From dan at rohtbart.com  Fri Jul  1 13:39:27 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Fri Jul  1 13:39:30 2005
Subject: [Travel] test 4
Message-ID: <9128.64.119.130.94.1120239567.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

test 4 body
From dan at rohtbart.com  Fri Jul  1 13:46:46 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Fri Jul  1 13:46:47 2005
Subject: [Travel] Test 5
Message-ID: <14394.64.119.130.94.1120240006.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

t 5 body
From dan at rohtbart.com  Fri Jul  1 13:49:49 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Fri Jul  1 13:49:51 2005
Subject: [Travel] test 6
Message-ID: <5242.64.119.130.94.1120240189.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

t6
From dan at rohtbart.com  Thu Jul  7 19:47:39 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Thu Jul  7 19:47:40 2005
Subject: [Travel] Win some, lose some
Message-ID: <64835.203.117.181.40.1120780059.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

I feel much closer to Aparna, Miki, and everyone else who visits their
parents via these long flights. My flight from Frankfurt to Singapore
passed over Delhi, and boy are my arms tired.

Singapore airport is exactly like every American airport, down to the
pop-hop playing from music stores (Nelly's "Hot in Herre") except there is
free Internet access. Thus this email.

Things I thought I'd miss: lox and ice cream. Both served on my flights. Wow.

Things I know I'll miss: my friends. Emails are encouraged and very very
welcome!

First flight: my free ticket put me in the middle of 50 kids from
Connecticut heading to Germany on an exchange program. Germany can keep
them! Constant chatting throughout the red-eye. At one point, some kids
started chanting "Toga, toga, toga!" and I gave the leader the evil eye
until he silenced.

Second flight: peace and quiet the entire 12 hours. Even the babies didn't
cry.

So this wasn't so funny, but it's an easy way to let you all know that I'm
in Singapore (since I won't necessarily get to write from Bangkok).

All the best,
Dan
From dan at rohtbart.com  Sat Jul  9 06:39:09 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Sat Jul  9 06:56:47 2005
Subject: [Travel] Muay Thai muy bueno
Message-ID: <30018.203.150.210.215.1120905549.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Hello from Bangkok!

Over here, a few people ahave expressed sympathy to me for London
bombings. They've also been oblivious to the difference between the United
States and Britain. But onto the fun.

Last night, I sat ringside at the Muay Thai (kickboxing) matches. First
row. All hail the mighty exchange rate. I was looknig forward to hearing
the chatter from the corner. But I'm dumb...they're all speaking Thai!
Each fighter's friends/team had a small corral right next to me where they
could cheer from the good seats. I saw the Thai Jaime Carrillo, but didn't
get my camera out in time.

There were 11 fights on the card, 2 Western boxing exhibitions and 9 Muay
Thai. Two knockouts in Muay Thai, both spectacular knee-crumpling hits.
The first resulted in the winner celebrating, as expected. But the other
match ended differently. As the loser crumpled, the winner had a look of
horror on his face, and immediately came around to check on his opponent.
He helped his opponent to his feet, and took him from the ring with care.

Thailand has been an overwhelming experience. All my senses are in
overdrive. The heat, the smells, the sounds, the amazing sights. When this
afternoon's monsoon rains were approacching, I was visiting the Grand
Palace and shrine of the emerald Buddha. Bells with large clappers were
hung from the awnings of the shrine. In a light wind, they were silent.
But in the monsoon, they rang over and again. As the rain came beating
down, I stepped into the shrine. Breathtaking.

Bangkok has provided a few laughs. My driver from the airport was showing
me sights, this Buddhist temple, that king's temple, then he points to the
right and says that it's the American temple. It was a McDonalds.

For what it's worth, short Thai words look similar to Hebrew. Which makes
it even more odd that the Bangkok Chabad house is right across from my
hotel. And an Israeli restaurant. Down the street was a schwarma stand
operated by a Thai lady.

Thai massage, invigorating and stretching, could be the next big thing for
athletes with the right marketing. You stay dressed, and that gives the
masseuse some more liberties. Jake could grab a leg, throw it over his
shoulder, and pull to stretch my knee, without any concern for my modesty.
Lots of slapping, pulling, popping and tugging. The massage is very
demanding on the masseuse, as he was leaning with his elbows and knees. We
chatted as he worked, and I talked about my Muay Thai experience. He
pointed to his leg, which was holding my arm in some Figure-4 wrestling
move, and said "Muay Thai? Muay Thai." Muay is the Thai word for leg.

Off to meet my group. Thanks for the great responses, and yes, I'm taking
care of myself. I've learned a new word: tout. A tout is a low-grade scam
artist, atempting to divert you from what you want (walking to the Grand
Palace) in order to take you to alternative attactions, so you'll buy
something there. In other words, he's an internet advertisement. One tout
tried to convince me that the Grand Palace was closed for a Buddhist
holiday. When I kept walking, he told me that only Thais were allowed in.
When I said I'd take ictures of the outside, he told me that the place was
surrounded by police and army. But he knew of a wonderful shrine, open
only once a year, that was open a few blocks away. Free of charge. No
thanks buddy, I'll take my chance with the temple. Which was open. But
then I had to pay 5 Bhat to pee. Some touts you can't avoid.

Dan



From dan at rohtbart.com  Mon Jul 11 12:35:49 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Mon Jul 11 12:36:05 2005
Subject: [Travel] Elephants love bananas and sugar cane. Film in August. 
Message-ID: <3214.203.172.51.30.1121099749.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Greetings from Chiang Mai!

So far, I've lost a bottle of Purel and my 'Oakey' sunglasses. I've also
been swindled three times for a total of $2. Life is very good here. We
took the overnight train from Bangkok last night, and I've had a very
active day including elephants and riverboats, so pardon me if I ramble a
bit.

So the group assembled Saturday night, I think, well it was some night.
Call it Day 1. That's all we call it. Twelve travelers, 4 men and 8 women.
Our leader, Nick, posted some authoritative yet friendly signs and met us
in the lobby, where we learned that Nick is a wee British lass.
Five-three. Perky at all hours. A good influence on me, as I'm not
terribly good in the mornings. Former roommates and bosses are getting
this email and simultaneously rolling their eyes at my antics.

Jet lag has been good to me, as I no longer care what time it is.
Everything is relative. Last night, on the train from Bangkok to Chiang
Mai, I got tired and went to sleep. I think it was 10 pm. I woke up
completely refreshed to hear Marcus (male, British, 23, normal) holding
court with some ladies. I popped up for some breakfast conversation only
to find that it was 1 am. Sleep is a scarce commodity, I returned to my
bunk.

This was my third bunkbed experience in the last two weeks. The train gets
the silver medal. I didn't have Batman sheets (Wayne's house), but neither
did I smack my head into the ceiling (cousin's house). Sleep would have
been easier if they turned off the flourescent lights in the car, but it's
my fault for losing my blindfold (which I found after we got off the
train, so it did not make the list).

You'll hear more about the cast of characters as time goes by. No need to
memorize them now, but in short:
Nick (female, British, tourguide, perky)
Marcus (still normal)
Sam (male, Kiwi, 30's, frighteningly intense and slightly bonkers)
David (male, Canadian, 40's, art teacher, solitary, normal)
Ginny and Jo (British, 30, inseperable, insufferable)

This is getting boring. I'll get to the other six women in time. Betsy,
you have nothing to worry about. People on this trip have great
personalities. In the Reality TV sort of way. At the least, these first
few days have shown me just how hyper-sensitive Americans are to criticism
and stereotyping. I've felt PC urges myself, but I generally don't give a
shit, so the urges pass. Mostly, citizens of former UK colonies needle
each other in predictable patterns. When it's my turn to be teased, I take
it well. But I don't dish it well at all. Years of softening my humor have
left me with few barbs. We'll see how long that lasts.

I've also learned that the Brits among us are far better at insults than
anyone else. The Aussies are second, though clearly derivative. I've
picked up a few britishisms, and I'm sure I'll be quite annoying when I
get home. More annoying, that is.

I'm proud to announce that we're three hours into The Great Food
Experiment, where I ate pork-on-a-stick and an beverage with ice at the
same meal. So far so good. Nick is very clear that we should feel free to
experiment, and that the guide books are very conservative about salad and
ice when they don't need to be. But she also said that she won't hold back
you hair or carry your bags if you're wrecked. So I started my trip with
simple fare, like chicken satay and banana fritters cooked in front of me.
Today was crispy pork, crackling pork rinds, fried doughnuts with egg
yolks in the middle, and a Lipitor. The bus driver tried to explain that
there's no cholesterol in crackling pork rinds, right after he took us,
unrequested, to the second market of the day.

And the swindles. Most people here have been wonderful, both kind and
patient, as I struggle with the pronunciation of "Hello" and "Thank you."
(now that I can almost say both, we are headed to Laos, where the s is
silent. Help!) However, scams abound. I've only been overcharged or
double-charged. It's $2. I can live. And they need the money more than I
do. Especially the ten year old boy who got me to buy a 25-cent piece of
candy by thumb wrestling me. He tapped me on one shoulder, then walked to
the other. Teased me. Pointed at my shirt, then flicked my nose. Teased
me. He was as slick as the older kid on the playground on your first day
of elementary school, but he was a third my size! During the (brief)
thumbwrestle, he cried that I was beating him up, and taunted me for not
being able to beat a ten year old. He has his patter down, and he was very
successful as he walked around our area. Nick warned us that kids like
that are more prevalent at popular sites, like Angkor Wat, where they are
under-educated but not stupid. They can patter and hustle in 5 languages.
There's great potential out there, if it can just be tapped. Hopefully
this kid can tap his.

Finally, an odd moment of international relations. Looking for comfort
food in the train station after a particularly difficult incident with a
bathroom tollbooth, I stopped at Dairy Queen. Yes, the Sage of Omaha
reaches here. No, I didn't go to the Dunkin Donuts next door (sorry to my
readers from Allied Domecq). Waiting for my Blizzard, the family in front
of me is puttering along in an accent I don't recognize. The father hears
me order and asks if I'm British. Really? No, American. He introduces
himself as Persian, then starts to explain that he's Iranian. Death to
America much? So I'm ready to get out of line when he starts telling me
that he is glad for what George Bush did in Iraq. No shit, I think, as GWB
just weakened your two most powerful neighbors and adversaries. Then he
says -- I'm not kidding -- that he hopes Iran is next. He hates the
mullahs (that word took three repetitions for me to believe him) and
believes that all the elections are rigged, and supports getting rid of
the theocracy by any means. Check, please! I didn't dig in on the Death to
America crowds, but stepped away from the conversation with an odd
feeling. Does he have a different perception of the state of Iraq? Or is
his life so terrible that he'd take it? And if that's the case, what's he
doing in the Bangkok train station with his family, heading to Phuket?

So that can't be finally. Far too serious. So I'll leave you with an
image. My fellow travlers and I set out for some liquid refreshment after
our encounter with the ten year old con candy salesman. After numerous
vodka tonics and a lengthy relationship with a one-gallon pitcher of
Heineken, we set out for food. Next to McDonalds -- Ronald has
pronouncedly round eyes here, very eerie -- we found a 24-hour restaurant,
catering to drunken Western travelers and local teenyboppers. And I found
snake-head fish on the menu. Remember that controversy a few years back,
how a snakehead fish was found in the Chesapeake, and how it would eat all
the other fish and kill the ecosystem? I did. So at 3 am on my second
night in Bangkok, I'm in a a diner with three people I just met, who I'm
about to spend a month with, eating an entire snake-head fish fried in
very spicy batter (memo: Northern Style means Burn Your Face Off) and
washing it down with a milkshake. Yes, there's more ice cream here than
you can shake a stick at!

All the best,
Dan

p.s. Off to Chiang Khong (home of the 650 lb catfish, which I will eat or
get swindled trying to eat) and then two days on the Mekong River. I
probably won't write again until my second day in Luang Prabang. What's
that date? I don't know. Hit http://www.intrepidtravel.com/VSV and count
it out. Day 1 was a Saturday.



From dan at rohtbart.com  Tue Jul 12 10:04:48 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Tue Jul 12 10:04:51 2005
Subject: [Travel] On Hospitality
Message-ID: <3578.203.156.135.18.1121177088.squirrel@webmail2.pair.com>

Hello from Chiang Khong, home of the 650 pound catfish!

After a few drinks, I wander into an internet cafe. Nature calls, and I
ask for the bathroom. In the back is the owner's home. Pictures of family,
a couch, a teakwood carved dog. And his own bathroom. Amazing. I've never
seen hospitality like this. It was also my first full encounter with a
country-style toilet, if you know what I mean.

(You don't? A country-style, or squat, toilet is a toilet bowl embedded in
the ground, with no seat, but some porcelain footrests on each side. You
drop your pants and
- hope that you don't dip the pants in the toilet
- pray that your cheapo sandals have enough grip to keep you from slipping
and landing in the bowl
- wish that your knees had a few less miles on them

To a man, pissing in a hole is quite natural. My full experience tonight
was much more difficult. Conversely, my female tourguide remarked that she
prefers squatting over a country-style toilet to squatting over a Western
toilet.)

Today was a transit day, where I slept in a van while we drove across some
remarkable terrain. Northern Thailand has many of these abrupt hills,
rocketing up from the valley floors, and covered in jungle scrub. The
hills and mountains are amazing.

We also saw the Hilltribe museum, which left me with a mixed feeling. Do
these folks want to be left alone? Do they want our development efforts?
How can we coexist with people from a different time? They want to sell
opium as a cash crop, so why are their existing crops insufficient? Are
they looking to buy to the subsistence level? Or are they looking to
alleviate the difficulty of their lifestyle? That 'museum' would have had
no answers...I saw plenty of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and others
pointed out more. It's a nice idea with a good heart. But lunch was
better.

Stop thinking I'm such a bastard! Lunch was at the Condoms & Cabbages
restaurant, where the proceeds benefit family planning in Northern
Thailand. Their goal is to make condoms as easily available as cabbages.

Chiang Khong is a tiny village with a great view. The Mekong river winds
into the distance in both directions, and our teak guest house is a
gorgeous vista. I've only bothered with two panorama shots, and this was
the second. The first, from the Wat at Chiang Mai, is a famous panorama
that goes on forever. I couldn't have done it justice, but I needed to
capture the experience. Then I watched monks chanting.

This trip has been amazing so far. Thailand can't just be seen in
photographs: it must be experienced. So as I bumble my way through, I'm
taking a bit of video with my digital camera. If we're all lucky, there's
a decent movie in there.

I was going to introduce you to more of the passengers, but Marcus is
sitting at the next computer over, so that'll have to wait.

Until soon,
Dan
From dan at rohtbart.com  Sat Jul 16 05:32:11 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Sat Jul 16 05:32:14 2005
Subject: [Travel] A million doesn't go as far as it used to
Message-ID: <62565.202.136.241.101.1121506331.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Greetings from Luang Prabang!

I apologize in advance for the awful use of local currency in this email,
but you can all do the math. $1 = 40 Baht = 10,000 Kip. Also, this
keyboard is terrible, but what do you expect for internet at 100 Kip per
minute?

We left Chiang Khong by slow boat, and spent two days on the Mekong river.
Smells are the dominant sense. The river is full of silt, and runs brown.
The fragrance is a quarter of the smell of a farm. Rich earth, animals,
waste. The hills loom high around us, and the mountains beyond that.
Everything is lush and green. Square patches of slash-and-burn farm
abound, each with its own farmhouse, and square patches of scrub brush
show where farmers were years ago.

For our one night stop, we landed at Pak Beng. Here, I realized that we
are in sync with some travelers we met in Chiang Khong. Marcus (23, UK,
normal, remember?) and I were having dinner and drinks at a restaurant run
by a Finnish man and a Thai woman in Chiang Khong when we met David, Eva,
and Simone. David is Swiss, and the two girls are Austrian. Hell of a lot
of fun. Chiang Khong works on an interesting system: slowness. People
order dinner for a particular time, then return to eat. They had ordered
dinner for 9 pm, so they went back, and we got a bunch of our friends from
our guesthouse, wandering the streets with an open beer in my hand. Chiang
Khong has no closing time. The Finn served us until we were fallnig over.
At 3 am we staggered back (no beers in hand) and settled down for our 7 am
wakeup call.

The guesthouse in Chiang Khong had a modest facade at entry, but the
inside was beautiful, all teak wood. The floors wee strong and broad, and
lacquered to a shine. The walls were stanied beautifully. The guesthouse
in Pak Beng was the opposite. Two-story colums and a secnod-story porch
reminiscent of a Southern US plantation. Inside, the shower sprinkled
lightly (I was happy when the hose fell out of the nozzle: I simply hosed
myself down). There is only electricity from 6pm - 10pm, and I was in bed
as the fan shut off and the mosquitoes came in. We lit up a coil and took
our malaria drugs.

There's an Australian woman on the international phone here, tellnig her
parents where to put her mail. This is not the dumbest conversation I've
overheard. That was Gemma: "Hi mum...[shrieking: Oh my baby!]...I'm having
a great time...no I'm in Laos...yes, I was expecting to go to Laos...Yes,
I told you...I don't care if you don't remember...Yes, Laos is a
country...Mum, this call is very expensive...OK, just tell dad I send my
love."

Luang Prabang is a wonderful town. It's a traveler's crossroads, with a
well-known backpacker's bar. People come in from Vietnam, Bangkok,
Northern Thailand, Cambodia, all with stories to tell. We're spending
three days here so we can see most of what's here. I could stay another
two days. This is my favorite town so far, and if I were alone (and
traveling without end date) this is the first town where I'd consider
taking a waiter job.

The night market here is amazing. It's full of textiles from local tribes.
The patterns and colors are beautiful, and many peoples' gifts are coming
from here. Unlike Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the market is approachable and
the people friendly. When you buy something, the woman will wait until you
have left, then touch everything in her stall with your Kip, saying "lucky
lucky" in her language. If there's someone behind you in line, she'll do
it in English.

When I changed money yesterday, I counted it and inspected it. Laos is
paranoid about counterfeit, and money changers will not accept damaged
money  for exchange. So I rifled through $100 worth of Kip and exchanged
bills which were drawn on or damaged. Some replacements were more damaged.
The guy behind the counter did this in good humor, and at the end, he gave
me a 500 kip note. So of course, I thanked him and said "lucky lucky."

Back to my tour group.
Gemma (22, UK, never traveled) is nice and alittle overmatched here. She's
doing well, but she's fraying a bit. Heck, I am too.
Pom (20-something, UK, Sikh) is also a bit young.
Ginny and Jo are not as bad as I thought. They started socializing and are
great fun. Ginny's sister has already traveled these regions this summer,
and is feeding us tips.
Butterfly (30, Canadian, mysterious) is a friendly BFA student in Halifax.
She's had a checkered past and is a continuous revelation to talk to.
She's been a reflexologist, and specializes in textiles. The night market
in Luang Prabang is her paradise.
Nic (34, Kiwi, funny) works on a yacht with her boyfriend. He's off at a
piloting class, so she's off having fun. She says wonderful things like
"yeah Yeah YEAH!" and apologizes for Sam a lot.
Susan (26, US, LA reality TV producer) is fun to have around in a group,
but has a persistent pout. That'll get old soon. She's single, and we want
to get her some action. Gemma is also single, but we don't have that level
of interest in helping her.
Naomi (mid-thirties, Aussie, married) has ben traveling for 18 months. Her
husband is currently on a motorcycle ride across Asia with his mates, and
she wanted something a little social during her 3 months alone. She's an
absolute blast. Combination den mother and overgrown child, she's very
flirty and very safe to flirt with. Wayne, you'd love her.

That's everyone. Including David and the Austrian chicks, who will likely
fall off our pace tomorrow when we fly to Vientiane. I told Marcus we'll
need to find a few more like them. We're very lucky on this tour, pretty
much eleven for twelve, and Sam is a good guy when he's in a comfortable
situation.

Natural affinities abound. Even among twelve people there's almost a high
school hierarchy. After the first few days, this trip changed from an
independent adventure to a very social one. The advantages are obvious,
but the disadvantages are insidious. We move much slower, and each person
sees less of what they want to see. We defer to the group when we should
be independent. On the other hand, it's not that hard to convince a
handful of people to get a two hour massage for 60,000 kip. After that,
four of us went to a delicious restaurant and racked up a 1,050,000 kip
bill. I was so proud. That's going in the scrapbook.

Lao food is distinct from Thai food. In the cities, there's a French
influence (sidenote: Thailand was never conquered by a European power, so
they have less Euro influence in their food. They also have a strong
nationalism and a strong currency. Baht are essential. In Laos, I could
get by with a fistful of singles. But I don't have singles, so I changed
1000 Baht at the border, and got 260,000 kip (I did the math for you
because I love you) in 5000 kip notes. Seriously. Can a brother get a 20?
My first three days (yes, $25 lasted 3 days) I walked around with a pimp
roll of 50 bills, paying for little items). The French influence is in the
food, the architecture, the government. Signs are in Lao and French,
allowing me to make an ass out of myself with my eighth-grade french
skills. Sorry Mom and Dad, but French since nursery school doesn't have
staying power when I don't practice for 14 years. On the other hand, I can
say three things in Lao: Hello *sabaidee*, thank you (very much) *kop jai
(lai lai)*, and see you later *pop gan mai*.

Today I decided to walk around Luang Prabang alone. I was a bit
disappointed that I didn't see much of Chiang Mai because I chose to go
play with elephants. Tough call. I think I did well. But when half the
tour wanted to go whitewater rafting today, I opted out so I could see the
city. I wandered through the old city, sweating and taking fun pictures.
The architecture is beautiful, and the juxtapositions striking. UNESCO
designated this scity a World Heritage site recently, so there is money
for rebuilding key building s from different eras. Consequently, you see a
colonial French villa-turned guest house next to a corrugated tin shack
with a satellite dish next to the best small monastery I've seen yet.

After having a bowl of noodle soup from a woman who looked like my mom
(same hair color, same posture, same haircut, same shoulders, but Lao) I
walked a path where the Mekong river meets the other major river in town.
Heart of the old city, and few people come this far...it's a three-block
wide peninsula, and there are better ways of getting where you want to go.
The path took me past a monastery where the novices were goofing off. A
monk was sitting outside the wall of the monastery, underneath them,
talking to a friend. Seven or eight novices were hangnig on the wall as I
walked by, so I smiled, yelled out "Sabaidee!" and waved. They smiled and
waved back, each yelling "Sabaidee" and one boy asked "How are you?" I was
amazed. I said "Good. Kop Jai. How are you?" There's a long pause, as the
boys confer with each other, and the boy tentatively yells back "Good." I
smile and cheer, "That's right!" and the boys smile and cheer too. I yell
"Pop gan mai" with a smile and a wave, and they cheer me on my way. As I'm
walking away, I hear the monk teach them "Have a nice day."

I hope all is well with you. This trip is incredibly fun, and there are
many stories I don't have time to tell now. But at 100 kip per minute, I
get shelter from the sun and a fan on my back.

All the best,
Dan



From dan at rohtbart.com  Mon Jul 18 03:58:02 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Mon Jul 18 03:58:04 2005
Subject: [Travel] Laos is grrrreat!
Message-ID: <3729.202.62.97.11.1121673482.squirrel@webmail4.pair.com>

Greetings from Vientiane, capital of Laos!

A quick email...how could I forget the best part of my big day at the
waterfall? We got to see Phet, the rescued tiger. She's beautiful. A few
of us pooled money for some buffalo meat for her. I figured it just a
donation. Instead, Nick handed me a bunch of buffalo meat and said to feed
her from the highest point in the cage. Yes, I fed a tiger by hand. Yes,
there are pictures. Yes, I still have all ten fingers. And never one to
miss an opportunity, with one feeding, I brought my hand down, out of the
cage, then patted her paw which was resting on the cage. Big, huge paw,
with claws curling over the bar. Phet was absolutely beautiful.

Many more stories, of course, but I need to find some people and go see
the Vertical Runway. It's a Lao monument to war heroes, and it got the
nickname because it was built with some concrete donated by Americans
*concrete which was supposed to rebuild the airport after the war*.

Onwards. I'll be on the road tomorrow, with a homestay in a small town,
followed by a quick stop in Ninh Binh, Vietnam. A few solid days of
driving, where I expect the highlight will be playing cards. So it'll be a
while before anything funny happens. Have a good week, and I'll probably
write you from Hanoi (check http://intrepidtravel.com/vsv for my schedule.
Day 1 was Saturday July 9)

All the best,
Dan
From dan at rohtbart.com  Wed Jul 20 09:21:10 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Wed Jul 20 09:21:13 2005
Subject: [Travel] Tree Hugger, or Mr. T to my friends
Message-ID: <1369.221.132.43.1.1121865670.squirrel@webmail4.pair.com>

Greetings from Ninh Binh!

I'm fine. I'm not hurt. It's only a scar. Turns out I was a bit mistaken
about Vientiane being boring. After signing off last time, I went to the
local Hash House Harriers hash. If you don't know what this is, google
Hash House Harriers. Their tagline is "A drinking club with a running
problem," which we adopted for the Grizzlies: "a drinking team with an ice
hockey problem." To be honest, I didn't know how much running to expect,
but I assumed that I could bow out if (when) I ran out of gas.

Most of you have heard my Urban Challenge stories...limping up hills,
sprinting through traffic, celebrating with gusto. The Vientiane Hash
House Harriers put those experiences to shame! First I had to find them.
They placed an ad in the local English language paper, pointing to a
bakery where they post their starting point weekly. I found the bakery
still hungover, haggling with songthaew drivers (songthaews are taxis made
from open-bed pickup trucks) for a ride, and finally walking over new
blacktop that glistened in the heat, unable to dry. That pointed me to a
bar near where I started. Time to walk.

Why walk? Maybe I mentioned this before (did I talk about my laundry?) but
the Lao are terrible with directions. There are fewer roadsigns than
Boston, and the street names change more frequently. At the bakery, I got
a map and a lot of water. I walked up Vientiane's Champs Elysees and past
its Arc De Triomphe, getting to the bar in time for a glass of water.

The hashers were quite welcoming. The first man to introduce himself,
Chris, goes by the race name of Numbnuts. Everyone had a race name, most
profane. Virgins (I was a virgin) don't name themselves. Running reception
was a mother and daughter (50-ish and 20-ish) and the father was getting
stretched out. The crew was a mix of expats and local Lao. A few people
brought their dogs. I was the only interloper this week. Lee (Pommy Fag)
and Chris took care of me as we ran.

The run (not a race: that's a punishable offence) started easily, as I
stuck with Chris. He's in his late forties and a heavy smoker, but more
importantly, he set the course. A Hash course is a meandering path through
complex environments. Saturday hashes are in the jungle. Monday hashes are
in town. In Vientiane, "in town" is a relative term. Within the first two
kilometers, we had run through underbrush, vacant lots, and impoverished
neighborhoods. I had already dunked my left shoe into rich green mud, all
the way to my ankle.

The difficulty in the has course is its unpredictability. Before 10 am
that morning, Chris walked the route, drawing dots every 50 meters on the
ground in white builders chalk. Yes, we were in a communist, totalitarian
city. Yes, he had to stop. When they caught him six kilometers into the
route, he drew an arrow which said "this way home." The dots lead to open
circles. At a circle, paths lead in many directions. Dot, dot, X. Bad
path. Backtrack the 150 meters. One path will run dot, dot, dot. That's
the real path. The leader yells "On on!" and the race continues. By
standing next to Chris, I never took a false path. About half the 30
runners explored paths, the rest used my plan.

Every 2-3 kilometers, the open circle has an H in the middle. At this
point, all halt. The run regroups, and there is a path home. So the hash
has a Short, Medium, and Long run. Half the folks, all the children and
puppies head back after the short run. I expected to run the short run.
But I was standing there, muddy shoe, sweating, but just finished warming
up. I decided to press on. The medium run took us along a rice paddy and
back into the poorest urban neighborhoods I've seen. One-room huts,
stacked up against each other, with dogs wandering through. Unpaved roads,
refuse on what passed for streets. Children and adults alike watching us
with wonder, often smiling, sometimes pointing and laughing at us. Chris
reminds me that this is a part of Nientiane I'd never see, tour group or
not. Backpackers would have no reason to go back there and race along
canals and paddies...all within the city limits. Heck, within two miles of
their Arc De Triomphe.

At the end of the medium run, I was ready to go back and drink. Both shoes
are covered in mud, and it's all over my legs. My hands are mysteriously
black. Chris shrugged his shoulders and announced "Medium runners, I have
no idea how to get you back to the bar. Follow us, and you can grab a
songthaew from the main road." Great. On on! And I huff and puff through
the next kilometer, we come across another paddy. The ground dips sharply
as we come to an irrigation runoff, just three feet wide. The ten of us
line up single-file and jump it in turn. I'm next to last (a man,
Knackered, with a dog is behind me). The man in front of me jumps, and as
he stands, he stumbles. People laugh. I'm too focused on how he took off
and landed...my legs are out of gas and I don't want to get soaked again.
I spring with both feet and land, then pop up and CLANG. I stagger back as
the world gets wobbly. I catch myself before stepping back into the water.
Regrouping, my head hurts and my hat is down over my eyes. My sunglasses
are crumpled under the hat. I roll my neck to each side, realize that I'm
alright, and almost bang right back into the tree that knocked me over.
Knackered comes right over to ask whether I'm alright, then recoils a bit
when he sees the cuts on my nose. Chris comes back to check on me, and
asks whether I can finish the race. I buck up and keep running. I've taken
hits that bad in hockey, but I could always skip a shift when I needed to.
Here, I had to get myself back...at least to a road with a songthaew.

After a few minutes, I'm back to a reasonable pace, and my nose only hurts
when I press on it. No break. We weave through more lots, and back to the
"this way home" dot. Chris walks the last ten minutes with me, as we
discuss his hashing experiences. My main question was whether he's run
into UXO (unexploded ordinance, bombs dropped from airplanes which did not
detonate but which remain live to this day) on the jungle hashes. In ten
years, he hasn't. The hashes run along well-worn trails. On top of that,
the locals work to have UXO defused, so they can strip the machine for
spare parts and sell the metal and wiring as scrap. On the other hand, as
a mine worker throughout Laos, he's seen UXO dug up repeatedly. His
company has a staff which scours the area for UXO before the construction
team goes in. He's in construction, and has watched the scouring team miss
items....large Caterpillar trucks end up roto-tilling the bombs underneath
them. He still hasn't seen one explode. UXO are not landmines.

Returning to the bar, Chris cleaned up my nose witht he first-aid kit.
Four of my friends had arrived, as well. They meant to take pictures as I
left, but the songthaew driver got lost. As the hashers circled up for the
ritual drinking and hazing, they insisted that my friends join them. I
learned, by necessity, how to chug beer. Thanks to my accident, they
serenaded me while I chugged:
Here's to the tree hugger, he's true blue.
He's a hasher through and through.
He's a bastard, so they say.
Tried to get to heaven but he went the other way.
Drink it down, down, down, down, down.

Pictures to come. Same with more stories. I hope everyone is doing great.

All the best,
Dan

From dan at rohtbart.com  Mon Jul 25 12:36:07 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Mon Jul 25 12:37:15 2005
Subject: [Travel] Babies without motorcycle helmets
Message-ID: <1851.203.210.245.81.1122309367.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com>

Greetings from Hue, the Seattle of Vietnam!

Hue (Pronounced "who WAY". I can't figure out how to put an accent on the
e...and my former employers put great emphasis on international software
:} ) gets nearly constant rain from July to December. The skies have
taught me new words for grey, as they range from wispy off-white to
rumbling charcoal. The monsoons have been much more reasonable here,
though, than they were in Hanoi.

It's been a bit since I wrote, not through any lack of excitement.
Hopefully I can encapsulate a few little moments, which show off the
overwhelming level of chaos.

Laos gave me wonderful moments. I shared a laugh with novice Buddhist
monks, and floated down the Mekong river. The locals in Luang Prabang
welcomed me gently with smiles and bows. Even Vientiane, slightly
bustling, gave me some expat humor with the Hash House run.

Vietnam, on the other hand, provides a stark contrast. Crossing the
border, I waited 40 minutes for my passport to be processed. So I sat down
near the ubiquitous snack counter and pulled out my journal. The girl (age
somewhere between 16 and 27) working the snack counter turned around and
pointed at my journal.
Me: "Xin Chao" (hello)
Her: "Xin Chao" and points to my journal
Me: "Do you read English?"
Her: Quizzical shake of the head, as she starts flipping through my journal.

All things considered, I don't mind a woman who doesn't speak English (and
is likely illiterate in English as well) flipping through a journal which
is basically notes for these emails. So she tried to sound out some words
while I encouraged her. Butterfly came over, too. Artist, sensitive soul,
of course she has a journal. So she laid her journal on the table.
Butterfly first came up with the idea of exchanging names.
"My name is Dan"
"Dan"
"What is your name?"
The girl picks up a pen and writes "is Mui" in Butterfly's dictionary
"Ismui?"
"Mui"
"My name is Butterfly"
"Hm?"
"Butterfly"
Conveniently, Butterfly has a tattoo of a butterfly across her cleavage,
so Mui understood immediately.

When Mui wrote in Butterfly's dictionary, she was captivatedby Butterfly's
pink pen. (seriously, how anti-proletarian!) So butterfly gave it to her.
Mui also noticed that some pictures fell from Butterfly's journal. A
niece. Her parents. Mui oohed and aahed. So I retrieved Betsy's gift to
me: some pictures of us being adorable. Mui didn't understand the winter
jackets...I explained about ice skating with big swooshes of my hands. She
still didn't understand, but loved the pictures of us in a swimming pool.

Mui was the last welcoming experience of Vietnam for days.

As soon as we crossed the border, Vietnam provided a starkly different
experience from Laos. By luck (and a quick first step) I ended up riding
shotgun for the drive from the border to Ninh Binh. Luckily, this meant a
seatbelt. The drivers in Vietnam are so bad that most of our group
couldn't watch the road.

It seems that the Communist government must issue each citizen a motorbike
on their elementary school graduation. There are 10 motorbikes for each
car on the road...and most of those cars are taxis. Nick was nice enough
to summarize Vietnamese road customs in this way: "Vietnam only got
driving laws about eight years ago, and they haven't stuck. Paved roads
are new. Right of way goes to the larger car. On a clear road, a
Vietnamese driver will drift into the middle...simply so he has more
options."

This doesn't begin to cover the honking. Vietnamese drivers honk
constantly. The message is completely different from American drivers. In
America, a honk means "you are in danger, and you must change your
behavior immediately, or I will kill you with my car." (it can also mean
other messages, but Dave Barry has covered them to exhaustion. Google
him.) In Vietnam, a honk means "I am doing something bizarre, but if you
stay at your current pace and position, you will be safe."

Crossing a street in Ninh Binh was harrowing. Motorbikes are whizzing by
in both directions on one-way streets. Bicycles are everywhere. But after
a few hours in Hanoi (and a tip from Nick) life got easier. The locals
simply shuffle. Shuffle along through the traffic and motorbikes will
avoid you. It's amazing. The seas part and rush around you like you're a
rock in a stream. It's a pleasant feeling until a bus comes. Buses don't
avoid anybody. When you see a bus, run. On my way to see the Water Puppets
(they are their own email!) I watched a bus turn down an alleyway;
motorbikes scrambled for cover. An old man walking a bicycle almost stood
his ground, but finally grumbled and hid within the line of motorbikes.

Foolishly, I had expected that I'd be safe on the sidewalks.
Unfortunately, Hanoi residents park their motorbikes on the sidewalks (why
leave them in the street where they could get hit?), so pedestrians are
constantly walking in the street to avoid *parked* motorbikes.

These traffic patterns led to a few fantastic photos. Marcus (still 23,
normal, and a party animal) crossed the street with his camera on his
shoulder. He has shots of motorbikes whipping around him. I filmed the
process, and I have a shot of him walking calmly until he loses control
and sprints across traffic, chased by a rogue motorbike. And finally,
there are the bia hoi photos.

Bia hoi is a Vietnam phenomenon (Yes, "bia" is pronounced "beer"...if
you're from South Boston. I feel like I'm surrounded by my hockey team). A
fresh keg of beer is perched on the stoop of a restaurant. Patrons sit on
tiny plastic stools around tiny plastic chairs, looking like they were
lifted from some elementary school with weak security and enterprising
parents. Lukewarm beer is server from the keg to thirsty customers for 10
cents per glass. A typical bia hoi has no "inside" and simply seats people
on the sidewalk. We brought eight people and promptly packed the place. In
the beginning, we had normal photos. Eight people around the keg. Around
the lady pouring the keg. With eight beers. But I had to sit in the street
to drink. Stool on the pavement. Classy. So there's pictures of me
drinking in the street. Nothing new, I know, so Marcus took his beer and
wandered into the middle of the intersection. Great pictures. The second
time, he brought a bia hoi micro-elementary school stool. He sat in the
center of the intersection as motorbikes raced by, laden with parcels,
people, and babies.

Did I mention the babies-on-motorbikes phenomenon? Of course not. Helmet
laws in Vietnam are theoretical at best. Occasionally, someone will wear
an old-fashioned army helmet, which offers as much protection as a hardhat
(also seen). The locals will put anything on a motorbike. My game, during
the 5 hours from the border to Ninh Binh, was to capture as many of these
combinations on film. A woman with a baby. A couple with a baby. A bamboo
stalk carried like a lance. A motorbike completely obscured by baskets. A
motorbike carrying a coffin. Carrying live pigs. Carrying a dozen live
roosters, upside down, six on each side. I finally caught a family of four
on a motorbike at a stoplight, and I felt immediately triumphant, like I'd
captured the Abominable Snowman. But an hour later, Nic from New Zealand
saw a family of five. A couple and three kids. Now we've got an arms race.

Traveling out here makes the abnormal seem normal. I no longer cringe at a
baby on a motorbike. Cat and dog are just meats I don't eat. And sitting
on a tiny stool on the corner of an intersection drinking a beer is OK, as
long as the beer costs a dime.

There are other subjects to cover, such as the Vietnamese face covers and
the trip to the deaf family's restaurant. I've got to share our follies on
a boat in Halong Bay, and the fallout when Sam finally snapped. Tomorrow
we're contemplating sneaking into the Olympic (really Olympic?) stadium in
Hue, but we'll end up at a bar called the DMZ. Vietnam is very different,
but I like that it's pushing my horizons.

All the best,
Dan


From dan at rohtbart.com  Fri Jul 29 10:00:15 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Fri Jul 29 10:00:57 2005
Subject: [Travel] Same same, but different
Message-ID: <1989.222.253.81.224.1122645615.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com>

Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City!

Shopping is not my favorite pastime. I'm a browser. I weave from store to
store, finding the best price, and maybe buy something I like. Maybe not.
I am totally incompatible with Asia. But then again, Asian merchants have
their own quirks.

Hill tribe women in Thailand are the easiest merchants I've encountered.
They show you beads. You say no. They walk to the next person at the
table. Another woman, right behind the first, shows you identical beads.
The women huddle together in groups of there or four, so it's eay to
become completely encircled at a sidewalk cafe. But they take No for an
answer.

Moving into Luang Prabang, the women became more aggressive. The Thai
goods were beads, easily transported and shown. Women in Luang Prabang
bring sacks of textiles into the night market. Around 4 pm they start
laying their wares along a major road (traffic stops at 6pm for all but
the most aggressive motorbikes). By 6pm, the road is lined on both sides
and in a double row down the middle with merchants. You cannot switch from
one side of the road to the other, because merchants are packed in,
double-wide, in the middle of the road. Children hide in the shade of
hanging tapestries. Children of bead merchants hide underneath low
squatting stools, which can be flipped over to double as a makeshift crib
for the fussy three-month old who is interfering with a sale. Most booths
have different wares, from carvings to silver jewelery to textile work.
But there are duplicated patterns, so a woman wants to keep you at her
stall.

There are a few tricks for keeping someone at your stall. These folks know
a few words of English, so they'll ask where you are from and how old you
are. Then, in those thirty seconds, if you've looked at a patterned cloth,
they will pull out four tapestries with variations on the pattern. If you
(gasp) tell her you like the pattern but not the color, or vice versa,
she'll unfold more cloth and announce proudly "Same same, but different."
This is my favorite Asian English phrase. Hold up matching wooden
elephants: "Same same." Hold up an orange and a red placemat with
identical patterns: "Same same" (they really want to move these things!)
and I have to respond "Same same but different." Sixteen years of school
down the drain.

Men have been much more aggressive salesmen. The thumb-wrestling boy my
second night in Bangkok has been my favorite male salesman. I've dealt
with a seedy taxi driver who told me that the Grand Palace was closed, but
he could take me to some wonderful free exhibits. Taxi drivers in Vietnam
have been as bad, but in a different way. Same same, but different. Every
corner in Hanoi, Hue, and Hoi An has had a taxi driver slumped in his
motorbike asking whether I want a ride. "Moto?" Later in the evenings,
it's "Discotheque?" Nobody believes that I'm where I want to be. And the
drivers in Hoi An were the wrost. They just didn't get it. "Moto? Is very
cheap!" Wow! Cheap? Well, I was planning on meeting my friends, but if I
can go somewhere else for very little money, then sign me up!

Some drivers have been very good, pointing out sites and chatting. A few
have taught me words. The best drivers, of course, have been the pre-hired
teams. This afternoon we had a fleet of cyclos (one passenger in a
car-level seat, powered by a bicyclist who sits behind on an absurdly high
bicycle seat) around the city. The Brits refered to the trip as Highly
Civilized. I would have been worried about the cyclist, but (a) it was
overcast and in the low 80s, and (b) he was smoking while cycling. More
photos of babies on motorbikes, as well as two new weird things: a
ten-foot ladder and a six-foot wedding bouquet. "Mom, I know the wedding
is this afternoon, but could you hop on your moto and carry these flowers
to the church?"

My best shopping experience has been in Hoi An. The tailors really work
you over, picking the right fabric and patterns. Marcus (still 23, normal,
drunk) got nervous in one shop, because everything he picked got the
response "that look very good on you." I defended against this by
intentionally choosing fabrics that looked terrible and judging the
tailor's face. I'm pretty sure one was ready to throw me out of her store
for being so bad at shopping.

Tailors in Hoi An know what they're doing. Even my shirts required
measurements around my neck, shoulders, chest, top of potbelly and peak of
potbelly. I explained that I'm 4 months pregnant now, but I am moving in
with my girlfriend, so I expect to be 6 months pregnant soon. The tailors
were professional and efficient, but they are only human. One friend
recounts that she wanted a shirt made for her boyfriend, who is not here.
She grabbed a man off the street and said that he's about the same size.
The tailor brings her tape measure to the very attractive man off the
street and says "OK, I measure the bottom now." Her: "But I only want a
shirt." Tailor: "No. I measure the bottom now!" In another incident,
Marcus was measued quite efficiently by a male tailor. Shoulders, chest,
waist. The male tailor walks away and a woman comes over to handle his
thigh and inseam measurements. Customer service: That's the name of the
game.

For all that effort, shopping was a bit fun over here. I felt very mature
as I stepped in and out of my personally tailored suits. Tailors followed
me and made recommendations. After choosing my suit fabric, shirts were
next. And when I made a mismatch between the color of the suit and the
color of a striped shirt, they gently told me "Same same but different"
Shops were either efficient machines or homey family affairs. Efficient
shops made better suits, but it was so much fun to buy from some sisters
who could easily have been my first-cousins as they passed a fussy baby
around while helping me shop.

I ended up with two suits, some dress shirts, and a ton of casual shirts.
A ton? Well, sixteen. Sixteen?! I really need a credit card that has an
out clause if I've been drinking. The group met up at a cafe, and we held
the table for hours as people visited tailors. When one woman came over in
a corduroy jacket, everyone got very excited...and got their own. We have
six people with identical jackets. I'll admit: I tried it on. But I have
the same jacket in suede, same same but different, so I passed. I waited
for people to get measured (six jackets and the tailors get you water and
change the TV station for you). Right behind the tailor's elderly mother
was a stack of shirt fabric that would be good for casual shirts. I
grabbed one, then another. After four, I asked how much per shirt. Eleven
dollars. Wow. No limits. Friends appeared, chose fabrics, and assured me
the pattern would look good on me. I ended up with fourteen before asking
whether I could pay by Mastercard. With a few minutes of sign language,
the tailor's daughter conveyed that I could use a Mastercard if I could
figure out how the credit card machine worked. Tech support basic: make
sure the machine is plugged in. Five minutes later, I was on my way with a
receipt for too many shirts. The next day, I picked everything up and
realized that I'd bought two identical shirts at different stores. Same
same.

I'm off to finally capitulate to the taxi drivers who have been bugging me
for days. I simply don't know how to walk home from here. But there are
plenty of stories I haven't told you, including impressions of Lao vs.
Vietnam agriculture, getting into the stadium, Marble mountain and the
stairway to heaven, two stories about the South China Sea (three if you
count Halong Bay), tales of Graham and Jen (Nick's friends in Hoi An) and
impressions of Ho Chi Minh City. But all those for a future day.

All the best!

Dan





From dan at rohtbart.com  Wed Aug  3 12:43:58 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Wed Aug  3 12:44:01 2005
Subject: [Travel] Working elephants and the monkey king
Message-ID: <2609.203.223.35.176.1123087438.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Greetings from Siem Reap, where I've managed to have another amazing day!

My apologies in advance for letting this email get away from me. It's too
long, and it's not funny enough. I think at one point, I was channeling
Angelina Jolie. But you can always skip ahead to the part with Tsok.
Anyway...

I am bad in the morning. Have we gone over this? I'm
dad-dragging-me-across-carpet bad. I'm
CEO-laughing-when-I-show-up-late-for-his-meeting bad. But when I'm excited
enough for something, I get up early. So today, I sat up at 3:15am
wondering whether it was time to go to Angkor Wat yet.

Angkor Wat? But you were just in Saigon! Yes, it's been too long since
I've written. Phnom Penh showed me another set of orphans and a powerful
introduction to the deep wounds left by the Khmer Rouge. Altogether
sobering stuff. And I didn't believe I could do it justice. You know what?
I still can't. So I'm skipping ahead to dessert, and leaving my vegetables
for later! Yes, dessert includes waking up at 4:30am.

Yesterday we flew into Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. Yes, bold travelers
that we are, we flew. Shut up. The roads in Cambodia are terrible. I miss
the potholes in Boston. At least the road was paved once. Cambodian roads,
aside from a few major highways, are packed dirt roads. After a good rain,
holes open up in the road. It's monsoon season! Vietnamese drivers stick
to the middle of the road to better avoid other drivers. Cambodian drivers
stick to the middle of the road to preserve their axles. We survived the
road to Phnom Penh and immediately found massage. The flight made me
happy.

In theory, the flight made me happy. Our plane was painted like a circus
tent. The pilot is a monkey? Four propellers, which is twice as good as
two, and twice again better than the biplane my sister and I took around
Sedona. Seating assignments were dense. The rows were packed tightly...but
the first five rows were empty. Thanks, guys. The flight
attendant-slash-robot delivered the safety address from the front row as
we pointed and laughed. Forty minutes later we nosed in for the
landing...nose down. Nose down? White knuckles all around. Well, except
for the empty rows.

Part of the fun of arriving in these new countries is learning the simple
nuances that are so important. Do you bow when you say hello? How do you
say hello, goodbye, thank you, sorry? Which side of the road do they
drive? This flight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was a domestic flight, and
I emerged energized and ready for anything the city could throw at me. You
bow a little. Sua Sid-day is hello. Drive on the right side. So I found
the right-hand driving taxi a bit alarming. Four of us packed in with the
driver (Brit in front for everyone's sanity) and we took off like a
sputtering mail truck, driver hanging his right arm out the window.
Cambodia, we learned, imports cars from Thailand, and must live with the
cars they get.

Siem Reap has fewer motorbikes than Phnom Penh or the Vietnamese cities,
but no more cars. The city is painfully impoverished, with beggars lining
the streets. Many have lost a limb to landmines. Children can beg in your
language, but older people simply extend a hand and say "Money." Late in
the day, they pat their stomachs and say "Money. Dinner. Yum yum."
Tonight, a man asked for money for dinner. He didn't pat his stomach or
extend a hand. He'd lost both forearms at the elbow to a landmine.
Landmines are the Cambodian Agent Orange.

Amid this poverty, Siem Reap is awash with luxury. Angkor Wat is a true
tourist gold mine, and upscale hotels are building as fast as they can.
The old market area in Siem Reap has nearly American prices at beautiful
cafes, where you can sit under an umbrella on the sidewalk, and have your
heart broken by the flow of crippled and impoverished locals who beg for a
dollar, a dime, a penny. Cambodia has a similar pirated-book market to
Vietnam's. Street hawkers sell fake copies of popular and relevant books.
I saw Harry Potter 6 in softcover on July 30th in Saigon. In Vietnam
adults, mostly women, sell books about the American-Vietnam war. When you
look at a book, they push two similar books at you and offer a package
deal. They are Asia's Amazon.com. In Cambodia, children whimper meekly and
push photocopied books toward you while begging you to buy from them.

Our hotel is a mile from the center of town, and it feels much farther.
It's a bit nicer than other places we stay. In an American city, the hotel
would get two stars (if you ignore the geckos). We did not pass through
town when we came from the airport, and we had an isolated afternoon as we
caught up on sleep either in air conditioned rooms (luxury) or by the
swimming pool (luxury!). The swimming pool is such a rarity that we've
developed a bit of fixation on it. Tired? Lay by the swimming pool.
Energetic? Go swimming. Our first afternoon, six of us sat and
read/wrote/listened to music while occasionally swimming. Mediocre food
was slowly delivered to us, cold, as we sat in the sun. Luxury!! The
monsoon blew in around 3. Half the folks picked up and hid. Marcus (still
23 and entertaining) and Tour Leader Nick jumped straight in the pool. How
could I resist? Underwater, there is no breeze to chill your skin.
Raindrops blasted our faces, so we put on our sunglasses. The three of us
horsed around and did flips in the pool until we got tired. Then we
floated on our backs, watching the rain, through our knockoff sunglasses.

When I signed up for this trip, five items made my decision. Chiang Mai,
slow boat on the Mekong, Luang Prabang, Hoi An, and Angkor Wat. I've been
anticipating sunrise over Angkor Wat like Christmas morning, so I spent
much of last night figuring out how to get a good night's sleep. Massage?
Check. Slow dinner? Check (like I had another option). We ate at the Dead
Fish Tower. I was skeptical, until I realized that every restaurant here
is a dead fish restaurant. Oh, and they have crocodiles. The restaurant
has two entrances. The normal entrance is ever so boring. The fancy
entrance takes you across a walkway over a still pond, then across
stepping stones under a crudely lettered sign reading "Big fish bite." The
inside of the restaurant is MC Escher's vision of a Louisiana Bayou shack,
complete with a Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater motif. There are no walls
in the two-story restaurant, and stairways come and go from nothingness.
Gaps in the floor have water running under them. In the rear left corner,
there is another crudely lettered sign warning parents to watch their
children closely. Crocodiles. Lots of them. Maybe five feet beneath your
feet. In a pit with no fence or railing. The waitstaff helpfully reminds
you not to lean too far over, as crocodiles can jump. For fifty cents, you
can throw in a dead fish and watch crocodiles snap it out of the air with
blinding speed. It's dark and cold, so the beasts move slowly. But after
(other tourists) threw in a few dollars of fish, I still could not tell
which croc got the snack.

After dinner, I practically ran home, eager to fall asleep so I could wake
up. Honestly, if every early meeting included a Wonder of the World, I'd
always be on time. As I left the bar, Marcus mumbled something about
staying up all night, as Nick invited me to stay, assuring me that they
wouldn't close the bar or anything. I slept. They closed the bar. When we
boarded the bus at 4:45am, Marcus fell asleep on the back bench. Nick
rattled off her tour guide speech quickly and promptly fell asleep on my
shoulder.

It's 5am and they want to take my picture for an ID card? Mood souring.

We arrive at the moat to Angkor Wat as the darkness is lifting. The sky is
full of friendly clounds, glowing indigo. Angkor Wat casts a long, low
silhouette against the dark sky. We stumble along the causeway over the
moat, which keeps going and going. At least a hundred feet. Maybe more.
This is a real moat. The first gate looms high over us, as we grab our
cameras and light up the stone with our flashes. The wall is hardly
impressed. My pictures are gloomy and foreboding. Walking through the
first gate, I remember the admonishment that you should never step on the
threshold of a doorway to a temple. The foot is the least holy part of the
body, and the threshold carries the soul of a building. This threshold
stone is more than two feet wide, wider than any I have seen.

Inside the first gate, a vast field opens up under the grey sky. The
indigo is fading as the density of the clouds becomes clear. It's early,
but we're not getting a sunrise. Our stone path leads straight ahead for a
thousand feet, into the temple itself. Off to the sides are stone
buildings and marshes. Our guide explains that the space was once full of
homes and shops, wooden buildings which have disappeared, leaving only the
stones. A grey mist rises in the distance over a grey building that might
be a library. This field is Halong Bay on land.

We pause behind a pond, which has clusters of lotus flowers swimming in
pods shaped like larger lotus flowers. A light breeze blows across the
pond, rippling the temple's reflection. The breeze carries a light smell
of incense. The grey mist has become more intense. It is smoke, from
incense fires lit by the monks of the temple.

When the sun has given its best effort, we retire to breakfast before
climbing the Wat. We've really had crap luck with the sun on this trip.
Rainy season aside, our sunsets have been terrible. We climbed a big hill
in Chiang Mai to see the sun set from a picturesque monastery, only to
watch the sky turn from white to grey to black. We had a cool, though
abnormal, sunset in Halong Bay when a storm cloud rolled in front of the
sunset. The effect was a sunset in a box, next to a box of lightning
bolts. OK, I take it back, we got one good sunset.

Leaving the main gate and crossing the causeway, we are mobbed by
children. Buy my postcards. Would you like some beads? Buy MY postcards.
Waaaaaaaay back in Bangkok, Nick had warned us about the children of Siem
Reap. Everything was true. They hound your every step. "Maybe later" means
"Yes" and if you try to buy from a different child, prepare for conflict.
I actually wanted a pack of postcards, so I tried to buy them from the
first boy I saw after breakfast. A crowd of children wrapped around us. A
girl twice his height came up and insisted that this wasn't fair. "That
isn't FAAAIIIIIRRR! Remember me? You said you didn't want postcards, and
that you'd buy them later" (I'd said "maybe later"). Not good times. I
folded up my dollar and walked on.

Their parents make them sell postcards/film/batteries because the children
make money at it. The current theory is that if the revenue from these
children dries up, the kids will be able to live more normal lives, either
farming or going to school. Under pressure of a mob of children, I faced a
problem: do I reward the aggressive girl, or do I violate their system of
her owning me from the beginning. I couldn't buy into either system. Later
in the afternoon, I bought postcards from the Landmine Museum.

Breakfast. I drink a cup of coffee (completely abnormal for me, but so is
a 4:30am wakeup call), while Marcus tries to figure out how to order two
plates of two-bacon-and-two-eggs from waiters who speak no English. Twelve
zombies munch while I bounce in my seat, ready to see Angkor Wat.

After completely upsetting the children, we board the bus to drive around
to the rear of the temple. Most wats face East, to collect the rising sun.
Angkor Wat was built (take this all with a grain of salt...I was excited
but REALLY tired) as a final resting place for the Angkor king, and thus
it faces West, towards the setting sun. All sun-related metaphors apply.
Non-metaphorically, walking into the West door during the early hours is
reallyu dumb. You go blind and your pictures suck. So we drove around the
outside (you really need to) and started from the rear.

At sunrise, I actually marveled at how manageable the temple felt. At the
heart of the complex, the main temple looked smaller than it should, and I
felt disappointed. From the rear, walking up the first (of three) levels
and across a giant plain of stone, I realize that I am an idiot. This
temple is immense. But how tall is it? It could be four stories, it could
be forty stories. I see a speck near the top and realize that it's a man,
standing. Oh. Crap. I'm a lot more tired than I thought.

On the second level, we see some wonderful reliefs whose names and
mythology I would butcher here, and I'm only up to 9am of a wonderful day.
I like monkeys, so the guide made sure to point out the monkey king. There
are elephants everywhere, so I'm a happy camper. But this is a long email,
so let's skip ahead to the sweating. Stairs up to the top level are steep,
if steep meant that you needed all four limbs to climb, and you can't turn
around and wave for pictures because your day-pack will push you off your
step. Sand grits under my hands and feet, and I wonder whether I made a
mistake by buying the cheapest pair of sneakers I could find. Huffing and
puffing, I reach the top. Beautiful views in every direction. A lovely
Buddha (no, I won't make an offering to a god that's not my own) and more
incense. Some scaffolding where stonework is being repaired. The corners
have an off smell...are they ancient latrines? Nick explains that the bats
live in the corners. After a half hour, I'm almost ready to come down.
We've been taking pictures of ourselves looking alternatively happy and
pensive. Temples are great for thoughtful looks. It's like I'm deep or
something.

Marcus comes around the corner, looking a bit unhappy. Marcus never looks
unhappy. His range is from tired to mischievous, but never unhappy. He
mumbles something about the smell of latrines and the climb and how
guzzling a bottle of water on top of the breakfast was too much for him,
so he had climbed off among the scaffolding and vomited in a corner. Of
the highest level. Of the most famous temple in Southeast Asia.

We clamber down, staying away from scaffolding, and walk across the
temple's grassy yard to the bus. That's it. A couple early hours with
*the* Angkor Wat, and we're off to see the rest of the complex. There are
dozens of temples around, and we're focusing on the four most prominent.
One down. Three to go. First a nap.

The pool fetish returns, as half the group parks by the water. I discover
the joys of a saltwater pool (you can open your eyes without them
burning!) and of an available showerhead near the saltwater pool (you
don't get salt all over your journal while you're napping on a beach chair
and pretending to write in it).

I kick Marcus awake so he can have fifteen minutes to clean up. He skipped
the pool for our AC, and he looks none the worse for wear. "I don't mean
to sound like your mother, but you skipped lunch and threw up your
breakfast, so how about you grab a can of Coke or something for the road?"
"Legend." Marcus says stuff like "legend." Perhaps it's British. Perhaps
it's Scottish. Perhaps it's Marcus's college slang. If I come home
sounding like Marcus, Betsy will kick me out on the street.

Aki Ra's Landmine Museum is a collection of sheds on a dusty lot. It's not
depressing. It can't be. Mr. Ra and all the children are on a field trip.
Most of the exhibits are packed up, waiting to be put into a new building.
Nick starts to fabricate a tourguide speech when a monkey climbs up her
arm and onto her shoulder. A monkey. Ebola! Didn't AIDS come from monkeys?
Aren't they all rabid? "And before we get to the landmines, let me
introduce the distraction. This is Tsok. His mother was poached, so Aki Ra
adopted him. He's sweet and he loves to play." A monkey. They're fun in
barrels! They have cute tails and faces! They swing from Nick's hair?
Oops. Little help? I join the fray, and soon we're spinning: Nick, me,
Tsok, Nick's hair, until I make some clicking noises to entice Tsok to let
go of Nick and jump on me.

Tsok is the highlight of, well, at least the highlight of the hour. His
head and body are about eight inches long, and he has little arms and
legs, and a long tail. He might weigh three pounds soaking wet. He jumps
off me, onto a branch. Then he jumps onto the hand I extend to him. He
climbs up my arm and nuzzles my cheek, then circles around my shoulders
and onto the other side of my head. I have a monkey on my head!
Frantically, I hand off my camera to the nearest person and beg them to
take pictures. But Tsok has no attention span. He's down the other arm and
onto Jo, who is completely unprepared. Trying to jump out of her skin, she
recoils and leans backwards. But if you're a little monkey, three feet off
the ground and looking up, it's much more appealing to climb a ramp than a
vertical wall. Of course he goes right to her head, so Ginny puts out an
arm and brings him over to her.

Tsok jumps from person to person, occasionally onto a tree branch for a
nibble. He wanders off towards the road to check out the local kids who
are hanging around. He chases a chicken through the yard. Back up my arm
and onto my head. Falls to the ground too quickly, bumps his ass, and
skitters off for a little while. We explore the available sheds and learn
that landmines are an ongoing danger in Cambodia. Mr. Ra, an accomplished
mine clearer, has collected hundreds of defused mines, which he exhibits
in the shed. He's also housing any number (really, any number. Somewhere
between one and two dozen) of young kids who have been crippled by
landmines. A few of the boys are around, and they watch Tsok make a fool
out of us.

We head to Angkor Thom, which is spectacular. Fifty-four stone towers
originally stood on the site, each with four faces, one pointing in each
cardinal direction. Many towers still remain, and we face more climbing.
Marcus makes no more mischief. And our guide gives one more surprise: not
only are we going up the hill to watch a great sunset (the clouds are
billowy and covering about two-thirds of the sky, leaving great gashes of
blue peeking through) but we can hire an elephant to carry us. Make no
mistake: I am on time to leave Angkor Thom.

Waiting with our guide (whose name is pronoiunced Sokh-leng, but I did not
know how to spell it, and Nick left the internet cafe an hour ago), I am
bouncing from foot to foot. I'm eager to get moving, and impatient at the
people who are still in Angkor Thom. I've felt this way. We've all see
this. It's the behavior of an overstimulated child. So I try to explain
this to Sokh-leng. Overstimulated child? Blank stare. What if you bring a
kid to the city for the first time? Blank stare. He explains that he
understands (taps his head) what I'm saying, but he has never felt that
way. He has never been outside Cambodia, so he has not been surrounded by
newness the way I am. I tell him about scuba diving (lots of explanation
about breathing underwater) and how he can be overwhelmed without leaving
Cambodia. Of course, this would mean going to Sihanoukville, on the
southern coast of Cambodia. And that's like my telling a guy from
Tennessee to go to Miami. A guy from Tennessee who gives tours of the
Elvis museum and has never left the state, except for the occasional trip
to Washington DC.

(side note: I got a massage yesterday at a spa where the uniform is green
with gold trim. Three masseusses just came in, and one recognized me. And
then recognized two other guys in the internet cafe. She came over and
said hi, then we ran out of English. So we made faces at each other (I am
a complete fool, and tend to laugh during encounters with people who don't
speak my language. A massage is an hour of encounter, and we run out of
English quickly, so there's usually a lesson for me in the local language,
and lots of pantomime and making faces) and now she's standing over my
shoulder watching me type. She asked why I didn't come in today. She's an
effective saleswoman, but I'm pretty sure she can't understand what I'm
writing.)

We climb on the elephants. OK, not all of us. Nobody wants to pay, but I
suddenly remember that it's an elephant! Jo is excited (she loves
elephants) but Ginny is nonplussed ($15 could be souveneirs for her
friends), so Jo perks up when I tell her that I'll ride with her. Of
course I will! Sometimes, my vacations degenerate into the goofy stuff I'd
do if I could play in a zoo with no fences. Butterfly decides to join us,
and Sokh-leng takes great pictures of us as we ride off.

Reaching the top of the hill, I realize that we're not the only people
with this idea. The monument on the hill is covered with Westerners. We
can see Ginny at the top, waving at us, holding her camera. It's hard to
miss Ginny, a six-foot blonde. She's also psychically at one with Jo, who
immediately points her out. We leave the elephant (not before petting her)
and clamber up yet another steep wat.

The sunset is perfect. Oranges and greys streak across the western sky.
The eastern clouds turn pink. Two UK travelers are next to me, chatting up
some Italian women. One guy is wearing a sarong as a skirt, and has a
great camera. When they mention wanting to see Cambodian dancing, I tell
them about the restaurant in Phnom Penh where the orphans have their dance
recitals (yeah, orphans in full costume smiling and beaming as a room full
of people shower them with love and appreciation). They're interested, but
more interested in the Italians, so I leave them to that.

Walking off the wat, sun set, almost dark, a couple of monks are walking
towards us, past us in the other direction. Their saffron robes are
glowing in the dusklight. I turn and see Marcus lining up a monk to take a
picture. They are grinning at each other, and the monk is clearly very
happy with the picture. He's standing next to an ancient stone tower with
the sunset behind him. The sky is glowing orange and pink, and his robes
are brighter than the sky.

Sorry for going on so long, but it's been a heck of a day, from dawn to dusk.

All the best,
Dan

p.s. What have I not told you since Ho Chi Minh City? Cambodian
moneychangers, Phnom Penh massage and contortionism, waking Nick rudely,
musings on culture shock and lack thereof, and musings on travel fatigue.

p.p.s. I had thought that I'd write an email on travel fatigue, and I had
a whole lot to say, but then today was so awesome that I couldn't resist
writing about it. Travel fatigue email to come soon, and hopefully you
won't be too tired of me to read it.





From dan at rohtbart.com  Sat Aug  6 01:23:51 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Sat Aug  6 01:23:53 2005
Subject: [Travel] Culture shock
Message-ID: <3078.202.47.231.90.1123305831.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Greetings from Bangkok, home of disorientation!

Bangkok has all the subtlety of a slap across the face from an ugly
prostitute. The transition from Cambodia from Bangkok is an ideal lens to
understand the culture shock of this trip.

Friday morning, we woke up in Siem Reap. Some earlier than others. We went
to bed around 1am, with a 6:30am wakeup call to drive the Disco Road. The
front desk didn't answer, so I asked Nick to call us at 6:30am. After I
fell asleep, Marcus set his watch (only functioning timepiece in the room;
I'm now down three watches for the trip) ahead 75 minutes. Nick,
conspiring, called me to say that it was 6:30am, and I should wake up. I
packed, got my passport out of the safe, went to breakfast, and saw
nobody. Guessing I had time, I popped off to the internet to email Betsy.
Noplace was open. The streets were deserted. I found a guesthouse and used
their computer. They booted it up, and the time read 5:45am. Bastards.

The Disco Road connects Siem Reap and the Thai border, poorly. Parts are
paved. Parts were once paved. Parts are still packed dirt. Potholes can
dip a foot deep, but the drivers will swerve into potholes to avoid
puddles. Puddles can hide deeper holes, which can wreck an axle. Drivers
in both directions swerve to any part of the road which looks passable.
Bridges are questionable at best, often slats of wood recently repaired,
yet still missing planks. At times, our driver would put the right wheels
on the bridge's concrete sidewalk, rather than brave the wood slats.

The drive took five hours. We split into four cars, because cars are
easier to push out of mud than buses, and because if one car broke down,
the twelve of us could pack into three cars. Our car was a right-hand
driver (Britain-style) but the road was American-style. I rode shotgun,
constantly alarmed that my steering wheel had been taken away. The
seatbelt pulled me snugly into my seat, keeping my head from hitting the
roof. I certainly knocked against the window, one time so hard that it
woke me, made the driver laugh, and woke Marcus and Ginny in the back
seat.

Along the side of the road were lush green rice paddies, with red signs
every quarter-mile or so. A red circle around a picture of a farmer
plowing over a landmine. Don't touch the landmines. We saw two kids
horsing around in a flooded rice paddy, twenty feet from one of those
signs. One car took a bathroom break accidentally under the signs.

The Disco Road is a tremendously important transit route for Cambodia.
Major imports from Thailand, major tourism from Thailand. The road is so
bad that the forty minute flight between Siem Reap and Bangkok costs $170,
in a region where flights are often $20. So why is the road in such
disrepair? Most guesses point to the corruption in the government. Money
just doesn't appear for public works. Ironically, if the criminals would
let the road be built, they could skim from much larger pools of tourist
dollars.

Siem Reap is bursting at the seams already, and new hotels are coming up
on the outskirts of town. The center of town, about twenty square blocks,
is still dirt roads and local shops. This jewel is the only draw of Siem
Reap, which is otherwise the hotel address for Angkor Wat. While Luang
Prabang and Hoi An are thriving with increased tourism, Siem Reap looks
poised to fail.

Thursday, our last full day in Siem Reap, we visited the freshwater Lake
Tonle Sap. Three million people live around its shores, which are
ever-changing. The lake triples in size during the rainy season, so every
building floats. We saw sixty schoolchildren pulling their elementary
school upriver towards the high ground. Floating markets, floating homes,
floating churches. The center of the lake changes from 5 meters deep in
the dry season to 11 meters deep in the rainy season, flooding the damp
jungles for 6000 square kilometers. Silt from the Mekong River collects
during rainy season, turning the water a muddy milk-chocolate color.
Sokh-leng explained that in January, the flow from the Mekong abates, as
the lake has grown too large. Silt settles to the bottom and the lake
becomes crystal clear. By February, the rivers reverse flow, as Lake Tonle
Sap drains into its tributaries. People undock their homes and tow them
back into the central area.

The lake is everything to its residents. Fishing in the lake provides
food. Food is washed and prepared from its waters, then the food waste is
thrown overboard. Clothes are cleaned in it. It is the bathtub and the
toilet. Consequently, marshes have a musky, pungent reek. But the people
were universally friendly. Cambodia, and the other countries for as long
as I can remember, have been full of people who are very happy to see us.
Kids wave, adults smile. We are friendly oddities, bringing much-needed
tourist dollars.

Friday, we crossed into Thailand, and the difference was immediately
apparent. Communist countries have their faults, but they always have
enough people in make-work jobs. Border crossings nito Laos and Vietnam
had five hoops to jump through, but there were always enough three-ring
binder employees at each hoop. Cambodia even had four people available to
check us out of the country. Thailand had one person to let us in. And she
was on her cellphone. In her air-conditioned office with a tiny window, so
we could pass our hot passports to her.

On the silky smooth road from the border to Bangkok, we all immediately
fell asleep. American-quality potholes were a luxury, and we awoke for a
gas station/bathroom stop, some three hours later.

When I arrived in Bangkok, the sights, smells, and speed overwhelmed me. I
shrank inwards and explored cautiously. Poverty in Laos, Vietnam, and
Cambodia has assaulted my sense of compassion and justice. But nothing
prepared me for the absolute culture shock of a roadside suburban-Bangkok
7-11. Air conditioning. Clean floors. Well-lit aisles. Shelves with
choices. Thai Muzak. A Slurpee machine. No pressure from the shopkeeper.
We stumbled around aimlessly, twelve confused zombies, faced with evidence
of a former life, trying to piece together details of what we saw. Racks
of baked goods, with labels in Thai. Coolers with soft drinks. Gatorade.
Ice cream, where everything isn't sold out. I picked up one of everything
before settling on a Gatorade and a Coca-Cola Slurpee. We drove off, and I
saw a bus full of kids. I waved. They looked at me with contempt. Back to
civilization.

We arrived in Bangkok with an hour before dinner, so I decided to buy a
fake watch. I've had such good luck so far, that I figured the fourth time
would be the charm. Marcus, who had bought some fake Rolexes a month
earlier, told me that the best way would be to ask a taxi driver. Selling
the watches is clearly illegal, and it would take me hours to stumble
across a sufficiently shady place in the backpacker district. When the
first tuk-tuk driver came up to me and asked where I wanted to go, I said
"Rolex." This took a few minutes to explain, including me holdnig my wrist
and running through a number of other expensive watch brands. He snapped
into understanding and apologized that he didn't know. So he brought me to
another driver, who immediately adopted my crusade.

Tom loves America and Americans. His father lived in Nashville, Tennessee
for thirty years. I have no idea why they came back. His father is Lao,
and his mother is Thai. Thanks, Tom, but what about my watch? We settle on
a price for his taxi ride "There and back, and I wait for you." Tom is
good at obvious logic, but not a good salesman. We're in the car a few
minutes, where he asks me the staple questions of Asia (I'm from America,
New York City, 28, not married, with a girlfriend) and because we have
enough time, I ask him the same questions (Norther Thailand near Laos, 30,
"no money, no honey"). He asks whether I need a ride to the airport
tomorrow, but I already ghave a van. Ten minutes into the drive, he asks
me if I want a massage. I am so naive that I tell him that I don't have
time for a massage, thinking that I can always get a foot massage near the
hotel. He responds, "Is good, full body massage. Clean and safe." He taps
the inside of his elbow. "Girls tested every week by doctor." Ugh. Just
the watches.

We enter the store, a typical silk handicrafts/carvnigs/souveneir shop.
Tom says something to the owner in Thai, and the owner rushes into the
back room, where he furtively opens a large, deep cabinet, and pulls out
four velvet-covered boxes. He brings them out into the store, and shows
them one by one. Each box closes before he opens the next one. He is
friendly and pleasant, but clearly concerned at being caught. I go through
all four boxes, three more, and three puches. Twice. Then I settle on
three watches. Two hundred fifty dollars. No thank you. This is the first
money-conscious decision I've made in three years. I'm not working
anymore, and I have no need for three fake Rolexes, even if each is really
pretty. When I dig my heels in, he loses his pride, beseeching "Please,
give me more money" and finally accepts fifty dollars for one. Even if it
turns out to be very fake, it's still a beautiful and inexpensive watch.

Tom drives me back to the backpacker district, occasionally making
halfhearted sales attempts. "Massage? You sure? Only ten minutes from
here. Pingpong show?" No thank you. I sit back and enjoy the drive through
Chinatown, then rejoin the group for dinner.

Our last night's dinner almost fizzled. David (art teacher from Canada)
had stayed in Siem Reap to see more of the Angkor complex. Sam
(neanderthal) skipped the dinner. Susan and Jo had been sick the day
before, and couldn't muster any enthusiasm for a late Bangkok send-off. So
nine of us limped over to the roadside bar to power up before dancing.

The roadside bar is a converted Volkswagen Eurovan, parked outside our
hotel, across from Beit Chabad (an Orthodox Jewish synagogue). The roof
tilts up, and one side folds down to make a bar. Speakers blare bar and
dance remixes as Jewish tourists leave after Friday night services. We
drink incredibly potent cocktails on the sidewalk, ably turning away
hilltribe women vendors offering beads. A month in Asia (hell, a day in
Cambodia) and I can say no to anything.

Dancing is a blast. We get another gallon of Heineken. Half the group
drinks too much. Butterfly decides to leave early. She has run out of Baht
and tries to pay in dollars. The exchange rate is 40B/1$. The bar quotes
$36 for her 400B bill. She walks off in disgust, only to have the bouncers
close in on her. One is calling the police. Nick intervenes, tells the
bartender to stop talking crap, and changes Butterfly's dollars into Baht.
Butterfly is released.


Now twitchy, we close the dance club and head across the street to a
late-night bar. We're down to five, and Ginny, Naomi, and Marcus get into
a drunken argument. This morning, nobody can even remember what they said.
But Marcus said something very rude and Ginny slapped him. They all left,
so Nick and I called it a night. Arriving in my room, Marcus had already
settled everything with the girls. hugs all around. Then he told me about
the way his night ended. "I'm going to have to steer clear of Khao San
(backpacker) road for a while. When I left the bar in a foul mood, a
prostitute grabbed my ass and rubbed up aganist me. So I told her to fuck
off. She blustered 'what what?' so I told her that I'd had a tough night
and she could fuck off. So she slapped me as hard as she could."

Bangkok. Sometimes culture shock hits harder than others.

I'm off to Singapore now to see some friends from my old job. Hopefully
I'll have an adventure there that's worth writing about!

All the best,
Dan

p.s. Still haven't written about travel fatigue and its effects...amazing
to watch how each person deals with the impact of such foreign
experiences.
From dan at rohtbart.com  Sun Aug  7 11:21:14 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Sun Aug  7 11:21:33 2005
Subject: [Travel] Drinking the water
Message-ID: <61700.203.118.10.3.1123428074.squirrel@webmail2.pair.com>

Greetings from Singapore, where culture shock has rendered me useless!

I retract my slight against the Singapore airport. In an early email, I
said that it was only a typical Western airport with the occasional koi
pond and orchid garden. Facts right, tone wrong. Singapore airport is a
Western airport! Air conditioning. Security staff. Sterile isolation from
other people. A spa where I can shower. All the stuff I have missed for
the last month.

Singapore had me for a day and completely twisted my brain. All things
considered, the twist could have happened in New York, and Betsy would
have had to handle me nearly melting down at the first inconvenience.
Instead, I seethed at the Singapore Airlines staff. Let's just say that my
problem became their emergency.

Because I didn't have a seat assignment yet (and I wanted to avoid the
middle all the way in the back) I tried to check in this afternoon.
Online? No dice. Ticket issued by USAir. Phone? Not at per-minute charges.
So I went to the downtown service office, mainly because I practically
tripped over it. That's where we learned that I managed to lose the last
ticket in my booklet. The booklet was intact, aside from one page. After a
month of being pressed up against my wallet, the edges got destroyed. The
Thai Air gate agent in Bangkok, laughing at me in my Vietnam conical hat,
got distracted and pulled out too many tickets. At least that was my
guess. So my Singapore Air helper called Thai Airlines, who denied any
wrongdoing. Singapore Air helpfully told me that I could not fly to New
York tonight. I politely swallowed my tongue, as my eyes rolled back in my
head. They offered that I could buy a ticket, and sort things out with
USAir. Adrenaline, sweat, bile. They ask me for contact info, so they can
tell me if they get any info....but USAir has no office in Singapore, and
only they can reissue the lost ticket. These are worse than Communist
hoops!

Just as I'm getting up, a service rep comes running from the back room,
holding a fax. Thai Air got off their asses and looked through their
records. Indeed, my ticket was there. And now Singapore Air can check me
in. Thanks, guys. Three-ring binder service at its best.

I'm about to run out of time, so I'll save Singapore stories for the
future. In a nutshell, it's not as strict as you would think. I ate an
overwhelmingly good feast last night, then walked around town. The
electronics shopping was fantastic.

My hotel was a Western three-star hotel, which I booked from New York. I
expected it to be adequate. After a month on the road, my jaw dropped at
the reliable airconditioning, flat bed, and shower which didn't soak the
floor.

I'm still not used to the biggest difference: I can drink the tap water.
Every time I pull a glass, I tense up. The first sip is scary, and I
usually can't finish the glass. But it's a start. Back to the West.

All the best,
Dan

From dan at rohtbart.com  Thu Aug 11 13:17:48 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Thu Aug 11 13:17:53 2005
Subject: [Travel] Home is where I don't have to pack my backpack
Message-ID: <51231.207.237.215.10.1123780668.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com>

Greetings from New York!

Adapting to the West is easier than I expected, but with a few snags.
Leaving the airport, I walked to the wrong side of Betsy's car, "Oh, you
drive on the right side of the road in this country." The trip also helped
me adapt to a New York apartment. After a month sharing small hostel rooms
with Marcus, this 500 sq ft one-bedroom apartment feels like a luxury
suite. It's full of things I've bought, and there's an internet connection
in the suite -- with computer provided!

Of course, prices have thrown me for a loop. The exchange rate here is $1
for every $1, but tipping is encouraged. Required. The only tip jar I saw
in Asia was in a Starbucks, where I snuck in to steal some air
conditioning.

The questions have changed from my trip. Nobody asks me how old I am.
Nobody asks me where I'm from (the occasional "what planet are you on,
buddy" is the closest I get). Now the questions are about my trip. How was
the food? (Great) Did you drink the water? (Are you crazy?) Did you miss
Betsy? (Yes). My grandmother was very happy to see me last night. She
smiled and laughed for at least a half-hour before asking how much I paid
for my hand-made suits, then telling me I got ripped off. Because in the
1960s, when she sold suits, she used to get a dozen suits from Romania for
$36 apiece.

With the end of my trip, this is the last email I'll be sending. Thanks so
much for reading and encouraging me. My journal is full of anecdotes I
didn't have time to type (or which piled up in short order, and I didn't
want to flood you with emails), and I will hopefully be pulling all these
experiences together into a book by Christmastime. So I lied about this
being the last email. When the book is published, you'll get a single
email with an announcement. Sorry in advance for the spam.

All the best,
Dan



From dan at rohtbart.com  Mon Dec 26 18:20:19 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Mon Dec 26 18:20:20 2005
Subject: [Travel] On the road again
Message-ID: <1823.68.198.174.126.1135639219.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com>

Greetings from rainy Westchester County NY!

Yes, Westchester NY would be the weakest travelog, but it's merely the
first stop on our trip to India. Betsy's folks fed us all weekend
(assuming incorrectly that we won't be eating anything for the next ten
days), and are driving us to the airport. Our flight was supposed to be at
7 pm, but it's 6:15pm and we're sitting here watching the leftovers get
cold. Plane is delayed.

I've changed a bit since the last time I wrote. My sense of time and
urgency is accelerated (my former bosses, I'm sure, are thankful and wish
they could have seen such a day) and I'm more in ahurry than I've ever
been. So I'm not really in the right mindset to work with the Air India
website, which would rather show you a timetable than sell you a ticket,
and has a "Fog Information" banner flying on its homepage.

Fog is a big deal. No joke! Fog is keeping us from detouring down to Goa
for New Year's...since we wouldn't be able to get to Delhi in time for a
meeting January 2nd.

Meeting? OK, this isn't just a boondoggle. It's a school-arranged
boongoggle. I love busniess school. They set up some meetings with local
companies, who sponsor part of the trip. We'll also make it to some of
central India's beauty and party in New Delhi for New Year's. While
poetic, it's not nearly as big of a party as Goa...though I'm probably not
enough of a party goer for party Goa.

But boondoggle. It's not like this is free, but I'm allowed to put it on
my student loan. My first week of classes, we learned about how a company
gets better returns on its equity when it takes on debt. Then in the
second week, they asked who wanted to take a study trip.

My fear is that after this brainwashing, I won't be funny anymore. (why
start now?) Or worse, that I'll only be funny to the Future Investment
Bankers of New York. But I'll give this a shot, and as before, I'd love to
hear what you've got to say.

One last thought: this trip is very different from my last one. I'm not
risking nearly as much of myself, since I"m traveling with 40 Columbia
students. There's no oafish, violent Sam. I'm unlikely to watch someone
fall off a boat after midnight. And I'm definitely not going to be allowed
to play with monkeys. But it's a new land, and I'm arriving with a new
confidence in myself. Betsy will be by my side, which is more
responsibility than reinforcement. And we'll be drinking in India as a
couple, which will change my point of view as much - if not more - than if
I had gone with Columbia without her. So I'm very glad we're headed to the
Taj Mahal...the hook that got her on this trip.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year, and all the other
greetings of the season.

All the best,
Dan





From dan at rohtbart.com  Fri Dec 30 08:49:38 2005
From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart)
Date: Fri Dec 30 08:49:50 2005
Subject: [Travel] Inconvenience is Regretted
Message-ID: <3907.203.212.223.90.1135950578.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com>

Greetings from Mumbai!

The entire city is under construction, and each site has a sign,
"Inconvenience is Regretted." So polite. Of course, it took us 3 hours to
go 12 miles at dinnertime last night. But I haven't even gotten you into
the city.

Worst question so far: "How would you compare your travels this summer to
India?" I've been in Mumbai for two days and barely left hygenic
conditions, and I'm supposed to summarize the country? It's hot. Except
where it's cold.

First impressions of Mumbai: poverty. Not where we're staying (the school
only books posh hotels, so our three nights in Mumbai will cost me the
same as my entire month on the last trip), but everywhere else. The
shantytowns I expected. But not exactly. From the road, you can see
corrugated tin roofs stretching back a hundred yards, with narrow paths
running through the labyrinth. The front shacks are generally shops. There
are no doors on the shacks which are not shops. The walls are made from
billboards, so every third house has a Valmora ad...I suppose they had a
huge ad campaign since the last monsoon.

Those are the lucky ones. Even luckier are the shantytowns where walls are
a bit stronger (maybe cinderblock or at least piles of concrete) and a
second floor can be added. These lofts had kids scrambling around,
makeshift ladders. Signs. Auto parts, food shops, even hotels!

Who was worse off? Even more people. The official population of Mumbai and
surroundings is 16 million, but the government recently hosted a disaster
planning expert and asked him how to deal with 24 million. The local life
insurance company estimates that only about 35% of all Indians are
insurable.

As we rolled in from the airport at 7 am, we saw the homeless rising from
the sidewalks to begin their day. The next day, we hit the road at 9 am
and saw two homeless guys collaborating to tie their belongings in plastic
bags in a tree. They saw us, made eye contact with me, smiled and waved.
We drove alongside an elevated highway, which had a concrete bed beneath,
sheltered from the sun. People lived beneath the highway, in full view,
and we watched them doing laundry, cooking over open fires, living.

There are two Bombays. Maybe more. I bought a bottle of water for 20 cents
from a mom-and-pop pharmacy, then my friends went out and spent $12 per
drink at a club. I don't know how many shades are in between.

So that's our setting. We've got 40 business school students, a professor,
and a staff member. A handful of Indians, who have their own identity
problems to deal with. Many have only been back a few times, or were born
in America and have trouble re-assimilating here. Anand, a buddy of mine
from b-school, is in that role, but it doesn't keep his friend from
calling and trying to set him up with an Indian girl in Pittsburgh,
claiming she's one of the Top 25 something somethings. Pittsburgh's not
worth it for anybody!

Courtesy of the Mumbai traffic, the bus is our home. I have pictures of
very intelligent, put-together people asleep with their heads tilted back
and mouths open. I also have pictures of complete chuckleheads in the same
position. Sleep captures everyone.

Everyone except.... School has given me my first contact with people who
actually gain energy by staying out late. In the first week of school, my
Swiss buddy sauntered into class with a Red Bull because he hadn't gotten
to bed before 4 am since he arrived in New York three weeks before. Red
Bull every morning from then on. Last night, after a fantastic dinner in a
mansion on the outskirts of Mumbai, a dozen people went out to a nightclub
until 5 am. They probably won't feel jet lag because they never slept
before, either.

I, on the other hand, am a different traveler today than I was six months
ago. Betsy caught me trying to explain this, and gave me about ten seconds
to make it sound like I'm not whipped. Oh, I'm whipped. But that's not why
I'm not drinking until 4 with these folks. It's because that's not who I
am. This trip isn't the pure vacation I had this summer, where I met new
people and left them in my memories. This trip is a bonus school
experience, where I already know a third of the people with me, and I
don't feel like acting out. My state of mind doesn't keep me from noticing
funny stuff they do, but it makes writing about it harder...these folks
aren't caricatures (27, oafish, Slovakian) except for the ones who are.

So that's entering the city and my state of mind. There's a lot more to
say about Mumbai, all good, and much more about the trip. Despite the lack
of unbridled stupidity, I have plenty of Indian nuance to talk about. But
I'm hungry. So think about this: how do you solve the problem of people
taking empty water bottles from the trash, refilling them with unhygenic
tap water, re-sealing the caps, and selling them for half retail price?

All the best,
Dan

p.s. Animal update: as many stray dogs as Thailand, but they are much
lazier. We can't take an elephant trip up to the fort at Jaipur, because
the government deemed all 45 elephants there unfit for service. Saw a man
today with a monkey on a leash, looking for money to take a picture.