Friday morning, on my way to work, I saw a man sanding the feathers off a live chicken. I was already feeling nautious from taking my malaria meds on an empty stomach, and that did not help.
Our ride to work is really different here. We turn right out of our hotel onto the National Highway, the Vietnamese equivalent of I-95. Where we are, it's a 2-lane road with a dotted white line and fruit stands every 10 meters that people park on the side of the road for. There are cows grazing on the sides, and chickens running around. Endless palm trees line both sides and creeks flow through them, separating the houses from the road. Once we get closer to town, the traffic is terrifying. Pedestrians yield to bikes, bikes yield to motorbikes, and trucks do whatever they want. Logan almost ran into a man with one leg crutching along the side of the highway. Almost all of us have had some kind of small biking mishap already.
After the market, we cross two arched bridges, just big enough for boats laden with coconuts to pass under. After a few kilometers, we turn onto a palm tree-lined sidewalk with creeks on both sides. We ride over two more bridges--sidewalk-sized with no railings. It stinks when motorbikes decide to pass me on these sidewalk-bridges, especially motorbikes like the one today, which had three people on it (which is technically illegal).
Then we turn left onto an even smaller sidewalk and cross two more bridges. It stinks even more when motorbikes try to pass on those. The final part of the bike ride is the hanging bridge. This morning there were two dogs in my way. I was pretty sure I was going to kill them or go over the edge, but somehow we're all still alive. After that bridge, we park our bikes and start walking over monkey bridges. They're made of anything that's available and allow us to traverse the water network by foot. The first one we cross is a bundle of bamboo trunks, then lots of wooden branches, then mud, then a coconut tree trunk, then a concrete beam, then one reinforced with wooden planks, just for us, and Yay! We're there.
Though our daily commute is unnerving from a self-preservation standpoint, there are a lot of quality sights along the way. I see one or two huge blue and black butterflies almost daily. We are passed by men in neon orange jumpsuits who are apparently engineers on their way to work. I feel a kind of kinship with them--our fellow inmates. There is a row of casket stores, all open-air, of course. The other day I saw a little girl chatting with an old man on a bench in front of the displayed coffins. Then my personal favorite is a pair of statues. There is a T-Rex tethered to an umbrella pole, claws outstretched. In front of him is a slightly shorter Buddha statue on her shrine, oblivious to the fact that Barney is about to take her out.
Last Wednesday was our first day playing soccer with the teachers and construction workers from the elementary school where we teach. Backing up a bit, people here drink wine and beer like we drink coffee. They start early--like 6 a.m. early. They also sometimes take an afternoon wine break, instead of tea. The first day we played soccer with them, the computer teacher interrupted Logan and I during class and asked us to come over and chat with him and the principle. The principle was feeling a bit woozy, though, so we just went into the office with Tri, Alyce's assistant, and had the most scatter-brained chat you could imagine. One second we were talking about the location of the soccer stadium, and the next, he was asking how to say 'spring roll' in English. The game ended with a kid spraining his arm and the computer teacher puking on the sidelines. He played better the next day.
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