Grace Lewis - AsiaLIFE Magazine

HCM City’s newest rock climbing guru is a fast-talking
Renaissance man. By Frances McInnis. Photos by Fred Wissink.
His compact body slides up the
wall and across the ceiling with
impossibly smooth movements.
An arm extends, a knee bends
and, somehow, he propels himself
up to his goal: an electric
blue rock climbing hold in the
shape of a telephone. Hanging
upside down like a fly on the
ceiling, he pretends to make
a call, laughs, and then drops
lightly down to the mats below.
Meet Paul Massad, the
21-year-old owner of Push
Climbing. Push is Vietnam’s
first gym dedicated to bouldering,
a style of rock climbing
done over crash pads without
ropes or harnesses. Massad,
who punctuates his speech with
quick grins, swear words and
sips of strong, black iced coffee,
says he and other bouldering
enthusiasts are the most
laid-back segment of the rock
climbing community. “It’s easy.
You go out and you do it. A mat
and two people, that’s all you
need. No ropes, no anchors,” he
says. “I’m lazy.”
Well, not quite. Opening a
business in Vietnam as a foreigner
requires quite a bit more
than a few mats, and older,
more experienced entrepreneurs
have been stymied by licensing
snafus and language barriers.
Massad tackles those challenges
the same way he climbs: with
unbending tenacity and a bit
of grace. “It’s all patience,”
he explains. “You’ve got to be
willing to wait, to sit down and
wait for the licenses, to bargain
the prices.”
Making the feat yet more
impressive, Massad opened the
gym in less than six months,
all while taking a full academic
load in the Public Relations
department at RMIT. He barely
slept for months before Push
opened in December.
But that punishing pace is
routine for Massad. He seems to
have more energy than normal
humans, and, having barely
begun his 20s, has already done
more than most octogenarians.
He has worked as a candy salesman,
a motorcycle mechanic, a
helicopter tour salesman and
an office drone. He’s been a
supermarket bagger, a commercial
fisherman and a kebab shop
owner. He’s been an ESL teacher
and a dive instructor, and has
lived on four continents.
Massad attributes his willingness
to take risks and try new
experiences to a childhood
in Chiloe Island, in southern
Chile. Living in a community of
only 300 people, his American
father and Chilean mother let
him set his limits. “You could
go anywhere and it was safe.
My parents always gave me
the liberty to do as I pleased: to
roll on the ground, climb trees,
eat anything, come back with
scratches and bruises.”
The family moved to Alaska
when Massad was 15, and it
was there that he started rock
climbing. At first it was stress
release—he was only sleeping
two hours a night back then too,
bagging groceries at a supermarket
chain called Alaska
and Proud, starting a kebab
restaurant and attending school.
Soon, he was a fixture at a local
climbing gym, heading out
to local mountains with other
regulars whenever he could.
After the family moved to
Nha Trang last year, Massad
missed rock climbing. (“My
hands went soft,” he says
shaking his head mournfully.)
He planned a trip to Japan to
satisfy the craving, and trained
to climb Mount Fuji solo at
dawn. Alone with a bottle of
Jack Daniels at the summit, he
watched the sun go up. “I was
breathless. It was an epiphany
moment,” he says with uncharacteristic
solemnity. Then he
grins and adds, “It was just like
The Lion King.”
He hit several bouldering
gyms in Japan, and was gratified
to find they were packed,
with experts and amateurs.
“Everyone having a good time,
fat, short, skinny, tall. It didn’t
matter at all if you’re good or
bad. Then I clicked. This might
work in Vietnam.”
Indeed, Vietnam’s karst limestone
formations produce the
stalactites, caves and pockets
that make for exciting climbing
and the sport has exploded here
in the last few years. Tourists
and expats flock to Halong
Bay and Dalat, HCM City now
boasts two vertical climbing
walls, and teams from across
Southeast Asia converged on
a peak in Phu Yen province in
late March for the country’s
first international rock climbing
competition.
But local residents have
been slower to embrace the
adventure sport, says Massad,
and this is where his ambitions
lie—to bring Vietnamese into
the global climbing community.
“Climbing is a means to
communication where you
don’t need words. It’s a feeling
that you’re part of community.
Climbing here, or in Japan or in
the US, it’s all the same.”
“Still, it’s not easy to have
people try a new thing, especially
where they are committed to
their own culture and traditions,”
he says. “It’s going [to
be] a lot of work.”
Somehow, I think he’s up to
the challenge.
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