Number 32

Written Wednesday evening and posted Thursday morning.

I don’t even know where to start. Today was an amazing day. Maybe the single most interesting day of the journey so far. The situation with my project here is still less then perfect but let me start at the beginning.

I got up early and met Giao downstairs for breakfast. As previously mentioned, his wife has a Pho restaurant on the ground floor of their house. Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup that has some vegetables and beef in it. I came down around 7 and the place was hopping. I say I came down because I’m staying on the third floor. We sat down at a table just inside the house and one of the many employees brought us each a huge steaming bowl of Pho. I mean a HUGE bowl. I told Giao I didn’t want to insult his wife but I couldn’t eat that much in the morning. He said not to worry as they’ve had Americans and Canadians in their home before and they said the same thing. There were four little jars on the table with different kinds of hot spices which I passed on. There also was a bowl of fried breadsticks for dunking. Giao insisted I try one and it wasn’t bad. The soup had beef in it. Last night Giao’s dog had been in the area where people were now eating so I asked him where the dog was. He pointed to the side yard and once I saw the dog I began to eat the soup. It was really good except for the cilantro. Giao said tomorrow I can have a kid’s portion and no cilantro. We finished the Pho and next was the Vietnamese coffee which is probably the best tasting coffee I’ve ever had. After 2 cups we headed for the University. Giao has a nice new fancy Honda. Here’s where the fun started.

Traffic in Chiang Mai is challenging. Traffic in Manila was crazy. Traffic in Hanoi defies description. I’ll try but I won’t even come close. It’s a cross between chaos and anarchy. It’s like a video game where there are no rules and everyone has to honk their horn all the time. Giao drove like a maniac and honked the horn seemingly just so people would know he was there. He honked at anything that moved and some things that didn’t. He clearly felt no need to observe the trivialities of lanes, or speed, or common sense. The only time he wasn’t honking or swerving was when he was using the remote control to change the station on the TV he was watching on his navigation screen. And as far as I could tell he was one of the better drivers. There are thousands of scooters that drive like bats out of hell honking and pulling within a few inches of each other. You’d see a couple hundred bearing down on a busy intersection with a couple hundred more coming from the perpendicular side and no one stops. It’s like shuffling cards at high speed. Whole groups just pull in front of oncoming traffic to turn. There’s cars and trucks and buses and bicycles and people wearing those Chinese hats and carrying those bamboo poles with baskets on each end and thousands and thousands of scooters. It’s incredible. They drive on the wrong side of the street, up sidewalks and people are missing each other by inches the whole time. I was amazed and laughing and scared all at the same time. We somehow got to the University and stopped in. Up 3 flights of stairs to Giao’s office to grab some papers then off to the LERES center.

The LERES center is where I’m based since the Law School still hasn’t authorized the room for the Clinic. I saw the room, but we can’t go in it. The LERES center is the office for Community Legal Education run out of the Law School. It’s about 10 hair-raising minutes away and 5 stories up. (and still no elevator) We had a brief meeting with 6 students and then Giao left, presumably washing his hands of any further involvement in the project. I decided that regardless of what was going on, I had prepared the materials, the students were eager to learn and I was going to do what I came for. We spent a couple hours setting a schedule of meetings and training sessions and then they said it was time to go out for lunch and do a few errands I needed to do. (get a Vietnamese SIM card for my phone, change some money and go to Air Asia to change my return ticket) We walked down the five stories and four of us (the 2 students from the GAJE conference the LERES office manager and I) were to head out. On the ground floor, pulled inside, were several scooters. I was handed a helmet and realized I was going to be riding on the back of Phong’s scooter. The two women got on one so I got on behind Phong and remembered I didn’t have a will. What ensued can only be described as surreal. For the next 20 minutes I became a player in the video game known as Hanoi traffic. What a rush. Phong is an excellent driver and the thrill of going from the relative safety of Giao’s car to the back of a little scooter was breath taking. We joined the sea of insanity and it was a ball. Our first stop was to change money so naturally we stopped at a jewelry store. I asked Phong why we didn’t just go to a bank but he said that was too much trouble and the exchange rate was better at the jewelry store. $50 got me 850,000 dong. I love that name. “Here, I’ll pay for lunch, let me just reach in my pocket and pull out my dong!” We got to the restaurant and went up 3 stories to a nice room where we had a tasty Vietnamese lunch. I had a potato and beef dish that was good. I ate with chopsticks and somehow didn’t embarrass myself.

After lunch we headed for Air Asia. After about 15 minutes of driving we came around a corner and I almost fell off the back of the scooter. Off to our left was Lake Of The Isles. I couldn’t believe it. I’m going back to take pictures. I was so taken with it that after we stopped at Air Asia and another place to get a SIM card, Phong drove by another lake. It was Lake Calhoun, and as we rounded a corner there was a group of men standing around a cock fight. I had no idea Hanoi had these beautiful lakes in the middle of the city. From there we went by a park that had a big statue of Lenin, Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and a series of government buildings that looked like they came from a Rambo movie complete with Army guys looking like evil North Vietnamese soldiers standing guard. It was at this point that I finally said to myself; “I’m in (expletive deleted) Hanoi!” After about an hour of site seeing and crashem robot driving we headed back to the LERES center but had to stop for coffee because we hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for an hour and of course the coffee place was on the 3rd floor. We finally made it back to the LERES center, climbed up the 5 stories and I met until almost 6 with the new students who had shown up.

The only thing that the students seem to like more then eating and drinking coffee or tea is talking about where to go eat or drink. It takes at least 20 minutes every time. Phong and Vuong (another law student) and I went to a Vietnamese fast food place and had dinner (order on the first floor and walk up 2 to eat). The ride was during rush hour and it was even crazier. I guess I’m too stupid to be scared because the experience is like being on the best ride at a theme park that just keeps going and going. There’s something about careening into an intersection with a couple hundred other people when there’s no opening and the intersection is filled with a couple hundred people going right across where you want to go. It’s so wrong that when you realize you’re going to make it through you get a real adrenaline rush. As we pulled down the street of the fast food place there were a number of guys standing on the curb yelling at anyone who went by to stop. I asked Phong what they were doing and he said inviting people to come in to their restaurants to eat dog. Dinner was fine and we got back on the scooters and headed for…a tea house. This was a take off your shoes, sit on a pillow on the floor, quiet place. They brought little cups and a small teapot that was filled with fresh green tea. They filled it with hot water and left a thermos with more hot water for refills. We let it steep while Vuong told me the story of tea. It’s a Vietnamese legend and he told it in English which made it more interesting. When the tea was ready Vuong, with great ceremony, poured three small cups. It tasted horrible. The two of them drank a few pots of it while we listened to Vietnamese folk songs on a sound system and the place filled up. After the fourth pot, Vuong poured me another cup and said it would be better. It was and I joined them in the next 3-4 pots. Finally around 9 we left. Vuong headed home and Phong drove me to Giao’s.

I really like Hanoi. I wouldn’t want to live here or drive here but it’s so alive and energized and so crazy. It’s large and sprawling with thousands of shops and vendors and it's very clean. The tradespeople each have their own section of town. There’s a copper section a furniture section a fabric section and even a sunglasses section.

Since Nut is gone from Chiang Mai for two weeks, Aom took it upon himself to email me right before we left the LERES center to tell me to be sure to let everyone know it was another good day in Chiang Mai. He’s so cute!