And life in HCMC continues on. As you can see from the pictures I was able to post, life in Vietnam is constantly stimulating my mind and placing me in situations that are always challenging, rewarding, and extremely unique. I did want to clarify two things before I head into writing. First, I wanted to clarify a small detail about the name of my home stay family in HCMC. Their last name is spelled in Vietnamese as Dung (with lots of squiggels and accents on top). It is pronounced, however, in the Hanoi accent, "Zoom." This is the reason that in some posts I call my host mom Mrs. Zoom and others Mrs. Dung. I'm sorry for that confusion! Also, I wanted to explain the use of surgical masks while riding motorbikes. Like helmets, they have become a fashion statement. Men and women both wear intricately embroidered masks, some with cartoon figures and others with solid colors or patterns. They are used for protection against the sun (as are the long gloves many women wear on hot days…I know, crazy). More importantly, the masks are used against the pollution. It's hard to describe the feeling of breathing in HCMC because it is something you are actually conscious of, unlike in the U.S. I have become accustomed to the thicker, darker air, but you definitely feel like you are breathing (or perhaps I should say "trying" to breath) when you are. The masks are useful on the bikes when this pollution is even more tangible in the air. I am actually thinking about getting one! I know – I ride on the back of motorbikes and wear surgical masks, but hey, I'm in Vietnam. They are actually useful! I promise I won't continue wearing it at home, nor will I continue using my money belt (although it is quite a useful little accessory…I can't even imagine going back to wearing a purse or even not locking up everything I own on a routine basis. I'm not promising I won't be a paranoid person in some ways when I return…)
For the first time all semester, we have some routine! We arrived back to the city on this past Saturday night and will be staying at our main guesthouse here until November 2nd when we fly to Hanoi. During this time, we have regular classes each day (VN language in the morning and different seminars and lectures in the afternoon). As a result, there is more free time than we've yet experienced. And by that, I mean we have afternoons and a lunch break. It's really wonderful and needed after the last 2 months and leading up to the trip to Hanoi and our ISP's (independent study projects). On Sunday night, Abby, Michelle, and I were going to go to our regular pho restaurant for dinner. Instead we decided to head to the backpacking district, which I have grown to love and know since living there during my home stay. We weren't particularly hungry so we were up for a little exploring before choosing a restaurant to eat at. We took a taxi from our guesthouse to Bui Vien Street, which is right in the heart of the energy of the district. Walking around at 7:30PM on a Sunday night in a city has never in my life been so entertaining and stimulating. In fact, this city always epitomizes these two words: entertaining and stimulating. Granted a whole bunch of other words like chaotic, hot, and polluted can also be thrown into any description of this city, but for the sake of describing this evening in HCMC, keep in mind these two words. We walked along the street rather than the sidewalk because of all the motorbikes cramming the side walk and finally came across a hole in the wall Bun Bo Hue restaurant to eat at (this is traditional beef vermicelli soup from Hue, which is the city considered to be the "kitchen of VN"). I still haven't finished writing about the central excursion…so much left to say and recall! But I will do that in a later post. Anyway, we sat down and with the help of Michelle and her VN language skills, decoded the menu written in dry erase markers on the wall. The menu at these type of places is pretty simple since they usually only serve one dish (rice, broken rice, spring rolls, pho, or bun bo hue etc) per each restaurant, which varies based on the type of meat you choose. The kitchen is in the front of the restaurant, which usually implies a woman, maybe two, ladling soups into bowls, throwing in some mystery meats, vegetables, and maybe some chili if you have your mind set on something spicy. In this case we thought we were ordering beef, but the small differences in tone in the way we ordered our food resulted in our evening meal of noodle soup with chili paste piled on and some crab balls floating on top. I've come to realize that what sounds disgusting and looks disgusting in Vietnamese food usually means that it tastes good (although there some blatantly consistent and disgusting exceptions to this generalization...such as the bird saliva I tasted). By the end of the meal we were all literally drenched in sweat and walked outside to find that the 90 degree heat actually felt cool (the temperature today was 90 degrees with a heat index of 100 degrees...it's hard to describe exactly what this type of heat feels like).
We walked around the streets for a while and ended up walking for an hour or so home instead of taking another $1 cab fare taxi. This was the best idea we have had in a while. There were so many people on the streets. It's one thing for there to be a lot of people on the streets…this happens in Washington DC, New York, or Boston all the time. The difference here is the openness of the street. All the storefronts are completely open to the street. Street vendors keep selling at all hours of the night. Women pushing carts of junk (literally) walk up and down the streets shouting out in a loud, nasal voice what they are selling to attract attention and buyers. People sit on their motorbikes and talk (actually when we walked through the park we realized that when darkness falls, it becomes the place to be for lovebirds. We saw all sorts of public displays of affection that you would NEVER see in daylight in this country! We stopped for some bubble tea and continued scoping out restaurants near the university and our guesthouse and headed home. Despite its simplicity, it was definitely one of the best evenings I've had here! As we were walking we all agreed how this city has really, really grown on us. We actually love living here and love where we are right now in the program. I couldn't have picked another place I would have rather have been for that evening and now in general.
I wanted to briefly talk about the lecture we had this afternoon, because it was really unique and completely fascinating. We had a seminar on the rise of consumer culture in HCMC by Dr. Rylan Higgins, who runs a CET study abroad program in Vietnam. He is about to defend his Anthropology dissertation work in the next few weeks, which he has spent the last few years working on here. The topic of his research is "Negotiating the Middle in HCMC, Vietnam." The two hour lecture literally flew by because it was so interesting – he was able to describe his research, which relates to four major overarching frameworks: economic reform, socialist or capitalist Vietnam, trade imbalance and consumerism, and globalization. On the surface, these are all topics we have studied in depth over the last two months, however, he provided a look at these topics within the context of his American upbringing and through use of pictures, his field notes, and anecdotes. This I've realized is the most important part of any lecture we have here – it is often very hard to understand certain issues when taught by Vietnamese professors, as good as their English skills may be. Rylan understood where WE were coming from and lectured with this as his context, unlike Vietnamese professors who do not know our own upbringings and do not notice the same things we do about VN culture, history, or ways of life.
In general, Rylan argues that the culture of the middle class in Vietnam is regionally, culturally, and economically specific to Vietnam, rather than a fragment of globalization. Although his research has indicated that there is significant change being witnessed and experienced in Vietnam, which is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, this change is not Westernization. Instead, the combination of money, people, and ideas are bringing about regional specific forms of globalization (he basically discarded Thomas Friedman's theories of cultural global individualism). I want to write a bit about his observations from his research because they are totally fascinating and help me to understand life in this city so much better. As any anthropologist would, he has studied the middle class as any other culture in the world, which he describes as a socio-cultural project here in which people in this city are constantly working toward identity formation or a sense of "middle-ness" between the rich and poor. He has summarized his findings into a diagram. On one extreme on the left side are the phrases: too local, too traditional, and too poor. On the other side are the phrases, too global, too modern, and too rich. In the middle is an oval shape where middle-ness falls. In Vietnam, he has classified the middle class as this middle area between the extremes.
I found the most fascinating part of the lecture to be the part when he talked about middle class spaces. For example, he showed us various pictures from his fieldwork of food spaces that are designed for certain classes. A common example is "Com Binh Dan," which is a restaurant specifically serving and advertising "food for ordinary people." We were introduced to this type of food from the first week of the program – it usually means eating on little blue stools on the side of the road or in an open to the street structure and is usually not clean or particularly nice. There are also "office lunch restaurants", where strictly middle class people eat. The stools are usually silver, the bowls may match the chopsticks, and the food is still at reasonable prices for middle class people. His point was that even though HCMC may not be geographically separated by class (for example, apartments for middle class Vietnamese often overlook the canal that transports fecal material out of the city), the notion of performance of middle class culture is very important here. This concept of performances is something I have definitely noticed. I was never able to describe it in words, but he did such a perfect job. He explained certain aspects of Vietnamese culture that exemplify this concept of performance of middle class culture that is so important. For example, squatting. You may have noticed in my writing or seen in my pictures that squatting pervades the streets here. Rylan explained that based on his research, middle class people never squat in public. If you were to go downtown in the office district, no office people are squatting. The taxi drivers or motorbike drivers may be squatting and eating or drinking a cup of coffee, but NEVER middle class people. Another example is motorbike posture. Based on pictures he showed us (something I have noticed in real life as well), middle class people have a certain posture on the motorbike. They sit upright with their wrists bent, arms tucked in, knees as close together as possible. In contrast, women of working class may sit with their knees more apart, slouching a bit, and arms more separated. Although I noticed this before, I have a whole new set of eyes when observing people and street culture. I don't want to bore you all with every detail of the lecture, but I did want to give you all a taste. It was so eye opening and also so interesting because we have had the home stay experiences here and life in general over the last two months as the context to analyzing middle class life and culture through Rylan's research results.
I still have so much more to catch up on. I want to write an entire post about Agent Orange and other health related issues here that I have learned more about and witnessed, but I will save it for the next post! Today we have two lectures, one about HIV/AIDS, which I'm especially looking forward to. Some of the girls in my program and I found a yoga place in one of our guidebooks that is run by American and Singaporeans and has an entire week of unlimited classes for $25, so we are going to try a core pilates class tonight and spend the $25, which seems like an absolute fortune here, especially compared to our less-than-a-dollar dinners that we have been enjoying each night in the city. Miss you all!
P.S. I mailed my absentee ballot about a week and a half ago! It was quite the experience – I received it in the mail, filled it out, walked the 20 minutes to the main post office where they applied about 15 large stamps. It was so rewarding to send in that vote for Obama halfway around the globe!
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