There is really little new that can be said about Beijing's air pollution, so I am generally reluctant to write about it. Nevertheless, I feel the last couple of days merit special notice. It has been bad. It has been bad in a way that the word "bad" just doesn't capture. The simple phrase "bad air", despite its elegance, leaves far too much open to interpretation. This is not unusual. Regular readers may recall that last June I had to invent the word "nastulous" [nast-yuh-luhs] to describe a particularly grim stretch of atmosphere because no existing vocabulary seemed to do it justice.
Again, however, I find that reality has outstripped even my dictionary-shattering lexicon, so I am forced to resort to metaphor.
How bad was the air the last two days? If it was a person it would have been a seedy, broad-shouldered thug, dressed in filthy leathers and reeking of grain alcohol, last-night's whorehouse and cheap cigarettes, that hauled you into an alley by your collar and beat you senseless with a lead pipe wrapped in duct tape, emptied your wallet, found your grandmother's address inside, went to her house and beat her senseless with the same pipe, cleared out her jewelry box and sodomized her golden-retriever on the way out the door before setting fire to her cottage, coming back to the alley and kicking you in the ribs one more time for good measure.
It was that bad. And even that may not quite capture the sheer evil of it.
The night before last I went to the gym to run on the treadmill but I could see the grunge in the air inside the gym swirling in cones under the spotlights. The idea of pulling any more of it through my lungs than absolutely necessary was appalling. I could achieve the same results by cutting my lungs out of my chest, rubbing them up and down on the street until they picked up a good coating of diesel soot, coal ash and cigarette butts, and then sewing them back in. So I gave up on the idea and went home to watch television instead, confident that it represented a net health gain.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
News from the soon-to-be-not-home front
The below is from Imagethief's China blog this week. I'm glad I'm not there.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Leaving town on the Reunifcation Express
I'm waiting for my bus to Quy Nhon, so I figured I'd post some journal excerpts.
Xmas eve in Saigon was quiet, so I resolved to try to make it to Nha Trang for Xmas night.
On Xmas morning I slept through my alarm, so when I woke up I was in a bit of a hurry to get things done. I raced to the Chinese embassy by motorcycle taxi, where I collected my passport and visa and paid in US dollars, the only currency they'd accept. You know you've been away from home for a while when your own country's currency looks and feels fake.
After the embassy I stopped at a Vietnamese bakery for a baguette, a pair of egg tarts, and what appeared to be some sort pistachio cake, I'm not sure. I then hurried back to the train booking office to buy a ticket on the Reunification Express to Nha Trang. It's a 7 hour ride, and the soft seat ticket was $10.
I tried to take pictures on the train, but the windows were dusty and they didn't turn out very well. So I wrote down a lot of observations and made some sketches:
The huge expanse of blue sky that I'd hoped to see in Saigon, but did not, is here, complete with fluffy white clouds.
There are legions of trees in rows going back from the train as far as I can see, and they've been continuing for miles. They're each tapped at human height, so I assume they're rubber or something.
There's a kid in an Adidas shirt hip-deep in a rice paddy. Rice paddies are the greenest things I've ever seen. As I observed in Thailand, I think there should be a Crayola color, Paddy Green, and it'd easily be the brightest crayon in the box.
The soil is a rich red color where it's bare of vegetation, but it's not bare very much. There are what seem to be baby banana trees in plantations. The trees are no more than 5 feet tall, but each has a cluster of yellow hanging from them. There are two types of houses here: shacks and porticoed, collonaded shacks. Some trees have brown leaves hanging from their branches and surrounding them on the ground. Winter in Vietnam? In other places the ground is a grey-pink color. I'm not sure if there's a pattern to the soil or what it means. (I later figured out that the brown trees and the grey soil are the result of burning to clear land. There were whole stretches of countryside on fire.)
Banana plantations stretch to the horizon after the hills pass and the ground flattens. The ground gets wavy again. Dotting the rows of banana trees are larger trees, standing like scarecrows or sentinels above the rest. The sentinel trees have fans of spiky leaves. I was already thinking about how tropical flora looked prehistoric, and these trees look like the back and tail of a stegosaurus. (My journal here has a sketch of the tree and a sketch of a stegosaurus).
Hills seem to come out of nowhere. This one is rocky, with patches of black. It's terraced about halfway up one side, but the other side is overgrown with vegetation. (Now there's a sketch of what the shacks look like, on stilts and the slanted metal roof also functioning as the back wall.) We cross a bridge and pass a much more gently rolling hill. This one isn't studded with rocks, and there's a patchwork of crops all the way up. White birds, in pairs, fly above the orchards. This is apparently more banana country than rice.
Actually, I'm not so sure those are bananas. The train slowed down, and now I can see that the yellow clusters are blowing in the wind, which bananas would be too heavy for. I think they may actually be coffee plants, but what do I know? I took a picture of one up close while the train was moving slowly, so I'll look it up later.
(At this point I figured out that there was a dining car with windows that opened, so I spent the hour before sunset hanging out there and taking photos. They also served excellent and cheap food in the car. I got roast chicken over rice, stir-fried bean sprouts, and soup all for $1.30.)
I keep seeing things that make me think about the war. The railroad I'm on was bombed, of course, and so was every bridge in the country, so each one we pass over is new. Every time I see someone missing a limb I wonder whether it happened during the war. Or maybe it was afterwards, as he was plowing his fields and triggered an unexploded shell or mine. Maybe it was just an accident, but it makes me think. On the motorbike today, at a stoplight, I looked over and saw a man with a heavily scarred face, and realized he would have been about 17 or 18 during the war.
And here, now, on this train, I see how beautiful this country is. As in Thailand, the colors seem so intense. Maybe they actually are more intense, something about the sunlight near the equator. But I don't really have words to describe the colors here, so hopefully some of the pictures I took will convey them.
The train arrived in Nha Trang about 2 minutes late, much to the credit of the Vietnamese train system. I actually only knew it was my stop because of the timing- there was no other indication. I decided to hoof it down to the backpacker area from the train station. I had planned to take a motorbike taxi, but they annoyed me as I walked out of the station, so I kept going. It's funny how that works. I'm so anti-tout and anti-heckling that even when I want the service they're offering, I'm still put off by it.
Xmas eve in Saigon was quiet, so I resolved to try to make it to Nha Trang for Xmas night.
On Xmas morning I slept through my alarm, so when I woke up I was in a bit of a hurry to get things done. I raced to the Chinese embassy by motorcycle taxi, where I collected my passport and visa and paid in US dollars, the only currency they'd accept. You know you've been away from home for a while when your own country's currency looks and feels fake.
After the embassy I stopped at a Vietnamese bakery for a baguette, a pair of egg tarts, and what appeared to be some sort pistachio cake, I'm not sure. I then hurried back to the train booking office to buy a ticket on the Reunification Express to Nha Trang. It's a 7 hour ride, and the soft seat ticket was $10.
I tried to take pictures on the train, but the windows were dusty and they didn't turn out very well. So I wrote down a lot of observations and made some sketches:
The huge expanse of blue sky that I'd hoped to see in Saigon, but did not, is here, complete with fluffy white clouds.
There are legions of trees in rows going back from the train as far as I can see, and they've been continuing for miles. They're each tapped at human height, so I assume they're rubber or something.
There's a kid in an Adidas shirt hip-deep in a rice paddy. Rice paddies are the greenest things I've ever seen. As I observed in Thailand, I think there should be a Crayola color, Paddy Green, and it'd easily be the brightest crayon in the box.
The soil is a rich red color where it's bare of vegetation, but it's not bare very much. There are what seem to be baby banana trees in plantations. The trees are no more than 5 feet tall, but each has a cluster of yellow hanging from them. There are two types of houses here: shacks and porticoed, collonaded shacks. Some trees have brown leaves hanging from their branches and surrounding them on the ground. Winter in Vietnam? In other places the ground is a grey-pink color. I'm not sure if there's a pattern to the soil or what it means. (I later figured out that the brown trees and the grey soil are the result of burning to clear land. There were whole stretches of countryside on fire.)
Banana plantations stretch to the horizon after the hills pass and the ground flattens. The ground gets wavy again. Dotting the rows of banana trees are larger trees, standing like scarecrows or sentinels above the rest. The sentinel trees have fans of spiky leaves. I was already thinking about how tropical flora looked prehistoric, and these trees look like the back and tail of a stegosaurus. (My journal here has a sketch of the tree and a sketch of a stegosaurus).
Hills seem to come out of nowhere. This one is rocky, with patches of black. It's terraced about halfway up one side, but the other side is overgrown with vegetation. (Now there's a sketch of what the shacks look like, on stilts and the slanted metal roof also functioning as the back wall.) We cross a bridge and pass a much more gently rolling hill. This one isn't studded with rocks, and there's a patchwork of crops all the way up. White birds, in pairs, fly above the orchards. This is apparently more banana country than rice.
Actually, I'm not so sure those are bananas. The train slowed down, and now I can see that the yellow clusters are blowing in the wind, which bananas would be too heavy for. I think they may actually be coffee plants, but what do I know? I took a picture of one up close while the train was moving slowly, so I'll look it up later.
(At this point I figured out that there was a dining car with windows that opened, so I spent the hour before sunset hanging out there and taking photos. They also served excellent and cheap food in the car. I got roast chicken over rice, stir-fried bean sprouts, and soup all for $1.30.)
I keep seeing things that make me think about the war. The railroad I'm on was bombed, of course, and so was every bridge in the country, so each one we pass over is new. Every time I see someone missing a limb I wonder whether it happened during the war. Or maybe it was afterwards, as he was plowing his fields and triggered an unexploded shell or mine. Maybe it was just an accident, but it makes me think. On the motorbike today, at a stoplight, I looked over and saw a man with a heavily scarred face, and realized he would have been about 17 or 18 during the war.
And here, now, on this train, I see how beautiful this country is. As in Thailand, the colors seem so intense. Maybe they actually are more intense, something about the sunlight near the equator. But I don't really have words to describe the colors here, so hopefully some of the pictures I took will convey them.
The train arrived in Nha Trang about 2 minutes late, much to the credit of the Vietnamese train system. I actually only knew it was my stop because of the timing- there was no other indication. I decided to hoof it down to the backpacker area from the train station. I had planned to take a motorbike taxi, but they annoyed me as I walked out of the station, so I kept going. It's funny how that works. I'm so anti-tout and anti-heckling that even when I want the service they're offering, I'm still put off by it.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas in Saigon
The town is heavily decorated for Christmas, and a lot of retail staff are wearing Santa hats. Santa hats here and in China are anemic- they're a pale red, and not very fluffy. Neon and flashing lights seem to be a part of xmas here, with light up reindeer and some Santa hats that look like the Vegas strip.
I went to the Cha Tam church today, where the Catholic president Diem hid during the coup against him. He finally surrendered to the rebels, who sent an APC to fetch him at the church. By the time the APC returned to the center of town, Diem and his brother had been shot by the soldiers and their bodies stabbed. The flavor of Christianity practiced at Cha Tam also seems to rely on neon. Baby Jesus in the nativity scenes (yes, there were many) tended to be lit up like a bar or a brothel. A couple of my favorites- The one with fake snow piled up around the tropical foliage of Vietnam. Guys, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They don't have snow there, either, so you can actually be more authentic than us Western types. My other favorite scene seemed to be built into a giant mound of aluminum foil or mylar. Astronaut Jesus, delivered to this world in an asteroid that cracked open on impact, explains some things. The star the kings followed? Burn-up on atmospheric entry. Virgin birth? Artificial insemination by the Zorn Medical School of Mars graduating class as a practical joke.
I also went to 7 pagodas today, and a mosque. The pagodas were all very different. Some were dark and quiet and everyone seemed respectful. Others were bright and packed with noisy people and their children. The decorations were aways ornate, but some pagodas seemed to have more taste than others, at least as far as the bright colors and fake gold goes.
At the Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda, which was dimly lit and felt suitably sacred, I prayed for people at home. I bought a prayer card and wrote the names of everyone I could think of who's traveling soon, the idea being that the horse god Quan Cong is supposed to protect people on journeys. You hang the prayer card on a spiral of incense several feet tall, then the attendant holds the spiral up while you light it at the bottom with a candle. The attendant uses a hooked pole to hang the spiral from cords that cross the ceiling, along with dozens of other spirals. Then you rub the horse statue, ring the bell around its neck, drop some more money into the box, and you've purchased travel insurance from the gods. Gongs were ringing quietly from the next room when I touched the horse, so I figure we're safe in our journeys. Or we're all going to die, one of the two.
This evening I went back to the coffee shop where I've been getting my morning cappuccino (oddly cheaper than their black coffee, thus the extravagance). They have a small theater on their 3rd floor where they screen movies. They show a combination of Vietnam-themed classics and new releases. I came for I Am Legend, which they seemed to already have the pirated DVD screener version for. There's couch seating, the movie's free (not even a mandatory purchase), the room is air conditioned, there's a call button on your table for service, and the video and sound were pretty good, even if they were a bit out of synch with each other by the end. I Am Legend was pretty good, but getting to watch it like that was cooler.
So I haven't decided what I'm doing for xmas eve and day. If there seems like there's going to be a good party, I might stay out late tonight. Otherwise I'll go to bed early to get to the Chinese embassy to collect my passport first thing. I'm either leaving for Nha Trang tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening, depending on how cooperative the ticketing people are and what happens tonight. I wouldn't mind sleeping part of the day on a train, then spending xmas evening partying at a bar on the beach. Saigon's cool enough, but I'm ready for a change of scenery.
I've been eating great food, but describing it without being able to include pictures seems silly. But it's good. More about it later.
I went to the Cha Tam church today, where the Catholic president Diem hid during the coup against him. He finally surrendered to the rebels, who sent an APC to fetch him at the church. By the time the APC returned to the center of town, Diem and his brother had been shot by the soldiers and their bodies stabbed. The flavor of Christianity practiced at Cha Tam also seems to rely on neon. Baby Jesus in the nativity scenes (yes, there were many) tended to be lit up like a bar or a brothel. A couple of my favorites- The one with fake snow piled up around the tropical foliage of Vietnam. Guys, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They don't have snow there, either, so you can actually be more authentic than us Western types. My other favorite scene seemed to be built into a giant mound of aluminum foil or mylar. Astronaut Jesus, delivered to this world in an asteroid that cracked open on impact, explains some things. The star the kings followed? Burn-up on atmospheric entry. Virgin birth? Artificial insemination by the Zorn Medical School of Mars graduating class as a practical joke.
I also went to 7 pagodas today, and a mosque. The pagodas were all very different. Some were dark and quiet and everyone seemed respectful. Others were bright and packed with noisy people and their children. The decorations were aways ornate, but some pagodas seemed to have more taste than others, at least as far as the bright colors and fake gold goes.
At the Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda, which was dimly lit and felt suitably sacred, I prayed for people at home. I bought a prayer card and wrote the names of everyone I could think of who's traveling soon, the idea being that the horse god Quan Cong is supposed to protect people on journeys. You hang the prayer card on a spiral of incense several feet tall, then the attendant holds the spiral up while you light it at the bottom with a candle. The attendant uses a hooked pole to hang the spiral from cords that cross the ceiling, along with dozens of other spirals. Then you rub the horse statue, ring the bell around its neck, drop some more money into the box, and you've purchased travel insurance from the gods. Gongs were ringing quietly from the next room when I touched the horse, so I figure we're safe in our journeys. Or we're all going to die, one of the two.
This evening I went back to the coffee shop where I've been getting my morning cappuccino (oddly cheaper than their black coffee, thus the extravagance). They have a small theater on their 3rd floor where they screen movies. They show a combination of Vietnam-themed classics and new releases. I came for I Am Legend, which they seemed to already have the pirated DVD screener version for. There's couch seating, the movie's free (not even a mandatory purchase), the room is air conditioned, there's a call button on your table for service, and the video and sound were pretty good, even if they were a bit out of synch with each other by the end. I Am Legend was pretty good, but getting to watch it like that was cooler.
So I haven't decided what I'm doing for xmas eve and day. If there seems like there's going to be a good party, I might stay out late tonight. Otherwise I'll go to bed early to get to the Chinese embassy to collect my passport first thing. I'm either leaving for Nha Trang tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening, depending on how cooperative the ticketing people are and what happens tonight. I wouldn't mind sleeping part of the day on a train, then spending xmas evening partying at a bar on the beach. Saigon's cool enough, but I'm ready for a change of scenery.
I've been eating great food, but describing it without being able to include pictures seems silly. But it's good. More about it later.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Good Morning, Vietnam
I wanted a break from the museums and hiking, and I'm still recovering from last night's excesses at a bar, so I figured I'd sit down and talk about what I've been doing. I'm just going to copy things straight from my journal.
12/19/07
I'm sitting at gate 50 at the Beijing airport. Because, I suppose, my flight to Saigon has a stop in Nanning, China, we've been exiled to this single-gate area. There's a restroom, but that's it- no food, no water, nothing. Apparently I was supposed to be able to figure out to come here based on my boarding pass, but I tried to go through customs and was sent back from whence I came with a shaky explanation that what I was looking for was "S–Channel", which of course with the accent and the utter lack of inherent meaning in the phrase, was completely unintelligible to me. But I'm here in my purgatory, awaiting a chance to sit in an even more cramped China Air flight. A number of the Shanghainese folk sitting near me got trays of food as part of their flight to Shanghai, so I got the treat of listening to them smack their way through their meal. Now they're belching loudly. I'm so ready to be out of this country.
12/20/07
I’m sitting in the Jade Emperor Pagoda right now. It’s immediately off a busy street, but as soon as you step through the gate it’s noticeably calmer.
Last night at SGN airport was an adventure. First, the immigration guy gave me a hard time because I hadn’t indicated where I’d be staying in Vietnam on my form. It took some negotiation before he let me in without the address of a hotel. Then, once out of the customs area, I was shocked to find that there were no ATMs at the terminal. I had also screwed up the time change in my planning, making staying at the airport until morning 2-hours on hard chairs less appealing. I figured I’d get a cabbie to take me to a bank in town, but when I offered them the rate suggested in the Lonely Planet they told me that I should take the bus. I finally walked down the street to the domestic terminal, an open-air deal, and found a single ATM. Armed with Vietnam Dong, I managed to convince a cabbie to accept them instead of the requested US dollars, and to only overcharge me 30%.
I’m now at Tapiocup, a bubble tea joint. The Jade Emperor Pagoda was most interesting to me as an oasis in the city. In terms of architecture and content it doesn’t really stand up to Chinese temples in China. So after a few minutes sitting, then looking around, I moved on to the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum. It, along with most everything else right now, is closed for the afternoon siesta, so I’m killing time here.
So, back to last night, the taxi dropped me off on Pham Ngu Lao street, the backpacker ghetto. Every guesthouse in the Lonely Planet had its gate closed for the night when I got there at 3AM, and many of the other places were closed or full up. So I wandered seedy alleys for a while, carrying my bags, passport, cash, bank card, and an ATM statement that rather shockingly listed my remaining available balance of 62 million Dong. Target, much? I finally found a guesthouse with an 8-dollar room and took it. The room was on the main backpacker drag, on the 4th floor, and while the guesthouses were closed, the bars and noodle stalls were in full, noisy swing until the morning traffic sounds took over. I didn’t get to sleep until 6, but I blame my fucked-up sleep schedule more than the street sounds.
I got up at 9, showered, paid, and went out with my stuff to find a wherever I was going to spend the night. I went to the places in the Lonely Planet, but they were either fully-booked or quoting $15 a night (again, in dollars). I finally settled on one for $12 a night, probably not worth the savings for the quality drop, but I was in a hurry to get to the Chinese embassy before the visa office closed. This place, the Yellow House Hotel, had $5 a night dorm beds, which I would have gladly taken had there been a locker for my backpack during the day. Ah well.
I’m back in the room now. After bubble tea and the end of the siesta I went to the history museum. I have little interest in pottery and metal-age artifacts, but it was still worth the $1 entrance fee. One thing that struck me reading the descriptions was just how much of Vietnamese history has been spent fighting off aggressors with imperial aspirations- the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Siamese, the Mongols, the French, and finally the US. I didn’t realize, though I’m certain I’ve read about it, just how ridiculous our involvement here was. I mean, one can argue about the efficacy of containment, and even the logic of the doctrine, but I didn’t realize just how undemocratic our anti-communist actions had been. The North-South division was supposed to be a temporary of the Geneva peace accord that ended French occupation. There were supposed to have been nation-wide elections, but the US killed them because our man Diem was going to lose to Ho Chi Minh. Not to mention the parceling out of land that succeeded WW2, when the Japanese in Vietnam surrendered to the British in the South and the Kuomintang in the North, but certainly not to the Vietnamese.
12/21/07
Last night I forgot to mention the visa business. I took a ‘xe om’ to the embassy. ‘Xe om’ is literally ‘motorcycle hug’. I think. It seems to be a convenient was to travel if you’re alone. That was the first time I’ve ridden on a motorcycle, as far as I can remember. It was also my first time in Saigon traffic during the day, so the experience was pretty much terrifying. It’s possible, though I’m not certain, that the Vietnamese use their horns more than the Chinese, but I’ve yet to see Vietnamese at a stop light laying into them.
At the Chinese embassy the forms were easy. We spoke a combination of Chinese and English (I can never remember the word for ‘visa’ in Chinese, though I know how to write it). The only strange thing was that they don’t take RMB or Vietnamese Dong, only USD, so I’ll have to change some before collecting my passport on xmas morning.
So now I’m at Fanny’s, an ice cream place with a street-side brick patio, having just finished my tiny scoop of cinnamon ice cream. Earlier I went to the Ben Thanh market where I bought [gifts redacted so as to remain a surprise]. I went to the HCM City Fine Arts Museum, which is in a beautiful, yellow, colonial building with impressively tiled floors. The art wasn’t very interesting, with the exception of some propaganda pieces, but the setting was nice. I did like one painting of “Uncle Ho with the hill people”. Ho Chi Minh was literally twice the height of anyone else in the painting. Mao’s height is often exaggerated in the Chinese equivalents, but he’s infrequently a giant on that scale. I’ve also been asking around about engraved zippo lighters. They say “Vietnam”, a location, and a date (e.g., Danang 68-69). The back has a bit of platoon wisdom, like “When the power of love is stronger than the love of power the world will know peace”, and some have a metal unit seal glued on. I bought 2 of them when I found a street stall that quoted $3 up front, whereas most quotes had been $10. I’ll probably find a couple more that have a good combination of seal, wisdom, and a recognizable location. I don’t know who they’ll be gifts for, but I’ll figure it out. I also skipped the Lonely Planet recommendations for lunch and just stopped at a random street stall for a grilled pork chop over rice, a bowl of soup with an unidentifiable green vegetable, and an iced tea. I ordered by pointing and paid by holding up fingers, but if they overcharged me it was still only $1.50, under the $2 I’d figured.
I’m at the War Remnants Museum right now. Outside is an assortment of US military hardware, inside photos, text, and infantry weapons. I started by looking at the anti-personnel mines, which are gruesome enough. The next section was on Agent Orange and dioxin poisoning and its teratogenic and mutagenic effects. It showed photos both of American servicemen victims and Vietnamese victims, and quoted a call for the US government to morally and monetarily compensate Vietnamese poisoned, as they did with US veterans by apologizing and giving a payout. At this point I was thinking about how insane it was to dump tons of chemicals we didn’t understand all over a country, but I suppose science has always advanced through experiments in killing. It was when I got to the photos and descriptions of torture and murder that I really started to be bothered. Looking at deformed babies and fetuses in jars of formaldehyde is creepy, but I can at least rationalize the actions that led to them with ignorance. How a man who’d become senator, Bob Kerrey, had led a SEAL time gutted children and slit the throats of old people in bed, that I couldn’t understand. But most chilling, I think, were a series of photos of terrified people, women, children, and the elderly, and the descriptions by the journalist photographers of how they’d heard the shots of the M16s as they’d walked away, right after taking the pictures. Knowing that you were looking at someone defenseless, in the last moments before their life was needlessly ended by Americans looking them right in their eyes, was disturbing. I don’t know whether there is an order to visit the exhibits, and I don’t know whether I followed it, as the museum is undergoing renovations. The last thing I saw, though, was the beginning of the US Declaration of Independence. After all the images I looked at, seeing that shook me up the most. The number of tourists smiling their way through the exhibits wasn’t far off.
12/19/07
I'm sitting at gate 50 at the Beijing airport. Because, I suppose, my flight to Saigon has a stop in Nanning, China, we've been exiled to this single-gate area. There's a restroom, but that's it- no food, no water, nothing. Apparently I was supposed to be able to figure out to come here based on my boarding pass, but I tried to go through customs and was sent back from whence I came with a shaky explanation that what I was looking for was "S–Channel", which of course with the accent and the utter lack of inherent meaning in the phrase, was completely unintelligible to me. But I'm here in my purgatory, awaiting a chance to sit in an even more cramped China Air flight. A number of the Shanghainese folk sitting near me got trays of food as part of their flight to Shanghai, so I got the treat of listening to them smack their way through their meal. Now they're belching loudly. I'm so ready to be out of this country.
12/20/07
I’m sitting in the Jade Emperor Pagoda right now. It’s immediately off a busy street, but as soon as you step through the gate it’s noticeably calmer.
Last night at SGN airport was an adventure. First, the immigration guy gave me a hard time because I hadn’t indicated where I’d be staying in Vietnam on my form. It took some negotiation before he let me in without the address of a hotel. Then, once out of the customs area, I was shocked to find that there were no ATMs at the terminal. I had also screwed up the time change in my planning, making staying at the airport until morning 2-hours on hard chairs less appealing. I figured I’d get a cabbie to take me to a bank in town, but when I offered them the rate suggested in the Lonely Planet they told me that I should take the bus. I finally walked down the street to the domestic terminal, an open-air deal, and found a single ATM. Armed with Vietnam Dong, I managed to convince a cabbie to accept them instead of the requested US dollars, and to only overcharge me 30%.
I’m now at Tapiocup, a bubble tea joint. The Jade Emperor Pagoda was most interesting to me as an oasis in the city. In terms of architecture and content it doesn’t really stand up to Chinese temples in China. So after a few minutes sitting, then looking around, I moved on to the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum. It, along with most everything else right now, is closed for the afternoon siesta, so I’m killing time here.
So, back to last night, the taxi dropped me off on Pham Ngu Lao street, the backpacker ghetto. Every guesthouse in the Lonely Planet had its gate closed for the night when I got there at 3AM, and many of the other places were closed or full up. So I wandered seedy alleys for a while, carrying my bags, passport, cash, bank card, and an ATM statement that rather shockingly listed my remaining available balance of 62 million Dong. Target, much? I finally found a guesthouse with an 8-dollar room and took it. The room was on the main backpacker drag, on the 4th floor, and while the guesthouses were closed, the bars and noodle stalls were in full, noisy swing until the morning traffic sounds took over. I didn’t get to sleep until 6, but I blame my fucked-up sleep schedule more than the street sounds.
I got up at 9, showered, paid, and went out with my stuff to find a wherever I was going to spend the night. I went to the places in the Lonely Planet, but they were either fully-booked or quoting $15 a night (again, in dollars). I finally settled on one for $12 a night, probably not worth the savings for the quality drop, but I was in a hurry to get to the Chinese embassy before the visa office closed. This place, the Yellow House Hotel, had $5 a night dorm beds, which I would have gladly taken had there been a locker for my backpack during the day. Ah well.
I’m back in the room now. After bubble tea and the end of the siesta I went to the history museum. I have little interest in pottery and metal-age artifacts, but it was still worth the $1 entrance fee. One thing that struck me reading the descriptions was just how much of Vietnamese history has been spent fighting off aggressors with imperial aspirations- the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Siamese, the Mongols, the French, and finally the US. I didn’t realize, though I’m certain I’ve read about it, just how ridiculous our involvement here was. I mean, one can argue about the efficacy of containment, and even the logic of the doctrine, but I didn’t realize just how undemocratic our anti-communist actions had been. The North-South division was supposed to be a temporary of the Geneva peace accord that ended French occupation. There were supposed to have been nation-wide elections, but the US killed them because our man Diem was going to lose to Ho Chi Minh. Not to mention the parceling out of land that succeeded WW2, when the Japanese in Vietnam surrendered to the British in the South and the Kuomintang in the North, but certainly not to the Vietnamese.
12/21/07
Last night I forgot to mention the visa business. I took a ‘xe om’ to the embassy. ‘Xe om’ is literally ‘motorcycle hug’. I think. It seems to be a convenient was to travel if you’re alone. That was the first time I’ve ridden on a motorcycle, as far as I can remember. It was also my first time in Saigon traffic during the day, so the experience was pretty much terrifying. It’s possible, though I’m not certain, that the Vietnamese use their horns more than the Chinese, but I’ve yet to see Vietnamese at a stop light laying into them.
At the Chinese embassy the forms were easy. We spoke a combination of Chinese and English (I can never remember the word for ‘visa’ in Chinese, though I know how to write it). The only strange thing was that they don’t take RMB or Vietnamese Dong, only USD, so I’ll have to change some before collecting my passport on xmas morning.
So now I’m at Fanny’s, an ice cream place with a street-side brick patio, having just finished my tiny scoop of cinnamon ice cream. Earlier I went to the Ben Thanh market where I bought [gifts redacted so as to remain a surprise]. I went to the HCM City Fine Arts Museum, which is in a beautiful, yellow, colonial building with impressively tiled floors. The art wasn’t very interesting, with the exception of some propaganda pieces, but the setting was nice. I did like one painting of “Uncle Ho with the hill people”. Ho Chi Minh was literally twice the height of anyone else in the painting. Mao’s height is often exaggerated in the Chinese equivalents, but he’s infrequently a giant on that scale. I’ve also been asking around about engraved zippo lighters. They say “Vietnam”, a location, and a date (e.g., Danang 68-69). The back has a bit of platoon wisdom, like “When the power of love is stronger than the love of power the world will know peace”, and some have a metal unit seal glued on. I bought 2 of them when I found a street stall that quoted $3 up front, whereas most quotes had been $10. I’ll probably find a couple more that have a good combination of seal, wisdom, and a recognizable location. I don’t know who they’ll be gifts for, but I’ll figure it out. I also skipped the Lonely Planet recommendations for lunch and just stopped at a random street stall for a grilled pork chop over rice, a bowl of soup with an unidentifiable green vegetable, and an iced tea. I ordered by pointing and paid by holding up fingers, but if they overcharged me it was still only $1.50, under the $2 I’d figured.
I’m at the War Remnants Museum right now. Outside is an assortment of US military hardware, inside photos, text, and infantry weapons. I started by looking at the anti-personnel mines, which are gruesome enough. The next section was on Agent Orange and dioxin poisoning and its teratogenic and mutagenic effects. It showed photos both of American servicemen victims and Vietnamese victims, and quoted a call for the US government to morally and monetarily compensate Vietnamese poisoned, as they did with US veterans by apologizing and giving a payout. At this point I was thinking about how insane it was to dump tons of chemicals we didn’t understand all over a country, but I suppose science has always advanced through experiments in killing. It was when I got to the photos and descriptions of torture and murder that I really started to be bothered. Looking at deformed babies and fetuses in jars of formaldehyde is creepy, but I can at least rationalize the actions that led to them with ignorance. How a man who’d become senator, Bob Kerrey, had led a SEAL time gutted children and slit the throats of old people in bed, that I couldn’t understand. But most chilling, I think, were a series of photos of terrified people, women, children, and the elderly, and the descriptions by the journalist photographers of how they’d heard the shots of the M16s as they’d walked away, right after taking the pictures. Knowing that you were looking at someone defenseless, in the last moments before their life was needlessly ended by Americans looking them right in their eyes, was disturbing. I don’t know whether there is an order to visit the exhibits, and I don’t know whether I followed it, as the museum is undergoing renovations. The last thing I saw, though, was the beginning of the US Declaration of Independence. After all the images I looked at, seeing that shook me up the most. The number of tourists smiling their way through the exhibits wasn’t far off.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Pandas and jackhammers
I don't have much to say about this, but I thought it was interesting.
The city of Beijing just opened an elevated tunnel. The goal is to ease traffic that snarls up as cars try to move between the West second and third ring road. This sounds perfectly normal, and much like the bypass any other city might build.
The difference is that this tunnel passes over the Beijing City Zoo, and it's supposedly soundproofed to protect the animals. I haven't been to the zoo. Scot hasn't been to this one, either, but he says that zoos in China are the most appalling he's seen. This particular zoo is home to China's premier panda exhibit, however, so I hope that the high profile keeps them honest. I'm curious whether the efforts to soundproof the tunnel will pay off, but I wonder more about what the animals went through while they were building the damn thing.
"The" way vs. "A" way
From James Fallows's (Atlantic Monthly writer) blog:
My coworker James lives in one of the fancy expat apartments near my place. He pays about 10x as much for his rent, and the apartment IS much nicer than mine. He says he likes renting there, but he'd hate to own it. The power outlet covers are on at slight angles, the hardwood floor isn't sealed, the faucets wobble, etc. Whoever actually bought the apartment (presumably prepaid for it) got a seriously sub-standard construction job, in what's one of the nicer places in the city. I don't know how much of it's a lack of pride in one's work and how much of it's the fact that it was built by untrained migrant laborers.
This is not a scientific comparison, but when i saw one scene I remembered another.
This is the recent scene: yesterday afternoon, Naha airport, Okinawa, Japan. Line crew gassing up a Cirrus SR22:
Details to notice below: crew identically dressed in company uniform; complete safety gear -- hardhats, reflective chest straps with procedural checklist clipped on, puffy protective cuff to shield the plane's wing from damage. It's hard to see in the picture, but even the boots are part of the uniform: black, with red laces, and company logos on the back. Impossible to see in the picture: the coordinated shout and semi-bow toward the plane when the fueling was done.
Now, the scene I remembered and mentioned last year: Refueling the same kind of plane in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, China.
With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.
(Yeah yeah yeah, there are exceptions: perfectionist operations in China, loosey-goosey ones in Japan. Still.)
At the moment, I am feeling positive toward both approaches. The emphasis on the right way of doing things is re-surprising on each encounter with Japan. And the determination to do things in China, no matter what, commands respect, despite the obvious complications and problems it creates.
But when it comes to refueling the plane....
My coworker James lives in one of the fancy expat apartments near my place. He pays about 10x as much for his rent, and the apartment IS much nicer than mine. He says he likes renting there, but he'd hate to own it. The power outlet covers are on at slight angles, the hardwood floor isn't sealed, the faucets wobble, etc. Whoever actually bought the apartment (presumably prepaid for it) got a seriously sub-standard construction job, in what's one of the nicer places in the city. I don't know how much of it's a lack of pride in one's work and how much of it's the fact that it was built by untrained migrant laborers.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Visitors from the land past the setting sun
Daria and Christian visited recently. Daria was here to see me, and Christian was in town trying to renew his visa. We crammed into the apartment for a few days, and got some good touristing in. I've let too much time pass to get into detailing what all we did, but I posted pictures.
There's the new Strangeness page, a page for our trip to the 798 Art District in a vacated weapons factory, two separate pages for stuff Daria and I saw, and one for when Daria and Christian were both around.
There's the new Strangeness page, a page for our trip to the 798 Art District in a vacated weapons factory, two separate pages for stuff Daria and I saw, and one for when Daria and Christian were both around.
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