Blind but most certainly not deaf..

To complete a rainy Saturday afternoon Claire joined me to visit the Vietnamese Institute of Traditional Medicine where we took massages from the blind people who are looked after there.
Claire was given an air-conditioned room at one end of the colonial era corridor and received an excellent massage while I was shunted along to the other end to a communal room. It was ok to be pushed and pulled as my 'therapist' had no sight at all, she tugged at my clothing indicating it should be removed and then pulled me to the massage table where she began her 'massage'. It wasn't really a massage though, instead she engaged with the 'therapist' in the joining room, and a man who stood outside the curtains in a three way conversation that was highly amusing to them all. Between shrieks of laughter and her own thigh slapping she would deliver me a random squeeze or slap around the head and continue on in a huge variety of tones that got me thinking about the language. I gave up on the idea I was having a massage and instead tried to absorb some of the characteristic phonology and phonetics of Vietnamese.
If they weren't laughing so much you might think the speakers were angry, the glak-glak rapid fire of syllables, the swallowed vowels, the lack of dentals, like alveolar dentals and more pharyngeal sounds that come from the back of the mouth create a system that is difficult to replicate with a western palate. The register too was hard to comprehend as after delivering a series of long vowels sounds a burst of shrieking syllables would follow without pause. The speakers were turn taking and obviously enjoying a conversation that allowed for equal contribution, they didn't interrupt each other over much even though my 'therapist' was animated and speaking rapidly I could observe her listening intently to the other speakers..dreadful massage great lesson in language..