... and yet another visa

Done! Got China visa, plane ticket to Rangoon and tomorrow evening I'll be there..... none too soon.

Today was exploration of the Bangkok I have seen from the river, from taxis and from Tuck-Tucks but never really moved around there on foot.

Whoa!

Pity the tourist or the business man who is condemned to make his residence there. Of course, some would not quite fit into Khao San and are thus stuck with the inevitable. Super modern, gleaming glass and steel, some mind boggling architecture, it has the charm of a railroad station waiting room.

To get there I took a riverboat to the pier where my Bangkok map indicates a Skytrain passes. Track and stations are way above the roads, sometimes several stories up. While zipping along above the town you can look into people's fifth story living rooms. In train and stations all is fully automatic, super clean and, of course, air conditioned. I got off at Siam Square, the center of the business and high end condominium district and .... was not in the Bangkok of my love anymore.

Siam Square is also a huge, multi-story shopping center. Macy in New York claims to be the largest department store in the world. That may be true if one counts a store of one name under one roof, but from the looks of it, a couple of Macy Herald Square stores could be accommodated inside the Siam Square complex. It goes on and on, endlessly. I walked around for a while among the hi end boutiques, international chain stores, businesslike dressed crowds and then escaped back to my old haunts on a boat that sped through a narrow canal that smelled like a sewer - which it probably was. I celebrated my return to Khao San with a Banana and Nutella crêpe from a cute street vendor. There, in the ghetto, were definitively more smiles per square meter than around Siam Square.

Yesterday a barber trimmed my beard stubbles to a fashionable, (rakish?) three millimeters. I simply had to have that done because the longer my facial hair got the whiter it was. After all the jokes I made about the graveyard blond set in Khao San, I couldn't live with that anymore. The very friendly barber, who also gave me neck massage, did such a lousy job on the mustache I looked like one of the sculpted ugly, evil-looking ogres guarding the good spirits inside temples. So, today, before heading downtown I went back to the barber to also trim the mustache down to three millimeters. He seemed offended that I didn't like his work and refused to change anything. I said not to worry, I'd pay. That didn't mellow him, but he made a young assistant do it then he charged the same amount as when he did the whole face (it was still only sixty cents).

People watching again last night, I met a Dane, an independent Apple programmer. He gets enough monthly checks from Apple for the apps he'd designed as a free lancer to allow him to travel three months out of the year - so he must be good. Now I am relieved to know I am not a complete dolt in the IT world. When I mentioned my problems with transporting photos to a blog from iPad he said it could not be done but that I just gave him a good idea. He will now design an app that can make it happen. He is always searching for problems that need solving. He lives off commissions from the paid downloads of apps he creates.

Our conversations were so interesting (mostly about IT which usually is Chinese to me) I got lost in his alien world. The guy, a real geek, is fifty years old. His travel rule is never to have more than ten kilos of luggage. By the way, even though he doesn't qualify for the formerly described nostalgia set - his hair is not gray and he is not out of shape - he goes to the New Merry V since many years. Wherever he heads for southeast Asia, he first flies from Denmark to Bangkok, then stays at New Merry to unwind and to get into the groove of things to come.

That is again a confirmation that I am not alone with my addiction to Bangkok's, more precisely Khao San district's, siren song. A friend, Jonah who was the main editor of SEASONS OF SAND, wrote in an email that he too, like by a forceful magnet, is regularly pulled to that weird spot.

Now, with required visas in passport, tonight I'll be looking for noodle soup in Rangoon.


01/19 Yangon, Rangoon.

The world hasn't stopped here either. Last time I was in Rangoon, about fifteen-years ago, I remember it as still a sleepy, charming town. It sure ain't sleepy anymore.

At the (now super modern) airport yesterday I saw a man holding a sign for Motherland guesthouse. I took the free shuttle, expecting to stay at that place, even though I know it is pretty far from the center of town. It was fully booked except for a bed in a co-ed dormitory.

That dormitory arrangement is as follows: My bed is perpendicular at the foot of three other beds. During the night I have one pair of feet in my face, a pair in my groin and a last one at the level of my feet. The single toilet/shower for all nine occupants is outside, down a stair in a dark corridor. I have a locker for my stuff down a hall. For someone of my age with sometimes not much time to spare between the sensation of having to go and actually needing the toilet, then and there, that is a risky proposition. Today I'll do something about it. A taxi driver (who spoke a little English) drove me around town to hotel/guesthouses.
"How long drive?" he'd said.
"Until I find accommodations," I said.
"Very expensive," he said.
"Why?"
"All hotel fully booked," he said.
"So, how much 'till we find one?"
"Fifteen-thousand kiat," he said. That, with the black market exchange rate I got the previous night, amounts to about twenty dollars - in a land where twenty dollars is probably a decent weekly wage. When I protested he suggested I take another taxi.

He drove me to at least ten downtown places. All had no vacancies even though I was not particular about my requirements , as long as it was not a dormitory. The driver clearly started to get antsy about the inordinate time he spent chauffeuring me around for my quest.

After about twelve "no" to my questions about "you have vacancy?" I got a "yes". Couldn't see the room though because the guests were still in their twenty-five dollars a night digs. Only cash accepted, I was told, but breakfast included.

Back at the Motherland guesthouse, about two hours later, the driver, as relieved about mission accomplished as I, offered to take me and my luggage back to to the Yoma, the name of my new digs, for free. Maybe he was just a bit guilty about the charged fee.

Rangoon has changed big time since my last visit. It has become a noisy metropolis, congested, much less charming than it had survived in my memory. Where you could walk on streets full of pedestrians, men in longhis, the wrap around waist cloth, and women with sandalwood powder circles painted on their faces, winding your way in between the little stools of street stall diners, today parked cars and trucks have become ugly prosaic impediments. Man-powered trishaws have largely been replaced by dilapidated taxis. The quaint tiny wooden stools people sat on in the street eateries have succumbed to the plastic revolution. To make it worse, some malevolent force has decided to produce them in the gaudiest of colors. The street fruit seller still offer a profusion of fresh and beautiful tropical fruits but also here the rare exclusive have taken over - apples with stuck-on labels, informing the buyer of their New Zealand provenance. For the huge price of one apple, a fruit that doesn't grow in the tropics, one could buy a large bagful of tropical delights, the kinds of fruits, despite their high cost, so popular at home where they, in turn, don't grow.

That human trait, wishing for what one doesn't have, is perfectly described in a Swiss word of wisdom:
Hansdampf im Schäggeloch hät alles was er will,
Was er will das hätter nöd und,
Was er hät das will er nöd.
Loosely translated that means:
Little Jonnyboy, enclosed in his protective shell, has everything he wants,
But, what he wants he doesn't have, and,
What he has he doesn't want.

Ah, the pleasures one can expect after giving up hitting one's head with a hammer!

The visa tribulations continue. Since it seems I can't get a Vietnam visa in Kunming, China, I have to try to get one here. Two of the roads I'll try end up in China. From there I could go all the way to Hong Kong, get visas to wherever I want to go, but that seems lame, and way off the territory.

The Vietnam embassy here is in a huge beautiful house, a long way out of the town center. When I got there this morning, with doors ajar, the place seemed abandoned. With the coming of next week's Lunar New Year, that all nations around here in this neck of the woods celebrate, the whole staff seems to have gone on vacation. I wandered around on the white marble floors of the house and called from time to time "Hello!"

A lone woman eventually appeared and told me nothing could be done 'til after the next week. I offered to pay extra for expediting the matter, so she said she'd try to contact someone and, just maybe she could get me a visa before totally everybody was gone for the week.

Now I have to stay in my windowless room, hoping for a phone call from her. The Internet Wifi (which they advertise to have here) is down, so I spend my time writing, even though there is not much to write about. It has been almost four hours since I left her my passport, completed application and photo and no phone call has come. Now I ran out of things to report about Rangoon today, in 2012. The last time I was here the calendar said 1960.

That 1960 Rangoon stay was accidental. While on my round-the-world-trip-without-money (twenty-dollars brought from home when I left from Zurich, Switzerland) I had taken a flight with the Burmese airline from Calcutta to Bangkok. Along the way there was a problem with the plane, an old WW II surplus DC-3. We bumped to an emergency landing in Rangoon. When we hit the runway, fuel was pouring out of the left wing, just outside my window. Instead of a fire engine, a truck raced along, right behind the wing with two men in the back trying to balance a barrel to catch as much as possible of the valuable spilling fuel.

The only Westerners on the plane were an old missionary women from the US and yours truly, the totally broke globetrotter from Switzerland. We both found it chic of the airline when they lodged us in the famous Strand Hotel - not that they had to throw other guest out to make room for us - from the looks of it, we were the only occupants. We were served a sumptuous Chinese dinner ... with chopsticks. That was no problem for the missionary who had lived in the regions for just about her whole life but for the boy from Switzerland, at a time when there were not yet Chinese restaurants wherever you went, it almost meant starvation. The staff, knowing full well we were not regular guests had a ball watching me struggle. The problem got solved. Just coming from India, I ended up eating my Chinese food by hand.

During the day the missionary and I explored the city, a dusty backwater town, on foot. In the evening she was tired so I went out again, alone. When it got dark, there were no streetlights, the town was pitch dark except for some flickering cooking fires. I had no idea where I was, my feet were muddy from having stepped into all sorts of smelly things. A man led me by a hand into a house, I was served tea then brought to a cot and made to lay down. It was too dark to see anything. When hands stared to fondle my body I stormed out, blindly. After erring around for a while I saw a light, stumbled towards it and found it to be a police station. Somehow I managed to make them understand I wanted to go to the Strand Hotel. An escort brought me there. After a shower, and relieved to be back at the hotel, we were served dinner, this time with fork and knife. Next day we flew to Bangkok.

Hopefully soon, for the sake of people who read this stuff and for me, the journey will be getting more interesting.

In Bangkok, as mentioned in the last report, I saw in Wat Tramit the 5.5 metric ton Buddha in pure gold. Well, here in the land where there seems to be a stupa, a temple, or a paya for every man, woman and child, where taxi drivers stop at certain temples to donate or bow, they have an even more impressive gold deity. The Buddha in Rangoon's Shwedagon Paya weighs 53 metric tons, larger than its Bangkok's counterpart by a factor of ten. Poor Bill Gates could afford barely ten of these.

I wonder how many children could be educated and fed with the money that would be freed up if they melted down and sold the gold in that statue in the name of Buddha's compassion and benevolence. Bill Gates goes that way and he is no god. To judge from what I have seen previously here and the little new insights from the present visit, the country's people could use all the help they can get.

About six o'clock last night the lady from the Vietnam embassy called. If I hurried I could pick up the visa. She said she'd wait for me. It cost, instead of sixty-five dollars, the expedited fee of eighty-five, a sum I gladly paid. It meant no ten-day wait in Rangoon. The woman refused the tip I offered for her service.

At ease now I'll do laundry while I have nice running water, try to find a working internet café to read my email, maybe post this scribbles on the blog, and organize transport to Mandalay. Plane is out, train I'd already done twice, boat transport, as I found out, doesn't exist, so, it will probably be the twelve-hour bus ride.