My First Tet

A lot has happened since last time I blogged, but I haven't really had internet access except for the occassional internet cafe session, which I'm making use of now. The Tet celebrations have slowed down now, and people are starting to return to their daily lives, but I'm still in vacation mode as long as I'm in Pleiku.

I came here about a week before Tet started, and it was a week of preparation and anticipation for the big day. I took an overnight bus from Saigon, and it was full of beds instead of seats, so I was able to sleep a little on the way there. When I got there, it wasn't too exciting in the days before Tet, because Uyen was helping one of her sisters run her shop, which was really busy selling snacks and special foods and wines before Tet. I helped in any way that I could, but I couldn't exactly help the customers when I couldn't speak Vietnamese. Anyway, I was Uyen's guest and I was treated as such, so I had access to as much food as I wanted from the shop. There was quite a bit of snacking that went on, but not as much eating as during Tet, which I'll get to later. During the preparation time, though, Uyen also had to help clean the house, and I helped out with this. Her family has a nice house, even though like most houses in Vietnam it's very narrow, but they make use of the space and it's actually pretty wide open inside. The floors are all hardwood or marble, and I don't think I've really seen any carpets here. Breakfasts and lunches and pretty much every meal involves rice, and different plates of meat and fish and vegetables, and you just take from the middle and put on your plate. If I happened to be awake early enough for breakfast, though, I always preferred just some bread with cheese or something. For some reason certain "regular" foods I don't feel like should be eaten when I've just woken up, like rice and meat. I always have to have some kind of bread or egg or fruit.

Anyway, I was able to explore a little bit of Pleiku, but there wasn't much to see. It reminds me of Glastonbury back home, in the small town feel, but this is also the capital of the whole province out here. The center of the town still is probably no bigger than a small town in America, but it does feel a little more urban and crowded. They don't really have any chain stores or big stores, it's mostly all little shops that are run out of people's homes. There aren't any restaurants except for little noodle places that serve things like pho or bun bo. The food is healthier and I like most of it, but they don't seem to be afraid of a huge chunk of bone and having to gnaw around it to get to the meat.

On Tet and the days that followed, we ate a lot of different foods. Tet really lasted more like 4 or 5 days, since it started Monday and only now it's getting back to normal, and I don't see all of Uyen's family hanging around the house anymore. So over the whole span of it, we ate rice with most every meal, but also they cooked pasta and liver one day, and I really liked the liver. They made some fried spring rolls and also these fried squid and pork balls coated with coconut, or something. The other night for lunch there was lots of fried chicken pieces that were really delicious, but some of the pieces were a little less appetizing, even though her family members picked it up and started nibbling away without hesitation. I'm talking about the actual head of the chicken, where you can still see its eyes looking at you. Also, Uyen seemed to like the feet of the chicken. I guess they don't waste a single part of the body. Also, part of nearly every meal is some soup, with pieces of fish or some kind of meat inside. On one day we drove a couple hours to another town to meet her grandmother and some other cousins and relatives, and for lunch we ate from a giant hot pot on the table where we cooked beef and noodles, and it was very good. All in all, lots of food, and they always seemed to cook much much more than anyone could possible eat. If there were leftovers from lunch, and there always were, they just brought out the same stuff for dinner again.

The eating tradition on Tet itself was interesting. After you eat at home, and distribute lucky money to your family members, you go off and eat and toast at all your friends' houses. I went with Uyen's brother and a few of his friends, first to play billiards, and then in a caravan across the city, stopping for a few minutes at a friend's house, raising a glass of tea or beer or wine, having a few snacks, and moving on to the next place. Since they didn't really speak English, I was very confused by all this, and I felt more like a sheep just being herded along to various pastures, but all in all it was pretty fun. The snacks were similar at every house, usually some dried fruit like raisins or dates and pieces of dried ginger, as well as some other crackers or cookies. Ubiquitous here are fried watermelon seeds, which you crack open with your teeth and feast upon the tiny seed inside. Everyone is entranced whenever they see them around, and start mindlessly opening and eating one after another. Every single place you go, from the coffee shop to the internet cafe where I'm sitting now, has watermelon seed shells littering the floors. For me it's a great difficulty to get them open and I usually end up with some hard shells in my mouth, but part of the fun is the process of opening them, when you have nothing else to do.

Uyen's family is very big, because she has 3 sisters and 2 brothers, and most of them are married with kids. She also has several cousins, and her grandmother had 9 children so clearly there's lots of extended family, but she doesn't see them very often, especially since she lives in Saigon. For the family members who are dead, they honor them on Tet, going to the temple to light some incense and say some prayers. From what I could see, it was not a Buddhist temple, and I'm not sure if there is a specific name for it, since Uyen said her family doesn't have a religion but they just honor their ancestors. At the temple and the shrine in their house they have little statues of people that look like Confuscious or some other old wise person. They leave anything from fruit to chocolate cakes to cans of beer at the shrines in their homes. Also at the temple, people get their fortune on a piece of paper which predicts what will happen to them in every month of the year, according to the year in which they were born. This year is now the year of the buffalo, which in China is the year of the ox, and since it is the year I was born in maybe it will be lucky for me. Apparently not only do I add a year to my age for the new year, but I add one in advance of my birthday, which I don't really understand, but now I tell people that I'm 25, and it feels nice to be a little older.

What else is there to say? Pleiku is a little colder than Saigon, which I like. During the day it feels pleasant but at night it's really quite cold (uyen tells me that it gets down to 10 degrees celsius), so I'm glad I have my hoodie with me, which I hadn't used in Vietnam until now. People go to bed pretty early here, like 9 or 10 o'clock, but I'm staying in a hotel and at least there's a couple movie channels like HBO that I can watch before I go to sleep. I don't know why I wasn't allowed to stay at Uyen's family's house, but I guess it's a cultural thing, like only family can stay there during Tet, or something. She hasn't told them that I'm a boyfriend, just a friend, because I guess once someone is a boyfriend or girlfriend, it is assumed they will get married. But they have to suspect something. Why would I come all the way to Pleiku to spend two weeks with just a friend?

Anyway, I've said a lot, and I'm probably forgetting some stuff. I just wanted to point out a few interesting differences in manners between this culture and Western culture. Respect and politeness is very important here but they do many things that people back home would frown upon. For example, they have no shame at all in burping at the dinner table or elsewhere and not covering their mouths. However, if you yawn you must cover your mouth. At the dinner table, appparently there is no etiquette to wait for everyone to be seated and have food to start eating. At least in my experience, they encourage me to sit down and eat when only the father has food. Maybe he's supposed to eat first since he's the head honcho, I don't know. Something that I always tried not to do at home was put my elbows on the table, but apparently that's no big deal here. People actually usually pick up their bowl of rice and noodles so that it's just a few inches from their mouth, and shovel it in with great speed and fervor. I can't say I object. It may, however, be a shock when I go back home.

So, on Monday I return to Saigon with Uyen, and soon after that it's back to work. I may be looking for a different schedule, or quitting one of my schools and looking for another. Actually, ideally I want to start tutoring some people, because that's the best hourly rate you can get. I want to work more in the morning because Uyen is finished with her degree now and will need to find a daily job, so if I keep working at night I'll never have a chance to see her except for the weekend. Plus, I tend to waste a lot of time doing nothing in the afternoon, so it will be nice for a change of pace.

That's all for now.
Chuc mung nam moi!