Sunday, September 23, 2007

More Dragons, More Temples, and my First Vietnamese Stalker

One of the nice things about not having an itinerary is... well... not having an itinerary. We've been really enjoying Hoi An and so decided to forgo Nha Trang ("nah jang") and just stay here for a few more days. This also allows us the luxury of skipping what would be another 12 hour bus ride and instead just take a cheap $50 flight to Saigon where we will finish out our trip.

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Bicycles have become our preferred transportation around here. Here is what the less touristy part of town looks like.

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The Full Moon Festival continues until tomorrow, so there is no escaping the drums and the dragons. Even on the beach today, these two adorable kids came and did their little dragon dance (which at that age doesn't look a whole lot different from the chicken dance at any Jewish wedding).

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Speaking of Jewish festivities, yesterday was the Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur, so I decided to honor it by going to another temple, even if it was not a Jewish one. We took an hour drive to the temple ruins of My Son ("may sun"), which means "Good Mountain." They have been around for about a thousand years and were built by the Chams people before they were absorbed into what is now Vietnam.

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These temples were not as impressive as the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia, but they are a few hundred years older, and you know what they say about respecting your elders.

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If you look closely at the bricks, there is no mortar holding them together. That's a real head scratcher for experts who ponder how these temples have held up all these years. Well, they held up until the Americans came and bombed them during the war. Now only about twenty of the original seventy are in good condition.

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The Cham people were also very into their phallic symbols. Couples could come rub this giant penis if they wanted be blessed with lots of children. Nowadays if you do the same thing in West Hollywood, it just means you have to tip more.

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Rather than drive back from My Son, we took a boat. By this time I was so experienced navigating the waterways of Vietnam that I just told the boat driver to take the day off.

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Okay, weird story. We were sitting on the beach today outside a little cafe. The wind had knocked over our two bottles of beer so I was returning to get replacements. Out of nowhere, a girl who works at the cafe whips out her camera phone and starts taking pictures of me.

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So I whipped out my camera and started taking pictures of her!

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But she wanted none of that, so next thing you know, we are dueling with our cameras trying to get shots of each other without being photographed ourselves. She didn't know who she was up against and naturally I kicked her ass in the photo-taking department.

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Afterwards she asked if I was married or if I had a girlfriend. After answering in the negative to both questions, she was not shy about applying for either position.

Actually, nearly every conversation with a local includes these questions in this order:

Do you want to buy (x)?

Where are you from?

Do you want to buy (x)? How about (y)?

How old are you?

Are you married?

Do you have a girlfriend?

Do you want to buy (x)? How about (y)? How about (z)? Bring it back to your girlfriend.

You don't have a girlfriend? Why not?

Do you want to buy (x)?


They are very persistent here.

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