Tokyo noodles
Day 1 in Tokyo, bad jetlag, Anna goes off to work (Alan still in Sydney so still haven't seen him), flight to Shanghai that evening, several hours to kill.
So I go off in search of soup noodles, to Alan's favourite place. It isn't till I get there that the full force of the 'foreign-ness' that everyone talks about in Japan hits me.
I wait in the entry way (conveniently the little flags that hang down in the doorway are right in face - designed for an altogether different body architecture from mine). Soon a salaryman gets up and leaves and I take his seat. The waitress comes to me and says something. I say 'curry udon', hopefully. Apparently that is not this place's thing. So I gesture wildly and, I hope, meaningfully, at my table mat, trying to convey 'bring me whatever you want to bring me'. This causes yet more puzzlement in the waitresses face, soon moving to consternation as the crazy foreigner continues his wild gesticulations. 'He might start throwing things soon', she is no doubt thinking, 'Perhaps if I nod a lot he will go away'.
Then she is struck with a brainwave - she points towards the window (out of my line of sight) where there are lovely plastic mockups of the food. Lightbulb goes off in my own head, and I almost shout 'Number 3'. Of course, I have no idea which number 3 is, but am anxious to put us both out of our misery, and as I rightly surmise, even a non-English speaker is able to figure out what I am saying.
Number 3 arrives a few minutes later. Bliss! It is scrummy, delicious, wonderful and lovely. I slurp noodles and soup like an expert (or is it hungry person?)
The salaryman next to me gets up and leaves, a quarter of his soup bowl still glistening with a rather more spicy looking brew than mine. I look at it wistfully, wondering just how rude it would be for me to turn to his food and try that as well (apparently, quite rude).
It has been 18 months since my last real trip, and the travel bug is now coursing through my vains as surely as the warmth from the soup flows through my digestive system.
Shanghai
It's been twenty years since I was last in Shanghai. Even then it was on its way to becoming the biggest city in the world, but it has exploded since then, and more to the point has gone from looking like the lovely 1930's city that most people associate with Shanghai, to a futuristic mixture of Miami, Las Vegas and the Jetsons. The old French Concession and the Bund (the strip of UK built banks) are the same, of course, but Pudong, the new district across the river, now springs up where before there was swamp land, and everywhere skyscrapers are being built. Large swathes of the city are unchanged, though, and you can walk down little alleyways where people cook, wash, and chat with their neighbours, across the street from a high rise. It felt a little to me like a teenager with his brand new duds - but still with acne, and oh, he forgot to take off the white socks. Much of the conversation seems to be about why Shanghai is so much better, cooler, more with it that Beijing (which I can well believe). There is an energy about the place - the newest place, the best restaurant, the new gallery. Reminds me of some of the people I know in New York, except that here it really is new - the building probably wasn't there a year ago, let alone the restaurant or bar.
One of the highlights is Louise taking me for lunch for my birthday at Jean Georges, where Tommes is a sous chef. Jean Georges is on the Bund in one of the gutted and renovated bank buildings, along with a number of other high end restaurants. Another is going to the hotel where I stayed 20 years ago - then, one of those 'decayed splendour' places that I love to find - huge bedrooms, stuffed (in my case) with six beds, dormitory style. As well as the bed occupants, I also shared the room with a rat back then. I remember eating a meal in the enourmous dining room and watching as someone wheeled some heavy machinery across the equisite parquet floor, leaving track marks on it. These days the Chinese set a bit more value on the past, if only for the financial draw of tourism, and the hotel has, after a brief stint as the Shanghai Stock Exchange (believe it or not), been restored to something like what it looked like when it was called the Astor Hotel in the 30's. All of the important building on the Bund, and around Shanghai, have little plaques commemorating what the building once was, in English and Chinese.
Vignette
On the plane back to Tokyo, I slump into seat 23G. Across the aisle in 23H is an American, 2 along from him in 23K is a Japanese, and a Chinese sits heavily into 22H. He immediately reclines his seat so that his head is almost in the American's lap.
Pandemonium then ensues as the American uncomfortably tries to move the seat; the Japanese starts whacking the back of the seat with his hand and doing a 'take off' gesture with other hand, and the Chinese turns around and tries to figure out what everyone's problem is; he glances contemptously at the Japanese, then turns round again and stays as he is. This goes on for a couple of minutes.
The American would normally be irreverent of rules as long as they don't inconvenince him; the Chinese, if he is vaguely aware that there is a rule that seatbacks need to be in the upright position for takeoff, doesn't give a damn, and the Japanese is appalled that a 'ruru' has been broken, and even more so that the normally discrete cough he could have emmitted to a fellow Japanese to let him know he was not fitting in, will not work with the Chinese, cementing his long held belief that they are all barbarians anyway.
Tokyo Redux
In the part of Toyko I have been in so far, there are definite 'uniforms'. Most of them are the salarymen in their blue or black suits. But the younger men seem to be walking around in quite a different outfit. Good for them, I think, but, do they really all have to wear the same? They have the baggy trousers of the ghetto look, along with a bandanna tied around their heads. All of them. So much for individuality. Then I spot the paint on one guy's trowsers and realise that this is the attire of the manual labourer.
The most popular brand name for taxicabs is Cedric. Beats me how they came up with that one. Just doesn't have the same ring as 'Testarossa' or 'Lincoln Town Car'
If Shanghai is a teenager, Tokyo is definitely an adult - confident, self-sufficient, mostly unaware that you are even there. The best analogy I can think of is of a western city plopped in the middle of Japan - and then populated entirely by Martians. That is what it feels like to be a foreigner there. Most cities I have been a tourist in want something from me - specifically, my money. Therefore, there are people who will find ways to communicate with me - want a taxi? Sure, we'll just jack up the price a bit for you. Water? Definitely, here it is, $3 a bottle. Room? We have those for foreigners, no probs.
Not so in Tokyo. Yes, some things are signposted. Wandering around Tokyo train to get the Narita Express, I follow the trail of little signs in English. Then at some point the breadcrums run out and I am alone in the forest of 5'2" bodies running around past me. That's what it feels like. It's also when you realise quite how dependent we are on text - In Vietnam, in Egypt, in Brazil, in Germany, I can make out what the signs say and figure out where to go. Even in Shanghai all the signs are in English too. There is text EVERYWHERE in Tokyo, but none of it means anything to me.
Something Fishy
On the morning of my birthday I wake with a start at 4. So I get up and head to the fishmarket to find the famous tuna auction, armed with the Japanese for 'auction' (Kyobai) that Anna had given me the day before.
The place is huge - literally many street blocks - and I have to weave through the forklift trucks playing dodgems all over the place. It's clear that I could really go in any direction from where I came in, and that without guidance I'm not going to get very far. So I go up to a man directiong traffic, and confidently say 'Sumimasen, kyobai kudasai'.
A look of incomprehension passes over his face. I have clearly mispronounced the word and he's wondering why the crazy foreigner has asked for a ball of string or a bikini wax. Meanwhile I too am perplexed, since there can't be too many explanations as to why a gaijin would be wondering around in the dark in a fishmarket, a few hundred feet from a world famous fish aution that is considerered one of the must-sees of Tokyo - something that has clearly not crossed his mind until I pull out my guide book and show him a picture. Immediately he says 'Ah, auction-o' followed by a bunch of Japanese punctuated by 'righto's and 'refto's which would be his interpretation of directions in English.
The auction is fascinating - but best described by the pictures. (see the link below)
After that I wonder around the hole-in-the-wall foodshops. Sushi at 6:30 in the morning - a fitting start for my birthday. And what sushi! I can virtually feel it still flapping around in my mouth.
Crowds and concepts of time.
Whereas in New York everyone is in a hurry, this doesn't seem to be the case in Tokyo. An interesting example is traffic lights, and walk signs - also a good example of the 'ruru' in action. There can be no cars coming at all, yet everyone waits patiently until the light turns green. Fine. But I was surprised that Anna and Alan also waited for the lights to turn. I asked them about this - apparently once one person starts moving, everyone does - somehow they trust the crowd more than they do the lights. So they don't want to be responsible for killing a half dozen Japanese just to get to the other side of the street (I feel a chicken crossing the road joke in the making).
An even better illustration of time and travel... I'm standing in the overground train, waiting for the doors to close. A girl, nose buried in a book, walks towards the doors - which close in her face. She doesn't look up, doesn't bat an eyelid. The doors open again, she starts walking - still nose in book. The doors close again (she took her own sweet time starting to move); the doors open and she walks in. Doesn't look up from the book the whole time - no concern whatsoever about missing the train.
Then again, trains in Tokyo are very frequent and timely. But somehow I like better the theory that time doesn't matter to her, than that she feels there is another train right behind this one.
Amateur Udon Lover
Always been a curry udon fan, which I mention to Alan. He takes me to the 'best' curry udon place. You may have noticed by now that Japanese restaurants are heavily specialised. You might get a bit of sashimi as a first course in 'fusion' restaurants, but otherwise, if you want sushi, you go to a sushi restaurant; tepanyaki, at a tepanyaki place. Naturally, there is a chain that specialises in curry udon. Not just udon, but curried. You can, of course, get different topings. But that's the extent of the menu.
And it is the best curry udon I have ever had. Ever. It's so good I contemplate ordering another bowl, throwing out the udon and slurping down the thick, spicy soup.
I love the waiting system for Japanese restaurants. You don't put your name down, you put your behind down, on one of the row of seats outside the door. As people get seated, everyone moves up the appropriate number of places. How appropriate, how civilised. How conformant to the 'rurus'
The person who founded the curry udon chain felt the need to engrave an enscription, in English, on the glass walls of one of his shops. It reads something like 'Want to be forever an udon lover. I am an amateur udon lover. Under my spirit of enquiries, the curry udon was born in my kitchen. Have been dreamed it must be superficially delicious if curry and udon eaten at home get together with. Foundatinos or professionalism isn't the matter in the cooking. Maker of the curry udon is the amateur. Udon lover's creativity and the sensitive tongue. Believe a delicious crosses the border. I am the cook naming Udon Lover."
Quite.
Levels
Tokyo seems to operate on levels. (see some of the last pics), at least near where I was staying. You can be a story up from the street and then look down 3 stories to a sub-basement level, or look up and see trains whizzing by two levels up, with cars passing by one level below that.
Which might explain a bizzare monument. Alan took me to see the Nihonbashi, the 'Japan Bridge'. This is apparently so important, so central to Japanese culture, that all distances in Japan are measured from there. There has been a bridge there for centuries, althought he current one is very late 19C.
And, there is a flyover just above. Trucks driving over a national treasure. Not to mention spoiling the view.
And this is my theory. Since it is possible for things to exist comfortably in the same space, just on different planes, then maybe there is no conflict in the flyover over the bridge - because, since it occupies a different vertical space, doesn't, in fact, occupy the same space at all, nor obstruct the view. The flyover is, to all intents and purposes, not there, when you are considering the bridge from the ground level. A comforting thought, maybe, if only one could learn to filter out other extraneous information all of the time.
pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.woddis/TokyoShanghai2005
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Vietnam, Jan 1998
Vietnam was wonderful. It just goes to show how a different perspective alters your view - people who had come from Thailand felt that Vietnam was expensive, the food not particularly good, and that you get hassled by the locals. Coming from India, I found the quality of the rooms really very good, the quality of the food not bad and the people, though they always try to sell you something, remarkably friendly if you just chat with them.
You could be forgiven for forgetting that Vietnam is a communist country. True, the customs official was as bureaucratic and nasty as they come. But after that it was rampant capitalism. The first big sign that I saw in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was for Oracle, the next one for HP. Although the country has only become a tourist destination in the last three years, they have embraced the industry rather better than many countries, certainly better than China at the same stage of development. Understanding their market well, they have ignored the high end resorts (although the first few are now being built) and concentrated on good quality rooms at low prices. A decent size room with air conditioning costs $18. Although most backpackers would not be seen dead taking a tour, there is a network of minibuses running up and down the coast, and to the popular destinations inland, catering for the backpackers. They are cheap and you are guaranteed a seat. Some trips, like the two-day Mekong Delta tour, would be extremely hard work to do on your own; these tours cost $20 including the hotel and an A/C bus.
The trips are sold out of backpacker haunts in all the towns - places that sell OK food at reasonable prices, and which make sure that they are competitive on backpacker staples, beer and bottled water. In India the shopkeepers jack up the price of water in tourist spots - here they know that it is a loss-leader to sell the trips. 400Km up the cost will set you back $5 - a substantial amount in a country where the average person earns $50 a month, but peanuts to a tourist for whom the alternative is to stand in a crowded public bus. It also makes for a very social holiday - there is essentially either the trip from South to North or North to South - a sort of new Ho Chi Minh Trail, if you like, on which you come across the same faces every so often.
My prediction is that communism won’t last five years in Vietnam - everywhere there are canny businessmen who understand what they are doing, and evidence of growth. It does not surprise me that the country was so resilient in the face of a far superior military power.
Vietnamese women have to be among the most beautiful in the world, at least when they are young. Visually they seem to divide into two groups - 14-19 (ie all women under 30), and 125+ (ie all women over 35). The fact that they are so young is rather disconcerting - I began to wonder if I was getting a Nabokov complex. Their beauty is furthered by the use of a garment called an Ao Dai which disappeared after Unification but came back in the South a few years ago among students and officials. It consists of trousers and a gown that goes down to the ankles but is split at the hips. This gives a very graceful air to an already graceful race.
The other thing which makes the race so attractive is the smile - everyone is trying to sell you
something, but if you ignore the sales pitch and joke with them you get huge grins:
Vietnamese culture believes that suntans are a sign of manual labour, so women walk around Saigon in the midst of a heatwave wearing hats and long gloves, with scarves round their necks to ward off the sun. Even in fairly cosmopolitan Saigon you see the conical peasant hats, although of course they are much more prevalent in the countryside.
The traffic in Saigon is almost as crazy as Cairo, although there are more bicycles than cards. At the change of lights, you are confronted by a surge of cars, bikes, cyclos (cycle rickshaws) and mopeds. The latter are a form of public transport - you wave them down and give them a dollar or two to take you pillion. Traffic rules seem to rely on the laws of motion - bodies that are moving will keep moving in the same direction. Therefore, a moped, car or bike will not be the least discomfited by you crossing the road against the lights, but will assume you will carry on in the same direction. Only if you stop will you cause an accident, because you will be in a spot where the driver assumed you would not be by that point.
Outside the Palace of the Reunification I was treated to an amusing sight as every cyclo driver in sight rushed to his vehicle and pedalled off as fast as he could. Then I saw the reason - a police jeep with a trailer, on which were piled several cyclos. Apparently the government has decided to phase them out as non-progressive, so no new licenses are being issues. Therefore there are a large number of illegal cyclos around. According to the guide book many of the drivers are ex-officials, teachers or soldiers of the old South Vietnam, who were persecuted after Reunification and exiled to the countryside or even put in labour camps. The only way they could get back to Saigon was to live on the streets and ply their trade as illegal drivers. I spoke to a couple who told me about “having to go away” after 1975.
I found the attitude towards the war (which the Vietnamese call the “American War”) very interesting. On the one hand was typical communist revisionism - what is now the War Remnants Museum used to be called the War Crimes Museum, showing a very one-sided view of the very real atrocities committed. A sense of history seems to have been lost - the guide a the Reunification Palace told us that a painting was of one of the last kings, but when asked when that was, all she could say was “I think it was in the feudal period”, as if that had no real meaning to her. (In fact the last independent king was 1888, with various puppet kings supported by the French and later the Japanese into the 20th Century).
On the other hand is a remarkable lack of bitterness. I met several guides who had been soldiers of the South and were now employed to show tourists around battle sites because of their good English. Although they had probably been treated very badly after 1975, they were now in jobs which must be fairly lucrative by Vietnamese standards. Against Westerners, and Americans in particular, there seems to be more curiosity than any resentment. And yet the country was completely devastated by the war. I have spoken to ex-US troops who said that whole areas looked like the moon. Even today there are places where there are no plants because of the effects of Agent Orange. Slightly under 58,000 American soldiers were killed during the war; just under 60,000 including the MIAs. At Khe Sahn 500 US marines were killed, but 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers died in the same battle. Overall, more than five million Vietnamese were killed or wounded in the conflict (over 12% of the population), and 300,000 are still missing in action. It is estimated that the US spent over $2,000 for each person in Vietnam on the war - perhaps rather better results would have been achieved simply by distributing the money, or dropping cash instead of bombs from the B-52s which flew over North Vietnam and dropped more bombs than in all of WWII.
Most of the country has recovered, and what you see today is a stunningly beautiful country. The predominant impression is greenness - both the rice paddies and the jungle covering the hills are intensely green. I have vivid memories of an overnight bus trip, opening my eyes about six after 8 hours trying to sleep, and seeing the sun come up over distant hills, bathing the paddy fields which turned from grey to golden to green. Then we went through the hills and came down the other end and drove past a crescent bay, full of brightly coloured sailing boats.
You could be forgiven for forgetting that Vietnam is a communist country. True, the customs official was as bureaucratic and nasty as they come. But after that it was rampant capitalism. The first big sign that I saw in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was for Oracle, the next one for HP. Although the country has only become a tourist destination in the last three years, they have embraced the industry rather better than many countries, certainly better than China at the same stage of development. Understanding their market well, they have ignored the high end resorts (although the first few are now being built) and concentrated on good quality rooms at low prices. A decent size room with air conditioning costs $18. Although most backpackers would not be seen dead taking a tour, there is a network of minibuses running up and down the coast, and to the popular destinations inland, catering for the backpackers. They are cheap and you are guaranteed a seat. Some trips, like the two-day Mekong Delta tour, would be extremely hard work to do on your own; these tours cost $20 including the hotel and an A/C bus.
The trips are sold out of backpacker haunts in all the towns - places that sell OK food at reasonable prices, and which make sure that they are competitive on backpacker staples, beer and bottled water. In India the shopkeepers jack up the price of water in tourist spots - here they know that it is a loss-leader to sell the trips. 400Km up the cost will set you back $5 - a substantial amount in a country where the average person earns $50 a month, but peanuts to a tourist for whom the alternative is to stand in a crowded public bus. It also makes for a very social holiday - there is essentially either the trip from South to North or North to South - a sort of new Ho Chi Minh Trail, if you like, on which you come across the same faces every so often.
My prediction is that communism won’t last five years in Vietnam - everywhere there are canny businessmen who understand what they are doing, and evidence of growth. It does not surprise me that the country was so resilient in the face of a far superior military power.
Vietnamese women have to be among the most beautiful in the world, at least when they are young. Visually they seem to divide into two groups - 14-19 (ie all women under 30), and 125+ (ie all women over 35). The fact that they are so young is rather disconcerting - I began to wonder if I was getting a Nabokov complex. Their beauty is furthered by the use of a garment called an Ao Dai which disappeared after Unification but came back in the South a few years ago among students and officials. It consists of trousers and a gown that goes down to the ankles but is split at the hips. This gives a very graceful air to an already graceful race.
The other thing which makes the race so attractive is the smile - everyone is trying to sell you
something, but if you ignore the sales pitch and joke with them you get huge grins:Vietnamese culture believes that suntans are a sign of manual labour, so women walk around Saigon in the midst of a heatwave wearing hats and long gloves, with scarves round their necks to ward off the sun. Even in fairly cosmopolitan Saigon you see the conical peasant hats, although of course they are much more prevalent in the countryside.
The traffic in Saigon is almost as crazy as Cairo, although there are more bicycles than cards. At the change of lights, you are confronted by a surge of cars, bikes, cyclos (cycle rickshaws) and mopeds. The latter are a form of public transport - you wave them down and give them a dollar or two to take you pillion. Traffic rules seem to rely on the laws of motion - bodies that are moving will keep moving in the same direction. Therefore, a moped, car or bike will not be the least discomfited by you crossing the road against the lights, but will assume you will carry on in the same direction. Only if you stop will you cause an accident, because you will be in a spot where the driver assumed you would not be by that point.
Outside the Palace of the Reunification I was treated to an amusing sight as every cyclo driver in sight rushed to his vehicle and pedalled off as fast as he could. Then I saw the reason - a police jeep with a trailer, on which were piled several cyclos. Apparently the government has decided to phase them out as non-progressive, so no new licenses are being issues. Therefore there are a large number of illegal cyclos around. According to the guide book many of the drivers are ex-officials, teachers or soldiers of the old South Vietnam, who were persecuted after Reunification and exiled to the countryside or even put in labour camps. The only way they could get back to Saigon was to live on the streets and ply their trade as illegal drivers. I spoke to a couple who told me about “having to go away” after 1975.
I found the attitude towards the war (which the Vietnamese call the “American War”) very interesting. On the one hand was typical communist revisionism - what is now the War Remnants Museum used to be called the War Crimes Museum, showing a very one-sided view of the very real atrocities committed. A sense of history seems to have been lost - the guide a the Reunification Palace told us that a painting was of one of the last kings, but when asked when that was, all she could say was “I think it was in the feudal period”, as if that had no real meaning to her. (In fact the last independent king was 1888, with various puppet kings supported by the French and later the Japanese into the 20th Century).
On the other hand is a remarkable lack of bitterness. I met several guides who had been soldiers of the South and were now employed to show tourists around battle sites because of their good English. Although they had probably been treated very badly after 1975, they were now in jobs which must be fairly lucrative by Vietnamese standards. Against Westerners, and Americans in particular, there seems to be more curiosity than any resentment. And yet the country was completely devastated by the war. I have spoken to ex-US troops who said that whole areas looked like the moon. Even today there are places where there are no plants because of the effects of Agent Orange. Slightly under 58,000 American soldiers were killed during the war; just under 60,000 including the MIAs. At Khe Sahn 500 US marines were killed, but 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers died in the same battle. Overall, more than five million Vietnamese were killed or wounded in the conflict (over 12% of the population), and 300,000 are still missing in action. It is estimated that the US spent over $2,000 for each person in Vietnam on the war - perhaps rather better results would have been achieved simply by distributing the money, or dropping cash instead of bombs from the B-52s which flew over North Vietnam and dropped more bombs than in all of WWII.
Most of the country has recovered, and what you see today is a stunningly beautiful country. The predominant impression is greenness - both the rice paddies and the jungle covering the hills are intensely green. I have vivid memories of an overnight bus trip, opening my eyes about six after 8 hours trying to sleep, and seeing the sun come up over distant hills, bathing the paddy fields which turned from grey to golden to green. Then we went through the hills and came down the other end and drove past a crescent bay, full of brightly coloured sailing boats.
Vietnam has two areas designated by Unesco as World Heritage sites. The first is Halong Bay, way up in the North which I didn’t get to. Part of “Indochine” is filmed in this bay and it is pretty stunning if the pictures are anything to go by. The other is the town of Hue. Hue was the old imperial capital and is quite fascinating, although there isn’t anything like as much left as there should be - Hue was held for several weeks by the NVA during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Americans bombed the hell out of the old palace and fortress, where the NVA were dug in. Still, you get a feel for what the old palace must have been like from the foundations and the few structures that have been restored.
Hue has another point of interest known to most visitors - Lac Thanh and Lac Thien restaurants, next to each other and both run by deaf-mutes. You communicate via the menu or a comic attempt at sign language - the owner seems to spend most of his time doubled up with laughter. Lac Thanh is so popular that an imitation down the road, with exactly the same spelling but an accent in a different place, and also run by deaf-mutes, has been set up. I couldn’t figure out why there was no one there when I went there. They even told me they were the people mentioned in my guide book, but the deception didn’t seem to get them any more customers!
The nature of the Vietnamese language makes for some interesting translations. Although Vietnamese is not really monosyllabic, words are often broken down into constituent syllables. This flows over into English translations, so that you might get “the Vietnamese religion combines the ten ants of Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism…”.
Hue has another point of interest known to most visitors - Lac Thanh and Lac Thien restaurants, next to each other and both run by deaf-mutes. You communicate via the menu or a comic attempt at sign language - the owner seems to spend most of his time doubled up with laughter. Lac Thanh is so popular that an imitation down the road, with exactly the same spelling but an accent in a different place, and also run by deaf-mutes, has been set up. I couldn’t figure out why there was no one there when I went there. They even told me they were the people mentioned in my guide book, but the deception didn’t seem to get them any more customers!
The nature of the Vietnamese language makes for some interesting translations. Although Vietnamese is not really monosyllabic, words are often broken down into constituent syllables. This flows over into English translations, so that you might get “the Vietnamese religion combines the ten ants of Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism…”.
Further down the coast is the historic town of Hoi An. This is a pretty little town, with really quite old houses on the waterfront and in a couple of roads parallel with it. There is a strange feel, because it is authentic, but it is so small that every tourist in town is concentrated along these three or four roads, and so is the tourist industry. I couldn’t help thinking of Bourbon Street in New Orleans - except that in Vietnam everyone is in bed by 11 and up by 5:30!! I became something of a regular at one of the food stands in the market, where I would go and eat savoury pancakes for 10c each. I’d go to the same one each day and soon would attract other foreigners, so the owners saw me as free advertising.
From Nha Trang, the most famous beach (other than China Beach) I took the (in)famous Mama Hahn’s boat trip. I think this woman partied too much with the GIs when they were here and took too many hallucinogenic - she always seems to be on a high. For the princely sum of $7, as she told us, “you pay $1 for beer, free food, free fruit, free kissy, free Mama Hahn, free fucked up”. We did some great snorkelling and were then fed excellent food until we were stuffed. She then ordered everyone into the sea. While people floated around on rings, she paddled from person to person handing out joints and glasses of mulberry wine. There were people on this trip who seemed to do this every day. Throughout the day Mama Hahn would get on the PA system and announce “OK, fucked up babies, NOW you swim/party/eat” - and everyone would do as she said.
From Nha Trang, the most famous beach (other than China Beach) I took the (in)famous Mama Hahn’s boat trip. I think this woman partied too much with the GIs when they were here and took too many hallucinogenic - she always seems to be on a high. For the princely sum of $7, as she told us, “you pay $1 for beer, free food, free fruit, free kissy, free Mama Hahn, free fucked up”. We did some great snorkelling and were then fed excellent food until we were stuffed. She then ordered everyone into the sea. While people floated around on rings, she paddled from person to person handing out joints and glasses of mulberry wine. There were people on this trip who seemed to do this every day. Throughout the day Mama Hahn would get on the PA system and announce “OK, fucked up babies, NOW you swim/party/eat” - and everyone would do as she said.
Body Building Club in Saigon:
Interlude
It took me 45 minutes to get through Immigration on my way out of India - for some reason they insisted on questioning every Indian national (including expatriates). After 6 weeks in the Third World it was truly a pleasure to arrive in Singapore for the night. It is clean but above all efficient - I was through immigration and customs, with all my luggage and having changed money, in about 15 minutes after landing. The hotel has a shuttle service. After paying through the nose for the hotel in Kovalam I can truly say that the Meridien in Singapore is worth every penny. They opened up the business centre for me at 7 on a Saturday evening and did not charge me for Internet usage.
Perhaps not the best experience to have, however, just before heading back to the Third World in the form of Vietnam, the part of the trip about which I was most apprehensive…
Perhaps not the best experience to have, however, just before heading back to the Third World in the form of Vietnam, the part of the trip about which I was most apprehensive…
India, December 1997
My first surprise on arriving in India was how painless the airport process was - there was even a place to change travellers cheques which I was able to do in a couple of minutes (unlike the hour and a half which it had taken me at Amex in Delhi 7 years earlier). (This was rather different from what happened when I left at the end of two weeks - it took 45 minutes just to get through emmigration - the first country I have been to where they want to ask you questions before they let you leave the country).
Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, has little to recommend it. Just moving your head can make you sweat. But one of the sensual pleasures of being in India after the mediocre (and rather pricey) food in Sri Lanka is being able to go to a downmarket restaurant and get a good vegetable curry for about 30 cents. The food can be pretty lousy in India, especially if you are eating meat (and sometimes with the more watery vegetable curries in the South) - but if you like spicy food, you can do very well for very little. Stuffing your face on cheap, tasty grub can be a surprisingly sensory experience after a long journey.
A less wonderful experience in India comes about because many of the people who interact with tourists believe that it is your duty as a tourist to cough up money. Not only are they bemused when you say you don't want something, but they believe that if they just keep at it you will relent (When you say no you mean maybe and when you say maybe you mean yes!). Sometimes what is being sold is justifiable enough (e.g. the pineapple sellers on the beach) but sometimes there are quite extraordinary propositions. One hawker wanted me to buy a drum on the beach. When I said that I didn't want one, he then proposed swapping my ($120) diving mask and snorkel for a drum. [This approach was also apparent to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka - one man on a train wanted me to buy a lottery ticket, even though I was leaving the next day. He then said that the drawing was being held that day and just couldn't understand why I didn't want to win a bicycle, even when I explained I was travelling round the world and wanted to travel light!]
India is a conundrum in so many ways. It has huge resources in terms of land and a population of over a billion (officially denied). It has a middle class of 250 million - some only relatively to the rest of the country, but many also affluent in absolute, world terms. There are 10 million speakers of English as a first language (that's more than New Zealand or South Africa), and many more who use it as their main means of communicating in business. India has a wealth of educated technology talent, both as a local resource and as an export (many of the engineers creating wealth in Silicon Valley come from India).
Yet the country itself still has great poverty, with perhaps a million or more people living on the streets in Calcutta. The bureaucracy, even for simple things like buying a train ticket, can drive strong men to tears of frustration. Hotels that charge $150 a night can have waiters who simply shrug their shoulders when you point out that you asked for tea and they gave you coffee, then wander off to get you what you wanted and are bemused by your annoyance. The caste system paralyses efficiency, since each type of task should be carried out by the appropriate task and it is demeaning to do someone else’s type of work. This sort of worked in an agricultural economy but is non-sensical when companies need to be nimble. Worst of all, years of socialist government and a culture of inefficiency have created massive overemployment in most industries. As the economy opens up, business people are seeing opportunities which they can only exploit by nimbleness and flexibility. Sooner or later they will push for labour reform which will cause substantial social upheaval, possibly precipitating a political shift among some of the more extreme parties such as the Hindu nationalist BJP. Is India a great opportunity, the next South America? Or will it remain only a potentially great economy, destined always to have potential which is never realised?
On a train trip to Cochin I idly speculate about privatising the railways - it takes 5 hours to cover 220 kms (then again, it does cost less than a subway token in New York). Intercity trains in Britain or France could cover that distance in an hour if there were no stops. There would be massive costs involved in modernising the system, but on the other hand each train has a couple of thousand people on it paying way under the real value of the trip (side thought - in a predominantly agricultural economy, where are all these people going? Why do they choose to make long distance trips? Is it just because fares are so cheap that it creates demand?). Fares could go up quite a bit and still be more than competitive with airlines; the six day trip from the south to Delhi could be cut to a one day trip which would make it a feasible business trip.
The main part of Cochin, Ernakulam, is just another Indian town, but Cochin itself is the remains of a trading outpost once settled by the Portuguese and then the Dutch. Kerala is a very cosmopolitan state by Indian standards - a very large Christian population (there were Christians in Kerala before there were any in Britain)., the highest literacy rate in India and a small population of Jews dating back almost 2000 years, mostly in Cochin’s old Jewtown. It is quite strange to walk around this old town and see signs for Sarah’s clothes shop and Cohen the lawyer.
Near Cochin are the Backwaters, a network of canals and waterways which create an economy completely based around boats. People live on narrow trips of land in between the waterways, harvesting coconuts (from which they make rope, mats, boats, houses, thatching, oil and cattle-feed). Life seems not to have changed for hundreds of years. Water hyacinths float in the more still sections of water; sometimes they clog up whole sections.
India also has hill stations - it is noticeable that one’s mood changes as you get higher up and away from the heat. In Kodaicanal the weather is positively cool and drizzly - rather a pleasant change!
This view is from a few miles outside Kodaicanal. Unfortunately when I got there the view was obscured by clouds - but in some respects it made it even more awesome - these cliffs don’t just drop down a few hundred feet as the picture might suggest, but over a 1500 metres. Knowing that under the clouds is a huge drop makes the cliffs more majestic somehow.
On the road to Madurai in Tamil Nadu the bus passes through a plain flanked by hills. The scenery is not particularly remarkable, except that it is dotted with literally hundreds of wind mills along a 10 mile stretch of the road. Somehow a wind farm seems more in keeping with a high-tech, developed economy such as California’s. In India most of the cars still run on diesel - all the more reason to look at alternate sources of energy, but I would have thought the first step would be to clean up existing emissions!
Madurai was by far the most Indian part of this trip. The town itself is mayham, with buses, rickshaws and bullock-pulled carts all competing for space on the road. The road is dirt even in the centre of town, which can make things pretty dusty.
The main attraction in Madurai is the temple - one of the great Hindu temples of India. There are approximately 13 million statues on the walls around the temple, each one garishly painted. Monkeys climb all over the structures, as a monkey is one of the incarnations of one of the Hindu deities.
Pilgrims come from all over the country to the various shrines, especially the lingam, a stylised representation of a phallus which is the symbol for Shiva. This section of the temple is out of bounds for non-Hindus. Outside this section there is a shrine to the monkey god, which people daub with butter and red powder (don’t ask me why. I backed into it by mistake when I was taking a picture of something
Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, has little to recommend it. Just moving your head can make you sweat. But one of the sensual pleasures of being in India after the mediocre (and rather pricey) food in Sri Lanka is being able to go to a downmarket restaurant and get a good vegetable curry for about 30 cents. The food can be pretty lousy in India, especially if you are eating meat (and sometimes with the more watery vegetable curries in the South) - but if you like spicy food, you can do very well for very little. Stuffing your face on cheap, tasty grub can be a surprisingly sensory experience after a long journey.
A less wonderful experience in India comes about because many of the people who interact with tourists believe that it is your duty as a tourist to cough up money. Not only are they bemused when you say you don't want something, but they believe that if they just keep at it you will relent (When you say no you mean maybe and when you say maybe you mean yes!). Sometimes what is being sold is justifiable enough (e.g. the pineapple sellers on the beach) but sometimes there are quite extraordinary propositions. One hawker wanted me to buy a drum on the beach. When I said that I didn't want one, he then proposed swapping my ($120) diving mask and snorkel for a drum. [This approach was also apparent to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka - one man on a train wanted me to buy a lottery ticket, even though I was leaving the next day. He then said that the drawing was being held that day and just couldn't understand why I didn't want to win a bicycle, even when I explained I was travelling round the world and wanted to travel light!]
India is a conundrum in so many ways. It has huge resources in terms of land and a population of over a billion (officially denied). It has a middle class of 250 million - some only relatively to the rest of the country, but many also affluent in absolute, world terms. There are 10 million speakers of English as a first language (that's more than New Zealand or South Africa), and many more who use it as their main means of communicating in business. India has a wealth of educated technology talent, both as a local resource and as an export (many of the engineers creating wealth in Silicon Valley come from India).
Yet the country itself still has great poverty, with perhaps a million or more people living on the streets in Calcutta. The bureaucracy, even for simple things like buying a train ticket, can drive strong men to tears of frustration. Hotels that charge $150 a night can have waiters who simply shrug their shoulders when you point out that you asked for tea and they gave you coffee, then wander off to get you what you wanted and are bemused by your annoyance. The caste system paralyses efficiency, since each type of task should be carried out by the appropriate task and it is demeaning to do someone else’s type of work. This sort of worked in an agricultural economy but is non-sensical when companies need to be nimble. Worst of all, years of socialist government and a culture of inefficiency have created massive overemployment in most industries. As the economy opens up, business people are seeing opportunities which they can only exploit by nimbleness and flexibility. Sooner or later they will push for labour reform which will cause substantial social upheaval, possibly precipitating a political shift among some of the more extreme parties such as the Hindu nationalist BJP. Is India a great opportunity, the next South America? Or will it remain only a potentially great economy, destined always to have potential which is never realised?
On a train trip to Cochin I idly speculate about privatising the railways - it takes 5 hours to cover 220 kms (then again, it does cost less than a subway token in New York). Intercity trains in Britain or France could cover that distance in an hour if there were no stops. There would be massive costs involved in modernising the system, but on the other hand each train has a couple of thousand people on it paying way under the real value of the trip (side thought - in a predominantly agricultural economy, where are all these people going? Why do they choose to make long distance trips? Is it just because fares are so cheap that it creates demand?). Fares could go up quite a bit and still be more than competitive with airlines; the six day trip from the south to Delhi could be cut to a one day trip which would make it a feasible business trip.
The main part of Cochin, Ernakulam, is just another Indian town, but Cochin itself is the remains of a trading outpost once settled by the Portuguese and then the Dutch. Kerala is a very cosmopolitan state by Indian standards - a very large Christian population (there were Christians in Kerala before there were any in Britain)., the highest literacy rate in India and a small population of Jews dating back almost 2000 years, mostly in Cochin’s old Jewtown. It is quite strange to walk around this old town and see signs for Sarah’s clothes shop and Cohen the lawyer.
Near Cochin are the Backwaters, a network of canals and waterways which create an economy completely based around boats. People live on narrow trips of land in between the waterways, harvesting coconuts (from which they make rope, mats, boats, houses, thatching, oil and cattle-feed). Life seems not to have changed for hundreds of years. Water hyacinths float in the more still sections of water; sometimes they clog up whole sections.
India also has hill stations - it is noticeable that one’s mood changes as you get higher up and away from the heat. In Kodaicanal the weather is positively cool and drizzly - rather a pleasant change!
This view is from a few miles outside Kodaicanal. Unfortunately when I got there the view was obscured by clouds - but in some respects it made it even more awesome - these cliffs don’t just drop down a few hundred feet as the picture might suggest, but over a 1500 metres. Knowing that under the clouds is a huge drop makes the cliffs more majestic somehow.
On the road to Madurai in Tamil Nadu the bus passes through a plain flanked by hills. The scenery is not particularly remarkable, except that it is dotted with literally hundreds of wind mills along a 10 mile stretch of the road. Somehow a wind farm seems more in keeping with a high-tech, developed economy such as California’s. In India most of the cars still run on diesel - all the more reason to look at alternate sources of energy, but I would have thought the first step would be to clean up existing emissions!
Madurai was by far the most Indian part of this trip. The town itself is mayham, with buses, rickshaws and bullock-pulled carts all competing for space on the road. The road is dirt even in the centre of town, which can make things pretty dusty.
The main attraction in Madurai is the temple - one of the great Hindu temples of India. There are approximately 13 million statues on the walls around the temple, each one garishly painted. Monkeys climb all over the structures, as a monkey is one of the incarnations of one of the Hindu deities.
Pilgrims come from all over the country to the various shrines, especially the lingam, a stylised representation of a phallus which is the symbol for Shiva. This section of the temple is out of bounds for non-Hindus. Outside this section there is a shrine to the monkey god, which people daub with butter and red powder (don’t ask me why. I backed into it by mistake when I was taking a picture of something
The best bit of Madurai temple was the temple elephant. People line up to be blessed - they put a rupee coin in its trunk and it taps you on the head with a wet snout. Every so often he blows out the coins (along with the other contents of his nose) into his handler’s hand.
Kovalam is a pretty double horseshoe of sand which has become one of India’s most famous beaches, and of its most overdeveloped tourist areas. You walk down the beach at night and get accosted by the restaurant workers who want you to come to their restaurant. It can take over an hour for them to grill your bit of fish - sometimes nearer two. But you get a piece of tandoori fish (sometimes the whole fish if it is something like a snapper) and beer and salad for about $3-4 - a huge amount for food in India, but nevertheless, sitting at a table looking at the sea and eating freshly grilled fish is a pleasant way to spend an evening.
On my last morning in India I had two bovine experiences. I sat in the rooftop restaurant of the hotel idly looking at the menu - each section had a theme (“from the sea”; “from the garden”). I noticed that the meat section was called “from the Quadruplets”… but roast babies were not to my fancy that day, so I looked out at the beach and saw… a cow. It was standing uselessly looking at the waves coming up the shore and lapping at its hooves. How it got there I have no idea, because there is really quite a steep road on both the access paths to the beach. In addition, it would have had to wend its way in between the various restaurants, hotels, and above all people, to get to the beach. Somehow it seemed an appropriate summing up for India…
On my last morning in India I had two bovine experiences. I sat in the rooftop restaurant of the hotel idly looking at the menu - each section had a theme (“from the sea”; “from the garden”). I noticed that the meat section was called “from the Quadruplets”… but roast babies were not to my fancy that day, so I looked out at the beach and saw… a cow. It was standing uselessly looking at the waves coming up the shore and lapping at its hooves. How it got there I have no idea, because there is really quite a steep road on both the access paths to the beach. In addition, it would have had to wend its way in between the various restaurants, hotels, and above all people, to get to the beach. Somehow it seemed an appropriate summing up for India…
all the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.woddis/IndiaSabbatical
Sri Lanka, November 1997
My first impression of Sri Lanka was negative. I got off the plane and immediately had to fight to get through immigration – another common feature of third world countries is the distaste for queueing. So by the time I got to the Galle Face Hotel in Columbo (at 8 in the morning) I was in a pretty bad mood.
The Galle Face is 164 years old and completely wonderful. It doesn’t have a gym, business centre, sushi bar or a shuttle to the airport, or any of the other things associated with a modern luxury hotel. But it has large beds in large rooms, with large bathtubs (they don’t make ‘em like that any more…). I went down to breakfast – the dining room always has French doors open onto the veranda, which is 12 feet wide – the perfect place to sit with a cold beer and watch the rain in the rainy season. Luckily for me this was not the rainy season and the open windows let in a nice breeze in the otherwise heavy air.
Sri Lanka too has its troubles – the Tamil Tigers have been fighting the government for a couple of decades and exploded a bomb in one of the main hotels a couple of months before I arrived (living in New York is too dull and I have to go to exciting places for fun…). The police look very different here – whereas they tend to be asleep in Egypt, they look all too professional here, as do the various troops (including women), all wearing British-style uniforms.
During one trip I spoke to the driver about the various road blocks. He talked in broken English about the problem with the Tamils – then said that “Indian” Tamils were “good” Tamils, unlike the Tigers. The “Indian” Tamils were brought over by the British in the last century to work the tea plantations, while the native Tamils came over many centuries ago as part of the various Indian invasions. Sri Lanka has extraordinary diversity considering its relatively small size. Not only does it have great beaches (which for many Europeans are the only part of Sri Lanka they see), but beautiful hill country covered with green tea plantations, jungle, and ancient cities.
One of the pleasures of travelling in Sri Lanka is the railway system – not because it is so efficient (it isn’t) nor extensive (there are only two lines) but because the scenery is so extraordinary. Between Colombo and Kandy, and then Kandy all the way to Ella, the train climbs thousands of feet through the jungle. Tea is surprisingly green, but more impressive is the wild fauna that grows naturally or springs up in between the plantations. Plants we consider “exotic” or indoor plants grow wild, or at least unfettered by cold weather – crocodile philondendrons grow happily outside in the gardens, scarlet canna lillies sprout everywhere near houses, and morning glories of an intense purple-blue climb all over the tea bushes and all the plants nearby, along telephone wires and on road-side bushes.
This is the leaning Budda at Annaphurna, one of the ancient cities in the centre of the country. Annaphurna was built about 1000 years ago and then abandoned. Both it and Siggiria where reclaimed by the jungle and hidden for hundreds of years until discovered by the British in the last century,
Sigiria is even more impressive than Annaphurna. It is a huge rock which sticks out from the plane, quite a few miles from the nearest hill. Along the bottom were ornate gardens with running streams as well as pools. Steps wind up all the way up the rock. About half way up can be found some frescoes from the 6th century, very famous in the East – they gave rise to all sorts of graffiti on the surrounding wall, from lascivious men to jealous women. The shape of the women is quite surprising – maybe the first supermodels; certainly not the shape of Sri Lankan and Indian women today.
At the top are the ruins of what used to be the summer palace, the beginnings of which were built 1500 years ago. They are overgrown with lush plants, and as ruins are not particularly spectacular.
The real treat is finding this palace at the top of such a hill, after a long climb, and with such extraordinary views.
The final step of the Ancient Cities trip is Dambulla. This is a natural cave cut widthwise in the rock. For many centuries is has been used as a temple, with Buddhist paintings all over the ceiling. Over time, the cave has been built up so that it is now a formal temple - an odd mixture of man-made walls and weather-carved rock.
During this part of the trip, my driver engaged in a little exchange which never failed to amuse him. He would drive me up to a restaurant on the road and leave me to have my lunch, while he went round the back. After lunch he would ask me how much my lunch would cost, and I would say "300 rupees" (about $5). He would then grin, and say "50 rupees", which is what he had paid for his (and probably eaten the same meal).
Newara Elyia is a hill station - one of the many built by the British in India and Sri Lanka to escape the summer heat. It is completely different in feel from the rest of the country - it feels more like the Lake District in England than part of a tropical country. This is not just because of the weather, which is almost cool and often misty or rainy, but because, more than any part of the country, there is an English feel about the place. Below is the Hill Club, once an exclusive club open only to Europeans and men (although there is a side entrance through which ladies could gain access to the bar). Nowadays it is mostly a hotel, although it is still a club. I got a suite for $35 and the rooms even have the damp smell of English bed & breakfasts. The place not only has a dress code for dinner - rather pretentious in a place where most of the guests are tourists - but I wandered into the billiard room and was knocking balls around when a water came in and told me that I needed to wear a jacket and tie to play billiards. As I was settling into bed for the night one of the staff knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted a hot water bottle - an odd concept in such a hot country.
Further into the hill country is the Ella Gap - an opening in the mountains that provides a clear view from the mountains onto the coastal plain. This is a stunning view of which unfortunately (for all of you) I didn't take a picture - you will have to take my word for it that it is a really beautiful view, and very relaxing to sit on a veranda with a cold beer watching the sun go down.
After the hill country I headed for Hikkaduwa and the beach. Hikkaduwa was the first place in Sri Lanka to be opened up for tourism, mostly by Germans heading for sun and sea. There are plenty of people who arrive, sit on the beach for two weeks and leave, never having eaten a local meal or gone to visit any of the major sights in the country. Nevertheless, Hikkaduwa has a nice feel to it and has some special attractions. I was trying out my new snorkel and mask on the first day in the sea - I put it on and stuck my face in the water, and there, 12 feet away from me, was a giant turtle. I tried to follow it around, and it slid away, keeping about the same distance in between us. I came across turtles several times while snorkelling - on one occasion I followed three around for several minutes before I lost sight of them.
Also in the Hikkaduwa area are 14 wrecks within an hour of each other. I dived two of them and it was definitely the best diving I have done - the water is warm (warmer actually than the air temperature, since it was raining that day). One was a sailship, the other a small tanker. It was breathtaking to swim around the bows, then through the wreck, which seems to attract fish as a sort of artificial reef. One of the fish was a puffer - usually about the size of a fist (when they are not puffed up) but this one was about the size of a head (unpuffed).
The Galle Face is 164 years old and completely wonderful. It doesn’t have a gym, business centre, sushi bar or a shuttle to the airport, or any of the other things associated with a modern luxury hotel. But it has large beds in large rooms, with large bathtubs (they don’t make ‘em like that any more…). I went down to breakfast – the dining room always has French doors open onto the veranda, which is 12 feet wide – the perfect place to sit with a cold beer and watch the rain in the rainy season. Luckily for me this was not the rainy season and the open windows let in a nice breeze in the otherwise heavy air.
Sri Lanka too has its troubles – the Tamil Tigers have been fighting the government for a couple of decades and exploded a bomb in one of the main hotels a couple of months before I arrived (living in New York is too dull and I have to go to exciting places for fun…). The police look very different here – whereas they tend to be asleep in Egypt, they look all too professional here, as do the various troops (including women), all wearing British-style uniforms.
During one trip I spoke to the driver about the various road blocks. He talked in broken English about the problem with the Tamils – then said that “Indian” Tamils were “good” Tamils, unlike the Tigers. The “Indian” Tamils were brought over by the British in the last century to work the tea plantations, while the native Tamils came over many centuries ago as part of the various Indian invasions. Sri Lanka has extraordinary diversity considering its relatively small size. Not only does it have great beaches (which for many Europeans are the only part of Sri Lanka they see), but beautiful hill country covered with green tea plantations, jungle, and ancient cities.
One of the pleasures of travelling in Sri Lanka is the railway system – not because it is so efficient (it isn’t) nor extensive (there are only two lines) but because the scenery is so extraordinary. Between Colombo and Kandy, and then Kandy all the way to Ella, the train climbs thousands of feet through the jungle. Tea is surprisingly green, but more impressive is the wild fauna that grows naturally or springs up in between the plantations. Plants we consider “exotic” or indoor plants grow wild, or at least unfettered by cold weather – crocodile philondendrons grow happily outside in the gardens, scarlet canna lillies sprout everywhere near houses, and morning glories of an intense purple-blue climb all over the tea bushes and all the plants nearby, along telephone wires and on road-side bushes.
This is the leaning Budda at Annaphurna, one of the ancient cities in the centre of the country. Annaphurna was built about 1000 years ago and then abandoned. Both it and Siggiria where reclaimed by the jungle and hidden for hundreds of years until discovered by the British in the last century,
Sigiria is even more impressive than Annaphurna. It is a huge rock which sticks out from the plane, quite a few miles from the nearest hill. Along the bottom were ornate gardens with running streams as well as pools. Steps wind up all the way up the rock. About half way up can be found some frescoes from the 6th century, very famous in the East – they gave rise to all sorts of graffiti on the surrounding wall, from lascivious men to jealous women. The shape of the women is quite surprising – maybe the first supermodels; certainly not the shape of Sri Lankan and Indian women today.
At the top are the ruins of what used to be the summer palace, the beginnings of which were built 1500 years ago. They are overgrown with lush plants, and as ruins are not particularly spectacular.
The real treat is finding this palace at the top of such a hill, after a long climb, and with such extraordinary views.
The final step of the Ancient Cities trip is Dambulla. This is a natural cave cut widthwise in the rock. For many centuries is has been used as a temple, with Buddhist paintings all over the ceiling. Over time, the cave has been built up so that it is now a formal temple - an odd mixture of man-made walls and weather-carved rock.
During this part of the trip, my driver engaged in a little exchange which never failed to amuse him. He would drive me up to a restaurant on the road and leave me to have my lunch, while he went round the back. After lunch he would ask me how much my lunch would cost, and I would say "300 rupees" (about $5). He would then grin, and say "50 rupees", which is what he had paid for his (and probably eaten the same meal).
Newara Elyia is a hill station - one of the many built by the British in India and Sri Lanka to escape the summer heat. It is completely different in feel from the rest of the country - it feels more like the Lake District in England than part of a tropical country. This is not just because of the weather, which is almost cool and often misty or rainy, but because, more than any part of the country, there is an English feel about the place. Below is the Hill Club, once an exclusive club open only to Europeans and men (although there is a side entrance through which ladies could gain access to the bar). Nowadays it is mostly a hotel, although it is still a club. I got a suite for $35 and the rooms even have the damp smell of English bed & breakfasts. The place not only has a dress code for dinner - rather pretentious in a place where most of the guests are tourists - but I wandered into the billiard room and was knocking balls around when a water came in and told me that I needed to wear a jacket and tie to play billiards. As I was settling into bed for the night one of the staff knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted a hot water bottle - an odd concept in such a hot country.
Further into the hill country is the Ella Gap - an opening in the mountains that provides a clear view from the mountains onto the coastal plain. This is a stunning view of which unfortunately (for all of you) I didn't take a picture - you will have to take my word for it that it is a really beautiful view, and very relaxing to sit on a veranda with a cold beer watching the sun go down.
After the hill country I headed for Hikkaduwa and the beach. Hikkaduwa was the first place in Sri Lanka to be opened up for tourism, mostly by Germans heading for sun and sea. There are plenty of people who arrive, sit on the beach for two weeks and leave, never having eaten a local meal or gone to visit any of the major sights in the country. Nevertheless, Hikkaduwa has a nice feel to it and has some special attractions. I was trying out my new snorkel and mask on the first day in the sea - I put it on and stuck my face in the water, and there, 12 feet away from me, was a giant turtle. I tried to follow it around, and it slid away, keeping about the same distance in between us. I came across turtles several times while snorkelling - on one occasion I followed three around for several minutes before I lost sight of them.
Also in the Hikkaduwa area are 14 wrecks within an hour of each other. I dived two of them and it was definitely the best diving I have done - the water is warm (warmer actually than the air temperature, since it was raining that day). One was a sailship, the other a small tanker. It was breathtaking to swim around the bows, then through the wreck, which seems to attract fish as a sort of artificial reef. One of the fish was a puffer - usually about the size of a fist (when they are not puffed up) but this one was about the size of a head (unpuffed).
see more pics at:
Sabbatical - Egypt
November, 1997
The other strange thing about the Egyptians (and in fact was common about all of the countries I visited, but particularly so of the Egyptians) was the propensity to ask what Westerners would consider personal questions. This covered not only “how old are you” (always) but also “are you married?”, usually followed by an incredulous look, sometimes followed by “why not?”. [Not, as you might think, because of my devastating good looks, but because arranged marriages are fairly common, women’s careers usually not, and in the countryside in particular the economics of a family unit are just too compelling to let irrelevancies like feelings intrude]. On even asked me “Have you ever had sex? How many times?”.
Of course the main reason people come to Egypt is for the antiquities, and they truly are stunning. Luxor in particular is worth the trip on its own, although it is there that the hustlers have really refined their art. There are two temples, one in Luxor itself and one a couple of miles away at Karnak, which was built up over a thousand year period. Across the Nile is not only the Valley of the Kings, were the tombs are found, but several other monuments including Hatsepshut’s temple.
The West Bank of the Nile at Luxor
The idea came to me while I was sitting in the spring of the oasis at Farafra in the Western Desert, watching the sunset. My romantic notions of oases was that they are small pools surrounded by a dozen or so palm trees, a couple of Bedouin tents and Beau Geste wandering around in the background. No doubt this is many other people’s conception too. The reality is that I was sitting in a concrete tank, having warm but ferrous water pouring on me (and staining my clothes). There are indeed palm trees, but most of the oases are virtually cities, covering in some cases several thousand square kilometres.
So I resolved to write down some impressions of this trip, trying to get down my notes while I was still the wide-eyed innocent in the face of the new, before too much analysis and cynicism has set in. I would fail in the latter, of course – both analysis and cynicism come too easily. However they contribute to the overall goal – to give some sense of what this trip was like to others, without the inconvenience of the trip, as it were.
EGYPT
Cairo is a crazy city – the craziest one I’ve been in, and I’ve been in some pretty crazy ones. The pollution is as bad as Bankok’s – from the pyramids (on a hill a couple of miles away) you can hardly see the downtown area. Traffic lights are seen as more of a challenge than a warning. At least three people have told me that the way to cross the street is to close your eyes and pray to Allah.
It’s rather a grand city in some respects – areas such as Zamalek remind me rather of Buenos Aires (“the Paris of the South”) – but even these areas are in dire need of a lick of paint. Lots of plants sitting in building lobbies, but they’re covered in dust. It’s as if someone had had a grand design, but then decided it was simply too much effort to keep the place looking nice and the desert at bay.
Another astounding thing is the contrasts – you can walk 500 yards away from the supreme court, built like all similar ones to project grandeur, and be in the middle of slums, with narrow alleys filled with goats, straw and manure. The Islamic part of town is the most exciting – on the other side of the road from Khan il Khalili, the “touristy” bazaar, is the real souk, a warren of alleyways and workshops apparently unchanged since the middle ages. Since they don’t sell tourist souvenirs and there is no tourist map, tourists don’t venture there and it doesn’t change much. There are buildings there which date back a thousand years, next to a shack which might have been built last year (but is in dire need of repair).
One thing that is very galling to the visitor is the hassle/hustle approach the Egyptians use with tourists. A new person approaches you in the street – he is polite, wants to welcome you to his country, invite you to tea in his shop and exchange business cards. You say that you are in a hurry, you need to get to the bank before it closes (in six hours!), he is insistent, says that it would be rude to turn down his hospitality. You think that maybe this time he might be genuine, he is so polite and after all the only way to get out of it would be to be deliberately rude. Then you get to the perfume shop, your “friend” disappears and the shop owner takes over with the rather harder sell. I think they send everyone to the same hustle school – everyone says “you are from England? I have been to England. London Liverpool Manchester Yorkshire”. I haven’t been to Yorkshire, yet every street vendor knows someone in every town. In my whole time in Egypt, I was only approached two times by someone who didn’t want money – and one of those might well have wanted money as well, in return for what he had to offer!!
The strange thing is that the Egyptians are really rather lovely people – if you get off the beaten track and they do not have the equation “tourist = $” imprinted on their retina, they are really nice and friendly and you get some great beaming smiles back if you say hello in Arabic. Even the hustlers seem quite happy to invite you to their houses for tea after having tried to gouge you – it’s as if the mentality is “just because you did a bad business deal doesn’t mean we can’t be friends…”. You do develop a siege mentality after a while, looking down or away whenever someone comes near you in the street. Then again, I got hassled in every country, but it didn’t bother me so much so perhaps I just got used to it. But perhaps the Egyptians have a particularly insistent approach. And someone should really tell them that shouting “Hey, Mr No-Hair, you want taxi?” at me is not the way to win business.
So I resolved to write down some impressions of this trip, trying to get down my notes while I was still the wide-eyed innocent in the face of the new, before too much analysis and cynicism has set in. I would fail in the latter, of course – both analysis and cynicism come too easily. However they contribute to the overall goal – to give some sense of what this trip was like to others, without the inconvenience of the trip, as it were.
EGYPT
Cairo is a crazy city – the craziest one I’ve been in, and I’ve been in some pretty crazy ones. The pollution is as bad as Bankok’s – from the pyramids (on a hill a couple of miles away) you can hardly see the downtown area. Traffic lights are seen as more of a challenge than a warning. At least three people have told me that the way to cross the street is to close your eyes and pray to Allah.
It’s rather a grand city in some respects – areas such as Zamalek remind me rather of Buenos Aires (“the Paris of the South”) – but even these areas are in dire need of a lick of paint. Lots of plants sitting in building lobbies, but they’re covered in dust. It’s as if someone had had a grand design, but then decided it was simply too much effort to keep the place looking nice and the desert at bay.
Another astounding thing is the contrasts – you can walk 500 yards away from the supreme court, built like all similar ones to project grandeur, and be in the middle of slums, with narrow alleys filled with goats, straw and manure. The Islamic part of town is the most exciting – on the other side of the road from Khan il Khalili, the “touristy” bazaar, is the real souk, a warren of alleyways and workshops apparently unchanged since the middle ages. Since they don’t sell tourist souvenirs and there is no tourist map, tourists don’t venture there and it doesn’t change much. There are buildings there which date back a thousand years, next to a shack which might have been built last year (but is in dire need of repair).
One thing that is very galling to the visitor is the hassle/hustle approach the Egyptians use with tourists. A new person approaches you in the street – he is polite, wants to welcome you to his country, invite you to tea in his shop and exchange business cards. You say that you are in a hurry, you need to get to the bank before it closes (in six hours!), he is insistent, says that it would be rude to turn down his hospitality. You think that maybe this time he might be genuine, he is so polite and after all the only way to get out of it would be to be deliberately rude. Then you get to the perfume shop, your “friend” disappears and the shop owner takes over with the rather harder sell. I think they send everyone to the same hustle school – everyone says “you are from England? I have been to England. London Liverpool Manchester Yorkshire”. I haven’t been to Yorkshire, yet every street vendor knows someone in every town. In my whole time in Egypt, I was only approached two times by someone who didn’t want money – and one of those might well have wanted money as well, in return for what he had to offer!!
The strange thing is that the Egyptians are really rather lovely people – if you get off the beaten track and they do not have the equation “tourist = $” imprinted on their retina, they are really nice and friendly and you get some great beaming smiles back if you say hello in Arabic. Even the hustlers seem quite happy to invite you to their houses for tea after having tried to gouge you – it’s as if the mentality is “just because you did a bad business deal doesn’t mean we can’t be friends…”. You do develop a siege mentality after a while, looking down or away whenever someone comes near you in the street. Then again, I got hassled in every country, but it didn’t bother me so much so perhaps I just got used to it. But perhaps the Egyptians have a particularly insistent approach. And someone should really tell them that shouting “Hey, Mr No-Hair, you want taxi?” at me is not the way to win business.
The other strange thing about the Egyptians (and in fact was common about all of the countries I visited, but particularly so of the Egyptians) was the propensity to ask what Westerners would consider personal questions. This covered not only “how old are you” (always) but also “are you married?”, usually followed by an incredulous look, sometimes followed by “why not?”. [Not, as you might think, because of my devastating good looks, but because arranged marriages are fairly common, women’s careers usually not, and in the countryside in particular the economics of a family unit are just too compelling to let irrelevancies like feelings intrude]. On even asked me “Have you ever had sex? How many times?”.
Of course the main reason people come to Egypt is for the antiquities, and they truly are stunning. Luxor in particular is worth the trip on its own, although it is there that the hustlers have really refined their art. There are two temples, one in Luxor itself and one a couple of miles away at Karnak, which was built up over a thousand year period. Across the Nile is not only the Valley of the Kings, were the tombs are found, but several other monuments including Hatsepshut’s temple.
The West Bank of the Nile at Luxor
THE MASSACRE –
One week before I arrived in Egypt 57 tourists were massacred at Hatsepshut’s temple on the West Bank at Luxor. This made this photograph rather incongruous and seems to have tickled most of the tourists intrepid or crazy enough to make the trip anyway.
One week before I arrived in Egypt 57 tourists were massacred at Hatsepshut’s temple on the West Bank at Luxor. This made this photograph rather incongruous and seems to have tickled most of the tourists intrepid or crazy enough to make the trip anyway.
Below is Hatsepshut’s temple – an impressive structure which has been extensively restored given the pictures I saw from the 1930’s. It was built about 3500 years ago and at the entrance there are two tree stumps which may have formed an avenue all the way to the Nile a couple of miles away. It is believed that the whole area was once green and fertile – Egypt used to be seen as Europe’s bread basket by the Romans.
Rather more poignant than the “Smile” picture is this one. Someone had stuck this rose in the stones of the wall leading up to the temple. There were also flowers strewn in the first level corridor.
The whole structure is quite shallow, with the colonnade in the first level being only a few feet wide. The terrorists chased the tourists in and out of this colonnade for 45 minutes in a sort of game of hide and seek, then mutilated the corpses with knives in a (successful) attempt to gain maximum shock value.
The whole structure is quite shallow, with the colonnade in the first level being only a few feet wide. The terrorists chased the tourists in and out of this colonnade for 45 minutes in a sort of game of hide and seek, then mutilated the corpses with knives in a (successful) attempt to gain maximum shock value.
THE DESERT –
The extraordinary thing about the desert is that a) it is not that deserted (oases can be fairly large towns, and there is a good paved road running in between each one), b) part of it are really quite green and you can see water by the side of the road (at least in winter) and c) most of it is not sand. On occasion you come across a dune, and the wind patterns can be quite amazing. There is also the Great Sand Sea, which I didn’t see but sounds amazing. But for the most part you get a tundra, as you can see on the right side of this picture – a sort of moonscape.
The extraordinary thing about the desert is that a) it is not that deserted (oases can be fairly large towns, and there is a good paved road running in between each one), b) part of it are really quite green and you can see water by the side of the road (at least in winter) and c) most of it is not sand. On occasion you come across a dune, and the wind patterns can be quite amazing. There is also the Great Sand Sea, which I didn’t see but sounds amazing. But for the most part you get a tundra, as you can see on the right side of this picture – a sort of moonscape.
There is also the White Desert which is even more moonlike. This is made of limestone and can produce some pretty interesting shapes when the harder parts have been eroded by wind or water.
I got within a couple of hundred kms of the Gilf Kibir and therefore did my best Ralph Fiennes impression – then again, the man’s a clothes horse so the baggy shorts didn’t quite look so good on me.
Finally, the Pyramids. Perhaps the most magical view of them (one of them, at least) was when I drove out into the desert as part of the Oasis tour, over a week before I was to make a trip specially to Giza where the Great Pyramid of Cheops is. I looked over to the left as we were driving and, over the top of several buildings, I could just make out a hazy outline of the top of a pyramid. From that distance it looked majestic and quite enormous.
When you get up close it can be disappointing – you have to fight your way through the touts selling trinkets or pretending to be tour guides (or even ticket collectors), local tourists having a picnic on an ancient lump of sandstone, and pick your way amongst the camel crap left behind by some of the tourist attractions. The pyramids themselves seem rather smaller than you imagine.
At Giza there are three pyramids in various states of (dis) repair. I didn’t make it to the other sites. Giza has the edge because it is really close to Cairo and also has the Sphynx, whose nose, incidentally, was shot off by Napoleon’s troops who used it as target practice.
Finally, the Pyramids. Perhaps the most magical view of them (one of them, at least) was when I drove out into the desert as part of the Oasis tour, over a week before I was to make a trip specially to Giza where the Great Pyramid of Cheops is. I looked over to the left as we were driving and, over the top of several buildings, I could just make out a hazy outline of the top of a pyramid. From that distance it looked majestic and quite enormous.
When you get up close it can be disappointing – you have to fight your way through the touts selling trinkets or pretending to be tour guides (or even ticket collectors), local tourists having a picnic on an ancient lump of sandstone, and pick your way amongst the camel crap left behind by some of the tourist attractions. The pyramids themselves seem rather smaller than you imagine.
At Giza there are three pyramids in various states of (dis) repair. I didn’t make it to the other sites. Giza has the edge because it is really close to Cairo and also has the Sphynx, whose nose, incidentally, was shot off by Napoleon’s troops who used it as target practice.
view all pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.woddis/Egypt1998
Sabbatical - Intro
I was working at a technology company in 1998 which gave out sabbaticals after 5 years of service. So, I set up a round the world trip over 8 weeks - a 2 week stop in each of Egypt, Sri Lanka, India and Vietnam (with a one night stop off on either side in Singapore).
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