yo........i hate blogging. i hate writing long posts so I never write anything and because I haven't written in so long I end up writing long posts.
updates...
-found lesbians!!!!! all this time I've been going to all these spots for gay men, asking myself "where be all the lezzies?" I found an answer to my question! Well maybe not all the lezzies...but a substantial amount hang out at this one karaoke bar. I went there twice. I met the owner, who used to live in France...so we parlered (pronounced "parlaid") some francais. I also met her ex-lover, who's a viet kieu from canada (viet kieu are overseas vietnamese who come back...so yours truly is also a VK)..so she speaks english. hopefully she can help me with this project and introduce me to folks...but i kind of fucked up already. I accidentally mislabeled her number in my phone...so I had this other guy Dat's number saved under her name. So in VN, I haven't been calling anyone, only text messaging. I thought I had set up a lunch meeting with her but it was really with Dat. I was confused and confused everyone and now she thinks i'm weird...but hopefully will still talk to me anyway. so who is this Dat guy? he's this 21 year old hottie who sometimes hangs out with gay men a lot but still claims to be straight (even though our mutual gay friends tell me about dat's love life with boys). Dat used to be in an unsuccessful boyband called Four Candles, from age 18-20. however, i don't think they released a CD.
anyways, with the advent of this lezzie karaoke place, i'm slowly inching my way into the dyke community here. it's difficult though. gay men are friendlier and open and just talk to you. And for fun they like to go out dancing, which I find fun, so when I go to a gay bar to do field observations it's fun. so far, i've only seen lezzies sing karaoke, which can be fun, but it's hard to do repeated sessions of field observations there (i can only take so much karaoke...). i have that problem in the states...queer women whom i'm not already friends with intimidate the shit out of me.
- :'-( There was this eccentric, wacky, awkward, funny guy who worked the graveyard shift named Lee. I don't think that's his real name but that's the name he told us. He gave me his phone number and at first Kyla thought he was creepy but after chatting with him, decided that he was just quirky. we had ice cream with him, and later dubbed him "lazy crazy lee" as a nickname accurately describing his nature. Me and Kyla would often sit in the lobby and watch World Cup matches with him, and the security guard Thien. Thien is like your lanky, tall kid brother. When he nods his head yes, his whole upper body goes up and down too. Watching the world cup with them reminded me of Pomona, like going into a lounge and just hanging out with people. It felt homey, which is hard to do in a hotel. The sketchiest people come to the hotel at all hours of the night, often stumble over yourself sloppy kind of drunk. The graveyard shift sucks ass. Part of the reason why I heart Lee is cuz he doesn't take shit from people. However, cuz he doesn't take shit from people, he got fired last week on the spot for being disrespectful to a customer. Service is really important here. People are super attentive, hovering around you, doing stuff for you that you could easily do for yourself (like open your can of soda), all of which makes me feel supes uncomfortable. some rich people here, especially some at our hotel, feel hella entitled to this treatment, having no problems with making someone lose their job in response to having their ego bruised.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Sunday, June 18, 2006
a new post!
i know it's been so long! i learned that i'm not meant to be a blogger...however since I've started one I will keep it up!
So sketchiest night pt. 2...
-RR (who's name is something like Emeson...think "msn")took us to this upstairs bar/club place with a rock band of sorts that played covers of such songs like "The only thing that looks good on me (is you)" originated by the illustrious Bryan Adams, and the song "B*tch" by Meredith Brooks. Emeson bought us drinks and then called his friend Don to come meet us. I think Emeson wanted to hook me up with him. Don comes, wearing a white long sleeve shirt, with the top few buttons unopened to show his chest. Don is ten shades of nasty. The first few seconds i met him he proclaimed how he wanted to go to my hotel room tonight. gross! i should've been a lot meaner about him getting away from me, but part of me thought the whole thing was entertaining, and i had high opinions of my ability to avoid contact. i thought it was entertaining because don claims to be a football player in singapore here on vacation. then for the next half hour I had to dodge him trying to kiss me. about 98% successful. except once he tried to french kiss me, but i dodged it, but not in time to prevent face-tongue contact. ew!!!!!!!!!!! wait...i don't think you get the full picture: EW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyways...had to split....but they decided to get in the taxi with us, and i was too drunk to make a big stink. when we got to the hotel, they expected to go back to our rooms with us (nasty!). we told the guy working in the lobby (who's now our friend! his name is lee) that we didn't want that. he took our cue, and told them to leave. then emeson tried to check into the hotel, and lee told him that the hotel was full (yay lee!).
-pretty soon emeson began "courting" kyla, which includes behavior that by american standards would be called "stalking"...he called everyday, multiple times, stopped by the hotel (luckily the staff told emeson that we weren't here). This went on for awhile...oh yeah until a few days ago when Emeson checked into the hotel, with a middle-aged vietnamese woman who's his sugar mama (who happened resemble stephen huie's mother...no seriously!). there are two computers with internet in the lobby, so kyla and me happened to be online and in the lobby when emeson had checked in. he left his lady friend and began talking to kyla, saying shit like "why don't you call me". Then his ladyfriend beckoned him to come back. Then they went upstairs. We talked to the woman working at the desk at the time. Apparently he had checked in onto the floor above us (gross!)...and the lady didn't like us. The woman at the desk told us that she talked shit about us, telling emeson "I don't like those girls" to which he replied "Don't worry, we won't see them"....this whole kyla-emeson thing is too long and difficult to describe! anyways...now professor thai wants kyla to help him write an article using her expertise in nigerian prostitutes.
-what's fascinating is how race is dealt here. going to school in LA, and the legay of the LA rebellion, looking at the dynamics between black and asian communities is important. it's interesting to see the similarities and differences in this situation, between vietnamese locals and foreigners from africa (besides nigerians, we've met some south africans, folks from togo). There's definitely some hostility, which is cyclically reinforced. for example (in crude terms) taxi driver mean to emeson, emeson mean to taxi driver, each one is reinforcing the stereotypes they think of each other. What also has been hard dealing with, is relying on the racism here. Emeson, again by American standards, was relentlessly pursuing Kyla, being very stubborn, not taking no for an answer or leaving her alone. Whenever we got in a sketchy situation with Emeson (in our hotel or at a restaurant), we knew nothing bad would happen to us, because the staff there was just waiting for an opportunity to kick him out. there's ugly shit out there, and it's a shitty thing to face when you conform to it.
other highlights
-started doing research...now am just studying gays and lesbians in general
-Professor Thai has an assistant named Loc who's a university student, who helped me get in touch with his classmate Ha, who's gay. I met Ha and his boyfriend, Tuan, who introduced to their friend Tony. Tony has been taking me to different gay spots. I went to this bar where the waitors wear different costumes, such as spider shirts with short shorts, or sexy monk costumes (unfortunately i wasn't there on sexy monk night). Yesterday I went to this park where men pick up other men. You drive around the park on your motorbike until you find a guy you like. When people go to the park, they say they're "going shopping", or "di cho" (in vietnamese). However, there are straight people there making out as well as wholesome university students playing soccer in the park as well. Parks here are crazy. At night, there are dozens of couples who just make out there. it's really fun but i haven't met any lesbians (or queer women in general) yet..or maybe i have...more accurately I haven't seen anything of a queer women's scene yet. The gay men I've been talking to say that lesbians are no fun and are mean. I'd like to contradict them but.....
what surprised me, is that the words the men i've been hanging out use to describe themselves, are words that are derogatory when used by straights. words such as "bong" or "pe de". Bong Lo is somoeone who's obviously gay while Bong Kinh is someone who you can't tell is gay. Tony and friends use bong with each other all the time. Also, I interviewed this gay tour guide and when he told me vietnamese terms he only used those too. However, when I talked to my professor, I said bong, and he told me to use another word because that means faggot. However, the term professor told me use, i've never heard being used by my informants.
-as i expected...the only white people i see in the gay spots are nasty old white men....all with gray hair (if not balding)...some in shape but others with potbellies. My interview with the tour guide confirmed this, he said that all of his white gay male clients are in their late fifties. the only non-white clients he has are asian men that have older white boyfriends who come along. i pretty much expected this but it is still on the hellza nasty side.
So sketchiest night pt. 2...
-RR (who's name is something like Emeson...think "msn")took us to this upstairs bar/club place with a rock band of sorts that played covers of such songs like "The only thing that looks good on me (is you)" originated by the illustrious Bryan Adams, and the song "B*tch" by Meredith Brooks. Emeson bought us drinks and then called his friend Don to come meet us. I think Emeson wanted to hook me up with him. Don comes, wearing a white long sleeve shirt, with the top few buttons unopened to show his chest. Don is ten shades of nasty. The first few seconds i met him he proclaimed how he wanted to go to my hotel room tonight. gross! i should've been a lot meaner about him getting away from me, but part of me thought the whole thing was entertaining, and i had high opinions of my ability to avoid contact. i thought it was entertaining because don claims to be a football player in singapore here on vacation. then for the next half hour I had to dodge him trying to kiss me. about 98% successful. except once he tried to french kiss me, but i dodged it, but not in time to prevent face-tongue contact. ew!!!!!!!!!!! wait...i don't think you get the full picture: EW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyways...had to split....but they decided to get in the taxi with us, and i was too drunk to make a big stink. when we got to the hotel, they expected to go back to our rooms with us (nasty!). we told the guy working in the lobby (who's now our friend! his name is lee) that we didn't want that. he took our cue, and told them to leave. then emeson tried to check into the hotel, and lee told him that the hotel was full (yay lee!).
-pretty soon emeson began "courting" kyla, which includes behavior that by american standards would be called "stalking"...he called everyday, multiple times, stopped by the hotel (luckily the staff told emeson that we weren't here). This went on for awhile...oh yeah until a few days ago when Emeson checked into the hotel, with a middle-aged vietnamese woman who's his sugar mama (who happened resemble stephen huie's mother...no seriously!). there are two computers with internet in the lobby, so kyla and me happened to be online and in the lobby when emeson had checked in. he left his lady friend and began talking to kyla, saying shit like "why don't you call me". Then his ladyfriend beckoned him to come back. Then they went upstairs. We talked to the woman working at the desk at the time. Apparently he had checked in onto the floor above us (gross!)...and the lady didn't like us. The woman at the desk told us that she talked shit about us, telling emeson "I don't like those girls" to which he replied "Don't worry, we won't see them"....this whole kyla-emeson thing is too long and difficult to describe! anyways...now professor thai wants kyla to help him write an article using her expertise in nigerian prostitutes.
-what's fascinating is how race is dealt here. going to school in LA, and the legay of the LA rebellion, looking at the dynamics between black and asian communities is important. it's interesting to see the similarities and differences in this situation, between vietnamese locals and foreigners from africa (besides nigerians, we've met some south africans, folks from togo). There's definitely some hostility, which is cyclically reinforced. for example (in crude terms) taxi driver mean to emeson, emeson mean to taxi driver, each one is reinforcing the stereotypes they think of each other. What also has been hard dealing with, is relying on the racism here. Emeson, again by American standards, was relentlessly pursuing Kyla, being very stubborn, not taking no for an answer or leaving her alone. Whenever we got in a sketchy situation with Emeson (in our hotel or at a restaurant), we knew nothing bad would happen to us, because the staff there was just waiting for an opportunity to kick him out. there's ugly shit out there, and it's a shitty thing to face when you conform to it.
other highlights
-started doing research...now am just studying gays and lesbians in general
-Professor Thai has an assistant named Loc who's a university student, who helped me get in touch with his classmate Ha, who's gay. I met Ha and his boyfriend, Tuan, who introduced to their friend Tony. Tony has been taking me to different gay spots. I went to this bar where the waitors wear different costumes, such as spider shirts with short shorts, or sexy monk costumes (unfortunately i wasn't there on sexy monk night). Yesterday I went to this park where men pick up other men. You drive around the park on your motorbike until you find a guy you like. When people go to the park, they say they're "going shopping", or "di cho" (in vietnamese). However, there are straight people there making out as well as wholesome university students playing soccer in the park as well. Parks here are crazy. At night, there are dozens of couples who just make out there. it's really fun but i haven't met any lesbians (or queer women in general) yet..or maybe i have...more accurately I haven't seen anything of a queer women's scene yet. The gay men I've been talking to say that lesbians are no fun and are mean. I'd like to contradict them but.....
what surprised me, is that the words the men i've been hanging out use to describe themselves, are words that are derogatory when used by straights. words such as "bong" or "pe de". Bong Lo is somoeone who's obviously gay while Bong Kinh is someone who you can't tell is gay. Tony and friends use bong with each other all the time. Also, I interviewed this gay tour guide and when he told me vietnamese terms he only used those too. However, when I talked to my professor, I said bong, and he told me to use another word because that means faggot. However, the term professor told me use, i've never heard being used by my informants.
-as i expected...the only white people i see in the gay spots are nasty old white men....all with gray hair (if not balding)...some in shape but others with potbellies. My interview with the tour guide confirmed this, he said that all of his white gay male clients are in their late fifties. the only non-white clients he has are asian men that have older white boyfriends who come along. i pretty much expected this but it is still on the hellza nasty side.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
possibly the sketchiest night of my life pt.1
i don't know...last night is in heavy competition with that night of drunk driving with cameroonian music video dancers and hitting a teenager and taking him to the hospital. While that may seem more sketchier on paper, I personally felt more sketched out by last night.
during the day, my roommate Kyla had met with Professor Thai (the professor she works for and that I'm affiliated with). He told her that there was this trend where rich Vietnamese women hire Nigerian male prostitutes. All day, me and Kyla thought this was hella interesting and would make a really cool research project, since it is a relatively new phenomenon and little work has been done on it. also, i was interested in the experiences of an african in asia since i've spent time being an asian in africa. however, we were at a loss of how to meet these nigerian men. do we just go up to them?
anyways, so for my project i've been really limited in what i can do. i don't have a translator so i can't do interviews...so i've been going to places listed on this gay travel website and doing participant observation, and scribbling in my journal. so one of the places i need to go to was this bar in the backpacker district of hcmc (ho chi minh city). after having dinner there, we wandered around and bumped into three men, two nigerian and one from togo. they were all infatuated with kyla. we chatted a bit, the togo guy scolded me about being viet and not being able to speak the language, and not wanting to get to know where i come from (oh yeah...in that case, why the hell am i here?). we parted ways and continued to wander.
We stopped at this park that apparently becomes a make out spot at night, like a the stereotypically lookout point where gross guys takes out girls to score in high school tv shows and movies. except parking their car, couples park their motorbikes, which they lean on as they cozy up against each other and make out. two men approached us (more accurately, kyla). they were both south african, while one of them (the one super into kyla, who i will refer to as the RR, which stands for Ridiculously Rich) was now living in nigeria. he invited us to go to a club with him called Apocalypse Now, which was a club that was on my list (places in HCMC are not specifically geared towards gay folks, but are gay-friendly (or least not overtly homophobic)). so we decided to go with him. however, he had to wait for another friend to arrive. as we wated, this middle-aged asian man who spoke some english came frantically to us, along with a middle-aged vietnamese woman. after a few misunderstandings of what he was trying to ask us, we figured out he was asking if one of us spoke vietnamese. though i barely spoke it, i tried to help. he wanted to go home with her, but she didn't want to go to her house because it was far and there were people there. he suggested that they go to a hotel, but not like a 5 star hotel because that would be expensive. She would just go wherever he wanted. he doesn't no hcmc, so wouldn't know where to go so she should pick it. and off they want, a happy couple about to get laid. so sketchy! and i facilitated that hook up! a) i was doing it for the karma points b) i wanted to test my vietnamese and c) i should be helping sketchy people because i would be researching sketchy people
sketchiest night ever will be continued at a later period in time. now that i have a blog, i don't feel the compulsion to finish a story in one get go anymore, as i would have done with a mass e-mail. also, i don't have the attention span anymore...
also...sadness....i don't think i'm going to research male prostitutes anymore. a) i'm having a hard time finding a translator who willing to work with that topic [no translator = no ability to research] b) i stumbled on a survey of men who have sex with men in vietnam, and there was a section on sex workers which would go over similar territory that i would go over c) so far, all the gay stuff i've seen about vietnam have been super male centric. in an article about gay issues, there'd be like one paragraph about queer women. also, most of the spots i've been too, men have been more visible, so i am just left with the reaction "where da women at?". so maybe i want to focus more on that, or more focus on general queer issues. in my proposal, i said i'd research how gay tourism impacts lgbt experiences in VN, and how it impacts sex work, but how could i research that when i have no idea what lgbt experience in VN are like in general. so...sorry everyone who was looking forward to that!
during the day, my roommate Kyla had met with Professor Thai (the professor she works for and that I'm affiliated with). He told her that there was this trend where rich Vietnamese women hire Nigerian male prostitutes. All day, me and Kyla thought this was hella interesting and would make a really cool research project, since it is a relatively new phenomenon and little work has been done on it. also, i was interested in the experiences of an african in asia since i've spent time being an asian in africa. however, we were at a loss of how to meet these nigerian men. do we just go up to them?
anyways, so for my project i've been really limited in what i can do. i don't have a translator so i can't do interviews...so i've been going to places listed on this gay travel website and doing participant observation, and scribbling in my journal. so one of the places i need to go to was this bar in the backpacker district of hcmc (ho chi minh city). after having dinner there, we wandered around and bumped into three men, two nigerian and one from togo. they were all infatuated with kyla. we chatted a bit, the togo guy scolded me about being viet and not being able to speak the language, and not wanting to get to know where i come from (oh yeah...in that case, why the hell am i here?). we parted ways and continued to wander.
We stopped at this park that apparently becomes a make out spot at night, like a the stereotypically lookout point where gross guys takes out girls to score in high school tv shows and movies. except parking their car, couples park their motorbikes, which they lean on as they cozy up against each other and make out. two men approached us (more accurately, kyla). they were both south african, while one of them (the one super into kyla, who i will refer to as the RR, which stands for Ridiculously Rich) was now living in nigeria. he invited us to go to a club with him called Apocalypse Now, which was a club that was on my list (places in HCMC are not specifically geared towards gay folks, but are gay-friendly (or least not overtly homophobic)). so we decided to go with him. however, he had to wait for another friend to arrive. as we wated, this middle-aged asian man who spoke some english came frantically to us, along with a middle-aged vietnamese woman. after a few misunderstandings of what he was trying to ask us, we figured out he was asking if one of us spoke vietnamese. though i barely spoke it, i tried to help. he wanted to go home with her, but she didn't want to go to her house because it was far and there were people there. he suggested that they go to a hotel, but not like a 5 star hotel because that would be expensive. She would just go wherever he wanted. he doesn't no hcmc, so wouldn't know where to go so she should pick it. and off they want, a happy couple about to get laid. so sketchy! and i facilitated that hook up! a) i was doing it for the karma points b) i wanted to test my vietnamese and c) i should be helping sketchy people because i would be researching sketchy people
sketchiest night ever will be continued at a later period in time. now that i have a blog, i don't feel the compulsion to finish a story in one get go anymore, as i would have done with a mass e-mail. also, i don't have the attention span anymore...
also...sadness....i don't think i'm going to research male prostitutes anymore. a) i'm having a hard time finding a translator who willing to work with that topic [no translator = no ability to research] b) i stumbled on a survey of men who have sex with men in vietnam, and there was a section on sex workers which would go over similar territory that i would go over c) so far, all the gay stuff i've seen about vietnam have been super male centric. in an article about gay issues, there'd be like one paragraph about queer women. also, most of the spots i've been too, men have been more visible, so i am just left with the reaction "where da women at?". so maybe i want to focus more on that, or more focus on general queer issues. in my proposal, i said i'd research how gay tourism impacts lgbt experiences in VN, and how it impacts sex work, but how could i research that when i have no idea what lgbt experience in VN are like in general. so...sorry everyone who was looking forward to that!
Monday, June 05, 2006
the land of moist towelettes pt. 2
more photos.
This is from a temple I visited while on a half-day city tour. The spiral things are incense that burn for 7 days. The tour was with a company called Sinh Cafe. We went around in a big, air-conditioned bus, even though there were only five people signed up for the tour. Me, Kyla, a Vietnamese man who immigrated to the U.S. and now lives in San Jose, a white Canadian woman who has just finished living in Bali for three years, and a white British woman living in France. The last two were hella White Vagina Mountain (I will refer to them collectively as WVM). WVM kept on making comments about how they can already see how "industrious" the vietnamese are as a people, and how they can get that sense though they've only been here for two days. floral garlands that are for "special occasions" are instead intended for "Ceremonies," "rituals", and "tradition" according to their lingo...basically they were trying to impose a lot of ancient oriental easter spirituality bullshit. They were surprised that me and kyla would be in ho chi minh city for two months, thinking that we would get bored of the city. i've lived in the bay area for all my life and still have a lot to discover about the city. however discovering a place does not put notches on the travel belt for the hip backpacking crunchy granola crowd. Our tour guide, Son, was a nice middle-aged man who studied for a year in the U.S. in 1972, visiting New Jersey and Colorado. It was interesting to see how he presented recent Vietnamese history. April 3oth, known in the U.S. more as "the Fall of Saigon" is referred to as "The Liberation" and other little things like that. I will rant more on that at a later time.
This is the view from the top of my aunt's house in Vung Tau. Vung Tau is a beach side city, a 90 minute ferry ride from Ho Chi Minh City. When I mean my aunt's house, I mean her compound of several guest small guest houses along the side of a hill. She and my cousin Tung both have successful businesses in the clothing industry. My uncle Chiu has a business selling gas-cookers. As a result, my family here are a bit on the ridonkulously rich side. I've been going to sheeshee places that I don't really go to in the U.S. (combination can't afford to, and don't really want to). Like with many of the nouveau riche, materialism denotes one's status and value as a person. Materialism aside, they're family and they've been really nice to me and caring, and keep me from holing myself up in the hotel room. it's just overwhelming being exposed to something i'm not used to. it's also a strange experience of confronting power and privilege, being an evil American imperialist, going to a country that is dealing with the shitty end of neo-colonialism, and yet still remaining in a isolated bubble from the realities of the place, because my family here are part of the elite. what is also weird....i had drinks with my uncle chiu (my mom's brother) a few nights ago. he and my dad had a falling out and hate each other. i don't really know the story. it's either they started a business together, it failed, and now they blame each other...or it's that chiu was up for this position, but my dad supported someone else instead. anyway, so while having drinks, i had to dodge all these passive aggressive questions and comments that were thinly veiled jabs at my dad. so i couldn't answer anything because he would probably use it against my dad. oh family drama
the land of the moist towelettes
hello! time for photos! but before that, if you are me, you have just been served a complimentary moist towelette to freshen up along with my coffee. Now that I've freshed up, I can continue! Moist towelettes are given everywhere! What I thought was just regulated to slightly fancy Chinese restaurants is actually a full blown Asian phenomenon, and by Asia I really mean Ho Chi Minh City and the airport in Taiwan (based on those two experiences I can make generalizations for the entire continent, didn't you get the memo?)
To the left here is a picture of a tie I found being sold in a gift shop in the Chiang Kai-Shek airport in Taiwan. As you can see, the design is made up of the repeated images of shirtless brown men wearing turbans. Those of you who delight in ironic appreciations of the world, would hopefully enjoy this. That is one thing I miss. One's sense of irony is hard to translate across different cultures and languages, since so much of it is based on common points of references and what not. Even my roommate doesn't get it...she even hates Arrested Development!
Now the photo to the right is the view from my hotel room. I live on the 7th floor of a nice hotel. It's interesting being here. On one hand, I don't like how much it reeks of privilege, the fact that this is my lodgings for two months. It's strange the idea of having a staff cater to you, having your room cleaned and your sheets changed everyday by someone who is not you. What I do like is the people watching, seeing all the different people stay and leave the hotel. as a result i also like getting familiar with the people who work here, it's nice seeing some familiar faces everyday. My cousin Tung used to have a bar where the hotel currently is. By coincidence, a friend of his from Myanmar was also staying here when I arrived, so I would bump into my cousin in the mornings and stuff like that. He says that this is a hotel more for men than women...that basically this is a love hotel (where men bring women. i have seen older rich looking men with younger women, but also i've seen families staying here, and women staying here. however, it is true that down the hall there are raucous partying noises at night. the sketchiness stays out of our room so i don't really mind. tung thinks i should stay somewhere else due to said sketchiness...however doesn't that make him rather sketchy because he put his friend in this hotel?
Sunday, June 04, 2006
May 31st 2006 - The First Day
I am in Saigon. This has been a crazy last 24 hours. This flight has been the first time I flew with China Air, not surprising since I have never been to Asia before. The female flight attendants wear these purple uniforms that are one part stereotypical Asian cheongsam…and one part swinging sixties. This shade just begs for a matching hat. There was this one male flight attendant who was very no-nonsense. The movies that played were Casanova, New World and Glory Road. Though I wanted to see the first two, they sent me to sleep right away. It could've been the dimming lights…or the fact that I could barely make out the audio because there was something wrong with the sound where I was sitting.
So we arrived in the Chiang Kai-Shek airport. It felt like the few blocks of Chinatown that I was used to growing up has magically expanded into an all-encompassing universe. The candy-coated yellows, pinks and reds of the signs for some reason scream Asia to me, the continent of KAWAII!!!…where Hello Kitty and her knock-offs were born.
The plane to HCMC was nicer. There were individual screens on the backs of the seats where you could pick your own movie. I watched this crazy artsy Chinese musical called "Perhaps Love". I liked it…but the ending spoilt it for me. The descent into HCMC was beautiful. Lovely greens abound. This is Vietnam.
We landed, waited in line through customs, a harrowing experience. Then we went to baggage claim, which was chaos. A man came to us and asked other how many bags we had. At first I had no idea who I was, and coming off my Cameroon experience, I just decided to ignore him, figuring that we should deal with our luggage ourselves. However, it turns out he worked for the airport, cuz I saw a lot of other men in similar uniforms. There was a helpful moustached man clad in a white shirt, in his forties, who was really helpful to me in Kyla. I got to use some of my limited Vietnamese (basically saying I have two pieces of luggage, one blue, one red, etc.). One of Kyla's bags got misplaced, but after a lot of confusion, the moustached man led us to lost and found, where we found it. We finally met with Loc, a thin, nice-looking student, who sadly had to wait for two hours in the blistering heat.
Saigon is HOT! The heat is a physical presence weighing down on your shoulders as you walk the street. In the taxi, we struck up a conversation about World Cup, and he knew who Eto'o Fils was! And he knew that the Cameroon team was good! That is the way into a girl's heart. He took us to our hotel. This was funny…because it was exactly what my mom had thought I was going to stay…a hotel on Bui Thi Vien street. However, she was misled by the receipt Thai sent me, which said we were staying in a house on Nguyen thi Minh Khai.
After showering, me and Kyla met with Loc, who took us to meet with Thai. We met at this very sheeshee place called "Highlands Coffee" or something like that, which is basically like an upscale Starbucks-like establishment, with several branches popping up in Saigon. It's owned by Italians. The menu is in English, and serves stuff like croquet monsieurs. Loc likes hip hop and rock ballads, and would like Kyla to teach him how to do hip hop dance.
It's been a strange and beautiful experience being here so far (which has been like six hours). It's very foreign yet really familiar to me. The way the city is constructed, laid out, how the buildings look remind me a lot of Yaounde, how the urban concrete is littered with lush greenery that seems naturally there, not forced, like in SF. It's not like I feel like alas I have arrived home. However, there are aspects of it that seems familiar. It's like Yaounde and Little Saigon fused together. I never really thought about it, but my experiences of Asia have mainly been through cultural enclaves, Little Saigon, Chinatown, Japantown, Little Tokyo. All these diminutives and now I'm in the Asia big leagues!
There aren't as many bicycles as I thought there would me. Mostly motobikes. So many! Just swarms of them! Plenty of women drive them as well. When you cross the street, you just become surrounded by them, as you try to evade them buzzing by you. Thai and Loc took us walking around the CBC area….where there are a lot of businesses and sheeshee cafes. He treated all for of us to cyclo rides back to our hotel. It was amazing to ride through the city on a cyclo. It's just all this open air, and you're barely dodging getting hit by cars or motorbikes, but you just have to have faith that your driver, who's like 50 years old, has lots of experience and knows what he's doing, you place your trust in him, just sit back and feel the joy of zipping by a new place that seems incredibly exciting, scary, and full of promise.
So we arrived in the Chiang Kai-Shek airport. It felt like the few blocks of Chinatown that I was used to growing up has magically expanded into an all-encompassing universe. The candy-coated yellows, pinks and reds of the signs for some reason scream Asia to me, the continent of KAWAII!!!…where Hello Kitty and her knock-offs were born.
The plane to HCMC was nicer. There were individual screens on the backs of the seats where you could pick your own movie. I watched this crazy artsy Chinese musical called "Perhaps Love". I liked it…but the ending spoilt it for me. The descent into HCMC was beautiful. Lovely greens abound. This is Vietnam.
We landed, waited in line through customs, a harrowing experience. Then we went to baggage claim, which was chaos. A man came to us and asked other how many bags we had. At first I had no idea who I was, and coming off my Cameroon experience, I just decided to ignore him, figuring that we should deal with our luggage ourselves. However, it turns out he worked for the airport, cuz I saw a lot of other men in similar uniforms. There was a helpful moustached man clad in a white shirt, in his forties, who was really helpful to me in Kyla. I got to use some of my limited Vietnamese (basically saying I have two pieces of luggage, one blue, one red, etc.). One of Kyla's bags got misplaced, but after a lot of confusion, the moustached man led us to lost and found, where we found it. We finally met with Loc, a thin, nice-looking student, who sadly had to wait for two hours in the blistering heat.
Saigon is HOT! The heat is a physical presence weighing down on your shoulders as you walk the street. In the taxi, we struck up a conversation about World Cup, and he knew who Eto'o Fils was! And he knew that the Cameroon team was good! That is the way into a girl's heart. He took us to our hotel. This was funny…because it was exactly what my mom had thought I was going to stay…a hotel on Bui Thi Vien street. However, she was misled by the receipt Thai sent me, which said we were staying in a house on Nguyen thi Minh Khai.
After showering, me and Kyla met with Loc, who took us to meet with Thai. We met at this very sheeshee place called "Highlands Coffee" or something like that, which is basically like an upscale Starbucks-like establishment, with several branches popping up in Saigon. It's owned by Italians. The menu is in English, and serves stuff like croquet monsieurs. Loc likes hip hop and rock ballads, and would like Kyla to teach him how to do hip hop dance.
It's been a strange and beautiful experience being here so far (which has been like six hours). It's very foreign yet really familiar to me. The way the city is constructed, laid out, how the buildings look remind me a lot of Yaounde, how the urban concrete is littered with lush greenery that seems naturally there, not forced, like in SF. It's not like I feel like alas I have arrived home. However, there are aspects of it that seems familiar. It's like Yaounde and Little Saigon fused together. I never really thought about it, but my experiences of Asia have mainly been through cultural enclaves, Little Saigon, Chinatown, Japantown, Little Tokyo. All these diminutives and now I'm in the Asia big leagues!
There aren't as many bicycles as I thought there would me. Mostly motobikes. So many! Just swarms of them! Plenty of women drive them as well. When you cross the street, you just become surrounded by them, as you try to evade them buzzing by you. Thai and Loc took us walking around the CBC area….where there are a lot of businesses and sheeshee cafes. He treated all for of us to cyclo rides back to our hotel. It was amazing to ride through the city on a cyclo. It's just all this open air, and you're barely dodging getting hit by cars or motorbikes, but you just have to have faith that your driver, who's like 50 years old, has lots of experience and knows what he's doing, you place your trust in him, just sit back and feel the joy of zipping by a new place that seems incredibly exciting, scary, and full of promise.
Friday, June 02, 2006
A Blog is Born
I have been in Vietnam for three days. I've been journaling a bit so far, however as any young adult who grew up on a steady diet of reality television, recording my thoughts for myself is just not enough...i need to exhibit them to the world! The first few entries are going to be out of date but hopefully I'll get up to date soon. The star in the blog is in honor of my communist settings!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)