Understanding Vietnam

Visitors to Vietnam have given me mixed reviews of their experiences from pure hatred by famous travel bloggers such as Matt Kepnes to adoration.  (I lean towards the latter).  Despite all personal experiences, the generalization of North and South being very different holds some water from the short time I've spent here.  My thoughts are the ones who hate Vietnam do so because of their Westernized expectations from the locals.  They feel that by paying money to visit as a tourist, they are entitled to fair treatment by not getting ripped off and being treated nicely.  They compare Vietnam to Thailand, for example.

This is unfair.  Vietnam, firstly, is communist, albeit a conservative communism.  The people have also experienced a lot by way of domination by the Chinese, French and the United States. Visitors also have to remember Vietnam is predominantly Buddhist and believe in karma.  To be fair, the USA pillaged, raped and bombed the country for 10 years without very clear objectives other than victory as the Presidency shifted to LBJ and Nixon.  This may have led the Vietnamese to feel they have no obligation to cater to tourists due to previous unfair treatment.  Additionally, the communist mindset doesn't necessarily provide them with the perspective of a capitalism where tourism is an industry to be fed.  Rather, it is an opportunistic way to supplement their simple lifestyles.

Hanoi is lined with areas dedicated by zones to appliances, art, books, tires and the like,  For a niche product, it seems you have to go to a very specific area and choose among numerous shops selling the same products at the same price, going against the capitalistic mindset of fierce competition.  Rather, it leans towards socialism.  The Vietnamese seem quite content to set prices and leave everyone to benefit equally.  The nationalism is obvious, so foreigners are a means to gain a personal advantage, and frankly we should be okay with that given their roots in communism.  Accepting that has allow my experience in Vietnam to be much more bearable than if I had come here with a democratic hat, expecting equal treatment as the locals.

By misunderstanding this, a Westerner's experience can be a horrid one.  The US in the war failed to prevail despite having superior weaponry, money and military support because the Vietnamese were so strongly nationalistic and united to defy our understanding while we were protesting and forgetting why we even entered the war.

Communism by repression, oppression, aggression and censorship limits freedom and usually fails to remain sustainable (i.e. the Khmer Rogue in Cambodia, former Soviet Union, East Germany), although North Korea still stands.  This extremism isn't obvious here.  Communism is usually written off too quickly by the West because we think of the oppressive examples, but Vietnam appears to have achieved a healthy balance.

Sex Industry in Vietnam

The backpacker district of Pham Ngo Lao in Saigon is filled with women trying to coax men into their massage parlors, not dissimilar to Thailand.  My experience in Thailand, however, was that the women were still well-trained in massages and if the topic of sexual favors in exchange for money was never brought up, you walked out with some knots rolled out at a bargain price.

Seeing the obvious sex tourism here in Pham Ngo Lao, I asked a local to take me away from the backpacker district for a proper "no sexy"massage.  Walking in, I paid $15 (higher than Thailand), and naively proceeded upstairs.  The masseuse proceeded to lightly massage me when she grabbed my attention and demanded money to massage "my baby." I said no, to which she began to become anxious and upset that she wouldn't have a short session with a cash bonus to walk away from.  After expressing my disappointment and refusal to tip for a service I was declining, she began to beg and say she was hungry and received no salary from the parlor.  Whether the latter fact is true is questionable, but if it is, it shows the obvious demand for sex the tourism industry brings here.

The women have transactions which earns them $10-$20 quickly without a demand for a salary because stepping in is the entrance fee paid by a patron, so the parlor is satisfied.  This way she can get high turnover.  Unfortunately, I made her work for it and it was obvious how untrained she was in giving any semblance of a real massage.

My hubris led me again to a different massage parlor where I explicitly stated I wanted a foot massage.  Same story.  Only after turning her down did she actually try to give a real massage, although she tried numerous times to coax me again.

Can sex have economics?  Clearly so.  There must be a study out there that analyzes this stuff, but it's obvious how many tourists come here to have a meal, drink some cheap beer and get jerked off.

We're all being used

The minute I quit my job in Australia, I am deemed to be here illegally as an alien, and the government has every right to kick me out. The only reason I’m here legally is that the government deems the benefit they gain from my contribution to capitalistic ventures and tax dollars outweigh any utility cost they sacrifice by having me here. An avenue to stay here legally in spite of my employment status is to gain entitlement with time. If I’ve done enough and proved my willingness to submit to the system and provide a benefit to the country for long enough, they’re convinced I can be a sheep for life and therefore pose no threat to stay indefinitely. By maintaining the status quo for another few years, I would gain permanent residency and eventually citizenship, but until then, I’m in a holding period.


This logic filters through to media and companies – if you’re not providing them a beneficial use or ratings, you’re useless and expendable to them. If they perceive the benefit you provide them by way of $$ as favourable to them (not you), they will milk you and use you. Despite what you want to believe, there is very little by way of trust – which is why you sign contracts and any breach of a provision will lead to a merciless battle to preserve their sanctity, not yours. In that light, we’re all being used because we can be discarded if circumstances change whereby the benefit you provide is no longer worth the utility cost. By committing ourselves to too much to work, we delude ourselves into believing we’re doing something beneficial to the world, the company and anyone else who benefits down the pecking order. Stop measuring your self-worth by how capitalistic ‘success’ has been defined – how much you earn, what you drive, where you live, what you’ve created, how many ‘likes’ you get. In the end, we're all cogs being used and spit out by the system, sweetie.

On Creation and Idleness

Humans, by nature, are driven to create things. From the moment we’re cognizant and enthralled enough to realize our poop is self-created, we take pride in the things we make. Success is measured in our ability to create such things as art, books, money, buildings, video game scores, food, powerpoint presentations etc..  The product can be something shitty, but you made it and that's fulfilling.  This is why DIY home-made projects are more rewarding than paying someone else to do it – you can admire your own creation and take pride in it, regardless of whether or not it took you twice the time and effort. 


The glory of boasting about our creations and being praised for them lies at the heart of privileged societies, which are entitled with this luxury as we have numerous tools at our disposal to create at will, barring innate skill, money and fear as constraints. This is why the religious type are inclined to argue that no such diversity and complexity of life could evolve over billions of years and must be attributed to a higher being, but I digress.

The fact of the matter is through our propensity to create more for self-satisfaction, we end up consuming more, hoarding more and feeding our narcissism. We don’t feel ‘happy’ or fulfilled unless we’re actively pursuing capitalistic tendencies to beat the competition or come up with something new and innovatively creative. Subsequently,  some thinking people step back and wonder why we’re still not ‘happy’ and fulfilled because after all, that’s the one Holy Grail we’re all universally chasing after. Living an idle life is frowned upon and deemed a failure if we are physically and mentally able to do something the majority feels you are capable of doing. .

This is a huge reason why I advocate travel and to an extent idleness, where we’re not constantly compelled to create something – it allows us to see the discrepancy of our so-called privileged lives of endless choices contrasted with a life of, for example, a subsistence farmer whose only aim is to feed his family, limited in choice and leaving his or her vices to the weather. A life of routine prevents us from getting a full flavour of what our choices of work are doing with regards to resources and on others as far as income disparity. There is no free lunch. Everything we create or do, despite convincing ourselves it will inspire others or improve their lives, comes at the expense of others indirectly. That’s the capitalistic, self-fulfilling way. Look after yourself at the expense of someone else you can’t see. 

In the end, capitalism will always triumph and by getting ourselves stuck in its wheel, you either pay to play in order to maintain status and pride or risk falling out. In order to gain an understanding of why our productive lives, intended to be full of happiness, are not in fact as grand as we imagine, we need to understand that the mechanical acts of endless creation can be futile.

Take the time to be lazy, idle and to travel.

An Inspirational Vagabond

Yesterday on my way back from Kuala Lumpur to Perth Fortuna spun its wheel in my direction and I was lucky to meet a 27 year old Swiss girl name Virginie. Shy and unassming, yet bold. We made small talk and slowly she divulged to me that she had been travelling for the past 14 months around Australia and SE Asia on her own. For the next 4 hours of her flight, she knew her plans, but after picking up her bags, she had no idea where she was sleeping that night or how she’d get there.

Virginie had very little money so she confessed she had hitchhiked around Australia for 6 months and planned to do so again, camping along the way in a cheap tent without the luxury of being waterproof. She had camped in Thailand and Malaysia the past 4 months, without a cooking stove, subsisting on dry food and trusting in the charity of others. There was a bit of a language barrier, but I couldn’t help myself from asking her a barrage of questions on loneliness, fear, safety and what brought her to embark on this adventure. She had no cell phone, no laptop, no Facebook, no means of direct communication with her parents and very little by ways of possessions. In short, she is a modern day Christopher McCandless (although she wasn’t full of hubris like he seemed to be).

I commended her on her bravery and provided her a place to crash for the night, gave her a solid knife, some rope, a map of Australia and some other things to help her on her way. She defied the typical person we commend today, full of narcissism and a desire to prove themselves through accomplishments, unable to remove themselves from their phone and modern day comforts. Rather, she was keen on exploring the world on her own accord, establishing her independence and realizing her ability for self-sustenance after depending on someone through a 9 year relationship prior to her travels.  She had nothing to prove to others other than herself and it showed.  Virginie wasn't concerned about vanity and mundane worries, but about the basics (transport, food, shelter) to allow her to travel and explore more.  She was astounded by having a simple meat, potatoes and brocolli dish for dinner with us while we tend to worry about cooking temperature and seasoning.

We spent the night talking with my 2 roommates over dinner at home, sharing stories and opinions. She is, by far, one of the most interesting and brave people I’ve ever met. She encouraged me in my plans next year to drop everything and explore the world more, flap free style.

Bahh Bahh

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’re all sheep, bleating and following behind the next woolly ass in order to avoid judgement and risk being cast out amongst peers. We constantly seek approval. Socrates was an anomaly. He was an outspoken, unhygienic and allegedly ugly man who would walk the streets of ancient Greece barefooted asking people in the marketplace very profound questions. While he may have failed to conform to our notions of physical attractiveness and hygiene, his questions cut people like a razor. For this, some came to adore him for forcing them to think, others despised him for his unconformity and fear-inducing logic.


Imagine you’re shopping at a local Saturday morning market, latte in-hand, the other feeling for a perfectly ripe avocado to make guacamole you hope your friends will praise you for. (Enter approval seeking). Suddenly a decrepit, unshaven man walks up to you and asks you (very eloquently) to give your perceptions on the origins of morality. Chances are you’ll scoff and tell him to fuck off and find some shoes. Socrates stated that as sheep, we rarely step back to think about where we’re headed and challenged us to question our assumptions and eliminate those things that rationally made no sense (The Socratic Method) until we arrived at some truth. By insisting we know enough, rather than admitting our incapacity to understand everything, we already limit ourselves.

His student Plato carried his philosophy further by saying most of us live without an understanding the depth of our condition, content to take everything at face value, which is why ordinary citizens would shun the shoeless Socrates rather than answering his questions, because they had never considered them to begin with. By taking things at face value, these men advocated we are bathed in shadows, interpreting these as reality rather than the source of the object. To make a long story short, Socrates rubbed so many people the wrong way until those in power had enough and sentenced him to death, forcing him to drink poison. Luckily, 2,500 years later, his legacy and those of his pupils, Plato and Aristotle, remain strong, but our behaviour generally remains the same.

The thing is, as humans, we’re born into a conundrum. Of all animals, we have one tool at our disposal other animals don’t – REASON. It’s a tool all of us use, but not to its full extent, because beyond a certain point it doesn’t serve to improve our individual survival, which is ultimately what we care about. We like to eat, have sex and drown ourselves in the flavour of the week. This comfort inducing cycle creates such complacency that some of the most developed countries are depressed and have no idea why. Having money, a job, a house, good food, kids and the like is supposed to equate to happiness, right?

I’m not advocating that we need to come out of every comfort zone and think philosophically about every topic because this could even lead us to realize the human condition can be an ugly spectacle. However, the lack of self-reflection and elimination of nonsensical thinking as Socrates fought so hard for could be a genuine reason we’re in such predicaments we have no idea how we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The Brothers Karamazov

I read this book without much research other than hearing the premise of the novel and continuing my binge on Russian literature.  The only fact I knew was that it involved 3 brothers, each different in their own rights, contemplating religious faith.  The philosophy of religious faith as contemplated from multiple perspectives was enough for me to read it; however, I must admit I thought the author would allow atheism to triumph as Ivan is painted as the character of philosophical insight.

The book was completely opposite to what I expected since religious faith was deemed the champion to shaping ones’ character, happiness, reputation and fate.   While Doestovsky was too idyllic in painting pictures of faith triumphing as skeptics saw their demise through death or suicide, I could heed a bit of what he was saying: That humanity needs to believe in the unbelievable and faith is not merit-based. Faith allows the means for people to live happily and peacefully without having to find answers to every gaping hole.    

Coupled with a lot of reading of Christopher Hitchens, the most outspoken person against faith, I feel a bit disheveled after letting The Brothers Karamazov digest.  The person I most identified with in the novel was Ivan, who goes insane after discovering a serious flaw in his philosophy that he is in fact partially responsible for his father’s murder.  His demeanor is one of detachment from humans, attempting to keep humanity at a distance due to his skepticism, which I also identify with at times. 

While Doestovsky’s novel spoke volumes to me and reminded me certain people of faith are some of the best people I know (similar to Alyosha), I can’t help but let my thinking fall into the fate of well, my own thinking.  Novels like these, while insightful, do little to sway me from my endeavor to discover what’s true.  If it leads to my personal insanity like Ivan, so be it.   If it puts me back on a track of faith due to the ignorant happiness it can bring despite defying logic, so be it.