24: Relationship Status

How I'm feeling about my new home

Outside of food content, it feels like I have not written much about Vietnam lately. That’s what routine will do to you. To me. I love relying on a daily structure, but the lack of newness makes me innocently think I have nothing to share with you. With a more serious post still ruminating, I thought I could write something quickly (says the world’s slowest writer) this week about the flags of my current relationship with my new home, whether that’s Saigon, Vietnam more generally, or more more generally, the region. Television has taken a backseat to TikTok in how I decompress before bed, and in the mix of mukbangs, cute Japanese toddlers, cooking, and music, I’ll get trending topics like beige flags that your significant other gives off. So here are my current relationship flags in a complete random order.

Green flag = It makes me happy to be here with no end in sight.
Red flag = It will likely contribute to me not being here one day.
Beige flag = It puzzles me or raises my brows but overall is very neutral.

Hot weather all the time: Green

Take your Christmas snow, wool sweaters, and tall leather boots. Take your autumn chill, rosy cheeks, and seasons, too. I am fine without. Better, even. I love that when I walk outside I feel like I’ve entered a warm bath—maybe because I miss taking one. I have no significant complaints thus far about how hot it can get here. I do my best to take necessary precautions, and I view sweat only as salty water. This is because I have spent what feels like my entire life being cold. I hate when I encounter icy air conditioning here—part of why Lửa is my favourite restaurant is because it doesn’t have A/C. I’m elated that, as a homebody, I have much more control over the temperature of my personal space. I was recently telling someone that a muscle issue that’s worsened in recent years hasn’t come up once for me here. I honestly think it’s because my body is not perpetually tensed up due to being cold.

Bottom line: I would much rather sit at my desk all day in my underwear than wrapped up in blankets.

(No) Queue culture: Red

I can’t. The lack of logic. The lack of consideration. I can try to understand why it likely doesn’t exist, but I still can’t warm up to it. I actively avoid places or situations where I will have to deal with the lack of a queue for a service. If I can’t, I ensure I am in no rush. Life is so much more enjoyable when you’re not ignoring the previous presence of or pushing someone out of the way to get, for example, your postage stamp first. The red flag is that lack of acknowledgement. We’re both humans. We both want stamps. I know you see me, see that I was here first. Why can mine continue to be waited for but yours can’t?

Malls: Beige

To escape into the comfort of an air-conditioned mall on a hot day is wonderful, and the prevalence of malls in Southeast Asia is not strange to me. I think I am just fascinated by how many there are and how extraordinary they can be. Coming from an area of the world where malls have notably been dying out, I have been both astounded by the opulence and a little turned off by their allure. Because remember, I also come from a city that once was home to the largest mall in the world.

The stress of a visa run is probably not the best reason to visit a city, so I was overall not so into Bangkok. But shamefully I would go back if it meant another visit to the mall wonderland of ICONSIAM. The food, the shops, and the dazzle of it all enraptured me. All the malls here kind of do. Of course, it could be my outsider lens or nostalgia. The excess reminds me of the chandelier and fountain heydays of North American malls in the late 1980s and early 90s.

My main issue with them is that they’re everywhere and become focal points of neighbourhoods.

Motorbikes: Green

There are so many reasons not to like them. But they make Saigon, Saigon. They are an important soundtrack and create a tapestry of faces within the streets. I never want to have to commute on one—just as I’ve never wanted to commute by a private vehicle anywhere—so it’s easy to keep my romantic feelings going when I’m only taking 0-3 rides per week. And those rides are overwhelmingly at night, when the breeze is perfect and the city is aglow. But on romance more pointedly, their function as a cheap and easy way for lovers to connect gives me all the feels. Evening rides are prime time for watching couples on bikes. Before there was Grab, you looked for a driver of a xe ôm, a motorbike taxi with the actual translation of motorbike hug. The sweetness of all the hugs I see brings much happiness. The stories I make up about all the couples young and old involve, as I said, using the bike as a way to be close when other options might not be as readily available. I’m going to dinner, but they are just riding, together, through the motorbike hug.

Produce: Green

All the herbs. Custard apples and guavas on my counter every week. Fruit and vegetable vendors making their way through the alleys every day.

I have basically forgotten that I used to eat two Pink Lady apples every day. All I care about now is star apple season.

Public grooming: Beige

I knew from travelling here before that things like popping zits and picking your nose are completely acceptable to do openly in front of other people. As someone from a culture where this is private behaviour, it’s still strange, especially when it’s not being done by a child. But I think the “don’t touch your face” pandemic adage is what rings loud in my head when I see a finger up a nose. Hand germs all up in your mucous membranes?! No no no.

Public urination: Red
Littering: Red

I have heard that there is an element of people thinking that cleaning up is someone else’s responsibility (like the government) and that by actively keeping things clean outside of your home, you might be taking a job away from someone (like a government worker). But it’s not enough for me to not be confounded by just how severely people treat public spaces like dumpsters. The constant vigilance needed to not step in or on garbage will eventually be too much, I’m sure.

Delivery: Green

Everyone rightly develops crushes on the plastic chairs that give character to small eateries, but once you keep your eyes open, you see just how often people here eat out of styrofoam boxes. Delivery is extremely popular. Food, yes, of course. But delivery of anything you could desire and at lightning speed is the real boon. Amazon Prime is just so LOL in comparison. I am very very close to never going into a store again (see: queue culture).

Teaching English to kids: Red

Because the majority of them don’t really care. During the school year, they’re at regular school from roughly 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and then they come to me at 5:30 for two hours, two days a week or on both Saturday and Sunday for two hours each day. During the summer, they have to come after they’ve been chillaxing all day. Motivation at all times is very mid, because obviously the lessons are primarily the parents’ desire. Just like the extra math classes they all seem to take. To get them into the lessons, content often needs to be gamified. Kinaesthetic learners tend to be prioritized perhaps because it makes the class look more exciting. It’s not my style of learning at all, so I often struggle translating it into my default way of teaching or talking to students. (I know I should be more student-centred, but.)

Some of the older kids will often talk about wanting to study abroad, but even more of them will talk about a desired mark on the IELTS test. Not to study or work outside of Vietnam, but to be able to to skip courses in Vietnamese universities. A similar thing goes for an important high school English test they will take. Lots of money (lots and lots of money) is paid for English lessons for one or two important marks that won’t be used for their intended purpose.

The kids are sweet and fun and make every class different and enjoyable, but it’s hard for me to find the energy to inspire them and to think of this type of teaching and age category as something I could do long term.

Teaching English: Green

Not once have I thought about my previous job path. I get the chills when I do, to be honest. I felt incredibly lucky and privileged to have a legitimate, steady job writing, but now, I only want to write for myself and my own interests (hello, Substack). That my steady job is now teaching English suits me very well. I just want to move toward adults at some point before I retire. My Canadian training was for teaching adults, and I much prefer it, especially in the context of learning English for a basic functioning in society. But also, I have an Education degree that I never put to use. I’ve seen myself in this profession somehow for a long time. As a know-it-all, I can have a lot of fun talking (too much) and trying to impart knowledge.

Money: Red

It seems like a national obsession: more money. All the money. Coveting money. Showing off money. At whatever the cost. It colours my students’ endless talk of wanting to be rich and teasing others in the class who they believe are rich (to afford my company, they’re all rich). It colours the reality that someone might be scamming you at every turn. I don’t like the feeling that I can’t trust anyone or any product or that the binaries of rich/poor and cheap/expensive rule the day. The raw honesty of it doesn’t bother me, just how it can cloud sense, decency, and character.

N.B.: I work in the for-profit education sector. Bias, much?

Entrepreneurship: Green

The flip side is that with everyone trying to make a quick buck, playing around and being bold with new ideas for businesses also happens at every turn. The “no rules” ethos here means that people, especially young people, just try things out through pop-ups or social media. I find it incredibly exciting to watch. Risk tolerance is higher because start-up costs can be much lower. The related networking is similar. People meet, trade ideas, try things together. It’s quick and random and again, so exciting to see how people will chase a passion with much gusto. It feels like a place full of, not simmering, but about-to-boil-over ideas.

(Lack of) Bathtubs: Red
(Inadequate) Kitchens: Red

Showers get the sweat off just fine, and a cold one is beautiful. But I live for the relaxation brought by a 30-minute soak before bed. That I will never have a tub here means I will never have a future here.

Relatedly, I will want to properly bake again. I will want to use my Dutch ovens again. My pizza steel. My sheet pans. I will want to do so in a kitchen that I’m comfy in, with a proper sink and an oven. (Inadequacy and lack due to my earning potential, to be clear.)

Density: Green

I knew from age 5 that I needed more than the gridded streets and single-family, detached dwellings that Edmonton offers. Big, dense urban jungles get my heart racing, and I especially love the ones where people are always out and about. In cities where I have resided, Edmonton has always felt the most unsafe when walking alone as a woman and that has always been because of the lack of people around. Does a person call for help if there is no one around to hear them? I like the privacy of my own home, but I love the feeling that there is someone, lots of someones, always near. I recently went to the area of Phú Mỹ Hưng in District 7 and felt very weird about it. People say that Thảo Điền in District 2 is an expat bubble for people who don’t really want to live in Saigon. The perfect streets and spaciousness of Phú Mỹ Hưng feels like an expat bubble for people who don't really want to live in Vietnam. I can see the attraction, but I left a place that looked like that so that I could have the spoils and chaos of people packed much more tightly together.

So many Saigon spoils to enjoy. So much chaos to embrace.