Once or twice a week, I get a two-egg sandwich<\/a> from a sixty-year-old guy who has a crudely lettered stand on Ba Cu Street. It\u2019s across the street from a huge Buddhist temple with a garish gate, and not far from Pizza Hut<\/a>, where you can get a pie with squid, shrimps, (fake) crab sticks and mozzarella, or one with Chinese sausage, pat\u00e9 and mozzarella.<\/p>\n Selling less than 20 banh mi each morning, he makes just over 5 bucks daily. Still, his life is OK, for he has endured much worse. During the 80\u2019s, he was a bicycle cop near Front Beach, where each night dozens of prostitutes (or \u201cchickens\u201d in Vietnamese slang) waited for domestic and international clients.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Soviet workers didn\u2019t make much, so they would chase after old women.\u201d he laughs. \u201cOne ran into the bush to get away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut she wasn\u2019t a chicken\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, she was a mamasan. These Soviet guys loved to drink. They\u2019d drink N\u00e0ng H\u01b0\u01a1ng [Miss Fragrant] Vodka. They\u2019d eat dogmeat with the Vietnamese hoodlums.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo they sort of fit in.\u201d<\/p>\n He nods. \u201cWe were paid very poorly. I\u2019d skip breakfast, or just eat rice with fish sauce. For lunch, I\u2019d have rice with boiled water spinach. We didn\u2019t have meats. We\u2019d beg from the fishermen. They\u2019d give us anchovies, but sometimes bigger fish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey gave it to you because you were a cop!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d he smiles, showing gapped, discolored teeth. \u201cI quit after seven or eight years. I was too dissatisfied. My friends who stayed now get 10 million [$431] a month in retirement!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKids today have no idea. Do you tell your kids and grandkids about how your life was?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut they don\u2019t really understand. They have it too good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey have it so good.\u201d<\/p>\n He has a cousin in the US. She left in the 80\u2019s with her ARVN husband. He had spent five years in a reeducation camp.<\/p>\n \u201cThe US was OK in the 80\u2019s. I\u2019d say it was still OK until 1995 or so. Now, it\u2019s a mess. You know, brother, you wouldn\u2019t be able to run this stand over there. It\u2019d be outlawed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hear you can\u2019t even put a chair in front of your own door and sit on it!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s not that bad, but they do have too many laws. In Vietnam, I can have a room with twenty hammocks that I rent out, it\u2019s no problem, but in the US, there\u2019s no way you can have twenty guys in a room. It\u2019s not allowed, but why not?! No one is causing a problem. Still, the neighbors would complain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere, you do what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhich makes sense. If a guy can\u2019t afford his own room, let him sleep with ten or twenty other guys. Why not? Since they have nowhere to go, the poorest Americans sleep on sidewalks. Old people, too. Is that a superpower? Many sleep in their own car, but in many places, that, too, is not allowed. Some try to sleep under their car, but they outlaw that too!\u201d<\/p>\n Shaking his head, he chuckles incredulously.<\/p>\n [Philadelphia, 9\/10\/16]<\/p>\n Until Covid, Vietnam improved, year by year, over three decades, so optimism also increased. During that same period, the US slipped, then nosedived, so where are we? With food and gas prices stratospheric, and record murder and drug overdose rates, even the dumbest doofuses know things are fucked up. Still, there are those who insist it\u2019s just a minor dip. Happy days will be here again!<\/p>\n Among the weirder predictions is Mike Adams\u2019 vision of Chinese troops invading the West Coast by November. They\u2019ll arrive hidden in shipping containers. Swarming inland, they will be met by American nuclear bombs, so if you\u2019re in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, etc., expect your beef chow fun to be suddenly lit up supernaturally, as screaming Mandarin rings in your ears. There are worse ways to go.<\/p>\n Just now, a hyphenated American, G. Joseph, told me he agreed \u201cthings are really bad back there,\u201d so \u201cliving in Europe in a quaint smallish country, things seem better if you ignore the threat of looming compulsory jabs or the possibility that after enough poking, the Russian bear would get really mad and let his nukes loose.\u201d Since the southern hemisphere seemed safest, why didn\u2019t I stay in Namibia, he asked?<\/p>\n Though the southern hemisphere should be safest during World War III, I returned to Vietnam because I was exhausted from drifting from one country to another. Here, I’m in my element, and there are close friends in Vung Tau<\/a> I can have long conversations with. One recent session at a restaurant<\/a> lasted 11 hours! The fried beef<\/a> was excellent, too.<\/p>\n Conversation is a human necessity, of course. It heals or even redeems terrible ordeals. If no one hears you, minor pains fester into permanent abscesses.<\/p>\n Plus, the food<\/a> options in Vung Tau are much, much better than in Windhoek<\/a>. When you can eat well, especially for cheap, you simply feel better. If you had just months left, say, wouldn\u2019t you rather spend them as sanely as possible? Eat, talk, laugh!<\/p>\n With that, let\u2019s close with a food joke. You\u2019ll get a glimpse of the Vietnamese mindset, then and now. Though I embellish on a much-told tale, such is story telling.<\/p>\n Under an enormous moon, inside a thatch hut, with bamboos rustling outside, a Ngh\u1ec7 An couple is having dinner with their two boys, aged 9 and 6. Each rustic has a bowl of rice, and there\u2019s a wooden fish on a cutesy plate in the middle of the threadbare reed mat. (They don\u2019t even have a table.) Shoveling rice down their maws, they glance at this fish.<\/p>\n Suddenly, the father whacks the 6-year-old across the head. To the tearful, cowering and trembling boy, he then screams, \u201cStop staring at that fish nonstop! You\u2019re eating more than your share!\u201d<\/p>\n Nodding, his wife speaks up, \u201cIt\u2019s good you\u2019re teaching him some manners. If his greed goes unchecked, he\u2019ll grow up to be a highway bandit!\u201d Turning to the boy, she snarls, \u201cWhat are you waiting for?! Apologize to your dad!\u201d<\/p>\n Obeying, the boy folds his arms, bows his head and murmurs, \u201cSorry, dad.\u201d<\/p>\n That night, the boy dreams of an enormous wooden fish he can stare at forever, in a land of obscene, unlimited satiety where visual lust is never punished by sudden whacks on the head. Waking, he realizes his life goal must be to emigrate to Orange County, California.<\/p>\n [Vung Tau, 5\/23\/22]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To subscribe to Linh Dinh\u2019s Postcards From the Edge scroll to the foot of the source page<\/a> and enter your email.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Linh-dinh2-Philadelphia-9-10-16.jpg\")
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