Welcome back to my substack! This week the Tank got to see some (military) Tanks in a foreign country, and of course promptly forgot to take a photo of the family reuinion. Sorry to disappoint.

This was the first week in Singapore in which I felt the full force of my workload at uni. Yeah, they call it “uni” over here as opposed to “college”. Because Americans are the minority in almost every possible social group in Asia, I feel like an uneducated and uncultured delinquent every time I say “college.”

Of course because my work picked up, I was unable to do anything fun this week. The university system won, I’m here to do school after all, so I need to put my head in the books and get these good grades!

Obviously, it just meant that I ignored the increased workload and focused on the things that mattered to me: traveling, meeting people, and learning about the culture in this part of the world.

There are so many ways to learn that don’t involve a classroom, and I feel like experiencing things firsthand just accelerates my learning and understanding. Until that’s no longer the case, I’m going to make what I’m doing the priority.

The streak of meeting some fascinating and cool people continued. This week, those people included a woman from India who teaches Bhuddist Studies at a university back home. We talked about meditation, India, and current events in southeast Asia and I genuinely felt like my understanding of the region increased twofold talking to her.

One of the more interesting things I’ve learned the past few weeks in Asia is that the rest of the world has this perception that Americans are exceptionally friendly people. I find that hilarious because when I think about quintessential American cities: New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., none of them have a reputation for being friendly at all.

Yet, the more I ask, the more foreigners tell me that Americans are so friendly it’s almost annoying. Specifically, they love to initiate casual conversation when others would rather keep to themselves.

Of course, my friends have also noted that I’m better at that sort of thing than most, and my desire to talk to literally everyone has given me a reputation of “the friendly American.”

I rather enjoy this, as it brings out an outgoing side of me that definitely exists, but isn’t always as pronounced as it should be when I’m back home. Here, because I now have a reputation of being the friendly American to uphold, it pushes me to be as social as possible, with strangers and friends alike.

This weekend, I traveled to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Most people in the western world know Vietnam because of the Vietnam War, but I’d only ever heard the American side of events in history class growing up. In Ho Chi Minh I learned firsthand how truly messed up the war was.

I visited the Cu Chi tunnels which are tunnels that the North Vietnamese built outside of Ho Chi Minh to conduct raids, wait out any bombing attacks, and move supplies around during the war. We got to go walk through the “bigger” tunnels, suitable for westerners, and I have no idea how they were able to survive them for years on end.

Also, like most Americans in the military in the 1960s/70s, my first time shooting a gun was in Vietnam. They had a shooting range and I fired some bullets from an AK-47.

Contrary to the foreigner on the tour who noted that “this must be what it sounds like in America every day,” I’ve never heard the sound of a gun firing up close and personal like that before.

It’s hard to imagine being down in those tunnels for hours and days on end, only to come to the surface and hear rounds after rounds being fired. I see why people come home from war with PTSD.

The only thing more eye-opening than realizing what the war actually looked like on the front lines was going to the War Remnants Museum and seeing all the stuff the US did to the Vietnamese.

Most notably, they used this chemical, Agent Orange, which they sprayed out of planes in hopes of killing all the trees in Vietnam, preventing the North Vietnamese from having anywhere to hide.

What ended up happening was so much worse. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who got Agent Orange in their system suffered irreperable damage to their bodies and minds. Birth defects, and lack of mental or physical development, it happened on a massive scale and ruined the lives of so many people who had nothing to do with the war.

I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum, but this was far more unbearable to look at.

Something about knowing it’s your own country who inflicted so much damage, and realizing that the US was really sticking its nose in someone else’s business is kind of a tough pill to swallow.

I know our goal was to prevent the spread of communism and promote democracy in southeast Asia but damn.

Not only did we fail, but it cost us more money than World War II, and mercilessly ruined countless generations of Vietnamese lives. Agent Orange side effects have been traced as far as 4 generations down.

Fast forward 50 years, and communism did not even really spread much further than Vietnam in that region of the world, and Vietnam actually considers the US as somewhat of an ally, while Chinese support in the country is waning as China lays claim to territorial waters that have been historically Vietnamese. All that being said, communism is still king in Vietnam as you can see in this photo.

Onto other parts of present day Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was incredibly cheap. We went to the number one restuarant in the city and ate to our hearts content and it cost me $23. I ordered a GrabBike to the airport, a 25 minute ride, for 53,000 Dong which is $2.26 USD.

Of course I was terrified that my driver was going to crash every 5 seconds, but hey, you get what you pay for! At least he gave me a helmet. Here’s a video of what the streets of Vietnam looked like.

We stayed on the backpacker street which was also the number one street for nightlife in the city.

That being said, I didn’t like it. Every 5 feet you were getting hustled by someone offering you a drink, to shine your shoes, to give you a massage, to sell you some smelly fried squid, and more.

Bars lined the street, but not a single one had any dancing. They did have laughing gas if that’s your drug of choice. They served it in a balloon.

I passed gas…I mean I passed on the gas.

Probably both honestly.

We did find one club that a local recommended that had the slightest bit of dancing.

Of course, you know I had to go onstage and get my 10 seconds of fame…except my 10 seconds turned into 40 minutes because I guess the performers thought I was kind of hype 😂. Here’s a little video of him giving me a shot while I stunned the local Vietnamese with my scintillating dance moves.

All in all, I’m glad I got to visit Vietnam, mostly to understand firsthand what the war was like. It opened my eyes to a perspective of the war that is shared by most of the world, but seldom talked about in the US.

The country is proud and resilient, and slowly clawing their way to prominence. Its said to be developing rapidly, but the overwhelming amount of people are still poorly educated and have a substandard quality of life.

To tie a bow around my thoughts about being “the friendly American,” if there’s one thing I learned this week it’s that your friends’s belief of who you are end up drastically shaping the person you believe yourself to be. I’ve experienced this firsthand because I’ve been forced to temporarily swap out the people I associate most with since coming to Singapore.

While I am the same person as when I left, my new friends’s understanding of my personality is different than in the US, thus leading them to form a different image of me than my friends back home.

I don’t see it as a bad thing necessarily. It’s simply brought forth different parts of my personality that maybe haven’t shown in a while. But it does go to show how important the people who you associate with are in helping you become the person you want to be. Our friends shape that person more than we care to admit.

Answers I’ve received to my question: “If you have one piece of advice to share with the world, what would it be?”

The world is too big and life is too short to give a fuck about what they think of you. Just be yourself and don’t give a fuck - Sai from Singapore

Have no shame - Manali from Singapore

Truly live in the moment - Wan Yang from Singapore

People are never what you expect them to be. You pull an all nighter with them and then you’re like “this is a completely different person.” It’s also like “the differences you find is also the goal” - Atulya from USA