Jet Lag?

Made it through the day yesterday, but just barely. It was wonderful to have Nellie pick me up from the airport -- I really missed her, and getting to spend some time with her before the next semester begins full steam is wonderful. We looked over all the stuff I brought back, I tried to make us some Vietnamese coffee... Going to need to work on that.

Went to bed at 8pm, slept until 4. No problem. Until it got to be about 11am, then I was wiped out! Took a nap, got up and tried to spend the afternoon in the sun. Sunlight, I recently read, it what adjusts your body's internal clock, so I wanted to give it as much exposure to natural light as I could. No real energy for the rest of the day until about 7pm, then I was wide awake.

I managed to go to bed at a respectable 10pm, and slept until 5am, with only a few wake-ups during the night. I'll also point out that I adjusted back to my memory foam ultra soft bed in no time, but I might consider getting a hard bed next new mattress that I buy...

Today I have to go to class and work, so I hope my energy keeps up throughout the day!!!

Interesting story about the Vietnamese

To be honest, I expected a little hostility to Americans from the Vietnamese. I never saw it. The only abrasiveness I felt was in the government's rhetoric in places like the War Remembrance Memorial and at Cu Chi Tunnels. But the people have all been very nice.

Most people are very warm and friendly. They are all very direct. It didn't happen all the time, but it happened frequently enough that I think I should tell you about it: More than a few times, a Vietnamese would come up and ask where I was from. Next, he or she would ask how old I was, then if I was married, then if I had kids. In this culture, family is very important, and there is some hierarchy based on age. They would want to understand these things about me because it was something they could relate to. Other visitors to Vietnam have found these questions common enough that they made up some answers. For example, if you weren't married, they would ask why not. Some who were single found it easier to say they were married rather than explain why they weren't. If you didn't have kids, they would want to know why as well. I believe it was Dr. Burr (although it could have been anyone) who told me of someone who invented 2 kids complete with life stories in order to have an acceptable answer to these questions.

In the US, we might find these kind of direct questions offensive. In Vietnam, they are normal questions, as are questions about how much money you make and how much something costs.

I think this type of directness makes them good salespeople.

Oh, yeah. The beds...

There are two types of beds that seem to be prevalent in Vietnam. The first is a very traditional bed called a board bed. It looks like a regular bed, but instead of a mattress, it has a solid wooden "floor" with only a woven mat on top of it. Needless to say, it is a very firm bed, and wasn't the type we had in our hotel rooms.

Instead, we had the second type of bed. It was like a board bed, but with a thin mattress instead of the woven mat. More cushion than the board bed, but still VERY FIRM! I slept fine on them even though they are a far cry from my memory foam.

Just something to know about when you come, because you shouldn't be expecting anything similar to what you sleep on in the US unless you sleep on floor!

Ethnic Diversity and Race

We visited a museum dedicated to the different ethnic minorities in Vietnam. It was eye-opening. First, I assumed that everyone in Vietnam was Vietnamese. I viewed them as homogeneous. Apparently, that isn't the case. There are about 54 different ethnic groups in the country.
I have included some of the pictures of the different type houses to give you an idea about how unique and different these groups might be from what we would traditionally think of as Vietnamese....

Don't think it is all one big happy family, either. The minorities suffer persecution from the government, and obviously don't have the same political clout that the Viet have.

One interesting observation, with is consistent with what I've seen in most cultures: Fairer skin color is highly esteemed in Vietnam. Women will often were long gloves and face coverings when driving on scooters to avoid getting sun exposure, and therefore darker skin. Fair skin shows you are wealthy enough to not work in the fields. It signifies some level of education and affluence. I thought that was interesting...

Buildings and Commerce

Most of the buildings that you would see around Hanoi, and the rest of Vietnam, are very narrow in width. They are only about 10 ft wide, but go back fairly deep, and up quite a few stories.

Our hotel in Hanoi, Rising Dragon III, is this same dimension. Obviously, with only 10 feet in width, there are challenges with maximizing the space. The hotel has 9 stories. The first one has a small reception area, the front desk, the elevator and stairs, and then a small eating area. (Everywhere we have stayed provides a pretty good sized breakfast
for all the guests.) There are then 8 floors with rooms. The elevator and stairs divide the hotel in half, and each floor has two rooms. It is very different than the traditional American hotel.

I asked about the size of the buildings as was told by someone (I don't remember who) that it originated in the countryside, where minimizing the amount of land used was important in order to keep land available for farming. The narrow width and long depth "fit" with a rice field. Don't know if that is accurate, but it makes sense.

Not every building is a hotel, however.

In 1986, the Vietnamese government instituted a reform called Doi Moi. (Click Here to read the Wikipedia article about Doi Moi.) This step allowed some market-based economic orientation, which started in farming and grew to the cities. Suddenly, people were looking for opportunities to open businesses and begin making more money. This country is full of small business owners, and is very capitalistic for a communist country. I guess everyone is a risk-taker in Vietnam: maybe they are comfortable with business risk because the driving risk may make the risk of running a business seem so small in comparison.

What people do is use the front of the ground floor of their buildings for store fronts, and they live in the rest. Walking down the street, you see everything. Small grocery stores, liquor stores, restaurants, cafes, tea stalls, fresh vegetables, raw meats, seafood, barber shops, motorcycle repair shops, etc...

We spoke with a small business owner today. A Spanish couple who design dresses and manufacture them. (Click Here to visit the website.) I asked a lot of questions about corruption and difficulty in running a small business here. One of the things I gleaned is that small businesses fly under the radar. They don't get the same bureaucratic red tape that a larger business would have to deal with.

I suspect that most of the small businesses we saw aren't "official." This also creates a large difficulty for the government. These small businesses don't pay taxes, so a large part of the tax base in the country is ignored. Larger businesses must bear the brunt of the responsibility for generating the tax revenue...

Kopi Luwak Coffee: 780,000 dong for 1 kilo

I just got back from the last of my excursions while in Vietnam. I had seen coffee for sale that said "Weasel Coffee," and I was curious, so I asked around. Ends up, this is the very expensive kopi luwak coffee, made famous in the 2007 movie "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I had considered buying some in the US, but the price was $60 for 3 oz., so I took a pass. But the price of the coffee here was probably cheaper since it was being sold in regular shops, so I decided to check it out, give it a try, and, if good, buy some.
Well, the coffee is great. Very mellow, no bitterness at all. A regular cup of coffee sells for 20,000 dong, this coffee was 50,000 dong. Expensive in Vietnam, but a bargin compared to Starbucks. A kilo of the coffee costs 780,000 dong, whick was less than what 3 oz would have cost in the US. So I bought it!

By the way, to get to the coffee shop, I had my first scooter ride in Vietnam. Very scary!

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay, which means "descending dragon," has an interesting legend behind it. (Click Here to go to the Wekipedia article about Ha Long Bay.) I'll just tell you that the pictures don't do justice to how beautiful the place is. It takes about 3.5 hours to drive there from Hanoi. And it was cold when we arrived, plus a little foggy. It had been raining in Hanoi, so I thought we might get more bad weather for our stay. Other than it being cold, it was great, and the second day there it warmed up a good bit.

We stayed overnight on a large Vietnamese Junk with cabins. The first day, we went out to a very scenic area where there was access to kayaking, a beach, and other assorted things. Primarily, though, it was an opportunity to see incredible views! Everybody else went kayaking while I stayed on the boat. (I was cold, and didn't think that getting in the water was going to help that at all. To conserve energy, the Junk captain did not turn on the heating for the cabins until after 5:30pm, so I was just trying to get warm as best I could.) When everyone got back, we went to a nearby island to scale a mountain and take some great pics before we lost all the light.

An interesting observation of the entrepreneur spirit of the Vietnamese. The bay we anchored in isn't anywhere close to land that I could tell. It was a popular site, however, and our boat was just one of maybe two dozen in the bay. There were probably 6-8 small rowboats that Vietnamese women had stocked with all sorts of items: chips, cookies, beer, soda, pearl necklaces, and shells, just to name a few. These women would go from boat to boat, trying to sell to the tourists on these boats. The rowboats didn't have motors, so they used oars to row around, and would try to outmaneuver the other rowboats to get to the new boats first. It was just interesting to me how hard they worked, and that they had found a need and were supplying something that a command economy probably wouldn't have supplied. In this country, it looks like everyone is doing something, opening some storefront, selling something... whatever they can to make more money...

After dinner, we began singing karaoke. This was my first time to sing karaoke, and it may be my last. I learned that, if you stay up late singing karaoke for 3+ hours, you might wake up the next morning with a massive headache, queasy stomach, a little dizzy, very low energy...

Thursday morning, we went to see the "Amazing Cave," which isn't the same one that was in National Geographic recently, but a small (but nevertheless still spectacular) cave on one of the islands. Then we headed back to shore for our drive back! Oh, I almost forgot. We stopped at a little restaurant outside of Ha Long Bay to eat lunch. They have a hotel attached to the property, overlooking a fantastic view. A deluxe suite that accommodates up to 4 people: $75 per night. Getting here is expensive, but a dollar goes a long way once you are on the ground!

I thought that this excursion was great, and the pictures are incredible. Like with Iceland, however, I feel like it was hard to capture the essence of the view with a camera....