It’s the most wonderful time of the year
Posted: December 15, 2011 Filed under: Christmas, family | Tags: christmas, family, Hanoi Leave a comment »
Right, we’re out of here. Later tonight we’ll be catching a flight back to the North East of England to spend Christmas with my family so there won’t be much activity on the blog for the next couple of weeks.
I just wanted to say Happy Christmas to friends, family, people who take time to read this blog etc etc. It’s been a wonderful year all in all.
I can’t wait to get back to see everyone in the UK and yet Hanoi is currently stunning. We’ll back back for the cold of January.
Take care.
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A Death Anniversary in the Countryside
Posted: December 11, 2011 Filed under: change, family, Food and drink, Reflections, Stories | Tags: change, countryside, family 2 Comments »There’s a balance when it comes to wider family events, particularly the countryside ones.
I know behind the scenes my wife makes my excuses and we keep our appearances to a respectable minimum. It wasn’t that this one was especially important so much as we hadn’t shown our faces for a while. When my wife said it would take half a day I thought we’d be back by lunch. It turned out she’d meant it would be 12 hours door to door.
I recall in KOTO days, visiting the countryside homes of the poorest kids. Food was a struggle but the sheer newness and oddness of the situation made it unmissable. Later as the experience becomes less novel the food becomes proportionately less palatable too. Likewise the drinking, that it’s hard to duck out of, is now a chore rather than just a tale to be mentally filed away for future travel anecdotes.
That said, all things considered, yesterday was fun. No one now is either surprised or offended if I just pick at the food and then fill up on my own smuggled in snacks. The drinking was beer, whisky and rice wine before noon. Having written off the day in advance, being drunk before noon was no hardship. There’s a brief couple of hours of euphoria before the inevitable afternoon fug.
For all my caution when it comes to attending family events I’m proud to be a part of these people. My wife has favourites among them and those she’ll only politely acknowledge. Good people and bad people, family feuds and debts of gratitude from the past.
Their own stories set against this incredible pace of change could be a book on its own and, in that respect, I don’t suppose they’re any different to any other family in Vietnam. I noted that while the oldest members of the family are farmers, the youngest include TV producers, an artist and a cafe owner.
I snored home hungover and slept for three hours. A friend called round late yesterday and said I was still stinking of cheap booze. This morning I felt poisoned and wondered, for the millionth time, what other than rice was in the wine.
But during the day the sheer absurdity of me, sitting cross-legged, eating and drinking deep into the Vietnamese countryside with my Vietnamese family and wife, wasn’t far from my thoughts. A beautifully ridiculous situation that, against all odds, still somehow turns a chore into something genuinely life affirming.
Life these days is very very good. Recently I’ve felt just as much in love with Vietnam as I ever have.
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The Chicken Feet
Posted: December 4, 2011 Filed under: family, Food and drink, Stories | Tags: chicken feet, food, wife 3 Comments »My wife’s taste for chicken feet is, more often than not, something she indulges when I’m not around.
She knows not only can’t I stomach the things, I cringe just watching her eat them. With some Vietnamese food I feel the challenge of actually finding protein between skin, gristle and bone is more the point than actually filling your belly or even enjoying the taste.
Occasionally when chicken feet are craved, but I’m in the house, the concession is I get to ring for a pizza. The implied deal is she won’t mention the fact that it’s both expensive and unhealthy. Then we both silently stuff ourselves with our mutually-repulsive food.
One of my wife’s closest friends lives a few alleys down and she too is married to a Brit. Recently, when he was not around, they met, chatted and munched chicken feet without anyone to disapprove.
She came back with a tale of another Anglo Vietnamese union where the pair had moved to the UK. After several months the wife craved chicken feet so much she overcame her shyness and asked her local butcher if he could supply them.
“The butcher said she could have as many chicken feet as she liked,” she tells me, “for free!”
Truly a promised land.
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Vietnamese men need to be empowered too
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: family, Reflections | Tags: gender 13 Comments »Some posts/columns you live with for a while and others you write in five minutes. This one has been knocking around my head for some time. It was going to be a blog post, then I decided it worked best as a column for my regular Word Hanoi slot. I wrote it with that in mind but, for whatever reason, it didn’t make the cut.
It’s written to provoke debate and is a little mischevious. If I don’t 100% believe my own argument, I guess what I am trying to say is this – biggots and NGOs alike tend to gender stereotype. I don’t believe western stereotypes can even begin to explain roles here in Vietnam. Neither east nor west is perfect we are just different and we have different ideas of what is right.
I am in awe of Vietnamese women but I also believe that if Vietnam is to change then both sides need to adapt. What I don’t mention below is that I fear more for Vietnamese men. Women seem to be far better at adapting to Vietnam’s fast pace of change.
***
I’ve been threatening to write this for a while – even going so far as to test drive its arguments over drinks with friends.
So far it hasn’t gone down well.
So I’ll say it quickly then I’ll do what I can to justify it. Hopefully we won’t be as far apart in our thoughts as you might imagine and yes it might appear to go against traditional thinking but here we go….
It’s men that need to be empowered in this country. Not women.
Yes, you will rightly point out that in 99% (made up but hopefully accurate figure) of key government and industry jobs men are at the helm. No argument there.
And yes you can also tell me that Vietnamese men don’t have the best reputations – and I will gladly agree. I briefly tried to outline my thoughts on this on Twitter and was told that women had better things to worry about than men – they were too busy keeping the house and family together while men were heavy drinking, gambling, chasing prostitutes etc.
Yes, yes, yes but…
This is my point.
It’s time that men didn’t have time for any of those negative activities. The devil will find work for idle hands and all that. But women need to change their attitudes too.
Sisters, give your man a broom and tell him this time it’s his turn to sweep up. Stay with him, encourage him. Point out what he is doing wrong and what’s he doing right.
DO NOT stand over him tutting and shaking your head after 30 seconds before kicking him out the door to the local bia hoi and doing it yourself.
Now repeat that with a fair share of the cooking, cleaning etc.
Kicking that workload up the chain surely then results in those corporate high fliers suddenly having a load more daily tasks to get through. Right, now we have an even playing field.
In Vietnam, women control the money which limits men’s freedom. When I hit my teens my dad starting giving me pocket money. A couple of year’s later he started paying it monthly reckoning that a larger sum would be a better test of my ability to manage cash. I think he was right.
Too many men here only manage their daily lunch money. I’m one of them. Once you get used to it it’s a luxury. Your wallet magically fills itself almost daily and meanwhile I never give rent or bills a thought.
And yet it’s making parts of my brain as flabby as the rest of me.
My office is dominated by women. Genuinely the smartest, most hardworking, friendly, kind, intelligent people I have ever met. I leave work worn out in the evenings aware, from conversations, that the rest of their day will be taken up not only by domestic chores but also tutoring kids, attending gyms, studying for further qualifications etc.
Perhaps Vietnamese women are just too incredible. They need to shrink in order for Vietnamese men to grow. They need to raise their expectations of their other halves. More pats on the backs and a lot less tuts.
Can’t we raise our expectations rather than letting men become a self fulfilling prophecy of uselessness? While we’re at it we should also remember that the cliche is far from representative of all men.
I don’t believe Vietnamese women are not empowered enough to put their foot down regarding a few chores. Vietnamese women are fearless. Following this line of thought, the problem must lie instead in their lack of belief in their men. Men can’t do anything because they’ve never been allowed to. How could they help when they’re only men?
Of course men should be encouraged to do more – but more importantly they need to be *allowed* to do more.
Women, empower your man.
Men, trust me, this works out better for all of us
The Irish Stew
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: family, Food and drink, getting married, Reflections, The Cart | Tags: cart, food, irish stew, wife 1 Comment »Earlier this week, The Cart specials popped up on my Twitter feed and I was happy to see, for the first time, Irish stew among the items on offer. It prompted the post below and the explanation of how it has come to mean more to me than the sum of its potatoes, carrots etc.
***
As a foreigner, before you can marry a Vietnamese national, you have to go through the kind of interview best known for its dramatisation in the movie Green Card.
Basically they want to check it’s not just a marriage of convenience.
Having seen the movie, I filled my head with lots of useless facts about her family and her favourite food, cosmetics, TV shows etc. In reality the interview was actually a lot more friendly than I’d imagined.
After a general chat they suddenly hit me with: “When did you realise that you had fallen in love with your wife to be?”
Had I prepared an answer then I may have come up with something that made me look a little less bad. Then again any other answer would have been a lie.
“When she made me Irish stew,” I said.
I’m not proud of it but there was some sentiment behind it rather than just my-wife-as-personal-chef. Honestly we both cook as much as each other.
You see I’d just spent a lonely year in rural Cameroon. A year which in many ways I had chosen to do after the break up of a pretty disastrous relationship.
In my new apartment in Hanoi I was still marvelling that hot water came out of the tap every single time I turned it on. I’d stand there grinning and shaking my head in wonder as the steam rose.
I had just met my now wife and I had cooked for her first. Some days later she told me that she would return the favour but wouldn’t tell me what she was making. I’m pretty good with Vietnamese food but feared it might be something I’d struggle with. Either way I was working down the other end of the studio flat as these amazing smells wafted by.
I kept asking what it was and she’d tell me it was a surprise.
Finally she relented and said: “It’s Irish stew”.
Still bruised from a previous relationship, still grateful for home comforts after Africa, I nearly burst into tears on the spot. Making me food was one thing, going to the effort of researching how to cook something so foreign moved me beyond words.
Now, just over a year into the marriage, I teasingly sometimes refer to the Irish stew moment as being “back then” when she’d do anything for me (and I for her).
“That was my trap”, she says, with a mock evil glint in her eye.
