Wandering Goat

Alien life: Immigration Reform

2011-11-15T11:27:00.000+07:00

Alien life: Immigration Reform: We hear a lot of talk about immigration reform, but what exactly do we want to reform? Do we have an idea of what is necessary to ...

Arab Season

2008-08-10T19:27:00.001+07:00

Is what the locals call it. July and August, being the hottest time in the mideast, are not coincidentally the time of year when the well off Arabs flee for other climes, one of which is frequently here in KL, ostensibly because its a Muslim country but really because it isn't. Though it should be noted that its a center of the Islamic financial universe due to its well developed Sukuk industry (look it up) As a consequence ME food and shisha pipes abound as do their clientele, which are of course Arabs. Also en vogue is the full length Burqa, a questionable development for the equatorial region. Aside from the more revolting sexist aspects of this particular convention, most striking is the fact that males escorting the burqas wear shorts and a t shirt. A fairer shake would be for them to wear three piece suits I think.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Of medieval mace like fruits

2008-08-10T12:33:00.001+07:00

At long last I have sucessfully consumed a portion of Durian - the peninsulas most well known and most maligned fruit. The smell is simply inhumane, leading to its rightful banishment from respectable establishments. The taste is not that awful, with a texture vaguely reminiscent of avocado. Hard to eat and inhale though.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Downriver

2008-08-07T08:44:00.000+07:00

Writing on a handheld device doesn't really allow for narrative flow but I've got two hours on the longboat so I may as well. I just spent two nights at kuala tahan at the entrance to Taman Negara rainforest. The town itself is a depressing collection of filthy shacks and concrete built into muddy riverbank. Its also overcrowded by both locals and tourists. If you're contemplating a rainforest trip in Malaysia I'd advise you to skip the peninsula and head to Borneo, which in retrospect I should have done.

The highlight was a 6 hour jungle hike yesterday that I forced myself into doing. I set off solo without a guide. I've done jungles before and figured this was one I can handle since its fairly touristed. Occasions like this are when its good to travel alone as one is left alone to question one's sanity after several hours of hot humid, muddy, leech infested traumatization rather than to face recriminations from other parties.

The jungle itself was surprisingly decent. Just a K or two outside the park entrance and you're pretty alone with the bird calls and the monkey howls and the heavy distort cicada solos. I saw a few small animals bolt away from me on the trail, probably small deer, and some elephant tracks as well as a few monitor lizards but the predominant organism, aside from the battalions of ants of all shapes and sizes (2 inches some) was the legion of leeches.

I've dealt with these guys before but man, they really still do suck in every sense of the term. I can't think of a creature more apt to induce revulsion, making their brief partnership with 18th c medicine all the more unlikely. The first one I saw yesterday reminded me how much I hated them ~ it was clinging to the edge of a leaf on the trail, totally vertical with its fat little mouth aiming skywards and waving around. It sort of reminds you of an annoying kid in class desperately raising his hand to get the teachers attention.

If successful it will then vault onto your shoe and then somersault its way up to your ankle and start to feed and get fat and nasty. Getting them off is no joy either. I had my Swiss army knife with me so I used the blade to pick them off. It was overkill of course and tweezers would have been ideal but I take great pleasure in bringing a knife into the jungle and using it to really knife things, as its normal use is to open beer bottles. Of course this backfired when I sliced my ankle open which turned my planned 18 k round trip into a 10k hike, which was fine insofar as I was running out of water in any event. Ok battery is dying so I have to end here.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

On a longboat in the Tembeling river

2008-08-05T13:42:00.001+07:00

The coverage of wireless communications is amazing these days.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Steak ahoy!

2008-08-05T07:35:00.000+07:00

A trend which I must note- now that I've recognized it as a trend- is a peculiarity of Malaysian steakhouses. I'm uncertain if they got this from some other locale (Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong frequently borrow each others habits though won't admit it) or this is something they invented.

Anyway I first saw this in Penang and seen it repeated here in KL: a Malaysian steakhouse apparently must be nautically themed. Such as the exterior always looks like the bow of an 18th century sailing ship and the staff is outfitted in full Jolly Rogers style regalia. The incongruity of this is obvious - nothing says fresh prime beef like the dried beef and moldy biscuit diet of Her Majesty's Fleet!

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Penang (not the restaurants in manhattan, the island in the straits)

2008-08-04T18:18:00.001+07:00

So I ended up spending two days in Penang - Malaysia's second city. And it showed! No, I'm kidding, sort of, lovely old chinese two-story shophouses and some nice Kongsi houses and good Peranakan/Nonya architecture (you'll have to look up old posts if you want to remember what that means) but not really much to report otherwise. Good food though, I would recommend you shy away from the Rojak unless tropical fruit drowned in syrup and fish paste is one's idea of a good time. People seemed to take a genuine interest in the fact that I was there to sample their Hokkien Mee (a seafood/noodle soup with tamarind or something sweet in it that's damned good, one of my favorite noodle soups I'd have to say) and Char Kway Teoh ( a noodle dish that is the essence of awesomeness) so I guess that's something. But anyway it's your standard old colonial town, the first British settlement in Malaya but bypassed on the way to greatness by Singapore in the 19th C, which is good and bad, leaving it behind but free of overdevelopment and Japanese bomb damage. Old British Colonial outposts, of which I reckon I have now seen a hell of a lot of in my days, all have the aura of ghostly poetic metaphorism, which really goes wild if you traipse around the old Colonial cemetary (which I often due, I've done it like twice). So you see the old graves with their Victorian encomiums to the various victims of deaths at sea, tropical disease, childbirth etc and they're overgrown amid the banyan trees and the capital R Romanticism of the moment kind of makes you want to vomit, where you're ashamed of even thinking of waxing anything about it.

A few random thoughts for the record, on arrival in Malaysia one is still greeted with the homey and welcoming "home of the deadly death penalty for drug traffickers" rannouncement, and according to recent signage, piranha imports are also expressly labeled as uncool here, so keep that one in mind. I should also say I'm fortunate to be here during yet another "Visit Malaysia Year" - just like 2007, according to unchanged signs, and just like the last time I was here in 2005.

back sort of

2008-08-04T18:05:00.001+07:00

so yeah I wrote this two days ago then realized that I was e-mailing the post to the wrong address so it got returned, it's two days later now so obviously we aren't real time. The grand experiment fails. Out of practice though man, that's what happens

Ok I hope this works. This is my first post via handheld ever- so I'm writing in real time from a smelly bus between the gleaming ultramodern Kuala Lumpur Int Apt and the rundown old airport where one catches the cheap local flights. The only notable thing thus far was the incredible nordic stoicism of the two older Swedes sitting next to me, who did the whole 12 plus hours of the Stockholm to KL leg without getting up ONCE. They literally just sat there like runes. I was flabbergasted frankly, I am not one to lightly bestow the gast of flabber. In Sweden I understand the same feeling is referred to as "flabbjerkastjenorg"

Just noting as we pull in that Malaysia is one of the few places where you'll see a policelady with a headscarf and a submachine gun.

Dormancy over

2007-07-21T09:17:00.000+07:00

All right so I apologize for not writing in forever. The mundanity (a word?) of everyday life I guess became pervasive in a Kafka Metamorphosis way so that i couldn't even bring myself to make snotty allusions to Kafka. Anyway I am starting this blog up again, without as much (any?) travel adventures and more boring musings, so I am accordingly doing it for myself.

Anyway, enough about that. Something that just randomly popped into my head - and of no relevance whatsoever to anything printed so far, and basically just being written down so that I don't lose the thought - was an old memory of a football game I went to. It was, I believe, about 1985, the year after the then-Los Angeles (nee Oakland and since re-nee'd as Oakland) Raiders won the Super Bowl. I went to an NFL game between my since mort Houston Oilers at the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Houston Astrodome - since downgraded to about the 1,536,905th wonder of the world, somewhere between that Japanese eating champion guy Kobayashi and the fact that the city of Miami has not self-imploded. Now, the Oilers back then were an awful, sad sack franchise, saddled with ugly uniforms and a general malaise that would make Gregor Samsa himself cringe. Turning into giant human insects would have been an improvement. Nonetheless, I was a fledgling 9 or 10 year old fan at the time and thought they were sweet. As for the Raiders, they were silver and black demigods who lived only on the airwaves (how pathetic is it that 'airwaves' is now a dated term? awful).

As the Oilers were horrifically bad at playing football back then, tickets were rather easy to come by. My father, doing the kinds of things that good fathers do, I believe arbitraily decided one Sunday in the fall that he should take me to the game, on the morning of. (at the time, I believe it was my second ever NFL game, with the first being an inglorious Oiler loss to a powerhouse Dolphins team led by a young Dan Marino). As the Oilers were awful back then, like I said, tickets were easy to come by, specifically, tickets in the Temporary Bleachers section.
Surprisingly, these tickets consisted of temporary bleachers, set up in what would have been the centerfield area of the Astrodome in baseball configuration [aside- back in the old days in the multipurpose stadia (yes we are going latinate with our noun forms this evening), they used the same Astroturf (tm) for baseball and football, so accordingly one could see Earl Campbell run into the faded paint outline of foul territory, or see Jose Cruz field a fly on the ghostly specter of the 20 yard line]. The best par was that they were literally right on the field and very cheap (though uncomfortable, but really who cares).

As I recall it was a decent game, insofar as the hapless Oilers stayed relatively close to the Raiders before losing by a TD or two (i could look it up now but am too lazy and too into a narrative mode). The crux of the story occurs at postgame. The great part about the temp bleachers was that the area behind them was literally the passage to the visiting locker room, which both fans and, obviously, the visiting team, used for ingress and egress procedures (a cop term I learned in a differnt life). Anyway, as a wide eyed 10=year old, I remember after the game, my dad and I were walking out to the Astrodome parking lot (quite literally a whole 'nother story in itself).

Our progress was halted when a makeshift array of cops (or cop) halted us prior to crossing around the concourse to the exit. As we were in the temp bleachers, we had to circumvent the tunnel into the visiting team locker room, which is where we were stopped. So we had to wait, like at a railroad crossing, for the L.A. Raiders to go by.

Now for me this was unprecedented. The Raiders at that point were nothing short of televised Olympian figures who I had no business being on the same astral plane as, much less being mildly inconvenienced by as they strode back to the locker room. So needless to say, for me at the time the experience was incredibly memorable. Being in the presence of a bunch of giants (overall and to a 10-year old) wearing the formidable silver and black of the Raiders was, well, awesome. I vivdly remember them emerging from the tunnel from between the stands into the dark smelly concourse area, it was like a clown car, but with awesome intimidating dudes instead of awful clowns (who are also intimidating in their own way, but again- that's a whole other ramble).

A few guys in particular stood out. The concourse at this point was full of whooping and whollering (sic) Raider fans, which I decided to temporarily belong to at that point as I honestly had no other option. Anyway, the guys I recall were Marcus Allen (literally probably the best player at the world at that point) who simply ran past us alll, no desire to gladhandle or high five (or in my 4 foot tall case, low five), though I think I grabbed his elbow as he jogged past. A bit of a disappointment as he was my favorite Raider easily for his incomprehensible skill, obvious even to a youngster. Sean Jones (later an Oiler, and then, if I recall correctly, recently convicted of some form of fraud stemming from his career as a sports agent), all 6 foot 7 of him, with huge forearm pads, being incredibly intimidating so much to the point where I was scared to extend him the hand of recognition. The best by far was future Hall-of-Famer Howie Long, who took the time to take his helmet off and shake my hand, or so I imagined, maybe it was just a grasp, but anyway number 74 has always gotten free pass from me becasue of that, even for his short lived and awful movie career.

Better late than never

2006-09-07T01:55:00.000+07:00

So here's a good video of Yodsaenklai Fairtex, one of the guys I trained with last December (and by "with" I mean, "in the general vicinity of, as he laughed at my flabby ineptitude") at Fairtex.

back ın busıness

2006-08-15T18:24:00.000+07:00

Göreme, Turkey

Its been a whıle (thıs ıs not beng helped by a Turkısh keyboardö btw) but I am now ın south central anatolıa. I actually typed an update a few days ago but emaıled ıt to the wrong address (skılls have atrophıed shamefully) but ıt was rusty and not up to standard, ın my opınıon so ıts best forgotten.

quıck ımpressıons on Istanbul - claustrophobıc, yet surrounded by the sea on all sıdes and crumblıng hıstory on every corner whıch makes ıt ınterestıng to vısıt, and ın the overused parlance of orhan pramuk, melancholy to lıve ın or so I would ımagıne. Its not really ıntımıdatıng but ıts got more than ıts share of scammers and hustlers, however the fabled turkısh hospıtalıty (eıther there or ın any of the three spots where I have been sınce) ıs less than vısıble, I thınk because everybody thınks I am a frıggıng Turk here (people regularly approach me wıth entreatıes ın rapıd turkısh, whıch my knowledge of ıs so poor that I cant even ındıcate that I dont understand

Second stop was Konya, allegedly the relıgıous conservatıve capıtal of the south and the home of the mevlehvı sect of sufıs, aka the whırlıng dervıshes. Nıce mosque type thıng, but not worth the soul crushıng 12 hour busrıde (turkısh otobus are actually the prımary means of ıntracountry transıt, therefore the bus system ıs vast and confusıng and, well, quıte Turkısh) Of course the bus ıtself ıs tolerable and aır condıtıoned and even has a stewardess type guy who serves you water and soda; ıt ıs the lap of luxury compared to some of the bus rıde adventures of the Indıan subcontınent that I had the pleasure of endurıng last year. The problem ıs that when one ıs on an 11 day vacatıon rather than a 6 month odyssey of self dıscovery vıa drınkıng beer, such thıngs are less palatable. So I shoudl probably modıfy my backpackocentrıc approach for somethıng more dıgnıfıed, though Im ın no mood for that eıther

Thırd stop was/ıs Goreme - lıterally carved out of volcanıc tufts ın the canyons of cappadocıa. Nıce place, wıth rather fascınatıng byzantıne rock churches lıterally carved ınt o the sıdes of caves (Cappadocıa was the de facto headquarters of early chrıstıanıty for a whıle there) It has really struck me how over the past few years Ive seen an unbelıevable varıety of relıgıous sıtes and monuments, from cave churches to cave buddhas to the jokhang to the aya sofıa to the golden temple to the meenakshvı temple to the taj mahal - supremely ıronıc gıven that I have kınd of "taken a seat on the bench" as far as relıgıon goes for the last few years. If anythıng though ıt shows one of the great thıngs that relıgıon has done ınsofar as ınspırıng some of the worlds greatest art and archıtecture

Anniversary

2006-06-18T17:09:00.000+07:00

So a year ago today I was at the Marco Polo Hotel, admiring the characteristic water damage and bad muzak that makes Chinese hotels so endearing. And little did I know, even though I knew, I had six kick-ass months to go, and that's putting it mildly

So now I'm back and have been back. I'm trying to think of grand insights or philosophical conclusions that I can make but I'm drawing a total blank. It was great, and I guess I just have to forget it to an extent and move on, because the one thing worse or as bad as not doing what you want to do is living in the past. I realized this while wistfully walking through chinatown the other day.

On the explorational front I think I'm going to Turkey in August. Not quite as awesome as before but in theory where east physically and culturally meets west, which is something. Also it's the western terminus of the Silk road, which is what I was traveling last year at this time. Of course the temptation to keep moving towards the Armenian border and staying away will be severe, but that's probably a good thing insofar as going east from that direction involves passing through Iran, Chechya and Afghanistan, that is if you skip Iraq, which is probably too adventerous even for me..

absent

2006-01-22T20:43:00.000+07:00

<img>

I suppose I promised a big wrap-up/analysis highlighting your (stereo)typical East meets West type themes last month when I came back, but I don't know if I can anymore. Now that I've been back for a month it's a testament to the human condition that it's like I never left, except that everybody is now 6-7 months ahead of where they were and my bank account is a lot smaller than it was. Otherwise I've adjusted fine - I know longer go through bouts of panic when I can't remember the precise location of my passport, etc. I also have a MAJOR problem with this whole new Bluetooth wireless headset fad that inexplicably became popular in my absence. What are you people, cyborgs or something? You look ridiculous. Take that crap out of your ear.

I did take a goatish epilogue trip in Stockholm last weekend but I don't know if I have the energy to do the full write-up at this point. Nice city, It is a lot like Bangkok, insofar as the locals are friendly and there are 7-11's everywhere, but also somewhat unlike it, insofar as it freezing cold, really expensive, small, traffic and pollution free, organized, aesthetically pleasing, walklable, and northerly. Visit the Vasamuseum if you're ever there, btw - really cool

The biggest remaining thing from the sojourn is trying to sort through and print my photos. I've got 600 or so, most of which are pretty good (the crap photos I erased as soon as I took them. So sorting/uploading/ordering them is kind of daunting. Not daunting is the following pic (a modified version of one I took in Kashgar) which I think turned out awesome, even though I like the original (which is posted here, scroll back to July 2k5 I think to see it. Sorry for the huge photo size, btw, but I just felt like putting a high res version up so save the image and view it.

:

final route maps

2005-12-18T19:33:00.000+07:00

self explanatory, though some of the backtracking is confusing. Apologies.

and the itinerary list insofar as here's where I went:

Beijing
Xian
Lanzhou
Jiayaguan
Dunhuang
Urumqui
Kashgar
Auytagh
Urumqui
Chengdu
Emei Shan
Chengdu
Kunming
Macau
Hong Kong
Dehli
Leh
Stok Park area
Leh
Manali
Shimla
Chandgarh
Amritsar
Wagah
New Dehli
Agra
Mathura
Chennai
Mamallapuram
Pondicherry
Trichy
Madurai
Thekaddy
Ernakulam
Cochi
Alepphuza
Kollom
Varkala
Trivandrum
Bombay
Kuala Lumpur
Kota Kinabalu
Kinabalu Negara
Mulu
Mulu Negara/Camp V
Singapore
Johor Baru
Melaka
Hanoi
Sa Pa
Bac Ha
Bai Chay
Hue
Hoi An
Da Nang
Saigon
Siem Reap
Battambang
Bangkok
Sukhothai
Mae Sot
Myawaddy
Tak
Chiang Rai
Chiang Khong
Houeyxai
Luang Prabang
Vientane
Nong Khai
Udon Thani
Chiang Mai
Koh Samui/Chaweng
Bang Phli/Bang Na

Ramble on?

2005-12-17T22:06:00.000+07:00

last of the goat?

Tokyo Narita International Airport, Japan

Wow, so it's finally down to this. Not without a heavy heart this morning did I set out for Don Muang airport for the last time, both because it's over (for now...) and because I had about 3 hours worth of sleep after sortieng with friends way out in Bang Na at the fabled "The Street of Hollywood" disco (and my exploits there over the last few weeks there probably deserves a blog of its own, but...) I knew this day would come eventually (and sometimes it seemed like it would never come.) But overall I can't believe it happened so soon.

But the sun came up today and I got on the plane regardless, just like the sun will come up tomorrow (which is 36 hours or something away for me. So I'll just resign myself to business class splendor (if American Airlines business class can be called that....btw, I bought the tix on JAL, which was great the first leg, it turns out second leg was JAL 740 operated by AA...glad I paid a premium for that..)and my shiny new Omega watch and try to ease my pain through the false comforts of material goods. After all - it's christmas everybody. My compliments, by the way to Captain Takahashi, who set down the 747 at Tokyo with a landing as smooth as a thai girl's countertop.

On approach and landing in Tokyo I was confronted with two semi-comforting images. The first being one that I've seen a few times on the way over and back here when flying over the land of the rising sun (where strangely i've never been save the airport)and that is the sight of Mount Fuji poking up above the cloud cover. I hate to be cliched but there is such a zen-like serenity to any image of Fuji, but especially so from above. If you were god and you set out to create an aesthetically perfect looking mountain, your finished product would look like this. No wonder guys like Hiroshige and Hokusai spent years and years illustrating it again and again.

The second was the sight of the winged horse logo and a Mongolian Airlines jet parked on the taxiway (it was either the "Chinggis Khan" or the "Kublai Khan", being that they only have two jets). This is significant to me insofar as that same jet (well, that one or its sister ship) served as the vehicle for my first penetration into the heart of Asia back in 2003 when I packed up for Mongolia basically on a whim. Mongolia itself was all right but ultimately not that impressive, though it was a great primer for traveling into places that are the back of the ass of beyond. Importantly that trip set the stage for last year's himalayan adventures and of course the wandering goat tour which I can without a doubt say was the greatest 6 months I've ever had.

As the shock of coming back to a place where beer costs 6$, nobody calls me a farang, and being back in real life dissipates over the next few days I'm going to congratulate myself a little bit and be a little proud of myself. Looking back, holy shit, I've done a hell of a lot in six months. Off the top of my head: I traveled 4000k down the Silk Road and went to the very end of China, hiked the 50k Emei Shan trail in two days, sipped gin at the Peninsula in Kowloon, climbed a 22,000 foot Himalayan monster (and conquered a bunch of smaller peaks for good measure), survived two months of travel on the most dangerous roadways on earth in India, safaried through the jungle at night in search of poachers, hacked my way through the Borneo rainforest, jaywalked and chewed gum in Singapore, partied well into the morning with the young and restless of all of Southeast Asia, motorbiked through the mountains of Vietnam, traversed the heart of the Mekong, trained and fought with professional fighters in the heat of Bangkok, and befriended folks from around the globe, from Ladakhi herders to Uighur urchins to Hmong hawkers to Bang Phli barmaids. And that's just the short version. It was fucking great, pardon my french.

But I'm not done yet. More to come.

More Muay Thai photos & videos

2005-12-17T20:30:00.000+07:00

So this long-awaited post may interest only me, (now back, and jet lagged), so I have to get rid of it before I get christmas spirit fever and can't remember any of it

here's a link to a good article about Yodsaenklai (pictured below) that was written while I was at Fairtex last week. He won the fight last night (was last night when I first wrote this- MAV), btw, and is now the undisputed world champ at 154 lbs. Maybe one day he'll be man enough to move up to 168 and challenge me.....

Here's some training vids of him, what doesn't come across in these videos is the sound of him hitting the pads - it is loud, very, very very loud, and very violent. That's my man Yak holding the pads for him, btw. He's the only thai at fairtex who's big enough to hold the pads for Yody without falling over/and or crying.

vids
short

long(in this one he rips off about 30 something kicks in a row to end a 6 minute training round - for reference at my zenith I could get off maybe 10 weak kicks to end a 4 minute round)

Below is a series of photos and videos from Dec 9 at Lumphini Sanma Muay Thai - aka Lumphini Stadium which is the mecca of Muay Thai throughout the universe. It's sort of Madison Square Garden combined with the Super Bowl in terms of importance to the sport (ironically, it's named after nearby Lumphini Park, which is named after the town of Lumphini, Nepal, fabled birthplace of the decidedly non-violent gentleman Guatama B.) The stadium itself isn't much, kind of a large shack with a corrugated roof and some ineffectual ceiling fans that holds a few thousand screaming, gambling thais and a few hundred bewildered tourists most evenings. The downgrade nature of things there though in my opinion (I've been about 5 times in the last year or so now) only adds to its authenticity. Add in the music (traditional thai music is played during all matches), the crowd, and Friday night in Bangkok and you have the recipe for an intoxicatingly good time, especially if you choose to get intoxicated during it with access to free flowing beer chang

One of the really cool things about Lumphini's decrepitness (supposedly it is being replaced by a newer more modern facility that was to be ready two years ago but in typical Thai fashion, is shrouded in controversy that nobody understands) is that it has no real locker room. The hallway outside the concession stand and men's restroom on the lower level doubles as the dressing room for the fighters, so you have a backstage pass whether you like it or not if nature calls, which means you can get some good pics.

pictures

Lumphini Sanma, the calm before the storm

respect..

Some wai kru action

game face

backstage

And here's a lot of action shots

videos

Here's scenes from the wai kru, the buddhist dance-ish thing that precedes every match. Allegedly afficionados use the wai kru to determine who to bet on (oh, but yeah, gambling is illegal in thailand, ha ha ha, and so is prostitution)but I think that's just some bullshit line they feed the tourist guide books as most of the fighters I know don't care much for it.

http://s41.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=329UGIEWK55OF3OSHU1F5BZD1F

And here's some regular action. Again, much louder in person

short

long

The End?

2005-12-15T13:13:00.000+07:00

Bangkok, Thailand

First, apologies are in order insofar as I haven't been updating as much as I should. The reason is I had typed up a post with more muay thai vids and pictures but I have had tremendously shitty luck with finding a computer with a working USB port so I could not upload them. I didn't want to get out of sequence but I guess it will have to be that way.

Second, an update, last weekend was my last hurrah at Fairtex camp (congrats, by the way, to Yodsaenklai, (pictured below) who added a world title to his collection on Saturday in Sydney and now literally is the baddest man on the planet at 154 lbs) Although my initial impressions of the camp were less than favorable and I expected to have a heinous time, it ended up being a shitload of fun and I was a beloved figure when I left. My trainer was getting bleary eyed, and everybody from the fighters to the cleaning lady to the office workers were saying "when you come back, when you come back?" as I walked out the door. And you know what? Even though the downtime there was rather boring and the accomodations spartan, I probably will go back. When you're with friends it doesn't really matter so much.

On the negative side, i don't think I lost a single kilo of weight despite the training (though I did make a lot of progress physically, at the end I was going 5 4-minute rounds in the AM session and 7 4-minute sparring rounds in the PM session - up from 3 & 3 when I first started, and finishing it off with 200 situps). I chalk that up to the fact that each training session was followed by a gigantic, calorific thai food breakfast and dinner at which I stuffed my tired exhausted body to the maximum extent. Also I didn't do much running insofar as I had some nasty toe blisters from the canvas which I will not detail insofar as it is disgusting. I did become more competent in the deadly art of MT - I got in a few decent shots on my trainer in the sparring sessions, though I got much more than I gave, of course.

Since then, I have been hanging out at the Shangri-La in Bangkok, shopping, living, etc. Not quite as nice as the Oriental or the Peninsula but nice enough. My first impressions of Bangkok (from 3 days in October 2004) were less than favorable but since then, having been in and around BKK for about the past month or so, the place has grown on me significantly. The biggest negatives in Bangkok that I took from last year were weather, scammers, and traffic. As far as the first two, I've been in Asia so long I hardly even notice them anymore (plus the weather the last week in BKK has even had some bluish skies above the pollution and only in the 80's, which is as good as it gets here). As far as traffic, I've quickly mastered the Skytrain, Metro, and Public Ferries (which I pride myself on, am sort of an urban mass transit Kalahari tribesman) and have gotten a serious handle on the geography of the place, which makes life a lot easier. Plus I tell every cab driver that I just spent time at Fairtex (and not telling them that I suck at fighting) so it makes them think twice about scamming me.

But all this is secondary and a long way of saying that in about 18 hours I am on a plane headed back to JFK. I suppose I should come up with some grand essay but I'm a bit hung over at the moment and really I don't know what to say. About a month ago I was dining alone in a restaurant in Nong Khai during Loy Krathong (as I am often wont to do) and I started writing down the things that I've learned on this trip, but for the life of me I can't remember what the hell I wrote. I've learned that I enjoy having a good time is the main thing. Which is ridiculous to have to learn, but probably more people should.

I'm not done with this blog yet though I've got a few more things stored up, though I will probably be posting them from stateside, alas.

more Thai pictures

2005-12-08T16:46:00.000+07:00

more thailand pix:

monkeying around at Wat Phra Si in Chiang Mai

me and Al at Doi Inthanon, thailand's highest peak

Karen villagers doing what they do best: weave weave and weave

Jack Carles, pere of alex, and man of the people as this Hmong boy obviously feels.

Audtachai kicking some stuff

I'm pretty sure Yodsaenklai's leg has more muscle than my whole body. I don't know who I feel more sorry for, the pad or poor Mitt, who has to hold it.

"sugar" Kaew, another fairtex prodigy.

Audtachai in action again, you don't want to get hit with one of those elbows.

Videos to come......stay tuned.

Kicking Around

2005-12-06T20:11:00.000+07:00

Fairtex Muay Thai Camp, Bangphlee, Thailand

some notes on the cast of characters and life generally here: of the fellow trainees, it's mostly professional fighters from Europe (such as Herman, the factory manager/kickboxer from Graz, Austria who fights under the name "the Hermanator" (actually he spells it "Horrmanator", but that's a little too Soi Cowboy for my tastes) as well as your occasional wannabe such as myself and the two hyperactive Spanish brothers from the Canary Islands who are about the funniest two guys you'll ever meet. No real assholes or ego cases, which is surprising given the nature of the business but obviously good. The only problem is that very few of these guys ever wants to go out and have a drink (save on Saturday, Sunday being our only off day). They go out, but they drink coke. Not my style.

More my style are the trainers, who consist of retired fighters that sit at the little street kitchen across the street and polish off cigarettes, cheap beer (Beer Leo) and Thai whiskey by the boatload after each day, despite the fact they have a 5 AM wakeup call 6 days out of 7. Good guys mostly, and the fact that a lot of them are half crazy from being punch-drunk (these guys usually have fought in 100 plus matches prior to age 20) contributes to making it easier for them to get really drunk, after which all bets are basically off. Even when not drunk, they're a funky group. To name a few, there's Apideja, apparently a walking god among muay thai fighters, who's now a bit nuts, but incredibly friendly who likes to come up to me and say "USA good!" all the time (even W couldn't turn him off). Likewise there is Boonma, another guy who is half crazy, speaks little english and probaably massages me too much, but has proudly said that he is christian and that baby jesu is good, which allays my fears. (after spending about 90 days in a country with as much gender confusion as Thailand (which I love, btw), a creeping sense of paranoia sets in after a while). I also like Yak, who, at 6-3 and 230 plus lbs, (a behemoth in Thai terms) is the epitome of the gentle giant. He likes to practice his english with me, so imagine a big huge oxlike thai fighter, sitting next to me with an elementary english book, gleefully going over phrases like "you are my friend, yes we are friends, we are very good friends". Funny stuff.

The other folks are the real Thai fighters (not this kind - sorry, terrible joke but I had to make it). Fairtex is kind of a dynasty in Muay Thai, consisting of a family-run company that runs 3 training centers (Bangkok, Pattaya, and one in San Francisco), promotes fights, manufactures equipment, and manages fighters. Here there's about 6-8 actual Thai kids who fight professionally at the highest levels here, the older ones of which are among the baddest men on the face of the planet, pound for pound (pictures and videos upcoming in the next post). When they train, they basically do the same stuff as we do, yet at an exponential level of intensity. Watching these guys hit the pads and the bags is a study in inertia being overcome and translated into pure kinetic energy in the most efficient manner possible. In other words, they tear shit up, in violent fashion. Foremost among them is Yodsaenklai, who is the baddest man in the Thailand (and possibly the world) at 154 lbs. When he hits the pads, he rips off about 30 kicks in 25 seconds that creates a sound not unlike a machine gun - except more fearsome and certainly more lethal in reality. Despite this, he and the rest are actually very nice kids, who are as fascinated with us as we are with them, probably due to the fact that really big money isn't a factor in muay thai as it is in US pro sports - so egos don't develop. He also enjoys poking fun at my Singha beer gut when I do sit-ups, which I don't enjoy too much, but I'm not going to be the one to tell him that. Also the children of some of the staffers, ranging from ages 8 and up, train sometimes, though I think they just do it because they live here rather than because they've been sent up the river to a camp as some young thai kids are - I don't think Fairtex signs a fighter to their stable till after he's had a few fights and developed a bit. Also showing up on occasion is famed fighter Nong Tum, an attractive young...woman whose story sort of speaks for itself ( you really should click that link to see, not that there's anything wrong with that, she could kick my ass from the looks of her)

School of Hard Knocks

2005-11-30T20:10:00.000+07:00

Fairtex Muay Thai Camp, Bangplee, Bangkok, Thailand

(Bangplee is a suburb of Bangkok, I think it's in Bangkok district, hence the long ass subject line)

On my previous post I don't think I accurately explained why I am doing this. I did give an explanation, which was because I did it before, but that's pretty half-ass and tautological and I don't settle for that kind of shit. So the reason why I'm doing this is the same reason JFK said we'd go to the moon and hustled Marilyn in the back door of the White House - and the same reason why I've climbed mountains and crossed deserts and hacked through jungles for the last five months. I didn't do them because they're easy, but because they're hard.

Thai Boxing is hard, real hard. Particularly if you're out of shape and not very good at it. But I keep at it. There's nothing as absurdly satisfying as in the one kick out of ten when I hit the pads hard and perfectly and make a loud slap/bang shotgun blast type noise, nothing at all. It's a challenge, a big challenge - but I like it.

What makes it more fun is that like I said before, what could be an intimidationg atmospeher here is anything but. The fellow campers, (western guys who are pro fighters in their home countries) are a bit socially dysfunctional (meals pass in punctuated silence) but for the most part are not a bunch of jackasses as one would expect. There's hulking dutch and hungarian dudes here who are nothing but unfailingly polite, and a couple of Spanish guys from somewhere in the South of Espana where I've never heard of who don't shut up but don't speak much english either so it keeps a lid on things. All in all though it's a decent crew, all very helpful.

Even better, and I can't express this more, are the Thai instructors. These guys are all former Lumphini and Radamancheon Stadium Champions (think MSG and Boston Garden in basketball), which in the world of Thai Boxing is equivalent to the world champs. Many of them are legends in the sport. But here I am, an out of shape, out of work attorney moonlighting as a wannabe fighter, and they couldn't be more happy to see me. I suppose it's the fact that big money (the top of the line fighters, in top fights, make no more than $2,500 per fight) is nonexistent in Muay Thai and hence egos remain in check. But still, it's remarkable - the guys training alongside me are world champs, who fight in the main events at Lumpini -- and then there's me. My own personal trainer, a former world champ named Ruck who's about 3 years and 30 pounds beneath me, thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, desptie the fact that I'm utterly inept at the sport. (I also informed him that I'm the undisputed beer drinking champ of Lumpini Stadium, which I am) It's sort of like going to a fantasy basketball camp with Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson as coaches, and training alongside Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. Crazy stuff.

As for the particulars, life here is a bit of routine. I get up at 6:30, down a bottle of Caribou Daeng (Thailand is the ancestral home of energy drinks), go a few rounds from 7-8. 9 Am is breakfast/lunch - then sleep in till about 1:30, then do training again from 2-4. It's a bit monotonous, and allegedly if you're a serious fighter you'll run 6 miles before each training session (fat chance, I'm sore as shit), but it's good, still.

First Day of School

2005-11-29T10:47:00.000+07:00

Fairtex Muay Thai Camp, Bangkok

So first a little background, Muay Thai (Thai boxing) is an ancient art of self defense practised by Thai soldiers which has evolved into a modern sport, which is by far the most popular sport in the country here and is practiced in various forms around the world. Muay Thai, unlike Chuck Norris/Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee stuff like Karate, Judo, Kung Fu, etc, has remained a functional sport for hundreds of years, and it does not have a defining credo/philosophy/mr. miyagi aside from the same general buddhist tendencies and rituals that pretty much shadow all life in thailand. It's also very brutal, because pretty much anything goes - kicks, knees, elbows, throws, I think the only thing you can't do is hit to the groin, and that's about it.

How I got wrapped up in this is as follows: badly in need of some after work stress relief, one day back in January 2004 I walked into Kru Phil Nurse's gym on Howard street in lower Manhattan. It was exhausting, grueling stuff. But I liked it, so I went back 2-3 nights a week for about the following year up until I left. I enjoyed a lot of it, save for the fact that Phil could never rememeber my name, which kind of sucked. So, long story short and on my quest for further adventure, I signed up for a two week stint of the same here in Thailand at the world famous Fairtex camp.

Needless to say, the training at the Fairtex Camp is a little bit more serious than that at a 3rd floor loft in Soho. it's kind of just me, a bunch of big, muscular farangs with tatoos who are pro fighters, and a bunch of thais who are also pros, having been in hundreds of fights each, some of whom are legends in the sport. It's sort of like going to an Advanced Non-Linear Dynamics seminar after having only taken Algebra 1 and getting a C in it. The scariest part, much scarier than a kick to the head for me, is trying to fit in with all these folks as a weekend duffer.

I figured the experience would be sort of like boot camp after the last few weeks of epicurean living, and the published schedule (hour of running, 3 hours of training, lunch, 3 hours of rest, repeat, dinner) looks horrendously grueling, but when nobody woke me up on the first morning i was a little confused. Turns out that like everything in Thailand, it's fairly low key, do your own thing. So that was a bit more intimidating in a sense as I had to make it happen, rather than back in nyc with Phil shouting out commands and having us doing drills etc in precise sequence. So I strapped myself into a newly purchased pair of ridiculous looking muay thai shorts from the factory that is right next door (which say 'USA' on the crotch, putting additional pressure on myself) and rolled on up to the trainign area.

The training area consists of about 4 boxing rings and some heavy bags (covered by a roof from the scorching heat, mercifully) and 20-30 thai fighters with 0% body fat. I didn't have a clue what to do then, but thankfully one of my fellow campers directed me to a smaller kid who spoke some english named "Ruck" (last name = sack? unsure, the thai fighters have real names and nicknames too) and we preceded to a go a few rounds with him holding the pads. Predictably I was quite rusty but I didn't embarass myself too badly (save when I tried to jump over the top rope at the urging of 'Mitt" and promptly fell on my ass in front of everybody). And that was it after about 30 minutes, far less grueling than the average NYC class, which is good since I'm starting slow.

The following will interest only me, but i'm writing it anyway. The way they do things here is unsurprisingly very different from the way I was taught back in NYC by Phil and the gang. Phil, being a former boxer from Manchester, taught us in a more boxing oriented way, so I've got a few boxing habits with regard to footwork, distance, etc. the Thais care more about the kicks than the punches. They're also willing to take more risks and lean in, simply because they're used to getting bashed in the head and just don't give a rat's ass. So unlearning may be the biggest problem for me.

The other big problem is lack of sufficient options during the downtime, since we're a ways away from central Bangkok. There's a few really bad magazines (eg the Aussie version of "FHM") lying around the living area (which is a dump, btw). Also there's some bad books. Yesterday out of sheer boredom, I forced myself through a copy of Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" that was lying around, with the expectation that it couldn't be quite as mediocre as the Da Vinci Code. Of course, it was. Generally when I read a piece of crap like this I root for the bad guy, but he never wins, so I'm doubly disappointed. Obviously this stupid Robert Langdon character is Brownie's idealized self-manifestation. He must suffer from low self esteem if he wants to resemble that loser. Dan Brown always puts a bunch of "FACT"s before the prologue of his book. I suggest he include the following from now on "Fact: This book will contain stupendous cliches and plot contrivances" "Fact: the dialogue in this book is so stilted and unnatural as to explain basic concepts to the masses that it is nearly unreadable' "Fact: the female heroine will be a ravishing beauty with brains, and Robert Langdon will "unexpectedly" get the girl at the end, using every hackneyed romantic incident possible" "Fact: I am going to sell 8 zillion copies despite the fact that this is trash" Generally I think that all mass-market paperback authors should be kicked in the head by Ruck, en masse, but that's another story.

Aisanglish

2005-11-28T18:53:00.000+07:00

Fairtex Muay Thai Camp, Bangkok, Thailand

two random observations that i forgot to include earlier:

The other day, when conversing with a local, my friend Alex was like "why the hell are you talking like that?" What he detected was my, by now, finely honed, Asianglish. In which I speak with exaggerated thai-ish pronunciations of words and simplyify my grammar often omitting articles, verbs, tenses etc. So the question "So, have you lived in chiang mai for a while?" becomes "So yoU live chiang mai long time ?' While it sounds like a patronizing westerner talking down to people, I've found it really helps in communication (and it makes sense, as much of Asian language grammar does away with subject verb agreement, tenses, articles, etc.). So as a consequence I've gotten quite good at it and now do it subconsciously. So I'm worried when I step out of JFK in a few weeks I'll tell the cab driver "I go 49 street yes?" without even thinking of it. Actually come to think of it, that will probably be work with NYC cab drivers, so never mind.

Another thing that is grown to absurd proportions is the Peninsula/Mandarin Oriental hotel rivalry. As the two premier far eastern luxury hotel brands, and arguably the two finest brands in the world, they brawl like drunken tuk-tuk drivers on each others home turf. Example, in Bangkok, the Oriental has it's home base, with the first Oriental hotel ever built, old and famous and the home of guys like Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad in the old days. So obviously, it's tough for the Pen to compete with this type of tradition, so they went the other way, and build a massive 40 story behemoth of a building on the opposite bank of the Chao Phraya that dominates the views of anybody on the river side of the Oriental. They both have flotillas of identical looking, yet dueling luxury motor launches that seem to try to ram each other shuttling passengers across the river. One has a fleet of custom BMW's, the other has a fleet of custom Benzes, etc etc etc. Not that I'm bitching about any of this, but seriously, those of us who travel in the Princess' private speedboat require a bit more decorum. I think a duel might be in order, or a muay thai fight.

addendum

2005-11-27T19:07:00.000+07:00

Bangkok, Thailand

some random thoughts from the past week i forgot earlier:

The one new thing i did in Bangkok is eat dinner at Chakra-something Villa, which is actually the private residence of some old member of the Thai royal family who spends most of her time in London. Anyway, for a not small but not too exorbitant fee, you can rent it out for the night and have dinner on her pavillion the banks of the Chao Phraya, right across from Wat Arun and right near Wat Po & the royal Palace, and the Royal Staff is at your beck and call. Pretty goddamned cool. Even more cool was her luxury speedboat that we got to take back to downriver. (compared to the mekong speedboat, it was a ferrari akin to a yugo). Suffice it to say, when you pull up to the boat dock at the Oriental Hotel in bangkok to have a drink at the bar and everybody points and gawks at your ride, it was one of the top pimping moments of all time for me at least. (on another culinary note, Bangkok also boasts fantastic German food, as its a popular place for them to both travel and live. Best sausage I've ever had was last night at a place that apparently maintains its own herd of pigs)

Also should note that i'm reticent about starting training tomorrow as the last week I've been partying like it was 1999 with my old friend Alex and have since gained a few lbs. Highlights included making up fake ridiculous names and back-stories about ourselves to the girls, both working and non, who accosted us (I'm Steve Assoluti, Policeman/Helicopter Pilot/Drummer), the surreal occasion of being caught in a monsoon playing Connect 4 with a bunch of hookers (and that literally means the board game, nothing dirty - Alex got smoked by them owing to his superior math skills, and despite my singha induced handicaps I only managed to beat my adversary 9-8 in a best of 17. The only reason why i was trailing was because I'd build up a lead and then drink some more and promptly allow a connect-4 whore (c-fo-ho) rally, which would force me to play more games out of pride), and hanging out in a Chiang Mai speakeasy. Also was regaled by locals with some great stories about drunken tourists and ladyboys - the most incredible of which I won't repeat here, but which led me to walk around with a healthy dose of paranoia about all those pretty girls smiling at me.

Penthouse to Outhouse

2005-11-27T13:54:00.000+07:00

Bangkok, Thailand

I think this is the longest I've gone between updates for a long while, so I'll be very brief with some updates for the last week or so.

My best friend Alex and his pere Jack were here and we spent a few days in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui. Bangkok was good, we did the standard things, (Wat Po, Palace, Shopping, etc.). The boys loved muay thai at Lumpini as it afforded Jack a chance to catch up on some sleep. But we did bangkok. A fantastic discovery that we made last week here came when we stumbled into Jorg Kohler's store ( www.classicmaps.com ) which features expensive, yet exquisite, antique maps and prints of Asia, that are worth every penny.

After Bangkok was Chiang Mai, the second city of Thailand and the northern capital. Not a lot to see there although you can overdose on Wats if you like as some of the best in the country are there. Also unbelievably impressive (and basically worth the trip) was the Rachamankha hotel - probably the single most aesthetically pleasing hotel at which I've ever stayed, with absolutely gorgeous Lanna style architecture and lanna/burmese antiques furnishings. I hate to use the cliche but it was very zen, and highly highly recommeded by me and the boys. Chiang Mai itself, desptie being overloaded by tourists, is a nice spot, very relaxed. It's sort of the "real" thailand without the chaos of Bangkok.

Koh Samui was next - a tropical paradise, that was buried under several feet of rain starting the moment we got there. Outrageous torrential storms and flooding have ravaged the south of Thailand, killing at least 12 on Friday so we were unable to swim or do pretty much anything you would do in a beach town. Nor would we be for awhile, as the beaches were destroyed and will require weeks to clean up.

So now I'm here at fairtex muay thai camp outside bangkok, which isn't as spartan as one would believe (they've got a nice pool) but a far cry from the last week. Thus far I've kind of just sat around and read the paper, but I guess the anectdotes and kicks to the gut will start rolling in soon. Think of me as George Plimpton playing for the Detroit Lions but just not a weird old freak.

Pause

2005-11-16T11:11:00.000+07:00

Vientane, Laos

(Pause - because I'm taking a break from updating and so I'm also throwing in some disjointed random thoughts before I forget)

I understand why people like the Lao. They pretty nice, friendly, easygoing folks, and they don't try to cheat you or steal from you to the extent that some other indochinese succumb to temptation. Plus they are very low pressure at trying to sell/hustle you. Even the hookers here are sort of meek about soliciting you on the street (I would describe them as "laid back" but that's probably a bad choice of words). The capital, Vientane, is about as unassuming as they are. Not a lot of traffic, or people, or tourist sights as Vientane has been looted and sacked repeatedly by Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese invaders until the late 19th c. when the French moved in and stablilized the borders, to the temporary joy of the Lao. (however, it is absolutely overrun with backpack laden travelers coming over the Mekong from Nong Khai Thailand and hence finding a simple guesthouse bed is a real bitch)

This laid back-itude can lead to some complications though, especially since the infrastructure here has simply not caught up with the massive tourist influx due to Lao being the hottest thing going in Queensland these days. Hence my arrival in Vientane was a bit delayed after the express bus ticket I bought was overbooked and U was relegated to the regular public bus. The public bus looked like a model that was donated/scrapped/sold to them, as it had korean writing all over the inside - I'm still debating whether it came from North or South Korea, every time we changed gears it made noises like an 18th century blacksmith shop was operating under the drivetrain. Needless to say it was crammed with every Lao that could possibly fit as it stopped at the first 57 rattan huts we saw in order to load more people (some with AK-47s who I assume (hoped) were soldiers), rice sacks, poultry, furniture, etc.

That said the drive would have been pleasant, had it been less excruciating. Mind you, I'm not blaming the Lao here, I'm blaming the 18 zillion tourists that are overrunning the infrastructure, which I am doing my part to limit by getting the hell out in a few hours across my second Friendship Bridge in the past week. This bridge, one of the few across the Mekong was interestingly funded by Aussies, which is no coincidence as they probably use it the most since hordes of them pour over it every single day in search of the cheapest possible guesthouse in which to act obnoxiously.

Back to the drive, the scenery is pretty cool, simply because there just aren't many people here, only like 5-6 m for the whole country (compare that with 60m Thai, 70m Vietnamese in areas not that much bigger and 12-15m Cambodians in an area much smaller). THere's a few huts and small settlements here and there but the off the highway the Lao highlands are pretty much absolutely deserted, just jagged limestone cliffs, lots and lots of vegetation, and clear blue skies (and unfortunately, in the eastern half of the country lots of UXO (unexploded bombs) left over from the war era, courtesy of the USAF and Air America). Few places that i've been to inthe last few years are as isolated, maybe Mongolia, parts of the Tibetan plateau and the Talamaklan Desert, but even there you're not far from grazing animals and oases - here it's just trees (and tigers, bears, gibbons, etc). So it's easy to see the appeal of Laos in that sense, and if it were a few months ago and I were less tired and had more time, no doubt I would have bounded into the jungle like Dr. Livingstone in spite of the barely there tourist infrastructure.

Tomorrow I'm taking a bit of a breather insofar it's back to the 5-star life with pre-booked hotels, flights etc as one of my best comrades from NYC flies into Bangkok. WHich is great, because I am really tired of eating alone in restaurants. Usually I take a book so I will at least not look like a loser, but finding books that don't suck is sometimes a problem here (though that hasn't stopped me from reading so many I've lost track, I believe the number is over 30 by now, I stopped counting after 20 and that was months ago.) The selection of English books usually sucks. The other night I had to trade in Graham Greene's "The Honorary Consul" (which was very good) for a pirated, xeroxed version of "American Psycho" (which was not but it was the only non-Clancy/Brown book there - it was a book based solely on shock value that droned on with the same schtick for 400 pages when 150 would have done nicely). The worst thing is they made me pay an extra 2$ for it - I tried to explain to the Lao bookseller that Graham Greene was a vastly superior writer to Bret Ellis and that the literary value was much higher, but American Psycho had a glossy cover, and the Greene book was an old Penguin paperback, so that didn't really work out. Oh, and on the subject of mass murder, if I hear either the original or muzak version of Richard Marx vomit inducing ballad, "waiting for you" one more time...

On French Indochina generally, since I'm leaving it soon - a few thoughts: It's a profoundly interesting area (moreso, IMO, than mainland china nearby) because of the huge variety of influences here. Each country has it's majority group (Khmer, Lao, Viet) but that group was profoundly influenced by Indian and Chinese culture and blends both although the degrees vary. Add in substantial indigenous minority group populations (save in Cambodia), longtime trader colonies, and then on top of that, add in a century or so of French influence (which results in fantastic pastry, btw) and the results are compelling.

I should also say that the results historically have been very violent, not just with the last century's bloody wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but historically the states and kingdoms in the region have been invading each other and been invaded by the Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, for centuries. I have to think it's population pressures and scarece resources that motivate a lot of this more - looking at Laos, it's the most sparsely populated (though very ethnically diverse), and while it too had a violent civil war, the scale of bloodletting afterwards was comparatively mild , there were no mass murders and the transfer of power to the Pathet Lao was peaceful. Contrast this with more ethnically homogenous (yet far more densely populated) areas like Cambodia and the carnage that ensued.

That said, it's a great place to visit, and I hope to return before there are 7-11's on every corner like in Thailand.

Cambodia/Thai/Laos Pictures

2005-11-15T12:08:00.000+07:00

Here's some more pictures. Also check out the movies in the post before this one if you like.

A few Angkor shots below:

These don't do it justice, it's just amazing to see.

Riding the bamboo train! As fun as it looked.

One of many cambodian families living on Tonle Sap, a huge lake/marsh in the center of the country off the Mekong

Sukhothai historical park, Thailand

Kid, if the shoe fits...

Some more Burmese. The stuff on their face is combination sunscreen/buddhist anointment or neither, my guide wasn't all that clear on this part.

Wat Sisaket, in Vientane, Laos.

New Movies!

2005-11-15T11:43:00.000+07:00

25 downloads each. Re-up and re-post in the comments section if you like.

Riding the bamboo railroad in Cambodia

Burmese schoolkids say hello, or something to that effect

Motoring down the Mekong

Evening prayers at the Wat in Louang Prabang

enjoy.

High-Lao

2005-11-13T15:58:00.000+07:00

Louang Prabang, Laos

A few weeks ago, on the way to Cambodia, I said that was going to be last new country to visit. Of course in the last few days I've been in 3 different countries, so I guess I lied.

I made my way to northern Laos via north central Thailand and the Chiang Rai area, almost entirely by bus. While the bus system in Thailand is short on legroom, as most thais are short on legs, it works pretty well. Thais are easygoing in general but the people who operate the bus stations are busybodies who make it their personal duty to get you on the right bus at the right time (and they always wear denim shirts or jackets - it's like the universal bus operator outfit here, strange) and are very helpful in general (and they don't expect baksheeh either). The buses themselves are clean and efficient and usually air conditioned. After enduring the hell that is the Indian bus system for a few months it's kind of awesome in a way.

As far as going to Laos, I can't say I've harbored a burning desire to ever go there, but I do have to leave Thailand and not cross back till the 15th so as not to overstay my visa, and I was in the neighborhood. Also, I wanted to see if Lao lived up to the hype - it's gotten lots of coverage as a vacation stop and the euro/aussie backpacker circuit acts like it's the greatest thing since cheap weed. I've seen smelly Aussies get wistful and teary eyed at the mere mention of Lao. I crossed over to Laos around the town of Chiang Khong by taking a ferry across the Mekong. The Lao town on the other side, Houayxai, could be described as a one stoplight, one horse town, but that would be an exaggeration as there is nothing as remotely interesting as a horse or stoplight would be there. (nb: I'm going to say "Lao" as an adjective and not "Laotian", which is a dumb word that the French made up. Saying Laotian to a Lao is like saying "Thailandic" or "Thailandish" to a Thai - it's just stupid. Oh, and if you're reading along in your head, nobody ever pronounces the "s" in Laos, everybody just says Lao, no 's'.).

After an extremely uneventful evening there, I showed up at the speedboat pier the next day to go down the Mekong to Louang Prabang. Now, over the past 5 months, I have done a lot of traveling, via foot, bike, motorcycle, train, tuktuk, autorickshaw, cycle rickshaw, Air India, bus, taxi, minibus, bas-mini, longboat, junk, bamboo train, etc etc etc. But when it comes to "most ill-advised travel experiences", the speedboat to Louang Prabang easily takes the prize.

Picture yourself wedged (along with 8 others plus luggage) into a space on a wooden boat about 14 inches long by 16 inches wide, sitting on your ass with your knees held to your chest and your feet crammed into the board in front of you, and a board jammed into your back behind you. Now, imagine a very, very, very loud outboard diesel engine (they give you helmets to protect against the noise) running right behind you. Now do this bumping along the Mekong in the sun at about 30 or 40 mph for 6 hours.

Not fun. The river was nice (and very sparsely populated, there's only a few million Lao anyway), but it was hard to appreciate when you're just praying you'll someday regain feeling in your toes. It wasn't cheap either, about 30 bucks, which is a fortune in Lao terms. Laos overall hasn't been that cheap. It's not expensive, it's just that the only people who can afford things (like Cambodia) are tourists, so prices are artificially high.

Louang Prabang itself is OK. It's the cultural and spiritual heart of Laos (the actual capital is downriver in Vientane) and has wats, wats, and more wats, and a palace or two, though my tolerance for wats and palaces after 150 days as a tourist in Asia has diminished somewhat. Otherwise it's your standard french colonial architecture with chinese influences, not unlike northern vietnam. Nice, but I'm not sure if it lives up to the hype, plus I've already seen this stuff in the rest of Indochina so it's hard for me to see why Mickey Melbourne and Sherry Sydney get so hot about it. Lao food is pretty decent, sort of like Northern Thai with obvious vietnamese influences and a lot of Mekong fish mixed in. The weather's nice, and there's no pollution as Lao hasn't a lot of people or industrial areas (and sometimes no electricity as a consequence)

Overall though, there's not much to do here except sit around and have a drink. Beer Lao has a reported 99% of market share here, so your choices are a bit limited but it's good beer. Southeast Asia as a whole is a pretty good beer making region. Each country has its own national brew: here it's beer Lao, Cambodia has Angkor Beer (although Anchor Beer is also widely sold there, so whenever you order one, you almost inevitably receive the other, unless you're a wussy brit who says "An-chore, please"), Myanmar has Myanmar Beer, and Vietnam has a regional brewery in each city, while Malaysia/Singapore are dominated by Tiger. Every one of these beers claims to be the winner of some sort of international beer contest of some sort. But they are all pretty good. Also available everywhere, much to my dismay, is Heineken. Why people drink that shit, when it is both: 1. worse and 2. more expensive than the local brews is absolutely beyond my comprehension.

The last person I saw drinking one was an obnoxious sounding German girl last night who, on observing and visibly disdaining an Australia/England rugby match on TV, pronounced with apparent seriousness, that "We Germans don't play rugby, we are too civilized!" I almost fell out of my chair. I thought people like that only existed in movies. Germans don't play rugby because they're afraid that if they do, they'll enjoy hurting people too much, and they'll seem like a bunch of assholes. So instead, they are just mind-numbingly boring (civilized), which is a safer alternative.

Tomorrow is a 10 hour bus ride to Vientane. That sounds like a long time, but the alternative is a speedboat.

Burma & Back

2005-11-09T15:31:00.000+07:00

Mae Sot, Thailand

Mae Sot is a Thai border town and hence kind of one of those skanky, ugly yet mildly interesting hodgepodge cities that you get wherever there's a border, a large income discrepancy, and liberal amounts of bribery and lawlessness on both sides. It's also got a large, old chinese populace (wherever there is a historic trading community in SE Asia, there is always an old school chinese community) as well as a significant population of both ethnic Burmese (generally darker skinned and more likely to be wearing sarongs) and Karen Burmese refugees (a low intensity civil war with Karen separatists has been raging across the border in Burma for decades, though many Karens are now good, god fearing Anglicans thanks to Aussie evangelists.

In order to get to the border (Mae Sot's about 6km away), you take what is the fairly universal mode of transport in Cambodia/Laos/Thailand outside of major cities - not the motorbike or tuk-tuk, but the Sangkaew, which is a pick-up (or flatbed) truck with a roof over the bed and a few (padded, if you're lucky and in Thailand, wooden if you're not) benches set up for cargo/people. So this morning I piled into a sangkaew with a bunch of returning Burmese and headed for the "Friendship Bridge" over the Moei River to the Burmese town of Myawaddy. (generally every asian border crossing is spanned by a "Friendship Bridge" or a "Friendship Highway", usually between countries that are usually not very friendly historically (Thailand and Burma being no exception - most of medieval thai history deals with various wars and invasions and counter-invasions by and of the rival Burmese.) Once the border formalities are complete, you acquire a nifty Burmese passport stamp (I'm not one for trophy travel, but it was cool to get it nonetheless, plus there's not much to do in Mae Sot anyway). Crossing the border, things take an unexpected turn for the poor, even if you expected it to be that way. The Thai side of the river is run down and ramshackle, the Burma side is paleolithic - pedi-cabs (trishaws) replace tuk tuks, and motorbike capacity increases to about 6 burmans per vehicle, instead of the ubiquitous, plain spoken navy blue & polyester thai uniforms, you get little kids running around in muddy green hand me downs - who ar the lucky ones as they at least get to go to school. It's not unlike crossing the Zhangmue/Khodari border (also via friendshp bridge) in between China and Nepal - one side is poor and chaotic by western standards - but the side you cross to is exponentially more so.

I was met instantaneously by a bunch of tour guide/translator/hustler types as I crossed the border who i positively could not shed. Also it was raining and I had no map and was the only westerner in town so was pretty much at their mercy. I succumbed to my man (Joti or something like that was his name - he just kept calling me "traveler-visitor") and he proceeded to give me a tour. There's not much to see in Myawaddy aside from a few Wats (which appear more like Indian or Nepalese Wats than Thai ones do, so mildly interesting) and hear about the stnadard episodes from the life of Buddha, which I pretty much know by heart now anyway. Joti/whatever kept assuaging my initial fears of cross border hustlers by saying "You can trust me, I not tell lie ever, I very innocent, you traveler visitor, I help you, I no do bad things. We have military government here in Myanmar, if I do bad things, they start shooting!" - which sounded honest enough.

Afterwards we had lunch (Myanmar food is not unlike Indian food with Thai influences) and Joti told me about how he loved the Czech soccer team and hated the Norwegian team. I'm not sure why, but he felt very strongly about it. We also had some conversation about Thai women, who he did not like, as they cost too much, I think. I sort of missed the gist of that, though once again I was complimented as being very handsome. This seemingly happens to me everywhere I go here, the women (working and not working) of the Lower East Side of Asia react more positively to me than their counterparts in Manhattan, and even some of the men. THere was a gay security guard at the hotel in Saigon who would escort me across to the elevator, holding my arm, every time I walked in. I double locked my door there.

Tomorrow it's northeast towards Chiang Rai and then over the Lao border. I'm collecting countries like trading cards at this point.

Thaied Up

2005-11-07T16:38:00.000+07:00

Sukhothai, Thailand

Another week, another country. I arrived in Bangkok for the first time since last year last Thursday, I think (easy to lose track of time), and within a few minutes on arrival, (well, actually a few hours as BKK Don Muang Int'l airport is a madhouse this time of year) I was accosted by several thousand fake taxi drivers (ignored them), screamed "meter, meter, meter" 1000x when my regular driver tried to re-negotiate, and then had to scream at him again for him to take me to the hotel I wanted rather than the fleabag guesthouse that would pay him a commission - and of course this is all sandwiched around the worst most heinous traffic existing this side of the world, in my experience. So really, there were no surprises - that's just the way BKK is.

Yesterday I made my first journey outside of BKK and flew north to Sukhothai, which is the ancient capital of Thailand during the golden years in the 14th c before it moved to Bangkok much later, though apparently it bears no relation to the Jewish festival of Sukkot, much to my shack-grin. The historical parts (wats, wats, and more wats, and a stupendous amount of stupas - and boy, I really need to see more of those after 5 months in Asia....) are pretty interesting though it is still hot as holy hell up here even though I am theoretically in Northern thailand. Sukhothai town isn't much to look at (one of the benefits of colonialism, from my selfish POV, is that cities and towns in colonial spots like Vietnam and Cambodia sport much more interesting architecture, both of the colonizers and the local fusions/variations), but that isn't it's biggest problem.

The biggest problem here is the nightlife. There's a lot of it, in fact, more than I've seen anywhere yet, it's quite problematic as it's rather distracting. By this I mean the millions and millions of gnats that come out at night and flock towards anywhere with light (and therefore people). And it's not just a few gnats, I'm talking huge clouds that gather in front of lights, in doorways - it makes it look like it's raining outside, it's even hard to breathe at times. As far as pests go, I guess gnats aren't that bad, since they don't really bite, sting, spread disease, or anything like that. They just fly around, get in yoru face, and then die in the morning - it's still really annoying though.

Tomorrow I'm headed west a bit to the mountains that border on Burma and the town of Mae Sot. Generally, as I've traveled, not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I find that the border/fringe areas of a country tend to be the most interesting for various reasons because you sort of get the best of both worlds - Xinjiang, Tibet, Kunming in China, Ladakh, Tamil Nadu India, Borneo in Malaysia, NW Vietnam etc.

Back again

2005-11-01T17:25:00.000+07:00

Siem Reap, Cambodia

This AM I took the boat from Battambang back up the river here to Siem Reap, where Angkor is, which I plan to make a return visit to tomorrow. One day doesn't really do it justice. The boat ran out of gas at one point and it looked like we were going to be sitting for a long time, but a helpful man in a canoe appeared in the right place at the right time.

Day 2 in Battambang meant a little bit of exploring in the area around. There's one 11th C. Khmer temple (Wat Ek) that is worth seeing, it's not Angkor, but it's cool enough, and it's on top of a hill which makes it mildly impressive just for that. One of the not-so-cool things about it is that local militant Buddhists have staked their claim to it and charge admission and collect donations to line their own pockets. The thing about the Khmer buildings is, they're really not Buddhist in origin. The Buddhists like to pretend they are, and hence demand a cut of admission fees, but anybody with a half a brain cell can tell you that the pictures of VIshnu, Ganesh, the dancing Apsaras and the Shiva Lingams render them about as hindu as it gets (Indian cham traders contributed this influence to the Khmers"). Of course the official khmer religion eventually became buddhism, but they didn't forget their hindu past. The whole idea of militant buddhists is probably foreign to most westerners since our predominant buddhist imagery includes cuddly dalai lamas and zen rock gardens. But they exist. Particularly in the Hinayana/Theruveda form (the saffron robed guys you see in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka) which is somewhat odd as the conventional wisdom is that their form is the more low-key form. (denigratingly referred to as the "lesser vehicle" (that's what hinayana means) by the Mahayanas - which are Tibetan/Himalayan buddhists found in that region as well as Mongolia)

The other, uh, attraction of Battambang is a chance to ride the bamboo train, which I took, as my moto guy called it the opportunity I would remember for an entire lifetime. Since the roads were so awful and covered with mines, and the national train service frequently disrupted during decades of war, the Cambodians who lived along the railroads built their own trains, which are essentially bamboo boards with lawnmower engines and iron wheels. It's stil in use today and is a pretty ingenious form of local transit evn though motorbikes (5 or 6 to a bike) and pickup truck beds predominate in the dry season.

The final attraction of Battambang, that I did not see, alas, was its most famous part time resident, Ms Angelina Jolie, who conducts world-saving activities from a villa outside town part of the year. To her credit, she picked a good place to do so, as it needs the help. The countryside around Battambang (and pretty much everywhere in cambodia) is as poor as you would imagine it, skinny underfed cattle, scrawny children, naked kids running around. And everywhere there are people and settlements. Before here, I would say that Mongolia (and parts of India) were the poorest places I've seen, but this is up there with any of that. This is pure specualtion, and I'm stealing the idea from Jared Diamond's "Collapse" again (the chapter on Rwanda), but I would not be surprised if malthusian/environmental population pressures were as much a factor durning the savagery of the Khmer Rouge bloodletting as were politics. I forewent to see the opporutnity to see mass graves and bones, though my moto guy promised me skulls, I decided I just didn't want to see it.

Despite it all, I must say Cambodians are a pretty friendly lot. Oh, and the food is pretty good - like you would imagine, it's sort of halfway between thai and vietnamese food. Also, I should note that the SE Asian obsession with lacquer. Every damned place you go, from expensive hotels to cheap ones, everything that can be lacquered is lacquered. Door frames, furniture, whatever. I'm afraid if I stay in one spot too long I might get lacquered in place.

Angkor's Away

2005-10-30T16:38:00.000+07:00

Battambang, Cambodia

So this is sovreign state number 6 on this trip, not counting HK/Macau, and for the 6th time I am sitting here sweating like a banshee in a stuffy building. Thank god for climalite fabric. Yesterday and the day before I was in Siem Reap (and would have written about it contemporaneously if not for the frequent blackouts) which is the home base for all things Angkor.

As for Angkor, simply put - holy shit. Absolutely incredible and exceeded expectations. It is a truly massive collection of sites - I spent one hot sun beaten day but am going back in a few days to check it out again, but you could spend a week there and just scratch the surface. It's loaded with tourists of course, but for things like that, it really should be, and it doesn't detract from the grandeur too much as the sites and buildings are simply so huge that people only serve to make it look bigger.

Some of the signature buildings (angkor wat and the Bayon of Angkor thom) have undergone pretty extensive restoration work - and in many cases complete rebuilding. There is a fundamental difference between western and eastern approaches to archealogical preservation/conservation/restoration - with the eastern (mostly japanese funded and trained) approach focusing on rebuilding things the way they would have looked, even if it means using non-original materials, and the western approach being more on preserving what's there and letting the fallen stones gather moss in Ozymandias-like tragedy. (for the japanese, allegedly, the idea of the temple/building supersedes the individual stones, etc.)

For my money though, some of the most impressive ones are the outer "minor" (although they are so massive it is hard to call them minor) buildings that exist on the fringe of the jungle, some with massive 200 foot trees literally growing right in the middle of the buildings as the Khmers used soil as filler under the limestone and sandstone blocks. They're covered with lichen and moss and bas-relief rubble lies everywhere - the whole thing has a spooky Indiana Jones quality that I haven't encountered anywhere else yet. Worth the trip.

THis morning I took a long hot boat ride down the river to Battambang, in Northeast Cambodia. THe boat ride itself was hot, long, and filled with groundings and collisions, as it's not so much a navigable river as a series of muddy mangrove swamps filled with punting fisherman and the occassional sampan. Battambang itself is described as a charming french colonial administrative town, of which I'd say at least the "administrative" part is still apparent. It's not horrible, just not that great. It's also, along with most of the NE, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, though things are fine on that front these days, and like any population center in Cambodia, the dominant force is that of the NGO.

--
http://mavillarreal.blogspot.com

Vietnam photos

2005-10-26T17:33:00.000+07:00

I have the time, so here goes:

Hanoi Opera House, epitomizes the french colonial period.

And aren't flowers usually pretty too, right?

Yup, I'm still alive, here I am near Cat Cat village forcing enthusiasm at my run of the mill surroundings.

Black Hmong farmers near Cat Cat, near Sa Pa.

Market day at Bac Ha....

....which is the home of the flower Hmong

...because of the way they dress.

Ha Long Bay. I wonder if these guys know where my mp3 player went?

The gateway to the Emperor's palace in Hue, lovingly restored and obviously very chinese influenced.

and an altar to the monkey god from the Japanese Covered Bridge in Hoi An. Even monkeys need gods.

Mister Saigon

2005-10-26T17:04:00.000+07:00

Saigon, Vietnam

I've been here in Saigon for about 5 days now, having decided to forego Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia and head for Siem Reap (home of Angkor Wat) directly, reason being that everybody who's been to PP say that it sucks and all the guidebooks warn how it's dangerous after dark, so I traded in my Phnom Penh ticket for today for one for Siem Reap on Friday, and am resigned to watching the Astros cough up another World Series game early in the morning tomorrow.

I think the last time I posted I was in Hue, the old capital Vietnam. Since my travels first stopped in Hoi An. Hoi An was nice enough, nicer than Hue, and was sort of the Vietnamese version of Melaka/Melacca. In other words it was an old coastal/riverine city with a lot of foreign influence from traders (primarily Chinese & Japanese, but a lot of Indian & European mixed in) so it was interesting to look at and a decent break architecturally from the standard vaguely French-Vietnamese fusion that is everywhere else. Plus good food too. Also like Melaka the Chinese parts of town manage to be more chinese than most of the stuff in China, which happens a lot in expat areas.

Saigon isn't so much to look at, and is the most expensive city in Vietnam, though still cheap as hell by western standards. It is where the motorbike reigns supreme, and more annoyingly, the cry of "Hello Sir! Moto-Biiike!" reverberates in a cascade as I saunter down the street (sweating, it's still hot and humid here). Again, not a lot of obvious tourist attractions aside from the War musuem although some of the old french stuff (Notre Dame, Hotel de Ville, like any big French city) has been well restored. The rest of the city is sort of concrete and not all that interesting as it was rebuilt recently after the war took a heavy toll here. There's a huge expat/tourist population here though. Again, mostly aussie, but I've met a few decent ones who could carry on a conversation without them accusing you of being an idiot for having George W. Bush as a president regardless of who you voted for or donated to and regardless of the fact that Johnny Howard is no great shakes himself, the most interesting one being a lawyer from melbourne who was sort of doing the same thing I am - we stick together, us common law boys.

Half Hue home

2005-10-18T14:13:00.000+07:00

Hue, Vietnam

So I've recovered a bit from the Ha Long Bay caper and spent a few days back in Hanoi in expat hangouts comiserating. I met some fairly interesting folks - generally the expats are more interesting to talk to than the fellow travelers (with the exception of a kilt wearing scotsman I ran into on saturday), at least for me, and my tale of from the concrete jungle to the real jungle arouses a bit more interest than the standard backpacker lonely planet "I just graduated college..." BS song and dance. Included among them were old vietnam hands (again, predominantly aussie, one of whom, for some reason, explained to me that he "know exactly what [my] problem is. You don't know who you are! I can tell it just by looking at you! You don't even know who you are!" That may have been a fair assessment, but my real problem is that there are too many loudmouth wallabies every single damned place I go.) and even a few random russians left over from way back when. Regarding the others, many of them, even the long termers, shared the same feeling of tiredness of having to remain guarded a bit more here than in some other spots in SE Asia. On that front, later that night as I was cruising home a moto-hooker...sorry, I mean "masseur" (I must have looked really stressed) who was peddling her wares found time to pick my pocket while I was walking down the street. On the plus side, I figured it out after a few seconds and simply turned around and said "give me my fucking wallet back", and she handed it over with no fuss- of course it wasn't till later till I figured out the cash I had inside (not more than 20 US$) was gone, but that seemed like a small price to pay for not losing my credit, atm cards, etc, and for whatever reason that wasn't as upsetting as when I've gotten cheated and robbed before.

Today I'm in Hue, which was the imperial capital of Vietnam during the 19th c, and features your standard, heavily chinese influenced forbidden city/palace type citadel. It's nice enough, and the restored parts are well done, though a lot of it has been destroyed in various fires and wars (the siege of Hue was a major battle of the Tet offensive in 1968, memorably depicted at the end of the movie Full Metal Jacket). Accordingly much of it is just ruins in overgrown fields and crumbling walls pockmarked with bullet holes, which gives it a spooky quality, though not as disquieting as the woman's shoe store/internet cafe I'm in right this second. After this, it's Da Nang, Hoi An, then Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon and off to Cambodia, which will be a bit of a relief.

Sorry Charlie

2005-10-14T15:53:00.000+07:00

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Ha Long does it take for the honeymoon in Vietnam to last? About two weeks. So stuff took a turn for the not so awesome starting yesterday AM after the night train back from Sa Pa, where I left my fanclub of 4 nd a half foot teenaged Hmong girls and barmen after a week. The night train itself wasn't the issue, but as soon as it ended stuff went downhill. Groggy and half asleep at 5 AM arrival, I made the mistake of jumping in a fake taxi with a fake meter - which I recognized as such as the ride back to the Hanoi Hilton cost twice as much as it should and they were trying to hustle me into some fleabag hotel of theirs. So controversy ensued. Normally I would have paid the extra 1$ that they were screwing me with without complaint. However, I've been on the road for 4 months, and overcharged, swindled, and screwed over so much that I can no longer take it. So I screamed at them and cursed them out and generally made a scene which they did not like. I didn't resort to physical violence because my bags were too heavy and I was too tired, but it was an option. Now months ago I would have deplored such conduct - but fuck it. If somebody wants to steal my money, then that is the price they will pay.

So things took a turn for the even worse on arrival at the Hilton - they had booked me for a room on the 12th (the night I left for Hanoi) instead of the 13th as I had requested, and even upgraded me to a suite - which I had the choice of using for a full five and a half hours before being kicked out. I declined this generous offer without profanity and took my leave for Ha Long Bay, which is the other highlight of North Vietnam, a day before I had initially planned. I traveled via bus - interesting to note that as in India, bus conductors hustle all the way up and down the road to the destination to pick up more passengers. Unlike India, however, where the bus slowly ambles through the bazaars and the conductors shout the destination, as the bus slowly sardinifies, the Vietnamese techique is for the conductor to point and scream and the small number of pedestrians as the bus honks its way down the highway at 50 mph, an approach that seemed a lot less successful.

Ha Long Bay is kind of unimpressive resort town, full of chinese style hotels as it attracts chinese tourists by the boat and bus load from across the border about 30k away. The primary attraction is the bay itself, which is loaded with thousands of giant limestone islands and outcroppings which basically form a giant maze. These things are a dime a dozen across the south china sea but the ones here are the most in one place, and I have to say they're impressive in spite of the Coney Island atmosphere that surrounds them.

So earlier today, I set off on a boat trip arranged by my hotel. At 8$ an hour for 6 hours, I thought this trip was outrageously expensive by vietnamese standards, but was too dazed to decline when I scheduled it. When I got to the jetty this AM, my fears were allayed by the fact that my 50$ bought me a junk with a 3 man crew, and seating for 29 of my closest friends. Say, where the hell were you guys anyway? I always come to all of your stuff except when I don't.

We set off for a gilliganesque tour of the bay and some of the islands. The first stop was a series of limestone caverns, which after seeing the ones in Borneo, were not that impressive. Making them less impressive was that the Vietnamese subscribe to the Chinese school of tourist site development, which is to put tacky colored lights and railings and generally make things as awful looking as possible in order to attract crowds of custom hat wearing, guide flag following chinese tourists. Their efforts were an unmitigated success.

Lunch was mildly interesting, as it was purchased off one of the various floating seafood markets, and the rest of the cruise was largely uneventful. The major event happened 15 minutes after I left the boat, and discovered that Giligan or the Skipper had taken the liberty of stealing my mp3 player out of my bag while I was on deck, me having forgotten it was in there. I hauled ass back to the pier to create a scene with hopes of somehow getting it back, but the boat was long, long, gone. I thought about going to the police, but with me having scant few details and not really knowing where the police station is, I'm thinking the chances of them finding anything by tomorrow am are slim. So I'm just going to bitch to the hotel staff who arranged it about how their countrymen are thieves. Again, I don't really give a shit about the mp3 player - it was a cheap one and I haven't used it in months because I'm sick of the songs. I'm just tired of being swindled, stolen from, and most of all of being constantly targeted for it, and therefore always having to be guarded. It makes it reallly hard to be nice to people in a country who actually are being nice to you when their countrymen smile while robbing from you.

Vietnam, I loved you, and your beer, and your pork, but you are making things very difficult. With only south Vietnam to go, which few people on the tourist trail are as impressed with as the North, and with Saigon being regarded as kind of a pit, I'm thinking of cutting my time here shorter than anticipated.

Killing Time

2005-10-12T14:51:00.000+07:00

Sa Pa, Vietnam

OK, I've been here for 7 days and counting and am finally out on the night train this evening. I have had literally nothing to do except consume cheap beer and cheap internet access while exchanging the same "where you from/where you going/etc."conversation with fellow travelers that I've had about a thousand times - so I'm just kind of writing this to fill space that would otherwise be filled with bowls of pho and cheap bia. I've become a fixture at the local bar here and much beloved by the staff as I hand out thousands and thousands of vietnamese dong as tips (which are generally unheard of here, and not forthcoming from shoestring Aussie and Israeli backpackers that populate this place). On the Aussies there was a brief light in the Oz darkness when, for the first time, I talked to Oz traveler who was ashamed at both 1. the number of Aussies there were everywhere, and 2. how incredibly annoying and obnoxious most of them were. So, wallabies, there is hope for you after all - recognizing there is a problem is the first step. In their defense, I will say that of the few Americans out on the trail, a lot of them are complete idiots as well, that I would never hang out with in a million years except for the fact that I had to a few times, though the US-expats I've met aren't so bad, and generally aren't as in to finding opium or getting free drinks from you. The locals I have no problem with though, the hmongs and I are tight, my private montegnard army outlook is positive so far.

Since the premature end of my motocross career, I've exhausted the local cultural opportunities. Last Sunday I went to Bac Ha market (home of the flower hmong, a little different tribe from my sort of- hometown Sa Pa hmong as far as costumes at least). Mildly interesting, and a great place to get chicken flu. Also we visited a flower-Hmong village, complete with a patriarch inebriated with traditional 100 proof corn wine, who danced, sang, and gleefully poured shots of jet fuel in gleeful anticipation of his cut from the tour company. The countryside is beautiful, though the vistas are frequently ruined by the haze from fires due to the swidden/slash & burn agriculture that is prevalent here.

A lot of the agriculture is of cannabis plants, which they use for hemp and for smoking as well. While it's technically illegal, the cops don''t seem to care very much at all even though it's a police state, and are even less inclined to arrest tourists for dabbling (there's a strict "hands off" policy from Hanoi regarding that golden goose). The only problem for the tourists is that the mj product here is not exactly knock out strength. The other night at the Tau Bar, my home away from home, there were two french backpackers, with a huge bag of marijuana, an ashtray full of joints, and just rolling joint after joint in a Le Cheech et Chong-ish display, trying desperately to get high but not succeeding. I'll miss you Sa Pa.

Easy Rider

2005-10-09T19:35:00.000+07:00

Sa Pa, Vietnam

So this is day 4 out of 7 in Sa Pa (my train doesn't leave for a few
more days) which will make it the longest I've stayed in any one spot
since I left New York 4 months ago. I've been here long enough that
the Hmong street hawker women don't even bother with me anymore when
they see me coming, which is a small victory.

Among the most rewarding things in Sa Pa is not the town itself, which
is at least functional for tourists if not pretty, but the countryside
and the Black Hmong, Flower Hmong, Red Dao, and Giang villages within
day tripping range. The best way to see these is by auto, which here
means either renting a jeep (expensive) or taking a motorcycle.

Having never ridden anything two wheeled other than a Huffy Dirtbike I
got when I was 10, I figured that the motorbike was the best option.
Yes, it's dangerous, but my taxi on the way in from Hanoi airport
smashed into a road sign so I figure it can't be worse than being
driven. And anyway, for somebody with zero motorcycling experience, I
figured that the best way to learn would be the rugged mountains of
Northwestern Vietnam around Fan Si Pan, with piss poor roads covered
with potholes, falling rocks, puddles, mudslides, insane motorists,
schizophrenic weather, and loads of "HALLLOOOO" ing village children
running after you whenever you slow down. (Actually the twisty
switchback roads were as traffic free as anyplace I've been recently,
and the heightened danger keeps you from opening it up like Evel
Kneivel so speeds are low and most drivers somewhat cautions - and yes
mom, I wore a helmet).

My mount of choice was a not intimidating looking white Honda. It
actually wasn't my choice, and I would have preferred the cooler
looking Russian Minsk that is the other popular choice around here,
but they are apparently real pieces of shit, so image loses out. My
plan was to rent it for three days, to use today to learn how to
become a road warrior and then take on some longer haul day trips. It
started off lousy as I teeter-tottered down the main drag here
without striking a pedestrian (miraculously). Then the open country
started up, and while the weather was good here for a change and the
scenery of the villages & fields was beautiful (and for a change you
saw Hmong not trying to sell you stuff), the road got difficult very
quickly which demanded more of my concentration than I would have
liked - "wow great vie, now don't die you idiot" For whatever reason,
whenever I saw a rock or pothole, despite all my efforts, some
supernatural force would pull me right towards that rock or pothole.
I think I hit every single one without fail. Plus changing gears was a
bitch, the gear thingy was made for small asian feet, so I kept
missing the damned thing and hitting the ground, which is a bad idea.

My nadir came at one of the nasty waterfalls. In mountainous
undeveloped highlands in Asia you always get the phenomenon of
waterfalls at the roadside, which are kind of cool looking unless you
are crappily driving a motorcycle through them. But they make it
difficult to motor through because the water, which is sometimes deep,
obscures rocks and cracks and potholes and bumps and you pretty much
just roll through and pray you don't hit anything nasty --the worst
thing is to go too slow cause then you get stuck, it's delicate. Well
I did the worst thing and got stuck, and then trying to extricate
myself from the predicament, managed to slip and have my chariot fall
over on its side (and necessarily dumping me in the puddle). I was
uninjured, save for my pride which was devestated insofar as this took
place in front of two intially bewildered, then laughing hysterically,
teenage Hmong girls walking along the road. The ride went on for
another few hours without incident, again, gorgeous if somewhat
repetitive countryside vistas - so I got the gist of what 2 more days
of it would be like. But the fact that I looked like a such a tool
due to my extreme suckitude at motorcycling(though I rapidly improved
towards the end) kind of ended my desires to take on anymore ambitious
routes. I mean, death, danger, who cares - that doesn't bother me at
this point as I've been spitting in the face of the grim reaper with
aplomb for four months now in mountains, deserts, jungles, Indian
buses, etc -- but looking uncool, well there's just a limit to what I
can put up with. So no mo moto for me for now.

Among Hmong

2005-10-06T10:37:00.000+07:00

Sa Pa, Vietnam

So yesterday I took the night train from Hanoi to the far northwestern side of the country, right on the Chinese border. The night train taking process itself was a bit complicated, as the state railway service runs three trains a day out to the border town Lau Cai (or Cau Lai, I always get it confused), each of which leaves within 10-15 minutes of each other, making it a trial and error process as to which train you should get on (third time's the charm)

After that it's a short bus ride through the mountains to Sa Pa, the tourist hub. It's famous for its mountain scenery (the highest peak in vietnam, Fan Si Pan (3000m), is a short bit away. You know I was going to climb it, but apparently it's a miserable wet climb and the view is only good if the weather is (it's been overcast since I got here), so I think I'm going to honor my Borneo pledge and not bother. Of course, it's probably going to gnaw at me incessantly that I'm right next door, and I could theoretically take down Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand's highest peaks in the span of a few months, so I may think it over. (of course, the peaks, like the people, aren't exactly towering giants, but still....)

Sa Pa and the northwest region generally is the home to the minority peoples, who I plan on visiting and fashioning into a private army with myself as their god-king a la Col. Kurtz in apocalypse now. Or just buying some handicrafts, as if I don't have enough of those after 4 months here. You actually don't even have to go out of the city of Sa Pa to do so, the place is loaded with ethnic Hmong in exotic traditional dress selling stuff up and down the street. Of course the first one I ran into yesterday tried to sell me opium, some things are not so exotic.

Speaking of such, let me say life as a lone traveller is somewhat boring, but damnif I'm not offered drugs or women every 15 seconds, far more than I could possibly ever hope to consume - I would have to bring in John Belushi, Jim Morrison, and the young George W. Bush for back up and still don't think we could do all this stuff.

On a few more general things: the "hello, moto-bike" call is as persistent here as it was in Hanoi, and even less useful insofar as the town is the size of a postage stamp. Another thing I noticed is that when a moto driver wants to get your a attention, he usually hoots with a "whoo!" which I guess is like a Vietnamese "Hey!" It took me a few days to figure it out, I kept hearing the "whoos" thinking that Ric Flair was goingto jump out of an alleyway and start forearm chopping me.

I'm unsure as to wheteher I've written on the next subject before as things tend to run together after awhile. But in Asia, especially in hotels/restaurants/airplanes with delusions of/actual grandeur aimed at upper crust travelers and local wannabes, there is an unhealthy obsession with blaring Muzak. Really unhealthy.

I think there's like one set of tracks for all of Asia, which was playing the day I walked into the first hotel in Beijing and will no doubt be playing BKK in December when I leave. There are some subtle regional variations, for example here in Vietnam, Micahel Bolton has won more hearts and minds than LBJ and Gen. Westmoreland could have ever dreamed of (and with his luscious locks and soulful lyrics, I would think it is more hearts than minds). I'm not sure what to make of this anomaly, and whether to blame us for exporting it or them for importing it - suffice to say that the next time I hear an instrumental version of "Take my Breath Away" I'm going to stick a chopstick in my eye.

new movie/general thoughts

2005-10-03T17:42:00.000+07:00

this should be Kathkalai dancers in Cochin/Kochi

http://s27.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=05KMHPO6926G82G32ER5BQISBN

and here's a low res movie of the atmosphere around the Indo-Pak border flag ceremony on India day:

http://s27.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=335W6TP0JRZPZ1ZV7EQ7JID0BW

A few general thoughts on Hanoi and miscellaneous stuff I meant to write but haven't yet (everything of tourist interest is closed on Mondays here, which is why I've been updating all day)

Hanoi is probably the best preserved colonial city I've seen yet. Very pleasant. Not intensely exciting, but almost no damage from the wartime air raids or anything like that. Central Hanoi is smallish and eminently walkable, if you don't mind dodging thousands of motorcycles (which I can do in my sleep after 4 months in Asia) , though you will seldom see any Vietnamese walking anywhere rather than riding other than poor laborers. As a consequence, it's pretty much impossible to walk down the street without some guy saying "Hello! Moto-bike!" to try to ferry you along every 10 seconds. Mildly annoying but they're not that persistent. The motorcyclization of Hanoi is as complete as I've seen anywhere in Asia. Even the great east Asian proletarian mode of transport, the bicycle, is a vanishing sight. Even the hookers now try to take you for a ride via moto, no kidding.

Oh, and I should say that the currency here is the most confusing yet. Due to a bout of hyper-inflation towards the end of Viet-socialism in the late 80's, the Vietnamese Dong is currently going at about 16,000 per US$. Which pretty much makes it hard to make an ATM withdrawal without the vaguely disconcerting scenario of becoming a cash millionaire on the spot, and makes for some complicated long division when pricing.

One thing about Asia generally which has totally annoyed me is that whenever I order food remotely spicy, the waitstaff always expresses a scornful "oohh, very hot, spicy!", as if I'm Johnny Bull from Liverpool who takes two lumps of sugar with his tea and will break out in hives if I taste any bit of capsacin. And then I'm often served something that's greatly toned down. For god's sake, where do these guys think the chili came from? Hint: not from this hemisphere. When their ancestors were eating bland lentils, mine were pounding out chili powder, and drying jalapenos and stuff even worse. I suppose I can't blame them, as there's approximately zero latin americans traveling the circuit in my experience, but....

Unrelated item: last week I was talking with Peter, my Ibon tribesman/jungle guide in Mulu out in Borneo. Sarawak, where he's from, did not open up to tourists, and hence become remotely developed, till the late 80's, so he grew up killing his own food. Talking with him about the way things were before and the way things are now, he expressed a great preference for the pre-development Sarawak. "Things were better before", was exactly what he said if I recall correctly. But, when asked him about his family and such, he wanted all of his kids to go to school and get an education and then get a job in an office. I've found this type of somewhat contradictory view to be pretty universal in all of developing Asia, from the steppes of Mongolia to the Tibetan plateau to the Malabar coast to the deserts of Xinjiang and here in the jungles of Borneo - things were better before, but they want their kids to become westernized. At first glance you would say that it's the "you can't beat em, join em" effect but I'm not so sure if that's all it is. While the Borneo rainforest is shrinking at a dizzying pace, it's not impossible to live the old lifestyle, as we encountered a number of spear wielding hunter gatherer types. In the same vein, most Tibetans, while they hate the Chinese, care just as much about having a TV set or a good vehicle as they do about attaining nirvana. So I don't know if progress really corrupts people in the way that its often portrayed, I mean there is something universally attractive about it, which is the point I am half-assedly making.

Upriver in a longboat

2005-10-03T12:10:00.000+07:00

this video might not work, so this is just a test. If it works I'll upload a few more.

http://s20.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=38XCAMJGZUI6D1K30OLTB5M3AY

25 downloads is the limit, if you DL you can help re-up it using www.yousendit.com and post the link in the comment box, thx.

MAV

Edit: it works for me! well, if you turn your head sideways that is, I forgot you can't rotate movies like picture. Will put some better ones up later.

S. India & Malaysia photos

2005-10-03T11:21:00.000+07:00

Sorry if this is up twice, this computer is stuck on japanese so I'm having some trouble.

Here's the shore temple in Mamallapuram. THat's the heart of the tsunami zone.

One of the cool things about South India is the street painting, here's two examples from Pondicherry:

Even in Pondi - French India- Cricket is king of the streets.

The temple complex at Madurai, one of the coolest things I saw in all of India:

Who goes to Kerala without seeing kathkalai? Nobody:

...or fishermen on the backwaters? Nobody:

On the way back down Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah, Borneo:

In the heart of the jungle in Mulu, Borneo:

Ugliest mammal ever, the Malayan flying fox, world's biggest bat. This thing is like a flying cat and even nastier looking in person. Big and ugly, but cool

And here's a picture of Melaka, Malaysia, simply because I felt like I had to put one in. A nice city, thoguh not a great picture. That's the dutch/portugese church of St. Francis X, which the Brits ruined by putting the ugly lighthouse in front of.

Fortunate Son

2005-10-02T11:34:00.000+07:00

Hanoi, Vietnam

So after Borneo I spent a few more days in Peninsular Malaysia before flying into Vietnam yesterday. As for Malaysia, Melaka (Molocca/Melacca) is an interesting place, a former Dutch/Portuguese settlement on the straits (near Indonesia) with a large Baba-Nonya (old school straits Chinese mixed w/Malay/Indonesian) populace dating back to the Melacca Sultanate and before. Not a lot to do there, but it's got character stemming from cool architecture. Interestingly, if somewhat predictably, the chinese parts of Melaka are better preserved and more interesting in many ways than the stuff in the mainland, simply because 1. the communists didn't destroy it, and 2. being expats they cling a bit mmore to the old ways. Also interesting, and not as predictable, is that giant, ferocious looking 6 foot long or longer monitor lizards patrol the riverbank in the middle of the city.

Not as interesting was Singapore, which essentially a string of offices and shopping malls with a few old colonial buildings sandwiched in between. Singapore as we know is an Admonishocracy, where visitors and residents alike are frequently chided about their list of "dont's" such as gum chewing, peeing in public, and even worse, peeing in a public elevator. Of course, the whole place was loaded with hookers openly plying their trade under no threat of caning (at least not without paying) so it's kind of paradoxical.

Yesterday I flew into Hanoi and don't have much an impression yet, other than that it seems nice enough. Future visitors to Vietnam be forewarned, the importation of toys that contribute negative influences on children (Barbie?) is strictly prohibited by Vietnam customs.

Oh yeah, and I just edited the settings to try to minimize those spammy bitches. Let's see if work.

Run through the Jungle part 2

2005-09-29T19:03:00.000+07:00

Melaka, Malaysia

OK, so after Kinabalu I flew out to Mulu Park (after clearing customs like 3 times, Malaysia has an anoying habit of making you do it when you switch between Borneo states , a large patch of protected rainforest with some spectacular limestone mountains and caves everywhere.   Again, Park HQ was tastefully appointed but disappointingly developed after meeting my jungle guide, Peter (all Borneons seem to have dutchish names, I guess stemming from colonial days, hence a lot of Peters, Williams, and Corneliuses, of course they are Dyak and Iboh tribesman, but...)

The first day we walked down a well lit, stroller safe planked wooden walkway. A bit dispappointing again, but the caves at the end were rather impressive. One of them, Deer Cave, which features a cool Abe Lincoln likeness, not kidding, is pretty much completely cavernous -- the biggest chambers in the world allegedly. The other featured some fantasitc stalac/stalagmites to rival anyhthing I've seen anywhere. And oh yeah, guano, lots of guano.

Again, the lack of wildlife was a bit disappointing, it's not unlike going through a rainforest exhibit at a high class zoo or museum, but the flora, again, I can't say enough about it. Just completely alien, exotic, fantastic, and unbelievable. Massive broad planar dipterocarps, trees with roots that start 50 feet up, single leaf palms, giant banana plants, carnivorous pitcher plants, giant fishtail palms, Tarzan vines -- just incredible. Combined with the mossy limestone karst backdrop the landscape is truly Cretaceous in nature, you half expect a Velociraptor or more likely Chewbacca or Yoda to come crashing through the underbrush, not an inebriated Japanese with a 3/4 empty bottle of VAT 69.

Day 2 in Sarawak was where things picked up. Peter and I hopped into a longboat and headed upriver. (Borneons, though short, travel in longboats and live in longhouses. THe longboats are due to the shallow river (much pushing/punting/pulling is involved in any trip), while the longhouses are due to lack of family planning I guess). The first stop was a longhouse village, complete with satellite dishes and a rather ugly Evangelical church; at this village I was mildly pressured to buy plastic handicrafts, which I did, though I steered away from the bead hangings that, in a stinging rebuke to Nietcsche (or Ray Nietschke? I forget) declare: "GOD IS ALIVE", which begs several questions.

The next stop was two more spectacular caves, one of which, at 108k and counting, is apparently the worlds longest. Again, great stuff, but sensory overloiad kicks in after you've seen underground rivers and sniffed underground guano mountains and have rolled past massive columns of japanese. (ironically, Peter was telling me how his father & grandfather used the caves to hide from the Japanese during the war, which he now leads them to) After another hour or so upriver in the longboat was where stuff got interesting.

After lunch, an 8k sweaty, exhausting, muddy, hideous hike through the jungle to Camp V awaited us. It was a huge chore and involved slogging through swollen rivers, quicksand, and even actual hacking at the undergrowth by Peter. It was totally miserable, but leech free. In short, I loved every second of it.    That's why you go (or at least I go) to Borneo.

Camp V was loaded with the normal complement of Aussies, some Flemish (nothing like some Flemish to add character) and a large foulmouthed contingent of cave researcher/explorer types from the RGS. . Not a lot of leisure activities awaited there save swimming, which in Borneo is like putting up a "FOR RENT" sign for tropical stuff to crawl up your butt so I passed.

The next day we lit out early for what will be (and I'm serious this time) the last damned thign I climb on this trip. It's called Gunung Api or something, or more simply the Pinnacles. It's a colllection of jagged, vertical limestone spines at about 2k m up a tropical mountainside.    While it was the lowest thing I've climbed in a while (now that I am a certified BA Barracus as far as climbing goes) It was by no means easy. Sweaty and tropical and slippery and nasty at the bottom with sharp skinny limestone jags at the top, augmented by various ropes, precarious ladders, and rickety metal bridges. The whole thing was quite literally a giantass jungle gym for adults and just a shitlooad of fun to climb around if exhausting and treacherously dangerous. (though to be fair, the good thing about climbing limestone and granite, rather than high altitude Himalayan scree, is that its smooth, firm, entrenched, and doesnt' disentegrate under your hand/foot, making stuff easier).

Again, I can't say enough about the Jurassic Park/Tomb Raider setting of massiver trees, vines, rocks, massive cave openings, etc. Again, not a lot of fauna, save some serious insects, Borneo Giant Jungle Ants (to farm these guys would require an estate), huge spiders, some distant angry macaques, and a Rhinosceros hornbill, which is apparently the piece de resistance among birders. Although this is not altogether a bad thing. While trudging through the jungle, I could not help but remember the days spent in the Reptile House of the Houston Zoo, always my favorite stop there. I used to spend hours gazing at the various brilliant and lethal looking vipers and cobras, each of which had a placard that said, in big bold letters "VENOMOUS". I also remmber being reassured, when looking at them most deadly varieties (save the deadly 4 texas snakes, cottonmouth, rattler, copperhead, coral), that their habitats were nowhere near my backyard, and usually were a bunch of islands sort of between Asia and Australia - i. e. here.   No big deal, I though, I'd just avoid big flat rocks, deep roots, and old logs. Of course, the route up to the Pinnacles involves exclusively big flat rocks, deep roots, and olds logs. So I resorted to whistling to drive the snakes away. When Peter said "Why you singing Magal", I embarrasedly stopped and was prepared to suffer the deadly consequences.

Thankfully, no scaled death dealers approached. Mostly just some really cool insects, fantastic moths, butterflies, etc; what was not cool were the two six inch millipedes that crawled out of my bag at one point. Not cool at all. Especially awesome was the dearth of mosquitos, apparently due to the massive amounts of bats that are flying around my head at this very moment.   Anyway, I got up and down without a VENOMOUS incident, so I considered myself lucky.

Computer issues again, will continue tomorrow

Run through the Jungle

2005-09-27T10:21:00.000+07:00

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

(picking a title for this entry was so hard, so many good jungle themes, Welcome to the Jungle, It's a Jungle out There, In the Jungle the Mighty Jungle, the Jungle Book, and that's not even getting into the Forest stuff etc etc. I think I showed admirable restraint)

I haven't been updating recently because I've been on a somewhat overpriced trek through the Borneo rainforest. When I signed up for this tour I was in darkest India and that Malaysian Borneo would be similarly hassleish and inaccessable. That waasn't the case as I was able to watch Monday Night Football (well, Tuesday Morning Football here) shortly after arrival from my waterfront room at the Hyatt. While this bit of luxury was not unwelcome, I didn't expect the development to go up to the edge and into the rainforest, which it does and is both good and bad.

Kinabalu climb

The first adventure was a climb of Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia's highest point (as well as the highest in SE Asia though maybe Burma might have one slightly taller, not sure) at around 4200m/14k feet or so. As I said earlier, it's not a huge peak either absolutely or relative to July/August's advenrures out in Ladakh, however it's just high enough to give mild altitude troubles but not high enough to bother acclimitizing to. Normally on the way up to the mountains on this trip, my journey has started crammed into a rickety jeep or bus traveling up a dirt road screaming around blind curves and prayint that the 18 Tata trucks you just passed by don't have a 19th companion on the other side. Here however, it was smooth asphalt on an A/C Bas Mini, so that was a sign of things to come.

On arrival at the tastefully appointed park HQ, I received my mandatory climibing guide, a toothless Dusung named Justin. I'm not sure why a climbing guide is mandatory other than as a state sponsored scam; the trail up the mountain is pretty well marked with stairs and railings at lower levels and ropes at the higher spots. The only reason why you would need a guide would be if you were a complete idiot who totally sucks at climbing mountains, which we have established I am not. Though to be fair, there were a lot of Australians on the mountain...

So accordingly I was a bit disappointed both by how crowded and developed the mountainside was (though I was grateful for the toilet at the last checkpoint before the summit). To be fair, I should say the Malaysians have done a much better job as far as making it accessible without being too tacky, with the general atmosphere being not dissimilar to a US national or state park. If this were China, there would be a souvenir stand selling stuffed orangutans every 10 feet and a cable car going up to the Karaoke bar at the summit. Here the stuffed orangs are confined to the park HQ.

Now at this point you're probably saying: "hold on, jackass, you were just praising the various starbucks of KL last week and now you're going all rousseau noble savage on us, what the f?" Fair point, but when I sign up for a seven day borneo adventure, I want to be hacking through the underbrush with a pith helmet, not slogging past a traffic jam of middle aged Kiwis pretending like they're traversing the South Col. And the accomodation (shack) I had to sleep in sucked - if I'm going to have my illusions shattered, I'd prefer it to be in opulence considering the Ringits I malayed out for this trip.

So I reached the grotesque lodge at 11k feet up after 3 hours instead of the expected 5 by not stopping other than a quick food break, even though I was out of shape and operating on a twisted ankle from too much partying in KL. I did so in order to punish my mandatory climibing guide for his presence (he was thoroughly unpunished) and to show the slow people how slow they were. Of course, this just meant more time at the crappy lodge, so nobody wins there.

I should say that the mountain and the forest are pretty cool. Not much fauna, but lots of crazy exotic flora and smooth granite. THe whole place, from the fantastic gnarled trees growing at impossible angles to the well worn rocks is polished and smooth from eons of tropical rainfall.

On day 2 I got up at the absurdly early hour and was moderately taxed on the way up. Slightly difficult due to slippery wet granite, but moreso due to the traffic jam of aussies & japanese on the way up and down. Apparently the sunrise over the South China Sea is something, but as it was cloudy I'll never know. Even the obligatory summit photo was a bit anticlimactic; like anything, if you do it too many times it gets boring.

[edit, I meant to continue this with the account of 4 days in sarawak but the internet screwed up on me and I lost a whole bunch of work, so will continue later]

Borneo Again

2005-09-20T13:29:00.000+07:00

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

So the last few days I didn't have much to say, going from the barely controlled chaos of Bombay and India to the ultra clean, ultra modern Kuala Lumpur was a bit of culture shock, although the replacement of rickshaw wallahs with mercedes & monorails was a welcome change. KL manages to be more Western than most places anywhere in the west with an inordinate concentration of Starbucks, Borders, etc as well as a shocking amount of largely Guinness fueled nightlife for a muslim country making it a popular party destination (the first night I hung out with an expat chiropractor from Vancouver and a former coal miner from Wellington NZ ). Making life easy once again is that English, due to colonial heritage as well as the variety of ethnic groups (malays, straits chinese, indians, tribal people) is the lingua franca. And even Malay is easy enough to read a lot of the time as it's written in Roman alpha (though it possesses a komical amount of "k"s which I guess is from the dutch influence "teksi, Komuter Tren" and such). The people are friendly enough too; Malaysia has an inferiority complex (malaysian flags are everywhere) and is kind of desperate to get noticed, (which is why they built the Petronas towers and the KL Tower) and boasts all sorts of obscure superlatives ("world's largest covered outdoor bird park!" "Asia's Largest Chinese Harvest Festival Zhang He Mooncake float!" ) - apparently there is even a government backed initiative to get Malaysians into the Guiness Book of World Records.

I arrived in Borneo after a flight across the sea today (the BMW dealership next door establishes that this is not your father's wildman's Borneo) and tomorrow set off early to start climbing up Mt. Kinabalu which should only take a day and a half. (at just over 4101m, an anthill compared to July's effort, which is good because I haven't exercised in eons save to dodge roving drum salesmen in India. (one of many banes of my existence there - in every tourist area, north south, whatever, somebody tries to sell you a goddamned drum. Who the hell is buying these drums? They don't pack easily, and they're really not that cool in any event).

Bom-bye!

2005-09-15T15:30:00.000+07:00

Bombay, India

So today is the last of 52 days in India, finishing where many people start. Bombay is pretty much as expected, with some very nice parts and then some things that aren't, as well as insane traffic. As far as sights go it doesn't really have many aside from Elephanta Island, as it was of little historic significance until a few hundred years ago. It's more of a place to be than to see things, and it is really the place to be these days as it's the Ganapati festival in which groups of people from all over the city, rich and poor, lead loud, drum beating/chanting/fireworks exploding processions with bright neon pink and red effigies of Ganesh, and then toss them into the Arabian sea.

At this point you're saying "why doesn't he call it Mumbai like he's supposed to?" Simple, really - way back when the name change first happened I caught on fast, and then haughtily informed everybody (mom) that it was now Mumbai. So I figured it was a standard post-colonial name change (from the portuguese Bom Bahia/good bay) that I could go with. But it's actually something more sinister than that. The name change (in honor of Mumba devi, a Hindu goddess who's got a temple here) was precipitated almost singlehandedly by the Hindu/Marati nationalist group Shiv Sena, a small minority of Bombayites led by the detestable Bal Thackeray with a disproportionate influence, as well as a record of religious massacres and general thuggery. The name wasn't the restoration of any pre-colonial name (there was just a few villages here before), rather it was intentionally chosen in order to emphasize the Hindu connections of the city (despite that Bombay is home to millions of Muslims, Christians, Jains, and despite that most of the city institutions were built by the small but tremendously important Parsi (Zoroastrian) community. So from now on its Bombay (which is what most Bombayites say anyway) or nothing for me.

I'd been working on some big long reflective general essay on the last 7 weeks on India but it has no substance, so I don't know if I'll put it up. Briefly, I can say I will miss a lot about India, and there is also a lot I am glad to be done with.

End of the Line

2005-09-11T14:48:00.000+07:00

Varkala, Kerala, India

So I'm here at the bottom left corner of the subcontinent on the cliffs overlooking the Arabian Sea by way of Cochin, Alleppy and Kollom. The rest of Cochin was rainy and uneventful, though I did get to take in shows of Kerala's two major art forms Kathakali and Kalarappia (sp?). Kathakali is sort of like Keralan opera, with elaborate make up and costumes. As the actors don't speak or sing and communicate with eye movements and mudras (hand positions), it's theoretically understandable by westerners, however the mudra for "Welcome, exalted and honored guest" is pretty much indistinguishable from the one that says "bitch you better bring me a chicken sandwich!". Fortunately, Kathakali plots are the same as that of nearly all Indian mythology (hero/heroine slays demon/demoness) so it's not that hard to follow. Kalarappia is south Indian martial arts, which was fairly straightforward and faintly embarrassing as I was the only person in the audience for the show. While it wasn't that impressive, I wouldn't want to knife or stick fight any of those guys, even though the chubby stick fighter guy bore a resemblance to the Star Wars Kid.

On the way out of Kochin (via Kerala's awful bus service, by far the worst in India that I've seen. Getting on a bus in Kerala is accomplished by running alongside the bus as it pulls into the station and then shoving your way through the door as people enter and exit) I stopped in Alleppy, aka the Venice of East and major entry/exit point for Kerala's famous backwaters. Venice of the West has little to fear from Alleppy, sad to say. From Alleppy I took the all-day backwater ferry to Kollom, which some of the tour books crap on as lousy but which I didn't find so bad, although there were only two other tourists on the boat (a parisian lawyer with a ridiculous pepe le pew accent, and a Londoner of Indian descent, also with an absurd etonian accent - I could listen to him say mosquito or mojito all day long). Not a lot to see on the boat aside from various fishing vessels going about their business and palm trees, as well as some fantastic bird life, with literally thousands of fishing eagles, but very relaxing even if you don't have a lot to relax from.

So now I'm in Varkala, as I said before, on the shore of the Arabian sea. It's a beach town although the beach and the water isn't so pleasant. It's visibly violent and angry and features a nasty undertow and riptide that has sent some to a watery grave, so swimming past knee deep water is not advisable and really not much fun. The food is really good, though, the best damned calamari I've ever had, especially the calamari curry, which really works.

Speaking of unfun, I can't think of a place that makes drinking as unfun as India. Fisrt, the selection of liquor is either (lukewarm) Kingfisher ("The King of Good Times", "A Taste Most Thrilling!" (of which it is neither)) or Indian Made Foreign Liquor due to absurd import taxes. Second, your liklihood of getting some of these beverages (which are relatiely expensive in Indian terms) varies considerably. More often than not, restaraunts are unlicensed and won't sell it to you (perhaps because "ALCOHOL RUINS COUNTRY, FAMILY, AND LIFE!" as the Tamil Nadu bottles helpfuly warn us), and even if they will, they won't do so on dry days, (Thursdays, and various other days at unpredictable intervals). The worst of all possible options is an Indian bar, which is actually a stuffy dimly lit room full of chainsmoking guys in Lungies drinking cheap whiskey - enough to turn one off drinking forever. Here in Varkala it flows a bit more freely being a resort town, though still unlicensed so it's available either in a teapot, or under the table. And when I say "under the table", I mean it is literally served in a bottle that you have to keep under the table so the cops don't see it.

Gorilla Monsoon

2005-09-04T18:33:00.000+07:00

Fort Cochin (Kochi) Kerala, India

So Kerala is nice but hell if it isn't wet. I mean it's the monsoon-end season but hell. Kochi/Cochin is one of the more interesting spots in all of India, it's on the bay at the northern head of the famous Kerala backwaters, where I'm headed in a few days, and has been a European (Dutch, British, Portuguese) settlement for hundreds of years (pre-Raj) as well as a center of Christianity (Sts. Thomas A. (allegedly) and Francis X (definitely) landed here a long, long time ago. Adding to the western feel is the formerly large, now almost vanished, Jewish community (mostly in a mattancherry neighborhood, tastefully named "jew town") that dates back to either Nebuchdenezzar or the diaspora or medieval times, depending on who you believe. It's probably best known in the contemporary times as the setting for about half of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, which, if you have not read yet, you should - I'm ashamed for taking 30 years to discover Salman Rushdie, it's not like he was never in the news...

Kochi was the main spice trading port for a long time, and still is south India's largest shipping center, as its close to the Spice Mountains/Western Ghats from whence I just came. Regarding the Spice Mountains, I think when I left you last I was about to engage in a night safari. That term was a bit of a euphemism, it was actually just a few hours of walking with the Periyar Park Rangers on their nightly patrol of the park in search of poachers and smugglers. Apparently elephant poaching & sandalwood smuggling is a big concern, though it has declined a bit since the death of the infamous Veerapan the Bandit King of Tamil Nadu & the Western Ghats. (India is many things but seldom without local color, I mean who the hell knew that Bandit Kings still existed?)

Anyway, one of my two ranger escorts carried a rifle, which I imagine was for smugglers and not tigers. If it was for the latter, it goes without saying I did not like his chances of hitting a charging tiger in the rain, at night -- I mean I probably had a better chance with my swiss army knife (who at this point I have creatively named "Knifey" due to lack of having any other friends here in a Taxi Driveresque move).

The night patrol by itself was about as much fun as walking around a jungle in a monsoon at midnight as you would imagine -- were you imagining leeches? Because if not, the picture would be incomplete. Yeah, there were a lot of leeches. Prior to a few days ago, I was grotesquely indifferent yet somewhat intrigued with leeches in principle, having no experience with them. I can honestly say that the thrill is gone. Leeches are really, really, really gross and annoying.

The ride back down to Kochi the next day was a fiasco too. As I had crossed the border, I was on a Kerala bus and not the usual Tamil Nadu State DVD Coach - which invariably features blaring movies of Tamil flicks, usually featuring a chubby, lungie wearing (lungie is like a kilt/skirt for men) sideburned mustachioed guy performing badly choreographed dance-fighting moves to Tamil music in between love songs. (As I mentioned earlier, this one guy, one of MGR's successors, is now one of the state governors whose visage is plastered everywhere. ) The bus station in Kottayam, as I tried to head south, was a nightmare. The tourist police/station masters tried to help me and had me on about seven or eight different buses simultaneously but none of them went to my initial intended destination (Kollom) so I ended up taking the law into my own hands and heading for Kochi. A lot of times asking for help an India is a bitch because nobody's really in charge, it's often easier just to go to the bus drivers/etc and call out the name of your destination/problem loudly in English until somebody helps you.

Lost in Spice

2005-09-02T20:00:00.000+07:00

Thekaddy, Kerala, India

Well I complain about the seeming state of near anarchy that pervades in India but compared to events on the other side of the world really it's a miracle that things run as well as they do here - nothing ever makes sense and nobody seems to be in charge ever and you may get swindled and overcharged and scammed and extorted, but in the end, things seem to work here, which is remarkable given a country of 1 billion people speaking 100+ different languages, many of whom have been ethnic/religious enemies for thousands of years and slaughter each other once a decade or so, with various splinter groups engaged in armed rebellion in spots and with an actual ongoing war with Pakistan in Kashmir within its borders. And yet still India, whatever that means, manages to continue existing.

So I'm not going to bitch about Thekaddy, and actually I wouldn't anyway because it's pretty nice. It's right over the border of Kerala in the Western Ghats, which are the low (1-2k m) mountains that go down the spine of South India. This particular spot is known as the Spice Mountains, specifically the Cardamom Hills - so it's the best smelling place in India, unless you're allergic to cardamom, in which case it kind of sucks. Nearby is the Periyar wildlife reserve which apparently has some hard-to-see tigers and leopards as well as a boatload of elephants, I'm going on a night safari tonight to see what's what - but this area looks way to populated (overdevelopment is India's curse but there's too many other problems to worry about it). If you ever come to India, btw, the Taj chain of hotels offers great value in the offseason, I've got a fantastic little jungle cabin for a song .

Tomorrow it's off to the west coast, hard to believe but only 2 more weeks in India and then the fantastic voyage is halfway done.

Negotiator

2005-08-31T22:13:00.000+07:00

I don't think a visit to India is complete without getting taken by Kashmiri rug merchants. So I went souvenir hunting this afternoon in Madurai, looking for something small, portable, and cheap. An hour after entering the shop, I ended up with two gorgeous 3 foot tall painted Meerakshi statues paying the number I had intended to spend in mind, cubed. (mom/dad, they should be en route to Texas at some point, I geev you very special excellent price if you want one....) I also somehow ended up with a small rug thrown in for good measure, which I actually got a decent deal on, probably because I overpaid for the statues. But they kick ass, and considering the money I've saved here on domestic transit - I've traveled at least 1000 km or more in India overland, generally for not more than the price of a subway ride each way - they were worth it. Plus they're wood, so I can eat them if necessary.

Is that a Gopura in your Pocket?

2005-08-31T16:14:00.000+07:00

Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

So Madurai features a lot of those by now familiar Indian tourism contradictions - a congested, sprawling ugly city full of hawkers, beggars and hustlers (though not quite as bad as Agra) surrounding stunning tourist sights and crammed full of saris so incredible that I might start wearing one. So again, you love it and you hate it, yin and yang, Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu, etc etc etc.

As for the good: the Shri Meenakshi temple is absolutely stunning, both inside and out, and worth the trip. Among the top religious sites of any type anywhere, it's the high point of medieval Dravidian (Nayak) sculpture/design around and makes for good photos. It's a Shiva/Parvati (his number 1 consort) temple although down here they have different names - suneshavara and meenakshi. Among the more interesting aspects is that is in continuous use at all hours, with all sorts of ongoing ceremonies, usually multiple weddings (since it's a shiva-parvati fertility site), featuring elaborate marigold headdresses, tearful teenaged brides, stone faced grooms, and shoving matches between rival parents in-law - and some jerk wearing ugly mountain climbing sunglasses taking pictures of the whole thing.

As for the bad: the usual range of auditory and olfactory offenders. Special mention goes to the hotel Supreme, where my room features hideous decor that a 1979 mumbai bachelor would think was swinging, an air conditioning system that I think caught on fire last night or at least smelled like it and now is broken, and a toilet seat that was apparently designed for both standing and sitting - it's like a raised squat platform and just makes no sense logistically from any posture. Anyway, it will now feature prominently in my vivid Melifoquinine induced nightmares for that reason from now on. Plus the food is all South Indian veg - so it's dosa/uttapam/idli or bust. I'd rather bust.

Tomorrow it's on to the absolute sticks (back to the Taj resorts for me, it costs more and is a lot by Indian standards but staying in dives I can only do once or twice a week) in Thekaddy to try to visit the Periyar dwildlife reserve, which might be closed and I might have to bribe/baksheeh my way in as you end up having to do a lot here as a rich westerner even if you're not rich.

Below is a corrected route map - black is by air, red is by land (or boat), and blue is - the future, but compare it with map 1 from months back and see that plans change.

Of 30-pondy-trichy

2005-08-30T15:50:00.000+07:00

Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

So it's undisputed that I've lost a bit of steam after the first few heady months. The heat and hassle-wallahs will do that to you after a while, I've been gone for something like 76 days now and been in India for 5 weeks. Very few grand adventures, just sort of shuffling around from place to place. I tried to engineer a good story by trying to get a cycle rickshaw driver to let me cycle him around the other day, but it was met with blank stares and not much anectdotal potential. I'm lining up a (smaller) mountain climb and some rainforest safari action in Borneo, Malaysia next month so maybe then Johnny Quest will be back.

As for the last few stops, Pondicherry, down the road from Mamallapuram, was sort of the odd counterpart to Shimla, the old British capital in the hills where I stopped a month ago. Pondy, as it's known, was the capital of French India - and after a few wars with the British, it was pretty much all of French India until they gave it back in the 50's. So like Shimla, it's like somebody plopped a Euro(French Med) town right in the middle of South India on the Bay of Bengal. Even the cricket playing tamil kids in the street were speaking French. Unlike Shimla, it has been kept up rather nicely, with contributions from both the French and this weird Sri Aurobindo Society cult type organization which apparently owns half of town. That said it was a pleasant enough if not exactly happening, spot in which to purposefully ignore a dubious occasion. The food was decent there too as a number of French expats live there and have set up some respectable restaurants.

The next stop, Tiruchirapalli, aka Trichy, incorporated (as does most of inland Tamil Nadu, alas) the claustrophobic, wall to wall rickshaw, stifling heat that Northern India does, so in other words it kind of sucks and is not worth my or your time. It has a cool looking (from afar) big rock temple/mountain in the center of town, right next to a huge-ass cathedral and jesuit college, (lots and lots of churches down south) but other than that, nothing to write home about, other than that I spent my first night in South India w/o air conditioning - which will be the last such night, ever.

There's also some weird scam down south where everybody asks you for foreign coins. Some school kid yesterday asked me for it for a "school project" and I gave him a nickel and some pennies and some Hong Kong change, and then I realized his project was probably a fabrication after about 10 other people asked me for foreign coin "souvenirs" as well. Not sure what the hell they are doing with them.

Mamalla the Ugandan Giant

2005-08-26T13:37:00.000+07:00

Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India

Mamallapuram is south of Chennai/Madras along the Bay of Bengal. It's kind of a cheap beach resort but unfortunately the beach isn't a place where you want to spend too much time here because you could step in something alas. The town is decent enough, with your typical pink/blue/yellow/whitewashed beachy colors and thatched roofs and that kind of thing. It's famous for its rock temples (which are in art-historical family sense, distant cousins of the ones I saw in Dunhuang & Bingling in northern china, 5000 miles away) and they are pretty impressive, even though looking at them takes some endurance because it's crazy hot here.

A few more random thoughts - the South of India is easier going generally than the North - and there's fresh seafood too. The area seems to be doing fairly well even though its right in the middle of the tsunami zone. Most of the beachfront areas have rebuilt, if they needed to, and while there's some rubble I'm not sure if it's tsunami related or just general Indian miscellaneous debris. That said the South generally doesn't seem to have the same sense of decaying/bursting/imploding that the North does, probably because it's in an economic boom. While outsourcing and the growth of software and high tech industries are widely reported in the US, what isn't reported is the irony of it all here. The South of India has been inhabited by darker skinned Dravidians, while the lighter skinned Indo-Aryans in the North( who invented the caste system, a lot of which revolved around skin color to separate themselves from the dravidians) have traditonally hogged the spotlight and still do, constituting the Taj & Raj imagery with which most westerners conceive India. As far as I could see, Northern India looked like the past to me - nice temples and monuments, a huge government bureaucracy that is more bark than bite, and a raft of problems that nobody seems to know how to fix. Southern India seems to be the future.

There's some unique problems though, a lot like their high-tech california colleagues, the Tamils have a thing about electing movie stars into their government. Apparently every single state gov't official (state gov'ts are more powerful here generally, the chief minister is like a Governor on steroids) is a former Tamil movie star. ( Contrary to popular myth, Indian film is very very regionalized. Everybody in the West knows about Bollywood, but the thing is only 50-60% of the populace speaks Hindi, in which Bollywood films are made, and down here everybody speaks Tamil, which is not really related to Hindi at all. So as a consequence, there's a Ladakhi film industry (which is basically a few guys in Leh with a mike and a camera) that I call Bol-Leh-wood (ha!), a Tamil film industry (Tamalewood? ha ha!) etc etc etc. Of course all the movies in the regional cinemas are identical to a westerner - man sings earsplitting song, woman sings earsplitting song, dancing ensues, repeat, but that's beside the point.

The big-daddy of Tamil movie star politicians is some guy named MDR, who kind of looks like Moammar Qaddafi because he wears a lambswool hat and sunglasses, I say this because his picture and statue is literally everywhere, by the roadside, on the streetcorner, everywhere. Of course he was a gangster and monumentally corrupt and actually was reelected after he had a stroke and was incapacitated at the end of his career before he died (when a legion of his fans maimed themselves by cutting of arms/legs in sympathy, not kidding).....but man they love him, and they love his last wife too, who was also a movie star and succeeded him, and was also a gangster. She's everywhere though here.

Patience

2005-08-23T17:51:00.000+07:00

Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India

So it seems every time I step on a bus in India there's always a novel test of endurance awaiting me. I thought very little could be as frustrating as the Amritsar ride on the night "luxury" bus, what with the controversy over the coffee table, the intense heat, choking diesel fumes, and the annoying, loud, sweaty sikh kid sitting next to me over whom I battled for the armrest (I pushed him back over the line of control) and who I eventually just had to tell to f-himself when he started trying to shut the window, which actually worked.

Unfortunately the bus from Agra to Dehli on Sunday evening was even worse. Having been shutout of train tickets and having a monday AM plane flight, I had no alternative, but to book another "deluxe" air-conditioned ride. This time, my booking did not secure me a seat, but instead a spot on the floor in the back (some german loser who simultaneously got on took the last seat, made no effort to switch with me, and was bitching to me how it was uncomfortable - yes).

Of course, I could have tolerated this had we made the 4-5 hour drive back to Dehli as scheduled at 5 pm. Instead, the "deluxe" bus was actually the back end of a domestic tour bus, so instead of driving back to Dehli, we made several stops for night-time sightseeing in Mathura (where there are no streetlights or anything, but that's beside the point). Mathura, in the 1-2 hours I spent there, managed to shoot past Amritsar and Agra as the biggest dump in India that I've seen yet. Apparently it's significant as a pilgramage center due to the fact that Lord Krishna allegedly lived there during the events of the Bhagavad Gita, so there's loads of vishnaivite sadhus, and of course cows, cows, and more cows, as well as persistent hawkers and beggars. While I take no position on the various Hindu deities, by the end of my time there, I was ready for Kali, Durga, and the rest of the sivaites to raze the place.

So after that unscheduled stop, already being well behind schedule and only being a little over an hour outside dehli, at or around 11 pm our driver made the customary roadside dhaba stop, for "dinner", which I'm pretty sure they usually do in order to get a kickback/commission from the owners as this happens a lot. Then at some point outside Dehli I was hustled off to a neighboring bus headed more towards my part of town, and although I didn't have to sit on the floor, I managed to lose my hat (which I thought I had lost in China but recovered). Then the driver screamed at us in Hindi and dropped us off two miles away from our destination. So at 1 AM I got back to the hotel marking the end of what should have been a four and a half hour drive after 9 hours. India.

Chennai is a coastal city recently famous for outsourcing (which I guess here would be Insourcing) and is the first place I've seen in India which seems to be booming rather than decaying. I'd like to see more of it, but I can't really stray too far from my hotel room due to a microbial souvenir from the north.

Agravation

2005-08-21T15:10:00.000+07:00

Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

So New Dehli got old very quickly, the scamming and heat and the traffic make it a hard place to really enjoy for very long. I spent a lot of time locked in my hotel room watching cricket. While hanging out and watching TV isn't the reason why I came here, when you're in Dehli and it's hot, and you're tired of being harassed, it can be a refreshing alternative. Also I got to meet up with my friend Hashmet - hiker/author/expedition leader/tour guide - who helped me plan the rest of my India travels. That helped quite a bit, because northern India/Dehli can kind of sour your mood a bit as it's got the atmosphere of a prison riot in a phone booth.

Similar to that, and many times worse, is the spot where I am now, lovely Agra. Agra represents the postcard-best of India, boasting the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, and a boatload of other monuments and places of historic interest just a short ride from Dehli. It also represents the absolute worst, matching its monuments with extortionate pricing, punishing heat, wall to wall crowds, filthy, polluted, vile streets, and the most persistent and annoying touts, con-artists, scammers, and everything- wallahs on the subcontinent. The only reason why I'm here is because I couldn't face the inevitable "you went to India for seven weeks and didn't see the Taj Mahal?" scrutiny that would have followed had I skipped it (and am now stuck here for a few more hours until a dreadful bus ride as the train tickets were sold out - although hopefully it will be better than the last bus ride from Amritsar to Dehli, which featured a lot of yelling in Punjabi and a trip to the police station regarding an attempt to place a coffee table in the aisle.) The Taj is nice enough, it looks like it does in all the pictures, though I found the Red Fort more interesting. Anyway, I've seen it, and now I can get the hell out.

Tomorrow I am heading southwards to Chennai aka Madras and then spending the next 3 weeks in Tamil Nadu and Kerala - supposedly the atmosphere in the south is more relaxed than in the north, which is good, to put it delicately.

India photos

2005-08-19T15:58:00.000+07:00

So here's a small selection of the last 3 weeks or so, uploaded for your pleasure. Not sure how much bandwidth I have so check again if it doesn't load.

here's stok kangri from advanced base camp, we went up the back left side, which you can't really see in this picture

Here's the glacier field you cross on the way up

another summit picture, from left to right Dashi the cook, Tundep Tsetan, and Sir Hilary.

Chortens near stok village

Kullu house in old Manali

Pilgrims at Amritsar

Border guard at Wagah - he really was about 90 feet tall

An old Dehli school bus

Itinerary thus far

2005-08-15T20:45:00.000+07:00

This is just for my own purposes recording where I've stopped so far, I'll update this later with stats and maybe even a revised map and wittier commentary

Beijing
Xian
Lanzhou
Jiayaguan
Dunhuang
Urumqui
Kashgar
Auytagh
Urumqui
Chengdu
Emei Shan
Chengdu
Kunming
Macau
Hong Kong
Dehli
Leh
Stok Park area
Leh
Manali
Shimla
Chandgarh
Amritsar
Wagah

Happy Indiapendence Day

2005-08-15T17:47:00.000+07:00

Amritsar, Punjab, India

So today is I-day, aka Independence day or India day. It's pretty much the same as every other day here, hot and sweaty and crowded. The real hot nationalistic action occurred last night over at the border in Wagha. Yesterday was P-day (Pakistan day - although I & P became independent simultaneously, they changed their national days so as not to be the same as the other) so it was a big deal over there too. Thus the evening flag ceremony at Wagah, the only official land border crossing between the two and where the flags are simultaneously lowered by each side's border troops in tandem, was the place to be yesterday.

Accordingly I hauled my ass out there for what was a suffocating shoving match even by South Asian standards. The border is in the middle of a wide road with huge reviewing stands on the india side facing two gates, which has not-so-huge but still large stands on the Pakistan side., and two flags (indo & pak) right in the middle in no-mans-land-istan between the two gates. By mutual agreement, the flags are simultaneously lowered around 6:45 each evening so that neither flies while the other doesn't.

So when you arrive you work your way through the teeming mass to try to get a spot as close to the border as possible. The crowd is wild, especially since it is I-day weekend, and there's a live band playing tunes to whip them up. The border guards are all about 6-5 or taller and wear absurd, vaguely 19th C. British style hats and sashes and vehemently blow whistles at people in the crowd, as gangs of younger males tend to stand up and dance which results in the occasional near confrontation from another gang seated behind the dancers. This has limited success as the ceremony starts as pretty much everybody, regardless of creed or caste or nationality, in my case (though I have been mistaken for Indian a few times), leans on and shoves each other towards the border.

The ceremony (described even better here w/picture) itself consists of precision absurd marching at high speeds by the border guards on both sides. If a military conflict were ever to revolve on the ability to sychronize speed march fifty yards with little jump steps, the Indians and Pakistanis have established complete superiority. The flags are lowered in synchronicity while the Indian crowd chants and screams "Hindustan! Hindustan! Jai Hind!" and the Pakistani crowd reciprocates. Afterward, the gates are shut and then the crowd, which has been moving up despite frantic whistling by the guards, surges forward in jostling waves as close to the fence as they can get ( i got maybe 20 yards away when I got sick of the human cattle stampede and gave up - which is about as close as I'll get to Pakistan which is too bad as there are certain high mountain regions thereof that I wish I could see, but its also a bit of a relief). The same thing looks like it's happening over in Pakistan except everybody's wearing white shalwar kameezes instead of sikh turbans, and there seems to be even more frantic running and retreating. On the whole though, the crowd is fairly good natured given that its bitter enemies are across the way and the whole thing seems sort of tongue in cheek, with more waving at the other side than cursing.

Tonight I head to Dehli where I'm going to hole up at the Intercontinental and figure out what to do next and hopefully try not to sweat for a while.

Punjabi blues

2005-08-14T15:49:00.000+07:00

Amritsar, Punjab Pradesh, India

At first glance, the Punjabi spiritual capital of Amritsar, close to the Pakistan border, is a dirty, hot, noisy, sweltering disaster area. But this is inaccurate, as you peer deeper into its interior, one discovers that it is a really, really, really hot, noisy, dirty sweltering disaster area. It's one saving grace however, aside from fairly friendly natives, is the famed Golden Temple of Amritsar,

which does make it worth it -- barely.

The Golden Temple is the vatican/mecca/wailing wall/jokhang of the Sikh faith. While the Sikhs have a well earned reputation of being sort of warlike and martial (It is guarded by spear carrying sikhs, plus I saw a guy carrying around an actual medieval flail in the temple), Sikhism itself is a pretty interesting religion. It comes from the Indo/Pak border areas It's described as a blend of hinduism & islam, though I don't know if that's very accurate. It's more of a reaction to both. It's actually based on very egalitarian and democratic principles, renouncing the caste system of any kind (that's why all Sikh men take the name Singh (lion) and woment take the name Kaur (wolf or something, I forget) and welcoming to people of all faiths. In fact in the Golden Temple, all are welcome to get a free communal meal in the Langor with the Sikhs regardless of race, creed, color, religion. In what I think must be a subconscious jab at Islam, in sikhism both men and women are required to cover their hair and carry daggers.

Speaking of the daggers, the warlike tradition of the Sikhs contrasts a bit with the religion, although since they were the barrier against Islam on the west and later the guardians of the British frontier its only natural. The British themselves waited till a period of Sikh infighting to conquer them, not wanting to take on the whole nation. Afterwards, and up to this day, they formed the backbone of the Indian army, and still do, despite the troubles in 1984 that led to Indira Gandhi's demise. A placard in the Sikh museum next to a picture of the destroyed facade of the temple gleefully alludes to the Sikh revenge against Indira. The rest of the museum features, among various guru portraits and battle scenes, oil paintings of Sikh martyrs being: mutilated, boiled, crushed by giant wheels, sawed in half vertically, and otherwise disembowled. But they're actually a fairly nice lot, the Sikhs, everybody at the temple seemed happy to see me otherwise.

On the 5-hour way here yesterday I took a bone-rattling, dirt cheap state bus. It was , crowded, uncomfortable, and hot (but I don't think anybody vomited) but actually in a sick way I sort of enjoyed it. Taking that mode of transport is a good way to go local, if miserably, and gives you a glimpse as to what life is like for 15-=20% of the world's populace. So think of me as a man of the people, like Gandhi, except with a platinum card.

Pun in the Sun

2005-08-12T20:35:00.000+07:00

Chandigarh, Punjab Pradesh, India

So to briefly cover the last few days, no real swashbuckling adventures. I spent the last two nights in Shimla, former summer capital of British India from about 1864 - 1947 - though it became the de facto capital where the Brits spent most of their time after they realized that Calcutta was way too hot.

Shimla today consists of a strip of a bunch of run-down Tudor & Victorian buildings undergoing ineffectual, if any, restoration, set above the typical Hill State labyrinthine bazaar town. It's got everything a lively English town needs - a mall, consistent fog, and even a Gaiety Theatre, as well as constant territorial brawls between roaming bands of dogs and monkeys. What it lacks is Englishman of any sort, which is sor of poetic justice given that natives were banned from the English section till 1917.

The other lesson I learned here is that Samosas over here are not the ineffectual little bite sized dumplings that you get stateside. Rather, they are massive tetrahedrons of fried goodness 4-5x the size of their wimpy american cousins, which explains why people were taken aback when I ordered two prior to dinner. Although I note that tthis time I avoided a repeat of the Quanjude incident back in Cathay and took them both down anyway.

A quick word in general about the sanitation here, it's been commented on at length by others, most notably a half rabid and stoned VS Naipaul back in the 60's, but it's an issue, and that's all I will say other than that its odd that a country which is so obsessed with ritual cleanliness and purity apparently tthinks nothing, for the most part, of simply discarding its garbage wherever it drops.

In the same vein, the bus ride to Chandigarh marks my third consecutive ride where people were violently retching out the window. Riding a bus in India in the Hill states is a lot like riding a roller coaster in the US, save for the fact that its cheaper and far less safe. After a while you just have to put your head down and realize that you can't will the cement truck THAT JUST CAME AROUND HE FOG OF THE MOUNTAIN BEND AND IS ABOUT TO KILL YOU out of the way and relax.

Chandigarh, where I currently am, is one of the stranger (and richer) cities in India (and is a brilliant contrast to Shimla in a way). Afer the partition, the old Punjab capital, Lahore, was in Pakistan, so J. Nehru decided to build up a new one from scratch. So, looking forward, he let Le Corbusier (french for "the corbusier") design his city of the future. The result is a geometric grid of exact rectangles and broad boulevards, and intersecting roundabouts, filled in with large, concrete block buildings that double as Tandoori ovens during the 13 month long Punjabi summer. Each sector is simply given an Orwellian number (right now I am in Sector 17B, I think), which I guess sounds futuristic, but the long, broad layout creates plenty of business for cycle rickshaws, the primary mode of transport which I bet Corby didn't have in mind. I guess it's not that ugly, but it also isn't nice, tthough the layout does seem to minimize filth concentration which is good.

The major sight is the Neck Chand Rock Garden, which is a bizarre, Gaudi-esque park/sculpture garden/playground type thing designed (illegally) out of rocks and old bathroom fixtures by a bored road engineer back in he 70's. At first its a bit underwhelming and it has you wondering why the hell you dragged yourself out to the Punjab in the middle of August to see it [thats another phrase I thought I'd never type]. But after a while it seems deceptively large kind of like you're walking around in an MC Escher print or something. Pleasantly surprising overall. Unpleasant was the fact that they closed the state museum right before I got there, which allegedly has some great Gandharan art which is harder than hell to find in most places.

Kullu Valley High

2005-08-09T17:27:00.000+07:00

Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India

So I should say a bit about Manali. It's a former colonial hill station in the Himalayan hills at the head of the Kullu Valley, home of the Kullu peoples (as always, its easiest to distinguish them from the various Nepalis, Jo's, and Tibetans by their headwear) and is the first actually Indian place I've been, although it also has more Israeli backpackers than you would think existed, as old Manali has more Hebrew signs than Hindi, no kidding. Otherwise its a popular Indian resort town set on the banks of a bunch of raging rivers in deodar, pine & evergreen forests and is fairly low key for India. And I'm staying in a renovated wooden cottage dating back to the Raj days so it's kind of cool.

There's not exactly a lot of sights as its a resort area, and its the rainy season, so that's how I found myself hanging out with a bunch of Mumbai guys drinking beer and watching wrestling yesterday (which is incredibly popular here as of late). Of course, the whole afternoon was a pretext for a scam (actually the first attempted scam on me in India in two weeks, which is pretty good, in Beijing they started the second I got off the plane). This one involved giving me free beer and then asking me smuggle diamonds back to the US to avoid import duties. I'm sorry to say this - but what a bunch of total amateur hucksters. I'm not Joe Idiot Australia guy. It takes a lot more than two beers to get me to commit to something that stupid, more like 10. Thanks for the beer though guys.

Wrapping up Ladakh

2005-08-08T13:31:00.000+07:00

Manali, Himchal Pradesh, India

So I had a bunch of entries ready for the end of Ladakh but am sort of condensing/scrapping them. Most of them were just laments about how incredibly bored I was (which is what happens when you reach the apex of an 8 day trek on day 4). Briefly - the highlights

-two days after climbing Stok Kangri, out of sheer boredom and truly just....because it was there....I climbed another mountain named Guleb Kangri. Although it was shorter (maybe only 18.5 k feet or so) It was a real pain in the ass to climb. It was mostly scree and slick, dangerous, ice so I climbed w/o equipment. I thought it was technically much more difficult than Stok because you have to cross a bunch of very dangerous, massive boulder fields on the way in and out and the ascent is a lot steeper and the descent is a bummer. About the only thing fun about it was a bit of free rock climbing at 17k feet, which, btw, is very dangerous and nobody should ever try at home including myself. I'm not sure if it was fatigue or just lack of motivation but climbing this guy was more like work than fun, and I took a lot of spills that thankfully I was able to survivie but could have turned ugly. So I think my high-altitude mountaineering days are done for now. At the end of the day I was completely exhausted after the 11 hour ordeal and near collapse at dinner in the kitchen tent (meals, btw, became their own ordeal of mass quantities of curry, lentls, and peas as time went on and became a real sore spot) and, in his charismatic way, Tsetan asked me "You tired?" to which I responded - "A little bit, do you watch a lot of Matlock or something?" in response to which Dashi was convulsed on the floor with laughter - some things are universal I guess.

-On the last night of a trek, there's usually a bit of a party. Ours was highlighted by a gathering around a pile of flaming bullshit - or techinically I think it was dzo-shit (cow/yak hybrid) since there's no wood. A bunch of locals joined us, so at first when they at me down near this fire surrounded by candles I thought they were going to do some weird local initiation ceremony. But it was actually just the standard "singalong" thing. Invariably attention was turned to me to sing along. I didn't have a lot of ideas but the good thing about this type of thing is that you can make up the words and they won't know the difference. I led with "you've lost that loving feelin", followed up with La Bamba (great for word making up), took a misguided yet inspired detour into "let me stand next to your fire" and then closed with the original Sargent Pepper, simply because I knew all the words. I was then presented with a cake which said in huge letters on it "HAPPY JOURNEY MAV TREK", which I graciously accepted

-On my final night in Leh, I booked a ride on the 2 AM jeep to Manali. As a consequence I stayed that evening as a guest in the Tsetan house - which he referred to as his "family home"and I think housed either his sister or sister in law and a bunch of kids. Dinner, of course, was mutton curry, and all sorts of other things I was forced to eat politely, as well as politely enduring a bunch of Boll-Leh-wood type VCD's put on for my entertainment which I alos endured politely. I was also given the guest bed of honor near the buddhist shrine room which unfortunately had its windows near some site of human waste, as are a lot of things here, but all in all a good show for Tsetan

-The Manali-Leh jeep trek itself along the world's 2nd highest motorable road, frequently described as one that can't be missed, should have been avoided at all costs. The scenery was nice but not that great considering the other stuff I've seen so far and not worth a 19.5 hour trip. Otherwise, the heinous road conditions (most unpleasant I've seen anyhere, and I've been in Nepal, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc) and being crammed into a jeep with 8 other people are best skipped. Particularly so if the driver is on the floor next to you with some wierd stomach ailment and some Ladakhi kid we picked up on the side of the road is now driving, and if some androgynous middle aged dutch woman keeps stopping the jeep to vomit, inter alia.

Ascent Epilogue

2005-08-06T12:57:00.000+07:00

Why the hell did I do this

Good question. Lets begin with the reasons why I did not do it

Its not because of some death wish or anything like that dreamed up in moments of misery, even though this stuff really is quite dangerous at times. It is not because of the camping either -- theres nothing fun about sleeping on the ground even if you have a 3 servants waiting on you. It is not because of the fauna - unless traveling to the other side of the world to see pigeons and crows and donkeys is worthwile. (theoretically Ladakh is the last refuge of the snow leopard, regarding which one is contractually obligated to use the word "elusive" when putting it into a sentence, so the chances of seeing one are slim and none.) The scenerz really is not all that great either. I mean, trust me, the Himalayas are beautiful, especiallly the foothills and such. But the high plateaus like Tibet and Ladakh are more beautiful in the stark, rocky, mars-scape sense than in any Heidi picture post card sense.

The reason why I came here (and went up there) is because the place and the activity is so very extreme. The sun is intense, the cold is intense, the air is thin, life is barely supported. Likewise, climbing up the side of a huge pile of rock and ice with your legs on fire and barely being able to breathe and having to concentrate and maintain focus and carve that ice step in the ice field with steek while simultaneously maintaining a foothold and your balance and having another hour to go while not slipping and falling and ending up dead is about as extreme as a sport gets . (with apologies to all you skaters and surfers and rollerbladers out there, despite what modern marketing may tell you, your sports are about as extreme as eating a bag of Zessty Salsa Doritos compared to this shit) When I was a kid I dreamed of being an astronaut - well this is about as close as one gets to those conditions while staying on land.

Another reason is that its the ultimate individual challenge, and its so simple and easy in a certain sense. THeres only two possible outcomes. Either one goes up or goes home. Thats it. There is no middle ground, no gray area. Either you answer the bell and dig down and take the next step or you dont. A lot of writers & the climbing press, to the extent there is one, like to phrase things in terms of "you vs. the mountain". I think thats bullshit. The mountain is a bunch of ice and rock. It has no feelings. It does not care what happens to you if you grab the wrong handhold or whatever. It does not care.

You, on the other hand, do care. You came halfway around the world to do this and made all the arrangements. You care a lot. Its not you vs. the mountain, its you vs. yourself, and your own doubt, and pain, and fatigue, and focus.

In a way it is almost too easy - people seldom make real life as simple as the up or down, go or no issues of the mountain. Theres a lot more gray. Thats why its fun to do this, its a way to test yourself on a simple level by removing a lot of variables, and its fun when you pass.

Ascent part IV (contd again)

2005-08-06T12:29:00.000+07:00

So I forgot to mention that prior to the climb I had put on the one pair of yet unused underwear I had (this computer is totally fucked up so I cant hyphenate or apostrophe or get any punctuation to work correctly, sorry, and the y key is mixed up with the z key) - underarmour. I was unsure why I brought it but I knew on the morning of the climb it was time to protect this house). It ended up helping a lot on the descent. Anyway, after reaching the summit T called his wife, boss, and mother in that order. I adopted the air of "is this all" and then had a bit of lunch. The descent was a pain in the ass and I slipped a few times and managed to stop myself from a long slide by performing a perfect textbook ice arrest with steek, although I dont think in the textbook one is supposed to pretzel their leg behind steek, but it worked, and my 99th percentile presidential physical fitness test rankings in flexibility from gradeschool were validated.

Around this point I decided that fighting gravity was a silly idea so I followed the lead of a few of the other climbers and went down the easy way....sliding down on my ass. While not glamorous, it was a shitload of fun and a hell of a lot easier than trying to walk down the steep ridges and such, and the only casualty is a wet ass, which everybody knows I dont mind. Even when the slope evened out a bit and my momentum faded, I cross country assskied the rest of the way using steek. I recached the big glacier field around 10 or 11 and then avoided the worlds biggest damned crevasse (it was so big it looked like space-time was folding in on itself) Around the last hour back when I was dragging, the following exchange ensued(typical of T and I, whose english wasnt so hot)

T- "you tired"
me- "yeah I kind of just up at 2 am and then climbed a 20000 foot mountain my man. you tired "
T- "you tired"
me ""
T' " I take you bag"
me "yours"

So around noon or a little later we got back. And thats the story of that mountain. I was pretty proud of the fact that 1. I did it, and 2. did it on the cheap-amateurish way (of course not counting my 3 man support staff). I used a north face windbreaker that I bought with Amex rewards points, a 3$ hat that I bought at Duane Reade on Pine street on the way to the Jets game a few years ago, the lead boots from hell and shitty crampons, and purple steek. Hell the underarmour was the most expensive thing I had on aside from the ridiculous french glacier glasses, which I would have thrown off the mountain on the principle of their being so ugly but I needed them to get down.

Most of the other groups in camp had all sorts of fancy gear and stuff like that, of which I was naturally contemptuous, particularly awful was the DAV Summit Club' - Deutsch, who had monogrammed tents, and I swear to god, climbed and hiked in formation.

SO how did I feel after it all - good I guess. I did one of the things I set out to do and did it well enough. Not sure if I will ever do anything like it again or go much higher. Maybe Kilimanjaro as an excuse to see Africa one day, but lets face it, at only 19k feet its really kind of beneath me at this point.

Ascent part IV (contd)

2005-08-06T11:47:00.000+07:00

top of the world

Ascent Part IV

2005-08-05T18:08:00.000+07:00

7-31-2005, Summit Day

Summit Day begins at night, at like 2:30 AM, due to weather issues (you have to cross a huge ice field/glacier on the way to and from the mountain, which you don't want to do in the afternoon unless you "VANT TO GO SVEEMING". Our cook thoughtfully prepared a dinner of baked beans, which I declined as Ed Viesturs would consider it cheating, inter alia. So I turned in around 8 pm to sleep a bit and plot my victory speech.

After the 2 AM wake up call, I loaded up my backpack (strike two for Dashi the cook, who prepared an unconscionably heavy lunch filled with stuff I won't eat like boiled eggs) and strapped on the most godawfully uncomortable, lead footed set of mountaineering boots ever assembled. Seriously these things were like 4-5 lbs each. My previous hikes were with lightweight sneaker type shoes, not even close to this kind of weight. It was like the difference between running a mile and running a mile with a cartoon ball and chain on each ankle.

Making matters worses was that the initial ascent from base camp is punishingly steep and nasty if not dangerous in the dark. I did it with little trouble yesterday but today with the gravity boots on it was a hideous, hideous challenge. My lungs were fine due to the diamox but the lactic acid burn in my calves by the time I got to the first ridge was more painful than a naked picture of Gertrude Stein. After the first 30 minutes I was dreaming up scenarios to bow out gracefully and find a way to waterproof my normal shooes and try again rather than deal with the hell boots. Not helping matters was that Tundep (T) and the cook Dashi (D) were setting a ridiculous pace as if they had somewhere importaint to be. Around that point they forced me to start using my climbing pole (which really purple and cute in an elton johnish way), or as they called it " steek" which made matters a bit better.

I figured I'd last till Advanced Base Camp and then quit to make it respectable, but as we got past it and into the icefield around hour no. 3, the pain started to fade a bit as we headed up the Southeastern face of Stok Kangri (Kangri means glacial peak in Ladahki, btw). I was still slow and tired but then strapped on the crampons and got a bit of a second wind going (by withholding steek and crampons from myself till absolutely necessary, I find it gave me a bit of a mental boost) and started making my way up the face and veering left towards the ridges, away from the summit but a gentler route. A minor setback occurred around 5:30, when the sun rose and I put on my heinous looking glacier glasses, in the process dropping my gloves and watching them slide tantalizingly down the mountain. Also around that point another group, which had chosen the steeper route, had somebody turn back, which made me feel good in a perverse way.

After another hour or so I started to fade again so I jacked up the MP3 player and started big pimping my way up and up along with Jay-Z. This was another mental motivational device that lasted for about 30 minutes and then faded, so I switched to the "step salvo" approach after that, where I'd plan to take 5 steps and take 7, 8 and take 10, etc, gasping in between. I was way behind T&D at this point but was still making a decent if sporadic pace up the mountain, considering that I had to pause to readjust the world's shittiest set of crampons every five minutes by banging them with steek.

Around 7 or 7:30 I made it to the top of one of the high ridgelines around 19k feet or 5600 meters or so. I had a minor scare on the way when a handhold gave way (btw, this shit is really, really dangerous) on the way up but was otherwise OK. I paused to inhale a juicebox and then popped another diamox for the final push to the top. At this point, neither the muscial-climb-along method nor the step-salvo method was working due to sheer exhasustion. So, to take things over the top I resorted to a method known to every Catholic school kid and honed in the classrooms of St. Rose, Seton Jr. High, and St. Thomas: self-flagellation.

This consisted of repeating a few phrases mentally and out loud to myself over and over again, and went a little something like this: "come on, stop being such a bitch, do you want this you bastard? Then go take another step! Look at Tundep & Dashi, their families are poor! Probably because you didn't donate to the canned food drive and were busy watching wrestling! But they're already up there! Do you want to be a man! Then get the f- up there you little poseur! GO!"

At 8:35 am India time, I made it to the summit, 6,150 m (20,295 ft) above the earth's surface. The feeling was a mixture of relief, euphoria, absolution, fatigue, and the tiniest bit of disappointment that a challenge had been removed. I probably could have made it a bit higher, maybe another few hundred feet, but was pretty glad to be at the end.

[to be continued tomorrow, the computer is fading here]

Ascent Part III

2005-08-05T17:41:00.000+07:00

7-30-2005 - Stok Kangri Base Camp, Summit Eve

Today we hiked up to Advanced Base camp. Tundep (whose wifes name is Nundep, and who's last name is Tsetan -- pronounced like you would expect, so yes I am following the path of Satan) told me it would be about 2-3 hours depending on speed but we did it in just over an hour. Here is where I sing the praises of Diamox. Normally I shun pharmas of any kind as both a practicing stoic and because they are for wusses. But seriously, this suff works. No headache or lightheadedness or coughing. Obviously physical exertion is still troublesome and your heart stilll races, but honestly the stuff works. Ed Viesturs would probably consider it cheating, but considering that i don't have fancy (or even adequate) gear or sponsors or any of that stuff, I consider him to be a cheater. So take that no ox boy.

As a consequence I feel good enough to take a summit crack tomorrow (Base camp, btw is at about 14,500 feet or so, the summit is like 20,300ft (6150m) or something. In theory tomorrow was supposed to be a rest day. But since I'm out of ideas as to leisure (all I brought was a New Yorker summer ficition issue due to weight concerns. I normally shun this issue because it's way too self important. No magazine should ever have two pieces that use the word "cerulean" in them. Even worse the only thing left to read is a a critical snoozefest on "The making of Americans", a long boring incoherent rant by Gertrude Stein, which shockingly, happens to make a long and boring article that you don't want to read. Yes, Stein was avant garde. So what? That doesn't make her good. I can be avant garde too. I could write this narrative on the back of a piece of used TP. That woldn't make it good).

So what we've established in the preceding paragraph is that I'm climbing a 20k foot mountain in the Himalayas because I hate the NY'er summer fiction issue, as good a reason as any I guess.

Ascent Part II

2005-08-05T17:30:00.000+07:00

7-29-2005, Stok Kangri Base Camp

This morning we set out early to get a good base camp spot. Tundep (T) -- who just asked me my name yet again, hell I love you T but shit, I'm the only person here, it's not that hard -- set a nasty pace. We ended up ascending maybe 2-3k feet in about 90 minutes. Hiking at that pace is tough at altitidue, especially in the Himalayas, which, as has been said, begin where other mountains end. I just sort of look at the ground and take it step by step. Obviously this is not conducive to scenery viewing, but considering how big the damned mountains are the veiw doesn't change that much on a minute-to-minute basis.

So around 10:10 AM we pulled into base camp. While the term "base camp" has a faintly romantic/exotic/rugged ring to it, inreality it is a dirty field of used TP where you set up your tent. One of the major drawbacks of Himalayan mountaineering is that the climate and food conspire to ensure that every trekker leaves a colonic calling card to be mummified for future generations. Gross.

Ascent Part I

2005-08-05T17:23:00.000+07:00

7-28-2005, near Stok Pass, Ladakh

So I tried to be a good guy and save some cash and use an Indian agency rather than a US one. That as a mistake. The various middlemen involved did not relay critical info to my guide, (Tundep, who I just call "T"), who can't remember my name though everybody just calls me "sir" as a sahib anyway.

Among the information not relayed is that, as appealing as dragging heavy mountaineering boots, an Ice Axe, and Gaiters throught the Taklamaklan Desert would have been for the past month, I didn't bring any equipment. So I spent yesterday on the back of T's motorcycle, renting & buying substandard equipment (I believe my rusty ice axe bears the inscription, " property of H. Harrer" on it) The rest of the evening I spent googling things like "how to use an ice axe," in true Mallory & Irwin fashion. (hey maybe if they had they'd have made it)

Was glad to get out of Leh because it is crawling with tourists, particularly there are more French there than MOMA on a Saturday in August [you know even though france bashing is so cliched, it's really hard not to here. French tourists are just as bad as any american crew and probably worse; loud, annoying, insular, and either tubby fannypacked middleagers or hippies trying to go native and failing. Get the hell out of here guys. At least the English who also suffocate this place know that they don't fit in.]

So today we set out from Stok Village for a 3-4 hour hike up Stok pass. Not an exceedingly difficult journey but by no means easy w/elevations ranging from 12-13.5 k fee. My crew ( I require a staff of 4 - guide (T), cook (Dashi), helper (Dorje), and Pony Man (Pony Man) is currently hard at work setting up camp as I drink tea and wax ironic. I've had full service camping last year in Tibet but never as the sole object of affection which is a little weird. Of course I'm rather busy surveying for the RGS, and of course sending dispatches back to Simla on frontier developments ( a group of hashish smoking/new age Israeli backpackers being the most notable incursion) as well as the Bonapartists.

Ascent part 0

2005-08-05T17:06:00.000+07:00

These next few entries cover the last 9 days or so. The fact that I'm typing them nnow ruins a bit of the suspense as to whether or not I made it off the mountain for that, potential beneficiaries and heirs apparent, I apologize.

A little bit of general background as to where I was/am. Ladakh is just on the other side of western Tibet (and is a.k.a. "Little Tibet" as its people are a sub-branch of Tibetans). It's literally between a rock and a hard place as to the west lies the bloody valleys of Jammu & Kashmir where confrontations w/Pakistanis and insurgents continue and to the east is the disputed border area w/China where the Chinese, using specious reasoning even more pathetic than their flimsy claims in Tibet, invaded in 1962. Otherwise though it's a lot like Tibet but with a substantial Kashmiri (Muslim) minority.

Game Reset & Into the Hind

2005-07-27T11:41:00.000+07:00

Leh, Ladakh region, India

So I've been quite lately due to mental & physical fatigue and also because I really don't have that much to say. Hong Kong is Hong Kong, and it doesn't really need me to say anything about it that you can't learn on your own. Plus, 5 star living at the Peninsula Hotel kind of saps your resolve as it seems as if the Concierge would post for me while I sip gin on the veranda. Being a Peninsula guest opened many doors for me while I was in HK, particularly the automatic kind when I waved the Peninsula umbrella in front of the sensor.

The only really memorable experience, aside from eating Lipman's Thousand Year Old Eggs after he chickened out, was walking through a deserted super high tech shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon which was like a new age cyber ghost town. But since I'm still acclimatizing here in Leh I don't really have the energy to describe it, so I'll leave the apres-postmodern monograph to Jonathan Franzen or Dom Delillo, who can write things in BIG CAPITALIZED PHRASES or important expressions of utmost irony.

I should also send a shout out to my friends (and gracious hosts after the Peninsula ran out of dishes for me to wash) Jayne, Alex & Austin. While it wasn't the Virginia Woolf-ish spectacle of being marooned in Moron that I happened to share with J on a previous excursion, nonetheless their hospitality was much appreciated. So--holla, guys.

I don't have much to say about Ladakh or India yet other than that while things here are changing, I imagine that flying Air India biz class is not unlike flying Air India biz class. My big deal trek and the assault on Stok Kangri (which I can see from the roof of the hotel. It looks...high. But not too high for me) starts tomorrow, but it's a 9 day affair so it's not going to be too rushed. I'll likely be out of radio contact till then but the pen is mightier than a shitty dial up ladakhi internet connection.

Salon Kashgar

2005-07-21T17:21:00.000+07:00

He's not only the owner, he's also a client!

A stern Urumqi caution listed below:

Fotos

2005-07-20T17:02:00.000+07:00

Hong Kong Special Adminstrative Region

So I'm back in the land of limited freedom and can finally access the goat myself and upload some pictures to prove that this entire trip is not cover for a giant insurance fraud scam ....... yet.

So here's a limited selection of what I've seen so far, uploading which takes more mental effort than me pronouncing on various topics occidental and oriental in a nagging know it all voice.

These are lower res versions and just a limited selection, and am not sure how many people are reading this now so I might have some bandwith issues, so download early I guess:

This is Ci Xi, the legendary Empress Dowager's, famous marble boat at the Summer Palace outside Beijing (she embezzled the funds to build/refurbish the summer palace from the Chinese Navy, and finished it off with a marble boat as an ironic final insult. Not that long after she died & the Qing fell.

Also at the summer palace

Bingling Si, off the Yellow River

Hui woman, Lanzhou

Overhanging Wall Section, Great wall, Jiayuguan

Mingsha sand dunes, south of Dunhuang

Kashgar Sunday Bazaar

Uighur district, Kashgar

Autagh, Pamirs

Kashgar

Summit of Mount Emei

Macau Boy

2005-07-18T13:25:00.000+07:00

Macau Special Adminstrative Region

Yesterday I got off the mainland finally flying out of Kunming and jetfoiled it over to Macau. Kunming (the "eternal spring" city, capital of Yunnan province) sits at the southeastern corner of the himalayas, so it's in the mountains yet is also the crossroads into SE Asia (Laos, Burma, Vietnam, etc)so it's got a lot going for it. Kunming was thought of as a backwater hellhole where the communists would exile nationalists in the old days and as I said before was the end of not only the Burma Road but also the end of the famous Hump Airlift. The only problem was that people liked it and didn't want to go back. So now instead of a dirty backwater it's a popular vacation spot for domestic tourists and backpackers alike due to climate (70's in the summer) and location, and sports a Mazerati dealership on the Renmin Road. Hell, my own accomodations, which were mid range when my guidebook was written 2 years ago, were 5 star by the time I pulled up on Friday. (Chinese 5 star means only a little bit of water damage on the floor - although that is nit picky, it was excellent for the mainland).

Like Chengdu, Kunming is a laid back place but with better weather. Also a thriving nightlife scene featuring a maze of bars and carousing. Early on my last evening there I ended up dining, by random circumstance, with my new friends Karl and Zhang (incidentally, I plan on introducing a line of mens thongs in China under the label of Karl Zhang one day, they'll be so gay they're practically straight). Karl was a large teuton who ate most of my noodles by accident. Zhang was a museum tour guide. Unfortunately, Zhang was setting us up for the oldest trick in the book by offering to show us his museum later that evening, and one that I was vigilant against a few weeks ago but had forgotten about. Zhang's museum was of course not so much of a museum as a giant gift shop - which only makes it about 10% different from many actual tourist sites.

I politely extricated myself from that situation, abandoning Karl to his fate, and headed for the main Kunming party area, which is basically a maze of bars & clubs where young Yunnanese drink to excess. As a lone gaijin, I had no trouble approaching and befriending groups of locals - generally a line like "Hello" or "So, you're Chinese, huh?" worked quite well. A moment of glory was attained when one of my new friends pronounced that I was like "Tom Calooze". Of course this accolade was conferred by a 28 year old male office manager, so I decided to keep my Dianetics in the bag at that point.

Then it was on to Macau the next morning, where I am now. It's basically hot as hell, loaded with Portugese buildings and Portugese language signs (which must be by some legislative ordinance), and filled entirely with Cantonese. I haven't met one Portuguesa speaker yet and I've been dining at portugese restaurants and asking around as it's an excuse to eat Western without feeling like a hayseed. Anyway, this has its benefits, as it has allowed me to claim to them all that I am the son of a Brazilian diplomat, and so I then insist on ordering in Portugese. Of course, I speak no portugese and can only read it simply because I can read Spanish without much trouble. So when I pretend to speak it, I use Spanish and just put in a bunch of "owww" sounds where the "o" would be in spanish and use a lot of "shhh" instead of s's. This has worked fairly well thus far.

Southward to Exile

2005-07-14T10:13:00.000+07:00

EDIT - meant to post this a few days ago, sorry.

Chengdu, China

According to various guidebooks, getting a visa extension in China is a straightforward affair. My own visa expires on the 17th, and I'd structured my entire trip around getting to Hong Kong on the 20th when I have hotel reservations, so I just needed a mild extension - which would give me time to do a horsetrek in Songpan, because every boy should do one at one point. So yesterday I hoofed it down to the local Public Security Bureau, and unfortunately due to the massive insecurity with which it is managed, getting a visa extension is a 5-day complicated procedure which requires, inter alia, photocopies of bank statements (which was insulting as I've been tossing yuans around like J. Pierpont Warbucks XXIV and maintain considerable reserves in chinese terms) and worse which requires you to surrender your passport and stay in Chengdu for the whole time - so there's no point in me doing it. So I decided to trash that idea and head southwest to Kunming in Yannan province tomorrow, which although not that great, allows for some good daytrips and is a place where I've wanted to go as its the terminus of the famed Burma Road. From Kunming, rather than let the Man cramp my style and force me to HK before I am damned good and ready, I'm going to fly to HK on Sunday and then transfer immediately to the jetfoil to Macau, which I don't really want to see because I don't like gambling that much, but it's necessary to go there to avoid giving Them the satisfaction.

In another depressing development, I lost my cheesy pair of Serengeti Sunglasses on a bus, which means I had to go in search of another pair yesterday, because the only other pair that I have is a pair of JULBO glacier glasses for mountain climbing. WHile they are good for mountain climbing, they are lousy for urban fashion as they look like something that Stone Cold Steve Austin wears while boating (which may be the same ones that Alex wears.) So I went to the department store in search of yesterday. Shopping for regular western type stuff in China is a little iffy because you are not sure what you're getting since everything is made here - you're either getting a cheap knock off, or you're getting the real deal at a good price, or somewhere in between, where you get the real deal but with no label, or a chinese label. This actually proved to complicated for me to absorb yesterday so I ended up with nothing.

Speaking of Chinese labels - frequently, though you'll see western name brands in the bigger cities, the trend here is to Chinese Western clothes. By that I mean a Chinese made, chinese owned, chinese operated label, but with a western name and western models in the advertisements and names and logos which vaguely resembele western counterparts. AMong the most popular are Jack Jones, Septwolves, and K-Boxing, as well as Leadon, Youngor, Flying Scotsman, Leonardo, Giovanni Valentino, Zare, Minze New York, and my old favorite "Frognilio Zima". My new favorite is one that I saw yesterday in the department store, a handsome display of mens underwear was feautured right below a sign which bore the proud name of the label, in large gray letters......... "SCHEISSER".

So since I'm nearly at the end of the line on the mainland, I guess I should start wrapping up China in the form of issuing sweeping generalizations and cliches. A few things to take home:

1. I sort of wish I had more time here, but on the other hand I'm not that disappointed to be leaving, for a few reasons. One is that the han Chinese parts of China have a collective sameness about them that although well known, doesn't sink in until you experience it. For example, to the untrained (my) eye, a (restored) Tang dynasty pavillion in Beijing will look identical to a (restored) Qing dynasty building in Chengdu which will look similar to a (restored) Ming building in Lanzhou, as to a recently built pagoda out in the Pamirs, literally on the westeren end of china. Now, all of these buildings were built thousands of years and thousands of miles apart, yet they look very similar - I believe for the reason that the perception was that art & architecture achieved a level of perfection during the Tang period, so everything else followed the same style in subsequent works. I'm not saying they're not beautiful, elegant buildings and art - they are, certainly, with the Jiheyuan/Summer Palace in Beijing being my favorite example. However, imagine how boring it would be if western/american art & architecture was thought to have achieved perfection around the colonial/georgian and every subsequent building from 1700 -1960 was built in the same style - no art nouveau, no art deco, no prarie home, no bauhaus, no nothing. Gross. This probably sounds a bit too harsh and condemnatory and I'm not saying it's that bad, just different because it's the same.

2. Communist era city planning is awful, awful, awful. You're not going to find too many old towns in most chinese cities as they were bulldozed for wide up and down avenues a long time ago. Kashgar had the only remaining medieveal old town, and even that was chopped up into little island enclaves. Although I must say that it makes it convenient to get around, there's always a Renmin lu running either north south or east west in every city right through the heart, which makes it easy to orient yourself. Also a lot of the major sites are sort of aligned north south in feng shui style so that helps too.

More later.

The Long March

2005-07-12T15:07:00.000+07:00

Emei Shan, China

[this is a bit long, sorry]

So I'm writing this from the Wanfu nunnery (but typing it later) about 3000m up on Mount Emei, about 200k west of Chengdu. As a nunnery, it seems to lack a significant populace of nuns, or maybe they're just the non-head shaving kind. Either way despite the fact that it is populated with travellers, etc, and is rather noisy for a Buddhist nunnery, it's significantly less so than the St. Rose of Lima convent on a Friday night.

Emei Shan is one of a seemingly endless number of holy mountains in the Buddhist world. I think there's at least four or five here in China including the big one (Kailash) over in Western Tibet. Each one has a big story about it, but forgive me because I forgot the one that goes with this one as they're kind of formulaic, and after three years of traveling intermittently in Asia they blur together. Just assume that some boddhisatva or something was passing through on a pilgrammage and miracles happened and elephants flew or talked or something and so they built monasteries and such here.

Emei itself is a series of mountains ranging from 1 -2.5k meters (3k -7.5k ft) all the way up to Mount Emei which is about 3.1km tall (10k ft). It covers a HUGE geographical area and features at least a hundred miles of trail & roads and is covered with temples, monasteries, pagodas, nunneries, etc. Somebody put together a page with some nice photos of it here.

There's a couple of ways you can do Emei - the wussy sissy I'm a little baby way, where you can drive to various points almost all the way up to the summit and then walk the last vertical half-mile (or even worse, take a cable car), or the hardcore badass way, which is to start at the base at Baoguo Si and takes about 2 days of walking and about 50-55k total. Since I've got bigger mountains to climb in the near future I went the hardcore route.

The park itself at the lower elevations especially reminds you of Chinese painting type stuff - bamboo forests & gingko trees and brown rocks and waterfalls (except for the occasional exposed sewer pipe or high tension wires). Allegedly there are even a few pandas there, but considering that many parts of it are the standard 690 ring Chinese tourist circus I think the only pandas are the ones you can buy at the souvenir stalls that line the lower levels. It did however have a seriously huge sampling of insects around though - and even better most of them were of the non-stinging/biting variety. I think it's home to 500-1000 species of moths & butterfly alone, which I would believe - they had all kinds of crazy looking butterflies there that you only see shellacked against a wall in a museum. There were also these wild cicada like things that made this noise that sounded like a rusty windchime from Children of the Corn or something that were mildly disquieting.

As for the hardcore route, after screwing around visiting a few temples & monasteries at the lower levels I finally got cracking in the early afternoon, which was a mistake. It wasn't hot but it was ungodly humid, and slippery and wet as hell. Within a few minutes of climbing you're drenched (and you've also fallen on your arse a few times). After about 4-5 hours of hiking up and down (that's the hard part about Emei Shan, you don't just climb a 10k foot mountain, you ascend and descend about 4 or 5 3000-6000 foot mountains first and then climb it) I was dead tired and had covered about 10 miles. So, having been misled about a scarcity of hotel beds (thanks a lot, Rough Guide to China), I pulled into the first dumpy prefab hotel I found.

Big mistake. Not only was it a dump and a relative ripoff, but it featured the worst bathroom situation I have encountered yet (which I was too tired to notice before I hd paid). It featured a nasty little in-ground Chinese squat toilet, with a shower. And by with a shower, I mean the shower head was directly over the toilet. Needless to say, despite the fact that I was sweating more than a Uighur discotheque, I chose to forego a shower that night/morning despite the possibility of killing two birds with one stone. It also had the effect of killing my appetite and putting me in a nasty mood the next morning.

So the next morning I cleared out around 7:30 and headed down the trail towards the "monkey joking zone" with a bad attitude towards all primates, which was heightened by the ineveitable first few hundred "HAA-LO"s from Chinese passersby. Any westerner who spends an extended amount of time in China can tell you that it's basically impossible to walk down the street in any place outside of maybe Beijing or Shanghai without 1. everybody staring, and 2. somebody (usually kids, but adults do it too) shouting "HAA-LO!!!!" to you all the time. While the "HAAA-LO"'s are sort of welcome and amusing at first, after three weeks they start to grind on you and one gets the feeling that many times it's not so much as a greeting as it's like them throwing a stick at you and seeing if you'll fetch it. I talked to an English guy yesterday who'd been here teaching for 11 months and was on his way back and he said that not having to deal with "HAA-LO"'s was the thing he was looking forward to the most.

SO on to the monkeys - among the few species of megafauna you'll regularly see in Emei is the Tibetan Macaque. They're rather used to humans, and they appear throughout the park as well as in the "monkey joking zone". Joking is one word for it. They're pretty much always demanding food from you and they can get very aggressive - I saw some of them unzip peoples pockets and take stuff out, and they steal peoples bags and run off with them if you're not careful. Also they don't bite, but they threaten to bite you if you don't give them food so they growl at you and bare their teeth. So what I'm telling you is that they are cute, but up close and personal they're not really monkeys, they're more like assholes.

I knew about this beforehand, and since I had my passport and camera and stuff in my bag I wasn't going to put up with any of their monkey crap. As I said before, I was in a bad mood this morning so if necessary I was ready to go head to head with monkeys and was wiling to resort to my swiss army knife, if necessary, and start snapping and dancing and going Sharks vs. Jets on their monkeyasses.

Fortunately that wasn't necessary, they'd give me the growling, teeth baring biting routine and while ignoring them doesn't work, giving them a dirty look and a menacing step usually backs them off, which was somewhat disappointing. What was not easy was the climb itself. It was freaking hard, long, and humid, and I hate to harp on this, but I was losing electrolyes like a madman (though I was setting a decent pace and burning past elderly chinese pilgrims left and right). As I got halfway up the second mountain of the day I nearly crashed and had to sit awhile and eat an extortionately priced but incredibly good bowl of cold noodles.

That was early on though and it got rougher from there. I think today (day 2) I covered about 40-45k total (26-27 miles or so) in about 11-12 hours with only short breaks. It got somewhat easier when I switched on the MP3 player to drown out the "HAAA-LO"s and then decided to sing off key along with most of the songs on it (after 3 weeks and with only 1GB, I know them all by heart), causing much bewilderment and amusement to fellow travelers. This both fulfilled the Chinese "look at this crazy american guy" perceptions and distracted them before they could launch the "HAA-LO" salvo so I consider it successful.

Later on when I saw a group of Tibetans crusing down the other way, I did take the time to shout "TASHI DALEK!" (the all purpose Tibetan greeting) as loudly and stupidly as I could, which rather amused them. Now, hold the phone, I know what you're thinking: "why, that little bastard ain't a-practicing what he's a-preaching". Wrong, this is distinguishable from the "HAA-LO" thing for two reasons: 1. Most or all Chinese don't know enough about Tibetans or just don't bother to shout "Tashi Dalek" to them - and nobody did it to the ones that I saw, and; 2. "Tashi Dalek" literally translates to "good auspices" in English - that is it's a Buddhist blessing. So when you say it to a Mahayana (himalayan/tibetan) Buddhist you're gaining a small amount of merit for them and yourself - and if you do it to a monk (as one of the walking Tibetans was) he gives you a little mini head bow/praying hands type blessing in return - sort of a mutual merit boost. So I was doing them a favor. The only bad part of the experience was that the Tibetans gave me a false impression that I was near the top, to which I was nowhere close.

By the time I'd pulled into the nunnery I'd been hiking about 11 hours (the last few very steep and at relatively altitude) and again, not to overemphasize this, but it was true - sweating like a jazzercise class and was nearly at the wall. The nunnery was maybe a 1-2k walk or so from the summit which I probably could have reached but there was no point as real mountain men know that the summit is only worth it in the morning when it's clear and the view is good.

So the nunnery (all the nunneries & monasteries traditionally offer cheap, relatively clean accomodation to travelers & pilgrims) was where I stopped tonight. They served an awesome vegetarian dinner, which was great even though I had no idea what it was, and had long, animated dinner conversation with a bunch of older chinese guys, about what I am not sure. The nunnery accomodations though spartan were far superior to the previous night's; I'm serious, give me a filthy outhouse located a long walk away over the shower/squat shitter combo any day of the week.

EPILOGUE: This AM I reached the summit early in the morning, which was all right - the view was decent but a little hazy. I was filled with contempt for the total wusses from tour groups in rented jackets who had obviously either driven or ridden up that day who were up there yelling at each other in Chinese (actually that is an oxymoron - all Chinese is yelled, not spoken) but otherwise the 50k hike was its own reward.

Also, note: now that I'm back in Chengdu, I've noticed that it's not quite as relaxed as I thought. The sign in the elevator in the hotel contains a laundry list of regulations for proper and safe elevator travel, including "NO SMOKING OR JOKING" and my favorite: "THE FOLLOWING PERSON MAY NOT USE THE ELEVATOR WITHOUT ACCOMPANIED: 1. BLIND 2. PREGNANT 3. PSYCHOPATH". So if you are a sightless, knocked up serial killer living in Chengdu, I hope you get used to the stairs, sister.

Out of the Desert

2005-07-09T14:07:00.000+07:00

Chengdu, China

Ok, this is the third time I've had to type this because for some reason the they included a "power" button right beneath the delete key on this keyboard, very convenient....

Anyway, I'm finally out of goat stankonia and back into China proper (though not before half of Kashgar attempted to trade me everything they owned for my mp3 player - I was offered hats, watches, even something vaguely organic that I couldn't identify). Chengdu gets little respect and for most travelers is a stopover on the way in or out of Tibet, for example, my first visit here last year was just to spend the night with a retired geologist from Utah named Jerry, which everybody should do, I think. It's too bad because it's a decent place - cheaper than most big cities here, with a relaxed atmosphere and awesome, if satanically hot, food since it's the capital of Sichuan. It's got drawbacks, namely humidity and pollution, and the loudest goddamn cicadas I've ever heard, honestly, they make most chinese seem quiet, but a pretty decent spot nonetheless.

Closing the book on the Silk Road - was it everything I thought? Yes and no, it was a little disappointing in that it was all pretty damned modernized by now - but when there are dudes hitching up their donkeys at the blacksmith shops at the end of the line it's pretty authentic. It did have high spots - Dunhuang, Bingling Si, the Pamirs being among them. I also skipped a bunch of key spots (Khotan, Turpan, Korla) due to lack of time and attention span. Not sure if I'd do it again as my kebab capacity was breached, but I'm glad I did it.

Where to next? Tomorrow I'm headed west of here to someplace called Emei Shan, which is a complex of Buddhist mountains and temples and that kind of thing. Supposedly it takes three days to travel the whole route so I'll be out for awhile.

Last Flight Out

2005-07-07T12:44:00.000+07:00

Kashgar, China

So at this time last week I was hauling ass to get to Kashgar and now I'm trying to get the hell out. You've been great Kashgar, but I am starting to smell like a goat - that means I need to leave but am stuck here till the night plane unfortunately

A few more observations on the Uighurs - great people but they need fashion intervention; urban Uighur dudes in formal occupations favor the Andy Sipowicz/Homer Simpson short sleeve white shirt with tie look. Also their hairstyles are trapped in the late 70's, early 80's look, sort of like Kirk Cameron from "growing pains". And the trading - it's a stereotype, but damn these guys will trade anything, anytime, anywhere. Everywhere you go, you see crowds of Marvelous Marvin Hagglers trading goats, grain, hats, textiles, cell phones, whatever.

Next stop is chengdu - so I am deviating from the route map and instead of making the big zig back to shanghai it's a small zag to chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. The food should take an upturn although I think it's nasty humid out there this time of year.

Stop .... Pamirtime!!

2005-07-06T18:35:00.000+07:00

Pamir Mountains, Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, China (yes, I'm really typing this from Kashgar but I wrote this at the former location and am a little sick of Kashgar at this point)

So today I finally got off the beaten path and took an expensive (1200Y) driving trip out to something either called Auyitagh or Oytak, depending on who you ask and when. I'm kind of sitting on top of a melting glacier at the moment and ice balls keep rolling past so I should probably make this quick. I'm about 200 something K southwest of Kashgar in the Pamirs somewhere along either the Tajikistan border I think, but I'm not exactly sure where I am yet and I can't find it on any map.

About the Pamirs, briefly speaking, there's several major mountain ranges that are a result of the crash with the Indian subcontinent: the Himalayas, the Karakorum, the Kunlun, the Tian Shan, the Pamirs, and maybe some more that I forgot. Anyway all these mountains are gigantic, I think nearly all of the world's 7000 m peaks are in one of those ranges, so they're just massive. THe Pamirs themselves separate the various Stans of the world, as in Afghan- Pak- Tajik- Kirghiz- etc, and were locally called "The Roof of the World", and allegedly Alexander the Great and Marco Polo passed through somewhere in the vicinity

Right now, I'm guessing, but i think I'm on the glacier, would guess about 14k feet up or so, of this massive pile of rock called Konger Shan or maybe it's Auyitagh Shan or something like that, or maybe one of the ones next to it. Anyway, let me read you what it says on the admission ticket, which basically says all one needs to know:

"Within one mountain, try millenium primitive ecology of view best, between one day, is it catch gem scene originally four seasons to award to the limit praised as 'The Western Regions one all one's life attitude view' goological expert"

OK, maybe not. So I'll describe it - I've seen some beautiful spots and some high mountains in my day, I've been to Everest base camp, and the Altaics & seen the Alps, but Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, if the scenery up here in the Pamirs isn't the most hyper-perfect, drop dead postcard beautiful shit I have ever seen, then I'll eat a donkey for dinner. I'm talking thousand foot waterfalls, massive glaciers, huge snowcapped peaks and blue skies, green pastures & valleys, huge red-clay canyons, dense fir tree forests, little Kirghiz farming & herding settlements along the way -- it's like scenic crack and I am overdosing.

The best part about it is that there is not a soul up here except for me, some other goats, and a couple of marmots, and a few Kirghiz (they're like the Uighurs mountain cousins, hard to tell them apart though). Which I guess is understandable, this place doesn't appear on any major brand English maps or guidebooks and is an expensive pain to get too, but damn if it isn't worth it. Best of all, the assorted incompetents and thieves who run the China domestic tourist biz appear not to have caught on yet, and hence there is a present lack of tacky karaoke spots, borderline autistic Chinese tour guides, and overpriced hotels with mediocre buffets. Simply awesome.

epilogue: so actually I ended up driving back later that day because it enables me to get out of here an day earlier - Xinjiang is great and all but I think I'm beginning to smell like a roasted goat myself. I'm headed Southeast towards Chengdu & Sichuan province, which will unfortunately take two days so I won't report in for a while. In another shitty development, I left my Ohio State hat in the car, which will no doubt now become the precious new possession of the driver (as well as the food he stole from me)which means I now have to rely on this awful green floppy hat that makes me look like a jungle warrior village person or buy some shitty Chinese hat that says "Rocck In the Fry WOrld!!!" or something.

Local Time

2005-07-04T13:55:00.000+07:00

Kashgar, China
So my Uighur pal didn't show up last night, which was a bit of a relief. Not sure if I got the time right or not, since they have that weird "local time" thing here. But I waited across the street from the "Newlywed Fast Executive Hotel" at what I believed to be the appointed time, and no omarjun.

A word on Chinese beer - every Chinese province has their own cheap brand of identical tasting watery lager, produced by a state run brewery - so in Gansu you get "Landmark" beer, in Tibet you get "Lhasa" beer, here in Xinjiang you get "New" beer. Most of it is drinkable if cold and if it's hot out, which it pretty much always is, except for one brand which has a picture of a horse on it and smells way too much like cat urine. Anyway, last night, since I'm a dark brau guy at heart, I jumped at the chance to grab a bottle of 'New Black Beer" from the hotel bar.

So as you may have noted, I've been somewhat critical of the Chinese tendency to euphemistically label things - however when I got "New Black Beer", I got exactly what it described. Watery chinese lager - with black food coloring added. Be careful what you wish for I guess.

Uighur Beaver

2005-07-03T14:49:00.000+07:00

Kashgar, China

first, today, or actually last night, officially marked the two-weeks of traveling mark - and even better, through a combination of judicious timing and good fortune, I have not had to use an Asian squat latrine once. Not sure how long that streak will last.

Second, a few words about the Uighurs (pronounced "WEE-gurs"). They're a Turkic peoples and accordingly speak a Turkic language, written in Arabic script, and which sounds like Arabic with the throat clearing "habhlablgabchabg" type noise being the predominant one. As for the faces, some of them look fairly Asiatic but many of them look strikingly Western like they could be from Cyprus or something. Although it's difficult to tell them apart, as there are also various Kazakhs, Kyrgziz, Tajiks & Uzbeks running around too. Apparently you can tell by the hats, but it's an acquired skill. Some of the Uighur chicks would be kind of hot, but unfortunately many have got a thing for the Frida Kahlo look, where they actually pencil the unibrow in if they don't exist.

As for Kashgar city, if you were teleported into any number of Uighur neighborhoods here, (which exist as large baked mud-brick/adobe islands amid the standard ugly chinese made shop-blocks) and somebody asked you where you were, about the last thing you would say would be "China". More like Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad or Istanbul. I'm talking donkey carts, blacksmith shops making horseshoes, blaring islamic music. Crazy stuff.

The Uighurs, however, are a hell of a lot more friendly towards westerners than you would think people in the above places would be. Yesterday in the main square in front of the mosque, I was eating some Uighur bagels and kind of walking around when one young Uighur walked up and started chatting, and invited me to his language school. Being a wary global citizen, I had visions of being kidnapped and held for ransom - though these guys were pretty small so I felt I could take them so I went along with it. So it turned out their offer to buy me some kebabs was . . . . actually an offer to buy me some kebabs, which they did, and then absolutely refused any payment whatsoever, despite the fact that my weekly disposable income was probably enough to feed their families for years. I also gained their favor in the same way that one would with Tibetans, Miao, or other mainland china minorities - by saying nasty things about their government overlords (who, by the way, put the hugest-ass statue of Mao up that i have ever seen here in the characteristically ugly renmin square)

So after that, they (they primarily being my boy Omarjun, and his friend with some unpronounceable name) actually did take me to their language school, where I was instantly the most important person in the entire building. They took me to class, which lasted from 9-11 (or actually from 7-9 - China has this idiotic rule where all cities are on Beijing time, however we are as far from beijing as LA would be from NYC, so consequently there is also an unofficial "local time" two hours behind that Kashgar residents use that confuses the shit out of pretty much everybody). Despite my grateful efforts to bow out after a bit, my host Omarjun wouldn't hear of it, or actually he wouldn't let me go without him, so I reluctantly stayed.

The class was in a dank basement and consisted of about 30 students ranging in age from 12 years old to about 35 or so. The teacher, Muhammed Iziz, or something like that, spoke pretty decent English, though the class wasn't so great as they'd only been at it for a few months. What they lacked in language skills, however, they made up for in enthusiasm and volume. Inevitably, being the only native English speaker for miles around - I was soon impressed into leading the class in their excercises. So Muhammed hands me the book and I start leading the Class in exercises, where I'd read a phrase and they'd repeat it. It went a little something like this:

Me (very slowly and emphatically): "I want to go swimming"
Uighur class (shouting): "EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING! EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING! EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING!"

Me "I want to have a picnic"
Uighurs "EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK! EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK! EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK!"

and so on ad nauseum. And then we had a bit of a Q&A session where I told them about myself, etc, though its very hard to explain to a bunch of Muslims how you like to go out drinking with your friends and I suggest you never try.

All in all, a very touching experience even for a hardened cynic. The only problem is that my buddy Omarjun has now latched himself on to me and proudly declared yesterday to be 'one of great days of my[his] life', and wants me to come to class yet again tomorrow, so i have to meet him again in a few hours. It's kind of a drag, but it's hard to say no when your mere presence makes people so happy.

Speaking of such, right now (if you are still reading this far down and didn't get tired of it) you may be wondering how an American can walk into the heart of a muslim enclave, just a few miles from the Afghan & Pakistan borders & Al Qaeda & taliban country, and be so well received. The answer is both geography (incredibly high, virtually impassable 20k foot mountains surround Kashgar on all sides and cut it off from those places pretty much) and politics (chinese heavy-handedness keeps Xinjiang and the Uighurs pretty isolated from those places, although they frequently use 'terrorism' as an excuse to crack down on them).

Regarding the Bazaar, which I just came from, I'm not sure where to begin. Kashgar's sunday bazaar is the largest & most famous in all of Central Asia, drawing 100,000 traders from hundreds of miles around. To imagine it, take a bunch of Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgzyz, Turkmens, Pakistanis, Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and even a few descendants of White Russians & Cossacks, and the occasional Mongol, put them on trucks, motorcycles, bikes, & primarily donkey carts, then cram in every possible consumer good, agricultural item, livestock animal, commercial good, or otherwise that can be bought, sold or traded, including the kitchen sink in many instances, and you have the Kashgar sunday bazaar.

My own experience involved being swindled repeatedly by Uighur knife merchants - I only wanted one, simply because they're so popular around, here, but I somehow ended up with 3 despite much baragining, which I hope don't get confiscated because I probably paid way too much for them.

Kashed

2005-07-02T16:57:00.000+07:00

Kashgar, China

So I finally made it to Kashgar which was my ultimate goal. Am writing from the Chini-Bargh hotel, an ugly concrete box next to an old bungalow which incorporates the remnants of the former British Consulate which was also the estate of legendary British Central Asia Hand Lord George MaCartney, who was the chief British spymaster in Central Asia during the Great Game era and effectively the guardian of the Raj's furthest frontier. Sorry for the lectures, but if you guys would get off your asses and read "Tournament of the Shadows" or Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game", you would know what I was talking about already and I could go on to more frivolous affairs.

Haven't seen much of Kashgar so I'll talk about that later. Let me just stop and lavish praise upon myself for a second - I hauled ass across 3000 miles of China speaking no chinese and took in a ton of territory, mostly overland, in about 11 days. That goddamned bazaar better be worth it.

As for the trip to Urumqi - I made the latest of my "train friends" on the night train from Dunhuang, a Kazakh tour guide named Hader. With all due respect to my han chinese train comrades from previous train journeys, I've got to give the edge to this guy. Drinking beers on the train with a Kazakh crossing the Taklamaklan is the reason why I do this kind of thing, which sounds nuts but trust me you had to be here.

As for Urumqi - the guidebooks make it out to be a hellhole and it has a long and bloody history of warlordism and general industrial nastiness. I actually found it not that bad, although the service at the Urumqi Ramada could have been a bit better, but the city itself was very modern & new, a lot of money had been poured in recently apparently. It's the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region - "autonomous", when one translates the chinese political jargon, means the exact opposite, of course. Maybe they should call it the Xinjiang Uighur Oxymoronous Region. Although, in a rare show of restraint, it appeared the Chinese were too afraid to go to the Uighur section of town because I was the only non-Turkic dude there. Likely because they look mean and carry knives. I actually had a nice dinner there and spoke pidgin Chinese/English/Uigur with the waiter in one of the cafes, although he kept making a throat slitting gesture which was mildly disquieting.

I will also note that I saw a pimped out, fully loaded, NBA first round draft pick style Cadillac Escalade rolling down the streets there, which is the only time I've ever seen a Cadillac in Asia. The second time came not more then an hour later, when I saw a mint condition 80's land barge style Cadillac Fleetwood in the Uigur section. How the hell that car got from Detroit Rock City to Central Freaking Asia in the 80's would probably make a hell of a book.

My Kingdom for a Donkey

2005-06-30T10:33:00.000+07:00

Dunhuang, China

There's a chain of outdoor cafe/bar/travel service/expat hangouts in a few cities in NW China called "John's Cafe" which are allegedly a good place to meet fellow travelers. Thus far the only acquaintances I have made at this branch are longtime friend Tsingtao and his singaporese colleague tiger, which will have to suffice.

Earlier today I went to the Mingsha sand dunes and the crescent moon lake - it's a 200-300m high mass of dunes literally at the end of town, and the lake is Dunhuang's other attraction besides the caves, subject of this recent Times article.

I actually walked there, as the Rough Guide to China promised it was only 45 minutes, but it was more like 75 minutes in the desert. I could have taken a bus for a nominal fee, but I was aiming to recreate in microcosm the perilous desert crossings of early explorers like Sven Hedin and
Xuanzang, out of a sentiment that was equal parts masochism and misplaced romanticism. In any event, all dreams were shattered when I got to the park and saw that they were charging an outrageous 80 yuan ($10) to get in (by comparison, the forbidden city in Beijing only costs 60 yuan). It's just a bunch of sand and an underwhelming if significant pond. To make matters worse it's got all of the full scale tackiness that breaks out whenever a site becomes popular among chinese tourists. Disappointing.

Afterwards, while I dined at Charley Jong's cafe once again (which has one of the few Engrish menus in town), I decided, in keeping with the spirit I've maintained thus far, to sample the local specialties again. Last night I had the Dunhuang noodles (and to tell you the truth, after 12 days in Northern China I am beginning to reach noodle saturation point) and the other two local specialties were cold Donkey meat or lamb & vegetable hotpot. As cool as it would be to be able to write to you right now that "DUNHUANG EATS F-NG DONKEY MEAT BEYATCH YEAH!!!!!" I opted for the latter, and was re-acquainted with an old nemesis.

Now, having seen the words "lamb & vegetable hotpot", I reverted to my Occidental conception of lamb, you know, rack of lamb, shish-kebabs, gyros, that sort of thing. Well, even though I'm a central asian veteran, I forgot the first rule of eating around here, which is that 9 times out of 10, meat = boiled mutton. It's really difficult to describe the smell of mutton. It's sort of musty, and stale, and powerful yet not really a stench. It's intensely powerful up close but doesn't really carry, although it permeates but fades. It completely defies explanation. Without getting into the particulars of the Einsteinian vs. Newtonian universe, it sort of transcends curved space-time. An ominous sign as I head further west.

I Have Always Depended on the Kindness of Strangers

2005-06-29T14:36:00.000+07:00

Dunhuang, China

So as I get further out into the wilderness as the only whitey around, I become paradoxically both the most popular person in town, where undertaking activities like walking down the street tend to elicit stares from the locals as if I just descended unto the renmin square on the back of a flying sow with a rainbow wig wearing fuschia dungarees, and simultaneously the biggest pariah in that I'm pretty much unable to communicate other than my now indigenous mixture of pointing and bad spanish, although snorting baby powder through rolled up 100 yuan notes will occassionally result in a polite smattering of applause.

However, I must say that being a stranger in a strange land has won me just enough pity to be quite helpful among those Chinese willing to test out their halting English against my rapid fire extemporization. As I wrote earlier, my Sleeper car bunk-mate Angus of the clan He was instrumental in helping me out in old Jiyaguan the other day. On the way out of the big J, I made some new friends in the person of a group of traveling university students from Chongqing on the way to Dunhuang like me. That came as a huge relief because the train was a "hard seat" only trade loaded down with peasants with their clothes in potato sacks. They were good enough to save me a seat and to alternatively ignore and be fascinated me throughout the five hour ride through the desert.

The biggest help was a guy named something I forgot, probably Li, but anyway his english name was "Horn" (which he actually chose himself, so democracy is coming small increments, although maybe it shouldn't in this particular instance) I'm going to ignore the fact that he was a design student and that his favorite english song was Bryan Adams "Everything I do I do it for you" and that his infatuation was marginally creepy on a certain level. I also must mention that his hat, said in english letters "Sprite of the Burnout" on it. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it probably intended to say "Spirit of the Burnout", not that that would have made it much better but..

Anyway, he and his classmates let me ride in their bus to the town from the station, which was actually a big deal because it's a 2 hour drive. So we sang Chinese pop songs and they were bummed that I didn't have "Who Let the Dogs Out" on my MP3 player (no kidding) but those are the breaks. Eventually they dropped me off at my hotel, which unfortunately matches the downward progression of hotel quality as I get more rural, though it is cheap. I averted what would have been an an embarrasing incident this morning when I accidentally locked the bathroom door shut from the outside last night(because there were holes near the shower that I think a rat could fit through so I initiated defense protocols). Fortunately, in a very mission impossible moment, and in a nick of time as I had to use the facilities, crisis was averted when I managed to actually pick the lock with a swiss army knife, slowly rehabbing my reputation after the duck incident of weeks past.

Dunhuang itself is the home of the spectacular
Mogao Caves aka the 1000 buddha caves. The mother of all buddhist caves, this is really incredible shit, it's like Bingling Si on steroids. Lots and lots of caves dating back to the first introduction of Buddhism in China from the early early AD era culminating in the Tang dynasty style around 700, and you can literally see the progression from cave to cave from Indian to Chinese art styles. Great stuff. There's also two incredible 100 foot tall, 1000 year old Buddha statues carved inside two caves. The only really big drawback is that you can't take photographs of them which is a huge pity - the other thing is that a huge library of manuscripts from inside is somewhere in a basement in the British Museum after the work of Sir Aurel Stein early last century, and many other relics from Dunhuang are spread about Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Japan and even the US. The Chinese who work the caves referto them as thieves & robbers & villains, which they were to some degree. To be fair though, had they not stolen the stuff it's likely that either white Russian Refugees (who trashed a bunch of the caves in the 20's) or native tomb robbers would have likely wrecked them anyway, so there's two sides.

I've got yet another night train, this time to Urumqui tomorrow night, and then another one on the Kashgar after that which is my ultimate goal. I've been stressing all week about timing and covering ground and trying to make it to Kashgar for its legendary Sunday bazaar, but then last night I sort of caught myself and said "Fuck it, you're on vacation for 5.75 more months, stop worrying". While the bazaar is a major attraction, why exactly do I need to be there that bad, to buy sheep? No, screw that. If I miss it and I really have to see it I'll just stay another week and go to the next one; It's not as if I don't have the time.

All Along the Watchtower

2005-06-27T12:13:00.000+07:00

Jiayuguan, China

So the Night Train to Jiayuguan was fairly uneventful. Somewhat more interesting was dinner earlier at the Botoh Coffee Shop, which is apparently THE place to be in Lanzhou. Coffee shops are the latest western rage to hit China. So if you take wicker furniture, red checkered table cloths, an extensive whiskey collection, crystal chandeliers, candlelight, waitstaff wearing hotel maid uniforms, 40's USO WWII black and white photographs, eel pizza (tasted like chicken) and of course a grand piano & pianist, and you have the Botoh Coffee Shop. Starbucks has it's work cut out for it when it gets here, which it will of course, as there's already one INSIDE the Forbidden City.

I met another chinese friend in the badly misnomered "soft sleeper" car on the train, a Mr. He something or other, whose english name happened to be....Angus. Naturally, after meeting my good buddy Raphael a few days ago, I was wondering how the hell he got the name Angus. And alas, in China, contrary to what I thought, but par for the course for the PRC, one doesn't get to choose one's own English name, your English teacher chooses it for you. So the poor guy is stuck with Angus. Nice guy though, he helped me out on the train when the severe car attendant demanded my passport for no apparent reason, and paid for my cab fare to the hotel. I promised to send him some fine tartan for his kilt.

Jiayuguan itself is a kind of squat little industrial city that traditionally marked the far Northern and Western border of the Chinese empire in Medieval times. It's situated in a mountain pass where all Silk Road traffic had to pass through on its way either into China or out into central Asia, and it's where the Great Wall quite literally ends. The main attractions are the Wall (which has been well restored here, and has more snakes and scorpions than fat tourists and hawkers) and a huge fortress that's also well preserved and restored. In China, Jiayuagan is almost a metaphor in an of itself as the end of the civilized universe with inhospitable barbarians in the West (turks & muslims) and North (Gobi & Huns & Mongols). The only real problem with Jiayuguan is that I was able to see all of the sights in about 3 hours and now have to kill the rest of the day, so it looks like I'm taking the early train to Dunhuang tomorrow.

Picture of the fort below (again, not mine unfortunately):

http://www.coxandkings.co.uk/img/fareast/tours/sre_jiayuguan.jpg

nopuedoverlo

2005-06-26T17:32:00.000+07:00

Oh yeah, one more thing I can't read this page or access it, though obviously I can post to it, since big brother blocks access to it here. Cool.

For that reason I can't respond individually to comments (even though they get sent to my e-mail), though trust me I really want to.

Bingling...Si

2005-06-26T09:26:00.000+07:00

Lanzhou, China

So now I'm in North central China sort of at the edge of the Chinese part of China near the top of the Yellow River. Mercifully the temparture has dropped considerably, with it topping out around 30 C.

Closing the book on Xi'an, at breakfast the other morning I noticed that I was surrounded by lots of tables of Germans each bearing what was apparently one of Xi'an's major souvenirs, chinese babies. Nothing to say other than that it was a weird spectacle.

On a self-centered note, all the guidebooks warn male travellers to be wary of frequent attempted hook-ings. Well I haven't really been solicited at all aside from the standard Beijing street pimps, so I'm not sure whether to be insulted or flattered - I must have an un-hook-able look about me, which is either gay, poor, or too attractive to be hooked. I'm going with the latter for now.

Regarding Lanzhou city (another one of those 3.5m person cities that nobody in the US has ever heard of)not that nice but not that bad either. Beer drinking was all the rage here among locals, which suits me fine. There's an outdoor bar in the parking lot next to the hotel which is not half bad at night, if you don't mind the bartenders who shortchange westerners (for meager amounts), the smell of motor oil, and the fact that you shouldn't sit at one of the back tables, as they are frequently hit by buses backing out of the parking lot, no kidding. Still at the equivalent of 37 cents a beer, I'll take it and then some. My crap chinese has incorporated the word for beer "pijiu" -- although when I say it, it comes out as "pee-jew", which causes confusion as it is also the chinese word for Eric Lipman in a bar after 10 minutes.

The main highlight here, which I didn't know about until a few days ago, are the caves at Bingling Si (photo below, found off the web, not taken by me) http://www.martinsbta.co.uk/images/photos/china/big/bingling.jpg

I'm not sure if it's possible for a Buddhist cave to be f-ing awesome, but these caves were f-ing awesome. Briefly speaking, it's a series of thousand year old Buddhist caves, frescoes, & statues carved into the side of a canyon off the Yellow River. Really truly awesome. To get there, you have to take motorboat (that frequently runs aground as the river is huge but shallow & silty, also you tend to run aground more if your boat, like mine, is overloaded with rotund Marseilleise) through these huge canyons for about an hour. The highlight is the 70 foot or so tall Buddha carved into the side of the cliff around AD 700, very cool.

The only problem is that it costs an arm and a leg to get out there and they hit you with fee after fee once you get there, including a ridiculous 300 Y to see the "special caves" at the very end, which I declined. The Japanese visit in droves and they fork over anything, so they drive the price way, way up.

My company for the trek was a local guide I totally forgot his name halfway through so I started calling him "Li", since pretty much everybody's name out here is Li, which proved correct. He was in fact Mr. "Raphael" Li, apparently Michelangelo and Leonardo were taken, though I give him props for not choosing john, george, david, like most. Despite his latin name, he was quite confused about the name "Miguel", as are most Chinese, who tend to pronounce it "My-gull" or "Mee-gull"

Later on today I'm taking the night train to Jiyaguan, which has to be a metaphor for something, or at least will be before tomorrow AM.

Kenny Rogers Roaster

2005-06-22T17:20:00.000+07:00

Xi'an, China

Postscript on Beijing, which I left today for Xi'an:

Last night I decided to sample what passes for nightlife in Beijing. Getting out there was a chore, the cab drivers in Beijing, as in many parts of Asia that I've visited, either don't know where a damn thing is or try to scam you if you're Western, which makes for a nasty combination. The guy who drove me to the bar district, which I colorfully described to him in Spanish ("Bar! Cerveza! Borracho!"), since he wasn't going to understand anyway, inexplicably dropped me off several blocks away, which is odd considering that the bar district is denoted with a 20 foot tall beer mug on the street corner. Technically, he did drop me off close to one bar, the aptly named "Music Bar Sport Restaurant", which promised "Nordic Style Cuisine Eating" - which gave me a mental image of some Asiatic Thor figure smashing up dim sum with a war hammer - regardless I passed on that.

The acutal bar district is a joke. It's just a row of cookie cutter pseudo-American style places, all with awful chinese bands, expensive (for China) budweiser & food, and acres of empty tables. The establishement that I patronized was particularly happy to have an actual american as they proudly positioned me in the window seat, and they were crestfallen when I declined their offer of American style popcorn (served in the microwaveable bag).

The exterior of the street is even worse, as pimp like figures offer you "pretty girl bar massage 100 yuan" Obviously, that sounds like hot concubine action on offer, but with the lengths to which people will go to scam you, I'm guessing that even that offer is a scam of sorts. The thing was sort of like a bad Chinese knock-off of Bangkok - I mean how much open street hooker-ing can there be in a quasi-totalitarian police state? Not much I bet. But anyway I didn't stick around to find out. The whole thing was only the second most ridiculous thing I saw that day however, with the first being the Chinese Miltary Museum (FYI, Mao won WWII, in case you didn't know)

So now I'm in Xi'an, aside from a Kafka-esque experience of being ferried around town (in omnipresent 40c weather) in search of mythical train tickets to Lanzhou -- where I actually don't even want to go, it's just on the way west -- I settled for the less mythical and slightly pricier option of flying - which was had its own Kafka-esque sequences (I had to sit in three different chairs - the ticket booking chair, the hotel booking chair, and the change -getting chair - mind you, this is a small 10x10 foot office with three desks and three chairs).

Duck No. 1.15 098564

2005-06-20T17:00:00.000+07:00

Beijing, China

First, let me say I'm not sure whether I'm writing this to myself or for an audience or both, so I'm going to switch on and off the pretense randomly, so that is part fo the ride.

On Beijing generally, after the first full day (now two) the most noticeable thing after seeing the standard tourist sights (Tienanmen, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, etc.) is the love affair with euphemism in place names("Hall of Heavenly Peace, Eternal Joy, Ultimate Wisdom etc etc etc". During the Qing dynasty when most of this stuff was built & restored, there was anything but joy, wisdom, peace, tranquility both within and without. That sort of thing doesn't seem to vary with politics here, since even the more modern stuff bears the same hallmarks (e.g., the "Great Hall of the People" isn't really that great, nor do the people have much input). I'm sure I'm not the first to make this observation in a cynical Western way, but at least we're honest about that sort of thing when naming stuff back in the US; take the White House for example, its inhabited by and largely run for the benefit of rich white guys. It's easier that way.

On to the less weighty stuff - the real reason I came to Beijing was to try out to become a eunuch. Since the application was Chinese, my second real reason for being here was to eat a duck. So last night I rolled up to the signature location of the massive Quanjude roast duck empire, a seven story avian graveyard. After cruising through the requisite gleaming lobby (btw, Chinese architectural schools must have like, a whole freaking year of courses on how to cram in as much marble and chrome as you can per square meter; I knew that coming in, but still, man...) I was directed up to the 5th floor and the end of a long hallway.

So I grabbed a seat in a smoky roomful of Chinese duck eaters who mercifully paid no heed to the weird foreigner eating alone. Afer a few minutes I hailed the waitstaff and stalked my prey - one roast duck and 24 oz's of Yanjing beer. The language barrier presented little problem, by now, I've resorted to talking loudly and ridiculously in English to all Chinese, hoping that body language can get the meaning through, which it usually does. Plus it allows me to laugh at my own jokes. They don't mind, I don't think, because they talk really loud too naturally so at least we've got one thing in common, and they already think I'm weird anyway.

What made them thik I was weirder was that I ordered a whole roast duck. As you might know, Peking Duck comfortably serves 2-4. But I knew this and wanted the damned duck anyway, so I sort of played off the gluttonous American role and boasted to the waitstaff that I was going to finish the whole duck since I was from Texas. For additional effect, I drained the rest of my Yanjing and ordered another. I think this went over pretty well or not at all.

When the duck finally arrived, I reiterated this pledge to the duck carving chef and started pointing to my stomach, and said "I'm taking this duck down", which generated much levity, or mockery, not sure which. The train started to go off the tracks almost immediately. Here one is expected to roll up your own duck into little pancakes, while stateside the duck chef usually does it for us gringos. My first duck roll was a disaster. To make things worse, the waitstaff was watching, and my chopstick control was badly affected by nerves - it was like Uma Thurman trying to eat rice in Kill Bill vol. 2. By the second roll, the waiter stepped in and rolled it up for me. This was doubly insulting as I've eaten enough things in tortillas in my life to feel really bad about this.

I started to improve my rolling a bit after that, but that was when the scale of the task before me began to sink in. I had two plates of duck meat in front of me stacked up like the Petronas Towers and a whole lot of boasting to back up. 4-6 rolls later I had chopped down the first tower, but I was in a bad way and had the second plate, plus the split duck head to go. 2-3 rolls into plate 2 I hit the Great Wall. By the last roll, not only did my rolling form revert to shit, but I had to take super small bites and chew it up into paste since my esophogus was pretty much 95% duck. Slightly after this, and to avoid further loss of face by hurling in the Quanjude Duck house, I hung up my chopsticks and was presented with a certificate by the waitstaff indicating that I had consumed Duck No. 1.15 098564 - which at that point was being packed into a doggy bag that I had no intention of eating but asked for anyway for appearances' sake.

As I sat sipping my Yanjing, watching as the duck head was lovingly packed for me to consume today, I thought about a lot of things about east & west, but mostly, I thought "son of a bitch, that was a shitload of duck."

3 bags, 6 months

2005-06-16T21:30:00.000+07:00

DSC00021
Originally uploaded by mv.

Fascinating, right? This is why I haven't been updating this thing much.

So what the hell is a wandering goat?

2005-05-11T10:20:00.000+07:00

First, let me just say that the very idea of a blog authored by me is pretty reprehensible. I hate the word "blog", I don't know who made it up but they are probably pretty sucky - the portmanteau is a word format of the damned.

Even worse, the whole thing has been seized upon by self-important wannabes who feel it's their ticket to recognition as some sort of intellectual/insightful/quirky icon of post-modernism or politics or whatever. For god's sake assholes like that ruin everything.

The main reason why I'm doing this is because it's easier then sending out 1000 emails and it's an easy place to keep stuff so that I don't forget and that won't be stolen by South Seas pirates, etc. As for the name, "Wandering Ghost" is a chinese/buddhist concept of what happens to unfortunate souls. The story goes that if you do something bad, you turn into a wandering (or hungry) ghost when you die, traditionally portrayed with long skinny necks and a bulging (empty) stomach, condemned to wander around and be hungry for a few turns on the old wheel of life. Anyway I liked the name but the concept was too morbid, and the consensus, spearheaded by friend & colleague Amy, was to go with the old goat. That, and the fact that I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "Dengue Fever"

Route map

2005-04-26T01:05:00.000+07:00

This is just proposed for now, could change, but this is roughly the route I've got (may pencil in Australia after India).

2005-04-05T04:39:00.000+07:00