Time Flies in the Tropics

I have tapped into an incredible reader audience here in my Hoi An hammock. My stumbling scribe act goes over great since none of my neighbors can string an English sentence together and my Vietnamese is still at a childlike murmur. It’s the perfect readership. They scan and smile. No critics. Being a grandfather (ang noi) as well as a journalist (nha boa) is working well in a culture where older people and creativity are cherished.

View from my house

I even did well during the recent flood as no less than 4 neighbors brought me food. Now there is no room in my refrigerator. How can one gain weight on rice and vegetables? Down them with three beers and follow that up with a dessert of a delicious Vietnamese ice cream. I will wait another day to traverse the water. Would you like some chicken and rice? How about a hunk of pickled papaya?

Cua Dai (pronounced good eye) is a bustling street that takes one to Cua Dai Beach.

The Lights are on but no one’s home. Coffee houses seem always empty but blaring, mindless digital bass music blasts into the streets anyway.
Ba Le Market is fun. The lady vendors laugh at my bad Vietnamese but I usually get a lower price because I try to speak to them in their own language.

Sunshine! (Nang!) Even the crabby lady at the mini mart smiled at me.
Finally I get to go to the beach, a 4 km ride on my bicycle.

Toi or I, me…was not used much in Vietnam until the 40s. For 1000 years the strict concept of the individual yielded to the concept of village. It is used today but people still try to get around it when talking abut themselves.

The traffic is absurd. My bicycle is great for long stretches, back streets, beach lanes and after 9 pm when everyone goes home. Often riding in the Old Town or along busy roadways is like negotiating Red Mountain Pass in July or August.

In this vein I neglected to add that the rebar-wielding grandmother from the Use Your Noodle article was texting her son and humming April in Paris when she narrowly (in my Western estimation) missed running into me on Li Thai Do Street.

A palmetto bug runs across the floor. My machete is upstairs. I hope he doesn’t see me. He looks like he lifts cockroach weights. Look at those biceps.

Today I will pay a visit to my Friend Anh Ming over on Tran Nhon Tong Street. He is always trying to show me rooms for rent in his homestay even though he has been to my house. Mr Ming is the nosiest person in Central Vietnam and Western Laos. I fully enjoy making faces of disapproval when he interrogates me. If he persists I start drinking my beer fast in preparation to leave and he settles down.

Vietnamese cuisine some of the best in the world

Sample Dialogue:
Mr Ming: You send people here to stay at my guesthouse.
Me: Well if the opportunity presents itself I will.
Mr Ming: You send to Mr. Ming
Me: I grasp your concept Mr. Ming.
Mr Ming: Air conditioning, Wi-FI, breakfast.

Mr Ming is a gardener/cook/a virtual walking multi-media salesman. Mrs Ming runs the front desk and all the cash. She is extremely pleasant to me and generally ignores Mr Ming. She has offered to take me to the market so I get a Vietnamese price on such things as eggs and toilet paper. She is quite sincere in her offer, but quite nosey too.

Their son, Dung, fixes baby motorcycles. He never asks me anything which is much preferable to the Ming grilling. Mrs. Ting smiles all the time and brings me noodles while rolling her eyes at her husband. Next time I will bring her a rose.

Well then…I’ve been a few spots on several continents but I have never been treated so well as on a little front porch bar on the river. I am the only foreignor that goes there. The only pretense there is that the patrons stare at you if you drink beer from the bottle and not from a glass. “Who brought you up? The dog?”

An Bang Beach palapas

I ask for a glass. Squid salad and beers in this populist’s Vietnamese language school. Smiles and pigeon English are flying all over my table. I started out solo near the street but now I’m set back in a more profound spot against the wall, chatting away to who knows what end. After three weeks I have three adopted grandmothers, two daughters, several good male acquaintances and a host of women mothering me.

My local was flooded recently and from the mud that hangs along the riverbank I think they got a heavy dose of what kept me inside my house for two days. I see people cleaning debris from the river just because they feel a need to do so. Just a little. Everyone does just a bit of pulling and collecting and bagging the trash that was absconded by the bad ol’ river. Sounds almost communal, even tribal.

– Melvin O’Toole