Connexion
Lazy Kuban dumplings in tomato sauce
From my favorite Russian site. We will talk about it, think about it, understand the process, and enjoy every minute. The one thing that I love about my favorite Russian food site is the many pastries and pastry dough. It seems every babushka can figure a simple pastry from collective memory. I’ve never been a good pastry chef, so I love these different methods from people that are not scared of pastry. This one is not going to be baked. And the filling opens up a raft of various possibilities, as long as one remembers a few things.
The KUBAN part of the name refers to a strumby. Strumby is a dumpling version made in Kuban in the south of Russia. The simple name is dumplings with meat. The feature is the way they’re shaped. These are small meat rolls stewed in tomato and cream sauce. They are called ‘lazy’ because you roll out the dough only once, fill it with meat or stuffing of your choice and then cut it into circles. Imagine a lazy pastry! A sharp thin-bladed knife is really recommended for this.
We will first fry these circles and then stew them in the sauce. I hope you have some last lost sweet overripe tomatoes left in the cold areas.
You can use any kind of meat or vegetarian filling. The formal recipe has beef, pork and the fatty part of a brisket. So here is the first problem – too much meat and I don’t like pork at all, but it was clear we are looking for a rich filling. So I checked out some vegetarian filling options but as I have not tried them, I’ll just mention them. Mine were made with simple tasty fried ground beef, and some cooked mashed dry beans that kept the ground beef together. Seasoning was simple – black pepper and tamari soy sauce. If I did not have soy sauce, I would have used sea salt. Chicken will work and a filling like this is the place to add most everything that is leftover in the fridge. The filling has to be cooked and don’t go mixing raw and cooked ingredients now! The filling only has to hold together. For vegetarian, one should look at cooked lentils and search for vegetarian pie fillings where the secret is in the way it is seasoned. You’ll find something even if it is with a firm tofu, crumbled and fried – The best meat substitute. Again, seasoning is the secret. I’m not sure if tofu is reasonably priced where you are, but I’m lucky sometimes and get a block that is cheaper than any other protein. Cannot complain about that.
What pretty little fellows there on their plate.
This is what is needed :
Dough:
Stuffing: (or whatever you have – it does need the onion of course – get your stuffing prepared first)
Sauce:
Preparation:
Pastry dough: Place flour, salt, an egg and two spoons of water in a bowl and knead the dough by hand or with a mixer. Add a third spoon of water if necessary. For more elasticity, just do it in a mixer and mix for 15 minutes.
2. While the dough is kneading, prepare the sauce. While the sauce is very tasty, I would add some dried herbs to enhance the flavor. I would also not put the cream in to cook, but add it at the end. Don’t go use a bottle or box of pasta sauce now .. it looks the same but fresh is better in this case. Yes I know, this whole recipe looks like stuffed pasta in sauce, and in a sense it is.
Finely chop onions and carrots and fry in vegetable oil. Add tomato paste. Add tomato pulp. The fastest way is to grate them over the pan and let the skin remain on top of the grater.
Add salt and pepper and cook the sauce for a while until it starts smelling fragrant and full of ripe tomato. Then add the cream and extra water if it needs it. It is going to thicken slightly so it does not have to be very thick. Let it stew slowly while preparing the strumby.
Back to the pastry dough: When the dough is smooth, let it sit (covered) for 15 minutes and finish the stuffing if that is not done yet. Roll out with flour on your board to a single layer. Put the filling on there and roll a tight roll.
Be sure to pinch the edge together with a little water on your fingers. You do not want it to burst open. The original recipe says to ‘sew’ it together, but good heavens, finger pinches will do it as well.
Cut your roll into 2.5 – 3 cm rounds and place in some flour to hold together, and also will thicken the sauce.
Now comes the change in preparation. No oven .. Fry these rolls until both sides are golden brown.
.
Then pour the sauce over and for a little more flavor, add crushed garlic, a bay leaf, check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Cook for 30 minutes under a lid on low heat – you do not want them to burn and you don’t want all the sauce to cook away.
Serve hot with a handful of fresh chopped herbs and a further dollop of sour cream. I had some plain yogurt and used it in place of sour cream, as cream is not a staple in our household. A green salad works as an accompaniment, or something like peas or green beans – you definitely want a little green.
Mine came out very nice. I could have had some more herbs. All I did for the green, was to chop some lettuce. This is relatively more fiddly than my usual very simple recipes but it made a nice change from yet another pot of pasta. Oooh my tomato sauce was spoonlicking gooood!
“Belligerently, defiantly and gleefully savage, millions march towards their Golden Age.”
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Leavitt for President! — Nov 07, 2025.
Trump on 11/6/25, “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under Biden, according to Walmart. My cost are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!”
White man in his 30’s, “We’re now at the point of, you can finance your food. Like, people are so poor that you can actually finance your food! We went from being able to finance a house to financing a burrito. That’s insane! […] The unemployment rate is 4.2% or 4.9%. Like, give me a break! […] There’s no chance that 96% of people are employed right now [….] Most of my college friends are either vastly underemployed or unemployed now, so that number is just completely wrong.”
Sobbing white woman in her 60’s, sitting in a car, “I don’t even know where to go anymore. All I keep doing is driving back and forth on highways. We spend all our time in the car. I can’t even cook for him anymore, because it’s getting colder outside. I try to do my best, but where am I going? Where am I going? I’m either driving to a friend’s cabin, which is three hours away, or I’m driving to a campground, which is $38 a night and has a shower. Either way, I’m spending money […] Working decades, you think retirement is a time of peace and quiet, you’re rewarded for all your hard work. For so many, it has become a complete nightmare […] There are so many people right now that are one rent, one medical bill and one bad month of being homeless out on the streets.”
She had started a new business, but it flopped, like thousands across the USA just this year, then she and her husband were evicted. Her property taxes were jacked up, like her utility and grocery bills. Even with jobs, millions of Americans can no longer afford to live.
Those employed are overworked and underpaid. Thousands of nurses and teachers are quitting. The latter must deal with increasingly stupid, distracted and belligerent students with their minds and emotions wrecked by screen addiction. The moronic and deranged are easier to steer and cow. Just look at MAGA fanatics.
Nurse, “It got to the point where I was crying on my way to work every day. My mental health was just so bad, I knew I needed to leave, so I did. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and it took me a long time to finally find the courage to leave. I had studied nursing and worked in healthcare since I was 17 years old.” If native nurses can’t hack it, there’s an endless supply from the Philippines, India, Mexico and Africa to replace them. All speak enough English. They’ve been bringing them in for decades. Ditto, Trump. A diseased oligarch, he can’t help but squeeze hardest from the bottom. Biden sniffs and squeezes. Trump grabs. Nearing the end, he’s squeezing and grabbing even harder. Melania flinches. She got hers.
Trump on 11/5/25, “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down. Affordability is our goal. Love to the American People!”
– Linh Dinh
Since all these panicking Americans are saying the opposite of Trump, they must be lying. Chaos at American airports are fake news or deep fakes. Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is really 25% lower. So what if this year’s Walmart version only has 15 items instead of 21, with a smaller turkey. No one will miss the Southern pecan pie, sweet potatoes or cranberry sauce, etc.
This morning at Coffee Seven, I said to Liệt, the retired teacher, “Obama was excellent at lying. Trump is just naked. He has no shame!”
Liệt just laughed.
In a new video, Trump depicts himself as a rising sun, crowned king, the pope and a muscle man holding a laser sword. His approval rating still stands at 37%.
Trump has birthed a new YouTube genre, FAFO, for “fuck around and find out.” MAGA farmers, welfare queens and truckers, etc., are mocked when they suddenly find themselves broke or starving. Especially ridiculed are the browns, blacks and yellows who voted for someone who clearly hates them. I, for one, don’t think Trump’s cabinet is MAGA enough. It should only be filled with well stacked blondes. Don’t you think Karen Leavitt would look fantastic as your next president? Sure beats Hillary, Ocasio-Cortez or Pocahontas. I’d fly back just to vote for Leavitt.
Meanwhile, they moan, and not orgasmically.
El Pais on 11/5/25, “‘I’m angry with my president:’ Trump voters in Florida confront the fallout of his policies a year before the midterms—Reeling from aid cuts, the immigration agenda and a government shutdown with no end in sight, those who supported the Republican in the 2024 elections feel a mixture of guilt, anger and bewilderment.”
Suck it up! And suck it good.
Vung Tau. (L): $47.35 on 11/7/25 ; (R): 11/8/25
Intergalactic Trillionaires — Nov 08, 2025.
Petronius, “So the little man suffers, while those grinders of the poor never stop celebrating.” They do it often enough at Mar-a-Lago. This 126-room property on 17 acres was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post, the richest woman in the USA, just before the Great Depression.
In The Satyricon, Trimalchio leaves his feast to take a dump. In Fellini’s version, this is even announced, “Vado al vaso,” to heighten the obscenity of the entire scene. The fat man needs help from two near naked slaves just to get up. Later, he cracks a lame joke, “What’s a poor man?” Still, his guests laugh. They’re elaborately, almost grotesquely made up, with their blueish or grayish faces ghoulish in that dark, orange walled room.
– Linh Dinh
At least Trump’s Great Gatsby Halloween bash was well lit, and he didn’t need to leave his chair to go al vaso. Remarkably, MAGA morons still think Trump’s jokes, including those on them, are hilarious. He’s still fighting a court order to feed starving Americans.
In Vung Tau, even that Cambodian who sleeps outside Ông Bầu each night isn’t starving, and neither is Hùng the cyclo driver who’s been homeless for four decades. With the weather always warm, they’re also in no danger of freezing to death.
Having lost much weight in two years, I’m still a fat American, figuratively speaking. Yesterday, my shopping at Lotte Mart cost $47.35. I bought three jars of Cucina and Amore spaghetti sauce from Italy, two bags of frozen dumplings from South Korea, three Black Angus burger patties from Australia, cream cheese from the USA, wasabi paste from Japan, five small boxes of Vietnamese chocolate, 100 bags of Phúc Long green teas, 30 frozen meat balls and a tray of ready-to-eat tuna with mayo kimbap. Had this haul been in the USA, all the imported stuff would have been slapped with Trumpian tariffs. I would have had to pay twice as much. For basics like cucumbers, tomatoes, okras, hot peppers and eggs, I go to a neighborhood grocer, where I rarely spend more than $3!
Having lived here and there, my diet is eclectic, but even Viets who haven’t traveled are becoming fond of foreign dishes. Kids now demand donuts, hot dogs, spaghetti with red sauce or sushi for breakfast. Poorer ones, though, must stick with sticky rice with peanuts, lotus seeds, coconut shavings or pork floss, etc.
For Americans, peak eating occurred during the 80’s and 90’s. In the 70’s, they were still tricked into ingesting Wonderbread, American cheese, Tang, Yoo Hoo, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, Miracle Whip, Chef Boyardee, Oreos, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Country Crock of Shit and Pop Tarts, etc. Their ancestors’ culinary heritages were nearly wiped out, so words such as prosciutto, chorizo, pecorino and terrine, etc., hadn’t just disappeared, but considered pretentious, nearly obscene, unlike Funyuns, Lachoy, Koogle or Mountain Dew. This was bizarre. Empires are supposed to gather the best from all over. Americans mostly ate garbage.
Working in DC in the 80’s, I would get Greek rice or moussaka at a food court off Farragut West. Immigrants and refugees from all over enriched the local food scene. Ethiopian cuisine was hot. In Santa Clara, CA, my father opened a Japanese restaurant.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. America wasn’t just on top, but seemingly the only solution to everything. Offshoring had already started, however. As always, profits had to be maximized.
Vung Tau, 11/7/25
Those grinders of the poor need that separation, that contrast, to be as stark as possible. Subsidized by chumps like you over decades, Elon Musk is now a trillionaire. Trump family’s net worth has more than doubled since his reentry into the White House. Though he’s parlayed this penetration into 3 billion bucks, he won’t dispense just $188 per SNAP recipient, and it’s not even his money, but yours!
At Walmart, a loaf of Wonderbread is just over $3, with taxes. Two slices, though, will give you as much calcium as an 8 oz glass of milk! Since each loaf has 26 slices, four a day, equal to two glasses of milk, will keep you going for 6.5 days. Just keep eating Wonderbread, then, as you wait for Elon Musk to rocket you into heaven. The genius, “With AI and robotics, you can actually increase the global economy by a factor of 10, or 100. There’s not, like, an obvious limit.”
There’s no ceiling to your imminent wealth. You, too, will be a multi-trillionaire, and an intergalactic one! Stop thinking so small. Those penny counting days are over. No more Ramen Pride! On Mars, Saturn or wherever, there will be so much of everything, filet mignons and lobster tails, plus underaged tails, too, everything your massas are enjoying. Why shouldn’t you live like Soros or Trump?
(L): The Gold Office’s Golden Calf ; (R): still from Fellini’s Satyricon
Naked Degeneracy — Nov 09, 2025.
Netanyahu’s paternal grandfather was Nathan Mileikowsky. The Argentinian president is Javier Gerardo Milei.
At a Miami synagogue in 2024, a kippah wearing Milei or Mileikowsky spoke about his grandfather. Only near death did he find out he was Jewish, Milei claimed. Still, “He was very close to his mother and his grandfather was also a rabbi. That is to say, all the education he had received from them was deeply linked to Judaism and all the values he transmitted to me were Jewish.”
All the values, mind you, so Milei was either pandering or lying. John Kerry, too, said he only knew he wasn’t Irish, but Jewish, late in life. His real name is Cohen.
Though a supposed Catholic, Milei has a personal rabbi, Shimon Axel Wahnish, with whom he’s studied the Torah. At the Western Wall in 2024, Milei didn’t just pray but sob. Following Trump, Milei plans to move Argentina’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, just to say fuck you to Arabs. He also fully supports Jews butchering Palestinians in Gaza or wherever.
After visiting the Miami synagogue, Milei flew to Texas to meet Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “aspirational Jew.”
Since 10/7/23, the US has given Israel at least $16.3 billion to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Last month, Trump’s regime gave Milei’s Argentina 20 billion bucks, with 20 billion more coming “from sovereign funds and the private sector.” Sovereign funds are just American tax money invested.
In what other country could a leader be so generous with his citizens’ cash? Trump is also starving millions of Americans while forcing millions more to work without pay. Limp, stinking and near death, Degenerate Donald really enjoys twisting that knife.
The world notices. Times of India on 11/3/25, “Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Halloween party, featuring half-naked dancers in a giant martini glass, drew sharp criticism as millions lost food aid during the government shut down […] Internet compared the scene to ‘Epstein Island,’ as, just like the late paedophile, the party also seemed to have similar vibes of wealth, secrecy, and moral decay.”
Of course, Trump won’t tone it down. A Conservative Political Action Conference bash at Mar-a-Lago had guests gushing over its seafood spread, ice sculpture and even majestic bathrooms. Entire families can comfortably sleep in there, even on the floor. A $64,000 beach vacation in Thailand was auctioned. An opera singer is dressed like a belly dancer. The highlight, though, was Milei doing a Trumpian, stiff white man dance to roars and cheers. His 55-year-old, undiapered hips did sway, though, unlike Trump’s burdened behind. With a $40 billion bailout, why shouldn’t Milei be giddy?
(R): hot singer Halsey
Daily, grotesque displays pile up. Most emblematic, though, is Trump standing stiffly at the Resolute Desk, staring ahead and not giving a shit while just feet away lies a collapsed man. Everyone else, alarmed, is showing concern. Not seen is Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for he has run off. That, too, is emblematic.
Trump pulling out a chair for Netanyahu will be also be remembered. With so many days left before Donald drops dead or is assassinated, for real, we can count on many more lowlights. In a decade, perhaps, there will be a traveling exhibit of such photos. This is what America has become.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
“I walked past a McDonald’s, Starbucks, 7-11 and Kentucky Fried Chicken, all lined up, cheek to cheek. America’s icons will survive its collapse.”
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Kathmandu. (L): 10/29/25 ; (R): 10/28/25
Go There! — Oct 29, 2025.
Walking a couple miles, I got a last look at everything, that square with the serene stupa and Tibetan temple, KTM Burger, Fire Café, Bueno Burrito, the early morning chai place that made me feel so at home on my first morning, 4 Square with Sumitra mopping the steps, the Indian beggar in his NIKE knit cap, Saroj’s store, founded in 1943 by his grandad, where I bought more treats and yak cheese. I passed too many gorgeous neighborhood temples to count. I moved too fast for stray dogs to say goodbye or curse me for leaving them.
With plenty of time before my flight, I asked the taxi driver to leave me outside the airport’s gate. Thirty-seven years old, he’s been driving 15 years. Though his village is only 100 kilometers away, he doesn’t have to go there since his parents are dead. Only his 55-year-old brother remains.
“Does he want to come here? To work?”
“He was here.”
“No job!”
“No job.”
“At his age, it’s better he stays in the village. When you’re over 45 or so, no one will hire you for anything. They don’t want experience, only young, strong bodies.”
He chuckled in agreement.
“In Vietnam, too, it’s like that.”
“It’s like that everywhere.”
“For women, it’s even worse. They only want young, pretty women in the restaurants and cafés. Hey, how come your English is so good?”
“I practice.”
“No classes?”
“Four classes!” he chuckled.
That’s all he could afford, obviously. He pays 15,000 rupees ($106) a month for rent. His taxi costs 3,000 a day. That’s also the monthly tuition for his five-year-old-son. Since his other son is only 1 ½, his wife must stay home to take care of this baby. Food for four costs 20,000 per month.
“I have no savings,” he said. “Sometimes, I take out loans.”
“But the interests are so high!”
“There are no jobs.”
“Too many people from the villages, and not enough tourists. I’m very surprised.”
“They’re scared.”
Kathmandu, 10/21/25
“But that was what, six or seven weeks ago? It’s perfectly safe here. Even then, there was no danger. If you see a protest, you just walk the other way! Did you see anything?”
“No, just on the mobile,” he chuckled.
“The protests were in a tiny area. Tourists, though, are always nervous. In Kathmandu, they stay inside a tiny area, where they can eat burgers and pizzas!” I laughed. I didn’t confess to pigging out at Bueno Burrito several times. Vung Tau has no Tex-Mex.
Just now, a guy about 50 looked over my shoulder to see what I was typing. We smiled. I’m sitting outside a cheerful and perfectly skanky eatery with dirty dishes on the concrete floor. Waiting to explode, an old gas canister lies on its side. The young waitress looked very nervous when I said, “Chai,” or when I threw up an index finger, meaning one more. Smartly dressed in his school uniform of button-up shirt, neck tie, creased shorts and dress shoes, a boy of eight eyed me as he walked past. Ten feet away, blue and red plastic bags of food garbage lean against each other. All I smell, though, is the curry being cooked. Since I don’t feel like sweating in agony, I’m not going to order anything. Tall bottles of Gorkha are certainly tempting.
This time tomorrow, I’ll be on my last leg to Saigon. Suddenly, I’ll be in balmy weather again. Snow is expected across Nepal within 48 hours. “4,982 escapees are still on the run,” announces the Himalayan on its front page. Also, Cameroon has just elected a 92-year-old president. Since Trump is just 79, Americans should expect 15 more years, at least, of winning big, no inflation and having so much money, they won’t know what to do. Unlike Elvis, Trump won’t ever leave the building.
At 10:16AM, I’ve cleared immigration and security check. There was a long line to just enter the airport. With boarding still an hour away, I rewarded myself with a 500 ml can of Nepal Ice. With its licker content at 6.1%, I’ll be groovy on that plane. Maybe I’ll sing Elvis.
Already, I miss Shree Gha Vihar, but here’s a deep, original thought. You can’t be everywhere at once! I should have been a hash pushing guru. It’s never too late. That’s what they all say, even as they’re lowered into the ground.
That thought just now is but a limp riff on what my long lost buddy, Aziz Vargha, said. When I visited Aziz on the 8th floor of Pennsylvania Hospital, America’s oldest, he lamented, “You know what’s funny, man? You can’t just be somewhere, you must go there! That takes time.”
Born in Iran, Aziz was raised in Germany then the UK before ending up in the USA. He had “MADE IN USA” tattooed on his forehead, back when tatts anywhere was still rare. Sitting in McGlinchey’s among whites, Aziz shouted, “I’m white, man, just like you!” Soon after, he said to a table of blacks, “I’m black, just like you!”
One snowless Christmas, we headed to Kensington to get lots of the white stuff. Doing lines, we laughed so hard. If alive, Aziz would not being do well, I’m sorry to say. He was already a mess four decades ago.
Just sitting still takes time. That’s all we have. Even if it’s just a hundred yards, I’d rather go there.
After my laptop went dead, I rushed to a charging station. Seeing my heavy machine, a woman in her mid 50’s asked in a Germanic or Dutch accent, “Do you want to sit here?”
“No, no, I just need to charge my laptop. Thank you!’
Immediately I thought of an old woman on the Rome subway from 26 years ago. “Chi vuole scendered?” she said in the gentlest voice imaginable. She even smiled slightly.
Such sweetness or civility is what we live for. OK, must run now. Boarding time. I must go there!
Guangzhou, 10/29/25
Too Heavenly for Words — Oct 30, 2025.
If still in Nepal, I would have been in bed by the time I landed in China. Though exhausted, I was also elated at finally entering China, so I headed into town. Getting a transit visa was relatively painless and not too time consuming. After changing $100 into yuans, I found my way to the Metro. Though I had visited Macau and Hong Kong, and saw Chinese streets from across a thin river in Lào Cai, only now was I inside!
Having no Google Maps, I didn’t know which station to get off. One that connected to two other lines sounded like a transportation hub, so must be busy at street level? Outside, there were just vendors selling assorted sausages on sticks, mostly, taxis and motorbike taxis. No stores or cafes were within walking distance. This was Guangzhou at its grubbiest. The station, though, was well appointed. After ten minutes, I headed back in.
Guangzhou, 10/29/25
Since the ticket machine didn’t accept my 100 yuan bill, a uniformed employee went out of her way to get me change. She also suggested a more lively station. This young lady couldn’t have been nicer.
On the train, all but a very old, tiny woman were looking at phones. Whether in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand or China, Asian subways are new, safe, clean and on time. The squeaking horror shows that still chug along in NYC or Philly are certainly cinematic. Since DC’s Metro must serve swamp dwellers, lobbyists, lawyers and Pentagon staffers, it’s cleaner and safer, though still dark and almost spooky in its cavernous design. DC go-go bars have nicer dancers, too, and they show everything. No coquettish peekaboo. Powerful old creeps don’t have time for subtleties.
Of course I forgot the recommended station, so got off at another drab neighborhood, but this one had stores and restaurants. I walked past a McDonald’s, Starbucks, 7-11 and Kentucky Fried Chicken, all lined up, cheek to cheek. America’s icons will survive its collapse. 7-Eleven has long been owned by the Japanese. Sears, once a symbol of America’s abundance, is mostly dead at home. There are three in Mexico City. I ran into one.
Standing outside McDonald’s, I heard John Denver’s “Take Me Home,” though sung in Cantonese, with only bits of English. “Country roads take me home, to the place I belong. West Virginia, mountain momma. Take me home, country roads.” Arriving in the US in 1975, this was one of the first songs I could almost sing.
Further on was a local fried chicken joint where sat three Chinese and an African. I noticed two pizzarie and several convenience stores. At a bright stand selling lottery tickets, a young female employee slept with her head slumped on a table. I entered a lit up Cantonese restaurant with uncleared tables and beer cans on the floor. To compensate for my suffering, I ordered too much food. I was nearly comatose. Grabbing a takeaway container, I then exited to look for a taxi. Before leaving, I did notice adds for prostitutes inside the toilet. In London, they lined phone booths, with exotic chicks from Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Scandinavia and Brazil, etc., especially popular. Dom leather, water sports, pussy licking, uniforms, toys and spanking were all available.
At Kathmandu’s airport, there were about 30 English high school kids. I heard one say, “I’d be very sad if you were to die on the way back.” Deadpan Brit humor. My favorite is what an Englishman says to his wife after their very first night, “I sure hope you’re pregnant, dear, because I don’t want to go through all those ridiculous motions again.”
Reentering Guangzhou’s airport, I knew my can of Nepal Ice, saved for Sơn in Vũng Tàu, would likely be confiscated, but there’s no way I could drink it myself. I had a can of clam sauce taken in Philly, a bottle of wine snatched somewhere and a jar of confit nearly filched from me at Heathrow. Global madness amplified after 9/11, the Anthrax scare then the Shoe Bomber, all hoaxes. In case you haven’t figured it out, Covid was an American bio attack on China, then Iran. Already a totalitarian state, China didn’t need a fake virus to paralyze itself. It was real enough for them to way overreact. Trump’s economic war against China should also be seen in this context. Xi, and Putin, too, certainly knows who’s his main enemy.
Exhausted and irritated, I made a beeline for those sleeping pods I had seen two weeks earlier. At just 138 yuans ($19.44) for three hours, it was absurdly cheap. Inside, there was a comfy seat that could be reclined nearly flat, lights that could be dimmed, a quiet fan and a TV. I assumed when my three hours were up, some alarm would go off or there would be knocks on the locked door, but nothing happened. I slept two extra hours. This, I only realized after emerging outside. Last night’s employee was asleep at her counter.
Since it wasn’t quite 6AM, restaurants were just setting up. Arabica, though, was open. A latte was just what I needed. Even before my first sip, I took photos of this elegant café. Their baguette sandwiches seemed proper. Nearly all Asian and European airports are more comfortable, better organized and civilized than American ones. At Guangzhou’s, hot or cold water is available for free, and you can sleep well enough even outside those pods. There are also free shower stalls. Even today, you cannot take a train from JFK to Manhattan.
At Mi Cang, I ordered rice gruel with just bits of minced pork and century egg, a peasant breakfast much beloved by my buddy John, an ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. It’s his ultimate comfort food, what his mama must have made often. It’s akin to oatmeal for many Americans. In Macau, I met a Chinese-American transplant who was delighted to find a store selling oatmeal. He needed it to feel at home
At $5.92, Mi Cang’s rice gruel was much fancier, for it came with four Japanese fried dumplings. On the menu were also Vietnamese phở, Japanese ramen with tonkatsu and a burger combo that looked pretty good, but they all do in photos. Eating my grub, I thought of a Nam Cao story where a woman feeds slop meant for pigs to her kids. Her calling it chè, a sweet, cold soup eaten as snacks, doesn’t fool them.
Looking up, I noticed a line at my gate, earlier than expected. Joining it, I asked a young white man if this was for Ho Chi Minh City, but he didn’t answer. Overhearing me, a Chinese said, “Yes, Ho Chi Minh.” The other couldn’t hear because he had earbuds on. To block out the foreign, many tourists must listen to familiar songs and check, constantly, websites from home.
With Guangzhou’s airport so vast, you must often take a shuttle to your plane. Getting on, I immediately looked for Vietnamese faces, but there was none. I also strained to hear Vietnamese, without success. Two weeks earlier, the flight from Saigon to Guangzhou had few Vietnamese. It’s that human or animal instinct to identify your own. Forever, life and death could depend on it.
Guangzhou, 10/29 – 30/25
With more money, and many more people, Chinese are much more visible everywhere. With increasing economic and political might, Chinese tourists and immigrants will be even more ubiquitous. JD Vance’s characterization of them as peasants exposes his hickishness. In Canada and Australia, rich Chinese have made real estate prices in many cities unaffordable for native peasants, workers and even the middle class.
After failing repeatedly to log on to Yahoo! Mail or my SubStack, I realized they were blocked. Everything Yahoo! is inaccessible there. Same with Google, Wikipedia, New York Times and Washington Post, etc. China doesn’t want any American information or disinformation for its citizens.
Rejecting most American products, it’s also prepared to ditch the American consumer. That righteous and pushy slob has been buying on credit for decades, from China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and, literally, every country you can think of.
Landing in Saigon, I will leap immediately onto a mini bus for Vung Tau. Failing to bring Sơn a Nepalese beer, I thought of getting him a Chinese one, but busy writing, I never got round to it. Those remaining yuans I’ll use, hopefully, on a proper trip to China.
Cloudy paths, zap me home! To that place, I sorta belong! Ocean mamas, they’re singing and dancing, all right. It’s enough to steal glimpses of them every so often. Why should they sing to me?
On the Kathmandu to Guangzhou leg, two babies on my row screamed or cried often. Others elsewhere did the same. Now, I only hear the slurping of noodles from the guy two seats away. Since there’s no broth, I’m not sure how he does that. Behind me is a well masked American from Chicago. Risking death or long Covid, he did manage to take it off to eat.
I finish this at 6:58PM in Vung Tau. It’s as if I never left. This is Như’s last day at Ông Bầu Coffee, she just told me.
“Where will you go next?”
“I don’t know.”
I don’t either. At some point, I should return to the US to experience, at least for a couple weeks, its Golden Age. I must catch Honolulu, El Paso or San Francisco before it becomes too heavenly for words. As for Philly, I won’t even recognize it, I’m sure.
Guangzhou, 10/30/25
Shrinking Brains and Dwellings — Oct 31, 2025.
On 5/29/25, a garbage truck stopped a Kings Park, NY middle school to empty its dumpster. There, a school janitor saw an injured, garbage draped man trying to climb from the truck. After it emptied its load, another was discovered, but well dead. Since this happened at the back of the school, no student witnessed the horror. Learnt of it from television news, how many thought this could ever happen to them? Much more likely, they envisioned their future as a president, astronaut, NBA star, Hollywood actress, trophy wife, rapper or, at the very least, YouTube influencer. On that date, the low was only 55, so these unfortunates or human garbage had slept inside the dumpster not for warmth, but to be safe. This was conditional on them getting up before the arrival of the garbage truck.
In Santa Monica, bums, especially female ones, dwell inside locked toilets. Further north, you can rent a tent pitched on someone’s backyard. Storage units are more solid, but illegal. Still, thousands of Americans must be dwelling in them. So loaded, they don’t know what to do with their heaps of cash. Those who freeze outside in the winter must be alcoholics or drug addicts, according to conventional wisdom. Don’t say it’s too funny a word in Trumplandia.
Sleeping quite well in my tiny pod at Guangzhou’s airport, I thought these compact solutions should be scattered everywhere. Herding American peasants into cities, huge parks were built to give these factory slaves imitations of their lost landscapes. Thus, we have Central Park in NYC, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Fairmount Park in Philly and Grant Park in Chicago, all built in the 19th century. Now, all these and more can be filled with sleeping pods, imported from China. Spinning in his grave, Frederick Law Olmsted will appreciate the exercise.
Convicted of any crime, the offender’s sleeping pod can just be locked. With bread sticks tossed in daily, he won’t starve. His shit and piss can be eased out through a hole. Capital punishment will be applied quickly and cheaply by denying him of bread sticks. After the stinking corpse is extracted, his sleeping pod will be sold at a slight discount, after a few sprays of disinfectant.
Just a few hours in China yielded so many solutions. Must be in the air.
In China, porn is banned. In the West, it’s freely available as the last bastion of free speech. Since jerking or stroking nearly nonstop is the best means of social control, it must be made mandatory. TVs inside sleeping pods must show only porn. Wouldn’t this lead to more rapes? Quite the opposite. Men who’ve shot their wad several times a day can only grab, at most. Most Americans are already fine with this, at least in principle. It’s also egalitarian. Why should bottom dwellers be denied some Trumpian perks? “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” MAGA chicks are turned on.
Guangzhou, 10/30/25
The last photo I took in Guangzhou was of a white enough man in a LAS VEGAS hoodie. Next to him was his exhausted wife. Bent over, she held her head. His or her wrinkled, white haired mom looked stunned. On 5/26/25, more than 8,800 flights were delayed in the USA alone. The next day, nearly 7,000.
Flying from Chicago to Frankfurt on 10/28/25, a 28-year-old Indian stabbed two sleeping American teens with a metal fork. He then slapped a woman and a crew member. One teen told investigators he had only exchanged pleasantries with the Indian. This non-immigrant had just finished his studies at Moody Theological Seminary.
Since 42 million Americans will lose food aid tomorrow, proactive cops across the USA have increased patrols around grocery stores, convenience stores and shopping centers. America’s Golden Age has just begun.
Yesterday at Saigon’s airport, I joked with the immigration officer, “Coming back, I’m just waiting to die!”
“You’re not that old, uncle,” she smiled slightly.
“I’m exhausted.”
On the minibus to Vung Tau, we passed a young man with this on his hoodie, “SMILE! IT WILL ONLY GET MUCH WORSE.” His helmet said, “WE WILL ROCK YOU!”
The young lady next to me wore a Covid mask and earbuds. When not dozing off, she stared at her cellphone. Born into universal madness, she’s well lost. After she dropped one earbud, we all helped her to find it. When it was discovered, there was universal jubilation inside that mini bus.
Ông Bầu Coffee’s evening barista just gave me a free glass of hot tea. In a minute, I will head home to eat some yak cheese with Nepali biscuits. This morning, I was too pooped to show up at Coffee Seven before 5AM. Tomorrow, then, I will see Mrs. Seven, Sơn, Liệt, Nọng and Milk Cow.
Vung Tau, 11/1/25
Fish in Teapots — Nov 01, 2025.
At Ông Bầu Coffee, one barista is a rather morose 20-year-old I first talked to only yesterday. It turned out she’s a third year student in logistics. With lots of shipping through Vũng Tàu, she’ll get a job easily, she believes. AI won’t bump her into any dumpster.
Though born after the Boat People crisis, Morose knows about corpses being washed up regularly on Vũng Tàu beaches. She also knows about Vietnamese trying to enter the US illegally during the Biden years. Someone approached her family to propose this. $70,000 per head was all it took, he said, and you’d make that back within two years, working in a nail salon, as if the US wasn’t oversaturated with these Vietnamese businesses. As a clumsy newbie whose English or Ebonics wasn’t good enough to interact with customers, who would hire you?
After eight years, you could return to Vietnam loaded with cash. He didn’t say anything about crossing seven countries before reaching the Promised Land. After entering Panama from Colombia, you would be an illegal for over 3,000 miles while being transported by criminals from various nations.
“What’s stopping them from robbing, raping or killing you?” I said. “People who could afford to fly to South America were rich! They sold everything here, thinking they’d never come back. Now, they’re being deported by Trump!”
Morose has never been outside Vietnam. She didn’t even know you could easily reach Cambodia by bus.
Village explainer, “You can go from Saigon to Bavet in just two hours! Cambodia opens all these casinos for Vietnamese. They want as many to come as possible, so go to Bavet, but without entering the casinos! You’ll just lose all your money! Phnom Penh is much more interesting, but it takes six hours to get there. Go to Bavet first, just to get a taste, then go to Phnom Penh later.”
Here three years, Morose started out making 18K, or 68 cents an hour. Now, she earns 23K. Working 200 hours a month, she takes home $129, though the shifty owner often deducts $27 for unexplained reasons.
Morose never protests. When business is slow, she just stares at her phone, like right now.
Morose lives with her parents just two doors down. At least her school is six miles away. She does visit occasionally a married sister in Saigon and has gone as far north as Nha Trang.
Fancying himself a painter, the owner has set up an easel right at the café. He’s so vapid and timid, you can’t talk to him about anything. It took me less than a minute to find out.
Before me, Như tried to mentor Morose, but it’s useless, she said. This girl is just incurious.
“She never had a chance!” I protested. To invigorate her, I will nudge and shove Morose some more, give her a few kicks in the ass.
Once, I overheard Như telling Morose about a new café that paid better. I’m not sure she applied. Begging for acceptance is always intimidating and dispiriting.
Ông Bầu Coffee has a new regular. A Siamese fighting fish is living, all alone, inside a teapot. Its diameter is four times the length of the fish’s body. There are pebbles at the bottom. Though it’s always lidded, I’ve been reassured there’s enough oxygen for this displaced creature. It could be much worse. Next to this teapot is a glazed ceramic planter with a cartoon cat and “cute” above its head. Taking frequent breaks, Morose would sit next to these exiled beasts.
In the next room, someone is strumming a guitar and singing. Surrounded by kitschy paintings, he and his listeners are soaked in an artistic environment.
Out collecting plastic bottles, that homeless Cambodian will return in the evening. He uses Ông Bầu’s bathroom and sleeps each night just feet from where I’m sitting. Lately, he’s refrained from disturbing that garish altar to the goddess beneath a banyan tree across the street. As long as he doesn’t go berserk, he belongs here at least as much as that fish.
Splotchy and discolored, he’s a piss poor representative of his species. With any residual self-respect, he should be deeply ashamed of himself, but I shouldn’t talk. My dorsal, pectoral, pelvic and anal fins are sad and feeble enough. Still, they’re sufficient to propel me home. After paying for my cappuccini, I’ll swiftly swim outta here.
That yak cheese is nearly gone. That cheerful, repetitive hymn to Ganesh I heard dozens of times daily so recently has faded. Soon enough, I’ll remember nothing.
(L): Vung Tau, 11/1/25 ; (R): Trump’s Golden Lincoln Bathroom
Bloodbaths and Bashes — Nov 02, 2025.
Too much excitement this morning at Ông Bầu. Using her thin jacket, a woman swatted at a bee in mid flight, then stepped on this buzzer after he had dropped to the floor. His squashed body now oozes whatever. His stiff, broken wings are stuck up. No one knows what he could have accomplished. He might have been a great bee poet. For this gratuitous display of unfathomable viciousness, she’ll be reincarnated as a bee, wasp, fly or mosquito, I’m sure. Placid, Morose inspected the fleeting carnage. As she walked by, I had to refrain from expressing my entirely justified indignation. I only thought, “What were the odds of the innocent, intelligent looking bee stinging that smug, still smiling broad in the fuckin’ twat?!” Oblivious, she’s yakking away. She does have a melodious voice.
Before Ông Bầu, I stopped at Mrs. Tím’s stand for a $1.52 bowl of crab noodle soup. As I slurped away, a security guard on a motorbike stopped to ask for a 95 cent bowl. After he left, I said, “You still make a profit with that, no?”
“No, but what was I supposed to do?”
“Does he come by often?”
“Only rarely.”
“A security guard’s salary isn’t too bad.”
“But he also has a wife and children. What was I supposed to do?” Mrs. Tím, then, makes nothing selling to this man. Her name means Purple, by the way. One of her two sons is nearly always in drug rehab. This widow has maybe four front teeth left.
Worst are those who stuff some change into their bra or up their long sleeve, then say Mrs. Tím has short changed them!
“They have so many tricks. When you sell stuff, you see everything.” She said this without rancor, only a touch of amusement.
Before Mrs. Tím’s food stand, I was at Coffee Seven. Today, Sơn told me more about his experiences in Cambodia. I had asked Sơn about soldiers who freaked out. Of course, that happened. Losing their minds, some even shot at their comrades.
On a lighter note, Sơn told me about Vietnamese troops visiting Cambodian whorehouses. They were dim and sordid, and the girls were so poor, their panties were pitifully or laughably threadbare. Worst were Viet soldiers who refused to pay after service. “They’d leave a hand grenade on the floor to chase the girls away.”
made in Thailand jeans and T-shirts
Even Viet officers barely had cash. Some sold used artillery shells, illegally, of course. With this profit, they could buy made in Thailand jeans or T-shirts. Both were highly prized back in Vietnam. Even in 1998, I had some rural guy touch my Levi’s with something like awe. They were called cow pants, quần bò, short for cowboy pants.
Underfed Viet soldiers stole chickens, ducks and pigs from Cambodian peasants. Like American, Australian or South Korean soldiers here, they raped. Unchecked aggression or rage is intrinsic to every war, as is wetting or soiling your pants from ungodly terror. Clean uniforms and impeccable discipline are only meant for parades, to fool civilians, draftees and recruits.
Last night, I finally bought a new phone. With a sim card, it cost me just $125. Don’t even know what brand it is. Last phone I bought before this was in Albania four years ago. I need this gadget to take care of some business.
Last night, I also went shopping at Lotte Mart, Vũng Tàu’s fanciest mall. Viets who can afford it treat it like an amusement park, almost. Better dressed kids run around screaming. With burgers, pizzas and fried chicken available in futuristic settings, they’re in the USA of their imagination. KFC Vietnam has a new dish, Migaxuxi. It’s slices of hotdog in an overly sweet red sauce on too soft spaghetti. On KFC’s wall was a nearly life-sized Colonel Sanders, with that first KFC in Harland, KY in the background. Most Viets think this America still exists.
When the entire White House is destroyed, replicas will appear across Asia, I’m sure. Even if all of the USA becomes like Gaza, its highlights will be preserved in the East. There’s nothing to worry about, man! Thousands of Statues of Liberty will sprout, just not in America.
In each Oriental burger, pizza or fried chicken joint, wholesome white families as wax figures will be installed to give yellow diners the impression they’re practically in Sacramento, Cincinnati or Youngstown. In fancier diners, waitresses with their hair already dyed blonde can wear white masks and speak in a cute, flirty English they’ve learnt from movies like American Pie or Grease.
For a while, Michael Bordenaro has done an excellent job of tracking America’s collapse. Three days ago, he said, “As of September, employers have announced over 1 million job cuts, which is the largest number that we’ve seen since the pandemic in 2020 […] So this job market collapse is getting real.” Walmart, Amazon, Ford, Microsoft, Target, Starbucks and McDonald’s, etc., are all firing thousands of workers this year.
When Bordenaro asked his viewers about how they’re coping with this new grim reality, they’re saying they’re buying less or inferior food, driving less, selling more to pawn shops, delaying or avoiding medical care, saving less or nothing, using less energy, including taking cold showers, not traveling or seeing distant relatives, not going to restaurants or movies and, perhaps, most depressingly, having to move back home after decades of living independently.
One man, “I’m 45 living in my parents’ basement again, not because I’m irresponsible, but because of the economy.” Over 57% of Americans between 18 and 24 are living with their folks. You’d have to go back decades to find a higher percentage. Millions of Americans are also side hustling. One, “I’m doing DoorDash after my full-time job just to keep up. I’m exhausted and still falling behind.”
Another, “I barely leave the house anymore because I can’t afford gas to drive to work and see my family.”
All these testimonies, though, must be fake news disseminated, or rather, jerked off, by far-left agitators.
As Trump cut off food aid to over 40 million Americans, he hosted a Great Gatsby themed Halloween bash at Mar-a-Lago called, “A little party never killed nobody.” So cute, the bad English. Shows his common touch.
Posting photos of his glitzed up shitter on 11/1/25, Trump crowed, “The Refurbished Lincoln Bathroom in the White House—Highly polished, Statuary marble!” Let them eat shit is right.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
“The whisper turns out to be a touch. We are all so bereft of friends and companions, especially those among us who have lots of ‘friends.’”
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Lalitpur, 10/25/25
Rather Not Be in New Youk! — Oct 26, 2025.
Going from Phonsavan to Luang Prabang, I sat next to an Italian lady on the mini bus. Bumping along on narrow roads with many switchbacks was exhausting. “Now, I’ve seen all of the mountains in Laos!” she blurted near the end. I’ve already told you about Coredo, the owner of Dok Mai Lao Trattoria in Pakse. If I stay anywhere enough, I’ll hear Italian on the streets. At Kathmandu, I just met Marco. His town of Cesenatico, population 15,000, I had never heard of. The closest I got was Bologna. Marco, on the hand, had never heard of Certaldo, where I spent two years.
We did joke about Prato. “Is it 100% Chinese now?” I asked.
“Yes, it is!”
“That’s amazing! It’s a historical place. Dante wrote about it. Empoli, too, must be filled with Chinese.”
Since the tourists who come to Cesenatico for its beaches are nearly all Italian, there isn’t even a fish and chip joint for drunken Brits. Not even the dubiously named Sloppy Joe’s serves it.
I’ve heard people complain about American, British, Israeli, Chinese and Indian tourists, but never a bad word about Italians, or Japanese. In Vũng Tàu, the many Russians are quiet, family orientated folks who never cause problems. Power English, owned by an Australian, won’t hire them, however. He’s bought into the Putin as the new Hitler propaganda.
Lalitpur, 10/25/25
Chinese are very visible in Kathmandu. Amrit Street, in particular, is lined with Chinese restaurants. They’re spilling into Laos and Cambodia, too. Around Thamel and Paryatan, Africans are often seen. Nepal Coffee Hub is their favorite spot. In only its fifth season, the Nepal Super League has seven teams. Each has African players. They come from Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are also black players from France and the UK. With Nepal ranked 180 out of 211 nations, how long before a non Nepali-speaking foreigner is naturalized? Everybody else is doing it. Vietnam’s star striker, Nguyễn Xuân Sơn, is a black Brazilian born as Rafaelson Fernandes. You think his mama calls him Sơn or Rafaelson?
“Ma, I’m Sơn now! Stop speaking Portuguese to me!”
As Hitler points out in Mein Kampf, citizenship in modern times is no longer a question of blood, but bureaucracy.
Yesterday on Mahankal in Boudha, I saw an interesting poster, “YOU NEED A CHANGE? GET A NEW HAIRCUT.” Predictably, all four models were white. Who would want to become some dark skinned, malnourished Dalit?
Since the late 14th century, the Pode have been in charge of sweeping Kathmandu streets. Even today, most are Pode. Many, though, have moved up into the world, primarily through education. Though poorly paid, sweepers I’ve seen weren’t underfed. One I photographed yesterday was positively chubby. Her red T-shirt read, “TENDER EMBRACE / Affection / LOVELY.” Since most adult Pode can’t even read Nepalese, she probably just liked its two hearts and a ribbon. They live in Dhalko, which I’ve roamed through often. It is not a slum.
Lalitpur, 10/25/25
One can also remake oneself by wearing high heels and mini skirts. An elagant and gorgeous young lady I saw at Thamel and Paryatan had some writing tattooed boldly across her pale décolletage. Strolling back and forth, she didn’t seem happy. More comfortable was a squatting chick in a red vinyl jacket and leopard print pants in too thin a fabric for that weather. Like me, she was drinking a chai from a streetside vendor.
There were three Nepalese men, clutching each other. The best and most confident looking was in the middle. The other two looked nervous, if not scared. They were out of their element. More loaded and usually beefier, foreigners commanded more attention. Defeated natives could head home to clutch drive themselves.
They are so unlike their American sisters. In Camden, I would run into Amanda. Each time, I was surprised she was still alive. Once, I gave her money for a bus ticket to her aunt. Of course, Amanda used it to buy heroin. Seeing her writhing on the sidewalk another time, I had to give her $20 just to ease her obvious suffering. In a filthy lot behind an abandoned, boarded up house, she injected, but not before taking a piss. She already smelled like shit, I swear. Smacked, she smiled immediately, then wandered away singing. It was cute. “See you later, Amanda!” Her prematurely wrinkled belly bore stab wounds from some youth who was just bored. They do that to Camden whores.
Stories like that don’t make sense to Nepalese, or Vietnamese. In Lalitpur yesterday, there was young man taking a selfie with his phone. He wore a T-shirt with the Manhattan skyline. “NEW YOUK,” it said.
No thanks, I’d rather be here, Vung Tau, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Busan or even Manila, though the last has a shocking number of filthy homeless, like many American cities. Among East Asians, Filipinos are most Americanized.
Soon, I won’t see 4 Square again. If Sumitra is here when I show up around 6:30AM, there’s the same repetitive hymn to Ganesh on the TV. It’s like Ravel’s Bolero without the jizzy climax. The only variations are the slightly different choruses. Cheerfully, it bounces along. Every so often, there’s an eight bar flute interjection. Even decades from now, I will likely hear this in a dream.
It’s already a dream, Kathmandu, and it’s not over yet. Thank you! Now, I will run outside, simply because I’m allowed.
Kathmandu, 10/26/25
Dog Whisperer at Fire Café — Oct 27, 2025.
Yesterday on Amrit, I noticed a coffee shop that seemed old fashioned, but not in that spiffed up retro way meant for snobs. Modest and quaint, it would have fit on any American Main Street. Its presence in Kathmandu was certainly usual. I walked in.
It suspect it’s a converted tavern. On high stools at the bar, three people were staring at phones, though one, a beefy older Oriental, was also chatting with two men at a table. The tiny waitress wore a red shirt, blue pants and Converse canvas sneakers. Her hair was much shorter than any woman’s just outside. The barista had on an “Australia” T-shirt and jeans. Only the cook and dishwasher was dressed like a Nepalese. My black coffee was too strong to be an Americano. Almost an espresso, it was still served in a mug. You’d never see that in Italy. I imagine Nepalese come to Chikusa to be transported, I don’t know, to Ohio or Nebraska?
I’ve proudly become the dog whisperer of Kathmandu! If there’s a dog cemetery here, I want to be in it. Sitting at Café de Fire, I have two dogs at my feet. Sniffing me out, they’ve come in from outside, and I’m five yards from the door. Suddenly, a man approaches my booth to chase them out. Gently kicking them, he whispers, “Pejo! Pejo!” Get the fuck out, then, is my first Nepalese word!
Kathmandu, 10/26/25
In Philly, I drank at bars not just in my neighborhood, the Italian Market, but in Point Breeze, Bella Vista, Kensington, Devil’s Pocket, Port Richmond, Olney and many more. Each bar was a different universe. I got to know a bunch pretty well. In Norristown, I was almost beaten up by three guys, one white and two black. Though I was loud and momentarily obnoxious, I didn’t deserve such a welcome. Plus, three against one?!
Though I had become very comfortable writing at KTM Burger and 4 Square, I’ve also strayed into many other Kathmandu cafés. Yesterday was my first time at Fire. Walking in, I was greeted by a middle-aged drunk who shouted, “Sifu! Sifu!” That’s Cantonese for “master,” mostly of kung fu. Those Norristown assholes were lucky cops showed up to save them from this sifu. I did escape into a store to avoid a trip to the emergency room.
Don’t tell me you don’t know shit about Nepalese indie rock?! Swar rules! No hymns to Ganesh here. On the screen is a bearded guy, a laborer, courting a sweet country girl. Sitting side by side in idyllic settings, they smile shyly at each other. One day, she disappears, leaving only a note behind. Running onto a dirt road, he finds her riding away in a tuk tuk. Though I can’t understand a damn word, I can see that she’s dressed like a bride, with a golden septum piercing dangling. Draped in white and gold, she’s radiant. Collapsing, bearded motherfucker has tears streaming down his dark face. It’s a timeless plot. In Vietnam, too, there are all these poems, songs or just stories about losing your girl through marriage arranged by her parents. They don’t want your sorry, three-bucks-a-day ass, man!
Though untouchables were traditionally tasked with singing and dancing, all the singers and musicians on Fire’s screen are just too cool looking, with perfect outfits and hair. All these country chicks are also too clean. There is realism in depictions of wet markets and dark, impoverished dwellings. There’s also violence, including, just now, an implied rape. There can never be too much realism.
One of the dogs has returned. Stray ones are fed here. What they lack is love. Only in cheesy songs do humans admit to craving the same. The very word is uncool. We all know who are the coolest people on earth. Even cool, though, has become uncool. There, assholism is now coolest.
Kathmandu, 10/26/25
On the screen, there’s another couple gently courting. Sitting on a pristine hill to stare at mythical, perfectly shot mountains without trekkers and their tons of garbage, they hold hands. Now, she’s on a bus, looking devastated. Moving from village to city is also a universal theme. With opportunities come separations, often from yourself even. She cries. Everybody cries on Nepalese music videos, at least in Indie ones, with their gentle, melancholic melodies.
Demanding touch, these dogs often nudge their head, insistently even, against your leg or hand. As I’ve said, they don’t look at your face. Though demonic enough to these dogs, we have hands.
On the way here, I passed Lulu Lunch Bar. On its lit sign was a white chick holding a goblet of red wine. On her blonde hair was a straw boater hat. She tilted her head just right. Further on was Palace Dance Bar, with another white babe, this one with a Union Jack bikini top over her boobies. With Nepal landlocked, most folks here can only dream of the ocean. Even without near naked white chicks, it must be paradise.
Leaving my dog friend, I will go have a hot chai in the semi dark. For 21 cents, I will buy it from a colorfully wrapped crone. What a quaint, old fashioned word, just like grocery in America. Once, it evoked smiles instead of pain.
Kathmandu, 10/27/25
Change to Die For — Oct 27, 2025.
Life is a battle royale with eight billion hysterical bipeds punching, kicking, clawing, nunchucking, mugging, seducing, hair pulling, fucking, mostly badly, gladhanding and grifting each other. One by one, they die. Some can prolong their stay in this mayhem by ducking or squatting below the fray. Hoisted way above from cradle to grave, the luckiest can shit on everyone at the bottom. In a smugly blighted country, millions think that’s hilarious as they wipe royal diarrhea from their upturned faces.
No matter how many times I’m reincarnated, my Mariners will never make it to the World Series, my Sonics will never reappear and I will never be printed again, not even on toilet paper. Left alone, I will become so pure and focused, dog wisdom will seep from each pore. I won’t even have to bark.
By any measurement, most of us are losers or, to put it more politely, unchosen. I dedicated my first book, Fake House, to the unchosen. Just more proof I was born a Nazi or at least a white nationalist.
In Kathmandu, there are large signs outside highschools with recent graduates. Each is listed in order, with their grade point average displayed. The 47 boys and girls at Amrit Boarding School begins with Rajanish Khanal, with his awesome 3.96, then ends, most miserably, with Samikshya Baniya, with her toilet bowl dwelling 2.89. The shittiest, though, aren’t even on here. They simply failed.
Samikshya is the prettiest. Perhaps she couldn’t study because she was so attractive? I know the feeling. Dogs won’t leave me alone.
Again at 4 Square, I just ran outside to catch a man pushing his old, beat up bicycle loaded with plastic basins, soap dishes, utensil holders, dustpans and soccer balls. Attached to his handlebar was a blaring speaker. Just as in Vietnam, few hawkers hawk any more. Lullabies, too, are mostly dead. Most babies would rather listen to “Johny, Johny, Yes Papa” or “Baby Shark.” Though composed in India and South Korea, they are in English. Everything local is diminished. The plasticware peddler had a professorial demeanor. Nearly everything could have been.
Just now, I joked with Vimal about going into one of those no name eateries to ask for an apple pie or enchilada! Laughing, Vimal explained that those green curtains are traditional. Now, they can come in more colors. Since eating out was considered ostentatious, they hid those inside.
Kathmandu, 10/27/25
During last month’s protest, Lalipur’s Ullens School, walkable from here, was burnt. This is not entirely shocking when you realize its monthly fee for high school kids, $300, is roughly thrice a common laborer’s wage. As for lunch, “The food committee finalizes school menus, and meals are prepared in our modern kitchen by trained staff under the direction of a professional chef.” No dark rooms behind green curtains there.
Yesterday, Vimal made me an excellent lunch of buffalo stew, curried potatoes and basmati rice. Slices of cucumber and carrot added much needed coolness. I didn’t even pay $3. Just now, I asked Vimal to make me whatever. As a traveling foreigner, I’m already privileged, I fully understand. When I told Mrs. Seven I was flying to Nepal, a country she had never heard of, she asked if I would buy my ticket at the airport?
You do what you must with what you have.
My flight back to Saigon has been delayed by more than nine hours, with that extra time in Guangzhou. Since it will be night, who knows if it’s worth it to head into town?
Just flying is a privilege, now winding down.
Online, there are all these videos of enraged passengers, mostly Americans. Each aspect of their society is breaking down. After Trump’s $300 million ballroom is completed, they’ll be free to glimpse it, all lit up, from a quarter mile away, at least. Unlike Nepalese, they will only burn their neighborhoods down.
It’s all good, actually. Washington Post on 10/25/25, “The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. Many see the rubble as a metaphor for President Donald Trump’s reckless disregard of norms and the rule of law, a reflection of his willingness to bulldoze history and a temple to a second Gilded Age, paid for by corporate donors. Others see what they love about Trump: A lifelong builder boldly pursuing a grand vision, a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo and a developer slashing through red tape that would stymie any normal politician.”
The White House, too, must change, “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness.” As a Third Worlder happily stuck in the Third World, who am I to argue, so evolve away! Change is good. You’re the change you’ve been dying for.
10/25/25 (L): Lalitpur ; (R): Kathmandu
New Babel — Oct 28, 2025.
Those five or six people who bought my Blood of Soap may, or may not, remember its first story, “Prisoner with a Dictionary.” In it, a fool tries to teach himself a new language by studying a dictionary, the only book he has. Many pages are missing, however, for he has to wipe himself, after all. Keeping his ass somewhat clean is much more important and urgent than feeding his brain, and he’s not even doing that, unless you consider any mental exertion, no matter how idiotic or wrong headed, useful.
Since I can’t possibly be more stupid than one of my characters, today I confidently picked up Dor Bahadur Bista’s Fatalism and Development: Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization. Already, I’m halfway through, as proven by a most convincing photograph. This wasn’t easy, I tell you, since I had to guess at every word. I wasn’t even sure those squiggly lines were words.
My immediate mastery of Nepalese made me think of a prisoner, described, I’m pretty sure, by Primo Levi. Since I read If This Is Man at least three decades ago, I can’t recall all the details. Levi’s fool read books in languages he didn’t know. Trapped in a concentration camp, this brainy idiot was surrounded by those whose languages he couldn’t quite understand, or at all. To overcome his despair, he studied these relics, symbols or icons of civilization. Maybe there’s no such fool in This Is Man.
Those Jews from across Europe were forced to build a carbide tower whose top were “rarely visible in the fog.” Levi, “Its bricks were called Ziegel, briques, tegula, cegli, kamenny, mattom, teglak, and they were cemented by hate; hate and discord, like the Tower of Babel, and it is this that we call it: Babelturm, Bobelturm; and in it we hate the insane dream of grandeur of our masters, their contempt for God and men, for us men.”
Towers of Babel are attempts at globalism, no? The United Nations and World Economic Forum are Towers of Babel, and so is English. Marxism, too, obviously.
All the gods must be enraged at Uncle Sam, Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates or whoever else is trying to be god. Notice how white they are! That’s why humanity is blessedly divided into Vietnamese, Chinese, Nepalese and South Africans, etc, with each group fragmented much further.
Starting this article at KTM Burger, I sat within earshot of a Brit and an Italian. Speaking English, they were talking quite comfortably about the political situation in each other’s country. How many Americans can name Mexico’s president or Canada’s prime minister? Even before the European Union, it’s no big deal for any Italian to have visited adjacent France, Switzerland and Austria, or Spain, too, with its language similar enough, he could figure out shop signs and menus. Despite this relative cosmopolitanism, he was well aware of how distinctive Italians were. They have fought against all their neighbors many times, and each other, too. Florence, Pisa and Siena used to war among themselves, and they’re all in Tuscany.
The Italian at KTM Burger was a retired doctor. In his caravan, British for “trailer,” he spent months in North Africa. He gushed over the sweetness of Moroccans. After Nepal, he will head to Sikkim. Though belonging to India, it’s ethnically distinctive. With periodic unrest, foreigners need a permit to enter. Assam, too, is Oriental. Assamese I met in Bengaluru and Chennai were delighted to see me. Beaming, each blurted, “We look the same!”
To a Pennsylvania crowd in 2024, Trump said of Biden, “Did you ever hear Shakespeare? He was ‘hail and hearty and well met,’ but he wasn’t a smart person.” The Donald didn’t just mess up “hail-fellow-well-met,” it sounds like he’s declaring Shakespeare stupid.
This year in London, Trump intoned, “A fifth of all of humanity speaks, writes, thinks and prays in the language born on these isles and perfected in the pages of Shakespeare and Dickens, Tolkien and Lewis, Orwell and Kipling—incredible people, unbelievable people like we have rarely seen before and probably won’t see again.” A fifth is 1.6 billion. Only 373 million on earth are native English speakers. Those who speak or write a passable English, like the Italians, Nepalese or Brazilian I’ve met in Kathmandu, don’t think or pray in it, Donald. They do so in their mother’s tongue. What do you expect, though, from a man who mentions Tolkien in the same sentence with Shakespeare and Orwell? It’s a safe bet he’s read none of them. Trump’s stupidity and crassness reflect at least his supporters’.
Halfway through this article, I paused to say goodbye to Vimal. He’s leaving for India this morning, so won’t be at 4 Square when I show up in about an hour. As a Teli Gangauta, Vimal was in the middle among castes. In the US, he’s dark enough to pass as a black American.
In Tennessee 30 years ago, I found myself in a nearly all-white county. An old lady explained, “We do have a doctor. He’s not really black, he’s something!” The guy was Indian. I have an uncle who worked as a doctor in a rural, all-white Texas town in the late 70’s. In a US that was much kinder and sweeter, they treated him fine. Leave it to Beaver, Laverne and Shirley and Mork and Mindy were on TV. From planet Ork, Mork had to be an illegal alien. He’s played by Robin Williams, who committed suicide at age 63 in 2014. Those days are over.
As Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam, Williams goofed most memorably, “What is a protective dike? Is that a large woman standing by the river saying, ‘Don’t go near there!’ […] Don’t go down to the river! Stay aware from there!” Those days are certainly over.
Kathmandu (L): 10/27/25 ; (R): 10/25/25
So full of shit and themselves, stupid people are painfully unfunny.
Tossed into a Communist concentration camp, Hà Thúc Sinh was beaten up by an interrogator who insisted he was a spy. The proof was all the books this ARVN had published before the Fall of Saigon.
“If you’re not CIA, you must be CIB!”
The thug didn’t mean it as a joke. Recounting it years later, only Hà Thúc Sinh and his readers laughed.
Levi, “The confusion of languages is a fundamental component of the manner of living here: one is surrounded by a perpetual Babel, in which everyone shouts orders and threats in languages never heard before, and woe betide whoever fails to grasp the meaning. No one has time here, no one has patience, no one listens to you; we latest arrivals instinctively collect in the corners, against the walls, afraid of being beaten.”
This world has always been a perpetual Babel. To avoid being beaten or killed, it’s best you understand all shouts, threats, orders or hints. As just guests passing through, travelers are much indulged, especially if they speak good English. It’s an empowering, nearly magical, language. Tomorrow morning, it may be Mandarin. Already, it has 990 million native speakers. Hindi and Spanish, too, have more native babblers than English.
As for listening to your own language, spoken by those who look exactly like you, few, now, have the patience. More are becoming atomized and deranged. Grubbing and scrounging beneath burning towers, we’ll enter a New Babel.
Now, I’ll go back to Fatalism and Development. Can’t say I agree with all of Bista’s conclusions.
Kathmandu, 10/28/25
Cursed Red Ogres With Kissing Toes — Oct 29, 2025.
This time tomorrow, I’ll be flying over China. I haven’t made up my mind whether to explore Guangzhou a bit. By the time I’m sprung from the airport, it’d be at least 8PM, so 9 when I get downtown, assuming everything goes swimmingly. I’m already exhausted, and stumbling.
Several more times, I nearly fell down. My sandals are too loose, with its soles too smooth. They provide almost no traction. Going barefoot nearly always in Vung Tau, I didn’t notice. I’m no longer adapted to footwear, simple as that. Over two weeks in Nepal, I’ve only seen two similar savages. One a girl of about 2, the other a whore with the arm of some drunken Korean around her neck.
It’s cold and drizzly today. Walking to 4 Square at 4PM, I recited out loud lines from “The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock.” Reading it at 18, I thought this poem ridiculous. Its self-pity made me laugh.
Careful to not fall into the gutter or get whacked by a swerving Royal Enfield motorbike, I moaned most earnestly,
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I’ve heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think they’re singing to me.”
This morning I spaced out over two hot chais at the Shree Gha Vihar, my favorite spot in Kathmandu. The bigger Boudha Stupa has many more shops, restaurants and tourists. Shree Gha Vihar is quiet, though magnificent enough with its Tibetan temple and Tibetan monastery. There’s always a blue tub of water set out for the swarming pigeons. A four story high school and a Mongolian restaurant face this square.
Here, people string up five or six hot peppers over a lemon to ward off evil spirits. As I pondered one such display, an old beggar came up, so I gave him some money, not much. Since his English was rather good, we chattered. Deciding he’d make a great guide for the next hour or so, I invited him to breakfast. Mutual exploitation is fair trade.
Kathmandu, 10/28/25
Fading out, I had to stop, so it’s 2:49AM on the morning of my (final) departure. Walking to Fire, I took my sandals off, to let my semian toes breathe and, more importantly, grip the gravel. Conquering Vietnam in 204BC, the Chinese named it the Jiaozhi Commandery. Zheng Xuan (127-200AD) explains jiaozhi [交趾] as having your toes turned towards each other. They’re nearly kissing. It’s like playing footsie with yourself, but involuntarily. Soon as you sit down, your toes go at it. This exegesis is mine, of course, not the honorable Zheng Xuan’s. Even today, Vietnamese have no problems believing their ancestors had feet funkier than monkey’s. The Chinese also called us 赤鬼. 赤 is just red, but 鬼 is either ghost, devil or ogre. As an adjective, it means cursed. Vietnamese, then, were cursed red ogres with kissing toes. We still are. If you have a problem with that, I’ll go Philly on you, motherfucker! Compared to us, New Yorkers are acrylic painting faggots who must stare at cardamom buns all day long. They can’t even afford them. Tastykake rules!
Walking in, I thought I heard Rod Stewart, but it’s just some Nepalese guy with a prominent mole on his face. Before I lose all threads to this narrative, my life and the state of the world, let’s return to that beggar.
Since we were already outside one of those nameless eateries with just a curtain, I suggested we enter. Inside, there were three chubby women sitting at a table facing the entrance, preparing food. Two other adults were busy in the background. It’s a tiny space. You’d expect them to be startled at seeing me, not the other guy, but they looked at him with shock or annoyance. After some words, we walked out. No one smiled. Something was wrong.
Three minutes later, we reached a similar eatery. Though people were already chowing away, we got a similar reception, as caused by my instant buddy. Leading us out, this stern looking dude wanted to steer us to another eatery, perhaps one that served untouchables? Red ogres with kissing toes would also be welcome. Philly fuckheads, too. Nothing could go wrong.
Ignoring our tout, I said, “Let’s go this way instead. I know of places.” Didn’t I say I felt at home here? Everybody in Kathmandu already knows me, man, and I’m going through libraries in Nepalese. I have entire books memorized. Soon enough, I’ll write some. Soon, we reached this green curtained dump, a place so low-class, no one had ever been refused, I was convinced. Still, our bhado or bhikhari wouldn’t walk in. You’ve got to be kidding me. Were we destined to fine dine inside a bus station toilet?
Most reluctantly, we entered Temal Khaja Ghar. Though dumpy enough, it had a name, plus 17 photos of dishes and drinks on its sign. Beneath each was a name in English. Again, the owner and cook glared at Bhado, let’s just call him that. Still, he allowed us to sit down. Seething in his dark, tiny kitchen, visible through a window, he cooked our thukpa. Again, Pico Iyer wouldn’t touch such shit, nor would V.S. Naipaul. In Bengaluru, I sat next to a westernized Brahman at lunch. Though I asked many questions about her life, she showed zero interest in me. My teeth alone indicated I was low class. It didn’t matter we were featured writers at the same literary festival. I was just lucky this tense, stiffly buggered chick didn’t espy my kissing toes.
With amusement, I told Saroj at 4 Square about that morning’s incidents. When I showed him a photo of Bhado, Saroj immediately blurted, “He’s Indian!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, one hundred percent.”
“So they hated him because he was an Indian beggar?”
“Of course.”
A barista no older than 25 chimed in, “We have many Indian beggars here.”
Kathmandu, 10/28/25
From India, Nepal receives cheap goods and produce which it can’t compete against. During the just completed Tihar festival, all those marigolds had to be imported from India, even though Nepal has better weather for growing such flowers.
Going to Saroj’s shop to buy snacks for the regulars at Coffee Seven in Vũng Tàu, I noticed just about everything packaged was made in India. Yak cheese, a Himalayan delicacy, was locally made. It’s a bit like gouda.
Naipaul on cheese, “It was a delicacy in India. Imports were restricted, and the Indians had not yet learned how to make cheese, just as they had not yet learned how to bleach newsprint.” Uppity enough? It’s from his An Area of Darkness, published in 1964.
In Alexandria, Naipaul was so annoyed by its Oriental chaos, he retreated to his Greek freighter two days early. He preferred his cabin to the baffling and invigorating life outside.
The further East you go, the more misshapen the humanity, according to Naipaul, “The physique of Europe had melted away first into that of Africa and then, through Semitic Arabia, into Aryan Asia. Men had been diminished and deformed; they begged and whined.”
Belonging enough, I will now walk outside in happiness and gratitude. Like you all, I’m nearly out of here.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
“Suddenly, there were more cars, fewer shops, little foot traffic and no history. The car, television and, now, cellphone make being nowhere not just possible, but desirable.”
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Kathmandu, 10/22/25
Could Have Been, Can Be and Will Be Much Worse — Oct 22, 2025.
Should have rung one of those bells five or six times for divine protection! At least it happened near the end. Today, I walked many miles without having the faintest idea where I was going. Done this countless times in too many cities. You must trek through the most boring or, hell, even deadliest parts to understand any place. If all you see of Philly are Center City, Old City, Society Hill, University City and the Italian Market, you have no idea what locals must go through.
Having experienced spectacular temples, awe inspiring stupas, exhilarating street markets, quaint courtyards and tiny, picturesque shops, today I got a numbing taste of Kathmandu’s newer quarters. Suddenly, there were more cars, fewer shops, little foot traffic and no history. If not for those colorful mandalas on sidewalks and Nepalese scripts on some signs, I was hardly in Nepal. Wandering around such a neighborhood in Busan years ago, I nearly thought I was in California! The car, television and, now, cellphone make being nowhere not just possible, but desirable.
On one street, there were all these job placement agencies for Japan. One large sign had a three-tiered pagoda and a sweetly smiling babe in a kimono. Similar teases exist in Vietnam. Sent to Japan, you might never see such a chick. Still, a monthly salary of 250,000 rupees ($1,775) is inducement enough. In Kathmandu, a college graduate makes just $213 a month. For a general laborer, it’s $103. Renting a basic room in town is already $50. With wages so low, it’s even more incredible there are so many smiles, and so few crimes.
Employed at 4 Square, one 17-year-old must walk three hours daily, six days a week. Sometimes, he gets a ride on a motorbike. He can’t even afford a bicycle.
With English classes expensive, few can learn. Those who do try to work abroad.
I didn’t even know I was just north of Thamel. Seeing two goats outside a butcher’s shop was encouraging, though. Just above them through an open window were mostly defleshed skulls of their kind, plus a young female of my kind, smiling. Until it’s our turn to be decapitated, everything is hilarious, or at least interesting. Soon after, I saw my first temple in maybe an hour.
Kathmandu, 10/22/25
As hope returned, I suddenly pitched forward. On the ground, I looked back to see one of my cheap sandals flung many yards behind me.
“Sir, are you OK?”
“I’m fine! It could have been worse.”
“You scraped your knee!”
“I’m OK. Hey, you sound American!”
“I am.”
“Where are you from?”
“Utah.”
“I used to live in Philadelphia.”
“I actually live here! I’ve been here for 13 years.” She’s a white woman around 55-years-old.
“How do you like it?”
“I love it!”
“Do you have family here?”
“I’m my entire family!” She spread her arms out, palms up.
“Now, I know why I fell down.” I was getting mystical. “I fell down so I could meet you, an American, with your interesting story!”
“You’re such a nice man. You fell down because you were trying to get out of my way.”
I’m not sure I did that. I do try to walk on the traffic side when seeing a woman. Here as in Vietnam, people often stray onto streets. Today, I stepped into a gutter. Out of politeness, I gave her a wide berth, perhaps. It could have been much worse. There was some dark blood on my left big toe, but no real pain. In ruined Beirut, I stepped into a broken grate. My leg could have been sliced open.
Sitting in 4 Square at 2:15PM, I’ve been hearing for half an hour loud banging on drums and cymbals from youths on passing trucks, or just marching by. It’s the fourth day of Tihar. Tomorrow, maybe they’ll shoot rockets into hotel room windows. I must be ready for anything.
With no clear boundaries between spectators and participants, this is nearly a carnival. Before it got cleaned up, with its finale moved indoors, Philly’s Mummer Parade was also carnivalesque. Rulers prefer parades. You’re not supposed to do anything but watch. One nation even has “free speech zones” where the ignored are caged.
The best jobs here are government sinecures, as dispensed by a higher-up relative. Running your own business is also an attractive option, but there are so many of all kinds already. On this limited planet, mouths are still multiplying, so wars, riots, lootings and famines are baked in. Even among mild and dignified Nepalese, there’s trouble ahead. For now, they will still dress up, smile brightly and celebrate.
Today, Vimal has on a Celtics jersey, number 5. That’s Kevin Garnett. Looking for cheap apartments in Boston, Vimal was steered to Roxbury, but one quick look told him it was deadly, “I’d rather sleep at the train station.” As a teen, Malcolm X lived in Roxbury. Did you know that “Hold it, brother!” were Malcolm X’s last words?
Now, two girls no older than twelve are chanting, with one holding a bamboo tray with a burning incense stick jutting from a banana, marigold petals, a colorful piece of paper with magical writing and a sort of donut, but thinner and larger. They’re trick or treating, basically. Having given money to so many kids already, the barista ignores them, so they move on, perfectly cheerful.
Still fat enough despite everything, I, too, will move on.
Sacred Stones, Dogs, Mud and Even Men — Oct 23, 2025.
All that racket yesterday was also to celebrate the Newari New Year, Mha Puja (self worship) and Gai Puja (cow worship). Ratopati informs us, “The cow is revered as mata or mother by Hindus […] Modern science has also proved that indigenous breeds of cows absorb the energy from the sun and the moon in their hump which is transmitted through milk to humans.”
Only indigenous breeds, mind you. Hump on that for a while. Three days ago was Kukur Tihar, or Festival of Dogs. Surely, I qualify. Must come back next year to be honored, with a bindi, at least. To expect a marigold garland is already vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Shit, man, I’m getting my religions confused.
Petting that old black dog at KTM Burger, I couldn’t help but think of Nọng and Milk Cow back in Vũng Tàu. They’re washed with human shampoo by Mrs. Seven at least twice a week, then blasted with a hair dryer. I’ve warned her about parching their skin, but do you think anyone listens to anyone? We’d rather die stubbornly stupid and proud.
Speaking Vietnamese to KTM Burger’s dog, I murmured, “So pitiful! You’ve never been washed!” On his forehead, there was a red trace from the bindi applied days ago, during the Festival of Dogs, of course. Once a year, this filthy beast is dabbed with kumkum powder. That’s what it’s called, I swear.
Last week was Jazzmandu. My hipster days over, I wouldn’t have checked it out anyway. Once, I sat in bars to listen to Wynton Marsalis and Mickey Roker. I also caught Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Charlie Rouse, Johnny Hodges, Benny Goodman and, most memorably, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Lester Bowie was evil! Last time I gushed over jazz, a moron jumped in to protest, “What about great white music?”
White worship of Jewjerked Trump is too appropriate for a society too stupid, degenerate and ignorant to honor its own heritage or recognize what’s best about itself. They’re worshipping a rapist of white children as purveyed by a Jew! Just as bad, they’re fine with his destruction of the Heartland. Anti-Trumpers can’t wait to vote in another Jewjerked puppet.
Not even Germany is so hopeless. It still has enough cultural relics to remind Germans of who they are, and of their greatness. Nepal, too.
Americans are mostly indifferent. Twice, they voted in a culture wrecker.
Erecting his vanity project, Trump Tower, this philistine moron ordered the razing of the Bonwit Teller Building, an Art Deco masterpiece. At least René Chambellan’s bas reliefs and Otto J. Teegan’s entrance grille could be saved, it was hoped. After promising them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trump simply destroyed them.
Teegan, “It’s odd that a person like Trump, who is spending $80 million or $100 million on this building, should squirm that it might cost as much as $32,000 to take down those panels.” It’s not odd at all. Destruction is how this eternally insecure fool flexes his power. Trumpers seethe at uppity, coastal liberal words like Art Deco, masterpieces or just “art,” so yes, tear it all down.
But what about great white music? Whiggers like Forgiato Blow and Stoney Dudebro are certainly carrying the torch. Dangling his noose, literally, is JJ Lawhorn. Sucking hardest, though, must be Kid Rock. As a yellow outsider, I can’t keep up with so much greatness. You tell me.
Spending two years in Certaldo, particularly its medieval section, I felt, viscerally, each day, the importance of cultural depths, and I’m feeling the same in Kathmandu, except for yesterday, when I strayed into its more modern, thus sterile, neighborhoods. The worst architectural school ever was the International Style, with offshoots like Brutalism or Soviet Modernism just as nasty. Art that isn’t rooted in the local displaces the soul. This is irrelevant if you don’t think art matters at all.
In 2018, the Met returned to Nepal a 10th century standing Buddha and a 12th century stele. In 1996, Britain repatriated 19 artifacts. Thousands of masterpieces were also looted by whites from India, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Cambodia, etc. At least they never bombed Nepal. In Palestine, Jews have long used white bombs to destroy even churches, including some of the oldest ever built. MAGA Christians don’t give a fuck. They have freakish pastors like Paula White-Cain to fulfill their spiritual needs.
Those with means can also fly to the Jewjizzed Holy Land. Kevin Barrett, “In a bold move to resuscitate its genocide-battered tourism industry, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism announced a new initiative this week: ‘Get Baptized In Jewish Spit.’ The project aims at bringing American Christians to Israel so they can be rapturously soaked in the only fluid that’s holier than holy water: pure, fresh, kosher, locally-sourced 100% organic Jewish saliva.” That Satanic outrage will end soon.
Here a week, I haven’t even tried to reach Lalitpur, not five miles away. Hot chai, dirty dogs, radiant smiles and calming squares are more than enough. That’s because I’m bathed in collective memories, echoes and ghosts. Here ancient stones are so alive, they’re smeared with food.
Kathmandu, 10/23/25
Worried Looking Girl with Bills and Green Glow Worm — Oct 23, 2025.
On the fifth day of Tihar, you’re supposed to go home and have lunch with your family, so nearly all stores and restaurants were closed. Though those Chinese joints on Amrit and Jyatha were open, I just didn’t feel like wok fried dishes, yellow noodles or braised chicken skeleton. After a nap, I decided Bueno Burrito would be a great choice. Walking there, I thought about how quintessentially American is Tex-Mex, as is the Mission burrito, born in San Francisco. Jazz, too, is the best of the USA, and no narrowly defined black or white music.
At 4:30PM, Bueno was still closed, so I bought a short story collection by Anjan Adiga, a Nepalese-American writer. I want to write an American writer born in Nepal, but there’s no bio in Leech. Sitting on steps outside shuttered stores, I read. After just a few pages, I could tell Adiga is excellent.
Without his heritage, plus emotional and intellectual investment over many years, I’m just groping, obviously, but travel writing is like a drunken incel being shoved into a whorehouse. As long as he doesn’t run out immediately in terror, we have stories.
With almost nothing open, I decided to try Zaika Biryani Center on Gangalal. Entering a tiny, skanky room on the second floor, I shared a table with two guys. One was the only other foreigner. Not only that, he spoke a fluent American English. We chattered.
Fifty-nine-years old, Marcos is a Brazilian who’s been just about everywhere. This is his third time in Nepal. He’s also spent four months in Vietnam over two visits. We talked about Đà Lạt, Nha Trang and Vũng Tàu. His first time here was in 2005. Nepal was much poorer then, Marcos told me.
“That’s good to hear, so the country has improved.”
“All of Asia has gotten richer,” he chuckled.
As for the USA, where Marcos spent many years, we agree Trump is collapsing its economy on purpose. One motive, obviously, is for his oligarch buddies to buy up all the farm land from MAGA peasants. Those who haven’t committed suicide, that is. Survivors can keep their red hats. Trump and his pals are also raking it in through market manipulations. Then there’s his bitcoin racket. It’s too funny, really.
We laughed over Trump’s 40 billion dollar gift to Argentina, and over China buying soybeans from Brazil instead of the USA. We discussed the growing power of BRICS. Marcos knows what’s up.
Kathmandu, 10/23/25
My chicken biryani was only so-so, but at only $1.78, I can’t complain. It came with one boiled egg, and there was a pitcher at the table. Without cups, you’re supposed to just pour the cold water into your mouth, with the spout not even an inch from that unclean aperture. Though not quite correct, it sounds better than hole or orifice, God forbid.
Though Marcos had vowed just one week ago to never drink alcohol again, I said he must try the excellent Gorkha Beer. Perversely, he admitted to being fond of bia hơi. Brewed overnight by whoever felt like, it became popular in northern Vietnam during the worst years of Communism. Though without kick or character, it’s still being served.
Wandering around, I stumbled onto a Czech restaurant, and a Chinese owned hotel called Vienna!
In an Adiga story, “High Heels,” a young woman has reinvented herself by finishing high school against her mom’s wish, moving from her village to Kathmandu, getting a job at a bank, dabbing herself with Lakme Elegant perfume and wearing red high heels. Most radically, she has become a Christian. Nine pages in, her mentor, Father Matthew, is already betraying impure motives. She, though, has the hots for Binod, a handsome and confident coworker. On their first date, he admits to finding Christian women “bold.”
With six more days here, I have plenty of time to finish this story, or the whole book even, but when traveling, one should spend as much time as possible reading streets, landscapes, bodies and faces.
Just typing this, I’m not doing that, but that’s the paradox of trying to capture reality. Writing, you’re no longer living. Converting all this richness into words, I’m reducing, if not caricaturing, everything. Each second is modified, enriched, complicated or contradicted by the next.
Today, I photographed a small girl in a vermilion top with a neon green glow worm. Holding some bills, she looked worried. Behind her was a man and a boy, each with a disposable surgical mask, of the type made ubiquitous during the Covid hysteria. Why weren’t they caned for not keeping a social distance? Deprived of oxygen, their modest IQs approached zero. Their muffled conversation sputtered one syllable at a time, punctuated by pauses minutes long. Since a photograph is already a translation, I’m translating a translation.
Don’t curse me, though, for shrinking so much into so little, for a postage sized Kathmandu is still better than nothing.
Kathmandu, 10/24/25
No Plunging, Scoop, Halter or Sweetheart Necklines — Oct 24, 2025.
It didn’t take long, did it? Halfway through their first lunch date, Binod said to Sarita, “I have a lot of respect for you, for how far you’ve come in life.”
On the way back, they had to duck into an old temple to escape a heavy rain. Suddenly, this young Christian woman was trapped in a dark, “dismal place,” with even “the stench of uncollected garbage” wafting from an adjacent alley. The only other presence was a statue of Kali, that frightful blue faced goddess with her four arms, red tongue, sword and garland of decapitated heads. Still, Sarita felt safe.
Adiga describes her delusions:
In him there was a hidden capacity to care, she knew it. She wished she could take him to church. They would kneel and pray together. She was now completely sure that the church was the guiding force he needed to turn his life around.
Besides being a spoiled only son, Binod was a lost soul, a sinner. She was destined to save him. He interrupted her noble musing by putting his hands on her shoulders. Sarita’s wet cleavage made her irresistible. This detail indicated, further, her Western orientation. We already knew by her red high heels and tube of Fair and Lovely. Always in her purse, it made her whiter, though never white enough.
Before Sarita knew it, they were kissing, then his hand somehow slipped beneath her bra to squeeze her naked breast. Ignoring her protest, he kept going, but at least they didn’t copulate. In shock, Sarita asked to be dropped off before reaching the bank.
Clearly annoyed at being thwarted, Binod sneered, “Your mole is disgusting.” Patiently seducing her many days before, Binod said it looked like “a tiny juicy grape.” Even her mom thought it resembled a tumor. Sarita fancied it nearly a nipple. This mark of shame became her naked turn on, she desperately hoped. Binod spat at that notion. Born elsewhere, Sarita could just remove it.
Kathmandu, 10/24/25
I’ll read the rest later. Looking up, I see three young men. One wears a baseball cap with “MARQUETTE.” I’m sure he doesn’t know what it means. One is listening to his phone. With porn banned, there’s not much to look at. The last, in a hoodie and jean jacket, is staring at revelers just outside KTM Burger.
At another table is a black man focused on his magical screen. Perhaps 30, he’s alone. Besides TikTok recorded laughter, I can also hear extended dialogues in English. Unlike others, he didn’t go to the counter upon entering, but only ordered a can of Carlsberg and a chicken kathi roll when approached, finally, by an employee after about 20 minutes.
Elsewhere, more young men stare at phones. I’m sure all of them wouldn’t mind a bold, westernized woman, even without otherworldly cleavage throbbing or bobbing. It’s cool enough for a jacket or hoodie. In my short sleeved áo bà ba, I must ignore the weather.
One tallish man with long hair has a girlfriend. He’s wearing a fluffy white and gray fleece hoodie over a shockingly red long shirt, however. Even Sarita wouldn’t try to save this guy, much less a true Western woman. Of course, it’s presumptuous to think he’d even want one, just to see, taste and smell what it’s like, you know. I must disagree with Alberta Hunter. You can certainly tell the difference after dark.
Displaced, you can be so wrong even when you’re dressed perfectly. A female, though, is always welcome, if only for a hit and run. If willing to spend, even the most repulsive can get off. A five minute stroll down Pattaya’s Soi 6 will amply prove this. It’s bad enough in Vũng Tàu.
Quality of whores varies so much, though, with the richer, more prestigious countries offering the worst. Worse than selling one’s body for half an hour or an hour to endless creeps is to be chained to one. Melania often looks disgusted. Ivana wrote about being raped. Once permanent residency is gained, millions book.
In “High Heels,” silver-haired Father Matthew is creepy enough. Fleeing from Binod, Sarita took a taxi to Saint Mary’s Church. It didn’t sound like her ordeal was over.
Finishing this at 4 Square, my right leg went dead, so I hobble outside. At 10:15AM, it’s sunny and warm, with, as usual, a constant stream of pedestrians. There’s not a cleavage in sight. No plunging, scoop, halter or sweetheart necklines. One dips just enough to show collar bones. That’s it.
Around 4AM, I passed four drunken youths, including one woman. Pissed at somebody, she flipped the bird, the first I’ve seen in eight days, and I’m out constantly. Though dressed casually in the American style, she showed no cleavage either.
As a Kami, Sarita was elated to discover she could read the same bible as anybody else. There are 1.5 million of her kind in Nepal. Though caste-based discrimination was abolished in 1963, you can’t mold or regulate anyone’s heart.
10/25/25 (L): Kathmandu ; (R): Lalitpur
Why Not Hitler Fashion? — Oct 26, 2025.
A regular at 4 Square is Saroj, a shop owner in his late 40’s. Though his brother has lived in Boston for 20 years, Saroj hasn’t been able to visit him. Applying for a visa recently, he was rejected. Saroj worked eight years in India, so speaks good Engish, and he has traveled to Hong Kong and Bangkok. An avid bicyclist, he’s also in great shape, so looks every bit a successful and well fed middle class person. Still, Trump won’t let him in. After three months, Saroj will try again.
When told of my time in the USA and Europe, Saroj looked startled for a second. I was just sharing my experiences of NYC, London and Paris, to say those places aren’t like in the movies or popular imagination. “Everywhere I go, I want to see the regular neighborhoods, you know, the more boring ones, because that’s how normal people live.”
This was my response to a visit to the Buddha Stupa. Saroj hadn’t just insisted I see it, but phoned a motorbike guy to get me there. More interesting for me, though, were all the blasé streets I saw on the way. After that stupa, which was indeed spectacular, I had a better time checking out the area. There was Ramsterdam Café, “where hippies meet.” That fabled Kathmandu isn’t just mostly gone, it was hardly there in the first place.
Freak Street and Dharma Path, where Pico Iyer hung out, is as alien to most Nepalese as Phạm Ngũ Lão and Bùi Viện to Vietnamese. That Saigon pocket with its whores, pimps, weird cuisines and bars is known as Phố Tây, or Western Streets.
Even now, most residents of Kathmandu would find this passage incomprehensible:
I had the best enchilada of my life on Freak Street, and the chocolates in the stores seemed to have been sent special delivery from the heavens. As for the pies for which Nepal was famous, they exceeded even their reputation. Soon I established my own sacramental ritual: disappearing several times each day into the dark entrances of cafés—not just Mom’s Health Food Restaurant and Aunt Jane’s, but also Tibetan, Chinese and stateless restaurants—in order to devour extraordinary apple pies, almond layer pies, orange cakes, fruit cakes, lemon pies and more apple pies.
It’s telling that Iyer never mentions momos, choila, khaja, thukpa, sekuwa or even dal bhat, Nepal’s national dish. That’s what most people eat here, man, not lemon or apple pie! They have never heard of them, or enchiladas! Most wouldn’t dare walk into Mom’s Health Food Restaurant. Its name alone sounds expensive.
(L): Busan, 3/29/20 ; (R): Taiping, Malaysia on 7/19/19
The cheapest eateries here are dark, tiny places without a name. You enter through a curtain. Most have no English menus. Yesterday in Lilitpur, I noticed a barefoot girl about three flinging dirt outside Mo:Mo Cha and Stick Food Café. She had on a dirty pale pink top with two smiling cats. Catching me eyeing her daughter, this large woman came out, but not to chase me with a stick or knife. Smiling, she urged her kid to say hello. Her cheerfulness invited me in. If there was no menu, I would just ask to see what she had. I had done this in various countries. Point and you shall receive.
There was a menu, just one, with “Momo Magic and Stick Delights!” on the cover. Its plastic lamination was peeling off. Its wire binding was all awry. Without knowing what “Buff Khaja Set” was, I ordered it anyway. It turned out to be a buffalo stew, choila, with curried potato, peanuts, chickpeas, pickled vegetables and crunchy rice flakes, chiura. The last was most surprising. This delicious meal cost me just 170 rupees, or $1.21.
Arriving in Lilitpur, I emailed my buddy, Jonathan, “You shamed me into going to Patan, motherfucker! You think I give a shit about temples!!! I must admit, though, this place is orgasmically spectacular. Makes me even more ashamed to be Vietnamese. Just kill me now.” Tone is everything. That’s how friends talk. I used to do the same with Giang, whom I had known for more than four decades. After three Jewjabs, he seemed to change. His voting again for Trump hardened Giang further. Suddenly, I could no longer goof around with this guy.
Walking back to Kathmandu, I got seriously lost. Without a map or cellphone, I ended up in Kalanki, then Bafal. It didn’t help that I was lugging my bag with a camera and laptop, both heavy, and, most likely, I kept wandering in circles. I crossed streets and creeks that looked awfully familiar. This misadventure allowed me to enter a nearly dead mall, pass a bus depot with clearly rural folks waiting to go home, ramshackle dwellings abutting swanky developments and, mostly astoundingly, Hitler Fashion!
All I saw were jeans, hoodies, T-shirts and sneakers, typical American styled casual wear. Do Nepalese consider eternally adolescent Americans as Nazis?
Though swastikas are common in the East, this was just weird. Without my phone, I couldn’t speed dial my rabbi or the Anti-Defamation League. In Kukes, Albania, I had run into Bar and Restaurant Nazi, but that’s just the owner’s name, pronounced as Nor Zee.
(L): Skopje, North Macedonia on 9/26/20 ; (R): Vung Tau, 9/8/24
This morning, I read about a 33-year-old, Kenneth Morgan, who had entered Cutter’s Pub, an Athens, Georgia bar popular with college kids. Dressed as an SS officer, complete with a red armband with its black swastika on a white circle, Morgan was clearly asking for trouble. Immediately, he was cursed, then chased out by a crowd. When Grace Lang tried to yank off his armband, Morgan whacked her with his beer mug, breaking her nose. She relayed her account to The Red and Black, which aren’t just Nazi colors but those of the University of Georgia. Of course, many if not most of those outside the South and Midwest think those folks are Nazis anyway.
Though Mao and Stalin killed many more, Hitler is considered uniquely evil. Even most deaths in concentration camps were from starvation, and related diseases, resulting from American and British bombings. At least a million Vietnamese died from the same. Near the end of World War II, Vietnamese ports and rail system were destroyed.
Detailed or nuanced understanding of anything is beyond most people, with American college students among the worst. A little learning is already dangerous. When it’s mostly bullshit, you’re fucked for life.
Here’s how Grace Lang describes herself at Linked, “I capture angles that are rarely seen and humanity that is often overlooked. My photos give the audience a chance to see with my eyes, granting them a vivid, deep connection with my work.” Seeing with her eyes, you will be exposed to hidden truths about humanity.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
A little sweet, and very different. A time to recover our senses from the circus that we watched the past day or two.
This, from my favorite Russian cooking site, describes what kids ate at school in Russia. She says:
Soviet kids ate nearly all their meals at school, and like school food the world over, it left much to be desired.
Anna Kharzeeva researched and discovered what the kids actually ate, and some of it is wholly revolting. But in the process, she found this delicious little morsel. It is on our list for the coming weekend, but I will make it with a bit of flour for binding, as semolina may be challenging to get in our climes. I will also try one or two with Chia seeds to bind them together. This is the secret, then, of cooking – adjusting as we go. Creating new out of old.
1 carrot; 1 apple; 1 tsp semolina; ½ tsp sugar; 2 tsp butter
Wash carrot and apple and grate.
Put the carrots in a pot.
Add ¼ cup water and cook until soft. Add apples and simmer until apples are tender.
(I would also suggest to leave at least some crunch and don’t cook ’em to death).
Then add semolina (flour or my suggestion, Chia seeds), sugar, and some salt. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Allow to cool.
Shape in the form of cutlets and fry in butter.
I’m imagining these will go well with a topping squeeze from the honey bottle and then don’t use sugar in the making of it, or even try it with a little white sauce or herby sauce as a dinner vegetable accompaniment. Dress it up with a few raisins or dried cranberries. It is a versatile process.
If Trump’s weapons overseas are bombs and missiles, his domestic ones are primarily words.
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Biggest, Longest and Hottest Wordsmith Ever — Aug 09, 2025.
Michael Snyder’s The Economic Collapse Blog has been around for over a decade. Its gathering of raw statistics is most useful. Snyder has also published seven books on the rapture, including The Beginning of the End (2013), End Times (2022) and Chaos (2023). Having gained a following, Snyder decided to run for congress as a Republican in 2018.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 11/30/24
The Idaho News on 1/1/18, “Michael Snyder says he is not a politician—but a firebrand, fighter and 100 percent supporter of President Trump.
“‘He restored my faith in America,’ Snyder said.
“[…] If elected, Snyder says he wants to be Trump’s ‘best friend in Congress.’”
In the Republican Primary, Snyder got just 10.3% of the votes, so finished fifth. Not every boy can grow up to be a congressman. As for president, the morally depraved have the best chance, but keep in mind that nearly everyone is already excluded, so stick to your fireman job fantasy, and only fools dream of walking on the moon or Mars.
Of 47 US presidents, only one had German blood. None had French or Spanish. Old World feuds are still being fought. Nearly all POTUSes were Englishmen with roots in the English Colonies. Though Trump and Obama don’t have this pedigree, they can easily be blackmailed. The compromised will wreck his nation to save his sick, corrupt ass.
Chastened by defeat, Snyder has returned to what he does best. On 8/7/25, he wrote, “If everything is going to be just fine, why are thousands of stores closing all over the country? So far this year, the total amount of retail space that has been permanently closed has surpassed 120 million square feet […] Store closings spiked during the early days of the pandemic, but in 2025 stores are being permanently shuttered at an even faster pace.”
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/8/25
MAGA diehards would dismiss this as doom porn. It must be fake news that 5,822 stores have closed during the first half of 2025. What about all those newly opened? On 8/8/25, Trump posted at Truth Social, “Stephen Moore: ‘Mr. President, you gained ten times more income for the average family than Joe Biden… Every income group did better under Trump than Biden—by a wide margin…’”
Ten times?! With every income group doing better by a wide margin? Is this like gas at under two bucks and drug prices being reduced by 1,500 percent? Far from that madhouse, I’m appalled and fascinated by this information war. Having kissed Trump’s ass so heartily, Snyder can’t blame his (ex?) idol for the very economic collapse he’s documenting.
As with the Holocaust, Israel’s right to exist, 9/11, Bin Laden’s supposed assassination, Jewjabs, America as beacon of democracy and champion of peace, Arabs as head chopping fanatics and Jews as always persecuted for no reason, narratives matter very much. Words shape reality. With all eyes on him globally, any American president is most powerful, even if he’s just taking orders. With Trump, there’s the added horror of seeing English being degraded most tragically and farcically. There’s no more shame in spewing outrageous lies in the crudest, most cartoonish language. Sickest are those who worship this crass idiot. Again, Trump mirrors America.
Trump’s tariffs raise prices, so people shop less or shoplift, thus bankrupting stores. This generates many more desperately broke blokes who must travel further to stuff cans of tuna if not a whole frozen chicken into their pants. “Why you look so hard at my bulging crotch, man?!” If it doesn’t quite fit, you can unzip to release part of the cold cock.
There’s a new trend of grabbing snacks from Walmart shelves, to be eaten in situ, but this lifestyle revolution can only be practiced if there’s still a Walmart within 30 miles or so of the storage unit you call home. Since all your neighbors are similarly destitute, you can’t even turn tricks to earn gas money. Five must squeeze into a compact, then, to go raiding. Wilding will spread.
Those who don’t have a storage unit or car to sleep in soon go apeshit from being exposed nonstop to the elements and, much worse, fellow humans. There’s always a healthy percentage among them who can’t wait to rob or rape you, even if you’re just a fetid sack well past your expiration date. Since it’s only “best before,” a can of baked beans stamped “31.12.25” can still be consumed a century later. There are good news! If you haven’t been bludgeoned or sodomized at a hundred years old, Trump can now pack you into an insane asylum. If you’re a Hispanic or American Indian, you might even be rewarded with an open ended foreign vacation.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/8/25
Though Trump’s ICE’s targeting of brown people has cheered many whites, it’s only misdirection. He’s screwing whites, too, only differently. Most dangerously, he’s normalizing lawlessness, on top of vulgarity and idiocy. Unleashing mayhem and terror, Trump burps slogans, cliches and lies to an audience lobotomized over decades. If Trump’s weapons overseas are bombs and missiles, his domestic ones are primarily words. Since these still work well on nearly half his country, Trump must be America’s most formidable wordsmith.
Even before it stopped making stuff, America was mostly about branding, misnaming and marketing. The worst bread ever was called Wonderbread, the worst cream was dubbed Miracle Whip. As the US declined, its self promotion became absurdly infantile, to suit its own citizens. Who cares if billions outside are aghast? In the age of selfies, the world is reduced to your face, regurgitated opinions, TV stations, bookmarks, video games, favorite YouTube influencers and the same songs heard over and over.
With American literacy reduced by 1,500 percent, James, Whitman and Pound might as well have written in Chinese. Luckily, America still has Trump.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/9/25
Fart and Run Communication Among the Faceless — Aug 10, 2025.
On 5/12/23, I made a four minute video of the Sacred Heart Church in Pakse, Laos. Since my videos are among the worst on YouTube, I don’t expect likes or comments. In March of 2025, one blanchelobo4420 came on to ask for the time of the English mass on Ash Wednesday. I didn’t even know there was such a mass at Sacred Heart. I answered, “I left Pakse years ago. I don’t know the time of their masses.”
Though blanchelobo4420 was in Pakse, he somehow thought the comment stream of this barely seen video was the best place to get his info. After asking the same question over and over, he snapped, “It is so sad that my several queries regarding the English Mass on Ash Wednesday & what time it is is being ignored. If I don’t get any reply from you, it’ll be on your conscience for preventing me to hear Mass on Ash Wednesday. I plead of you to please reply to my query ASAP. THANK YOU.”
An American Catholic who must attend mass on Ash Wednesday shouldn’t have expected to find any Catholic church in a provincial Lao city, much less one with English services. Almost every Lao is a Buddhist. In Pakse, though, there are Europeans running an Italian restaurant, French bakery and French restaurant, all clustered together downtown. Also, his hotel receptionist must have spoken English, or he wouldn’t have been able to check in. Despite these options, blanchelobo4420 had to harass a Vietnamese who lived 450 miles away.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/8/25
Two weeks ago, I received a message from an admirer of my poetry, particularly my “Brand New Products.” Since Alex was too young to witness my banishment from the US literary scene, he asked me for an explanation. It started with my questioning of 9/11, I replied, then worsened with my straying from polite or correct versions of the Bin Laden “assassination,” Jewjabs and, most damningly, the Holocaust. My collaboration with Iran’s Press TV over several years didn’t help. As my career sank, I felt no regrets. All I cared about was articulating what I really believed to be true.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “I definitely don’t agree with the genocide being perpetrated by Israel and the USA right now, but your hate for Jews clouds your literary genius. May one day you be able to escape the chains of hate, for they tie us down rather than empower us. Thank you for the answers to my questions and I hope your weekend is enjoyable.”
So my revulsion over genocides stemming from a genocidal ideology is reduced to my being strapped to “the chains of hate.” I’m sure he has no use for my “Less Than Cockroaches.” Don’t lecture me without reading it.
Days ago, I got a message from Avi Shmoo. “I just listened to your conversation with Kevin Barrett, and I’d love to be in touch with you. Thanks Brother. Have a wonderful, beautiful day.” Sure, let’s talk, I replied. In the warmest tone, Shmoo said he was reading my Wikipedia page and had listened to two of my articles. Decades ago, he also had a Vietnamese friend. Learning that Shmoo was living in Moscow, I immediately suggested we do an interview. I also sent him two I had done with American expats in Russia. Who wouldn’t want to hear about how Shmoo had ended up there? Sure, he said, but, “I try to keep my head down. I stay off the radar. So I wouldn’t want to use the same name (pseudonym) in two places.” No problem, I answered. Below Shmoo’s messages were the flags of Iran, China, Russia, Palestine, not quite Syria or Iraq, and Malaysia. His fake photo was of some fat, clownish white guy in a black wig. Though I had started to formulate questions for this Avi Shmoo, I never heard from him again.
These sketches illustrate how the faceless communicate in 2025. Appearing suddenly, they can just fart then run. With chatbots, it will get even worse, they say. It’s hard to imagine. “Real men” are bad enough.
Tentative titles for this piece were “Tales of Madness,” “Edifying Sketches” and “Madness Buffet,” with the last particularly stupid. The word buffet, though, did make me think of a distant episode. Since insanity is our default state, men were also crazy in the 90’s, but somehow less so, I’d like to think, in my incurable madness.
Around 1990, Korean owned buffets spread across the USA. They didn’t just serve Korean dishes, but Chinese stir-fries, spaghetti, salads, meatloaves, mashed potato and Swedish meatballs, etc. You paid by the pound. It was a winning concept. Walking by one of these in Philly, I noticed its owner standing outside. Puffing a cigarette, his face beamed with a naked pride obvious to every businessman, secretary, construction worker and student strolling by. Starting out in Muju, Asan-myeon or Oksan-ri, this squat man had conquered America, so it was only natural for him so puff out his chest and suck in deeply, so deeply, in fact, that there wasn’t enough oxygen for anyone else within a quarter mile. Suddenly, everyone staggered, gasped and nearly fell down. Seeing this, he felt even more vindicated. I wouldn’t have been surprised had he started crowing like a cock, or pulled his pants down to more fully display his cockiness.
No less vain, I made a video this dawn that’s even more pointless than usual. It depicts humans and dogs doing not much in silence and darkness. Mrs. Seven can barely be seen scooping some ice, emptying a bucket then making herself an iced coffee. Sơn the security guard is already exhausted before starting his shift. Pretending to give a shit, I hug Mrs. Seven’s two dogs.
zero star lunch chez moi in Vung Tau on 8/11/25
Sadistic Addicts Ready to Convict — Aug 11, 2025.
By the time I could sit down at my first café, it was nearly 4:30PM. Since I would normally be out by 4AM, then have an article done by 9 or 10, I had added 12 more hours to my enormous tally of wasted time. I had woken up with a headache continued from last night.
In Buchner’s Woyzeck, the captain hilariously says, “It’s frightening, how the world turns round in a day. What a waste of time! What does it amount to?” He also tells Woyzeck to slow down his barbering, since the captain has no use for ten extra minutes.
Before drinking my guava juice, I checked on Mo, Cà Phê Cà Pháo’s kitten. He had just returned from the vet, where he spent four days. Counting two days he lay immobile at home without eating, Mo had wasted nearly a week. When not sick, this alert, hyper active animal never squanders a second. You’d never catch him with a cellphone four inches from his face, or playing the same board game with each free moment for an entire lifetime, or watching hundreds if not thousands of sporting contests yearly, with millions of commercial breaks.
Lying half dead at home, I did catch up on some news. A green card holder from South Korea has been jailed for at least a week, after his arrest at San Francisco International Airport. Unlike President Trump, 40-year-old Tea Heung “Will” Kim never murdered or raped anybody. More than a decade ago, Kim was convicted of marijuana possession, for which he did community service. He’s now a doctorate candidate at Texas A&M, researching a vaccine for Lyme disease. Though Kim has been in the US since age 5, he never applied for citizenship, however. Under any other administration, this would not have mattered.
Kim’s attorneys haven’t been allowed to contact him. They don’t even know where he’s being held.
Most revealing are YouTube comments about this case. sheilawilliams2875, “So he had a DRUG charge. Deport him.” karenphu998, “Drug charges? This guy needs to go back to Korea.” georgieboy2432, “Green cards are not a free pass!” JHtx991, “they should also remind everyone you get like 10 yrs in jail for weed in korea [laughing to tears emoji] with a 99.9% conviction rate.” tamelabarr6601, “Blah blah blah blah… he’s not an American citizen.” Most comments are like these. Led by Trump, the US has turned into one hideous society.
How many drugs are Elon Musk on? How many have you tried?
My high school best friend, Brian Robertson, introduced me to weed. Under Trump, Brian became a Senior Policy Advisor and Speechwriter at the State Department and Department of Health and Human Services. He’s also a Policy Director for Republican Senator Sam Brownback. At every junior or senior high school across the USA, anyone could buy weed from a classmate without a problem.
In college, I did weed and lines of coke, once with a professor. This was the era of Cheech and Chong. Not so funny is how the USA will turn nearly everyone into an addict, with self destructive behavior nearly unavoidable. With each waking moment so empty and pointless if not painful, wasting time while dazed, delirious or numb has become the most common solution. Partying means getting fucked up. It’s almost impossible to talk at parties, bars or night clubs. Starved of meaningful conversations, brains dry up, souls shrink and language dies.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/11/25
Now at Cóc Cóc, I’m five yards from a teenaged boy who’s been possessed for nearly two hours by video games. Sickly thin with horrible posture, he wears the uniform of the Vietnam America School, where tuition for the 10th grade is $3,477 a year. This barely Americanized kid isn’t just lost to Vietnam, but anything pungent, tactile or visceral. His eyes are deader than crazed marbles in the dullest color. An aspiring global citizen, he’ll soon have a harem of AI girlfriends to confide and jerk off to. Sex, for him, will be purely visual. Though living next to the ocean, he will likely drown within seconds of being tossed into it.
Before leaving my room, I did make a hybrid dish of San Remo Spaghetti with Cuccina and Armore three cheese sauce, Kikoman Light Soy Sauce, cucumber and roast pork. Though neither Mo nor Mrs. Seven’s two dogs would touch this globalist travesty, it tasted fine to me. To be alive now is to be adrift, or lênh đênh in Vietnamese. That’s almost my name. We’re all Linh Đinh. Culinary miscegenation is perhaps globalism’s greatest contribution.
Sơn the security guard makes around $2,000 a year, so no Vietnam America School for his kids. Fresh again at 7PM, I’ll see this quiet, melancholic man before dawn tomorrow. Impossibly slumped, that 10th grader’s chin has sunk into his bony chest as his skeletal thumbs dance frantically. Tinny clashes of swords erupt nonstop. Now he’s holding his phone right over his crotch.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.
Empty Bellies, Emptier Minds — Aug 06, 2025.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: (L): $2.55 on 8/6/25 ; (R): $1.33 on 8/3/25
Arriving at Coffee Seven around 3:40AM, I sat on its one park bench to use the wifi. Five minutes later I could hear Mrs. Seven say to her white bitch, “Grandpa is here.” Knowing it already, the dog’s excited paws could be heard pattering on the worn tiles, then she came running out to greet me. After setting up a few tables and chairs, Mrs. Seven went inside to brush her teeth.
Nearly always, Sơn the security guard is the second to show. Once, he asked Mrs. Seven for two diarrhea pills. Of course, she didn’t charge him. Another time, she borrowed his motorbike to go to Cô Giang wet market, a quarter mile away. Mrs. Seven only has a bicycle.
Sometimes a 29-year-old would appear. After his coffee, he’d buy a pack of Saigon cigarettes for 61 cents, so her profit isn’t even four pennies! Worse, he’d sometimes pay her 15 instead of 16K đồng, then conveniently forget about the difference. He’s not too bright a young man. I know from trying to chat with him.
Hearing music from pre-1975 Saigon, Half Lit was surprised to learn you could be arrested for listening to it just a few years before he was born. Of course, he didn’t know Ho Chi Minh had a Chinese wife.
“Just about everything you’ve been taught about history is a lie,” I said. “How many kings were in the Hùng Dynasty?”
Though this knowledge is so basic, he didn’t know it, so I told him, “Eighteen! How many years did this dynasty last?” Of course, he went blank. I continued, “Two thousand! You can’t have 18 kings over two thousand years. Each would have had to live over 300 years. The name Hùng Vương is already bullshit. Hùng means brave. Vương means king. Both words are derived from Chinese. We didn’t have writing until the Chinese came. There’s no writing on our bronze drums. These so called “brave kings,” then, are merely mythical. It’s impossible to have any dynasty lasting two thousand years, period.”
Half Lit didn’t need to hear all that. You probably tuned out also. Though a college drop-out, I did teach at six universities in two countries. It’s the village explainer in me sputtering. Sorry! Understandably, Half Lit has made sure to ignore my presence entirely since.
$1.66 in Vung Tau on 5/18/25
My 61 cent black coffee came with a free pot of hot tea. Leaving Coffee Seven, I walked seven minutes to the grocer to buy four cucumbers, six tomatoes, ten brown eggs and 14 okras for $2.55. On the way, I passed an old lady selling sticky rice for breakfast. These come in many varieties, but even with bits of meat, none should cost more than 50 cents. I give you these prices to show basic food items shouldn’t cost much.
In the US, you’re not just paying for the tomatoes but its aspirin spray, ethylene gas, long distance transportation, attractive packaging, placement in a large, well-lit and air conditioned store, plus shoplifting and spoilage costs.
The US gets most of its tomatoes, avocados, bell peppers, strawberries and bananas from Latin America. Though some of these can be grown in the US, there just aren’t enough illegal immigrants around, unfortunately.
According to Trump, Americans are too “inner city” to farm, “They’ve tried. We’ve tried. Everybody’s tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally.” Trump meant all these illegal immigrants when they’re not whacking white retirees with baseball bats from behind, or running around looking for white teenagers to rape. That should be reserved for aging white creeps who must grab last minute pussies before high fiving Jesus. “Naturally! I said, ‘What happens?’ to a farmer the other day. ‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting.’ In many ways, they’re very, very special people.”
Before Mexicans, there were blacks, I suppose, to bend over under an impossibly hot sun, all the time, every day, until they drop dead immediately from a bad back. If farming is only natural for brown folks, how did white Europeans survive for thousands of years? Easy, they just looted, raped and pillaged from assorted peoples of color. I’m just using Trumpian logics here. If Trump University was still around, I’d certainly be hired to teach history, anthropology, sociology, agricultural science or business administration.
Standing next to a Trump standee fingering Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood or Heidi, I’d lecture, “Y’all are paying more to eat shit. Milk, eggs, chicken, pork and just about everything else cost less, yet taste much better, the second you step outside the US fuckin’ A! Try it sometime. Go dip one toe into the Rio Grande and see if the burrito you just bought in El Paso or San Ysidro doesn’t taste a hundred times better?”
Raising one skeletal arm, some kid in a MAGA hat would moan, “But perfesser, many of us ain’t even eating.”
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: (L): $21.81 on 3/7/24 ; (R): $2.36 on 12/14/24
It’s not fiction. After my recent article about American supermarkets closing left and right, Troy Skaggs comments, “The Western Avenue Kroger in South Bend closed last month. I called it ‘my’ store because it was one of the few major label groceries that I felt comfortable being in. With the influx of Latinos, it always had good Poblano peppers in the meager produce section. Struggling yet dedicated employees, the place had a downtrodden but friendly vibe. Chris, one of the checkout guys, had some obvious physical disabilities. You could tell that mobility was difficult, but he was always there doing his best. I was in there a couple of days before it closed for good. Half empty, with everything reduced, some customers were filling their carts while the employees did their best to keep the place clean. Knowing that I’d never be in the store again, I had a hard time keeping it together as I made my way to produce.”
Even a chain supermarket gave Troy a much needed sense of community. With fewer illegals farming, food prices rocketing due to tariffs and even mega stores going tits up, Troy will have to drive further to eat less. Like millions of other Americans, he might have to use food banks, until those, too, run dry.
Just in case you think only bums do so, consider this NBC News report on 8/2/25, “Twice a week, just outside of Fort Hood, Texas, the armed services YMCA holds a free food distribution for the military community, and every week, there are more families in the line than food to serve.” These are wives and children of American soldiers, mind you. With their husbands stationed at one of 750 bases at +80 countries, these women, many with jobs, must still rely on charity. “One in four active duty troops are now food insecure, more than double the rate for civilians.”
Trump on 3/9/25, “We’re going to be so rich, you won’t know where to spend all that money.” Though he hasn’t toned it down, many still believe this master grifter.
Finishing this in Cóc Cóc at 7:59PM, I had to move to a different seat because a young man, sitting right next to me, was shooting nonstop at cartoony enemies. On a phone held six inches from his face, he generated endless rat tat tats with his restless thumbs. Not quite 30, his world has shrunken to almost nothing. Vietnamese retards are also multiplying at a stupendous rate.
A month ago in Amman, I photographed some stray cats at a 1,800 year old Roman ruins. Troy Skaggs commented that those beasts looked “more vigilant and aware than many humans, myself included.” Unlike most of us, they’re not trying at each moment to avoid reality or their own thoughts, Rat, tat, tat, tat! 21st century man is the least human ever. The phone has just moved an inch closer to his deadened face.
An older, saner arrangement still exists. Just eight hours from now, I’ll reenter it. “Grandpa is here,” I’ll hear again, then be greeted by one joyous being unmolested by constant bullshit.
Vung Tau, 8/6/25
Post Attentiveness — Aug 07, 2025.
Born in 1963, I’m already among the last to remember when flying was civilized, and any half intelligent man was expected to read at least several books a year. Entering college during the Fall of 1982, I wasted no time in using its library, so no later than halfway through my sophomore year, I had read Gide, Gorky, Apollinaire, Cendrars, Stefan Zweig, Whitman, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Roger Shattuck and Robert Henri, on top of Erasmus, Thomas More, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Calderón de la Barca, Marquez, Conrad, Chekov, Tennyson, Eliot, Beckett, Kate Chopin and Flannery O’Connor, which I had to do for classes. Being so young and stupid, of course I missed much, but serious literature is meant to be reexamined repeatedly. I read other books I no longer remember. I couldn’t penetrate Chaucer and never cared for E. E. Cummings. Even with little life experience, I thought Dickinson embarrassingly dry when not hysterical. Dostoievski, Kafka, Kundera, Borges, Cortazar, Manuel Puig, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Artaud, Jarry, Neruda, Yeats, Ginsberg, Buchner, Hamsun, Milosz, Simone Weil, Evelyn Waugh, CK Williams and Robert Lowell I’d discover before finally dropping out of college in 1986. Of crazy Artaud, I can recall two lines, “I hate and denounce as cowards all so-called sensate beings.” “And you are quite superfluous, young man!”
Paying $25 rent to live in a dismal house that was more like a shell, I then read 900+ pages of Céline. Just sentences into Death on the Installment Plan, I thought, This is very dangerous, but I forged forward. I’m mapping out my intellectual beginning to show that even a habitually drunk immigrant with an accent and philistine parents could educate himself somewhat if not distracted by constant TV, nonstop music or, of course, the cellphone. I bought my first computer in 1995.
Had I been born in, say, 1985, I would most likely be a slobbering retard who can’t wait to vote again and again, “to make a difference.” Of course, I’d comment diarrheically online behind an original pseudonym appended with PhD. Even as my house, mama and society go up in flames, it’s important I keep the lowest profile, fly miles under the radar and never dox myself. Above all, I mustn’t hate a systematic, steady hatred nakedly applied against meaning itself. To even hint at it would be anti-schematic. Please don’t report me, sir! If unusually brave, I might risk waving a hand scrawled sign at mostly indifferent traffic for half an hour every five years, among masked comrades.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on 8/7/25: (L): Coffee Seven ; (R): Cà Phê Cà Pháo
In any new city, one must find great bookstores. Before the internet, this meant actually walking around. Bookish locals could also help you out, but they were very rare. In Philadelphia, South Street Books was pretty good, but Factotum, also on South but on the wrong side of Broad, was even better. Browsing books on shelves leads to discoveries. The internet killed this practice. Finding books by key words keeps you in the tiniest ghettos.
A college professor, Stephen Berg, was the editor of the American Poetry Review. Among English language poetry zines, it had the highest circulation at over 20,000. Published six times a year, it also appeared more frequently than all. Most were quarterlies. At Steve’s office and house, books were all over. Of course, as a powerful editor, he had thousands sent to him unsolicited. Though we became drinking buddies, Steve got angry at me for two reasons. Already knowing I didn’t respect his poetry, Steve ditched our friendship when I didn’t immediately intercede on his behalf at Seven Stories Press. Emailing Steve from Italy, I said I would talk to Dan Simon in person, but that wasn’t enough. At some Manhattan bar, Dan said he didn’t need anyone to tell him what to think. Nothing I said could change his mind about Steve’s manuscript.
All writers think they’re underappreciated, overlooked or slandered. With fewer readers paying attention, this bitterness has only increased tragically, or perhaps just pathetically.
Typing this at Cà Phê Cà Pháo, I have in front me a 2024 edition of Ngô Sĩ Liên’s history of Vietnam, first published in 1479. I’m the only one who has shown any interest in this 1,284 page volume. Though the café’s owner has only bought it as a decoration, Ngô Sĩ Liên shouldn’t complain. Five centuries after his death, he’s still visible, if only from the side and afar, to dozens of distracted zombies daily, when they’re not admiring their own selfies or playing video games. At least he wasn’t castrated like Sima Qian. Uppity, name dropping intellectuals deserve no less.
Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: (L): Cà Phê Cà Pháo on 8/7/25 ; (R): Ngô Sĩ Liên’s Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư at Cà Phê Cà Pháo on 7/27/25
Living in Vung Tau four years, I’ve only seen three people with books. One had volumes by some new agey guru. Another was reading short stories by Nam Cao, so that was encouraging. Last night at Cóc Cóc, there was a guy reading a book. Before I got too excited, I noticed his earbud. To read with music is nearly as bad as reading on the toilet. His author was the super lame Nguyễn Nhật Ánh.
Twenty-first century man has stopped reading everything, not just books. It’s a question of focus. Neurologically damaged, he can’t read a face, the sky, his room, city or nation. Skimming or flitting while taking a shit or masturbating with the worst music on full blast is not reading.
Just yesterday, one “john henninger” emailed me, “You had preferred kamala for a week before teeing off on her!” No salution, introduction, context or, clearly, any real reading, since I’ve never said anything positive about Kamala Harris. What prompted this idiocy was the first 142 words of a 901-word article. I canceled his free subscription. There are people who subscribe to hundreds of SubStacks, just so they can leap into a few to fart and run. It’s an epidemic.
We’ve sunk a long way. In his The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell points out:
The American Civil War was the first, Theodor Ropp observes, “in which really large numbers of literate men fought as common soldiers.” By 1914, it was possible for soldiers to be not merely literate but vigorously literary, for the Great War occurred at a special historical moment when two “liberal” forces were powerfully coinciding in England. On the one hand, the belief in the educative powers of classical and English literature was still extremely strong. On the other, the appeal of popular education and “self-improvement” was at its peak, and such education was still conceived largely in humanistic terms.
Again, it’s not just knowledge you gain from reading, but how to be attentive. Without attentiveness, which doesn’t have to come from reading, of course, there’s no respect or love for anything, only the most narrow, hateful and desperate form of self love. Sunk in it, you’re literally in hell.
Referral Hospital in Stung Treng, Cambodia on 3/12/23
Bodies As Tests and Lessons — Aug 08, 2025.
Nhà thương, house of love, is what Vietnamese call hospitals. If you’re looking for a whorehouse, it’s on a different block, but who knows? Somewhere, perhaps everywhere, there must be hospitals cum whorehouses, where male and female nurses can mount near corpses to send them into the netherworld. “Goodbye, grandpa. You should have checked in much sooner. Trying to save a few pennies killed your fuckin’ ass.”
At Coffee Seven, three middle aged guys are talking about hospitals and various ailments at 5:30AM. Before leaving, Sơn the security guard showed me black pellets he’s taking for his joint pains. They looked like rabbit turds.
“You should take some, too,” I said to Mrs. Seven.
“Why?”
“To feel better.”
“But my joints are fine.”
“Taking those, your joints will feel even better!” I laughed.
(L): Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bengaluru, India, 12/1/22 ; (R): First Town Hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, 7/25/20
Like me, Mrs. Seven is leery of medicines, especially Western ones. She’d massage any spot that’s hurting. To stimulate blood flow, I slap or scratch fiercely. Sơn soaks his ankles in a tub of hot water with sea salt. I must swim in the ocean more. According to Mrs. Seven, sea water can even cure ovarian cancer.
“This lady would sit at Front Beach. The water came in and out, you see. When she was diagnosed a while later, her ovarian cancer was gone! After that, she became a vegetarian.”
That’s very good to know. “Do you swim?” I asked Mrs. Seven.
“No, no! I almost drowned as a girl. Never again.”
“Many people have never seen the ocean. Living by the ocean, we take it for granted.”
Most days, Mrs. Seven doesn’t stray ten yards from her front door. As a young dancer, she did travel to Hanoi and Cambodia. Before her parents died, she was literally stuck in this very house for 17 years. After her mother’s stroke, she had to take care of her every need for 12 years. Though her dad wasn’t so messy towards the end, his senility forced Mrs. Seven to stay near him all day long. Witnessing all this, her husband hid his pneumonia from her, thus hastening his own death.
“Once, he called me after having checked himself into a hospital. It shouldn’t have come to that. His lungs could have been drained, but I didn’t know.”
Having an extended family means dealing with death and shit nearly nonstop. Somebody is always dying. Babies and the aged must be wiped and washed constantly. More advanced societies deal with these annoyances by inventing daycares, retirement communities and, just now, Jewjabs. Killing them off is always the most efficient and cost effective solution.
While murdering other people’s babies, as is now done in Gaza, you can import black, brown and yellow nannies to pamper your own. Just go to any Manhattan park during the daytime to see them push strollers with white babies. If you’d rather not have spooky bodies in your home, pale au pairs are ideal solutions.
Last week, I got an email from a Vietnamese-American woman I hung out with just once. In 2017, we wandered the streets of Hanoi into the night.
She shares, “Smart move leaving the US in 2016. I should’ve just stayed over there! I am in Chicago, have been since 2018 when I left Ha Noi. I have been in a layer of hell, my father was hit by a car in 2023 and suffered a traumatic brain injury, and I have been caregiving for him with my mother and brother. I never had kids so it’s a cruel twist that I’m changing diapers every day. Even so, there have been moments of joy in caring for him, like tucking him in at night and realizing that he looks like ET from the movies.”
(L): just outside Pennsylvania Hospital, America’s first, in Philadelphia, 8/24/13 ; (R): mock hospital room at the Death Cafe in Bangkok, Thailand, 10/11/22
Bodies are ultimate tests and lessons.
Think also of babies born deformed from Agent Orange. The US has denied any responsibility. In Gaza, starving parents must watch their children die. With weaker bodies, they succumb first. Many are also horribly injured. Among Judeo Christian Satanists, sadism has become a necessity, like food. In DC, that leader of the free world is fussing about gold moldings and statuettes as golden nonsense oozes from his puckering orifice.
Troubled by bodies, we also dress them up with words, ink or pigments in linseed oil. All of culture is a perfumed dress. Beautiful bodies overpopulate paintings. Static and well rendered, even the most hideous are dignified.
Just before leaving Philly, I hung out with my friend, Ian. Driving through South Jersey, we decided to stop at a go-go bar. It was laughably lame, however.
“Yo Ian, I know of a much better place. It’s in Pennsport. Since cops go there, they can show everything.”
Cringing, Ian explained he’d rather not look at that. It’s a wound that won’t heal. Very bookish, Ian lived with his mom in a spacious house that even had an indoor swimming pool. Like us all, Ian’s civility is well tailored.
No less pretentious, I wear a peasant shirt and go barefoot. Wading into the crowd, I will pass real peasants in their GUCCI, Prada, Balenciaga and Hermes pyjamas, made in China. It’s past time for my peasant breakfast, so goodbye!
The upholstered seats seen through the back doors of a mini bus resemble coffins. Seven minutes away is a dead gecko, apparently ran over by a motorbike. Most of his green and golden body is still intact, however, though dotted with bluebottle flies fattening themselves. Today has turned out so much better than expected! It pays to buzz to alien territories. Stooping to pick up some fallen papers, a woman in an indigo dress with white dots appears, for just one second, like the most refined Pre-Raphaelite painting. At the end of the street in the far distance, part of a freighter can be seen. Piggy backing on the vastest body, it imprisons and protects the most fretful. Within seconds, this house of imperfect love will disappear from our lives forever.
About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):
‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’
AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks
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