I Loved Cambodia
Thursday, February 21st, 2008And here are 2000 words that explain why.
Archive for the ‘Southeast Asia’ Category
Chau Doc: Vats of Goo and A Bad Hotel
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Chau Doc is a busy border town with dusty streets and tin roof buildings and TV antennas. Our hotel sat on the edge of the river. Behind us, the motorcycles buzzed around offering rides, on the other side, river traffic floated back and forth, rowing or spewing fumes behind noisy diesel engines.
It’s impossible to tell where the town stops and the river begins. The houses are high and leggy off the water, but there are floating docks and floating buildings and then, houseboats… J and I watched the sparks fly from a floating welding shop while next door, a place that was stacked high with giant ceramic drums did nothing at all. “How’s that welding guy get his power?” J asked. “I don’t want to know.” I said, picturing an extension cord running through a plastic tube across the decks and through the water to a hookup somewhere on land.
We skipped the group motorcycle ride because I’d had enough motoring for the day, opting instead for a walk through the market. In retrospect, I think the moto ride may have been the more placid choice as the Chau Doc market was hot, close, intensely smelly, and full of mystery. The vendors fairly ignored us because there’s very little for tourists on display, though one funny dude seated in front of a pile of pig’s trotters shouted at J. “Mister! Mister! You want to buy?!” We both looked down at the pile of hooves before looking the comedian in the eye. Then we all started to laugh, the vendor showing a checkerboard smile of missing teeth.
Everywhere there were giant piles of produce and stacks of dried fish. There were great stinking vats of mysterious gummy substances, slick with goo and shiny in the hot light. There were piles of paper mache masks and decorations for Tet and noodles, noodles, noodles. There were kite shaped flags of dried squid and flip flops and plastic soup spoons and bonsai trees. Skinny guys pushed carts through the crowd, girls in dust masks rolled scooters around, it felt like we were the only Eur/Americans in a giant maze of food and noise and smell. I paid way too much for a couple of Mandarin oranges and we went back to the hotel to sit on the balcony and watch the light change over the water. It was very hot, in the high 80s or low 90s and even with sunset, the heat didn’t abate. I peeled the oranges and breathed deep of the skins to chase away the memory of the smell in the market.
Our hotel room was a cell with only a piece of glass block for a window. We had an air conditioner that made a shocking amount of noise and a fan that occasionally caused all the other electrical devices in the room to shut down. Our door was right next to the reception desk and to get in and out, we had to climb over the extension chord that was powering the twinkle lights on the tree in the lobby. The hotel restaurant was on a floating platform on the river, requiring navigation of a rickety series of gangplanks and stairs. The dirty sheets were a weird nylon substance and the mosquito nets were full of holes. The whole place was hilariously bad, a joke that would have worn thin in a big hurry had we not been staying only one night.
After a deeply unsatisfying sleep - interrupted repeatedly by a thwacking noise that I like to imagine was a circuit breaker repeatedly blowing, we shuffled into the early morning to board the boat to Phnom Pehn.
Saigon at Night
Monday, February 18th, 2008
I love this picture that J. took as we were walking to our table at a restaurant in Saigon. It perfectly captures the feeling of being there, the noisy blurry mess, the vibrancy, the off kilter feeling, everything. (It’s probably a good time for a reminder that J. takes a lot of the pictures you see here on NEV, he has an excellent eye and a steady hand.)
It was a hot night and we were going to eat BBQ in a courtyard restaurant that’s popular with locals and expats. The place was packed, the waiter was expecting us. The ceiling was covered with geckos, the air was fuzzy with smoke. We sat at a rickety table in the back and drank Tiger beer by the bottle. I was frustrated by the menu - there was nothing I wanted - and ordered badly.
J. had crocodile, which he ate after grilling the raw meat over a charcoal burner. I’m sure the waiters don’t get hazard pay but they earn it, hefting blazing hot ceramic buckets full of smoking charcoals over your head and placing them in the middle of the table on a metal plate. I had fish, it was fried and dry and full of bones. I tasted the crocodile - I found it a weird cross between chicken and fish; I’d probably overcooked it because it was tough and chewy.
After dinner we went to the rooftop bar at the Rex Hotel, a fancy place with a cover band playing the Greatest Hits of the 70s. The Carpenters are alive and well in Saigon, Simon is still singing with Garfunkel, A Daydream Believer can still hook up with a Homecoming Queen. I filled my unsatisfied belly with coconut ice cream, eaten out of a real coconut and washed it down with Perrier. It was, without question, the most expensive thing I ate in Vietnam.
As soon as I’d finished, I was finished. I had to go back to the hotel right away, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. There were a few instances during our travels when I was so utterly overstimulated, so completely undone by sensory overload that I had to get into my room as fast as my feet would take me. This was one of them. I was cooked.
People typically ask the same questions about the trip. “Was it fun? Did you have a GREAT time?” If I hesitate in reply it’s not because it wasn’t fun or because I had a lousy time. Yeah, it was fun, yeah, yeah I had a great time. But that’s nowhere near enough. The socially appropriate answer is probably, “Yep, it was fab.” But the more honest answer is that it was intense.
It’s why I like that picture so much. Sure, those people are out having a great time. But wow, so much more is going on.
There are a few pics of Saigon added to the SE Asia set, here. Also, almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece about how much I wanted to go to Vietnam. How ’bout that?!
Messing About in Boats on Halong Bay
Saturday, February 16th, 2008“There is nothing — absolute NOTHING — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
I hate to fly, I can’t bear long bus trips, and boats, good god, don’t get me started on boats. I love to be in exotic places, but the process of getting there, by most methods, leaves me queasy and tired. I will be the first to admit that this is a pathetic and contrary state of affairs in a person who loves to travel as much as I do, but there you have it. I am happiest on a leisurely stroll or on a road trip where the way is straight or I am doing the driving. I’m okay on a train, too, as long as it’s not too terribly winding. I get seasick, at sea and on land, and there’s not much for it. The drugs leave me feeling worse, so I settle for feeling ill at ease, a little nauseated, and edgy, until the sensation passes.
I had great trepidation about spending the night at sea but my reading suggested that Halong Bay is flat as a mirror, mostly, protected and smooth. I wasn’t prepared for the cold, but the water was just as reported. The only disruption to the stability of our ride was the wake from other passing tour boats. It turns out it’s not boats I dislike, only the (sometimes) cramped quarters and the constant motion of what’s under my feet.
Our boat was a neat little junk with drafty windows and heated cabins; we even had our own private bathroom with a shower. Once we figured out how to get the heat working, it was snug and cozy. The bunks were a little narrow, but I slept like a real water rat and woke up hungry and enchanted. I didn’t want to go back to shore, I could happily have spent another day gazing into the fog at the karst peaks and floating villages. [Me in the cabin, early morning.]
Halong Bay is a Japanese painting serviced by little floating convenience stores. Women row their skiffs right up to your boat to sell you Oreos and cigarettes and bottled water, one woman we saw had all that plus a few fresh crabs and a cuttle fish floating in a basket. Freighters and fishing boats and floating homes are anchored all across the surface of the water. The view changes every few minutes, the shape of the mountains, the light, the color of whatever kind of craft is floating by. [Floating shop.]
I should have been disappointed by the weather but instead, I enjoyed the way the mist muffled the sound, softened the edges of the rock, made the sky and water into one floating gray field. It’s easy to imagine how grand it must be to float Halong Bay in the sunshine, drinking cold beer on the deck and sleeping with the windows open, but I’m not sorry that it was otherwise. [Dragon bow of our boat, karst peaks.]
We took a few more boat trips during our journey - a run down the Perfume River in Hue and a long day from the border town of Chau Doc in Vietnam to Phnom Penh in Cambodia (I was there and I’m still stunned at how exotic that sounds) and I enjoyed both journeys tremendously. It’s open water I can’t take, the churn is too much for my weak stomach, but the steady pace of a river journey suits me just fine. As I was lying at the stern in a pile of luggage, a fellow traveler said, “You’re Mark Twain!” and I thought, “Life on the Mississippi. Maybe that’s for me.” I might have an idea for our next adventure.
I’ve posted a mess of new photos to Flickr, here’s Halong Bay and here’s Hue.
So, What’s Hanoi Like?
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Slideshow here. Suggested tune? Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix.
Every morning around 6am, the Voice of Vietnam blasts over Hanoi. Our tour leader told us that they broadcast local news, the lottery numbers, and a generous helping of propaganda. (I find it incongruous that a socialist nation has a lottery. Do they redistribute your winnings if you pick the right numbers?) The Voice of Vietnam is the first noise of the day, every day, and the sound spins up into a fevered pitch as the hours pass. The traffic picks up, people take to the streets to work and sell and go from place to place, and they honk and shout and chatter the entire time.
The sidewalks are mostly unusable. As soon as dawn breaks, the rogue restaurants appear, cooking soup and frying omelettes over tiny portable stoves. There’s always a scattering of plastic stools, low to the ground, right up to where the curb crumbles into the street. Where you think you should be able to walk, scooters are parked shoulder to shoulder while their drivers load and unload stunning quantities of goods. Every now and then there’s the frenzy of a sale, a pile of merchandise tossed on to the concrete. The sales are easily identified by the cloud of 20 something girls around the product and there is no passing them, you must step off the narrow goat trail of a path into the street.
Once you’re in the street, your life is in the hands of oncoming traffic. It does no good to look for oncoming traffic because it’s coming from everywhere, even from inside the shops and out of little alleys that seem almost too narrow to walk down.
Picking your way through the city is a daunting task because you have to watch where you put your feet so’s not to kick over a pot of boiling soup, watch for onward traffic because it comes from the wrong direction, watch your head because the network of tarps and hanging goods means you might clock yourself on who knows what or pour a stream of rainwater down the back of your neck, watch your belongings - not so much because of theft though that can be an issue - because your pack can catch on the handlebars of a passing scooter, and all this in the middle of an unstoppable freight train of noise.
Pictures of Hanoi do it little justice because it’s such a sensory assault. In order to experience Hanoi, you have to first surround yourself in the visual mess of telephone wires and merchandise and people in brightly colored helmets, but you have to put it all in motion, swirling 360 degrees around you, with not one still place to rest your eyes. Then, start the soundtrack, the honking, the chatter, the engines. Add to that the smell of food cooking, not always pleasant, of exhaust and dust and damp and sometimes of sewer, and cigarette smoke. Crush yourself into not enough personal space and then, move forward, as best you can. Even if you do all these things, if you haven’t been someplace like Hanoi, you still have no idea what Hanoi is like.
This makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy Hanoi. That’s not true. During our last breakfast in Bangkok, N asked if we’d do it again. Knowing what we know now, would we hit the reset button and do it again? J and I were in complete agreement: Absolutely. In spite of that fact that we were down with the ick (a cold/flu thing) in Hanoi and again, down with the ick in Bangkok (bad belly), we were ready to go. Again.
