerably as dozens of teachers flocked outside to chug convenience store booze and chain-smoke in the parking lot. There are few occasions as mind-bogglingly boring as an awards event in which you receive no award.

Awards were followed by dinner, a scrumptious buffet of expensive meats stuffed with other expensive meats, diabetes-inducing piles of frosted chocolate desserts, and finally the free wine. Unfortunately I was completely unable to enjoy any of this, as I was immediately whisked away from the table for dance practice.

I probably should have mentioned this before. The most eagerly anticipated/dreaded portion of the evening was set to follow dinner: the teacher dances. Every year, teachers from every VUS campus semi-volunatrily squeeze themselves into ridiculous costumes and shake their asses in front of a sea of camera phones while the crowd works itself into a ravenous, inebriated frenzy.

Along with five other teachers, I was performing a traditional Vietnamese dance about a boy from the South who falls in love with a girl from the North. One member of our group, a part-time dance instructor named Gary, was comfortable performing on stage, but the rest of us were decidedly not. We found a bottle of champagne, passed it around, and started practicing our steps in the kitchen. My partner, a beautiful Vietnamese girl named My (which means 'beautiful' in Vietnamese, coincidentally) looked ready to puke all over her traditional silk dress.

We waited backstage and watched as the other campuses performed their dances, still handing around the champagne and applauding wildly after each performance concluded without any major falls or wardrobe malfunctions. There were Bollywood bellydancers, a hula-salsa number, and a surprisingly good rendition of 'Love Potion #9'. When the MC called out for the 'teachers of An Duong Vuong' I slapped hands with Jenny, a sweet little South African girl on my team, and got ready to rush the stage.

A taste of India.

Shakira is always great.

Our performance went off almost perfectly, and our co-workers flooded the stage to snap photos once the music stopped. Holding flowers and grinning like idiots, we buzzed with relief, friendliness, and mid-rate bubbly. All of us were hugging and shouting and generally feeling like the world's most successful buffoons.

Bassy (Netherlands) and Jenny (South Africa) performing a traditional Vietnamese dance.

 Eventually the stage cleared and we retreated to our backstage post, still basking in the post-dance euphoria. Then came the highlight of the night: the sexy dance.

Aptly named.

Three female Vietnamese teachers slipped onto the stage and proceeded to blow the place out. Even the normally reserved VIPs were hooting like freshmen at a toga party. I turned to Gary, one of my fellow An Duong Vuong dancers, and whispered, 'Thank god we didn't follow THESE chicks.' The girls were dynamite dancers with absolutely no reservations about delivering an all-out performance. Quite a few monocles were dropped during that dance. When they finished, they had to remain in costume for over an hour as hordes of partygoers clamored to take their pictures. I'd been told of the famous risqué Teachers' Day dance before. After witnessing it with my own eyes, I can vouch that its reputation is well-deserved.

~

After the sexy dance there were a few more performances, some closing remarks, and a polite variation of 'you don't have to go home now, but get the hell out'. A tidal wave of giddily hammered teachers streamed out the doors on their way to the bars, eager to continue their buzz and maybe make a pass at the cute co-worker they'd been eye-banging for the past five hours.

I left the Sheraton long after the main crowd, weaving through the extravagant lobby with my buddies John, Rob, Kieran, and Scott. We were on our way to a casino at another swanky hotel, where we'd heckle waitresses for free drinks and moan about the lack of $5 blackjack tables. We were sheep in wolves' clothing, and determined to capitalize on all the misguided respect our suit jackets would get us.

We didn't last too long at the casino, even though most of us were winning. Our friends were waiting at a nearby bar, and we soon wandered over for another round of hugs, toasts, and slurred pickup lines. The hours passed, the morning came, and I stumbled out into the street to catch a taxi home.

As I left the bar I saw a guy I recognized. Hunched over by the curb, decked out in glorious pinstripes, he was holding his tie behind his head as he puked all over his brightly polished shoes on the trash-strewn Saigon street. He rose unsteadily, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shouted, 'Happy Teachers' Day!' He was grinning from ear to ear as he stumbled back into the bar.

'Yes', I thought as I waved down a cab.

'Happy Teachers' Day indeed.'

Typhoon Daze

Last Wednesday around 4 pm, I was running up and down the stairs of my house in Saigon, yelling in vain for my buddy Kieran. I'd just finished loading a few seasons of Breaking Bad on his USB, and I needed to return it before leaving for work. I also had to swing by the tailor to be sized for my new suit, a sharp three-piece charcoal grey number whose specifications I'd lifted directly from the GQ style guide. And as always I was running just slightly behind schedule.

Finally I grew frustrated of hunting for the elusive Irishman, and decided to leave the USB with our Canadian housemate Gabe. When I knocked on his door, Gabe was slumped at his computer, shirtless and blasting David Bowie at ten thousand decibels. He took a long, glazed look at my starchy work clothes and fidgety impatience. Then he chuckled, 'Dude, might wanna check your phone.' So I did.

Dear teachers,
Due to the typhoon all VUS classes will be cancelled. 
Thank you.

Jesus, Allah, Buddha - I love you all!

If you've never been so delighted that you pooped a little then you, sir, have never had a typhoon day.

~

Like responsible adults, we began to gather emergency supplies for the storm of the century. By this I mean that Johnny and Kieran went to buy beer, while Gabe ordered a small pallet of pizzas. I contributed by stupidly going to the tailor's anyway (despite warnings that the typhoon was due to hit any minute), though I did remember to pick up a sack of ten baguettes on the way back. In the event of a weather apocalypse, we would not lack for carbs.

Carrying armfuls of pizza, beer, guitars and other necessities, we gathered on the roof for a frontrow look at the typhoon. We made ominous predictions about the imminent flooding and readied ourselves for a few days without YouTube videos and air conditioning. Then at 6 pm, a funny thing happened.

Nothing.

The hours stretched on, half eaten pizzas were consolidated into single boxes, and the table began to resemble a forest of Tiger cans. Johnny played guitar and I played ukulele. The ashtray became a porcupine as the sky grew darker and darker. Once I thought I heard thunder, but it was just a passing jetliner. Around midnight we wandered downstairs to bed, feeling like Tom Sawyer after a successful day of playing hooky.

The next morning it rained a little, but the skies were clear again by noon. Hurricane Yolanda came and went without blowing down a single leaf. In Saigon we sent reassuring emails to our friends and family, telling them we were OK and asking them to send Honey Nut Cheerios anyway. We went back  to our usual daily routines - working, eating, napping, compulsively checking Facebook every ten minutes, and so on. Business as usual.

In the Philippines, things were a little different.

~

Although it boasts some of the most picturesque beaches and mind-blowing scuba sites in the world, the Philippines is a precarious paradise. The archipelago has been hit by dozens of major storms in the past year. If you read an article in the paper about the Philippines that isn't about a recent natural disaster, it's probably focusing on government corruption or the sex trade. The country, which is still struggling to recover from years of mismanagement under the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos, could really use a break. Super Typhoon Yolanda was not that break.

~

I visited the Philippines in August after years of avoiding the country for no good reason. I was under the misguided impression that it was the Cancun of Asia; a place for drunk nineteen year olds to smear themselves with gaudy neon body paint and guzzle rum buckets until dawn. Like many carefully considered value judgments based off the best available information, this turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

No jello-shots dispensed from this party bus.

In the town of Sablayan I dove with a local guide named Ramon. He was a tall, handsome man with perfect teeth and the confident mellow vibe usually given off by exceptionally competent people. He was knowledgable about the history of the region, both natural and political. He could talk about hawksbill turtles for days. He knew every shipping route coming in and out of Sablayan, and the career scoring average of Dirk Nowitzki (Filipinos are nuts for basketball). He had a degree in tourism and hospitality from the provincial university.

Few tourists come to Sablayan, so Ramon supplemented his income by giving rides on his motorbike to friends and neighbors. In a good week, he made about 500 pesos - a little more than $10 USD. After we returned from our dive, he brought me to his home - a dilapidated hut crammed next to a hundred others in a corrugated shantytown, with a thin piece of plywood for a front door. He wrenched the 'door' open to reveal an unlit single room with a dirt floor. His elderly mother lay on a cot next to the wall, quietly coughing in the darkness.

And that was when I had the ugly realization that after a lifetime of hard work and filial dedication, all of Ramon's earthly possessions were worth less than my iPod.

~

Less than a week later, I was standing outside a small hospital in Coron, a small town on the island of Palawan famous for its shipwrecks. It was 2 am, yet the air was still stifling. I stood next to a cluster of divemasters and scuba instructors, both Filipino and foreign, all of whom looked worried. One of their brothers, a mischievous imp named Ken, lay on a thin bed inside, wracked by epileptic seizures. We had to stand outside because earlier one of the doctors threw a punch at Ken's friend Wizard, who was begging him to administer the oxygen that could save Ken from permanent brain damage. The doctor was more concerned with maintaining face than saving his patient's life.

And it wasn't even his oxygen. One of the German instructors and I had to retrieve the emergency oxygen tank from the dive shop and rush it to the hospital, because apparently Filipino hospitals are not equipped with their own oxygen supplies. Later, one of the dive masters had to rouse a local shipowner to buy a few pills of diazepam to help with Ken's uncontrollable spasms. Apparently Filipino hospitals are not equipped with medicines, either. It was no wonder that Wizard angrily described the place as 'not a hospital, just a place to die'.

We sat and waited for news from Ken. One of the dive instructors told me that his aunt had recently died in the same hospital from a simple case of asthma. I thought of the two Ventolin inhalers in my bag and imagined the terror of suffocating in one's own lungs. Another girl was cursing furiously in English and Tagalog in between chest-racking sobs, vowing that she wouldn't lose another friend to this place.

The Rocksteady family in happier days.

~

That story ended happily, an outcome that seems far too rare in the Philippines these days. The winds and waves of Yolanda have thrown the country into utter chaos as survivors struggle to find their loved ones, a place to sleep, and something to eat.

Like much of the world, there is little margin for error in the Philippines. If your house is demolished by a typhoon, insurance isn't going to cover the damages because who the fuck can afford insurance? Can the government help? Sure, if by 'help' you mean provide a few woefully inadequete supplies long after the moment of greatest need. Maybe if you're lucky you can seek help from family members, but chances are they're in the same boat as you.

And so ordinary Filipinos are left with the sobering realization that if this mess is ever going to be cleaned up, they must do it themselves. They must clear the rubble, they must rebuild the homes, they must bury the dead. And to their credit, all my friends in the Philippines seem to accept this fact with courage and determination. They aren't laying around feeling sorry for themselves, though they certainly have enough reasons to do so. In the aftermath, they seem pragmatic and rational - they're ready to start putting things back together.

~

From my comfortable, non-flooded home in Saigon it was easy to dismiss the hyperbolic reports of the 'biggest storm ever' as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. It probably became a semi-popular Facebook joke - 'Typhoon Yolanda 7/11/13 - Never Forget'. And beneath those words, a picture of an overturned lawn chair.

I still can't entirely wrap my head around the sheer destruction and misery left in Yolanda's wake. As a relatively affluent American, I was born into safety nets that most Filipinos will never, ever know. If Saigon did get blasted by a monster typhoon, my family, friends and credit cards would make sure I got out and returned home safely. Most Filipinos have nowhere to run, and no benevolent benefactor to save them. Like childbirth, this is a pain I cannot comprehend.

I am fully capable of feeling another kind of pain though, this one mixed about 50-50 with a hot cup of shame. This is the pain that comes with remembering all the past disasters that I read about: the tsunamis in Indonesia, the mine collapses in Chile, the meltdowns in Japan. All of these terrible, terrible catastrophes that I somberly watched on the news and discussed in hushed tones at work. And that sneaky feeling of self-satisfaction I got from 'sending good vibes' and 'wishing all the best' to the victims as I scrolled past the donation page to check NBA scores for the thirty-seventh time. It's the pain of knowing that I made myself feel better about a tragedy without doing a damn thing to help those who bore its wrath. It's the pain of empty words and self-congratulations.

~

I've learned my lesson this time: send your love and prayers, but send a check as well. Because people can't eat prayers.

Some Inconvenient Realities of Living Abroad

Yesterday my friend had her bicycle stolen while she shopped for vegetables at a market. The incident was as predictable as most 'surprising' thefts - broad daylight, lots of bystanders, a momentary diversion of attention. Theft is horribly common in Vietnam; it seems that half the population are employed as security guards to keep the other half of the population from robbing the place blind.*

*Figures only slightly exaggerated.

My friend is an avid cyclist and, while I hate bicycles like a nudist hates pants, my heart went out to her. So did the hearts of numerous people on Facebook. When somebody posts a status involving personal loss, there are four typical responses: 1) straightforward condolences, 2) sympathetic personal anecdotes, 3) hopes for better luck in the future, and 4) self-righteous moralizing. The first three are mostly harmless.

The last subgenus, however, is a pain. It can be tempting to point out that shit happens everywhere and scumbaggery has no borders. Like mathematics and the English Premier League, shady morals are universal. But well-meaning ethicists, secure in their impression that every society is just super in its own way, often dismiss the subtle unpleasantries of daily life in a different country. From their ivory tower of cultural relativism they pellet the expat with bromides while encouraging her to ignore her eyes and ears and firsthand experiences. Which generally include some variation of the following...

~

The people can be inhospitable.

Here is Lonely Planet's description of 'the Vietnamese experience':

Vietnam is a nation going places. Fast. Its people are energetic, direct, sharp in commerce and resilient by nature. This is an outrageously fun country to explore, the locals love a laugh (and a drink) and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to socialise with them and hear their tales.

To which the cynic might add:

For an authentic taste of Vietnamese cuisine, stop by a local market to sample the diverse array of fresh produce. Haggle for ten minutes over the price of a cantaloupe with a surly pajama-clad matron, finally paying an exorbitant markup so she'll stop shouting at you in Vietnamese. Then hop on a motorcycle taxi, or xe om, for an invigorating tour of notable landmarks such as the Notre Dame Cathedral, Reunification Palace, and Jade Emperor Pagoda. 

Make sure to allow plenty of time for this tour, as your driver is possibly drunk and likely has no idea where said landmarks are located. Expect to get at least one flat tire, at which point you'll have the chance to visit one of Vietnam's most hallowed institutions - the unscrupulous motorbike mechanic. Watch in awe as a chubby, shirtless man drinks coffee and chainsmokes while shouting at your xe om guide, who will reply by also shouting and jabbing his finger ominously in your direction. Eventually the mechanic will demand that you pay 500% of the proper rate, which you will (quickly) because both men are now yelling at you in Vietnamese. 

In the evening, your phone and wallet will probably be stolen no matter what you do.

For reasons of brevity, it's understandable why Lonely Planet's editors cut this bit.

~

The weather is going to suck in some new and awful way.

Here is a weekly weather forecast from February in Saigon:

High 30's, for you Celsius folks.

And here is the forecast for this week:

High 20's, metric chumps.

There's nothing surprising about a week of clouds in a tropical environment. Even the most grizzled Nebraskan corn farmer has heard of 'rainy season', and there are certain necessary tradeoffs if you want to live in a place with palm trees and coconuts. However, this forecast hasn't changed since March. Which means we're now going on eight consecutive months of daily downpours. This is unlikely to end soon.

The rain has little regularity, except for the tendency to reach its maximum deluge at the precise moment you are leaving for work. Interestingly, the rain seems to have little impact on the behavior of the Vietnamese unless you count the massive uptick in poncho sales. The streets are still clogged with reckless motorists, who calmly ignore the laws of physics and continue to charge pell-mell into oncoming traffic with the same idiotic determination they display in perfect conditions. Crashes abound. Skid marks appear with alarming frequency. Despite overwhelming evidence that doing so would be a great idea, few people bother to slow down. And so every day while driving to work I find myself cursing Vietnam's shitty, shitty weather.

I imagine that a Vietnamese might express similar despair after four months of a bleak Minnesotan winter. And I'm not trying to argue that one particular form of weather-related misery is worse than another. The important thing to remember is that moving to another country with hopes of a better climate is like trading your bag of rocks for a bag of differently-shaped rocks.

~

There will be a cultural quirk or habit that drives you utterly insane.

When I lived in Korea, there were a few talking points guaranteed to turn polite, open-minded foreigners into a pack of ravenous snarling hounds. For example, even the most accomodating waeguks were incensed by the tendency of old Korean men to loudly clear their throats and spit giant balls of phlegm in public. Once I was riding the subway with a Canadian friend of mine (whose patience had been worn especially thin by five years of loogies) when a drunk old man appeared to cough up most of his left lung onto the car's floor. My friend's face assumed the pained look of a PETA advocate who just watched a barrel of kittens being drowned, and I was legitimately afraid he was going to murder the wheezy geezer. Nobody else blinked an eye, of course.

In Vietnam, the social faux pas de choix is nosepickery. My personal feelings about this are the same as my feelings toward BDSM and spoken word poetry. Whatever kicks you get in the privacy of your own home are none of my business. Some things, however, do not belong in public.

Issues of hygiene and decorum aside, Vietnam's attitude toward nosepicking is remarkably egalitarian. On the streets of Saigon everybody from the wealthiest CEO to the scruffiest street urchin to the most stylish fashionista can be spotted knuckle-deep in nostril. Young and old alike dig relentlessly for nose-gold, regardless of setting (English class, for example) or company (English teacher, for example). There is no social stigma attached to public nasal exploration, so everybody feels free to indulge whenever the mood strikes. On the plus side, there is potential for a hilarious Morgan Freeman audio book here.

~

I've spent the past three years overseas, and on the whole I have a positive impression of expatriate life. Willowy platitudes about 'self discovery' and 'seeing the world' aside, living abroad has allowed me to travel, pick up some neat hobbies, and make a reasonable amount of money without working too hard. I'd imagine the same is true for most people who decide to leave their home countries. 

As temporary residents of a foreign country, I do believe we should make an honest effort to adapt and adopt some local customs and practices. It also seems reasonable to resist blaming isolated inconveniences on some intrinsic failing of that country ('supermarket out of Honey Nut gahhhhh fuck this place afasjdahsdadam!').

At the same time, a place's different-ness should not endow it with sacred cow status. Expatriates should not be criticized for using their eyes and ears to observe their surroundings and occasionally arriving at uncomplimentary conclusions. Holding expats to some impossible standard of objectivity is both condescending and self-congratulatory. It also ignores the positive impact that a foreign perspective can have on local issues.

Sometimes it takes a real friend to say, 'Yo, dude - you stink.'

Ukuleles

A few weeks ago I returned to Saigon from the Philippines. When I stumbled into my room around 3 a.m., I found an oddly shaped bag on my bed. On top of the bag was a note from my roommate John. It read, more or less, 'Here's a birthday present that you can hopefully use to pick up chicks one day.' I unzipped the bag to reveal a handsome, dark brown ukulele inside. My eyes welled with tears at the selfless beauty of John's gesture. With great tenderness I placed the ukulele on top of my wardrobe and promptly forgot about it for two weeks.

The uke - when you want to play music, but don't have the patience to learn a real instrument.

With the notable exceptions of Thomas Pynchon and middle-aged white guys in Hawaiian shirts, few people are willing to publicly admit their fondness for the ukulele. Even Pynchon himself once described ukulele players as, 'feckless, clownlike children who will not grow up.' In the pantheon of ridiculous instruments, the uke is eclipsed only by the accordion and kazoo. It lacks the face-melting badassitude of the electric guitar, the hipness of the bass, or percussion's cacophonous fury.

However, the ukulele does hold three major advantages over other, cooler instruments. First, it is cheap. John later admitted that he chose the uke as a gift mostly because, 'I don't like you enough to splurge on a guitar.' Second, it is small. While unimpressive as a living room centerpiece, the uke's compact size makes it the perfect travel instrument. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is easy* to play.

*Relatively.

For the musically-incompetent, this last fact cannot be emphasized enough. The attics of the world are filled with dusty mandolins, trumpets, and digeridoos heartlessly cast aside by frustrated owners who quickly despaired of ever mastering their respective instruments and went back to watching reruns of Duck Dynasty. My own attempts at learning the acoustic guitar petered out after a week when I proved spectacularly inept at strumming, a massive disappointment considering my former dominance of Guitar Hero on PlayStation2. Life fails to imitate art, often humiliatingly.

So a few days ago, after gingerly stumbling through a disjointed version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', I was almost catatonic with joy. For the next two hours I played the same chords over and over again, delighted by the almost-recognizable tune I produced with only a cheap box of wood and a few nylon strings. For the first time ever I had blisters on my fingers.

There is something incredibly pathetic about a grown man's pride in learning a new skill. Although I managed to refrain from humblebragging about my accomplishment on the internet ('took all day but finally got the E7 chord lol'), I was unable to resist casually mentioning my newfound uke talents to friends and co-workers. I even showed off a bit of fingerpicking to my parents on Skype, like an 8-year old who just learned how to whistle. 'Hey Mom, check out this intro to 'Dust in the Wind! Mom? Mom? MOM!'

We expect this kind of needy attention-seeking from children, because children are generally useless human beings who require validation for the smallest of accomplishments. Kids get a gold star for not shitting their pants (literally, in many cases). Adults, on the other hand, are supposed to have outgrown this need for constant approval. We should be able to acquire a new talent or ability without taping proof to the refrigerator.

Where the magnets at?

My generation forgot to learn this lesson. The smallest act of self-improvement needs to be shared with the world, so everyone can be impressed that you jogged 2 km on the treadmill and did a couple pushups before breakfast. Ideally there should be an app for this, so you can receive anonymous kudos from similarly insecure people who are also desperate to be congratulated for their slightest progress in the Sisyphean ordeal of human existence. Also, you'd probably like a cookie.

I'm one of these people. I am a Millennial. I am unmarried, I do not own a home, and I have never held the same job for more than a year. I have no pets, investments, or marketable skills besides a U.S. passport and the ability to talk American pretty OK. I do not volunteer, speak a foreign language fluently, or cook edible meals. I have voted precisely once, writing in 'Turd Ferguson' during the 2008 presidential election.

But I can play two songs on the ukulele, three if you count the refrain to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. And I devoted most of the afternoon to telling you all about this.

Life is absurd.

Shipwrecked

Statistically speaking, scuba diving is less dangerous than having a baby or driving to work. It is only slightly more lethal than table tennis. Your odds of perishing underwater are roughly 200,000-to-1. Your chances of being murdered on the way to Whole Foods, on the other hand, are 18,000-to-1. As always, the lesson is to quit your job and eat all the gluten-drenched trans fats you want. Also, don't have kids.

These comforting statistics were remarkably easy to forget the first time I penetrated a shipwreck. Breathing underwater is about the most unnatural thing a human being can do, short of laying eggs. It is a very deliberate slap in the face of reason, which may explain why so many people enjoy it. Like me, for example. However, breathing underwater while willingly swimming into a pitch-black aquatic labyrinth/tomb is more like punching reason in the nose and stealing its purse, then using its credit cards to buy $700 worth of indoor marshmallow roasters. Sure, you could do that (it wouldn't even be that hard, really), but why?

Well, you could probably see a lot of interesting marine life down there. After all, a shipwreck is basically a giant artificial reef, and reefs are teeming with Nemos and Flounders and all the other cuddly anthropomorphic sweethearts of the sea, right?

Just keep swimming, mother*****.

Sure they are! They're right next to the lovable stonefish, the most venomous little bastard in the Pacific and a creature widely considered to cause the worst pain known to man. And to your left we can see the unmistakable fin rays of the lionfish - you can pet them if you don't mind the subsequent paralysis, heart failure, and death. Also, if you like to be spooked by camouflaged prehistoric hellbeasts, there's a scorpionfish! And a crocodile fish!

Like when you found the cat sleeping in your cereal bowl, if your cat's whiskers could kill you.

Why are the pretty ones always venomous?

No touching!

At this point, it seems that wreck diving is mainly an opportunity for divers to either: A) get lost in a vast underwater maze, panic, and drown, or B) get stung by a venomous sea creature, suffer excruciating pain, and then drown. So why would anyone in his/her right mind decide to go wreck diving?

For me, the answer was found in a book called Shadow Divers. It focused on two American wreck divers and their quest to identify a mystery U-boat which sank off the coast of New Jersey. Although Shadow Divers is nonfiction it reads like a novel, full of boozed-up skippers and underwater piracy and, of course, Nazis.  It also presents a frank depiction of the dangers of wreck diving. The U-Who, as the mystery sub was called, claimed the lives of many top-notch divers. Worst were the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, a father-son team who succumbed to decompression sickness ('the bends') after making an emergency ascent to the surface from nearly 70m/230ft, their blood literally bubbling in their veins.

Still, when I finished the book I could not wait to dive a wreck. For a lifelong history nerd the appeal was obvious. I'd spent much of my childhood reading about the savage naval battles of the Pacific during World War II. Here was a chance to combine my love of the past with my love of the sea. And maybe take some cool pictures along the way.

~

Coron is a small island in the Philippines, slightly north of Palawan. There is absolutely nothing to do in the town proper, nor in the surrounding area, which is mountainous and densely forested. If you don't speak scuba, Coron may be the single most boring town in the Philippines.

However, Coron boasts some of the best wreck-diving in the world. The neighboring seas are littered with Japanese ships sunk by an American airstrike during World War II. Some of the wrecks are quite shallow, less than 18m/60ft beneath the surface. Others are much deeper - on one dive we reached a depth of 37m/121ft, near the limit for recreational diving. There are oil tankers, seaplane tenders, troop transports, and gunboats. The water is a balmy 30°C/86°F, and marine life is abundant. In short it is a novice wreck diver's paradise.

I dived with a group called Rocksteady. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the only Rastafarian-themed / German-owned diveshop on the island. I decided to complete a Wreck Diver Specialty course, which is basically an overpriced confirmation from the global pyramid scheme known as PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors or, as it is colloquially known, Put Another Dollar In) that its holder is not completely incompetent underwater. I chose Rocksteady because its staff were courteous, professional, and safety-oriented, and also because their boats were painted like giant bongs.

The Coast Guard must be constantly pulling these guys over.

The first time I dived on a wreck, all I could think about was Rose, that chick from Titanic. Not that one, this one. As I swam through the dark, twisted passages of the wreck I heard her shaky old lady voice narrating an imaginary history of the ship. I laughed when she described how they used the squatters at sea. Man, she's old.

Submerged commode.

Other sights were far more sobering. At one point, I passed through a large, shadowy room behind my Filipino dive instructor. He turned to look at me, and seemed to scratch his cheek. I struggled to remember what this meant in complicated scuba sign language. I checked my gauges, dive computer, hoses...everything, but he still kept scratching his cheek. Finally he wiggled his dive torch at a barnacle-encrusted shelf, and I realized what he was trying to show me. It was a human jawbone.

No humans in this cargo hold, luckily.

I took no pictures of the remains, out of equal parts respect and superstition. It was my first personal experience with a harsh, undeniable truth: the ocean is a wonderland, but it is also a graveyard.   The danger and the beauty can't be separated.

That's why we always go back.

Mr. Nick Goes to Prison

Like most people who have seen Shawshank Redemption I have a keen interest in not going to prison. For one thing, I find orange jumpsuits unflattering. And aside from softball games and amateur winemaking courses, most jailhouse pastimes involve entirely too much stabbing for my taste. So you can imagine my discomfort as I stood outside the main gates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm, sweating profusely under the hot equatorial sun and wondering why the hell I was here.

~

Welcome to prison!

The Philippines penal system occasionally takes an interesting approach to rehabilitation. The famous dancing inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) have received international acclaim for their performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has nearly fifty-three million views on YouTube. Prisoners at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa practice yoga and meditation through a course sponsored by The Art of Living humanitarian movement.

In Sablayan, the inmates watch birds.

~

Visiting the prison was Marie's idea. My sole objective in Sablayan was to leave as quickly as possible. But Marie had read something about a penal farm in her Lonely Planet guidebook, and she wanted to see it. The desk clerk at the ecotourism office thought she was insane, but happily agreed to arrange visitor's passes for a nominal fee. After paying said nominal fee, along with a very un-nominal fee for the dirtbike, we were on our way.

The woman in red is smiling because she just robbed me blind.

~

Before arriving in the Philippines I had no intention of visiting the prison, or even the island on which it stands. I planned to travel from the touristy island paradise of Boracay to El Nido, a slightly less touristy island paradise famous for its picturesque sunsets and spectacular karst formations. Instead, thanks to a slight miscalculation involving a ferry and two cities with identical names, I wound up 630 km from my intended destination in the backwater town of Sablayan, where there are no tourists.

And so I found myself atop a battered dirtbike, with a terrified French-Canadian girl whom I'd met the day before clinging to the back, racing furiously out of town.

~

Thirty minutes and eleventy-billion potholes later, we arrived at the prison. As we pulled off the main road, I noticed a small sign with the words 'DO NOT PICK UP MALE HITCHHIKERS' painted in urgent red letters. Continuing down the dirt path, we passed a gaggle of inmates carrying long bamboo poles. They stopped in their tracks to stare at Marie. Their smiles could best be described as predatory. I sped up.

Once we reached the main prison complex, we were directed to the administration office. There we waited while the warden finished the final touches on his new screenplay and eventually approved our visitor's passes. Meanwhile, a horde of secretaries fussed over Marie and cast venomous glances my way. Apparently they felt prison was no place for a pretty foreign lady. I didn't have the energy to explain that visiting this den of thieves and rapists was in fact her idea.

Freshly stamped papers in hand, we walked out of the warden's office and headed back to the main gates. We passed the prison hospital, which appeared to be completely empty. Apparently the inmates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm enjoyed perpetual good health.

This song was stuck in my head the whole time.

Back at the main gate we waited again while a different set of guards double-checked our passes. We sat on stools in the cramped, dark shack and made small talk with a group of Filipina prostitutes who had come to visit their incarcerated menfolk. The girls were flirtatious and light-hearted; two of them asked if I was married, while another gushed over Marie's curly hair. They were the nicest hookers I've ever met in prison. They carried small bags of candy and gifts for their men, which they would presumably trade for cigarettes and...backrubs, maybe.

Soon the guard returned with our passes, and we were free to enter the compound. 'It is illegal to give the prisoners drugs or weapons,' he added cheerfully as he shut the gate behind us. I felt like I was entering the world's least-fun human zoo. But I revved the engine and we scooted off into the bowels of the penal farm.

~

Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm occupies an area of over 16,000 hectares, a unit of measurement as meaningless to me as a smoot or potrzeble. However I can say with reasonable certainty that it is really, really big. So big, in fact, that we spent the next hour meandering aimlessly in search of something besides hills and rice paddies. Periodically we passed checkpoints manned by bored shirtless men who chuckled at the sight of two foreigners staring helplessly around at the endlessly repetitive scenery. The area was beautiful, no doubt, but so are many areas that aren't crawling with violent criminals.

Finally we passed an army outpost, and I stopped to ask for directions. The soldiers were surprisingly friendly. One of them put down the heavy black assault rifle he was cleaning and helpfully pointed us in the direction of the prison lake, which he assured us was quite beautiful. He and his buddies waved goodbye as we headed back onto the road. Later I would find out that a prisoner had escaped the day before, and the soldiers were very much looking forward to catching him and shooting him full of holes. 'Dead or alive, dead no problem!', one inmate cheerfully explained.

Basically what you'd expect from an average lake.

The lake was indeed beautiful, though there is only so much fun you can have at a lake without a fishing rod or jet ski. We left after a few minutes, and set out for the Inmates Recreation Facility.

~

At the rec center, a tall muscular guard escorted two prisoners over to us and introduced them with the enthusiasm of a third-grader reading poetry. Their names were Ricky and Manuel, and they would guide us on a trek up the heavily forested mountain to see the local waterfall. Marie looked mildly horrified at the idea of wandering into the jungle with two convicts. I looked mildly horrified at the idea of hiking in flip-flops.

Manuel was a small, thin man who looked to be in his mid-forties. His main job was to scurry ahead of us and smoke hand-rolled prison cigarettes impatiently while Marie and I pulled our sandals out of the muddy path and tried not to step on anything venomous. I don't believe he said a single word the entire afternoon.

Ricky was a different character entirely. He spoke perfect English and chattered incessantly from the minute we left the rec center. As it turned out, he and Manuel were the prison's two foremost bird experts, trained to identify the numerous endemic species that dwelt in the thick jungle around the penal colony. He told us that most visitors to the prison were hardcore aviphiles who were quite happy to tramp through the mountains for hours, then sit motionlessly for additional hours while they waited for a kingfisher or imperial pigeon to flutter into view. Ricky proudly informed us that he was able to discern a bird's species, gender, and age simply from the call of its voice. Looking into his broad, smiling face I felt ashamed of my lack of interest in bird calls.

Turns out the streamwater was totally potable. Refreshing!

Marie's sandal-clad feet were already bruised and bloody from the unforgiving jungle trail, so we decided to turn back when we reached the mountain stream. She wiggled her toes in the clean cool water and Manuel sat on a rock and chain-smoked while I stood and talked with Ricky. He seemed disappointed that we weren't interested in continuing the hike. It was obvious that he took great pride in his birdwatching abilities, and he seemed to sincerely enjoy sharing his gift with others. I was deeply impressed by his genuine warmth and thoughtfulness. I never asked him why he was in prison.

Eventually we made our way down the mountain and across a rice paddy. 'We have no irrigation,' said Ricky as I stared at the verdant fields, 'so we must wait for the rain. All in God's hands.'

When we returned to the rec center, we said goodbye to Ricky and Manuel as the guard led them back into the fenced-off compound. Some inmates were playing basketball on a cracked asphalt court. Others stood around and stared at us, and once again I had the horrible feeling that I was a paying customer at a human zoo. I waved goodbye to Ricky and wished him good luck in the future. I have no idea what 'good luck' entails in his world, but I hope he gets lots of it.

Marie and I climbed back on the bike. I kicked it into gear and pulled back onto the dirt path. Minutes later we reached the main road, where we reentered the free world. We had that luxury.