the sky was grey and looked as if it could fall at any moment. looking out my window, in my air-conditioned room, i watched the rain fall. slow suicide. it felt like i was at home on a cold autumn night. outside everything seemed to be moving slowly; weighted down by the rain.

outside felt nothing like pennsylvania in the fall. it felt like you were holding your head above a boiling pot of water. the humidity and moisture creep into your pores and sweat runs down your face like tears.

on days like this, the weather controls the mood. that is, if you allow it to. it’s when there’s time to stare at the clouds and notice that they are all hanging a bit lower than normal. when you watch traffic flow by and only hear the hissing noise that tires make on wet roads. when you can never dry off.

people drive their motorcycles covered in ponchos. they drape them over the front of their bike and only their faces and lower legs get wet. they all should have been miserable but seemed to be driving with the same irrational ambition. i stood inside the yokohama tire dealership talking to the ladies. they were also being irrational. irrationally happy. they seemed to be unaffected by this ubiquitous rain. a rain so constant that it pounded its way into your head.

it was also a cleansing rain, i’m sure. i didn’t really notice.

it ended after i ate bun rieu. it’s a strange soup full of all sorts of oddities. some shellfish, some processed pork and some gelatinized pig’s blood. it was tasty but only because i loaded it with chilies. i left and the sky was clear and dark. i did my penance and the rain gods let up. it was as if i atoned for my attitude and was given a new lease on life.

now i’m able to celebrate again. i celebrate the republicans controlling the house, senate and presidency. i celebrate being the richest person here even though i’m a volunteer. i celebrate the heat of the day for cleansing me. i celebrate sarcasm.

when it rains it pours, right?

i went to the yokohama tire dealership this afternoon. i thought maybe i could catch some vietnamese before supper. i knew my buddy wasn’t going to be there (he is in long xuyen for the week) but i also knew that there would be plenty of people to talk to. turned out to be quite the language session.

i studied vietnamese with them for a couple hours. they told me i had to be the sales person. i stood behind the counter waiting for customers. i stood there, my pale face to the road, waiting for people to stroll up and look at motorcycle tires. a couple did. i asked them in my rudimentary vietnamese if they wanted to buy something. it sounded rude to me but everyone loved it. “what do you want to buy?” was what i asked. what a rude question for a salesperson. they would rattle something off and i just stood there while everyone laughed. haha.

so, i did that for a couple hours. actually sold a couple tires. they were wrapped in green tape that said “yokohama” all over it. the sales people now wanted an english lesson and i obliged.

today we studied the word, “cool.” how on earth do you explain this. the dictionary doesn’t have anything close and i haven’t found anything suitable in use here. i started to describe someone who was cool. someone who had, “all the girls” and “wore the right clothes.” so, they wondered, were they rich? “no”, i said. they just were cool. they knew how to act. they had tires in the store one of which was, in my opinion, ugly and one of which was very, well, cool. i pointed to them and said, “this is cool and this is not.” so, they wondered, were they just rich? the one tire was much more expensive than the other. i was getting no where so i dropped the lesson for now. i’ll pick it up later.

do teachers give up?

one of the customers asked me to go out and give her english lessons in exchange for vietnamese lessons. she gave me her number and said to call her after 9:00. haven’t decided if i will yet.

after all of this chaos, i decided to go and eat where i always do: a small restaurant that doesn’t have a name. the owners seem very poor and food is cheap. they all know me and i can practice my terrible vietnamese on them. i met a man there who wanted to take me for coffee. i obliged.

we went to the river. i was never there before and it didn’t seem to be moving. it was dark and the lights from surrounding buildings cast their wavering shadow. i looked at it closely. you could see trash slowly floating down. large dark objects jutted out of the water as it ambled by. everything seemed dirty but i told people that the view was, “beautiful.” they loved it. my friend bought me french-fries and coffee. i don’t think i’ll sleep tonight.

he talked to me in his english. terrible. just terrible. the first vietnamese person who spoke english worse than i spoke vietnamese. i guess it’s a milestone. i decided i shouldn’t loose this friend.

at first i thought it was a mistake. some scantily clad women ambled towards us with dyed hair. some was blonde (orange) and some was red (bright, cherry red). i thought, “great, hookers. just what i need.” (sarcasm) i thought maybe my friend thought i looked lonely. he quickly shooed them away. one of them told me, “my god is jesus too.” that disturbed me. she showed me a necklace that had the virgin mary’s face on it. agh. what a terrible combination. hooker with the virgin around her neck.

my friend told me he liked to play pool. (all through hand gestures) i told him i liked it too. we decided to leave the filthy river with it’s filthy inhabitants and head for the local pool hall.

i knew nothing of vietnamese pool. i can play back home but here i’m a novice. the game is played with three balls. one white, one yellow and one red. the red is neutral. the goal of the game (i found this out by making many wrong shots) is to hit your lead ball (either the white or yellow, depending) off of both of the other balls in the same shot. this requires much skill and i was quickly defeated. if you hit your lead ball off of the other two you get to shoot again. my friend explained that one time he succeeded 20 times in a row.

well, i had my fill of vietnamese for the day. i’m going to read now and probably won’t sleep well on account of the coffee. that and the virgin mary.

so, everyone here has a small motorcycle, right? either that or a bike. the motorcycles are small and seem to strain whenever they are asked to accelerate. they also scream when they brake. rush-hour is an buffet for the ear.

i always get a kick of the names. there is the ubiquitous honda dream. there is the dream, the dream I, the dream II, the super dream, the super dream I and the super dream II. it is the ford tarus of motorcycles here. the side panels are a rainbow of maroon, orange and purple. also, there is the max II (which looks like maxi), the best, the future, the spacy (i don’t think i could make this up), the wave, the support (what?), the welcome, the jupiter, the darling, the citi 100, the magic 100, the viva (where are we, madrid?), the boss, the team, the mystery, the deluxe, the vision, the fuzzy (nothing fuzzy about it), the sirus (not the one that goes to salford), the angel, the fx and the astro. those were the ones i wrote down in about 10 minutes of watching rush hour traffic.

i quickly counted all the vehicles that passed me in one minute. the road i’m on is one way and very narrow. one and a half lanes. in one minute i counted 165 vehicles of which maybe 6 were cars/trucks and 20 were bicycles. i thought i may have miscounted so i counted again. i got 177. the flow of traffic is relentless.

the yokohama tire dealership was to my left and a young man walked out and said hi to me. he said, “pleased to meet you, jon.” i pooled my memory but his face didn’t come up. did i know him? “you are 22, right? you look very young. you look too young to be a teacher.” i was dumbfounded, forced a smile and he drove off. guess i’ve been the center of conversation over at the ‘ole tire dealership.

another day that could fill a book. maybe a couple.

it all started out early. i woke up at 6:00 very tired and wished that i could have kept sleeping until maybe 10:00. walked to the supermarket and met ms. ha. she was a little late and i thought that i still might be able to crawl back in bed. we took a local bus to the main bus station. we were going to the cu chi tunnels.

ms. ha asked me to go with her because she hadn’t seen the tunnels yet and wanted to. i had been wanting to see them too. she said that if we did go, would i mind taking a local bus instead of the tourist bus? evidently we took the vietnamese tourist bus to go to vung tau and i didn’t know. i said sure. my face was excited but inside i was concerned. rightfully so.

this bus cost 1000 dong for a one and a half hour trip. that’s a hearty .07 cents. the tourist bus would have cost about 50,000 dong. the scent of state subsidies was in the air. we boarded and there were no passengers. we sat in the back where i could stretch my legs out and avoid the seat in front of me. the bus was very heavy and looked like a throwback to the ussr. the engine screamed and the shocks didn’t absorb. i think a belt was loose.

the bus slowly filled until there were people standing in the aisle. every stop someone would enter and the attendant would quickly dash out and haul a bicycle onto the roof. he would crawl down and back inside while the bus was moving through traffic. the man next to me was very young and had a small child. maybe three years old. the child looked green and that is not a figure of speech. he sat lifelessly next to me with his one hand inadvertently patting my leg as we bounced along. his father grabbed a vomit bag from the attendant (they had them handy) and held it open in front of his son’s face. the son stared at it for a good 10 minutes without puking. just the thought of him being sick almost put me over the edge.

we arrived just south of cu chi and were swarmed by local taxi drivers. ms. ha was trying to organize things but she’s as indecisive as a fawn. we finally got something organized. two moto drivers decided that they would take us the half hour trip, wait for us there, and drive us back. they drove too quickly. like they didn’t care if they died.

the cu chi tunnel parking lot was a small field and a long road stretched off into the jungle. my mind quickly shifted to the task at hand: i was to relive the war. i looked through the jungle growth. it was thick and i imagined you couldn’t see someone if they were only 10 feet in. the sky was was blue as death and the ground bleed red clay. it was a long walk and no one else was really around. then the unthinkable happened.

was i seeing things? i mean, i heard things. someone yelling into a bullhorn. people screaming. was i really seeing what i thought?

there were ten men dressed like guerilla soldiers running through the jungle. my heart stopped and i paused. they wore dark green helmets that spread out as they lowered. their backs were covered with jungle leaves. they held guns and ran low to the ground. i was sure that i was hallucinating.

we rounded the corner and there were about ten busses. they were parked half on one side of the road, half on the other all facing one another. the screaming i heard was that of children. they were all dressed in large green hats. the brims of the hats were round and wide. they all carried small paper vietnamese flags and waved them high above their heads. i was the only white face.

normally i have some idea about when i’m going to feel uncomfortable. i can prepare myself. now, the road led directly through the screaming children and right behind the ten or so soldiers that had just crossed in front of us.

the absurd happens. there is a tank that comes out of the woods right behind us. it’s made of wood and painted to look real. it is covered in leaves and there are many soldiers crouched around it. it is carrying speakers and gunfire can be heard. me and ms. ha are following this small band of ten soldiers and leading a tank. we are right in the middle of the parade. my white face in a sea of vietnamese. in a sea of vietnamese remembering their victory over my country. i was uncomfortable.

a man behind me walked in front of the tank. he had a uniform on with many stars and pins and what not. he spoke into a bullhorn. every once in a while the crowd would burst out into applause. i clapped too. it was a futile effort to assimilate myself. maybe if they all thought i understood his patriotic mumbo-jumbo they would leave me alone.

the entourage left us at the gate and proceeded through the jungle. i stood there stunned. behind me there were hundreds of children all dressed with green hat and flag. to my left there was a fake platoon of vietnamese soldiers and a tank. i hadn’t even seen the tunnels and was ready to go home.

we did finally make it to the tunnels. foreigners have to pay 65,000 dong while vietnamese pay only 6,000 dong. guess they figure that if you destroy their country you should pay a bit more to see the tourist attractions.

the tour was fascinating. for those that aren’t familiar with the cu chi tunnels, they are a series of tunnels that stretch for over 250 kilometers just north west of ho chi minh city. they were a strong hold of resistance during the vietnam war. they were all dug by hand in the clay soil. the tour guide said that, “the land around cu chi is good for rice. the land of cu chi is higher and is good for tunnels.” there are three levels of tunnels and some stretch well into the ground. there were hospitals underground and even tunnels that had entrances underneath the river.

we were shown a video. i was in a group of a couple koreans, some japanese and a few people from india. i never heard the phrase, “american-killer” so many times in my life. they kept saying it over and over. “these traps were american-killers. this person was distinguished as an american-killer. this girl killed 15 americans and was given high honors as an american-killer. these bamboo traps were once used to hunt animals. now they hunted americans. they were american-killers.” honest. made my stomach turn. i mean, my stomach would have turned too if someone was saying, “the napalm was a wonderful vietnamese-killer. agent orange has been a wonderful vietnamese-killer because it has allowed for deformities long after the war ended.”

we were shown the tunnels. we were first asked to find the entrance which no one could do. it was right under our feet and well hidden in a pile of dirt and leaves. the entrance was small and my shoulders wouldn’t have fit through. our guide showed us another section that had been remade for fat tourists. we crawled down into the tunnel and scurried through. it was only 30 feet long but scary. you had to run completely crouched over and my head constantly hit the ceiling. my shoulders also constantly rubbed the walls.

we went into another series of tunnels. they were all short and designed to show us how different stages of their operation worked. there were hospitals, store rooms, meeting rooms and a mess hall. at the end of the tour the guide asked if any of us wanted to go on a long tunnel walk. all the way to the river. i guess he didn’t think anyone would take him up on it because we were all breathing heavily. i decided i would like to go.

we crawled into the tunnel, me behind him. he would point out bamboo traps along the way. he scurried through the tunnels like he was born there. without the light from his flashlight i was alone in the darkness, trapped under a thick layer of clay. i felt along the walls to find my way. they were rough and the ground was smooth. the tunnel twisted and turned many times. we had already lowered ourselves into the second tier of the tunnel system. we were about 20 feet under the ground. the air was thick and felt like it had been through fifteen people’s lungs before it found mine. i was covered in dirt. finally i found the exit and made it back to the tour group. there aren’t too many times in my life i’ll be able to crawl through the cu chi tunnels.

at the end of the tour someone asked our guide what he did during the war. he said he was a volunteer and served in the tunnels here. he was born in 1948. the same year both of my parents were born. he showed us his wound. a gunshot had taken off a large part of his left shoulder and now he had a gaping scar there. my parents were his age. makes you wonder.

we left and headed off to the buddhist temple. it is sunday. there we found the american war memorial. this sobering memorial stands in a large room maybe 100 feet across and 40 feet high. the walls are covered in black granite. the names of those that died are permanently etched. the granite stretches up to the ceiling and around the room on three of the four sides. the names are small. much smaller than the vietnam memorial in washington dc. there were many more names. there were so many more names.

i stood in the middle of the room and looked around. the granite walls looked as if they wanted to fall and crush me. they loomed over me. the weight of all of those names seemed to be enough to bring the walls down. why should i carry so much guilt for something i had nothing to do with?

we made it back on the bus. it reminded me of the tunnels. dark, hot, thick air, no space to move. you have to imagine you’re somewhere else to stay sane.

friendly people are incredibly wonderful. they make you feel warm inside. i always seem to trust them instantly and smile a lot.

tonight i went out with a man named phan quoc huy. he works at the yokohama tire dealership which is located about 20 meters from my apartment. i walk by the place every day. at first i just noticed the large red sign. then, i started looking in the shop as i passed it. i always noticed two young people standing aimlessly behind the counter. they looked to be about 30. one day i waved to them. they started waving back. we had a wonderful wave and smile relationship.

at the beginning of this week i bought a paper from the vendor across the street. when i was walking back, phan quoc huy was there, outside his shop, to greet me. he offered me tea and invited me in. i was flattered. i met him and his assistant and we exchanged phone numbers. his assistant is quiet. she smiles crookedly and has bright eyes. she throws in japanese words even though she’s vietnamese. i guess she thinks i know japanese. i just smile. he is tall but shorter than me. his face is well proportioned and he cocks his head to one side when he talks. his hair is cut short and spiked up all over and his teeth all seem to be heading in different directions. tonight he took me out to eat.

he called me at 7:00 and said he had just gotten off of work. we could go now. i walked down to the yokohama tire dealership and hoped on his motorbike. everything was dark and everyone was smiling. i sat snugly against him on the motorcycle. all forms of homophobia have to be thrown out the window. the insides of my legs touched the sides of his hips. i had to press my head against his to hear what he was saying. when we would take a violent turn, i would have to grab onto his stomach. the position would only be uncomfortable if i let it be.

the wind blew my hair everywhere. we drove for maybe 20 minutes and talked. he speaks wonderful english but wanted to practice. the streets are all full of people eating and selling things. small stores are everywhere and everyone seems to be employed by themselves. the fluorescent lights from the shops took the place of overhead street lamps.

we arrived at some small place where we were going to eat. it had a high roof and the walls were a pleasant light blue. we sat down at a table that was very small. it wasn’t more than a foot and a half off the ground. we sat on small plastic seats. they were blue and green and looked like foot rests. they had no back and were only six inches off of the ground. ones legs end up being higher than the table and one ends up eating in the fetal position. he ordered.

the food came and it was spring rolls and squid soup. the place specialized in squid. we talked about many things and i didn’t want to talk to him in vietnamese. i wanted to talk about culture and philosophy. he didn’t care. he wanted to practice english.

“how many hours a week do you work at the tire dealership? i see that you are there all the time.” my words were clear and pronounced. “oh, 80 hours every week. we work very long in vietnam.” wow. 80 hour weeks every week at the yokohama tire dealership. “and we normally take night classes to learn languages. vietnamese people want to learn many things!” he was smiling. i guess ms. ha’s story wasn’t as unique as i thought. we talked about the war. he said that vietnam had seen many terrible things and that his was the first generation to really experience peace. he didn’t want to talk about it and i felt like a tourist for bringing it up. surely i had known that we were well beyond war.

we talked about girlfriends and mothers. he wondered if my family worried about me. i said i thought they did. he thought that his mother wouldn’t let him go so far away for such a long time. she would worry too much. he said that we were part of our parents and that we could not deny that.

i asked him what he thought about the chairs. i said that i really liked to sit like this to eat but he didn’t believe me. i didn’t believe myself either so i made up some reason. i said it had something to do with feeling more alive. more real. i don’t think he understood me and acted like he did. phew. he said that he didn’t like sitting on, what he called, “high chairs” because you couldn’t laugh. he said it was because when you sit on high chairs you are in a big restaurant and that no one laughs there. one time he was in a big restaurant with his boss and someone told a joke but no one could laugh. here, everyone was laughing he said. he started to laugh just because he could.

well, i guess my reason wasn’t too far off. just being alive, feeling more real. eating close to the earth. feeling like you’re camping. he said that we think alike. we both like to eat close to the ground. he thought maybe it was because we were both young.

wonderful. me and phan quoc huy both enjoyed sitting close to the ground because we were both young. i wasn’t american and he wasn’t vietnamese. we were both young enough to understand that it was special even though we really didn’t understand each other.

i’m going to go out with him again. this time his assistant will come too. she had a japanese class tonight.

as he was taking me home he said, “oh, it is 9:00 and very late. i must get to bed to wake up early tomorrow.” he took the only two hours he had free tonight to spend with me. i’m honored.