Indian motels and Cambodian doughnut shops

Its common for different immigrant groups to find particular niches when they come to the States. For example, my Grandpa George, got into the garment business in New York after his family moved here from Hungary, a common career path for European Jews in the early 20th Century. The Greek diner, Italian deli, Chinese laundry, Irish police officer, etc. have become archetypes.

In our recent travels, a couple of relatively new business models have been very evident. Logistics or inclement weather have caused us to stay at several cheap, old-fashioned motels along the way and every single one has been owned by recent immigrants from India. This has almost always been the case on my other bike trips in the Upper Midwest. I've read on the web that most of these folks come from the state of Gujarat in western India.

These kind of motels are never fancy but they're usually serviceable and clean and never cost more than $49 a night. I'm typing this from the Vanguard Motel in Navasota, TX, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, taking advantage of the free internet.

We get very excited to find doughnut shops along the way where we can can warm up and talk with locals. The two we've been to so far, in Kirbyville and Coldspring, TX, were both owned by immigrants from Cambodia. I guessed this because both shops, the Donut Palace and A Plus Donuts, both displayed paintings of the famous Angor Wat temple.

At the second shop I asked the owners, a very young couple whose small daughter had just completed a tantrum in the back of the store, if they were in fact from Cambodia, and they said they were. The husband, a very friendly guy who seemed to be fresh out of high school and spoke much more English than his wife, told me have had lived a few different places in the US working at donut shops and had recently moved to Coldspring to open this shop.

I told them about the band Dengue Fever from California, which plays songs inspired by '60s Cambodian rock and roll, sung in Cambodian and asked how business was. The husband said sales were brisk. "Well, I guess nobody ever went broke in the doughnut business," I said. "People really like to eat doughnuts."