Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 525 - Why Is Vietnam Secretly Erasing Its Iconic Street Vendor Culture? - Chris Tran Travels

Transcript

525 - Why Is Vietnam Secretly Erasing Its Iconic Street Vendor Culture? - Chris Tran Travels · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast today.
0:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I have Chris Tran from Chris Tran Travels back on Welcome to the podcast once again Chris always a pleasure can thank you for having me back
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like you're not sure you're talking every week because the topics that you are covering in this last few months become such a part of every Vietnamese person's journey, historical journey in the world and the latest one that you did with a woman who broke down to
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: our past history, with Cambodia, this fascinating.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to see more of that.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to see deeper.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I go to other things that you're breaking down words.
0:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, we see more of that.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just never ending Chris and I love it so much we should be talking until we get feel.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it's never ending because you know, it's never ending because you inspire me with the people that you have on and then I'm getting little like sparks that send me on this rabbit hole, you know, and then I uncovered new things that I'm like I never knew this and then it just keeps going and going and going, more questions,
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, it's infinite like treasure chest of content, you know, like for us, it's talk about, but like personal for us.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's personal for you.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like this personal drive to just keep digging.
1:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm never satisfied with like, oh, this is what being Vietnamese is.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: This is it.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, wait, no, no, there's more open that door than there's another huge rabbit hole that jumped into.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I'm doing and that's what you're doing.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So, do you think we will ever be satisfied with the information that we've been covering?
2:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We just need to sleep.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We just need to get sleep.
2:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Some days like, okay, I do just, you know, like, recharge my brain and then I'm back into it.
2:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think it's ever going to end.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not.
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's a beautiful thing about it because, you know, there's so many ways to look at being Vietnamese, being our history, our culture.
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I went down a huge rabbit hole with our food.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I had an incredible privilege of co-hosting a Brown University study abroad course.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: like just recently, it's 14 students from Brown that came to Vietnam for three-week trip from Hanoi, all the way to Macon Delta.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Big shout out to Gojang, the Vietnamese professor who organized that and invited me on.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I came as like,
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They called me like the onsite liaison, you know?
3:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what do we call Christmas?
3:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was just like connecting all these people I know from Hanoi into the Macon Delta, like my entire network who I thought would be inspiring to the students.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But then Gojang also brought on like university professors.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I'm just in the back during these lectures like just soaking it in and I'm like, Oh, my God, this is food.
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been eating my whole life.
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: No, whatever odd about like where does this come from.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What about this ingredient like where does the Vietnamese?
3:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And a new kind of, you know, category begin, you know, it's all gets blurrier and blurrier.
3:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have to kind of like redefine it, you know, think about where we're looking at it and be like, oh, wait, I'd never caught this before.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just keeps going.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I can speak for the both of us that it's incredibly fulfilling, you know, it drives us.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And we can make that funny.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We can make that emotional.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We can make that, you know, personal.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's just so many things we can do with that.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so good for you.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been working,
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: My day job in the last year is working with robots, cooking robots.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know, I've been in the food business for a long time.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And recently, I, I was like, chomped at the bit to work for this company that my, my friend, chef win.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And the team is all Chinese guys from mainland China.
4:49
[SPEAKER_00]: and guys from all over China.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There are just so many different types.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know there's so many times of Chinese food.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I just had no idea Chris.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, you know, it's like when somebody just recognizes or realizes the Vietnamese culture and then they jump in.
5:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this is what's happening to me with James culture, the food culture.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm like, like,
5:14
[SPEAKER_00]: twice a week, we go to lunch.
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The boss takes us all, we just hang out and whoever's in the office, we go to lunch.
5:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I began to realize the difference between their noodle dishes, their food dishes,
5:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Natu, the funk, the, the, the pungents, the pungent of some of our dishes.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We have this like mump, mump, mump, this really strong pungent.
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I was watching that episode with you in
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Come here, come on, roots, and when I think about who do you, and when I think about like that feeling of that pungent that real deep kick.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: that fermented kick, I feel like it's like related to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and people, and just jam, yeah, and central, because when I eat Chinese food, a lot of Chinese, but when you eat like a lot of Chinese food, like a year of it.
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You begin to see like, it's missing that kick.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That real deep, pungent kick that's in like, Cambodian food, Lao, Thai food, that shrimpy, sort of like, it's, that's sort of like for me now, like the difference, the general difference, that there's a different type of like,
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: kick that Chinese food has, but it's not that like, and there's a soul, a spirit to that kind of food that I'm beginning to notice the difference between just in general.
7:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
7:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
7:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You notice that because then now I'm looking at the food really differently too after learning about it and the history of it and you know, when I talk about it, it seems like a lot of people in the comments get really emotional about like who does it be long to you know, like we started it and then you can dig like deep deep deep into that and
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I think even the scholars that are really committing their lives to digging this stuff up, like they disagree with each other, you know, so it's like, at the end of the day, when I'm reading these like really like charged comments like, no, like Vietnamese people came up with fish sauce first because it was in like our historical records and I was like, it's jump people and it's like, oh, there's a theory that the Romans came up with it and then
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: who cares, you know, what's actually more interesting to me.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, I think maybe it's the the old geography teacher me because I used to teach geography as well in high school is the reason for it is really interesting because they're saying that it evolved out of this necessity for fermentation.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, to kind of preserve food in really harsh climate.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the central region of Vietnam, with like there was like a lack of farm land.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So people were fishing a lot.
8:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You needed a way to ferment food and then you get, mom is like such a thing there.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's also like the energy people need to work.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like very, very salty, super-pungent.
8:45
[SPEAKER_01]: like flavors, and spice was believed to fight off toxins.
8:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So you need it spicy food to like kind of survive these climates like that's what people thought during that time.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So the last time I went to Hawaii, which is about two weeks ago, I started to kind of notice it in the Hawaii food and the Danang food when I ate the the mom there.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, wow, this is really spicy.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: and salty.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I never really registered this, you know, but it's like, oh, it comes from this, this need, this survival, you know, like people were doing it because of a very specific purpose.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's fascinating to me that now it's like, it's just cuisine, right?
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like, it's just Vietnamese cuisine, this is how we eat, these are the flavors, this is what Vietnamese people like, you know?
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But back then, I don't know, a thousand years ago when someone was coming up with these,
9:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't because of taste preferences or like some chef who was like, we're just going to concoct this because it's like, this tastes good to us.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, it was like for their specific reasons.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: and very specific conditions that it came about and it came about too because of what they had on hand in their environment that that's what grew our food you know and now it's like hit you know you can find it in like a hit restaurant
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But it comes from like these people that were doing it to survive, off of what they had, like, you know, centuries ago.
10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, that's cool.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter who it was.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We can get really into that too.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, you know, that's more fascinating to me.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it, as you're telling the story,
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And mum relies on this pungency.
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It relies on this sort of like this deep umami like umph to, you know, it's arguably one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the United States.
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this restaurant in New York, the way it's set up, the chef behind it is white guy, you know, killing the food.
11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like the,
11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a great way, he's just a bad ass, he had the food there, I can tell you there every day, but if you take out the pungency of the conversation that we're talking about, it's not mum, I mean, it's called mum, you know, it's called mum, it's
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the soul of our food in its own way, because when I eat Chinese food, it doesn't have that at all.
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's almost no fish sauce.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like in some parts of the dishes that I eat, the bowls of noodles is very similar to Houthil.
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You have all the little accoutments, but it doesn't have that, it doesn't have that stink.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: you know that that cool like yeah, you know, yeah, and much that's up in the face.
11:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, stuck in the face.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that really separates our cuisine and I feel like you know psychologically it bleeds into like when you talk about the spice and you know the the
12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: the flavors of the central dishes, it affects, you know, psychologically affects the way I see the culture of the central people, right?
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a difference sort of like in the way that they kind of like carry themselves.
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's psychological to me, you know, it's not, I'm not saying that there's any empirical thing that I can research, you know, it's just a feeling I get.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not the only one, I mean, I've noticed that and I confirmed it with even these professors who said, like, you know, they all agree there is kind of a connection between what's available to people, how they eat and the culture because they talked about how that transformed when it got to the Macon Delta when Vietnamese skin settlers were moving into the Macon Delta and it was a land of abundance.
13:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There was so much available in the natural environment like they didn't really need to really even farm.
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You can just stick your hand in the water and catch a fish.
13:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There was like all these like, you know, plants all around.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so people could just like grab a bunch of stuff, wrap it up in some like rice paper and then just eat.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so it was just like very, very generous like the environment which is very generous to them.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so much abundance.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Very different from the central.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: where you had to survive, right?
13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to preserve food.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to use a lot of mum to kind of like, you know, have food that you might not get later, you know?
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they have four months of typhoons in central, right?
13:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the south, they didn't really have to worry about that.
13:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, does it make the people the way they are?
13:57
[SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of a connection, I'm just like put that theory out there that, you know, meaning that people are very generous, they're very open, you know, they're very like welcoming, you know, the food is like just from one edge of the table to the the other, you know, on this huge like baskets of herbs and like, you know, that's just how they eat, it's how they are as people.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Just coming in my house, drink all my beer like, you know, you're welcome to it all of it, you know, and I think it's kind of cool when you we make these connections if we could be wrong, but like how fascinating is that, you know, that the food, that's the culture, the people and like sometimes the food was like really just like what these settlers were.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, eating because that's what they had on hand in their environment and like I don't think, you know, um, 16th, 15th century Steadler during that time Was thinking that, you know, this food is going to make it into New York restaurant like, you know, generations later like how crazy is that, you know?
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I just love that stuff
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: the transformation of who we become and how we affect people who are not in our culture like mum and being in New York and you see all of these international travelers in this restaurant and how it's like really reverberating and creating such a beautiful connection for Vietnamese people to the outside world.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, learning needs to be an encyclopedia type.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: historical documenting of Vietnamese food, because I think that there's just like the Chinese cuisine, there are hundreds and hundreds of dishes that we do not know about.
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: No, nobody can just know about all of these dishes and Vietnam and the variations of certain dishes, because the more you dig into the Vietnamese cuisine,
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: it's not what we think it is.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there's a depth to it and variations to things and why things are are different in certain regions not all fuzz the same, not all bunches, I was the same, not all how quiet is the same.
16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really rich place.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and all these dishes are like, there's like, there's a timeline, right?
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Of when these dishes came about because okay, on top of it, just being what was available to them, it was also interaction with other cultures.
16:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we wouldn't have fun me if the French French weren't here.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: right we wouldn't have maybe even I might people might attack me in the comments for this, but maybe even noodles without you know northerners coming in from China, right?
16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, yeah, I thought you meant French and noodles.
16:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd be fine with it.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to clarify everybody.
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's like, you know, when we say like Vietnamese cuisine, we're thinking like this box, you know?
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But me, like in my head, it's like, especially now, it's like a venn diagram, you know?
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always like overlapping, like, you know, circles on top of each other.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, who here's come out cuisine, here's French cuisine, here's Chinese cuisine, but like different regions of China or whatever, here's Laoshen cuisine.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like overlapping, overlapping, overlapping.
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And even those categories, you can like,
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, dissect them even further and then break them up even more, you know, so it just keeps going and going and it's just like us quitting labels on stuff.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: to make things easier for our brains, but like it's such like this beautiful chaotic mess is cuisine and culture and our language and like all of it.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's why this exploration doesn't stop.
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because this language is more layers off of it.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like, oh cool, like this came about because of this and, you know, add a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it's, it's my boy.
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to put, I'm going to put this out in the comment section.
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm asking anybody who's listening or watching this today that if they know of other things about people who are like real, like,
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: researchers and people who talk about this please leave it in the comments because Chris and I will definitely explore this more and the reason I ask that is because I'm thinking about a mutual friend that you and I have who I consider a national treasure to Vietnam both Vietnamese Americans and Vietnamese in Vietnam.
18:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're about to talk about.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Go for it.
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you talking about Daniel?
18:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only one.
18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is there only that one guy that we've both think about?
18:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He's truly a national treasure to the people of Vietnam all over the world and I, you know, you and I are the mouthpieces.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's like, in the trenches researching in the forest and, you know, like, buddy, it worked the last 20 years.
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, just such a fascinating, fascinating soul.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: because I'm going to be straight up honest here.
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: When I met Daniel, so this was on that food trip, this like food study course that I was saying.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You just met Daniel?
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just met Daniel.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So how is that possible that you just met Daniel that you've been there for so long and didn't say?
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just met him because on the the travel study course, one of the students,
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: set a message in the group chat and it was like, oh, I've heard about Song Kai.
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're really amazing.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I really like what they do.
19:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's when I finally check them out because I don't, I don't drink a lot.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely, I'm not a gin drinker either, especially.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So then I was like, I don't know about them.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I've heard of them.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I looked at their website and I was like, OK, this is really cool.
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like the five minutes that I like looked at it.
20:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, OK, this is amazing.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I will go with you.
20:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's off the itinerary.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So the the school doesn't pay for this part.
20:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so if you go, I'll go with you.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had a little group that went and I was like talking to some guys Instagram account.
20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Not knowing what's Daniel, all right?
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's like, come on through.
20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll take you guys around like the distillery and I'll show you guys what we do.
20:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, awesome.
20:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So we showed up, there was like six of us.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It was awesome that the students who asked to go really knew so much.
20:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They asked a million questions.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like, genuinely curious and new about distilling and spirits.
20:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And all this, and I was like, just this spectator.
20:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, listening to this like nonstop like four hour conversation about distilling.
20:56
[SPEAKER_01]: and like hearing Daniel talk about his history, his background, how long he's been there, and it just clicked, I'm like, okay, I see what kind of person Daniel is, you know, like what kind of Vietnamese diaspora on their journey to Vietnam type of person he is, you know?
21:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been in a different category, you know?
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I hate to do this, but like, you know, I kind of like kind of place Vietnamese diaspora that comes to Vietnam, and I'm just like, okay, this person is like a new seeker, they're fresh.
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're like here because they're curious about Vietnam, they're trying to find themselves, you know, like they never spoke a lot of Vietnamese back home and like, you know, they've only been to Vietnam with family cool.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the path that you're on right now.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome, welcome, you know?
21:55
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like a different like he's going to be on that.
22:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He might get cravings for burgers and like want to speak a little more English a certain day, but he's like deep into the entire Vietnamese world and like the culinary world, the history, like he's just like Yakuya said, he's a national treasure.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a national treasure.
22:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because of his work and his depth of knowledge and his passion and his connection to local communities and what he's doing.
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He's he's I haven't met.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't met anybody at that academic level.
22:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Like like a PhD wouldn't even, you know, it wouldn't even be sufficed to describe Daniel.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like going to spiritual like cloud like he's going to spiritual cloud.
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like a god, you know, he's like y'all like No, the spring down between Daniel like what he's doing anymore
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely like when I was to G and not G for gangster, but G for genius, you know, is a total total G and you know, it's like funny that you bring up the whole craving for burgers.
23:14
[SPEAKER_00]: He was in LA one time and chef went and I were hanging out and you know, we were coordinating hang out with him.
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: He
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's chef when is like knows all the little spots and the Michelin spots is the street spots, the taco spots, everywhere in LA and it was crazy being around these two guys.
23:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like, um, where we getting dinner tonight and they're like chicken neck tacos and he's still there somewhere.
23:47
[SPEAKER_00]: and we go to this place it's look I come from other I was like basically born and raised in a lake I've never heard of this spot and you go there and it's packed and it's been going for years it's packed this chicken and taco place and you you're from L.A. too Chris I've never heard of me there chicken and tacos okay
24:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't saying it was, but I'm just saying this is like one of the mini arrows that these guys have in their quiver, you know, but chef when it is like food food and then Daniel's like they they're like both these like black belts and food and they you just watch them on the mat and they're just like
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm blowing to see the dead.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even need it.
24:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to talk about it, break this down for me, explain it to everybody.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Why you're into this?
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's insane.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they're doing this about, because you know, these guys are traveling all over the world and Germany, and they're like talking about how they crave.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and they're not like flexing.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just like, truly,
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Like two souls who are like just buzzing, connecting when they're together, you know?
24:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like being around that.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like that around you, you know?
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we get to nerd out on the culture.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't sleep like that's why I brought that up because we're stayed up to like four a.m.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: When I see you talking about this, I was like, can we got to go to bed, man?
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just going.
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but you know, same to you, man.
25:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Who else in the world, you know, and I'm not obviously asking you that right now, but I would love to hear it in the comments, who else in the world can Chris and I
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, talk to more or should be on our radar because two years ago, you should have known about Daniel and now you're knowing about you know what I mean like that's but you're in the thick of it you're in Vietnam and you're around that world and now you're just now meeting so imagine if that's why I always say we need more podcasts there's we need more we need like 100 x more.
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: doing what we do.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, sometimes I'm too in the thick of it, that like, you know, sometimes I'm in like a village in central Vietnam trying to help them build a bridge, you know?
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm like, I'm not tapped into like who's doing what?
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's talking about what?
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but when I do like, I love just, you know, being around that, like Daniel like, oh my god.
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's just like a treasure trove.
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I'm I'm asking the same thing.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's out there?
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's doing this?
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So I invited a couple friends onto like this food course that we did and I don't know if you ever had Lila on Lila's amazing curious about you.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been heard of that.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is Lila?
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so Lila feed me his name is V. She does a page called Curious about Vietnam.
26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: She's also called Miss yummy face.
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: She's so oh my god.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I call her?
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like a Vietnamese food ambassador She's like because she's like very bilingual.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: She does all her content in English, but you know, she's from Vietnam She's from Hattan, like North Central Vietnam Amazing journey, but I just love how she has this like kind of like insider connection
27:20
[SPEAKER_01]: to vendors, to chefs, to people grow the food.
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a very intimate, very deep understanding of street food, Vietnamese food culture, which I really appreciate.
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I brought her along, she made a little speech with the students, they loved it, they loved it.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a guest, another guest speaker.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to lower the volume.
27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry about that, everybody.
27:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead.
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's drop in that name for you right there.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: My really good friend, she's incredible.
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like there's got to be so many people out there.
28:01
[SPEAKER_01]: People in the comments, please let us know.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really want to find more of these, you know, seekers, people who are like very deep into it, who are doing incredible things right now.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: learn from them.
28:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just kind of be around that curiosity that passion.
28:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I sent you topics that we're gonna talk about because I've been thinking a lot about these topics and every time I see your clips, I think about, you know, these other things that are not food related.
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're moving into the second half of our conversation.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanna touch on some of these ideas.
28:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like Vietnam is driving towards cleaning up
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: corruption, bribery, shenanigans, and they're really going hard in the paint.
28:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like Vietnam is really trying to do some, but it's slowing down the economy because you got to kind of like, you have to go really slow in order to go really fast.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's targets in 2045 to for Vietnam to be like, they're probably trying to be, say again.
29:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Developed country.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like developed countries that is by 2045 2045 Right, which is insane if you think about it, you know, it's like that's a huge very huge jump huge jump That's like
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, but you could see that it's happening.
29:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, people in the States, Vietnamese people, they don't believe it.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't understand it.
29:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't, you know, really kind of, I saw one to ask you, what, um, what are you seeing on the ground, um, as somebody who lives there and, uh, who could kind of like just make this distinction of like, um, is life really improving in the way that it should be.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a tough question, but that's a really hard question for me to answer.
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I'm going to quit to answer it.
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say there's challenges.
30:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that Vietnam knows there's challenges because they're doing a lot.
30:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I could say.
30:15
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, when I went to Hanoi with these students recently, was the first time I experienced
30:23
[SPEAKER_01]: them getting rid of the sidewalk businesses.
30:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So like a lot of our favorite jam places and then street places.
30:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They used to just spill out into the sidewalk that was like their business for however long and then it's just like all empty.
30:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we once had our favorite jam place that used to be packed, right?
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they have to operate just within their house because they can't be on the sidewalk anymore.
30:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then Hanoi itself was just like kind of dusty because there was all this construction that was going on because they're just like rebuilding Hanoi pretty much right it's this massive amount of development that's going on like just, you know, making a new city it seems like, um,
31:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then, you know, with the new airport that's going to come around Ho Chi Minh City, then building like a track new like high speed rail through Gung Yeh, which a lot of people are saying are like kind of like the last kind of big green zone around Saigon.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're going to build a high speed rail there to like some like luxury development that's that's going on on the coast.
31:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, just all these big things.
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't I can't comment on it.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, you need to hit up our boy Mike Tatarsky or someone who's really tapped into a lot of the economic policies right now.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the ground, I would say, man, I guess I'm a unique person to ask because
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: My work takes me to a lot of different communities.
32:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I go to a lot of kind of rural communities, Central Vietnam, Macon Delta, where it hasn't trickled down to them as fast.
32:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm not saying the government doesn't care about them.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that.
32:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And too, I'm not sure about all this.
32:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't trickle down that.
32:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It can't happen to stress.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to prioritize.
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't do everything at once.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's still pretty rough for them in some of the parts where I'm at.
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say that there was one really big project that we were doing in the central region in what used to be Wengnan Province.
32:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We were renovating like a huge road that last year because of the typhoons was just demolished in kind of isolated this village, right?
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So then they were,
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of stuck out there, it was really hard to evacuate people and, you know, they were kind of cut off.
33:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So then we fundraised to help them kind of like reinforce this road that connected the village.
33:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And the government has stepped in to
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just redo the whole thing.
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just happened recently.
33:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we were just scrambling to like kind of reinforce it with like rocks and stuff like that, you know, big rocks.
33:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was kind of the game plan.
33:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I went back to visit maybe a few months ago, they were like, Oh, the government stepped in now.
33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, you know, they're contributing this much money.
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just going to redo the whole thing.
33:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then in the same village, we were trying to build a playground for the school, this like kindergarten, and then they're like, oh, the kindergarten's not there anymore.
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, what happened?
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, they just demolished it.
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to build a new one.
33:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just came back there to visit it.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, wow.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like another kindergarten double the size.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's happening.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like, you know, all around it might not be reaching obviously all the communities like you said it cannot trickle down cannot be developing all at once at every location.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, they're pulling off like a lot of things right now, it's it's going to be a different Vietnam, I feel.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: soon.
34:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's hopeful, but at the same time, a little bit sad because the magic of the street vendors and our lives, our lives of, yeah.
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: citizens that have these magical businesses that spill out into the road and to the street that we get to experience as travelers or foreigners and the magic of Vietnam needs to be cleaned up to make way for, you know, a cleaner, tidier sort of systematic way of fitting into this
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what's the balance?
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you do that to kind of take care of people, keep that essence?
35:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think I hear this, not just from like, tourists and like visitors who are romanticizing this, like locals feel this way too.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They feel like this is,
35:26
[SPEAKER_01]: What Vietnam has always been, you know, you, what is Hanoi?
35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: What is Ho Chi Minh City without the street vendors?
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the street culture, the lady's selling like Magianjo by like Hokong Wu, you know, like, which are not there anymore, right?
35:41
[SPEAKER_01]: they're not there either.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it is cleaning up.
35:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm hearing like also they're really formalizing all the taxes as well.
35:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know you had like a lot of Vietnam's economy being kind of like an informal economy.
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's just there.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just, you know, organizing all of that and then and people are going to have to register their businesses and pay taxes and probably have inspectors check out what they're doing, you know.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, disclaimer, I don't know the actual policy right now, but yeah on the ground, it's very visibly changing.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always physically changing.
36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like you know how fast the development has been Vietnam and the change and like now it's like going even faster because you know the policies are massive you know how they're revapping everything.
36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure every society, in known to mankind has had to undergo this transformation and in some ways it's beautiful for some people and, you know, it's absolutely destroying other, you know, communities of people when we think about how it's, uh, every time there's a shift, it, you know, it's got to be good for some people and horrible for other people.
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, I mean, I feel like me being on the ground working with community programs and you know, folks out in like very rural parts, small towns, things like that, you know, I think about them a lot.
37:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just think about like if these big changes happen and they will that there are programs in place there's things to support them that, you know, they're going to find they're going to share in the whatever, you know,
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom, you know, she visited recently.
37:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just literally going to talk about it.
37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I literally was just, that was like the next topic that I was getting into.
38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to transition right into your mom right now.
38:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Crazy.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I, it was beautiful because I got to bring her to all these community projects.
38:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the way on Central Vietnam, we went to this place I was talking about, where we're doing this infrastructure work in near Hawaii.
38:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I brought her out to the Macon Delta and she met these people and like she has a different perspective, you know, where she's just like
38:27
[SPEAKER_01]: they're doing so much better than we were doing back in our day.
38:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's like kind of where she's coming from.
38:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Because she's seeing people like, they have motorbikes, they're able to get around, they have plenty of food, they have houses, you know, like they seem really happy, you know,
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: she's not seeing a lot of struggle in average families in these rural areas, even, you know.
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I think me being in psychon, like I'm seeing like this fast development, these huge high rises, you know, yachts, even.
39:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like the gap is so massive, but then, you know, she kind of...
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: was like seeing how, you know, people have enough and compared to what she was seeing back in like the 70s, you know, the early 80s, she's like, yeah, this is this is good, you know, people are doing well and I hope they do better.
39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that's not a comprehensive view of how people are singing at home, but like, you know, it was it was interesting that my mom shared that perspective
39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't, your mom has three kids, right?
39:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, she lives in the States, but two of her kids are in Vietnam, right?
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yes, two of her boys are in Vietnam.
39:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Two of her boys are in Vietnam.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And her baby, my little brother, he's very young.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And why, you know, this is my mom doesn't, would never move to Vietnam.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And why is your mom living in the States when two of her kids are in Vietnam?
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And Grandpa.
40:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, yeah, she's like,
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the, it's the daughter's duty, it's the child's duty, you know.
40:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, we're not talking her out of it, you know, it's just like, you should take care of Grandma, Mom.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's, that's what you did your mom, I asked this because, you know, I, I live with this and I contend with this, with a lot of older people on their generation that they don't want to live in Vietnam.
40:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just boggles my mind.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you can live in Vietnam and have a,
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: in my it's a very biased view you can have a much better life why would you want to be outside of Vietnam and you can live inside of Vietnam with with this structure you have your sons and you you're going into old age and you got people taking care but I know it sounds like your mom has grandma but I'm asking this as a general question like one day is your mom open to
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: she said that she wants to be here, that's huge for us, massive for for me, 20 years, man, back and forth, you know, every since I've fallen in love with Vietnam and just finding my place like my community here and committing to this place and my parents being like, what are you doing?
41:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then to hear my mom say, like, I want to join you guys.
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I really want to be there.
41:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, she was so sad to leave a couple days ago, and it was like, man, it is very emotional for us, and it was beautiful, man.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The three weeks that she was here, and, you know, and, you know, I think like,
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: 80% of it was just us being together, but then, for her to have healed and to enjoy being here and allowing herself to just really have a good time with us, was amazing.
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the first time that it was like that for us.
42:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like she had no issues with like,
42:17
[SPEAKER_01]: the idea of her moving back here.
42:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Like she really wants to.
42:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but she has that obligation.
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, I think that, you know, we're going to see a lot more visits.
42:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, um, but the question that you asked why why wouldn't you choose this life that that's really a question that I asked my dad actually.
42:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like what, but you know, and no responsibility is, we don't, I can never claim to fully understand what they went through.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, if I ever move to Vietnam and my kids are like, do what?
42:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you leave LA?
42:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you leave the place that we all grew up in and we had such a good time riding the subway together going a little Tokyo together with each other and eating all these wonderful variations of food.
43:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Why dad, why would you not live in LA?
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the question I asked my mom and all of my uncles who can, you know, who have money.
43:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, she's actually had like two brothers so I can move back to the
43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But for the most part, why would you not want to be with your sons and relocate to a place that people look like you talk like you.
43:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, life is not, it's not that difficult.
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a wonderful place.
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wonder if that's a whole lot actually.
43:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, for that and I'm kind of speaking for him here.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: He's actually very mysterious with the reasons.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really know why, but it really
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guessing because he came back here two years ago and I was kind of watching him spending a lot of time with him, like watching his experience here and it was really awkward for him.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really tough for him.
44:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Navigating Vietnam and like, you know, stumbling with the apps and like everything felt familiar, but the unfamiliar was like scary to have, you know, having to ask
44:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Locals like how do you use this app?
44:20
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I pay for this like you know, he felt so awkward?
44:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it hit me that like he had actually spent more of his life in the states by that point You know, you know, and in the US even though from outside it seems like oh, this must be so weird for you because like You know, it's not your people.
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't get to speak me in a maze all the time
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually, my dad's routine is like, he's set.
44:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he's speaking his broken English at work, still, he's got his buddies, you know, he's got, you know, where he lives, and he's got his little routine.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And then to break away from that and go into a place that should feel familiar to him.
45:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the grew up there, but it doesn't, it's like move way past what he's familiar with and you can hear it in the way he talks sometimes because my dad's like kind of like filtered and my dad's like what the heck is this this is terrible like what why did they build this I'm like that relax and you know like It's like criticizing everything, you know, yeah, that's how that's his his way of coping with like
45:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like this.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like a lot of change for me and it's kind of freaking me out a little bit here.
45:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so that's, I think that's what he was experiencing.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's not political.
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, I know for a lot of our first generation, our parents, you know, it's political.
45:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I think my mom and my dad, you know, have kind of thankfully move past that trauma.
45:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So for them, it's something even deeper.
45:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, well, you know, my mom now, it's it's changed, you know, because of this recent trip, but with my dad, it might be something a lot deeper than that, you know, it's psychological and and for my dad to it's it's a little different from a lot of our it's a little different from a lot of my friends parents because he's not moving back to a bunch of family members.
46:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, for your mom, it's like if she comes back here, like two of her brothers are here.
46:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know.
46:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And like a lot of my friends, parents who have moved back here, they're moving back to join massive extended family, you know, and building their little house and let me comment down to her, whatever it's around.
46:31
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how I grew up.
46:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This is amazing.
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like my dad doesn't have that.
46:36
[SPEAKER_01]: He left, like, he's Bucknump though, he left the North when he was left.
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Who roots left?
46:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, everybody's gone.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So if he comes here, the crazy thing is like, his family are going to be his kids.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're born and grew up in the states that they'd be at, not now, mind boggling to think about that pattern of that, right?
47:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a surreal.
47:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a place where you came from, you know, entire lineage is from here, but you look around and you're not related to anything except the kids that were born away from this, you know, craziest thing is that in a lot of ways, I know more about Vietnam than him.
47:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it feels weird to say that because obviously like he grew up in a very traumatic time and his experience and like all these things and and like obviously I'm not talking about that I'm just talking about like I've traveled more than him.
47:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yep, and Vietnam.
47:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I've talked to more locals throughout Vietnam than I've talked to.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: a wider spectrum of people than him from like professors to like farmers to like celebrities, some musicians to like all these kinds of people like my understanding of this place and the different communities is vast.
47:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like a thousand.
47:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I was doing with my mom.
47:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like taking her to introduce her to like all these dimensions of Vietnam, these facets of Vietnam, these different communities, then she didn't really know about.
48:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she went to Hawaii and she's never been there.
48:09
[SPEAKER_01]: She asked me like, I wanna go to Hawaii, can you take me?
48:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never been that far north before.
48:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, yeah, let's go have friends there, you know, like, you know, I know a driver.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We can like check it out.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanna introduce you to all these people.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's what I was doing.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it felt amazing.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But kind of weird if you think about this,
48:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I was, I didn't grow up here, you know what, I'm showing my mom like her birth country, you know, and it's it's a crazy thing that's happening, you know.
48:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But that may be so beautiful, yeah, that's amazing and beautiful.
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine what that's like, you know, there is another thing that's related to this topic of family that I found to be so funny to you are talking to your brother.
48:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, you guys never speak Vietnamese together.
48:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, there's this awkwardness to it.
49:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I cannot speak Vietnamese to my brother.
49:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be it's just,
49:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just I don't know what it is, but to call my brother unenam, but, you know, even with a gentleman, that's the weird thing.
49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: When I talk to my mom about my brother, I say, I'll, I'll label my brother on.
49:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And even that feels a little bit like, oh, it's a little bit, but, and I've been doing that for like, 34 to years of my life, you know, because my mom really made a point to correct that.
49:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you just can't, you're a call about a Tom, you know, you have to call him his Vietnamese, and I'm lying, right?
49:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, be correct about it.
49:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm watching you talk about this with your brother and it makes me realize how really far removed we are culturally on a language level that we can't even speak to our brother.
49:57
[SPEAKER_00]: in our brothers in, in his native language.
49:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's fascinating to me.
50:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating, it's, it's the feeling is real.
50:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so awkward, you know?
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And especially the, I'm am, you know, like imagining your brother coming up to you be like, oh, I'm like, I'm coming up to you.
50:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, I'm the, you know, it's like, what did you call me?
50:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so weird dude, you know?
50:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's like, it's not just a language, like it's not just speaking Vietnamese to each other.
50:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also like the ranking,
50:24
[SPEAKER_01]: you know like we like I just don't see my brother as like this little am to me you know like I have to like get used to that has to train my brain to get used to that um and then he tells me uh my Vietnamese name too with aunt and it's aunt and my Vietnamese name is Munn so he is going to call me aunt
50:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but then I think I feel like it's like merged into just a word, you know, it's not like a rank, you know?
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But wait, is he calling you unnaturally like is it okay for him or not?
50:52
[SPEAKER_01]: He calls me unmen, which is my Vietnamese name and then you know, with brother, with un, but it doesn't feel like he's saying it like it's some kind of rank, you know, like big brother.
51:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not using am back to him like to me.
51:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's cringy and I feel like it's cringy to him too.
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, what is that?
51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
51:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is that?
51:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is it?
51:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you know, even my little sister,
51:24
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't even call me un, actually.
51:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Only my little brother does.
51:27
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives me 17 years younger than me.
51:30
[SPEAKER_01]: My sister is three years younger than me, but we've never had that culture of calling each other at an in-aim.
51:35
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't even call me un-min.
51:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have that rank.
51:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Even my sister, yeah.
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just like equals, you know?
51:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a weird, it's weird, it's just so weird, and you can't speak Vietnamese without using these pronouns, it's like rankings, you can't use Vietnamese, it's like, um,
52:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's it's like cooking, but you have no like, you have no heat.
52:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's you have to have heat to cook.
52:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you have to have these pronouns to cook.
52:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it means you have to.
52:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because it's like, I can't do that with my mom with English.
52:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I speak Vietnamese with her.
52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have our own little world together that's just Vietnamese, right?
52:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't have an English world with my mom with my little brother.
52:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the opposite, right?
52:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And my, and my sister,
52:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like we only have this English world like we've never established a Vietnamese language world with each other to talk about these things to tell stories to each other in Vietnamese and like jokes to each other or like share emotions in Vietnamese with each other.
52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, we're always going to opt to using English as a tool for that and like you know we operate in a English world like we don't we we're not
52:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have a Vietnamese toolkit for that with each other.
53:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I just realized something, something that we probably think about all the time, but I just realized something, it just hit me like a ton of bricks right now.
53:08
[SPEAKER_00]: All these years of talking to my mom and dad or grownups and occasionally being really, just being really nasty or being really strong,
53:22
[SPEAKER_00]: to their ears, me using certain languages and then going home, muck guy, and it really triggered them in a way where they just wanted to smash my face in.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The opposite is true of what's happening to them when they're in the States.
53:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're young American child is talking to them like not even not even like equals, but you're like, as American child, you're talking literally down to your mom and dad, like you're saying, no, no, let me educate you.
53:53
[SPEAKER_00]: They can, yeah, he by my hand.
53:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't say it.
53:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me teach you in Vietnamese.
53:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't
53:58
[SPEAKER_00]: you never say that.
54:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just unheard of the way you used the word.
54:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me teach you.
54:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me educate you.
54:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't as a child educate back up.
54:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But in America you can.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Mom, let me tell you about this.
54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, your ideas of like, you know, reversing the river's flow going upstream is completely normal in an American society the way we use language.
54:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like disrespectful.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
54:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I totally agree.
54:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there is kind of like this thing that's inherent in English, especially American English, that the language kind of carries the culture and the culture is very like equalizing, right?
54:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very like, you know, it's very like informal, but Vietnamese is not like that.
54:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you're informal with Vietnamese and I do Vietnamese locals talk pretty informal with their parents, they can buy their parents, but it has to be cute.
54:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to be a joke.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not serious, you know?
54:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a way to do it.
54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like very cute, but like that hierarchy is established.
55:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you still are very much like respectful to the parents, respectful to elders in general.
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, taking care of the people who are older than you.
55:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's built into the culture and into the language here.
55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: like, people are very careful with that.
55:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's not, it's not like going back to that word toolkit, again, it's not a toolkit that we have.
55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's a thing that it's like very normal for Vietnamese people here.
55:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I work with a very young Gen Z local Vietnamese team.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And they would just snap into like character.
55:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they would just know what to do when an older person's there.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: When my mom is in the room, like, they're just like, they're just like different, they're just like different.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they transform into like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're very respectful, you know, they know what they do, they just code switch, you know?
55:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so to me, that that's amazing.
55:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm not going to be like super hard on on our second and third gen who like don't have that education and that that experience.
56:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That experience.
56:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not their fault.
56:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's very nice to see.
56:13
[SPEAKER_01]: young Vietnamese folks who are taught that, who continue to carry on that culture, and that kind of respectful way of using the language.
56:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to see that.
56:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's a dark side to it where you have to shut up and just kind of like, you know, obey orders.
56:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like, you know, sometimes that ranking kind of backfires a little bit.
56:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's that respect, you know, and that kind of like kind of like humbling yourself when someone's older than you.
56:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
56:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like that, you know?
56:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And it goes beyond language, too.
56:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you see them snap into it when, you know, like an older person is sitting down, they'll get them a drink of water, you know?
57:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And like the young people start to clean up, you know, or like they'll fight each other about cleaning up like, yeah.
57:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's very Vietnamese, that's been a big part of our culture that when we're in the West, a lot of the younger generation and myself included before I learned and watched all of this, we just sit there, or it's like we have American ways of doing things, it's like very direct, you know?
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't ask me to do that, so I didn't do it.
57:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, it's very cringy when I'm in Vietnamese places,
57:37
[SPEAKER_00]: and like homes in Vietnam or in America, it doesn't matter.
57:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And then with Vietnamese people and at the end of a meal, if there are people with me that don't get up to move with the kitchen flow, men or women, it's just very cringy to me.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: because that's what we, when you, when I see them not move, I'm like, oh, yeah.
58:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where do you come, like, who raised you?
58:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a, but I think in American homes, it's more like, this is not my house.
58:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to get up to, you know, I'm not going to get to clean or, you know, move the dishes young, young, can you, right?
58:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it means homes in America, and if it means homes in Vietnam, whoever I'm with is not moving, it's just a very,
58:23
[SPEAKER_00]: awkward feeling.
58:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's a little older than me and they're like, Jewel back or whatever and they don't get up at that's fine.
58:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But typically they're my age or younger.
58:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to get your ass up and like you're having some cups in the kitchen and you know, men or women doesn't matter to me.
58:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just you need to start picking up and signaling that you understand the culture of this is community and we don't just sit
58:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, those.
58:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know what?
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll take it back.
58:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm, I'm going to get a little hard on the first generation here or the, the second third generation, um, they, yeah, they need to know good form.
59:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's, yeah, it's taught to the Vietnamese folks here, but I don't think anyone argues against that.
59:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very important in the culture to have those kind of manners.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom goes crazy.
59:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my mom's in, like young folks come in and they don't go.
59:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, that's such a big deal for my mom.
59:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, automatically you're in her bad books.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're coming in all timid and shy and it's like, oh, I don't wanna, I don't know what to call her and then I'm just gonna like slip into the room.
59:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if my friends came over and they did that or my little brother's friends, boom, they're in the bad books for life.
59:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like you have to gow.
59:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Very respectful reading.
59:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I take it to another level.
59:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I take it to another level because I have kids and I have to do this to them
59:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And even about the jail for me, dude, it's not even about that.
59:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's jail, but you better be connecting your eyes to the person that you're jail, right?
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not enough.
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough to just say, you can kill back.
1:00:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have to, I, I make my children.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like literally you square up shoulder to shoulder with the person and you have to look at them and and and be in the present moment and not be like Go back and then you're not looking somewhere else and you want to run you want to get to your toys and you want to get to the back of your room.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, you sit there because it's
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: it's human connection at this time we need to make sure we establish a firm connect with the person.
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that the Vietnamese way of jow, you know, so beautiful and warm.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's missing.
1:00:49
[SPEAKER_00]: this whole other dimension, if you're not connecting eyes and really sitting in that moment to connect with the eye.
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really pushed this with my children every time they are with uh and my parents said that to me and I got I talked to so many Vietnamese adults that thank their parents who did that to them when they were growing up in America because you know it really makes a huge difference in how you carry entire conversations with people in Vietnamese.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends, who I introduce my mom to here, um...
1:01:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It was always a little, it was a lot more than just jail for sure.
1:01:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're not little kids, but, you know, it would be jail, jokal.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, they would talk to her, right?
1:01:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They would ask her how she's doing, like, how was your trip, quiet home, and then they would like help her sit down, they would get her food, you know, my friends who are girls, like they would like lock arms with her, walk with her, you know, they're just like forget Chris.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here to hang out with you, you know, like they give her so much attention because, like, they really love older folks here.
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They really do.
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_00]: They really do.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not really doing it.
1:02:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Because even at the airport, you know, we're flying Vietnam Airlines and, you know, they saw me with my mom.
1:02:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they, they are like, oh, come over here.
1:02:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They put us in another line, you know, to, like, kind of cut everybody.
1:02:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And my mom was like, oh, no, no, no, no.
1:02:21
[SPEAKER_01]: She's just kept repeating that and then she started like saying like, you know, she started expecting it.
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was like, oh, so how my whole thing, you know, like, she, she felt like, um, really taking care of.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was doing it.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be like, gone down like, Chris trend travel is not anything.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, who?
1:02:45
[UNKNOWN]: What?
1:02:46
[UNKNOWN]: What?
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cool man.
1:02:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I noticed it until my mom started pointed it out that I was like, oh, yeah, you know, they really take care of older people here.
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of respects still.
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it.
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris, thank you for agreeing always to sit and shoot the shit with me.
1:03:11
[SPEAKER_00]: These moments, these hours are such a treat for me, because I know how really busy you are.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And the work that you do is so valuable and to be able to sit and really just kind of go everywhere with our topics.
1:03:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So super.
1:03:30
[SPEAKER_00]: super duper valuable to me and being able to cut these up into clips of our conversation and being able to pick your brain and I want to say push and propel other people to suggest other topics and ways of thinking is a real treat in the work that I do and thank you so much for coming on today.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Bro, I'm always honored and, you know, to me, this is like
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_01]: like a teaser for me because I would love to talk to you for days about any of this stuff.
1:04:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know that.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's always, always has such a pleasure, you know, to spend this time with you.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_00]: As long as we can always keep the role of me asking the questions and you talking about it, oh, we're good.
1:04:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a comfortable place for me to be.
1:04:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be turning the tables on me, man.
1:04:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be asking me, I know you got to tell you.
1:04:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is great and I hope to see you at the end of the year in Vietnam and are you coming to LA anytime soon?
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I will be there in a few months.
1:04:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be back for a month in December.
1:04:43
[SPEAKER_01]: A month?
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a minute.
1:04:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you coming back for a month?
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Just a visit family and you know we're spread out most of my family are in Alabama.
1:04:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow That's where my mom lives is my grandma lives my sister though is in redondo beach California So you know will be split between those two so we need that extra time Yeah, we should definitely set up a few podcasts when you get here and set up, you know and just record
1:05:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
1:05:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris, my pleasure.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much and we will be talking very soon.
1:05:19
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, catch you soon, Ken.
1:05:21
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, thanks, Chris.
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care, brother.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Win.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Win, Katherine Win, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Trin.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.