Life as an Expat

I’m finally coming to that time when you move somewhere new when you finally feel at home and are not overwhelmed every day just to leave your house or cross the street (but let’s be honest crossing the street will never be a piece of cake). I have more of a routine and have had more time to explore the streets and discover hidden gems around my neighborhood like the cheap seafood restaurant across the street and my fabulous gym that has a steam room and have discovered from which stalls in the market I should buy fruit. I was even stopped the other day by tourists to ask how to get somewhere, and I was so happy that a. I looked like I knew what I was doing and b. that I actually knew how to give them directions without looking at a map!

What I love most about living here is the random exchanges I have on the street with people (admittedly limited exchanges due to the language barrier) all from the woman in the market who sells me diet coke to the moto drivers or to the little children who scream “hello” when I pass them.

Even though I am living in an area where Westerners tend to live, I definitely still stand out, which can be great, such as when people remember what I order. My local coffee place (a stand in the alley next to my house) and my barista (about five middle aged women covered from head to foot and often wearing the typical cone-shaped hat) all wave and giggle when I come up. They know I will order ca phe da khong duong (black coffee no sugar). I first went with Elizabeth, so when I went again by myself, they automatically gave me two coffees. At first they charged me 7,000 VND, but now since I come nearly every day, they knocked the price down to 5,000 VND. The women have even become less shy and have started asking me questions when I go.

All of these exchanges lead me to wonder so many things. Where do these women come from? Where do they live in Saigon? Where do they put their food carts at night? I asked Hien some of these questions one day and she told me that many of the people who sell things on the street are from the country and come to the city to try to earn money, particularly during the rainy season when there is tons of flooding in the middle of Vietnam. She also told me that young people will come to send money back to their families before they get married, or that often whole families will come to the city and rent a single room for everyone to live while they try to sell their wares. One morning when I was in Nha Trang I went out and bought us bahn mi op la before our boat tour (so cheap and so delicious…French baguettes with a fried egg, some greens, some cucumbers, soy sauce, and sweet chili sauce, and so cheap. It’s not bodo’s but the profusion of bahn mi stands in Vietnam has kept me alive). When they gave me the sandwiches I saw that they had wrapped them in paper, which isn’t unusual, but this wasn’t any paper, it was someone’s, I imagine a girl’s because of the pretty handwriting, school notes. Paper is so precious here. You have to force the kids to write notes down, so it wasn’t strange that they had reused someone’s school notes, but I couldn’t help but wonder who was this girl? Did she care that her precious notes or stories were now being smeared with the yellow egg yolk that was dripping on my fingers and on my face? I hated that I couldn’t ask these women any of this. And I also hated that I also couldn’t tell the women, who had been trying to set me up with a random man eating his breakfast at a table next to me, that it was too early in the morning for anyone to be playing matchmaker.

These are just some of the many questions that have surfaced during my stay here. I have so much more to write of my many adventures such as going to a Vietnamese yoga class and trying to buy tailored clothes and going to a music festival and teaching, (definitely teaching) and all my awkward moments such as when I stepped in a square of wet cement on the sidewalk when I was looking for a place that sells diet coke. Being Vietnam, there was no orange cone, just a piece of cloth whose color matched that of the sidewalk in front of the random square of sidewalk that was being redone. Everyone was staring at me, but that’s not new, so how was I to know not to step there? Let’s just say after I realized my foot was sinking, I quickly ran down the sidewalk without buying the diet coke. But, as Elizabeth said, this is neat because now my footprint will stay forever in Vietnam, and if it weren’t for this embarassing moment I would never have found the lady in the market who sells me diet coke and loves me!

I am definitely going to update the blog soon with these adventures (as in this weekend), but I wanted to go ahead and give a small update and put up some pictures.