First observations upon stepping off the plane in scenic Newark, New Jersey:

1. It’s the end of November and still 50 degrees F (that’s 10 degrees C). Global warming is real.
2. Things cost money. Lots of it. $5 for a coffee in New York is 10 breakfasts in Saigon. I find it depressing to even mention the subway.
3. There is silence. Somewhere on the Lower East Side, the traffic is orderly, the people wait for crosswalks and, after Saigon, New York City turns out to be downright peaceful.
4. Unlike Vietnam, everyone in NYC says how they feel. Like the guy on the subway one weekday morning singing his ride-to-work song: “Standing here, stuck at 21^st Street. Standing here STUCK. AT. 21ST. STREET. DON’T WORRY NONE OF US HAVE ANYWHERE TO BE TODAY. #$@%&*!” From Monday: The Musical.
5. Everything is HUGE. I bought a 20-oz. bottle of Coca-Cola, convinced that it would last me at least two weeks. I nearly died eating brunch somewhere in New Jersey. And there was an Italian restaurant where I almost fell asleep in my dinner. Wine and food-induced narcolepsy are a bad combo.
6. Despite leaning over the table and lowering my voice, everyone does still speak English and everyone can still understand me, including the girl with the ugly sweater that I am currently mocking. A little disappointed by this.

Next up: Family Time! (Terrifying!)

2,000 kilometres (or 1,200 America miles)

= a straight line from Detroit, MI to Austin, TX

= a flight from Toronto to St. John’s

= a little more than a trip from New York to New Orleans

= a little less than the shortest distance between London and Athens

Or, if you’re me, 2,000km equals the distance from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam by bicycle. This distance can also be measured in rest stops, excruciating muscle pain, fits of boredom, dehydration, hills, and degree of sunburn, but I’ll update you on those when we get there.

 You see, in relation to my last post, I got bored a few months back and signed up for a bike ride that would make me a) incredibly fit, b) incredibly hardcore, and c) incredibly tan all at the same time. The first few rides were not exactly the glamourous adventure I had envisioned, but over the past couple weeks my chin has shrunk, my thighs have grown, and my skin has contracted some weird, splotchy pattern on account of the sun, all of which should bode well for me in February, when I fly up to Hanoi with my H2H teammates (that’s Hanoi 2 Ho Chi Minh City, if you haven’t figured it out), only to turn around and cycle directly back to where we came from. Naturally, this is considered a Western thing; no Vietnamese person would be so thick as to fly from Point A to Point B and then use the slowest means of transportation possible to return from whence s/he came.

the trip

The plan is simple: I cycle through Vietnam, take lots of pictures, look fabulous, make friends with the locals, and tell you all about it, and in return you give me what money you can spare. Where does this money go? you might ask, and to that I say to the many disadvantaged children in Vietnam who deserve a better start in life. By partnering with three charities – The Children’s Initiative (TCI), Saigon Children’s Charity (SCC), and the charity network of ILA school (ILACN) – H2H is able to provide funding for these respectable and well-established organizations, which in turn do things like create schools, give scholarships to children otherwise unable to attend school, and provide vocational training to older students as they prepare to enter the work force.

Better yet, when you make a donation to H2H, absolutely 100% of your money goes directly to the charities listed above – all cycling expenses, from plane tickets to bicycle equipment down to refreshments, are paid for by the riders themselves (that’s me). So every dollar you give to this cause goes exactly where it’s supposed to.

Looking fabulous: CHECK

Not convinced yet? Then you can either go to these websites to find facts and figures that might encourage you to give, or feast your brain on the wonderful commitments I am willing to make should you, dear friend, support my cause:

 I will send photos and video during our trip through Vietnam.

1. I will give my donors 50% creative control in my outfit selection during the ride.

2. I will update you on a regular, non-annoying basis leading up to the event.

3. I will not ask you for a Christmas present.

Obviously, this is an opportunity you do NOT want to miss, as I can be very persistent when it comes to holiday gifts and I have many friends comfortable with using intimidation to benefit the greater good.

"DO IT!!!"

Think about it and then please DONATE!

Thanks in advance!

For more info, visit http://www.h2hcharityride.org/

And I mean, I had this license so...

But now, some 12 years and 8,000-miles away, here I am on my first road bike. My legs work and the bicycle is moving, but I’m pretty sure that my back is on fire somewhere between bridges on the Nguyen Van Linh Parkway. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why my back would be on fire when I’m not even using my back. Aren’t bicycles supposed to be about your lower body? Thanks to the hours of triathlon-spectating that come with an Ironman father, I have seen enough potbellied cyclists to prove that all you need is leg strength to power a bicycle. I have no idea what about my upper body is going into this exercise, but it is painful and illogical. I must be doing it wrong. I can feel my shoulder blades bursting into flames under my clothes, like someone has taken a white-hot wire to my spinal cord. There has to be a mistake. I swear I remember how to ride a bicycle. This can’t be right, I think. And then: Who forgets how to ride a bicycle?

Here we are, on Day 1 of my cycling adventure. I bought the bike this morning. I have been riding for maybe 30 minutes. And I have committed, approximately 4 months from now, to make a month-long, 2,100-kilometre (1,200-mile) trek from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. As the sun rises higher over the Parkway, it dawns on me that this will happen 5-6 times everyday for 26 days in a row. My back will catch fire every morning around 9 a.m. My wrists will go stiff, my elbows will lock up – my shoulder blades, and later my arms, will fall off, if that’s physically possible. I begin to think of all the things I will have to give up when I lose my arms.

(Eating with utensils, writing, shaking hands with strangers, gesturing offensively or inoffensively, punching, wearing long-sleeved shirts, brushing my teeth, shielding my face from the sun, playing dodgeball, pushing shopping carts, hammering nails, driving, turning pages, taste-testing things I didn’t make but will eat, shampooing, conditioning, carrying stuff, dropping stuff, stealing, returning stolen goods, doing up buttons, unzipping trousers, tying back my hair, cutting out paper lanterns, peeling apart Post-Its, wiping sweat from my brow, opening doors, closing doors, locking doors and unlocking them again, tying shoes, giving high-fives, receiving high-fives, hitting snooze buttons on alarm clocks, signing important documents, dialing phone numbers, hugging, concealing my whispers, wearing foam fingers and ski gloves)

Perhaps it’s a developmental thing. Experts say that if you don’t start learning a foreign language before the age of 12, you will never master that language like a native speaker. The older it gets, the more the brain forgets how to make sounds. It’s possible that I learned how to ride a bike too late. Maybe now I’ve forgotten how to pedal correctly. For a fraction of a second, I regret being a wuss; I wish I had been as dim as those neighbour boys. Until I remember their mother fed them spray cheese. Then I take it back.

We stop somewhere past a red bridge, maybe the second or third one we’ve seen since we got on this road, heading further and further out of Saigon, toward grass and trees and oxygen. I have to stand up for a moment and readjust my spine. I think I may have broken my neck muscles in the last hour. I turn to Rhona, my flatmate and cycling companion, and tell her that I am in unbelievable pain. My face begins to burn, too, partly because of the heat, partly because of the shame of my cycling inadequacies. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I confess. “But my back is killing me. My arms, too. I think they’re going to fall off.” She wrinkles her brow for a moment, brings up a hand to shade her eyes, and then says the three words that make me feel like maybe I have NOT forgotten how to ride a bike, and perhaps I am not as depressingly pathetic as I originally believed: “Yeah, me, too.”

So it’s not just me who’s hopeless. Instantly, I begin to feel better. The rest of the ride back, I am still in excruciating discomfort, but now I know that someone else is, too. The closer we get to the city, the more desperate I become. When we cross the bridge into District 1, I am practically hallucinating. I see my apartment building in everything. Between taxis and motorbikes, my road rage ignites. I squeeze past other vehicles to approach the stoplight. A string of profanity comes out when a motorbike cuts me off. As we round the corner near the market, two minutes from our apartment, I make a promise to myself that I will not stop for anyone, including seniors and small children. If there is a person stupid enough to get in my way, I will run them over and keep pedaling. I will not stop until I can get off of this bike, lie down on my bed, and allow my upper body to restore itself to its original shape. I have not been so focused on anything in a long time.

I black out the rest of the way home. I can’t remember anything except pulling into the parking garage, sweat stinging my eyes, and the vague, multi-coloured outlines of a person sitting in the lawn chair near the entrance. The bikes go somewhere I don’t recall and there is a brief, incoherent exchange with Hung the Parking Attendant. And then I am home, inhaling water from the cooler, leaning against the dresser at the front door, deciding whether I am going to pass out on the floor before or after I eat lunch.

Day 1, I tell myself. Day 1.

Traditionally, it is not Christmas in Canada until this man has donned his velvet suit.

Or so I assume. Because if the Vietnamese can get excited about this holiday as a largely non-Christian nation, then all the Jesus-lovers over there must be ecstatic. On every Saigon street corner, in every neighbourhood, there are Yuletide decorations and messages of cheer. Instead of snow, a sheen of dust fills the air as the rainy season comes to an end. The smog has gotten thicker, the dirt more pervasive. I bought handmade Christmas cards last week from a woman peddling a collection in the thousands. They include a) a rosy-cheeked Santa pig smiling as he bares his bum, b) a nude reindeer covering his unmentionables, and c) some type of snowman with googly eyes.

Because, as I said, Vietnamese Christmas, a secular holiday, is about so much more than petty things like immaculate conceptions or the mere birth of Jesus Christ. Instead, it attacks the real meaning of the holiday season and broadcasts it for all to see: FEAR.

Paralyzing, inarticulate, pants-wetting terror that shakes you to your very core. Sure, you get presents: a jolly, naked, pizza-eating Santa will come to your house – likely through the front door – and slip the goods under your Christmas tree, or in your Christmas sock (whoever first told the Vietnamese about stockings must have gone with the literal translation). But surrounding these innocent, heartfelt gestures is an exterior of horrifying decorations meant to induce constant paranoia.

On a storefront in District 3

I am, of course, referring to the humourless Christmas giraffes occupying a hotel display somewhere on Ky Dong. What began as an innocent winter scene – cotton snow, a tiny cottage, white lights – has been transformed into a glaring reminder that, despite your religion or geographic location, no one is safe from Yuletide cheer. I’m not sure when they arrived, but the four stiff-legged, spotted, wooden creatures have taken over the sidewalk and erected a massive sign that reads in fiery red uppercase letters, “MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR. OR ELSE.*” A shock to the quiet, peaceful routine of the street.

*I may or may not have added the “OR ELSE” for good measure.

Elsewhere in Saigon, other Vietnamese Christmas animals have cropped up to occupy the city with their Christmas terror. Near Tao Dan Park, zebras monitor Truong Dinh with icy stares, an unnatural, striped** breed of antler-less reindeer. While the bigger creatures force us into the Christmas spirit, their minions – like the Christmas pig – are sent across town to lure unsuspecting citizens with their adorable faces. They seem innocent enough, but when you look down, past the upturned snout and the Santa jacket, you see that they are wearing NO PANTS. In the case of Santas and reindeer – the actual brown, antlered version – they are almost always nude and embarrassed about it, acting as though this is all a big, unplanned mistake. BUT IT IS NOT. These types of lewd tricks are typical of the fear-mongering Vietnamese Christmas animals. Few of which, I might add, actually live in Vietnam.

**(pronounced stripe-ed)

Also: Christmas Guard Cow

But the most horrifying Vietnamese Christmas creatures I have seen to date are the ones I have, in fact, created. The tiny, shrieking brand of midget reindeer that could not likely pull any type of sleigh, but might instead overturn it, robbing Santa’s stash of presents before cutting each others’ hair with safety scissors and colouring the walls magenta. When left alone, they feast on crayons and the contents of their noses, and also have a strong aversion to sitting in chairs. Easily the most shifty, unpredictable creatures I’ve met.

BEWARE. This is what the Vietnamese Christmas spirit is really about.

look for these anywhere but hospitals

Two days ago, I paid my first – and hopefully last – ever visit to a Vietnamese hospital, and I can promise you that there were no donuts. Or anything else fun. I have for a long time believed that hospitals were generally a good place to be – you could have a water fight with empty syringe cartridges, build a house out of GIANT Legos in the playroom, play Murderball with the wheelchairs – and no one was ever going to actually give you a check-up. Best of all, the doctors’ lounge was a glorious, air-conditioned paradise where my mother, Dr. Deb, would leave us with a dozen glazed and jam-filled confections and return an hour later to find her sticky-faced children climbing walls and throwing pediatric journals across the room.

Except that nowadays, as an adult, I am slowly finding out that there is nothing about hospitals that is remotely close to fun. In addition to the lack of free donuts or the magical doctors’ lounge, hospitals have become a place where I go and people take things that belong to me. Such as:

1. my medical history
2. my blood
3. my urine

And I hate giving people my urine. Possibly even more than I hate giving people my blood. And I am no fan of that, either.

In any case, Quynh, the gracious intern from work who was kind enough to guide my housemate Rhona and I through this process, starting with a plethora of paperwork, which she completed for us. During this time, I promptly fell asleep in the waiting room chair. It was only later, when Rhona was laughing at my open-mouthed, drooling slumber, that I came to and followed both of them down to the x-ray room. An x-ray technician then asked me to disrobe behind a giant, metal submarine door. I traded my shirt for a hospital gown and came out wearing it the only way I knew how, with the gown open at the back.

For a moment, he just stared at me, forehead wrinkled. “Oh,” he said, bewildered. “…Okay.” And then he placed me in front of a giant plate and made me stand with my hands on my hips, showing off my bare back to the waiting room. Sample #1: my dignity.

After that, we proceeded to the ear, nose, and throat doctor, a kind man with a light on his head who tried to gag me with a tongue depressor and then looked in my ears. He asked me where I was from just as he shoved a round metal object up my nose and forced open my nostrils. I think I said Canada. I was too busy wondering what the hell he was doing looking up my nostrils. Sample #2: access to the innermost regions of my nose.

But my least favourite leg of this adventure was the taking of blood. Some people like to say giving, but I disagree: this was not an instance in which I was giving my blood to anybody. Instead, it was being sucked out of my veins with a large needle and put into tiny jars. I have nothing against subcutaneous vaccinations, but sticking things directly into my bloodstream is out of the question, and you are certainly not allowed to keep what you find for yourself. In any case, I may have some kind of strange foreigner-disease, because in my medical opinion the stuff that came out of me was almost black, and that just can’t be healthy. Perhaps the motorbike exhaust has been seeping into my veins when I’m not looking. Sample #3: my unnaturally dark blood.

the most upsetting violation of my insides (courtesy of WebMD)

Directly after I was robbed of my platelets (and whatever else is in blood), the nurse who did so handed me a plastic cup. Quynh clarified just where the toilets were and I opened the door to find the first Asian squat toilet I have seen since arriving in Saigon. Oh sure, there are bum guns everywhere (more on that later), but most of the loos I’ve seen in this city are Western-style cans.

I am not sure whether the discrepancy was a curse or a blessing in this moment. On the one hand, I was terrified that I was going to fall into the ever-moving pool of toilet water below me, or at least ruin my work clothes. On the other hand, I have only ever struggled with pee-shyness when it comes time for me to give that urine as a gift (or when I am held in a Vietnamese hospital until I surrender my pee). The last time this was asked of me, a few years back, I spent over an hour in the bathroom trying to muster up enough to prove I wasn’t pregnant, just so I could get the yellow fever vaccine I wanted. But once I found myself positioned over that squat toilet, this became a much easier task, and I was successfully in and out of the loo in under ten minutes. I grudgingly handed over my pee to the robber/nurse. Sample #4: my urine.

(Note: By reading the above paragraph, you may feel as though you have been robbed of the bliss of not knowing about my trip to the hospital. If so, I apologize to you. But perhaps now you know a bit more about how I felt giving up my bodily fluids for examination.)

Finally, when all the fluids anyone could possibly have taken were removed from body in small amounts, after I had been hit over the head with the bar that was meant to measure my height (the nurse was shorter than me, so she just threw it up, pushed me under, and let the metal beam fall directly onto my head, taking an inch off my height), I was called in to see the physician responsible for “foreign patient service.”

Or at least that’s what it said on her door. In reality, this woman could not have been less pleased to see a foreigner. She sat behind her desk, silent and stone-faced. After a few tick marks on the paper she leaned over, motioned for me to sit on the stool beside her desk and, without standing up, she reached across to my midsection and began jabbing at it with the tips of her fingers. This proceeded for about three minutes, during which time I held my breath in an attempt to keep in my laughter and the possibility of another urine sample coming out on the office floor. She put a few more ticks and a signature on the page, thrust it in my direction and, before letting me go, gave my belly a couple pokes for good measure.

The whole exam was completed in under 3 hours, a Vietnamese miracle. But I want everyone to know that 1) even in Vietnam, hospitals are NOT the joyous oasis you may have thought, and 2) I want everything that was taken from me returned or destroyed when this process is over. I am still shocked and outraged by the lack of donuts at the hospital.

Also:

Next Week’s Lesson:  Girl Reading Book Injured in Drive-By Shooting; Friends Listen to Music, Fall in Love

Ms. Winfrey and I have a lot in common. (from The Chicago Sun-Times)

Lately, I’ve fallen in love with the same handful of things over and over again, everyday. After two months of relative instability – you know, the different countries, the different continents, the living out of a suitcase, that old hat – I have come to love my new routines, which started the day I moved into a real house and have yet to stop. They are mostly unexciting, but I figure I should share a few of the fixations I’ve picked up that are most illustrative of my life in Saigon. Enjoy.

before & after shots

Banh Mi: Or, to those who know what banh mi is, Heaven-in-an-Old-Piece-of-Newsprint-and-a-Rubberband. It would probably be more helpful to call them Vietnamese sandwiches – a baguette full of parsley, cucumber, carrot, white carrot*, hot pepper, soy sauce, and egg (or some type of meat) – but to anyone on this side of the International Date Line, the sandwich goes by its local name. I have made friends with at least 3 separate banh mi vendors in the area and am currently a regular at each of their respective sandwich carts. (Note: as a ginger in Asia, becoming a regular at any neighbourhood establishment is an incredibly easy feat. There is only one requirement: show up TWICE.) My personal preference – though I do feel like I’m betraying my original banh mi contact – is a highly-organized storefront called Lo Banh Mi Dien on Le Van Sy, just up the road from the Nguyen Van Troi Market. For 6,000VND (a.k.a. USD 25 cents), you can start your morning with, as my Aussie friend loves to call them, a hot and delicious “bang me.”

*NOT a real carrot

Lo Banh Mi Dien, 316 Le Van Sy, Ward 14, D3

This is what's holding my life together (not the apples. the blue stuff).

Blue Tack: Or, as I like to call it, BLUE GOLD. This has become the most valuable tool in my teaching repertoire. It is, literally, the gunk that holds my life together. Without it, I would be hopelessly lost and my students, particularly those to whom I teach in local Vietnamese schools, would be limited to no more than four visual aids per class. During my teacher on-duty hours, when I am flashcard organizer extraordinaire, I horde any and all forgotten, leftover blue tack and amalgamate it into one giant, sticky piece of wonder. God bless whoever invented this infallible substance.

I have no idea where you can buy this, only that it is made of magic and also something adhesive.

Farm

Farm: Or, as it has become, My New Living Room. This is the single coziest place I have found in Saigon, and just a little way off the crosswalk-nightmare that is Hai Ba Trung in the Tan Dinh Ward, it is incredibly close to where I live. Tucked down the end of an alley, this small cafe, owned by a local architect and designer, is a haven for peace and quiet and a vendor of many delicious beverages, including iced ginger tea with honey, a plethora of smoothies, the Cafe Farm (a unique blend of caffeine and Bailey’s), and my personal favourite, sinh to cafe, a cereal bowl-sized helping of frozen coffee. The walls are lined with antique gadgets and books, and there are tables fashioned from glass and chicken wire, tiny plant centrepieces and mugs that come in animal shapes (mine was a zebra last time). I don’t think I could possibly express enough good things about this place, but if you live in Saigon and ever find the time or desire to wander aimlessly around Tan Dinh – Farm can be a bit of an adventure to find – I highly recommend it. My guess is that you, too, will want to become a regular.

Sinh to cafe

Farm, 214/19/8C Nguyen Van Nguyen, Tan Dinh Ward, D1

P.S. Many thanks to blogger A Girl in Asia for pointing me in the right direction with this one.

from Wikimedia Commons

It is before 9 a.m., I am in a room full of screaming 7-year-old children, I have not yet had my morning cup of tea, and I look up to find the eyes of Uncle Ho boring into my soul. We’ve been talking about breakfast foods for the better part of 30 minutes (Me: “Do you want a pancake?”, 23 Small Children: “NO! I DON’T!”), but through the language barrier, our activity has devolved into chaos. There is a round, speechless child colouring the wall with his pencil. A girl in the back raises her hand, desperately wanting to answer a question I have not asked. Two boys attempt to kick each other in the genitals while remaining on their chairs. And up front, near the teacher’s desk, someone has ingested the blue sticky tack that once held up my visual aids. Though you wouldn’t think so, it is possible to stretch five minutes into an eternity.

Believe me, I had them for the first 30 minutes. They were staring at me with rapt attention – fascination, even. “Teacher,” one of the girls said, her forehead wrinkled in confusion, “Your hair is…yellow?” She’s not really sure what colour it is. No one is really sure what colour it is. I prefer the term strawberry-blonde, but being a ginger, even in the Western world, means that you are an anomaly. So here, amid a sea of pin-straight black hair, I am a curly, redheaded freak. The benefit is that I earn the attention of my students with my wildly obscure appearance. The disadvantage is that they don’t have any fucking clue what a pancake is, they just want to know why I look so funny.

And it’s not just in the classroom that I am an oddball. On the street, I can see heads turn out of the corner of my eye. Toddlers point. Adults stare openly. Children wave and shout hello. Everyone is lovely, curious, cheerful, and a great conversationalist (though sometimes only in Vietnamese), but every time I leave the house, I am on display. While I was not unaware of this possibility before I arrived in Asia, I have become a circus sideshow, peddling my act all over Saigon.

But the real point of this story is that, at the back of my classroom, which is meant to be better than other classrooms and graciously equipped with scissors, markers, crayons, a whiteboard, air-con, and a CD player (though it is only ever equipped with the whiteboard and the air-con – sometimes broken, sometimes not – on a regular basis), there is a life-sized bust of Ho Chi Minh supervising my classroom from in front of a red velvet floor-to-ceiling backdrop. And if it were not enough to have Uncle Ho looking on as I instruct his countrymen in the language of the oppressor, beside him is a massive sculpture of the Communist hammer and sickle, reminding me where I am. You know, in case I forget that I’ve picked up everything, moved to Southeast Asia, and started teaching English to small children who eat sticky tack.

from Wikimedia Commons

This is my new life. Welcome.