Da Nang it!
...written on 04.08.05, @ 6:01 p.m.
Jesseca and I are in the bowels of an internet station in Da Nang. Our flight to Ho Chi Min (Saigon) has been delayed, so we have four free hours.
It's sweltering of course and the only refreshment is a brief whoosh of air from a fan mounted on a wall. The third world is another world as we know it and all expectations are best left at home. Though we tend to be our experiences and flashes of a Dominican Republic twenty years ago would fit the picture here for many things, I want to look at Vietnam on its own dusty, dingy, and dirty merit. I am not saying it is good or bad, just that it is dusty, dingy and dirty in this city.
We are swamped with street vendors, toting and touting goods of all kinds. Many in liberty scale baskets that hang from their shoulders dripping with familiar tropical fruits. I had a guanabana (soursop) the other day and the small yellow banana, what, manzanillas? I've only had one mango though I hunger for many more. I don't like to haggle.I'm reticent to bargain, but it's all a game and I've seen some very interesting things happen.
I was sitting in a clothier shop in Hoi An. Jesseca was negotiating for a pair of pants and skirt she wanted made. I already had finished ordering
two Chinese shirts, when a young girl came up and said she was ready to continue our bargaining of the day before. "It wasn't me." I told her, but she continued with the often heard hooks. "Where are you from?" she asked. "America.", my answer. "How long have you been in Hoi An?" "Three days and you?" I countered. "Fifteen
years, but I am not from Hoi An, I'm from my mother and even then we come from the moon, the sand and the stars."
Her adept English takes me aback and I ask her more questions, all the while being reeled in for the final sale. Her family you see makes the silk cards with scenes of Vietnamese life on them. Five for five dollars, but six for five now because it is "Happy Hour".
"Where did you learn your English?" "Half from school, the other
half from tourists. I listen to what they say, ask them what it means if I don't know and then I remember." "How about four dollars?" I ask, fanning the six cards across my chest. She takes the five dollar bill I offer and disappears in the ensuing chaos at my table with the seamstress and Jesseca haggling over the clothes to be made.
Out on the street, Jesseca is happy with her negotiation. I am telling her the story of the clever fifteen year old when to my right appears an old lady with the very same silk cards who says,"Hello. Madame,ten cards for a dollar?"