Foul Weather Acquaintances

[3839 Café in Pakse on 8/9/23]

Back in Pakse five days, I’ve seen a few friends. Dropping into Coffee Saigon before 7AM, I was greeted with shouts of surprise. When I disappeared two months ago, they never thought they’d see my drowsy face again.

“I was in Thailand,” I explained. “I was sick. For nearly a month, I was lying stiff in bed.”

A beefy, tattooed man who was shirtless laughed, “If you had a lady visit, you’d have been less stiff!”

A scrawny man with a “hen face,” mặt gà mái, added, “You’d have been stiff in just one place!”

Even as she prepared my black coffee, the proprietress stole a glance at the last sore on my left leg. Its dark scab was dome shaped. Hopefully in a week, it’ll flake away.

On television was a goofy game show on Vie Network. Young men and women dressed in cartoon colors were acting like kindergarten kids. The live audience was entirely female.

Over a dozen visits, I have seen no Laos in Coffee Saigon, but once, a Brit dropped in, so we had a long conversation. Always on his bicycle, Ade had logged thousands of miles across Europe and Asia. As others showed up, I briefly talked to them in Vietnamese, which prompted the proprietress to chide me, “Talk to him!” She didn’t want Ade to feel lonely.

Arriving from Macau in 1617, the Milanese Cristoforo Borri lived in Central Vietnam for five years. He observes, “Whereas all the other Eastern Nations, looking upon the Europeans as a profane people, do naturally abhor them, and therefore fly from us when first we come among them: In Cochin-China it falls out just contrary: for they strive who shall be nearest us, ask a thousand questions, invite us to eat with them, and in short use all manner of courtesie with much familiarity and respect.”

Four centuries later, at least some of that openness remains. A Hong Kong friend told me that when he mistook a Vietnamese home for a restaurant, the lady didn’t chase him away, but gave him a pot of tea. Since they couldn’t communicate, she had no idea why he was sitting there.

Fred Reed on 1/16/18, “If I inadvertently left my granddaughter of two years in a remote Vietnamese fishing village, I would be little concerned. Rather I would expect to find her a week later having become the queen of the village and being well cared for. The Vietnamese would not eat her.”

Of course, foreigners have also been cheated and mugged by modern Vietnamese, but such is progress.

I’m not implying Vietnamese were uniquely hospitable. Following a Burmese friend to his rural home in 1951, Norman Lewis was expected to sleep in the same bed with five other people!

His friend did manage to install Lewis on a camp bed in a separate room, “It was a solution the dear old mother completely failed to understand and she complained at length at the family’s affront to good manners, and the decadence of the times.”

Returning to Pakse means I can eat at Dok Mai Lao again. This trattoria is the city’s second-best attraction, with the top spot claimed by the miraculous murals at Sacred Heart, with Christ shown in Lao settings. That church’s doors are rarely open, though.

Seeing me, Coredo was astounded at my thinness.

“I was very sick in Thailand. Blood sugar!” I grimaced. “But I’m much better now.” I grinned

Touching his own ample stomach, Coredo laughed, “Tutto il male non viene a nuocere!”

What’s bad is not entirely harmful, it basically means. My ordeal did give me a better understanding of food. This day, though, I was getting a bit sloppy. Coredo’s victual was too good. In front of me, I had two sausages with mashed potato, fried sweet potato greens, salad, bread and Dijon mustard. Instead of Beerlao, I settled for water.

[Sausage dinner for around $8.60 at Pakse’s Dok Mai Lao on 8/9/23]

Though Coredo had just gotten back from a month in Italy, he said he would have to return for six weeks next month, to be near his parents. “When I’m around, they feel better.” This, from a man who once declared Italians hate their families!

Coredo’ father is 83, his mother 79, and there’s also a 91-year-old aunt living in the same house. Like every other Italian town, Pietrasanta is filled with the old.

“When I’m there, I feel like a boy!” Coredo is about 55.

“All the young people have left.”

“And they’re not having children.”

“Don’t tell me,” I laughed. “Have Italians stopped having sex?”

Also laughing, Coredo jerked his left fist up and down.

Coredo, too, has left. He’s most at home in Laos.

“When I’m in Italy,” he said, “I have to be careful.” He tapped his wallet.

“Zingari!”

“No, it’s not just zingari, but immigrants, and Italians, too! It’s not like here.”

“How’s Prato? Is it, like, 50 percent Chinese now? Maybe it’s 100 percent!”

“There is a Chinatown in Rome, and Milan.”

“Maybe there’s an Italian town in Prato!” We laughed.

“Are there Ukrainians in Italy?” I continued.

“Yes, many.”

“Refugees?”

“Many came before the war. They take care of the old people. Ukrainians do this, and Moldovans.”

Ukraine’s unraveling started with the Jewish orchestrated Maidan Revolution, now rebranded the Revolution of Dignity. Visiting the country in January of 2016, I saw a bankrupt population already on its knees, with its young men needlessly massacred to satisfy Victoria Nuland’s lust for Slavic blood. Nudelman needs her revenge. The current war actually started in 2014.

On his way back to Laos in October, Coredo will stop in Istanbul for three days. Like Rome, it’s a magnificent city layered with so much history. Coredo can’t wait to see it again.

“You should stay longer.”

“I can’t. I must come back here.”

His baby must be personally supervised. When anything is done with love, it shows. Likewise, when it’s executed fraudulently, which raises the question: how difficult is it to succeed in the US without selling your soul?

To put it differently: is it possible to be an honest American doctor, academic, journalist, soldier, politician, singer, comedian, marketing director, sales rep, stockbroker, statistician, software engineer or data scientist, etc.?

Passing Yummy a dozen times already, I haven’t seen the man, so his adventure in Lisbon continues, or maybe he’s in Mumbai. I look forward to hearing his stories.

I haven’t seen Liên, the ex-ARVN who lost his leg, then wife, but not his equanimity. I should eat lunch at his place tomorrow.

At 4:28PM, it’s 88 Fahrenheit, so not too bad. Again, Dok Mai Lao beckons. I do have a weakness for honest cooking. At least it’s not tranc or fentanyl. Just now, I saw workaholic Thảo flitting by. She still has hours to go before rest.

Across the street is, again, Amor Fati. Of course, but this fight is far from over. Ubi pus, ibi evacua. There’s a lot of shit and madness to flush away.

[Pakse, 8/12/23]

[Pakse, 8/12/23]