Rubbing my eyes, contact lenses still in, I slowly woke up to an orange sun just beginning its daily ascent. We were still on a bus, just about to arrive in Nha Trang after driving all night from Saigon, but waking up alive meant I'd survived seven consecutive days of being a vegetarian (coinciding with the start of a bicycle trek from Nha Trang to Saigon, an exercise in which I would need all the calories I could get, regardless of source - future blog post on that experience). Since then, in the name of science I did another one week stint as a vegetarian which led me to finish writing this post.
Vegetarian restaurants in Saigon
[ Above is a map I made of vegetarian restaurants mostly around Districts 1, 3, and Binh Thanh. Red Markers indicated closed restaurants. Google and other online resources for Vietnam/Ho Chi Minh City are useful sources too but I always find them to be both lacking, inaccurate and, out of date, which means I've wasted a lot of time looking for restaurants that no longer exist or have moved. Feel free to suggest additions in the comments or let me know if you want to be a collaborator on the map and I'll give you access. I will only list restaurants that I have verified or which you can vouch for. The map will be updated periodically.]
Why eat vegetables and not animals in Vietnam?
With any luck, you should actually enjoy eating a healthier diet and feel better for it, both physically and mentally or spiritually. If you do convert to vegetarianism you should do it for yourself before any other reason.
Not eating tons of meat has health benefits. It will lower your risk for various diseases while you'll be eating more of the good nutrients you probably aren't getting enough of. You'll avoid more of the poisons like pesticides and heavy metals that accumulate in higher concentrations in animals. Vegetarian restaurants in Vietnam often go an extra step and refrain from using MSG in their food. (Next time you eat out in Vietnam, you'll be praying that Ajinomoto is the worst of all the additives used in most other restaurants.) Being vegetarian can be good for your conscience too - less animal farming is better for the environment and uses less of our resources and not killing sentient beings is something they'll appreciate (although it's up for debate whether invertebrates feel pain). If you're Buddhist then you should be concerned about what Buddhism says about that last point. Otherwise, try not to let it bother you. Try not to think of a purple elephant while you're at it.
If you happen to meditate, you may be interested in knowing that vegetarians shoved in an fMRI machine show more empathy. Personally, I've found myself feeling a bit more compassion for animals. From an enlightenment perspective, this extra push in compassion may help with your concentration, as meditation on compassion leads to improved concentration. (Thus compassion, beyond or despite its altruism, also shapes us into better human beings.)
In Vietnam, we should be especially concerned about what poisons may be going into our foods because when hearing reported seizures of rotten meat for sale to consumers (40 tons of rotten meat seized in Thu Duc District in the first half of 2012) we know it's just the tip of the iceberg. Fear of death due to eating rotten chicken may be reason enough to vegetarianize yourself, when chicken is often undercooked here, not to mention Vietnam's own various raw meat dishes including the raw beef thrown in pho. Lack of refrigeration is common at the numerous informal restaurants and carts in Vietnam despite the tropical weather and, whereas vegetable dishes can go unrefrigerated for awhile, meat dishes will spoil quickly despite being cooked possibly hours before being served to and eaten by customers, with leftover lunch being kept in the afternoon heat to be served for dinner.
Meat in Vietnam is often served with skin and fat included, making it even less healthy (although it can also be more delicious this way). And sinewy Vietnamese beef doesn't even taste good, does it?! This is why beef imported from Australia or the US is available for a markup here, for even minimally discerning tastes. I would honestly not miss eating Vietnamese beef. But Vietnamese people enjoy gnawing on chewy stuff, apparently.
Buddhists in Vietnam are also supposed to eat vegetarian once or twice a month, based on the lunar calendar, and can eat free vegetarian meals at pagodas on those days. The world is a better place for it on those days at least.
Vegetarians become aware of protein alternatives (e.g. broccoli, soy, beans, etc. although most beans are actually quite rare) and Vietnamese vegetarian restaurants have numerous mock meat dishes, some of which are rather convincing. How could you live in the south of Vietnam without eating "cơm tấm", broken rice served with grilled pork, shredded pork skin, and a slab of pork meatloaf? Thankfully, vegetarian restaurants in Saigon can do a convincing faux meat version (pictured above) of this signature dish and other Vietnamese favorites of mine like chả giò and canh khổ qua. Besides soy-based "meat", Vietnamese use wheat gluten (mì căn) to make mock meats. I'm impressed by what Vietnam has done with vegetarian (generally vegan) cuisine and want to encourage even more conversion of the low hanging fruit of Vietnamese cuisine into meatless versions.
Generally, meals at Vietnamese restaurants might come with fresh herbs but lack vegetables beyond a measly slice of unripe tomato and cucumber. We all know we should be eating more vegetables and eating at a vegetarian restaurant is an easy way to inject some vitamins into our diets.
--
Vietnamese Vegetarian Restaurants
Saigon has vegetarian restaurants sprinkled throughout the city, from cheap (under a dollar per meal) to fancy (e.g. Hoa Dang a.k.a. Loving Hut). But if you like to stay up late and eat late meals it can be harder to find your favorite veggie spot still serving - often the normal vegetarian "com chay" quans, like most restaurants in Vietnam, stop selling after lunch around 2:00 PM and start back up around 4:00, but then after 8:00 close for the day. I work late at night which is normally not a big problem for food in Saigon where late night joints can be found throughout town. So a late night vegetarian restaurants would have at least one customer!
There are basically two types of vegetarian restaurants in Vietnam. The most common is a "quan com chay" and they are easy to find all around the city. Just make sure it says "cơm chay" and not "cơm cháy" because the latter is a kind of crispy rice wafer., which may not be vegetarian at all. A quan com chay will generally have a cart in front with a buffet of a dozen or so vegetarian dishes such as tofu, mock meats, sauteed vegetables, greens, etc. to be eaten with rice.
The other kind of vegetarian restaurant is the proper restaurant with non-plastic chairs for seating, with air conditioning, where you will be shown a proper menu from which you will order dishes. This is where you'd take guests whereas the former is where you'd stop in for a quick meal.
Won't it suck?
Issues that might come up:
Hunger: Do you find regular Vietnamese portions to be too small, even after eating in Vietnam for awhile? Then it won't be better when eating vegetarian. I was used to it, and was already eating several vegetarian meals a week, but still felt hungry sometimes. But at most buffets you can choose to order more side dishes and even more rice. But Quan Thien Tam at 152 Ban Co, right off Dien Bien Phu in District 3, a 15000 VND rice plate is enough to satiate almost anyone's appetite.
Craving for animal flesh: I recently quit smoking. Thinking about a specific meal containing meat sometimes does not compare to the desire to smoke a cigarette after you've just quit.
Availability: It's available all over Saigon as long as you don't need to eat after 9 PM or so! I did not restrict myself to a vegan diet so eggs and milk products were "on the menu" so it was possible to eat at many normal restaurants too.
This is bún chả giò, rice noodles tossed with fried spring rolls and some bean sprouts and herbs, like salad with fish sauce as the dressing. Except the fish sauce here isn't made from fish and the spring rolls have tubers and other plans as ingredients instead of pork. It's delicious aka "ngon" in Vietnamese.
This is the long awaited blog post on finding housing in Vietnam (requested by many readers of the classic Cost of Living in Vietnam post, and this new post is especially about the Ho Chi Minh City rental scene for expats.
As I've mentioned before, I live in an unfurnished two-storey house of about 70 square meters located in a tiny alley (I'll explain why below) which is less than a 10 minute drive from downtown District 1. For this I pay less than $200 per month including all utilities. For the past year, rent has been stable whereas the previous year it went up by $10/month.
I pay more for housing than the average single Vietnamese person pays, while paying far less per square meter than the average expat in Vietnam.
How (can I not get ripped off on housing)?
1. Have Vietnamese friends on your side, finding housing for you that they would be willing to pay for for themselves or their families. Not real estate agents who see each foreigner as a fat commission check (even when they are foreigners themselves), where the higher they can negotiate monthly rent the more money they earn. Agents are incentivized to get you into the most expensive housing you're willing to pay for. Friends want to save you money. The difference between the two methods can mean hundreds of dollars saved each month.
When you first arrive in Vietnam, consider staying in temporary housing, a guesthouse, or a hotel for three months or so, while you build a network of Vietnamese friends. Don't rush yourself into a 1-year contract.
2. "Nhà cho thuê". Memorize this Vietnamese phrase. It literally means "House for rent" and it's a sign that you won't have to pay extra for having some agent with a storefront market the house (or spam the internet). These landlords get less requests for their properties if they're relying on eyeballs on their signs alone. These are hidden gems. If you see a sign in an area (and it should be in an alley) that you'd like to check out then write down the phone number, name (the name is probably preceded by "A." or "C."), and address, then have a Vietnamese friend call for you, ask for the price, and then schedule an appointment to come check it out.
Also be on the lookout for "Phòng cho thuê" which means "Room for rent" which means you'd only be renting a single room in a house. You'll see these signs for guesthouses in the backpacker district as well. For most rooms for rent where the landlord lives in the house and is in charge of unlocking the front door, it will be inconvenient for you to come home after a late night of partying as someone will have to wake up to open the door.
Some other vocabulary:
"ở ghép" - This means a group of people are looking for someone to share a room.
"nữ" - This means the housing is for females only.
"sinh viên" - This housing is meant for university students. Any of these are probably not a good match for foreigners moving to Vietnam.
Spend time walking or leisurely bicycling through kilometer after kilometer of alleys and find as many of these as you can. Especially be willing to venture into dead-end alleys. For the same reason that you'd normally not go into them (which isn't due to any physical danger - Vietnam is generally really safe), for the people who actually live there it's a quiet place to live without the through traffic.
You can also find posters attached to light poles and other public areas although in that case you won't be able to immediately see the outside of the house.
3. Unfurnished housing. A rule of thumb is that furnished housing costs twice as much as unfurnished housing, even though the "value" you get from renting furniture from your landlord rapidly goes down as the price goes up. So at $300/month for a fully furnished room for rent, you could find a similar yet unfurnished room for rent for 3 million VND. A 4 million VND house would easily ask $400/month if furnished.
Picky about furniture? You will actually be better off buying your own and renting an unfurnished place. If you're concerned about not being certain how long you'll be here, just consider that the monthly savings could easily cover buying appliances, etc. in the 6 months your likely minimum shortest contract is for. If you do suddenly leave in 6 months you do have the option of selling your nearly new appliances. On the other hand, wait awhile before you move into your first permanent home and you might be fortunate enough to have new expat friends who decide to leave the country and give you their furniture and appliances! (One thing you quickly learn about being an expat is that we are an impermanent lot)
Oh, don't forget that you can actually affordably have custom furniture built for your home in Vietnam.
4. In general, not being too picky about having something in mind and finding something that matches it exactly. Did you willingly decide to move to Vietnam yourself? Then you should dispel any expectations of Vietnam changing itself to suit you on your arrival without having to conform in any way. If an international company sent you here to work then you might have an argument for being housed in more expensive expat housing.
Do you need to live on any given street, or really close to your work? Probably not if you can ride a motorbike.
In Vietnam, kitchens can range from spacious countertopped rooms to nothing but a sink. But a sink, anywhere with a water hookup, is the kernel of a kitchen. Any area with a sink can be turned into a kitchen with some tables and shelves. If the place is unfurnished, you can provide your own portable gas or electric stoves. Don't expect to find an oven, something most homes in this tropical climate don't have.
If you don't like how the rooms are arranged in a house, have you ever considered knocking down the walls and having the insides rebuilt to your liking? In Vietnam, this is actually an affordable option if you consider the savings compounded over more than a year. This includes adding new sinks or moving them around.
Do you need a pool in your apartment complex? If you did stay somewhere with a pool, keep in mind you would have to pay extra for it, when you could just live near a pool which you could go to when you felt like it. Despite the tropical climate, it's actually too cold to swim for many months anyways.
All that said, you should live somewhere you feel comfortable. If you have special requirements, even if they seem like normal requirements to you, it may take longer to find the right place or you may have to pay a lot more for it.
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How much does a house cost in Saigon? Apartments for rent in Ho Chi Minh City
$25-$100
At the very low end might be a tiny, thin-walled (privacy is optional in Vietnam) room for rent with no private bathroom. In District 1, this might be $100/month. Outside of D1, maybe $25/month, but in this price range it would be more common for Vietnamese to share a room. But it's very unlikely this range of housing would suit a foreigner - if you can even find it such a place on your own.
$100-$125
Next up might be a small but furnished room for rent in District 1 from $100-$125/month. This would have a tiny bathroom in the room, but probably nowhere to cook. The small dimensions would make a lot of tall Westerners feel claustrophobic.
$150-$250
The Pham Ngu Lao backpacker district in D1 is full of guesthouses for rent for foreigners at around $200/month. These are generally furnished with beds, desks, closets, air conditioning, and a private bathroom. Like a hotel, there is housekeeping service included. On the other side of Tran Hung Dao, Co Giang and Co Bac Streets are full of these. Vietnamese would find similar housing for $150.
[ Alleys outside of D1 also have many one to two-storey small houses from 3 million VND (about $150) on up (unfurnished). ]
$250-$350
Old, non-luxury highrise apartments start from about 5 million VND ($250). For example:
- - 1 bedroom apartment in D5, 10 minutes drive from downtown: 5 million
- - 2 bedroom in brand new housing in the suburban districts: 7 million.
- - 1 bedroom in an older midrise apartment complex 5 minutes from downtown: 6 million.
[ The outer districts (Tan Phu, Binh Tan, D6, D8, D12, D9) have a lot of brand new highrises being built. Meanwhile, there are very few buyers and the real estate market in Vietnam is in a deep slump. This means there is a vast oversupply of this kind of housing. ]
$400-$800
At this range you can rent a furnished four or five bedroom house for foreigners or a large serviced apartment (or what they will call "luxury apartments" here). This could be in District 1, District 2 (An Phu), District 7 (Phu My Hung), or elsewhere, and generally people (expats) go through agents to find these, although for apartments you can just walk up to an apartment building you like and there should be an agent on site so you could just cab it from highrise to highrise looking at serviced apartments.
You would also find houses for foreigners in The Ghetto (Thai Van Lung and Le Thanh Ton area of D1, which has many Japanese residents) in this range.
The bigger houses would be harder to find, but follow my instructions above.
$10000
Apparently, you can even pay this much for a crazy villa.
But anything above $1000 is outside the arena of value judgement when it comes to this blog post.
A note on online apartment finding services
While it would be really convenient if we could just use the same websites we used back home to find housing, unfortunately they don't work well here. While Craigslist does exist, it is full of a handful of real estate agents pumping their overpriced products. You can assume that anything on there is a ripoff.
Since MetVuong is no longer up, another website worth mentioning is MuaBan. It's the online presence of a popular classified ads paper published daily or weekly. You can also go buy a copy for a few thousand dong. You will see lots of listings for housing and it will give you an idea of how they're described. Get someone to translate for you. But beware: nearly all of the phone numbers are for real estate agents and not the actual landlord. They may not know which ad you're looking at when you call and they will definitely try to show you some other properties instead. They will also want to charge you for the privilege. It's rare that they will ever find a house for you to move into, but they make their money by just showing you any house.
Otherwise, for the time being, just avoid any online real estate website for foreigners.
Writing Vietnamese is a pain. You have several different input systems to choose from (VNI, Telex, VIQR, etc.) and they all require some effort to memorize and get used to. But as it turns out most Vietnamese text can be understood without those accent (diacritic) marks at all. Vietnamese people are accustomed to texting (sms) each other using Vietnamese words written without marks - because their phones often don't support Vietnamese characters. But it's better to have the marks and emails and posts on forums often do. GMail even supports a Vietnamese software keyboard built into the interface now.
But if Vietnamese people can understand Vietnamese without diacritics, can computers? Turns out there is software that can take unaccented Vietnamese text and ADD the diacritics!
Let's take some text:
Chuyến phiêu lưu khám phá bỏ nhà ra đi đầu tiên của bạn vào năm bao nhiêu tuổi? - Nghĩ lại thì thấy hồi xưa mỗi lần mà bị mẹ la là hay giận, bỏ nhà đi lắm, vì lúc nào cũng nghĩ mình đúng hết. Giận thì giận nhưng mà đi lang thang rồi lại về, hoặc về trong tình trạng được tìm thấy và lại tiếp tục bị mắng :D
Then we strip the accents and put it into a few websites to see the results.
http://vietnameseaccent.com/
Chuyến phiêu lưu khám phá bỏ nhà ra đi đầu tiên của bạn vào năm bao nhiêu tuổi?
- Nghĩ lại thì thấy hồi xưa mỗi lần mà bị mẹ là lạ hay gián, bỏ nhà đi làm, vì lúc nào cũng nghĩ mình dùng hết. Gian thi giản nhưng mà đi lang thang rồi lại về, hoặc vê tròn
http://vietlabs.com/vietizer.html
chuyến phiêu lưu khám phá bỏ nhà ra đi đầu tiên của bạn vào năm bao nhiêu tuổi?
- nghĩ lại thì thấy hồi xưa mỗi lần mà bị mẹ là là hay gian, bộ nhà đi làm, vì lúc nào cũng nghĩ mình đứng hết.
gian thì giản nhưng mà đi lang thang rồi lại về, hoặc về trọn
http://www.easyvn.com/tiengviet/index.php
Chuyến phiêu lưu khám phá bỏ nhà ra đi đầu tiên của bạn vào năm bao nhiêu tuổi?
- Nghĩ lại thì thấy hồi xưa mỗi lần mà bị mẹ là là hay giận, bỏ nhà đi lắm, vì lúc nào cũng nghĩ mình đúng het. Gian thì giận nhưng mà đi lang thang rồi lại về, hoặc về tron
The results are nearly the same except for the last word: 'tron'. This is because the real word is "trong" but it got cut off in the de-accenting process! So each different software took a different guess as to what the word was, but it was the wrong word to begin with.
All in all, they do a pretty good job and probably better than even some native Vietnamese speakers due to the fact that some tones are mixed up!
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Today I spent the day hacking on the WordPress site for BarCampSaigon. I'm no expert on WordPress but trying to hack a theme with it makes me appreciate Drupal so much more. WordPress does have an "API" or at least some documented functions which are used internally which can also be used by developers but it's certainly not designed with developers in mind. Wordpress is great for bloggers. Drupal is great for developers and users who need something more than a blog will have to choose between working with Drupal or fighting against WordPress. :-)
Due to two recent conferences, BarCamp Hanoi and the opening of DrupalVietnam.org, I put together a presentation called "The Business Case for Drupal in Vietnam". I'll blog about those two events later.
I targeted two main groups: outsourcing companies based in Vietnam who want to attract more clients abroad, and any software development shop in Vietnam who is deciding what technology to use to develop websites. There is a third group, who are those companies with simpler website needs who perhaps only need one website and are not in the business of making websites.
I go over a number of common concerns that customers outside of Vietnam might have which Vietnamese companies might not expect. One point is being vendor agnostic when developing what is essentially a CMS. I make a strong point that one should never fall to the temptation of developing your own in-house CMS and as a consumer, you should stay far away from such "bespoke" solutions in the modern age where content management frameworks such as Drupal exist. I also think Drupal represents a strong brand name that is not well-known yet in Vietnam, but we all know how much Vietnamese people love brands.
On the supply side, I talk about why Drupal is a decent choice for Vietnamese developers, similar to any web developer. But the main recent news is that there is finally Drupal training being made available in Vietnam, much like for Joomla, and that PHP is widely known in Vietnam not just because there are books on it in the Vietnamese language, and that there is now a core Drupal community in Vietnam represented by DrupalVietnam.org (which I somehow became vice president of).
In general, I say go with your strengths. If web development is not your strength, then hire someone proper to do it for you while you focus on your core business. If web development is your business, make better use of your developers by using a CMS.
Anyways, here's the presentation.
Business Case for Drupal in Vietnam
View more presentations from tomosaigon.
Curious about Buddhism in Vietnam? So was I. When you look around the country you would just about assume that everyone was Buddhist. Until recently, I was only taking in these "Buddhisms" as just another dish in the realm of Vietnamese culture that makes the country so different from the West. But there are also Christian churches (some 10% of the population) as well as a long tradition of Islam within certain ethnic minorities like the Cham who form Muslim communities in their provincial strongholds as well as in the city. There's also a unique indigenous religion called Cao Đài that basically mixes Buddhism and an Abrahamic God. Still it's clear that Vietnam is a predominantly Buddhist country in both religion and culture and it has been for most of known recorded history (notably, there was a dark and critically damaging period for Buddhism in Vietnam when Roman Catholics controlled the Southern Vietnamese government, more on the issue of religious intolerance in another future post perhaps).
What kind or sect of Buddhism?
When one thinks of Christians, they are a diverse group that identify much more with being Catholic or Protestant or Mormon or whatever else more than just being a Christian. It seems every major world religion has similarly broken down over the years into sects that started believing all kinds of things that weren't there at the founding of the religion, and who differentiate themselves from other sects through these new and unique beliefs. While people in Vietnam seem to just think they are Buddhist rather than any special kind of Buddhist, Buddhism itself, as I've found, has not been immune from such corruption -- or innovation, depending on how you look at it.
When you think of Buddhism as just an aspect of being Vietnamese, you don't think much about how Vietnamese Buddhism relates to Buddhism in other countries but in fact it does have its own characteristics. If you split Buddhists into the two main branches, Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) and Theravada, Vietnam falls into Mahayana along with the rest of China's historical sphere of influence (the CJKV countries, ethnic Chinese countries like Singapore and Taiwan, and neighbors like Tibet, Nepal, and Mongolia). The Southeast Asian Buddhist countries (Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia) are all Theravadin except for Vietnam. What is relatively unknown is that Vietnam does have Theravada Buddhism among the million or so Khmer (Cambodian) population concentrated in the Mekong Delta as well as with a small number of ethnic Kinh (Vietnamese are mostly ethnically Kinh) who have their own Theravadin temples. There is also a third, newer branch called Vajrayana a.k.a. the Diamond Vehicle (Kim cương thừa or Mật tông in Vietnamese), Esoteric Buddhism, or Tantric Buddhism. There are some small centers teaching Vajrayana scattered throughout the country including ones (associated with Diamond Way Centers) run by foreigners. Otherwise, Vajrayana doesn't lie in Vietnamese Buddhist tradition the same way as Mahayana.
But unlike a Catholic or Protestant, a Vietnamese Buddhist might not really identify with any sect of Buddhism. If you ask them, they might not even know. And Theravadin Buddhists and Mahayana Buddhists can actually be Buddhist buddies together in the same places without any conflict. Vietnamese Buddhists are generally some mixture of Pure Land and Tientai for most people (laypeople) which involves mostly chanting, burning stuff, ringing bells, and praying, or Vietnamese Zen (Thiền-Na or more commonly just Thiền), which is mostly for monks and is where meditation is found. The two types of Buddhism live side by side and are mixed into a unified Zen-Pure Land Buddhism and this doesn't seem to bother anyone. Vietnamese might not even identify themselves as Buddhist, although they will still have a mix of Buddhist, Confucian, and ancestor-worship beliefs and practices.
Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật
A common chant or prayer used by Vietnamese Buddhists is "Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" which is a call (somewhat like seeking refuge) to the A Di Da (Amitābha) Buddha, who was a, but not the, Buddha. By calling out his name it is said you will be born in the Pure Land (tịnh độ) when you die, where you can more easily attain enlightenment. To me, it sounds a lot like Jesus. However, chanting can also be similar to Buddhist meditation practices by instilling a sort of mindfulness. Anyways, that line is just the first part of a longer prayer which is meaningless in Vietnamese but was transcribed (via Chinese) from Sanskrit. You can find it in small booklets found, among other places, in some vegetarian restaurants.
Vietnamese Buddhist laypersons are mostly not vegetarian, but once a month (although preferably six days a month) Buddhists will abstain from animal food products. On these days, which occur at midpoints in the lunar month, many local restaurants especially those near temples will serve vegetarian dishes. Vegetarian restaurants will be packed, but temples will also provide vegetarian meals, sometimes for free.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
The last piece I'll cover in this introduction to Vietnamese Buddhism is the aspect of Vietnamese Buddhism outside of Vietnam. In America, Buddhism came to be known from Asian immigrants and especially from certain Americans going over to Japan after the war and learning about Japanese Zen. [If there are stories of American War Veterans bringing Vietnamese Buddhism back to the States, I'd love to hear about it.] Buddhism in Japan had itself spread from China which had received it from India. Likewise, Tibetan Buddhism has also spread to the Western world after exiled Tibetans fled to India where they came into contact with traveling hippies.
Vietnamese Buddhists have also had their influence around the world although mostly through a single enigmatic figure rather than a school of thought. This person would be Thich Nhat Hanh (random aside: Thích is the "family name" taken by Vietnamese Buddhists when they become monks and it comes from Thích-ca Mâu-ni or Shakyamuni, the Buddha). Thich Nhat Hanh comes from Vietnamese Rinzai lineage, but today he is said to no longer represents any kind of contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism. Sadly, he is also not allowed to freely return to Vietnam despite being one of the world's greatest living Zen masters.
Another Vietnamese monk who came to be known around the world was one Thích Quảng Đức. It was not his teachings that brought him fame but his self-immolation in protest of religious persecution which became a major event in the end of American support for the South Vietnamese government. A large memorial park was recently constructed at the intersection of Cach Mang Thang 8 and Nguyen Dinh Chieu in District 3 where Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire. Today, as Tibetan monks self-immolate in increasing numbers, also in protest of a certain government, they might learn a thing or two about PR from the Vietnamese.
But like other waves of Asian immigration before, the post-Vietnam War flood of Vietnamese into the US eventually led to temples in maturing Vietnamese communities everywhere in the country. I believe these temples mostly serve to memorialize ancestors and as community centers now but some do serve to teach practical Buddhist teachings that can be useful to more than just Vietnamese immigrants. Today they don't hold the cachet that, say, Japanese-style Zen centers have. But I am, with the help of some good friends, gradually discovering the traditions in Vietnam that have been passed down and were able to foster such great masters of whom Thich Nhat Hanh and Thich Quang Duc are only two.
Thien Vien Truc Lam, Da Lat.
Last night I went to my first Saigon Heat game (thanks Skunkworks!) against the Philippines Patriots (the Philippines actually have two teams in the ASEAN Basketball League). Despite being up by six in the first half, the Patriots swiftly brought nearly 20 points of defeat to Saigon, who seemed to make mistake after mistake. The Heat are Vietnam's only basketball team, have only been around since late last year, and have been trying to promote this rather unknown sport with lots of promotional tickets. There was a decent turnout that night and it really was a fun night out, despite our loss.
Saigon have two Americans on the team (including an ex-Laker, I hear) who tower over the rest of the players, as well as two Filipinos. The Philippines, with much stronger American influence, are relatively big fans of basketball whereas in Vietnam it's really all about soccer (bong da, da banh, football, whatever). But there are small numbers of Vietnamese who enjoy shooting hoops. (A few of us play irregularly on Sunday afternoons if anybody reading would like to join. Preferably, you are not too good.)
Despite regular (English language) TV programming support from the league, I think it will still take some effort for b-ball to take off in Vietnam, and Asia in general -- really, most countries outside of the U.S, although it's certainly gotten a lot more popular around the world. At the moment, it feels more like an expensive hobby for some Asians with a lot of money and a love for sport, but not enough to buy an NBA team proper. It will be a decade before Vietnamese kids who grow up watching basketball will be ready, and tall enough, to play for the Heat. Perhaps the owners of the Heat should invest in battling malnutrition among Vietnamese children - team up with Vinamilk!
Home games are at the Tan Binh Stadium. Tickets are as low as 40k and go up to 500k. Try catching an NBA game for $2 back in the states! It makes for a decent date if you're looking for date ideas. Tickets can be purchased at the stadium (18 Xuan Hong), as well as various Coffee Bean locations around town. See you there this Saturday as the Heat play the Indonesia Warriors (thanks Topica!).
This post is not about basketball.
This post is about staying cool.
During my first few months in Vietnam I sweat a lot. Now I sweat less.
1. Change your genes. If you are Vietnamese, you sweat less. If you are derived from Europeans, you will sweat more at the same temperature. You can "get used to it" and not using the A/C more than necessary helps to acclimate (it will feel a lot more humid if you've been in a cold A/C room all day) but you will never stay as dry as a Vietnamese person. Hmm, we're off to a pretty bad start...
2. GTFO. Saigon and southern Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia can be pleasant during the dry season. In Saigon, that means November to February. December and January are the best times of the year to be here, and also the time most expats are likely to go back to their own countries for Christmas/New Year/Tet. Which is really a shame.
The rainy season from June to October are mixed, weather-wise. But when it does rain, and usually after it rains, the cool winds that created the rainstorms succeed in bringing down temperatures. But it can be quite hot and humid before it rains, or if the skies are promising rain yet failing to deliver.
April and May are pretty awful. Go to Dalat or something.
3. Stop moving. Stop exercising. When the sun is out and it's hot, don't exacerbate the situation by walking around. I used to think walking was normal, or even bicycling. Vietnamese people think it's insane. If you must exercise, do it before the sun comes up or after it goes down.
Riding a motorbike helps immensely. When it's not super sunny, it can be in the 30s and the wind still feels cool. You might think Vietnamese people are crazy for wearing jackets in this heat but a light, airy jacket does serve to keep the sun off. There are also these "nets" for motorbike seats that keep your seat from getting too hot to sit on in the sun as well as slightly increasing airflow to your sweaty arse.
4. Baby powder. If you're male and not Vietnamese you probably have a lot of useless body hair. Fur is great for keeping your body warm during ice ages but it's a gross evolutionary vestige in Saigon's climate. Combined with sweat and trapped under clothes it becomes even more uncomfortable. Use something like baby powder (which Johnson&Johnson have made available to us!).
5. Siesta. Just sleep all afternoon if you can. It's a worthless time to be outside unless you're poolside.
BONUS: Stick ice cubes down your pants.
Did you know that Facebook was tracking all the links you clicked? If you've ever tried to copy a link from Facebook to another site then you'd see that the link always started with www.facebook.com which is how they track what pages you're visiting.
In Vietnam, this is more than just a privacy problem. Because Facebook access intermittently requires workarounds to connect, those links can be useless even if we can see the actual website URL right there. This is because, by showing you the real website URL, Facebook makes you think they aren't doing anything tricky by adding a tracking ID to the URL and forcing you to go through Facebook to browse to the site.
So what can you do to make your life easier as well as private?
Install the Facebook Link Tracking Disabler free from the Chrome Web Store.
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Bonus: Are you tired of people using Facebook apps to post news stories which then require you to install the app to actually read the article? If you haven't already filtered all of those out of your feed then you should at least install the Facebook Article Grabber extension to convert those stories into real URLs.
Today, Wikipedia, Google, and many other high profile websites are protesting the MPAA's Protect IP Act (PIPA, in the Senate) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, in the House), two anti-piracy acts that they're trying to push into legislation in the US, which also threaten internet freedom. Citizens of other countries should be concerned not just because much of the internet each of us uses runs in the US and so abides by US law, but because the wording that eventually passes will likely be copied by governments around the world.
Netizens in Vietnam have joined the cause or at least have spread word in support. Stepping back, doing so is an act of irony from multiple perspectives.
First, that we're protesting at all in a country where public protest is a privilege more than a right, that the Communist Party is seldom willing to confer. In this case, there's little concern for the Party, since the object of protest is in America, and it's specifically an industry (Hollywood) which clearly gets no respect here - it's more convenient to buy pirated DVDs, two for a dollar, publicly on the street at tax-paying (or whatever it is they're paying, to whoever) businesses, than it is to download them online anyways.
Next, we're protesting because we don't want arbitrary websites to be taken down by the law without any due process. If you're at all familiar with Vietnam's legal system, you'll already know that this is the case here. Nominally, pornography is banned and this is why the government can block websites but if there are any porn sites that are blocked I'm not aware. If IP laws were enforced here, Zing would not exist. But some websites are taken down occasionally.
And finally, we're using social media as our protest medium. Social media and web technology make it really easy to join a protest; it only takes two clicks to share something on Facebook. Except that Facebook itself is already "blacked out" in Vietnam. And Facebook is by far the most commonly used form of social media in Vietnam. And the protest is about internet censorship.
The point I want to make is that internet freedom is valuable and is a worthwhile cause for all people. For the people who are just now thinking about internet censorship issues, I hope they also become aware of it in a more immediate context, like a campaign to help starving Africans should also serve to bring about greater awareness of poverty closer to home.
Happy 2012!
Despite one of FPT's divisions signing a contract with Facebook to be a Facebook developer partner in Vietnam, unlike what many folks here in Vietnam had hoped, it did not mean that FPT would keep access to Facebook flowing freely. Facebook isn't actually banned in Vietnam, it just suffers from "technical difficulties" from time to time that nobody seems to bother to investigate for the millions of users in Vietnam. So businesses still advertise and do business using Facebook as a platform. Even the State uses Facebook, with the Vietnam Administration of Tourism stating they will campaign on Facebook. I suppose they don't mind if only people outside of Vietnam can see the ads, even if most tourists in Vietnam come from Vietnam.
There are a number of theories as to why it's sometimes difficult to access Facebook in Vietnam. In China, it's outright banned. In Cambodia, it's just really slow, but otherwise doesn't suffer the same "technical difficulties" despite using the same Internet service providers as Vietnam (as Vietnamese telecoms serve as uplinks to Cambodian ISPs). Some of the conspiracy theories include pressure from rival social networks like Zing Me or the government's own Go.vn, or that Facebook is blocked due to not paying taxes.
As of right now, FPT has started making it "technically difficult" to access Facebook, whereas Viettel seems to be okay, and VNPT is hit or miss (currently it is working on this VNPT connection), Mobifone is a no go. The usual method of changing your /etc/hosts file or your DNS will no longer work. Using apps like HotSpot Shield, VPNs, proxies, and SSH tunnels will always work. You can also use various apps including Seesmic or Hootsuite to access both Facebook and Twitter at the same time.
So if you don't want to play musical chairs with your ISPs as each one opens/closes access to Facebook, be sure to have one of the above in your arsenal of freedom.
If your ISP is blocking Facebook then you must use a general workaround such as Hotspot Shield (spammy) or a VPN like StrongVPN.
© 2010-2014 Saigonist.
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