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.'

Ukuleles

A few weeks ago I returned to Saigon from the Philippines. When I stumbled into my room around 3 a.m., I found an oddly shaped bag on my bed. On top of the bag was a note from my roommate John. It read, more or less, 'Here's a birthday present that you can hopefully use to pick up chicks one day.' I unzipped the bag to reveal a handsome, dark brown ukulele inside. My eyes welled with tears at the selfless beauty of John's gesture. With great tenderness I placed the ukulele on top of my wardrobe and promptly forgot about it for two weeks.

The uke - when you want to play music, but don't have the patience to learn a real instrument.

With the notable exceptions of Thomas Pynchon and middle-aged white guys in Hawaiian shirts, few people are willing to publicly admit their fondness for the ukulele. Even Pynchon himself once described ukulele players as, 'feckless, clownlike children who will not grow up.' In the pantheon of ridiculous instruments, the uke is eclipsed only by the accordion and kazoo. It lacks the face-melting badassitude of the electric guitar, the hipness of the bass, or percussion's cacophonous fury.

However, the ukulele does hold three major advantages over other, cooler instruments. First, it is cheap. John later admitted that he chose the uke as a gift mostly because, 'I don't like you enough to splurge on a guitar.' Second, it is small. While unimpressive as a living room centerpiece, the uke's compact size makes it the perfect travel instrument. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is easy* to play.

*Relatively.

For the musically-incompetent, this last fact cannot be emphasized enough. The attics of the world are filled with dusty mandolins, trumpets, and digeridoos heartlessly cast aside by frustrated owners who quickly despaired of ever mastering their respective instruments and went back to watching reruns of Duck Dynasty. My own attempts at learning the acoustic guitar petered out after a week when I proved spectacularly inept at strumming, a massive disappointment considering my former dominance of Guitar Hero on PlayStation2. Life fails to imitate art, often humiliatingly.

So a few days ago, after gingerly stumbling through a disjointed version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', I was almost catatonic with joy. For the next two hours I played the same chords over and over again, delighted by the almost-recognizable tune I produced with only a cheap box of wood and a few nylon strings. For the first time ever I had blisters on my fingers.

There is something incredibly pathetic about a grown man's pride in learning a new skill. Although I managed to refrain from humblebragging about my accomplishment on the internet ('took all day but finally got the E7 chord lol'), I was unable to resist casually mentioning my newfound uke talents to friends and co-workers. I even showed off a bit of fingerpicking to my parents on Skype, like an 8-year old who just learned how to whistle. 'Hey Mom, check out this intro to 'Dust in the Wind! Mom? Mom? MOM!'

We expect this kind of needy attention-seeking from children, because children are generally useless human beings who require validation for the smallest of accomplishments. Kids get a gold star for not shitting their pants (literally, in many cases). Adults, on the other hand, are supposed to have outgrown this need for constant approval. We should be able to acquire a new talent or ability without taping proof to the refrigerator.

Where the magnets at?

My generation forgot to learn this lesson. The smallest act of self-improvement needs to be shared with the world, so everyone can be impressed that you jogged 2 km on the treadmill and did a couple pushups before breakfast. Ideally there should be an app for this, so you can receive anonymous kudos from similarly insecure people who are also desperate to be congratulated for their slightest progress in the Sisyphean ordeal of human existence. Also, you'd probably like a cookie.

I'm one of these people. I am a Millennial. I am unmarried, I do not own a home, and I have never held the same job for more than a year. I have no pets, investments, or marketable skills besides a U.S. passport and the ability to talk American pretty OK. I do not volunteer, speak a foreign language fluently, or cook edible meals. I have voted precisely once, writing in 'Turd Ferguson' during the 2008 presidential election.

But I can play two songs on the ukulele, three if you count the refrain to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. And I devoted most of the afternoon to telling you all about this.

Life is absurd.

Shipwrecked

Statistically speaking, scuba diving is less dangerous than having a baby or driving to work. It is only slightly more lethal than table tennis. Your odds of perishing underwater are roughly 200,000-to-1. Your chances of being murdered on the way to Whole Foods, on the other hand, are 18,000-to-1. As always, the lesson is to quit your job and eat all the gluten-drenched trans fats you want. Also, don't have kids.

These comforting statistics were remarkably easy to forget the first time I penetrated a shipwreck. Breathing underwater is about the most unnatural thing a human being can do, short of laying eggs. It is a very deliberate slap in the face of reason, which may explain why so many people enjoy it. Like me, for example. However, breathing underwater while willingly swimming into a pitch-black aquatic labyrinth/tomb is more like punching reason in the nose and stealing its purse, then using its credit cards to buy $700 worth of indoor marshmallow roasters. Sure, you could do that (it wouldn't even be that hard, really), but why?

Well, you could probably see a lot of interesting marine life down there. After all, a shipwreck is basically a giant artificial reef, and reefs are teeming with Nemos and Flounders and all the other cuddly anthropomorphic sweethearts of the sea, right?

Just keep swimming, mother*****.

Sure they are! They're right next to the lovable stonefish, the most venomous little bastard in the Pacific and a creature widely considered to cause the worst pain known to man. And to your left we can see the unmistakable fin rays of the lionfish - you can pet them if you don't mind the subsequent paralysis, heart failure, and death. Also, if you like to be spooked by camouflaged prehistoric hellbeasts, there's a scorpionfish! And a crocodile fish!

Like when you found the cat sleeping in your cereal bowl, if your cat's whiskers could kill you.

Why are the pretty ones always venomous?

No touching!

At this point, it seems that wreck diving is mainly an opportunity for divers to either: A) get lost in a vast underwater maze, panic, and drown, or B) get stung by a venomous sea creature, suffer excruciating pain, and then drown. So why would anyone in his/her right mind decide to go wreck diving?

For me, the answer was found in a book called Shadow Divers. It focused on two American wreck divers and their quest to identify a mystery U-boat which sank off the coast of New Jersey. Although Shadow Divers is nonfiction it reads like a novel, full of boozed-up skippers and underwater piracy and, of course, Nazis.  It also presents a frank depiction of the dangers of wreck diving. The U-Who, as the mystery sub was called, claimed the lives of many top-notch divers. Worst were the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, a father-son team who succumbed to decompression sickness ('the bends') after making an emergency ascent to the surface from nearly 70m/230ft, their blood literally bubbling in their veins.

Still, when I finished the book I could not wait to dive a wreck. For a lifelong history nerd the appeal was obvious. I'd spent much of my childhood reading about the savage naval battles of the Pacific during World War II. Here was a chance to combine my love of the past with my love of the sea. And maybe take some cool pictures along the way.

~

Coron is a small island in the Philippines, slightly north of Palawan. There is absolutely nothing to do in the town proper, nor in the surrounding area, which is mountainous and densely forested. If you don't speak scuba, Coron may be the single most boring town in the Philippines.

However, Coron boasts some of the best wreck-diving in the world. The neighboring seas are littered with Japanese ships sunk by an American airstrike during World War II. Some of the wrecks are quite shallow, less than 18m/60ft beneath the surface. Others are much deeper - on one dive we reached a depth of 37m/121ft, near the limit for recreational diving. There are oil tankers, seaplane tenders, troop transports, and gunboats. The water is a balmy 30°C/86°F, and marine life is abundant. In short it is a novice wreck diver's paradise.

I dived with a group called Rocksteady. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the only Rastafarian-themed / German-owned diveshop on the island. I decided to complete a Wreck Diver Specialty course, which is basically an overpriced confirmation from the global pyramid scheme known as PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors or, as it is colloquially known, Put Another Dollar In) that its holder is not completely incompetent underwater. I chose Rocksteady because its staff were courteous, professional, and safety-oriented, and also because their boats were painted like giant bongs.

The Coast Guard must be constantly pulling these guys over.

The first time I dived on a wreck, all I could think about was Rose, that chick from Titanic. Not that one, this one. As I swam through the dark, twisted passages of the wreck I heard her shaky old lady voice narrating an imaginary history of the ship. I laughed when she described how they used the squatters at sea. Man, she's old.

Submerged commode.

Other sights were far more sobering. At one point, I passed through a large, shadowy room behind my Filipino dive instructor. He turned to look at me, and seemed to scratch his cheek. I struggled to remember what this meant in complicated scuba sign language. I checked my gauges, dive computer, hoses...everything, but he still kept scratching his cheek. Finally he wiggled his dive torch at a barnacle-encrusted shelf, and I realized what he was trying to show me. It was a human jawbone.

No humans in this cargo hold, luckily.

I took no pictures of the remains, out of equal parts respect and superstition. It was my first personal experience with a harsh, undeniable truth: the ocean is a wonderland, but it is also a graveyard.   The danger and the beauty can't be separated.

That's why we always go back.

Mr. Nick Goes to Prison

Like most people who have seen Shawshank Redemption I have a keen interest in not going to prison. For one thing, I find orange jumpsuits unflattering. And aside from softball games and amateur winemaking courses, most jailhouse pastimes involve entirely too much stabbing for my taste. So you can imagine my discomfort as I stood outside the main gates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm, sweating profusely under the hot equatorial sun and wondering why the hell I was here.

~

Welcome to prison!

The Philippines penal system occasionally takes an interesting approach to rehabilitation. The famous dancing inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) have received international acclaim for their performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has nearly fifty-three million views on YouTube. Prisoners at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa practice yoga and meditation through a course sponsored by The Art of Living humanitarian movement.

In Sablayan, the inmates watch birds.

~

Visiting the prison was Marie's idea. My sole objective in Sablayan was to leave as quickly as possible. But Marie had read something about a penal farm in her Lonely Planet guidebook, and she wanted to see it. The desk clerk at the ecotourism office thought she was insane, but happily agreed to arrange visitor's passes for a nominal fee. After paying said nominal fee, along with a very un-nominal fee for the dirtbike, we were on our way.

The woman in red is smiling because she just robbed me blind.

~

Before arriving in the Philippines I had no intention of visiting the prison, or even the island on which it stands. I planned to travel from the touristy island paradise of Boracay to El Nido, a slightly less touristy island paradise famous for its picturesque sunsets and spectacular karst formations. Instead, thanks to a slight miscalculation involving a ferry and two cities with identical names, I wound up 630 km from my intended destination in the backwater town of Sablayan, where there are no tourists.

And so I found myself atop a battered dirtbike, with a terrified French-Canadian girl whom I'd met the day before clinging to the back, racing furiously out of town.

~

Thirty minutes and eleventy-billion potholes later, we arrived at the prison. As we pulled off the main road, I noticed a small sign with the words 'DO NOT PICK UP MALE HITCHHIKERS' painted in urgent red letters. Continuing down the dirt path, we passed a gaggle of inmates carrying long bamboo poles. They stopped in their tracks to stare at Marie. Their smiles could best be described as predatory. I sped up.

Once we reached the main prison complex, we were directed to the administration office. There we waited while the warden finished the final touches on his new screenplay and eventually approved our visitor's passes. Meanwhile, a horde of secretaries fussed over Marie and cast venomous glances my way. Apparently they felt prison was no place for a pretty foreign lady. I didn't have the energy to explain that visiting this den of thieves and rapists was in fact her idea.

Freshly stamped papers in hand, we walked out of the warden's office and headed back to the main gates. We passed the prison hospital, which appeared to be completely empty. Apparently the inmates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm enjoyed perpetual good health.

This song was stuck in my head the whole time.

Back at the main gate we waited again while a different set of guards double-checked our passes. We sat on stools in the cramped, dark shack and made small talk with a group of Filipina prostitutes who had come to visit their incarcerated menfolk. The girls were flirtatious and light-hearted; two of them asked if I was married, while another gushed over Marie's curly hair. They were the nicest hookers I've ever met in prison. They carried small bags of candy and gifts for their men, which they would presumably trade for cigarettes and...backrubs, maybe.

Soon the guard returned with our passes, and we were free to enter the compound. 'It is illegal to give the prisoners drugs or weapons,' he added cheerfully as he shut the gate behind us. I felt like I was entering the world's least-fun human zoo. But I revved the engine and we scooted off into the bowels of the penal farm.

~

Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm occupies an area of over 16,000 hectares, a unit of measurement as meaningless to me as a smoot or potrzeble. However I can say with reasonable certainty that it is really, really big. So big, in fact, that we spent the next hour meandering aimlessly in search of something besides hills and rice paddies. Periodically we passed checkpoints manned by bored shirtless men who chuckled at the sight of two foreigners staring helplessly around at the endlessly repetitive scenery. The area was beautiful, no doubt, but so are many areas that aren't crawling with violent criminals.

Finally we passed an army outpost, and I stopped to ask for directions. The soldiers were surprisingly friendly. One of them put down the heavy black assault rifle he was cleaning and helpfully pointed us in the direction of the prison lake, which he assured us was quite beautiful. He and his buddies waved goodbye as we headed back onto the road. Later I would find out that a prisoner had escaped the day before, and the soldiers were very much looking forward to catching him and shooting him full of holes. 'Dead or alive, dead no problem!', one inmate cheerfully explained.

Basically what you'd expect from an average lake.

The lake was indeed beautiful, though there is only so much fun you can have at a lake without a fishing rod or jet ski. We left after a few minutes, and set out for the Inmates Recreation Facility.

~

At the rec center, a tall muscular guard escorted two prisoners over to us and introduced them with the enthusiasm of a third-grader reading poetry. Their names were Ricky and Manuel, and they would guide us on a trek up the heavily forested mountain to see the local waterfall. Marie looked mildly horrified at the idea of wandering into the jungle with two convicts. I looked mildly horrified at the idea of hiking in flip-flops.

Manuel was a small, thin man who looked to be in his mid-forties. His main job was to scurry ahead of us and smoke hand-rolled prison cigarettes impatiently while Marie and I pulled our sandals out of the muddy path and tried not to step on anything venomous. I don't believe he said a single word the entire afternoon.

Ricky was a different character entirely. He spoke perfect English and chattered incessantly from the minute we left the rec center. As it turned out, he and Manuel were the prison's two foremost bird experts, trained to identify the numerous endemic species that dwelt in the thick jungle around the penal colony. He told us that most visitors to the prison were hardcore aviphiles who were quite happy to tramp through the mountains for hours, then sit motionlessly for additional hours while they waited for a kingfisher or imperial pigeon to flutter into view. Ricky proudly informed us that he was able to discern a bird's species, gender, and age simply from the call of its voice. Looking into his broad, smiling face I felt ashamed of my lack of interest in bird calls.

Turns out the streamwater was totally potable. Refreshing!

Marie's sandal-clad feet were already bruised and bloody from the unforgiving jungle trail, so we decided to turn back when we reached the mountain stream. She wiggled her toes in the clean cool water and Manuel sat on a rock and chain-smoked while I stood and talked with Ricky. He seemed disappointed that we weren't interested in continuing the hike. It was obvious that he took great pride in his birdwatching abilities, and he seemed to sincerely enjoy sharing his gift with others. I was deeply impressed by his genuine warmth and thoughtfulness. I never asked him why he was in prison.

Eventually we made our way down the mountain and across a rice paddy. 'We have no irrigation,' said Ricky as I stared at the verdant fields, 'so we must wait for the rain. All in God's hands.'

When we returned to the rec center, we said goodbye to Ricky and Manuel as the guard led them back into the fenced-off compound. Some inmates were playing basketball on a cracked asphalt court. Others stood around and stared at us, and once again I had the horrible feeling that I was a paying customer at a human zoo. I waved goodbye to Ricky and wished him good luck in the future. I have no idea what 'good luck' entails in his world, but I hope he gets lots of it.

Marie and I climbed back on the bike. I kicked it into gear and pulled back onto the dirt path. Minutes later we reached the main road, where we reentered the free world. We had that luxury.

Balut

Imagine the most delicious food you've ever tried. Maybe you're thinking of a thick ribeye steak, grilled medium rare and dripping with savory juices. Or perhaps a fresh tropical pineapple, plucked straight from the tree and chilled to perfection on a block of crisp, clear ice. If you have a sweet tooth, you might have pictured a rich chocolate eclair drizzled in decadent caramel icing.

Keep that image in your mind, and visualize the sensations of your first bite. Envision the sublime texture between your teeth. Allow yourself to be swept away by the intoxicating aroma, and recall that transcendent moment when your mouth becomes a garden of earthly delights. Then imagine this process repeating over and over again, the pleasure growing more exquisite with every bite. Finally you dab your mouth with a napkin and recline lazily. Your belly is full and round; you pat it with blissful tenderness. You smile and sip your digestif, basking in the afterglow of a toe-curling foodgasm.

Eating balut is just like this, only the exact opposite.

~

To the naked eye, a balut looks much the same as any egg. Depending on the species of bird, the shell may be white or speckled, or even a dark brownish hue. It is only after the shell is cracked that you realize something is horribly, horribly wrong.

God's cruelest mistake.

If you've ever eaten a hard boiled egg and thought, 'This is nice, but I wish there were more feathers, claws, and leathery membranes,' then balut would be an excellent food to try after your release from the sanitarium. 

Balut are allegedly popular throughout Southeast Asia, and have recently ascended to near-mythic status in the region's street grub pantheon. Several years ago noted asshole and food enthusiast Anthony Bourdain sampled one in Saigon's Ben Thanh Market, sparking a new wave of balut fever (with congruent nausea and violent diahhrea). Balut challenges have also appeared on 'Fear Factor', 'Survivor', 'Ultimate Fighter', and many other TV shows popular amongst idiots. Today, most grizzled backpackers can tell at least three balut-related stories which are all synopsized with the tidy platitude, '...but actually it wasn't that bad!'

I assure you these people are full of shit.

~

 In Vietnam, in-shell aborted avian fetuses are known as hot vit lon. They are a popular food amongst impotent middle aged men, social degenerates and alcoholics. Upstanding Vietnamese citizens do occasionally eat them as well, presumably to horrify their foreign friends. I have been forced to try hot vit lon several times during the past year by my local chums. The eggs are quite small, half the size of one's thumb. As such, they can be gulped quickly in a single mouthful without chewing. I have always considered these bite-sized treats as a fairly innocuous dinner time diversion, like eating a handful of jalapenos or snorting a line of salt. 

When I visited the Philippines in August with my sisters Lizzie and Alexa, I insisted that we try some of the infamous balut, figuring that my battle-hardened stomach would have no problem with a slightly larger version of the familiar hot vit lon. I had forgotten the time honored aphorism that size matters.

~

On my sisters' final night in Boracay, we gathered with some friends for a seafood barbecue on the beach. Together with my Irish roommate Kieran and some Filipino friends named Cathy and Brandon, we gawked at the restaurant's wriggling menu of freshly-caught lobsters, crabs, prawns, snapper, and lapu-lapu. After placing our orders we relaxed at the table with several pitchers of icy mango mojitos, digging our toes in the sand and savoring our last evening together.

Alexa and I were trying to convince Lizzie to get matching sibling tattoos when Cathy, a lovely Filipino girl whom I would later want to strangle, was approached by an itinerant food vendor bearing a large styrofoam box on his shoulders. They spoke in rapid-fire Tagalog, a beautiful melodic language full of soft sounds and rolled consonants. I was so entranced by their hypnotic conversation that I failed to realize the vendor was selling balut.

Minutes later we were staring at the giant, heavy white eggs in our hands as Cathy and Brandon gave detailed instructions on how to properly consume the fertilized chicken embryos. Here is a condensed transcript:

1) Never, ever look in the egg.

2) Crack open the top. 

3) Pour in vinegar and soy sauce.

4) Guzzle the embryo juice cocktail.

5) You didn't look inside, did you?

6) Stop crying and peel the egg.

7) Seriously, don't look.

8) Eat the deformed baby chicken curled around its thick, curdled yolk.

9) Pick the feathers and beak out of your teeth.

10) Renounce your faith in the goodness of humanity.

Before we ate the balut, we looked like this. 

When we finished, we looked like this:

But actually, it wasn't that bad.

Class(room) Warfare: Korea vs. Vietnam

When I first moved to Vietnam, people asked me a lot of questions. Most of these could be answered without much thought - 'Where are you from?' (America), 'What's your job?' (teacher), 'Does this look infected to you?' (dear god, yes). After these pleasantries were concluded, my new friend and I would smile politely and sincerely regret ever making eye contact with each other. Eventually we'd both feel uncomfortable and attempt to start a new line of conversation, since we were obviously going to be stuck together until the bar/coffee shop/teacher's lounge finally closed/burned down/threw us out for loitering. And at some point before that happened, we'd touch upon the subject of Korea.

Not the one with nukes and belligerent Kims. At least not the ones on CNN.

If my fellow conversationalist was a teacher, he or she would usually ask something along the lines of, 'Do you prefer teaching in Korea or here in Vietnam?' Then I would chuckle, gaze thoughtfully out the window, and silently curse myself for ever leaving the house. 

It's not as if this question is hard to answer. Teaching in Vietnam is much, much better than teaching in Korea. And it's not even close. But I found it hard to answer truthfully without sounding like a callous, cynical turd. And since most of our daily lives (and by 'our' I mean 'mine') are spent in the vain effort to conceal what callous, cynical turds we really are, a question like this is the Edward Snowden to our PRISM database of douchedom.

But screw it. Let's go all Anonymous on this bitch.

~

When I first arrived in Korea, I had absolutely zero teaching experience. I arrived in Seoul at 8pm, caught a bus to Cheonan (the first city I lived in), and hitched a ride from my school's owner to my new apartment. By this time it was almost midnight, and after putzing around my closet-sized digs for a few minutes I passed out from a combination of jet-lag, nervous excitement, and three donuts (a welcome gift from the owner, who apparently believed jelly Bismarcks are every white person's favorite bedtime snack).

Seven hours later, I was in the classroom. And that's when I realized that I wasn't actually going to be teaching for the next twelve months.

English instructors in Korea are half teacher, half babysitter, half amateur psychologist, and half hostage negotiator. Please direct any comments about my shitty math skills to Al Gore. Anyway, I hadn't been in the classroom for more than a minute before a little girl started crying and hysterically babbling in Korean. After frantically conferring with my TA, who spoke as much English as your average pencil case, I discovered the cause of Sara's angst: a boy had accidentally knocked her eraser off the table.

Jesus. Christ. It was going to be a long year.

I soon learned that the emotional fragility of Korean kindergarteners is matched only by their inability to tolerate any type of physical discomfort. This was made crystal clear during a game of 'Duck, Duck, Goose'. To make a long, boring story somewhat shorter and (hopefully) more interesting, a boy we'll call 'Tony' tapped a boy we'll call 'Jimmy' lightly on the back of the head. If you're familiar with the game, at this point Jimmy should have leapt up from his chair, chased Tony around the circle, and then given his teacher a $50 gift certificate to Applebee's. Instead, Jimmy fell on the floor, clutched his head like he was JFK in Dallas, and screamed louder than any boy should reasonably scream if his testicles aren't caught in a bear trap. All I could think was, 'You pussy...'

But this being Korea, I had to pick him up and take him to the front desk, where the hatchet-faced receptionists fretted over him like nervous mothers and pacified him with so much candy that he immediately developed Type II diabetes. Later that afternoon, my Korean co-teacher received a phone call from his actual mother, who (I am guessing here) had roughly fuck-all else to do with her day besides harass underpaid twenty-year-olds over the phone. My co-teacher was practically in tears when she finally hung up. And we never played 'Duck, Duck, Goose' again.

It's not as if such unbelievable sissiness is limited to the young'uns, either. During my second year in Korea I was teaching in a city called Yongin, which is an overgrown suburb of Seoul home to Korea's most obnoxious nouveau riche. I worked at an academy called LCI Kid's Club, renowned for its batshit insane mothers and criminally incompetent management. Here are two almost-verbatim transcripts of conversations I had with the Korean staff during that year:

Exhibit A: The Dance

Korean Manager: Amy's mother is upset because she is at the end of the line for your class dance.
Me:  Amy was absent for a week. Everybody else learned the dance while she was gone.
Korean Manager: Yes, but her mother is angry. Amy wants to be in the middle.
Me: Can you tell me why?
Korean Manager: Amy is very sensitive. Her mother does not want her to feel bad. You must change the dance.
Me: But there are only four days before the performance. What about the other kids?
Korean Manager: Amy's mother is upset. You must change the dance.
Me: Has anyone ever told you that you are a fucking idiot?

Exhibit B: The Test

Co-teacher: Chloe's mother is upset with her test score. It is too low.
Me: What's wrong? She got 84/100 on the test. That's not bad.
Co-teacher: But Chloe is a smart girl. Her mother wants her to get the high marks. 84 is not OK for her.
Me:  Fine, no problem. She'll do better next time.

The following month...

Co-teacher: Chloe's mother is upset with her test score.
Me: *genuinely surprised* But why? She got a 96! That was the best score in the class?
Co-teacher: Her mother thinks the test was too easy. She is angry at you.
Me: Next time just ask Chloe's mother what score she wants, and I'll give it to her.
Co-teacher: Ummmm...ahhhhh...you must only give her the good score to make her mother happy.
Me: Fuck this place.

~

After two years of dealing with this parental nonsense, I was ready to leave. I had absolutely no idea what teaching in Vietnam entailed, but as long as I wasn't coddling spoiled little shits in Burberry pea coats I would be happy. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that teaching in Vietnam involves absolutely zero interaction with mothers. Or fathers, for that matter.

Korean kids attend English class, on average, between 3-5 days a week. Vietnamese children, on the other hand, only have two days of class each week. This might not seem like a drastic difference, but it is. Sweet infant Jesus, it is...

~

'Wow...that kid can take a punch.'

I uttered those words to my Vietnamese TA during our 8 year-old class's break time. I had just watched a small boy take a running start and deliver a series of vicious blows to the back of his friend's head. It looked like this. Much to my surprise, the victim of this vicious bushwhacking didn't immediately start bawling and begging for attention. Instead he turned around, chortled happily, and aimed a kick at his assailant's face. I was so delighted that I didn't bother trying to break up the fight. I always tell my Vietnamese students that they are free to beat the shit out of each other during break time, as long as they behave during class. And I'm a man of my word.

The physical toughness of Vietnamese kids was the most obvious difference between them and the Koreans, but I soon grew to appreciate the lack of helicopter parenting even more. This might seem odd when you consider that every Sunday the hallways of my school are choked with daddies toting Doraemon bags and wiping their kids' noses (even the older ones), but Vietnamese parents seem content to let the teachers teach without imposing their own agendas on the classroom.

Granted, this is probably due in large part to the fact that most Vietnamese parents don't speak a lick of English, and in many cases didn't finish high school (as explained to me by the helpful TA during our break-time Thunderdome). But whatever the reason I am quite grateful for their lack of interest or ability in critiquing my teaching style.

I am making certain assumptions here, but from what I've seen Vietnamese kids are allowed to fend for themselves far more than Korean children. And I believe they are far better off for it. Not only do they soon learn to defend themselves from sudden roundhouse kicks (a more frequent hazard than you might think), but they develop thicker skins as well. My teenagers in particular can be absolutely ruthless when razzing their classmates, but I've never seen a kid cry in class. Or even mope, which is especially surprising coming from that notoriously angst-y demographic. It's as if Tom Hanks personally delivers a pep talk to all the nation's maternity wards so they learn it young.

~

Having said that, teaching in Korea wasn't all bad, and teaching in Vietnam isn't all lollipops and unicorns.

While having the same kids in a class for five consecutive days can be a repetitive nightmare at times, Korean kids do learn to speak English fairly well. I had a lot of fun with some kindergarten classes; at one point, I had a group of twelve students convinced that being a hobo was the greatest thing a person could achieve in life. I also taught a unit on animals entirely in Steve Irwin's voice, which led to a bunch of Korean six year-olds running around yelling, 'Crikey, lookout mate! It's a toi-gah!'

I'd make that face too if I had to stick my thumb in a snake's butt.

Also, I was stuck with some of these little monsters for eight months at a time. And some of them turned out to be pretty neat. I'll never forget huddling my first LCI kindergarten class together on our last day for a group hug. For once I was glad of their runny noses and constant facial leaking, because all the tears and snot blended together and nobody could tell I was crying too.

I still miss these little hobos.

I only spend one day a week with my Vietnamese students, so we don't get to bond quite as much. For the most part I'm quite OK with this - there's something very, very nice about showing up for two hours a day, dropping some knowledge on the little bastards, and then going about my merry way. I don't have to deal with their neurotic mothers or wipe their butts after they shit themselves (happens more often than you'd think in Korea, though I always delegated to the Korean staff, often with a diabolical grin as I delivered the poop-stained child directly to their desks). Sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when my favorite students would invade the teachers' room to climb on my lap and steal candy from my desk. The feeling usually passes quickly, but I never entirely forget.

It's true that Vietnamese kids don't speak as well as Koreans - in many cases, the kids can't string two words together unless they're parroting the teacher. So the ego-boosts that teachers in Korea get from their students are non-existant. Nobody writes letters saying, 'I love you teacher,' in that endearing childish scrawl. But every once in a while they'll surprise you...

Sir Mix-a-lot must've sown some wild oats over here.

And having dealt with the Tiger Mothers from Hell, that's good enough for me.

The Red Wedding and the Old Ultra Violence

It's cool to be a nerd. 

Nerds are smart. Some of them are literally rocket scientists. Nerds are funny. They invent hilarious catchphrases. Nerds are rich. One of them earned $19 billion USD before he turned 30, making him the most depressing point of comparison for young adults since this guy. And ever since professional athletes started dressing like your high school's chess team, nerds are probably getting laid as well.

Stay back, foxy mamas.

It's obvious that nerds have come a long way since the Days of Sorrow. Yet for all their accomplishments, there is still one thing that eludes their grasp: a sense of perspective. 

The Internet exploded this week when a bunch of mostly boring characters on a mostly boring TV show were gruesomely murdered in the bloodiest wedding reception since...ever, probably. The nerds were out in full force - some hysterically threatening to cancel their HBO subscriptions, others documenting their unsuspecting friends' reactions to the gore like a secondhand snuff film, while still others just bitterly wept, gnashed their teeth, and cursed the House of Martin.

Now, I am a bit of a nerd myself. In my younger days I was a voracious reader of Tolkien - to my great and everlasting shame, I once made a sincere effort to learn Elvish. I've read the Silmarillion so many times that I could probably sketch a map of Numenor without breaking a sweat. I know the difference between a Kirk, a Picard, and a Janeway. I laugh at Admiral Ackbar jokes. 

He'd be delicious with a little butter and garlic.

And I'm certainly not an emotionally resilient consumer of entertainment. I cry whenever I read Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, or pretty much any other book featuring the death of a canine. Dances with Wolves always gets my blood boiling. When Omar got got in The Wire, I did this. 

Yet I found it hard to twist my panties into a suitably outraged bundle over 'The Rains of Castamere'. Like most people, I felt sick when Robb Stark's pregnant wife was stabbed in the belly. I think I covered my eyes before the poor direwolf was turned into a pin cushion. I immediately voted Walder Frey into the Creepy-Old-White-Guy Hall of Fame next to him, him, and this dickhead.

To be honest, I felt that the Red Wedding scene was the most oddly compelling mix of brutality and grace since Alex and the gang tried out a bit of the old ultra violence. The slaughter in the dining hall felt horrific yet not quite gratuitous. As the credits rolled slowly down the screen, my thought wasn't, 'dear God, that was barbaric,' but rather, 'wow, that was brilliant filmmaking.' 

I'm a little worried about what this suggests. It's quite easy to laugh at the furious geeks and their endearingly stupid rants about the fictional demise of fictional characters. Seriously - Robb and his wife had just decided to name their baby after Ned Stark, aka Sean Bean. Their demise was practically preordained. And it's not like Game of Thrones suffers from a shortage of attractive yet charmless characters.

Uh, guys...

But perhaps they're right to be horrified. They're just horrified for the wrong reasons. 

The cinematography of the bloodbath was, in a vacuum, impeccable. The aural atmosphere around the castle dripped menace, from the clanging doors to the direwolf's lonely moan to the spine-tingling chords of the minstrels. Almost everyone agrees that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (who wrote the episode) created 2013's ten most captivating minutes of television.  

So what?

Game of Thrones is entertainment. It has never pretended to teach us lessons about social injustice (like The Wire), or human nature (like Breaking Bad), or delicious cookies (like Sesame Street). It is extremely well made and occasionally well written, but there is no substance behind its style. A good GoT episode is a fifty minute extravaganza of swords, sex, and dragons. It aims to please, not to teach, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is entertainment. People love entertainment. Entertainment is fine.

But if you're going to repeatedly stab a pregnant woman in the stomach and show her bloody, shredded womb gurgling sadly on national television, you ought to have a damn good reason.

And 'entertainment' just doesn't cut it.