I wake up early in the morning.
GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!
I get up and go to the hotel terrace for free breakfast. The lady cannot speak any English and I can't even say thank you and please in Vietnamese, so I bow and smile a lot. Breakfast consists of: coffee, tea, toasts, butter, fruit and a strange, frozen marmalade: mashed banana. The tales about delicious Vietnamese coffee are true, best coffee I've ever had.
I'm setting off. The old town is a labyrinth of streets full of e-bikes and motorcycles. Hardly anybody can afford a car I guess. They make unbearable noise and create a dense, nervous atmosphere. It is more traditional here than in China, crazier. The vendors still carry their goods in two flat round baskets tied to two ends of a pole that they carry on their shoulder. They still wear Asian straw hats and lay their merchandise on the pavement, including raw meat.
Nobody bothers me besides the motorcycle taxi drivers, who try to get me to ride with them every five seconds.
I find the money exchange and I sell two hundred RMB, as people buy them only in the North of Vietnam. They will gladly buy my American dollars everywhere else. The local currency is dong. One dollar is twenty thousand dongs. There was a time that we were counting money in thousands and millions in Poland, long long time ago, when Hong Kong still belonged to the United Kingdom and dinosaurs were walking on the streets.
On every banknote there is Ho Chi Minh: the communist Vietnamese leader and hero. As the country is still socialist, he is still the hero, he united Vietnam by winning the war and capturing Southern Vietnam. On the other side of the bill we can see Vietnam's pride: elephants, Halong Bay rocks, buildings under construction and happy female factory workers.
I'm visiting the Fine Arts Museum. Beautiful old Vietnamese art exposition, although small. Modern art... well, interesting. A lot of Uncle Ho portraits capturing different moments of his eventful life. Here he is playing with children, there he is winning the revolution. Endless images of how joyful the life of a peasant is, and the life of a partisan- even more enjoyable.
Yes, we are in a socialist country.
After the visit I'm starving. I quickly find a street food stand that attracts me with vegetables. The lady asks for thirty thousand, I choose some cabbage, some grass, some beans, a dried fish and rice. I get some chili sauce and some soup that looks green. I sit down on a plastic chair on the pavement.
Before I eat I pray in a way peculiar to travelers: first, I ask God to not let me fall mortally ill after having this meal. Then, I visualize (it is also an element of meditation I think) the bag of medicines that I brought.
It's quite nice, soup especially. I eat it all and a little boy brings me another plateful. I tell them, no, thank you, they are shocked. But why should I waste soup? Vegetables are cooked, which means safety. Fish is completely disgusting. A granny sits in front of me and shows me to eat more rice, also instructs me to use my spoon too.
After I finish I pay them the dollar and a half that they requested, many smiles and goodbyes.
I go to the Temple of Literature. It is not very impressive, but important for the Vietnamese, as this is the oldest university. It is a common phenomenon anywhere you go: many sights are important to the local nation because of historic or patriotic reasons. Although they are not very interesting for the tourists, they are described by Lonely Planet as a must-see.
I observed a rare phenomenon: young people in traditional clothing take photos. This is commonly done in China, however, in China it is done by the newlyweds. Here I can see girls with girls, boys with boys.
The bird flu, tiredness and afternoon drowsiness make me sleepy and I sit down on a bench to rest. I write for a while and two girls approach me. Can they speak to me? Sure.
They are students of finance who want to practice their English. Excellent, so they have to tell me something about Vietnam.
There is an economic crisis in the country and many people are unemployed, so girls want to find jobs right after they graduate. They have no foreign teachers, that is why they try to practice their English as often as possible. Education paid from the primary school, there is no free education. However, it's not so expensive, people generally learn to read and write. Perhaps the tribal communities choose not to, partly because they prefer it this way, pertly because of the poor living standards and the schools being far away from their homes. They are shocked that schools are normally free of charge in the West. Yes, because your country is rich, they say.
The war seems long time ago for the girls. I find it hard to believe, the second world war ended in the forties and yet still we talk about nothing else. They nevertheless have nothing to say about the war that ended in the seventies. They only tell me that the veterans can get free education and some pension from the government even. Many children were born deformed. They parents remember bombings and hiding in the shelters. Grandparents had to fight. Nobody is happy that the Americans decided to give them freedom. Yet, the war was long time ago, now they focus on the future.
They are glad that I'm planning to visit Saigon. The city is much more modern than Hanoi, as it was colonized by the Americans. It is so curious that they see it this way.
Women in Vietnam get married when they are twenty five or twenty seven, but the parents don't arrange the marriage, just nag them. I don't know what's better (or worse).
There are ninety million of Vietnamese people, but nothing is done to stop the population growth. It is hard for them to find an apartment, in Hanoi especially.
Those young people who are talking pictures are not gay newlyweds, but students who are about to graduate from a university. Now it makes sense.
I say my goodbyes, but I invite them to hang out the next day. They are happy and they ask if they can bring their friends along. Sure, why not. Then it occurs to me that I spend the whole semester with Chinese students and when I'm off, I am looking for the company of the Vietnamese ones.
I'm heading towards the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where he lies preserved just like his comrade Lenin and comrade Mao. It's shut down, but I'm not particularly sad that I won't see the corpse today. I'm heading back to the hotel and visiting the Lenin Park on my way. The huge statue is now surrounded by boys playing football. The park is a concrete square filled by people playing various sports. Lenin must be hit in the face with a ball hourly.
I visit the cathedral. There is a Christmas tree and a nativity scene in front of it. Inside, a small crowd of grannies chant Holy Mary in Vietnamese.
I am finally back and barely in time for the happy hour when they serve beer for free. Beer is Vietnam is brewed daily, fresh beer.
Agnieszka and Flor invite me to go for dinner with them, I accept gladly. Flor's colleague recommended a place. We walk there and stop to look at the menu outside. They glance at it, agree that it is so cheap and walk inside, not asking my opinion and giving me a chance to protest that it is in fact crazy expensive. I have no idea how to behave, so I sit by a candle-lit table and browse through the menu for five minutes, desperately looking for something that I can afford. I decide on rice with vegetables, the cheapest dish in the menu, while girls order food for twenty dollars and can't stop talking about how cheap it is. I don't feel great eating my small portion of the cheapest dish in the menu and still feeling hungry. I ask them if really everywhere in the world is so cheap for them, they say yes, everywhere is cheap in comparison with Amsterdam. They recall their visit in Granada in Spain and how insanely cheap it was. I lived there and I remember how students from everywhere in Europe were delighted that Granada is cheap and us, Poles, could afford absolutely nothing.
Well, but some of us don't work in Amsterdam. Some of us work in China and receive their salary in bills with Mao on them. Nice that it is so easy for Agnieszka to forget how it feels to be Polish. I was shaped by my year in Granada too much.
We finish the meal, pay up and leave. To my embarrassment, the waiters made a mistake and make me pay more, I have to complain. They are really trying to make me suffer tonight. After sorting it out the dinner is mercifully over.
GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!
I get up and go to the hotel terrace for free breakfast. The lady cannot speak any English and I can't even say thank you and please in Vietnamese, so I bow and smile a lot. Breakfast consists of: coffee, tea, toasts, butter, fruit and a strange, frozen marmalade: mashed banana. The tales about delicious Vietnamese coffee are true, best coffee I've ever had.
I'm setting off. The old town is a labyrinth of streets full of e-bikes and motorcycles. Hardly anybody can afford a car I guess. They make unbearable noise and create a dense, nervous atmosphere. It is more traditional here than in China, crazier. The vendors still carry their goods in two flat round baskets tied to two ends of a pole that they carry on their shoulder. They still wear Asian straw hats and lay their merchandise on the pavement, including raw meat.
Nobody bothers me besides the motorcycle taxi drivers, who try to get me to ride with them every five seconds.
I find the money exchange and I sell two hundred RMB, as people buy them only in the North of Vietnam. They will gladly buy my American dollars everywhere else. The local currency is dong. One dollar is twenty thousand dongs. There was a time that we were counting money in thousands and millions in Poland, long long time ago, when Hong Kong still belonged to the United Kingdom and dinosaurs were walking on the streets.
On every banknote there is Ho Chi Minh: the communist Vietnamese leader and hero. As the country is still socialist, he is still the hero, he united Vietnam by winning the war and capturing Southern Vietnam. On the other side of the bill we can see Vietnam's pride: elephants, Halong Bay rocks, buildings under construction and happy female factory workers.
I'm visiting the Fine Arts Museum. Beautiful old Vietnamese art exposition, although small. Modern art... well, interesting. A lot of Uncle Ho portraits capturing different moments of his eventful life. Here he is playing with children, there he is winning the revolution. Endless images of how joyful the life of a peasant is, and the life of a partisan- even more enjoyable.
Yes, we are in a socialist country.
After the visit I'm starving. I quickly find a street food stand that attracts me with vegetables. The lady asks for thirty thousand, I choose some cabbage, some grass, some beans, a dried fish and rice. I get some chili sauce and some soup that looks green. I sit down on a plastic chair on the pavement.
Before I eat I pray in a way peculiar to travelers: first, I ask God to not let me fall mortally ill after having this meal. Then, I visualize (it is also an element of meditation I think) the bag of medicines that I brought.
It's quite nice, soup especially. I eat it all and a little boy brings me another plateful. I tell them, no, thank you, they are shocked. But why should I waste soup? Vegetables are cooked, which means safety. Fish is completely disgusting. A granny sits in front of me and shows me to eat more rice, also instructs me to use my spoon too.
After I finish I pay them the dollar and a half that they requested, many smiles and goodbyes.
I go to the Temple of Literature. It is not very impressive, but important for the Vietnamese, as this is the oldest university. It is a common phenomenon anywhere you go: many sights are important to the local nation because of historic or patriotic reasons. Although they are not very interesting for the tourists, they are described by Lonely Planet as a must-see.
I observed a rare phenomenon: young people in traditional clothing take photos. This is commonly done in China, however, in China it is done by the newlyweds. Here I can see girls with girls, boys with boys.
The bird flu, tiredness and afternoon drowsiness make me sleepy and I sit down on a bench to rest. I write for a while and two girls approach me. Can they speak to me? Sure.
They are students of finance who want to practice their English. Excellent, so they have to tell me something about Vietnam.
There is an economic crisis in the country and many people are unemployed, so girls want to find jobs right after they graduate. They have no foreign teachers, that is why they try to practice their English as often as possible. Education paid from the primary school, there is no free education. However, it's not so expensive, people generally learn to read and write. Perhaps the tribal communities choose not to, partly because they prefer it this way, pertly because of the poor living standards and the schools being far away from their homes. They are shocked that schools are normally free of charge in the West. Yes, because your country is rich, they say.
The war seems long time ago for the girls. I find it hard to believe, the second world war ended in the forties and yet still we talk about nothing else. They nevertheless have nothing to say about the war that ended in the seventies. They only tell me that the veterans can get free education and some pension from the government even. Many children were born deformed. They parents remember bombings and hiding in the shelters. Grandparents had to fight. Nobody is happy that the Americans decided to give them freedom. Yet, the war was long time ago, now they focus on the future.
They are glad that I'm planning to visit Saigon. The city is much more modern than Hanoi, as it was colonized by the Americans. It is so curious that they see it this way.
Women in Vietnam get married when they are twenty five or twenty seven, but the parents don't arrange the marriage, just nag them. I don't know what's better (or worse).
There are ninety million of Vietnamese people, but nothing is done to stop the population growth. It is hard for them to find an apartment, in Hanoi especially.
Those young people who are talking pictures are not gay newlyweds, but students who are about to graduate from a university. Now it makes sense.
I say my goodbyes, but I invite them to hang out the next day. They are happy and they ask if they can bring their friends along. Sure, why not. Then it occurs to me that I spend the whole semester with Chinese students and when I'm off, I am looking for the company of the Vietnamese ones.
I'm heading towards the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where he lies preserved just like his comrade Lenin and comrade Mao. It's shut down, but I'm not particularly sad that I won't see the corpse today. I'm heading back to the hotel and visiting the Lenin Park on my way. The huge statue is now surrounded by boys playing football. The park is a concrete square filled by people playing various sports. Lenin must be hit in the face with a ball hourly.
I visit the cathedral. There is a Christmas tree and a nativity scene in front of it. Inside, a small crowd of grannies chant Holy Mary in Vietnamese.
I am finally back and barely in time for the happy hour when they serve beer for free. Beer is Vietnam is brewed daily, fresh beer.
Agnieszka and Flor invite me to go for dinner with them, I accept gladly. Flor's colleague recommended a place. We walk there and stop to look at the menu outside. They glance at it, agree that it is so cheap and walk inside, not asking my opinion and giving me a chance to protest that it is in fact crazy expensive. I have no idea how to behave, so I sit by a candle-lit table and browse through the menu for five minutes, desperately looking for something that I can afford. I decide on rice with vegetables, the cheapest dish in the menu, while girls order food for twenty dollars and can't stop talking about how cheap it is. I don't feel great eating my small portion of the cheapest dish in the menu and still feeling hungry. I ask them if really everywhere in the world is so cheap for them, they say yes, everywhere is cheap in comparison with Amsterdam. They recall their visit in Granada in Spain and how insanely cheap it was. I lived there and I remember how students from everywhere in Europe were delighted that Granada is cheap and us, Poles, could afford absolutely nothing.
Well, but some of us don't work in Amsterdam. Some of us work in China and receive their salary in bills with Mao on them. Nice that it is so easy for Agnieszka to forget how it feels to be Polish. I was shaped by my year in Granada too much.
We finish the meal, pay up and leave. To my embarrassment, the waiters made a mistake and make me pay more, I have to complain. They are really trying to make me suffer tonight. After sorting it out the dinner is mercifully over.
RSS Feed