Backstroking to Vung Tau

[Bogor, 12/28/23]

As always, time is short. I’m sitting at Roti’o, an Indonesian chain, inside Duri Station at 6:36AM. From here, I can take a train to the airport, so will be in Saigon by late afternoon. If not dead from exhaustion or some other cause, I’ll ride a minibus to my beloved Vung Tau. Tomorrow, for sure, I’ll be installed at that stone table outside Ca Dao Café. I’ll chatter with friends then, maybe, walk that black dog.

Unlike humans, he never aks, “Where have you been?” Pulling on his leash, inky [con mực] will act as if I’ve always been there for him.

With a soft “permisi,” a lovely barista has just placed on my round table a paper cup of hot cappuccino. Though deserving nothing, I’ll take it. Damn, that tasted good!

There’s a huge ceiling fan with six thin blades, a sci-fi spider, spinning over me. Eight notes made familiar to us all from grandfather clocks long dead are pulsing electronically, with frequent announcements overlaying them. Granting me a quick glance, a tricolor cat has just walked by.

In my Oyo Hotel room this morning, I didn’t hear that distant “hello,” so the ghost, batty air vent or nutty plumbing was sulking. You can’t say I’m sorry enough. Walking to Stasiun Tanahabang at dawn, I heard birds constantly. Many were caged, however, just like us humans, if we’re lucky. There is a visible homeless population in Jakarta. Unlike in the US and many Western cities, they are reasonably clean and haven’t been driven crazy. You don’t see anyone obviously on drugs or alcohol.

By Oyo, there’s the Jaya Pub, an extremely rare Jakarta dive, but I never claimed a stool there, for I’m a sick man. Had I shown up just six months ago, I would have gotten to know all the bartenders and many regulars. Bars are fantastic story troughs.

Shunning taverns, Jakartans gather in neighborhood eateries. Warungs are everywhere except in pricier neighborhoods. In a Sabda Armandio’s story, a homeless couple use Bibi’s to relax. With a guitar and crude drums, Yuli and Gembok barely survive by busking. All over Jakarta, you see these troubadours.

“In a crisp buttoned shirt, dark grey trousers and a pair of loafers,” an unhappy yuppie enters their lives.

Trying to establish his street cred, this junior businessman babbles, “You’re trying to eat at your favourite warung, the best one in town. It’s so good, so popular, right, that people are lining up in a queue waiting to get in. But lucky for you, you have enough money to pay people to queue for you. Do you see what’s wrong here? Has anyone ever stopped to think about how everything we do revolves around money? I mean, who decided that we needed money in the first place? And who benefits from having money? I think about this all the time.”

Though Gembok politely nods, Yuli smells bullshit. “No warung is actually ever that crowded to begin with, she reflects. “Educated people sometimes make things up just to prove a point.”

9:07AM and I’m at the airport’s Terminal 2. Bypassing A&W Restoran Khas Amerika, a supposedly “Typical American Restaurant,” I’m relaxing in Solaris, waiting for my jus alpukat sans susu or gula. In the city, I’ve had avocado juice without milk and sugar a few times. On the menu board, there’s kopi Vietnam, but condensed milk would catapult me to the nearest emergency room, then morgue. Charitably cremated, I’ll be tossed into one of those canals turned fetid sewers. Building Batavia, the Dutch envisioned a tropical Amsterdam. My most startling memory of that city is of an African pissing from a bridge just before a long tourist boat passed under it. Wouldn’t a surprise golden shower enjoyed collectively be a most amusing anecdote at cocktail parties?

With just hours left in Indonesia, I’m still trying to retain basic words I’ll forget tomorrow and won’t likely use again, but there’s pleasure in all learning, for it’s a most hopeful activity.

Isn’t it charming that makan means “to eat” while makam is “grave”? Two words that sound nearly the same signify the exact opposites. The irony or profundity here is merely accidental, though, for makam is derived from the Arabic maqām. In its original context, maqām is poetic enough, for it means location, situation, home, social standing or tomb. You won’t be home until you’ve eaten enough to be buried.

Though Muslims dislike dogs, you see them all over Istanbul. Kept outside, they’re still fed. So used to street life, they can cross four lanes of insane traffic. In Jakarta, dogs are nearly nonexistent. Free roaming cats, though, are everywhere, except in ritzier quarters, of course. In my alley, there was a green, black and red parrot so striking, I thought he was some exaggerated rendition. Only when I detected his left eye moving did I realize he was at least as alive as me.

Staring out my train window, I could see many shabby houses. I had already observed these up-close when wandering mapless through alleys. With open sewers, many stank enough. Though not overwhelming, such whiffs were a constant reminder of the putrefaction awaiting everyone, including the most aromatic face with the freshest breath. Often enough daily, we’re cornered into this funky realization.

On YouTube, two dorks just arrived in Jakarta gush, “Is this New York or Asia?!” Chunks of the Big Apple are squalid enough. Dodging slums, you’ll find most cities reasonably comfortable, sophisticated and Americanized, in the most cliche sense. Spoiled, we forget that only four decades ago, edible burgers, sushi, spaghetti, tacos and Korean BBQ weren’t available nearly everywhere.

Working stiffs, though, can barely afford some dismal hovel, much less an exotic repast. Many of Jakarta’s poorest are borderline skeletal. In Cape Town, there are leafy neighborhoods with transcendent vistas and chic, expansive homes rivaling Laguna Beach’s. Shacks without running water are kept far away. In Jakarta, though, the first and third worlds often play footsie.

10AM and I’ve endured check-in and security check. Since the 9-11 false flag, airports have become theaters of the absurd, but it wasn’t that bad today at Soerkano-Hatta. In Philly nine years ago, a uniformed dummy demanded I drank my can of clam sauce. Even with an image of spaghetti on its label, he couldn’t tell it wasn’t a beverage. Since I couldn’t open it to comply, he dutifully confiscated my explosive weapon. I pity those who have never know life without a permanent War on Terror then Jewjabs, with digital IDs, 15 minute cities, climate lockdowns, economic collapse and global conflagration scheduled next.

In Indonesia, too, there are signs of New World Order tyranny. Many businesses don’t accept cash, buzzwords like “New Normal,” “Net Zero Emission” and “Sustainable Development Goals” are bandied about, and Jakarta is touted as a “Kota Global” [“Global City”]. After deploying Jewjabs like much of the world, Indonesia is now relying on a homegrown, non mRNA version, however, so that’s a hopeful sign.

Trying to be chummy with both China and the USA, Indonesia has resisted joining BRICS, but tough, brave choices will need to be made as we’re plunged deeper in the New World Order. Those who think it will be business as usual, more or less, will be dead.

Mail Online on 12/13/23, “Now scientists say BREATHING is bad for the environment: Gases we exhale contribute to 0.1% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.” We don’t just breathe, however, but drive, fly, eat nonstop and buy entire shopping malls during even the briefest lifespan, thus consuming way too much of their resources. The only solution, then, is for us to be Jewjabbed, bombed or starved to death.

Same as always, we can be counted on to butcher each other, with any dividing line sufficient, whether racial, tribal, religious, linguistic, including slight variations in accents, or geographic. Whatever, man, you’re eating my nasi, mie, soto, sup and roti! In Aceh, they’re menacing Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide, so no solidarity there among Muslims.

Would it surprise you to see militia skirmishes between Manhattan and Staten Island, New Hampshire and Vermont or San Francisco and Sausalito? To protect themselves, Sausalitans will need to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. The 2022 Crimean Bridge Explosion is one model. To block marauding Manhattanites from swarming into Jersey City, the Holland Tunnel and Uptown Hudson Tunnels will have to be blasted.

Meanwhile in Jakarta, they hang Palestinian flags and march against Israel and the USA. These rogue states have never been more nakedly grotesque. Demonstrations mean nothing, though, without actions, so bravo to the Lebanese, Yemeni, Turks and Malaysians. Stepping up, Indonesia should close its ports to any ship delivering just one container to Israel.

At an airport bookstore, I notice a local bestseller, prominently displayed, is Nur Masalha’s Palestine—A Four Thousand Year History, which brings to mind that Jewish lie, “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Only ahistorical morons can believe a region so ancient, fabled and continuously inhabited was empty enough for millions of European Jews to not just move in, but claim as theirs exclusively.

As with Jewish skin lampshades, Jewish hair mattresses, Jewish blood oozing from the ground, Jewish babies beheaded or torn in half and, above all, six million Jews gassed, they’re history’s most outrageous liars. Though everyone lies, only Jews insist the rest of humanity honor their genocidal nonsense. Luckily, most Muslims don’t bite. To save your sanity or even skin, you must follow their example.  

It’s already 8:53AM of the next day. Typing this, I’m at that stone table, so I’ve made it.

When the plane landed in Saigon yesterday, Cao Việt Bách’s “Tiếng hát từ thành phố mang tên Người” came on. Openly obsequious, it’s about Ho Chi Minh and the city named after him. Needless to say, it doesn’t circulate among Saigonese. After that was the English version of “Bonjour Vietnam,” a curious number composed by two Belgians, Marc Lavoine and Yvan Coriat, for a Vietnamese-Belgian singer, Quỳnh Anh. About an uprooted daughter returning home, it has these lines:

One day I'll touch your soil
One day I'll finally know your soul
One day I'll come to you
To say hello... Vietnam

For enduring poetry, though, nothing beats Y Vân’s 1964 celebration of my hometown, so quietly to myself, I sang it on the shuttlebus to the terminal. Though warm, it was raining hard. If I had more energy and focus, I would try to translate some lines for you.

Another Y Vân number is “60 năm cuộc đời” [“60 Years of Life”]. Dying at 59, he missed this modest or extravagant wish by a few months. I’m already 60.

Reaching Vung Tau in the dark, I found it packed with revelers. Returning to my old hotel, I found it fully booked, but luckily, I was allowed into an employee’s room for just $5 a night. Exhausted, I slept through the midnight celebration.

Since I haven’t eaten properly in 22 hours, I must stop here. Though not a very graceful ending, it will have to do. Lovely Jakarta and so much else have already receded. There’s never enough time to adequately describe, explain or even see anything. Of course, everything has been mislabeled. Since I haven’t read the news, nothing bad is happening anywhere. Inky waits for me. In his direction, I will walk.

[Bogor, 12/28/23]

[Bogor, 12/28/23]

[Bogor, 12/28/23]

[Jakarta, 12/28/23]