Category: Vietnam
-
I Like My SUVs Dipped in Gold and My Skies Tinted Milky Grey: Let’s Talk About New Money and Bad Air in New Asia
This is not a rant. This is an open question/discussion prompt. A week or two ago, one of my former students (now grown up, married and somehow happily living in Saskatoon, Canada) from my previous existence teaching high school English in the middle of Turkey drew me into a rather intriguing and thoughtful conversation…
-
Insert Coherent, Concise, Astute Title Here: Notes on Starting the New Year with a Question Mark
One of the downsides to writing every three or six or eight months is that all of the half baked ideas that might have made up a dozen different posts all burble to the surface and battle it out to be the opening line. Hey, I’m still living in repetitive suburbia in Koreatown in…
-
Are We Better Yet? Notes on Writing About Normal
When I decided to reopen the cobwebbed vaults of my semi-abandoned online hiding space, I first looked into the drafts folder to see if there were any false starts in there worth revisiting and finishing. Here are a few of the titles from the past year or so, which never saw the light of day.…
-
Greetings From my New Expat Bubble
Hi. You might remember me from such posts as that one six months ago, back when we were still living in Hanoi, in a long, narrow railroad flat perched five floors above the reeking, oil-slick, sewage-milky, belly-up fish filled Truc Bach lake. Like many things in Hanoi, it looked lovely and atmospheric and serene from…
-
How to be Happy in Denmark (and Vietnam): Notes on Getting it All Wrong Again
I’ve been sick for the past two or three (maybe four?) weeks. One of those fun, persistent malingering malaises that morphs from one form to another, then back again, sometimes overlapping in comical yet debilitating ways. I currently have twin ear infections that have swollen my already dainty canals into mere pinpricks, whilst at the…
-
The Skies Are White, If Nothing Else: Christmas in Hanoi!
Christmas is back in Hanoi! Those creepy, hip swiveling robot Santas are playing their saxophones outside occasional pho joints and unexpected Christmas trees are popping up in lobbies and windows around town. At the overpriced expat grocery stores you can now buy the world’s tiniest Christmas puddings for the price of a three course meal…
-
A Totally Impractical Guide to Changing Everything All At Once (Again)
I should be studying right now. Four units into the first module of a master’s degree in applied linguistics, I’m painfully wrapping my head around the idea of a lexeme’s paradigm (not to be confused with a gangsta’s paradise, though I will admit that I now can’t get Coolio out of my head) and filling…
-
John McCain Crashed His Plane Just Outside Our New Flat
It was a few years ago (1967), but still- he ejected just over there- you can see it from our living room window. About two weeks ago, we moved house. Again. I may have mentioned the reluctant need to uproot, yet again. The construction work, the noise, the dust, the madness. Remember? Yeah, that.…
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and Living) in Ridiculously Humid Climes
A month or two ago, my third external hard drive in three years decided to just stop being a functioning external hard drive. It was only a year and a half old when it died and took all of my laptop’s back ups with it. As a neurotically careful archivist of my own clutter,…
-
Just Like Starting Over: Hanoi 2.0
Can I tell you about our early days in Hanoi? Back in October? So many months ago. The weeks when we lived in a stuffy, cramped hotel room in a curious neighborhood that would have been more curious if it hadn’t been hemmed in on so many sides by major roads that were…
-
Welcome to Sapa: Notes From the Hub of the Curiously Dystopian Hill Tribe Folk Villages
Last week, we took an overnight train to Sapa, the hill tribe tourist hub in the northern reaches of Vietnam. It’s way up there near China, so far up that it’s shrouded in mist and fog, with palpably moist cloud tendrils snaking down steep, narrow streets and into open doors. It’s up in the…
-
Notes From Hanoi: Post-Tet Bling, Wise Men and Orion Pies For the Gods
I’m surprisingly comfortable with having no clue what’s going on around me. I’ve spent most of my adult life in countries where I’m not only far from fluent in the language but am also illiterate and still learning the cultural ropes. Vietnam- and specifically here in Hanoi because I can’t really speak for the rest…