A More Mundane Post

Once upon a time it was this morning and Paul had taken his shower and was ready to leave the bathroom. Only, he couldn’t, because the bathroom door ‘locked’ and he was stuck. I tried the handle from the outside, and he tried it from the inside, and nothing happened. (Keep in mind that our bathroom has no windows or doors other than this one.) So I went and got the screwdriver; only, there were no screws in the door handle. Eventually, after about 15 minutes, much shouting, and some tears, I had to hammer the handle off and pass a screwdriver in to Paul, who managed to fidget with the locking thing enough to get himself out. After that, we had to clean up the Benalyn on the floor from Paul’s attempt to hammer himself out.

It was not a happy morning.

We’re in week two of winter camps. Paul gets a new group of kids tomorrow, but I have the same group for three weeks. Today, I had one kid spit out his gum twice, and give me the crackers he was eating. He was still chewing a new piece of gum when he left. I’m amazed that parents send their children to these classes. Some of my kids are bored, while others have to be forced to pick up a pen. Most of them just copy from another’s work anyway. There is no concept of ‘do your own work’ here… which is fine for aiding a group-mentality society, but not so fine when it comes to test time. Then again, these kids know that the curriculum I teach isn’t directly on the test (though it’s usually relevant), so they don’t bother. I suppose it’s the same as teaching anywhere. I just feel especially bad for some of their parents.

Camp, for both of us, is done by 12:00. The rest of our days are spent in a relatively empty office making more plans and reading things online. (You would think that means I get a lot done, but it doesn’t always.) Paul’s school sends him home at 2:30 so they don’t have to heat his office. Gas is ridiculous here, and there is no such thing as insulation or double-paned windows. I share an office with the one other teacher who is at the school to answer questions. Once a week a class of kids comes in, dressed in uniform, to clean the school. They’re here at 9 and gone by 11. It’s bizarre.

It’s snowing here; a pleasant, soft sort of snowing. One of our friends was sent home early from work because of the snow, and it made me think of Nashville, where sometimes they give ‘snow days’ based on the weather report.

Ps. For those of you who are interested in such subjects, we had to throw out the ‘Feel the clean Cosmos’ toilet seat – it was broken. If I could have taken a picture of the toilet seats at the store, I would. A few were out of our price range, but came with heated seats and bidet functions. Other choices included: clear plastic sparkly, teddy bears with clear top, large pastel florals (seat plus top), Christmas trees with Santa (seat and top – and not even on sale!), and beach-theme (umbrellas, sandcastles, etc. – also seat + top). We opted for the most simple – plain white with a sailboat and harbor on the top. My favorite, however, was a floral cloth cover for your toilet seat, aptly named, “Fabric Cover A Piss Pot.”

A Few Photos From Our Trip

We're still a little busy this week with Winter Camp and seeing friends again so I'm just going to throw up some photos from our time in Vietnam.

We did a fair bit of travel in Vietnam as the country is far longer than I had realized. During our vacation we actually traveled through 7 airports over our 14 days (Seoul, Hanoi, Hue, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh, Siem Reap and Bangkok). Though all our flights (except the ones from and to Korea) were only an hour in length so the travel didn't consume much time at all.

Our favourite city in Vietnam was Hoi An (with Hue as a very close second). We enjoyed Hanoi a fair bit and didn't really like Ho Chi Minh very much. Though we were glad we made a brief stop there as the Reunification Palace was definitely worth a visit. This was the home of the South Vietnamese President during the war and it's where the war officially ended when the North came crashing in with their tanks as the remaining Americans evacuated from the rooftops of Saigon in their helicopters. We even got to watch a video about the war from a very different perspective after our tour.





Here we are in Hanoi in front of Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. We were allowed inside to see his body (it was a lot cooler than it sounds).





This is us in Hue. About 2 minutes after we took this photo we got monsoon levels of rain. We actually took our ponchos off for this photo, but luckily got them back on in time.


In this photo you can see us with our ponchos on. It rained a lot in Hue, but we still had a really good time there. I felt like a fool at first wandering around in my blue poncho, but I kind of miss it now. You can't really see it but we're at the entrance to the Forbidden Palace of Vietnam.


We encountered a fair range of weather over our two weeks away. When we left Korea it was around 0 degrees, Hanoi was about 16, Hue 18-19, Hoi An 20-22, Ho Chi Minh 25, Angkor 27-30 and Bangkok 35. So it gradually got hotter as our trip progressed. Which worked out fairly well since I think I might have died from the heat if we had gone straight into Thailand. I'll try and post some from Thailand and Angkor in the next few days. You'll definitely notice a chance in our clothing as the weather heats up.

We're Back

However, we're also really tired and busy teaching Winter Camps at our schools so a real update will have to wait another day or two. I will say that we really enjoyed ourselves and we both very sad that the vacation had to end. It all went fairly smoothly (except for near the end when Meg got a little sick in Bangkok) and we have many stories to tell. I think out of the three countries visited we liked Vietnam the best, however Angkor Wat was easily our favourite site and 4 days there was just barely enough. I think we could have easily stayed a week.

I'm still in the initial phases of sorting through my many, many, many photos but here's an early one that jumped out at me. It's from the first time we went to view the sunrise at Angkor. I think you can understand why we got up again at 4:30 am the next morning to see it all over again (if we had more days there I probably would have done it again too!).

The Big 3-0

For Paul's birthday, we went to My Son, the ruins of the Champa Kingdom near Hoi An, Vietnam. Since our stay in Hue had been so wet, we were worried about rain in Hoi An, especially for this trip to My Son. However, Paul's birthday ended up being one of the nicest weather days we had in Vietnam. We even saw the sun, which we were both beginning to think didn't appear in Vietnam.

As a part of his turning-thirty/ turning-a-new-leaf, Paul decided to wake up before 5am to go on the early morning trek to the ruins. (This also meant that we would be some of the only people there.) We reached our destination just after sunrise, had a cup of coffee as we waited for the park to open, and then drove up a rocky path to the sight of the ruins. Paul took many pictures of the sight, and I took many pictures of Paul, and we fell behind the tour group we had arrived with. They ended up waiting for us in the van while we bought bought a small statue commemorating our visit.

We returned to our hotel before ten, taking advantage of the free buffet breakfast, then spent time packing our belongings and showering, before we went on our next journey: finding the rice fields we could see from our balcony. Since Paul enjoys tormenting his travelling companions, we walked for about forty minutes in the wrong direction. He loved it: we got to see a bit of a real neighborhood, and he took some pictures of boats on the river. In the end, I went back to rest at our hotel while Paul found the fields for pictures.

Hoi An is a sleepy and picturesque little town. Because it lost much of it's trade to Danang, it wasn't wealthy enough to be bombed in the war; and thus managed to retain a lot of it's traditional architechture. The town itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We had a late lunch in a little cafe overlooking the river. Paul had a half-dozen mango shakes; we did a bit of shopping and picture-taking before catching our flight to Saigon.

Unfortunately, the traditional Patterson-family ice cream cake will have to wait until we return to Korea. All of the bakeries were closed by the time we reached Saigon.

The Red State

Well we made it to Hoi An in one piece. We just finished two water logged days in Hue. Although, it was initially a bit disappointing that it was raining I actually kind of liked it in the end (my feet did not however...). We were visiting the old capital of Vietnam and some Mausoleums of the kings that ruled from Hue a couple of centuries ago. The palace area was an imitation of the Forbidden City of Beijing (on a slightly smaller scale...but still huge). It had fallen into disrepair before the Americans bombed it during the war and now only about 20% remains. There are numerous ruins creeping through the grass that hint at its former glory and in a way I think the rain fit the attitude of the place. The rain came in waves. It would rain fairly lightly, then more heavily and then it would stop for about 10-20 minutes before resuming again. I thought it had passed a few times before realizing that it just was going to maintain this pattern all day. I really liked the Purple Forbidden City much more than I expected and I think Meg was quite surprised by its massive size. I'm looking forward to her reaction to the one in China when we get there next year.

This morning we went to the mausoleum of Ming Manh (I'm sure I spelt that wrong). It was easily my favourite place so far in Vietnam. It was a real pain to get to. Our problem began when we taxied to an out of the way temple with a well-known pagoda. I agreed with the taxi driver that he'd come back an hour later for us which he seemed happy to accept since I tipped him well. Of course an hour later he never showed up and it took us nearly an hour to find a way out of the area. The whole time being offered boat trips down the perfume river to our destination. We probably would have considered this option if we weren't on such a tight schedule and if it wasn't raining. I'm pretty sure the boat people have figured something out with the taxi people that keeps the taxis away because on of the women who kept trying to solicit us seemed to know our driver wasn't coming back and many people told us that taxis wouldn't come to that area (nobody would tell us why). It was a bit irritating trying to find a taxi for so long after spending numerous times each day telling taxis, cyclos and minibike drivers that you don't want a drive repeatedly as they follow you down the street asking again and again.

It seems like we can post our blog, but can't actually see any posts we make. I think the internet is heavily filtered here. I'd almost forgotten we were in a Communist country. I actually commented to Meg yesterday that this might be my first time in a Communist country. I thought it was strange that I'd never been in one before. I had this nagging feeling that I had, but then I couldn't think of one so I assumed that Vietnam was my first. Today I realized that this was of course false. Upon this realization I immediately turned to Meg and proudly told her that I was wrong, I'd been to a Communist country before...China. She just looked at me and said "Yeah I was wondering why you weren't counting that as a Communist country." I nearly kicked her. Then we talked about how we'd probably be visiting a large chunk of Red States in the next year. It's almost as if we're going on a Communist tour (Vietnam, North Korea, China & Russia). The idea seems very strange. I wonder how differently I'd feel about visiting these places if I'd grown-up a decade earlier. As it is I only have the faintest memories of disliking the Communists and viewing them as the enemy. As it is most of my anti-Communist memories come from Canada vs Russia hockey games over the past 35 years (Speaking of hockey it's a darn good thing I wasn't watching that Canada/Sweden World Junior game...I probably would have thrown my laptop across the room...).

Anyways it's getting late so I should probably wrap this up. Once I can post photos I will. I suspect this won't occur until we hit Camboda this weekend (or early next week). Of course by then I'll probably be obsessed with my Angkor photos and you'll never see any of the splendors we saw here in Vietnam. For those of your who know your Vietnam War history (or the American War as they call it over here) we're currently 30 km from Da Nang which was a major site during the war. We actually passed through it today and along the coast where I'm pretty sure numerous American troops arrived into Vietnam. I think we even passed China Beach. We saw a bunch of American tanks and weapons that the were captured by the Vietnamese yesterday in Hue. It seemed very strange to look at tanks that rolled through this area 30 years ago that had actually seen action and likely taken lives. Especially since perhaps the most common tourist items that I see Westerners wearing are the little Viet Kong hats and red shirts with the Vietnamese flag on them.