Bang!kok

As noted, we're in Laos for the New Year, and so were nowhere near the Bangkok explosions. We appreciate everyone's concern. When this isn't so soon, I will make some jokes about the Khao San Road bomb.

Also Laos.

Apologies for the lack of updates. I'm currently in Laos and it's a bit difficult to find good internet access--I have a bunch of entries backlogged for when I get back to Thailand (tomorrow). Also, happy new year--I'm spending New Year's in Vientiane. Seems like a good idea.

I don't want a pickle

One skill I've picked up that I won't get to use much in New York is my moto passenger ability. Over the past few months, I've learned to sit on a motorcycle so that three people and bags can fit, to give basic directions in Khmer ("turn left", "stop", "want to die" (the last one means "slow down")), and how much to pay for various rides at various times of day. Motos are infinitely more convenient than taxis or the subway, and it's something I'll miss when I'm back in New York. Maybe I'll get a Vespa?

It's a fair cop.

Cambodia recently passed some new laws that raise punishments for traffic offenses and for attempting to bribe a traffic cop. No one expects these to make any difference. As long as police are paid $20/month, they're going to supplement their income with bribes--how else can they survive? Generally here, when you're pulled over, how much you have to pay depends on how much time you're willing to stand around, smile, and smoke cigarettes with the police. If you can spare half an hour or so and have enough cigarettes to go around, you'll probably pay a few dollars or less. If you're in a hurry, it might be a lot more.

I was reading Lonely Planet: USA the other day, and in its discussion on legal issues, it warned visitors that in the United States, if you are stopped by a cop and attempt to "pay the fine" on the spot, you will probably be arrested.

I think a very good use of aid money would be to augment civil servant salaries. I have no idea how many police officers Cambodia has. The states of the U.S. have between fifteen and thirty-nine officers per ten thousand people. Let's say Cambodia has twenty, so about twenty thousand officers. For twenty-four million dollars per year, some donor could quintuple their salaries. Earning $1200/year instead of $240 would transform police officers overnight from near-destitute to middle class. An officer who earns $1200/year values his job a lot more than one who earns $240/year, and so is much more concerned with following the rules (lest he lose his high-paying job). He's also harder to bribe because he values each additional dollar less. At $240/year, a $1 bribe might mean the officer could feed his family that night--it's hard to say no to that. At $1200/year, it means much less.

To get to the other side.

Pictured here are a couple of monks crossing the road. There are a lot of monks in Cambodia; most men spend at least a few months as a monk at some point during their lives, usually in their teens. Monks aren't supposed to have any contact with women, eat after noon, or have any possessions except for a begging bowl and some saffron robes. There are a few things I don't understand about the system; as far as I can tell, monks spend the morning walking around looking for donations of food. I think this involves walking up to a restaurant and standing outside quietly until you're noticed--if the staff is in a charitable mood, they will bring out some food, otherwise the monk moves on. Every now and then you see a monk doing something incongruous like talking on a cellular phone or riding a motorcycle.

"Bah, humbug", only without the Malthusian elements.

I live next door to a branch of the American School. I guess they teach classes in English or something like that. It seems like it has very long hours--when I come home from work at 5:30pm or so, the kids are still there, and sometimes still when I get back from dinner.

Yesterday was Christmas Day. There wasn't much observation of the holiday here in Cambodia, given that the country is predominantly Theravada Buddhist, except some restaurants and hotels that cater to westerners (my apartment complex has a Christmas tree). But yesterday was different. Apparently the American School decided to have some sort of all-day Christmas celebration and wanted to share it with the neighborhood, and so I was awakened at 7am by the sound of overloaded amplifiers blaring out various horrible Christmas songs. I walked by at mid-day to find that they had dressed all the children in elf costumes and had them standing on stage waving pom-poms while the music played. Two western guys, I assume teacher/missionaries, were standing on the side looking proud. The courtyard was filled with slightly bewildered parents, and was surrounded by confused moto drivers peeking through the fence. I guess something similar happened at every American School in the city, because for the rest of the day I was spotting little kids in Santa hats. Incidentally, in this country where the temperature never drops below 65 degrees, how many people know what a "white Christmas" is?

Christmas here seems to be a lot like Chinese New Year in the United States--certain minority ethnic groups celebrate it, anyone who deals with those ethnic groups is aware of it, and everyone else ignores it or uses it as an excuse to have a party or a sale. I have no idea what was going on in this picture, except that I think Khmer Claus was trying to get people to participate in some sort of raffle or something.

It grows in bunches / I've got my hunches

I have less than forty-eight hours remaining in Phnom Penh, and so I'm trying to do all the things I'll miss back home while I still can. As you can probably guess, most of that involves eating. In the past two days I've had four meals from Maharajah, the greatest Indian restaurant on the planet (street 278). I'm considering asking them if I can watch them cook so I can learn their secrets. Or trying to convince them to move to New York. Either one, really.

I also went back to my two favorite Chinese restaurants, Hai Yi, a very upscale place with tanks of live sea creatures outside and tasty food inside, and Peking Canteen, a tiny, slightly dirty restaurant near the Central Market that just happens to have amazing Chinese food.

Finally, I've been having more street food. Pictured are these bananas that I've been curious about for months; on any street in the city, there will be an old woman sitting on the curb slowly peeling little bananas, basting them in this thick white sauce, and then cooking them on a grill. Finally I broke down and bought a stick (1000 riel, twenty-five cents). They were not what I was expecting at all--I thought I was getting grilled banana with some oil on it, but the sauce had dried and formed a thick, chewy skin. The banana was sweet, but the outside was very salty--surprising, but very tasty.

Spins a web, sweet surprise / Catches thieves just like flies

Here are four things I recently learned about tarantulas:

• The term "tarantula" covers many species of spider. When two tarantulas are considering mating, they must first use a series of signals to establish that they are of the same species.


• Tarantulas are not especially poisonous. There is no record of anyone ever dying from a tarantula bite.


• The first line of defense for many tarantulas is to flick sharp hairs at the attacker. These don't generally hurt people (unless inhaled).


• Tarantula tastes like shrimp.

Fried tarantula is one of those things that everyone who comes here sooner or later seeks out. Travel magazines and blogs are filled with stories and photos of giant piles of fried spider and people eating same. It seems a little artificial to me, but I wasn't going to pass up a chance to try it.

Tarantula is a delicacy of Skun, a town about an hour or so from Phnom Penh. I didn't feel like spending an hour on a moto to get there, so I just went to a local restaurant that caters to tourists and oredered up a plate of them. They're more or less exactly what you'd expect--black spiders, about two inches long, covered in fine hairs and stir-fried (heat destroys their venom). The outsides are crispy, but the inside is soft white meat. It's dipped in a lime, garlic, and pepper sauce.

It's unclear how people began eating spiders. The story I heard was that people have been eating them for more than a century, but it became much more popular during the Khmer Rouge, when more than a million people died of starvation. But they still do it today, and I can see why--spider isn't bad at all.

I didn't eat the abdomen--apparently it's filled with organs and sometimes eggs. Some consider it a delicacy, but I don't usually like organ meat and I don't think spider organ meat will be the exception.

Shoe, fly, don't bother me

I had some shoes made. There's a block on Street 143 that has three shoemakers, and on good recommendations we used the middle one, Sy Phal. It was interesting--they had me stand on graph paper and traced my foot, then I picked a style and a type of leather. Came back a week later and there they were. I had them tightened a bit while I waited, and now I have a great pair of shoes. The fit is good (not perfect, but better than I can get in a shoe store), I really like the design, and they're the cheapest pair of shoes I've ever owned. One thing about Cambodia is that you can get spoiled pretty quickly--I don't think I can afford custom shoes in Manhattan.

Kuala Lumpur Day Three: The Journey Home

This is the last day of Arie's trip to Kuala Lumpur. You may want to start at the beginning.

Thursday, time to head back to Phnom Penh. We checked out of our hotel (15% discount for using a Mastercard, sweet) and took a taxi to KL Sentral, the central bus station. We grabbed an AirAsia bus to the airport, got through security, and made it to the check-in counter exactly two hours before departure--precisely when check-in is supposed to start.

But it didn't start. We waited amidst the gathering crowd until we got bored enough that I asked an AirAsia employee when we could check in. He told us that our flight had been delayed four hours. I asked why, and he said it was because of flight delays. Helpful. AirAsia decided not to update the giant electronic board, and so we sat for a little while longer looking at the thing flashing "Check-In Underway" before pushing our way through the crowd to the airport coffee shop.

We sat at the coffee shop for a couple hours listening to their rather amazing music, some sort of compilation CD of crappy "lite-rock" covers of 1980s power ballads (I think the café employees enjoyed our lip synching to Eternal Flame). Periodically we'd check the board; eventually, instead of announcing that the flight was delayed, they just gave it a new number and time. Finally, almost sundown, it was time to check in. (I should add at this point that we spent all our money on chocolate and tea. This will be significant later.)

We got our boarding passes and made it into the departure area, where there was an ATM but no money changer, and we certainly didn't want any more Malaysian ringgit. We sat for another hour; eventually, half an hour beyond when we were supposed to take off, I asked someone about the delay. The response: We had to wait for the plane, which was delayed by "technical difficulties", and they had no idea when it would arrive. Confidence-inspiring. It was about then that I really started to dislike AirAsia. I can deal with delays, but I refuse to believe that they didn't know where their plane was, and I don't think it's asking too much for an airline to keep its customers informed--especially five hours into a delay.

Incidentally, the immigration officer wished me a merry Christmas. It surprised me the extent to which there's celebration of Christmas in Malaysia, but I guess it shouldn't--not only are 10% of Malaysians Christians, but a lot of western tourists pass through Kuala Lumpur. It should be noted that the Malaysian constitution states that you cannot be an ethnic Malay unless you are Muslim. I was not aware that this is how ethnicity works.

We eventually took off, our flight was uneventful, and we landed in Phnom Penh airport. Cambodia requires Americans to purchase visas (tourist visa $20), we were entirely out of cash, and all the ATMs were beyond the immigration desk. No problem, assured the police, we could use a credit card. They took our passports, stuck in visas (on the Amendments page, my passport is full), and asked for our money. I handed them a credit card. They said no, cash only. I went to the officer who had said it was OK, but this time he said no, credit cards could only be used outside. Apparently earlier he was trying to tell me that the nation of Cambodia does generally have places in which you can use credit cards. I explained that I had no money. He explained that he didn't care. I pointed out that my credit card was a Visa, and so surely I should be able to use it to buy a visa. This did not go over well.

Finally I found the guy in charge, and he said that once everyone else on the plane was processed, he'd have someone escort me to an ATM, and sure enough, that's what happened. Not exactly my most fun adventure, but now at least I know what happens when you arrive somewhere without enough money to pay for a visa. (Next time, maybe I'll find out what happens if you don't have any money in your account. Probably prison.)

I had forgotten what it's like to be surrounded by poverty. Viet Nam, Thailand, and Malaysia aren't the wealthiest nations in the world, but the gulf between Cambodia and its neighbors is tremendous. I don't have a lot of positive things to say about returning to Phnom Penh after touring the region. This is a great city to visit, but I won't be too sad to return to New York.

Kuala Lumpur Day Two: Many High Places

This is day two of Arie's trip to Kuala Lumpur. You may want to start at the beginning.

Malaysia has an unusual structure. It's a federation of thirteen states, nine of which are governed by sultans. Under the Malaysian constitution, the sultans are absolutely immune from all laws (members of royal families have killed people and used their immunity to escape prosecution). The modern history of Malaysia is largely the history of colonialism; conquered first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British, Malaysia has been shaped by various empires and colonial policies. Singapore was part of Malaysia until 1965, when it exited the nation because of racial and social tensions.

Race has always been a problem in Malaysia. Malaysian business has long been dominated by ethnic Chinese and Indian families. After race riots in 1969, the government decided that racial harmony would not be achieved as long as ethnic Malays ("bumiputras", "princes of the land"), who make up 60% of the country, were significantly poorer than the rest of the country. They passed a law that required at least 30% of every public Malaysian business to be owned by bumiputras within twenty years. Millions of ethnic Malays invested in government-managed portfolios that purchased large chunks of public companies, and over the past few decades, a sizable bumiputra middle class has emerged. Malaysian politics since then has consisted of maintaining a delicate balance between preference for bumiputras and equality.

There was no racial harmony in the Pondok Lodge that morning--we were awoken by loud Asian teenagers. Conveniently, I had just received notice that I had a job waiting for me in New York--time to celebrate. A quick glance through Lonely Planet revealed that we were only a ten minute walk from the Hotel Equatorial, a luxury hotel in the middle of the city. We grabbed our luggage and trekked over.

The Hotel Equatorial is more or less the exact opposite of the Pondok Lodge. We checked into a room on the 13th floor (a non-smoking floor with a no durian rule (really)). Out our window we could see much of the downtown, and the building directly across from us featured a perfect reflection of the Petronas Towers.

Oil is the largest industry of Malaysia, and Petronas is Malaysia's national oil company. Money from the west flows in pretty freely, and so they have a lot of cash to throw around. A few years back, they decided to build the world's tallest building--two of them. The Petronas Twin Towers may have been the tallest building in the world when completed. They were designed by César Pelli to incorporate motifs common in Islamic art. Each tower was built by a different construction company--they had a race (tower two won). Importing steel into Malaysia is very expensive, so they were built with more concrete than usual--less efficient and heavier, and so the building sits on the world's deepest foundation. There's some controversy over whether they were ever the tallest building in the world. The Sears Tower has a higher roof and higher occupied floors, but the Petronas Towers have a taller spire. The Petronas oil company occupies tower one, and rents tower two to various companies (including IBM, Al Jazeera, and Microsoft).

The only part of the Towers open to tourists (besides the mall at the bottom) is the skybridge, which connects the towers on the 41st floor. It's only 170 meters off the ground (the building is 452 meters). They distribute eight hundred tickets each morning, first-come first-serve, and the tickets tell you when to come back. We went to the desk and were just in time to receive the very last tickets of the day, and were told to come back at 4:45pm.

We walked around the Petronas Towers a bit, and then took a taxi to Little India. Lonely Planet made it sound like a little restaurant-filled district straight out of Bombay, but it's actually a few streets of fabric stores and hotels. There was a little sidewalk stand, but nowhere we wanted to eat. We decided to go have lunch at the KL Tower.

Walking to the KL Tower was a bit more of a challenge than we had anticipated. For unclear reasons, there is a forest City Forest, in the center of Kuala Lumpur. I guess they heard about Central Park and wanted to one-up us. Anyway, getting to the tower involved a rather steep trail through the forest, complete with wooden bridges and bird viewing platforms. We later learned there was a shuttle bus.

The Menara Kuala Lumpur, or KL Tower, is one of the tallest towers in the world. Like the Petronas Towers, it incorporates motifs from Islamic art. I think "menara" is etymologically related to "minaret", the towers that surround mosques. There's a revolving restaurant at the top that allegedly has a great view, but its menu was uninteresting--all overpriced western food. We opted instead for an Indian restaurant set into the bottom of the tower--much better. After lunch, we walked back through the forest to our hotel.

It was about time for our Petronas Tower visit, so we hiked over there. They first threatened us with a video about the Tower's construction, but mercifully allowed us to skip it and get into the elevator. We were allowed ten minutes to walk along the skybridge and take photographs. Being on the skybridge afforded a good view of the surrounding area, but it's not especially high. The Towers might be one of the tallest structures in the world, but the bridge is only about a third of the way up.

After the skybridge, we walked around the mall at the base of the Towers and had a snack at the food court. I stopped into a toy store briefly and found that every toy in the place was science-themed. No wonder this part of the world is kicking our ass in science education. The mall also featured a "Premier Paid Toilet" which cost 2 ringgit (60 cents) to visit. Signs around the premier toilet explained that there were free toilets around the corner. It didn't occur to me to do so at the time, but now I regret not going in to see what was so premier about it.

It was getting dark and we were disappointed with the skybridge view, so we took a taxi to the KL Tower, which has an observation platform at 276 meters (almost twice as high as the Petronas Towers view). Unlike the Petronas Towers, there's an admission fee, and so you don't have to line up early in the morning and it's not overcrowded. Yay capitalism. The elevator up to the platform was rather fast, covering the distance in under a minute, and instead of a floor display it had an altitude display.

It was a much more impressive view of the city (and, ironically, a great view of the Petronas Towers). Kuala Lumpur is interesting to see from up high because unlike Manhattan, there are no constraints on its expansion, and so it's quite spread out. There are some very tall buildings, but they're not nearly as concentrated as they are in cities like New York or Hong Kong.

We had dinner at our hotel; one of its restaurants had a massive buffet of various types of Malaysian food and fresh grilled seafood. Can't really ask for more.

Continue to my last day in Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur Day One Part Two: As I Malay Me Down

This is the second entry about my trip to Kuala Lumpur. Click here to read about my trip from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur.

I should mention at the outset that I had some concerns about visiting Malaysia. Like almost all Muslim countries, Malaysia does not permit entry to citizens of countries that it has not recognized, and the only country it has not recognized is Israel. I come from an Israeli family, and I had qualms about visiting somewhere that wouldn't welcome my grandmother. But I decided to go for a number of reasons. Primarily, boycotting Malaysia wasn't going to hurt Malaysia, it was going to hurt me. It also seemed unfair to penalize Malaysians because of the political decisions of their government--that would seem fairly hypocritical, given the core issue. Finally, I had never visited a Muslim country, Malaysia is one of the most moderate in the Islamic world, and I wasn't going to avoid visiting an entire third of the planet.

I think I made the right decision. Malaysians are the friendliest people to travelers that I've encountered in Southeast Asia. From the moment our flight landed, everyone was friendly and accommodating. I didn't feel like I was viewed as a walking ATM (like I did in Viet Nam) or a carrier of contagious disease (Khao San Road, Thailand). Admittedly, they didn't know I was Jewish--unlike in the west, where anyone with my name and features is immediately identified as a Jew, here there's no awareness whatsoever (I got a lot of "merry Christmas"es). But they did know I'm American. This isn't exactly a time of harmonious relations between America and the Muslim world, but you wouldn't know it from the way Americans are treated in Malaysia.

Anyway, so our flight landed in Kuala Lumpur's airport. We were flying AirAsia, a budget carrier, and so we had to land at the LCCT ("Low Cost Carrier Terminal"), which is fairly ghetto. It's basically a large warehouse with some fences and a coffee shop. Also, it's not really a terminal, it's more like a separate airport--it's a twenty-five minute (non-free) bus ride to the main terminal. Lonely Planet said there was a fast, new, and cheap train from the airport into the city, but it turned out it was too good for the likes of the LCCT, so we took a bus.

Kuala Lumpur's airport is about fifty miles from the city, so it was a long bus ride. We finally arrived at KL Sentral, the bus terminal, where AirAsia put us on a van to take us to our hotel. We had made reservations at a place, Pondok Lodge, and were armed with a street address. The van had some trouble finding it because instead of a neon sign or a big hotel, it was a small doorway with a handwritten sign saying "Pondok Lodge, third floor". Trouble.

I lugged our bags up to what turned out to be a perfect model of a college dormitory. I guess for $15/night we shouldn't have expected much more. The "Lodge" was two floors of a large building that had been divided into "rooms" with drywall. We were given a key that unlocked the padlocked door to our cubicle. We slid the door and were pleasantly surprised to find a perfectly serviceable room, clean with powerful A/C. Shared bathroom, but that's not a big deal. We padlocked our room and went out to find dinner.

Dinner was easy to find. Malaysia's pre-colonial history is the history of the interaction of Indian and Chinese powers, and they've left a culinary impression on the country. We had some excellent northern Indian food.

We got back to the Lodge and discovered that it now stank of durian and marijuana. Durian, or "stinkfruit", is a clever way to mask the smell of weed, and while the third floor of the Pondok Lodge was probably not crawling with NARCs, I don't blame them for being overcautious--Malaysia has the death penalty for possession of even small amounts of narcotics. We decided to stay the hell away from everyone and spend the night locked in our room.

We returned to our dormy but charming "room" to discover its fatal flaw: thin walls and loud Asian teenagers. Decorously divided by gender, the kids had rooms on either side of ours--girls on the left, boys on the right. As it got later and we got more and more tired, they got louder. Finally, I got up and banged on the walls very, very hard, and they immediately shut up. I didn't expect it to work on the boys (in the U.S., banging on the wall of a bunch of teenage boys would immediately lead to a fistfight), but it did.

Little was I to realize that they would soon have their revenge. Apparently Asian teenagers don't need a lot of sleep, because by 6am, the Lodge was once again filled with the sounds of a couple dozen Asian teenagers laughing and throwing stuff.

Continue to day two, where I go up various towers and eat more food.

Kuala Lumpur Day One: Arrival

This is day one of my trip to Malaysia, which came just on the heels of my trip to Viet Nam.

Tuesday, time to pull a John McCain (a.k.a., getting the hell out of 'Nam). Taxi to the airport to fly to Bangkok for a connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur. Or at least, what we thought was a connecting flight.

The trouble started when AirAsia's Hanoi desk told us that we had to check our bag, and they couldn’t check it through to Kuala Lumpur. Or check us in for that flight. We pointed out that we only had 40 minutes to make the connection, and would not have time to go through Thai immigration, get our bag from the luggage carousel, and go back through Thai immigration again. They pretended they didn't understand English. Finally, we found a guy who sympathized, and he said we could gate-check our bag.

When we arrived in Bangkok, the flight crew revealed that they had no idea what gate checking was. As per the Hanoi manager's instructions, we explained that our bag was in "Hold One". Eventually we got the bag, and tried to make our way to our gate. Oops, turns out no--Air Asia is a "point-to-point carrier", which is code for "no connecting flights". They would not give us boarding passes until we left the airport and came in again. Sux0red.

With fifteen minutes until our flight's departure, they radioed ahead to keep a lane at the ticket counter open for us while we ran as fast as we could through Thai immigration and customs ("How long will you be staying in Thailand?" "Five minutes."). We got there to discover that our flight was delayed 30 minutes, possibly to wait for us, we're not sure. Boarding passes in hand, we discovered we had to pay Thai departure tax again. After a long wait for the ATM, we got our baht, paid the fee, sailed through immigration, and ran through four miles of duty-free shops (sorry, "shoppes") to get to our gate. I set off the metal detector and had to be wanded, but it was OK because we did the thing where you skip the whole line by showing the attendant a boarding pass that says you board half an hour ago.

We got to our gate just as boarding was starting. They were actually pre-boarding (children, people with disabilities, and monks (really)). The airline staff scolded us that we should make sure to leave three hours between flights next time, but why would we when this worked so well?

And that's how I made it to Kuala Lumpur. Continue reading about my Malaysian adventure.

Northern Viet Nam Day Seven: Beer and Puppets

This is day seven of Arie's trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Monday, my last full day in Hanoi. Lunch was Indian food, which is delicious here--as far as I could tell, much better than northern Vietnamese food. In gastronomic terms, southern Viet Nam is the place to visit—better spring rolls, fresh vegetables, more herbs, and tastier food.

I tried some bia hoi ("fresh beer"), which is an interesting type of beer. Introduced by the Czechs, it's brewed every morning, has no preservatives, and is meant to be drunk as soon as possible. The brewery prepares the day's supply (estimating demand), regional distributors take it to distribution points, and then various bia hoi places around the city take empty containers of all types to the distribution points to fill up. The beer is very light and crisp, very cheap (1500 dong, about ten cents), and very good. It's popular with workers, and at lunch and dinner time, bia hoi places get very crowded. They also serve excellent food; we had some great tofu. I think if I have to go back to Hanoi, I will mostly eat at bia hoi places.

After wandering aimlessly ("lost") for about an hour in the outskirts of the old quarter, we bought tickets for the water puppets that night. Lonely Planet and various others told us they were wonderful and worth seeing, so we figured, sure. First of all: Buy tickets early. We went mid-afternoon and they were mostly sold-out and we had to sit in the back. Second: One hour of water puppets is too much. It gets old.

Water puppetry is a very old entertainment in northern Viet Nam. There's a big tank of mucky water with a curtain in the middle, and behind the curtain stand puppeteers in waders. A traditional band plays Vietnamese music while they move the puppets in various ways to tell little stories, sometimes with fireworks. They told, amongst others, the story of the Golden Turtle reclaiming Le Loi's sword. I'm fairly sick of that story, really. Water puppets are nice for a few minutes, then, yeah, gets old. On the Global Entertainment Scale, I'd say it's better than Everybody Loves Raymond, but not as good as bowling.

That concludes my trip to northern Viet Nam. I flew on to Malaysia, read about it here.

Northern Viet Nam Day Six: Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, and Smoking

This is day six of Arie’s trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Sunday morning, more Hanoi. I took a moto to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, one of the sights I was determined not to miss. There was a massive line, but it was moving very quickly. At the first security checkpoint, they took my water bottle (“write your name on it so you can find it at the exit”, right), but let me keep my camera. I set off the X-ray machine, but no one cared. Through the checkpoint was another massive line, but this time there were Vietnamese police to make sure that everyone stayed in two lines—none of the typical Vietnamese approach to lining up, which is to not line up, but instead to form a giant mass and push everyone else as hard as you can while you fight your way to the front. That was what it was like at the security window where we had to check our cameras, but fortunately, I’m one of the largest people in Viet Nam, so I had a very easy time pushing my way to the front. Between the checkpoints, they took away everything everyone was carrying—nothing could be brought into the mausoleum. I’m not sure if it was for security reasons or propriety.

Then we were on the line that led into the mausoleum. The line was long enough that it wrapped around the grounds, through the checkpoint, and out onto the street. Outside was a little chaotic, and between the tour groups massed together and the Vietnamese people cutting in randomly, it was a bit hard to get through. But past the checkpoint, guards kept everyone in line. I’m told that in China, Mao’s mausoleum is similar except that the guards have guns and are much more serious about it.

The mausoleum is a large, squat, dignified cube of gray stone, with columns cut into the front and various soldiers standing around in white uniforms. We saw the “changing of the guard”, which Lonely Planet says rivals the formality and ceremony of Buckingham Palace. Lonely Planet is a liar. It’s just that these dudes walk up to these other dudes, take their place, and then the other dudes walk away. It’s true that they’re wearing uniforms, so that’s something.

We went inside. The line goes up some stairs, around a bit, and then into a large room with a high ceiling. The pathway goes around the outside of the room in a U-shape, and at the center is Ho Chi Minh’s body, locked in a glass box. There are soldiers standing around him, and his body is lit with bright yellow light (the rest of the room is dark). The line moves pretty quickly, so you don’t get much of a look at him.

Most Americans probably know Ho Chi Minh as that commie Vietnamese guy who hiked on some sort of trail in his efforts to stop Robin Williams from broadcasting on the radio. But here in Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh is a national hero. He’s highly respected both for his military leadership during the war and his civilian leadership afterwards.

Ho Chi Minh ("He who enlightens") spent his life fighting for Vietnamese independence from colonial powers. He petitioned at the Versailles peace conference that followed WWI, but when it became clear that the western powers would not willingly grant Viet Nam independence, he turned to Communism. During WWII he fought against the Japanese occupiers of Viet Nam, and when the war ended, he again attempted to appeal to the United States. In an interesting episode, he proclaimed the independence of Viet Nam at a rally where the Vietnamese and American national anthems were played, and quoted from the U.S. Declaration of Independence (the U.S. would not give him a copy, so he quoted from memory). But the west would not recognize his new government, preferring the French colonial government, and so the Viet Nam War (they call it the American War) began. He led Viet Nam until his death in 1969, and presided over the government as Prime Minister and then President. The mausoleum violates his wish to be cremated (he wrote that cremation saves precious farmland).

Ho Chi Minh also presided over the process of the subjugation of the south, which resulted in the deaths of millions of his countrymen. But much like the story of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S., history is written by the winners, and history seems to tolerate a significant amount of bloodshed as long as victory and peace are eventually achieved.

There were several types of visitors to his mausoleum: western travelers, Vietnamese schoolkids, Asian package tourists, and Vietnamese adults. The smallest group by far is western travelers; we’re dwarfed (not actually dwarfed because we are the tallest) by mobs of Chinese package tourists who are herded around and don’t seem especially interested in doing anything except taking photos of each other standing in front of the mausoleum smiling. There are a lot of Vietnamese schoolkids, most of whom are reverent because of the national veneration of Ho Chi Minh. Finally, there are the Vietnamese adults. I guess there’s no one in this country older than about 30 or so who didn’t serve in the army, and for many of them, Ho Chi Minh is a hero. We saw groups of people in military uniforms who were very emotional. Some of them had arrived with wreaths of flowers to place near the tomb. Even the poorest Vietnamese people clearly save up for a trip to the capital to visit the mausoleum; we saw a great deal of economic and social diversity among the Vietnamese visitors. Some of the former soldiers were missing limbs, presumably from combat. Because of the restrictions, they could not bring their crutches, and so they were carried through the tomb by their comrades.

The exit from the mausoleum was conveniently right in front of the Presidential Palace museum, which features such highlights as a “garage of Ho Chi Minh’s used cars”. Instead, we headed over to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Some students approached us outside and asked us some questions in English as part of an assignment for school; something similar had happened to me at a tourist site in Japan.

The HCM Museum had two floors. The first was the sort of thing you expect to find in a museum—an exhibit about soldiers sent from the North to the South during the war. But the top floor was totally crazy. It was filled with all sorts of inexplicable sculptures, weird artwork, and confusing displays. Lonely Planet says that the Edsel crashing through the wall is supposed to juxtapose the failure of American capitalism with the failure of the American military effort. I’d like to know what the strange warped table covered in giant fruit symbolizes. The most confusing thing was an exhibit about Coc Bo Cave, where some leaders of the northern government met. It was portrayed as a giant brain.

After the museum, we walked to a statue of Lenin, and then down some side streets to look at some other neighborhoods. Then we had lunch at a restaurant called Cha Ca La Vong. Cha Ca is a traditional Hanoi dish, pieces of monkfish prepared with vegetables and served on a little charcoal grill at the table. Cha Ca La Vong, like most Cha Ca restaurants on Cha Ca Street, serves only that dish (they have a little card to explain it to tourists). It was very tasty.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Little Hanoi, which turned out to be a serious mistake. It’s apparently listed in some popular French guidebook, which means it’s overpriced and crammed with French tourists. The food wasn’t great for the price, and I’m sure it was surrounded by places that were cheaper, better, and had air not filled with French cigarette smoke.

One of the annoying things about leaving Manhattan is that the rest of the world allows people to smoke in restaurants. One might think smokers would be polite enough to smoke outside while people are eating, and in most of Southeast Asia, people are very polite about their smoking. Smoking is fairly common, but few locals smoke near people who are eating, near babies, etc. However, European tourists light up anywhere and everywhere, and seemed almost to follow us around while chain-smoking. Stereotypically, Americans and Australians are the rudest travelers, but on this trip, every time someone was doing something unpleasant or inconsiderate, they were speaking German or French.

Continue to day seven.

Northern Viet Nam Day Five: Dining at the Hoang Y

This is day five of Arie's trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Saturday. Unlike Krabi in Thailand, there aren't many beaches in Halong Bay. The exceptions are three beaches surrounding Cat Ba town, and I decided to check them out. After climbing a large hill, I found Cat Ba 1 (brilliant name), which has been almost entirely overwhelmed by a massive tourist resort.

Fortunately, there was a wooden walkway along the rocks to Cat Ba 2, which has so far resisted most development. I walked back, avoiding the over-aggressive moto drivers ("nice camera! how about I take you to top of hill for better photo? why not? come back here!") and checked out of the hotel.

Foolishly, we hadn't brought much money, and were left with only about 40,000 Vietnamese dong ($2.50), two hundred baht ($5), and only $7 in U.S. currency. We immediately discovered that there are no ATMs or banks in Cat Ba. Fortunately, we already had boat tickets back to the mainland. Unfortunately, I was hungry.

Our hotel offered to change our $7 into dong, but at a rate of 15,500 to the dollar. Thinking we could do better, we tried a few of the money changers in town. The first one offered us 14,000, and the next 10,000. They explained that the bills were not worth their face value because they were old. I tried to explain that that is not how inflation works, but they wouldn’t listen. We returned to the hotel, which more closely examined the bills and told us they wouldn’t take them at all.

Demoralized, we returned to Hoang Y, prepared to share something that cost 40,000 dong or less. Fortunately, the owner was glad to take our $7, and at face value. Score. We ordered a massive amount of seafood. Unfortunately, it arrived five minutes before our boat was scheduled to leave, and we couldn’t afford to miss the boat. We rushed through the amazingly great meal (I started to run out, but the owner explained that the boat would wait for me to eat a little more, and put some more food on my plate), ran down the pier, and climbed onto the hydrofoil.

"Hydrofoil" sounds cool, but it was just a high-speed ferry. There isn't even any foil. We sat inside a passenger cabin with a lot of Vietnamese people and watched the VN-language TV for an hour, and then we were at Haiphong.

Haiphong is Viet Nam's third-largest city and a major industrial center. We walked to the bus station and asked for two tickets for the next bus to Hanoi. The good news was that a bus was leaving in fifteen minutes. The bad news: It cost 30,000 dong per person ($2), and the two of us only had 40,000 between us. We dredged around in our bags and pockets and came up with another 17,000 in coins, and stood there in disbelief that we were going to miss the bus because of twenty cents. But while I was looking at the map to find the nearest ATM, an attendant offered to accept our Thai baht. For our 120 baht ($3.50) we received 36,000 dong ($2.25), but I suppose it was a buyer's market.

The bus to Hanoi was interesting. It was actually a van, and we were the only westerners. The drive was only two hours, but it stopped several times--once to pick up a hitchhiker, and twice more where the bus driver got out, came into the back, and exchanged some money with the Vietnamese people on the van. I don't know what that was about.

Halong Bay was an interesting trip. I would love to go back--not necessarily for the bay, or even for the beach, but mainly for the seafood. I could quite happily eat at Hoang Y every day for years.

Continue to day six.

Northern Viet Nam Day Four: Halong Must We Sing This Song?

This is day four of Arie's trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Friday. We decided to go see Halong Bay, a major tourist attraction in northeast Viet Nam. Halong Bay is an area of limestone karst islands (similar to Krabi in Thailand). It's supposed to be very beautiful. At the center of the bay is Cat Ba Island, a little seaside town with a burgeoning tourist scene.

We took a morning bus to Halong City, about three hours away. The bus was designed for tourists, so it featured a couple of tour guides who told us the origin myth of Halong Bay twice (a dragon descended into the ground, or something). It turns out that everyone else on the bus was part of a package tour that included a boat cruise around the bay and a night in a hotel (or maybe on a boat). We've long since learned that there's very little we can't do better than an organized tour, so we were just along for the bus ride. A German guy on the bus asked our tour guides what they thought of America--they said that no one was angry about the war, everyone just wanted to increase Viet Nam's standard of living, and America was important for that. Seemed fair. As if to remind us that not everyone in the country saw America as just a source of wealth, the bus stopped along the way at a bathroom stop that sold handicrafts made by agent orange victims and war orphans.

We arrived at Halong Bay and parted company with our tour. We walked over to the pier to arrange a cruise around the bay, and it was surprisingly easy--the government has established a central authority for cruises, and there are fixed prices and routes. An agent met us at the gate, explained our choices, and assigned us to a boat that boarded in fifteen minutes. We grabbed some snacks and got on.

The tourist pier at Halong Bay is crammed with boats, and they all more or less look identical. They seem to have restaurants and cabins on the inside, and a viewing platform on top. We parked ourselves in some comfy sun chairs on top of the boat, resisted their repeated efforts to get us to have lunch with the tour group that shared our boat, and enjoyed the view.

The view of the harbor, that is. For some reason, the tour of the bay started with an hour docked at the pier while everyone except us ate. Didn't bother us, it was sunny and we were on a boat. Finally, we headed out into the bay.

Our first stop was Hang Dau Go Cave ("Cave of Wooden Stakes"). The same forces that created the interestingly shaped islands created some giant stalactite-filled caves, and the Vietnamese government has turned these into tourist attractions. Lonely Planet describes the cave as "beautifully illuminated for the benefit of tourists". I would describe it as “garish to the point of comical". What was once in all likelihood a beautiful collection of natural rock formations is now the inside of a disco gone wrong. Ridiculous blue, green, and pink neon lights are concealed throughout the cave, giving the whole thing an aura of absurdity. Near the end of the path through the cave, we came to a small mechanical fountain--that marked the end of my ability to take it seriously. Studying the walls more carefully, we noticed what appeared to be strategic seams in the rock face; I now suspect that the government constructed the entire thing.

We headed deeper into the bay. Another hour of karst islands, and we were at Cat Ba. Halong Bay is a very beautiful place. It's interesting to compare it to Krabi, the other karst island spot in Southeast Asia. I found Krabi to be much more beautiful, with more unusual and unlikely rock formations. On the other hand, Halong Bay is much more peaceful, with beautiful vistas and soft misty rock in the distance. The tourist system is very different--Halong Bay has these overnight boats through the bay, while Krabi is more centered on beach resorts. In fairness, I kayaked around Krabi but not Halong Bay, so I may have missed some of the better parts of it.

Our boat dropped us at a pier 30 minutes from Cat Ba town, and we took a bus through the mountain passes to our hotel, Sunflowers. Once again, there was some trouble with our reservation, but they sorted it out in less than an hour. We dropped our stuff and walked along the harbor looking for a place for dinner.

There are a lot of floating restaurants in Cat Ba. The idea seems to be that you hire a rowboat to take you to and from your chosen place. But we found a restaurant on the island, Hoang Y, that seemed worthwhile. Lonely Planet claimed that it was an excellent place to eat, and to quote something someone had written on one of the menus, "Lonely Planet was right for once!" The food was amazing, simple dishes of fresh seafood grilled with copious quantities of garlic and onions. Hard to go wrong with that, I guess, but this place was pretty special.

After dinner, we tried to figure out how to get back to Hanoi. Our hotel offered us hydrofoil tickets for 160,000 dong ($10), but the same tickets were on sale at the harbor for 100,000 ($6.25), so we bought those. They actually said 90,000 ($5.60), oh well. At this point, I hadn't yet realized that there were no ATMs on the island and I was critically short of funds, or I would have been much more careful. (How's that for foreshadowing?)

Sundown was Hanukkah. For Hanukkah this year, I got: an overpriced hotel room with a bathtub that drained into a sluice on the bathroom floor. Yay! Well, also a trip to Viet Nam.

I took some photos at sunset. The highlight was a group of Vietnamese children who had invented a game: fill a bag with rocks and then dump it over the rail into the harbor. It looked like fun; I didn't play myself, but I think it's a good spectator sport.

Continue to day five.

Northern Viet Nam Day Three: Arie Learns About CensoVIET NAM IT IS GREAT

This is day three of Arie’s trip to northern Viet Nam. You may want to start at day one.

Thursday. I got up early to update this blog, and discovered that it was inaccessible. At first I thought maybe Blogger was broken, but no, it turns out that Viet Nam censors the internet.

The official story is that the government of Viet Nam censors the internet to prevent its citizens from looking at pornography. Unsurprisingly, Amnesty International reports that the government's censorship is directed towards politics, not pornography. They say that virtually no porn sites are blocked, whereas everything relating to political dissent is. I suppose there were too many blogs on Blogger that relate to politics, so they just blocked the whole thing.

Still early, maybe 7am, I walked to the morning market. It hadn't really gotten going yet, I guess this city doesn't get going as early as does Phnom Penh (where most of the city is on the street at sunrise). I walked down to Hoan Kiem Lake again, this time to visit Ngoc Son Temple, which sits on an island at the northern end. The temple, built in the 18th century, is dedicated to three people: La To, the patron saint of physicians; General Tran Hung Dao, who defeated the Mongols in the 13th century, and Van Xuong, a scholar (thanks, Lonely Planet!). Inside the temple is a Buddhist shrine. I'm not sure if it’s acceptable to photograph Buddhist shrines, but I was the first person to arrive at the pagoda that morning, so I did.

Also on the center island is a sort of museum about the giant turtles that live in the lake. This featured the body of a preserved giant turtle, apparently found in 1968. I told the story in yesterday’s entry about the lake, but again, it's basically king saves city with powerful sword, king gives sword to golden turtle, golden turtle takes sword down to the bottom of the lake. The usual.

After the island, I went to the Martyrs' Monument, which honors those who died fighting for independence. For reasons that never became clear to me, many statues of soldiers in Viet Nam portray them as holding large sticks with three prongs on the end—things that look like giant plugs, and I had to try not to imagine the statue as a tribute to those who died trying to plug stuff in. It seems somewhat unfair that America's 58,000 mostly military casualties from the Viet Nam War receive so much attention in the U.S. while Viet Nam's 2,000,000+ mostly civilian casualties have a small statue near the lake. The same is true of the search for the remains of those killed in action; the U.S. spends millions of dollars each year on a project to locate the remains of every American soldier (several hundred are still missing, mostly crews of planes shot down over the jungle), while hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families will never find their relatives’ remains. I guess it's one of the advantages of wealth.

I walked around the lake. It wasn't far; the entire old quarter is less than half a mile long. People were very friendly, especially because I had my camera out. One guy called me a paparazzi, though apparently to get my attention so he could offer me a moto ride. Just like Phnom Penh, Hanoi is filled with moto drivers hawking their services. Another guy who was just walking around the lake spoke no English, but was very eager to try my camera. I let him look through the zoom lens, and he was very amused. That sort of thing never happens in Manhattan.

After breakfast, we walked to the Memorial House. The House is just a merchant’s house from several centuries ago, but preserved and filled with various examples of artisans in the area (conveniently, all available for purchase). Like many houses of the period, it's built long and thin with a very small front because houses were taxed based on their street-front area. I think the same thing happened in Europe at various times--there are various streets populated entirely by long, thin buildings. The house is only two stories; no buildings were permitted to be taller than the Royal Palace. That rule has since been lifted, but Hanoi has no skyscrapers.

We walked down to a part of the old city where various art galleries were located, but didn't see anything that seemed worthwhile--everything seemed imitative of western styles to the point of being entirely derivative. A short walk took us into the expensive part of the city, where the embassies are located. We stopped into a little restaurant that was mostly filled with lunching office workers and had some excellent spring rolls.

After lunch, I went to the zoo. Hanoi's zoo is an interesting place to visit, but more to look at the people than the animals. They claimed to have various big cats, but their cages were empty. I started at a monkey cage; several Vietnamese kids had climbed the fence around the cage and were giving the monkeys Q-tips.

The zoo also includes a "fun park". I had thought that meant an enjoyable area with plants, but it turns out it meant a hall of mirrors, a ball tank, and various roller coasters. Most of them were shut down, I guess because it was fairly late (maybe 4pm).

The ostrich pen was interesting--I've never been that close to an ostrich. I was pretty sure it was going to try to peck me, but it didn't. There were a lot of other birds around, but I didn’t look too closely. Unlike, say, the Tokyo zoo, the exhibits here aren’t horrific--the animals more or less have enough room to walk around—but it still seems unfair to the birds to put them in tiny cages.

The zoo was arranged around a lake, and at the center of the lake was an island. The island was where most of the monkeys were. I'm not sure if its official name was Monkey Island, but it should have been. Anyway, this is where most of the people were—mostly families with children and groups of teenagers. They were there for one purpose: to harass the monkeys. Apparently this is a major thing—go to the zoo and try to poke the monkeys, or give them food, or try to trick them into eating plastic wrap (?). I was the only non-Vietnamese person at the zoo, so I was a bit of a curiosity too, and many of the locals were very excited for me to photograph them tossing food to monkeys.

There were a few large mammals. The zoo has a couple of elephants, but they’re chained to the floor--it's not a great scene. There was a hippo surrounded by an electric fence (which I almost touched when I hopped the regular fence to retrieve my lens cover). Watched a few more people tease some monkeys, and then I set out for home.

I figured, can't be more than three or four miles. A couple hours maximum, by foot, and it'll give me a good chance to see some non-touristy parts of the city. So I started walking, at first along the river, then down a few major streets. It was around sunset, a very photogenic time for cities. Walking around, I was again a bit of a curiosity--there were no other westerners around, and I guess few tourists make it to that area. Although I'm not sure where exactly it was--I got turned around a bit, and after getting some bad directions and hiking for an hour and a half in the wrong direction, I gave up and got on a moto taxi. Long day.

Continue to day four.