Party All The Time

This might seem silly and obvious to everyone, but we spend an inordinate amount of our lives surrounded by people speaking in a language we don't understand.  Even as I write this, there is a steady stream of unintelligible banter going on behind me.  Sure, I heard other languages (mostly Spanish) in the US.  But this is different.  When people speak Spanish around me, I can almost make it out.  Or, if I can't, a Spanish speaker can explain it to me in English I can understand.

Not the case here. And there are times when you feel as if you are living in a modern version of Apocalypse Now.

While at the job site this week, there was a party.  The party was to celebrate the hand-over of the first area of the building to the owners.  The fact that the area isn't finished, and no hand-over actually occurred that day didn't seem to matter.

I was informed of Wednesday night's party when I arrived in our office Wednesday morning.  "The contractor is having a party with dancing girls tonight!" I was told by a breathless consultant from another company.  I thought two things:

Brace for digressions


Thought #1 - 


"Bald guys in their mid-fifties who bear a striking resemblance to Hobbits really get excited when an event includes 'dancing girls'"

Unfortunately the TatVeg gets nervous whenever the phrase "they'll have dancing girls" gets uttered.  You see, I used to shoot photos for a lingerie company in Las Vegas that was entirely owned and operated by strippers.  I made a lot of money, and I was the only guy I knew who received money from strippers; but my opinion of strippers plummeted to the point where I could no longer enter a strip club without a feeling of dread.*  That glassy eyed look of disassociation you often see on strippers faces?  That's not specific to inside the club.  Many just look like that all the time.  It's likely this comes as a shock to no one, and I was just horribly naive, but most Vegas strippers are every bit as vapid and vacant in real life as they are inside the club.

*Once, when Reyna was upset for me over something I fully deserved to be in trouble over, she punished me by forcing me to go to a bachelor party at Spearmint Rhino; the largest and most popular strip club in Vegas.  It was miserable.

Thought #2 - 

I wonder if the guy we passed on the way into town roasting a headless and legless beast on a spit while spraying it with liquid from a pump-up bug sprayer is preparing for our party?

This thing was HUGE. It had to weigh at least 1.5 American Fat Men (AFM -my new standard of measurement since I can't seem to settle on using metric or imperial).  It sat on the sidewalk and was posed on the spit as if it would be running if the legs hadn't been removed below the knee and it wasn't, you know, dead and skewered over a fire.  The mental image of a cow running was confirmed when we nearly hit a live cow running across the street about five minutes later.*

*Have you ever seen a cow run on pavement?  HILARIOUS.  They have to be the most graceless animals on earth.  You know, other than half the girls I've ever dated (not you Reyna!)

So I went to the party.  And yes, there were dancing girls...at first.  They came out and danced while everyone in the crowd with a smart phone, except me, recorded videos.  Then an emcee came out and spoke at length in Vietnamese.  A few people got up on stage and made speeches, also in Vietnamese.  A lot of handshaking, back-clapping and cheering ensued.  Considering we were celebrating a milestone we had yet to reach, the whole thing felt a little forced.

After the dancing girls and speechifying a random guy got on stage and sang a song.  It felt exactly like when you were in middle school and the girl who was the pet of the music teacher sings some inspirational song in assembly while the music teacher accompanies her on a keyboard set to "Vibraphone."  The difference being that the man singing was a man, and a contractor.  A guy who earlier that day had been laying brick or hanging drywall or sweating pipe was now rocking a Vietnamese cool jam.  While he sang he did a dance that was basically an excessively animated version of The Charleston -complete with rolling hips and chugging arms.  I turned to my Vietnamese colleague standing next to me,

Me:"What is he singing about?"

Phuc*: "He is singing a song about building a building."

Me: "Oh...okay..."

*Yep, his name is Phuc.  But know that it's pronounced "fook".  Prounounced correctly, it rhymes with "spook."  What are we, ten?  

And the crowd was EATING IT UP.  Singing along and cheering, while I stood in amazement.*  The only song about building a building I can think of in English is We Built This City, by an aged and downright depressing version of what was once Jefferson Airplane.  No one, in the history of the US, has ever cheered and rocked out to this song.  Go ahead. YouTube it.  I'll wait... 

*Sadly the video I made of this performance didn't save to my phone.**  

**Yes I skipped videoing the pretty girls and shot the strange dancing man instead.***

***What?

Next, the World's Gayest Vietnamese Man* stood up and got on the microphone.  He was wearing a merlot silk shirt with white cuffs and collar, cream pants and matching cream shoes.  Remember, this is a construction site.  We were sitting and standing on gravel.  His hair was curly -meaning it was either done with rollers or he had a perm- and dyed an auburn that came close to matching his shirt.  WGVM got on the mic and hosted a series of game shows:  all in Vietnamese.

*It's not normally TatVeg form to publicly refer to anything as "gay" in a derogatory way.  The TatVeg loves the gays.  And for god's sake, let them get married.  What harm could a little gay sex do in a country where a single mom can have octuplets as a publicity stunt; a country where we need to stockpile weapons to protect us from the same military we salute before, during, after every sporting event and slap support magnets for on our cars?  When do they become robotic killing machines exactly?  Seriously guys?  People watch dudes put dick to ass millions of times per day on the internet, but we can't fathom that happening in a real life relationship where people love each other?  Somehow that's gross and unacceptable.  I'll stop before I really get going.

The crowd routinely fell into uncontrollable spasms of laughter, including the guys I was standing with.

Me:  "So, ah, what are they talking about?"

Dung*:  "He [pointing to WGVM] ask questions, if they answer right, they get a prize."

We are momentarily interrupted by a large roar of laughter. A beat.

Me: "What question did he just ask?"

Dung:  [Wiping his eyes and struggling to keep from busting up again] "A girl, she give a man a birthday cake and a tiger and tell him to chose.  Then the tiger blow out the candles on the birthday cake!"  

Me:  [Quizzical look] "That's not a question...."  [pause]  "Wait... Why is that funny?"

Dung: [Shrugs shoulders]

*Yes, that's his real name.  But before you go all fifth grade on me, it's pronounced "yoong."  You see in Vietnamese normal D sounds like a Y.  If the vertical part of the D is crossed, then it sounds like normal D.  And it was Dung's birthday yesterday.  You are now free to feel like a dick.

The only other exchange in English occurred between me and the aforementioned Fifty-Something Hobbit Colleague, who is American.

Me:  So what did you think of the dancing girls? 

F-SHC: Pretty good.  You know, one of them would probably fuck your brains out if you go talk to them.  They're right over there.

Me: I'm good.  I'm not really down with the whole 'come to Vietnam and cheat on your wife/girlfriend' thing.

F-SHC:  It's hard not to, man, these girls are so goddamned horny.  It's like you have to fight them off!* [goes in for beer can "clink" with me before wandering away].

*Yes, yes, that's what it is, F-SHC.  The girls are just so darn horny.  I mean it's like you have to beat them back with sticks!  And how could they not get excited about a 5'-5" middle aged bald man who smokes two packs of menthol Dunhills a day?  How do they resist? They couldn't possibly be attracted to your money could they?  No, you're right.  They're HORNY.

The game show(s) went on for more than an hour -video is forthcoming, I promise.  Thank god they had beer.  Let me take a moment to remind you, that at one point in this party there were scantily clad girls dancing and jiggling on stage.  And to make matters worse, Dung told me that not a single game contestant answered a question right.  So no one got a prize.  The table with the prizes was left with a pile of gifts wrapped in silvery paper sitting there at the end of the party.

The party ended at 9:00.  Me and my beer tummy (there was no vegetarian food at the party so I drank my dinner) shuffled to the car to bounce the hour back to Vung Tao.  

I walked into my hotel room to find that neither of the bedside lamps worked.  I sat with the overhead light on and tried to describe to Reyna the scene I'd just witnessed.  Then got straight in bed and fell asleep.  At 3am, I woke up to find one of the bedside lamps on.

This place is weird...

Continuous Thunder

It's been a week of amazing pictures for the TatVeg.  Let's get right to it:

Does it get any better than this?  No, no it does not. Normally I hate feeling like a tourist, but I couldn't resist.  

Oh you'd like to see what it looks like from the back?

Yep... Symmetry.  Pretty nice sky too...

Shortly after I took these photos, our be-headphoned driver attempted to maim two guys on a motorbike in front of half a dozen cops.  The whole thing happened right outside my window, so I got to watch it all unfold; from the, "wow those guys are close" to the "oh shit, they just crashed" moments. We sat in an immobile car for more than 45 minutes waiting for him to make the necessary pay-offs (the cops, the guys we hit, the families of the guys we hit, the people who witnessed the accident -there are a lot of people).

Mental note: When getting into an accident that is your fault, the fewer cops here are around, the better.  He left the car with a wad of cash and came back with nothing.  I can't imagine he makes tons of money driving us around.

There wasn't a whole lot else to see on my ride(s) this week.  Since it's Allow-Your-Cows-To-Graze-On-The-Shoulder month, I made an effort to count how many I saw.  On day 1 I counted 28 cows grazing within 3 meters of the pavement*.  On day 2, there were a lot more.  We passed them so quickly I didn't have any hope of counting them all, but I'd say it was in the neighborhood of 50.  We only had one swerve-around-the-herd-of-cows-crossing-the-highway moments, which is less than usual.  Honking at cows doesn't work as well as honking at motorbikes.**

*There are a few rules as to what counts as a "cow grazing on the side of the road."

1. There cannot be any fences
2. They have to be on the street side of any drainage ditches or shrubbery
3. Bonus points if you cannot locate the guy watching the cows. 

**And let's just take a moment to discuss that, shall we?  It amazes me how blase the motorbike riders are around cars.  The farther away from the city you drive, the worse it gets.  We'll be barreling up the rear of a motorbike, going at least 40km an hour quicker than the bike; our driver will be flashing his lights and laying on the horn.  It's like we're riding behind a deaf and blind motorbike driver.  Keep in mind that they are driving a 100cc scooter, we are driving a Toyota Fortuna; the Asian equivalent of a Toyota Land Cruiser in the US.  We out weigh them by at least 2000lbs.  They don't move over, don't even glance sideways.  Leaving us to either slam on brakes to avoid an on-coming dump truck in the opposite lane, or swerve one inch from the motorbike as we pass.  Why don't they just scoot over?  I don't get it.

But as it is with most things, once you start counting this or that, you find yourself counting other things too.  In my quest to find cows, I noticed a lot of men relieving themselves on the side of the road.  On our journey I counted 16, plus bonus points for a father and small son peeing side by side.  That's bonus points right? RIGHT?

Upon my return to the office this morning, I was greeted with this:

Does it even need a caption?  It's AMAZING.  I think I've dropped enough hints to the creator of this masterpiece to ensure I get one on my birthday.  Brace yourselves!

I wrote all that last week and never got around to posting it.  Sorry about that.  The subsequent rides to site all happened on the ferry from HCM to Vung Tao.  The ride to Vung Tao was filled with puking children.  It wasn't even a rough ride, but you know it's going to be bad when kids are throwing up as they BOARD the boat.  One kid actually had a plastic bag hanging on his ears like a reverse horse-feeding sack.  I chose to stand outside.  I followed a line of kids hurling into bags when I disembarked.  It's true, kids will barf at the drop of a hat.

Here's a photo of a cheese plate:

I know what you're thinking, "What's so special about a cheese plate?"  This particular cheese plate(s) came AFTER we'd already had five courses of food.  Every table gets this much cheese.  We sat in a stupor for a few minutes, then discussed what we should do with all this cheese?  Do we sit and eat it?  Do we eat a little and take it home?  Will they be upset if we only eat a few bites? We settled on eat as much as we can and be done with dinner.  They took it away, and then forced us, FORCED US, to sit there until we were ready to order dessert. When we finally finished, the owner of the restaurant rolled us into the factory where they make all this cheese.  Yep, it's all house made.

So I finally got my three-year visa.  I think it's safe to say that Vietnam has changed me a little.  I didn't notice when the photo was taken that I look like a fat ax murderer.  It's not entirely my fault since no one told me I was supposed to have my picture taken until the day of, and you're not allowed to smile.  Apparently when I'm not smiling, I look like I'm going to murder someone.  Sorry about that, everyone I've ever met.

Finally I want to take a moment to give big shout-outs to two people.

First, to Crack, who I spoke to for the first time in three years yesterday.  You are one of the reasons The Tattooed Vegetarian exists.  I totally stole the * thing from you.  Your writing is hilarious and everyone should go and read it here.  I'm not sorry I crushed your Bugles.  The look on your face when I did that still makes me laugh.  You also forgot to mention that you made the rope swing in the shop within the first 30 minutes of your first day.  Looking back on it, I can't believe I ever let you near power tools, but I'm glad I did.  Don't ever stop being a spazz.  I can't believe you're turning 30.  It makes me feel old...

And second on this list, but not in my heart, the lovely Reyna's birthday was on Sunday.  I don't know where I'd be without you, but I can tell you I'd be less happy.  You convincing me to move to Vietnam was the best things anyone's ever pressured me into doing.  I love you.  Thanks for putting up and sticking with me through this crazy challenge.  Without you, I'd still be riding a desk in a windowless office wishing to be hit by a car on the way to lunch.  You have truly changed my life and helped me through so many hardships, fears and fuck-ups.  There is no one I'd rather walk by an untended fire on the sidewalk with.  I can't wait to see what the next three years brings.  

See? I don't look like a fat ax murderer all the time

Yeah I named two straight posts after songs from the same band.  Sue me...  Besides, this song has the perfect sentiment.

Evil's Sway

It is with mild trepidation and anxiety that I announce I've moved into the second decade of the 21st century.  You can now follow your friendly neighborhood TatVeg on Twitter.  I haven't actually tweeted anything because I find the verb "tweet" almost as grotesque as the verb "blog."

I resisted the Twitter phenomenon as long as I could, but now I can feel a fast growing addiction forming.  Although I still don't entirely understand the appeal of reading celebrities every passing thought, there is still something wildly entertaining about the lives of strangers.  I hate myself right now, can you tell?

There are times when a 3000 word blog post isn't necessary, and you jerks aren't signing up to follow the blog anyway.  It appears that following someone on Twitter is a much easier process, so GO DO IT.

I would have sent my first micro-blog into the ether yesterday when I saw what may or may not have been a dead guy on the side of the road while I was riding my bike.  I decided photographing unconscious people was not altogether "classy" so I guess you'll just have to wait.

You can find me, and my real name apparently, here: @tatveg

  

Last Dance

I've decided to make a concerted effort to write a weekly report of what I see riding to and from my out of town project.  I'll try to do my write-up on Thursdays, but sometimes Thursdays are busy.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't mark your calendars.

This week's ride was especially eventful.  I was forced to ride in the very back of the SUV in the temporary seating known in my family as the "back-in-the-back."  Riding on top of the rear axle feels similar to six hours on a Pirate Ship ride at any local fair -similar amounts of gasping, screaming and vomiting included.  I managed to keep my lunch in me for the entire trip, but only barely.   Despite being sloshed around like a beer can in the back of a pickup truck, I managed to observe a few things during the ride.

But before we go there, I feel that I should set the stage a little better.  In addition to bouncing around like a fun-house in the car, our driver has a death wish.  This means you get to enjoy the up and down motion of the potholes as well as the backward and forward motion resulting from him alternately hammering the gas pedal and slamming on the breaks.  The traffic is difficult to describe.  When it's heavy on the highway it's not unusual to be surrounded on all sides by eighteen wheelers.  This has happened to me in the US before, but the difference here is that the trucks are usually less than a foot away -blocking out the sun.  They are also jockeying for position on the too-narrow road, so they're driving at oblique angles beside us in an attempt to either cut off, or avoid being cut off by other trucks.  All the while, shirtless, shoe-less and helmet-less young men dart between the gaps on motorbikes, and pedestrians, usually bearing  children, try to squeeze their way across the street without getting flattened.  It's amazing we don't see more fatal accidents


We usually sit in traffic for at least 20 minutes while trying to leave the city.  On Wednesday we were sitting behind a truck used to move workers from place to place.  It's essentially a smaller version of a box truck with perforated walls and open at the back.  There are benches on either side where the workers sit.  Last week I passed a person wrapped up and lying on the floor of one.  I couldn't tell if it was a dead body or not.  I think it may have been.  Anyway, there was only one guy sitting in the back of this truck.  As we sat in the gridlock, the window of the truck's cab opened, and the person in the front seat passed a two foot bong to the the guy sitting in the back.  He grabbed it and the proffered lighter, took a hit and sent it back through the window.  They had to be careful to not spill the water.  There's really nothing worse than getting bong water on your clothes*.

*Confession time:  I went to a party the night before I left home for my freshman year of college.  Everyone at the party was smoking out of a bamboo bong.  For some reason I don't remember, I found myself sitting alone in the living room with the bong.  I wanted to look at the bottom to see if the base of the pipe was the natural ribs of the bamboo.  So I turned it over and spilled about a pint of month-old bong water on my jean shorts.**  Every other article of clothing I owned was already crammed in various bags in my room as I'd planned to wear the same clothes in the car with Mom and Dad to Kentucky.  So I spent eight hours in the car with them the next day wreaking of month-old bong water.  Classy, I know.  I don't know how or why they never mentioned it.  Even after washing the shorts they still smelled.

**Screw you, it was the mid 90s.  Jean shorts were cool back then.***

***They were to me... SCREW YOU!

Later in the ride we passed a funeral.   Actually it wasn't a funeral, it was a funeral prep.  A group of people stood by another people-mover-truck like the pot-smokers were riding in, while three men hand-dug a grave.  Just their heads, shoulders were visible above the ground -along with their shovel scoops throwing dirt in the air.  Have I mentioned that the temperature on Wednesday was a suffocating 95 degrees with 99% humidity?  I'm assuming the truck was holding the body.  This was not in a cemetery, mind you, but in a rice field about 10 meters from the side of the highway.

Next we passed three young boys fishing.  Nothing especially noteworthy there, except that they were fishing in a puddle in the middle of a rice field.  The puddle was about 5 feet wide.  It's the rainy season, so there are a lot of puddles around, but I'm feeling confident they didn't catch anything.

And I can't believe I didn't mention this the last time I talked about funny things on the side of the road, but every week we pass a sculpture retailer who specializes in animal sculptures.  Full color, life-sized animal sculptures.  Just imagine two life-sized giraffes crossing necks on your front lawn and you're part way there.  You can also choose from an elephant, a water buffalo (complete with feeding bird on it's back), a silver-back gorilla and a vast array of elk, deer, monkeys and birds.  A 20 foot cement shrugging Christ has nothing on the giraffes.


Lastly, I'd like to observe a moment of silence for a fallen friend.  The Light That Never Goes Out went out on Sunday.  We weren't home to witness it's final moment.  In fact, we didn't even notice it had gone out until we turned the lights out before bed that night.  It's safe to say that the house is no longer the same without it -last night I had to physically turn a light on when I got out of bed to get a drink of water.  I looked back through my posts and found that I'd written about the light in late February, after it had been running non-stop for approximately ten days.  So it ran non-stop for about four and a half months.  Let's call it 150 days, or 3600 hours.  Standard lamp life for an MR16 is 2000 hours (like I've said, I'm really good at pub quiz), so TLTNGO likely doubled its life expectancy.  So I urge you to raise a glass at glass raising time to our dear departed friend.  And I wish that you all double your expected lifetimes as heartily as TLTNGO Today's title video is my dedication.

Crash

Despite having a ton of work to do, I'm writing instead.  This can be attributed to the fact that my email has been down since Saturday morning and I haven't been paid since May.  It's not easy to go from getting paid every two weeks, to once a month, to whenever my employer feels like it.

Reyna crashed her motorbike on Wednesday.  She's fine, but it was unfortunate that she picked the one day I needed to spend the night in Vung Tau to have her accident.  I stood in the rain and felt helpless while she stood on the side of the road in our neighborhood and bled onto the pavement.  The final diagnosis is a cracked bone in her foot, a fairly large cut/abrasion on that same foot, and various scrapes and bruises.  We agreed when I got home that it could have been much much worse.  She was lucky.

When I got home Thursday evening, the first order of business was to retrieve Reyna's motorbike, which she'd left at a cafe next to the site of the crash.  I was under orders to get the motorbike and drive it to the supermarket to purchase various supplies needed to tend her wounds.  I snapped a photo of Reyna looking pathetic on the couch in her cast to show to the proprietors of the cafe.  This way they would know that I wasn't some random thief.  Armed with my proof, I walked into the night.

When I arrived at the cafe it was clear I was interrupting a rousing card game between the cafe owners and a gaggle of taxi drivers.  A plump older Vietnamese woman didn't need to see my photo of Reyna on the couch.  She knew that I'd come for the motorbike.  It was sitting at the entrance and she motioned for me to take it away.  I thanked her as best I could, started the bike and began to back it out of the store.

I lifted the bike to get it off the stand when the handlebars broke.

When I say the handlebars broke, I don't mean they wouldn't work properly.  I mean they snapped off, leaving the handlebars clinging to the bike by a mass of cables.  The bars fell into my lap like a chicken with its neck wrung.  I looked inside and saw the one inch steel pipe that constitutes the substructure of the bars had sheared off.  The taxi drivers saw what happened and deserted their cards and bets to rush over and check on the problem.  Each appeared to have his own flashlight.  They felt around in the guts of the broken-necked bike, talked quickly to each other in Vietnamese and pointed here and there.  I put the kick-stand down, looked at the shop-owner and gave her the universal sign for "one minute."  I looked at my phone to check the time as I turned on my heel and walked toward the mechanic.  It read 8:20.

Ten minutes later I found the mechanics also sitting and enjoying beers and a card game.  We looked at each other and I said "Motorbike" and pointed down the street.  They said nothing and went back to their cards.  A few seconds later, one of the mechanics got up, gave me an annoyed look and started walking toward where the bike was parked.  I was following a little behind him when he turned into an internet cafe, sat down and started playing a first person shooter game.  I stood for a minute hoping he was just finishing up, decided he wasn't going to help me and walked back to the bike.

When I got back to the bike I called all my Vietnamese speaking friends.  No one answered.  Finally I called my boss.  He answered and let his wife, who is Thai and speaks a little Vietnamese, talk to the shop owner.  It was clear they wanted the un-steerable bike out of their cafe that night.  My boss offered to come help me wheel the bike home as one of the other people in the cafe put down a tiny red plastic stool for me to sit and wait.  I sat, sweated in the humidity and watched the shop-owner stir a giant pot of what I hoped was chicken six feet away.  I hoped it was chicken because between the pot and me two tiny kittens greedily nursed from a reclining female.  Bear in mind this is a restaurant.

Fifteen minutes later, my boss appeared.  We managed to get the handlebars seated on the bike well enough that when he pushed down with all his weight, he could get the bars to turn.  I sat and walked his bike behind him while he did his best stunt-driver impression.  When we arrived at the mechanic, the metal roll door to the shop was half closed.  I ducked under and called out.  The mechanic poked his head out of his room above the shop, mouth covered in rice.  He came down the ladder and surveyed the sad motorbike as he munched his dinner with his greasy hands.  He then called a couple friends over from the cafe, who finally deigned to help us wheel the bike back across the street to the overnight storage unit.

The overnight storage unit is a corrugated tin shack (walls and roof) with no windows and is about 25 square feet in total.  The man helping us opened the door.  As we pushed the bike into the shack, I noticed a pale blue light emanating from underneath a veil of mosquito netting.  My eyes adjusted to reveal a bed with a woman breast-feeding a baby.  Soft Vietnamese cool jams ushered from a nearby radio.  We put the kickstand down on the bike and got the hell out of there.  I walked back in the door of the house at 10:00 and apologized to Reyna for not making it to the supermarket before it closed.

The next day I went to the mechanic to pick up the motorbike.  They had replaced the entire front end, including the metal substructure for the handlebars, grips and the mirror that had been destroyed in the accident.  Total cost?  VND615,000 or $30.  Total cost for Reyna's medical bills (Doctor's consulatation, X-rays and a plaster cast)? VND750,000 or $37.50.  So come to Vietnam, where you can have a near-death experience and recover for under $75.00.

I'm starting a new thing here at The Tattooed Vegetarian.  Since I feel so clever about using song titles for all the post titles, I've decided to include the actual songs for your listening (and viewing) enjoyment.