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