Vietnam's Globalist Princess
On 5/29/24, a 31-year-old woman in a tasteful cream colored dress entered the five-star Lotte Hotel in Hanoi. Strolling past the reception desk, she entered an elevator and pushed 63. In Grill63, she mused over the menu before ordering a grilled lobster happily swimming in garlic butter for $112 and 300 grams of stone grilled A5 Wagyu steak bathed in Café de Paris beure for $116, a fine bargain, really. For just $2.36 more, the beef was wedded to green peppercorn sauce, though truffle sounded pretty good too.
Such a dandy eatery should have had a longer wine list, but there were only ten to choose from! Indignantly, she skipped over La Vendimia from Spain, Bodega Argento from Argentina, Antinori Santa Cristina from Italy and Cap Royal from Le Château Pichon-Baron in France. Lapis Luna from the USA provoked a bitter smirk. I might as well wolf down my Wagyu with a dented can of Budweiser! Sucking it in, she chose Fritz, a tolerable riesling from Rheinhessen, Germany. Though most expensive on the menu, this bottle only set her back $71.
To add variety, she ordered assorted fruits and vegetables, plus vanilla ice cream, fresh strawberries and blueberry and nut brownies. She instructed the head-bobbing waiter to bring everything out together. She wanted to admire in its entirety this banquet for one.
In Vung Tau, a good bowl of pho is $1.96 and banh mi is 79 cents. Two days ago, I had an excellent lunch at an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet, Minh Bảo, for $2.16. Though Hanoi prices are higher, a hot meal can easily be had there for less than two bucks.
News accounts of the fine dining lady say she’s studied overseas. Her home village, Vĩnh Tường, has been settled since the Stone Age. With raging pride, I must note that its biggest hero, a saint practically, is General Đinh Thiên Tích, who lived in the 17th century BC! This Dinh dude taught them how to grow rice, plant berries and raise silkworms, etc. Since historical accounts from last week or year are already grossly simplified, if not entirely made up, we can’t be sure if Đinh Thiên Tích ever existed. Just for saying that, I’ll be strangled tonight by his ghost.
Though she took a long time eating, our princess couldn’t finish her meal. It was as if she just wanted to sit there. Outside was lively, messy Hanoi, with its rural transplants in conical hats and mismatched pyjamas. At sidewalk cafés and eateries, laborers sit on low plastic stools to breathe in exhaust and be pestered by itinerant pushers of lottery tickets. Grimy walls at low-end joints are decorated with vulgar ads or even pages from ancient calendars. General Đinh Thiên Tích lives!
Within sight may be an occupied crib or sewing machine with grandma patching away. In the corner sit two Chinese gods, of course. A banner celebrating new year, Christmas or some long ago wedding may be up. It’d be no surprise to find in July a tinseled Christmas tree with dangling silver balls. Somewhere, there must be a gay techno bar with that name?
Chattering away, they slurp MSG laced broth and chew on the cheapest cuts. On their T-shirts and hats is often asinine English to be laughed at. At any moment, some psychotic methhead with a permanent hardon may wander in to rape our princess.
Up high at Grill63, she’s surrounded by an international set speaking a dozen languages. The Vietnamese among them are loaded and well-traleved, with recent trips to London, Sydney or Dubai. As for Singapore or Bangkok, that’s like sleepwalking to the local boulangerie or microbrew pub. They yawn often at Le Grape Principal, Jovel Chan and Beeznees 1920s.
Befitting her generation, princess has uploaded tons of cool, sexy or chic selfies. She showcases her thin, pale form with a black multi-strap bikini. From a nation without snow, she’s pictured somewhere exotic with fat flakes falling. Inside a highrise with Saigon’s skyscrapers filling a large window, she lifts one bare leg to highlight her shadowy crotch and $900 Balenciaga sneakers. In a lace white top fringed with stringy fake fur, her mouth is unnaturally narrow, but there are apps to make any rotting corpse just fished from the most polluted river look like Miss Universe. Like millions across the globe, she’s documenting a life to be envied.
News accounts have mostly blurred her face and her name is withheld. Even Grill63 is not identified. Her mother explains princess has a mental problem, but her madness seems quite generic and universal to me. She’s just another entitled narcissist luxuriating in her own make believe universe.
This night, princess refused to pay her $432 bill because her foreign date had failed to show up, she said. At other restaurants, she would speak gibberish in a babyish voice. Though her mom has paid some of her tabs, princess has gotten away with much.
When it comes to dine and dash, princess isn’t even the tiniest speck. The heaviest champ ever is Uncle Sam. He’ll only settle his astronomical account by nuking not just that restaurant, but the entire world.
Spared of a minor scandal, Lotte Hotel just made the news with a murder. Yesterday, a 33-year-old woman was strangled then suffocated to death by a 44-year-old man. Both are South Korean. Having gotten her into his room, he expected sex. For millions of years, men have thought that way. Freaking out, Lee Chanju took the elevator to Top of Hanoi on the 65th floor.
Though with the city’s best views, its food can’t compare to Grill63. An elegant board of Parma ham, salami, pork paté, smoked pork loin, quince jelly, cheeses, nuts and pumpernickel bread will set you back $25. Before Lee Chanju could dash to the railing, he was stopped. All strolling peasants below were safe from some foreigner hurling towards them at the highest velocity.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll fly to Oz. Together, we’ll discover another unreal realm. Meanwhile, there’s still time to grab a $2 lunch.
The Western view of the world and "Americanism" in particular have come to Vietnam or so it would seem. In this view the epitome of human existence is extravagant consumption. (After all the economic system of Capitalism demands people willingly, even passionately, put all their energy, money and time into consumption. That is when they are not working to produce wealth; most of which is expropriated by the peoples' Capitalist masters and a small fraction given back to the worker by way of a wage. But obviously the "production" side of the equation was not part of this young woman's problem.)
Apparently the young woman here has found some way to "beat the system" and get more than the normal, paltry share given the working class; after all she is a "princess" of some sort.
Many philosophers have found the West's peoples' obsession with material wealth, consumption and the quotidian empirical offensive to the point of repugnance.
I am slightly familiar with the philosophy of the Russian "Easterner" novelist, Fydor Dostoevsky who considered the decadence brought to his Russian nation from the West to be anathema and he predicted it would become destructive to his beloved Eastern Russia.
To the limited extent I understand Dostoevsky he felt that the West's exclusive focus on material consumption would act as a poison on humanity. Western man would forsake doing good for the world and for others and seek only to fulfill his (or her) sensual desires.
And perhaps growing weary of that seeking of fulfillment in the unsatisfactory he would as has, for example Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin, sought to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.
After all, the U.S. ownership class can't let China, Russia and their BRIC economic allies overtake the 75 year old Bretton Woods-United States domination of the world. Because the U.S. ownership class won't give up the extravagant $500 dinners, metaphorically speaking, they have been indulging in for decades now.
"The Chickens have come home to roost", as the saying goes. What the U.S. bequeathed to itself it then bequeathed to the world. A world of which Sigmund Fraud characterized as being in the thrall of "Thanatos", the love of death. So be it.
Let the insignificant people splurge $500 on what can be had by the frugal for $5. They are, like circus performers, only doing what they have been trained to do.
They might add "Ferrocar noche" to that pretentious wine list; otherwise know to certain winos as "Night train."
Oz!? Holy crab!