Vietnam

A story in the English-language Vietnam News had me laughing into my ninth glass of tra da the other day. It seems a sweep by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism uncovered pirated software in use at a French-run architectural firm in Hanoi.

Who was leading the raid? Claude Rains? Vietnam’s piracy rates have topped 90 percent for the past several years, according to the killjoys at the Business Software Alliance. Having lived here for a little while now, the only thing that surprises me about this figure is that ten percent of people are actually using real, licensed versions. Where do they get them? As far as I can tell, it’s not possible to buy a legal CD, DVD, or piece of software here, even if you really, really wanted to. I wouldn’t know where to look. English-language books, shoes, clothes, electronics, almost the same thing.

But there is, as they say, more to the story. Apparently this crackdown is at least sorta for real. As Vietnam’s economy continues to grow, there’s mounting pressure to clean things up, especially considering a tech industry is starting to develop (Intel is currently building a $300 million semiconductor plant here in Ho Chi Minh City.) In fact, the Vietnam News article claims that in the past year Vietnam has fallen out of the top 12 pirate nations, after years as number one.

What’s next? A motorcycle helmet law?

Yes. One is going into effect in December in HCMC. Vietnam, I hardly recognize you anymore.

I’ve been laid low the past couple of days by a nasty little stomach bug. I assume it was something I ate, but what? It could have been just about anything. The grilled street pork. The ice in my iced coffee. The ice in my beer. Everyone’s a suspect–it’s like Murder on the Orient Express. Still, this is the first of such troubles I’ve had in I don’t how long–certainly since I’ve been in Vietnam, which, as I realized the other day, has been more than four months now. In any case, it’s impossible and kind of pointless to live here and not eat the street food and drink the street cafe sua da, and seriously, most Vietnamese food is incredibly fresh, although just typing the words “eat” and “food” makes me want to go lie back down.

First in a series.

Vietnamese jazz hands. The multipurpose hand gesture, hands open and raised and swiveled repeatedly at the wrist. Means a bunch of things, including: I don’t have it. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to. I can’t. I don’t know. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. And more. I started out imitating it as a joke, but I’ve found myself using it for real lately. I have a feeling that it’s going to be permanently incorporated into my body language, no matter where I am. It’s just so useful, and kind of fun to do.

Vietnam, on its way to full membership in the global community.

Admitted to the World Trade Organization. A seat on the United Nations Security Council.

And now, most importantly, Vietnam has its very own celebrity sex tape scandal, featuring Huang Thuy Linh, 19, star of the teen soap opera Vang Anh’s Diaries.

When news of the sex clip infiltrated the gloomy corridors of state-run television–I picture their headquarters in a windowless, concrete citadel–the mandarins at the helm pulled their dusty, comically oversized plug on the show. Clearly, Vietnam is clamoring for nudity. How long can the will of the people be subverted?

The naked and the nude.

Last night I drove past a man who was walking into heavy traffic wearing nothing but sandals. Even weirder, he had a wad of money stuffed in his mouth, the dong bills spilling out like pink and green tongues. At first I thought, crazy, but as I sped away I began to wonder if there was something else going on. Was this a one-man protest, maybe? (Which, in Vietnam, would be truly crazy.) Or perhaps it was some kind of forced public humiliation, like a punishment for trying to steal money from the mob. I don’t know if organized crime even exists in Vietnam, but the scene looked like it could have come straight out of a Takeshi Kitano film.

This was in fact the second case of public nudity I’ve witnessed here recently. A couple of weekends ago, I saw a Western man–a rather, er, endomorphic Western man–on the sidewalk completely naked, just chatting away on his cell phone. I was across the street with some friends on a crowded bar patio; he was standing in front of a hotel–a nice hotel–absorbed in his conversation, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world to be fat and naked on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. After a few minutes, however, when he finally noticed the crowd of onlookers gawking, he started to ham it up and began performing in ways that I still wish I could un-see. Movie reference point: early John Waters.

Twice might be a coincidence, but three times will constitute an official trend. Mondo Vietnam? Communist Gomorrah? Will keep you posted.

Too much to try and catch up on in one post. It’s been a hectic month for me here in Ho Chi Minh City. Yes: subtly, almost imperceptibly, I’ve stopped saying “Saigon” and have started calling the city by its gray and many-syllabled official name. Ho Chi Minh City. It’s just that I hear most Vietnamese say it that way. I don’t mean humorless party functionaries or war-hardened ideologues (not that I’ve met any), but just people I know, people who are too young to have ever called the city by any other name. Ho Chi Minh City. It sounded so alien and clumsy to me when I was first arrived, but say anything enough times and it starts to feel familiar, to become second nature.

I marvel at human adaptability. What’s in a name? What’s in a place? Time and again while traveling I’ve been struck by how easily one can get used to a new city, or a remote mountain village, or a beach, or an entirely new country, all the time meeting people and leaving people, being alone, being together. On the one hand there is an almost perpetual sense of dislocation, on the other, a remarkable capacity to latch on to things and make them familiar, to make a home of wherever you are. There is something very revealing about the human wiring in all this movement, I think.

And now, from movement to its opposite. Getting settled; working, finding a place to live, opening a bank account, riding a motorbike every day. Oh, how we get used to things. I buy sandwiches and iced coffee and bags of fruit and lotus-seed drinks (delicious!) from street carts without even getting off my motorbike now. I ride in monsoons wearing a blue plastic poncho.

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