After Sunset (slash During Sunset) Fun in Phang-nga

As I have mentioned before, most of my nights consist of cooking and eating. If I'm teaching until 7, sometimes I'll go to the market in town for dinner where my very Dickensian meal consists of boiled rice, boiled chicken, cucumber slices, a strange (but weirdly OK-tasting) black "herbal" cube, and a small bowl of broth with a slice of squash at the bottom (so good, I have been trying to steal a glance at the chef/apron-ed man as he cooks but I can't figure out what's in it). The location of this gastronomic adventure is a wall-less shack with an aluminum roof under which picnic tables and brightly colored plastic chairs reside. Despite its rather bland description, the meal is actually delicious and the chicken/rice is flavored with a plethora of available sauces that range from the typically Thai, spicy chili sauce to a thicker brown sauce with what appears to be onions and peppers sliced and diced in it.

After eating, I usually head back to my house where this is a typical scene on my porch from about 9 pm until bed. [Aside/footnote: there is a rooster that lives next door who has taken it upon him/herself to begin crowing before sunrise (circa 4 am) but simply crowing is not enough for this rooster (who is not, I note, crowing at the break of day as Bob Dylan and others have claimed). He engages in a 4 am onward (as in through the afternoon) crowing dialogue/crow-off between a neighbouring, slightly further away rooster. The entire thing is mind-bogglingly annoying and now I have to lock my windows before I go to bed and thus deny myself the pleasure of falling asleep to the wind and the buzzing of insects.]

Candles propped up by various bottles/coral around the porch provide excellent reading light. The curly thing in the lower R-hand corner is the best anti-mosquito device of all time. It looks like one of those hippie incense things (and it sort of is) but the scent repels mosquitoes and flies and every other sort of small winged thing that makes incredibly annoying and distracting-while-reading noises.

One of the many candle-in-coral things around the porch.

When nights of reading and sitting on my porch don't suffice, sometimes I invite over two lads for a game of Risk and sitting on my porch...

Sometimes we're so enthused and energized by our (often 3 hour long) game of Risk that we decide to be adventurous and social and go to Stefan's Pizza Bar, which sometimes doesn't have pizza and isn't really a bar as much as it is a place filled with flashing lights, techno music, a fake Christmas tree decorated with small American flags, and a pool table.

When Stefan, a loud German who speaks five different languages (sometimes simultaneously) and is almost by necessity of his profession constantly intoxicated, has cheese and therefore can make pizza he begins the night by playing jazz or the Latin Grammy's podcast (no joke). After he has actually created and served the pizza, the music takes becomes slightly more aggressively tempoed (think hip Jazzercise music). Once we have finished eating and begun to play Connect Four (or pool) he puts on the flashing, dotted lights that are bright green and give the inside of the bar/restaurant/area the aura of being inside one of those nauseating spaceship Gravitron rides at amusement parks.

The more low key alternative to Stefan's is the Muslim fishing village which is a 20+ minute motorbike drive from Phang-nga. The road itself is beautiful (once you get off the absolutely terrifying highway of speeding trucks and cars and buses who drive like life is a MarioKart game).

The walkway to the fishing village is usually swathed in golden light when we drive up (the sunsets are half of the reason to eat dinner here) and there are the ubiquitous children playing in the afternoon sun.

To get to the fishing village itself one must walk over a long, narrow bridge whose wooden planks extend throughout the village and provide somewhat precarious walkways. When the ebbs and flows of the water are most noticeable and extreme, the bottom of the sea is revealed and with the mud comes a copious amount of what appears to be the claw of a crab but living on its own.

The restaurant of choice is located at the very end of the walkway and has recently expanded to the both sides of the walkway such that the new sitting area is directly over the muddy and expansive flat of the ocean floor. The scenery is spectacular. Especially as the sun begins its downward trajectory...

(this picture was not enhanced at all...the sun literally sent beams of light into the sky)

The meal itself almost equals the scenery is awesomeness. The menu is all in Thai  but I've figured out how to ask for exactly what I want which is bplaa tord (a whole fried fish, head and all, with garlic) and boo or gung (crab or shrimp, respectively) steamed. Everything is caught that day and sometimes you see fishermen bringing up tubs of live crabs and then ten minutes later bringing you a plate of them freshly steamed.



Sports Day

I have mentioned before that Thailand is a place in which parades and festivals are paramount. The first week of 2011 consisted of Sports Day, an event with which I had become familiar due solely to the week of classes that were cancelled leading up to it to facilitate the most practice possible. This practice took place somewhere other than the school’s field (and by “field” I mean the sparsely grassed rectangle that serves as no athletic purpose other than existing as the land over which the children run in a line that is best described as a “Rover, Red Rover, Let ____ Over” formation). Sports Day, in my mind's image of it, was akin to the Field Day of my middle and high school era, a time of relay races and sunblock sweat and fluorescent popsicles in Tylenol flavors. I was secretly excited to witness this Day of Sports, as the athletics I had witnessed at Anuban consisted solely of people tying knots around trees and the aforementioned multi-person line running from one side to the other of the field. The other athletic endeavor in which I had seen Anuban children was what appeared to be a lot of miniature people in bright pink dancing around the field...

Three flights of stairs down and a closer inspection revealed the revelers to be hula hooping.

The only glimpse of Sports Day to which I was privy before THE Sports Day (January 6^th, 2011) was the practice marching band that paraded around the school’s buildings on the 5^th. “Wow,” I thought. “That is so cute, a real live marching band! I thought those only existed at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and in The Music Man.” I imagined children in Little Drummer Boy outfits wielding large golden drums and recorders.

What I did not imagine was a couple of things, the first being that this marching band was actually a parade of every single student at the school that began at one end of Phang-nga at 8 in the morning and proceeded to the town’s stadium (at which Sports Day was being held) and lasted for three hours. I also did not imagine that the costumes in which these primary schoolers were dressed would be of quite this caliber of sparkle and Wild Wild West meets Vegas showgirl….

(the kindergarten class)

After I got over the initial shock of overloaded hair gel and shimmer (and I thought lower school gymnastics involved a lot of hairspray and clips), I realized that there were also some very interesting shoe choices…

and also that not all costumes are created equal (these are the "cool hat" team...?).

The best part of the parade, however, was the instruments. They were unlike those I had been expecting, to say the least…is that a keyboard with a plastic straw? I think so.

After the many hours of parading and marching bands, the real show began. I was on the yellow team and I spent the majority of the day cheering (by which I mean yelling "WOOOO!!" very loudly) and I was at the very top of the bleachers so I couldn't really understand what was going on on center stage...not that it really would have helped to be any closer to the action. See picture.

I also figured out what all the pre-Sports Day hula hooping was for...

It was actually the cutest thing I have ever seen and I now understand that to be a good hula hooper, or even to be able to hula hoop at all (which I cannot), one must start from an early age. I'll add that to the list of Things I Wish I'd Known When I was in Kindergarten right next to spilling red nail polish all over your mom's bathtub is not the end of the world (sorry, Mom).

The rest of Sports Day consisted of teams of five or six people running relays around the field. It was athletic, I'll give them that, but the runners still had all of their makeup and hair gel and sparkles (and fishnets) on. 

Vietnam Part 2: Find a Wife, Build a House, Have Buffalo

On the afternoon of the 27th, we bade farewell to Con Dao and hopped on the slightly terrifying plane back to Ho Chi Minh City (read: sitting next to the propeller on a 15 row plane is not recommended or enjoyable). The next morning we woke up early and had an unbelievably gluttonous feast at the hotel's breakfast buffet with Mr and Mrs Thomas. Twas a cornucopia of deli meats (smoked salmon!) and fruit shakes (mango and ginger! who knew!) and bread (whole wheat/non-cotton-white-food!!). Following our morning feast, we headed to a tailor near the hotel where Steve and I got a shirt and dress made (respectively).

After impersonating Nic Cage and wondering whether our new silk duds would, in fact, be silk and wearable, we went on a historic tour of Saigon (as everyone there calls the city) which included a stop at Henry Cabot Lodge's house...

(L-R): tour guide whose English mainly comprised hysterical laughter, the man who currently owns/lives in Henry Cabot Lodge's cribs, the only two people in the picture who are happy to be there

Upon leaving Cabot's lodge (sorry, I couldn't help myself) we saw a man sharpening knives and...that was pretty cool.

Then we headed to the War Remnants Museum which was a terribly upsetting place. On the way to the museum, our tour guide announced the "three most important things for Vietnam Man" which were as follows in this order: find a wife, build a house and have buffalo. What I gathered from his elaboration on the last part was the buffalo are essentially the livestock of Vietnam with emphasis on the "life" part of "live." They provide the Vietnamese with a whole string of useful things such as meat, leather, transportation, musical instruments and carriers of all things portable. Just thought I should explain from where the title of this post is derived...now, folks, back to the museum. Outside of the museum are various aircrafts from the war, but the tourists drinking cans of 333 beer (Vietnamese version of Natty Ice) and smoking cigarettes certainly gave the entire place a nightmare-Disney-World-ish feel.

Inside the lobby the visitor is immediately confronted with many many photographs of infants affected by the aftermath of Agent Orange and jars of still-born babies with various physical deformities in formaldehyde. It is clear from the entrance of the museum how the Vietnamese see their own people's involvement in the war versus that of the Americans. There are far too many specifics to mention in this blog post, and I fear of confusing small facts, so I will skip over the rest of the museum's various exhibits except to say that, like most people whose histories have been tainted and devastated by war, the Vietnamese have constructed their own version of the war that is propagated by the Museum and by other similar historical monuments and structures in the city. As an American whose knowledge of the War and the US' involvement in the War is very much affected by not just history books but also the culture of the time, specifically the music. That sort of thing, that power that the culture had over dictating how we remember the War (I'm talking here about how the post-war generation is informed of and views the Vietnam War) is not apparent in Vietnam. In their mind, the war was a series of violent attacks on humanity and morality by the Americans and that is where it ends. Nothing in the museum mentioned the anti-war protests and lyrics of songs such as this Dylan one, "Let me ask you one question/Is your money that good/Will it buy you forgiveness/Do you think that it could." The focus of the Museum is on Americans but only on the Americans they wish to portray in light of their own country's history.

I should mention that the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is unlike any that I have experienced anywhere in the world, aside from Bangkok but even that city's traffic has some order and adherence to stoplights and the general chaos can be chalked up to the confusing labyrinth of highways and crisscrossing roads. Ho Chi Minh City's traffic is simply nonsensical.

There are so many motorbikes going in so many different directions at slightly different angles and at slightly differing adherences to lanes that the getting anywhere takes at least an hour by motorized transportation. The following morning we headed to the morning market and our experience with traffic was rather terrifying, as evidenced by the picture above. It was pretty much the opposite of defensive driving.

"These hats are only for women," as we were later informed by our tour guide after he'd had a good ten minute laugh about it.

                      The market is a great place to go if you need a whole lot of plastic flip flops...

Or ten different kinds of fried bananas...

 Or are looking for that perfect peppercorn...

Or need clothes for your ghost (no joke, these are clothes for ghosts that visit people's houses)...

Or can't decide on a size or salty-ness of the infamous dried shrimp of Southeast Asia...

Or need the perfect home decoration, aka a golden frog that moves its arm up and down in a Jersey Shore fist-pump motion...

Or if you're really just craving the Vietnamese version of Williams-Sonoma.

The next night we flew to Hanoi where we had an eight hour layover at a hotel that provided us with delicious food and jazz music and a comfortable bed before waking up early on the morning of the 30th to drive to Halong Bay.

The four hour drive along the two-lane-turned-four-lane-by-complete-and-utter-lack-of-driving-rules-highway to Halong Bay was...terrifying to say the least. Trucks are under the belief that going 100 km/hour and honking a horn with fervor are grounds for passing a car despite the number or speed of oncoming cars. The scenery was, however, vibrantly green and many of the fields consist of rows and rows of variously textured green things and the effect is rather spectacular. It almost made up for the fact that our van was nearly smashed several times by the oncoming and/or passing traffic.

But then we arrived at Halong Bay and got on the boat that would be our home for the next day and it was well worth it...



After sitting down to some lunch we headed out on mini row boats to one of the many fishing villages housed within the mountains of Halong Bay.

  

We headed back to the boat just in time for sunset and a delicious meal of shrimp, pumpkin soup, spicy papaya salad (one of my favorite dishes now) and a surprisingly amazing mango mousse (usually that texture is just...well...repulsive to me).

That night we all fell asleep to the rocking of the boat and the salty air of the sea and were awoken at 7:30 by the captain of the vessel yelling at every room that the boats for the "Surprise Cave" were about to leave. I couldn't miss anything given the epithet "Surprise Cave" so I rolled out of bed and grabbed whatever sustenance I could find for I imagined a great many stairs and a great deal of climbing ahead of me. And I was right. The cave is located in one of the Bay's 1,600+ mountains and it offers some pretty spectacular views of the boats' sails in the morning sun.

I have not spent much time dwelling in the inner recesses of cavernous holes, but my impression of caves has always been one of dark, damp, claustrophobic places with ambiguous and musty smells and the possible presence of bats and/or bat feces. In short, I was not a huge enthusiast of caves. But the Surprise Cave erased and replaced everything concerned with my prior conception of all caves besides Batman's.

Oooooooo, I'm in a cave!!!

This cave was absolutely enormous and the ceiling (stalactites) looked like upside down sand dunes with dripping sandy icicles. Note the totally natural lighting...(not).

Back on the boat, we headed to the port and then back to Hanoi where we began our New Year's Eve with a water puppet show at a traditional theater near our hotel. After the show, we went back to the hotel to recuperate and shower (I still can't get over how amazing hot showers are after the months of cold water in my house) before dinner at a very delectable French restaurant called Verticale. And vertical it was...each floor of restaurant had about five or six tables and we were on the uppermost floor. As it was also the first time in about five months that I've worn heels, the experience was a bit wobbly. At midnight we headed to the roof of the hotel where everyone doused one another in confetti to the restaurant's background music of a song to an ABBA-esque tune whose lyrics consisted solely of "Happy New Year" repeated again and again and again and again.

On the morning of the 1st, we headed out for our day of touring Hanoi. After visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, a terrifying piece of architecture in which we were allowed neither to have our hands in our pockets nor to speak. His body is preserved in something that has imbued his body and face with a sleep like quality and a glossy sheen (not sure what or how that is accomplished but I am content to remain ignorant). The white uniformed guards stand watch over the line and make sure there are no gaps in the constantly moving line of visitors, especially as they walk by the body itself. The experience was rather strange and was made even stranger when Steve and I were accosted by some Vietnamese teenagers outside of the mausoleum who wanted to take a picture with us with the mausoleum in the background. We all dutifully flashed the peace sign and as I walked away I had to wonder where that picture was going...two Americans, a bunch of teenaged Vietnamese girls and the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Interesting. We also went to a pagoda around the mausoleum where women are supposed to pray to the lotus flower for all sorts of womanly powers and awesomeness. So I prayed slash stood by the lotus flower pagoda and here is the picture to prove it.

After leaving the giggling girls we headed to the old French quarter where our tour guide took us to Anh Tuyet's house (a master chef in Vietnam) just to visit. Our tour guide (who endearingly referred to everything and everyone as "so beautiful" but also spoke absolutely perfect English) was a friend of the chef and wanted to introduce us to her. Upon entering her house, we were greeted by Anh and a tray of ginger tea (delicious) and four boxes of her Gold-Medal-in-Cookies-winning-coconut-cookies. Then she brought down crab spring rolls and a sort of fried fish dumpling that were both unbelievable (they also materialized out of nowhere, it's what I imagine the kitchen in Beauty and the Beast to be like).