working with communists, travel hate, junkie den, refresh

So working here is tough.  Really tough.  I'm working kinda like a biz dev consultant for this silk "village" down in Hoi An.  First, the language barrier obviously.  Of course, it's not anyone's fault, but it's frustrating nonetheless.  Sometimes I talk to someone for 15 minutes in a really slow, drawn-out, methodical way, with the person nodding in agreement and saying "Yes, I understand."  Only to finish the process when the person asks me the original question, the one that I had just spent 15 minutes explaining.  There's also everyone's obsession with Facebook - it's as if Facebook holds the power to all life.  I just spent a week redesigning this website, but the only the concern they have is making FB more prominent or promoting things on FB.  F me.

Anyway, life goes on.  It pays the bills and it's an interesting learning experience.  I've come to realize that I don't really like traveling.  And I like travelers much less.  I much prefer living in a place for an extended period of time, getting to know the people, lay of the land, intricacies of that particular location.  Of course, I realize that it's impossible to do that everywhere you go and being a "traveler" or tourist is completely necessary if you're gonna go see places.  But what I say when I don't like traveling means that I just really don't like the 2 days in a place, on a bus, 2 days in another place, on a bus, etc.  And in Vietnam you meet a lot of people that are frankly beyond cliche.  They're wrapping up or starting their SE Asia tour and have only the most superficial knowledge of anything they're doing or seeing.  They get off a bus, stay at a backpacker hostel (cuz you ain't legit less you call yourself a backpacker), eat at a touristy joint for 10 times the price, party with other white people, take pictures of a few sites, get back on a bus and repeat somewhere else.  Or sometimes I meet the Henry David Thoreau's of SE Asia travelers, the ones who wear the baggy cotton pants that only westerners wear, go meditate on some dude's tomb and claim that they're a child of the earth.  All equally awful.

So it was nice when I met Aki, a fluid (read sexually free) Canadian chick that's been living here for 6 months working for a charity that's reviving traditional paper flower making (i couldn't make this stuff up).  Not only is she a much appreciated fluent English speaker, but she's been living in Asia for the past 5 years or so and we have pretty similar thoughts on living out here.  Thuy and I rode out to the village she works at and it was a pretty sweet lil Saturday.  We rode out through the back roads, racing through rice paddies, listening to the evening Commi news on public loud speakers, the usual.  Stopped for a quick snack (a whole roast duck) on the way back into town.  Pretty coo.

Being by myself and frustrated with work started taking its toll on me.  Not that I was depressed or anything, just a bit down.  So it was nice when a new acquaintance Hieu, a motorbike driver, invited me over to his house for dinner last night.  Riding over the bridge with the hills in the background at sunset reminded me how beautifully awesome this place is.  Went over to his place and experienced the male/female segregation for really the first time in Vietnam.  The men sat on the floor drinking and eating as the women cooked and then sat in the back part of the room gossiping and knitting.  Well, I guess it's how it is.  Anyway, dericious food and a much needed break from life in my bubble.

Going to Hoi An on Monday for a week of work down there.  Adios.

Oh yeah, just got a job in September in TBD Latin America to work with a microfinance institution providing student loans to kids (don't worry, it's not the same system as the US).  So going back to a place where I understand the language.  Thank Hey-zeus.

ghost riders, traveling man, employment and beyond

So been in Hue for 3 weeks now.  And I'm really loving it.  In particular, I don't speak the language and have few friends here.  So I'm able to be alone for 95% of the time.  Which I was unsure about at first, but I've come to realize how much I love being alone.  Not being anti-social per se, but having the opportunity to think and self-analyze.  It's really a luxury.  And I have no one to report to.  Being with some of my married friends here I've re-remembered how lucky I am that I don't need to field calls of "where are you honey?" or "i'm waiting for you at home, when are you coming back???".

So I've been spending my endless amounts of free time working out, reading and practicing Spanish, applying to fellowships and working on other side projects.  It's awesome, especially considering I spend about $10/day living like a king doing it.  One of my fav activities is going for long runs into the countryside, through rice paddies and by mud huts, with everyone looking at me like an alien.  Time will tell if I turn into Teddy Kaczynski but so far so good.

My friend from Guate, Shelley, paid me a visit a couple weeks ago and we had a good time traveling around Hue and then motorbiking it up to Paradise Cave.  We got to hum through the same karsts and rice fields that I traveled through via train.  Of course, we ended one of the nights "nhau'ing it" as I would say, getting hammered over grilled meats and rice wine in Khe Sanh.  The concept of "nhau" btw, is uniquely Vietnamese.  The loose translation is "getting wasted and eating lots of grilled meats".  So I can't come up with a single word translation in English.

Obvi we traveled with Nam, the same driver that took me and Alby to Hoi An last year.  I'm actually staying at his brother's hotel.  So basically through a variety of connections and the ability to speak English, I've partnered with a handful of folks here in Hue and am acting like a biz dev consultant for their businesses, all related to tourism.  In fact, a "quick" biz meeting with Nam tonight turned into a booze fest (vietnamese biz meetings either leave me hyper-caffeinated or drunk, drunk in this case) where we discussed starting Hue's first real homestay.  A small but growing part of me wants to become the Shantaram of Hue, with a hand in all tourism-related businesses like currency exchange, drugs, tours, homestays, restaurants, etc.  But no hookers.  I'd never do that.  Speaking of which, the low lifes about town have finally remembered me I think.  You know, the guys that offer you weed or girls or whatever.  I started saying things like "no hablo ingles" or "nah, I'm good your mom blew me this morning" and though they didn't understand a single word, I think they got the point that I wasn't interested.

But yeah, I'm gonna keep my feet moving.  Just focused on this silk tour in Hoi An for now...which is shaping up to be a fun project.  I've found my go-to's here, the places with good food and fair prices (the amount of arguments I've gotten into over white people prices is insane) so I feel really comfortable in my lil shell here in Hue.

Yeah, that's pretty much it for now.  All quiet on the western or far eastern front if you will.  Adios cabrones.