One Night in Bangkok
The City of Angels, Kindgom of Old Siam

Siem Reap I was glad to leave. Harsh mix of dirty sand and dirty wealth. Poorest of the poor with rich resort goers who pop in for Angkor and luxury in the form of cheap five course meals and ice cream cones and hot air balloon rides over the temples and then jet off. I bussed off.

The bus ride to the Thai border was fraught with apparent peril and good old-fashioned adventure. Cambodia, unlike most countries, still gives you a sense that you're returning to the past, even if it's just ten years (which is about all the liberal project will allow--you know, only countries without McDonalds get our bombs). Our bus was air conditioned, but the system was obviously an afterthought, just a maze of duct taped tubes and whirling, smoking, dripping motors where the luggage rack should have been. The German behind me not only had to lodge a scrap of wood into his seat to stay upright, he also kept the aircon from blowing up. "German engineering!" the boisterous hippie farmers from Washington State cheered through their two inch mustaches. They were the first and only Americans I met in Cambodge. At one impass (the bridge was out), we veared off Highway 6 (a dirt road) onto a dirt two track, through some villages. The porter literally had to hack away the jungle with a machete. We drove through fields. The middle of the bus got caught on a ridge. By the time we reached the border the bus a dirty, scratched and dented mess.

Border crossing went smoothly. They played thumping techno on the Thai side, the uniforms nodding along as they stamped.

Ah, Thailand...

...how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Massive highways, how I missed you! And 7-eleven. Your slurpies have no compare. And your Lays potato chips! (the first I'd eaten in two months). You're a fine face of Empire Americana! And Khoa San Rd, the most backpacker friendly load in the world. Packed full of my kind. Took me an hour to find a room.

I met up with an old university friend in Bangkok. It was his last day before returning back to Bangladesh, where he's on ten-month scholarship. He was laying in medical supplies to take back to his hospital. He's doing amazing things and very good deeds, working in an ER ward and collecting samples of a rare tropical parasite that lodges itself in the white blood cells. He truly had transformed into "Eastern Ken." (I'll write more of his specifics soon, because there is much more).

We went to a club, watched the drag queens, danced ourselves silly, got caught up into the wee hours. I couldn't be happier to be back in the Land of Smiles. Now I'm off to the border. Bangkok is better the shorter I'm here.

Angkor What?
Siem Reap, Cambodia

Yesterday, after they pulled my backpack from the dusty bus compartment, I gave it a good patting off. Then I buckled, walked, and plopped down at--"That guest house no good. Very noisy. Japanese there," the moto driver told me right before my plopping. Indeed the guest house was full of Japanese and Japanese books, and it was cheap. But it was quiet.

The Japanese are the number one tourist group in Cambodia. Their government does nice things, like build roads and help with Angkor Wat's numerous restoration projects. I like the ones at my guest house. They don't talk to me, and when they do, it's only a moment before they look back down at their little anime books. And did I mention they're cuddly? And they let me sleep?

Sleep so I could get up early. Early so I could get to the world's largest religious site before the sun did.

No problem. The guesthouse owner had a motorbike driver waiting for me at 6 a.m. and we zoomed through the cold streets six kilometers north of town. I paid my $20 day pass fee and we were soon revving around moats and millenium-old stone structures to my first planned stop. They used to do it by elephant.

I followed the "established" one-day itinerary, the one started, I think, by the French, some time after they "discovered" the site. Because the gate of Bayan faces east, tourist logic says that's the place to start. Ta Prohm is shrouded in jungle canopy because the trees have grown like snakes into the very structure of the temples, making it dangerous to cut them down. The third place, Angkor Wat itself, faces west, so that's the place to see the sun set, they say. Made sense to me. Lonely Planet said I might be smart to reverse the order to avoid the rush.

I know what the world's most popular travel book series is. I see the people who read it as gospel truth. I knew what they'd be doing. So I stuck to the original plan. I would see the sun rise where the French tourists did.

I won't try to immortalize Angkor. The task is too great, the path too well-trodden. I can only give my personal anecdotes.

Bayan was quiet at 6am. I beat the tour guides even. As I wandered under the spires with bodhisattva Avolokiteshvara's giant faces peering out in the four cardinal directions in my every periphery, I got a second wave of awe (the first being the motorbike ride itself through the ancient streets). I made my way to the center. An ancient buddha figure was draped in an orange robe under an umbrella. I did not enter. The umbrella was guarding against the torrents of bat guano dropping from the chirping mammals in the tower. So I looked at the Bas-Reliefs instead.

As I moved to the other complexes in the Bayan area, I began to see more and more orange-robed monks and white-robed nuns wandering around. I meditated near a few and then they moved off. I followed them. When I came over the next crumbling wall, my whole field of vision was filled with milling orange figures. I smiled. They smiled. An older gentleman with a staff shaped like a seahorse came up to me.

"This is my chopstick," he said, holding out the stick and laughing. "I mean, my stick."

We began a long discussion about what was going on. He told me this was the fourth day of their annual nation-wide pilgrimage to this holy site, where the Khmer kings of old had held their temple rites. The oldest monks were in their fifties and the youngest were fifteen.

"One tousand, two hundred tirty monks are here," he said. "Last night, we slept over there. Tonight, we sleep over here," he said pointing to the forest floor.

A crowd of smiling faces and orange robes was gathering. One of the monks interjected with what I presume was a question about my religion with, "what are you?"

The older monk butted in good-naturedly. "He is human being. You are human being. I am human being. We are all human being."

Before I knew it, I was talking to several of them and the older monk had vanished. The discussion turned to their alms bowls, which they all had slung around their necks on straps. For their noon-time meal, the monks go to the community for food. The monks cannot kill, drink or have sex, but if someone gives them meat, they're obliged to eat a part of it before giving the rest back.

The discussion turned sexual when the monks confirmed that they could not touch or be touched by women. They could not even look a woman in the face. I interjected some third-gender sexual politics when I asked if they could touch someone who doesn't consider him/herself either gender, like a native American berdache. Third gender did not compute.

"Could you touch a ladyboy?" I asked.

"As long as the person was born a man, we can touch him."

Certainly the early dogmatists behind this strange Buddhist rule had no idea that people--especially surgeons and feminists--would break the gender binary.

In addition to all those monks, there were about a thousand nuns too. A twelve year old boy hugging a random temple Buddha told me in his perfect English that there were a 1,700 nuns. While leaving that enclave and returning to the tourist grounds, I saw the congregated monks listening to a Dharma talk. The older monk with the staff was in the front of a long line, beaming. I beamed back and we exchanged small waves goodbye.

The rest of the day, I traipsed around, fending off vendors and beggars, occasionally giving in. I lasted seven hours in unusual heat and body-withering sun. When I asked a ticket checker how he was at midday, he said simply "hot."

I'm not sure I liked paying the $20 entrance fee because Angkor is managed by a Vietnamese oil company and I don't like where the profits are going. It's like buying Kraft Macaroni and Cheese knowing that Phillip Morris owns the Kraft brand. Still, if this oil company will employ the locals to walk along the roads and sweep the nonexistent debris from the dirt shoulders, then it can't be all bad for Cambodia. I just wish more of the money was going back into Angkor. Though every fifth temple had some restoration activity going on, it certainly wasn't enough. Resurrecting this complex site from the clutches of the jungle takes more than just corporate accountability.

At least Cambodians get into this national treasure for free. But the thing I wonder is...why did the Cambodians get so upset last year when the Thai people claimed they had just as much right to Angkor as the Cambodians? They're both Khmer people. When did all this nationalism get in the way? Certainly neither Cambodia nor Thailand existed in their present forms when the Khmer empire began to crumble and this site receded into the trees. What gives?

The Dead
Siem Reap, Cambodia

"...to know that the kindest, most worthy people have all fallen away, or even been tortured, humiliated before being killed, or buried and wiped away by the machinery of war, then this beautiful landscape of calm and peace is an appalling paradox. Justice may have won, but cruelty, death and inhuman violence had also won.

"Just look and think: it is the truth.

"Losses can be made good, damage can be repaired and wounds will heal in time. But the psychological scars of the war will remain forever."

--Bao Ninh, Vietnamese veteran of the American War, from his book, The Sorrow of War

South East Asia knows death on a massive scale. And I'm not just talking about the genocidal domination of these nations by Axis-allied Japan during the second world war. I'm talking about the last four decades, the last two generations. There isn't a South East Asian over thirty who knows not some sting of war-related death.

The blood that flowed during the Twentieth Century washed away the dead and continues to drown the living.

Along with the two million Asians killed by the South Koreans, Australians, and Americans during the American (Vietnam) War, millions more have died from internal spasms of violence--all for ideology's sake. And for what? If General Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Party had not achieved its revolutionary and genocidal communist revolution in 1975--after five+ years of civil war and American bombing--Cambodia might be more developed than, say, Thailand, which has known relative peace, despite its 17 coups and attempted coups since 1932. If none of the 55,000 Americans that lost their lives in the war had died, American companies would still be importing Snickers Bars and Pringles for the locals to sell to the tourists.

I never made it to the American War Crimes Museum in Saigon. Thien and I slept away the afternoon of my last day there ("you changed my schedule," said the former bar owner). Which was fine. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (Link is to the official site) in Phnom Penh was enough (here's a professor's guided tour, with pictures and here's a site showing some of the victims, tortured or otherwise).

The site itself was a quiet place in the center of the Cambodian capital city, a former primary school. At the time it was converted into a prison, the city's millions of residents had been herded into fields by the army, and agents of the Khmer Rouge killed and tortured over 14,000 ethnic minorities, intellectuals and other undesirables. Their goal was to achieve a totally agrarian society--a country of peasants. Historians give conservative estimates that two million Cambodians were killed over the four-year Khmer Rouge period. Others say the numbers are as high as nine million.

The dead don't stay in the ground. The living aren't quite whole. "All of the scouts, one way or another, were killed," Bao Ninh wrote. "But then you read of them dragging themselves along the streets, living hand-to-mouth lives as city-dwellers in the post-war years." The mutilated victims of war stalk the streets looking for money or pedal cyclos to market with one leg. They go crazy. They get strange syndromes and unexplained cancers. They lose both legs in war and then lose to a Republican who brands them unpatriotic. All the while, leaders remain untouched, and--so far--unimpeached.

Still, I'm just a traveler. I look at things. I smell things. That's my job right now.

On the bus to Siem Reap, just outside of Angkor Wat, I was glad I had tucked my handkerchief in my bag for easy access. (This was Thien's suggestion). While connecting to the capital two days ago, the dust rag was unnecessary, but en route today, the asphalt roads gave way to red dirt. This was the same kind of red clay that, when wet, gave me an unwanted facial last year on the back of a truck as I rode through the jungles of Loas.

Now the dust penetrates deeper. The dust settles like the poverty. In the eyes, throat, all over you. In your gut from the smell of it and its hands all over you. Trees turn the color of that earth, that sickly brown red, echoes of agent orange. Joyce (I know you're probably thinking, Joyce, what did he have to say about war? and Joyce, enough with the Joyce already), well, Joyce is suitable in such a pedestrian scene. The dust is a bit like the January snow storms now falling in my native Michigan. The dust reminds me of the last line in Dubliners, from a chapter called The Dead. The dust--like the snow--covers everything. It makes us forget. We experience...

"the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Tet


Some of the city of Saigon's blocks-long display to celebrate Tet, the lunar new year.

Fighting New Imperialism

This article in The Nation by Arundhati Roy proposes we further develop non-violent resistence to the neo-liberal project: "The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.

For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war."

"The New American Century"

Deja Flu in a PhePhnominal City
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Phnom Penh is not what I expected it to be. The road from the Vietnamese border was paved, for one thing, and the bus was full of interesting people who read The Economist, or know how to bribe customs officials when they lose their exit papers, or wear adorable straw hats from North Carolina.

Happy is the most prevalent adjective in my life at the moment. I stay at the Happy Guest House. Last night I ate "Happy Pizza" (I asked for a very happy pizza, with extra happy) and the happy has just now worn off halfway through the next day. There are happy bakeries and happy motorbike drivers and this whole city has a laid-back attitude. Though roads outside the few major thoroughfares in the center are all dirt and bumps, they're not noisy. Cambodians are sensitive to noise pollution. Even the major streets are fairly quiet and uncongested.

And then there's the Avion Flu, no? SARS all over again...and then some. So we just wait and see what becomes of it. Hopefully this conference in Bangkok will prompt the ten or so Asian countries that have confirmed the presense of the virus to really clamp down to stop its spread. I think my best bet is to get to my fairly isolated placement and wait for things to die down. No, die down's not what I mean to say. I'll wait for the hype to fall and the chickens to be dead and the migratory birds to not spread it. Anyone got any ideas?

Leaving Vietnam

Well, it's been a nice ride, but tomorrow I leave Viet Nam for Cambodia. I don't know how much I'm going to be able to update this site from there. Perhaps with the same frequency. But it matters not. I've spent time and money enough in Vietnam, and will just zip through Cambodia with a stop at Angkor Wat and the capital. Probably no more than five days before I get to Thailand.

Thien and I will spend our last day together. I hope to see the art museum, and perhaps a bit of the American War Crimes Museum before going dancing. Miss An, Thien's house guest, is cooking me a going away meal as we speak, so I must be on my way.

Voice Chat--the Future is on MatrixMasters.com!

We just finished what I hope will be the first of many voice chat sessions on www.matrixmasters.com. I was in Vietnam, and my fellow chatters were in various locations throughout the states. My webmaster Lorenzo has configured a unique system that he bought from a failed dotcom-- talkspace (dotNETTER hyperarchy) --a totally secure, totally clear, full-duplex system for talking online. Infinitely configurable, all you have to do is find a room and tell your friends to meet you there for free voice chat with the quality of a phone conversation. It works best with a microphone/headset combination, but you can also use computer speakers and a microphone. It must be heard to be believed! It adds a totally new dimension to the online world.

If you missed today's chat, come back to this website for more messages. I hope this can be a weekly chat from Thailand. Stay tuned as we obliterate the distance between us!

Two Random Saigon Scenes

I. Sitting in the street-side Italian restaurant with Thien, we saw the object of so much adoration pass by in the streets. It had a police escort. Thien thought at first that it had something to with football. He was wrong, but it was on its way to adoring fans. T'was a traditional Vietnamese sticky rice cake wrapped in banana leaves on the back of a big truck. Thousands of people were waiting in some public space in the center of the city vying to break the world's biggest rice cake record. It looked like a giant log on its way to a burling contest.

II. Taking photos on the last night of New Years festivities, just as workers were beginning to dismantle the acres and acres of potted flower displays, a woman, festooned in rags with empty juice cans tied about her knees lurched into the public square, made a pronouncement to the fountain, and jabbed the syringe into her right forearm. As I swung around on a three meter radius to get a better view, she removed the injectable and stuck it in her other arm. As I was just about to move again, stunned at what I was seeing, she pulled the needle out and stuck it directly into her neck, right above her clavicle in that little dip where the windpipe recedes into the chest. Letting out a moan, she threw the needle into the potted flowers and staggered off into the shadows grinning into the crowd. That wasn't how William S. Burroughs described it.

Re Joyce

While perusing the shelves of books at Thien's house, I found a page turner to replace the copy of Finnegans Wake I lost to that scheming Chinaman in Kunming. It's ReJoyce by Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange and many others. Who knew he appreciated the Joycean? I was disappointed that the library formerly known as the "Abraham Lincoln Library" in Saigon does not appreciate such literary compass keys as this now, but at least this random American benefitted.

Tet begins--and so does the Year of the Monkey

This morning my friend Thien dressed up in a white robe and performed the various ceremonies at all the little altars throughout his house, marking the start of the lunar new year. There was the "lucky man" with the flashing christmas lights near the fish tanks in the entrance who got incense, a giant watermelon and a bowl of fruit; the living room Buddhas got dusted off; the kitchen gods were appeased with burnt money; in the family pagoda above the turtle pool, elaborate ceremonies and offerings of food, drink and flower brought the world of the ancestors back to the living--and then we ate the food while his houseguest cried at the falling of a leaf.

This quite Chinese ritual differed somewhat from my experience last year in Thailand, where the Chinese ancestry of my Thai host made the Chinese influence equally strong--though quite Thai as well. We burned money at both ceremonies, but in Thailand we did not stay up late to mark the year, as we'll do tonight with Thien's grandmother and family. Also, the Vietnamese government has banned the use of fireworks, so instead of the rousing 5am bang of firecrackers I got last year to scare off evil spirits, we just got a knock on the door and the sound of 16 dogs barking. It was the police making their new year's call, raising the mandatory single star red flag of the nation at every rooftop.

"What happens if you take down the flag?" I asked Thien.

"The police will come by and bring another one."

I enjoy the sight of so much red. I shudder at enforced nationalism. Then I eat and be merry.

Fucking Nationalism
Saigon, Vietnam

Every now and again, nationalism rears its ugly head. Tonight it was a Frenchman who wandered up to the bar with his compatriates.

"You American? English? Scandanavian?"

"American."

"And your friends are Vietnamese?"

"Yeah."

"No nationalities here." And that was the last I saw of him.

Then there was the silly man who confronted me and my motorbike driver on the way to the Thai consulate. He began a vitriolic shouting at some random intersection. "Go home, white. Go home," he screamed with a wild grimace. The motorbike driver and I had a good laugh about that one.

Sunday Driving
Saigon, Vietnam

Allen Ginsberg once said, "I won't write my poetry until I'm in my right mind."

I try to do the same thing with my prose.

Right now, my mind is in the right place, but my body, no matter how much Vietnamese coffee I drink, is nearing exhaustion. Still, my whirlwind of a past few days is worth committing to print, even if only to serve my own memory.

I am happy with my place in Saigon. My first day here I met an American gentleman drinking coffee in the street. "Welcome to the best coffee shop in Vietnam," he proclaimed. He is working as a financier, and rents a room at a hotel across the street from his coffee shop. It's one of those places people rent for month-long holidays (or eight-month business stints) and I lucked out with a fifth-floor room with balcony. It's slightly above my budget, but the writing vibe hit me there and I've been conjuring saints and demons (Holly Hughes, madness, Terence McKenna, past cult experiences to name a few). I'm not putting off my essays any longer. They must spew. And the center of a bustling part of town is just the place to stop running. Though an occasional break to eat street food, go to a bumping night club or buy lottery tickets from the one-eyed orphan is ok.

I'm also happy with my time here. It's the middle of the traditional Tet Festival, Vietnam's version of the Chinese New Year and the plaza near my hotel is abustlin' with holiday spirit. A walk through the brilliantly lit night squares bring visions of Kumquat trees shaped like mythical Vietnamese animals, fields of flowering trees (some US$400!), dragon fruit (the seed pod of a snaking succulent with green skin, red scales, and white flesh with seeds like a kiwi), and anything and everything else.

The twilight brings out bats and they swarm above steeples.

Today I took a day off from writing. I wanted to visit a Vietnamese temple and meditate with the locals, but my favorite cyclo driver was nowhere to be found. Instead, I just did it in my room and afterward had my daily coffee. One cannot meditate after drinking that stuff! Realizing during my coffe (and Carl Sagan) that the museums were closed on Sunday, I abandoned that plan too. Instead, because I got tipped off to a friendly cafe, went there to see and be seen.

Not long at the cafe, a curious Vietnamese with good English struck up conversation and we fast wanted to know more about one another. I ended up at his house for afternoon tea. He was an avid orchid grower and gardener. One small portion of the yard had a family shrine perched above a turtle pond. He did not have a job, but he did have a 25% share in a bar that was shut down by the police last month "for being too loud." Now he was redecorating to open it again.

From what I could tell, he mostly just had obsessions. He gardened and tinkered. A caretaker/manservant did the rest of the cleaning. Best I could figure out, he was living off the money his family sent him from America, and it was his job to maintain the family estate. His father was dead and his mother lives in California, though his mother was in Saigon taking care of his 102 year old grandmother. His father's mother--106--taught him how to chat on the Internet! (Or so he claimed). But you're probably wondering about his obsessions.

His house was like a pet shop. In addition to the five varieties of turtle in the garden, the entrance was dominated by ten aquariums full of run of the mill fish. But the main thing were the dogs. He had 16 of them! Muts, Chihuahas, pit bull looking beasts, and everything in between. They seemed to have the run of the downstairs and the manservant supplied them with a never-ending bowl of dog food. Six months ago he had thirty dogs, but half of them were killed by some sort of virus, and he showed me the photo album of his departed canines. There were pups in cups, dogs climbing on houseplants, and crowd shots. It was like 101 Dalmations. He even had plaster dogs in his garden.

And why did he have so many dogs? Obsession? Indulgence? He wasn't being a "caninitarian". He said he got them from his friend at the pet shop, so I don't know what the deal was.

This afternoon, I met a friend of a friend, a film director and resident of Saigon who had billowing, slightly unkempt hair and a delightful French accent from his days as a film student in Paris. He showed me around a bit and we drank coffee in the street. I won't share his name or the titles of his movies, because what I'm going to write is somewhat politically sensitive. From what I can tell, he's a little bitter that his work is subject to censorship. He was a man struggling to attain his vision. Until now, the government has prevented him from achieving this.

My new friend has been writing and directing for twenty years and told me he had always wanted to be a film maker. He idolizes Yang
Yimou, the director of "Hero" and "Not One Less," (amongst others) because this man has been able to create controversial films, like his one about the Cultural Revolution that was banned in China. As a government-funded artist, my new friend is unable to pursue his ultimate vision. In time, he hopes things will shift, and he hopes the opening and reform sweeping the Chinese system will do the same in Vietnam. The way I look at it, he's got about five or ten more years, as that's how far "behind" Vietnam's party reforms are. But who's to tell? He could raise money and get his film produced in two years the way things are going. And with a censored film, his fame could reach new heights (though I don't think he wants to risk jail time, what with a family and all).

I wish I could tell you the details of his latest film, but to do so would compromise his identity. I have a diagram of the plot in my notebook and will share it in a freer time. Briefly, I can say the film deals with social issues and creeps toward the kind of vision he longs to actualize.

After coffee, we spent twilight in a sort of Tet-inspired city fair. On exhibit: exotic fish, birds, bonsai, caligraphy, and other art. It's amazing to see how the traditional artform of caligraphy has been applied to Vietnam's latinized quoc ngu script. I never expected to see anything but Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters in broad brush stroke. These exhibits made me want to grow a bonsai and long for my stolen camera.

That's all for now!

~josh(away)

Some First Impressions of Saigon
Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam (the post-unification name of this former southern capitol)

The knowledge that Vietnam is what we used to call a "third world" nation is less contained in here than in China. Everything and everyone in this country sprawls into the street, a massive writhing sea of grime, motorbikes, smells, noise and chaos--and just about anything and everything else. Whereas China's infrastructure is well-established and orchestrated like a giant bland ant hill, Vietnam is just getting started. There aren't many big buildings. Ho Chi Min City goes on and on for kilometers, mostly two or four story buildings punctuated by an occasional (and absolutely stunning) cathedral or park or occasional high-rise. Chinese cities seem to be all high-rise. But then, Vietnam didn't have leaders urging massive birthrates in the 1950s and China did not lose 1 in 7 of its male population in any recent wars. The Vietnamese also have a respect for trees, whereas the Chinese chop them all down (and keep their dogs in rat cages). Vietnamese trees are as colorful as its history.

I like HCM City. It's better streets feel European, though admittedly I've never been to Europe. Travelling around by motorbike is exhilerating. Decent Italian and Indian restaurants break up the monotony of fried rice dishes. And I'm off to get my Cambodian visa after only one day of processing. Then to the Thai consulate to get an extended tourist visa. (Remember, I'm working slightly below the radar in Thailand, so I'm not getting working papers).

"Get Your War" on never ceases to make me laugh (and then want to cry)

FRIGGIN' CHIGGINS (Into the Streets!)Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam

Must I be followed by killer viruses wherever I go? First SARS in China last year. Now that Chicken Virus. Right now the thing is confined to the northern parts of Vietnam and is not spreading from human to humans, but it's already killed fifteen people, or something like that. (The woman at the hotel wouldn't let me read the paper, so I had to sneak peaks). Ah well. For the time being, I just stay away from chickens and be ready to run if the virus mutates.

On a related note, I went to the Yersin Museum in Nha Trang the day before yesterday. Yersin was a Frenchman who was the first European to explore this area. He set up a hospital and vaccination clinic and lived in Nha Trang. He also discovered the mechanism with which that the last great plague spread. This helped lead to a cure. Where is he now? I just keep hearing a voice in my head say, We'll be safe, yes we will. We and the precious* we'll be safe, won't we precious?

*precious=life

Then, last night, in the bus, there was:
The Street, at Night

Everyone, always into the street. Old women squat and stare; children chase one another, and dogs; mothers emerge from caves of kitchens, dinner on hands and apron, telling strapping youth to fetch a needed green from market on motorbike. And for sale: shoes and services, lights blazing flourescent and neon behind pink and orange Buddhas, or forming halos behind Christs, while men have lined motorcycles next to coffee shop holes next to bamboo lumber yards next to sewage moats and makeshift general stores with merchandise stocked in front of shopkeeps peering over mountains of boxes and into the street. Always into the street, the dirty dirty street where the geography books point but never bring alive, what the history books replicate but never truly capture. Where we travel, where we go places. Where tires and animals go to die quick and local women wear scarves over faces to stay young against the sun and elements and doors open into houses and the sky opens to the stars.

Not Enough Exploitation?
Nha Trang, Vietnam

I just finished reading Nicholas Kristof's latest NYTimes op-ed piece "Inviting all Democrats". In this column, he bemoans the fact that most Democratic Presidentail candidates are going against the traditional "pro-trade" history of the party when they call for international trade rules that consider workers' rights, environmental protection, and human rights standards. He argues that employing more people in "sweatshops" for $2/day in places like China, Cambodia and Africa trumps any of these other concerns. Kristof also argues that mandating a certain level of environmental responsibility would send more jobs to places like Mexico, where development is further along, thereby increasing income disparities and breeding instability in less developed nations like the one I'm in now.

After living on and off in the developing world for at least 12 months of my 23 years, I can see where Kristof is coming from, but his arguments are short-sighted. It's important to look at environmental instability as just as pressing a threat as economic instability

Per capita income in Vietnam is about $1/day. And people here work all day, from before sun-up to after sundown. This is not to say all of their jobs are difficult. Most require large amounts of sitting punctuated by frantic bargaining and a flurish of activity. And few jobs are what we would consider "professional." Not even all of them require specialized skills. Certainly construction work is an exception to this--and it is hard work (when the work exists). Jobs like working in a market, selling souvenirs or driving a cyclo (like a pedi-cab) or motorbike are different. Many of these simple jobs needn't be replaced. Almost any economist would disagree with this reasoning, but I use the simple argument that the world--the planet--cannot sustain a universal middle class (or "American") lifestyle. If we begin lifting these people out of poverty by making goods that will wreck their environment, we will have a short-term benefit with long-ranging consequences. The only way we should even consider universal uplift in living standards is if we change the way goods are made by implementing environmental protections and utilizing green energy like solar and wind.

Still, there are cases where Kristof makes a convincing argument. Driving a cyclo is one job that I consider a waste of human potential. The market for motorbike drivers is already flooded--and they pollute. So wouldn't that driver be better off in a factory? I don't know. Monitarily, the motorbike driver's lot would improve, but at what cost to his mental health, and what about the polution created in the process?

Somewhere in the middle is tourism. It's harmful to the environment in some ways, but in others, it enables the preservation of certain environmental treasures and historic areas. Right now the Vietnamese are dependent on tourists as one of their main means of social uplift. Building more factories could make Vietnam a less desirable tourist destination, but would make them less dependent on tourist dollars.

I have always considered myself part of what the mainstream media has wrongly labeled the "anti globalization" movement, the one that first gained attention with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington in 1999. I'm not anti globalization. I'm just an environmentalist. I'm anti-consumerist. I'm against unfettered trade, but I'm not against the blurring of national boundaries.

When I hear economists or investors talk about consumerism "greasing the wheels of the market," I tend to think of soulless mall shoppers and the pollution caused by a million Chinese factories running without pollution standards. When traditionally communal indigenous lands in Chiapas and other parts of southern Mexico get partitioned off and commodified by governments so that transnationals can buy the land for resource exploition, I feel outraged. It's uninventive to say there are no alternatives to the current model of globalization. We are becomming a more unified globe with every passing day, but I do not think we should sacrifice the environment so that Vietnamese workers can make one dollar per day instead of two.

I sent this to the NYTimes. Let's see if I can get a letter to the editor printed. Not likely, but hey, it's worth a shot, right?

Tomorrow I arrive in Ho Chi Min City.

THE TYPICAL VIETNAMESE CONVERSATION
Nha Trang, Vietnam

In Vietnam, the following scenario (with slight variation) happens about every five minutes:

Random: Hello! How are you? Where you from?
Me: (Walking) China.
Random: (Smiling broadly after a moment's pause) I don't think so!
Me: Ok, I'm from America.
Random: (Still walking) Where you go?
Me: Crazy.
Random: You go by moto?

OBSERVATIONS MADE BETWEEN CITIES ON THE EAST COAST OF VIETNAM
Hoi An

Mid-afternoon, the bus driver stopped to buy a new spare tire. We passengers disembarked to piss and stretch.

The villagers were slaughtering a pig across the road on a slightly raised platform above the surrounding rice paddies. The animal's squeals of pain and terror carried more urgency than the trucks' horns as drivers honked at me for crossing the highway for a better look. I urge any of you meat eater to get as close as those villagers were to their next meal, that once-breathing, once-squealing carcas. As the bus rolled on deeper into the misty hills, the butcherers carved out internal organs.

A certain family story goes that my great grandfather once stabbed himself in the hand while slaughtering a pig. I doubt most of you could ever stand within earshop of a pig's death peals and then fry his jowels for your BLTs. If you could, you deserve to enjoy it.

If you still feel like eating meat you haven't killed yourself, here's a nice article by Robyn Landis about what we can learn from "Mad Cows in a World Gone Mad."

love,
~josh(away)

SHOELESS IN THE STREETS OF HUE
Hue, Vietnam

They were playing cards, smacking down their stacks of pairs, threes, fours, straights, and flushes hard against the paving stones. The boys had wads of cash that they carefully removed from under their sandals to place in the kitty.

One called out, "Where you from?"

I told them.

"Here, you sit down," said the oldest boy, 20, giving me his stool. "Soon you know how to play this game. I get you silk paintings. You take a look. My name Cu Ba, like the country near you. What's your name?"

"Oh, no thanks," I began as he dashed off to get his notebook.

When he returned, he started in on the sales pitch. "My uncle paint these," he began as I thumbed through the stack. "I give you good price."

While this was going on, the younger boys, 16 and 14, began to beg me to let them shine my shoes. I looked at my dirtied running shoes. "What shoes?"

"I got no parents, no money, no shoes." I wondered where the sandals were that he was stuffing money under.

"But you were just gambling," I told him. "You have money to play cards."

By this time, they had removed one shoe and I had selected a few paintings from the stack. The older boy convinced me the price he quoted was "very good, very cheap." And, indeed, the boys didn't have any parents.

I reluctantly opened my purse to give the boy what seemed like a good price for the paintings. He displayed the president's picture on the clear section of his wallet.

When I tried to pay the shoeshine boy 10,000Dong for the shine (about 6 times what I paid in China) he said "why you give me such cheap money?" He wouldn't take it. He kept telling me about his dead parents, how he needed to buy shoes and food. I couldn't take it and how the solution he used on my shoes cost 20,000Dong. I couldn't tell fact from fiction and gave the money to the older boy to give to the shoeshiner when he calmed down.

Down the street, with my purchase in hand, I confidently stepped into the Mandarin cafe and asked the owner--an amateur photographer from whom I bought a few prints the night before--if I indeed had paid a good price for those paintings. He laughed at me. I should have paid about a third of what I did. But the difference was only a few dollars. Still, for a moment, I lost my appetite, then ordered a Coke and fries. Ah, comfort food. And now I've regained the stomach for it!

After lunch, I approached the older boy, Cuba--the other boys had run off--and implored him to please buy those kids some food with the money he made off me. "No, I sell you paintings at good price. My uncle's paintings not the same as down the street."

"Whatever," I said. "If you ripped me off, you know it. Take care of those boys."

"Sure, I do that," he said convincingly enough (though he could have easily been lying) and he shook my hand. I don't know what will come of him. His "uncle's" paintings looked the same as the ones down the street.

So now I say farewell to Hue, a place I have felt, despite my fever--or is it because of the fever?--more at home than anywhere else in Vietnam.

~jjw

THE YEAR OF THE FAKE

Read Naomi Klein's story about 2003 as the Year of the Fake in the Nation.

2003 "waged open war on truth and facts and celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey. An action movie star became governor and the government started making its own action movies, casting real soldiers like Jessica Lynch as fake combat heroes and dressing up embedded journalists as fake soldiers. Saddam Hussein even got a part in the big show: He played himself being captured by American troops. This is the fake of the year, if you believe the Sunday Herald in Scotland, as well as several other news agencies, which reported that he was actually captured by a Kurdish special forces unit." read more

CALLING ALL MICHIGANDERS! VOTE IN THE UPCOMING CAUCUS!!!

http://www.mi-democrats.com/

Go there and register to vote for your favorite Democratic contender.

THE PEOPLE I MEET
Hue, Vietnam

It sounds like the title of a Dr. Seuss book, but today it's just the title of my blog post. It's the people I've met.

This woman sat next to me at the French Cafe in Kunming. Her dirty blond hair was in tangles and she wore capri pants. The way she cradled her coffee, she looked like she'd been on a 24 hour sleeper bus without food or water. Then I saw her in Hanoi with the same outfit on. Yesterday I saw her at the travel agent's stand when I was buying a bus ticket. The girl at the ticket booth told me I could get a commission if I convinced the woman to buy, so I spoke to her and told her what I just told you now. She said she was from Holland. She said she flew. Who knew?

Then there was the Bulgarian family I saw at the Water Puppet Theater in Hanoi and again in the Mandarin Cafe in Hue, with mom's curls bleach white, dad's waves a graying scarlet, and all three lanky sons sharing the same gangly limbs and bobbing locks of gold.

There was the gaggle of Europeans who'd ridden their bikes along the silk road from Germany to southern China. I saw them at the border of China and Vietnam. Then I saw them in the post office ripping into a box--their twice-monthly shipment of fresh paperbacks from their friends back home!

The Czech couple told me where to find cheap net access. They laughed as we seperated from our group for lunch on the Cat Ba Island tour because our guest house had a different meal plan for the three of us. They once worked in England, but they'd been on the road a year. They knew the trip would soon end and they felt lucky to have experienced what they did. They knew how to find the good deals on things like pastries and gummy candy. They would probably go back to England. They went on walks together and gave me a postcard of their birthplace, a frigid place even colder than my Michigan mitten.

And the elderly couple in the guesthouse with the cat, the motorbike drivers with their constant calls, the children selling peanuts and fake money, the german playing an unplugged electric guitar and giving me advice about my diarhea, the woman in the market who helped me buy an overpriced hat and was disappointed I wouldn't buy her silk shirts and wore the most exquisite white heels that were covered in the mud of the vegetable stalls where she found me wide eyed and slightly feverish.

And all of you readers too. Well, some of us may not have met, but when we're scattered around the globe, sometimes the net is the only place we can meet.

And Hue, the rains and this stomach bug have kept me from exploring your secrets by bicycle.

until the next post,
~josh(away)

Hey from Hue (An Unhappy Reunification Express with Volunteering Updates)
Hue, Vietnam

Despite having an upset stomach on the train ride from Hanoi to Hue, I'm doing alright. The natives here are friendly, quick to smile and joke, and laid back. I'm staying in a guesthouse run by a seventy-something year old Vietnamese couple. They're adorable.

The train ticket I bought was not actually the "Reunification Express" I hoped I would ride on. Instead, it was 12 hours of pushy vendors, unresponsive cabin mates who looked at me with disdain, and workers who locked the door of the bathroom for no apparent reason. And there was chicken wire over the windows. Oh well. I guess I shoulda been more careful when I bought the ticket.

I shall stay in Hue for at least two nights. Life is easy and cheap here. But now I'm traveling by bus because it's cheaper than train.

And I don't need to be there until later than I hoped, so I can take things easier in my travels. It's a good thing too, because there's a lot to see! But right now I just need to relax and get feeling better.

I hope "home" exists when I come back. The longer I stay away, the more my community exists at the click of my mouse.

love,
~josh(away)

Should the Green Party Run Full-Force in 2004?
The Avacado Declaration Says Yes

"The Green Party is at a crossroads. The 2004 elections place before us a clear and unavoidable choice. On one side, we can continue on the path of political independence, building a party of, by and for the people by running our own campaign for President of the United States. The other choice is the well-trodden path of lesser-evil politics, sacrificing our own voice and independence to support whoever the Democrats nominate in order, we are told, to defeat Bush.

"The difference is not over whether to "defeat Bush" - understanding that to mean the program of corporate globalization and the wars and trampling of the Constitution that come with it - but rather how to do it. We do not believe it is possible to defeat the "greater" evil by supporting a shamefaced version of the same evil. We believe it is precisely by openly and sharply confronting the two major parties that the policies of the corporate interests these parties represent can be set back and defeated.

"Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign exposed a crisis of confidence in the two-party system. His 2.7 million votes marked the first time in modern history that millions voted for a more progressive and independent alternative. Now, after three years of capitulation by the Democratic Party to George Bush they are launching a pre-emptive strike against a 2004 Ralph Nader campaign or any Green Party challenge. Were the Greens right to run in 2000? Should we do the same in 2004? The Avocado Declaration based on an analysis of our two-party duopoly, and its history declares we were right and we must run..."

read more here

"Wonderment"
Hanoi, Vietnam

All the trash cans in Vietnam say "Happiness to Everybody" and "Wonderment," while the chopstick holders say "Work is Glory." Life (well lived) is glory.

"A thousand star hotel" is what our guide (who called himself "Number 7") called our stay in the little boats in Halang Bay the night before last. By the time most of us on the boat hit the sack about 9pm, we were exhausted from the sheer beauty of the place. Rock formations like those in Yangshuo in China (except these came straight out of the calm blue deep, caves with ceilings like merengue, azure waters we dove into from the ceiling of the boat, and a German (Frankie the frankfurter", he called himself) who threw beer cans into the waters of this UNESCO World Heritage site...

Ok, so it wasn't all beautiful, but most of it was worth the $10/day I paid for the whole package. The only disappointment was some of the food, and this will probably make it my last packaged tour. For breakfast on the boat, we expected fresh fruit and a nice spread. Instead we got a piece of bread and a banana, and some hard margarine. We protested, even pointed to the passengers in the other boats enjoying omelettes, but to no avail. The pattern continued with lunch after our 12 kilometer hike, when we got instant noodles and the guide got vegetable stir-fry. "They must think we're stupid," said the Londoner with the Vietnamese wife. But there was nothing we could do.

In all, if I had it over to do again, I would have bargained more. A couple from the Czhech Republic paid $25 apiece for the same package. Oh well. Get scammed and learn. Still, everything was on time. We spent lots of time on boats and had pleasant hotel rooms, except for all the dust and explosions of development. They were everywhere cutting paths through Cat Ba Island's national park, making roads, paving this, I'd hate to have been born in a developing country--even as a dog. Except as a dog on one of the house boats we saw on Cat Ba Bay. The houses were quite ingenious and the fisherpeople there were living the life. Their dwellings were just wooden planks over blue oil barrels and they slept in small shacks. They shat directly into the ocean. And the dogs patrolled those patios like dogs guarding the front yard of any shack anywhere in the world.

But best of all, it was the people. A Dutch neural psychologist, an active-duty Army man from Cali (who hid the fact from everyone but me); a German--"plastic bag boy"--named that because he carried a plastic bag through the forest for 12km; a couple of Koreans; a Welsh, British, and American English teacher working in China; the normal New Zealanders and Israelis; and too many others to remember. I need to replace the journal that was stolen in Kunming. I'm an amateur journalist without a journal!

Next, I'm off to Hue, the former capital of the country during the dynasty right before the French arrived. It's supposed to be quite historic. And thanks to webmaster Lorenzo, I've made contact with a Vietnamese film director who lives in Ho Chi Min City who was working on a movie in the city. We'll see what develops. ;)

Best to you all,
~josh(away)

Cat Ba Island, Vietnam
Two hours east of Hanoi

I decided to get out of the big city for a few days and go to Halong Bay, an area of 1,969 islands. For only ten dollars a day, I've been sleeping on a boat, seeing caves and chatting with folks from around the world. Forgive me for not updating in the last few days. I've been indisposed...and net access is expensive on this island. Sorry that my email has been bouncing messages back. Should be ok now.

I've been meeting the most interesting people. On a trek around the national park here on Cat Ba today, I met an American Vietnam vet, drafted at 20, who has let go of his anger toward the Vietnamese (and the US gov't) and is enjoying the country he fell in love with when he was in the service. He described the tenacity of the fighters, many of whom wrapped wires loosely around their arms in case a limb got blown off. Just twist the wire for an instant turniquet and keep on charging.

I also learned that some people from the Netherlands can speak better "American" than people from the States. They also watch a lot of American TV. I never thought I'd have Simpsons references spit back at me from anyone outside of America.

And another thing about this net connection is that it's slooooooooooooooooooooooow. I'll try to update in Hue, just south of the De-Militarized Zone when I arrive the day after tomorrow.

peace,

~josh(away)

HELLO FROM HANOI
North Central Vietnam

Being in downtown Hanoi is like always being at the center of a swarm of roaring spinning flies. Everyone seems to own a motorbike. And all the buildings are narrow and vaguely French. They extend far into the centers of old blocks. Tourists abound, surprise surprise, and the ladies exchanging money accidentally slip wads of 5000 Dong notes in with the 20,000s to see if you're paying attention. Scam a minute.

I did enjoy my train ride from the border to Hanoi, despite arriving at 5 o'clock this morning and driving around in the taxi like I had a leak in my pocketbook. The calm of the train ride has been replaced with a feeling of disorientation and heat. The Vietnamese are much less curious about foriegners than the Chinese and the people in my train compartment made no effort to communicate with me, despite my asking them if they could speak English, French, Chinese or Spanish. The response was a flat "No!" But people on the street are generally much less afraid to strike up conversation and no one so far has asked if she can be my friend just because I speak English.

Also, the coffee here is like a whirlwind. They grind the beans like espresso powder and use a metal strainer. The effect is strong. I don't know if they add something else to the brew, but two small cupts blew my top off.

And generally, I've found that, with a little bit of discretion, I can trust most of the Vietnamese I meet. The map seller was angry that I didn't buy a map. The man my age who came up to me on my morning park bench and told me he was hungry really did want the soup I bought for him, and little else. The guy at the border was right that the bank wasn't open on Saturday, but he was obviously in cahoots with the money exchange woman. The guys who found me wandering at 6am and took me to their guesthouse really did have a room with hot water, a fan, and a TV for $4/night. But I wasn't about to walk down a dark alley with them. Luckily, morning cabbage markets and the like were bustling and narry a street was deserted when the train barreled in at 5.

And the bread! Mmmm... After only a month of deprivation in China, I appreciated the French influence greatly! I quickly devoured four 15cent loaves before my stomach realized what was going on. Reason for this is the Chinese just don't get it on bread. They're forever adding sugar and pummelled white flour. Candy bread, we used to call it last year in Qingdao.

Now I'm off to see the infamous "Water Puppet Show." Actually, I have no idea what this is, but it only cost $1.50US and Lonely Planet recomended it.

So for any backpackers reading this, a good place to stay in Hanoi is the "Red River Hotel" at 83 Thmoe Bae St. (tel 8250020). It's a bit further north of Hoan Kiem Lake than most hotels, but the rates are nice. I got a double with a posted price $6US for $4. Maybe this is the off-season, but it doesn't feel like it. "Red River" also has some of the cheapest package tours in town. I've checked. Nice people too.

Good morning Western Hemisphere! (From the bustle of night in urban Vietnam)
~josh(away)

FISHING FOR CIGARETTES
Lao Cai, Northwest Vietnam

smells: exhaust, fried rice
temperature: pleasant
weather: overcast
tastes: mentos, fried eggs and noodles, coca-cola, and plaque (plack? oh spelling...)
feeling: stickiness (as in contacts stuck to my eyes from sleeping with them in the smelly, exhaust belching, spit covered bus from Kunming to HeKou)
main object of amusement in this town: the "dream world" cigarette machine. Imagine a Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Garfield covered "claw machine" that has been wheeled onto the sidewalk and filled with tobacco products instead of stuffed animals.
travel companions: a young japanese couple with limited English and a decent phrase book.
time till train departure to Hanoi: 8 hours
main source of my own amusement: Margaret Atwood

MAP OF TRAVELS IN DECEMBER 2003

Rough photoshoped map of travels in December 2003: Detroit to San Francisco to Shanghai to Qingdao to Shanghai by plane. Shanghai to Guilin to Kunming by train (with a few stops here and there, oh train travel's the best). Travels by bus from Kunming to Yuxi to Hehou on the Vietnamese border.

SAWING LOGS
Kunming, Yunnan Province
PRC
Jim Secreto's Apartment
The last week of December 2003

I promised you pictures of my carpentry project. If you'll recall, Jim hacd a bed that would not fit through the door of his spare bedroom. The only way we could get it in (besides taking out the wall) was to saw it in half. Unlike most things in China, this bed was extremely well made and the builder used almost no nails. All the planks were fitted together and glued! Enjoy this series of pics! ~josh
1. the bed in two pieces
2. close up of sawed bed
3. Jim holding a piece of the bed aloft in disbelief
4. Josh holding a piece of the bed aloft in false triumph
5. Jim....huh? What have we done?
6. Josh saying "enough with the bed"
7. The bed, back together...mostly
8. The landlord won't know the difference.