Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 474 - How Did Vietnam save this broken Aussie’s life? - Ethan Kelly

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474 - How Did Vietnam save this broken Aussie’s life? - Ethan Kelly · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The Vietnamese podcast.
0:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I have Ethan Kelly.
0:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He is also an architect.
0:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, tongue-of-it is your handle.
0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, welcome.
0:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed the content that you put out.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, bro.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for having me.
0:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I was really excited when you reached out because yeah, seeing your content many, many times, especially on Instagram.
0:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm excited to be here.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Same here.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Same here.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen so much of your stuff.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, let's talk about real quick.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just jump into it.
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to start in your shirt and I want to call attention to that because most of my listeners, most of my audience, we belong to the Vietnamese diaspora.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And for so many years,
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I am so awkward around the conversation of the flags, you know, the three start flags, the yellow star flags.
0:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we were just talking about that a little bit before we got to start a tour.
0:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
0:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, I mean, I have a good, I have a good different aspect again because I'm obviously fully Australian, I have no Vietnamese family, no, it's no links prior to 2019 to Vietnam in any way.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I came to Vietnam, obviously the God O Salva was the only flag I had ever seen or known about.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And then obviously as I came to know more about Vietnamese culture and history and I worked in Australia with Vietnamese people.
1:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So these were people who had come by boat to Australia in, you know, the 80s and whatnot.
1:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So I really got a really non biased view of the whole thing.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have anyone tell me you can't do this or you can't do that or you can't wear this or you can't wear that.
1:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I just had people share their stories with me.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: had fled Vietnam and got to Australia in the 80s share their stories with me.
1:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had that really like, wow, you know, trying to imagine what that would have been like.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And hearing this out of the story where they'd lost properties, they'd lost generations worth of worth of, they'd lost everything.
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Really.
2:01
[SPEAKER_02]: The particular people that I worked with at the time.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had that kind of whole thing.
2:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I
2:06
[SPEAKER_02]: as bad as that was to hear and everything.
2:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm at the time of 24 year old kid in Australia.
2:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like you can't relate with that being in a Australian and not having any idea.
2:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You can hear it and you go, wow, these stories are fascinating.
2:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, really fascinating stories and really, again, hard to connect with, but also it kind of helped me to, it was the precursor to everything else I learned about.
2:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm so I learned that, wow, okay,
2:36
[SPEAKER_02]: huge thing that happened.
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was an upheaval of the country as it was and you know at least for at least 50% of the people you know in the South and and in some of the middle regions and things like that.
2:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I came to Vietnam and then I started posting content online and gaining, I mean all my following I have.
2:58
[SPEAKER_02]: maybe 300 to 400 million views a month, 99 more than 99% of those views are in Vietnam views, not bitkills or other, or other, or other, you know, other Vietnamese communities.
3:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So then I had the opinion of those people, which is very, very, um,
3:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Both sides can be hostile.
3:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I might say it's a very hostile view.
3:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's either this one or none like piss off, you know, so I really saw both and yeah, I even had trouble where I had posted something in Australia with with one flag and then posting content here with others and for me, I've always got away with it because.
3:36
[SPEAKER_02]: they're like, oh, he's Australian.
3:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So whichever side of the fence you're on, they're like, I, he probably doesn't know, you know, but to be honest with you, from my purely from my perspective, I was born in 1992, and as far as I'm concerned, since I've been alive, this is the internationally recognized flag for the most part, aside from obviously the vet care or community overseas.
4:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So I
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: To me, I never really went, oh, you know, I shouldn't, I shouldn't wear the internationally recognized flag, aren't, well, you know, I understand all of that.
4:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I worked for years with people who hated it, right, but at the same time, since I've been alive, it is the internationally recognized flag, whether I like it, you like it, someone else likes it, it's just, it is what it is, right, however,
4:28
[SPEAKER_02]: people who still recognize the yellow flag with the three stripes as their flag, I've never at any point gone.
4:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I know what you shouldn't do that or you know what I mean?
4:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm pretty and I guess maybe this is an Australian thing too is like whatever your way is like you do your way and I'll do my way.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's very good.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've never thought at any point like he shouldn't wear that or she shouldn't wear that or but what I do find really really jarring is the extreme hostility from which other side is not just from one where they're like, if you you can't wear this and I'm like, oh, you know, I thought like you can do whatever you want and I can do whatever I want.
5:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, from from my perspective, I think
5:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, in the younger generations, there are a lot of people who are just kind of like, well, we're going on like yours, but whatever, we're all Vietnamese at the end of the day.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and certainly my children who are Vietnamese, or at least half Vietnamese, you know, that's the way they'll be taught as well at one point in time.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: This was the flag, since my children have been alive, this is the flag, but I teach them
5:32
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of things about and we watch a lot of documentaries and things like that about the history of Vietnam because I think it's really important for them to know and they speak fluent Vietnamese too even though one of them is just over two one of them is nearly four they speak fluent Vietnamese as well so yeah I think it's it's all important and for me I've always felt like I got I dodged bullets the whole way through it because I'm not actually Vietnamese by blood
6:02
[SPEAKER_02]: whatever anyone stands is on it because it's their stance, you know, and I have my own, and everyone has their own.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but I've also had the four-hour conversations with like 80-year-old women that I knew very well and worked with at the time in the Vietnamese community of Brisbane where they told me the horrific stories of what had happened at the time, and yet some of the stories are hard to, it's actually it's not hard to impossible to really comprehend you like how
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: how being born in 1992, nothing like that has ever even crossed a been a thought in my life, you know, we've lived in a very safe time and a very lucky time.
6:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I was kind of really lucky to just get the whole picture really early on into my, into my, you know, my dive into Vietnamese culture and everything.
6:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, can you wear that shirt in Australia?
6:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look, I wear many shirts with red flag in Australia, not by not intentionally any particular shirt, just I have a lot and I have a lot of friends give me a lot of shirts and they might have a red flag or something to be honest, I don't even notice it'll be someone else will say, oh, but no, never in real life, I've had any hostility, but I mean, I'm a really big person, I'm like two, nearly two meters tall, so maybe.
7:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But honestly, if you're just a good respectful person, I don't think it, you know, no one's going to go, you're doing that to spite me or anything like that.
7:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And like I said, I've noticed a lot in the younger generation, whether they like the yellow flag or the red flag, they're very accepting of the other side to that.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, put it this way, they might even think, oh, Jesus, they guys are decadent or something, but they're not going to
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: they're not going to go out of their way to say, oh, you can't do that.
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's much more accepting by than probably what it used to be when you were a kid in the Vietnamese communities in America, and it was probably a lot more hostile back then.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, it's still not okay to wear that in where I like to go.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: an hour from where I live.
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that, no matter who you are, you wouldn't be able to wear it and get away with it.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you wouldn't.
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be very difficult.
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, and we have a lot of international students that come from Vietnam that have to contend with this.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And just for the record, I come from, I'm a second generation.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I was born in the United States, but second generation Vietnamese, my parents were first generation.
8:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm second generation, the yellow flag is the flag of my
8:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we are living in a, I'm 50 years old.
8:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We are living in a new day-nage.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that I will never forget the lives that were lost on my family side and all the men and women that served in the South government, South Vietnamese government, but at the same time, I do see a change in the,
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: in the representation.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a lot more Vietnamese that are coming from Vietnam that are coming to live in America and beginning to kind of blend in and understand what you know, what the sort of the hurt was and the history behind the flags.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think eventually, you know,
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: the flag, the historical flag of the south, will always be remembered for a certain group of people, but the international symbol of Vietnam today has and probably will remain the red flag for a very long time.
9:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think, look, I think definitely with whatever whatever you are, wherever you're from or whatever your history was, there's always, there's always parts of history that you can't let go.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, look at the Aboriginal people in Australia, even, you know, like that's it.
9:49
[SPEAKER_02]: not too dissimilar issue to the one that we're talking about now and it never goes away.
9:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's for sure.
9:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It never goes away.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always for those people in particular.
10:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always going to remain.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It was such a huge trauma, such a huge trauma.
10:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think for me personally, like I said, I didn't even consider
10:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The flag was on this shirt when I just put it on and just wear whatever shirts I like and recently the Vietnamese Vietnamese were playing in the under-22, the under-22 championship and I was wearing this shirt you know supporting the boys, so but yeah
10:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to, I wanted to come on here because firstly, I don't do any media with American or other kind of Vietnamese channels, but not in Vietnam.
10:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I do heaps in Vietnam.
10:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to grow my mustache and hair at the moment for a big one that I'm about to do as well.
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done a few TV series with VTV as well here, but I've never done anything
10:55
[SPEAKER_02]: a lack for a Vietnamese bass show with speaking English.
10:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just not never haven't been invited or you have intentionally stayed away from it.
11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty open man.
11:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I do whatever whenever I'm as long as I have the time and that's where it's I've done I've done SPS in Australia a few times and stuff like that.
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love sharing because I have a pretty cool story from the beginning as well.
11:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So I love to share my story and also I love to hear other people's stories as well.
11:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I guess just not, not many people invite me, firstly, purely because there aren't that many publications like you know, you got you guys in a show, we have like SPS and as much as they they give it a good crack, it's not the biggest thing out there, you know.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's I think there's multiple reasons why as well because you know, I think when you do sport the red flag yellow star, it's hard to invite you on to these legacy media channels, right?
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in in America, there's like we have like a handful of Vietnamese legacy media.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way they can have you on and go, what they're going to have to ask you.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you take your shirt off?
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know that that's first thing that they're gonna do but for me I'm an independent person.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I can I you know, I'll cut kind of a little I'll get a little slack for this But you know, it's it's part and parcel of the work that I do But I think that for me I want to be able to cover every aspect of People that are affecting the culture It means culture both inside Vietnam and outside of Vietnam and I think you're doing both so here we are
12:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll put it this way.
12:43
[SPEAKER_02]: If you watch all of my content, particularly my content in Vietnam, where we do a lot of just a lot of fun entertaining content, a lot of charity content, bit in a fun way and a lot of things, you would never have a thought towards any flag, whichever type you would just go, wow, this is so cool.
12:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, then you say the flag and you go, oh, it's okay because they're a respectful decent person.
13:03
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not,
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, and they're inventing them and that's the flag of it and I'm right now.
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not there's nothing there's nothing outwardly hostile about it or anything, you know.
13:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean you're in these rivers or ponds cleaning up the trash and I've been by thousands of those in the 25 years I've been going to Vietnam and I know exactly what they smell like.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And you in there, you know, and I think to myself, I wonder what the viewers are thinking, right?
13:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, this guy's just showing off this guy's just making fun, but look, if we could start there, if we could even have anybody jumping into those polluted waters and just like, who knows what kind of toxicity is actually coming out of that stuff and for you to risk your life and
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, being those, oh my god, it's like, it reminds me of dirty jobs back in the day.
14:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I forget his name right now, but, you know, dirty.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But I remember that show.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you jump it into really just biologically hostile environments to clean out the gutter, and clean out the ponds.
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let me tell you about this story, bro.
14:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me take it back.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So we had just moved to Heng Yen in Wanzang.
14:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's outside of Hanoi by about 30 minutes.
14:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're just cruising around.
14:33
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to do some contents and videos.
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We had some ideas.
14:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we drove past this huge cemetery where again in Australia, we don't have that.
14:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like,
14:42
[SPEAKER_02]: huge, like, you know, the really big, uh, brave stones and now have the whole family, like, in the same little thing.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just went there and I didn't record any of the, the, the actual tombstones.
14:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just recording a video just saying about, like, my perspective isn't struggling.
14:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen that.
14:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It was crazy.
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, they're like houses in that, you know what I mean?
15:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, I, I just done not, and I'd come out and I noticed that the road was really filthy, and I went, uh, then this is, uh,
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: This shouldn't be, you know, like, if it was my family and now they're like, oh, this road is filthy.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, this needs to be cleaned up, you know?
15:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just any road, you know, and how to huge cemetery on that.
15:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, okay, I'll clean this road up.
15:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as we're walking back, I was doing a video on a set of, I'm gonna clean all this, this road, whatever.
15:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was walking back and I saw the river next to it and it was just like, putrid and I was just like,
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, all right, we'll come back and we'll do this too.
15:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew I couldn't do it, right?
15:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's, it's too big.
15:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The water is disgusting.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, really, really disgusting.
15:44
[SPEAKER_02]: There's the stinky rivers.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Then there's that river.
15:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went, you know what, I'm just going to do it anyway because firstly I'm a I'm an Australian guy.
15:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: We're hard working people and I went, you know what, I'm just going to do it.
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I because I knew one thing is people would go are is doing it by himself and you know the Vietnamese nature is well, let's help each other, you know, so it just sparked a and on Facebook these videos.
16:08
[SPEAKER_02]: get like five six million views.
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The huge views on Instagram.
16:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really get much or I don't post as much either, but on Facebook it was huge.
16:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you see all the comments and they're like, guys, let's stop wasting stuff in this area.
16:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he's the people in that community of Wanzang.
16:25
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all like, hey,
16:26
[SPEAKER_02]: where are you going to be all come and there was heaps of people like hundreds and hundreds of people in my inbox yes, I think will come will come so and then I just said after we've finished you know living a year and all that sort of thing I'll let you guys know and then yeah, so there'll be plenty more content with that and just with that particular area when our man you can't just leave this road like that when there's you know all your family is resting resting place, you know so but that's how it happened and then prior to that
16:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We did all sorts of, I actually went swimming in another river.
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very similar to that because I'd said, if Vietnam, if Vietnam loses, I'll do it.
17:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Vietnam lost, I can't even remember, I blocked the game mentally from my mind.
17:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had to go swimming in there for 10 minutes as well.
17:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we got up to plenty of plenty of fun stuff out there.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's the beauty of the internet.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That is truly the beauty of the modern life that we live is that you can affect change, change hearts and minds of people in ways that are unimaginable before the internet.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the inspiration that you can bring hundreds of people out to help clean up the environment is mind blowing.
17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say that because
17:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can affect change and positivity one video clip at a time, you know, yeah, I realize like this year, 2026 year of the horse.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like coming in hot and I just want to create more positivity because the world is just so full of negativity and we can do something so different.
18:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can really we can we can make a positive change.
18:06
[SPEAKER_02]: pro you're right in another example of this like one video that's all it takes and then one more video and then one more video that's every single thing you do is is building up into that whatever direction you wanted to go and like we did like we don't have money right like my family comes here we we're just a normal family we're just to be honest sometimes where the opposite of having money when we come here
18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and anyway, but I really love to just do videos of giving back and it's never crazy amounts never it's like whatever we can afford.
18:36
[SPEAKER_02]: We just do it right and I did a video and I was giving um old lady's flowers and it was really funny because I did like triple check like Am I allowed to give these flowers as a gift or these flowers for like dead people or you know, it was I had to learn really about what flowers for what
18:54
[SPEAKER_02]: then I went and I didn't post in the video that I was giving money.
18:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just posting getting flowers, but if you really, really look, you can see every single person I gave them like a thick, fat little roll of like hundreds and 200,000s.
19:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And what happened is people were commenting on it going, oh, you need to give money.
19:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You shouldn't give flowers.
19:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Why wouldn't you give money, blah, blah, blah.
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, whatever.
19:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the internet, right?
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what we do with on the daily basis.
19:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So another one that I had already recorded but hadn't uploaded yet,
19:24
[SPEAKER_02]: was we went and we just bought heaps of meals rice and pork and whatever else at all the little vendors you know like all the gum dump like two dudes cooking like hey how many meals can you make them like fuck 50 like okay when these like come back in half an hour so we come back at 50 and like big big plastic bags and we put them on scooters broke and I posted on Facebook and I was like hey if anyone in this area come help me like I need to do this
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: No preparation.
19:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just like, all right, I got time.
19:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it now.
19:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I ended up with about 10 people with scooters.
19:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And we just had bags and bags of meals just loaded on to these scooters.
20:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we went and just gave them out.
20:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We went to some really, really kind of high density homeless, homeless areas in in the whole chiming city.
20:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was like, yeah, it was a huge eye open at one of the most life changing events I've ever.
20:21
[SPEAKER_02]: being a part of because I've seen I've seen homeless and I've seen people doing it tough.
20:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen 10,000 within a minute appear, you know, like it was crazy.
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: This is at like 11, 12pm under the bridge going from district 7 into district 3.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember that I'm in the bridge.
20:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't spend much time in and so on.
20:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm mostly in Hanoi.
20:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We went down there and there was, you know, children, my kids, age, sleeping on the road and looked, you know, look like they had eaten, like, looked apart.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was heartbreaking as it was.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we'd stop and we'd start to get food out.
20:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And within two minutes, three minutes, it was just like, it was dangerous.
21:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Even for me, like I said, I'm a big dude.
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like really like in danger, because just purely because too many people.
21:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had girls that had common, you know, like tiny girls, like 20 year old girls had come along with their partner or whatever.
21:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just like, this is not safe for these dudes.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, and then since then, we still do the same thing, but we kind of do it a bit more, like, get in, get out, you know, um, because otherwise it gets too hectic.
21:28
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I was saying is, I don't think I've maybe done it 10 times, right?
21:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's maybe only cost me every time I do
21:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But since those videos every time I do a video they'll be a company who's like, hey, we'll do a sponsored post.
21:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll give you $5,000 or we'll give you $10,000 and they want me to just go keep doing it and then they be a partner of it like as in terms of me advertising for them.
21:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went, wow, imagine if I don't it and those videos let's say let's say they might have an average of two million views each.
22:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Imagine if I posted a thousand of those over a two year period.
22:05
[SPEAKER_02]: how much, how much awareness and how much support we could possibly get, but I thought, no, I'm not going to do anything right now.
22:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to stop it all.
22:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Until I figure out, okay, what can we actually do that's going to have a lasting impact rather than just going to get meals for the night?
22:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Because that was the takeaway from it is I felt good in the moment giving people food.
22:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like, wow, I'm helping this person right now.
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I drove, when I left it
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: but I just can't think of how I can solve that problem or even how you could make a dent in that.
22:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so vast.
22:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And to be honest, money is not the problem.
22:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It's too big.
22:49
[SPEAKER_02]: There's too many people and I just thought that has to be something, even on a minor scale to begin with, there's to be something I can do that can provide.
22:57
[SPEAKER_02]: a longer term solution for some of these people.
23:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I've kind of been amongst all my projects trying to, trying to work out because it's, it's fucking heartbreaking man, it's really heartbreaking.
23:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know Chris Trent travels?
23:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know Chris here.
23:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I love his content.
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I love his content.
23:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like you guys are both sort of like in the same space of helping using the leverage of the media, the corporate sponsorship, but to hear you say that it's really not putting
23:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I am pretty sure this is for the United States as well.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: This is for, I don't know Australia well at all, but only been there once, but how similar this is to just impoverished communities that we can't really do anything to help because it's just so far beyond our reach.
23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And you might be able to help a few thousand people at a time every year, but it is a very tough image to kind of like digest.
24:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, look, if I can just share a bit of my story, it might help you to understand a bit more.
24:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm coming from because to some people, they might go, what?
24:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm trying, I would know if it means blood.
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never even studied Vietnamese, right?
24:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I just learned it from just...
24:20
[SPEAKER_02]: working with people.
24:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I can read and write to a very high level to some people that would probably be strange.
24:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the time, it was in like 20, 20, 18.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I just lost my company.
24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very young.
24:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I was doing very well.
24:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I was killing it.
24:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I lost my company right.
24:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So lost all money.
24:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It was I had a fruit, a fruit wholesale company.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe in the first year, turned over about $6 million, like did really well.
24:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And then by the end of the second year, just through being young and not managing the company properly, just had to liquidate the company.
24:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So effectively, I'd lost everything.
24:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd also just separated from my son's mother.
25:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just in a, the lowest point of my life, and really, really terrible point.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And then luckily, I had been working for the old people that I mentioned earlier,
25:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Try to that.
25:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even know what, you know, and just it'll sound terrible, but in the in most countries like Australia or whatever, at least when I was a kid, we didn't know the difference between Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese or anything like that.
25:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We just knew, well, this is this Asian culture, you know, this is just an Asian thing.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: There was no education about any of it.
25:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Until I had found my way to Inala in Brisbane, it's the Vietnamese community in Brisbane, right?
25:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, these old people that I worked for, as harsh as they were, they're kind of like family to me at the time, you know?
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, hey, we're going to go to Vietnam, but do you want to come because like we need you to help us?
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: get around, you know, get on the plane, you know, they're very old.
25:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, wow, because I could not afford a trip at this time.
25:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I even had to borrow money just to spend there.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember it was, the lowest point of my life, like I was really extreme depression, just terrible time, terrible terrible time.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I came over here with them and it was from that moment that my whole life changed because what I did is I went to a really remote community in a mountain, in central Vietnam,
26:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And the way that they lived was just crazy.
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It was insane.
26:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a 90% trade-based community, the kids didn't have phones.
26:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it was, it was really like stepping back 100 years.
26:35
[SPEAKER_02]: What felt like stepping back in time 100 years to me.
26:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the most beautiful experience of my life.
26:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it was from that moment that I,
26:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I continued learning Vietnamese again just learning in my own way.
26:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't study.
26:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I just learned through music and other things like that.
26:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had such a desire to come back here.
26:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, oh, if I'm going to come back, like, I want to be able to speak Vietnamese.
26:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I learned through just posting content, live streaming and all those sorts of things.
27:01
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was from that moment that
27:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I came here in my lowest of the lowest point, and I saw that the people generosity of Vietnamese people, like I couldn't go past a house without someone offering me food or offering me to come in and drink with their family and their private din the time.
27:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it was such a foreign concept to
27:19
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, an Australian, I can assume even an American who hadn't hadn't been part of it.
27:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You just go, what do you mean?
27:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, you need this here.
27:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
27:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You need food here.
27:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It isn't.
27:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And everywhere I went, they wouldn't accept money.
27:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They wouldn't take it.
27:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, not.
27:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt like, really, but uncomfortable.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, we just gave me like 50 bucks worth of food for free.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to pay.
27:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, no, you can pay, but you can never come back.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, what?
27:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What is going on here?
27:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I went and working each day in that community growing corn and growing beans or picking coffee just as an experience just living like them.
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, yeah, I don't know.
27:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I just had this.
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember how to call with my mom.
28:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, how's it going over there?
28:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, I'm going to move here for sure.
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, oh, you know, you've only been there for a few days.
28:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to move to get four.
28:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
28:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
28:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just felt this real pool to get an arm.
28:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that was before I'd even met my wife or anything.
28:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I came back to Australia and, you know, started putting my wife back together and started building on social media.
28:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I now have an English school with over 500 students and I have, you know, my, my gold button for YouTube and all that sort of thing, but it was all from that trip, that, that couple of week trip, that's, that's what it all stem from.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So in that short brief time in, I spent time in so on then and also in in London, that I'm just really captured in really captured my heart and could be a lot to do with the trauma I just gone through my own life and then coming here and.
28:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know exactly why, but from that moment on, I just went, I just fell in love with Vietnamese culture.
28:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, Ethan, for all the audience that have never heard you speak Vietnamese, I just want to say, and I want to comment on your Vietnamese.
29:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You speak with the Northern Hanoi accent, flawless words that you use, the vernacular that you use is so precise, the idioms that you
29:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Clearly, I could clearly hear what you're saying and know that you have probably the reading and writing skills because the depth of understanding of what you're saying is just so natural.
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just want to let the audience know that if you all have a chance, check Ethan out on his Instagram page because you can hear
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: be inspired.
29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the most important thing is like to be inspired by somebody who learned Vietnamese, you know, very, very late in life and to speak it with that precision.
29:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it requires this blind faith.
29:59
[SPEAKER_01]: that you're going to move their one day, right?
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's what I think.
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You can only do what you did if you're just like, I'm moving here one day and I just need to make sure that I speak it the same way that the locals speak it.
30:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what, there was two main things that drove it.
30:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The first thing was that I started posting content about it.
30:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And people would laugh at me and people were like, oh my God, you sound shit, you can't say this, you can't say that, you can't, you're saying it wrong.
30:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just didn't care, because I literally just lost it.
30:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I just had a real ego-shattering experience.
30:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just didn't care.
30:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't give a crowd was like, yeah, whatever.
30:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I just stopped caring about everything and that's what allowed me to move past that period.
30:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where a lot of people get to and they're like, hey, I know a lot of vocabulary, I'm too scared to talk and it's like, well, then just give up.
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You're up or just do it.
30:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's only two ways.
30:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Just give up or just fucking do it because that you have to get through that phase.
30:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the second thing was that
30:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I, you know, you hear a lot of the Vietnamese ladies, they'll say, I keep to my language, yeah, well, like they'll come to them, God, I know, but come home, but be thinking, you're right, well, somewhere, yeah, I think somewhere along the line.
31:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I had some Vietnamese family or something because it was, although I say, you know, I learned in my own way.
31:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I listen to music and I just hang out with people in probably one year, maybe a bit more than a year.
31:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I could speak read and write from not knowing it.
31:38
[SPEAKER_02]: at all.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's pretty crazy.
31:41
[SPEAKER_02]: If I was to even an easy language like French or Italian or something now, there's no chance I could be as fluent with that as I am with Vietnamese and they are nowhere near as difficult as Vietnamese.
31:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So I can't really explain it either, but it was mainly the course.
31:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but the content when you keep posting it and then people keep commenting about it, it's just this constant loop and that's what really kept me going with it
32:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But let me ask you something though, Ethan, I'm speaking of the kipchew kip-sau, right?
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And what that means is, you know, this whole karma business of reincarnation, right?
32:15
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what these ladies are alluding to.
32:17
[SPEAKER_01]: There must be something also beyond, okay.
32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: If I was to record myself in my head, mentally visualizing the language, there are also contextual markers that I can feel in my body, in my heart,
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: that I just shit's really familiar to me.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why all of the vocabulary is soaking in.
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to ask you today that had to have been happening as well because if you're getting this stuff in under one year, there's gotta be some like quantum,
32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, uh, this is, uh, really familiar pattern and I'm understanding and soaking this up because if I'm not getting French in Italian or German like this, but I'm understanding Vietnamese this way, it might really be something, give you a kipsale, right?
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be or also might be that I have extremely freakish patent recognition, like I'm not the smartest guy.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't not mistaken me for a smart guy, but with it's just this weird thing.
33:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I just look at it and I just get it and I hear it and I just it with it means correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like you feel 50% the other 50% those in your ear.
33:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I would notice even when I couldn't speak it, I could still get what they were saying to me.
33:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is that make sense?
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: 100% whereas with English and things like that, it's not the same.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a different thing.
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I guess with the language and, you know, luckily they now have, it's like a Latin alphabet, Latin based alphabet.
33:54
[SPEAKER_02]: When I teach English, I say to people, learning Vietnamese, if you knew neither of the two, learning Vietnamese is far more logical.
34:02
[SPEAKER_02]: far easier than English because it shows you how to say it because literally someone was like hey say that word again and they're like um jaw and they're like okay okay that sounds like that and they literally that's how the current Vietnamese alphabet was designed right it's so much more logical than English.
34:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a precision to Vietnamese that English does not have and correct.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Viet about English is imagine like you're listening to American rap music and there are so many deviations of the meanings and the way things are pronounced and that's just one sliver of American English but if you put all of it together and you're trying to learn it formally there's just so much going on the imprecise way that Viet means is English is spelled out
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese has very clear rules and they don't deviate.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the there's no synonyms.
35:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no same word that means a minute.
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, not some minute the other way, which is one word could be could be spelled many different ways, but pronounced the same and yeah vice versa can happen to once spelling the same word could be pronounced differently.
35:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's bananas like the when you think about American English, it's just wild.
35:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Or bro, you teach English and then trying to explain to someone how do you, you know, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth show them the word sixth and they'll be like, what is that?
35:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, I made it.
35:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's, I hate teaching English, especially to people who, I mean, I teach English.
35:41
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of my full-time jobs.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is so hard to teach people coming from not knowing it.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: If they already know the vocabulary and you've just got to really help with pronunciation, beautiful, very fun job.
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you're going to teach them from the start, they're like, why is it like that?
35:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I don't know.
35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I just do it.
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's quite easy, I think, for the Western ears, the tonality is the most difficult part.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But once you get the tonality down, you really drill down on the final side of it, the tonal aspect of it.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The logical rules are very, you're staying in one lane constantly.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's rules that are very defined.
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, it's really funny as well because my accent, I noticed you said it's like a handle accent right, but if you speak long enough with me in Vietnamese, you'll see my accent is all over the place because I didn't learn from one person.
36:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I learned from mostly a lot of at the beginning, mostly people from, you know, I mean, they gun per.
36:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, a soft tongue, back blue, all these areas in the fast out of, um, then what happened was I started doing TikTok every night for like four hours, I would stream on TikTok, right?
36:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was at that time that my Vietnamese became very, very sharp, like it is now because all night, four or five hours every night, I was streaming and it was mostly with people from high
37:13
[SPEAKER_02]: of the kind of Hanoi region.
37:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was, yeah, that was where I learned.
37:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And not I were in you before that.
37:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Hence why I had a big enough following to do what I did.
37:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But it wasn't sharp.
37:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Like now it's sharp people go how the LA have you not lived here for 10 years.
37:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been here for a month.
37:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, what?
37:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it doesn't they're like how and like I know from when I was in Australia I learned fully in Australia and they just can't believe it because learning with those guys and just the way I am with with particularly with Vietnamese language like I said it's just like it just clicks for me It didn't at one point, but then one day it just did
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I just all night, you're like sharpening the sword every night, four to five hours.
37:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then also the other thing was comments on there.
37:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd have 20 to 30,000 live viewers watching the comments are going like this.
38:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you just get so fast at reading.
38:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't say I'm on the level of reading English, but I'm almost, it's almost the same.
38:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And to be honest with you, I probably use Vietnamese more than 50 percent of my day speaking, reading, writing, messaging, posting on social media.
38:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I probably use Vietnamese more than English.
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's what it was.
38:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I would stream with all these guys, my manly from the North just at the time, my circle on TikTok was, again, not, I didn't choose anyone.
38:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just the way it went.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you speak long enough with me, you'll see I'll still say many things kind of with the with the D or Z, like a, you know, you know, you know, instead of vaping at that.
38:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it's all over the shop.
38:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess mostly it's kind of a kind of a hungaway accent.
38:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like,
38:51
[SPEAKER_02]: For me at the beginning, when I started hearing that and speaking with that, I felt like it was more in a straight line.
38:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas down here, I'm in Sopjong right now.
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I just showed you before.
39:02
[SPEAKER_02]: There's there's kind of their way of speaking.
39:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to Bucklew an hour away and there's differences in it.
39:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can go to Garmal or you can go to, you know, Gunter and there's differences.
39:14
[SPEAKER_02]: There's many, there are only subtle, but there's differences in every single area where as I felt like that Hi-Fong, Tang-Wai, Tang-Wai all those areas up north, I felt like at least me as a listener to it at the beginning, it was more like, oh, everyone speaks the same thing.
39:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was just easier for me at the time to understand when they'd say it, I could write that word.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas in being gay people say it, I'm like, what letter is that?
39:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, but like I said at the start, when I was learning and when I couldn't speak very well, I would speak with a fully Southern accent at the time.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, we are covering nothing that I prepared for you.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other questions I wrote, we have not even touched one thing, and I love it.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it when conversation goes this way, because you're surprised, and this is the way life goes, you know, when things don't feral in a certain way, it's great.
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I do want to talk about is rapping.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah, your connection to the Vietnamese American content creators, like my boy, we farmer, you know, like, oh, yeah, he's a Australian.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a Australian.
40:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You said American, I'm so sorry.
40:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an American.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an Australian.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had money to the podcast.
40:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What a riot that guy is.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, Brian.
40:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you have this whole other side of your life of content creation that's wild as hell.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not even, it's nothing compared to what I came here to talk to you about, right?
40:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's this whole other chapter, like we found out like Snoop Dogg was an American diplomat before he became a rapper or something like that.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I'm just saying, oh, yeah.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to hear that journey how you, um, you got you all broke.
41:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We firstly, um, when you do a lot of content, which I do, you're going to have a wide variety of stuff.
41:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm the kind of guy, I don't do content because I'm like, or if I record the intro like this, it's going to be like this.
41:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Manhole, we're very similar in this aspect.
41:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We would just open the phone and just see where it goes.
41:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't, but I just cannot prepare content.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't
41:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't follow a script.
41:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I hate it.
41:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Even when I am see weddings, like 500 people weddings, I don't prepare enough and I just make sure I know I run the name.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't bring his script.
41:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't bring enough and I'm just like, I feel too uncomfortable and I feel like the more I try to remember a script, the more I'm going away from what I'm good at, which is just big naturally and just feel the room and you know.
41:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, look, I have, I have rap music videos,
42:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I have an English channel where I teach English, I make kids English learning videos, I make charity content, I got content of just doing stupid skits, everything you, you name it, I've got it, but one of my most favorite things to do and I never, I was never with like a music lab or anything, anything like that, I purely made the music videos, I've done about maybe five or something.
42:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I made them first reason is because the first one I made blew up it really blew up and it got like it did super well and I was like okay and a lot of people asked me like can you make more and I was like whatever and then I just found the whole process of having a big project for the first time ever where you're like you've got to write the song firstly.
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to get, you know, I worked with Big Voo.
42:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure if you know, Big Voo, but Big Voo made the beats and things like that.
42:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just felt like involving different aspects different people and then putting it together with a music video that we made fully ourselves, like just, you know, just get the on the camera.
43:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You always got that one on the camera.
43:04
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got a camera
43:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, yeah, get it.
43:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Bring out Chono, you know, and then so you just get all the boys together and then you'd add at the video and you'd post it as like a premium on YouTube and you'd get all the boys around to watch and I just loved it.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I really became addicted to that process of working with a huge team.
43:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the most recent one we did with how we farmer in it and Zipper had another young really talented rapper in Australia.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That was so much fun.
43:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We got Vietnamese from Sydney, Melbourne.
43:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we went to the Saigon Plaza in Brisbane and it was empty and we just like they just gave us the whole rooftop to film the music video.
43:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It was awesome.
43:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that the one in the like the mostly gray tone?
43:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that the the one?
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, ah, yeah, yeah, the most recent one.
43:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you were to say that on Instagram.
43:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that one.
43:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And that one did really, really well on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, but not really well on YouTube for some reason.
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We all were like, I wrote my bit that we wrote his bit and zip it right his bit.
44:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah,
44:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, not even a whole bunch of times like we saw went around as Yipers had and just like laid it out and I think, yeah, no, we all I love a love Ziphead's person up, but how he's first was good to see.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: How he's similar to me as well, like in that way, he's very creative.
44:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But one day if you're doing this stupid as content you've ever seen in your life, next day he's doing like a serious music video or somewhat serious music video.
44:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the cool thing.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: You never know what you're going to get, right?
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But
44:36
[SPEAKER_02]: with the music that's I'm the same like I love drill rap I love Australian drill rap I don't get into much American old old American rap I love but then at the same time like while I'm here I listen to like U-Fooing and famtooing and like Nactvang Nactvang like all the even full-on ballero music it's one of my favorite things to listen to so yeah maybe I just have like 10 personalities on the show but
45:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I love it, man.
45:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And with the music videos, I would say looking back now, it's something I always come back to them like, man, I'd love to make another one.
45:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's just such a fun experience.
45:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Far out, you know, I'm, I'm sitting here thinking like, oh, these takes months to prepare.
45:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you look at the thing and you're just like, flow is just like, on point when you're like, when you're spitting these real times, it's like, wow, this is like really good stuff's fun stuff.
45:30
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think I'm good at it, but I think I'm I think I'm good and I think I think it comes from being a kid, you know, 10 years old or 12 years old buying M&M on core and and opening up the lyrics booklet and reading it 100 times over every song like playing it until your mom tells you shut shut the hell up turn it off that you know when I was a kid I was obsessed with rap, I think a lot of us were when we were kids so.
45:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's what it's from.
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But then what I loved about it was mixing in Vietnamese and making it like English and Vietnamese rap.
46:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think such a niche audience right, but I never made it because I was like, this is going to blow up.
46:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I made it because I was like, this is such a cool, what I call like landmark pieces of content where you like.
46:13
[SPEAKER_02]: five years from now you watch it back and you go oh my god that's terrible but like it's such a funny experience I watch it with my kids my kids like no all the words of my songs and I'm like that's a it's a cool you know landmark content right right it's amazing what what do you actually spend most of your time now
46:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the moment, I just moved to Hanoi because I opened a export import company in Vietnam.
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, I have an export company in Australia, so we're going to send stuff to ourselves here and then send things from here back, like we actually had the moment have broken us from Bentea going back to Australia.
46:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so I have been in Hanway for a month.
46:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm now in Subjun, which is my wife's hometown in Mink Bay, and uh, this is my, this is my favorite place, man.
47:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I just love chilling out here.
47:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Why Subjun?
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, uh, my wife's hometown.
47:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, no, no, I, why is it your favorite?
47:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I just don't know, and it's just one of those things, like, why do you, how did you learn Vietnamese so easy?
47:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really know.
47:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I just come in.
47:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a very genuine sense of like I had a lot of traumas, you know, business related personal related.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a really hard block of time.
47:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I came to Vietnam that the reason that I loved it was that feeling of you, you just
47:35
[SPEAKER_02]: you feel truly welcome.
47:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You feel truly welcome and you feel truly relaxed.
47:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when I found I was able to step out of the trauma and to start looking at life again.
47:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I come to here, even though the first time I came here, you know, a lot of people knew me online from TikTok and things like that, but for the most part,
47:56
[SPEAKER_02]: you pretty much left alone and I just felt super super relaxed.
48:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like I can just lay down here in a hammock and just chill out and you know it's been there's only been a few times in my life where I had had that and then ever since that moment whenever I come back here I associate this place with oh I'm gonna go there I'm gonna feel amazing for the week you know I'm gonna you know I just
48:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I get on the bikes and I just go in whatever direction I feel like and you go and you find some really tiny community out that farms rise out there and you sit there for 2 hours and then at last time I went out to the beach where they farm fish and all those sorts of things and I just chilled out there and everywhere you go you meet someone new that does something that you don't know about.
48:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just there's not much happening like there is in the city so everything's kind of at your own pace and wherever you want to go whatever you want to do you just go and that's it's a true freedom it's a true feeling of freedom for me here and I guess that's what I that's why I just love it when I come here because they are cool I'm down for another week of
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: true freedom, you know, who wouldn't be, right?
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: However, in the future, I will be doing a massive project, which I'm not legally allowed to talk about until the end of the year, but as soon as I can, I will.
49:15
[SPEAKER_02]: But for this project, I'll be in, uh, so go on for about a month next month.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I'll be in, um,
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: they buck and a few kind of the country areas in the north and a few I'll be moving around for the next year pretty much, but I have a house rented in Harno, so I guess that's home base at the moment for me.
49:35
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you meet your wife?
49:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, good story.
49:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So my friend rings me up and he goes, bro, there's a singing contest at the uni at the university and I want to go in it and you're going to come with me because then I'll win and I was like, wait.
49:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, wait, why?
49:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, yeah, it's for Vietnamese people.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, but I'm not Vietnamese.
49:52
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, no, I checked.
49:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You're allowed to go in.
49:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still.
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay.
50:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 2020.
50:08
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
50:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a singing competition.
50:09
[SPEAKER_02]: A singing competition he goes, come along, we're gonna win if you go in it.
50:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, fuck, what's all we're gonna sing?
50:16
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, when I sing this song, just trying to remember the lyrics.
50:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, damn, this ain't gonna go good.
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a bit of miscat.
50:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, he's he's a good friend of mine.
50:26
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like a brother.
50:26
[SPEAKER_02]: He's name's Clang.
50:27
[SPEAKER_02]: He's he was one of my very first if not the first Vietnamese friend that I had actually And to this day, he's my brother, but he goes, yeah, we're going to go in the singing contest and I was like, oh man.
50:38
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
50:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever.
50:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like I'm pretty easy going guys.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, all right.
50:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.
50:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, we go along and we we sing and I we sing terribly like I'm not a singer.
50:48
[SPEAKER_02]: We also forgot the lyrics and it just capitulated basically within about a minute and but then you know the judges which at the moment you know child Ali right
50:59
[SPEAKER_02]: No, generally.
51:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Chong Ali, bro, he's done no.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He's done tracks with, uh, Holy, you know, the Viet gang song that Holy farmer put out, well, that was, that was where Chong Ali, he, he is probably one of my favorite rappers of all time.
51:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though he's like a niche Vietnamese rapper, probably one of my favorite of all time, who I still listen to daily every day.
51:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He's in my mix with he, he's got some great tracksman, especially from Viet gear.
51:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got some great tracks.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, he was one of the judges who I didn't know at the time, you know, and a couple other people.
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I guess they saw at the end of the song when they were like, you know, that was judging our performance.
51:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I spoke really well or really entertainingly.
51:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're like, hey, do you want to come back and be the MC of the Grand Finale?
51:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, fool, because the girl who was seeing our trial run that we're doing was like the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and I said as we walked into my friend buying I was like, hey, I know all the Vietnamese here, I don't know that girl who's that and he's like, I don't know who cares and I was like, no, no, no, who is that?
51:58
[SPEAKER_02]: She was beautiful.
52:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, okay, whatever I was like, well, we're here for work.
52:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's focus on the job at hand, right?
52:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But then I like, hey, do you want to come back and be the MC of the Grand Finale?
52:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was going to be also.
52:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, yeah, whatever it is, I'm down.
52:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, let's do it.
52:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from there, she was, she was about to be running out of her visa in Australia.
52:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And she had planned to come back to Vietnam to open a business.
52:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And on that night, which is the first night we'd really properly met.
52:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, no, no, no, you can just stay in Australia all marion.
52:28
[SPEAKER_02]: She was like, what?
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, yeah, I don't know.
52:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I guess I'll shoot myself now.
52:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we just, we're just stating contact a little bit.
52:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But she wrote me a message.
52:39
[SPEAKER_02]: She was like, okay, mate, I'll see you soon or something.
52:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, damn, she dropped the mate on me.
52:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, but it means like, friend, right?
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just go through that from now.
52:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't need to be told twice, you know, have a good life, whatever.
52:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then maybe a month after that, she was like, hey, would you like to go out and get some food?
52:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and then from that moment we never, we never were apart, what a beautiful story.
53:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is, and now we have two half enemies, half Aussie kids, and yeah, we're very, very lucky, but she's a real one man.
53:15
[SPEAKER_02]: She went through a lot of hard times with me and she's just that true, true, just, you know,
53:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately for us men I got to say this but Vietnamese women are the backbone of this country man They are they are on another level man, and I'm so proud that she's my kids mom You know, she's she's a weapon absolutely weapon Wow I'm so touched to hear that Yeah, I'm
53:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree with you, bring some feelings for you.
53:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no, you know.
54:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Was your mom like the kind of the weapon character in your life?
54:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Was your mom kind of that?
54:08
[SPEAKER_02]: There are special people, man.
54:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's hard.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Hard people.
54:15
[SPEAKER_01]: unconditional love for the family, you know, but not all of them are like, you know, not all Vietnamese women are like that.
54:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, for the most part, the ones that
54:30
[SPEAKER_01]: travels throughout the world, you know, you could see that that way of being and it's hard to explain.
54:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very, very hard.
54:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds misogynistic when it comes out of a man's mouth, you know.
54:42
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, but you got to say that and this is, this is a, this is a, it's a touchy topic in the west ride.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: for me right and people go on you know you that's that's sexist or whatever but here's what here's the reality of it right is that we're designed by God or whoever designed everyone who's listening you can have your own designer but we're designed by God right and man I'm really good
55:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I can work seven days straight with no sleep, no food, and I can get through it, right?
55:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I can carry 50,000 stresses and still get my job done and nothing, everything's fine.
55:14
[SPEAKER_02]: However, if I'm here with 30 minutes with my own children alone, I'll throw them off the balcony.
55:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't do it.
55:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot do it.
55:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have the ability to do it.
55:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And women, particularly my wife,
55:33
[SPEAKER_02]: This fuse never ending fused like they can just roll it on a throw it on her and she just she'll do the classic snap, you know, like raise the voice and like You know classic Vietnamese style however she she makes the meanest food every day She never buys herself anything she never does anything for herself everything is purely to make the kids happy Make sure that I'm happy and everything is always done to maintain the family unit and if you
56:00
[SPEAKER_02]: If I take her out of that, like if she goes to work and does all these things, it's not happy anymore.
56:06
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not happy anymore.
56:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not because of any sexist reason, the reason is because there is a true beauty in that and being the homemaker, like you are the rock of the family.
56:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said it to her many times, myself and some of my artist times, you know, like.
56:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You need that wife that's just there for you.
56:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You go home and no matter what shit storm you are facing in your life, you go home and you've got some fresh fur or you've got some fresh meal made for you and your kids are happy.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man, that is invaluable.
56:37
[SPEAKER_02]: No money in the world can buy that.
56:39
[SPEAKER_02]: No matter how rich you are, nothing can buy you that.
56:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that to me is a very special thing.
56:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not about the man does this and the woman does this.
56:50
[SPEAKER_02]: We are the family unit.
56:52
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my role of the family unit and this is your role, but there's a real camaraderie aspect to it where it's like shit.
56:59
[SPEAKER_02]: She's had a messed up day with the kids.
57:02
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't sleep last night.
57:03
[SPEAKER_02]: She's got this going on this going on and we got to come into bat for a bit and help out and vice versa.
57:08
[SPEAKER_02]: She goes man.
57:09
[SPEAKER_02]: My husband's been
57:11
[SPEAKER_02]: he's been fucked up this month with work and all this and she'll even come in and chipping on on other things that I need to do and that's the way it should be man in my opinion and it has nothing to do with with because man of this or because women of this it's just the way
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It is man and that's what she's good at and I'm good at what I'm good at and it's a beautiful thing man.
57:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really beautiful to have a proper family unit like that and I mean that's that's in many ways the the culturally speaking that's that's the way it was for a long time and I guess Vietnam and and many other places and I get it now man because yeah even my wife when I in the in the instances where I've needed her to come in and and work in my business
57:57
[SPEAKER_02]: doing what she loves to do, which is keep, which is, you know, doing things for the family and being there for the family and also she has her own little, her own projects going on and stuff too.
58:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I take her out of it and I bring her into this, you know, work and into my stresses, I just feel the whole family suffers.
58:16
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so I'm like, whatever it is, I'll just do that.
58:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll all pull help from somewhere if I need it.
58:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm never touching that family unit again.
58:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not worth it.
58:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to leave that family unit because that is the rock for any man, any man who, who maybe is, you know,
58:32
[SPEAKER_02]: maybe doesn't have a family yet or anything like that is in my opinion that is the rock for any man like that you can that you can stand on to fight any any troubles coming your way if you have that rock man you're good because once you walk in your house and you close it all behind you you're back in your happy um you're happy non-affected
58:51
[SPEAKER_02]: realm of where your family just loves you and you love your family.
58:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you go back out the door, okay, then worry about the shit, the shit storm going on, but at least when you're in your home, you have that sanctuary of a loving family.
59:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Ethan, this conversation has been surprising and it's taken on a lot of different directions and life of its own.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We are up on tone, but what I want to do is I want to invite you to constantly reach out, you know, especially the project that you have coming up at the end of the year, it sounds like you're under NDA and it sounds like a thing, but
59:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Contact me and, you know, let's keep in touch and have you back on and, you know, there's so many recurring guests that I have now that we get to learn about Vietnam through your eyes and ears through your experience and my platform is the place that a lot of Vietnamese Americans and people who are not even Vietnamese learn a lot about what goes on in Vietnam through the eyes and ears of somebody like you.
59:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you.
59:56
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
59:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I really appreciate the opportunity to come on here, and I definitely will grow.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I definitely will reach out and yeah, like I said, it worked out really good because this is learning you here and I'm off work at the moment, but any moment I have, I'm always happy to share things and even like I said, yeah, with that big project that's coming out and things like that, I think a lot of Vietnamese overseas will be interested as well.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So definitely I'll reach out to you brother.
1:00:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank you very much again for your time, man.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, to when I'm on, yeah.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Come on, yeah.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, brother, I have a good one.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Take care.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to The Vietnamese with Kenneth Win.
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Win, Catherine Win, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Trin.
1:00:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at The Vietnamese Podcast.