Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 527 - How Did A Ginger Become The VIP Guest At A Vietnamese Catholic Pilgrimage? - Phúc Mập Vlog

Transcript

527 - How Did A Ginger Become The VIP Guest At A Vietnamese Catholic Pilgrimage? - Phúc Mập Vlog · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Today I have the dear friend back.
0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck them up.
0:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Although now, I feel a little bit weird calling you that now, because you're not fucking up anymore.
0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more like, fuck, no, hello, fuck, blah, blah, like, what do we, what do we, how do we get out like figure that out?
0:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, it was very interesting.
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't picked a name yet, but going around Mary and days, which I'm sure we're going to talk about
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The number of names people tried to assign me or give me, you know, people I met before people who'd only seen me online Like you said, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fukno, Fuk
0:55
[SPEAKER_00]: football isn't really came down.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not really humble because it is okay.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We gave it to you.
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The world gave it to you and you didn't give it to yourself.
1:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, of course, of course.
1:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the end, I really like the name.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what I've heard for you since 2015.
1:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really hard to make that switch in my head.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, maybe maybe I've done enough to deserve a name change
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But to be honest with you, I still like food map because I never saw this an insult.
1:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I never saw it as degrading You know, maybe we don't say food no as, you know Something that you don't need to be humble about because if you can just say food no full no la
1:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it didn't mean we said something.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know.
1:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We can do different things.
1:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty satisfied with football.
1:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't tattooed on my side.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't see myself changing it any time soon.
1:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is, you know, really great to hear people who have only seen me online or haven't seen me since two years ago at Mary is to give the compliment.
2:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So always happy to receive a compliment.
2:12
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you doing tonight?
2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm good.
2:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I was really looking forward to this because I apologize for not going with you to Mary and Daisy and we're going to really get into this because this is why we're here.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just got so busy with work and you know, I do want to go and I, you know, I have kids and it's just such a huge commitment to leave them and and go out there to cover in the days.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a family event.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I brought them two years ago and it's hard because they're young and it's hot and there's nothing for them and for for for you and I it's a lot of interesting things that you're just when you observe it you're we're going to get into this.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk both of us find a way to share a way to talk about Marianne days in the beginning just to open up to the audience what
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll probably give a brief overview, but I would love for you to come in as well any time to sprinkle your football, you know, very dust into the story because I know it from many generations ago, but I haven't been a part of it and aligned with it as much as you have in the recent years.
3:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Marianne days, as I understand it, is what in Vietnamese we call it, Nai Hoai Tan Mao, which is like the Coachella for the mother of God in the Vietnamese culture.
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is where 100,000 Vietnamese people go out into, I mean, it's like in the middle of America, Carthage, Missouri, and the group of priests, yeah, young, don't come.
3:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that translates to in,
3:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually really bad with a religious vocabulary and Vietnamese.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually went to my first Vietnamese Catholic church this last weekend.
3:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I was the MC for a wedding in Portland and then invited me to the actual reception at the church.
4:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I grew up Protestant, but I'd never been in a Catholic church.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd definitely never been to a Vietnamese Catholic church.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm listening to him as he's given his speech.
4:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, I'm getting this word.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I got that word.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't know that one.
4:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a whole new set of vocabulary.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The lexicon's out there.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So the the priests are Yang Dong come and the priests, I think they landed in that part of the world and
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: some Catholic gave that like I think there's like someone got the amount of acreage to this order of Vietnamese priest that came from Vietnam in 75 and I think they started up in 77 and people started to come visit the priest because they
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: put on an event for the weekend and in the early days and the seventies when you had all of these people who are, you know, coming from Vietnam who didn't have a sort of a meeting place.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the place and then it slowly grew into this big pilgrimage for Catholics and now non-Catholics.
5:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a wonderful place that people go camping for a few days, three, four days, I think,
5:24
[SPEAKER_00]: even longer because, you know, to touch on two things, you said, one with the, you know, ton of acreage, they just, one of my buddies there explained to me, they just got more since the last two years since I was there.
5:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So he took me in his golf cart all the way out to the edge.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It just goes on and on and three to four days for the actual event.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but people get there
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so they'll be getting there weeks before, and I've met a number of people from two years ago, and then, you know, reunited with them this year, they actually have purchased houses in the town to be at, so they don't have to worry about a camper or anything.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Unbelievable.
6:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, if I was to put a magic number on it,
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: people in America, and only even talking about like regular people, but Vietnamese Americans in America.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I would venture to say maybe, I'm just throwing a wild number out there, maybe 20% of us know about this thing.
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, and maybe so deep in the Vietnamese culture, I remember two years ago when someone told me about it, I said, I've never heard of that.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it?
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And they gave me a breakdown and I said, well, that's probably worth an eight-hour drive, a better check it out.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so glad I found it because this time this year I drove out again.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: second time going.
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I went two years ago and then went back this year.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's up, there's a magical feeling at Marion Days because you know that the town is shut down.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole, um,
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: area is shut down in a way that's organized and the white people around town understand what's going on Walmart is full of Vietnamese people in the middle of nowhere and the surrounding cities as well.
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Joplin and just everything around that area.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a special thing that somebody needs to make a really thorough documentary about the place because after 50 years, I don't know, 48 years now, it is still going very strong.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about three weeks before the weekend starts, it's usually the second week of August, right?
7:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it was the six through the eight if I'm not mistaken off the top of my head and to be honest, you know, I might have told you the last time we did a podcast, but you know my wife is very open to me traveling by myself and she said Nyania Lelemwit Kimthian Musa Chava
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: back on.
8:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can go anywhere.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I can go every week, but I need to be doing a business trip.
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't just go for fun and leave the family and I don't want to do that either.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So this summer, I've literally been in a different city.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: every single weekend.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way I worked this out was I ended up getting a sponsorship in Kansas City with the Vietnamese Cafe, the first Vietnamese Cafe in Kansas City.
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I used that as a springboard.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I drove to Kansas City seven and a half hours.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I drove down to Carthage the day after two hours down and then drove back from there.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, tell me what it's like for you to go into Dachruth and Mal, it is.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's everything I love about Vietnam, but over here.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can display this on my video.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, two years ago, the first video is the drive over and when I get there on Thursday night.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it was Thursday night and Ernomahs, Wednesday night.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I'm walking right into the tents,
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: people just started inviting me in the tents.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They say, hey, if we're going about you doing, my, my, come inside, check this out.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They explain everything to me and it's like, here, take a picture of my kids, hang out with us.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, would you like a beer?
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you like this?
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's, it's literally just like Vietnam because I'm one of the only new and look why and everybody's so hospitable and friendly.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll see when I put out the video from this year.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm walking from my car the first day.
10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Folks, ma'am, where'd you come from?
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing here, hey?
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just literally from the road going all the way to where they serve the food.
10:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm taking pictures, shaking hands, saying hi to everybody.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's such a hospitable and friendly environment that it just, it's almost like it transports me over to Vietnam.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Your magic.
10:26
[SPEAKER_01]: of experiencing that is a reciprocal sort of feedback loop because people know who you are and you know that you speak in Vietnamese is such a charming thing for this sort of fishbowl of 100,000 people, 100,000 Vietnamese people and I don't know if most know you, but a lot know you.
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel that way and I say that again as humbly as possible, but you can watch the videos.
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you this year, I didn't even make a good video.
10:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't make a good video because the whole time, as I'm walking with my camera, trying to get a thought process going, trying to get a storyline going.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Fugma, to Wenderham.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, you know, I'm happy to talk to everybody and take pictures of everyone and you'll see in the video it's almost going to look like I just made it to look at all the pictures I could take with people like it comes up in every video, but especially in Mary and days where I couldn't get a second to hey, look at this food even at one point one of the fathers at the church is my buddy now father Benedict
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, here, come eat some bun cool movie and then I'm going to take you here and there.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And we sit down and I can't even eat my bun cool.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody comes up to the table to take a picture.
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have the personality.
11:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the kind of person where I don't get annoyed from that.
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's great.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just appreciative that people like my content and like me enough.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing to get recognized.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But to get recognized and then have people actually come up and say, Hey, thank you for what you do.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: That's another level.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of people recognize.
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: people don't like them.
12:02
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I was with you in Orange County and you know, just watching you be so graceful with Vietnamese people and, you know, they asked for pictures, they asked for, you know, I mean, it's like the equivalent modern-day autographs, right, to take a selfie with them and to spend time with them and you so graciously oblige.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that's
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: in Carthage, Missouri in the middle of nowhere in the middle of America.
12:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's such a deep dense population of it.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's probably the most densely populated event outside of, I mean, little Sagan on a parade day, you know,
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of Vietnamese for sure, I can't imagine if there is one I haven't heard of it, but I'd like to go, but I can't imagine another event in America, other than yeah, like you said, Los I go on during thought or something like that.
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm just happy to be a part of it.
13:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a bit inconvenient.
13:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but I'm pretty good with the road trips now, so there was a lot of couples when I was growing up that met at Marian days.
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people, I'm sure in the history of of Marian days and getting married met at Marian days.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, people from all over the Midwest and the East Coast who didn't live in Vietnamese communities would wait
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: for that weekend to go to Marion days.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It meant so much to people who are not coming from LA or Orange County, San Jose, all the major cities on the west coast.
13:43
[SPEAKER_01]: People from Dallas or
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: people from Chicago would drive down because it was so close to them.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Ohio, Pennsylvania, they would all go to merindays and it was such a place to meet young people and couples would would bind there.
14:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It was so magical and especially at night when it's hot and walking, you know, and there's still a buzz on the streets.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: People are still out late at night.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, look at it like this, you know, as you mentioned with smaller cities two years ago, this lady came up to me.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, fuck, mom.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I just, hey, how are you doing?
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You said, you know, go home.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, yeah, I thought, yeah, I'm like, I took me a second.
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying they're going through my, you know, my little effects.
14:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out,
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I made a video randomly at her nail salon in my hometown of New Summer to Beach in 2020.
14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So four years before, tiny little nail salon in a tiny town in Florida and she was there and saw me in four years later.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember because I interviewed her in her nail salon in her video while my brothers getting a pedicure.
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, wow, we just meet again.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: In Missouri, Bung Thing Vietnam call you in Gapla, you know, we have faith to meet again, right in the middle of Missouri and the same thing nail tax in Kentucky, the owner of beauty depot in Houston is a big fan and I featured him in my video in Houston in 2023.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Saw him two years ago and I saw him again this year and it's like so great to reunite This is like, hey, how's your family like I talked to his daughter talked to his wife He just had a grand baby like sharing pictures and it's just you know the big thing about the pilgrimage to me It's like a giant family reunion And I felt that this time around because I saw so many familiar faces from two years ago
15:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what about the God element, the spiritual element there?
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there, um, did you go to any of the services?
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you, uh, particular religious at all or not really your secular man?
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And you, you don't, you stay away from, from that kind of stuff.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, tell me about that experience.
15:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up Protestant, I would say Baptist, but all my Baptist churches growing up became non-denominational.
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think that's the trend now.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I said earlier, I've never actually been in a Catholic Church for a service, especially if he had to meet one, but they had one outside, and Father Benedict explained a lot to me with that, where it's, they have a,
16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to get the term wrong, but it's sort of like a traveling mother Mary and they have it there, one of eight, one of eight in the whole world and they bring it to that event.
16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's great to see.
16:32
[SPEAKER_00]: even though I'm not Catholic and not fit to me as if you couldn't tell.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it is great to see everybody coming together and gathering around with their faith, you know, and just having that as like a center point.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people have expressed to me that they've seen miracles happen because of that and coincidence or not, you know, one of my buddies, his daughter got pregnant right before they went and they'd been trying for a very long time.
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The father explained that they had someone who's possessed years prior, and they ended up getting a successful exorcism with all of the fathers there, you know, it just story after story from people.
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really respect what they're doing, you know, regardless of the fact that I'm not Catholic.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah, respect for what they're doing.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a profound thing and it's so difficult to imagine what they are doing these priests.
17:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What it takes to organize and I think we got to find a way to to get
17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: these guys on camera and and see we can podcast, you know, I, I think that their story is so worth the world even Vietnamese Americans to get to really know, you know, it would be cool to like eventually have
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: a Marian days but like with the secular side of it where if these priests were down for it that we would be able to like show up in mass and you know how food vendors and you know really entertainment like a Coachella and you know then we could all be kind of closer to God you know like we can find a way back to God and and how a reason to really
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: congregate and well I feel like you know from what I see in the event regardless of the fact that you know probably 90 to 95 percent in my opinion this is just a guess but our our Catholic or coming from a Catholic background.
18:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's kind of open for that because the service side is over by the church outside and whatnot, but on the other side with the food, they have the food vendors and they have people hanging out singing karaoke, you know, if you you take the golf cart, my buddy, uh, vomu.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I met him two years ago, and he's just the nicest guy from Texas.
18:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Him and his wife did nails.
18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He's retired now, and he comes weeks early, sets everything up, and he sets up this whole restaurant called Yassu Wann.
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They have some of the best food there.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: They had, um, uh, Boteen, they always have ball at load.
19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They have different kinds of goi, uh, just a variety of food, but his whole thing is all the money they earn goes to the poor and Vietnam.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I know I'm getting off topic, but the point is, uh, he takes me around and shows me and then that
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: not secular community, but what could be secular for some people who are not as close to God or in the Catholic religion?
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You can pick any of those campers for half a mile and have what it is known as like a Vietnamese party singing karaoke in the day, everybody just getting along and doing their thing, you know?
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I talked to Jenny and Vow from Cook Somni, the RV life, kind of, it's, it's, it's, it's the pin my mind right now, but I had them on the podcast this morning.
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They were also at Marion days, but they're like professional RV people, and they were
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: to the, you know, the premises of, of, and I heard him out, and when you set up like them, and you have like this big RV, you know, monster RV, and you have AC, and everything's blowing, and you got proper kitchen, proper food.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, that would be like the, that is like the ultimate way to spend three weeks.
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I would, of course, I would, of course.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, they have an area of volumop actually shows me this and it's in it's featured in my video from two years ago We drive through he said this is full me hung are you familiar with full me hung in district seven?
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, this is full me hung of a daihoye tan mout
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And he shows me these campers.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, this one's over a million.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: This one, a couple hundred thousand and they have some legitimate RVs.
21:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I saw theirs.
21:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but they had some of the biggest RVs I've ever seen.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
21:08
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that even happen?
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, wait a minute.
21:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, why would the Catholic church split up the, um, not the piece just?
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just where they like the park, you know, it's not split, not per se.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just these bigger campers were in this area two years ago and they were back again this year.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and it could be because one of the houses, I have a on video actually, one of the kids was a fan of mine.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And he took me over there to meet him and his family and he comes running out of the house with his family and that's right where the cameras were so maybe They part close to where their friends live.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just taking a guess, but uh, yeah, it'll be it's in my older videos and it'll be in this video as well And how do you spend your days at?
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Mary and days.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do all day from morning to night and where do you stay?
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I just walk.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm literally just on the move the whole time.
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have a sort of funny story, which, you know, relates to the Vietnamese culture that I haven't told you yet.
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So I told you about the Kansas City, right?
22:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get the Kansas City Marriott downtown,
22:25
[SPEAKER_00]: didn't pay for it, you know, it's like over 300 and night, but I had some Marriott free nights that were going to expire.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So I said, oh, perfect.
22:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll use it for this collaboration.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a parking garage that's, you know, closed off under the hotel.
22:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, great, you know, my van will be safe here.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll park by the elevator under the camera.
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And for this marion days, I brought my Vietnamese father-in-law's electric bike.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, boy, talk on moon, say it up date and cool ball, con con mondie ball.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on,
23:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, man, and I told the management, I go, it's not the value of the bike that matters.
23:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know how long it takes to build a relationship with a Vietnamese father-in-law?
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you serious right now?
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys have a closed off garage, and you let, they go, well, we don't know how they got out.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, he didn't put the bike in his pocket.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The garage is closed, so he walked up the stairs, right in front of your valleys with my bike.
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they went through the cameras.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We called the police and four in the morning.
23:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Some guy went down.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The big thing was I said, did I lock it?
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm very careful about locking my car everywhere.
23:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, yes, you turned around and you hit the button and the lights flashed.
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow that guy opened it up without breaking a window.
24:01
[SPEAKER_00]: and managed to take the bike.
24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, at least they didn't break the window, you know, especially on a road trip.
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyways, leading up to that.
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't have an electric bike at Mary and Days and I get there and I stayed at the same campground that I did last year.
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of the hotels are booked out, pretty much all the hotels are booked out.
24:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Early, you know, year and advance or so.
24:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a campground about
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: three miles away and you just I just parked my van and blow up an air mattress and sleeping my van.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and you keep that you see on them right in the car.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I actually bring a fan and it has an outlet next to it.
24:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So I put an extension cord under the sliding door and then close the door and then it blows up the air mattress and keeps a fan going in there and it's not too hot.
24:53
[UNKNOWN]: No.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's definitely hard outside, but it's a good size fan, you know.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: are walking around all day.
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just not having an agenda.
25:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You just walk all day.
25:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's hard to imagine people.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, you can, you can watch in the video.
25:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's literally 10 feet, meet somebody.
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 feet, meet somebody.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, fool, man, let's say a day.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I get on somebody's golf cart and they take me around.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I get off, I walk.
25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: someone puts me on another golf cart and brings me around like it's and then a father Benedict, you know, he takes me up on the roof and I don't know how many people get that privilege, but he brings me up to the very peak of the cathedral.
25:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I take pictures and video and he just wants to make my video better.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So he, you know, brings me up there and yeah, it's just, I feel like I get a cool backstage pass almost VIP experience, if you will.
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: My buddy, Vol, he ended up buying a house right there in Carthage outside the campground.
26:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, full mop, where you stand?
26:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You could sleep on my floor, or the rest is full, but you can sleep on like, no, I already paid for the campground, but thank you.
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like next year.
26:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
26:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You stay in my house.
26:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's appreciate that.
26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That that that that that that is like a national treasure that Vietnamese America has and I think that's I really implore
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: all Vietnamese Americans to go to Vietnam, at least once in their life, of course, to check out Mary and Daisy once in their life.
26:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it is a very special thing that has been going on for decades.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just keeps getting bigger.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And it keeps getting bigger.
26:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, in the age of social media, we should all know more about this thing.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like such a wonderful experience.
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep saying that.
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like gonna beat this like, you know, to death.
26:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just, I mean, that's,
26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: why I'm sitting here talking to you today because I want to hear what we know on what's new and and and they have a it's like a city but there's tents that are set up and it's not like you just going and it's like a like a you know like an eight-seater I mean you know eight tables
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: or even 20 tables, these dining halls are massive.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
27:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, it's crazy because all the stuff inside, the father told me that they have a company who sets up the tents, but all the stuff inside is some church in America who literally transports.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: all of this stuff from Texas, from California, whatever to set up an entire restaurant.
27:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the youth group is working as the servers, the older ladies are cooking the bankone and they're selling it and then they're giving the money to the poor.
27:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it's, it's a really great experience because, you know, you're paying $15 for a thing of bankone.
27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: When I guess that's kind of a normal price at restaurants these days, but you know it's going to a good cause.
27:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you know, this church came from across the country
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: back in the day, they would have these, the, the tents, these food tents, but we didn't have cell phones.
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would meet, you know, as a teenager.
28:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would meet, you know, my group of guys would meet a group of girls and we'd be like, okay, at three o'clock in the afternoon, meet us at the, at the, at the, the tent.
28:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were smaller.
28:18
[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't the, the size, the mega sizes.
28:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But,
28:22
[SPEAKER_01]: you would go with your crew and you would just wait and you would hang out to see these girls or groups of people from church would just go and then that's how like these unions and these couples would get together and it was again the magic of no cell phones.
28:46
[SPEAKER_01]: has had gone through that, please leave something in the comments because, you know, it's such a romantic time in my life when I think about, you know, I overly romanticize that Huita and Maui and Marianne days.
28:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I do have conflicts with the Catholic church, you know, internally I, there's a lot of things that doesn't sit well with me.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: However, the discussion of something like the Marianne day event is sort of a healing thing for me to say, you know what?
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to have everything so black and white.
29:21
[SPEAKER_01]: We can be
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, anti this, but still show up for our family.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: We can be politically this way, but you know, we should still be able to love our neighbors and be part of our people, Vietnamese descent in cartage.
29:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure a lot of them politically are very different from each other, but at the end of the day, there's a magic that is in the congregation of all these Vietnamese faces.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we talked about this, the last podcast we did, what I think it was around April.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, as I mentioned on there, it's like, as a grown man, I know people will have different opinions from me, and no matter how good my argument may be, I'm not gonna convince another grown man to change his mind.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: as I don't expect them to change mine, but that doesn't mean we can't get a long work together, work on projects, whatnot, and especially when it's something more in common, like a fellow Vietnamese person, you know, Buddhist and Catholics and people from the left and right can get together and, as you said, have a sort of game.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a family reunion or whatnot,
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: at this, it's a thing that just keeps growing every year, you know, and to be honest with you, like I haven't even attended other than the beginning of the main parade with Mother Mary, I haven't attended a lot of the religious portions of this in the times that I've been there.
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more just walking around and socializing, you know, and that's what I go, touching back on what you said about having sort of secular event.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you really don't even have to be involved with the Catholic portion whatsoever.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You can hang out in the separate town of food vendors or trailers and campers and still have a great time and not even realize it's a Catholic event.
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember years ago when I went, I remember they had, you know, like when you go to a work convention, like your doctor and then you go to a convention and you're looking at equipment, but then they have breakout seminars or you're in the, let's say you're in the car business or you're in the film business, they have these like weekend conventions, and you break out and go to like,
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: an hour and a half of like, you know, the latest, greatest, whatever, they break out seminars and it's listed in the in the program.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember my mom saying, oh, I am some of my girlfriends are going to go to a yetta yang.
31:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're going to go listen to a priest.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: hold to seminar about, you know, marriage, right?
31:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how to be helped in your marriage or how to raise your children.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They have these, and I don't know if, um, um, that whole time, all has those still to this day, but that would imagine, but yeah, I'm not sure.
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They were really popular, and I remember going with my mom to a few of them in my dad, and they were like standing room.
32:19
[SPEAKER_01]: People were just standing on the, you know, people were, you know, maybe 300 seats, and then, you know, around the walls, people were just standing, and they would just have so many of these seminars.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, um, this is what blows my mind still continuously, but as I'm talking to you this whole time, is like,
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like you handful of people know that this exists, you know, and it just still blows on mind that as Vietnamese Americans, like we should know, like every one of us should know about this place, just like we know about full of tall, right?
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We know in Little Saigon in California, there's this like mall.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a shrine built to, you know, everybody goes there.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is even bigger than that.
33:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm, I'm trying to do my part because as I always state and sort of my mission, you know, my target, my goal, mopedip, you know, mopedio, however you want to put it with my channel is just to spread, you know, the positive aspects of Vietnamese culture from the eyes of an American.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tried to do my part by sharing the event.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I was able to make four or five videos the last time I went.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Won't be as many this time, but still trying to get it out there.
33:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And people see, and they say, oh my goodness.
33:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And even without the videos, even if I wasn't filming,
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It has become a sort of family reunion for myself because as I mentioned people that I met before, you know, there's a guy, his name is Fee, a young guy from Hawaii.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: What I never met this guy, I don't think I'm ever going to go to Hawaii, but he comes there.
33:51
[SPEAKER_00]: He was there two years ago, took me around on a golf cart, gave me some free fried chicken, came up with, you know, who's going to turn down fried chicken?
33:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see him again this year and I say,
34:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been great to see, made it all the way back from Hawaii again, oh my goodness, and it just little, you know, meetings and relationships like that, you know, you can see the people who shared my picture almost in their story, and I reshared it, because like, hey, Fookmops back, Fookmops here again, and it's people that I met, ties it forth, so it's become a sort of family reunion for me as well.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And did you see any other, um,
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Influences or content creators out there that you recognize.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to try to go through I can't say that I did this time around and I feel bad if I talked to somebody and I don't remember it.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I told you I had my own run in two years ago where you know it's a guy who a lot of people don't like but you know I didn't see him and I don't remember interviewing on any channels this time around.
34:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I may have popped up on some, for example, one of the milk tea stands, the guy was treating it like an auction, and then Ben Jesuit, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, oh yeah, he's like, oh, fuck, fuck my, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just becomes a whole thing in the next thing, you know, I look and it's just cameras, you know, whether they know me or not, it's just some white guy speaking Vietnamese on the mic, trying to sell milk tea for one of the stands like That is an incredible story.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you miss Vietnam?
35:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I I really really miss Vietnam so much so that I'm going back next month and how long are you staying for?
35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of undecided, but it's definitely gonna be a while.
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to be back by November Because I have a wedding to not only MC in Arizona, but this is the first Vietnamese wedding who has asked me to be the Efficient as well, so I have to get ordained
36:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And did your family go back to Vietnam with you?
36:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, this trip they are.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I go by myself other times they come, but this time we are going back.
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to, the in order to get the first class tickets that I got.
36:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to go to Japan first.
36:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to show my wife Japan for a few days.
36:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Her sisters in Taiwan working there.
36:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to Taiwan and then from there to Vietnam to see family, to make YouTube, to just reconnect and whatnot.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: off-topic kid.
36:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I told you, but I'm starting a second YouTube channel.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Credit cards, points, miles, rewards, and, uh, shameless plot.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it was always done anyways, but shameless plug.
36:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I got my wife, my baby and myself.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Three first class tickets to Japan from America.
37:04
[SPEAKER_00]: $15,000 worth of tickets on Delta.
37:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I used points and the points I got a flash sale where the seats were the same price as regular seats.
37:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So 240,000 points total to get three first class tickets.
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So we got beds and everything.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the whole trip from Japan to Taiwan points.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: From Taiwan to Vietnam points, the hotels, the AirBNBs, points.
37:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam, you know, would stay at my wife's family's house, so, nothing there.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But, yeah, so I am starting that channel here shortly.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I already got the domain name and everything else.
37:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, the credit ginger.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I hear these stories, you know, I follow all the channels and these guys are like, I just started learning about credit card rewards two years ago.
37:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm doing my own channel.
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, buddy, I've been doing this for 15 years.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We used to get credit cards and send money back and forth on them, just to get the bonus and then move to the next one.
38:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We did that in college.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for a long time.
38:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just kind of pairs well with trips back to Vietnam and trips over here,
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in San Jose doing a meet and greet.
38:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The flight was on points, the hotel were on points.
38:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned Kansas City, Maria was on points.
38:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Just all these trips that I've been taking all summer, the flights, the hotels.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to charge a sort of travel fee on top of the sponsor fee or whatever, because I do the points.
38:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So why not share my love about it and teach other people about it on a second channel?
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
38:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you going to do it in Vietnamese or just purely?
38:41
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, it's it's going to be all English.
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing subtitles for my new YouTube video today and it just shaking my head every time just going through cap cut and correcting and I just I have to do the subtitles, but it it it's going to feel good to not do subtitles anymore and a lot of the cards are not applicable in Vietnam.
39:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's mainly an audience here in America.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I do want to ask about this idea of language because I'm sure you probably had to contend with this.
39:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just going to ask publicly because, you know, let's talk, let's talk shop about a little bit because, and I'm going to give a shameless plug for me.
39:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I started a podcast a few months ago, and we are, I think we're a different podcast.
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: for general, for like universal, for, but it's in Vietnamese and it's with two other hosts, Ing Hwang-Jong-Tui, and Jing-Au-Lan from Littersega, TV in Orange County.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We speak entirely in Vietnamese, and it's, you know, has its own channel, has its own thing.
39:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So audience, please, you know, listeners of you, if you'd like, please tune into it, give us a subscribe, a like.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have traditionally, first two, three years of my Vietnamese podcast, this podcast, did it in both languages.
40:13
[SPEAKER_01]: If I encountered friends that couldn't speak English, I would do it in Vietnamese and I'd post it.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I figured that it really messed up that.
40:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt like it really messed up the algorithm and confused the algorithm, but now I want to create another podcast.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's the Vietnamese.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a subsursive of the Vietnamese on a separate channel.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I'll have a different name for it.
40:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what is the words of wisdom that you can give me in terms of creating an ecosystem that's coherent, but we have two different languages that you and I, we really have to serve as two different languages, and at the end of the day, you and I are very different
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: is Kenneth and you know, full, but then when you're going to fuck them up and I go to Kenneth and Vietnamese, it becomes two different personas almost.
41:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel right and so what your thoughts and all that it's really a tough one that I've juggled for the last couple of years.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I will say adding more English into my overall content has
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: which in turn you earn more add money from America, but you can't forget where you came from, you can't forget who made you what you are in the first place and that was Vietnamese and Vietnam.
41:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really tough because...
41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You're almost alienating a certain part of your audience by not speaking their language.
41:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And that goes both ways.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to find a balance.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to speak a good bit of Vietnamese in my videos and keep the subtitles opposite of what I'm saying.
42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But, I think it comes down to who your final target demographic is, you know?
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: A buddy of mine, I'll share this.
42:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Marky's eats Vietnam.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a big guy, it's fairly large, and he got on CNBC while living in Vietnam, I think it's called Make It.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and then he started the YouTube channel from there, great production, great team behind them.
42:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But he encountered this where he's like, he had a dubbed version and an English version and YouTube took away his dubbed version, so that it messed up all his analytics and he was talking to me about which way should I go?
42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I try to speak my broken Vietnamese?
42:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's pretty good at Vietnamese, that he's a long time, but,
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not fluent or so they just go with English because either way, I'm going to lose a big part of the audience.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think all three of us can relate and agree that it's, it's hard, it's a hard decision to make.
43:10
[SPEAKER_00]: What did he end up doing?
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: He finally got his dubbed audio back right after we talked.
43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's still going with that.
43:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess there's a feature on YouTube where it will double over your voice in another language.
43:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So by allowing that in Vietnamese, it helps the Vietnamese to understand what he's saying most of the time.
43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting because it's it's like an extreme version of let's say best ever food review show I mean he's eaten the the penises of horses he's eaten the brains of this and that I mean he's eaten is the craziest weirdest things that he can you know it took me eight years to eat that can for the first time and he's eaten it like his first four videos on like more power to you buddy yeah I got a beast
43:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we're we're hoping to collab when I get back and hopefully he's keeps keeps the dub audio and keeps everything going and hopefully we can keep that going on there.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when when I get this I'm I'm gonna.
44:07
[SPEAKER_01]: start this next channel in Vietnamese and all Vietnamese and I'm gonna migrate a lot of the ones that I did in Vietnamese over to the to the new podcast and keep it going.
44:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would love to have you come on as a guest and we just go all in Vietnamese.
44:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That'd be fun.
44:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Funny story on that.
44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat down with the owner of Cafe Cafe.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: This lady Jackie.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: She actually comes from California, lived in New York City.
44:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, uh, so you know her?
44:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran into her at a gallo just recently.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, perfect.
44:45
[SPEAKER_00]: She had the idea for her channel for her social media that we sit down and do a sort of podcast and then at the end we all try to do Vietnamese and for her and her friend.
44:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a bit difficult.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's one of those times where I was like, dang, okay, my Vietnamese is decent because I feel like I'm kind of guiding the conversation.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But getting deep into a podcast past.
45:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say surface level conversations, but I find it the more I know someone, the harder it is to keep the conversation going long-term in Vietnamese.
45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Because like we talked about religion, I lack some vocabulary there.
45:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so wait, do you like the vocabulary or does the other person like the vocabulary?
45:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No, in this case, they did and we, you know, the video will be out on my channel around the time of the marion days one.
45:44
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, they did, but I feel like I've been on TV shows before.
45:49
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, M.C.
45:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Quellen was interviewing me on a show called, uh, yeah, Maki Thai.
45:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like deciphering the genius or something, which I didn't find out to have for you.
45:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, that's cool.
46:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Maki Thai.
46:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
46:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Maki Thai.
46:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh,
46:04
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife, she told me before the show.
46:06
[SPEAKER_00]: She's backstage.
46:06
[SPEAKER_00]: She goes, if you don't understand a question, don't answer it.
46:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, sure, whatever.
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she said a couple of times in the show.
46:15
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked something, and then I, jadlo, I calmly and quen, I'm just answering like something random, and I didn't understand.
46:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's been times where we've had deep conversations on TV to evolve places where I've kind of gone off the rails and think I know what I'm talking about, but a little too overconfident.
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait a minute, would you say that you think you know what's going on, but aren't you transiting in your mind words and you are actually saying real thoughts?
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So how could it be like a runaway train?
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't get it.
46:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I misunderstand the question and I think he says this, I hear some words I understand and then I go a whole different tangent and I'll give you a
46:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned before, I teach Vietnamese on Patreon, and it's at a basic level.
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's things that I understand very well, but I've been doing it for three years, and I have 127 lessons, 130 lessons.
47:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I had the opportunity in Portland to meet up with one of my patrons, the Sky Joe.
47:15
[SPEAKER_00]: He invited me to go to his gym, and we go work out, and I was like, all right, so your wife's Vietnamese, right?
47:20
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, no.
47:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, so you like Vietnamese best friends, right?
47:23
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, no, I just really like Vietnamese.
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to study.
47:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been there before working with the government.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I like your Patreon.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, it's really cool.
47:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we got to go to a place called Bumball, right?
47:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Restaurant, very creative.
47:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got to watch him use some of the things that he'd learned on my Patreon speaking Vietnamese to these people.
47:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bring this up because he says, you know, like you said,
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You really just need to get the context and then you can answer accordingly.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to understand every word and you don't have to feel discouraged when you don't understand every word.
47:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's what I used to teach my IELTS students with English.
48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you believe that?
48:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you still believe that.
48:07
[SPEAKER_00]: believe that you don't have to understand it.
48:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's kind of like a waiting game.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the YouTube channel.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: If I wait till everything's perfect to start my YouTube channel, I'm never going to start.
48:18
[SPEAKER_00]: If I wait till my Vietnamese is perfect to have conversations with people on podcast or TV, I'm never going to have those conversations.
48:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, since 2019, I've just ran with it.
48:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can go back and watch my TV show in 2019.
48:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Moltenaik.
48:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, full mop, literally, one day with full mop on HTV9.
48:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And my Vietnamese was so elementary, compared to what it is now.
48:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And they would ask me something, and I'm like, tick.
48:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like that.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know exactly what you say, but I like it, you know, and it's, it's a progression over time for sure.
48:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what a wonderful philosophy in life is, you know, don't let perfection be the enemy of the good, you know, and I've got a dear friend who told me that my brother tells me that, and this is the perfect example of not letting perfection kill the progression of becoming
49:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do you know, how do you get better now?
49:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I still sit down with my tutor.
49:24
[SPEAKER_00]: you're still working it.
49:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, now not as not as frequently on point that out there.
49:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We just had a lesson last week, but I used to study one to two times a week with her in the beginning.
49:35
[SPEAKER_00]: From 2016 to 2019, that built the whole base of my Vietnamese.
49:40
[SPEAKER_00]: In my tutor, who's also named Fee, I mentioned
49:47
[SPEAKER_00]: obviously fluent of Vietnamese and she's decent at Chinese.
49:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's very good explaining the Hun Vietnam, the Chinese root words.
49:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And she breaks things down to me.
49:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've tried other tutors.
49:59
[SPEAKER_00]: No one's ever.
50:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Tuderd me like she has.
50:02
[SPEAKER_00]: She's very good at what she does.
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: She should have been normal here.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Vietnam.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So she teaches Southern Vietnamese.
50:08
[SPEAKER_00]: She's got lesson plans and everything else.
50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And we sat down last week to refresh some of my wedding MC things to say because my wife always says, day, the night by the wedding.
50:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You do, you do not want to upset the old people there.
50:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I go with her and everything, but you could get away with something, you know, you made mistakes because you know, you're, you're, you're like, right?
50:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course.
50:37
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and the mistakes are one thing.
50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But like when you get, if you get too informal and you got 30 of the bride and groom's family, all the old people sitting right in front of you and looking at you,
50:49
[SPEAKER_00]: you know it's but this this particular wedding some of the groomsman were cussing up a storm and their speeches in English and I'm like I guess I don't have to worry about that man these guys what that's the first wedding I've been to they're just kind of cussing up a storm but uh it was very good and I I got a lot of compliments so whether they're just being nice or it's getting better I don't know we'll see
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: you know that that there's a crazy idea when I look at you and I'm like this ain't no this ain't no hobby no more this ain't no like eight year hobby and I'm like I just was interested in building airplanes and I'm gonna stop this this is
51:26
[SPEAKER_01]: a lifelong life style anymore.
51:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You basically like implanted some genetics into you, and you began to grow this tree inside of you that was Vietnamese, and you're becoming that tree instead of like, you know what I mean?
51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like inside of you, and it's not a hobby.
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is this is not
51:48
[SPEAKER_01]: you've you've basically become Vietnamese and there are a few other guys in Vietnam that are like that.
51:54
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this other young Vietnamese kid who's from like um I don't know where he's from in America but his Vietnamese talks like a but I think he's a gay kid and he speaks like
52:08
[SPEAKER_01]: like a woman from the hood, it's not the hood, but a woman who is maybe a thama, you know, in the rural areas.
52:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And just the speaking is so on point that if you close your eyes, you're like, oh, that's a woman in, you know, in these parts of the may call or something.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt the same way, one of the first people to inspire me to learn and get better Vietnamese was CJ.
52:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He was probably one of the originals.
52:46
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, when it comes to foreigners on YouTube, speaking Vietnamese, and to this day, he still creates content and say my idea, you close your eyes and you're like, wow, like that sounds like a man straight from Hanoi, but even not, I don't say even more impressive, but what's crazy is, um,
53:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris Lewis, the ginger kid from Colorado, we used to do a lot of videos together.
53:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This kid, I say kid because he's like 28.
53:15
[SPEAKER_00]: He speaks fluent Chinese, fluent Vietnamese, close to perfect Urdu.
53:20
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd like to taught himself Urdu before he went to Pakistan.
53:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn Hindi, now he's living in Korea and speaks Korean.
53:27
[SPEAKER_00]: He made vlogs and peruse, speaking Spanish.
53:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the true definition of a polyglot.
53:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, I look at him, I'm like, I'm trying to get my video to me, he's been in this guy's working on seven languages at once.
53:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Me, your other language is social media, right?
53:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is a language, understanding how to put this all together and make it sort of, that's a, it's own special unique talent.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Full, you know, thank you.
53:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, is dynamic and I, you know, I'm here for it and a lot of us Vietnamese, you know, we had some people that you had dinner with when you were out in Orange County with us and some people, you know, don't come from an understanding of like, not all white people are trying to appropriate, you know, the Vietnamese or the black culture, whatever.
54:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you proved
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: yourself to be just authentic and loving and want the best for the people around you and and it's regardless of who or what we look like, you know, you just have this deep love for the Vietnamese people.
54:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I told them that where I feel like, of course, from the outside looking in, if you just stumble upon my page and you go, who's this guy trying to be Vietnamese and just appropriating, as you say, yeah, of course it can look like that.
54:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I fully admit that.
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when, you know, we do a podcast like we did, and you hear the story from the start.
54:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you were saying, when you say you've almost become Vietnamese,
55:00
[SPEAKER_00]: This whole journey is like a never ending, uh, like a...
55:07
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the word I'm looking for?
55:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a never-ending journey, if you will, to please my wife's family, and of course, make my wife proud.
55:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Where it's like, I told my brother-in-law in the beginning, before all this blew up, I said, if I make a YouTube channel of Vietnam, everyone's gonna know who I am.
55:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna go so hard and make some ridiculous videos.
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's what it takes, that everyone in Vietnam, they might not all like me.
55:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They might not be a fan, but they're going to go, ah, fuck my hair, cutting my, you know, I am me, tang, nah, I know him, you know, it's like, and I feel, you know, experiencing traveling around the country this summer and obviously, you know, whenever I'm in Vietnam, but like the amount of people who come up and thank me for teaching Vietnamese or doing what I do or helping the culture, I feel like.
55:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost there.
55:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're still more to go, but I'm almost there.
56:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just natural because I'm doing this right alongside my wife.
56:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm speaking Vietnamese to my wife every day and every day.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm speaking Vietnamese to her family.
56:10
[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm in Kentucky, I'm at the Nail Salon, speaking Vietnamese to everybody like, that's just data that, you know?
56:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you live it in the trenches with the rest of the Vietnamese community all around the US and it's such a beautiful thing.
56:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Marian days, you know,
56:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming back to like, share that with our community and our audience and you know, being a part of that, and describing the things that we're going on is like, it's ironic that I'm not speaking to a Vietnamese person about Marian days, but I did this morning, you know.
56:45
[SPEAKER_01]: with Jenny and Volu.
56:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, here we are.
56:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, thank you so much.
56:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that, you know, by the time, you know, you're in Vietnam, maybe we could pick it up again.
56:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And because these are a lot of fun.
56:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, to hear you, you know, break down certain things.
57:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's a real treat full.
57:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and this is what I always say about collaborations and I've done quite a few.
57:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like this is a mutual benefit.
57:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
57:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a podcast that's helping Vietnamese learn about different stories in the Vietnamese culture.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just proud to have worked and done enough to where I can be one of those stories.
57:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the third time on the pod.
57:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So I appreciate you.
57:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to do many, many more.
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is what it's all about.
57:27
[SPEAKER_01]: This is fun.
57:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks a lot.
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate you so much.
57:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk soon because I think I'm coming back to California after Vietnam.
57:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Anytime we're here, you know, open arms and we'll do more.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.
57:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
57:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a good night.
57:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynn.
57:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynn, Catherine Wynn, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
57:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese Podcast.