It’s the Little Things
Tonight John and I pulled off a minor triumph of independent living in Vietnam: We went to dinner by ourselves! Now, this may sound like Not a Big Deal, until you know that this achievement involved:
1. Choosing a restaurant from the list Chris W gave us (not so hard);
2. Getting a taxi to take us to the restaurant (not so hard; we just pointed to the name and address of the restaurant on the list);
3. Realizing it wasn’t the restaurant we thought it would be (one we remembered from our last trip), but going in anyway (a little brave);
4. Ordering our meal (moderately hard; the menu was translated, but we still weren’t sure what we were ordering);
5. Calling a taxi to take us home (could have been really hard, because we don’t have a cell phone to call the taxi; but we managed to ask the waiter to call the taxi for us – which involved a bit of pantomiming “telephone call” and pointing to our taxi card, then pulling out the taxi receipt from the ride there to make sure we got the right taxi company);
6. Giving the taxi driver our destination – SUPER easy, because it was the SAME DRIVER WHO BROUGHT US TO THE RESTAURANT!
So, we are feeling QUITE independent tonight. We had a lovely meal (shrimp and asparagus soup, followed by a shrimp and rice dish that looked like the waiter told the cooks, “Hey, we’ve got some Westerners here. Keep it tame.”). We were right on the river, where we watched the ferries go back and forth carrying people from the “city” side to the “jungle” side.
This was our first dinner by ourselves in both trips – we were escorted to meals every night last time, and Chris W was here until this morning, so we didn’t eat alone. Today, dinner. Tomorrow, who knows?
1. Choosing a restaurant from the list Chris W gave us (not so hard);
2. Getting a taxi to take us to the restaurant (not so hard; we just pointed to the name and address of the restaurant on the list);
3. Realizing it wasn’t the restaurant we thought it would be (one we remembered from our last trip), but going in anyway (a little brave);
4. Ordering our meal (moderately hard; the menu was translated, but we still weren’t sure what we were ordering);
5. Calling a taxi to take us home (could have been really hard, because we don’t have a cell phone to call the taxi; but we managed to ask the waiter to call the taxi for us – which involved a bit of pantomiming “telephone call” and pointing to our taxi card, then pulling out the taxi receipt from the ride there to make sure we got the right taxi company);
6. Giving the taxi driver our destination – SUPER easy, because it was the SAME DRIVER WHO BROUGHT US TO THE RESTAURANT!
So, we are feeling QUITE independent tonight. We had a lovely meal (shrimp and asparagus soup, followed by a shrimp and rice dish that looked like the waiter told the cooks, “Hey, we’ve got some Westerners here. Keep it tame.”). We were right on the river, where we watched the ferries go back and forth carrying people from the “city” side to the “jungle” side.
This was our first dinner by ourselves in both trips – we were escorted to meals every night last time, and Chris W was here until this morning, so we didn’t eat alone. Today, dinner. Tomorrow, who knows?
posted by Kris at 5:27 AM
2 Comments:
Great questions, Jody. I think I'm beginning to feel more independent, so more comfortable. I've figured out how to get some of my basic needs met (literally, a comfortable place to sleep, a shop to buy bottled water, and foods that don't make my stomach hurt), and that makes me feel more able to cope with the more complicated stuff, like how I'm processing the culture and our work here. I'm now thinking that I was SO overwhelmed last time I was here that I couldn't consider "cross" cultural - I was simply immersed in "not my culture" shock and incompetence. More comfortable, definitely. And differently comfortable, also.
Thanks, DMZ! And yes, there was a bit of "I am (independent) woman, here my roar" dancing going on.
:)
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