Archive for March 2008

Goodbye to Hanoi (for now)



One last day of frantic errand-running in Hanoi before I take the night train to Sapa and the northern mountains, where I'll be for at least a few days, maybe more. I'm still a bit exhausted from the last stretch of the CELTA course and then a fairly busy-but-fun weekend. On Saturday I went to the Perfume Pagoda, along with everybody else in Vietnam. I was warned it might be a bit crowded after the lunar new year, but had no idea how crowded that would actually be. In the two hours we were given to explore, it took me one about forty five minutes just to get to the base of these stairs from the cable car point, all the while sandwiched in to a massive, slowly-moving sea of fruit-and-fake-flower-bearing families, and then it was so crowded that I didn't have time to really explore the equally packed cave. It was a bit like being on the 6 train leaving work at rush hour, except everyone seemed to be in a good mood, and people were smiling and laughing as they pushed past you.

I don't think I've ever been in a crowd quite like that, and so it was a cool experience, though I think I'll have to go back to the Pagoda this summer when it'll be less crowded and I can actually see some pagodas.



Leaving the crowds; we got to and from the Pagoda via a deceptively small metal boat, in which the rowers managed to cram all sixteen or so people from our bus.

Anyway, I need to make some travel plans, see if I can get some visas for Laos and Cambodia, find a place in Hanoi where I can buy a new nose ring, figure out how to send mail home and clear out of my hotel room, among other things; there seems to be internet access in Sapa, but possibly not as much beyond there, so I will try and post more from the road as soon as I can.

Photo for the Day




Flowers for sale in the street market near my guesthouse.

The goal this week (along with finishing the CELTA course) is to post a new photo every day of Hanoi. Right.

Temple of Literature







School has been so busy that I haven't had the chance to see much of Hanoi yet, despite having been here for over three weeks now; but today was too nice of a day to spend entirely inside.

Marble Mountain





A few photos from one of the Marble Mountains (again, from a few weeks ago), which are a series of towering limestone outcrops covered in trees, vines, 10th century shrines and precariously vast caves.

 



Left to right: Dad and his favorite proverb; a temple roof; Maggie and Dad take on the 300+ stairs up the mountain.

 





Shiva in Vietnam?





 



Caves! Left to right, a goddess carved into the wall of a cave; the entrance to a the cave that had the hole that led to the top of the mountain (see below).





The entrance and inside of one of the larger caves, which housed several shrines and a giant Buddha carved high up on the wall.



See that hole in the cave ceiling illuminating the slippery rockface? I climbed through that on to the top of the mountain NO BIG DEAL.



Halong Bay on Land?




On Sunday, I took a brief break from lesson planning and the Present Perfect Continuous tense to take a day trip to Tam Coc, which is advertised as "Halong Bay on land," which confused me, until I got there (this ... might make more sense if I had posted photos of Halong Bay, which I promise I will soon). Tam Coc means "three caves" (I think?) and a trip there consists of getting into a tiny boat and being rowed through three caves that straddle the river. Most of the boats are rowed by women, and - like the real Halong Bay - it is inevitably quite touristy, with boats of tourists occasionally clacking into one another, but the entire area is astonishingly beautiful.



These guys were acting as the boat traffic directors on top of this narrow passageway.



Maggie, this photo is especially for you.

 
 









Above: a few more of the river and the palace ruins at Hoa Lu.

CELTA training - halfway mark!


 
 


 








Friday was our last day practicing on the volunteer Elementary-level students, and I'm really going to miss them; I didn't get a chance to take photos of every single student of the seventeen who were nice enough to let us practice on them, but working with all of them has been the high point of life in Vietnam so far, and even if the CELTA class itself is extremely challenging, I really, really enjoyed getting the chance to hang out with the students in a less rigid setting for a bit. For the last hour of class, everyone broke out their cameras or cell phones, and there was a mad flurry of photo-taking and peace-sign-flashing, along with cake and some random party games (have you ever seen a roomful of adults play musical chairs? They do not mess around). Anyway, goodbye practice students! Thank you for making my first two weeks of practice-teaching so much fun.

Anyway, I'm taking a slight break from the intense pace of constant studying/practice teaching, and am going on a daytrip somewhere south tomorrow to see ruins and caves and possibly a river; I'm sorry not to be posting more (I had it in my head that I was going to post a photo a day. A new photo! Every day! Hahaha) but I'm literally at school from around morning till night and am too tired to do anything except crawl into bed and watch iTunes episodes of Jericho, which I have gotten weirdly addicted to lately. Which probably doesn't make me sound quite as much like the intrepid jet-setting free spirit I wish I was, but oh, well. While I'm at it, I'm going to blame the fact that I look haggard and disheveled in all of these photos on the fact that I'm going on about fours of sleep and still not used to the heat and humidity here (though you'll notice the students all look bright and sparkly and are wearing jackets.)

So anyway, that's here, more or less; I haven't had the chance to just hang out in Hanoi as much as I would like, but I am trying to venture out at least a little every evening and explore the streets around my guesthouse; it was also my goal this week to stop relying on restaurants and try some of the street kitchens around here, which has been a lot of fun; I think I found my new favorite pho place yesterday morning around 6:30 am when the xe om guy randomly dropped me off a block away from my school - it's actually good enough to make me consider waking up ridiculously early more often.

Anyway; I will try to post more soon, though I think the photo-a-day thing may have to wait till I actually have the time to do things other than shower, which I think everyone can agree is a good thing.

Bad grammar and English-teaching, all in one post!



Sunset over rice fields on the drive from Ha Long Bay to Hanoi.


Hanoi things I am used to/ getting used to/ still flummoxed by every time I think I'm used to:
  • Teaching - I don't think I'm any good at this yet, but we have the best practice students in the world, so it'd be impossible not to love working with them. And I can (sort of) public speak now, or at least, I can stand up and talk without going into the fight-or-flight panic response that so characterized about 80% of grad school, so, hey, progress?
  • Crossing the street. I think the trick lies in walking purposefully and slowly enough that oncoming traffic - and there is always oncoming traffic in its many and sundry forms - can predict where you're headed and swerve/honk/slow accordingly. This goes against every fiber in my being, which is screaming at me to run as fast as I can if not faster so I can stop staring death in the eyes, but I think I'm getting better at it. And if that fails, just glom yourself on to the nearest clump of equally-nervous looking tourists and then you can all walk together, like a big, happy, cowardly family.
  • Showering. In the bathroom, not in a shower; there's just a nozzle above the sink and the water goes everywhere. I always feel like I'm doing something wrong, getting water all over everything, but it's really kind of fun as long as I remember to move the towels first.
These bullets probably don't make it clear how much I love being here (and I really, really do love being here, even if I do whine about trying to cross the street more than may seem reasonable), but a week of intense school after many, many weeks of indolent Top-Model watching and/or aimless wandering around various foreign cities means that last week kicked my butt, so I am going to go forage for food and then enjoy a shamelessly lazy night of watching Scrubs on my laptop before the next week of bootcamp (er, school) begins.

xe om!





No photos at the moment, unfortunately, so instead please enjoy this video (which I did not take; credits are at the end) of a xe om ride through Hanoi.

Hoi An, Part Two



A few more photos of Hoi An; above, the covered market goes on all day (this photo is from the same street corner as the market photo above) and sells everything from raw fish to pearl necklaces to fresh flowers.



Also, hats.



And beans! Who doesn't like beans?



The other thing readily available in Hoi An is custom made clothes, which you can get at about 200 shops lining the main streets (and you can read about in far much more detail elsewhere on the internet).



Mr. Xe's, where my sister got a cute dress (similar to the one at the far left, in a different fabric).



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