So Much Life So Nearby

[Vietnamese owned cafe on Khemarak Phoumin Ave in Phnom Penh on 10/30/23]

After walking a mile in the dark, I’ve just arrived at A Den Café. It’s 5:29AM. I’m sharing a table with a man in a baseball cap and his skinny grandson. The boy’s reddish hair comes from spending too much time in the sun. His name is not Liam, Cillian or Oisin, I don’t think. Watching animation on a phone, he’s eating Chinese fried dough, youtiao, dipped in his granddad’s coffee.

I only discovered A Den yesterday. Seeing a dozen people in a brightly lit joint, I strode in. Even from outside, I could spot red banners with Chinese writing spanning its entire width. The owner had a broad face and a squat, round figure. Her loose blouse came down just past her crotch, and her matching pants ran out of fabric above her shins. I was also familiar with her slight waddle. In Vietnam, such a woman would be identified as a “bà xẩm,” with bà meaning Mrs, and xẩm Cantonese for auntie. A bà xẩm, then, is a Cantonese auntie.

After ordering black coffee, I called Cu in Kratie. Since the connection was poor, I could barely hear him moan about having no customers. No, I told him, I have not gotten a visa extension.

“You’re Vietnamese, brother,” bà xẩm said after I had hung up.

“You’re Vietnamese, too!” Then, “How long have you been in Cambodia?”

“All my life, except for a few years in Vietnam, when I was a child.”

“To get away from Pol Pot.”

“That’s right, then I came back in 1984, after I got married.”

I’ve met many Vietnamese in Cambodia who returned after years in Vietnam. Despite being a widely disliked minority, they’re most familiar, thus most comfortable, within Cambodian society and culture. For this bà xẩm, Phnom Penh is her beloved home.

A Phnom Penh Post headline from 10/22/08, “Phnom Penh rated the second -worst city in the world to visit.” With more development and congestion, its reputation has dipped further, but this negative verdict is bullshit. First off, the raters were 280 “experts” gathered by National Geographic. To them, Singapore was the best Southeast Asian city!

Though I find S’pore intriguing enough, there are at least two dozen SE Asian cities I’d rather spend extended time in. Singapore’s sterility and cheesiness are annoying, but it’s super clean and efficient, so the prissy love it. Give me raw life instead.

In place of night markets, Singapore has food courts they call hawker centers, mostly installed in highrises. It has no poorly lit alleys where the private and public intertwine, with laughing or shrieking children in flipflops or barefoot, old men bent over chess boards and sweating laborers wolfing down plates of rice with chicken, pork or offal. Its youth are visibly neutered. I was immediately invigorated just crossing from S’pore to Johor Bahru, a fourth-rate Malaysian city.

Since bà xẩm and I started calling each other brother and sister, as is normal in a Vietnamese conversation, we never found out each other’s name. When she said she was 69, I immediately blurted, “But your hair is still black! You must have dyed it?”

“No, I haven’t. My blood is good.”

“I’m not quite 60, and look at my hair! It’s also thinning.” Grimacing, I ran my fingers through its thin strands. I wouldn’t be surprised if my blood was a rainbow colored sludge exhaling a chemical fragrance.

Though bà xẩm spoke with a Mekong Delta accent, she couldn’t tell me her ancestral village. This is further proof she’s 100% Chinese.

More adaptable than any race, Chinese can thrive on the far side of the moon. To do business, they’ll learn enough Swahili, Arabic, Albanian or Hindi in less than a month. In Belgrade, I met a 20-year-old German-born Chinese who spoke perfect English and Serbian, on top of her Cantonese and, of course, German.

In Vietnam, bà xẩm met her husband. Believing in Uncle Ho’s socialist vision, his dad had brought his family back from Thailand. Of course, this was a grave mistake. Like everybody else in Vietnam, they nearly starved to death. When it comes to politics or emigration, a wrong move can turn tragic, if not deadly. After WWII, shiploads of relieved and exuberant Koreans left Japan for North Korea. Eager to get rid of them, Japan gave this exodus a hearty push.

Although just about every Vietnamese, Cambodian or Lao over 55 has experienced historical horrors that are very relevant to you, yes, you! it’s best to ignore them completely, for their testimonies will complicate, if not contradict, the wise words of Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and your progressive professors. Also, pay no mind to any Palestinian, Lebanese or any other Arab. Instead, have this tattooed on your forehead, “EX COMMUNIST, NOW ANARCHIST,” or vice versa.

Briefly, bà xẩm and I talked about how desperately poor Cambodia and Vietnam were just two decades ago. Those grim years over, she can afford to visit her son and grandchildren living in Đồng Xoài [Deer Meadow], near Saigon. A daughter has just built a brick house a few miles from downtown Phnom Penh. A third child can read Vietnamese and speak a fair amount of Mandarin. As we chattered, two of her granddaughters came in. Wearing lime and white uniforms, they had the brightest faces. Each given a white bread sandwich, they devoured them before being whisked to school.

From their faces alone, I could tell they were half-Khmer. Since these girls can easily pass as Cambodians, they’ll have an easier life than their grandma, or eternally suffering Cu in Kracheh.

Of course, races have always mixed, but too many blood types often lead to bloodshed. Pushing multiculturalism, Jews execute ethnic cleansing, but according to a Jew like Dan Duffy, I’m a hater for being sickened at babies being butchered. You should be ashamed, Dan.

Fake populist Donald Trump has just declared foreigners in the US who protest against the Gaza genocide should be deported, and Jews aren’t responsible for any of that carnage. Dropping bombs on innocents, Jews are only defending themselves. Once more, the world can see the West’s true face. Posterity will remember.

Though you’re a Nazi for wanting to build a wall, Jews simply erect them, with your money! If goyim are so stupid and cowardly, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Though God’s Chosen and the smartest, if not only, humans, they’re still persecuted everywhere, for no reason whatsoever, so of course Jews can overreact a bit, like right now.

Leaving A Den Café, I noticed a half masked man sitting alone at a busy eatery one block away. His nostrils were exposed. On 4/19/21, New York Magazine published “The People Who Plan on Wearing Masks Forever.” Thankfully, Cambodia, and Laos too, has very few such idiots. Barriers between you and life must be torn down.

Strolling along, I passed Taste of the Middle East Iraqi Restaurant. In Pattaya, Thailand, I stumbled upon Al-Baghdadi Cafe, and Saigon’s Al Sham is owned by a Syrian. Wars scatter people. Count yourself lucky if you haven’t had to flee bombs, bullets and psychos.

At a Tel Aviv rally in 2016, a woman held up a sign, “KILL THEM ALL,” as the crowd chanted, “Death to Arabs!” On Amazon, you can buy a “KILL ’EM ALL LET GOD SORT ’EM OUT” T-shirt for $29.95. To get one that says, “Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them,” you must go elsewhere, though.

Though college football icon Woody Hayes is remembered for punching an opposing player, few recall what he said about the My Lai Massacre. All the Vietnamese men and women deserved to be murdered, he declared at a banquet, and all the children, too, if they were older than five.

Made in America and tested in Japan! We love the smell of Napalm in the morning! Kick ass then go home! Bomb, bomb away! We support our troops, no matter where they’re sent, to massacre whoever! Above all, Israel must be defended!

Mirroring each other, they will go down.

[Vietnamese owned cafe on Khemarak Phoumin Ave in Phnom Penh on 10/30/23]

[Vietnamese woman at Vietnamese owned cafe on Khemarak Phoumin Ave in Phnom Penh on 10/30/23]

[Phnom Penh, 10/30/23]

[Phnom Penh, 10/30/23]