Left Hand Path

Goodbye, SE Asia!

On 1 July, I boarded a Cathay Pacific flight from Jakarta to Hong Kong and officially left SE Asia behind.  I'm very, very sad to see it go.  Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia.  I'll miss the chaos and the feeling that anything could happen.  I've used the word "chaos" to describe just about every place I've visited on this trip, and it refers to an all-pervasive energy that both invigorates and enervates, which is both awe-inspiring and debilitating.  I think it would be a challenge to live a balanced life in SE Asia but I would never be bored, not for a moment.  The extreme always makes an impression, and my trip has been a disorienting study in extremes, capped off by 5 days in Jakarta, possibly the most intense city I've ever visited.  I remember the cities best of all from my trip throught out Asia.  Chennai was both chaotic and conservative, Shanghai ruled by single-minded capitalism, BKK a hub of multi-cultural hedonism.  Siem Reap introduced me to the ancient crumbling majesty of Angkor Wat.  The S-21 prison in Phnom Penh filled with me a sense of dread and hopelessness amidst the hustle and bustle of a city and a people courageously rebuilding itself after decades of devastation.  The derelict buildings and crushing poverty of Jakarta mixed uneasily with high end malls and fancy cars and oher evidence of abundant wealth in the hands of a very small privileged minority.  I saw firsthand the fierce nationalistic pride of the Vietnamese and the searing scars still remaining from its wars of independence.  I arrived in Sydney in the middle of my travels throughout SE Asia and it felt like the volume was turned down, like I was barely awake.

SE Asia affected me in many ways, some of which are too personal to discuss here.  But suffice it to say that the whole trip, especially the SE Asian portion, jump-started my system after a long period of paralysis and inertia.  Many of my experiences were wonderful and positive, some difficult, some a confusing combination of the two, some of them beyond words or any kind of neat definition.  The other day in Jakarta I walked over a bridge stretching across a busy street connecting to Blok M Mall and passed by a woman beggar with what looked like an Adam's apple massively swollen to the size of a grapefruit.  What can you say about Cambodian amputees walking the streets in Siem Reap, victims of Khmer Rouge landmines?  I saw prostitution thrust out in the open and on such a massive scale that it has become an integral part of the societal fabric.  I saw terrain in Central Vietnam where to this day roots could not grow more than 5 feet beneath the ground because of all the toxic chemicals my country dumped on the country in the 60s and 70s.  I saw young Thai men bashing themselves into premature brain damage in a boxing ring.  I saw things that filled me with wonder and things that filled me with guilt and anxiety.  I also saw human warmth and empathy in the most unexpected places.

I knew the least about Indonesia before visiting and it turned out to be far more complex, perplexing, difficult, amazing, and memorable than I anticipated.  What I could not prepare myself for were the Indonesians themselves.  Indonesians are the friendliest people I met on my travels (next would be the Cambodians) and they love Bules (white people).  They are naturally outgoing and are unencumbered by Western notions of personal space and privacy and will strike up conversations with perfect strangers and fire off personal questions without hesitation.  (The women, however, tend to much more shy than the men, especially when it comes to the opposite sex.)  I am a very private person, an introvert, and adjusting to these cultural norms proved to be quite challenging.  My Indonesian tour guide, an Australian, told me that every travelerer should go to at least one place where there are no other foreigners around, and I experienced that to a large degree in Jakarta, which has almost no tourism.  Expats are generally only here to work and those numbers have thinned considerably since the economic decline in the late 90s as Suharto was forced from power after decades of rigid control and widespread corruption.  I did not stay in the backpacker area my last time in Jakarta and when I walked the streets and wandered the malls I was often the only Bule in sight.  I was openly stared at and gawked at and the intensity of the silent and not-so-silent attention focused on me became a bit unnerving.  I had to periodically retreat to the relative anonymity of my hotel room in order to escape from this gaze.  But I also managed to make friends wherever I went, no small feat for an introvert.  I also learned to smile at every available opportunity, as the smile functions as an all-purpose social lubricant in Indonesia, to fill in pauses and save face and smooth over awkward moments.  This was a good exercise for someone as stony-faced as myself.

There was a dark side to Indonesiam good cheer as well.  The poverty was relentless.  Corruption and graft are commonplace.  There is basically no infrastructure and no central organization.  Food shortages and rising gas prices are stressing an already overburdeend population.  Jakarta is a mass of endless traffic jams and sweltering heat and vast economic disparity.  I thought of the famous traffic jam setpiece in Godard's Weekend as I crawled through gridlock inch by precious inch, as two lanes magically became three, as I miraculously inched up to 40, 50 and even on one rare occasion 60 km/h.  Jakarta seemingly has no rules and no laws and I heard tales of vigilante justice meted out to pickpockets where thieves are beaten within an inch of their life or dipped in gasoline and set on fire.  However, Jakarta has a reputation for being quite safe, given its poverty, especially for Westerners.  I wanted to check out the (in)famous club Stadium in Kota but decided against it after being warned by multiple people that I would be accosted by drug dealers and mama sans and that someone would liberate me of my wallet.  The nightlife here is unbeatable but also disconcertingly decadent.  The natural beauty in Indonesia blew me away so many times, but it's the product of a volatile ecosystem always at risk for earthquakes and tsunamis.  Overall, for all its difficulties and complexities, I loved Indonesia and I hope to back there sometime soon!

1 July 2008.  I turned on my mobile phone today for the first time in nearly six months.

I love you all!

Last night my Norwegian friend danced on stage bare-chested with a ladyboy.  My Scandavian friend is a strapping young lad of 20 years, 6 feet tall and very blond.  A tasty tidbit by the standards of your average ladyboy.   Mad props to Norway for being so secure with his heterosexuality.  He got off the stage and told me he still had goosebumps from the experience.  He was like, "Everyone's laughing at me."  I told him "No one's laughing at you.  The chicks all want to fuck you, and the gay dudes all want to fuck you."  I don't think that reassured him too much.  He was uncomfortable with the whole experience for sure, and onstage went several deep shades of red as the ladyboy made him grab her ladyboybody and dance with him in a  standing spoon and then peeled his shirt off and of course gave him a little kiss goodbye, but he never got agitated or aggressive and handled it all with good humor if no small amount of psychological discomfort.

At least two of the ladyboys were prancing around and lip-synching while wearing panties and stockings and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the hell they kept their dicks out of sight.  Was it one of those between the leg tucks like Jame Gumb in Silence of the Lambs?  It's all a mystery.  The other mystery was how a bunch of dudes who like to dress up as girls managed to have thinner thighs, flatter stomachs and slimmer legs than most chicks I know.

At the end of the show, the main ladyboy introduced all the dancers and there was much applause.  One of the more convincing ladyboys-- and there were at least two where I would be hard-pressed to tell that they were actually men-- said to the crowd, in a high, chirping voice, "I love you all."  The M.C. told her to repeat that in her real voice, and she obliged, in a "I LOVE YOU ALL" basso profundo that dropped me to the floor in utter hysterics.  The ladyboy that stripped Norway down-- maybe it was the same ladyboy with the deep voice, I can't recall, it's all a blur-- came over to him afterwards and took more pictures, this time with the both of us.  But really, she only had eyes for Norway.  "He's beautiful," she said.  Bloody priceless!

We were taken to the show by an Indonesian dude from the Javanese city of Surabaya.  He drove us home on his motorbike and we kept breaking into huge belly laughs while repeating the "I love you all"... "I LOVE YOU ALL" pitch shift.  Several drinks in at this point, good we didn't crash on those narrow Kuta-to-Legian streets.  Never agree to be the third person on a motorbike, there's nowhere to rest your legs and you end up either holding them up-- painful after a few blocks-- or letting them hover just above the ground, which can get hairy on a sharp turn or a slender passageway.  The Indonesian dude had been adopted by Norwegian parents and so could speak with Norway in Norwegian.  It was the perfect icebreaker and there's nothing better than being introduced to a foreign culture by a local, so we ran with it.  The nightlife in Kuta is pretty full-on and at some point he vanished when we got to the expat bars, a real shame as I enjoyed asking him about Bali, the Javanese and the sexual politics of ladyboys.  This afternoon on way from Soekarno-Hatto to my hotel room I spent the entire taxi ride quizzing the driver on all the important Jakartan topics, such as traffic, malls and... traffic.  If you ever make it to Jakarta, be sure and use the Bluebird taxis, they're an oasis of honesty in a mad sea of people trying to rip off Bules.  The traffic in this city really is completely insane, and the utter lack of infrastructure that unfortunately characterizes the Indonesian experience only adds to the chaos.  The only other city I've seen that can compare in terms of traffic, pollution, pandemonium and noise is Chennai, but Chennai tops out at 4 million whereas Jakarta hosts anywhere from 8 million to 22, depending on how you count and trying to factor in all the folks living there illegally.  I explored the neighborhood around my hotel for a coupe hours today and I could feel the exhaust burning my lungs.  Puzzling out the streets poses huge challenges.  For instance, there's usually a main street such as Angsaka, but then there are a myriad of surrounding smaller streets (Sois, if you're in Thailand) called Angsaka 1 through 8, but these streets can run horizontally, vertically or diagonally, so Angsaka 2 may run perpendicular to Angsaka 1 and 3 may run from the end of one to the beginning of 5.  Etc.  No rhyme or reason to any of it.  These next five days should be interesting.

Montage

I went to see the kecak dance the other night here in Bali.  It's a famous indigenous phenomenon wherein a circle of bare-chested Balinese men percussively chant "cak" while waving their hands in the air (think "spirit fingers") while various male and female dancers move around the circle in costume, all of which collectively somehow depicts a battle from the Ramayama.  I had high expectations and for the most part I was a bit disappointed, as the most memorable moment was one of the chanters blatantly flirting with a 19 year old Swiss girl from our tour.  I had first seen the dance depicted quite beautifully in the non-narrative film Baraka and while reading up on the film found out to my consternation that the dance is not the mystical ritual it appears to be, but rather a piece of performance art designed for tourist consumption.  It makes a certain amount of sense, however, one further reminder that my experiences in SE Asia have been filtered through the massive cultural melting pot contained within the films I have seen depicting the region. 

The old adage is that art imitates life, but for me, often life imitates movies.  It all started when I saw Apocalypse Now when I was 9 years old, which while shot in The Phillipines created an indelible image of Vietnam the light and space of which really put the zap on my head, full of palm trees and beaches and the burning stench of napalm.  I first heard about Indonesia when I saw The Year Of Living Dangerously, which depicts the period of turmoil during Sukarno's fall through the eyes of an Australian journalist.  Shanghai came to life for me in Empire of the Sun, Cambodia predictably through The Killing Fields and Angkor Wat via the haunting montage that closes Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love.  Aside from the kecak dance, Baraka contains many exquisite images of Prambanan and Borobudur and rice paddies in Indonesia, Angkor Wat and a stream of urban metropolises including Jakarta and Hong Kong.  I've seen Hong Kong in stacks and stacks of HK horror and action flicks from the mid-90s during the Category III renaissance before control reverted to mainland China at the end of the century.  Hong Kong is my last stop in about 5 days, we'll see if it lives up to the movies!

Jakarta to Bali

I met my friend Charlie, an American I met in Vietman, in Kuala Lumpur on a layover on 6 June and then we flew to Jakarta together to join a tour starting on 7 June.  We met up with a family friend of Charlie's on the morning of the 7th, who took us around the city with his fiance in a private car with a driver.  As I mentioned in my previous post, my initial impressions of Jakarta were quite negative.  The traffic is incredibly dense and small distances can take absurdly long to navigate due to gridlock.  It's crowded and polluted and chaotic.  We took a quick look at the National Monument but then spent the rest of our time cruising the malls.  The first time I went to Jakarta I spent two days at Plaza Indonesia and felt slightly embarrassed of this fact, but now I found out that's actually exactly what Jakartans do on weekends, so it was a proper cultural experience after all.

The Intrepid tour wasted no time in Jakarta, and we set off early in the morning on 8 June to a quiet little oceanside town on the southern coast of Java called Pandangaran.  It's one of those sleepy beach towns that work best if you smoke pot and like to surf.  Unfortunately, I indulge in neither, but it was a pleasant way to spend a few days and we went on a quick day tour where we saw monkeys, scorpions, porcupines and even an iguana in the distance.  Our Indonesian guide Suddha pointed out magic mushrooms growing in cow shit, and later offered to cook me an "omelette."  He said, "After omelette, you can fly."  He tried explaining what he meant to the half-deaf Dutch guy on our tour (a metalhead who proudly wore a Celtic Frost t-shirt a couple of times), with little success.

The first night in Pandangaran turned out to be an ice-breaker, as Charlie and I started in with our patended acerbic banter, our principal target the Australian and especially British accents of our touring colleagues. I've been working on my Australian accent since Sydney.  I was pleased to note that our inveterate goofiness offended no one, and in fact most people found our constant sarcasm entertaining, even as the jokes got more and more over-the-top.  An older woman on the trip, Ann, a Brit who has lived in Broome, Australia since the early 1970s, told us that she found our behavior refreshing as in her experience Americans are overly serious.  I initially found this comment perplexing, but as the tour progessed and our joking continued apace, I realized that in a crew of Americans our behavior would most likely be greeted with eye-rolling and eventually full on irritation and I now I can see where Ann is coming from.  All of which makes me think I was a Brit in a past life (especially since I've heard Australians described as Brits w/out the seasonal affective disorder, as I've definitely got the seasonal affective disorder).  An ill-tempered, moody, sarcastic Brit, but isn't that a bit of a tautology?  Surly pricks.

On our last night in town, we ran into Suddha and some of his friends getting drunk on the beach and so began a night of awe-inspiring debauchery during which Suddha hit on a 19 year-old Swedish girl from the tour who with her pale skin and Renaissance figure enjoyed bottomless attention from Indonesian men and enjoyed absolutely every second of it.  She later told us that she dated a 32 year old guy when she was 16 and seemed quite confused as to why we found this a bit shocking.  (Indonesian men proved themselves to be quite brazen flirts with the Western ladies, it was almost a bit too much at times.)  Turns out there was another 19 year old on the trip, a Brit who made the mistake of describing her accent as posh and that was all it took, she wore the nickname Posh for the remainder of the trip.  (Eventually she started calling me Grandpa, due to my shocking realization that I was literally old enough to be her father.  "You see that old guy over there, the bald guy wearing the black t-shirt?  That'll be you in ten years."  It's a humbling experience to be roasted by a teenager.)  I referred to the Welsh chick as Wales and ridiculed her chronic elision of the letter "T", which would turn Harry Potter into 'arry Po'er and other egregious abuses of the English language.

Another day of travel took us to Yogyakarta in central Java.  Yogya (the first and second "Y's" are pronounced more like a soft "J" so it sounds like 'Jogjakarta') is the cultural capital of Java, which unfortunately meant to a large extent that it's known for its shopping.  And by shopping, I mean lots of trinkets designed to be snapped up by tourists.  Not my thing.  However, just outside of the city lies Prambanam, an ancient Hindu temple built in the middle of the 9th century.  An earthquake a few years ago damaged the temple and visitors are not allowed to climb over certain portions of the structure, but it was still absolutely stunning, nearly on the level of the awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping amazingness of Angkor Wat.  The fact that temples like the Angkor Wat complex and Prambanan have not been meticulously preserved adds immeasureably to their ancient feel, it's like you're back in the 9th century when staring down those ancient, crumbling structures.  The ancient Buddhist temple Borobudur can also be found in the area, although paradoxically the fact that it has been very well-maintained makes it less interesting, and its design is more repetitive and ultimately it didn't inspire the same sense of wonder I got from Angkor and Prambanan.

After a forgettable day at a nature preserve, during which I mostly caught up on my sleep-- the roosters were blaring in my ear from about 3:30 to 5:30 a.m. every morning in Yogya and I barely slept for three days-- we made our way to the mountains of East Java and woke up at three in the morning to witness the sunrise over Gunung Bromo, an active volcano.  Bromo is one of three volcanoes emerging from a vast crater that stretches 10 km across, flanked by the peaks of Kursi and Batok (that last bit taken from Lonely Planet).  Shrouded in mist as the sun rises, it truly feels like an alien landscape, or maybe the last bit of swallowing panorama at the end of the world.  If Herzog had decided to film Aguirre, The Wrth of God in Indonesia, Kinski's death scene would've involved a camera spinning around Bromo's crater.  As you get closer to the actual crater, which constantly belches smoke, your nostrils are invaded by the sulphur smell, which becomes so thick that it ravages your throat.  The angle is steep and my lazy ass barely made it up the steps, but I'm glad I worked up a sweat, the sight from up top was possibly even more stunning than the sunrise.

Next, a car, non-AC train and finally a ferry to Bali.  Charlies and I befriended a 4 year-old Indonesian boy named Riski on the train, who seemed fascinated by my prolific air-guitaring while listening to Graves At Sea on my iPod and couldn't stop staring at me.  He was shy at first but warmed up when I started making silly faces and pretending to hide from him behind a curtain.  We were complaining about the sweltering heat in the cabin until we found out that Riski and his parents had been on the train for 3 days, after 4 days on a boat.  We had the option of moving into the a/c car after a couple of hours but decided to sit it out with our new buddy.  It was so hot that after a while I felt like I was knee-deep in some kind of hypnotic trance.  Charlie would ask me a question and I would reply a minute later like no time had passed and we were both so out of it neither of us thought this was weird.

In Bali, we started off in Lovina, a quiet beach town in the southern part of the island which was little more than a strip of restaurants and bars bordering the beach.  We went to a local hot springs where we were the only Westerners and it was quite a spectacle.  As we walked through the crowds, it was-- to borrow Charlie's words-- like Moses parting the Red Sea as Indonesians gawked at us.  I sat out the first night of partying but made it out for the second night of partying, and ended-up with one of the worst hangovers of my life.  I have some vague memories of insulting a British dude in a pool hall, entirely without provocation, and came dangerously close to getting my ass kicked.  A little food settled my stomach and we got on a mini-van to Ubud.  Ubud is the cultural capital of Ubud, which like Yogya, means an endless stream of stores selling batik, wooden sculptures of the Buddha and massive phalluses, junky "Bintang Pilsenser" t-shirts, jewelry... etc. etc. etc.  Some great restaurants, though, and for our farewell dinner, we ordered an entire Balinese roast suckling pig.  I ate stacks and stacks of pork, including massive rolls of fat and gristle, and it all tasted delicious. 

I'm in Kuta now, one of the southern beaches in Bali.  It's kind of a hellhole, really.  Endless winding streets filled with the usual assortment of hawkers and stores selling batik, boogleg DVDs, t-shirts with witty slogans like "No money no honey" and "Lest's [sic] fuck lesbians".  And the usual parade of women ogling men for massages and taxi drivers harassing pedestrians for fares.  I'm burnt out on that vibe and looking forward to flying to Jakarta in a couple of days.

BKK

I left Bangkok for the last time on 2 June.  I've been through this bustling metropolis on four separate occasions since I arrived in SE Asia in late March for a grand total of about two weeks.  I heard all the usual disclaimers about the place-- it's just another city, the traffic is horrendous, it's too hot, it's too polluted, it's too big.  It's all essentially true, but I still love the BKK and it's my favorite of the cities I've visited on this trip.  It's a regional hub and as a result you can find basically anything there, from amazing Thai boxing to great bookstores and movie theaters and incredible food and Ashtanga yoga and of course a buzzing nightlife.  I made many single serving friends there, especially at Thai boxing matches, and shared many a beer with my fellow expats.  I also did a lot of solo roaming in sweltering heat and took morning mysore classes that were so hot that my glasses would still be fogging up a block away from the studio.  I spent my last four days there squeezing in a final Thai boxing match at Lumphini stadium-- fucking amazing!  two knockouts-- catching up on stupid Hollywood movies and drinking a few beers at night.  It was sublime.  My affection for the BKK sums up the paradoxical nature of my travels in many ways and why a lot of folks find my tastes a bit unpredictable, strange, counterintuitive, whatever.  What it comes down to is that I love concrete jungles the most and I can only take remote areas for so long before I feel a creeping anxiety rolling up my spine, like first rising vibes of an acid frenzy.  It also meant that I had to dodge a lot of travel advice because the prevailing wisdom is to escape the frenzied cities as quickly as possible and make way quiet pictueresque rural areas.  Never got off the boat, I say.  Absolutely goddamn right.

Next on the menu after I leave Bali is 5 days in Jakarta.  All the same warnings I heard about the BKK apply triple strength to Jakarta, and in fact my initial impressions when I spent a few days there in May and June were quite negative.  Then I started to read up on the nightlife there and found out it's absolutely world class and it is in fact the clubbing capital of SE Asia, hundreds of clubs and venues and bars spread out over an immense urban sprawl.  There's this massive club called Stadium which consists of four separate levels with a gigantic dancefloor nestled at the top that supposedly fits up to 2000 people at a time and is open from Friday night clear through Monday morning at 4 a.m.  I can only imagine what goes on in a place like this but it sounds like a can't miss.  The music sounds amazing and the idea of happening electronic dance clubs reminds me of that brief period in the mid-90s when it looked like electronic music was actually going to take off in the States, but then it fizzled out and died and it's been ages since I've been to a club with really good dance music.  I miss it.  Maybe the scene migrated to SE Asia?  I'll know in a few days.

Same Same

I just wrapped up a few days in Ko Phangan, a small island about 30 minutes by ferry from Ko Samui in Southeastern Thailand.  Much of the island is rocky and undeveloped, and I stayed on the southeastern tip, a small beachtown called Hat Rien.  The island is full of stoned-out twentysomething hippie backpackers who want to drink and party away the wee hours of the night and convalesce on the beaches during the day.  I saw backpackers limping around with arms, legs, arms, knees and wrists wrapped in gauze so many times that it became a running gag, fallout from drunken motorbike accidents, like those moments sprinkled throughout Clueless where you see future sorority girls walking the school grounds with bandages on their noses as they heal from plastic surgery bankrolled by their rich Beverly Hills parents.  Remember that scene where the students prepare to play tennis in gym class and the girl with the bandaged nose declines to participate?  Amber: "Ms. Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose."  Dionne: "Well, there goes your social life."

Ko Phangan reminds me quite a bit of Goa.  I flashbacked to this January where I spent 3 weeks in Goa, which was about 2 weeks too many.  I lasted 3 nights.

I met an Australian couple on the ferry ride over and went with them to a pool party that first night, where I was introduced to vodka buckets, a Thai specialty.  Not satisfied with the massive quantify of liquor per bucket, the Aussies added Red Bull to the concoction, and told me that because Thailand is less regulated than the West, their Red Bull is extra strong, with something like 2.5 times as much caffeine as what we get domestically.  I've had a few vodka Red Bulls in my day, but I avoid them now because they get me drunk but I'm too wired to realize it, and I end up acting like an imbecile.  I also don't much like coming home drunk and being completely unable to sleep as my mind races from all the caffeine.  I can only imagine the brain-erasing potential of the Red Bull vodka bucket, a poor man's speedball.  Not surprisingly, the Aussie chick kept insisting that the drinks were watered down and she couldn't feel anything, until reality hit like one of those vicious sidewinding kicks in a Muay Thai fight, and the couple had to jet out of their around one a.m. so she could go home and puke.  I stuck to Tiger beer and was pretty drunk but basically fine, but one a.m. was past my bedtime and I left when they did.

I had opted to stay in the Same Same Guesthouse.  "Same same" is one of those tricky half-English, half-Asian phrases used through the region, and generally refers to a reasonable facsimile of a Western brand of clothing, watch, or electronics or whatever else happens to be ripe for bootlegging and/or imitation.  A fake Rolex, for instance, is "same same but different."  Same Same was one of those prototypical Asian guesthouses with a big open area downstair containing a restaurant and a screen showing American movies and episodes of the Simpsons and Friends from late afternoon to night.  A friendly, social place designed for the budget-conscious traveler just out of Uni and searching for adventure and people to party with.  I like these types of places -- the amusingly named Okay Guesthouse in Phnom Penh was another memorable example -- but the downside is that they tend to be a bit grimy.  My needs are not so great, but I do expect a room to be clean.  My room at Same Same had an above-average level of grunge to it and had a couple of ratty-looking mattresses thrown in a corner for no apparent reason, which put me over the edge.  I found a room that day at a place called Sea Breeze Bungalows, and it was a striking contrast, bungalows draped over the edge of a cliff looking directly over the ocean.  I took about 20 pictures of the sunset from my balcony which I will share after I download them.  Absolutely beautiful.

I spent the next day reading and walking around, and signed up for a tour on my last full day that took us from Hat Rien up the east side of Ko Phangan to a waterfall and a few remote beaches for swimming, eating and light snorkeling.  I hung out with a Croatian guy who lives in San Francisco-- as post-straight as they come-- and a British girl fresh from 7 months in Melbourne who was about to do the BKK- Cambodia- Vietnam (south to north) route.  Both were 26-- the Aussie couple from two days before were 23.  I now regularly hang out with people born in the 80s.  They always seemed surprised to learn that I'm 34, the baby face is really coming in handy these days, although it was a bit of a drag when I was a 26 year-old lawyer.  All good things come to those who wait.  I've liked a lot of people that I've run across, but as the trip goes on, I have found myself putting less effort into prolonging these friendships, which often last anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days, but rarely more than that.  Single-serving friends.  I miss having my real friends around and it's one the main reason I'm starting to burn out on traveling.

I liked Ko Phangan well enough, but one of the things that I've learned about myself on this trip is that I'm at heart an urban guy.  I like cities.  I feel slightly out of sorts in remote, undeveloped areas away from urban centers.  This creates some paradoxes when it comes to beach travel, because the prevailing wisdom is to find the most remote beaches, but if you really get out there, there's nothing and nobody around and it things can get dull pretty quickly, particularly when you're doing a lot of solo travel.  I felt better when I got off the ferry from Ko Phangan on Ko Samui, knowing that I had just entered a more developed area with better restaurants and nightlife and more people to hang out with and maybe even a decent bookstore. Bookstores, I have discovered, are my benchmarks of civilization.  I could not live in a place that didn't have decent bookstores.  (Rule of Thumb #1 for bookstores in Asia: It's a bad sign when all the books are alphabetized by the author's first name.  Rule #2: You never know what you're gonna find in a used bookstore, so keep looking.  Just pinched 2 Dashiell Hammet short story collections for peanuts.)  For all those reasons, out of the beaches I've been to in Southern Thailand, Phuket was by far the most enjoyable.  This is mostly because the area I stayed in-- Patong-- had some over-the-top nightlife, as well as plenty of places to drink coffee, watch movies, get Thai massages (no, not that kind), check out Muay Thai boxing, buy bootleg DVDs, and generally indulge myself.  (I saw the new Indiana Jones, absolutely terrible.  Clunky diagogue, overdone CGI, bland performances, pedestrian plotting.  Absolutely nothing to recommend it.)  Still, this is Thailand, and inevitably the nightlife is cut through with a generous dose of sleaze.

At night, Patong comes alive with expat bars, go-go clubs, ladyboy cabarets, Thai boxing, freelancers offering up the boom-boom, and whatever else you could possibly want.  One section of the town is closed to all but pedestrian traffic at night and the streets buzz with energy.  Airline tickets from Australia to Phuket have become very cheap, and the place was crawling with Aussies.  The hawkers quickly become oppressive, trying to shake your hand as you walk by in order to drag you into their stores, asking you where you're from-- most assumed I was Australian, once I got mistaken for a Swede, and my resolute muteness in the face of these incessant inquiries even earned me the question "Do you speak English?" At night it was impossible to avoid dudes trying to get you to check out what they delicately referred to as "pussy shows", descended from the infamous onstage spectacles that originated in Bangkok's Patpong.  They would hold up a little sign listing twenty or so gymnastic feats their female dancers (if that's what they're called) were supposedly able to perform with the most intimate parts of their anatomy.  I didn't have any particular interest in checking it out, and I was especially leery when they insisted that the shows were free, which smelled like an unpleasent scam to me.  The Aussie couple checked it out and confirmed that it was totally disgusting (darts shot out of women's private parts, unwinding long strings out of the same area, and so on) and they were charged 400 Baht for their first beer, which is roughly 7 or 8 times more expensive than a beer in a regular bar.

In Phuket, you also couldn't avoid the ladyboys.  Ladyboys are ground zero of Thai mythology for many Westerners, a nerve center firmly enmeshed in the cultural landscape, and I can understand why.  Thai ladyboys can be unnervingly difficult to spot.  Their builds are much slighter than Western men and their legs and torsos much slimmer.  They're also everywhere-- finding a transgender (s)him in this country is as easy as locating the nearest 7-11.  (Credit to my friend Casey for inventing the term "(s)him".)  In Patong there was a table set up for dancers advertising one of the ubiquitous ladyboy caberets.  I never tired of trying to figure out who was a chick and who was a chick with a dick or some other variation on the theme.  Massive fake tits were a dead giveaway, as was an overly aggressive manner (Thai women are generally very shy) or paradoxically an exaggerated feminine walk, hips swaying back and forth in a caricature of womanhood.  There was one shim in particular who was hanging out in front of the club that confounded me with "her" convincing feminine looks, and (s)he pulled me over when she saw me wielding my camera and insisted I take a picture with her and a friend (pic also forthcoming).  I was pleased to note that her voice gave her away completely.  As I departed she lightly rubbed her hand along my stomach.  That kinda sums up the unnerving aspect of the ladyboy-- all the aggression of your average street hawker, but amps up the discomfort with transgender ambiguity and an alarming willingess to invade your personal space, especially if you're a man.  I opted against attending a ladyboy cabaret in the end because I didn't want to deal with the harassment.

Thai boxing is also huge in Phuket.  I went to a gig there which was fun but the fighters weren't as professional as the ones in Bangkok and not quite as raw as the street brawl fighters in Chiang Mai.  The first fight in Chiang Mai was between two kids who couldn't have been older than the early teens, which unnerved me and I found myself rooting for the underdog simply because I couldn't bear to see a little kid get his ass kicked, even if it was by another little kid.  I've seen a bunch of knockouts.  Knockouts are the real deal and as a result can come out of nowhere, one kick or punch connects totally, usually with the head, and what seemed to be a reasonably even match ends quite suddenly.  I was rooting for the underdog in one of the fights yesterday in Hat Lamai when the he unexpectedly smashed his opponent backwards and kicked him square in the head as he rebounded off the mat shielding the inner corner of the ring.  You can identify a solid blow when its recipient freezes in shock for a moment and teeters on the edge of passing out.  He recovered but then a round or so later began to stagger around drunkenly and could barely walk back to his corner after the whistle blew, but bravely fought on even as he struggled to stand.  He made it through the fight without getting knocked out, but mostly because his opponent hesitated at those crucial moments when he should've moved in to finish him off.

In another fight yesterday a fighter got kneed under the chin twice in quick succession and after the second blow his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumpled to the ground.  He bounced off the mat and got back up immediately, the impact having jarred him back into consciousness.  The ref displayed poor judgment by not stopping the fight at this point and the other boxer moved right in and a couple punches later his opponent went down again, this time for good.  A ref in Chiang Mai stopped a fight early because one of the boxers had just taken a hard knock and was wobbling on glass knees and a well-directed punch at that moment of vulnerability could've done some very serious damage.  My first fight was in Bangkok, and there the fighters were comparatively quite skilled and there were no knockouts.  Every other boxing gig I've seen since then has involved knockouts, although all of the fighters have managed to pick themselves up and stagger to the locker room after spending some time spread-eagled on the mat, head lolling to one side, eyes blinking in and out of consciousness.  The walk out of the ring is a painful sight, shoulders hunched down, barely mustering the strength to move forward.

The "half-time" show in Chiang Mai consisted of three fighters stepping into the ring and putting on blindfolds, and then lurching around trying to punch the other two.  It quickly became chaos and even the ref caught a couple of stray punches.  The ferocity with which they would punch each other blindly was quite startling, although they were all smiles with each other after it was done.  I dissolved into laughter at the absurdity of it all.  The half-time show captured for me one of the SE Asian qualities that I will miss when I'm finally back in the States-- the feeling that something completely bizarre could happen at any time and out of nowhere.  I went to the bathroom at the Muay Thai show in Phuket and as I was washing my hands, two Thai dudes who worked at the club descended on me for some unsolicited Thai massage and starting cracking my back and even tried to crack my neck-- I stopped them, I was slightly drunk and that stepped outside of my comfort zone-- something that would never, ever happen back home in the land of over-regulation and personal space issues.

I will also miss collecting stories on the road, both first and secondhand.  For instance, when I brought up the infamous Aussie Quarantine (see blog below) with the 23-year old Australian couple, the woman admitted sheepishly that she once accidentally brought a gram of coke through.  She had throught the gram of coke lost but it was merely hidden somewhere in the cavernous depths of her purse.  She went through customs totally oblivious that she was walking a tightrope between freedom and incarceration, and then arrived home and discovered the gram while emptying out her purse.  Unbelievable.  Still, it's nothing even remotely as jaw-dropping as a story I heard from a Canadian dude I ran into on the streets of Bangkok.  He'd been traveling for approximately as long as I had throughout SE Asia and was coming off a week or two in Chiang Mai.  (WARNING: The following is not, I repeat not, for the faint of heart.  If you're squeamish, stop reading right here.)  He told me a story of a German businessman who traveled to Bangkok every month as part of some kind of obscure import-export electronics gig.  He picked up a prostitute on the streets of Bangkok and at some point during their assignation became a bit disconcerted, because the prostitute kept insisting on getting fucked in the ass.  Well, I suppose you can guess why.  The Canadian remarked to me, in mock despair, "Why couldn't he have told me that this happened to someone he knew, or a friend of a friend or something?  I felt like throwing up after he told me."  (The first rule of Thailand is...)  I have a strong stomach, but that little anecdote managed to singe my eardrums.  Thai Ladyboys-- same same, but different.

Singapore to Sydney

I flew out of Ho Chi Minh City on April 27 and landed in the glitzy mall city-state known as Singapore.  Singapore is indeed as airbrushed as its reputation suggests, although its high-tech glitz was a welcome relief after the grim and chaos.  Also, most importantly, Singapore has its own Borders Books, and I was reaching that catastrophic where I was on the verge of polishing off my last viable reading material -- Brother Number One, a biography of Pol Pot.  There are no decent English language bookstores to speak of in Vietnam, and my supplies needed replenishing.  So predictably, I lost control.  I had barely gotten off the plane and checked into my hotel and I was out the door again and hailing a cab to Kinokuniya, and then off to Borders.  Singapore is probably the wealthiest spot in Asia outside of Japan and very clean, although I stayed in Little India and it is indeed Little India, filled with sari shops and restaurants serving dosa and a music store blaring a pop song whose lyrics were taken verbatim from a Vedic chant I learned at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram back in February.   The scenery changes radically as you go southwest, which is shopping central.  Taxis pulse in and out of the mall driveways to the beat of a metronome.  Big glitzy movie theaters jockey for space with all the high-end designer clothing stores you could possibly imagine.

Singapore's wealth and pristine splendor provided that necessary stop gap that I needed after a month in Vietnam.  I may not be the hardened traveler that I thought I was, because after a big chunk of time in a relatively undeveloped area, I start to yearn for the comforts I associate with home.  Strangely enough, this often translates into the desire to visit the mall, although I hardly ever spend time at malls back home.  Go figure.  My time in Singapore was mostly spent in bookstores and eating Dim Sum, as well as figuring out some travel details at Malaysia Air and elsewhere and also adding some passport pages at the U.S. Embassy, a place where time stands still. 

After 3 days in Singapore, I flew to Jakarta.  My original plan had been to go from Vietnam to Jakarta, Indonesia being my last stop before I returned to the States.  Then I added in a trip to Sydney, and then I decided to return to Thailand (not to mention adding in a 5 day layover in Hong Kong before I fly back to the States).  This resulted in some confusion and some less than economical flight patterns.  I had a two-day layover in Jakarta before flying to Australia which I was originally going to spend planning my trip through Indonesia, but then I joined an Intrepid tour from Jakarta to Bali that rendered that moot.  So I had two days to kill in Jakarta, a city that basically everyone who has been there told me to avoid.  I can see why-- it's huge, crowded, polluted, noisy and surprisingly expensive.   I'm greatly looking forward to checking out Indonesia when I return in June, but I must agree with the majority opinion-- Jakarta is nothing to get excited about.

I flew out of Jakarta the night of 2 May and arrived bright and early at 6:30 a.m. the morning of 3 May.  I had already been warned about Aussie customs.  After I got off the plane, I walked by a deluge of signs posted above trash cans warning me to dispose of all food and drinks or they would be disposed of for me when I got to Quarantine.  Lonely Planet warns travelers not to show up at Quarantine with dirt on your shoes, as this may lead to confiscation.  The customs declaration form asks you if you've recently visited South America or Africa in the last 6 days and whether you've done any camping. Bee keeping equipment is strictly prohibited, and all gardening equipment must be scrubbed free of all detritus.  All of this fuss is apparently intended to protect Australia's biodiversity as an island nation.  For a fuller explanation, see here: Bill Bailey on Aussie customs .  It all felt a bit to me like one of those sci-fi flicks you see which predict a hygiene-obsessed future.  Certainly the contrast I've witnessed in the last 5 months between Asia and the West suggests that one of the principal characteristics of developed nations is an increasing obsession with hygiene that is to some extent getting a bit out of control.

Anyway, I became obsessed with Aussie customs and kept cracking annoying jokes about it over the next 10 days, which particularly grated on the nerves of my host.  The Aussies I met all took this in stride, as Aussies are some of the chillest people I've met.  In general, I really liked Australians.  They have a sarcastic, ironic, light-hearted sense of humor that I totally love.  I met an American expat there who described Aussies as Brits without the seasonal affective disorder and that struck me as dead-on.  Sydney took some adjusting for me because it really felt like the volume was turned down after the hustle and bustle of SE Asia, but after 4 or 5 days I fell in love with the place.  I'll definitely be back and I look forward to exploring some of its more extreme geography.  I'll have to make it out west to Perth and north of Perth, which is Wolf Creek country.

Back in Thailand

Yesterday, I saw my first Ladyboy.  The experience was somewhat anticlimatic.  When I announced my travel plans late last year, I would get various stock comments for each region or country.  For Thailand, of course, warnings about encountering ladyboys abounded.  For some strange reason, I didn't see any in Bangkok, but as I was returning from the Chiang Mai night market last night, I was besieged by a crew of Thais encouraging passers-by to check out Muay Thai boxing at a local stadium.  Not surprisingly, most of them were scantily-clad Thai women, and as I walked by my eyes traveled over a slim female-looking torso in a dress and as I made it up to the eye, "she" spoke and made it abundantly clear that no, that was no lady, that was a ladyboy.  I might've checked out the fights but I had already purchased a ticket for the next night at a different stadium.

I fell in love with Thailand when I visited Bangkok in late March.  Great food, friendly folks, awesome hot weather.  And I'd obviously heard quite a lot about the southern beaches and Chiang Mai in the north, so I decided to return after I visited Sydney in mid-May.  I flew back to Bangkok on 13 May, spent a few days there recovering, as I flew from Sydney to Jakarta on 12 May, and from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok the next day.  Originally I was going to fly directly to Chiang Mai on 14 May, but decided to bump that back a few days.  BKK was nothing new-- I caught up on stupid Hollywood movies (Speed Racer-boring; and two others I'm too embarrassed to mention), bought more books I can't carry at Kinokuniya, and ate lots of delicious Thai food from street vendors.  Then up to Chiang Mai.  Chiang Mai is a small city in northern Thailand, much quieter and more provincial than BKK.  It's nice here, there's lots of good food and a solid Ashtanga studio and cheap Thai massage every half-block, but the weather is fairly gray and cloudy and there's not much going on and I also can't wait to finally sample the beaches of Southern Thailand.  I fly to Phuket tomorrow, to stay on a patch of beach that's supposed to be totally beautiful, complete with more Thai boxing and ladyboy cabarets and whatever else you need, all within two blocks of the beach and my hotel.  I found out my hotel room will have a DVD player, so I loaded up at the Chiang Mai night market on bootleg DVDs -- including a few horror movies that I missed in the theaters, Diary of the Dead and Ruins; also the new Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) Iraq drama Stop-Loss; and a bunch of others.  The standard price for a bootleg DVD here is 100 Baht, about 3 bucks.  Cheap, to be sure, but expensive by Shanghainese and Vietnamese standards, where most movies cost about 1-2 bucks.

After 5 or so days in Phuket, I fly east to the island of Ko Samui, and then I'll take the ferry to Ko-Phangnan, the backpacker paradise of the southern Thai beaches.  The island is known for its infamous full moon party-- which won't happen while I'm there-- and should have lots of yoga and hippie types.  I'm also planning on spending some time in Ko Samui, which is one of the more touristy areas and probably less interesting.  Then it's back to BKK for a couple of days to watch some more stupid Hollywood movies and load up on books again-- I've been reading voraciously-- before flying to Jakarta for the start of my Intrepid tour through Java and on to Bali.  I'm meeting up with my friend Charlie for the tour and we plan to head to Lombok for a bit before he flies to Jordan.

"Hey Ho Chi Minh! HEY!"

That's what a motorbike driver yelled at me as I walked by him this morning, referencing my Ho Chi Minh t-shirt, which displays the iconic bearded image of Ho with his name and years that he lived emblazoned on the bottom.  I have two of these shirts, in gray and white.  I also have a t-shirt that says "Danger! Mines! Cambodia!" in English and Khmer, an Angkor Wat t-shirt, a black t-shirt that says "Victory will be ours" with the Communist star on the bottom and "www.dogmavietnam" on the back, as well as the newest addition to my collection, a t-shirt with a Vietnamese soldier brandishing an AK-47 and "I am ready to fight the Americans" written in Vietnamese (I'm assuming the shopkeeper translated this correctly, of course.)

It's my last full day in Ho Chi Minh City and in Vietnam, and I'm feeling nostalgic.    It's been an active three weeks and I've seen most of what I've wanted to see in Vietnam (places I didn't see which I will be sure to check out on the next trip include Mui Ne beach, Phu Quoc Island and the central mountain town Dalat.)  I joined a two-day cycling tour through the Mekong Delta on April 23-24 with a great local company called Sinhbalo which took us to the a small island where we biked through small villages for a few hours each day.  The paths were winding and narrow and sometimes consisted mostly of sand, which made for an active ride even though it was mostly level ground.  Even on the narrowest paths we would sometimes have to move very carefully to the right to avoid the ubiquitous motorbikes.  Children would yell "Hello! Hello!" as we passed and would often walk or ride perilously close to us as we passed, which proved challenging to me as I was still working on my balance for most of the trip, it'd been at least 15 years since I last rode a bike (not counting motorbikes in Goa and Sapa).  I met this fun Dutch couple from Utrecht on the trip who were moving on to Nah Trang next and I encouraged them to that perfect little restaurant there Pho Cali and sample the finest Vietnamese iced coffee in all Vietnam...

In the morning, we visited the Cai Rang Floating Market, near Can Tho, and it was one of those moments you see in movies, the Mekong filled with boat after boat with its wares spilling everywhere. Many boats would set up a pole in front with a sample of their product so buyers would know what the boat was selling.  I took many pictures.  We piled on top of one of the local boats and ate pineapple and surveyed the chaos.  Conical hats and Vietnamese junks and fruit and fish filled my line of sight.  Aside from the boat's motors (which looked like they'd been lifted from cars or motorbikes) and the ever-present tourists, the scene seemed primitive and timeless.  The old woman at the front of our tour boat guided us around with a long stick she used as a makeshift rudder.  Sometimes women in neighboring boats would grab hold of our boat and offer to sell us cans of soda glistening with sweat from the ice which kept them chilled.  The Dutch woman Corrine was a big softie and admitted that she felt bad for not buying a coke because the little Vietnamese boy in the boat looked so disappointed when no one bought anything.  I told her about the markets in India where I first saw a woman beggar walking around with what looked like a two to three month child in her arms and the jolt of guilt that I felt, which subsided incrementally as I witnessed the same calculated display a second, third, fourth and fifth time.

On our way back into Saigon, we passed through rush hour traffic and this is a spectacle that really has to be seen to be believed.  Motorbikes fill every inch of the streets broken-up only occasionally by a car or a bus and the noise pollution from all the honking fills the air.  Amazingly, it is actually possible to cross the streets as a pedestrian in Siagon, although it's an art and best not attempted by amateurs.  You have to stare directly at the incoming motorbikes as you carefully and methodically cross the street and they will alter their trajectory to accommodate your passage.  It's important that you walk in a steady line so the drivers know where to move.  Don't slow down or change your pace.  I never tire of watching the traffic.  I especially enjoy watching the women drivers.  Vietnamese women are incredibly hot, no doubt about it.   However, because Vietnamese women so strongly covet white skin, they will often cover themselves from head to toe despite the blistering heat and humidity of South Vietnam.  They will wear the motorcycle helmet with sunglasses and a face mask which serves the dual purpose of reducing inhalation of the pollution but I think most importantly keeps the sun's rays from darkening the face.  Women will wear t-shirts and cover their arms with what look like long thin gloves that go past their elbows.  I've seen women wearing the full get-up and a hoodie despite the fact that the temperature hovers around 40 degrees Celsius.  Never underestimate a woman's vanity as a motivating force.  Take a look here.

For me, there are two essential archetypes of the Vietnamese women.  The first one is the woman riding a motorbike.  The first variation on this iconic image is the slightly tomboyish helmeted look of the female motorcycle driver, with the long black hair trailing out of the back of the helmet, usually to at least halfway down the back and sometimes to the waist.  Often they will wear jeans, but more beguilingly will calmly drive their motorbike through horrendous traffic wearing high heels and a mini-skirt.  I still haven't quite figured out how they manage to do this given the limited mobility afforded by a mini-skirt.  Did I mention that Vietnamese women are super thin and trim and have amazing legs?  Another variation is the young girlfriend riding behind her boyfriend with her legs carefully folded sideways across the seat.

The second archetype of Vietnamese women is women wearing the traditional Vietnamese dress, called "ao dai."  This is a long flowing tunic with a slit down each side worn over a pair of loose-fitting white, black or colored pants.  The dress splits into a front and back panel from the waist down.  There are many variations on this basic theme and they almost always look spectacular.  Take a look:  on bikes with face masks and from behind and Holy shit, dude.

A friend of mine went to a tailor in Hoi An which was filled with women wearing these dresses and I went back with him for every fitting just so I could sit around and watch these women walk around in these incredible dresses.  My friend took a picture of me with five or six of these women and it's a complete disgrace, I'm totally sweaty and disgusting with a dazed look on my face and I'm surrounded by petite and perfectly poised Vietnamese women.  Vietnamese women are really hot.  This is not an opinion; it is fact.  They may seem foreign, but no doubt they hang out and gossip about boys like women the world over.  I saw one young Vietnamese woman in Saigon driving a motorbike while wearing a t-shirt that said "Friends are forever - boys are whatever."

Culture Clash

Vietnam intrigues and exhausts in equal measure.  Its wealth of history and sophisticated culture and untouchable cuisine have been endlessly rewarding.  As a tourist, however and unfortunately, I have too often over the past two weeks experienced the people of Vietnam as a drone of voices clamoring for every conceivable way of separating me from my money.  The dollar sign syndrome.  I came here with good intentions and I have no regrets, but I've grown increasingly frustrated with the rough behavior of the Vietnamese, especially now that I finished my tour and I'm traveling solo.  I'm sick of getting ripped off and barked at.  And last night I finally lost it over this shit.

After a while, the usual scams become obvious and predictable.  The taxi driver who changes the price at the last minute for some bullshit reason (to be fair, taxi/ rikshaw/ tut-tut drivers the world over basically suck).  The dude at the train station who leads you over to somebody else driving to the hotel and then demands 50,000 dong.  Some scams are more subtle.  For instance, I spent the last few days in Sapa, a mountaineous town in Northern Vietnam near the border with China.  There is no airport up there, so people arrive via overnight train.  I booked a hotel room at the Cat Cat Hotel, Lonely Planet's midrange pick, and they assured me that they could book a train for me.  Booking a train is a bit strange in Vietnam, I believe you are only allowed to book trains the day of the trip, so it's tricky.  A local operator in Hanoi delivered what appeared to be a train ticket to my hotel, after much confusion and waiting around.  So far, so good.  I got to the train station and when I tried boarding the train, they insisted that I go to the restaurant mentioned on my ticket and collect my ticket there.  This despite the fact that the train was boarding.  It turns out that I didn't have a proper ticket, but rather a "receipt" which I was supposed to present at the restaurant identified on the piece of paper and there I was to collect my ticket.  In other words, a way to force you to eat at this restaurant before you get on the train.

I should first tell you a bit about sleeper trains.  They usually leave around 9 or 10 in the evening and arrive at some horrendous hour, like 4 or 5 a.m.  Aside from being uncomfortable -- and some are worse than others, the train from Hue to Hanoi just about jarred my teeth loose, it was so bumpy -- this creates problems with hotels because you have to check out late and check in obscenely early.  Or you just end up waiting around in the early morning marinating in your stink, which is what I'm doing as I write this, in a deserted hotel lobby in Hanoi at 5:30 a.m.  The soft sleeper trains are 4 to a room, 2 bunks on ground level and 2 up high.  The last two times have been okay, except for the drunken, stinking Chinese dude on the way to Sapa who reeked of cigarettes and snored like a freight train.  The older, French-speaking Vietnamese dude in the cabin last night/ this morning had an even harsher snore, that would occasionally end in this protracted gasp-hiccup-wet gulping monstrosity that I had to block out with music from my iPod and earplugs jammed way up into my ear canal.  He slept so hard that his French compatriots had to wake him up when we arrived at the train station.

So naturally, the idea of taking a sleeper train is unpleasant enough without having to chase after my ticket.  In Hanoi, just after the dude had told me to go to the restaurant, this woman appeared magically out of nowhere and produced an envelope from which she extracted my ticket.  Savvy to the scam on the way back, I knew that I would have to appear at the restaurant identified on my train receipt prior to departing Sapa for Hanoi.  The van provided by my hotel dropped everyone off at the restaurant, so apparently this scam is embedded in the system.  I decided to eat something with the Dutch couple I had met on the train there and then collect my tickets.  The Vietnamese waiter who doubled as ticket procurer immediately reassured us when we got to the restaurant that he would have our tickets in five minutes.  30 minutes passed, nothing, and at this point, my temper flared and I basically lost it.  I went over to the guy and demanded my ticket.  "5 minutes."  I paid for my bill and then demanded my ticket again.  He told me to meet him at the train station, a 2 minute walk.  I went over there with an American guy Bob who I had met a few minutes before.  When we got to the station, the restaurant guy tried to pass off another receipt as an actual ticket, and it took around 10 minutes of freaking out and demanding my ticket again and again and again and then 20 minutes of waiting around to get the ticket.  The Vietnamese people working at the station were taken aback by my anger, but I was fed up and didn't give a shit.  I literally sat in front of the dude from the restaurant and said "where's my ticket where's my ticket where's my ticket" until he finally figured his shit out.  I think the Dutch couple were a bit taken aback by my temper and obvious aggravation.  Normally I would've cared a bit more, but I'll never see them again. 

It's difficult to describe the feeling of vulnerability and exposure you feel when you are in a foreign country with unfriendly people who are constantly trying to rip you off.  It's unnerving.  Bob compared the behavior of the Vietnamese to Prague right after the wall went down, when people felt no real compunction to be nice to you in order to get your money.  Maybe it's one of the last vestiges of Communism in Vietnam, I don't know, but in every other way Vietnam buzzes with the money-making capitalist instinct.

I was not pleased that I became so angry. I like to think of myself as tolerant of cultural differences.  Opinionated for sure, but also open-minded.  But the fact of the matter is that when you actually settle into a new country, even for a short time, there is a honeymoon period when everything is new and amazing and if you stick around longer that honeymoon period ends and you are confronted with otherness and the experience can be disconcerting and even repulsive.  The negative aspects of my culture, which I assume are readily apparent to most foreigners, require little enumeration and ironically my disenchantment with my own culture was on the principal instigators of my trip and this exploration of otherness.  To state it succinctly:  Sometimes you just hit a wall.  ("Every man has his breaking point.  You and I have one.  Walt Kurtz has reached his...")  There is another layer of irony here, because despite my disenchantment with some aspects of my country, when traveling abroad in Vietnam and other places in Asia, there is an instant "us v. them" bond that develops between Westerners, even those who have only just met.  And for me, this is especially so with Americans that I meet.  The further you go, the closer you get.  I'm more of an American than I realized.  I had to travel to Southeast Asia to figure that out.

A couple hours after I wrote this blog, I had breakfast at this Vietnamese chain restaurant that serves delicious Pho (Vietnamese beef noodle soup) and cafe sur da (Vietnamese iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk).  Perhaps the most perfect breakfast.  And later that night I wandered around Hanoi and marveled at all its little side streets and its sizzling urban energy... I fly to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow morning and will probably go on a 2-day bike tour of the Mekong Delta on the 23rd.  So life is good....