Antidote to Burnout

Tet Parties

My Tết holidays this year were enjoyed in Dắk Lắk Province at the home of my Vietnamese friend's parents, introduced in this previous posting. A subsequent posting presented their home as a typical rural Dak Lak house. Since the Tết... Read more →

Response to life in Viet Nam

Chris Harvey at Charvey in Vietnam reminds us of the secret to successful life anywhere, but especially while living in a different country and culture than one's home town. It seems obvious but we too often forget that our own... Read more →

A morning in the park....

Charvey posted about the large park with sculptures in the midst of downtown Sài Gòn a couple of months ago, so we finally followed up with a visit. Frankly, the noise on our hẻm (lane) has started to get to... Read more →

Meeting the future of Việt Nam....

Back on 2 September, I wrote about my frustrations in not having friends here in Việt Nam to communicate with. I received some very supportive comments to that posting that I appreciated very much. However, I obviously had to be... Read more →

Looking to global voices beyond my postings...

The value of any blog often lies in the comments available at the end of each posting. It is the interaction between blog author and readers in the form of reader comments that amplifies and clarifies the author's ideas expressed... Read more →

A Rice Cracker?

D. has posted a provocative thread of ideas on his blog VA to VN entitled "Everyone's an expert" (5 September 2006). He points us to the website Ethnically Incorrect Daughter, published by what he describes as a "conflicted Vietnamese adoptee."... Read more →

Neighborhood breakfast stand....

Noodlepie has the street stand food scene in Ho Chi Minh City well covered in his blog archives, although he no longer blogs from Saigon. Think of a particular Vietnamese street food you might be craving, look it up in... Read more →

Again: It takes a village....

Last June, I posted that the "village" consisting of all of the people living on our hẻm (lane) nurtured the teenagers on the streets so that there was very little of the teen-age gang crime prevalent in American cities. The... Read more →

The social dinner....

Whenever I have dinner with a Vietnamese group, I always think of the very articulate words of Mark in the now inactive blog Six Months in Hanoi. Mark wrote eloquently about social groups here and here in Viet Nam, and... Read more →

An outing with a large Vietnamese family....

It is a real treat to be invited to attend a large Vietnamese family function. In this case, we also were able to experience a pure Vietnamese resort, which is quite a bit different from the resorts westerners expect. I... Read more →

Language frustration...

I am growing increasingly frustrated at my inability to speak Vietnamese. I want to be a sociable person in my neighborhood, but I haven't gotten past "Hello, how are you" yet. Vietnamese people are very sociable people -- they love... Read more →

Working 365 days a year here....

Not me, of course. This blog is about the antidote to burnout, after all. But the vendors bringing by the food every day in our hẻm (alley) in TP. Hồ Chí Minh come by every day without fail. The most... Read more →

Sociability and noise...

My blogger friend Virtual Doug and his wife have returned to the USA from Huê, Việt Nam. He recently published a post comparing the noise of Việt Nam with the quietness of suburban America. In addition to the millions of... Read more →

It takes a village...

From my vantage point in the midst of a thoroughly lower-middle-class neighborhood of TP. Hồ Chí Minh, there is very little crime. This is surprising since there is a large degree of unemployment, particularly among teens and young adults in... Read more →

When you fly into the HCMC airport...

Be sure to dress very well and be prepared to act like a celebrity when you arrive at the Tân Sơn Nhất international airport (SGN) in Sài Gòn. In the picture below, you see the crowd that greets you after... Read more →

Always a smile...

As we take our daily walk around Thành Phố (City) Hồ Chí Minh, we like to get off the smoggy main streets and head into the các hẻm (winding lanes) linking together hundreds of houses and families within the large... Read more →