Do You Like Dog?

One of the best parts on any vacation is coming back home. I enjoyed Sapa and Hanoi and was glad for the chance to go to Vietnam, but after a rickety, smelly overnight train ride followed by a shoving match to get through customs and then followed by a jarring 5 hour-long bus ride, I was more than happy to be back in my own apartment. After a shower and a pot of coffee, life was good again.

I'm still consolidating photos from the trip so I'll post photos later.

A funny story to share . . . When we got back to the border, my phone service came back and I had a text message from Robin, a student-friend. I had spent time helping Robin prepare a speech for a competition a few weeks ago. After the competition, she went back home to see her family. Here's the text message she sent me:

"Dear Kim. I'm coming back tomorrow. If you like dog, I can bring a small one to you, there are three in my house."

Knowing that dog meat is available in the Mengzi markets and after a week of hearing about all kinds of strange food that people in Vietnam eat, I just assumed that when she said "if you like dog," she meant "if you like to eat dog." So my reply was:

Thanks for the offer but actually I think it's a little strange to eat dog. Maybe it's a cultural difference.

Then I got another message from Robin:

You made a mistake. I mean I will bring a small dog to you to keep, not eat. Because you said you like dog.

Oops! My mistake, but as much as I like dogs and as relieved as I was that it wasn't dog meat, I still didn't want her to bring me a puppy. I just don't think having a dog in China is a good idea for me since I travel a lot and don't want to have to give a dog up whenever I end up going home. So, I politely declined Robin's offer to bring me a dog and laughed about assuming that she was bringing me dog meat! I guess I never thought about the difference between saying, "do you like dogs?" and "do you like dog?" . . . maybe I should point that out to Robin . . .