Schools, Motorcycles, Markets, and Museums
Trip Start
Feb 07, 2007
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Trip End
May 15, 2007
I woke up sleepy, as tired is a permanent state these days, but excited. I was getting to do a service visit . Our small group of fifteen students and two professors met the bus at 8:15am to take us to the outskirts of town where the Da Thien School for the Deaf was. I got to see a little bit more of Vietnam along the way, after pulling off of the same route that took us to the Cu Chi tunnels the previous day. It still amazes me how you know instantaneously when you're leaving the hub of town. Suddenly, the streets get wider and the congestion of the traffic is a mere percentage of what it was. But still no cars. I can probably count on my fingers and toes the number of cars I saw in Vietnam throughout the two days. Maybe even just my fingers and one foot. The shops are still everywhere though, with people squatting outside and selling the contents of their stores on the sidewalks out front rather than inside. But it's easier for them to heckle you when you pass through them instead of by them. And when they heckle, there's a better chance you'll give in because they'll keep showing you their goods and you will probably find something that interests you. It's marginally irritating, but I've gotten so much more relaxed about people in coming to these countries. I feel like I have a lot more patience, at least for these people. After getting off the main road we drove for another fifteen minutes through areas that reminded me of the townships in South Africa, except with a lot more traffic, which had picked up again in the outskirts. The streets were dirt and rock, animals roamed freely, people of all ages walked barefoot, rode bicycles barefoot, carted goods around behind them in large wheelbarrows. We stopped along a gate and stepped off the bus into piles of trash and mud, and I held my breath as I walked into oncoming traffic. The motorcycles and rare car will honk, but they'll move around you. If traffic maneuvers around pedestrians, what's the point of the vehicles having horns? People are walking in front of traffic coming from both directions, and honking at them isn't going to stop them. And even if it did, people aren't supposed to stop because the person operating the vehicle has to gauge where the pedestrian is going and if the pedestrian hesitates, it throws off the system. So why the horn, I ask? But anyway, we had to walk along a rocky alleyway, where elderly folks were sitting with their grandchildren watching as we passed by, and the older children and parents attempted to sell us fruit and drinks as we passed. We rounded a bend in the road and as we approached an open gate with an empty yard, I heard my trip leader, a professor who was a Vietnam vet, say "It's the same." His wife asked him what he meant, if the school looked the same as one in Malaysia, and he said no. "It looks exactly the same as it did in the ambush." That was hard for me, and I have no relation to this man, nor was I in the war. To return to a place that is now a neighborhood, where you once were to ambush it in a war, and for it to look the same to him, I can't even imagine. It brings it so much closer to home than reading about the war in a book at school in the US, or even talking about it on the ship on the way to Vietnam. To hear a Vet talk while you're standing there with him as he remembers the war, it makes it that much more real to you, as a bystander listening to this Vet who doesn't even realize you are there. It was an amazing moment. We walked inside the gates of the school and were greeted by the shouts and waves of children before being escorted into one of the rooms of the two buildings angled along the yard. The principal of the school addressed us in Vietnamese and a volunteer at the school translated for us, telling us about the deaf and dumb who go to school there and explaining logistics. He invited us to enjoy the children, and welcomed us to take a look at the drawings their drawings that decorated the walls. Of course, we asked if we could purchase them, and they said we would have time after we visited the classrooms to shop. We divided into two groups, one to go visit the classroom for the deaf and the other to the classroom for the Down syndrome children. I went to visit the children with Down Syndrome first and was greeted by a group of nine adorable children, ages four to twelve, all of which are taught by women volunteers. The group sang songs for us as we joined in with the hand motions and what snippets of words we could figure out how to pronounce. Some of us had brought puzzles, balls, stickers, and stamps so we spent the next forty-five minutes tossing around beach balls, putting stickers on them, and taking pictures. Most of them were very excited by the cameras, as they were little kids. But there were a couple who didn't quite understand it, or just didn't like it. One boy, the cutest chubby little two-year old, spent the entire time running around, rolling around, and putting everything he could find in his mouth. I was sitting by the door and he ran outside multiple times, and we'd been playing with each other off and on so I stopped him on his third or fourth time out the door to take a picture. One of his teachers came over and tried to help him into my lap, more like get him to stay in my lap while she took a picture, because he wanted none of it. He didn't want to be kept in one place for even the few seconds it took to take a picture. He started squirming out of my lap almost the instant I placed him there. He was just interested in and curious about everything else around him. The camera, he couldn't touch or play with, and he was too young to realize his picture was being taken. The teacher tried to show it to him, but he just didn't care. He liked it a little better when I tickled his belly. The other boy who didn't like when I took his picture, I later realized that he's just very tense and sensitive. At about twelve, he didn't like to be touched at all. He'd talked to me at first but when I tried to repeat back what he was saying, he made a funny face and walked away. He came back fro time to time after that, but he wouldn't let me play with him. He wouldn't catch any balls I threw to him, he pulled away when I pointed at the stamps on his wrists, and he scooted away when I held the camera up. And as I watched him, I saw that he kept to himself most of the time, not engaging in play with the others. When another girl tried to take his picture as we were leaving, he was sitting on a stool looking quite cute and she stepped back to snap a picture and he swatted his hand at her. I couldn't quite communicate the question of what was wrong with him, because he was one of a couple that didn't actually have Down syndrome. But some of the other kids, they loved having pictures taken or just showing off like healthy kids. One little girl, a four-year old with a pale blue dress, danced and twirled and fell on the floor in giggles. She was also quite feisty, demanding the center of attention at all times as she ran around joining in others' games and always trying to steal the beach ball we were tossing around. She wasn't the youngest, but she was the youngest girl and I think she knew that. She also knew she had an adorable face, with just a soft pout from the Down syndrome, and she used it. As much as she hit her fellow students, pushed her way around and through them, and emitted little squabbles of four-year old Vietnamese backtalk, no one really disciplined her except for the oldest girl, the twelve-year old mother hen. Throughout our time there, she spent most of it with the other children in her lap, playing with them or in the case of the youngest girl, disciplining. It was clear that she really loved all of those kids, wrapping her arms around them and rocking them, putting together puzzles with them, stamping with them, and rubbing their heads when a beach ball would bounce off of it. She would pat them and rub their arms, comforting them as if they were hurt or upset even as they laughed. After about fifty minutes, we switched rooms and went to spend some time with a group of seven or eight deaf children in the next classroom over. These kids were a bit older, ten to thirteen, and most sat around the table drawing and playing with stamps, signing animatedly to each other as they bickered over stamps and markers. One boy stood at the front of the classroom, practicing writing in cursive with the two teachers. He asked each of us to sign our names to him and he would spell it out. He kept forgetting to capitalize the first letter of our names, and every time the teacher would say something, in the same tone every time, and he'd erase the letter with his thumb and rewrite it. The Vietnamese alphabet in sign language is slightly different, which I realized after signing my name to him in the sign language I know and him looking confused by my "B". Us SAS kids gathered around the poster of the Vietnamese sign language on the wall and spelled out our names for him to practice writing. He would then try to say it, which was so cute. A little bit murmur red but pronouncing every letter, he spoke our names quite well. None of the teachers spoke English, so it was good practice for me to try to communicate with them through other ways. They were trying to tell me to tell him how old I was, and that struggle through the language barrier was something I haven't really encountered too much on this trip, as much as I expected. Most of the places we go, the people speak at least some English, but going out to this school for the handicapped that hasn't been around for long, and is in a less urban area, they're less likely to speak the language. And I liked it. It's been easy for me so far, so I liked the challenge. We didn't have as much time to color and stamp with them as I wanted, because we'd spent the majority of our time in the first classroom, and after about fifteen minutes with them we were called back into the first meeting room so we could look at the drawings, knit handkerchiefs and handmade cards, all made by children at the school. Of course, you can always count on me to buy these kinds of things, and I bought a beautiful crayon drawing of a city. I really am going to have the most random collection of art when I have to decorate my own place. I'm going to need at least ten rooms to decorate to cover all the themes I've built up in my collections. Or maybe I can just combine it all together to have a Semester at Sea room, with children's artwork, Indian rugs, and paintings of the Hindu god Brahma. But in terms of the children's art, it supports them. The volunteer who was coordinating our visit explained to us that they weren't going to charge us for anything, that we could just donate whatever we were willing to give. I was worried that I hadn't paid enough for the three pieces, but two women came over and thanked me personally for my contribution to the school, so I suppose what didn't seem like a lot to me was to them. After the principal thanked us for our visit, we were on our way. But not before taking a group picture with some of the kids who had gathered outside in the yard to see us off. Some I recognized from the classrooms I'd visited and others I did not, but even if they'd never met you before they were still anxious to say goodbye or high-five or just touch you. I'm not sure how often they receive visitors, but these kids sure seemed to have enjoyed us. It just makes me so sad, that they don't take anything for granted. I've noticed a lot of that on this voyage. Anything you can give them, from money to just some time, they appreciate. When I constantly worry about intruding, that they feel us American tourists are infringing on their territory and their lives, they seem to feel quite the opposite. Somehow, even something simple like just acknowledging them makes them happy. I've never seen so many faces light up from just a wave. As we walked back up the dirt road to get to our bus, the same children were squatting out front of their shops and restaurants, and a smile from one of us would result in a huge grin, a wave, a jump out of a seat. All of the simple things are a joy. It really reminds me to find joy in the simple things because this world is so rich, and there's so much I miss by just hurrying along in my own life. It's like we need to slow down somehow, but the world just keeps moving faster so there doesn't seem to be much time for the simple things anymore. Or perhaps it's just a perception that we don't have time for these things. Maybe it's both. We got back on the bus and drove back to the ship while I tried to take it all in, since this was my last day in Vietnam. But it's like the more I try to memorize the more it all runs together. And yet I want to remember every detail because I don't want to get to a point where I have to think "Okay, was that India or was that Brazil? Was that Vietnam, or Cambodia?" Because right now, if I ask myself what I did on the second day in Puerto Rico, or the second day in Brazil, or the fifth days of South Africa and India, I can tell you exactly what I did. I can remember who I was with, what we did, what I saw. And I don't want to lose that. I want to be able to remember it all. Because in the past, I've had to remind myself that I've been to certain cities so there's no way I can recall what I did there. I took it for granted. My Mom will tell you, I was the worst person to go on guided tours with. I hated going on tours, except on the double-decker bus tour in Manhattan. Everything else bored me. So I missed a lot. I went a lot of places when I was younger that I don't remember going, or what we did. And I refuse to let that happen here. This is too precious to forget a moment of. And in time I'm sure I won't be able to remember what I did on the third day in Mauritius at the drop of a hat, but I won't forget what I've seen. And I don't want to forget how it made me feel. Because that feeling of helplessness, of horror, of awe, that's what kicks me into gear. That's when I go into overdrive and want to never sleep again until the world is a better place for everyone to live. So I watched the city go by, the people at their work or visiting in the streets. I watched the traffic. I watched the children helping their mothers. I tried to think about how I was feeling after visiting the children at the school. And I still can't put anything down. I felt joy and sorrow. I felt hollow. I felt lost. I don't know what I have to contribute in this world yet. I received an email telling me to not worry about it yet, to just take it all in and figure it out later, but staring into the eyes of those adorable children and not knowing what to do, I felt useless. I was frozen. I don't know what was going on, but I couldn't get it together. I watched everyone play with them, so at ease. I mean, I tossed a ball around and tickled and took pictures, and I spelled my name in sign language, but I felt like I was on the outskirts of it all. It was one of my only chances for service visits, after the disabled home in Malaysia. Once I got into a chair there and was able to talk to the young man, I was fine. But there with those kids, all I could do was watch and I don't know why. It's like I was so uptight that I couldn't remember to do the most basic things, like get up and dance with them or teach them patty-cake or things like that. I feel like I may have been overwhelmed, but by what I'm not sure. I mean, after being in a school for disabled children in Vietnam, I don't know what got so under my skin and freaked me out. Perhaps it was just shock. I wasn't tired, so it wasn't like I was exhausted and just not able to function. And I'm not bad with kids. I just froze. I felt like I couldn't figure out what I needed to do. But did I really need to do anything? All I was doing was playing with kids; that's all I had to do. Maybe it was because I couldn't speak the language, but I didn't even really feel like I would have had any questions to ask them. I was just there. I hope as it digests in my mind I'll be able to understand why I was so ill at ease. But for now, I'm just confused by it. And before I knew it, we were back at the ship. Everything outside of my window had become a blur as I retreated into my own head, trying to figure out what my problem was. So I decided to let it go and just enjoy the rest of the day. I had a note on my door from Becca saying that everyone had gone out and were coming back for me at 1:00, when Katie and Lauren had to leave for Cambodia. I ate lunch and wrote until they got back, and I said quick goodbyes to the girls before heading out with the Bobsy twins (that's what Lauren and I call the couples, interchangeably). The four of them had gone to the Museum of War Remnants earlier that day because Becca had remembered I said I wasn't particularly a museum person, but I'd heard someone talk about how amazing it was and decided it was probably something I should see. So we came up with a plan, that we'd do the big Ben Thanh Market and then they'd hang out in the museum courtyard while I took a run through it. We hired motorcycles right outside the ship, and I have to say it was even scarier than skydiving at first. I got on and I grabbed the bar behind my seat and asked the driver if I could put my arm around his waist. He gave me a funny look but said I could, but then I saw Becca drive away holding on with one hand and figured I had to just suck it up. I definitely missed the days of riding ATVs with my Dad, trusting him completely as we jumped and dipped on the trails on the mountain, and ironically I was nervous on a flat road. But after the first initial bumps and swerves to get into the traffic, I did relax. I found my footing and didn't need to hang on to the driver for dear life anymore and could actually enjoy the insanity of the streets. A couple times I yelped in the driver's ear a little bit, which I felt bad about, but when you're not used to being able to stick your hand out and touch the big tour bus next to you, you might make a noise. We made it to the market in less than three minutes and paid the dollar each we'd bargained for, and went inside. It was more packed and hotter than any place for shopping I've ever been. Shops line the perimeter and the cross-hatched pattern formed by the walkways, so the entire market is basically a tangle of shops filled floor to ceiling with goods and side to side with people. As if it weren't easy enough to get lost, sometimes the walkways dead end and you have to turn around and find another way out. I lost Becca once, when I'd stayed behind to look at a painting, and really started to panic. With every single woman and man at their shop addressing you, making offers to you to look at their stuff, or asking if I wanted a scarf, a t-shirt, a purse, when all I wanted was to find my friends, my pulse started to race a little bit. But I did find them, and we spent a couple hours weaving in and out of the aisles together, looking at lots of the same handicrafts and knickknacks, clothes and accessories. After I got my charm and my fabric, I just had fun bargaining with people. But I have to say, of all the places I've been the people at this market were the most difficult to work with in getting the prices down. Not that they were too expensive to begin with, but they held their ground a lot more than in the other markets we've been to. More than half the time you'd walk away, they wouldn't follow you whereas the other places, they'd keep after you for at the very least a few steps. But here, a lot of times if you stepped away they let you go in peace. But I suppose with as famous and big of a market as that is, they don't need to accept low prices because there will be other people who will pay. And I have to say I was a little bit surprised at how touristy Saigon is. I felt like I saw a lot more tourists who weren't a part of SAS than I have in any other Asian market. There were a lot of people from England, New Zealand, France, and countless other countries. I'd gotten so used to the fact that if I saw a white person my age in a market, it was probably a fellow student. I also met a woman from Vietnam who had moved to San Diego fifteen years ago and was visiting for two weeks. She owns a bridal shop now and gave me her card, telling me to look her up whenever I'm in San Diego and when I need a wedding dress. After shopping around for awhile, I couldn't take the heat from so many people in such confined spaces so we found the grocery portion of the market and sat down for a cold drink and, insanely enough, pho, the boiling hot rice noodle soup with meat, sprouts, and scallions Matt and I had been wanting to try. So we ordered bowls, now sweating from the heat of the place, the heat of the soup, and from the spices we'd put in it. We sat on little stools at a bar that wrapped around display cases of unidentifiable animal parts, which normally would have made me push away my food, but I suppose I'm getting used to things like that. After walking past hunks of bloody hunks of fish and cows to get to our seats, what was a little display of fleshy, pink meat balls going to do to my appetite? So we sat, eating and drinking before deciding we'd done enough shopping. Becca and Matt promised that they didn't mind waiting for me at the museum, so we caught a cab to the museum and I split from the couple, who found a couple chairs by a street vendor while I walked by myself through the displays of pictures from the Vietnam War. I couldn't believe what I saw there. I've taken history classes. I've looked at history books. But never before have I seen such brutal images of the war before, and with such anti-American spirit. This time, I was seeing the war from the Vietnamese perspective. We were, I was the enemy. I was nearly in tears looking at a picture of a victim of Agent Orange, and suddenly I heard whispers behind me and from the corner of my eye I could see a finger pointing towards me. It pointed at me, then up at the picture on the wall, and back at me as the whispering continued. I was the enemy. I've never been in a situation before where I myself was seen that way, at least to my knowledge. I know that in some places we've been I as part of a collective may have been seen as an American, but never before have I been pinpointed with something like this. It broke my heart. As if the pictures themselves weren't enough, after being pointed at too many tears had collected in my eyes and they began to fall. They didn't stop. I looked at pictures of women with their children, of men on the battlefield and in hospitals, of people running. I lost my composure once more as I looked at the screaming face of a woman standing at a pole with her family. I read the caption, a quote given by a journalist from Life magazine. He saw this family, he said, and he saw the soldiers with their guns pointed at the family. Wait, he said, before taking a picture of them. Then he turned around, and he heard the crack of gunshots as he walked away. How? How can you possibly do that? To be outside of the war and to see the suffering of these people, and document it like that. In their final moments, when they are in the most vulnerable state, and do nothing but take a picture? I suppose on the other hand there wasn't really anything he could do. And I suppose, it's easy from the outside to make guesses about what I would do, but it seems to me I'd rather be nowhere near it doing nothing than right in the thick of it and doing nothing. But what if I'm doing the same thing? What if by being here, and not doing anything to help the people on the streets, I'm in the same role? I don't feel like it's that extreme, but where is the line of responsibility? Sure, it wasn't his job to get in the middle of it and save them. What about his responsibility as a human being, though? Do you take it upon yourself to act, or do you take care of yourself? It depends on where you're from, how you answer that question. I'm realizing more and more that it's a Western way of thinking to look out for yourself, to take care of yourself and your family first. But in other places, the emphasis on everyone in the community is so strong. Not that one way is better than the other, but for us we would say we need to take care of ourselves in a situation like that. And were I in that situation I probably would look out for myself as well. I'd love to think I would be the one to stand up and do something, but the truth is I don't think I'd put myself in a situation where it was my job to live so I could tell the stories of death. But then I think of Jennifer Connelly's character in Blood Diamond, the person Kat says I'm going to be, who was a journalist in Africa. She documented, got the stories and took pictures, saw bloodshed, but she did something, which is what I like. She went against the rules when she had to to save people's lives. I know that's fiction and what I had right before my eyes was real, and my mind's going in a million directions right now. It's just hard for me to accept what people are capable of. After I walked around by myself, looking at the pictures on the three walls, I went back to the front and found the comment book I'd heard someone tell me about, which was what made me realize I'd wanted to go visit the museum, and read a note from a woman. One world, she said. When it comes down to it, we're all human beings. Of all the places I've been, and the different cultures I've been introduced to, and as different as we can be in many ways we are all exactly the same. I watched Vietnamese girls sitting by the side of the road side by side, one touching the hair of the other and then speaking before looking back at the hair. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I knew what she was talking about. And it reminded me of Kat and I, sitting on the couch together as she played with my hair. Halfway around the world, they do the same thing as I do. Even though they play barefoot in the street and sleep in a shack next to their parents' place of business, and I am privileged in pretty much every aspect of my life, we care about the same silly things. It's just one example, but it's one world we're living in. How do we do things like we do to each other? And the more I learn about the Vietnam War and America's place in the world, the more I think we need to back off. Because we can cover it up all we want, say that we really care about the people's well-being and maybe someone does, but overall, we only care about the resources. It's all about how we can keep ourselves ahead and comfortable, so we go to war for it? Nothing, nothing is worth creating a scene like I saw in those pictures. I could hardly believe what I was looking at. I've seen special effects in movies, and some of these pictures were graphic enough to not seem real. In reading the comment book, some people found it interesting but said they didn't learn anything from it. I certainly did. Even if it was just a deeper sense of compassion, I learned something. I really am the kind of person who does so much more affected when I see it in person. I sometimes hate that because I wish that, as a writer, words could move me as much as pictures or visiting the actual places. But hopefully some people can respond to just the written word and can be inspired to make changes without being able to go see the world. And obviously they are, because people fight every day for causes they haven't actually seen the effects of. I do respond to things I read about, but I suppose I just mean that it impacts me that much more when I get to see it for myself. After visiting the museum I couldn't do anything for awhile. I hate to say it and I don't mean any offense to anyone when I say that I can see why people would want to drink or do drugs after coming home from wars. I don't advocate it at all because I know it rips families apart, but just looking at pictures I can see why intoxicants would be so appealing. I myself didn't really want to talk for awhile after visiting the museum. Becca was talking right to me and I was staring right through her half the time, lost in astonishment from it all. We went back to the ship then and put all of our purchases from the market in our rooms before heading out to dinner. We found a restaurant called Blue Ginger in our SAS notes and tips, which was in walking distance from us, but I'd had so much fun on the motorcycle ride earlier that I paid for us to take the quick drive on them. I love my adventures, what can I say. The restaurant was beautiful, a big place for tourists but also popular with the locals. We got there early enough that we were the only foreigners in there. We listened to Vietnamese women dressed in beaded and sequined dresses wearing the awesome Vietnamese hats play music as we ate pho, vegetables, and rice for dinner. Towards the end of our meal, meaning after our second order of fried bananas, more Semester at Sea kids started showing up. I was exhausted and we had to get up for our flight to Cambodia, so I was set with walking back to the ship. I breathed in the night air for the last few times, smiled once more at the same group of men playing their game on the street by our ship, and wished I could stay longer in the city. But, Cambodia was waiting for me and from what I hear, it's very hard as an American to travel there. Vietnam will be easier for me to return to, which I fully intend to after just two days in this marvelous place.
