Hanoi floods

Silence

When I decided to go to Vietnam I promised myself to keep an open mind - to view things not just through the lens of politics or war, but through the eyes of the people I meet, and to remember that political systems function within different cultural and ideological contexts. As an American, I try not to push glib and potentially offensive questions like, "So, like, do you think of the government here?" as they tend to be read in the way they were actually intended (Is your regime really as repressive as we all think it is?). Because on the whole things seem quite alright - life carries on as normal. Sometimes it can be hard to stay objective though, and responses like this one say a lot.

"I love my country, and I love our culture. But you have to understand, Vietnam is not a free-talking society, Brian. I can't really say. I mean, I don't know, maybe sometimes if somebody gets me a little bit drunk I might...but no, I can't really say. I mean, when you're so used to not talking about it, it's hard to even know how to answer..."

"I mean, it's not as bad as China or anything" is also a popular and cryptic refrain.

What about brunch?

Since I can't actually post photos of the crowds that pack out Saigon's secret gay Sunday brunch, check out this shot from the parking lot.

"I just don't get it.

You go there, and look around, and then don't talk to anybody. I mean, like, what's the point?"

Our minuscule cups of robusta-black coffee burn like punctuation marks into the table. Peppered around the open-aired cafe, groups of young men sit cross-legged and chatting in wicker chairs, peckishly sipping their fruit shakes and watching the passerbys. It seems that no cafe in Saigon is complete without such a scene, yet it's one you won't find anywhere outside them.

The vast majority of the 'gay space' in Saigon is hidden in plain view, from the cafes to the discos. But even in the handful of gay-only places, the watch-but-don't-interact rule prevails (except, of course at the male sauna).

Triet stirs in his condensed milk, distracted. "Well, you know, you chat with people online, and maybe somebody messages you and you say 'yeah, I've seen you around - you're cute' and you start talking"

This isn't a phenomenon necessarily bound to the gay community (see my post about Vietnam's 'evening cafes') but it's certainly amplified therein. The interesting thing expressed in Triet's angle, is that it effectively creates a space in the physical world that serves as an extension of an internet forum.

This really gets me thinking about the way our real lives, even our own bodies are coming to be filtered and altered through the medium of the internet. It's become so common as to be totally unnoteworthy for someone to do something, wear something, or even go someplace simply because "it will make a great Facebook photo". In a poststructuralist world where perception is reality, it's hard to say if 'real' reality or the perceived reality we document and curate is more legitimate.

With social networking sites and (certainly among gay people, though increasingly in the hetero community) internet dating subsuming our reality, we are given the opportunity to structure our image with a neurotic degree of control - a project that occasionally spills over and prompts us to alter our image, our own bodies or, through guilt of lying, our activities and interests based on how they will appear online. This can be as damaging as coming to view one's body as an internet commodity or as empowering as offering us a space to reflect on the kind of person we'd like to be. For gay people without private space in a culture where approaching strangers is taboo the project is often dichotomous but no less pervasive.

As the internet becomes ever more portable and ubiquitous, the boundary between our online selves and the real world is only going to become more blurred.

Engrish encounter #674

Do you believe in public health care? Vote Obama? Study abroad in a communist land to get to know other cultures?

Have we got the store for you!

Gay news week Feb 22nd 2008

Fred (God Hates Fags) Phelps, the tacky-poster-waving, soldier-funeral-picketing, my-own-captive-family-IS-my-congregation pastor, hate monger and sodomy abstainee (whom I've protested personally) was denied entry to the UK last week basically on the grounds that they just don't want him there.

Contrary to the Bush administration's much under-publicized declination last December to sign a UN statement condemning violence against and prosecution of people on the basis of sexual orientation (which even Poland, Slovenia, and Gabon could jive with), the Obama administration did go ahead and support a similar measure submitted to the Durban Review Conference on race and discrimination, signaling a possible return of empathetic reason to the white house (The statement was rejected as irrelevant but still...).

I celebrated eating my 1,000th kebab on the streets of Istanbul.

Vietnamese 'evening cafes'

"...WHAT?!"
"NEVER MIND!"
"...WHAT?!"
"I SAID, NEVER MIND!"

I petulantly drum my swizzle-stick and look around, bobbing my head to the pulsating beat. Everyone else at the table is sort of looking around too, sort of grooving along in their own way.

-This is so stupid- I think to myself, culturally-insensitively.

The cafe is enormous, and brightly lit as a hospital, the packed tables filled with people sipping their drinks, not talking, not dancing. Something about it feels embarrasing, like when a club finally turns the lights on, or being indoors in your bathing suit soaking wet.

Yeah yeah - dancing's not a big part of the culture, contact between men and women taboo, blah blah. I ask Van about it later during a brief musical interlude: what are you supposed to DO here? "Oh, you know, just sit, look around, enjoy the music, share each others' company" There's a pause. She notices my still-expectant face and sort of waves off to the other side of the room. "There's some prostitutes over there too..."

Whatever.