Deeper Conversations and the Diamond Plaza

Language lessons started out a bit roughly this morning (I wasn't in touch with my tieng Viet mojo yet), but things improved after coffee break and vocab drills (I've got most all the food terms down except for spring roll and snake meat). We actually constructed sentences and questions today (my 3rd day in 'Nam!) and enjoyed learning opposites (short/tall, expensive/cheap, full/hungry).

Conversation became a more interesting Vieglish mix when Van and I started to chat about her family and nha tha, or church. I don't know about yall, but I was always under the impression that the church in Vietnam was something of an underground, oppressed affair that people smuggle Bibles into at the risk of their lives.

Van doesn't quite tell it that way. She and her family make a regular practice of getting up for church, eating a banana breakfast together, and praying together in the evenings. Wowzer. She didn't know much about Protestants, but knew that both Protestants and Catholics were Christians alike. That's more familiarity than some Americans exhibit. She was impressed and eager to tell her parents that I read my kinh thanh (Bible) every day. Whoopee! She was also excited about the granola bar I brought her--she mentioned yesterday she didn't know what one was. Glad to be promoting Chewy Quaker bars.

I was happy to have had an engaging conversation with DiDi yesterday as well. At her favorite pho (noodle) shop and later Boba tea bar (boba tea is honeymilk tea with tapioca pearls and jello bits in it-delicious/ngon qua!), she shared her thoughts on taxes and Communism.

DiDi is in business school here in Saigon, away from her more southerly home. She just took an essay exam with the topic "What are your thoughts on the Vietnamese taxation system?" DiDi told me she wrote tomes on the problems she sees with the system, in which the wealthier echelons are taxed to a higher percentage and the proletariot are scot-free. I felt like a brainwashed egocentrist, because I never even thought Vietnamese university students (sinh vien) would have the opportunity to express dissent on such a topic. It's always been taught or implied to me that Communist governments crush every whisper of protest.






















The only agonizing, American-red-blood-curdling information DiDi shared was that concerning the election system. About a month ago the Vietnamese elected their prime minister, but DiDi and many of her friends didn't vote because they didn't feel they knew enough about the candidates. Better to not vote than select the wrong man for the job--I've heard that mantra from a bunch of Americans too. She felt pretty rotten about it, as she recognizes it as a civic privilege. (Voting isn't compulsory in Vietnam either.) The other, TERRIBLE reason they didn't vote, however, was that to vote you have to go to your hometown and vote in person. There's no voting by proxy or absentee ballot. For university students who travel far from rural provinces to get to usually either Hanoi at the far north or Ho Chi Minh at the far south, going home is expensive and very costly.

Another heavy, recurrent theme throughout most of the topics we covered (excepting that of the male species :) ) was the issue of race.

In Vietnam the racial profile is astoundingly monolithic (see Vietnam Factbook). Pretty much 90% of the nation is one particular ethnicity. U.S. politics, however, with the nation's oft-touted metaphors of being a "melting pot" and "tossed salad," are always focusing on achieving group votes such as "the women's vote" or "the African-American vote." Honestly I hadn't really thought of many political strategies beyond basically achieving group votes.

DiDi saw the collection of so many races as an interesting (hay qua) thing, but primarily as detrimental to progress. How can they all agree? Surely there is so much miscommunication that things are much harder than it is for us.


Not really being able to speak for all Americans, I told her how wonderful it is when we share our cultural contexts and synergize. More power in hybridization--at least that's what biology class taught me.

We segued to the nice topic of a pre-Babel Tower world where everyone speaks one language...how much would that really decrease miscommunication? Then we chatted about languages--she'd never heard of Hebrew at all, and I've had zero contact with Japanese past "konichiwa" and Yamato's Steakhouse. We agreed to teach each other as much as we could--hooray!!

ANYHOW, hooray for deeper conversations with my newfound pals. I talk to lots of other folks, though--an Aussie and Kiwi couple, 2 26-year-old hilarious women and their brother, and approximately 60 wizened old men who shove bikes at me with "Ride Ma'am?!" More Robertsons trickle in tonight to a nearby guesthouse, so the fiesta here in Saigon ought to pick up even more momentum.

Here's a motley collection of photos--I toured the expensive, cosmopolitan business district called Diamond Plaza where I found triple the number of white people I've seen while here along with my first fat person, first pregnant woman, and first Middle Eastern man. Also photos from a run-down university here--comparing with Duke or UNC or even State is just cruel. Check it out: