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Planet Daily
French village takes on Coca-Cola
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[04/26/00]

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[04/25/00]

Planet Daily
Stupid tourist tricks
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By J.A. Getzlaff
[04/25/00]

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I could see Tuyen coming toward me down the lakeside path, pushing his rusty bicycle. He sat down beside me. "Comment allez-vous ce soir, Wendy?" he asked formally, shaking my hand. I looked at him for a moment. Although he was in his mid-20s like me, his face was seamless, his eyes clear and bright. The part in his thick black hair was perfectly straight, and his cheekbones looked burnished in the fading light.

"Oh, I'm fine. My research is going well." This was a blatant lie. I had spent the last week trudging through various ministries, drinking endless cups of green tea, talking unconvincingly about the research I wanted to do on family planning practices in the countryside. The officials always smiled and nodded, but were completely noncommittal. Tuyen asked me a few questions, also looking unconvinced, so I quickly tried to change the subject by asking him about his childhood.

"I come from a small village. I live with my brother's family now. I don't get to go home very often." He told me that he had come from Hoa Binh province to seek a better job, but that he sent most of his monthly salary -- all $40 of it -- back home every month. He wanted to be a lawyer and was taking classes at night, but he really didn't have any hope of ever becoming one because he couldn't afford to stay in school. But he told this to me with a smile. Somehow, I expected this story to be a segue into a story about the war, or about the poverty of the country, but he seemed happy to just sit by the lake, gazing out into the water.

"Co gia dinh chua?" he asked me, the first thing he had ever asked me in Vietnamese.

"Chua co." No children. Not yet. I was careful to use the phrase that all unmarried women used. I knew that here, a woman my age without a family was considered an embarrassment. Suddenly panicked, I looked around. Three old men were sitting on a nearby bench, watching us, leaning on their canes, cackling to each other. "What are they saying?" I asked Tuyen.

"They say you are very pretty," he said. "That you are very tall and your eyes are very blue." The look in his eyes was teasing and sly, and he moved closer to me on the bench.

We sat there until it was completely dark, talking as best we could about our families, about America. We skirted carefully around politics, but the topic hung there in the air in front of us, a subject thankfully too difficult for our motley language skills. When I told him how cold it was in California compared to here, he looked concerned. "Does it snow in your town? Do people die from the cold?" I tried to imagine Tuyen in California with me, eating a burrito, walking down Haight Street, drinking a nonfat decaf latte. Impossible.

"People don't usually die from the cold there, no," I laughed.

He seemed to ponder this forever, a slight crease between his eyebrows. The temperature in Hanoi had probably never dipped below 50 degrees in his lifetime.

The swarms of people reached a frenzied peak just as the last streak of light left the sky. It was still hot, and I was sweaty and getting hungry. "Do you want to go eat?" I asked him. "Let's go somewhere. I'll take you to a nice place I know."

He seemed confused and embarrassed. "I don't have any money."

"No, no, I'll treat you. It's OK. Don't worry about it."

He looked at me and laughed. It was a wonderful sound. "No. Next time." He got up abruptly, touched my hand briefly, and pedaled off. "Meet me in two days, same time," he called over his shoulder.

Next page | He put his chicken in my bowl, looking meaningfully into my eyes