Down and Out In Saigon

Down and Out in Saigon Southeast Asia, and Mexico has always attracted A certain type of westerner The down and out On a down word spiral Why? Relatively cheap to live Lots of part-time gigs Teaching English Or other things Cheap Booze, drugs, sex Readily available Places to stay Dirt cheap And no one needs To sleep outdoors Easy to disappear Into the foreigner's backpackers ghettos And escape From whatever you are running from The locals are somewhat tolerant The police usually look the other way And there are lots of people In your shoes I was surprised to find That Saigon has become The latest place For the down and outer crowd In Bangkok, one sees them a lot In Cambodia as well In the Philippines In Nepal And south of the border In Mexico as well and Eastern Europe and Latin America In India not so much In Japan and Korea Just too damn expensive And too cold to be outdoors Back in the day I used to work The citizen services gig And saw lots of the down and outer set The old blues song comes to mind No one remembers you When you are down and out And in the States Being down and out Means living on the mean streets As it is very difficult To live with almost no money And the various side hustles Don’t give you much money Unless you are dealing drugs And teaching ESL Is not an option other hustles are difficult and begging gets one arrested Food is expensive Transportation is expensive Booze and drugs expensive Rent is prohibitive Commercial sex is expensive And no one loves you If you are down and out No one knows your name You are just another homeless bum Invisible to all As you try to make do Much better to be down and out In Southeast Asia Than on the mean streets Of the USA