So, this is what illiteracy feels like

One question I’m often asked is how I’ve been getting along with the Vietnamese language. Considering I started taking lessons almost immediately after I arrived in Saigon, my Vietnamese is not as good as it should be. I can complete everyday tasks, like ordering food, bargaining for a xe om, shopping at the market, and texting my maid. I can engage in simple, polite conversations with strangers, but my limited vocabulary means I routinely - accidentally or deliberately - tell outright lies. On a good day, I can be the quasi-competent interpreter for my visiting Australian friends. On a bad day, the lady from the corner store hands me a kilo of watermelon seeds when I thought I had asked for tomatoes. 

Thanks to decades of national literacy campaigns since 1945, Viet Nam currently has a literacy rate of 93% - far higher than its developing neighbours, Laos and Cambodia. My work here often takes me to rural communities in the Mekong Delta and communities in poor urban districts of Saigon, and in my experience, even among the low-skilled and vulnerable you rarely encounter a Vietnamese person who cannot read or write. So, when I struggle to fill in a form, read a payment notice, or comprehend simple directions, it gives me a fleeting insight into what it must feel like to be part of that illiterate 7% of Viet Nam. Actually, worse than an illiterate. More like an illiterate deaf-mute. Bumbling through daily tasks. Dependent on my colleagues and friends for translations. Possessing the vocabulary of a small child. Deaf to the cacophony of conversations going on around me. Clueless as to why people are laughing or shouting at me. It’s a somewhat humbling feeling.

But, as with every challenge, you find ways to adapt. Here's how I've been surviving in Viet Nam as an illiterate:

Think Chinese

 

Caveat: Obviously, this only works  if you already speak Chinese and/or languages that have sino-roots.

Wikipedia tells me that Hán Việt, elements in the Vietnamese language derived from Chinese, account for about 60% of the Vietnamese vocabulary. Certainly, I find that a stroll down the streets of Saigon can sometimes be like a game of Sino-Viet Bingo. 

The Vietnamese word for ‘woman’: Nữ. 
The Chinese word for ‘woman’:女(nǚ)

The Vietnamese word for ‘passport’: hộ chiếu. 
The Chinese word for ‘passport’: 護照(Hù Zhào).
Trust me, they sound similar enough…

A Chinese-Australian friend recently described a conversation she had with her mother where she was struggling to explain the type of work she was doing in Vietnam. “I didn’t know the word for 'development' in Chinese…so I said it in Vietnamese, mangled the tones a little. And, mum understood!”

It is important to note, however, that most of these Hán Việt words are rarely found in conversational Vietnamese. Back in the day, literary Chinese was used in Vietnamese government administration, and thus sino-root words are mainly found in terms relating to science, politics, education, and philosophy. I find solace in this fact: this is clearly why my Vietnamese isn't better despite my sino-language advantage.

Google-Translate it

I wouldn't usually rely on google-translate under normal circumstances. I've no doubt that google-translate is to blame for most, if not all, of this. But, sometimes google-translate is all you've got. And frankly, if my housemates and I were able to negotiate our new tenants' agreement with our Vietnamese landlord, communicating only via google-translate, then google-translate can't be all bad.

Artist/designer, Candy Chang, puts it better than I ever could. Read her short post here. 

 

Mime and Gesticulations

No explanation needed here. Mime and gesticulation are universal whenever you travel to a place where you don’t speak the language. My favourites include miming for insect repellant (slapping and scratching your arms and legs whilst complementing your performance with mosquito sound effects) and miming for directions to the local swimming pool (doing breast-stroke, back-stroke and free-style whilst sitting on your motorbike).
 

Real-life Pictionary

The scenario: My housemates and I wanted to purchase a hammock for our rooftop terrace.

The problem: It is, in fact, very difficult to mime the word "hammock." You try it. Seriously. Go on. Turn to the person next to you and, without words, do your best impersonation of a hammock. Did they understand?  No?  Then I've made my point. [If they did understand your hammock mime, then you are both freaks (or liars), and now go outside and try miming that word "hammock" to a complete stranger.]

The solution:

A scrap piece of paper + my mad Pictionary skills + 10 minutes at our local market

Dreams do come true

When you don't speak the language, getting anything done in this country - no matter how minor - is a huge victory worthy of celebration.

Five signs you’ve been in Vietnam too long

#1.  Muscular atrophy is not something to be concerned about (aka: my fat-o-meter has shifted)  

The only fat people in Vietnam are the foreigners. Ok, that’s not entirely true...there’s a small yet noticeable chubby pumba cohort amongst the 5 -10 year old over here, but let’s just say that the obesity phenomenon which is taking the developed world by storm has not yet arrived in Vietnam. The general slenderness of the Vietnamese was particularly noticeable to me when I first arrived in Saigon directly from a country where over 75 percent of the population is overweight or obese.

Vietnamese women, in particularly, are uniformly waif-like. I’m always afraid that if I brush past them at the supermarket checkout their arms (which closely resemble toothpicks) will snap off, sending their shopping baskets of diet tea tumbling into the aisle. The other day, I was preparing to cross the road on Pham Ngoc Thach when a Vietnamese lady in front of me turned sideways and disappeared.

The average Vietnamese woman is so skinny, the average sized shorts here don't fit on average sized mannequins (Photo: stolen from somewhere on the web)

It was only during a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, whilst chowing down on delicious, delicious laksa and roti canai surrounded by corpulent local diners that it dawned on me: I now consider unnaturally rake-thin, skeletal women as completely normal. Why else would I be distracted by a few overweight Malaysians? I come from Australia, dammit!! AUSTRALIA! Clearly, having been surrounded by a freakishly thin population for the past 6 months, the settings on my fat-o-meter have shifted.       

#2.  The act of walking is a thing of the past

All the locals I know in Saigon actively detest walking. And it’s easy to see why; the footpaths of Saigon are like an assault course for pedestrians. Street food vendors, uneven pavements, protruding tree-roots, massive pot holes, xe oms waiting for their next customer, people barbequing their meat over open flames, people riding their motorbikes up onto the footpath, and an assortment of abandoned furniture all serve to make the walking experience in Saigon less like a stroll along the Yarra and more like a game of Super Mario. And we've not even begun to discuss the agility and skill required when crossing the roads.    

 

As a consequence, after about a month or so living in Vietnam, you find yourself riding your motorbike everywhere. It makes no difference if the trip is supposed to take 30 minutes of 2 minutes. You'll always choose to go by bike. And, most importantly, you ride like a local. This means you ride up onto the footpath to escape gridlock, or simply because you can. You ride through knee-high flood waters with your feet raised towards the handlebars. You ride against oncoming traffic on a one-way street. You’ve ridden three to a bike.

You’ve also ridden side-saddle. You’ve ridden side-saddle, three to a bike, no helmet, through unsealed Mekong roads. You ride your motorbike through the front door of your house and into your living room. You would ride it to the bathroom if it weren’t for those 4 flights of stairs. The only way I could ride more like a local is if I rode while smoking a cigarette, eating a bánh mì while answering my mobile with an infant balanced precariously on my lap.

#3.  Soup and juice should be served in and consumed from a plastic bag.

Any other way is just weird.

Refreshing watermelon juice, straight from the plastic bag. This particular bag even has a handy string for holding.

#4.  Geckos are no longer cute

These little critters are everywhere in Saigon. A home is just not complete without at least two geckos hanging out by the florescent light blub in each room. They are cute at first, with their big bug-eyes, knowing smiles and funny toes, so you are more than happy to have them for company. Until you find out that one has pooped in your toaster.

  

#5.  You’ve acquired an unshakeable “don’t ask” attitude

Why was the wait-staff at KFC walking around in their socks and no shoes? Why is that man taking a dump on the side of a busy road? Where has the balcony of our hotel gone? 

(Photo courtesy of Chloe.)

Where has the neighbour’s fat pomeranian disappeared to? Where does the office rat (last seen scampering across the filing cabinet) usually live? Why is the black-bra-and-sheer-top look so popular around here? And, are those very tiny shorts, or is she just wearing underpants with a belt? Why can’t someone fill the massive pot-hole outside our house with asphalt, rather than just sticking a broken chair into it? And, why the hell did they stick this in the middle of the main thoroughfare near our house?!?!

This photo does not quite capture how infuriating this obstruction was. At one point there were TWO of these towers erected side-by-side in the middle of our road. The Tower of Sauron effectively doubled my commute time to work and trebled my daily inhalation of carbon monoxide as I sat waiting in traffic that would bottle-neck around the towers. We still don't know why the local authorities thought it was a good idea to do this.

These are all good questions. Unfortunately, these sorts of questions crop up all the time in Vietnam; so frequently, that if you were to follow all of them through to their logical conclusion you’d simply have no time to think of anything else or get anything done. Furthermore, none of the locals look twice or appear even the tiniest bit phased by any of these things. After six months living in Vietnam, you find that you have also adopted a strident 'don't ask' attitude. You don't ask questions anymore, even when you encounter something like this...

Scooby Doo giving you the finger atop Ham Rong mountain, Sapa. Don't ask.

(Photo courtesy of Matty)

Saigon Essentials: The Motorbike

In Saigon, the motorbike is king. Some estimates put the number of motorbikes in this city at close to 3.6 million; that's almost one motorbike for every second person. The two-wheeler is the primary mode of transport for most Vietnamese, and if you discount the inhalation of diesel fumes, risk of injuries, and the 30 deaths on the roads per day in Vietnam, the motorbike is definitely the best way to get around Saigon. Sure you could walk, cycle, take a taxi, take a xe-om, catch the bus…but all the aforesaid modes of transport are either too expensive, too slow, or too sweaty. And ultimately, they are also not nearly as fun as getting around on a motorbike.

Meet my trusty steed, Yellow Peril.

 

I admit, she is a hideous colour and has zero street-cred, but she’s a hardy little thing. Since acquisition, I’ve dropped her twice and rode her through flood waters countless times. She was also once thrown against a tree (she is incredibly light for a motorscooter). Despite the mistreatment heaped upon her, she has to this day remained as reliable and as zippy as ever. 

Being able the get around this city on a motorbike completely colours your experience of living in Saigon. As petrified as I was during my first weeks riding in Saigon traffic, it took only a short while before I became a complete convert and now I can’t imagine living here without one. 

There are drawbacks to the motorbike, of course. Yes, Saigon peak-hour is an ugly, nasty, horrible bitch. Yes, riding during a monsoonal downpour under a sodden poncho while copping mountainous sprays of black water from passing trucks and buses does not compare to the comfort of being chauffeured in a dry, air-conditioned taxi. Yes, my lungs are gradually being poisoned by carbon-monoxide and other delightful toxins as I wait at the traffic lights behind thirty-odd belching exhaust pipes. And, yes, the risk of having manslaughter charges laid against me in a foreign (communist) country is always lurking in the back of my mind. 

But a motorbike just makes life so much easier. 

With a motorbike, you quickly decipher the labyrinth of one-way Saigon streets, and learn where everything is in relation to everything else. You can get home late at night without resorting to the services of xe-om who may or may not rob/rape/kidnap/murder you. You get to wear a carbon–filter mask during your daily commute to work, which aside from slowing the disintegration of your lungs has the added benefit of making you feel like a ninja. 

And, when you aren’t thinking about carbon-monoxide as you sit trapped in peak-hour traffic, there is something - akin to a sense of camaraderie, perhaps - about glancing over to the fifty or so other motorcyclists next to you. They are so close. Less than an arms length away. So close you could ask for directions or pull faces at their toddler (who is more often than not perched precariously on a highchair wedged between the handle bars and seat of the motorcycle, with a mosquito net draped over their head). So close, you can nod hello and check out the content of their shopping basket. Without a windscreen and the metal carriage of an automobile, the boredom and anonymity of a traffic-jam (the kind of traffic-jam we are used to in a developed country) is taken away. There is a vague sense of solidarity, which makes you feel (just a tiny bit) like you're apart of this city. 

Or, to put it in much simpler terms, it makes you feel like you are part of a million-strong bad-ass bikie gang.

My bikie gang. No one can stop us.

To round off this post and drive home the point about how fun (and integral) motorbikes are in Vietnam, here is an excellent collection of photographs by Dutch photographer Hans Kemp. My favourite is the hula-hoop one, closely followed by the motorbike carrying five fully-grown people. 

Sino-Vietnamese Relations

This is a well-practiced drill that I relive on a daily basis:

1. A local speaks to me in Vietnamese.  
2. My woefully limited Vietnamese vocabulary and my powers of deduction tell me that they are not asking me how my day is, inquiring about my age/martial status or declaring the chicken phở delicious.
3. I shrug my shoulders helplessly and give them my best “I don’t know what you’re on about, but let’s remain cordial, shall we?” smile.
4. If they persist in Vietnamese (95% of the time), I'm left with no option but to pull out the big guns: “Xin lỗi, tôi không nói được tiếng việt.” Translation: "Sorry, I don’t speak Vietnamese,” which I memorized by heart before arriving in this country.
5. Local giggles and invariably responds with “Blah blah blah tiếng việt blah blah blah.” Approximate translation: “But you just spoke Vietnamese!! How funny am I!?” If their friends are around, they will also join in to laugh at me and the fact that I’m linguistically challenged. They chortle in a nice way, though. Sometimes I even join in and laugh along with them.
6. Once they have exhausted themselves with laughter, they will ask in English: “Where you from?"
7. Me: “Australia.”
8. Local: “Malaysia?” 
9. Me: “No, Australia. Tôi là người Úc.”
10. Local: *with some suspicion* “No. But your looking Asian. *with added emphasis in case I'm not only linguistically but mentally challenged as well* "Where. You’re. From?”
11. Me: *with resignation* “My family is from Hong Kong.”
12. Local: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Hom Kom! You are Chinese.” It’s as if all the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place, and all is well with the universe.

Given the regularity with which this occurs, the aforementioned dance is one that I’m gradually growing tired of. And, incidentally, it's not just the locals who mistake me for Vietnamese. The other day, a well-meaning tây (westerner) asked me where I learnt to speak such fluent English. 

It all feels just a tiny bit unfair. My white friends don’t have to put up with daily interrogations. But I'll also acknowledge that I have no one else to blame but my supposedly Vietnamese-looking self and my slow retention of the Vietnamese language. [Some locals have even asked me to explain to them why I look "so Vietnamese". Explain my Viet-face? Really?! How the frick am I supposed to know?!?!]

Before arriving in Vietnam, I heard from various sources that Sino-Vietnamese relations oscillate between 'icy' and 'verging on hostile'. I've also been warned that there are some ill feelings toward ethnic Chinese, particularly those from Mainland China.

To be honest, all the Vietnamese people I’ve encountered here have been unfailingly affable, even after I’ve identified myself as a Chinese-Australian. I think the hostility is directed more at the Chinese government. There is, however, always the chance that some people may not be savvy enough to make the distinction between the actions of an authoritarian government and the people of a particular ethnic group. 

During my first week at work, my colleague instructed me to avoid the Chinese Embassy on Sunday mornings. In the past few months, demonstrators have held a series of anti-Chinese protests outside the Chinese embassies in Hanoi and HCMC to rally against what Vietnamese see as China's violations of their country's sovereignty in the South China Sea. To read between the lines of my colleague's warning, I should stay well away from the angry mobs least they sense my Chinese-ness and lynch me. 

Given I am apparently "Vietnamese-looking" to the extreme, I think I'll be pretty safe.

Anti-Chinese protests have remained largely peaceful.

The uneasy - some would say turbulent - relationship between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China (PRC) has a history extending back 2200 years. Throughout the ages, Vietnam has been subjected to four periods of Chinese domination with Vietnamese forces maintaining their independence as a vassal state from time to time. 

Eminent Vietnamese historian, Dr. Huu Ngoc, who gave the Australian volunteers a 53 minute lecture on Vietnamese history as part of our in-country training, likened Sino-Vietnamese relations to the relationship between a man and a woman. Make of that what you will.

The territorial dispute between China and Vietnam revolves around the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Ownership of these islands have long been contested, but the dispute has escalated in recent decades following geological surveys which indicate that the islands and surrounding sea floor hold significant oil and mineral reserves (nevermind the fact that these purported reserves sit far beneath the oceanic crust in sedimentary beds, and nobody currently has the technology to extract anything.)

One of the Spratly Islands which is currently the subject of Sino-Vietnamese territorial dispute. Apparently, also rich in Unobtainium.

During my second week of work, my Vietnamese colleague informed me that “many Vietnamese people hate China” (his emphasis, not mine). I don’t even recall there being a segue to his comment. He obviously felt that this piece of information was important enough to bring up out of the blue. He proceeded to tell me that I should inform people specifically that I’m from Hong Kong and never say that I’m from mainland China, before rattling off a litany of PRC offenses. I nodded and murmured in agreement, not only because I could see he was getting quite upset about the actions of the Chinese government but also because I actually agree with him. 

"That is why, " he said, "it's probably better if don't tell people you are from China." 

“How do the Vietnamese feel about the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, like the huge Chinese-Vietnamese community in Saigon? Ethnic Chinese who were born in Vietnam and whose parents and grandparents were also born here.” I asked. 

“That is true, there is a big Chinese-Vietnamese community in Saigon” he nodded thoughtfully before adding without any sense of irony, “for example, my grandparents are Chinese.”  

I smiled and kept my Chinese-Australian mouth shut.

Welcome to Saigon. Population: 7.2 million (now +1)

 

Three weeks ago, having completed 5 days of quasi-relevant in-country training in Hanoi, I bade farewell to my fellow Australian volunteers and boarded a Vietnam Airlines plane bound for Ho Chi Minh City. The sole volunteer from this program to be posted in HCMC this intake, the lonely flight to Ho Chi Minh City – where I will volunteer as a project officer at the International Organization for Migration the next 12 months – was oddly exhilarating and smelled vaguely of fish sauce. 

Ho Chi Minh City - or Saigon, as the locals like to call it - is approximately 6700km from the south-east coast of Australia (read: Home). And what a difference 6700km makes. Allow me to demonstrate ...

This was my street in Melbourne: 

Below is my street in Saigon, complete with yappy dogs, a confused cockerel which will crow at all hours of the day and night (I think it’s broken) and a lady across the street who belts out Vietnamese tunes into on her karaoke machine until the wee hours. 

A few nights ago, there was a funeral procession outside my house at 3 am. The cacophony of cymbals, wind instruments and general tooting only lasted 30 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad. 

I have yet to fully master the correct pronunciation of my street name, which poses a few problems, not least when you are trying to get the taxi-driver or xe-om (motorcycle taxi) to take you home. To the correct address. According to my housemates, the challenge is to repeat our street name no less than 10 times using varying intonations (butchering the Vietnamese language in the process) until the taxi-driver or xe-om understands you, or pretends to so you’ll shut up. Success rates are not high, so I prefer to have the address written down on a scrappy bit of paper which I just show the driver. Apparently, that’s cheating and not in the spirit of the game.

This was my local market in Melbourne:

 

Here is my local market in Saigon: 

Melbournians will note the absence of gelato, skinny soy lattes and annoying Melbourne hipsters.

A few minutes walk from my place in Melbourne would get you here:

Yarra River, Melbourne

Take a two minutes leisurely stroll from my home in Saigon, and you might find yourself here:

The local slums with its very own poo river.

Since you’ve seen the neighborhood, it would be incredibly rude of me not to show you my home as well:

Mi casa. It’s a four story, five-bedroom house with two roof top terraces. 

 

Resident turtle.

The living room that doubles as a motorbike show room.

My room:

My room comes with its very own library. Before you get excited, the library largely consists of books like this:

I got excited when I misread the title of the second book from the left. "Jesus Pictionary?!?!" 

No. It wasn’t.

And, lastly, probably the best feature of the house, the roof-top terrace:

We are thinking of investing in hammocks.

View from the second roof-top.

 

So that’s my new neighborhood. I’ll show you the rest of the city later. For now, I’ll just leave you with this youtube video clip of Saigon peak hour traffic: 

It’s the kind of crazy you could grow to love.