Sandalwood, the Burmese all-in-one cosmetic, is believed to create a smooth complexion, make you smell good, prevent sweating. It functions as a sunscreen and - they think - it makes you look beautiful even if, with liberally applied paste, some, otherwise pretty faces look like the inside of a bowl after you prepared pancake mix.
Thar Aye for growing his retirement fund, plants sandalwood trees on ancestral land in his native village.
We drove to the agency that assigns tourist guide jobs to him. It turned out to be a small roadside office, cum pharmacy. The assignment manager and Thar go into a heated give and take. It soon dawned on me he was trying to get out of already agreed on jobs. The manager confirmed my suspicion when I asked.
"Under no circumstances will I accept Thar's time with me if it involves giving up even one crummy professional assignment, " I said.
Thar broke up completely. Tearfully he insisted, as long as I was in town, he wanted to be at my disposal.
"The best you can do for me is to leave me alone," I said brusquely, maybe even a bit harshly. It was easy to see this is the hight of the annual tourist season when he can make the means to carry him through the year. More important, I didn't want him to mess up his job providing contact.
"Unless absolutely necessary, like seventeen years ago," I blinked at him with what I hoped he'd understand as our 1994 conspiracy, "I totally wish to be by myself."
The pharmacist / travel tour arranger, showed relief. I asked him not to accept any of Thar's resignation attempts. As a result, Thar guided yesterday eighteen American tourists in and around Mandalay and, apart from his guide fee, made a three-hundred dollars commission from the jewelry they bought in the store he herded them to. When this group is gone he'll shepherd another, and then another. Those jobs will continue to come 'till the northern hemisphere snowbirds see the crocuses emerge from the ground and put the snow shovels away 'till next winter.
It boggles the mind how unfettered capitalism by a few for a few has run this beautiful country into the ground. I say, unfettered capitalism because the honchos who ran the show here for the last sixty odd years have virtually the whole country under their thumbs. There are no rules or regulations to impede the free flow of their capitalist creative energy. They own just about everything, they create the laws that put the least possible obstacles in the way of running their businesses. They have no need to invest in lobbyists because they themselves have the power to do whatever the situation requires. They are the law. As a result, the country ends up in an indescribable fiasco, with nothing for most and everything for a few. In Myanmar, the 99% versus the 1% has come full circle.
During colonial times, this country was considered the region's breadbasket. Now, besides gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, huge tracts of valuable virgin lumber (that, to a large extent has now become furniture and wood paneling all over the world), an abundance of fertile land, and an amiable, peaceful population, it also has oil and gas. Still, the infrastructure crumbles everywhere. Compared with its neighbor, Thailand, who has practically none of Burma's natural treasures, and virtually the same climatic and topographic circumstances, it is a hopeless basket case. On my last visit to the country the Kyat bills (name of the Burmese currency) had been changed from units like 5, 10, 50, 100' 1,000 etc. to uncountable monstrosities like 9, 45, 90, 450, 900 etc. One day the junta declared all the old bills to be worthless. Everybody had the right to exchange only a small portion of their cash for new currency. Talking about instant wealth distribution! It certainly enriched the rulers, and it worked instantly at leveling the general population's wealth.
While wandering around in town I saw some areas that look like gated communities in the US, except each home has its own gate. Right in between crumbling, dirty, pot-holed, crowded, alleys, you'd suddenly come upon a high ends estate type neighborhood with perfectly paved streets and landscaped center dividers. Elaborate, gaudy villas peak out over high, razor wire topped walls. Those houses, I found out, belong mostly to Chinese investors.
A real gated community is on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. A square enclosure of 3,500 yards (about two miles) per side, behind a 500 feet wide moat alongside a 30 feet high wall, is accessible, for a ten-dollar fee, to tourists wishing to visit the palace. The ticket comes with strict warnings not to trespass beyond the straight road leading to the palace. Numerous military sentries make sure you keep to the rules. The top military brass, the country's rulers, have their digs in the huge compound in the middle of the city. One can only imagine how luxurious they are.
Thar joins me for breakfast at the hotel before he has to meet his tourists. We talk about politics, life, how he lost all his savings with the currency changeover, and his total devotion to Buddhism. He assures me that now I don't have to worry anymore what I write in Myanmar, about Myanmar, with some limits about describing the government, the economy and Burmese life in general. The leaders realized they are incapable to suppress the new methods of disseminating information.
The day after answering in minute details many aspects of my life, like date and what time of day with what means of transport (a strange question since only flight is permissible) I arrived in Myanmar, for inclusion in the application to be let go north to cross into China, and paying a hundred-dollar application fee, a government agent called the hotel with news the northern region is closed to foreigners. "A messenger will return the hundred-dollars and retrieve the receipt," he said. As soon as I heard that, I rushed out to get the receipt photo copied. Back at the hotel the messenger was waiting for me, returned the hundred-dollar bill when I handed over the paper then left. The copied receipt said it was for the hundred bucks, as a downpayment for a permit to do the Burma road on February 8, from Lashio to the border at Mu-se. I immediately started to make arrangements to pass time in the region until February 7 (hint, hint!).
Next morning I had to leave the hotel at 6:15 AM to embark on an Irrawaddy river boat to Pagan. By the way, the rulers, as they had done with other local names, changing Burma to Myanmar, Rangoon to Yangon, the river is now called Ayeyarwaddy.
Pagan is one of the old capitals and sports 4,400 Pagodas in a relatively small area.
Six AM the reception called that Thar was waiting for me in the lobby. He and his wife were there to drive me to the boat landing and to give me two large bags of travel provisions. Before leaving, Thar made me sit on a chair, then he and his wife stood in front of me and put their hands together in prayer. They dropped flat to the ground, raised their upper bodies, hands joined praying towards me, went down again, up, down, up down as I had seen people in front of Buddha images. Totally embarrassed, I pleaded with them to stop - to no avail. When they finally got up, Thar hugged me, western style, and cried again. He said I was responsible for all that went well in his life. The provisions they brought for the less than ten-hour boat ride were eighteen bananas, four bags of potato chips, two sweet rolls, six little bags of biscuits, two toasts with chocolate filling, five limes and two bottles of water.
The boat has a restaurant and, although called the fast boat, it is only fast when compared to other decaying wood and rusty steel floating contraptions on the river, the ones with very loud and smoky one-cylinder tuck-tuck-tuck engines. For the 180 kilometer (about 120 miles) downriver journey, going with a 4-5 mph current the boat took almost ten hours. That "fast" boat seems to be reserved exclusively for tourists. There too, as in so many other places I'd noticed before, the average age of passengers must have been around sixty.
A horse and buggy picked me up at the boat landing for the trip to my guesthouse where I'd made reservations from Mandalay. I don't like my new digs at all - bad vibes. It feels, sort of, like Bates Hotel(?) from the film Psycho. It gives me the creeps..
I'd barely settled in when a young man came into my room and introduced himself as Thar's second son, the doctor. Over dinner he told me he makes, as a doctor since four years, the princely sum of about one-hundred-dollars a month. His spoken English, like his father's seventeen years before, is not fluid, to say the least. He never gets chances to practice even though he remembers a large vocabulary.
Next morning, which is today, I wandered around in search of a more suitable guesthouse. I am writing now on a little veranda off my charming twenty-dollars per night bungalow. All is pleasant here, except for the maintenance man who is painting furniture next to me with a very strong smelling paint and other odors wafting by, one I identified as coming from burning car tires. Birds don't seem to mind, they keep merrily chirping away.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
EMBARRASSED!!!!!
Images of Rangoon.
The lady at Yoma's reception (Yoma is the name of my lodging) is very charming and helpful.
"Where is the place to buy a bus ticket for Mandalay?" she answered with:
"We'll get it for you. No charge." Her friendly smile displayed a scary set of teeth. All incisors were filed to sharp points. I thanked her and accepted the offer.
"Do you have reservations for accommodation in Mandalay?" she said.
"No," I said, "I never make reservations, just take what I find."
"That might be difficult next week during New Year. Everything tends to be fully booked," she said.
Her remark made me think of my default funky dormitory accommodation at the otherwise sold out Motherland guesthouse and the problems finding an alternative.
"Could you make me one?" I said.
"I can try," she said and presented another of her scary smiles. She ended up making one call after another, probably about ten, until she found a place in Mandalay that wasn't yet fully booked. She reserved it for me. I really started to like her smile.
"What would you like for breakfast?" she said.
"Do I have to chose now in the evening?"
"Yes, because it will be served in your room at the time you chose." She showed me a list of what was available; eggs, butter, toast, fruits, coffee or tea, and then the local fare, fish head soup with pork rinds and noodles. While I looked it over she said:
"I suggest you take the local food, if you don' mind spicy. It is more nourishing."
Fish head soup with pork rinds and noodles for breakfast turned out to be an excellent choice.
That reminds me again of the previously mentioned strange way we humans make choices. The offered cornucopia of fruits here in town is a pure delight for eyes and taste buds that are accustomed to what is offered in regular supermarkets back home. Street sellers display mountains of (I am not sure of the spelling for these tropical fruits' names): Lichee, logan, mango, papaya, jack fruit, mangosteen, durian, pineapple, all kinds of shaped and sized bananas, pomelones, star fruit, a big assortment of melons, berries and piles of other, interesting looking fruits I'd never seen or tasted before. But, the most expensive and most prominently displayed fruit on many of the vender's tables are apple with stuck on labels identifying them to be imported either from Japan, China or New Zealand. Compared to the prices of local fruits, their cost is astronomical.
As the Romans so aptly said: De gustibus non disputandum est!
Yeah, right!
On my street wanderings today I passed a sign with pictures of sushi, sashimi, tempura, katsu don. A sushi bar in Rangoon! With much heard stories about Japanese cruelties and mass enslavement of Burmese during WW II, it is hard to imagine that there exists a love affair between the two peoples. Not having noticed French, Italian, even Chinese restaurants advertised in town, seeing a Japanese was a surprise. Fully aware of my statements about human idiosyncrasies, about wanting rather the unobtainable than the readily available, I could not resist going in and try. True to form and its exclusivity, the Japanese meal in Rangoon, although absolutely perfect, cost a multiple of what an equally delicious Burmese feast would have set me back.
The other extreme to street fare prices was demonstrated at the bar in the Strand hotel. For old memory's sake I went there to see how time has dealt with that old venerable relic of Somerset Maughan's and Kipling's colonial lore. Together with Raffles in Singapore, the Strand was a shining crown in the empire where the sun never set, a place where jingoistic old boys slapped backs and ingested their gin and tonic, ostensibly to ward off Malaria.
The only feature of this empire jewel that appears authentic is the name, it is still called Strand. Inside as in the old version, there is plenty of mahogany wood paneling but now it has a kitchen cabinet look. All is spic and span as one would expect in a super expensive five-star hotel, yet the white marble floors, that in my memory had the worn look of time, now have the feel of a tiled and polyurethaned bathroom floor. The bar, except for the few liquor bottles, could, for all its charm, be in a hospital cafeteria. The similarity with a hospital is also demonstrated in the pricing. A gin and tonic cost ten dollars, the price of ten wholesome dinners in Rangoon's streets - even with noodles of your choice. There were no old boys, just a couple of morose tourists in shorts sucking beer.
Burma seems to have a functioning system to avoid unemployment. A twelve-story construction site had, as in an ant colony, a continuous stream of men carrying bags of cement, sand and huge loads of bricks up the partially finished stairs, presumable for the construction of the thirteenth floor. On the whole large site there was not one crane or pulley system to transport material up to near the clouds.
My fascination with old travelers did not stay in Bangkok's Khao San. Already on the flight from Bangkok, in a super cheap Air Asia flight where the seats are so close together and narrow that normal sized people have to suck in breath and curl up to fit, it felt like a geriatric convention. Among Rangoon's tourists, even thought not numerous as in Bangkok, a fair number qualifies for inclusion in the graveyard-blond set. I had to revise my Khao San nostalgia traveler assumption. Here in Burma it is not likely many of oldies are repeat visitors - traveling in Burma during their younger years was not the thing to do - and very few did. It was difficult to obtain a visa and affordable tourist accommodations were rare. Also, Daw Aung San Suu Kui, the peace Nobel price winner who was placed under house arrest after she won an election, advised against visiting Burma. "I only fills the coffers of the ruling junta," she advised.
With a French woman, the only other western traveler on the bus, I shared a taxi from the out-in-the-boonies bus station into town. She is a grandmother, her children are independent of her. She hopes to find some local crafts to buy that she then can sell back home with a profit to help finance her travels. "What do I have to lose?", she said. With super cheap fares on airlines nobody ever heard of, food and lodging costing less than cigarettes at home, she stretches her French social security check as far as it might go - and that is way further here than at home.
Where do I fit into that picture? Right somewhere into the middle, I am afraid. Maybe a few of the observed senior frailties and peculiarities aren't burdening me as much as some others. In a Rangoon sidewalk eatery I observed one of the oldies pulling a roll of toilet paper out of her bag then cleaning with it her plate, chopsticks (which are disposables that have never been used and never will be used again) and tea glass. Also, I am not buying crafts for resale or stretch social security checks, but try to acquire exiting happenings to add to my store of worthwhile, memorable memories.
The toilet paper cleaning lady reminds me of a theory I came up with. No matter how strange it might seem to you, please bear with me - because in the end you just might agree.
When eating from street food venders, as I regularly do here in Asia, in Africa, South and Central America, in short, wherever they are, and if the food is cooked and served in dishes, don't look for the pristine, antiseptic-looking ones - unless you like your food to taste as if, before serving, it had been submerged in a swimming pool. Almost all street food venders have no access to running water. Even if clean running water was available by his or her stand it is not practicable. Vegetables, dishes, glasses, utensils, are all washed in a bucket of water under the stand - all day long.
Sounds terrible, right? Yes, but....
Some of those street chefs, "to do right by their customers", heavily chlorinate the water in which they wash food and dishes. As a result, offered fare gets that not so yummy swimming pool flavor. The alternative, if you want vegetables that taste like vegetables, fish taste like fish, meat like meat, is frequenting the less conscientious street establishments.
Before gasping think of what you are most likely exposed to if you eat in hotels or regular indoor restaurants. Food and dishes are washed in water that might also be questionable. Even if you adhere strictly to the edicts of careful travelers; never accepting local ice cubes, never eating salad, never drink, or even brush teeth with water from the faucet, you are not home free. Water, no matter it's quality, is everywhere, in everything, every day. You will be exposed to it no matter how much you try to avoid it. Even the bedding you sleep in has been washed in it, the local's hands you shake have the same bugs like the local water. You wash your hands - with what? You can't disinfect them forever, everywhere, every time.
The answer, according to yours truly, is immunization.
The locals survive the onslaught of local bacteria, even though their system is no better equipped than yours. Give your body a chance. Most likely, at home, your system is never exposed to the same internal flora and fauna you come in contact with while traveling in some regions of our planet.
Immunization, according to my non-medical expertise, is exposing the body to weakened or small amounts of agents that are liable to attack the system. That way, though a normal process, our internal biological laboratory is stimulated to produce antibodies. If your machinery was never exposed to these alien onslaughts, it has no capability to resist attacks.
David, a Canadian friend of mine in Paris lived that theory to an extreme. Whenever he bought a baguette sandwich he first placed it on the ground in the street, rolled it around a few times with his shoes while muttering: "It you don't eat a few of the buggers all the time you won't be able to resist them when they attack."
The solution, again according to my non-medical but plenty of empirical experience, is to accustom the system gradually to local conditions. First, brush teeth with water from the faucet, then advance to rinsing the mouth, have a drink with ice cubes, wash the dust off a fruit with local water, have a little salad, and soon, your immunization is complete.
My Mandalay contact from way back is out of town 'til tomorrow.
EMBARRASSING!!!!!
When I came back from the internet café the reception lady said a man had called, asking for me. Because I know absolutely nobody else in this town, I assumed it was Thar Aye, my old friend from Mandalay whom I had informed by email about my arrival. "He will call back at two PM", she said.
It was about eleven, plenty of time for the planned visit to Mandalay Hill, 1,729 steps up from the street entrance, to visit the tall golden (gold painted?) standing Buddha. I went to the foot of the hill by taxi because it is about seven kilometers from my hotel. On my return, as came into the hotel lobby, Thar jumped up from a seat, embraced me, then prostrated himself in front of me and - kissed my feet. They were really dirty from the long walk. I tried to pick up the sixty-year old man, I pleaded with him to stop, I pulled while he kept kissing my feet. Total embarrassment! When he finally got up, tears were streaming down his face. He kept holding on to me and had arranged for a photo studio to take pictures of the two of us.
If all that sounds strange to you, it no doubt is. It came about because what happened when we first met, about seventeen years before.
Emilie and I tried to get from Mandalay to Imphal in India's Manipur. That journey, then and now, was off limits to everyone from the outside since right after WW II. The Brits, with the help of hundreds of mules imported from South America, built that road during the war to get behind Japanese lines. The war was over before the road was completed. Since then, Nagas and Kukis, two former headhunting tribes in the region, are at war with each other and, neither Indians, nor Burmese would permit anyone getting through the area because lawlessness prevailed.
In order to find our way across that off-limit territory we needed a local assistant to help organize a transport elephant, or whatever else was needed to get through the jungle to India.
Enters Thar Aye, a trishaw driver we'd met at the Mandalay train station. He had a surprisingly huge store of English words, but a very limited capacity of speaking it. He explained how, when he was a Buddhist monk, he gave himself the task of learning a hundred English words a day for a hundred days. He did, but had practically no opportunity to use his knowledge for speaking - 'till he met us. I offered him a thousand dollars if we could make it to India with his help. He agreed and we left. In the last town officially accessible to us, Monywa, we found out that we were shadowed by the secret police. Had we succeeded in our quest for reaching India, Thar, as out facilitator, would have been dead meat at the hands of Burma's ruling junta. We abandoned our attempt and returned with him to Mandalay.
"Why?" I asked him, "why would you risk your life for a thousand dollars?"
"With that my children could get an education and that is more important than my life," he said.
Needless to say, I gave him the thousand dollars anyway.
Roll forwards fifteen years.
I was contacted by a man from White Plains near New York city.
"Are you Ernst Aebi who traveled once in Mandalay?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you met Thar Aye there?"
"Yes. What's that all about?"
"I am a travel agent and was in Mandalay to make contacts to organize trips. I met Thar, a travel guide. At his house is a photo of you, like on a shrine. He says that his children all have a wonderful education because of you, that he is a licensed travel guide because of you, he managed to buy a house because of you."
"Well applied thousand dollars," I thought.
When I returned from my East Africa trip last year, there was a letter in my huge pile of accumulated mail. It came from a couple in Manhattan's Upper Westside. It also stated that they hope I am the Ernst who once was in Mandalay and that I knew Thar Aye. Included was a handwritten letter from Thar. He explained how one son is now a computer programmer, one a dentist, one a doctor and his daughter is married to a jeweler - and that he lives now in his own house, all thanks to you (me), he wrote. He expressed a wish that some time soon I might come back to Mandalay.
That's what brought about the foot kissing.
We drove on his bike to the government information office to find out, first officially, which of the routes I might be allowed to take.
The one from Mandalay to Imphal, we were told, is okay to drive on but I was not allowed to go there because the Indians refuse entry. It is like a war zone over there. Thar confirmed that claim by the government lady. The road between the border town in India's Manipur, from Moeth to Imphal, is closed to regular traffic.
The Ledo road from Assam in India through Burma to China, in many parts does not exist anymore. It was built by US troops under general Stillwell, also called Vinegar Joe because of his demeanor, during WW II to resupply the Chinese in their fight against the Japanese.
That leaves the old Burma road that was also off limits for most of the last sixty years because of ethnic conflicts between the Burmese ruling junta and, I think the Karens.
"Maybe you get a permit," one of the five ladies behind the counter said.
"How do I know I get it?" I said.
"You apply now, pay one-hundred dollars and in two weeks you get answer."
"Then I can go?"
"No, you will need a car and an escort from Lashio to the border, one-hundred and fifty dollars," she said.
"One hundred here, one-hundred and fifty in Lashio?"
"Yes."
So, my options are:
* Road to Imphal, but no permission to get into India. With the road from the border to Imphal closed, even if I managed to crash that border, I'd have to walk about 150 kilometers through a war zone.
* Ledo road doesn't exist any more, but reconstruction is under way.
* The old Burma road, lame, with a government handler, but historically significant. I could try to avoid the government dude, but for what? Save two-hundred and fifty dollars? On a road I could (probably) take officially if I was willing to hand over two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.
I paid the initial hundred dollars and now I get two weeks of exploring other parts of Burma. I have heard of worse fate.
The lady at Yoma's reception (Yoma is the name of my lodging) is very charming and helpful.
"Where is the place to buy a bus ticket for Mandalay?" she answered with:
"We'll get it for you. No charge." Her friendly smile displayed a scary set of teeth. All incisors were filed to sharp points. I thanked her and accepted the offer.
"Do you have reservations for accommodation in Mandalay?" she said.
"No," I said, "I never make reservations, just take what I find."
"That might be difficult next week during New Year. Everything tends to be fully booked," she said.
Her remark made me think of my default funky dormitory accommodation at the otherwise sold out Motherland guesthouse and the problems finding an alternative.
"Could you make me one?" I said.
"I can try," she said and presented another of her scary smiles. She ended up making one call after another, probably about ten, until she found a place in Mandalay that wasn't yet fully booked. She reserved it for me. I really started to like her smile.
"What would you like for breakfast?" she said.
"Do I have to chose now in the evening?"
"Yes, because it will be served in your room at the time you chose." She showed me a list of what was available; eggs, butter, toast, fruits, coffee or tea, and then the local fare, fish head soup with pork rinds and noodles. While I looked it over she said:
"I suggest you take the local food, if you don' mind spicy. It is more nourishing."
Fish head soup with pork rinds and noodles for breakfast turned out to be an excellent choice.
That reminds me again of the previously mentioned strange way we humans make choices. The offered cornucopia of fruits here in town is a pure delight for eyes and taste buds that are accustomed to what is offered in regular supermarkets back home. Street sellers display mountains of (I am not sure of the spelling for these tropical fruits' names): Lichee, logan, mango, papaya, jack fruit, mangosteen, durian, pineapple, all kinds of shaped and sized bananas, pomelones, star fruit, a big assortment of melons, berries and piles of other, interesting looking fruits I'd never seen or tasted before. But, the most expensive and most prominently displayed fruit on many of the vender's tables are apple with stuck on labels identifying them to be imported either from Japan, China or New Zealand. Compared to the prices of local fruits, their cost is astronomical.
As the Romans so aptly said: De gustibus non disputandum est!
Yeah, right!
On my street wanderings today I passed a sign with pictures of sushi, sashimi, tempura, katsu don. A sushi bar in Rangoon! With much heard stories about Japanese cruelties and mass enslavement of Burmese during WW II, it is hard to imagine that there exists a love affair between the two peoples. Not having noticed French, Italian, even Chinese restaurants advertised in town, seeing a Japanese was a surprise. Fully aware of my statements about human idiosyncrasies, about wanting rather the unobtainable than the readily available, I could not resist going in and try. True to form and its exclusivity, the Japanese meal in Rangoon, although absolutely perfect, cost a multiple of what an equally delicious Burmese feast would have set me back.
The other extreme to street fare prices was demonstrated at the bar in the Strand hotel. For old memory's sake I went there to see how time has dealt with that old venerable relic of Somerset Maughan's and Kipling's colonial lore. Together with Raffles in Singapore, the Strand was a shining crown in the empire where the sun never set, a place where jingoistic old boys slapped backs and ingested their gin and tonic, ostensibly to ward off Malaria.
The only feature of this empire jewel that appears authentic is the name, it is still called Strand. Inside as in the old version, there is plenty of mahogany wood paneling but now it has a kitchen cabinet look. All is spic and span as one would expect in a super expensive five-star hotel, yet the white marble floors, that in my memory had the worn look of time, now have the feel of a tiled and polyurethaned bathroom floor. The bar, except for the few liquor bottles, could, for all its charm, be in a hospital cafeteria. The similarity with a hospital is also demonstrated in the pricing. A gin and tonic cost ten dollars, the price of ten wholesome dinners in Rangoon's streets - even with noodles of your choice. There were no old boys, just a couple of morose tourists in shorts sucking beer.
Burma seems to have a functioning system to avoid unemployment. A twelve-story construction site had, as in an ant colony, a continuous stream of men carrying bags of cement, sand and huge loads of bricks up the partially finished stairs, presumable for the construction of the thirteenth floor. On the whole large site there was not one crane or pulley system to transport material up to near the clouds.
My fascination with old travelers did not stay in Bangkok's Khao San. Already on the flight from Bangkok, in a super cheap Air Asia flight where the seats are so close together and narrow that normal sized people have to suck in breath and curl up to fit, it felt like a geriatric convention. Among Rangoon's tourists, even thought not numerous as in Bangkok, a fair number qualifies for inclusion in the graveyard-blond set. I had to revise my Khao San nostalgia traveler assumption. Here in Burma it is not likely many of oldies are repeat visitors - traveling in Burma during their younger years was not the thing to do - and very few did. It was difficult to obtain a visa and affordable tourist accommodations were rare. Also, Daw Aung San Suu Kui, the peace Nobel price winner who was placed under house arrest after she won an election, advised against visiting Burma. "I only fills the coffers of the ruling junta," she advised.
With a French woman, the only other western traveler on the bus, I shared a taxi from the out-in-the-boonies bus station into town. She is a grandmother, her children are independent of her. She hopes to find some local crafts to buy that she then can sell back home with a profit to help finance her travels. "What do I have to lose?", she said. With super cheap fares on airlines nobody ever heard of, food and lodging costing less than cigarettes at home, she stretches her French social security check as far as it might go - and that is way further here than at home.
Where do I fit into that picture? Right somewhere into the middle, I am afraid. Maybe a few of the observed senior frailties and peculiarities aren't burdening me as much as some others. In a Rangoon sidewalk eatery I observed one of the oldies pulling a roll of toilet paper out of her bag then cleaning with it her plate, chopsticks (which are disposables that have never been used and never will be used again) and tea glass. Also, I am not buying crafts for resale or stretch social security checks, but try to acquire exiting happenings to add to my store of worthwhile, memorable memories.
The toilet paper cleaning lady reminds me of a theory I came up with. No matter how strange it might seem to you, please bear with me - because in the end you just might agree.
When eating from street food venders, as I regularly do here in Asia, in Africa, South and Central America, in short, wherever they are, and if the food is cooked and served in dishes, don't look for the pristine, antiseptic-looking ones - unless you like your food to taste as if, before serving, it had been submerged in a swimming pool. Almost all street food venders have no access to running water. Even if clean running water was available by his or her stand it is not practicable. Vegetables, dishes, glasses, utensils, are all washed in a bucket of water under the stand - all day long.
Sounds terrible, right? Yes, but....
Some of those street chefs, "to do right by their customers", heavily chlorinate the water in which they wash food and dishes. As a result, offered fare gets that not so yummy swimming pool flavor. The alternative, if you want vegetables that taste like vegetables, fish taste like fish, meat like meat, is frequenting the less conscientious street establishments.
Before gasping think of what you are most likely exposed to if you eat in hotels or regular indoor restaurants. Food and dishes are washed in water that might also be questionable. Even if you adhere strictly to the edicts of careful travelers; never accepting local ice cubes, never eating salad, never drink, or even brush teeth with water from the faucet, you are not home free. Water, no matter it's quality, is everywhere, in everything, every day. You will be exposed to it no matter how much you try to avoid it. Even the bedding you sleep in has been washed in it, the local's hands you shake have the same bugs like the local water. You wash your hands - with what? You can't disinfect them forever, everywhere, every time.
The answer, according to yours truly, is immunization.
The locals survive the onslaught of local bacteria, even though their system is no better equipped than yours. Give your body a chance. Most likely, at home, your system is never exposed to the same internal flora and fauna you come in contact with while traveling in some regions of our planet.
Immunization, according to my non-medical expertise, is exposing the body to weakened or small amounts of agents that are liable to attack the system. That way, though a normal process, our internal biological laboratory is stimulated to produce antibodies. If your machinery was never exposed to these alien onslaughts, it has no capability to resist attacks.
David, a Canadian friend of mine in Paris lived that theory to an extreme. Whenever he bought a baguette sandwich he first placed it on the ground in the street, rolled it around a few times with his shoes while muttering: "It you don't eat a few of the buggers all the time you won't be able to resist them when they attack."
The solution, again according to my non-medical but plenty of empirical experience, is to accustom the system gradually to local conditions. First, brush teeth with water from the faucet, then advance to rinsing the mouth, have a drink with ice cubes, wash the dust off a fruit with local water, have a little salad, and soon, your immunization is complete.
My Mandalay contact from way back is out of town 'til tomorrow.
EMBARRASSING!!!!!
When I came back from the internet café the reception lady said a man had called, asking for me. Because I know absolutely nobody else in this town, I assumed it was Thar Aye, my old friend from Mandalay whom I had informed by email about my arrival. "He will call back at two PM", she said.
It was about eleven, plenty of time for the planned visit to Mandalay Hill, 1,729 steps up from the street entrance, to visit the tall golden (gold painted?) standing Buddha. I went to the foot of the hill by taxi because it is about seven kilometers from my hotel. On my return, as came into the hotel lobby, Thar jumped up from a seat, embraced me, then prostrated himself in front of me and - kissed my feet. They were really dirty from the long walk. I tried to pick up the sixty-year old man, I pleaded with him to stop, I pulled while he kept kissing my feet. Total embarrassment! When he finally got up, tears were streaming down his face. He kept holding on to me and had arranged for a photo studio to take pictures of the two of us.
If all that sounds strange to you, it no doubt is. It came about because what happened when we first met, about seventeen years before.
Emilie and I tried to get from Mandalay to Imphal in India's Manipur. That journey, then and now, was off limits to everyone from the outside since right after WW II. The Brits, with the help of hundreds of mules imported from South America, built that road during the war to get behind Japanese lines. The war was over before the road was completed. Since then, Nagas and Kukis, two former headhunting tribes in the region, are at war with each other and, neither Indians, nor Burmese would permit anyone getting through the area because lawlessness prevailed.
In order to find our way across that off-limit territory we needed a local assistant to help organize a transport elephant, or whatever else was needed to get through the jungle to India.
Enters Thar Aye, a trishaw driver we'd met at the Mandalay train station. He had a surprisingly huge store of English words, but a very limited capacity of speaking it. He explained how, when he was a Buddhist monk, he gave himself the task of learning a hundred English words a day for a hundred days. He did, but had practically no opportunity to use his knowledge for speaking - 'till he met us. I offered him a thousand dollars if we could make it to India with his help. He agreed and we left. In the last town officially accessible to us, Monywa, we found out that we were shadowed by the secret police. Had we succeeded in our quest for reaching India, Thar, as out facilitator, would have been dead meat at the hands of Burma's ruling junta. We abandoned our attempt and returned with him to Mandalay.
"Why?" I asked him, "why would you risk your life for a thousand dollars?"
"With that my children could get an education and that is more important than my life," he said.
Needless to say, I gave him the thousand dollars anyway.
Roll forwards fifteen years.
I was contacted by a man from White Plains near New York city.
"Are you Ernst Aebi who traveled once in Mandalay?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you met Thar Aye there?"
"Yes. What's that all about?"
"I am a travel agent and was in Mandalay to make contacts to organize trips. I met Thar, a travel guide. At his house is a photo of you, like on a shrine. He says that his children all have a wonderful education because of you, that he is a licensed travel guide because of you, he managed to buy a house because of you."
"Well applied thousand dollars," I thought.
When I returned from my East Africa trip last year, there was a letter in my huge pile of accumulated mail. It came from a couple in Manhattan's Upper Westside. It also stated that they hope I am the Ernst who once was in Mandalay and that I knew Thar Aye. Included was a handwritten letter from Thar. He explained how one son is now a computer programmer, one a dentist, one a doctor and his daughter is married to a jeweler - and that he lives now in his own house, all thanks to you (me), he wrote. He expressed a wish that some time soon I might come back to Mandalay.
That's what brought about the foot kissing.
We drove on his bike to the government information office to find out, first officially, which of the routes I might be allowed to take.
The one from Mandalay to Imphal, we were told, is okay to drive on but I was not allowed to go there because the Indians refuse entry. It is like a war zone over there. Thar confirmed that claim by the government lady. The road between the border town in India's Manipur, from Moeth to Imphal, is closed to regular traffic.
The Ledo road from Assam in India through Burma to China, in many parts does not exist anymore. It was built by US troops under general Stillwell, also called Vinegar Joe because of his demeanor, during WW II to resupply the Chinese in their fight against the Japanese.
That leaves the old Burma road that was also off limits for most of the last sixty years because of ethnic conflicts between the Burmese ruling junta and, I think the Karens.
"Maybe you get a permit," one of the five ladies behind the counter said.
"How do I know I get it?" I said.
"You apply now, pay one-hundred dollars and in two weeks you get answer."
"Then I can go?"
"No, you will need a car and an escort from Lashio to the border, one-hundred and fifty dollars," she said.
"One hundred here, one-hundred and fifty in Lashio?"
"Yes."
So, my options are:
* Road to Imphal, but no permission to get into India. With the road from the border to Imphal closed, even if I managed to crash that border, I'd have to walk about 150 kilometers through a war zone.
* Ledo road doesn't exist any more, but reconstruction is under way.
* The old Burma road, lame, with a government handler, but historically significant. I could try to avoid the government dude, but for what? Save two-hundred and fifty dollars? On a road I could (probably) take officially if I was willing to hand over two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.
I paid the initial hundred dollars and now I get two weeks of exploring other parts of Burma. I have heard of worse fate.
Friday, January 20, 2012
... 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.
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.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Bangkok Hum-Drum
I just made some birds homeless!
Copied as written in bird's nest for sale package.
The Thai bird's nests are extraordinary natural product that healers of the old school, and physicians have proved and endorsed that they are composed of many highly useful substances which nourish the lungs, kidneys, heart, stomach, and other internal organs, as well as heal the "excessive heat in the intestines, and other internal organs" relieve cough and phlegm, and regulate the blood circulation, the physical condition would be greatly rejuvenated with youthful vigor and freshness; it also helps to brighten mental faculties and give more radiance to the complexion.
Preparation:
First soak the shredded clean-dry bird's nest in the clean cool water for one hour to allow it to soften and swell, then take the bird's nest out and put it into a steaming vessel for stewing on a low fire for two hours. When the bird's nest becomes jelly like and tender, add sugar as required and keep it on the fire for a little while, then you will have the above mentioned priceless delicious food.
Alter natively (!) chicken soup stock can be used to make a very delicious bird's nest soup.
Now you know it too. I got this description in the bird's nest store/restaurant. Even though it is not specifically mentioned, it (the soup) looks like they cleaned out the bird poop before cooking up the nests. I never had it before and it tastes like nothing, no particular flavor, consistency, aroma, in short, nothing to write home about (and here I am doing it!)
But, short of simply becoming immortal, after having eaten that elixir of gods - may come what may - I'll never, ever get sick.
For the tidy sum (here in Bangkok, that is a lot for food!) of nine dollars I got a tiny bowl full (about the size of a small tea cup) of that mystery food. It was served with a raw egg, a couple of ginkgo berries, a little pitcher of honey and a bowl of ginseng tea.
Along the walls stood glass jars with dried bird's nests. Prices written on the jars ranged from an equivalent of 90 dollars to 900 dollars. I had no idea if that was per weight or by nest. The owner told me. It is for 38 grams (1.34 ounces). So, 1.34 ounces of a better quality bird's nest can put you back 900 dollars. The darker the nest were, the higher the price (does that mean the expensive ones are less washed?)
That magic potion, however, didn't prevent me from getting blisters on my feet. I walked about five hours in my new rubber flip-flops. It was totally worth it.
I have been to Bangkok's Chinatown before and it never looked even vaguely like that. Just like the Khao San backpacker ghetto, Chinatown has bulged and is busting in its seams. Either vastly more Chinese came here or, the ones already here had babies like crazy. The place is more densely populated than an anthill is anted, antelated(?). They sell authentic-looking AK-47 but they shoot only gas-powered BBs. There are more flip-flops on display than there are people on the planet able to wear them. Everything is in such an excess, the sight might make you dizzy. Way more than 90% of the stuff is simply useless junk, stuff that nobody ever needs, stuff one buys for presents, on impulse, or because of a shopaholic affliction. Once bought it gets put away, maybe dusted a few times, then discarded. Since two wrongs don't make one right it is no excuse that we in the US, or generally the "developed world" share the same idiotic habits.
I wonder how we, in the States or in Europe, are going to deal with the frightening phenomena of total gridlock and congestion as I see here. Bangkok's Chinatown could serve as a laboratory. The good news is, from the looks of it, they take it in stride. There are plenty of smiles even on people's faces whose bodies are about to be crushed. In areas of wall-wall humanity deliveries to stores still need to be made - and they are. It is inexplicable to me how not lots of feet, or at least toes, get crushed as pick-up trucks, and motorcycles with improbable loads squeeze through the mass of humanity.
A day later:
Last night I went people watching on one or Khao SAN's main drags, an activity I love almost everywhere, even in Walmart (if that didn't involve having to actually go there!) Not so long ago, a European with a smattering of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian - I mean just recognizing them by the sound would be enough - could have felt like a homebody anywhere international travelers congregated.
Fugetaboutit now!
The whole world is on the move. The former xenophobic Soviet Republic's masses haven been unleashed. Nationals of countries where obtaining simple sustenance took all their time and effort, have now become free to visit other shores. A place like Khao San could serve as an illustration of the biblical Tower of Babylon - with the saving grace that all in the milling crowd have a smattering knowledge of the international lingua franca, English. Maybe there is a benevolent god after all because the one who created the havoc in Babylon didn't offer that handy service.
Over a couple of bottles of Singha (the Thai beer that goes: One Sing-ha, two Sing-ha-ha, three Sing -ha-ha-ha!) I got into interesting conversations, one with an official of the UN, a Dutchman, stationed in Bangkok since seven years. What a job! I think he has just been forgotten by his superiors because he didn't seem to have much of an idea about what his duties were. At least he doesn't do any harm to anyone (according to him, they at the UN, not he, were working behind the scene for improving the Burmese junta's human rights record!). Why not live in Burma for that? I thought. But then, of course, Bangkok is much more pleasant than the new capital the (former) Burmese bozos had themselves built in the middle of nowhere, a place difficult to reach by the rest, and maybe restless, of the population - thus a place with a marked absence of interesting people.
The German I met later was much more interesting. A professional gemologist gem buyer, about sixty-years old, he has roamed the gem producing regions of northern Pakistan, Shri-Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, mostly as a backpacker, hence his presence in Khao San, in search of private, thus mostly illegal, miners.
The stories! We both managed to impress each other with recounting of our respective exploits on the planet. We ended up with a lot of ha-ha-ha. At a dollar a bottle, how could one go wrong.
I learned an interesting factoid about natural versus manufactured gem stones. For most of his buying journeys he carried a little portable laboratory; spectrometer, chemicals, microscope etc. etc. I didn't recognize even the names of some of the tools he described but some of what they unveiled fascinated me.
The difference between a manufactured gem and a natural one is in the impurities. The natural ones have blemishes, inclusions of other materials that impede brilliance, clarity, refraction or, what have you! The manufactured ones, even though, with the same chemical composition, are pure.
"Thus worthless, or worth less?" I asked.
"Yeap," he said with a sheepish grin.
"Wasn't it once the purer the better?" I said.
"Yeahhhh," he said.
This is yet another illustration of man's (woman's) gullibility, snobbism, or simply silliness? If it is rare it is worth more, or we desire it more, even if it is of inferior quality, less tasty, or less beautiful, or weaker, than readily available substitutes, or, in some cases even injurious; think bird's nests, shark fins, caviar, Limburger cheese, or, hitting the head with a hammer.
As for the before mentioned people watching, I keep being mesmerized. With Sing-ha-ha-ha I sit and stare at the great show of a never ending procession.
Two men, both tall and hefty, with shaven heads and reflecting sunglasses, one in a jungle green singlet that left his beefy, tattooed arms exposed, with grim features and brusque gestures, looked exactly as one would expect rough mercenaries to look like. They met a third, punched fists and started to talk. After a while one made the sign with his straight hand of slitting a throat, the two others repeated the gesture, they punched fists again, one left and the two went to a table across the ally from me and ordered food. As they sat on the tiny plastic stools both their spread legs start whipping vigorously. The table belongs to a street food seller that advertises vegetarian. One got an orange soda, the other a bottle of water. While they waited for their vegetarian meal, the bigger one got up from his tiny stool, rummaged in a garbage can, retrieved a styrofoam bowl, filled it with water from his bottle and brought it to one of the stray dogs in the ally.
Many of the passing foreign woman are achingly beautiful in their special exotic Khao San outfits, stuff few might wear on their home front. Tattoos these days are covering whole limbs and torsos. Many entwined pairs of women stroll by. It seems men with men have their own cruising grounds somewhere else, but transvestites add interesting colors to the mix. One, a really big guy with an Arnold Schwarzenegger upper body, veiled in pastel colored gossamer shrouds that left spandex shorts exposed tripled by in high heel stilettos. I wondered where he might have gotten his enormous sized lady's shoes.
It is strange to see the before mentioned nostalgia elders lugging bulging backpacks in their search for accommodations. Some, with their tottering gait, look like you might want to help them across the street even if they carried nothing. More so than their younger counterparts, they seem to have a permanent grin plastered to their faces.
Markedly absent in the passing mix are Thais. Except for the occasional man or woman hurrying by on the way home from their cooking, serving or massaging jobs, they are missing while only a short block away, on Phra Athit, a street parallel to my ally, many young Thais are lined up together with the foreigners for the inexpensive, but delicious noodle soups.
I had lunch today at a restaurant about a half hour away from the ghetto. I remember it from former visits for having the best roast duck. It offered also shark fin soup on the menu. After my malevolence with wild birds I stayed with duck.
Staying in Thailand for any length of time without having a massage would be like hanging out at Munich's Oktoberfest without drinking beer. The Khao San region is full of advertisements; foot, neck, head, whole body oil, or just the regular full body Thai massage. On my wanderings I often passed a hole in the wall with an advertisement for massage in the garden. Through the hole I saw a white pebbled path with black stepping stones, sort of like a Japanese rock garden, going through the building. Since I never was a fan of having my body kneaded I went there mostly out of curiosity; to find out what that garden in the middle of the city was all about. I opted for the full body Thai, even though I know from previous experiences that it is nothing short of torture.
The garden was beautiful, all white river stones with slate slab walks between potted plants. Baldachine-like tents, with massage tables inside, stood about. In a dressing room I put on a supplied lime green, loose fitting gown and then was led to a table - and that is when hell started.
A hefty, elderly woman tried to rip off my foot from my leg. Of course I would not let on that it hurt. I now realize this is a wrong reaction. The masseuse has to know she is getting to the body and if you don't let her know, yes, I feel it big time, she just tries harder. Hard and harder she tried, and more and more it hurt. I closed my eye tightly, concentrating on suffering in silence, not to appear like a wimp. I had requested the one hour treatment instead of the recommended two hour job. That was the only bright thought I had while being subjected to kneading, kneeing, elbowing and being walked/stomped around on. They could save a lot of man(woman)power by simply strapping customers on the rack then tightening the vices.
When it was over I was happy to notice I could still walk - sort of. Singha turned out to be a quick remedy.
Another, sort of massage, is also offered all over the place. Fish Treatment, they call it. When walking past one of those places with large, aquarium-like tanks full of little fish, I heard piercing screams. A young woman had just put her feet into one of the tanks and the sensation of the fish starting it nibble on her skin prompted the outburst.
Now, with the world's disgust about pig and chicken shit fed fish from Asian fish farms one can add to the list of local fish food - backpacker callouses.
I expect to have the Chinese visa by Tuesday evening, so, if all goes as planned, next Wednesday I'll be in Burma where the real trip begins.
Oh, I just remember another tidbit, a remarkable sight in Chinatown's Wat Traimit. The Buddha in that shrine is made of solid gold, 5.5 metric tons of it. Google tells me that 5.5 metric tons are 194,006.79 ounces. At almost 2,000 dollars an ounce that makes it a pretty valuable idol. Bill Gates, if he used up all his loot, could barely afford a hundred of them.
Copied as written in bird's nest for sale package.
The Thai bird's nests are extraordinary natural product that healers of the old school, and physicians have proved and endorsed that they are composed of many highly useful substances which nourish the lungs, kidneys, heart, stomach, and other internal organs, as well as heal the "excessive heat in the intestines, and other internal organs" relieve cough and phlegm, and regulate the blood circulation, the physical condition would be greatly rejuvenated with youthful vigor and freshness; it also helps to brighten mental faculties and give more radiance to the complexion.
Preparation:
First soak the shredded clean-dry bird's nest in the clean cool water for one hour to allow it to soften and swell, then take the bird's nest out and put it into a steaming vessel for stewing on a low fire for two hours. When the bird's nest becomes jelly like and tender, add sugar as required and keep it on the fire for a little while, then you will have the above mentioned priceless delicious food.
Alter natively (!) chicken soup stock can be used to make a very delicious bird's nest soup.
Now you know it too. I got this description in the bird's nest store/restaurant. Even though it is not specifically mentioned, it (the soup) looks like they cleaned out the bird poop before cooking up the nests. I never had it before and it tastes like nothing, no particular flavor, consistency, aroma, in short, nothing to write home about (and here I am doing it!)
But, short of simply becoming immortal, after having eaten that elixir of gods - may come what may - I'll never, ever get sick.
For the tidy sum (here in Bangkok, that is a lot for food!) of nine dollars I got a tiny bowl full (about the size of a small tea cup) of that mystery food. It was served with a raw egg, a couple of ginkgo berries, a little pitcher of honey and a bowl of ginseng tea.
Along the walls stood glass jars with dried bird's nests. Prices written on the jars ranged from an equivalent of 90 dollars to 900 dollars. I had no idea if that was per weight or by nest. The owner told me. It is for 38 grams (1.34 ounces). So, 1.34 ounces of a better quality bird's nest can put you back 900 dollars. The darker the nest were, the higher the price (does that mean the expensive ones are less washed?)
That magic potion, however, didn't prevent me from getting blisters on my feet. I walked about five hours in my new rubber flip-flops. It was totally worth it.
I have been to Bangkok's Chinatown before and it never looked even vaguely like that. Just like the Khao San backpacker ghetto, Chinatown has bulged and is busting in its seams. Either vastly more Chinese came here or, the ones already here had babies like crazy. The place is more densely populated than an anthill is anted, antelated(?). They sell authentic-looking AK-47 but they shoot only gas-powered BBs. There are more flip-flops on display than there are people on the planet able to wear them. Everything is in such an excess, the sight might make you dizzy. Way more than 90% of the stuff is simply useless junk, stuff that nobody ever needs, stuff one buys for presents, on impulse, or because of a shopaholic affliction. Once bought it gets put away, maybe dusted a few times, then discarded. Since two wrongs don't make one right it is no excuse that we in the US, or generally the "developed world" share the same idiotic habits.
I wonder how we, in the States or in Europe, are going to deal with the frightening phenomena of total gridlock and congestion as I see here. Bangkok's Chinatown could serve as a laboratory. The good news is, from the looks of it, they take it in stride. There are plenty of smiles even on people's faces whose bodies are about to be crushed. In areas of wall-wall humanity deliveries to stores still need to be made - and they are. It is inexplicable to me how not lots of feet, or at least toes, get crushed as pick-up trucks, and motorcycles with improbable loads squeeze through the mass of humanity.
A day later:
Last night I went people watching on one or Khao SAN's main drags, an activity I love almost everywhere, even in Walmart (if that didn't involve having to actually go there!) Not so long ago, a European with a smattering of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian - I mean just recognizing them by the sound would be enough - could have felt like a homebody anywhere international travelers congregated.
Fugetaboutit now!
The whole world is on the move. The former xenophobic Soviet Republic's masses haven been unleashed. Nationals of countries where obtaining simple sustenance took all their time and effort, have now become free to visit other shores. A place like Khao San could serve as an illustration of the biblical Tower of Babylon - with the saving grace that all in the milling crowd have a smattering knowledge of the international lingua franca, English. Maybe there is a benevolent god after all because the one who created the havoc in Babylon didn't offer that handy service.
Over a couple of bottles of Singha (the Thai beer that goes: One Sing-ha, two Sing-ha-ha, three Sing -ha-ha-ha!) I got into interesting conversations, one with an official of the UN, a Dutchman, stationed in Bangkok since seven years. What a job! I think he has just been forgotten by his superiors because he didn't seem to have much of an idea about what his duties were. At least he doesn't do any harm to anyone (according to him, they at the UN, not he, were working behind the scene for improving the Burmese junta's human rights record!). Why not live in Burma for that? I thought. But then, of course, Bangkok is much more pleasant than the new capital the (former) Burmese bozos had themselves built in the middle of nowhere, a place difficult to reach by the rest, and maybe restless, of the population - thus a place with a marked absence of interesting people.
The German I met later was much more interesting. A professional gemologist gem buyer, about sixty-years old, he has roamed the gem producing regions of northern Pakistan, Shri-Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, mostly as a backpacker, hence his presence in Khao San, in search of private, thus mostly illegal, miners.
The stories! We both managed to impress each other with recounting of our respective exploits on the planet. We ended up with a lot of ha-ha-ha. At a dollar a bottle, how could one go wrong.
I learned an interesting factoid about natural versus manufactured gem stones. For most of his buying journeys he carried a little portable laboratory; spectrometer, chemicals, microscope etc. etc. I didn't recognize even the names of some of the tools he described but some of what they unveiled fascinated me.
The difference between a manufactured gem and a natural one is in the impurities. The natural ones have blemishes, inclusions of other materials that impede brilliance, clarity, refraction or, what have you! The manufactured ones, even though, with the same chemical composition, are pure.
"Thus worthless, or worth less?" I asked.
"Yeap," he said with a sheepish grin.
"Wasn't it once the purer the better?" I said.
"Yeahhhh," he said.
This is yet another illustration of man's (woman's) gullibility, snobbism, or simply silliness? If it is rare it is worth more, or we desire it more, even if it is of inferior quality, less tasty, or less beautiful, or weaker, than readily available substitutes, or, in some cases even injurious; think bird's nests, shark fins, caviar, Limburger cheese, or, hitting the head with a hammer.
As for the before mentioned people watching, I keep being mesmerized. With Sing-ha-ha-ha I sit and stare at the great show of a never ending procession.
Two men, both tall and hefty, with shaven heads and reflecting sunglasses, one in a jungle green singlet that left his beefy, tattooed arms exposed, with grim features and brusque gestures, looked exactly as one would expect rough mercenaries to look like. They met a third, punched fists and started to talk. After a while one made the sign with his straight hand of slitting a throat, the two others repeated the gesture, they punched fists again, one left and the two went to a table across the ally from me and ordered food. As they sat on the tiny plastic stools both their spread legs start whipping vigorously. The table belongs to a street food seller that advertises vegetarian. One got an orange soda, the other a bottle of water. While they waited for their vegetarian meal, the bigger one got up from his tiny stool, rummaged in a garbage can, retrieved a styrofoam bowl, filled it with water from his bottle and brought it to one of the stray dogs in the ally.
Many of the passing foreign woman are achingly beautiful in their special exotic Khao San outfits, stuff few might wear on their home front. Tattoos these days are covering whole limbs and torsos. Many entwined pairs of women stroll by. It seems men with men have their own cruising grounds somewhere else, but transvestites add interesting colors to the mix. One, a really big guy with an Arnold Schwarzenegger upper body, veiled in pastel colored gossamer shrouds that left spandex shorts exposed tripled by in high heel stilettos. I wondered where he might have gotten his enormous sized lady's shoes.
It is strange to see the before mentioned nostalgia elders lugging bulging backpacks in their search for accommodations. Some, with their tottering gait, look like you might want to help them across the street even if they carried nothing. More so than their younger counterparts, they seem to have a permanent grin plastered to their faces.
Markedly absent in the passing mix are Thais. Except for the occasional man or woman hurrying by on the way home from their cooking, serving or massaging jobs, they are missing while only a short block away, on Phra Athit, a street parallel to my ally, many young Thais are lined up together with the foreigners for the inexpensive, but delicious noodle soups.
I had lunch today at a restaurant about a half hour away from the ghetto. I remember it from former visits for having the best roast duck. It offered also shark fin soup on the menu. After my malevolence with wild birds I stayed with duck.
Staying in Thailand for any length of time without having a massage would be like hanging out at Munich's Oktoberfest without drinking beer. The Khao San region is full of advertisements; foot, neck, head, whole body oil, or just the regular full body Thai massage. On my wanderings I often passed a hole in the wall with an advertisement for massage in the garden. Through the hole I saw a white pebbled path with black stepping stones, sort of like a Japanese rock garden, going through the building. Since I never was a fan of having my body kneaded I went there mostly out of curiosity; to find out what that garden in the middle of the city was all about. I opted for the full body Thai, even though I know from previous experiences that it is nothing short of torture.
The garden was beautiful, all white river stones with slate slab walks between potted plants. Baldachine-like tents, with massage tables inside, stood about. In a dressing room I put on a supplied lime green, loose fitting gown and then was led to a table - and that is when hell started.
A hefty, elderly woman tried to rip off my foot from my leg. Of course I would not let on that it hurt. I now realize this is a wrong reaction. The masseuse has to know she is getting to the body and if you don't let her know, yes, I feel it big time, she just tries harder. Hard and harder she tried, and more and more it hurt. I closed my eye tightly, concentrating on suffering in silence, not to appear like a wimp. I had requested the one hour treatment instead of the recommended two hour job. That was the only bright thought I had while being subjected to kneading, kneeing, elbowing and being walked/stomped around on. They could save a lot of man(woman)power by simply strapping customers on the rack then tightening the vices.
When it was over I was happy to notice I could still walk - sort of. Singha turned out to be a quick remedy.
Another, sort of massage, is also offered all over the place. Fish Treatment, they call it. When walking past one of those places with large, aquarium-like tanks full of little fish, I heard piercing screams. A young woman had just put her feet into one of the tanks and the sensation of the fish starting it nibble on her skin prompted the outburst.
Now, with the world's disgust about pig and chicken shit fed fish from Asian fish farms one can add to the list of local fish food - backpacker callouses.
I expect to have the Chinese visa by Tuesday evening, so, if all goes as planned, next Wednesday I'll be in Burma where the real trip begins.
Oh, I just remember another tidbit, a remarkable sight in Chinatown's Wat Traimit. The Buddha in that shrine is made of solid gold, 5.5 metric tons of it. Google tells me that 5.5 metric tons are 194,006.79 ounces. At almost 2,000 dollars an ounce that makes it a pretty valuable idol. Bill Gates, if he used up all his loot, could barely afford a hundred of them.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Visa hassles, but I love them, keeps me longer in Bankok
Looking around in New Merry's bar, it becomes obvious that this is a particularly popular hangout for the previously mentioned nostalgia-challenged Kaho San population. Unlike in the rest of the local backpacker ghetto crowd, a good portion of the New Merry guests are of the graveyard-blond set. That might be because this guesthouse is one of the older haunts - it looks it too - and thus a bunch of us oldies are repeat guests, trying to re-create the lusty times of yesteryear, a vastly different era in our lives. Some might have been here in their hippy years - quite a few of them have that, je ne sais quoi, former hippy aura, timid little signs of rebellion against standard rules, like wearing a necktie over a T-shirt, or a puny ponytail made of a few strands of thinning hair. Some of the women have multiple earrings per ear, hefty necklaces made of wood, shells with voluminous pendants engraved with Buddha images, evil eyes, clumps of turquoise framed in silver, all the stuff that used to be the rage in their days. Some also sport tattoos, now pretty much faded. Their designs are also smaller than today's ubiquitous body covering creations. Alas, those once free spirits got married, had kids, slaved away at jobs, had bosses, pay checks, car payments, parent-teacher meetings, soccer practice, dental and doctor appointments - some not only for the children but, as of late, also for their implants or dentures.
Many of them could easily stay in upscale, starred hotels, but now, as they have become grandparents and thicker around the waist, and as mentioned, men's hair gotten thinner - or non-existent and women's hair don't flow so freely and carefree anymore, they remember the good old times, the times before they were second hand, also rans. Retracing their youthful journeys, they are naturally drawn back to their old haunts like the New Merry.
Ooooops! Got emailed questions about certain colored light districts in Bangkok.
That is a delicate subject,
Since .....
My children might worry that their children, my grand children, who might read the blog, would get a wrong impression about their grandfather.
In some ways I'd like to say Doodle Pip!
.... but I refrain from telling anyway because I grant them their right of having their fully expected prudish opinions (I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't).
As for my blog photo woes, they still woe. After trying, experimenting, trying again, endless fidgeting, swearing, moaning, all to get pictures from the camera into the blog, I gave up and went to ask a pretty, very young (an absolute requirement for IT competency - I think it is a generational thing!) girl. She tried almost as long and intensively as I had and finally assured me that I am not a complete dolt. She couldn't do it either.
She sent me to Bangkok's digital shopping center, a one-acre per floor, five-story building with nothing but electronic stores, a gazillion miles away from New Merry V. Along the way in a taxi, once more new Bangkok vistas opened up. This time we crossed a few bridges.
Lo and behold, one of the Bangkok IT wizards in the IT heaven found out that New York's B&H IT wizard had sold me a bill of goods, a wrong connection cable. With that knowledge there is now less worry about my digital adroitness - at least in my mind!
So, if yours truly manages to figure out my new camera so that pictures don't turn out blurry (even though the camera is programmed to operate on fully automatic), there might be the occasional picture in the blog.
My extensive taxi rides bring up yet another New York analogy. If you were to take a taxi, two times up and two times down, let's say from West Broadway and West Huston to West 86th street, unless it was Sunday morning or any night at four AM when there is absolutely no traffic, the ride would always be the same, Westside highway to the closest exit of 86th street and vice versa. During off traffic times some driver might go down Broadway.
In Bangkok drivers play to a different tune. I've been up twice and down twice to the Myanmar embassy and got an incredibly diverse view of the city. The only invariable was omnipresent gilded temples. On every route we passed oodles of them.
As mentioned before, with every driver I needed to negotiate a price for the trip. If I offered less than the equivalent of six dollars, he invariable drove off. Returning from the Myanmar embassy the last time a driver pointed to the meter when I asked the price to start the negotiating process. Even though the traffic was heavier than on previous trips, the metered price was, instead of the regular six, a tad less than three dollars. I gave him a hefty tip to reward him for honesty.
The line for Myanmar visa pick up was enormous but it went fast. I now have the Burmese passport entry.
Back in the ghetto I went to one of the agents advertising visas for China. For roughly two-hundred-and-ten dollars, plus a plane ticket to and from the country, plus hotel reservations in China I could have the visa in three days, she said.
Bummer! Whichever route I plan to take, none would involve an airplane. A hotel reservation for a certain day, with my intended way to travel, is a joke. The agent assured me I would not have to take the flight nor did I have to go to the reserved hotel. As for paying these things, they are only pro-forma, I'd only pay a handling fee. It shows there are many ways of skinning a cat.
One instance in my travels tells me there is something to the visa proposition here. When we planned to get into Tibet illegally by crossing over the Himalayas in an uninhabited region, at an uncontrolled border, also the source of Brahmaputra, we got such a Chinese visa with pro-forma travel arrangement from Kathmandu. It helped a lot when the Chinese authorities caught up with us in the wilds of Tibet without having checked into the country.
The difference now is that I don't know if I'll end up in India or in China. The original intended route ends up in India.
I'll soon post my decision. Stay tuned (if you care to know!)
The bug snacks should help unblocking writer 's block while writing blogs.
That house looks very much like the one I lived in during my 1960 Bangkok stay. In the back was the swamp with the wooden causeway by which one could reach the (dirt) road.
These are some of the mentioned nostalgia visitors to the backpacker ghetto. I asked permission to take the picture and told them what it was for.
Exactly as guessed, one said 1970 was the first time for him. The others all came a bit later, but for each it is a repeat visit.
MANGOSTENE, the delicious queen of fruits, even though not pretty to look at.
Queen Victoria had heard about how yummy they are. She offered knighthood to whoever could bring her one to England. None of her brave subjects got the coveted back slap with a sword. Apparently Mangostenes don't travel well.
Here they are easy to get, you just buy them from a street vendor.
Street view from a tuck-tuck. Taxis in town are in such weird colors that no owner in his right mind would have a private car like that. Thus, taxis are easy to locate.
Nowadays they are metered but, at least for a foreigner like yours truly, they refuse to go metered. Every time I insisted, the driver took off. So, still as it always was, before every trip there is a (good natured) bargaining session.
As you can see, I have not mastered the formatting for picture with text. Until I get that right, you'll just have to figure out what caption goes to what picture. If anyone can send instructions, it would be greatly appreciated. My IT person here seems also lost.
Many of them could easily stay in upscale, starred hotels, but now, as they have become grandparents and thicker around the waist, and as mentioned, men's hair gotten thinner - or non-existent and women's hair don't flow so freely and carefree anymore, they remember the good old times, the times before they were second hand, also rans. Retracing their youthful journeys, they are naturally drawn back to their old haunts like the New Merry.
Ooooops! Got emailed questions about certain colored light districts in Bangkok.
That is a delicate subject,
Since .....
My children might worry that their children, my grand children, who might read the blog, would get a wrong impression about their grandfather.
In some ways I'd like to say Doodle Pip!
.... but I refrain from telling anyway because I grant them their right of having their fully expected prudish opinions (I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't).
As for my blog photo woes, they still woe. After trying, experimenting, trying again, endless fidgeting, swearing, moaning, all to get pictures from the camera into the blog, I gave up and went to ask a pretty, very young (an absolute requirement for IT competency - I think it is a generational thing!) girl. She tried almost as long and intensively as I had and finally assured me that I am not a complete dolt. She couldn't do it either.
She sent me to Bangkok's digital shopping center, a one-acre per floor, five-story building with nothing but electronic stores, a gazillion miles away from New Merry V. Along the way in a taxi, once more new Bangkok vistas opened up. This time we crossed a few bridges.
Lo and behold, one of the Bangkok IT wizards in the IT heaven found out that New York's B&H IT wizard had sold me a bill of goods, a wrong connection cable. With that knowledge there is now less worry about my digital adroitness - at least in my mind!
So, if yours truly manages to figure out my new camera so that pictures don't turn out blurry (even though the camera is programmed to operate on fully automatic), there might be the occasional picture in the blog.
My extensive taxi rides bring up yet another New York analogy. If you were to take a taxi, two times up and two times down, let's say from West Broadway and West Huston to West 86th street, unless it was Sunday morning or any night at four AM when there is absolutely no traffic, the ride would always be the same, Westside highway to the closest exit of 86th street and vice versa. During off traffic times some driver might go down Broadway.
In Bangkok drivers play to a different tune. I've been up twice and down twice to the Myanmar embassy and got an incredibly diverse view of the city. The only invariable was omnipresent gilded temples. On every route we passed oodles of them.
As mentioned before, with every driver I needed to negotiate a price for the trip. If I offered less than the equivalent of six dollars, he invariable drove off. Returning from the Myanmar embassy the last time a driver pointed to the meter when I asked the price to start the negotiating process. Even though the traffic was heavier than on previous trips, the metered price was, instead of the regular six, a tad less than three dollars. I gave him a hefty tip to reward him for honesty.
The line for Myanmar visa pick up was enormous but it went fast. I now have the Burmese passport entry.
Back in the ghetto I went to one of the agents advertising visas for China. For roughly two-hundred-and-ten dollars, plus a plane ticket to and from the country, plus hotel reservations in China I could have the visa in three days, she said.
Bummer! Whichever route I plan to take, none would involve an airplane. A hotel reservation for a certain day, with my intended way to travel, is a joke. The agent assured me I would not have to take the flight nor did I have to go to the reserved hotel. As for paying these things, they are only pro-forma, I'd only pay a handling fee. It shows there are many ways of skinning a cat.
One instance in my travels tells me there is something to the visa proposition here. When we planned to get into Tibet illegally by crossing over the Himalayas in an uninhabited region, at an uncontrolled border, also the source of Brahmaputra, we got such a Chinese visa with pro-forma travel arrangement from Kathmandu. It helped a lot when the Chinese authorities caught up with us in the wilds of Tibet without having checked into the country.
The difference now is that I don't know if I'll end up in India or in China. The original intended route ends up in India.
I'll soon post my decision. Stay tuned (if you care to know!)
The bug snacks should help unblocking writer 's block while writing blogs.
That house looks very much like the one I lived in during my 1960 Bangkok stay. In the back was the swamp with the wooden causeway by which one could reach the (dirt) road.
These are some of the mentioned nostalgia visitors to the backpacker ghetto. I asked permission to take the picture and told them what it was for.
Exactly as guessed, one said 1970 was the first time for him. The others all came a bit later, but for each it is a repeat visit.
MANGOSTENE, the delicious queen of fruits, even though not pretty to look at.
Queen Victoria had heard about how yummy they are. She offered knighthood to whoever could bring her one to England. None of her brave subjects got the coveted back slap with a sword. Apparently Mangostenes don't travel well.
Here they are easy to get, you just buy them from a street vendor.
Street view from a tuck-tuck. Taxis in town are in such weird colors that no owner in his right mind would have a private car like that. Thus, taxis are easy to locate.
Nowadays they are metered but, at least for a foreigner like yours truly, they refuse to go metered. Every time I insisted, the driver took off. So, still as it always was, before every trip there is a (good natured) bargaining session.
As you can see, I have not mastered the formatting for picture with text. Until I get that right, you'll just have to figure out what caption goes to what picture. If anyone can send instructions, it would be greatly appreciated. My IT person here seems also lost.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Bureaucrats In Paradise
Bangkok, January 10, 2012
,
The only thing that hasn't changed for me in Bangkok since 1960 is my total feel good about this special nook of our planet.
1960, escaping from a hepatitis quarantine in Calcutta, another long story, I ended up in Bangkok via Rangoon. Even though I had made serious money on my round-the-world trip up to then, in Beirut (belly dancing), Damascus (decorating in an international fair), Izmir (same as Damascus), Kabul (selling a car I had bought cheaply in Turkey) and Delhi (selling gold coins for a lot more than I had paid for them in Turkey), I was totally broke on account of a Calcutta hospital stay.
My home in Bangkok, for about two months, was a shack on stilts reached by a wooden causeway over a swamp.
Years ago, on a previous visit, I tried to find the place but that swamp, in walking distance from the imperial palace, was paved over between tall buildings. This temporary home of mine must have been a precursor of today's backpacker guesthouses. There were no backpackers then but the shack's inhabitants were their equivalent. Brian, according to his words, an escapee from Eaton and overly demanding parents, helped me with my reading of my first novel in English. It was Kipling's Jungle Book, but I remember nothing besides, I think, a pet mongoose saving a little boy by killing a cobra. There were a few sailors who had jumped ship, or missed its departure. One, a tall, hefty, red-haired Dutch man, claimed to be a refugee from Japanese police, after a Tokyo jewel heist. He was a flaming gay and always had some young Thai boys around him, most of the time sitting on his enormous lap.
I made a reasonable living with temple fresco rubbings. I'd bought pieces of black silk and gold bronze paste. With lengths of split bamboo I wedged the silk over stone frescos then rubbed gold bronze over the protruding sculptures. Those rubbings sold. well to tourists, at least to keep me amply supplied with orange soda, the hepatitis medication recommended by my Calcutta doctor. There was never enough for answering the siren song of pretty girls who patrolled the streets in the back of bicycle rickshaws.
Last night was the first time I stayed in a regular, starred Bangkok hotel. I had made reservation for it on account of my very late arrival from Seoul. Despite a fancy bathroom, TV, AC, and mini bar, I was happy this morning to get into the backpacker ghetto of Kaho San.
Here, in an old haunt I knew from before, New Merry V, I have a room with bed, little plastic table, chair, bathroom which is a toilet bowl in the shower stall, ceiling fan. I have to have my own towel, soap and toilet paper (which I can't keep by the toilet because, as mentioned, it is also the shower). When leaving the room I look it with my own padlock, the one from my luggage. Still, even though it is probably not really needed, I chain my luggage to the table. Instead of the 200$ in the other hotel, the present deluxe digs (deluxe because of en-suite bathroom) cost the princely sum of 12$ a night.
As for the backpacker ghetto, Banglamphu, also called for its main drag, Kaho San, wow!!! There must have been a worldwide backpacker population explosion. The few streets in the neighborhood that were populated by these young travelers and the Thai catering to all their needs, have multiplied by a factor of, whatever .... but a lot. There is nothing one can not buy, eat, drink, experience, hear or see. One sign says: One suit, one shirt, one silk tie, one clothes bag, one hanger, choice of Armani or Hugo Boss label, 50 €. I had a foot and neck massage on a well padded deck chair in the street. The masseur, a man!, was at true sadist and I must have been a masochist to let him maul me the way he did. His painful ministration didn't prevent me right after from having two bowls of noodle soup, 30 cents US per bowl. Sitting with a Singha, the local beer, in the street I noticed among the young milling crowds quite a few silver foxes, the people in my age group with graveyard-blond hair. They must be, I reasoned, like me, folk who had loved this place when they were young and now came back for a nostalgic encore.
One thing strangely absent with all the young people around are the smart phones. They actually sit with their beers, juices, coffee, tea, food in outdoor establishments and talk with each other instead of texting. Apparently their home country servers don't do their thing for them here.
There are now even more places that offer cheap flights to everywhere, visas to all places, even Hotdogstan - except to Myanmar. For that they can't serve you. Applicants for Myanmar visas need to present themselves to the embassy in person.
A valuable advice to parents with children that are still at an age when they create acida for their elders because of upcoming college expenses. Here, in the streets you can, besides ID for whatever you can think of, get a Harvard diploma for roughly two dollars.
Also, Bangkok is debunking a prevailing USA fear of black mold. With the recent floods many surfaces are covered with that stuff and nobody seems to care. At least, the population looks as healthy as any other I know.
Now I'll go to the Myanmar embassy.
Evening, same day.
Myanmar seems to be as desirable a place too go to as the US. The line of visa applicants in the street outside the embassy is as long as any in front of a US consulate anywhere in the world - or is it only the intractable bureaucracy of either place that is the same? At any rate, I arrived at the front of my line after about two hours, only to be given application forms. Filled out forms in hand, I eventually made it to the front of another line, where, having reached the window, just before handing in the forms, I saw another sign informing me that I also needed a photocopy of the application to hand in with the original. Thanks to a lenient bureaucrat behind the window, the lady made me a copy for 15 cents (US equivalent). I waited (on provided chairs) about an hour then was called to another window where I was told to come back two days later to pick up that desired entry in my passport.
Among a multitude of other information about myself, the application required me to list all my employments for the last ten years. I was tempted to write in that I was married during that time but then, afraid of other delays, I wrote "retired".
Imagine New York with Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, all tied up together without any separations by rivers and harbor expanses. The layout is not a neatly divided grid of avenues and streets but a jumble of random angles of tiny alleys, regular streets, wide boulevards and elevated highways, sometimes several stories high. Then imagine an additional cool million of inhabitants. Then imagine a vast majority living in two or three story buildings.... You got Bangkok!
From where I am staying in the Khao San area, to the Myanmar embassy it is a roughly one-hour taxi ride (no worries about cost, I managed to negotiate a flat six-dollar fee, both for going and coming). Each taxi driver considered himself a wise guy who knows how to avoid the Bangkok traffic nightmare. Each squeezed through narrow alleys then zigzagged between other road users on wide boulevards between super modern cloud-scratching office towers. Instead of chocking vehicular congestion we got into chocking vegetable cart and street peddler congestion. I tried to guess by the sun in which direction we were heading. It was a wind rose heading, east, west, south, north, in wild succession. The second driver, an old man with but one black tooth in the font of his mouth, tried to be a helpful tourist guide, pointing out all sights we passed. Problem is, he prattled everything non-stop in Thai, so I am none the wiser for it.
The short of this story is: Bangkok is huge.s
Since I'll be here for another while (I also need a visa for China, the Indian I made in New York), you are condemned to get some more Bangkok dribble. Sorry, I promised exciting news of an exiting journey and now this!
Vivere pericolosamente - and reporting about it - will have to wait.
,
The only thing that hasn't changed for me in Bangkok since 1960 is my total feel good about this special nook of our planet.
1960, escaping from a hepatitis quarantine in Calcutta, another long story, I ended up in Bangkok via Rangoon. Even though I had made serious money on my round-the-world trip up to then, in Beirut (belly dancing), Damascus (decorating in an international fair), Izmir (same as Damascus), Kabul (selling a car I had bought cheaply in Turkey) and Delhi (selling gold coins for a lot more than I had paid for them in Turkey), I was totally broke on account of a Calcutta hospital stay.
My home in Bangkok, for about two months, was a shack on stilts reached by a wooden causeway over a swamp.
Years ago, on a previous visit, I tried to find the place but that swamp, in walking distance from the imperial palace, was paved over between tall buildings. This temporary home of mine must have been a precursor of today's backpacker guesthouses. There were no backpackers then but the shack's inhabitants were their equivalent. Brian, according to his words, an escapee from Eaton and overly demanding parents, helped me with my reading of my first novel in English. It was Kipling's Jungle Book, but I remember nothing besides, I think, a pet mongoose saving a little boy by killing a cobra. There were a few sailors who had jumped ship, or missed its departure. One, a tall, hefty, red-haired Dutch man, claimed to be a refugee from Japanese police, after a Tokyo jewel heist. He was a flaming gay and always had some young Thai boys around him, most of the time sitting on his enormous lap.
I made a reasonable living with temple fresco rubbings. I'd bought pieces of black silk and gold bronze paste. With lengths of split bamboo I wedged the silk over stone frescos then rubbed gold bronze over the protruding sculptures. Those rubbings sold. well to tourists, at least to keep me amply supplied with orange soda, the hepatitis medication recommended by my Calcutta doctor. There was never enough for answering the siren song of pretty girls who patrolled the streets in the back of bicycle rickshaws.
Last night was the first time I stayed in a regular, starred Bangkok hotel. I had made reservation for it on account of my very late arrival from Seoul. Despite a fancy bathroom, TV, AC, and mini bar, I was happy this morning to get into the backpacker ghetto of Kaho San.
Here, in an old haunt I knew from before, New Merry V, I have a room with bed, little plastic table, chair, bathroom which is a toilet bowl in the shower stall, ceiling fan. I have to have my own towel, soap and toilet paper (which I can't keep by the toilet because, as mentioned, it is also the shower). When leaving the room I look it with my own padlock, the one from my luggage. Still, even though it is probably not really needed, I chain my luggage to the table. Instead of the 200$ in the other hotel, the present deluxe digs (deluxe because of en-suite bathroom) cost the princely sum of 12$ a night.
As for the backpacker ghetto, Banglamphu, also called for its main drag, Kaho San, wow!!! There must have been a worldwide backpacker population explosion. The few streets in the neighborhood that were populated by these young travelers and the Thai catering to all their needs, have multiplied by a factor of, whatever .... but a lot. There is nothing one can not buy, eat, drink, experience, hear or see. One sign says: One suit, one shirt, one silk tie, one clothes bag, one hanger, choice of Armani or Hugo Boss label, 50 €. I had a foot and neck massage on a well padded deck chair in the street. The masseur, a man!, was at true sadist and I must have been a masochist to let him maul me the way he did. His painful ministration didn't prevent me right after from having two bowls of noodle soup, 30 cents US per bowl. Sitting with a Singha, the local beer, in the street I noticed among the young milling crowds quite a few silver foxes, the people in my age group with graveyard-blond hair. They must be, I reasoned, like me, folk who had loved this place when they were young and now came back for a nostalgic encore.
One thing strangely absent with all the young people around are the smart phones. They actually sit with their beers, juices, coffee, tea, food in outdoor establishments and talk with each other instead of texting. Apparently their home country servers don't do their thing for them here.
There are now even more places that offer cheap flights to everywhere, visas to all places, even Hotdogstan - except to Myanmar. For that they can't serve you. Applicants for Myanmar visas need to present themselves to the embassy in person.
A valuable advice to parents with children that are still at an age when they create acida for their elders because of upcoming college expenses. Here, in the streets you can, besides ID for whatever you can think of, get a Harvard diploma for roughly two dollars.
Also, Bangkok is debunking a prevailing USA fear of black mold. With the recent floods many surfaces are covered with that stuff and nobody seems to care. At least, the population looks as healthy as any other I know.
Now I'll go to the Myanmar embassy.
Evening, same day.
Myanmar seems to be as desirable a place too go to as the US. The line of visa applicants in the street outside the embassy is as long as any in front of a US consulate anywhere in the world - or is it only the intractable bureaucracy of either place that is the same? At any rate, I arrived at the front of my line after about two hours, only to be given application forms. Filled out forms in hand, I eventually made it to the front of another line, where, having reached the window, just before handing in the forms, I saw another sign informing me that I also needed a photocopy of the application to hand in with the original. Thanks to a lenient bureaucrat behind the window, the lady made me a copy for 15 cents (US equivalent). I waited (on provided chairs) about an hour then was called to another window where I was told to come back two days later to pick up that desired entry in my passport.
Among a multitude of other information about myself, the application required me to list all my employments for the last ten years. I was tempted to write in that I was married during that time but then, afraid of other delays, I wrote "retired".
Imagine New York with Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, all tied up together without any separations by rivers and harbor expanses. The layout is not a neatly divided grid of avenues and streets but a jumble of random angles of tiny alleys, regular streets, wide boulevards and elevated highways, sometimes several stories high. Then imagine an additional cool million of inhabitants. Then imagine a vast majority living in two or three story buildings.... You got Bangkok!
From where I am staying in the Khao San area, to the Myanmar embassy it is a roughly one-hour taxi ride (no worries about cost, I managed to negotiate a flat six-dollar fee, both for going and coming). Each taxi driver considered himself a wise guy who knows how to avoid the Bangkok traffic nightmare. Each squeezed through narrow alleys then zigzagged between other road users on wide boulevards between super modern cloud-scratching office towers. Instead of chocking vehicular congestion we got into chocking vegetable cart and street peddler congestion. I tried to guess by the sun in which direction we were heading. It was a wind rose heading, east, west, south, north, in wild succession. The second driver, an old man with but one black tooth in the font of his mouth, tried to be a helpful tourist guide, pointing out all sights we passed. Problem is, he prattled everything non-stop in Thai, so I am none the wiser for it.
The short of this story is: Bangkok is huge.s
Since I'll be here for another while (I also need a visa for China, the Indian I made in New York), you are condemned to get some more Bangkok dribble. Sorry, I promised exciting news of an exiting journey and now this!
Vivere pericolosamente - and reporting about it - will have to wait.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Adventure for a soul with IT angst in Seoul
Looking for adventure? Seoul, South Korea is not the place - unless getting lost in a cyber world counts - or maybe finding your way in an underground labyrinth - or hopping in tropical clothing over frozen snow piles.
On my way from the Big Apple to Bangkok I made a stopover in Seoul because I've never been in South Korea. In 1960 I tried to get from Peking (as Pejing was then called in English) to North Korea but that didn't pan out because of Chinese bureaucracy.
Of course I knew Seoul is not in the tropics when I packed my carry on, but I didn't expect a serious cold spell that makes me now walk the city swaddled in two T-shirts, and two shirts under my bush jacket.
About getting lost in the cyber world, that started with my first visit to a toilet. When it came to the point of pulling paper off a roll, all I saw was a control panel with twelve options on little images with instructions in Korean writing. I pushed something with an image of a fan - and got my behind fanned. In the end, after getting washed where the toilet paper would have been in action, first with water way too hot, then with a stream so strong it practically lifted me off the (heated) toilet seat, I got dried by the fan and was allowed to leave. As soon as I got off my seat the contraption flushed automatically.
The menu in the hotel bar is in an iPad. For many people, also one of my brothers, it might as well mean prohibition and famine. Without help he won't be able to chose anything. Only a year ago the same would have happened to me a total newcomer to finer IT points like flipping pages by finger stroking an iPad screen — never mind about turning it on.
I got into the underground labyrinth when I went to explore the city. I saw only very few pedestrians, strange for such a big metropolis, I thought. When I tried to cross a wide street with a continuous stream of traffic, and no pedestrian crossings, I noticed stairs that went down. An underpass I thought. It probably was, but not the expected straight job in the direction of the other street side. I had entered a bustling population center with stores, eateries and the crowds one would expect in a large city. I never made it to the other side. I wandered, looked and wandered some more with no idea as to whether I went Nort, South, Eeast or West. When I came up into daylight I had not the foggiest idea where I was in relation to my hotel. I went underground again found a store that sold city maps, went up, re-oriented and was saved.
After that I decided to do it the New York way, jay walk. After the third or fourth New York style street crossing, the law caught up with me. Two police officers, a female and a male, took me by the arm and led me - to jail? Not jail, but the labyrinth. They led me downstairs and pointed me in the underground direction of the other street side.
Seoul, as large cities go, is impressive. Already gettin from the airport to town in an airport limousine, as the bus was called, boggles the mind. Even though it was dark when I came in, I noticed that we drove for miles on impressive causeways over large water expanses, some of them frozen. That, sort of gave me the willies when I though of my wardrobe put together for the tropics.
I decided to go see Unesco World Heritage Changdeok Palace some Emperor of the Joseon Dynasty founded in 1392, exactly a hundred years after the Swiss Confederation was formed. The structures of the palace are impressive even though plaques inform visitors that the place had been razed, looted, burned many times either by foreign invaders or internal revolts. The secret garden is off limits to wandering visitors. It can be visited only in a guided tour. Since I was already there and had not much else to do, I took the tour even though visiting a snow-covered garden, secret or not, didn't promise wonderful sights.
The warmly dresses guide talked non-stop about where and how the princes used to eat, compose poetry, or watch sunsets while I almost froze to death. A group of young men in the tour, I think a Dutch, a Norwegian and a German, discussed the pros and cons of what is more convenient, to sharpen used chainsaw chains or, with the ridiculously low prices of Chinese made tools, to simply go and buy another saw.
I left the group and went to a warm tea house. The hot Quince tea was so good, I had to try the fresh ginger tea, also hot, as well. Cozy warm again I was not sorry about having missed out about what else the princes and princesses did in their garden.
Full to the gills with Kimshi - they must really love that stuff - no matter what meal I ordered, it came with that pungent cabbage, I fly late tonight to Bangkok.
I'll arrive there around 11PM. With that late arrival time I did an unaccustomed thing, made an online hotel reservation for one night to a "centrally located hotel that offers airport pickup". I reasoned that arriving downtown Bankok after midnight, I'never find an open pack packer place.
So, if all goes to plan, the next report will be from more familiar haunts, Bangkok.
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