(If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS/Atom feed. Thanks for visiting! - Michael)

When a cop yelled out at my friend, “Stop in the name of the law!” , my friend, naturally, said, “Huh?”

(That picture is not from the event I am about to retell)

I never go out. Ever. Partly because of a need to hold on to my money (and then spend it all on expensive things in the US to bring back to Vietnam), and also, well I don’t really like people. Talking, spending time, etc.

But I do, from time to time.

A couple of weeks ago, met with some friends here(I will withhold names simply because it’s a cop story, which is quite a sensitive issue here) in District 1 along with my cousin. Had a pretty big group, quite possible close to 15 people, that died off as the hour got late. Had a few drinks at this first bar, went on to Cage Bar, which is not really a bar but more of a club, next to Legend Hotel, had more drinks, and an emerging late night full of alcohol but no dinner was starting to ware some of us (me) down.

On to the motorbikes and food, we cried!

On the way to a Chinese food place on Nguyen Trai, one friend, whom I shall call the Human Thong (HT), wasn’t wearing a helmet. A few blocks before we got there, a cop saw him and rode up next to him to get him to pull over.

The Thong said no, but in an “Huh?” manner, like a foolish dumb-witted foreigner (which he definitely is not).

Again, told to move over. Ignored!

Third time, the cop (he had a buddy in the back of his motorbike too) was a bit pissed and basically forced HT to stop. It looked like he was going  to swing at him.

After this was at least 20 minutes of HT acting like he didn’t know what was going on, couldn’t understand any Vietnamese. Not only that, HT was a bit of a belligerent drunk, so when one cop tried to hold his arms down (handcuff hold), the Human Thong struggled, crying out, “What’s going on, what’d I do?”

We were on a busy street, and because of the his refusals, causing unwanted attention.

Ideally in this situation, you want to do English only, but also do it quietly so cops can save face and get paid off or whatever it is so they let you go.

No face saving here. The crowd was here, people were talking trash (arrest him!), and I (and other friends) was worried.

Arrest. Jail. An invite to leave the country.

Meanwhile, my cousin snuck off and went to pee in a corner. A building guard saw him and was not so pleased.

Back to the Human Thong. There was a guy there who seemed to have weird relationship over the cops. Some of us later thought maybe he was a gangster, and at first he told the cops to let HT go, he was a foreigner. Then as HT was a bit of a jackass, he changed his mind, saying, arrest him.

How this all went down is still a bit confusing. On one side, the cops really don’t want to bring foreigners in- that could mean trouble for their own careers in case that guy knows someone. Plus, they just want they money, so bringing the guy in doesn’t help.

On the other side, you have to save face with the crowd around. You can’t show everyone, if they’re watching, that people can just do whatever they like, even if everyone knows it’s true (for some).

In the end, the cops got another helmet, put it on HT’s head, and HT nodded “OH! Wear a helmet! OK! OK!”, and they let him go.

And off we went to discuss the story together over some Chinese, with me really needing water and food to avoid going over that “one drink too many” line. (Success!)

A little bit of luck, a little bit of drunken stupidity, and little too much excitement for my wussy butt.

On another note about nightlife, one of the topics of discussion at the restaurant was, “I wonder how old that prostitute is?”

What one man called 40, I felt was 28, not because she looked that young, but in VN people can look very old very quickly. A little like white people, yes.

Once we were outside the restaurant, I noticed prostitutes were everywhere, almost like sitting down in front of the restaurant waiting for customers. And it’s not even like that area is some dirty red light district or something.

This is Vietnam.

Related posts

• Finding Housing in Saigon [Fail] (2)
• The Red Light (2)
• Saigon It Is! (0)
• Office rental rates in Ho Chi Minh City, San Jose, other cities (0)
• My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist (0)

I don’t know how other men are, but documentaries like My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist, don’t make necessarily despise the men involved or mock them. Instead, I wonder how much I am like them, if I could be like them, what would it take for me to become them.

And I am scared. Am I ugly, perverted, socially inept? Could I became not only a purchaser (which is not so bad in some contexts, if it’s a fair trade on both sides) but also someone in need of purchasing sex (because I have no other option)?

I like to think that of course I am decent looking, intelligent, just “better” than those guys, but deep down I wonder. How far am I really from being that guy?

My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist is a Channel 4 (I don’t know what Channel 4 is, I assume it’s a UK channel, like the BBC) 2 part documentary (2nd part to be shown next week, but first part came out in December) that looks at the lives of the workers at a resort in Venezuela, where prostitution is legal. Essentially, if you go to the resort, you get to get the girlfriend experience- you pick a girl among the roster, and you hangout together as if a couple, though surely, she’d be a little more submissive than a normal girlfriend.

The resort owner says that oftentimes the clients are 30 years older than the girls and supremely overweight. I was surprised that some of the clients allowed themselves to be shown, but my guess is that’s because 1) they don’t care at that state in their lives 2) it’s a UK show, and the people shown were either American or Canadian. I guess if we were to mock people who pay for these activities, then the people shown do fit those stereotypes, even a little bit creepy/abnormal/weird/uncomfortable.

The documentary doesn’t talk to the men really, but looks deeper at the women, their motivations and experiences during about a week of their lives at work. Life for them is not really roses, but it’s a job, for them one probably born out of necessity rather than them being high-end callgirls.

Anyway, if the subject matter appeals to you, and for some reason any documentaries related to sex appeal to me (a few months ago, I watched a documentary about men’s insecurity over penis size as a society), you can find this on torrent, as I did. I wouldn’t call it entertaining or deepy revealing, but just interesting.

Link: My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist | Channel 4

Related posts

• The Red Light (2)
• (A Vietnamese) Police Story (0)

Walking home, I went by the local massage place. When I say local, I mean across the street, it really is local. And there’s probably a total of 3 on the 6 minute walk from work to home that I go by everyday. So anyway, I walked past the place and saw a guy leave and get on his motorbike. I started thinking, I wonder if people here feel any shame or embarrassment when they walk out of these things, like they wouldn’t want me to take a picture of them and put it on Facebook (or CyWorld). I looked at him, and he just seemed ho-hum, like “I just bought some bread and now I’m going home”.

In other news, the Pho 24 across the street just closed down. I found out the hard way when I went there for dinner tonight (that’s when I passed by the massage place). It’s rather expensive (for me, $2-3, but I do like it) but since it’s so close I went there 2-3 times per week. Now it looks like I’ll have to use my motorbike more often (I frequently don’t use it for a week at a time) to go get dinner. What poo poo.

Related posts

• My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist (0)
• (A Vietnamese) Police Story (0)