First Domestic Flight and a birthday!

Greetings!  We are in our 6th week of teaching and enjoyed a long weekend last weekend for a "teacher's holiday" (day off) in Vietnam last Friday the 18th.  First, some school goings-on.

Pizzas:  ham,sausage,onion; ham and pineapple;
seafood.  Yum!  The ketchup did come with the
pizza delivery and our Vietnamese colleagues
dip their pizza in ketchup.  :)

Yes, we sang "Happy
Birthday!"

Dr. Koh, Phuong, Bob, Kim, Mr. Long, and Ngan.

A beautiful bakery cake with a pineapple filling layer.

Thursday Nov. 17 was Mr. Long's birthday (the head of our optometry sub-department here at the university) and we celebrated with a pizza lunch and cake!  It was a nice lunch in our little office.  We told him he's not old yet because Bob is still older :)  ( and so am I for that matter!).  He has 13-year-old twin sons.

Plastic body parts

Medical students memorizing parts of the body.

Often on our way in to our office in the morning, the medical school students are practicing their anatomy lesson with a "tub-o-body parts" that makes us chuckle.  It looks especially funny when a student is cradling a hand or leg in his own arms!

leaves (and yellow marigold flowers)
drying on racks for use in tea.

More tea leaf drying racks

Kitties eating...what else here but...rice!

Two weekends ago we thought one way to try to figure out this mysterious city bus system was to take one of the buses that gets us to downtown/the city center all the way to its terminus on the opposite end of its route.  It put us at a large intercity bus station.  We walked back to our apartment for a good morning of exercise and explored along the way.  Hui Hiang (Dr. Koh) came along since she lives in our apartment building and she enjoyed discovering 2 pagodas/Buddhist temples along the way.  Many tourists like to find the pagodas to look at and go inside.  These tea racks were at one of the temples, as were the kittens.  Kitties here are the skinniest we've even seen!  A woman who seemed to be cleaning one of the fountains at the temple was feeding these kitties that we saw come out from under a planter.

A cloudy but still beautiful sunset on the island.  And no
traffic noise!!

Now for our "exciting" weekend.  Thursday we left school a bit early to catch a flight on Vietnam Airlines to Phu Quoc Island, a nice weekend trip suggested by our Vietnamese colleague.  It's known for its beaches and is in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia.   The flight was very nice, only an hour on a big Airbus and no delays.  We arrived in time for a peaceful sunset.  After we watched the sun go down, we found a beachside bar/restaurant for dinner and sat for awhile after dinner chatting with 2 girls from the UK.  Thursday night Bob woke up with severe pain in his left elbow and we saw it was red and swollen.  It's always something, isn't it?!  It seemed to be a cellulitis, he thought maybe he had picked up some bacteria from the table that entered through a dry skin spot on his elbow.  So he started himself on some antibiotics and we lay low Friday but when he woke up with it worse on Saturday we thought we should explore the international hospital on the island.  Not in our original game plan!  The hotel staff was very kind in arranging for a ride for us (the hospital was 27 km away and a taxi would have been expensive) that waited while the doctor saw us.  The doctor spoke only Vietnamese but he had an English-speaking assistant that was very helpful. He ordered x-rays and ended up agreeing to the cellulitis diagnosis and gave stronger antibiotics as well as 2 anti-inflammatory meds and an enzyme to "speed up chemical reactions in the body" (according to Google--we don't use enzymes much in the US).  So Saturday was another day of medicating and sleeping and reading.  

Bob's arm at lunch on Saturday.  The line I had drawn
the day before to mark where the redness/swelling
had stopped, but it had spread!

Sunday morning he felt like his arm had improved so we ventured out on a motorbike to explore the island!  Renting a motorbike in Vietnam:  we were at breakfast and some guy there asked if we wanted to rent his bike.  We made the deal:  Less than $7 US for the whole day!  No required return time, no deposit to put down!  We did start with only 1/4 tank of gas so found a gas station as soon as we could.  Good thing Bob grew up on a farm and knows what old gas tanks from the 1930's in America looked like so he recognized the station.  It was fun to drive along the island not limited by traffic hemming us in on every side.  We found another beach, and had a Western-style lunch of big Australian beef burgers and french fries!!  I rarely order a burger in a restaurant but I did here!  And it tasted really, really wonderful.

Most people drink Vietnamese coffee iced
but I finally got the real thing (brewed
slowly over the mug) hot.  I ordered it with
milk and at first I thought they forgot, but
then saw the thick layer at the bottom.  Their
"milk" is like our sweetened condensed milk,
so thick and rich.  Delicious!  Even though I
never use sugar in my coffee at home.  Coffee
here is very strong as well, my favorite!
After brewing is finished, one stirs the milk up.

I would have thought "oh, they
are out of gas!"  Nope, the gas
needs to be pumped up into the
holding tank.  She asked us
how much we wanted, 1 liter?
Two?  We ended up with 2 liters at
a cost of about $1.00 US.

Now the gas has been pumped into
the holding tank, then she'll open
the valve to get it into the gas tank
under the motorbike seat.

Sometimes we had to wait for a cow to get off
the road!

We also stopped at a pepper farm, after wondering what plants we kept seeing tied up on a pole.  Thank goodness for Google!  We bought black and white peppercorns from the owner of this farm; she had a stand set up inside a building on her property.

Pepper trees

If you look closely, you'll see
little green peppercorns
in the leaves.

We decided to spring for one more "touristy" event Sunday evening in light of 2 days of inactivitiy.  We booked a sunset squid fishing/barbeque "cruise."  We left from the marina at 5:30 and after sunset began to fish for squid!  There were perhaps about 40 people on board and only 2 people caught a squid.  We used a hand reel and a lure and just hung it over board and were instructed to frequently "jerk" the line to hopefully catch the squid on the lure.  After about an hour or a little more of trying, we were told it was time for dinner and to find a seat.  Dinner was a rice porridge, roasted prawns (shrimp), and a stir-fried noodle dish with seafood in it (including cut-up squid).  I forgot to take a photo of the meal!

One of the two squid caught on
our fishing trip

Bob hoping for the lucky catch.

That catches you up with our latest goings-on.  Bob's arm this morning is MUCH better; he did go see a follow-up doctor back in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday afternoon as suggested. This doctor added one more med to help the swelling.   I think we just want to be all better in two days!!  Impatience.  But we also don't want to have our worst fears realized about some weird infection that won't go away.  It is another reminder of how much we take for granted when all is well with our bodies.

Thank you for following our blog and Happy Thanksgiving!  We are missing the family times especially with holiday reminders coming up (on facebook, etc.).  I have 2 afternoon lectures to give both Thursday and Friday since Thanksgiving is not a Vietnamese holiday of course.  But there are Christmas trees going up in some stores!  No, they don't celebrate Christmas but Hui Hiang (from Singapore) guesses that they just like the decorations.  I don't think we'll find any turkey (they don't seem to have that here--but they do have duck and geese and chickens) but maybe we'll spring for some western-type food over the weekend to feel a little of the old homey feeling.  Until next time!

Election week, security at UPNT, and food (of course!)

 Greetings!  We are in week 11 of the school year here and finishing our 4th week of teaching.  We didn't have any lectures or labs Wednesday morning so were able to attend the live presidential watch party sponsored by the US Consulate General here in Ho Chi Minh City.  It started at 8 am our time (8 pm Tuesday night to Michiganders).  It was a festive atmosphere and we met some interesting consulate workers as well as other Americans and Vietnamese interested in the process.  We chuckled at the first table of food we saw and which was announced as a "taste of America:"  McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and a Starbucks coffee table.  The other side of the room had nice pastries and fruit and juices and oatmeal and yogurt, however!  We couldn't stay until the end since we had afternoon work back at the university; we read reports later that many of the young people wept at the surprise results.

2 running screens for election updates:  CNN and FOX news.

"A taste of America."

Dunkin' Donuts!  The ones in the front
were topped with Fruity Pebbles!  Eww.
But children here do like sugar, as children do everywhere.  The cereals available include high-sugar varieties, but most not recognizible names.  There may be a couple of brands
that I know from home but they're very expensive.

Photo op with Mary Tarnowka, the US Consul General of Vietnam.

When we started working here we were taught security procedures and I thought you might find it interesting.  We have at least 9 keys in our personal possession because for the 3 rooms we most often use (our office, a lecture room and a lab room) there is a door handle lock, a padlock, and a sliding internal door that locks.  After we lock up for the night, we are to write our name and the date
on a small piece of paper and glue it over the lock.  The next morning we pull off the paper to insert our key into the locks! A lot of our cabinets and desk drawers of equipment also lock.  Thieves not welcome!

Paper with name and date written on it, glued over the padlock.

Another lock to unlock.

A third lock with the paper "seal" over it, before
unlocking and sliding the gate over to enter the room.

Last week Saturday we pursued getting a passport sized photo for Bob's international driving permit, and for the visas we'll need when we visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  We found a small shop on a street that our Vietnamese colleague recommended and the shopkeeper took photos and had them ready in 10 minutes.  His studio was in the back of his shop, which advertised wedding photos and apparently wedding supplies (based on the pictures below) like dresses and props.

Bob posing for his photo.

The setting: the back of the shop.

Lastly, we of course have more food experiences to

share!  We had two weekend dinners out last weekend.

On Friday, Mr. Long (our optometry department head) 

took us and our colleague from Singapore to his favor-

ite crab restaurant, Quan Ut Ca Mau.  He ordered  

several dishes for us all to share.

  

Delicious fried rice, crab, and mussels.

Dresses for ?sale ?props?

Our next experience was a 

dinner out to a restaurant that

our rental agent Phuong and 

her newlywed (2 weeks) husband Cu wanted to take us to.  Phuong also offered that Bob could use her motorbike and I could ride on the back, and she would ride on Cu's.  !!!  Bob instructed Cu "don't go very fast," because the hardest part was tailing them and not letting too many other motorbikes get between us.  They took us to a place they said was famous--I don't know how any tourist would find it.  Indeed, we were the only foreigners there.  It was down several back alleys.  Their specialty is snails (the name is Oc Dau--"oc"=snail) and we had 3 different types ordered by our hosts.  Maybe 3 different types was the key but my stomach doesn't like snails so much, I found.

Our spread.  The prawns/shrimp were good!  The top middle dish was
snail meat with lots of garlic, super good on the fresh bread that was
brought.  The dish on the right is a side dish popular here called tai heo.  I found out
how it's made:  it's pig ear fermented in vinegar then cut finely and spiced.  Hmmm,
maybe that's what my tummy didn't like.

Bob enjoying DRIVING for the first time in over a month.
Restaurant entrance behind us.  We did wear helmets!

Our very nice hosts Cu and Phuong.  They insisted on coffee
after dinner as well and wouldn't let us pay.  Phuong told us the
tradition is we pay next time, so I said that is good it makes sure
there will be a next time to socialize!

This past Tuesday we female optometry staff-persons declared a girls' lunch out.  I think they were kidding at first and did invite Bob, but he waved us off.  The girls from Vietnam wanted to have us try topoki, a specialty in Korea.  We went to a Topoki restaurant in a mall downtown.  Topoki is made from soft rice cake, fish cake, and a sweet red chili sauce.  It's made like a "hot pot" like we've had in Vietnam other places, put on a burner on our table.  The sauce reminded me of red enchilada sauce that comes on wet burritos back home.

Restaurant entrance

The girls!  Ngan, Hui Hiang, myself, and Phuong.

Topoki in the pot.  Seafood (mussels,
prawns, squid) as well as the rice cake
parts that look like white sausages, & the
fish cakes are flat like a tortilla.  Sides
served with were kimchi on left and a 
sugar-glazed sweet potato.

We're getting more adventurous with street food and trying vendors near our apartment.  Street food is so inexpensive!  We tried a vendor with "chao ech" on his sign and found it meant "frog porridge."  The porridge was a rice porridge, and the frog was served in a boiling tasty broth (boiling is good! (for germs)).  Frog was in pieces but had bones.  We realized after we were done that patrons near us seemed to toss their bones on the sidewalk (we had used the table).

The cook, streetside.

Rice porridge and frog in broth with herbs.

Last food experience to report:  we bought some fruit from a street market near our house last night and after buying the small watermelon Bob wanted, the vendor "pushed" some carambola (starfruit) at us.  We took two, for 10,000 dong as Bob recalls (which is about 25 cents apiece).  It was the best, sweetest starfruit we've ever had.  Probably because in the US it doesn't ripen naturally on the tree and is shipped from the tropics!

Best starfruit ever.

Thanks again for following our adventures in Vietnam.  Next weekend we get a long weekend since Friday is some sort of teacher's holiday (not sure if it's just our school or wider than that) so we plan to get out of the city for the first time (besides our initial vision screening weekend in a rural village 2 hours from HCMC).  The plan is Phu Quoc island in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia (still in Vietnam).  That'll be the next blog!

Teaching, Tex Mex, Vietnamese wedding, and aerobics!

Happy Halloween to you Americans back home!  We have been here one month now.  No, Halloween is not "celebrated" here by children trick-or-treating but some stores do decorate with Halloween motifs.  And there are probably parties in some places, but I have nothing to report!

Last week's blog had a picture of me lecturing for my first time, so I thought I'd show that Bob also has his first lecture under his belt as well! 

"Dr. Robert" has taken over the contact lens track lectures.

On the topic of teaching, today we had a half day seminar we were invited to (as were all the medical school faculty) on the topic of Competency-Based Curriculum.  It was very interesting, kind of learning about learning. :)  Wrap your mind around that.  More specifically, the contrast was between "classical" learning in Vietnam and newer models of competency-based learning which has 3 elements:  knowledge, skill, and attitude and how to assess competency in students in this model.  It was presented in English (yay!) by a Belgian professor with a lovely French accent. A translator translated the lecture into Vietnamese.  Tomorrow we have a full day seminar by a different Belgian professor on a related topic.

The lecturer on left from University de Liege in Belgium, translator on right.  Screens in both English and Vietnamese.

We chuckled over the drop-down "desk" from the chair ahead.  A great working distance if you are near-sighted and young enough to have a good near-focus.  Neither of which term applies to us far-sighted people. :)  Phuong, in the background, is a Vietnamese ophthalmology graduate who is teaching our optometry students in their native language.  She actually has normal vision (not near-sighted) and can focus at near, being not to bifocal age yet!

Next, more food pictures!  We've been staying close to "home" but Friday night decided to explore downtown (i.e. where Westerners can find familiar food) for dinner.  We had found a restaurant that promised Tex Mex food...(the owner is from Maine and has a Vietnamese wife according to the restaurant's website) ahhh, real burritos and nachos!!  We have been eating a lot of rice and noodles!

La Fiesta!!  The name of the restaurant!

  

Burrito mostly finished (on left), nachos on right.  And sangria!!

First time we saw salt and pepper on the table here.  Really.  Usually the condiments are soy sauce and fish sauce.  And chilis in a bowl.

After dinner we walked around District 1 (downtown) a bit, and also wanted to find Pasteur Street Brewing Company we'd read about in our Lonely Planet guide.  Bob does not like going down alleys, so of course, guess where the entrance to the brewery was?

Narrow little alley leading to a steep
staircase up to our destination.

Steep staircase!

They even had "weird beer" like in America--
we didn't order the "what the heo" beer at the top
(heo is "pig" in Vietnamese, haha) but the
description says it's brewed with pork loins
and bacon!

Miscellaneous stuff to fit in:

Dog at the bus stop.  I miss my dog!

The fish sauce selection at our local market.  I couldn't get the whole wall into one
picture!  This is not soy sauce, but all the brands of fish sauce.  It'll be interesting
to see how many brands I have to choose from when I get back to Charlevoix.  I'm
thinking probably one.  Maybe two?

Saturday we also walked around downtown, exploring with our colleague Dr. Koh.
Bob found the indoor ice arena in the fancy Western mall!  It was just being set up,
opening slated for Nov. 1.  NOT regulation hockey size, oh well!!

We can't find basil at our supermarket so Bob found basil seeds and planted them last week
and they are already sprouting!  We had some containers with dirt on our balcony already.

Lastly (almost), is my Vietnamese wedding report.  Last night, Sunday evening, we attended Minh's (our Vietnamese once-weekly cleaning lady and cook) son's wedding.  We also met 2 of Minh's other employers, both teachers here for the past 4 years.  One is from Colorado and one from Canada near Niagara Falls.  We sat with them which was nice to be able to exchange some experiences.  The bride and groom were married in a ceremony earlier (we were told) attended by family and close friends.  We arrived at 6:30 for the dinner to be served at 7 pm.  After dinner, some people began to leave but guess what was happening on stage:  karaoke!!  The audience was invited to go up if desired and several different singers went up!  Not us.  It was very loud with the accompaniment and hard to talk to our table mates.  We left about 9 pm, having to work the next day.

Fancy wedding invitation

The inside of the invitation.  The groom's name is Pham Quoc Thai (Thai is his first name) and
the bride's is Vo Thi Be Nam (Nam is her first name).  The wedding was held at the Glorious Wedding and Event Center (see the word "Glorious" on the right side, half-way down?)

We arrived by taxi to this sight: attendants lining the entrance.

Inside the entrance a pianist was playing...

...and wedding displays were set up.  Our dinner was on the 2nd floor up.  I think
there were 5 floors with other weddings going on.

Entering our dinner room, after getting a photo in the 2nd floor
"lobby" with the bride and groom.

Initial table setting. (my seatmate, the Colorado teacher, lamented about no fork or spoon) The drink choices were water, Pepsi, or Heineken, and servers kept refilling our glasses.

Before dinner, some singers/dancers took the stage to entertain us.  Perhaps they sang
a wedding type song...it was in Vietnamese!

After the entertainment, the bride and groom and their parents took to the stage for introductions.
Minh is standing next to her son, and next to Minh is her husband Pham Van Chieu.  Some
gold confetti showered on all of them from the ceiling.

The bride and groom did cut the cake--only the top layer is a real cake.  There was dry ice "fog"
pouring out of the bottom layers of the (cardboard) cake.  The guests are not served this cake (the one on top of course).

The bride and groom also poured champagne or wine into this fountain structure.  It also had 
dry ice "fog" coming out the bottom!

When it was time for dinner, uniformed servers marched into the dining room in a line.

I forgot to take a picture of the first course, a delicious shrimp spring roll.  This is the second course,
crab soup.  It's thick like egg drop soup I've had in the US.

First main course, steamed chicken.  The server portioned it out and handed it to us.
Note the chicken head.  I don't think anyone claimed it, although the 2 North Americans sitting with us offered to let us have it.  Haha!

Next main course, Australian beef.  It was like a beef stew and so delicious!

Last of the main dishes, it translated as "lotus leaf rice hub."  Lol.  It was rice with lotus seeds, according to someone familiar with Vietnamese food.  The seeds had the texture of garbanzo beans.

Dessert was one of these little cakes.  A lot of sweets are made with rice flour, which
meant it was sticky and rubbery to cut into.  But sweet and delicious!

The inside of the cake had a little layer of cake (as I think of cake) and a nugget of sweet paste.

And lastly, my most recent experience.  Over the weekend I investigated the 2 nearest gyms and joined the less expensive one ($184 US for 9 months vs. $806 (!) for 9 months).  Tonight I went to my first "dance fitness" class with Ms. Xuan.  It was pretty fun!  It felt good to exercise anyway.  A lot of hip-hop dance moves with no instruction, just following along with the instructor on stage.  I tried to hang out in the back but the instructor asked me to come forward so I could see better (I think) and she could help me.  She knew a little English.  I'm sure I was the worst dancer in there, but it was exercise!  The second half we got mats out for stretches and toning (sit-ups, etc.)  She had us hold some stretches and counted.  You know how you think to yourself, I can hold this for X counts?  Lol, the count was in Vietnamese!  "Mot, hai, ba, bon, nam, sau, bay, tam!!"  OK, now I know, counts of 8!  At the very end she gave an instruction to the class and said to me "now we sleep."  ????  She must have seen my confusion because she said "only for 3 minutes!"  In other words, stretch out and relax/cool down.  Another different experience in Vietnam!

YAP Gym and Yoga, across the street from my apartment.
Floors 3 and 4 (lit up) are the dance studio, yoga room, and gym.