October 1887: French Indochina and Vietnam's Amazing Literacy Rates

Look at these crazy stats! These are for youngsters;
they taper off a few percentage
points as age increases.

In October of 1887, France formally founded French Indochina, and with it solidified a path which would result in modern Vietnamese rates that are through the roof.

(beat)

Wait, really?

Yes! But let's give credit where it's due: this story spans much more, from French Jesuit missionaries to a 8,000 word trilingual dictionary to a very recent (historically speaking) adoption of the entire written Vietnamese language.

Today's script is called Quoc Ngu, or "National Language," and is the national script of Vietnam. It's most interesting characteristic, beyond the tones inherited from it's Chinese history, are that it is in Roman characters and is pronounced phonetically! This makes it different in appearance from most other SE Asian languages, which generally looks like beautiful scribbling.

However, below the makeover it got in the 17th and 19th centuries, the grammar remains very similar to others in the regional language family (and the grammar is so easy it's almost comical, which probably also helps literacy).

In addition, literacy rates in Modern Vietnam are high. Like, really high. Per UNICEF's most recent data (2013), total adult literacy rate, 2008-2012, lies at a cool 93.4%. For youth it climbs even higher - 96.7% of Vietnamese females 18-25 are literate, and the males figure rests at 97.5%. These are STUNNING figures, and, if accurate (I'm not sure if that data was collected in-house by UNICEF or outsourced), are a serious achievement. We'll learn more about how these great literacy rates run up against the State Party and their media restrictions much later in this series, so keep these in the back of your mind.

To put this in perspective, America has an ongoing literacy crisis (as does much of the world, developed or no). 14% of American adults can't read. A ridiculous 19% of high school graduates cannot read. What. the. f*ck. (Yes, the problem is definitely unions, and not the fact that poverty shrinks your brain from birth. *eyeroll*) These numbers are from a US Department of Education paper published in 2013. If that doesn't break your brain, I don't know what will.

Ok, but backing away from the politics and back to the French (if I had a nickel)...

Saigon Sights: The Reunification Palace

The Reunification Palace is one of the most historically and architecturally interesting sights in HCMC, and it shows. It might not offer a lot of spectacle for the casual tourist, but inside it remains a perfectly preserved piece of mid-century Modern Vietnamese, from the open air party solon up top to the bunkers buried below, and it's stunning.

This beautifully modern building, unique in Vietnam, saw every historic event that occurred in South Vietnam from the date of the Geneva accord and the withdrawal of the French to the moment that Liberation forces crashed through the front iron gate on April 30, 1975, terminating the regime.

Let's take a tour through time and space!

This is the state banqueting hall. Banquets with up to 100 guests were held in this room. One of the most notable was the inauguration dinner of President Nguyen Van Thieu and his VP on October 31, 1967. The rooms gold color scheme was intended to create a convivial atmosphere.

13 Haikus For the Elderly Woman Next Door

There's something about a stoic, silent figure that inspires the poetic in me. What is their mission? My neighbor is usually on her tiny balcony, watching over the alley. Unfortunately, I know little more than that. Here are some haikus I've constructed to help myself make sense of you, elderly Vietnamese neighbor grandma. A year and a half of enjoying you enjoying your little balcony has finally produced something.

Also, I'd been struggling to find a way to incorporate some modern and traditional art in my blog - taking pictures of art museums is pretty passe - and this presented an opportunity for me. Vietnamese art is the product of complex forces within Vietnamese culture and society, and these are a few of my favorites! There are a few galleries in Vietnam that deal art to international clients, which is where I've gotten most of these pictures of the works. Sadly, most are privately owned and my pictures of the art museum were pretty much crap.

And thank you for not calling the cops on our awesome stereo setup on the terrace, neighbor. (And that goes for anyone living in our vicinity who may be reading this, thank you!)

Xin cam on ba.

192 A.D.: The Chams in the Land Before Vietnam

In my last post we heard a bedtime story about the origins of the Vietnamese people (TL;DR: Viets are spawn of a fairy and a dragon, who then got an amicable divorce and each took half the kids back to their parents' homes). This occurred in one of the earliest Vietnamese kingdoms, Dai Viet, which covered the area of current North Vietnam/South China.

Fast forward about 1,500 years and we encounter the Sa Huynh peoples, the forebears of the more culturally developed Chams. Scholars believe they were Malayo-Polynesian-speaking seafarers from Borneo, and this tendency to dominate the seas never completely left them as they founded what would become one of the regions' powerhouse governments, complete with major religions and early ideas of statecraft imported from the Indians. It was initially centered on the modern central Vietnam coast around Da Nang, although the sea unquestionably was their true dominion.

The Sa Huynh thrived and expanded from roughly 1,000 B.C. to the 2nd Century A.D., which is when we find the Cham peoples' distinctive culture flowering. Cham artifacts and ruins have been found on most of the western islands of the South China Sea (at that time known as the Cham Sea, because they know who's in charge), including the Sprately and Paracel islands, which we'll learn a bit more about much, much later in this series.

This is a very unique Champa sculpture that represents the nine gods (navagraha) associating planets to other deities, and was once worshipped. It's linked strongly to the Indian traditions of cosmology, and very common in India. Similar remnants have been found among the ancient Cambodian Khmer art. Taken at the HCMC History Museum of Vietnam.

Hinduism was imported early on in the kingdom's history from Indian merchants, and was followed later by Islam. Adherents of both religions also revered Cham kings and deities, as well as their ancestors, much like virtually all current-day Kinh (ethnic Vietnamese) do.

Dressed to Kill in Hoi An, Courtesy of Ha Na Tailor

Red club! BTW Kat's shirt is an outline of Wisconsin with "curdlandia" written across it. LOVE IT.

In January I had what might be my most successful traveling stint of all time, with my sister and her best friend. Finding good travelin' buds be hard, amirite??

We were in sync in almost all things. Foods (all), bedtimes (early), fruit juices (again, all), music (OMG THIS ST. VINCENT ALBUM HOLY SMOKES), opinions regarding gazelles (majestic, obviously). It was a not really a surprise, though, that I was not really into the "let's make me new clothes!" thing, as we approached Hoi An - a city known globally as a custom clothier paradise. I'm not a clothes shopper on the best of days, and presented with unlimited choice? Well, that's just downright intimidating.

However.

All it took was one carefully dropped hint from my sister, and I was off to the races, too (although I managed to spend several hundred USD less on dresses and blazers).

Click through to see the fantastic clothes we got, custom made by Ha Na Tailor!

[p.s. Please forgive the wretched photography. These beautiful women deserved better, but all they got was me and my iPhone 5 camera. haha!]

Saigon Sights: The FITO Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine

A re-creation of an apothecary's cupboard, above the stairs.

One of the last days of my roommate Elena's time in Vietnam (as a medical intern), she wanted to visit the FITO Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine, and Antoine and I readily agreed. You can't really visit the HCMC Tripadvisor.com site without noting that this museum is almost always the first or second-rated attraction in the city, and yet I'd never been... even though it's a mere 1 km from my house.

Now, this sounds like it might be a fairly dry subject, but wow. Not only is the museum absolutely captivating, but it's beautiful and informative as well. Those reviews online have it right! It may be a small side trip out of the main D1 area, but it's completely worth it.

Click through for a small photo tour, for those of you who may not be able to see it in person, and feast your eyes!

Dare to Fail Gloriously: What Happens When No One Reacts to Your Work?

It's usually about this time that I just put the laptop away and start
surfing reddit and imgur.

I'm pretty lucky in the fact that there are usually at least a couple dozen people who check out each post, and oftentimes more (maybe as many as 4 DOZEN! or MORE - like 5 dozen. So crazy). But not always.

Sometimes it gets me down. I've read a fair amount about blogging. The ins and outs, and the way you need to divide your time among many different tasks, the hard work of building, engaging, and maintaining an audience, etc etc etc... it's actually a ton of work, and a lot of it is promotion stuff that I, frankly, am not very good at.

One of the pieces of advice I see repeated regularly is that the ratio of content creation to promotion is much more lopsided than I previously assumed. In my incredibly naive brain, it went something like "IF YOU WRITE IT... THEY WILL COME."

Humph. Not good enough, apparently. There's this thing called 'social media' of which blogging is an intrinsic part, and you simply can't do one without the other. In fact, many self-described blogging 'experts' say the actual ratio of your workload should be about 20% content creation, and 80 DAMN PERCENT promotion. I hate self-promotion (although one of my new year's resolutions is to tackle it head on this year).

So every so often I'll see that I've been particularly prolific, turning out what I consider to be a series of high-quality posts that address a wide variety of subjects, but they get no views. In fact, several of the pieces that I feel are my best, thematically, content-wise, and in structure and form, get very few views.

Trip to Bummertown? Maybe a temporary layover...

Resolution Check-in: 2014 Post-Mortem

The hour is almost here (on my side of the globe, at least): 2014 is slowly making way for the new calendar year. 2015, you ready?

But first, let's cut 2014 up into gloopy pieces and see what it was made of for me. What made it go? What brought it to a halt? What helped, and what hindered. And, most importantly, where am I going next?

Back in January 2014, I made a list of 8 resolutions, plus some Lesser Goals, for the year.

So... how did I do?

I should say that I've never before followed-up my resolutions like this. I've really enjoyed the time spent mulling over and reflecting on what I did and didn't do to make these goals come to life as I sit down to write - there's often a deadline on traveling, which makes it nice for setting practical goals and provides a good incentive to follow through, or at least thinking of following through - there's sometimes no 'next year' to restart and re-evaluate your chosen goals. Do it now, while the doin's good!

In thinking about my goals for 2015, I wanted to quickly review what I accomplished, and didn't, in 2014... and in my creative life! Some of it worked... some of it didn't. Entire projects fell to flooding, rust, and sun, and it was a helluva time finding and using new materials (including bamboo!) All of it was sweaty, dirty fun, and most of it didn't give me minor electrical shocks! But hey, that's how I roll.

Let's see, shall we?

Da Lat's Hằng Nga Guesthouse

Lisa's Butt in her New Pants approaching the second spire of Crazy House by cement ivy walkway.
It makes sense... trust me.

Note: This summer took me to many new places... so many, in fact, that I'm only just now realizing that I have a zillion more posts to write about those three short months! Oof.

In July I went to Da Lat (again) with my friends Erin and Lisa. We had a BLAST.

Part of the experience was that we were staying in what I can easily call the most unique guesthouse I've ever seen. It's so absurd, I have a hard time even describing it with words. Even my gift for analogy seems like too fine a point on it when trying to talk about this astounding creative vision.

On second thought, that won't stop me from trying. Click through for a tour of one architect's vision made concrete (literally and figuratively, I assure you) - a kaleidoscope of nature, wire, stone, and wood brought together in an unforgettably eccentric manner.

L'Usine: HCMC's Foremost Food & Fashion Fusion

L'usine (151 Dong Khoi Street, HCMC) aims for a specific niche, and nails it: the creative crowd that loves euro-influenced brunch (and an exceptionally expensive boutique) has a home here. Much has been made of the two locations in HCMC, of which the best by far is the first Dong Khoi location (entering through the art gallery almost makes it all by itself!) sitting kittycorner from the stately Saigon Opera House.

Arty!

My friend and roommate Yona introduced me to L'usine, and I owe her a debt that will go unpaid for a long time. I won't go into crazy specifics here. It was one of the first western places I ate, and I've brought several friends here since. It's a solid, dependable option when you want a place with class and air conditioning, and a creative atmosphere with compulsively sippable Iced Lime Juice.

The boutique is a little too hyped up. Not only is half of it so trendy that it's probably already half-ironic by the time it gets to the shelf, but it's almost hilariously expensive. Even if I would buy a great afghan in the south of Vietnam (which, no), 200 USD is just a tad more than I like to pay for anything less than my rent.

But let's not lose sight of why I end up bringing my friends here... that comforting food!

I Do Karaoke So You Don't Have To - But You Should

Have you lived?

Have you taken down Metallica in a room the side of your bedroom, on a microphone stuck on 'echo'?

Have you pillaged the field of 1950's oldies, sacrificing accuracy of notes on the altar of ROCK AND ROLL?

Have you taken on The Rainbow Connection and sang it with every fiber of your being?

Have you ever done more to accelerate your already rapidly fading hearing in a single three hour session in a closed, neon-lit room?

My friends, if the answer to any of these questions is "no," you have not experienced the Vietnamese variety of Karaoke.

Picture it, if you will: a sunny Saturday afternoon, noon. Two friends and co-workers about to leave work/the city for good, and all they want to do is karaoke. You agree. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into...

Preparing Holiday Cards

2012's design, hand-stitched with painted buttons.

For several years now I have produced my own Christmas Cards for my family and friends. I've had successes, and some missteps, but few things excited me more before I left America than the idea of sending a new, original christmas card to my family and friends from the opposite side of the world.

This process always starts with my list of addresses from the previous year - I usually have between 60-80 cards to make. I have a few more this year because of new friends, which is both awesome and a little exhausting to think about.

When I envisioned this task while in America, I thought that I would have already started to practically learn more about Vietnamese artistic traditions by this point. That hasn't really happened, but I decided I still wanted something that would be iconic, festive, and really, really Vietnamese. I put my thinking cap on and got to work.

Why Travel Now?

Why Travel Now?

After receiving many questions about my motives for traveling, and Vietnam in particular, I wanted to share with you how I got to where I am, and where I want to go. At least, how I decided to go NOW, and not in a year, or 6 months, or 5 years.

I'll continue about Why Vietnam? in a second, related post. :)

I should also add that, while these are my goals now... I'll be course correcting as I go along!

Once Upon a Time, in the late summer of 2012, I was riding my bike home from my volunteering gig at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. It's a 7.25 mile trek back to Albany Park, about half of it along Chicago's unparalleled lakefront trail - surely one of the most pleasant, easy urban rides in the United States. I was thinking about how nice it was to have access to such a strong network of biking trails in Chicago and how lucky I was as a citizen to be able to use them to get sunshine, exercise, and peace of mind, as well as using them for cheap, practical transport. 

And here I found myself thinking, How did this happen? Who did this? I wondered if there were some way that I could get in on this city-improving action.

The idea stuck, and I was soon concocting plans.

Saigon Sights: Notre Dame Cathedral

[Note: While I'm processing my first week teaching in HCMC's public primary schools, please enjoy some pictures of a fancy church!]

In separate occasions in June and July I took the time to stop by the Notre Dame Cathedral and take a few pictures of this beauty, which lies in the heart of downtown Ho Chi Minh City, not far from my favorite cafe (where I'm writing this) and the Resurrection Palace. Unfortunately they were both on Sundays, but here's a few photos of it. Enjoy!

Ho Chi Mix City: July 2013 & Mix Tape Creation

July has been a great transition month for me as I get used to my new house/city/country/culture, new neighborhood, my lessons, and anticipate moving into my job teaching English in the public schools in the coming weeks. A lot of my time has spent walking, exploring, and thinking. In the US I'd be listening to my iPod almost constantly - here? Nope.

Surprisingly, there was not a lot of music in my life in June, and since I've gotten out of the habit of making these for myself (instead preferring to spend my time making them for friends in recent years) I thought I'd kill a few birds with one stone and musically document my months here, treating myself to some musical therapy and sharing them with YOU.

This week I've been working on a mix that describes my Transition-y, Explore-y July. It's a work in progress, but I'd like to share it with you today. I put it on youtube just for you:

My Bedroom is Like a Third-World Ocean Fairytale

[UPDATE: The walls are white! There are posters hung! A new homemade light fixture! And... no more finding nemo shades! We feel positively grownup about it all.]

In all the ways that my bedroom is like living in a deep sea children's insane-asylum - the pink coral-colored walls, the Finding Nemo windowshade, the charming children's sheets on the charmingly-sized twin bed made of plywood - the LED lights are by far the oddest feature (yeah, let's stick with 'feature'):

Park Life: Công viên Lê Văn Tám

I couldn't find much info on this statue, which is
a shame - I like the stylized torch on top.

As one Google user states in their review of Le Van Tam Park (presumably a local, speaking in translated Vietnamese):

"Complicated resident with old construction..."

Couldn't put it better myself (well, mayb. This was the first park I fell in love with, and so it's the first public space I'll cover in depth in my tour of spaces that make Ho Chi Minh City unique.

I love parks. They're good for the mental and physical health of residents, they provide much-needed space for groups to meet, socialize, and exercise, they beautify, they breed civic pride, they can boost tourism, and they help create strong, integral communities with a multitude of opportunities for residents to interact, play, and work. They're an important part of any neighborhood, and cities without parks are just downright boring, as well as have more difficult paths to all the benefits I've already mentioned. A park is simply a wonderful thing to have around, and I have a personal interest in community infrastructure and design... which is why it's pretty much the first type of place I tried to find after moving to Vietnam. I was not disappointed - this park is well-designed and great for all sorts of activities.