I just finished reading a great book by Laura Lam, Late Blossom Memories of life, loss and love in Viet Nam. I wish I had read it before my last trip to Vietnam. I recognize some of the street names she talks about in Sai Gon and nearby locations (Cu Chi and the large Cao Dai temple). It's an autobiography set during times of war in her home country, against the French, the Americans and internally amongst the Vietnamese. Not only is she surrounded by the ugliness of war, but she grew up with an abusive mother and an onslaught of predatory men. Despite all the trials in her life, there are lights, too, including her beloved grandmother, understanding friends, and a remote but encouraging father. She details life growing up and moving in to adulthood and trying to escape.
Laura is actually a good friend of my sister's and had invited us over for dinner in her garden a few days ago. At that point, I had only read the first few chapters - but even so, I had that blog feeling again - like I knew so much more about this person than I would otherwise. And I knew that I would shortly find out a lot more. I didn't know if I should mention it (I've started your book) or leave it alone, as it was am emotional time in her life, and I didn't know the whole story yet.
Once I finished the book last night, I realized that I had met some of the other characters in the book - except that they're not characters - they're real people. If I said anymore, I'd ruin the ending of the book, so I'll leave it at that. Amazon seems to frequently run out, but it gets restocked every so often. For anyone in Seattle that wants to borrow it, let me know. I highly recommend it to anyone planning on going to Vietnam and also any American who is open to reading about another viewpoint on the Vietnam War. Though part historical novel, it relates to the modern world shedding light on the war in Iraq. It's also a great read in itself, and made me wonder what a memoir from someone in my parents generation might be like, with their own struggles in China and Taiwan.
I just met Laura again tonight, telling her that I finished her book. She was eager for feedback and happy to hear that I put in an order for my own copy. She plans on donating all proceeds to help build a school in her home town, and with any extra money, working towards a hospital and improved roads and bridges (there aren't any roads left, as they were all bombed - there hasn't been enough money to have them recreated). There is so much work to be done, she hardly knows where to start, or if she'll be able to make the financial goals. The book is only sold through Amazon right now, and is on automatic re-order when their supplies run out - so don't be deterred if the site says that there aren't any in stock.
Che Chuoi
Yesterday, I also made a Vietnamese banana coconut tapioca soup. The blend of flavors was quite nice and it makes a nice cool summer dessert (yesterday it was more than 25C/80F).
Che Chuoi: Sweet Banana Soup With Tapioca and Coconut
This makes 4 servings (or 3 adults and 2 kids, including seconds)
2 cups water- 1 (14 ounce) can light or regular coconut milk
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup minute tapioca
- 2 large ripe bananas, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 1-2 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted
- Bring water and coconut milk to boil in a medium saucepan.
- Add sugar, salt, and tapioca.
- Reduce heat to medium-low, letting it cook for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Stir in bananas. Remove from heat and let stand for 15 minutes. Note: After you add the bananas, don't stir too much, it'll break up the fruit.
- Serve hot, or chill for 3-4 hours.
This all brings me back to thoughts of Vietnam and the leftover blogging I have to do. Most of my time in HCMC and Ha Noi are written up (here in the blog or on My Map) - it's my time in Da Nang that was left out. This was my favorite part of the trip, where I got to spend a lot of time with various members of Tuyet's family, who have lived in the area for generations. I happened to keep a small journal during my stay and have notes on each day's activities.
The summary of it is that I really enjoyed spending time with Grandma, 2 of her sons (one they call Uncle 10, because he was the 10th child), and their wives, and a bunch of cousins. I met numerous other family members and friends, all of whom were extremely generous. They fed us much too much food, both to be my tongue's delight and waistline's disappointment. Most days were lazy, as we couldn't adjust to the heat and intense sun enough to get in real exercise. Instead we watched a lot of movies (which were something like 3000 dong each for rent, about 20 cents US), did a lot of sudoku puzzles (that were quite challenging for being in a teenage magazine), and spent a lot of time at the internet cafe (doing a lot of research for future travel).
Towards the end of the trip, we got Tuyet's elusive cousins to play with us. The youngest cousin (6 or 7) was an only child, and seemed to be lost in a world that revolved around her. I played several card games with her, not always understanding the rules (b/c I learned by watching), and also b/c she would change them to suit her at times. The oldest (17, but looked 13) who lived in the house, Sang, was learning English and French in school. He along with a few other cousins seemed extremely shy and disinterested in us at first. We broke through the barrier and were soon hanging out each night after or before school.
WARNING: The following journal notes are for the seriously bored, as there are a lot of minute details here.
30 Jan 07 - Night time arrival to Da Nang
Our flight from HCMC was delayed 2 hours on Vietnam Airlines, but eventually got us to Da Nang. Two of Tuyet's uncles picked us up at the airport on motorbikes. When we arrived, despite having dinner on the flight, Grandma had prepared a lot of food for us. She said it was a light snack, but it was really quite a filling meal on its own: rice, fake squid, noodles and greens, veggie dish, tofu. She watched us eat and seemed disappointed that we didn't want to clean up all 5 plates. She encouraged us to change into jammies, lending me one of her own. I was worried about it being the wrong size, as she is a lot shorter than me - but I forgot that my height is really due to a long torso - so her jammy pants fit fine (with a little bit of a low rise look). We spent a few minutes taking pictures with Grandma in bed - she got a kick out of looking at the photos on the digital camera - immediately showing her jovial nature. She had an easy time laughing and smiling, and seemed to be able to enjoy life. Her uncles seemed of a similar nature, and made me feel at ease, despite the huge language barrier - me not knowing any Vietnamese, and them not knowing any English. I also met some of her cousins briefly, who were quiet, and seemed to want to do their own thing.31 Jan 07 - Morning Walk, Market, Weeding
We had discussed joining Grandma on her morning walk the previous night, but when the alarm went off at 4:45 am, Tuyet didn't show any signs of rising. It wasn't until Grandma came in to wake us up that we got a move on. We were finally out the door at 5:35 am - when it was still pitch dark out. We walked down a short path, between other houses and to the main road, where we started walking towards the temple. As the sun rose, we could see a beautiful silhouette of boats on the water against the skyline. Fishermen were examining their catch (shrimp and crabs). On our way, many people were returning down the hill and commented on the lateness of Grandma's start. I think the 5 am start time was a compromise and that she usually goes at 4 am.
With a delayed start, Grandma didn't want to go all the way to the temple, so we stopped to do some calisthenics, which included some stretching, swinging and what I call butt raises. It was a form of push up but a lot easier. The ground was hard and my belly full, so when I attempted real push-ups it proved too difficult a task. I looked at Grandma and she was just lifting her butt up and down without moving her arms. That seemed a lot easier, so I decided to do what Grandma was doing. I think she laughed at me as much as I laughed at myself.
We returned home, and Tuyet went straight back to bed. I wanted to spend more time with Grandma and see what a normal day would be like for her. She went to the market, so I went along as she picked up pork, 3 duck eggs, greens, onions, herbs, carrots, potatos and examined some seafood. There was a lot of tossing of the seafood on small trays back and forth, and then the market lady throwing Grandma's money back at her - each one not wanting to accept it. Something similar had happened with the pork lady. I'm not sure if it was because of my presence or if it was a normal occurrence because of Grandma's status in the community. (Tuyet explained later that this side of the family was very well off because of her Grandma's ability to handle money.)When we returned home, the maid spoke to me in Vietnamese and tried a lot of hand gestures that I also failed to understand. I thought it best to retreat to my room and join Tuyet in napping. We woke up for what I would have considered lunch, but Grandma was calling breakfast (I think it was her personal goal to fatten us up by feeding us more food at more meals than we could handle). This was another filling meal (rice, pork, greens, fried duck eggs mixed with green onions, 2 oranges). Tuyet and I took a walk with one of her uncles back to the same market, via a different route, hitting it from the other side. It was a lot emptier later in the day, with most of the food stalls cleared out completely. Tuyet picked up a pair of shorts (planning on using it for future trekking). When we showed it to her family, everyone laughed - Vietnamese girls don't wear shorts, so it was a funny purchase to them. I learned to play 13 Cards (Vietnamese Poker) with Grandma and Tuyet (once the power outage forced Grandma to stop watching her dubbed chinese soap). We took another nap at 1:30 for a few hours.
When we woke up from the second nap, we went outside to toss a disc (to help prep me for the tourney I had signed up for) in the driveway. Given the tight space, it wasn't really the exercise I was looking for, so we began to help Grandma and an Aunt weed - making sure not to pull the onions or other plants. I got a nasty bite from a tiny fire ant that made me feel like my finger was burning. We went back in, sat in front of the TV, had dinner (rice, fish, stewed pork and carrot), showered (everyone tends to shower the same time of day, once the water heater is turned on), more TV, and then played 13 cards with Tuyet's little cousin and Grandma, before retiring early for the night at 8 pm. Despite 2 naps, the 5:35 am walk really did us in.1 Feb 07 - Hoi An and Marble Mountains, Grandma 2
Tuyet and I took a walk on the beach with some light jogging and stretching, in the morning. We returned home to play more cards before an excellent breakfast: rice paper, dry and wet, with pork and greens and a dipping sauce. A family friend picked us up in his car - we were hoping that an uncle would join us, but it turns out that most of the family gets quite car sick but are fine on motorbikes (Grandma is in this category as well, and gets around town by hitchhiking).
We drove to Hoi An, a quaint touristy town with lots of small shops. We considered getting me some tailor made skirts, but it was too expensive for same day service ($20 US), especially considering that Tuyet's aunt could do it for cheaper in Da Nang (we would later find out that because of Tet preparations, nobody would be available to make anything). All the bookstores had copies, not originals and were charging a hefty price. We passed many foreigners trying to bargain the price down quite unsuccessfully ("But this isn't even the real version - I'm not going to pay full price"). The three of us had lunch at a Vietnamese place, costing us 140,000 dong total. We had asked for a small meal, but ended up getting a huge bowl of rice and at least 6 side dishes (vegetables, a whole fish, pork, octopus, sprouts, herbs, soup) - it was way too much (again)!
The family friend drove us around planning on taking us to an island - but we scrapped the plan when we found out it was under renovation. We planned to stay until evening, so took a nap in a parking lot. But we found out the light event at night wasn't going to happen since it was so close to the new year. So we drove to Tuyet's other grandmother's house - which was quite different from where we were staying. She too chewed betel leaves and had black teeth - but she was completely senile - asking every 5 minutes who Tuyet was, after being told each time that she was her niece. This drove Tuyet absolutely mad. We took a drive to Marble Mountains, which reminded me a lot of the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur. This was a Buddhist version, with more caves, and pagodas, that I enjoyed very much. At the base were a lot of shops selling scultpures and carvings.We drove home and Grandma was just returning from the market with fresh fish for dinner. We enjoyed a small dinner (rice, fish, smoked fish, noodles, greens) and then played games on Sang's computer (Box, a logic game, and Pikuchu, a matching game with logic). Somehow we ended up playing 13 cards together where the loser had to do pushups. Tuyet's little girl cousin ended up stealing the deck of cards, so we amused ourselves by reviewing Sang's French book (which put Tuyet to sleep on his bed at 9:30).
2 Feb 07 - Lazy Day, Internet
Tuyet and I started the day off with another short walk on the beach. I enjoyed a Central breakfast (noodles, veggies, fake meat, herbs, sauce) but Tuyet just had ramen. We took a walk and spent an hour at an internet cafe, before returning home so that Tuyet could return to her other Grandmother's house. I stayed behind and spent a couple more hours at the internet place. I wasn't hungry, so tried to skip lunch and went to our room to think. The maid woke me up at 3 pm and started laundry. I watched her prepare lunch - a sort of Vietnamese tubular zong-zi, that she peeled and cut with wire into slices. She sent me back to bed 15 minutes later. 25 minutes later she came back and said a few things in Vietnamese and used a lot of hand gestures that I couldn't understand. It seemed like she was asking for 2000 dong (which is too little - that's like 15 cents US) or 200,000 dong (which isn't a lot by American standards, but seemed quite a lot for Vietnamese). I tried to tell her to wait for Tuyet to come home, but I'm not sure I got that across. I think the only thing we both understood was that neither of us understood the other. I went down for lunch and found that they had fried the zong-zi slices and ate it with a soy dipping sauce. They sent me back to my room 10 minutes later, while Grandma laid on the couch and an aunt was eating another dish (leaving me wondering if they were cooking special dishes for us, or if I was really experiencing the normal daily life). Tuyet returned from the other grandmother's house and we watched the 3rd X-Men movie. Dinner was rice, tofu, beans, and a really tasty squash soup. We watched another movie, Accepted, and went to bed.
3 Feb 07 - Buffet Lunch, Lounging
We got up before 8, took a walk, played cards with Grandma and an Aunt, had breakfast (a square zong-zi with soy sauce), and then sat on the front swing watching while an uncle and 3 helpers moved 2 huge potted plants from the front of the house, to further down the driveway past the mini fish pond. Uncle and his wife (the mother of the small girl cousin), took us on motorbikes to her mother's house for a buffet lunch, an honoring memorial of her father, that started with a morning prayer and then an afternoon feast. There were 3 tables set up with more food than Tuyet and I were able to handle. Plates were literally piled up on top of each other, reaching to the edges of the tables. It was delicious and left me thinking that I could eat Vietnamese food for life. And that was before the dessert (tapioca and red bean). We returned home at 3:30 and admired Tuyet's large food baby. We watched another movie (the heat of the day and lack of transportation prevented us from doing anything more interesting) in Chinese with subtitles. We played computer games and did Sudoku puzzles, had a light dinner (rice, fish and something else), and then more Sudoku until 10:30 pm.4 Feb 07 - Sick Day
I had a rough night, waking up at 3 in the morning feeling crampy. After a bathroom run, I took a cipro pill at 4:30. I spent the rest of the morning resting in bed, while Tuyet spent time at her other grandmother's house. I slept most of the time asleep - otherwise trying to convince Tuyet's family that I did NOT want to eat or drink anything, including the bowl of porridge they brought me. The most I could do was drink water, but even that seemed to set me off. I wondered what it was - one of the dozens of dishes I had at the lunch buffet? Something else? Unknown. But I had faith in cipro and knew I just needed 24 hours rest. Grandma on the other hand seemed angered by my resolve to not eat anything.
5 Feb 07 - Da Nang market
We took a morning walk as usual and then had an udon breakfast that her uncle got for us. We went into town center with 2 uncles to get the Vietnam Air tickets to Hanoi, to connect with our flight to Bangkok. We stopped to get a Vietnamese dessert (ice with a mixture of items, a green noodly dish with yams, and mung bean balls with coconut). And then to the big market, where her aunt has a fabric stall. I admired the fruit, was overwhelmed by the smell of drying seafood, and picked up a huge bag of pistachios as a gift for Grandma. We returned home to do more puzzles, check internet, eat dinner (rice, soup, fish, tofu, squash), and watch a movie (Munich). Aunt and Uncle returned home with a second dinner - wanting us to try another traditional central dish before leaving - 2 kinds of banana leaf wrapped glutinous rice flats and meat sticks with rolls.6 Feb 07 - Another Lazy Day
I woke up at 7 am feeling nauseous again. Uncle insisted two of us join him on a bike, which was a tight fit. We were surprised to see he just drove us around the corner to get a pho breakfast. The location was near the internet place, so we insisted on walking home and stopped to get more movies. We went to the beach to help work off all of the food we'd been eating - finding a dead crab and a live oyster. After taking a lot of pictures, we went back to the internet station to purchase flights for Cambodia. We returned home at 2 pm to enjoy an asian pear and lunch. We went movie crazy (John Tucker Must Die, Just My Luck, Blood Diamond), played cards with the little cousin, enjoyed a veggie dinner with Grandma, and then later a duck and porridge dinner with Uncle 10 and Aunt, and pistachios with the whole family. After showering, we went back for internet late at night. This felt a little awkward, as the internet cafe is just in someone's living room. She said it was ok to be there that late, but when we turned around, the doors were locked, the chairs were folded up and no one was around - they had gone to bed! On return, we found that we had been locked out. Shouting didn't wake up anybody in the house, but it did wake up the neighbor - a friend of the cousin, who climbed down his roof and went inside to get someone with a key. He went back over the gate (so much for security).7 Feb 07 - Last Full Day
We walked to breakfast around the corner with an uncle and had white noodles, while listening to ghost stories about the uncle and hearing about how Grandma was prepped for marriage at the age of 14 and had her first kid at 18. We took a short walk on the beach and returned home to hang out with Sang - he did his homework and I worked on making puzzles for him and Tuyet obsessed over taking pictures of the beach finds. Uncle 10 showed us a math puzzle (a pre-written number, you write a number, he writes something, you write another, he writes one and it all magically ends up being the pre-written total). We also spotted a huge snail with jabba-da-hut like qualities. Lunch was noodles, pork, greens.
More cards with Grandma, Aunt and cousin in the sitting room. Tuyet got fed up with Cousin 2's "you suck" comments and he went off to take pictures with my camera. Another internet check, returning home at 4:15 pm to have Grandma's fresh rolls. 
Tuyet's dad actually invented the recipe, but grandma perfected it - including an excellent sauce. Grandma'a brother came over and kept speaking to me in Vietnamese, not being able to believe that I didn't know any (by this time I learned how to say Have/Don't Have to play 13 cards: gaw, cum gaw). "Ask her if she can understand what I'm saying now" Tuyet translated for me. "It's so easy to speak - how can she not know?!" Another walk through the village. And more food, some flat rice noodles with yummy topping and leftover dipping sauce.8 Feb 07 - Send Off
Grandma woke us up too early to go. With the extra time, she tried on Tuyet's yellow backpack, marveling at the weight and size. She sent us off with banana leaf wrapped rice goodness (Vietnamese zong zi). An uncle drove us and our luggage to the airport in a car. 2 other uncles and an aunt showed up on motorbikes later to join us in waiting. I made the mistake of having another Vietnamese coffee just outside the airport.
Missing Bits
One night we went into Da Nang center for drinks and karaoke with one of Tuyet's cousins and his friend and the friend's girlfriend. It was my first private karaoke room experience.
I heard a little bit of the family history, including how Tuyet's mom would feign craziness to avoid unwanted suitors. A trick I'm not surprised that Tuyet would start using to fend off bachelors her own mother might set up. There was an incredible amount of pressure on Tuyet to get married - every relative we met would bring the subject up over and over. Another common topic was about eating more. They seemed to view a big waistline as attractive, which was in direct conflict with our American view of a slim one. This was a hard battle to fight, as I really would have loved to eat as much as possible, given how delicious all of the home cooked food was and knowing it was for a limited time only. However, once we couldn't zip/button our pants, it was clearly a problem.
Grandma did a fair amount of cooking for us, but it was customary for her daughters (in law) to do the cleaning and some amount of cooking. These tasks would have fallen on Tuyet as well, except that she is still single. It was perhaps the one good thing coming out of her not being married, as we could just sit back and relax. I must say it did take some getting used to, not being allowed to clear the table or help prepare food. But after listening to all the hounding about getting married and needing to have babies, I think Tuyet enjoyed her brief moments of relaxation after eating and not having to clean.
Given the communication barrier and Tuyet's absence on occasion, I asked her how to say certain things that I thought would be helpful for me.
Eat - an - ong
Hungry - doi bung
Full - naw
Rice - com - gum
Do you want more - nua - ne
Go upstairs - len lau
Sleep - ngu - ngoa
Laundry - yak do
Thank you - cam ung
Grandma - Nguy - Ngo ia (no beginning 'N' - Nw-eye)
1 comment:
Lol. That was amusing.
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