You know you've lived in Hanoi too long if...

I have lived in Hanoi for 1 year, 7 months, and 2 weeks. And though I am far from being "just like a Vietnamese person" as many people attempt to praise me, I nevertheless have reached a degree of assimilation. Here are some of the indications that you've lived in Hanoi long enough for things to sink in:

• You casually say things like "Today I was riding my xe đạp and decided to stop at this one tea stand in my ngõ and got lots of xinh đẹps from the lady there. Then a xe máy almost ran into me." (credit: Calah Schlabach)

• You can cross a shoe checkpoint without even breaking stride.

• An alarming proportion of your personal items are decorated with chubby animals, and/or something monstrous is dangling from your cell phone.

"Fu female"

• 20-degree weather causes you to dress like this (because you know those cement walls and floors were not designed to keep you warm).

• "The Lake" means Hoàn Kiếm Lake.

• When you go out to eat, you look for the smallest plastic chairs possible (because everyone knows the size of the chairs is inversely proportionate to the deliciousness of the food).

 

• Alternately, you choose your restaurant solely based on how funny the name sounds. 

Highschool Restaurant Teeny Pizza actually sells teeny pizzas!!!!

• You find yourself asking things like "How old are you?" "Are you married?" "How much did you pay for that?" of people you only just met.

What do I do all day anyways?

This is a good question for me to ask myself, too. I may live 12 time zones away from my nearest blood relatives, but I still work a nine-to-five, and it helps to remind myself what I actually do with all that time. When I'm not writing blog posts, mostly I am editing articles that have been translated from Vietnamese into English. For example, an artist profile for a book on contemporary Vietnamese art, that starts like this:

Lê Quảng Hà was born in 1963 in Hanoi. 

This is the only sentence in the entire document that I did not change. The rest of the first paragraph goes like this:

His skinny and spare-face showed his strong personality, naughty and activeness with sharp eyes widely opening to stare at everythings as if they were looking for the inside natures, never take his eyes off anything. Keen on drawing since he was young, Ha started his drawing class in children’s club when he was only 7. When grown up, he once tried to shift to Irrigational University but he could not be happy nor could find his position there. There was sometime when he even tried as a worker but it was not all right at all. Ha sat for an entrance exam in University of Fine Arts again. Painting seemed to be his fate that was unavoidable. His first three school years was in Ho Chi Minh city University of Fine Arts (1986- 1989), and the next three years was in Hanoi Industrial Arts University (1989- 1992), and expescially under the instruction of femal painter Kim Bach, to whom he paid so much respect to, Lê Quảng Hà has become mature gained a lot of painting knowledge and experiences.

And this is what I turn it into, with a little luck, a little skill, and a lot of help from my amazingly patient boss, Mr. Long.

His thin face, with its wide eyes that seemed to pierce every object he looked at to their core, revealed a strong personality, both active and mischievous. Fond of drawing since he was young, Ha enrolled in a drawing class at his children’s club when he was only seven. When he was older, he tried to transfer to the Water Resources University but was unhappy and unable to find his place there. There was even a time when he tried his hand at manual labor, but he did not feel right about it. So he sat a second time for the entrance exam to the University of Fine Arts. Painting seemed to be his fate. His first three years of study were passed at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts (1986-1989), and the next three years at the Hanoi School of Industrial Art (1989-1992), primarily under the instruction of the painter Kim Bach, to whom he owes great respect for giving him the knowledge and experience that would later help him become a mature painter.

Polished prose. Isn't it a beautiful thing?
Sometimes my job seems so tedious. Sometimes it is downright scary.

But right now, looking at the finished result, I can't help but feel a sense of accomplishment. And I have to admit there are times when my job is highly entertaining. Take these delightful examples from the The Gioi Publishers blooper reel, for instance:

I first knew the strange impressive and unforgettable light fragrance, the smell of straw bended with the good smell of village girl’s hair, which made one on a cloud nine. 

Someone sure knows their American idioms from 20 years ago!

They put the dó plaints in a mortal and smash them by a cylinder hummer until it turns into a platform.

[see below for clarification]

credit: my totally awesome brother, Asa Forsythe

Through the side windows, we can know how many women in the family get married. 

This one actually makes sense in context. One room with a window is added for each daughter that gets married. But you gotta appreciate the Freudian slip!

Cascadeur students act not only simple performances but also very dangerous ones such as jumping off a building, speeding on a motor, falling off an abyss, etc.

Wow! Makes my job seem like a piece of cake.
And the grand finale:

U Minh forest used to be a battlefield and a place to cover top leaders in the Southern Resistance, such a valuable forest of humankind should have been a culturally attractive address for tourism such as biology tourism, history tourism, especially for young generation. It’s so regretful it’s burnt and destroyed. Even the scene is also nothing more than concrete blocks and the forest is overexploited for commercial purposes. The difference between the rich and the poor here is taking place more drastically than ever. This is a hindrance to organising tourism industry structures but still keeping native distinctive cultural features? I dare to think that it’s time to put what’s modern or what’s traditional or what’s natural on the right place so as to keep the natural beauty, abundance and uniqueness... That’s how tourism can attract more tourists. It’s local authorirties’ reponsibilities to distinguish what belongs to distinctive tradition, what’s cuturally unique to maintain for offsprings, both physical and non-physical culture. To the end, the hardest-to-solve problem is human resources. From higher managers to staff, they all need traning very basically and the Government should generate favourable conditions by reasonable policies so that they can live on their jobs. Only by that could the non-smoke industry develop. Last but not less, the waterways gardens tourism will stand firm with a sound bandmaster.

And rightly so, in my opinion!

Peace.

They weren't any better than us

For Vietnamese New Year, Calah, Alicia, and I went to the great, the awe-inspiring, the one and only tourist-ridden Angkor Wat.


On the first day we decided we'd watch the sunset from atop one of the temple-mountains. Climbing up that old, old rock face, I could hardly help but have a few thoughts. First thought: Ancient Angkorians were obviously very fit.
And upon reaching the top, second thought: Holy cow that's a lot of tourists.
How am I supposed to have my epic Angkor Wat sunset experience with all these people here cramping my style? How am I supposed to take pictures of exotic landscapes with modern people in the way?

And it happened like that all week until it started to seem a little ridiculous. People were constantly stepping into each others' photos and then apologizing, like if Grandma saw your pictures from vacation and there was anybody in the picture she didn't know she would cut you out of her will. Or if your friends found out that there were actual tourists at Angkor Wat (never mind that you yourself are one) suddenly they would recognize you for the Lame Poser you really are.

So then I had a third thought to chew on for the rest of the week: Why do we love to pretend that we are the only tourists here?

I think part of it comes from Western individualism. We like to think of ourselves as independent, as pioneers. We don't like to be reminded that we are not the first, and definitely not the last, and most certainly not the most important individuals ever to see this amazing place.

And a (perhaps related) component is the desire for the exotic. We don't normally like to travel for long distances in cramped quarters only to see other people just like us. (Though of course, we do still want food that is palatable to us and hotels that are safe and clean and have pools like our hotels at home.)

But I think the most powerful reason is the sneaking suspicion that ancient peoples were so much cooler than people like us. I mean, what's the modern American equivalent of Angkor Wat? The White House? Lame.  The Mall of America? Ugh. Gag me with a spoon. And not only are modern structures not as cool, but they won't even last for half as long as Angkor already has—and they didn't even have the luxury of fork lifts back then! Yessiree, we tourists are major lame and ashamed of it.

But while that may be true, there's probably another side to the story. Looking at the heavy slabs of stone I was struck by the sheer amount of manpower required to build just one of the hundreds of monuments that populate the ancient capital of the Angkor kingdom. Who provided all that labor? Probably slaves, or serfs who were as good as slaves. Who could command such a great effort from his people? Only a despot.

King Jayawarman VII, despot extraordinaire

And even if their monuments are still standing, the fact remains that their empire eventually collapsed, just like every other empire since the invention of history. Just like modern Western hegemony will someday also kick the bucket.  

The urge to romanticize the ancient peoples of foreign lands is completely understandable. Life in the 21st century just feels so ordinary. But even if ancient Angkorians were really cool, I don't think that it means they were necessarily any better than us. They probably would have had a few things to teach us, for sure, but it's not like history has made zero progress since they disappeared from the stage. Things like women's rights and the 8-hour work day are only a few of the may perqs of being a modern-day human. 

So the next time you feel guilty for being a WASP or a suburbanite or some other totally lame, over-privileged segment of the population, just remember Angkor and realize that, the way history works, someone is always gaining power at the expense of others, and the only thing you have control over is what you do with the position you have been given in this mess. History is not your game to play, it's your own life that's yours to play.

So peace out!

They weren't any better than us

For Vietnamese New Year, Calah, Alicia, and I went to the great, the awe-inspiring, the one and only tourist-ridden Angkor Wat.


On the first day we decided we'd watch the sunset from atop one of the temple-mountains. Climbing up that old, old rock face, I could hardly help but have a few thoughts. First thought: Ancient Angkorians were obviously very fit.
And upon reaching the top, second thought: Holy cow that's a lot of tourists.
How am I supposed to have my epic Angkor Wat sunset experience with all these people here cramping my style? How am I supposed to take pictures of exotic landscapes with other white people who look just like me in the way?

And it happened like that all week until it started to seem a little ridiculous. People were constantly stepping into each others' photos and then apologizing, like if Grandma saw your pictures from vacation and there was anybody in the picture she didn't know she would cut you out of her will. Or if your friends found out that there were actual tourists at Angkor Wat (never mind that you yourself are one) suddenly they would recognize you for the Lame Poser you really are.

So then I had a third thought to chew on for the rest of the week: Why do we love to pretend that we are the only tourists here?

I think part of it comes from Western individualism. We like to think of ourselves as independent, as pioneers. We don't like to be reminded that we are not the first, and definitely not the last, and most certainly not the most important individuals ever to see this amazing place.

And a (perhaps related) component is the desire for the exotic. We don't normally like to travel for long distances in cramped quarters only to see other people just like us. (Though of course, we do still want food that is palatable to us and hotels that are safe and clean and have pools like our hotels at home.)

But I think the most powerful reason is the sneaking suspicion that ancient peoples were so much cooler than people like us. I mean, what's the modern American equivalent of Angkor Wat? The White House? Lame.  The Mall of America? Ugh. Gag me with a spoon. And not only are modern structures not as cool, but they won't even last for half as long as Angkor already has—and they didn't even have the luxury of fork lifts back then! Yessiree, we tourists are major lame and ashamed of it.

But while that may be true, there's probably another side to the story. Looking at the heavy slabs of stone I was struck by the sheer amount of manpower required to build just one of the hundreds of monuments that populate the ancient capital of the Angkor kingdom. Who provided all that labor? Probably slaves, or serfs who were as good as slaves. Who could command such a great effort from his people? Only a despot.

King Jayawarman VII, despot extraordinaire

And even if their monuments are still standing, the fact remains that their empire eventually collapsed, just like every other empire since the invention of history. Just like modern Western hegemony will someday also kick the bucket.  

The urge to romanticize the ancient peoples of foreign lands is completely understandable. Life in the 21st century just feels so ordinary. But even if ancient Angkorians were really cool, I don't think that it means they were necessarily any better than us. They probably would have had a few things to teach us, for sure, but it's not like history has made zero progress since they disappeared from the stage. Things like women's rights and the 8-hour work day are only a few of the may perqs of being a modern-day human. 

So the next time you feel guilty for being a WASP or a suburbanite or some other totally lame, over-privileged segment of the population, just remember Angkor and realize that, the way history works, someone is always gaining power at the expense of others, and the only thing you have control over is what you do with the position you have been given in this mess. History is not your game to play, it's your own life that's yours to play.

So peace out!