I woke up on 1/8 early to go on a day tour of the Mekong Delta. I finally got a Vietnamese breakfast sandwich- a baguette with a fried egg, cucumber, tomato, cilantro, and chilli sauce. I love the French-Asia fusion stuff.
I slept on the bus to Cai Be, where we got on a 20-seat motor boat and started to cruise. The water was opaque, choppy, and brown, and covered with vegetation that the river had ripped from the shores. In places the river seemed more like a lake, the shores barely visible in the distance, but soon we turned into an offshoot off the river's main course. In slowly became narrower and more shallow. Villagers in groups fished by standing the the water with a huge net rigged with plastic bottles for flotation, manually gathering the thing up. The process took 10 people 10 minutes, and in the end netted only 2 small fish.
We got off the boat to visit a candy-making factory. They pressed coconut juice from the meat, recycling the pulp as fertilizer. The juice was boiled down to a caramel on a fire fueled by rice husks and nut shells, then mixed with chocolate and poured into hand-made wooden channels to cool and harden. Apparently they also use banana leaf and durian as flavorings, and do plain coconut candy, but the chocolate is for the foreigners, who prefer it. Besides the woman stirring the coconut caramel, there were 3 women at the candy-manufacturing table. One woman pulled strips of hardened candy out of the channels, cutting them with a giant cleaver. Another wrapped them in rice paper, apparently necessary in the humidity, and the 3rd wrapped the rice paper and candy in wax paper.
At another part of the factory (which, by the way, was a thatched, open-air hut, if a large one) they made a sort of rice crispy treat. They mixed rice into hot black sand in a cauldron, which popped the rice into puffed crisps. A sieve above the cauldron received the mix from below, letting the sand fall back in and leaving the rest to be transferred to another sieve a few feet away. This separated the husks, which fell into a pile on the floor which would fuel the fire under the cauldron. The puffed rice was then bagged and sent to the next station, where it was mixed with sugar syrup and stirred in a pot. It was then poured onto a greased sheet, maybe 8'x4', and rolled out and cut into cubes by two men with heavy steel rollers, cleavers, and a straight edge. I tried the finished blocks, but as a bit of a rice crispy treat snob, I found them lacking the certain je ne sais quoi imparted by bottled marshmallow fluff and sticks of butter.
They made other candies there, as well as distilling disappointingly uninteresting banana and jackfruit liquor, but I didn't see any of that in progress. The still was very simple, and I wondered afterwards how much methanol I got in my liquor samples. They also hawked tourist crap of all kinds there- low quality silk goods, the same paintings you see everywhere here, tea leaves, even carved wooden pigs (seriously, what the fuck). My big gripe about the place was how touristy it was, but I guess I wouldn't have seen the cool, primitive, assembly-line candy making otherwise.
We left the factory and moved farther up the river. The river narrowed and became too shallow for our boat to continue- it kept jarring as the propeller hit the mud bottom. It was low tide, and the mighty Mekong had been reduced to a sliver lined by swathes of mud. We switched to 4-person canoes, narrow and low, piloted by a guy standing at the back with two paddles. Actually, mine was piloted by a guy, but the other 3 were old-Vietnamese-lady-powered. Mamma-san-powered, if you will. These boats were uncovered, of course, and the mid-day sun was brutal. I was fine, and got to only for the second time use the sunblock I'd bought, but I felt sorry for the drivers working in the heat.
The muddy banks were crawling with amphibians, invisible, either because of their native color or a mud layer, until they moved in quick bursts. The water was perfectly calm except for bubbles rising to the surface all around, I assume from decomposing plant matter releasing CO2. UNder the calm surface, the clouds of mud looked like crumpled silk, motionless until broken by an oar, when the silk vanished in a puff of smoke. It was quiet and I found myself thinking about the spirituality of the river, bringing flooding death and rotting end, at the same time the genesis of the green surrounding us, and enough rice to feed millions upon millions. It was hard to picture navy boats interdicting sampans running guns.
Eventually the channel became more of a puddle, and not even the low-draft canoes could continue much farther. The pilot began to pole us, then jumped out and pushed, finally inserting a peg and shoving on that for the last little bit. We stopped for lunch and to wait for the tide to come back, pooling a tip for our poor pilot, at $2.50 probably his day's wages over again, as we left.
Lunch was boring and touristy, but afterwards the restuarant let us borrow bikes to explore. I separated from the group and got lost on dirt paths. I dodged motorbikes, then, as the path got smaller, only dogs and chickens. The path had tiny, arching stone bridges over the canals. I passed graves and temples; open, airy houses strung with hammocks; and children playing in the dirt.
I don't know whether I've mentioned this before, but many of the graves here are above-ground. On the train through the countryside, passing rice paddies, the fields were like a flooded lake. Rising a few feet above the lake would be an island with the house, sorrounded by a club of vegetation. Farther out into the fields would be a smaller island with stone boxes and grave tablets. The farmers work on the family land in constant sight of their ancestors, a clear look at rural culture here. Land profiteering, buying and selling and moving for a profit, doesn't exist. You don't own the land in Vietnam, at least culturally, you're simply its caretaker for your children. Without land you're not only a vagrant, you've literally and figuratively lost sight of your ancestors. I think that's part of what kept the villagers in place through napalm and search and destroy teams and chemical defoliants.
Anyway, I got lost on the back roads, and kept my tour group waiting for 15 minutes while I found my way back. Thankfully one of the other passengers reminded the guide I was missing, or the guy would have left without me. The tide was back in, and our motor boat had come up to meet us. I felt bad for keeping people waiting, but if I hadn't I would have missed out on the back roads that only I saw, and ended up being my favorite part of the day. So I told them I was sorry, but I lied.
Showing posts with label touristing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label touristing. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
DMZ - Densely Militarized Zone
The Vietnamese DMZ runs south of the Ben Hai River, the dividing line set up when the Geneva Convention of 1954 pulled out the French troops and provisionally established 2 Vietnams until a general election to be held in 1956. The election was never held, and villages that were once in the middle of Vietnam found themselves instead in the middle of the Vietnam war.
I went on a tour of the DMZ out of nearby Hue. You can get a motorcycle driver, often ARVN (South Vietnam's regular army soldiers) vets, to give you a personalized tour of the area, but I paid $10 for my group thing instead of $60 for a day on a motorcycle covering 300+ km.
The Ben Hai River was bridged, and split down the middle as North and South territory. Each side set up flagpoles, competing to build the tallest. The South kept trying to repaint their side of the bridge, and the North kept trying to match the color (there was only 1 Vietnam in their eyes). Each side set up batteries of loudspeakers, blaring their propaganda increasingly loudly to the other side. The US settled the competition in 1967 when an F5 sank the bridge into the river.
South of Ben Hai is the 5km thick stretch of the DMZ. It's rice paddies now, a flat plain hill-less to almost the horizon. During the war it was defoliated and shelled daily, one shell or bomb for every square meter of the 5km by 50km region. The villagers didn't run away, though, instead digging tunnels and hiding out. They knew that if they left, the VC (South Vietnamese communist guerrillas) would be unable to receive supplies from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army, the regulars). The Ho Chi Minh Trails originally ran straight through Vietnam, through this region, with local guides escorting cadres and troops and supplies from the North in the middle of the night. The US had indisputable control of Vietnam during the day, when there were only harrassing attacks, but at night they mostly had to hole up in their firebases, and that's when the Vietnamese took the offensive.
I learned why the US had troops and launched bombing raids in Laos and Cambodia. As the US tightened control of the DMZ, bombing it to uninhabitability and lining it with razor wire and minefields, the HCM Trails had to move around it, skirting out into Laos and then back into the country further South. The US special forces teams and bomber missions were there when they thought they'd detected the trails. Interestingly, while the US bombed the North, it never really sent troops there, as it would mean declaring war. I'm sure there were black ops, as in Laos and Cambodia, but it was small scale. But anyway, the US command, probably rightly, thought that if they could cut off the supply trails from the North they'd win the war. The McNamara Line was under construction, extending the razor wire and mine boundary to include motion sensors and fire bases, trying to isolate the South from the North. The project was never finished, though, and the trails never shut down. It's interesting to me, though, where VC supplies came from. Before 67 or 68, when Chhiense AK-47s and artillery were rolling in, they were scrounging for material, building home-made guns. They used tins from discarded US rations to make grenades and mines, unexploded shells were disassembled for explosives. The waste created by the US juggernaut was turned against it. It sounds to me like this was realized, and there was a 'bash, burn, and bury' policy instated for all waste, but that it wasn't followed very closely. I think this was a huge failure on the part of the US. The troops weren't convinced of the importance of not leaving Coke cans for the enemy, and so they left them one day only to have them thrown back filled with explosives and shrapnel the next. US intelligence should have, if they didn't, set up a display with captured VC weapons and bombs, showing the GIs exactly how what they discarded could be used to kill them.
We went to the Dakrong Bridge over the Han River, another one-time dividing line. South of the DMZ on Route 9, the Rockpile is one of the many hills emerging from the plains, this one particularly tall and named by the marines who saw it stripped of all vegetation. They set up an observation post on top, calling in air and artillery strikes and looking for activity. When I visited the vegetation was back. It's amazing how this country seems alive again. Dioxins from the Agent Orange are still in the ecosystem, and will be for ages. Unexploded mines and shells still kill people. Vets still walk around (or don't walk) crippled. But the countryside looks almost unscathed. I didn't see the craters the guide pointed out until I knew what I was looking for. They're deep and round, but covered in foliage, with clumps of bamboo growing out of the bottom. The amount of life in the tropics never ceases to amaze me, it's a creeping hand that, without constant human intervention, would clench the region into a tightly curled fist of jungle in just a matter of years.
We drove past the Lang Vay special forces base, invisible unless it's pointed out. There a group of Green Berets and the indigenous fighters they trained were assaulted by NVA regulars. It shocked the US at the time, especially troops in the region, because of the tactics. Bangalore Torpedoes took out the defensive wall, the advancing troops had tanks, and they sprayed the bunkers with flamethrowers. It was an incident where the US were fighting the tactics they had trained against, well-equipped warfare in open combat, but it came as a surprise. The special forces in Vietnam, as I hear about them, amaze me more and more. 14 of the 24 survived the assault. Many of the troops they were training were killed, but despite being outgunned and outnumbered they still inflicted tons of damage on their attackers and many managed to get away.
One last thing to talk about. When the Lang Vay troops escaped, they made it to nearby Khe Sanh. The Khe Sanh Combat Base is on a plateau overlooking Laos, the DMZ, and the central highlands. It had an airstrip capable of landing C130s, but didn't do that much in order to prevent their loss. The Dispatches book I read talks about it a lot, as the author was there during the US buildup. Before the Tet Offensive, Vietnamese troops used Khe Sanh as a diversion. US command, up to President Johnson, who had a relief model of Khe Sanh in his office, were afraid of a defeat there like the French suffered in Dien Bien Phu. They poured more and more troops in, up to 6000 at the height, and were ready with support from all over the country in case the surrounding troops turned the situation into an actual siege. Lots of US planes were lost in the region, shot down by Chinese-madee rockets or mortared just after landing on the airstrip. The author of Dispatches describes how, on landing, you had to immediately run for trenches and cover to avoid the shelling, and how the Seabees there spent most of their time repairing the strip and clearing the remains of destroyed aircraft from the runway.
Khe Sanh has a museum now. There's a guestbook that I read cover to cover (at least the English entries). Most of those entries were from US vets or their families, which were very moving, but alternated with general anti-American diatribes. I've met a lot of foreigners in my travels, and no one has ever gone off on America to me like they did in that book. I guess it's easier to pour it out on unresponding paper than to someone's face.
I went on a tour of the DMZ out of nearby Hue. You can get a motorcycle driver, often ARVN (South Vietnam's regular army soldiers) vets, to give you a personalized tour of the area, but I paid $10 for my group thing instead of $60 for a day on a motorcycle covering 300+ km.
The Ben Hai River was bridged, and split down the middle as North and South territory. Each side set up flagpoles, competing to build the tallest. The South kept trying to repaint their side of the bridge, and the North kept trying to match the color (there was only 1 Vietnam in their eyes). Each side set up batteries of loudspeakers, blaring their propaganda increasingly loudly to the other side. The US settled the competition in 1967 when an F5 sank the bridge into the river.
South of Ben Hai is the 5km thick stretch of the DMZ. It's rice paddies now, a flat plain hill-less to almost the horizon. During the war it was defoliated and shelled daily, one shell or bomb for every square meter of the 5km by 50km region. The villagers didn't run away, though, instead digging tunnels and hiding out. They knew that if they left, the VC (South Vietnamese communist guerrillas) would be unable to receive supplies from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army, the regulars). The Ho Chi Minh Trails originally ran straight through Vietnam, through this region, with local guides escorting cadres and troops and supplies from the North in the middle of the night. The US had indisputable control of Vietnam during the day, when there were only harrassing attacks, but at night they mostly had to hole up in their firebases, and that's when the Vietnamese took the offensive.
I learned why the US had troops and launched bombing raids in Laos and Cambodia. As the US tightened control of the DMZ, bombing it to uninhabitability and lining it with razor wire and minefields, the HCM Trails had to move around it, skirting out into Laos and then back into the country further South. The US special forces teams and bomber missions were there when they thought they'd detected the trails. Interestingly, while the US bombed the North, it never really sent troops there, as it would mean declaring war. I'm sure there were black ops, as in Laos and Cambodia, but it was small scale. But anyway, the US command, probably rightly, thought that if they could cut off the supply trails from the North they'd win the war. The McNamara Line was under construction, extending the razor wire and mine boundary to include motion sensors and fire bases, trying to isolate the South from the North. The project was never finished, though, and the trails never shut down. It's interesting to me, though, where VC supplies came from. Before 67 or 68, when Chhiense AK-47s and artillery were rolling in, they were scrounging for material, building home-made guns. They used tins from discarded US rations to make grenades and mines, unexploded shells were disassembled for explosives. The waste created by the US juggernaut was turned against it. It sounds to me like this was realized, and there was a 'bash, burn, and bury' policy instated for all waste, but that it wasn't followed very closely. I think this was a huge failure on the part of the US. The troops weren't convinced of the importance of not leaving Coke cans for the enemy, and so they left them one day only to have them thrown back filled with explosives and shrapnel the next. US intelligence should have, if they didn't, set up a display with captured VC weapons and bombs, showing the GIs exactly how what they discarded could be used to kill them.
We went to the Dakrong Bridge over the Han River, another one-time dividing line. South of the DMZ on Route 9, the Rockpile is one of the many hills emerging from the plains, this one particularly tall and named by the marines who saw it stripped of all vegetation. They set up an observation post on top, calling in air and artillery strikes and looking for activity. When I visited the vegetation was back. It's amazing how this country seems alive again. Dioxins from the Agent Orange are still in the ecosystem, and will be for ages. Unexploded mines and shells still kill people. Vets still walk around (or don't walk) crippled. But the countryside looks almost unscathed. I didn't see the craters the guide pointed out until I knew what I was looking for. They're deep and round, but covered in foliage, with clumps of bamboo growing out of the bottom. The amount of life in the tropics never ceases to amaze me, it's a creeping hand that, without constant human intervention, would clench the region into a tightly curled fist of jungle in just a matter of years.
We drove past the Lang Vay special forces base, invisible unless it's pointed out. There a group of Green Berets and the indigenous fighters they trained were assaulted by NVA regulars. It shocked the US at the time, especially troops in the region, because of the tactics. Bangalore Torpedoes took out the defensive wall, the advancing troops had tanks, and they sprayed the bunkers with flamethrowers. It was an incident where the US were fighting the tactics they had trained against, well-equipped warfare in open combat, but it came as a surprise. The special forces in Vietnam, as I hear about them, amaze me more and more. 14 of the 24 survived the assault. Many of the troops they were training were killed, but despite being outgunned and outnumbered they still inflicted tons of damage on their attackers and many managed to get away.
One last thing to talk about. When the Lang Vay troops escaped, they made it to nearby Khe Sanh. The Khe Sanh Combat Base is on a plateau overlooking Laos, the DMZ, and the central highlands. It had an airstrip capable of landing C130s, but didn't do that much in order to prevent their loss. The Dispatches book I read talks about it a lot, as the author was there during the US buildup. Before the Tet Offensive, Vietnamese troops used Khe Sanh as a diversion. US command, up to President Johnson, who had a relief model of Khe Sanh in his office, were afraid of a defeat there like the French suffered in Dien Bien Phu. They poured more and more troops in, up to 6000 at the height, and were ready with support from all over the country in case the surrounding troops turned the situation into an actual siege. Lots of US planes were lost in the region, shot down by Chinese-madee rockets or mortared just after landing on the airstrip. The author of Dispatches describes how, on landing, you had to immediately run for trenches and cover to avoid the shelling, and how the Seabees there spent most of their time repairing the strip and clearing the remains of destroyed aircraft from the runway.
Khe Sanh has a museum now. There's a guestbook that I read cover to cover (at least the English entries). Most of those entries were from US vets or their families, which were very moving, but alternated with general anti-American diatribes. I've met a lot of foreigners in my travels, and no one has ever gone off on America to me like they did in that book. I guess it's easier to pour it out on unresponding paper than to someone's face.
Hoi An to Hue
Before leaving Hoi An I met a girl from Boston. We hung out in bars, the cheap ones with the $0.25 draft beers, and chatted a lot. It was nice talking to someone from Boston, but she was very career focused. It got annoying talking about jobs and school and real world things like taxes and insurance. Sheesh. I also find I'm getting really sick of running the 'just met while traveling in SE Asia' script. How long have you been traveling? Where are you from? Where have you been? How much longer do you have? Where's next? What do you do back home? I've met some great people and had interesting conversations, but the introductions wear me down, and I'm sick of talking about why I dislike China and why I'm no longer working at the UN. Actually, I don't like bringing up the UN at all. It always gets a "Really? Wow!" response, and it always feels like I'm bragging. The only time I don't mind is when someone asks me whether I'm teaching English in China. It's the same thing with school. If someone asks me where I went to school I always answer Boston, and only MIT if they follow up. But saying I work in China always leads to the next question.
I collected all of my clothing before leaving Hoi An. Of the 10 shirts, jacket, and pair of shoes I bought, the only thing I was really unhappy with was the tux shirt. I may do another one in China. I had a hard time explaining stud eyelets to them, the collar isn't as stiff as I'd like, and the fabric I picked sort of makes it look like a curtain. Since that last part was my fault, I paid for the thing, but I'll probably never wear it. I don't know whether I mentioned before, but for one of the more casual button-up shirts I ordered I picked a blue and orange striped fabric, and for some bizarre reason they made the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. I tried it on, and it looked ok. I had half a mind to make them re-do it, but I thought that maybe it'd grow on me, and all of my shirts are vertically striped, so I kept it.
I took a bus to Hue. I paid $4 for the 3 hour trip, which turned out to be almost twice as much as I could have paid.
I could talk a lot about Hue, but I'll keep it short. My hotel on the first night was a too-expensive $9. Its redeeming feature was the fact that it was on the 5th floor, a one floor walkup from the elevator to the 4th. Next to my room, one of 2 on the floor, was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a skylight that opened up. At night I took a little bottle of Vodka Hanoi up and sat perched on the edge of the window, looking down on the city.
Hue was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war, which I didn't know until I left the city and started reading a book called Dispatches. It's the old imperial capital, and the ancient part of the city is surrounded by a citadel with towering, meters-thick walls that go on for 10km. During the Tet Offensive, NVA regulars took the city and flew their flag over the citadel for weeks before the US could retake it. It was street to street combat with incredible losses, said to be one marine for every meter captured.
In the battle, and in a previous Viet Minh-French battle a decade or more earlier, the city took heavy damage from air strikes and shelling. The Thai Hoa Palace, Vietnam's equivalent of the Forbidden City, is mostly leveled to a foundation covered in grass, despite the hesitance of the US military to target it. What's left has been restored and reworked, and out front flies a huge Vietnamese flag. It's interesting for me to compare Vietnam's palace with the Forbidden City. The two-story gate here looks tiny in comparison to Tiananmen. The courtyards in China in which the emperor could review his mandarins and troops would hold armies, while the courtyard here would fit into a soccer stadium. Instead of 27 steps, split by a huge tablet carved with dragons, leading up to the Chinese throne, there are 3 unornamented steps here. It's fairly obvious where the power in the region was during the imperial days.
I collected all of my clothing before leaving Hoi An. Of the 10 shirts, jacket, and pair of shoes I bought, the only thing I was really unhappy with was the tux shirt. I may do another one in China. I had a hard time explaining stud eyelets to them, the collar isn't as stiff as I'd like, and the fabric I picked sort of makes it look like a curtain. Since that last part was my fault, I paid for the thing, but I'll probably never wear it. I don't know whether I mentioned before, but for one of the more casual button-up shirts I ordered I picked a blue and orange striped fabric, and for some bizarre reason they made the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. I tried it on, and it looked ok. I had half a mind to make them re-do it, but I thought that maybe it'd grow on me, and all of my shirts are vertically striped, so I kept it.
I took a bus to Hue. I paid $4 for the 3 hour trip, which turned out to be almost twice as much as I could have paid.
I could talk a lot about Hue, but I'll keep it short. My hotel on the first night was a too-expensive $9. Its redeeming feature was the fact that it was on the 5th floor, a one floor walkup from the elevator to the 4th. Next to my room, one of 2 on the floor, was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a skylight that opened up. At night I took a little bottle of Vodka Hanoi up and sat perched on the edge of the window, looking down on the city.
Hue was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war, which I didn't know until I left the city and started reading a book called Dispatches. It's the old imperial capital, and the ancient part of the city is surrounded by a citadel with towering, meters-thick walls that go on for 10km. During the Tet Offensive, NVA regulars took the city and flew their flag over the citadel for weeks before the US could retake it. It was street to street combat with incredible losses, said to be one marine for every meter captured.
In the battle, and in a previous Viet Minh-French battle a decade or more earlier, the city took heavy damage from air strikes and shelling. The Thai Hoa Palace, Vietnam's equivalent of the Forbidden City, is mostly leveled to a foundation covered in grass, despite the hesitance of the US military to target it. What's left has been restored and reworked, and out front flies a huge Vietnamese flag. It's interesting for me to compare Vietnam's palace with the Forbidden City. The two-story gate here looks tiny in comparison to Tiananmen. The courtyards in China in which the emperor could review his mandarins and troops would hold armies, while the courtyard here would fit into a soccer stadium. Instead of 27 steps, split by a huge tablet carved with dragons, leading up to the Chinese throne, there are 3 unornamented steps here. It's fairly obvious where the power in the region was during the imperial days.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Town of food and tailors
My bus to Quy Nhon was a 3rd-world experience. There was no 1PM bus, as I'd been informed there was, and the 3PM bus seemed to be full. The lady at the ticket window advised me to stick around to see if a seat opened up, which I did until about 2:30, but by then everyone had arrived and claimed their tickets. My 1PM deperture became a 4PM departure, so I killed time in a nearby pagoda that was much more peaceful than the bus terminal.
My bus's driver thought he was Schumacher. He cut aggressive paths through curves, leaving passengers hanging on to the armrests. The 1A highway, Vietnam's major North-South route connection HCMC and Hanoi, is one lane each way and involves passing lumbering dumptrucks on blind curves on tortuous coastal mountain roads. In some spots the road is perfectly paved, in others the ground under the asphalt seems to have sunken away, leaving unmarked pits requiring evasive action. Pedestrians and motorbikes hurry across the road in the dark.
The one nice part of the trip came at night. It was raining and dark as we raced past a bay. There were lights out on the water that I at first thought must be a bridge, but as we got clser I realized they were boats with batteries of fluorescent lights hanging off the sides, presumably to draw squid to the surface. One island was surrounded by hundreds of these boats, an eery sort of fairy necklace or halo of ghost boats. They seemed other-worldly and beautiful in the distance, but I imagine that closer-in they would be cold, wet, and miserable.
In Quy Nhon the motorbike taxis chased the bus through the station gate. One driver hopped off his bike and kept trying to pull open the locked sliding door. Because the bus (actually a Sprinter) had power locks, they wouldn't open as he pulled on the handle. In disgust I skipped the motorbike taxi again, instead opting to hike my gear 4km up the beach through town.
It was a Friday night, and as I walked I was passed by gangs of teenagers on identical motorbikes. They cruised slowly up and down the streets, 2 or 3 to most bikes, but there was the occasional lone wolf who'd from time to time stand up on his scooter and rev the little 50cc motor for all it was worth. They were a ridiculous spectacle circling back and forth, especially as frustrated cars and trucks laid into their horns, trying to pass the band. Gaggle? The bikers would eventually ease into a single lane to let people pass, but they'd take their sweet damned time about it.
Quy Nhon was quiet. It's a beach town, but the weather wasn't any good during my two days there, so I checked out the temples and churches and spent hours wandering the streets. I hung out with some backpackers at the hostel- drinking beers on the beach or in the lobby. We also hired a boat to take us to an island in the bay. There's a statue of a Vietnamese hero pointing defiantly towards China, apparently telling the invaders to go back where they came from. There used to be an abandoned US tank that emerged from the surf at low tide, but unfortunately the city government recently had it moved. I tried to run along the beach, but the town's fishing industry ensured that there weren't too many litter-free stretches nearby the hostel.
I opted to take the train from Quy Nhon to Hoi An, in hopes of getting some sleep and maybe not dying. The trip is actually from Dieu Tri, 13km from Quy Nhon, to Danang, 30km from Hoi An. I got a seat rather than a sleeper, planning on relying on the tray table as a pillow and saving some money, but I got one of the 2 seats in the whole train car that didn't have a seat in front of it for a tray table. I didn't get much sleep.
It was raining in Danang when I arrived at 5:40AM, and in the last moments of darkness. As I walked out of the train station I overheard a couple of foreigners say that they were going to Hoi An, so I latched onto them. They turned out to have been traveling for 7 months, and had picked up a nifty trick. They had met a tour group bound for Hoi An while in the sleeper cars, and they planned to hitch a ride on the group's bus if there was room. There was, and the driver decided on the arbitrary price of 50,000 dong ($3), which I assume went straight into his pocket and not the tour company's account. I had been prepared to pay up to 100,000 for a motorcycle taxi, but that wold have been a cold and wet 30km. My other option was a public bus, but that required hiking to the Danang bus station and then from the Hoi An station into town. This tour group's bus was fast, cheap, and convenient, and by myself I never would have thought of it quickly enough to hitch a ride before they left.
I spent an hour wandering town and asking about hotel roooms, but it was still only 7AM and rooms were either too expensive or the staff didn't yet know whether there'd be check-outs. I'd resigned myself to paying $15 for the first night and moving the next day, so I went back to a cheaper hotel to reserve a room for the next day. When I got there the receptionist told me that they did in fact have one $5 dorm bed, which she didn't tell me about the first time. I snapped it up. I heard a lot of people asking about rooms to no avail, so it's fortunate I was there early.
I went to breakfast with some people from the dorm room. Dennis, a heavily pierced and tattooed preschool teacher from Holland, Takeo from Japan, whose English wasn't very good, and Sarah from Melbourne. Sarah turns out to be half Thai and half Iranian, a combination that apparently produces very beautiful people. We ate noodle soup and crispy rice pancakes at a morning market, surrounded by Vietnamese buying produce and meat. Then we got coffee at plastic tables under an umbrella by the river. It may have been the best cup of coffee of my life. They have a plastic bottle filled with concentrated black coffee goop which they dilute with hot water and serve. It sounds unappealing, but it was amazingly good.
We split up at that point, and I spent most of the morning going to tailors. My first stop was a cobbler that had Converse All Star high tops out front. The draw was the fact that the Converse logo was stitched by hand, which was completely awesome and ridiculous. I talked to the store owner, and for $13 I designed my own Converses. They're red, lined with a a red and white stripe pattern, with an identical tongue. I spent a while looking at fabrics before I picked one of the more modest tailors to copy a shirt I had with me- my pink and white striped Gap shirt that fits me so well. I had it done in pink, white linen, and white with blue and orange pinstripes. 3 shirts made to order for $30, in less than 24 hours. Today I went to get 4 more shirts made, at a different place with more fabric. I got another copy of the same shirt, this time actually making the waist a little narrower, plus 3 shirts with French cuffs that they fitted me for. I even had them dye cotton to match a color I requested for one of the shirts. The total for those 4 shirts was $48. Today I passed a corduroy jacket on the street that caught my eye. They'd run out of the fabric color they'd used in the display model, so I took the one off the rack and had them alter it for me. So, in total, 7 button-up shirts, 1 jacket, and 1 pair of shoes, all made to order and fitted, for $116.
I said that in addition to being full of tailors this town was foodie heaven, but I'll wait until I've had my cooking class to elaborate on that, especially as I'm sick of typing.
My bus's driver thought he was Schumacher. He cut aggressive paths through curves, leaving passengers hanging on to the armrests. The 1A highway, Vietnam's major North-South route connection HCMC and Hanoi, is one lane each way and involves passing lumbering dumptrucks on blind curves on tortuous coastal mountain roads. In some spots the road is perfectly paved, in others the ground under the asphalt seems to have sunken away, leaving unmarked pits requiring evasive action. Pedestrians and motorbikes hurry across the road in the dark.
The one nice part of the trip came at night. It was raining and dark as we raced past a bay. There were lights out on the water that I at first thought must be a bridge, but as we got clser I realized they were boats with batteries of fluorescent lights hanging off the sides, presumably to draw squid to the surface. One island was surrounded by hundreds of these boats, an eery sort of fairy necklace or halo of ghost boats. They seemed other-worldly and beautiful in the distance, but I imagine that closer-in they would be cold, wet, and miserable.
In Quy Nhon the motorbike taxis chased the bus through the station gate. One driver hopped off his bike and kept trying to pull open the locked sliding door. Because the bus (actually a Sprinter) had power locks, they wouldn't open as he pulled on the handle. In disgust I skipped the motorbike taxi again, instead opting to hike my gear 4km up the beach through town.
It was a Friday night, and as I walked I was passed by gangs of teenagers on identical motorbikes. They cruised slowly up and down the streets, 2 or 3 to most bikes, but there was the occasional lone wolf who'd from time to time stand up on his scooter and rev the little 50cc motor for all it was worth. They were a ridiculous spectacle circling back and forth, especially as frustrated cars and trucks laid into their horns, trying to pass the band. Gaggle? The bikers would eventually ease into a single lane to let people pass, but they'd take their sweet damned time about it.
Quy Nhon was quiet. It's a beach town, but the weather wasn't any good during my two days there, so I checked out the temples and churches and spent hours wandering the streets. I hung out with some backpackers at the hostel- drinking beers on the beach or in the lobby. We also hired a boat to take us to an island in the bay. There's a statue of a Vietnamese hero pointing defiantly towards China, apparently telling the invaders to go back where they came from. There used to be an abandoned US tank that emerged from the surf at low tide, but unfortunately the city government recently had it moved. I tried to run along the beach, but the town's fishing industry ensured that there weren't too many litter-free stretches nearby the hostel.
I opted to take the train from Quy Nhon to Hoi An, in hopes of getting some sleep and maybe not dying. The trip is actually from Dieu Tri, 13km from Quy Nhon, to Danang, 30km from Hoi An. I got a seat rather than a sleeper, planning on relying on the tray table as a pillow and saving some money, but I got one of the 2 seats in the whole train car that didn't have a seat in front of it for a tray table. I didn't get much sleep.
It was raining in Danang when I arrived at 5:40AM, and in the last moments of darkness. As I walked out of the train station I overheard a couple of foreigners say that they were going to Hoi An, so I latched onto them. They turned out to have been traveling for 7 months, and had picked up a nifty trick. They had met a tour group bound for Hoi An while in the sleeper cars, and they planned to hitch a ride on the group's bus if there was room. There was, and the driver decided on the arbitrary price of 50,000 dong ($3), which I assume went straight into his pocket and not the tour company's account. I had been prepared to pay up to 100,000 for a motorcycle taxi, but that wold have been a cold and wet 30km. My other option was a public bus, but that required hiking to the Danang bus station and then from the Hoi An station into town. This tour group's bus was fast, cheap, and convenient, and by myself I never would have thought of it quickly enough to hitch a ride before they left.
I spent an hour wandering town and asking about hotel roooms, but it was still only 7AM and rooms were either too expensive or the staff didn't yet know whether there'd be check-outs. I'd resigned myself to paying $15 for the first night and moving the next day, so I went back to a cheaper hotel to reserve a room for the next day. When I got there the receptionist told me that they did in fact have one $5 dorm bed, which she didn't tell me about the first time. I snapped it up. I heard a lot of people asking about rooms to no avail, so it's fortunate I was there early.
I went to breakfast with some people from the dorm room. Dennis, a heavily pierced and tattooed preschool teacher from Holland, Takeo from Japan, whose English wasn't very good, and Sarah from Melbourne. Sarah turns out to be half Thai and half Iranian, a combination that apparently produces very beautiful people. We ate noodle soup and crispy rice pancakes at a morning market, surrounded by Vietnamese buying produce and meat. Then we got coffee at plastic tables under an umbrella by the river. It may have been the best cup of coffee of my life. They have a plastic bottle filled with concentrated black coffee goop which they dilute with hot water and serve. It sounds unappealing, but it was amazingly good.
We split up at that point, and I spent most of the morning going to tailors. My first stop was a cobbler that had Converse All Star high tops out front. The draw was the fact that the Converse logo was stitched by hand, which was completely awesome and ridiculous. I talked to the store owner, and for $13 I designed my own Converses. They're red, lined with a a red and white stripe pattern, with an identical tongue. I spent a while looking at fabrics before I picked one of the more modest tailors to copy a shirt I had with me- my pink and white striped Gap shirt that fits me so well. I had it done in pink, white linen, and white with blue and orange pinstripes. 3 shirts made to order for $30, in less than 24 hours. Today I went to get 4 more shirts made, at a different place with more fabric. I got another copy of the same shirt, this time actually making the waist a little narrower, plus 3 shirts with French cuffs that they fitted me for. I even had them dye cotton to match a color I requested for one of the shirts. The total for those 4 shirts was $48. Today I passed a corduroy jacket on the street that caught my eye. They'd run out of the fabric color they'd used in the display model, so I took the one off the rack and had them alter it for me. So, in total, 7 button-up shirts, 1 jacket, and 1 pair of shoes, all made to order and fitted, for $116.
I said that in addition to being full of tailors this town was foodie heaven, but I'll wait until I've had my cooking class to elaborate on that, especially as I'm sick of typing.
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.
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.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
The first pillar is filial piety.
10/29
Pictures from the weekend.
My dad visited this weekend. He was in China for a conference in Shanghai, and arranged a side trip to Beijing to meet with a potential collaborator at Tsinghua, then stayed around for a couple of days. He brought me a whole shopping list worth of stuff, like my sweet new sleeping bag and a mini tripod that might actually work with my front-heavy camera.
We did some of the requisite tourist stuff, including a Forbidden City visit and a trip to the Great Wall. The Forbidden City is big enough that I can go back a couple more times before I think I'll have seen it all and be sick of it. We ended up going to the Mutianyu section of the Wall, one I hadn't been to yet, and that turned out great. There were more people there than at Simatai, and it was more restored, but there was still plenty of vertical movement and it seemed a bit exotic. The trees were settling into their fall colors, and there was even snow in the shade and on the peaks from the previous night's pollution-clearing precipitation. I was afraid the wall might be slick, or that it'd start raining once we got there, but the weather stayed clear enough that you could just make out downtown Beijing some 60km away, probably the farthest I've been able to see in the area.
Daria is coming over Thanksgiving, and she's probably my last visitor before I finish my UN gig. That's likely a good thing, since there's a lot of work left to do and not many weeks to fit it into. I have a meeting tomorrow with a guy from the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy, and I'm trying to set up meetings with some biotech companies in town, both local and international. I need to start writing more soon, I think, since writing works well to bring into focus what I know and what I don't. It's also a process I enjoy, and when I have a something down on paper I feel like I'm making progress, a feeling that's been elusive for a while.
I'm still not sure what I'm doing next. There's definitely a trip to Vietnam coming up, probably from about December 20 (when my visa expires) until around the 10th, when my brother Mike is tentatively coming to visit. After that I may hang in Beijing for a bit if I end up renting my apartment for another month, then probably touring some of Western and Southern China, as far into the boonies as I can get. My friend Scot is helping me look for English teaching work through his extensive network of contacts in-country, and I'm shopping around online, too. I could get a job tomorrow, it seems, so the point of this exercise is to find the best job in the most attractive location- likely the lower Himalayas in Yunnan province or in the plains leading to Tibet in Qinghai province. I'll write more as I figure it out.
Pictures from the weekend.
My dad visited this weekend. He was in China for a conference in Shanghai, and arranged a side trip to Beijing to meet with a potential collaborator at Tsinghua, then stayed around for a couple of days. He brought me a whole shopping list worth of stuff, like my sweet new sleeping bag and a mini tripod that might actually work with my front-heavy camera.
We did some of the requisite tourist stuff, including a Forbidden City visit and a trip to the Great Wall. The Forbidden City is big enough that I can go back a couple more times before I think I'll have seen it all and be sick of it. We ended up going to the Mutianyu section of the Wall, one I hadn't been to yet, and that turned out great. There were more people there than at Simatai, and it was more restored, but there was still plenty of vertical movement and it seemed a bit exotic. The trees were settling into their fall colors, and there was even snow in the shade and on the peaks from the previous night's pollution-clearing precipitation. I was afraid the wall might be slick, or that it'd start raining once we got there, but the weather stayed clear enough that you could just make out downtown Beijing some 60km away, probably the farthest I've been able to see in the area.
Daria is coming over Thanksgiving, and she's probably my last visitor before I finish my UN gig. That's likely a good thing, since there's a lot of work left to do and not many weeks to fit it into. I have a meeting tomorrow with a guy from the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy, and I'm trying to set up meetings with some biotech companies in town, both local and international. I need to start writing more soon, I think, since writing works well to bring into focus what I know and what I don't. It's also a process I enjoy, and when I have a something down on paper I feel like I'm making progress, a feeling that's been elusive for a while.
I'm still not sure what I'm doing next. There's definitely a trip to Vietnam coming up, probably from about December 20 (when my visa expires) until around the 10th, when my brother Mike is tentatively coming to visit. After that I may hang in Beijing for a bit if I end up renting my apartment for another month, then probably touring some of Western and Southern China, as far into the boonies as I can get. My friend Scot is helping me look for English teaching work through his extensive network of contacts in-country, and I'm shopping around online, too. I could get a job tomorrow, it seems, so the point of this exercise is to find the best job in the most attractive location- likely the lower Himalayas in Yunnan province or in the plains leading to Tibet in Qinghai province. I'll write more as I figure it out.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Catching up with life
Well, I never got around to typing up the rest of my Thailand trip. I threw all of my remaining pictures from the vacation together on the new photo page, here, so you can check them out.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Disappearing CIA agents and kicks to the head
Photoblog link
09/18/07
I started my day by going to see Jim Thompson's house. He was an OSS/CIA operative during World War II who fell in love with Thailand during his posting here, and returned to the country after the war was over. He became interested in the Thai silk, an unknown product at the time. He promoted the silk by bringing samples to New York and Paris, creating interest in fashion circles there earning huge profits by exporting it. His home is actually a compound of several traditional teak wood Thai stilt houses he had disassembled and transported to Bangkok. He preserved most of the style and observed traditions like moving in on an astrologically favorable date, but he added western comforts like electric lighting and a table and chairs to eat at.
Jim Thompson disappeared while on vacation in Myanmar in the 60s. He went on a walk and never returned. No one knows exactly what happened, but theories include being eaten by wild animals or being hit by a truck driver who panicked and disposed of the body.
Things I learned on my tour of the house:
-Chopping off a Buddhas hands and head is believed to cancel their protective powers.
-Thai houses typically had their front door facing the canals, which served as streets.
-A Thai pastime involved placing mice in small mazes built to resemble houses. Bets were placed on which mouse would emerge first.
After the house I went back to the hotel, taking a pass on the expensive silk products available at the gift shop. Dad was napping. After he woke up we got free drinks at the hotel lounge before rushing out to Lumphini Stadium to see muay thai fights. We took a taxi, but it quickly became stuck in traffic, so we hoofed it to the subway and then to the stadium. We heard the stadium before we saw it- crowds cheering and shouting.
The touts at the entrance fell on us quickly, and got oddly angry that we didn't want to talk to them. One woman asked dad why I wasn't listening to her as I was walking away trying to scout out the entrances. Due to a miscommunication between us at the hotel it turned out that neither of us had enough money to buy the tickets that turned out to be twice as expensive as the Lonely Planet had said, so we turned around and walked (ran) back to the ATM at the subway stop, not noticing a couple of ATMs along the way. When we got back another tout approached us. The first has offered to take us inside to show us seats, this one was trying to tell us about the fights. I bought tickets at the official window as he was talking to us, which made him pretty angry. He snatched away the 'free' fight sheet he'd handed me, snarling something about how other people wouldn't care about us like he did. Whatever. It turns out the fight schedule was free at the door and there was no assigned seating, so I don't understand what their business model was.
The fights were obviously in progress when we got in, but we were far from the last to arrive. The biggest fighters weighed 136 pounds. Some of them looked 15 to me, but dad said he'd heard the announcer say that the minimum age was 18. The announcer was marvelous. Between her accent, the bad sound system, and the crowd noise we caught maybe one word in ten.
We tried a few different vantage points for the best view, finally giving up on our front-row (of the 3rd class section) bleacher seats for a spot 20 feet closer leaning on a railing. That 20 feet gave a much stronger sense of immediacy to the fights, and it also brought us closer to the densely-packed Thais betting and cheering.
Before each match the fighters dance around wearing spiritually protective arm and head bands. The dance also seems to be a stretch and warm up. They pray, and then they sit on chairs in shallow metal trays in their corners as their handlers spray them with water and rub them down.
The 1st round is slow. They feel each other out, but the consistent lack of action, and the fact that the Thais pay zero attention to the 1st round suggests that there may be some inviolable tradition about the 1st round being slow. The 2nd round starts fast and hard. After the fighters clinch, the ref sometimes leaves them to knee each other (the arms are too locked up), but sometimes breaks them apart. We couldn't figure out how the decision was made, but my guess is that it involves the way the arms are positioned. After the ref splits the fighters there's no lull as they feel each other out again, they lunge right back at each other. Muay thai has more action and seems generally more brutal than western boxing, but there was only one KO in the evening. That fighter took a kick to the head and kept throwing punches, then collapsed after taking a glancing punch. It seems you have to land 2/3 of the blows in the fight to win, so the matches were mostly tied.
09/18/07
I started my day by going to see Jim Thompson's house. He was an OSS/CIA operative during World War II who fell in love with Thailand during his posting here, and returned to the country after the war was over. He became interested in the Thai silk, an unknown product at the time. He promoted the silk by bringing samples to New York and Paris, creating interest in fashion circles there earning huge profits by exporting it. His home is actually a compound of several traditional teak wood Thai stilt houses he had disassembled and transported to Bangkok. He preserved most of the style and observed traditions like moving in on an astrologically favorable date, but he added western comforts like electric lighting and a table and chairs to eat at.
Jim Thompson disappeared while on vacation in Myanmar in the 60s. He went on a walk and never returned. No one knows exactly what happened, but theories include being eaten by wild animals or being hit by a truck driver who panicked and disposed of the body.
Things I learned on my tour of the house:
-Chopping off a Buddhas hands and head is believed to cancel their protective powers.
-Thai houses typically had their front door facing the canals, which served as streets.
-A Thai pastime involved placing mice in small mazes built to resemble houses. Bets were placed on which mouse would emerge first.
After the house I went back to the hotel, taking a pass on the expensive silk products available at the gift shop. Dad was napping. After he woke up we got free drinks at the hotel lounge before rushing out to Lumphini Stadium to see muay thai fights. We took a taxi, but it quickly became stuck in traffic, so we hoofed it to the subway and then to the stadium. We heard the stadium before we saw it- crowds cheering and shouting.
The touts at the entrance fell on us quickly, and got oddly angry that we didn't want to talk to them. One woman asked dad why I wasn't listening to her as I was walking away trying to scout out the entrances. Due to a miscommunication between us at the hotel it turned out that neither of us had enough money to buy the tickets that turned out to be twice as expensive as the Lonely Planet had said, so we turned around and walked (ran) back to the ATM at the subway stop, not noticing a couple of ATMs along the way. When we got back another tout approached us. The first has offered to take us inside to show us seats, this one was trying to tell us about the fights. I bought tickets at the official window as he was talking to us, which made him pretty angry. He snatched away the 'free' fight sheet he'd handed me, snarling something about how other people wouldn't care about us like he did. Whatever. It turns out the fight schedule was free at the door and there was no assigned seating, so I don't understand what their business model was.
The fights were obviously in progress when we got in, but we were far from the last to arrive. The biggest fighters weighed 136 pounds. Some of them looked 15 to me, but dad said he'd heard the announcer say that the minimum age was 18. The announcer was marvelous. Between her accent, the bad sound system, and the crowd noise we caught maybe one word in ten.
We tried a few different vantage points for the best view, finally giving up on our front-row (of the 3rd class section) bleacher seats for a spot 20 feet closer leaning on a railing. That 20 feet gave a much stronger sense of immediacy to the fights, and it also brought us closer to the densely-packed Thais betting and cheering.
Before each match the fighters dance around wearing spiritually protective arm and head bands. The dance also seems to be a stretch and warm up. They pray, and then they sit on chairs in shallow metal trays in their corners as their handlers spray them with water and rub them down.
The 1st round is slow. They feel each other out, but the consistent lack of action, and the fact that the Thais pay zero attention to the 1st round suggests that there may be some inviolable tradition about the 1st round being slow. The 2nd round starts fast and hard. After the fighters clinch, the ref sometimes leaves them to knee each other (the arms are too locked up), but sometimes breaks them apart. We couldn't figure out how the decision was made, but my guess is that it involves the way the arms are positioned. After the ref splits the fighters there's no lull as they feel each other out again, they lunge right back at each other. Muay thai has more action and seems generally more brutal than western boxing, but there was only one KO in the evening. That fighter took a kick to the head and kept throwing punches, then collapsed after taking a glancing punch. It seems you have to land 2/3 of the blows in the fight to win, so the matches were mostly tied.
High wattage
Photoblog link
09/17/07
I found out that I could crash the IEA conference dinner that evening, so I spent the whole day keeping my eyes open for yellow clothing, the theme of the evening. Monday is yellow day in Thailand. The king was born on a Monday some 80 years back, so now every Monday a huge portion of Thais wear yellow clothing. The monarchy is one of the most loved institutions in the country, and hugely respected. Besides the crowds of people wearing yellow, the king's image was sold on amulets and icons right next to images of Buddhas. Religion is the other widely respected institution. Thai men are expected to become monks at least twice in their lives, usually once while children as 10-vow novices, then again maybe after school as full 227 vow monks. I don't really know what the vows entail, so that's probably worth looking into when I get back.
My first stop of the day was the Grand Palace, home of Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha. The emerald Buddha isn't really emerald, just a dark jade, but it's still spectacular. The king no longer lives in the grand palace, but the Wat there is still his personal temple. Every season he changes the solid gold clothing on the Emerald Buddha as part of an elaborate ritual. Again, I don't know how to describe everything that I saw, so I'll let the pictures do most of that. I especially liked the juxtaposition of classical European architecture with traditional Thai design. There was one building that reminded me very much of Versailles with the wood and mirrors and chandeliers, but instead of fleur de lis on the wallpaper there were Buddhas.
I asked a lot of different people to take my pictures. The Chinese lady was surprised that I was talking to her in Mandarin, but the guy I asked in Spanish responded in English. Ah well.
I'm not sure where the tactile boundary is in a place like the Grand Palace. What part is simply a building, something you interact with and touch, and what's considered art? There are mosaics on most of the walls, and some parts were roped off. Does that imply the rest of the mosaics are fair game to handle? Maybe it doesn't matter here. Yesterday the Reclining Buddha's feet were well worn, and I have clear memories of people touching paintings at the 798 district in Beijing.
In one park near the palace I had corn forced into my hands by a couple of different people, the immediately transparent scheme being that I feed the pigeons and then they hit me up for cash. So I resisted for a while, actually tossing the unopened bag of corn back at one girl from 20 feet away so she couldn't hand it back. One pair of guys actually dumped the corn into my hand, saying, “Present. Happy new year.” I walked down the sidewalk without throwing the corn on the ground, being mobbed with pigeons. I eventually dropped the corn, and when they asked me for money I explained to them that since I didn't have anything they'd given me and I didn't want anything from them now they didn't have any leverage, and that they should strive to live by the mantra of 'get the money first'. I'm only exaggerating slightly, and and I'm certain I confused them. As I walked away I smiled, waved, and bade them a happy new year. I've been generally very friendly on this trip, smiling a lot, as the Thais do, but there's only so much haranguing I can take.
After the Grand Palace I tried to find the river and ferry dock to cross to the other side, but I kept getting turned around in the rabbit warren of markets that hugs the shore of the river. I spent a while wandering a market in a more open area selling everything from washing machines to underwear to herbal medicine to new tires for cars. What do they do with the washing machines when it's time to close for the night? I tried to find yellow clothing, but all of the ubiquitous yellow polo shirts with the king's seal seemed to be for women.
I finally found the ferry taking near Wat Rakhang, but when I got to the other side I promptly became lost again. Next trip like this I'm brining a damn compass. Wat Rakhang, when I found it, wasn't visually spectacular, but it was a 'working' wat, with monks' orange robes hanging to dry, locals making offerings, and a small school attached with classes in session.
My next stop was Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, which has an 82m stupa that looks like something out of Angkor Wat. (Note: I later found out that it's a 'prang', not a stupa. Chedis and stupas are the typical Thai style. A prang is Khmer, and that's why this looked Cambodian to me- it's the same design as Angkor.) Up close to the tower you can see that it's covered in mosaic. There's a fair bit of Chinese porcelain built into the decoration. It turns out that Chinese merchants sailed ships to Siam loaded with broken porcelain as ballast. They dumped it here when they loaded up on whatever they were bringing home, and the porcelain was dragged out of the harbor by the Thais to incorporate into their temples.
After Wat Arun I crossed the river and took the express ferry all the way down the shore to where there's a dock below a skytrain station. I like how you get around in Bangkok- some combination of car/tuk-tuk/motorcycle taxi/bus, skytrain/subway, boat, and walking through alleys.
I got back to the hotel just in time to shower before racing over to the mall next to the hotel to find yellow ties for dad and me to wear to dinner. The meal was a western menu, which was disappointing, but the entertainment was MCed by what I imagine were typical Thai presenters, a guy and a girl who were, for lack of a better word, cute. There was live music and a dance troupe performing a sampling of traditional Thai dance. The 4 women had numerous costume changes. One of the girls, now wearing a tail, paired up with a guy in an ornate, stylize monkey costume (that looked a lot like a demon) to tell the story of a mermaid and a monkey falling in love.
09/17/07
I found out that I could crash the IEA conference dinner that evening, so I spent the whole day keeping my eyes open for yellow clothing, the theme of the evening. Monday is yellow day in Thailand. The king was born on a Monday some 80 years back, so now every Monday a huge portion of Thais wear yellow clothing. The monarchy is one of the most loved institutions in the country, and hugely respected. Besides the crowds of people wearing yellow, the king's image was sold on amulets and icons right next to images of Buddhas. Religion is the other widely respected institution. Thai men are expected to become monks at least twice in their lives, usually once while children as 10-vow novices, then again maybe after school as full 227 vow monks. I don't really know what the vows entail, so that's probably worth looking into when I get back.
My first stop of the day was the Grand Palace, home of Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha. The emerald Buddha isn't really emerald, just a dark jade, but it's still spectacular. The king no longer lives in the grand palace, but the Wat there is still his personal temple. Every season he changes the solid gold clothing on the Emerald Buddha as part of an elaborate ritual. Again, I don't know how to describe everything that I saw, so I'll let the pictures do most of that. I especially liked the juxtaposition of classical European architecture with traditional Thai design. There was one building that reminded me very much of Versailles with the wood and mirrors and chandeliers, but instead of fleur de lis on the wallpaper there were Buddhas.
I asked a lot of different people to take my pictures. The Chinese lady was surprised that I was talking to her in Mandarin, but the guy I asked in Spanish responded in English. Ah well.
I'm not sure where the tactile boundary is in a place like the Grand Palace. What part is simply a building, something you interact with and touch, and what's considered art? There are mosaics on most of the walls, and some parts were roped off. Does that imply the rest of the mosaics are fair game to handle? Maybe it doesn't matter here. Yesterday the Reclining Buddha's feet were well worn, and I have clear memories of people touching paintings at the 798 district in Beijing.
In one park near the palace I had corn forced into my hands by a couple of different people, the immediately transparent scheme being that I feed the pigeons and then they hit me up for cash. So I resisted for a while, actually tossing the unopened bag of corn back at one girl from 20 feet away so she couldn't hand it back. One pair of guys actually dumped the corn into my hand, saying, “Present. Happy new year.” I walked down the sidewalk without throwing the corn on the ground, being mobbed with pigeons. I eventually dropped the corn, and when they asked me for money I explained to them that since I didn't have anything they'd given me and I didn't want anything from them now they didn't have any leverage, and that they should strive to live by the mantra of 'get the money first'. I'm only exaggerating slightly, and and I'm certain I confused them. As I walked away I smiled, waved, and bade them a happy new year. I've been generally very friendly on this trip, smiling a lot, as the Thais do, but there's only so much haranguing I can take.
After the Grand Palace I tried to find the river and ferry dock to cross to the other side, but I kept getting turned around in the rabbit warren of markets that hugs the shore of the river. I spent a while wandering a market in a more open area selling everything from washing machines to underwear to herbal medicine to new tires for cars. What do they do with the washing machines when it's time to close for the night? I tried to find yellow clothing, but all of the ubiquitous yellow polo shirts with the king's seal seemed to be for women.
I finally found the ferry taking near Wat Rakhang, but when I got to the other side I promptly became lost again. Next trip like this I'm brining a damn compass. Wat Rakhang, when I found it, wasn't visually spectacular, but it was a 'working' wat, with monks' orange robes hanging to dry, locals making offerings, and a small school attached with classes in session.
My next stop was Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, which has an 82m stupa that looks like something out of Angkor Wat. (Note: I later found out that it's a 'prang', not a stupa. Chedis and stupas are the typical Thai style. A prang is Khmer, and that's why this looked Cambodian to me- it's the same design as Angkor.) Up close to the tower you can see that it's covered in mosaic. There's a fair bit of Chinese porcelain built into the decoration. It turns out that Chinese merchants sailed ships to Siam loaded with broken porcelain as ballast. They dumped it here when they loaded up on whatever they were bringing home, and the porcelain was dragged out of the harbor by the Thais to incorporate into their temples.
After Wat Arun I crossed the river and took the express ferry all the way down the shore to where there's a dock below a skytrain station. I like how you get around in Bangkok- some combination of car/tuk-tuk/motorcycle taxi/bus, skytrain/subway, boat, and walking through alleys.
I got back to the hotel just in time to shower before racing over to the mall next to the hotel to find yellow ties for dad and me to wear to dinner. The meal was a western menu, which was disappointing, but the entertainment was MCed by what I imagine were typical Thai presenters, a guy and a girl who were, for lack of a better word, cute. There was live music and a dance troupe performing a sampling of traditional Thai dance. The 4 women had numerous costume changes. One of the girls, now wearing a tail, paired up with a guy in an ornate, stylize monkey costume (that looked a lot like a demon) to tell the story of a mermaid and a monkey falling in love.
Meditation on a rainy Sunday
Today's photoblog link
09/16/07
After breakfast, a lavish buffet with Western and Thai dishes, we went to the Red Cross snake farm to see a snake handling, feeding, and milking demonstration. The slide show was interesting and informative, and the presenter was good except for an accent that led to gems like 'lespilatoly fairule'. The presentation itself was fun. We sat in bleachers under a canopy as it poured down rain outside. The handlers seemed very unconcerned about their safety around cobras, pythons, and vipers, despite the presenter's comment that every handler at the hospital had at one point been bitten. His own story involved a Siamese cobra and a paralyzed, necrotic finger that was saved by grafting a big chunk of tissue from his forearm. The cobras struck a lot while we were there, but didn't hit anything.
It was still raining after the presentation, but less, so we decided to push on to our next destination- Wat Pho. We took the subway to near a river dock, but by then the rain had started again in earnest so we holed up in coffee shop. Oh, the subway. It uses a different system from the skytrain, meaning to transfer between the two you need to buy tickets twice. The skytrain uses a paper card with a magnetic strip, the subway uses a small, black, plastic token with an embedded RFID chip. The subway itself was modern, had AC, and was nearly empty, which seemed stranger. Maybe it was a Sunday afternoon thing. Also of interest, there was a cop checking bags at the entrance to the subway, but not hard enough that I couldn't had carried, say, 10kg of high explosives on with me.
After sitting with our coffee for a while, dad reading the guidebooks and me catching up on journal writing, the rain eased off again and we pushed on. We got a bit lost, but a Thai guy stopped and tried to point us toward the boats. He gave up, but another Thai guy came over. He was friendly, spoke good English, and gave us some story about being a schoolteacher. He said that the boats weren't running because of the rain, and that Wat Pho was closed for a holiday. For some reason my father, who's read the same scam advisories I have, bought the story and was trying to get info on this guy's recommended Wat as I was trying to get us out of there without explicitly saying that he was full of shit. I finally pulled my dad away (“I want to explore this neighborhood”) and waved off the tuk-tuk driver who was conveniently standing by. When I outlined the characteristics of the guy's scam my dad felt suitably foolish, and we both got a good laugh out of it.
We couldn't find the dock. We walked through back alleys and poor neighborhoods trying to find the place, but none of the alleys were on our map and we didn't even have the sun to navigate by. We were approached by another Thai guy who suggested a different Wat, but in the end he gave us good directions, and it was unclear how he might have profited from the situation, so I guess he was probably on the level. We finally found the dock and waited for our boat.
On the boat, the orange line of the Chao Phraya express ferry, they tore our tickets in intricate ways that made us afraid to hold the damn things for fear of invalidating them by some subtle fold. The river itself was opaque brown and fast-flowing, carrying patches of floating vegetation as it moved. There were ferries like ours, long-tail river taxi boats with outboard motors driving long propeller shafts, and one gargantuan barge carrying an indeterminate cargo. On the way we passed a combination of river-front slums, gleaming white luxury apartment towers, the naval headquarters, and the imposing Wat Arun.
We got off the boat right at Wat Pho. I don't have much to say about the place that can't be better conveyed in pictures. We took off our shoes and entered a side temple, kneeling on a plastic Winnie the Pooh mat in front of an 800 year old golden Buddha. The main Reclining Buddha was huge. Again, the pictures tell the story better, except for having to fight small crowds to actually take them, and this was a rainy Sunday in the low season. The Reclining Buddha's toes were inlaid with a gorgeous mother of pearl depiction of other Buddhas, but were rubbed down right next to a 'do not touch' sign.
After Wat Pho we quickly hit the amulet market outside of nearby Wat Mahathat before heading in. We were there for meditation classes, and at 6PM we sat down with a Buddhist monk and 3 other Americans. He gave us a primer on meditation theory, most of it fairly vague to my unenlightened mind, but my dad, who's read some texts on meditation, understood some of the subtleties. One idea the monk had that was new to me was the idea of moving a hand slowly up and down with your breath in order to help you focus. He also suggested banishing wandering thoughts by identifying them and repeating them 3 times, for example, 'pain, pain, pain” or, “noise, noise, noise”. After the primer we practiced walking meditation, in which you focus on the soles of your feet, then seated meditation, where you focus on your abdomen. The seated meditation lasted until 8, over an hour, and got pretty excruciating. That was by far the longest I've ever tried to sit still and not think.
09/16/07
After breakfast, a lavish buffet with Western and Thai dishes, we went to the Red Cross snake farm to see a snake handling, feeding, and milking demonstration. The slide show was interesting and informative, and the presenter was good except for an accent that led to gems like 'lespilatoly fairule'. The presentation itself was fun. We sat in bleachers under a canopy as it poured down rain outside. The handlers seemed very unconcerned about their safety around cobras, pythons, and vipers, despite the presenter's comment that every handler at the hospital had at one point been bitten. His own story involved a Siamese cobra and a paralyzed, necrotic finger that was saved by grafting a big chunk of tissue from his forearm. The cobras struck a lot while we were there, but didn't hit anything.
It was still raining after the presentation, but less, so we decided to push on to our next destination- Wat Pho. We took the subway to near a river dock, but by then the rain had started again in earnest so we holed up in coffee shop. Oh, the subway. It uses a different system from the skytrain, meaning to transfer between the two you need to buy tickets twice. The skytrain uses a paper card with a magnetic strip, the subway uses a small, black, plastic token with an embedded RFID chip. The subway itself was modern, had AC, and was nearly empty, which seemed stranger. Maybe it was a Sunday afternoon thing. Also of interest, there was a cop checking bags at the entrance to the subway, but not hard enough that I couldn't had carried, say, 10kg of high explosives on with me.
After sitting with our coffee for a while, dad reading the guidebooks and me catching up on journal writing, the rain eased off again and we pushed on. We got a bit lost, but a Thai guy stopped and tried to point us toward the boats. He gave up, but another Thai guy came over. He was friendly, spoke good English, and gave us some story about being a schoolteacher. He said that the boats weren't running because of the rain, and that Wat Pho was closed for a holiday. For some reason my father, who's read the same scam advisories I have, bought the story and was trying to get info on this guy's recommended Wat as I was trying to get us out of there without explicitly saying that he was full of shit. I finally pulled my dad away (“I want to explore this neighborhood”) and waved off the tuk-tuk driver who was conveniently standing by. When I outlined the characteristics of the guy's scam my dad felt suitably foolish, and we both got a good laugh out of it.
We couldn't find the dock. We walked through back alleys and poor neighborhoods trying to find the place, but none of the alleys were on our map and we didn't even have the sun to navigate by. We were approached by another Thai guy who suggested a different Wat, but in the end he gave us good directions, and it was unclear how he might have profited from the situation, so I guess he was probably on the level. We finally found the dock and waited for our boat.
On the boat, the orange line of the Chao Phraya express ferry, they tore our tickets in intricate ways that made us afraid to hold the damn things for fear of invalidating them by some subtle fold. The river itself was opaque brown and fast-flowing, carrying patches of floating vegetation as it moved. There were ferries like ours, long-tail river taxi boats with outboard motors driving long propeller shafts, and one gargantuan barge carrying an indeterminate cargo. On the way we passed a combination of river-front slums, gleaming white luxury apartment towers, the naval headquarters, and the imposing Wat Arun.
We got off the boat right at Wat Pho. I don't have much to say about the place that can't be better conveyed in pictures. We took off our shoes and entered a side temple, kneeling on a plastic Winnie the Pooh mat in front of an 800 year old golden Buddha. The main Reclining Buddha was huge. Again, the pictures tell the story better, except for having to fight small crowds to actually take them, and this was a rainy Sunday in the low season. The Reclining Buddha's toes were inlaid with a gorgeous mother of pearl depiction of other Buddhas, but were rubbed down right next to a 'do not touch' sign.
After Wat Pho we quickly hit the amulet market outside of nearby Wat Mahathat before heading in. We were there for meditation classes, and at 6PM we sat down with a Buddhist monk and 3 other Americans. He gave us a primer on meditation theory, most of it fairly vague to my unenlightened mind, but my dad, who's read some texts on meditation, understood some of the subtleties. One idea the monk had that was new to me was the idea of moving a hand slowly up and down with your breath in order to help you focus. He also suggested banishing wandering thoughts by identifying them and repeating them 3 times, for example, 'pain, pain, pain” or, “noise, noise, noise”. After the primer we practiced walking meditation, in which you focus on the soles of your feet, then seated meditation, where you focus on your abdomen. The seated meditation lasted until 8, over an hour, and got pretty excruciating. That was by far the longest I've ever tried to sit still and not think.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Landing in the land of Thailand
This is a partial transcription of my handwritten journal for my trip to Thailand, September 2007. Note: I'm posting the same text with accompanying photos on my domain here. I'll continue to post the text of these entries on this blog as I type it, but I think it'll be more fun to read with the photos.
09/14/07
Flying into Bangkok, I was amazed by how far I could see lights. There doesn't seem to be the Dongbei haze cutting off visibility after a couple of miles. Right now I'm holed up in a corner of the airport behind some palm trees, thinking about getting some sleep before I head through customs and find a cab downtown.
I'm less prepared for this international trip than I've been for any previous. I don't even have a guide book until dad arrives with the Lonely Planet, only some phrase lists I printed off of the internet and the names in the Thai alphabet of a couple of tourist sites I got from Wikipedia. Escalators and moving walkways in the airport go forward on the left side. Do they drive on the left side of the road here? (Note: Yes, they do, and it's more confusing than I thought it'd be.)
(Written the next day)
I ended up sleeping at BKK for a couple of hours before going through customs. I tried to lie on the ground behind some palm trees, but the stone floor was sucking the heat right out of my body, so I ended up across some chairs.
I decided to take the public transportation into town, so after wandering and reading signs 2 or 3 times over I figured out that I had to take a shuttle to the bus station. At the station I got on bus 552, paid the bus attendant after I figured out he wanted to know where I was going, and was off. Again, I was amazed by how clear and blue the sky was. I guess I'd gotten used to the haze. I listened to what other passengers told the attendant and I noted someone with the same stop as me to follow out of the bus. I got off at On Nut, the terminal stop of one of the Skytrain routes (Bangkok's elevated rail system). I figured out how to get change for the ticket machines by asking an attendant. You tell them your stop and they give you the fewest coins necessary to buy the ticket, the rest comes back as bills. The fare varies with distance, and at 35 baht my long ride was 6-7 times as expensive as a bus, so I guess the locals enjoying the fast, air-conditioned ride were of the privileged set. I got out at the Siam Square stop, probably at about 8AM, and wandered around the still-shuttered shopping district. (As an aside, my total cost from airport to hotel was 67 baht on public transit. My dad's cost later that day was 1400 baht for a BMW limo.)
It was hot, maybe mid 80s, and humid when I stumbled our Pathumwan Princess Hotel. It's a 30-story tower abutting the MBK shopping center. I went in, unsure of whether I'd be able to check into my room so early, but they let me in right away. I think the nicest hotels I've ever been to have been on my dad's business trips, with the possible exception of the Westin Dragonara in Malta, where I myself shelled out $200+ a night for a couple nights. The Princess has several restaurants, a huge pool, a spa, a gym, a running track, and a cold 'check-in drink' handed to you in the lobby. In addition to a concierge it has a limo desk, a tour desk, a business center, and a lounge for corporate guests (including me, ha!). The view from our room on the 17th floor was spectacular. There's a university nearby with the traditional red-peaked Thai roofs. The towers in the distance have architectural twists that make them distinctively Thai: a gold pyramid on top, a gold Buddha's crown coat of arms on the side, minarets, etc.
After oversleeping from my nap, I caught the skytrain to Chatuchak market. Most of the 'new' Bangkok, the parts I've seen so far, have been very rich. I've seen beggars in the streets, but only a few hovels. One of the shacks seemed to cling to the side of a building right next to a clean, shiny skytrain station.
Chatuchak market sells everything- used and new Converse shoes and jeans, silk bed covers, wood carvings, music, books, household consumables, food, electronics. Everything. One thing I immediately noticed was the large number of Thais shopping there, not just tourists. The place smelled of pleasant things rather than slime and waste, a pleasant change from Chinese markets. I bought red shoelaces to go with the black Converse hightops I've been trying to find for ages and was convinced I'd get here, but as in China the shoe sizes available top out well below my far-from-freakish 11.5 feet. I got my first hit of Thai food at the market- red curry over a bowl of rice, which would have been great but for the bones, coconut milk, a fresh-squeezed orange juice, a styrofoam container of lo mein-like noodles, and a bowl of spring rolls. I also had a weird green popsicle out of a steel drum that somehow keeps them frozen. On the way out of the market I stumbled on a separate market selling produce, where I bought excellent caramel-sesame cashews that would last us the rest of the trip.
I went back to sleep when I got back to the hotel, waking up when my dad arrived at the room to chat a bit before we called it a night.
09/14/07
Flying into Bangkok, I was amazed by how far I could see lights. There doesn't seem to be the Dongbei haze cutting off visibility after a couple of miles. Right now I'm holed up in a corner of the airport behind some palm trees, thinking about getting some sleep before I head through customs and find a cab downtown.
I'm less prepared for this international trip than I've been for any previous. I don't even have a guide book until dad arrives with the Lonely Planet, only some phrase lists I printed off of the internet and the names in the Thai alphabet of a couple of tourist sites I got from Wikipedia. Escalators and moving walkways in the airport go forward on the left side. Do they drive on the left side of the road here? (Note: Yes, they do, and it's more confusing than I thought it'd be.)
(Written the next day)
I ended up sleeping at BKK for a couple of hours before going through customs. I tried to lie on the ground behind some palm trees, but the stone floor was sucking the heat right out of my body, so I ended up across some chairs.
I decided to take the public transportation into town, so after wandering and reading signs 2 or 3 times over I figured out that I had to take a shuttle to the bus station. At the station I got on bus 552, paid the bus attendant after I figured out he wanted to know where I was going, and was off. Again, I was amazed by how clear and blue the sky was. I guess I'd gotten used to the haze. I listened to what other passengers told the attendant and I noted someone with the same stop as me to follow out of the bus. I got off at On Nut, the terminal stop of one of the Skytrain routes (Bangkok's elevated rail system). I figured out how to get change for the ticket machines by asking an attendant. You tell them your stop and they give you the fewest coins necessary to buy the ticket, the rest comes back as bills. The fare varies with distance, and at 35 baht my long ride was 6-7 times as expensive as a bus, so I guess the locals enjoying the fast, air-conditioned ride were of the privileged set. I got out at the Siam Square stop, probably at about 8AM, and wandered around the still-shuttered shopping district. (As an aside, my total cost from airport to hotel was 67 baht on public transit. My dad's cost later that day was 1400 baht for a BMW limo.)
It was hot, maybe mid 80s, and humid when I stumbled our Pathumwan Princess Hotel. It's a 30-story tower abutting the MBK shopping center. I went in, unsure of whether I'd be able to check into my room so early, but they let me in right away. I think the nicest hotels I've ever been to have been on my dad's business trips, with the possible exception of the Westin Dragonara in Malta, where I myself shelled out $200+ a night for a couple nights. The Princess has several restaurants, a huge pool, a spa, a gym, a running track, and a cold 'check-in drink' handed to you in the lobby. In addition to a concierge it has a limo desk, a tour desk, a business center, and a lounge for corporate guests (including me, ha!). The view from our room on the 17th floor was spectacular. There's a university nearby with the traditional red-peaked Thai roofs. The towers in the distance have architectural twists that make them distinctively Thai: a gold pyramid on top, a gold Buddha's crown coat of arms on the side, minarets, etc.
After oversleeping from my nap, I caught the skytrain to Chatuchak market. Most of the 'new' Bangkok, the parts I've seen so far, have been very rich. I've seen beggars in the streets, but only a few hovels. One of the shacks seemed to cling to the side of a building right next to a clean, shiny skytrain station.
Chatuchak market sells everything- used and new Converse shoes and jeans, silk bed covers, wood carvings, music, books, household consumables, food, electronics. Everything. One thing I immediately noticed was the large number of Thais shopping there, not just tourists. The place smelled of pleasant things rather than slime and waste, a pleasant change from Chinese markets. I bought red shoelaces to go with the black Converse hightops I've been trying to find for ages and was convinced I'd get here, but as in China the shoe sizes available top out well below my far-from-freakish 11.5 feet. I got my first hit of Thai food at the market- red curry over a bowl of rice, which would have been great but for the bones, coconut milk, a fresh-squeezed orange juice, a styrofoam container of lo mein-like noodles, and a bowl of spring rolls. I also had a weird green popsicle out of a steel drum that somehow keeps them frozen. On the way out of the market I stumbled on a separate market selling produce, where I bought excellent caramel-sesame cashews that would last us the rest of the trip.
I went back to sleep when I got back to the hotel, waking up when my dad arrived at the room to chat a bit before we called it a night.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Saturday In the Park
09/07
I was absolutely determined to go out on Friday rather than watch more DVDs, but didn't really have firm plans with anyone, so I ended up sitting alone at the Rickshaw for a while. I chatted briefly with strangers, but I wasn't nearly as successful at insinuating myself into a group as I had been the previous week. I think I probably have to be more forward; relying on situations to present themselves is silly and boring. Later in the evening, Randy, formerly of Harvard, and his friends joined me. We all ran into another group we knew and decided to bar hop together. So I met some new people, some of whom I'm meeting tonight to play poker, and successfully avoided another movie night. I went home late and slept in.
09/08
When I woke up it was still way too early to just sit around in the apartment. Because it was unusually clear and sunny I decided to finally go check out some of the nearby parks. Chaoyang Park, the huge one across from my apartment, was sort of unimpressive, at least the parts I saw. I pretended I didn't hear the gate guard yelling after me as I biked past. I thought she wanted money, but it turns out bikes are banned. She didn't run after me, though, and it wasn't until I was on my way out that I figured out what she'd wanted. The Beijing Pop Festival was going on, so I stood on the opposite side of the lake and listened a bit, but I was eager to find something more scenic.
The next stop was Hong Lingjin (Red Scarf) Park, by way of an interesting street. One side of the road was crumbling and filthy. The stores all sold construction supplies: racks of steel piping, bags of concrete, wire, simple metal tricycles for transportation. This is your destination if you need to run a labor-intensive, low-tech, somewhat shoddy building project. The other side of the road has the Park Avenue apartments, gleaming new towers on manicured, gated grounds. I imagine the side of the building with views towards the park is substantially more expensive than the side overlooking the slums. I tried to take a picture to capture the contrast, but it didn't work very well. I ended up stitching 2 together using photoshop. Had I known how easy the stitching process was I would have taken the pictures with that in mind and gotten a much better shot. Next time. In fact, I think I'm going to try to get some skyline shots in Beijing using stitching, and maybe play around with making the seams invisible.
The park itself was surprisingly nice considering the 4th Ring Road, one of the 5 concentric highways in Beijing, cuts right through the park and over its lake. But the gardens were pleasant and the trees and the bridges were elegant and very much fit my China archetype. The park was also filled with art. There were steel sculptures illustrating Chinese legends, painted mobiles hanging from trees, huge rocks split in half revealing foot-long 'fossils' of insects, and even garbage cans shaped like- well, something anthropomorphic.
I've noticed is that there's no graffiti around town, at least not the spray painted kind. I don't know if they clean it up quickly, if a severe punishment deters artists and vandals, or whether it's just that I live around a snooty expat neighborhood and a neighborhood probably too poor to afford paint. There is, however, extensive use of spray stencils. The otherwise beautiful bridges in the park had at least 4 'No fishing' signs each, and the walls around the park repeated that message and others. I guess the extensive use of sprayed behavioral dictums are a vestige of the Cultural Revolution. If the spray-painted signs aren't enough there are plenty of more western sign boards. I particularly like the warning not to swim in the water translated into English; I can't imagine anyone from a western country even considering a dip in the green, soupy lake. The locals seem not to be bothered by the idea of eating the fish that they catch in brazen violation of the many signs. My view is that if the water's so green you can't see a millimeter below the surface there's probably too much nitrogen in it, and one has to wonder, especially in a city of 17 million, what exactly happens to the nitrogen from human waste?
Here are the pictures from the park. You have to scroll down, I'm afraid, because iWeb messes up my old links if I put the new pictures on top and it doesn't let me use HTML anchors to send you to the bottom. It's lame, and I'll try to figure out a workaround soon. (Edit: I sort of fixed it. Still gimpy, but it'll work for now.)
I was absolutely determined to go out on Friday rather than watch more DVDs, but didn't really have firm plans with anyone, so I ended up sitting alone at the Rickshaw for a while. I chatted briefly with strangers, but I wasn't nearly as successful at insinuating myself into a group as I had been the previous week. I think I probably have to be more forward; relying on situations to present themselves is silly and boring. Later in the evening, Randy, formerly of Harvard, and his friends joined me. We all ran into another group we knew and decided to bar hop together. So I met some new people, some of whom I'm meeting tonight to play poker, and successfully avoided another movie night. I went home late and slept in.
09/08
When I woke up it was still way too early to just sit around in the apartment. Because it was unusually clear and sunny I decided to finally go check out some of the nearby parks. Chaoyang Park, the huge one across from my apartment, was sort of unimpressive, at least the parts I saw. I pretended I didn't hear the gate guard yelling after me as I biked past. I thought she wanted money, but it turns out bikes are banned. She didn't run after me, though, and it wasn't until I was on my way out that I figured out what she'd wanted. The Beijing Pop Festival was going on, so I stood on the opposite side of the lake and listened a bit, but I was eager to find something more scenic.
The next stop was Hong Lingjin (Red Scarf) Park, by way of an interesting street. One side of the road was crumbling and filthy. The stores all sold construction supplies: racks of steel piping, bags of concrete, wire, simple metal tricycles for transportation. This is your destination if you need to run a labor-intensive, low-tech, somewhat shoddy building project. The other side of the road has the Park Avenue apartments, gleaming new towers on manicured, gated grounds. I imagine the side of the building with views towards the park is substantially more expensive than the side overlooking the slums. I tried to take a picture to capture the contrast, but it didn't work very well. I ended up stitching 2 together using photoshop. Had I known how easy the stitching process was I would have taken the pictures with that in mind and gotten a much better shot. Next time. In fact, I think I'm going to try to get some skyline shots in Beijing using stitching, and maybe play around with making the seams invisible.
The park itself was surprisingly nice considering the 4th Ring Road, one of the 5 concentric highways in Beijing, cuts right through the park and over its lake. But the gardens were pleasant and the trees and the bridges were elegant and very much fit my China archetype. The park was also filled with art. There were steel sculptures illustrating Chinese legends, painted mobiles hanging from trees, huge rocks split in half revealing foot-long 'fossils' of insects, and even garbage cans shaped like- well, something anthropomorphic.
I've noticed is that there's no graffiti around town, at least not the spray painted kind. I don't know if they clean it up quickly, if a severe punishment deters artists and vandals, or whether it's just that I live around a snooty expat neighborhood and a neighborhood probably too poor to afford paint. There is, however, extensive use of spray stencils. The otherwise beautiful bridges in the park had at least 4 'No fishing' signs each, and the walls around the park repeated that message and others. I guess the extensive use of sprayed behavioral dictums are a vestige of the Cultural Revolution. If the spray-painted signs aren't enough there are plenty of more western sign boards. I particularly like the warning not to swim in the water translated into English; I can't imagine anyone from a western country even considering a dip in the green, soupy lake. The locals seem not to be bothered by the idea of eating the fish that they catch in brazen violation of the many signs. My view is that if the water's so green you can't see a millimeter below the surface there's probably too much nitrogen in it, and one has to wonder, especially in a city of 17 million, what exactly happens to the nitrogen from human waste?
Here are the pictures from the park. You have to scroll down, I'm afraid, because iWeb messes up my old links if I put the new pictures on top and it doesn't let me use HTML anchors to send you to the bottom. It's lame, and I'll try to figure out a workaround soon. (Edit: I sort of fixed it. Still gimpy, but it'll work for now.)
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Photos from Scot
Scot crashed on my couch for a couple of nights before flying back to the US to re-up his visa, eat Ana's, and spend September in Boston, the lucky dog. We took the opportunity to trade some of the photos we'd taken when I first got to Beijing. Here are some of his.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
What do duck, military history, and bars have in common?
08/16
Thursday I went to yoga, went home and showered, then biked downtown to meet up with Scot and Catlin for dinner. An girl from MIT came along, and a guy from Harvard met us halfway through our meal, which was my first Peking duck in Peking. It was good, but not as spectacular as I'd hoped. I'll have to try a couple more places. The rest of the meal was pretty standard, but since it was more expensive than the places I tend to eat there was less (maybe no?) MSG and less oil. So it was fun, but sort of sad, as it was my goodbye to Catlin before she went back home. So stay in touch, Catlin.
08/17
Friday night I stayed in. I thought about going to see BT perform at a club literally across the street from my apartment, but I decided against going alone and paying more than I could afford, and I don't listen to his stuff much these days, anyway. So I watched DVDs. I should have studied Chinese, but I'm weak-willed. My (rather pathetic) excuse has been that I don't have a desk lamp and that it's too hard on my eyes to do it in the poor overhead lighting at night. Well, I'm buying a desk lamp today.
08/18
Jack, my flatmate's boyfriend who's sharing the apartment with me right now while Xie Fan is in Hong Kong dealing with a death in his family, invited me to go to the Temple of Heaven. I was tempted to tag along and get some Chinese practice in, but I'm trying to save these big, dramatic touristy things for when Adri or Daria (or anyone else that buys a ticket, hint to you all) come. That, plus the fact that it's the PLA's 80th anniversary and I was told I could see China's new J-10 fighter at the Military History Museum (they spoke lies) led me to turn him down and go to the museum on my own.
On my way to the subway I finally found the military surplus store I was looking for. They have some stuff there, but not the hat I'm looking for or exactly the right jacket. I really want to find navy or gray Cultural-Revolution gear.
I also took some street pictures as I biked. One illustrates the superfluous crossing guards (8 at an intersection, albeit a very large intersection, 3 visible in the photo.) Another is a sea of umbrellas on a sunny day like I discussed when I talked about combat walking. Some are construction photos, particularly of the cool new CCTV towers that are being built at an angle, eventually to be connected on top with an 'L' shape.
In the subway I noticed that there was a battery of monitors over the platform. I thought that it was a weird place for security monitors, but on closer inspection I realized that they showed every subway train door and were meant to be visible to the train conductor so he could control door closing. I thought it was neat.
I posted pictures from the museum, but other than that there's not much to say. It was absolutely crazy packed with people. I didn't understand enough of what was written on most of the signs to learn much Chinese military history, but the exhibits went back to the very beginning of the nationalist movement to the 2007 PLA anniversary with a tank simulator, updated uniforms (which look much like the US's, to much scandal), and lots of video displays that can only be described as recruiting material. Another observation is that the gift shop is on the 4th floor, way out of the way. Not only do you not have to go through it on the way out, but to get there you have to climb an awful lot of stairs to get from the 3rd to 4th floor. It was jammed with people anyway, so I guess it's not a problem.
On my way home I got a message from Scot, so we met up at the subway stop for dinner and beer. After that we started walking north up to Sanlitun, near where I work and live, to meet an MIT guy and to go to some bars. The hike is a few miles, but we broke it up with a short side-trip to Wal-Mart. I've been meaning to make the pilgrimage since I'd arrived, and I finally got my chance. It's a lot like what you'd expect from a Wal-Mart, only in Chinese. The one glaring difference I noticed was that checkout lines were short and really densely packed. We bought a durian (big spiky fruit with the strongest smell you can imagine) and cheated by having the employees cut it up for us, then continued on our hike north. I had the durian in my backpack sealed in 3 plastic bags, but it was still pretty strong.
We met Ben, the MIT guy who was in China teaching this summer, in Sanlitun, but the bars weren't really very full at 10pm. We went to Butterfly, one of the few bars I've found in Beijing that I like, mostly for its prices, and had a couple of drinks. We asked if we could eat our durian, and were surprised when they said yes. So we cracked it out. The flavor wasn't as strong as you'd expect from the smell, and was actually pleasant, but the texture was strange and soft. The waiters came by almost immediately and asked us to put it away.
We checked out Alfa, which was a fairly quiet lounge with high prices, and Nanjie, which wasn't really hopping either, but had outdoor seating next to a field and looked like it might be fun some other time. Bar Blue, winner of best in Beijing last year, seemed classy, but also wasn't packed and was way more than I wanted to pay.
So we sat at outdoor tables at Pure Girl Bar and played a drinking game with chopsticks while we people-watched. Besides lots of couples making out there were a few drunk drivers coming down the alley. One guy crashed his motorcycle about 10 feet from us. I jumped up and ran over with a couple of other people while I watched others jump up and run away- that made me feel good. The driver was a black guy with bleached hair, a sleeveless shirt, lots of bling, sunglasses on after midnight, and of course no helmet. He was ok, but he took the entire side panel off of his Honda rice rocket and destroyed one of the bar's signs. After making sure he was unhurt and wasn't about to ride off I sat back down and watched him pick at his bike and try to gather some dignity. I'd say he's an ambassador's son. I guess that because Chinese companies are loathe to hire blacks and as a result there aren't many around. The racism means that most of the blacks here, based on my observations, are with embassies or are students. Students can't buy motorcycles in China and don't tend to look that wealthy, and I guess that African embassy workers might not be that rich, either.
I went home at 3 or so, enjoyed climbing the 14 flights to the apartment, and went to sleep.
Thursday I went to yoga, went home and showered, then biked downtown to meet up with Scot and Catlin for dinner. An girl from MIT came along, and a guy from Harvard met us halfway through our meal, which was my first Peking duck in Peking. It was good, but not as spectacular as I'd hoped. I'll have to try a couple more places. The rest of the meal was pretty standard, but since it was more expensive than the places I tend to eat there was less (maybe no?) MSG and less oil. So it was fun, but sort of sad, as it was my goodbye to Catlin before she went back home. So stay in touch, Catlin.
08/17
Friday night I stayed in. I thought about going to see BT perform at a club literally across the street from my apartment, but I decided against going alone and paying more than I could afford, and I don't listen to his stuff much these days, anyway. So I watched DVDs. I should have studied Chinese, but I'm weak-willed. My (rather pathetic) excuse has been that I don't have a desk lamp and that it's too hard on my eyes to do it in the poor overhead lighting at night. Well, I'm buying a desk lamp today.
08/18
Jack, my flatmate's boyfriend who's sharing the apartment with me right now while Xie Fan is in Hong Kong dealing with a death in his family, invited me to go to the Temple of Heaven. I was tempted to tag along and get some Chinese practice in, but I'm trying to save these big, dramatic touristy things for when Adri or Daria (or anyone else that buys a ticket, hint to you all) come. That, plus the fact that it's the PLA's 80th anniversary and I was told I could see China's new J-10 fighter at the Military History Museum (they spoke lies) led me to turn him down and go to the museum on my own.
On my way to the subway I finally found the military surplus store I was looking for. They have some stuff there, but not the hat I'm looking for or exactly the right jacket. I really want to find navy or gray Cultural-Revolution gear.
I also took some street pictures as I biked. One illustrates the superfluous crossing guards (8 at an intersection, albeit a very large intersection, 3 visible in the photo.) Another is a sea of umbrellas on a sunny day like I discussed when I talked about combat walking. Some are construction photos, particularly of the cool new CCTV towers that are being built at an angle, eventually to be connected on top with an 'L' shape.
In the subway I noticed that there was a battery of monitors over the platform. I thought that it was a weird place for security monitors, but on closer inspection I realized that they showed every subway train door and were meant to be visible to the train conductor so he could control door closing. I thought it was neat.
I posted pictures from the museum, but other than that there's not much to say. It was absolutely crazy packed with people. I didn't understand enough of what was written on most of the signs to learn much Chinese military history, but the exhibits went back to the very beginning of the nationalist movement to the 2007 PLA anniversary with a tank simulator, updated uniforms (which look much like the US's, to much scandal), and lots of video displays that can only be described as recruiting material. Another observation is that the gift shop is on the 4th floor, way out of the way. Not only do you not have to go through it on the way out, but to get there you have to climb an awful lot of stairs to get from the 3rd to 4th floor. It was jammed with people anyway, so I guess it's not a problem.
On my way home I got a message from Scot, so we met up at the subway stop for dinner and beer. After that we started walking north up to Sanlitun, near where I work and live, to meet an MIT guy and to go to some bars. The hike is a few miles, but we broke it up with a short side-trip to Wal-Mart. I've been meaning to make the pilgrimage since I'd arrived, and I finally got my chance. It's a lot like what you'd expect from a Wal-Mart, only in Chinese. The one glaring difference I noticed was that checkout lines were short and really densely packed. We bought a durian (big spiky fruit with the strongest smell you can imagine) and cheated by having the employees cut it up for us, then continued on our hike north. I had the durian in my backpack sealed in 3 plastic bags, but it was still pretty strong.
We met Ben, the MIT guy who was in China teaching this summer, in Sanlitun, but the bars weren't really very full at 10pm. We went to Butterfly, one of the few bars I've found in Beijing that I like, mostly for its prices, and had a couple of drinks. We asked if we could eat our durian, and were surprised when they said yes. So we cracked it out. The flavor wasn't as strong as you'd expect from the smell, and was actually pleasant, but the texture was strange and soft. The waiters came by almost immediately and asked us to put it away.
We checked out Alfa, which was a fairly quiet lounge with high prices, and Nanjie, which wasn't really hopping either, but had outdoor seating next to a field and looked like it might be fun some other time. Bar Blue, winner of best in Beijing last year, seemed classy, but also wasn't packed and was way more than I wanted to pay.
So we sat at outdoor tables at Pure Girl Bar and played a drinking game with chopsticks while we people-watched. Besides lots of couples making out there were a few drunk drivers coming down the alley. One guy crashed his motorcycle about 10 feet from us. I jumped up and ran over with a couple of other people while I watched others jump up and run away- that made me feel good. The driver was a black guy with bleached hair, a sleeveless shirt, lots of bling, sunglasses on after midnight, and of course no helmet. He was ok, but he took the entire side panel off of his Honda rice rocket and destroyed one of the bar's signs. After making sure he was unhurt and wasn't about to ride off I sat back down and watched him pick at his bike and try to gather some dignity. I'd say he's an ambassador's son. I guess that because Chinese companies are loathe to hire blacks and as a result there aren't many around. The racism means that most of the blacks here, based on my observations, are with embassies or are students. Students can't buy motorcycles in China and don't tend to look that wealthy, and I guess that African embassy workers might not be that rich, either.
I went home at 3 or so, enjoyed climbing the 14 flights to the apartment, and went to sleep.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Chinese tiger
I read an article on the Economist and went to the Chinese Military History museum (pics), both of which were sort of scary.
From the Economist article:
If someone hits an aircraft carrier with a cruise missile a LOT of people are going to die. I mean thousands of people. The last time someone killed that many Americans at once was 9/11, and I'm pretty sure it was World War II before that.
To protect its carriers he US relies largely on ships like the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer I visited last year. These have missiles and cannons like the white-bubble phalanx CIWS (close-in weapons system) to shoot down incoming cruise missiles. The CIWS on the Arleigh-Burkes fire 4500 rounds a minute and has all sorts of fancy, automated tracking that make it theoretically capable of destroying an incoming Sizzler, but according to wikipedia the phalanx system has never been credited with an interception. Also don't forget that China recently managed to surface one of its diesel attack subs within a few miles of the USS Kitty Hawk without being detected beforehand.
China's also probably becoming a nuclear threat:
Ok, so it's not so likely that the US and China will duke it out in a conventional war or a nuclear exchange. But how would the US react if China shot down some of our satellites or jammed our internet? What will we do when we catch China stealing military secrets off of our unsecure networks? A military strike isn't proportional, but I don't know that there's any other action that would work as a deterrent. I think it's really important that China be reliant on the rest of the world, because the more self-sufficient it gets the better able it would be to shut down its borders or weather trade sanctions and embargoes. Here's what the Economist says about asymmetric warfare:
I seriously hope US spies have gotten better. Given this reading I also feel slightly better about Japan changing its constitution to allow a formal military. While China might be the new giant it'll be nice to have some allies in the area.
From the Economist article:
"On paper at least, China's gains have been impressive. Even into the 1990s China had little more than a conscript army of ill-educated peasants using equipment based largely on obsolete Soviet designs of the 1950s and outdated cold-war (or even guerrilla-war) doctrine. Now the emphasis has shifted from ground troops to the navy and air force, which would spearhead any attack on Taiwan. China has bought 12 Russian Kilo-class diesel attack submarines. The newest of these are equipped with supersonic Sizzler cruise missiles that America's carriers, many analysts believe, would find hard to stop."
If someone hits an aircraft carrier with a cruise missile a LOT of people are going to die. I mean thousands of people. The last time someone killed that many Americans at once was 9/11, and I'm pretty sure it was World War II before that.
To protect its carriers he US relies largely on ships like the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer I visited last year. These have missiles and cannons like the white-bubble phalanx CIWS (close-in weapons system) to shoot down incoming cruise missiles. The CIWS on the Arleigh-Burkes fire 4500 rounds a minute and has all sorts of fancy, automated tracking that make it theoretically capable of destroying an incoming Sizzler, but according to wikipedia the phalanx system has never been credited with an interception. Also don't forget that China recently managed to surface one of its diesel attack subs within a few miles of the USS Kitty Hawk without being detected beforehand.
China's also probably becoming a nuclear threat:
During the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96, America could be reasonably sure that, even if war did break out (few seriously thought it would), it could cope with any threat from China's nuclear arsenal. China's handful of strategic missiles capable of hitting mainland America were based in silos, whose positions the Americans most probably knew. Launch preparations would take so long that the Americans would have plenty of time to knock them out. China has been working hard to remedy this. It is deploying six road-mobile , solid-fuelled (which means quick to launch) intercontinental DF-31s and is believed to be developing DF-31As with a longer range that could hit anywhere in America (see map below), as well as submarine-launched (so more concealable) JL-2s that could threaten much of America too.
Ok, so it's not so likely that the US and China will duke it out in a conventional war or a nuclear exchange. But how would the US react if China shot down some of our satellites or jammed our internet? What will we do when we catch China stealing military secrets off of our unsecure networks? A military strike isn't proportional, but I don't know that there's any other action that would work as a deterrent. I think it's really important that China be reliant on the rest of the world, because the more self-sufficient it gets the better able it would be to shut down its borders or weather trade sanctions and embargoes. Here's what the Economist says about asymmetric warfare:
The PLA knows its weaknesses. It has few illusions that China can compete head-on with the Americans militarily. The Soviet Union's determination to do so is widely seen in China as the cause of its collapse. Instead China emphasises weaponry and doctrine that could be used to defeat a far more powerful enemy using “asymmetric capabilities”.
The idea is to exploit America's perceived weak points such as its dependence on satellites and information networks. China's successful (if messy and diplomatically damaging) destruction in January of one of its own ageing satellites with a rocket was clearly intended as a demonstration of such power. Some analysts believe Chinese people with state backing have been trying to hack into Pentagon computers. Richard Lawless, a Pentagon official, recently said China had developed a “very sophisticated” ability to attack American computer and internet systems.
I seriously hope US spies have gotten better. Given this reading I also feel slightly better about Japan changing its constitution to allow a formal military. While China might be the new giant it'll be nice to have some allies in the area.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Beach weekend
Pictures from the weekend.
08/10
I left work at 1 to meet up with Xie Fan and a bunch of his friends to drive out to Nandaihe for a weekend at the beach. Nandaihe is really close to Shanhaiguan, where I went to the Great Wall, but I wanted to go on this trip with Chinese speakers as a way to get some practice in. I think that worked to some extent, but I'm a much more boring person when I'm a bit shy about the language and can't be funny and witty.
I took notes of key words while there (thanks, Nate), thinking I'd remember what I'd cared about so I could write when I get back. I do remember, but I mostly don't care anymore. So I'm just going to move through some of them in a list and get this recorded.
-The car I rode in was a BMW 523, which doesn't exist outside of China. It's apparently slightly longer than some other BMW 5 series. I know his car was manufactured in China, but I'm a little bit disappointed if that's what a $60,000 car is like in the US. It was comfortable, and it seemed fast enough, but it wasn't actually very luxurious or how I'd choose to spend that much money.
-People on the highway are psychotic. Passing happens on all sides, people weave in and out of traffic, cars shoot by in the breakdown lane. From the People's Daily:
Last week when we went hiking I saw a truck (lorry, not pickup) in reverse on the highway, backing up to get onto the exit it had missed. Craziness.
-I got a sample of little emperor treatment of children. When I got into the car the driver's daughter was asleep in the passenger seat, and when she stirred she decided to recline the seat as far as it would go and push it all the way back. This kid is short enough that her feet don't touch the ground, but she has her seat pressed into the knees of the guy next to me. When she woke up we listened to the same song on repeat for the last hour of the drive, while she sang along (shouted, really), out of key. Well, key implies there was a melody, but I think she mostly hit the same note.
When we arrived I had my most expensive dinner so far in China. It was ok, but definitely not as good as Pure Lotus and I was sort of bummed about the total being so high. It was really only $11, but I hadn't planned on my weekend getting so expensive so fast. I tried jellyfish, which was disgusting and expensive, so I don't think I'll do that again. The mouth feel is just too strange and it's very bland.
After dinner we walked along the beach. There's sort of a carnival setup, with ATVs for rent to drive on the sand, minibikes and golfcarts to drive along the streets, amusement park games, etc. There were a couple of hot air balloons that went up in the distance, but they were lashed to the ground, so I'm not sure how much fun that would have been. I didn't get a picture of the cool lighthouse out in the haze, but here's a link. There was a group of performers that carried people around in a circle in sedan chairs, shaking them up and down along with the music played by a band. Apparently it's a traditional form of conveyance in weddings, here done for fun. There were also a bunch of candles in the shape of a heart over by a wall on the beach. Amazingly they stayed lit in the wind, and the people in our group stood around the fire and drank beer for a bit while making fun of the heart's absent creator.
08/11
We had lunch, which was cheaper than the night before, but still expensive, then went to the beach. The beach was crowded and heavily commercialized. We only paid to rent umbrellas and chairs, but people around us paid for motorboat rides or to have their pictures taken and such. I would have just sat in the sand and the sun, but I didn't want to be the one person opting out of paying their share of the rental, so the weekend expenses went up again. I waded out into the ocean a bit, but it was too crowded and I'm not a big swimmer, so I went back and sat down until we rented a volleyball (the only reasonably priced beach expense I saw there) and played for a bit. My only other comment about the place is the huge number of speedos worn. At least the Chinese don't have much body hair, but most of the wearers were overweight.
Oh, and I keep seeing people with these circular marks on their backs, so I asked one of the girls I was with what they were. She said that they're marks from a traditional Chinese medicine treatment in which glass cups are placed on your back and then paper is burnt in them. So the marks are burns, apparently good for what ails you. The cups suck out the bad stuff. Or something.
After the beach we went to a fish market in town. I told the organizer of this evening's cookout back at the guesthouse that I didn't want any seafood, that I wasn't used to the local stuff and was afraid I'd get sick if I kept eating it. So I spent a few RMB and bought some steamed buns and said I'd eat some of the vegetables they bought. I actually just didn't want to pony up the cash for another big, expensive dinner, but I think everyone bought my excuse.
Dinner was huge and lasted for a few hours as the guesthouse staff kept bringing out more dishes made from the food we'd bought for them to prepare. I had a bunch of the vegetables. Some were good, one was just strange: it was cabbage in a suanla (sour-spicy) sauce that seemed to have been flavored with baijiu, Chinese rice liquor. I tried it, but the floral. fruity baijiu flavor is off-putting. To be polite (and because I was hungry) I also tried some of the seafood that was forced on me. Some of the fish was great, the oysters were good, the shrimp weren't.
08/12
We had a simple lunch avoiding seafood, which was nice. Again, not cheap, but I was going to make it through the weekend with a few RMB left in my wallet after all. We ate at a place along a much nicer beach than the first. There were fewer people, fewer hawkers, and bigger waves. There were also these wooden boardwalks that led out to platforms maybe 40 feet into the water, with a sort of deck and seating. Some men stood on them and fished, I sat on the railing and let the waves hitting the platform splash me. As a wave came into shore it'd shoot up through the slats between the planks one-by-one, which for some reason didn't get old.
After some beach time we headed home, entertained (as we'd been all weekend while driving) by that same damn song on repeat. When the girl fell asleep and the dad/driver changed the track I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but then I realized that the CD was 18 tracks with different arrangements of the same 2 songs. God.
It was a good trip, if expensive.
08/10
I left work at 1 to meet up with Xie Fan and a bunch of his friends to drive out to Nandaihe for a weekend at the beach. Nandaihe is really close to Shanhaiguan, where I went to the Great Wall, but I wanted to go on this trip with Chinese speakers as a way to get some practice in. I think that worked to some extent, but I'm a much more boring person when I'm a bit shy about the language and can't be funny and witty.
I took notes of key words while there (thanks, Nate), thinking I'd remember what I'd cared about so I could write when I get back. I do remember, but I mostly don't care anymore. So I'm just going to move through some of them in a list and get this recorded.
-The car I rode in was a BMW 523, which doesn't exist outside of China. It's apparently slightly longer than some other BMW 5 series. I know his car was manufactured in China, but I'm a little bit disappointed if that's what a $60,000 car is like in the US. It was comfortable, and it seemed fast enough, but it wasn't actually very luxurious or how I'd choose to spend that much money.
-People on the highway are psychotic. Passing happens on all sides, people weave in and out of traffic, cars shoot by in the breakdown lane. From the People's Daily:
"It was a little ironic as the overall number of vehicles in China is far smaller than that in Western countries, while the death rate from road accidents is much higher," said an academic surnamed Wang who was quoted in the China Youth Daily.
"According to our research, the death toll and death rate per 10,000 automobiles here is eight times more than that in America," he said.
The most important factor was still the negligence of drivers. Statistics showed that last year some 78.5 per cent of the deaths, about 86,000 people, were caused by improper driving.
Last week when we went hiking I saw a truck (lorry, not pickup) in reverse on the highway, backing up to get onto the exit it had missed. Craziness.
-I got a sample of little emperor treatment of children. When I got into the car the driver's daughter was asleep in the passenger seat, and when she stirred she decided to recline the seat as far as it would go and push it all the way back. This kid is short enough that her feet don't touch the ground, but she has her seat pressed into the knees of the guy next to me. When she woke up we listened to the same song on repeat for the last hour of the drive, while she sang along (shouted, really), out of key. Well, key implies there was a melody, but I think she mostly hit the same note.
When we arrived I had my most expensive dinner so far in China. It was ok, but definitely not as good as Pure Lotus and I was sort of bummed about the total being so high. It was really only $11, but I hadn't planned on my weekend getting so expensive so fast. I tried jellyfish, which was disgusting and expensive, so I don't think I'll do that again. The mouth feel is just too strange and it's very bland.
After dinner we walked along the beach. There's sort of a carnival setup, with ATVs for rent to drive on the sand, minibikes and golfcarts to drive along the streets, amusement park games, etc. There were a couple of hot air balloons that went up in the distance, but they were lashed to the ground, so I'm not sure how much fun that would have been. I didn't get a picture of the cool lighthouse out in the haze, but here's a link. There was a group of performers that carried people around in a circle in sedan chairs, shaking them up and down along with the music played by a band. Apparently it's a traditional form of conveyance in weddings, here done for fun. There were also a bunch of candles in the shape of a heart over by a wall on the beach. Amazingly they stayed lit in the wind, and the people in our group stood around the fire and drank beer for a bit while making fun of the heart's absent creator.
08/11
We had lunch, which was cheaper than the night before, but still expensive, then went to the beach. The beach was crowded and heavily commercialized. We only paid to rent umbrellas and chairs, but people around us paid for motorboat rides or to have their pictures taken and such. I would have just sat in the sand and the sun, but I didn't want to be the one person opting out of paying their share of the rental, so the weekend expenses went up again. I waded out into the ocean a bit, but it was too crowded and I'm not a big swimmer, so I went back and sat down until we rented a volleyball (the only reasonably priced beach expense I saw there) and played for a bit. My only other comment about the place is the huge number of speedos worn. At least the Chinese don't have much body hair, but most of the wearers were overweight.
Oh, and I keep seeing people with these circular marks on their backs, so I asked one of the girls I was with what they were. She said that they're marks from a traditional Chinese medicine treatment in which glass cups are placed on your back and then paper is burnt in them. So the marks are burns, apparently good for what ails you. The cups suck out the bad stuff. Or something.
After the beach we went to a fish market in town. I told the organizer of this evening's cookout back at the guesthouse that I didn't want any seafood, that I wasn't used to the local stuff and was afraid I'd get sick if I kept eating it. So I spent a few RMB and bought some steamed buns and said I'd eat some of the vegetables they bought. I actually just didn't want to pony up the cash for another big, expensive dinner, but I think everyone bought my excuse.
Dinner was huge and lasted for a few hours as the guesthouse staff kept bringing out more dishes made from the food we'd bought for them to prepare. I had a bunch of the vegetables. Some were good, one was just strange: it was cabbage in a suanla (sour-spicy) sauce that seemed to have been flavored with baijiu, Chinese rice liquor. I tried it, but the floral. fruity baijiu flavor is off-putting. To be polite (and because I was hungry) I also tried some of the seafood that was forced on me. Some of the fish was great, the oysters were good, the shrimp weren't.
08/12
We had a simple lunch avoiding seafood, which was nice. Again, not cheap, but I was going to make it through the weekend with a few RMB left in my wallet after all. We ate at a place along a much nicer beach than the first. There were fewer people, fewer hawkers, and bigger waves. There were also these wooden boardwalks that led out to platforms maybe 40 feet into the water, with a sort of deck and seating. Some men stood on them and fished, I sat on the railing and let the waves hitting the platform splash me. As a wave came into shore it'd shoot up through the slats between the planks one-by-one, which for some reason didn't get old.
After some beach time we headed home, entertained (as we'd been all weekend while driving) by that same damn song on repeat. When the girl fell asleep and the dad/driver changed the track I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but then I realized that the CD was 18 tracks with different arrangements of the same 2 songs. God.
It was a good trip, if expensive.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Meditation, movies, and meandering. Ok, so meandering's a stretch.
This weekend was quiet.
7/26
On Thursday I went out to dinner with Fan Xie (Bobby, my flatmate, but I think Bobby is a silly name and am going to try to stop using it) and a couple of his friends. The friends showed up at our apartment before he did, by about 45 minutes, and we couldn't reach Fan on his cell. So I met these people, a husband and wife that arrived separately, and chatted for a while. The husband works in advertisement directing TV spots and the wife does PR. As far as I can tell they're the classic upwardly-mobile young Beijingers. They drive a car (Nissan Bluebird) and 'own' a house (which I think means that they have a 99 year lease from the Chinese government, which is as close as you can get here), they're educated and in their mid-20s, and they seem pretty liberal. We went out to eat at a hot pot place nearby, then to meet a couple of their other friends at the Black Sun near my house. The evening was good, despite my $3 bottle of Guinness that was mostly disappointing. It was my first night out with all Chinese speakers, so I struggled to keep up with the language, often failing. I need to be doing a lot more of that or I'm never going to get any good.
7/27
After work I went to yoga and watched DVDs. It was a pretty quiet night. I accomplished my goal of going to yoga 5 times this week.
7/28
Pictures of today's wanderings, plus last week at Panjiayuan. I also started 2 new albums, one for random photos I take and the other documenting Beijing construction. I'll try to keep adding to them.
Workers started tearing down a wall right outside my window at about 7AM. I managed to stay in bed until about 12, but I'm sure those hours of sleep were completely unproductive, as every few minutes they'd start cutting through some rebar or sledge-hammering something solid and my whole bed would shake.
It had rained heavily the night before and the sky was a little bit clearer than normal, so I decided to go sightseeing. Because things close pretty early I booked it out the door as soon as I could. I took a couple of buses over to Dongcheng and my first stop, the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower (Gulou and Zhonglou). They're maybe 50m tall, and in the past were used to tell time. While I was there the guys in the Drum Tower played the drums to mark the hour, but other than the fact that they're cool old buildings with decent views of the hutong area around them there wasn't much to see.
After the towers I got porridge and pot stickers at a small restaurant nearby. I didn't realize how close the towers were to another place I'd been already. Mentally linking these different, distinct areas I'd visited was neat; I like it when cities start to click into place. I walked to the next place I was going to visit, on the way passing Mao Livehouse. I'd never heard of it, but the exterior was rusty bolts and sheet metal and white stenciled writing, so I noted the name and looked it up when I got home. It turns out it's a new bar/music venue that's well regarded. They're doing a Ramones tribute on Friday by local bands that I think I'll try to go to.
My next stop was going to be the Lama Temple, but they closed soon and they wouldn't give me a student discount, so I walked across the street to the Imperial College (Guozijian) and its attached Confucian temple (Kong Miao). The Imperial College was China's premier university for about 600 years, and is where the emperor would give an annual address to the elites on Confucian values. The Confucian temple houses a forest of 190 stela on which are carved the 13 classics of Confucianism. The main hall was closed for construction, which doesn't surprise me.
When the tourist sites closed I found a bus that took me straight home from the Imperial College. I was going to try to meet up with Scot and Catlin, but the logistics didn't work out and I ended up hanging out and watching more movies.
7/29
Reading, yoga, and movies. It was a relaxing weekend, but next week I'm going to a bar even if I have to go alone.
7/26
On Thursday I went out to dinner with Fan Xie (Bobby, my flatmate, but I think Bobby is a silly name and am going to try to stop using it) and a couple of his friends. The friends showed up at our apartment before he did, by about 45 minutes, and we couldn't reach Fan on his cell. So I met these people, a husband and wife that arrived separately, and chatted for a while. The husband works in advertisement directing TV spots and the wife does PR. As far as I can tell they're the classic upwardly-mobile young Beijingers. They drive a car (Nissan Bluebird) and 'own' a house (which I think means that they have a 99 year lease from the Chinese government, which is as close as you can get here), they're educated and in their mid-20s, and they seem pretty liberal. We went out to eat at a hot pot place nearby, then to meet a couple of their other friends at the Black Sun near my house. The evening was good, despite my $3 bottle of Guinness that was mostly disappointing. It was my first night out with all Chinese speakers, so I struggled to keep up with the language, often failing. I need to be doing a lot more of that or I'm never going to get any good.
7/27
After work I went to yoga and watched DVDs. It was a pretty quiet night. I accomplished my goal of going to yoga 5 times this week.
7/28
Pictures of today's wanderings, plus last week at Panjiayuan. I also started 2 new albums, one for random photos I take and the other documenting Beijing construction. I'll try to keep adding to them.
Workers started tearing down a wall right outside my window at about 7AM. I managed to stay in bed until about 12, but I'm sure those hours of sleep were completely unproductive, as every few minutes they'd start cutting through some rebar or sledge-hammering something solid and my whole bed would shake.
It had rained heavily the night before and the sky was a little bit clearer than normal, so I decided to go sightseeing. Because things close pretty early I booked it out the door as soon as I could. I took a couple of buses over to Dongcheng and my first stop, the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower (Gulou and Zhonglou). They're maybe 50m tall, and in the past were used to tell time. While I was there the guys in the Drum Tower played the drums to mark the hour, but other than the fact that they're cool old buildings with decent views of the hutong area around them there wasn't much to see.
After the towers I got porridge and pot stickers at a small restaurant nearby. I didn't realize how close the towers were to another place I'd been already. Mentally linking these different, distinct areas I'd visited was neat; I like it when cities start to click into place. I walked to the next place I was going to visit, on the way passing Mao Livehouse. I'd never heard of it, but the exterior was rusty bolts and sheet metal and white stenciled writing, so I noted the name and looked it up when I got home. It turns out it's a new bar/music venue that's well regarded. They're doing a Ramones tribute on Friday by local bands that I think I'll try to go to.
My next stop was going to be the Lama Temple, but they closed soon and they wouldn't give me a student discount, so I walked across the street to the Imperial College (Guozijian) and its attached Confucian temple (Kong Miao). The Imperial College was China's premier university for about 600 years, and is where the emperor would give an annual address to the elites on Confucian values. The Confucian temple houses a forest of 190 stela on which are carved the 13 classics of Confucianism. The main hall was closed for construction, which doesn't surprise me.
When the tourist sites closed I found a bus that took me straight home from the Imperial College. I was going to try to meet up with Scot and Catlin, but the logistics didn't work out and I ended up hanging out and watching more movies.
7/29
Reading, yoga, and movies. It was a relaxing weekend, but next week I'm going to a bar even if I have to go alone.
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