Some Inconvenient Realities of Living Abroad

Yesterday my friend had her bicycle stolen while she shopped for vegetables at a market. The incident was as predictable as most 'surprising' thefts - broad daylight, lots of bystanders, a momentary diversion of attention. Theft is horribly common in Vietnam; it seems that half the population are employed as security guards to keep the other half of the population from robbing the place blind.*

*Figures only slightly exaggerated.

My friend is an avid cyclist and, while I hate bicycles like a nudist hates pants, my heart went out to her. So did the hearts of numerous people on Facebook. When somebody posts a status involving personal loss, there are four typical responses: 1) straightforward condolences, 2) sympathetic personal anecdotes, 3) hopes for better luck in the future, and 4) self-righteous moralizing. The first three are mostly harmless.

The last subgenus, however, is a pain. It can be tempting to point out that shit happens everywhere and scumbaggery has no borders. Like mathematics and the English Premier League, shady morals are universal. But well-meaning ethicists, secure in their impression that every society is just super in its own way, often dismiss the subtle unpleasantries of daily life in a different country. From their ivory tower of cultural relativism they pellet the expat with bromides while encouraging her to ignore her eyes and ears and firsthand experiences. Which generally include some variation of the following...

~

The people can be inhospitable.

Here is Lonely Planet's description of 'the Vietnamese experience':

Vietnam is a nation going places. Fast. Its people are energetic, direct, sharp in commerce and resilient by nature. This is an outrageously fun country to explore, the locals love a laugh (and a drink) and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to socialise with them and hear their tales.

To which the cynic might add:

For an authentic taste of Vietnamese cuisine, stop by a local market to sample the diverse array of fresh produce. Haggle for ten minutes over the price of a cantaloupe with a surly pajama-clad matron, finally paying an exorbitant markup so she'll stop shouting at you in Vietnamese. Then hop on a motorcycle taxi, or xe om, for an invigorating tour of notable landmarks such as the Notre Dame Cathedral, Reunification Palace, and Jade Emperor Pagoda. 

Make sure to allow plenty of time for this tour, as your driver is possibly drunk and likely has no idea where said landmarks are located. Expect to get at least one flat tire, at which point you'll have the chance to visit one of Vietnam's most hallowed institutions - the unscrupulous motorbike mechanic. Watch in awe as a chubby, shirtless man drinks coffee and chainsmokes while shouting at your xe om guide, who will reply by also shouting and jabbing his finger ominously in your direction. Eventually the mechanic will demand that you pay 500% of the proper rate, which you will (quickly) because both men are now yelling at you in Vietnamese. 

In the evening, your phone and wallet will probably be stolen no matter what you do.

For reasons of brevity, it's understandable why Lonely Planet's editors cut this bit.

~

The weather is going to suck in some new and awful way.

Here is a weekly weather forecast from February in Saigon:

High 30's, for you Celsius folks.

And here is the forecast for this week:

High 20's, metric chumps.

There's nothing surprising about a week of clouds in a tropical environment. Even the most grizzled Nebraskan corn farmer has heard of 'rainy season', and there are certain necessary tradeoffs if you want to live in a place with palm trees and coconuts. However, this forecast hasn't changed since March. Which means we're now going on eight consecutive months of daily downpours. This is unlikely to end soon.

The rain has little regularity, except for the tendency to reach its maximum deluge at the precise moment you are leaving for work. Interestingly, the rain seems to have little impact on the behavior of the Vietnamese unless you count the massive uptick in poncho sales. The streets are still clogged with reckless motorists, who calmly ignore the laws of physics and continue to charge pell-mell into oncoming traffic with the same idiotic determination they display in perfect conditions. Crashes abound. Skid marks appear with alarming frequency. Despite overwhelming evidence that doing so would be a great idea, few people bother to slow down. And so every day while driving to work I find myself cursing Vietnam's shitty, shitty weather.

I imagine that a Vietnamese might express similar despair after four months of a bleak Minnesotan winter. And I'm not trying to argue that one particular form of weather-related misery is worse than another. The important thing to remember is that moving to another country with hopes of a better climate is like trading your bag of rocks for a bag of differently-shaped rocks.

~

There will be a cultural quirk or habit that drives you utterly insane.

When I lived in Korea, there were a few talking points guaranteed to turn polite, open-minded foreigners into a pack of ravenous snarling hounds. For example, even the most accomodating waeguks were incensed by the tendency of old Korean men to loudly clear their throats and spit giant balls of phlegm in public. Once I was riding the subway with a Canadian friend of mine (whose patience had been worn especially thin by five years of loogies) when a drunk old man appeared to cough up most of his left lung onto the car's floor. My friend's face assumed the pained look of a PETA advocate who just watched a barrel of kittens being drowned, and I was legitimately afraid he was going to murder the wheezy geezer. Nobody else blinked an eye, of course.

In Vietnam, the social faux pas de choix is nosepickery. My personal feelings about this are the same as my feelings toward BDSM and spoken word poetry. Whatever kicks you get in the privacy of your own home are none of my business. Some things, however, do not belong in public.

Issues of hygiene and decorum aside, Vietnam's attitude toward nosepicking is remarkably egalitarian. On the streets of Saigon everybody from the wealthiest CEO to the scruffiest street urchin to the most stylish fashionista can be spotted knuckle-deep in nostril. Young and old alike dig relentlessly for nose-gold, regardless of setting (English class, for example) or company (English teacher, for example). There is no social stigma attached to public nasal exploration, so everybody feels free to indulge whenever the mood strikes. On the plus side, there is potential for a hilarious Morgan Freeman audio book here.

~

I've spent the past three years overseas, and on the whole I have a positive impression of expatriate life. Willowy platitudes about 'self discovery' and 'seeing the world' aside, living abroad has allowed me to travel, pick up some neat hobbies, and make a reasonable amount of money without working too hard. I'd imagine the same is true for most people who decide to leave their home countries. 

As temporary residents of a foreign country, I do believe we should make an honest effort to adapt and adopt some local customs and practices. It also seems reasonable to resist blaming isolated inconveniences on some intrinsic failing of that country ('supermarket out of Honey Nut gahhhhh fuck this place afasjdahsdadam!').

At the same time, a place's different-ness should not endow it with sacred cow status. Expatriates should not be criticized for using their eyes and ears to observe their surroundings and occasionally arriving at uncomplimentary conclusions. Holding expats to some impossible standard of objectivity is both condescending and self-congratulatory. It also ignores the positive impact that a foreign perspective can have on local issues.

Sometimes it takes a real friend to say, 'Yo, dude - you stink.'

The Thief

Tuesday was my day off. I had big plans for Tuesday. Tuesday was going to be great. Then I woke up and everything went to hell.

I got out of bed and looked around for my iPod. Nowhere to be found. Then I looked for my laptop, which I kept on a stand next to my bed. Also gone. Ditto for my backpack and wallet. Huh. This was all very confusing, until I opened the bedroom door and found my wallet on the stairs with small bills scattered around. Things began to get clearer. Finally I walked downstairs and saw the front doors wide open. Aha.

This was the worst surprise since Omar caught one at the Korean joint on the East Side.

~

Saigon expats have a curious sense of pride regarding their city. Sure, it might rank #124 out of 140 on the Global Liveability Survey behind such legendary utopias as Damascus (war-torn Syria), Bogota (the capital of Colombia's cocaine cartels and, to a lesser extent, government), and Almaty (which is in Kazakhstan). But that's only because its traffic is lethally horrendous, its rivers are open sewers, and its crime rate is astronomical.

Saigonophiles will counter by extolling the city's vibrant energy, eccentric inhabitants, and low cost of living. There's certainly some validity to their arguments. Impromptu alley cockfights are definitely entertaining (if neither humane nor hygienic), and commissioning a tailored suit for less than $100 is one of life's small victories.

There's a certain grittiness to Saigon that strikes many young Westerners as exciting and romantic. In many ways it is the Williamsburg or Mission District of Asia - a hip, edgy place to live and work. Neighborhood markets! Street food! Cyclos! Dilapidated colonial-era buildings! Let the squares have Hong Kong and Tokyo. If you got balls, Saigon is the place to be.

On March 25th, I would've been firmly in this camp. Saigon was James Dean, and I was...whatever hitchhiker James Dean befriends and whisks off to Mexico for tequila and bullfights. The city seemed dangerous in the same way that skateboard punks seem dangerous. It was fun to chuckle at the uptight luxury travelers clutching their expensive cameras and peering suspiciously out the windows of their air-conditioned tour buses. I felt comfortable in those streets, and the fact that they didn't made me feel special.

On March 26th, I wouldn't have been disappointed if Kim Jong Un nuked the whole damn city.

~

The robber came sometime between 1:00 and 6:00am. He walked in through the front door, which had been left open by one of my roommates. He proceeded upstairs to my room, where he stole my hiking backpack, iPod, external hard drive, laptop, and cash. All of this happened while I was sleeping. The laptop was less than a foot from my head. He didn't bother to take the power cord.

I called my landlady, who was sincerely distraught and offered the most consoling broken English I've ever heard. I called the police, because that's what you're supposed to do when someone robs you. I called my parents, to start the process of canceling accounts and changing passcodes and jumping through all the annoying little hoops that pop up when you get cleaned out. The last call was useful. The first two were not. Lessons learned.

As I sat on the couch trying to process everything that had happened, I felt legitimately angry for the first time in years. Not the garden-variety type of anger you might feel at a late deliveryman or a slow internet connection. Real, powerful, visceral anger at the little weasel bastard who decided he'd help himself to my things. Anger at that shameless asshole who felt no guilt at walking into a stranger's house, stealing years of memories and hard work, and pawning it off for a few lousy dong. Anger at the helpless feeling of knowing he'd never be caught and never face justice for what he did.

Anger took me to some disturbing places that day. Places I didn't know I was capable of going. I legitimately hoped that the son of a bitch got cancer, AIDS, and the Ebola virus all at the same time. I hoped that his kids were hit by cars, that his house burned down, and that every awful thing which can happen in this world happened to him. I spent most of the afternoon fantasizing about catching the motherfucker and beating him to a bloody pulp in the middle of a crowded street.

Two weeks later the anger has faded, thankfully. Like the Buddha said, a man who holds on to a hot stone does nothing but burn his own hand. Holding on to anger in this city is a dangerous proposition; there are a million ways to lose but none to win. There are no prizes for 'Longest Grudge Held', or 'Most Suspicious of Vietnamese', or 'Angriest Tirade at Traffic Cop'. Life simply goes on, whether you approve or not.

~

When I first moved here, many of my Vietnamese friends warned me about the 'bad people' of Saigon. My foreign friends also had plenty of stories about thieving taxi drivers, dishonest cleaning ladies, and brazen machete-wielding gangsters . I now have my own stories to add to the mix. It's not a particularly great feeling.

I don't feel qualified to make any sweeping judgments about the nature of Vietnamese society or the Vietnamese people in general, but I've learned that depending on the kindness of strangers is a sure way to get burned here. Actually, forget 'kindness' - depending on the non-scumbaggery of strangers is naive at best and dangerous at worst. The margin of error is 0%; let your guard down (or your door open) for a moment and there will be consequences.

I first fell in love with Saigon because it felt wilder than any place I'd lived before. I still think that is true, but those words seem darker now. Wildness cuts both ways - more freedom, more risk.

It's all in the game, but how badly do you want to play?