Once Upon a Time

[Don Det, 3/29/23]

As I was typing in One More Bar, Ken the owner, Miha and a Brit from Bradford, let’s call him Ian, told me they’re going to look at a chicken.

“Is this a joke?”

“No, we’re serious,” Ian said. “He’s very interesting.”

Miha, “He looks at you and follows you around.”

Ken, “He’s a very famous chicken.”

“So when will you be back?”

“We don’t know.”

Just like that, they all left, so there was no one to tend the bar or cook. Besides poutine as its signature dish, One More Bar also serves curried chicken, beef and pumpkin burgers, pancakes and even pizzas!

Half an hour later, a customer came in for lunch, so I told Ken’s 11-year-old daughter, lying nearby, to wait on him. To make sure she understood, I shoved imaginary food into my mouth with two hands. She went to him, smiled, said nothing then returned to her spot. Fifteen minutes later, the customer left.

As I got up to leave an hour later, only Ken’s mother-in-law and nine-year-old son were around, so I scribbled with two fingers and a thumb into my palm, meaning check, please. Though the boy had brought me my third or fourth Beerlao, neither he nor his grandma knew what else I had had, or even how much anything cost, so I just gave them what I thought was correct.

Ken had told me he liked to be his own boss because he could just close his bar whenever he felt like. This time, though, he didn’t even bother to close it.

Three years ago in Luang Prabang, I went to a pizzeria with a friend and his two kids. When our antipasti never came, we just thought they had forgotten about it, but as we asked for the check after a fine meal, out came our appetizers!

I’ve also talked about Lao long distance buses stopping en route for way too long, with their drivers nowhere to be found. Maybe they need to unwind with local girlfriends? While waiting, everyone is cheerful, or at least resigned. When the driver reappears, you move on.

To be fair, most Lao businesses function more or less like they do everywhere else, but there are moments that remind you this is Laos, the land of a million hammocks, for it's always pleasant, especially in this heat, to be swayed back and forth into daydreaming, contemplation or simply sleep. Why hurry?

Lao cradles are often suspended from the ceiling, so lying in his bamboo basket, a newborn can be rocked, rather violently, into space.

To be impatient for anything, be it a result or destination, is to shrink, cheapen or erase all the life in between, so a man should savor his last decades in prison even? Granted, longing for your release won’t make it come a second sooner, but what if you’re being starved, tortured or raped? Short of being in pain, then, a man should cherish each sensate moment. Fair enough.

I’m typing this in Mr. Mo, a spacious restaurant with excellent views yet cheap enough food and beer. My large Beerlao costs $1.18! Two tables from me, a middle aged white man in faded T-shirt and jeans has just walked to the counter. Looking worn out and exasperated, he spreads his palms out to wordlessly ask a girl of 13 about his food. Smiling, she points to the kitchen. It’s worth the wait. Earlier here, I had freshly caught Mekong fish with ginger over rice for $4.12.

A word of caution. On the menu is “HAM BURGER,” with the word chopped in two, so you’d think, but what they mean is “HAM SANDWICH.”

Done eating, he pays with a bright smile, causing two teen girls and a boy behind the counter to laugh and titter. Snapping watercress nearby, their mom also cracks up. None of them is in pain.

The only thing wrong with this picture is the tinny music and spasmodic laughter spewed from the kids’ cellphone. As a moral American, I feel obligated to snatch it from their hands and toss it into the Mekong!

Though they don’t understand much English, if any, I’ll still declare, “It’s for your own good. Fuck pop music! Was it rap you just heard? Turn that shit off to listen to cows mooing, pigs pigging out and fish jumping. Pay attention to that wise gecko.”

Pointing to one, I’ll pause to let it sink in. In the kitchen, their grandma will pick up a broom, if not the meat cleaver.

After another sip of Beerlao, I’ll shoot anew, “As a reasonably well-traveled and well-read raving fool, I can conclude, without too much doubt, that you already have everything!” Must be careful not to scream here. It is an American tic. “So what if no one here owns a collection of Shakespeare sonnets, or a Schoenberg CD! Why dream of Vientiane, Bangkok, Tokyo, Paris or New York?! OK, so you will die without ever having seen a Vermeer, but your mom cooking is already a Vermeer!”

After my first article on Don Det, I discovered that Forbes, of all people, has written about this place. Penned by Morgan Hartley and Chris Walker, it’s called “The Best Pot Dealer in Town,” and features Adam’s bar, not a minute from where I’m sitting. Adam’s is also 30 seconds from the boat dock, so our journalists didn’t have to leg it out too much. “On an island that has nothing except places to relax, Adam’s is the chillest bar of all,” they conclude.

Has nothing? Whatever it lacks, at least Don Det doesn’t rob you of so much daily, like Philadelphia, Mumbai or Saigon, etc., and it’s not just because these are cities, but places where connections to the timeless have all but disappeared. More technically advanced and socially progressive, they’re hurling towards a common, globalized future, with even their slum dwellers sporting Gucci, Nike and Chanel. Who cares if much of it is fake? The real articles are fake enough.

I have a friend who gave his wife a $50,000 watch. They’re divorced. He says my articles are too long. Concise, to the point pieces, like those on CNN, are more to this liking. Jabbed thrice, he can suddenly turn nasty, but at least he’s alive, for now. Overly domesticated, he sees, hears and smells next to nothing wherever he travels. The point is to collect selfies with some landmark blurry in the background. If he comes to Don Det, he’ll immediately buy a “BEEN THERE DON DET” T-shirt, then can’t wait to get the hell out.

I don’t think foreigners come all this way merely to relax with cheap pot and shrooms. If just popping in, they may experience nothing more than pleasant highs in an exotic setting, but even with the briefest exposure, they’re likely to recover something they didn’t even know they’ve lost.

I’ve had Don Det moments in Italy, France, the UK, Germany and even the US, though not to this degree. It’s a universal deprivation, made even worse with Covid sadism, and of course, I’m not talking about the disease.

Granted, there are many spots elsewhere just as frozen in time, but some may be just that, frozen, or they’re much harder to reach. Very few have accommodations or eateries serving much more than, say, chicken feet. Most importantly, few people are as laid back and tolerant of outsiders as Laotians.

In West Texas, I once drove a rented car in search of a desert town with just one resident left, an old woman. More than two hours into my journey, I suddenly realized there’s a good reason she lived alone, so I wisely turned back. Plus, the road was no longer paved, and I didn’t even have a cellphone should my engine die.

I finish this sitting in Sunset View. From the kitchen, the owner’s daughter sings. On a tin tray, mango has been spread to dry. There are no kids around, since they’re in school. Roosters crow to each other all day long. If flirting, they must be gay.

Silence is one of Don Det’s great gifts. Here, you can finally hear yourself think and others talk, every day, all day long, until you can finally stop thinking.

If you’ve seen everything, but can’t share anything, what good is it? Touching backs, lovers stare at cellphones. Inducted into the virtual, even babies have become deaf and blind to the world.

If you think people are insane now, wait until these twisted and suffocated victims mature, and I’m only using the word in bitter jest, of course. They never got a proper chance to be born.

After the usual photos, there’s a flash fiction piece from my 2004 collection, Blood and Soap. You’ll see why it’s relevant to this article.

[Don Det, 3/24/23]

[Don Det, 3/29/23]

[grave in Don Det, 3/19/23]

Man Carrying Books

It is true that a man carrying a book is always accorded a certain amount of respect, if not outright awe, in any society, whether primitive or advanced. Knowing this fact, Pierre Bui, an illiterate bicycle repairman from the village of Phat Dat, deep in the Mekong Delta, took to carrying a book with him wherever he went.

Its magic became manifest instantaneously: beggars and prostitutes were now very reluctant to accost him; muggers did not dare to mug him; and children always kept quiet in his presence.

Pierre Bui only carried one book at first, but then he realized that with more books, he would make an even better impression. Thus he started to walk around with at least three books at a time. On feast days, when there were large crowds on the streets, Pierre Bui would walk around with a dozen books.

It didn’t matter what kinds of books they were—“How to Win Friends And Influence People,” “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” “Under a Tuscan Sky,” etc—as long as they were books. Pierre Bui did seem particularly fond of extremely thick books with tiny prints, however. Perhaps he thought they were more scholarly? In his rapidly growing library one could find many tomes on accounting and white pages of all of the world’s greatest cities.

The cost of acquiring so many books was not easy on Pierre Bui’s tiny bicycle repairman’s salary. He had to cut out all of his other expenses except for food. There were many days when he ate nothing but bread and sugar. In spite of this Pierre Bui never sold any of his precious volumes. The respect accorded him by all the other villagers more than compensated for the fact that his stomach was always growling.

Pierre Bui’s absolute faith in books was rewarded in 1972 when, during one of the fiercest battles of the war, all the houses of his village were incinerated except for his leaning grass hut, where Pierre Bui squatted trembling but essentially unscathed, surrounded by at least ten thousand books.