Letters from Vietnam 65

20 February 2007 – 21:37

First Day of Dalat Trip

While I was cutting my toenails in the morning of Saturday, J asked me to stop. It was because cutting nails at the weekend brings bad luck according to Thai culture (or one of the many Thai superstitions) I laughed at her comment and continued as if I did not hear what she said. However at that moment I knew that whatever bad happens during our journey to Dalat will be caused by my unfortunate timing of nail cutting. It will be considered as the only scapegoat to be blamed for. In fact it did not last long. When we were in the taxi going to the bust station we noticed that we left the recharging cable of camera at home. That was the first unfortunate event caused by my bad timing of self-cleaning. Then we also realized that my belt has been left at home.

I took two books with me to read. The first one is “Baba ve Piç” (Bastards of Istanbul) written by Elif Safak. Allan brought this book along with another Safak (Mirrors of the City) and one Pamuk (Black Book) last month. According to my plan, I read two books in English then I read one book in Turkish. If I consider I have only three books in Turkish in Vietnam, I will probably need to read same Turkish books again and again until I visit Turkey in June. Safak’s book is translation from English. She wrote the book in English first and according to the first page of the book, she helped (or guided) the translator for the Turkish version. However I had some problems with the translation regarding the words chosen at some parts. The language fits the plot and characters but sometimes some words seem as if they have been kept too literally. One example I can remember now was the word “overprotective”. I guess the writer in the original book used this word for Rose to explain her attitude towards her daughter. Turkish translation says “koruyucu” which exactly means “protective” but in Turkish we don’t say “koruyucu” for a mother who cares about her children excessively. It might have been “esirgeyici” or another word which I can not figure out now because I don’t have a Turkish Dictionary here. Other than the problems in the language, I found the novel magnificent. It is one of the best novels I have ever read and I am completely willing to read all other works of Safak as soon as possible. I will write about Bastards of Istanbul later in another blog entry. The second book was Murakami’s “Sputnik Sweetheart”. I have read two novels from Murakami before and I really like the way he mentions the conflicts in modern Japanese society with some ironic scenes and his approach to the history/identity/future problems of young Japanese people.

It took six hours to arrive at the hotel we reserved last week. Bus left us just in front of the hotel so we did not need to deal with the local taxis or motorbike drivers. The owner of the hotel (also the receptionist) was a very nice, very gentle, very helpful person. He was fluent in English and French. When I asked him where he learnt French this fluently, he said “in Dalat”. His wife was also speaking English/French and I saw his daugher playing the piano at the reception hall. This was a truely nice environment. Actually, it was a small hotel and run by a family of five (Mr. Duc, his wife, two young kids and a grandmother). When we enter the hotel lobby, he asked my nationality. I told him that I am from Turkey. Then he smiled and said “You are the first Turkish in our hotel”. “Well”, I said “I hope I will not be the last!” Then we went to our room. It was bigger than what we have expected. There were two beds and it did not take long to decide to lay on different beds while reading and using one of the beds for sleeping. The only problem with the room was the constant noise coming from the street just in front of the hotel. Because it was in the second floor, the noise from the motorbikes was very disturbing. When I asked to change the room, I learnt that the hotel was totally full. Then we did not have any chance but to go with what we have. The room had large windows and the first thing we see through the window was a mini-Eiffel Tower about 500 m. away from us. Then there was a red cathedral very near to the Eiffel tower. I looked at these two structures and with the help of relatively cold weather I have imagined that I am not in Vietnam but somewhere else. (I have no idea where it could be but I sensed that this was different from the rest of Vietnam.)

The weather was surprisingly cool and there was a nice breeze in the air. The lake was only 100 metre away from the hotel but because our room was in the second floor we did not have chance to see it from our balcony. There were roads going up and down. It seemed to me the town is busier during Tet because the population doubles and almost all hotels are full.

After unpacking our things, we went out for some walk and have some nice dinner if possible. In fact there were restaurants –most of them are simply called “café” but they serve meals as well- everywhere. We fist had a simple dinner in a café and went down to the Hon Xuan Huang Lake to walk around. There were people everywhere. Mostly families were strolling around, children were riding bicycles and big boys were driving motorbikes. It was all light, colors and noise. There were amusement parks for kids and young couples were on the grass –with their motorbikes of course- hugging and kissing each other. When I saw the lake I thought it could be a good idea to run around the lake in the mornings and I planned to wake up earlier next morning for a 5 km run.

While walking beside the lake, we bought grilled corn, felt the cold wind and smiled the little kids who were very enthusiastic about greeting a foreigner man. In that moment without considering how dangerous it was I was almost passing under a road sign. The board was high enough and I was not hitting my head even if I didn’t duck my head but still I had to stay away from the things which can bring us bad luck! Hopefully J pulled me to the side of the board and I got rid of an event which can cause enormous unfortunate things. When we got back to hotel, there was a surprise waiting for me.