Dear Joe:
Just a quick note to thank you for your work on behalf of those few of us who can see a purpose beyond manic consumption and extension of credit beyond the point of absurdity.
I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (formerly known as Saigon, the Paris of the Orient, you know) where I work as little as possible as an English teacher. I'm 36, fairly typical working-class from a family in the now dead auto industry in the rust belt, and deeply unsatisfied with what our culture has given me to strive for and work towards. It never fit me, never will, and I won't do it.
When most people think about Ho Chi Minh City, they think of helicopters leaving the roofs of embassies in panic and dead-eyed commies marching through streets shooting anyone who ever spoke to a westerner. Or, if they're lucky, they might think of beautiful women in the traditional "ao dai" dress, mysterious winding alleys, exotic food, rice farmers slowly making their way into town to buy and sell buffalo. It's not like that anymore.
It's not like that anymore at all. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the most popular restaurant among the young hip set, its only competition being the new Pizza Hut that opened in the big downtown shopping mall. McDonalds is opening up within a few weeks. Doubtless it will be followed by Starbuck's and Burger King. Young Eurotrash hepcats and ever-so-understanding dreadlocked white college boys and girls wander around gett ing ripped off on fake war relics and "landmine charities" whose only connection to landmine victims is the willingness of the administration staffers to send the surviving amputees into the field to find and deactivate said mines. They've already lost limbs, what does it matter, right?
There are major multinationals, banks with global presences, SUVs. Vietnam is getting rich, and it's starting to show. In a bad way. They seem to want to copy every vulgar pointless indulgence of the west. My students (teenage, and typical) said, in a lesson on the language used when talking about material objects, "We never had these things, now we can afford them, and we want everything". I tried to ask about morality and practicality as it relates to consumption and credit, but was shouted down. "It makes your life better, teacher! It does!". She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, not me. But they spend their youth in one-upmanship showing each other the stupid tricks their cellphones can do. You'd be hard pressed indeed to find anyone who would disagree with her around here. Not too much different from Orange County, or Houston, or Tampa, or Toronto (where I lived for 20 years before coming here two years ago, and can't remember that much about -- just not that memorable), or any fucking where else for that matter. The Pearl of the Orient isn't all gone, by any means, but it's going.
What's the point of all this whining? To say that things are rapidly becoming the same all over, but there are still people who think like humans and not consumerbots, and you provide a voice and a measure of hope for us. Thank you. I hope your health will continue to let you write, because Joe, we need you.
The girlfriend's yelling at me to come eat noodles, so I gotta go. If you ever get here, I'll show you some truly hair-raising sights that the tourists will never ever get to see.
Your admirer,
Jeff
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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Dear Jeff,
What a neat summary of our condition. Third World Latin Americans, of course, are not immune either, they just don't have the money. I recently tried to convince one of my Hopkins Village friends here why she did not need an expensive mobile phone when she already has a good landline phone at home that is much cheaper. Hell, she never gets more than a couple hundred feet from her cottage! She already has a new refrigerator that stands completely empty wasting expensive electricity all day because she cannot afford the kinds of foods that need refrigeration, she has a microwave but no food to nuke, she has Belizean cable TV that is disconnected half the time for non-payment ... and is talking to a loan shark on the phone about getting enough money to buy a motorcycle, for god sake! As to the mobile phone, it was just the idea of her friends seeing her with one when they walk by her place. She is very typical of the younger married people here. Anyway, she thought I just didn't understand progress.
Whatever the case, I'm the same as you: " It never fit me, never will, and I won't do it."
The cost for both if us is marginalization from society.
So far, I am finding it to be a fucking bargain.
I surely hope to get to Nam some day, and my health is doing so much better here I just may get to do it. I would never have guessed that a moist salt breeze and low stress could have such a profound affect. Oh, I still have a few bad days, but nothing like I experienced in the States.
Is it OK if I file your email as a possible contact in case I ever get over your way?
In art and labor,
Joe
