misc.

yes it has been weeks and a lot has happened. you know, normal vietnam kinda stuff. overnight trains, debilitating sickness, knives pulled on us (well, knife), temples, snake wine, rainy season goodness, frogs, boats, caves, vomit, motorbike accidents, more trains, slaying of the first born and all that... yeah i only got a second but i figure a bad post is better than no post. no? i got my visa and plane ticket to burma, despite the military dictatorship and the threat of 20 suicide bombers in the major cities over the next couple months (seriously). so the plan is..bus to cambodia, up the river to siem reap, bus to bangkok, flight to yangon, then back to saigon. back in the US by the 14th of june, in nyc a few days later. sound good?

oi

yeah so i registered. taking some classes. here goes---
-culture as communication
-the simple life
-point of view
-human rights and culture
-socialist theory

some gallatin shmallatin, anthro, journalism type stuff. also taking the gallatin arts workshop "future noir" this summer.. lemme know if you're taking any of these

we are the world

just got home from a marathon karaoke session..so with broken-english renditions of "dancing queen" and "borderline" still ringing in my ears, i thought i'd write a word or two. oh and first let me say, karaoke is some serious shit in vietnam. sure you can have some drinks and fuck around a bit, but when the time comes to sing "trong com", there is no passing of the microphone. no room for messing around. serious.

so this is my next-to-last night in my homestay..on sunday i fly up to hanoi for about 3 weeks to start research for my independant study, then down through nghe an, nha trang, then back to saigon. this means that i'm done with all my "real" classes (had my vietnamese final this morning, ouch), and now i'm entering a new and exciting phase of study where i can slack off on my own initiative. but really, i think it will be fantastic. i am really excited about my topic..if not a bit pessimistic about getting any real results. i mean, my advisor basically told me to show up at the ministry of culture in hanoi with a translator and try to get people to talk to me..seems kinda unlikely. i've learned that everything in vietnam is more complicated, takes longer, is less reliable. just to conduct my research, i had to submit a list of prospective interviews, questions and proposed research methods to the university in saigon, who then sent out a clearance letter to all the local police, organizations, and whoever else all over the country. when the time comes to do the interviews, however, there is no gurantee that anyone will talk to me, and really, why would they. the issue of governmentt-controlled media and propaganda is sensitive, especially coming from a stupid american student, and the beaurocracy is so dense that i could spend half of my time getting sent from office to office. oi, but i'll figure it out i guess.. regardless, i'm really looking forward to getting out of saigon for a bit. traveling with kids. beach-chellin and all that.

speaking of beaches..yeah nice transition, i'm getting good at this, i went to vung tao with quoc, nguyen (his girlfriend) and scott last weekend. quoc has some family there, so we had some mat-on-the-floor accomodations, incredible food aplenty, and a weird uncle who got drunk and molested scott. came back to saigon on saturday sunburned and slightly confused.. next day trang (my future wife) took us to the cu chi tunnels..250km of interconnected tunnels and rooms used by the viet cong during the war. my legs were sore for 3 days afterwards from crouching..apparently i'm too tall to be a vietnamese soldier.
a couple days later i had the chance with some other kids to talk with trang's father about his experiences during the war..he was a writer/propagandist for the North, based in saigon. he ended up being imprisoned for 8 years by south-vietnamese and american troops, tortured to near-death on countless occasions. now, of course, he's a top-level communist party official. it blows my mind that he (like other people i've talked to) is so open with us about his experiences, and so happy to have me sitting in his living room. as he said "if you were here 30 years ago, i would have shot you to death". now, he's offering me fruit and saying he thinks of me like a son... i could, and should, write more about this.. it brings up a lot of issues and questions i need to think about almost every day in vietnam. but not at 2 am when i'm still sorta drunk. remind me to tell you about some heavy shit next time..

"we are one family"

the past few days have seen some interesting moments...but let me begin by saying, yes i still have a fungus. no, i don't know how i got it (though the doctor suggested changing my clothes more often), yes, i got medicine, and no, you cannot drink while taking it (i would have to eat pills for a month). therefore, it was a simple question of fungus vs. sobriety and well..this is a drinking culture, and it doesnt even itch or anything, so fuck it.

that being said, two nights ago i got wasted with a former viet cong general. in his words "we were once enemies, and now we are friends". i couldnt have said it better, mr. truong huu hung. in between shots of vodka, my new best friend instilled words of wisdom ("a man without liquor is like a flag without wind" being perhaps the most memorable), showed me pictures of himself, broke into song, and took me up into his attic, where he keeps all his oriental medicine/potions/whatever. after assessing my ahem, fungus, he opted not to prescribe any "faeces tragopterum" or "semen juglandis" (dead serious), though warned me--"western medicine will kill you. eastern medicine will kill you...slower". this guy is amazing. and to think nicole nearly ruined everything by almost eating food off his ancestral alter!

the next morning our group was bussed out, reluctantly, to the university's communist youth union "cross-borders camp" with 300 of our closest vietnamese friends. when we first heard "communist" and "camping" we got pretty excited, but then we realized that this is vietnam and we don't know anything. apprently in vietnam "camping" means a 36-hour techno-hyperscheduled-creepytouristresort-awkward playdate. we got seperated, grouped into countries (i was the philippines with 13 vietnamese kids). we were made to come up with chants and songs and skits and dances, play one trillion get-to-know-you games, line up in groups every 10 minutes, and listen to the aaron carter cd on repeat for 3 hours. oi, the thing is, the vietnamese kids love this shit! after the second or third skit competition, where i played guitar for the official camp song "we are one family" (penned by none other than my homestay brother, quoc..don't worry, after we record a couple more songs i'm making a myspace), and the tent decoration competition, it was 2 am time to go to sleep. well, for me at least. everyone else continued to sing and dance and whatever else, while me scott and megan found a concrete slab far enough from the blaring loudspeakers to fall asleep into mosquito-feeding, hip-bone-bruising bliss. wow, so it was simultaneously the most horrible and maybe amazing experience of my life. from the safety of retrospect, at least. there were enough "what-the-fuck" moments added up to last a lifetime. ridiculous. i will never think of camping the same way again.

in other news, i've been stocking up at the saigon square market..lots of cheap bootleg dvds, designer sunlasses (okay, maybe they're not actually versace..), gucci and louis vuitton hats (i didnt know they made baseball hats! for so cheap, too), and maybe some presents if youre lucky. im going to the beach friday-saturday with scott and quoc, to the cu chi tunnels with adrian on sunday, and to hanoi for 3 weeks after that...covering some ground. i'm finally starting to befriend the kids who live in my alley (well, in houses in my alley), but still they know more english than i know vietnamese. shit's hard, i promise. and man, how about that heat?? ok, end.

eh

i have a fungus. i dont want to talk about it.

boi vuot bien

i am really bad at this blog-machine thing, and i assure you that more is going on here than i am letting on. im just being secretive. i spent the past week traveling with my group in central 'nam..so here's a lazy little wrap-up..
last sunday we took a 15 hour train ride to quang ngai, really not as bad as it sounds. we each had little cots, a good supply of liquor, and rice fields aplenty out the window. once in quang ngai we visited sandy's (a girl in my group) grandparents in a tiny village on an island, where we paraded around with a good portion of the populace behind us..kinda like a rap video posse but way more awkward. we watched an old woman take a shit on the beach (standard procedure, apparently), chased little kids, got chased by little kids, sang songs with little kids, and contemplated stealing some little kids. oh and tons of mango. from there we went to the my lai massacre site, which was sobering to say the least..it was pretty well-done, excepting the life-size models of disemboweled kittens. actually that may have been the best part. we spent the night at my khe beach..it was scott's 21st birthday so we all got wasted va tam tram troung o dai duong (skinnydipped in the south china sea). maybe one of the first times i've been truly happy to be in a group with ten girls and one guy. group bonding i guess. i also got puked on. okay i'm already bored of this chronology so let's see...over the next few days we made it to hoi an, hue and danang, my son ruins...imperial citadels, mausoleums, more beach, more hard chillin, and got a herringbone hoodie made-to-fit. really, they'll make anything you can think of for like five bucks. scott got a denim tuxedo. dude's weird. also, we stopped at a gas-station on the road from hue to danang where some friendly vietnamese men fed me some oysters and homemade whiskey (thats what they called it at least...it was thick and red and poured out of a big medicine bottle thing). just another example of my recklessness...i mean, you're not even supposed to brush your teeth with tap water, and i'm eating shellfish and sludgy liquor at a rural gas station?? stupid stupid.

ahh okay that was painfully oversimplified but i'm kinda over this internet thing. in other news..in the past couple weeks i've witnessed a creepy communist parade/performance featuring little girls holding shiny hammer&sickles dancing in front of huge AK-47s, found a gay bar (really not that different than any other club here) and a fantastic indian restaurant, and saw my first serious motorbike accident. actually terrifying...i mean, i've heard the statistic that there are something like 10 deaths a day in saigon from motorbike accidents, but man...i'm coming home (on the back of a motorbike, of course) and i heard all these people screaming, i see a motorbike on its side, and a girl lying in the curb. her friends are freaking out trying to lift her up, she's not responding, a crowd is forming, my driver is stopping...but yeah i'm really not trying to see any more so i walk the rest of the way home. ah okay moving on. i'm changing my independant study project, ima look at propagandist billboards. basically a fantastic excuse to travel for 4 weeks taking pictures, but also really really interesting and strange. ho chi minh reading to children, ho chi minh in front of a flag, ho chi minh holding a baby, dancing condoms, frowning syringes, and more hammers and sickles and yellow stars than you'd ever want to see. they're everywhere. seriously, nevermind the billboards, this country is insane. if i ever make it home i will tell you about it. okay its really hot and i need to go. its really hard to translate 2 full weeks of intense travel, sickness (another story for another time), sweat and dog meat into any words that make any sense. ask me to show you pictures when i get back to new york...

oh! and i think the cockroaches in my room are all gone. at least they havent crawled across my face in a few days. this is good news. AND i got absolutely the best package ever from abby lida lindsey and will. they sent me curb your enthusiasm dvds, tokion, condoms and many other things that make me love them more than i did already. chao cac ban!

xe om, etc

okay, i've come to terms with never fitting in here. no matter what, even after 4 months in saigon, i will always be seen as a tourist. i could even get alright at the language (unlikely--shit's hard) and amputees and little street kids would still flock to me, arms outstretched. by now i'm used to being stared at, and i know that whether i'm buying a bowl of pho or negotiating a motorbike-taxi ride in broken vietnamese, someone's gonna try to rip me off. i'm getting the hang of it--figuring out how much i should pay for a pineapple or an hour on the internet. but every time i'm trying to get the price down 1,000 dong or whatever, i have--believe it or not--a sort of moral dilemma. now, it always sucks to be taken advantage of, and new york has hardened (jaded?) me to the extent that i have no problem telling someone to fuck off (in vietnamese, even!). but when, for example, the homeless motorbike driver asks for 15,000 dong--less than a dollar--to take me home from school, and i know it shouldn't cost more than 10,000, how hard should i try to push the price down? do i walk to the next street-corner or shell out the extra coin so the guy can buy some lunch? i think i'm being so street-smart and clever, when i'm really just holding out on the equivalent of 5 cents. i don't wanna be a pushover, but sometimes when i take a step back i feel like a dick. as much as i try to fit in here, as much as i want to be treated like i'm vietnamese, i will always be a tall, sweaty, white target. it's frustrating to think that after 4 months in saigon that won't change. but it could be worse. i mean, life in saigon is grand--all sugarcane juice and pop music, cheap cigarettes and karaoke. i really gotta start taking myself less seriously.
okay so moving on...i went to dalat this past weekend with scott..amazing time, romantic getaway. we hung out with "crazy lady", the architect-daughter of the former vietnamese president, and stayed in her hotel, accurately dubbed "the crazy house" (we got the room at the top of the tower.. http://www.reisebilder.ch/vietnam/crazyhouse.htm). she showed us her blueprints and creeped us out. got drunk and ran around it like a haunted house. also played guitar with an old poet man with a foot-long beard, rented motorbikes and went back to the heavy-metal bar. i think we did pretty well for spur-of-the-moment trip. now i think im getting sick..dengue fever, i hear you can shit to death. but for now a sore throat is the least of my worries, since i am currently battling a cockroach infestation and a couple hundred pages of vietnamese economic history. oi..chao cac ban

the mighty mekong

let me begin by saying...i may never come back from this place. not in a get-bird-flu-and-die sort of way (though that is a possibility), but a move-to-the-jungle-and-lie-in-a-hammock-for-the-rest-of-my-life kind of thing. i got back yesterday from a 5-day excursion deep into the mekong delta and it was quite possibly the most amazing thing i have ever experienced. a deep, hot, filling breath of fresh air. we flew into Ca Mou, which is a smallish city near the southern tip of 'nam, then worked our way back to saigon by boat and bus, staying over in Soc Trang and Can Tho along the way. i can't possibly describe everything we did, but i will try to find some words strong enough to give some sort of idea of what the fuck i've been getting myself into.

i never would have thought to describe my experience in saigon as sheltered, since really i still feel like i've escaped death, disease and imprisonment every time i safely return to my hotel. but when i was wandering around a isolated fishing village off the mekong river (where they literally have never seen a white person before), or being chased by monkeys in a mangrove forest on the delta coast, i couldn't help but think fondly of the things i take for granted in the city, however foreign. air conditioning, for one. not to mention the option for medical treatment if needed, some hope of communicating with people, or food that hasn't been killed before your eyes. but really i can't complain. i know this sounds trite, especially coming from me, but the extremity of human condition in vietnam is like nothing i could have ever imagined. life-changing is an understatement. and really i almost (ok, not almost) feel sorry for anyone studying in london or paris or new york, no offense.

okay so, i didn't see "mosquitos the size of hummingbirds" as my guidebook promised, but i DID, for example, see a performance by a one-armed guitar player, ride for hours on the roof of a speeding boat through the jungle at night, finally catch one of those fucking geckos i keep talking about, and interview an old khmer basket-maker in a remote village (with the help of a translator, of course). just a sampling. yeah, so we've been doing a few interviews in preparation for our independent research projects at the end of the semester..sometimes it's really uncomfortable and i feel stupid asking like, how many fish do you catch a day or whatever, but really the opportunity to go these places and meet these people is unbelievable. i was conducting an interview with this old fisherman in this village Kenh Dao with two other kids in my program and a translator sitting on the floor in his house, and over the course of the hour the house filled with 50 people (seriously) crowded on the floor, in the doorways and on the porch, just gawking at our pale-asses. these little girls were sitting next to me trying to steal my pen and pinching me and pulling my hair. just situations like that, i try to take a step back and think about it objectively and it blows my mind. like, i couldnt even find this place on a map, and who are these people, and how did i end up here? and how is this so fucking incredible?

we had a professor traveling with us, and one night we took a boat to his village to eat dinner with his grandparents. he grew up in a huge fruit orchard, and we spent a couple hours walking around picking mangos, papayas, bananas, guavas and vietnamese cherries (apparently different than regular cherries?) right off of the trees. drank lots of beer and layed in the hammock and asked his grandma if i could come and "work" for them in the orchard for the rest of my life. i think she said yes, but there was something of a language barrier. so if i don't come back, look for me on an island near the town of Tra On. wherever that is.

so now i am back in saigon, braving motorbikes instead of malaria. i started my homestay today. my new brother is named Quoc (pronounced "wah"), who lives with his mom and older brother in a small house in an alleyway in district 3. it's too early to tell, but they seem really nice and easy-going and they think i am maybe the most hilarious thing they have ever come across. just trying to serve myself with chopsticks or say "how are you" in vietnamese elicits delirious laughter. so far they havent really been around that much (his mom works late and Quoc is hanging out with his girlfriend), but after being with my group 24/7 for the past 3 weeks, it's kinda nice to have some time alone. Quoc says i can use his motorbike whenever i want, i have my own room with a computer and internet (but no air conditioning...or door, for that matter), and i don't live too far from some other kids in my program. should be pretty good. i had to go to the police station to "register" or something. i dunno, these communists, they're weird man. i'll keep you all updated. i hope everyone is well...did any of you guys get my postcards? i think it takes like a month or so for mail to get to the US, so chill out. much love, and send me an e-mail or something, ya?