Blathering Undead on Burning Ark

As published at SubStack, 7/30/23:

[Don Sang, Laos on 4/6/23]

After visiting Laos in 1950, Norman Lewis wrote in A Dragon Apparent:

Laos was considered the earthly paradise of South-East Asia, although Cambodia ran it a close second. So much was this realised by French officialdom that the competition for a posting to either country was strenuous. Many a wily administrator manoeuvred his way to a position in Ventiane or Luang Prabang, where he instantly married a Laotian wife, set up a shrine with joss-sticks to the lares of his house, and spent much of his leisure decking out Buddha caves with fresh flowers.

Both of these oases of decorum and charm were to be devastated and debauched in the Vietnam war, when as many bombs were showered among the shrines and the pagodas of these small countries as were expended in all the bombings put together of the World War in Europe.

Quite remarkable, the willingness of many Frenchmen to go native, complete with the adoption of Lao customs.

To wed a foreigner is to embrace not just her entire family, but culture. Although a divorce from all of your past is liberating, you’re only entering a new set of rules and demands.

Realizing this, many bail out, but not Luis Merand. Born in 1913, Merand married a Lao three years older, so he’s no cradle raider. She also died 16 years before Merand, but he didn’t go home. At Wat Chanthaboury, their ashes share a stupa grave.

[Vientiane, 1/19/20]

Arriving in Don Det in March of 2023, I felt slowed down and becalmed. Occupying a crude cabin without air conditioning, I was content. Each dawn, a hundred cows ambled across open fields to nibble on grass and leaves. Nearly all restaurants had cushions on floors for customers to sprawl on. At Datta Banana Leaf, the teenage waitresses sometimes dozed under a table. As I drifted into sleep at Datta, a yellow dog curled up against my legs. To visit a bustling market, I took boat rides to Nakasong. Among silent islands untainted by signage, I floated.

At the yearly festival which lasted all night, a chubby lady and skinny gay man, garishly made up, sang to a hypnotizing guitarist. Faintly smiling, eight teenage dancers in tutus and braids pranced. Sitting on blankets on the ground, entire families watched without emotion. Though enjoying the show, they never clapped.

In Don Det, I felt restored. Though an alien place, it had features any visitor could recognize as intrinsic to himself, though long lost.

Even before the cellphone, the isolation of Don Det wasn’t perfect, for there was the intrusion of colonialism, communism and Americanism, global forces that couldn’t help but molest the furthest reaches of this puny earth. With the cellphone, though, you can be in Don Det simultaneously with Bad Kissingen, Intercourse, Ashkelon or Philadelphia, etc., so Don Det, or anywhere else, has been diluted and blurred. Further, the people of Don Det demand, or at least tolerate, this, for they, too, must have cellphones to remove them from themselves.

[Don Det, 4/9/23]

Still, Laos heals.

Norman Lewis, “For all the briskness with which its holy places are maintained, the silence in Luang Prabang is only disturbed by the distant, classroom sounds of bonzes chanting in Pali, and the slow, mild booming of gongs. It is the hometown of the siesta and the Ultima Thule of all French escapists in the Far East. Europeans who come here to live soon acquire a certain, recognisable manner. They develop quiet voices, and gentle, rapt expressions.”

And, “Laosised Frenchmen are like the results of successful lobotomy operations—untroubled and mildly libidinous. They salt their conversation with Laotian phrases, all of which express a harmoniously negative outlook. Bo pen nhang, which is continually to be heard, means no more than, ‘It doesn’t matter’.”

When Lewis visited Indochina, the First Indochina War had begun, then came the Vietnam War, Pol Pot’s reign, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, the boat people exodus and Sino-Vietnamese War. Considering all these, Lewis wrote in 1982 that they constituted “the greatest holocaust ever to be visited on the East. It consumed not only the present, but the past; an obliteration of cultures and values as much as physical things. From the ashes that remained no phoenix would ever rise. Not enough survived even to recreate the memory of what the world had lost.”

The prolonged torture of this region made it “the greatest holocaust.” Though not often acknowledged, a twisted aim triggered these linked traumas. Beyond colonialism and its consequences, it’s the attempt to impose an internationalist design on duped or recalcitrant provincials. This war still flares. You’re in the thick of it.

In any case, the obliteration of the past is an unspeakable tragedy, and not only to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but the entire world. This assessment give us a clue to why foreigners considered backward Laos a paradise.  

In A Dragon Apparent, Lewis also asserts, “The Europeans corrupted but failed to barbarise Indo-China, and many of them who lived there long enough were happy enough to go native and cultivate what they could of the patina of the old civilisation.”

Instead of civilizing the East, Europeans corrupted and even tried to barbarize it. This goes against the usual justification. As the apex of civilization, the West has long felt a Christian duty to deliver the East from darkness. With nuclear bombs, napalm, cluster bombs and, now, Jewjabs, the West always saves the day.
[Vientiane’s Khouvieng Road in 1993, as photographed by a Canadian]

Before my first visit to Laos three years ago, a Canadian reader sent me a photo he took of Vientiane’s Khouvieng Road in 1993. Though a main artery, it looked like some leafy country lane, with just one tuk-tuk, one motorbike, two parked bicycles and a few boys lazily walking, in the road.  

Two days ago, I went to Khouvieng Road to photograph a busy bus station and the swanky Vientiane Center. Though often dead, it’s where locals go to buy a Seiko watch, Burberry bag or Oppo phone. There’s a Pizza Company, a Thai chain, and a Dairy Queen. One store is called How R You 2Day? Over two standard fire hydrants in their glass case is this proud pronouncement, “THE ULTIMATE LIFESTYLE FIRE HYDRANT.” At the cinema, young people in Gap styled clothing bought soft drinks and pop corns. Waiting for their movie, they sat on comfy couches to stare at cellphones. A Malaysian horror flick, Blood Flower, was a hit. In our walking dead era, zombies are the zeitgeist. Just look around you.  

[Vientiane Center on Khouvieng Road on 7/28/23]

Three years ago, I was also sent two 1995 photos of Attapeu, a town in southern Laos. With its primitive huts, it seemed timeless. There’s no chance that mode of living is still extant.

The reader who sent photos said he had lost all affection for Vientiane, for it had been ruined. Laos itself was being dismantled, “My Lao wife called Lao the whore of Asia. Everything for sale, even the lands surrounding the national monument.” Coming from places much more corrupt, perverted and devastated, visitors can easily think Laos is still pristine.

On this burning ark, there are compartments already collapsed and under water. Scorched bodies flail. From certain seaview cabins, the ocean appears calm and the moon reassuringly huge, a magical mirror, same as it ever was. Locked inside your budget, interior room, you hear muffled commotion, but it’s probably just your disquiet brain, with its frequent hallucinations, audio and visual. Inside the entertaiment lounge, sumo sized trannies have sex on stage to a hooting audience of soccer moms, babies, academics and clergymen. Bobbing away in the dark, some odd ones may survive.

Smug, oblivious creatures, many can afford to posture and talk tough, as long as their bacon is not fried. With needless deaths all around him, an aging American in Kiev can still reflect, “Ongoing war has its upside. No jabs, no CBDCs, no immigrants and fewer frivolities.”

Always tiny, man has shrunk, so bo pen nhang may sound truer than ever, but, of course, everything still matters very much, for we are ensouled, and this land is sacred. To stoke reverence, elaborate temples in Ultima Thule are built, rebuilt and beautifully maintained. Burnt or bombed, they’ll reappear.

[Attapeu in 1995, as photographed by a Canadian]

[Attapeu in 1995, as photographed by a Canadian]

[Vientiane Center on Khouvieng Road, 7/28/23]

Last photo of Don Det, at least for a while...

A last look at Tony of Datta Banana Leaf. Before leaving, I wrote this review at Google Maps:

 

 

During my 20 days in Don Det, I practically lived here. Owned by a Sri Lankan and Lao couple, it serves not just Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, but some Malaysian, such as mee goreng, maggi goreng and chicken murthaba. There's chai and lassis. I also accompanied the owners and one or two waitresses to the morning market in Nakasong. The nicest people imaginable, they're that welcoming. Datta can also provide you with all sorts of travel assistance. Not only did they find an affordable hotel for me in Pakse, but arranged for a long stay discount. As with all Don Det restaurants, chickens sometimes wander in, but at Datta, there's often a turkey strutting about just outside and, sometimes, even a partridge. Their dogs, Toto and Sahana, doze near your table. On the Mekong, ducks drift. Stevie Wonder sings, then it's Hotel California. I have a home here, and so will you.

Last Songs in Paradise

As published at SubStack, 4/12/23:

[Don Det, 4/11/23]

After 20 days in Don Det, I'll leave tomorrow for Pakse. I've just booked a $9 room, with AC! for ten days. Hotel owner is Vietnamese, and there are pho and banh mi joints nearby. There's an outside chance I'll return to Vietnam via Attapeu. My great uncle, Hoang Co Minh, had to commit suicide there in 1987.

Hoang Co Minh and his band staged their reentry into Vietnam from Thailand. The American media hyped him as the new Ho Chi Minh, an expat repatriated to liberate his country. They even pointed out that HCM and Ho shared the same initials. Clearly a tool of American and Thai intelligence agencies, he’s barely a farcical footnote, with his forgotten Bay of Pigs, but don’t laugh too hard. The man was willing to die for his beliefs.

Since I'm allowed to stay in Laos until May 22nd, I may also come back to Don Det, or travel further north. If I go to Savannakhet, I can take a bus to Khe Sanh. Site of a 1968 series of battles where roughly 10,000 people died, including Lao soldiers fighting alongside Americans and South Vietnamese, it’s still not clear what anyone was trying to achieve. History is a litany of human sacrifices.

For my last evening in Don Det, I’m sitting in Datta Banana Leaf, of course. It’s a great place to type during the day, when it’s quiet, but since it’s dusk, the same nine songs have come on, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” Bryan Adams’ “Look Into My Eyes,” Richard Marx’ “Hazard,” Lionel Richie’s “Hello,” Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” Elton John and Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart,” Lionel Richie, again, with “Say You Say Me,” and Bryan Adams, again, with “Everything I Do.” Tony is clearly a gentle sap.

Soon, customers will trickle in, all foreigners. Leana, “Lao can’t eat this food. They never finish.”

Since remote places are bastions of local cultures, they’re also leery of exotic food. On this island of 400, there are at least two hundred cows, roaming freely, but no one milks them, for most Laos don’t care for dairy products. Cheese makes many retch, and milk usually means super sweet and condensed.

As if knowing I was about to leave, Toto came to my door this afternoon, something he had never done. So well-behaved, he didn’t dare to enter, even after I had called him in. Later, even Sahana dropped by to say goodbye.

Tony, “When I go to Vientiane or Pakse, and I stay two or three days, Toto, he cries.”

“How do you know?”

“He cries before I go!”

“Amazing.”

Liberated, Sahana got pregnant at nine-months-old. Her litter of five was given away.

During a trip to the market in Nakasong, Tony pointed to a girl who didn’t look older than 11, “She worked for me, one year, then she left. She got pregnant at 14.”

In East Asia, only Burmese die younger, so it’s understandable, sort of, that Laos tend to get it on early.

Lao New Year is less than 48 hours away. Knowing I’m never without my cameras, Tony warned me about having them out, “You must be careful. They throw the water. They don’t care if you have a phone or a camera, but in the evening, they stop.”

Tony’s Lao workers call him papa, which led me to believe they were his stepdaughters. They’re 12, 13 and 13 years old. Two are from Don Sang, where I spent two nights last week. One of the 13-year-olds is clearly smart, so Tony and his wife, Leana, only have her work half a day, so she can go to school in the morning. The girl’s mom is always nagging her for money. Her stepfather barely works.

Leana is a bit annoyed. Yesterday, a guest checked out from one of her rooms at 5:30PM and, complaining of faulty light bulb, only paid her $3 for 1 1/2 day!

Recounting this, Leana and Tony told me about other outrageous antics. Two women ate then disappeared. A man ordered lots of food, then said he had no money after eating. A woman ordered a salad, then showed Tony a bone that clearly could not have come from his kitchen. A man ate half of a chicken biryani, then complained there wasn’t enough chicken.

A man said he would work for food, but not after 8PM, because he had to go to bed early. Fine, but on his second day, he said he had to stop to look at the sunset, on the other side of the island. Two days later, he showed them a bloody forehead as an excuse to stop working. Still, he wanted his food. One of the teen workers had seen him scratch himself with a nail, however, so he was sent on his way.

Since my father ran several restaurants in California, I’m familiar with these tricks, but it’s gotten worse, I tell Tony and Leana, “There’s a new term, dine and dash. Dine and dash.”

Two days ago, a French woman tried to not pay for her visa extension, a service Leana had arranged. She hadn’t paid before it was sent out, and now, she wanted her passport back without paying. “Oh, I forgot my money again! I’ll go get it now.” Not stupid, Leana hung on to that document.

Many crazies from the West show up in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, with the last particularly attractive for its cheap drugs and easy-going locals.

Six or seven years ago, a black councilwoman in Philadelphia wanted to ban bullet proof plexiglass in ghetto stores, because it was insulting to black people, she said. Ghetto commercial measures are spreading, however.

With increasing lawlessness and more Americans starving, anything that’s ready to eat will be locked away, so no more easy access to canned tuna, Spam and nuts. The homeless can’t readily cook. More cashiers will be shot. More stores will close. Electric fences will appear. Walls will rise.

To glimpse America’s immediate future, book a flight to Johannesburg then, ah, walk around a bit.

If you’re young and in relatively good shape, you’re in danger of being drafted soon, so have an escape plan, unless you want to be minced and smoked in your own Khe Sanh.

Since it’s night, mayflies are all over my laptop screen. Lionel Richie is moaning again. At 11AM tomorrow, I will board a boat out of here. Though life is one long goodbye, you don’t quite realize this until you’re really ugly and stinky, but the sooner you know this, the better, actually.

On a dark, desert highway… So stupid! All around me, young people are laughing, and why not? They’re the last to splurge on this much degraded planet.

They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast. Steely? Poetry for the masses, it’s America’s epitaph.

 

[Nakasong, 4/11/23]

[Nakasong, 4/11/23]

[Nakasong, 4/11/23]

[Nakasong, 4/11/23]

275,000 kips [$15.98] for food and beer at Torture Sandwich Bar, and I had an extra roll of bread. It's not expensive when you consider that just about everything has been imported, and the bread itself must be brought in from Pakse. The pesto, though, is freshly made.

Very good Torture Sandwich Bar is owned by a German from Hamburg. Been here three years. He gets his excellent bread daily from a bakery in Pakse, four hours away.

Three chickens to be sold in Nakasong for 75,000 kips [$4.36] each. In Don Det, each would only fetch 60,000 kips [$3.49]. With Lao New Year coming up, Datta Banana Leaf will sell many chickens and ducks.

3:18 by Mekong in Don Det, Laos on 4/11/23

Sitting Out WWIII

As published at SubStack, 4/10/23:

[Don Det, 4/9/23]

Two days ago, I treated myself to a “diavolo pizza” at Reggae Bar. At 120,000 kips [$7.06], it’s expensive for Laos, but I was overdue for a true pizza. It was good.

Two months ago in Siem Reap, I had subjected myself to a travesty without tomato or cheese. When I pointed this out, some savage came on to curse me out, in a comment I had to delete. What a world we live in!

Having spent two years in Italy and 16 more in Philadelphia's Italian Market, I should know what's a real pizza or fake cheese, but hey, deeply unhappy and impotent people are constantly triggered.

[Philadelphia’s Italian Market on 12/3/13]

On 1/31/23, 36-year-old Nathaniel Radimak was finally arrested in Ontario, California for a series of road rage attacks, with nearly all against women. He would strike their cars with a steel pipe and, sometimes, this tough guy even punched them. On 3/31/23, 30-year-old Brandon Leotta Rutt of Grapevine, Texas was arrested for shooting a woman in the neck after she had apparently cut him off on a freeway.

Countless others are assaulted for no reasons at all, but that’s what you get from a nation that came up with free fire zones, knockout games, Shock and Awe and “kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.” A much-admired president, the best ever, according to some, could joke about drone strikes on boys who dared to eye his daughters, and this wasn’t spontaneous humor, but a scripted line to a select audience, to be filmed for posterity. Kick ass then go home! To distract from his blow job woes, Clinton green lighted the mass murder of distant foreigners. That’s how America rolls!

It’s a hit and run society. Only in Hollywood movies are American men out in the open, with their faces shown, battling great odds, as in one against hundreds.

In drowsy Don Det, no one can remember any murder or rape, but, of course, where there are men, sick or evil acts are always latent, for men often think of what they can’t have. Around 4AM last night, there was a commotion outside my door.

By then, I had already been up for half an hour, reading up on the news. With military exercises as pretext, China is blockading Taiwan for at least 12 days. A Russian warship has just docked in Saudi Arabia. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are closed because of “worker shortage.” Though Paris is still burning, the Paris-Roubaix race is still on. Started in 1896, it’s a symbol, or illusion, of an unchanging France.

“Get the fuck away from my window, mate! Go, go away! What the fuck are you doing?! I’m going to knock you out. Go, go away!”

After this outburst, I heard someone chasing someone.

At my guesthouse, each cabin has a crude table, chair and hammock right outside, on a veranda. Each two cabins share the same steps to enter or exit. Standing outside my door, I waited for the UK guy to return.

“Wow, man. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Is he a tourist?”

“No, a local.”

“That’s fucked up.” I shook my head.

“First, I saw him lying on my hammock, so I told him to go away. Then, I caught him jerking off outside my window.”

“I think I know who he is. I’ve seen him at the Indian restaurant.”

In Don Sang, the village idiot is a productive and well integrated member of the community. He drinks and talks, in his own way, with everyone. He’s well liked.

In Don Det, the village idiot is a creep who gravitates towards foreigners. He invites himself to their tables and, sometimes, is even admitted into their rooms, with both men and women paying him for sex. Why not? It’s an experience. No one will know.

He has stolen phone chargers and even phones, so has been locked up, but only briefly.

When I told Ken of One More Bar about the creep’s latest antic, Ken said, “That’s no good. We don’t want to scare the falang away. I’ll talk to his family.”

Arriving in Laos on a 30-day visa, I thought I would stay in Don Det for ten days, at most, but it will be at least 20 days, if not longer. Pakse can wait. Paying $50, I just got a 30-day visa extension via Datta Banana Leaf. It’s more than just an Indian restaurant.

From a nearby table, a Swiss tells a Chinese woman in English, “I had money, but I wasn’t happy, so I decided to start over. Now, I have no money, but I’m happy.” He laughs.

It’s not quite true, for if he literally had no money, he wouldn’t be lounging around in southern Laos, and that applies to me also. Sitting in Datta before noon, I’m on my second large bottle of Beerlao. At $1.18, it’s hard to resist, and it does relax me, thus an aid to my work, what I call my writing.

Charlie Parker died at age 34 from sadness and heroin. The coroner thought he was between 55 and 60. At 17, I learnt this, and that Thelonious Monk was mostly silent during his last decade. It’s a fickle spigot. Do whatever it takes, for everything conspires against this, with failure almost certainly assured. So what if I will only leave garbage behind? It takes a vast minor league system to yield Rickey Henderson and Pete Rose, etc.

I look up to see the masturbating creep standing at my table. He’s the ugliest man I’ve seen in months, if not years, with a face entirely sapped of intelligence. Ready to leave, the Swiss says, “This guy was caught masturbating outside a woman’s window last week.”

“Unbelievable! He was jerking off outside this guy’s window last night.”

“What can we do? It’s not our country.”

“In Vietnam, somebody would have killed him already, and I mean Vietnamese. If you’re a woman who sees this freak jerking off outside your window, it’s not trivial. It’s terrifying.”

The Swiss can only shrug. He’s been here for years. This is Laos.

As for the idiot, he just stands there, with the faintest smile on his face.

“Look at him, man!” I say. “He knows what’s going on. He’s smiling!”

Even in something like paradise, there are false notes, for this is still earth, after all.

Sitting in Oi’s yesterday, I saw tourists and locals hanging out on a tiny island in the Mekong, with a white woman repeatedly standing on her hands. Oi’s has nachos with salsa and real cheese, it claims. If true, that’s another reason to linger in Don Det.

At German-owned Torture Sandwich Bar, the sausage machine is broken, so there are no wursts for a vile.

You can order burgers here, but without pickles, only raw cucumber. This is not just a slap in the face to six million Holocaust survivors scattered across the globe, but every Jew alive, including me, of course.

Still, Don Det is as perfect a place to sit out World War III as any. How did I become so lucky? To be canceled by Uncle Sam was the best gift I’ve ever received.

Without that erasure, I would likely not have had the volition to search not just for freedom, but life itself.

[Don Det, 4/9/23]

[Sarande, Albania on 5/26/21]

[“Kosovo Pizza” in Tirana, Albania on 2/17/21]

[Yangsan, South Korea on 3/29/20]

At $7.06, an expensive meal for Laos, but this pizza at Reggae Bar was real, and I was overdue for one. Before this, I endured a "pizza" in Siem Reap that had no tomato or cheese. When I pointed this out, some savage came on to curse me out, in a comment I had to delete. What a world we live in.

Having spent two years in Italy and 16 more in Philadelphia's Italian Market, I should know what's a real pizza or fake cheese, but hey, deeply unhappy and impotent people are constantly triggered.

Since I left the US nearly five years ago, I have stayed in nearly 20 countries. Only South Africa was arguably as barbaric, and I measure this by how strangers treat each other.

A headline from 4/7/23, "13 people shot in last 48 hours in Philadelphia," but the situation there has actually improved! If only momentarily. "Despite the number of shootings, the Action News data journalism team found shootings in the city are down 16% compared to this time last year."

[5:39AM]

Grading Kunstler, Kirsch and Barrett from Laos!

As published on SubStack, 4/8/23:

[Don Sang, 4/4/23]

Getting up at 3:30AM, I opened my door to find a black animal sleeping just outside. This turned out to be Toto, a dog from Datta Banana Leaf, about seven yards from my room. When I called him by name, Toto ignored me. At dawn around 5:30AM, he finally got up.

After briefly acknowledging his buddy, Toto settled down to pleasure himself. Making all sorts of slurping sounds, he was nevertheless businesslike. A dog, man or woman must do what each has to do. Done with sucking his dick, Toto left without saying goodbye.

When I mentioned to the folks at Datta their dog had slept outside my door, they said his sister, Sahana, had also acted strangely yesterday.

Leana, “Somebody bad was around.”

“In one of your rooms?”

“No, but around.”

Tony, “Dogs know. They can see ghosts.”

Man or ghost, some presence spooked them, but it’s over. Next time Toto tries to lick my face, though, I might not let him.

When tourists were locked out of Laos for over two years, Tony and Leana made up their lost income partially by raising chickens, ducks, rabbits and turkeys. Their four guestrooms were still occupied by stuck travelers, so that’s good. When they started to plant vegetables, though, their landlord blocked this by saying it would upset ghosts. He didn’t care to have angry demons rush to his home to complain or retaliate. Spirits prefer the status quo.

In Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, most tattoos are magical, to ward off evil spirits, bring good luck or make you sexy even. Although I find all of this absurd, I’ve had incidences in my life that were beyond natural, so it’s reasonable, I think, to admit our logical minds, even when functioning properly, have serious limitations. Certainly, we have no intimation of the wisdom possessed by the dumbest dog, duck or termite.

What drives Laos, though, isn’t magic but its understanding of Buddhism.

Technically, Laos is Communist, but Jewish thinking, with its us against them and progress as weapon, has no purchase here. The Vietnamese-sponsored Pathet Lao gained support because the US made this nation the most bombed in history, but after that horror, Laos is, again, as tolerant and easy going a society as you’ll find, and it’s not just blasé about progress, but purposeful exertion. Laos is the definition of chill.

On 2/13/20, I made this observation about crossing from Laos into Vietnam, “Immediately, the landscape became animated with people buying, selling or working in the fields. Across verdant paddies, dozens of figures were bent over to plant rice seedlings. Everything seemed more purposeful than in Laos. Even the herons flew straighter, and each dog yawned with more determination.”

Visiting Laos in 1950, Norman Lewis already pointed out:

It is considered ill-bred and irreligious in Laos to work more than is necessary. The father of a family cultivates an amount of land, estimated, by a bonze who is expert in such matters, to be sufficient for his requirements.

[…]

The accumulation of wealth which is not to be used for definite, approved purposes, causes a man to lose prestige among his neighbours, just, as in the West, the process is reversed.

[…]

It is a stimulating reflection that the Western millionaire, obsessed for the sake of social distinction with the amassing of enormous possessions—little of which he can personally consume—would attain the same ends of personal celebrity under a Laotian Buddhistic order of things by his priestly austerities—by embracing the most abject and prestige-conferring form of poverty.

The more abject your poverty, the more you’re admired. In 2023, however, some top Lao Commies have made themselves obscenely rich, but that’s inevitable in any totalitarian system. For pointing this out in Animal Farm, Orwell is still taking low blows from leftist soy boys. Mostly black sheep from better off families, they rage against not just the middle but lower class, whom they caricature as “right wing” idiots. Hypocritical indignation is a hallmark of Jewish thinking.

Why didn’t Khmer Rouge type hell erupt in Laos? Besides being much milder than Cambodians, Laos weren’t ruled by Paris educated maniacs. Discounting Prince Souphanouvong, a useful idiot, the Pathet Lao was led by a half-Vietnamese, Kaysone Phomvihane, whose birthname was Nguyễn Cai Song.

Laos still has 80 million unexploded American bombs, including toy-like cluster bombs liable to be picked up by children. In Laos, too, babies are born grossly deformed by Agent Orange. Of course, most Americans couldn’t care less, for they have new genocides to orchestrate, as in Ukraine and Syria.

On 4/3/23, James Howard Kunstler wrote:

The main thing about the Ukraine War is that the US doesn’t want it to end. You understand, it is not about any airy-fairy principles such as freedom for Ukraine. It’s about antagonizing Russia no matter how many dead Ukrainians it takes, because US officials developed a delusional psychosis about Russia after years of using it to mind-fuck American citizens, and our folks-in-charge have to justify that antagonism by pretending we have vested interests in Ukraine, which we don’t, by the way.

As smart as Kunstler is, he’s missing at least two key factors. To prevent itself from becoming irrelevant in an emerging world dominated by China and Russia, the US must subvert its main rivals, and so what if millions of Ukrainians, Taiwanese, South Koreans or Japanese must die? Germans, Brits, and Frenchmen can also watch their societies crumble. Uncle Sam has never cared for innocent lives.

Moreover, the war in Ukraine is an intimately Jewish affair, with Jews celebrating Jewish Ukraine resisting Putin, the new Hitler. Of course, no Jews are killed or hurt, only Slavs. This, in itself, is a key Jewish objective, as I pointed out on 3/9/22, with my “As Many Dead Slavs as Possible.” On 3/29/22, I elaborated this further with “Chris Hedges, Victoria Nuland and the Khazars.”

If you ignore the Jewish factor, the world’s most pressing problems hardly make sense. For about two years, Steve Kirsch is continually perplexed that authority figures keep ignoring his mountain of evidence against Covid “vaccines.” There’s no mystery, however, if you notice all the Jewish players behind this unprecedented genocide, and, even more importantly, that it’s entirely backed by the Jewish dominated media.

Of course, I’m just an anti she mite for writing on 11/19/21, “Mass Child Sacrifice in Plain Sight.”

Just yesterday, Kevin Barrett published “Zionists Attack Worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque.” See a pattern? Jews attacked Islam’s most sacred mosque, Kevin, not “Zionists.” As the man who translated Laurent Guyénot’s From Yahweh to Zion, Barret knows better. Get with it, man! You ain’t got no respectability left to maintain!

I finish this in Mr. Mo. In front of me are two German tourists, and behind me are Koreans. Last night, Toto again slept outside my door, so maybe Datta Banana Leaf is haunted.

With even Saudi Arabia joining BRICS, the dollar collapsing, Europe in turmoil and America increasingly lawless and beyond stupid, a global war is inevitable, it seems, but not much will change in this corner of Laos. Sure, most tourists will disappear, but locals are well geared to eating less and spending next to nothing. Having been so lazily fished, there’s still plenty of protein left in the Mekong, and edible leaves grow wild. Laos will survive.

After all, this is where the best men prove themselves by needing less. Bone tough, they’re not soft like most others.

[Nakasong, 4/3/23]

[Nakasong, 4/3/23]

[Don Sang, 4/3/23]

[Nakasong, 4/3/23]

[Datta Banana Leaf]

Bony Kids, Dogs, Hot Pig and Beerlao on Elephant Island

As published on SubStack, 4/6/23:

[Don Sang, 4/5/23]

Over two visits, I have spent six weeks in Laos, Land of a Million Elephants. By vans and buses, I’ve criss crossed this country. Of course, I’ve seen no elephants, not even during my two days on Elephant Island [Don Sang].

At Vietnamese temples, there’s often a large depiction of a tiger. So feared, this beast was called Mr. Tiger, and in Phú Yên, there’s a Mr. Tiger Bridge. There are just five wild tigers left in Vietnam.

Lions used to roam Turkey, Greece and the Balkans.

Except for dogs and cats, humans prefer their animals as myths, cartoons and mascots, so there are statues of lions all over Cambodia, Singapore is the Lion City, and we cheer for the Detroit Lions, Washington State Cougars, Chicago Bears or Philadelphia Eagles, etc. Real animals, we mostly cage, shoot, eat or enslave.

In Egypt, you’d see men nearly as large as the donkeys they ride on. To give these scrawny animals some rest and justice, they should switch roles occasionally.

Yes, it’s a lame joke by an urbanite who would starve next to a live pig.

We must eat or enslave everything to bring ease to our overbearing and precarious lives, for daily, we must contend with nature and, most alarmingly, other men. Driven insane, we even turn against ourselves often. I have never refused a piece of meat. A piece of meat is a piece of shame, goes a Vietnamese proverb. Give me my piece, damn it!

Though I’ve spent nearly all my life in or just outside cities, I’ve experienced villages. None, though, was as primitive as Elephant Island. On Google Maps, there’s a Don Sang, but that’s a larger one in another part of Laos.

The family I stayed with has a daughter who works at Datta Banana Leaf, where I’ve been eating Indian and Malaysian dishes.

On a boat, I arrived with her mom and younger brother. I had no idea what I would find beyond the fact there was no one I could communicate with. As for food, I would eat whatever. For my first dinner, this turned out to be one small fish, complete with head and tail, in a sour broth, some freshly plucked leaves and plenty of rice.

The next morning, two locals had me join them for a mini feast of dogmeat with rice wine. One man had two sentences of Vietnamese he had tried on women, “You are very beautiful” and “Do you have a husband?”

Halfway through our merriment, the village idiot appeared. Making odd sounds, he was at least more articulate than me. I noticed a wedding band on his working man’s hand.

By the Mekong was the village’s only bar, two tables on sand under a thatch roof, with a speaker ready to boom some pulsing, psychedellic Lao pop. There, I had larb made with tiny, uncooked shrimps bathed in a vinaigrette like mixture of fish sauce, lime and chili, with bits of scallion for kick and color.

19th century French travelers remarked on the popularity of larb, so it predates phở, pad thai, cheeseburgers, cheesesteaks, hot dogs and potato chips, etc.

Everyone shared beer. As the just arrived foreigner who couldn’t talk, I made myself welcomed by buying much more than my share. It’s the least I could do. In Camden’s freezing and stinking tent city years ago, I gained entry by bringing beer in my backpack.

A dark drunk man with missing front teeth talked nonstop to me for over an hour. The dogmeat fellow invited me for more of the same later.

Speaking of which, here’s William Clark on 10/10/1805, “our diet extremely bad haveing nothing but roots and dried fish to eate, all the Party have greatly the advantage of me, in as much as they all relish the flesh of the dogs, Several of which we purchased of the nativs for to add to our Store of fish and roots &c. &c.-”

Meriwether Lewis on 1/3/1806, “for my own part I have become so perfectly reconciled to the dog that I think it an agreeable food and would prefer it vastly to lean Venison or Elk.”

Within hours of arrival, I noticed an abundance of small kids, but almost no one from 16 to 25. Leaving Don Sang to find work, most go to Thailand. The language is nearly the same. Plus, Laos have spent all their lives watching Thai TV and movies. Bangkok, then, is their Tokyo, Paris or New York.

My hosts had a spacious house on wooden posts. Most rooms were kept practically empty. When it’s too hot during the day, it’s better to lie on a hammock under the house, or on a platform under a tree overlooking the Mekong.

Seeing a leashed sow on hot sand, I would bring her basins of water, which she appreciated. Drinking some, she would knock over the rest, in a mostly futile attempt to create mud. Noticing fresh leaves just out of her reach, I plucked handfuls for her to eat. As a hit and run visitor, I could afford to be sentimental, but when you’re hot or thirsty, each drop of water matters. Getting spoiled, Mrs. Sow would plop her mottled self down for me to stroke.

I slept in the living room where, each night, nine or ten kids watched TV. During the day, I often saw them play cards. Seeing me swim in the Mekong, some joined me. I hit it off with nearly all of them. They laughed and goofed around with the beer bellied foreigner. A dirty baby wearing just a filthy shirt would shriek whenever I got too close, however. He could sense the terror in this outsider.

With a slingshot, a bony boy knocked a tiny yellow bird from a tree. Sitting with her grandson, an old woman slowly plucked it. With his baby fingers, he learnt to do the same. Proud of this new dexterity, he showed me his dead bird.

[Don Sang, 4/4/23]

Although there’s a school on the island, I didn’t see any kid in school uniform. With embarassment, a girl of about 11 said “Hello!” Thinking she might know some English, I asked very slowly, “Do kids here go to school? School?”

Even more embarrassed, if not terrified, she just laughed.

Like everywhere in Laos, much land is not used. I saw nothing planted by my host family. For my second dinner, I was again fed bits of fish in the same sour broth, plus leaves and rice. This time, I was also given bananas. When I only took one, two boys sitting nearby asked for the others, which they immediately ate. On my first night, I also saw a kid eating just rice.

In Laos, you sometimes see people who are extraordinarily thin, and many kids seem undersized. Besides not getting enough protein, many were born to teenaged, not quite mature mothers.

[Nakasong, 4/3/23]

Better educated females in cities marry later, but most Laos still live in rural areas. With cellphones, they now have access to even more sexual stimulation, and the means to titilate each other with racy photos.

Lao traditional dancing is slow, gentle movements expressed mostly with hands, and no hip thrusts, but some, at least, are learning how to twerk. There’s a sexy duet by Zamio P and Thinlamphone with an English title, “All Day All Night.” Trendy Laos can also look up to Laostha of San Jose, CA. With his homies and pricey cars behind him, the well-tatted Laostha flaunts his gold chain, grabs his crotch and raps. Having gained all that decadent and dying American cliches, Laostha no longer belongs here.

Having written about Don Det as an oasis of calmness and sanity, I sought out a more typical Lao village, so I went to Don Sang. Unlike the former, it has no tourists, so no restaurants serving foreign dishes. There’s no cosmopolitan veneer over the frozen in time. It’s simply backward, though with the seductive outside world beamed in via TVs and cellphones.

Demographic pressures also force people out. My host family has 12 children. Five are working in Thailand, with a sixth laboring in Don Det. They don’t just leave their island to eat, but are lured by all the seductions of the outside world. Once in Ubon Rathachani or Bangkok, though, they’ll find themselves sweating nearly nonstop in kitchens or factories, or on farms. Though their days have never been so long, they’re grateful to feel their mind and wallet expand, until, finally, they decide enough is enough. Now, I will go home. Most do go home.

Born in Saigon, I saw Seattle at 11, Portland at 12, Los Angeles, Houston and New Orleans at 13, San Francisco and San Jose at 15, then Washington, New York, Chicago and Saint Louis at 16. Soon as I could drive, I went to DC to look at paintings, and Baltimore to watch baseball. Not counting Saigon, I didn’t quite live in a city until I moved to Philadelphia for college, however. That nasty, smart assed yet goofily sweet dump certainly shaped me.

As an adult, I’ve spent time in countless cities, so I come to Don Det or Don Sang as a jaded city snob. I must not forget that.

Still, I insist these tiny and remote places are crucial bastions of local cultures, so we don’t all become some globalized type or cliche, or parody of Lady Gaga or Snoop Dogg, etc. Moreover, even in dirt poor Don Sang, I heard laughter whenever adults or children got together, and they were nearly always together.

How many times in Philly’s Friendly Lounge did I find myself unable to have a conversation, because some same old song was playing too loudly, or the Phillies, Sixers or Temple Owls were on? Laughing too hard at some YouTube video, the bartender had just spat her denture onto the floor. Beautiful once in Miami, she had danced next to Prince.

Back in Don Det, I write this in Datta Banana Leaf. At the next table, the owners and two teenaged workers are having lunch. Making just $41 a month, each sends all but $3 to her family. When there are no customers, which is most of the day, they just lie around. Sometimes a girl would sneak into the toilet to chat with her boyfriend.

Datta Banana Leaf also has four guest rooms. Last year, a Russian stayed for four months. Not only did he go nowhere else, he ate nearly all his meals at Datta Banana Leaf. Shrinking his universe, this man was content.

Among the island’s 20 or so white residents, there’s a Finnish druggie who would drop by Datta Banana Leaf to borrow money. Each time, he would pay after a month or so, but once, he decided to grant himself a debt jubilee of three million kips, or $175. Only when he was firmly reminded his visa had long expired did he pay up. Incredibly, Datta Banana Leaf has resumed lending to this miserable refugee, without interest. No one likes to see a man beg.

In Albania, I ran into an American who was singing in Turkish or Kurdish on sidewalks. He’d rather do that than return to teaching high school in the US. Since learning has become nearly impossible in that perversely stupid society, who can blame him? Plus, how many teachers are beaten up by savage students? Last I checked, Dandelion Lakewood was living in an abandoned concrete bunker.

In Siem Reap just two months ago, I was happy to see again Max, a 65-year-old from Iowa. Thrilled to be in a $30 a month room, he said I could have it should he, finally, be able to collect his social securities and veteran’s benefits. Max has spent roughly four decades overseas. All he misses of home is a juicy, tender steak, with just enough blood oozing.

In Don Det last week, I met a German woman who said she was 18.

“No way! You’re kidding me!”

She grinned.

“When I was your age, I was too scared to go anywhere, or do anything.” It’s not quite true. I was flattering her a bit. “So where will you go next?”

“Don Det.”

“You mean you’ll return next year?”

“Yes.”

Not all is perfect here, of course. A fly just landed in my Beerlao, so I had to fish him out. There are no Tex Mex tacos or burritos. Walking across fields barefoot, you must sidestep cow pies. With racing partridges sometimes crossing your path, you must yield.

With no one to shoot, stab or sucker punch you as you wander around, drunk or inattentive, there’s no frisson to your uneventful day, so you can’t look super gangsta, lying there on the ground, breathing your last.

If you swagger here, no one will say anything, but they’ll think you’re insane.

 

[Don Sang, 4/3/23]

[Don Sang, 4/4/23]

[Don Sang, 4/4/23]

[Don Sang, 4/4/23]

2:12 on Mekong between Don Det and Nakasong at 6:30AM on 4/3/23