One Monkey, Three Massages, and Tons of Mangoes on the Cheap…

Before the events of last weekend fade into distant memories in the whirlwind that has become life in Vietnam, they need to be mentioned in all their gloriousness.

To start it all off, we had a little visitor in our front yard. Yep, that’s right, a monkey. We’re not sure where he came from – there’s the possibility that he’s a pet of one of our Vietnamese neighbors. Either way, he showed up in our yard just as Sam and I were biking home from class. Which was super cute and all…until he pounced. We ran shrieking into our house and stayed there through lunch, images of Outbreak running through our heads. Our friend An, who is incidentally not much bigger than the monkey itself, was brave enough to chase it away for us, narrowly missing a nip on the leg from the little bugger.

Amusing happening number two of the week occurred when on Friday afternoon, after a long week of teaching, Alice, Sam and I decided to try getting massages. After negotiating the price in botched Venglish/Vietnamese, we were led upstairs to a tiny little changing room (where we were told to strip down and grab a towel) and then a dimly lit room with three tables and three masseuses. Sam has had some massage experience back in the States, but this being the first time for both Alice and I, most of what we know about massages comes from watching Phoebe on Friends. I don’t know what we expecting exactly, but both being pretty steeped in “Puritanical” American standards of public modesty, we erupted into nervous giggles when the masseuses climbed up on our backsides and pulled down those towels. Hello world, yes, that would be my @$$! Of course this made Sam laugh hysterically as well. Which in turn made the three Vietnamese girls catch the infectious giggles – apparently not all of their clients find massages so hilarious. This went on for about half an hour, until we calmed down enough for them to give us impromptu lessons in what I’m pretty sure was cursing in Vietnamese. To top it all off, Frank called us in the middle of this giggle-fest, wondering where we were to let him into our house and very confused as to why we found his phone call hilarious.

By far one of the highlights of the weekend was a trip to Cai Rang, the famous floating market just outside the city, with a group of my students on Saturday morning. I had talked to a few of the members of my Thursday afternoon class (by far my favorite, sorry, but it’s true!) about wanting to see the market the “Vietnamese” way – traveling there by bicycle and then renting a boat from a local instead of taking an organized tour. One of my students, whom we shall call “Tom the Tour Guide” said he could probably swing that, just for me. This was the first week that I had gotten enough sleep to bear the thought of getting up at 4:45 on a Saturday, so we made the plan.

Alice, Frank and I met up with three of my students bright and early the next morning. Though we were running on just four hours of sleep (thanks to a farewell party for our German friend the night before) the trip definitely proved well worth the agony of the early morning. We were able to convince a local man to take us out on the water just in time to watch a magnificent sunrise, and wove our way through boat after boat of fresh produce. Personal highlights of the trip for me included stopping at a grab-n-go coffee boat (a boat-thru, I guess?) and buying as much fruit as we could bicycle home (Mangoes! Mangoes! Mangoes!) for cheaper than cheap. The morning finished off with a delicious breakfast of hu tieu (vegetarian noodle soup), and we were even done in time for a late morning nap. I also enjoyed getting to know my three students a little better outside the constraints of the classroom. The mood of the morning was pretty relaxed – we joked around, raced on our bikes, etc – and I felt like a student again myself. Tom the Tour-Guide has offered to take me to his home province, An Giang, soon, and I’m looking forward to another spectacular tour!

On to amusing happening number four, by far the best. Earlier in the week, Sam had informed me that our dear friend Mr. Ly has recommended us to be the main attraction at the English Department’s opening ceremony on Saturday night. What was this to entail exactly? Dancing. We were to choreograph a short dance, perform it in front of the whole department, and then choose ten students from the crowd to compete in a dancing contest that we were to judge. Now Sam used to be a ballerina, but how exactly was I qualified to do this? Apparently because I am such an enthusiastic “recreational” dancer. Ha! I could have killed Mr. Ly.

On Saturday afternoon Sam and I met to choreograph our little dance. In keeping with the general theme of ridiculousness, we settled on Britney Spears “Gimme More” as the most appropriate song selection. I must say I was pretty pleased with the result of our efforts – we managed to incorporate the sprinkler, the awkward shoulder dance (a shout-out to the Paine twins for that one), the moonwalk, a lot of hip-shaking and even a corny high-five into our little number, all in the span of about a minute. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing on stage, but the students LOVED it. They went nuts, and now I’m pretty sure they think Samantha and I are professional dancers. I’d like to say that this is because of my mad DP skillzzz, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the relative comparison – as my good friend Duy commented, “When I see Americans dance, I think that Vietnamese people maybe do not dance so well.” Nuff said.

But by far the best part of the evening was the dance contest. Just picture this: me as MC, Sam as model dancer, and ten Vietnamese students gettin’ down on stage with the sprinkler and the awkward shoulder dance, all to the tune of “Hooo-ah, ha ha ha, hooo-ah, ha ha ha.” Actually, don’t picture it – watch the video I uploaded (copyright Alice S. Garabrant). In the words of Frank, “the guy in the blue is really killing it.”




I’m starting to think I should rename this blog “Vietnam: Where You Too Can Become a Star.”