As published at Unz Review, Smirking Chimp and TruthSeeker, 2/3/20:
So now I’ve been to the Plain of Jars. Among places, it has among the most evocative of names. It sounds so plain, yet so poetic, because we simply don’t associate any plain, or meadow, with jars, and we’re not talking about Mason ones here, but stone, and huge, with the largest ten feet tall and weighting 14 tons.
The average Lao man is only 5’3”, and the average woman, 4’11,” so these tiny people used iron tools to shape and hollow out thousands of these funerary urns made of sandstone, granite, conglomerate, limestone or breccia, except that they didn’t, because the current inhabitants of Laos weren’t here two thousand years ago, when these jars were made.
Laos have their own explanations. Some believe these jars were used by a race of giants to brew and store alcohol, in celebration of a hard-fought military victory. Whatever their size, they had the surplus time and wealth to make such expensive coffins.
Even when well-documented, history is filled with distortions, if not outright lies, and though some of our greatest achievements may survive our protean and often gleeful destruction, their significance is often lost.
The Plain of Jars has many more secrets, not least the CIA’s Secret War. Initiated by Eisenhower, it would be clandestinely sanctioned and escalated by Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. It was here that the “intelligence” agency became a rogue fighting force, accountable to neither the Pentagon nor Congress, much less the eternally clueless American public. Using unprecedented airpower and a proxy army, the Hmong, the CIA’s Secret War in Laos provided the template for other American interventions, down to our days. Instead of using troops to conquer an enemy, America would just bomb the targeted society into submission. It would be machine against flesh, often civilian. Drones have no conscience, never cower and cannot be mourned.
Tiny, thus weak, Laos has long been intruded on, however. Just since the 19th Century, this Land of a Million Elephants has been invaded by the Thais, Burmese and Vietnamese, not to mention the White Tais and their fearsome Chinese ally, the Black Flag Army.
Bet you haven’t heard of this punk band. Led by the Hakka Liu Yongfu, the Black Flag were bandits and mercenaries. Fighting against the French on behalf of the Vietnamese, it killed Francis Garnier, the conqueror of Hanoi. Always looking for a blood bath, Liu ended up in Taiwan in 1895, where he was immediately made a brigadier general of the fleeting Formosa Republic. Promptly defeated by the Japanese, Liu fled Taiwan on a British ship, disguised as a coolie. Don’t you believe, not even for a second, slanderous accounts that insist Liu was dressed as a hag. May the nearest black flag lance, repeatedly and with a twisting motion, such reckless rumor mongers!
Visiting Laos in 1950, Norman Lewis never made it to the Plain of Jars, for the roads were much worse then. Plus, there were the Khmer Issarak and Viet Minh guerrillas to avoid. With frightful understatement, here’s how Lewis describes an accident in his convoy, “On our right was a precipice, but the vegetation was so thick that you could get no idea of the drop […] we were nosing our way round the hill, keeping a lookout for occasional gaps in the road left by subsidences, when the lorry ahead suddenly turned off the road and went over the side. Gently, almost, it was lowered from sight amongst the bamboos. Up till the last fraction of a second before a thousand graceful stems screened it from our view it was still upright and quite level. The soldiers in it had hardly risen from their seats and raised their arms not so much in alarm, it seemed, as to wave farewell.” Even then, multiple deaths in Laos hardly registered.
My 10-hour minibus trip from Vientiane to Phonsavan, the portal to the Plain of Jars, was nowhere nearly as eventful, but with all the potholes and switchbacks on endless mountain passes, I disembarked feeling like hell anyway. I am not young.
In the lobby of my one-star Nice Guesthouse, I noticed some Pathet Lao weapons on the floor, as decorations, but over the next several days, it was much more common to run into American bombshells, literally hundreds of them. They fronted restaurants, hotels and travel agencies, and were used in the countryside as columns and fence posts. Inside the Dokkhoune Guesthouse, cluster bombs, artillery shells and ammunition belts were stacked on mesh wired shelves, and outside a huge wedding banquet hall, several dozen yellow bombs, with many rusted brown, stood sentry to lend, I don’t know, a macabre tint to each matrimony.
Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Vientiane and Si Phan Don all receive many more visitors than out-of-the-way Plain of Jars, so on my minibus, I was the only non-Lao, yet even in Phonsavan (pop. 40,000), there’s an excellent Indian restaurant, and even a highly regarded Italian one, with a Genoese owner and a Spanish chef, one who had learnt his craft in il bel paese.
The most conspicuous foreigners, though, were Vietnamese. They ran all types of businesses throughout town. At Phonxay Restaurant, I noticed two scrolls on the wall with Vietnamese writing, so I talked to its owner. Seventy-one-years-old, she came to Phonsavan in 1955.
Nineteen Vietnamese families were recruited to this area by the Chinese Communists, she said, to clear the land. Chinese Communists in Laos? So that’s another secret. Struck by various jungle sicknesses, some Vietnamese died soon after arrival.
“There were so few doctors, and almost no medicines,” she said.
"Of those 19 families, how many are left?"
“We’re the only one! Most left for Vientiane, or even overseas. They dropped a lot of bombs here.”
“Were you here during that entire time?”
"Yes, I was. When you hear them coming, you have to jump into a hole. We had holes dug all over."
A bomb shelter at a home received a direct hit, so 11 people died, she said, from two families, "It was worst for three years. From 1969 until 1971. In 1972, it stopped."
"How long would it last, each bombing?"
"It would last for ten minutes, but another wave would come, then another wave!"
"So how long would it last altogether, sister?"
"On the worst day, it went from 6 in the morning until 7 at night."
"So you just had to stay in the hole all day long?"
"Yes, but some people got out early..."
"And they died?"
"Yes. When we came out, all the houses were gone," and she swept her arm to indicate the entire street. "All gone, so we had to go into the woods to dig up cassavas to eat. We also made soup with wild flowers."
Roses, daisies, banana flowers, cowslip creepers, Egyptian riverhemps and mountain ebonies are all edible, among others. There’s a proverb, “A phoenix, starved, will eat chicken shit.”
The horrors of war are often drowned out by heroic propaganda or rendered much less bloody through dry historical accounts, penned by academics, but there’s a slim book, Voices from the Plain of Jars, that allows suffering civilians to recount their terror filled existence under constant American bombs.
Edited by Frederic R. Branfman, it has a foreword (in the second edition) by Alfred W. McCoy, who notes, “Since there is no other book written by the villagers of Indochina, these ‘voices’ can, in a sense, speak for the countless Vietnamese and Cambodians who also suffered under the U.S. bombing. Not only does the 2.1 million tons of bombs dropped on Laos from 1965 to 1973 rank among the largest air wars of the twentieth century, exceeded only by the 2.7 million tons dropped on Cambodia, but it also was a precursor for the way wars would be fought in the twenty-first century and beyond […] this book recovers an obscure yet significant moment in military history and documents an air war so intense that it became a testing ground for a new form of global force projection.” The CIA’s Secret War in Laos reverberates into everyone’s life, in short, even after the American Empire has disappeared.
When not conducting secret wars, your clean-cut CIA merely runs drugs, for the American government is the world’s largest, most successful and coolest criminal outfit. Losing nearly every war, it always returns a boffo profit for its handlers. McCoy is known for his groundbreaking book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America.
In Voices from the Plain of Jars, there’s a drawing by a 33-year-old woman that shows three planes dropping bombs on a decapitated head, a severed arm and two mangled bodies, with this narration, “A life whose only value was death. I saw this in the village of my birth, as every day and every night the planes came to drop bombs on us. We lived in holes to protect our lives. There were bombs of many kinds, as in this picture I have drawn. It is not beautiful but it shows the shooting and death from the planes, and the destruction of the bombs. This kind of bomb would explode in the air and was much more dangerous than other ones. I saw my cousin die in the field of death. My heart was most disturbed and my voice called out loudly as I ran to the houses. Thus, I saw life and death for the people on account of the war of many airplanes in the region of Xieng Khouang. Until there were no houses at all. And the cows and buffalo were dead. Until everything was leveled and you could see only the red, red ground […]” The book is filled with such accounts.
For the record, about 40,000 Laos have died from American bombs, with nearly half of these killed after the war, from the millions of ordnances, especially cluster ones, left all over eastern Laos, an area corresponding exactly to the Ho Chi Minh Trails or controlled by the Pathet Lao, before they took over the entire country.
Since the Vietnamese Communists were responsible for both the Ho Chi Minh Trails and the creation of the Pathet Lao, it can be said they brought war into Laos, though of course, they’ve always characterized themselves as liberators, but this is typical of invaders. Vietnamese Communists were also instrumental in building up the Khmer Rouge, one must remember, and a Vietnamese, Pham Van Dac, even became head of the Malaysian Communist Party.
In any case, Laos on the Plain of Jars didn’t ask for Vietnamese soldiers to be on their land, an introduction to Karl Marx or American bombs to shatter their entire society. Like the littlest people everywhere, throughout history, they simply suffered the consequences of outrageous if not incomprehensible decisions, made by unseen hands, way above their wretched station.
Returning to Phonxay Restaurant several times, I found out more about its owner. A widow, she had been married to a Lao, with whom she had eight children. One had become a doctor in Vientiane, and another was an IT whiz living in India, “He’s very smart. When he was still here, he told me, ‘I must learn English. If you know English, you can do everything.’ It took him three years.”
“That’s very good. So the schools here are not bad?”
“No. He learnt English right near here.”
This son had actually been to 45 countries, she proudly repeated, “When he was small, he didn't go out, he only studied, so everybody thought he was just a nerd. He never smoked or drank alcohol, but now he’s traveling everywhere!”
She herself had been nearly nowhere, and had only returned to Vietnam three times in 65 years. On one of those week-long trips, she was reunited with a lost brother.
Towards the end of the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, up to two million Vietnamese starved to death. To stave off this fate, her parents sold two of their children, a 7-year-old son and a 9-month-old girl, to rich but childless families.
“My parents missed my brother so much, they kept coming by his new family to visit him, until they were told to stop it! Fifty years later, in 2004, we were reunited. My brother Dai remembered that his ancestral village was called Làng Tre [The Bamboo Village], so that’s how he was able to find our relatives.”
“There was just that one meeting?”
“Yes, my mother cried so much.”
“And has he come to visit you in Laos?”
“No, but he has visited a brother in Vientiane, several times.”
As for the nine-month-old, she was lost forever.
Of my traveling, the old lady said, “That's good. It’s good to see things. We’re like a lamp. Today, it’s still lit, but tomorrow, it’s out, and that’s it!”
The nearest jars were miles outside Phonsavan, so I could either join a tour, no way, or hire my own driver. The guy I found was a 50-year-old Vietnamese tuk-tuk operator.
In Vientiane, I had stumbled onto graves of Vietnamese who had been born in Laos. Even if they had never been to Vietnam, they never ceased to see themselves as Vietnamese. Later in Luang Prabang, I would encounter many more Vietnamese graves, including one of an indigent, judging by her modest grave, who was known only as “Mrs. Fat Five.” With no proper name, birthplace or age at death, she was still Vietnamese and buried among her own kind, by her own people.
In 2017, I met Vietnamese in Chanthaburi, Thailand, whose ancestors had come as early as the mid-19th century. Though almost none could speak Vietnamese, they persisted in praying in what they thought was Vietnamese in their grand church, the biggest in Thailand.
A third-generation immigrant, my tuk-tuk driver, Trung, was married to a Lao, and in day-to-day life, almost no one even knew he was Vietnamese, he stated.
His grandfather had come to Laos, “to help the Lao Revolution,” and his father and two older brothers had also fought for the Communist cause there. As a reward, the Vietnamese government had given one of Trung’s two children a college scholarship, so the kid had been in Vietnam for three years, with everything paid for. Barely making a living, Trung had never been to Vietnam.
From Trung, I found out another Plain of Jars secret, “The Hmong used to shoot at passing cars and buses.”
“At Vietnamese?”
“No, at everybody. At Laos, too. They didn’t want anybody here.”
“When was this?”
“Until the 80’s, then our troops [meaning the Vietnamese] came in to sweep them away. Only we could do it. We cleaned them from the caves.”
Speaking of caves, there was one right at the Plain of Jars Site 1 that had been used by the North Vietnamese Army as a command post, a fact that was casually relayed to me by a Vietnamese woman in Phonsavan. Inside and outside this cave, there were many tiny, crude rock memorials, like the most infantile stupas, which indicated many people had been killed there, but there was no explanation.
On my last evening in town, I invited two Laos out for drinks, for I was told they needed to practice their English. For my part, I wanted to hear their stories, and everyone has hundreds of them, at least.
One man was tiny and had a triangular face. He wore a white dress shirt with a burgundy tie. A 23-year-old student of business administration, his name was Chue Ha, so he was a Hmong.
Square jawed, unsmiling and even rigid, the second man wore a military jacket, which was appropriate, for he was a colonel in the Lao Army. Thirty-five-years-old, his name was Xai Thong.
They’re both from Xieng Khouang Province. Xai Thong had traveled around Laos, but never beyond it, and Chue Ha had only ambulated within a hundred-mile radius. For four years, though, he did live in a Vietnamese boarding school in Nonghet, near the Vietnamese border. Over and over again, I would run into Vietnamese influences in Laos, for their footprint there is second only to the Chinese's.
The younger man was already married, with two kids, while the grave colonel was still single. He did have a girlfriend, “Next year, she go to Vietnam, to study, so I go to see her.”
“Where will she be?”
“Da Nang.”
“Ah, you should go to Hoi An! Hoi, An. It’s near Da Nang.”
“Where you go next?”
“After this, I will go to Luang Prabang. I will stay there for maybe a week.”
“Very beautiful, Luang Prabang. I know Luang Prabang.”
“I am looking forward to my visit.”
“In Luang Prabang, you should see Mount Pussy.”
“Huh?” I tried not to smile, even with my eyes.
“Yes, Mount Pussy. Very beautiful. On Mount Pussy, you will see Pussy Temple. Also very beautiful.”
“I will ask for it.”
“After Luang Prabang, where you go?”
“I will go back to Vietnam, to Dien Bien Phu. I was there in 1995. I want to see it again.”
“If my English is good, I can travel.” If this man ever smiles, his face might shatter. “Next time you come here, I show you around, with my truck.”
From Xai Thong, I found out another Plain of Jars secret. About a hundred Russian soldiers, he said, were training in the immediate area.
“Wow! I haven’t seen any Russian in Laos!”
“I see them.”
With Uncle Sam and his bombs out of the way, other foreign players are busy plotting Laos’ next chapter. In Luang Prabang, I would skip Mount Phousy and its lovely temple, but in nearby Pha O, I spent half an hour inspecting an impressive Chinese railroad bridge, under construction, that spanned the Mekong, plus a tunnel, one of many, that drilled deeply into a mountain. All the supporting facilities and suppliers were Chinese, not to mention nearly the entire workforce, with its familiar dormitories. A vast shopping center nearby was also Chinese. Though empty, it will undoubtedly be flushed with tenants, shoppers and cash once the trains start rolling.
Just as the Hmong have no choice but to be integrated into Laos, Laos seem destined to be sucked into an increasingly Chinese universe, and so will you, short of this chessboard being kicked over by you know who.
In Voices from the Plain of Jars, many refugees speak of their desire to return home as soon as possible. A seventeen-year-old man explains, “Since I have come to live in Vientiane, the only good thing has been that we are not afraid of airplanes; nothing else. If there were no war, truly I would not want to be here […] Although my region is in the countryside and not developed, that does not matter to me, for it is the place that nurtured me and has been the home of my ancestors long gone, a place once full of pagodas and prosperity, with a fresh and pleasant climate […] If the war ever ends, I will return to my village that very day. And if there is no plane to take me, I will walk all the way.”
This echoes what Norman Lewis wrote in 1950 about the Hmong, “They are utterly incapable of bearing, even for the shortest time, other than cool and temperate climates. Being self-supporting, they rarely come down to visit the markets of the plains and valleys, and when obliged to cultivate fields below the 3000 feet line, they always return to their villages to sleep […] Besides the [Hmong’s] predilection for mountain tops they have other claims to distinction. They are utterly independent and quite fearless. Their passion for freedom compels them to live in the smallest of villages and, apart from such rare events as the invasion of 1860, they will not tolerate chiefs or leaders. If forcibly brought to lower altitudes they are soon taken ill and die.”
Living in a mountainous and landlocked country with hardly any roads, Laos often relied on their isolation as a shield and refuge, for even when Luang Prabang or Vientiane was sacked, burnt and looted, there was always the jungle, with its tiny, hidden hamlets, to flee to or hide in. With modern aerial warfare, and now new highways, bridges and media to accelerate the importation of everything alien, what it means to be Lao has been much whittled down, just like its fauna, just like us all.
We, too, are Hmong wrested from our mountains. Forward!
.
Showing posts with label Chanthaburi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chanthaburi. Show all posts
Monday, February 3, 2020
Monday, April 2, 2018
Melting Pots, New Identities and Flowering Barbarism
As published at OpEd News, Smirking Chimp, Unz Review, TruthSeeker, Intrepid Report and LewRockwell, 4/2/18:
In 1987, V.S. Naipaul was asked by Andrew Robinson, “Have the immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean changed British life?”
Naipaul, “I feel that there will be a lot of difficulty. I don’t see how it can be avoided, especially with these immigrants who are not seeking a new identity or a new kind of citizenship. They are migrating to allow their barbarism to flower, so they can be more Islamic or more Sikhish than they can be in the comparative economic stagnation of their home societies. I think it is very dangerous.”
Of the US, Naipaul stated, “Americans are really very nice, very humane people. What a humane civilization and culture to have been created from a big melting pot.” As for living there, Naipaul said, “I have no plans, but it would be nice to be in a place where nearly everyone you meet is a stranger.”
Did Naipaul contradict himself? If having a culture where everyone is a stranger is very nice and humane, then why shouldn’t England, or anywhere else, become a “big melting pot,” American style? The caveat, perhaps, is that the immigrant must seek a new identity, must transform or deform himself, so as to shed his “barbarism,” but with multiculturalism replacing the melting pot as an ideal, assimilation, no matter how imperfect, is no longer required, so is the new, barely-tossed salad, where every ingredient is distinct, even more humane and nice?
Born in an Indian-dominated melting pot, Trinidad, Naipaul went to university in England, which has become his home in every sense, but this hasn’t prevented him from having extended stays in numerous places, including a year in India. Born uprooted, Naipaul has chosen to spend much of his life as an outsider, so it’s within this context that one must view his suggestion that an ideal society is one where everybody is similarly estranged.
When asked what aspects of himself he felt was specifically Indian, Naipaul answered, “The philosophical aspect—Hindu I would say. Speculative and probably also pessimistic. What I mean by pessimism is not things turning out badly, but a pessimistic view about existence; that men just end. It is the feeling that life is an illusion. I’ve entered it more and more as I’ve got older.”
So despite his cosmopolitan aura and English manners, Naipaul remains Indian on the deepest level, for all of his experiences and learnings rest on a Hindu foundation, and this, too, informs and dyes all of his emotions.
So what, you may say, for the accommodation of diverse groups is already required of all societies, for none is truly monolithic, but between diversity and homogeneity, what should any society aim for? In traditionally white countries, diversity is the new religion, opposed only by racist louts, so go the white media, while in all the yellow, brown and black countries, ethnocentrism still rules. So who’s on the right path, the “progressive” West or more traditional, “reactionary” societies?
Recently, I visited Chanthaburi, a Thai province with many Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodians. The first 100 Vietnamese arrived in 1709, as Catholics fleeing persecution. Now, there are more than 8,000 people in Chanthaburi (pop. 550,000) who identify as Vietnamese. Almost none can speak the language, however, and many are also of mixed blood. Religion is the primary glue that holds this community together, and their present church, built 109 years ago, is the largest in all of Thailand.
Standing outside a chapel, I saw a flower-bedecked coffin with a framed portrait of a priest, and two dozen people, mostly old, praying. Immediately, I could tell that it wasn’t Thai, but then it wasn’t Vietnamese either. Every so often, however, I would catch a word or phrase that was somewhat Vietnamese. When they were done, I spoke in Vietnamese to the folks walking out, but the first three couldn’t answer me, then a man approached with tentative English, “Can I help you?”
It turned out they were all Vietnamese, praying in Vietnamese, and to prove it, the 55-ish man showed me his Vietnamese prayer booklet. With his tones all mangled, he proudly read me a sample sentence. In strained English, he then stated, “I want to learn Vietnamese. My father, mother, Vietnamese.” Then, “My tổ, uh, tổ…”
“Tổ tiên [ancestors]?”
“Yes!” He smiled. “My tổ tiên, Vietnamese!”
Until World War II, Vietnamese was still taught in the community, he said, but now, there’s only one old guy at the market who could speak it fluently.
“Have you been to Vietnam?” I asked.
“No, no.”
“Do you feel Thai or Vietnamese?”
After a slight hesitation, “Both.”
Fair enough. If there was a shooting war, however, which way would his rifle be pointed?
In Chanthaburi, I saw several Buddhist temples and shrines that were clearly Chinese, so religion is intertwined with ethnicity to preserve a separate identity for each subgroup. A most fascinating example of this are the Jews of Kaifeng, China. There at least a thousand years, they are indistinguishable from other Chinese, yet still consider themselves very much Jewish. Some have emigrated to Israel.
At the other end of Thailand, there are 64 Chinese villages, populated by descendants of Kuomintang soldiers. Thailand let them in to be a buffer against the Chinese, then Thai Communists, and all have been granted citizenship. In a 2015 New York Times article, a 47-year-old man is quoted, “I may have a Thai ID, but I’m Chinese. My family is Chinese, and no matter where we go, we’re still Chinese.”
After seven decades, these “Thais” are still attached to China, unsurprisingly, although it’s still ruled by the same Party that tried its best to kill off their forebears.
Since blood is thicker than paperwork, its corruption is one way to dilute a competing allegiance. My Chanthaburi friend, Mala, is half Chinese, half Vietnamese, speaks only Thai, considers herself 100% Thai and is married to a Thai man.
Ethnic and race mixing, though, can only go so far, and even if universally applied, will only create new shades, each with its attractions and repulsions, not to mention a lingo that’s inhospitable to outsiders. With each group defining itself against all others, conflicts will continue to erupt, as they always have.
Just as a man who claims to love all women, loves no woman, no one is remotely capable of giving a damn about everybody, no matter how much he may go on, often with righteous, vindictive rage, about universal brotherhood. With self-love as his compass, he will jab, kick and snipe at all those who differ even the slightest from himself, as testified by the comment stream following this very article.
With population and sense of entitlement constantly rising, against resources rapidly depleting, a state of constant war, nearly everywhere, is the best we can hope for, and in such a situation, a fragmented society will have no chance.
Everyone’s barbarism will flower.
.
In 1987, V.S. Naipaul was asked by Andrew Robinson, “Have the immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean changed British life?”
Naipaul, “I feel that there will be a lot of difficulty. I don’t see how it can be avoided, especially with these immigrants who are not seeking a new identity or a new kind of citizenship. They are migrating to allow their barbarism to flower, so they can be more Islamic or more Sikhish than they can be in the comparative economic stagnation of their home societies. I think it is very dangerous.”
Of the US, Naipaul stated, “Americans are really very nice, very humane people. What a humane civilization and culture to have been created from a big melting pot.” As for living there, Naipaul said, “I have no plans, but it would be nice to be in a place where nearly everyone you meet is a stranger.”
Did Naipaul contradict himself? If having a culture where everyone is a stranger is very nice and humane, then why shouldn’t England, or anywhere else, become a “big melting pot,” American style? The caveat, perhaps, is that the immigrant must seek a new identity, must transform or deform himself, so as to shed his “barbarism,” but with multiculturalism replacing the melting pot as an ideal, assimilation, no matter how imperfect, is no longer required, so is the new, barely-tossed salad, where every ingredient is distinct, even more humane and nice?
Born in an Indian-dominated melting pot, Trinidad, Naipaul went to university in England, which has become his home in every sense, but this hasn’t prevented him from having extended stays in numerous places, including a year in India. Born uprooted, Naipaul has chosen to spend much of his life as an outsider, so it’s within this context that one must view his suggestion that an ideal society is one where everybody is similarly estranged.
When asked what aspects of himself he felt was specifically Indian, Naipaul answered, “The philosophical aspect—Hindu I would say. Speculative and probably also pessimistic. What I mean by pessimism is not things turning out badly, but a pessimistic view about existence; that men just end. It is the feeling that life is an illusion. I’ve entered it more and more as I’ve got older.”
So despite his cosmopolitan aura and English manners, Naipaul remains Indian on the deepest level, for all of his experiences and learnings rest on a Hindu foundation, and this, too, informs and dyes all of his emotions.
So what, you may say, for the accommodation of diverse groups is already required of all societies, for none is truly monolithic, but between diversity and homogeneity, what should any society aim for? In traditionally white countries, diversity is the new religion, opposed only by racist louts, so go the white media, while in all the yellow, brown and black countries, ethnocentrism still rules. So who’s on the right path, the “progressive” West or more traditional, “reactionary” societies?
Recently, I visited Chanthaburi, a Thai province with many Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodians. The first 100 Vietnamese arrived in 1709, as Catholics fleeing persecution. Now, there are more than 8,000 people in Chanthaburi (pop. 550,000) who identify as Vietnamese. Almost none can speak the language, however, and many are also of mixed blood. Religion is the primary glue that holds this community together, and their present church, built 109 years ago, is the largest in all of Thailand.
Standing outside a chapel, I saw a flower-bedecked coffin with a framed portrait of a priest, and two dozen people, mostly old, praying. Immediately, I could tell that it wasn’t Thai, but then it wasn’t Vietnamese either. Every so often, however, I would catch a word or phrase that was somewhat Vietnamese. When they were done, I spoke in Vietnamese to the folks walking out, but the first three couldn’t answer me, then a man approached with tentative English, “Can I help you?”
It turned out they were all Vietnamese, praying in Vietnamese, and to prove it, the 55-ish man showed me his Vietnamese prayer booklet. With his tones all mangled, he proudly read me a sample sentence. In strained English, he then stated, “I want to learn Vietnamese. My father, mother, Vietnamese.” Then, “My tổ, uh, tổ…”
“Tổ tiên [ancestors]?”
“Yes!” He smiled. “My tổ tiên, Vietnamese!”
Until World War II, Vietnamese was still taught in the community, he said, but now, there’s only one old guy at the market who could speak it fluently.
“Have you been to Vietnam?” I asked.
“No, no.”
“Do you feel Thai or Vietnamese?”
After a slight hesitation, “Both.”
Fair enough. If there was a shooting war, however, which way would his rifle be pointed?
In Chanthaburi, I saw several Buddhist temples and shrines that were clearly Chinese, so religion is intertwined with ethnicity to preserve a separate identity for each subgroup. A most fascinating example of this are the Jews of Kaifeng, China. There at least a thousand years, they are indistinguishable from other Chinese, yet still consider themselves very much Jewish. Some have emigrated to Israel.
At the other end of Thailand, there are 64 Chinese villages, populated by descendants of Kuomintang soldiers. Thailand let them in to be a buffer against the Chinese, then Thai Communists, and all have been granted citizenship. In a 2015 New York Times article, a 47-year-old man is quoted, “I may have a Thai ID, but I’m Chinese. My family is Chinese, and no matter where we go, we’re still Chinese.”
After seven decades, these “Thais” are still attached to China, unsurprisingly, although it’s still ruled by the same Party that tried its best to kill off their forebears.
Since blood is thicker than paperwork, its corruption is one way to dilute a competing allegiance. My Chanthaburi friend, Mala, is half Chinese, half Vietnamese, speaks only Thai, considers herself 100% Thai and is married to a Thai man.
Ethnic and race mixing, though, can only go so far, and even if universally applied, will only create new shades, each with its attractions and repulsions, not to mention a lingo that’s inhospitable to outsiders. With each group defining itself against all others, conflicts will continue to erupt, as they always have.
Just as a man who claims to love all women, loves no woman, no one is remotely capable of giving a damn about everybody, no matter how much he may go on, often with righteous, vindictive rage, about universal brotherhood. With self-love as his compass, he will jab, kick and snipe at all those who differ even the slightest from himself, as testified by the comment stream following this very article.
With population and sense of entitlement constantly rising, against resources rapidly depleting, a state of constant war, nearly everywhere, is the best we can hope for, and in such a situation, a fragmented society will have no chance.
Everyone’s barbarism will flower.
.
Friday, March 30, 2018
National Identity, Great Thais and Eyes Rolling
As published at OpEd News, Smirking Chimp, The Russophile, Unz Review, TruthSeeker and Intrepid Report, 3/30/18:
History is primarily a chronicle of wars and invasions, most often among neighbors, so every inch of every border has been fiercely fought over, for that’s how any population maintains its autonomy, integrity and identity. Plus, you need land to prosper so, often, you grab your neighbor’s when he’s weak. Everyone has done this. Everyone.
Peace, then, can only be achieved when you’re strong enough to defend your borders, and if you’re no longer willing to do this, then you’re already lost, conquered, and not necessarily by an external enemy.
Take Thailand. It has fought against China, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and the Malay state of Kedah, all of its neighbors, in short. After swallowing up Laos in the 18th century, it lost it to France in the 19th, and in 1941, Thailand surrendered to juggernaut Japan after only five hours of, uh, fighting. At least it wasn’t less than 45 minutes, which was how long it took the Sultanate of Zanzibar to raise the white flag to Great Britain. To be fair, the Sultan saw no reason to continue after the Brits had shelled his palace, instantly killing 500 troops and wrecking his beloved harem.
All countries have been built on war and conquest, and the bigger a nation, the more wars it has fought, so an empire, by definition, is a war machine, with many fighting until the homeland itself is incinerated. One is so possessed, however, it has eviscerated itself by waging endless war on behalf of a supposed vassal, and for this dog wagging tail, is threatening to blow up the entire world.
Pointing out such basics, I’m sometimes challenged by world-class nitwits who’ll say something like, “Well, China never invaded anybody. All the myriad tribes that make up present day China just couldn’t resist the allure of superior Han culture, so they became Chinese voluntarily. They demanded to be Chinese!” This echoes the colonel in Full Metal Jacket, “We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook, there is an American trying to get out!”
But surely, after seven decades of (war-filled) Pax Americana, everybody does want to be American, as witnessed by the pervasiveness of American culture worldwide, but this is merely cosmetic, I insist, to be scraped off in a blink. Traveling, Americans tend to gravitate towards the most Americanized pockets of whatever country, so they’re inclined to see foreigners only as touchingly degraded versions of themselves, and not as autonomous beings in an entirely separate universe.
Last week, I was in Chanthaburi, Thailand, population 28,000. In the middle of town, there’s a Robinson Mall, with a huge sign, almost entirely in English, advertising Tops Market, Super Sports, Power Buy, B2S, SFC Cinema, KFC, Swensens, Yayoi and MK Restaurants. With the exceptions of KFC and the Japanese Yayoi, however, the rest were Thai chains, and of the four movies shown, two were Thai, and two were American: Malila: the Farewell Flower, Thibaan the Series, Black Panther and Lady Bird. Wandering around, I spotted a bearded white guy on an ad, “DANCE / LOSE WEIGHT / CONTEST SEASON.” Wearing a red tank top, he had a green hula hoop, like a twirling halo, around his impressive love handles. Throughout the mall, most of the other models were also white, I can’t deny.
Beyond the mall, English was nearly nonexistent, however, and often bizarre, as in a roadside sign for a “MiniConcert” by “BOY PEACEMAKER.” Holding a cowboy hat, a cartoon cow had a speech bubble, “Hi.!” Bits of English lent hipness to caps and T-shirts. A 45-ish woman wore one with Sesame Street Muppets and, “REPRESENTING THE STREET.”
Showing up on clothing and even couple of trucks, the American flag was a popular decoration, and on Route 3, a dozen leather-clad guys pompously straddled Harleys.
All the Americanness, though, was extremely superficial, I repeat, for the social fabric of daily life, each second of it, remained deeply Thai. At no point did I feel like I was in nearby Vietnam, much less America, for its pace of life, tones of speech, modes of address and many other details, large and tiny, were all distinctively Thai, as they should be.
Take the wai, the Thai greeting of having hands pressed together, prayer-like, and bowing slightly. Most foreigners, especially tourists passing through, feel rather ridiculous doing this, so can’t be bothered, but that’s why we’re not Thais. They are.
Next to a public porch swing, there was a plugged-in boom box, so the amorous couple could play their cassettes.
Reminiscent of the Japanese fondness for kawaii, cute figurines stood outside temples, stores or even bathrooms, as in a bare-chested, chubby and smiling guy performing a wai.
Sampling a few lurid streets in Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket or Chiang Mai, foreigners come home with tales of live sex on stage and ladyboys, but Thailand is no more of a brothel than the Netherlands, although each Dutch city, not just Amsterdam, has its red-light district. Most Thais are conservative, rural people, and during my visit to Namtok Phlio National Park, all the female swimmers were well-covered, except one, a young blonde whose barely there bottom revealed most of her cheeks.
Since 1912, Thailand has had 21 coups d’état and 29 prime ministers, so that’s a lot of turbulence, but it has not suffered any foreign occupation, civil war or mass imposition of an alien psychosis, such as Communism. Its twin pillars have been the monarchy and a brand of Buddhism that includes the worship of Phra Phrom, a version of the four-faced Hindu god, Brahma. Inside India, there are almost no shrines to this deity, but they are all over Thailand, with the one outside Bangkok’s Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel making world news when a bomb near it exploded in 2015, killing 20 and injuring 125. No one has been charged.
Inside several Chanthaburi shops, I spotted two hanging pieces of paper, with writing, lay out in curious patterns, and a vertical alligator. These weren’t cutesy decorations, but deadly serious talismans, there to ward off evil and reel in good fortune.
Anyone who has visited a Thai restaurant anywhere is likely to have seen a framed photo of King Bhumibol. Ruling for 70 years, he died with a fortune of $30 billion, the most of any royal worldwide. In Bangkok, Chonburi, Rayong and Chanthaburi, I saw his likeness everywhere. Since it’s illegal to criticize the king in Thailand, of course you’ll only see adulation, but still, no one is coerced into displaying ten images of Bhumibol on a wall, such as I saw in a small store.
My Thai beer buddy, Somchai, said that Bhumibol was deeply concerned about agriculture. He investigated different types of rice, introduced new methods of growing it and visited farmers regularly to hear their concerns. The king even invented the chaipattana aerator. A low-cost buoy with propellers that oxygenates bodies of water, it’s in use all over Thailand. Thai agriculture was revolutionized by Bhumibol, Somchai stressed. Packing and exporting longans, my friend and his wife own two cars and have two daughters in college. Thailand’s per capita income is fourth highest in Southeast Asia, behind only Singapore, Malaysia and oil-rich Brunei.
Bhumibol’s detractors can point to his association with a series of military strongmen and implicit endorsement of coups against elected leaders. Anti-democratic mobs wear yellow shirts to show their loyalty to the king.
Born in Cambridge, MA, Bhumibol spent most of his youth in Switzerland. At 18, he became king only after his older brother had died, from a bullet that may have been fired by Bhumibol himself, accidentally. This incident resulted in the wrongful convictions, then executions, of two hapless pages and a senator, plus the permanent expulsion of a prominent leftist, Pridi Banomyong, from Thai politics. With a love for Bach, jazz, ballet, fast cars, yachting and Paris, the thoroughly Westernized Bhumibol was reluctant to leave Europe, so it took him nearly four years to return to Bangkok to cremate his brother and be crowned, in elaborate ceremonies fraught with occult meanings.
Ignoring the taboo of never looking down on a king’s head, American journalists at the coronation climbed on trees to get better shots, and one caused great offense when he loudly snapped his fingers, during a moment of silence, to get Bhumibol’s attention. As a photography aficionado, perhaps the Divine Feet, Supremacy, Divine, Highest Indra, Great, Strength of the Land, Incomparable Power, Overlord of the Land, Overlord Rama, Overlord of Mankind from Chakri, Siamese Ruler, the Overlord, Supreme Holy Shelter understood and forgave these simian antics.
In East Asia, you just don’t touch an adult’s head or buttocks, but if a Japanese or Korean plays in the Major Leagues, then he’ll just have to accept being gayly patted by his teammates episodically. Perhaps the ultimate insult to Thai heads was delivered by the French, when they occupied Chanthaburi from 1893 to 1905. The mirthful Gauls built a jail with a chicken coup over it, and Chicken Shit Prison can still be seen today, just down the street from a 7-Eleven.
Chanthaburi’s most beautiful building is a shrine to King Taksin (1734-82). Born to a Chinese father and Thai mother, he led an army to kick out the Burmese, restored the Thai nation and declared himself king. During a 15-year reign, Taksin fed the poor, dug canals, encouraged Chinese immigration, built up seaports, fostered international trades, snuffed out rebellions, invaded Laos, then finally went mad by declaring himself an incipient Buddha. By meditating and fasting, Taksin believed he could soon fly and turn his blood white. He gave religious lectures to monks, demanded that they worshipped him and flogged those who refused. Capriciously, Taksin jailed or tortured hundreds of other innocents.
Finally, a palace coup eliminated Taksin, and he was either decapitated or placed in a velvet sack and clubbed to death, since royal blood, red or white, should never touch the ground. A third version claims some poor replacement was bagged, so Taksin simply hightailed it to the Himalayas and dwelt in some stinking cave until he kicked the slop bucket at the overripe age of 80.
Around Chanthaburi, I also saw Taksin worshipped in homes and businesses, so Thai still revere this long-dead king for his many contributions to the Thai nation, just as they do with Bhumibol, for their accomplishments far outweigh their flaws.
In late 2014, an 81-year-old historian, Surak Sivarak, was charged with insulting a 16th century king, Naresuan, when he suggested that the long-cherished story of Naresuan’s victory over a Burmese king in an elephant duel is likely nonsense. I’m surprised Sivarak wasn’t put on trial for defaming the elephant, Chao Praya Prabhongsawadee, as well. Thanks to the mercy of Thailand’s new king, the infamously crop top-wearing Vajiralongkorn, all charges were dropped in January of 2018, however.
Naresuan is the subject of a series of six over-the-top films, released in theaters over a nine-year period. The elephant duel alone has its own film.
Thais don’t want anybody to chip at their heroes, in short. What a contrast this is to the USA, whose inhabitants are conditioned to doubt, sneer at or tear down all their great men, except one, Martin Luther King. The very concept has become risible. Quite tellingly, one of my commenters has this as her tagline, “Behind every great man is me rolling my eyes and doing the jerkoff motion.”
History is primarily a chronicle of wars and invasions, most often among neighbors, so every inch of every border has been fiercely fought over, for that’s how any population maintains its autonomy, integrity and identity. Plus, you need land to prosper so, often, you grab your neighbor’s when he’s weak. Everyone has done this. Everyone.
Peace, then, can only be achieved when you’re strong enough to defend your borders, and if you’re no longer willing to do this, then you’re already lost, conquered, and not necessarily by an external enemy.
Take Thailand. It has fought against China, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and the Malay state of Kedah, all of its neighbors, in short. After swallowing up Laos in the 18th century, it lost it to France in the 19th, and in 1941, Thailand surrendered to juggernaut Japan after only five hours of, uh, fighting. At least it wasn’t less than 45 minutes, which was how long it took the Sultanate of Zanzibar to raise the white flag to Great Britain. To be fair, the Sultan saw no reason to continue after the Brits had shelled his palace, instantly killing 500 troops and wrecking his beloved harem.
All countries have been built on war and conquest, and the bigger a nation, the more wars it has fought, so an empire, by definition, is a war machine, with many fighting until the homeland itself is incinerated. One is so possessed, however, it has eviscerated itself by waging endless war on behalf of a supposed vassal, and for this dog wagging tail, is threatening to blow up the entire world.
Pointing out such basics, I’m sometimes challenged by world-class nitwits who’ll say something like, “Well, China never invaded anybody. All the myriad tribes that make up present day China just couldn’t resist the allure of superior Han culture, so they became Chinese voluntarily. They demanded to be Chinese!” This echoes the colonel in Full Metal Jacket, “We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook, there is an American trying to get out!”
But surely, after seven decades of (war-filled) Pax Americana, everybody does want to be American, as witnessed by the pervasiveness of American culture worldwide, but this is merely cosmetic, I insist, to be scraped off in a blink. Traveling, Americans tend to gravitate towards the most Americanized pockets of whatever country, so they’re inclined to see foreigners only as touchingly degraded versions of themselves, and not as autonomous beings in an entirely separate universe.
Last week, I was in Chanthaburi, Thailand, population 28,000. In the middle of town, there’s a Robinson Mall, with a huge sign, almost entirely in English, advertising Tops Market, Super Sports, Power Buy, B2S, SFC Cinema, KFC, Swensens, Yayoi and MK Restaurants. With the exceptions of KFC and the Japanese Yayoi, however, the rest were Thai chains, and of the four movies shown, two were Thai, and two were American: Malila: the Farewell Flower, Thibaan the Series, Black Panther and Lady Bird. Wandering around, I spotted a bearded white guy on an ad, “DANCE / LOSE WEIGHT / CONTEST SEASON.” Wearing a red tank top, he had a green hula hoop, like a twirling halo, around his impressive love handles. Throughout the mall, most of the other models were also white, I can’t deny.
Beyond the mall, English was nearly nonexistent, however, and often bizarre, as in a roadside sign for a “MiniConcert” by “BOY PEACEMAKER.” Holding a cowboy hat, a cartoon cow had a speech bubble, “Hi.!” Bits of English lent hipness to caps and T-shirts. A 45-ish woman wore one with Sesame Street Muppets and, “REPRESENTING THE STREET.”
Showing up on clothing and even couple of trucks, the American flag was a popular decoration, and on Route 3, a dozen leather-clad guys pompously straddled Harleys.
All the Americanness, though, was extremely superficial, I repeat, for the social fabric of daily life, each second of it, remained deeply Thai. At no point did I feel like I was in nearby Vietnam, much less America, for its pace of life, tones of speech, modes of address and many other details, large and tiny, were all distinctively Thai, as they should be.
Take the wai, the Thai greeting of having hands pressed together, prayer-like, and bowing slightly. Most foreigners, especially tourists passing through, feel rather ridiculous doing this, so can’t be bothered, but that’s why we’re not Thais. They are.
Next to a public porch swing, there was a plugged-in boom box, so the amorous couple could play their cassettes.
Reminiscent of the Japanese fondness for kawaii, cute figurines stood outside temples, stores or even bathrooms, as in a bare-chested, chubby and smiling guy performing a wai.
Sampling a few lurid streets in Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket or Chiang Mai, foreigners come home with tales of live sex on stage and ladyboys, but Thailand is no more of a brothel than the Netherlands, although each Dutch city, not just Amsterdam, has its red-light district. Most Thais are conservative, rural people, and during my visit to Namtok Phlio National Park, all the female swimmers were well-covered, except one, a young blonde whose barely there bottom revealed most of her cheeks.
Since 1912, Thailand has had 21 coups d’état and 29 prime ministers, so that’s a lot of turbulence, but it has not suffered any foreign occupation, civil war or mass imposition of an alien psychosis, such as Communism. Its twin pillars have been the monarchy and a brand of Buddhism that includes the worship of Phra Phrom, a version of the four-faced Hindu god, Brahma. Inside India, there are almost no shrines to this deity, but they are all over Thailand, with the one outside Bangkok’s Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel making world news when a bomb near it exploded in 2015, killing 20 and injuring 125. No one has been charged.
Inside several Chanthaburi shops, I spotted two hanging pieces of paper, with writing, lay out in curious patterns, and a vertical alligator. These weren’t cutesy decorations, but deadly serious talismans, there to ward off evil and reel in good fortune.
Anyone who has visited a Thai restaurant anywhere is likely to have seen a framed photo of King Bhumibol. Ruling for 70 years, he died with a fortune of $30 billion, the most of any royal worldwide. In Bangkok, Chonburi, Rayong and Chanthaburi, I saw his likeness everywhere. Since it’s illegal to criticize the king in Thailand, of course you’ll only see adulation, but still, no one is coerced into displaying ten images of Bhumibol on a wall, such as I saw in a small store.
My Thai beer buddy, Somchai, said that Bhumibol was deeply concerned about agriculture. He investigated different types of rice, introduced new methods of growing it and visited farmers regularly to hear their concerns. The king even invented the chaipattana aerator. A low-cost buoy with propellers that oxygenates bodies of water, it’s in use all over Thailand. Thai agriculture was revolutionized by Bhumibol, Somchai stressed. Packing and exporting longans, my friend and his wife own two cars and have two daughters in college. Thailand’s per capita income is fourth highest in Southeast Asia, behind only Singapore, Malaysia and oil-rich Brunei.
Bhumibol’s detractors can point to his association with a series of military strongmen and implicit endorsement of coups against elected leaders. Anti-democratic mobs wear yellow shirts to show their loyalty to the king.
Born in Cambridge, MA, Bhumibol spent most of his youth in Switzerland. At 18, he became king only after his older brother had died, from a bullet that may have been fired by Bhumibol himself, accidentally. This incident resulted in the wrongful convictions, then executions, of two hapless pages and a senator, plus the permanent expulsion of a prominent leftist, Pridi Banomyong, from Thai politics. With a love for Bach, jazz, ballet, fast cars, yachting and Paris, the thoroughly Westernized Bhumibol was reluctant to leave Europe, so it took him nearly four years to return to Bangkok to cremate his brother and be crowned, in elaborate ceremonies fraught with occult meanings.
Ignoring the taboo of never looking down on a king’s head, American journalists at the coronation climbed on trees to get better shots, and one caused great offense when he loudly snapped his fingers, during a moment of silence, to get Bhumibol’s attention. As a photography aficionado, perhaps the Divine Feet, Supremacy, Divine, Highest Indra, Great, Strength of the Land, Incomparable Power, Overlord of the Land, Overlord Rama, Overlord of Mankind from Chakri, Siamese Ruler, the Overlord, Supreme Holy Shelter understood and forgave these simian antics.
In East Asia, you just don’t touch an adult’s head or buttocks, but if a Japanese or Korean plays in the Major Leagues, then he’ll just have to accept being gayly patted by his teammates episodically. Perhaps the ultimate insult to Thai heads was delivered by the French, when they occupied Chanthaburi from 1893 to 1905. The mirthful Gauls built a jail with a chicken coup over it, and Chicken Shit Prison can still be seen today, just down the street from a 7-Eleven.
Chanthaburi’s most beautiful building is a shrine to King Taksin (1734-82). Born to a Chinese father and Thai mother, he led an army to kick out the Burmese, restored the Thai nation and declared himself king. During a 15-year reign, Taksin fed the poor, dug canals, encouraged Chinese immigration, built up seaports, fostered international trades, snuffed out rebellions, invaded Laos, then finally went mad by declaring himself an incipient Buddha. By meditating and fasting, Taksin believed he could soon fly and turn his blood white. He gave religious lectures to monks, demanded that they worshipped him and flogged those who refused. Capriciously, Taksin jailed or tortured hundreds of other innocents.
Finally, a palace coup eliminated Taksin, and he was either decapitated or placed in a velvet sack and clubbed to death, since royal blood, red or white, should never touch the ground. A third version claims some poor replacement was bagged, so Taksin simply hightailed it to the Himalayas and dwelt in some stinking cave until he kicked the slop bucket at the overripe age of 80.
Around Chanthaburi, I also saw Taksin worshipped in homes and businesses, so Thai still revere this long-dead king for his many contributions to the Thai nation, just as they do with Bhumibol, for their accomplishments far outweigh their flaws.
In late 2014, an 81-year-old historian, Surak Sivarak, was charged with insulting a 16th century king, Naresuan, when he suggested that the long-cherished story of Naresuan’s victory over a Burmese king in an elephant duel is likely nonsense. I’m surprised Sivarak wasn’t put on trial for defaming the elephant, Chao Praya Prabhongsawadee, as well. Thanks to the mercy of Thailand’s new king, the infamously crop top-wearing Vajiralongkorn, all charges were dropped in January of 2018, however.
Naresuan is the subject of a series of six over-the-top films, released in theaters over a nine-year period. The elephant duel alone has its own film.
Thais don’t want anybody to chip at their heroes, in short. What a contrast this is to the USA, whose inhabitants are conditioned to doubt, sneer at or tear down all their great men, except one, Martin Luther King. The very concept has become risible. Quite tellingly, one of my commenters has this as her tagline, “Behind every great man is me rolling my eyes and doing the jerkoff motion.”
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
.
She has a Vietnamese father and Chinese mother, but speaks only Thai, considers herself 100% Thai and is married to a Thai man. They pack and export fruits, own two cars and have two daughters in college.
Though successful, they're very down to earth and are extremely pleasant to be around, but so are most Thais. Vietnamese are louder and pushier.
When I asked if they had traveled much, they said they had only visited Malaysia and Vietnam. "No money!" they laughed.
.
She has a Vietnamese father and Chinese mother, but speaks only Thai, considers herself 100% Thai and is married to a Thai man. They pack and export fruits, own two cars and have two daughters in college.
Though successful, they're very down to earth and are extremely pleasant to be around, but so are most Thais. Vietnamese are louder and pushier.
When I asked if they had traveled much, they said they had only visited Malaysia and Vietnam. "No money!" they laughed.
.
Monday, March 26, 2018
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