But What About That OTHER Side of Bangkok...?

Say 'Bangkok' outside of Thailand and one thought that likely springs to mind is the seamier side of human activity and commerce that the city and even Thailand in general has gained a reputation for. The world is awash in stories, videos, blogs, etc. that expound in abundant and and intricate detail on the topic of Thailand's infamous sex industry. Even though Thailand has reined in once-rampant drug use activities, the sex industry has continued to flourish even though prostitution is illegal in Thailand. Yes, that's absolutely true, but obviously it's a law that's not just unenforced but seems to be acknowledged and regarded with about equal concern as the strange laws on the books in some US towns forbidding such reprobate acts as eating chocolate ice cream on Sundays.

As part of Bangkok's remake and emergence as a modern world-class city, she's been scrubbed up and sent to rehab and doesn't see as much of that old crowd from the wrong side of the tracks these days. Not to say that prostitution in Bangkok has gone the way of the dodo, but it has gone from pigeons to bluebirds. Much the same way that some US cities have dealt with crime and homelessness, Bangkok made life just difficult enough for the sex industry that it's largely just packed up and moved along elsewhere, most notably to Pattaya which now holds the claim as Thailand's numero uno destination for sex tourists. With a single change in the law, the imposition of a 1 AM closing time for bars, the Bangkok party scene was dialed down from an extravagant 11 to a prosaic 6. When I was in Bangkok 10 years ago, 1 AM was pre-crescendo any night of the week at places like Soi Cowboy and Nana Entertainment Plaza. An excellent chronicling of life in Bangkok and Thailand over the past decade that covers this particular aspect of Bangkok life along with a multitude of others can be found at www.stickmanbangkok.com. It's written by an expat (a Brit I believe) who's been living there for quite some time and makes for interesting and entertaining reading even if you never plan to set foot in Bangkok.

My guest house during my week in Bangkok was located just a few Sky Train stops from the Nana stop along Sukhumvit Road so I thought I would take the pulse of the current state of Bangkok nightlife by sampling some of what was on offer on a Saturday night in that area renowned for its abundant array of hedonistic diversions, purely for the sake of research of course. I scratched Nana Entertainment Plaza from my list of possible destinations as my 10 year old memory of that temple to prurience and debauchery was that it was more than my much mellowed constitution could now withstand. So I alighted onto Sukhumvit Road peering up each soi (a soi is a side street off a main street in Thailand) as I strode along. There was definitely a vigorous energy in the air and no shortage of vendors selling food, drinks, various gift items and there were plenty of bars broadcasting open invitations to passersby via the medium of flashing neon. Like Goldilocks I wanted a soi that was lively but not overbearingly so with welcoming lights but not garishly so and with an overall feel of conviviality all within the bounds of respectability. In a stroke of good fortune I strolled past only a few soi's before I came upon one that nicely satisfied my uncompromising criteria.

Just 30 meters or so up my chosen soi I began to encounter very friendly young girls hanging around on the sidewalks and hailing me from the many open-air bars that lined the soi. It was immediately apparent that the blow officialdom had dealt to the solar plexus of Bangkok nightlife had fallen far short of taking it out for the count.

Most of the girls on the street were in small groups and the girls in the bars were working within the protection of the bar establishment, all part of the important aspect of security in what is unquestionably a risky occupation and they all played the part anyway of enjoying themselves and each other's company.

As I entered a darker stretch of street between the pools of light cast by the bars and restaurants and saw a very pretty and young, I'd guess about 20 years old, girl dressed in white shorts and blouse standing alone in a sort of rough-cut niche in a wall next to the sidewalk. As I passed by she looked at me and motioned towards me without saying anything as she probably spoke little or no English. There was no practiced smile on her face and she stirred the air with no trickle of frivolous laughter but rather her face was weighed with an expression of sadness and pleading as her hand reached out towards me before falling softly and resigned back to her side as I made no motion to pause and responded with only a cursory tight smile and slight nod of the head. In this unexpected and momentary encounter my mood was stamped with the realization that the festivity in the air and the facile accessibility displayed by the women is born of the yawning disparity between what many of them desperately need and what most of the revelers regard as a birthright.

After walking a few more minutes I came upon a friendly little bar called The Tavern or something similarly nondescript but descriptive enough and was drawn in by the small group of foreigners who appeared to be in my age range and the numerous flags of North American and western European countries festooned around the entrance. The atmosphere inside was charged with a testosterone fueled spirit and I was immediately welcomed into the fold after disclosing my nationality and favorite football team (an NFL team was accepted only after first revealing my nationality). I was joining another yank along with 2 Cannucks, a Brit, and a Norwegian and the patrons were being served by 2 very friendly and attractive Thai women who skillfully played their pivotal part in keeping the men entertained and the beer and money flowing. Whether this pair of bartenders was available for 'extra' services I wasn't sure, but oftentimes they are. Even if they are not, the perception that they are or just their friendly demeanor is enough to add to the stag party ambiance and result in a little extra lingering by the customers and fattened bar tabs. The other American was a very large individual and had a capacity for beer consumption commensurate to his build. By the time I called it quits a couple of hours later his beer count, including those before I arrived, was at least 12 and he didn't seem intoxicated! Or perhaps I was and was no longer qualified to make that judgment.

On my way back down the soi to the Sky Train station I passed the girl on the sidewalk again. This time she didn't bother looking at or gesturing towards me but I could see she still had the same unhappy troubled air as before and I'm guessing she had seen no business while I was in the bar unless it was a really expeditious customer. I was thinking I wanted to do something to help her but what? I wasn't going to hire her services. Give her money, give her insipid advice in a language she doesn't understand while assuming some sort of morally superior attitude? Perhaps I could have given her a little money since that's the reason and the only reason she was there that night, but would it have obviated her need to come back the next night or the next? In all likelihood she was helping her family. A surprisingly high percentage of women in that business, at least in Asia, pass the money they earn directly into the family coffers, clouding the case that prostitution is the realm of only the degenerate and dissolute. The fact that it's the world's oldest profession is testament to the fact that it's a complicated issue without simple explanations or solutions.

This is the infamous Nana Entertainment Plaza exposed to the unforgiving Bangkok sunlight. Like many of its patrons and workers, probably better seen in a darkened state amidst flashing lights and loud music after sunset. I do like the Christmas tree no doubt set up so that Santa can leave gifts for all the nice boys and girls!

At SEA Again

On my way back to Vietnam via Thailand this time. I was here once before in 2000 and visited Bangkok and Koh Samui. This time it's Bangkok and Chiang Mai thus far. My plan with Bangkok was to drop off my passport at the Vietnam embassy along with my visa application and head elsewhere for a few days while the byzantine Vietnam visa machine worked its magic. After all, who wants to just hang around in Bangkok I asked myself. Fast forward 1 week and my Vietnam visa is ready and I wouldn't mind a few more days in this modern fast paced metropolis of Bangkok.

Between its incredibly efficient sky train and subway systems and its huge glitzy shopping malls you might guess you were in Tokyo, Singapore, or Hong Kong if you were just plopped down in the middle of it all. It's a city in transition however and many parts of the old Bangkok remain. Most of the modern Bangkok is in the eastern part of the city away from the Chao Phraya river. In fact the sky train and subway terminate well east of the river and the old city leaving the tuk tuk drivers to ply their exhaust-belching trade relatively unperturbed for the time being.

I flew into Bangkok rather late, landing about 11:30 PM. I had called ahead to a guest house listed in the Lonely Planet guide and spoken to a nice woman to let them know I'd be arriving late but would like to reserve a room. As most of the smaller guest houses and hotels still don't use credit cards my reservation was purely on a faith and honor basis. I didn't get to the guest house until almost 1 AM and it was all dark and closed up but a gentleman, the night watchman, perked up and sprang to his feet to open the door for me as I approached. Sure enough, on the table by the door was the form for my reservation under the name Mr. Christo that I had given her along with my room key. In that moment I developed an instant emotional connection with the guest house and its staff as from my perspective they were like reliable and dependable old friends who stood by me in my time of uncertainty. Truth is it probably made no difference to them if I showed or not, but I'm not going to allow that to dampen my warm fuzzy feeling of international comradeship! Perhaps I should have learned their names.

The next morning at breakfast (it's included!) I met an Englishman who appeared to be in his 50's with a mountain bike. I asked him where he had rented it as it was a Gary Fisher, not the type you'd normally see in Asia. Well he didn't rent it he rode it from England! With a few necessary nods to more modern forms of conveyance such as the ferry across the Channel of course. And he's going to continue riding as much as possible until he gets back to England, again with a little helping hand here and there where necessary as we all know the earth is 80% or so water. He's been out for over 200 days and figures he may have about that more to go. All I could offer as a response to all that was that I had actually met the man whose name was so conspicuously splashed across his bicycle's frame because he lives in Marin county where I've spent a great deal of time. He seemed as impressed by that as someone who's bicycling around the world could possibly be.

A glimpse of Bangkok now. This is next to Siam Center viewed from the Sky Walk, a raised sidewalk through the heart of the Siam district. What a fantastic idea! Every night there was a live performance on the stage below with large video screens for easier viewing. The energy was thumping loud and proud like the heartbeat of this dynamic city.



Dusit Palace near the older part of Bangkok. I didn't go in but it looks pretty nice from the outside.

Some Basic Info

This post comes from San Francisco as I've left Vietnam and returned and was unable to post again while there due to the theft of my laptop. I made the foolish mistake of trusting the people who ran the mini-hotel I'd stayed at to keep a watch on my bags while I was gone for 3 days and also made the mistake of putting my laptop inside my bag and returned to find the bag a little lighter than when I left. I was robbed twice during this trip to Vietnam and both times were due to my trusting business staff and being coy. By being coy I mean I didn't disclose that I had valuables in my bags and assumed all would be alright. Big mistake. The first theft was cash taken from my backpack while on a snorkeling boat trip in Nha Trang. I assumed that leaving the backpack on the boat with the cash while I and the rest of the clients were in the water was safe. I didn't know the cash was missing until later because the thief was smart enough not to take all of it. In both cases I should have removed the valuables and handed them directly over to the staff for safekeeping in order to assure at least some accountability, or in the case of the cash I should have just left it with the hotel desk. The mini-hotel owner in the laptop theft incident tried to explain that because the hotel is also a school many people have access to the bags and that I shouldn't have left the laptop in a bag. Maybe so, but buying his logic I guess I was lucky to get my bags back at all.

There seems to be a general attitude that Vietnam is not safe which, regardless of the aforementioned thefts, I find to be completely untrue. Countries like Vietnam are often the victim of rumors and hearsay because many people want to believe that certain beliefs are true. As I was leaving San Francisco back in November a Korean man next to me in line asked me if I thought Vietnam was safe because he'd heard that it was dangerous. A Korean man! While it's true you have to keep an eye on your valuables, I don't believe there's much violent crime in Vietnam. At least I never heard of or saw any. As for thefts, they occur everywhere and it's always a good idea to keep your possessions secured.

I had an apartment in Sài Gòn for 6 months and worried a little about whether I would get my deposit back, $500 US I had paid in cash when I moved in. I was pleasantly surprised when there was no issue whatsoever as I was paid back in full on the morning I moved out. I haven't heard any other stories on this topic so I'm assuming that it's business as usual in Sài Gòn to refund an apartment deposit when there's no reason not to.

I enjoyed eating pho (or phở as it's properly spelled) often while in Vietnam until I found out that it's common practice to add MSG to it. I imagine it's common practice there to add MSG to about everything as there is usually an MSG aisle in the large supermarkets so a lot of it is being sold. Anyway I had been feeling not so great and stopped eating the phở and started feeling better. Could have been all in my head of course.

I finally experienced riding some of the Saigon buses that leave from the Bến Thành market and other points around the city. I was apprehensive because I had not seen many foreigners on them and had even read somewhere that they were best left to the locals. Turns out it's quite easy to read where each numbered route takes you and all you do is hop on a bus and wait for the ticket seller to collect your 3000 vnđ (about 15 cents US) and sit back and relax in air conditioned comfort. It's a good way to see parts of the city while taking refuge from the midday sun and heat. I also made 2 trips down to the Mekong Delta and used the Saigon bus (#2) to take me from the Bến Thành market out to the Miền Tây bus station that serves the Mekong region from Sài Gòn. Once you arrive at the Miền Tây station it's very easy to find your Mekong destination and purchase a ticket from one of the number of private companies that run the buses. Upon return to Miền Tây you simply head for the parking lot behind the station and look for the same Saigon bus to take you back.

For bus trips up the coast or to Dà Lạt, there are many companies that run open tour buses from the Phạm Ngũ Lãu backpacker area and the prices are very reasonable or really just plain cheap. It's best to go directly to a bus company to purchase your ticket instead of using a tour service company because you'll pay a markup and won't know what company and bus you'll be on. For my numerous trips to Nha Trang, I found the sleeper buses are the way to go whether it's nighttime or daytime and regardless whether you'll actually be sleeping. The reason is that you have space to stretch out a bit and you don't worry about the seat back in front of you suddenly dropping into your lap while likely bruising your knees! I'm not kidding about this, it happened to me more than once. I guess the Vietnamese attitude is that you don't worry about the person sitting behind you unless they complain which I did every time this happened and the individual in front of me obliged by raising their seat back from its near-horizontal position. The company I liked best for sleeper bus trips is T. M. Brothers Cafe. Their prices and service are both excellent and I found them better than the few others I tried.

I took 2 train trips from Nha Trang to Huế and back and my ticket had the word 'Foreigner' printed on it. I suspect I was charged more than a Vietnamese because the price didn't seem so cheap and the train was packed full of Vietnamese passengers. It's accepted practice to charge foreigners more for anything and everything in Vietnam and it's even openly practiced by the government at the hotels they run. At one of these, I saw the room rates printed on a card at the reception in vnđ and thought they looked reasonable. The reception staff then flipped the card around which had higher prices in US dollars and informed me that I had to pay the US dollar prices! I moved on. It's easy to get around being overcharged once you become familiar with the system and the prices. Except with train tickets.

If you fly into Hồ Chí Minh City you should pay about 120,000 vnđ ($6.50 US) for a cab ride from the airport to the Phạm Ngũ Lãu area or anywhere in District 1. Once I thought I would have some fun and asked a waiting cabbie as I strolled out of the international terminal with a faux naive expression on my face how much it would cost for that trip. He sized me up and gave me his price of 500,000 vnđ! I laughed at him and told him to go to hell with a few other choice words thrown in that he may or may not have understood and kept walking. In general the further away you get from the initial contact with cabbies in this situation the better the prices get. This is of course a general rule all over the world and the known universe. You can also take a Saigon bus from the airport (#152) to the Bến Thành market for a cost of I think 5,000 or 6,000 vnđ. Another option if you don't have large bags is to walk through the airport parking lot to the exit gate and catch a xe ôm, or motorbike taxi, for about 50,000 vnđ. The airport doesn't allow them inside the airport boundary. I used a xe ôm both to and from the airport numerous times. It's interesting but a little too adventurous for most and I don't blame anyone for feeling that way!

In the Phạm Ngũ Lãu area there is a labyrinth of alleyways between Phạm Ngũ Lãu and Bùi Viện streets where you can find many mini-hotels and guesthouses (and unfortunately the one where my laptop was stolen) with good prices and where you can get away from the constant cacophony of the busy streets. I never explored all of it as I would imagine one could spend quite a few hours doing that, but it's worth some reconnaissance if you're going to spend more than a few days in the area. Rates are always negotiable and if you're staying multiple days you can always use that to bargain for a lower rate.

As you walk past the many jewelry shops you'll see all over Vietnam, you may notice the board often placed in front with numbers for 'mua' (buying) and 'bán' (selling) of something. That something is 1.2 troy ounce bars of gold called taels that are made by the Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) and bought, kept, and sold by Vietnamese as a store of value and/or just to speculate on the price of gold. Vietnam effectively has separate systems for currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value, the Vietnam đồng or vnđ being the former and gold being the latter. I imagine this dual system evolved because of the unstable nature of the vnđ over the last few decades meaning its value has steadily declined. It's an interesting phenomenon because in the US and most other countries the currency is used for both the medium of exchange and a store of value. There is probably some well-known rate of inflation that economists know whereby a population seeks out an alternative store of value such as gold in Vietnam. Many real estate transactions in Vietnam are settled in gold with the price quoted in taels and not vnđ. Vietnamese can deposit and withdraw taels in banks and get paid interest on them just like cash.

When I left Vietnam I first flew to Hong Kong on one of the many low cost carriers that service the area. I first flew to Bangkok in order to get the lowest fare I could. What I found out is that some carriers are point-to-point carriers meaning you can only check your bags to the destination of the flight you're on, so I had to check my bags to Bangkok first and then to Hong Kong later meaning I had to collect my bags in Bangkok and go through customs there and recheck the bag for Hong Kong. This was especially aggravating because I had a 5-hour layover in Bangkok and I couldn't check the bags for Hong Kong until 3 hours before the flight so I had to haul the bags around the Bangkok airport for a while. In the end I'm not sure it was worth all the extra work and hassle and I was wishing I had just used a 'regular cost' airline. The low cost carriers usually give you a low quote for the flight on their website but as you navigate through the purchase process the fees and costs start getting tacked on so that your real purchase price may be substantially higher than the original quote that got you hooked. Also something to think about.

During my 5-hour wait in the Bangkok airport I found a seat along a main walkway and started people watching. While glancing across the walkway I spotted a young woman, very thin, very attractive, wearing a dress type thing that really didn't fall far below her waist. Why I fixated on her amongst all the others between her and me I just can't tell you. My eyesight is not as good as it once was, but as my gaze climbed up her physique to her face I thought that maybe she was also looking at me. So I did the only thing that one can do in those circumstances, I smiled. Within 2 seconds she and her 2 friends began making their way across the walkway towards me and arrived at the same bench I was seated on and took the 3 remaining seats that were left, the one I had stared at in so unsubtle a way seating herself right next to me. So I again did the only thing one can do in those circumstances and turned to her and said something inane along the lines of "So, where are you from?" "I'm from Thailand" was the response accompanied with a bemused smile. "Where are you traveling to?" came the question from her. Her English was quite good. "Hong Kong, and you?" I replied. "Maybe I go Hong Kong. With you." Smiles and giggles from her and her 2 friends. "I can fit in your bag" she added to a chorus of more smiles and giggles. Turns out one of her friends was there to meet her boyfriend from Germany and they all came to the airport together. They were from some area far from Bangkok. I noticed she had a tattoo on her shoulder blade and bent my head to look at. She slid her dress strap to the side so that I could see the intricate design around the words "Sex Love". I had already surmised that she probably was not a schoolteacher. Just for fun I asked her what her job was and this prompted a brief exchange between her and her friends in Thai and her response in Thai with more smiles. We had a pleasant and entertaining conversation for about 20 minutes before they had to leave to meet the German boyfriend. I learned something from the experience on a social, personal, and moral level and that is that I should try that smile thing more often.

Now that I'm back in the US I don't know when I'll be returning to Vietnam. While I enjoyed the 8 months there on this trip, it was actually a failure in light of my original intentions. I had intended to stay longer than 8 months maybe even for a period of years based on what I heard during my first trip in 2008 regarding visas in Vietnam. At that time many foreigners were taking advantage of lax enforcement of the rules for 6-month business visas and staying indefinitely in Vietnam by simply renewing these twice yearly. Sometime in 2009 the government cracked down on this and started requiring actual work permits in order to get a business visa. This meant I was relegated to tourist visas of 1 to 3-month durations which is not very long and doesn't allow one to really feel like they're living somewhere. Compounding this is the unpredictability of the visa rules that seem to change day by day and vary depending on your home country. While relations between the US and Vietnam are certainly much better than they were 30 years ago, the US is still not at the top of the list of Vietnam's favorite nations. Australians for example get more favorable treatment than US citizens in Vietnam.

Instead of getting an apartment with a 6-month lease I should have rented a furnished room on a month-to-month basis and kept my options open. If I return there I'll do it this way.

You Foreigner, you're not now nor will you ever be one of us! I don't think I was supposed to keep this once I left the train station. I can only imagine the non-Foreigner price is less.

Throngs at a Buddhist festival in the town of Châu Đốc near the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta region.

Roadside rest stop in the Mekong Delta region. I, too, was reclining in style in a hammock!

The (Un)Usual

After having spent almost 7 months in Vietnam on this trip I often forget about the many aspects of life, some quite interesting and amusing, that I've simply grown accustomed to and no longer consider unusual to a Westerner even though they likely are. I'll try to cover most of my list here.

I made reference before to the problem (well, that's subjective) here of using way too many disposable plastic products especially those plastic bags that states like California and places like Hong Kong are trying to control. I heard that in Hong Kong you are actually charged a small fee to leave a store with one of their plastic bags. Sounds good in theory to me. As an example of what I mean about Sài Gòn, I often go into one of the many excellent local bakeries to buy 1 or 2 croissants and maybe a cream puff. When you buy a cream puff here, they actually use a cloth funnel to squeeze the cream into the pastry when you buy it! Anyway, what typically happens is that I walk out with the baked goods along with 3 plastic bags and 1 plastic clam shell provided as packaging. The real problem lies in the mentality here which is one of a little pride in being able to include so much plastic packaging along with your purchase as a way of showing that they're a full member of the modern global economy by being able to do that. When I was in Cambodia I saw a Western girl with a cloth handbag with the message 'Just say no to plastic' on it and I admired her ability to take a stand like that against all the local conventional thinking. The problem is as bad or worse in Cambodia. The attitudes can and will change, but it would be nice if they could just go ahead and do it now!

I stayed in a hotel in Nha Trang that seemed to pride itself in throwing away my toothbrush and providing a new one as part of the daily maid service. This was especially aggravating because the first one they so diligently disposed of was my own personal one and I was none too pleased with having it replaced with their flimsy substitute. After a couple of days of this I started hiding the ostensibly disposable toothbrush so they couldn't throw it away. Hopefully I reduced by some small number the plastic toothbrushes that end up in the vast sea of disposed plastic products the swirls about far out in the Pacific Ocean.

Another aspect to that attitude is the habit many or most (or almost all) Vietnamese have about litter which is that there's no such thing as litter meaning throwing your paper or plastic bottle on the ground doesn't qualify as such a thing and there's nothing wrong with it. In defense of that behavior Sài Gòn and all Vietnamese cities I've been in have very thorough and regular street sweeping, so some of the behavior can be attributed to simply taking advantage of that public service. I can already see some changes in that behavior starting especially in the public parks where there seems to exist a boundary that renders a complete change in attitude when crossed and the trash cans that are provided get a lot of use.

On the other hand the level of air pollution here is not as bad as I had feared. I've spoken with some who have spent time in China, particularly Beijing, who've informed me the air pollution here is not even close to as bad as it is there. My first few months here I experienced regular bouts of what one expat I met dubbed the Saigon Flu, a case of coughing and chest congestion attributable to either pollution or microbes or viruses I'm guessing. But since the pollution isn't so bad and I've not had a case of it in almost 4 months, I think it may just be something in the environment that one needs to develop an immunity to.

There is something in the environment here that one cannot develop any immunity to as far as I know and that will make your life miserable if left untreated and this problem doesn't get much attention. I was fortunate enough to have been informed about this by a Vietnamese woman and the timing was impeccable as I developed symptoms within 2 weeks of having learned about it and I don't think I'm a hypochondriac. What I'm referring to is, in a word, worms. Yes, creepy disgusting ringworms that get into your system by who-knows-what means, but I've since heard that it's almost impossible not to get them if you stay here long enough. Vietnamese and expats who live here follow a regular treatment regimen of taking a single pill every 4 to 6 months. If you don't treat them, you'll eventually develop a stomach ache and find yourself jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to run to the bathroom and....Well, let's just say it's better to do the treatment. And here's the treatment. You go to one of the countless pharmacies that dot the streets in any Vietnamese city and ask for a dose. The one I used that was recommended to me is called Fugucar. There may be others I don't know of but this one worked well for me. You don't need a prescription. When I bought mine the pharmacist used a calculator display to show me the price of 16,500 vnd which I misread as 165,000 and eagerly pulled out 2 100,000 vnd notes to gladly fork over to rid myself of my reviling affliction and she informed me of my mistake. It's a single pill that you chew and swallow. It's without doubt the best 85 cents I've ever spent!

When I grocery shop here I have no problem finding the products I want including high quality dairy products many of which are imported. I find it hard to live without my cheese and I can find adequate versions of it here. If you want real French brie or the like you may be restricted to a few expensive boutique shops in Sài Gòn and Hà Nội, but good quality swiss and cheddar and the like are readily available at regular markets. I've started using UHT milk and have been able to buy very good milk imported from Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania. Yes, Tasmania! As an American whose only knowledge for most of my life that there existed a place called Tasmania was due to the little spinning slobbering tornado of a cartoon character that chased Bugs Bunny around, it felt exotic and exciting to drink milk from there. We all get our jollies where we can!

Eggs are sold here unrefrigerated and they seem to sell about equal amounts of chicken eggs and duck eggs. I remember as a kid wondering if duck eggs were edible and I can now tell you they most certainly are! I've started eating them on a regular basis. Quite frankly I think they taste just like chicken. Eggs that is. Many Vietnamese eat fertilised duck eggs. I haven't worked up an appetite of a desperate enough level to sample that one yet. But I'm told they're good. I've also been told dog is good. They eat that mostly in the north in Hà Nội and I've never seen it for sale in Sài Gòn. I have seen it for sale in Hà Nội in its butchered and skinned form piled high on a table. Real life.

In Vietnam, maybe more so in the south, one has to get over the fact that you're sharing the biosphere with various other members of Mother Nature's panoply of life such as large cockroaches, rats, bats, and geckos. I long ago accepted the cockroaches that live carefree productive lives in my bathroom as non-paying roommates, but I was recently disturbed when one of them began practicing a new level of cavalier camaraderie by crawling over my bare feet while I stood astride the toilet. Being midstream, so to speak, my level of protestation had to be understandably restrained and it was a challenging exercise in mental focus to say the least. I think it's time I sat down with my roommates and had a little chat about limits and boundaries.

The cute furry little mammals you seeing bouncing about the parks and streets at dusk are not squirrels nor are they chipmunks. Take your pick from the list in the previous paragraph. The Vietnamese word is chuột.

Little geckos frequent all the non-horizontal surfaces in the homes and rooms here. Well, is the ceiling a non-horizontal surface? Either way you see them there, too. They are cute and harmless except to the insects they consume. I also recently found out they sometimes make noises that sound to me very squirrel-like. I heard these noises emitting from a gecko on a wall while he approached another member of his species. I'm assuming that other member was of the female gender and these noises are part of that mysterious process through which we keep having geckos around. Just assuming. Or maybe he or she just had something to get off his or her little gecko chest.

I appreciate the fact that many Vietnamese and others have learned the English language and continue to do so and I am very tolerant and patient if one of them speaks it in a way that reminds me of how very complicated and difficult human communication can be, but recently a very nice Vietnamese woman and I were having a conversation in which she informed she me enjoyed watching 'horrible movies'. Of course I was a bit perplexed (but of course she would have an essentially infinite number of fine productions to choose from!) until as she continued to talk it finally hit me that she meant horror movies! It's been weeks and I still catch myself privately chuckling about that one.

I've been to the local park countless times and just recently noticed the rules that are posted in Vietnamese are also in English on the other side. I'm not sure how they expect anyone to have any fun there especially in light of rule #3.

Well this rules out me and my gang of drunken sorcerers!

Cry Me a Perfume River

The weather here in Sài Gòn has gotten very humid and warm and stagnant and made it hard to live without that modern miracle, the air-conditioner, though I imagine the large majority of the city's residents do. A few rain showers have occurred and there will be more of that to come and then the weather usually becomes a bit more pleasant or so I've been told.

I made my second trip to the beautiful city of Huế to visit a friend from my English teaching certification course, Craig, who hails from Australia. Huế is most famous for its historical citadel which was used during Vietnam's last dynasty, the Nguyễn, which ended only in 1945 and also for the excellent cuisine that was required to satisfy the Nguyễns' royal palates . Huế is also known as the site of furious fighting during the Vietnam War as it's not too far from the DMZ. One of life's many ironies is that areas near DMZ's are often witness to intense fighting and in the case of Vietnam, have the most persistent UXO (unexploded ordnance) problems.

I enjoyed my 4 days in Huế as it's a low-key city bisected by the beautiful Perfume River, but I could have done without the daily unannounced power outages that apparently are a part of life there especially this time of year. 2 of the 4 mornings there I awoke in soaked sheets due to the motionless state of the ceiling fan over my bed, a fairly reliable indicator, I grew to discover, that the power is out! Ok, so it's out, when does it come back on? Ah sometime later, I see. Thanks for the helpful information. Yes, it does get annoying. It would usually be out for a period of 'some hours'. On the bright side this helps keep the pace of life in Huế to a manageable slow sprint.

Craig and I made use of the hotel's rental motorbike and toured the most famous of the numerous Nguyễn palaces/tombs in the Huế area, Tự Đức, where one of the Nguyễn royalty of that name whiled away his days back in the 1800's writing poems and frolicking with his wives and concubines who numbered around 150. Maybe he had 150 playmates but he didn't have air conditioning! At the risk of discrediting my virility I think I would opt for the air conditioning. Besides I've found that once you get to over 100 girlfriends it can start to be too much of a distraction and more of a headache than it's worth and I'm sure some of you out there can attest to this. He also had no children, supposedly due to a childhood illness that rendered him sterile. Based on the aforementioned excessive numbers I have this feeling he was unwilling to accept the sterility as being his problem.

We also went out to a local beach area one afternoon and spent a few hours drinking local beer and being harassed by the endless stream of child vendors all selling the same assortment of bagged snacks. I didn't see any other foreigners out there so I'm sure we were regarded as fat cows to be milked with inflated prices for snacks of dubious quality. One of them, a young lad, was especially persistent, but his sales pitch was limited to a tiresome string of 'you, you, you'. That was the only English word he would say. I started responding back with 'em, em, em', the Vietnamese way of addressing him, to the amusement of some of the Vietnamese who were within earshot. I tried to teach him to say 'Would you like to buy some snacks?' to no avail. He couldn't or wouldn't learn even a single new word and I wrote him off since I didn't want any of his wares anyway. If some of the tens of thousands of Vietnamese touts want to set themselves apart all they need do is learn a few more words of English or French or whatever language they're assailing their prospective customers in. If I were walking anywhere in Vietnam and I heard a Vietnamese voice say 'Sir, do you need a motorbike ride?' instead of the ubiquitous 'You motorbike you', I think I would be so pleasantly shocked I would jump on the back and say 'take me anywhere you like and tell me how much later'! I might do that once. Only once.

While at the beach Vietnamese enjoy swimming even if they neglected to bring the proper attire. No, they don't skinny dip, but take the other option of going in fully clothed even if they're wearing denim jeans! I can't imagine any of the boys and girls I saw sitting around in their wet jeans were comfortable, but I saw nothing but smiles and heard nothing but laughter. Someone obviously needed to inform them all how just how miserable they unknowingly were. Many women don't own what we would consider to be proper swimming attire due to both economics and conservative attitudes. It's rare to see a Vietnamese woman in a 2-piece bathing suit, a.k.a. bikini, so rare in fact that I don't recall a single instance of it.

I recently finished an excellent book for an education in understanding Vietnamese society entitled, appropriately enough, Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jameson. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject. It's both insightful and very well written and helps make sense of a lot what you see today in Vietnam.

On the way back from the beach as darkness was falling we discovered that none of the lights on the motorbike worked. Not a big deal in Vietnam as you'll see motorbikes blithely slipping through the darkness completely unilluminated on any night, but I didn't like not having any lights and I shouldn't have been driving at night without my glasses. Craig had no experience motorbiking so it didn't make sense to switch drivers either so we proceeded while I tried to be cautious while also going with the flow of traffic.

As we approached a left turn to take us back into Huế I slowed to wait for an approaching motorbike but I continued to slowly make the turn thinking the approaching driver would veer to his right as we turned. I remember seeing the approaching headlight waver before the loud crack and finding myself lying on the pavement in a state of semi-shock unable to breathe. Craig and I exchanged questions and replies that we were both ok though I couldn't yet move to lift myself up. A Vietnamese bystander came over and offered his hand to help me up but I declined. After maybe 30 seconds of laying on the pavement I was able to take breaths again and I pulled myself up and righted the motorbike. I could see that Craig was standing by the roadside and was OK. I turned back to find out about the other driver but he wasn't there. Apparently he went down also but was able to quickly get back up and took off. By the time I finally pushed the motorbike to the side of the road, the small crowd that had gathered was beginning to disperse, having seen that no one needed any extra attention. I'm not sure how much time had elapsed since the impact. It could have been 2 minutes or 20. In a bit of pain and with my confidence shattered we completed the 10 minute ride back to the hotel. Luckily Craig knew where to go as I was lost and fuzzy and shaky.

It was not a pleasant night for Craig or myself. The motorbike suffered only a minor cracked faring, but I was hurting all over from my head to my knees. Craig suffered some scrapes, the most noticeable being on the knuckles of one of his hands giving him the appearance of having been in a good bar fight. I got about 2 hours of restless sleep that night as I had very few comfortable positions I could try to lay in. The next morning I left for a 13 hour train ride back to Nha Trang.

I assume the accident was at least partly my fault as I'm still not comfortable with the unwritten rules of the road here. I'd had a previous near miss in Nha Trang that was definitely my fault. I should have just stopped and waited for the oncoming motorbike to pass, especially since I didn't have a headlight and he probably had a hard time seeing exactly where I was. Truthfully I was happy to see the other driver had left because that meant he was OK and also I was afraid of being held liable for damages. It would have been smart to check the lights on the bike and/or been more mindful of the time. Of course it would have been helpful if the hotel had informed us the lights didn't work! Then again, they may not even know. I don't know if we even told them

Picture of my respectable bruise is below.

Craig gets momentarily distracted from the day's important business: sipping coffee and reading news on the banks of Huế's Perfume River.



It's not as if the concubines went unnoticed and forgotten!

Remnants of a concubine house.


American bunkers from the Vietnam War perched high up on a bank of the Perfume River outside Huế.

View upriver from the site of the bunkers.

Ouch! But as I've discovered from numerous mountain bike accidents, there's often little correlation between how bad an injury looks and the pain. This one never hurt at all. What was quite painful was the rib that I must have bruised but that had no visible external signs whatsoever.

Welcome to the Mystical Land of Realia

I've taken a month-long break from my last post so that I could devote all my limited mental bandwidth to obtaining my English teaching certification that allows me the option of spreading the knowledge and ability to communicate in the de facto international language of government and business to Vietnamese and other non-native speakers of it. It was an interesting experience that unfolded in ways that surprised me while also making demands of me that I wasn't anticipating.

My fear before attending the first class was that I would be by far the oldest student with the others comprised of 20-something fresh college grads, but the class was a nice mix of ages from 23 to the mid-50's, and nationalities including 3 Americans, 4 Aussies, and 1 Brit so I didn't feel at all out of place.

Right off the bat we were introduced to techniques for getting the foreign language learning process started for beginning students by using images, pictures, gestures, and something called realia all in the interest of setting a known context to start from. Realia is nothing more than a fancy name for props that a teacher would use in the same manner as a prop comic who pulls objects out of a bag to accompany his comedy material and a teacher does it for the same purpose, that is to command the attention of the audience and illustrate ideas without requiring much effort. I am however reminded of the metaphor of using an elephant gun to shoot a mouse and it seems a bit high brow and a waste really to use the term realia for something so mundane and ancillary as toys and gadgets. I was then fully expecting to cover the philosophy of dangling participles and the morality of missing antecedents followed by the gestalt of coordinating clauses. Realia?! Please. Henceforth I will use the term props. The realia, along with a wicked dose of philosophy, morality, and gestalt was to appear, for me at least, at the onset of teaching practice.

Teaching practice is where, as they say, the rubber meets the road. In my case I hit the road behind the wheel of a toy car made of cardboard and wire held together with paste and cellophane tape with wheels made of construction paper and popsicle sticks and at least one of those wheels was square. I found that I got no notice or respect for the 'Teacher On Board' scrawled across the door. Written in blue magic marker of course. This is all to say I was woefully unprepared for the task of standing at the head of a classroom of over 30 12-13 year old Vietnamese students who had about as much interest in learning English as having a few teeth pulled. This is simply how kids of that age are and always have been all over the globe. As I stood there and tried to ask in a friendly manner for attention and quiet with all the effect of whispering into the maw of a hurricane I thought to myself 'Where is my class of eager quiet attentive English students?' and I knew the answer was they existed in my head but definitely not then and there in that classroom. Now you can finally start talking to me about realia!

It turned out that a topic we had touched on ever so briefly in our classroom, a topic properly called classroom management, was the most important skill we would be needing for our series of 6 teaching practices. Out of our class of 8 prospective teachers, I'd say there were 3 who had an innate or previously acquired ability in classroom management and the rest of us floundered a bit. Not all the classes we taught were out of control and even in those classes that were there was always a handful of students that did pay attention and did want to learn, but without the classroom management skills the English teaching was largely a wasted effort. That said, it was still a good learning experience for us teachers and I think overall the kids liked it too even if they didn't show it the way we would have liked them to. I also have this suspicion we were being tested to find teachers who could in fact control large classes in this age group as I gathered many teachers simply will not teach these students, preferring really young or more advanced and serious students, but unfortunately 2 of the 3 teachers that I thought did a good job of classroom management during the teaching practices said they had no interest in pursuing it, at least for the time being. No worries, starting next week there's a new group of prospective teachers to pick through!

The classroom teaching practices were followed by one on one practices which were much easier on us and productive for the students who volunteered. It was good to get a taste of being able to help someone who wanted to learn without having to first rope them up and herd them into a paddock.

End result is that we all received our TESOL certification which should help any of us who so desire to get English teaching positions in Vietnam or elsewhere. My biggest regret of the experience is that I didn't bring my camera to any of the teaching practices to get some photos of the classes and the enthusiastic students in their blue and white uniforms. All the public schools here require uniforms which I've grown to consider a good idea. The schools here also operate at late hours, until 9 PM often, and even on weekends. I don't know if this is due to having shifts to deal with overcrowding or if it results in longer classroom hours for the students.

Besides the teacher/student aspects of the classroom experiences, over the past 4 weeks I came face to face with many of my own expectations and as it turns out, illusions, about not just teaching but living somewhere like Vietnam on a long-term or permanent basis. I also spent a lot of time interacting with and observing my fellow student teachers in an attempt to divine the answers each of them might truthfully have to what I simply call The Question. The Question is simple and important but it's one of those that most of us devote more time dreaming up polite pretty responses to that we can roll off at a party or over lunch with a relaxed smile and maybe accompanied by an expression of selfless concern on those rare occasions it's even obliquely asked than to trying to honestly answer. The Question is 'Why are you here?'. While the nice responses we concoct are not necessarily untrue, there's usually also a less selfless component we tend to leave out that we should acknowledge at least to ourselves. Or maybe not. That's enough realia for now.

Stone Temples Rock

No tourist is allowed to enter Cambodia without paying a visit to the world-famous temples of Angkor which includes the most famous, Angkor Wat. A few are rumored to have come and gone without visiting, but they will certainly be tracked down and punished.

So many volumes have been written and terabytes of images produced extolling the incredible qualities of Angkor that one might be forgiven for believing no more needs to be done, but this is how I once felt about Brangelina and extra terrestrials and I now know you can just never get enough.

The temples of Angkor are not a World Heritage site and one of the top tourist attractions in the world because of slick polished advertising and no hawkers stand at the park boundary shouting and beckoning you to come in. You don't encounter the hawkers until after you've entered the park and it's only the usual drinks and trinkets they're peddling. No, the temples of Angkor are just simply and inherently awe-inspiring.

The temples are located on the outskirts of the city of Siem Reap which has became well developed with tourist amenities, but is still a very pretty city, the nicest one of the 3 I visited in Cambodia, the other 2 being Phnom Penh and Battambang. The Siem Reap River runs through its center as it makes its way to Tonle Sap Lake and there are nice parks and gardens and tree-lined streets in combination with an overall peaceful and relaxing atmosphere. Even though the temples are a huge tourist attraction, perhaps it's due to their being immense, intricate, mute, and seemingly timeless that calms the attitudes and activities that would normally surround such an attraction.

Even though admittance to the park is expensive by SE Asia standards it's definitely worth it to see these stone monuments, but the aggravating aspect is finding out how the funds are actually distributed. There's a group called the Aspara Authority that's dedicated to the preservation of the temples that receives somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the gate, a private company that administers the admission takes about 17%, and the remainder goes to the Cambodian general fund that is used for the benefit of Cambodian people. I'm reminded of the old joke about Italian actuaries when I say I have a pretty good idea of exactly which Cambodian people largely benefit from the regular charge of money that finds its way to the general fund and those would be Hun Sen and his family and cronies. After all, flying helicopters between mansions spread throughout the nicest parts of Cambodia and keeping your leader living in a style that befits and benefits Cambodia isn't free. This breakdown in Angkor fee disbursements is courtesy of the Lonely Planet guidebook and I'm impressed they were able to obtain these figures and I have no problem believing their veracity and my only doubt is that the portion claimed to go to the Aspara Authority may in fact be inflated.

One of the interesting aspects of the temples is that they are not all versions of the same thing as the general architectural and stone carving styles vary greatly between them. This is due to the long time period and various regimes under which they were constructed. I purchased a 3-day admission to the park and I believe this is the minimum time needed to have a meaningful experience there and see most of what there is to see. Because the temples are so spread out in an area of about 3 x 7 miles, walking is not a viable option, but biking is and since that was my option I'm going to recommend it to anyone who feels up to it. The park itself is about 5 km north of Siem Reap but the road leading there and all the main roads within the park are well maintained and flat so the biking is pretty easy by my standards. Of course I've been a bit of a biking enthusiast and understand not everyone shares my idea of pretty easy, but it's really not bad. You can always try it one day and see how it goes. Renting bikes in Siem Reap is cheap, I never paid more than $1/day, and I found out after renting for 2 days that my lodge offered bikes for free! Granted none of these bikes would last an hour in places like the Bay Area in California without being laughed off the road, but in Cambodia the standards are different and the bikes work just fine. The main reason for biking around the temples is not just to lord a greener than thou attitude over the patrons of motorized transport, but to have the freedom to explore at your own pace and find off-the-beaten-track hidden gems of temples that rarely if ever find themselves part of any motorized tour because they are often down unpaved roads and largely unknown to the tourists themselves. Your tuk tuk driver is not going to voluntarily pull you down one of these unpaved side roads without your coaxing, and yes, that probably also means 'incentivizing' him to do so. I never saw a single tuk tuk or motorbike or car at any of the beautiful peaceful side temples I visited. I encountered a total of 3 other tourists, 1 who was also biking and 2 others who had apparently strayed away on foot from their tour group. The main drawback to biking the temples is having to plan for and locate a suitable place to wait out the roasting hours of 1-3 or even 12-4 PM every day when the tropical sun drives almost all living rational creatures to seek shade. But if you were adventurous enough to be biking in the first place, finding such a suitable place is not at all difficult. Just bring something to read.

Many of the temples are still used for religious purposes and often there's a monk camped out in the central chambers who will be happy to bless you for an appropriate modest fee. On my 3rd and final day touring the temples I engaged the blessing services of not 1, but 2 of these enterprising portals to the benevolence of the gods. Along with a chanted blessing in Khmer or some equally mysterious language the monk will wrap a piece of red string around your wrist as a token of blessedness for all to see and admire and I therefore had bright red strings on each wrist as a consequence of being literally doubly blessed. Little did I know that I would be needing this reinforced spiritual armor against the sinister elements of the universe until later that afternoon and little could I have ever guessed from what quarter it would come.

One of the many interesting aspects to the temples of Angkor park is that sprinkled around the temples throughout the park are small settlements where ordinary Cambodians have huts and small plots of land where they scratch out a living. I imagine many of these intrapark residents also comprise some of the large number of concessionaires that offer cool drinks and alimentations but also serve as somewhat of a gantlet to all visitors of the major and many of the not so major temples. The vendors are almost all women many of them young girls and their lyrical 'cold drink, sir, you buy cold drink, sir' greeted me at almost every temple entrance over the 3 days I spent in the park. They were no strangers to my patronage as I found I needed and wanted copious amounts of cold drinks to keep me pedaling from temple to temple. If you don't want any of the offered cold drinks, the only proper response is a simple firm 'no thank you'. Don't try to play the game of 'well, maybe on the way out' thinking you've just successfully thwarted the sales pitch without bruising any feelings or indicating your true desire of really not wanting anything because the utterance of these words is paramount to striking a binding contract with the vendor and with none other than the ancient stone temples of the Gods, adamantine in their timeless stance for truth and justice, as witnesses.

It was late on the 3rd day and as I parked my bike to walk into one of the last temples I would visit, I was hit with the tiresome and predictable cold drink pitch and maybe it was because I was tired or momentarily unfocused, but I slipped up and said it. 'Maybe on the way out'. 'Ok, ok, I remember you and you remember me', came the trilling enthusiastic response. As I made my way back to my bike after touring yet another breathtaking temple, I remembered my commitment and even though I didn't want yet another cold drink, I told myself if the price was reasonable I would buy one. I've adopted a practice in SE Asia once I'm familiar enough with a place of approaching every business transaction with 3 numbers in mind: the price I think I should fairly pay, the maximum price I will willingly negotiate with, and the walkaway price, that is the price that is so far out of line with the fair price that I just pay it no heed and walk. I decided that I would buy a drink from the young girl as long as she didn't utter that unforgivable third number. It's a common practice among vendors not just here, but everywhere, to regard a tourist more as a head of cattle than anything else and to have a sense of ownership once a contact has been established and therefore to expect to extract a non-competitive price from that tourist. Come to think of it, that practice isn't limited to tourist vendors and don't bother writing your Congressman about it. Anyway, I should have known she would give me the fatal third number and she did. I sighed and told her I just didn't want a drink and mounted by bike and started to pedal away. 'Well that's the way to deal with that!' I chirped to myself as I began laying meters of real estate between myself and the jilted vendor until her words, lacking the usual uplifting singsong quality I had grown accustomed to, rang out dripping with foreboding and malevolence and seemed to echo off the hallowed stone and through the verdant jungle as if bellowed from very the heavens, 'Ooh, you bad man'. I momentarily checked to be sure I was still moving and breathing and not succumbing to the powers of the black curse that had just been laid upon my head and pedaled a little quicker as if that would somehow deliver me out of its reach. I gazed furtively at the trees alongside the road fully expecting them to have adopted a monstrous aspect with branches transformed to menacing hands and claws and I just knew the eyes of the next stone face I encountered would follow me with their stoic judgmental gaze (and they did!) and checked to see that the red blessing strings around each of my wrists had not blackened and seared into my skin marking me forever for all to see and know me as what I had now become: a bad man.

The strings still flashed their brilliant red and hung loosely on my wrists and the trees still swayed gently in the afternoon breeze and I visited 2 more temples without a single 5 ton stone toppling off its 700 year resting place to squash my head like an overripe melon, but I can only attribute this to the fact that I received my Angkor blessings much like the population of Chicago was once rumored to have voted and that is early and often. And I advise you to do the same when you visit the temples of Angkor!

Earlier that 3rd day I had visited the prima donna that is Angkor Wat and it was largely what I expected, that is very large and designed to impress and/or intimidate and crawling with more tourists and concessionaires than I had seen anywhere else in the park. I spent an obligatory few hours there and checked it off my mental list. My favorite temples by far were the ones I found by following unpaved side roads especially on the north side of the park. They were quiet and reverential and beautiful and accessible. To each his own.

One of the pretty riverside streets in Siem Reap.





A tourist balloon is launched early in the morning as seen from Phnom Bakheng.
This site gets really crowded before sunset when throngs come here to watch.





Sunset approaches at Pre Rup and the monks are out in their saffron robes adding a touch of color to the stone.




I stopped at this family's roadside refreshment stand in the East Baray and enjoyed talking to the young man in the blue pants who was the only one who spoke any English. He struck me as the kind of kid who would excel if given the
chance and I hope he gets it, but life is not kind or fair that way.



Maybe my favorite temple, the small and beautiful Krol Koi. No one else was there. Note the tree growing on top of the wall. This is a common and amazing feature in the temples and there are many other larger more dramatic examples of this at other temples including one that was used in the Lara Croft movie.



What a small hand you have! Found this outsized jungle denizen as I was waiting out the roasting hours near the east gate of Angkor Thom.



If you ever wondered what Jayavarman VII looked like. He was the most prolific temple builder at Angkor and his face is everywhere. This is the east gate of Angkor Thom and his face is on all 4 cardinal directions of the gate.

Back From The Wild (well, not quite as much as it used to be) West

Earlier this month my tourist visa for Vietnam expired and I embarked on the little adventure of taking a bus across the border into Cambodia to its capital Phnom Penh to acquire a new 3-month Vietnam visa. This was the first time I've ever played the 'leave the country and come back' visa game that I've heard so much about.

I arrived in Phnom Penh on Feb. 3 not really knowing what to expect after having read a couple of books on Cambodia and Phnom Penh including the famous 'The Killing Fields'. Interestingly, that book doesn't expound on the actual killing fields at all and has only a single brief reference to it, but describes in detail what it was like to be in Cambodia back in the 1970's and to be a captured slave of the Khmer Rouge. The subject of the book, Dith Pran, was a Cambodian who worked with an American journalist, Sydney Schanberg, and stayed behind in Cambodia after his family and Schanberg left for the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dith_Pran). It's a chilling story and I recommend it to anyone who has not read it. Of course there's also the Hollywood version which I've never seen.

The days of the killing fields are now in the not-so-distant past and the Toul Sleng torture camp is now a museum and memorial to the atrocities that took place there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng). After visiting there one has a real appreciation for the freedom and security we usually take for granted and it opens up the actions of the world's powerful governments to a lot of questions. How an individual like Pol Pot who died peacefully in his sleep while under house (straw hut) arrest and a group like the KR came to be in a position of power with the military hardware to enforce it in Cambodia is an interesting story with a lot of players and threads of responsibility and betrayal woven into it. In the end, that is in 1975, those who could have intervened turned their backs and moved on to more pressing and important matters. It was none other than Vietnam who finally toppled the KR regime in 1978. Such is the way of the world.

In short, I don't care for Phnom Penh. Please allow me to elaborate. It's a nice city in a pretty location at the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, but it lacks the touches that make it a pleasant place to be IMHO. In my time in southeast Asia there's one commodity that I've grown to regard as both highly prized and a basic human right and that's public shade. Public shade, exactly that, is simply places where an individual can sit and escape the baking midday sun and Phnom Penh has very little of it. Granted, the average sedentary tourist who arrives by plane or bus and jumps into a taxi or shaded tuk tuk and is whisked from hotel to restaurant to tour site may not care or take notice of the lack of this precious attribute, but I can safely aver that I am not an average tourist because I do a lot of walking to get from place to place and I appreciate the simple idea of public parks and benches in shaded areas that make the difference between misery and relaxed comfort. As a tourist though I'm only sampling what life is like on a daily basis for the citizens of a place that I'm merely passing through and how it affects their overall quality of life and I know beyond any doubt that the citizens of Saigon and Hanoi and other cities in Vietnam have a better quality of life than those of Phnom Penh. Perhaps it's all due to the French influence in Vietnam and perhaps the KR or others in Cambodia destroyed this particular aspect of French influence in Cambodia, I don't know, but to me it really stands out in stark contrast. I found only one public park in Phnom Penh, the Wat Phnom, and it was a long way from where I was staying and I took to retiring to my hotel room each day from about noon to 4 PM just to seek cover from the sun's relentless assault. Furthermore and distressingly, a high priority in Phnom Penh seems to be to clear out space to make room for the growing number of the conveyance of choice among those who can afford it in Phnom Penh, the large SUV. These monstrosities are ubiquitous in Phnom Penh and the drivers choose them for the same reasons they do elsewhere, status and a perception of security. The perception of security however is more grounded in reality in Phnom Penh as a large vehicle lifts the occupants above and shields them from the swirling flow of motorbikes and non-mechanized conveyances that ply the streets and additionally protects them from the aforementioned relentless sun thereby affording them a generous measure of private shade. So there's security for the SUV drivers at the expense of the young or weak who can't get their hands on one and this seems a wonderful way to build a strong society. Perhaps this is the 'new man' that the KR propagandists once referred to. The only amusing aspect to the SUV's in Phnom Penh must be a product of a deep-seated need or insecurity of the owners and is manifest in many of them having large lettering emblazoned across either side that indicates this vehicle parked across the public sidewalk that you're having to detour around or that just cut you off because you're on a motorbike and just what the hell do you think you're going to do about it anyway, that this vehicle is in fact an actual LEXUS or LAND CRUISER. To be fair there's not much difference between the motivations of the citizens of Phnom Penh and the soccer moms and dads in the United States and elsewhere for driving these SUV's but it's just a little more obvious and pronounced and sordid in Phnom Penh.

The conditions in Cambodia are in fact improving and have changed remarkably for the better since the scourge of the 1970's. The country is still peopled primarily by the rural and uneducated who scratch out an existence by subsistence farming and whatever other enterprises they can find to engage in. One will notice the presence of NGO's from every corner of the globe throughout Cambodia who are there simply because they want to help. Well, there may in fact be some ulterior motives at play such as religious or ideological conversion, but Cambodia needs the help no matter what strings may be attached and I say the more the better at least for the time being. One activity that Cambodia gained an infamous reputation for in the 1990's and that thankfully appears at least to be on the wane is the exploitation of children by paedophiles that would travel there as sex tourists. Many tuk tuks and hotels and guest houses and billboards now carry notices regarding what's being termed 'responsible tourism' along with a hot line to call to report any suspected child exploitation. This took root in Cambodia for the only reason it ever has and that's economic need and hardship along with a huge disparity in the monetary means of foreign tourists and some fellow Cambodians. Even the brothels and girlie bars that Phnom Penh was also infamous for seem to be subdued from their hay day. The government is making an effort to not let Cambodia become a destination for this type of tourism either. I spoke with the Swedish owner of a guest house in Phnom Penh's main riverside tourist area who told me these types of bars are being phased out. I'm not so sure about this though because I was chased down by a rather scantily clad young lady who handed me a flyer advertising the grand opening of a brand new such establishment not far from that same guest house! You find these girlie bars everywhere I've been in Asia and I don't think they will ever disappear entirely as the business allure is just too strong. They also exist in parts of San Francisco and other US and other cities.

So back to getting my Vietnam visa. After my arrival in Phnom Penh I took a day or 2 to get my bearings and visit some of the main tourist sites such as the Toul Sleng Museum and then found the location of and ventured down to the Vietnam embassy where I found a visa office along with 3 or 4 staff and a prominently displayed stack of visa application forms and took note of the fees required and the office hours and came to the conclusion that I could just relax and take care of it after spending some time as a Cambodian tourist. The top tourist destination in Cambodia is the temples of Angkor which includes the famous Angkor Wat and I wanted to take a bus up to Siem Reap and see this for myself. I'll cover this trip in another post. Whenever you check into a hotel in Vietnam you have to give them your passport as a form of security and to show them you're there legally with a valid visa. This seems strange initially, but you grow used to it since everyone does it and has been for a long time and you really don't have much choice. I imagine at the more expensive hotels just showing your passport and presenting a credit card would suffice but most southeast Asian hotels don't yet accept credit cards. So I thought I would need to have my passport with me for the same reason in Cambodia and therefore didn't want to leave it at the visa office and have difficulty checking into a hotel in Siem Peap, an additional reason I decided to take care of the visa after returning. Turns out Cambodia is a bit looser than Vietnam in this regard and the guest house I stayed in in Siem Reap never asked for any sort of identification only that I pay in advance. When I returned to Phnom Penh it hadn't occurred to me that the following week was the week of the Chinese Lunar New Year which is celebrated to varying degrees all over the world but especially so all over Asia and the Vietnam embassy had posted an announcement that they would be closed during that time. I was able to submit my application and get a receipt to come back and pick up my passport and visa at the end of the next week after the closure. Luckily I had brought enough money to last that long and my plans were flexible enough to accommodate it, but of course just what the hell did I think I was going to do about it anyway?! The posted fee schedule listed fees for various visa types and lengths including tourist visas for durations of up to one year. For a long time expats living in Vietnam were able to acquire 6-month business visas and have them renewed indefinitely without having to engage in any actual business activity so in essence a foreigner could just live in Vietnam and only need to get a renewed visa twice yearly. Then suddenly late in 2009 the government, that would be the Hanoi Boys, decided to put an end to this and the new rules require an actual Vietnam work permit in order to get a business visa and the alternative left to those using the business visas simply as a way to remain in Vietnam became to acquire tourist visas and renew or extend them every month or to leave Vietnam every 3 months and acquire a 3-month tourist visa. I'm not sure I've gotten these details exactly right because I've found that getting reliable information on visas in Vietnam is a bit like getting advice on treating the common cold or how to best invest that little bit of extra cash you have but the difference here is that there is a definite answer that exists somewhere but no one seems to know it! There are some websites I've found that seem to have accurate information but your mileage may vary once you set foot inside an actual visa office. So I decided to try to get a longer term visa even though I 'knew' that the maximum term for a tourist visa is 3 months and applied for 5 months. After submitting my application, the gentleman behind the plexiglass asked me for $40 which was the fee for a visa of 1 month or less not 3 or more. I enquired in my bad and limited Vietnamese how many months the visa would be for and with this unambiguous exchange accompanied by a show of 3 fingers by both of us he assured me it was for 3 months. So I left the office feeling comfortable that even though I now had to spend an extra week in Cambodia it wasn't so bad because I was getting the visa I came for and it was costing me less than I had anticipated. The next day I departed for Battambang (again covered in a later post) to wait out the Lunar New Year week and return to Phnom Penh to pick up my new visa and ride triumphantly back to Saigon.

I returned the next week after a nice trip to Battambang but getting low on funds and patience and quite excited about waltzing into the visa office and then on the bus ticket counter to put the final pieces in place for my return to Saigon. Upon entering the visa office I was struck by a sense of foreboding by the dozen or so forlorn looking individuals arrayed in the plastic chairs against the back wall, the visa office waiting area. I slid my receipt under the plexiglass and took one of the few remaining plastic chairs. I could hear some of the conversations taking place in English (there was also French and others) and even though uttered sotto voce, could pick up the gist that plans were being shuffled and priorities shifted amid tones of resignation. It was only a few minutes before the only English-speaking member of the staff emerged from behind the glass holding not my passport but the receipt I had just given them. He kindly informed me with a standard insipid bureaucratic smile (or was it a smirk?) pasted on his face that the office in Hanoi was experiencing problems and that they were not authorized to issue any more visas that day and could I please just come back next week. I knew that this was a moment of truth and that if I displayed any anger or frustration it was game, set, match, and please drive (or walk in my case) home safely to wait out the weekend. So I maintained my composure and informed him that I could only do that if he allowed me to spend the weekend camped out in their office as I was out of funds and had already stayed much longer in Cambodia than planned. Of course the comment about the funds was not true but since when is truth anything but a path of guaranteed defeat when dealing with government bureaucrats? He informed me he had made a few exceptions that day and would try to see if he could do one more. I thanked him and returned to my seat. Some obligatory bureaucratic minutes later he reemerged with my application with the good news that an exception had been granted and asked if I could help him out. Those were his words, help him out, by supplying some more detailed information about where I would be staying in Saigon. I informed him that I had an apartment in Saigon and could just give him the address. He responded 'Oh, you have an apartment?' with a slight tone of surprise. Please see former comment about truth and dealings with government bureaucrats. At this point I do believe he expected a little extra incentive in order to be sure that they got all the details correct for my new visa. I can never be sure because I offered nothing, but I've heard enough about corruption in Vietnam from both foreigners and Vietnamese to know it's a common enough practice. He disappeared back behind the glass and finally reemerged once again with my passport. By this time all the fellow applicants who had been waiting when I entered the office had departed, all I believe, planning to return the next week. I quickly flipped open the passport to see that a new visa had been given and thanked the man and walked out relieved. Then I stopped outside the office to examine the visa in detail and discovered to my dismay that I had not only received only a 1-month visa but that it was backdated to the previous week so I was holding in my hands a passport containing effectively a 3-week Vietnam visa! I dashed back into the office and informed the staff member of the mistake and he calmly informed me that my application was for a 1-month visa and that the backdating was necessary for some ridiculous reason I can't recall. I knew immediately I had just had my first encounter with the notorious Vietnamese bureaucracy. The determination to issue me the 1-month visa had happened the week before when I submitted my application for a 5-month visa because I had only been asked to pay the fee for a 1-month, so in that regard at least they were honest. Perhaps that was just their way of slapping me around for having the unmitigated temerity for requesting a 5-month visa when they knew that I 'knew' that the limit was 3 months. I believe the 1 week backdating was done because I failed to offer the proper incentive required for double checking that such details are correct. Again, I'm only speculating on this, but let it suffice to say that all of this was in writing on my application and there was nothing ambiguous or unclear about it and I've never had any problem of the sort any other time when getting a visa and that these highly qualified professional visa issuers deal with these complex matters every day (weekends and holidays excluded) and know very well what they're doing. I wasn't going to fight it because it would have gotten me nowhere and I was so anxious to get out of Phnom Penh that I didn't care.

So now I have 3 weeks to deal with my visa again but I believe it will all work out so I'm not worried at this point. My experience with the Phnom Penh Vietnam visa office underscores a larger point that needs to be made about Vietnam and that's regardless of how well the society appears to run and how friendly most of the people are most of the time and how much the society and economy has been allowed (allowed is a key word here) to open up to foreign influences, the Hanoi Boys still run the show here and they are not democratically elected nor do they tolerate any public dissent. These words would not be allowed to be published to the web if they knew about them and could intervene. Which brings up the fact that sometime since November 2009 the Hanoi Boys have blocked direct access to certain web sites such as Facebook and some other blog sites, but curiously not this one. Of course such simple-minded tactics are easily defeated and short of cutting off all internet access they can't block its content, but there seems to be an overall movement afoot to rein in some of the freedoms that Vietnam has gained in past 15 or so years. One of the highlights of my trip to Cambodia was that I enjoyed watching the Vietnam episode of the National Geographic Channel show 'Bite Me'. What I'm talking about is that a few times while watching this and similar TV shows in Saigon the screen flashed into a sort of multicolored mute test image. I found out from a seasoned Saigon expat that this is the Hanoi Boys pulling the plug on the show because they don't like its content! Let me tell you, that episode of 'Bite Me' (oh the delicious richness!) was startlingly damning in its portrayal of the bugs and snakes and other creepy creatures that inhabit Vietnam and I can understand the concern in Hanoi about the unsavory image of Vietnam such content presents. The fact that this type of information is just pure objectivity (oh that dirty word) and could actually serve to warn Vietnamese and others about some of the (gasp!) natural dangers that exist here matters not when perceived preservation of power is concerned. This is the way of the world. So as much as great social and economic progress has been made in Vietnam in the last couple of decades it's important to keep in mind that the Hanoi government has not in essence changed in many more decades and that the tendency of such governments is to open up long enough to improve the standard of living of themselves and enough of their citizens to maintain social order and then throw up the walls again. Strong words I know, but I see the incipient rumblings of it and hope it's only a temporary spasm of paranoia that will run its course and fade away but it could easily go the other way.


These motorbike and tuk tuk drivers were camped outside my hotel in Phnom Penh every day for most of the day waiting for customers. The solicitations can get a bit annoying, but if you need one you (no kidding) need only cast a glance in their direction and get an instant reaction!



One of the few refuges offering public shade in Phnom Penh, Wat Phnom has all the usual beautiful touches found on most Cambodian wats such as these cobra-like multi-headed nagas.