I can deeply relate to your tale of the dispossessed, Mr. Linh Dinh.
You brought to my attention what most of us look at every day but can not see; the rising tide of the dispossessed sweeping the world. It took me years to understand that I am among them.
I grew up in Connecticut, in the U.S.A. in a comfortable middle-class environment that FDR's New Deal had brought to my father's generation. Perhaps the most fortunate working-class generation in the history of the world.
My father died when I was a child thanks to the legalized decimation the tobacco industry inflicts upon the world in general and America in particular. My mother lost our house and then died from smoking herself and I moved to California to attend school. I made a meager living as a tutor in California for twenty years. I lost that job in the Financial Crisis of 2009 that the banksters had unleashed on the world. When Covid hit I moved south to Mexico where the rents were more affordable.
I found out the hard way that many Mexicans (perhaps often for good reasons) don't like "Gringos." So I moved back to as close as I could afford to get to my old home town in Connecticut, Bridgeport, a poor, abandoned, rust-belt wreck of a city on Long Island Sound where I can barely afford to rent a room in a vermin infested rooming house from where I write this.
My last hope in this life is to take my meager Social Security stipend and find a refuge somewhere, perhaps in south-east Asia or the Philippines, wherever they will put up with me, a defeated old American who no longer has a home.
I'm finding, through my research, that nobody wants Americans, unless they come for a short -- very short -- vacation and bring lots of money. Which I don't have.
So I, too, am among the enormous tide of the dispossessed sweeping around the planet. I keep asking myself, "couldn't we have done better than this?"
Have you perhaps looked at the reason why Mexicans don't like Americans? Perhaps it's their lack of humility and inability to adapt to the country they're in. I have a German friend who looks like the ultimate Gringo with his blonde hair and red complexion but the Mexicans love him. I put it down to personality and how he treats people, he's got the type of personality that everyone likes.
However there is a dynamic between Mexicans and people from the U.S. that needs to be considered.
I lived for many years in California. There is a long, sordid and unpleasant dynamic between Mexicans forced by economic necessity to come to California to work as field laborers in agriculture and the exploitative agribusiness industry. Mexicans and Central Americans are often abused by their American farm employer because if undocumented the laborers have no where to turn for assistance. They have no minimum wage to fall back upon and no health insurance.
In other words Mexican laborers' hardship is often exploited by agribusiness. And Mexicans might rightly resent that and take out that resentment on any American they come across in their country.
I personally was always respectful of Mexicans as I am of all people. I am a firm believer in Christ's imperative and Kant's categorical imperative: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Unfortunately, perhaps due to human nature, some people pre-judge us and I as a "Gringo" was assumed to be "bad."
The Mexicans' dislike of the Gringos might be because of the war-on-drugs misery unleashed upon them. But in most of the world, if you don't act like a pri*k, you are still welcome as an American.
I believe that, generally speaking, what you say is true.
However among any "in" group of people (people who identify themselves by nationality, race or ethnicity for example) there will be some people who dislike "the other" or "the outsider".
In my personal experience I ran into some lovely people in Mexico who went out of their way to be kind to me. However there were a few among those I met who seemed to instinctively dislike me before they even knew me. Seemingly just because I was obviously not a native.
Yummy will likely love Portugal and only come back if forced out. I have never met a Thai or known anyone who knows a Thai living overseas, for example, who doesn't prefer living in a White country to living back in Thailand.
White countries, for the most part, seem like a dystopia with the Great Reset and all. However, even with all the financial shenanigans, anal revolution, endless wars and increasing censorship, it is much easier to earn a living in them than in a developing country.
In many ways the shrewdest move of the Jews was flooding the US with people from very disfunctional countries. Those immigrants have far lower expectations of a society and usually will, as the elite spreads disfunction, mainly compare the US to their old country not the old US.
These days, one driver of US emigration might be a search not for affordability but for sanity. But Thomas makes a good observation about the less-than-warm welcome that might await a US emigrant elsewhere in the world. In the past, the prototypical "ugly American" might have made his own bed in this respect, but now our government is "helping" us out by wearing out our welcome before we even have a chance to go there and misbehave ourselves!
I've written about Max in Siem Reap. This native of Iowa was often so destitute, he had to rely on free meals from a friendly restaurant. When I saw Max 3 1/2 months ago, he was living in a $30 a month room, rented from that restaurant, so that Cambodian family was taking care of him.
As long as they're not acting like Unzian assholes, Americans are still welcomed in many, if not most, countries, I think.
When foreigners peek into Unz, they're apalled by the ugliness routinely on display.
I spent several years living in Ho Chi Minh City. During that time I noticed something: Those foreigners who came expecting to have a bad time, to find conflict with the locals - well, they found it. And those who didn't expect a bad time, for the most part didn't find one. I think this has almost everything to do with how they interacted with others.
Treating people decently - at a kindergarten level, no suave cultural sophistication required - goes a long way.
The tragedy of Europe is that they simply gave up. No longer proud of their traditions, history or religion, they are giving it all away to dark strangers before committing euthanasia. Sometimes literally. In the Netherlands even 12-year old children with depression or obesity can apply (in Canada, the government may even force it on you).
As for those migrants, they have no idea of Europe of old was like, for them it is just an opportunity to be in a place where they can get some free money and benefits, and maybe a white whore. For many it doesn't work out and they end up on the streets or prison. But it works enough for a lot, for a while. They don't need much and have lower expectations than even the poorer white European. A brown, dying Europe is the future. Count Kalergi would be proud.
Linh, sometimes I suspect you may be an incarnation of Louis-Ferdinand Celine - restlessly wandering, distracting self in the observation of the mindless delusion and folly of others, finding momentary comfort in food and drink; but, as inevitable as dusk, being consumed by the saudade within us all. “Love One's Fate” indeed.
“Well the danger on the rocks is surely past/Still I remain tied to the mast/Could it be that I have found my home at last/Home at last"
In 1985, I was 21-years-old when I read Céline's Death On The Installment Plan and Journey To The End of The Night. I had just dropped out of college and living in a miserable shell of a house in Grays Ferry. I had a housemate. Each of us paid just $25 a month in rent.
32 years later, I would be paid more than a thousand bucks for a poem about Grays Ferry:
"Grays Ferry": brothers from another mother - in my case, I remember trying to wade through "Finnegans Wake" while failing miserably in college; then, ending up reading a good chunk of William S. Burroughs published works in the school library. "Finnegans Wake" ended up being used as a doorstop....
"Having done it over and over, I’ve gotten fairly good at it. Still, I’m tired."
I can sympathize. At first moving from place to place was rejuvenating. After a point it just started feeling, like most other fun things, repetitious. However, after not leaving Thailand in over 5 years I am finally ready to branch out.
Linh, If you don't see yourself going back to Europe, what do you see yourself doing? Are you looking for a home base or will you just bop around Eastern Asia indefinitely? Or?
In the article, I said I was waiting for Vietnam to start issuing three-month visas again. I'm also looking into getting a one-year residency permit for Laos. If nothing comes through, I'll circulate between Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
As for the US, I have no plan to return, but whenever I think about that possibility, El Paso keeps suggesting itself, weirdly enough. El Paso and Juarez call to me, but only faintly, for now.
Linh, do I have it right that you are native-born Vietnamese? It's interesting that this doesn't qualify you for permanent residence if not citizenship. If this is the case, it's weirdly amusing that the bar to entry is now so much lower in the good old USA. All you have to do here nowadays is walk across and present yourself, after which they give you a court appointment a few years down the road and turn you loose. Even if you don't show up, it's doubtful that the increasingly witless bureaucracy will ever bother to run you down.
I can apply for Vietnamese citizenship, but it's a process.
No country has borders like the USA. When I lived for two years in Italy, I had to get my papers in order to occupy an apartment, and I had to do the same when I taught in Germany. In each country, I had to prove I had the right to be there.
What you describe sounds much more like the norm to me, although I suspect that was a long time ago, and perhaps things have gotten more "informal" in Europe given the incoming tide of recent years.
Laughably, I knew people in the US that used to talk about moving to Canada. (PS: I don't hear this too much any more...) Most of them believed that all they needed to do to make this happen was drive up there and rent an apartment, as though they were relocating from Pittburgh to Philly or something!
If you overstay your visa in Laos, it's a fine of $10 per day, but you can only get away with overstaying for a few days. At their discretion, they will throw you in jail if they think you've overstayed deliberately. Same with Thailand, I think.
Well Bill, they were probably old enough to remember the draft dodgers. But what country wouldn't welcome a flood of healthy, educated 19- year old young men? In those days it was relatively difficult to get permanently landed in the US, even for Canadians. Not so hard the other way. Remember The Electric Flag (i think) singing 'Find Yourself Another Country'?
Looked up Yummy - there seems to be Yummy with green walls (probably old location) and Yummy with beige walls. Mixed reviews for the food but the main driver of sales is the price.
Looking at the hostel, I've stayed in worse places, excluding the likely insects residing in the room, while backpacking in Europe.
Hi Linh, good to hear you are in good spirits. I understand the feeling of not wanting to travel around much anymore. The longer we stay in one place the more we enjoy and appreciate it. Take care and looking forward to your return to Vũng Tàu where the waves never stop.
Linh, please avoid the fish larb, you might get severe kidney problems from it, the uncooked pork larb is perfectly safe. I'm loving your Pakse writing, I could probably live there happily, not so my American wife - she'd hate it. Thanks!
Elaine, there's no trichinosis (sp, as well). The northeast Thais and adjacent Laotians feed their pigs rice and not garbage - it's ok to eat it raw. Not so the fish, parasites are still there unless you cook it and they don't.
Bill, I couldn't find trichinosis, but I found trichomonal - any flagellate protozoan of the genus trichomonas parasitic in humans or animals. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
Pork should be thoroughly cooked, not eaten raw. Pigs are particularly susceptible to those parasites.
I can deeply relate to your tale of the dispossessed, Mr. Linh Dinh.
You brought to my attention what most of us look at every day but can not see; the rising tide of the dispossessed sweeping the world. It took me years to understand that I am among them.
I grew up in Connecticut, in the U.S.A. in a comfortable middle-class environment that FDR's New Deal had brought to my father's generation. Perhaps the most fortunate working-class generation in the history of the world.
My father died when I was a child thanks to the legalized decimation the tobacco industry inflicts upon the world in general and America in particular. My mother lost our house and then died from smoking herself and I moved to California to attend school. I made a meager living as a tutor in California for twenty years. I lost that job in the Financial Crisis of 2009 that the banksters had unleashed on the world. When Covid hit I moved south to Mexico where the rents were more affordable.
I found out the hard way that many Mexicans (perhaps often for good reasons) don't like "Gringos." So I moved back to as close as I could afford to get to my old home town in Connecticut, Bridgeport, a poor, abandoned, rust-belt wreck of a city on Long Island Sound where I can barely afford to rent a room in a vermin infested rooming house from where I write this.
My last hope in this life is to take my meager Social Security stipend and find a refuge somewhere, perhaps in south-east Asia or the Philippines, wherever they will put up with me, a defeated old American who no longer has a home.
I'm finding, through my research, that nobody wants Americans, unless they come for a short -- very short -- vacation and bring lots of money. Which I don't have.
So I, too, am among the enormous tide of the dispossessed sweeping around the planet. I keep asking myself, "couldn't we have done better than this?"
Have you perhaps looked at the reason why Mexicans don't like Americans? Perhaps it's their lack of humility and inability to adapt to the country they're in. I have a German friend who looks like the ultimate Gringo with his blonde hair and red complexion but the Mexicans love him. I put it down to personality and how he treats people, he's got the type of personality that everyone likes.
To some extent what you say is certainly true.
However there is a dynamic between Mexicans and people from the U.S. that needs to be considered.
I lived for many years in California. There is a long, sordid and unpleasant dynamic between Mexicans forced by economic necessity to come to California to work as field laborers in agriculture and the exploitative agribusiness industry. Mexicans and Central Americans are often abused by their American farm employer because if undocumented the laborers have no where to turn for assistance. They have no minimum wage to fall back upon and no health insurance.
In other words Mexican laborers' hardship is often exploited by agribusiness. And Mexicans might rightly resent that and take out that resentment on any American they come across in their country.
I personally was always respectful of Mexicans as I am of all people. I am a firm believer in Christ's imperative and Kant's categorical imperative: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Unfortunately, perhaps due to human nature, some people pre-judge us and I as a "Gringo" was assumed to be "bad."
The Mexicans' dislike of the Gringos might be because of the war-on-drugs misery unleashed upon them. But in most of the world, if you don't act like a pri*k, you are still welcome as an American.
I believe that, generally speaking, what you say is true.
However among any "in" group of people (people who identify themselves by nationality, race or ethnicity for example) there will be some people who dislike "the other" or "the outsider".
In my personal experience I ran into some lovely people in Mexico who went out of their way to be kind to me. However there were a few among those I met who seemed to instinctively dislike me before they even knew me. Seemingly just because I was obviously not a native.
Yummy will likely love Portugal and only come back if forced out. I have never met a Thai or known anyone who knows a Thai living overseas, for example, who doesn't prefer living in a White country to living back in Thailand.
White countries, for the most part, seem like a dystopia with the Great Reset and all. However, even with all the financial shenanigans, anal revolution, endless wars and increasing censorship, it is much easier to earn a living in them than in a developing country.
In many ways the shrewdest move of the Jews was flooding the US with people from very disfunctional countries. Those immigrants have far lower expectations of a society and usually will, as the elite spreads disfunction, mainly compare the US to their old country not the old US.
These days, one driver of US emigration might be a search not for affordability but for sanity. But Thomas makes a good observation about the less-than-warm welcome that might await a US emigrant elsewhere in the world. In the past, the prototypical "ugly American" might have made his own bed in this respect, but now our government is "helping" us out by wearing out our welcome before we even have a chance to go there and misbehave ourselves!
Hi JustPlainBill,
I've written about Max in Siem Reap. This native of Iowa was often so destitute, he had to rely on free meals from a friendly restaurant. When I saw Max 3 1/2 months ago, he was living in a $30 a month room, rented from that restaurant, so that Cambodian family was taking care of him.
As long as they're not acting like Unzian assholes, Americans are still welcomed in many, if not most, countries, I think.
When foreigners peek into Unz, they're apalled by the ugliness routinely on display.
Linh
I spent several years living in Ho Chi Minh City. During that time I noticed something: Those foreigners who came expecting to have a bad time, to find conflict with the locals - well, they found it. And those who didn't expect a bad time, for the most part didn't find one. I think this has almost everything to do with how they interacted with others.
Treating people decently - at a kindergarten level, no suave cultural sophistication required - goes a long way.
The tragedy of Europe is that they simply gave up. No longer proud of their traditions, history or religion, they are giving it all away to dark strangers before committing euthanasia. Sometimes literally. In the Netherlands even 12-year old children with depression or obesity can apply (in Canada, the government may even force it on you).
As for those migrants, they have no idea of Europe of old was like, for them it is just an opportunity to be in a place where they can get some free money and benefits, and maybe a white whore. For many it doesn't work out and they end up on the streets or prison. But it works enough for a lot, for a while. They don't need much and have lower expectations than even the poorer white European. A brown, dying Europe is the future. Count Kalergi would be proud.
Linh, sometimes I suspect you may be an incarnation of Louis-Ferdinand Celine - restlessly wandering, distracting self in the observation of the mindless delusion and folly of others, finding momentary comfort in food and drink; but, as inevitable as dusk, being consumed by the saudade within us all. “Love One's Fate” indeed.
“Well the danger on the rocks is surely past/Still I remain tied to the mast/Could it be that I have found my home at last/Home at last"
- Steely Dan, "Home At Last"
Hi Yosemite Sam,
In 1985, I was 21-years-old when I read Céline's Death On The Installment Plan and Journey To The End of The Night. I had just dropped out of college and living in a miserable shell of a house in Grays Ferry. I had a housemate. Each of us paid just $25 a month in rent.
32 years later, I would be paid more than a thousand bucks for a poem about Grays Ferry:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/142854/grays-ferry
That was my last hurrah in poetry. Now, no one in that world would touch me!
Just after a few lines of Death, I thought, This is very dangerous. Should I go on?
Linh
"Grays Ferry": brothers from another mother - in my case, I remember trying to wade through "Finnegans Wake" while failing miserably in college; then, ending up reading a good chunk of William S. Burroughs published works in the school library. "Finnegans Wake" ended up being used as a doorstop....
"Having done it over and over, I’ve gotten fairly good at it. Still, I’m tired."
I can sympathize. At first moving from place to place was rejuvenating. After a point it just started feeling, like most other fun things, repetitious. However, after not leaving Thailand in over 5 years I am finally ready to branch out.
Linh, If you don't see yourself going back to Europe, what do you see yourself doing? Are you looking for a home base or will you just bop around Eastern Asia indefinitely? Or?
Hi Al,
In the article, I said I was waiting for Vietnam to start issuing three-month visas again. I'm also looking into getting a one-year residency permit for Laos. If nothing comes through, I'll circulate between Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
As for the US, I have no plan to return, but whenever I think about that possibility, El Paso keeps suggesting itself, weirdly enough. El Paso and Juarez call to me, but only faintly, for now.
Linh
Well Laos has really beefed up your writing output so maybe it is what you need. I like this steady stream of high quality posts.
Linh, do I have it right that you are native-born Vietnamese? It's interesting that this doesn't qualify you for permanent residence if not citizenship. If this is the case, it's weirdly amusing that the bar to entry is now so much lower in the good old USA. All you have to do here nowadays is walk across and present yourself, after which they give you a court appointment a few years down the road and turn you loose. Even if you don't show up, it's doubtful that the increasingly witless bureaucracy will ever bother to run you down.
Hi JustPlainBill,
I can apply for Vietnamese citizenship, but it's a process.
No country has borders like the USA. When I lived for two years in Italy, I had to get my papers in order to occupy an apartment, and I had to do the same when I taught in Germany. In each country, I had to prove I had the right to be there.
Linh
What you describe sounds much more like the norm to me, although I suspect that was a long time ago, and perhaps things have gotten more "informal" in Europe given the incoming tide of recent years.
Laughably, I knew people in the US that used to talk about moving to Canada. (PS: I don't hear this too much any more...) Most of them believed that all they needed to do to make this happen was drive up there and rent an apartment, as though they were relocating from Pittburgh to Philly or something!
Hi JustPlainBill,
If you overstay your visa in Laos, it's a fine of $10 per day, but you can only get away with overstaying for a few days. At their discretion, they will throw you in jail if they think you've overstayed deliberately. Same with Thailand, I think.
Linh
Well Bill, they were probably old enough to remember the draft dodgers. But what country wouldn't welcome a flood of healthy, educated 19- year old young men? In those days it was relatively difficult to get permanently landed in the US, even for Canadians. Not so hard the other way. Remember The Electric Flag (i think) singing 'Find Yourself Another Country'?
lol, Yummy's *best* shot at European residency is to cross the Mediterranean in a raft and wash up on the shores of Normandy.
Free 5-star hotels, personal physician with no wait, a free smartphone, a stipend, and zero accountability.
Looked up Yummy - there seems to be Yummy with green walls (probably old location) and Yummy with beige walls. Mixed reviews for the food but the main driver of sales is the price.
Looking at the hostel, I've stayed in worse places, excluding the likely insects residing in the room, while backpacking in Europe.
Hi Linh, good to hear you are in good spirits. I understand the feeling of not wanting to travel around much anymore. The longer we stay in one place the more we enjoy and appreciate it. Take care and looking forward to your return to Vũng Tàu where the waves never stop.
Great note.
All wonderful. Keep on. Was the dodgy Fuck from a few posts back with the baseball cap yer come from behind man?
Yeah Jay, that's yer roving drug distributor--Linh
Linh, please avoid the fish larb, you might get severe kidney problems from it, the uncooked pork larb is perfectly safe. I'm loving your Pakse writing, I could probably live there happily, not so my American wife - she'd hate it. Thanks!
I read that uncooked pork is definitely not safe. Trichanosis (spelling not right, but I can't find it in the dictionary. It is a disease, though.)
Elaine, there's no trichinosis (sp, as well). The northeast Thais and adjacent Laotians feed their pigs rice and not garbage - it's ok to eat it raw. Not so the fish, parasites are still there unless you cook it and they don't.
Bill, I couldn't find trichinosis, but I found trichomonal - any flagellate protozoan of the genus trichomonas parasitic in humans or animals. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
Pork should be thoroughly cooked, not eaten raw. Pigs are particularly susceptible to those parasites.
A fun culinary journey with a sad note
And you believe Ian? Sounds his dick needs its own residence permit.