Mưa

I had the opportunity to spend a month in Viet Nam this summer. It was the greatest summer of my life! Vietnam is such a fantastic culture to get into. I spent most of my time in Ho Chi Minh City. That city essentially became my home away from home. I have such a long list of positive memories; these are my favorites:

- Phở
- Public Transportation.
- Going to sleep at 4 and waking up at 9.
- Fitting an emasculating helmet over my curls and riding around on an emasculating motorbike behind a girl who threatened me constantly... with emasculating castration.
- Blowing all my cash at the Casbah.
- Covering taxi fare for, or having my taxi fare covered by, my best friends.
- Learning Vietnamese the hard way (Immersion) and the easy way (by parroting funny-sounding phrases) at the same time
- Leaving an American passport in a Vietnamese hotel room and having them drive it to us
- Meeting a German, a handful of French, a handful of Spaniards, a Bosnian, and 4 Americans without being in Germany, France, Spain, Bosnia, or America.
- The bat-shit crazy cleaning lady at the Casbah
- Not traveling to the North because of a storm. Or something.
- The hotel room that smelled like cancer
- Going to that same hotel's pool in the middle of the night, and realizing the next morning that each of us was right in front of the security camera
- Syntactically referring to currency as "Thou".
- Seeing the Vietnam war, finally through the eyes of Vietnam
- Freaking out Dylan by repeating all the Vietnamese words he spits out
- Hearing the Cathedral bells while at the Casbah
- Hearing the words "Of course we fuck up each other's lives. Why else do you think we're friends?"
- Watching Kim get red as a bloody lobster from the sun
- Explaining the mysterious hair found on the bed...
- "Một, hai, ba... dzô!"
- Going to a party for the World Cup championship almost straight away from touching down at the airport.
- While on the return trip, getting stuck in Japan for 12 hours and Hawai'i for 9 hours. Not complaining about either.
- "Hi, I'm Kristin. Do you have any fetishes?"
- "Hey, give me your driver's license." 
... Why? 
"Just do it. We need an ID to give to this lady so we can rent bikes."
"..."
- Realizing the only context I can enjoy pop music is when I'm surrounded by Asian people who love it so much more than I do.
- Instant noodles: Breakfast of champions!
- Waking up to the sound of car horns and Abba's "The Winner Takes it All"... every single morning. <3
- Constantly playing up the danger of being sold to the Shanghai slave trade
- "What is this called? What does that mean? How do I pronounce this?" 
- Being served by waitresses that were quite obviously eight years old... At least, to my eyes.
- Observing locals transport open trayfulls of food at a time... by motorbike.
- Dragon fruit. Enough said.
- Get up, shower, go outside, sweat, sweat some more, sleep, get up, realize how useless it is to shower, shower anyway, go outside...
- Getting pissed on by a merry-go-round. Multiple times.
- Getting my foot torn open by that same merry-go-round.
- 'Surprising' Fishy that I could stay an extra week, and having the surprise go slightly sour. Worth it anyway.
- Engrish! Engrish everywhere!!!
- Meeting the loveliest people in Vietnamese clubs.
- Eating fruit that is, quite seriously, outlawed in America for numerous reasons.
- The horror (and amusement) offered by the Bến Thành market
- Finding ancient-looking, Sino-Vietnamese buildings which are anachronisms compared to the modernistic apartments
- Seeing the genuine anger on my friends' faces when viewing VinCom's expansion plans
- Truc threatening to cut off (and fry) my "cu".
- Drinking at least one cà phê sữa đá a day.
- Vietnamese traffic: Survival of the fittest.
- Almost getting stuck in the Vietnamese airport because I don't know the address I'm staying at, and taking an address from a lovely young American couple on their honeymoon and jotting it down roughly.
- Making Midsummer 2010 the best time of my life.

"It's the thought that counts."

I was speaking with my good friend earlier today. She said something that I simply didn't understand at the time.

"It's the thought that counts to me. Seriously. I'd rather have you just tell me 'Happy birthday, I'm sorry I couldn't get you anything because I'm low on cash.' than get me something silly."

Now, I've naturally heard that before. "It's the thought that counts." Every time, however, I admit I really didn't give it much thought. After all, it may be the thought that counts, but think about how bad you'll look if you're the only person who didn't (or wasn't able to) buy gifts.

I had gone out to eat bún riêu (A kind of Vietnamese noodle soup) with a few of my friends, and I figured I should pick up a small snack for my friends who were back at my college. I bought a package of two spring rolls and headed back.

Some bún riêu. Never had it? Go fix that. Now.

I tracked down my friends and gave them the food, but one of my friends reminded silly me that she had eaten it before and wasn't overly fond of it. I was kind of disappointed. Not only had I picked the wrong food, I had also (in a sense) broken my promise to bring something back for her.

My disappointment must have shown on my face. She quickly assured me "But it's the thought that counts! Seriously! I think it's so nice of you to do this!" I was taken off guard. Does that adage apply to this situation? I suppose it must.

If the thought really is what counts, why do we even need to actually go through the action of buying or creating gifts then? We can just think them up. That should be good enough. Right?

...Yeah, no. We should get gifts because we want to, not because we have to. It's not an equivalent exchange. Of course, the other side of this is that if we are completely unable to get a hold of gifts, then you shouldn't feel obligated. If it's outside your power, then so be it. It's around this time of year we begin to lose track of what a gift really means, so this is why I decided to write about it today with that phrase fresh in my mind.

If you're able, I want you to post in a comment below what your favorite gift was. Just a way of reliving certain good memories.

Mine was the year I got the biggest Transformer ever for Christmas: Unicron. Jeez, that mofo was big. He was so big, he didn't transform into a semi. He didn't transform into no stinkin' Battleship either. No, he didn't even transform into a Boeing 747. This bad boy transformed into a damned PLANET.

Pictured: This bad boy (right), a damned planet (left).

So if you have one gift that really meant a lot to you, please leave a short description in the comment. It's good to remember these things from your childhood.