Real Life: Viet Nam Style

On Monday morning I woke up at 6:30 AM and dragged myself to the internet cafe down the road. I got to speak to Andy for an hour and a half and that was amazing since we hadn’t spoken in over two weeks. I was also joined by DiDi at the café, sent her pictures over Skype, and posted a blog entry. After getting a lot accomplished and having the usual breakfast of iced coffee and bread with egg, I went back to my room at 10:30 and we searched for the xe may key before I donned my helmet and headed out.

DiDi had asked me to go with her and look at apartments and of course I was up for it. The first “apartment” (they are all really rooms with a communal bathroom) had nobody home and DiDi and I were looking at that day’s newspaper’s classifieds trying to find the open apartments. It was frustrating and eventually DiDi pulled over on this side road and paid 100,000 dong in order to hire this guy who acts as kind of a temporary realtor. We followed this one guy on his xe may and he showed DiDi and I two apartments. One was too small and one was too expensive. He then told DiDi that she was being too picky and we followed him back to this side road where this realty’s home base was. The second guy lost us after our xe may stalled in the middle of this intersection and DiDi had to jump start it at this nearby gas station. The third guy took us to a couple apartments that were already rented and then DiDi was pissed and met with their boss, an older guy who was sitting at a little plastic table on the side of the road. I went and got us some sodas as a prt of my never ending quest to be supportive and keep morale up so as to find DiDi an apartment. After she spoke to their boss we were assigned to a fourth guide and he was able to find a room that’s pretty small with no internet but the renting family is very nice, the rent is extremely cheap, and the street is well lit and safe. She put down a portion of one month’s rent and then we went to find some lunch. We had rice with squid, beef, onion, and some greens which we inhaled in about 15 minutes because by then it was 2:00 pm and we were famished.

We got back to the guest house and rested. I was in Sarah and Monica’s room when DiDi busted in and reported that the rooms in the other guest house (where the other half of our group was already living) were ready. A mistake had been made and we had to move right then and not the day after as previously planned. All 10 of us packed up our stuff, got it onto taxis and rode a few blocks away to the new guest house in less than an hour. This was good because it left almost no room for complaining. I helped DiDi orchestrate the taxis, hand out keys, and move people into their rooms. Then DiDi showed up our room, 410, and was having a full-blown panic attack because of the fast move to the new guest house and the fact that she had a job interview in less than half an hour. I skipped the shower, coaxed her into some slower breathing, donned a dress, and jumped into a taxi with her. We then picked up Phat’s xe may and got a bit lost before finding the food/hotel company at which she was going to interview. I sat in the middle of the office and read my book from 4:20-5:00. She then took through rush hour traffic to the ATM and back to my guest house, where I finally got to shower.

I then hung out and read in the room and waited for DiDi to come back to the room and get dinner with us. Jill and Monica went to the rooftop restaurant early but by 7:45 I headed to dinner too. I met Jill and Monica on the way there, however, since they decided not to eat at the place because of the intense heat there. We struck out on one more restaurant before finally settling on this one I’d been to once before in September. The fried rice I got was burnt and I found a giant piece of eggshell in it. We finished (well I tried my best) and walked back to the guest house. I found DiDi packing up her stuff in Tony’s room because the guest house doesn’t allow three people to stay in one room. We had a good cry and then Co Trinh took me to Crazy Cocktail on her xe may and we met a bunch of her friends and my friends. We spent from about 9:30-midnight talking and chilling out on the roof and I had a great iced coffee as well. We tried to go dancing at “Go 2” down the road but they wouldn’t allow DiDi to go upstairs to the dance floor, since they have some policy about Vietnamese women and no prostitutes upstairs. She was understandably a wreck after that and she also felt bad about the fact that we refused to enter the bar after this incident. We just didn’t want to support a place that views all Vietnamese women as prostitutes. All of us walked down the road a bit and I almost punched Dale in the face because he was so tanked and he was using his horrible Vietnamese. At 1:00 I took a taxi back to my room with Jackie and then read in bed before falling asleep at 1:30 am.