When Blinking Makes You Sweat

 It’s back – the heat that is. I noticed this week that I was getting warmer under the collar and my underwear was beginning to act like a bucket - and I was right! Pooh L

For some reason I thought that the last 4ish months of me just glistening (as I like to think of it) rather then melting like the Wicked Witch, was a sure sign that I was adapting, acculturating to the heat of Vietnam and Vietnam in general. This last week has shown me how ludicrous that Hollywoodesque notion was. From the dripping I did in class this week it’s clear that my blood viscosity is still utterly of the Northeastern America Great Lake Insulation Ice Storm in March variety and my sweat glands have had zero interest or motivation to get on board with this tropical sun/humidity thing. This also means that the last 4ish months were cool weather – yeah 75 in the morning is cool, let’s not talk about the temp at noon. No seriously it is. What kills me is that rather then accepting the gift from God I was all full of my white-ass bougie self, “look at me y’all I am adapting. Tiny sweat stains today, and you can’t see um, booyah!” Meanwhile, God is just thinking “oh you little white kid just you wait, just you wait – adaption, pshaw. Me want some roasted ETA for breakie.” To further exasperate the return of this absurd heat I started teaching in the new blocks of classrooms and I literally have to cross an entire desert of sand in the direct sun. No trees, no bushes nothing but a tiny sidewalk and sand. I know it’s a construction site but come on, SAND? Seriously? It’s like their inspiration was Lawrence of Arabia. Hell, even the nomadic herd of water buffalo who seem convinced this field is still theirs all huddle on the one tiny piece of grass and all cower under the pitiful palm tree. At least I think that tall weed is a palm tree…

Seriously?! Isn't it enough that I feel like I am burning from the inside out? This is just a visual reminder of all that is utterly irritating about the tropics. And that bush thing - what is that?

Sand for as far as your pixilated vision can see - and it's deep sand too, it gets all in your teaching shoes which makes the next 3 hours even more fun.

Yep, telephone poles made of 1-inch diameter bamboo. Welcome to the provinces.

Remember that spike in Al Gore’s graph? The red one? It was labeled, ‘summertime temperatures affected by climate change.’ It went up and up and right off the screen and then off the wall, remember? It was scary. It made you nervous. It made you start pricing properties in Saskatchewan and building relationships with autistic heiresses from the South Island.

Because sure, Vietnam has many positive points – cheap Chinese haircuts, for example, and crotch mildew and jock itch (not to be too personal but training for a 10K here) – but even if you had your own talk show on VTV1 and a villa outside Da Lat with a personal che maker and one of those fortune tellers who can see dead people and give you fully accurate advice about who likes you and who doesn’t and how you can get even with the greatest perpetrators of injustice in your life (just off the cuff here, I’m remembering a certain English teacher who tortured me with Shakespeare and then after much suffering decided to give a lowball B+, totally unjustified and baseless), you wouldn’t want to stay in Vietnam if it got any hotter than it already is.

Why Summer (or most months in the South) is Bad

Vietnam is hot (except for sometimes, in the North when it’s cold) and hot is bad. Hot does clean your pores and excuse you for OD-ing on iced sugarcane juice (btw, never buy anything whose greatest selling point is, ‘cleaner than theirs’) but that doesn’t excuse it for leaving sweat marks in unbecoming places – like I don’t know – knee caps in class producing two asymmetrical circles halfway down your already distractingly long, Tay legs. And befuddling your brain so much that you do stupid things like seek heatstroke relief in multiple cà phê sữa đá and end up with what you think is a panic attack twitching all evening long to the not-so-well-hidden delight of the locals around you.

Summer (or for that matter 9 out of the 12 months in the South) is not just hot – it’s absurdly, badly, criminally hot. Like, it’s hot beyond the range of Acceptable Hot and well into what I imagine, Training for Menopause Hot would be. At times it is hotter than a Bikram yoga torture chamber hot. It is hotter than Sofia Vergara (some would say).

It’s so hot that you can’t go shopping anymore because the salespeople are too hot and sleepy to overcharge you and where’s the fun in that? You might as well live in Adelaide. It’s that boring (Sorry Oz, you know I love you).

Vietnam is so hot that women still pregnant in July induce labor before August and motorists take the unusual step of stopping beneath the train tracks or any shade during red lights to enjoy the cooling shade or ochre mist of passing trains.

It’s so hot your deodorant will melt; your vision will pixilate, your goldfish will bloat up and die and sweat stains will turn all of your clothing to paisley. Ew.

How to Deal

As aforementioned, summer, well life in Southern Vietnam in general, involves a lot of sweating and sweating is slimy and stinky and not very comfortable so most (including Vietnamese) try to avoid it. If you don’t move, you are less likely (though not at all guaranteed) to sweat. Think lizard. Blood also thins in the heat (not Tay blood though that stays thermal insulation thick for life) and that makes blood sluggish. Thus, instead of gesturing with hands, for instance, many start using their nostrils or eyes to express the nonverbal. A single eyelash can quiver with great meaning. Picking someone up at a bar, or coffee house, or food stall by the dumpsters, takes on a whole new subtlety and tempo. I have seen expats fall in love over a game of ‘I Spy’.

Lethargy is all well and good but play is still an important part of everybody’s day so if you have to be active, try to make it something anaerobic. For instance stay in doors where somebody else is paying for the electric.

Or, plan ahead. You can take slow evening walks in the park as long as you keep a mini battery-powered fan directly under your chin and chew on Oresol. You can bicycle as long as you carry a parasol, and not fall over or get killed or trigger an accident. You can smile as long as you use blotting paper.

You can exercise too, but don’t over do it. Remember, in this audacious weather, laughing, sweating, kissing, and blinking more then once every twenty seconds count as exercise. Your best option is to swim – but only go to the pool in mid-morning! Never during the evening stampede! Your elbows aren’t sharp enough. And there is precious little chlorine; you might contract a lisp.

All in all, the best thing to do in extreme temperatures is meditate. This requires no movement at all and it trains your mind to accept and ignore disagreeable situations (like Monday morning and students who don’t do any homework or study and then wonder mystified why they are failing). Find the quietest place you can in the decibel dungeon that is practically every city in Nam, close your burning eyes and focus your mind on a single concept or image. Try:

Cranberries

Waterfalls

World Peace

Humpback Whales

Irony

Do not think about Sophia Vergara or wonder what Olympic sport you might have medalled in. Let peace fill you. Relax your thyroid gland and concentrate on slowing your breath, your mind and your metabolism. Imagine walking through the market in your boxers (or even less depending on the sun’s current angle). Imagine a strong breeze (or a hurricane). Remember John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan losing successive presidential elections. Though depending on your persuasions this may agitate you – sucks to be you. Believe in a brighter future. Believe in cold. And above all else, find air con and never leave.

This heat might just be the thing to drive me back to the loving embrace of central AC. 9 more weeks and counting. Think cold. Feel cold. Be the cold.