It's a merciful...

mid-afternoon in southern Vietnam as soft rains begin to fall, washing the streets smooth and shining-clean, yearning and sighing like hot rocks along the stream bed, quelled by the remembrance of the changing seasons. Cyclists dart in bright plastic ponchos to and fro, like fly-fishing lures above an all-too-still surface - evening rains mean twelve cool night hours in Saigon, which in turn means nothing but trouble...

Weird things I have eaten abroad

sea snails
bowlfuls of whole little fishies
"live" squid (not really, but still moving)
spicy conch
fish dogs
pig's feet
pig's face
chicken feet
duck's tongue
chicken penis (what?)
goat's udder
GALLONS of fish sauce
dog (sorry!)
quail fetuses (sorry!)
fermented rice noodle-bean-veggie things
enough dried squid to kill a horse

Wash it all down with a nice cup of weasel crap coffee and you've got yourself a meal...

*Update*
silkworm larvae
duck intestines

I grip the back handholds...

...of Ann's motorbike as we careen along the roundabout. Members of our caravan weave in and out of view, discussing our plans for the evening. Adam's distracted by a tandem pair of miniskirts and speeds up alongside them to chat.

Short exchanges, fleeting glances, obstacles, exhaust, pursuit. Driving around is an end unto itself in Saigon. In a city where private space is pure fantasy and even the rats snarl out from every last cranny, all you've got to do is kick start your motor to jump aboard the high-speed space-time express of the road, and suddenly you're nowhere. And the image of you holding on tight to your guy (or girl) is just a blur, and your conversation with any other shooting star rests on a wavelength all it's own, spread long across the city like a record spun too slow.

Bóng

The two most common words for gay in Vietnamese are the French-derived "pede", with it's obvious implications, and "bóng".

Traditionally bóng are a kind of transvestite mystic, embodying the secret powers of both sexes. They'd linger about the temples and pagodas. They tell your future, tell you things about yourself you don't yet know. They're with you there, silently, when go to light the incense, and they're with you there, singing, at your funeral when you go. They live at the fringe, the periphery - where things start to become fuzzy - mysterious, sacred, dangerous, dirty.

"This is always what I think of when people shout at me on the streets. 'Yes', I say. 'I am - and so?', and then they feel sort of bad."

Jaydee fixes his hat and has another sip of his iced latte. "Bóng can also mean 'glossy'". He taps his PDA with a shiny, press-on nail. "I like that".

Jaydee left the house at 16 to open a fashion boutique. His family is well respected after all, and he couldn't burden them with such a life. He would work through the night sewing to keep up demand but struggled, and the shop eventually closed. He took the opportunity to study abroad in Seattle where he met his boyfriend-cum-fiancee.

It was there that his mother warmed to the idea that two men could form a couple, watching the way John would dote on him. And when the two moved back to Vietnam to (symbolically) marry, his parents were hesitantly, silently approving.

In the rip-roaring frenzy of 21st century Saigon, a stable marriage is just about every parent's hope for their child - and at the age of twenty, miraculous.

Learn Vietnamese with Brian

Yes folks, in just six thousand easy steps, you too can learn to correctly pronounce the Vietnamese language. Fortunately for us Westerners, Vietnamese uses Latin characters. Unfortunately for us, the French taught them how to spell...

Lesson 1: The alphabet

For additional practice, most music videos do come with lyrics attached. For your viewing pleasure:

I'm buying a helmet.

Some of you may remember my this post about crossing the street in Korea. Well, I thought I'd provide a little followup with a typical Saigon pedestrian adventure.

The cultural differences at play here should be more or less self-explanatory....

Next!

I never knew the meaning of "socialist bureaucracy" until I visited the Ho Chi Minh City post office...

Security Guard: "Hello Sir, what would you like?"
"I want to send this envelope"
Security Guard: "Teller number 12 please"
Teller 12: "Please fill out this form, and this form in triplicate and take it to Teller 1"
Teller 1: "Would you like to mail this regular post or express?"
"Regular."
Teller 1: "Please go to Teller 7"
Teller 7: "What are the contents of this package, sir?"
I point to the 'package contents' form: 'music CD'
Teller 7: "What is on the CD?"
"It's a mix CD, of music."
Teller 7: "May I open the package, sir?"
"Um, OK."
Teller 7: "May I take a look at the contents of the CD, sir?"
"Fine."
Teller 7: "You shouldn't label this as a music CD - it's not legal. Please fill these out again and label it as a photo CD." I fill out the forms while Teller 7 repackages the envelope, coats the whole thing in tape, several layers of bubble wrap, more tape, a second envelope he makes himself out of paper and staples, and a few more go-arounds with the tape roll.
Teller 7: "Please take this to Teller 1"
Teller 1: "That will be 30,000 dong, sir. Please take this to Teller 3 for mailing."

"The first thing you've got to do is forget everything you've read [about Vietnam]"

This was the advice my roommate Adam gave me before I ever arrived. And he was right. Trying to peg down what it 'means' to be Vietnamese right now is like trying to stop raindrops.

The median age for this entire country is 25. These kids weren't here for the war. Born and bred capitalists of the post-Đổi mới era, they stay out late, drink their coffee black and drive their motorbikes fast. They bought their phones on credit.

Their parents watch on, with sound mangos-and-rubbertree advice in a world where it's untested, and who want their kids to come home early, safe behind the gate, and get married. And the government sits in crisp red cabinets, shuffling the boundaries of the law like army ants in the rain. And the old women bow their conical hats to gaze into baskets of rambutan, and the old men sit with their beers in plastic chairs, laughing.

The airwaves are tense with the charge of so many new ideas that it's anyone's guess which or when they will gravitate, crystalize and snap into reality.

안녕히계세요!

Korea! I love you!

I've had such a fantastic time in Seoul and I'm so grateful for all of the amazing people I've met here. But alas, I've got to keep this show on the road.

Good night Korea, and good morning Vietnam!

In and out

A few weeks ago I interviewed Kenny (many Koreans also keep English names, to the frustration most westerners). Kenny is one of the coordinators of Seoul's gay pride parade, as well as one of the key organizers of the Gay and Lesbian film festival and one of the editors of Korea's only gay magazine. He's also involved in Chingusai, Korea's biggest gay men's club, iSHAP, the sexual health awareness group. He helped found one of Korea's first gay clubs at his college and is very well in the know with the Seoul gay scene.

Kenny, like most unmarried Korean men in their late twenties to early thirties, lives at home with his parents. When I asked him if he'd discussed his sexuality with his parents, his response was a simple, "Well, no".

Had this been the beginning of my stay in Korea, I would have been blown away (if only by the mere logistical feat) but by now it was the response I'd anticipated. The idea of 'coming out' is integrally tied to a gay identity in the US, and while many to most Korean's don't consider it to be their identity, it's very difficult for most westerners to understand. Dave, a filmmaker focusing on Seoul's Gay Pride Parade and I were discussing this over a smoking pit of samgyopsal: "For the first few years I was here, I was like 'no really, you must want to come out' and they were like 'no, no I'm fine' and I would think 'no really, but it must be terrible' and they'd say, 'no really I mean, this is how I want it'. It was several years before I could ever really accept their word."

The fact is, that from my first few days of my arrival, I've been told by just about everyone that 'coming out' is just not an appropriate model to apply to Korean people. I asked Kenny what the phrase 'gay pride' meant to him, a term he'd used earlier in the conversation, and he said that he thinks of it as being a personal thing a matter of self-acceptance and esteem. And anyway he stressed that he does feel proud to be gay, and didn't hide it - he uses his real, Korean name in publications and doesn't hide his face from cameras in the parades and events. But his parents are old and unlikely to be aware of let alone interested in such things, but if they were to find out by whatever means that would be OK. I can more or less relate to his position. I certainly haven't discussed my sexuality with my eighty year old Chilean grandmother. Does she need to know? For most Korean people, their family and their relationship with them is so much more important than gratifying their own desires, it would be selfish of them to think otherwise, and by staying 'in the closet' it's not themselves that they feel they'd be protecting from strife, it's their loved ones.

I asked him if he thought that, if given the situation that his parents did read about him in an article or see him in a photo at one of the parades, would they approach him about it. "No, I don't think they would." "...but you wouldn't breech the subject with them either..."

"No."

Mmm, spicy...

Some people ask me, "what will you miss most about Korea?". Well, aside from my friends, the answer is cheap-ass jjimjilbang and the food, which I shall now let speak for itself:

All in the family

In his article "Asian values, Family values" writer Chris Berry points out, among other things, that in focusing on the problematic nature of same-sex desire in fulfilling family network obligations, Asian gay cinema effectively points out the 'blindness' of Western images of gay people to the topic.

In my investigation of what it means to be both Korean and gay, nothing has been of more personal significance to me than this idea.

It's really true that in the United States, I almost never saw images of gay people in which their relationship to their families was even acknowledged let alone focused on. Though often these 'gay people' may be charming or boisterous, with friends or engaging jobs, they are also were people without pasts, or with assumedly painful ones, and whose family relations it was best not to try and pry into. This model has persisted in the general media well beyond it's expiration date.

In coming to terms with my own sexuality, I think I subconsciously registered it as something requiring me to pull away from the rest of the family - that these two lives were incompatible and mutually exclusive. Of course this was not the case, but there remains no clear model as to how to weave them together. In my own family it's been of particular significance; As my sister and I are both gay (oops!) we've more or less had to forge our own idea of what it means to be a family (there ain't no PFLAG south of San Antonio either) with all parties having to carefully tread the path of defending their own desires and expectations while respecting those of the rest of the family. It's still not a subject that's necessarily easily breached, but it is happening, in our family and all over, and it's time for American media to get with it.

Photos

I know, I'm a bad blogger and haven't been posting photos.

But I've been really busy! or in gay places, where (as it turns out) people really don't want photos taken. Those are weak excuses though, I know, so here's a whole bunch of full-color goodies from the loose change of my last two months. Enjoy(mom)!

Around Seoul - 90


The Catacombs of Soul Metro - 4


Kwangjang Hanbok (traditional dress) market - 6


Lost and confused in Tokyo - 40

Making an 'us' from 'us and them'

"New York was great. I had a great time. But..."
Chung-Hee pauses for a moment, searching for tactful phrasing, "I just could never understand...the idea that you can't go outside at night, except in certain places."

I know where this conversation's going. Violence is something that for the most part does not exist in the minds or concerns of modern Korea, even in really impoverished areas, even late at night. I know that somewhere in Chung's mind there's an image of America (and most non-Asian nations) as being a land of racial and ethnic-warfare that isn't always distinguished from the pervasive, latent idea that non-Asians are more-or-less barbaric. I never really know how to explain my country to other people, a place that I don't quite understand myself. "It's just... complicated, there's all sorts of social disparity, and racial tension that's, like, become institutionalized, and-" ... I'm not doing a very good job.

Growing up, I've always taken it as a given that multi-culturalism was either a already a reality everywhere in the world, or it was quickly becoming so. But here I see that that's not necessarily the case. Indeed, even for me it is difficult to envision a Korea that is not in someway based on the Korean people and the cultural and genetic bloodlines that go back over 5000 years - as far as any other culture or people in the world today. People here openly praise their cultural and ethnic unity as something that makes them 'one big family', wherein one's sense of personal pride has a vested in lifting everyone else in their society out of poverty and in in which there are few clear lines of institutionalized repression. In a way it does seem like a really great thing, they don't have many of the same problems here that we do in the west, but it's also a rather scary mentality that harkens troubling memories of ethnic nationalism the world around. I suppose whether they like it or not though, rates of interracial marriage and mixed-race children are fast on the rise in Korea, so it's something that will have to be addressed sooner or later.

Urban forestry

In the desert in Arizona I once visited an enormous construction effort by Italian architect Paulo Soleri. It was his vision that we could reduce our impact on the earth by bulding entire cities as huge bulding complexes. Korea, however, is clearly several steps ahead of them. I'm fascinated by the seemingly endless forests of skyrise apartment-complexes that skirt the cities and seem to pop out of nowhere from the middle of the countryside. Together they form one of the most alien landscapes I've ever experienced - breathtaking, terrifying, and grand.

Adding to the 'hive effect' is the fact that, across the nation, they look almost identical. That's because their construction has been undertaken almost exclusively by a few companies, mist notably Doosan, one of South Korea's chaebol, or business conglomerates with sketchy government ties. After seeing several hundred of these forests though, it's hard to imagine constructing housing so quickly for so many people in any other way. I wonder about their effects on Koreans' sense of community and what their environmental impact might be.

Basmati, jasmine, or whole grain?

"So have you caught Yellow Fever yet?"
"I'd be all over you if you weren't white skinned."
"I'm really into Western guys; I bet you have a huge dick"
"It's a little hard being here 'cause I'm really only attracted to, like, Thai guys or you know Southeast Asians"
"It can be stressful in Itaewon because everybody's after the Western guys, so people get really competitive"
"I just hate it when I'm talking up some guy and he's like, 'Sorry dude, I'm a rice queen¹.'"

OK, what's the deal with gay guys and race?

Now, racial consciousness (and prejudice) is all-pervasive most places - in Korea 'race' is basically the distinction between Koreans and 'others' (the idea that people could be legally but not ethnically Korean or vice-versa is a real brain-twister) - so you expect it in a demographic that crosses social boundaries, but in the gay world it's subject to a kind of eroticization that can become really strict. [It is worth noting that all of these comments come from the international Itaewon district where people go searching for the Other and where elements of gay culture comes steeped in the broader American context]

Granted, I don't think it's all bad - in a speech I went to by ex-porn star and PhD Annie Sprinkle, she suggested that the porn industry had done more to ease race relations in the United States than any civil rights group - but it's clearly problematic and, personally, I just don't get it. I suspect it has something to do with people subconsciously looking for their exes, or with post-capitalist consumer culture and the internet-dating window-shopper effect, but if anyone could explain it to me that'd be great.

¹As I'm aware that the much of my readership isn't actually gay, for your edification here is a brief glossary of racially-charged gay terms:
Rice Queen - (Typically) White guys who are only/predominantly into Asian guys
Sticky Rice Queen - Asian guys who are only into other Asian guys
Minute Rice - No explanation necessary
Rice Cooker - Gay establishment attracting mostly Asians
Potato Queen - (Typically) Asian guys who are only into white guys
and the term's been taken further with Bean Queens, Curry Queens, and Queen of Spades, but you get the idea.

Teeny weenie fishie kissies

Here's a picture of me having my first 'Doctor Fish' experience in Hongdae. Basically a school of adorably ravenous little Cyprinion macrostomus swim up and nibble off all of your, um, dead foot skin. It's without a doubt the most ticklish thing I've ever experienced (made worse by the fact that you can't move your feet or you scare the little fishies away) so I took solace in the fact that I gobble up little bowlfuls of their cousins at the pojangmacha.