Settling In

I’ve been on Cat Ba for a little over a month now. The overpowering in-your-face effect of the island’s larger aspects (the pho, the constant– and fairly terrible– karaoke, the swarming motorbikes) have become less overwhelming, allowing me to notice smaller nuances of the culture I’ve set myself into.

I know now to allow three days for my laundry to dry, strung on lines on the roof in our perpetually humid environment. I structure grocery runs to the mini mart (and lunch breaks) around the Vietnamese version of Siesta, from noon-2:30. Stalls at the market will let me barter; streetside shops carry set prices. The 8:00 am siren no longer brings tornados to mind, instead signaling the ferry’s arrival from Hai Phong and our own call to work. The green on our rickety pool table moves slightly every time a hand adjusts when lining up a shot, using either the sticky cue or the crooked cue to wage war against our perpetually chalked and battered cue ball. Alongside free pool the bar above Asia Outdoors sells laughing gas, sheesha and weed over the counter.

I’ve begun to carry a clearer notion of what I most definitely cannot get my hands on here–– proper hair ties don’t exist. Neither do flash drives compatible with Macs (I’m pretty sure I own the only apple computer on Cat Ba), duct tape or lip balm. Unless I’m keen on slathering myself with whitening agent, I won’t be buying moisturizer or sunscreen any time soon.

I’m also catching onto customs that tend to be different here- subtle things that vary from culture to culture, that I begin to understand and integrate with tips from friends and coworkers.

We eat family-style on the boat; that I understood and have appreciated from the start. We lay dishes loaded with food in the middle of our circle, piling our preference onto rice in our little individual bowls. At some point Ross, a coworker, mentioned a hierarchy amongst our crew and staff (however laxly the boat crew themselves hold to it). The next time we ate on the bay I noticed clearly that at the head of the circle sits Chu Bien, our basket boat driver and oldest member. Ages range downward toward the foot of the circle, where the youngest person sits and dishes rice as needed. We wait until the oldest person has begun to eat before helping ourselves.

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When in the city for lunch I often wander toward the market, avoiding sidewalks (with their crowds and incessant restaurant hawkers) for the relatively open waterfront boulevard. A family of black dogs with stubby legs rules this territory: I imagine there’s some shepherd somewhere in their ancestry, but at the moment they roam and sprawl across the road together as a pack of overly happy sausage dogs. The island contains an abnormally large percentage of short-legged dogs. I’m told that, in the west, sausage dogs were originally bred to go down badger holes. I feel like their prominence on the island is more a result of an obscene amount of inbreeding.

Somehow I don’t expect to see them around much longer; I’m told that the island’s population of dogs decreases to almost nothing through the course of Tet- our upcoming Vietnamese holidays.

Motorbikes honk as I continue down the street, alerting me to their presence. We play a silly form of dance as we weave between each other, avoiding larger cars and busses carrying tourists toward the western harbor. Younger men roast clams over coals over buckets on the curb. Beside them guys on motorbikes offer rides or rentals from bays of scooters and far jankier manual machines. As I near the market I begin passing streetside shops: some hawk cell phones, rice cookers, puffy jackets or metal fittings. Rarely does a shop sell more than one or two categories of items; shopping requires a jaunt into several different stalls. Mini Marts, carrying snacks, toiletries and liquor, prove the exception.

The market in itself contains an entirely different culture, much of which I’m still woefully unfamiliar. Aisles criss-cross through the area within a giant, low- ceilinged covered building. At the back entrance, just off the street, dozens of ladies sell fruit piled high on tarps in front of them through the morning. By evening, this area transforms into a street food plaza of sorts. Tables and low stools sit in front of ladies selling soup, noodles, greens and various forms of meat, added in without regards to separating flesh from bone.

The back entrance leads into housewares territory: stalls brim with dishes, chopsticks, blankets and rice cookers. One or two ladies run sewing shops while others try to charge me obscene prices for weak, rusted needles. Further in, stalls sell crackers, pringles and cookies. A turn toward the far end of the market brings me into restaurants serving phó and other unfamiliar dishes. Encountering large groups of men downing bottle after bottle of rice whiskey or vodka over lunch proves fairly common– the midday meal is that in which most drinking is taken part.

If not serving food, the population shuts down for a solid two hours during midday. Further through the market women doze behind tables laden with greens, noodles and individual veggies, providing opportunities to walk through and buy separate ingredients to piece meals together. Other tables left unattended hold pig legs, belly and other body parts, while a man in the next aisle takes a meat cleaver to a roast dog (identified by the skin' distinctive smoky-scorched texture).

I bypass the dog and a room of fresh fish and bins swarming with seafood, stopping in front of a lady sitting behind a pile of springrolls. 20,000VND later I continue on with a baggie of four spring rolls a side of fish sauce. Toward the market’s front entrance, past several rows of rice whiskey sold out of vessels full of dead lizards and sea stars (good for your health), I find the fruit ladies. They man stalls full of mangos, dragonfruit, lychee, melon, bananas, some giant form of Asian pear and tiny Vietnamese apples (that have a tendency to go bad within a couple days). They also happen to be some of the cattiest ladies I’ve ever met, and bring into glaring light the difference between customer loyalty in the West and that in Vietnam: whereas we tend to give people discounts in order to court customer loyalty, these ladies will wait until customer loyalty is firmly established before beginning to offer reasonable prices. Now that I’ve returned to the same lady several times in a row she’s begun charging me fairly, although as I walk away I draw sullen glares from the other women flanking the aisle.

I walk back toward the office having traded 70,000 VND ($3.50) for 15 bananas, a mango, springrolls and fish sauce. A bench full of bean bags, an open-air balcony and a janky pool table are waiting for me.