An Introduction
As you read through this blog you’ll end up getting three different views of the trip: a view through the lens of Big Pea, one through Mamma Pea, and mine, Daddy Pea. I apologize for repeating some of the stories and descriptions. Although these posts are typically written in parallel, the timing of the posts are staggered, so there is opportunity to modify to give the entire breadth of flavor. However I have found myself just writing, it is a transparent view of my thoughts and experiences. I am thankful for all who have enjoyed our story so far. Maybe you are getting a sense of the things that are striking us individually, and those where we all have been impacted? Also, this is a way for us to log our experiences in a family journal, which we happen to make public. So, no worries if you decided to move on half way through a post, especially long ones like this one :). With that, here’s my story on Vietnam.
Hanoi: A Business City Stuck in the Past
The family transitioned from the order, cleanliness, and properness of Japan to the complete madness of the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam. My stomach was in my throat as we drove in a taxi from the airport to our accommodations. The roads looked half paved, motor bikes not obeying traffic laws and driving the wrong way on the road. The taxi driver stops and says we’ve arrived; imagine someone dropping you off in the middle of NYC in the wrong part of town late at night. All we see are street vendors, no signs of apartments. So with 10 bags and three small children, Mamma Pea and I walk down narrow alley, pass a street vendor preparing the internals of a banh mi for soon to be patrons. We enter into a courtyard with several motorbikes and apartment doors, we’ve arrived at our new home.
Hanoi: Vietnamese Food and Train Street
Early the next morning I venture out onto the streets in search of some breakfast for the fam. For being so early I’m amazed at how many people are out and about. Right next to our accommodations there is a grocery store, thank goodness because I have no clue on what I’m doing or where I’m going. Unfortunately there is an official looking gentleman in full uniform guarding the door; he puts his arms in the air and makes an “X” symbol with a scowl on this face, no entry for me! I continue down the road and encounter groups of retirees jolting their bodies into different positions in what looks to be a Richard Simmons video gone Asian. People are enjoying bowls of pho on this hot and humid summer morning. I see baskets of eggs at these street vendors but am too shy to ask if these are for individual sale or condiments for their breakfast soups. Finally, I find a Starbucks and grab a plethora of food and some iced coffee. I’d soon come to realize that I just spent 4 times as much on this meal than most meals that we’ll eat. Also, Mamma Pea and I decide to discard the iced drinks, not knowing how well the local water filtration systems are operating.
The food situation gets a lot better from here, a whole lot better. We start to take some chances and stop to try some street food. The kids all enjoy the pho, they are stepping out of their comfort zone and trying new food (they really don’t have a choice haha). We try to keep to the rule of thumb that if the restaurant looks busy, it’s safe for human consumption. But sometimes rules are made to be broken, and in a pinch we found ourselves at a fairly deserted pho vendor, which had us on edge. Were we all about to have a visit with the toilet? To our surprise, this was probably the best pho we’d have on the trip! We also found our favorite banh mi restaurants, where 5 sandwiches, a handful of drinks, and a hot plate would cost us $12; talk about breaking the bank! We’d also come to love dishes like banh xeo, goi cuon, cao lau, and, bun thit nuong, over our time here in this country.
Vietnam is known for its coffee and chocolate. While the chocolate seemed to me to be similar to that of the cocoa in Costa Rica and elsewhere, the coffee was amazing. The locals love their egg coffee, which unfortunately I never mustered up the courage to try. However I enjoyed many a salt coffee and coconut coffee throughout my stay. One day in Hanoi we found ourselves enjoying a coffee and some smoothies on train street. We were with other tourists for sure, with locals selling nick knacks up and down the track. When the time came the coffee house staff came by to take down the folding tables as they did not want them to impede with the passing train. Then this concerned parent held back Little Pea, told Middle and Big Pea to lean back, and we watched the train come whizzing by. Quite an experience!
Hanoi: Walking and “Sidewalks”
The challenge in this busy city was moving around. Mainly because Mamma Pea and I were determined to have the littles get some exercise and to experience the streets firsthand. Although the local rideshare, Grab, yielded trips less than $3 for anywhere we wanted to go, our preferred method of transport was by foot. This led to strange looks and head scratching locals taking amusement by waving and calling out hello as we ventured through the city streets. Mamma Pea would lead, with the three little peas next, and Daddy Pea bringing up the rear, often yelling at the peas to follow in a straight line. As for sidewalks, the locals preferred to park their autos on them, causing a back and forth of the marching peas from street to the safety of the walkway, as long as a motorbike wasn’t using it to take a shortcut along the road.
The Night Train
Our stay in Hanoi concluded with an adventure on a “night train” to Da Nang. The kids were excited because it mirrored a podcast that they had listened to about a couple of stowaway kids catching a ride from Chicago to Sacramento called “On the Night Train”. It was an adventure for sure, having to put up relatively small quarters and hard beds, rowdy young Italians drinking and smoking in the adjacent cabins, Little Pea losing a tooth, and us leaving some supplies behind in the bunk beds of the train. Sixteen hours later, we had arrived to our next home in central Vietnam.
Hoi An: Time to Slow Down
We’re not quite sure what to expect when we arrive at the Da Nang train station. It’s another bustling city, however this time we are destined for a more of a rural area called Hoi An. The taxi driver takes us down a road where there a hundreds of large, and I’m talking large, statuses of made of marble. LOTS of Buddhas, lions, even mermaids. We would become accustom to these figures as this road will be one we will frequent often when we attend Da Nang International Church on Sundays. The driver gets into town and turns down a very narrow road, finally stopping at our next home. We arrive at a villa with a shared pool, a nice reprieve from the big cities that we had been spending our time in up to this point. The villa has bikes available for use, where a child seat would soon be fastened so that Little Pea could take rides with Daddy Pea on grocery runs (usually a minimum of 3 stores visited on each run). Over the next three weeks all stress and worry that I had been storing up would dissipate. The worry of work, that I was no longer doing mind you, would finally, finally leave me. The worry about if the kids would adapt had mostly subsided, they were getting along better than I expected. The worry of being in a foreign land, of how to communicate and to get around, on if the locals would treat us as true outsiders, started to fade away. This place is a peaceful place. Slow, and relaxed. Inexpensive yet rich in beauty and culture. Man I could see myself getting used to this place.
Hoi An: Seaside Serenity
On top of all of this, there is a beach. Warm, smooth sand, cabanas in front of local restaurants that could be available for a small price if wanted. The salty bay was mostly calm, you can easily float and move with the gentle motion of the South China Sea. There were a few days were the sea was rough, Typhoon Yagi was about to pierce through northern Vietnam. We got the benefits of large waves and a couple of exciting days were the littles, and parents, rode waves with enjoyment, to the complete dismay of the local authorities (and I wonder why the rest of the world rolls their eyes at American entitlement). This was a time to sit in the sand and read, or curate a castle or two. Mamma Pea turned to me on one of these days and said, “Six weeks ago I would have never thought that you could just sit and build sand castles without being worried about something”. How true of a statement that was.
Hoi An: Local Markets and People
Hoi An had a local market called Ba Le Market. Most people visited it either very early in the morning or in the early evening, the time in-between is sweltering hot. We, of course, were not particular on when we would venture around town. If you did want to shop in the early afternoon, you would likely need to wake the shopkeeper as it is customary to enjoy an afternoon nap. The people were fantastic, so very friendly. One friend who I was corresponding with over email had just recently been to the area. His thoughts on the locals certain ring true, “What amazed me was how cheap the food and drinks are and how friendly the people are. They do not hold the war against us.”
Vietnam in General: Communism
It was striking that they did not hold the war against us. Da Nang is very close to what Americans would considered the Mason-Dixon line, the 17th parallel. This is where the country was divided in 1954. The north being the communist state, and the south being on the other. The signs of communism is everywhere, with flags outlining major roads throughout Hoi An. You wouldn’t know that you are in a communist country if these flags weren’t in plain view.
The Vietnamese Rice Fields
Mamma Pea described her appreciation of the rice fields in a beautifully written poem. As I would take walks, especially during my God time in the morning, I would admire the beauty of the fields as I saw firsthand the life and harvest of the rice. Below is my poem described through pictures
A Story in Pictures: Saturated Life, Sweltering Work, Smoldering Ground; A Rebirth of the Field and Food on the Table
Colors of the fields; shades of green, gold, and in-between.
The wind talks through the fields through the waving stalks.
Water channels once filled are closed; the drying and harvest begins.
Stalks are plucked from the ground by locals; the rice exposed in its husk.
The husks are laid on tarps to dry, then bagged in quantity.
Fires are set to replenish the land; the once green-gold appearance of the fields are now a dark soot, fields ready for replanting.
Family: How we are getting along?
So, how is the peapod squad getting along. As I have said a couple of times in this and other posts, WAY better than I would have anticipated or predicted. These kids are still at each other’s throats from time to time, but that is what kids do. They have learned to share more than they had before. Missing home is starting to wear on us some. Being away from our family is hard, we miss the interactions that we took for granted. And our community family of friends? Wow, I personally miss them way more than I thought. We all look forward to phone conversations, texts, emails, and video calls…keep them coming! We pray all of the time that our travels is not impacting the people we love too much. This will get better over time, as everything does, but for us it will be a constant on this trip. As for Mamma and Daddy Pea, we are learning more and more about each other on this trip, even after 12 years of marriage. I continue to pray that we will continue to bond in ways we never knew before, hoping this happens before she decided to leave me behind in one of these Buddhist temples haha.
Work: How am I getting along?
As for my career, it has been weighing on my mind. Of all of the things that have been relived from my world of stress over the last 2-ish months, family and career worry is still present; there is a healthy level of worrying happening. Some doors opened already, however I am taking Mamma Pea’s advice and putting it on hold for another month or two. Stay tuned.
Practical Life Practices
I’ll conclude my post with this: Practical Life Practices. Practice Life Practices, or PLPs, are the everyday things that just come naturally as you live your daily life. This is a assessment on how we benefited or struggled with them during our stay.
PLP: Transportation
Getting from place to place has been a challenge. Going from having your own car to other forms of transportation was the big change for us. We moved through the country via train, airplane, and bus. However, most of our travel has been via rideshare (Grabs). Grabs have been averaging $2-3, so no sweat on the budget. Although, we have tried to walk as much as possible. There was a bike at our villa in Hoi An, which was super convenient when it came to running around town to get groceries and whatnot. Overall, with the cost, exercise, and relative convenience of ride shares, I’d give this a 9 out of 10 on the PLP scale.
PLP: Lodging
We stayed in three places in Vietnam. In all three of the apartments there were no ovens, and the stove tops were small and propane powered. Like you would imagine, the kitchenware was limited. At one point I wanted to purchase a meat thermometer to cook steaks (I should have brought one with me). I took a photo with both English and Vietnamese description on the photo, and rode my bike to at least 10 places showing them the picture asking if they had one for sale; on multiple occasions I was directed from the kitchen supply store (that I has currently in) to the pharmacy. I ended up befriending the gourmet meat store owner, he had a buddy purchase it and then sold one to me. Even with all of the change of hands, the thermometer only cost me $2! Sleeping has been a challenge, it seems like Asians like to sleep on hard beds. Aside from the kids bunking in the same room, which has been going OK, home comfort has not been a priority for the places that we’ve stayed. Only one of the apartments had a couch, and I had to convince myself that the other home loungewear was comfortable to make hanging out enjoyable. We had a pool at 2/3 places, which helps for kid activity, and really helped in Hoi An to send the kids outside to play, a luxury that we will not have at most places I presume. Keeping our stuff organized is a challenge, making packing a time consuming activity. The inexpensive lodging really helped with the budget, that gives it a plus. Overall, I’d give it a 7 out of 10 on the PLP scale.
PLP: Kids Schooling and Day to Day Life
The regular motions of our daily lives have been upended. It’s a struggle to decide on if we want to explore or to stay at home and relax. We can’t do something every day, we do have a budget to think about. But…we are only here once so that weighs heavily on us. In general, we got to slow down and live a typical life during the middle part of our stay. School during this time was a focus, however the bookends of our trip made that challenging. We’ve found ways to take advantage of long travel time for learning opportunities, so for the most part the month was fruitful education-wise. Since this has been such a huge change for us, I’d give it a 6 out of 10 on the PLP scale.
PLP: Buying Stuff: Clothes and Other Stuff
In America we have this wonderful thing called Amazon Prime. It is both a blessing and a curse. The amount of money that we’ve spent on it over the years has been outrageous. Considering my meat thermometer story, it’s really nice to be able to get goods delivered to your house within hours. As far as clothes, there are tailors everywhere. You can go to a market, select from one of ten different tailors, get measured, and receive a custom linen shirt or dress for relatively cheap. In all of these stores it’s a haggle, you need to lowball the merchant, put up with their expression of discontent, and bargain for the deal. Admittedly, Manna and Daddy Pea are not the best of negotiators, we are getting better. There are also tons of knock off brand name clothing, that so happens to be 2 sizes smaller than those in America. For the first time I am wearing an 2XL shirt, and it’s too small haha. Given all of this, I would give buying clothes and other stuff a 6 out of 10 on the PLP scale, with the downgrade being because of having to go to multiple stores to get your goods, the haggle factor, and the fact that all of the cheap goods tend to be the knockoff clothing.
PLP: Buying Stuff: Food and Groceries
In much of Vietnam, each store has a specialty. In Hanoi, there are streets dedicated to each type of good. As I would venture out to get groceries, I would find myself having to go to 3 stores on one errand run. One store would be the gourmet store where most of our meal protein, sliced meats and cheeses, and bread and crackers would be purchased. The next store that I would visit would be a western specialty store. This store would have stuff like corn tortilla chips, taco seasoning, salsa, and Tostitos cheese dip. I would frequent a western style grocery store, where ex-Pats go who do not know the local language, and are skeptical about purchasing produce from the local market. This is where I’d purchase our produce, drinks, and paperware. The paperware available is kind of a comical experience. Bounty has not made it to this part of the world, the paper towels are a little flimsy. They also come in two packs, and the paper plates come in 10 packs; gone are the days of bulk purchasing. We would avoid these things however the Vietnamese serve what they call “tissues” with their meals, and there are no dishwashers (Daddy Pea is the traveling dishwasher). Overall I’d give this category a 5 out of 10 on the PLP scale.
PLP: Bugs and Nature
We come from Las Vegas, which is a desert (for those who didn’t know). In the Vegas area there are a lot of gnarly insects. We get the occasional scorpion inside of the house, which can be jarring. And I have heard of people seeing tarantulas on their properties, mostly on the outskirts of town near dessert areas. And there are lizards, but they are mostly benign. Vietnam is a jungle, with lots of vegetation and water, so it is prone with mosquitoes, lots of them. There are also geckos, which make this weird bug-like clicking sound in the middle of the night; and they find themselves into the houses easily, which can make for an interesting midnight experience. The cockroaches are extra big, 1 to 2 inches in size. But the most shocking experience of all was encountering a huntsman spider in the house. These things are big, quick, and have a poisonous bite, although being bitten doesn’t not require hospital attention (apparently). Other than the bugs, we stayed in two cities and a beach town. The cities are typical cities, they were very busy as you can imagine. The most pleasurable place we stayed was in the beach town of Hoi An, where on any day we could head to the beach for some R&R. I know that most of the bug experience was the shock from going into a different climate, and although we loved spending our time at the beach, I am giving this category a 3 out of 10 on the PLP scale.
On the Road Again
As we depart from Vietnam, I will also look back at our time here fondly. I never thought that I’d say this, but it is definitely a place that I could stay long-term. However, our journeys are taking us forward. Time to hop on the bus and continue our journey through South East Asia!
Peapod on Purpose 