Monday Blogcrawl

Yesterday we celebrated the Moon Festival in Cabramatta. Sure, it was a little early, but it was lots of fun, and was just about the closest I was going to get to Vietnam without getting on a plane. Here are some items from the net that will help bring you that one step closer:

 The Friendship Village in Hanoi trains youth at risk

• An excellent video showing you how to make Pho at home
• PBS has a nice piece about Vietnamese priests serving in rural America
• It seems that the Vietnamese government is really cracking down on press freedom, and Committee to Protect Journalists investigates why
• Hanoi street food from the Medical Observer
• If you're in Australia, here is a handy list of suggestions of what wine to have with Vietnamese food
• Quinn Ryan Mattingly has a beautiful photo of backstage at the circus in Saigon
• There's a Luxe City Guide to Ho Chi Minh City. And while you're there, check out the beautiful Giac Lam Pagoda
• Some people seem to think taking the hard seat on the train to Hanoi is a romantic thing to do, and The Age brings us one such story
• MGM Grand is building a casino in Vietnam
• There was a gay-themed drama performed live in Ho Chi Minh City, according to Gay Star News

Monday Blogcrawl

Always yearning for Vietnam, with half my heart constantly there. Here are some things that caught my eye over the past week:

Vietnamese fishermen arrested for illegally fishing Thai waters

• I'm always mystified by the empty real-estate in Hanoi, and the trend continues. Nhan Dan tells us that some developers have been suspended over improper actions in Hanoi's Old Quarter
• Michael Jackson's dad is no longer building a tourist park in Vietnam
• Vietnam's ruling elite is still deeply troubled by any criticism, and Voice of America explains why three political blogs have been singled out for condemnation by Vietnam's Prime Minister
• Arts Expo Malaysia will feature some works from Vietnam this year - from Vietnam.net Bridge
• Thieu Tran is a Vietnamese-American who has created a one-man show about his experiences. Bring it to Australia, Thieu!
• Thanh Nhien tells us about a leather tanning firm that has been poisoning the Saigon River for years

Rosamund Burton's CASTLES, FOLLIES & FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS released in the UK

Just a brief note to tell you that my dear friend and wonderful publishing stablemate Rosamund Burton has had her book Castles, Follies & Four-Leaf Clovers released in the United Kingdom and Ireland this month.

It is available through Atlantic Books, and if you're in that part of the world, do go out and treat yourself with a copy.

Castles... is Rosamund's account of her journey along St. Declan's Way, a little-known pilgrim's path in Ireland.

Rosamund grew up in Ireland, and this book is an affectionate and fascinating look at the mystical and magical worlds that lie just underneath the surface normality of Ireland. You will read about fairy's shoes and leprechaun's hats, as well as the miraculous springs dedicated to St. Declan and to the Virgin Mary. It is a gentle, affectionate and illuminating book, and left me aching to visit Ireland.

Two Days In Hanoi

Vietnam blues in an East-West fusion

Dom Turner is a legendary Australian blues guitarist most famous for his work with the Backsliders.
In one of those wonderfully fortuitous accidents of history, he made the acquaintance of a master blind Vietnamese guitarist called Kim Sinh, and together they have produced Two Days in Hanoi, a wonderfully quirky and utterly original amalgamation of what can truly be called Delta Blues, with a heavy emphasis on the Mekong Delta, in this case.

For me it is probably Kim Sinh's sound that is the most immediately familiar. I have never been much of a follower of the Blues, but I have spent much of my life listening to the delicate, sliding and mournful guitar sounds of traditional Vietnamese music, and sometimes from the very first pluck the listener can be transported to a state of wistful nostalgia and sadness about the bad times. And that, I suppose, is what the Blues is about, no matter where it might come from.
The songs and sounds on this amazing CD alternate between Turner's solid folksy blues, traditional Vietnamese sounds and Kim Sinh's own fusions between traditional cai luong and the more Western forms that have influenced Vietnamese music for more than a century. It makes for wonderful listening, and has been on high rotation here ever since I received my copy. Interestingly, while it had played almost all  he way through, including the songs with English lyrics, my Vietnamese partner, who had only been half-listening, said: "Where did you get this nice Viet CD from?" A true vote for the authenticity of the sounds, but, if you are listening more closely, there is plenty of innovation here as well, and it is an album that will intrigue afficionados from both sides of the musicological fence.
I was won over most by Dom Turner's song, Vietnam People, on the album, a real love-letter that I recognised almost instantly, a folk song from someone who has been seduced by Vietnam and its people.


You can get Two Days in Hanoi on iTunes, or purchase a copy of the CD here.
Two Days in Hnaoi is produced by the Fuse Group.

Liao Fan's Four Lessons

When I was in Vietnam last time I made the acquaintance of a really lovely (and impossibly handsome) young monk from Hanoi called Thay Nguyen. He had come to Saigon to study at the Buddhist University, and I would go to visit him in his suburban temple, hidden down an incredible maze of back streets and alleys. It was a busy temple, a real community hub, as such temples tend to be. In the afternoons we would sit out on the monks' terrace garden and discuss some of the finer points of Buddhist philosophy, in a wonderfully effective mix of English and Vietnamese.
He always had gifts for me - CDs of Kwan Yin chants, colourful plastic prayer beads and, once, a book by the Dalai Lama in Vietnamese. That was rather too ambitious a gift, I'm afraid.
One of the texts that Thay Nguyen enthusisatically endorsed was Liao Fan's Four Lessons, a book which I had in fact read several times before.

In recent days I have been listening to a very old series of cassettes on which the book is read - something I picked up at a temple in Sydney 10 or more years ago - and I am struck by what a good guide to life it really is.
It is a kind of Chinese self-help book, advocating that wholesome mix of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism that has sustained the spiritual life of the Chinese for a thousand years, and has in turn had such a great influence on Vietnamese culture. It tells the story of a Mr. Liao Fan, a man who set great store by the predictions of psychics and soothsayers. After a chance meeting with a Zen master, he learnes that in fact destiny can change at any point, and that all people should be involved in re-shaping their destiny for the better. Then follows a long list of different methods for acquiring good karma, all illustrated with stories from Chinese mythology and antiquity.
In terms of Vietnamese culture it is probably quite a salient text. The people living in 21st Century Vietnam still set great store on the teachings of psychics, mediums and feng-shui masters, though all occupations are officially banned by the Communist government. Thay Nguyen was constantly coming up against parishioners who were distraught because of some bad forecast for the future, or overly-casual about spiritual cultivation because they were completely convinced that their destiny was pre-ordained.
As a popular cultural text, Liao Fan's Four Lessons is absolutely intriguing. Indeed, it is so much admired by people of all religious stripes that in Hong Kong and Taiwan there are societies established specifically to distribute the book and propagate its teachings.
The Vietnamese translation is becoming more readily available too, though the ones I saw in Vietnam were always donated by a Buddhist group in Taiwan, or were printed for commercial sale and distribution.

I Love You, Man

Matters Queer are popping up again and again in Vietnam lately.
Last year one of the best Queer movies ever to be made in Asia, Hot Boy Noi Loan, was released in Vietnam. Then there was a recent gay pride parade in Hanoi, and then whisperings that the notoriously conservative central government is about to legalise gay marriage.
It comes as a great surprise to many that Vietnam should suddenly become a hotbed of Queer foment. But to me it is no surprise, familiar as I am with the vibrant gay cultures that exist in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi (and in other, smaller, cities).
I stumbled upon this very sweet video on Youtube.

I am not at all sure it is real. Some say yes, some say it was staged by film students in order to raise the profile of gay and lesbian issues in Vietnam. I don't really care, because it is a charming piece of ficto-reality, and the actors/participants show incredible bravery. Oh, and balloon boy is an absolute hottie.
Do watch and enjoy:

Monastic Communities

Buddhist monastic communities are still very much alive in Vietnam, though the numbers of young monks have dwindled rapidly from their heyday twenty years ago when Vietnam was desperately poor and entering a monastic institution was seen as a guarantee of a comfortable and predictable life. Now that Vietnam has well and truly entered the consumer age young people are less willing to embrace a life of renunciation, celibacy and physical hardship in exchange for predictable food and quality education. 

The Baby Buddha, Tinh Xa Trung Tam, Ho Chi Minh City

And because the predominant form of Buddhism in Vietnam is Mahayana, there is none of the temporary ordination that you see in neighbouring countries like Cambodia and Laos, which swells the ranks of monks quite deceptively with young men and makes for all those charming pictures of monks that people take back home after their holidays. 

Monk blessing people, Battambang, Cambodia

In the Vietnamese tradition you take the monks’ robes for life, so young men take the decision a good deal more seriously. 

The internet has been abuzz for the past week or so with stories of a gang of Buddhist monks in Korea caught on camera drinking, smoking and gambling. It would be extremely naive to think that such things don’t go on in Vietnam. Of course they do. Drinking is completely verboten, but back in the 90s I knew young monks who consumed beer at parties. When I questioned them about this, they maintained that the ban was on strong forms of liquor like vodka and whiskey. Beer, they maintained, was only a mild intoxicant and so not technically wrong. Absolute nonsense, of course, but it was a common deception. 

In the 80s and 90s I would say that most monks in Vietnam smoked, though I have noticed that in recent years this is increasingly frowned upon, and many of my old monastic companions have given up for the sake of propriety. The disapproval of lay people had simply grown too strong. I can honestly say I have never witnessed monks gambling. I think that gambling is such a real and ever-present social problem in Vietnam, one which regularly destroyed the lives of the people they ministered to, that they were not capable of giving it any kind of saffron-wash. 

One sees now, more and more often, clips of Buddhist monks on Youtube doing inappropriate things, like dancing, staring down women’s blouses or even, in the case of one Thai monk, vouging. Of course, these things are all forbidden by the Vinaya, the enormous code of ethical conduct for monks devised by the Buddha many centuries ago.  This is a fascinating document, going into the detail t hat it does about what monks should or shouldn’t do. The list is exhaustive and seemingly random – most scholars assume it was created in reaction to infringements by monks living in the Buddha’s day, or the complaints of scandalised lay people. 

And so it is that rules exist forbidding monks, for example, to climb trees, or to roll rice up in balls and throw it into their mouths, or to eat with an “mmmph mmmph” sound. So extensive is the list of forbidden activities in the Vinaya that it is almost impossible for any human being to uphold them all, and most monks don’t even try. The Buddha himself knew this, and said that if a monk could abide consistently by every rule established he would be immediately enlightened. Suffice to say that enlightenment among monks is still pretty thin on the ground.