lucy - posts from vietnam

Noble truth number 1 - bad things happen

2011-02-28T01:19:00.000-08:00

Literally the day after I'd prepared a long blog on the peace and safety and general loveliness of central Vietnam, and the day before I left for Thailand, someone broke into my friend's house and took my laptop. So for the foreseeable future I won't be online much, and won't be blogging. I still have a lot of things I would like to share about this incredible year, so will post more when I can, but for now.... 'hen gap lai' amigos.

Thanks for reading

A splash of colour...

2011-02-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

I'm working in a small village, where everyone knows everything that's going on. So back in January, when an orphanage opened nearby, we were invited to visit and join the small party going on.

Which was how I met Co Minh Hanh, a nun from Saigon, who raised the money to build and open the place, Chu Hung, the director, and the 15 children living there (either orphans or coming from families who just can't afford or cope with them). Some have physical disabilities, some have learning difficulties; all are gorgeous and deserving and fun to be around. Over the next few weeks the centre will become home to up to 30 children. The staff somehow find the money to pay for the children's meals, school fees, medical fees and clothing - allowing them to continue in education and live in a safe environment.

Since then I've visited them regularly, enjoying games with the children and scrumptious vegetarians meals with Mrs Minh Hanh, the director, his wife and the ladies living there to look after the kids.

I was sad that whilst the people were really loving and positive and nurturing, the building itself was very dull - typical blue/green walls, tiled floors, barred windows.... no toys, no colour....

So I asked some friends from nearby Hoi An to come and help me with a little decoration.....

A massive thank you to Yves, Matt, Stephanie, Thilo, Sue and Rob for making the trip and for bringing toys, books and colouring pencils, and to the kids at the centre for the creative input, help with the painting and just generally being fabulous.

Today I went back to do another wall. Big smiles all round.
And I got a big ol' Valentine's kiss.....

More food, glorious food....

2011-02-14T06:12:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite things to do here is to set out from the house. on foot, with no destination in mind. I love to wander around, sometimes for hours, just looking and listening and smelling and tasting. Moving slowly, with your senses alive, leads to some incredibly beautiful experiences, and some, well, slightly less beautiful ones....

Here's a few of the interesting street dishes I've found on my wanderings, both alone and with friends, over the past few months.....

Steaming bowls of bún riêu cua. This tomato, pineapple and shrimp flavoured broth is served with crab meat balls (sometimes with shrimps, tofu or cabbage), and served over thin rice noodles. Shredded herbs and beansprouts add colour and flavour, along with a squeeze of lemon, a couple of teaspoons of pickled sour veg, and a good dollop of chilli jam...... mmmmmmmm

A breakfast favourite (particularly after a night drinking Bia Larue) is now 'Bánh mì ốp la' - a fried egg sandwich, Vietnamese style. They are so delicious it's making my mouth water just talking about them. A hot baguette is broken open and stuffed with fresh salad leaves, herbs, shredded spring onions and cucumber. Then in goes the hot egg; quickly fried with some minced pork and seasoning, the yolk broken and runny. The final touch is a good squirt of soy and chilli sauces (some would say it has to be Maggi, but soy sauce is amazing too). The resulting sandwich is warm, a bit crunchy, a bit moist, very difficult to eat with any kind of elegance, and just perfect. An incredible mix of flavours, and very 'Vietnam'.

'Xôi' - You have to be up early to enjoy this dish of sticky (glutinous) rice. They're normally sold out by 7.30am. It can be cooked on it's own or with all sorts of things added - sweetcorn, green beans, black beans, coconut, meat, peanut, cassava, mung beans..... and then on top you can put coconut, sugar, salt, peanuts, meat, fried onions, onion oil, chilli oil, egg, shrimp..... these really are the difficult decisions of life. I tend to stick to the sweet varieties (as in the picture below, which is black bean xoi) with coconut, peanut, sugar and salt on top. I find it's the perfect mix of carbohydrate, sugar (to replenish energy after a long sleep), and salt (to balance electrolytes and set me up for another long day of sweating!)

'Bánh xèo'. These small rice flour pancakes are cooked in shallow pans (8-10 at a time in the market) with shrimp, pork, shallots and bean sprouts. They're taken by hand and rolled in dry, translucent rice paper, with a heap of leaves, herbs, fresh beansprouts, cucumber, green papaya, banana flower.... into what looks like a huge fat spring roll (I'm still teased about the first time I ate this, when I had to roll it up on my knee - I watched and learned, and now roll deftly in the air like everyone else). Then you dip into a delicious sugary, vinegary, garlicky, chilli-y liquid, which helps to cut through the oiliness of the pancake. It's incredible to watch my teeny tiny colleagues eat these things. I can manage 3 at the most (and I have a good appetite, as you all know...) They can eat 7 or 8, easily. I honestly don't know where it goes. They don't even stop talking.

'Bánh cuốn' - rolled and sliced steamed rice noodle sheets, with a variety of fillings; sometimes something pink coloured and savoury and completely unidentifiable, sometimes mushrooms, sometimes crumbled pork meat. The noodles are often topped with pickled julienned vegetables and chilli, or a fried spring roll, and drizzled with a sweet, vinegary liquid. Described in words, it sounds pretty unappetising, but it's really tasty, especially with a glass of fresh hot or iced soy milk. (The name 'bánh cuốn' refers to the rolling of the noodle sheets, so fresh spring rolls go by the same name, and are equally as good)

'Bánh rán' - golden balls of a gluey rice/cassava mixture, deep fried to crunchy outside, with a gorgeous grainy filling of bean/sugar paste inside. Warm, very tasty, and at least 10 billion calories per ball.

'Hến trộn' - baby clams fried with lemongrass, chilli and spring onion, served with crushed peanuts, fried shallots, nước chấm (a fish sauce, sugar, chilli and garlic dipping sauce) and a crunchy rice cracker to break and scoop them up with. A great snack to tuck into with friends.

This picture is borrowed from http://www.hoian.vn/ - I was so hungry last time I ate it
that I forgot to take a pic! I'll put my own soon

Another delicious snack dish, 'bò bía', consists of a pile of shredded pickled vegetables (carrot, unripe papaya and daikin), a dark thick sweet, caramel-y, soy-saucey, open-sesame-ey sauce, caramelised shredded dried beef (I think, although it might be jackfruit), roasted and crushed peanuts, heaps of fresh Asian basil, and again, a big dried rice cracker to scoop and scoff it all up with. I've never eaten anything like it before, and I'm sure I won't find it anywhere else (when I googled it for recipes I found that in the rest of Vietnam it's a different dish - a form of spring roll with Chinese sausage). It was astoundingly good.

A common sound on the streets of Vietnam is that of the 'Bánh bao' sellers, as they cruise around on their motorbikes. They carry ingenious dispay cabinets, small charcoal fires and metal steamers around with them, from which they pull fluffy steamed rice flour pockets filled with spiced and peppery vegetables, rice noodles and pork fat. They're very cheap, and popular with kids.

Fresh seafood at the beach. Bliss.

This street barbeque smelt absolutely amazing. I was a bit unsure when I realised what was sizzling on it, but I didn't let myself wimp out. The marinade was delicious, and I actually enjoyed the small hot crunchy birds. The fresh beer was pretty good too :o)

My favourite evening snack is hủ tiếu from the cheerful mobile vendor up the road. Mien (vermicelli noodles), lots of beansprouts, pork broth, meat and crackling, a heap of lettuce leaves, a squeese of lemon, soy sauce, chilli jam.... I can rarely stop at one bowl (and at 15p a pop, why would I?)

Over the winter, I really enjoyed hot chè, to be found bubbling in in Tam Ky's markets, in huge vats over charcoal fires. I think I described chè before - it's basically any type of legume (red bean, green (mung) bean, black bean, lentil) slow-cooked with a heap of sugar - but there are a million varieties and all sorts of things are added. So far I've tried sweetcorn chè, tapioca chè, fruit chè, banana chè, seaweed chè, sweet potato chè, coconut chè, longan chè, lotus seed chè, ginger chè, rice chè.... but I'd never eaten hot chè before, so I had to sample it.... a small bowl of sweet green bean soup with chunks of taro and ginger and a good splash of cool coconut milk on top. Ridiculously sweet, but delicious.

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So now I'll move onto dishes I'd put into the 'glad I tried them, but won't eat again' category....

First up is mực khô, a whole dried squid, barbequed in front of me, and served with a potent and fiery jammy chilli/tomato/fish sauce dip. Really Not Good. Tough as leather, and very very fishy. I could neither bite a piece off or swallow the stringy mouthful I finally managed to rip off with my fingers. I managed to wrap half the thing in newspaper and hide it in my bag to dispose of later.

I would never have ordered this next dish, but ettiquette forced me to try it when I was invited out for dinner one day. It was either frog or toad, I'm not sure which. It had big dark blotches on it's skin, which was still very much connected to the 'meat', and lots and lots of little bones. The dogs under the table got a good meal from me that night. I'm getting pretty good at the subtle dropping of things...

And then I was devastated when I realised what I'd ordered at the little stall by my house, when I'd just moved to this town, it was very late, raining heavily and I was desparately hungry..... 'trứng vịt lộn' are considered very nutritious for children and people recovering from illness, and are apparently recommended for guys wanting to enhance their, erm, performance. They're boiled duck eggs - with an almost fully developed duckling inside. Yep.. feathers, feet, beak... I took a deep breath and managed half a spoon. With my eyes closed. And kept it in my mouth as I escaped to spit it out at home. Sorry - I'm sure a lot of people love them, but I couldn't handle it. I went to bed hungry that night!

Again, this isn't my picture. Mine came out dark and blurry, and I'm not about to repeat the experience to take another one. This picture comes from a website http://www.baochi.info/ if you want to see more.

And now onto Tet food....

Tet (the lunar New Year) is a really big deal in Vietnam - it's like Christmas, New Year and the entire nation's birthday rolled in one big 5-10 day party. And as with every good holiday, a considerable part of the celebration revolves around eating. There are a lot of traditional and symbolic dishes for Tet. Unfortunately I went off without my camera for the two week holiday, so I don't have pictures of any of it! Some dishes were very good, but the most memorable were the more 'challenging' things.... a spoonful of pig brain eaten straight out of the boiled pig's head (it looked like moist blue cheese, and tasted a bit like creamy pate), being woken up with a bowl of rice porridge with a chicken head sticking out (a big honour - the bird had spent the night on the altar before being hacked up), endless bánh chưng and bánh tét - traditional sticky rice cakes stuffed with pork fat and mung beans, and chalky dry green bean biscuit/cakes. It was a real pleasure to spend time with families over this important holiday, but I have a renewed appreciation of our UK festive cuisine - I'll stick with warm homemade mince pies and mulled cider, thanks!

Well there you go. A few more Vietnamese treats. I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I did discovering them.

Now, what to have for tea.... :o)

Some favourite Vietnam things....

2011-02-12T01:56:00.000-08:00

Just for you, ma, here's some of my favourite things.....(I'm not going to include foods - it'd take about a couple of years to write!)

The smell of warm damp tropical greenness

Smiles and games with the children

The patch of sunlight that comes through the mosquito net at 5.30am

Ca phe sua (nong hai Saigon) any time any where

Stopping on the footpath to watch old nanas with crinkly faces, beady dark eyes and pointy bamboo hats carrying veg to the market. And having them smile back and stop to talk

Walks and yoga on the beach

The way it takes just a couple of years of alternating strong sun and intense moisture to make buildings look prematurely ancient, in a very beautiful and atmospheric way

Understanding the naughty jokes of the women I work with. And being able to crack some too

Squatting to play the Vietnamese version of 'Uno' with Thuy and other friends in a village doorway, slamming cards down, crunching watermelon seeds and joking around for hours on end

Riding my bike along the winding mud paths between the rice paddies in the sun

A cold beer as the sun goes down at La Plage, playing chess with Stephanie-oi (and keeping an eye out for Dons, of course, eh missus?!)

Picking salad leaves and herbs from Chi Thong's garden, as we prepare the evening meal. Being considered family enough and capable enough to help.

Riding on the back of friends' motorbikes as we zip along, wrapped in warm nights, and tilting my head up to look at the stars

Thought-provoking discussions with other development and health workers - life stories, achievements, ambitions, ideas, different opinions....

Beaming smiles when I banter in Vietnamese at the market

Hair washes and head massages (and the way it's something that all women treat themselves to, regularly, and cheaply)

A glass of iced sweet lemon juice, with a tiny, salty, preserved peach sunk in it, on a hot hot day

Cooking experiments and hanging out watching movies and 'The Good Wife' with my buddy Sam, before a beer at her local (600m away on the beach)

Watching and listening as my interpreter works and gets into what she's explaining - and seeing people understand the concepts

Getting lovely emails from lovely friends at home. Thank you so much

The rare but deeply special appreciation of imported treats - a small bowl of olives, some brie, a glass of good red wine (as opposed to Dalat!) - a reminder me that these things are so much better when you can't have them whenever you like

The everyday enjoyment of simple local food - fresh vegetables, seafood and rice (and the communal spirit of preparing and eating)

Rice, in all it's forms, but particularly when it's just freshly cooked. A little bit sticky and moist and utterly delicious (I know I said I wasn't including food, but it's just too big a part of life to leave off the list)

Simple text message conversations with my friends Khai and Thuong in Hanoi, who speak no English at all. Despite the language barrier we have a strong bond. I like to think of them, and know they think of me too

A Mango Guapo at Mango Mango with the 'Friday family' after the stressful journey - you know who you are guys xxx

Sitting outside looking over the fields, having afternoon snacks with the kids and staff at the small rural centre

Having more, and better conversations with my parents than I ever had in the UK

The view to the right along the river from the bridge as you ride back to Hoi An from Cua Dai

Watching lightening storms from the rooftop of Cargo - with girlfriends, something dark and chocolatey and lots of giggles

The astonishing depth of love mothers can have for their children, and the un-ending and un-complaining care and attention they give them

The beautiful quiet dignity of most of these people

Observing and being infected with the child-like joy at karaoke - a few hours of freedom for people who have to conform and follow rules in almost every other aspect of their existance. singing, dancing, drinking, losing track of time....

The noise and bustle of the markets, and the freshness of everything

Witnessing the magic of my nephew's transformation from a baby into a little boy, via Skype. The astonishingly rapid development of his language and communication, his funny faces, his tummy, the squiggle wiggle, and the little games we play. Knowing that he knows me. Thank you internet, you crazy flying electromagnetic fantastical thing you

Listening to the pounding tropical rain on the metal roof, when I'm snug in bed

Knowing how lucky I am to be seeing this world from the very inside

Knowing how lucky I am to be able to leave

Comments

2011-01-26T21:39:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone

I've figured out how to change the settings on this 'ere Blogspot, so now anyone can leave a comment without having to have a google account or anything. So please feel free.

Any requests for topics?

:o)

To change or not to change...

2011-01-19T03:42:00.000-08:00

As part of this job, my interpreter and I often visit young people with disabilities in their homes. I am often close to tears.

Even the worst situations I came across in Smethwick and West Bromwich seem like luxury compared to the lives of some of these people. 24 year-old Định didn’t mind me sharing his story…

Định's father left his mother as soon as they realised their son was disabled. Throughout his childhood and teenage years, Định stayed at home in the small hut, alone, while his mother worked in the fields to provide enough food for them both. Định's mother died four months ago. Now his aunt brings him food, and his cousins visit occasionally, but other than that his only human contact is in the evenings and mornings when his uncle comes to lift him on and off his bed. Định has severe pain in his hips and his neck. He was given a plastic wheelchair, but it broke a long time ago.

A wonderful NGO called Orphan Voice are now supporting him and his aunt and uncle with food packages, and I'm organising a new, stronger and more comfortable wheelchair for him through the organisation I am working with. But it's not much of a life, is it....

My point in giving this example, is that when we visited Định, neither my interpreter or the local volunteer who took us to see him were at all surprised or distressed at what they saw.

They don't see any particular problem in the way these young people have to live.

Here in rural Vietnam the difference between the lives of poor people with disabilities, and the lives of people who are just very poor is, sadly, not that huge. The people I work with see similar dirt, discomfort, barrenness, poverty and lack of opportunity in 'normal' fully-able-bodied homes. People here have, very recently, been through times of such hardship and suffering that their concept of a ‘decent’ standard of living is far far lower than my relatively-very-privileged UK standard.

My role here is to convince people of the benefits of doing some kind of creative therapy with young children with disabilities, and then to teach them how to do it.

But if people don’t see something as a problem over and above other problems, how can you convince them to work to change anything?

When it comes to the effectiveness of rehabilitation centers, lack of information is surprisingly rarely the problem. I’ve uncovered all sorts of useful booklets, advice sheets, CD’s and information packs (all in Vietnamese, often with pictures) from dusty cupboards. The staff and parents just don’t think to read or make use of it. They’ve attended numerous good training events, with financial incentives, days out, lunches and certificates, but for some reason they don’t apply what they've learnt. They say “thank you very much, that was very interesting and helpful”, and lose 95% of it on the motorbike home. It’s wasted.

WHY?

As I mentioned above, I think firstly people don’t have any motivation for change. A lack of physical ability is not the only barrier for these children. Even if we help a child to develop physical skills to the point that he/she can get around, they will most likely still not be able to attend school, or get a job to earn a living. The improvement to quality of life that I promote as a benefit of therapy are often not considered worth the thought and effort and time that the therapy requires. What we (in the UK) would consider an achievement is relatively meaningless for these families – “Wow, look! Jimmy lifted his hand up all by himself!!” is not something you’d ever hear here…. it's just not relevant.
What these families want, and need, is a child who can support them in their later years (there is no social security to speak of) – so understandably they will reserve the majority of their time, attention and money for an able-bodied sister or brother. (That’s if they have an able-bodied sibling… unfortunately some Dioxin/Agent Orange affected families don’t seem to realise that after 2 or 3 children born with disabilities, they should stop trying for an able-bodied child…)

Secondly, staff and families don’t have a lot of faith that ‘therapy’ works. It’s impossible to know whether a child develops better because of therapy, or whether they would have got there anyway. Whilst we can understand why it works, and demonstrate improvements, and explain benefits, we can’t prove, scientifically, that therapy works. It's almost impossible to get robust evidence, because it's inethical to withhold treatment if it can be offered. What makes it even more difficult to convince people is the fact that children can take years to do things. Changes are slow, and difficult to measure. And in addition, some kids with severe brain damage will never be able to do very much, no matter how much therapy we try invest in them.

So for these rural farming families, time and effort are far too precious to be risked on something that can’t be proven to work, and which won’t, at the end of the day, affect their disabled child’s inability to support them later on in life.

Quality of life is a luxury. Things will only ever change significantly for those with disabilities here when the area as a whole is lifted out of such grinding poverty. And this is out of the hands of the individual families and volunteers I am working with.

Still. I’m quite stubborn. I’ve come here to do a job and I won’t give up on potential. My ma used useful gardening terms to refer to the work we’re doing here – sowing seeds and drip-feeding. Gradually, slowly, consistently, planting and nurturing ideas. So I continue to promote movement and play and engagement with the children. I show by example, and explain to families and staff again and again, in different ways, the benefits of having children who are slightly more independent and happy. I try to make everything I teach easy to do at home, and try to use materials and items that they can get hold of very easily and cheaply. And I do believe it will have some impact, however tiny. And that's enough to keep working for.

I’m also going to produce a short storybook, telling the concurrent stories of two families in a village. Both families new-born babies with a brain injury (cerebral palsy). One family have no hope and no motivation, and do no therapy with their child. He lies on his back all day, and learns nothing. The other family decide they want to see what their child can learn, even though her body is awkward and abnormal. They try things. They make things using materials in the home and the market. They get advice. They go to the rehabilitation hospital.

The story will hopefully outline how one child has absolutely no chance to develop, and the other slowly but surely learns to do some things. It’s very difficult to write, because I need to be careful that parents don’t read it and think that if they do the same things as the fictional family, then their child will be able to do the things that the character learns to do (every child is different, every child needs different treatment). It’s the concept that I want to get across, not the specifics.

I’d like to distribute this storybook to doctors, so that there’s a chance they might discuss the ideas with families when they diagnose disabilities in the first place (as opposed to “Sorry, we can’t do anything about it. Just take your child home.”) Ideally, they could give the families a copy. Other potential places to distribute would be therapy departments, child health nurses, and Government Red Cross departments….

But at the same time as I’m putting a lot of effort into this, I’ve still got a horrible feeling that in a year’s time, my booklet will be found nesting in dusty cupboards along with the rest of them….

Why expensive equipment isn’t always the best thing…..

2011-01-15T03:38:00.000-08:00

If you think about a day centre for kids with disabilities, you'll probably imagine rooms full of wheelchairs, mats, balls, parallel bars, frames, special seating, rolls, wedges…..

When disability centres are being established in developing countries, the initial focus is often on buying equipment. On filling the rooms with “things” to help the children.

Big deliveries arrive from the capital, paid for with foreign funds; shiny and brightly coloured and expensive and attractive.

This is completely understandable, and always done with positive intentions. But I’m going to suggest that putting all this ‘stuff’ into a poor rural day centre doesn’t actually help. In my opinion it causes a problem....

Parents start to bring their children to the centre for therapy. There’s a therapist, who (with varying levels of understanding and ability) uses the equipment for activities and games to help the children’s development. The parents watch and are happy. But this approach, whilst fun and beneficial for the child, encourages the parents to view ‘therapy’ as ‘what the child does with the therapist, using equipment, at the centre’. They are led to believe that therapy can only be done by someone with training and a ‘title’, using the expensive mats and rolls and wedges and seats from the city.

During the rainy season, or the harvest time, or a national holiday, or when it’s too cold, or too hot, or too misty, or the winds in the wrong direction… the family might only attend the centre once every three or four weeks. So if the child’s therapy is limited to what they do at the centre, they’ll only be engaged in activities to help their development for a few hours every three or four weeks. The rest of the time, during normal life at home, they will often just lie on their backs on the floor or on a hard bed.

In order for a child with a disability to develop to their potential, their parents need to become ‘therapists’. The parents need to understand that ‘therapy’ is a way of thinking. That therapy can, and should be, incorporated into absolutely everything a child does in daily life.

Therapy is the position a child sleeps in. The way you pick them up when they’re small. The way you don’t pick them up when they’re bigger. It’s the way you talk to them. The things you ask them to do for themselves instead of doing for them. It’s the pillow you tuck under their arms, or between their legs. It’s the direction you put them to lie on the day bed. The way you feed them, or help them to feed themselves. It’s the way you carry them, or don’t. The way they sit on the floor, or don’t. The things you encourage them to play with. The things you encourage, and the things you don’t let them do.

Parents (and families) need to adjust and commit to constantly thinking about how to make everyday life ‘therapeutic’ – or an opportunity for their child to learn new skills.

These families cannot afford big deliveries of shiny, expensive equipment for their homes. They’re certainly not going to get it for free from a National Health Service like families do in the UK. They have what’s available from the market. They have plastic stools and tables, available in one height only. They have blankets. They have bamboo mats. They have pillows. They have washing baskets. They have bowls and spoons. They have cardboard boxes and the packing inside them. If they splash out a bit and visit a bookshop they can get playing cards and crayons and colouring books. They have walls and windows and steps and bamboo growing outside.

My point is that therapy centres, and therapists, in poor rural areas of developing countries should focus on teaching families positions and activities that they can easily replicate at home, making creative use of things that are easily and locally available, rather than demostrating the use of expensive (and often imported) equipment from the cities. They need to think long-term. And local. And self-reliant, rather then dependent on outside funds, which are all-too-easily pulled.

If things from the market things break, as they do, they can be easily replaced, and life and therapy goes on….

If a child grows too big for a set of bamboo walking rails, then the family can cut some more bamboo and make a larger set.

If a child is using a home-made cardboard chair, and develops better sitting balance, the family can make a new chair that doesn’t have so much support.

If a childs needs more support in the wooden standing frame made by the carpenter in the village, then the family can take it back to the carpenter in the village and ask him to add some.

(Having said this, there are some pieces of equipment which are very important for the development of any child with more severe physical difficulties – specialist wheelchairs, plastic orthotics (splints) and walking aids for example - which should be made to measure and are best provided by people who know what they’re doing. I'm not about to start knitting walking frames....)

So my advice to organisations setting up rural therapy centres - think about your aims.

If your aim is to provide top-quality therapy in your centre, then grab your catalogues and get ordering.

If your aim is to teach families how to bring out the potential in their child, then think about holding back. Hit the market instead.

Cardboard chairs and the rainy season....

2011-01-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

As you'll see from the post on 'cardboard chairs' - we were feeling proud of the made-to-measure chairs, and the kids were excited to start using them - so we finished them with a coating of tough coloured paper, and left it at that.
ERROR!!!

A couple of weeks later the rainy season hit - and I hadn't been prepared for quite how damp it would be. Constant rainfall - day and night, for weeks on end. The air was heavy with moisture, clothes never quite dried out, everything felt damp.

Dampness + cardboard chairs = a bit of a problem

They went soft and soggy, and started to go mouldy.

So as soon as we had a few days break from the rain, they had to go out in the sun to thoroughly dry out, before we properly finished them with spray paint and a couple of coats of varnish. Not ideal in terms of toxic chemicals, but the treatments have proved absolutely necessary, and I haven't seen any forms of seating available that aren't either made from plastic or covered in varnish.

Cô Sương demonstrating the chair she made for Hung.

It seems to have done the trick.

So if you're trying something similar, anywhere in the world - be smarter than me and think about the seasons your chairs might need to weather....

(We're now playing about with polystyrene chairs, beanbags, packing boxes.... I'll update with pictures soon.)

Big Brother - maybe. Nanny state - definately NOT

2011-01-04T01:34:00.000-08:00

I really like it that here in Vietnam, people are generally left to make their own decisions about whether or not something's dangerous. This is definately not a nanny state.

But being left to their own devices, people can do some really, REALLY risky things......

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In the cities it's almost funny to watch glamorous fashionistas on the back of motorbikes holding their helmets in the air above their hairstyles, ready to put them down should they pass by a policeman. Or to see girls wearing helmets with big holes cut out to accomodate the sparkly hairclips.

Children here are apparently magically protected from injury... it's normal to see parents (in helmets) sitting solidly on the bike, whilst one, two, three children stand in the middle, no helmets....

On the highway it's not unusual to see motorbikes speeding along with passengers holding huge panes of glass sticking out sideways far far into the road... and thats just getting started on what can be attached to the back of motorbikes. So far I've seen a double wardrobe, a double mattress, an American style fridge, a bicycle, fully grown pigs, and now..... a coffin (I really really hope it was empty). Not all on one bike, obviously, but all quite incredible in their own rights. Both in terms of 'give it a go' optimism, danger level and astounding lack of concern for life.

I'm sure that the utility companies do have policies on health and safety, but I still hold my breath when I see dudes leaning ladders against the cables, climbing up and rooting around amongst the tangle, with motorbikes zipping around underneath.

Walking past a part-built house the other day I noticed that the builders using a technique for throwing bricks up onto the first floor using what looks like a long thin lacrosse stick. The bricks land exactly where the person on the first floor is busy doing the same thing up to the second floor. There must be an entire ward at the local hospital full of people with brick-shaped dents in their heads.

If a plug breaks, leaving only one pin, it's quite normal to see them jammed in sideways, sparking every time someone nudges the cable.

During a recent downpour, the caretaker for the centre was standing on a table, water pouring through the leaking roof, fixing the electric light. I couldn't look.

I'm sure these situations aren't limited to Vietnam, but it does seem that a lot of people here are very relaxed about the whole life/death thing. Maybe it's the Buddhist influence.... :o)

3am noodles

2010-12-30T03:23:00.000-08:00

Surprisingly this post isn't a story of late night revelry, which is the only situation you would normally find me talking about food at 3am...

10 months into my time in Vietnam, I think I've tried most foods you can get in this region. I'm so good at searching them out, that I've even started introducing local people to dishes that they didn't know they could get here.

I spoke before about breakfast, and the joy of a big bowl of noodles in the morning on the way to work. I've now settled into a rotation of two favourites.

One of these, Mỳ Quảng, was the 'love at first sight' which I spoke about in my first food post. This intense crush has remained, despite a temporary falling out when I ate 3 bowls, felt quite disgustingly full, and went off it for a few weeks. 'Mỳ Quảng' is extravagant, boisterous and demands attention. It's full of fun and if you're in the mood it can be exactly what you want. But at other times it's just... too much.

My other breakfast favourite has crept up on me slowly. It's quiet, understated and relatively unglamorous, but has proved to be reliable, consistant and comforting. 'Bún bò' is a simpler dish. Beef noodle soup. Less colour and pizazz than Mỳ Quảng. Less intense. Less complicated. But hot and filling and flavourful and good any time of day or night. It never lets you down.

Taking advantage of my time living here to eat plenty of both, last week I thought I should find out how they're made.....

Not content with looking it up online, I decided to go to the source. I normally eat at a small outdoor stall, 3 doors down from where I'm living. So one morning I asked the smiley lady (Cô Sáu), if I could go and cook with her the next day. Knowing that she starts serving at 6am, I was expecting a fairly early start, but I wasn't quite prepared for 3am! Still, if she can do it every day.... and I eat her noodles every day.... I should go....

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed, out the door, and up the street - where I stood looking suspicious under the streetlight. Thankfully the streets were deserted apart from a few rats running around, and they weren't going to try and pick me up or arrest me for prostitution.

At around 3.20am Mr Noodle (Chú Tấn) opened the grate at the front of their house, I said hello quietly, and he nearly had a heart attack. He was definately present when I asked her, but the 3am brain is a funny thing. I was very glad to see he gets up at that time too. Certainly by 6.30am when I go there to eat, he's reclining in a hammock while the missus works away. I was under the (mistaken) impression that he didn't do anything other than drink coffee.

So by 3.30am there's Mr Noodles, Mrs Noodles, Grandma Noodles and me. Mr gets the fires going outside. Mrs and I wash a lot of salad leaves. Grandma carries tables and chairs and bowls and chopsticks, and sets up for service.

Lemongrass is tied and mashed, garlic and chilli are pestled, pineapple is cubed, tomatoes are pureed, pork and shrimps are marinated and fried and sliced, spring onions and chives are chopped, teeny tiny eggs are boiled, oil sizzles, knives fly... I feel quite in the way in the tiny kitchen. Clearly so does the mouse, which scarpers.

At 4.30am a bag of bones arrives on a motorbike
At 5.00am a hunk of beef arrives on another motorbike, the sky begins to get light, the police start their physical training and the pagoda dong dude starts doing his darned donging.
At 5.30 a bundle of fresh noodles arrive on another motorbike, and people start passing by on their way to work.

At 5.45am I proudly serve the first customer a bowl of the finest 'My Quang'.....

He clearly finds it very very amusing to be served by a foreigner, but says it's delicious. I probably looked quite scary after waking at that ridiculous hour, and he felt at risk of a ladle over his head if he said anything different! I don't know how Mrs Noodles always looks fresh as a daisy, and is so incredibly cheerful.

By 8am I'm almost dribbling with tiredness, so after a nice bowl of noodles, I head home for a nap.....

The figures:
The breakfast stall is the only income for the family of 3 (children grown up and living else-where). They serve roughly 100 bowls of noodles, and provide about 40 takeaways. At 10,000 VND per bowl (that's about 30p) they'll take around 1,400,000 VND (£42) per day. The ingredients cost roughly 1,000,000 VND (£30) - leaving an income, between 3 people, of around £12 per day.
Not a lot, hey.

The Big Belief Buffet

2010-12-04T05:11:00.000-08:00

In trying to understand and describe the various, co-existing and intermingling belief systems, religions, philosophies and traditional and modern influences here in Vietnam, the best analogy I can think to use is that of being at a big buffet. This post might seem to make light of what can be contentious subjects, but my intention is certainly not to disrespect what can be personal and deeply held beliefs. I respect that everyone has the right to make sense of life any way they want or need, in order to have peace with their actions and direction. This is just my way of trying to describe the complex, varied, and yet generally pragmatic mixture of beliefs here.

So please, open your minds.... and welcome to the Big Belief Buffet!

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I'd like you to imagine a beautiful room, with numerous tables laden with a wide range of dishes, to suit all tastes and appetites. It's generally very calm and peaceful and welcoming, and it appears that you're free to choose and mix anything you want.

But before you get busy fixing up a delicious meal, you'll be given a plate pre-served with some items. It'll be quite difficult to get any further without taking one. And you should be aware that the mirrors are two-way. The management operate a 'right of admission reserved' policy, and don't take kindly to 'trouble-makers'...

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Pre-served items:

To begin you'll have a large spoon of nationalism - a result of justified pride, censored media and extensive propoganda. (To be fair, when you've fought for numerous centuries to expel invaders, dealt with aggressive interferers, united yourselves and built a rapidly growing economy, I think you're intitled to feel a little bit pleased with yourselves.)

To accompany this you'll have a good sprinkling of love for 'Uncle Ho' (Hồ Chí Minh) on there. In fact his picture may well be on your plate. Mr Ho is revered and celebrated throughout Vietnam, for forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, and for being, at various times, Vietnam's motivator, activator, speaker, champion of the people, President, Prime Minister and until his death in 1969, military leader of the Viet Minh.

Then you'll have some Confucianism - a very slow-cooked dish from China. For centuries these ancient teachings have influenced (and continue to influence) everything in Vietnam from national structure to community organisation, education and working life to family relations and social interactions. This complex dish is overall quite healthy. It's remarkably relevant and practical, with respect for your parents, elders and teachers, thankfulness and rememberance of your ancestors, dedication to education, and self-responsibility being some of the main ingredients. There is, however, a slightly bitter after-taste, which seems to suit men more than women; according to Confucious, men are ultimately superior to the fairer sex. This dish is distinctly more popular with the older generations, and some youth try to hide it under their chopsticks, regarding it as a bit old-fashioned.

Another of the 'compulsory' items on your plate will be a fair sized dollop of Communist policy, structure and conformism. You don't have to eat a whole plateful (only roughly 3% of the population are Party members) but it's definitely frowned upon to refuse it altogether.

Then there'll be a few of the long-standing and enduringly popular folk dishes. These classics have evolved through centuries of rural, agricultural lifestyles - worship of plants, animals and fertility are integrated into most customs and practices of Vietnamese people.

According to everything I've read, you'll also have a bit of Daoism (or Taoism) - ancient recipes for living life, based on the concept of flow, or 'the way'. Kindness, simplicity and modesty are key (nicely demonstrated by shopping at the market with Vietnamese friends - sparkles, glamour and no holding back in telling you that you look ugly and fat!??) along with maintaining the balance between humanity and the cosmos (again - the lack of concern for the environment shown by most of the people I've met and worked with might bring the Tao influence here into question...) But still, I reckon it's a pretty nutricious dish, and we'd all do well to take a bit.

And then it's unfortunate but unavoidable that you'll have a serving of nepotism gravy - covering everything from what job you can apply for (or have a chance of getting), who you can marry, where you can buy land....

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OK, so now you can take your already pretty well-loaded plate and go explore the rest....

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Optional items:

Guidelines
In general, you can take and mix whatever you like. Most people are busy fixing up and eating their own meals, and will let you get on with yours quite peacefully. If you find you have a favourite table and choose to stop there for the entire time, then you'll be generally be respected for it. Attendents check up on the behaviour at tables pretty regularly, but they're apparently becoming more easy-going than they have been in the past.

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Now let me describe some of your extensive spiritual buffet options....

The majority of people will take some Buddhism;
Fancy visiting the beautiful and peaceful pagodas (very popular), maybe including prayers to statues of Buddha and other bodhisattvas, lighting incense sticks and taking offerings of food, drink and money?

How about a statue or image of Buddha in your family alter, in the front of your bus, or on a necklace around your neck?
You'll happily help yourself to some belief in fate and quiet acceptance of life's trials.
You’ll most likely ignore the plates of meditation or yoga – they don't really suit the Vietnamese palate.
You might pick up some belief in re-incarnation, but unless you're a monk or nun it’s very unlikely to make you vegetarian or abstinent. The meat dishes and beer on the table are quite irrestistable….

You’ll definitely want some ancestor veneration / remembrance;
I heartily recommend the ‘Ancestor Party’ dishes – days of eating, drinking and remembering ancestors with the extended family. And spending the afternoon sleeping it off. They're great.
Remember, your parent's, grandparent's and great-grandparent's spirits live in the family alter alongside the God of the Home (it's like a tardis, don't worry, there's plenty of room), and they get pretty hungry, so pick up some extra fruit, sweets and drinks to replenish it when you get home. And don't forget to throw in some beers and cigarettes for grandad.

At the next table you might pick up some Christianity;
Catholicism is more popular than Protestantism, but both are available. If you're keen on it, you can go to Mass every Sunday. There are quite a lot of churches. Other people ignore this table completely. A lot of people just pick up some of the junk food - like the gaudy, sparkly, plastic, badly-sung and hip-hop Christmas items, which should, in my opinion, be banned altogether!

Small Islam and Hindu tables cater for some people from the Cham ethnic minority, but aren't of much interest to the general population.

A newly available, very popular and rapidly expanding area of this buffet is the Capitalism table; the rich foreign flavours proving very addictive for those who try it. Whilst some of the dishes are undeniably nutricious, some people say the flavours don't mix so well with the items already on the plate. And sometimes people find the dishes on this table so irresistable that they eat too much and get a bit sick.

And just next to the Capitalism dishes are the imported(?) Consumerism treats; very tempting, very easy to eat, and proving very popular, but the long-term health effects are questionable and the floor around the table is covered in discarded plastic wrappings.

The 'foreign flavours' table is completely surrounded by excited teenagers, and mostly ignored by older generations. Korean 'dishes' are particularly popular (fashion, movies, singers...) as is English football ("No, I'm not from Manchester... sorry, no, not Liverpool either...")

Condiments of ghosts, spirits and other superstitions can be found on most of the main tables - and can add significant flavour to your plate. Mediums and fortune tellers are on hand to advise you on selection.

Some people prefer to have their plates designed and made up for them.

For them there is the option of the locally-produced Cao Đài platter - which appears to be a combination of most of the above (minus the capitalism, consumerism, meat and beer). Folks who order this seem to have an ethos of a great big hug - "all religions have one same divine origin, one same ethic based on love and justice, and are just different manifestations of one same truth", however some people find aspects of the platter a bit too unusual to be palatable.

So thats most of it. Quite a selection.
I'm sure I've missed, misunderstood or misrepresented some things, please don't hesitate to let me know...

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After such a feast, desert is simple and very Vietnamese - some good humour....

humanity, pragmatism, astounding aesthetics and, of course.....

....... karaoke!!

a couple of stories

2010-11-21T07:07:00.000-08:00

Before I take you on an exploration of the wierd, wonderful and complex Vietnamese belief systems (I can almost hear the excited anticipation!) here's a couple of stories from November.

The first because you have to take the rough with the smooth, and I don't want you to think it's all fun fun fun....

After a good morning's work and a delicious noodle lunch in the sun with the kids, I went to use the toilet. It's a squat, in a mouldy low-roofed cupboard, with no working light, but I'm used to it and it's never normally a problem. But today, as I bared my bottom and squatted to pee, a rat poked it's head up through the hole in the toilet.
That's just too much.
Can you imagine what that's like?
So if you ever get jealous while you're reading about my (more fun) adventures here in Vietnam, just go and sit on a nice, clean, normal-height, rat-free toilet for a few minutes, remember this little story, and tell yourself how great life is.

And the second because it's good to laugh at yourself.....

Riding along on the back of a xe-om (a motorbike taxi - literal meaning 'go hug') I was chuckling cynically to myself at the state of the driver's helmet, which was completely cracked, with big chunks missing, and held together with thin wire. "Wow, this dude really doesn't get the point of a helmet, does he! You'd never see this in England. What a fool...." I thought.
Until I remembered that I was on the back of this man's motorbike. Wearing his spare helmet. And it was hardly going to be his better helmet, was it now.

On arriving, and being relieved to get there in one piece, I paid the man, gave him a small tip, said goodbye and headed off to meet a friend. He called me back, which is unusual, and was gesturing, with the money in his hand. I knew I'd paid enough. Why was he asking for more?
"No more, sorry brother. Bye" I said (in friendly Vietnamese) and turned away again.
He called me again and started waving his hands in the air.
"No more!" I said (a bit more firmly) and turned to walk away again, amazed at his persistance, it's really not common here, especially when you speak some of the language.
When he called me back for a third time, I couldn't help but get a bit angry inside and started to say pretty firmly (although I'd never make a scene, especially here, where it's just not done) and in a big-girl voice; "Now really, you know I paid enough, and I already gave you a tip, and I'm NOT giving you ANY MORE...."
when I realised that I was still wearing his dubious helmet, and he wanted it back.

I felt like a total dumbass. But then again, if he'd just said what he wanted....!

(VSO, I totally understand this helmet story is the reason why you have are rules about us wearing our UK provided, full-head, certified, stig-esque helmets. It won't happen again, I promise!)

Now get to the front of the queue for your tickets - the cultural smorgosbord of Vietnamese beliefs will be starting soon....

A stay in hospital and our wonderful NHS

2010-11-10T02:15:00.000-08:00

During my recent 5 day incarceration in the Hoi An Pacific Hospital, I had plenty of time to lie back and think about the unfairness of life. Not the unfairness of getting Dengue - that's just bad luck and having mega-delicious blood, but the unfairness of having vs. not having.

There was me, with my VSO medical insurance, in the 'International Department'. A big clean room to myself, with a spare bed, a private bathroom and the biggest TV I've seen in Viet Nam, a phone line direct to a nurse, and daily visits from the doctor. And then just down the corridor, in the 'normal' wards, were people 2 or 3 to a bed, with no mattress or sheets, who were lucky to see a nurse once a day, never mind a doctor.

This is what's unfair. Simply because of where I was born, and to whom, and because (via insurance) I have dollars, I have such different treatment when I'm sick.

We're all essentially the same. We're all people, we're all vulnerable, and we should all have the same access to healthcare irrespective of race, colour or money.

Here in Viet Nam, there is both Government and private healthcare provision, but you have to pay for either, and there's generally little difference in cost or service. There are private health insurance schemes, and there are some Government subsidies - children under 6 don't pay for basic healthcare, and the very poor, disabled, war veterans and poor elderly get some reduced rates.

My interpreter's father is very sick with a cardiac condition, and after two weeks in the local hospital he's had to go back home as they can't afford for him to be there any longer. When you're in hospital there is no personal care, and no food or drink are provided. So if you're sick, a member of your family has to stay in the hospital with you to take care of things. Another family wage lost....

People often don't buy the medicines they are prescribed, or they reduce the dosage - I regularly see children with epilepsy who have fits several times a day because their parents cut their tablets in half or quarter. They just can't afford to buy more.

If someone needs a wheelchair, they have to buy one, or try to find an organisation (Vietnamese or foreign) to buy one for them. Often their family will just carry them.

This picture is of the children's ward at the local hospital. It's unbearably hot. All these people are sleeping and eating in this room.

Whilst half-shielding painful eyes from the glow of the laptop, I watched Michael Moore's 'Sicko' - and was completely astounded by the money-grabbing and lack of humanity in the US healthcare / insurance system, where if you don't have (or can't get) insurance, or if your insurance can wriggle out of it, and you don't have money, you just don't get help when you're sick. Or you go bankrupt trying.

My experiences here are reconfirming my absolute belief in, and admiration of the UK's National Health Service. Although at times it's a rumbling, inefficient, hulking lump of an organisation - it's free healthcare for everyone. All we ever hear in the media about the NHS is the problems. The wasted money. The doctors who mess up. The beaurocracy. The waits. The IT systems. The constant re-structuring. The rising costs. And these things do need sorting out.

BUT... if you get sick in the UK, you'll be looked after. If you need drugs, sure there's a prescription charge, but it's tiny compared to the cost of the medication. If you need an operation, okay you might wait a while, but it'll be free, and you'll stay in a relatively clean (compared to other places in the world) hospital, for as long as you need to, with food and care and therapy at no cost. If you need follow up medical care at home, that's free too. If you need therapy, that's free. X-rays, CT scans, blood tests, examinations, biopsies, MRIs.... all free. If you need orthotics, or a wheelchair, or a hospital bed at home, they're free.

These things aren't deemed newsworthy. But they're incredible, and we should treasure and celebrate our NHS, despite it's faults.

A comparison of a working day

2010-11-10T02:05:00.000-08:00

Morning
UK - struggle to get out of bed when the alarm goes at 7.30, hot shower, breakfast, iron uniform, find socks, boots, jumper, coat, scarf, gloves, scrape ice from the car.
Vietnam - wake up with the cockeral and public loudspeakers at around 5.30, yoga, cold shower, throw on shorts, T-shirt and flipflops. Find my bike (which has often been appropriated by one of the family to go to the coffee shop or to play football)

Breakfast
UK - tea and porridge at home
Vietnam - fresh iced soy milk and beef noodle soup on the street on the way to work, or meet with colleagues for savoury pancakes.

Journey to work
UK - 20-30 minutes by car or mountain bike, queues and traffic lights on the Wolverhampton road, problems finding parking, 10 minutes finding the paperwork I need in my very messy car.
Vietnam - 5 minutes on my bike, dodging motorbikes, dogs, floods, potholes (what are these animals, Bry?) No paperwork to find.

Home visit
UK - make sure someone knows where you're going, check alerts and make sure visit is entered on the computer system, unlock filing system and review clinical notes, phone to confirm interpreter, collect appropriate equipment, record mileage and postcode of destination, check you're wearing a coat which covers your uniform, check you have your ID badge prominently displayed, set out in the car using A-Z to negotiate Walsall. Arrive and park so that you can see your car from the house, and secure any valuables in the boot out of sight. If you're lucky and there's someone in, you're likely to get complaints about services, schools or waiting for something. Neighbours couldn't care less if you're visiting, unless you're in their parking space. Heating and soap opera on full blast. Check the child's multiple special chairs, orthotics, standing frame and hoist. While there, phone the Consultant's secretary with a query about the date for follow-up. Provide printed exercise and advice sheets, and arrange the next visit. On returning to the office, confirm and code the visit on the computer system, and write comprehensive notes by hand within 48 hours in case of litigation. Next visit.....
(4-5 visits per day, per therapist)

Vietnam - meet interpreter at coffee shop. Have iced coffee while waiting for a few more people. Pile on motorbikes. Realise no-one knows where the child lives. Wait while someone goes back to the centre to find a phone number and get a rough address. Set off in the opposite direction. Stop at a market where someone buys fruit. Go back in the right direction. Stop because we've lost a motorbike. Phone them. All catch up, person who was left behind now carrying six empty 4-litre plastic bottles and a child. Stop at another market for something. Turn off the road onto a dirt track. Get to a large expanse of water.

Try to put the motorbikes onto tiny wooden boats and fail. Leave the bikes, and climb on. People, helmets, bags, bottles, fruit, and child.

Marvel at the muscles on the elderly lady paddling us across. Get to the other side. Fight over who pays (everyone's trying to). Walk through palm trees, cactii and pines. More motorbikes appear from somewhere. Climb on (3 on each). Arrive in a village, and stop at a house. Quickly realise this isn't a house with a child requiring therapy. Offer appropriate condolances, light incense sticks and put fruit on the altar for the recently departed. Set off again after drinking tea. Arrive at another house. Walk through their garden to the shack behind. Finally - a familiy with a child with a disability. Neighbours and relatives gather to watch - squatting in doorways and clambering at windows. House built for ventilation, with mosquitos and gheckos joining the party. Assess child on the thin mat on the floor where the family sleep.

Try to get the local therapy worker to get involved rather than watch the loud and very distorted soap opera blaring out from the TV. Drink fresh coconut milk, and eat hot Vietnamese 'donuts' brought by the aunt. Cut the legs off a plastic stool with a penknife, give advice via interpreter, and draw pictures in biro in a school notebook. Investigate the wheelchair sitting rusting in the back garden, which still works fine, and suggest that we might use it for another child. Fix it onto the back of a motorbike. Lunchtime. But we set off in another direction. "Do we have another visit?" "No". "OK, where are we going?". "To make a visit Nhi's parents". As if it was a very stupid question. Arrive for a 10 minute visit. Drink tea. Have lunch. "Are we going now?" "Now we rest". Of course.

2 hours and a nap with grandma later, the bottles are filled with home-made fish sauce and we're all loaded back on. I drive a motorbike round the garden and everyone laughs when I crash into a fence. At some point we deposit the borrowed bikes back, walk again, and get to the water. Back on the boat, retrieve the original bikes, and weave our way back to the centre. Everyone lies around in exhaustion and wonderment at how much work we've done. "Thank goodness we don't have to do that every day" they say... "Oh my god"
(4-5 therapists, one international volunteer,1 visit per day!)

School visits
UK - sign in, showing identification and CBR certification. Meet with child and their dedicated 'LSP' (learning support practitioner). Discuss progress and/or concerns. Meet with teacher if needed. Update their daily therapy activity programme. Arrange a review with their speech therapist, their occupational therapist, their educational psychologist, their paediatrician and their wheelchair specialist. Provide information for their educational review. Write notes and put on the computer system.
Vietnam - dream on. A child who can't fend for themselves and get around independently won't be in school.

Lunchtime
UK - half an hour to eat a sandwich or salad, often in the car or the office
Vietnam - 2 to 3 hour break in the middle of the day. Leisurely cycle home for a feast of rice, veg and fish with the family, and a nice long nap

Meetings
UK - efficient, agenda-ed, to the point, effective, democratic. Generally people paying attention and things get decided.
Vietnam - slow, circular discussion, authoritarian, people smoking and answering their phones, not much gets decided.

After work
UK - back in the car, back on the busy road, home.
Vietnam - to the market with colleagues for fresh passionfruit juice and hot banana and coconut fritters. Home in 5 minutes, and then a ride to the beach for a swim....

a weekend of culture....(and dancing)

2010-11-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

Having met Kathy and David in Heathrow airport on the way to this Vietnamese adventure, it's very sad that they're about to finish up their placements in Hanoi and go back to the UK. Being alone, far from home, and in a very unfamiliar culture, they've been a big support to me and the rest of our little starting-out group. So to say goodbye, the six of us met up together for a weekend in Huế, central Vietnam. One of the wettest cities in Asia. In the middle of the rainy season. Whose idea was that?????

Well despite the constant rain, persistant cyclo drivers, post-Dengue fatigue and Shimpei's dodgy massage (more about that later!) we had a really fun weekend.

The city is green and aesthetically pleasing, with the Perfume river winding through the middle, and lots of parks and ornamental gardens with footpaths running through and round them. The streets are very very clean, and much less crowded than Hanoi or Saigon. If it ever stops raining I'll go back and spend time walking around.

Huế is renowned for it's temples, the Citadel, and it's food. I missed the tour of the temples and tombs, staying at the hotel to preserve currently-limited reserves of energy for the evening's fun and games, but the Citadel was an experience - walking amongst the ornate temples and buildings in the mist and rain was atmospheric and other-worldly. We wandered around, imagining going back 80 years to a time when the Citadel was home to Nguyễn emporers, their wives and concubines and eunuch servants, with their Mandarins in elaborate robes lined up to advise and discuss important matters, and elephants trained and dressed up for show.

Following hours walking around in the rain, our good friend mister Shimpei decided to make use of the hotel sauna and massage service. The sauna turned out to be 10 minutes shivering in a lukewarm cupboard, and the massage was, in his words, 3 minutes of "rubbing, scratching, and pinching" in a very seedy little room. When the young lady climbed astride him, pointing to his lower region and saying..... "bay-bee? bay-bee?", he claims to be pretty sure that she was offering an extra service and not just being descriptive, and escaped as fast as he could! Despite him turning down her lurid advances, we'll be calling him 'baby' for the rest of his life. Hahaha.

So the rain continued, but couldn't put a dampener on the evening, as we feasted at a popular local vegetarian restaurant, with the torrential rain hammering the metal roof. Huế has quite a lot of fairly devout Buddhists, and therefore has more vegetarian eateries than any other city in Viet Nam. Who'd have guessed that savoury fried sesame jackfruit would be so tasty?

And after dinner we made our way to an actual nightclub, where 'happy hour' lasted from when we arrived until we'd danced our socks off, every guy had tried and failed to chat Sarah up, and we'd finished the bar's stocks of sambuca. Good times.

I spent Sunday night with some volunteers living in Huế and some of their local friends. This was an adventure, consisting of beers at the backpacker hostel, local street food,

an hour at the Miss Hue University beauty pageant (degrading, chauvanistic and UNBELIEVABLY slow, but an experience. Cameras and lights and sparkles and celebrities and gold suits and screaming ahoy).....

......followed by late night exploring of the city on scooters in search of sinh to, sheltering under low plastic sheeting to crowd round a tiny table to eat hot sweet fried goodies, more scootering, more street food and finally to bed.... fun fun fun in the, er, rain rain rain

I somehow slept all the way back back to Tam Ky on Monday morning (when the ticket says 'hard seat' they're not joking, and the smell of dried squid was pretty intense)....

....and then slept through most of the cultural show I was invited to attend that afternoon. Local government and Party officials and university directors were gathered for endless speeches, dancing, singing and a large buffet. I was almost dribbling with tiredness, and for the first time since university lectures was doing the thing where you fight sleep until your head drops down, waking you up, and you quickly look around to see if anyone has noticed. Know what I mean?

If you read this, Sarah, thanks for the welcome to Huế, and Kathy and David, good luck for your travels and thank you for being wonderful and 'tot bung'. See you back in the UK....

And the rest of you - see you at Christmas!!

progress with the lingo...

2010-10-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

My Vietnamese is steadily improving. At least I feel like it is.

I do, however, have some concerns about my pronunciation and spelling. In this central region there's a very strong, drawling, farmer's accent, and my most dedicated and enthusiatic teachers are a young lady with a harelip, a girl who is deaf, and a man with dyslexia.

I guess this might equate to someone learning English by living and working in a special school in deepest darkest Somerset for a year...

X-rated chair

2010-10-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, indiscriminately tearing up a friend's copy of Vanity Fair to cover a young child's seat was not a very good idea. It's now displaying some very tawdry and lurid details about Tiger Woods' shenanigans. OK so no-one can understand, but I still feel it's a bit inappropriate...

Cardboard seats?

2010-09-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

Why does seating matter?

Some disabled children have a really hard time controlling their bodies. When working with physical disability, the most common problem we come across is cerebral palsy (CP). CP is the name given to disability caused by injury to a child’s brain during the mother’s pregnancy, during birth, or soon afterwards. It's a problem all over the world, although rates are higher where pre-natal and birth care is not very good, and where doctors prescribe high levels of drugs to expectant mothers (amongst other problems).

Like with a stroke or a brain injury in an adult, the amount and area of damage to the brain determines what type and degree of problems the child experiences. CP can range from children with normal behaviour and learning and just very mild movement problems, to children with significant problems with movement, sensation and thinking.

For some children with CP, the injury damages the part of the brain which helps them to hold themselves upright (the bit that sends signals to the postural muscles). For some of these children, the signals for 'activity' don't get produced, so they're floppy. For other children the signals aren't regulated properly, and so their muscles are overactive. They might arch back, straighten and/or cross their legs, and/or their arms might take unusual positions.

From David Werner's 'Disabled Village Children'

To get an idea what this lack of postural balance might feel like for a child (and I often get the staff and parents to try this….) imagine sitting on a gym ball - one of those big bouncy exercise balls - and lifting your feet off the floor. Then while you’re trying to balance, try to colour in a picture. Or write your name. Or put on your clothes. Or eat a meal. It’d be pretty difficult, right?

Well that’s how things are for a child who has a problem with their postural muscles. When you sit them on an ordinary stool or chair, it takes everything they’ve got to try and stay upright, never mind to concentrate on swallowing their food, or gripping a pencil, or stacking bricks. They can’t concentrate on developing their functional skills (eating and drinking for example), their 'fine motor' skills (small movements with the hands), or their speaking or swallowing skills, because they don’t have a stable base to start from. They’re simply trying to balance.
They feel vulnerable, and they are. This feeling of insecurity makes their muscles misbehave even more (again – think about what you’re arms and legs would do if you try to sit and balance on a wobbly gym ball).

So…. in order to give children like this some stability, some balance.... we have to give them good seating. They need suitably sized, suitably supportive chairs. Some children need straps. Some need the seat to be sloped downwards towards the back (to stop them arching their body back). Some need head-rests. Some need arm rests.

When these kids are properly supported in a sitting position, without having to work too hard, they suddenly have the opportunity to use their hands. To work at holding their head up. To concentrate their efforts on swallowing their food or practicing speech.

Surely they have chairs in Vietnam? Why bother making them?

In the UK, children with CP can get an astonishing array of fantastic specialist seats, for free, courtesy of our quite incredible NHS. But here in Vietnam, ‘seating’ for kids generally means the floor, or whatever plastic seating is available at the market. So you often see adults squatting on tiny stools, and children perched high up on bar stools. The standard sized seats and tables are far too big for children. For kids who can balance well, the solution is simply to cut the legs of the plastic chairs and tables. But for the children who can't balance the options are;

1) Sit them on the floor or whatever seat you've got around.

2) Save up and order specialist seating from Hanoi or HCMC - around $100 for a very basic chair, off the shelf, which may or may not fit well. Then it's a few weeks wait and an expensive delivery (1000+ km). In a years time, when the child has grown too big for it, save up another $100..... and order another one (bear in mind some families are living on around $2-3 per day).

3) Try to find a kind charity or organisation to order one for you. And another one in a year's time. Then another one....

or 4) Make your own seats to measure.....

So, one of my main focuses here has been to teach the therapist and volunteers how to make strong, durable, made-to-measure chairs from cheap (or free) locally available materials.

I attribute all the techniques we’re using here to the late Bevill Packer and the very much alive and inspiring Jean Westmacott, who refined these methods in Zimbabwe and other countries. Jean runs training programmes in the UK and abroad, and has generously made their advice and instructions freely available on the web. Please see ‘www.cerebralpalsyafrica.org/APT_Programmes’ or search for 'appropriate paper based technology' for more information on their projects.

Cardboard is everywhere in Vietnam. Thanks to the prolific smoking of the adult male population, there are huge ‘Bastos’ and ‘White Horse’ boxes discarded outside every small shop. And the only glue we need is made from flour – here we’re using cassava flour, but you could use rice or wheat flour.

The only cost is around 6,000 VND (£0.20p) for the bag of flour, and then coloured paper, stickers, varnish or whatever you want to cover the chair with.

It’s basically just papier-mache, on a large scale, with some structural engineering thrown in. And it’s a lot of fun.

The first stage is to make strong, thick boards. This is done by layering large pieces of corrugated cardboard in alternate directions. We’re using 3 or 4 layers, depending on the thickness.

These are pasted together with cassava glue, which is made by adding boiling water to a paste of flour and cold water. The kids love helping with the pasting.

Then we dry the boards under tables and weights outside in the Vietnamese sun. They need turning over regularly, and dry in around 3 days.

Once the boards are dry, we measure the child and cut the pieces to the appropriate size. The sides are tensioned together with rods with splayed ends.

All the joints are then glued and re-enforced with ‘angle irons’ made from thinner cardboard.

Edges are covered with strips of magazine or newspaper, and once dry, the chair is ready for a layer of tougher paper, paint, varnish......

......in any colour or design the child chooses!

Straps can be made very cheaply by tailors at the market, and it's easy to cut holes through the back or sides to attach them.

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The therapist is currently making her first chair completely independently, and I really hope that she will carry on making seating for the children in the area. It makes such a difference to their lives and to their development. Maybe some of the families can learn from her, so that when their child grows, they can make new chairs themselves…..

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6 months in...

2010-09-30T03:31:00.000-07:00

... and it now seems completely normal;

- to meet a friend for breakfast at 6.30am on a Sunday morning

- to eat fish, shrimp, garlic and chilli for breakfast at 6.30 on a Sunday morning

- for people to wear pyjamas all day long

- to feel naked leaving the house without a hat and sunglasses

- to have a nap every day after lunch

- to stand up in a (mini)bus on long journeys

- to hear 'happy birthday', 'jingle bells', 'auld lang syne' and 'deck the halls' chiming chirpily from the rubbish truck

- to be asked if I know rooney

- for coffee to come with ice and condensed milk

- to have to get things signed and stamped by a million people before you can do anything

- have school children hide behind bushes to take your picture on their mobile phone (I'm a celebrity, doncha know)

- for 9pm to be a late night!- to take cold showers

Food - the next installment

2010-09-27T03:33:00.000-07:00

Hello people!

Sorry... before I give you pictures and recipes, I know I already talked about this in my first blog about food, but, well... life here is having a big impact on me. I want to talk more about corporate vs. local food production. I know that you guys, my fabulous friends, are already engaged with the world, and give thought to how your lifestyle choices affect you, your community and the planet we live on. So I know I'm preaching to the converted, and you don't need to read this. But well, it's just.... if you're not particularly, or you don't particularly..... please read, and give it a little bit of thought.

Here in Vietnam, more than 70% of people still make their living directly from the land. In this area, even the people working in office jobs, industry or running small businesses also keep animals, and grow rice and vegetables at the home. Admittedly things are different in the cities; supermarkets are becoming more common and I've heard that meat, fruit and dairy products are being imported from China for the growing middle-class urban market. But still.... the vast majority of the Vietnamese population still live in rural areas, surrounded by the beauty of the rice paddies. Their lives are entwined with the cycle of sowing and growing. People (especially the women, who do most of the work) are tough and lean and incredibly strong from physical work. Food is as fresh as can be, and (other than seafood) doesn't travel far from field to bowl. Communities are still sustained by the camaradery forged through physical work, with families and neighbours joining together during strenuous periods of labour. The local market is the still the buzzing hub of every village - with people calling in daily to buy what they need for the evening's meal. Small street restaurants are everywhere, and Vietnamese people are very (and quite rightly) pround of their food.

I need to be careful when I describe all this, because I fully understand that things are not perfect here. Not by a long way. This rural lifestyle, whilst seeming so idyllic to me.... healthy, beautiful and essentially sustaining and sustainable; is very tough, and not lived by choice. It's forced, by limited financial resources and systemic repression. I understand why families who have farmed for generations, for centuries, want their children to do well in school so that they can get good jobs in offices. With computers. And, depending on the family, either enough or lots of money.

It's really difficult to speak about this without feeling and seeming patronising. I've never had to live on 2 dollars a day. I don't have a family to feed. I don't have children to think about. I haven't had to work in fields my whole life, and I don't have blisters on my hands. I've had a comfortable upbringing and a full education. I have a degree, a van, an iPOD and a laptop. And so it feels ungrateful to discuss any negative aspects of life in the UK. But I think it's important that people here balance their aspirations of urban lifestyles and material wealth with an appreciation of some of the positives of their current lifestyles, and some of the problems which can so easily accompany the transition.

As an example, in Britain (and I'm sure I can say the same for the US), the vast majority of people have become completely detached from where their food comes from. According to Colin Tudge from the Campaign for Real Farming, less than 1% of the total workforce in Britain and the US is working on the land, and in Britain the average age of farmers is approaching 60. I'm embarrassed to say I can count on one hand the number of farmers I know personally in the UK. Wandering (ok... sitting snacking) in the vibrant markets here, listening to the chatter and bartering, I think about the admittedly convenient, but very depressing behemoths that are supermarkets at home, and about the sad-faced people trudging their aisles for cheap deals on heavily packaged, anonymous, chemically-treated and far-too-often imported foods. People here can't comprehend that a lot of people in the UK rarely buy fresh food. That a huge number of people have major preventable health problems caused by unhealthy diets and lack of exercise. That some people rarely go outside in the fresh air.

(That's not to say that Vietnam doesn't have preventable health problems, don't get me wrong - cancer, diabetes and heart disease are major and growing problems here, but I would say that at the moment, the average Vietnamese diet is far healthier than your average Brit's...)

I don't talk about these things to be critical of home. There are so many things about life in the UK that we can and definately should be grateful for. I just really hope that as more people here enjoy office jobs, more money, more free time and more stuff, they keep in mind the real (but judging by the West, all-too-easily forgettable) benefits of the agrarian, land-connected life they risk leaving behind. And on the other side of the world, I hope that the UK continues to re-awaken, re-learn, and re-build our connection with our land and food production. Optimistically, there are many deeply committed people and organisations working at encouraging this - lets just hope the mainstream accepts the idea. On a personal level, I'm deeply appreciating living in and amongst the produce which nourishes me so well, and I'll be making every effort to adjust my life to the same when I get back.

(As an aside, I keep wondering whether there's any way the UK could tie-in unemployment and state benefits with people learning about and growing food. Hmmmm.....)

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Here, animals are animals before they're food.

As in the UK, Vietnamese love to eat meat. Now that people have a bit more money, practically every dish at meal includes meat or fish. Although I'm sure there are some larger scale operations somewhere in Vietnam, in the rural areas animals are raised in and around family homes. Meat is generally taken to the village markets by the person who raised the animal. It's slaughtered, bought, cooked and eaten within hours. OK, so it is often served complete with bones, and tendons, and sinews and skin (which to our sensitised Western tastes might be 'disgusting'), but it's healthy, natural, and tastes great. I personally feel that our apathy towards treatment of animals and farmers at home is far more 'disgusting' than picking bones out of my chicken noodle soup. Now I know that there is simply not the option to buy cheap factory-farmed meat here. Being a tad cynical, I think that if there were supermarkets selling the stuff, then Vietnamese would probably buy it. Families here have to spend a significant amount of their daily budget on food. But they're spending it on good healthy local produce, the production of which doesn't harm the environment in the same way that our 'Western' mono-culturing, globalising, profit-driven corporate food production does.
(The problems with food safety here are far more often due to lack of knowledge about nutrition and clean food preparation rather than the basic health of produce.)

Anyway, enough blabbering on.... here's some more food descriptions, pictures and vague recipes

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Vietnamese chickens can be pretty scrawny birds, but around here they're as free-range as the children are. They peck at whatever they fancy. They wake everyone up at 5.30am. They get an occasional kick when they cluck around under the table while people are eating breakfast (not from me, I should add). They grow when they're ready. They lay eggs when they're ready. They ride on the back of bikes and motorbikes, and are sold live and kicking at the market.

My favourite chicken dish has got to be 'mỳ gà'. This is a dish of the same thick fat rice noodles as in 'mỳ Quảng' (described in my last post on food), with chicken pieces and broth rich and full of flavour, with lemongrass, garlic and chilli. To this is added fresh salad leaves, herbs, roasted peanuts, more chilli, nước mắm (fish sauce) and broken up sesame rice crackers.

Another good chicken dish is a simple plate of slow-boiled, shredded chicken with cilantro (you could use Asian basil), mint, onion (boiled with the chicken) and plenty of black pepper.

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Pigs are normally kept in enclosures at the back of houses, open to sunshine and air. They're fed on food scraps, vegetables, dried casssava and rice husks.

When they're slaughtered, absolutely nothing is wasted. Although I'm not particularly partial to pig's knee noodle soup (bùn gìo heo), or congealed pigs blood soup (cháo huyết), these make very cheap nutricious meals and are very popular. (I should mention that in more urban regions where they have abattoirs, the procedures seem pretty unhygenic, and I've heard that the workers often get ill. Health and safety is not yet much of a concern here.

When it comes to pork dishes, there are so many good ones I don't know where to start. 'Bún thịt nướng' is a widely available favourite in this area - the translation is literally 'noodle meat barbeque', and consists of a bowl of fresh salad leaves, herbs and cold thin white string-like noodles, topped with flattened, marinated barbequed pork, cucumber slices, crispy rice things that look like quavers, crushed peanuts, beansprouts and slivers of blanched carrot and pickled savoury melon. The marinade is incredible - lemongrass, shallots, chilli, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, pepper, lime juice.... all the flavours of Vietnam. This will be a perfect dish for barbeques next summer. Who's in?

It's really hard to make this dish look nice in a photo. But trust me, it's soooooooo delicious.

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In the mornings, I like to stop on my bike to watch the long wandering lines of ducks as they're led from their sleeping enclosures to the rice paddies, where they are free to roam until evening when they're led back to nest.

Duck is quite a delicacy, and the meat is full of flavour. Of course, restaurants don't mess about with only serving the bland white bits. When you ask for duck you normally get a platter with the chopped-up bird (and I do mean the entire bird, chopped up; bones, head, skin, feet, everything), a side plate with the gently fried and seasoned insides (organs and part-formed eggs - pretty tasty) and a rice soup with the blood poured in (I tend to give this bit a miss). Sorry, no photo yet. I'll update next time I'm, er, 'treated'...

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Cows are all over the place. They’re sometimes tethered on long ropes in areas of grass and bushes, but often seem to just wander where they like. I'm sure children don't appreciate the family cows when they're sent out to fetch them from the fields before tea, but I certainly do. Sure they're lean and bony, but they're healthy, with shiny eyes. There's no confinement, chemicals or corn-feeding for these animals, and again, every part is used when the family decides it's time to slaughter one. I can't find out why, but cows here are only kept for meat, never for dairy products. Milk and yoghurt comes in boxes, always with at least 9% added sugar. It's expensive, and only really drunk by children. Cheese is almost unheard of, and butter is neither available or required.

Beef is cooked in so many delicious ways, it's hard to pick my favourite. 'Phở bò' is the obvious one - but I've talked about that before. 'Bún bò' is paper-thin slices of lean beef in a thin-noodle-laden broth - I often have this for breakfast, with added chilli of course!

A special celebration dish is tenderised, flattened beef, wrapped in leaves that look like spinach but aren't, and flash fried. Another common way to use beef is to add small slices to stir-fried green beans or broccoli. Again, I'll add photos as I take them.

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If you look at the shape of Vietnam, most of the country is relatively close to the sea, and fishing is a livelihood for a lot of people here. Market sellers make an early morning 5km trip to the beach with ice boxes, returning with fantastic shrimp, squid, clams, crab....

On a recent family visit, the child's father (a fisherman) quickly grilled some dried squid, which we devoured hot, torn into strips and dipped in potent, chilli-laden nước chấm (fish sauce).

One of my favourite seafood dishes is 'lẫu tươi sông' which is basically a big pan of soup brought to the table and kept boiling over a heat source (either a candle or a gas flame) - in which you cook all sorts of fresh seafood, egg and vegetables (of course you can get variations including fish, chicken, tofu or whatever else you feel like throwing in).

Around here, this delicious soup is served in small bowls, with bun noodles. Everyone refills everyone else's bowls, until everyone is so full they can't move. Work tends to happen quite slowly after a lunch of 'lẫu'.

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Vegetables....

....are everywhere. They're grown all around houses, and in large areas in the fields.

They're taken to market on backs, over shoulders in baskets, loaded in hand-pulled carts and piled onto motorbikes. They're mainly sold by ladies with deeply lined faces, sharp eyes, grubby fingers and suprising smiles. The veg will have been picked the day you buy it, complete with dirt and reassuring small holes that show that the smallest village inhabitants haven't been detered.

Dark green, light green, red, purple, yellow, bitter, succulent, strange-looking, bland, spicy.... cooked up into soups and spring rolls, stir-fried, steamed, shredded, pickled, wrapped, chopped, boiled, sweetened, mashed, salted, dried.... I could go on and on.....

I think I'll do another post just on the crazy fruit and veg. And there's a whole world of breakfasts to talk about at a later date..... this one's gone on far too long already, and has made me very very hungry.

Now, what shall I have for dinner..... :o)

work....

2010-09-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

OK, so I know I promised the next post would be about food, but I'm going to make you wait until you've read some more about my work. Mwah ha ha....

But don't worry - this one's mainly pictures of what we're up to.

Welcome to Nui Thanh centre!

Having felt at the beginning that this placement just wasn't going to achive anything, it's turned out to be amazing. We're making good progress, and I wish I had longer here. It's mainly informal training with the therapist (in glasses here) and the families, but I'm also doing more structured sessions with local women who volunteer their time to visit children who can't get to the centre.

Days at the centre are full of fun and games.

I promise you, the little girl below IS having fun...

This is her "I'm having fun" face. Her cerebral palsy just makes it difficult to smile.

Can you guess what colour we had to make her special chair?

This 14 year old young man had never held a pencil or a crayon in his life. Why? No-one thought he could. He draws every day now, but it's a battle to get anyone to let him try things. This one's really getting to me. He could learn to do so much if people believed in him.

This mother is absolutely incredible. Her little boy is quite severely disabled with cerebral palsy, but they communicate like they're reading each other's minds. I love watching them laughing when they balance on her old bicycle. She works very very hard with him, and she'd do anything for him.

We're also doing a lot of home visits, which are always humbling and unpredictable. At this very remote shack on the side of a mountain, we were treated to an hour-long feast, home brew (lethal), guavas and bananas from the tree outside, cassavas from the garden to take back to the centre, and beds and hammocks to rest in. Work certainly wan't like this in West Bromwich!

This family have a devastating story... they had two healthy normal children, then the husband went to Cambodia with the Vietnamese army (as they fought to end the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge). On his return, they both felt that they wanted more children, so had two more, and both have cerebral palsy with severe learning disabilities. Almost certainly related to the amount of Dioxin in the areas where the soldiers were based.

This little boy was born with club feet, which are being managed well by the Orthopaedic Hospital in Da Nang. The only problem is that families have to go and stay in the city, pay for all the treatment and orthotics, and the children often need input until they are 5 or 6 years old, sometimes longer. For families whose incomes are often only enough to just get by, it really causes them a lot of difficulty. Although it has it's problems, the NHS is pretty special...

The little girl on the far right has severe burns to both her legs, but functionally she's fine. I was sad to discharge her from the centre, as she was a little ray of light, but she's far better off going to school.

As you can probably tell, I love this job. Good times.

and the next blog will be about food.... I promise

Friend have healthy no?

2010-09-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

That's the direct translation of the phrase "bạn có khỏe không?" - meaning 'how are you?'
It's occurred to me that, when I meet up with ex-pat friends, talk often turns to the things about life here which make us feel unhealthy. Sure, the heat is oppressive. Sure, when you go out jogging people stare. Yes, the roads are lethal, and there's dust and pollution everywhere. Yes, humidity means a lot of sweating, and wounds are more prone to infection. And yes, there's a crazy amount of salt and sugar and flavour enhancers added to food and drink.

But honestly? After six months here I've never been healthier. And here's why....

1) SLEEP
Where I'm living, the pace of life is slow. Thanks to earplugs, I sleep a good 8 hours most nights, and nap for at least an hour every lunchtime. (Admittedly it's not the same for everyone. The ladies I buy my morning sticky rice, noodles, soy milk or baguettes from are up and cooking at 3am, the ice-cutters are busy cutting ice soon after, city slickers in HCMC and Ha Noi work long hours, and I'm absolutely certain the workers in the Western-owned shoe and clothing sweatshops don't get to nap in whatever tiny lunch break they get. But here in the country, in general, people rest and sleep plenty.)

2) EXERCISE
Cycling and walking everywhere. (Again, this is no longer true for most adult Vietnamese; who are now able to afford motorbikes, and use them far more than necessary. The centre's therapist does the 800m journey from home to work on her motorbike four times a day, and the lady who cooks at the guesthouse rides hers all of 200m to buy vegetables. And I have no doubt that when people can afford to buy cars they will, and will use them as ridiculously as a lot of people do in the UK. But all that is for another discussion.)

3) INSPIRING WORK
My work here is very challenging and very inspiring, I'm learning loads, and meeting all sorts of kind, resourceful people. Working in this situation is requiring me to re-analyse the fundamental role of therapy in people's lives. I'm enjoying exploring teaching methods. Drawing pictures. Acting (the fool). Engaging people with ideas. Finding out what they understand. Working with Nhung, my fabulous interpreter. I'm enjoying the opportunity to be creative and practical - making adaptive equipment from whatever we can find. Although there are fantastic services for children with disabilities in the UK, I do feel that sometimes the easy availablity of expensive specialist equipment, and the restrictions of H&S mean that we either forget, disregard, or are prevented from using more simple methods. I'm having to be part time physiotherapist, part time teacher, and part time speech therapist, occupational therapist, behavioural therapist, seating constructer, psychologist... Again, for another, longer post.

4) SUNSHINE
Plenty of that here! No vitamin D shortage....

5) YOGA
I'm doing a lot of yoga. Ok so this is mainly because I'm here alone. I don't have a family to look after or fields to tend, and I don't exactly have a packed social life. But the slow steady pace of life, combined with the beauty of the country and the sunrises and sunsets, somehow inspires taking time to think and reflect and centre. (I haven't yet met a Vietnamese who knows what yoga is - free time is a very new concept here, and is generally spent sleeping, drinking coffee, chatting or watching soaps on TV)

6) MINIMAL BOOZING
Rarely drinking alcohol. Partly, again, because I don't have much of a social life, but also, because women very rarely drink here. (It's sadly a different story for men, who drink a lot of beer and rice wine, and who smoke like chimneys. The World Health Organisation office in Vietnam estimates that over half the men over 18 in Vietnam smoke, and health services are reporting rapidly rising rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.)
(Hoi An girls..... you'll may well disagree with this claim, but you'll agree that cargo's mojitos are sometimes essential for mental health reasons....! )

7) EMOTIONAL STABILITY
There's minimal risk of me getting close enough to any guys for them to mess with my emotional wellbeing :o)

8) and finally.... GREAT FOOD!
I've eaten nothing but good, fresh locally grown / raised food for 6 months. (OK... I lie. I VERY much enjoyed the dark chocolate-covered coffee beans sent by my mum. hint hint)

I think it's time for another posting on food....

things that didn't make sense and now do

2010-08-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

OK so there's lots of things. But here's a couple....

1) Completely un-padded chairs and beds.

My soft, white, sofa-pampered British ass took an unexpected beating when I first arrived in Vietnam.
'WHY would anyone not have cushions on seats?' I thought.

'WHY would anyone choose to sleep on a solid surface if they don't have to?' I thought.

Especially when most Vietnamese have very little padding of their own.....

Well I totally understand now.

It's so hot and sweaty that it would just be horrible and sticky to be cushioned into anything. Clothes have to be tolerated, but otherwise it's a case of minimising skin contact with anything. It's all about air flow.
As to sleeping on solid beds/floors? Well I'm working on the padding (as if I needed an excuse to eat more Vietnamese food!), and luckily take after my father in never having much of a problem sleeping, well, anywhere! Naps ahoy....

(As an aside, I'm sure that as well as being cool, the no-mattress thing is a pretty effective contraceptive in this two-baby country... )

2) Bottled drinking water.

Wow, I thought when I arrived. How very un-environmentally friendly. Everyone drinking bottled water. What a lot of plastic. What a lot of waste!

But on thinking it through.... what is more wasteful? Cleaning to drinking quality only the water you drink, or cleaning to drinking quality the water you drink, plus the water you wash your car with, wash your dog with, water your garden with, shower in, flush your loo with....

And although making lots of plastic bottles isn't ideal in any way, the system isn't as wasteful as it first seems. Sure some people buy lots of small bottles and throw them away, but that's generally tourists. In every Vietnamese house, shop, office, pagoda, every building in Vietnam, you'll find large blue 21-litre bottles of drinking water. Fresh bottles are delivered by nearby shops, who take the empty ones for re-filling. Each large refill costs around 30-40p (the same as a 1 litre bottle). So it really makes a lot of sense. And of course, drinking this water gives you POWER!!!....

These things makes me wonder what else I consider normal or sensible which is actually ridiculous?
And what am I seeing and living that is actually ridiculous but that's becoming normal in my mind?!>
Hmmmmm.....

buses. oi choi oi.....(oh my god!)

2010-08-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

After a particularly traumatic bus journey yesterday I thought I'd put my experiences of Vietnamese buses out here for you all! Enjoy....

Now obviously I'm not talking about the Korean or Japanese tourist buses that whisk people north-south or vice versa. These air-conditioned, reclining-seated, well curtained, shock-absorbing, speed-monitored ghosts slip up and down the country as if the parts of Vietnam outside Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Saigon don't exist. If I try to flag one down it's as if I'm invisible.

So if I want to go anywhere that I can't get to on my feet or my bike, it's the local buses. Now these are all privately owned and operated, and it's a ferocious world. There are no overt bus wars (as you find with taxis in other parts of the world) because this is Vietnam and everyone is lovely to everyone, but there is a lot of competition. This is worth knowing when they try to charge you 5 times the normal price...

Buses on my stretch of the highway are 16 seater minibuses. The vehicles themselves are pretty modern, which is a small relief. They'll have a driver and a sharp-elbowed... conductor? (I guess that's the best word) in the back.

There are no timetables, and the way to catch one is to stand at the side of the road and wait. Soon enough one will scream up with mister or mrs sharp-elbows yelling the destination. They'll go past you, notice you waving, slam on the brakes, and reverse back into into the oncoming traffic for you. This scooping people up from the side of the road means that, as a driver, you have to perfect the last minute overtake-and-squealing-brakes manouvure to ensure that you get to passengers before the bus dude in front of you.

And then two minutes later he does the same to you.

And then you do it again.

And so on.

I'm developing a grudging respect for the drivers. It's quite common for us to hurtle along at well over 130kpm, around and between motorbikes and lorries, with only a loud and insistant horn to clear the way. How they pull out from behind a line of 3 lorries and buses, into an outside bend, up a hill, with a doubly loaded minibus, see a truck coming the other way, and still overtake, is beyond me. The driver doesn't even pause in his conversation, and might change the track on the radio at the same time. Every time I think we're going to get creamed, and every time we seem to make it. No-one else even notices. I still sit there shaking a little. I guess I have fairly good reason to be worried - within two months of being here I'd seen 3 fatalities on this small stretch of highway, and there are two buses in my village with their fronts smashed in.

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A few things I've learnt about taking buses....

1) Never get on an almost empty bus. Whilst you can luxuriate in a seat to yourself, your luxuriating will be done whilst you go back and forth through your town for as long as it takes for the bus to be full enough to move on. The other morning I was still outside my guesthouse an hour after I got on.

2) Never get on a completely full bus. When I mean completely full, I don't just mean that all the seats are full, I mean that every available square cm of space from the floor to the ceiling is full. You'll feel the full quality of the elbows as they squash you into a ball and ram you into a top-left corner like something they're trying to hide in a wardrobe.

3) Never sit with women. Rural Vietnamese women very rarely travel in cars. They are unused to being in a moving box. They vomit. Frequently. They're quite organised about it - packing small plastic bags and tissues, but when they've deposited their lunch into the bag they tie the top and throw it past the other passengers and out of the window. (Extra note to self.... watch out for flying bags when cycling on the highway....)

4) Never expect a seat to yourself. In fact, never expect a seat. When they happily squeeze 35 people into a 16 seater, you do well just to be inside. I've been on buses where they've had to bang the walls and ceiling to get the driver to stop because someone's passed out in the crush. The following picture is at the beginning of a journey. I haven't yet been able to take one during a journey for two reasons - a) I can't move my arms enough to get at my camera, and b) the conductor and driver get mad and throw you off. I guess they do have some regulations then....

5) Think carefully about accepting a seat in the front. Whilst you might get marginally more space (5 is the most I've seen in the front), you also get a view of the road. Which is terrifying. My mental health suffers less crammed in the back.

6) Never sit next to the cute child. They will be on your lap and throwing up before you know it.

7) Never sit next to the very red-faced man. He will be drunk, on your lap and throwing up before you know it

8) Never try and take your bike on the bus. It causes chaos.

9) Never get separated from your stuff. Not because it would be stolen (things are very safe here), but because getting off means throwing yourself off whilst the bus is moving, and the chances of gathering everything together are slim

10) Always look for an older driver. If they've survived that long....

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In some countries I'd recommend travelling on local buses as an experience. Here it's just very uncomfortable, and really quite dangerous. I'd recommend the train, if you can. Or a big ghost bus with a fridge, cool drinks and a loo.

good mornin!

2010-08-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

Arriving in Nui Thanh and checking out the view from my room, I asked about the building and grounds next door. On being told that it's the regional marine training base, my celibate self got to imagining lots of handsome young men running around and doing pressups with their shirts off underneath my window.....

Unfortunately not.

The only male I ever see there is the gardener, who looks at least 100 years old, and sleeps under the bushes. There apparently are lots of men staying there, but the establishment keeps them very effectively hidden (and presumably sedated) by putting them through their 4-times weekly physical training session at 4am.
This long training session involves a lady with a very piercing voice and a loudspeaker......

"MOT, HAI, BA, BON..... " (1,2,3,4....)

Not so pleased about the neighbours now!!!

the rice cycle

2010-08-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Vietnam is variously described as the 2nd and 3rd biggest rice exporting country in the world. Either way, they grow a lot of rice. The combination of lots of sunshine, massive amounts of tropical rain, and huge expanses of flat land, makes Vietnam (like much of South East Asia) very fertile and perfect for rice farming. The Southern and Central areas manage to coax three harvests a year out of the land. The North manages two. Obviously there are some large areas of Vietnam where rice is grown commercially (particularly in the South), but certainly here it's small scale. The majority of families around here rent small patches of land from the local officials, and their harvest is used only to feed the family that grows it, not for selling on. Growing rice is a labour intensive, endless cycle, and I was shocked to discover that around here, most people who farm rice earn in a year the same as our "moderate" VSO monthly allowance.

So, living and working with people who grow rice, I've learnt quite a bit about the process, and I thought I'd share it with you, dear reader....

Being a "cycle", there isn't a beginning to start at, but it seems right to begin when the ground is empty....

Before they plough, people soften the empty ground by flooding it with water, using irrigation channels and small generator-driven pumps. For small scale farming like this, with minimal income generation, it's not economically viable to buy machinery to lighten the physical load. Some people have tried forming co-operatives to purchase ploughs etc, but the obvious difficulty with this is that everyone is at the same point in the cycle at the same time. i.e. they need the machines at the same time. So... it's generally all done by hand. A lot of people keep buffalo to pull simple ploughs (they also provide manure for growing vegetables at home), and at ploughing time you'll see lean bodies out in the fields from morning till night hacking at the land with long sticks with a blade perpendular at the end.

Once the ground is prepared, the ground is flooded again, or the rain arrives. Either way, the water sinks in and gets the ground soft and ready.

Grains of rice from the last harvest are then scattered across the land, and left to grow. A bit of a rest..... When the young plants reach around 10-15cm, they are pulled up (very easily, in flooded paddy fields) and transplanted evenly in rows.

I've been trying to attach a movie is of me hindering the transplanting process - I was soooooooo slow. But I am not enough of a technological geekoid to figure out how to get a .wlmp onto blogspot. If anyone is... please drop me a line?! Until I figure it out, you'll have to make do with a photo...

Then it's a case of letting the sun shine, avoiding the raining rain, and watching the countryside get greener and greener. Many people spray fertilisers and insecticides during the rice's main period of growth.

After around 1-2 months growth, when the rice is tall and starts to turn yellow gold in colour, it's all hands on deck as the plants are cut with sythes....

.....laid out to dry, threshed (by hand) to remove the rice kernels from the stalks (around 60-70 kernels per plant), and the kernels laid out in the sun to dry (often along the sides of the roads).

The stalks are collected up and stored to provide fuel for fires and food and bedding for buffalos

Any stalks remaining in the land are burned, and the ground is ready for the next cycle....

Once the rice kernels have dried, they're taken in large bags on the back of motorbikes to the village to be put through a machine which shakes off the husks. The husks are collected to feed the pigs, and the rice is then ready to be stored in the home....

and...... EATEN!

(Or turned into fat noodles, thin noodles, round noodles, dried noodles, rice crackers, rice flour, rice cakes, rice pancakes.....)

I'm finding it incredible how the changing landscape affects my mood. I think it must have some effect on everyone here (although obviously the signs and signals of an impending or completed harvest hold more positive meaning for those who depend on it for their daily.. er, rice - just like endless rain is tiresome for me but a celebrated necessity for those farming).

When the fields are damp and green and vibrant, I feel joyful, and positive, and full of life. As the world turns brown and dry, I've noticed I more easily feel tired, and frustrated. And for the short period when the harvest is gathered and the fields are burning and blackened, I feel awful. This is probably not just a psychological response to the aesthetic, but also physiological - the constant smoke in the air makes your eyes sting and your chest hurt. This deep, palpable connection with the land is something I've come to realise I've been too removed from at home, and I think is missing in a lot of our urban 'Western' lives. I'm thinking about a few months WWOOFing when I finish here.....

the interrogation

2010-08-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

Being the only foreigner in the area, its totally understandable that people are curious about me. I also understand that people are often very keen to practice their English (all 3 or 4 sentances of it). It's always nice to meet new people, and I'm more than happy to talk. It's just slightly frustrating that people seem to wait until you're about to start eating a meal before pulling up stools and starting with the questions. Especially at breakfast. Breakfast's a pretty personal meal. I'm often not fully awake, and trying to get my head together for the day at work. Negotiating a conversation in Vietnamese (or, even more challenging, very broken English) whilst handling chopsticks, balancing on a teenytiny plastic stool, keeping flies out of your face and fending off stray dogs, in 35 degree heat, is quite a stressful experience. Unfortunately quite a lot of the people around here have a rather brusque manner - questions are literally fired at you. If you don't understand, they're shouted louder, but no slower. And drunk people are a nightmare.... but it's all part of the fun and games.

As to the course of the conversations, they're very predictable;

1) "What person are you?" Easy

2) "How old are you?" Easy

3) "What do you do?" Tricky - hard enough to explain in England. I just say I work with children. Not a doctor, not a teacher, something in between.

4) "Are you married yet?" (it's always asked with a 'yet'. The idea of someone not getting married is utterly inconvievable)

5) "Do you want a Vietnamese husband?" Well what do you say to that?
a) Yes please, do you know anyone suitable?
b) Yes please, can I have yours?
c) No, Vietnamese men generally have a very fixed idea of gender roles and they don't match mine
d) No thanks, I have no intention of settling here

I generally try to joke around and say I love Vietnam, and the people here, but I don't speak much Vietnamese, am too tall, etc. and change the subject....

6) "How much do you earn each month?" I really dread this one. I never know what to say. Our VSO allowance is just over 7 million Vietnamese Dong per month (roughly £200). Which for me out here in the country, with a very simple life, is more than enough. I'm managing to save a lot of it to pay my house and van bills when I get back to the UK (or maybe for travelling....) For volunteers in the cities however, it disappears quickly, and certainly isn't enough to live a luxurious lifestyle. But 7 million is still more than double what my interpreter earns. It's more than double a teachers salary. It is probably 10 times the earnings of a rice farmer. And our accomodation is paid for. So compared to the majority of people around me, I am receiving a huge amount. For volunteering. So.....

- I can't say 'I don't get paid' because, although linguistically it's a 'living allowance', I receive money.
- I could say 'not much compared to what I can earn at home', but i'm not at home. And you can't compare.
- I could say exactly how much I get, but I feel it would change the dynamic between me and my community. I'm not flashy. The staff and families I work with see me in old practical clothes, on a rusty second hand bike, eating street food, and they feel comfortable with me. I feel it's important that I live on a level with them, for people to trust me, to speak openly about their problems and discuss things.
- I could lie, but I'm not comfortable with that.

I tend to try to say 'I have enough to eat and drink and get about' (as well as I can in Vietnamese), and again change the subject. At work, where they know I have a camera and a laptop, I try to take fruit and snacks for the children regularly, and I always contribute when we have a party or meal. But when people are particularly persistent in wanting figures then I sometimes pretend not to understand. Is that cowardly? Advice and suggestions on how to handle this would be welcomed.....

Now I'm done writing this, I'm going to go out for something to eat. And no doubt an interrogation or two....!

a very big sky

2010-08-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

After the gloominess of my last posting, I'm going to show you one of my favourite things about living here....

The sky.

The UK sky can be beautiful, but has a tendancy to sulk in a grumpy grey way for days on end, and at night is far too often dulled by city lights. The sky in southern Africa is breath-taking in its expanse and blueness and the colour of the sunsets and the brightness of desert stars. But what I love here, that I haven't particularly noticed about the sky anywhere before, is it's dramatic, expressive, manic personality. I think of it like a very passionate opera, with huge reaches of emotion.

Often, it's blue. Blue blue blue, true blue, as far as you can see. A massive sheet of blue. So blue it's hard to believe.

And on clear days, when the suns sets (never much before, or after 6pm) the darkness is deeply dark, and the blanket of stars seems so close and dense that you could reach one of the little sparklers down. I love riding on the back of a motorbike with the air rushing past, my head tipped back to watch the stars overhead.

Other days we'll have clouds. The most beautiful, awesome clouds I've ever seen. So many times I've just stopped on my bike, found a big rock to climb on, and watched them, sometimes for hours. I've gone over into ditches because I'm so distracted. There'll often be all types of clouds, layered up and through each other. Sometimes they seem so solid that I want to climb up there in them and jump around a bit.

One of my favourite time for the clouds is as the sun goes down. The clouds light up with red, purple, pink, yellow. It's even more dramatic on the days when it's overcast, when the light bursts through little gaps to make streaks across the colours between the sky and the earth.

This sky doesn't play games. It doesn't sulk, or hide it's feelings or avoid things. If it's happy - it's bright happy blue. If it's tense, or angry, or has something it wants to say, it makes it very clear, very quickly. It'll turn very dark, brooding, like night has come early.... before unleashing furious rain and house-rumbling thunder. It's fabulously dramatic.

Maybe I love the sky so much here because I have time to study it. Maybe because its a distraction from the dust and the dirt and the mangy dogs and the rubbish. Maybe it's because I'm spending so much time thinking and evaluating my place in the world. Whatever the reason, it's incredibly beautiful and I'm very grateful for it.....

Núi Thành

2010-08-02T04:22:00.000-07:00

People have been asking where I'm living now (placement 2 of 3), so welcome to Núi Thành....

(Can you describe something as 'nondescript'? Is that a contradiction in terms?)

Anyway.... Núi Thành, where I'm now living, is a nondescript couple of kilometres of dusty truckstops and old Soviet-style buildings along an industrial part of the highway. There's about as much to do as is shown on google maps. Even when you've zoomed right in.

Tourist buses pass through in the middle of the night like big white air-conditioned ghosts. Trucks bellow through all day and all night. They're filthy noisy beasts, clearing the road with their ridiculously loud and very insistant horns. Buses speed through suicidally, playing chicken with the trucks. (They don't always win; there are two just up the road smashed to bits this week.) Motorbikes dodge either side, between, and all-too-frequently underneath the trucks and the buses. It's a bit of a sad place, where people on long journeys up and down the country stop for a new tyre, cigarettes, a bowl of noodles, or a shit.

It's pretty soul-less.

I'm painting a very unattractive picture, I know. You know me, I always try to see the best in everything, but despite trying as hard as I can to find beauty or optimism or hope here, I just can't. Sorry.

It's a lethargic town. People seem to do a lot of not a lot. There is a high school here, but no colleges, so the young people with sufficient ability, means and ambition move away. Guys play football or pool, watch TV, or drink coffee and beer. Girls tend to stay home, cook, clean, wash clothes and watch TV. I've joined in a couple of football games, but honestly, I'm pretty useless, and it's a bit awkward. Guys and girls don't seem to interact much around here (until they get hitched, move into one of their parent's houses, and make a start on procreation. After they get married, the guys continue drinking coffee and beer. The girls have babies and continue cooking, cleaning and watching TV.)

In my last place there were a lot of young people about, and people generally seemed welcoming. By the end of the first week there I was busy most evenings, and every weekend doing things with Vietnamese friends.

In four weeks here, despite walking around in the evenings, going out to drink coffee, wandering around the market, and smiling at everyone I meet, I haven't yet made a friend. The warmest smile and most extensive conversation I get here is from the lady that I visit for a hairwash once a week (can you hear the violins....!?)

I'm pretty sure it's not me. I always check I don't have veg in my teeth, and I'm showering plenty.

It just seems to be the general atmosphere around here.

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I can understand some of the reasons why this area is depressed;

- it was an area which suffered very heavily during the war (I have to keep remembering it only ended 35 years ago)
-- it's a very very poor area, with most families farming rice (I just found out that the average rice farmer's yearly income is roughly the same as my monthly living allowance, which is a pretty shocking thought) or working in the factories and mines close by
- it's very very hot, which induces lethargy in even the most motivated worker
- it's an area that is hit regularly, and hard by flooding and tropical storms

To summarise, I'm not finding this an easy place to live, and I've got to admit I've been feeling pretty low. Hence the lack of posts. But as my good friend Sylvia said in a recent email -

"You can at least count your blessings because you dont have to live and work there forever, for some there is simply no or a very restricted choice."

Which is a very valid point, and I think about it several times a day. Three months is nothing in the big scheme of things. I think about the Pulp song 'Common People' - I can pack up whenever I like and get out. I've got choice. Options. I'm lucky.

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And there are some Good Things....

Yesterday I was sitting having a refreshing drink in a little roadside bamboo shack when an elderly man pulled up in his arm-propelled bicycle and walked on his prosthetic limb using a crutch, to sit in the shade for a drink. A few minutes later a blind man who lives in the area walked past, tapping his stick in front of him. The owner called out to him to warn him about a hole in the road and went to him for a chat and to offer him a drink. There are some kind people here.

The family who run the guesthouse I'm staying with are very sweet and caring, and look out for me. My room is lovely and clean, with a good fan.

The cloud formations and sunsets are incredible (they deserve a post all to themselves...)

I can get to the beach in half an hour on my bike.

There are some beautiful mountains not too far away, and I often explore the foothills on my bike (I have, however been warned not to venture too far, the only reason people will give me is that 'people there aren't nice' - I'm not sure I believe it?)

I've found a place that does the most delicious 'sinh to' I've had in Vietnam (and I've had a lot). It's a glass full of chunky bits of fruit (banana, avocado, dragon fruit, passionfruit, jackfruit, pawpaw, lychee etc), a good dollop of condensed milk, and lots of crushed ice, with dried sweetened coconut sprinkled on top. Shows how simple my life is when a glass of fruit is the highlight of a day!

Now if only I can make some progress with my work, then things'll be better....

A moan, a book and a re-think....

2010-07-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

It's strange, but recently, whenever I've been feeling unsettled, frustrated, or miserable, a song or a book has appeared which helps me make sense of things.

Today was a perfect example. I had a long conversation with my sister on skype, telling her about my frustration with my current placement (2 of 3). The many obstacles I'm meeting. The feelings of ineffectiveness and professional impotency. Basically having a moan, feeling sorry for myself, and feeling a waste of VSO's precious and limited funds.

Anyway, once she'd had enough of me (!!) I took my grumpy butt to a coffee shop around the corner, where extremely strong Vietnamese coffee and Barack Obama's book 'Dreams from my Father' made me re-evaluate. The bit I happened to be reading describes how, in his late 20's, Mister Obama moved to Chicago to make big waves as a community organiser. He talks about how he went with big ambitions, full of enthusiasm, wanting to work hard and bring about dramatic changes. He goes on to describe more than a year of bitter weather, empty meeting halls, un-returned calls, futile knocking on doors, weekends alone in an apartment with his books..... frustrations, set-backs, dashed hopes, let-downs. But we all know where he's at now. That someone who has achieved so much and has so much confidence, had times when he achieved very little, and felt very useless, was exactly what I needed to read at that moment. Thank you Mr O.

Of course us volunteers are going to feel demotivated at times. Of course there'll be times we can't see a way to move things forward. But looking at the big picture; I've only been in this (literally) sleepy little town two weeks. I'm doing the best I can, with the skills I've got and the things I can make. I'm not going to change the world (and I'm pretty sure the US is better off without me as President, haha), but, whilst in the short term I need to give everything I've got to fulfilling my job description with VSO and my local partner (essentially to improve the quality of life and life chances for these children with disabilities and their families), I also need to acknowledge that part of the value of doing this is actually for me. For me to develop skills in listening, communication, problem-solving, understanding, patience, resiliance.... in other words, to prepare and practice positive action for the long term. For a lifetime.

As well as fundraising and personal donations, VSO receives some money from DFID, the UK Department for International Development. So all you tax-payers - after a few minutes considering (and if you're inclined, getting active about) your hard earned pennies being used to prop up unethical banks (RBS? Goldman Sachs?), subsidise airlines and re-build Trident... you can smile and remember that some of your money is going to help the most disadvantaged people in the poorest countries of the world, and some to funding my personal development. You should feel good about that :o)

Family party Viet Nam stylee

2010-07-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

About 4 hours ago, with a long empty Sunday evening stretched out in front of me, I thought I'd write a post about Vietnamese parties. Then, as I went downstairs to make some tea (you can take the girl out of England, but.....) I found myself on the back of a motorbike being whisked away to the beach for a.... family party.

A feast for 27

Having grown up in the Otto/Stephenson clan (both families being renowned breeders), some aspects of these gatherings are very familiar. We also enjoy large rowdy meals; with 30 or so family members ranging in age (and behavioural age) from 0 - 93, laughing, teasing, shouting, children dangling off chairs / trees / hammocks / roofs, lots of food and drink, someone sleeping on the floor etc....

There are subtle differences though. Things I'm less familiar with including;

- throwing all scraps and bottles onto the floor

- scrawny dogs eating said scraps from around your feet

- people pissing off the edge of the restaurant platform

- being given the chicken's head as a prize delicacy

- having whatever watery iced drink I have in front of me topped up with whatever someone else has at hand....beer, coke, or green tea, or worst of all, 'sting' (the local version of red bull)

- hookers sitting at the next table eyeing up the younger guys

- the lady who's drunk the most (apart from grandma) telling me she's due at work in a couple of hours. At the hospital.

- grandma vomiting from her hammock after one-too-many glasses of said watery-iced-beers (granny, don't get any ideas!)

The aftermath

So, I'm back at the guesthouse, feeling a bit bewildered by the last few hours, a bit tipsy, and glad to have been to another party instead of just sitting here typing about them :o)

Things that are starting to get a little bit annoying....

2010-07-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

Whilst I am meeting lots of fabulous kind funny people here in Vietnam, and the vast majority of interactions with people are positive, there are a few things that strangers do which have started to get a bit irritating after four months here....

1) People who just stare, without acknowledging a smile or hello. That's rude any place.

2) People (mainly groups/gaggles?/herds? of teenagers) who jostle and dare the bravest to shout "hello" and then before I reply, all run away part-giggling part-terrified, as if they expect my eyes to start glowing red, a forked tongue to flick out or a scaly tail to appear.

3) On the same note, people who wait until I've cycled a safe distance past them to shout "hello". This leaves me in a conundrum - do I ignore them and feel very rude, or turn to shout and wave back, risking veering into an oncoming tractor.

Please, I'm not a freak. I really don't have glowy red eyes. I don't foam at the mouth. I won't bite. So speak to me if you want to, I''m quite friendly. If you don't want to, please don't shout at me...

4) Restaurant/shack owners who, after I've chatted with them (in Vietnamese), and asked how much i owe (in Vietnamese), scrabble around for five minutes to find the appropriate denomination note to demonstrate, or hold up the appropriate number of fingers. Give me some credit, we learnt numbers in week one.

and the next one is by far the most annoying....

5) People who slow down to ride beside me on their motorbikes, wanting to practice English..... Firstly, I can't hear you because you're on a motorbike. Secondly I can't hear you because you have a face mask on, and you're refusing to remove it. Thirdly, you're talking incredibly quickly. So... sorry dude/dudette, it's just not going to work. Please ride on and let me ride in peace?

Wow. That unintentionally turned into a bit of a rant.
All insignificant in the big scheme of things.
I still think Viet Nam rocks....

SWEATING

2010-07-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Doesn't the title just make you so excited to read this....!?
Uncharacteristically for the new, very ladylike me, I thought I'd put this little observation out there on the world wide web. Don't worry, I won't put pictures with this one.

Have any of you lived in a tropical climate? Or used a sauna on a regular basis? If you have, or do, then you'll have some idea what I'm talking about.

It's mid-summer, and the temperature is between 35-42 degrees every day. It's not much cooler at night. Relative humidity is very high (40-50% in the countryside, 70-80% in the cities) . In this rural area there are few places with air con, and fans are dependant on power, which is pretty inconsistent right now (Viet Nam hasn't yet embraced solar power, although this will be a perfect place for them.)

So.... sweating is like breathing, or digestion, or toenails growing - it happens without you even being aware of it. It's not a pleasure, but it's not really an annoyance. It just happens.

It's not a sweaty-stinky-pits type of sweat. It's not wet-patches-in-politician's-shirts or nervous-job-interview type sweat. It's not BO sweat. It's more of an all over leaking type sweat, seeping out of every pore - knees, chin, arms, stomach, eyebrows, toes, just everywhere. Like an childhood Babybel-left-in-a hot-lunchbox, only without the smell of cheese. Like a running-on-the-beach type sweat. It's a clean fresh sweat, that smells like clean hot people. And everyone takes a lot of cool showers.

At night it's a case of sprawling on top of a sheet, in as little clothing as you can get away with and still be decent when the landlord walks into your room to plug in an extension lead at 5.30am, and finding positions to sleep where there is a minimum of skin-on-skin contact. I'm almost grateful to be here alone - i can make a skydiver star-shape, and rotate both pillows to get 3 more cool sides. I now understand why (at least in the rural areas) most people don't even use a mattress. Lying on a hard surface allows air to move underneath you.

Well, there you go. Sweating à la Vietnam. Not the most exciting of posts, but life isn't all incredible and amusing and fascinating. You're gonna have to read about some of the mundane too!

See you soon :o)

4 days and the extremes of Viet Nam

2010-07-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

My birthday weekend was pretty special. I hope that in writing this I can show you some of the extremes of life in Viet Nam - from the simplicity and poverty in the rural villages to the ex-pat (and Vietnamese) high life in Ha Noi. In both worlds, I had time, laughter and celebrations with good friends - thanks everyone!

Thursday
At the centre where I'm working, the happy occasion was celebrated with a hyperactivity inducing, teeth-dissolving sugar-fest - kids and adults alike tucked into an enormous cake, elaborately decorated with roses and swans and lashings of longlife, sweetened cream; brightly coloured, very sweet, agar-based jellies (somehow moulded into a bizarre and entertaining array of animals - fish, dolphins, giraffes, cats...); 'che' - various beans cooked with what seems like an equal amount of sugar and drunk with ice; lychees, rambutans, jackfruit...

I'm sure there were some very grumpy children and parents that evening.

From that chaos, I gratefully retreated to spend a lovely evening with Mrs Thong (pronounced Thom) and her family. Thong is one of life's angels - despite having poor health, she spends her time (voluntarily) visiting families with disabled children. The family have very little money, and few material things (you can see how bare the house is), but they radiate friendliness, warmth and contentment. They insist that I don't take gifts when I visit, and have done everything they can to make sure I'm looked after here in Dien Ban. I hope one day I can repay their kindness, or at least pass it on.

Setting out for Ha Noi later on was a bit of a sad occasion, as it meant saying 'tạm biệt' to my very good friend Phuc, who's just moved to the US for a year (yep, heard all the jokes, and yep, I've pre-warned her). She took me to Đà Nẵng on her motorbike to catch the train to the capital, and as usual we stopped at various local eateries in the never-ending exploration of Vietnamese cuisine! I wish her all the best for her new life over there, and expect that she now understands why I broke down in tears the first couple of times I visited her house for language lessons and couldn't correctly pronounce the difference between

a, ă, â, à, ã, á, ạ and ả.

It wasn't her teaching. Tôi nhớ bạn!

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Friday
Arriving in Ha Noi the following afternoon (after 16hrs overnight in a non-aircon train compartment. 4 people in 2 seats!?), I met fellow VSO-ers and great friends Kathy and David for a drink by Truc Bach lake. A happy re-union, a beautiful view, lovely trees, handsome men exercising on parallel bars with their tops off, a cold beer.... would have been perfect apart from the young guy dropping his kegs to shit in the water just in front of us.

Later that evening the three of us dodged fat tropical raindrops to go round the corner for a gorgeous Indian meal (my first dahl in 3 months!) and then I gladly made a nest on their (far more comfortable than my bed) sofa.

Saturday (my Birthday!)
Breakfast chez Kathy was a treat. Living in Ha Noi allows them some little luxuries - cold fruit, yoghurt and apple juice from the fridge, with muslei from Fivimart. Which, when eaten in their company, on their 4th floor balcony, listening to the birds and watching early morning urban life down below, was the perfect start to the day.

Socialising here in Vietnam, as all over the world, tends to revolve around meals. So my birthday breakfast was just minutes and a short motorbike taxi-ride from a birthday lunch with Vietnamese friends (staff at my partner organisation) at the 'Ngon' (Delicious) restaurant. It certainly was 'ngon', and really great to catch up with them.

What better way to laze off lunch than by a pool? So, next on the birthday agenda was the Thang Loi Hotel pool, where for around £1 you can swim, sunbathe and hold your belly in to your hearts content. And it was also where I'd arranged to meet up with the rest of my VSO family (from my first post). The lifeguards were a little bemused by me screaming, running and jumping in the pool with all my clothes and shoes on to hug my friends, but they were happy enough once they'd extracted me and sold me a ticket. Lots to catch up on - work, and play. They were all jealous of my country tan - I was jealous of the accomadation, music, culture and cheese that they can get in the city.

After whiling away a good few hours, we headed to Pat's (another VSO's) house, where we were joined by more people for WINE and aformentioned CHEESE!!!! I'm ashamed to say that when she brought it out of the fridge I didn't wait for crackers or for anyone else to start - I dived straight in. Kind of like the pool I guess!

It was a joint celebration weekend for me and VSO Sarah (on the left in the pic above), and the first time we've all met up since we started out here, so everyone was as excitable as the kids in Dien Tho after all that sugar....

Pre-dinner snackage and wine started playtime perfectly, and from then on it became a bit of a blur of food, beers, laughter, taxis, trees blowing down, boys, cocktails, giggling, running in the rain, MCing, motorbikes (don't worry mum, it was very safe) football, Jagermeister......

Sunday

We got in around 4am, which in the UK wouldn't be anything too unusual, but for girls now used to rural Vietnam time (5.30am rising, 9.30pm going to bed) and utterly unused to alcohol, was quite an achievement.

As a result, I'm very glad that I'm not in the following picture, which was brunch a few hours later. Very ex-pat, very luxurious (eggs Benedict!), very nice, VERY hungover. Sarah still manages to look glam though (grrrrr).

Ambitiously (for the day after the night before) I'd promised to meet with a Vietnamese friend, Khai, who I first met in my village (he and his brother were staying at the guesthouse where I live). I dragged myself onto the local buses and met him by the lake in Hanoi, and it was really great to see him. He speaks exactly two words of English (OK and No) so we get by on my Vietnamese and both of our amusement with sign language and mis-communication. We walked, had dinner and made plans for me to visit his village the next day.

Khai dropped me off at the Hanoi Opera House. It felt very wierd walking away from my Vietnamese friend in his old (but immaculately clean) clothes, on his old (but perfectly maintained) scooter, towards my relatively very wealthy ex-pat friends, dressed up and illuminated on the elegant marble stairway. It really highlighted our privilege.

Initial adjustment aside, it was incredible to sit there, in the cool dark auditorium, listening to an Italian cellist play everything from classical pieces from the 1700's to Hendrix and Nirvana. We were transported to another, fabulous, magical world for a while.

Monday

The following morning I set out to visit Khai and his family, which involved over a hour of reading maps, flagging down buses, getting off said buses when heading in the wrong direction, flagging down more buses. With only a text message in Vietnamese to tell me where to go.

I like an adventure....

When I arrived in the village, Khai picked me up (at exactly the place and time we'd arranged. I understand if you're amazed.) We headed to the tiny house where he currently lives with his mother and brother Thuong, and met and chatted with her a while.

Power is rationed at the moment (in most rural areas it's off every other day), until the rainy season arrives and fills the hydroelectric resevoirs which provide a third of Vietnam's power. When it's hitting 40 degrees, it's coolest to be outside, in the shade, where you can catch any hint of breeze. So the three of us left his mother to nap, and wandered around the large peaceful village pagoda (a temple, in this case a triple faith temple - with elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). We ended up joining most of the rest of the village on mats under the trees by the river. The men grouped together talking football, napping and smoking. The women chattered (as women do the world over). The kids climbed the trees, caught locusts, paddled in the river. It was bliss. I didn't take pictures, it was too special, and is etched in my memory.

As the afternoon went on, Khai and Thuong took me to the plot in the village where Khai has just started building his own house. The fact that he's able to do this in his twenties is testimony to his hard work and saving - Vietnamese cannot get mortgages, and land is expensive. Most rural Vietnamese live with their parents, even after marriage. I helped with the digging, which they found hilarious.

I fell a little bit in love with Khai that day - he's the perfect gentleman. The kind of guy that the man want in the middle of their group to slap on the back and make banter with, the women want around to mother, tease and flirt with, the teenage girls giggle and hide from, and the kids want to climb all over. There's a kind of sweet, unspoken romance between us, and for hours that afternoon I imagined just staying there, in that village. But there's some very good reasons why it can't and won't ever go further than coy glances and smiles.

Anyway, at the end of that beautiful day (where I'd only spoken Vietnamese!) I was back on the wrong buses, mis-reading my map, and managing to get back to central Ha Noi perfectly on time to meet another Vietnamese friend. This time the very modern, very professional, very welcoming Thao, who is the country representative of my partner organisation. She's married to an Australian, and they have two young children who are growing up completely bilingual, in a fabulous hectic stimulating house with a constant stream of visitors and house guests, tennis courts and a pool. Quite a life for them, and the most beautiful kids I've ever seen (apart from my nephew Orin of course). After a very fun evening with them and various others, Thao dropped me a the station for the 11pm train back to Đà Nẵng.

This time I had a sleeper, and I definately needed it....

many cures for an ill

2010-06-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

After my post talking about hyperchondria, I've got myself a bit of a cold. And as a husky voice and crackly cough are indisguisable, I'm getting advice and treatment everywhere i go....

In ex-pat / backpacker Hoi An - it's bronchitis, I need antibiotics, paracetamol and rest.
At the beach - I shouldn't eat chicken (In general or just today? Any other advice other than avoiding poultry?)
On the phone from Hanoi - it's because of the heat, I should eat black beans boiled with a lot of sugar.
In Vinh Dien - it's because i've been on a business trip which involved getting in and out of air conditioned taxis. I shouldn't eat chilli, ginger or Japanese rice crackers (you can't even buy them here??) I should have accupuncture, with electrical current pulsed through the needles.
In Dien Tho village - it's because of the weather. I had ginger rubbed all over my neck and face, and was told not to drink anything before meals, only after. My interpreter offered to do me a treatment which consists of inserting coins into boiled eggs and rubbing them on your face. Or maybe we still have some work to do on the interpretation thing...?
In Dien An village - I've got a cough. I should rest and drink hot lemon juice.

I gratefully accepted the advice and hot lemon juice from Chi Thong in Dien An. She's like a second mother. She was very happy when I told her that my mum would do exactly the same.

my lai (this one's not in any way amusing)

2010-06-21T05:04:00.000-07:00

Those of you reading this who are old enough to remember coverage of the American / Vietnam war, or who have read anything about it, will probably have heard of the 'my lai massacre'. I recently spent a weekend visiting the area, where a museum and war memorial have been built. It was impossible to align the quiet peace and beauty of the place with the horrifying carnage that was wreaked there just over 40 years ago.

Although what happened here is very disturbing, i feel everyone should know something about it.

"In the absence of light, darkness prevails"

(I heard this quote in a trailer for the movie Hellboy, and apparently it's an adaption of a Buddhist saying, but I can't find out what. Anyone know?)

We humans have such potential for good, and yet, if we don't actively cultivate this good in ourselves, and if we don't actively encourage (and insist on it) from others, atrocities like this show what can happen. The dark stuff - the abuse of power, the inhumanity, the greed, the hotheadedness, the arrogance - is still going on, now, all over the world.

Strangely, the day after putting this post up, I read a chapter in Martin Bell's book 'Through Gates of Fire' where he discussed how "good things happen because people make them happen and bad things happen because people let them happen"....

A scary statistic he quotes is that in WW1, 90% of casualties were soldiers; in recent wars, 90% are civilians.

Amnesty international is a good place to start for more information and campaigns against war crimes.

The My Lai / My Khe massacre

Early one morning in March 1968, American troops landed helicopters in rice fields, and over four hours systematically killed between 400-500 unarmed villagers in a small area in central Vietnam. The majority of those killed were women, children, and elderly people.

It's bizarre and disturbing that an American army photographer captured the carnage quite calmly, and that the photographs were kept and made available. The troops appear detached, unconcerned with what they were doing, some smiling.

Copies of reports from American troops are chilling in their disregard for human life.

Looking at the photographs of the piles of bodies was gut-wrenching and emotional. I kept thinking about the families and children I'm working with - every lunchtime we lie around on the mats all sprawled out. The families slaughtered would have been people just like the them. The homes burnt down were just the same as the homes where I visit colleagues and friends.

The museum was deeply chilling and fascinating, but also incredibly, admirably, balanced. Whilst it doesn't hold back on showing the evil, the inhumanity and the devastating loss of life, the curators have also been very careful to highlight the actions of three American soldiers (Thompson, Andreotta and Colburn) who risked their lives to intervene in the carnage. When they saw what was happening, they landed their helicopter between a troop of soldiers and some fleeing villagers, and turned their weapons to face their countrymen. They then airlifted a boy to hospital.

There is a big section showing how the area is regenerating (pictures of the school choir, the district badminton team, the newly built hospital etc)

And right next to the large plaque commemorating the villagers killed, is an equally large painting depicting the world-wide demonstrations against the war.

A powerful lesson in forgiveness, not dwelling too much in the past, and looking for the good in situations, ourselves, and other people.

Am I sick???

2010-06-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling a bit hyperchondriac-ally anxious for the past couple of weeks.

Aching legs. Slow and lethargic on my bike. Out of breath as I go over the rise of the bridge.....

What could it be????? Tropical fatigue? Some kind of low grade infection? Something horrible and squirmy in my belly??? Should i go visit a doctor??

You'd think three years of triathlon would teach me to check my brakes aren't rubbing......
:o)

the daily commute

2010-06-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Before you get any further, if you are already feeling in any way resentful of a joy-sapping, time-wasting, soul-eroding commute, then stop now. I don't want to make things any worse.

Here's my journey.

At around 7am I set off along the main road through my 'town'; Vietnam's Highway 1. This is not a lovely road. It's a trucking, honking, dust-flying, rule-breaking, life-threatening assault of a wake-up call. Thankfully, after about 800m I turn off, into rural Vietnamese heaven.

I could probably do the journey in around 40minutes, but I take an hour to meander along. Every single day I'm astounded by the scenery, and I only wish my pictures would do it justice.

Every turn brings a vibrant splash of colour in the sea of green

The buildings themselves are painted in rainbow colours - blues, turquoises, purples, pinks. The harvests drying outside are a natural aesthetic touch - corn, chillies, peanuts. Everywhere you turn there are colours to lift the spirit and brighten the day.

I don't need to write too much about all this, the pictures speak for themselves.

I'm one very lucky girl

What's happening to me???

2010-06-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

Vietnam's changing me.

I'm taking the stairs sedately, one at a time (no more clattering up 2 or 3 at a time).

I'm riding slowly and carefully, on a 'sit-up-and-beg' bicycle with a basket and a bell (a million miles from the clumsy filthy mountain-biking BRAT you once knew?).

I'm eating small mouthfuls from chopsticks, and taking small sips of green tea from tiny glasses (OK I'm lying on this one, I still love my food and eat like a pig - join me for Mi Quang one morning and you'll see..!)

I've stopped cursing or complaining (except on the all-too-frequent frequent days when it hits 40 degrees and there's no power (so no fans). Then I do join the other sweaty bodies on the floor, napping and mutterering "nong qua!" - "too hot!")

I'm wearing earrings.

I'm brushing my hair (here, the 'tousled' look is simply taken as what it actually is - extreme laziness).

I'm going to the market every week for a pedicure and a hairwash (I'll dedicate a whole new post to this fabulous way of spending an hour and 30p).

I'm wearing a variety of hairstyles (every cell of my being grates at this one - Suong is 13, deaf and dumb, and an aspiring beautician. The ladies at the centre thought it would be a wonderful idea to get me all sorts of hair accessories for my birthday. The results can be best described as 'creative...')

I'm wearing dresses (sometimes by choice, sometimes for politeness! Maybe I should've kept my birthday a secret...)

I have a shiny red GENUINE!!! Chanel handbag (darned birthdays!!)

Oi choi oi! (Oh my goodness!) I'm becoming a lady!!!

Me in all my birthday finery. Aren't I beautiful... (?!)

It's not that my gender's ever been in doubt (at least I seriously hope not?!) It's more that when I arrived I stuck out like a broken leg in a full-length cast. If you didn't already have an idea, Vietnamese women are (generally) gorgeous, elegant, gentle and feminine. And whilst I'm never going to match the diminutive proportions (a girl at work is not particularly skinny, but 5 feet nothing, 42kg and a 24" waist), and whilst I would look and feel ridiculous in the beautiful full length white 'ai do' that girls wear to high school, and whilst I'm never going to be one for frills, sparkles and embellishments (unless it's glitter from sparkly tom!), I CAN adapt my behaviour....

random funny stuff

2010-05-31T04:06:00.000-07:00

I am always amused by translations in the tourist areas. There have been so so many good ones. I wish I'd had my camera for the signs for 'SANDWICHES AND BUGGERS' and a 'SHELF HELP GROUP' (to mention just a couple).

I managed to hold myself back from any 'romping' around the extremely quiet and reflective war memorial garden.... (?!?)

And menus are always funny. (Not that the fine dining establishments we have here in Vinh Dien have any menus - hence the very experimental eating for the first couple of months....)

But it's reassuring to know that I can always trust my absolutely accurate Vietnamese phrasebook should I ever get into any......

life's tough....

2010-05-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Living and working in a new country, with a new home, a new culture, a new language and lots of new people, does take a bit of a toll on my mind. Thankfully, I live a stunning 45 minute bike ride from some of the most gorgeous beaches I've ever had the luck to visit.......

...and after early morning yoga, swimming and breakfast on the empty quiet beach, you'd have to try very hard to hold onto any stress!

The water's clear and warm, but relatively cool enough to be refreshing. Fishing boats float past. The bamboo shacks at the edge of the beach serve up fruit salads, whole coconuts, seafood....

I've got about a million photos, but I won't put any more. I don't want to make anyone tooooooo jealous. OK just one more.....

And I'm very lucky to have made two amazing friends, who live close to the beach. Lovely lovely people, inspiring, knowledgable, easygoing and fun. Beautiful minds. Like old friends from the minute we met, the three of us talk all day. (Obviously I don't mean that you guys are 'old'....x) They both work with children, and have spent a lot of time here in Vietnam. Thank you S for letting me stay in your gorgeous apartment, and thank you both for your advice, opinions, yoga lessons and sex-and-the-city-style chats over chocolate cake...