============================================================== To reach ALL SJD members, please send to sjd@satjadham.net ... Do NOT include any other addresses when sending to the list... Include as LITTLE of the original messages as possible........ Message sent by: LanXang Siengkhene *** Announcement: *** Please send your member fee to Victor if you haven't done so. ============================================================== Savannakhet was very much like Thakek or Pakse in regards to population content. That was it had a big concentration of Vietnamese residents in town especially in the urban areas. One thing that showed this aspect was when a certain Vietnamese died, they would have a long procession of Vietnamese looking people parading behind the black casket truck right in front the post office as this town belonged to them. Besides, as a person in charge of the post office, my dad was constantly visited by the Vietnamese bringing presents in the hope that they would get some favorable treatment from my dad. The big present, of course, came when the Vietnamese (Chinese) New Year arrived. There was a joke circling around the post office employees. It went like this: there was a certain Vietnamese who wasn't received warmly by the Lao. Then, when the Vietnamese New Year kicked in, everyone was extremely nice to him so he said: "Before, everybody called me Buc, Buc. Now, everybody called me Ong, Ong." I, personally, knew one Vietnamese woman. She was a woman who regularly came to the post office to sell Nam Vane Thoua Dame. Her name was Lane but the employees liked to call her "E Lane". Her Nam Vane was so good that it was sold out each time she came by the post office. From her, I learned that the Vietnamese work very hard to earn a living; unlike us, the Lao, who spent most of the time idling around. Besides the Vietnamese, there were the Chinese in every corner of the town. Wherever they were, they had shops selling everything from candies to food. With time, the Chinese shops seemed to get bigger and bigger. Lastly, there were the Indian selling cloth and Roti. Their main headquarter was near the Hong Nang Lith movie theatre. There, the whole street virtually belonged to them. It was not hard to distinguish them from other groups for they (the men) tended to wear turbans on top of their heads. In general, we considered them to be very honest. That was why my mom loaned them a big sum of money for their business. Honesty or not? that Indian fled when his business was bankrupt. I guess you could not fully trust people because they belonged to a certain respectable ethnic group no matter what. I almost forgot one group of people. Though looking and talking very much like us, they were called Thai Isan. They were the coolies hauling the bags of rice in and out of the boats and trucks at Tha Dane. These people skins were a little bit darker than us, the Lao, but they worked extremely hard that we could envision doing the same. They were from Mukdahan, a Thai town from across the Mekong River. At this point of the river, it was very wide. You could hardly see what was going on in Mukdahan from Savannakhet shore, unlike Thakek or Vientiane. As I remember, I went to Mukdahan a couple of times and witnessed how hard the Isan people worked to earn a living. No wonder why so many Isan people settled in Savannakhet or any Lao towns across the river. (to be continued) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com _ ***************************************************************** Visit SatJaDham Homepage at: http://www.satjadham.org (or .net) *****************************************************************