The Hills Are Alive. . .

A part of our orientation for the Fulbright Program entailed a bonding trip to Mai Chau, a mountainous region located in Hoa Binh province, about 135 km from Hanoi.  It is home to the black and white Thai who are related to the Thai who settled in Thailand.  In speaking with our guide, I discovered that basic numbers and animals were the same as in Thailand! 

At the Mai Chau Lodge, where we stayed.

 

The wooden houses on stilts with wooden tiled roofs looked a lot like the old style in Northern Thailand.  The Mai Chau area was definitely the prettiest place I have been to in Vietnam.

 

We also took a trip through a Flower Hmong village nearby--very picturesque because of the lovely and colorful outfits of the flower Hmong women!  While Misoula has a fairly large settlement of Hmong refugees from Laos, they are not of the Flower Hmong group.

 

 

Flower Hmong ladies having their hair straightended in the village beauty salon.

This is in the living room of one of the houses.  Note the use of beer bottles around the bottom of the house walls to help let in light.

Cooking over an open fire.

Corn storage above the kitchen.

A basket backpack for gathering corn.

Eating a hardboiled egg for breakfast.

 

Hmong family shopping for new shoes.

The outdoor sewing room.

Good protection from skin cancer!





Field Trip to Co Loa

During my first visit to Hanoi, I had the wonderful opportunity to travel out to the Co Loa archeological site with my Vietnamese language classmate Teagan McGillivray and her professor Dr. Nam Kim, who are both at the University of Wisconsin.  Co Loa is in Vietnam's Red River Delta near modern-day Hanoi.  It may have been the seat of an early state-level society during the Iron Age. 

Teagan is taking core samples of the ancient city wall to research which crops were grown back then.

I seem to find kitties wherever I go.  My new motto is that cats and dogs are friends not food!   This motto is an especially important message in Northern Vietnam, where cat meat and dog meat restaurants abound!

Fulbright Friends and Adventures

I finally found my password and so am blogging again!  Here are some of my friends here in Vietnam.

Rakka and Ashley are the Fulbright Ph.D. students here in Vietnam this year.  I am lucky enough to have both Ashley and her husband James living down the street from me, while Rakka, who is working on the epidemiology of dengue fever in the Mekong Delta, lives in Hanoi!

 

Here I am, leaving Hanoi, with Diane (who specializes in higher education) and Pam (who is a legal professor), and one of Diane's Vietnamese contacts.  Diane and Pam live in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Here, James and Pam sip some rice wine as a part of a bonding experience in Mai Chau village, outside of Hanoi.  We also had a nice walk in the countryside and through a village near Mai Chau.

 

Our farewell dinner in Hanoi, with Miss Thu Huong, the assistant in charge of the US Fulbright Scholar Program in the US Embassy in Hanoi.

 

I took James and Ashely shopping at a wonderful papergoods shop in Saigon two weeks ago.  We even had a chance to taste some lovely Vietnamese noodles with fresh herbs and fried spring rolls on top!

Last, but not least, is my friend and colleague at the Mekong Delta Development Research Institute, Dang, who recently completed his MSc in Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.  Dang went with Ashley, James, and I and the English Teaching Assistant peering over his seat, Kate, to have dinner with the vice-consul and his family in Saigon.  Way too much fun was had by all!

 

Here, Dang and I join an international businessman, Jake, at Bobby Chinn's restaurant in Saigon, after our official Fulnright dinner.  Bobby Chinn has more than one tv show on cooking and makes delicious grapes encrusted with goat cheese and nuts--yum!  

How nice! You can speak Chinese!

I finished my eight week long Vietnamese class at the Southeast Asian Summer Institute in Madison.  After innumerable glasses of iced Pete's Coffee, an exciting fan dance at the SEASSI talent show, and a quick few days in Missoula packing and enjoying Biga Pizza, I boarded the plane for Vietnam.

Vietnamese professors and students, SEASSI 2012

My trip to Vietnam left something to be desired. . .the ticket was over $5,000, and I paid $275 for my luggage, yet I had trouble with my bags at every stop, maybe in part because the flights had been billed separately to save money.  The highlight of the trip was spending an hour or so in the Seoul airport, where they have a Korean culture area.  Despite my jet lag and exhaustion, I managed to paint this woodblock folk picture, which was a very zen experience in the hustle and bustle of this ultra-modern airport!

After perhaps 30 hours at airports and on planes, I reached the Hanoi airport and took a taxi to a small hotel near the airport.  The next morning, I walked to a nearby bar/restaurant and managed enough Vietnamese for the most important question, "Where is coffee?"  Though the bar keeper didn't have coffee there, she walked me across the highway and down the way to a small cafe run by her niece, where she prepared me my first delicious and VERY STRONG cup of Vietnamese coffee!  It is shown in this photo, dripping through a little fliter into a glass with sweetened condensed milk in the bottom, being heated by sitting in a tea cup full of hot water.  Very cool!

So, I got coffee using Vietnamese!  Yay!  But my language skills apparently leave something to be desired as, after I told the hotel manager in what I thought was intelligible Vietnamese that I would be working as a professor at Can Tho University,  she said in English, "How nice!  You can speak Chinese!"  Apparently I really am nearly unintelligible as the taxi driver, thinking that I was flying to Guang Zhou (Canton), China, took me to the international departure area, not the national departure area where I can fly domestically to Can Tho.  Sigh. . .

After a short two hour plane ride, I reached beautiful Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta south of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).


A river in Can Tho City, from the plane



Boat with view of the longest bridge in Southeast Asia
taken in front of my hotel



Touring America's Dairyland

Bicyclists were whizzing around capitol square this morning, apparently a part of the bike race of America's dairy land.  Here are a few dairy land facts.  Did you know that 99% of Wisconsin's farms are family owned and that the state produces an average of 2.2 billion pounds of milk each month?!  No wonder there are cheese curds everywhere!



Development of Can Tho University

Can Tho University Building Site, 1966



Can Tho University Classroom Made of Bamboo and Thatch, 1976



Mekong Delta Development Institute, 2012 (This is where I will be working.)

Views of Can Tho and Surrounds

My friend Allison and her daughter are traveling around Vietnam right now.  They very kindly provided these photos of Can Tho!  Check out all of the trees!!! 

Traffic in Can Tho appears to be more manageable than traffic in Ho Chi Minh City!



This is the Social Sciences Building at Can Tho University.
It's much more up-to-date than my office building at the University of Montana!



Shaded Lane at Can Tho University

Fruit Stop between Can Tho City and Ho Chi Minh City
Durian (the large spiny fruit at the bottom) scares me!
It smells and tastes like baby poo. . .