As I posted earlier from Japan, seeing a counties war sites and museums is certainly a interesting experience when your country was the adversary. However, the surreal level really cranks up when the war in question is viewed by the other country as their glorious and successful revolution, rather then a unfortunate mistake in the past. We went to three major war sites in the Saigon area:
Reunification Palace - Saigon
This building in Saigon was the seat of the South Vietnamese government and was where the North's victory was made official in 1975. The war ended when North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates and then troops demanded the surrender of the president of South Vietnam. Interestingly, the president was not Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the leader for most of the war, but Dương Văn Minh, a poor sap who was handed power 48 hours before the tanks rolled through the gate.
The building is a piece of 60's architecture that would look at home on most US college campuses. It would be the semi-modern building that would look out of place and everyone would hate. It is only as old as 1966 because the original was bombed by the South Vietnamese (you read this correctly) Air Force in an assassination attempt of the unpopular president, Diem.
From an architectural standpoint is does improve once inside, where there are large open foyers that actually give the building a very open feel. The stuff on the main floors is mainly the official presidential offices and meeting rooms for foreign dignitaries. The main thing that struck me about this area is the chincyness of the whole place. It is trying to be fancy in a Chinatown restaurant kind of way and does not look like a place of any real power or history. Disturbingly it pretty much looks like the seat of a low budget government, which is pretty much what it was.
In the upper floors of the building is the presidents residence, which is quite modest with the exception of a collection of stuffed elephant's feet. Also on the top levels is a small movie theater with vintage projection equipment and a helipad with a vintage US huey parked on it. There is also a lounge and game room that Austin Powers would be happy to have in his flat, for the use of top government officials.
Next you go to the basement where the command bunker facilities are. It is a really dank and almost claustrophobic place. There are seemingly endless rooms, all with gray painted concrete walls, that have crappy institutional desks and chairs, as well as vintage US radio equipment. You definitely get the feeling of how maddening it must be to command a country from such a dark and cut-off place.
For the last bit of the tour they drop you off at an area where they play a government produced video of the history of the building. The narrator was really hard to understand and we walked in at the end, so we only stayed for a few minutes. The only memorable part was the song they played during the video montage at the end. It had marching band type music as a background and then a choir singing "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh..." over and over and over again.
War Reminence Museum - Saigon
This is the museum set up for the Vietnam War and the conflicts of that era. Evidently is used to be called "Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes", but was renamed to something a little more subtle when Vietnam reopened to the west.
The museum is three smallish halls surrounding a courtyard filled with captured American tanks, artillery and planes. The first hall was actually a very nice photo exhibit dedicated to news photographers who died in the war. It was actually sponsored by a bunch of western companies, I believe FedEx was one of them. This had a lot of great pictures from the photographers, most of which were published in magazines at the time, and often pictures of the photographers themselves before they died. The photos that I found most affecting were of a female war photographer who's name I cannot find. They had many of her photos as well as one of her in cammo garb. They also had a photo taken by another photographer of her being read the last rights as she lay dieing in a field of tall grass.
The second hall was mostly photos of terrible stuff that was done by the US in the war. Topics covered included My Lai, Agent Orange and the massacare that was admitted to by Bob Kerry in 2001, which I had actually never heard about. Of these the Agent Orange photos were quite disturbing, as well as a very grisly one I had never seen before of a Marine holding up the head and shoulders of a exploded corpse.
The third hall focused on the cruelty of the South Vietnamese regime as well as the French. For the South Vietnamese they had a waterboarding type of device as well as mock ups of the little cages that they used to keep political prisoners in on a deserted island. For the French they had one of their old Guillotines. It makes you jump about three feet back when you look though the little slit into the dark cage and find out there is a wax figure of a prisoner looking back at you. They should really put up a sign about that.
Chu Chi Tunnels - Chu Chi
There are several networks of tunnels that were built by the VC during the war, these are the most visited because they are right outside Saigon and have been set up into kind of a campy war tourist attraction.
Evidently this village of Chu Chi was a hotspot for the VC and war right near a big US military base. The VC in the area fought with the US for the length of the war by using a massive network of tunnels, a few of which have been enlarged for the viewing of tourists.
After buying your ticket, the first thing you do is go in a room where they show a propaganda video that was actually produced by the North Vietnamese during the war. It follows, in its own way, the story of the "Chu Chi Guerrillas". The movie starts with showing the peace loving villagers of Chu Chi tending to orchards and rice patties. Then the US starts bombing the village and kills many innocent people. The ingenious and determined Chu Chi Guerrillas then fight back the US with their network of tunnels, as well as hiding anti-tank mines in rice baskets and other guerrilla war tactics.
The strangest thing is the part where they follow one male and one female (who is quite attractive and made-up for a guerrilla fighter) member of the Chu Chi Guerrillas. They both win the "Killing Many Americans Award" (exact quote) for their mine planting and sniping abilities. I do not know if it is mainly just an issue with the translation of if that is actually the name of their medal of honor. Needless to say, I have never heard of a WWII medal called the "Killing Many Japanese Award".
After the video you get a free tour guide and they take you into the park. The first thing is an old entrance to a tunnel that is just a tiny hole in the ground. If you are skinny enough you can slide down into the hole, but not into the tunnel that leads away from it, and get your picture taken half in the ground. After that there are some bomb craters, a burned out US tank and many surface level bunkers with exhibits of how they were used to make weapons, treat the wounded or cook food. The kitchen is kind of neat because they have an underground chimney that lets the smoke out 20m away from the bunker. There is also a workshop where they make sandals out of old tires that were supposedly used by the VC in the war and were supposedly invented by Ho Chi Minh.
We declined the offer to go to the firing range where you can shoot an M-16 or AK-47 for one US dollar a bullet.
Our tour guide was a really nice and funny guy, but his habit of referring to US soldiers as "your army" made everything sound even more disturbing. When you are in the area where they have models of various sharpened bamboo traps he demonstrates each one by saying "your soldier step here then... whap!".
As for the tunnels themselves, you can walk about 200m through a tunnel that is only barely big enough to allow you to walk through bent over rather then on your hands and knees. There was a little bomb shelter room in the middle, but mostly it was just a tunnel. The air is really hot and stuffy and since only the guide has a flashlight, the person at the back walks mostly in the dark. It is a short experience, but the fact that people spent years living in this underground environment gives you an idea of how determined the VC was to win. The fact that after 5-10 minutes in there I was drenched in sweat also makes you appreciate how tough they were.
Conclusion
Let me start by saying that I in no way think that the Vietnam war sights are presented in any balanced way. The point of these places is to celebrate the glory of the current regime and they certainly in no way say anything about the ruthless tactics of the VC and NVA. However, the effect of these types of places, at least to me, is to emphasize how terrible war is, regardless of who is right and who is wrong.
It is also a little disappointing how few Americans are exposed to pictures of mangled corpses and deformed children that are the result of modern war. There is such an effort in our country, in newspapers, museums and on TV to shield us from any objects or images that disturb the myth of the glory of war. I would love to see someone build a place like this in DC. I don't think the effect of more exposure on people would be to make them never want to fight when it is necessary, but it may temper the belligerence that exists around how we need to bomb this country or that. It may also give people an idea of what it means to "Take the Gloves Off", which is too often floated as a solution when wars are not going well.
On a side note, as Japan made me want to do some more research into the endgame of WWII, Vietnam made me want to look more into the use of Agent Orange. I would be interested to know how the people who approved the use of a powerful chemical that killed all vegetation, and had effects on humans that were not fully understood at the time, would not be classified as war criminals under most accepted definitions. On one level it seems rather obvious that such a powerful chemical would have some adverse effects on humans. On another level, going on a focused campaign to destroy the natural environment of a country is not very ethical either. If we had sprayed Vietnam with a chemical that was designed to bring about chronic illness and birth defects that would be a war crime, correct? Ignorance of these obvious side effects does not seem to be a very compelling defence.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Home at Last
After 5 months away we are finally back in the US. The flight was fine and was actually a piece of cake when you have the travel zen gained over many hours on Indian buses.
However, the blog is not over.
Because of issues with getting on the internet, as well as wanting to pack more activities into a short period of time, I left out a bunch of stuff from the end of the trip. So, stay tuned as I will be writing up the end of the trip as well as some overall thoughts and small travel guides over the next few weeks.
However, the blog is not over.
Because of issues with getting on the internet, as well as wanting to pack more activities into a short period of time, I left out a bunch of stuff from the end of the trip. So, stay tuned as I will be writing up the end of the trip as well as some overall thoughts and small travel guides over the next few weeks.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Last Quick Update?
- Only one more day in Hong Kong, so this might be the last of the updates. I have mental notes on a bunch of things however, so I am probably going to write quite a bit when there is some Christmas down time in Baton Rouge.
- Hong Kong is great. Probably the most "international" city on earth. It is certainly Chinese, but the British influence is still very strong here. There seems to be a large Ex-Pat community in the mix as well. It is certainly as easy as anyplace we have been to get around with English here. Almost everyone seems to speak it quite fluently.
- Pete was nice enough to use hotel points to put us up in the Conrad Hotel for the first three days. Needless to say, staying in a high end hotel in Hong Kong is pretty nice. He also has a gold card so we got free breakfast and evening drinks, really great food as well.
- Speaking of great food, we have enjoyed a great Lunch and Dinner courtesy of our family friend Bob's sister Cecilia and her husband Hans. As usual with Asian cuisines they have meats and ingredients here that are just not available back home. The food was so good I even enjoyed eating a whole fish, which is pretty unbelievable for me.
- We had the latest night out of the entire trip in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong's nightlife district. Great place where you can drink on the street and there are loads of bars. There was also a charity event going on where for 300 HKD (about $40) you got a Santa suit and 10 free drinks. As you can imagine this resulted in a whole street of drunk people in Santa suites, definitely a sight to see. If we had gotten there earlier, before we had a bunch of drinks ourselves, I would have thought about forking over the 300 HKD.
- Another strange thing. Often on this trip we have tried to avoid what we call "Human Zoos". By this we mean a tour where you go to see tribal people, boat people, etc., and seeing the people is really the only attraction. In Lan Kwai Fong there is a very mixed crowd of drunks, but a good amount are westerners. This results in quite a few rich Chinese and Japanese tourists walking down the street doing the human zoo tour of drunk westerners, snapping photos indiscriminately. Weird to be on the other side of the glass.
- The amount of money spent on luxury goods in this city is crazy. A Louis Vitton or Channel store is about as common as the Gap is in the US. It is kind of annoying because they do not really have regular shopping centers. A mall of the Copley Place quality is as low rent as it gets here. Evidently most of this consumption is fueled by mainland Chinese. Definitely boom times out here.
- The currency of Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Dollar. Interestingly it is issued by one of three private banks, Standard Chartered, HSBC or Bank of China. This makes it a little confusing because the notes from the three different banks all look different, but are the same basic color, based on the amount. There is something a little strange about money that is not issued by the government. I was thinking that if we had a similar system in the US banks would probably start printing the bills with "Free Checking", "New Low Rates on Home Equity Loans" or some other form of advertisement.
- Hong Kong is great. Probably the most "international" city on earth. It is certainly Chinese, but the British influence is still very strong here. There seems to be a large Ex-Pat community in the mix as well. It is certainly as easy as anyplace we have been to get around with English here. Almost everyone seems to speak it quite fluently.
- Pete was nice enough to use hotel points to put us up in the Conrad Hotel for the first three days. Needless to say, staying in a high end hotel in Hong Kong is pretty nice. He also has a gold card so we got free breakfast and evening drinks, really great food as well.
- Speaking of great food, we have enjoyed a great Lunch and Dinner courtesy of our family friend Bob's sister Cecilia and her husband Hans. As usual with Asian cuisines they have meats and ingredients here that are just not available back home. The food was so good I even enjoyed eating a whole fish, which is pretty unbelievable for me.
- We had the latest night out of the entire trip in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong's nightlife district. Great place where you can drink on the street and there are loads of bars. There was also a charity event going on where for 300 HKD (about $40) you got a Santa suit and 10 free drinks. As you can imagine this resulted in a whole street of drunk people in Santa suites, definitely a sight to see. If we had gotten there earlier, before we had a bunch of drinks ourselves, I would have thought about forking over the 300 HKD.
- Another strange thing. Often on this trip we have tried to avoid what we call "Human Zoos". By this we mean a tour where you go to see tribal people, boat people, etc., and seeing the people is really the only attraction. In Lan Kwai Fong there is a very mixed crowd of drunks, but a good amount are westerners. This results in quite a few rich Chinese and Japanese tourists walking down the street doing the human zoo tour of drunk westerners, snapping photos indiscriminately. Weird to be on the other side of the glass.
- The amount of money spent on luxury goods in this city is crazy. A Louis Vitton or Channel store is about as common as the Gap is in the US. It is kind of annoying because they do not really have regular shopping centers. A mall of the Copley Place quality is as low rent as it gets here. Evidently most of this consumption is fueled by mainland Chinese. Definitely boom times out here.
- The currency of Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Dollar. Interestingly it is issued by one of three private banks, Standard Chartered, HSBC or Bank of China. This makes it a little confusing because the notes from the three different banks all look different, but are the same basic color, based on the amount. There is something a little strange about money that is not issued by the government. I was thinking that if we had a similar system in the US banks would probably start printing the bills with "Free Checking", "New Low Rates on Home Equity Loans" or some other form of advertisement.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Back From Halong Bay
We just got back from our tour and it was actually a great success.
The first day we spent on a nice cruise boat Junk kind of thing, had a good food and lots of drinks. The second day was two kayak sessions followed by a night at a really nice resort on Cat Ba Island. Third day was a half day at Cat Ba followed by the transport back to Hanoi.
As usual these days I do not have enough time to write a big post, but it really was an incredible natural environment. The giant floating villages were something very interesting as well.
Nisha is uploading some pictures right now and we are flying to Hong Kong tomorrow.
Perhaps I will have a little more time there to write.
The first day we spent on a nice cruise boat Junk kind of thing, had a good food and lots of drinks. The second day was two kayak sessions followed by a night at a really nice resort on Cat Ba Island. Third day was a half day at Cat Ba followed by the transport back to Hanoi.
As usual these days I do not have enough time to write a big post, but it really was an incredible natural environment. The giant floating villages were something very interesting as well.
Nisha is uploading some pictures right now and we are flying to Hong Kong tomorrow.
Perhaps I will have a little more time there to write.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Quick Update
- We flew successfully up to Hanoi today and checked out the town. Very nice city, a lot different from Saigon since it is an older city with small little streets rather then wide boulivards. Still at lot of motorbikes however.
- Dispite our usual problems with orginized tours, we signed up for a 3 day trip to Halong Bay since it really seemed like the only practical way to do it. We will be on a boat the first night. The second will be on Cat Ba Island.
- Dispite our usual problems with orginized tours, we signed up for a 3 day trip to Halong Bay since it really seemed like the only practical way to do it. We will be on a boat the first night. The second will be on Cat Ba Island.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Quick Update
Since Pete is now here we are a little more busy, so I might be in quick update mode for a while.
- Checked out the old South Vietnamese White House type building and the American War museum. Will probably write something serious about that later.
- Had a really full afternoon and evening in Saigon yesterday. Highlights below.
- Went to the Dam Sen water park. This place was really fun, normal water park setup like the US, but only 5 bucks to get in. They had about 10 water slides, including one I had never seen before. The new one sent you shooting down a tube at incredible speed and then shot you out into a big toilet bowl kind of thing. After circling the drain as many times as you could go around, you fall out the bottom of the bowl into a pool. The first time I rode it I thought it was the scariest water slide I had ever been on.
- Drank some Bia Hoi, or "fresh beer" on little sidewalk tables. This was in the real neighborhood near the water park, so we did stick out a bit. Bia Hoi is beer that is made fresh without preservatives and delivered to bars that sell it out of a big metal tank. It is sold by the liter and is the worlds cheapest beer at 25 cents per liter. This was our first time having it, and we ended up getting 3 beer mugs filled with ice and an old 2 liter plastic bottle, that looks like something you would use for petrol, filled with Bia Hoi. Mixed with the ice it was pretty good, very light and refreshing.
- Went to this big faux western music bar near the hotel. In this palace of varnished wood walls and giant totem poles they had the most bizarre cover band I have ever seen. It was a long haired guy and two scantily clad girls backed up by a normal set of musicians. The three singers with switch off on who was the lead vocalist and they covered everything from Beyonce to Roxette to Metallica. Really bizarre hearing two Vietnamese singers playing the roles of Beyonce and Jay-Z. They actually were really entertaining.
- Checked out the old South Vietnamese White House type building and the American War museum. Will probably write something serious about that later.
- Had a really full afternoon and evening in Saigon yesterday. Highlights below.
- Went to the Dam Sen water park. This place was really fun, normal water park setup like the US, but only 5 bucks to get in. They had about 10 water slides, including one I had never seen before. The new one sent you shooting down a tube at incredible speed and then shot you out into a big toilet bowl kind of thing. After circling the drain as many times as you could go around, you fall out the bottom of the bowl into a pool. The first time I rode it I thought it was the scariest water slide I had ever been on.
- Drank some Bia Hoi, or "fresh beer" on little sidewalk tables. This was in the real neighborhood near the water park, so we did stick out a bit. Bia Hoi is beer that is made fresh without preservatives and delivered to bars that sell it out of a big metal tank. It is sold by the liter and is the worlds cheapest beer at 25 cents per liter. This was our first time having it, and we ended up getting 3 beer mugs filled with ice and an old 2 liter plastic bottle, that looks like something you would use for petrol, filled with Bia Hoi. Mixed with the ice it was pretty good, very light and refreshing.
- Went to this big faux western music bar near the hotel. In this palace of varnished wood walls and giant totem poles they had the most bizarre cover band I have ever seen. It was a long haired guy and two scantily clad girls backed up by a normal set of musicians. The three singers with switch off on who was the lead vocalist and they covered everything from Beyonce to Roxette to Metallica. Really bizarre hearing two Vietnamese singers playing the roles of Beyonce and Jay-Z. They actually were really entertaining.
Friday, December 7, 2007
The Last of the Beaches
Ian and I left our last beach location today. Let's see, we have been to Diu, Goa, and Varkala in India. Koh Samui, Koh Tao, Koh Phagnan, and Railay in Thailand, then Mui Ne Beach in Vietnam. You may be thinking that we have spent an inordinate time at beach places, but can you really ever have too much? Especially since it's 19 degrees in Boston, where we are headed on December 19th.
Mui Ne was a spectacular beach. I'm glad we didn't take the advice of a Australian-Norwegian couple we met on a bus. They live in the Mekong Delta and said that Mui Ne stunk. Stubbornly, we headed there anyway. Like Railay in Thailand, it has large sporting activities - kite-boarding and wind-surfing, neither of which Ian or I tried.
Our foray into the giant surf was to rent a divorce-boat (two person kayak). We have done this a few times before without incident. Unbeknowest to us, this particular kayak had a leak that let in water when it was turned over. We would be kayaking on an extremely wavy and windy beach, swimming in which made me nervous. We were paddling happily near the breaking surf when we had our first dump. Ian righted the kayak and we hopped in, prepared for such an event. In the next 5 minutes, we fell over 2 more times until we realized the kayak was sinking. We decided that Ian would kayak back to shore. He suggested that I swim back to shore, about 200 meters in very heavy surf. Instead, I held on to the back until 10 meters from the shore and swam hard the rest of the way. No papers served.
The rest of the three days we spent on the beach, at the pool, and checking out the local attractions. Due to the geography of the area, the beach gets very high winds daily and is relatively dry. We visited a stretch of picturesque sand dunes. Similar to India, it is difficult to visit any attractions without various people following you around try to peddle something. It looked like every tourist was on some desert expedition. Two kids followed us for about 20 minutes asking us if we wanted to rent a sled to slide down the dunes. Not quite sledding on snow, but it was fun nonetheless.
I highly recommend Mui Ne beach to anyone visiting Vietnam. The long, clean, and white stretch of sand is not overdeveloped. There are excellent Vietnamese and international restaurants. We went to an Italian one that we recognized by Slow Food International. There are many activities around the area if you get bored of baking in the sun. The Vietnamese people are surprisingly and extremely friendly. Most of all, unlike Thailand, there was no trance music or hookers.
- Nisha
Mui Ne was a spectacular beach. I'm glad we didn't take the advice of a Australian-Norwegian couple we met on a bus. They live in the Mekong Delta and said that Mui Ne stunk. Stubbornly, we headed there anyway. Like Railay in Thailand, it has large sporting activities - kite-boarding and wind-surfing, neither of which Ian or I tried.
Our foray into the giant surf was to rent a divorce-boat (two person kayak). We have done this a few times before without incident. Unbeknowest to us, this particular kayak had a leak that let in water when it was turned over. We would be kayaking on an extremely wavy and windy beach, swimming in which made me nervous. We were paddling happily near the breaking surf when we had our first dump. Ian righted the kayak and we hopped in, prepared for such an event. In the next 5 minutes, we fell over 2 more times until we realized the kayak was sinking. We decided that Ian would kayak back to shore. He suggested that I swim back to shore, about 200 meters in very heavy surf. Instead, I held on to the back until 10 meters from the shore and swam hard the rest of the way. No papers served.
The rest of the three days we spent on the beach, at the pool, and checking out the local attractions. Due to the geography of the area, the beach gets very high winds daily and is relatively dry. We visited a stretch of picturesque sand dunes. Similar to India, it is difficult to visit any attractions without various people following you around try to peddle something. It looked like every tourist was on some desert expedition. Two kids followed us for about 20 minutes asking us if we wanted to rent a sled to slide down the dunes. Not quite sledding on snow, but it was fun nonetheless.
I highly recommend Mui Ne beach to anyone visiting Vietnam. The long, clean, and white stretch of sand is not overdeveloped. There are excellent Vietnamese and international restaurants. We went to an Italian one that we recognized by Slow Food International. There are many activities around the area if you get bored of baking in the sun. The Vietnamese people are surprisingly and extremely friendly. Most of all, unlike Thailand, there was no trance music or hookers.
- Nisha
One of a Kind
I have been reading this book The Glass Palace the last week. As a historical fiction fan I have found it quite fascinating because of the different prospective that it offers. It is written by a Bengali author, in English, and is about the British empire from the late 1800s to WWII from the prospective of an extended Indian/Burmese family. It is a nice change to read something, in its original language, about the colonial era from the prospective of those being colonized, rather then the British colonialists.
The reason I am writing about this is that a part in the book, as well as being in these countries torn apart by violent revolutions, makes me finally "get" Gandhi. As I wrote earlier, I read an autobiography of Gandhi awhile ago and this gave me a much more full picture of his life then I had before. I now know him as more then just a peaceful, Dohti wearing guy, but I still thought before today that he was too much of an idealist.
The thing about Gandhi is that even though he wanted India to be free, he wanted even more to solve India's social ills. In fact, he said that he did not want the British to go until India was ready to rule itself in a just way. Even at the point of independence, he still thought India was not really ready to rule itself. Also, he never wanted there to be a violent revolution. Despite the fact that it took 40 years for India to gain its freedom, he fought ferociously against the elements that wanted to go to war with the British.
When I first read this, I thought it was very admirable, but I did think that it was a little weak. Granted his strategy did work, but it took an incredible amount of time, and only worked because the British got tired of ruling a country that did not want them there. I did think that perhaps if the Indians has taken a more active course they may have still had independence, but just a lot sooner.
The thing that I did not take in to account is that, in general, even if your violent revolution is a success, you end up with a country ruled by violent revolutionaries. The problem is that the kind of people that are effective at fighting a war are also terrible, ruthless leaders after the war is over. A large part of the reason why a chaotic country like India became a stable democracy is that its political revolution resulted in politicians, not generals, becoming its first leaders. I am not an expert on Nehru, nor do I agree with all his ideas, but at least he was a secular politician who believed in democracy. The chances of a violent revolution producing a leader who fits that description are slight at best. The problem is that there is only one Gandhi, so violent revolutions will exist for as long as there are people who do not like their government.
Incidentally, I do realize that the American revolution is the one example I can think of where a violent revolution did not result in an early government with totalitarian tendencies. I am not sure yet why I think this happened the way that it did. One thing I can think of is that it was a different era, and it was English colonists fighting against the English crown, not another race or culture of people. It also, however, makes one think about how unique the early Americans were to take power for England but then give all that power to a democratic government. Perhaps they were one of a kind in their own way as well.
The reason I am writing about this is that a part in the book, as well as being in these countries torn apart by violent revolutions, makes me finally "get" Gandhi. As I wrote earlier, I read an autobiography of Gandhi awhile ago and this gave me a much more full picture of his life then I had before. I now know him as more then just a peaceful, Dohti wearing guy, but I still thought before today that he was too much of an idealist.
The thing about Gandhi is that even though he wanted India to be free, he wanted even more to solve India's social ills. In fact, he said that he did not want the British to go until India was ready to rule itself in a just way. Even at the point of independence, he still thought India was not really ready to rule itself. Also, he never wanted there to be a violent revolution. Despite the fact that it took 40 years for India to gain its freedom, he fought ferociously against the elements that wanted to go to war with the British.
When I first read this, I thought it was very admirable, but I did think that it was a little weak. Granted his strategy did work, but it took an incredible amount of time, and only worked because the British got tired of ruling a country that did not want them there. I did think that perhaps if the Indians has taken a more active course they may have still had independence, but just a lot sooner.
The thing that I did not take in to account is that, in general, even if your violent revolution is a success, you end up with a country ruled by violent revolutionaries. The problem is that the kind of people that are effective at fighting a war are also terrible, ruthless leaders after the war is over. A large part of the reason why a chaotic country like India became a stable democracy is that its political revolution resulted in politicians, not generals, becoming its first leaders. I am not an expert on Nehru, nor do I agree with all his ideas, but at least he was a secular politician who believed in democracy. The chances of a violent revolution producing a leader who fits that description are slight at best. The problem is that there is only one Gandhi, so violent revolutions will exist for as long as there are people who do not like their government.
Incidentally, I do realize that the American revolution is the one example I can think of where a violent revolution did not result in an early government with totalitarian tendencies. I am not sure yet why I think this happened the way that it did. One thing I can think of is that it was a different era, and it was English colonists fighting against the English crown, not another race or culture of people. It also, however, makes one think about how unique the early Americans were to take power for England but then give all that power to a democratic government. Perhaps they were one of a kind in their own way as well.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Quick Update
- We have been doing the last real beach stay of our trip on Mui Ne beach in
Vietnam. Is one of the top beaches that we have visited. There are
quite a few hotels, but it is pretty mellow. The beach is very long and nice, with pretty big surf, a nice change after Thailand;s calm waters.
- We really stuck gold with a hotel here. After a few places were
full we ended up with a bungalow literally 5 steps from the beach. The place is undergoing renovation, so there is construction, but it is just painting and quiet stuff. Because of the construction our room is half price and we get free breakfast and use of the big pool next door.
- Mui Ne is evidently one of the worlds best Windsurfing and Kitesurfing locations. Every day a sea breeze whips up that must be up around 25 knots in the middle of the day. This makes it a little annoying to sit on the beach (it is calmer before 10 and after 3), but watching the guys out there surfing is amazing. I have not windsurfed because it is really advanced and everyone seems to know how to do an in-water start and a carve jibe, which I never learned how to do. Also, since everyone else windsurfing is very, very expert I do not want to get in over my head and make an ass of myself.
- Kitesurfing has to be a pretty dangerous sport but is incredible to watch. Most people seem to keep their board on the water and just zip back and forth, but a few people do jumps, which are amazing. When they jump they look like they go about 10m in the air and stay up for at least 5 seconds. The really good guys make it look like a cross between windsurfing and hang-gliding.
- I might write more about this in the future, but I am kind of amazed how hard the Vietnamese work. At the construction in our hotel and around town in general, they get started at around 6 in the morning and are often still painting and sanding by the light of big florescent tubes until 8-10 at night. This is typical as people here in general are up and about at 5:30-6 in the morning and ofter are still working late in the evening. A Vietnamese construction site is pretty serious too, not much standing around. Seems like it could be part of the reason they were such worthy adversaries 40 years ago.
- Today we go back to Saigon (I am using the old name in this instance because that is what it is universally called here by the south Vietnamese, it is only written down as HCMC). Tomorrow we pick up Pete at the airport, he will be with us for the rest of the trip.
Vietnam. Is one of the top beaches that we have visited. There are
quite a few hotels, but it is pretty mellow. The beach is very long and nice, with pretty big surf, a nice change after Thailand;s calm waters.
- We really stuck gold with a hotel here. After a few places were
full we ended up with a bungalow literally 5 steps from the beach. The place is undergoing renovation, so there is construction, but it is just painting and quiet stuff. Because of the construction our room is half price and we get free breakfast and use of the big pool next door.
- Mui Ne is evidently one of the worlds best Windsurfing and Kitesurfing locations. Every day a sea breeze whips up that must be up around 25 knots in the middle of the day. This makes it a little annoying to sit on the beach (it is calmer before 10 and after 3), but watching the guys out there surfing is amazing. I have not windsurfed because it is really advanced and everyone seems to know how to do an in-water start and a carve jibe, which I never learned how to do. Also, since everyone else windsurfing is very, very expert I do not want to get in over my head and make an ass of myself.
- Kitesurfing has to be a pretty dangerous sport but is incredible to watch. Most people seem to keep their board on the water and just zip back and forth, but a few people do jumps, which are amazing. When they jump they look like they go about 10m in the air and stay up for at least 5 seconds. The really good guys make it look like a cross between windsurfing and hang-gliding.
- I might write more about this in the future, but I am kind of amazed how hard the Vietnamese work. At the construction in our hotel and around town in general, they get started at around 6 in the morning and are often still painting and sanding by the light of big florescent tubes until 8-10 at night. This is typical as people here in general are up and about at 5:30-6 in the morning and ofter are still working late in the evening. A Vietnamese construction site is pretty serious too, not much standing around. Seems like it could be part of the reason they were such worthy adversaries 40 years ago.
- Today we go back to Saigon (I am using the old name in this instance because that is what it is universally called here by the south Vietnamese, it is only written down as HCMC). Tomorrow we pick up Pete at the airport, he will be with us for the rest of the trip.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
First Impressions of Vietnam
Another country, another one of these articles.
- The official currency of Vietnam is the Dong, which is fun because the name is pretty great to say, and it is 16,000 Dong to the Dollar. Becoming a Vietnamese millionaire is as easy as one trip to the ATM.
- Interestingly enough, the US dollar is also very big here, especially for hotels and other higher priced items. So much for the capitalist pigs.
- Vietnam might be the cheapest country yet of the tour. 15 dollars will get you a pretty decent hotel room (AC, TV, hot water, sometimes fridge) and food is dirt cheap. Our dinner of two bowls of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) last night was less then 2 dollars.
- Every bowl of Pho we have had in Vietnam has been spectacular. At less then a dollar is most places, and very healthy, I think we will be eating quite a few more.
- Even after seeing the rest of Asia, Vietnam is the small motorbike king. There are a few more cars in Saigon, but in the Mekong Delta where we were before I would estimate that %99 percent of all vehicles on the road are a motorbike. We rented one to look around Chau Doc and on the main road out of town you could see at least a mile down the road, and every vehicle was a motorbike, hundreds of them.
- The people of Vietnam are the friendliest so far. People smile and say "hello" all the time. Kids love to see you and get so excited if you pay attention to them. For the most part this friendliness seems very genuine. Even annoying hawkers can be fooled around with, and will often want to just chat with you, after they figure out weather you want to buy anything.
- After all this time we finally had a cab man try a meter scam on us. When we arrived in Saigon, we got in a cab and after less then a KM I noticed that the meter was already at 5 KM and 28,000 Dong. I complained and he said, or so we thought, that if would only be 14,000 Dong to take us to where we were going. When we got there he tried to take 50,000 and not give us any change. Nisha took the lead in bitching him out while I got change and ended up giving him around 20,000 Dong, which is about what the meter should have been.
- We have been travelling on a lot of speedboat ferries lately. First we took one from Penom Penh in Cambodia to Chau Doc in Vietnam and then from Can Tho to Saigon. Great way to travel around the Mekong. As fast as a bus and more comfortable, with a better view. They are a kind of long thin fiberglass boat with a roof and windows, set up pretty much like a bus inside. There is sometimes a little deck on back you can hang out on as well. Powered by twin I/O engines, these things move along over 30 knots. On our trip to Saigon, there was some driving down a crowded delta canal filled with sand barges that would make the average New Hampshire Marie Patrol officer pee his pants.
- The official currency of Vietnam is the Dong, which is fun because the name is pretty great to say, and it is 16,000 Dong to the Dollar. Becoming a Vietnamese millionaire is as easy as one trip to the ATM.
- Interestingly enough, the US dollar is also very big here, especially for hotels and other higher priced items. So much for the capitalist pigs.
- Vietnam might be the cheapest country yet of the tour. 15 dollars will get you a pretty decent hotel room (AC, TV, hot water, sometimes fridge) and food is dirt cheap. Our dinner of two bowls of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) last night was less then 2 dollars.
- Every bowl of Pho we have had in Vietnam has been spectacular. At less then a dollar is most places, and very healthy, I think we will be eating quite a few more.
- Even after seeing the rest of Asia, Vietnam is the small motorbike king. There are a few more cars in Saigon, but in the Mekong Delta where we were before I would estimate that %99 percent of all vehicles on the road are a motorbike. We rented one to look around Chau Doc and on the main road out of town you could see at least a mile down the road, and every vehicle was a motorbike, hundreds of them.
- The people of Vietnam are the friendliest so far. People smile and say "hello" all the time. Kids love to see you and get so excited if you pay attention to them. For the most part this friendliness seems very genuine. Even annoying hawkers can be fooled around with, and will often want to just chat with you, after they figure out weather you want to buy anything.
- After all this time we finally had a cab man try a meter scam on us. When we arrived in Saigon, we got in a cab and after less then a KM I noticed that the meter was already at 5 KM and 28,000 Dong. I complained and he said, or so we thought, that if would only be 14,000 Dong to take us to where we were going. When we got there he tried to take 50,000 and not give us any change. Nisha took the lead in bitching him out while I got change and ended up giving him around 20,000 Dong, which is about what the meter should have been.
- We have been travelling on a lot of speedboat ferries lately. First we took one from Penom Penh in Cambodia to Chau Doc in Vietnam and then from Can Tho to Saigon. Great way to travel around the Mekong. As fast as a bus and more comfortable, with a better view. They are a kind of long thin fiberglass boat with a roof and windows, set up pretty much like a bus inside. There is sometimes a little deck on back you can hang out on as well. Powered by twin I/O engines, these things move along over 30 knots. On our trip to Saigon, there was some driving down a crowded delta canal filled with sand barges that would make the average New Hampshire Marie Patrol officer pee his pants.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Thailand Beach Wrapup
This is more for random people searching on Google that anything else, but I wanted to write up the five beaches that we stayed at on Thailand. The thing is that they all have their strong points, so picking one to go to is really a case of just finding the right one for you. Please note that all these visits were in mid to late November.
KO SAMUI - HAT CHAWENG
This was the most crowded and developed beach we visited. There is a main road that forms the "strip" of town, and most resorts are in the 300m or so from this road to the beach. The strip was a pretty lively place, however a good deal of the partying was hooker related. The strip also had a lot of very sleek bars, nice and expensive restaurants, as well as Starbucks, McDonald's and plenty of 7-Elevens.
We stayed at a hotel that was on the strip called The Wave Samui, which I was not a fan of. Besides my issues with the hotel, I did not realize what a pain it would be to not be in a place with beach access. There is only one place where you can take an actual public road to the beach, so most of the time we had to sneak through a resort to get out to the sand. There were a couple of relatively cheap places with beach access, I would check out those if you want to go here. If you want to pay 500 Baht for a bungalow on the beach, go somewhere else.
As for the beach itself, it was very nice. A little crowded, but not overwhelmingly so. The water is clear and the swimming nice. It can be a little hard to find a place because all the resorts put chairs out for their guests, but space can be found. There is also a strip of bars near the Ark Bar that have raised futons on the beach, and are pretty fun at night as well. You can hang here is you want to buy drinks. There were several kayak and sailboat rental outfits on the beach, and we had a lot of fun with a little Hobie Cat. There are a few hawkers, mostly of junk souvenirs, but they are manageable.
Go here is you want to:
- Party, mostly with Euros and Brits
- Listen to trance music
- Get a hooker
- Have a lot of activities, food and drinks available on the beach
- Eat at high class restaurants
- Spend a lot of money
Don't go here if you want to:
- Have a peaceful vacation
- Go to chill bars
- Really get away from it all
KO SAMUI - HAT LAMAI
I will not do a full review of this, because we used Nisha's leftover Marriott points to stay at a high end beach resort at the very end of the beach. From what I did see, it looked busy, but far less so then Chaweng. The beach was nice here, but very shallow. You could walk for probably a kilometer out into the ocean before having to swim. It was great for Frisbee in the water, and there was some snorkeling by the rocks at the headland.
If you want to know about the Marriott Renaissance, read up on it here.
KO PHA-NGAN - HAT KHOM
This was our place to do the real beach hut thing, and I don't think we could have found a better place. Hat Khom is a small beach, only about .5KM long, in a cove on the north side of the island. It is accessible from the main village on the north side by a dirt road that can be negotiated via pickup truck or motorbike. The road can also be walked in around 25 minutes. The beach has occasional boulders that add to the scenery, as well as a reef that can be snorkeled. Swimming is also good as there is a deep sand bottom area between the beach and the reef.
The only business here is the four beach hut resorts that line the beach, as well as their bar/restaurants. We stayed at the Ocean View, which seemed to have the best rooms and had the best food at the restaurant, but they all seemed OK. The huts all seemed to be in the 300-800 Baht range. There is no Internet and the only nightlife is the resort bars. One of the resorts rents Kayaks for very cheap and the Ocean View had free snorkeling equipment.
Go here if you want to:
- Stay right on the beach
- Only hear the sound of the waves at night
- Hang out with a backpacker crowd
- Be on a secluded, quiet and beautiful beach
- Not spend a lot of money
- Shower with only cold water and only have electricity from 6PM to 6AM
KO TAO - HAT SAIREE
We stayed here mainly because Nisha was getting here dive certification. This beach is very long, but also very thin. The resorts in the area push right up to the beach, so there is only a little room in front for swimming and putting a blanket down. The swimming is pretty good, but there are quite a few boats tied to the beach and ropes to watch out for. There is a place in town that rents Kayaks and sailing equipment, but not on this beach. One really nice thing here is that the main road is not anywhere near the beach. Along the beach is a brick walkway which is only used by pedestrians and the occasional motorbike.
This is kind of a middle ground between an overdeveloped beach and a quiet beach. The beach is fully developed, but there is still some open space and small hut resorts. There are a couple of 7-Elevens and plenty of Internet cafes and resort restaurants. There is also a area near the far end of the beach with some bars and restaurants that are independent of a resort.
One thing is that how quiet the beach is will have a lot to do with where you stay. We stayed at the AC resort, and the bar there pumps music until late at night, so our room was pretty loud. At other locations that are not near a big time bar, things would probably be pretty quiet. As far as the nightlife, it was still low season, so things were not really hopping yet, but it seemed like in season there would be a lot of partying going on. However, not many hookers and you could get away from it if you wanted to.
Go here if you want to:
- Get SCUBA certified easy and cheap
- Party, but not be in a total madhouse
- Spend a moderate amount of money
- Have plenty of modern amenities, but not feel like you are in a city
Don't go here if you want:
- A really nice beach
- To really get away from it all
KRABI PROVENCE - RAILAY
Railay is a peninsula attached to the mainland, but inaccessible by road due to the massive cliffs. The only way to get there is long tail boat. The peninsula is about 500m across, and has beaches at each side. The west beach is pretty nice, with giant cliffs at each side. It is wide with hard and flat sand. The swimming is calm and good, but the water is very warm and there are quite a few long tail boats. The east beach is muddy and used mainly for long tail boat arrivals. There is also another beach you can walk to in 10 minutes that I did not make it out to, but Nisha rated as one of the better beaches she has ever been on. There are some hawkers who work the beach, but they mainly sell beer, so I find them quite useful.
All the area that can be developed has been, all the flat area between the beaches as well as the area up the hill that we stayed in was used for resorts. Up the hill in back was the only place for budget accommodation (besides the far beach around the corner that is, but I am talking about the main part of town), but where we stayed at the Highland Resort was very quiet and only about a 10 minute walk to the good beach. However, since there are no motor vehicles, the place has a pretty low key feel, even more so then Ko Tao. There are a fair number of bars and restaurants, but no bars really pump music, it is more of a Bob Marley kind of place.
The rock climbing is also a real attraction here, I went twice and loved it. Things are a little expensive however, you definitely pay island prices, not mainland.
All in all, this was my favorite beach.
Go here if you want to:
- See great scenery
- Go to first class beaches
- Rock climb
- Enjoy chill, but busy, nightlife
- Spend a moderate to high amount of money
Don't go here if yo want to:
- Get a hooker
- Listen to trance music
- Eat top flight international food
- Really get away from it all
KO SAMUI - HAT CHAWENG
This was the most crowded and developed beach we visited. There is a main road that forms the "strip" of town, and most resorts are in the 300m or so from this road to the beach. The strip was a pretty lively place, however a good deal of the partying was hooker related. The strip also had a lot of very sleek bars, nice and expensive restaurants, as well as Starbucks, McDonald's and plenty of 7-Elevens.
We stayed at a hotel that was on the strip called The Wave Samui, which I was not a fan of. Besides my issues with the hotel, I did not realize what a pain it would be to not be in a place with beach access. There is only one place where you can take an actual public road to the beach, so most of the time we had to sneak through a resort to get out to the sand. There were a couple of relatively cheap places with beach access, I would check out those if you want to go here. If you want to pay 500 Baht for a bungalow on the beach, go somewhere else.
As for the beach itself, it was very nice. A little crowded, but not overwhelmingly so. The water is clear and the swimming nice. It can be a little hard to find a place because all the resorts put chairs out for their guests, but space can be found. There is also a strip of bars near the Ark Bar that have raised futons on the beach, and are pretty fun at night as well. You can hang here is you want to buy drinks. There were several kayak and sailboat rental outfits on the beach, and we had a lot of fun with a little Hobie Cat. There are a few hawkers, mostly of junk souvenirs, but they are manageable.
Go here is you want to:
- Party, mostly with Euros and Brits
- Listen to trance music
- Get a hooker
- Have a lot of activities, food and drinks available on the beach
- Eat at high class restaurants
- Spend a lot of money
Don't go here if you want to:
- Have a peaceful vacation
- Go to chill bars
- Really get away from it all
KO SAMUI - HAT LAMAI
I will not do a full review of this, because we used Nisha's leftover Marriott points to stay at a high end beach resort at the very end of the beach. From what I did see, it looked busy, but far less so then Chaweng. The beach was nice here, but very shallow. You could walk for probably a kilometer out into the ocean before having to swim. It was great for Frisbee in the water, and there was some snorkeling by the rocks at the headland.
If you want to know about the Marriott Renaissance, read up on it here.
KO PHA-NGAN - HAT KHOM
This was our place to do the real beach hut thing, and I don't think we could have found a better place. Hat Khom is a small beach, only about .5KM long, in a cove on the north side of the island. It is accessible from the main village on the north side by a dirt road that can be negotiated via pickup truck or motorbike. The road can also be walked in around 25 minutes. The beach has occasional boulders that add to the scenery, as well as a reef that can be snorkeled. Swimming is also good as there is a deep sand bottom area between the beach and the reef.
The only business here is the four beach hut resorts that line the beach, as well as their bar/restaurants. We stayed at the Ocean View, which seemed to have the best rooms and had the best food at the restaurant, but they all seemed OK. The huts all seemed to be in the 300-800 Baht range. There is no Internet and the only nightlife is the resort bars. One of the resorts rents Kayaks for very cheap and the Ocean View had free snorkeling equipment.
Go here if you want to:
- Stay right on the beach
- Only hear the sound of the waves at night
- Hang out with a backpacker crowd
- Be on a secluded, quiet and beautiful beach
- Not spend a lot of money
- Shower with only cold water and only have electricity from 6PM to 6AM
KO TAO - HAT SAIREE
We stayed here mainly because Nisha was getting here dive certification. This beach is very long, but also very thin. The resorts in the area push right up to the beach, so there is only a little room in front for swimming and putting a blanket down. The swimming is pretty good, but there are quite a few boats tied to the beach and ropes to watch out for. There is a place in town that rents Kayaks and sailing equipment, but not on this beach. One really nice thing here is that the main road is not anywhere near the beach. Along the beach is a brick walkway which is only used by pedestrians and the occasional motorbike.
This is kind of a middle ground between an overdeveloped beach and a quiet beach. The beach is fully developed, but there is still some open space and small hut resorts. There are a couple of 7-Elevens and plenty of Internet cafes and resort restaurants. There is also a area near the far end of the beach with some bars and restaurants that are independent of a resort.
One thing is that how quiet the beach is will have a lot to do with where you stay. We stayed at the AC resort, and the bar there pumps music until late at night, so our room was pretty loud. At other locations that are not near a big time bar, things would probably be pretty quiet. As far as the nightlife, it was still low season, so things were not really hopping yet, but it seemed like in season there would be a lot of partying going on. However, not many hookers and you could get away from it if you wanted to.
Go here if you want to:
- Get SCUBA certified easy and cheap
- Party, but not be in a total madhouse
- Spend a moderate amount of money
- Have plenty of modern amenities, but not feel like you are in a city
Don't go here if you want:
- A really nice beach
- To really get away from it all
KRABI PROVENCE - RAILAY
Railay is a peninsula attached to the mainland, but inaccessible by road due to the massive cliffs. The only way to get there is long tail boat. The peninsula is about 500m across, and has beaches at each side. The west beach is pretty nice, with giant cliffs at each side. It is wide with hard and flat sand. The swimming is calm and good, but the water is very warm and there are quite a few long tail boats. The east beach is muddy and used mainly for long tail boat arrivals. There is also another beach you can walk to in 10 minutes that I did not make it out to, but Nisha rated as one of the better beaches she has ever been on. There are some hawkers who work the beach, but they mainly sell beer, so I find them quite useful.
All the area that can be developed has been, all the flat area between the beaches as well as the area up the hill that we stayed in was used for resorts. Up the hill in back was the only place for budget accommodation (besides the far beach around the corner that is, but I am talking about the main part of town), but where we stayed at the Highland Resort was very quiet and only about a 10 minute walk to the good beach. However, since there are no motor vehicles, the place has a pretty low key feel, even more so then Ko Tao. There are a fair number of bars and restaurants, but no bars really pump music, it is more of a Bob Marley kind of place.
The rock climbing is also a real attraction here, I went twice and loved it. Things are a little expensive however, you definitely pay island prices, not mainland.
All in all, this was my favorite beach.
Go here if you want to:
- See great scenery
- Go to first class beaches
- Rock climb
- Enjoy chill, but busy, nightlife
- Spend a moderate to high amount of money
Don't go here if yo want to:
- Get a hooker
- Listen to trance music
- Eat top flight international food
- Really get away from it all
Meeting the Bogey Man
I traveled to both Cambodia and Vietnam with reservations. My hesitation in going to Cambodia was because I had read about terrible bribery and scams at the border. we had been very well informed and therefore did not fall prey to any of these. I'll write my thoughts on staying in Cambodia later.
However, I had much irrational trepredation in coming to Vietnam. Irrational because I have heard many people say they had a great time here and know that it is a safe tourist destination. But this is Communist country. All the bogey men of my childhood were communist. They tortured you, imprisoned you for looking at them, started all the wars, and left you to die in the endless Steppe. These were all things I was told in elementary school and their sentiment has subconsciously lodged in my brain. Then top that with a large helping of resentment from the "American War" (that's what they call it here).
Of course, I have seen nothing of that here. I am stunned by how different this communist country is from my elementary-school imagination. Part of this could be due to the fact that they are more a socialist dictatorship rather than Soviet-style communists, but nevertheless. First, they love tourists. Of all the places we have been, the people in the small Mekong Delta towns of Chau Doc and Can Tho are overwhelmingly the most friendly. Nearly everyone smiles or says hi to us. Kids under 6 generally start yelling and screaming "helllllooooo" while gesticulating wildly. Just while walking down the street, a man offered for me to taste the soup he was making (it was yummy!).
Scary communist? Not in my observations of the last 48 hours. They take their kids to dinner. They go on vacation. They study engineering in college. I am at an unregulated internet cafe filled with kids and adults searching all corners of the net. We visited temples and have seen monks walking. There are no scary dudes in military vehicles in the streets. Though they do have a giant statue of Uncle Ho in the center of town and propaganda and calisthenics over the loud speaker awoke us at 5 in the morning.
The Anti-Ameriancism? I have not experienced any so far. They wear shorts with the US flag on them. The toilets are "American Standard" brand, thankfully. Most want any chance to practice their English and nearly everyone has relatives in Canada or the US.
I know this may be different when we travel to the north of the country. However, so far I am amazed and pleasantly surprised, though hopefully you knew this already.
However, I had much irrational trepredation in coming to Vietnam. Irrational because I have heard many people say they had a great time here and know that it is a safe tourist destination. But this is Communist country. All the bogey men of my childhood were communist. They tortured you, imprisoned you for looking at them, started all the wars, and left you to die in the endless Steppe. These were all things I was told in elementary school and their sentiment has subconsciously lodged in my brain. Then top that with a large helping of resentment from the "American War" (that's what they call it here).
Of course, I have seen nothing of that here. I am stunned by how different this communist country is from my elementary-school imagination. Part of this could be due to the fact that they are more a socialist dictatorship rather than Soviet-style communists, but nevertheless. First, they love tourists. Of all the places we have been, the people in the small Mekong Delta towns of Chau Doc and Can Tho are overwhelmingly the most friendly. Nearly everyone smiles or says hi to us. Kids under 6 generally start yelling and screaming "helllllooooo" while gesticulating wildly. Just while walking down the street, a man offered for me to taste the soup he was making (it was yummy!).
Scary communist? Not in my observations of the last 48 hours. They take their kids to dinner. They go on vacation. They study engineering in college. I am at an unregulated internet cafe filled with kids and adults searching all corners of the net. We visited temples and have seen monks walking. There are no scary dudes in military vehicles in the streets. Though they do have a giant statue of Uncle Ho in the center of town and propaganda and calisthenics over the loud speaker awoke us at 5 in the morning.
The Anti-Ameriancism? I have not experienced any so far. They wear shorts with the US flag on them. The toilets are "American Standard" brand, thankfully. Most want any chance to practice their English and nearly everyone has relatives in Canada or the US.
I know this may be different when we travel to the north of the country. However, so far I am amazed and pleasantly surprised, though hopefully you knew this already.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Beach Reading and More
While traveling through Asia, I have tried to rectify my deficient knowledge of world history by reading Asian history or historical fiction. No this is not beach reading, but I have never been the type to read about poor beautiful girls in New York trying to find a rich husband. Shogun gave me insight to Japan's rich feudal heritage. In India, the Lewis Fischer's biography of Gandhi and William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali taught me a great deal of Indian history. Thailand has few authors that write about anything except finding oneself, doing drugs, beaches, time in the infamous Bangkok jail, and marrying prostitutes. The real winners combine all 5 in one. Cheng and Eng, a fictional book based on the real Siamese twins, gave me a glimpse of 1800's life on the Mekong in Thailand. Ambitv Gosh's The Glass Palace concentrated more on colonial Burma, India, and Malaysia with a little of Thailand mixed in.
Volumes are written about places where terrible things have happened. I started my breif studies on Cambodian history with First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung. I tore through this 250 page book in only 6 hours on the ferry from Koh Tao. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in a first hand account of what the Khmer Rouge did. In brief, the Khmer Rouge overtook Phenom Pehn in April 1975 and drove the inhabitants of this city and others into countryside work camps. In the following 4 years and 8 months, they enslaved their population in farming camps to fulfill some Utopian communist dream. They summarily executed those with higher education or loyal to the former government. They tortured and killed some 14,000 - 20,000 men, women, and children in a high school in Phenom Pehn now know as S-21 or Tuol Sleung.
Ian and I visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum yesterday. It is quite ironic that the tuk-tuk driver's touts to tourists usually start with "hello, want to see the killing fields and S-21?" The class rooms of this sunny high school were turned into between 1 - 30 cells each. Prisoners were kept shackled to the floor and tortured. Like the Nazis, the KR were fastidious about their record keeping. They took photos of each person alive, and many dead which are all shown in the museum. The people were taken to the killing fields, about 15km away, and bludgeoned before being left to die in a mass grave. In Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp which I visited in 1997, the solemn grounds have been able to mellow after 60 years. However, the barbed-wire wrapped Tuol Sleung still has violence in the air. There is a photo exhibit of men and women who worked (likely forced) in the prison. They are still living among the people of Cambodia, many of whom lost loved ones. There is still blood on many of the floors of the cells. The pictures of the main architects, one was Duch who will received a hearing on Monday in the war crimes tribunal, are scribbled with angry Khmer graffiti. There exist the actual tools of torture, including a water-boarding tank. It's nice to know that some of our presidential hopefuls endorse the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge.
Finally the North Vietnamese, having recently defeated the Americans and South Vietnamese, invaded to end the Khmer Rouge reign in 1979 because the KR were massacring Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta. Sadly, the KH were responsible for the extermination of between 1.4 - 2.2 million Cambodians either directly or through starvation and tens of thousands of Vietnamese in South Vietnam only 4 years and 8 months of their reign.
Henry Kamm was a NYT correspondent in Cambodia from 1970 - the 1990s. He skillfully penned Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land and answered many of the burning questions I had about the rise, reign, and fall of the Khmer Rouge.
I also highly recommend this book as a thoughtful history and analysis of this dark period in history. It's not exactly beach reading, but that's not what I'm here for.
Check back in a few days for links to pictures I took at Tuol Sleng.
- Nisha
Volumes are written about places where terrible things have happened. I started my breif studies on Cambodian history with First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung. I tore through this 250 page book in only 6 hours on the ferry from Koh Tao. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in a first hand account of what the Khmer Rouge did. In brief, the Khmer Rouge overtook Phenom Pehn in April 1975 and drove the inhabitants of this city and others into countryside work camps. In the following 4 years and 8 months, they enslaved their population in farming camps to fulfill some Utopian communist dream. They summarily executed those with higher education or loyal to the former government. They tortured and killed some 14,000 - 20,000 men, women, and children in a high school in Phenom Pehn now know as S-21 or Tuol Sleung.
Ian and I visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum yesterday. It is quite ironic that the tuk-tuk driver's touts to tourists usually start with "hello, want to see the killing fields and S-21?" The class rooms of this sunny high school were turned into between 1 - 30 cells each. Prisoners were kept shackled to the floor and tortured. Like the Nazis, the KR were fastidious about their record keeping. They took photos of each person alive, and many dead which are all shown in the museum. The people were taken to the killing fields, about 15km away, and bludgeoned before being left to die in a mass grave. In Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp which I visited in 1997, the solemn grounds have been able to mellow after 60 years. However, the barbed-wire wrapped Tuol Sleung still has violence in the air. There is a photo exhibit of men and women who worked (likely forced) in the prison. They are still living among the people of Cambodia, many of whom lost loved ones. There is still blood on many of the floors of the cells. The pictures of the main architects, one was Duch who will received a hearing on Monday in the war crimes tribunal, are scribbled with angry Khmer graffiti. There exist the actual tools of torture, including a water-boarding tank. It's nice to know that some of our presidential hopefuls endorse the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge.
Finally the North Vietnamese, having recently defeated the Americans and South Vietnamese, invaded to end the Khmer Rouge reign in 1979 because the KR were massacring Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta. Sadly, the KH were responsible for the extermination of between 1.4 - 2.2 million Cambodians either directly or through starvation and tens of thousands of Vietnamese in South Vietnam only 4 years and 8 months of their reign.
Henry Kamm was a NYT correspondent in Cambodia from 1970 - the 1990s. He skillfully penned Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land and answered many of the burning questions I had about the rise, reign, and fall of the Khmer Rouge.
I also highly recommend this book as a thoughtful history and analysis of this dark period in history. It's not exactly beach reading, but that's not what I'm here for.
Check back in a few days for links to pictures I took at Tuol Sleng.
- Nisha
Government Matters
In the US these days, most talk about government or politics focuses on the high level philosophical stuff, Foreign Policy, Abortion, Church and State, etc. Not to say that this not impotent stuff, but this trip has highlighted for me that there is another dimension to government that is rarely talked about, overall competence.
By overall competence I mean the ability of the government to build roads, run schools, keep basic law and order. Basically its ability to provide a stable environment for people to live and work. As I have seen on this trip, the ability of governments to do these things is not necessarily related to how they are selected or what high level positions they believe in. At the highest level we have been in countries that range from stable, multi-party democracies like Japan and India, to Vietnam and Thailand, which are both currently run by unelected governments. All are basically capitalist countries, with somewhat of a socialist bent (Vietnam is officially communist, but that is not very true in practice).
In terms of overall competence I would have to obviously rank Japan as first. The infrastructure is top notch all over the country, the trains are amazing and crime is non-existent. Thailand I would also give high marks to, because it does a lot for how much money it has. Most things there seem to run at more or less a US level of quality, but I assume that they spend a lot less money to get there. India and Vietnam are similar in a lot of ways, because things seem to run OK, but you still run into some substandard roads and bad trash collection. Also, while some people in these two countries are doing very well, others are left behind in substantial poverty. Cambodia's one-party democratic government is basically a failed state. No one has any confidence in the government to do anything, and almost every road and school in the country has a sign out front thanking the country or NGO that built it for them, usually Japan.
The interesting thing about all these countries, as well as the US, is that a good number of people in all of them think the government is run by a bunch of crooks. Most of the time these thoughts are backed up by evidence. The accusations very from the money just disappearing, like in Cambodia, to the usual shady government contract deals that exist pretty much everywhere there are politicians with money to spend. Pork barrel stuff also shows up pretty much everywhere, like Shinkansens (bullet trains) to nowhere in Japan. However, even if crooks run the show everywhere, their output quality varies immensely.
The aggravating thing about this is that although the competence of government matters so much, I am not sure how one controls it. Why should India and Vietnam have similar public services despite the fact that one government is elected, and the other is authoritarian? As a voter in the US it is annoying that this never even really comes up as an issue. We know politicians positions on almost every philosophical issue, but not if they can build a decent airport.
My last thought is as to how the US fits within the ranking of countries above. Overall our government is fairly competent at basic service. We have very good roads, there are a reasonable number of cops and garbage does not stack up in the streets. However, we also pay a lot of money to achieve this decent level of service. I think our biggest problem is that our expectations for the final product of the things our government builds is so low. I am sure in Japan, Japan Railways (JR) is a giant pit of patronage and wasted money. I am sure there were all sorts of shady dealing with building the new airport in Bangkok. But, at least in these places they get an incredible train system and a really nice looking new airport. The most upsetting thing is that we get ripped off, as every country does, but often do not even get a world class product.
I guess my conclusion is that Americans should raise their expectations of government and not buy that things cannot be done, or cannot be done well. If the semi-authoritarian government in Thailand can build a nice new subway line, why can't we do so in New York or Boston? We might get ripped off, but it is better to at least get something for your money then nothing at all.
By overall competence I mean the ability of the government to build roads, run schools, keep basic law and order. Basically its ability to provide a stable environment for people to live and work. As I have seen on this trip, the ability of governments to do these things is not necessarily related to how they are selected or what high level positions they believe in. At the highest level we have been in countries that range from stable, multi-party democracies like Japan and India, to Vietnam and Thailand, which are both currently run by unelected governments. All are basically capitalist countries, with somewhat of a socialist bent (Vietnam is officially communist, but that is not very true in practice).
In terms of overall competence I would have to obviously rank Japan as first. The infrastructure is top notch all over the country, the trains are amazing and crime is non-existent. Thailand I would also give high marks to, because it does a lot for how much money it has. Most things there seem to run at more or less a US level of quality, but I assume that they spend a lot less money to get there. India and Vietnam are similar in a lot of ways, because things seem to run OK, but you still run into some substandard roads and bad trash collection. Also, while some people in these two countries are doing very well, others are left behind in substantial poverty. Cambodia's one-party democratic government is basically a failed state. No one has any confidence in the government to do anything, and almost every road and school in the country has a sign out front thanking the country or NGO that built it for them, usually Japan.
The interesting thing about all these countries, as well as the US, is that a good number of people in all of them think the government is run by a bunch of crooks. Most of the time these thoughts are backed up by evidence. The accusations very from the money just disappearing, like in Cambodia, to the usual shady government contract deals that exist pretty much everywhere there are politicians with money to spend. Pork barrel stuff also shows up pretty much everywhere, like Shinkansens (bullet trains) to nowhere in Japan. However, even if crooks run the show everywhere, their output quality varies immensely.
The aggravating thing about this is that although the competence of government matters so much, I am not sure how one controls it. Why should India and Vietnam have similar public services despite the fact that one government is elected, and the other is authoritarian? As a voter in the US it is annoying that this never even really comes up as an issue. We know politicians positions on almost every philosophical issue, but not if they can build a decent airport.
My last thought is as to how the US fits within the ranking of countries above. Overall our government is fairly competent at basic service. We have very good roads, there are a reasonable number of cops and garbage does not stack up in the streets. However, we also pay a lot of money to achieve this decent level of service. I think our biggest problem is that our expectations for the final product of the things our government builds is so low. I am sure in Japan, Japan Railways (JR) is a giant pit of patronage and wasted money. I am sure there were all sorts of shady dealing with building the new airport in Bangkok. But, at least in these places they get an incredible train system and a really nice looking new airport. The most upsetting thing is that we get ripped off, as every country does, but often do not even get a world class product.
I guess my conclusion is that Americans should raise their expectations of government and not buy that things cannot be done, or cannot be done well. If the semi-authoritarian government in Thailand can build a nice new subway line, why can't we do so in New York or Boston? We might get ripped off, but it is better to at least get something for your money then nothing at all.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Thai food II
Here were a few of our favorite meals:
Steamed Sticky rice in Bamboo - Our guide in Chiang Dao brought us to this road side place where a woman makes steamed rice in bamboo. The rice, sugar, and coconut mixture is stuffed into a hollow bamboo segment capped with hay. It is BBQed over a wood fire until steamed. The outer husk is then hacked off, the rice left to cool, then it's ready to eat by peeling away the bamboo from the rice. Simply amazing.
Crispy Aromatic Duck - This was tasty take on Peking duck that we have many times in Chinatown. - Chopsticks, Koh Tao
Malee's Buffet - We stayed in Malee's Guesthouse in Chiang Dao, north of Chiang Mai. The first night we went to the renowned Europen-Thai fusion restaurant next door, which was fabulous. The next night we dined on Malee's buffet. She served my favorite Thai curry, Green curry with chicken, mashed squash with egg, a huge platter of fresh fruit, and many other dishes. It was like dining in someones home. Not to be missed - Malee's GuestHouse in Chiang Dao
Thai Iced Tea - I am self-proclaimed iced tea snob. Northern restaurants on good days make me laugh with their version of iced tea, on bad days make me scream with horror. Thailand is where I surprisingly found excellent iced tea. They brew it extra strong, stronger than even the South. They they pour it over crushed ice and finish it with condensed milk!
Family meal at the Highland Restaurant - The restaurant at our resort in Raliay was the best in the area. We had no idea what to expect with the "family meal." You know a meal is going to be great when it starts with "maybe you should move to a bigger table." Our came a hot charcoal cauldron with a grille on top, a bowl of broth, a platter of veggies and rice noodles, and a plate of beef, chicken, fish, shrimp, and squid. We were instructed to coat the top with butter and then grill each. The resulting soup made from the meat drippings was delicious.
- Highland Resort, East Railay
Coke Zero out of a Glass Bottle - For fellow Coke Zero lovers, no more needs said.
You may notice on this list the abscense of Thai dishes in served in the US. They were there and we liked them. However, most good Thai resturants are very similar in the US. Therefore, it's just plain boring to write about Pad Thai.
- Nisha
Steamed Sticky rice in Bamboo - Our guide in Chiang Dao brought us to this road side place where a woman makes steamed rice in bamboo. The rice, sugar, and coconut mixture is stuffed into a hollow bamboo segment capped with hay. It is BBQed over a wood fire until steamed. The outer husk is then hacked off, the rice left to cool, then it's ready to eat by peeling away the bamboo from the rice. Simply amazing.
Crispy Aromatic Duck - This was tasty take on Peking duck that we have many times in Chinatown. - Chopsticks, Koh Tao
Malee's Buffet - We stayed in Malee's Guesthouse in Chiang Dao, north of Chiang Mai. The first night we went to the renowned Europen-Thai fusion restaurant next door, which was fabulous. The next night we dined on Malee's buffet. She served my favorite Thai curry, Green curry with chicken, mashed squash with egg, a huge platter of fresh fruit, and many other dishes. It was like dining in someones home. Not to be missed - Malee's GuestHouse in Chiang Dao
Thai Iced Tea - I am self-proclaimed iced tea snob. Northern restaurants on good days make me laugh with their version of iced tea, on bad days make me scream with horror. Thailand is where I surprisingly found excellent iced tea. They brew it extra strong, stronger than even the South. They they pour it over crushed ice and finish it with condensed milk!
Family meal at the Highland Restaurant - The restaurant at our resort in Raliay was the best in the area. We had no idea what to expect with the "family meal." You know a meal is going to be great when it starts with "maybe you should move to a bigger table." Our came a hot charcoal cauldron with a grille on top, a bowl of broth, a platter of veggies and rice noodles, and a plate of beef, chicken, fish, shrimp, and squid. We were instructed to coat the top with butter and then grill each. The resulting soup made from the meat drippings was delicious.
- Highland Resort, East Railay
Coke Zero out of a Glass Bottle - For fellow Coke Zero lovers, no more needs said.
You may notice on this list the abscense of Thai dishes in served in the US. They were there and we liked them. However, most good Thai resturants are very similar in the US. Therefore, it's just plain boring to write about Pad Thai.
- Nisha
Friday, November 30, 2007
Just Another Day in Bangkok
The scene is a crowded Bangkok Internet cafe. The protagonist is a pudgy, 50 something American with a southern accent. The man sits down and calls his family on Skype. Because on Skype you use headphones (there is no phone booth) and because of his projecting voice, we hear a several hour phone call I never thought would be so public. Things about this nice man Nisha and I now know:
- Evidently he has been married for 2 weeks to a Thai woman (we did not hear how they met), I am assuming some kind of mail order bride.
- She does not know much English, but their connection is like nothing he has ever felt before.
- He has never been so happy in his life, every day keeps getting better and better.
- The lord and/or Jesus are responsible for the proceeding.
- His new Thai wife likes to sleep draped all over him in a non-sexual way.
- She is a massage lady and he hopes that she can get a job as such in the US.
- He knows someone who knows someone who works in Dick Durbin's (US Senator) office, thus her Visa is assured.
- He gives her a $20 dollar a week allowance, which goes a long way in Thailand.
Gotta love Bangkok!!!
- Evidently he has been married for 2 weeks to a Thai woman (we did not hear how they met), I am assuming some kind of mail order bride.
- She does not know much English, but their connection is like nothing he has ever felt before.
- He has never been so happy in his life, every day keeps getting better and better.
- The lord and/or Jesus are responsible for the proceeding.
- His new Thai wife likes to sleep draped all over him in a non-sexual way.
- She is a massage lady and he hopes that she can get a job as such in the US.
- He knows someone who knows someone who works in Dick Durbin's (US Senator) office, thus her Visa is assured.
- He gives her a $20 dollar a week allowance, which goes a long way in Thailand.
Gotta love Bangkok!!!
Thailand Wrap
Thailand was a very nice place to visit.
That, for better or for worse, is about as strong a opinion as I can muster about it. I know it is not all that profound, but honestly, Thailand is not that profound a place. It is just a nice, well run country with really nice beaches and people. It is also quite cheap to travel around, although not as cheap as places like India and Cambodia.
We did have a very good time in Thailand. But, I am really glad that we went there after Japan and India. While those parts of the trip felt more like a real adventure, Thailand felt more like a nice extended vacation. The first reason for this is that the travel in Thailand is so much less challenging. The train and the government bus run quite efficiently. People speak enough English, and westerners are a dime a dozen, so you do not ever feel particularly out of place. There are 7-Elevens, fast food and Internet cafes pretty much everywhere. The touts are quite tame by Asian standards and the beggars are virtually nonexistent.
The other reason why Thailand is different is that everything there is less dramatic. Their sights are kind of interesting, but nothing like the Taj Mahal, Angkor, Hiroshima or even Shinjuku. You may get a little aggravated with the occasional Tuk-Tuk man, but you never have to deal with the stress of an Indian train station, or figuring out how to order a meal in Japanese.
If you come to Thailand to find yourself, learn Thai culture or experience real travel adventure, you will be disappointed. If you come to Thailand for a nice vacation, you will probably love it.
In conclusion, a few highlights and lowlights:
UPSIDES
- The beaches are really nice, often with very litte waves and prefect conditions to swim or play Frisbee in the water.
- The north was pleasant as well, but we enjoyed it much better on our trips outside Chaing Mai on a rented car or motorbike. Downtown Chaing Mai can feel like one giant tourist trap.
- There are really not many places in the world where you can pay $15 dollars for a hut right on the beach.
- Bangkok is an interesting city, good, cheap shopping and some of Thailand's best sights.
- The quality and availability of cheap food is incredible. Eventually we figured out that for Thai food, the cheaper the place, the better the meal.
- There is also a good variety of quality food from all over the world at every tourist destination, at very reasonable prices.
- Most Thais are very nice people. They do indeed seem to smile all the time, and are usually quite helpful and friendly.
LOWLIGHTS
- Some Thais, especially ones who work in tourist trap places, are not very nice. This is the cost of Thailand being so well covered by tourists.
- I really don't like the parallel transport system of buses, boats and taxis that are only there for tourists. The service on these is usually really bad, and it is not a good way to experience the country. Unfortunately, sometimes this network can be the only practical way to get from one place to another. Often this is because the government bus terminal is not near downtown or the train is sold out.
- A great number of your fellow tourists are either British frat boy types or mid-market package European tourists. Also, a good proportion all westerners are sex-tourists. This is especially bad in Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Ko Samui. This may not be a problem for other people, in fact it may be what you are looking for. However, all these groups get a little tiresome for us at times.
- You will learn to hate Trance music if you stay in the wrong room at the hotel.
- Thailand has the worst waiters in the world. Getting the bill is a constaint ordeal.
- Thais care a lot about "face" and thus make for really annoying touts. I do not care if people want to aggressively tout stuff to me. However, the fact that I need to be polite to the touts, in order to prevent unpleasant behavior by them, is really annoying. At least Indian touts know their place in the world and have a thick skin.
- As Nisha has covered in some detail, Thai bathrooms suck.
- The amount of obvious Hooker-Westerner couples did not really bother Nisha and I. In fact it was kind of a game to speculate if the girls were hookers or not, then sometimes if they were really men or not (on a side note, I never imagined that any culture would be as accepting of transvestites as Thais are). However, if this kind of thing bothers you, then best stay away from the big three locations I mentioned above.
That, for better or for worse, is about as strong a opinion as I can muster about it. I know it is not all that profound, but honestly, Thailand is not that profound a place. It is just a nice, well run country with really nice beaches and people. It is also quite cheap to travel around, although not as cheap as places like India and Cambodia.
We did have a very good time in Thailand. But, I am really glad that we went there after Japan and India. While those parts of the trip felt more like a real adventure, Thailand felt more like a nice extended vacation. The first reason for this is that the travel in Thailand is so much less challenging. The train and the government bus run quite efficiently. People speak enough English, and westerners are a dime a dozen, so you do not ever feel particularly out of place. There are 7-Elevens, fast food and Internet cafes pretty much everywhere. The touts are quite tame by Asian standards and the beggars are virtually nonexistent.
The other reason why Thailand is different is that everything there is less dramatic. Their sights are kind of interesting, but nothing like the Taj Mahal, Angkor, Hiroshima or even Shinjuku. You may get a little aggravated with the occasional Tuk-Tuk man, but you never have to deal with the stress of an Indian train station, or figuring out how to order a meal in Japanese.
If you come to Thailand to find yourself, learn Thai culture or experience real travel adventure, you will be disappointed. If you come to Thailand for a nice vacation, you will probably love it.
In conclusion, a few highlights and lowlights:
UPSIDES
- The beaches are really nice, often with very litte waves and prefect conditions to swim or play Frisbee in the water.
- The north was pleasant as well, but we enjoyed it much better on our trips outside Chaing Mai on a rented car or motorbike. Downtown Chaing Mai can feel like one giant tourist trap.
- There are really not many places in the world where you can pay $15 dollars for a hut right on the beach.
- Bangkok is an interesting city, good, cheap shopping and some of Thailand's best sights.
- The quality and availability of cheap food is incredible. Eventually we figured out that for Thai food, the cheaper the place, the better the meal.
- There is also a good variety of quality food from all over the world at every tourist destination, at very reasonable prices.
- Most Thais are very nice people. They do indeed seem to smile all the time, and are usually quite helpful and friendly.
LOWLIGHTS
- Some Thais, especially ones who work in tourist trap places, are not very nice. This is the cost of Thailand being so well covered by tourists.
- I really don't like the parallel transport system of buses, boats and taxis that are only there for tourists. The service on these is usually really bad, and it is not a good way to experience the country. Unfortunately, sometimes this network can be the only practical way to get from one place to another. Often this is because the government bus terminal is not near downtown or the train is sold out.
- A great number of your fellow tourists are either British frat boy types or mid-market package European tourists. Also, a good proportion all westerners are sex-tourists. This is especially bad in Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Ko Samui. This may not be a problem for other people, in fact it may be what you are looking for. However, all these groups get a little tiresome for us at times.
- You will learn to hate Trance music if you stay in the wrong room at the hotel.
- Thailand has the worst waiters in the world. Getting the bill is a constaint ordeal.
- Thais care a lot about "face" and thus make for really annoying touts. I do not care if people want to aggressively tout stuff to me. However, the fact that I need to be polite to the touts, in order to prevent unpleasant behavior by them, is really annoying. At least Indian touts know their place in the world and have a thick skin.
- As Nisha has covered in some detail, Thai bathrooms suck.
- The amount of obvious Hooker-Westerner couples did not really bother Nisha and I. In fact it was kind of a game to speculate if the girls were hookers or not, then sometimes if they were really men or not (on a side note, I never imagined that any culture would be as accepting of transvestites as Thais are). However, if this kind of thing bothers you, then best stay away from the big three locations I mentioned above.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thai Food I: Street Food
It took me quite awhile after arriving to Thailand to get into the food. It was not because a dislike of Thai food, since it is one of my favorite foods in the US, more more a dislike of where one eats Thai food. The restaurant culture of the US, India, and every other place I have been does not really exist here. There are restaurants, just not Thai ones. It seems that Thais will go a nice enclosed AC restaurant to have pizza, Chinese, or any non-Thai food. However, except in Bangkok, all Thai restaurants if not catering directly to tourists or in a 5-star hotel, are ramshackle open-air establishments or food carts.
The carts are not really permanent, since they are put up and taken down everyday, but they occupy the same location every night. They all have wheels to be pushed away at the end of the night. They do not have running water. They do have electricity and even meters to presumably pay someone for the power. The prices are all between 5 and 40 baht (10 - 80 cents). The ambiance matches the price - you eat on metal folding tables and plastic stools. Many are arranged in the same place to constitute a day or night food market. Some are simply a swerer or fruit seller attached to a sidecar.
In India street food is either sworn off or you know it will cost you some serious bathroom time. We had great hesitation in delving into the multitude of street eats. During our first week here, we ate primarily at tourist restaurants, which besides McDonald's, this is the place you can go to guarantee eating the worst food any locale has to offer. Slowly, as we saw more Westerners eating from them and not in the hospital with IVs, we too entered into the makeshift street restaurants.
What do they serve? Everything on a menu of a typical US Thai restaurant and more. The diversity is stunning. Curry carts offer over 10 types of succulent meat and vegetable curries. Soup carts offer something akin to Vietnamese Pho with sliced meat or shrimp, or duck. There were numerous BBQ carts with various processed meats creatively sculpted on the wooden skewer. The carts catering more to Thais include BBQed hanging offal, looking much like an anatomy class. There were stir-fry and pad Thai carts. Many served various types of iced tea - black, chrysanthemum, hibiscus, and ginger finished with condensed milk. Dessert carts had banana and nutella crepes, silver dollar pancakes filled with a coconut mixture. On every corner is a fruit cart filled with carved and chilled pineapple, banana, mango, dragon fruit, jack fruit, and watermelon whether for immediate consumption or to be whipped into a shake. The one I always looked out for was the mango and sticky rice cart. At first I scoffed at such a pedestrian dessert made with rice. However, it's hard to describe the unbelievable marriage of a silky fragrant mango with slightly salty, sweet, coconut stewed rice.
After a month in Thailand, food carts instilled in me, rather than fear and terror, a Pavlovian response of salivation. Some of the best food we had in Thailand came from these lowly eateries. Next post - more about specific dishes.
The carts are not really permanent, since they are put up and taken down everyday, but they occupy the same location every night. They all have wheels to be pushed away at the end of the night. They do not have running water. They do have electricity and even meters to presumably pay someone for the power. The prices are all between 5 and 40 baht (10 - 80 cents). The ambiance matches the price - you eat on metal folding tables and plastic stools. Many are arranged in the same place to constitute a day or night food market. Some are simply a swerer or fruit seller attached to a sidecar.
In India street food is either sworn off or you know it will cost you some serious bathroom time. We had great hesitation in delving into the multitude of street eats. During our first week here, we ate primarily at tourist restaurants, which besides McDonald's, this is the place you can go to guarantee eating the worst food any locale has to offer. Slowly, as we saw more Westerners eating from them and not in the hospital with IVs, we too entered into the makeshift street restaurants.
What do they serve? Everything on a menu of a typical US Thai restaurant and more. The diversity is stunning. Curry carts offer over 10 types of succulent meat and vegetable curries. Soup carts offer something akin to Vietnamese Pho with sliced meat or shrimp, or duck. There were numerous BBQ carts with various processed meats creatively sculpted on the wooden skewer. The carts catering more to Thais include BBQed hanging offal, looking much like an anatomy class. There were stir-fry and pad Thai carts. Many served various types of iced tea - black, chrysanthemum, hibiscus, and ginger finished with condensed milk. Dessert carts had banana and nutella crepes, silver dollar pancakes filled with a coconut mixture. On every corner is a fruit cart filled with carved and chilled pineapple, banana, mango, dragon fruit, jack fruit, and watermelon whether for immediate consumption or to be whipped into a shake. The one I always looked out for was the mango and sticky rice cart. At first I scoffed at such a pedestrian dessert made with rice. However, it's hard to describe the unbelievable marriage of a silky fragrant mango with slightly salty, sweet, coconut stewed rice.
After a month in Thailand, food carts instilled in me, rather than fear and terror, a Pavlovian response of salivation. Some of the best food we had in Thailand came from these lowly eateries. Next post - more about specific dishes.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
First Observations of Cambodia
- They have yet another form of Autorickshaw here, also called the Tuk-Tuk as in Thailand. The design is totally different however, as it is a regular small motorbike, like a Honda Dream, with a trailer attached that holds up to 4 people. It actually is the nicest ride of all of them, because it is not enclosed, so you get a lot of air and can see the view. They also drive at very safe speeds since a 125cc motorbike is not exactly designed as a towing machine. Here is a photo of one, from someone else.
- We ran into one of Nisha's classmates in her SCUBA course at Angkor Wat yesterday and got a first-hand account of the Koh San Road/Bangkok tourist bus to Siem Reap. Evidently everything was fine until the border where aggressive touts convinced half the people to change all their Baht to US dollars at a really terrible exchange rate. Then the ride that took us 3 hours in a cab takes 9 hours in the bus, so they can deliver you to a second rate guesthouse at the edge of town. Since you arrive at 22:00, it is difficult to get onward transportation, so you end up staying there until the next morning. If you are doing this trip, read our post and this website, do the trip yourself.
- It is really strange how upscale the center of Siem Reap (Bar St.) is, especially considering that the rest of the country is on the India level of rural economic development. There is basically a whole area here of upscale cafes, bars and restaurants which are up to western standards of sophistication, food and service. To give you an idea, we had pizza from a real brick oven and home-made raviolis last night. One thing I have read is that a lot of these establishments are run by westerners, as there are no regulations here that make owning a business difficult for foreigners, as in most Asian countries. This may very well be true, because some of the restaurants go out of their way to say that they are run by actual Khemrs (Cambodians). This may not be great for the locals, but is good for the consumers, as the level of service is high in both the western and local owned establishments. Lets here it for open market competition.
- Strangely enough, the fact that they use US dollars here, rather then some foreign funny money, makes us feel poorer then in India or Thailand. Things are about the same price here, but when you pay 240 Baht for a nice pizza in Thailand, you do not really think about it as 7 dollars or so, it just seems like some small amount of your total wad of usually over 10,000 Baht. Here the pizza will still cost 7 dollars, granted this is a tourist place and it is as good as pizza I pay 14 dollars for at home, but it still seems expensive. The same goes for beer costing $1.50 rather then 60 Baht. Actually the main thing that is cheap here so far is accommodation (15 dollars for the best value hotel of the trip - Golden Temple Villa) and the Internet (75 cents an hour). Food is the same price as India or Thailand for the level of quality, but the cheap food carts here sell roasted snakes and entrails, and are not really set up for westerners. No more 25 Baht noodle soup for us.
- Even though Siem Reap is very touristy, it nice to be back in a place where people are more happy to see the tourists and their money arrive then in Thailand. Thais are still very nice, but they can often seem jaded at the endless cycle of budget travellers that tromp around their country. Especially since many of these travellers are drunken assholes or sex-tourists, their attitude is somewhat understandable. Khemrs have so far seemed much more honestly friendly and happy to talk to you, and the scene here is a little more grown up, and less like Cancun.
- Do your self a favor and search for something dumb like "Cancun Drunk" on flickr. There are a lot of gems out there I found while searching for that picture. Like this.
- We ran into one of Nisha's classmates in her SCUBA course at Angkor Wat yesterday and got a first-hand account of the Koh San Road/Bangkok tourist bus to Siem Reap. Evidently everything was fine until the border where aggressive touts convinced half the people to change all their Baht to US dollars at a really terrible exchange rate. Then the ride that took us 3 hours in a cab takes 9 hours in the bus, so they can deliver you to a second rate guesthouse at the edge of town. Since you arrive at 22:00, it is difficult to get onward transportation, so you end up staying there until the next morning. If you are doing this trip, read our post and this website, do the trip yourself.
- It is really strange how upscale the center of Siem Reap (Bar St.) is, especially considering that the rest of the country is on the India level of rural economic development. There is basically a whole area here of upscale cafes, bars and restaurants which are up to western standards of sophistication, food and service. To give you an idea, we had pizza from a real brick oven and home-made raviolis last night. One thing I have read is that a lot of these establishments are run by westerners, as there are no regulations here that make owning a business difficult for foreigners, as in most Asian countries. This may very well be true, because some of the restaurants go out of their way to say that they are run by actual Khemrs (Cambodians). This may not be great for the locals, but is good for the consumers, as the level of service is high in both the western and local owned establishments. Lets here it for open market competition.
- Strangely enough, the fact that they use US dollars here, rather then some foreign funny money, makes us feel poorer then in India or Thailand. Things are about the same price here, but when you pay 240 Baht for a nice pizza in Thailand, you do not really think about it as 7 dollars or so, it just seems like some small amount of your total wad of usually over 10,000 Baht. Here the pizza will still cost 7 dollars, granted this is a tourist place and it is as good as pizza I pay 14 dollars for at home, but it still seems expensive. The same goes for beer costing $1.50 rather then 60 Baht. Actually the main thing that is cheap here so far is accommodation (15 dollars for the best value hotel of the trip - Golden Temple Villa) and the Internet (75 cents an hour). Food is the same price as India or Thailand for the level of quality, but the cheap food carts here sell roasted snakes and entrails, and are not really set up for westerners. No more 25 Baht noodle soup for us.
- Even though Siem Reap is very touristy, it nice to be back in a place where people are more happy to see the tourists and their money arrive then in Thailand. Thais are still very nice, but they can often seem jaded at the endless cycle of budget travellers that tromp around their country. Especially since many of these travellers are drunken assholes or sex-tourists, their attitude is somewhat understandable. Khemrs have so far seemed much more honestly friendly and happy to talk to you, and the scene here is a little more grown up, and less like Cancun.
- Do your self a favor and search for something dumb like "Cancun Drunk" on flickr. There are a lot of gems out there I found while searching for that picture. Like this.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Overland to Cambodia
So, we completed the much dreaded Bangkok to Siem Reap overland journey yesterday. Rather then taking the tickets from Bangkok sold for backpackers, which can be a decent deal, but often involve bus scams and annoying delays, we did the trip ourselves, using a myriad of transit options. There may be annoyances along the way when you plan the trip yourself, but I prefer to at least make my own problems and have the flexibility to what I want to solve them.
The Result:
1) Leave at 7:00 in a taxi to go to the North Bangkok government bus depot (Mo Chit). Get stuck in Bangkok traffic, trip takes a little under an hour.
2) Take a government bus at 8:00 (no scams unlike backpacker buses) to Aranya Pratet.
3) Arrive in Aranya Pratet at around 12:30, pretty non-descript Thai border town. Decent roads, 7-Elevens, usual stuff. Take a 5km Tuk-Tuk to the border.
4) Check out of Thailand, walk across the little bridge to Poipet, Cambodia. Funny thing here, there is a border market on the Thai side that Cambodian merchents can get a pass to go to for the day. Evidently it is a way to sell goods of dubious origin to the Thai people who have more money. Going the other way on the bridge there were pushcarts full of new $800 Trek bikes as well as one with guitar amplifiers.
5) On the Cambodian side of the bridge go to the visa office to get a visa, since we did not get one before arrival. There is a sign that says that a visa costs $20 US (US currency is the de facto currency of Cambodia, although Thai Baht and their own currency can sometimes be used). Because you are supposed to have six months before expiration on your passport, and Nisha only has five, I pay 1000 Baht each (30 dollars) to the guy who "helps" you get the visa. Visa comes back no problem.
6) Walk down the strip of new casinos that are in this no mans land for Thai gamblers. Errie sight, especially seeing the Indian street scene beyond the immigration gate.
7) Wait behind a bus load of westerners to actually pass immigration.
8) Enter into Cambodia and start trying to work out the taxi situation to get to Siem Reap. There are a bunch of taxi guys right beyond the gate who seem pretty disreputable, and want $40 US to drive just the two of us in a Toyot Camry to Siem Reap. There are also guys wearing yellow shirts who try to get you to go on a bus where they say they sell you a seat in a share Toyota for $15 US each.
I don't really like the vibe from the guys who are right there, and the lowest they will go is $35 dollars. However, we see that the bus goes just 200m up the road, and a yellow shirt guy on a scooter keeps telling us to go there. So we head walk up there to check out the deal. This is a crappy little office, but does look to be where most people are getting trasportation forward. It is either $12 for a seat on a bus, or $15 for a seat in a cab that leaves right away. We take the cab and end up sharing with two solo people, a Swiss lady and a friendly young guy from Hong Kong.
9) From around 14:00 to 17:30 bounce down the atrocious dirt highway from Poipet to Siem Reap. Looks like we are back in India, shocking trasformation from Thailand.
10) Get dropped off in the taxi depot on the edge of town. Negotiated for a Tuk-Tuk with the Hong Kong guy for $2 US dollars into town.
11) Go to "Bar" St. in the center of town, find a suprisingly really nice and classy tourist area in the middle of town. Find a really nice little hotel in the area called the Golden Temple (or something like that) for $15 US a night. Get free beer opon check in.
The result, not that bad. Did not cost too much and relly the only problem was figuring out the taxi deal in Poipet, but even that worked out fine. Siem Reap is actually very nice, and today we head out to see Angkor Wat.
The Result:
1) Leave at 7:00 in a taxi to go to the North Bangkok government bus depot (Mo Chit). Get stuck in Bangkok traffic, trip takes a little under an hour.
2) Take a government bus at 8:00 (no scams unlike backpacker buses) to Aranya Pratet.
3) Arrive in Aranya Pratet at around 12:30, pretty non-descript Thai border town. Decent roads, 7-Elevens, usual stuff. Take a 5km Tuk-Tuk to the border.
4) Check out of Thailand, walk across the little bridge to Poipet, Cambodia. Funny thing here, there is a border market on the Thai side that Cambodian merchents can get a pass to go to for the day. Evidently it is a way to sell goods of dubious origin to the Thai people who have more money. Going the other way on the bridge there were pushcarts full of new $800 Trek bikes as well as one with guitar amplifiers.
5) On the Cambodian side of the bridge go to the visa office to get a visa, since we did not get one before arrival. There is a sign that says that a visa costs $20 US (US currency is the de facto currency of Cambodia, although Thai Baht and their own currency can sometimes be used). Because you are supposed to have six months before expiration on your passport, and Nisha only has five, I pay 1000 Baht each (30 dollars) to the guy who "helps" you get the visa. Visa comes back no problem.
6) Walk down the strip of new casinos that are in this no mans land for Thai gamblers. Errie sight, especially seeing the Indian street scene beyond the immigration gate.
7) Wait behind a bus load of westerners to actually pass immigration.
8) Enter into Cambodia and start trying to work out the taxi situation to get to Siem Reap. There are a bunch of taxi guys right beyond the gate who seem pretty disreputable, and want $40 US to drive just the two of us in a Toyot Camry to Siem Reap. There are also guys wearing yellow shirts who try to get you to go on a bus where they say they sell you a seat in a share Toyota for $15 US each.
I don't really like the vibe from the guys who are right there, and the lowest they will go is $35 dollars. However, we see that the bus goes just 200m up the road, and a yellow shirt guy on a scooter keeps telling us to go there. So we head walk up there to check out the deal. This is a crappy little office, but does look to be where most people are getting trasportation forward. It is either $12 for a seat on a bus, or $15 for a seat in a cab that leaves right away. We take the cab and end up sharing with two solo people, a Swiss lady and a friendly young guy from Hong Kong.
9) From around 14:00 to 17:30 bounce down the atrocious dirt highway from Poipet to Siem Reap. Looks like we are back in India, shocking trasformation from Thailand.
10) Get dropped off in the taxi depot on the edge of town. Negotiated for a Tuk-Tuk with the Hong Kong guy for $2 US dollars into town.
11) Go to "Bar" St. in the center of town, find a suprisingly really nice and classy tourist area in the middle of town. Find a really nice little hotel in the area called the Golden Temple (or something like that) for $15 US a night. Get free beer opon check in.
The result, not that bad. Did not cost too much and relly the only problem was figuring out the taxi deal in Poipet, but even that worked out fine. Siem Reap is actually very nice, and today we head out to see Angkor Wat.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Flaming Floating Lotus Flowers
Experiencing different festivals of the world is one of my passions, so you can imagine my delight when I found out that we would be in Bangkok for the Loy Kratong Festival. During the festival times, normally tourist-weary locals are more talkative, open, and generally in a better mood. The city is cleaner and the excitement in the air is palpable.
So far we have been extraordinarily lucky - we hit the Asakusa Samba Festival in Japan, the Ladakh Festival in Leh, the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Diu and Mumbai, Dandiya in Chennai, the Durga festival in Calcutta, and now we were in town for the Thai's second most important festival of the year. It has been chance all except for Calcutta (most of these run on the lunar calender making it hard to find the exact dates).
Possibly hinting at Indian roots, the main activity of the Loy Kratong festival is to buy or make a kratong and release it with lit incense and a small candle into the river. Unlike the Hindu festivals we have attended, this one seems to have unclear origins. It seems that the Thais take is as a festival to mark the beginning of the cool, dry season and releasing of the kratong as good luck.
The kratongs are usually made of a disc of banana tree, bread, or styrofoam (think the kind that you caulk windows with). Trying to find a less environmentally damaging one, we picked was a simple lotus flower. They are decorated with folded banana leaf, flowers, incense, and candles. I read at sometimes there is money in the center which explains the three women in a longtail boat downstream from the releasing point fishing them out, dumping the contents in the boat, and throwing them back in the water.
Some of the main events took place in the park near our guesthouse in the neighborhood of Banglampu. There were plenty of foods stalls (more on that to come in another blog), balloon sellers, and 2 stages. One stage was for beauty contests and traditional dance and song. The other larger one for a Thai rock band. It was all very well organized with marine patrol and Mardi Gras barrier corrals to wait in before releasing your krathong.
The floating kratongs in the Mae Nam Chao Phraya river and the Mardi Gras-like floats parading down the river made for a magical night. We released our krathong with the help of a man down the walkway from the festival. He was using a fan cover attached to ribbon to hoist up floating krathongs. I thought at first he was looking to take the money out of them as well. However, all he did was insert a stick topped with a alcohol soaked sponge, light it, and release the flaming kratong back in the water. I guess he was looking for lots of luck.
- Nisha
So far we have been extraordinarily lucky - we hit the Asakusa Samba Festival in Japan, the Ladakh Festival in Leh, the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Diu and Mumbai, Dandiya in Chennai, the Durga festival in Calcutta, and now we were in town for the Thai's second most important festival of the year. It has been chance all except for Calcutta (most of these run on the lunar calender making it hard to find the exact dates).
Possibly hinting at Indian roots, the main activity of the Loy Kratong festival is to buy or make a kratong and release it with lit incense and a small candle into the river. Unlike the Hindu festivals we have attended, this one seems to have unclear origins. It seems that the Thais take is as a festival to mark the beginning of the cool, dry season and releasing of the kratong as good luck.
The kratongs are usually made of a disc of banana tree, bread, or styrofoam (think the kind that you caulk windows with). Trying to find a less environmentally damaging one, we picked was a simple lotus flower. They are decorated with folded banana leaf, flowers, incense, and candles. I read at sometimes there is money in the center which explains the three women in a longtail boat downstream from the releasing point fishing them out, dumping the contents in the boat, and throwing them back in the water.
Some of the main events took place in the park near our guesthouse in the neighborhood of Banglampu. There were plenty of foods stalls (more on that to come in another blog), balloon sellers, and 2 stages. One stage was for beauty contests and traditional dance and song. The other larger one for a Thai rock band. It was all very well organized with marine patrol and Mardi Gras barrier corrals to wait in before releasing your krathong.
The floating kratongs in the Mae Nam Chao Phraya river and the Mardi Gras-like floats parading down the river made for a magical night. We released our krathong with the help of a man down the walkway from the festival. He was using a fan cover attached to ribbon to hoist up floating krathongs. I thought at first he was looking to take the money out of them as well. However, all he did was insert a stick topped with a alcohol soaked sponge, light it, and release the flaming kratong back in the water. I guess he was looking for lots of luck.
- Nisha
Thai Economics
I wrote when I was in India a post called Indian Economics where I tried to put in prospective the amount of money that Indian make versus the US. I thought a followup might be in order discussing what we have found in Thailand.
Going back to the same list of GDP per capita, we find that Thailand currently is at $9,193 versus India at $3,802 and the US at $43,223. So, for the purposes of this article I will say that the average Thai makes 1/5 as much as the average American and twice as much as the average Indian. I have not done as much word of mouth research to validate these assumptions, but I do believe that they are more of less true.
With these facts in mind I will say that I am very surprised how much closer the standard of living feels in Thailand to the US then it does to India. When you walk around a Thai city or town, things do not seem that different from home. Most streets are well kept and have a mixture of little shops and restaurants as well as fast food and 7-Eleven chain outlets. Streets are well kept and usually have good sidewalks. People mostly dress in normal, clean western cloths. When you are in the outskirts of a city you see a lot of giant new Tesco superstores (similar looking from the outside to a Wall-Mart, except bigger) and fancy new gas stations.
The most drastic differences I notice off hand are in transportation and street food/shopping. The mix of vehicles here is very heavy with small motorbikes. There are plenty of private cars, but there are also swarms of these little bikes everywhere, being driven by young men, grandmothers, Thai schoolgirls, etc. Also, there are a lot more regular buses and many converted pickup truck buses, or Songthaews. As for street shopping, food carts are everywhere, selling cheap Thai food staples. Also, a lot of shopping for clothes and other goods is done in large areas of small stalls that are present in any large town or city.
The end result is that it seems like Thai life is not that different from the US, but just with a lot of components being done in a cheaper way. A Thai mother still goes out to the store, but it is usually on a motorbike and often to a rustic vegetable market. Thais eat out a lot, but they only spend 20 Baht (75 cents) at a soup stand rather then $10 at Chilies. Thai teens still spend a lot of time shopping, but rather then for name brand goods at a mall, it is for counterfeit goods at a outdoor market, and they ride in a Songthaew to get there. Long haul transportation is usually done by nice tour bus, rather then private car. From what I have seen on the outside, Thais usually live in much smaller houses, but they are usually well kept.
The thing that also makes life seem similar is how a lot of the Thai ways of doing things are a lot cheaper, but are actually on the surface as good as the US version. When we stopped on our 10 hour bus ride at a rest stop to eat it was a brand new open air market place with nice tables and chairs and a array of little counters with the usual soup and curry mix. My soup and Diet Coke cost be 40 Baht (a little over a dollar) but I would take it over a McDonald's value meal any day of the week. A ride in a Songthaew is certainly not a safe as a real city bus, but with the fresh air blowing through your hair, it is not any less comfortable. A 120 Baht (4 dollar) counterfeit Abercrombie and Fitch T-Shirt is no different from its $30 version, it might even be made in the same factory.
Nisha had an interesting observation on another aspect of this big leap from India. When you read the paper here the social problems are not that different from the US. This morning she read about a protest by people in wheelchairs because Bangkok was not installing enough ramps in the sidewalk, so that they can cross the street easily. This is in contrast from India where it is not that uncommon to see someone walking down the sidewalk on their hands. The Thai story reads like something you might see in the US, but having a disabled person walking down the street on their hands is not even something we would think of as a problem in the US.
Going back to the same list of GDP per capita, we find that Thailand currently is at $9,193 versus India at $3,802 and the US at $43,223. So, for the purposes of this article I will say that the average Thai makes 1/5 as much as the average American and twice as much as the average Indian. I have not done as much word of mouth research to validate these assumptions, but I do believe that they are more of less true.
With these facts in mind I will say that I am very surprised how much closer the standard of living feels in Thailand to the US then it does to India. When you walk around a Thai city or town, things do not seem that different from home. Most streets are well kept and have a mixture of little shops and restaurants as well as fast food and 7-Eleven chain outlets. Streets are well kept and usually have good sidewalks. People mostly dress in normal, clean western cloths. When you are in the outskirts of a city you see a lot of giant new Tesco superstores (similar looking from the outside to a Wall-Mart, except bigger) and fancy new gas stations.
The most drastic differences I notice off hand are in transportation and street food/shopping. The mix of vehicles here is very heavy with small motorbikes. There are plenty of private cars, but there are also swarms of these little bikes everywhere, being driven by young men, grandmothers, Thai schoolgirls, etc. Also, there are a lot more regular buses and many converted pickup truck buses, or Songthaews. As for street shopping, food carts are everywhere, selling cheap Thai food staples. Also, a lot of shopping for clothes and other goods is done in large areas of small stalls that are present in any large town or city.
The end result is that it seems like Thai life is not that different from the US, but just with a lot of components being done in a cheaper way. A Thai mother still goes out to the store, but it is usually on a motorbike and often to a rustic vegetable market. Thais eat out a lot, but they only spend 20 Baht (75 cents) at a soup stand rather then $10 at Chilies. Thai teens still spend a lot of time shopping, but rather then for name brand goods at a mall, it is for counterfeit goods at a outdoor market, and they ride in a Songthaew to get there. Long haul transportation is usually done by nice tour bus, rather then private car. From what I have seen on the outside, Thais usually live in much smaller houses, but they are usually well kept.
The thing that also makes life seem similar is how a lot of the Thai ways of doing things are a lot cheaper, but are actually on the surface as good as the US version. When we stopped on our 10 hour bus ride at a rest stop to eat it was a brand new open air market place with nice tables and chairs and a array of little counters with the usual soup and curry mix. My soup and Diet Coke cost be 40 Baht (a little over a dollar) but I would take it over a McDonald's value meal any day of the week. A ride in a Songthaew is certainly not a safe as a real city bus, but with the fresh air blowing through your hair, it is not any less comfortable. A 120 Baht (4 dollar) counterfeit Abercrombie and Fitch T-Shirt is no different from its $30 version, it might even be made in the same factory.
Nisha had an interesting observation on another aspect of this big leap from India. When you read the paper here the social problems are not that different from the US. This morning she read about a protest by people in wheelchairs because Bangkok was not installing enough ramps in the sidewalk, so that they can cross the street easily. This is in contrast from India where it is not that uncommon to see someone walking down the sidewalk on their hands. The Thai story reads like something you might see in the US, but having a disabled person walking down the street on their hands is not even something we would think of as a problem in the US.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Potty Humor
Seeing as this part of our trip will be a major topic of conversation with the Basu family at Christmas, I will get a head start on the ups and downs of the traveling toilet situation.
The highlight of this part of the trip was in Japan. The Japanese have applied the technology we reserve for $2000 dishwashers to their the porcelain thrones, with splashing results. I had heard rumors of the wonders of Japanese toilets - they have mechanical hands that wipe the nether regions, the seats are made of solid gold, they play music, etc, etc. Some of this was true, though not the mechanical hand. There is a famous 24 karat solid gold toilet in Tokyo. If you have a golden toilet, then why not golden poop as well?
The typical Japanese toilet, the one you find in the homes, hostels, and malls, consist of a toilet bowl, seat, and toilet tank. In the high-tech ones, there is a control panel of sorts next to the bowl. This panel is studded with many buttons in Japanese with small incomprehensible pictures for those less literate. I never really deciphered all the functions, but here are some Ian, Andrew, and I figured out. With this panel, it is possible to receive squirts of water from inside the bowl to one's business areas. These jets vary in intensity, duration, and aim. During my first use, I nearly leaped to the ceiling because I didn't know the previous patron had turned the jet on high. As I became soaked, I found out that it would not cease until I found the off button. These robo-toilets also also would spray a jet of air to finish the job you did with the water and toilet paper. For the discrete Japanese ladies, there was a "fake flush" button that when pressed, would make a flushing sound during which you could tinkle or make whatever other noise you wanted without the whole bathroom hearing. One had headphone hook-up. I never found out what was playing.
Almost more important to me than the actual toilet apparatus, is the ability to clean my hands. This need is inversely proportional to cleanliness of the bathroom. In Japan, there was always automatic soap and water basins. However, I quickly found out that everyone carried handkerchiefs to dry their hands. This lesson is one that I will keep with me in the US. Why use a paper towel when you can carry your own?
Which brings me to my next country. I had the most trepidation about India in this regard. During my 3 prior visits, I had had some horrific experiences with splintered wooden planks as a toilet seat over a vat of mosquitoes and filth. Also, since everyones toilet use increases in India for obvious reasons, I tried to be prepared by always carrying toilet paper and a hanky to dry my hands.
Reflecting the diverse economic strata in the country, India has a wide spread between completely horrific bathrooms and sparklingly clean ones with attendants. Fancy hotels and restaurants have normal easy to understand Western toilets with paper, a flushing mechanism, a clean dry floor, and a sink with water, soap, and towels. All things taken for granted in the American bathroom experience. When there is a squat toilet in India, it generally had a flusher and a bucket of water to use instead of toilet paper (though I never figured out how to do this without soaking myself in the process). We had a squat toilet for 3 days in our stay in Mapsua, Goa. It really wasn't that bad. When it is your own, you can strip down so as not to wet all your clothes in the process. I can't stay I achieved the Zen of backpacking in India, which is to balance yourself on a squat toilet while reading the newspaper. Only the free public toilets will cause night terrors, as happened with me before our overnight bus ride from Udiapur.
Also, though this may not be evident on a quick vacation to India as your experience will likely be colored by the worst bathroom experiences of your life, Indians do care about washing their hands. This may not always happen in the vicinity of the toilet, but in every restaurant, no matter if it has a dirt floor and is made of blue tarp (the developing world's replacement for the tar paper shack), there will be a sink with soap to wash with before dining. Once you realize this, and have brought your own hanky to dry your hands, your war against the colon twisting germs in India gets a tad easier.
I do feel that I owe India somewhat of an apology about ragging so much on their plumbing in my first blog about our accommodation. I didn't think that the toilet situation could get worse once we left the land of the squat toilet. But again, I was wrong. Thailand has the worst plumbing I have ever seen coupled with a questionable system of personal hygiene as well (from what I can deduce from the facilities offered).
Here in Thailand, virtually everywhere has either a squat or Western bowl. Not really a problem - India trained us well. However, no where are these toilet bowls equipped to flush toilet paper as the exiting pipe is a narrow as a sink drain. There is generally a large bucket of water with a huge bowl or a high-pressure dish sprayer to replace the toilet paper. All bathrooms here have a generally poorly worded sign that tried to communicate to you to throw the paper in the trash. One of these signs read "some napkins go in the bucket." Not fully understaidng this, I thought to myself, where are these napkins, and why do only some need to go in the bucket, as I tossed my tissue in the toilet.
The second enormous problem with Thai plumbing and why it ranks below that of India, is that there are many places that don't have a flushing mechanism on the toilet. That's right, there is a toilet bowl with no tank. You think it's a normal toilet until you go to flush and stupidly pull at the air. Every morning, one has to try in vain to dispose of your handiwork with a bowl full of water that is kept in a bucket next to the toilet. Once hotel toilet was so terrible, that Ian and I had to use the bowl of water, the high-pressure butt sprayer, and the hand-held shower hose to get the toilet to flush. The large downside of this country wide practice is that: 1. you guessed it, your bathroom stinks at all times with the used tissues in the trash can, 2. since there is always a large bucket full of water, the bathrooms are mosquito pits, 3. you never want to flush the toilet since it's such an ordeal, and 4. your bathroom is soaked at all times.
So after a victory with flushing the Thai toilet, all I want to do is wash my hands. Therein lies the 3rd problem. Most public toilets in respectable places - restaurants, shops, etc, either have no place to wash or if they do, have no soap. Maybe I just haven't figured out how Thais wash their hands yet. In India it took me a while to figure out that it was expected that everyone wash their hands before eating in a restaurant. This really is the most maddening thing here in Thailand. From what I can tell, most Thais clean their privates, Indian-style, without the ability to wash hands. Baffling!
I know some of you are thinking, what should I expect traveling to Asia? Maybe avoiding toilet paper is more environmentally correct, I should have more respect for the local customs... I thought you might want the straight story without the social correctness sugar-coating.
Now on to Cambodia. I'm sure the situation can't get any worse. But I said that about India as well.
The highlight of this part of the trip was in Japan. The Japanese have applied the technology we reserve for $2000 dishwashers to their the porcelain thrones, with splashing results. I had heard rumors of the wonders of Japanese toilets - they have mechanical hands that wipe the nether regions, the seats are made of solid gold, they play music, etc, etc. Some of this was true, though not the mechanical hand. There is a famous 24 karat solid gold toilet in Tokyo. If you have a golden toilet, then why not golden poop as well?
The typical Japanese toilet, the one you find in the homes, hostels, and malls, consist of a toilet bowl, seat, and toilet tank. In the high-tech ones, there is a control panel of sorts next to the bowl. This panel is studded with many buttons in Japanese with small incomprehensible pictures for those less literate. I never really deciphered all the functions, but here are some Ian, Andrew, and I figured out. With this panel, it is possible to receive squirts of water from inside the bowl to one's business areas. These jets vary in intensity, duration, and aim. During my first use, I nearly leaped to the ceiling because I didn't know the previous patron had turned the jet on high. As I became soaked, I found out that it would not cease until I found the off button. These robo-toilets also also would spray a jet of air to finish the job you did with the water and toilet paper. For the discrete Japanese ladies, there was a "fake flush" button that when pressed, would make a flushing sound during which you could tinkle or make whatever other noise you wanted without the whole bathroom hearing. One had headphone hook-up. I never found out what was playing.
Almost more important to me than the actual toilet apparatus, is the ability to clean my hands. This need is inversely proportional to cleanliness of the bathroom. In Japan, there was always automatic soap and water basins. However, I quickly found out that everyone carried handkerchiefs to dry their hands. This lesson is one that I will keep with me in the US. Why use a paper towel when you can carry your own?
Which brings me to my next country. I had the most trepidation about India in this regard. During my 3 prior visits, I had had some horrific experiences with splintered wooden planks as a toilet seat over a vat of mosquitoes and filth. Also, since everyones toilet use increases in India for obvious reasons, I tried to be prepared by always carrying toilet paper and a hanky to dry my hands.
Reflecting the diverse economic strata in the country, India has a wide spread between completely horrific bathrooms and sparklingly clean ones with attendants. Fancy hotels and restaurants have normal easy to understand Western toilets with paper, a flushing mechanism, a clean dry floor, and a sink with water, soap, and towels. All things taken for granted in the American bathroom experience. When there is a squat toilet in India, it generally had a flusher and a bucket of water to use instead of toilet paper (though I never figured out how to do this without soaking myself in the process). We had a squat toilet for 3 days in our stay in Mapsua, Goa. It really wasn't that bad. When it is your own, you can strip down so as not to wet all your clothes in the process. I can't stay I achieved the Zen of backpacking in India, which is to balance yourself on a squat toilet while reading the newspaper. Only the free public toilets will cause night terrors, as happened with me before our overnight bus ride from Udiapur.
Also, though this may not be evident on a quick vacation to India as your experience will likely be colored by the worst bathroom experiences of your life, Indians do care about washing their hands. This may not always happen in the vicinity of the toilet, but in every restaurant, no matter if it has a dirt floor and is made of blue tarp (the developing world's replacement for the tar paper shack), there will be a sink with soap to wash with before dining. Once you realize this, and have brought your own hanky to dry your hands, your war against the colon twisting germs in India gets a tad easier.
I do feel that I owe India somewhat of an apology about ragging so much on their plumbing in my first blog about our accommodation. I didn't think that the toilet situation could get worse once we left the land of the squat toilet. But again, I was wrong. Thailand has the worst plumbing I have ever seen coupled with a questionable system of personal hygiene as well (from what I can deduce from the facilities offered).
Here in Thailand, virtually everywhere has either a squat or Western bowl. Not really a problem - India trained us well. However, no where are these toilet bowls equipped to flush toilet paper as the exiting pipe is a narrow as a sink drain. There is generally a large bucket of water with a huge bowl or a high-pressure dish sprayer to replace the toilet paper. All bathrooms here have a generally poorly worded sign that tried to communicate to you to throw the paper in the trash. One of these signs read "some napkins go in the bucket." Not fully understaidng this, I thought to myself, where are these napkins, and why do only some need to go in the bucket, as I tossed my tissue in the toilet.
The second enormous problem with Thai plumbing and why it ranks below that of India, is that there are many places that don't have a flushing mechanism on the toilet. That's right, there is a toilet bowl with no tank. You think it's a normal toilet until you go to flush and stupidly pull at the air. Every morning, one has to try in vain to dispose of your handiwork with a bowl full of water that is kept in a bucket next to the toilet. Once hotel toilet was so terrible, that Ian and I had to use the bowl of water, the high-pressure butt sprayer, and the hand-held shower hose to get the toilet to flush. The large downside of this country wide practice is that: 1. you guessed it, your bathroom stinks at all times with the used tissues in the trash can, 2. since there is always a large bucket full of water, the bathrooms are mosquito pits, 3. you never want to flush the toilet since it's such an ordeal, and 4. your bathroom is soaked at all times.
So after a victory with flushing the Thai toilet, all I want to do is wash my hands. Therein lies the 3rd problem. Most public toilets in respectable places - restaurants, shops, etc, either have no place to wash or if they do, have no soap. Maybe I just haven't figured out how Thais wash their hands yet. In India it took me a while to figure out that it was expected that everyone wash their hands before eating in a restaurant. This really is the most maddening thing here in Thailand. From what I can tell, most Thais clean their privates, Indian-style, without the ability to wash hands. Baffling!
I know some of you are thinking, what should I expect traveling to Asia? Maybe avoiding toilet paper is more environmentally correct, I should have more respect for the local customs... I thought you might want the straight story without the social correctness sugar-coating.
Now on to Cambodia. I'm sure the situation can't get any worse. But I said that about India as well.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Don't Look Down
We went to Railay primarily because it seemed like a nice beach and a pleasant area to relax. It certainly did match these expectations, but the highlight of my time there was certainly my first couple times rock climbing.
I went out on a beginner trip each of the two mornings that I was there. I found climbing to be more fun and more interesting then I imagined. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of challenge they would throw at you as a beginner. I have spent a lot of time climbing up little steep rock faces in New England without ropes, and did not want to just end up doing that with a guy holding a rope at the bottom.
The deal with beginner climbing in Railay is more or less this. You go to the office in the morning and they set you up with a harness, chalk bag and climbing shoes. The shoes are meant to be very tight, so you pick ones that are barley comfortable, knowing that you only wear them when climbing the wall. You then take a 10 minute walk with your Thai, rope carrying guide, to the end of the beach and arrive at a place I found out is called the 1,2,3 wall. This wall is evidently the easiest to get to area and is suitable for beginners, so it seemed like pretty much everyone who is doing the beginner half day rock climbing trip ends up down there, meaning around 10-15 climbers and the various Thai guides.
As you can see from someone else's picture, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is a real wall, it is basically vertical in all places and is at least 100m to the very top. The first thing you do when you get there is learn how to tie yourself to the end of the rope, and how to belay, i.e. work the bottom of the rope, for someone else. You then get to put your belaying skills to the test as the guide lead climbs up the wall to get the rope to the top. The guide makes it look easy as he climbs up to the permanent ring anchor that will be used as the top of the rope for the rest of the day. He does clip in to the intermediate anchors so he has some protection, but between the fact that he is lead climbing and being belayed by someone who does not know what they are doing, I am pretty sure they prefer to never fall. After he reaches the top, around 10m up for the first climbs, he hooks the rope through the ring and then you lower him down.
Most of the initial climbs are only around 10m high, so soon after you arrive different groups and guides have strung up around 4-5 top ropes. At this point the tourists start going up and it becomes more interesting. The first climb I did was not too difficult. It was very steep, but the craggy limestone rock in Railay provides a ton of hand and footholds. I did make the climb more difficult then it should be because I was still climbing like I was scrambling up a ledge in NH. By this I mean that I was mostly using my feet and taking no risks, this ensured not falling, but limited the number of things you could do.
The Dutch guy with me did pretty much the same thing and we moved to the next rope. This is the kind of nice thing about being on a busy wall. When you get done with your rope, you just hop in line to use one of the other ropes set up by another guide. Before climbing the next rope the guide showed us how to climb using our hands more. Rather then using your hands to pull yourself up like a pull-up, as you might imagine, you can use your hands to hold your body away from the wall, giving your feet a better angle to grip small footholds. I would never do this without a rope, because if you hand lets go, you fall, but taking risks is the point of having a rope, right?
Now knowing this allowed me to take more risks and climb things that I would have never been able to make it up with my previous technique. We had fun the rest of the morning climbing the various routes, touching the ring at the top, and getting dropped down to the bottom. My highlight was climbing up a longer route that was around 20m high. My lowlight was running out of arm strength and ending up hanging by my fingers in an untenable position. There is an instinctive moment of panic, but then you remember that if you just yell "Tension" down below the rope gets very tight, and you can just hang for a minute to catch you breath and then pick it up again.
This seemed to be the most common problem people would have, running out of arm strength and not being able to make the final push over a difficult part. The Thai guides do have a little trick however. When someone can not quite make it, they just lean heavily on the rope, giving the person above the 20kg of upwards assistance they need to get over the hump. I don't think I got any help like this the first day (or perhaps I am just deluding myself), but that was how a lot of heavier guys and girls were making it to the top.
I liked it so much I went back the next day for pretty much the same program. Now with more practice, and a night to recover some life in my arms, I was able to breeze up even several of the harder 10m climbs. To give me a challenge they let me climb the 30m climb to the top of the main part of the wall. This was the limit of the 60m ropes that we were using. I was equal to the first 20m, which was a interesting, but not too hard climb I had done the day before. The last 10m however was a vertical, sheer wall with only a few handholds to use. I should have taken a longer break before tacking this beast, because I once again ended up dangling by my fingertips and needing to yell a long way down for the rope to be made tight so I could take a break. I was completely spent after this ordeal and it felt pretty good to touch the ring and take the easy ride down.
I was also entertained this day watching the other guy in our group who was a burly Nordic guy of some description. He was a lot heavier then me, but also a lot stronger. We were about equal as far as climbing, with him being a little better, due to his better time on the top of the 30m beast. He did not climb like us lighter guys, but rather just used his arms to lift himself up the mountain. It looked like he was in a bar brawl with the cliffs, thrashing around and powering himself up, but he always did make it to the top.
There should be some of our pictures of the day up soon as well, so check them out.
I went out on a beginner trip each of the two mornings that I was there. I found climbing to be more fun and more interesting then I imagined. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of challenge they would throw at you as a beginner. I have spent a lot of time climbing up little steep rock faces in New England without ropes, and did not want to just end up doing that with a guy holding a rope at the bottom.
The deal with beginner climbing in Railay is more or less this. You go to the office in the morning and they set you up with a harness, chalk bag and climbing shoes. The shoes are meant to be very tight, so you pick ones that are barley comfortable, knowing that you only wear them when climbing the wall. You then take a 10 minute walk with your Thai, rope carrying guide, to the end of the beach and arrive at a place I found out is called the 1,2,3 wall. This wall is evidently the easiest to get to area and is suitable for beginners, so it seemed like pretty much everyone who is doing the beginner half day rock climbing trip ends up down there, meaning around 10-15 climbers and the various Thai guides.
As you can see from someone else's picture, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is a real wall, it is basically vertical in all places and is at least 100m to the very top. The first thing you do when you get there is learn how to tie yourself to the end of the rope, and how to belay, i.e. work the bottom of the rope, for someone else. You then get to put your belaying skills to the test as the guide lead climbs up the wall to get the rope to the top. The guide makes it look easy as he climbs up to the permanent ring anchor that will be used as the top of the rope for the rest of the day. He does clip in to the intermediate anchors so he has some protection, but between the fact that he is lead climbing and being belayed by someone who does not know what they are doing, I am pretty sure they prefer to never fall. After he reaches the top, around 10m up for the first climbs, he hooks the rope through the ring and then you lower him down.
Most of the initial climbs are only around 10m high, so soon after you arrive different groups and guides have strung up around 4-5 top ropes. At this point the tourists start going up and it becomes more interesting. The first climb I did was not too difficult. It was very steep, but the craggy limestone rock in Railay provides a ton of hand and footholds. I did make the climb more difficult then it should be because I was still climbing like I was scrambling up a ledge in NH. By this I mean that I was mostly using my feet and taking no risks, this ensured not falling, but limited the number of things you could do.
The Dutch guy with me did pretty much the same thing and we moved to the next rope. This is the kind of nice thing about being on a busy wall. When you get done with your rope, you just hop in line to use one of the other ropes set up by another guide. Before climbing the next rope the guide showed us how to climb using our hands more. Rather then using your hands to pull yourself up like a pull-up, as you might imagine, you can use your hands to hold your body away from the wall, giving your feet a better angle to grip small footholds. I would never do this without a rope, because if you hand lets go, you fall, but taking risks is the point of having a rope, right?
Now knowing this allowed me to take more risks and climb things that I would have never been able to make it up with my previous technique. We had fun the rest of the morning climbing the various routes, touching the ring at the top, and getting dropped down to the bottom. My highlight was climbing up a longer route that was around 20m high. My lowlight was running out of arm strength and ending up hanging by my fingers in an untenable position. There is an instinctive moment of panic, but then you remember that if you just yell "Tension" down below the rope gets very tight, and you can just hang for a minute to catch you breath and then pick it up again.
This seemed to be the most common problem people would have, running out of arm strength and not being able to make the final push over a difficult part. The Thai guides do have a little trick however. When someone can not quite make it, they just lean heavily on the rope, giving the person above the 20kg of upwards assistance they need to get over the hump. I don't think I got any help like this the first day (or perhaps I am just deluding myself), but that was how a lot of heavier guys and girls were making it to the top.
I liked it so much I went back the next day for pretty much the same program. Now with more practice, and a night to recover some life in my arms, I was able to breeze up even several of the harder 10m climbs. To give me a challenge they let me climb the 30m climb to the top of the main part of the wall. This was the limit of the 60m ropes that we were using. I was equal to the first 20m, which was a interesting, but not too hard climb I had done the day before. The last 10m however was a vertical, sheer wall with only a few handholds to use. I should have taken a longer break before tacking this beast, because I once again ended up dangling by my fingertips and needing to yell a long way down for the rope to be made tight so I could take a break. I was completely spent after this ordeal and it felt pretty good to touch the ring and take the easy ride down.
I was also entertained this day watching the other guy in our group who was a burly Nordic guy of some description. He was a lot heavier then me, but also a lot stronger. We were about equal as far as climbing, with him being a little better, due to his better time on the top of the 30m beast. He did not climb like us lighter guys, but rather just used his arms to lift himself up the mountain. It looked like he was in a bar brawl with the cliffs, thrashing around and powering himself up, but he always did make it to the top.
There should be some of our pictures of the day up soon as well, so check them out.
Quick Update
We just had a great time in Railay, which is a beach area nestled in dramatic cliffs and accessible only by boat. It was really a great little place and I had a great time rock climbing, and Nisha had a great time at the beach.
Off to Bangkok since we only have 2 days left on the visa. Don't want to become an illegal immigrant.
Off to Bangkok since we only have 2 days left on the visa. Don't want to become an illegal immigrant.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Finally Legal: Open Water, Baby!
When we planned this trip, we knew that we would want to do some diving in Thailand. Once I found out that Koh Tao is one of the cheapest dive meccas in the world, Ian I decided that we would spend a few days there and I could get my open water certification.
There are many outfits on the Sariee Beach, the main backpacker beach. After evaluating a few, I chose Phoenix Divers mainly because they had a nice looking restaurant and had a pool for Ian to hang out in. Most places wanted 9800 baht for the certification plus free accommodation on the course days. We took a discounted AC bungalow near the pool from the AC Resort for 400 a night and the course was only 8500. This was only $270, a steal compared to the US and I was diving in the Gulf of Thailand rather then the Boston Chinatown YMCA pool.
The course was entertainingly led by Christophe, a Flemish former boys boarding school principle turned SCUBA instructor who told well-timed fart jokes. There were only 5 people in our class which I didn't realize at the time was such a bonus until I saw some of the other outfits with 12 - 20 students. One of the highlights of the whole experience was meeting other travelers.
We went on four excellent dives. One of the other students, Marek, a communications major from Germany, took hundreds of photos of the dives, some of which I posted on Flickr. The amount of fish and diversity of coral was truly stunning. The visibility was perfect, and despite being monsoon season, had no rain. Since Koh Tao is a very young diving area, there were no places with anchor damage or trash. I hope they are able to keep it that way.
The beach itself was pleasant, though this should not be the sole purpose from coming here. The walking brick street was lined with many low-key resorts, Thai and international resturants, and bars. There were a fair amount of people around, so usually a few of the bars would be packed with the fire-twirlers providing much of the entertainment. The only downside about the AC Resort was that it had a totally empty bar that blasted techno until at least 5 AM every night. I heard that it would get crowded later with Thais, but I never saw a sole in there.
Now I'm finally legal. Open water in Flordia and Aruba here I come!
- Nisha
There are many outfits on the Sariee Beach, the main backpacker beach. After evaluating a few, I chose Phoenix Divers mainly because they had a nice looking restaurant and had a pool for Ian to hang out in. Most places wanted 9800 baht for the certification plus free accommodation on the course days. We took a discounted AC bungalow near the pool from the AC Resort for 400 a night and the course was only 8500. This was only $270, a steal compared to the US and I was diving in the Gulf of Thailand rather then the Boston Chinatown YMCA pool.
The course was entertainingly led by Christophe, a Flemish former boys boarding school principle turned SCUBA instructor who told well-timed fart jokes. There were only 5 people in our class which I didn't realize at the time was such a bonus until I saw some of the other outfits with 12 - 20 students. One of the highlights of the whole experience was meeting other travelers.
We went on four excellent dives. One of the other students, Marek, a communications major from Germany, took hundreds of photos of the dives, some of which I posted on Flickr. The amount of fish and diversity of coral was truly stunning. The visibility was perfect, and despite being monsoon season, had no rain. Since Koh Tao is a very young diving area, there were no places with anchor damage or trash. I hope they are able to keep it that way.
The beach itself was pleasant, though this should not be the sole purpose from coming here. The walking brick street was lined with many low-key resorts, Thai and international resturants, and bars. There were a fair amount of people around, so usually a few of the bars would be packed with the fire-twirlers providing much of the entertainment. The only downside about the AC Resort was that it had a totally empty bar that blasted techno until at least 5 AM every night. I heard that it would get crowded later with Thais, but I never saw a sole in there.
Now I'm finally legal. Open water in Flordia and Aruba here I come!
- Nisha
Book Corner II
I have continued with my increased reading level since the last version of this column, so I thought I would catch up with what I have read since.
The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple
Nisha found this book first, and after hearing much about it I decided to keep on the Indian theme after the Gandhi autobiography. This book was also nice because it is a collection of short articles, so many stories almost read like a long Economist article.
Basically this book is a collection of stories from the premier English language author on India today, written as he was researching stories for books in the mid 90s. It is a little out of date because it portrays India as teetering on the edge of oblivion, when we now now that they following 12 years were one of the most prosperous in its history. However, the stories are very well written, and give a lot of insight into the darker sides of rural, traditional India. Also, there is a very interesting section on Pakistan that is very topical since it was written before 9/11.
My only real complaint with the book is that the author is certainly very sentimental, especially with the old coots who tell him tails of India many years ago. He is a historical fiction writer, so it is understandable, but he does not bring any prospective to the old tales of the glory of Lucknow, Hyderabad, etc. before independence. Things may have been better in those cities back in the day, but reading this book you would think the streets were paved in gold and the tap water was wine.
This is really my only complaint however, and this book really is a great way to get a lot of interesting history about the entire subcontinent. Just keep a little prospective on the ramblings of old men.
The Ramayana - R. K. Narayan
The Ramayana is one of the big epics of Hinduism and is referenced in paintings, songs and pretty much everything that has to do with Indian culture. Since I knew so little about it I looked around a bookshop and found this shortened English version of the epic written by a prominent Indian author. At only around 150 pages I figured it would we worth while to get a little background on Hinduism and read this book.
It reads a lot like the Roman and Greek mythology that you read in school. It is a tale of gods having fantastic battles in a mythical version of India. The story itself is a pretty basic tale of god meets girl, marries girl, rival god steals girl, good god takes girl back. It is somewhat entertaining, and does let you understand a lot more about Indian art and culture.
However, I did feel a little empty after reading it. Perhaps it is because it is so shortened, but even though I now know they basics of the Rama story, I do not really understand why it is of such great significance. Perhaps reading the whole epic makes the significance more clear, for me it was just a bunch of gods running around doing a bunch of stuff. Anyway, I found it to be useful, and brief, reading, but all in all, not essential.
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
I know Salman Rushdie is mostly known in the US for his issues with the Ayatollah in the 80s, but as Nisha discovered, he should be known for his writing.
This book is the sordid tale of an American ambassador and a group of Kashmiri entertainers, spanning the trouble in Kashmir since Indian independence. It does a great job of being a real page turner, as well as feeling like literature. It also feels quite current since it deals with some of the issues of Islamic extremism that we deal with today.
The story is great in of itself, but the real star is Rushdies writing. His style is so fresh and modern, without being shallow. The first part of the book is one of the best constructed character introductions I have ever read. The whole story is set up as digressions to the climax of the book, which is at the beginning, intertwined with a fair amount of sarcasm and pop culture references. The rest of the book that follows is written in a more straight forward manner, but is still a tour de force.
Highly recommended.
Tai-Pan - James Clavell
After a time away from the big books, and in preparation for going to Hong Kong, I decided to tackle another James Clavell beast.
Tai-Pan is based in Hong Kong, 240 years after Shogun, but was actually written 9 years earlier. I will not hide the fact that I like James Clavell. I once again found this book to be an entertaining, swashbuckling, historical fiction romp. As reading Shogun makes you want to go to Japan, this book certainly increases your interest in Hong Kong.
Shogun and Tai-Pan are very similar. However, I would suspect that if you asked Clavell, he would tell you that the lessons he learned writing Tai-Pan were used to make improvements in Shogun. Probably the greatest thing about Shogun is how he seamlessly weaves together the many different characters and plot lines. Also, in Shogun the main protagonist is not the most important character to history, but rather an important bit player, which allows him to both look in the mind of Toranaga (the Shogun) but also leave him shrouded in mystery.
Tai-Pan is more of a standard novel, where the hero is the most important guy, and the whole book is pretty much focused around him. There are a lot of characters, but the vast majority of the writing is from the prospective of the Tai-Pan (meaning "big boss" in Chinese). It is still entertaining, but lacks the artfulness that brings Shogun to the next level.
If you want to read one Clavell book, I would still say to read Shogun first. It is the first one chronologically anyway.
The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple
Nisha found this book first, and after hearing much about it I decided to keep on the Indian theme after the Gandhi autobiography. This book was also nice because it is a collection of short articles, so many stories almost read like a long Economist article.
Basically this book is a collection of stories from the premier English language author on India today, written as he was researching stories for books in the mid 90s. It is a little out of date because it portrays India as teetering on the edge of oblivion, when we now now that they following 12 years were one of the most prosperous in its history. However, the stories are very well written, and give a lot of insight into the darker sides of rural, traditional India. Also, there is a very interesting section on Pakistan that is very topical since it was written before 9/11.
My only real complaint with the book is that the author is certainly very sentimental, especially with the old coots who tell him tails of India many years ago. He is a historical fiction writer, so it is understandable, but he does not bring any prospective to the old tales of the glory of Lucknow, Hyderabad, etc. before independence. Things may have been better in those cities back in the day, but reading this book you would think the streets were paved in gold and the tap water was wine.
This is really my only complaint however, and this book really is a great way to get a lot of interesting history about the entire subcontinent. Just keep a little prospective on the ramblings of old men.
The Ramayana - R. K. Narayan
The Ramayana is one of the big epics of Hinduism and is referenced in paintings, songs and pretty much everything that has to do with Indian culture. Since I knew so little about it I looked around a bookshop and found this shortened English version of the epic written by a prominent Indian author. At only around 150 pages I figured it would we worth while to get a little background on Hinduism and read this book.
It reads a lot like the Roman and Greek mythology that you read in school. It is a tale of gods having fantastic battles in a mythical version of India. The story itself is a pretty basic tale of god meets girl, marries girl, rival god steals girl, good god takes girl back. It is somewhat entertaining, and does let you understand a lot more about Indian art and culture.
However, I did feel a little empty after reading it. Perhaps it is because it is so shortened, but even though I now know they basics of the Rama story, I do not really understand why it is of such great significance. Perhaps reading the whole epic makes the significance more clear, for me it was just a bunch of gods running around doing a bunch of stuff. Anyway, I found it to be useful, and brief, reading, but all in all, not essential.
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
I know Salman Rushdie is mostly known in the US for his issues with the Ayatollah in the 80s, but as Nisha discovered, he should be known for his writing.
This book is the sordid tale of an American ambassador and a group of Kashmiri entertainers, spanning the trouble in Kashmir since Indian independence. It does a great job of being a real page turner, as well as feeling like literature. It also feels quite current since it deals with some of the issues of Islamic extremism that we deal with today.
The story is great in of itself, but the real star is Rushdies writing. His style is so fresh and modern, without being shallow. The first part of the book is one of the best constructed character introductions I have ever read. The whole story is set up as digressions to the climax of the book, which is at the beginning, intertwined with a fair amount of sarcasm and pop culture references. The rest of the book that follows is written in a more straight forward manner, but is still a tour de force.
Highly recommended.
Tai-Pan - James Clavell
After a time away from the big books, and in preparation for going to Hong Kong, I decided to tackle another James Clavell beast.
Tai-Pan is based in Hong Kong, 240 years after Shogun, but was actually written 9 years earlier. I will not hide the fact that I like James Clavell. I once again found this book to be an entertaining, swashbuckling, historical fiction romp. As reading Shogun makes you want to go to Japan, this book certainly increases your interest in Hong Kong.
Shogun and Tai-Pan are very similar. However, I would suspect that if you asked Clavell, he would tell you that the lessons he learned writing Tai-Pan were used to make improvements in Shogun. Probably the greatest thing about Shogun is how he seamlessly weaves together the many different characters and plot lines. Also, in Shogun the main protagonist is not the most important character to history, but rather an important bit player, which allows him to both look in the mind of Toranaga (the Shogun) but also leave him shrouded in mystery.
Tai-Pan is more of a standard novel, where the hero is the most important guy, and the whole book is pretty much focused around him. There are a lot of characters, but the vast majority of the writing is from the prospective of the Tai-Pan (meaning "big boss" in Chinese). It is still entertaining, but lacks the artfulness that brings Shogun to the next level.
If you want to read one Clavell book, I would still say to read Shogun first. It is the first one chronologically anyway.
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