No, she doesn't have a female deer, or even some kind of alien quadropod, just a typical letter reversal charmingly common with kids
Monday, February 28, 2005
Blizzard of Birthday Cards from Home
Well, just when I thought my birthday was over, what do you know, but I get a heavy, substantial packet from my family in Oregon. It looks like quite an effort; every hand in the house, that wasn't incapacitated in some way or another, was press-ganged into this enormous transfer of paper, comics, miss-yous and what not from one side of the Pacific to the other.
What can I say? I must say I was touched. Although I must alert all of those of my gentle readers who abhor cruelty to animals, that one animal was harmed in the making of this blog.
That is, if the impassioned writings of small fry can be trusted. Bee-Bee (her real name is Beatrice, but she really has the energy of a BB just leaving the muzzle of an air-rifle) not only wrote to introduce her 'puppy', but big Brother Arlen left me with something of a 'Help, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune Cookie factory' sort of missive:
"Dear Kelly,
How are you? We miss you. Our puppy is big and bald. Mom scalped him. His hair is long all over.
except on his head.
Love,
Arlen
I took the liberty of amending the punctuation and spacing somewhat (the original is done in very rococco cursive, but I thought I'd spare you the extra image), but there you have it, a truly impassioned plea for help. I would alert the nearest PETA branch, but I fear that the dog is out of their reach, being, as it were, in a small town between two other smallish towns.
Somewhere in Oregon.
What can I say? I must say I was touched. Although I must alert all of those of my gentle readers who abhor cruelty to animals, that one animal was harmed in the making of this blog.
That is, if the impassioned writings of small fry can be trusted. Bee-Bee (her real name is Beatrice, but she really has the energy of a BB just leaving the muzzle of an air-rifle) not only wrote to introduce her 'puppy', but big Brother Arlen left me with something of a 'Help, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune Cookie factory' sort of missive:
"Dear Kelly,
How are you? We miss you. Our puppy is big and bald. Mom scalped him. His hair is long all over.
except on his head.
Love,
Arlen
I took the liberty of amending the punctuation and spacing somewhat (the original is done in very rococco cursive, but I thought I'd spare you the extra image), but there you have it, a truly impassioned plea for help. I would alert the nearest PETA branch, but I fear that the dog is out of their reach, being, as it were, in a small town between two other smallish towns.
Somewhere in Oregon.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Elegy for a dear friend and child of mine
This weekend, I was able to finally say goodbye to a friend who had been ailing and lingering for some time. Not that death was imminent or even assured; but that for me, the original spirit had already left, and was just waiting for the body to follow.
Saturday night I was stumbling about the hood, blind drunk, with two Kiwi buddies, with the intention of dragging them into Macondo.
Those of you who know me know that this was the only tangible thing I've done with my entire life; after pouring all of my life force into it for many years, I was able to give this bar a foundation that would last it into the 21st century. It was one of only two businesses within a two block radius that survived the atomic-bomb like devastation of Korea's IMF crisis (known outside Korea as the Korean currency crisis.)
It was the only child of my marriage to a famous Korean. She sunk her money, I sunk my time and health into the project (imagine breathing all that smoke 24/7 - a bit like working at the smoking room in an airport.) It ended up, some might say, costing us our relationship - but that'll have to remain for a deeper analysis.
We turned the corner from the intersection, that same intersection I had passed so many, many times on the way to 'work', the only job I truly relished and was able to put in 89 hour workweeks without complaint - we turned the corner and were confronted by the scene you see above.
Rubble. A big hole where my baby had been. I thought all about the wall decorations (which had surely been taken down), the wall mural painted by a famous Korean artist, the wooden floor which had been built by Nick the Canadian and his girlfriend Angie (who looked up cheerfully while holding a jigsaw in one hand and squealed with girlish delight "It's just like sewing for guys!"
I thought about all the good times and how few, really how few bad times there had been; only one fight in all its years, a fight I didn't witness personally, but was apparently a jealous wife hair-pulling catfight kind of thing (the kind of fight guys watch in morbid horror/pleasure, not knowing if or when to interfere).
I thought about all the people who had passed through it's glass doors; diplomats and DDD workers (Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult - mostly Peruvians) , Korean pioneers and hipsters, and foreigners from nearly every nation (the ONLY Cuban passport holder in the entire country was our DJ). Some people had come to Macondo by word of mouth from as far as Buenos Aires and Madrid.
Macondo was the flagship of Salsa in the entire nation; a cradle of latin civilization that spawned as many direct descendants (Sabor Latino, Moonnight, among ) as it did imitators (too many, and too ignomious to mention all- but at last count there were 8 salsa bars in the Hong Dae neighborhood).
Macondo was more than a bar that sold drinks for its livelihood. It was nothing less than a Latin American embassy, disseminating the finer aspects of Latin American culture- and doing a better job than most of the actual embassies at doing that (the Mexican minister of culture used to borrow Mexican movies from us). The first Salsa lessons, the first Salsa dance contest, and the first Latin American cultural festival all were born there. (the festival was held in downtown Seoul, but was designed and carried out by Macondo people)
Macondo also represented the better part of diplomacy to many people; here was a place where Koreans of ALL AGES (so many asked at the door if we had an age-ist policy like the other bars) and outlooks could mingle with people of all nations, outlooks, ethnicity (everyone who crossed the door lintel became an honorary Latino for the night), where people could relax without pretension.
Macondo was truly a community; it went beyond the 'Cheers' concept - not only was it a bar where 'everyone knows your name' - but it was a bar where you would be sadly missed when you left the country, a place many people chose to have their birthday and farewell parties. It was a combination of place and time, a synthesis of all the right elements that I will be forever grateful for having been able to participate in.
Goodnight, dear friend. Go gently into the night, for you will be sorely missed by so many.
Saturday night I was stumbling about the hood, blind drunk, with two Kiwi buddies, with the intention of dragging them into Macondo.
Those of you who know me know that this was the only tangible thing I've done with my entire life; after pouring all of my life force into it for many years, I was able to give this bar a foundation that would last it into the 21st century. It was one of only two businesses within a two block radius that survived the atomic-bomb like devastation of Korea's IMF crisis (known outside Korea as the Korean currency crisis.)
It was the only child of my marriage to a famous Korean. She sunk her money, I sunk my time and health into the project (imagine breathing all that smoke 24/7 - a bit like working at the smoking room in an airport.) It ended up, some might say, costing us our relationship - but that'll have to remain for a deeper analysis.
We turned the corner from the intersection, that same intersection I had passed so many, many times on the way to 'work', the only job I truly relished and was able to put in 89 hour workweeks without complaint - we turned the corner and were confronted by the scene you see above.
Rubble. A big hole where my baby had been. I thought all about the wall decorations (which had surely been taken down), the wall mural painted by a famous Korean artist, the wooden floor which had been built by Nick the Canadian and his girlfriend Angie (who looked up cheerfully while holding a jigsaw in one hand and squealed with girlish delight "It's just like sewing for guys!"
I thought about all the good times and how few, really how few bad times there had been; only one fight in all its years, a fight I didn't witness personally, but was apparently a jealous wife hair-pulling catfight kind of thing (the kind of fight guys watch in morbid horror/pleasure, not knowing if or when to interfere).
I thought about all the people who had passed through it's glass doors; diplomats and DDD workers (Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult - mostly Peruvians) , Korean pioneers and hipsters, and foreigners from nearly every nation (the ONLY Cuban passport holder in the entire country was our DJ). Some people had come to Macondo by word of mouth from as far as Buenos Aires and Madrid.
Macondo was the flagship of Salsa in the entire nation; a cradle of latin civilization that spawned as many direct descendants (Sabor Latino, Moonnight, among ) as it did imitators (too many, and too ignomious to mention all- but at last count there were 8 salsa bars in the Hong Dae neighborhood).
Macondo was more than a bar that sold drinks for its livelihood. It was nothing less than a Latin American embassy, disseminating the finer aspects of Latin American culture- and doing a better job than most of the actual embassies at doing that (the Mexican minister of culture used to borrow Mexican movies from us). The first Salsa lessons, the first Salsa dance contest, and the first Latin American cultural festival all were born there. (the festival was held in downtown Seoul, but was designed and carried out by Macondo people)
Macondo also represented the better part of diplomacy to many people; here was a place where Koreans of ALL AGES (so many asked at the door if we had an age-ist policy like the other bars) and outlooks could mingle with people of all nations, outlooks, ethnicity (everyone who crossed the door lintel became an honorary Latino for the night), where people could relax without pretension.
Macondo was truly a community; it went beyond the 'Cheers' concept - not only was it a bar where 'everyone knows your name' - but it was a bar where you would be sadly missed when you left the country, a place many people chose to have their birthday and farewell parties. It was a combination of place and time, a synthesis of all the right elements that I will be forever grateful for having been able to participate in.
Goodnight, dear friend. Go gently into the night, for you will be sorely missed by so many.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Hippie Boy gets his comeuppance
Whew!
I just finished a very long, very disgusting bus ride from Vientiane to Bangkok. I had intended to take the very excellent sleeper train from the border town of Nong Khai, but had been scared off the idea by a travel agent who told me that all the tickets were sold out, and that if I wanted, I could go standby and hope that someone would cancel.
I decided to go the sure and easy way. It turned out not to be so easy. First, I discovered that my seat assignment was the very last seat on the bus, in the back corner. If you know anything about vehicles, you know that the most comfortable place to sit is over the wheels, where the suspension is, or , failing that, in between the two suspension systems (in the middle). This is doubly true if you are riding a double decker, since it seems to have a greater travel (distance it rides up and down on bumps) than regular buses.
Well, there I was, stuck in the corner head-banging seat. Things got worse, as I discovered it didn't recline all the way, owing to a projecting rear light box behind it. But none of this mattered to me because of the Dreadlocked Frenchman who was sitting next to me.
He plomped down beside me and right away I felt something was wrong. A sickly-sour smell (why can't we have that smell? We've got sickly-sweet, after all!) , the unmistakeable pang of dead-skin and bio-detritus of the homeless, came wafting my way. At first I thought I was just making some sort of prejudiced judgement; after all, he looked like a dirty hippy (largely the effect of the dreads and the two-months-plus beard).
Now people who know my history know that I used to have quite long hair and a beard, and I used to go around saying exactly the kind of things people associated with hippies- in fact, my speech is still full of hippy-isms. People who know me even better know that I purposely studied the history of the sixties according to the pundits of the time (who were known as 'freaks', by the way; hippy was a pejorative coined by media hypists)
So I think that, compared to most people, I look quite favorably on what people call 'hippies', and I'm quite tolerant of any particular anti-social aberrations they may display. But maybe it's a product of my living in Asia, and having been 'asianized', that I just cannot tolerate bad body hygiene.
To me the two things are quite separate; you can oppose the 'man', you can fight for human rights, for freedom and equality, you can even do anti-social things like wear funky clothing and funky hair, but none of these things gets you out of a daily bath.
If you are familiar with Macrobiotics you might know something about George Osawa's curious aversion to soap, and the underlying belief that it harms health. Still, I kind of doubt that serious macrobioticists fail to wash - Osawa, was, after all, still Japanese, and they are a race of people serious about scrubbing the outer layers of dead skin off using mildly abrasive sponges. So macrobiotic soaplessness is also not an invitation to body odors if taken in the original spirit.
Then there is the curious poll that was taken of the hygiene habits of French people, which revealed that a good number of them only bathed two times or less per week - paralleling not just the previous English stereotype of them, but also explaining what someone had told me once: that French people believed it unhealthy to bathe overmuch.
So it didn't help that the guy next to me, Le Pig-Pen, was French. I tried hard to find ways in which he could be excused; perhaps the stench was coming from the unwashed seat of the bus; perhaps he had been in a hurry or had no time between buses; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
But no; I could find no reasonable excuse for a failure to clean oneself; in a country where three dollars can get you a very, very nice room with a bathroom inside, where even where you share a bath with other guests, no one, owner included, minds you washing your clothing and hanging it on the family clothing line; to have your laundry done for you costs about fifty cents a kilo in Laos.
So this was a kind of revelation for me; finally I could understand why so many people around the world seemed so judgemental of hippies. They smell bad; or at least some of them do, as I now have the proof. Worse, they have the money and the means to not smell bad, but they do so anyways.
Interestingly enough, the Scot in the seat in front of me began talking about this, and apparently (possibly in all of Britain, but who knows?) the Scots distinguish between clean hippies (just 'hippy') and dirty ones (known as crusties). Nice word. Or then again, perhaps not, probably too graphic.
I just finished a very long, very disgusting bus ride from Vientiane to Bangkok. I had intended to take the very excellent sleeper train from the border town of Nong Khai, but had been scared off the idea by a travel agent who told me that all the tickets were sold out, and that if I wanted, I could go standby and hope that someone would cancel.
I decided to go the sure and easy way. It turned out not to be so easy. First, I discovered that my seat assignment was the very last seat on the bus, in the back corner. If you know anything about vehicles, you know that the most comfortable place to sit is over the wheels, where the suspension is, or , failing that, in between the two suspension systems (in the middle). This is doubly true if you are riding a double decker, since it seems to have a greater travel (distance it rides up and down on bumps) than regular buses.
Well, there I was, stuck in the corner head-banging seat. Things got worse, as I discovered it didn't recline all the way, owing to a projecting rear light box behind it. But none of this mattered to me because of the Dreadlocked Frenchman who was sitting next to me.
He plomped down beside me and right away I felt something was wrong. A sickly-sour smell (why can't we have that smell? We've got sickly-sweet, after all!) , the unmistakeable pang of dead-skin and bio-detritus of the homeless, came wafting my way. At first I thought I was just making some sort of prejudiced judgement; after all, he looked like a dirty hippy (largely the effect of the dreads and the two-months-plus beard).
Now people who know my history know that I used to have quite long hair and a beard, and I used to go around saying exactly the kind of things people associated with hippies- in fact, my speech is still full of hippy-isms. People who know me even better know that I purposely studied the history of the sixties according to the pundits of the time (who were known as 'freaks', by the way; hippy was a pejorative coined by media hypists)
So I think that, compared to most people, I look quite favorably on what people call 'hippies', and I'm quite tolerant of any particular anti-social aberrations they may display. But maybe it's a product of my living in Asia, and having been 'asianized', that I just cannot tolerate bad body hygiene.
To me the two things are quite separate; you can oppose the 'man', you can fight for human rights, for freedom and equality, you can even do anti-social things like wear funky clothing and funky hair, but none of these things gets you out of a daily bath.
If you are familiar with Macrobiotics you might know something about George Osawa's curious aversion to soap, and the underlying belief that it harms health. Still, I kind of doubt that serious macrobioticists fail to wash - Osawa, was, after all, still Japanese, and they are a race of people serious about scrubbing the outer layers of dead skin off using mildly abrasive sponges. So macrobiotic soaplessness is also not an invitation to body odors if taken in the original spirit.
Then there is the curious poll that was taken of the hygiene habits of French people, which revealed that a good number of them only bathed two times or less per week - paralleling not just the previous English stereotype of them, but also explaining what someone had told me once: that French people believed it unhealthy to bathe overmuch.
So it didn't help that the guy next to me, Le Pig-Pen, was French. I tried hard to find ways in which he could be excused; perhaps the stench was coming from the unwashed seat of the bus; perhaps he had been in a hurry or had no time between buses; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
But no; I could find no reasonable excuse for a failure to clean oneself; in a country where three dollars can get you a very, very nice room with a bathroom inside, where even where you share a bath with other guests, no one, owner included, minds you washing your clothing and hanging it on the family clothing line; to have your laundry done for you costs about fifty cents a kilo in Laos.
So this was a kind of revelation for me; finally I could understand why so many people around the world seemed so judgemental of hippies. They smell bad; or at least some of them do, as I now have the proof. Worse, they have the money and the means to not smell bad, but they do so anyways.
Interestingly enough, the Scot in the seat in front of me began talking about this, and apparently (possibly in all of Britain, but who knows?) the Scots distinguish between clean hippies (just 'hippy') and dirty ones (known as crusties). Nice word. Or then again, perhaps not, probably too graphic.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
More Moral Musings from the Heart of Darkness
Feeling a bit sick to my stomach today. I'm taking antibiotics, so I'm not worried about any pathogens, unless they're viral. And you might think that I'm queasy because I just bought a bunch of (uncooked) bee and ant larvae (eggs), but that's not it, either.
I'm feeling a bit wonky because of what I saw for sale in the market. Besides the usual bits of flesh, blood, and guts for sale by smiling, wholesome-looking women, there were also some
things that tested my ability to see the world in shades instead of black and white.
There was a whole line of what appeared to be chipmunks, or voles of some sort. There was a large, and very dead, canopy-dwelling bird with a large beak. There, next to yet another chunk of in-the-comb bee-larvae, was what appeared to be a skinned and cooked bat. (that one in particular turned my stomach, because the lady offered me some bee larvae, and I ate it)
I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures for you, but I just felt it was a bit...invasive of me to take them. Taking a picture might constitute a judgement on these people - and though you might argue that the taking of (possibly rare) canopy birds for commercial purposes is 'black-and-white' wrong - neither you nor I have any idea of the circumstances surrounding this act.
Of course, it is easier for us to be certain about wrongdoings in our own culture - people like former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay probably deserve all of the ire and malfamy heaped upon them - for they have not only acted to the detriment of society for their own enrichment, but to them were given the keys to the kingdom - the benefit of a good childhood, good education, and all the opportunities that those things entail.
But of these people, can we honestly say that they had other opportunities to make 'an honest living'? What if they are simply doing what they and their ancestors have been doing for millenia? Is it their concern if the pressures upon the ecosystem brought about by encroachment of urban centers and the subsequent industrialization are as much to blame for the lessening of the bird population as they are? After all, it is we, the urban dwellers, who have brought an end to their way of life.
I'm feeling a bit wonky because of what I saw for sale in the market. Besides the usual bits of flesh, blood, and guts for sale by smiling, wholesome-looking women, there were also some
things that tested my ability to see the world in shades instead of black and white.
There was a whole line of what appeared to be chipmunks, or voles of some sort. There was a large, and very dead, canopy-dwelling bird with a large beak. There, next to yet another chunk of in-the-comb bee-larvae, was what appeared to be a skinned and cooked bat. (that one in particular turned my stomach, because the lady offered me some bee larvae, and I ate it)
I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures for you, but I just felt it was a bit...invasive of me to take them. Taking a picture might constitute a judgement on these people - and though you might argue that the taking of (possibly rare) canopy birds for commercial purposes is 'black-and-white' wrong - neither you nor I have any idea of the circumstances surrounding this act.
Of course, it is easier for us to be certain about wrongdoings in our own culture - people like former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay probably deserve all of the ire and malfamy heaped upon them - for they have not only acted to the detriment of society for their own enrichment, but to them were given the keys to the kingdom - the benefit of a good childhood, good education, and all the opportunities that those things entail.
But of these people, can we honestly say that they had other opportunities to make 'an honest living'? What if they are simply doing what they and their ancestors have been doing for millenia? Is it their concern if the pressures upon the ecosystem brought about by encroachment of urban centers and the subsequent industrialization are as much to blame for the lessening of the bird population as they are? After all, it is we, the urban dwellers, who have brought an end to their way of life.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Charity begins at home...and finishes on the road
I have the oddest notions about beggars. Today we were comparing Pnom Penh with Vientiane, and besides a lot of involved history, what really distinguishes these two Indochinese capitals are the beggars.
Pnom Penh actually has a noticeable number of victims of land mines. Or at least that's what springs to mind, since mines are so famous, and then you see someone without a limb- your mind makes the connection. Of course, not all of them are beggars, but Pnom Penh does seem to have many more people missing limbs.
The other thing, slightly more annoying, is that some beggars in Pnom Penh will walk up to you and ask for a dollar (one person actually asked for ten). The currency of the country is not dollars, and the meaning of being asked for dollars is that this particular person has been taught by experience that foreigners have a guilt complex that can be harvested by an open hand and the word 'dollar'...
Of course this is really out of proportion; these people with the guilt complex and the deep pocket are the NGO and UN mid and upper level executives, who make in excess of 100,000 per year, with a mansion and a chauffered car provided free. In other words, they are suddenly perceived by the people they have come to 'help' as being a kind of noble class, since they are in reality among the top 1% of the country who have 90% of the income.
Some of them realize this gap and perhaps grasp the hypocrisy of it all, and their pocket opens each time they see someone who reminds them of it. Not so the grubby backpacking tribe, whose money was made by washing dishes in Sidney or teaching English in China, and who extended that money by bargaining, haggling, and doublechecking menu overcharging all along the way to Pnom Penh.
Their pockets do not open as easily; nor do the pockets of well heeled travelers - since they tend to look harder at the person to see whether or not they might actually be capable of working instead of begging. This latter group is more likely to deny a donation to a beggar on economic or so-called 'moral' principles than either of the other two groups.
Vientiane apparently hasn't got as many of these NGO and UN types running around, though they certainly do have a presence. Perhaps they do have as many people on the ground here, but their effect is ameliorated by larger numbers of the other two types mentioned above (don't forget that some 'normal' people are still afraid of the land mine/political coup situation in Cambodia)
So I found it a little strange the other day when this Lao lady, mid-thirties, asked for money for food. She was in fact, the neatest dresser I had seen in the country, sporting very artistic tennis shoes, matching dress, makeup, etc. She had a brand new expensive looking backpack, and a 'fashion' bag full to the top with objects; all I could see was a silver teapot poking out of it.
She more resembled a mugged yuppie than an itinerant beggar; or perhaps an educated person; who as a result of a very recent lover's quarrel, had been thrust out upon the street with a few of her belongings.
I finally decided that she was suffering some sort of mental problems. Even if she was a 'scammer', this would not be an intelligent way to go about it, and by all appearances, she certainly had some intelligence.
Does this mean she didn't deserve some help? Certainly this was not the case, but how to help people like this? This appears to be our dilemma in the west, since so many more of our beggars fit into this category than beggars you might see in the third world.
It certainly leaves you wondering about the two situations relative to each other; though people confronted by beggars in third world countries feel guiltier - are they really any more guilty than those in advanced countries who rationalize away helping the mentally ill, who the government has cast out upon the streets and the tender mercies of the ignorant public?
Pnom Penh actually has a noticeable number of victims of land mines. Or at least that's what springs to mind, since mines are so famous, and then you see someone without a limb- your mind makes the connection. Of course, not all of them are beggars, but Pnom Penh does seem to have many more people missing limbs.
The other thing, slightly more annoying, is that some beggars in Pnom Penh will walk up to you and ask for a dollar (one person actually asked for ten). The currency of the country is not dollars, and the meaning of being asked for dollars is that this particular person has been taught by experience that foreigners have a guilt complex that can be harvested by an open hand and the word 'dollar'...
Of course this is really out of proportion; these people with the guilt complex and the deep pocket are the NGO and UN mid and upper level executives, who make in excess of 100,000 per year, with a mansion and a chauffered car provided free. In other words, they are suddenly perceived by the people they have come to 'help' as being a kind of noble class, since they are in reality among the top 1% of the country who have 90% of the income.
Some of them realize this gap and perhaps grasp the hypocrisy of it all, and their pocket opens each time they see someone who reminds them of it. Not so the grubby backpacking tribe, whose money was made by washing dishes in Sidney or teaching English in China, and who extended that money by bargaining, haggling, and doublechecking menu overcharging all along the way to Pnom Penh.
Their pockets do not open as easily; nor do the pockets of well heeled travelers - since they tend to look harder at the person to see whether or not they might actually be capable of working instead of begging. This latter group is more likely to deny a donation to a beggar on economic or so-called 'moral' principles than either of the other two groups.
Vientiane apparently hasn't got as many of these NGO and UN types running around, though they certainly do have a presence. Perhaps they do have as many people on the ground here, but their effect is ameliorated by larger numbers of the other two types mentioned above (don't forget that some 'normal' people are still afraid of the land mine/political coup situation in Cambodia)
So I found it a little strange the other day when this Lao lady, mid-thirties, asked for money for food. She was in fact, the neatest dresser I had seen in the country, sporting very artistic tennis shoes, matching dress, makeup, etc. She had a brand new expensive looking backpack, and a 'fashion' bag full to the top with objects; all I could see was a silver teapot poking out of it.
She more resembled a mugged yuppie than an itinerant beggar; or perhaps an educated person; who as a result of a very recent lover's quarrel, had been thrust out upon the street with a few of her belongings.
I finally decided that she was suffering some sort of mental problems. Even if she was a 'scammer', this would not be an intelligent way to go about it, and by all appearances, she certainly had some intelligence.
Does this mean she didn't deserve some help? Certainly this was not the case, but how to help people like this? This appears to be our dilemma in the west, since so many more of our beggars fit into this category than beggars you might see in the third world.
It certainly leaves you wondering about the two situations relative to each other; though people confronted by beggars in third world countries feel guiltier - are they really any more guilty than those in advanced countries who rationalize away helping the mentally ill, who the government has cast out upon the streets and the tender mercies of the ignorant public?
Monday, February 14, 2005
Jumping on the Tsunami Bandwagon
It appears the Tsunami is back, sooner than we expected. I don't know if you've seen the images of the waves buffeting the shores of Sumatra, but I found it fascinating that Lao people, who have no coastline to speak of, though most of them live within flood distance of the Mekong river, were so captivated by the images of the marauding sea.
Stranger still is the above image taken from the 'Tsunami Victims' wall at the end of Khao San road in Bangkok. The tally lists just three South Koreans as missing; and stranger still is that there was actually a North Korean taken by the tide as well....
One wonders what this poor communist straggler was doing there - was this person with the South Koreans? Or possibly spying on them? Or just having a vacation like all the thousands of people from decadent capitalist nations. Surely the winter in North Korea is something worth escaping from for a little respite on the southern beaches of Thailand.
One more level of weirdness removed is that Indonesia falls into the 'one person missing in Thailand' column. How odd that a neighboring country only had one of its citizens in the path of the wave....of course there might have been hundreds of other Indonesians who did not go missing, and the same could be said for North Koreans...but since Koreans of any flag are rarely, if ever, alone, then what of the other, non-perished Koreans? How many were they in total?...
Stranger still is the above image taken from the 'Tsunami Victims' wall at the end of Khao San road in Bangkok. The tally lists just three South Koreans as missing; and stranger still is that there was actually a North Korean taken by the tide as well....
One wonders what this poor communist straggler was doing there - was this person with the South Koreans? Or possibly spying on them? Or just having a vacation like all the thousands of people from decadent capitalist nations. Surely the winter in North Korea is something worth escaping from for a little respite on the southern beaches of Thailand.
One more level of weirdness removed is that Indonesia falls into the 'one person missing in Thailand' column. How odd that a neighboring country only had one of its citizens in the path of the wave....of course there might have been hundreds of other Indonesians who did not go missing, and the same could be said for North Koreans...but since Koreans of any flag are rarely, if ever, alone, then what of the other, non-perished Koreans? How many were they in total?...
Sunday, February 13, 2005
A bit of Ranting Down South in Laos
February 12th;
An exciting couple of days jaunt into the 'neck' of Laos with an intrepid Dutch girl. This is the second time I have had a female platonic travel companion (fptc), and both of them were Dutch, and both of them were named Marion. The first Marion went down the exotic Usumacinta river with me in Guatemala/Mexico (the river forms the bortder) so many years ago, and it is not a little bit weird that this Marion also had planned a river trip; the feeling of repeating myself was too eerie; Marion 2 even looked like Marion 1.
The river's name this time was the Nam Kading, and the launch point, appropriately enough, was a village called Pak Kading. Most of the reason I wanted to go with Marion is that she said the river was pristine, had been cited by the lonely planet as a potential spot for adventure travel, and because I was rather festering in Vientiane.
Not exactly festering...but I had acheived a queer balance of travel without moving; after my arrival in the capital, I didn't feel like going anywhere else. Very similar to my thing with Yangon, I seem to have this predilection to want to 'decompress' for the longest time after arrival in a country, and to slowly interpret that country in terms of its capital city.
So when I had the chance to join her on this trip, it was largely a chance to get some travel momentum. After being in Vientane only four days, I already owned a hammock and ropes (plus the valuable real estate in the hotel to hang it in, since my room fronted a balcony), a kilogram glass whiskey bottle of honey, assorted snacks and a small DVD collection (they apparently are coming from China directly, and are 30% cheaper than Bangkok)...in short, I had set up shop and started to accumulate the detritus of budget travel....
Of course it is true I'm still convalescing from the hard road of Burma and the subsequent devastation of the winter camp, where I was laid low with fever...but it just seemed logical that I should make an attempt to get off my keester and see two or three cities of this country.
It was a great trip. I left Marion yesterday in Tha Kaek, a rather annoying town at the junction of the Mekong and a chain of limestone karst formations (read 'hills') jutting out of the plain. I say annoying because we stayed in this lovely guesthouse (four dollars for a single) with a garden and loads of beautiful teak furniture, which turned out to be still miles from the Mekhong, and the center of town.
Tha Kaek was suffering from Urban Sprawl, despite not really having enough population to call it a Big City. The street in front of the guesthouse was lined with businesses, but behind those buildings were just jungle, farmland, crisscrossed with canals and chicken coops.
The consequence of this is that what appeared to be actual urban space was not; rather it was frontage designed for motorcycle traffic that would later become car traffic. None of the shops were what you would call typical urban shops like restaurants or clothing or department stores; they were mostly selling furniture or metal welded roofs or snacks.
There was no sidewalk, and no reason to build one either, since there was no pedestrian traffic. How much this reminded me of similar places in American cities, places that make a pedestrian feel like an alien creature, an unwelcome blemish on the face of a car-crazed culture!
I also noticed that there seemed to be a trend in making buildings. The traditional Lao, indeed, indochinese way of making a house is building a house on high stilts, so that instead of having a first floor to a two story house, one just has freely circulating air. This design assures natural cooling for the house, as well as flood protection.
The trend in Tha Khaek was towards one of energy dependence; instead of building a light, airy construction, they were now building concrete block monstrosities, that, since they now lacked a natural cooling mechanism, were dependent on several side mounted air conditioning units. In order to make the air conditioning more effective, then, it is necessary to seal the house up, participating in a sort of airless vicious cycle.
The design of western homes and the use of vapor barriers in insulation has often been cited as a major design weakness and potential health risk of western construction. What will it mean here, in this tropical area, where mold, mildew will have a perfect, anaerobic environment in which to flourish?
How much worse, then, than this dependence on air conditioning, which appears to be slowly and steadily making its appearance in this country that never knew it (Lao have used caves and hilltops for the occasional breath of cool air).
Air conditioning is not only shocking to the body, since it causes exposure to temperature extremes, and stifles the body's natural ability to cool off, but it is also extremely anti-egalitarian, since the air conditioning unit produces hot air outside the house, where it is assumed into the environment, thus making a hot day hotter for those unpriveleged persons not inside of the house (pedestrians passing by, for example)
I know, I know, it sounds a bit hard-ass of me to deny everyone the right to have air conditioning. But this wilful and wanton tendency towards energy dependence is to me just as disturbing as the warmongering that it entails later (the governments will all end up fighting over sources of energy or water in the future).
It seems appropriate to end this tirade on a slightly hypocritical note. I'm typing this story on a laptop, Bus-bound and hurtling back north towards Vientiane with only the light of a crescent moon for company. The batteries heat up quite a bit during use, and I'm finally cooked to the point where I can write no more.
Gentle Reader, I leave you to imagine the crescent moon and the barely perceptible friendliness of its light.
An exciting couple of days jaunt into the 'neck' of Laos with an intrepid Dutch girl. This is the second time I have had a female platonic travel companion (fptc), and both of them were Dutch, and both of them were named Marion. The first Marion went down the exotic Usumacinta river with me in Guatemala/Mexico (the river forms the bortder) so many years ago, and it is not a little bit weird that this Marion also had planned a river trip; the feeling of repeating myself was too eerie; Marion 2 even looked like Marion 1.
The river's name this time was the Nam Kading, and the launch point, appropriately enough, was a village called Pak Kading. Most of the reason I wanted to go with Marion is that she said the river was pristine, had been cited by the lonely planet as a potential spot for adventure travel, and because I was rather festering in Vientiane.
Not exactly festering...but I had acheived a queer balance of travel without moving; after my arrival in the capital, I didn't feel like going anywhere else. Very similar to my thing with Yangon, I seem to have this predilection to want to 'decompress' for the longest time after arrival in a country, and to slowly interpret that country in terms of its capital city.
So when I had the chance to join her on this trip, it was largely a chance to get some travel momentum. After being in Vientane only four days, I already owned a hammock and ropes (plus the valuable real estate in the hotel to hang it in, since my room fronted a balcony), a kilogram glass whiskey bottle of honey, assorted snacks and a small DVD collection (they apparently are coming from China directly, and are 30% cheaper than Bangkok)...in short, I had set up shop and started to accumulate the detritus of budget travel....
Of course it is true I'm still convalescing from the hard road of Burma and the subsequent devastation of the winter camp, where I was laid low with fever...but it just seemed logical that I should make an attempt to get off my keester and see two or three cities of this country.
It was a great trip. I left Marion yesterday in Tha Kaek, a rather annoying town at the junction of the Mekong and a chain of limestone karst formations (read 'hills') jutting out of the plain. I say annoying because we stayed in this lovely guesthouse (four dollars for a single) with a garden and loads of beautiful teak furniture, which turned out to be still miles from the Mekhong, and the center of town.
Tha Kaek was suffering from Urban Sprawl, despite not really having enough population to call it a Big City. The street in front of the guesthouse was lined with businesses, but behind those buildings were just jungle, farmland, crisscrossed with canals and chicken coops.
The consequence of this is that what appeared to be actual urban space was not; rather it was frontage designed for motorcycle traffic that would later become car traffic. None of the shops were what you would call typical urban shops like restaurants or clothing or department stores; they were mostly selling furniture or metal welded roofs or snacks.
There was no sidewalk, and no reason to build one either, since there was no pedestrian traffic. How much this reminded me of similar places in American cities, places that make a pedestrian feel like an alien creature, an unwelcome blemish on the face of a car-crazed culture!
I also noticed that there seemed to be a trend in making buildings. The traditional Lao, indeed, indochinese way of making a house is building a house on high stilts, so that instead of having a first floor to a two story house, one just has freely circulating air. This design assures natural cooling for the house, as well as flood protection.
The trend in Tha Khaek was towards one of energy dependence; instead of building a light, airy construction, they were now building concrete block monstrosities, that, since they now lacked a natural cooling mechanism, were dependent on several side mounted air conditioning units. In order to make the air conditioning more effective, then, it is necessary to seal the house up, participating in a sort of airless vicious cycle.
The design of western homes and the use of vapor barriers in insulation has often been cited as a major design weakness and potential health risk of western construction. What will it mean here, in this tropical area, where mold, mildew will have a perfect, anaerobic environment in which to flourish?
How much worse, then, than this dependence on air conditioning, which appears to be slowly and steadily making its appearance in this country that never knew it (Lao have used caves and hilltops for the occasional breath of cool air).
Air conditioning is not only shocking to the body, since it causes exposure to temperature extremes, and stifles the body's natural ability to cool off, but it is also extremely anti-egalitarian, since the air conditioning unit produces hot air outside the house, where it is assumed into the environment, thus making a hot day hotter for those unpriveleged persons not inside of the house (pedestrians passing by, for example)
I know, I know, it sounds a bit hard-ass of me to deny everyone the right to have air conditioning. But this wilful and wanton tendency towards energy dependence is to me just as disturbing as the warmongering that it entails later (the governments will all end up fighting over sources of energy or water in the future).
It seems appropriate to end this tirade on a slightly hypocritical note. I'm typing this story on a laptop, Bus-bound and hurtling back north towards Vientiane with only the light of a crescent moon for company. The batteries heat up quite a bit during use, and I'm finally cooked to the point where I can write no more.
Gentle Reader, I leave you to imagine the crescent moon and the barely perceptible friendliness of its light.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
A Bee's Eye View
Foggy Sunrise over Vientiane...I do hope you've had your breakfast before you read this...
Breakfasting on the oddest of substances, bee larvae in the comb. I can't explain the complicated mechanism whereby I somehow fooled myself into eating it the first time (there was another traveler nearby, so perhaps the 'dare' element was the active ingredient)
The taste is easier to describe: it is a milky liquid, tinged with salt, which I believe the Lao add for flavor in the form of soya sauce. The sensation of the milk flooding your mouth is not unpleasant, however it is so difficult to keep your mind from focusing on the source of that milk; the fact that it comes from inside of the hex cells of the bee is enough to make most people gag.
But once you have eaten your first 'larvaecomb', the hardest part is over - then technique begins to take over...you can tear each litle cell off of the whole bit by bit, it becomes the sort of food you can pick at while making conversation with a friend (the perfect party food)-and before you know it, you are tearing off the very last little honeycomb cell.
This is not the only strange and exotic food I encountered in the marketplace; I also found people eating ant eggs mixed with other food. As you might suspect, ant eggs look like little grains of rice, only slightly more rubbery and juicy...I tried a few of them, but wasn't able to detect a taste on such a small quantity.
Breakfasting on the oddest of substances, bee larvae in the comb. I can't explain the complicated mechanism whereby I somehow fooled myself into eating it the first time (there was another traveler nearby, so perhaps the 'dare' element was the active ingredient)
The taste is easier to describe: it is a milky liquid, tinged with salt, which I believe the Lao add for flavor in the form of soya sauce. The sensation of the milk flooding your mouth is not unpleasant, however it is so difficult to keep your mind from focusing on the source of that milk; the fact that it comes from inside of the hex cells of the bee is enough to make most people gag.
But once you have eaten your first 'larvaecomb', the hardest part is over - then technique begins to take over...you can tear each litle cell off of the whole bit by bit, it becomes the sort of food you can pick at while making conversation with a friend (the perfect party food)-and before you know it, you are tearing off the very last little honeycomb cell.
This is not the only strange and exotic food I encountered in the marketplace; I also found people eating ant eggs mixed with other food. As you might suspect, ant eggs look like little grains of rice, only slightly more rubbery and juicy...I tried a few of them, but wasn't able to detect a taste on such a small quantity.
Friday, February 04, 2005
From the street behind the temple....no pictures till tomorrow
For those of you that know Khao San Road in Bangkok, I'm on a little back alley behind the temple, at one of the 1 baht/minute internet glass-enclosures. I've just bought an air-con sleeper berth to Nong Khai on Sunday - this is the border town for Laos - at a bargain of less than 20 dollars. I've been warned not to take the word 'air con' lightly - I'll need a good sweater on top of the blanket they issue, just to stay warm enough to sleep.
So, another crazy circus-like Saturday night is mine to spend in the Khao San Hippie Emporium (well, most real hippies I met have been avoiding this place since the late eighties - preferring to sleep out of town, like Ayuttaya and places like that)- it should prove to be a nice counterpoint to the insanity of Seoul nightlife.
Khao San, in fact is quite a phenomenon, so much so, that originally it went from being a place that 'decent' Thai people would avoid like the plague (unless they needed to make money, which of course is always a good thing here) to a three-ring freak show that draws their daughters in by the droves, hoping to meet a handsome blond Dane, or a wild and crazy Italian, or a mild-mannered and polite/presentable Canadian or American...Perfectly 'decent' Thai girls came to see this place as a great place to travel the world without ever leaving home.
After all, nothing was going on here morally that hadn't been going on for hundreds of years elsewhere in Thailand - but this one at least had a flair, a twist of the exotic and different.
Indeed, it is hard to ascribe any nationality to this place. Khao San will someday probably be seen by scientists as the best proof of some of the more objectionable aspects of String Theory. I'm referring to the eleven dimensions proposed by the theory. Khao San is definately in one of those eleven dimensions; which one, nobody can be sure of - but it definately is not in our current dimension.
I'll try to update more later, either with pics from Bangkok or from the last Burma trip.
So, another crazy circus-like Saturday night is mine to spend in the Khao San Hippie Emporium (well, most real hippies I met have been avoiding this place since the late eighties - preferring to sleep out of town, like Ayuttaya and places like that)- it should prove to be a nice counterpoint to the insanity of Seoul nightlife.
Khao San, in fact is quite a phenomenon, so much so, that originally it went from being a place that 'decent' Thai people would avoid like the plague (unless they needed to make money, which of course is always a good thing here) to a three-ring freak show that draws their daughters in by the droves, hoping to meet a handsome blond Dane, or a wild and crazy Italian, or a mild-mannered and polite/presentable Canadian or American...Perfectly 'decent' Thai girls came to see this place as a great place to travel the world without ever leaving home.
After all, nothing was going on here morally that hadn't been going on for hundreds of years elsewhere in Thailand - but this one at least had a flair, a twist of the exotic and different.
Indeed, it is hard to ascribe any nationality to this place. Khao San will someday probably be seen by scientists as the best proof of some of the more objectionable aspects of String Theory. I'm referring to the eleven dimensions proposed by the theory. Khao San is definately in one of those eleven dimensions; which one, nobody can be sure of - but it definately is not in our current dimension.
I'll try to update more later, either with pics from Bangkok or from the last Burma trip.
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