All’s Fair in Vietnam by Noah Klinger

     This story tells about a girl first arrived in Vietnam and took a small room in the backpacker quarter with the aim of becoming an English teacher. She realized that she needed some more formal attire with which to maintain her respectability. So she trotted over to Ben Thanh Market in search of some cheap clothes.

     The story begins when she found a shop selling khakis and asked the salesgirl how much they cost and the salesgirl said “Forget that. Tell me how much for your skin?” This conversation shocked me because I thought this story tells about a Vietnamese sells part of human body. Well Vietnam is quite famous about that right? Thank God it’s not.

     Which I like about this story is how the writer gives me a new part of knowledge that I didn’t even know about it. For your information, in Vietnam, this curious genetic discrepancy became a source of admiration for the locals. The effect was usually immediate. Those who had a little English would simply announce upon meeting “Oh, you are very white!” Others did not speak, simply grabbing arm and holding it up to their own for the sake of comparison. Other than that, one woman demanded to know what kind of special diet to maintain such a complexion. Sick right?

     Besides, sunscreen is expensive. So proper Vietnamese girls solve the problem of protecting themselves from UV rays by wearing an assortment of covering. Including hats, gloves and face-masks that makes them look like motorbike-driving, cellphone-chatting ninjas. On the sands of Vung Tau local tourists dressed more like they were going to the office than the beach. Among of thousands of people there look exactly like one woman in a two-piece bathing suit.

     Instead of going tanning, Vietnamese girls go to spas for whitening. Though exactly how this was accomplished that never did find out. Instead of bronzing the various skin creams all promised to make you look like you would spent your life in a dungeon 100 feet underground. Occasionally it would see women who had slathered themselves a bit too liberally with these products and the result was always lamentable. They looked deathly ill more than anything else.

     It doesn’t take a genius to discover the moral in this story, if there is one. Namely that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that people always desire what is expensive and difficult to maintain. I learned not to take it too seriously. Of course, a little adoration never hurt anyone.