Scatology, or TP RTW

RTW is backpacker-speak for Round the World. This post is about the wide world of toilet paper.

And poop.

There are no pictures in this post but still, I wouldn't recommend reading this before or after a meal.

Get a group of dog walkers together and after the initial pleasantries the conversation will usually veer quickly to the dogs' bowel movements. Don't ask me why. I don't have kids but I notice that friends and family with newborns spend a lot of time talking about diapers and what's in them.

I've written several posts about "Things that may interest only me". This is one that will interest everyone. People just like to talk about poop.

Travelers are no exception. One of the joys of traveling is seeing the little ways in which other countries are different. For instance, a friend of mine, whose name I'll change to protect his innocence, returned from his first trip abroad. How was it? The first thing he mentioned was using a bidet for the first time. I jokingly asked him if he was going to put one in every bathroom now. No, not every bathroom, every room.

It's a subject of interest for even the most experienced and jaded travelers. I traveled for a few days in northern Thailand with a German photographer. Michael has seen more of the world than anyone I've ever met.

We were having dinner at a restaurant in the soulless ex-pat enclave of Chiang Mai when he got up to use the toilet. He came out laughing with a delighted expression on his face. "Did you see this?" he asked, pointing towards the toilet. "The lemons in the urinals?"

What follows are some observations rendered as tastefully as possible.

Squat toilets are the norm in Asia, although places that are accustomed to tourists will have western-style tourists. I can understand why people might find them uncomfortable or awkward to use, but I am surprised at how absolutely apoplectic some people get about squat toilets.

To a certain type of traveler anything other than a squeaky-clean western toilet is clearly an indication that the people in that area are morally defective and should be wiped off the face of the earth. These are generally the same people who travel to faraway lands to eat at McDonald's and spend half their day in internet cafes.

I'm a guy. I don't care. Squat toilets take a bit of getting used to, but they make hygienic sense in that you don't have to touch any part of the toilet. There's also a lot less hardware involved. Also, from a practical standpoint, you're less inclined to take the newspaper in with you and sit for 20 minutes.

When you're a man the world is your urinal. I try to be discreet but it's not necessary in this part of the world. Men will pull over on the side of the highway and urinate in plain view of passing traffic. I saw an old man in Hue standing on the sidewalk peeing into the sewer drain. This wasn't a side street, it was the main thoroughfare running parallel to the river.

It's refreshing to see a culture with a more relaxed attitude towards what is, after all, a perfectly natural thing to do. Perhaps it shouldn't be necessary to go to so much trouble or to build elaborate cathedrals for a simple bodily function. People who live on boats just sit on the edge of the boat and go, often in view of passing tourist boats.

One thing I've seen throughout SE Asia that I'd love to see in the US are outdoor urinals. I see them mostly at service stations and rest stops. A row of urinals with partitions is bolted onto the back wall of the building. I'm a man so I love this. If I were a woman I wouldn't be as thrilled, since there aren't similar facilities for women.

In most parts of the world I've been the plumbing is not as sturdy as we're accustomed to in the US. Toilet paper doesn't go in the toilet, it goes in a small wastebasket. If you put tissue in the toilet it will back up. As a result you'll see signs in the stalls asking you to please put the tissue in the basket.

These signs are usually written in all capital letters and have lots of exclamation points, clearly evidence that the sign was made by a flustered employee who had just finished cleaning up yet another mess caused by a tourist who still hasn't figured out the system. I'll have to remember to switch back when I return to the US!

One thing I'm really looking forward to is not having to carry my own toilet paper with me. Most places I've been have toilet paper as a rule. But you only have to make that mistake once, using the toilet without any tissue, before you remember to bring your own.

In some places you'll have to pay to use the toilet, such as bus or train stations. Often they'll charge you for a wad of toilet tissue. I've been places, such as Nepal, where the tissue is sometimes made of plastic and is just slightly better than using nothing at all. But at least there's tissue. Some places don't use it at all.

Please indulge me for just a moment while I go off on a wild tangent.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was from a well-to-do family in Buenos Aires, but even then he bathed so rarely that his friends called him el chancho, "the pig". Later in life, when he became a communist revolutionary known as Che, his lack of hygiene was legendary. The CIA dossier on him famously noted with questionable grammar that "He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty".

And yet even Che was appalled by the habits of the Quechua people of Peru. He observed that men there don't wipe at all while women use their skirts to wipe themselves and their children. In "The Motorcycle Diaries" he wrote the women are "veritable warehouses of excrement".

I can say from personal experience that this is still true.

When I was in Peru in 2005 I spent a long two hours on a local bus from Ollyantaytambo to Cuzco. My friend and I were the only tourists on the bus. I was standing in the aisle next to a woman who had the most offensive odor I have ever encountered.

It was not organic. It was not of this planet. It's what potpourri will smell like in hell. It was so bad I literally gagged. My eyes burned. I spent the entire trip holding my sleeve over my mouth and nose to keep from getting sick. No one else seemed to even notice. I had to keep reminding myself that I was the visitor and, whatever I might have felt (or smelt), by local standards it was normal.

I met a Venezuelan man in Ulaanbaatar who had just returned from a 30-day tour with his wife and two small boys. They went to western Mongolia to watch the solar eclipse. What a cool dad! He said he had thought Russian toilet paper was rough (it is) until he saw a young Kazakh girl by the side of the road wiping herself with a rock. He said he'd never complain about toilet paper again.

I always have multiple rolls of TP in my backpack. It's cheap, lightweight and doesn't take up much space. And it's something you never want to be without. Whenever I check out of a guest house I steal the TP and the soap. I almost always have a roll on my person.

This comes in handy when I'm at a restaurant that doesn't have napkins. Unlike American restaurants, where we take a six-inch stack of napkins, use two and throw the rest away, in other parts of the world you might get one or none at all. (Hopefully it's clear which method I'm criticizing.) Napkins in Vietnam are the size of post-it notes and have the absorbency of aluminum foil.

I will change my eating habits depending on my travel schedule. If I'm taking an overnight bus I'll try not to eat or drink anything, otherwise I might have to use the toilet in the middle of the night. I have made the rookie traveler mistake of drinking a couple beers to help me relax and sleep. (Trust me, it's a bad idea.)

I also don't want to take the chance of getting an upset stomach. Buses will make rest stops but you don't want to be the guy that causes the bus make an unscheduled stop because of your tummy.

Indoor showers are also a western convenience that have to be retrofitted into bathrooms in other parts of the world. If there is a tub it probably won't have a curtain. Because space is limited there usually isn't a tub or even a shower enclosure. The shower head will be put on the wall wherever it fits, which is usually over the toilet.

This method makes for an efficient use of space but it also leaves the toilet seat wet and standing water on the floor. If you need to use the toilet you can wipe the whole area down with a towel, but it makes more sense to just take off all your clothes!

I could go on but I think to do so would violate even my low standards of good taste.

Once more unto the beach

The first time I was in Hoi An I spent a day at Cau Dai beach. It's leisurely 20-minute bike ride from the town. The day was windy and overcast and downright chilly when I got on the beach. But the beach itself seemed quite nice. I wondered what it would look like on a clear, sunny day.

Now I know. It wasn't just hot and sunny. It was probably the hottest day I've ever spent on a beach. The sand scalded my feet even through my flip-flops. Even in the shade of a beach umbrella the heat was suffocating.

But the water was refreshingly cool, so I got in every 20 or 30 minutes or so to cool off. In Thailand, by way of comparison, the water is so warm that it doesn't cool you off. It's hard to tell where the air ends and the water begins.

One of the knocks against Vietnam is that, even though it's a beautiful country and easy to get around and the food is delicious and the people are wonderful, the beaches don't compare to Thailand.

I don't get it. I was hugely disappointed by the beaches in Thailand. The ones I visited were narrow, crowded and loud. It's impossible to relax while you're fending off a never-ending stream of beach vendors, 10 or 12 per minute at times.

The beaches in Vietnam are long, wide and relatively undeveloped, although that's changing quickly. Nowhere in Vietnam did I see anything like Hat Chaweng, the biggest beach on Koh Samui in Thailand.



I had plenty of time to check out the Vietnam coastline from the air this past week because I flew four times. Danang-Hanoi, Hanoi-Danang, Danang-Saigon, Saigon-Hanoi. Long story.

There are miles and miles of pristine beach with no commercial development whatsoever. The water isn't as clear as I've seen in other parts of SE Asia but aside from that I like the beaches in Vietnam much, much more than those in Thailand. I don't want to be too hasty in my appraisal, though. I think this warrants further research. I think I should spend a few more weeks beach-hopping before I submit an official opinion.

I've mentioned before how I think it's funny how overweight, pasty-skinned tourists suffer through the scorching mid-day heat in skimpy clothes while the locals do everything they can to avoid the sun. Women here will cover literally every inch of skin during the day: sunhat, mask, scarf, long sleeves, gloves, pants, socks and sandals. The only part they don't cover is their eyes.

The reason, as I understand it, and as with most things I "understand" I'm probably dead wrong, is due to a cultural belief that goes back literally thousands of years. Dark skin is traditionally a sign that the person farms or fishes or toils at some other "common" work in the sun all day. Lighter skin is a sign of wealth or refinement.

When locals go to the beach for fun they go in the morning or the evening, when the sun is low and the air is cooler. This makes a lot of sense, aside from the fact that these are the times when sharks feed.

This is a stretch of beach near my sunbed at mid-day.



This is almost the same shot near sunset, with the beach full of locals.



One way to pass the time is to watch the local fishermen working. These circular boats practically beg to have their photos taken.



Fishermen stand up as they row these with a single long paddle. This is a shot from Cham Island (which I'll cover in a separate post). Try this at home. I dare you. I think I'd be able to stay on a rodeo bull longer than I could stand up in one of these boats.



Later in the day they create just the right amount of shade for a man to play with his granddaughter on the beach.



I met a woman who lives in Saigon but was in Hoi An visiting family. She invited me to dinner at a beach a few miles up the road that I hadn't heard or read about. It was packed with people eating, swimming and relaxing on the beach. I did not see another tourist.

Tourists always pay more. I don't have a problem with that, as long as I don't think I'm getting fleeced. Even at inflated prices I pay much less than I would at home. We ordered two big grilled fish, picked the meat off and rolled it in rice paper with fresh greens. I'm sure there's a name for this but I don't know it. I was too stuffed to ask. We each had a soda. The entire meal cost about twice as much as the coffee I'm drinking as I write this!

Thought of the day

As I was listening to the pre-flight instructions on my Jetstar flight from Danang to Saigon I wondered if there is an airline anywhere in the world that allows passengers to smoke. In 2009 is it still necessary to tell passengers that they're on a non-smoking flight?

That's a rhetorical question. Even with the announcement and the posted signs I'm sure even as I write this somewhere a flight attendant is asking a passenger to put out his cigarette. I'm confident of this after seeing a passenger who wasn't familiar with barf bags.

On my Hanoi to Danang flight a guy across the aisle and just behind me got airsick. Rather than use the bag provided by the airline he just leaned over into the aisle and puked onto the floor. Thankfully it was only an hour flight!

Denouement

Vietnam is an easy country to travel in, partly due to the wealth of transportation options, but mostly because of the shape of the country. Because it's long and skinny, visitors either travel from north to south (Hanoi to Saigon) or vice versa.

I did the south to north route, entering from Cambodia, starting in Saigon and heading north to Hanoi and ultimately to Sapa. Having gone all the way up, I'm now going back down. I decided to return to Hoi An, my favorite town in the whole wide world. The sunset shot above is just one reason why.

From here I may continue on to Saigon, or I may go back north again and see if I have better luck with the weather in Sapa. My visa for Vietnam expires on May 3, so I may stay here for a couple more weeks. Or I may go back to Cambodia. Or Laos. Ask me tomorrow.

I am totally winging it at this point. The trip is essentially over. I'm just trying to stretch it out as long as I can. Luckily I'm in a part of the world where it's easy to travel cheaply.

I don't expect to be posting as much since I'll probably be covering familiar ground. After the breakneck pace of the first half of the trip it's been nice to be able to take my time and relax a little.

Another day, another protest

I was in Bangkok during the airport strike last year. I started working on a post about the political situation in Thailand but never finished it. I wish I had. I predicted the worst was yet to come. And for once in my life I was right. As I write this I'm watching news footage of the Thai military shooting in the streets, burnt vehicles being towed away, and other typical scenes of a Southeast Asian vacation.

I was stuck in Bangkok for a week when I went back to the city after aggravating my back diving in Koh Tao. I received emails from folks wondering if I was OK. The bombings in Mumbai happened at the same time and it was easy to confuse the two.

At the time I was perfectly safe at a comfortable hostel in Silom, the financial district. There was no sign that anything was amiss, except that attendance at the hostel dwindled. One night I was the only guest! On the streets there was no sign that the country had been shut off from the outside world.

Bangkok is the main hub not just for Bangkok but for all of SE Asia. If you fly to Rangoon or Hanoi or Phnom Penh the odds are pretty good that you'll go through Bangkok. So by shutting down Bangkok the protestors were effectively shutting down the whole region.

I was fascinated at the time by the way the story was being covered, not just in the American and Western press, but also in the SE Asian media. They totally missed the point. I read the English-language reports online and in the local press, and the story was all the same.

A group of peaceful protestors from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) shut down the airport because they wanted to force out a corrupt prime minister (Somchai), who was actually just a puppet for a previous corrupt prime minister (Thaksin), who is living in exile to escape justice in Bangkok.

Sounds perfectly noble, doesn't it? The protestors were well-behaved, articulate, organized and had the best interests of the country in mind. Right?

Not so fast.

The former prime minister who is living in exile is actually wildly popular and was elected in a landslide. He was forced out of office in 2006, not by an election or even a trial, but a coup. The people who are protesting now want him to return.

His successor was likewise elected in a landslide election. Both were successful because they understand one fundamental truth in politics, no matter what the country: There are more poor people than rich people.

Both PMs appealed to the rural poor of Thailand, the farmers and the fishermen. They've been accused of buying votes. A scathing commentary in Forbes magazine during the protest explains how these votes are "bought":

"Thaksin and Somchai are loved by the rural poor whom they have showered with grants and subsidies, some of them venally political in nature, but others more worthy. They have nudged elitist and stuffy Thai banks to open up affordable credit lines to impoverished farmers, which is no small thing given that for generations those same people have languished in misery, forgotten and despised by the urban elites and unable to raise any capital whatsoever outside of ruinous loan sharks."

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/02/thailand-class-airport-oped-cx_lo_1202osborne.html

In other words, sure there were some shenanigans, but they instituted policies that would help the poor become ... not poor.

Thaksin also made the catastrophic mistake of butting heads with the king. Thailand is a monarchy, remember. The people there love the king. It's no act. They literally worship the guy. It is genuine, but they are required by law to do so.

The Thailand constitution says:

"The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action."

The Thai Criminal code further states:

"Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen or the Heir-apparent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years."

By all accounts, though, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been a good leader. He has used his almost literally infinite wealth to sponsor thousands of public works project. (In 2008 Forbes ranked him as the world's richest monarch, with an estimated wealth of $35 billion. Thais will not pass up an opportunity to vigorously dispute this, as they believe that the king's wealth is Thailand's wealth and vice versa.)

During his reign there have been a bewildering succession of coups and changes in government, but the king has managed to remain respectfully above the fray.

Which brings us back to the PAD. They wear gold to show their allegiance to the king. The People's Alliance for Democracy is actually a pro-monarchy group. But you'll only find that crucial nugget at the bottom of news stories, if at all.

“If Thaksin’s puppet government returns or they make any attempt to amend the constitution in Thaksin’s favor or reduce the king’s power, the People’s Alliance for Democracy will come back,” protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul said during the airport strike.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aezhA7mHQmIc&refer=asia

So the story was grossly misinterpreted in the way the media completely missed that this "democratic" organization's goal is to solidify the king's power. The two PMs appeal to the vast numbers of rural poor, so what can the educated/rich/pro-monarchy group do?

They want to take away the vote from poor people.

I am not simplifying or paraphrasing. That is the stated goal of the PAD. A news article says the PAD "is now considering moves to take away the power of the vote from the rural masses, with parliament members to be appointed."

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=420664&publicationSubCategoryId=64

The legislators would be "appointed" by members of certain professions, professions which, not coincidentally, happen to make up the bulk of the PAD.

Surgeon Noppakoon Lagum, one of the airport protestor said: "Rural people have good hearts but they don't know the truth like we do in Bangkok. It is our duty to re-educate them."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081204/ap_on_re_as/as_thailand_political_unrest

It is astonishing that in 2009 a political group can so boldly and nakedly embark on a program to disenfranchise poor people simply because they're poor without anyone even noticing! You have to give the PAD credit for the way they managed the media. They were so well-behaved and so darned reasonable that no one in the media -- not even locally -- bothered to question their motives.

The PAD was able to steer the conversation in such a way that the story became "Look at all these poor stranded tourists!' They were able to engineer the situation in such a way that the media, even the local media, focused on how it was affecting foreigners, and not how it would stand to affect Thais.

Maybe it's because the situation is so hard to simplify into terms Western readers can digest. The Forbes commentary I quote above says "make no mistake that this is class warfare. But forget the usual categories of left and right. This is class war in a consumerist Theravada technocracy ruled by an uneasy mish-mosh of divine kingship, a shadowy military, business interests and inherited money. It is outside Western categories."

I was sure there would be a backlash. When a small minority engineers not one but two coups in as part of a systematic attempt to take away the vote from the vast majority of the people, the people whose votes are threatened are going to react. Again, it's important to remember that both PMs won huge victories in democratic elections. The minority doesn't like the results, so they're going to change the entire system of government.

I am a bit torn on this because I believe -- and I love dropping this conversational hand grenade -- that universal voting rights are a bad idea. The Founding Fathers instituted the Electoral College because they felt the vast majority of the population was quite simply not educated or informed enough to make a responsible choice.

Of course they were all rich, white, educated landowners, aristocrats who felt they were best-suited to run the country. They never in their worst nightmares imagined a scenario in which everyone could vote.

A person can live in a Unabomber shack in the woods and stumble into town once every two or four years and cast completely arbitrary votes. His vote counts the same as mine. If someone votes purely along party lines, without even knowing the names, let alone platforms, of the candidates, her vote counts the same as mine.

Voting is a right but it is also a responsbility. If you do not take it upon yourself to make the most informed decision possible, sorry, you don't get to vote. And yes, this rule would apply to me in some recent elections.

I met a girl last year in Nepal who said she wouldn't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim. If you vote on one issue, you don't get to vote. Period. If you vote on one issue and you are demonstrably wrong about it, you don't get to vote for the rest of your life. The 25 percent of people who still approved of Bush when he left office? No more votes, sorry.

I question whether voting rights should be universal but it's just plain evil to take away votes from poor people simply because they're poor. Wealth, class, profession -- these are not reliable indicators of a person's intelligence or political acumen. There is a certain rich private-school guy who served two terms as president even though he is as dumb as a box of hammers.

Back to the king. When I first arrived in Bangkok much of the city was shut down for a state funeral. The king's sister had died several months before. The official explanation for the delay was a "national period of mourning" or something along those lines. I was told on the sly that the delay may have been due to the king's health, that he was not well enough for full-day of ceremonies. The funeral was delayed until he was up to it.

He turned 81 in December. He traditionally gives a radio address to the nation on his birthday. This year his son, the crown prince, gave the address. Last month he was hospitalized.

The PAD wants to protect the power of the king. The king is truly loved by the people but that doesn't mean future kings will necessarily inherit the goodwill he has built up during his 63-year reign. He is the longest-serving head of state in the world. There hasn't been much for the royal heir to do .

A 2002 issue of The Economist was banned in Thailand for criticizing the crown prince's personal life. He's on his third wife. He put the lèse majesté laws to clever use during his first divorce. He claimed his wife was totally at fault for the failure of their marriage. Because she was forbidden by law of accusing or criticizing him, she was unable to refute his accusations!

So if the PAD achieves its goal it will be just in time to see the king's newly-solidified power pass to the hands of the crown prince, who does not enjoy unquestioning adoration as his father does.

The situation is obviously far too complicated for an American tourist to grasp, although I do think I see the finer points of the controversy better than most of the journalists paid to cover it.

One thing I know for sure: I'm glad I left Thailand when I did!

Among the Hmong

The main reason tourists go to Sapa is to trek into the hills and visit the local villages of the ethnic minorities. The area around Sapa is populated mostly by Black Hmong and Red Dzao.

Homestays are a popular excursion. In theory this involves hiking to a village, staying with a local family and seeing their traditional way of life. In actuality it's usually a staged event, almost like a museum exhibit.

One couple I met was aghast to spend a night at a "traditional" homestay not with the family, but in a separate building nicer than their hotel back in town, complete with satellite TV and a refrigerator full of beer. They were led to believe they'd be roughing it, not basking in luxury.

It's possible to arrange the real thing. There are so many women wandering the streets of Sapa selling souvenirs that all you have to do is find one willing to work as a guide. It's not hard to find someone willing to guide you for around $10 per day. It beats carrying around a basket of pillowcases and shoulder bags and getting rejected by tourists all day.

I ended up not doing a trek to the hills because it rained every day I was there. But I did do one short hike to a village called Cat Cat, just outside Sapa. I did it on the one sunny day I had. The scenery was beautiful, but the village itself had the feel of a theme park attraction. Hiking the main path was as "authentic" as an exhibit at Epcot.

The first sign of trouble was the ticket booth. It didn't get me anything except the privilege of walking through the village. It was less than a dollar to get in, which would have been OK had I thought that the money went to the village. The ticket says Lao Cai Tourism Company so I would guess that somewhere in the neighborhood of zero-point-zero percent of the proceeds goes to the village.

A wide, evenly-paved path wound down the hill from the ticket booth, a path built solely for tourists. Because the valley is so steep I could clearly see dirt tracks going up and down the hills, but aside from the one I was on I couldn't see any other paved paths.

Which is not to say it isn't a working village. The path went past rice terraces where children played in the muddy water...


... and others that were being tilled by water buffalo.


In the foreground you can see a young girl working with an infant strapped to her back. Women work from sunup to sundown with babies on their backs. I never heard one of the children cry.

All along the path are huts selling the same souvenirs you can find in town, except that you can buy them straight from the source. I bought a small stone carving from this Hmong woman, working here as her cute little daughter watches. She didn't speak a word of English so I couldn't even manage to find out what her name is. But she does have a celphone.


At the bottom of the hill the path crossed a bridge where I passed a boy, perhaps eight years old, going off to work with his tools.


As I passed him I followed what I think is a good rule when traveling: Always smile at someone carrying an axe and a machete.

Just beneath the bridge was a waterfall where you can plainly see how much rain the area had been receiving in the muddy torrent.


Then it got a bit absurd. There were a couple brick buildings with concrete walkways. Inside one was a traditional arts center with a PA system blasting music into the hillside. It cost extra to go in. Again, I'm happy to contribute to the local economy -- I bought quite a few souvenirs -- but sorry, no, I'm not going to go along with the charade.

From there I decided to wander off the paved walkway and wander some of the dirt paths into the hills. This is the view looking back up at Sapa, with the paved walkway visible in the foreground.

Everywhere I looked were rice terraces built into the mountainside, the reflection off the water making them look like giant marble steps.



For tourists these hills provide a challenging day or two of hiking. The people here walk up and down these hills every day and farm these on these steep slopes. It may be a hard life, but I doubt they ever tire of the view.

A van down by the river

My visit to the Sunday market at Bac Ha was part of a day trip that included a couple other stops. After the market we drove just outside of town to visit a Flower Hmong village. It looked the way it might have 100 years ago, except for the modern school, the power lines, the paved path built for tourists ... okay, so it didn't look this way 100 years ago.

It was still interesting to see the difference in lifestyle between the town of Bac Ha and the village just a mile or two away. Here's the school, completely surrounded by patches of crops.


Walking through the village took about 30 minutes for all but one of us. We had to wait for one passenger who managed to get lost. The area we walked was about the size of a high school football stadium but this guy managed to get lost for 45 minutes.

It gave us plenty of time to watch the locals returning to their homes from the market. Notice anything missing from this pic?


Men!

We saw a few men walking but none of them carried anything. The women carry the gear home while the men ride their motos. It's nice to see a community where men and women understand their roles.

I'm joking. Really, I am. I would never make my wife walk home alone with a basket on her back. I would ride my moto nice and slow right beside her so I could tell her what to cook me for dinner.

Moving right along...

This hill is cultivated from top to bottom with people walking on a footpath about halfway up.


As we were walking back towards the van two little girls walked briskly past, each with a basket strapped to her back and a long, curved knife in her hand. We said hello and waved but they just kept walking. They had work to do.


They were cutting basil leaves from bushes along the path and tossing them into the baskets. At least that's what they were trying to do when tourists weren't jamming cameras in their faces. They absolutely did not want their picture taken. Ah, who cares what a little girl wants when there are people back home waiting to be dazzled by your photography skills.

I was secretly rooting for one of the girls to poke one of the intrusive tourists with a knife, but thankfully they're more civilized than I am.

We stopped on the way back to Sapa to drop some folks off at the train station in Lao Cai. I knew Sapa was close to the Chinese border but I didn't realize how close. Lao Cai is on the border. We stopped briefly at the river so we could see the border crossing.


The monument in the foreground is in Vietnam. The building in the background is in Hekou, China. In between is the Song Hong (Red River), one of the rare place names that sounds equally musical when translated! To the left is a bridge connecting the banks. These two countries have, shall we say, a complicated past, so I was a bit surprised that tourist vans can just roll right up to the border.

Sapa

Instead of flying to Bali I took the sleeper train to Lao Cai, on the Vietnam-China border. From there I took a mini-bus to the mountain town of Sapa. It's usually spelled this way even though it should actually be Sa Pa, since in Vietnamese, as in Chinese, each syllable is a word.

The train arrived in the wee hours of the morning, as all trains in Vietnam seem to do. (There are four daily trains from Sapa to Hanoi. They all arrive between 4:30 and 5:30 am. Seriously, what the hell?)

I arrived in Sapa just after daybreak in fog so thick I couldn't see the other side of the street. I was trying to get my bearings using the tiny map in my guidebook, but I couldn't find the church or even the town square, which is about the size of a squared city block. I couldn't see this:



I was wondering if going to Sapa was a mistake after I found a room in what turned out to a fairly bizarre hotel and saw the early morning 'view' from my balcony.


The hotel owner allowed me to switch rooms after I convinced him that 'hot shower' implied the presence of a shower head, and not just a stream of hot water running down the wall. I took a nap and awoke to see the fingers of God massaging the scalp of the earth.


It was as if someone had hung a giant Thomas Cole painting on my balcony. I was officially glad to be in Sapa. In better light you can see villages and rice terraces clinging to the steep mountain slopes.


The only time it was clearer than this, of course, was the afternoon I took the shuttle from Sapa to Lao Cai to catch the train back to Hanoi.

There's nothing particularly Vietnamese about the town itself. The view from my balcony looks like any mountain town you might find in the Rockies or Alps.


The people in this area are, for the most part, not ethnic Vietnamese. They are members of various ethnic minorities, primarily Black Hmong and Red Dzao. The streets are full of women in traditional garb selling handstitched blankets, tapestries, etc. You know the stuff is authentic because you can see them sewing. The women's hands are blue from winding hemp fibers into twine.

These women, working on the sidewalk in front of a tourist steakhouse, are Red Dzao. The red headgear that looks like a pillow is an easy giveaway.


Obviously a lot of this is for show. Women dress like this in part because that's what tourists want to see. I was having a bowl of noodles in the market when I saw this woman in Flower Hmong garb engaging in a timeless local ritual, which translates roughly into English as "talking on a celphone".

I enjoyed a few days there despite really lousy weather. I wanted to climb Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina, but slogging through the rain and mud for three days didn't appeal to me much. And I must admit I just wanted an excuse to say 'Fansipan' in conversation. That's the Anglicized version of the Vietnamese name, Phan Xi Pang. No matter how you spell it, though, it still rhymes with 'fancypants', and who wouldn't want to say he climbed that.

The countryside around Sapa is a spectacular. It reminded me, strangely enough, of Peru. In both places farmers raise crops on terraces built on impossibly steep mountainsides, all the way to the summit. Both places are inhabited by people who are short in stature but incredibly tough. The altitude here isn't nearly as high, though. Fansipan, the highest point in Indochina, is 3,143 meters, which is lower than the city of Cuzco, Peru.

Tourism has not necessarily been a good influence on Sapa. When I arrived after daybreak there were already Hmong women wandering around selling local handicrafts. They know when tourists from the trains arrive and they're ready and waiting when we arrive. The stuff is beautiful and cheap, but there's far too many people selling far too much similar stuff.

I am sitting in the the H'mong Sisters Bar & Restaurant as I write this. The only other people here are young Hmong girls in traditional garb, none of whom is over five feet tall. I just finished reading "Gulliver's Travels" so I'm wondering if this is a weird Lilliputian dream induced by the awful local wine. (The label says it's "fruit wine", but I can't imagine what kind of fruit could produce the flavor, unless dirty gym socks grow on trees around here.)

Even though it's dark and rainy, there are still women in the street peddling to tourists. The truly sad part is they're the same women I saw at the crack of dawn. The come up from the villages in the early morning, wander the main street all day and all night, then return to the home. Or not.

Sitting at next to me are my two new best friends. My best stab at the spelling of their names is Mai (12, front, in Black Hmong clothing) and Ha (15, back, Flower Hmong).

After peddling souvenirs all day they come to the bar to play games and talk to tourists. Their English is fantastic, which is incredible since they learned it all talking to tourists. When it comes time for them to go to bed they walk to a friend's house in town. Their village is a two-hour walk or 30-minute moto ride.

They're both exceptionally bright but Ha strikes me as something as a prodigy. She was visibly enjoying herself as she made me squirm, using her ruthless intelligence to demolish every argument I put forth as to why I wouldn't buy anything from her. Her potential would be limitless in the US, but I fear there's only so far a girl can go in Sapa.

I did stump her. I wanted to buy some of the gorgeous blankets. She said she had a cousin who had them so I told her to bring some to me at the hotel.

She brought four. I had found out what a fair price would be for one. I told her I'd buy all four at that price. By this time of course a huge crowd of women had gathered, shoving blankets in my face, saying "You buy one from me".

Ha was speechless for once. It may have been the biggest deal she had ever done. She talked in Hmong with the women for about a minute before she finally realized this was a deal she definitely wanted to make. I'm sure I paid a little too much. I don't care.

As much as I love the beauty of the town, and (mostly) enjoy my interactions with the locals, it makes me terribly, inexpressibly sad. These women spend virtually every waking hour chasing tourists through the streets. If you stop to talk to one or, heaven forbid, start looking at what they're selling, they turn into sharks with blood in the water.


Perhaps that metaphor is a bit harsh, because I am humbled by how genuinely friendly and cheerful they are. Don't get me wrong, they are persistent, and it is frustrating smiling and saying "No thank you" a thousand times a day, but if I spent every day being continually rebuffed by tourists, often rudely, I would lose my sense of humor in approximately eight seconds.

The poor tourist trapped against the wall here laughed, threw up his hands and jokingly yelled "Help!" as I walked past. Sorry, pal, I paid my dues...

Bull market

Or water buffalo, to be more precise. One of the main attractions in northern Vietnam is the weekly market in Bac Ha. Travel guides always list the local markets as must-see sites, but I'm usually disapppointed. They're good places to get cheap food but they tend to look alike: knockoffs of brand-name clothes, Yankee caps, beer tshirts, and so on.

Bac Ha is a real market where real Vietnamese people really shop. There are stalls geared toward tourists but the number of times I was asked "Mistah you buy from me?" was blessedly low. Most of the time I felt I was intruding. It's held on Sunday and people from the local hill tribes travel, often on foot, to by and sell.

It was cold and rainy the day I went. Muddy streams ran through the stalls.

The miserable weather made the place look like a refugee shantytown, but the mood was festive. People were enjoying themselves, except for these adorable little girls, standing arm in arm under an umbrella, looking like they'd be just about anywhere else.


This is clearly a big social occasion. I'm told that young folks there is a 'Secret Market', which isn't really a secret. It's the best and perhaps only way for young folks from the hill villages to meet and court. I could see for myself groups of women talking and joking in their elaborately stitched clothing.

The people in Sapa are primarily Black Hmong and Red Dzao. In Bac Ha they're primarily Flower Hmong. Unlike the understated (but quite lovely) garb of the Black Hmong women the Flower Hmong wear brightly colored clothing, with orange being the primary color.


I'm eternally mortified by the way tourists stick their cameras in the faces of local people without permission. Imagine being in your yard or office or in the aisle at the supermarket and having a foreigner stick a foot-long camera lens in your face at point-blank range.

I try to be more discreet. I don't feel bad about taking candid long-distance shots but if I want a close-up I'll ask permission. I wanted to get some pictures of the young girls in their Sunday best, but most of them really, really did not want their photos taken.

Four girls were standing together selling selling herbs. I asked if I could take their picture. The two on the ends both took a step to the side. One of the girls in the middle shook her head and put her hands in front of her face. This girl gave me a big smile. I showed them the camera so they'd know I only took her photo.


There were people selling the usual fruits and vegetables, herbs, meats, rice and other foodstuffs. But there were also blacksmiths making shovel blades.


And barbers.


If you're looking to buy or sell livestock this is the place to be: water buffalo, pigs, horses and dogs. Someone asked if the dogs were meant to be eaten. Our guide answered a bit too emphatically that they were not. My guess is his answer takes into account the western attitude toward dogs, that they are companions and not food.

Here is the area where the buffalo are tethered.


You can see the dramatic setting of the town, nestled in the hills, as well as the swampy conditions. I especially like the three women socializing on the right, seemingly oblivious to their dreary surroundings, except for the one on the left who is standing on a rock in a hopeless attempt to keep her feet from getting muddy.

After we gathered to wait for the minivan to take us to the next stop I noticed a motorbike packed up and ready to go. There are a couple of geese strapped to the side, some bulk goods tied to the back, and a dog, wrapped in plastic and tied to the seat!

The only part not wrapped in the plastic bag is his head. He seemed perfectly content and even closed his eyes and went to sleep as he waited for his master to take him home maybe he realized that being strapped to the back of a motorcycle is better than stewing in a pot, like the horse who went into this stew at the market.

I Bail on Bali

There are 869 reasons why I didn't go to Bali. Here they are in order of importance:
1) Just kidding.

I told some of my plans to travel from Vietnam to Bali, Indonesia. I decided not to for reasons I have mercifully chosen not to share. It was the right decision.

I will most likely stay in Vietnam for a little while longer and then head back to the States. My visa here expires May 3 so I can stay here until then, or maybe make one last trip to Cambodia, or ... ah, who knows. The trip is nearly at an end...

I'm in Sapa now, in the northern highlands of Vietnam. I was at the Chinese border today. I really want to hike Fansipan, the highest peak in Indochina, but the weather here is miserable. Sapa is a gorgeous mountain town so I think I'll hang out here for a couple days to see if the weather improves. If it doesn't, well, I don't want to slog through the mud for three days to get to the top and see nothing.

(Thanks to Molly for the title of this post!)

Halong Bay

One of the top ten things I'd hoped to see on this trip is Halong Bay in northern Vietnam. I had read that it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Now I know.

The bay has nearly 2,000 islands, spread over an area of about 600 square miles. Traveling by boat through the maze of islands is like exploring a mythic realm Tolkien might have imagined.

When I arrived in Hanoi the weather was so hot and humid it was hard to breathe. I spent those two days seeing the city and waiting for my hostel to fix the A/C in my room. They fixed it the day the weather snapped and it became cold and rainy. I had planned on going to Halong Bay but I didn't want to go in the rain. So I waited. The weather underwent another drastic, sudden change. On the second hot and sunny day I booked a two-day tour. You can guess what happened next.

It's about a three-hour drive from Hanoi to Halong Bay. It was sunny when I was picked up in the morning but by the time we got on the water it was cloudy. I would have rather seen the area in the sunshine, of course. Even in the gloomy weather it was spectacular. From a distance the overcast sky gave the islands a ghostly, ethereal look.

We entered into the labyrinth of islands, rows of them disappearing into the mist like a series of receding horizons.


The islands are limestone and thus it's not surprising that there are caves with stalactites and stalagmites. We visited two, which were quite impressive.

There was some sort of official personage in one of the caves with what we all agreed was the World's Coolest Office.


Our tour guide was yet another aspirant to be the World's Worst. He'd giggle like the village idiot as he pointed out all the interesting formations. Dragons having sex with other life forms was a recurring theme...

This is the view from the cave exit. It's safe to say Halong Bay is no longer a well-kept secret.


I got a kick out of listening to other tourists complain that there are too many tourists!

From there we went to another cove to do some sea kayaking. There are fish farms there where fish, sharks, lobsters, crabs and even cuttlefish are raised for my dining pleasure.


This is our junk in the cove.

In the water below is a small rowboat with a floating grocery store. Some incredibly hard-working entrepreneurs row around to the tour boats selling beer, whiskey, snacks, etc.

The prices on the boat are outlandish so another American guy named Colin (who was there with his girlfriend Katy) and I were going to buy a bottle of rice whiskey for 100,000 dong (as opposed to 30,000 for a beer on the boat).

As I was making the transaction a member of the crew shouted down in extremely rude fashion, indicating that we would be charged if we tried to bring the whiskey on board. We were told when we booked the trip that everything was included except for drinks. We were not told we'd have to buy them on the boat until the moment I was handing over the money to the girl in the boat.

She was crushed. I was not pleased.

I would much rather pay a fair price to a hardworking girl in a rowboat than pay out the wazoo to the extortionists on board. Colin had an idea. We ran down to his cabin and waved her over the window. She rowed over and we bought it. Two young British guys pulled the same trick. I'm sure the crew knew. Screw 'em.

I was lucky to be in a fun group. I shared my cabin with a Canadian guy named Marc-Antoni (second from left). In addition to the American couple (center) and the British guys there was a pair of Danish girls. On the table is a bottle of rice whiskey and in between Colin's feet is the bottle we bought from the lady in the boat.




The cabins were surprisingly nice, considering I was doing a cheapo, grungy backpacker-type tour. But it was so cool and pleasant a bunch of us decided to sleep on the sunbeds on deck. I'd like to say it's one of those ideas that sounded good at the time, but even then, through the haze of two bottles of rice whiskey, it seemed like a recipe for disaster. Considering my back was already bothering me it was about as smart as jumping down an elevator shaft with an anvil strapped to my back.

Katy was kind enough to take a picture of me the following morning and you can see how I felt.



The budget tours are for two or three days. I was glad I did because the next day was just plain miserable. We dropped off the three-day'ers at Cat Ba Island. And then boat conked out. We were dead in the water.

Someone had the brilliant idea to have another junk tow us back to port. These aren't tugboats. They're built for slow cruising. It was comical watching the crews trying hooking the tow row up to various points on the two boats and then looking flummoxed when the boats refused to budge an inch. Then we got to watch as the crew of the other boat had to pry out the rope after it got jammed under the planks in the hull. I should run a caption contest for this pic.


I should say it was comical for the first 20 minutes or so. After an hour or so of futility I asked our tour guide if the other boat was going back to Halong City. It is? Why don't we hop on the other boat? He said something to the effect of "What would we do about this boat then?" I resisted the temptation to say "I really don't give a crap" or "That's not my problem" and instead just shrugged.

A few minutes later we were boarding the other boat. Apparently it hadn't occurred to anyone on either boat that we should switch. If I hadn't suggested it I'd probably still be on the boat, surviving by eating the corpses of my starved fellow passengers.