Thai Nguyen Road Trip

Friday, July 20, 2007

This morning Sandy, Bella, and I headed out to Thai Nguyen, the “capitol” of one of the outline provinces. It was over 80km away and it took us a while to get there. Sandy had said that it was a “windy” road and having stuff along for carsickness was a good idea. She said she often sleeps to avoid being sick. It turns out it is not a windy road, but that the whole time you are swerving back and forth between bicycles, motor scooters, semis and various other vehicles including cows and waterbuffalo. Actually, there was never a water buffalo IN the street, but close enough to the edge that the people with him (or her) were in the road and we needed to go around them.

We got to the school a bit before their morning break and go to listen to their ending “cheer” with the classes. The did the call/response “I said a boom, chicka, boom…” However, they had janitor style, “I said a broom sweepa broom…” and Astronaut style, “I said to the moon to the moon…” I was laughing at the creativity. Apparently there is also cowboy style, but we didn’t here it today.

We walked over to the guest house where the team is staying and the front lawn was filled with goats. Big, small, black, white… Bella was trying to figure out if this was a fight worth having and decided, wisely in my opinion, that just walking with the humans was enough. We had an amazing lunch. I must say that I have never had such great food as on this trip!!! There was molasses-roasted boar with lotus seeds, egg flower soup, stir-fry shrimp, and a tofu wrapped meatball of sorts. We also had passionfruit juice to drink. We spent after lunch with the team as they got ready for their culture presentation on Christmas and its origins. We stayed while they presented and then headed back to HaNoi.

As we headed back into town a storm rolled in. The motorbikes were still racing around, but everyone had on rain slickers. Apparently, no one wants to be the first to stop (out of pride) to put on the poncho, but once someone pulls over, about 20 other bikes will join them. The slickers draped over the front of the bike and many of them had clear sections so the front light still shone through. In addition, some folks had a “double” slicker with 2 head holes so both people on the bike were covered.

For dinner we went with friends of Sandy to a Pakistani restaurant that was amazing. I have never had so many rich flavors in one dish, let alone all the flavors in the meal. The owner was very friendly and brought us some dishes that he just wanted us to try. One of the dishes had “pinkle” in it. That is actually the English word, but none of us had heard it. We had some carrots and mango that also had pinkle and it was a cross between vinegar, pickled, and anise flavoring.

Tomorrow we need to be at the school at 6 am for a trip to Ha Long Bay. We will be gone until Sunday night. We’re going with the teachers at the school I taught at.