Markets

Dear Mom,

I lost my riding-at-night glasses and would like another pair from Harbor Freight.  If you're living in Bend and can help me get those and something from Walmart THIS WEEKEND, I'd be grateful.  The next people coming to Vietnam from Bend are leaving on Monday, so I don't have time to order what I need online and have it arrive to them on time.  Email me if you're up for a small shopping trip on my behalf.

The Christmas season officially ends for us today, with three more family members (one son and two nephews) flying homeward.  



In this picture I'm drinking a soursop shake and my dad and my son are sampling durian smoothies at the biggest municipal market.  Durian is ... durian a whole topic unto itself, but I realize I've never talked about markets.

The most common market is a tạp hóa ("top hwaah" with a sharply rising tone as you finish hóa)



These tạp hóa storefronts are generally in someone's house, taking up what we would consider the front living room.  The hanging packets across the top are single-use soaps and shampoos.  You can also buy TP, snacks, water, drinks, some cooking essentials like oil or fish sauce.  If it starts to rain and you're unprepared, you can buy a single-use poncho made of the thinnest plastic you can imagine.

No negotiating prices.  Sometimes items are marked, usually not.  Sometimes I'm charged a "foreigner tax" and get to pay a higher price, but I don't get mad.  There's no point in trying to tell them that I just saw someone else get the same thing for 10K cheaper, or that it's got a standard price and they're gouging.  Just note which stalls seem trustworthy and use them in preference to the others.

Next up are the Mini-Marts:


These are chain brands, convenience stores with things you'd expect in an Asian Circle K, plus maybe vegetables/fruit.  I'll find one of these for every 5 of the tạp hóa corner stores.

And while there are some huge stores like Mega (a Thai company similar in some ways to a Costco) or Lotte (a Korean chain similar to Super-Target), the only other category of market is a Municipal Market.  They range in size, but you're going to find a similar array of things that happen in and around a local "Chợ" Market.  IMAGES


At the Municipal Chợ, you'll be able to buy MOST of what a person needs for daily life:

  • veggies
  • meat/fish
  • ice
  • fruit
  • flowers
  • bamboo plants
  • clothing
  • seamstress
  • ancestor-honoring stuff
  • food stalls with metal benches (that's where we are in the picture above, holding our durian-fruit shakes)
  • dried fruits/nuts
  • candles
  • scissors
  • plastic containers
  • umbrellas
  • all the stuff available at a tạp hóa

And then around each Chợ (pronounced "chuh-uh" with a rising tone) you're going to find the same sort of shops within a half-block:

  • motorbike helmets
  • gold shops (this is where you should exchange USD)
  • optical shops
  • food stalls that shift from breakfast to morning snack, then disappear for 2-3 hours, then reappear to sell early-dinner snack
  • and obviously some coffee shops and motorbike repair shops, but that's a given since they're so ubiquitous
It takes some time to get the hang of knowing where to go when I need a certain item, and then once I've gone somewhere and had a positive experience, I always go back to the same person when I need something similar.  I'm good at making eye contact with the sellers and smiling, so that when I return I usually get a happy greeting.

Ah, when I wrote that last sentence I could hear someone reading and thinking "yeah, they're happy because they know they can cheat him again," but that's actually not true.  The ones who cheat me are universally unhappy to see me again.  I'm never harsh with them, and I try to avoid going back to them so this seldom happens, but they never gesture to me to buy something when I go past.   It's so different with the ones who give me the local prices from the start--they're happy to have me as a returning, eye-contact-smiling customer.

Which brings up one more point about the markets, and haggling.  There's really only one sort of place we haggle here, and it's the places that sell things to tourists.  Haggling/negotiating for prices is not done at a tạp hóa or most chợs (except for the one Chợ Han in town that is dedicated to tourist traffic).

I'd sign off by saying "okay, that's all, I'm off to the Chợ/Market now" but it's 1pm and nothing is open.  All the Chợ stalls are asleep and  the tạp hóa lady would wonder why I'm waking her up to buy a wheel of peanuts.  The only places to go shopping at 1pm around here are the minimarts, which usually don’t carry what I’m needing, or one of the big stores across town, and I'm too sleepy to want to make the journey.

Love,
Tim/Janet




Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas!

I like celebrating Christ's birthday in December, but for my birthday I prefer celebrating in the summer with camping and feasting.  Unless I'm in Vietnam, and then I don't mind sharing Jesus' birthday month, kicking it off with decorating and Christmas carols and whatnot, maybe some beach time ... ahhh.

I'm grateful.  Grateful that God sent his son to be born.  Thanks, God!

Short VIDEO of me walking on the beach, saying I'm grateful.  Photo ALBUM of random pics since our visa run to China.  Few things would give me more pleasure than writing in reply to you, to explain one or more of those pictures...or just make a comment in the photo album and I think it notifies me...

Love, 

Tim/Janet





China Smiles

This is a letter about smiling. Some of it is about China (we went for a visa run and had a wonderful time!) but lots of it is about living overseas and sharing smiles with people.
 




Dear Mom,

I smile when I'm walking around, or even when I'm on my motorbike and out in the town.  I know that I'm weirdly tall and fair-haired and I have a giant nose--I'm something of a spectacle regardless of my facial expression.  But over time I've trained my face that when I'm out and about, my facial "zero" expression should be uplifted eyebrows and a smile to my mouth.  

Sometimes I'm just doing that and I get a smile in return, and I remember that I'm smiling by default but then I Really smile back to the person who's smiling at me, and then they know that they've been smiled at and then they Really smile back, and then sometimes we both even laugh.  It's nice.

We did a visa run to China last week, and I had the darndest time getting people to smile at me.  There wasn't any hostility (zero) toward my whiteness, even though we're not China's favorite nation right now.  I was in a state of heightened awareness about all the shenanigans the USA has been doing internationally, and what that could mean for me as an expat citizen abroad, so each time I went out walking or interacting with people in China I very intentionally set my face in a cheerful countenance.

They didn't smile back!  Actually they mostly never even made eye contact.  The people I passed seemed ... I've tried to find the right word and it keeps eluding me.  Solemn?  Sullen?  Definitely not all the way to Sad, but let me try Joyless?  I'm not someone who thinks I can judge a person's heart or motives by what they do, but I think it might not be too far wrong to say that you'd have seen Joylessness, too, if you'd been with me in the big city.  

It was a city of 8.5 million where I found it difficult, but not impossible, to meet people's eyes and share joy.  It's a small city in the southwest--If you've lived in China you'd probably know it, but otherwise you've never heard of it.  One time I went into a little hardware shop and the proprietor and his wife wanted to help me get supplies so I could repair a sink for our hosts (my pleasure), and they smiled at me.  Well, she smiled at me while her husband used loud Chinese to compensate for my lack of understanding.  (You've noticed, no doubt, that people all over the world talk louder at a foreigner who doesn't speak the local language?)  But he smiled a couple of times before our interaction was done, and it was such a Relief to get a smile.

When we left that city and went to a neighboring small town, though, people behaved much more "normally" --in a way that I'd expect throughout Vietnam and like it was in previous times when I've been in China.  People held their gaze upwards from the pavement directly in front of them, made eye contact, and smiled at me. 

It's the old cleaning ladies who are always MOST likely to reflect my smile.   I think maybe most people don't make eye contact with them.  Eye contact that stays, lingers long enough for the smile to transmit and reflect and reflect again.  I definitely can't communicate with them verbally (nor do I have the time to, as this happens all the time), but I am always on the lookout for someone to reflect my smile.  I want to thank them for their service, tell them that I see them, acknowledge their humanity and loveliness.

Here are (almost all) our pics from China.  Enjoy!


  
Love,
Tim/Janet


PS from Janet:
I have to tack on this little story: When we were on the street in the unsmiling city, and Tim was talking to our host about what he was noticing and asking her about it, I kid you not, a woman was walking toward him wearing a white sweatshirt with these words on it: Who's the funny looking kid with the big nose? (It's the title of a Peanuts cartoon book and is a reference to Snoopy, but man, was it funny as a backdrop to Tim's curiosity about why no one was smiling at him!)

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