A couple of months back, when I was living in Saigon, I got an e-mail invitation to hang out with a guy named Charles Phan.

First thing that came to mind: “Charles Phan…who da heo is that?”

When in doubt, Googles them shits.

http://charlesphan.com/

Snap. Slanted Door…alright, you got me, I’ve never eaten there. The last time I had $40-something dollars in San Francisco, I spent it on a $3 slice of pizza at a mom-n-pops, and the remaining $37 buying pints, chatting up American Apparel daisies with identity issues.

All good though. Redemption song: hang we do. Here are some lessons I learned from hanging with Charles Phan.

1. Be cool, let’s try to eat at that place over there

The place we originally wanted to have lunch at was closed for lunch. Shit, lost credibility in Charles’ eyes. It’s alright though; Charles, his wife and one of Charles’ Chefs, Brian, are cool eating somewhere else. So we improvise, walk down the block back to a bustling northern Vietnamese restaurant Charles observed in walking over. We get some things on-menu, then Charles starts going further down the rabbit hole with the waitress, seeing what they have off-menu. Roll with the punches, make the best of what you got, and if the food sucks (it didn’t), start drinking.

2. Brilliance comes from places you’d least expect

Charles and Brian go back and forth a bit about dishes they’re seeing from this Northern Vietnamese restaurant. The inspiration doesn’t have to come from some Michelin-starred circle jerk. Inspiration comes from anywhere: from that aged-crumpled menu, on that crooked dining table, in a no-name restaurant tucked in a sign-less alley, on Ly Tu Trong street, in the city of Saigon, in the country of Vietnam, on the continent of Asia, 1 of 7 on this planet Earth, the 3rd rock from the Sun, one of many dimensions.

3. Being a computer software salesman at the Age of 28 is not worth your time (actually, upon my 10th edit of this: nothing is worth your time if you don’t have your heart in it)

When he was 28 or so, tired of his stint as a computer software salesman, he decided to quit and take some time to himself. During that time of unemployment, he developed an idea: to marry his love of Vietnamese food and design (he majored in Architecture at Cal). And here you have it: Slanted Door.

4. Synergy is money (walk through the Slanted Door)

On that note, in other words, akin to what Steve Jobs accomplished, baking in the Calligraphy he learned from auditing classes at Reed, ultimately feeding his ultimate philosophy: intersecting the liberal arts with technology.

No idea is original, but when you put two ideas together. Vietnamese food and design: money.

5. Clothes don’t make the man

Charles Phan is not ostentatious with his wardrobe, just like Donald Fisher, founder of Gap Inc. Just because you have money, doesn’t mean you need to dress like it. Act your age, not your shoe brand. Actually, I’m a better dresser than Charles Phan nowadays, wink.

6. Money is The Money

Louis CK said it best in his recent success with his DRM-Free comedy show video campaign, in which he made a cool million in a matter of a week: “I never viewed money as being “my money.” I always saw it as “the money.” It’s a resource. If it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.” That said, Charles Phan is seeking out worthy causes in Vietnam, so if you have any leads, that don’t involve greasy palms, send on.

Also, he covered all our restaurant bills (no Kampuchea). Thank you again Charles.

7. Look in a magazine and go!

That’s how him and his wife decided on a resort in Phan Thiet, when we were all in the region. Just go and make the best of it. Shit, this is basically what I said in aforementioned item numbers 1-3. Eff it, worth saying again.

8. The finest things in life comes from your buddies and doesn’t use gold in any way, shape or form

As a parting gift from Charles, whiskey bottles were left at the Park Hyatt reception for pick-up. If memory serves me right, and memory is usually fiction, these bottles came from a Kentucky Distillery. The label was nothing fancy at all, no gold ink found on Johnny Walker bottles, just a label. And my, it was some bout-it bout-it whiskey. In an online search for them, turns out these bottles don’t cost that much either. But the ordinary denizen would never know about it, only Charles would since industry cats hook it up with the inside track. No marketing muscle, it’s those word-of-the-mouth things that really do the trick, which goes to show, buddies are the most important capital one could ever possess.

There were sure to be more lessons but I didn’t take notes, I graduated with a 3.3., love me.

Charles Phan, that guy is one cool dude. He’s one of my new role models, next to Bao Phi, Anthony Bourdain, Judy Blume, Yan Geling, Hideo Kojima, my old boss Fiona Pearson, George Nguyen (of tbwa\Vietnam), my Sifu Cameron Khuu, and Daymond John, founder of FUBU.

He has a book on the way. Keep posted.

Charles in Charge, there, I said it.

World AIDS Day isn’t just about the 1.2 million Americans infected with this virus or those who become infected everyday. It’s about the people of the world coming together to solve a problem we all face in our lives – through ourselves, our friends, our families, and our communities.

In Vietnam, over 222,000 people are infected with HIV/AIDS. In Tanzania, where I visited this summer, over 1.4 million are suffering from this virus. This isn’t a dilemma of America, it’s a dilemma of the world.

Although stigma and ignorance still surround HIV/AIDS, take today to learn more about this issue and educate others to prevent it from spreading. The lack of sexual education for women results in increasing numbers, in addition to drug use and unsafe sex worker practices. The only way to change and rise above is to take action.

In Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Tuan, a student at Van Lang University in Saigon, Vietnam, created a dress out of 700 condoms as part of his graduation project titled “Breaking The Condom Taboo.” Creativity is his tool to educate others about the issue of HIV/AIDS, and condoms are his platform to exemplify a solution to the problem. What will you do to spread the word and educate?

Watch more of Nguyen Minh Tuan’s project below.

Photo by Chim

“To rid yourself of vanities and just go with the seasons” – Jason Mraz

Hanoi, you always let me back in.

My perfect day in Hanoi starts, as with any perfect day in Vietnam, by waking up with the sun. Don’t worry if your window treatment was pulled down the night prior, the roosters and commotion of the elderly exercising will be your natural alarm. The iPhone 4S can wait, RIP Steve Jobs.

Hopefully, my ruou dan toc hangover isn’t the debilitating day-destroyer it tends to be, so I slump onto zee motorbike and slog over to Pho Thin (13 Lo Duc street). Order at the front, tell the Pho Thin mamasan exactly what I want (“Mot bat, mot trung, banh…ua, het banh roi ha? Chet!”). In bizarro Elizabeth Gilbert fashion, one must Pay, Eat, Leave. And that I do, and damn, oishii desu ka – taste the beef in that hella good broth.

Feeling like a million dong, I head over to Cafe Pho Co (11 Hang Gai). Rather, I am headed up Cafe Pho Co – through a small street-side art gallery, down a narrow, stone hallway I would barely be able to squeeze through had I stuck with my childhood diet of Super Nintendo and Filet-O-Fish. Up the whirling, chipped-paint staircase, and there I am, Ho Hoan Kiem (Hoan Kiem Lake) in all it’s turtle-power morning glory. Buzz of commute / walkers and their rounds / ca phe trung behind a Djarum clove cigarette.

Class starts at 8am and I am blessed with a batched morning schedule that has me working Mondays through Thursdays, with Fridays off to take long weekends to Sapa. I have a conversation about pedagogy with my friend Henry, before grabbing a straightforward, elegant lunch, either a bowl of Bun Cha on Hang Manh or a cut of fatty Sato bo Viet Nam with a side of Sup Cua Ca Tom at Nguyen Sinh (17-19 Nguyen Quoc Su street). Then, trick it, I goes gets me a piece of the best warm chocolate cake (evar) at Love Chocolate Cafe (26 To Ngoc Van).

Khong phai la anh yeu em…anh yeu toi

To atone the sin of that warm chocolate cake – neck and hand stretch – I jam over to NShape Fitness for my daily workout, since it’s probably going to rain tonight, ruling basketball out at the Van Phuc Sports Complex or Bach Khoa University.

The regimen:

• Weight-lift at least every other 2 days
• A minimum of 30 minutes of punching bag
• The mid-day Soccer Mom Yoga class, if I don’t get carried away with the punching bag

The tools:

• iPad (catch up on the world through Flipboard, Reeder & TED talks) + Headphone connection: Bluetooth, of course
• Coconut juice (natural electrolytes, 12.000-20.000 VND)
• Dry sauna room
• God’s gift called this body:

Photo by Brian Nguyen

Puku (16/18 Tong Duy Tan) for a second cup of coffee and green tea, to bang out some e-mails for my friend, project manager and Cyworld Vietnam extraordinaire, Michael, work on morsels of our iOS development project, three screenplays and plan for the lessons in the days, and life ahead. Always plan.

Dusk settles, sip on a Lemongrass Martini while catching the 48-Hour Film Contest “Best Of” World selections at the Hanoi Cinematheque (22A Hai Ba Trung, yes, you can drink in the theatre) before the New Hanoian quarterly meet-up, where I’m swaying to the stylings of the band for the night, Zamina: Pilipino on the guitar, white dude bassist, African-descent vocalist with a Tiger beer, (shirtless) white dude bucket drummer, and lastly, one of my students as the keyboardist, an IT professional from Nigeria.

How it went, and went.

[New Hanoian Meet Up Oct 2011 Presents Zamina! by Chim]

Question: Gin & Tonic in hand, why the front girls get giddy in my near sway?

It’s midnight, driving down Nghi Tam, listening to Blackstar’s Respiration that I put it on infinite loop, driving around more just because of it, pondering if I should pre-prevent my unpreventable hangover with a bowl of xoi from Xoi Yen (35B Nguyen Huu Huan).

Next time. Rev.

It’s nights like these – these live, low-key musical events, the Hanoi Cinematheque, the buzz as I feel the chill, autumn air on my face – when Hanoi reminds me of my hometown, Berkeley, CA – except with more beautiful Vietnamese jivesters, an actual bar scene, and better Pho.

Photo by Chim

I cross the highway over to Solace (cross the highway East of the Old Quarter and follow Chuong Duong Do all the way to the river), because it’s not just a dance club, it’s a dance club on a motherjunkin’ docked boat, on the Red River, owned by old-time friends. Hellos and how are you doings and, let me get a Gin & Tonic and I’ll be out there, handle your bitness.

It’s then, when the fifth gin & tonic kicks in – sitting out, elbows with arms crossed on the rail, watching the workers drive back home on the bridge over blue-black waters, wondering, that perhaps, she’s on that blinking plane touching down, pulling up in a taxi like a blindfold surprise, coming back to me.

Under the night, drinks in hand, smiles out of the glint of our eyes, music and conversation, there together.

Tomorrow, we’ll take the train somewhere.

According to Macworld, iPhone 4S’s sold by Sprint will come GSM-unlocked.  Verizon’s version can be unlocked after 60 days. What that means is on your next trip to Vietnam, there will be no need to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone, a process that can be complicated and could void your warranty.  This feature is huge for the thousands of Vietnamese Americans making the pilgrimage home to Vietnam every year.  In fact, it’s huge for any of the 60 million Americans who are 1st and 2nd generation immigrants.

As for AT&T iPhone 4S owner, you’re out of luck. AT&T runs on a GSM network here in the US so they are well intent on locking the SIM to keep themselves the exclusive GSM carrier.

The iPhone 4S, though debuting as a disappointment to diehard fans due to lack of significant feature updates, is becoming the fastest selling iPhone to date. Apple has already reported 1 million units sold since the phone was announced last week.

Hey, psh! Stuck with the iPhone 3GS or 4 for another year? Don’t live in envy, follow our guide on how to unlock your iPhone/iPad for international travel here.

Update: Looks like Sprint is playing take backs, saying the phone will be locked after all.  However, Verizon phones can still be unlocked after 60 days.

David watched as his mentor, Hung, lay on the hospital bed like a shriveled plant long past its vital days.  Wet footprints from the rain marked the floor beneath.  Around them, patients lay along the walls of the hospital in open air–some in movable steel beds and others on bamboo mats rested flatly on the ground; it was an unfit place for a hero to spend his last dying days.

Yet, emblematic of his whole orientation in life, the first words out of Anh Hung’s mouth were:  “How are the children?”  These four words marked a soul that found meaning out of protecting the helpless and giving them a ray of hope in an otherwise hapless life.

Anh Hung, known as Hung Pho to his friends, was imprisoned following the Vietnam War.  During his imprisonment, Hung picked up a preference for frequent liquor and a fondness for heroin.  By the time he got out of prison, Hung was homeless and addicted.   But living on the war-torn streets soon gave him a reason to quit heroin and work himself out of poverty.

He had encountered orphaned street children who elicited more of his pity and sympathy than he could muster up for himself.  They were a casualty of war just like him—but the difference was that he had more capability for work and more power to change his life unlike those persons undeveloped in mind and bodily strength.  So, Hung cleaned up his life and went on to work with Thao Bang orphanage.  He later found the SMILE group, which provided support to HIV and AIDS victims.

David had come to SMILE group that summer of 2007 in a study abroad program to learn more about Vietnam and to improve his Vietnamese.  It was during this summer that he decided to pursue medicine as a career.

Unlike many Vietnamese Americans with their hearts set on medicine due to parental pressure, David wavered between public health and medicine, never quite sure of what his calling was.  He spent his early college days often traveling back and forth between UC Berkeley and South L.A. to care for his dying father, who died when David was 18.  Shortly after that, his mother moved to Colorado to live with her boyfriend.

Left alone to make sense of his father’s death and to navigate college life, David’s grades suffered.  Living without his father, the only strong link he had to Vietnam, David was scared that he’d lose his connection to Vietnamese culture.  Growing up, his family already didn’t celebrate much of the Vietnamese holidays and customs.  Without his father around, David didn’t know whether he could keep this link.

David grew up in Downey, a city in South Los Angeles.  Downey was predominantly white, and David was often picked on since he was one of the few Asian Americans at his school.  Not only was he not accepted by his white schoolmates, but David also felt left out by Vietnamese people.  He recalled going to the temple when he was 8 years old and getting picked on by Vietnamese gang members who liked to frequent the temples.

“So the white kids picked on me because I was Asian, and here I was trying to learn something about Vietnamese culture, and the Vietnamese kids picked on me too.  I never felt like I belonged to either side,” David recalled.

Because of experiences like those, David found himself wishing he weren’t Vietnamese.  But living away from SoCal where all the great Vietnamese food is, he began missing pho and longed to learn more about Vietnamese culture.  So he joined VSA, and for the first time in his life befriended Vietnamese people.

In the summer of 2007, he signed up for an immersion program in Vietnam to improve his Vietnamese, to learn more about Vietnam, and to hopefully use that time to figure out where he wanted to head next in life.  Once there, the lives of the poor opened up his eyes to the links between poverty and HIV.

“A lot of people with HIV contract it in prison, and a lot of the people who go to prison end up there due to poverty,” David explained.

David found himself enjoying his work with the SMILE group.  “Despite their situation, they are happy and smiling,” said David.  David talked to Anh Hung one last time before Hung died and learned that Hung wanted David to help the kids.  Since Hung took David under his wings as a mentee, the kids began looking up to David as a kind of replacement for Anh Hung.

David came back from that trip knowing more firmly who he was and what he wanted to do with his life.  He pursued medicine and was accepted into UC Irvine’s medical program, where he is currently pursuing his studies.  He plans to do some work in Vietnam in the near future because of his positive experiences there.

David’s path is an instructive one to young Vietnamese Americans figuring their path in life, while making sense of their bicultural identities.  He started out self-conscious of his heritage among a sea of white faces at his school, often not fitting in neither American nor Vietnamese culture.  It was in coming back to reconnect that he found inspiration from his homeland.

His calling in life, although not directly caused by his being Vietnamese, was at least indirectly influenced by it.  When asked about his insight on what it meant to be a Vietnamese-American, David offered this: “We wear different hats and play different roles wherever we go, regardless of our race.”

And yet it was in Vietnam that David discovered meaningful work through his experiences with the children in the SMILE group.  The relationships and empathy he developed there were those borne out of a commiseration for the vicissitudes of the human condition– the condition that can affect any one of us regardless of race.  Yet without being in a country affected by poverty, David might not have as strong a grip on his direction in life.

At an age where many of his peers drifted to jobs where they didn’t know why they were there for, except to pay for occasional trips and go out to nice restaurants, David found work he was passionate about.  But he didn’t find that by taking a bunch of career tests or searching for a particular passion to strike in the middle of the night. He found it through immersing himself in an environment where he could provide value to the surrounding community, continually enhancing his skills in order to garner the external rewards that reinforced his internal enjoyment of the work, finally aligning him towards a path we can describe as passionate.

It was a passion found through being exposed to a human condition that extended beyond race, and yet it started with him missing pho. The bowl of pho that he craved led to a deeper yearning to learn more about his cultural roots, sending him back to Vietnam in that summer of ’07.  Then he met Hung Pho, and there, “I found out where I belonged: a community that needed me.”

[This post is a continuation in my series of posts exploring what it means to be a Vietnamese American and how young VAs can leverage their bicultural identities to live a meaningful life.  If you or someone you know has an inspiring true story you would like to feature, please contact me.  These true stories add to our ongoing dialogue and help others learn from examples of how to forge a strong path out of the different pieces of their lives.]

I never thought I would ever say this, but I think I know what being white feels like. While this was not a thought that had crossed my mind before my trip to Africa (really, I don’t spend my days pondering the lifestyle of a caucasian female), being in Tanzania made me definitely feel like the “other”–as in not Tanzanian, as in white.

Upon my first day of arrival, a fellow traveler in my group taught me the Swahili word ‘mzungu’ and told me to get used to children pointing at me and hollering this word. I was told the meaning of this word was “white person,” but other sources say it’s defined as “person of foreign descent,” which in Tanzanian terms I am.

However, to the children especially, the only other type of person out there besides African is white. I was told by many of the teachers that the students in the schools I visited have never seen a “white” person (non-local person), and as a result, I was quickly classified as a white mzungu by the students and even the local villagers in remote areas.

I clearly know that I am not white, and being in a traveling group where everyone had blue eyes and light hair, I as an American understood the ethnic differences between us.

Yet strangely enough, because we all faced prejudice as being the “other,” we came together because as a group, we were all stared at, pointed to, and whispered about in the same way. We flocked together as English-speaking, Western etiquette-following, candy bar loving Americans. As my music player slowly drained in power, I even agreed to listen to country music, a genre I had never connected with before because of the intrinsic differences in my experiences and that of the singers. But our love of Pringles, mp3 players, peanut butter, and warm showers brought us side by side. Personally, as a person who questions the role of race and gender in American society, I no longer thought about us in divided terms in Tanzania. We were all Americans who loved the red-white-and-blue flag and couldn’t wait for consistent electricity, drinkable tap water, and pre-set prices.

I’ve definitely learned a lot from my trip and value the new set of feelings I had when I was there, not just feeling white, but feeling grateful, lucky, and privileged to be brought up in a seemingly crappy but mostly great society. Although those thoughts will always stay with me, I couldn’t help but notice that a week after my return, I had already started processing the different class and racial groups I saw in Los Angeles. However, that isn’t to say that I don’t believe in oneness and the ability for all Americans to see more eye to eye, as naive as that may sound.

Saigon street scene at night.

It was July 2002 when I stepped out of  Tan Son Nhat International Airport, and into the streets of Saigon, revisiting my homeland and my past.  The heavy humid air bore on me and my skin began forming beads of sweat.  Here it was, the Vietnam that I had so missed when I first came to America in 1992 — the noisy crowded streets, the musty air, and the people who spoke my native tongue.  As a child, I dreamt about coming back.  And here I was, 10 years later, a teenager who had grown up in America.

Back at the hotel that night and sitting next to the windowsill, I peered out my window as the faint voice of a food peddler announced last rounds before she retreated for the night.  I observed the scene with the fond heart of a native and the detached mind of a foreigner.  The next morning, I awoke to the hustle and bustle of Saigon traffic and looked out my window to see what daylight revealed that the darkness of night could not.

I scanned the horizon and glanced past the streets congested with people on their mopeds and bikes to see a pinkish building jump out at me, apparently a relic of Vietnam’s French colonial past.  Girls’ uniform ao dai’s flowed wistfully in the wind as they made their way to school, reminding me of the paintings that people sometimes brought back from Vietnamese tourist traps.  Along the edge of the road right beneath my vision, a young man in his dress shirt and slacks rode his bicycle.

As I gazed out at them, it made me wonder what their lives were like.  Where were they heading off to? Was she a good student? Was he going to study abroad? What will become of them? These were things that usually escaped my mind when observing people in a place where I lived daily.

People’s faces in the streets were a stark contrast to the metallic shields of cars and reflections from windshields that I saw everyday in America.  Being able to see people as living bodies out in the streets instead of just getting  glimpses of anonymous beings in their metallic pods lent a faint feeling of familiarity to them.  It brought back memories and reminded me of the things I loved most about Vietnam.

I loved the circumambient air, the aesthetic beauty of girls in ao dai, the live faces I got to see on the streets, the fresh innocence of unworldly children, and mangosteens, rambutans, sapodillas, waterapples, and jackfruits. But despite my headiness at re-experiencing my exotic homeland, I couldn’t help being bothered as I recalled the way airport authorities tried to extract money from us as we checked out of the airport upon arrival.

I remembered the officer yelling at me and questioning me repeatedly on my intentions of visiting Vietnam—all because he had not seen any dollar bills slipped into my passport when he opened it.  Really? Yes, a petite teenage girl such as myself really held a threat to national security and needed to be questioned over and over again as to why I was visiting.  (Dude, that usually happens when you come to a rich country from a poor one, not the other way around!) We finally made our way out, but that incident still stuck with me.

How could anyone be loyal to a place like this? How can I be proud to come from a place where coercive government and domestic abuse still run rampant? Those were the defining questions that guided my identity formation in my teenage and college years.

The truth was, I was never quite sure that I should be proud of my heritage.  Although I was fortunate enough to retain my fluency in Vietnamese and enjoyed Paris by Night and Vietnamese food, I wasn’t wholly sure that my heritage was something worth being proud of.

How could I be when I’ve seen what my motherland allowed? The beating and oppression of women bothered me the most since I am a woman.  And having grown up in a traditional household where I was expected to do chores while my brothers were not, this kind of subject really spoke to me.  How can a woman be proud of coming from a place that treated women as being lesser than men?

As I grew older, my philosophy gained more coherency from its previously fragmented state. Just as I was still an American despite hamburgers, widespread violence in the media, imperialistic foreign policy, and school bullying, I was still Vietnamese whether I liked it or not.   My heritage has influenced who I am as a person and how people chose to treat me.

No matter how American my philosophies are, the outside world will always see me as an Asian girl at first glance, and treat me as they have been conditioned to treat an Asian woman.  So to me, the importance of knowing where I came from was intertwined with the necessity of learning to navigate the stereotypes that people bestowed upon me.  Understanding the source of that stereotype opened up my empathy for Vietnamese women, and for myself.  Then I understood that my Vietnameseness ran deeper than the color of my skin or my black hair.

My heritage was to me like a baby is to its mother, and a mother is to her baby.  You cannot choose certain things; you are stuck with its idiosyncrasies.  But to nurture that which is close to you, you need to see what’s ugly about it to help you rectify the problem or at the very least, not make it an even bigger one.  Denying that there’s a problem will not help, yet denying that which is a part of you is to lose the totality of who you are.  And so I chose to cultivate my Vietnamese-American identity the same way a great mother cultivates her baby: to accept wholeheartedly what is hers, to nurture that which is beautiful and good, and to call out for rectification the bad behavior.

[This piece started out as a piece on why a lot of Vietnamese-American kids don’t like to speak Vietnamese because they think it is ugly, but my writing took on a different path as I recalled my own shame of Vietnamese culture.  There are a lot of factors involved in this shame: peers making fun of Asians, not seeing enough positive representations of Asians in the public eye, not seeing good role models around, not having positive experiences with Vietnamese culture as a child, etc.

But the sources of this shame have been discussed before, and it still hasn’t done enough to encourage Vietnamese American kids to embrace their roots.  What is needed now isn’t more dissection of the problem, but more good examples of Vietnamese Americans successfully navigating the two worlds while embracing and leveraging their Vietnamese heritage to live a meaningful life and ways in which we can encourage our youth to do the same.  More to come in future posts as I formulate my thinking more on these topics. I encourage you to post your suggested solutions to this problem.  Hopefully, as a community, we can help Vietnamese-American kids overcome this hurdle in forming a strong core.]

Ho Hoan Kiem. From VNPhoto.net

While sailing on a lake in Hanoi formerly known as Luc Thuy, or “Green Water,” a giant, golden turtle (“Kim Qui”) appeared and took the sword from Le Loi. The turtle submerged to the depths of the lake, where it is said to have guarded the sword for future use, if Vietnam were to be invaded again.

After searching fruitlessly for the magical weapon and turtle, Le Loi accepted that the sword had served its purpose and must be returned. Thus, he renamed the lake “Ho Hoan Kiem” – Lake of the Returned Sword.

At least, that’s what happened according to the famous legend. Today, the lake is home to one of the only four remaining turtles of the critically endangered Rafetus swinhoei species, a giant soft-shelled turtle considered a sacred symbol in Vietnamese culture. A pair resides at Suzhou Zoo in China, and the fourth in Son Tay, Vietnam.

Ulcers can be seen covering the turtle's front flippers. From CNN

Imagine the alarm that spread when lesions and other injuries caused by pollution were spotted on the cherished turtle’s feet and shell. Many attempts were made to rescue the female turtle for medical treatment, but it wasn’t until early April, months later, that she was successfully caught. The job took two hours and over fifty rescuers. Bystanders cheered as she was finally brought onto land.

Known as The Great Grandfather (her sex hadn’t been determined until this recent rescue), the turtle weighs 372 pounds and is estimated to be over 100 years old.

After three months of treatment, she was well enough to return to the lake on July 12. VietNamNet Bridge reported that the lake had also been cleaned and stocked with carp, chubs, and anabas for the turtle to eat.

And so our legendary turtle lives on, continuing to protect that magical sword at the bottom of the lake.

National Highway 1A was initially known as Duong Thien Ly (or ‘The Thousand-Mile Road’) and was built in disjointed segments over time. While the connecting of disjointed segments was not necessarily contemplated previously, it was a natural progression and the roads were ultimately connected when the country was united under the Nguyen Dynasty. The highway was further improved and expanded upon by French colonists in the early 20^th Century.

Since the French colonialists’ work on the highway, it has been upgraded by the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) as approved in March 2010 and the World Bank since 1993 following the lifting of the foreign aid embargo on Vietnam. The Japanese ODA Loan will be used to repair and replace nine bridges on NH1A in the southern Mekong delta region (from Can Tho to Ca Mau). The World Bank’s assistance in 1993, the first transport sector project in Vietnam that was funded under a program sponsored by the United Nation Development Program, involved rehabilitating two sections of NH1A from Hanoi south to Vinh and from Saigon south to Can Tho. The 1993 World Bank project also supplied new ferries and rehabilitated existing ones, as well as improved ferry operations at the two river-crossings of My Thuan and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. The World Bank has since repaired 1,000 kilometers of the NH1A and an additional 600 kilometers of improvements are currently underway. More recently, the French company VINCI Construction Grands Projects has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Vietnamese company Deo Ca Investment JSC to work on the construction of the Ca Pass tunnel and road project in Vietnam. The project is estimated at US$600 million and calls for widening 9 kilometer of road and building a new 11 kilometer section that includes two tunnels, three bridges and approach roads, which will eliminate the final dangerous mountain pass crossing on the highway.

The improvements that have thus far been completed on National Highway 1A have benefited the country and its people tremendously. However, NH1A and Vietnamese roads in general continue to need improvements to ensure more efficient transport and safety of everyone on the road. As previously presented in a OneVietnam article, there are all types of vehicles on local roads and highways, from pedestrians to bicycles and cow carts to heavy duty commercial trucks. Particularly in Vietnam, where there is little to no distinction on which vehicles are permitted on which type of road, narrow and low quality roads make smaller vehicles such as bicycles and motorbikes especially vulnerable to accidents.  More specifically for NH1A, the National Assembly’s recent rejection of the proposal to build a bullet train from Hanoi to Saigon means that the highway will continue to be one of the main mediums of transport connecting the different regions of Vietnam. Though safety and efficiency are also functions of regulations and behaviors of those on the roads, having better transport infrastructure would assist in reducing tragedies resulting from roads in poor form.

Go on, I’ll wait. Now that we’ve all basked in the glory of the ever-dapper Luke Nguyen, consider what a significant achievement Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam represents. As the first Vietnamese expatriate to headline a successful transnational television show (Maggie Q’s horrendous re-reincarnation of La Femme Nikita not withstanding), Nguyen exposes a Western audience to an image of Vietnam that often contradicts their common knowledge. The show takes for its subject not simply food or travel, but the people and culture of Vietnam. It is, in essence, a Vietnamese expatriate’s fantastic journey through the perils of modern Vietnamese society in an attempt to reclaim culinary and ethnic authenticity.

I’ve learned quite a bit from Luke Nguyen, the most enlightening of which is that unless it’s cooked in lemongrass, it isn’t truly Vietnamese. This places my entire life in crisis: am I really Vietnamese or have my parents mislead me? How much lemongrass must I consume to reaffirm my Vietnamese authenticity?

The Ever-Dapper Luke Nguyen

These signifiers of Vietnameseness, of course, are arbitrary, and in the case of lemongrass, environmental. But the question of authenticity continually re-emerges as we watch Luke Nguyen interact with his native brethren. The audience sees him cook in strange, exotic locales as a flurry of Vietnamese people surround him. Often, he invites a guest to sit and (uncomfortably) watch him cook, acting as a kind of living backdrop that attests to his authority. “Look,” it says, “a real Vietnamese person accompanies me.” This, of course, raises several questions: is Luke Nguyen not a real Vietnamese person? Is he some fake Vietnamese/Australian cyborg sent back in time to kill John Connor? And if he really is Vietnamese, why must the show constantly strive to prove as much to its Western audience?

That Sweet Aussie Accent

The show’s desire for authenticity may stem from the standard stereotype of the accented Asian. But let’s first be clear about what an accent is. Regional “accents” are, in actuality, dialects. Accents, instead, are a matter of (mis)pronunciation – what, for instance, someone Fresh Off the Boat would have. The FOB stereotype is so pervasive that it haunts even the most pompous Ph.D. candidates in English literature. On more than one occasion, I’ve been congratulated, in all sincerity, on how well I speak English. “Why thank you,” I always reply, “yours is aight.” Such an experience reveals the assumptions being made about what a typical Vietnamese (or Asian) person should sound like, and these are the same assumptions that challenge Nguyen’s claim to authenticity. If the stereotype imagines all Asians, whether first- or second-generation, as an accented caricature, it also inversely questions the ethnic and cultural knowledge of “unaccented” Asian people. As someone with a distinctly Western dialect, Nguyen is forced to continually remind his audience that despite his Aussie “accent,” he is ethnically, culturally, and linguistically Vietnamese. The relatives he visits, his scripted knowledge of Vietnamese culture, the people he awkwardly speaks to on screen – all attest to his Vietnamese heritage. This constant reiteration helps Nguyen gain much of his culinary authority. After all, who would watch a show called, “John Smith’s Vietnam?”

Authenticity and Exploitation by Proxy

On some level, the show is also about Luke Nguyen’s personal odyssey to reclaim his Vietnamese ancestry.

Luke Nguyen Attacked by Sea Creature

He roams the countryside flirting with young ladies, gets himself into all kinds of trouble, and narrowly escapes with help from the native inhabitants. He even gets attacked by a sea creature – or two-inch squid – in the middle of the night. Homer would be proud.

This reclamation of his authenticity, however, sometimes comes at the expense of the native Vietnamese population. Whether their presence is necessary or a twisted form of tokenism, it’s never made clear. And that is at once the beauty and frustration of Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam. It straddles the line between homage and exploitation, between a celebration of culture and an incitement to tourism. As a Vietnamese expat who is also culturally Western, Nguyen acts as a tour guide to the “real” world of Vietnam. But like the contradiction between his English dialect and his Vietnamese dialogue, the audience never experiences an “authentic” Vietnam. As the title suggests, Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam is a mediated experience. When he says, “It’s a pity I’m here alone” while cruising down a serene river in Tam Coc, you can’t help but feel sorry for the invisible Vietnamese person rowing him around. Or when he makes a game out of carrying 40-kilo baskets, an activity, he recounts, that “these little ladies” do all day, you’re not sure whether you should be buoyed by their strength or question his privileged trivialization of their harsh life.

At moments, the tension between what he says and what occurs on screen is palpable. Check out his interaction with the elderly Hmong woman starting at 22:00:

You feel for the old Hmong lady as Nguyen informs the audience that the Hmong in this area are incredibly poor and can rarely afford meat in their diet. He tells you this all before slicing up a piece of smoked duck breast and tasting it in front of the poor woman’s eyes. He even asks, “Thu Khong?” but then seemingly changes his mind and shoves it in his own mouth. The scene highlights a very clear disconnect between what he says and what he does. It signals an incredible failure on his part to appreciate the situation as he recites from the script. His words acknowledge that many people – like the woman perched behind him – can’t afford meat even as his actions reveal an apparent incomprehension of its consequences.

The Trouble with Translations

But the show’s mediation goes beyond simply using the native Vietnamese population as props to promote Nguyen’s authenticity. It also makes judgments as to what counts as legitimate and intelligible speech. Anyone who speaks multiple languages knows that the act of translating is a tricky business. The cultural production of language makes it nearly impossible to translate the literal, idiomatic, and connotative at the same time.

Translations are even trickier in Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam.

In some instances, the Vietnamese is subtitled as well as can be expected. In others, however, the show simply ignores the Vietnamese words uttered. The value judgment here, that these words aren’t important or lack the intelligible content viewers can comprehend, typifies the Western notion of foreign languages as insignificant gibberish. At times, subtitles are absent when Nguyen translates for the audience. At others, both subtitles and translations go missing. When he asks the Hmong lady if she’d like to try the smoked duck in Vietnamese – and then fails to follow through – the show gives neither subtitle nor translation. Non-Vietnamese speakers miss the disconcerting exchange, and its import, altogether.

Luke Nguyen Taunting Old Lady

The show’s selective representation, strangely, is even more problematic when he offers translations, since his renditions are almost always misleading. He often asks his guests in Vietnamese if the food smells good. They’ll give a little nod or quietly say “yeah” – how else could they respond? – and he’ll translate it emphatically as, “She said it smells delicious!” And all in that charming Aussie accent.

It’s likely that correctly subtitling these leading questions would raise doubts as to his authority and authenticity. If a chef has to ask for validation and receives a quick nod in return, it doesn’t exactly instill confidence in his abilities. And Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam, like all cooking shows, is heavily invested in its chef’s ability to not only produce, but astound. Instead of subtitles with that ambivalent nod, then, the viewer sees a real Vietnamese person supposedly enamored with Nguyen’s food. And what better verification of his Vietnamese and culinary authenticity than confirmation from a native Vietnamese person?

A large part of these questionable situations come from the artifice of the show’s “reality” format. We don’t expect authentic castaway life from Survivor, so why from Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam? Still, it’s difficult to come to terms with some of these representations of Vietnameseness.

What do you think the lesson from Luke Nguyen’s desire for authenticity is? Or, better yet, what the hell is Vietnamese authenticity, anyway?

This article is the first in a proposed series that examines Luke Nguyen’s journey to his native land in order to explore the often troubled, and always entertaining intersections between culture, identity, sexuality, and, of course, food. Look for Questionable Vietnamese Masculinity in the near future.