I live on Trương Công Định Street. Leading up to 6,000 men, he fought the French in the 19th century. On September of 1863, General La Grandière captured his wife and children. In August of 1864, he broke his spine in a battle. Some claim Trương Công Định committed suicide to avoid capture. Others insist he was executed. He was 44-years-old.
In Gò Công, just down the coast, there’s a large temple dedicated to him. Vietnamese worship their military heroes and martyrs. They don’t tear down statues of those who have ensured their continued existence.
For beating the Mongols twice in the 13th century, Trần Hưng Đạo has the most temples honoring him. Great feats should never be forgotten. Vietnamese have even erected a Trần Hưng Đạo Temple in Vientiane, Laos, and I’m quite shocked, really, there isn’t one in Westminster, California. Maybe it exists in some strip mall.
As for Vung Tau, its greatest hero is Võ Thị Sáu, who is credited with tossing a hand grenade at French soldiers on Bastille Day, 1949, killing one and injuring several. In 1952, she was executed at age 18 or 19. What happened in 1949 is still unclear. Many people in this area claim most of her victims were Vietnamese, with some even insisting she was mentally ill. In any case, there’s a Võ Thị Sáu Temple in nearby Đất Đỏ [Red Earth]. Her grave on Côn Sơn Island, where she was imprisoned, attracts hundreds of pilgrims daily. It’s often shrouded in incense smoke. Vietnamese ask her for better luck in life, love or with the lottery. On Côn Sơn, parents scare their misbehaving children by saying Võ Thị Sáu would show up to twist their necks.
We live on stories. Gossips aren’t just for the nosy. Revelations warn or teach. Tales entertain. Steadily fed bullshit, we become manure. Most importantly, stories ground us.
Singularly minded, sex tourists or sexpats, though, couldn’t care less about stories, and the few they happen to hear are spun by professional liars anyway. A Vietnamese noun for prostitutes, điếm, is also an adjective for “deceitful.” Ah, you so handsome, and not some sweaty old fuck making me want to throw up! You no small-time globalist raider!
[Ba Cu Street in Vung Tau, 6/18/22]
In Vung Tau, the street I spend most time on is Ba Cu, as in the capital of Azerbaijan. The best bay on the Caspian Sea, its name is likely derived from the Persian bad kube (“blown upon by mountain winds”). I’m on Ba Cu most days because that’s where Cafe Ca Dao is located, though in an alley. I’m sitting there right now.
Walking up and down Ba Cu, I’ve noticed a bunch of regulars, such as a man of around 60 who pushes his grandson’s stroller around each day, without fail, just before 6:30AM. Retired, Vietnamese grandparents are supposed to take care of their grandkids. At some point, this trim man in shorts will pray for a minute in front of the locked gate of Phật Bửu Tự Temple, with its turquoise, peach, pale pink and yellow ochre color scheme, many swastikas and Islamic doorways. A third of Vietnam was once an Islamic kingdom, Champa.
There’s a crazed homeless crone who’d glare at you. At night, she sleeps at a nearby wet market. People give her food. If strangers give her money, however, she’s likely to curse at them. Guests at funerals and weddings have discovered this. If especially enraged, she might hit herself or threaten to slam a beer bottle against her own head. Self-harm as protest, coherent or not, is a Vietnamese tradition. Monks immolating themselves is a sublime example.
At a cellphone and computer repair shop, there’s a curious sign, "FREE JOB TRAINING FOR THE HANDICAPPED, ORPHANS AND THE POOR."
In Vietnam, you'd see in public water dispensers and glass cases with loaves of bread, all left out by private citizens. Plus, there are charitable eateries that charge less than a dime, or even nothing at all, for a plate of rice with vegetables. Though all these aren't too common, the poorest know where they are, so it's literally impossible to starve here.
There’s a deeper story at the phone repair shop. Its owner was born with shortened arms, so he only hires handicapped people. The only exception is a man needed to lift heavy objects. Our boss married a pretty rural girl, who gave him two kids, but she has moved on to a Chinese businessman. No sweat. Bossman found an even younger and prettier replacement. Even with shortened arms, our charitable stud has no problems driving a car or even a motorbike.
Whatever you do, don’t buy anything from Davi Bakery, what a pretentious name in English, for its croissants and donuts are only croissant-shaped and donut-shaped travesties! Its fraudulent patés chaud also does not have yeast-leavened laminated dough!
Around 6:30AM each Saturday, there’s a line of shabbily dressed people outside Jamun Medical, a South Korean company that promises you a century of living, if only you’d buy its heated mattress, ceramic padded heated pillow, heated belt, health promoting necklaces, magical tablets and stone turtles, etc.
Often raising their hands, as if surrendering after some fierce urban skirmish, this line of Jamun sales reps would respond to prompts from a leader.
“Jamun?”
“Number one!” (in English).
“Merchandises?”
“Sold out!”
Before settling in Cafe Ca Dao for the day’s labor, I often get an egg sandwich from a man my age. Since introducing him to you, I’ve found out more, but such is one’s relationship with anybody. There are always more layers.
In Joyce’s “The Dead,” Gabriel gazed up at his wife standing at the top of the stairs, listening to some distant music, to realize he had had no inklings of her deepest wounds and longings. He didn’t know her. Rimbaud via Louise Varèse, “Should I have realized all your memories,—should I be the one who can bind you hand and foot,—I shall strangle you.” So inattentive, we barely notice anyone’s most blatant form.
An ex-cop who makes banh mi, he also takes his wife to Saigon once a week to buy clothing, to sell on a Vung Tau sidewalk. Paying just over $40 a month for rent, they get by, but what’s most astounding, I just found out, is that they’re also supporting two grown sons!
One, 36-years-old, was in a traffic accident just after graduation from high school, so now is little more than a vegetable. “He was such a smart and good looking kid. He had so many girlfriends.” His monthly disability payment is $41.33, so there’s the rent money.
His 30-year-old brother, though, is just a bum. Weighting up to 275 pounds, he’s now down to a more manageable 210, though a few months ago, he even huffed and sweated himself to 190, after eternities on a treadmill, bought by his parents.
Biggie has had just one job, as a parking attendant, but that didn’t last a month. A chain smoker if allowed, he’s only allotted six cigarettes a day. He spends all his waking hours playing computer games or watching movies and, I’m assuming, porn. Separated by a makeshift wall, his disabled brother lies in the same room, and at night, his dad shares his bed. His mom sleeps in the living room of their 230-square-foot home.
Four people, then, are crammed into a studio apartment, with one so large, he must count as two. Imagine this arrangement during a Covid lockdown! Many Vietnamese have even less living space.
If it’s hard to imagine a 275-pound Vietnamese, there’s a young man weighting 472 pounds in Bình Dương, near Saigon. With increased prosperity, much is possible. Economic collapse will also bring tons of surprises, if not shocks.
Thanks! Sounds like you're going to have a great time in Alaska. I've never been there.
In "The Ugliest Girl," there's that bit about the bartender's reply to the midget that one must be able to see over the bar to get service at a bar. It's actualy something a friend of mine said to another friend, a midget. This midget friend of ours, let's call him M, took his mom on a cruise to Alaska. It was his trip of a lifetime.
Sadly, M was a heavy drinker and died from it. On his way to work once, he got hit by a car, but didn't quite realize it, he was so drunk. He just scraped himself off the pavement then staggered to work. When he got there, everyone was aghast because he looked like, well, he got hit by a car!
Despite everything, M was very good natured, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He told me he was so sick of his job, he was thinking of getting into freak porn...
“Biggie has had just one job, as a parking attendant, but that didn’t last a month. A chain smoker if allowed, he’s only allotted six cigarettes a day. He spends all his waking hours playing computer games or watching movies and, I’m assuming, porn.”>
Interesting how the parents tolerate this behavior. For some reason I thought this was an American phenomenon.
P.S. Unlike American parents, most worldwide don't insist or at least imply their kids should leave the house by age 21 or even 18, though it's getting harder and harder to do so for American kids. Many grown Vietnamese have never left their childhood home.
I think the impetus to push kids out of the nest as early as possible is one of the main (intentionally inflicted) drivers of mental illness and misery in the US. It's totally unnatural, financially crippling, and most countries don't have this arrangement. I would've loved to have grown up with 3 generations under one roof (assuming they were not my actual, American family). People living in isolation are so much easier to control and sell to. This phenomena you refer to, though, seems to be people actually living in isolation among their own family members- the "hikikomori".
I've noticed, when living abroad, affluence and obesity go hand in hand. The ethnic Chinese merchants in Cambodia all have fat kids.
One of the big stories here in Phoenix is the continued imprisonment of Brittany Griner, the star basketball player for the Phoenix Mercury, who was caught in a Moscow airport with marijuana vape cartridges. She was supposed to talk to her "significant other" last weekend but no one was staffing the phone at the American Embassy to connect the call. Talk about incompetence.
Her teammates, including star Diana Taurasi, are wearing "Free BG" T-Shirts and have appealed to Joe Biden & the State Dept. to expedite the release of Ms. Griner. Good luck with Biden & Blinken.
These women are like children asking their mommies & daddies to "make it all better".
Do they not realize that the U.S. Govt. has just spent over $40 Billion to kill as many Russians as possible ? Now they want the Russians to play nice & negotiate in good faith ? Both incredible and ludicrous.
I'm bracing, Linh.
Nhan sua quan ao......Get clothes repaired....that was driving me crazy lol.
I just read up on her. Griner was arrested on 2/17/22, so before Russia invaded Ukraine. Wonder what she was doing over there?
Griner is paying child support to her ex wife for twin girls conceived through vitro fertilization. Even before they were married, both were arrested for assault and disorderly conduct, after they fought each other in Phoenix. Maybe it's in the water?
Griner's second wife, Cherelle, told Good Morning America rather cryptically, "At this point I don't even know who I'm getting back when she comes back."
If Griner comes back as a balding, Russian speaking man, that is, as a Putin lookalike, will the US accept her?
Linh.......LoL...Didn't know about the twin girls & ex-wife....she was over there to play in the Women's Pro Russian League since the WNBA doesn't pay near what NBA players make (and rightly so).
Might see her on an episode of "Locked up Abroad" in a few years.
Love the description of your city and the wonderful photographs are the icing on the cake. So grateful to have found you, Linh.
Hi Peggy,
Thanks! Sounds like you're going to have a great time in Alaska. I've never been there.
In "The Ugliest Girl," there's that bit about the bartender's reply to the midget that one must be able to see over the bar to get service at a bar. It's actualy something a friend of mine said to another friend, a midget. This midget friend of ours, let's call him M, took his mom on a cruise to Alaska. It was his trip of a lifetime.
Sadly, M was a heavy drinker and died from it. On his way to work once, he got hit by a car, but didn't quite realize it, he was so drunk. He just scraped himself off the pavement then staggered to work. When he got there, everyone was aghast because he looked like, well, he got hit by a car!
Despite everything, M was very good natured, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He told me he was so sick of his job, he was thinking of getting into freak porn...
Linh
“Biggie has had just one job, as a parking attendant, but that didn’t last a month. A chain smoker if allowed, he’s only allotted six cigarettes a day. He spends all his waking hours playing computer games or watching movies and, I’m assuming, porn.”>
Interesting how the parents tolerate this behavior. For some reason I thought this was an American phenomenon.
Hi CR, we also have the hikikomori of Japan--Linh
P.S. Unlike American parents, most worldwide don't insist or at least imply their kids should leave the house by age 21 or even 18, though it's getting harder and harder to do so for American kids. Many grown Vietnamese have never left their childhood home.
I think the impetus to push kids out of the nest as early as possible is one of the main (intentionally inflicted) drivers of mental illness and misery in the US. It's totally unnatural, financially crippling, and most countries don't have this arrangement. I would've loved to have grown up with 3 generations under one roof (assuming they were not my actual, American family). People living in isolation are so much easier to control and sell to. This phenomena you refer to, though, seems to be people actually living in isolation among their own family members- the "hikikomori".
I've noticed, when living abroad, affluence and obesity go hand in hand. The ethnic Chinese merchants in Cambodia all have fat kids.
Hi Gigolo Joe,
Better off Vietnamese parents also think fat kids are cute:
https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2022/05/in-advertising-images-people-depict.html
Linh
lol, Oh my goodness, they're plump. Their heads look pasted on, like they've been plumped even further in photoshop.
Linh
One of the big stories here in Phoenix is the continued imprisonment of Brittany Griner, the star basketball player for the Phoenix Mercury, who was caught in a Moscow airport with marijuana vape cartridges. She was supposed to talk to her "significant other" last weekend but no one was staffing the phone at the American Embassy to connect the call. Talk about incompetence.
Her teammates, including star Diana Taurasi, are wearing "Free BG" T-Shirts and have appealed to Joe Biden & the State Dept. to expedite the release of Ms. Griner. Good luck with Biden & Blinken.
These women are like children asking their mommies & daddies to "make it all better".
Do they not realize that the U.S. Govt. has just spent over $40 Billion to kill as many Russians as possible ? Now they want the Russians to play nice & negotiate in good faith ? Both incredible and ludicrous.
I'm bracing, Linh.
Nhan sua quan ao......Get clothes repaired....that was driving me crazy lol.
Bill
Hi Bill,
I just read up on her. Griner was arrested on 2/17/22, so before Russia invaded Ukraine. Wonder what she was doing over there?
Griner is paying child support to her ex wife for twin girls conceived through vitro fertilization. Even before they were married, both were arrested for assault and disorderly conduct, after they fought each other in Phoenix. Maybe it's in the water?
Griner's second wife, Cherelle, told Good Morning America rather cryptically, "At this point I don't even know who I'm getting back when she comes back."
If Griner comes back as a balding, Russian speaking man, that is, as a Putin lookalike, will the US accept her?
Linh
Linh.......LoL...Didn't know about the twin girls & ex-wife....she was over there to play in the Women's Pro Russian League since the WNBA doesn't pay near what NBA players make (and rightly so).
Might see her on an episode of "Locked up Abroad" in a few years.
Bill