Ghosts from the Past

There are ways Southeast Asia shows how the history of colonialism and Asian culture and infrastructure intersect, and how they are still intersecting.

I find it hopeful that barbarous practices like ethnic apartheid and unpaid labor brought about by European powers have not only left sadness or trauma to the locals.

Some amazing fusion products have also been created, from infrastructure to cuisine.

The Dutch occupation of Indonesia led to a style of fusion cooking and tradition that combined Indonesian foods and spices with Dutch foods and influences.

Colonialism brought cheese, butter, margarine, bread, pancakes, fruit jams, and many other things to Indonesia.

Many Indonesian cakes and cookies can trace their origins to the Dutch influences such as kue bolu (tart), pandan cake, lapis legit (spekkoek), klappertaart (coconut tart) and kaasstengals (cheese cookies).

A popular cake known in Indonesia as kue cubit, which is commonly sold in front of busy marketplaces and schools, is believed to be derived from Danish poffertjes.

This fusion has also followed the Dutch home. The Dutch have an abundance of Indonesian dishes and restaurants, more than anywhere else outside of Indonesia.

Some Dutch consider many Indonesian dishes a part of Dutch cuisine, in fact.

The Countess C. van Limburg Stirum writes in her book “The Art of Dutch Cooking” (1962): here exist countless Indonesian dishes, some of which take hours to prepare; but a few easy ones have become so popular that they can be regarded as “national dishes”.

Some of those commonplace dishes include nasi goreng (fried rice), pisang goreng (fried bananas), lumpia goreng (fried spring rolls) and satay (grilled skewered meat).

Today, most towns in the Netherlands have an Indonesian restaurant and shop.

Then, there is the Vietnamese Bahn Mi Sandwich. Prior to the French occupation of Vietnam, Vietnamese cuisine did not include baguettes. The French brought the baguette and other types of bread.

They also required the Vietnamese who cooked for them to provide only the best cuts of meat to the French. This left only scraps for the locals.

Yet, with these meat scraps, the Vietnamese would marinate the tough cuts in Vietnamese spices to make them soft and easy to chew. With the discarded organs, they might make pate.

Using their local veggies and herbs such as cucumber, carrot and cilantro, they would create a Vietnamese style sandwich using Vietnamese meat, pate, and vegetables in the center of a French baguette.

This is how the Bahn Mi came to be, out of oppression and raised flour.

The French in Vietnam spared no expense in building highly effective and expensive infrastructure including roads in and around the areas of Vietnam they preferred, whether for business, resources or their own holiday trips.

For that reason, the main Post Office in Ho Chi Minh City is a work of European architecture comparable to a Victorian age cathedral in the United Kingdom.

Many roads built by the French are still in use today. Many buildings and entire holiday getaway locations are still in use today. These are roads and buildings the French had never intended to “gift” to the Vietnamese, but they had little choice once the Vietnamese decided they’d had enough.

There is a museum in Ho Chi Mihn City known as the American War Museum. An American would understand this museum to be a Vietnam War Museum. Traveling to places like this museum immediately changes a traveler’s perspective, by putting them in the shoes - and the country - of the “other”.

For Vietnamese, who did not initiate the so-called Vietnam War in the 1960s (but who did finish it in the 1970s), the war belonged to America. It was obviously the American War.

At this museum, you can see American tanks, helicopters, trucks, and various armaments left behind when the US exited Vietnam. (When they left, they left in a hurry).

As an American, I felt sad to see these things, and surprised that typical Vietnamese citizens don’t hold a grudge. They’re some of the friendliest people in the world, in fact.

Instead, they brought all this war memorabilia together and labeled it in the best way they understood from their perspective. This has allowed me to have a more personal and nuanced perspective.

It has allowed both of us to look into the future with more hope.

The knowledge that a society can find use from formerly oppressive buildings, from roads used to transport the resources from their forced labor to roads that have led to Vietnam becoming one of Asia’s strongest economies, should give underdogs hope.

Moreover, food alchemized from scraps and ancestral pain is a special type of resilient and fulfilling cuisine. You could say it’s delicious.

Celeste Vale, Bali

August 7, 2026