One evening while on a brief holiday at sea in Vung Tau I got a phone call.

"Anh Tomo, can you do me a favor?"

One early thing I learned about Vietnamese interpersonal relations is that people are much more forward when it comes to asking for favors than Americans might be. There isn't the hesitation to owe other people favors that keeps me from asking in most situations.

Around this time I had begun practicing a new philosophy though. Basically, like the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man" I started saying "yes!" to invitations and requests that I would have probably hemmed and hawed at in the past. This has led to some awesome times and amazing new friendships in Vietnam. But there have also been many moments of great regret.

This time the request was to be an emcee.

Some people (like my friend Minh) are (by whatever means (whether natural tendency or hard work and practice)) good emcees. They are able to talk continuously and control the flow of the audience as the situation requires.

A good MC has a bunch of qualities and I basically had none of them.

How to be an MC when you're not an MC:

1) Don't care.
2) Smile. (I'm told I don't.)
3) Have a good sense of humor. LOL.
4) Look pretty. Smiling helps and being funny leads to smiling.

That's about all I can really teach about that subject.

The event in question was a "date auction" for a charity I'd never heard of called Helping Hand Saigon. My first thought was "OMG, selling young Vietnamese girls to foreigners - can I really be a part of such an operation?"

As it turns out, they were auctioning off young Vietnamese men as well. A Vietnamese male singer-song writer also showed up, performed a few songs, and then auctioned himself off, garnering over a million dongs. Later I saw one of his music videos on TV so I guess it was a bargain.

All the money raised was going to charity and not the girls. The charity would then help educate poor Vietnamese kids. The auction winners would get contact details of the won "lot" in order to arrange a coffee, movie, or other PG-rated date. So not at a short time hotel.

There is a point to this blog post. Tomorrow night (this Saturday night) Helping Hand Saigon is having their second date auction!

If you want to do some online window shopping before deciding whether or not to go you can see the date auction candidate's photos on Facebook.

If you are interested in buying a cheap Vietnamese bride then Helping Hand Saigon's Date Auction will only waste your time. If you really do want to find a Vietnamese bride I recommend you just spend some time in Vietnam, volunteering and meeting people.

Useful Errata:

Time: 5:30pm August 25th, 2012
Location: H&M Lounge, 101 Suong Nguyet Anh, District 1