Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

Your shrimp doesn't come from the sea and your pricey Orange Roughy is really Mekong catfish --- both likely raised in a sprawling tropical desolation of sludgy saltwater ponds converted from former rice paddies.

The Vietnamese government's expanse of 6,000 hectares of shrimp ponds I visited yesterday was so far down a narrow road that thick vegetation began to block the truck. So we hitched rides on strangers' motorcycles, riding past endless rice fields, scruffy dogs and shacks on stilts.

The lunch meeting began at noon with a bottle of Remy Martin cognac (above), poured by a 62-year-old Communist --- a veteran of the "American War", shrimp farm manager, and hardcore alcoholic. This old fucker could drink more than anyone I've seen. He poured round after round of 80 proof cognac, forcing us all to partake, until I secretly poured the booze into my rice bowl in order to survive.

12 shots in me on Sunday afternoon, and the drunken lout spit a question at us in Vietnamese, followed by a serious stare. I felt like Christopher Walken in the Deer Hunter, expecting a gun with one bullet in the chamber, but our translator told us he wanted to know what we thought about "Keck Meck".

What the fuck is Keck Meck? we asked. After five minutes of back and forth, the translator said, "You know, Keck Meck and Lenin. KECK MECK." Holy fuck, these people's language has no ability to pronounce the "-arl" or the "-arx" in the name "Karl Marx", so they say "Keck Meck" when referring to him. God damn.

So there I sat, trying to come up with a non-offensive answer for this rich Communist, blotto out of his skull on expensive French cognac, in the middle of a shrimp plantation --- his poor workers sitting 10 meters away in the dirt, eating rice and vegetables on top of an upside-down rusty 55 gallon drum. Ah, the irony.

I made up some bullshit about Marx's writings having more to do with capitalism than socialism and how Lenin and Stalin messed it all up. I don't think my translator understood. The meeting ended with this wasted old codger cackling and singing Communist anthems and keeping the rhythm by beating on the table.