Living in Việt Nam Pt. 1: A Neighborhood in Tây Hồ

The narrow alleyway from the house where I am living opens up at the edge of a bustling park. It is 7:00pm; it is already fully dark, but the dimly lit tree-filled park is swarming with activity. A dozen women in matching outfits do a synchronized aerobic dance routine to house music blaring from a boombox. A continuous stream of bicycles circuit the scenic lakeside drive, all going the same direction. A van with a loudspeaker shouts instructions about an event occurring at the local rec center - a small traveling circus, I later learn.

The park looks out over Hà Nội's "West Lake", and in the distance the lights of the skyscrapers of the city's center are arrayed in a long line rather than a concentrated clump. There is a cooling breeze; finally, some respite. Not from the heat, which is not so bad, but from the humidity and the smog.

A college-aged Vietnamese girl stops me: "Excuse me, do you speak English?"

She's doing a survey for her university English class, and I'm happy to oblige because it's an easy opportunity to interact with a local. The questions ask me to compare aspects of living in Việt Nam to the United States. I explain that I make much "less" money here than I could in the United States (actually I am a volunteer with a small stipend), but that there are much better options for healthy eating and that this kind of community park is not as vibrant in the U.S. as they are so far away that you usually have to drive to them. She doesn't really seem impressed or surprised by any of my answers though. Ex-pats who are English teachers here and give similar answers are a dime a dozen.

Before she leaves, though, she asks me: "I like your eyes, what color are they? Blue?"

I have already had multiple comments about my blue eyes and my silver (early graying) hair. In the States, I would have found the comment strange, but people are not afraid to ask direct questions about your appearance here and now that I know that I find it charming. It's a quirk of Vietnamese culture, which can be very indirect about disagreements, but very direct and concrete when it comes to "small talk". It will come in handy when I need to meet and talk to strangers.

For now, though, I am on a mission to hang out with two new American friends, and I send them a message on Whatsapp: "Running a few minutes late, wanna meet halfway?"

My new friends are also volunteers with the U.S. Peace Corps, and I have just met them a week ago. There is a joke that your fellow volunteers are your "government-issued friends". This is only the 3rd year that the Peace Corps has been in Việt Nam; it is a small cohort, and we feel not only extremely lucky to be among the few selected but sense a great amount of opportunity and responsibility.

There are only 16 volunteers currently serving in Việt Nam, and my cohort will add 20 (just as half of the volunteers here are finishing up and returning home). We are divided into several groups living in houses together in different neighborhoods across this district of Hà Nội. Some houses are studying the Southern Vietnamese dialect to serve in Ho Chi Minh City, but I am meeting up with "the boys" from a nearby house who will - like me - be serving somewhere not too far away in an outlying district of Hà Nội.

"You don't want to eat at the phở place?" Sean asks when I see him.

"How many times have you been there already?" (It's a few times.)

"There're a bunch of places this way;" I implore. "Don't you want to try all of them? They could be better!" (From my experience, they are, although I adore the friendly proprietor of my friend's trusted hangout spot.)

We agree to find some place new and head deeper into the neighborhood, crossing an 8-lane street at an intersection which is made more complicated by the inclusion of a third smaller street. Traffic here never stops for pedestrians, so you just to have pick your moment and step out bravely.

At first, crossing the streets here is daunting. Actually, I am still a little afraid of it. But with a little practice, it is not as bad as people say. Actually, compared to Mexico City or Marrakech, or even American traffic, Hà Nội traffic seems calm and reasonable. Drivers generally don't put the pedal all the way down and will calmly wait for a car doing a full U-turn in the middle of traffic. There is a certain rhythm in the chaos - a clear pecking order: motorbikes give way to cars give way to trucks and buses. Of course, motorbikes are far and away the bulk of the traffic.

And as long as you are steady and predictable in your direction and pace, the motorbikes will skillfully weave around you as you walk across the road.

"I don't think there's anything reasonably priced along this street," I report, "but we found a cool place where you can BBQ meat at your table by the park. Wanna try it?" Sean and Ryan are enthusiastic; the biggest culture shock to some Americans may be the small portions of protein in a typical bowl of noodles here.

Tây Hồ district, being situated on a nice lake, is the most foreigner-heavy district of Hà Nội. You can easily find Mexican food, German food, Russian food, and pubs full of English speakers of every variety. The prices in USD are much cheaper than American restaurants but are usually six-figures in VND. And that doesn't work on a volunteer's budget.

Our stipend is based on a livable wage in Việt Nam (and as such, is still probably more than the average Vietnamese earns). In terms of USD, we only have a few dollars to spend per meal. Fortunately, even in Tây Hồ, there are many local workers, and on the same street you can find local specialties at local prices right next to the expensive places seeking the ex-pat dollar.

The family-run BBQ place is a nail salon during the day, and the kids wait tables when they get home from school in the evening. But tonight, it is dead for some reason, so we decide to continue down the street. We want to do some people watching. And we soon come to a place that is packed with low tables, with people crowded around on milk crate-sized yellow plastic chairs. The delicious smells of charred meat hits us like a wave.

The host asks: "Hot pot? B- B- Qwe?"

We decide to give the hot pot a shot. I soon find out neither Ryan or Sean have done hot pot before; I have, but it doesn't mean I know all the rules here. But fortunately, a lot of restaurants here use an order ticket where you just write the number of how many things you want.

We've only been learning Vietnamese for a couple of days at this point, so we struggle to translate everything on the menu - with the help of Google Translate - but we eventually get some mixed veggies, several meats, and 3 beers.

Our waiter points to our order of beer and asks some question, to which I supply the Vietnamese word for three: " ba, ba, ba". This is my first mistake, as I manage to order beers of the brand "333" - which anyway is pretty much indistinguishable from Bìa Hà Nội or Bìa Saigon. The unrefrigerated cans are given to us with three cups filled with ice.

The hot pot at this restaurant turns out to made with a Thai-style Tom Yum soup broth with coconut milk, dried red peppers, and big chunks of lemongrass and pineapple. The broth only gets richer as we cook meats and seafood in it; when we are almost done, we throw in the instant ramen noodles and have the most delicious noodle soup.

We make a mess of the table, and picking things up with stainless steel chopsticks is challenging, and I catch the host laughing at us and taking a picture. A singer pulls up near us on the street and sings a song on a mobile karaoke machine and then tries to get us to buy some trinket in return.

We have a grand time.

Believe me, all of us volunteers frequently find ourselves looking at each other and asking "Is this real? How is life so good for us right now?"

Việt Nam is one of the most developed countries that has ever accepted Peace Corps volunteers, one of a handful that could be considered a major tourism destination. But Việt Nam understands that better English instruction can unlock a wider world for Vietnamese youth, including better prospects for university education. We can provide that and also strengthen our diplomatic ties and cultural understanding of a key economic partner.

After dinner, which took an hour longer than I expected, I head back home and realize I've blown most of my time for studying this evening. We are working six full days a week, with lots of studying to stay on top of all of the Vietnamese vocabulary and TEFL homework.

The home I currently reside in - typical of Hà Nội architecture - has a small, narrow lot and is four-stories tall, wedged in between several other adjoining houses. I walk up 3 flight steps of steps to my bedroom, turn the A/C unit on, and unzip the opening to the mosquito net erected over my bed. I am fairly certain that the ex-pats and tourists visiting this area of Hà Nội do not typically use mosquito netting. But we do leave the screenless windows open for ventilation from time to time, and the Peace Corps has been adamant in teaching us how to take every precaution for our health. We have learned to keep the kettle boiling water throughout the day so that we all have adequate drinking water; I still haven't given up making ice to drink iced water all day, but I have weened myself off buying expensive bottled water which just ends up creating more trash.

I awake from my stiff bed in the morning to the smells of a neighbor cooking. A ventilation shaft runs between the adjoined houses, and my bathroom's fan lets cooking aromas seep into my room. I grab my vocabulary and pronunciation books and a coconut from the fridge and head up to the roof. Once on the roof, equipped with a washing machine (and a dryer, which not all of the volunteers have right now), I take another flight of metal stairs to an area strung with clothesline, and another flight of narrower stairs to where three plastic chairs huddle together next to the house's water tank.

From here I can see parts of the lake and the city skyline, and the other roofs of my neighborhood. It's muggy and I start dripping with sweat almost immediately. It's 6:00am and one neighbor is already jackhammering away at the tile on his roof. The sound and the faint smoke smell of smog sitting over the city make this a terrible place to try to study... but for a second, I sip on my breakfast coconut water, and think to myself, "This is so cool..."