Binh Hoa Part II

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to go back to Bien Hoa (Trang's hometown) for the second weekend in a row. This time we stayed at Loan's house, or rather houses, but more about that later. We started out shopping in teams, with each of us making around two dishes for a competition that Loan came up with. Trang and I went to the market right by her house while the other pairs went to a market near Loan's house. Trang and I picked out vegetables, fruit, beef, and shrimp for our dishes.

The market near Loan's house

We headed to Loan's house to make our dishes. Trang and I made canh chua, which is sour soup. This is soup with shrimp, pineapple, tamarind, and vegetables. We also made a stir-fry with beef and vegetables and a dish with mushrooms and greens. The other dishes were eggrolls, mango salad with shrimp, fried fish, and one other dish which I can't remember. We finished the meal with a selection of tropical fruits.

Hanh flipping the egg rolls in the hot oil

Me stirfrying some carrots and greenbeans. There is a little stove under the pan.

Vi posing with the whole spread of dishes that we made

After we cooked and ate lunch, Loan surprised us all by saying, "Ok, now we're going to my other house." For some reason, her family has two houses. The first house, where we cooked, was very similar to Trang's house. Her other house was just a few blocks away and was very fancy. It was a brand new three story townhouse with big screen TVs and a Western style kitchen. She also had a karaoke machine which everyone loved so we spent the next few hours singing karaoke. Or rather the Vietnamese students did. Anna, Vi, and I got a little tired after going through the very short selection of Vietnamese songs that we knew but I've found that Vietnamese people really love karaoke. When they were finally done singing, we went to go see a fortune teller in Trang's neighborhood. I understood very little of what she said because I am not at all accustomed to Vietnamese fortune telling vocabulary. Even Vi needed a few translations from the Vietnamese roommates. Here are a few of her fortunes.

There is a man in the United States who loves you but you don't love him back

This year Anna will have a lot more money than you

An older Vietnamese man will follow you and tell you that he loves you, but really he just wants his money. You should give me all of your money. (My roommates said she's joking, mostly)

Your scholarship application is doing well

You're clueless about Vietnam, be careful

Don't get married this year, wait a year or two

(To my question, will I have children?) If you're not careful, you'll get pregnant this year

We finished the evening by having dinner and walking around a pretty park by the river. All in all, it was another wonderful weekend.

A bridge over the river at night

A wedding and a birthday party!

This weekend I had the very exciting opportunity to go to a Vietnamese wedding. My roommate’s boyfriend’s cousin was getting married and Trang was nice enough to invite Anna and me to the wedding in her hometown and to stay at her house the night before. We got to meet her family and have dinner with them. Trang’s ten year old brother took us on a tour of the town, including his favorite place in the whole town, the supermarket. We also got to meet a lot of Trang's friends from home. We all went to a beautiful cafe by a river. Then we went to the town's large night market where I bought earrings for the wedding the next day. Finally, I got to experience a Vietnamese karaoke bar. Unfortunately Anna and I have only learned one song in Vietnamese but we sang that one, attempted to follow along with a few others and did two Beatles songs.

Playing a board game with Trang and her little brother

The next day we had breakfast at a great noodle place in the alley where Trang lives and got our hair done for the wedding. That was quite a funny experience. Anna had just gotten her hair curled and the hairdresser was spraying her hair with hairspray. We all closed our eyes to avoid getting hairspray in them and when we looked up, Anna's hair was gold. Apparently the hairdresser thought that Anna's black hair would look nice with some gold, glittery highlights. She eventually got her hair returned to normal color but we all had a good laugh. The wedding itself was a lot of fun. Waiters brought out course after course of delicious food while we were entertained by various singers. The bride and groom went around to visit all of the tables and talk with their guests and I got to practice Vietnamese with the people sitting at my table. Throughout this, the bride changed wedding dresses several times. The first was a traditional, white, Western style wedding dress followed by, what can only be described as a series of 80s prom dresses.

Trang, me, Anna, the bride and groom, Trang's boyfriend

Tuesday, we had a birthday celebration for Anna who just turned 21! We went out for a special dinner of bánh căn, small fried cakes, they are a little difficult to describe but were very delicious. After that, we made a surprise (for Anna) visit to a coffee shop with live music. We listened to some classical violin playing followed by a rehearsal of a band doing covers of really old American songs like "Money, money, money" and "Yellow polka dot bikini." Then the violin player came back and played happy birthday on the violin and we brought out a cake for Anna. She was very surprised! I've attached a video of Loan singing a special birthday song for Anna. Sorry that it's sideways, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it. Maybe one you technical types out there can point me in the right direction.

Cuối tuần sau tôi có dịp đi lễ cưới của họ của bạn trai của Trang. Trang mời Sara và Anna ở nhà Trang tối trước ngày lễ cưới. Anna và tôi gặp bố mẹ của Trang và em trai Trang, Thi. Thi chớ Anna và tôi đi tour nơi quê Trang. Tôi hỏi Thi "Em thích nơi nào nhất ở thành phố này?" và em trả lời "Siêu thị!" Nên chúng tôi đi siêu thị. Sau đó chúng ta ăn tối với gia đình Trang. Sau đó, Trang, Anna, và tôi đi quân cà phê bỡ sống và gặp các bạn của Trang. Tôi có dịp tập nói tiếng Việt và các bạn của Trang dễ chịu.

Hospital visit, water puppets, and cooking class

This has been quite a busy week for me and I only have a short time to write before I am off to my roommate's hometown for the weekend to have dinner with her family and attend her boyfriend's cousin's wedding. I have been having all sorts of trouble with this website lately from pictures not uploading to deleting blog posts, to having the Vietnamese characters not show up so hopefully this post works out alright.

Thursday Alyce arranged for us to meet with Vietnam's #1 lock and key mogul who is also a benefactor to many charities in Saigon. She visits the city's largest government run cancer hospital to give presents and money to children with cancer and their families. We were fortunate enough to go with her to help her distribute milk and mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival. We also got to play with the children. I really enjoyed this because I had a very nice conversation with a cute five year old boy. Talking with children in Vietnamese is fun because I can have very manageable conversations like "What color is your shirt?" "What animal is this?" that wouldn't necessarily fly with an adult. Afterward the boy's mother said to me "Chị nói tiếng Việt giỏi lắm. Chị nên lấy chồng một người Việt Nam." This means, "You speak Vietnamese very well, you should marry a Vietnamese man." The trip to the cancer center was also very sad though because the conditions at a government run clinic are not very good. There were about 40 children living in only 6 medium size rooms. Many had to sleep on the ground because there weren't enough beds. The women we met with informed us that most of the children were terminal and about 90% of them would die in the hospital. All the children at least had rooms though. There was not enough room in the hospital for all the adults with cancer so many had to sleep in hammocks outside the hospital. I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to visit this place because it is often difficult for foreigners to gain access to government clinics.

After that, we went to see a traditional Vietnamese water puppets show. The show was very impressive and featured elaborate puppets including fish that shot water out of their mouths and dragons that spewed fire. I have posted a short video clip of the performance.


Today, the big excitement was that I was able to teach a cooking class at the Little Rose Shelter. Anna came with me to help out and we both had a really great time. I thought it would be fun to make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Yesterday, Loan and I went out looking for ingredients. We were unable to find baking powder but the pancakes were still quite good without them, just a little flatter. We also couldn't find chocolate chips but we found M&Ms and a chocolate bar which we cut up into little pieces. Trang helped me out by teaching me new vocabulary such as "flip" "batter" and "stir" and I taught the girls a few new English words like "flour" "sugar" and "milk." For the most part, I explained how to make the pancakes in Vietnamese but the girls sometimes had a difficult understanding my pronunciation of the words. What was really funny was that one of the girls, who didn't speak English, could somehow understand my bad Vietnamese better than anyone else and acted as "translator" meaning she just repeated what I said, fixing the pronunciation and grammar so that everyone else could understand. I was really impressed at how quickly the girls caught on. Anna and I only made one pancake as an example and then the girls took over completely. They figured out exactly how to adjust the heat and when to flip the pancakes without any instruction. From my time at the Little Rose Shelter, I am extremely impressed at how well they take care of the girls. They let them play and be kids, but also teach them how to be extremely independent and self-sufficient so that they can be successful after they leave the shelter. I think many American teenagers could learn a lot from the girls at the Little Rose Shelter. The girls declared the pancakes "ngon!" delicious, and distributed them to all the plates that they were preparing for breakfast. It made me really happy that they all wanted to get their picture taken with me and many asked when I would return again.

Teaching the girls English words for some of the ingredients

A traditional Vietnamese breakfast of fish, rice, cucumber soup and M&M pancakes


One of the girls expertly flipping a pancake

Tuần này tôi bận quá!

Thứ năm, tôi có dịp đi bệnh viện ung bướu chỉnh phụ. Tôi đi với một người giàu, giám đốc công tý chìa khóa ở Việt Nam. Cô ấy thường đi thăm bệnh viện ấy và cho các em bị ổm đồ ăn, tặng, và tiền. Tôi chới với các em bẻ. Tôi thấy các em bé rất vui vẻ. Tôi thích nói với em bẻ vì tôi có thể hỏi "Cài náy màu nào?" và "Con này là con nào?" được. Nếu tôi hỏi người lơn các câu hỏi này thì thấy hơi ngu! Sau khi đi thăm bệnh viện, tôi thấy rất buồn. Bệnh viện này không có đủ phòng cho tất cả bệnh viên nên nhiều bệnh viên phải ngủ ngoài bệnh viện. Tất cả các em bé ngủ trong bệnh viện nhưng khoảng 40 đứa bé ở sáu phòng thôi. Tôi biết ơn có dịp đi bệnh viện vì khó người nước ngoài đi thăm bệnh viện chỉnh phụ.

Sau khi đó, tôi đi xem múa rối nước. Tôi rất thích múa rối nước và tải lên một bộ phim.

Sáng thứ sau, tôi đi Mai Ẩn Hoa Hồng Nhỏ để dạy các em gài làm "pancakes" với M&Ms. Tôi cũng dạy những từ bằng tiếng Anh như "flour" "stir" "sugar" and "milk." Tôi giải tích làm pancakes bắng tiếng Việt, nhưng nhiều đứa trẻ thấy tôi khó hiểu. Một đứa trẻ hiểu tôi hơn và em ấy là "người dịch" nhưng không dịch tiếng Anh bằng tiếng Việt. Em ấy dịch tiếng Việt xấu bằng tiếng Việt tốt! Tôi thấy lớp nấu ăn vui lắm và hình như các em gài cũng thích lớp ấy. Tôi thấy các em gái rất thông minh và độc lập.

Gibbons at the Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Center. The man giving our tour explained that they make that siren like noise when they are being aggressive and that they do not like large groups of females.

Over the weekend, we took a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels and a wildlife rescue center. The tunnels were quite eerie. For those of you that have never heard of the Cu Chi Tunnels, they are a series of tunnels near Saigon that were used during the Vietnam War. These tunnels were very important because they provided refuge for resistance fighters. Even though the tunnels had been widened for Western tourists and reinforced with cement, it was still quite a tight fit for our whole group, which consisted entirely of small females. I was telling everyone how excited I was to see them but when the time came to actually go in them I was so scared! The tunnels were very dark and full of bats. I've always been a little scared of bats but living in Vietnam, I've been getting used to the ones that fly around at night. However, I was still not prepared to be in a very small tunnel with them. After having bats fly within an inch of my face in two of the short tunnels, I was a lame tourist and refused to go in any more of them.

A random place where you could eat potatoes by lantern underground...

The Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Center was a lot more fun. The center takes care of animals, most of them threatened or endangered species, that were being sold on the black market then confiscated by the government. Above is a video of some of the gibbons that we saw. The center also had Asiatic bears, endangered otter species, exotic birds, snakes, and a species of turtles that only have about 100 remaining in the world. The animals that were only recently taken away from their homes are rehabilitated and released into their natural habitats while others that have been out of the wild for too long to survive on their own will stay in the center or at a zoo forever.

We also went to a beautiful temple near Cu Chi that commemorated the soldiers from Cu Chi that died during the war. Finally, we ate at a place near the water that had a great view. There we ate a massive feast. There was so much good food and I felt very full after wards. I will be gone for the whole weekend this weekend because my roommate is taking me to her boyfriend's cousin's wedding. I am so excited to see a real Vietnamese wedding and meet Trang's family!