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!