Tôi có thể có một bia xin

"No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut"

Sam Rayburn (1882 -1961)

say that again please?

Well the second week has now passed and our fascinating In Country Orientation (ICO)continues. For a quick recap on week one please feel free to watch the delightful slideshow put together by Trish, a co-volunteer, and soon to be my housemate, along with Louisa, who also has a starring feature in the show; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppN8ImThZds.

Each day we have two Vietnamese lessons and we have now progressed from saying our name, to the more complex conversations required to barter at the market. It is to language that I now turn in this blog, for, unlike Sam Rayburn, if I am stay here for two years I will definately need to open my mouth. Yesterday we had our first practical session at the open air market. I refrained from buying a duck as I didn't want it waddling around the hotel bathroom and bought a grapefruit instead. Well at least I thought it was a grapefruit but it turned out to be something else, it was quite tasty though, whatever it was. The fact that I managed to buy anything was quite an achievement and testiment to the skills of our patient and good humoured language teacher who puts up with our outrageous pronounciation.

So why is Vietnamese so difficult? Well for those of you not familiar with this sort of language, it is tonal. This means that the sounds you make and where they are in the word, are equally, if not more important, than the combination of letters that make them up. There are six tones in the Vietnamese language; mid, low falling, low rising, high broken, high rising, and low broken. Thus every syllable can be pronounced in six different ways. Where these sounds occur in each word, is indicated by the diacritic-laden letters that you see in Vietamese writing, (thats the strange squiggles you see at the top and bottom of the letters).

The consequence of this is that different tones can completely change a words meaning. For example depending on how it is said ma could mean ghost, cheek, but, rice seedling, tomb or horse. The possibility for confusion is near endless for example, you could go to buy some oil (dầu), long tone high pitch falling, and instead say (dâu), short tone, low pitch, sudden stop, which means bride, or mistake trousers (quần) for a pub (quán). These are not the sort of confusions you wish to make in polite conversation. Just to make matters more confusing the dialect in the north is different to that in the south. In HCMC (Saigon) the low rising and high broken tones are both pronounced as the low rising tone, and to make matters that bit more interesting the Vietnamese spoken around Hue, in the centre of the country, is considered unique even by the Vietnamese.

So if you have followed me this far...you may wonder how it can be learnt. Well far from frustrating it is quite fun, learning Vietnamese improves your listening skills and exercises facial muscles you didn't know you had. The lessons on the ICO are very practical and the laughter loud, you don't even want to know the embarrasment caused if you ask for pork incorrectly, and most of all the language, like the country and people, is very beautiful as the high and low pitches swoop and glide in a musical manner. So I will persevere, and hopefully my efforts will be rewarded by even more unusual purchases at the market.

However, I have mastered one phrase, and for those of you wondering what the title of this blog is, it states..

"May I have one beer please?"

To which once it arrives the answer can only be,

"Chuc suc khoe!" or "Cheers"

See you next week for house hunting adventures in Hanoi.

Arrival

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

Freya Stark.

Xin Chao! Hello and welcome to the first Bromblog from Hanoi. It has now been nearly a week since I first stepped of the plane at Na Boi airport, passed through the swine flu medical screening and stepped into the heat and humidity of Vietnam. Unlike Freya Stark I am not alone but am instead welcomed by the wonderful staff of the VSO Vietnam office, Son, Trang and Thuong. I'm efficiently transported to the Au Co Hotel where a welcome basket of fruit, biscuits, tea and coffee awaits me.

In the evening we gather for a Vietnamese welcome dinner and I get to meet, mostly for the first time, the other volunteers in the team. We are diverse bunch in age, experience and nationality coming from the UK, Kenya, Ireland, Canada, Germany/South Africa and Pirkka from Finland who unfortuneatly is still to arrive due to some visa issues. We look forward to seeing her soon.

This shows the range of VSO partnerships both North and South and it is a good mix of experience and backgrounds.

Day 2 is really the start of our In Country Orientation (ICO) designed to enable us to gain confidence in our new environment. The first part of which is learning how to cross the road! The rules of which are simple, step out, preferably not under a bus, keep walking and don't stop until you reach the other side. The mopeds really do swerve to avoid you and the cars, mostly, really do slow down, stopping in the middle really just confuses the whole experience. If there is a large group of you, do not cross the road in single file, as in a school crocodile, as the mopeds cannot swerve around all of you at once and it causes havoc. Instead cross the road in a horizontal file with the bravest person in the hit zone at the end of the row. If you do not obey these rules, you will only ever see Hanoi from one side of the street and never be able to get from one section to the next.

So with the Great Road Expedition mastered, our next adventure was to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnography. This is a super start to the training, providing a fascinating insight to the 54 different ethnic groups belonging to 5 ethnolinguistic families, (more about language later), that inhabit Vietnam. The largest of these is, unsurprisingly, the Viet comprising 86% of the population, but there are many more such as the Black Hmong, Yao and the Lolo people. Most of these have colourful dress and unique customs, particularly the hill tribes, however these ethnic minorities have often not benefited from Vietnam's economic progress, and how to ensure that they benefit from Vietnam's successes in poverty reduction whilst preserving their culture is an interesting development debate, as it is in many places, that I hope to learn more about during my time here.

Giarai burial tomb and Bahnar communal house at Ethnology Museum of Vietnam

The museum is also home to the delightful Hoa Sua restaurant, not only does this provide excellent cuisine, together with wonderful French style desserts, such as flambe apple crepe, (I was tempted by a rich chocolate mousse), but it also serves as a training facility for disadvantaged young people providing them with the skills they need to work in Vietnam's burgeoning tourist sector, a rapidly growing and important part of its economy.

So I am afraid this blog only takes me through to the second day of my time here so far, but it is long enough already. Our ICO also includes 2 language lessons a day, background in the socio-political environment and development issues, the work of VSO in disability and HIV/AIDS and something I am really looking forward to the opportunity to spend a weekend with a Vietnamese family. It also includes all the numerous practical issues such as setting up bank accounts, including internet banking, mobile phones, emergency procedures, including evacuation procedures, for example, in the event of an avian flu outbreak, which hospitals to use, registering with the Embassy and police etc.. etc... etc..... as well as finding somewhere to live. Each of these is a seperate topic in itself so next week I think I shall write about our often hilarious experiences with the Vietnamese language.

See you next week

Ian