Southeast Asia #4: The tale of the dragon's tail and his path to the sea (4/11/08)

On Monday the 24th, we headed to the Pakse airport as a group.  We paid our hefty excess baggage fees, and boarded the tiny plane packed with plastic bags and fidgety passengers.  Upon our arrival in Vientiane, we stored our myriad bags and took advantage of Lao Aviation's policy of not checking you through on multi-leg journeys to head into Vientiane Center.  Now, it may seem silly, but we found an Italian restaurant...we should have eaten at someplace Lao, but after 3 weeks of rural Laotian food, we were all craving dairy and pasta and real salad.  So we opted instead to be really touristy.

 

Wat Sisaket

Afterwards, Kecia and I walked the few blocks to Wat Sisaket, a beautiful temple built out of wood in the 18th century.  Looking at it, you'd never believe the temple is that young - it is incredibly striking and looks very old.  You could see, too, the shift as we went farther north - the wat became more Chinese, more Mongolian.  We returned to the airport soon after, and then continued on to Bangkok.

 

The next morning, I headed out to the airport, and caught my flight to Hanoi.  Upon landing in Hanoi, the sky was grey, and the ground green - I was moving away from the equator.  Noibai is quite a ways from Hanoi, so the ride took a while.  By the time I got to my hotel, it was already 2p, and I called one of our participants, Cuong, to let him know I had arrived.  At the workshop, when I told the Vietnamese that I was coming to Hanoi, they immediately started planning my visit.  Cuong, whose English was strongest, was nominated to be the tour guide.  So, sure enough, he showed up at my hotel on his moped and we departed in a taxi (it's a status thing) to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  Yeah, commie dictators like to be embalmed, so one can actually visit Bac Ho (Uncle Ho) in the flesh.  I tried to deter Cuong, but to no avail.  Luckily, when we arrived, the mausoleum was closed for the afternoon for some random Vietnamese bureaucratic reason, so I was spared the viewing.  However, Cuong informed me that I must come back to Vietnam to see Uncle Ho, and perhaps worrying that I did not have a great enough appreciation for Uncle Ho, promptly ordered us a tour guide for the Presidential Palace.  It was odd to listen to the tour guide's canned speech about how humble Uncle Ho was, how he loved children (but was never blessed with his own), listening to the radio, and tuberoses with such reverence.  At one point, the tour guide said something about Uncle Ho and the enemy and then corrected his speech, apologizing if he had offended me as an American. 

 

After the failed mausoleum visit (thankfully), Cuong took me to the Temple of Literature, which turned out to be one of my favorite places in the entire world.  And yes, I realize how nerdy that is.  The Temple of Literature is a Chinese-style series of pagodas, and was built centuries ago by Vietnamese kings to honor learning and wisdom (what a novel concept for a culture to appreciate!).  In the 1400s, one of the kings decided that the names of talented and wise men should live on, so he inscribed the names of those who earned PhDs on stone stelae, carried on the backs of tortoises, which are symbols of longevity in Vietnam.  Some 1300 men passed the exams, and are immortalized in stone in the temple.  The Temple of Literature is also the site of the first university in Hanoi, although it was later moved.  Students come to the temple to pray for good luck on tests, and new grads swarm the courtyards after graduation ceremonies, coming to be photographed and thank Buddha for success.  It is also a beautiful place, and quiet - Hanoi's streets are filled with mopeds that honk continuously, so any peace is appreciated.

 

 

Cuong also provided some interesting tidbits on Vietnam during our day's stroll.  I noted that all the moped drivers were wearing helmets (not so in Laos) and he informed me that a law enforcing helmet use was enacted this past December.  And the people are obedient.  Even when it comes to regulating the number of children each family has - by law, families are allowed only two children.  According to Cuong, if you have more children than 2, it will be very difficult for you in your career.  He added that rural families often had more, but for those who worked in the city in this communist country, you can really only have 2 or you'll never be promoted - you'll be a "bad" party member in a country where your status with the party determines your future.

 

The Old Quarter of Hanoi is really picturesque and bustling, with "tube houses."  There used to be a law calculating property tax by the width of your storefront - so storeowners would make their storefronts 2 ft wide - and then the store would continue far into the back of the building.  So, there are many many houses that are short in width but very deep, a vestige of this colonial law.

I was enjoying Hanoi, and delighted in the delicious and authentic Vietnamese food at dinner with Cuong and Phu Lam, but Wednesday morning's bus ride to Halong Bay was calling.  I had been harboring dreams of Halong for months now, and my bus was leaving early.  I bid my friends goodnight, and returned to my hotel to again stuff souvenirs into any perceived cranny in my bulging luggage.  

 

I met up with the tour company, Handspan, the next morning, and waited eagerly in the Tamarind Cafe to depart (btw, if you ever make it to Hanoi, the Tamarind Cafe is amazingly good.  Do it!)  We boarded our little bus, my junkmates and I, and hit the highway (term loosely applied) to Haiphong and Halong City.  Having finished the books I brought from the US (list below), I jumped into the pirated copy of Sex Slaves by Louise Brown that I bought in Hanoi off a street vendor for $2.  It is a disturbing but informational book about the trafficking of women in Asia - one that shifts your understanding of the situation dramatically, and I grew absorbed (absorbed can be translated here as angry/frustrated/livid/enraged) very quickly and lost track of time.  Before I knew it, we had travelled the four hours' distance and we unloaded at the Halong Bay dock, which was frothy with tourists.  

 

We pushed through the different groups to descend into a small motorboat, which took our group out to the junk.  It was lovely, the tiny cabin and tiny bathroom and all in wood with carved dragons, and peaceful - no moped horns.  It was cool, and for the first time in a month, I found myself hunting for that one sweater I had brought.  Sitting on the top deck, my fellow passengers and I stared at the karsts as we sailed out - it is by far one of the most exquisite and beautiful places on the planet.  There are no words.  There were 11 of us on the boat: 5 in an Australian family that kept to themselves, and then a couple from Singapore, and a Swiss couple, and then an Englishman, and me.  Our junk was pretty relaxed - they were a nice group of people, particularly Tristan, the Englishman, and Christian and Alex, the Swiss couple.  We stayed up late drinking bad Vietnamese wine and discussing American politics in French - a lot of "merde" and "je comprends pas. je comprends absoluement pas."  It is reassuring to meet people like you when you travel - but then again, it's people with my interests who would show up on a boat in Vietnam that I found as well, so it's perhaps not surprising, but it was reassuring and comforting to meet people I will in all likelihood never see again but to share an evening of laughter, wine, frustration, and ultimately, understanding and connection.  

 

After a month of being misunderstood in Laos and struggling to communicate, it was refreshing, although the feeling wasn't to last long.  When I asked our tour guide Son how the karsts were formed, I expected some kind of scientific answer, like ...oh say rain and erosion combined with humidity.  Son told me that an ancient king was fighting a dragon and as he defeated the dragon, the dragon fell down out of the mountains in northern Vietnam and as he hurtled towards the sea, he swung his tail about in flailing arcs.  The earth he dislodged stayed put.  And so, the dragon's tail formed the 4000 majestic islands that are Halong Bay.

Upon my return from my two days in Halong, I spent my final night in Hanoi and Asia before my long flights back to Los Angeles.  Cuong took me to the water puppet show, which was incredible, but a bit touristy.  It was an amazing experience though - actors hold water puppets on long sticks behind a curtain, and then the puppets come out up through a little lake and "perform" in front of the curtain.  The show included really lifelike fish frolicking, and princesses dancing in unison, and a dragon with fireworks in his mouth.  It was incredible.  I was delighted, but tried not to chortle like a child like I wanted to for Cuong's sake!

 

It was good to come back to LA - I love it here.  As I reflect back on what my trip meant to me, how I grew from it, how I will carry it with me...I cannot help but feel my heart ache for the dusty jungle roads, and I yearn for the simplicity of my rural Laotian life.  LA is amazing, it is so beautiful - the sky is so wide and stretches on to forever, so freeing in its vast expanse of perfect blue, and the hills in their wealth and clarity on the horizon...but it was also beautiful to be away from everything, to be anonymous and mysterious for once, to have a simple life uncomplicated by gyms and iPods and timesheets and commutes.  In my mind's eye, when I am boiling over with stress, I imagine the hard red dirt of Laos under my sandals, and the scent of mangos and the broad swath of the Mekong slowly moving towards the south, to the sea, as we are all called - or the dreamlike karsts of Halong covered in their lush and emerald foliage, dropping steeply into the pure turquoise-green waters.  Tennyson was right and said it best:

 

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

 

And move I must, to a new margin, which will always gleam in my pilgrim's eyes.  So, cheers to the journey - thankfully, it never ends, it just turns another corner.

 

Reading List:

Give Me the World by Leila Hadley

Sex Slaves by Louise Brown

When Heaven & Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip

Foreign Devils on the Chinese Silk Road by Peter Hopkirk

Southeast Asia #3: the Coming of the Mango Rains (3/23/2008)

Another week has passed in Laos, and the workshop has successfully come to a close.  We were not reunited with our equipment, unfortunately, but luckily, there were no other major mishaps. The week went by slowly and quickly, at the same time.

The slow part was the heat.  And the sickness.  In my fourth week in southeast Asia, after successfully navigating the traveler's sickness question for so long, I finally succumbed...at the same time that my air conditioning kicked into overdrive and gave me a headcold.  Outdoors, however, the heat continued...and then the stillness in the air.  With the stillness came the heaviness of moisture, the feeling the sky has when it is up to something.  It crescendoed with the pressure of the workshop, ascending until the final Friday of presentations...and then goodbyes to our new friends.   Then the mango rains came.  They came with smashing bolts of lightning that illuminated the sky and cracked away into thunder that was deafening in the wide valley of the Mekong.  These rains, the beginning of the rainy season, are called mango rains because the mango trees begin to flower, and once they do, the rains inevitably come.  To me, the name is so beautiful, and captures the heady smell of earth, tree, and flower that the rains brought with them.  There are times of dry and times of wet, and you should revere and honor both.  The Lao celebrate the ending of the dry season with many lompong (pagoda parties!), so every night we were there, there was another lompong, because once the rainy season arrives, there isn't much to do...but sit and watch the rain!  So, the message is, enjoy what you can when you can and have patience with the rest!

Friday after the presentations, we closed the workshop.  Everyone went home to take a shower (mandatory when you're sweating through your shirt at 8:30am) and clean up before meeting at the boat dock at 5:30p.  Champasak is on the western bank of the Mekong, and our closing dinner was to be held on the island of Don Daeng.  So we boarded the boat, performed the necessary roll call ("Myanmar? Thailand? Vietnam?  Khmer?  Oh yeah, who else?") and we were off.  Almost.  After the boat was about 50M into the Mekong, we heard a shouting behind us.  Turning, we saw a man wading into the water after us.  Who is that?  The Lao and the Thai immediately burst out laughing.  It was the driver of the boat.

Once we managed to pick up our driver, then we went across the water, skimming over as the sun dropped behind the looming black outline of the hills and the Lingaparvata especially.  We were dropped at the edge of a wide, sandy beach, and made our way slowly up to the resort for our dinner (La Folie Lodge).  It was incredibly beautiful, and we had a wonderful dinner.  There was a slideshow to everyone's delight, and some good-natured national pride in swimming races – and in throwing people into the pool.  Before long, it was time to leave, and we made our way gingerly (and some drunkenly) back across the beach in the pitch black to find the boat.   Perhaps it was the Beerlao, but people started to sing their country songs, and everyone else would clap along.  It was beautiful, with their voices echoing across the water.  And then Aye Nilar (one of my favorites, this sassy Burmese girl) got up in the dark and began to dance.  We could all feel her rhythm in the beams of the boat, gently rocking us back across the river.

On Friday, my health improved, largely because I ate nothing for two and a half days so there was nothing left in me to either come out or be food for a virus or parasite.  Kecia has been sick too, as was Rohit, and two of the Thais – so questions around the breakfast table typically ran, "Are you eating today?" "How are you digesting?"  "Need any Cipro/Loperamide/Immodium/Vitamin C?" "Can you go to the classroom or are you staying in?"   Being sick abroad like this is a miserable experience – you get so lonely, and you are immediately convinced that the entire world has forgotten you, and why aren't people calling you, and you are going to die here and show those bastards.  Then four hours later you wake up and realize you fell asleep drooling again and it's time for more Cipro.  Hopefully this quells the notion that this kind of travel is romantic or glamorous or all laughs – it is incredible, to be sure, but riddled with sickness, loneliness, and in this case, necessary interaction and cooperation (and thus support of) an incredibly corrupt local government. 

Me with my kip bling to pay our vendors

Saturday was the day of loose ends and riding around with Top on his moped with a stack of money (63 million kip) to pay the restaurants and guesthouses.  At every place, you stop and drink and speak with the owner, who has helped you out over these 2 weeks.   It was a very long process.  But, at the same time, the easy friendly nature of the Lao, while it can be frustrating from a Western efficiency standpoint, was also a saving grace for us.  Our organization's bureaucracy tied up our cash for the entire duration of the workshop, only releasing it to us with one day's margin, and had the Lao not been trusting enough to front us 2 weeks of accommodation and meals for 30 people, we could never have had the workshop.  Imagine telling a hotel in the US, "Please let Simon come and stay and he will leave on the 18^th and we will come pay you on the 22^nd."  So, we are indebted to our Lao friends, although not financially anymore!

Lao soup additions...

Roadside market in Bolaven

Today, Jeff, Kecia and I – along with our instructor Rohit (or Lo-eet, as the Lao call him) were all that remained of the visitors, and we too loaded up a truck and headed towards the ferry to go to Pakse.  We got to our hotel in Pakse, a luxury hotel compared to what we have been living in for the past 3 weeks.  I realized today I haven't seen a TV in 3 weeks...and I was completely fine without it.  I have a bathtub, with a shower head with actual water pressure, and a temperature control for the shower.  My little room by the Mekong had hot water, or cold water, but no way to control the degree.  Part of me is afraid that returning to Bangkok will completely throw me.  Tonight in Pakse, we ate Indian food...so novel, for in Champasak, there is only local food.  No 7-11, no Mini-market with chips or packaged food if you're dying for something recognizable, or just something NOT Lao (for example, I have been having dreams of dairy products for about two weeks now).  Going home to my apartment in Los Angeles is unimaginable luxury – the variety of food waiting for MY selection at Trader Joe's and Pavilions, food waiting for me to come pluck it from shelves of plenty, is tantalizing. And overwhelming.

the ferry from Paxse to Champasak

We took the afternoon to take a tour of the Bolaven plateau.  We stopped in a textile village to buy these beautiful hand-and-feet woven fabrics – the women run a loom off their feet to their hands, and weave beads and incredibly complex patterns into the fabric.  They're incredibly beautiful.  The tribe is Katu, and they are hill tribes that are ethnically distinct from the Lao.  They are also polygamists.  We also saw a coffee processing plant, coffee being a particularly well-known product from the Bolavens, and then we went to several small tribal villages, including a Christian village of the Ta Oy tribe and an animist village.  The Christian village was full of children, who followed us around, and loved having their picture taken if we showed them the digital copy afterwards on our cameras.  They were incredibly sweet, and welcoming, and a crowd of 40 children (no exaggeration) followed us to the road and waved goodbye to us.  When I asked if they attended Catholic school or went to a public school, Oodon (our guide)  told me that they went to a public school when they are 5 or 6.  Many of the women give birth at home (the nearest hospital is in Pakse, 20km away, and they have no transportation), so there are no birth records, so age is an approximation at best.  Apparently the test to enter elementary school (no kindergarten) is if a student can reach their right arm over his head to touch his left ear.  If you fail, you're told to go age and come back in a year or two.

We turned off the paved road (mistake in rainy season) to go to the animist village.  About 10M down the track, the car lurched in the mud from the rainstorm earlier that afternoon.  And then lurched again.  Soon our tires were spinning mud pies out the back.  Ten kids came running out of the village to watch our van helplessly slither around in the red mud.  I was waiting for it, and finally, the driver turned around and said the inevitable: "Ok you push."

So, we pushed.

Eventually we made it out of the mud and into the village. Our guide said something about sacrificing buffalo, and Rohit and I turned to each other with the same look in our eye, and said, "Now?"  Thankfully, no, but unfortunately, these tribes have a ritual buffalo sacrifice annually.  Oodon took us to the spirit house in the middle of the village, where the buffalos are killed, and started to explain in detail how the sacrifice took place.  I wandered off to look at the well, unwilling to hear about animals being killed and also because I'm a wuss and might faint anyway, so I didn't hear too much.

Today I fly to Bangkok via Vientiane, and then tomorrow I go on to my vacation in Hanoi and Ha Long Bay.  Then Friday, finally Friday, beloved Friday, I am going home.  Home...

Southeast Asia #2: Waterfalls, swimming in the Mekong, & pagoda parties (3/15/08)

Sabaidee!

It has been a long and speedy week for us here in Champasak, quite the roller coaster.

It was tremendously exciting for the staff when the workshop participants arrived.  After months of preparation and studiously poring over the applications, we had actually made this thing happen.  I realized with a surge of pride on Monday morning that we had overcome many obstacles to get people here: complications with visas, lack of communication, frustrating partner organizations, problems of HOW to get money into this country according to the institute's strict and often stupid rules, superstitions – one participant declined our invitation to attend because his fortune-teller told him he should not leave the country until next year.

Monday evening, we left on a high, with our handler Thonglith promising to ensure the classroom was locked behind us.  Rather than carry the projector and printer and computer for the classroom back and forth daily, we opted to leave it locked in the municipality classroom.

Tuesday morning I arrived at 8am to set up the classroom.  My stomach turned to stone when I saw that every piece of company equipment left in the classroom overnight was actually gone.  I frantically called Thonglith, and he came running, assuring me that someone had probably just locked them up somewhere safe (but I thought the classroom was safe?) overnight.  The class took off for Vat Phou, and Kecia and I remained, waiting.  We sat in the classroom for 3 hours, waiting, waiting, waiting...as the clock ticked on, our hopes that someone had just tried to "help" dimmed and the realization set in that someone really had stolen our projector, Kecia's laptop, and the portable printer (which was brand new, ugh).  Everyone we worked with was so embarassed, they called in the mayor, numerous officials in dark olive-colored military suits passed through the hallway and peeped at us over their decorated epaulets.  Thonglith was nowhere to be found, and when we called him for progress reports, he informed us that the mayor had called everyone together, then later that the police were out searching for the items, etc, etc.  And yet nothing surfaced.  It was a frustrating morning, to sit and do nothing while $2000 worth of company equipment was MIA – and here, we could barely communicate.  There was nothing to do but feel helpless.

It was quite the scandal – after all, this project is pouring $20,000 of capital DIRECTLY into this town.  Immediate suggestions were that maybe an enemy of the mayor had stolen the items to cause the mayor to lose face.  Many suggested as well that because this is such a small town, and the loss of face so humiliating to the Lao (the director of a national ministry was here, after all, as well as every official in the province), that the items would likely mysteriously reappear.  We crossed our fingers, but we aren't holding our breath.  Meanwhile Thonglith pulled me aside and apologized profusely.  He was so embarassed and felt culpable, because he had promised me the class would be locked and that I could leave the equipment here.  The mayor came and apologized.  The Lao participants apologized.  It was clear that everyone was unhappy, apologetic, and humiliated.

Later that afternoon, our Thai partner J called from Paxse. She might be the kindest person I have ever met in my life, and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table.  I was surprised to see her number on my phone – her flight back to Bangkok was due to leave in 30 minutes or so.  She had just heard about the theft – she and her colleague were departing the Paxse museum when Phone Phanh (pronounced Pon Pan) came jolting up in a dusty white pickup truck, waving a sheet of paper signed by the mayor (in Lao, of course).  Phone Phanh nervously explained that he had to search their luggage for the missing items – as if they would have EVER stolen our equipment.  As J related this to me, I was so embarassed, and apologized profusely.  I had a very clear mental image of the chubby Phone Phanh, sweating in the midday heat, with his shock of black hair in his eyes, ripping J's pants, underwear, and shampoo out of her neatly organized bag in the parking lot of the museum.  With perfect grace, J replied, "Oh no, it's ok, now I have a good list of what's in my luggage."

It was so perfect, so graceful a response to such an awkward situation, such a perfect roll with the punches, to carry oneself with that kind of reserve struck me as wonderful, beautiful – something to aspire to.  To be able to carry that kind of grace in a situation so absurd and unfortunate...

The theft must have bought us some good karma, though, because otherwise, the workshop has been coming along nicely, thanks to some loaner equipment, and our fantastic participants.  Getting to know them, and the young Italians working with the architectural fondazione, has been a wonderful experience.  We sit in the evenings in long tables in outdoor pavilions and eat together, and inevitably someone buys a crate of beer ($12 for 12 x ½-liter bottles) to share with everyone.  The Burmese are wonderful – they are very sweet to me, and Aye Nilar has invited me to visit her in Yangon, and then Myo Jyaw, who works in Mandalay, chipped in to invite me north.  The idea of seeing Burma, a country so closed to Americans, with friends is an incredible enticement.  The Vietnamese participants, who are mainly from Hanoi, are excited to show me around their city for the few days I will be there and have promised to show me a good time.  They are exploring Paxse today, because they heard a rumor that there are Vietnamese there.  Apparently there is no one on our side of the Mekong who makes baguettes, so a Vietnamese in Paxse makes them and then delivers bags of them, swinging from the handlebars of his moped, over here to Champasak every morning.  I aspire to someday catch a glimpse!  The Italians, Mara, Rico and Beatrice, are young architects and archaeologists working at Vat Phou – they are kind, and open.  Rico has been especially generous to us, taking us on personalized tours of the site and always offering to help carry something or fix something.  One evening after class I had to take the videocamera back to my room.  With his quintessential cigarette hanging out of his mouth, he grabbed by camera bag and wedged it into the front of his moped (where usually children sit/stand).  He climbed on, ash spilling onto his pantleg, and said, "Well you are riding? Orrr not?"  So I got on board, shakily clasping the back bar to steady myself, and we were off, speeding down the road of dark red packed earth, me perched precariously on the back.

After a long week in class and working in the heat of the day at the site, we were all ready for a break on the weekend.  We had a field trip: but because the ferries that come over to our side of the Mekong cannot hold anything much bigger than a pickup or a Lao sawtheng bus (a converted pickup with benches in the back and a shade, we had to take our buses to the ferry, board a "passenger ferry" (two canoes tied together and a platform built over the top) over to the "mainland" and then boarded our giant tour bus to visit the ruins at ToMo, the waterfalls at Phonepheng, 2km north of the Cambodian border (and the Pearl of the Mekong), and then we took a delightful boat cruise through the Si Phan Don (4000 islands).  The Mekong fragments around, well, 4000 islands, and the result is a confusing myriad of small canals and beautiful islands where you could easily get lost and never want to leave should your charioteer not know his way around.

We stopped on an island to sit on the beach (suspiciously enough our boat drivers picked a beach near a Laolao distillery, which some participants eagerly explored).  The water was so clear, a shade of light tropical green, and the sun so bright and warm that many of the men modestly removed their pants behind stands of trees and then charged for the refreshing water of the Mekong.  At one point, I turned around, and I saw my boss Jeff make a beeline for the water, which he attacked like a water buffalo.  It was hilarious.  After splashing in the banks for a bit, burning with the midday heat, I finally gave in – Rico lent me his palleu to replace my cargo pants and I was in.  The water was glorious, and the current strong, so it was lovely to float past the beach and then try to dogpaddle your way back up for another ride.  There were some chicken fights for national pride, but those quickly gave way to international pairings and then pure simplicity of floating happily in the water.

Once we attempted to dry off, we got back to Champasak and had dinner.  Our party captain and handler, Thonglith aka Top called "the party bus" (our usual sawtheng) and we headed out to a "beek fest-tee-val."  Half an hour later, we showed up...at a pagoda!  There is apparently an annual festival at the monastery/pagoda, and the yard was shaking with the noise from a Lao band onstage.  Crates of Beerlao were being ferried back and forth, rice cakes with caramel distributed, children eagerly boarded the ride (a carousel, operated manually, no joke, the guys grabbed the bars and literally pushed it into motion), and people gyrated to the Lao pop music.  Meanwhile, on the fringes of the yard, the monks bundled down in their saffron robes to attempt to sleep on the decks of the pagoda.  Simon, one of our instructors, joked, "This is perfect.  If my wife calls, I can honestly say, 'But honey I'm at the pagoda!'"

I will be very happy to be home, but there are things here that I will miss which stand in clear relief to the life that I usually lead: the sudden fall of night here, like a curtain, heavy and absolute blackness; the translucent geckos who flock to the halos of light at night to feed, the bugs that swarm the light in an uncontrollable, primal frenzy – upon which the geckos snappily choose for their buffet dinner; the simplicity of life, needing only $5 a day to eat like a king – and the people who live and work here who aren't concerned with paper, receipts, regulations, or rules – they just trust you to pay them what you owe before you leave; you can walk alone at night on the inky streets in complete safety; the stencil of my birkenstock on my big toe from days and days in sandals; the simple pleasure of iced coffee – thick and silty, but it grows on you; fresh watermelon, bananas, and fruit that doesn't have a name in English; a hammock in the shade...life here is pure in a way that my frenetic LA life is not.  It is an addicting simplicity, and despite some things that have happened, my time here has served to instill a profound respect for humanity, and a realization that at our core, we are much the same.  Amphon, an archaeologist here at Vat Phou, can barely speak English and I no Lao, but we can talk about his 3-week old daughter and how hard it is for him to get some sleep.  Dian, a Lao transexual from Vientiane who works in the restaurant here, can tell me about her dreams to be a chef, and how someday she hopes to open a bed & breakfast of her own.  I don't know the Khmer word for hungry, but Heng and I can sit together and pass each other more food with an easy twitch of the eyebrow or knowing smile.  And barriers of culture all break down when we are dancing in the field of a monastery until 2am, cheering on Rohit's Bollywood dancing, the Khmer's articulated apsara-style dancing, and Simon's very British attempts at rhythm.   

When I stop to think about this, I cannot feel anything but extraordinarily blessed, that I can be here and share this moment with these people.

Southeast Asia #1: When you see "if it swims we have it" keep on walking (3/3/2008)

I am at the close of my time here in Bangkok.  Tomorrow morning, very early, we depart for Laos.  We are on a 8:30a direct flight, which we have been advised is often cancelled, so we're holding a second booking to fly to Ubon as well.  We are dearly hoping the Pakse flight goes, as otherwise we fly to northern Thailand, rent a cab to the border, manually walk all of our stuff across the border bridge, and meet a Lao driver on the other side...keep your fingers crossed!

 

Saturday Kecia and I headed to Jatujak market.  It is like a rabbit warren - rows and rows of stalls burrow along internal passageways, with the occasional peep of light filtering through the tin roof into the darkness below, and then you burst into blinding sunlight of the main arteries and there are flutists playing for donations, steaming street grills, giant furry peanuts...or rather, some really unlucky guy who got to dress up as a giant furry peanut cartoon on 100-degree day...we wandered and haggled, then rested with a glass of lime soda and some mango slices...and then got back on our feet and trekked around some more, looking for cool stuff and good bargains.  I am happy to say I have resolved some of my gift issues! But Vietnam will provide me other opportunities, I think...

 

After we had exhausted Jatujak, or...rather, Jatujak exhausted us, we got back on the skytrain (wish LA had something that modern & efficient!) and took it to the Siam station, where we got off and got in a tuktuk to go to Wat Po.  I had wanted to see Wat Po last time I was in Bangkok, but didn't have the chance, and Kecia had never been, despite this being her 10th visit to BKK!  Our tuktuk took the most roundabout random route - we had negotiated the price in advance, so it wasn't to cheat us, but rather to avoid the nasty BKK congestion (which actually is worse than LA, if that's imaginable!).  We teetered precariously around corners in Chinatown, looped around traffic circles with monuments in the middle, and turned so many times I lost all sense of what direction we were going...and then screeched to a stop outside Wat Po.

 

We went to go see the massive reclining buddha.  After taking our fill of the slumbering giant, we decided we should support the temple, and so we paid $6 to have a 45-minute foot reflexology massive.  It was lovely - we sat outside and drank lychee juice in the courtyard of the wat having our sore, Jatujak-trekking feet rubbed.  It was so relaxing.  When we were finished, it was close to 6p, when the wat closes to farang (not to Thais, though), and the courtyard was empty, and the scene breathtaking: the grapefruit-colored sky and the thin arching spires of Wat Po, and the Chao Phraya passing by slowly a block away.  Beautiful.

 

We then met up with Sophie, a Vietnamese/French conservator, who told us about this "jardin tropical et si beau" so we decided to go check it out for dinner.  We went down to the water ferry dock to begin figuring out how to get there.  We were waiting for the north-bound water ferry, when the south-bound ferry arrived.  The boat doesn't really stop, but more slows down, the ferry boy tosses a rope onto the dock to anchor the boat there, and then you have to haul it very adroitly to make the boat.  This is not a transportation method for sissies.  The boat started to pull away, and a woman standing in the entry area on the rear of the boat started calling and motioning to a guy on the dock, maybe her husband?  Anyhow, he made towards the boat.  Instead of jumping immediately, to slide onto the open rear deck of the boat, he hesitated, and with his giant camera bag and socks-under-sandals, he jumped about 5 seconds too late.  He leaped out over the growing 2-ft gap between the dock and the boat, and managed to grab the pole at the back of the boat - but couldn't hold it and tumbled down into the river.  Everyone on the deck gasped - we had seen it coming but were all rooting for him.  He didn't fall very far down, maybe 5 feet, but into the murky brown of the dirty, lotus-filled Chao Phraya...and completely soaked himself and unfortunately his camera.  It was such a surreal experience.  I couldn't believe we actually saw it!

 

Therefore when our boat pulled up, Sophie Kecia & I made quickly to board, and held on to the handrails, grasping tightly for fear of repeating our German friend's mistake.  We took the water ferry nearly 45 minutes up the river - far outside of the BKK city limits, to the end of the line at Nonthaburi.  Then we grabbed a cab, and after another 45 minutes, this time negotiating and calling the restaurant and trying to figure out where exactly we were, we eventually arrived at the Suan Thip restaurant.  It was a beautiful garden, with small pavilions/pagodas with tables interspersed with the lakes, fountains, and jungle-like greenery.  We selected a small pagoda in the center, not far from the river, and settled in our cushions to (finally!) eat dinner.  It was delicious, but unfortunately so was I - having no idea we were dining al fresco, I hadn't worn bug spray, and my right leg is now covered in mosquito bites.  Welts, really.

 

Yesterday our coworkers arrived, and we had a dinner meeting at Cabbages & Condoms.  It was begun by a man named Mechai to promote his family planning foundation - all the profits from the restaurant go to family planning and safe sex education for Thais.  The clientele was mainly farang.  It was a great restaurant, outdoors with lush foliage and a live musician, with sparkly lights and yummy food, but the decor was all...made of their primary materials.  So, the lamps were made of condoms.  There were mannequins by the entrances dressed in clothes made of condoms and birth control pills - it was very odd to be there with coworkers...

 

Today Jeff, Kecia and I worked on putting things together for the workshop.  We depart in the morning from the Massage Parlor King hotel, near the neon sign of a giant lobster that reads "If it swims, we have it" - behind Tops supermarket and the Starbucks...this is all soon behind us for the wilds of southern Laos!

Tunisia #4: Aish aish (10/28/07)

Greetings again from Tunis, and my charming hotel room on the rue de Palestine:

The conference went ok.  I wish I could give you more detail, but the last two days I got a terrible case of, er, travellers illness, and I definitely don't remember much of Friday, which was a haze of exhaustion and multiple medications.  Jeff said I could stay at the hotel, but I felt like that would be being too much of a pansy so I manned up, got myself some crackers and water, and pulled it together.  I honestly will miss some of our participants: Hajer and Faouzia were so excited about me learning Arabic that they specifically spoke as Fus-ha as possible around me and made an effort to include me, and Moez who shared his pictures of his daughters with me...I even have a soft spot for Lotfi, who totally cheated me as much as he could but who has a wonderful smile.  And the man whose name I don't know, who mumbled in Arabic about the pause-cafe and somehow we made it work in putting things together for the participants.  What I have found is that Tunisians are just like Angelenos: half of them are amazing and nice and wonderful and the best people you'll ever meet, and the other half will manipulate you any way they have to to get what they want. 

Saturday night, we had dinner at Liliane and her husband's house after she took us shopping in the souqs of the medina.  I bought myself a present for having made it through the week - a lovely wool Berber blanket.  I am excited for the cats to roll all over it and cover it in black fur!

Today I decided I would be no Dido, and throw away Carthage just because of a male (or in my case the hordes of them and trying to avoid them).  So while my coworkers stayed in Tunis, I made my way to the TGM station and took the train out through La Goulette (if you look on a map, the train runs along the spit of land outside of Tunis and then up north along the coast, it's cool!) and out to Carthage.  Carthage is a very wealthy suburb of Tunis now, beautiful along the lines of Nice or Cannes or Beverly Hills: rich white stucco houses surrounded by lush bougainvillea, palm, lime trees along hillsides overlooking in this case the gulf of Tunis.  Most of the ruins of Carthage are under protection,  but I imagine some houses overlaid the ancient Punic city.  I walked up to the Byrsa hill where the Carthage museum is, tooled around, and then came back down the hill and across the train tracks to the Punic ports musem (1 room) and the Sanctuary of Tophet.  At Tophet, I met Salah, a very knowledgable guide to the site.  He showed me around, and interestingly enough, claimed the site was a graveyard of children.  When the children died, the people believed they should sacrifice a small animal to Ashtarte/Ishtar (goddess of fertility) so that the next child would be healthy.  So when archaeologists uncovered the site, they found children and animal remains.  His story was interesting (he was actually very cool, and we had a very good conversation) but the Lonely Planet's explanation was slightly...different.  LP claims that this site was a child sacrifice site - hmmm...either way, it is actually a beautiful site and one of the best, most ...laid back and pressureless conversations I have had here.  

Tomorrow, we head out to Dougga.  My coworker says it's only an hour and a half drive, but I have been in the car with him back and forth from Mahdia, and he has been working in Tunisia long enough that he now drives like it (that is to say, the rules are - there ARE no rules!) so I think with my boss in pursuit in a second car, it will take us a bit longer.  But anyhow, we are to meet the French who work there, as well as seeing our colleagues and participants who were at our workshop who work at Dougga, so it should be a good day.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get on my flight to LA ok on Tuesday -- Air France picked a fantastic time to strike! 

Aish Aish (may God bless you)

Tunisia #3: The Rough Guide (10/23/2007)

Assalema bikum:

 

The conference is officially underway.  It was an exhausting week of 14-hour days in preparation, with some conversations being wonderfully easy and some being near incomprehensible.    To use the word interesting would be an understatement; this conference is an education unto itself. The cultural differences, and odd institutional relationships at play here, are mind-boggling.

Sunday we also had the chance to explore the medina of Mahdia.  The port city, built by the Fatimids in the early 900s in order to take Cairo – and was abandoned in 967.   This spit of land juts out into the Mediterranean, with its blue blue window shutters and sea and brightly white stuccoed medina.   The farthest point of the spit has a cherry red lighthouse, a cemetery spilling down the hill to a Fatimid gate, standing without its walls as a porthole to the sea, and a Fatimid fortress.   It is beautiful and charming, your prototypical Mediterranean fishing village with white buildings and domes clustered together along cobblestoned streets.  And again, the aqua shutters are ubiquitous.   I went wandering alone, while everyone else waited for their fresh fresh (literally, the garcon went to the fish market to buy it) fish lunch, since mine had been spaghetti and come and gone.   I wandered up to the mosque, which was destroyed in the 1500s by the Spanish and rebuilt.  It was closed for prayer, and someone came up to me to inform me that Muslims pray five times a day (like a PSA, or something, for the random blonde lady).   Turns out he was a shopboy at "Mama Bazar" around the corner.  Somehow I ended up on a stool drinking mint tea with Lotfi, the owner of Mama Bazar (bizarre), who had pictures of himself all over the store, along with his cheap wares that I didn't want to buy (hey man, if I can scratch off the top layer, it's not real silver.)  Later, after I bought a bowl from him, he insisted we take a photo together, where he insisted on holding the jewelry he gave me.   This photo pretty much sums up my Tunisian experience, or at least 1000 words worth. 

In the end, the good the bad and the ugly: this is definitely (what I hope will be) a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Next time I come to Tunisia, I will be much better equipped (and better packed, good lord why did I even pack one pair of heels?).   And at the least, it has given me some great material for characters in short stories.   And, thank God, I have some good music to dance to in my huge hotel room, the internet to maintain contact with my loved ones, and ...inshallah a sense of humor at the end of it all.     

May your toilets be equipped with toilet paper & functioning flush, your food be tuna-free, and your spirits light -

Tunisia #2: New adventures.... (10/16/07)

 

 **Part of my catching up on old travelogues...slightly edited from original email version to protect identities of individuals. Anthropological convention...

My enthusiasm was dampened a bit after a joyous late morning walk to have breakfast at the cafes alongside the Avenue Bourguiba - a man came up from behind my table, took my digital camera off it, and ran away (luckily I still have my Getty-owned work camera, so I was able to document my trip some).  I saw this fat hairy arm come over my shoulder, and before I knew it, his chubby ass had made off with my birthday present!  It is the first time I have ever been robbed in my life - never robbed anywhere in Europe, Russia, Turkey or Southeast Asia, so I guess it was my turn to buy some good karma.  The biggest loss is the pictures I hadn't yet added to my computer.  I hope some Tunisian kids eat well this month.

 

Then I made some new friends.  Two "gentlemen," Bechir & Ali, came to sit with me and chatted me up at the cafe as I waited for the commissariat de police to arrive to take my statement.  They seemed nice, so I figured, why not?  I can either pick them up now, or I can be hassled all day.  So I took my chances, and while I was taken to Ali's leather shop and shown around, on the whole they were tremendously respectful and showed me all around the medina.  We discussed politics, immigration, the educational and work systems in our countries...it was a very pleasant afternoon, which I needed after the rough wake-up call.

Bechir & Ali, Tunisian hosts/guides

 

I made it back to the hotel to meet Jeff & Francoise for dinner, after having some help from Bechir & Ali in picking out some Tunisian CDs.  (One has a video component, score!  They were 1,500TND.  That's 75 cents).  We ate at a place in the medina, Chez Nous, and headed back to the hotel to crash before meeting with our Tunisian counterpart this morning.  We showed up at her office, which is in an old palace in the medina, and it's gorgeous Islamic courtyard architecture, tiles everywhere, skylights in the domed central courtyard, walls covered with books and tapestries...I didn't talk much in the meeting, but it was an interesting power play of cultures and institutions (the director of the institute asked me if I understood French, after I had failed to laugh as heartily as he would have apparently liked, at his lame joke...no buddy I got it.  I got all of it.  It wasn't funny).  I thought to myself, I could easily work here because the office alone is beautiful.  Then...and then we saw Liliane's house when we picked her up for lunch. 

 

Liliane, a Frenchwoman, is our translator, and is married to a Tunisian dramatist.  They bought a house in the medina - huge carved doors, like you see on postcards, open into 30-ft hallways (I'm prone to exaggeration, and I'm not this time!) filled with books, mirrors, paintings, Arabic calligraphy...her home is arranged around a central courtyard filled with herbs, and plants, and cats...she handpainted all the decorations, according to accounts of what the house had originally been like, and restored the mosque on one end, and has yet to tackle the HAFSID (11th century) wooden walls on the north side of the house.  It is amazingly beautiful - the hard work of restoring an 11th century home shows! 

 

 

Liliane led us through the winding cobblestoned streets of the medina, past the Zeytouna mosque and down into a corridor with occasional skylights passing blotches of light into the small souqs lining it.  She turned suddenly, into a small alcove, and we sat down at the table that barely fit in the alcove, to order some salade mechoui and "the best lamb in the medina."  She was right, it was delicious!

 

After gorging, it was time to head down to Mahdia.  Our little Megane could barely handle all the bags and boxes and tubes of junk, but somehow we made it fit and zoomed out of Tunis on the only freeway in the country (2 lanes each way - it makes Santa Monica blvd look like the 405).  And then...then the highway stops just after Sousse.  And you go village by village, through the only paved road, past goats and butcher shops and small souqs and pedestrians dodging traffic and waiting for the bus.  Somewhere along the way the sky turned sour, and then the sky dumped down buckets of rain, that quickly drowned the flat road.  Soon we were plunging through puddles in the little Megane, trying not to spray pedestrians, but to no avail.  Several puddles later, we arrived at our hotel in Mahdia...much to our dismay.  It's pretty much the Tunisian version of a Sandals resort - huge and gaudy and filled with chubby Germans and Russians taking the cure. Jeff commented, as we waited in the reception, that it looks like one of Saddam's palaces...and it kind of does.  There are two swimming pools, 3 bars, a spa....and lots of native Tunisians forced into horrid condescending outfits.  All of us were ready to find a new hotel, pretty much as soon as we pulled up...but alas...

 

Anyway.  Tomorrow we drive into El Jem with Ahmad, our Tunisian partner, and begin the planning, in detail, for the workshop, and I meet with the hotel manager.  Exciting, la vie tunisienne.