Phu Quoc

I know it's been a while since I posted a blog. Xin loi—sorry. When I first came to Hanoi, I had a lot more time for blogging, because I didn't know anybody here and my new expatriate life was pretty basic—sleep, eat, work, look around. But you know how life likes to fill in the empty spots, and when those are full, it fills them in some more. You don't even have to plant a seed to have a jungle grow in your front yard. I know there are choices that can be made and some people do seem to keep their lives nicely ordered. But life will keep coming after you like beggar children on the streets of Bombay, and unless you mount a fierce counterattack, your life becomes something of a mob scene with little leisure for reflection or narration.

I'm only able to write these few lines right now because I've stepped to the sidelines for a moment. I'm sitting on the veranda of a little beach bungalow on the island of Phu Quoc, 4 kms from the Cambodian coast, where I've retreated for a week to clear my head and see if I can't catch you up on what's been happening in my life. Even here, far from Hanoi, with my mobile phone turned off and no Internet connection, there are endless distractions: other guests approach you wanting to swap travel stories and invite you to go searching out waterfalls with them; beach vendors approach you to sell you a snorkeling trip or a massage; the pretty girls who clean bungalows in the morning and wait tables at the beach cafe in the afternoon approach you to find out where you're from and how old you are; the old Frenchman who's been here 12 years wants you to play a game of chess with him; the clean sandy beach, the massive white clouds, the clear warm water, the shocking sunset keep calling you and calling you, eroding your will to resist.

There's another thing, too, that's kept me from blogging recently. It's not just the number of things happening. It's the kind of things—personal things, that can't easily be talked about in a public forum, where the people involved, and acquaintances of the people involved, are quite likely to read what I've written and regret my sharing it. This is where the broadcast nature of a blog loses its advantage over private emails. Consequently, I'm deciding even as I write this to fashion a new reporting strategy that will involve email lists in addition to the blog. Stay tuned for details. In the meantime, I'll continue to post photos here—lots of them. I have a really cool new camera (Nikon Coolpix P90) and my snapshot output is through the roof.

To catch you up briefly, here are some of the highlights of the past three months:

My lone class at Language Link ended the last week of April. It may resume toward the middle of June, but nothing is certain. Things got a little unravelled near the end of the term. For some reason, Language Link scheduled the final exam 10 days before the last class meeting. I could see what was coming and protested...to no avail. After taking their final, most of the students stopped showing up. The last week of classes was anemic and sparsely attended. There were only four students on the final day, which is traditionally given over to an end-of-term party, so I cancelled the party and sent them home.

I've become very fond of my private students Toni and Duong. They're both preparing to attend universities abroad and are two very bright, motivated, fun-loving young people. Sometimes we abandon the apartment to practice English at a cafe. Recently, they included me in a four-day trip to Sapa, a popular mountain resort town, with a few of their friends from school. I'll let the photos I took tell the story. Toni has adopted me and now calls me 'dad'.

Van, a former student of mine, adopted me a few months earlier. To her, I'm 'ba' and I call her 'con' ('child'). We chat online and meet occasionally for lunch, at a pizza restaurant near her office, or at the home of her friend Ha. Ha's nickname online is 'meo con', which means 'kitten'. I call her 'little cat', so she calls me 'big tiger'.

Thai Thu, who manages my favorite restaurant in Hanoi, has become a good friend because I go there so often. Festa, an Italian restaurant with a Vietnamese staff, has good wine, great bread, and pizza as good as any I've had in the US. Unfortunately, the restaurant's going out of business soon—not for lack of business, but due to personal issues of the joint owners. I don't know where I'm going to get my red wine and pesto fix from now on.

Thu, my tutor, and I continue to meet twice weekly for Vietnamese lessons, usually in Language Link's conference room but sometimes at her family's house. You'd think I'd speak a little Vietnamese by this time—but I don't. I have much to say about the reasons for this, which I'll save for another post, except to say that as a teacher Thu has been patient, creative, and devoted. And generous. She won't accept any payment—not even a cup of coffee—but she never fails to bring me something to eat: a bag of fruit, some sticky rice cakes, candy, apricot syrup, a bag of white rocks that turned out to be tapioca. I'm very fond of Thu, but she's too formal to call me 'ba' or 'dad'. Usually she just calls me 'mister'.

I see Miss Nga almost every day since her little travel agency is only 20 steps from my front door. She booked my air tickets to Phu Quoc and I try to steer business her way every chance I get, but it seems little enough to repay all the coffee, tea, and advice she's given me during the past year.

I still get together with my CELTA colleagues once a week for lunch. Jouke has moved in with Charlie, which is fine with everyone. We like Charlie so well we're happy to include him in all our activities. Mitchell's school chum Ben has arrived, completed the CELTA course, and is now teaching at Language Link with us. Mitchell and Ben now share an apartment that just a few weeks ago was a cafe. The neon cafe sign is still hanging over their front gate. Donna comes and goes—it seems she and her husband Hank are back in the US or off to Singapore nearly every month. Imran has taken on a heavy teaching load, but despite duties at school and duties at home he remains faithful to the group. James, too, shows up occasionally despite a busy social life and a leg still recovering from a nasty motorbike accident earlier this year. For news of Sarah, follow the link to her hilarious blog.

I was coming home from Festa on my bicycle one night when a motorbike pulled alongside me. The man driving said nothing, but the woman on the back offered to come home with me and give me a massage. I told her I was going home to sleep and she offered to come sleep with me. I didn't say 'Fuck off', but I should have. By the time I got home, there were two motorbikes and two prostitutes, who jumped off their bikes and tried to follow me into my building. While I was preventing one from lifting my wallet out of the front right pocket of my jeans, the other was lifting my mobile phone out of the front left pocket, a fact I didn't discover until I was inside and they had both disappeared.

Two days later my bicycle was stolen from the entryway of my building. For the first few months I had the bike, I kept it faithfully locked, but I noticed mine was the only one in the building that was ever locked. Since the entryway itself is kept locked, I decided I was being too paranoid and should save myself the trouble of locking my wheels when they were 'in the garage'. It took a thief about 10 days to discover my vulnerability and exploit it. I think what happened was that one of the building's tenants stepped out to run a quick early morning errand and left the front door ajar. Either that or the thief was a legitimate visitor to the building who happened also to be an opportunist. It was old and I only paid $6 for it, but I liked that bicycle. The one I've bought to replace it isn't nearly as good. (I'll tell you more about it in another post.)