Due to a combination of increasing demand for agricultural products and the proliferation of bootleg pesticide products, pesticide use in the Vietnamese agricultural industry has skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. While consumers are continually demanding blemish-free, “commodified” products that are usually only achievable with the use of pesticides, there are also rising concerns […]
A Tale of Two Riverbanks: Perspectives on Development in Ho Chi Minh City
A few days ago, my roommate and I were riding along the Saigon River on a wide and immaculately paved highway in District 1. The road had two separate lanes; one was for cars and the other for motorbikes, and the traffic lights were configured to account for both types of vehicles. The sides of […]
All is Fair in Love and Exercise: Hoan Kiem Park, Hanoi
Before the advent of the Internet, societal consciousness was generated in physical public spaces: on the streets, in cafes, on buses, or in parks. These hubs of human contact were, and in many ways still are, essential for the dissemination of information, for the formation of relationships outside of the home, and occasionally for spreading […]
Making Sense of the Saigon Heat: How the Vietnamese Do Hot Dogs and Basketball
The Saigon Heat is Vietnam’s team in the ASEAN basketball league and they are currently down 0-2 in a best of five playoff series with the Kuala Lumpur Dragons of Malaysia. I had seen a couple of their regular season games on TV but I was still very curious as to what a professional basketball […]
Cleanup Culture: Geographical Discrepancies in Vietnamese Trash Disposal Habits
The streets of Saigon are filled with vendors and buyers, smokers and loungers, each accumulating and depositing waste into the gutters and trash bins and sometimes even directly onto the sidewalk. However, despite this relentless barrage of consumption and disposal, each new morning I am greeted by a relatively waste-free landscape. I have been pleasantly […]
Observational Study: Non-Vietnamese Symbols in the Marketplace
Here is the link to my first blog post about the use of English and Western symbolism in Vietnamese markets.
Navigating Foreign Landscapes and Ambiguous Terminology
Exploring the three themes nature/culture, global/local, and stasis/change is foremost an experiment in the power of terminology. It’s difficult to even begin looking at representations of “nature” in Japan, for example, without first discussing the infinite understandings of what it means to be natural. That being said, my goal is to base my analysis of […]