Stormy Weather

In Vietnam, it rains.  Especially in the rainy season.  It rains at any time of day, whenever it feels like it.  Mostly it rains when you're just about to get on your bike or have to go somewhere outside, urgently.  Sometimes it rains during lessons and all my students ignore it because they have seen rain before...

Unless it is the first big storm of the season, during a lunch break, whereupon they all do this:

And on my lunch duty, I watch them running around doing this:

And I am not allowed to do this:

Instead, I have to tell them off and remind them that when they get into lessons, they'll freeze to death under the air conditioning.

And then the children look more like this:

And I realise that when they look at me, they see this:

Instead of this:

Which, frankly, is a real shame because essentially, here, Kate Middleton has just stolen my life in order to get a decent photograph with some cutely-intelligent looking artistic kid.

I do this.

This is me.

On a daily basis.

Except my hair isn't as nice.

And I don't really lower myself to sitting on plastic chairs with the masses.

And I don't let my kids do crap like artistic expression.  Pshoar!  More silent reading, please!

... oh, wait, we're back to this:

Too.  Sad.

An American in Saigon

 

Oh blessed morn, beautiful day that bringeth my Courtney to me!  If you follow my blog, you may know that my devoutest of all Followers/Commenters is my dearest darling CQD, who, from her little book nest in Massachusetts hath committed her wit, smile and general day-to-day musings to undeserving me, forever on the other side of the world.  What I have done to merit her affection, I know not, but very glad am I for it!

Right.  Enough Yoda-come-Gerard-Manley-Hopkins talk.  Courtney came to visit, and it was simply pleasantness personified.  A self-proclaimed atheist of the Li Hi culture, CQD outlined that her expectations of her visit were unpretentious and easy to accommodate:

1. See my face.
2. Smell my skin.
3. Sunbathe by a pool.
4. Read all the e-books currently available on loan from the Salem Public Library.
5. Be in Vietnam.
6. Have a very different experience to her father, who popped over "on tour" some thirty to forty years ago.  Apparently Vietnam was quite a different place back then: there was no air con.  Awful.

Thanks to a conveniently placed weekend in the middle of her flying visit, we also got to do all these things in Hoi An, as well as in Saigon.  Hoi An, if you remember from an earlier blog post, is full of lanterns and temples and bicycles and is everyone's image of what Vietnam is/ought to be/once was.

And obviously, as Courtney is one bridesmaid of four, we spent a large chunk of our time talking about the...

And how I am soon to be one part of a...

 



And about colour schemes, and bouquets and shoes, and rehearsal dinners and music to enter and exit by and invitations and generally viewing life through these:

Before I continue and defame us both, could I please make the very clear statement that both Courtney and I are Professional and Intelligent Feminists.  Please, let me introduce you to some of our shared role models:




Dorothy Parker - look her up.

 Dorothy Parker (New Yorker): abused, bitter, literate, mean about other peoples' literary works, enjoyed champagne, disliked dancing with men who stepped on her toes.












Emily.

Emily Bronte (Old Yorker): singleton, obsessed with the gothic, creator of disturbingly attractive mean male protagonists, wrote her novels in the same room she died in.






















Edith (Parisian): French, poor, orphaned, rejected, alcoholic songstress.  Inspiration for many; probably her own downfall.













Yes: literate or musical, bitter, expressive alcoholics. 

So it's important to note that our inane conversations about bows, bridesmaids, colour schemes, lace, tartan and garters this week was entirely our choice and right as empowered twenty first century women, and not the idiotic twitterings of twenty-somethings who have not yet grown out of secondary school procrastinating chat and note-passing during assembly.
A perfect response to the Feminist Discourse we had over cocktails on the roof of the Caravelle was to go and get Courtney fitted for her bridesmaid dress.

And to selfie (v. to take pictures of oneself in a vain and inane way) whilst making ridiculous faces:

 

 

"You come to my house on the day of my daughter's wedding?"

And to walk behind each other on the beach, whilst holding our Cath Kidston's as if they are Birkin Bags (this is a 'thing' that both Frenchie and Courtney have introduced me to.  Apparently the 'Birkin' is some famous Hermes bag made in homage to some famous woman called Jane Birkin who dated/was married to Serge Gainsborough.  Pah!  Capitalism.)

 

...Yeah... I put that photo in there deliberately to make you jealous.  I admit it.

And to have tea and become a tourist attraction for a group of Thai (they looked suspiciously Japanese/Korean) tourists because, let's be honest, we looked pretty idyllic in this tea house:

Now that's how empowered, bra-burning, beer-drinking feminists roll!  Uh huh.  Don't you even try to oppress us and compartmentalise us as those women who fantasise about romantic walks on the beach, darling tea cups and egotistical vanity.  No suh!

The highlight of the trip was the purchase of some teapot earrings that have completed my Afternoon Tea For Miniature People In The Form Of Earrings set.  Doesn't everyone have one of these?

Courtney has gone now, and it's horrible and sad and I don't want to talk about it.  I'm watching 80 Hours of 80s on the V channel to make up for it.  So far 99 Red Balloons, Madonna and Prince are doing nothing to console me.  Sad smiley.

 

Happily Ever After

Some time, ago, Bridget Clay and I drank pink Cava in front of 'Bride Wars' and cried because we couldn't afford champagne, or even Prosecco on shitty teachers' wages, and it was evident that at least one of us was going to die alone with cats.  Since Bridget is a dog person, things looked pretty bad for me.  Possibly in the same year, I asked my mother what would happen if I never got married.  Some mothers would have dismissed this, laughed it off as absurd.  My mother, ever the honest realist, simply replied, 'Well, Emma, some people just aren't meant to get married.'  I cried.  In a pub.  Whilst my father nervously asked the waiter for more ketchup.

For a long time, my profile picture on Facebook was thus:

I think you get the point.  To make matters worse, I'm a raving feminist, consider most men below me, and turn to violence if I ever feel that the female gender is being oppressed/put down/objectified in any way. I didn't realise how vehement I was until a young student told me her intention of getting a tattoo of the famous war propaganda poster, depicting a land girl saying 'We Can Do It' on her thigh, because I had, like, y'know, taught her about feminism and stuff.  Oops.  Permanent bodily mutilation for the sake of The Cause... Emmeline Pankhust would have been proud!

Thank goodness, then, that Frenchie is as crazy as I am, and through his strange perception of the world finds my insanity charming, my rage endearing and my stubborness a 'challenge'.  This morning, whilst sporting the baby-vole eyes of extreme fatigue and glaring at him over my cup of Earl Grey, thinking early morning death thoughts, he looked up, smiled in a melting sort of way and said, 'You look pretty.'  He is clearly a LIAR, or completely deranged.  I hope the latter because that, at least makes two of us.

If you haven't met him yet, then here he is:

Luckily, the rock he bought me to propose with, was much prettier, even if it was slightly smaller, and he mostly wears a shirt and jeans to go to work in, rather than this strange, elongated boob tube. Facial hair is similar.

It would have been rude to say no after bullying him into it, so of course I accepted, and ended up with a rather nice sparkler.  Tadah!

Yes, it is on the wrong finger, because officially the proposal was a surprise (in reality, it was a matter of conquest and aggression, whereby I lead my armies of Insistent and Deceptive Questioning into Frenchie's undefended realm of Having Never Planned a Proposal Before) and Frenchie chose the ring all by himself because he is very clever and artistic, and a little bit camp, and whilst he managed to pick a beautiful design, he was also convinced that I have monster great big giant fingers (which I do, to be fair), and so it doesn't fit on the right finger/hand.  Romance and surprises come at a cost, alas: just look at Romeo and Juliet.

If anyone reading this, by the way, wants to spend their lessons/working hours/lectures/retirement time doodling wedding dress designs for me, surrounded by floating love hearts and chirping birds, please do so and submit your entries to ElizabethSheppardWeddingPlans.org.uk and my sister will get back to you whilst I despise myself and resist the temptation to sit down with all designs surrounding me in a cloud of weddingdressness by searching frantically for my 'G.I. Jane' DVD.

I now spend my weekends in Singapore, which have become too passé for a blog entry every time: forgive me.  However, I will endeavour to blog at continuing regular intervals whenever something mundane and Vietnamese/Singaporean amuses me.

For example, today, when coming through passport control at Saigon airport, I put my handbag on the immigration counter.  As the security lady was checking that the frizzy haired eighteen year old was in fact the very same person as the radiant, sophisticated fiancé standing in front of her, my phone beeped to tell me that I had a message.  I ignored it, as it is possible not to be a slave to technology and leap at any handheld device the moment it makes a noise/vibration, but she stopped what she was doing and looked at the bag, blankly.

Immigration Lady: you have a message.
Me: GUFFAW.  Yes.  I do.
Immigration Lady: me too.  *Reaches inside important looking drawer, removes Samsung, checks and replies to Samsung-chat message*
Me: *thinks: maybe I should have smuggled some drugs this time?*  Oh, it's my fiancé.  (Because now I only ever receive communication exclusively from him.)
Immigration Lady: you are a teacher?

How bizarre.  Can you imagine the Immigration Officer at Heathrow doing that?  Israeli immigration would never stand it.

In other, beautiful news, RoD and I discovered that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Romeo, Juliet, the Nursemaid and John the Baptist had not in fact, been flushed into the sewers of Vietnamese hell, but had simply been relocated to an Appropriate Pool of Joy on the other side of our apartment complex!  How exciting.  They now live in the Playground Pond where small children can fall off apparatus into the sand, cry, and then be soothed by them... and maybe healed if Jesus is feeling gracious enough.  What great news, right?  I was very, very, very happy to see them, and RoD and I have agreed to continue saving fish from the Plastic Bag Man to release them into their new happy home.

"If you are for scuba, then I am a pea!"

So.  Having checked out of the Sheraton, Happy and I waited for a boat back to Bali for quite a long time, rented some motos and zipped along the Balinese coastline until we arrived at our second dream destination of the trip.  As I had been party responsible for the booking of this hotel (I clicked the button on the internet), I was quite pleased with my success, and repeatedly asked Happy if she had noticed how wonderful the hotel was.  Happy was very patient with me and confirmed over and over again that yes; indeed; Candidasa was a sleepy holiday village with dramatic coastal scenery, and the hotel pool was, indeed, a dream.

We spent our first day in Candidasa whizzing around the roads they use for all the National Institute of Tourism post cards: the rice terraces and winding roads and green and mountains were exaclty what I had always imagined Bali to be like, so we were very pleased that the island had lived up to our naive and stereotyped expectations.  We saw lots of beautiful things on our ride, and also a group of fully grown men splashing around naked in a river.  Sadly, we were riding along the bridge above them, so we couldn't join in, but in all honesty, we were both so surprised to see this, that we simply rode past with our mouths open and then stopped a little way away to giggle like scandalised school girls.  Photos of the hotel and the terraces will come, soon!

We discovered - through a very curt and reprimanding email from the owner of the dive shop - that we were supposed to have turned up to dive that very same morning.  Oops!  I felt terribly, apologised profoundly, and we turned up (after I had locked us out of our room) only five minutes late the next morning.

We spent the next two days with our instructor (who was aweome), Darta, learning how to float in the lotus position under water, how to get over our disapproval of snorkels (they are a pain), how to throw ourselves off the back of a boat without giving ourselves concussion, how to avoid floating, uncontrollably to the surface and how to high five under water.  Most of these are recognised PADI skills.  High fiving is one of the hardest skills to master.

On one occasion, I decided to throw a spanner in the works by having a panic attack at around 6 metres down.  Don't judge me, guys: there's this horrible skill where you have to take your mask off completely, whereupon water rushes excitedly up your nose, and your brain says 'DON'T BREATHE IN THROUGH YOUR NOSE; IMMEDIATE DEATH WILL FOLLOW!', but your nose gets confused, and so do your lungs, and then your brain gets confused, and your legs say, 'There's nothing else for it, guys, we better abort and kick up,' but then a very small, calm voice in your brain, that I imagine to look like Patrick Stewart on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, gripping calmly onto his chair's armrests as the ship is thrown back and forth under a Klingon attack, and some minor character goes flying through the air behind him, screaming for his mother, says 'No; no, breathe through your regulator, don't kick up.  This too will result in immediate lung explosion, and therefore death.  Breathe through your regulator, Lieutenant, finish the skill.'  My eyes were also upset at this point, as well, because I had to close them and therefore was panicking in suffocating darkness.

Anyway, I didn't die, but I did stress Darta out for a few minutes.  Happy, on the other hand, had been floating around quite peacefully, waiting for me to finish the skill and hadn't noticed a thing.

During the two days, we saw these cool things:

White tipped reef shark - not dangerous at all, but pretty cool!

Manta shrimp.  Surprisingly dangerous, and very weird looking.

Frog fish.  Ugly.

Stone fish.  Ugly.

Nudibranch.  Silly name.  Pretty slug.

And passed our PADI certificate, so now I can join the leagues of people who spend all their money on dive holidays.  Hoorah!  So, whilst it's not that Li Hi, I at least scraped back some form of Li Highness and can once again consider myself Extreme Royalty, even if I'm the impoverished cousin of royalty, selling off their land to car dealership owners to soften the blow of ancestral bankruptcy.

Remember: if you are for scuba, then I am a pea!

Rinjani: Nemesis

I wish this was a happy post, but there are many sad parts to it.

Since the age of 18, I have successfully lived up to my Chinese alter ego, Li Hi Shan, by taking on hardcore and impressive adventures, surviving, climbing up very high mountains and lots of steps, and generally preparing myself to aspire to the lofty heights of insane activities upon meeting my Li Hi destiny in the form of Risk or Death.  It is with great shame, therefore, that I recount the next episode of my Indonesian adventure to you, however, I feel that it is essential to my artistic authenticity to give a true and honest account of all my goings-on in Asia.

Happy Flower had decided that a lying-around-on-a-beach holiday was not for her, and so had booked us on a four day trek up to the Rinjani crater on Lombok.  Teaching being the busy occupation it is, I did not give the trek itinerary the attention it deserved and arrived in Lombok, amazed and delighted by the views of paddy fields and the obvious ease at which this four day stroll clearly promised.  I had packed my walking boots, I had packed two of Frenchie's t-shirts into which to sweat, I even had the sports bra of awesomeness, purchased for me by my sister at Christmas as a reward for surviving the Angkor Wat half marathon and proving that I was, truly, Li Hi.



Day 1
Imagine my distress, therefore, after three hours of walking or so, when, nestled under a tarpaulin lean-to eating some impressively cooked noodle lunch, when a monsoon storm suddenly exploded from the sky.  Happy Flower and I watched the rain come down steadily, and then turned to our guide, Singa, to explain to him that nothing that we currently possessed, was waterproof, and when, please, was the rain going to stop? After an hour of sitting, becoming increasingly more concerned, the rain had not stopped.  Three other, fully prepared Irish trekkers helped us to fashion half-waterproofs out of pink plastic bags.  These, with the amusing aid of my well-endowed womanly form helped to keep my body dry for all of half an hour as we trekked vertically upright.  After the four hours that we spent walking through a cloud, however, the plastic bags were as much help as they had originally seemed to be, and every single part of me was soaked to the skin, and becoming colder and colder by the minute.  Very miserable and embarrassed we were, especially as both Happy and I claim to be 'experienced' walkers.

Half way up our vertical ascent after lunch, it transpired that we had the worst guide in the history of mountaineering, ever.  Poor Singa got cramp, and within about ten minutes, was nowhere to be seen.  Happy and I continued, regardless, knowing that to stop moving would mean freezing to death.  However, when the thunder and lightening started, I called to Happy, explaining that it made me a little anxious to be standing in the middle of a storm without a guide to be seen.  We waited a moment or two on the mountainside, Happy reassuring me that the storm was a long way off.  Lightening, followed less than two seconds later by tremendous thunder claps, had her taking back her words, however, and we had to agree that we were right bang smack in the middle of the storm.  Quite scary.

We eventually made it to camp, whereupon we realised that our fingers felt very strange, we had no tent, and our porters had arrived too late to get any dry firewood.  At this point we were incredibly unimpressed by Singa, and Rinjani in general, although the view was spectacular now that we were out of the clouds.  We therefore explained that due to our lack of preparation, his general uselessness and the miserable weather, we would be cutting our trek short to two days.  We would summit in the morning, and return to the village the next day.  We slept, miserable, cold, warmed only by brief candlelight, hoping that some of our clothes would dry out a little bit by the next day.










Day 2
For those of you who know anything about altitude, you will know that it stops you from sleeping properly, gives you weird dreams, stops you from breathing properly and is generally a bit tough on the old morale after about 2,500m above sea level.  You will also know the phrase 'climb high, sleep low'.  Strangely, though, Singa and his company thought it appropriate for us to sleep at the highest point of our trek between day 1 and day 2, at 2,600m.  I therefore got absolutely no sleep, waking up every thirty minutes or so feeling like I was suffocating.

At 2am the next morning, we were woken, donned our head torches (I had to borrow one - I didn't read the itinerary) and began the summit ascent to 3,750m.  It was dark, it was cold, I was tired, there was sliding volcanic ash and slate under foot, it was straight up, scrambling with hands and feet in the dark.  At around 3,500m, the wind began to blow and the sun still wasn't up.  Frankly, a lack of willpower and an excess of altitude made me sit down at around this point, on a rock, with my hands up the sleeves of my inadequate jumper.

Happy: what are you thinking?
Me: I'm thinking I'm not going to make it and I feel horrible.
Happy: oh, Emma, are you sure?
Me: yes, go on without me.  Take the camera.  Take pictures.

After about four minutes of sitting, feeling miserable, I realised that to stay would mean pneumonia, so I gave Singa clear instructions to tell Happy where I'd gone, and started off down the mountain on my own.  There are few moments in my life where I've felt so bitterly disappointed in myself.  I've never not got to the top of a mountain, and not doing so on this occasion was nobody's fault but my own.  Sad times.

Half way down, however, the sun came out, and I was able to see this view:

I stopped to chat to two Australian boys, who had also not made it, and who lifted my spirits a little, and eventually returned to camp to practice my 'overjoyed' face for when Happy came down, victorious.  However, when she did finally arrive, the disappointment was too much, and we were soon sitting, staring at the view, in hugs and tears.  At this point, some Idiot Foreigner thought he might invite himself into the conversation.

Idiot Foreigner: hey, did you make it to the top.
Me: no, no I didn't (brush away tears).
Idiot: oh... why not?
Happy: (encouragingly) she made a really good job of it - she got right to that bit just before the last really hard bit.
Idiot: huh.  Don't you feel kind of bad about yourself that you didn't make it?
Me: ... yes.  I do.
Idiot: it's just, I thought you were injured or something.  Why didn't you make it?
Me: ... because I'm pathetic.  Go away now, please.

Refusing to completely accept my failure, Happy and I decided to trek for one more day, and walked down to the crater lake, and sat for a whole afternoon in a cloud, reading, sleeping, and generally getting tent cabin fever.







Day 3
On day 3, we walked up the other side of the crater, and thank goodness we decided to keep going for an extra day.  The views were extraordinary:







We had a very happy walk for about five hours in the morning, and then just after lunch, it began to rain again.  This time, however, Singa - his saving grace - had managed to source some makeshift waterproofs for us.  Happy was presented with a ripped poncho, and I with one of those foil wraps that you cover yourself in after a marathon.  It was gold.  After I had fashioned a makeshift cape for myself, I looked like a cross between a superhero and an Easter egg.  However, it kept my body bone dry.

Towards the end of the day, we were walking through dense jungle, where the path was just a narrow gully cut out by tree roots.  Within minutes, this path had become a gushing river, and we found there was nothing for it but to walk with free abandon through the water, getting mud and grit in our shoes and continuing, recklessly, regardless.  All conversation stopped: a combination of the pounding rain and the metallic shuffling, crinkling sounds of my super-cape meant that communication was pretty much impossible.

We were very pleased to eventually be picked up by a very posh car, and to explain to the driver that we would be going to the first five star hotel that we saw.  The lovely people at the Sheraton, Senggigi did well to hide their amusement/disgust when we rocked up, muddy, wet, stinking to heaven, hair bedraggled, insisting that they had a room for us, and that we take that room immediately.  How sad, that this is the Li Hi conditions that I - spoilt expat brat - have grown accustomed to in such a short space of time!  Obviously, I will have to plan something of Li Hi and epic proportions to prove to myself and the world that I am not a soft little dough ball of privilege, and could take on Rinjani - my nemesis - any day, if I so chose to.