Visiting Day

My 72 hours in Dalat went by quickly. I spent the last drizzly day visiting Bao Dai's palace (actually more of a big art deco villa) and the "Crazy House" (a cross between the Winchester Mystery House and the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House). Check out some of the hundreds of pictures I took before my camera lens fogged up.

More interesting to me than visiting these tourist sites was meeting Xuan and Thinh. Xuan is a waitress I met when I stopped at a tiny hole-in-the-wall café for a ca phe den (black coffee). Some very interesting music was coming out of the CD player in the corner—a very French-sounding pop tune with a lush, jazz saxophone accompaniment, the kind of music I seek out when I have access to satellite radio, but which I haven't heard since I arrived in Viet Nam. I was carrying my Vietnamese-English dictionary, so I looked up a couple key words and asked Xuan about the music. She pulled the CD from the changer and let me write the name of the artist in my notebook.

Later on, as I was returning from Bao Dai's palace, I got caught in a downpour and ducked into the same café to dry out a bit and wait out the rain. For about 15 minutes I was the only customer, so Xuan and I were able to have an interesting—albeit confusing—conversation, with the dictionary doing a lot of the talking. Then Xuan's husband Thinh arrived with several friends. If Xuan was warm and friendly, Thinh was effusive. He had no English but, having spent four years working in Germany, addressed me in broken German. When I responded in my own rudimentary German, Thinh sat down next to me, leaned into me, put one hand on my shoulder and the other on my knee, and made it clear I was his new best friend. I can't tell you all the things we talked about, but we laughed a lot and felt we understood each other well by the time the rain stopped.

That evening, while taking pictures on the street, I ran into the students Thanh and Chi. Thanh surprised me by asking if they could come back to my hotel room with me. I know what most of you are thinking, but there's a very good chance you're wrong. First of all, these young women were extremely polite and shy. Second, they couldn't fail to notice that, as handsome and sexy as I am, I'm obviously of their grandfathers' generation. Third, they mentioned to me that they were devout Christians. And fourth, they never once made a move toward my zipper. I wasn't taking any chances, though. I begged off without asking them to specify why they wanted to come home with me.

Back in Hanoi only a few hours, I received back-to-back invitations from my friend/chief advisor Thanh and my former student/Vietnamese tutor Thu. The next day I got to eat not one, but two, meals in a Vietnamese home.

Late Saturday morning, Thanh picked me up on his motorbike and drove me to his home in the southern Thanh Xuan district of Hanoi. Thanh's home is spacious, modern, and comfortable—approximately the same size and footprint as the World Hotel with the same high ceilings. On a common Vietnamese design, the house is one room wide, two rooms deep and connected by an elegant, curving staircase. There are family portraits and travel souvenirs decorating the walls, a stuffed animal collection in daughter Mai Chau's bedroom, and piles of sandals by every door, but a remarkable absence of the kind of clutter that characterizes most American homes—no piles of books, newspapers, magazines, letters, bills, tools, toys, pencils, and so on covering countertops, tabletops, desktops, and chairs.

The house is on a narrow, quiet backstreet lined with similar, prosperous-looking houses. Thanh's brother Lan lives in the house next door. Lan and his wife Ha and daughter Linh joined us for lunch. Thanh's wife Huong (who used to teach cooking classes) prepared some delicious nem (spring rolls) stuffed with crab. Ha prepared some bun cha. Without doing it justice, really, let me explain that bun cha is a wonderful combination of mixed salad greens, cold rice noodles, and charcoal grilled meatballs of seasoned pork, eaten together with a delicate sauce and sliced cucumbers. Yum! I lost some cred as a cultural ambassador when I declined the shot of vodka Thanh poured me before the meal began. But I did drink my share of the beer. And exchanged a few words of French with Thanh's father, who I believe said he was 92. I enjoyed every minute of my short visit and advanced my meager knowledge of Vietnamese, thanks to patient explanations from Thanh and his sister Hanh, who was also on hand.

Before I left on a xe om, Huong packed a dozen or so of the nem for me to take home and also insisted that I line the motorbike helmet with a sheet of newspaper. (You never know who's head has been in the helmet before yours or what microscopic critters they've deposited there.)

After putting my nem in the fridge, running a few errands in the neighborhood, and putting on a fresh shirt, I headed off on another xe om to Dong Da district to eat dinner with Thu's family. By the time I arrived, it was dark and seemed to have have grown hotter. I took a wrong turn and walked a block or two in the wrong direction. By the time I got turned around my fresh shirt was soaked through, front and back. Thu lives on Pho Trung Liet, a very narrow alley, dimly lit and crossed by a malodorous canal. Along the way I passed, in addition to the odd convenience store or beauty salon, several open doors with somebody watching TV from a hard-looking bed just a foot or two from the street. When I reached the address Thu had given me, I found a sliding metal gate like the one protecting my apartment building and most of the stores in Hanoi. When I knocked Thu came down and let me into a room containing about six motorbikes. Through a door in the back was a room containing a platform bed and little else. Off to one side was a cement staircase. I removed my shoes and went upstairs.

Thu's family home is quite a contrast to Thanh's house. I wasn't offered a tour, but what little I saw makes me feel confident I could rent their house—or one like it—for less than I'm paying for my little one-bedroom apartment on Luong Van Can. I was introduced to Thu's brother and father, who invited me to sit on a wooden sofa with him. Thu soon joined us on this sofa, which was really just a bench—wood slats with no cushions. (By the end of the evening it would feel to me like petrified wood.) The room also contained a small TV in a large cabinet against the wall, a wooden sleeping platform in one corner, a coffee table next to the bench, and a couple chairs. The only wall decorations were three calendars and a broken clock.

Thu's father is a veteran of the American War (i.e., the Vietnam War). He was wounded in combat, receiving damage to one eye, and is now retired on a veteran's disability at the age of 55. Two of his brothers were killed in the war. He shook my hand warmly when he told me these things and made a point of adding that the war is over now and what is past is past. With Thu translating, we discussed politics for a few minutes. Thu's father, like every other Vietnamese I've discussed politics with, likes Obama, loves Bill Clinton, has contempt for Bush, and doesn't really care about McCain. After a while, we were joined by Thu's grandmother—a delightful, smiling woman of 83—who was tickled that I greeted her in Vietnamese. She showed me a scar on her foot that she got as a girl during the war to free Viet Nam from the French and described seeing Ho Chi Minh in person once at a market.

We sat drinking green tea for some time and then Thu announced it was time for dinner and we all stood up. Thu seemed to be waiting for me to take the lead, but there was only confusion on my part when she led me over to the TV. I almost stepped on an overturned basket on the floor and didn't realize until Thu lifted the basket to reveal a tray of food that dinner was to be eaten sitting on the woven mat beneath the TV. We all sat down cross-legged on the floor and tucked into enormous bowls of fried shrimp, sliced pork, puffy squares of tofu, and shredded beef with steamed morning glory stems. Thu's father kept refilling my glass with wine—a Russian sparkling wine that tasted to me like watered sherry. He also kept popping more shrimp and pork and tofu into my bowl whenever it started running low. I warned him that I was a light eater and was getting full, but he pointed out that this was a "special meal" (because of me, I suppose) and tradition called for me to eat everything in sight. I did my best but of course my participation in the meal ended with my bowl still full to the brim with shrimp, pork, and tofu.

I kept wondering where the rice was. It turned out to be in a big pot behind grandma the whole time. Apparently, during normal meals the rice is eaten with the meat and vegetables, but during special meals it's held back and eaten last. I would have liked to have some rice, but by this point I was too full. When the food was cleared and we were back on the bench, however, I discovered I still had enough room to eat 9 or 10 big pieces of canteloupe and pineapple. This was a sticky business and I ended up with pineapple juice all over my hands. Seeing my discomfort, Thu's father handed me a wet rag to wash up with, but this rag left my hands stickier than ever. I asked Thu if I could wash my hands and she said "Yes, of course," and said something else in Vietnamese to her brother, who disappeared into the next room and returned with a basin of water for me to wash my hands in. To dry my clean hands I was offered the same rag as before. Oh, well.

I arrived at Thu's house at 7:00 and left at 10:30. It must have been exhausting for Thu to have to translate everything everybody said for three and a half hours, but she appeared tireless. When I finally got up to go, her grandmother said with evident delight that this was the first time she had been able to talk to a foreigner. I was prepared to take a xe om home, but Thu wouldn't hear of it and made her brother give me a ride back to Luong Van Can.

Arriving back in my street, I found myself feeling a little euphoric from all the beer, wine, and hospitality I'd been enjoying all day long. The Jazz Club was right in front of me and it was Saturday night, so I stopped in for a beer. The club was about half full—maybe 40-50 customers—and the mood was mellow: the band was doing a sensuous version of The Girl from Ipanema. While I sipped a $3 beer the female vocalist took a break and the band shifted gears into an uptempo number that soon had me grooving. It wasn't the Yellowjackets, but it was definitely jazz. Oh yeah! This was my best day so far in Vietnam.