Jimmy and Mme on Halong Bay
Hanoi
So this is what traffic looks like when it’s slow, meaning nowhere near rush hour.
View from our hotel in the old .25
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Last three photos from Vietnam
Friday, January 30, 2009
Back in BKK, resolutions and finally my trip home from Hanoi.
Well I’m back … But I think that most people knew that. Been back since last Wednesday night actually, but have had house guests, cleaning and things like that keeping me busy. Anyway, that’s probably not all that interesting.
I just picked up 10 rolls of film and am slowly sorting through it getting ready to post. I spent the last five weeks in USA and Tokyo; traveling first to San Francisco, then LA, then Niskayuna, then Killington, back to Niskayuna, over to Cincinnati, again Niskayuna, again Killington, again LA, Tokyo and finally home. I arrived the night of the inauguration and (embarrassingly) have still yet to watch it. The trip was loads of fun, nice to see family and friends and then Tokyo was even more interesting than I had expected.
Every year when I go back to the states, I love how disconnected I am. I don’t get a cell phone there, and I’m 12 hours of time-zone away from Thailand (although I guess I am closer to California). If people want to reach me, they have to call the land-line at my parent’s (yes, people still use those things) or send me an email and hope that I check it. It feels really nice to not be constantly interrupted, and I imagine that the people I’m spending time with like the fact that our conversations aren’t constantly interrupted by beeps. As soon as I get back, I tend to forget how nice this all felt and I go back to sending zillions of SMSs and looking at my phone the moment it beeps. So that’s my resolution for the year, to ignore my phone more. To send fewer messages, to let the phone beep or ring if I am talking to someone or eating a meal, stuff like that. There are a few other smaller resolutions too, stuff like bringing my own containers to the street vendors who sell cut-up fruit, and trying to use the word jejune in conversation at least once a day.
I never posted about my 40 hour return trip, at least not the details. When Michael and I finally realized that the BKK airports were not going to open for a while (Jimmy had left already), we decided to return to BKK via Laos and just be good sports about it. We tried to book a flight from Hanoi to Vianteene but found out that we would have to spend another night in the hotel and then pay $200 USD each for tickets. The alternative of a $20 bus ride didn’t seem so bad in comparison, especially since it left that night.
We left Hanoi via van around 5pm, took the van for an hour to the edge of town, got left on the side of the street, walked 10 min to the bus station, took the bus to the Laos border, waited two hours for the border to open, paid $35 for a visa, walked 10 min into Laos, rode the bus through Laos to the Vianteene on the border of Thailand, got a truck to take us over the friendship bridge into Nongkai, got to the train station, paid around $15 for a 2nd class train ticket (that’s all they had), rode in an un-air-conditioned train car for 15 hours, then finally took a cab from the BKK train station to my apt. Ohh, and I managed to poop using a squat toilet on a moving train (impressive?). The whole trip took about 40 hours, which is more than going to and from the USA.
The bus was full of Thai people, which made it fun and was probably a change from the backpackers who normally ride the bus-circuit. The people we met on the bus really all really cool and make all of the transfers much easier, I’m not sure we would have figured it all out on our own.
Some photos below.
Rest stop somewhere in Vietnam
The border crossing into Laos
I forget why I took this, hopefully someone can translate
Chickens coming to check out the bus
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Individuality
In Thailand the current King is on every banknote, in India it’s Ghandi, in Vietnam it’s Hồ Chí Minh and in the USA each bill is a different dead president. I point this out, because it highlights a really interesting point. In the states, there is this culture of independence and individuality that encourages people to be different and have egos. In most of Asia, the opposite is true. It’s important to fit in with the masses, and if someone is going to be elevated then it will be for one person in an almost god-like manner. In Thailand, the King’s image is protected be lèse majesté laws, and I am guessing that similar laws protect Ho Chi Minh’s image in Vietnam.
In the states, especially in present-day history classes we are generally taught about the faults of our country’s great men along with their accomplishments. Thomas Jefferson was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence but at the same time owned a huge number of slaves, Christopher Columbus was the first European explorer to find the Americas but then he massacred and enslaved most of the Native Americans that he found. In having the opportunity to study people for their accomplishments and their faults, I find that it allows us the opportunity to see the human side of each of them. When we see that they aren’t gods, that they make mistakes or that they make sacrifices, it allows for insight into their decision making process. If, instead, the person is above analysis and the histories are controlled by the government the person starts to seem less real to me.
Ok, so this is a bit of a long-winded explanation of the picture above. Hồ Chí Minh died in 1969 and was eventually installed in the above shrine for viewing. We queued up outside and were told how to behave: hats and sunglasses off, hands out of our pockets, don’t hold hands, don’t talk, stay in line, etc … inside the cool inner chamber, Uncle Hồ’s body lies in state for ten months out of the year (the other two he spends being restored in Russia). Jimmy picked up one of the official histories, which was really interesting to read. Each sentence seemed crafted to raise him to this super-human status, which in many ways seems rather ironic for a Communist.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
More stuff for sale
Ok, so we’re already established that Christmas comes from Hanoi … I think knock-off shoes and bike helmets just may also. A lot of these knock-off items are sold in BKK too, but I think that they generally comes from places like China and Vietnam.
Hanoi
So Madam and Jimmy finally made it to Bangkok after years of threatening to come. Our original plan was to spend four days in Hanoi exploring the city, then head back to Bangkok and explore there for another week or so. Before and during the trip, people asked us (over and over) if we were planning a trip to Halong Bay, which originally we were not. We’re all city people and I had heard that it was over-loaded with tourists. I had been warned by friends in Bangkok that things with the protests were going to be kicked into high-gear around the time that we were leaving, but I had no clue that the airport was going to be closed on us.
Ok, more on that in the next post.
Having been to two countries this year that share similar backgrounds over the last 100 or so years (Laos and Vietnam), it was really interesting to see how their original cultures survived … or maybe it’s that they both responded to similar outside influences in very similar ways. Both countries were colonized by the French, suffered during the Vietnam war (well they call it the American war) and now are rebuilding. Things in Laos seemed to operate at the laid-back pace of Thailand, where Vietnam had this go-go-go mentality. Almost like they were making up for years of strict communist laws by rushing as fast as possible into capitalism. People in Laos seemed much more interested in religion, where in Vietnam I didn’t see this emphasis at all.
I wonder how much the size of the populations impacts things, in Vietnam there are 86 million people, Laos only has 6.5 million (Bangkok alone has at least 8 million). I should also say that I speak a good deal of Laotian and only speak about 20 words of Vietnamese. This is significant because in Laos I was able to talk to people and try to grock what they are thinking, I tried to do the same in Vietnam but only in English which I think was very limiting.
Orange
This is where Christmas comes from
I think these are for funerals
Hair
Madame
