Letters from Vietnam 9

27th June 2006 – 20:10 – Home

One of the many surprising things in Vietnam is the absence of the stray dogs in the city. As a person who had lived in Thailand for more than six years and got used to see hundreds of stray dogs on a normal day, I was expecting a similar environment here in Vietnam. However, things are very different in this country. There are no dogs on the streets. Strangely enough, I needed to see a dog beside the road to notice this difference. The dog I saw yesterday was the first stray dog I have ever seen in Vietnam. I thought about the reason for this and found two possible answers. I heard from people that Vietnamese people like to eat dog meat. They believe that eating dog meat keeps their body warm enough in cold winter nights. Especially people from north of Vietnam like to eat dog meat a lot since north of Vietnam is colder. For this reason, some people collect the stray dogs from the streets and sell them to local restaurants. Even in Thailand, local people (especially in Isan) sell their naughty dogs to dealers for only a plastic bucket or a bowl. The other reason might be their sensitivity on personal hygiene. Local people may not really like to see dirty and sick dogs on the streets. Although this is quite unlikely because of the dirty scenes of the city streets and polluted air, it is still considerable.

Another difference from Thailand is the uniforms of motorbike taxis. There are no certain colour uniforms for motorbike-taxi drivers unlike the orange uniforms of Thai taxi drivers. In Thailand, young people become motorbike-taxi driver but they still have to pay some local authority to be registered. They have numbers at their backs and they belong to a certain taxi station. Here, everyone who has a motorbike is a potential motorbike taxi driver. It is one of the easiest jobs as long as they have a motorbike. Once you walk on the streets, someone can stop for you and offer you a ride. They might think that you look foreigner, so you would have money. I can definitely say that they charge at least twice from foreigners. That is why they insist a lot even when they see a foreigner waiting for a bus at the bus-stop.

Once I start to walk in the main streets of the city, it is impossible to avoid street vendors or booksellers. They sell photocopied books on the streets with a price less than the original price of the book. This reminds me my own country but with a little difference. It is easy to find pirate Turkish books on the streets of Istanbul or Ankara. Turkish people or mostly students who do not have enough money to buy original ones are always being tempted by these booksellers. Here, the situation is different. They sell books only in English. This means they sell only to foreigners. When I say I don’t want to buy, they insist on the importance of reading books and showing me different books written on Vietnam War by Vietnamese or Western authors. One day, a little girl approached to my table at a restaurant while I was waiting for my order and asked me to buy a book from her. I said ‘no’ but she did not leave. She offered me a small game. She said “let’s play rock-paper-scissors game.” If she wins I would have to buy the book, if I win, she will leave my table. Although I knew that I have 50% chance of winning, I said ‘ok’ and we started to play. First, we both made paper so it was a draw. Then, she made scissors and I made paper. I lost. She smiled and I bought Paulo Coelho’s ‘Manual of the Warrior of Light’. It was a copied book but I did not mind. At the end I lost the game but I won a book.

They also sell pirate movies in Ben Than market. On last Sunday, when we returned from Diamond Plaza, we bought several movies. Two of them were French and others were in English. I bought ‘Crash’, ‘Munich’ and ‘The Cache’. The quality is low but I will not complain since the price is less than a dollar for each.

Yesterday, I did my first teaching in Vietnam. I always feel excited when I start with a new class. Although I have been teaching Math for last 7 years, it is inevitable for me to feel uncomfortable in front of students who do not know me. I introduced myself and talked about the course. Surprisingly enough, almost one quarter of my class has a family name of ‘Nguyen’ and around 10% carries the name of ‘Tran’. Instead of memorizing their names, I decided to memorize last three digits of their ID numbers. I found this much easier because each number can be considered special in a way and I can find a connection between the number and the student. At first glance, I saw numbers like 256(2^8), 911 (Sept. 11), 112(first three Fibonacci), 496 (perfect), 499 (prime) etc… There are two western boys in this class and they are naturally comfortable in speaking English and asking questions.

I used PowerPoint in the class first time in my life. I told them I will use Power Point only for the first two weeks and then only whiteboard. Once we start the mathematical part of Statistics, Power Point will be useless.