Chatuchak Weekend Market

I love the markets in Southeast Asia. There's pretty much anything that you would ever want to buy, already listed at cheap prices, and then you can bargain the vendor down even lower. I'm really enjoying the art of bargaining as well. Although I'm not as good as I could be perhaps, I am getting over my shyness when it comes to asking for lower prices. Maybe that will come in handy when I return to South Korea.

The Chatuchak Weekend Market is the king of all the markets I've visited so far in terms of size. I spent almost three hours wandering around through the T-shirt and shoe shops, but there were also ceramics stores, a food market, and a lot of other kinds of stores that I didn't have the time to visit. I would say I probably visited only 5-10% of the stores in the market, and that's over the course of three hours, so that might give you an idea of the size of this place. I stopped for snacks at some stalls with some delicious street food. I also got a fruit shake at another cafe where they were playing the strangest music: big band + singer versions of 90s alternative music. Some covers that were featured were "Wonderwall" by Oasis and "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden. That last song being turned into big band music really brings a smile to my face.

It's so easy to spend money on clothes here. My backpack is gradually running out of room.

Stupidity

This morning I was supposed to catch my cheap AirAsia flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok that I had booked a month in advance. Instead, I caught a much more expensive (but nice) Bangkok Airways flight to Bangkok an hour later than I was scheduled to leave. Wherefore the discrepancy?

This morning, I ignored the three wake-up knocks that the hotel staff gave me this morning, because I kept looking at my watch at the side of the bed, and it was telling me that I had plenty of time before my driver was scheduled to leave with me for the airport. But, it turns out that sometime between yesterday and today, my watch stopped working for an hour and a half, so it was actually an hour and a half later than I thought it was. I suppose I should have judged that something was wrong by the height of the sun outside the window, but I just went by the watch, and I thought that the staff must have gotten the wrong wake-up time for me, thinking that I had requested an earlier time. This combination of bad luck and ignorance on my part caused me to miss the AirAsia flight. The moral is: Never trust that you are in complete possession of the correct time. Truly, time is fluid.

Battambang Province

Today I took an excursion to some of the sights around Battambang, but the thrill was traveling on these bumpy dirt roads through pretty rural area where I was the only tourist that was there for most of the journey. We drove past rice fields where the harvest was already taking place, since the wet season just ended last week, I believe. We passed a lot of palm trees and various kinds of fruit trees on both sides of the road.

About 15 km southwest of Battambang is a mountain, Phnom Sampeau (more of a hill, really), made of limestone. About halfway up the hillside was an old temple, which seemed pretty peaceful and quiet in the hazy morning. But, further in from the temple gates were a couple of ominous-looking caves where the outsides of the entrance had been scrawled over in Khmer writing and arrows. The Khmer Rouge used the caves as mass graves for people that the executed near the mouths of the caves. In one of the caves was a 20-m-long statue of a reclining Buddha. Along another wall perpendicular to the Buddha, a memorial stood with windows where you could look onto the skulls and bones of people whose bodies were found in the caves. Symbols of peace and devastation in such close proximity to each other were unsettling to say the least, as if my mind couldn't make sense of what my eyes were seeing.

The hike up to the top of the hill was hot, but I got to watch my child guide point out a green snake and catch the biggest lizard I've seen so far on this trip. The temple at the top of the mountain was beautiful, especially the murals surrounding the Buddha in the interior of the temple. The style of the paintings reminded me of what I had seen in Hindu illustrations and prayer books.

Another 10 km to the east of the mountain was the departure point for the bamboo train. Let me explain what the train looks like. A 12'x5' pallet of bamboo is mounted onto a pair of wheels that fit onto the train tracks. A motor is attached to the pallet, and this provides the energy for acceleration of the train. The train that we were on was a hundred years old, according to my tour guide. Watching the fields and vegetation race by at 20 km/h while bracing myself for the large bumps that happened whenever we passed over an uneven part of the track was pretty exciting. Sitting directly on the pallet and having no walls or windows to separate me from being outside made the speed of the train seem really fast. The 10-minute ride reminded me of a safer roller coaster, as long as I kept holding onto the rail.

Farewell to Siem Reap

Yesterday I rode about 20 km in a farewell bicycle loop past some of the temples I had already visited and some new ones that I hadn't. A lot of the children selling things at temples like to impress with their knowledge of U.S. state capitals. I had a friendly little girl tell me a long series of correct state capitals before saying that the capital of Massachusetts is Boston. A forgiveable mistake -- the answer is Springfield, which I told her. She seemed a little disappointed.

Ta Keo was a tall temple in the shape of a pyramid maybe six to seven stories high. This was the most unadorned of the temples I visited with no carvings and not much in the way of other buildings besides the central pyramid. The climb up to the top was challenging, and the view of the whole structure was great from the top. It made me think of the Mayan pyramids, although I've never actually visited those monuments.

Ta Prohm is the temples where some recent movies have been filmed, and visiting the temple in person demonstrated why this is such a popular shoot site. Not much has been done to stop nature from overtaking the temple, so it looks like a long-ago palace that everyone forgot about until a couple of days ago. This isn't true, because restoration efforts are taking place, but only where the decay in the building has rendered the path to dangerous for people to walk through. I'll remember this temple for all the sorts of trees I saw whose gigantic roots had grown out of the temple stones. No trees have seemed more alive and capable of movement that these trees, whose roots had coiled themselves around the stones like huge snakes.

Today I took an eight-hour scenic boat ride from Siem Reap to Battambang, passing through Tonle Sap, the giant lake in a north-central location in Cambodia that I am guessing is fed by the Mekong River. The lake was peaceful and mostly empty of other boats, with only some kind of vegetation floating along the water. The same sort of vegetation can be seen in the Chao Praya in Bangkok, but I forget the name of the plant. The boat got a little hot in the afternoon, but I enjoy traveling by boat because I can actually read during the trip, something that I can't do on a bumpy bus ride.

I reached Battambang at 4 in the afternoon, had a quick meal at the market, and walked along the river to check out some of the old French architecture. There's a lazy feel to this town that I like so farm, and it's seemingly empty of foreigners after the hordes at Siem Reap.

Angkor Thom

I rode a rented bicycle to some of the monuments in Angkor Thom, the ancient walled city of the Khmer during the reign of King Jayavarman in the 11th century. Traveling by bicycle was pleasant enough in the cool shade of the morning but got pretty tiring and hot by noon when I had finished visiting the temples I had wanted to and was tired and hungry.

Highlights from some of the temples I visited today:

Bayon -- The eerie faces of gods with the face of King Jayavarman peer out at the visitor from every side of every tower in the temple. Also, it was difficult to find the way from the outside courtyard to the highest inner courtyard if you tried to accomplish this from any direction other than from the front of the temple. My normally great sense of direction was confused by some of the twists and turns it took to get to the top of the temple. Also, if I was in an enclosed area of the temple, I tried not to look at the ceiling, because it seemed like there were rocks up there, building blocks of the temple, ready to fall at any moment. The uppermost courtyard was impressive, with all those faces up close looking at you and all the outer towers encircling and encroaching upon the center tower.

Baphuon - The grounds of this large temple were a mess, and most of it was closed off due to restoration efforts. The real find on the grounds was a tall temple in the shape of a pyramid that you could climb by going up a long, steep narrow flight of steps that left me breathless when I got to the top. The temple wasn't talked about at length in the guide book; I think the name of it might be Phimeanakas, which strikes me as a somewhat Greek name.

Terrace of the Leper King: Intriguing at first just because of the name. There's a statue at the top of the terrace that could be the image of an Angkor king in the 12th century who had leprosy, or it could be the image of the God of Death, Yama. The monument has a couple of layers of carvings on the walls, with the inner, original ones really well-preserved. In the narrow walkway, I met a landmine victim who had lost both of his legs but seemed really cheerful. I had given him a 1000 riel note (equivalent of 25 cents). He asked me where I was from, how long I was staying in Siem Reap and what I had seen so far. He seemed to speak excellent English. I think most of the people here pick up their English from speaking to foreigners, because a waitress I had spoken to at a restaurant said that they didn't teach English at any of her school up through high school. She is from Banteay Srei, which is 30 km northeast of Siem Reap. I think that the level of English I have seen in Cambodia is higher than that I experienced in Vietnam, and that proficiency is even more amazing considering that the teaching of the English language seems to be spotty in pre-university education in Cambodia. I have had really good conversations with some of the Cambodian people I've met in Siem Reap and, before, in Phnom Penh. It makes me feel guilty for being barely proficient in a second language.

Angkor Wat

Today was a tiring but ultimately rewarding day. My driver came to pick me up at 4:40 am to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. I had had a fitful night of sleep in the top-floor fan room where the fan was doing a great job of circulating hot air around the room. But the experience at Angkor Wat drove away any cobwebs in my head for the time being.

Sunrise at the temple was unbelievable. I almost felt like I was visually giving thanks for the coming day. I feel like if everyone was able to do this ritual at least once in their lives that there would be a lot more happiness in the world.

I don't remember ever being in a place this immense ever before, except maybe the Taj Mahal. Even though there are a thousand people who are visiting at the same time as you, it's still possible to find yourself alone with the monkey urine and the wonderful architecture along a corridor you've never visited before. The temple is surrounded by a giant moat that runs over such a great length and width that it made me wonder how long it took to build the moat and what the process was. The temple itself is divided into several courtyards, each further inside from the entrances and at a higher level than the courtyard below. The climb up to the innermost courtyard up steep, narrow steps was dizzying but offered some spectacular views of the temple grounds and the surrounding coutryside's lakes and greenery.

The outer wall of one of the lower courtyards is ringed by vast bas-reliefs depicting mostly scenes from the Ramayana. Unusually, depiction of the Mahabharata is also present, even though this story isn't depicted widely in other Cambodian temples. The images were without color besides the pink of the sandstone, although some of the faces were polished from hands touching them over the past ten centuries. I think a lot of the scenes were lost on me because there was too much going on, but the famous Churning of the Ocean of Milk scenes was as powerful as a painting. Visiting Angkor Wat was the primary reason that I decided to travel to Southeast Asia for vacation; I'm glad being there in person was as wonderful as I had hoped.

Some highlights from other temples I visited today:

Banteay Srei: The sandstone carvings in the edifices above doorways were finely intricate and remarkably well preserved for a temple built in the 9th century AD. The sandstone had several different colors that came out in the sunlight: yellow, pink, and gray.

Ta Som: A gigantic tree had the pretty substantial eastern gate of the temple surrounded by its huge roots. I feel like the temples' slow decay and return to nature is the most beautiful thing about Angkor.

Also, I was excited to buy some things in a fair trade store in the backpacker district: a checked Cambodian scarf that I hope will filter out the exhaust fumes from my breaths as I ride my bicycle today and a shirt featuring another animal for Elena.

Siem Reap

Siem Reap has a lot more dirt roads than Phnom Penh. The bus dropped me off at an undisclosed location instead of in the main backpacking area where I was expecting to be dropped off. Then the hotel where I was supposed to be staying was also hiding from me and the tuk-tuk driver, even though I thought I had pegged the location down correctly on the map in my book. The driver Prohum tooke me to a series of guesthouses all of which were full, until we found a nice one that has a swimming pool but didn't have any A/C rooms for Saturday night, only fan rooms. So it was a hot Saturday night until yesterday when they moved me to a much more comfortable A/C room. After checking into the fan room, my driver was taking me to see the sunset at one of the Angkor temples, and I spotted the sign for the missing guesthouse along the way, but it really was difficult to find.

The drive past Angkor Wat was amazing with the large placid moat surrounding the huge temple. There were lots of picnicking Khmer by the side of the moat on the grass, since it was a Saturday afternoon. I visited a temple a little to the northwest of Angkor Wat. The temple Phnom Bakeng was up a hill after a hike through some pretty dense forest. The temple ruins were definitely crumbling at parts, and the way was blocked at some points around the exterior because it was too dangerous. The climb to the top of the temple was up five steep flights of steps, which were exhilarating to walk up and down because the steps were so narrow. The top of the temple was supposed to give a nice view of Angkor Wat, but the way was partially blocked by some trees, and there are some unsightly green tarps covering parts of the exterior of Angkor Wat where they are doing restoration work. But there were some amazing views of some lakes and mountains in the distance, and the cloud cover gave everything a sleepy feeling. But the cloud cover meant no real sunset. I was hoping for better lucks in my plans to catch a sunrise at Angkor Wat in the morning.

Tuol Sleng Prison and the Killing Fields

S-21 was the name for the security prison units that the Khmer Rouge built and maintained throughout their control of Cambodia from 1975-79. The Tuol Sleng was a large high school in southern Phnom Penh before it was converted into a prison for political prisoners that had fallen on the bad side of Angkar (the Khmer Rouge ideals).

The prison could hold as many as 1,500 prisoners at one time. The prisoners were either housed in communal cells, where their limbs would be chained with a padlock to a long iron bar, and they would be lying side by side with 40 other prisoners in the same room. They had to ask permission to go to the bathroom otherwise they would be lashed 10 times or shocked with an electrical discharge 5 times. The bathroom would just be buckets in the cell. The other cell isolated the prisoner in a cell of their own with no room for anything else other than own bodies besides small buckets that would be used for going to the bathroom.

When prisoners were taken to these prisoners, it was termed by the Khmer Rouge being sent "to study." Here were the rules that were written on the blackboards for the prisoners to follow or else incur severe punishment:

1) You must answer according to my questions. Do not turn them away.
2) Do not try to hide the facts by making pretexts of this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3) Do not be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.
4) You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5) Do not tell me either about your immoralities or the revolution.
6) While getting lashes and electrification you must not cry at all.
7) Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8) Do not make protests about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9) If you do not follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10) If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electrical wire.

As you can tell from the above rules, various forms of torture were institutionalized at Tuol Sleng, such as water torture, removing the fingernails and pouring alcohol on the wounds, exposure to poisonous insects, and applying electrical shocks to sensitive parts of the human body. Photos taken upon the arrival of prisoners show that some of them had already had their arms amputated before they were even imprisoned. Perhaps the most perverted transformation of the schoolground into the scene of torture was the security guards' use of the jungle gym to hang prisoners from with their arms and legs all bound together to create unbearable agony on the joints so that the prisoners would soon pass out. Then the prisoners' head would be dunked in water in order for them to regain consciousness so torture could resume. The facades of some of the buildings still were covered with barbed wire to prevent prisoners the opportunity of killing themselves by jumping over the balcony to the ground below.

There was a documentary shown at the museum about the troubled romance and the lives of two prisoners at Tuol Sleng. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the movie was one of the 7 prisoners who survived incarceration at Tuol Sleng leading one of the old S-21 security guards around his studio. The prisoner showed the guards paintings that he had completed of various forms of torture that happened at Tuol Sleng and was asking him, "Did I get this right? Is this how it happened?"And the security guard would uncomfortably smile and say, "Yes, that's how it happened."

As I mentioned before, of the 12-15,000 prisoners that passed through Tuol Sleng, only 7 survived. The rest died of torture or starvation in Tuol Sleng or were transported by trucks about 15 km southwest of Phnom Penh to the killing fields of Cheong Ek, where they were lined up and executed by gunshot wounds, cutting of the throat, or blows to the head with blunt objects.

The Khmer Rouge tried to hide evidence of this extermination by destroying the detention building and the buildings which housed manacles and chemicals to cover the stench of the decomposing bodies. They didn't do a very good job of hiding the evidence. Soon after the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge and ended the revolution, mass graves in Cheong Ek were excavated, revealing thousands of intact human skeletons. One mass grave contained decapitated skeletons. Some of the prisoners were executed using the razor-sharp leaves of a palm tree. Some babies and young children were killed by bashing their bodies repeatedly against the base of a tree. These methods of murder were used to conserve bullets.

On the grounds of the former death camp, a white stupa stands, filled with level upon level of human skulls and the mostly intact clothes of the victims. Estimates vary about the number of deaths in Cambodia, but the memorial plaque at the Killing Fields put the number at 2 million people who died because of torture, execution or starvation during the Pol Pot regime. Combined with the secret American bombing of Cambodia during the early 1970s, the civil war which led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and the defeat of the Khmer Rouge at the hands of the Vietnamese army, highest estimates put the total number of deaths in Cambodia at 3 million people.

Impressions of Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh is a fairly big city in terms of getting to the important landmarks. It's a decent walk to get from one place worth seeing to another place worth seeing. There are almost as many motorbikes on the roads as in Vietnamese cities, but there's much less honking here. I have been seeing a lot of amputees asking for money, and I find myself wondering whether they were disfigured during the Khmer Rouge regime or whether it happened afterwards. Phnom Penh seems so peaceful and placid that it's creepy walking around and remembering the city's bloody history. Much more on that stuff tomorrow...

Last night for dinner, I had meat, seafood and vegetables barbecued at the table in what the Lonely Planet book calls the "volcano of fire." This was pretty similar to the galbi that you get in Korea, but, with the additional ingredients of seafood and egg to be cooked, and absent of the kimchi, the mushrooms and the garlic that you would find in Korean barbecue. The food was pretty good going down, but I had a little bit of upset stomach and diarrhea in the morning. But I took some of my strong Korean medicine, and I feel fine now.

I started my wanderings today at Wat Phnom, which is a small Buddhist temple at the top of a hill that basically is the highest point in Phnom Penh. The Buddhist temple was like many of the other Buddhist temples I've seen on this trip (forgive me if I'm going through temple overload), but the exterior had Khmer architecture, meaning lots of stupas and tiled roofs gilded in yellow and blue. The real treat in visiting Wat Phnom was seeing the monkeys frolic in the trees and eat fruit. They weren't really going after the food of any of the people in the park, but maybe that's just because everyone was wise to the presence of the monkeys and weren't eating food near them.

The National Museum houses a lot of sculpture and frieze-work from the Angkor era of the 4th-12th centuries AD. Most of the sculptures were found in the huge area of Angkor temples that span northern Cambodia and were removed to the museum for their protection. Unfortunately, the museum fell into disrepair during the Khmer Rouge takeover, and some of the sculptures suffered water damage or were looted of their heads and sold off. The National Museum has been rebuilt pretty well and has a wonderful interior courtyard that had a lot of these Angkor era sculptures amid ponds with lilypads and fish. The Angkor sculptures were all representations of Hindu gods and various incarnations of the Buddha, resembling the Cham style but with more definition and sharper lines and features.

After the National Museum, I visited the Royal Palace where the Cambodian royalty has resided since the 19th century when the palace was built, except for the time when Cambodia was overtaken by the Khmer Rouge, and I believe the royalty were driven into exile. The grounds of the palace reminded me a lot of the Grand Palace in Bangkok in terms of architecture and the layout of the grounds. More stupas and gilded tile roofs in the style of Khmer architecture. Unlike the Grand Palace in Bangkok, there were not mosaic images formed of ceramic and jewels on the facades of the buildings, but the main throne hall itself did feature a throne completely upholstered in gold and used by the King only once (I believe during the coronation ceremony?) and large frescos on the ceiling of the throne hall. Also, there was a large mural that ran around the inside of the four walls that surround the Silver Pagoda. The temple on the grounds of the Royal Palace was almost similar to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, in that both places feature an Emerald Buddha, although the Cambodian Buddha is newer and larger. The temple also featured Buddhas made out of silver and gold. For a religion where impermanence is a main principle, the temple sure featured a lot of earthly wealth. But I guess that just makes it a wonderful place to worship.

Mekong Delta

In the Mekong delta, the rivers are huge, larger than some of the lakes that I was familiar with growing up. I left Saigon yesterday and signed up for a tour that took me by boat and bus through various parts of the Mekong delta. We transferred from the bus to boat at Cai Be and went by small motorboat around the Cai Be floating market, where people were selling vegetables and fruits on the their floating houseboats where these families spent all of their time, meaning they had no houses on the mainland. Afterwards we went through some narrow waterways to a local restaurant where the decor was more rewarding than the food. Most of the food on this trip ran together: steamed vegetables, steamed rice, fried noodles, and either stir-fried tofu or pork. All of the food had mostly the same tastes, except for the coconut candy that the Mekong delta is famous for. The candy contains no sugar but gets its sweetness from the coconut and malt. It's chewy and can be mixed with chocolate or peanuts.

Most of the rest of this trip we just spent on boats or buses watching the riverside or the shops, respectively. Some of the bridges that we walked across to get off the boat and onto the mainland were rickety, wooden constructions that felt like they would buckle if you made a wrong step with the wrong amount of weight. The region of the Mekong is incredibly water-logged, and repeatedly we were shown houses where they measured the highest water levels that occurred each year during the rainy season. The house we saw this morning had a flood that reached up about fifteen feet from the ground on which we stood, which ended up being near the top of the wooden railing on the stilt house's second floor. This was in the year 2000.

We left the border town of Chau Doc in Vietnam this morning and visited some more floating villages by rowboat. There's a minority Cham population of weavers and fisher-people outside of Chau Doc, and, surprisingly, these people practice the Muslim religion and have their own small white-and-green mosque which was about a five minute walk from where we left the rowboats.

The rest of the day was spent traveling by a slow, wooden boat into Cambodia, getting through the Vietnam exit process, the Cambodia visa application, and the Cambodian entry procedure (all successful!), and the bumpy one-hour bus ride from the dock to my hotel here in Phnom Penh. I'm glad to be on dry land and have an air-conditioned room. Tomorrow I'll start my Cambodian sightseeing.

Cu Chi Tunnels

The Cu Chi Tunnels are about an hour northwest of Saigon and are famous for being an underground stronghold of the Viet Cong after the U.S. bombed the hell out of Cu Chi town and forced the villagers underground. The area surrounding the town was important for its rubber plantations. All those trees were completely wiped out by American bombs, but new rubber trees had been planted after the war finished, so rubber was bvack to being an important crop for the region.

The Tunnels themselves were very touristy, mostly with adverse effects. When we arrived at the Tunnels, we were sat down in an audiovisual room and shown this 10-minute propaganda film about the heroic resistance of the villagers, who fled from the town and constructed the Cu Chi tunnels, where they lived during the rest of the war and carried out guerilla combat operations against American soldiers trying to secure the region. The film was intriguing because it was composed of footage filmed during that actual period of the 1960s, but everything seemed staged, with smiling soldiers firing weapons and ranging around through the underground tunnels. It's difficult to imagine any soldier from either side of that war smiling while taking on the enemy.

After the film, we were led by our tour guide on a long loop past some of the tunnel entrances and also some exhibits of the kind of traps that Viet Cong soldiers set to injure and possibly kill enemy soldiers. For me and another American I met on the tour on the tour, there was entirely too much laughter as the tour guides were demonstrating how some of these traps worked. It seemed like people weren't considering that these traps were constructed to and were quite successful in killing people. To make matters worse, there was an actual firing range where tourists could fire makes of weapons similar to those that soldiers used during the American-Vietnam war. I tried to play devil's advocate with my friend by saying that the War Remnants Museum contained so much horrifying material that maybe the Vietnamese felt some levity was also possible with vestiges of the war so that remembering what happened didn't have to be completely depressing. But I don't really believe any of that carnival element was appropriate.

The best part of the tour was actually spending a few minutes crawling around these tunnels that soldiers lived in and fought from during the war. Marriage ceremonies and births happened in the tunnels during the war. People spent all their time living down there in these small passages that I couldn't stand up straight in even though the tunnels had been enlarged for tourists. I began to get claustrophobic after about a couple of minutes being stooped over and not being able to stand up straight, so I marvel at how people spent whole years of their lives in these cool passages that were only faintly lit. That's why the earlier carnival atmosphere that I experienced above the ground left me with such a bad taste in my mouth; it seemed to be making light of the sacrifices that various people on both sides made during the war, even if no one was completely sure why they were fighting each other.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Approaching HCMC on the highway, it was evident that this was a huge city from all the various factories of companies from other countries, like Coca-Cola and Kohler, on the outskirts of the city. Also, it seemed like we were in the city for thirty minutes on the highway before we actually passed into the proper city limits.

Today, I got a chance to visit some of the museums that the city has to offer. The Museum of Ho Chi Minh City was interesting to me probably for the history of the building more than anything else. It had been built as a French museum in the 1890s, but, after the Vietnamese began resisting the French in 1945 after the Japanese surrendered, the French used the building as their governor's South Vietnamese headquarters from 1945 up until the final South Vietnamese capitulation in 1975. The museum had been the site of various Communist pro-resistance demonstrations during the years of French occupation and probably during the American occupation as well.

The Reunification (or Independence) Palace was the next place that I spent some extended time. This palace was the official and living quarters of the president of the South Vietnamese government from 1945 to 1975, when the North Vietnamese actually burst through the front gate with a tank. The furnishings in the offices were quite elaborate, and the palace also featured its own cinema with plush chairs and a dance floor on the top floor of the palace with a stage for a band and a large wooden floor for dancing. A secret staircase, long since discovered, led from the president's office on the 2nd floor down to the huge bomb shelter and war rooms in the basement, which was quite a labyrinth of rooms in its own right.

After eating lunch in a restaurant blasting alternately techno music and Vietnamese pop music (some of which wasn't bad, and the food was good), I visited the War Remnants museum, which was pretty harrowing and almost brought me to tears a couple of times. The Museum documents the various wars that have been fought with Vietnam as the battleground in the 20th century and the horrible consequences of those wars. There were photos of victims of Agent Orange, the chemical used to defoliate stretches of dense jungle in Vietnam during the American War to make it the NVA more visible to the American army. There were photos of completely bombed villages that have just been rebuilt in the last 20 years. It's remarkable that some of these villages recovered at all when you see the original devastation in the photographs. There was an incredible collection of photos taken from various journalists who died covering the American War of both Vietnamese and American soldiers in battle. A part of the museum was devoted to cataloguing the various types of torture that the French, the South Vietnamese, and the US army used or authorized the use of against the North Vietnamese army and the South Vietnamese resistance. Exhibits included a French guillotine that was used up until the 1960s to execute prisoners.

It definitely wasn't a fun museum to visit, but I began to realize the complete devastation that overtook this country after the end of World War II. Ultimately, it makes traveling within this country all the more enjoyable when it's visible how far the country has recovered and grown and how much more is possible.

Spending All Day At The Beach, But What to Do At Night?

Mui Ne is a sleepy little beach town, and the waves, the wind, and the sporadic sun but not too fierce that it's hot make the beach a nice place to hang out for most of the day. But last night, I struggled to figure out what to do after the sun went down, because you can't really hang out at the beach when it's dark. I was kind of tired of traveling alone on my trip last night. It will be better when I'm in Ho Chi Minh City, and there are more people around, but here it's pretty quiet and deserted at night if you're not traveling with someone else. I ended up shooting pool with some Vietnamese people, one of them a motorcycle driver, at a bar down the road, and then going back to my room and reading my book, since the room had no television. The room that I stay at in Ho Chi Minh City will have a television. I will make sure of that.

Yesterday afternoon, I saw the scant sights that Mui Ne has to offer besides the beach. There was a very shallow stream that I could wade in pretty easily because the dirt in the bed of the stream was so soft. The tangy smell of fish sauce was in the air, because Mui Ne churns out the fish sauce, and the stream ran through a smallish canyon formed out of red sandstone, which crumbled pretty easily into fine red dust, so there were also some pretty large dunes of this red sand.

I also visited a larger red canyon near a beach at another part of the bay. It was a ten-minute hike from the road, and the narrow trail was the floor of this canyon. The end of this canyon and the top of the trail afforded a great view of the canyon and the ocean beyond. The last sight of note that I saw were these huge red sand dunes that were about five minutes from the canyon back towards the town of Mui Ne and where I was staying. The sand here was so fine, and some of the dunes were really tall that people could actually slide on sleds made of plastic down the dunes. I didn't, because I didn't really feel like getting sand everywhere in my clothes, and I feel like I've done the whole sledding thing before. But the views over the tops of the dunes were nice.

If I sound a little grumpy, it might be because I'm ready for the city again. The beach, surf, and books only go so far for me before I feel like doing something again. It's important for me to have the sense that there are many other people around me doing things, even if I know hardly any of those people.

Mui Ne

Yesterday, I weathered the 16-hour overnight bus ride and made it to Mui Ne, which is basically a sleepy beach town that is about three hours northeast of Ho Chi Minh City along the east coast of Vietnam. I had already booked a room in advance at another hotel, but I was dropped off by the bus at a different hotel, since there are always little scams that try to get you to book at the hotel that is affiliated with a particular bus company. In this case, the scam worked out in my favor, because the hotel owner showed me a bungalow room that is about a 10-step walk from the beach for $6 a night, and I was going to pay much more, $19 a night, at the other place I booked. I took the cheap room without hesitation.

I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning lounging on a beach chair reading and occasionally taking dips in the ocean to cool off. The waves are pretty strong, as is the undertow, so I haven't been in the water longer for a few minutes at a time, but I'm quite content just to hang out in the beach chairs sipping lemon juice and ice.

Another guy staying at the hotel and I had dinner last night, and it was nice to have the conversation and the company. Matt was living in the Philippines doing freelance production work for a Fashion TV German channel, and he grew up in Germany. After his jaunt in Southeast Asia, he's headed back home to Berlin, but then he'll only get to spend a month with his girlfriend before she goes to study Chinese in Beijing, and then he'll have to figure out something to do in China so he can come back over to Asia to spend time with her. At first, I was a little envious when he said he was going back to Germany at the end of his trip, because I wanted to feel like I would be going home to the States instead of South Korea when my trip ends in August. I'm happy with my life in South Korea because of the job and the comfortable lifestyle, but, for a fleeting moment, I wished that Elena and I would be going back to someplace more familiar at the end of this trip. Then again, the easy time I am having on this trip wouldn't have been possible had I not worked for it in South Korea.

My Son

My motorbike driver and I get to My Son too early, so I have coffee and some chicken with noodles for breakfast at a restaurant that was really out in the country (dogs frolicking in fields, chickens running around), because the Cham temple ruins of My Son are really out in the country. The original buildings were constructed sometime in the 4th century and then added onto continuously up until the 13th century AD.

The architecture of My Son resembles the Khmer style most famously displayed in the temples at Angkor in Cambodia. The friezes on the buildings featured Hindu deities sculpted out of the stone and the Buddha as well, abnd some of the buildings were preserved well enough to actually walk into. The interiors of the couple of buildings had reservoirs on raised platforms that were probably for sacrifices, since there were drainage pipes leading from the reservoirs to troughs below. A lot of the ruins were overgrown with greenery; one of the buildings had a young tree growing out of a large crack in the facade.

The objective I had hoped to achieve by leaving at 4:30 in the morning was accomplished; I had the ruins all to myself for the most part, except for a couple of friendly Australians. They pointed me to a wonderful tailor in Hoi An where I got two pairs of perfectly fitted trousers made for $35. The shopping here is excellent, but I would have to ship some stuff back if I bought everything that I had the urge to buy. I can't promise I won't cave in later in the trip.

Hoi An

Hoi An has a languid, easy-going pace that makes it easy to forget about the modern world. Last night, I was walking home after playing pool. I crossed over the Japanese covered bridge (the most famous Hoi An landmark, also on the Vietnamese 20,000 dong notes) out of the livelier area of town into an area where everything was dark. I would have thought that the street was completely empty of people and houses if I had not seen the same street during the day. On the unlit street, the stars were bright in the sky. The only sounds came from the bats flying around.

Hoi An used to be a busy maritime port up until the early 20th century, when mechanized ships transferred all the commerce from Hoi An to Danang. Hoi An had been a port in ancient times for the Cham people as early as the 7th century AD, as demonstrated by excavated pieces of pottery that are displayed in the town's Museum of Ceramics. Trade in ceramics and other commodities brought many traders from all over Asia to Hoi An, and the Japanese and Chinese both had enclaves in Hoi An during the 17th and 18th centuries. Along with the influences of these cultures upon the city's architecture were the European colonial influences of the Portuguese and the French, and you get buildings that at times reminded me of the French Quarter in New Orleans, whereas other buildings reminded me of the Gion tea houses made of wood that I encountered during my trip to Kyoto. Indeed, the similarities between Japanese and Vietnamese architecture perhaps encouraged the two countries to work together in planning and executing the restoration of valuable historical buildings in Hoi An, starting during the 1990s and continuing today.

It was much like stepping into a time capsule of what life in the early 1900s would have been like when I wandered down some of the town's really old streets. Tailors in silk are constantly trying to get you into their shops, woodworkers are pounding away with hammers and chisels to create new carvings, and the fierce sunlight bleaches and fades the colors of the buildings.

The town contains many assembly halls that were built as gathering places for the different ethnicities of people that settled in the city for business. The ornate assembly hall I visited of the Fujian Congregation also served the purpose of a temple. Huge coils of incense hung from the ceiling of the hall and slowly burned, deities with gold-leaf exteriors shone in the light cast by candles on the altar, and murals depicting events from folk tales flanked the inside main entrance of the hall.

Later, I walked down a street with a row of houses whose fronts were all French colonnaded. Some of the other houses combine elements of Japanese architecture, Chinese architecture, and Vietnamese architecture all in the same house, depending on the room or the floor of the building. One of the houses that I visited was built in the middle of the 19th century and had been handed down over seven successive generations of the same family. The house had been able to withstand five large floods because of the house's strong wood, although the family had to live on the second floor to be above the level of the water during these catastrophes. In the beautiful interior of the house and peering out at the sunlit street, it's difficult to imagine the damage some of these floods must have caused to houses along the riverfront and all the additional restoration work that must have happened as a result.

The Marble Mountains and China Beach

This morning I left Danang for Hoi An, stopping along the way to visit the Marble Mountains and China Beach. I got there by means of my driver and tour guide Hai, who was pretty knowledgeable about the American War, having fought in the South Vietnamese army from 1968-1973. Later, when I was having lunch along the beach, he showed me the scars that two bullet holes from the war had left. One was right above his right nipple, and other was on the outside of his left leg just above the ankle. Even now, he has strong sympathies for the Americans, even though South Vietnam was eventually folded into the rest of the Communist regime in 1975.

The Marble Mountains are literally composed of marble, which I found out after seeing the many stores at the foot of the mountains that had marble sculptures for sale. One of the stores' sculptures were so big and numerous that they had a sculpture garden of sorts to display all the sculptures. The mountains themselves contained two large Buddhist temples and pagodas that were visible on the mountainside from the beach below. There were also three caves that contained Buddhist shrines within, and it was beautiful to see a few shafts of light shine into these caves from small holes in the ceiling that let in air from outside. There were several large Buddhas housed along the mountainside; the most impressive ones were made out of polished sandstone and polished white concrete. I cooled off after the hiking by going to China Beach and swimming for a little bit. China Beach is a 30-km stretch of beach that was surprisingly nearly empty of people. There were a few dinghies completely beached by the low tide, and and island with a large mountaintop was barely visible along the horizon over the sea.

Danang and the Museum of Cham Sculpture

I'm in Danang, and the afternoon heat has forced me to retreat inside to the hotel after a couple of hours in it. The train ride this morning from Hue was pleasantly uneventful, and I even got some nice views of the ocean as the train wound its way along the cliffside. I spent the afternoon in the Museum of Cham Sculpture alongside the river. The museum contained sculptures produced by the Cham people of central Vietnam between the 7th and 12th centuries AD. A lot of the sculptures were of Hindu gods like Ganesh, Lakshmi, and Siva. There were also numerous representations of the Buddha. Animals such as lions and elephants were portrayed often in standing, human poses. About 40% of the sculptures were missing their heads when discovered or excavated. Either the sculptures were damaged by time or maybe even by the vandalism of enemies?

Thien Mu Pagoda and Dinner at Y Thao Garden

This pagoda is an important center for Buddhism in Vietnam and lies just outside of central Hue on the western (?) side. A monk from this pagoda drove a car to a major intersection in Ho Chi Minh City and set himself on fire to protest the injustice of the Diem regime in 1963. He famously burned himself to death. The car that he drove into Saigon on that day is preserved at the pagoda, and a large reproduction of that famous photo hangs behind the car. Afterward, we took a boat whose keel was in the shape of a long dragon down the Perfume River back into Hue. This river is called the Perfume River because there used to be some sweet-smelling flowers that grew along the banks of the river. Thanks to pollution, these flowers are nowhere to be found now, although I did see some people swimming in the river, so hopefully it's somewhat clean. The boat went underneath the Trang Tien Bridge, which is nicely lit up in different colors at night, as was the Citadel.

For dinner, I had a xe om (motorcycle driver) drive me into the Old City for a dinner at a Vietnamese-style house with a beautiful outdoor garden that had been converted into a restaurant. At one point during dinner, I saw a tiny frog leap across the tiled floor; at another point, I saw a lizard on the other side of the window pane near the table where I was sitting. On to the dinner itself, the presentation of the meals and the overall taste of the food were excellent. The highlights were: the spring rolls that were planted in a carved-out and illuminated pineapple to look like feathers in a peacock; the steamed, mixed rice that came wrapped in the leaf of a lotus flower, and the bean cakes coated in some kind of caramelized, colored syrup so the cakes were made to look like small pieces of fruit. The only problem was that the set menu had too much food; even I couldn't finish it all.

Hue - Royal Tombs

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting some of the Royal Tombs of former Vietnamese kings. The highlight of these tombs were the ceramic bas-reliefs in the inside walls of the palace at Khai Dinh Tomb. The designers used pieces of ceramic and found glass from beer bottles to make illustrations along the interior walls of the palace. The King Khai Dinh had twelve wives and only one son, so the tour guide was supported in his statement the king liked men much more than he liked women.

The Minh Mang tomb was much like the Citadel in terms of its architecture, with a raised, airy pavillion to view the surrounding lakes and gardens. Plants promoting longevity were growing in the garden. The vendors were selling a mixture of brandy and ginseng that allegedly promoted sexual strength for men. King Minh Mang was known for his virility with around 400 concubines and more children than whose names he could remember. No one knows exactly where the king's body is buried on the grounds, since he commanded that his body be buried in secret so that no one who may have wanted to seek revenge against him could steal his body.

Conical hat and incense making

Later in the day on the same tour, we stopped by some small shops where we could see a schoolgirl making different kinds of incense by hand. It's the summer, so the girl is on vacation from the regular school year. Supposedly, she makes 1200 of these incense sticks in one day, which seemed pretty believable since it took her about fifteen seconds to make one stick.

I also saw a woman making the conical straw hat that is a traditional symbol of Vietnam and one that I am fascinated with. Some of these hats have poems written on the inside that you can only see when the sun is shining on the hat. How this effect is achieved is by making a small layer of straw on the inside of the shell of the hat made from wood. After that, the words in the poem are cut out of a newspaper, and then the piece of newspaper is pasted on top of the small layer of straw. Then another larger layer of straw (which will be the full surface area of the hat) is woven to cover the first layer of straw and the newspaper to make the whole finished hat.

These traditional hats aren't popular among young people because these hats are not as easy to carry as ones that you can fold. For the same reason, I can't really buy one to carry along in backpack for the rest of the trip, though I want to.

The Citadel in Hue

Most of the huge Citadel in Hue was destroyed during the American War. The Citadel was built in the 1800s by the Vietnamese Nguyen dynasty of kings to house the royal family and conduct the official business between mandarins and the King. Each person could enter the Citadel by only one way according to that person's profession. The king and the royal family would always enter through the middle entrance of the gate. Civilian officials like mandarins would enter through the right entrance of the gate. The military and soldiers would enter through the gate's left entrance. The Citadel also housed a temple where the people can worship the ten kings who are held in favor by the people enough to have honorary shrines maintained for them. Of the three kings that don't have shrings, two kings were harmful governors and the last king was a puppet king installed by the French before their occupation collapsed in the 1950s.

We also got the chance to visit a traditional Hue house built in the 1890s. A remarkable characteristic of most of the buildings in this city is that the insides of the buildings stay cool even though it is blazing hot outside. There were several fruit trees in the garden of this house, where we picked mulberries from a tree, but most of the ripe, sweet ones had already been picked by previous visitors.

The good, the bad...

and if my brother was reading, he would say that I'm "the ugly." But last night was split into a good part and a bad part. First, the good:

I made it to the restaurant I had chosen to eat at for dinner just before it started pouring buckets again. Also, I managed to stop into a used bookstore that had a large selection of English new and used books, and I was able to trade out the Quiet American for The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. The French-Vietnamese restaurant where I had dinner was a training school for disadvantaged children to turn them into restaurant kitchen staff. Both the food and the service were excellent; I had pork chops with au gratin potatoes and cinammon and apple crumble with vanilla ice cream for dessert. They sat me down at a cozy balcony where the tables were ringed by bamboo stalks, and I could watch the rain pour down as I ate.

Now, to the bad....As for the train ride from Hanoi to Hue, it was rough. There were a lot of people heading down from Hanoi to Vinh (on the way to Hue) and the beach for the weekend, and pretty much all of the trains go south along the same tracks to Ho Chi Minh City. So, because the train was nearly booked up for seats when I went to the train station on Monday, I had to sit in one of the hard seats for this 17-hour trip, which are as bad as they sound. Mass was already aching thirty minutes into the trip, and it was almost impossible to get into a position where I could sleep comfortable because of the vertical alignment and a curve back even further near the top of the seat. Even worse, the coaches weren't air-conditioned, which meant that one had to keep the windows open, which made the temperature almost bearable when the train was moving, but meant that I had to remain vigilant against mosquitoes and biting flies, kind of contrary to the relaxation necessary to fall asleep.

The train was much more comfortable after 90% of the people in our coach cleared out at Vinh. I was able to stretch out over the three seats and fall asleep for a few hours. And the morning was nice until the train heated up again, being able to see lots of rice paddies, the tails of buffalo swishing, and the strut of a rooster. Also, the people that talked to me on the train were really friendly, sharing their snacks and drinks with me and teaching me some Vietnamese words. In the end, I made it to Hue in one piece, and my budget room is really comfortable. Sometimes, it might as well be the flip of a coin.

Halong Bay Day 2

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I hope someone had a hot dog or a cheeseburger for me...

You forget all about the Fourth of July out here, or the regular days of the week for that matter. This day was all about kayaking in the bay, although the strawberry jam at breakfast was nice and thick. After a brief kayaking lesson, we were off paddling around different islands in Halong Bay. Being a nerd, I was pretty excited that the kayaks had actual rudders with which I could easily control the steering. The last time I was in a kayak, I don't remember these kinds of rudders where you could push the left pedal with your foot to veer left and correspondingly with the right foot. It was difficult to match the rhythm of the front paddler with my paddling and remember to control the steering at the same time, but I got adequately good at it by the end of the day.

We paddled through some beautiful coves and laid up on a deserted sandbar. We also saw a lot of poisonous jellyfish in the waters. The tour guides and the people on the boat who had seen jellyfish before said that they were small, but they looked fairly big to me. After a day of kayaking and swimming, we ended up the day in a hotel on Cat Ba Island. I didn't get to see much of the town and the beaches, because I wanted to catch up on email and was exhausted from a day of fierce sunlight and paddling. I'm turning in early tonight to get ready for the various time-consuming forms of transportation that will get in Hue by noon on Friday.

Halong Bay - Day 1

Today felt like a high school field trip for the first part of the day. I got to try my rain cover out on the way to the tour meeting place when it started to pour buckets. It took the rest of the morning for the pants I'd worn to dry out but luckily I was wearing thin clothing, which is something I think I'll do for the rest of the trip.

We endured the three and a half hour bus ride to Halong City from Hanoi, where we boarded our suprisingly comfortable, well-appointed boat. I'm quite pleased with my cabin, and the boat is only lodging six of us tourists, so there is a lot of room to stretch out, and I have a large room to myself.

The scenery in Halong Bay was truly amazing. There are something like 1600 islands that are limestone outcroppings that jut up from the floor of the bay. The faces of these islands are sheer cliffs, and pretty much all of them are uninhabitable, but they are fun to look at. The scenery reminds me of Phang-Nga Bay in southern Thailand, but instead of containing small caves, some of these islands have huge caverns within them.

We visited one of these large caverns. The ceiling looked like upside-down sand dunes, and water dripped at points from the ceiling into freshwater pools, since this is rainwater that seeps through the limestone. Some of the formations that the limestone had eroded into resembled animals, like turtles or bats. One structure looked especially like an erect penis and had been lit up in a red-colored floodlight to heighten this effect.

The rest of the day was occupied with relaxation on the sun deck of the boat, a little swimming, and a lot of eating. The highlight of the meals so far has been the fresh seafood prepared in various ways, like braised whole fish, and whole steamed crabs. Anyway, the sun and the swimming tired me out, and I slept the whole night through without waking up, an irregularity for me.

Cuc

Cuc is a woman who works at the handicrafts store where I stopped my bicycle because there looked like some nice things for sale that I could bring home for Elena or my family. Anyway, she spoke a little English and was curious about background and asked me some questions.

In the course of a twenty-minute conversation, I learned some interesting things about Cuc. Her name is very close to the pronunciation for the English word "cook." First of all, her name comes from a flower that blooms every autumn, but now is apparently grown year-round. It sounds like from her description like she works 60+ hours a week at two different stores owned by the same family. She gets no holiday, no day off from work during the week. She is living with and taking care of her younger sister who is a university student in Hanoi. She lives very far away from the rest of the family, and she only gets to see them once a year during Tet, the Lunar New Year holidays.

The rest of her family lives in a village 200 km north of Hanoi. They are rice famers who grow enough to subsist on their crops. They sell the rest of their crops for a profit that works out to be around $25 a month, which goes a lot longer way in Vietnam. Cuc sends a lot of whatever earnings she has after the expenses of her rent, motorbike payments, petrol, and groceries back home to her family so that they can have basic amenities like a TV and a radio.

If her takeout lunch hadn't arrived, she might have told me even more. I am really enjoying how friendly Vietnamese people are and how willing they are to have genuine conversations with foreigners. I wish for the hundredth time that Elena was here to share this experience with me. It's only been two days, but it seems like a much longer time without her since she's so far away.

The plan for later in the week

Had a ham, cheese, cucumber, and tomato croissant and an ice coffee for a late breakfast. All above the board. I find myself picking up Britishisms like "queue" and etc. It could be because I'm reading Graham Greene, it could be that most of the foreigners here are from former British colonies, and it could be because I've been watching replays of English premier league soccer in my downtime here.

I successfully managed to book a train ticket to Hue, which involved braving the crowds at the Hanoi train station. I managed to get the train that I wanted for Thursday, but they are out of sleeper cars, so it'll be a long ride in the seat instead. I suppose I should be happy to have a seat. I'll have to get my sleep the night before. The train ride will be overnight and will take about 17 hours, so I should get into Hue by the following noon. I have my 2-night Halong Bay tour starting tomorrow. I've liked Hanoi, but I'm definitely ready for some scenery. Not much to do for the rest of the day. I read my book at a bench alongside Hoan Kiem Lake and then visited a Vietnamese traditional house where I snapped some photos.

My fried spring rolls just arrived, and I found a prime spot on the balcony of the restaurant overlooking a busy intersection in the Old Quarter. I'm set to do some eating and people-watching. They accidentally gave me two orders of spring rolls. At first, I was confused, but my hunger won out, and I finished both orders. The waitress said it was too much food for me to eat, but little does she know that, despite my thin frame, I can really polish off plates of food when I'm hungry.

The Temple of Literature and Antony

I visited the Temple of Literature this morning. I woke up with a slight headache thanks to yesterday's activities, but the cobwebs went away after breakfast and the bike ride to the temple. The Temple was another wonderful place in Hanoi. It housed the first national university, founded sometime in the 9th century. The teachings of Confucius played a prominent role in the national education, just as Confucian ideals are an important part of Korean society. The first Vietnamese teacher, Chu Van An, had a shrine in his honor at the very back of the temple. I met a second-year university student whose English name is Antony. His friend, two years younger than him, was about to take the university entrance exam. As in Korea, this sounds like the most important day of a Vietnamese adolescent's life. There's so much pressure on this one exam; it's downright frightening.

Students visit the shrine on the day before the exam to ask the teacher for help, so the area in front of the shrine was crowded with all these older teenagers who were presumably going to take this exam tomorrow.

Antony had a book filled with entries from foreigners whom he had spoken to over the years. I was Foreigner #339, meaning that 338 foreigners had written a small paragraph in his book previously. I wrote a short description of myself, wished him and his friend good luck, and wrote down my email address for him. I took a picture of him holding his book. I think the book is pretty amazing.

Making Friends

I was desperate for something to eat on the bicycle ride back from the museum, so I stopped along West Lake at the first reputable looking restaurant that I saw. When I entered the established, all the waiters had the deer in the headlights look on their faces, but they were friendly just the same, so I sat down and ordered a beer and tried to order some food. The menu wasn't in English of course, so I ended up going to where I could see the cooks cooking, and the cook showed me what he was going to make for me, which ended up being cooked, shredded beef, noodles, shallots, spinach, and lots of garlic served cold. It was really good and perfect after the hot bike ride.

When I was trying to settle the bill, one of the guys from another table where there was a large party going on helped me figure out the price that the waiter was trying to tell me. After I paid, the guy who helped me, Khanh, sat down, and we talked for awhile, since he spoke a little English. He said his girlfriend had been taking English classes for two years at a university in Hanoi, and that was how he was able to practice English. He said that he and his co-workers worked in social services, I believe, getting troubled youth off the streets and rehabilitating them. He was really friendly and invited me over to their table for some more beers and some of the food that they had ordered. They were having a whole fish boiled in a stew with spinach, noodles and lots of other veggies. There were some other people in the group who were really friendly. Khanh's boss really liked to take pictures and took some pictures of the group hanging out. There were also a couple of soldiers who watched over HCM's body inside the tomb I had just visited! They viewed this job as an honor. In general, the Vietnamese people I have met so far are really proud of HCM, because for the first time in their history in a long time, they are truly independent.

It started raining really hard outside, and I wasn't in a hurry to ride my bike around in the deluge, so we stayed at the restaurant for most of the afternoon, talking and snacking on food. When the rain finally began to let up, the group wanted to go for karaoke, so I offered to take them since they wouldn't let me pay for anything at the restaurant, which I felt bad about because I was near the oldest at the table and I was the foreigner. The karaoke place was near some tennis courts that I had passed earlier (incidentally, I saw people playing tennis in this rainy weather!), but we had to go to an ATM first so I could get some more money, which involved me getting on the back of Khanh's motorbike.

I thought I would be more scared being on a motorbike, but it wasn't that different from the bicycle riding along crowded streets that I had done earlier, but at a little faster speed. Khanh bought me a bien mah which was delicious ( a baguette stuffed with sausage and spicy vegetables), and we ate the baguettes as we drove back to the karaoke place. Karaoke involved me listening to a lot of people singing Vietnamese soul, but I did get to sing "Yesterday" and "The Sounds of Silence," two of the small number of English songs that the karaoke place had.

Khanh invited me to stay at his place, but I didn't want to deal with the bike ride in the morning, so I came home. But they were the friendliest people I have met in my travels so far.

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

After visiting the HCM complex, I rode 6 km in light rain to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology. At first, on the way, I thought I was lost, but the bus map was helpful, as was the Vietnamese guy who told me that I was standing across the street from the museum when I almost all of the way there but couldn't actually see the museum. The museum was very informative and had a lot of artifacts and information about the different ways of life for the many Vietnamese tribal peoples as well as modern Vietnamese people. Highlights (or what I can remember without aid of the brochure):

1) The museum extensively showed how arduous the subsidized-food economy was from 1975-1989. Soon after that, regulations loosened, but during the time immediately after liberation, food lines were long as socialist practices were strictly adhered to. But the people who were interviewed for the exhibit still felt that they were generally more fortunate to have to wait a long time for food rather than not having food at all.

2) Pottery is important to the economy of the Muong people of north-central Vietnam. The art of it is dying out as the demand for clay products is replaced by things made from plastic.

3) The Khmer build amazing houses of straw with towering roofs that defy gravity. They had some miniature representations at the museum.

4) The traditional clothing for many of these peoples was long, flowing and featured bright color combinations.

5) The building itself was beautiful. All of the walls were white, and there were many windows to let in sunlight from outside and windows onto the central courtyard and the surrounding gardents.

Ho Chi Minh Mauseoleum Complex

I got up early yesterday morning from noise on the stairwell. This was good in the long run, because I was able to walk around a bit and finally find a place that rented bicycles and leave for the bike ride to where Ho Chi Minh's body is housed and displayed. The plan was going well, until it started raining...but I powered through. I stopped at Lenin Park and took a couple of pictures of the giant Lenin statue in the park. No, I am not turning into a Communist.

When I got to the complex, I ended up on the wrong side of the entrance and had to walk all the way around. The KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs apparently also included the sidewalk that ran through the middle of the grass, so there was no taking a short-cut for me, which the guards strictly enforced with whistles and motions of their hands. I was also motioned to remove my left hand from its pocket when I finally made it to the inside of the tomb, which was after about thirty minutes of waiting in line.

The air was really cold inside, befitting a tomb, I thought. Ho Chi Minh was a handsome man, but it was difficult for me to figure out how tall he was because his body was laid horizontal. Once we exited the tomb, we could visit the palace and house where HCM used to live. He had some really stylish used cars, and we could walk around the house he had built on stilts that overlooked a small pond. Here it really started pouring, so people were in a hurry to get back to the main gate to stay dry.

Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre

After dinner, I went to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. The stage was literally water that was colored green, perhaps to resemble the greenish tinge of water in Hoan Diem Lake or a rice paddy. There was a small Vietnamese orchestra to one side of the stage with musicians who played instruments, sang, and provided voices for the marionettes that skidded and splashed acr0ss the water to the music. The puppets were marionettes that were being manipulated by people behind the screen who were actually waist deep in the water as well. The scenes involved lots of animals and people who I think were farmers. Occasionally the farmers would try to chase after some of the ducks and fish they saw in hopes of catching some food. They also reenacted the legend of the tortoise rising from Hoan Diem Lake and giving a magic sword to the the king to kill his enemies. The scenes were more interesting because of the choreographed dance movements that the puppets would go through as they "bounced along" to the music.

After the performance, I was hungry again, so I stopped for some street food at a pho street stall. The stew I had was excellent, with meatballs, noodles, green onions, and a spicy paste that you could add to the stew at your discretion. One of the guys on the far side of the common table we were sitting added the right amount of paste to my stew and kept trying to show me how to hold my chopsticks correctly. If I could have explained to him that my methods were due to the unorthodox way I have of holding my pen, I would have.

Hanoi's Old Quarter

Spent the afternoon walking around the Old Quarter. The art of dodging oncoming traffic is important if you don't want to get run over, I find out. It is important to walk slowly when you go through any intersection so that oncoming motorcyclists can see you. There are no traffic lights or pedestrian crossings at most intersections. Although dangerous, giving yourself up to the unwritten rules is pretty liberating.

I found my way to Hoan Diem Lake, which is the central landmark of the Old Quarter. In the middle of the lake on an island stands the Ngoc Son Temple. The legend behind this temple is that a powerful tortoise rose out of the water in the lake carrying a sword, which was the power that the people needed to conquer their enemies. A red, wooden bridge leads from the island to the mainland.

After visiting the temple, I wandered through various markets (a street of only shoe stores, a street of colorful lantern stores and kite stores, a street where I heard and saw blacksmiths pounding away at steel to fashion it into something of use). My favorite market was the food market of course. Here, I bought a fried spring roll stuffed with pork and veggies that was delicious.

For dinner, I ate a banana flower salad with shredded beef, cold vermicelli noodles, cilantro, some veggies sliced thinly, and garnished with lots of lime juice. It was a good way to cool off from the muggy weather.

More tomorrow, including Vietnamese Water Puppet Theater and a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mauseoleum.

Airport Ride from Noi Bai Airport

Fly into Hanoi over wooded mountains shrouded in clouds, rice paddies, and villages of houses that the rice paddies are centered around. I forego the taxi hawkers for a local bus that goes down a one-lane-road in both directions. The bus is really quiet even though it's full of people. It is also air-conditioned, which is nice. The weather is humid but doesn't really feel that different or worse than the humidity in Seoul.

There are a lot of people riding bicycles along the street wearing straw conical hats. There is a lot of water near the road in the form of ponds and rivers. This area seems really green and fertile. The water looks clean.

Soon, businesses start to become visible on both sides of the road. They look like really, big multi-storey houses. There is also a lot of space at least until I get into Hanoi city, which is refreshing after the urban sprawl of Seoul. Lots of motorcycles and lots of honking that other riders don't really seem to be responsive to. Soon, we enter Hanoi, and I am dropped off near the train station. I wasn't sure I had boarded the right bus, but apparently I did.

Engagement photos

Elena at the table of the restaurant where I proposed to her...

I was checking my camera for pictures that I had taken so that I could have a clean memory card for my trip to Vietnam when I leave on Saturday. I was surprised and delighted to find some photos that Elena and I took on the night we got engaged (March 24, 2007). Here's a link to my Flicker page for some more pictures of that night.

As Elena mentioned in the email she sent, we went to dinner at the resolving restaurant at the top of Namsan Tower, which is a tower on a mountain that is pretty much in the center of Seoul and so one can get outstanding views on clear nights. She already related the story of our engagement, which if you don't remember, I have included below:

Hello,
I just wanted to respond to Ajay's announcement to say that he's being very modest. It wasn't just a simple proposal in a revolving restaurant. Although I knew what was coming (or maybe because I knew what was coming), Ajay managed to plan such a special evening that I felt like I was on a first date and acted accordingly. I told stupid stories, played with the flowers on the table, said every small and insignificant thing that came to mind (including a summary of a scene from Sex and the City) and went to the bathroom two times to stare at myself in the mirror to make sure I looked okay. After returning from the bathroom the second time I pulled my chair into the table so hard that I almost disrupted everything. The waiter gave a little jump and Ajay excused himself to go to the bathroom. I wondered for a short moment if he would come back.

After putting me through a difficult hour or so, he finally sat beside me after returning from the bathroom and asked me to close my eyes.

I asked, "Why?" (dumb thing number 3,456 said by me that evening).

"Just close your eyes."

I closed them and started crying. He put a box in my hand. I opened my eyes.

He said, "Will you marry me?"

I made some sobbing and choking noises and hugged him. I think I said, "yes" eventually.

He said, "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."

When I opened the box I said, "It's perfect. It's sparkly." (number 3,457) We both laughed about that one.

Most people would think that the person proposing would be nervous, but no! Ajay was at his smoothest and most confident. He also looked very handsome that evening. I'm a very lucky woman.

I hope to see you all very soon,
Elena

The Strange Saga of Nabi

Nabi and I in March...

So, earlier this year Elena decided to take in a co-worker's cat because cats aren't allowed in the university housing where her co-worker is living. The cat's name is Nabi, which is Korean for "butterfly." Nabi is probably the smallest cat I've been around, and a couple of times I very nearly stepped on her because she had a habit of running in between mine or Elena's legs as we were walking, especially if she was at the top of the stairs waiting to be let into the apartment after having been let out. She is quite a feisty cat, as evidenced by the growls we sometimes heard when she got in arguments with the other cats in the complex or the strays in the neighborhood that sometimes hung around the complex. We once found her guarding a bloody, dead bird at the landing of the basement stairs. We weren't sure if she had killed the bird herself, but she sure had enough blood on her fur to make it seem like she had. We waited most of the day so that she could clean herself up before coming back inside. She is quite a gentle resident of the apartment and quite craving of attention, as you can see in the photo above.

The strange part of this story happened the day on Easter Sunday when Nabi was let out and didn't come home that night or the next night. Finally, I recommended that Elena ask Harvey, who has a couple of cats of his own and lives in the apartment complex's other building, whether he had seen Nabi around. He told her that he had been meaning for some time to round up the strays that hung around the apartment buildings and drive them up to the mountainside so that they would be in a place where they could find food yet no longer bother the residents of the apartment buildings with their howling and random pissings on doors and hallways. He finally carried out his intention on the Monday after Easter, and, when Elena described Nabi's orange and black appearance to him, he realized that he had mistakenly included Nabi in his roundup of the strays, not knowing that Nabi was not a stray but a cat that Elena was taking care of. Understandably, he was quite broken up about taking Nabi away from Elena and putting the cat in some unfamiliar place, even though we both insisted that it was a mistake that anyone could have made.

Anyway, we have been up the mountainside at least 20 times since Harvey accidentally released her up there. Harvey made notices in Korean with pictures of Nabi and our phone numbers on the paper, and we posted them all over the neighborhood near where Nabi was released. A couple of people have said that they have seen her, but Elena and I think that they have just seen a cat that is similar to Nabi in appearance but not really the same cat. We haven't caught sight of her since Easter among the many other cats that hang out by the river at dusk. We hope that she's doing okay, and we still have her litter box, the pot of catnip, and the scratching post if she comes back.

Casey must be happy...

...because the Cleveland Cavaliers are one win away from the NBA Finals.

I managed to catch the end of the Cavs-Pistons Game 5 starting from about the 3rd Quarter, and boy am I glad that the game didn't go on to 3OT, otherwise I would have missed the end of the game because of class.

What I saw was greatness. It was really satisfying for me to watch LeBron destroy the Pistons single-handedly after taking so much flak for difficult 4th quarters in Games 1 and 2 of the series. Maybe people should have just shut up and cut him some slack, since he's only 22 years old. Well...those critics are probably mighty quiet now.

I'm not a LeBron fan by any means, but this was playoff greatness that only comes along once every ten years. The last time I can remember something like this was when Michael Jordan single-handedly kept the heavily underdog Bulls in it against the championship Celtics team of 1986. Jordan scored 63 points and was unstoppable, sending that game against the Celtics into overtime before the superior Celtics finally ended up winning the game.

The difference between that game and this one is that the superior team didn't win, but the superior player did. The teams with the superstar performers are usually the solid pick in the NBA to advance to the next round, and this Cavs-Pistons series is a strong bet to live up to that pattern as well. Even if the Pistons steal Game 6, is anyone going to count out another LeBron performance like the one we saw Game 5? I didn't think so.

ESPN.com - NBA - Watching LeBron go on and on

28 Days Later

What with the coming end of the world when oil runs out and our blood boils inside our skins from global warming, whichever comes first, I've gotten into watching post-apocalyptic movies as a way of researching for the inevitable time when I can put to good use the wisdom that is imparted from those movies.

Since there are a bunch of mediocre sequels for movies out this summer, I thought I would personally revisit some of the better originals, especially 28 Days Later, the original for 28 Weeks Later. I remembered the original as a dark, at times completely horrifying movie that lost its fizzle at the end for me. But, when I watched it again last night, I was amazed at how much I had forgotten about what actually happens in the movie. I guess it's been five years and some missing brain cells since I saw the original in the theater.

The shots of a deserted London that occur in the beginning of the movie are fantastic, as powerful as they were when I first saw the movie. But, as I watched the movie again, I saw it as less of a horror movie and more of an action thriller that just has the infected zombie context of a horror movie. A lot of the gruesome material is left off the screen and only implied to, which is an effective way of making the violence all the more disturbing. Perhaps the most disturbing parts of the movie for me were the recollections from the various characters over what happened in London the first few days after the rage virus broke out, none of which the audience actually gets to see.

There are also a myriad of eerie shots throughout the movie that speak to either the overarching madness of the human race within the movie (a thirty-foot-tall fort of shopping carts that has replaced the landing for an apartment tower stairwell) or a return to the times before humans ever existed (a family of horses that have gone from stabled to wild). All in all, it was a lovely, although very dark, film the second time around, and the ending is actually more uplifting that what you would expect from a regular horror film.

Lotus Lantern Festival

This post is heavy on the pictures. We managed to get better spots for the Lotus Lantern Festival a couple of weeks ago. There seemed to be less people than when we went to the festival a year ago, and Elena's camera is better about taking pictures than mine was last year. So, here are some images from the event, which is held in honor of the Buddha's Birthday, which this year was on May 24.

After the festival....

During the festival...the peacock was definitely a highlight.

The lanterns at Jogyesa Temple in downtown Seoul. At night, all the lanterns are lit to create a beautiful nighttime ceiling.

Walk Through Samcheong-Dong

I've had a few days off from work because of some university festival going on. All I know is that afternoon classes are canceled, which means I've had Wednesday, Thursday, and today off, and that the festival includes job fairs and musical performances. Anyway, this break is coming at the right time for me, with only a few weeks left in the semester and both me and the students getting tired.

Anyway, last weekend Elena and I were able to walk around Insadong and Samcheong-dong. Elena snapped some pictures of Jogyesa, the Buddhist temple near Insadong, and some of the lantern decorations hung up for Buddha's Birthday, which is a holiday next week. The Lotus Lantern Festival is a Korean tradition where there is a parade of brightly colored and lit lanterns that are marched by many people along the street during the course of a whole evening. We got a kick out of the monk climbing up the tree outside the temple here.


Also, we got a chance to walk through a neighborhood we hadn't seen before: Samcheong-Dong. Up past where the trendy restaurants and galleries thin out near the Seoul's largest palace Gyeongbokgung, there were a bunch of houses with traditional architecture, and a nice, peaceful quiet walk. I relied on Elena's photographic skills to capture some of the images that we saw:


To see all the photos, follow this link.

Eastern Market Blues

I didn't get a chance to write about this until today, but it's something that I had been thinking about off and on all week. I was really shocked to hear about the inside of the Eastern Market in Washington, DC, being destroyed in a fire earlier this week.

Actually, I don't remember too much about the building's historic exterior. My connection with the Eastern Market comes from my time in DC during the summer of 1999. At the time, I was doing a mostly unpaid internship with a magazine and then a small newspaper in Virginia. Being 20 years old, I didn't know how to do basic things like prepare food and cook for myself, other than using my overly -used Foreman grill or working from a recipe where I had all the exact ingredients. Cooking was more like a safe chemistry experiment for me rather than anything intuitive.

The Eastern Market was the one refuge in the neighborhood of the eastern side of Capitol Hill, of which there were some rougher parts. I remember one of the bitchers in the Market had the most delicious cold cuts, and I went there so often, that not only did I gain about ten pounds, but I remember a night of serious heartburn when I overdid it on some of the spicier salami. Eastern Market saved me with its more ready-to-eat food. I wish I could be back there now that I actually know how to cook and actually like eating vegetables and fruits.

I also remember how hot and humid it was in that summer of 1999, and how stepping into the cool and expansive Market made me forget about how hot it was, even if I couldn't find a use for most of the things inside. I hope Eastern Market comes back soon and better than before.

Blaze Guts Historic Eastern Market (washingtonpost.com)

Exercise in Small Talk

It was the oddest sight to see another man of South Asian heritage on the small bus that I take from Elena's neighborhood to the subway. Usually, only Koreans, and mostly older Koreans or teenagers, are on this bus in the morning. The man immediately said hello to me when I boarded the bus, and, a little caught off-guard, I said hello back but sat about two seats back from the guy. I'm never quite sure how to react to other foreigners when I see them around in Seoul. On the one hand, there aren't that many foreigners around in certain neighborhoods, so I want to be friendly. On the other hand, living in a city for awhile like New York or Oakland, I learned that it was sometimes better to avoid conversations with other people, because you would never know what trouble it might invite.



But the man seemed nice enough, and we exchanged business cards. He works for a textile company not too far from the university where I teach. He is originally from Pakistan, but he has been living in Korea for the past five years. I tried feebly to make conversation, asking questions like where are you from? what do you think of Korea? while, in turn, he asked me what part of the US I was from and how long did I think I would live in Korea. He commented that the Korean textile business is not good, and I agreed, since that probably made sense, since Chinese labor is cheaper (read: child labor) and their capacity for production makes it difficult for Koreans to compete with. I mentioned that a lot of Korean kimchi is actually made in China.



The conversation took a stranger turn, when, somehow, in the middle of this conversation, he told me that he was on the way to meet his girlfriend at the doctor's office. He seriously informed me that facial hair was a problem for his girlfriend, gesturing toward his chin, and that he knew a doctor that could remove some of this unsightly hair for his girlfriend. As a man of South Asian descent, he must have assumed that I had some personal experience with unsightly facial hair, which I do, plucking the area between my eyebrows like crazy to create the illusion of having two distinct brows. Still, I wondered why he had seen the need to share this private information with me, or how we had even got on the subject. He then asserted that spicy foods like kimchi can make your hair grow quickly, which is something I have heard before, but I'm not sure whether it's an urban legend that I believe. I nodded my agreement, probably unconvincingly. I'm sure that plenty of people can eat spicy food and not worry about hair appearing in places they don't want.



Soon the ten-minute bus ride was at an end, and I transferred to the subway, bidding goodbye to the man, who seemed altogether friendly, although he definitely has a unique way of making conversation.

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Rockets-Jazz Game 4

What a debacle, at least if you're a Rockets fan. Two things I learned watching Game 4:



a) Rafer Alston cannot guard Deron Williams. The Rockets need to trap Williams on the pick and roll to prevent him from getting into the paint at will. Putting McGrady or Battier on Williams could be an option too, and have Alston guard Fisher as well.



b) The Rockets have been outworked for the ball in almost every quarter of this series, except for the third and fourth quarters of those games in Houston. The third quarter has been the quarter where each team has made the deciding runs that won the four games.



So, what's next? Three games to decide the winner of the series, with the next one in Houston. I only hope the Rockets come out with more energy in front of their home crowd; they seemed intimidated and listless on the road.

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Book Review: American Splendor

Sidenote: The first time Elena and I went out together (as friends) was to see the film version of this book that was released in theaters three and a half years ago.



I tried to space out reading this book as much as I could, because I don't think the comic strips are meant to be read consecutively. The comics, mostly autobiographical in nature, document Harvey Pekar's (or his alter-ego Herschel's) life as a government clerk and a hospital worker who has deeper, creative desires which are sometimes overwhelmed by the drudgery of his workaday life. I think anyone who has worked at a repetitive job (read: paralegal) would empathize with some of Harvey's problems, and, throughout the book American Splendor: The Life And Times of Harvey Pekar, the author makes it his mission to make the thoughts of his working-class character(s) relatable and sympathetic. Some of these thoughts were almost revelatory, especially Harvey's philosophical relationship to the great Russian authors who realized that the space of time occupied by a human life is infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the universe. However, over the course of several hundred pages, the themes that Harvey's thoughts return to grow overly familiar and repetitive over the course of the book. This is a book that is definitely not meant to be read in one sitting, or even ten sittings. Space it out as much as you can if you choose to read it.



I was taken in more by the ultra-realist style of the artwork, which does nothing to beautify or hide the flaws of the human characters in Pekar's stories. The artwork emphasizes how frail the human condition is, which connects to the central problem that haunts Harvey's character throughout these strips. The clever nature of the stories is how some of them are cut off after only a couple of pages, as soon as he has accomplished enough to get his point across. One of the stories that sticks with me is Harvey on the bus listening to one driver training another driver along a bus route. The pictures show different areas of Cleveland, where most of these stories take place, and the older bus driver has cutting things to say about each place. These statements gradually reveal the bus driver's prejudices, but there's a sense that all of us are capable of similar misconceptions about things we don't really understand but we think we do. At the end of the story, Harvey is let off at his stop and crosses the street absentmindedly, getting stuck in the median to avoid oncoming traffic. Harvey is caught in an error of his own, and, despite his strong ego, there is a constant motif in his best work of that ego being constantly derided by his insecurities and his mistakes. Above all else, Pekar's writing highlights the vulnerabilities in all of us.



American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, by Harvey Pekar. Ballantine Books, New York.

:From Off the Streets of Cleveland… Comes Harvey Pekar's Official Blog

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