Life on Trần Khánh Dư Road
A tall jacaranda tree across the road from my apartment bloomed thin bright purple flowers all through the spring. The blossoms would carpet the road across from the neighborhood trash bin. It was a nice contrast to the piles of food scraps and plastic bottles that some how end up outside the bin. But one day, a crew came along and took out the whole tree. I almost cried at the sound of the chain saws. I had grown so accustomed to seeing that tree. At least they waited until it had finished blooming.
I spent a lot of time in my apartment and the surrounding neighborhood in the second half of April, after I returned from Singapore. There was an entire week where I didn’t leave the apartment at all, during my Covid confinement. But once I could leave, I didn’t wander too far. For about a week after the point when I could re-emerge in public, I got really tired if I needed to walk more than 15 minutes. I also walked quite slowly.
But this gave me some time to notice things in my neighborhood, along Trần Khánh Dư Road, that I probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
My apartment is on the third floor of an imposing looking French-styled villa, with a tiled courtyard surrounded by a tall iron gate. Juniper bushes and fresh flowers ring the courtyard: day lilies and yellow hibiscus are always in bloom here. The first two floors are occupied by an internet company, and every day, as I climb the stairs to my apartment, I can peek in and see young people plugging away on their computers. Their motorbikes circle the building when they arrive every weekday morning. On one of the bikes sits a helmet covered with calculus formulas. I can relate.
My road is not quite the width of two cars in places, so it’s a challenge for cars to pass each other. Fortunately, most people ride motorbikes. It’s paved, but crumbling into light brown-grey dirt on the edges. This is not really the norm on other streets in the neighborhood. Most streets look like they have been recently repaved. I had long suspected this road was on someone’s list for repairs, and I got a text message from my apartment manager on the day the jacaranda tree came down that the city was beginning to repair the road. That would explain the large back-hoe lumbering down the street twice a day.
The road is lined in places with blooming hibiscus and deep purple or red bougainvillea (at least, it was before the roadwork began!), small villas and businesses. There is a bakery a couple of doors down – I only know this from the smell of freshly baked bread when I run by at 6:15 am. A little ways beyond that is a company that (I think) sells agricultural fertilizers. There are a few homestay hotels (essentially, B&Bs), and lots of small, gated courtyards. People like succulents, and there is a gated, sunny patio down the road with stands of tightly packed miniature succulents resting beneath the laundry that has been hung out to dry. One one side of the road, little alleyways occasionally drop down behind the houses to fields of kale or lettuce, or a greenhouse of marigolds. Near the bend in the road is a lady who sells sticky rice from a small cart every morning and afternoon. She always waves and calls hello to me as I run or walk by. I can only see her eyes. Her face and head are hidden by a mask and hat. I would not recognize her without the mask and the hat.
Sometimes when I go to campus, I walk up a steep, narrow laneway to the main, busy road that runs past the university: Đường Phù Đổng Thiên Vương. This road is only quiet before 6:15am and after 9pm. Otherwise it’s a steady stream of bikes and cars, or buses tootling their horns for everyone to get out of the way. The road is lined with stores, restaurants, eateries (places that are more like a buffet cafeteria than a restaurant), cafes, fruit and veggie stands. There is a pile of rubble at the entrance to my laneway – I think it used to be a building. A woman has established her fruit stand there. But her inventory changes all the time. Sometimes she sells coconuts. Another day it’s mangoes. For awhile there was a pyramid of watermelons, covered with a tarp when it’s sunny or rainy, or at night when she leaves.
Nearby is the family that sells pineapple (you can buy a pineapple for the equivalent of about $1). Beyond that is a market with all other types of fruits. You can find avocados that look like zucchinis, and giant pomelos – a type of citrus fruit that spawned the grapefruit when someone crossed it with an orange. There are purple mangosteens and yellow mangoes, three different types of bananas, and one of my new favorites, the soursop. (Don’t worry, I’ll write a post dedicated to fruit later.) All along both sides of the busy street are cafes with low tables and chairs where men – old and young – sit smoking while sipping their morning coffee and tapping their cell phones.
There seems to be a constant shuffle or overturn of shops on the street. Construction happens fast, with people working from sunup to sundown, and I’m surprised at some of the turnover I’ve seen in shops in the four months that I’ve been here. I saw a building down the street from my apartment completely gutted. When I returned from Singapore, there was a shining cafe with big windows, and a Korean restaurant occupying the two floors above. Beneath the cafe, where the street wraps around the building and drops down to my road, there is now a local market with veggies and meat.
To get to the university, I cross the busy street and turn down a narrow alleyway between two buildings. It’s just wide enough for a truck, and I never enjoy getting boxed in there with a car. There are always motorbikes zipping through – especially when the students are coming and going to class. The street just beyond the narrow alley leads right up to the back gate of the campus. I always enjoy walking down this narrow street. It’s full of places that students like to visit. When you walk through between classes, students are swarming to get milk tea or chicken rice or Bahn mi.
In the early morning, before the students come, I walk by just after the corner veggie market has had it’s delivery, and the shop owner stands among piles of produce tallying up her inventory with cell phone in hand as the young women who help her start unpacking and stacking carrots and bell peppers and the wide array of greens people buy daily here.
A lady a few houses down is chopping up the pig for fresh meat. Two houses down there are chickens and ducks in cages and fish swimming in a large bowl (you can’t get meat this fresh in the States). Up the street, along the university gate, a man sets out a small grill and piles on what looks like sausage patties on banana leaves. It smells so good.
Once I cross the threshold of the university, everything changes, and I feel like I’m in familiar territory, whether it’s early morning or a holiday weekend when no one is there, or midday and buzzing with motorbikes and students, universities everywhere have an atmosphere that feels like home to me. This university has a bonus: a park-like atmosphere, a forest, and views of the mountains. I walk past the library, past the gaze of the Golden Buddha on his hill to the north against the backdrop of Langbiang Mountain, the tallest mountain in the area. If I walk down a pathway through the forest, I’ll come to a pond. There are two ponds on campus. At one of them, I always hear frogs chirping. At the other one, if I come on the right day, early enough in the morning, I’ll see steam fog. While I was in Singapore, they expanded that pond. They extended it downstream and built an arching bridge across the stream that flows out the other end. Again, I was so surprised to see the landscape change so quickly!
This has been my neighborhood for the past four months, and I feel so lucky to be in a place that is so dynamic, so full of life, and also so close to a place where I can sit in nature for a bit. I think of the pond near my house back home (Greeley’s Glenmere!), and how much I love to walk there and watch nature shift through the seasons. I look forward to seeing it again, but I will miss the energy of my neighborhood in Dalat. I will miss being able to walk five minutes up an alleyway to buy fresh fruit and veggies and homemade tofu.
