Vietnamese people do not mess around when it comes to dealing with Westerners. The Vietnamese men, women and westerners have very different goals when in HCMC. The Vietnamese, of course, have the upper hand from being in home territory. It creates confusion for the westerners, who believe that their first world status can give them access to everything. When it comes to Vietnamese men, the Westerners think they’ll be able to trick these 3^rd world countrymen into doing what they want but get ultimately blindsided by Vietnamese men’s self-confidence and patriotism. When it comes to Vietnamese women, they think they’re just getting a paid session for sex but in reality, the women are plotting how to get the most money from them.

Vietnamese men use the space as a center for business deals and use the women to sweeten the pot. They try to dominate/ shame Westerners in different ways, asserting their own dominance in their home country. They prefer cash over credit, credit being a very Western monetary system. Essentially saying “I have disposable income readily available, unlike you”. The Vietnamese also make Westerners stand in line for these bars and clubs but allow Vietnamese clientele to go right into the clubs, showing that Westerners are secondary players. They even go so far as to invite Westerners to meetings, knowing they’ll say no to show dominance and that Vietnam doesn’t need them. Vietnamese men aim to show off Vietnam’s wealth and ascendancy in the global economy, finding it necessary to lower Westerners in order to drive that point home. With the Western and Vietnamese men clashing, it creates a sort of “pissing contests” in Vietnam: which region’s men will come out on top.

Vietnamese women use the space and their physical appearance in sexual transactions. For these women, prostitution is much better than working in a factory, which is where they would be since the vast majority of them are from poor rural families. This profession allows them to become breadwinners, something that is not very traditional but much more liberating for them. They take advantage of Westerners fetishizing them due to the shift of the racialized dynamic of Western dominance. They are able to form paid relationships with these Westerners, posing as “girlfriends” to accompany them to events and on vacations. They can ask for gifts to sell them on the black market, to openly ask for money to help them in fake crises. When Western men and Vietnamese women come together, they play damsels in distress and wrap the Westerners around their fingers.

The Vietnamese broker power, developing a reputation to uplift HCMC. As a secondary global city because of its travel destination and sex markets, the Vietnamese seeks to put HCMC on the primary global map. With these different bars, they cater to niche groups, increasing reputation and ability to play in global market. They create a certain kind of presence of self that is dependent on producing a shifting of racialized order, playing the role of underdogs in order to surprisingly come out on top. Vietnamese men are even crafting new forms of masculinity, where the Vietnamese born get the most beautiful women in these bars. They are trying to commodify all things Vietnamese, something they view as necessary for global respectability.

Do-it-yourselfers seem to be different from regular criminals, even though they are criminals themselves. Their actions of, well vandalism, are legitimized because they are not reprimanded by local authorities. If anything, they are praised for their illegal acts, because unlike Rios’s and Jacques’s and Wright’s teens, these people are partaking in “constructive resistance”, not self-destruction or communal destruction. Their resistance to their respective city’s inaction is for “the good of the community”. They alter signs to make them clearer to drivers, engage in “guerilla planting”, spray paint bike lanes onto roads, etc. Although these changes seem like positive modifications to the community at large, it begs the question: Do the DIYers have the right to make these changes? I think they have every right to recognize and address a problem they think they have in their community, but I don’t believe that they should be taking these matter into their own hands. Although they are residents, there are still certain channels they must navigate in order to enact the changes they are wishing for. Once people start to believe they can do whatever they want because they were not initially held responsible, a chaos will ensue that at some point the city will not be able to control lightly. There are processes for a reason, and although the residents who engage in urban modification refuse to go through said processes because “they might as well,” it doesn’t detract from the fact that going through the city is the legal route and all else is unlawful.

There’s also this sentiment that the changes by these residents could also be a nuisance for others. Bike lanes are a great idea until drivers begin to get pissed off because now the street is narrower. Planting food in an empty lot is great unless someone bought the land to develop a building on that plot. If someone gets hurt from perhaps a resident’s poor design of a bike lane or new road sign, who would be responsible: the individual or the city? I’d say the individual but then the city didn’t hold them accountable so they would be partly at fault as well. Some cities just are not built for these changes and so residents could cause unnecessary headaches for city planners. For example, Boston is a very old city, with winding roads that often don’t make a ton of sense.  Putting bike lanes in a lot of these streets would make the already narrow streets even narrower, maybe even leading to accidents like bikers getting hit during turns or running into an open door from a parked car. When many residents decide to make alterations, it is to help people but it isn’t to help everyone. If it isn’t going to help or please everyone, why go through the trouble and risk arrest or a fine? In addition, going about these changes alone makes the residents look selfish rather than activists. Partaking in collective action makes the issue seem more important and in need of a course of action instead of a self-centered resident who doesn’t like something and so changed it.