Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
Viewing entries in
Hanoi
Welcome to the 2nd installment of the ESL Teaching “Story Basket.”
Make some popcorn / get nice and cozy / go to the bathroom now because this one is a bit longer than the last one.
We'll start with the story of me giving a terrified student the "get-out-of-jail-free card."
In buying my first motorbike I chose the path of least resistance and bought an automatic transmission bike called a Nouvo. However, in addition to being a gas guzzler, this bike was considered to be 'unmanly'. Eventually I gave into societal pressures and graduated to a semi-automatic transmission bike called a Wave, which I rode for a short time. Semi-automatic bikes are undoubtedly the most practical bikes for city driving, but I really wanted to learn to drive a manual transmission bike. Go big or go home, right?
Most of what happens to me in the classroom isn't enough to merit its own extended blog post. But as the Vietnamese school year comes to a close, I want to share a collection of stories from my classes. This is the first of 2 installments of the teaching 'story basket'. So without further adieu, here are 4 little windows into what class with Peter is like.
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum is mammoth. It takes up a solid 10 square city blocks and it looks kind of like a slick, chrome, communist version of the Lincoln Memorial. It is only open in the morning. Entry is free but you had best be there at the butt-crack of dawn if you want to avoid a multi-kilometer long line. Most of the line is not tourists either. It is mostly Vietnamese families.
Yeah. Gross, right? Vietnam has a lot to offer to the dark side of the culinary world and I’m doing my best to try all the weird cultural dishes I can whilst I am here. This week’s dish is a beating snake heart. Also included in this post will be snake organs, bones, skin, and poisonous stomach bile.
It was good to get back home so that I could start making money instead of spending it. Spring has come to Hanoi. With summer just around the corner the streets are now littered with the flip-flops of small children and we are receiving more rain than I thought possible. One rainy Tuesday morning around 6am I woke up to my phone ringing.
I write this article to let you in on some of the issues you can have interacting with foreigners whilst you are abroad. You meet an interesting mixture of people when you are traveling, and in spite of their differences, the usually have one thing in common: extreme personalities. Another issue is that there are nearly always cultural differences that can muddle interactions. To make matters worse, many people living abroad are scared, stressed, or thinking that they are beyond the reach of consequences, so they will do extreme and selfish things from time to time.
There was a huge, black SUV stopped in the middle of the street. There was a mysterious white powder all over the shattered windshield. The rest of the vehicle was already very badly dented, as if a crowd of people had attacked it. There was an angry mob gathered around around the drivers seat door. Something was happening there.
Since moving to Southeast Asia I've felt that I would be robbing myself of the true experience if I didn’t at least try every strange dish that is pushed across the table in my direction. So that is exactly what I have been doing. And it's been a lot less disgusting than I expected... until the Buffalo penis.
This was disgusting.
Within the first few months that I spent in Vietnam, I had a couple gnarly accidents, the second of which landed me in the hospital. But before I got to the hospital—while I was I was lying in the street at the end of a long skid mark of blood and metal—it occurred to me that passing on the wisdom I had gained through learning to drive in Hanoi would be prudent. They say that the first 3 to 4 accidents are a rite of passage for driving in Southeast Asia, but that doesn't mean that you need to go into the experience blind. What follows are my 10 rules for staying safe on the road in Hanoi. But, before we get to any of that, I have a lil' treat for you.
