Bodies, Voices and Bread

[Prague, 10/25/15]

Last month in Kracheh, I discovered a one-table café owned by a solidly built Chinese with a slight smile always on his face. When he opened at 5 each morning, his parents were still sleeping on their hard beds, inside mosquito nettings. Each had a stroke recently, so could barely walk. Otherwise, they would be on the second or third floor. Sipping my 75 cent black coffee, I always noticed the old man rising before his wife. In shorts and tank top, he would sit in the half dark to take it all in.

One morning, another Chinese came in. To my surprise, he could speak Vietnamese perfectly. It turned out he had spent years in Vietnam, and Laos, too. Quicker than anyone, Chinese will flee anywhere to stave off starvation.

This man owned a bakery making those overly sweet and spongy Chinese cakes. I’ve always stayed clear of them. From a plastic bag, he produced a credible baguette, though, bought at another store. With scissors, he cut it into five or six portions, so each of us could have one. In Vietnam, you almost never see anyone eating just bread, but it’s common in Cambodia, though often dipped into coffee.

Just miles from the Chinese border in early 2020, with the Middle Kingdom temptingly visible, I ran into a motorbike riding man, selling bread. When I asked what it came with, he answered in surprise, “Nothing.” That high up, with nearly everyone dirt poor, there’s no way he could sell a well-dressed, uppity sandwich.

In Saigon, you can get a $100 banh mi that comes with sous vide pork, truffle, foie gras and caviar coated sweet potato fries. Since it can distend two bellies, you’ll also get two glasses of prosecco. All this info, I gleaned from a Vice article. It’s hard enough to squeeze just ten bucks for me, for any meal. With inflation, I’ve forced myself to occasionally cough up 12 or even 15, with soul warping anguish.

I’m writing all this because, just now in Phnom Penh, I saw a man eating bread with nothing.

It’s 6:02AM. Seconds ago, another customer at this cafe poured me tea, so I said thank you in Vietnamese, then English. Though many Cambodians know bits of Vietnamese, it’s probably wiser to be mistaken for a Japanese, but it was already too late. Actually, I’ve always identified myself as a Viet in Cambodia. Dissimulation is also lying.

When Vietnam invaded Cambodia to dislodge the Khmer Rouge, civilians were also killed or raped, as nearly always happen when you have angry young men forced to fight in a foreign land. After the Vietnamese Army went home, the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia dreaded retribution, but it basically didn’t happen. Vietnam also built hospitals, roads and bridges here, and thousands of Cambodian soldiers, cops, civil servants, teachers, doctors and nurses, etc, have been trained in Vietnam. After the methodical madness of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia had be rebuilt. Much of it was done by Vietnam.

Vietnamese, too, have suffered recently from the Japanese, French, Americans, each other, Australians, South Koreans, Chinese and those Khmer Rouge that encroached into Vietnam, but Vietnamese have moved on. None of those nationalities face hostility when they visit. Though many Viets had friends or relatives robbed, raped or killed by Thai pirates during the boat people fiasco, Vietnamese now flood into Thailand daily as tourists.

In Kracheh, my Vietnamese motorbike driver’s best friend is a retired Cambodian cop. Each day, they sit outside a café and chat. When Cu was busy driving me around, the ex cop called to ask him where he was.

When SacredCowPies talked recently about Vietnamese in Cambodia, he displayed an astounding testiness I’ve not encountered from any Cambodian. In Stung Treng, my hotel’s owner drove me to his best friend’s house and, after much drinking, wanted me to meet the mayor. He even called his adopted family in Vietnam so I could talk to them. In Vietnam, he had been trained as a cop.

In Siem Reap, the owner of Best Mom Restaurant couldn’t have treated me with more consideration or tenderness. If I was younger and much better looking, I would have fallen in love. I do have access to mirrors. I know my limits.

In out of the way Preaek Prasab, I spent two nights on the floor sleeping in the same room with four, or maybe five, Cambodians. Though I’m a world class snorer, they didn’t strangle me.

Most folks the world over are forgiving and accommodating. They don’t enjoy being enraged. They don’t find hilarious or pithy that American witticism or statement of purpose, “Kill them all, let God sort them out.”

Purposely butchering innocents, Jews can relate, and they’ve been doing it for decades, not just now in Gaza. Their most satisfying genocide, though, is the Jewjab, for millions must die alone and unseen, for many years to come.

What genocide?

The only one that’s kosher is their fantastic Holocaust, with its six million gassed, human skin lampshades, human hair mattresses, blood gushing from the ground and even a child torn in half with bare hands.

When I stated this was impossible, for no man can tear even a plucked chicken in half, an enraged Jew retorted it could have been a naked newborn. Cotton or wool would add resistance. Since my foreign English was so poor, I didn’t know a baby just popped out is also a child, he added.

Why this baby was naked after an endless ride in a freezing freight car, he couldn’t explain. It only mattered that I was an anti-Semite and hater, and he was right, of course. At least he didn’t claim to be a Holocaust survivor.

There are, what, six million in Brooklyn alone, or is it seven billion?

On 10/27/23, a hateful reader left this comment at my blog, “My 1954 Encyclopedia Brittanica had no entry under Holocaust. Why?” There really is no end to gratuitous anti-Semitism.

Having been away from Vung Tau a year, I should do my best to return there, so I can enjoy, again, my friendship with Nguyen Quoc Chanh, Cao Hung Lynh, Lynh Bacardi, Matthew Rossman and Scottish Jimmy. The last is an English instructor who’s busy teaching unwitting Vietnamese on how to chatter like genuine Glaswegians.

At their first interview at a multinational, they can begin, “Guid mornin, Sur ! How urr ye? Tae ill aboot th’ Rangers? Bugger th’ Celtic! We’ll git thaim neist year.”

After stuffing himself with tons of deep fried Mars bars, Jimmy now goes to the gym each afternoon. None of his relatives has made it to 65.

I’m also looking to seeing, again, the lady who sold me rice vermicelli with grilled pork. She’s one of those hot headed Vietnamese who don’t shy from chewing out their husband within earshot of half the block, but an hour later, you’ll see her jiggling with laughter, sometimes at her own joke.

Having extended my visa, I have another month in Cambodia, however. During that time, anything can happen, not just to me, but this entire world. Each morning, we wake to the most appalling news, though in Phnom Penh, I also hear the soothing sounds of shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalk, and roosters crowing. Six of them live in a nearby alley.

Into its darkness, I happily enter before the sun rises. Inside their cages, they see me. On wooden beds, dark forms sleep. Here and there, coal fires are started to grill meat or fish. A longing ballad plays. Without understanding the lyrics, I know it’s not just about sadness, but love.

Even a familiar city becomes entirely new with each dawn. It’s always been this way. Let’s keep that going much, much longer.

[Phnom Penh, 10/31/23]

[Phnom Penh, 10/30/23]

[Siem Reap, 2/23/23]

[Loiet, Cambodia on 10/15/23]