Hold the Squid...And the Chicken Please

Just returning to my hotel room after a killer game of cards with Julie, Supriya, and Vijay. Hard to believe it: was just last night that I arrived in Tam Ky City. The journey from Hanover to Tam Ky included reindeer dogs at the Alaska airport snack shack; "in-flight entertainment" on a 9-hour flight that consisted of 2 bad movies on a fuzzy screen in the middle of the aisle; five hours hanging out in a smoky Hanoi airport cafe watching Vietnamese pop songs on the tv; and finally a drive from Danang to Tam Ky with 2 strangers who called me Ms. Kelly & spoke almost no English. I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the hotel and my room had A/C, a hot shower, and no signs of cockroaches or bedbugs. I was even happier when I heard Julie's familiar voice in the hallway & saw Supriya & Vijay's smiling faces for the first time. Tired as I was, I was hungry too so we hit the "town" for some dinner.

The humidity was oppressive & besides some stray dogs in the streets, there weren't many people around. We settled on the first restaurant we saw. The name outside said Dung. We didn't think this was a great name for a restaurant, but we learned today that it is actually pronounced "yum." We attempted to speak English to our waitress and she literally giggled at us and ran away. I decided I would stay away from the meats, as Julie had recently described the cooked dog (full face & teeth) that she saw sold at the market in Hanoi. I wanted to avoid inadvertently ordering dog dumplings. The entire menu was in Vietnamese & none of us had thought to bring a phrase book. We knew the word for chicken - which I also learned today is very similar for the word for yes, blanket, and something else that is not chicken - so we ordered 3 chickens. Vijay was excited to remember the word for vegetable so he ordered me a vegetable plate. Only when my vegetable plate arrived, it was actually a big plate of squid. Oops. I guess we have more work to do on our Vietnamese.

So this morning, our work at the IDE office began with Ky (one of our IDE contacts) teaching us some Vietnamese vocabulary as we scribbled down what he said & butchered the pronunciation of everything. We learned so much today, from how to order vegetables to how many litters of piglets a sow has each year, to gender roles in pig and rice farming....not to mention all that we learned just over dinner tonight. We went out with a group of IDE staff members, including Ky and the small & enthusiastic Trang, plus others whose limited English meant they couldn't enjoy all the ridiculous things we said. We ate delicious steamed clams & giant prawns in a private dining room big enough to just barely fit our one table. At one point I noticed the chicken on the plate in front of me had many parts I didn't recognize. We made the mistake of inquiring about this only to discover we had not only chicken feet and stomach in front of us, but chicken head, eyeball hole and all. Ky picked up the chicken head and made it squawk at us. I think I'm done with chicken here.

Tomorrow we get up bright & early to move to a new hotel that is closer to the office and then begin another day of drinking excessively sweet Vietnamese coffees while contemplating pork production & rice fertilizer.