Scattered and Nostalgic, Dreaming of Wonder Bread

As published at SubStack, 4/16/23:

[squirting water during Lao New Year in Pakse, 4/14/23]

When you can speak in decades, death is yawning widely, revealing plenty of broken or missing teeth. Yesterday, I had some tough beef that reminded me of this fact.

Three decades ago, I read at least three Thomas Bernhard novels within a short span. He combines the cantankerous melancholy of Celine with the comic paralysis of Kafka, I thought, so in his world, just about nothing was possible, including writing, for the conditions, external and internal, were always wrong. Yet, he wrote about it.

I, too, slog along. Two days ago, I left tiny Don Det, population 400, for the absolute center of the universe, for here in Pakse, with its 120,000 souls, an improbable if not fantastic number, everything is available.

Tony of Datta Banana Leaf must come to Pakse regularly to get his Indian spices, discount potatoes and even underwear for his teen workers, “They don’t like underwear. I must go to Pakse to buy for them,” he laughed. “One girl, seventeen-years-old, never wore underwear, so I buy for her, but I must check. Are you wearing your underwear?”

Paying just $9.15 a night at the Lankham Hotel, I get air conditioning, a small fridge, a mid-sized TV I don’t watch and my own bathroom. Within a three minute walk, I can eat Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and even Italian food. There’s an excellent French bakery, but it’s closed for 11 days for Lao New Year.

Owned by a Frenchman, La Boulange makes real baguettes. Bread must have crust and be fragrant. I had a taste of La Boulange’s excellence at Torture Sandwich Bar in Don Det. There are those who have spent their entire lives without knowing real bread, cheese, milk, eggs, love or even friendship. Nothing they ever said was even remotely heard properly.

It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that Americans, as the richest and most powerful people on the planet, could be induced to happily ingest Wonder Bread, American cheese, Bud, Miller and cornflakes, the last invented by a nutcase obsessed with anuses. Intestinal flora must be power flushed.

Best thing since sliced bread makes no sense, since it’s a travesty of this sacred food. A population so easily manipulated, then, can be brainwashed into believing the cartoony myths of 9/11, Bin Laden assassination, Jewjabs as “safe and effective, gender as not biology but choice, all races are the same, nationalism is Fascism, Putin as Hitler and Zelensky as Churchill, etc.

I’m sitting just outside Lankham, at a table of hard, heavy wood. I’m on my second can of Beerlao, bought across the street for 99 cents each from Friendship convenience store. When I was in Laos just three years ago, this chain didn’t exist. Three Spaniards share my table.

Directly across from me is Amor Fati Cafe, but who accepts his fate? Even the Dalai Lama wants his tongue seriously sucked.

I had my first meal in Pakse at Amor Fati. The spaghetti was extremely hot but good. The mushroom soup was insulting. Not creamy at all, it was like slurping brown water, and the croutons that came with it sucked the Dalai Lama on his worst day. In the center of this pretentious cafe is a faux fluted column sheathed in vinyl. Though fake in every way, it’s still commanding and gorgeous. Immediately, I understood it was the phallus that held up the universe.

In Don Det, Tony told me Pakse was 75% Vietnamese. I had to laugh. That’s not possible. This morning at a Vietnamese cafe, a woman said the percentage is perhaps 60%. Still sounds improbable.

Though I could understand her Vietnamese, it took some effort. Like everybody else in the cafe, she was born in Laos. Surrounded by a dozen Vietnamese, I mostly heard Lao, for that’s the language they use daily, and what they’re most comfortable with. Vietnamese, though, would break out episodically, including from very young people. High on the wall was a photo of Ho Chi Minh. The calendar was in Vietnamese.

From a corner came the faintest Vietnamese song, with the lyrics barely discernable. With its mournful melody and vocal, it was clearly a ballad of longing so favored by rural and less educated Vietnamese. It’s a song of loss.

Most Vietnamese kids in Pakse go to Friendship Elementary School [Trường Hữu Nghị], where they’re taught in Vietnamese. Recently renovated with money donated from the city of Da Nang, it has six classrooms in a two-story building. After fifth grade, these kids must enter Lao schools.

Online, there’s a video of six girls in Lao school uniforms, performing a Lao dance to the song, “Welcome to Laos.” Twice in four minutes, a boy wanders onstage with a Lao flag. If not for a bust of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese flag in the corner, no one would know these kids are Vietnamese.

Born in Laos, they have never been to Vietnam, I’d bet, and it’s doubtful they can name more than five Vietnamese cities. Though they know next to nothing about Vietnam, they can still speak the language, if only idiosyncratically, and they still eat Vietnamese food. So what if it’s adulterated? My first bowl of phở in Pakse came with raw cabbage, to be dipped in a spicy peanut sauce.

Ultimately, they still identify as Vietnamese because that’s who they are, by blood. To pass as Lao, they would have to reject not just their DNA, but family and history.

In 2018, I visited a Vietnamese Catholic church in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Grand and gorgeous, it resembles a capsized ark. Listening to the praying, I had no idea it was in Vietnamese. People were reading texts they couldn’t quite pronounce. One man told me, through an interpreter, there were only three or four among eight thousand who could speak their ancestral tongue. The earliest Vietnamese came to Chanthaburi in 1707.

In Namibia, the Basters still stick together, as do the Kristangs in Malaysia. The Melungeons of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia have pretty much disappeared, however, for it’s much more advantageous to pass as whites.

A key engineer of the mass slaughter of Slavs in Ukraine is Victoria Nuland. Her paternal grandfather was Meyer Nudelman of Odessa, Ukraine.

John Kerry claimed he didn’t know his original surname was Kohn. Haaretz, “The new nominee for secretary of state only found out about his Jewish grandfather while running in the 2004 presidential election.” Sure, and Kerry is also a man of peace.

An anomaly, the US was not a nation founded on race, but ideals. Since those have been thoroughly defecated on by every American politician in recent memory, the US is effectively dead. Serving Israel, America has systematically betrayed itself, so there’s nothing left but division, acrimony and cowardice. Increasingly uncivil, the US will surpass even South Africa in lethal daily disorder.

So divided, the US should partition itself into six, seven or eight chunks, so Woke Socialists can have California, for example, with Bernie Sanders or Amy Goodman as president. Ron Unz can rule an Angry White Pussy Republic encompassing Wyoming, Idaho and eastern Washington. Noam Chomsky as corpse can be president for life of New England. Emigrating to New York City, Yuval Noah Harari and his husband can co-rule that metropolis, now renamed Transhumania.

Americans who can’t stand any of the above will scatter across this ruined planet, so a hundred years from now, there will be a pocket of mongrel Americans in Pakse even. Each evening, they’ll gather in a diner with a cardboard standee of the Statue of Liberty, to enjoy grilled American cheese sandwiches, made with genuine white bread. Speaking an English even more corrupt and grammar free than today, they’ll reminisce about a mythical land of Beyoncé, George Floyd, Donald Trump and Donald Duck. “We ruled,” they’ll tell their chillun.

Writing this yesterday, I was interrupted three times, by a Vietnamese, Finnish and American. The first was born in Laos, but has spent decades in Houston, Texas. The last time he was home was 13 years ago. Now in his late 60’s, he’s contemplating a permanent return.

The Finnish I first saw at my hotel’s reception desk. Wearing just a towel, this large bald man with a scraggly beard had tattoos covering much of his arms and entire back. Having booked a room with just a fan, he was complaining that it was too hot. He’s in Laos for the fifth time.

During the worst of the Covid hysteria, this affable man was stuck inside Vietnam for 20 months. “They wouldn’t let me out, and no one could come in!” Then, “Vietnamese are the nicest people. They treated me so nice when I was stuck there one year, eight months.”

“How long will you stay in Laos this time?”

“Maybe one month.”

“Why not just stay here? If you go back,” I laughed, “Putin will attack you!”

“I love my country. Finnish people are not afraid to die!”

“But why fight Russia?”

He just grinned. Despite appearing like a hardcore rebel, this man has been “vaccinated” five times!

The American, Richard, I had the longest conversation with. He, too, has been “vaccinated” five times without adverse effects.

Raised in Rochester, he’s spent his entire adulthood in Denver. Now 69, he will collect his first social security check next month. With his $325,000 condo already paid off, and no alimonies or children to worry about, Richard has $2,400 to play with each month.

“You can live like a king here,” I said.

“I can live well enough back in Denver.”

The city is going to shit, however. The homeless are all over downtown. This, Richard attributes to a decline in the work ethics and drug addiction. There’s nothing wrong with the economy. Unemployment is very low, and so is inflation. These bums just don’t want to work.

Old school, Richard is traveling through Laos without a cellphone, so no Google Maps. A dated Lonely Planet, checked from the library, is his only guide. When I told Richard he should get 17,000 kips for a dollar, he was shocked.

“This book says 8,600 kips.”

“Look at how old that is, man!”

Dated information can even kill you. It’s not 2019 anymore.

Everything has changed, now more rapidly than ever, but in Laos, they haven’t lost their minds, or forgotten who they are. When your core is intact, it shows in your face. There is more serenity here, and more smiles.

[Vietnamese kids in Pakse, 4/16/23]

[Vietnamese Cafe in Pakse, 4/15/23]

[Vietnamese church in Chanthaburi, Thailand in 3/24/18]