I got a whole lot of catching up to do, so sorry for the length of this post. For those of you who only have the time to read this first paragraph before your boss looks over your shoulder, it starts with being adopted into a Vietnamese catholic village community and ends with me finding work as a promoter for the http://www.vietnamwildbeachparty.com. That's the gist, you can stop reading now. Oh yeah, and if you're inclined to find out for yourself, you can now call me by pushing 001 84 905957437 into your phone.

As for the juicy part, I think it might be easier and more interesting if I give up trying to merge the past week spent in the village into a cohesive prose and just list random things as they pop into my head. I'll warn you now, if you're not into cultural exchanges, this first part might be a bit boring but I promise it gets interesting towards the end.

The tour guide I was with (about my age, real nice guy, spoke fluent english) invited me to spend Tet (Chinese new year) with his family in the 'burbs. He also happened to need another driver to take his spare motorbike out there, so it worked out easy. Anyway, we drive 50km out to the middle of nowhere just northwest of Dalat (if you feel like looking it up) to the Thanh Bihn village, where I took part in a very awkward family reunion between the tour guide (Hinh) and his folks. Luckily, there had been another American (from LA) that had been staying in with the family for the past two weeks already (but I think he was the first guest ever), which made living there a bit easier. Apparently, the entire country goes home for a week or two in celebration of Tet, and for most of them this is the only time they ever see their family. As you can imagine, the families here are ENORMOUS. There were two huge dinner tables full of people, and some more eating on the floor during the high point. And that's just for relatives once removed.

The town is 100% Catholic. This has far reaching implications with everything they do, act, or feel. Basically, and completely unexpectedly, the place looked overwhelmingly like the deep south, except that everybody was so goddamn happy all the time. That was probably the wierdest thing about the place, actually, even though I spoke absolutely no vietnamese at first, everybody would communicate in smiles and laughter. Not like the polite smiles we have in the states, I mean like genuine smiles that come out of being extremely happy all the time. These kids particularly, they sleep with all their siblings, sometimes as many as 5 per bed, spend every waking moment running around and playing with each other, and don't ever get a wink of discipline from their parents (to the point where I'd get woken up every morning at sunrise to the 7-year old running around the house singing the worst vietnamese music at the top of his lungs). Many times the houses have plenty of extra room for more beds, but they just see no reason to sleep alone. It's the kind of happy that was really, really nice at first but after about 5 days started to get under my skin. Once I figured out that they weren't just pretending for the guests, it almost started to bother me that families back home were never so together. These people were poor by international standards (they grow their own food, plus coffee for some income), but the family acted as a single unit, as if each member was just an extension of the whole. I mean they were really, really happy together in a way I'd never imagined possible.

There's also a lot of physical contact between men, and absolutely no contact between men and women, which took a little getting used to. Absolutely no sex before marriage, and never any kissing in public afterwards. Basically, it's a country of 5th graders.

Oh, I went to Mass at sunrise on the first day of the new year and no, I didn't take communion. Kinda wierd, really, some guy came up to the altar and started singing into a microphone as if the psalms were some kind of Buddhist chant, then everybody sung along. Women and men, by the way, were separated on opposite halves of the pews.

I got to see a pig die, and made me consider becoming vegitarian if it weren't for the fact that they then could feed the whole family for the next three days with it. The first day, actually, they made this really delicious jello stuff out of the fresh blood. Goes really well with lime.

I saw my first cockfight, too. They really beat the shit out of each other before one walks away, for almost half an hour. At one point Hihn's brother had to pick them up to move them back into the middle of the fight space and got blood all over his hands. I didn't even think that this was exactly the spot in the world where bird flu happens until he starting scubbing his hands with grapefruit and lemon to disinfect afterwards.

Oh, it turns out that the first visitors into your house after Tet determine the luck for the rest of the year. And somehow we were considered extremely lucky. I think the criteria was foreigners with big smiles are lucky, but in any case we got whored out to 6 or 8 houses on the first morning of Tet, after waking up an hour before sunrise to attend mass. At each house we drank buckets of green tea in front of an identical smiling shy girl who, translated through Hinh or his brother, wanted to marry one of us. For this one girl, who was really cute actually but also 16, the third sentence was "Do you want I be your girlfriend?" after using the previous two to establish that I didn't already have a wife or girlfriend myself. Good for her, the next sentence invited us to coffee with her friend, who wanted to marry the other American. It would be great to come here without any morals one day...

Anyway, we parted on a long and drunken night full of sad and really touching speeches (loosely translated), and before I left they offered me the new name Tran Thanh Anh, which kinda has a ring to it. I had adopted the name Anh, after realizing that nobody could pronounce my full name, and in Vietnamese culture they put the first name last. All the kids were really sad to see Uncle Anh leave, and the entire family from the bottom up gave me a whole hearted open invitation to come back for Tet (and/or the marriages of anyone in the family) anytime I could make it.

Hinh and his brother Quinn drove us back to Dalat, and just before arriving there Hinh stopped and asked if it would be OK if they drive us all the way to Nha Trang (7 hours away). Quinn, being a country boy, had never seen the ocean, and they both felt it was too soon to part. So I changed my plans from kitesurfing in MuiNe to getting drunk with Hinh, Quinn, and Tyler (the other American) in Nha Trang. We left late, so it took two days of motorbiking through absolutley gorgeous scenery to get there, something which Hinh as a tour guide usually charges $40 per day to do.

We got there yesterday morning, and after two full hours of hearing the Yelps and Yahoos of a Vietnamese countryboy playing in Ocean waves for the first time, we started drinking. I don't think I've ever been quite this drunk before on this trip, but it was nice to know that my "guides" were far worse off. After splitting a liter of rice whiskey on the beach, the conversation inevitably drifted over to sex which, we soon realized, was a very mum subject in the fully Catholic village of Thanh Binh. So Tyler and I proceeded to give a full female anatomy lecture, using sand diagrams to compare techniques, enough to get both of them riled up for a complete night. After another round of Long Island Ice Teas, we were ready to say "yes" for the first time to the motorbikes passing by offering to take us to brothels. We went to this one that looked exactly like a massage parlor, except there was no question about the motives of the employees or the clientelle. An hour, by the way, costs about $6. The brothers tried and tried to persuade us to come with them, since they felt bad doing it on their own, and we must have spent close to half an hour outside the place trying to communicate our intentions. It was probably the best reason I've ever had to pay for sex, but whenever I looked into the mechanical setup of the place, it was such a turnoff that even in my drunken state I had no desire to get led into one of those mangy rooms. For the price, though, we couldn't help but treating them to one hour each of fantastic City-Girl sex and running away to find the local nightclub. When we saw them again at the hotel, they didn't give us any details but both were so rediculously exhausted that it must have been something good.

We woke up a few hours later (7AM) to wish them goodbye and good luck for the long trip home, then after a few hours sleep Tyler and I got some afternoon breakfast to try to remember what the hell had happened to us the night before. It must have been something good, because after sitting down for about 30 minutes, some guy I vaguely recognized as the promoter for the bar we got our long island ice teas came up and asked if I wanted to work with him. Maybe it was the wierd hair (which has since become blondish pink), or the loud happy drunken state I was in, or the awesome bright blue T-shirt I was wearing that said "I EAT YOUR SKIN" in bright red that is so much more disrepectful because I bought it in Cambodia, but in any case he thought I'd make a good sell for this massive full moon beach rave next weekend.

So I followed him to talk to his "boss," who was this young (mid-late 20's) Vietnamese business-looking guy with a Moto Black Razr cellphone and a black silk shirt that made him look like some agent of the local mob. Both of them, by the way, speak this hilarious Australian-Vietnamese accent. Anyway, he explained how absolutely awesome this party was and how much money they're putting into it, then blitzed me with all sorts of freebies and incentives to make sure I didn't run away. They'll basically pay for all my transportation expenses, some drinks, and (nice) hotels for as long as I want to work for them. He showed me around town and pointed out the various bars and travel agencies that he "owned," then bragged about how he knows everybody everywhere, can get free drinks at all these bars, and before I left I got the distinct impression that this is just the kid of some rediculously rich family who wants to make his starting capital into an entertainment empire. Anyway, the way I see it, I've just been flung from the deep South to the New York VIP crowd.

Whether it turns out for the best or not, I'm in Hoi An at the moment getting ready to start talking to everybody I can find about this party, and when I get back to Nha Trang they'll need me to tend bar and keep doing the same thing. Except this time I'm getting paid to drink and party. I guess I'll have more to say about this in a few days once I figure out if the whole thing's a huge scam or not, but this morning arrived at the "free" hotel I was supposed to stay at in Hoi An and the receptionist gave me a brief scare when he told me the "arrangements" my "boss" had told me about didn't exist and tried to charge me $20 per night for the room. With a quick phone call to "the boss," everything was cleared up and I was escorted across the marble floor, past the massive swimming pool, through the Hyatt archetecture, to the room. Nice.