Tag: Ho Chi Minh City

Vespa in Vietnam

The brand is revitalized and resuscitated here in Saigon.  If not for the helmets, I would think it is a replay of A Roman Holiday.

Back then, the burning monk was pouring gasoline on himself and asked a younger monk to lit the fire.

He earned a memorial in that intersection.

Another Buddhist temple a few blocks away took collection to renovate. The presiding monk took off with the proceeds, leaving behind an abandoned project. Good monk bad monk. It’s Mid-Autumn Festival. Children with lanterns and adults with sweet cake. Fairy tales that had to do with an uprooted tree now replanted on the Moon. VIet Nam in the Sputnik and Space age.

The city is now catering to whatever clients demand and could afford: Gloria Jeans Coffee and Ha Long Bay tours (without Catherine Deneuve).

And back to my French coffee, Italian Vespa and USA‘s Hard Rock Cafe. You would have thought I am someplace but Vietnam.  I can assure you it’s Vietnam, with multiple English schools and exam prep “store fronts”.

Young Vietnamese design games, play games online and love watching soccer. They have street racing here too. And while doing it, they might as well feel the wind by taking off their helmets.  Electric bikes couldn’t make an inroad here, especially after they changed the regulation which required electric bike riders to wear helmets.

So forget the love for sustainable environment or the disgusting gas price. Young people zoom by on Vespa, adopt I-phone and continue to play games online. There isn’t enough open space for them to play soccer ( I notice a strange absence of basketball, US urban youth favorite past time sports).. On this Mid-Autumn day, my old neighborhood gets one less choice of temples: the abandoned Temple is still sitting there, “torn”, but not completely torn down while Vespa after Vespa zooms on by. Thang Cuoi in a Space Age. I will never look at the Moon, or Vietnam, the same way again, even with some familiar handles into the past like Vespa and lanterns on the street.

 

early imprints

I ordered my breakfast instinctively. And it’s 8 in the morning in Vietnam.

Already I feel the heat and humidity. Through the Australian school yard, I saw teachers in ao-dai. Could have been the ghost of my mom’s past.

Children are obviously better fed these days. And they have gone on to game 3.0 (playing less at internet cafe, but at home as broadband penetration has been on the rise).

There is less space between motorcycles, because the city was originally built as a French colonial city for a 10th of today’s size.

No one walks anymore, and certainly not in the heat of mid-day.

The game players keep the game designers employed.

The office workers keep the shopkeepers’

children fed. A family-operated coffee shop opens all day all night.

Three shifts in one. Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the earth.

But not earth. They chose cities, and not any city. It has to be Ho Chi Minh City. A few office towers got fully booked the day they let the tenants move in. Broadband was connected.  Zoom zoom.

If it weren’t for the absence of the double-decker, I would mis-take it for Hong Kong. Prepare to lose some weight here. And most importantly, stay alert when crossing the streets. My survival instinct kicks in, and not just because of the tropical storms.  I used to live here, schooled here and had my first love here. Except, we used to have more elbow room in traffic. It’s good that we wear helmet, glasses and mask.

It saves us from the embarrassment of  being stared at up close.

It’s awkward as well in Florida with the Lexus and BMW’s revving at the intersection.

But then it’s good that we found ourselves side by side as fellow travellers on our journey to work or home. Home is where someone is waiting for you.

It’s not a place geographically speaking. It’s your comfort zone. 1st place.

No more facade. Or acting up. Costume off. Hair down. And you are addressed by your rank in the extended family. Uncle Thang, good to see u.

 

Free but not cheap

People have paid lips service to freedom, the defense of freedom, and the exercise of free speech.

But few put any thought on the price of freedom. Freedom somehow is perceived as being free

(i.e. you don’t have to pay anything, in economic terms). Actually, freedom costs a lot.

Many lives have been laid down in service of freedom, many limps cut off to defend it.

The opposite of freedom is not tyranny: it’s the illusion that one is free when actually not.

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to have a drink, or a puff of cigarette

(or worse). Those were occasions when you were not being free. Then, at the political level, you defend your personal position, and your philosophy/faith.

But at what price? And do you truly know yourself and your belief? Have you been tested or truly challenged?

Many psychological studies (Standford was one of them) proved that people were often “anchored” to some previous position (a low price for instance), just to later make impulse decision based on the anchor which had been previously planted prior to the actual experiment.

So, make sure at the core, you have  a value system (cleanliness, decency, trustworthiness etc…) and be flexible about them, to adapt to the situation (survival).

I have read Victor Frankl, and his famous line ” you can take away the body, but not the me which resides in this body”.

He made a distinction between personhood and our physical embodiment . If you had a chance to visit Dr Death’s exhibition (of the bodies)

you will realize as I did, that at the physiological level, we are no different from one another, especially after we are all dead. But while alive, we do exhibit

personalities and preferences (case in point, there are a set of  twin sisters who recently married a set of twin brothers in England). One of the brides said she had been waiting for this moment her whole life. And that they can tell each other apart (being twins and all, they have more exposure to IDing twins).

Or, take a look at America’s Got Talent. You see people are quite unique, although every one held dear to their dream of becoming a celebrity.

I skimmed the Forbes 100 celebrities. And I don’t remember seeing a Teacher in there.

I noticed that they were all movie stars, singers, and sport figures. No wonder it’s hard to tell ourselves, much less our kids that education

is noble and rewarding. We need role models. And society tells us one thing while the school tells us another.

Which way to go? We spend an average 4-6 hours a day in front of a screen of some kind . The internet feeds of the media,

and now the media feeds itself of the internet. Media appeals to our lowest common denominator to homogenize us.

Marketers used to have it easy (3 TV networks, and the 30-second spot).  Now each medium seeks to cater to a different demographic segments not unlike magazine print venue.

And the language of different generations, different point of views and different interests don’t seem to converge. No wonder the concept of freedom itself is in danger. I am not advocating “cultural literacy” type of definition of freedom.

I just want to reflect on how costly freedom has been and will always be : man facing oncoming tanks in Beijing, election opposition demonstrating  in Tehran, Buddhist monk pouring gasoline on himself in Saigon.

Those people are on my Forbes list of Freedom celebrities. I emulate and want to be them. After all, for whom the bell toll. Taking away one man’s freedom is taking away freedom itself. It might not happen to me, but someday, my kids and grand kids might not have a chance to see the movie I now enjoy (they might not chose to watch it, but at least, if they wanted to research it for a class project, they can) or the lyrics I hum along. Not to mention the comedian I watch. Man, have you seen CR’s Kill The messenger? I thought it was a spy comedy. Turned out it’s his stand-up tour. And Chris Rock ran his mouth. I was watching it at home, alone. But I was paranoid as if I were watching a porno.

I know someone can always find out that I watched the tape, because of my credit card charge. But who cares? If they had issues with some of the things CR said, they should go after the comedian himself, not his accidental audience. After all, I paid my dear price for freedom in the first place when I left Saigon years ago, not knowing where and if I would arrive safely. Freedom, yes, I know a thing or two about this abstract notion that others often mistook it as being free. Even if it’s free, it still is not cheap (I heard that admission tickets to Michael Jackson memorial is free, but event organizers still have to pay for the lights at Staple center on Tuesday).

Or the fireworks on New Year’s Eve.