Vietnam Vacation, Pt. l: Ho Chi Minh City, Mui Ne, and Nha Trang

The summer in Cambodia is LONG, folks. For the first part of it, I was busy with my library project: completing the world map (which took about three weeks), and then working on the inside of the building with my three student helpers. We've managed to get a lot done in the month or so devoted to it: we've cleared the space of clutter, “thrown out” (or rather, shoved into a separate room so I can pretend they don't exist) old books, maps, an alarming number of dusty portraits of the king and company, a collection of musty sombreros (I have no idea for what purpose these were being stored in the library… unless there was some sort of Spanish club or weekly fiesta night of which I'd unfortunately been left unaware), and much more.

We painted the walls, windows, and bookshelves, and began painting the benches. After much hard work and being told repeatedly by tongue-clicking mings (aunts) at the market that I was “more beautiful before [this project started],” I knew a vacation was in order. My boyfriend Garrett, fellow PCV and human extraordinaire, and I made plans to go to Vietnam.

To begin our journey, Garrett and I met in Phnom Penh to travel to Takeo to see the K6s (new group of volunteers) swearing-in ceremony, which marked the end of their training and the beginning of their lives as Peace Corps volunteers. It was pretty cool to see things “as they were” (when I was still in training) but also "as they are now" as I rode my bike into my training village with a widened perspective to visit my previous family, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year! It was pretty fantastic to see my bong s’rey (big sister) again after so long and to chat with her so much easier than I could during training when my Khmer was still just a tiny bird in the process of hatching from its egg (can that be a real metaphor? I believe I just made it so).

After the ceremony, Garrett and I traveled back to Phnom Penh to catch a bus to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), also known as Saigon. The bus ride was only six hours! That’s a shorter amount of time than it takes to get to Siem Riep. Anyway, since I think journeys of this magnitude are better expressed visually, I’ll jump right in with maps and pictures to narrate through those.

The total distance we traveled by plane, train, and automobile was 20+ hours. As you can see, Vietnam is a REALLY LONG country! It’s about 40 hours by bus/train from top to bottom. Because of its length, the scenery is constantly changing from place to place, which made bus and train rides particularly engaging.

So we begin in HCMC with what else? Food. Since I’d heard that Vietnamese food is “like Khmer food but way better” I was excited to try it! Here we have a sticky rice cake with banana, cut up into pieces with scissors in front of you and topped with tapioca and sesame seeds before serving. SO GOOD.

NOM.

While in HCMC, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels- the infamous tunnels with which the Viet Cong won the war through surprise attacks on American soldiers and navigation by military personnel and transport of goods. A typical entrance to the tunnels looks like this: a definite challenge to squeeze through for your average well-fed American.

Booby traps were used to capture American soldiers in a pretty gruesome manner: spearing them with metal rods as they fell into a foliage-covered pit, or puncturing legs and other extremities with rotor-till like metal spokes, thus preventing any possibility of escape.

Our guide prefaced this display by saying, “The Viet Cong didn’t actually wear uniforms.” I’m not sure who decided it’d be an authentic representation to have these soldiers displayed around a fire, cozily writing letters home and sipping out of flasks when that was not the reality at all. The Viet Cong often spent weeks and even months in the tunnels, which were cramped and airless, as I can attest from having crawled through one myself, hunched over and trying not to head-butt the person in front of me’s rear-end.

Here we have a preserved tank, which tourists are encouraged to climb up onto and explore… Immediately after this display, our group was led to a firing range where visitors can gear up and shoot AK47s, pistols, or rocket launchers to their hearts’ content… This seemed a morally regrettable juxtaposition to me, and just a tad reprehensible at a site on which decades of suffering and fear plagued the people who were now encouraging visitors to release still more artillery fire into the mountainside. This, in addition to the “pleasure house swimming pool” made me a little weary of this historical site and left me with mixed feelings with regards to its effect.

This same day, we visited the War Remnants Museum which proved, as expected, an extremely powerful and poignant historical site. While the images I saw wandering through the museum are not soon to leave my head, I appreciated seeing what the American War (as it is referred in Vietnam) did to the Vietnamese people: how much destruction it caused and how little has been done in years following to account for it. It’s sad and disappointing on the part of Americans, but also inspiring to see the scale of Vietnam's recovery from rubble in just a few short decades and to see how forgiving its people seem to be.

Onward from HCMC! Next on our itinerary was Mui Ne, a small beach town on the southeastern coast, just five hours away by bus 

Mui Ne is renowned for its red sand dunes, which extend from the landscape opposite the coast. We barely ventured into the dunes but they were breathtaking nonetheless. Sunset is definitely the time to go since the evolving colors of the sky are reflected by similar hues in sand and water.

Possibly my favorite picture from the trip

  Or maybe this one

No, no- it’s gotta be this one

See? We can be normal sometimes

Said to Garrett later of this picture: “I don’t know why I’ve got my leg popped like that. It’s just something I’ve seen people do.”

We had some amazing seafood while we were there!

From Mui Ne we continued up the southern coast to Nha Trang (pronounced “Nyah Chahng) by bus- another five-hour drive.

The coast of Nha Trang is more varied than that of Mui Ne since there are mountains in the background, however there are also more tourists so Mui Ne still holds a more favored spot in my heart.

I was so glad the hotel thought to remind me not to stick my electric plugs into glasses of water. I’m always forgetting that!

PHỚ ! This is a breakfast staple in Vietnam, and for good reason: thick strands of white noodles bathe in a savory broth that’s topped with thin slices of beef and garnished with your choice of blanched and steaming bean sprouts, mint leaves, lettuce, garlic, chili sauce, and several other unidentifiable but lip-smacking sauces. Anthony Bourdain provides a pretty good description of phở' here (bottom of 80-82). Be warned: it’s blush-worthy.

More seafood! Prawns and lobster on the beach

This lucky pup and his friend got our leftovers...

How could they not? :)

Vietnamese night markets are good for diversion since there are always great finds to stumble upon, like this E.T. turtle.

Beyond the curious consumer goods there are plenty of typos to revere

As well as yummy, cheap food to try at different small eateries set up on the sides of the market. This was a favorite of mine: garlicky scallops with chives and peanuts.

And another favorite: beans in dessert! (my favorite food group. FYI). This yumminess is called xôi chè and is a typical Vietnamese dessert comprising various warm puddings with jellied lotus nuts, mung and broad beans, and mixed with coconut shreds, finally topped with a smattering of tapioca, sweet and condensed milk, and ice shavings. It was delicious and for 10,000 dong ($0.49), couldn’t be beat.

This has already been a very long entry so I’ll stop myself here and continue my story in another post, where our two wily protagonists continue their journey with an overnight train ride to a distant land on the southern-most edge of Vietnam's central highlands to a place called Hoi An. A chance encounter with another Peace Corps Volunteer? A thrilling novel called Badger, Beano and the Magic Mushroom? Public urination and a ten-day imprisonment in a Vietnamese incarceration center? Read on to find out which of these tales proves true...

Completed World Map

Early last week my students and I completed our world map! It took us some weeks and we had to adapt our plan several times as we went, but when all's said and done it was well worth our blood (blood was, in fact, shed, notably by my vice school director while helping me pry open a tub of paint with my pocket knife...), sweat, and tears (thanks to my dear, patient friend Diana for tolerating my increasingly frantic phone calls as my intended plans went awry). All of the hard work has paid off now that there's a tangible result on the wall, though, where before there was nothing but peeling yellow paint. I'm so proud of my students and the work they put into this project. Here are a few snapshots of how the process went.

After we drew the grid on the wall we started penciling in the countries.

We used "cheat sheets" with countries already drawn and labeled to complete sections of the map. Each sheet had a certain number of boxes over which countries were spread, so transferring them to the map was fairly straight-forward since we just blew the dimensions up a bit to fit our grid.

When we'd sketched all the countries with pencil, we started filling them in with paint. I remember how gratifying it felt to see a little color on the map after days of pencil grey gridlines on a bare blue background.

Then we outlined and labeled the countries with black marker. A few curious country names were beget such as "Irag" and "Myannar" but mostly the students labeled everything correctly and fastidiously, putting their routines of fussy notebook management (protractor to underline important words, different colored pens for organizational purposes, correction pens for every misplaced dot of an "i") to work.

Ongka khnyom! My organization :)

And of course, when all was said and done, we left our mark.

My four most dedicated volunteers in front of the completed map

A few things have changed since these final pictures were taken: the plastic covering we nailed to the wall to protect the map is no longer there. This location is very windy (something I didn't foresee being a problem when we first started) so the covering came off as wind billowed under the plastic and pried the nails off the wall. We applied a sealant instead, which gives the map a nice sheen and emboldens the colors.

... And that's that! We're now working on the inside of the library and are in the midst of painting: a bright shade of green my helpers picked out at a home supply store near my market. The four girls pictured above are my most resolute right-hand women, faithfully showing up every day, morning and afternoon, even after weeks of hard work. I would not be nearly as far as I am on this project if it weren't for their help. That's the news for now! Stay tuned for pictures of the inside as soon as things are in a lesser state of chaos. :)

Let's Reminisce

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my being in Cambodia. It hardly seems possible I’ve been here that long, and that I haven’t been here longer.

I still remember as vividly as if it was yesterday...

Fretting over what to pack, needing help from friends to be able to start the process. Realizing at 3:00 a.m. the night before I left I didn’t have a TSA lock and having to go to Wal-Mart to get one. The dazed feeling that came over me on entering the automatic doors and being hit with fluorescent lights, seeing aisles upon aisles of stuff, enough to overwhelm the senses even at that quiet hour.

The faces of my fellow volunteers, just as shell-shocked and uncertain as I was, when we met in San Francisco for “staging” (the initial meeting before leaving for your country of service), unsure of myself and what I was doing—where this adventure would take me and whether or not I was ready for it. Little did I know that some of these wonderfully mixed-up people would become my best friends here, more like family than I could have ever imagined.

The giddy feelings of excitement and terror experienced in tandem as our plane lifted from the tarmac and into the unknown, our hands reaching toward the sky like it was an amusement park ride.

Those first days in Phnom Penh for orientation-- hours upon hours of presentations. Hearing words like “doxycyclin” and “mosquito racket” and beginning to assign them tangible meaning.

Throughout training I recall...

Meeting my host sister at the wat in Takeo, worrying she wouldn’t like me and wanting to break the silence but being unable to as we sat with our legs off to the side nibbling on fried cakes and fruit, and trusting she would understand through my good intentions and/or ESP how much I wanted nothing more or less than for us to be best friends.

Trying way too hard at dinner to make conversation about everything, and somehow endearing my family in the process (or maybe it was pity I was engendering): “How do you say ‘road’ in Khmer?’ ‘How do you say ‘soy sauce’ in Khmer?” … Bowl after bowl of rice: white, brown, and sometimes black. Sweet, savory, dried, boiled… Rice with banana, rice with pumpkin, rice with peanut butter, rice with congealed blood, rice with ants...

And of course, from the past ten months at site I will never forget...

Feeling a sense of purpose when I make my host dad laugh, his hard-shell exterior breaking as he hoots gleefully from his gut.

Learning from my host family. Having preconceptions and assumptions continually shattered every time I reach out and engage them. Being continuously surprised by how much they know about things many Americans still stick their heads in the sand about (like climate change, for example).

Sitting on a rice-mat hammock in silence, comfortably, listening to the wind rustle the trees and watching the cars and motos pass, not rushing the moment but being able to contentedly mingle with it.

Meeting my friend Ohn at the market. Wondering to myself who this loud, boisterous Khmer woman was and accepting an invitation to have lunch at her house because she spoke so fast I hardly knew what I was agreeing to... and in the process opening the door to a whirlwind year of fast talking, barely intelligible phone calls, lunches of peanut butter and honey “sandweech” (of which her immediate appreciation solidified for me that Ohn and I were meant to be friends). Afternoons of helping to make “noam” (cakes) that Ohn sells at the market. Absorbing over time how to properly roll out the dough for noampia (peanut-filled cake) or wrap a som jay (rice cake with banana) with banana leaves and tie off with rattan stems. Laughing about nothing and everything with Ohn and feeling a sense of belonging when I am at her house.

The feeling of accomplishment when I discovered my Khmer was good enough to hold a steady conversation, and then the immediate realization of how much I still didn’t know.

~~~~

This year has not been easy. It’s been an up and down roller coaster of unprecedented challenges and curveballs I’ve attempted to fumble my way through. Projects have gone awry or taken forever to get off the ground, co-teachers have disappointed me and left me wondering why I’m here. But more often than not, people here have surprised me with their kindness and willingness to welcome me into their homes and lives.

My students who seek to improve their skills despite the corruption and favoritism around them, the countless children for whom it is the highlight of their day to say “hello!” to the foreigner as I pass on my bike, the amazing people here who don’t let awful living conditions and minimal resources weaken their spirit, and of course, the 56 other volunteers from my group who are endeavoring on this crazy, unforgettable journey with me: thank you. I look forward to another year full of adventure, mishap, disappointments, and successes that are sure to come here in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Here are a few pictures to commemorate the journey, some of which you've seen before. 

Arriving in country: just look at that naïve barang...

 

My training host family. These people provided the warmest introduction I could have had to what my life would be like here for two years.

Takeo! Swearing-in ceremony with volunteers from my training village. I'll never forget those two months during which lasting friendships started to form.

Making som jay (sticky rice with coconut and banana) at Ohn's house.

Ohn's mom, showing me how to wrap the stem around the banana leaf without all the uncooked rice spilling out (you can guess what prompted that)

Friendly kid at the wat near my house I went to with my host mom during site visit

At Waichika's wedding in Phnom Penh. Waichika lived with my family for several months before she got married, in the room right next to mine on the top floor, and was a night nurse at the referral hospital where my host dad works.

With Ohn and two yays (grandmas) at a party.

:) Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to relaying more of my adventures and encounters to you over the course of this next year.

General Update and Library Happenings

Hello! I realize it’s been a while since I last posted, so I’ll relay the top five highlights of what I’ve been up to in the meantime:

1) I went to some friends’ Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World: a leadership camp that emphasizes empowering young Khmer women) in Kampong Cham, the province just north of me. We used a stencil to spray-paint shirts (Note: it is extremely difficult to keep black spray paint in one place. More often than not you will end up with gummy fingerprints all over the shirt.)

2) I helped a friend move in Phnom Penh. Despite looking like my legs are being crushed by these trunks, I was actually fairly comfortable.

3) I cooked lentil burgers, sweet potato chips, and lemonade in honor of 'Merica day

(Do you love your country as much as this girl does right now? I doubt it)

4) I ate brie from a wheel twice the size of my head while looking extremely awkward and out of place at a fancy Embassy event I never should have been allowed into

5) I took advantage of this excessively large bathroom to tap dance.

~~~~

...And that brings us to the present! After my library project’s initial burst of productivity things hit a brick wall. My school director asked me to wait to start the project until students had returned the books they’d borrowed over the course of the year. This meant not starting the project until after school was out, when students would be busy with private classes and/or helping their families at home, so I decided to give out a survey during the final weeks of school to gauge student interest and availability.

This proved futile for two reasons: first, because at that time students still didn’t know when they’d have free time (private class schedules had yet to be determined), and second, because I told them the wrong start date for the project. Heh. I told everyone I talked to we would begin working in earnest on July 2^nd, all the while forgetting I’d been invited to sing at an Embassy event for the 4th of July and would have to be in Phnom Penh on that date. So I sheepishly called my school director to ask if he could please mitigate my mistake during the morning announcements. At this point I was pretty sure no one was going to show up to help the spazzy foreigner teacher, but my students surprised me...

Four students were waiting for me when I came to the school on the day we agreed to start on. I asked them to write down a few of their thoughts on the map project (Do you think this a good idea? Do you think it is important to know where other countries in the world are? How can we see if we have learned more about geography than we knew before doing this project?)

They filled in a blank map with the countries they could name without looking.

One or two students took the reigns on the labeling, but most of them contributed

They identified about 30 countries. Some of them were labeled incorrectly or spelled wrong but I was impressed with how many they could name (world geography is not emphasized in Cambodian schools). We’ll do this exercise again after the map is completed and hopefully they’ll know a lot more than they do now.

Before painting.

We measured our space, taped it off, and lay down the base of ocean blue. The coordinates for any World Map Project are double the length as the height. Ours is 140 cm high by 280 cm wide.

The fruits of our labor: a (not-so) perfectly squared rectangle, in all its shining glory. I actually got a swell of pride when I came back to the school the morning after we’d completed this to do some touch-ups. Just a rectangle, yes, but my rectangle!

My boc or Khmer host dad (far right) has shown up multiple times to help. His curiosity was likely piqued when he first saw me rushing to the school, huffing and puffing down the stairs carrying and almost dropping a tub of paint, a yard-stick, rollers, and pencils, looking utterly confused and mumbling about having napped too long. My boc is a bit of an imposing character (the first day he showed up he stood on the margins with his arms folded, pointing out to the students what they were doing wrong), but it’s also been nice having him around to spot things I might otherwise overlook (he saved the horizontal lines of the grid from going all wonky, for example).

...And that's the news for now! In the coming days I'll sketch the vertical lines of the grid, and then start sketching individual countries. Send good thoughts my way that students continue to show up to help! Thanks for tuning in, and for your support.

TEDx Conference in Phnom Penh

Last Saturday was the second year in a row of the TEDxPhnom Penh conference. Organized by an American who has been living in Phnom Penh for the past seven years, this conference brought together artists, experts in technology, educators, and even a princess for a day-long symposium on the fast-changing scenes in Cambodia and their implications for the country's future. The theme of the conference was “Inspirations. Aspirations. Generations,” and speakers came from all over the world to share their stories and ideas. I met up with several other volunteers to go to the conference and learned a lot that I hope will help me throughout my service and beyond.

One idea I found particularly striking both because of its familiarity as well as its obscurity is that as educators it is our goal, first and foremost, to inspire. "Why" we are teaching should be guiding "what" we are teaching about. It is easy for me to lose sight of this when I am required to teach out of a book that is slightly disappointing at best and detestable at worst (EFC, or English for Cambodia, the current required text for all Cambodian classrooms). Despite this and other challenges, I think it is still possible for me to keep this idea present in my teaching ethic, and also in my relationships with my co-teachers.

A great thing about TEDx conferences is that they are born of the particular environment in which they are held, so with that come stories unique to the place. Sovathana Nana, a 25-year-old Khmer woman who has had to deal with more in her 25 years than most of us have to in a lifetime, shared hers. Typical of so many Khmer people, Nana grew up in an impoverished household with many mouths to feed and not enough food to feed them. She moved to Phnom Penh to find work so she could send money home to her family. She has worked as a counselor and interpreter, a radio presenter, led a local youth volunteer organization, and worked as a DJ and a model in her spare time... She is now the main source of income for her family and supports her siblings' private education.

Despite all the negativity that could have resulted from the many challenges her life has presented, Nana has chosen to see all of these aspects in a positive light. Because of this, she has actively sought out opportunities to improve her situation, instead of letting it weigh her down. It was inspiring to see someone who has chosen not to see her problems as hindrances and burdens, but as motivators for change and action.

Princess Norodom Soma introducing a speaker. She left Cambodia with her family during the Khmer Rouge and spent 35 years in the U.S. before returning to her homeland to learn about its culture and history.

Display from Khmer artist Loven Ramos, who moved to Manila after his parents refused to support him through a fine arts education in Cambodia. He's now returned to create art in Siem Riep and promote an understanding of art not just as decoration, but as a representation of an artist's worldview.

The talks were conducted primarily in English, but offered some in Khmer too, and had translations available throughout. Here Tep Livina, a former gangster turned academic, explains why highlighting the "why" should be more of a focus in education.

A few links to highlights from the event, and relevant information:

About the conference: http://tedxphnompenh.com/about/

Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

A note on censored content from the conference: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012061156729/National-news/rated-x-for-content.html

That's the news for now! More soon.