Vietnam as Nammers Know It

I am sitting on a bororwed Honda at one corner of Ba Dinh Square, among the Honda-Om dudes, staring at the night traffic and feeling lost. Parking anywhere else along this national monument would be illegal (you’d hear a loud whistle from one of the many policemen, followed by “hey you, get over here!”). I wanted to go on to the Night Market at the old quarters, but I wanted to sit idly for a minute, trying to feel the rythm of this town. Reading my earlier post on Ha Noi, you’d probably think I am biased in my “Southerner” view…but I really came expecting to fall in love with all that Ha Noi I had read about. I really want to give Ha Noi the second or maybe 3rd chance it probably deserves, and I’d like to blame myself for not being to fully appreciate this place.

I ate “Ga Ac Tiem Thuoc Bac” (black chicken slow cooked with Chinese medicine) with some always-cheerful Ha Noi friends I met through my brother. At about $10 a bowl (now thats no ordinary chicken pricing by Vietnamese standard), it was supposed to help my flu, and I believed them – anything that tastes so bland and aweful must be good for you. Then we zoomed past Ho Tay, the biggest lake in Ha Noi – it was dead for a Saturday night. Where are those hang rong (mobile street vendors) and their tasty Ha Noi treats?

The square is full of people moving about. The generous street lights illuminate their faces and shiny cell phones. Boys and their girlfriends on their scooters. Family and ice-cream licking kids. Men wearing green soldier’s helmet (non coi) – they are not really soldiers, as these hats have been popular here since the NVA army invented them. Note to self: must buy a non coi before going further North tomorrow.My brother called me from the Night Market. He reminded me “we got 3 hours before the train ride to Lao Cai”. *Sigh* sometimes time flies even when you don’t have fun.

(L) Ha Noi Night Market (M) yet another run-down, shanty-towned apt building in Ha Noi (R) the new apt complexes, where our Ha Noi friends live, complete with curb-side taxi services, and a lake. 

  Long Khanh, Vietnam. Christmas 2004.

  “Wait 10 mins, I am buying a monkey”, was the text message we received from Tom as we sped down the dirt road to middle-of-nowhere, Long Khanh.

  If other people said to me on a hot afternoon in Vietnam, “i am buying a monkey”, my brain would immediately start processing all the synonyms and slang for “monkey”. Does he mean “spank the monkey?”, or is he “buying a hand-job” from some gir?! But if my friend Tom says he’s buying a monkey, be it in a barrio in Los Angeles or the African desert, you can rest assured he is buying a real monkey (no, not for food, you sick quick-assuming swine). But Tom’s another story. This one’s about Aaron, so that when you see that first post by him on Nammer.com, you can enjoy it in more proper context.

(L) And you would expect the “my trang” to sit in the back, squirmish with fright? (R) Aaron’s monkey nightmare

  Man, that female monkey was ferociously territorial.

  Tom had warned us, that the monkey he’d just rescued had a problem with women petting her, but not men. When Tom or I approached, the monkey was hugging either one of us, or bending over to show primal submission the only way she knew how. Aaron’s long hair made him kinda look like Jesus on a good day. But today, after the long ride to Long Khanh, it must have made him resemble a woman-with-an-Addam apple to that monkey. Aaron learned his lesson the hard way…and he had a bleeding claw mark on the right side of his face to show for it.

  “At least that would leave a cool looking scar” Tom comforted.

  … 

  5 pm. The mosquitoes came out in full force from the jungles nearby. Tom’s two factory workers had come up with two declicious concoctions of python stew and thit cay (dog meat) for dinner that evening. We setup the table outside the bamboo-shade factory while zapping mosquitoes non-stop. Aaron smelled the food and woke up from the afternoon nap. Not saying one word, to the dismay of Tom’s crew, he picked up a piece of the python and dog meat and started chewing with apparent joy.

 ”Do you know what you are eating?” asked one of the bewildered factory workers, expecting the my trang (white person) to start gagging and gasping for air once he finds out.

 ”This one’s dog meat, and very decent one actually” said Aaron in fluent Vietnamese with a slight Northern accent, not missing a beat on the chewing. He dipped the next piece in mam tom, the accompanying brackished bubbly-fermentation-of-rotten-fish of a sauce that to a foreigner must smell like that one time he accidentally got farted on at the beach. But Aaron, after being in the country for a couple of years, knew what it tasted like: very very good with dog meat!  

  …

 If I am as good as a writer as Aaron, I would be in Vietnam trying to write a script for my first movie. Well, that’s basicaly what Aaron is doing in Vietnam these days. If any of my ungodly activities has done any good to mankind, it would be to get Aaron to have a beer and sit down to write on this site about his experience in ‘Nam.

 So look for his post in Aaron’s corner. Lower all expections, though, because knowing him you won’t be reading about Oriental sex, rice field orgies, stupendous drinking sessions, or pantyless barbershop girls. No, leave those challenging and no-good-grammar-required subjects to me.

(L) @ Tom’s goat farm (R) with Pho, back in the ‘hood aka south LA, 2005. Backyard BBQ (I managed to get the devoted Mormon to have a small coke by the time I finished my 5th beer)

(L) My auntie, Di Thuy, teaching elementary English to the neighborhood kids in Suoi Nghe using a half-finished wall as a chalkboard (R) These two brothers are her most devoted students. Behind them are typical farming tools.

 I’ve started to write more about the people I have come to know all these years or just recently met in Vietnam. They, not just the places I have been to and the food I have eaten, provide a more vivid picture of Vietnam in all of her colors and cultural subtleties.  

 Once in doubt of where to begin, I usually begin with somewhere close to home - the people from the little town I was born in. Everyone in Suoi Nghe seems to be related to me in one way or another (I was really skeptical about calling that little baby my “uncle”), which at times got me reluctant to hit on any cute girl I happen to meet during the many visits. On the bright side of things, I know these people real well, the many uncles and aunties who still rough the rough & almost inhospitable land, whose hard yet fulfilling lives touched mine, making my life better and meaningful in more ways than one.

 ”Memoir from Suoi Nghe” is one man’s recollection and comtemplation of lives he knows well in certain parts of Vietnam -  hard, real, unpretentious, and survive-now-laugh-about-it-later lives.

To Ong Sau.

For as long as I have known him, which is to say all of my life, Uncle Sau has always been in a wheel chair and had a hunch back. Few people know how he came to be like that. Fewer people know where that wheel chair came from, but it looks like was built about 5 minutes after the invention of the wheel. Rusted and missing all but the crucial parts, it still runs if you pull the steering wheel back and forth hard enough. Everyone in the clan reserves a special kind of respect and grattitude to “Ong Sau”, partly because he is believed to bear the family’s karmic burden so that other members don’t have to. Perhaps that is the case, but personally I just respect Uncle Sau because he’s such a skillful and joyous survivor. 

Because Uncle Sau does not have his own family, he is devoted to Huynh blood-lined clan in the same unconditional and unquestionable way as Michael Corleone was to his Mafia family. He never missed any family cermony or event, no matter how far away it was held or how muddy the road was. Arriving at one of the relative’s, he would politely park his wheelchair under a tree, far enough from the house to attract much attention…but one of his nephews or cousins always caught a glimpse of him pulling himself across the yard and runs out to carry him.

Another Uncle Sau mystery: how he became so skilled at repairing watches. His fingers are crooked and his palms heavily callused from operating the wheel chair and pushing his own weight, but when it comes to delicate moving parts of a watch, they are quite agile and effective. Uncle Sau has three hobbies: drinking, smoking, and playing so de (a form of underground lottery which has left many people broke). I can’t think of any more destructive hobbies given his physical and financial conditions, but if you respect a man you also have to respect his hobbies.

I came to Uncle Sau’s watch repair shop one hot summer afternoon. He rents out a little corner on a bigger shop to put his simple wooden cart of tools, old watches, and China-made batteries. His tools are as primitive as the watches themselves: a couple of small screwdrivers, super glue, a sander, a few pairs of pliers. At the end of the day, he simply pushes the little cart into the shop from which he rents.

Everytime I come to visit it’s a different shop and a different corner, but finding him is easy, because everyone knows the only watch repairer in town. Plus I usally spot his wheel chair parked somewhere in the “late afternoon market” (as to distinguish from the “early morning market”). Twice a day, the same half-rotten fish, the wilted vegetable, and low-quality meat are brought out to be displayed on bamboo platforms, everything open to the air, the dust, and various insects. If I were ever to shop here for food, the only thing I would buy is rice, corn, and that slab of pork (pigs are killed locally here, so the quality is actually not too bad), and maybe those two live chickens tied up-side-down next to the crying baby. Most importantly, I would buy them in the morning, not now, when it’s 36 degree Celcius, and the flies looked tired and well fed.

My brother and I always wondered how many people actually need watch repair these days, or what uncle Sau would do if a problem requires tools slightly more sophisticated than a couple of screwdrivers.  But this afternoon he actually had a customer who looked to be in great distress. The watch, an old Seiko, needed a new hand and a new battery. He somehow managed to reattach the broken hand, and the fee was 15000 dong (1 US dollars). I watched him work silently from behind. Wanting to surprise him, I pulled aside the tarp which was blocking the sun, threw down my watch and said loudly “you sold me crappy fake watch, i want my money back”.

Somehow, he was not alarmed by the threatening demmand, only squinted his eyes a bit to take a good look at me: “Ha ha, you scared me a little, when did you come back?!” Uncle Sau cursed lovingly, openly delighted to see his newphew standing there blocking his sun. He lit another cigarrette. We sat and caught up on family news a bit while waiting for the next customer of the day, who never showed up.

“Come on, let’s go have a drink” Uncle Sau pointed across the dirt road to the local eatery, its walls falling apart and the floor was full of pot holes. There were already a few foul-mouthing men drinking in its dark corners. I could see green plastic chairs and clear plastic bottles of rice wine. The shop owner yawning behind the empty glass cage that was supposed to be filled with food. My kind of place.

“So how much did you make today?” I inquired.

“Lai rai” (slang for “enough to get by”), said Uncle Sau, his Quang Nam accent still heavy as ever.

That’s good enough. Uncle Sau’s watch repair shop is officially close for the day.

From Left: Uncle Sau proudly showing one of his work (2) Me in my ever-present plaid shirt, taken with Uncle Sau at his shop (3) Uncle Sau’s famous means of transportation and (4) My brother looks very skeptical in this picture, as he watches half-drunken Uncle Sau give the girl a quick “diagnostic” on the conditions of her watch