Archive for the ‘Southeast Asia’ Category
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
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I’d imagined Saigon in post-colonial elegance, but instead, it’s a post-industrial metropolis, a swirl of scooters driven by candy colored helmeted 19 year olds, nearly 9 million of them. I was absolutely wrong, Saigon was not the city I was looking for.
The good news is that Phnom Penh absolutely is. The fine grace of the temple and pagoda rooflines stands out against the French colonial architecture, river boats come and go at the waterfront, and there’s a style here that makes a person feel like they’re in a movie.
We had cocktails on the balcony at the Foreign Correspondents Club, the ceiling fans spin quietly above, the traffic buzzes and honks below, the mosquitoes find the one spot on your ankle where you’ve neglected to apply bug juice. It is hot and humid, so we are languid and lazy. It’s perfect.
There is, of course, a lot of ugly poverty and pollution, still, the air is thick and dirty, the river is brown and soupy. But I already know we are not spending enough time here.
Weather: 85+ and humid
Health: Still got that damn cough, but I really feel fine.
Funny: We took a cyclo ride around town. Trust me, it was funny.
I’d write more but this connection is just terrible. More to come.
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Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
- Windowless hotel rooms.
- Icky bathrooms.
- The bus.
- Lousy air quality, including second hand smoke.
- All those zeroes on the currency.
- Unpredictable coffee.
- Very Hard Beds. No, I mean VERY hard.
- Noise pollution.
- Aggressive shopkeepers.
- Being on someone else’s schedule.
That’s it for the complaining. Everyone gets to do a little bit, it’s only fair. But I’m done now.
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Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
At the Cu Chi tunnels, you can see where the Viet Cong forces, working with the local people (or not, it’s not clear) dug out an extensive underground complex that reaches from the outskirts of Saigon all the way to Cambodia. You can see examples of the terrifying traps the VC built to snag the American soldiers and you can buy an ice cream cone. You can crawl on your knees through a dark hole and then, for fun, you can shoot an AK47 at the firing range. You can watch a movie about the “American Killer Heroes” and you can sit under a leafy shelter drinking tea and eating manioc dipped in peanuts and salt. You can see murals that depict American soldiers being maimed and brutalized by traps and you can pick up a pair of sandals made from old tires. The Cu Chi Tunnels visitors complex is possibly the weirdest place I’ve ever been.
The problem with the compound is not just the collision between tourist trap and the horrors of war, though that has an awful lot to do with it. There’s also almost no interpretive material so you’re left with what you remember reading in your guidebook the night before, which, when you’re travel addled, isn’t that much.
And when your guide is provided by the state, they’re not exactly willing to stray into anecdotes that provide context. Check it out. The complex was home to 16000 people, 6ooo of them survived and there are, according to our guide, many still alive. “What was it like for them?” I asked. “Do they talk about it?” “It was dark.” she said. “They had schedules for the times when they could use light.” Then she moved on to something else.
It’s not quite a wasted experience, but there could be so much more to offer, even without conflicting with the party line on what the Vietnamese call “The American War.” The complex is staggering - you really get a sense of how resourceful and wiley the VC were and how terrifying it must have been for the American soldiers. They fell in to pits full of spikes, every snap of a twig could be a home made land mine or trap - and their opposition? Invisible. No wonder they went crazy.
But there’s no story telling here, just a weird packaging of the inventiveness of the VC and oh, look, a t-shirt that says Cu Chi Tunnels in English. We bought ice cream cones out of a freezer case and wandered back to the bus while the sound of gunfire at about a dollar a bullet faded into the background.
- Weather: High 80s, humid as hell. My ankles are sweating.
- Health: Whew, better. We could use some fresh air though, it would help a lot.
- Funny: We were given explicit instructions on how to cross the street last night. Our bus driver could not drop us in front of the hotel, so our tour leader gathered us together and told us what to do. We were to plunge into traffic headlong, in groups of no more than three, in a vertical line. She assured us that it would be okay. J and I locked hands, picked a fellow traveler, and on the go, stepped off the curb into the fray. We reached the curb and looked back - and behind us were all 14 of the remaining travelers, bringing traffic to a halt.
Tomorrow we head to the Cambodian border. Instead of traveling via tunnel, we’ll take a bus and then, board a boat to travel down the Mekong Delta.
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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
There’s a big mural on the back wall of one of the expat cafes in town that’s got Bruce Lee with a big can of Coke in one hand, and on the other side, there’s a Mona Lisa wearing an iPod. In the middle, it says in big letters, “I shop, therefore I am.” In the front salon, there’s a huge painting of Bono in a Superman outfit, below his portrait it says “Superbono!” in huge letters and to one side, it said “Giving, not bombing.” I was unsure how to take any of this stuff - is it ironic, sarcastic, serious? Who can say? It’s impossible to tell and the Vietnamese girls aren’t saying.
I talked to an Actual Artist ™ that told me that most of the work in town is copies, he’s the only guy showing original work. It was awful stuff, clumsy and ugly with bits of computer parts stuck into the surface - he told me he likes to do work about the balance between modernity and tradition, but hearing that didn’t make the work any more attractive.
We did end up dropping a little money in the tailoring sector of the economy that seems to drive this town. We had some modestly successful copies of my travel pullover made - the zippers aren’t quite right, but otherwise, they’re okay. J. got two pairs of pants, I got one, and then, on the way back to the hotel, I caved in and bought three silk shirts, very pretty things in dark colors with bits of embroidery on them, and blissfully unlike anything else I’d seen in town.
It’s hard to shop when everything looks so much the same. Stores stand shoulder to shoulder with stores selling exactly the same merchandise. “You come look my shop!” the girls shout. “You buy something new! You come look around!” But the third time you have been down the block you realize that there is nothing all that different about what’s in shop one as compared to what’s in shop 23. It kills the shopping buzz - that and the rather close distances the shopgirls keep. They are at your shoulder, you can not browse or touch or just look because they will not leave you alone. I suppose that’s the method that works if you are from here, but it just leaves me feeling like a shoplifter.
- Weather: Still cool and breezy. It’s just not tropical. Tomorrow, hopefully.
- Health: I’m looking forward to a room that hasn’t been underwater recently. That should help with my cough.
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Friday, February 1st, 2008
You know that paint you used in grade school? The chalky stuff, tempera, that when it dried, rubbed off on your clothes and your hands and your backpack and your homework? Remember those dry colors, dusty and dirty but oh so bright? Those are the colors of Hoi An. And because the entire country is in a frenzy of preparation for Tet, new coats of yellow and turquoise green and cerulean blue are being applied to the buildings that line the streets. The phrase “a riot of color” barely does the situation justice, though I will use it all the same because I can think of no more accurate way to express it. It is a sight to behold.
We left Hoi An early this morning for My Son, a smaller version of Angkor Wat - sort of an appetizer for what’s to come in Cambodia. The Vietcong holed up at My Son so the US bombed the crap out of it - there’s very little preserved save one small cluster of temple buildings that are blooming with ferns and lichen and a few weather beaten Hindu gods. It was beautiful and tragic - it’s such a waste to think that the US military destroyed the site and lost the war - what’s the point, really?
We returned to Hoi An via the river, a much more pleasant journey than the bus and with far less honking. There wasn’t much to see, some fishing boats, the shoreline, a watermelon farm, but it was nice to be away from the center of town for a few hours in the quiet of overgrown crumbling ruins or on the muddy green waters of the river.
When we got back into town, we made a beeline for the pastry shop we’d spotted the day before. The French occupation of Vietnam did, I’m sure, lots of damage in all kinds of unthinkable ways, but it also left behind some very pretty architecture and more than one fine patisserie. Long time readers of Nerd’s Eye View will know of my obsession with the sweeter side of snacking and forgive my trivializing the empire, new readers, please trust I’m not totally frivolous, but I do love a fine piece of cake. The double layer passionfruit/chocolate mousse confection I had was worthy - and the bakery was churning out some very attractive breads as well. Note to self: Pick up baguette tomorrow morning after we fetch J’s new pants and the travel shells we ordered from the tailor.
Hoi An, if you don’t know, is tailor central - you can have nearly anything made to order, complete with your embroidered logo. It would be fun to have my entire travel wardrobe replicated in black and red dragon patterned brocade, right down to the shoes - which, FYI, is totally doable. We didn’t buy much, J got to pairs of pants, I got some shorts and we’re having a couple of copies of this fold into itself shell thing I have done just for grins. We pick up everything tomorrow morning before we head to Danang where we’ll hop a flight for Saigon/Ho Chi Min City.
- Weather: Overcast, but mild. Very warm at the ruins.
- Health: Mornings are a little rough but that’s probably the damp. Our hotel room was underwater not all that long ago and the mildew isn’t so very healthy.
- Funny: Our tour guide today took advantage of our tour route to do all kinds of peculiar errands. After a lot of honking, we stopped at the side of the road in a tiny village. The guide hopped off and returned with a plastic bag full of meat. Another 20 minutes up the road, in town, the aggressive honking was repeated. The guide got off again and returned a few minutes later, minus the bag of meat.
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Thursday, January 31st, 2008
A: Our internet connections, while plentiful, have been sooooo slow that I’m quite sure that if I uploaded even one photo, no one in Vietnam would be able to use the Internet until I’m done.
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