I have been in Vietnam for about three weeks now. When you first arrive it’s like you see everything from the other side of the window. There’s a barrier and you don’t quite know how to get to the other side. Riding in the backseat of a taxi, buildings and people and motorbikes blur together and you wonder how you will ever become a part of the beating pulse that is Hanoi. Then as you sink into a routine, you begin to recognize the street corners. You know the lady selling the french bread spends spare time scrutinizing craniums, plucking white hairs from scalps that are going alarmingly bald from the process. You make a fist and hold it defensively near your chin, because you swear, if the zippo guy strikes a light in your face one more time, you may just knock him out. You watch three little boys perched on a parked motorbike at the roads edge, yelling “hello taxi!” and you wonder how you could ever get to the point of letting your children play unattended next to a busy street. And then you start seeing tourists everywhere, and you have to chuckle as you watch a husband forge into traffic as his wife whimpers and darts back to safety.
I told someone last night that I finally feel like I am beginning to sink into this place, and he said, “Careful! Pretty soon you’ll be kicking toward the surface trying to get out!” It will be what it will be. Every day I try to learn a few new words in Vietnamese. As I sit here writing this, my cook is asking me, “ex-cuse-a-me madame,” and pointing to her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, for me to translate. Yesterday she taught me to count to ten . . . mot, hai, ba, bun . . .
The Vietnamese language seems impossible. I have an upper hand because there are many similar sounds in chinese that white folks just have a really hard time with. Vietnamese is a tonal language involving six tones. There are upswings, downswings, flats, and who knows what else. What this means is that you could have a word like, “Ngon.” I know that it means delicious or fingers or toes, depending on how the ‘o’ sound comes out. The only way I can think to describe this difference is to ask you to remember saying “ahhhhhh” at the doctor’s office. One “ahhhh” might be the sound that comes out through barely parted lips, and the other would be opening your mouth as wide as possible. The thing is, if you are off slightly (and how could you not be) they will stare at you with blank faces and your efforts will be all for naught. No wonder most expats don’t bother.
I am planning on starting a beginner’s course in vietnamese next week. However, last week I answered an ad in The New Hanoian for Russian Lessons with Tania. Nobody understands why I’m doing this. I think Russian is the most beautiful language while Vietnamese sounds like cats fighting. Vietnamese is only useful in Vietnam, whereas a vast part of the world speaks Russian. AND, when Vietnamese don’t speak english, there is a good chance that they may know Russian. And I think I should get fluent in Russian, because in my estimation I’m about 15-20 percent there already.
I met Tania at a coffee shop and I liked her immediately. She pulled up on her motorbike, greeted me, and began her mental estimation of how much I knew already. It was meant to be a meeting to determine if we would be a good match. We ended up spending five hours together, as she dragged me all over the city on the back of her motorcycle to show me her favorite city spots. We have already had our first lesson in which I learned the complex russian alphabet. I’ve gone back in time to my child days of decoding puzzles. It’s a pretty satisfying feeling when I have a “breakthrough.” She kind of closes her eyes in proudness and gives me that thumbs up like I just split an atom. So cool. Mental Exercise. Now to start doing the work out videos I just downloaded on iTunes. The food is much too good around here.
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